ABSTRACT
In the late 1960s, audiences in the United States laughed each week as Goldie Hawn appeared as a “dumb blond” on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In and danced in a bikini, her body painted with multicolor images, slogans, and jokes. If Hawn could be read as a symbol of the “liberated woman” who inhabited the sexual revolution, on the streets, less ambiguous symbols of revolution held sway. The women’s liberation movement roiled with ground-swelling activism and promised a vision of women’s future as both sexually self-determined and politically empowered. The sacrifices made by millions of women provided considerable gains to subsequent generations of women including, access to credit in their own names, equal opportunity legislation for employment and education, Title IX, abortion rights, access to reproductive health care, as well as protections and support for rape victims and battered women.
