Okay, maybe I'm just a tad too irritable today. You tell me. The Guardian does this article on Gloria Steinem [thanks to Kameron for the link], and here's how it opens:

Steinem at 70 looks very much like Steinem at 35: same long hair, same leather trousers, same oversize sunglasses, which she wears throughout the interview (though the tint is light enough for eye contact). She is still movie-star glamorous, a fact that has confused people who like their feminists in dungarees. The American chatshow host David Susskind once said that "what Gloria needs is a man: you feel like either kissing her or hitting her, I can't decide which."

Okay, that's the second paragraph, after a brief bio graf. But practically right out of the gate, what do we have to know? How does Gloria look these days? Who wrote this? A woman! But wait, there's more!

Without a drop of irony, the writer quotes Steinem on the issue of being judged by looks:

"What is frustrating," Steinem says now, "is being told that no matter how hard I've worked, it counts less than my appearance. Although if you're not considered conventionally attractive, that also becomes an issue: you know, you're a feminist because you couldn't get a man." Still, there is a part of her that doesn't like getting older. "You become less visible. You become a category rather than an individual - an Older Woman."

Imagine if Gloria looked awful at age 70 ... would her words carry less weight then? Well, dear readers, we all can feel a sense of relief that Gloria Steinem looks good and don't have to face that awful question!

/sarcasm

Am I missing the joke here? These two paragraphs are right there, one right after the other. Is Melissa Denes goofing on us?

Okay, anyway, Gloria speaks, so let's listen:

"I always wanted to put a sign up on the road to Yale saying, 'Beware: Deconstruction Ahead'. Academics are forced to write in language no one can understand so that they get tenure. They have to say 'discourse', not 'talk'. Knowledge that is not accessible is not helpful. It becomes aerialised" - she holds a hand over her head to represent this bird's eye view - "and I think it's important that women's experiences be given a narrative."

Another good reason why feminists should blog.

I really wish there were more meat to this article, but it really reads like a puff piece, done only because she was in town to stay with her step-children over the holidays. But the article does point up what I fear is one of the biggest challenges we face:

When Steinem set up the National Women's Political Caucuses in 1971 with Betty Friedan, and the groundbreaking feminist magazine Ms in 1972, she and other women campaigned for abortion rights, equal pay and equal representation, and an end to domestic violence. They were also rebelling against the pressures on them to have children, to take a husband's name, to "be feminine". Now, many women embrace those same things - high heels, marriage, children - instead of a career. Which is fine, Steinem says: the big difference is that in the 21st century these are genuine choices; in the 60s and 70s they were social imperatives. She sees no sign that the women's movement is in any way diminished, and the notion of "post-feminism" enrages her. "It's like saying, 'We're living in a post-democracy.' It's ridiculous. We've hardly begun. The good news is that American feminism used to be three crazy women in New York: now a third of the country self-identify as feminists, and 60% if you go by the dictionary definition."

And there's the rub. 60% of Americans are feminists, but only 33% would actually use the term? Owww!

We need to reclaim that label. How it became an epithet, I don't know. But here we are, moving backward in political time, in a country with an Administration and radical uptight supporters hell-bent (with fire and brimstone, no less) on taking away rights and creating entire classes of unequal citizens, and with a Democratic Party that quite possibly will steer right to chase all those people who were bamboozled by Rove ... and we get women proudly saying garbage like, "Feminists go too far."

Well, the Guardian readers got their fluff and Gloria got some ink for feminism. Meanwhile, it seems like equal rights for women get directed, legislated and judged down another notch every day.

I need a cocktail.

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media girl also blogs at other places.