She Says, She Says
Two former Ms. editors blame the advertisers, not the glossies
By Kristen Bellstrom
THIS spring, women’s magazines, long
denounced by feminists, dismissed by “serious”
journalists and ignored by intellectuals, found
a new and unlikely critic in Myrna Blyth. With
the publication of her book, “Spin Sisters,” the
former editor in chief of Ladies’ Home Journal
opened fire on the industry where she had been
an insider for more than two decades. Blyth
accused her former media peers of conspiring to
create a culture of victimization and unhappiness
among women. She wrote in her introduction:
“The world of women’s magazines …
nowadays is primarily based on telling women
that their lives … are often too tough for them
to handle and that they should feel very sorry
for themselves.” They accomplish this, she
explained, by hyping the hazards
of women’s lives
and berating readers
with exaggerated
tales of deadly
diseases, toxic
foods and dangerous
products.
She also charged the
magazines with pushing
liberal political agendas,
unrealistic body images and unnecessary
products and services.
The industry has responded by closing ranks, accusing Blyth of trying to reinvent herself as a conservative pundit and noting that she did nothing to address these issues during her editorship. But what about the original critics of these magazines, the early feminists? What do they have to say? To find out, NYRM spoke with two of Ms. magazine’s founding editors, Gloria Steinem and Suzanne Braun Levine. What follows are condensed and edited excerpts from our discussion about Ms., “Spin Sisters” and the latest evolutions of women’s magazines.
GLORIA Steinem, who has been one of the most famous leaders in the women’s movement since the late 1960s, was a journalist long before she became a nationally recognized activist. She traces her interest in the field to her mother, who was an editor at The Toledo Blade. “She used to teach me how to fold sheets of typing paper into columns of three, that’s what they used before they had reporter’s notebooks,” Steinem recalled. She was a freelance writer for such magazines as Esquire and Show before helping create New York in 1968. Steinem founded Ms. in 1971, driven by a desire to tell the stories that were emerging from the women’s movement, stories she knew people wanted to read but that no existing magazines were willing to run. Steinem remained intimately involved with Ms. for decades, and even today occasionally finds time to contribute or consult with its editors. NYRM caught up with her during a rare unscheduled moment; via cell phone in Los Angeles International Airport, where she awaited a flight back to the East Coast.
NYRM: When you started Ms., did you think of
it as a new type of women’s magazine? Did it fit in
an existing genre?
GS: There was no [feminist] genre. First of all,
it had to be controlled by women. Secondly, it
wasn’t about women as consumers, it was about
women as readers. The editors of women’s magazines,
in my experience, are smart, serious people,
who are trying to sneak in a few smart,
serious articles in the midst of food, fashion,
celebrities, beauty … but it’s very difficult for
them to do because the advertisers control the
magazine.
NYRM:When Ms. used to run advertising, was it
a problem for the magazine to keep ads and editorial
separate?
GS: [Ms. advertisers] didn’t control the text.
In fact, most of the advertisers in the beginning
were for products and services that were
also directed at men … and that meant they
were less likely to try to control the text.
Because women’s magazines have always
had—no fault of their own, mind
you—a lower ethical standard. If
Time magazine had to write flattering
articles about General
Motors’ cars to get the ads, it
would be looked down upon.
But this is the standard way
women’s magazines have been
forced to operate. You write nicely
about certain cosmetics and designers
and clothing. When was the last time you saw
an article in women’s magazines saying that
specific manufacturers are exploiting their
workers in sweatshops?
NYRM: Do you think the level of tie-in between
the advertising and the editorial has been consistent?
GS: I think actually it’s gotten worse over time. If you look at magazines like Redbook or
Mademoiselle, they used to have fiction, they
used to have poetry. They don’t anymore,
because advertisers won’t pay to be next to
it. And in addition, there’s been the invention
of magazines that are entirely about
consumerism—whether it’s Martha Stewart
[Living], which is only about products, or
magalogues or catabooks or whatever you
want to call these hybrids that are only
about products.
NYRM: Can the standard women’s magazine
change that situation?
GS: Absolutely. But what one would need to
do is commit oneself to the separation of
church and state, that is, the separation of
ads and editorial. And also create a different
economic pattern, in which the readers pay
more and the advertisers are less the main
support of the magazine. And it works; we
did it, you know. Readers buy paperback
books without ads; they’ll buy magazines.
NYRM: Do you think Ms. has had any influence
on women’s magazines as they now exist?
GS: There are more articles about certain
themes initiated by the women’s movement,
violence against women or international
women’s rights … but those are due
to the editors who sneak in a three-page
article. So the subject matter unconnected
to advertising has changed somewhat, but
there’s very little subject matter unconnected
to advertising.
NYRM: In “Spin Sisters,” Blyth suggests that
these sorts of articles, stories about domestic violence
or sexual abuse, are used by the magazines to
victimize women and create a culture of fear.
GS: I think that’s bullshit. Because these are
real things that happen to women, and it
doesn’t create a culture of fear; it creates a culture
of hope. Because women then see their
experiences written about and they say to
themselves, “I can get help, I can change my
life, I can unite with other women in changing
legislation.” It’s a way of moving forward.
NYRM:Do you think it’s possible to have a feminist
magazine that includes fashion and clothes?
GS: Sure, we wear clothes. (laughs) But one
ought to be able to cover those subjects with
the same amount of service to the reader as
any other subject. So you ought to be able to
write an article about all the great things you
can find in thrift shops. You’re not going to
see that because thrift shops don’t advertise.
NYRM Are young feminists reading Ms.? Is
it effective in speaking to a younger generation?
GS: The median age of [Ms.] readers has
tended to stay the same, sort of early thirties,
which means there are younger readers
and older readers. The younger readers tend
to meet the magazine on campus. But what’s
different is not so much age as that Ms. is a
mostly text magazine. And that means, like
all other mostly text magazines, it skews a
little bit older. But I love the other magazines
too, you know. Bitch is wonderful …
And there should be lots of different kinds of
[feminist] magazines. There should be
choices. The problem is there are very few.
NYRM: Are there any mainstream women’s
magazines that seem to be moving in a positive
direction?
GS: Oprah’s magazine, O, is a step forward,
in the sense that it’s multiracial and also has
articles about subjects that are not for sale.
They are somewhat more about personal
development. I wish they were more about
banding together as a group to make it possible.
But nevertheless, it’s more diverse in
editorial content and imagery than the other
women’s magazines.
NYRM:So what about women’s magazines and
their credibility problem within the journalistic
community?
GS: In the beginning of the “Sex, Lies and
Advertising” essay, there’s an anecdote where
I’m sitting around with a group of male
journalists, and it’s after the so-called fall of
the Soviet government, and a Soviet official
who’s talking to us is saying, “Now we’ll
have to learn from our American friends how
to censor the media because the government
can’t censor it anymore.” And I said,
“Advertising. That’s how you censor it.” And
the other journalists looked at me like a traitor.
(laughs) It’s true of all the media, and
it’s especially true of women’s magazines,
and they said, “Oh, well. Women’s magazines.
Nobody cares about them.” And I said,
wait a minute, we could liberate thousands
of pages for good exposé, political reporting,
fiction, all kinds of things, if we just separated
advertising from editorial.
NYRM: Is this attitude related to the fact that
these magazines are written by and for women?
GS: Any time something only applies to
women, it’s perceived as less important.
However, there is a certain satisfaction in
sneaking up on them in a revolution with all
these magazines they haven’t paid any attention
to. (laughs)
ALTHOUGH Suzanne Braun Levine has
been a journalist and feminist for nearly
forty years, she began her career with no particular
affinity for either. Desperate for her
first post-college job, Levine happened into a
position at the fledgling Seattle magazine. She
took to journalism immediately and went on
to work at a variety of publications, including Mademoiselle, McCall’s and Sexual Behavior,
before becoming managing editor of Ms. in
1972. In 1989, she became editor of the
Columbia Journalism Review, a position she held
until 1996. She recently published “Father
Courage: What Happens When Men Put
Family First,” and just finished work on her
new book, “Inventing the Rest of Our Lives,
Women in Second Adulthood.”
NYRM: How was Ms. different from the magazines
you’d worked at before?
SBL: Ms. developed the most intense, intimate
relationship with its readers. And
because we were writing about what we were
living, editorial meetings were often more
like consciousness-raising groups. Any experience
that any woman on the staff, or anybody
she ever knew, reported was possible
material for the magazine. Our mandate was
so enormous. And every issue was different;
that’s the big difference
between Ms. and any
other magazine. It
was as random as
life.
NYRM: You’ve
said that when
you first joined
Ms., you didn’t see
yourself as a feminist. So
what motivated you to go work
at a feminist magazine?
SBL: I wanted to be a managing editor. I desperately
wanted that. When Ms. came out, I
read it right away, and I was impressed. I was
scared of some of the things—I remember
there was something about not shaving your
legs that freaked me out. But there were some
things that really got to me. In the preview
issue, which I didn’t work on, there was a list
of celebrities who’d signed their names saying
that they’d had illegal abortions. And there was
a coupon that you could fill out if you had had
one, too. So I filled it out. By the time those
coupons were being opened, to print the
names, I was working there.
NYRM: Was it your experience that journalists
didn’t take women’s magazines seriously?
SBL: I saw that the most with the American
Society of Magazine Editors. I ran the magazine
awards program for a lot of years and saw
absolutely clearly, that in the judging process,
women’s magazines were not taken seriously.
There would be an incredibly concise, wellresearched,
hard-hitting piece about some kind
of medical breakthrough or something—with
bullets, or boxes and stuff. And you could see
that judges, especially the men, would say,
well, how can this compare with a New Yorker
piece that’s 20,000 words? It was doing important
reporting, but it was too “girlie.”
NYRM:Have you noticed any trends in the amount
of serious, feminist content that appears in women’s
magazines?
SBL: I think it’s more diffused. You can frequently
find a story [in a general interest magazine]
that would only have appeared in a
woman’s magazine. Discussion about women
leaving their jobs to stay home or marrying
late—all of these sort of demographic stories
are considered news by every publication. If
you look at The New York Times even, there was
a time when there was never a woman’s story,
and you look now at the business pages and you
see stories about women executives. And then
there’s this magazine that I write for called
MORE magazine, which was started for women
over 40. Its not quite acknowledging age as
much as it claims to, but they have managed to
get the advertisers, and they have
managed to get older
women models
and that’s a total revolution. You
can’t imagine what a breakthrough
that is, to have a woman with gray
hair, or one wrinkle!
NYRM: In “Spin Sisters,” Blyth suggests that the
stories women’s magazines publish about issues like
domestic violence, health risks and sexual harassment
encourage women to view themselves as victims.
What’s your take on these articles?
SBL: When you think that this is all material
that is a life experience that was never written
about until twenty years ago, and that women
are still being abused, how can you say that it’s
old news or that it’s depressing? I do think that
it’s very important for any magazine that’s trying
to tell the truth about women to keep a
component of good news and fun. But I don’t
think that those stories make women feel like
victims. I think they empower women to
understand that they’re not alone, they have
rights, there are organizations that will help
them. I think the idea that it’s spreading a culture
of victimization is ridiculous.
NYRM: I noticed that Blyth places most of the
blame on the women editors, rather than the owners
and publishers, who are ultimately more powerful.
SBL: Absolutely. Women who are editors of
magazines now have much less power than the
editors of the women’s magazines that we were
rebelling against then. I think Myrna’s got it
completely wrong. It’s not a liberal conspiracy;
it’s an advertising conspiracy. You’re not going
to be able to sell a beauty product to somebody
who already feels she’s beautiful.
NYRM: Do you think it’s possible for a magazine
to have a feminist perspective and also have fashion
spreads and articles on beauty products?
SBL: I think it’s possible to have a feminist
magazine that includes people who like fashion
and who talk about how they like fashion. I
guess I don’t really think you can show fashion
or pitch fashion.
NYRM:Is there some particular change you would
like to see in women’s magazines?
SBL: The one area where I wish women’s magazines
would do a better job is between the
generations. This is my new obsession. It seems
to me that your generation and my generation
are having a very hard time connecting. I think
that’s an area where women’s magazines could
be really breaking new ground and performing
an important service.
NYRM: It seems that magazines are becoming
increasingly “niche.” Does that contribute to
this problem? Even within a single generation
magazines are divided—one
for married women, one for single
women, one for mothers—
SBL: Exactly. So you lose touch
with each other. For the woman
who is currently single, but one
day will be married or have children,
why should you have to switch
communities?
NYRM: Do you think Ms. has a hard time
attracting younger women? If so, why?
SBL: Younger women think of it as their
mothers’ magazine. The new owners, the Fund
for the Feminist Majority, have a great campus
network, and they may be able to change
things. But it’s very hard to get over that “your
father’s Oldsmobile” sort of image.
NYRM:Will Ms. still exist in thirty or forty years?
SBL: I think there will be a place for such a
magazine. What I am interested in now is what
I call second adulthood, women of my generation
who have just crossed the line that used
to determine that they were going to become
invisible—infertile, invisible, ineffectual. And
here comes a generation of women who are raring
to go. They have twenty-five years ahead
of them. This is a new kind of women’s experience,
and that’s a story for women’s magazines.
It’s news. I mean Social Security … and
sexuality and the gender gap and political
agendas—there’s a whole lot to write.