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The Debunker: Did Feminists Burn Their Bras?

by Ken Jennings

 

March is Women's History Month in much of the English-speaking world. This means the patriarchy is currently keeping the eleven other months for itself but hey, baby steps. Ken Jennings, like many Jeopardy! contestants, would be the first to admit he knows nothing about women. But he'll be with us all month correcting some misconceptions about history—or is it herstory?!?—that even the most ardent Women's Studies majors might miss on the final.

The Debunker: Did Feminists Burn Their Bras?

"Bra-burning," a shorthand term for the outspoken second-wave feminism of the 1960s and 1970s, was often deployed with a condescending snigger by the older generation—those nutty women's-libbers, burning their bras! What a crazy thing to worry their little heads about. Today, the term has been used for so many decades that most people probably assume bra-burning was a not-uncommon street-corner sight during the turbulent sixties, like sit-ins and bell-bottoms.

a supporting cast

But a review of newspaper accounts from the period makes it clear that lingerie-lighting was never actually a "thing"—and that the most famous "bra-burning" protest of all never burned a single bra! In 1968, a small group of feminists decided to disrupt the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City. They picketed outside on the boardwalk, and hung "Let's Judge Ourselves as People" banners. In a stroke of media-savvy genius, they dumped retrograde props like girdles, makeup, high-heeled shoes, girly mags, and, yes, brassieres, into a "Freedom Trash Can."

Lindsy van Gelder, writing in the New York Post, colorfully described the resulting bonfire under the headline "Bra Burning and Miss America." But in 1992, she confessed to Ms. magazine that there had never been a fire at all. She had pushed that angle in her story to make it more colorful and create parallels with anti-Vietnam War protests. The protestors wanted the Maidenform barbecue to happen, agrees event organizer Carol Hanisch, but police wouldn't allow it. Consider the bra-burning myth "busted." At this point, anyone who reduces the feminist advances of the 1960s and 1970s to a disagreement over underwear is just being a boob.

Quick Quiz: What Australian author wrote "Bras are a ludicrous invention" in her 1970 best-seller The Female Eunuch?

Ken Jennings is the author of six books, most recently his Junior Genius Guides, Because I Said So!, and Maphead. He's also the proud owner of an underwhelming Bag o' Crap. Follow him at ken-jennings.com or on Twitter as @KenJennings.