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We Look at ‘Ms’
by Sue (1972)
(Editors Note: Ms Magazine generated strong feelings across America.
A CWLU member examines this feminist icon when it was still new.)
Annoyed
by its slickness, I avoided Ms for a few months - just an intellectual
GLAMOUR or MADEMOISELLE, I thought, the same ads' beckoning suave men
to romance with a flawless skinned beauty, offering me Gloria Steinem
and other free-swinging beauties as my new role models.
But, curious
at last, I bought a copy, and I enjoyed it. I got a new view of Marilyn
Monroe, whom I’d, always liked anyway; had a good conversation
on sex and orgasms after a friend and I had both read "The Liberated
Orgasm" article in the August issue; and I laughed at the captions
on Pat Nixon's photos in "What if Pat Nixon Were a Feminist ?”
Then I looked
at the other issues. I was happy to read about women photographers
and poets and historic feminist fighters, to read new works by Sylvia
Plath and Doris Lessing, and to discover Simone de Beauvoir’s conversion
to feminist political action. Ingrid Bengis' article "On Getting
Angry" dealt so forcefully with our common experience of men's
sexist attacks that I recommended it strongly to friends teaching women's
liberation courses. The survival article on cars with its good drawings
at last made my car a comprehensible machine.
THE NATIONAL MAGAZINE OF WOMEN'S LIBERATION
Furthermore,
I knew a lot of other women who read Ms It is the national
magazine of women's liberation available on newsstands everywhere, highly
publicized, and eagerly read by nearly half a million women after only
a few months of publication. All kinds of women read the magazine -
high school students, college students, secretaries, factory workers,
housewives, secretaries, social workers, actresses, writers, young women,
older women. Women read it who sense things are wrong in their own lives,
who know that women are on the move, that something's happening out
there and they want to know what it is. Most are women who do not subscribe
to movement magazines and newspapers, like WOMEN: A JOURNAL OF LIBERATION,
OFF OUR BACKS, THE FEMINIST VOICE, or WOMANKIND. They read McCALLS,
LADIES HOME JOURNAL REDBOOK, SEVENTEEN, COSMOPOLITAN, GLAMOUR, TRUE
CONFESSIONS, and the other traditional popular women's magazines.
It was clear
that the women's movement had created a national market. There is profit
in publishing a national women's liberation magazine. We have a high
profile, more and more people are listening to us and in many areas
we are becoming a force to be reckoned with. Ms national profile
enables it to reach a wide audience. For many women it is among the
first steps of identifying themselves with the women's liberation movement.
Because it is an attractive, glossy magazine with good covers and graphics,
the transition to reading a woman's magazine that is not devoted to
glamour, style, and household beauty is not too difficult.
WHY WELFARE AT THE BACK OF THE MAGAZINE?
But, my
old suspicions crept back to nag me as I read on. Why did Johnnie Tillman’s
article on "Welfare Is a Woman's Issue" as well as “Three
Lives in Appalachia" appear in the back of the magazine? Why did
the articles on women, marriages, and families feature mostly white,
middle-class professional people like doctors, social workers, lawyers,
professors, ministers, and their wives? Why were the ads just like those
in GLAMOUR and LIFE? What's so liberated about an article by two black
professional women on how whites should talk to their black friends
at cocktail parties?
In many
ways, Ms is a deceptive and dangerous magazine. While claiming
to speak nationally for all women in women's liberation, Ms is
clearly written by and for only part of the women in America, middle
class women. As a commercial venture, dependent on profits, Ms will
exist only as long as it makes money. In order to make that money, Ms makes
certain limiting choices.
First of
all, Ms. costs a dollar, $1.00, each month. Right away,
it costs more for poorer women than richer women, as $1.00 is a larger
bite out of a salary of $89 a week, than out of $175 a week. The price
reflects the magazine's commercial nature; it is a profit-making investment
for some few people. Paid articles, glossy format and good graphics
cost money. The high price also suggests that Ms is aimed at
women with ample pocket money - not welfare or working women who have
to stretch inadequate incomes far.
If articles
were contributed, rather than paid for, who would write for Ms?
If the magazine were less glossy, who would read it? The high circulation
of low-cost magazines like TV DIGEST, MODERN SCREEN, and WOMEN'S DAY
suggests that it is not glossy format and expensively priced articles
that draw readers. Rather, people buy a magazine that responds to a
strong need - wanting to know the week's TV programs, curiosity about
Hollywood gods and goddesses, and a supermarket low-cost women's magazine.
The audience for a national women's liberation magazine has been proven,
so we would like to see Ms adapt its style and format to lower
cost.
BIKINI BEAUTIES BECKON ME
Second,
the Marlboro man, mink coats, Replique tigers, and the Coppertone bikini
beauty all beckon me to spend my money in search of handsome men, when
all I need is a pack of cigarettes or some suntan lotion. Dig it -
the mink coat ad featured a young black woman wearing the coat - "An
exquisite extra-dark natural mink bred only by Great Lakes Mink men
and designed by Geoffrey...”
Yet, before Ms appeared, Gloria Steinem did promise that Ms would
not publish sexist ads. When a woman wrote in to complain that the
Coppertone ad with the bronze blonde in the white bikini was sexist,
the Editor's Note said, "Read the ad copy. It speaks to 'people,' not women."
Since when does the copy seal the product. "However," the
Note continues, "there's disagreement about that ad in the office,
too, especially concerning the model's 'pose.' Please continue to send
us your reactions to the ads; we're forwarding your comments to the
advertisers, as we promised." Come on, Ms how about you
refusing to print sexist ads?
FOR AND BY COLLEGE-EDUCATED WOMEN?
Thirdly,
I noticed that the articles are usually written about and by individual,
middle class, college educated women - "Have One, Adopt One," "Anatomy of an Affair," "Rosalyn Drexler Fights her Fat,"
and "The Housewives' Moment of Truth, " to name a few. The
article “Why Women Fear Success," while an interesting commentary,
is itself based on a study done of undergraduates at the University
of Michigan. The article about fan magazines is not written for women
who regularly read those magazines to show how their sensational lies
feed on women's boredom and loneliness.
Ms. does
not speak to the lives of housewives, married young with three small
kids, a marriage gone sour, and dim, dull job prospects. It does not
deal with the daily lives of waitresses and factory worker. "The
Song of the Shirt", about women garment workers, is a historical
article discussing the conditions in 1867, not present day America.
The implied
snobbery of the magazine maintains and continues the elitism of America's
class society. All women are not born equal. Ms is dangerous
in that it gives many women a double message -"Join with us at
Ms to be a liberated women," but also "You can't be
like us because you didn't go to college, and we put you in the back
of the magazine to prove it."
There is
a kind of intellectual bias in the magazine that suggests the writers
and editors all went to college. The vocabulary in the article would
send a lot of readers to the dictionary, or else into a pit of self-doubt,
once a gain reminded of their "stupidity" for not knowing
a work. In fact, knowing that word's meaning is a fringe benefit of
the class privilege of a college education, not an individual act of
smarts.
Another
choice Ms has made is to walk a cautious line on lesbianism,
featuring only an occasional article written by a prominent lesbian,
for example, Jill Johnston's "The Return of the Amazon Mother"
and "Lesbian Love and Sexuality" by Del Martin and Phyllis
Lyon. Other articles take little notice of lesbian values, and imply
that all women are heterosexual.
LIVELY PERSONAL ARTICLES
A national
magazine of women's liberation is here to stay it seems, and for the
meantime we’ll continue to read Ms The letters to the editor
are enjoyable to read and indicate a wide audience responding to the
magazine. The articles, though limited, are on the whole well-written,
lively, and interesting. Many are personal articles full of anecdotes
out of the author's life, and they read as if the writer is talking
to her readers. Ms avoids long, dull overly analytical articles,
and at the same time tackles serious issues in depth. The many useful
sections of the magazine include the articles on machines (cars, bikes,
sewing machines), references to where to get films and literature mentioned
in articles, a guide to where to get help from selected national women's
groups, and a list of women's movement publications.
The rest
of the women's movement can use Ms as a forum for publishing
its articles and ideas. While changing the aims and content of Ms is
no priority item for radical women's organizations, we would like
to see some changes - basically less appeal to college-educated middle
class women, and broader appeal to all women.
Specifically,
we want to see:
- More articles about collective women's struggles. Feature women
fighting in Ireland and North Vietnam, instead of portraying the women
of Bangladesh as suffering victims. How about an article about a strike
by nurses or telephone operators, as well as the article about the
employees' class action suit against READER'S DIGEST for discrimination
in employment (October, 1972).
- More articles about our common oppressive experiences, like "On
Getting Angry." High school tracking, for instance, hits every
woman in America. Early marriages confine working class and middle
class women in motherhood before they have confidence and experience
in their creative and working abilities.
- Articles on more typical women's jobs, such as waitress, secretary,
nurse, saleswomen, and factory work.
- Attention to how other parts of our culture, such as TV, Hollywood,
and rock’n’roll, oppress women in female stereotypes.
If Ms
really wants to liberate women in America, then our sisters at Ms
have a responsibility to fight the myths and self-destruction that growing
up in a sexist society has brought to all women, not to create a new
journal that carries on half the lies while pretending to end them all.
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