The Mary Tyler Moore show was the first television sitcom in America to portray a single working woman’s lifestyle in a way that was not dreary or overly pitiful. That it dovetailed so perfectly the rise of the second wave feminist movement was partially kismet, but its impact can still be felt today, particularly…

Today, when every 26-year-old woman I pass on my West Village street seems to have her own start-up, and women’s empowerment conferences are redundantly full of millionairesses in Manolos with daily blow-outs and triplex brownstones in the world’s shiniest borough—Brooklyn, which used to be known for grandmothers in…