Burning the Bra: Second Wave Enemies of Glamour

Abstract

As I have discussed in the previous chapter, liberal feminism is characterized by a belief in the equality and “sameness” of men and women; indeed, Simone de Beauvoir had no qualms ending her pathfinding The Second Sex on the word “brotherhood” (741). Beauvoir was adamant that “woman … cannot be transformed unless society has first made her really the equal of man” (737-8). It was fraternity between men and women that was meant to bring about this “utopian fancy” and press for changes in the status quo. While many liberal feminists continued in this direction in the late 1960s and early 1970s, those feminists who saw their politics as more radical began to deviate from this egalitarian perspective by focussing more on the differences between men and women and on the need for a political “sisterhood”.¹ They argued that the liberal feminist stance was only pushing society into accepting women in the same positions as men, without otherwise altering the social order. One of the popular slogans of the period claimed that “Women who strive to be equal to men lack ambition”² — which was reinforced by contemporary activists like Ti-Grace Atkinson, who proclaimed that liberal feminism is “worse than useless” and the only successful way forward is confrontation through a “declaration of war” against men and society (quoted in Nicholson ed. 3; Gamble ed. 302).