Henrietta Hay's Column

We are magazine obsessive in this country. I wouldn't even venture a guess as to how many of those shiny covered periodicals are on display at the bookstores -- everything from Martha Stewart to Hustler and countless ones in between and beyond. I subscribe to more of them than I can read carefully. But one is very special.

Ms. Magazine is celebrating its 25th anniversary this month. 1972 was a very good year. Fifty years after women suffrage became a fact, the "new" women's movement was rapidly gathering speed. After 50 years of effort on the part of women nationally, the Equal Rights Amendment had finally passed both houses of Congress. It was due to fail ratification, but we didn't know that then. We were full of hope. The national NOW organization was six years old and the local NOW was brand new. Ms. Magazine appeared and lot of us chose to be called Ms. instead of Miss or Mrs.

Ms. Magazine was the symbol, the icon that helped tie us all together -- wherever we lived, whatever our status -- married or single, housewives or holding down outside jobs, with or without children, young or old or somewhere in between. Gradually, one by one, we became conscious of the awakening that was taking place inside us and around us, and as we read Ms. we found that we were not alone. We were part of something bigger than we were.

Ms. Magazine, this creation of a bunch of women with practically no money but a passionate cause and a lot of talent came along and validated us.

I first heard about the magazine from my son, who was living in Manhattan and wrote me about a young woman with whom he often shared an elevator as he went to work. She was creating a new magazine for women and he thought I might want to subscribe. Her name was Gloria Steinem.

Having been in the middle of the fray for all these years, I am more aware than most how much anger and resentment the idea of women's equality caused at that time, and how much still exists. In spite of that, those turbulent 25 years have created some basic changes in American society. As Gloria Steinem writes in the silver anniversary issue of the magazine, "In the last 25 years we've convinced ourselves and a majority of the country that women can do what men can do. Now we have to convince the majority of the country - and ourselves - that men can do what women can do.... Children who grow up seeing nurturing men (and women) and achieving women (and men) will no longer have to divide their human qualities into 'masculine' and 'feminine.' Gender will no longer be the dominant/passive model for race and class."

Gloria is writing about an ideal world, not today's -- not yet. Great social change takes place slowly and it does not go forward without steps back. Now in 1997 young women come into a world that has already achieved a level of feminist consciousness, a world in which many doors have been opened. But they are also aware of the strength of the backlash, which is taking place against the women's movement. Social, political and religious forces are still trying to push the position of women backward.

I think of the women who will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Ms..., still fighting for equality. The form of the magazine may be different, but Ms. Magazine will still be in there telling them that they are not alone.

I'm a little sad for them, though, because those early feminist days are gone, and they were the most exciting days of our lives. We marched and shouted and sang and knew that we were in at the beginning of something great. We knew that for the only time in our lives, we were changing society. We were in a battle that mattered.

To those women 25 years from now, your future is limitless. It's up to you. I realize that at 83 I have no chance of living to see victory. But as Steinem wrote in the Silver edition of Ms. Magazine, "If any of us make it we all will."

[NOTE: As Mom says above, yes, the consulting company I worked for in 1971 helped Gloria Steinem and her colleagues found MS. Magazine. Note that in 2019, 47 years later, the institution is still going strong. See http://msmagazine.com -DCH.]