Real Feminists Dance in Their Underwear
How 1978’s ‘An Unmarried Woman’ brought feminism to the masses
You probably have a halfway decent mental image of feminism in ’70s pop culture. The Stepford Wives depicting the housewife-hell of suburbia, Gloria Steinem in her badass tinted aviators, and Mary Tyler Moore making it after all. The Feminine Mystique and the National Organization for Women were freshly etched onto the background of the American narrative, and Paul Newman could say he was “sexually liberated” in Slapshot with reasonable certainty that most people would get the joke.
Hardcore cinephiles talk a lot about the feminist arthouse films of this period, like My Brilliant Career and the ostentatiously titled Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. More casual viewers think of Rhoda and Maude and probably Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman (who still holds up, by the way). But somewhere in the middle, there are a few accessible and 100 percent kickass feminist forces from the 1970s screen that seem to be eclipsing from public memory.
Chief among them is Jill Clayburgh. Effervescent, funny, and crazy talented, Clayburgh hit her stride in the…
