Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain Stuff. Lauren Bogelbaum here mentioned women's lib and first wave feminism during the nineteen sixties and seventies, and images of angry women's swinging their braws overhead like lassos and then setting the offending garments on fire might come to mind. There's just one problem. Women didn't really burn their braws as part of the women's liberation movement in the nineteen seventies.
Bra burning, it turns out, is another one of America's myths become cliche. Before the nineteen sixty eight Miss America pageant, most Americans had never heard of the women's liberation movement, But on September seven of nineteen sixty eight, a protest outside the pageant at the Atlantic City Convention Center drew
the nation's eye. As millions of viewers tuned in to watch the pageant, they witnessed nearly four hundred women carrying signs reading things like no more our beauty standards and welcome to the cattle Auction as they decried the concept of beauty contests. At the center of the commotion was the freedom can, which was a trash receptacle into which women were throwing high heels, girdles, dish detergent curlers, issues of Playboy magazines, and yes, bras, calling them instruments of
female torture. Although the protesters intended to burn the items, they were unable to obtain a fire permit, so in the end, no bras ever went up in flames. But that didn't stop the protesters from earning a nickname that would stick well into the nineteen seventies and beyond, braw burners. The term was coined by reporters covering the Women's Liberation protest who compared the Women's liberation movement to anti war
protesters who burned draft cards and flags. Specifically, a story in The New York Post referred to braw burning during the protest. The New York Post reporter in question, long, assumed to be a man bent on trivializing the protest, was later revealed to be a woman who had had the opposite intent. In the nineteen nineties, Lindsey Van Gilder admitted that she had given the bra burning term its start.
She said that she was trying to bolster the movement's validity by comparing it to Vietnam War protests, and that writing about the freedom can was her way of saying that the women's liberation movement was the equivalent of men burning draft cards in protest of the draft and the Vietnam War as a whole. The nuances of the comparison were missed, however, when a headline writer used bra burning, an image that was perpetuated many times throughout the ensuing decades.
While it's possible that small protests that occurred during the nineteen seventies may have included the occasional bra burning, it was never an official part of the Women's liberation movement. Any incept of widespread raw burning in the nineteen seventies seems to be nothing more than a myth. Today's episode was written by Laurie L. Dove and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of other topics, visit how Stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is production of
I Heart Radio. Four more podcasts in my heart Radio visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.