Gloria Steinem

Gloria Steinem went undercover at the New York Playboy Club in 1963, working as a "Bunny" to report on the degrading conditions for a magazine exposé. It was the assignment that made her famous — and that she spent the next decade trying to escape, because every new piece of work was introduced with a reference to the Bunny story. The irony turned productive: it made her relatable to women who had never attended a protest, and kept her angry in ways that good organizing requires.

In 1972, Steinem co-founded Ms. magazine — the first national women's magazine run by and for women, free from the usual dependence on advertisers who demanded soft content alongside their ads. The preview issue, stapled into New York magazine in December 1971, sold out in eight days. Ms. gave the women's liberation movement a national publication, a record of its arguments, and a readership that extended far beyond campus activists into the mainstream of American women's lives. Steinem edited it for 15 years and remained its most visible ambassador for decades longer.

Steinem's politics extended well beyond gender. She opposed the Vietnam War, co-founded the National Women's Political Caucus and the Women's Media Center, and advocated for racial justice, workers' rights, and Indigenous land rights throughout her career. Her essay collections gave feminist thought a voice that was witty and accessible rather than academic. When she expressed opinions on class and race, she was accused of overreach; her response was characteristically direct: the personal and the political were not separate categories, and they never had been.