Stories of Living Women's Lib: "We will wear pants!" by Wendy Williams
While attending Philadelphia’s NE High School during that freezing winter of 1968, I found it hard to understand why girls could not wear pants. So, at fifteen I joined a…
1968 – Before girls could wear pants
Women Will Wear The Pants
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While attending Philadelphia’s NE High School during that freezing winter of 1968, I found it hard to understand why girls could not wear pants. So, at fifteen I joined a student leadership group that grew into a citywide student activism committee. We made a presentation to the Philadelphia School Board regarding the dress code, explaining why we had a right to wear pants. At fifteen we were young women changing an American norm. It was exhilarating. Winning this first battle was truly empowering and the beginning of my personal development as a liberated woman. *
1969 High School Senior Girls in Pants
I grew up in a Philadelphia Jewish neighborhood of “row houses” build for the returning GIs of World War II. My father was one of those GI’s. As a young woman I was expected to marry a good Jewish boy, have two kids and live happily ever after. “In the Care of a Man.” As a girl, it was not important for me to have a bat mitzvah or go away to college. The excuse expressed, “we did not have the funds.” However, if I was a boy like all of my male peers, college would have been a requirement.
As a little girl I had to fight to play sports with the boys. I was eventually included as one of the guys. Truth known, I enjoyed playing and watching sports with the guys more than hanging out with the girls. Now, I did have boyfriends. And I danced on many sets from high school Honor Society, elected school officer, cheerleader and officer of our Jewish sorority.
Even with my success in high school, I still had to fight with my parents to earn the privilege of going to college.
I figured out how to get scholarships. I signed up for a work-study program that allowed me to become financially independent. Imagine. At 17, I was able to pay for my own education. I had reached escape velocity starting my first adventure outside of my Philly neighborhood at State University of New York at Stony Brook.
During the beginning of my years of emancipation, my father died. I said goodbye one morning. Dad went to work and dropped dead of fatal heart attack at the age of 47. This was a storm that my small family of three women endured, changing the trajectory of all of our lives. But, that is another story that I will get to later.
“The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off!” Gloria Steinem
It was the 70’s. I was inspired and learning how to live as a liberated woman, following the ideas of my first female role model, Gloria Steinem.
It was the 70’s and many of my college peers were experimenting with drugs. My first college boyfriend developed a serious addiction. Looking for solutions I discovered an organization in California that claimed to be the first self-help therapeutic community. In my initial research I found out that Synanon was much more than a place for recovering addicts. They were developing an intentional community. An alternative lifestyle. So, I hatched a plan with my professor that would recognize time living in the Synanon Oakland facility as a field experiment and provide credit towards my psychology degree.
Living Women’s Lib. Although equal treatment is more common today, what I found in Oakland rocked my world. It was the first time I was a member of a community where all the women worked! It was the first time I participated in women’s groups talking about women’s issues.
And then there was the Synanon Game. In the game women had the opportunity to explore their true aspirations. It was ok to think-out-loud about making different career choices. Different life choices. Truly a mind-liberating experience.
After spending a summer as a full time Synanon resident, I returned to SUNY Stony Brook for my senior year where I attended my first Women’s Studies Class. That year, as a featured speaker I reported on what it was like to live in a community that was working at changing norms. Working at recognizing equal standing between men and women.
I returned to California to extend that field experiment into a fourteen year adventure. I became an equal participant in the development of an alternative lifestyle. Men and women. Whites and blacks. Squares and recovering addicts were living in a 24/7 Change Management Process (Today’s business description: Organizational Development to work in Corporate America).
From SUNY to Synanon, I developed intellectual, business, social, personal and leadership skills that has served me throughout my fifty years. It is those skills that form the foundation of my most liberated lifestyle.
Fifty years after beginning this journey, I was most fortunate to meet my very first role model. I met Gloria Steinem at a SUNY StonyBrook alumni event in 2018. Full circle. How rewarding it was to share my story with the woman that provided that beacon of light, the ideas and courage that inspired and guided my journey.
Wendy Williams
September 2020
*In 1972, the Education Amendments of 1972 passed in the United States, which, as part of the Title IX non-discrimination provisions, declared that dresses could not be required of girls. Dress codes thus changed in public schools across the United States. In the 1970s, trousers became quite fashionable for women.
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