Betty Friedan's 1963 nit, The Feminine Mystique, was part an expression of a Smith girl's ambition, yearning for the life her education had accustomed her to expect.

* Betty Friedan's 1963 nit, The Feminine Mystique, was part an expression of a Smith girl's ambition, yearning for the life her education had accustomed her to expect. Another part was leftie rabble-rousing; Friedan had attended the Progressive party convention in 1948. The most potent part was that free-floating Sixties dread of inauthenticity, as suburbanites channeled beats and bohos. Friedan cofounded NOW in 1966, her book sold more than 3 million copies, millions of women went to work, millions of fetuses were killed, old jokes were driven underground, older pronouns were threatened, one woman ran for vice president while two others became secretary of state. In 1981 Friedan published The Second Stage, urging feminists not to become a lesbian lobbying group, but by then the horse had long left the barn: The feminist hard core were cranky queers, who had lost control of the forces they had unleashed. In her later years Friedan accused her former husband of beating her, charges he strenuously denied. She died on her 85th birthday. R.I.P.