Women Agree Men Are Changing, Can’t Agree on How

--Attitudes of American men toward women are changing, say women interviewed by U.S. News & World Report, but whether the change is for the better is a matter of opinion. “There’s a renewed sensitivity and a willingness to listen to women,” San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein told the magazine. But country singer Loretta Lynn said that “women are taking the man out of their men. . . . A woman needs a man that she can’t control.” Older men “don’t accept the idea that a woman may have a brain,” said Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics. “But younger men seem more accepting of women as equals.” Columnist Ann Landers said young, single men have “taken advantage of the women’s movement. They’re letting women pay. They’re not opening doors, and they’re not carrying packages. They’re more macho and less considerate.” Singer Pearl Bailey said she believed that the father’s heavy voice of authority she knew while growing up has been lost. “When you lose that in the family, you lose it in the nation.” But Sally Ride, America’s first woman in space, said the men she grew up with and went to college with believe that women have a place in all career fields.

--A shop assistant refused to exchange a pair of trousers for Princess Diana unless she produced a receipt, the Mirror newspaper reported in London. It said amazed shoppers watched as the clerk demanded proof of purchase from the future Queen of England for the $26 trousers, which were too big. The princess “stood blushing with her head down as her detective tried to sort it out,” an employee, Rebecca Lauretani, was quoted as saying. After the manager of the fashionable boutique settled the dispute, another assistant told Diana that she must produce her receipt in the future, the paper said.

--Rita Smith got quite a bargain when she bought a briefcase for $1 at a Salvation Army Thrift Shop in Traverse City, Mich. The briefcase contained $1,000 in $100 bills, $2,000 in traveler’s checks and 830 in British currency. And, if the owner can’t be found in 30 days, the loot is hers. She could have kept it, she said, “but I feel I’d like the next person to return the favor to me if I were ever in a similar situation.”