BIRTH | Betty Friedan, February 4

Betty Friedan, 1921-2006

February 4, 2020 – This day was born feminist Betty Friedan, in Peoria, Illinois, in 1921, the year after the passage of the 19th amendment including women among the enfranchised. (Next year will be the 100th anniversary of her death.)

She was not popular in high school, being unconventional in looks and behavior. She was smart, though, and excelled at Smith.

After marrying and having a conventional suburban life, she surveyed her Smith peers at their 15th reunion and found a lot of discontent among them, which she called  "the problem that has no name." She wrote a book about this, about the myth that women were expected to find fulfillment in domestic lives as mothers and wives. Her name for the myth became a book, The Feminine Mystique (1963).

It was a best-seller, and helped kick off the "second wave" of feminism, the "first wave" being women's suffrage, which would have to be a long ("Kondratieff") wave since it lasted from 1848 to 2020. She marched with Gloria Steinem in 1970 in New York City to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the recognition of the right of women to vote. This year is the 100th anniversary; Friedan would have been 99 years old.

Betty Friedan lived in Sag Harbor, N.Y. during the summers. She spoke at a NY City Hall performance in 1995 of my suffrage play, "Take Up the Song," and again at a performance at the Springs Church. I remember picking her up at her home and dropping her off again and being impressed with her edgy take on current events. She died the same year as my mother, 2006.

March 25 - Happy Birthday, Gloria Steinem, 80

Happy birthday, Gloria Steinem.

You are what Inez Milholland might have turned out to be if she had lived longer and had been born later.

Inez Milholland was called by the Editorial Board of The New York Times "the fairest of the Amazons" in 1913.

You were similarly called by The Washington Post columnist Maxine Cheshire  “the miniskirted pinup girl of the intelligentsia."

I got the Cheshire quote from Gail Collins's report on Gloria Steinem's 80th birthday. She noted that Steinem is in Botswana to celebrate her 80th.

Steinem's 40th and subsequent-decade birthdays have been well publicized because she wanted to lead other women by example, and not show fear in the face of aging. She has done this.

How much do women need men?

A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.

Steinem was born this day in Toledo, Ohio. Her father was an antique dealer and a summer resort operator who traveled around in a trailer, looking for new business ideas. She said of her parents:

[Dad] was always going to make a movie, or cut a record, or start a new hotel, or come up with a new orange drink. [Mom was] an invalid who lay in bed with eyes closed and lips moving in occasional response to voices only she could hear; a woman to whom I brought an endless stream of toast and coffee, bologna sandwiches, and dime pies.

In this environment, Steinem had poor grades, says Garrison Keillor, but she managed to get into Smith based on her entrance exams. After college, she made her name as a journalist with a piece called "I was a Playboy Bunny" (1963), about working "undercover" at the Manhattan Playboy Club. She went on to found Ms. Magazine in 1972. It sold out its first print run of 300,000 copies in eight days. Steinem has written several books about the inequities women face in the modern world, including Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (1983) and Revolution from Within (1992).