Where the boys are
“I went to Smith College in the 1950’s and discovered that most of the very bright young women were there to find husbands.”
…but, where? Smith is a women’s college, as is the school down the street, Mt. Holyoke. Were there bus trips to Boston? Or, organized activities in Amherst… 8 miles away? Ms. Steinem said her classmates were smart…this is not a smart plan.
Bikes were so popular at Smith that they put them on the cover of the yearbook when Ms. Steinem was a junior. Is this how they found these husbands? Menacing bike gangs prowling the backroads for menfolk…
“By senior year we were all raising our hands like this…
…so, we can see who is wearing an engagement ring.”
When last we left our hero, Gloria, she was in India…not getting married.
She succeeded in her mission to learn about peaceful protest. She put it into action immediately and peacefully protested the societal push to marry. Gloria moved out of the girls’ college to avoid so much talk about men and marriage. She learned how to listen to other women instead.
Unfortunately, the Smithie to follow Gloria either came with a different mission…or that really might be a magic matrimonial mango…
Ms. Joyce, the Ford Foundation head that wrote to Smith College, worried that “good looking American girls wandering about India” might be a bad look for a scholarship that has the American ambassador’s name attached to it, so worried that scholarship committee that they considered ending the grant altogether. Here she advocates for the next in line:
The committee gave $2,000 to only one student, as opposed to the $1,000 each that Gloria Steinem and her travelmate, Kayla, got. And, as per Ms. Steinem’s suggestions, gave the fellowship more structure with written project proposals, contacts in India, a clear 2-year timeline and writings to deliver to Smith.
… I should not think the following is funny…given the gravity of the movement that Gloria: A Play is showing me. …but this proof of principle made me chuckle…
Can you read that? The next Smithie they sent to India met a man, got engaged, broke it off and returned home in 2 months.
And there ends the fellowship that gave us Gloria. Would 2nd wave feminism have been the tidal wave that is was without Gloria Steinem’s India years? She doesn’t think so. Even though she sat in circles listening to only gender-based horror after horror in India—she still took another 20 years to realize that sexism existed. She was writing in magazines and newspapers, not speaking at protests and meetings, even after all of that in-person training in non-violent resistance that she got in India. Her impact on our country only landed when she applied what she learned at 22 in Satyagraha as 35 year old.
You know, Smith didn’t even pick Gloria Steinem to go to India. Her friend, Kayla was supposed to split the scholarship with another student, Flora Schnall.
This was supposed to be $2,000 scholarship. Kayla’s dad arrived with his dad on a boat from Russia when he was 7 years old. He and his dad and his brother went from being absolutely penniless to owning a chain of pharmacies in Rochester, NY by the time Flora was at Smith. It says, rags to riches on her dad’s obituary in the Times, and so, Flora didn’t need the whole $2,000 to get to India.
I wish I could tell you more about Kayla Achter. In some interview with Gloria Steinem I have rediscovered (yet!) she mentioned a grave of friend who was dying of cancer while Gloria was doing so much traveling to speak. I think she referenced wanting to be around her friend as why she started to be in her apartment more. That must have been Kayla. She died at 42 in Manhattan and was buried in Rochester.
Quick thank you to Ms. Achter for being Gloria’s friend fellow willing world wanderer in search of satyagraha.
“Dean, I’m here looking for a husband.” Or, “Dean, what better place to pick up men!”
That line is not in Gloria: A Life; it was in RBG because that is what Flora Schnall said when the Dean of Harvard Law School asked her and the other 8 female students (of 550) why they should be the first to take the place of a male student. True story. These first females were also made to sing in front of their classes. Flora Schnall was embarassed, nervous-always…and yucking it up.
Flora Schnall for president.
She wanted to be a political journalist, like Gloria Steinem. But, when she got into Harvard law she saw that there was precedent for female lawyers where there were no women getting the good reporting assignments. Why didn’t she share that bit of intell with Gloria! In Gloria: A Play, after she tells us about the Smithie engagement ring hand-raise, she says,
I assume I'll be wearing one someday, too.
I'm just, ya know, putting it off.
When I moved to New York after college, I had absolutely no idea what feminism was or that there was any need for a movement.
All I knew was I wanted to be a writer, a political journalist.
I soon found out that male journalists got all the political assignments, and most women got assigned family, food, and fashion stories.
My high-point was writing a long, in-depth article for the New York Times... on textured stockings.
Flora made a huge amount of money in real estate law. So much that, last year, at 91 she donated most of her millions to the U of Miami cancer center. She named it after her mom, Jean and herself.
She never did get married. Please take a moment to come up with the wildest not-getting-married version of Flora Schnall’s life you can think of… okay, how does this compare:
Flora met her partner of 35 years or so in the 1960s, when he was known by the name F.M. Esfandiary. He was an Iranian novelist, developing a new philosophy that came to be known as transhumanism. “He felt that mankind is facing the dilemma of facing death, and he wanted to put that behind us,” Flora explained. He repeatedly changed his name—he believed people should not be defined by their name or nationality—eventually landing on “FM-2030.” FM also rejected the notion of marriage. They were romantic and intellectual partners: Flora edited one of his books and worked on a movie about his life and vision. The film, 2030, described Flora and FM as “iconoclasts in very different ways.” “Despite the lack of an exclusive or even official commitment to one another—FM even preferring the word friend to relationship—Flora and FM’s connection proved to be lifelong, lasting until FM’s suspension in 2000,” the film explains, using FM’s preferred term for death. His body was placed in a cryonics facility.
Your version is only wilder if he and she get unfrozen and … don’t get married.
Okay. Now don’t cheat and scroll down! No scrolling…imagine what you think this guy looks like…
Ding ding ding. You got it. But maybe you remembered him from the 1948 Olympics where he competed for Iran in basketball…and wrestling…and fencing. All on his Wikipedia page.
well…can’t top that. Flora Schnall going out with a bang!
That’s all important marriage background for Gloria: A Life. I want to tie all that into the larger questions of motivation and plot in this play…but Flora upstaged me.