In 3QuarksDaily

On Nora Ephron, J.K.Rowling and Nostalgia for Second-Wave Feminism (Excerpt)

The common argument for why women like Nora Ephron is that she was an unusually funny, brilliant writer who wrote likeable, three-dimensional, often middle-aged characters that have stood the test of time. As Lena Dunham puts it, Nora excelled at expressing ‘the minutiae of being a human woman on screen.’ And she really did. But I think there’s more to Nora Ephron’s widespread current appeal than this. As unique as Nora Ephron was, she was also, unmistakably, a product of her time. Born in 1941, she came into adulthood just as what is now known as second-wave feminism was taking off in the early 1960s, and, like many other women of her generation — whether directly or tangentially involved in the movement —  she was unavoidably shaped by the mood of the moment. 

Sex was on the up (as Nora writes, ‘Just before I’d moved to New York, two historic events had occurred: The birth control pill had been invented, and the first Julia Child cookbook was published. As a result, everyone was having sex, and when the sex was over, you cooked something.’) Divorce was on the up (Nora writes about her two divorces with both humour and nuance, but always with the underlying sense that if a marriage felt too hard you didn’t forever ‘work on it’; you left). And a certain feeling — that freedom and empowerment were finally theirs for the taking — was on the up. When, in a 1996 commencement address to the (all female) Wellesley students, Nora promised ‘Of course you can have it all. What are you going to do? Everything, is my guess’, she still wholeheartedly believed it. 

When I think of Nora Ephron, I think of the coats. The women in Ephron’s movies wear the kinds of oversized coats that say ‘I’m walking down the street, alone, and I have somewhere to go’. They say, ‘I’m vulnerable and I’m powerful, and by the way the two aren’t mutually exclusive.’ They say, ‘It’s a crisp autumn afternoon and the smell of possibility is in the air’. 

Real the full piece here.