The Fat Chance Performance Group, celebrating “real” women’s bodies. Photograph by Cathy Cade, courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of
California, Berkeley.
The feminist health movement contributed mightily to new practices of eating and cooking, by
promoting whole grains, fresh produce, and organic food. Feminists were often active in starting food co-
ops, and their presence stimulated for-profit stores to compete by offering healthier foods. But these new
standards were deeply stratified by social class and race. Vegetarianism, whole-grain food, and organic
produce were simultaneously products of cultural feminism and of gentrification, and these changing
tastes became markers of privilege among those with the time to do fine cooking and to keep their
children’s diets pure. Working-class women, by contrast, often unable to afford healthier food, were more
often involved in campaigns to nourish children through improving school lunches and providing school
breakfasts.
Many women’s liberation groups created cultural projects. The CWLU created a graphics collective
that made beautiful silk-screened posters, on global as well as American issues. Poetry poured out of the
movement. Women’s rock bands formed and played at “women’s lib” dances, encouraging women
previously confined to singing to play instruments. Naomi Weisstein started a band in Chicago because
she was enraged by the Rolling Stones’ glee that a girlfriend was “under my thumb.” With her sister
musicians she began writing lyrics that allowed feminists to rock out, such as these:
Poppa don’t lay that shit on me,
I can’t accommodate.
You bring me down,
It makes you cool.
You think I like it?
You’re a goddamn fool.These bands were the pioneers. There were hugely popular women’s singing groups previously, like
the Supremes and the Andrews Sisters, but almost never female instrumentalists. Feminism made
women’s rock commercial, from the 1970s all-“girl” rock band the Runaways to Madonna in the 1980s
and the riot grrrls in the 1990s. Some feminist cultural projects became institutionalized, such as the
national women’s music festivals and the “womyn’s music” they promoted.