Monsters & Critics
I was a little girl when Gloria Steinem came on the scene. My mother was an early N.O.W. member in Massachusetts, and a subscriber to Steinem’s MS. Magazine.
Gloria was the sexy feminist; the one with long back combed hair, nails and was always a chic understated fashion icon. She was the kind of feminist that made men soften, important men like Henry Kissinger.
Gloria was a feminist at a time when women were invisible on the news, or high up in corporations. As a nation we were coming out of out “Mad Men” Joan Holloway imprint and diving headfirst into the woman’s user manual, “Our Bodies Ourselves” and Bella Abzug, Betty Friedan and the ERA amendment. …
The subject of the “Mad Men”-inspired network dramas for fall, specifically “Pan Am” and “The Playboy Club,” both set in the ’60s, about stewardesses and the Playboy bunnies, and “Charlie’s Angels,” another new series coming was broached.
Steinem shared her thoughts.
“The hierarchical response has two poles: The very worst men are into sadomasochism, and the very best men are into nostalgia. So I think this is like the nostalgia industry. It’s like the World War II industry. It’s the last time we were really right. So someone told me that we had actually put more money into making films and television series about World War II than we put into World War II. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it would be interesting research to figure out. It sounds true, right? But it is a problem; I agree.” …