I once wrote that Gloria Steinem, the great feminist thinker and activist who died Wednesday at 92, was like an indispensable computer program running in the background of every American woman’s life.
“You don’t always remember that she’s there,” I wrote, “but without her, your life would be constrained in ways you can hardly imagine.”
Think of all the improvements in women’s lives in the six decades or so that Steinem had her shoulder to the wheel: the right to abortion (sadly under attack again as never before), the right to take out mortgages and credit cards, the right to equal pay, the right to live and work free of sexual harassment. The list goes on. Women are now Supreme Court justices, astronauts, chief executives, engineers … and stay-at-home moms by choice.
Many, many other contemporaries of Steinem made indispensable contributions to the women’s movement, but few had her star quality. With her bell bottom jeans, aviator glasses and thick blond mane, she was the exceedingly attractive face of a movement too often vilified as ugly and angry.
Rights we take for granted now did not exist in 1963 when, as a budding 28-year-old journalist and recent Smith College graduate, Steinem went undercover as a Playboy bunny to expose the degrading, sexist ways in which she and her fellow waitresses were treated. The stunt made her famous, but she always regretted it.
“In the short term,” she said in 2011, “it was much harder to get serious assignments, and in the long term it’s been used to ridicule me.”
Over the decades, Steinem co-founded organizations devoted to women’s equality, but she is probably best known for co-founding Ms. magazine in 1972, a magazine by, for and about women. (It began in 1971 as an insert in New York magazine.)
At the time, the women’s media landscape was dominated by publications such as Better Homes & Gardens, Ladies’ Home Journal and Good Housekeeping. Ms. burst onto the scene with articles about battered wives, female genital mutilation and even the politics of housework.
“It was just clear that there was no other way we could be honest about women’s experience,” Steinem once said.
Where most people saw individual acts of oppression, Steinem saw patterns and systems. The cover story for the first issue of Ms. was “Click! The Housewife’s Moment of Truth.”
“A friend of mine stood and watched her husband step over a pile of toys on the stairs,” wrote Jane O’Reilly. “‘Why can’t you get this stuff put away?’ he mumbled. Click!” This was what would become a famous feminist refrain — the “aha moment” — when a seemingly trivial interaction leads to a feminist awakening. Pick up the damn toys yourself!
The phrase “humorless feminist” has always rankled me; I mean, what’s funny about date rape, unequal pay or sexual harassment?
The fact is, Steinem had a wonderful, dry sense of humor.
When someone at a 2014 women’s conference in Rancho Palos Verdes asked her how she felt about women using sex appeal to advance their careers, she replied, “If women could sleep their way to the top, there would be a lot more women at the top.”
In her 1978 essay “If Men Could Menstruate,” she wrote: “Men would brag about how long and how much. Sanitary supplies would be federally funded and free. Of course, some men would still pay for the prestige of such commercial brands as Paul Newman Tampons, Muhammad Ali’s Rope-a-Dope Pads, John Wayne Maxi Pads, and Joe Namath Jock Shields—’For Those Light Bachelor Days.’”
I first met Steinem in 1985, when she was in Los Angeles to promote her 1983 essay collection, “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions.” Steinem allowed me to tag along with her for the day. Norman Lear and his then-wife Frances hosted a party for her at their Brentwood home. Steinem and Jane Fonda arrived at the same time, and as Fonda gave Steinem a big hug, Fonda exclaimed, “I grew up in this house!” I was entranced.
In 2000, at age 66 and after decades of critiquing marriage, Steinem tied the knot with David Bale, an entrepreneur and the father of actor Christian Bale. It wasn’t that she had changed, Steinem said; it was that the institution of marriage itself had. (One headline writer had fun with the old feminist jest that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle: “Finally,” the headline read, “a fish gets her bicycle.”) David Bale died in 2003.
In 2014, at that women’s conference, Jennifer Aniston interviewed Steinem onstage before an audience of executives, activists and journalists.
“What’s the best way to describe you?” Aniston asked.
“Hope-aholic,” Steinem replied.
“What would you like to be remembered for?”
“As a person who had a good heart and tried to make the world a little more kind,” Steinem said.
Gloria Steinem didn’t just make the world a little more kind.
She made the world a much better place.
Bluesky: @rabcarian Threads: @rabcarian
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