INSPIRING STORY OF THE WEEK – LEFT OVER FEMINISM: MY LUNCH WITH BETTY FRIEDAN by Cami Ann Hofstadter
INSPIRING STORY
LEFT-OVER FEMINISM: MY LUNCH WITH BETTY FRIEDAN
by Cami Ann Hofstadter, PH.D.
LEFT-OVER FEMINISM IS A HUMOROUS STORY, BUT REMEMBER,
HUMOR CAN SOMETIMES ALSO INSPIRE US.
Cami Ann Hofstadter’s humorous story, My Lunch With Betty Friedan is one of them. While this hardly seemed funny at the time, Cami looks back with laughter on this most unusual event – the day she had lunch with Betty Friedan.
Cami Ann, a Swedish-speaking Finn and law student at the University of Helsinki (Class of 1968), was hardly prepared for terms like feminism, dehumanization and lost identity when she joined a group of U.S. Embassy-women for a book club discussion. The topic of the day was Betty Friedan and her Feminine Mystique. It might as well have been about the sighting of an unidentified flying object in Helsinki because her name and the book meant nothing to Cami Ann.
Thirty years after her Helsinki introduction to Betty Friedan, Cami Ann, now well ensconced in Miami, USA, arranged an in-person interview with Ms. Friedan..
After they agreed on the metaphorical “cup of coffee” on South Beach, Ms. Friedan asked Cami – no, ordered her – to pick her up at her hotel at 10 a.m. Cami Ann pushed aside an incipient feeling of hypocrisy: Shouldn’t this celebrated feminist stand for social equality where, if you wanted a favor, you’d at least ask nicely? Often those underlying feelings foreshadow the events to follow. Hardly a productive or rewarding day for Cami Ann, but one she can now look back on with laughter. Yes, a humorous story has its own way of inspiring us.
The video trailer of this story can be found at frames 3:44 – 5:27.
This story is now published in
Tales2Inspire ~ The Crystal Collection
Stories that Tickle the Funny Bone
Leftover Feminism ` My Lunch with Betty Friedan