Collage Detail from Womens Lib- A Storms Approachin’ collage by Sally Edelstein

Today on International Women’s Day 2017, nearly 45 years after the women’s liberation movement stormed onto the scene opening a floodgate of discourse about women’s rights, it’s déjà vu all over again.

It’s hard to believe that systemic gender inequality still exists today and women are still being moved around like so many pawns in a political game that seems to be played by men only. The denial of reproductive rights, sexual violence, domestic abuse and income inequality are still very much a part of our current dialogue.

It’s a long way from the consciousness raising days of the 1970’s, as women across the country gather to figure their way forward in the age of Trump.

Today a global Woman’s Strike is taking place.

The organizers behind the Woman’s March in DC have created another call for action called a Day Without A Woman to highlight the economic power and significance that women have in the U.S. and global economies, as well as call attention to economic injustices. They are calling for women to take the day off, if possible,  and encourage them not to spend money to show their economic strength and impact on American society.

Sally Edelstein collage detail Women’s Lib- A Storm’s Approachin’

Why are women’s lives so difficult even now in the 21st century?

Ironically because feminist ideas are so taken for granted few women think of themselves as feminists. The persistent stereotype of 2nd wave feminists as male bashing, make-up-less angry and non domestic was the same stereotype perpetrated by the media at the time.

It is worth remembering their struggles.

Women, Gender and Politics- Women’s Liberation

“Women’s Lib-A Storms Approachin” collage 48″x84″ artist :Sally Edelstein.

My collage “Women Lib: A Storms Approaching” takes a look at a  time pivotal time period when women became conscious not only of the inequality but how our identities had become fragmented by a media insistent on dictating ever-changing standards.

When women grapple with gender inequality they often find themselves turning to a rich 10 year period of modern history – the 1970s. Before the 1970’s a woman could not keep her job if she were pregnant, get a credit card, report cases of sexual harassment  or have a legal abortion.

The piece, part of a series called “Media Made Women” is a pastiche of postwar American imagery, a time when confining and conflicting images of media stereotypes of women littered the pop culture landscape that was erupting in a women’s liberation movement.

These images helped shape the female psyche in setting standards of how women should imagine their lives, think of fulfillment and arrange their priorities.

Collage as Expression

Collage promotes collusion’s of realities; by dissociating the images from their intended use, I can exploit the iconic effects of the imagery. Collage Detail: A Storms Approachin by Sally Edelstein

Collage becomes the perfect vehicle to deconstruct these fragmented messages.

Like most Americans, I have consumed vast amounts of pop culture imagery over the decades; as an artist and a collector I have amassed a formidable collection.

Like a toxic overspill, fragments of these countless mass media images remain imprinted in all of us.

Using collage as a means of deconstructing myths and examining social fictions, the piece is composed of hundreds of images appropriated from vintage advertising, periodicals, newspapers, vintage school books, old illustrations, comic books, pulp fiction and all sorts of ephemera.

Media Matters- Media Made Women

Collage Detail: Women’s Lib- A Storms Approachin’ by Sally Edelstein

Like most women growing up in the 1960s I was fed a generous serving of sugar-coated media stereotypes of happy homemakers who were as frozen and neatly packaged as the processed foods they served their Cold war families

Within a decades time these same images would be thawed out under the hot glare of a woman’s movement only to be joined by a heaping helping of new conflicting media representations of how a girl’s life should proceed.

What did it mean to be a woman in the wake of the woman’s movement; what kind of woman should we be? How assertive and ambitious should we be, and how accommodating to men.

Gender Warfare

I do not use Photoshop in creating the collages preferring to create the pieces the old fashioned way by Exacto knife. Collage Detail: Women’s Lib- A Storms Approachin’ by Sally Edelstein

This ideological warfare about women’s proper place was the prevailing subtext of American popular culture in the 1970’s.

Just as the right has demonized liberalism, so the backlash convinced the public that woman’s liberation was the true American scourge.

The back lash against feminism was filled with cautionary tales about what happens to women who are too angry or outspoken, and get too much freedom and attempted to push women back into acceptable retro roles .

The result was we were ambivalent toward femininity on the one hand and feminism on the other.

The media’s stereotypes about feminism turned the images into caricatures. They certainly played a central role in turning feminism into a dirty word and stereotyping the feminist as a karate chopping, Nair-rejecting bitch, with bad clothes, a perpetual snarl and a larger than life chip on her shoulder.

The media has long presented conflicting contradicting images of women and we have had to navigate the plethora of images offered up to young girls and young women suggesting what a desirable worthwhile woman should be.

Contrary to Popular Belief

Collage Detail: Women’s Lib-A Storms Approachin’ by Sally Edelstein

The irony is 45 years later the contradictions still exist and the media continue to provide us with images and rationalizations that shape how we make sense of the roles we assume in our families, our workplace and our society.

The media continues to be relentless in their assault on the imperfections of the female face and body while our bodies continue to be a battleground in the political arenas.

The current backlash against women and their reproductive rights still inform our dialogues and re-markets old myths about women as new facts.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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Who’s Afraid of Feminism

Collage Detail from Womens Lib- A Storms Approachin’ collage by Sally Edelstein

Nearly 50 years after the women’s liberation movement stormed onto the scene opening a floodgate of discourse about women’s rights, it’s déjà vu all over again.

Once again women are rising up, speaking up, and empowered. Once again they are taking action.

Having come of age during the second wave of feminism, it feels as though we are riding the third wave right now.

It began with the Women’s March which opened the way for the #MeToo Movement allowing so many  women to finally give voice in a public way  to often decades old sexual harassment and assaults. While the second wave feminists helped open the door  for women in the workplace, sexism and sexual harassment at the office was  hidden behind closed doors for decades.

Despite some opposition, they are being heard.

://envisioningtheamericandream.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/collage-a-storms-approachin-new-300dpi-copy-copy-6-copy.jpg”> Collage Detail; Women’s Lib-A Storm’s Approachin’ by Sally Edelstein

[/caption]For all the advances that had been gained by the women’s movement in the 1970’s it’s hard to believe that systemic gender inequality still exists today and women are still being moved around like so many pawns in a political game that seems to be played by men only.  The denial of reproductive rights, wage inequality, sexual violence and domestic abuse are still very much a part of our current dialogue.

Why are women’s lives still so difficult even now in the 21th century?

Ironically because feminist ideas are so taken for granted, for years few women thought of themselves as “feminists.” The persistent stereotype of 2nd wave feminists as male bashing, make-up-less, angry and non domestic was the same stereotype perpetrated by the media at the time.

It is worth remembering not only their struggles, but how they opened the door to how women can empower themselves and change the culture through action.

Rise Empower, Change and Action!

ningtheamericandream.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/sally-edelstein-collage-storms-a-coming-se8.jpg”> “Women’s Lib-A Storms Approachin” collage 48″x84″ artist :Sally Edelstein. On view at Whitney Modern Gallery in Los Gatos , CA July 19-August 31st, 2018

[/caption]I am honored to be a part of a very timely exhibition RISE: Empower,Change and Action at the Whitney Modern Gallery in Los Gatos, CA.

Whitney Modern Gallery in collaboration with Gutfreund Cornett Art present an exhibition featuring the art of 36  artists advocating for gender equality, women’s rights and social justice, these expressions provoke, and challenge assumptions about women’s lives in today’s global society in hopes of seeking a more empowering future.

Women’s Liberation

mericandream.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/sally-edelstein-a-storms-approachin-b.jpg”> Collage Detail: Women’s Lib- A Storms Approachin’ by Sally Edelstein

[/caption]My collage “Women Lib: A Storms Approaching” takes a look at a  time pivotal time period when women became conscious not only of the inequality but how our identities had become fragmented by a media insistent on dictating ever-changing standards.

When women grapple with gender inequality they often find themselves turning to a rich 10 year period of modern history – the 1970s. Before the 1970’s a woman could not keep her job if she were pregnant, get a credit card, report cases of sexual harassment  or have a legal abortion.

The piece, part of a series called “Media Made Women” is a pastiche of postwar American imagery, a time when confining and conflicting images of media stereotypes of women littered the pop culture landscape that was erupting in a women’s liberation movement.

These images helped shape the female psyche in setting standards of how women should imagine their lives, think of fulfillment and arrange their priorities.

Collage as Expression

.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/collage-a-storms-approachin-gaspnew-300dpi-copy-copy-2.jpg”> Collage promotes collusion’s of realities; by dissociating the images from their intended use, I can exploit the iconic effects of the imagery. Collage Detail: A Storms Approachin by Sally Edelstein

[/caption]Collage becomes the perfect vehicle to deconstruct these fragmented messages.

Like most Americans, I have consumed vast amounts of pop culture imagery over the decades; as an artist and a collector I have amassed a formidable collection.

Like a toxic overspill, fragments of these countless mass media images remain imprinted in all of us.

Using collage as a means of deconstructing myths and examining social fictions, the piece is composed of hundreds of images appropriated from vintage advertising, periodicals, newspapers, vintage school books, old illustrations, comic books, pulp fiction and all sorts of ephemera.

Media Matters- Media Made Women

dpress.com/2012/08/collage-a-storms-approachin-mother-daughterewatermk-copy.jpg”> Collage Detail: Women’s Lib- A Storms Approachin’ by Sally Edelstein

[/caption]Like most women growing up in the 1960’s I was fed a generous serving of sugar-coated media stereotypes of happy homemakers who were as frozen and neatly packaged as the processed foods they served their Cold war families

Within a decades time these same images would be thawed out under the hot glare of a woman’s movement only to be joined by a heaping helping of new conflicting media representations of how a girl’s life should proceed.

What did it mean to be a woman in the wake of the woman’s movement; what kind of woman should we be? How assertive and ambitious should we be, and how accommodating to men.

Gender Warfare

/2015/02/sally-edelstein-a-storms-approachin-a.jpg”> I do not use Photoshop in creating the collages preferring to create the pieces the old fashioned way by Exacto knife. Collage Detail: Women’s Lib- A Storms Approachin’ by Sally Edelstein

[/caption]This ideological warfare about women’s proper place was the prevailing subtext of American popular culture in the 1970’s.

Just as the right has demonized liberalism, so the backlash convinced the public that woman’s liberation was the true American scourge.

The back lash against feminism was filled with cautionary tales about what happens to women who are too angry or outspoken, and get too much freedom and attempted to push women back into acceptable retro roles .

The result was we were ambivalent toward femininity on the one hand and feminism on the other.

The media’s stereotypes about feminism turned the images into caricatures. They certainly played a central role in turning feminism into a dirty word and stereotyping the feminist as a karate chopping, Nair-rejecting bitch, with bad clothes, a perpetual snarl and a larger than life chip on her shoulder.

The media has long presented conflicting contradicting images of women and we have had to navigate the plethora of images offered up to young girls and young women suggesting what a desirable worthwhile woman should be.

Contrary to Popular Belief

-a-storms-approachin-crop-6.jpg”> Collage Detail: Women’s Lib-A Storms Approachin’ by Sally Edelstein

[/caption]The irony is 45 years later the contradictions still exist and the media continue to provide us with images and rationalizations that shape how we make sense of the roles we assume in our families, our workplace and our society.

The media continues to be relentless in their assault on the imperfections of the female face and body while our bodies continue to be a battleground in the political arenas.

The current backlash against women and their reproductive rights still inform our dialogues and re-markets old myths about women as new facts.

RISE: Empower, Change, and Action! Art Opening

If you are near Los Gatos CA  please stop by the Whitney Modern Gallery Gallery to view the show.

VENUE: Whitney Modern Gallery, 24 N. Santa Cruz Avenue, 2nd floor (no elevator), Los Gatos, CA

DATE: Saturday, July 21st, 2018

TIME: 12:30 – 3:30 p.m. Artist talk to begin at 2:30 p.m.

Exhibition opens July 19 to August 31st, 2018

Whitney Modern, in collaboration with Gutfreund Cornett Art, presents Rise: Empower, Change, Action!

This juried exhibition features selected works in the gallery by thirty-six artists from locations around the country and additional twenty-five artists on a looping slideshow on a monitor in the gallery.

RISE: Empower, Change and Action! brings artists into dialogue and brings forth what is important to self, community, our nation and the world at large through art that reflects on, addresses and seeks solutions for a more positive, empowering future, particularly for self-identified women and girls as well as their families. It is underpinned by the feminist principle that believes in political, economic and social equality for all. RISE emphasizes the commonalities of our human experience.

Join the conversation and see paintings, sculpture, printmaking, photography, collage and installations that speak for equality, independence and human rights while offering insight, healing and transformation.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2018. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

1970 was a year of great cultural divides.

Alongside war protests and racial unrest, women were in revolt. But in a year of turmoil there was one divisive issue that  captivated the media. A hot button topic if ever there was one, it pitted women against men, and women against women. For months on end, day after grinding day, the media covered it unrelenting from the front lines.

What was this deep cultural divide? Was it women’s liberation, the bombing in Cambodia, legalizing abortion,  or gender pay inequality?

Nah! It was the Great Hemline Battle of 1970.

As the year spiraled into social and political chaos,  women’s hemlines suddenly fell from thigh high to near floor length. At a time of unprecedented upheaval, the media devoted endless ink to covering not only the War in Vietnam buut  the fashion war that raged on between the Mini v.s. the Midi.

Since the mid 1960’s the mini skirt had reigned supreme.

The introduction of the Midi length skirt put fear into the hearts of ogling men and spunky women alike. It also caused   some dress manufacturers a good case of jitters as to whether the public would accept this dramatic change. But for all the women’s talk of liberation, the fashion world  was banking on the fairer sex’s  traditional slavish devotion to fashion.

“Every time the ladies turn around these days they discover another freedom,” Life magazine gushed in its March 3, 1970 issue devoted to the Hemline Hassle. “They can protest, they can compete, they can even – if they are Russian- fly of into space. But freedom stops when they turn around to regard their own hemlines in the mirror.”

In and Out

It would seem as though few things struck at the heart of a womans self-esteem than to be out of step with current fashion.

Like wearing white after Labor Day, hemline decrees had to be obeyed, like it or not. The word had been passed down from above through that sacred Bible of Fashion  Women’s Wear Daily commanding all women – libbers or not-   that skirts shall henceforth plunge to midcalf in what they called the Midi. Dress houses rushed to lower their hemlines  to prepare for the big fall preview. The US fashion Industry declared  definitively that the Mini was officially OUT.

Devotion to Fashion was just what the greedy Midi Men were counting on to line their own maxi pockets.  “There’ll  always be that strange woman, God bless her we love her,” reasoned an executive  at Marshall Field, “who wants to be the first out of the hen-coop with the latest oddity. She’ll go to any length to be au courant and we make a lot of money because of her.”

Along with fashionistas, they predicted the Midi would be favored by girls not built like Twiggy.

According to Life: “Merchants are now even briefing their armies for the attack, backed by the big manufacturers who are deep into the midiskirt, the big name designers here and abroad who thought it up, and women with heavy thighs.”

For those women hemming and hawing about the hemline, fashion manufacturers prepared to go to battle. Stores quickly banished the mini,  sweeping them totally off their racks. By late summer the mini was missing in action.

In August the die was cast. It would soon be farewell to knees and maybe even calves once the enemies of the miniskirts got their way.

Department stores began a vast campaign to re-train the customers eyes  and the first target was their personnel. Salesgirls were encouraged, urged, even shamed into wearing the Midi at work. Nearly all stores staged fashion shows to woo their staffs to the Midi and show them how to sell it, encouraging them  to spend more time with dubious customers to “get them to try on at least one Midi.”

August 3 was D Day at all the N.Y.Department stores,  the day the Midi became the law of the store. At tony Bonwit Tellers in N.Y. salesgirls were given the option of wearing either Midis or pantsuits. No minis.

The President of Saks Fifth Avenue gave the final death knell: “The mini is as dead as a doornail.”

For many these were fighting words. Battle lines were drawn. Suddenly the hemline debate became a matter of absorbing national interest.

Girl Watchers In Revolt

Girl watchers were in an uproar. The mini gladdened  (and the past tense was  painful) girl fanciers from California  to Manhattan.

Most men wanted  to see the hemlines remain exactly where they were. “Standing on the other side of the debate were all males over 12 (especially husbands)”  Life magazine exclaimed.

For men accustomed to seeing the female leg in full display it was a sad step backwards. How can we bear to bid goodbye to all this, they wailed in unison.

“The only thing this change is going to help is Saturday and Sunday television,” said a man in Denver quoted in the Life article. “Guys who would ordinarily  be out in the fresh air watching girls will be inside watching TV.”

Even our National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger  a world-class girl watcher chimed in on the issue  commenting “that legs were about the only scenery his basement White House office had to offer.”

The most wistful comment came from the Hallowed Halls  of Congress where a congressman lamented “I sort of feel momentary regret for the passing of a golden age.”

While most men preferred the  mini to mid calf length in women’s fashion, women were evenly divided. While some women said they would wear the midi length just to keep in style, and some praised the Midi’s feminist qualities, others echoed Time magazines assessment that the midi was “ungainly unflattering and unwarranted.”

Mini-skirted women march in protest of the midi skirt, July 13, 1970, in Miami, Fla. The women are afraid stores will stop stocking the mini skirt and they want freedom of choice in their attire. (AP Photo/Jim Kerlin)

The most vocal were the female mini skirt devotees  who vehemently opposed the Midi and held protests across the country. One lass in a micro-mini vowed that, “if the Midi becomes the style I’ll commit suicide or murder. I’ll stay out of the stores for 4 years if I have to.”

In Their Clutches

The real war often took place right at home.

If a fashionable gal wanted to refurbish her entire wardrobe with new hemline lengths it didn’t come cheap. And convincing husbands  to part with money for something they opposed was a battle itself.

“My husband won’t pay the bills,” cried legions of women confronted with the racks of new hemlines.

The style on which the U.S fashion industry was staking its money on, couldn’t very well be  paid for it with  a woman’s own credit card.

Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due

In 1970  a woman would need her husband’s  store credit card since she couldn’t get one of her own.

Even a working woman who got married would have to reapply for a charge account at a local department store under her husband’s name, despite the fact she was  working at the same job prior to her  marriage. A woman applying for a credit card could be asked a barrage of questions: Was she married? Did she plan on having children? Many banks required single, divorced, or widowed women to bring a man along with them to co-sign a credit card.

A single gal trying to obtain a BankAmericard in her own name would  be told: ”Our policy allows cards in the husband’s name only.”

Didn’t matter whether you were dressed in a Mini, a Midi, or a Maxi. Your application would be  declined. You needed a man in a pair of pants.

Now that was a hassle. A real battle worth fighting over.

Postscript

Filed Under Early Sexists Cartoons

A cartoon reflective of the times done in 1970 by my 15 year old self  clearly shows that unlike hemlines, my young consciousness had yet to be raised!

Today I turn 64 and if I am to believe the media, I have long passed my expiration date of desirability as a woman.

In fact to accept conventional wisdom about women, nothing matches their fear of visible signs of ageing.

But here’s the un-botoxed- wrinkle in that. Every woman is an “ageing woman.”

It begins at birth and continues if we are fortunate for 80 decades. Yet the window for beguiling is a short one in our youth culture, one lasting only a third of our life expectancy.

Women’s attractiveness seems at best highly perishable. Not unlike a container of milk there seems to be an expiration date, a best-used by date of about 30 years.

Despite the fact that we are currently living in a time when women over 60 are more visible and more powerful in government, business, and entertainment than ever before, when it comes their looks old stereotypes about our attractiveness linger like fossilized remains.

Women’s desirability is likely to decay.

The insistence that there is an arbitrary expiration date for women and their perceived beauty has not lessened its strong grip. In fact it has only accelerated as more fillers, serums, and procedures lay in wait to correct the “problems” fix the “flaws” and reverse signs of aging. To turn back time.

All Out War

Having been drafted by the media at an early age, I have been waging a war against any visible sign of aging for over 35 years. Like most girls I learned at an early age that along with a “visible panty line” there were to be no visible signs of aging.  Or we ourselves would become invisible.

By 1985, as 30 loomed for me, it was all out war.

So began decades of daily reconnaissance scrutinizing my face and body for any and all flaws. I was on high alert as a full-on assault on wrinkles, creases, furrows and lines escalated. My defense budget skyrocketed as I boost my already bloated arsenal of  costly creams, lotions,  and potions.

It is only now that I am beginning to question if it’s truly a battle worth waging.

I am constantly told “I don’t look my age,” the holy grail of  praise for a woman.

Though secretly pleased, I also know  I will never be 30 again, nor 40. Why would I look that way? Six decades of sorrows and loss, despondency and pain, along with great loves and laughter, wisdom and adventure are etched as deeply in my face as in my heart and psyche.

I wouldn’t have it any other way. It is a life lived.

I am far from expired.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2019. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific

The world was never the same because of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

A shy, petite, Jewish girl from Brooklyn changed my life forever. Her impact was as profound as another self-effacing, compassionate, Jewish, Brooklyn-born woman. My mother. Their place and affections in my heart are equally profound.

It is impossible to articulate what Ruth Bader Ginsburg meant to women’s rights

“Man in Charge” Collage Sally Edelstein

Imagine a time when a bank could refuse to issue a credit card to a woman unless her father or husband cosigned to get a card…or to buy a house or to open a bank account.

Imagine being hired or fired because you were pregnant or your work hinged on you not being overweight. When workplace sexual harassment was not a legal offense. Envision a time when marital rape was not recognized as a crime and birth control could only legally be prescribed to married women. Imagine being locked out of Ivy League schools despite your merits, because of your sex.

For much of their adult life, this was the reality for women of Ruth and my mother’s generation.

But this is not ancient history. This was my life too.  Despite there being a quarter-century difference in age from RBG, my young adulthood experiences in the early 1970s as a female were the same.

What changed it was Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Against impossible odds, this tiny, tenacious woman who fought sexism with the same tenacity she would demonstrate in fighting cancer, broke long-standing, deeply entrenched barriers to women’s progress and gender equality. All while raising a family at a time when professional working mothers were frowned upon.

In order to understand how truly revolutionary and trailblazing  RBG was it helps to understand the era she came of age in. And the courage it took.

She began her career at a time when conventional wisdom held that “feminists” or anyone who couldn’t find fulfillment in the Lady Clairol colorful cold war world of carpools, cookouts, cream of mushroom soup casseroles, and catering to contented children and happy go lucky husbands, were considered disturbed.

An MRS Degree

Ginsburg recalled “My Mother told me 2 things constantly. One was to be a lady, and the other was to be independent.”

Ruth was raised in the era when an MRS not a BA was the most valued degree a gal expected to receive at college. Most girls visualized marriage automatically at 21 along with voting and legal drinking, never doubting for a moment  that the sound of Handel’s  Wedding March would follow directly after “Pomp and Circumstance.”

Most young women in the 1950’s were convinced that the basic occupation of virtually every girl was choosing a man to marry, and college courses were set up to help Betty Coed in her mission to snaring a proper mate.

In the spring of 1954, the same year Ruth Bader graduated Cornell another Brooklyn girl was preparing for graduation herself. My mother’s cousin Rhonda was a college senior at Syracuse University  searching for Love and Marriage.  A 1950 graduate of Brooklyn’s Erasmus HS to Ruth’s James Madison, High, their lives would take them both out of their beloved Brooklyn but in very different directions.

Pretty and popular, Rhonda was voted the college senior with the likeliest future for matrimony. Convinced that the basic occupation of virtually every girl was choosing a man to marry, Rhonda was a smart cookie. She had a keen sense of her market value: her looks, personality, and virginity.

One of the first National Merit Scholarship winners, Rhonda knew brains were not enough for a gal to get by and in fact, could prove a booby trap without that right shade of lipstick and that perfectly turned out casserole. On the ball, she enrolled in the newly developed Marriage Arts Department of  Syracuse University, which promised to help her with her makeover from a Brain from Main to someone beau-worthy.

Meanwhile, at Cornell, a funny vivacious Long Island boy Martin Ginsburg fell in love with Ruth Bader’s brain.

Only a few years earlier in a speech to business and professional women, the Dean of Women at Syracuse University announced that feminism was outdated. Fortunately, Rhonda thought with a shudder, women had passed through that stage.

RBG married a man that not only was a brilliant lawyer but first-class gourmet chef and one who supported, encouraged, and made sacrifices to his own career in order to advance hers. (L) Home Ec. Class- Illustration “Saturday Evening Post” Feb 16, 1957, Steve Dohanos illustrator

Syracuse offered clever, useful courses such as house planning and family living, providing students with useful training designed to mold an attractive coed into an ideal wife, enhancing her marital resume.

Courses on making a home were most informative. “Your home,” her teacher Mrs. Berkley told the note-taking girls,  “is the setting for both you and your husband in the eyes of the world. It is your background. People who wonder what sort of person you are, see your home, and know.”

In this way, it was a very important factor in your husband’s career.

“Men especially, are very shrewd at judging other men by the women they marry and the homes those women run,” she told the class somberly.

“A New York financier once told me,” she explained to the class, “that his home presided over by an able gracious and clever wife, had been one of the greatest helps to him. Your home, then, with you as its mistress must provide the right kind of backing for a man.”

The ad for Pacific Fabrics with the headline “Well briefed” promises an A+ in fashion for the Miss 5’4″ or less, and judging by the ogling male student she’s scored a good grade.

By early April as graduation neared, Rhonda grew concerned as there was no engagement ring in sight. She bemoaned her predicament-“I’m sick of playing solitaire…I want to wear one.”

What with those pesky Russians building their arsenal of nuclear weapons and  President Eisenhower sending boys all over the globe,  there was no telling how many eligible men would be around.

With her newly sheered bangs to hide her intellectual forehead, her “beau-catching” curls finally caught the eye of a dreamy senior. Her hard work had paid off handsomely, as she accepted both the diploma and her glittering engagement ring. That degree in Sociology would end up tucked away safely in her Lane Cedar Hope Chest along with all her cherished keepsakes. Her real work as a wife was about to begin.

Ruth’s real work was also about to start.

Which senior will you be watching on graduation day?

Graduating first in her class, Ruth also found love and marriage. But she also found purpose. She was indeed a mid-century June bride her one nod to convention in a long life that would proceed on a brave, groundbreaking, and daring course that confronted and challenged the status quo.

A Jew. A woman and a mother. Despite these obstacles, she changed the world. At the encouragement of her beloved Marty, Ruth Bader Ginsburg became the first female Supreme Court Judge.

Her push for gender equality and for recognizing women’s rights as human rights was revolutionary when she began her career. It is heartbreaking that today gender equality has become politicized and framed as part of a radical agenda.

Trump’s re-election is dependent on the votes of fear-based white conservative men who want to return back to an America ruled by white men, the good old days  — before desegregation, before gay rights, before legal abortion, before raping your wife was illegal, before more than a handful of women were in the workforce. When America was great.

But in their opposition to feminism, to abortion rights, to wider contraception access, to marriage equality,  to family policies that would make it easier for women to remain in the workforce, the Republicans have fetishized the Good Old Days not just in rhetoric, but in policy that aims to take us back to them.

RBG never forgot the discrimination she experienced as a woman.

We must work to ensure that Justice Ginsberg’s replacement on the Supreme Court shares that same commitment to gender equality. It will require everyone who believes that women’s rights are human rights to raise their voice and to continue the fight for equality of all people.

The Notorious RBG would expect nothing less.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2020. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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The tale of two cities was the tale of two hats

While thousands of armed troops descend on our capital in preparation for Joe Biden’s inauguration, exactly 4 years to the day another army sporting pink pussy hats departed incoming trains and buses in Union Station, Washington  DC with the military precision of an invading army fired up to protest our new president.

Including me.

Now as Washington DC goes into near lockdown, and another inauguration will take place, my mind drifted back to that inaugural weekend in 2017  The deep divisiveness that would characterize the next four years was made very clear that exciting weekend in DC.

It came down to a tale of 2 cities was a tale of  2 hats.

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.

It was two days in January where two worlds threatened to collide.

Alternative lifestyles and alternative truths co-mingled. But the two worlds didn’t so much clash as coexist. Inauguration weekend 2017 in Washington DC was a tale of two cities.

It was a weekend of light and it was a weekend of darkness.

A Tale of Two Hats

Trumps sneering visage stared out at me on Friday, his likeness on all sorts of inauguration related merchandise. R) The Women’s March in Washington DC on Saturday

Inauguration weekend pussyhats and trucker hats co-mingled.  Patriots both, red-hatted “America First” Americans walked among progressive, pink pussyhatted marchers. Even without talking, they knew which team they were on.

I arrived by design in D.C. late Friday afternoon. I would miss the inauguration of Donald Trump, sealed in the bubble of my Greyhound bus surrounded in solidarity by other marchers headed down from N.Y. to the Capitol to protest.

Bubbles Collide

Departing the bus at a bustling Union Station, my friend Karen Gutfreund and  I walked out into a red sea of Make America Great Again hats. Streets vendors were busy hawking the de’ rigor red caps  along with T-shirts and buttons that screamed “Bitch, I’m President.”

Trump Merchandise lined the streets of Washington DC

On card tables on nearly every street corner, the newly elected president’s face looked out from just about everything that could stay still. All-American, patriotic mugs, T-shirts, tote bags, posters, calendars, buttons and hats all made in Bangladesh or Vietnam, all vied for attention.

I was surrounded by a crush of ebullient Trump supporters here for the inauguration, a cheerful celebratory bunch of pasty-faced people decked out in Trump merchandise head to toe.

These believers, in their polyester fleece pullovers emblazoned with the official Trump inaugural logo and the USA! Tees all brought from the official Trump Store (and why not? Donald Trump was offering 25% off merchandise for his first 100 days) all believed in their hearts America was on the wrong track and only Mr. Trump alone could make America Great Again; they had no doubt  that this billionaire with the beautiful family had the best interest of the country at heart.

They had bought Mr. Trump’s sales pitch for himself as easily as they bought his tacky merchandise.

Women Together

Along with the masses of travel-weary women departing incoming trains and buses with the military precision of an invading army, were the droves of Trump loving women already here for the inauguration.

The diversity of black, white and brown women arriving for Saturday’s March, made their way through the crowds juggling their rolled up protest signs while maneuvering their American Tourist wheelies packed with their pink pussyhats, as they jostled with doughy white women in mom jeans and American flag sweatshirts.

Carrying  their official tote bags with the gold seal of the 45th president close to their sides, their obligatory made in China red caps perched on their permed hairs, these were the same women who had only hours earlier cheered our new president who called for us to “Buy American and Hire American”

Among all the tacky merchandise, irony was in short supply.

I looked on with curiosity. These women were part of the 53% of white women who had voted for Trump.

These were the same women who were now high fiving one another who had only hours before cheered on a sexual predator as President. They had most likely spent the day at the National Mall watching and applauding the very inauguration I had purposely avoided acknowledging.

The bus ride down to Washington DC was a shared experience of solidarity where strangers morphed into sisters

At high noon as Donald Trump placed his tiny hands on Lincoln’s bible, the mood in my Greyhound bus was still.

There were no cheers, just sighs and bitter silence.  I sat in solitude with a group of once upon a time strangers now connected in solidarity who were simarly fed up with the Trump agenda that threatened the welfare of women, immigration LGBTQ rights, and through his climate denial the very health of the planet itself.

There was, at high noon, mainly deep determined silence.

But here now in D.C. was another group of women decked out in their $16.95 Trump red caps. These were women who saw a successful businessman as savior, a strong man who would fix what was broken.

These women looked past the threat Trump poses to women, past the pussy-grabbing past, his call to punish women who have abortions, past his misogynist name-calling, the body shaming. The racism. The xenophobia.

Did they look past it I wondered, or welcome it? It was hard to say.

With pink pussyhats packed away for tomorrow, we walked peacefully among the others.

Tomorrow was our chance to be heard.

Nasty Women Infiltrate

Nasty Women protest and Nasty Women infiltrate. Sally Edelstein with her friend activist and artist Karen Gutfreund at the March and at an Inauguration celebration for Donald Trump

As the daytime ballyhoo dispersed, the celebration continued through the evening with a decidedly better-heeled crowd, exchanging Sketchers for Manolo Blahnik’s. By nightfall, the limousines were out in full force as the dozens of official and unofficial inaugural parties began in hotel ballrooms across the city. A day of despair for me was a day of triumph and celebration for the billionaires’ supporters.

Inauguration celebrations for Donald Trump

Prowling the streets with my friend Karen we watched with curiosity as the spectacle unfolded before us. Tuxedoed men and bedazzled women scurried their way through mazes of concrete barriers to reach their prize for an evening of 3rd rate entertainment and red, white and blue cupcakes served on plastic plates.

As the evening wore on we marveled at the legion of Trump supporters in the throes of their victory lap, limping in their tight Jimmy Choos, staggering through darkened D.C. streets in Carolina Herrera ball gowns, their menfolk in well-cut Tom Ford Tuxedos all in search of GOP comradery and one last round of drinks.

Under Cover

Watching the spectacle of late-night revelers wobble into the W Hotel for one last party, it became irresistible to not participate. Karen and I glanced at one another with scheming looks. We two socially progressive artist-activists decided it was time to go undercover as card-carrying Trump supporters and infiltrate the other side. For one evening we would enter an alternative universe.

The celebration at the W’s rooftop lounge was less official but no less Republican. Bravely we weaved our way through the red velvet ropes in the hotel lobby as we headed for the rooftop crawling with Trump supporters. Undeterred by being woefully underdressed among these other gussied up GOP guests, we waltzed in with a brazen air of confidence, admitted into this rarefied world of Republicans by the mere privilege that blonde hair and blue eyes bestow.

The celebration at the W’s rooftop lounge was less official but no less Republican. With our Make America Great Again Hats we fit in seamlessly

We were ready to Make America Great Again.

Quickly snagging some signature red caps that were strewn about, we insinuated ourselves into the crowd. Approving nods soon followed along with, high fives and thumbs up all by virtue of wearing this cheap red hat made in Vietnam.

“Nasty Women” had successfully penetrated a Republican party.

It’s Trump Time Baby!

The room reeked of entitlement. The very personification of the kind of elitism Trump vowed to eradicate from Washington.

Some revelers were refugees of the official ball fortresses, some from state sponsored parties, a diverse crowd of rich white people mingling with richer white people, all taking selfies and proudly posting pictures of earlier encounters with Caitlyn Jenner at the Liberty Ball. The only real celebrity of the night, it did not spare her from the cruel mocking jokes I would overhear later.

Trump Boys Will Be Boys

With the Russian vodka flowing, these red-blooded men in red trucker hats topping off their satin peaked lapel Hugo Boss tuxedos were on the prowl, licking their chops in victory and entitlement like a Superpac of wolves.

Like heat seeking missiles looking to score it didn’t take long before some happy warriors zeroed in on our own red caps and obvious availability.

Grab Em By The Pussy!

The groping would have made our “grab em by the pussy” new president proud as a peacock.

Never taking no for an answer…It’s Trump time baby...they unabashedly and freely fondled us amongst cheers erupting around thru the room.

Don’t You Want Me Baby

My inauguration is bigger than your inauguration!

The music was at ear-splitting decibels and in a burst of Reagan era nostalgia, the electronic sound of Human League’s 1981 hit started blaring and the room burst into dancing and singing.

It wasn’t long before an overweight county supervisor from upstate N.Y. grabbed me to the dance floor. Pressing his oversized and unwelcome pelvis into mine, he sang along boisterously yet plaintively “Don’t You Want Me” the song eerily foreshadowing the oversize insecurities of our newly elected president whose gaping, wounded ego would be on full display the next day, begging us to like him.

You know I don’t believe you. When you say that you don’t need me.

You’d better change it back or we will both be sorry. Don’t you want me baby.

After embraces were rebuffed and sexual advances repeatedly declined, my dance partner whose tender ego mimicked our new Presidents, sneered at me derisively and spit out what he thought would be a cruel retort: “You look like a liberal!” and stormed away.

My integrity intact, it was time for this “Nasty Woman” to leave.

This is What Democracy Looks Like

Womens March on Washington January 21, 2017

On Saturday I stepped into another America and we embraced one another. The Woman’s March was democracy at its best.

Walking into the crammed National Mall filled with hundreds of thousands of people who simply rejected the racist, sexist, xenophobic Trump agenda was an instant balm to the despair that had been my new normal for the past several months.

The pink pussyhats hats reclaimed the loaded term used by Trump.

As far as the eye could see, I was enveloped by a vast blanket of pink and brown, black and white, a sea of diversity and solidarity, one voice with many issues.

A massive expanse of women and men and children, their pink pussyhats bobbing in a sea of protest choosing freedom over fear.

Photo Credit Amanda Voisard / Washington Post The March was a rebuke of bigotry and call for inclusiveness

Saturday we became a red white and pink nation at the Woman’s March.

These pink pussyhats made right here in American homes in kitchen and living rooms and dens across the entire country by grandmothers and mothers and daughters, the colors of the hats ranging from mauve to powder pink, as diverse as the women who would wear them. These pink woolen hats a part of the Pussyhat project were a product of good ol’ American ingenuity made right here in the USA with American know how and a bundle of pink yarn, a set of knitting needles, and women who wanted to be heard.

Across the country women came hundreds and thousands of them, by planes and trains and automobiles. All showing up to drown out Trump and have their voices heard. Some driving straight through the night from the heartland for 18 hours straight, with no sleep arriving blurry-eyed but energized; they came by the boatload on crowded buses and trains of solidarity among strangers who quickly became sisters.

We are loud, we are nasty and we are fed up

There were no walls that day, no boundaries between gender or class, color, or creed. There was comradery and compassion so that a Trans tax attorney from Brooklyn peacefully mingled with a meat packer from Kansas, war-weary veterans of marches past thier spirits  ignited once again, their sparkling eyes wise and knowing, rubbed shoulders with wide-eyed millennials in their first ever march. They were all there as a repudiation of what Trump is about, walking boldly together, as together we enter dangerous territory.

Stronger Together

The march was a show of force, proof that for however many people are happy about Trump’s inauguration and that number is far smaller than he or his press secretary would have you believe, many more are unhappy.

At the same time I marched in Washington it was empowering to know that across the country and around the globe people were showing up to drown out Trump too.

The author at the Women’s March Washington DC 2017

I was so proud to be part of this patriotic crowd of unified voices and diverse agendas, melded, supported, and enhanced by one another.

We will be watching. We will continue to make and keep America great.

Keep your hands off our democracy, was my final cry of the weekend.

How could I ever have imagined how close he came to choking the very life out it!

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2021.

Step on women’s rights and they start marching. If you stomp on justice they will take to the streets.

They march against misogynist presidents and protest economic inequality. And over and over again they have marched countless miles for reproductive rights, and it hasn’t stopped.

I’ve tracked more than a few miles myself.

I never thought in 2021 I’d be back out demonstrating for a woman’s right to choose her constitutional guarantee for a safe and legal abortion. Yet this past Saturday I joined with thousands of other women across the country in still another Women’s March to protect reproductive rights and demonstrate against anti-choice leaders whose ultimate goal is outlawing abortion.

Yet again. Three decades of marching was not enough. After thirty-five years of solidarity with other women protesting, the health of Roe v. Wade continues to be in jeopardy.

March 1986

I had naively assumed my first pro-choice march in the spring of 1986 would be my last for this cause. That somehow this earnest demonstration would make a difference and the fate of Roe v. Wade would be secured once and for all.

This was an issue that spoke deeply to me. My own abortion three years earlier was still a fresh memory. It was in fact never far from my thoughts. As I sunk into the soft coach seat of the Amtrak train, it played out in my mind in an endless loop as I rode from NYC to Washington D.C. to participate in the March for Women’s Lives. My abortion had been a difficult choice but one I was grateful to have.

This march organized by NOW was held in reaction to the annual Right to Life protests. That  January it had drawn a crowd of 40,000 demonstrators who marched to the Capitol. The religious right had the ear of the Reagan White House, and like so many I feared that the anti-abortion demonstrators had convinced the President, Congress, and the media that a majority of Americans opposed abortion.

I knew I needed to be counted.

Washington D.C.

Looking out at the sea of young women my age that had gathered on the grassy Mall between the Washington Monument and the Capitol was inspiring.

More than 80,000 demonstrators had come to Washington D.C. to support Roe v. Wade. At a time before social media the numbers are staggering. The March for Women’s Lives was described at the time as the biggest feminist rally ever.

It was history. We would be making history, maybe closing a chapter on questioning women’s reproductive rights

Marching in solidarity under cloudless skies in unseasonably warm weather, there was a festive air. Elbow to elbow I was enveloped by women from across the country.

We filled the length 15 abreast along Pennsylvania Avenue between the White  House and Capitol for much of the afternoon. Little did I realize that 3-mile route would become all too familiar.

Waving my homemade “Pro-Choice is Pro-Life” sign along with other the marchers who carried banners demanding lawmakers to “Stay Out of My Uterus,” we chanted loudly in unison “Not the church, not the state, women must decide their fate.”

It was these chanting’s and later the roar of the crowd boisterously repeating “Bella, Bella” as former Congresswoman Bella Abzug began speaking at the rally, that became the soundtrack for the day, filling my mind with exhilaration and hope as I rode the train back to N.Y. later that evening.

April 1992

Six years later I was back in D.C. marching past monuments and April’s cherry blossoms for the very same cause

This march came at a time of heightened urgency for the abortion rights movement with a sense that Roe v. Wade was in mortal danger.

In a few weeks, the Supreme Court was set to hear arguments in a Pennsylvania law that sought to limit access to abortion through a variety of regulations including a 24 hour waiting period and a requirement that women seeking abortions notify their husbands. Many saw the case as a vehicle to overturn Roe v. Wade.

As the 1992 presidential election approached abortion was a divisive and emotional political issue.

The crowds had grown.  At least half a million advocates streamed down Washington streets for a march and rally to support abortion rights.

Marchers came from all over the nation by plane, train, bus, and car. I was surrounded by mothers and daughters, teachers and doctors, husbands and brothers. Hollywood stars marched side by side with Republicans For Choice and Catholics for Choice.

The Democratic presidential candidates took part in the march taking a break from campaigning. Governor  Bill Clinton’s supporters chanted “Pro-choice, Pro Clinton” along with a flurry of campaign signs, while Jerry Brown’s team handed out literature, which I happily collected.

We thronged the Capitol not only to protest such reproductive restrictions but to also assert the growing political power of women in a year of Presidential and Congressional elections.

We Won’t Go Back

Like many of the marchers, I wore suffragette white, and carried a new handmade sign, “We Won’t Go Back.” Passing the White House, I roared at the top of my lungs in unison “We’re feminists, we’re fierce and we vote!” while others tossed tennis balls on the White House lawn with the message “Are you ready to be a Mother?”

The anti-abortion groups were out in full force holding aloft signs of aborted fetuses along the parade route. Their shouts of “shame” tried to drown us out but they were way outnumbered. Shame on them.

It was called one of the largest protest marches in history.

April 2004 Rally March

In April 2004 a massive collective call was put out to restore and preserve women’s health and reproductive rights. Again

This time a million people converged on Washington to sound the alarm at President George Bush’s administration’s attempts to chip away at women’s reproductive rights both domestically and globally.

I was among them.

There had been an intensifying attack on abortion rights since 2002 when an anti-choice White House and Congress began using legislation, and judicial appointments to roll back the clock on abortion rights.

That time bomb was ticking again.

No More

Unlike the 1986 march organized by just one group and focused exclusively on the rights of U.S. women, this March for Women’s Lives was led by several activist groups addressing health and reproductive issues on a global scale. This was an opportunity to express solidarity among women both in the United States and globally to say “No more!” to American policies that hurt women here and abroad

Once again it easily broke attendance records for national reproductive-rights rallies

Under an overcast sky, a sea of faces stretched more than a mile, from one end of the national mall to the other for a late afternoon 4-hour rally after the march. Filled with women, men, children, and even nursing babies wearing the bright pink T-shirts of Planned Parenthood, we listened to a diverse group of lawmakers and feminists including Senator Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Madeline Albright, and Gloria Steinem.

But it was Whoopi Goldberg I remember the most.

Women’s March Rally 2004

Waving a white coat hanger, the comedian kicked off the afternoon rally with a vow to never to return to the days of back-alley abortions that prevailed before the Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973.

This was the choice,” Goldberg said as she held up the hanger. “This was it. And I’m here to tell you, never again. We are not going backwards child, never again.

A million voices showed up hoping this would be the wake-up call. We would never go back.

October 2, 2021

Photo: Tina Perlmutter “Women’s March” Oct 2021

Today there is Texas. Once more we are outraged at draconian anti-abortion laws and the Supreme Court will be hearing a case that could challenge the current standing of Roe v Wade.

Now at 66 and menopausal, three decades after my first Pro-Choice march, I am still protesting.

At The Women’s March Oct 2, 2021 Foley Sq, NYC

On a clear, unseasonable warm day eerily reminiscent of that one in 1986, I along with thousands of other women in hundreds of cities rose up and took to the streets this past Saturday to have our voices heard. Instead of protesting in front of the White House and the Capitol, I rallied in front of the courthouses in Foley Square in N.Y.C.

Closer to home it is still a topic close to my heart.

My own abortion decades ago was still ever-present as it was 35 years ago and conversations with friends revealed it was something we all had in common. A right we wanted to make sure this generation can avail themselves to

When you tread on women’s liberties we don’t stand still. Even if we are getting weary of the fight.

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You can call me Ms. Edelstein, from now on!

Ms. Magazine, that grande dame of feminist publications started by that grande dame of feminists Ms. Gloria Steinem, just did a profile on me. For a long time feminist like myself, it touched me to the core.

For many women of a certain age that storied magazine evokes a time of exciting challenges, disruptions to the norm, and honest to God truth-telling.

First Issue Ms. Magazine July 1972

It was the tangible mouthpiece of the feminist movement and I may be one of the few folks they have written about who can lay claim to having the entire collection of Ms. magazines from the first July 1972 issue with Wonder Woman as the cover girl through the 1980s.

Stored neatly in my basement, boxes of Ms. and other feminist ephemera from that period sit side by side in my crowded basement next to neatly labeled cardboard cartons of their mainstream magazine nemesis, McCalls, Good Housekeeping, and Ladies Home Journal.

None of these classic women’s periodicals really told the truth about women’s experiences.

These vintage, oversized, ad-drenched glossies were an homage to the Lady Clairol world of carpools, cookouts, cream of mushroom soup casseroles, and catering to contented children and happy-go-lucky husbands.  They were more of an escape into an often mythologized world which was what made Ms. so special when it appeared on the scene in 1972. It had the potential to change your life by speaking the truth and talking about issues considered taboo and rarely spoken.

I still marvel at Ms.’s groundbreaking and controversial covers about domestic abuse and sexual harassment which helped bring awareness to those crucial, but previously little-covered issues. While glossy covers normally featured models with Breck-perfect hair and  Pepsodent white smiles, displaying a battered woman as the cover story which Ms. did in 1976, was very brave.

Most articles at the time were “How To’s” on pleasing a husband or boyfriend,  yet Ms. offered “How To’s” on getting jobs, and raising gender-neutral kids while raising your consciousness too.

A Proud Feminist

It was an exhilarating time to call yourself a feminist.

Today most young women have an uncomfortable relationship with calling themselves the f word. They likely embody what it means to be one, but just don’t like the word.

For me at that age the word feminist was more than a fresh lens to view the world, it also made me part of a community even if I was alone in my suburban teenage bedroom. Maybe especially because of that.

A Mid Century Free To Be Me Childhood

Even as a child in the early 1960s part of me had already been questioning the norm, living a feminist life without knowing the words to support it. Despite the fact that the word feminist had appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary by 1895, it would not be a word I ever heard uttered in my classrooms or my home.

The portrayal of women as wives and mothers -that love, marriage, and children were “The” career for women -held little appeal to me. Despite the fact that the 1960s was a time of infinite challenges, the women I saw on TV, in ads, and in schoolbooks were hermetically sealed housewives cheerfully chained to their Electrolux vacuum cleaners, debating the well-worn topic of ring around the collar and exchanging the latest busy day Jell-O recipes while men were out and about saving the world. Traditional roles, let alone marriage was of no interest to me.

Playing House

It is no surprise then that as a little girl, I never played house in the traditional sense.

Though I had the requisite Betsy Wetsy, Thumbelina, Chatty Cathy, and Peter Playpal dolls their care was overseen by a kind, middle-aged, make-believe housekeeper with a strong Irish brogue named  Maggie.

In 1962, pre-dating Murphy Brown by several decades, I was a pretend single working Mom.  Playing at running my own Advertising Agency, I was the Account Executive, Head copywriter, and Art Director rolled into one. After a long day at the office creating ad campaigns I returned home to my family of dolls asking Maggie how the children were.

Despite being exhausted from my tedious day of meeting with difficult clients, I was never too tired to listen to Chatty Cathy’s ramblings or take time to change poor Betsy’s seemingly always wet diaper. At the height of the MAD Men era, I was my own Don Draper without the martinis. But of course, I also had my own Betty, my dear mother the ideal housewife, who likely looked in on her “grandkids” while I was at work.

Even then I knew it takes a village.

Saturday Evening Post Cover By Steven Dohanos Feb. 16, 1957

However, a few years later, playing house was not optional. When I entered Jr High in 1968  I was required to take Home Economics, a class I ended up hating nearly as much as gym. Despite the beginnings of the second-wave women’s movement slowly making rumbles, this antiquated class was nothing short of basic training for being a successful wife, and homemaker.

While the teenage boys got sent off to Shop Class to work with wood, girls like me were learning how to bake the flakiest, most perfect biscuit sure to win a man’s heart. Having grown up in a household with a mother who ascribed to the ethos of new and improved -take a can and take it easy school of cooking, my only reference to biscuit making was banging open a can of frozen pre-sliced biscuits courtesy of the Pillsbury Doughboy. Slice and bake and call it a day.

I fared no better in the much-despised sewing part of the class.

Despite the fact that I was an artist with well-developed motor skills, a needle and thread were my downfall. Sewing machines were as foreign to me as a lawnmower and neither held any interest. The final project which required me to sew an A-line skirt, ended in disaster as I ultimately stapled the entire thing together rather than use a sewing machine.

Exasperated, my home ec teacher rolled her watery eyes swathed in green eyeshadow and reprimanded me.  Shaking her head in disgust, I will never forget being told in front of the class by this plump woman with a sloppy beehive hairdo and a cardigan with frayed sleeves:

“I hope you can do something else because you certainly can’t sew.”

Red-faced, and humiliated I knew somewhere deep inside I could indeed do a lot more than sew a hem.

Luckily Ms. magazine appeared three years later to help me realize I could.

Click

Reading the Ms article was a true “click” moment for me.

Not unlike many actors who, despite having celebrated careers and winning awards, can’t stand the idea of watching themselves on screen, I often have difficulty reading about myself and seeing my own words in print. A peculiar dilemma for a writer.  But tentatively I took a chance and in its own way it was a true Ms moment.  Reading it was empowering, offering me a true “ click” moment of recognition of myself and my worth and value, something so often clouded by self-doubt and derision.  If that isn’t one of the gifts of Ms I don’t know what else is.

Click for those who may not know the term was the feminist “eureka” moment, an epiphany originally used in the first issue of Ms. in 1972.  Click moments are a moment when our perspectives shift and suddenly the world looks different.

It’s a shock of recognition…click…a moment of truth. Thank you, Ms for bringing me there.

After Ms Magazine ran a piece on me as an artist a few months ago, I switched gears and decided to pitch them a story about my Mad Men-like childhood where I was more Don Draper than his wife Betty.

It just came out now.

Pushed to be Betty Draper, I Was Always More Like Don

I’ve been in hundreds of art shows over the years.

It is always a thrill. But this most recent one, “Agency: Feminist Art and Power” at the Museum of Sonoma County is especially satisfying.

Meaningful in ways no other has been.

When the catalog for the exhibit came in the mail recently, I quickly ripped open the thick envelope. Naturally, I was both pleased and honored that my collage had been represented on the glossy cover. Yet it was the interior bio pages I was most anxious to see.

Ok, I may have buried the lede.

Sure, I feel privileged to share the walls of an exhibit with such iconic and luminary feminist artists as Judy Chicago, Joan Semmel, and Martha Wilson. But the artist I’m most thrilled to see while I flip through this wonderful catalog bears the same name as me.

Sally Edelstein and her niece Jessie Edelstein/ Page from Exhibit Catalog

There are two Edelstein’s in this show and I couldn’t be prouder of my niece Jessie Edelstein for having her work as a performance artist recognized too.

Two generations questioning identity and gender representation through art.

My Mother The Patron

As a multitude of feelings swelled up in me, I so longed to call my mother and share this news. She would be over the moon proud of her only granddaughter and her daughter together in an art show.

Kvelling wouldn’t even come close to describing her joy.

Naches on steroids. ( Yiddish for pride or joy)

Not only an avid art lover, my mother Betty was a true patron of the family arts.

Suburban Roots

Truthfully, the Museum of Sonoma County was not the first art space in which Jessie and I exhibited together. That honor belongs to The Museum of Art of Western Park Drive. Not only was it a treasure trove of mid-century collectibles, ephemera, and a century’s worth of heirlooms, but it was also loaded with art.

In fact, it was in my mother’s home where Jessie and I had our original long-running exbibit together.

Following in my footsteps, my Gen Z niece Jessie had her first true retrospective in a mid-century ranch house in West Hempstead, Long Island.

Betty was a curator with a wizened eye and a heart of gold, who hung her beloved grandaughter’s drawings through the expanse of the house. No mere fridge door in the kitchen for her, crayoned sheaves of drawing paper hung Salon style in hallways, bedrooms, dining, and living rooms. Neat rows of Jessie’s whimsical drawings laden with text hung elegantly on a wall beneath a set of antique Tiffany cobalt blue Service plates.

To my mother, each item on that wall was as valuable to her as the other.

A Wall of My Own

Childhood Drawing Sally Edelstein 1964 Living Room Still Life

That house on Western Park Drive was also my very first gallery and for over 60 years there was an ever-changing exhibit of my artwork. Seeing works I created as a young artist beautifully framed and displayed by my gallerist mother hanging next to my young niece’s ever-expanding collection of art always filled my heart.

How many Sundays did I sit on the same soft living room carpet that I sat on as a child and drew with Jessie using the crayons and paper my mother always kept in supply. How many times did that day’s creation get hung immediately on the wall by my appreciative mother?

Never kept in drawers, art was always honored. As was the artist. It was my mother’s way.

It was only when we finally sold that house on Western Park Drive two years ago that I had the sad task of dismantling this museum for the last time.

The art was the last thing to be removed from the house, a home whose walls were literally covered and filled with love. Seeing them bare for the first time was startling. The shadows of the outlines of the framed pieces were now the only evidence of the creativity that had once been there, confirming the end of that chapter.

But the legacy would live on.

A Seat At The Table

The Dinner Party Judy Chicago

Today my art lover mother would be especially pleased knowing that Jessie and I are in a show with Judy Chicago.

In 1980 I was an art student at the School of Visual Arts when I  originally saw that feminist’s groundbreaking installation The Dinner Party with my mother just as it opened at the Brooklyn Museum.

Over the years, my mother and I went to countless museums and galleries together, but there was a unique excitement we both acknowledged viewing this exhibit.

In the same year when THE blockbuster art show at MOMA was one devoted to that ultimate misogynist Picasso, this controversial feminist show was a revelation.

It is hard to describe the fury and visceral reactions The Dinner Party aroused.

No one had ever seen anything like it before. Denounced and vilified by many, Hilton Kramer of The New York Times famously dismissed it as kitsch, “very bad art” and little more than vaginas on plates.

Historically, women were woefully underrepresented in the art world. Judy Chicago’s generation was denied the recognition they deserved, rejected by the male art community and did something about it. Chicago sought to address the overwhelming maleness of art history.

As an artist, I  would reap the benefits of the feminist movement in art even as I was coming of age smack in the middle of it.

As I walked into the dimly lit installation at the Brooklyn Museum there was a hushed reverence that felt like a holy experience.

Standing beside this massive triangle-shaped banquet table arranged with 39 place settings in variations of vulvar imagery emblazoned with the names of women of accomplishments both mythical and historical, I knew this was history.

This was a work of symbolism and scholarship that addressed the erasure of women’s history.

Herstory Mystory

Viewing it with my mother felt just right.

This was the woman from whom I not only learned to set a beautiful table but who also let me always know I had a place at it.

Yes, she taught me where to place the butter knife and water goblet, but she also encouraged me as an artist from the very start, unflinchingly supporting my childhood identity as a little French painter named Pierre.  She provided me not only with oil paints and sable brushes but with just the right costume mustache and gender pronouns to complete me. In a home shared with an entitled older brother,  she made sure my voice was heard.

And while other girls received the much-coveted princess phone when they turned sweet sixteen, my mother built me an art studio attached to our house.

A room of my own.

Whatever the cost of the construction of that studio might have been, it wasn’t nearly as priceless as the confidence she built inside me.

How this patron of the arts would be thrilled that her two darlings are each invited to have a seat at the table. Being seen. Being heard.

Together. With Judy.

In a show about Female Agency.

Three generations of Edelstein love and pride. (L) Sally Edelstein, Betty Edelstein, Jessie Edelstein 1997, (R) Sally and Jessie Edelstein 1999

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2022. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Feminism sought ought to advance a deep transformation of American society and scared conservatives. “Lib Poster” Illustration from Newsweek Magazine 3/23/70 Women in Revolt

The current war on “wokeness” is reminiscent of the war on feminism waged by conservatives over 50 years ago.

Today’s right-wing is scared of woke culture that threatens to change everything beloved about American life. Like “wokeness” the right turned “feminism” into a pejorative that was synonymous with the demise of everything good about America.

“Feminist” like “woke” became shorthand for those who blindly want things to stay the way things used to be when it appears things might change. Protestors against ERA

While the women’s movement gained significant momentum thru the 1970s conservatives- both men and women- began to build a counter-narrative based on so-called American values. To conservatives’ feminism was a threat that needed to be stopped.

While women libbers were out marching, anti-feminists would roar back.

On International Women’s Day, it is worth looking back at the backlash against feminists.

Phyllis Schlafly

Just as the right has demonized liberalism, so the backlash rose to convince the public that feminists were the true American scourge.

The emerging feminist movement swiftly came under attack attracting women who became part of the antifeminist mobilization. Led by Phyllis Schlafly, these were women who insisted on the unique nature of women’s identities as mothers and homemakers.

Phyllis Schlafly’s sneering portrayal of feminists would be familiar to anyone who follows the anti-woke movement today. Schlafly’s influence on the Republican Party and American politics reverberates today.

Schlafly helped make feminism a polarizing political issue, originating the idea of “family values” as a partisan divide. She and her supporters opposed politicians based on their support for abortion, gay marriage, and other issues Schlafly and her associates considered in opposition to the nuclear Christian family.

American women, Schlafly wrote, were “the most privileged” class of people ever to have lived, and the real heroes of women’s liberation were the men who’d invented the sewing machine, the automobile, and frozen food. Thanks to them, modern mothers were free to spend time enjoying their children and perhaps to take a part-time job or volunteer outside the home if they wanted more to do.

There was no real problem of inequality; instead, the “aggressive females on television talk shows yapping about how mistreated American women are” were tricking women into feeling aggrieved.

Ms. magazine, according to Schlafly, was filled with “sharp-tongued, high-pitched whining complaints by unmarried women” who “view the home as a prison, and the wife and mother as a slave.” The magazine’s subtext  was “how satisfying it is to be a lesbian.”

Now 50 years after the women’s liberation movement stormed onto the scene opening a floodgate of discourse about women’s rights, it’s déjà vu all over again.

Ironically because feminist ideas are so taken for granted, few women today think of themselves as feminists. Just as the right has demonized liberalism, so the backlash has convinced the public that feminists are the true American scourge.

The modern aversion to the word feminism and the archaic clichés of feminists as male bashing, make-up-less, angry and non-domestic are the very same stereotypes perpetuated by the media during the burgeoning women’s liberation movement of the 1970s.

Women in Revolt

Newsweek Cover March 23, 1970 “Women in Revolt” Cover Photo by Richard Ley

In 1970 as the national women’s movement gathered steam, Newsweek magazine’s all-male management decided to put feminism on their cover, featuring a lengthy article entitled  Women’s Lib: The War on “Sexism.”

A new specter is haunting America,” it announced ominously – the specter of militant feminism. Convinced they have little to lose but their domestic chains, growing number of women are challenging the basic assumptions of what they consider a male-dominated society.

Women’s liberation, members demand full rights for the once frail sex: A new American dream for the ’70s. Newsweek Magazine 3/23/70 Photo by Howard Harrison-Nancy Palmer

Right off the bat, the magazine offers an explanation of why a woman was writing this feature, a job usually best left to a man.

In an age of social protest the old cause of U.S. feminism has flared into new and angry life in the women’s liberation movement. It is a phenomenon difficult to cover; most of the feminists wont even talk to male journalists who are hard put in turn to tell the story with the kind of insight a woman can bring to it. For this weeks coverage Newsweek sought out Helen Dudar, a topflight journalist who is also a woman.

1970 negative stereotypes of feminists as karate chopping, bra-burning, male-hating women in desperate need of shaving their legs still persist.

Forever solidifying the stereotype of the feminist as unattractive, combative, and a woman in need of Nair, the article offered the reader its’ own guide to spotting and identifying a feminist.

Plunging into the movement can mean a new lifestyle,” the article explains. “Some women give up make up; a lot of them fret over whether to give up depilation in favor of furry legs; A few of them are bouncy looking lot, having given up diets and foundation garments.

Femininity vs Feminism

The image of the unattractive feminist stuck.

By mocking and dismissing the way feminist activists looked and behaved, they reinforced the same notions that sometimes sexual objectification and subordination were just fine.

Though eager to shed many of the holdover trappings of the 1960 femininity, the backlash against feminism was filled with cautionary tales about what happens to women who are too outspoken and too much freedom. (L) Germaine Greer, an attractive Australian journalist and theorist was a major feminist voice in the 20th century who was palpable to men (R) The liberated lady could still swing to a new beat in a bra and girdle in this 1970 Maidenform Ad

The media made it pretty clear that unless you were a saucy feminist like Germaine Greer,  a libber that even men liked with her easy charm that distinguished her from her militant sisters, you could count on being pretty lonely.

You’ve Come a Long Way Baby

Vintage Virginia Slims Cigarettes Ad 1971 Women could celebrate their own slim cigarette

 And virtually all of them in the movement light their own cigarettes and open their own doors,” the article continues.

“Chivalry” is a cheap price to pay for power, one lib leader commented. In any event the small masculine niceties now appear to liberationists as extensions of a stifling tradition that overprotects women and keeps her in her place.

Male Chauvinist Pigs

The male gaze

A favorite negative stereotype was the hostile, humorless, man-bashing, sexually uptight, karate-chopping libber who saw male chauvinism at every turn.

Newsweek explained:

Among the man things that incite movement women to fury are the liberties men take in addressing them on the street-whistles “Hey Honey” greetings, obscene entreaties.

Casual annoyances to the unenlightened, this masculine custom becomes, in the heightened atmosphere of women’s liberation, an enraging symbol of male supremacy reflecting mans expectation of female passivity and more important, his knowledge of her vulnerability.

Photo Newsweek Magazine March 23, 1970

“We will not be leered at smirked at, whistled at by men enjoying their private fantasies of rape and dismemberment, ” announced a writer in a Boston lib publication.” WATCH OUT. MAYBE YOU’LL FINALLY MEET A REAL CASTRATING FEMALE it boldly announced.

Her point was part of a plea for the study of karate a fashion that inspires men to helpless ho-ho-hos’s.

The lib view is that most girls discouraged from developing their muscles grow up soft and weak and without any defense reflexes to speak of. A little karate can go a long way in a woman’s life, according to Robin Morgan, a poet a wife a mother and the designer of the movements signet- a clenched fist within the circle of the biological symbol for female.

In the new feminist doctrine karate is not merely a physical or psychological weapon, It is also political if you agree that rape is a political act.”

Thus the karate-chopping libber became forever part of pop culture.

Hai Karate

In an odd coincidence, karate was already part of the pop culture landscape in a series of ads run by Hae Karate After Shave, but here it was the man performing karate to defend himself against his sex-crazed girlfriend ( or even his own wife ).

Hai Karate After Shave ad 1969

Hai Karate ran a campaign offering a small self-defense instruction booklet sold with each bottle of aftershave to help wearers fend off women. The notion being that the aftershave would turn women into wild maniacs who couldn’t wait to attack you.

“New Hai Karate is so powerful it drives women right out of their minds, That’s why we have to put instructions on self-defense in every package.”

Newsweek Women in Revolt

Ironically, as Newsweek planned this issue on Women’s Lib, they were oblivious to their own staff of women in revolt.

As the rumblings of the embryonic women’s movement began to be heard in 1970, some women in the workplace began quietly grumbling too.

With the help of attorney Eleanor Holmes Norton, 46 women employees sued Newsweek Magazine for sex discrimination, charging it was a segregated system of journalism that divided the work solely on the basis of gender.

The magazine’s well-educated highly qualified women were no longer satisfied answering phones and checking facts for its male staff of writers and editors. When it came to writing they were forced to hand over their reporting to their male colleagues.

Newsweek’s News Hens Sue

Meeting secretly, the group of women teamed up with a women’s rights lawyer challenging the sex segregation jobs, becoming the first group of media professionals to sue for employment discrimination based on gender under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

The night before the issue hit the newsstands the Newsweek women sent a memo announcing a press conference.

Media savvy, the women journalists called a press conference, filing the suit on March 16, 1970 the same day their magazine ran. Crowded into a conference room at the ACLU, “Newsweek’s News Hens” as the N.Y.Daily News called them, held up a copy of their magazine whose brightly yellow cover reflected their own story: Women in Revolt.

Fifty-three years later, the fight for women’s equality remains

Copyright (©) 2023 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved

Collage Sally Edelstein “Equal Opportunity-What a Game”

Don’t just accept the card you are dealt.

Play your own hand. It’s no mystery- women are powerful

Happy International Womens Day

Today I enter the last year of a decade I tip-toed into in 2015 with some bemusement and a not without a touch o’ disbelief.

Today I turn 69 and to believe the media, I have long passed my expiration date of desirability as a woman. But here’s the un-botoxed-wrinkle in that. Every woman is an “aging woman.” Yet the window for beguiling is a short one in our still youth culture, one lasting only a third of our life expectancy.

Women’s attractiveness seems at best highly perishable. Not unlike a container of milk there seems to be an expiration date, a best-used by date of about 30 years.

The insistence that there is an arbitrary expiration date for women and their perceived beauty has not lessened its strong grip. In fact, it has only accelerated as more fillers, serums, and procedures lay in wait to correct the “problems,” fix the “flaws,” and reverse signs of aging.

To turn back time.

All Out War

Having been drafted by the media at an early age, I have been waging a war against any visible sign of aging for over 45 years. Like most girls I learned at an early age that along with a “visible panty line” there were to be no visible signs of aging.  Or we ourselves would become invisible.

By 1985, as 30 loomed for me, it was all-out war.

So began decades of daily reconnaissance scrutinizing my face and body for any and all flaws. I was on high alert as a full-on assault on wrinkles, creases, furrows, and lines escalated. My defense budget skyrocketed as I boosted my already bloated arsenal of costly creams, lotions,  and potions.

It is only now that I am beginning to question if it’s truly a battle worth waging.

Occasionally I am told “I don’t look my age,” the holy grail of praise for a woman.

Though secretly pleased, I also know  I will never be 30 again, nor 40. Why would I look that way? Over six decades of sorrows and loss, despondency, and pain, along with great loves and laughter, wisdom, and adventure are etched as deeply in my face as in my heart and psyche.

I wouldn’t have it any other way. It is a life lived.

I am far from expired.

Time marches on, and I’m happy to walk to the beat of my own drum.

It is my birthday wish for all women, to feel at peace with themselves.

The legacy of suffragist Alice Paul brought to life on the stage in the Tony award-winning production of Suffs, was also the inspiration behind  ACCESS: An Ordinary Notion an exhibition I am honored to be part of at the Arc Gallery in San Francisco California.

Please join me today for an online artists talk  Thursday, June 20th 2024 7-8pm PT when  I will be discussing my collage  “Women’s Lib A Storms Approaching” about coming of age during the second wave of Feminism. Sometimes we need to look back in order to march fearlessly into the future Zoom link

ACCESS: An Ordinary Notion, a national juried exhibition, presents artworks that tell individual stories and advocate for social justice and human rights. Inspired by Alice Paul who introduced the Equal Rights Amendment in 1923, The Alice Paul Institute and the Susan B. Anthony Museum & House are partnering with NCWCA for this meaningful and timely exhibition.

Hand Cut Collage Sally Edelstein “Women’s Lib A Storms Approaching” 48′ x 84″

Today as women’s access to reproduction rights is rapidly diminishing, the lesson that every new generation has to fight for the same rights to protect these rights has never been clearer.

Progress is possible but not guaranteed.

It is no wonder that artists are currently exploring these issues because the fight is far from over.

The only right guaranteed to women by federal law is the right to vote.

The ERA has yet to be ratified.

Use your voice. In a world of Marjorie Taylor Greens be an Alice Paul.

VENUE & HOURS
Arc Gallery & Studios, Project Gallery
1246 Folsom Street,
San Francisco, CA 94103
http://www.arc-sf.com
ArcGallerySF@gmail.com
Arc Gallery is open 1-6PM on Wednesdays & Thursdays and 12-3PM on Saturdays. Viewing by appointment is also available.

On view June 15- July 13th, 2024