Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain Stuff.
Speaker 1: Lauren Bogelbaum here mentioned women's lib and first wave feminism
Speaker 1: during the nineteen sixties and seventies, and images of angry
Speaker 1: women's swinging their braws overhead like lassos and then setting
Speaker 1: the offending garments on fire might come to mind. There's
Speaker 1: just one problem. Women didn't really burn their braws as
Speaker 1: part of the women's liberation movement in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: Bra burning, it turns out, is another one of America's
Speaker 1: myths become cliche. Before the nineteen sixty eight Miss America pageant,
Speaker 1: most Americans had never heard of the women's liberation movement,
Speaker 1: But on September seven of nineteen sixty eight, a protest
Speaker 1: outside the pageant at the Atlantic City Convention Center drew
Speaker 1: the nation's eye. As millions of viewers tuned in to
Speaker 1: watch the pageant, they witnessed nearly four hundred women carrying
Speaker 1: signs reading things like no more our beauty standards and
Speaker 1: welcome to the cattle Auction as they decried the concept
Speaker 1: of beauty contests. At the center of the commotion was
Speaker 1: the freedom can, which was a trash receptacle into which
Speaker 1: women were throwing high heels, girdles, dish detergent curlers, issues
Speaker 1: of Playboy magazines, and yes, bras, calling them instruments of
Speaker 1: female torture. Although the protesters intended to burn the items,
Speaker 1: they were unable to obtain a fire permit, so in
Speaker 1: the end, no bras ever went up in flames. But
Speaker 1: that didn't stop the protesters from earning a nickname that
Speaker 1: would stick well into the nineteen seventies and beyond, braw burners.
Speaker 1: The term was coined by reporters covering the Women's Liberation
Speaker 1: protest who compared the Women's liberation movement to anti war
Speaker 1: protesters who burned draft cards and flags. Specifically, a story
Speaker 1: in The New York Post referred to braw burning during
Speaker 1: the protest. The New York Post reporter in question, long,
Speaker 1: assumed to be a man bent on trivializing the protest,
Speaker 1: was later revealed to be a woman who had had
Speaker 1: the opposite intent. In the nineteen nineties, Lindsey Van Gilder
Speaker 1: admitted that she had given the bra burning term its start.
Speaker 1: She said that she was trying to bolster the movement's
Speaker 1: validity by comparing it to Vietnam War protests, and that
Speaker 1: writing about the freedom can was her way of saying
Speaker 1: that the women's liberation movement was the equivalent of men
Speaker 1: burning draft cards in protest of the draft and the
Speaker 1: Vietnam War as a whole. The nuances of the comparison
Speaker 1: were missed, however, when a headline writer used bra burning,
Speaker 1: an image that was perpetuated many times throughout the ensuing decades.
Speaker 1: While it's possible that small protests that occurred during the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies may have included the occasional bra burning, it
Speaker 1: was never an official part of the Women's liberation movement.
Speaker 1: Any incept of widespread raw burning in the nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: seems to be nothing more than a myth. Today's episode
Speaker 1: was written by Laurie L. Dove and produced by Tyler Clang.
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