Our Cover Girls: Stories from the creation of Ms. Magazine

When we put a woman on the cover—a real person—she had to be a worthy real person, not a Hollywood beauty. We had Helen Gahagan Douglas [congresswoman, 1945–51], Shirley ­Chisholm [first black woman in Congress], Bella Abzug [congresswoman, 1971–77]. These were our cover girls.

In the late eighties and throughout the nineties, Ms.’s popularity waned as women’s legal and professional statuses improved and a crop of new magazines were launched, often co-optingMs.’s message and readership. In a 1990 Mother Jones cover story, Ms. Fights for Its Life,” Peggy Orenstein wrote, “Magazines such as Working Woman, Savvy, New York Woman, and Mirabellamay have poached some of the Ms. terrain, but they’ve manipulated the message, reflecting change but not inciting it.”

Men are better at celebrating successes. They have parades and trophies. But there was a transformation in those early Ms. years—in terms of family structures, the workplace, and our language. It would still be decades before the New York Times would come onboard to use the term “Ms.” [It was in 1986.]

I still meet women who say they had to hide their Ms. magazines from their husbands. It woke women up and spurred them to go out and do something.

“Ms. Is Magazine for a Whole Woman,”
By Lineta Pritchard
“For the first time you can read a publication that expresses total female sentiment, not sentiment based on some male publisher’s assumption that all women like to read about recipes, beauty tricks, wardrobe wizardry and entertaining.”

Ms. was being removed from public libraries as unsuitable reading material.

Cathie Black (advertising director, 1972–77): I remember having lunch with Clay and saying, “I’m going to go to Ms.” He said, “I think this is going to be a big professional mistake.” And I told him, “I think it will be the best move I ever made.” I thought, I want to get on this boat. I don’t want to be left behind.

Gloria, Pat, and their team would go to Detroit, and the car companies would say, “Oh, now, women don’t buy cars,” and the Ms. team would pull out their research and say, “Yes, actually they do,” but the car executives would still dodge and weave and ultimately turn them down.

Black: I had an ad-agency guy grab our research report out of my hands, throw it on the floor, and make a gesture as though he were going to spit on it.

Steinem: You know, I have made lots of mistakes all on my own, and I have done all kinds of things that I would like to change, but most of all, I would like to take back all the time I spent trying to sell advertising

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