Gloria Steinem - Journalism Career

Journalism Career

Esquire magazine features editor Clay Felker gave freelance writer Steinem what she later called her first "serious assignment," regarding contraception; he didn't like her first draft and had her re-write the article. Her resulting 1962 article 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.

In 1963, working on an article for Huntington Hartford's Show magazine, Steinem was employed as a Playboy Bunny at the New York Playboy Club. The article featured a photo of Steinem in Bunny uniform and detailed how women were treated at those clubs. Steinem's experience as a Playboy Bunny was later made into the 1985 movie A Bunny's Tale. For a brief period after the article was published, Steinem was unable to land other assignments, but that situation did not last long; indeed, Steinem landed a job at Felker's newly founded New York magazine in 1968.

In the interim, in 1965 she wrote for NBC-TV's weekly satirical revue, That Was The Week That Was (TW3), contributing a regular segment entitled 'Surrealism in Everyday Life."

In 1969 she covered an abortion speak-out for New York Magazine, which was held in a church basement in the Village. Steinem had had an abortion herself in London at the age of 22. She felt what she called a "big click" at the speak-out, and later said she didn't "begin my life as an active feminist" until that day. As she recalled, "It is supposed to make us a bad person. But I must say, I never felt that. I used to sit and try and figure out how old the child would be, trying to make myself feel guilty. But I never could! I think the person who said: 'Honey, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament' was right. Speaking for myself, I knew it was the first time I had taken responsibility for my own life. I wasn't going to let things happen to me. I was going to direct my life, and therefore it felt positive. But still, I didn't tell anyone. Because I knew that out there it wasn't ." "In later years, if I’m remembered at all it will be for inventing a phrase like 'reproductive freedom' . . . as a phrase it includes the freedom to have children or not to. So it makes it possible for us to make a coalition."

In 1972, she co-founded the feminist-themed Ms. magazine. It began as a special edition of New York, and Felker funded the first issue. When the first regular issue hit the news stands in July 1972, its 300,000 "one-shot" test copies sold out nationwide in three days. She even labeled it Spring Issue 1972 for that sole reason. It generated an astonishing 26,000 subscription orders and over 20,000 reader letters within weeks. Steinem would continue to write for the magazine until it was sold in 1987. The magazine changed hands again in 2001, to the Feminist Majority Foundation; Steinem remains on the masthead as one of six founding editors and serves on the advisory board.