The feminists are going, shuffling right off that mortal coil and so many are already gone. The girls of summer, whose vivacity and boldness I will never forget have done their work and are now all away somewhere else.

Kim Chernin has just died of COVID. She was eighty years old—my age. I knew her. I visited her in Berkeley, once a leafy, lovely state of mind. I reviewed—and praised her work. Here’s what I had to say about her pioneering work The Obsession: Reflections on the Tyranny of Slenderness; I reviewed it in the New York Times in 1985. Since then, there has been much work about women and eating disorders from Susie Orbach (Fat is a Feminist Issue) to Anat Gur (Foreign Bodies: Eating Disorders, Childhood Sexual Abuse, and Trauma-Informed Treatment).

I used to keep a list of our feminist dead, all women whom I personally knew and whose work I treasured, but I stopped when I passed 125. I could not bear to keep track of the passing of so many soldiers, visionaries, truth-tellers, and some truly dangerous dames. R.I.P Kim. Know that your work on earth mattered.