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#WomensDay2020: Why did a few women choose to use their bras as a mark of protest?

On this #WomensDay2020 let’s understand the term ‘bra-burning’, its genesis and how it manifested itself.

#WomensDay2020: Why did a few women choose to use their bras as a mark of protest?
Author
Bengaluru, First Published Mar 8, 2020, 2:29 PM IST

Bengaluru: For a long time, protests have taken place against subjugation, humiliation and relegation of women.

Probably, you too would have taken part in one of such protests, lodging your anger and vexation against the ill-treatment meted out to the fairer sex.

But have you ever heard of the term “bra-burning” in this parlance?

It may sound a little quirky, but the term has always been in vogue.

More on bra-burning:

It was the decade of the 1960s. There was a miasma of rebellion. Women wanted more space in the society. Until then, women were stereotyped to be good mothers and housewives. But now, they wanted to demolish the shackles they were confined with and assert themselves.

The manifestation of protests:

A beauty pageant called Miss America was held in the year 1968 at New Jersey. It was this event mutinying women chose to express their protest.

While the event was held, hundreds of women congregated at the venue to show their disgruntlement about such beauty pageants. They were of the opinion that such pageants stressed on the importance of beauty that is only skin deep by parading women like ‘cattle’ and relegating the real sense of the term ‘beauty’.

These women were from an organisation called New York Radical Women.

As a symbolic gesture to register their protests, they brought their bras and other feminine products like hairsprays, girdles, corsets and other items and flung them into what’s called “Freedom Trash Can” to be burnt.

“Bra-burning” became a trope, a catchphrase and went on to symbolise feminism.  

However, on the other side of the spectrum, there are some theories that debunk this very development.

As per thoughtco.com website, Robin Morgan, one of the lead organisers of the protest told New York article the next day that no bras were burned.

Well, though the argy-bargies continue over the issue, the gravamen of the entire protests was to seek equal rights for women and assert they were not inferior to men in anyway.  


 

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