Has Anybody Read It?

That was the question Sociology Professor Nancy Whittier posed to a standing room only crowd this weekend at Smith College to remember Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique. Whittier asked her mom, who was in Friedan's generation, to comment in preparation for the symposium. Her mom admitted: she hadn't read it, but it changed her life.

Maybe it didn't matter if anyone read it. It sparked a movement.

This panel got personal when discussing the political.

Betty Friedan was difficult. Like Moses, a prophet. And maybe an ego to match. Her rivalry with Gloria Stienem was petty, but real. Gloria got an honorary doctorate from Smith in 1971, before Ms. and years before Friedan. "Was it because of the story she wrote about the bunny?" Friedan reportedly fumed to Barbara Seaman, also there to talk about her colleague. But this being a panel from the sociology department, the conversation came back to this:

Would the women's movement have happened without her and The Feminine Mystique.

Walking the grounds of Smith at the start of the academic year left me feeling energizied. It's hard to explain the feeling of being in a room full of smart women. It's unspoken, but so powerful. This must have done something to Friedan. She said she was re-born at Smith. She went out into the world to change it.

Would the women's movement happened without Betty Friedan? Of course. But the book sparked the movement, it crystallized a profoundly unpopular sentiment: that women who should have been happy, were not. It got women talking to each other, it got them to raise their voices.

Would the French Revolution have happened without Marie Antoinette? Probably, but she helped unify the French people against her. Strange to be thinking about those two women from very different times this year, but both women are being re-examined this season and were the inspiration for revolution.