An excerpt from Sunshine Girls.
“The fight for rights, it has been going on long before the sixties,” Gilles said. “It’s only since Pierre Trudeau made his famous speech that the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation that—”
I stared at him.
“Ella, don’t tell me you don’t know about the speech.”
Of course I knew about the speech—everyone did. I’d heard it when I was in high school and I knew the government had passed a law decriminalizing homosexuality. They’d also passed a law legalizing therapeutic abortions. In history class my teacher had said the changes were a big step for women. I’d doodled and half listened to her talk about Kathrine Switzer, the first woman to run a marathon with men, even though the head of the marathon committee tried to ban her and doctors warned if she ran her uterus might fall out. I didn’t think any of it affected me so I hadn’t paid much attention. After class we’d laughed about it and some of the girls called our teacher a “butch broad.”
At the elevator in our building, Gilles switched back to his “normal” self. “Read the papers, ma belle. Keep up-to-date with what is going on. I know you don’t think so but it affects you and your friends as women,” he said. “And today’s man likes a woman who is aware of what is happening in the world.”
He seemed to be referring to Doris. She was smart and well informed. But Mary on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, who worked in a man’s world and whose job depended on being on top of world affairs, even she dressed in a feminine manner, wanted to find true love and get married. Now I was more confused. From everything I’d read, men didn’t want smart women. They wanted women who made them look and feel good. Maybe that was Mary and Doris’s problem—they didn’t follow the rules.
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