A teacher I worked with in Chicago invited me to a gathering at her home. She said there’d be a lecture about women’s issues. This was the early 1970s, and I assumed that meant child rearing or Tupperware. She explained it would be a “rally-the-troops” sort of evening. Not sure what that meant. Regardless, I wasn’t interested.
“Uh, nah, but thank you.”
She countered with, “There will be food.”
When I arrived at her second-floor walk-up, I saw an overflow of women in the living room, most sitting on the floor. An attractive woman in her late 30s stood facing the group, engaged in small talk with a few of the women closest to her. I took my place on the floor, nearest to the dining room table, and waited for the lecture to begin.
The speaker had a commanding presence, especially when she talked about the economic plight, the choices women faced, and how we could change the patriarchal dynamic to benefit us all. “Oh yeah, good luck with that.” I hadn’t thought much about the inequities in pay and the lack of autonomy available to women in a while. I believed it was just the way things were, and it wasn't going to change in my lifetime.
Outside of teaching, I knew I would have a challenging time finding a professional job with a paycheck equal to a man’s. I definitely experienced that unwelcome fact when working for an airline. I toiled alongside older women with advanced degrees, training younger, less qualified men for management positions. The women themselves were never promoted or progressed within the company. As a teacher, though, gender didn’t seem to be an issue regarding equal pay for equal work, since tenure was the factor in how much money you made.
She told us about a new magazine focusing on women’s place in society, which she explained should be anywhere they wanted to be. The magazine’s title epitomized the re-emerging revolution by referring to all women as Ms.—not Miss or Mrs. She encouraged us to be challengers and apply that title when introducing ourselves. “Why should anyone know or even care what our marital status is?” she opined. I was conflicted. I liked being Mrs. Somebody.
Gloria Steinem pictured by Scott Applewhite/AP Images.
After her talk, I went home and reflected on what Gloria Steinem talked about that evening. She wasn’t just blowing smoke; she was insisting we burn down the barriers that allowed the status quo to deny women equality. I was definitely fired up; still, I had no idea how to go about doing that. Eventually, though, enough glass ceilings were breaking, so even I could hear the crashing status quo.
"Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. She will need her sisterhood.” -Gloria Steinem
A couple of years later, my husband and I moved to a small town in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, bordering Lake Superior, where he would complete his undergraduate degree.
As it happened, Gloria’s aura followed me near the outer limits of the United States.
A friend, Annie, asked if I would be interested in joining a CR (Consciousness Raising) group. She was a stay-at-home mother of two young boys and explained the group got together every other week to discuss an agreed-upon topic concerning women: “Anything talked about within the CR meeting must not be revealed to outsiders. What do you think?”
We were a group of six women with Annie as moderator. She was also the only person who subscribed to Ms. Magazine, Gloria Steinem’s brainchild, where she found articles that could serve as our topic at meetings. One woman was the wife of a professor, three of us were the wives of student husbands, and two were students themselves.
It was at the first meeting that I learned about speaking your truth. The professor’s wife appeared to be the most straight-laced woman there. She was older than the rest of us, wore serious, black-rimmed glasses, and had Master’s Degrees in both psychology and mathematics. I also knew her husband was one of my husband’s professors. She casually discussed her recent eye surgery. Her biggest concern, she said, was that she couldn’t have sex or masturbate for a month.
What the hell? I just remember staring at her like she was out of her mind. I don’t think I’d ever said “masturbate” out loud, let alone in front of other people. I was definitely out of my comfort zone, but that was nothing compared to what was to happen at our next meeting.
We decided to meet at Kim’s next time because her isolated rental included an outdoor building with a wood-burning sauna. I had never been in one, so all I knew at the time was that it was a place where you sat and sweated, then ran outside and threw yourself in the snow. I wasn’t overly enthusiastic, but this seemed like a group-bonding experience, and perhaps it would be fun. Regardless, it would be a story to tell in the future, about how fearless I once was. Now, I just had to find my bathing suit.
We all trudged through the snow into the sauna building, then helped stack the wood logs underneath the sauna’s grill. There were rocks on top of the grill that the burning wood underneath heated. Once the rocks were sufficiently hot, we’d throw ladles of water on them to create steam.
We returned to the house to wait until the rocks were heated. Kim thought we were in for approximately an hour-long wait. While we sat in the living room chatting for nearly an hour, I asked if they were already wearing their bathing suits.
“Just our birthday suits,” the girls said, laughing.
We’re going to be naked? I was horrified. I now realized that to be a part of the bonding experience, I would have to verbally—as well as physically—bare all. I silently sat there and wished for something to get me out of this.
Then it happened.
Someone noticed smoke rising from the outdoor sauna chimney, and we all ran out of the house to discover the sauna was on fire. I couldn’t believe my luck! Now, I’m not claiming to have a direct line to the powers that be, but I have to admit that at that moment, I became a believer in manifestation.
That day, the sauna experience was put on hold, but I eventually overcame my aversion to nudity in front of other women. This robust group wasn’t going to let a little fire deter them forever. My experience with the CR group, the philosophy of Ms. Magazine, and Gloria Steinem helped me to accept myself and create sisterhood in my life.
“The point was never what we chose, the point is that we had the power to make a choice.” -Gloria Steinem
Five years later, and quite by accident, my husband and I wandered onto a nudist beach in Mykonos, Greece. While he was apprehensive, he did take off his swimming trunks, but would not budge from his position of modesty—body down and firmly pressed in the sand.
It’s not that you need to be naked to accept yourself, but you do need to be brave. I learned in Michigan that I didn’t need to cower in embarrassment or insecurity. So, I showed him how it was done. I slowly took off my clothes and walked to the edge of the shore. There, among all the other undressed and unconcerned, I stood proud of myself. I dipped my toe in the frigid water, then ran back to wrap myself in a blanket—not out of modesty but chill. At that moment, I felt empowered as never before.
“Women may be the one group that grows more radical as they age. So, whatever you want to do, just do it…Making a damn fool of yourself is absolutely essential." -Gloria Steinem
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