Abstract

What Feminism Looks Like

This article appraises the book "The Education of a Women: The Life of Gloria Steinem," by Carolyn G. Heilbrun. Gloria Steinem belongs to a generation of feminists that includes Kate Millett, Ellen Willis, Betty Friedan and Susan Brownmiller, yet she alone became its enduring emblematic figure. She is to feminism what Yasir Arafat is to the Palestinians--an incarnation, a figure of powerful suggestiveness, a projection in the popular imagination of all in cause that glimmers, and all that grieves. Carolyn Heilbrun's biography does not penetrate the mystery; it celebrates the incarnation. Heilbrun, like all right-minded feminists, yearns for the spirit of revolutionary feminism to be alive, fully fleshed and walking about once more.