How Gloria Steinem reconciled me to feminism.
My first encounter with feminism was a rude one: reading Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex as a twenty-year-old student in London in the seventies. Her seminal work, published before I was born, was a revelation to me, with its concept of “The Other:” the subordinate, the disempowered by gender, race or class. I suddenly saw familiar French authors through her eyes: Stendhal was a proto feminist, Montherlant a narcissistic, racist misogynist.
But in the mini-skirted, blow-dried seventies, dowdy old De Beauvoir with her turbans was a relic. Equally off putting was the grim, uncomprising feminism of Greer and Friedman, however impressive their intellectual constructs.
Only Gloria Steinem seemed relatable, with her straight, center-parted hair, her soft face, her stylish bell-bottoms and hipster belts. She gave you permission to be feminine and a feminist. None of the bra-burning, ungroomed armpits, man-demonizing radicalism. Steinem gave me permission to hold on to the loving, empowering legacy of my father and other “patriarchal” figures in my life, while acknowledging the injustice and inequality historically imposed on women.
Steinem was the gateway drug to feminism for many.
