It was hard to believe that Franklin and Eleanor would no longer be part of our lives. I can still see the exact look of the cracks in the sidewalk where I was riding my bike when my mother came out to tell me. By then, my mother and I were living in the small town in Massachusetts where we had moved after she and my father separated. It was hard to believe that Franklin and Eleanor would no longer be part of our lives

Both were kind and loving, just very different. Yet I never asked why my happy-go-lucky father had zero interest in politics. In later years, I wondered if she meant such small doses of hard realities to immunise me against the depression that, in her, could be triggered by as little as a sad movie or a hurt animal. I knew my mother didn’t want to frighten me, only to teach me something serious, and this made me feel important and grown-up. She also sat with me as we listened to a radio drama about a mother and child trying to survive in a place called a concentration camp.

I imagined people making soup from potato peelings, yet somehow I couldn’t imagine my family being attacked by police. When I saw a mysterious newspaper photo of police dragging dark-skinned people through city streets, my mother explained there were race riots in nearby Detroit – because the Depression had never ended for people called Negroes. It made perfect sense to me that my mother’s stories began in a personal place, and came to a political point. Or cutting up a blanket to make a warm coat for my older sister and protecting her from ridicule by saying if people loved a new kind of First Lady, they could love a new kind of coat. She described making soup from leftover potato skins, then listening to Roosevelt’s speeches on the radio to nourish her spirit. A few cases in point: Simone de Beauvoir’s quiet French, accidental glamour Angela Davis’s flirty jean jackets and miniskirts complementing her powerful and politically resonant Afro the nontraditional beauty of Yoko Ono, badass artist in her own right long before she began staging love-ins with John Lennon.M y mother’s stories of suffering during the Depression – and how Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt helped us out of it – taught me that politics are a part of daily life. Of course, long before Lagerfeld’s show, many real-life inspiring women have proved this maxim true. ( Binx Walton’s read “History Is Her Story,” and Gigi Hadid’s said “Boys Should Get Pregnant Too.”) Putting aside the anomalous delight of this Fashion Week event, it had an important message: Feminists can be radical, brilliant, and thoroughly chic. Tom Ford Eva aviator-style gold-tone sunglasses, $425 Gucci women’s round aviator sunglasses, $120 Glasses USA olive, $68 Valentino aviator sunglasses, $260 įor Chanel’s Spring 2015 collection, Karl Lagerfeld staged un petit coup and sent his models parading down a faux street and clutching signs emblazoned with women’s rights slogans.

Gloria steinem memoir