Revolution

Something happened in the ’60s that may, at the time, have appeared to have nothing to do with everything else that was happening in the ’60s, yet, looking back, I am stunned that I have only just made the connection.

In the midst of the sexual revolution, which held sexual liberation as its founding principle, was a more discrete, less moral-eclipsing revolution: a food revolution. More of which later.

Unmarried mothers, divorced women, abortions, almost foolproof contraception, career women; as the movement gathered momentum, propelled by the pill and its promise of sex without consequence, there was a seismically swift shift from the old morals to the new. The collective hearts of the post-war generation of women were wooed and won by this apparent freedom and men, certainly, weren’t going to object. Their responsibility became largely ours. The nature of womanhood was changed forever in an evolutionary blink.