Journalist and feminist pioneer Gloria Steinem, who co-founded Ms. magazine and spent her life working toward a more equitable world for women and girls, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. She was 92.
As one of the most consequential figures of the late 20th century, the Toledo-born Steinem’s name and image became emblems of second-wave feminism, although she long insisted her feminist awakening in her mid-30s came later than that of the movement mothers who came before her. And yet, Steinem’s combination of eloquence, elegance and determination contributed to her singular ability to push the fight for women’s equality into the mainstream.
“In my case, and in the case of some other women, it takes a lot of years even to question your conditioning,” she told Mother Jones magazine in a 1995 interview. “There’s such a deep part of our conditioning that is to make nice. That has an upside, it makes me a peacemaker. But a major problem I see is that we are into this kind of inner-outer division, so that activism is perceived as an activity in which you kill yourself and burn out.
“Well, burnout is a way of telling you that your form of activism was perhaps not very full circle,” she continued. “If we want a world in which you can tell jokes and get massages and have sex and dress however you . . . please, then we have to create a form of activism that reflects that, and have fun while we’re doing it.”
Most profiles of Steinem mention one of her earliest forays into journalism, her 1963 piece, “A Bunny’s Tale,” for the long-defunct Show magazine, as if her undercover stint as a waitress at New York’s Playboy Club was somehow a joke. But that breakthrough represented the first effort in a long career spent exposing exploitative working conditions for women other journalists diminished or outright dismissed.
Since the early 1970s, Steinem used her voice and influence to work toward legalizing safe abortions while championing survivors of rape and domestic violence and pushing for equal pay in the workplace. Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day exists because Steinem helped establish it. She also co-founded the Women’s Action Alliance alongside fellow Ms. co-founder Dorothy Pitman Hughes and Brenda Feigen, and co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus. Both were launched in 1971.
Decades later, in 2005, Steinem collaborated with fellow firebrands Robin Morgan and Jane Fonda to create the nonprofit, nonpartisan Women’s Media Center, with a mission to raise the visibility and influence of women and girls in media.
In addition to her highly public activism, Steinem’s signature style, defined by her large aviator glasses and long hair, made her a sought-after TV guest star and documentary interview. She made show-stopping cameos in the “Sex and the City” spinoff “And Just Like That. . .,” “The Good Wife” and “The L Word.”
She was also inspired an off-Broadway play, “Gloria: A Life,” which was adapted into a 2020 production for PBS’ “Great Performances” that starred Christine Lahti. In that same year, Rose Byrne portrayed Steinem in the FX limited series “Mrs. America,” and Oscar winners Alicia Vikander and Julianne Moore played younger and mature versions of her in Julie Taymor’s biopic, “The Glorias.”
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Through her media prominence and prolific output as an author, with a dozen books to her name, Steinem dispelled the stereotype of the humorless feminist simply by living. Steinem remained childless by choice and had several high-profile relationships, including with “The Graduate” director Mike Nichols and publisher Franklin A. Thomas, the first Black president of the Ford Foundation, whom she described to The New Yorker in 2015 as “the longtime love of my life.” For most of her life, however, Steinem declined to marry until 2000, when she married David Bale, the father of actor Christian Bale.
Ever quotable, her warning that “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off” is emblazoned on all kinds of paraphernalia.
She had a terrific sense of humor, which I witnessed firsthand during a book-signing event I attended in the early 1990s. During its question-and-answer portion, she shared that at one of the events on that tour, someone brought a copy of a book for her to sign that was authored by one of her far-right conservative detractors. She said she inscribed it with, “Turn this book back into a tree.”
Her final memoir, “An Unexpected Life,” comes out on Tuesday, Sept. 22.
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