Gloria Steinem

Yesterday

Joan Collins

Dolly Parton’s marriage advice for me

From our UK edition

I will miss Dolly Parton; one who truly deserves the title of ‘icon’. I met her a few times but the most memorable was in 1984 when I attended the premiere of her movie Rhinestone. I went by myself, which is unusual for me, but I had just told my then husband that I wanted a divorce after years of misery and verbal abuse. During the red-carpet ‘trek’ and photo shoot, Dolly noticed I looked a bit tear-stained and asked me if I was OK. When I told her that, despite being so unhappily married, it was still hard to adjust to life by myself, Dolly patted me on the shoulder and quipped: ‘Don’t worry, honey, husbands are like buses. If you wait long enough another one will come along.’ Dear Dolly, so wise. And in my case, so right.

Friday

Melanie McDonagh

Gloria Steinem made feminism slick – and dishonest

So, it’s farewell to Gloria Steinem at the astonishing age of 92: the feminist whose most striking attribute to those outside the movement was that she was terrifically easy on the eye. It didn’t endear her to the ugly sisters of the movement who complained about her unholy glamour, but it was an advantage she put to good use when she became a Playboy Bunny Girl in 1963 so as to write for Stage magazine about the sheer disagreeableness of life in that bit of Hugh Heffner’s porn kingdom.

Gloria Steinem

Thursday

Nicholas Lezard

The pursuit of love letters: My Search for Warren Harding, by Robert Plunket, reviewed

From our UK edition

There is something wonderful about a novel being rescued from obscurity. Robert Plunket’s My Search for Warren Harding was first published in 1983, given a few decent reviews and then disappeared. Occasionally admirers – including rather influential ones like Amy Sedaris and Larry David – would lend a weathered copy to friends, insisting they read it. And so here we are. Elliot Weiner, a third-rate academic (in fact the word ‘academic’ barely seems to apply), hears that Rebekah Kinney, a former mistress of Warren G. Harding, president of the United States from 1921 to 1923, is living in a decrepit mansion in Los Angeles.

Tuesday

Jonathan Leaf

Gloria Steinem’s revisionist history

Gloria Steinem is back in the news. Steinem, now 86, attacked the recent FX network miniseries Mrs America in a series of high-profile interviews. Yet Steinem’s criticisms reveal much more about her and how her extreme radicalism has harmed the women’s movement than they do about the miniseries. What are her complaints about the show? Steinem objects to its focus on anti-ERA campaigner Phyllis Schlafly, played by Cate Blanchett, and she accuses Mrs America of distorting the history behind the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). According to Steinem, Schlafly ‘never changed one vote’ and the miniseries is ‘hopelessly wrong’ in suggesting that she did.

gloria steinem