Gloria Steinem - 1934
|
Sycamore High School, Ohio
Read another essay on Steinem by Ohio student
Shiyi Zhao.Gloria Steinem is one of the country's most influential and innovative writers and activists- and Ohio can "claim" her! As a journalist in the turbulent 1960s and 70s, Steinem used the written word to struggle for women's liberation in her articles and speeches. In the beginning she found herself a "girl reporter" in a man's world, only assigned to cover entertainment figures and fashion. Then, a journalism assignment brought Steinem to her first feminist meeting in 1968. She soon became one of feminism's most outspoken advocates, delivering lectures, writing articles, and organizing political action.
I. Personal Life
Gloria Steinem was the second of two daughters, born to Leo and Ruth Steinem. Her father was a free-spirited man who prided himself on his ability to remain independent. For many years he supported the family with an antiques business that took the family all over the country. Steinem's mother was an intelligent, capable woman who had attended the liberal Oberlin College in Ohio (Hoff 10). During the early years of her married life, Ruth Steinem earned a teaching certificate and taught college-level calculus, along with becoming a respected newspaper woman. However, by the time Gloria Steinem came into the world her mother had left her journalism career, been hospitalized for a nervous breakdown, and was wracked by bouts of depression, delusion and fear (Daffron 24).
The Great Depression of the 1930s brought hard times to the Steinem family. Leo Steinem was an unreliable provider, with little sense of financial matters. He dreamed of making of it big in show business and getting rich. He used to playfully say, "My office is my hat. (Landrum 329)" The family constantly moved around in their crowded house trailer, following his business ventures. The erratic life the family led attributed to the fact that Gloria Steinem did not attend school regularly for much of her early childhood; most of her education came from her mother (Hoff 11). Despite Ruth's mental illness, which surfaced in the form of intense fear, despair, and depression, she did manage to impart on her daughter a love of books, learning, and poetry. Although Steinem's early childhood was odd and inconsistent, she was not always unhappy (Daffron 25).
Gloria Steinem's parents divorced when she was eleven, causing radical change in her life. Her father decided to go to California, to pursue his antiques business, and the rest of the family remained in the East. The family lived in Toledo, Ohio and Steinem finally began to regularly attend school; she was in the sixth grade at Monroe Elementary School (Stern 34). Alone with her mother, Steinem quickly realized how powerful her mother's medicines and illnesses were; she often had to prepare the meals, shop for food, keep house, and try and keep in control of her mother. The effects of such a life took their toll on her; she had little time to spend with her friends and was self conscious about the poverty in which her family lived. In an autobiographical account published in 1984, Steinem described her childhood life with her mother: "She was just a fact of life when I was growing up; someone to be worried about and cared for; an invalid who lay in bed with eyes closed and lips moving in occasional response to voices only she could hear…"(Hoff 11-14).
In the 1950s, Leo agreed to care for Ruth for a year so that Steinem could live in Washington, D.C. with her sister, Susanne, to finish her senior year of high school and take a break from the oppressive duties of her Toledo life (Hoff 18-20).
On the strength of her entrance exams and a strong recommendation of a high-school adviser, Steinem was accepted to Smith College in Massachusetts in 1952. During her four years there, she was an excellent student. She majored in government, an area in which she had been extremely interested in since the summer after her graduation from high school, where she had worked as a volunteer for Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic presidential candidate (Hoff 20-23). During her junior year, Steinem studied abroad in Geneva Switzerland where she primarily studied European politics (Daffron 39). She graduated magna cum laude in political science from Smith in 1956 (Landrum 320).
In August 1956 Steinem wrote to the Smith professor in charge explaining that she was interested in the opportunity to travel to India on a Chester Bowles scholarship, offered by the International Relations Organization's Asian Scholarship Fund. The committee was thrilled that she was interested. A member of the committee, Margaret Harrison Case, recalled "…it was to everyone's great relief when Gloria broke her engagement and said she'd like to go. Gloria Steinem was considered a golden girl." She immediately began offering to write articles and do other sort of work while she was in India to help supplement the scholarship stipend. Finally, she headed to London to obtain a student visa to India (Stern 90-93).
While she was waiting in London for her paperwork to go through, Steinem found out she was pregnant. Her boyfriend wanted her to give up her fellowship to India and marry him right away. Steinem felt that she was being trapped; she did not want to settle down when her life as an independent individual was just beginning (Stern 93-94). Finally, she decided that she had no choice but to get an abortion, which were illegal in the United States at the time. Consequently, she fled to Great Britain, where abortions were allowed. Except for two doctors, whose consent was required by law, she told no one about her pregnancy or plans to have an abortion. Later on, the issue of abortion would draw her even more to the women's movement (Daffron 40-41).
Steinem loved India from the moment she arrived. Years later she would say that she felt strangely at home there. She landed in Bombay, a dynamic city, the bustling business and entertainment center of India (Stern 96). Several days later, she traveled to New Delhi, India's capital, and enrolled with another student from Smith at Delhi University. Steinem and her classmate were the first American students to live in the college's dormitories. At the university, she studied history and government. She was often called upon to defend American foreign policy to Indian students and talk about life in America. Steinem remained in India for two years. Toward the end of her stay, she was asked to write a guidebook that would encourage American students and teachers to visit India. She wrote The Thousand Indias and also published several freelance articles in Indian newspapers (Hoff 24-28).
Gloria Steinem returned to the United States in 1958 to begin her professional writing career.
II. Professional Life
Steinem returned from India in filled with idealism and ready to save the world. She commented soon after her return that she now saw America as "…an enormous frosted cupcake in the middle of millions of starving people" ("Gloria," Gale Group).
Her first job was co-director of the Independent Research service. From this job Steinem moved to New York City in 1960, where she started her professional writing career. She was persistent in her search for a job as a writer, and eventually found one at a small political satire magazine called Help! Steinem's job involved contracting celebrities and persuading them to appear on the cover of Help! She was a dedicated and capable employee, and her boss, Harvey Kurtzman, was very impressed by her. In a 1983 interview with the Washington Post he described her by saying, "She would just pick up the phone and talk to people, and charm them out of the trees…I was probably in love with her back then, just like everyone else. (Hoff 28-30)"
Soon, Steinem began broadening her horizons. She met Bob Benton, the art director of Esquire magazine who introduced her to many writers and editors at the magazine. She quickly began writing unaccredited articles for the magazine (Hoff 31). Her first article for the Esquire was called "The Moral Dilemma of Betty Coed." In this article it was clear that although she was not a feminist, she was a progressive-thinking female interviewer with a social conscience. Her last paragraph in the article declared, "The real danger of the contraceptive revolution may be the acceleration of woman's role-change without any corresponding change of man's attitude toward her role" (Landrum 315).
A few months after this well-received article she took an assignment from the now-defunct Show magazine to work as a Playboy "Bunny" and write an expose on the New York Playboy Club. During her month at the so-called "glamorous" job, Steinem lost more than ten pounds, nearly ruined her feet, endured propositions, and fended off over-eager customers. She talked to the other Bunnies, questioned her employers (as much as she dared) and took notes on everything (Stern 138). Her two-part article called "A Bunny's Tale," brought her enormous attention, but it was the kind that a serious female journalist in 1963 didn't need (Daffron 51). Once, when Steinem was told that that piece put her "on the map", she simply replied, "Well, it was the wrong map." However, in her book Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, Steinem discusses the benefits of doing the article; she said that it made her realize "[…] all women are Bunnies" and that "Since feminism, I've finally stopped regretting that I wrote this article" (69).
As time went on, Steinem was given the opportunity to write more serious articles for respected periodicals such as the New York Times Magazine, Ladies' Home Journal, and Glamour . In 1965 she was asked to write about being a writer for Harper's November issue, she was also written about in Writer's Digest as an up-and-coming writer of the time (Stern 142-143).
Steinem wrote her first book, The Beach Book, in 1963. It was a frivolous work describing the act of sun worshipping. She spent time as a scriptwriter for NBC's "That Was the Week that Was" in 1964 and 1965. Despite the somewhat trivial nature of her pieces, Steinem honestly loved writing- it was the only thing that seemed worthwhile to her (Landrum 316).
In 1968 Steinem made the transition from writing about entertainment to serious political issues. New York magazine was founded that year; its editor was Clay Felker, a longtime colleague who would later sponsor Ms . magazine. Steinem became a regular contributing editor and regular political columnist for New York. She later said that it was during this period that she "felt like a reporter for the first time" (Daffron 62). She also said that, for the first time, "my work and my interests began to combine" ("Gloria," Glass Ceiling Biographies). Steinem wrote about peace rallies, malnutrition in the South Bronx, political campaigns, neighborhood struggles for decent day-care centers and the plight of returning Vietnam veterans. She also reported on the Nixon campaign. In her writing about Nixon, as in all of her political writing, she did not hide her true feelings. "When Nixon is alone in a room, " she wrote, "is there anyone there?" This honest, direct approach, along with her gift of humor and growing political savvy, made Steinem's New York columns popular and persuasive (Daffron 60-64).
Steinem was simply searching for and interesting story for her column, rather than a radical cause, when she attended a meeting of the New York liberation group called the Redstockings, which planned to protest the abortion hearings of 1968 in Albany, New York. She says this was her first realization that the "system" and not the "individual" was at fault. She realized, "I had thought that my personal problems and experiences were my own and not part of a larger political problem." This awakening led her to blend together journalism and political activism and she found that working for civil rights for women was vital (Landrum 316). Steinem declared, "The sex and race caste systems are very intertwined and the revolutions have always come together, whether it was the suffragist and abolitionist movements or whether it's the feminist and civil rights movements. They come together because one can't succeed without the other" ("Gloria," Glass Ceiling Biographies).
Her first openly feminist essay was published in April, 1969, in New York and was titled, "After Black Power, Women's Liberation." In the article, Steinem observed that many women who had fought for civil rights for blacks and against the Vietnam War were beginning to fight for political causes such as equality and opportunity for women. For this article she won the Penney-Missouri Journalism Award (Hoff 41). She joined with Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisolm, and Betty Friedan in July 1971 to form the National Women's Political Caucus, which encouraged women to run for political offices. She then became founder of the Women's Action Alliance, a tax-exempt organization for mobilizing nonwhite, non-middle-class women and men to combat social and economic forms of discrimination (Landrum 316-317). Additionally, Steinem continued to write about the women's movement whenever she could. Along with several feminist pieces for her regular New York column, she wrote an article for Look magazine about the possibility of a woman president, and an essay for Time called "What It Would Be Like If Women Win." In this essay she reminded readers of the ways women were discriminated against in almost every aspect of life. She concluded the essay by writing, "If Women's Lib wins, perhaps we all do" (Daffron 71-72).
One of Steinem's most long-lasting and far-reaching actions was the founding of Ms. magazine in 1971. The founders of Ms. helped to shape feminism, as we know it; It translated, as one founding editor, Letty Cottin Pogrebin has said, "a movement into a magazine When the Ms. preview debuted it contained articles on subjects such as the housewife's moment of truth, "de-sexing" the English language, abortion, women loving women and raising kids without sex roles. Ms. was widely successful with women. Its 300,000 "one-shot" test copies sold out in just eight days. It generated an amazing 26,000 subscription orders and over 20,000 reader letters within a few weeks. The magazine succeeded in raising the national consciousness and putting controversial topics ignored by the mainstream media on the national agenda. Ms. was the first U.S. magazine to feature prominent American women demanding the repeal of laws that criminalized abortion, to explain and advocate for the ERA, to rate presidential candidates on women's issues, to put domestic violence and sexual harassment on the cover, to feature feminist protests of pornography, and many other feminist firsts. Ms. became a powerful forum for feminist writers ("HerStory").
In 1977 Steinem helped to plan and then attended the National Women's Conference in Houston, Texas. In 1983 she published her very successful book, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions , a collection of essays and articles. A reviewer for the New York Times Book Review praised the "intelligence, restraint, and common sense of the work" (Hoff 83). Finally, in 1986 she published Marilyn: Norma Jeane, a biography of Marilyn Monroe in which she describes the real woman behind the media's sex-kitten image (Daffron 107).
Gloria Steinem is still alive today, the twenty-first century, and continues to live life to its fullest. The ardent feminist recently made news when she got married at the age of 66. She said, "Though I've worked many years to make marriage more equal, I never expected to take advantage of it myself…I'm happy, surprised and one day will write about it, but for now, I hope this proves what feminists have always said- that feminism is about the ability to choose what's right at each time of our lives" ("Ms. in Marital Bliss"). Her professional achievements are numerous and impressive. She once said, early in her involvement with feminism, that she thought it would occupy only a few years, and then she would return to her "real life. (Hoff 90)" But, it wasn't long before Steinem became so immersed with the struggle of women that she made it her life's work. Through her writing and her actions Gloria Steinem positively affected the lives of generations to follow.
III. Writing Habits
Gloria Steinem was an incredibly busy writer and feminist activist for many years; her writing habits and preferences mirrored her on-the-go lifestyle. An interview with John Brady of Writer's Digest describes her writing habits in depth. According the article, she gets many of her ideas for stories and articles on the spot, and often began composing the piece on the plane directly after an event (14). Gloria Steinem also mentioned that she does some of her best work under a tight deadline, she described herself as "one of those many writers who is basically lazy and doesn't function necessarily without a specific project or a real deadline…" She also commented, "…I find it enormously difficult to get started. It takes me quite a long time with many, many first pages crumpled up and thrown away" (14). Steinem went on to say that she usually starts out jotting notes and sentence ideas in longhand, but then coverts to the typewriter as soon as she really gets started (16). She spends "a long time, an inordinate amount of time, trying to write the first few pages. Then, after that it keeps going fairly well, depending on what kind of piece it is." Steinem spends a minimum of three days on writing a major piece for a magazine, usually about four or five- not including time spent researching and interviewing (17).
Another topic discussed by John Brady and Gloria Steinem was the process she used to prepare herself for conducting an interview. To prepare for an interview, Gloria Steinem first tries to find out everything she can about the person, including reading everything they've written. She says she does this because she "doesn't like to ask the same questions all the time, ones they've been asked before. The interview only works if they find themselves saying things that they haven't said before…" She also makes sure to ask the person about previous interviews and articles, so she doesn't repeat errors previous reporters did (16). She also told Writer's Digest that she doesn't like to use a tape recorder because she thinks it's more work than it's worth. "If you take notes you go through an editing process in your head while you are listening so that you write down…what you are eventually going to be able to use. Otherwise, you end up with one-hundred and twenty-five pages of typescript with all the errors and the 'ah's' and you have do it all over again" (16).
To conclude the interview Gloria Steinem dispensed some advice to new writers, just starting out. She urges aspiring writers to: "Write. And write what you want to write, not what you think will get published…" (Steinem, "Freelancer" 12-21).
IV. Published Works (Books)
The Beach Book (1963)- The Beach Book is Gloria Steinem's first book, a frivolous work describing the art of sun worshipping (Landrum 316).
Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (1983) – This book includes Steinem's recollections of the past, such as her experience as a Playboy bunny, and also covers the lives of other notable and exemplary twentieth-century women ("Gloria," Glass Ceiling Biographies).
Marilyn: Norma Jeane (1986)- Steinem describes the real woman behind the media's sex kitten image of Marilyn Monroe in this book. She portrays Monroe as being intelligent, generous, and often very lonely (Daffron 104).
Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem (1992) – Steinem attempts to provide "…a portable friend. It's self-help and inspiration, with examples of what some people have done and a glimpse of the extraordinary potential of the unexplored powers of the brain and how much our ideas of reality become reality" ("Gloria," Gale Group).
Moving Beyond Words (1994)-In this book, Gloria Steinem expresses her views on publishing, society, and advertising ("Gloria," Glass Ceiling Biographies). Gloria Steinem is also the author of MANY magazine articles
V. Interviews
http://
www.pbs.org/kued/nosafeplace/interv/steinem.htm - PBS interview discussing violence against womenhttp://www.feminist.com/resources/artspeech/interviews/gloria.htm - an interview by Marianne Schnall for Feminist.com in April 1995 on feminism
http://coverage.cnet.com/content/voices/movers/steinem.html - CNET interview with Gloria Steinem, discussing the 1996 elections
http://www.aarp.org/mmaturity/may_jun99/interview.html - an interview with Modern
Maturity on redefining aging "Gloria Steinem, Writer and Social Critic, Talks About Sex, Politics, and Marriage" - Interview with a free-lance writer, Liz Smith, for Redbook Magazine in January 1972. The
interview covers a wide range of topics, from sex to politics. "Freelancer With No Time To Write" – Interview with John Brady for Writer's Digest in
February 1974, discusses her writing habits, her experience with publishing, and gender discrimination in the writer's world "Gloria Steinem Examines the Women's Decade: Wins, Losses, and Changes in Her Life" –
Interview with People magazine's Irene Kubota Neves, in June 1980, in which Steinem discusses the relationships between men and women in the recent years. VI. Audio/Video Clips
You can find informative media clips of Gloria Steinem delivering various speeches and addresses by searching under her name at: An interview in which Gloria Steinem talks about why she does not support George Bush: VII. Influences There were numerous and varied influences that contributed to Gloria Steinem becoming
the prominent person she is today. Unlike various other well-known writers, Steinem was influenced less by the areas in which she lived, and more by the movements and politics sweeping the nation.
Although Gloria Steinem spent much of her childhood traveling around the country, living in Ohio did have an impact on her life. Steinem lived a poor life in Ohio; she and her mother
occupied a small, run-down apartment until her senior year in high school, when she went to Washington D.C. to live with her sister. With the squalor, and the loneliness that came
with coping with her mother's mental illness by herself, Gloria Steinem often felt like no one cared (Stern). However, these experiences helped her later in life. She came to understand
her mother's mental illness in terms of the struggles and frustrations of her life and related those difficulties to the problems of women everywhere (Hoff 15). Also, during her time at
Smith College, she learned that her difficult childhood life had taught her practical knowledge and independence. These realizations led her to advise others: "Don't worry
about your background; whether it's odd or ordinary, use it, build on it" ("Gloria,"Glass Ceiling Biographies). Reading was also an immense influence on Gloria Steinem's life; she sought escape from
her dismal and lonely childhood in reading. Every week she went to the library and took out three books, and became immersed in the tales of other times and other places. Two of her favorites were Gone With the Wind and
Little Women, which she read over and over (Daffron 31-32). She says, "I thought I was peculiar. Ideas mattered to me. I escaped into
books, into fantasy. I lived inside my head. (Landrum 320)" When she went to Smith College she thought the availability of books was "heaven" ("Gloria,"Glass Ceiling Biographies).
VIII. Critical Review of Author's Work Gloria Steinem is a revolutionary writer. She is a serious, dedicated, controversial figure that expresses her ideas through writing- in books, magazines, newspapers, etc. Her
magazine endeavor, Ms. has been hugely successful, surviving for over thirty years. In 1965, an article in Newsweek described Steinem as "…professional, observant, and
organized. Her editors say she needs only light editing. ("News Girl" 98)" Her feminist writing prompted a variety of reactions. The founding editor of Ms.magazine,
Letty Cottin Pogrebin, praised her writing, saying she translated "a movement into a magazine". However, James K. Kilpatrick described her writing in Ms. Magazine as a
"C-sharp on an untuned piano. This is a note of petulance, of bitchiness, or nervous fingernails screeching across a blackboard" ("HerStory"). The New York Times also
belittled Steinem and the magazine by describing them as "a mouthpiece for backsliding bourgeois feminism" (Landrum 319). Steinem's magazine and newspaper articles also brought about myriad reactions. Irene
Kubota Neves, of People magazine, had a favorable reaction Gloria Steinem's writing. She described Steinem's "The Decade of Women" as "an ambitious potpourri of pictures, news
bulletins and text on recent feminist history…" (Neves 31). Her books generally received complimentary reviews. Diana Trilling of the New York Times favorably reviewed Steinem's Marilyn: Norma Jeane
and writer Florence King "loved" it, although, as she wrote in the San Jose Mercury News, " I can't stand [Gloria], chiefly because she slammed feminism's door in my face when she stated in Ms. That it is
impossible to be both a feminist and a conservative. I am so conservative that anyone who tried to stand to the right of me would fall off the edge of the Earth- it's flat, you know- yet
my whole life has been a feminist statement" (Stern). Steinem's book, Revolution From Within was also favorably received. Leslie Bennetts, an experienced and respected former New York Times
writer, called it "decidedly unconventional in its category-defying form." Steinem herself felt that as she aged, her writing got better, in 1974 she commented, "I think
age helps in every way, so it must help in writing as well. I feel much happier than I have ever in the past, much more willing to take risks. I think that helps a writer, maybe in the
beginning you're a little more afraid of exposure. I think I hid behind a kind of reportorial technique a lot, and I think now I do that less. (Steinem, "Freelancer" 21) " IX. Links
http://www.womenwriters.about.com/cs/gloriasteinem/index.html - This article is a very in-depth review of Steinem's personal and professional life, and is as informative as it is interesting.
http://www.greatwomen.org/stnem.htm - This website includes a brief review of Steinem, and has links to other great women in history.
http://www.heroism.org/class/1970/steinem.html - This internet site contains a biography
of Gloria Steinem and an useful timeline of major events in her life X. How to Contact Ms. Steinem You can contact Ms. Magazine at this address: 20 Exchange Place
22nd floor
New York, NY 10005
ph (212)509-2092
fax (212)509-2407
Works Cited "Ms. in Marital Bliss." www.abcnews.com
Daffron, Carolyn. Gloria Steinem. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988. "Gloria Steinem." Gale Group. http:// "Gloria Steinem." Glass Ceiling Biographies.
http://www.theglassceiling.com/biographies/bio32.htm, Internet, Accessed 27 February 2001. Hoff, Mark. Gloria Steinem. Brookfield, Connecticut: The Millbrook Press, 1984. Landrum, Gene N.
Profiles of Female Genius: Thirteen Creative Women Who Changed the World. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 1994. "HerStory Neves, Irene Kubota. "Gloria Steinem Examines the Women's Decade: Win's, Losses, and Changes in Her Life." People. June 1980: 31-33.
"News Girl." Newsweek. 10 May 1965: 98-9. Steinem, Gloria. Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1983. Steinem, Gloria. Interview. Writer's Digest
. "Freelancer With No Time To Write." February 1974: 12-21. Stern, Sydney Ladensohn. Gloria Steinem: Her Passions, Politics, and Mystique. This essay was submitted by a student of Breen Reardon, an English teacher at Sycamore High School in Ohio.
Secaucus, New Jersey: Carol Publishing Group, 1997.