Push-Up Contest

2026. There's gonna be one a month this year and I cannot wait to share them. I actually just got back from China

“So I'm writing this at three in the morning. I'm so jet lagged”

But wait until you hear the story that I found there. I'm very excited for that one. I'm also working with some of my favorite minds and fashion to develop new episodes and ideas Including a story about bras and how they work and whether or not we need them, but whoop! I need a little more time to get it all together. So I wanted to share a different podcast that I really like. This is also a story about bras, but with a very different perspective. This is a piece from Signal Hill, which is an audio magazine.

It's such a smart concept. They publish all kinds of audio documentaries from all different contributors. Long-form reported work, short essays, reviews, poems, and it's packaged together in issues that you can subscribe to.

But I particularly loved this dispatch from their last issue. It's called "Push Up Contest" by Zoe Carland.

And it's about how her dad designed a bra that changed the world. It's a delight. I'll have that for you after this little break.

“Before we start today's show, we want to shout out another member of the Radio Topia family, Radio Diaries.”

For almost 30 years, Radio Diaries has been helping people document their own lives and histories. Now they're back with a new series called "Ortson Wells and the Blind Soldier" about a small town crime that sparked the desegregation of the US military. In 1946, a Black World War II veteran named Isaac Woodard was blinded by a white police officer. Nobody knew who the officer was or where the attack happened. But when famed director Ortson Wells found out about the attack, he pledged to not only broadcast it, but solved it.

On the radio week by week. Wash your hands off a Syrex, wash them well, scrub and scour. You won't blood out the blood of a blinded war veteran. You're going to be uncovered. We will blast out your name. And I will find means to remove from you all refuge off a Syrex. You can't get rid of me. This series is a riveting true crime investigation told by descendants, activists and the last known witness to the attack.

Listen to Ortson Wells and the Blind Soldier out now, wherever you get your podcasts, or at radiotopia.fm. And now, push up contest by Zoe Curland. Stop slamming your foot and also you might want to just sit on your hands. I mean, the rings are a collattery chatterie. I don't know if I'm off.

I think you just took off 11 rings. It should be 13. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. Oh, 14. Thank you very much. 14 rings. How many bracelets?

1, 2, 3, 4. This is my dad, Jeffrey Curland. He's a costume designer for movies, and he dresses like it. Pattern shirts, elaborate knitwear, scarves, and pocket squares, vintage loafers. All of those rings you just heard, and bracelets, and chains. He has wavy shoulder-length hair.

His style is luxurious, timeless, and a little genderless, like Tilda Swinton, as Orlando, or a Renaissance Prince. Eclectic.

“In a word, I think probably as a best word.”

Today, for example, he's wearing a poncho, and I assure you he's pulling it off.

This is probably the first thing that people notice about me is what apparel I happen to be wearing at the time.

Choose jewelry. It's all there. I grew up watching my dad use clothes to transform people into characters. They'd step in front of the trifold mirror under fluorescent fitting room lights. As they moved, the reflective panels multiplied their bodies to infinity, making them into mythical, multi-limmed creatures.

And then he would slice them into pieces with his measuring tape, searching for golden ratios.

Finally, he'd reconstruct them via textile, giving them contours they didn't come into the room with. As a kid, sitting in the corner of the fitting room, I witnessed this transformation over and over again. My dad designed the costumes for some very iconic movies. My best friends wedding, Hannah and her sisters, Oceans 11, Inception. But of all of his movies, I have one very clear favorite.

The movie came out in the year 2000, but I didn't see it until a decade later. I was 15, curled up on the couch at a friend's house. "It's a valentine called me. It would be very harmful." So, it kills people. "You're a lawyer?"

"I hate lawyers. I just work for them." "We're going to have to spend a little time filling in the holes in your research." "Don't talk to me like I'm an idiot, okay?"

“"I think we got off on the wrong foot here."”

"That's all you got, lady." "Two wrong feet and ugly shoes." "You got to find a different job or a different guy." "Aren Brakovich." For the uninitiated, the movie stars Julia Roberts as "Aren."

"A dogged, whipsmart, foul mouthed, paralegal." "Who helps a small desert town in California take on an energy company." "That's poisoning their water." "Why are there medical records and blood samples in real estate files?" "When you want to find a best to keep this welfare there."

At the end of the movie, Aaron handily defeats Pacific gas and electric in court

and wins a $333 million settlement for the town.

All while raising her three kids as a single mom. The whole thing is based on a true story. Aaron Brakovich is a real person who really did all that stuff. Watching the movie at 15, I swooned. Julia as "Aren" was just "it."

“Her take no prisoners attitude, her smile, and notably her clothes.”

Aaron clumps around the hot sun bleached town of Hinkley and high heels, many skirts, skin tight vests, leather, laces, gold belts, animal print, red. Her curly blonde hair is gigantic, tossing around in the dry wind. "Now that you're working here, you may want to rethink your wardrobe a little." "That's so."

"Well, it just so happens. I think I look nice." "And as long as I have one ass instead of two, oh, where would I like it?" "That's all right with you." And then, there were her boobs.

Whether she's running circles around the dumb men trying to keep her from the truth or definitely scaling the side of a swimming pool to fish out a dead frog, Aaron's cleavage is just right there. It's basically a star in its own right. Catapulting passed the zip-up neckline of a halter top,

“smashed together at the center of a corset,”

pole vaulting over the top button of a sheer leopard blouse. Some people write her off as a bimbo, but that's actually part of her power. "Well, make sure you think you can just walk in then, and what we need." "You're called boobs, eh?"

I was a late bloomer. At 15, I still looked 12, pre-alphabet-chested, and I wished for boobs incessantly. Plus, as a teenager, I thought constantly,

paranoically, about how to look amazing,

and also how to look like I didn't care. In the golden glow of my friend's TV, I was mesmerized by Aaron. I wanted to know how I could look like that. Do you feel like that?

I'm 30 now. Basically, the same age as Julia Roberts was when she played Aaron Brockovich. "Lately, I feel like I'm going through a new kind of puberty." After feeling for a decade,

like I'd largely escaped the fray of adolescence, I'm suddenly, once again, stepping from what feels like one life phase to another. No longer young, but not yet old. There's something mushy and liminal about this age.

The vague feeling of being at a turning point, like I'm supposed to be solid, crystallized, in some new identity that I don't quite understand yet.

In this liminal moment, suggestion is powerful.

I'm not immune to the rhythmic push and pull of society/cultures/the algorithm, which is telling me I should be ageless, have a baby tomorrow, and adopt a meat-only diet for some reason. I see pictures of my friends getting married, or somehow working from Tahiti,

And not since I was 15, have I thought this much about how other people might see me. Should I become a hat person? When I was a teenager, Erin was a vision of a shining adult future.

I could look forward to when I reached that point. But now I'm there, or here, rather. And I guess I'm still wondering, in some way, how to look like that, be like that.

“You see Erin Brockovich, you see Julia Roberts, you have to transform that into that.”

That's just the job. And if you're good at it, you can do it. And if you're not, you can't. You're the good or you're not. I'm good.

I am good. It dawns on me as I enter the air in chapter of my own life.

Somehow I'd never actually asked my dad about the making of Erin Brockovich.

I don't know, when you were just saying, like, that you were transforming Julia into Erin, like, where did you start with that? The logical place was in the bust. The bust.

It's the most noticed, probably noticed, property of Erin when you meet her. She features that, and you see it. It's there, and she's not ashamed of it. No, it should she be.

In 1999, Julia Roberts was known as the statuesque, classic clean lines type of beautiful.

“Sexy and essentially flat chested kind of way.”

To put it bluntly, she didn't really have the boobs for this job. Please note, though, that my dad would never call them that. You're so good at using words that are kind of not crass to describe bodies. Because I find bodies beautiful.

I have no reason to be crass about them. I don't think any of these crass about them. They're male or female. And I also have great respect for the actor. I mean, you can't.

I would never say Julia, your boobs.

I would just never do that. Because that's just inappropriate. It's a serious business. You know, it was not a joke. We were trying to create something real.

My dad takes his work extremely seriously. Fake boobs were not on the table. That would be anti-real. But this was the 20th century. Push-up broad technology of the time was not up to the task.

Regular broads didn't work. So, my dad and his collaborator, seamstress Mary Ellen Fields, got creative. We used everything there was out there. They made these little things called couplets.

They used to be a little hot-time mess, actually. They had gelatinum. So they moved rather like a bosom. And so that was very helpful also. And then it was just the broad itself.

Just the tightening and the pushing and the pulling and the filling. And all of that. Folks, it was pads on the side, pads on the bottom. Tight through the back and close in the front. After much trial and error, hours in the fitting room,

they got it.

In the end, basically, her bosom sat on a shelf

in the bra that lifted it and pushed it together.

“Do you remember when people saw Julia for the first time in the outfits?”

Oh, they loved it. Everyone was like, "Uh-huh, I don't know, just they thought it was great." You know, because it was a transformation. On screen, the bra did exactly what it was supposed to do. It was wonderful scene when she goes to the hall of records.

What can I do for you, Anne? Well, believe it or not. I'm on the crowd for some water records. Then there's a guy there. And he doesn't want to show her the books.

And she leans into the counter. And she pushes her forearms on her bosom. She features it. She pushes it forward. You know, it would probably be easiest. If I just squeezed back there and poked around myself

but that'd be alright with you. And it's just, it looks incredibly ample, large. And it's perfect. Well, I'll call you if I need you. All right.

Okay. Thank you. It's great. And she just used it there. She just naturally just did it.

And that's what I wanted. I didn't want her to think about it. I wanted it to feel like that was her. Growing up, I knew that Aaron Brockovich was a capital B big deal movie for my dad. It was a massive hit.

Julia Roberts won her first and only Oscar for it. We had my dad's drawings of the costumes framed in our house. But I didn't know how big a deal the bra itself was

I found lots of footage of Julia Roberts on the Aaron Brockovich Press tour.

She's asked about her cleavage in nearly every interview. There was cleavage there was lots of cleavage. Here she is with noted sex pest Charlie Rose. cleavage for day. There was of course a slightly leering tone to a lot of these interviews.

But Julia talked a lot about the bra on her own too. Even in more recent interviews, like here on the Graham Norton Show in 2023, when she was asked about how she got into character as Aaron. I just listened to audio tapes of her being interviewed by the director and got myself a really, really beautifully engineered bra.

I remember. Yeah.

“And that person saying I remember in the background is share.”

As in the mononymous singer actress extraordinaire, even share noticed the beautifully engineered bra. Everybody did. Oh, Aaron Brockovich. Fabulous.

So fabulous. The bra was such a sensation that it inspired knockoffs. A British lingerie designer started marketing Brockovich bras. And then she had the gall to claim that she had actually created the bra worn by Julia Roberts in the movie herself.

Totally false. My dad defended his honor to the LA Times, the Wall Street Journal. Was it funny to you that that even-- No, that's never funny. Someone tries to steal your thunder.

That's not funny. I don't find that funny.

“After the movie, there was a push-up bra wave that took over the world.”

My dad shouldn't get all the credit for that. But it seemed safe to say that he and that highly engineered Franken bra were part of the upswing, which lasted through the mid-tenths when boobs gave way to butts for a time. It was around that time, the peak of the boob era, perhaps, that mine finally arrived. It must be said that they are the most average breasts in the world.

Ever since they showed up, I felt completely ambivalent about them. They can be paraded out like party balloons or put away like socks in a drawer. They're malleable pieces of equipment and they're not quite a part of me.

And I've never invested much in bras.

For the last few years, I've seen them as a sort of blight on the bust, sometimes necessary evil. But as Aaron Brockovich resurfaces in my life, I'm starting to reconsider that opinion. Everything worked because that character was created from underneath

to feature what was on top. The character was created underneath, I love that.

“The character was created from underneath.”

I've heard my dad say this before, but this is the first time it really clicked for me. In Aaron Brockovich, the bra was more than a bra. It was a place that this amazing performance of confidence, ease, paralegalic badassery could radiate out from. The message is clear.

I need to buy a push-up bra. How will this push-up bra fit? How will it look? All answers will be revealed after the break. Hi, I'm Nicole Phelps, global director of Vogue Runway in Vogue Business

and host of the run-through podcast. Every Tuesday, join me for the latest fashion news like the shake-ups of Balenciaga and Dior and what's trending in Paris and Milan. You'll also hear interviews with top designers from Marc Jacobs and Rick Owens to Daniel Rosebury, Sarah Burton and many more.

On Thursdays, Chloe Mall, editor of Vogue.com and Choma Nadi, head of editorial content at British Vogue, take you behind the scenes at Vogue and share their thoughts on fashion through the lens of culture. You'll hear interviews with some of your favorite stars,

like Julian Moore, Ferrell Williams, and Celebrity Stylus Law Roach. Join us to get your fashion and culture news twice a week, listen to the run-through with Vogue, every Tuesday and Thursday. Wherever you get your podcasts. We're back with reporter Zoe Curlin's story

about a bra that her dad designed that changes the world. Zoe is about to try on a push-up bra of her own. Thankfully, to get this kind of bra now, one does not have to enlist my dad.

Oh my gosh, this looks incredible.

So today, I'm trying the new skims ultimate super push-up bra. The most flattering bra and the color shifts kids. It's the before and look at how full and naturally rounded looks after. Obsessed. Many thanks to the slew of influencers,

mostly Australian for some reason,

Kim Kardashian's underwear brand, Skims,

has apparently picked up where Jeffrey Curlin's left off. I placed my order online, $58 plus shipping. It comes in this kind of chic, frosted plastic bag. It's like so modest. It's like, "Ooh, what's inside?"

What's inside is this sort of pearlescent nude bra. It's very smooth, it's very soft. It looks like Barbie boobs. The bra is sort of sexy, but also deeply sanitary, like your skin, but also not.

“It's pretending to be something essential and corporeal.”

You, but better, exclamation point. Okay, I'm going to try it on. And we'll take you with me to do so. Okay, I'm walking over to the mirror. Nope, or yes, I don't know.

The bra did do some kind of job,

pushing my flesh together and up. I showed my boyfriend the contraption. Breast apparatus. What do you think? By the way, he asked me to pitch shift his voice for anonymity.

I thought it was going to make them more big, but they kind of just look long. Long, long. Long! Hearing this reaction from totally anonymous focus group participant number one,

I had an acute experience of body horror, imagining my long breasts animated like a loony tombs cartoon, extending from my chest like headlight beams,

“further and further wrapping twice around the circumference of the earth.”

[Music] When I was studying film in college,

I read a book by the film theorist, Mary Ann Duan,

about femme fatales. She wrote, "If the femme fatale over represents the body, it's because she's attributed with a body, which is itself given agency independently of consciousness.

In a sense, she has power despite herself. Walking around town with brought up boobs, I wasn't sure how to harness their power. In a tank top, they were enormous, and felt like a malevolent parasite,

sentient puppets, a fixed my body with their own thing going on. I felt, on some level, slightly unreal, like I was looking at myself from the outside, watching myself like a character in a movie. What was her story?

Truth be told, it seemed less like the intrepid exploits of a woman in stiletto's fighting the power, and more like the tale of a sturdy lass, working the barley fields, turning butter. Not exactly what I was going for.

[Music] When my dad told me the story of making the Aaron look, he'd said the hard part was making her feel real, and not just to the people watching the movie, but to Julia herself.

Now, I also had to create an Aaron Brockwich that was true to her, but also that Julia Roberts could perform, something that she, a skin that she felt comfortable in, also.

I went back to the interviews with Julia, and I felt like I could kind of hear what my dad was talking about, that Julia had to find a place between the real Aaron and the real her, and get used to it. You're costume.

I know everyone's talking about the cleavage thing and all that, but, you know, the costumes. Now, how fun for you to go into wardrobe every day, and find out what you're going to wear,

“and what kind of comments were you getting from the crew?”

[Music] Fun. I don't know, you know, a great, there's a great sense of intrigue, I would walk in and kind of look at my bed every morning and go,

hmm, that's an approach. But then I got used to it after a while, everybody got used to it. [Music] I wondered what that process was like for Julia.

What had inhabiting that skin actually felt like? How would you done it? And then, I thought, I'm a journalist. I could just ask her.

[Music] So, I called her agency. Thank you for calling me. Yeah, how can I help? I got in touch with an assistant and an audio producer.

Great. Okay. Can do. What is your email? Okay.

Wonderful.

Bye.

“And then, after weeks of attempting various”

communicates over email with an oraborose of agents and assistant agents. Costume designer, Geoffrey Crowe, and he's worked with to circulate her out for a few times. Intervitably invasive areas around the street.

She's got a story about an intra either a dad phone, or Erin Brockovich. [Music] I gave up. Of course, Julia Roberts wasn't going to call me back.

Maybe, at long last, she was over talking about the boobs. [Music] I had been foiled in my quest. And I was sitting in my direction when it hit me. What I really wanted to know wasn't what it felt like to be an actor

to put on a bra that turned me into another person. It was how to inhabit my own actual body. The Erin aura I was seeking didn't start with Julia Roberts. She too was copying someone. I realized I was calling the wrong Erin.

“And this time, when I called, the right Erin picked up.”

Hi, it's nice to meet you. You too, thank you so much for doing this. Here are my pleasure. This is Erin Brockovich, the real Erin Brockovich, talking to me on Zoom.

Her hair is swept up into a voluminous updo, huge glittering smile, jangly bracelets, a black V-neck top. She's 65 and 10. Coming to meet you from what looks like a new AG home office, stone floors, leather furniture, a Buddha head, next to her desk.

It kind of tripped me out to see the real Erin. When I pictured Erin Brockovich, I'd pictured Julia Roberts. Now, here was this completely different woman. Erin was, of course, very familiar with this confusion. She told me she was maybe more surprised than anyone,

when Julia Roberts was chosen to play her. I'm fine. I'm crazy. I'm not going from Kansas. Cute.

Fine. I'm not statuous. I was thinking more along the lines of like, maybe go the Han. And I wonder when you saw her in her costume,

“what did you think seeing a weird mirror version of yourself?”

When I first met her on set,

I was getting here and makeup done. Erin was there to shoot a cameo part in the movie. And I saw her in the mirror come in, and she went through a door to the right. And she didn't know I was going to be there.

So she came back out and walked behind my chair. I'm watching this in a mirror. And she stopped after she passed the chair, and she turned around. And she's looking at me,

and I'm looking at she goes, "Hi, I'm Julia." "Hi, I'm Erin." And she goes, "Oh, I'm so embarrassed. I don't even have my boobs in yet."

So that actually happened. Then for the actual cameo, the directors, Steven Sotoberg, thought it would be fun to play into this mirror image thing. He'd asked Erin to play a diner waitress,

serving Julia Roberts as Erin Brockovich. "I'm like, I know I don't want to do this, because you're going to do it. You'll be sorry if you don't."

I don't always like to be seen.

I've been that way forever. So generally, if I see a camera, I will turn. My dad had stitched a name tag onto Erin's diner waitress costume. I don't know what possessed him to do this. It feels almost diabolical, but it read Julia.

"It was weird because I'm Julia talking to Julia. It was like an out-of-body experience." In the bright lights of the movie diner caught in a cameo. She didn't want to be in. Erin experienced a split between herself

and the person that the world would come to see as her. "When you saw the costumes, when you saw the movie, did you feel like it was accurate? Do you feel like it made sense?" It felt good to me.

The style felt good to me. It felt true to me.

And it wasn't always one thing.

I'm very eclectic with that. I was kind of surprised to hear how blaze Erin was about seeing what I considered to be the most iconic set of outfits in movie history. I had this sense that Erin was really particular about what she wore

and that the costumes reflected that. But she told me that back in Hinkley that hadn't been true at all. "I wasn't focused on outfits or wardrobes. I'm very comfortable in heels. I just am.

I have a high arch. I got a tight calf. And so I am comfortable that way. Now, in many, many instances out in Hinkley,

Hot is a human blow dryer. So the less I had on the more comfortable, I was. I wasn't in the courtroom. I'm not the attorney.

I was a person out there that was attached to the people to the environment and that's where I was. I was collecting hazardous waste. I was just comfortable in my shoes. But I would generally wear short shorts.

The cleavage thing I get. The brawl kind of conversations surprised me because there would be many days out there. Actually, I didn't have on a brawl. It's not like I was wearing C through shirts. But I'd have on a T-shirt, a black T-shirt, short sleeve.

It was shorts because I was hot.

It sounded like the way Erin dressed had always been natural to her.

She wore what she liked. What worked. But she told me that after the movie, things started to change.

“You got to remember, I was 31 years old, 32 years old.”

When I began my work in Hinkley, I was pretty overwhelmed. I felt a shift of your trying to now make a person into this idea of what you think somebody who's had a film made about him is supposed to look like walk-talk and dress and behave. Not to be totally insane. But it sounds like Erin is talking about a version of the same thing that I'm experiencing.

A slightly more dramatic situation than simply exiting young adulthood, obviously. But this idea of feeling like the person you were isn't exactly working anymore. You're suddenly more conscious of the way the world is seeing you. Trying to look like a more polished version of yourself. Trying to dress for the role you're supposed to be playing.

I did start trying to adjust my wardrobe where I became more conscious. Okay, maybe I should cover up a little more. Or I became more conscious, well, maybe my skirt is too short. Things like that started to change for me.

But then Erin told me about when she first saw the movie.

I remember when I saw the film for the first time.

“I think it was a matinee I went by myself and it was packed.”

And I sat in the background and nobody knew who I was and to this day. Half the world, you know, if they saw me go like, "I have no idea who I am." I mean, I'm another person in life. I was amazed at the standing ovation in the theater. But I was listening to people. I was at the back against the wall.

And their comments, "Oh my god, do you think she really did that?" And then someone go on, "I think she really did. It's based on a true story." I found this really moving. The idea that Erin walked into a movie theater alone. Watched her life story play out and could appreciate it from afar.

Sit in the back row, sort of sanguine and watch the people watch her.

In my own life, I'm always trying to figure out if it looks right.

If it is right, if it's right for right now, I'm rarely just sitting back watching the show. I'll tell you one thing. I can now, with more confidence that I've ever had back then, because so much was coming at me, I'm absolutely, will not ever feel bad about who I was and how I dressed. It's about the result I got and the lives that it changed. I've learned from my dad that in costume design, every single thing on the screen has an intention behind it.

“You can close read a button if you want to. It'll provide some hidden piece of the story.”

After a lifetime of watching my dad do his job, I think hard about what I wear, what story it's telling about me. Correct me if I'm wrong. I've always seen, you know, your presentation, who you are, the way you dress, the way that you act, is very authentic to you. But do you ever feel like you get up in the morning and you're like, "I just don't want to be a Jeffrey Crowland today, I just don't want to do it." Yeah, that's interesting you should say that, because I do. I have those days where I wake up and I want to put all the rings on.

Do I want to put the joy on? Do I want to, I just don't? Yeah, because there are octaves that I go, fuck it, I'm just tired, I don't want to let all of this stuff all over the place.

And he moves with confidence like he's delighting in being and looking exactly himself.

“In this way, my dad actually reminds me a lot of Aaron, the real one, and also his version of her.”

But most of the time, it's such a natural thing for me to do, just wake up and put everything on. It's just, it's there. Yeah, and I like the choice that I can or I can't, I don't have to. No, and see, you know, like if I don't put anything on it, I come to work.

It is always at least six people going. Where are the rings? Where, which stuff? They just want to know where it is.

I want to make sure I didn't lose it or something, or other things. Where is it? Yeah, so, so you don't want to just believe me, boy. You know, that's good, if that makes some smile, makes me smile too.

“I always thought I'd work in the movies like my dad, but I don't. I'm a radio journalist in far west Texas.”

The light is golden. The wind is dry.

In my job, I knock on strangers' doors to ask them about their lives, sometimes even about their water.

I sit with them on their couches at their kitchen tables, follow them out screen doors to their backyards, crackling with dry heat. I have a big head of curly blonde hair, and I have been known to throw on a heel and clump around in the desert. It occurs to me that if you sat in the last row of the theater, if you squinted, it might look a little familiar.

“When my dad and I finish our interview, he puts his rings back on, one at a time.”

The placing of the jewelry at a ritual is, oh, this time itself.

It's very elegant. I just shocked that I know exactly where to put each one. Yes. That was an assortment. That's yours, yes.

Okay, go downstairs. This story was reported written and produced by Zoey Krelund. edited by Liza Gager, Jackson Roach, Omar Edmund, and Annie Rosenthall. Sound design and additional production by Liza Gager. This is just one of the articles in Signal Hill, which is a fantastic audio magazine.

The New Yorker actually called them one of the best podcasts of 2025. Along with articles of interest, I couldn't agree with them more. Check it out at SignalHill.fm, and I'll see you soon with more regular episodes. Radio to begin. From PRX.