1968 Atlantic City protest credited with kicking off the feminist movement
By DAN GOOD Staff Writer, 609-272-7218

Published: Wednesday, September 10, 2008
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/186/story/253327.html

Ever burn a bra? It ignites after a few seconds of fire contact. The flame saunters along the strap edges before gaining purpose, dancing onto the bra's cups, peeling the polyester, stripping the spandex, sending black smoke upward and leaving a charred, melted mess.

That charred, melted mess has symbolized the Women's Liberation Movement for 40 years - since its beginning on Sept. 7, 1968, when 100 women protested the Miss America Pageant on the Atlantic City Boardwalk. That's when feminists were given the nickname "bra-burners." Only one problem - no bras were burned that day, experts say.

"The bra-burning label has haunted us," said Susan Brownmiller, a feminist author and activist. "People wanted to believe about the bra-burning, just like they wanted to believe that feminists wore combat boots."

The bra-burning myth, like any good urban legend, was shaped by media coverage and public misunderstanding.

Members of New York Radical Women, upset by the Miss America Pageant's focus on women's physique and seeing an opportunity to publicize their cause, traveled to Atlantic City by bus. They wanted to burn things, as was in vogue then (people mad about other topics - such as the war in Vietnam - burned draft cards and flags), but city officials worried about the safety of the wooden Boardwalk asked the organizers not to burn anything, so they didn't.

Instead, the feminists dumped items like high-heeled shoes, bras, false eyelashes and issues of Ladies' Home Journal into a "Freedom Trash Can." They paraded a lamb outside Convention Hall and held up signs with such things as "Welcome to the Miss America Cattle Auction" written on them. Inside Convention Hall, demonstrators set off stink bombs during the pageant and unfurled a sign reading "WOMEN'S LIBERATION."

Newspapers helped fuel the fire. On Sept. 4, three days before the event, Lindsy Van Gelder of the New York Post wrote an article titled "Bra burners plan protest." In the Sept. 8 issue of the New York Times, protest organizer and former child actor Robin Morgan is quoted as saying the women would hold a "symbolic bra-burning." Open the next day's Atlantic City Sunday Press, and the headline jumps from page four:

"Bra-Burners Blitz Boardwalk."

The adjacent headline:

"What's going on? Sightseers asked."

Answer: the start of something big.

Ellen Mutari, Women's Studies Coordinator at Richard Stockton College, said the negative connotations associated with fire overshadowed the broader goals of Women's Lib, which included community outreach for women's centers and a push for equal health care coverage.

"In some ways the Women's Liberation Movement involved anger, but it wasn't all about anger," Mutari said. "It had to do with women finding their place in the world."

The world was a chaotic place in 1968. Our troops were fighting in Vietnam. Major figures like Martin Luther King and Sen. Robert Kennedy were getting gunned down. Desegregation was still a de facto pipe dream. Like the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 or suffrage parades in the early 1900s, the Women's Liberation Movement came at a flashpoint in our country's history, Brownmiller said.

"Women's movements tend to come into play when other movements and social change are in play, and women suddenly look at each other and say, 'What about us?'" she said.

It seems a lot of feminists were asking that question in the late 1960s. And in some ways, their concerns were addressed. In the five years following the protest, Miss America had its first black contestant, Ms. magazine published its first issue, Title IX was passed, equalizing male and female athletics, and the United States Supreme Court legalized abortion with Roe v. Wade.

Since 1968 we've seen female Supreme Court justices, astronauts and vice presidential candidates.

Women of 2008 receive more education, earn higher wages, wait longer to get married and have less children than their 1968 counterparts. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the percentage of women in the work force has risen from 41.6 percent to 59.6 percent.

Mutari says women have made strides since the Miss America protest, but until men take on more household and parental responsibility, it will remain a man's world.

"Women can't fully participate in public life until men share in private life," she said. "When a few exceptions can make it to the top, that's not the same as providing opportunities for all."

E-mail Dan Good: DGood@pressofac.com