Gloria Steinem: Seven things we learned
Gloria Steinem is one of the most important figures in feminist history. An activist and writer, she’s spent decades advocating for the rights of women.
2. She found going undercover as a Playboy bunny awful
Gloria became a journalist in the early 1960s and gained huge renown for an Esquire magazine article about going undercover as a “bunny” at the Playboy Club. She describes working at the club as “awful” and adds, “It was very much a men’s club, so there was a lot of mild sexual - not exactly assault, but supposition.”
She says the club had some likely unlawful practices with regard to its employees. “I was wearing a costume that it was probably not legal to require of a waitress,” she says. “The Playboy Club had a kind of racial system… the Black women had to call themselves ‘chocolate bunnies’… And one more thing was that we were told we had to have an internal exam to serve food in New York State, if you can imagine that. So they sent us all to some doctor… who was paid, I guess, by the Playboy Club. That was, of course, completely illegal too. That was a good introduction to the fact that what I assumed were illegal practices were not rare.”
4. She’s furious about the rolling back of abortion rights
In 1957, Steinem had an abortion. She has talked about that, and her belief in everyone’s choice to do the same, for decades, in her effort to improve women’s rights. She says she never found it difficult to speak up, because she was surrounded by women doing the same. “We were part of a wave of change, so we always knew that although it wasn’t conventional we also weren’t alone.”
She says the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, a U.S. legal case that protected women’s right to abortion, felt personal. “Why should our bodies be under the regulation of the government? Men’s bodies are not… Decisions over our own bodies should be ours alone, unless we are a threat to other people.”
6. Laughter is the greatest power
“I hope that we understand that [activism] is fun,” says Gloria when discussing her decades of protest and what keeps her going. “It’s interesting and it’s not a difficult duty. It’s a part of life. I mean, this moment will never arrive again, so why not take advantage of it?”
Asked the most significant lesson she’s learned in all her years of activism, she says, “Laughing… First of all, [laughter] is the only emotion that can’t be controlled. You can force somebody to conform, take orders, do all kinds of things, but you can’t force them to laugh. Our Native American cultures have a god of laughter, because it is truth and spontaneity and comes from within. As a culture, they’re wise enough to value laughter. I hope we can do that more.”
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Feminist book post?? My favorites are Gloria (obviously) and more recently Laura Bates' books.