Progress Report - Gloria Steinem

I have to be honest – my interest in Gloria Steinem was partially piqued because of a made-for-TV movie I saw on Lifetime once, entitled “A Bunny’s Tale.” It stars Kirstie Allie as Gloria Steinem when she famously went undercover as a Playboy Bunny at the magazine’s New York club in order to write an expose about the deplorable working conditions bunnies had to put up with. I had heard of Steinem before, of course, but this movie fascinated me; I couldn’t believe it was based on a true story. Of course, when I found out more about Steinem, I was even more interested in her - I greatly admire her for her contributions to feminism, including the creation of Ms. Magazine and cofounding the National Women's Political Caucus.

During the course of my research on Gloria Steinem, I have had the opportunity to actually read the essay she wrote after going undercover at Playboy, entitled “I Was A Playboy Bunny.” It can be found in an anthology of her writing called “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions,” which contains essays and articles Steinem wrote between the 1960s and the 1990s. Even the Playboy article, which is the oldest in the collection, sounds surprisingly fresh and modern, which is a testament to Steinem’s dynamic writing ability.

I’ve also done extensive research on Steinem online, checking out various websites that have biographies of her and discuss her role in the feminist movement. The online research has led me to several pithy quotes, like “The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off,” and “At my graduation, I thought we had to marry what we wished to become. Now you are becoming the men you once would have wished to marry.” However, I have yet to come across one perfect quote that I think best encapsulates everything that Gloria Steinem was and is – an entrepreneur, a witty writer and speaker, and a feminist revolutionary.

There’s one quotation from the preface of “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions” that may come close – “Indeed, backlash itself is a tribute to success; the dangerous but inevitable result of turning the majority consciousness toward equality, thus turning the former anti-equality majority into an irate minority that still thinks it can dictate what is legal and even what is normal.” This might be a little too long, though; I’m going to keep reading through this book and others that she’s read. Maybe I’ll find the right quotation in something more recent. Butler Library probably has old issues of Ms. archived, so they would probably be a good place to quote-hunt (I'm also just interested in what the magazine looked like back then). I’ve also been thinking about going over to Barnard and asking a Women’s and Gender Studies professor if he/she has any ideas of where I could look.