Breast Ironing on the Road Towards Women’s Empowerment
‘Sorry love, if your tits pop you’ll be raped, so we’ll iron them flat’
It’s 2020, and breasts are in danger. We’ve always known that, but this is danger like you’ve never heard before. To all the ways that women’s bodies are pillaged and plundered by patriarchy, add breast ironing. As another reason why we’re more than 100 years from reaching gender equality, hear the tormenting screams of a 10-year-old girl, pinned to a wall by the pain of a searing hot stone against her budding breasts.
The thought of breasts being ironed is enough to make anyone squirm, but for mothers desperate to see their daughters complete their education, the alternative is as painful.
Desperation and misinformation make for terrible bedfellows.
From the first Women’s Rights Convention in 1840s New York, through Britain’s Suffragettes of the 1860s, to the 1960s assassination of the Mirabal sisters by the Dominican dictator Raphael Trujillo, women of the world ignited the fight for their enfranchisement and gender equality, and kept it going, sometimes with their blood.
Throughout this history, the patriarchal, egotistic, sexist man has been viewed as the ‘problem’ blockading the advancement of women empowerment in different…
