At the recently concluded Grammy Awards 2021, a fashion statement was made and that too on centre stage. Pop artistes Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion both performed with metallic bras and nothing more on them.

It isn’t that metallic bras haven’t been worn earlier. Other pop stars such as Rihanna and Miley Cyrus have added the bling of metal to their star power in the past. But the appearance of bras — and that too in tones of metal — at the Grammy’s heralds a somewhat formal acceptance of innerwear as outerwear, at least in the world of pop music.

Metallic bras are war-like. Are these pop divas actually embracing the metal just like some women warriors in earlier times? Err no. What is being worn today is a bra-like garment that is coated with a metallic shine to make it seem like metal.

What warriors, men or women, wore was the real deal. Made of metal plates or metal chains, the body armour provided valuable protection before the advent of the firearms.

Metal chain armour allowed greater flexibility of movement but also greater vulnerability because the strength of the chain lay in its weakest link. Little metal ringlets were chained to each other, both vertically and horizontally, with the link providing the strength and continuity to this metal web. It was draped on to the warrior, sometimes covering him — and in a few cases, her — from head to knees. This contraption was prone to being slashed through though.

Metal plating consisted of layers of overlapping plates that afforded valuable arm and shoulder movement. They were joined underneath the plates by rivets or leather that helped the plates slide over each other when the limbs moved. Movement was restricted and slashing through a metal plate was not as easy. The metal body armour was flat, both for women and for men.

Unlike the two protruding cups in the armour of women fighters in new age video games, the original women warriors had no such appeal for many undesirable reasons.

To start with, it would give her gender away and increase her vulnerability. Moreover the cleavage in the metal would be the weakest point in the armour. And so it was a flat breastplate.

The sexualisation of women warriors in video games brings us to a very interesting story that played out almost a decade ago near Tuscany, Italy. This region was home to the Etruscan civilisation that flourished a few hundred years Before Christ. Not much is known about these people and their graves provide a great deal of insight into their lifestyle.

When a particular Etruscan grave was accessed, the underground chamber revealed two platforms cut into the rock. These were the resting places of two corpses, now reduced to skeletons. One of the skeletons had a spear resting near it, as if the corpse had borne the spear. The other skeleton had pieces of jewellery on it. It would be usual to assume that a noble warrior had been laid to rest with his weapon, alongside his wife adorned in royal jewellery.

The twist in the tail was the result of the skeletal analysis. The bones of both the skeletons clearly revealed that the one with the lance was a woman and the one with the jewellery, a man. Anthropologists went into spats. But were the spear to be with the man and the jewellery on the woman, there would have been no argument.

The columnist is the founder-CEO of Necessity-SwatiGautam, a customised brand of brassieres. Contact: necessityswatigautam@gmail.com