Esquire's Germaine Greer

The September 1971 Norman Mailer and Germaine Greer cover featured a whimsical yet wrathful take on the two rivals following their debate for Town Bloody Hall.  Lois played the notion that the battle of the sexes was not in fact much about sex, but rather about power.  

By reversing gender roles, Lois was able to point out the hypocrisy. Norman Mailer was a misogynistic and sensationalist novelist and by implying that he was equal to Greer’s serious social commentator style, it equated the ridiculousness to the respectable. During the time, however, this was shown as a woman meeting the man’s hierarchical standing, as inherently insulting as it now is to compare her competency to a popular buffoon.

LIFE magazine previously covered Germaine Greer in May of 1971 in a pandering pacification of male anxiety toward feminism by exemplifying the male concept that a feminist is a dyke.  Lois, contrastingly, put Greer in a very feminine role of a damsel in distress.