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Gloria Steinem Has Finally Watched Girls

Gloria Steinem arrives at
Gloria Steinem. Photo: Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images

Last April, we asked Gloria Steinem what she thought of Girls. ”I don’t know what it is,” she told us. We were surprised, especially since her name was invoked at least once to criticize the show’s portrayal of twentysomething sex (“Gloria Steinem went to the barricades for this?” wrote Frank Bruni). But all that’s in the past, because when we saw her at a screening of Makers: Women Who Make America last night, she assured us that she’s since seen the show. And she approves! “I am so relieved to see real people saying real words and wearing real clothes,” she said. Or not wearing any clothes at all, we point out, but showing real bodies. “I think the more rebellious we become politically and economically in our lives, the more society tries to tell us that there’s something wrong with us,” Steinem said. “In order to sort of say, ‘Well, it’s your fault. If you looked different, if you weighed less … ’ It is part of the backlash.”