'A Personality Indispensable to the Whole World': Readers Write Feminists (and others)

Iconicity and celebrity made certain feminists famous, communicating  their ideas to the public; one result was correspondence—both admiring and critical. Responses  to famous feminists in the media raise important questions about the  historical production of feminist icons and illuminates what American women took ‘home’ from reading, viewing, and listening feminists. This paper describes fans’ and critics’ mail to feminist authors or writers who took positions on feminism, either explicitly or implicitly. The correspondence of Betty Friedan, Phyllis McGinley, Dorothy Bryant (no celebrity, but thanks to Redbook’s condensation of her novel Ella Price’s Journal, the recipient of much reader mail), and Gloria Steinem helps us observe reactions to and perceptions of feminism over time and through a variety of lenses. Via an examination of the commonalities, differences , concerns, and celebrations woven throughout these correspondences, this paper exposes ordinary women’s contributions to conversations about feminism, gender politics, feminist and feminine identity, their perceptions of women’s  roles in flux, and their claim to a stake and a say in the outcome of feminist change. Particularly striking are the continuities in responses across time—an indication that the cultural change of the sixties and seventies was very much a process that rippled through society unevenly over the decades and also that women interested in the topic drew from a variety of discursive modes in addition to those made famous by feminism. Finally, this paper considers letters as sources on feminist celebrity, feminism, and gender role change from the 1960s to the 1980s.