I just finished watching the new HULU show, Mrs. America, which chronicles the women’s liberation movement, the ERA, and the groups of (radical) conservatives against the movement. I feel like, finally, I have found my people – the people like me. The ones opposite Mrs. America, of course.

As a child, I grew up in the 70s, but I don’t remember much about the 70s. I was just too small and, frankly, I was more worried about what toy I would get for Christmas or what we were having for dinner than I was about the women’s liberation movement. I had no idea that, at that time, there were people who adults then who would be like the adult version of me. I had no idea that something as simple as a short series on a station that I’d never dreamed of back then, streaming through the internet, would even exist, nor change the way that I feel about myself. The way that I finally, at 49, feel like I am not completely the odd duck. My whole life, I’ve always felt like the odd girl out, the one who was different but also outspoken about it. I pretended not to care. I pretended it was okay to be me, the black sheep, the everything else. I did care, though. I still do. This show in essence may have saved me from myself.

I have curly hair, and it’s just about unmanageable. I can get a haircut, and then five days later I feel ugly again. Why couldn’t I just have had straight hair? I know, I should feel “so lucky” not to have to do my hair every day. I know, I “look just like that curly hair girl off of the Peanuts” and I “should be thankful that I have such pretty hair.” I’m not. I would turn this mop in for straight hair in a hot minute. The frizz, the poof, the laughing-at-combs, the tangled mess that looks like Medusa on a bad day? That’s my hair. My husband loves it, which is great, but I still don’t. It’s been 49 years, I don’t think I’m going to change my mind.

Back when I was a kid, figure skating was a *big* deal. Everyone watched in awe as Dorothy Hamill skated her way into Olympic history. She was on the TV, she was on magazine covers, and she was on the Wheaties box. Although Wheaties taste like baked dirt, I didn’t care. I wanted to be like Dorothy. We lived about an hour from the nearest skating rink, so taking lessons wasn’t an option. I also wasn’t that coordinated. So, I decided to settle for her haircut. I mean, I did have a nice smile like Dorothy, right? so the haircut would get me one step closer.

But no. That was not to be. Why? Because of this stupid freaking curly hair. Back then, they didn’t have straighteners, and even if they did, there is no way that my mom would have taken that much time to do my hair every day, which is what it requires. Now, occasionally, I’ll get it straightened at the salon, and it looks great. But, step out in the humidity or so much as break a sweat and it’s Rosanna Rosanna Danna like on SNL in the 70s and 80s. I look ridiculous.

So, while several of my friends got the “Dorothy Hamill” at the local Hair Hut, I was stuck, once again, with the “Little Orphan Annie,” which has such a fruitful and optimistic ring to it. Annie wasn’t on the TV. She wasn’t on the Wheaties box. She was just an orphan, which is about how my hair made me feel. A misfit, if you will.

If the curly hair wasn’t enough, when I was 2, I fell onto a floor furnace. For those who don’t know what that is, it’s a metal grate in the floor, where the furnace provides heat for the house. So, when the furnace is on, guess what? The grate is hot. My 2-year old bad ass self decided to drag my favorite folding chair from my back bedroom to the other room, crossing over the hallway that included the dreaded floor furnace. My mom was in the other room, and she didn’t know what precocious me was doing until she heard me scream. My beautiful, clean, baby-soft forehead was forever changed in an instant, adding an “H” to it on the upper right side. I look back at baby photos now, and I see my forehead and dream of better times. From that point forward, I had to have bangs. So, if the damn curly hair wasn’t enough, I have to have curly bangs (which I do straighten from time to time) along with the rest of the medusa mop, as I like to call it. Fab-u-lous. A great way, combined, to give a 5-year old all the confidence she needs to start kindergarten for sure.

And then it happened – just before kindergarten as a matter-of-fact. The trifecta of adding a hernia surgery to the mix. I remember a family member saying that she had never heard of a little girl needing hernia surgery, as if I was a boy trapped in a girl’s body or something. Thanks for making me feel like such a freak! I had the surgery but never talked about it. It’s in a sensitive spot for a 5-year old to show everyone, and I still remember the face of the nurse who helped me put my mask on for surgery. She had curly hair.

Since I was obviously a freak to have this condition, I didn’t tell anyone about it for fear of being sent to the colony of misfit toys. I see you, Rudolph, and I raise you a freaky surgery as a 5-year old. Years later, I would read of a female childhood star that I adored who had had the same surgery when she was about my age. Automatically, I didn’t feel like a freak as much. I was a normal girl again! (Although I still don’t talk about it much, before now.) Then I got glasses, something none of my friends had, either. I was back to square one.

Moving ahead, I just always felt different. I wasn’t the conservative Catholic my family wanted me to be. I wasn’t the quiet Southern Belle my other family wanted me to be. I was loud, boisterous, not afraid to do things that scared me, way more liberal than anyone I knew personally, and I believed in common liberties for all. I never wanted to get married and professed this fact adamantly. (I am glad I found my husband, as he changed my mind in that regard.) I wanted to travel the world – a desire so strong that to this day it will bring me to tears just thinking about seeing a place I’ve always wanted to go – like Red Square on the even of my 50th birthday, for instance. A plan that is in place, which a COVID-free universe might actually allow me to experience.

I wanted to fit in, but I just didn’t. I always – and I mean always – felt like the black sheep, as if my “real parents” were going to come get me just any time. If I didn’t look so much like my mom’s mom, I would swear I was switched at birth. That is how very different I’ve always felt, and I have vacillated between wanting that to change and to just be “normal” and wanting to scream it from the rooftops and tell whoever doesn’t like it to bite me. My grandmother and six or seven penpals in the 80s gave me the travel bug, which is more like a virus because there is nothing that makes it go away except travel, and even then it only goes away for a short period of time. After 29 countries in 15 years, it’s still not quenched. There is a lot to see, and COVID needs to vamoose so that I can keep on going. Eurorail is calling.

Which all brings me back to the show. The main character portrays Phyllis Schalfly, who in the 70s was an ultra-conservative suburban housewife who went up big against the liberals and their silly women’s movement. She and her cronies, all born before WWII, were the privilege set – all married to husbands who fully supported them financially so long as their food was on the table at 6 o’clock sharp, they were always dressed as if going to church or a dinner party, they put out whenever they were asked regardless of how many kids they popped out, and they kept their minds from doing anything really productive that didn’t meet these criteria. Your typical 50s housewife in her postwar home, dragged on past the liberation of the 60s, straight on into the 70s kicking and screaming against those women who wanted more.

The other main characters played folks such as Bella Abzug, Gloria Steinem, and their group of women’s liberation movers and shakers, the same folks for whom the 60s must have been a fantastic time to be alive. Like Billy Joel said, I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints any old day. These ladies pushed the ERA through 35 states before it stalled in the late 70s, not achieving the magic number of 38 states to ratify within the time limit provided by Congress and the Senate, so that it would become law. They had long hair, wore cool clothing, smoked, drank, had sex with whomever they wished, took birth control, had abortions, and lived their lives free of the patriarchy telling them how to live and what time dinner needed to be on the table. These people were my people. I just didn’t know they existed until this show.

In one episode, Gloria Steinem goes to a young woman on the street and the woman shows her the first issue of Ms. Magazine, which is photographed in this blog post. In that preview issue, many of the modern-day hard-fact issues were discussed, including abortion, women’s rights to work outside the home, equal pay, and other issues. I saw the magazine on the air, and I decided that if I could find a copy, I’d buy it.

My birthday was that week. I decided that my gift to myself – because why the hell not – would be the magazine. I searched Amazon, no luck. I searched eBay and got a hit – AND the magazine auction was ending the same week as my birthday! GOLD! I bid high enough to outbid anyone else. That’s how much I wanted it. That’s how much I knew that the articles would make me feel like this show did – that I belonged. That I wasn’t alone. That there are thousands of other people out there like me – outspoken, believe in civil liberties, don’t sit on a high horse of conservatism, and most certainly don’t bow down to a man in my own home. (He knows, and he still loves me anyway!) I won the bid, and the magazine now proudly sits in my home office waiting to be perused again and again.

Fitting in can be a struggle for people in general. Whether it’s the color of their skin, their gender, their sexual preference, or the legal choices they make over their own bodies, they want more than “It’s okay so long as it doesn’t affect me” or “I don’t have an opinion on that”. Just like when I read Griswold v. Connecticut, Lawrence v. Texas and Loving v. Virginia for the first time with tears in my eyes, I sat transfixed as the credits on the last episode of Mrs. America rolled. I saw where little miss sunshine conservative Phyllis didn’t get the presidential appointment she wanted – because Reagan didn’t want to use someone who would alienate the rest of the population who were for women’s liberation. He, instead, appointed a pro-ERA woman to the position. (Go Ronnie!) I saw what happened to some of the other characters. I saw that in 2020, Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the ERA.

I cried. I cried buckets. My eyes were red and I had tears streaming down my cheeks. Why? Because I found out I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t a freak. I wasn’t weird for having curly hair or wearing glasses. I was way more normal than I thought, and I was way more progressive than I can ever discuss at a family party. Most of all, I felt like the way that I had always felt about myself as a child – a radical, outspoken, liberated person trapped in the body of someone that people would stare at from time to time, just wondering what I was going to say next. This show changed the way I feel about myself, and for that, I am very thankful.

Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisholm, and many others – you are officially added to my heroes list. I only wish I had know you sooner so I could have loved you all longer. You are my people.