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Even feminist icons are vain about their appearance. In 1999, Betty Friedan, who died on February 4, ran into Byron Dobell, a portrait artist and editor who’d known Friedan for more than twenty years. She asked him to paint her portrait. “It would be something she said she could give to her kids, and I said, ‘Betty, you would hate it!’ ” says Dobell. But Friedan insisted. Over two months they met at his apartment for five two-hour sittings. “I couldn’t make her a beautiful woman—she was not beautiful by Hollywood standards—but I made her a strong woman.” Friedan hated...

Betty Friedan, who died this weekend aged 85, was widely considered to be the founder of modern feminism. Was she really as pivotal as she thought she was, asks Germaine Greer Betty Friedan "changed the course of human history almost single-handedly". Her ex-husband, Carl Friedan, believes this; Betty believed it too. This belief was the key to a good deal of Betty's behaviour; she would become breathless with outrage if she didn't get the deference she thought she deserved. Though her behaviour was often tiresome, I figured that she had a point. Women don't get the respect they deserve unless...

Betty Friedan (1921-2006) died last Saturday at the age of 85. Eulogies have stacked up quickly for the feminist icon: Friedan founded modern feminism; she rescued women from the '50s; she pioneered the brave 'new woman' who now strides through society. I disagree with those eulogies about the content of Friedan's legacy. The disagreement contains no malice; however, because Friedan is a public and now-historical figure, an accurate view of her social impact is simply necessary. Accuracy may be especially important as the impact of her death is already being used (or abused) by various political organizations and groups to...

Ms. Friedan's private life was also famously stormy. In her recent memoir, "Life So Far" (Simon & Schuster, 2000), she accused her husband of being physically abusive during their marriage, writing that he sometimes gave her black eyes, which she concealed with make-up at public events and on television. Mr. Friedan, who died in December, repeatedly denied the accusations. In an interview with Time magazine in 2000, shortly after the memoir's publication, he called Ms. Friedan's account a "complete fabrication." He added: "I am the innocent victim of a drive-by shooting by a reckless driver savagely aiming at the whole...

The prophetess of women's liberation has been revealed as a liar and spouse abuser. If the personal is political – as feminists have long contended – what are the implications of this for feminism? Friedan accused her ex-husband Carl Friedan of beating up on her, in her recent memoir Life So Far. The media ran with the story. Now Mr. Friedan has responded with a website, carlfriedan.com, in which he charges that his ex-wife was mentally disturbed and given to fits of violent rage. It was she who abused him, says Mr. Friedan, not the other way around. The ex-Mrs....

WASHINGTON - Betty Friedan, whose manifesto "The Feminine Mystique" became a best seller in the 1960s and laid the groundwork for the modern feminist movement, died Saturday, her birthday. She was 85. Friedan died at her home of congestive heart failure, according to a cousin, Emily Bazelon. Friedan's assertion in her 1963 best seller that having a husband and babies was not everything and that women should aspire to separate identities as individuals, was highly unusual, if not revolutionary, just after the baby and suburban booms of the Eisenhower era. The feminine mystique, she said, was a phony bill of...