Gloria Steinem’s Life Between Art and Activism

Ihave many books about feminism on my bookshelf, but only one by GloriaSteinem. It's an old copy, possibly a first edition, of Outrageous Acts and EverydayRebellions , the book she considered her first. (Prior to this, she'dco-authored a book and curated an anthology of writing about the beach.)Published in 1983,  Outrageous Acts  brings together 20 years' worth of Steinem's writing, mostof it previously published, ranging from her 1963 undercover report on thelabor practices of the Playboy Club—a piece that made her notorious in New Yorkmedia circles—to her 1982 profile of the poet and novelist Alice Walker, alongtime contributor to Ms. Magazine, the feminist glossy Steinem and otheractivists founded in 1971. 

My copy of the book is a signed one, inscribed bySteinem "To Robin—with gratitude for this International Women's Day—and thefuture." I can't be certain, but I like to think that the Robin addressed hereis the poet and activist Robin Morgan, Steinem's friend and collaborator, andone of the books many dedicatees (there are more than a dozen of them). OutrageousActs may have a single author, but Steinem knew that feminism is acollective project.

Steinem,who diedthis past Wednesday at 92 , was many things: an editor, an organizer, apublic speaker, a fundraiser, a co-founder, a mentor, and, in her own words, an"entrepreneur of social change." But before she was all these things, she was awriter, and she remained one until her death. (Her final book, the memoir An Unexpected Life ,will be published on September 22.) It's easy to forget this, despite her impressivepublication record—she published 11 books over the course of her lifetime—andher evident way with words. A kind of poster girl for women's liberation, withher aviator sunglasses and her long sun-kissed hair, Steinem spent so much timein the public eye that one could be forgiven for thinking she was more like thejet-setting elites she occasionally profiled (and dated) than the workingwriter toiling away in relative obscurity.

But writingwas Steinem's first and perhaps most enduring love, the activity that gave hera sense of purpose even though, or perhaps because, it could be so daunting. "Forme, writing is the only thing that passes the three tests of a metier: (1) whenI'm doing it, I don't feel that I should be doing something else instead; (2)it produces a sense of accomplishment and, once in a while, pride; and (3) it'sfrightening," she wrote in Harper's in 1965.

Thatshe felt so committed to writing is all the more impressive given the mediaenvironment surrounding her. Media was a man's world: Magazines and newspaperswere run by men, edited by men, and distributed by men—although much of thework needed to put out an issue was done by women. Male journalists gotassigned better stories and earned higher fees. Even though many magazines weremarketed to women, male editors scarcely believed women knew how to read. (Atop editor at Ladies' Home Journal described its audience as "mentaldefectives with curlers in their hair.") Steinem struggled to earnrespect, let alone interesting assignments. When she first tried to break into Life magazine, the editor she spoke to told her, "We don't want a pretty girl.We want a writer." 

Steinemwas a writer, as the pieces in this book attest. At her best, as in the 1978piece " IfMen Could Menstruate ," she is pointed and funny, displaying the same giftfor aphorism that she showcased in her public speeches. But she could also beearnest and introspective, expressing complicated truths in a plainspokenstyle. "I still don't understand why so many, many years passed before I saw mymother as a person and before I understood that many of the forces in her lifeare patterns women share," she writes in "Ruth's Song," a movingautobiographical essay about her troubled mother, written specifically for OutrageousActs . "I suppose I couldn't afford to admit that what had happened to mymother was not all personal or accidental, and therefore could happen to me."

When does the world need your words,and when does it need your action? Should you go to that organizing meeting or meetyour deadline? Steinem lived these tensions, wrestling with them and,sometimes, writing about them.

Butshe was not always the writer she wanted to be. During the 1960s, when shewrote the most, she rarely expressed her political commitments or personalvalues in print. During the 1970s, when she honed her politics, she rarely hadtime to write. "It's one of the ironies of trying to be a writer and anactivist at the same time that just when you feel you have the most to say, youhave the least time to say it," she later recalled. Traveling on the lecturecircuit, often with Black feminists like Florynce Kennedy or Margaret Sloan-Hunter,she couldn't even find time to keep a diary. 

It'sa problem familiar to many activist writers: how to live according to yourpolitical principles without sacrificing your art—or vice versa. (We'll leaveaside, for now, the whole question of earning money.) How do you reach a widereadership without diluting your message? When does the world need your words,and when does it need your action? Should you go to that organizing meeting or meetyour deadline? Steinem lived these tensions, wrestling with them and,sometimes, writing about them. If she never quite resolved them, she didsomething perhaps equally admirable: She faced head-on the challenge of being awriter while living a politically committed life.

Thefact that Steinem became a writer at all is remarkable. Born in 1934 in Toledo,Ohio, to Leo Steinem, an antiques dealer and the owner of a summer resort, andRuth Steinem, a journalist turned homemaker, Steinem, the second of two girls, hada difficult, itinerant childhood. Her father was a schemer and a dreamer,taking the family on the road in a trailer during the winter and evading thedebt collectors who tried to track them down. Ruth, meanwhile, struggled withmental illness and underwent multiple hospitalizations.

WhenSteinem was ten, her parents separated; with her sister away at college,Steinem became her mother's caretaker. The two lived in "a deteriorating farmhouse" on a small fixed income. Steinem tended to her mother, who usedtranquilizers to calm her nerves and who often slipped into a stupor. When shecould, she escaped into books—and plotted her ultimate escape. "My ultimateprotection was this: I was just passing through, a guest in the house," shelater reflected. She would get out of East Toledo and avoid her mother's fate.

Shesucceeded, matriculating at Smith College, where she majored in government. Smithin the 1950s presented a different set of challenges than East Toledo did. Populatedby well-off, intelligent, entirely conventional women, Smith sent, in Steinem'swords, a "double message" to its undergraduates. As she later wrote, studentswere "encouraged toward personal accomplishment and excellence, and thenexpected to subordinate themselves to children and a husband's career." Ambivalentabout marriage, and eager to chart her own course, Steinem left Smith for afellowship in India—but not before stopping in Britain to have an illegal abortion,performed by a doctor who made her promise never to mention his name.

Itwasn't until she was sent, as a journalist, to cover a 1970 Greenwich Villagespeak-out on abortion that she would understand her abortion in politicalterms. "Suddenly, I was no longer learning intellectually what was wrong," shelater wrote. "I knew." She called it her "big click," as in the "click ofrecognition," a term used in feminist consciousness-raising circles to describethe moment when the scales fall from your eyes.

Radicalizedand galvanized, she did what journalists do: She pitched stories about her newinterest. There were a few takers: New York , where she was a regularcontributor, ran several of her columns about sexual politics. But for the mostpart, editors were dismissive—as Steinem later wrote, the very same "editorswho had assumed I had some valuable biological insight into food, male moviestars, and textured stockings now questioned whether I or other women writerswere biologically capable of writing objectively about feminism." Suchstonewalling and sexism drove Steinem to "try speaking instead of writing,"despite her longstanding fears of speaking publicly. Inspired by her companionson the lecture circuit, by Kennedy in particular, she got more comfortable inthe limelight—so much so that other leading feminists, such as Betty Friedan,came to resent her.

It alsodrove Steinem to create her own magazine. In 1971, she hosted a group of femalejournalists at her Manhattan apartment to talk about the sexism in theirindustry. One of them, Brenda Feigen, suggested that the group produce a "slickmagazine," something that would stand out from the pamphlets and newslettersthat various feminist groups distributed. With the help of Clay Felker, Steinem'seditor, Ms. magazine launched as a special insert in New York . Fewthought the project would be successful, but when Ms. published itsfirst standalone issue, the magazine sold out in eight days.

As afounding editor of Ms ., and one who remained with the magazine until2001, Steinem did more than almost anyone to change the media environment forwomen. Ms. was entirely run by women, and it solicited only femalecontributors. It broke taboos about what could be published in a glossy,running articles on lesbianism, welfare (a "woman's issue"), abortion, and thehousehold division of labor. Editors solicited contributions from women ofcolor and put a Black woman on the cover of the June 1982 issue—to the dismayof Southern newsstand owners, who refusedto distribute it . And Steinem and her fellow editors proved that there was,in fact, a national audience of intelligent, curious, politically engaged womenwho were willing to pay for a magazine that spoke to them about the realproblems they faced. Ms. eventually reached a circulation of 550,000,spawned all sorts of feminist media successors, and recently published ananthology celebrating its 50th anniversary.  

Steinemcontributed to Ms . as she could. Her first piece for the magazine, "Sisterhood,"is a well-meaning if perhaps overly optimistic argument for building solidarityacross racial and class lines. But she spent much of her time courtingadvertisers, whose money was needed to fund the production and distribution ofthe magazine. In a 1990 essay for Ms. , she wrote about the sense of "desperation"she felt, trying and failing to convince advertisers to buy space. Ms. eventually started running more ads, including ads for traditionally feminineproducts, which meant cutting fiction and poetry. In that same essay, Steinemadmitted that the magazine's "edges got smoothed down—in spite of all ourresistance." It's a tidy formulation, as so many of Steinem's were, providing aperfect image of political compromise. One imagines a counterfactual Ms. —lesssuccessful but perhaps spikier—and wonders what writers it might have nurtured,and to which readers it might have appealed.

Steinem was smooth, not spiky; there is a reason she became the figurehead ofwomen's liberation and not, say, Kate Millett.

ButSteinem was smooth, not spiky; there is a reason she became the figurehead ofwomen's liberation and not, say, Kate Millett . She wantedfeminism to reach as many women as possible: not just the New Yorkers and the professedradicals, but, as she put it, the "wives with white gloves welded to theirwrists" and the "students with boots who used words like 'imperialism' and 'oppression.'"She wrote—and edited, and fundraised—for the white woman, the woman of color,the agricultural worker, the factory worker, the housewife. She knew what itwas like to need print the way one needs water. She wanted her magazine toreach the women who needed it desperately, so they could learn that were otherswho felt just the same.

Bythe 1980s, the beginning of the "backlash" against feminism described by SusanFaludi in her book of thesame name , Steinem didn't see herself primarily as a writer. She had givenherself over to other projects; she'd let political action triumph over art. "Therehave been days in the last ten or twelve years when I thought my collectedworks would consist entirely of fund-raising letters, scribbled outlines ofspeeches, statements hammered out at the birth of some new coalition, andintroductions to other people's books," she writes in the introduction to OutrageousActs . She imagined her legacy wouldn't be a book or an essay but rather "theinvention of something as brief and pithy as the phrase reproductive freedom ."It wasn't until her friend and Ms. co-founder Letty Cottin Pogrebin wentthrough boxes of old articles and put together a potential collection thatSteinem took seriously the idea of writing a book. 

Therewas a part of Steinem that always wondered what she could have done as awriter, had she had world enough and time. "I didn't take myself veryseriously," she reflects in the introduction to Outrageous Acts ,recalling the frivolous stories she wrote as a young journalist. She didn'tfight hard enough for the stories she wanted; she let herself be distracted andmake excuses. "I'm not regretful of the time I've devoted to those projects"—thosemany projects that took her away from writing—and one can't help but think thatshe's protesting too much.

Intruth, neither Outrageous Acts nor any of her subsequent books amount toSteinem's legacy—though they are certainly part of it. In this way, Steinemdiffers from her contemporaries—Shulamith Firestone, Germaine Greer, andMillett among them—who are best known for their books theorizing sexism andfeminist utopia. Steinem will be remembered for her actions: co-founding Ms .,advocating for the Equal Rights Amendment, mentoring younger feminists, andforming coalitions with feminists whose politics and interests might havediffered from her own.

Byher own account, she loved the work of organizing—as much as she loved writing,or perhaps more. "On a good night, a roomful of people can set off a chain ofthought that leads us all to a new place—a sudden explosion of understanding, aspontaneous invention," she writes in the introduction. "We hear ourselvessaying things we had felt but never named." It's an ephemeral moment, acollective feeling. It's an experience that can't be captured in words.