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Gloria Marie Steinem (born March 25, 1934) is an American feminist icon, journalist, former Playboy bunny and women's rights advocate. She is the founder and original publisher of Ms. magazine.
Early life
Steinem was born in Toledo, Ohio. Her mother, Ruth Nuneviller, was of part German descent. Her Jewish-American father, Leo Steinem, was a traveling antiques dealer (with trailer and family in tow) and the son of immigrants from Germany and Poland. The family split in 1944, when he went to California to find work while Gloria lived with her mother in Toledo. As a child in Toledo, she cared for her ill mother and helped support the family. Gloria also had a sister named Susanne. Gloria attended Waite High School in Toledo then graduated from Western High school in Washington D.C. In 1963 she was employed as a Playboy Bunny at the New York Playboy Club to research an article that exposed how women were exploited at the clubs.
Political awakening and activism
After conducting a series of celebrity interviews, Steinem eventually got a political assignment covering George McGovern's presidential campaign, which led to a position in a New York magazine. Her 1962 article in Esquire magazine about the way in which women are forced to choose between a career and marriage preceded Betty Friedan's book "The Feminine Mystique" by one year. She became politically active in the feminist movement, and the media seemed to appoint Steinem as a feminist leader of sorts. Steinem brought other notable feminists to the fore and toured the country with lawyer Florynce Rae ("Flo") Kennedy, and in 1971, cofounded the National Women's Political Caucus as well as the Women's Action Alliance. In 1972, she helped start the feminist Ms. magazine and wrote for the magazine until it was sold in 1987. The magazine was bought by the Feminist Majority Foundation in 2001, and Steinem remains on the masthead as one of six founding editors and serves on the advisory board. Contrary to popular belief, Steinem did not invent the feminist slogan "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle".
Steinem cofounded the Coalition of Labor Union Women in 1974, and participated in the National Conference of Women in Houston, Texas in 1977. She became Ms. magazine's consulting editor when it was revived in 1991, and she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1993.
More recent life
In the 1980s and 1990s, Steinem had to deal with a number of personal setbacks, including the diagnoses of breast cancer in 1986 and trigeminal neuralgia in 1994.
According to two PBS Frontline features (aired in 1995) and Ms. magazine, Steinem became an advocate for children she believed had been sexually abused by caretakers in day care centers (such as the McMartin preschool case).
On September 3, 2000, at age 66, she married David Bale, father of actor Christian Bale. The wedding was performed at the home of her friend Wilma Mankiller, formerly the first female Chief of the Cherokee Nation. Steinem's marriage gained much publicity, not only due to her semi-celebrity status, but also because Steinem had once famously quipped, "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle." Steinem and Bale were married for only three years before he died of brain lymphoma on December 30, 2003, at age 62.
In 2005, Steinem appeared in the documentary film, I Had an Abortion, by Jennifer Baumgardner and Gillian Aldrich. In the film, Steinem described the abortion she had as a young woman in London, where she lived briefly before studying in India. Steinem is also a member of Democratic Socialists of America, and an advisory board member of Women's Voices. Women Vote.
Canadian singer-songwriter David Usher penned a song titled Love Will Save The Day, which includes sound bites from Steinem speeches. The song's opening contains her statement, "It really is a revolution," and the ending breaks for the quote, "We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen or those earned; we are really talking about humanism." In the credits of the movie V for Vendetta, this last speech is also quoted.
List of works
- The Thousand Indias (1957)
- The Beach Book (1963)
- Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (1983)
- Marilyn: Norma Jean (1986)
- Revolution from Within (1992)
- Moving beyond Words (1993)
Biography
- The Education of A Woman: The Life and Times of Gloria Steinem by Carolyn Heilbrun 1995
See also
Footnotes
External links
- 1983 audio interview of Gloria Steinem by Don Swaim of CBS Radio, RealAudio
- Gloria Steinem discusses “After Black Power, Women’s Liberation”
- Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution from the Jewish Women's Archive
- The Redstockings expose Gloria Steinem
- Gloria Steinem Biography from Thomson Gale
- The Gloria Steinem Papers at Smith College
- Gloria Steinem and the CIA-Operation Mockingbird Connection
- 1968 CBC interview with Gloria Steinem (video)
- Gloria Steinem speaks on "Nostalgia" on Bill Maher (video screenshot)
- Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem on ForaTv (video)
- Interview with Gloria Steinem on human trafficking (audio)
- Interview with Gloria Steinem on Victoria Woodhull in the documentary, America's Victoria, Remembering Victoria Woodhull
- Interview with Gloria Steinem at feminist.com