The Past Is Present

Half a century ago-amid Supreme Court hearings on Roe v. Wade, racial reckonings, and political tension a group of women launched Ms. magazine. Here, Gloria Steinem reflects on that first year

- By Keziah Weir

To hear Gloria Steinem describe the Ms. magazine office during its inaugural year of 1972 calls to mind a feminist workers’ utopia. The editorial team conducted meetings in a talking circle, passing a stick to indicate who was speaking. Salaries were need-based. When not in the tot lot,” the art director’s five-year-old delivered mail via tricycle.

Fifty years later, to flip through the magazine’s first year is to fall into something of a time warp. "I didn’t anticipate, then,” says Steinem, "that I would be here at age 88 confronting not exactly the same versions of issues, but the same kinds of issues.” Childcare. Pay equality. Mass incarceration. Angela Davis on the importance of writing for, about, and by Black women. Cynthia Ozick on the absurdity of defining a person by their organs: "If anatomy were destiny, the wheel could not have been invented; we would have been limited by legs.”