They had been led to believe “women’s libbers” were all dowdy, with hairy legs and frown lines. She was “trim” and “undeniably female”, marvelled one interviewer; she had “legs worthy of her mini-skirts, and a brain that keeps conversation lively”. “The truth will set you free,” she said, “but first it will piss you off.
WITH HER eyeliner, long locks and short skirts, Gloria Steinem wasn’t what most Americans pictured when they imagined a feminist activist. Ms Steinem, though, was glamorous. She was funny, too. Weren’t feminists meant to be angry and humourless?
Ms. sold out its initial run of 300,000 copies in eight days. In 1971, in order to get more women into office, she co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus alongside Betty Friedan, Shirley Chisholm and Bella Abzug. In 2015 she dedicated her memoir to John Sharpe, an English doctor who performed her abortion in 1957 and gave her the freedom to pursue her career.
She parlayed her public stature and journalism experience into Ms., America’s first national feminist magazine, in 1971. (They had considered calling it Bimbo, but reckoned the irony might be lost on a lot of readers.) Funding was not forthcoming; prospective investors described the venture as “crazy”. “It is difficult to express the sense of exhilaration upon finding in print the ideas that have been smouldering in my semi-rebellious soul for some 40 years,” one read. She tirelessly campaigned for the Equal Rights Amendment to the constitution, which promised that “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged…on account of sex”. In her memoir she wondered whether she would “have dared to challenge rules later in life if [her] father had obeyed them”. She felt that, in any democracy, individuals should have the right to “make decisions over [their] own physical selves”. “This book is for you,” she wrote. “I’ve done the best I could with my life.”
The organised resistance from conservative women such as Phyllis Schlafly made it clear just how hard-won progress would be. But Ms Steinem managed to scrape enough together to produce a test issue, which immediately put paid to the idea that there was no audience for it. The first issue included a list of prominent women, including Ms Steinem, who had had abortions. The magazine covered all aspects of women’s experience, from housework and parenting to menstruation, rape and domestic violence. Ms. was soon receiving thousands of letters a week. “It is comforting to know I am not alone. When she was not working late in the cramped set of rooms that Ms. called an office, Ms Steinem was involved in electoral politics. Her enthusiasm for campaign work began in high school, when she volunteered for Adlai Stevenson, a Democratic presidential candidate. The experience taught her that “male staffers made decisions, and women carried them out, even women old enough to be their mothers. It was passed by Congress, but hit a roadblock when it came to be ratified by state legislatures. Ms Steinem’s doggedness was shaped by her upbringing. Her father was a travelling antiques salesman who kept the family on the road, meaning that she did not go to school for several years and learned to read from road signs. Freedom was a luxury afforded only to him. Ms Steinem’s mother had had her own journalistic career, but it was curtailed by marriage and children, and she had a mental breakdown in her 30s. Each parent exerted an influence over Ms Steinem’s thinking in their own way. And her mother’s struggles—financial, medical and social—showed her how the personal was political. “She led me toward an activist place where she herself could never go. By the time of her death, Ms Steinem had spent more than half a century at the forefront of the women’s movement. In her final years, she was dismayed by America’s political direction —in particular the undoing of Roe v Wade.
