On the Wrong Side of the Battle

Left, Phyllis Schlafly; Right, Cate Blanchett

From a Feminist Viewpoint:

The mini-series "Mrs America," which aired recently on FX and Hulu, chose to focus on the woman who was hellbent on destroying the Women's Movement of the 1960s and 70s, and they cast the charismatic and talented Cate Blanchett to portray this fierce human being as an elegant, soft-spoken and smart. I don't remember her that way.

Not that I knew Schlafly personally, but I was an early recruit to the Movement, stimulated by the watershed book The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan. In a period when women's rights had been ignored for decades, Friedan eloquently described the dilemma young American wives faced. Conventional wisdom dictated they should be content--happy even--with life in the background while their husbands rose in the worlds of business, politics, power, and glory. I was a mother at the age of 23; the year was 1963. My baby was precious and precocious, but something told me tending her and my young husband's needs was not quite what I had expected when I walked down the aisle. I was experiencing what Friedan identified as "the problem that has no name," meaning I was not fulfilled by being a passive participant and cleaner-upper while all the attention and all the rewards went to somebody else.

Schlafly was one of those housewives who, married to a powerful big-city lawyer, found it offensive that anyone would suggest that she was not living the ideal life. A practicing Catholic, she had six children and proclaimed them the greatest achievement any woman could ask for. While espousing the glory of being a "homemaker," she dedicated her life to Republican politics, in hopes of being granted an appointment to office after years of hard work on building her base of support, women who bought her version of their reality even though her own was quite different. Her message was to housewives: You are the fortunate ones; you have that powerful man to do the difficult work while you are privileged to stay at home and raise the next generation. She was a throwback to the Victorians who not only believed a woman's place to be in the home but also that they should love it.

My first reaction when I heard about a TV series dedicated to this creature was an incredulous jaw-drop. Who would want to see a series about her? Trailers of the project revealed that the series was to be about the Women's Movement, however; and that featured in it would be actresses portraying Friedan, Bella Abzug, Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm--and all the women I had admired as a young and "trapped" housewife. I thought it might be fun to revisit those days of upheaval and hope, even though I knew it did not end well, and that the reason it didn't lay at the feet of Phyllis Schlafly.

Watching the episodes of "Mrs. America" I experienced an eerie sense of deja vu. I saw the confabs at Ms. Magazine, with Gloria Steinem (Rose Byrne) at the helm and the very vocal participation of Betty Friedan (Tracey Ullman), Bella Abzug (Margo Martindale), and others. My recollection of Steinem in those days was that she wasn't as wispy as Byrne plays her--she always had a strong presence although she was very feminine and sexy. Byrne seemed a bit delicate in the early episodes, but as the series went on she grew into the role, rather as Gloria herself seemed to do. I don't like to think of Betty Friedan as being that contentious and volatile, but Tracey Ullman had her looks and style down pretty well, so I could have been wrong.  I never saw Betty looking as disheveled and disgruntled as Tracy did, but I admit I didn't see her when the cameras were off. I used to see her on television, holding her own with confrontational male interviewers and working very hard to appear gentle and ladylike. I remember once she wore a feather boa which wafted in the televisual breeze as she spoke of women's rights. She did get emotional occasionally, but I am not sure that was her default position.  Once when an English actor deliberately pushed her buttons on a daytime talk show, she blurted out a phrase I had never heard before, "You, sir, are a male chauvinist pig!" 

To me the actors coming closest to the real life people I followed in the movement were Uzu Abuda as Shirley Chisholm and Margo Martindale as Bella Abzug. These two had voices and personal appearance down pat. It was a time when solid characters emerged--women with personalities, substance and at least the appearance of clout. They weren't beauties, these Women's Liberation Movement founders, but they had brains, humor, and courage.

I enjoyed looking back at those early days at the resolve and intellect of the women who had such an influence on my life, but it was poignant seeing them again as young and so very determined. It was painful, however, to see them trying to work within the system, trusting the powerful politicians who gave lip service to supporting them all the while apparently looking for ways to weasel out of any real action to help, backing the women for their own part, hoping primarily to manipulate them to get an even stronger hold on power for themselves. There were details of the battles they fought--some I didn't know about, some I did--portrayed in the series in a no-nonsense way.

"Mrs. America" was well produced, slick and beautifully written and acted, but, gripping as it was at times, it ended up minimalizing the women who threw themselves into the work of gaining an equal foothold in a man's world. 

Because its emphasis was always on Phyllis Schlafly. The series exposes her family life, her husband, her devoted sister-in-law and all those children who certainly provided at least as much stress as most children do. There was Phyllis' own personal ambition to get a law degree and get into politics, all the while claiming to be a housewife, and also claiming that was the most important job a woman could hope for. Her life was actually a model for a liberated woman--her husband supported her goals and backed her financially, women worked for her without pay, yet she made a name for herself through public appearances agitating against Women's Liberation by misstating its goals and its methods. She truly despised the movement and did what she could to create a counter movement celebrating women who did not dare to assert themselves. Cate Blanchett is one of the best actresses working today, and one of the most sympathetic ones. Her version of Schlafly is perhaps too much like Blanchett herself; where Schlafly was strident and sarcastic, Blanchett brings more class to the role than the real one ever had. Her polish makes her appear a bit two-faced where Schlafly's rage was never far beneath the surface.

It would be possible to watch the whole series and come away disliking Phyllis Schlafly, but I think it would also be possible to come away wondering what that whole movement was about. However, if you lived through it and believed it was going to change history, the real question is, what was Phyllis Schlafly all about? With all the power she amassed, what did she accomplish? And why is there a series about her at all?