What’s strange, though, is that the stereotype of the crazed, radical feminist, who passes her time twisting her armpit hair into dreadlocks, just doesn’t fit with the women who protested at the 1968 Atlantic City Miss America beauty pageant and who were captured in black and white photos.

With long flowing hair, hippy beads, flared jeans and Birkenstock sandals the women look as if they are about to pile into a Kombi van and head to a Summer of Love music festival, not bomb a beauty pageant. Even though, they did, in fact, stink bomb the pageant.

In some photos women in floral dresses grin over placards that read "Cattle Parades Are Degrading to Human Beings." They may as well be grinning over strawberry shortcakes they made for the county fair, they look that cheery.

But in my opinion, the bad stereotypes started here.

One of the protestors, let’s call her Hope, really had probably just come back from a Summer of Love music festival and had been too busy, well, sharing the love to shave under her arms.

At the protest some photographer probably caught her raising her arms a little too high – and click! – the myth of the feminist who can’t shave was born.

The bra burning is a little trickier.

Prominent feminist author Robin Morgan was quoted in the New York Times as saying bras would be burned. She was probably trying to be poetic, as in, "Heads will roll, bras will burn."

Protesters supposedly tossed their bras into a Freedom Trash Can along with high heel shoes, makeup, girdles and curlers.

But a proposal to burn the can’s contents was scuttled because police said a fire would pose a risk to the Atlantic City wooden boardwalk.

So no bras were ever burned, although it would not surprise me if Hope (she who loves music festivals) was feeling so relaxed, she lit up a joint and got so stoned she accidentally set her clothes on fire. So off came the burning clothes – including the bra.

And once again – click! – it was caught on film.

This is not to diminish these symbols – but let’s not play too much into stereotypes.

Or is the problem not the stereotypes, but the fact that we've moved on? Have we indeed made so much progress we don’t need the f-word anymore?

Recurring issues like discrimination and the gender pay gap would suggest not, however.

In any case we better be damn sure before we decide to chuck it all into a trash can and set it on fire – this time for real.

In a cartoon by Judy Horacek a young woman is perched on a surfboard in the middle of an ocean as sharks circle around her.

"So you’re hanging out in the ocean and the first wave of feminism has gone and the second wave and who knows how many other waves," it reads.

"It's dead flat and you find yourself thinking, Feminism – who needs it? Just be sure you can tell a fin de siècle from a fin de shark."