Exploding bras

Airport security wants you to check your gel bra.

Published August 17, 2006 1:56PM (EDT)

Bad news for women who wear gel bras. Blotter, the ABC News blog, reports that "U.S. authorities are advising women not to wear gel bras on airplanes as information developed in the foiled London plot points to an expanding role for women in smuggling explosives on to an aircraft." The article doesn't go into the physics of bra-as-bomb but the thinking behind this latest advisory is that gel bras -- like "baby bottles containing peroxide" or any number of female-specific terrorist devices (mascara, lipstick, hairspray) -- could potentially be used to trigger an explosion. In other words, women too can be suicide bombers.


By Sarah Goldstein

Sarah Goldstein is an editorial fellow at Salon.

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