Feminist Bra Burning Never Happened

The image of feminists burning bras throughout the 1960s and 1970s was largely a media myth that critics used to mock and discredit women's liberation. At the 1968 Miss America protest in Atlantic City, more than 200 women discarded girdles, curlers, and other beauty products into a "freedom trash can." Police and the mayor prohibited fires on the wooden boardwalk, so the protesters burned nothing. After protest organizer Robin Morgan mentioned "symbolic bra-burning" to a New York Times reporter, news coverage and movement critics turned the phrase into an enduring stereotype.

Previous Fact Next Fact