Liberated Now

An Ex-Cosmo Girl Sorts Out Reality from Revolutionary Propaganda

When Sue Ellen Browder was a college student, the women's movement was just gaining steam. In those days, a woman could be fired for being pregnant, she couldn't apply for credit in her own name if she was married, and a number of medical and law schools were off-limits to her.

Sue Ellen herself was fired mere months into her first job at the LA-area South Bay Daily Breeze after "accidentally" getting pregnant (she'd been on the Pill). In 1969, this was consistent with corporate policy in many American offices.

Shortly before their son Dustin was born, then, she and her husband Walter moved across the country to New York. Together they decided that Walter...