In the late 1960's, the media initially predicted the demise of feminism. Movies such as The Graduate showed the potential empowerment of women as creating familial dysfunction. However, as the early 1970's began, the idea was slowly accepted. Love Story, one of the most popular films released in the early 1970's, exhibits how the public's opinion of the strong-willed female had changed from the blatant dysfunction in The Graduate only in a few years. Love Story portrays a strong female lead character with a University education and control over her relationships with men in a functional and positive way. Much of what was going on in society at this time contributed to this attitude change.

The membership of the National Organization for Women (NOW) grew tremendously in the early 1970's, and most of the new members were young, well-educated females who changed the focus of the group. The organization's platform had altered from an extension of the older ideas introduced by Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique to the more radical ideas embraced by these new young women, many of whom had been active in radical student demonstration organizations in the 1960's. The older liberal feminists solely wanted legal change; they believed stating that men and women were equal under the law would solve the problems of inequities. The new radical feminists wanted a societal revolution of attitudes. They wanted "women's liberation" and to "raise women's consciousness," a Marxist term for the mental organization of the oppressed group planning to overthrow those in power. In the sessions to raise consciousness that these women held, questions were asked of the members' relationships with men and whether they had been treated and raised with different standards than their brothers. Patterns were discovered in these personal issues among the women, and the consensus of these new NOW members was that the personal is political. Meaning, it was these personal experiences in the lives of women that contributed to the higher societal problem. Sexism had been institutionalized in the family, schools, religion, and economy, and it assigned different roles and personalities to men and women at birth. Men were the primary and most important members of society while women were the subordinate members who defined themselves by their relationships to men. These new radical feminists felt the ideas contained in NOW's old platform were covering up gender problems with simple Band-Aid solutions instead of searching for what would really change the world.

The older liberal feminists were afraid that these new ideas would alienate the movement from the general public, but actual changes did surface in society because of NOW's efforts. There were more female commentators and journalists represented in the media, and the female employees at the magazines Time and Newsweek took their employers to court in order to share the main reporting jobs with their male coworkers. The emphasis of feminism focused on the belief that men and women were inherently the same, and it was society creating the differences. They felt both men and women could handle the same work. There was also a successful sit-in demonstration at Ladies Home Journal magazine to feature an issue dedicated to feminism. This brought the new ideas of feminism into the households of a larger audience of the American public.

Love Story and were influenced by all the attitude changes trickled down from NOW into the general public. Jenny, the female lead, is strong and in control of her life. Oliver, the male lead, is in some ways like the male lead of The Graduate, a rich son controlled by his parents with a lack of direction in his life. However, this time the strong woman that enters his life and has the upper hand over her love interest is shown as positive instead of negative and dysfunctional. Jenny is who saves Oliver and guides him into a good life instead of adding more problems and self-doubt like Mrs. Robinson did to Ben in The Graduate.

In that movie, Ben's role reversal of not being the traditional aggressive male was shown as weak and what lead to his problems. Love Story begins with Oliver trying to be macho and aggressive while playing hockey and that gets him nowhere. It is negatively portrayed and it embarrasses him and his father. There is also a tenderness in the role reversing scene where Oliver tells Jenny how strongly he feels about her and that she is going to have to have the courage to tell him that she does care about him.

Along with the idea that men and women can have functional untraditional roles is the new 1970's era of bitter realism. The struggles to fight for the civil rights of African-Americans and women and the horrid reality of the Vietnam war on the television news every evening led to the belief that love and marriage do not solve problems and make people live "happily ever after" like in the 1950's and 1960's Please Don't Eat The Daises and The Sound Of Music era. Love Story ends with a death that prohibits the relationship of Oliver and Jenny from continuing. It is a tragedy that Jenny dies at the end; however, because of that, she can remain a symbol of a strong young woman who never compromised herself that will last in the minds of the public.