American writer, editor and most noted feminist of her time. Steinem is the co-founder of “New York Magazine,” founder of the Women’s Active Alliance 1970 and of “Ms. Magazine” 1972.
Steinem has a sister ten years older than she. Her mother Ruth had been a journalist, but gave up her career to follow her husband Leo, a 300 pound salesman, who couldn’t stand his wife’s problems and left for California when Gloria was ten. Since her sister was away at college it fell to Gloria to take care of all her mother’s needs. Her parents divorced the following year. Abandoned by her beloved father, she buried herself in reading. Never in school for more than a few weeks at a time, she spent her first full term in one school when she was 12 as prior to this her family was on the road in a house trailer, crisscrossing the country buying and selling antiques. Ruth had suffered a nervous breakdown, had hallucinations, was afraid to leave the house and took medications dispensed to her by Gloria. When she was 12, Gloria took her mom to a doctor who confirmed she should be in a mental hospital. Steinem had read an article in “Life” magazine and knew she didn’t want her mother in that type of facility, opting to stay and care for her in the family home.
She took ballet when a teenager, danced in a local club and lied about her age when she was 15 in order to enter a beauty contest (which she lost). Gloria received a scholarship and Ruth sold the house to provide the rest of her tuition for Smith College where she majored in government. She graduated with honors in 1956, a Woodrow Wilson International Scholar. At 22, just out of college, she was engaged to a seven-year-older man from a musical family. She knew it would be a mistake to marry him and while she was in England working as a waitress, waiting for a visa to India to study on a Fulbright Fellowship, had an abortion. This period in her life was one of the lowest, reaching the point of being near-suicidal.
She published “The Thousand Indias” in 1957 and started her freelance journalism in 1960. Her father died in a car crash in 1961. Working as a Playboy Bunny in their New York City facility in 1963, she kept copious notes on the treatment of the female employees and later wrote an expose, “Bunny’s Tale” which was published in “Show” magazine and was made into a film in 1985.
In 1968, working as a journalist, she was a reporter assigned to cover Viet Nam, peace rallies and political campaigns and wrote her first prize-winning piece on women’s liberation. Feminism was a family tradition as her paternal grandmother founded the first vocational high school in Toledo, marched for women’s voting rights and addressed congress.
Steinem was one of the founders of the Women’s Political Caucus in 1971. Founder and editor of “Ms. Magazine” until she sold it in 1987, Steinem promoted feminist causes and became active in Democratic politics and was involved in the presidential campaigns of Adlai Stevenson, Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy. She was a supporter of efforts to organize migrant labor with the United Farm Workers. Her book, “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions,” a collection of essays, was published in 1983.
A cultural icon of the 1960s and 1970s, Steinem was a speaker on TV testifying before Congress, at feminist events on college campuses and for political causes with humor, high spirits and inexhaustible energy. She has a warm, positive platform presence, intellectual brilliance and a way with words. A foodaholic and always feeling overweight, she keeps her refrigerator empty as she will eat anything that is available- including co-workers snacks. At 5’ 7″ she tries to keep her weight under 115 pounds. A tireless worker putting in 18-hour days while editing “Ms. Magazine,” she took only three short vacations in 20 years.
Although she has been in serial long-term relationships from age 21 to her late 50’s, they haven’t been easy for Steinem as she had to become a premature adult, reversing the mother-daughter role. Stan Pottinger was her companion for nine years through most of the 1970s. She came closest to marriage with Robert Benton, film writer and art director at Esquire magazine. They took out a marriage license, had blood tests, and a ring – but waited. She never got her dress and the license expired. In the mid 1980’s she had affair with Mort Zuckerman, a wealthy real estate developer who was not liked in feminist circles. Their relationship ended in 1987. Her own attitude toward marriage was made clear at a I973 League of Women Voters convention when Steinem referred to married women as “part-time prostitutes” exploited by their husbands for their labors and sexual attentions.
Steinem had a cancer scare in 1986 in finding a lumpectomy but she has had no reoccurrence. Although she has an innate bias against therapy, she started psychotherapy the same year.
Steinem was married for the first time on 9/03/2000, to David Bale, a South African-born entrepreneur. The couple will divide their time between New York and Bale’s home base of Los Angeles.
Steinem’s husband, father of actor Christian Bale, died of brain lymphoma in Los Angeles on December 30, 2003. The couple had been married for just over three years.
In 2012 Gloria Steinem was honored with the Humanist of the Year award from the American Humanist Association.
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