Most of the time, when someone uses the word “feminism” in a derisory way, they prefix it with the term "bra-burning". It has ceased to matter by now that no bras were ever burnt, and the myth originated with a piece by reporter Lindsy Van Gel of the New York Post, writing about the September 7, 1968, protest outside Atlantic City's Convention Hall by the New York Radical Women’s group. They planned to throw items of "female torture"—bras, girdles, high heels, hairspray, hair curlers, copies of Playboy—into a metal Freedom Trash Can. While the activists initially hoped to set the contents ablaze, local police refused permission due to the wooden boardwalk’s fire hazard. So, no bras were actually burnt.

Origins Of The Bra-Burning Myth

Van Gelder tried to compare this method of protest to anti-Vietnam War activists burning their draft cards. Other media seized upon the provocative phrase and gave the women’s movement its most enduring insult. The widespread adoption of the "bra burner" archetype exerted a lasting influence on how Second-Wave feminism was perceived.

It is also true that the protest against the beauty pageant’s reduction of women’s personalities to body parts got its prominent place in the history of women’s liberation, which is unarguably one of the most powerful socio-political movements of the 19th and 20th centuries. It doesn’t matter that beauty contests are still organised; women have progressed through the gates opened for them through the struggles of others who fought for their right to vote, get an education, and pursue a career.

Politics Behind Beauty Standards

Still, as observers and scholars have........

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