'When Everything Changed' ... for the better
Columnist’s book offers an overview of the progress made by women and girls over the past half-century
By Ellen Snortland 02/04/2010
Gail Collins of The New York Times has written a book that I consider a must-read: “When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women From 1960 to the Present.” How good is this book? As an author, the highest compliment I can pay to another author is, “Damn! I wish I’d written this!” Yes, it’s that good. Run, do not walk, to Vroman’s or another local bookstore and get your copy. And please sit the men and boys in your life down to read it, as this book involves them as well. As women go, so go their men. Doubt it? Read “When Everything Changed” and I think you’ll agree.
Currently one of just two female op-ed columnists at the NYT, in 2001 Collins was the first woman to become the editor of the highly prestigious and powerful Times editorial pages. Women won the vote in 1920; the NYT was founded in 1851. Apparently, it took only 150 years for “The Gray Lady,” as the paper’s called, to accept flesh-and-blood ladies as competent enough for a top management post in its opinion ranks. I have to laugh every time more conservative folks rag on the Times for being so liberal. Liberal to whom? Not women or gender issues, that’s for sure. But I digress.
Collins has woven multiple yarns into a tapestry of the last 50 years that gives an overview of the mind-boggling progress women and girls have made during that time. She uses the accounts of regular women you’ve never heard of, as well as famous people most of us know: Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan and Hillary Clinton. I was moved by how inclusive she is of women of color, sisters who have shared the “double whammy” of race and sex prejudice.
At the risk of sounding like an inveterate feminist “geezer” — as in “You kids today don’t know how good you have it.…why, I had to walk eight miles in the snow to be discriminated against!” — I have lived through most of the gender-based acts of discrimination Collins recounts here. But many women born after 1960 will be astounded at the myriad indignities and second-class citizen paths their mothers, aunts and grandmothers were shoved down — often with our mindless and happy compliance. On wages, credit, schooling, manners, fashion and women-only jobs of nurse, teacher or housewife, we have been on a real trip through history.
I have also witnessed personal history. My own mother was not able to obtain a credit card on her own. She was the first woman in our family to work outside the home — as a teacher. I remember that one of my mother’s first acts of “civil disobedience” was to send me to school with slacks on, fully prepared that I might be sent home or “expelled.” She could not fathom a school administration’s insistence on 7-year-old girls getting frostbite because of the inflexible “dresses or skirts only” dress code for girls. If you think this is a trite issue, YOU try wearing a skirt or dress when the wind-chill factor on the plains of South Dakota is 50 below zero. But no! It was too “manly” for us to wear pants — the symbol of “who’s the boss” — in most families in the ’50s and ’60s. I did get sent home… and my Mom sent me right back with my pants on. We finally won when the school district decided girls could wear pants when it was below 32 degrees Fahrenheit. One small step for girls, a giant leap for women’s trousers.
I bring the pants controversy up because Collins opens her book with a story featuring a 28-year-old executive secretary who was thrown out of court for wearing slacks. Laughable now, the anecdote is emblematic of the rigidity of gender rules baby boomer females and their older counterparts put up with on a daily basis. Do you think dress codes are so … yesterday? Think again! It wasn’t until 1995 that the state of California, America’s bastion of liberal values, gave women the right to wear slacks to work!
Collins’ genius lies in the agile way that she pulls so many disparate people and issues together into one seamless narrative. The only complaint I have is how Collins herself was missing; her story as a female journalist is an important one. Working for the most important newspaper in our country, I would love to read about the “ink ceiling” she and her colleagues have put up with over the years. The media — including print and broadcast — has been instrumental in defining “all the news that’s fit to print,” which often omits the spectrum of women’s voices. Sadly, Maureen Dowd, (the other woman columnist at the NYT) and Collins are basically tokens. We will not achieve true equality until the spectrum of women’s points-of-view is amply represented. We are still not there.
Nonetheless, the journey we’ve traveled, despite the miles that remain, is truly breathtaking and amazing. Wow! Did I mention that I wished I’d written “When Everything Changed”?
Ellen teaches a writing workshop in Altadena. Contact her at snortland.com.
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