think about it...
This summer, when I was interviewing some prominent politicians, activists and NGO workers about their views on the Indian womens movement, one of my favorite questions was if they identified with feminism. Around 70% responded negatively, saying that they did not believe in 'bra-burning' and breaking families.
I was reading Susan Bordo's Unbearable Weight the other night, and I came across this...
"...[T]he first act of feminist protest was the 'No More Miss America' demonstration in the August of 1968...[this] was the event that earned 'women's libbers' the reputation of being 'bra-burners'- an epithet many feminists have been trying to shed ever since. In fact, no bras were burned at the demonstration, although there was a large 'Freedom Trash Can' into which were thrown bras, along with girdles, curlers, false eyelashes, wigs, copies of the Ladies Home Journal, Cosmopolitan, Family Circle, etc. The media, sensationalizing the event, and also no doubt influenced by the paradigm of draft-card burning as the act of political resistance par excellence, misreported or invented the burning of the bras. It stuck like crazy glue to popular imagination; indeed, many of my students today still refer to feminists as 'bra-burners'."
I wanted to quote some Judith Butler too, but I think I will have to do that some other time. But this certainly reminds of me of Edward Bernays stunt so that Virginia Slims were emphatically sold all over the country as 'freedom torches' to women, as if they were some sort of feminist victory, when it all really was a publicity gimmick to help the tobacco companies acquire a new market.
I was reading Susan Bordo's Unbearable Weight the other night, and I came across this...
"...[T]he first act of feminist protest was the 'No More Miss America' demonstration in the August of 1968...[this] was the event that earned 'women's libbers' the reputation of being 'bra-burners'- an epithet many feminists have been trying to shed ever since. In fact, no bras were burned at the demonstration, although there was a large 'Freedom Trash Can' into which were thrown bras, along with girdles, curlers, false eyelashes, wigs, copies of the Ladies Home Journal, Cosmopolitan, Family Circle, etc. The media, sensationalizing the event, and also no doubt influenced by the paradigm of draft-card burning as the act of political resistance par excellence, misreported or invented the burning of the bras. It stuck like crazy glue to popular imagination; indeed, many of my students today still refer to feminists as 'bra-burners'."
I wanted to quote some Judith Butler too, but I think I will have to do that some other time. But this certainly reminds of me of Edward Bernays stunt so that Virginia Slims were emphatically sold all over the country as 'freedom torches' to women, as if they were some sort of feminist victory, when it all really was a publicity gimmick to help the tobacco companies acquire a new market.