Reflections and Projections on American Feminism and Culture: An Interview with Gloria Steinem
by Susan Trollinger
In the spring of 1995, I received my PhD in rhetoric and communication from the University of Pittsburgh. That summer, I moved to Iowa City to teach a couple of courses while I looked for a more permanent teaching position. There, I met Melissa Friedling, who was finishing up her dissertation in rhetoric. She invited me to join her in an interview with Gloria Steinem that would appear in the Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies. Steinem was going to be in Iowa City to give a series of talks at the University and made herself available for a couple of young women to talk with her. When Melissa asked me to join her for this interview, I was thrilled! I had written my dissertation on what was being called the Third Wave of Feminism, and one of my chapters focused on Steinem’s Revolution from Within. What was so striking about Steinem in that interview was not only her thoughtful articulation of the challenges related to achieving gender equality and how to respond to them, but also her grace, generosity, and peace. Unlike so many angry voices we hear today, Steinem was calm, reflective, and thoughtful. She struck me as something like “feminism grown up.” She knew the history. She had lived the struggle. And she was full of kindness toward everyone—even her so-called enemies. I learned a lot from her in that interview—about a movement that made my life choices possible and about how to work hard for change and love the other at the same time.
Q. In your Playboy bunny expose as re-released in Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions you reveal that the well-paid, glamorous, on-her-way-to-stardom bunny was really an underpaid and sexually harassed cocktail waitress, squeezed into a corset. From this article we learned that the Hugh Hefners of this world lie, and that the women who work for them, do so out of necessity. Thus, you helped us to understand that duped bunnies are really exploited waitresses. In Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem you expanded our understanding further by showing us how education, religion, the fashion industry, etc., seduce women into wanting to think linearly, or worship god-the-father, or sport a miniskirt. Thus, you inspired us to call ‘sister’ not only the bunny who is really a waitress, but also the waitress who really wants to be a bunny. This expanded analysis seems terribly important because it helps us to have grace for the masculinist mistakes we all make, and to have empathy for even the most ‘duped’ among us. Yet, if we say that our desires are culturally produced, in order to have empathy for one another, on what grounds can we fight for, or even know, what it is women want?
A. I think we begin to suspect that our choices may be political when we see that we are following an existing pattern in society. That doesn’t per se mean that it’s not a personal choice, but the alarms go off when we see that we are impelled toward or there seems to be no choice other than what is the predominant one, two, or three. When we’re faced with more subtle choices, as women are now more likely to be (compared to, say, 25 years ago), I think we have more opportunity to examine what we really as individuals want to do or should do or “what’s right for the individual.” The interplay between culture and individuality and between community and person is always going to be very complicated and very subtle, because we are both unique human beings and communal creatures.
So the question becomes, “What are we impelled toward?” Now, this is a hard argument to make in a materialist-rationalist society that in education, even at its best, tends to treat kids like blank slates on which you can write anything and, at its worst, treats them like little animals whose spirits have to be broken. But I think it’s true. You know, I think that anyone who’s ever met a baby knows that there’s a person in that baby already. There’s the seed of what can become. If we flout too much what is already in the baby, that baby will grow up thinking there’s something wrong with a portion of herself or himself and that feeling that there’s something wrong seems to be the source of most future problems. It’s the source of addictions, the source of violence, the source of feeling you must be in a hierarchy in order to be better than others or worse than others or dependent.
So while we both respect each other’s choices and the pressure under which we make those choices, I think there are unmistakable signs in us of what is more suited to us as a unique person. The signs are joy. The signs are interest. The signs are forgetting everything that’s around you because you’re doing, whether it’s making a bookcase, or solving a computer problem, or talking to another person, whatever it may be. It’s a kind of forgetfulness of all that’s around you and a feeling of satisfaction that means that you might continue to do it whether you get paid or not. I don’t mean to be romantic about it, because that isn’t a feeling that happens all the time, but it happens in moments of unity with the task at hand. And if we allow ourselves to be guided by those moments, I think we will continue to make progress and support each other in our search for those moments.
