Bra Burning (1968)

[Baker, John]

        Wasn't "chauvinist" always a derisive term, whether or not accompanied by "pig" (or, for that matter, by "male")?

        According to a number of online sources, there was no bra burning at the 1968 Miss America pageant; a journalist was told that there would be a "symbolic bra-burning" and misunderstood that to mean that there would be a literal bra-burning.  There probably were cases in which feminists burned bras, but if so, they apparently were few and obscure.

John Baker



-----Original Message-----
From: Fred Shapiro [mailto:fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU]
Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2003 10:31 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Bra Burning (1968)


Ultimately, the term "women's liberation" itself was stigmatized,
and fell out of use, because of the derision directed at "women's lib," as
"male chauvinism"  was stigmatized because of the derision directed at the
term "male chauvinist pig."  On a nonlinguistic level, bra-burning, which
is regarded as pretty much a myth by chroniclers of the women's movement,
served to stigmatize feminism as a whole.