I first encountered Gloria Steinem in the 1960s in the pages of Glamour magazine. I don’t remember what she was writing about, though it was a number of articles over a couple of years – she wrote for them regularly, though I have not yet seen a mention of that particular magazine in the obituaries.
I can’t tell you who else wrote for Glamour back then, or much of what else was in the magazine. It was aimed at selling beauty products and clothes to young women and most of the articles promoted that in some way. It was, in many ways, the antithesis of MS. magazine, which Steinem and others started a few years later.
But I noticed Steinem from the first piece of hers I read. It was smart. She clearly had something to say. And after that, I sought out issues of the magazine that had an article by her.
I was a young teenager, but I disdained the magazines aimed at people my age. After all, I was already reading adult fiction and had been since about the age of 10. (Young adult fiction was laughable back then. Sue Barton, Student Nurse. I outgrew that by the age of 8.)
Even Seventeen seemed too childish for me, but Glamour (which was probably aimed at people in their late teens, early 20s) struck me as sophisticated without being out of reach, like Vogue was.
And yes, I read more serious magazines as well. The New Yorker (albeit mostly the cartoons). The Atlantic. The Texas Observer. But I was a young girl trying to figure out where I fit into the world, so I turned to Glamour as well.
Having read a lot of her work, I took Steinem very seriously when she got involved in second wave feminism and started MS. I continued to take her seriously throughout her life. Continue reading “The Importance of Writers”…