Tyra Banks, in partnership with Forbes Entertainment, will produce a film about Lisa Lindahl, Polly Smith, and Hinda Miller, the three women who invented Jogbra, the world’s first sports bra, in 1977. Britt Brewer is writing the screenplay, with Banks executive producing and producing through her SMiZE Productions, as well as taking a role in the film. Production will next search for a director and begin casting.
Set in late 1970s Vermont, the film follows the trio’s path to solving a problem that had gone largely unaddressed: women’s physical limitations and frustrations around exercise at a time when the fitness industry wasn’t designed with their bodies in mind. The story’s most unlikely detail is also one of its most memorable: a man’s jockstrap became part of the actual design solution, repurposed into something built specifically for women’s bodies. The project is based on a 2020 Forbes article by Maggie McGrath titled “Women Supporting Women: The Inspiring Story Behind One Of The 20th Century’s Least-Appreciated Innovations—The Sports Bra.”
Banks said in a statement that her own experience as a fuller-busted woman made the significance of a well-designed sports bra immediately personal, describing the freedom it gave her to run, box, and move without restriction, and that learning the real story behind its invention convinced her it needed to be a film. Lindahl, Smith, and Miller each offered their own reflections on the project, with Lindahl noting the invention wouldn’t have happened without all three of them together, and all three describing the story collectively as one centered on resilience, friendship, and the power of three different women coming together to create something that changed women’s lives worldwide.
For an invention this foundational to women’s athletic history, nearly fifty years without a major screen adaptation reflects a broader pattern in which stories of women’s practical, everyday innovations, as opposed to more conventionally dramatic historical narratives, have often taken far longer to reach film and television than their cultural impact would suggest.
The project follows SMiZE Productions’ recently announced feature on nail beauty icon Sally Hansen, continuing a pattern of Banks building out a slate centered on overlooked women innovators. Banks, SMiZE Productions, and Forbes Entertainment are represented by Echo Lake Entertainment, which packaged the project.
With the film arriving timed to the Jogbra’s upcoming 50th anniversary and still searching for a director and cast, the next major milestone to watch will be who’s brought on to lead a story its real-life subjects have waited five decades to see told.