Susan Faludi and Gloria Steinem on the cover of Time Magazine

Time Magazine ran this cover in March of 1992, following the publication of Faludi's best-selling book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, and Steinem's wildly popular discourse on self-esteem, Revolution From Within. Essayist and historian Nancy Gibbs writes in the cover story:

"Throughout history, Faludi argues, any time women tried to loosen their corsets and breathe more freely, they met with a suffocating counterattack. In the 1980s this backlash surfaced in the Reagan White House, the courts, Hollywood and, above all, the mass media, whose collective message to women went something like this: Feminism is your worst enemy. All this freedom is making you miserable, unmarriageable, infertile, unstable. Go home, bake a cake, quit pounding on the doors of public life, and all your troubles will go away."

Of Steinem's work, however, Gibbs writes:

"More interesting still, after months halfway down the best-seller list, Faludi moves to No. 2 this week -- right behind a new book by Gloria Steinem. Many critics dismissed Revolution from Within, Steinem's treatise on the political implications of the self-esteem movement, as an exercise in squishy new-age thumb-sucking. But as she tours shopping malls, Steinem is being mobbed by crowds that, according to one bookstore owner, exceed those of Oliver North and Vanna White, the backlash icons of American manhood and womanhood. Something must have happened in the climate of relations between men and women for these books to have such an impact."

The contrast and compliment between these two books and their theses is reflected in Gregory Heisler’s photo, now housed in the National Portrait Gallery. It is not only a portrait of two leading thinkers, but also of an ideological bridge between the younger and older feminist generations, between a stark pragmatism and an insistent hope.