phyllis schlafly, harbinger of doom (?)

phyllis schlafly is getting to me. not in the conversion-to-conservatism way, but in the i'm-beginning-to-understand-you-and-therefore-cannot-hate-you way. if that makes any sense. i mean, who else talks about self-conscious, waifish lauren bacall as an ideal? after all, as schlafly notes, "lauren bacall wasn't lonely. she had humphrey bogart." so it's a good thing that bacall subordinated her career to making sure that bogie had a relaxing island of domestic bliss to return to, if he so desired.

now, i might reply that after bogie died, lauren bacall suffered through relationships with the alcoholic jason robards and the straight-up jerk frank sinatra. meanwhile, her career stalled in a creative cul-de-sac, and bacall was forced to star in a couple broadway musicals, thereby immersing herself in the murky depths of *groan* song-and-dance theater. i don't care if she won a tony. forget waterboarding - forced musicals viewings might be a more fruitful form of torture.

phyllis parries: you foolish little girl. musicals shmoozicals. look at lauren bacall. just look at her.


lauren bacall is a hottie. you know you want to be lauren bacall.

egads, phyllis is right! i do want to be lauren bacall. so okay, phyllis. but if lauren bacall mimicry is not possible (plausible) for me - i mean, let's be realistic here - what are my options?

positive women #2: katherine hepburn.

you're killing me. are you really only going to give me astonishingly attractive actresses (and especially in hepburn's case, astonishingly brilliant ones), phyllis? huh?

oooooh - sciency.

unfortunately, there seems to be a thread running through her positive women greatest hits list - she unerringly chose staunch democrats. and rachel carson was a lesbian on top of her liberality. yet i can't decide whether this is the reason that the power of the positive woman hasn't aged well. after all, none of schlafly's books have aged well; this is the problem with writing for your audience. that audience ages, dies, and is replaced with a new generation that looks at the old generation and mutters "losers" under its breath before skulking off to the mall to hang out in front of the orange julius.

so are phyllis schlafly's details dated, or are her messages dated? is there a difference?

conservative women are extremely concerned with protection from the dangers of men, who will inevitably run off with their secretaries (or sexually loose feminists) if the law allows them to do so. thus, opposition to divorce law liberalization, while liberal women scream "how could you?!" in the background. but can conservative women translate their opposition into direct action? women in politics? elective office?

or was schlafly simply an inaccurate representation of the average conservative women, despite her aptitude for organizing them? are the two functions mutually exclusive? is it impossible to combine political savvy and ambition with a conservative worldview that privileges gender(ed) hierarchy?