Feminists protest Miss America and "bra burning"
In the late 1960s, some of the emblems of femininity became targets of feminist activism. Feminists charged that these objects, typified as patriarchal, reduced women to the status of sex objects. Some women publicly disavowed bras in an anti-sexist act of female liberation.
When Germaine Greer stated that "Bras are a ludicrous invention," her statement resonated with many women who had been questioning the role of the bra. Pivotal in popular bra culture is a now-notorious protest against the 1968 Miss America beauty pageant[20], seen as an oppression of women. About 400 women from the New York Radical Women were involved in a demonstration at the Atlantic City Convention Hall shortly after the Democratic National Convention[21]. Protesters saw the pageant and its symbols as an oppression of women (because of its emphasis on an arbitrary standard of beauty, and its elevation of its choice of the "most beautiful girl in America" to a pedestal for public worship and commercial exploitation). On September 7, 1968, a "Freedom Trash Can" was placed on the ground, and filled with bras, high-heeled shoes, false eyelashes, girdles, curlers, hairspray, makeup, corsets, magazines (such as Playboy), and other items thought to be "instruments of torture,"[22] accoutrements of enforced femininity. Someone suggested lighting a fire, but a permit could not be obtained, and so (contrary to the subsequent urban legend) there was no burning, nor did anyone take off her bra. Another similar protest was held in 1970. [23]
The event received quite a bit of media coverage at the time[24] but the notion of women burning their bras was merely a concatenation of several movements, including sexual liberation, in the media imagery[25]. A number of journalists [26] who wrote descriptions of the incident drew parallels with the young men who had burned their draft cards in opposition to the Vietnam War with the women's action and used the term "bra-burning." These parallels were encouraged by organisers such as Robin Morgan. Lindsay van Gelder's account in the New York Post carried a headline "Bra Burners and Miss America". [27] The phrase became headline material and was quickly associated with women who chose to go braless, following Germaine Greer's comments.[28] Feminism and "bra-burning" then became linked in popular culture[29] [30] and Greer became a metaphor for bra burning. It has been suggested that the association between feminism and bra-burning was encouraged by those in opposition to the feminist movement, as it created an image less of women seeking freedom from sexism, appearing more as though they were attempting to assert themselves as sexual beings. This might lead to the assumption that, as Bonnie J. Dow wrote in her article "Feminism, Miss America, and Media Mythology," they were merely trying to be "trendy, and to attract men." [31][28][32][33][34][35] The association between "bra-burning" and the feminist movement has led to somewhat of a misrepresentation of the movement and the actual purpose of the "freedom trash can." By being associated with an act like bra-burning, feminists may be seen, by those less knowledgeable of the movement, as law-breaking radicals, eager to shock the public. For obvious reasons, this is not good for the movement, and promotes the efforts of those against feminism to invalidate the movement.[36] Since then anti-feminists have used "bra burning" and "braless" [37]as derogatory and trivializing terms for the feminist movement.[24] What got lost in the rhetoric, and is probably more important, is that it became quite acceptable in the 1960s and 1970s to not wear a bra. Thus echoes of the 'liberated 60s' or 'bra-burning 60s' have continued to reverberate in women's fashion history.
Many women stopped wearing bras, but few did so with a public ceremony: they simply left their existing bras in a dresser drawer and stopped buying more. In 1971, Herb Caen, a San Francisco Chronicle columnist, reported that the Berkeley Roos/Atkins store had closed its bra department because of poor sales.
Bra sales were not noticeably affected by the protest, and manufacturers capitalised on the attitudes of sexual liberation by emphasising allure. They also promoted "no-bra" alternatives like the "no-bra bra" and adhesive pads that supported the breasts and covered the nipples. These stratagems were clearly attempts to recover braless women as customers, by offering them something that they could spend money on. Nevertheless this era was perceived by the industry as a crisis, and a preoccupation, which led indirectly to multiple mergers and acquisitions and the development of large corporations.
Wiki on History of brassieres
"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." - Martin Luther King Jr.
by lea123 » Thu Jan 08, 2009 6:58 pm 
