WOMEN IN REVOLT

Ah, the young. In "American Electra: Feminism's Ritual Matricide," her cover story in the October Harper's, Susan Faludi argues that young feminists are frivolous fashionistas who choose Lady Gaga over Gloria Steinem and consumerism over activism, thereby betraying the cause—and their second-wave mothers, real and figurative. Faludi thinks today's young feminists are out to kill their mothers, much as young women in the 1920s rejected the Victorian matriarchs who had won them the vote: "Over and over, a younger generation disavows the women's movement as a daughter disowns her mother."

-The Nation