Gloria Steinem (photographer unknown)
I don't know what my mom thought of Gloria Steinem. Mom was pretty tight-lipped about most things, whether it was about her childhood, or politics or current events, although while watching something on television in the mid-1970s, I think, that had to do with the Kennedys, she blurted out, "Bobby would have been a better president."
Mom grew up in the Bronx, the daughter of two alcoholics. She moved to Staten Island with her mother and brother, dropped out of school, and—lying about her age—worked to cover the household expenses. My dad, whose ship during World War II was—for the most part—based in Staten Island's Tompkinsville area, met her and married her three days after she turned 18. After the war, they had a son, and about five years after that moved to Toledo, Ohio, where Dad had grown up. (Incidentally, we lived about a half-mile from where Steinem had lived on the East Side of Toledo.)
Mom gave birth to three more sons—in 1952, 1955 (me), and 1959—with a stillbirth in 1958... something else she never spoke about. While I was in the middle of elementary school, she began attending night classes at a high school on the other side of town to get her GED, while at the same time holding down a part-time receptionist job, doing virtually all of the household chores, gardening, bowling every Monday night (and serving as the league's Secretary-Treasurer), and being active at our church. She also delivered mail for a while. I'm sure I've left out dozens of things.
She never talked about why she'd gone back to school, and I never asked her. With all the things she was doing, I guess I just assumed it was just one more way to spend her time. Unless she was darning socks, crocheting footies or afghans, doing the crossword puzzle, or computing her bowling league's averages, it seemed she rarely sat still.
Then she went to college. Still, I had no idea as to why she was doing this, it just... happened, and before I knew what was going on, she was a student teacher in my 7th grade math class.
Many years later, after she developed dementia, and just a couple of years before she died, I discovered she'd kept an autograph book from her 8th grade Bronx elementary school. At the beginning of the book is a list of "My Favorites (author, book, etc.)," and the next to last item is PROFESSION, to which she wrote in "School teacher." I was in my fifties before I'd learned she'd ever had such an ambition.
All this to say that if I ever had talked to her about her life growing up, her goals, really ANYthing of substance, I might have found out what she thought of Gloria Steinem. Mom was quite judgmentally glib, so I think that if she had a negative opinion about Steinem, she would have let it rip during one of Gloria's many television appearances.
I like to think that she would have been saying, "You go, girl!" in her head, but I also think she might have thought, "Pffft... who needs women's liberation?!?"
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