La Diff

Faced with the man-sized problem of filling another hour of its irregularly scheduled documentary series titled Woman!, the CBS news staff asked itself a challenging question: "Is the American woman losing her femininity?" On the debatable premise that San Francisco is "a woman's city, where men are very outspoken about femininity," the network last week turned west for its answer.

San Francisco's males were a disappointment. A collection of cocktail sippers stuttered over a definition of "femininity," finally decided that whatever was wrong with their wives, the best thing to do was "assert our power and not wash any more dishes." One gallant type, glooming behind a dark, straggling mustache, observed that European women "make a man feel 20 feet tall. I just don't get that satisfaction from the American female. She's reluctant to say anything inspiring to me about my appearance or abilities or talents or whatever." It was all so odd that Hostess Esther Williams, an athletic sort and no clinging vine, was moved to comment on one male's observation: "I don't believe he believes a word that he's saying."

Unfortunately for Woman!, San Francisco's women were no more helpful than their husbands. Junior Leaguers worried politely about whether they were supposed to learn the feminine graces at home or in school; a suburban housewife announced grimly that "by golly, my husband is not going to outgrow me." Anthropologist Margaret Mead finally arranged a truce in CBS's planned skirmish between the sexes by explaining that women are becoming less feminine, men less masculine, and that both sexes are "behaving more like people." Whatever that meant, Dr. Mead happily added the observation that there will probably always be a noticeable physical difference between the combatants. Nobody could quarrel with that.

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