Gloria Steinem, charismatic feminist and co-founder of Ms. Magazine, dies at 92
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Steinem → die → 92
Eating breakfast in a South Dakota coffee shop, Gloria Steinem was all too aware of the couple eyeballing her from the next booth.
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Steinem → eat → booth
He was sporting chains.
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He → sport → chains
She wore leather pants and what Steinem later recalled as “an improbable hairdo.”
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Steinem → wear → hairdo
The place was packed with tough-looking, mostly male bikers pumped about a huge rally they were attending.
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they → pack → rally
Steinem, returning from a Sioux powwow honoring ancient tribal women, knew she wasn’t in her element.
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she → return → element
Finally, the leather-clad woman came over and spoke up.
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woman → clothe → ?
“I just want to tell you how much Ms. magazine has meant to me over the years — and my husband too,” she told an astonished Steinem.
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she → want → Steinem
There was a time, the woman said, when rolling down the road meant perching on her husband’s back seat.
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rolling → be → seat
But now she had her own sweet ride: “I even put ‘Ms.’ on my license plate, and you should see my grandkids’ faces when Grandma rides up on her purple Harley!”
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Grandma → have → Harley
The image of that breezy, boisterous grandma stayed with Steinem for years.
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image → stay → years
“I’ve come to believe that inside, each of us has a purple motorcycle,” she wrote in her 2015 memoir.
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she → come → memoir
“We have only to discover it — and ride.”
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We → have → it
Steinem, the co-founder of Ms. sagazine and for six decades a charismatic leader who urged women to pursue self-affirmation, political power and equality both in the workplace and at home, died Wednesday at her home in New York City, according to her foundation’s social media pages.
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who → urge → pages
“Gloria lived true to her independent spirit, always with curiosity and a great sense of humor,” the posts said.
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posts → live → humor
An activist, journalist and relentless traveler who said she went for 20 years without spending more than eight consecutive days in her storied Manhattan apartment, Steinem was a glamorous and polarizing icon who used her fabled beauty, wit and charisma to inaugurate a new politics for women.
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who → say → women
“It’s such a cliche, but the personal is the political, and there was no separation between those concepts for her,” said fellow writer and longtime friend Salamishah Tillet.
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Tillet → ’ → her
“Gloria said feminism is something that you practice every day, something that you practice in private when no cameras are watching you, no pulpit is there for you to stand behind, no microphone is capturing the soundbite.
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microphone → say → soundbite
The world’s most recognizable feminist was always herself, friends and scholars said, even as she evolved from the face of the Second Wave to an elder of a fractious and contested movement.
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she → say → movement
Throughout her long public life, she regularly opened her East 73rd Street home to fundraisers and “talking circles,” book launches and baby showers, equally at ease in tête-à-têtes with public intellectuals and watching Tillet’s toddler jump on her bed.
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toddler → open → bed
“My sister was like, ‘Do you know whose bed you’re on?’” Tillet recalled.
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Tillet → know → bed
“And Gloria’s like, ‘It’s fine.’”
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It → ’ → ?
Despite her singular fame, Steinem rarely took the stage alone, amplifying the work of contemporaries such as Dorothy Pitman Hughes, Dolores Huerta and Wilma Mankiller, as well as generations of feminists who followed.
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who → take → feminists
“Gloria often said she wasn’t giving up a torch.
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she → say → torch
She was using her torch to light other torches,” said Michele Goodwin, a professor of constitutional law and global health policy at Georgetown University and the executive producer of Ms. Studios.
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Goodwin → use → Studios
“We bandy about the term ‘intersectional,’ but she truly understood what that was.”
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that → bandy → term
It was an improbable turn for a shy girl from Ohio who styled herself after Truman Capote’s socialite sex worker Holly Golightly and rocketed to fame skewering her two-week stint serving cocktails in a cheeky, fluffy-tailed bustier as a Playboy “bunny” in Hugh Hefner’s Manhattan nightclub.
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who → style → nightclub
Like the 19th century stunt girls before her, the 28-year-old reporter saw the undercover assignment as a way to break into the otherwise impregnable boys’ club of New York City media.
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reporter → see → media
Although she parlayed the exposé into interviews with Capote and James Baldwin, she struggled for years to escape its shadow.
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she → parlay → shadow
“The story is she’s this pretty face who is the face of the women’s movement, and she had to learn how to reckon with that,” said Mariana Brandman, a public historian and curator at Smith College who stewards Steinem’s vast archive.
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who → ’ → archive
It was an assignment for New York magazine — the chatty publication she’d helped found in 1968 — that became a turning point in Steinem’s professional and political life.
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that → help → life
She’d gone to cover an abortion speak-out in the Village, where women shared stories of the illegal procedures they’d endured in secret, and ultimately disclosed her own.
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they → go → own
“Suddenly I was no longer learning intellectually what was wrong.
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what → learn → ?
I knew,” Steinem recalled in 1983.
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Steinem → know → 1983
“I had had an abortion when I was newly out of college, and I told no one.
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I → have → one
If one in three or four adult women shares this experience, why should we be made to feel criminal and alone?”
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we → share → experience
Three year’s later, in 1972, her brand-new Ms. magazine featured some of the most famous women in America proclaiming that they, too, had had abortions — and imploring the government to change the law.
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they → feature → law
“They also [published] stories about women who had died because of botched back-alley abortions,” Goodwin said.
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Goodwin → publish → abortions
“With Ms. carrying those stories and images, there was a tremendous social narrative that moved the Supreme Court.”
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that → carry → Court
Nearly 60 years after she ended her pregnancy, Steinem dedicated her memoir to the British physician who arranged her abortion after she agreed to two conditions.
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she → end → conditions
…and 45 more, not listed.
The Aporia
