Gloria Hallelujah

by Helen Sadler

October 6, 2018

Answer to Prompt #44 Star Quality

I’m not sure when I first became aware of Gloria Steinem.  I’m sure it was some photo of her with her long hair nearly covering her face, save the aviator glasses that emphasized her fervent eyes and serious demeanor. She was speaking out. She wasn’t playing around. She wasn’t like anyone I knew.  Frankly, she scared me.

I was the “go along” girl – never asking questions, keeping myself as good as any Catholic school girl could hope to be, living in a heavily male household.  The Women’s Liberation Movement happened around us, and I had no idea how to understand it. So, given what I knew, I largely rejected it. After all, it was showing up in really strange ways. My favorite example comes from the summer of 1970 when I was out on a date with a guy (a real chauvinist) who needed to stop for gas. This was back in the day when no one pumped his own gas. Well, out of the station comes a girl in hot pants and long blonde hair, ready to fill the tank. My date wasn’t having it: he got out and pumped it himself.  This, of course, was in the very early days when everyone thought the women were just on the rag, and it would all go away soon.

But Gloria wasn’t going away. She started Ms Magazine (as the term “Ms” was still being debated), rejected advertising, and created a publishing revolution as she wrote about the true injustices to women. Among them: having to pay higher car insurance if divorced, having to get a husband’s permission for a bank account or credit card in her name, being held suspect if walking into a restaurant alone, and worst of all, the lack of term for domestic abuse. It was just “life.”

One of the things I remember most is that Gloria often repeated the feminist adage, “The personal is political.”  I would read that, but was totally clueless as to what it really meant.  She said it so often, though, it stuck with me.

Gloria and her sister writers started opening my eyes to all sorts of injustices, but let me be clear: this wasn’t until after I had gotten engaged and married against my own better judgment. I simply did not know how to listen to myself. I had “gone along” because the guy I was dating said we should, not because I really wanted to be married to him. I cringe when I think about it, but there it is.

I was a young woman who had no idea how to listen to my own truth. Even if I somehow acknowledged the truth I felt, I would not trust it.

I started reading Ms in the early 80’s, and continued thinking about these issues.  On my bookshelf this morning I found Gloria’s book Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, inscribed by Jim as a Christmas gift to me in 1983.  This book contains many of her most famous essays: “I Was a Playboy Bunny” (costumes so tight a girl’s legs would go numb, and if she sneezed the zipper would break); “In Praise of Women’s Bodies” (the first time I heard anyone say we are okay in any form we take, instead of the shaming messages previously received); “Ruth’s Song (Because She Could Not Sing It)” a lovely tribute to her mentally ill mother; “Marilyn Monroe: The Woman Who Died Too Soon” (a somber tribute to a woman who longed to be treated seriously); and one of my all time favorites: “If Men Could Menstruate.”  Here’s the thing – I read these over thirty years ago and I still remember them by the title. That is how vital and strong and compelling Gloria’s perspective was to me.  

Ms eventually lost funding, and I moved on in my life. But in 1993, Gloria published another book that got a lot of attention: Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem.  It was written when Gloria realized she had been living her life on the outside, working for outer change, and never considering inner change. Her friends joked, “An examined life is not worth living.” But Gloria began to question, and went on a search for a book on self-esteem that was written for both men and women. Since there was none, she had to write her own. The cover showed a vibrant woman with shorter hair and sans glasses.  In the book she acknowledges she had been hiding behind them all those years.

I recall well that I was reading this book in July 1993 when Jim’s back blew out, causing a disability and a drastic change in our financial life. I believe many things in this wise and wonderful book helped keep me balanced through a time that was full of uncertainty and fear. I think she helped ground me in myself, and my own confidence, to make it through anything.

Even more importantly, she speaks quite a bit in the book on how we all need to make changes, males and females. I had a sticky note on this page, although I’m not 100% sure why, but her message here seems so timely in 2018:

In Revolution she also turns around the phrase I mentioned above to “The political is personal.”  From the Parkland kids to the #MeToo movement to recent hearings on Capitol Hill, this is obvious. We must not forget.

***

I am not one to live with regrets, but I do have one that niggles in the back of my heart.  In 1995, Gloria was making an appearance at a local Borders Bookstore event. My friend Diane asked me to go, but for some reason I declined.  I still regret that I didn’t make time for Gloria, to hear her wise words in person, and perhaps meet her. If I had the chance today, I would probably not be able to choke out more than a “thank you for helping me understand.”

At the end of Revolution From Within, Gloria writes:

            We are so many selves. It’s not just the long-ago child within us who needs tenderness and inclusion, but the person we were last year, wanted to be yesterday, tried to become in one job or in one winter, in one love affair or in one house where even now, we can close our eyes and smell the rooms.

            What brings together these ever-shifting selves of infinite reactions and returnings is this: There is always one true inner voice.

            Trust it.