The AFU and Urban Legend Archive
Misc
 bra burning feminists




From: kate@bga.com (Katherine Catmull)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Bra burning feminists?
Date: Fri, 09 Dec 1994 14:53:55 -0600

Dan Hoey mailed tyhis to me because his newserver is down. I had just typed out the same passage from the Faludi (sorry about the Falucci) book, but I think his article is more concise.

[ Kate, I'm being throttled by my news server, so I can't post this right now, but I thought you'd want to know. Go ahead and post it yourself if you like, but be sure to let me know so I don't duplicate it. ]

kate@bga.com (Katherine Catmull) writes:

> I believe Susan Falucci addresses this directly in _Backlash_.

Faludi. On page 75, she writes of the press coverage of the Miss America pageant protest:

... a few women tossed some padded brassieres in a trash can. No one actually burned a bra that day--as a journalist erroneously reported. In fact, there's no evidence that any undergarment was ever so much as singed at any women's rights demonstration in the decade. (The only two such displays that came close were both organized by _men_, a disc jockey and an architect, who tried to get women to fling their bras into a barrel and the Chicago River as ``media events.'' Only three women cooperated in the river stunt--all models hired by the architect.)...

Her notes cite

Klein, _Gender Politics_, pp. 23-24.

Joanna Foley Martin, ``Confessions of a Non-Bra-Burner,'' _Chicago

Journalism Review_, July 1971, 4:11.

If anyone can dig up these refs, I'd like to hear what they have to say. Also, if anyone has evidence of liberational underwear-singeing in a different decade, it might be interesting.

Dan Hoey
Hoey@AIC.NRL.Navy.Mil
No lingerie was injured in the crem^Hation of this article.


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