Bra-burning never happened. It was completely made up by the media. A couple of women protesting a Miss America pageant threw some bras into a garbage can, and somehow that became this longstanding idea of feminists as bra-burners.
Jessica Valenti of Feministing.com in the Sunday New York Times Magazine.
NPR did a piece on the bra-burning myth a couple years back in which Carol Hanisch, one of the protest organizers, attested:
We had intended to burn it, but the police department, since we were on the boardwalk, wouldn't let us do the burning.
The perpetuation of the myth may have been born as the result "a New York Post story on the protest [that] included a reference to bra burning as a way to link the movement to war protesters burning draft cards."
Also tossed in the Freedom Trash Can that day: mops, girdles, pots and pans, and Playboy magazines -- items the protesters called "instruments of female torture".
2 comments:
Ah, but it was a good myth.
it's not too late.... although I have to say, I actually like mine. it helps. But thank goodness the girdle is no longer required!
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