by Nora Ephron
And Gloria. Sic transit, etc. Gloria Steinem has in the past year undergone a total metamorphosis, one that makes her critics extremely uncomfortable. Like Jane Fonda, she has become dedicated in a way that is a little frightening and almost awe-inspiring; she is demanding to be taken seriously—and it is the one demand her detractors, who prefer to lump her in with all the other radical-chic beautiful people, cannot bear to grant her. Once the glamour girl, all legs and short skirts and long painted nails, David Webb rings, Pucci, Gucci, you-name-it-she-had-it, once a fixture in gossip columns which linked her to one attractive man after another, she has managed to transform herself almost totally. She now wears Levi’s and simple T-shirts—and often the same outfit two days running. The nails are as long as ever, but they are unpolished, and her fingers bare. She has managed to keep whatever private life she still has out of the papers. Most important, she projects a calm, peaceful, subdued quality; her humor is gentle, understated. Every so often, someone suggests that Gloria Steinem is only into the women’s movement because it is currently the chic place to be; it always makes me smile, because she is about the only remotely chic thing connected with the movement.
It is probably too easy to go on about the two of them this way: Betty as Wicked Witch of the West, Gloria as Ozma, Glinda, Dorothy—take your pick. To talk this way ignores the subtleties, right? Gloria is not, after all, uninterested in power. And yes, she manages to remain above the feud, but that is partly because, unlike Betty, she has friends who will fight dirty for her. Still, it is hard to come out anywhere but squarely on her side. Betty Friedan, in her thoroughly irrational hatred of Steinem, has ceased caring whether or not the effects of that hatred are good or bad for the women’s movement. Her attack on Steinem in the August McCall’s, which followed the convention by barely a week, quoted Steinem out of context (Steinem’s remark, “Marriage is prostitution,” was made in the course of a speech on the effects of discrimination in marriage laws) and implied that Gloria was defiantly anti-male, a charge that is, of course, preposterous. I am not criticizing Friedan for discussing the divisions in the movement; nor do I object to her concern about man-haters; if she wants to air all that, it’s okay with me. What I do not understand is why—for any but personal reasons—she chooses to discredit Steinem (and Bella Abzug) by tying them in with philosophies they have absolutely nothing to do with.
At a certain point in the convention, every N.W.P.C. meeting began to look and sound the same. Airless, windowless rooms decked with taffeta valances and Miami Beach plaster statuary. Gloria in her jeans and aviator glasses, quoting a female delegate on the gains women have made in political life this year: “It’s like pushing marbles through a sieve. It means the sieve will never be the same again.” Bella Abzug in her straw hat, bifocals cocked down on her nose, explaining that abortion is too a Constitutional right and belongs in a national platform. “I would like an attorney to advise us on this,” says a New York delegate who believes it is a local matter. “One just did,” Bella replies. Clancy and Sullivan, two women delegates from Illinois whose credentials are being challenged by the Daley machine, stand and are cheered. Germaine Greer, in overalls, takes notes quietly into a tiny tape recorder. Betty looks unhappy. The South Carolina challenge is discussed: the women want to add seven more delegates to the nine women already serving on the thirty-two-member delegation. “Are these new delegates going to be women or wives?” asks one woman. “Because I’m from Missouri and we filed a challenge and now we have twelve new delegates who turned out to be sisters of, wives, daughters of…. What is the point of having a woman on a delegation who will simply say, ‘Honey, how do we vote?’ ” The microphone breaks down. “Until women control technology,” says Gloria, “we will have to be dependent in a situation like this.” The days pass, and “Make Policy Not Coffee” buttons are replaced by “Boycott Lettuce” buttons are replaced by “Sissy for Vice President” buttons. The days pass, and Betty is still somewhat under control.
The task Friedan ultimately busied herself with was a drive to make Shirley Chisholm vice president, something Shirley Chisholm had no interest whatsoever in becoming. Friedan began lobbying for this the Friday before the convention began, when she asked the N.W.P.C. to endorse Chisholm for vice president; the council decided to hold back from endorsing anyone until it was clear who wanted to run. And meanwhile it would be ready with other women’s names; among those that came up were Farenthold, Abzug, Steinem, and Representative Martha Griffiths. Jane Galvin Lewis, a black who was representing Dorothy Height of the National Council of Negro Women at the convention, had suggested Steinem at the meeting. The night Shirley Chisholm was to arrive in Miami, Lewis went up to the Deauville Hotel to welcome her and bumped into Betty Friedan in the lobby.
“What are you doing here?” Friedan asked.
“I’m here to meet Shirley,” said Lewis.
“You really play both ends, don’t you?” said Friedan.
“Explain that,” said Lewis.
“What kind of black are you anyway?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You didn’t even want to support Shirley Chisholm,” Friedan said, her voice rising. “I heard you. I heard you put up somebody else’s name.”
“That was after we decided to have a list ready,” said Lewis. “Stop screaming at me.”
“I’m going to do an exposé,” shouted Friedan. “I’m going to expose everyone. If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to do it. I’m going to do it.” She turned, walked off to a group of women, and left Jane Lewis standing alone.
“It’s like pushing marbles through a sieve,” Gloria is saying. Monday, opening day, and the N.W.P.C. is holding a caucus for women delegates to hear the presidential candidates. Betty has publicly announced her drive to run Chisholm for vice president. The ballroom of the Carillon Hotel, packed full of boisterous, exuberant delegates, activists, and press, gives her suggestion a standing ovation; minutes later, it is hissing Chisholm with equal gusto for waffling on the California challenge. I am sitting next to Shirley MacLaine, McGovern’s chief adviser on women’s issues, and she is explaining to fellow delegate Marlo Thomas that McGovern will abandon the South Carolina challenge if there is any danger of its bringing up the procedural question of what constitutes a majority. McGovern, she is saying, plans to soft-pedal the challenge in his speech here—and here he is now, pushing through another standing ovation, beaming while he is graciously introduced by Liz Carpenter. “We know we wouldn’t have been here if it hadn’t been for you,” she says. “George McGovern didn’t talk about reform—he did something about it.” The audience is McGovern’s. “I am grateful for the introduction that all of you are here because of me,” says the candidate rumored to be most in touch with women’s issues. “But I really think the credit for that has to go to Adam instead….” He pauses for the laugh and looks genuinely astonished when what he gets instead is a resounding hiss. “Can I recover if I say Adam and Eve?” he asks. Then he goes on to discuss the challenges, beginning with South Carolina. “On that challenge,” he says, “you have my full and unequivocal support.” Twelve hours later, the women find out that full and unequivocal support from George McGovern is considerably less than that.
“We were screwed,” Debbie Leff is saying. Leff is press liaison for the N.W.P.C., and she is putting mildly what the McGovern forces did to the women. Monday night, the caucus, under floor leader Bella Abzug, delivered over 200 non-McGovern delegate votes on South Carolina—100 more than they had been told were necessary—and then watched, incredulous, as the McGovern staff panicked and pulled back its support. Tuesday night, the fight over the abortion plank—which was referred to as the “human-reproduction plank” because it never once mentioned the word “abortion”—produced the most emotional floor fight of the convention. The McGovern people had been opposed to the plank because they thought it would hurt his candidacy; at the last minute, they produced a right-to-lifer to give a seconding speec
h, a move they had promised the women they would not make. “Because of that pledge,” said Steinem, “we didn’t mention butchering women on kitchen tables in our speeches, and then they have a speaker who’s saying, ‘Next thing you know, they’ll be murdering old people.’ ” Female members of the press lobbied for the plank. Male delegates left their seats to allow women alternates to vote. The movement split over whether to have a roll call or simply a voice vote. At four in the morning, Bella Abzug was screaming at Shirley MacLaine, and Steinem, in tears, was confronting McGovern campaign manager Gary Hart: “You promised us you would not take the low road, you bastards.” The roll call on the plank was held largely at Betty Friedan’s insistence. She and Martha McKay of North Carolina were the only N.W.P.C. leaders who were willing to take the risk; the rest thought the roll call would be so badly defeated that it would be best to avoid the humiliation. Friedan was in this case right for the wrong reasons: “We have to find out who our enemies are,” she said. Incredibly, the plank went down to a thoroughly respectable defeat, 1572.80 against, 1101.37 for.
Thursday. A rumor is circulating that Gloria Steinem is at the Doral Hotel to speak with McGovern. I find her in the lobby. “I didn’t see him,” she says. “I don’t want to see him.” She is walking over to the Fontainebleau for a meeting; and on the way out of the Doral, Bob Anson, a former Time reporter, who interviewed her for a McGovern profile, says hello.
“At some point I’d like to talk to you about the socks,” Gloria says.
“What do you mean?” asks Anson.
“You said in that article that I give him advice about socks and shirts. I don’t talk to him about things like that. He listens to men about clothes.”
Anson apologizes, claims he had nothing to do with the error, and as we leave the hotel, I suggest to Gloria that such incorrect facts stem from a kind of newsmagazine tidbit madness.
“That’s not it,” says Gloria. “It’s just that if you’re a woman, all they can think about your relationship with a politician is that you’re either sleeping with him or advising him about clothes.” We start walking up Collins Avenue, past lettuce-boycott petitioners and welfare-rights pamphleteers. “It’s just so difficult,” she says, crying now. I begin babbling—all the pressures on you, no private life, no sleep, no wonder you’re upset. “It’s not that,” says Gloria. “It’s just that they won’t take us seriously.” She wipes at her cheeks with her hand, and begins crying again. “And I’m just tired of being screwed, and being screwed by my friends. By George McGovern, whom I raised half the money for in his first campaign, wrote his speeches. I can see him. I can get in to see him. That’s easy. But what would be the point? He just doesn’t understand. We went to see him at one point about abortion, and the question of welfare came up. ‘Why are you concerned about welfare?’ he said. He didn’t understand it was a women’s issue.” She paused. “They won’t take us seriously. We’re just walking wombs. And the television coverage. Teddy White and Eric Sevareid saying that now that the women are here, next thing there’ll be a caucus of left-handed Lithuanians.” She is still crying, and I try to offer some reassuring words, something, but everything I say is wrong; I have never cried over anything remotely political in my life, and I honestly have no idea of what to say.
And so Friday, at last, and it is over. Sissy Farenthold has made a triumphant, albeit symbolic, run for the vice-presidency and come in second; as a final irony, she was endorsed by Shirley Chisholm. Jean Westwood is the new chairperson of the Democratic National Committee, although she prefers to be called chairman. I am talking to Martha McKay. “I’m fifty-two years old,” she is saying. “I’ve gotten to the point where I choose what I spend time on. Look at the situation in North Carolina. Forty-four percent of the black women who work are domestics. In the eastern part of the state, some are making fifteen dollars a week and totin’. You know what that is? That’s taking home roast beef, and that’s supposed to make up for the wages. We’re talking about bread on the table. We’re talking about women who are heads of households who can’t get credit. They hook up with a man, he signs the credit agreement, they make the payments, and in the end he owns the house. When things like this are going on in the country, who’s got time to get caught in the rock-crushing at the national level? I’m just so amazed that these gals fight like they do. It’s so enervating.”
—November 1972
Reunion
A BOY AND a girl are taking a shower together in the bathroom. How to explain the significance of it? It is a Friday night in June, the first night of the tenth reunion of the Class of 1962 of Wellesley College, and a member of my class has just returned from the bathroom with the news. A boy and a girl are taking a shower together. No one can believe it. Ten years and look at the changes. Ten years ago, we were allowed men in the rooms on Sunday afternoons only, on the condition the door be left fourteen inches ajar. One Sunday during my freshman year, a girl in my dormitory went into her room with a date and not only closed the door but put a sock on it. (The sock—I feel silly remembering nonsense like this, but I do—was a Wellesley signal meaning “Do Not Disturb.”) Three hours later, she and the boy emerged and she was wearing a different outfit. No one could believe it. We were that young. Today boys on exchange programs from MIT and Dartmouth live alongside the girls, the dormitory doors lock, and some of the women in my class—as you can see from the following excerpt from one letter to our tenth-reunion record book—have been through some changes themselves:
“In the past five years I have (1) had two children and two abortions, (2) moved seriously into politics, working up to more responsible positions on bigger campaigns, (3) surrendered myself to what I finally acknowledged was my lifework—the women’s revolution, (4) left my husband and children to seek my fortune and on the way (5) fallen desperately, madly, totally in love with a beautiful man and am sharing a life with him in Cambridge near Harvard Square where we’re completely incredibly happy doing the work we love and having amazing life adventures.”
I went back to my reunion at Wellesley to write about it. I’m doing a column, that’s why I’m going, I said to New York friends who were amazed that I would want anything to do with such an event. I want to see what happened, I said—to my class, to the college. (I didn’t say that I wanted my class and the college to see what had happened to me, but that of course was part of it, too.) A few years ago, Wellesley went through a long reappraisal before rejecting coeducation and reaffirming its commitment to educating women; that interested me. Also, I wondered how my class, almost half of which has two or more children, was dealing with what was happening to women today. On Friday evening, when my classmate and I arrived at the dormitory that was our class headquarters, we bumped into two Wellesley juniors. One of them asked straight off if we wanted to see their women’s liberation bulletin board. They took us down the corridor to a cork board full of clippings, told us of their battle to have a full-time gynecologist on campus, and suddenly it became important for us to let them know we were not what they thought. We were not those alumnae who came back to Wellesley because it was the best time of their lives; we were not those cardigan-sweatered, Lilly Pulitzered matrons or Junior League members or League of Women Voters volunteers; we were not about to be baited by their bulletin board. We’re not Them. I didn’t come to reunion because I wanted to. I’m here to write about it. Understand?
Wellesley College has probably the most beautiful campus in the country, more lush and gorgeous than any place I have ever seen. In June, the dogwood and azalea are in bloom around Lake Waban, the ivy spurts new growth onto the collegiate Gothic buildings, the huge maples are obscenely loaded with shade. So idyllic, in the literal sense—an idyll before a rude awakening. There was Wellesley, we were told, and then, later, there would be the real world. The real world was different. “Where, oh where are the staid alumnae?” goes a song Wellesley girls sing, and they answer, “They’ve gone out from their dreams and theories. Lost, lost in the wid
e, wide world.” At Wellesley we would be allowed to dream and theorize. We would be taken seriously. It would not always be so.
Probably the most insidious influence on the students ten years ago was the one exerted by the class deans. They were a group of elderly spinsters who believed that the only valuable role for Wellesley graduates was to go on to the only life the deans knew anything about—graduate school, scholarship, teaching. There was no value at all placed on achievement in the so-called real world. Success of that sort was suspect; worse than that, it was unserious. Better to be a housewife, my dear, and to take one’s place in the community. Keep a hand in. This policy was not just implicit but was actually articulated. During my junior year, in a romantic episode that still embarrasses me, I became engaged to a humorless young man whose primary attraction was that he was fourth in his class at Harvard Law School. I went to see my class dean about transferring to Barnard senior year before being married. “Let me give you some advice,” she told me. “You have worked so hard at Wellesley. When you marry, take a year off. Devote yourself to your husband and your marriage.” I was incredulous. To begin with, I had not worked hard at Wellesley—anyone with my transcript in front of her ought to have been able to see that. But far more important, I had always intended to work after college; my mother was a career woman who had successfully indoctrinated me and my sisters that to be a housewife was to be nothing. Take a year off being a wife? Doing what? I carried the incident around with me for years, repeating it from time to time as positive proof that Wellesley wanted its graduates to be merely housewives. Then, one day, I met a woman who had graduated ten years before me. She had never wanted anything but to be married and have children; she, too, had gone to see this dean before leaving Wellesley and marrying. “Let me give you some advice,” the dean told her. “Don’t have children right away. Take a year to work.” And so I saw. What Wellesley wanted was for us to avoid the extremes, to be instead that thing in the middle. Neither a rabid careerist nor a frantic mamma. That thing in the middle: a trustee. “Life is not all dirty diapers and runny noses,” writes Susan Connard Chenoweth in the class record. “I do make it into the real world every week to present a puppet show on ecology called Give a Hoot, Don’t Pollute.” The deans would be proud of Susan. She is on her way. A doer of good works. An example to the community. Above all, a Samaritan.