Gloria Steinem – Don't Gel Too Soon

From Bunny to Brave Leader of Us All. Happy Birthday Gloria!

Gloria in her "underground" Playboy Bunny garb for her 1963 expose in SHOW Magazine. — Gloria in her “underground” Playboy Bunny garb for her 1963 expose in SHOW Magazine.

I was 17 the first time I saw this, a Pittsburgh kid with grand ambitions for worldliness and intellectual heft and the ability to do the New York Times crossword puzzle in ink; so many that I actually subscribed to magazines like The Saturday Review, The New Yorker and SHOW: the Magazine of the Arts, where Gloria’s famous Playboy Club expose first appeared.

My reaction: “What a showboat, dumb thing to do!” My (never-less-than-honest) mother responded “You’re just jealous!” And she was right. Gloria had done something I so wanted to do – and so early in her career! How could I ever get from a Monongahela River mill town to that?

I never dreamed that Gloria, too, came from an industrial town – Toledo – much less that we would both have attended the same college, that I would hear her speak at my sister’s Smith graduation, and that, amazingly, I would actually come to know this remarkable woman. And here, on her 80th birthday, is what I learned:

In 1974, I told one of Ms’ spectacular co-founders how much I admired her. She replied “That’s how I feel about Gloria.” Heroes have heroes too, and hers was Gloria.

In 1982, for Ms. Magazine‘s 10th birthday, I produced an anniversary story called “A Day in the Life of Gloria Steinem” for the Today Show. The camera crew and I took a train from Penn Station to Philadelphia with her and followed her from event to event, including a couple of large public appearances. At least once every couple of minutes, a woman would walk up to her to thank her for something: courage, perspective, “you changed my life.”

Every time, every interruption, every stop on the street or in the hotel lobby or the ball room or the train, she treated each woman as if she were the first one she’d ever met. She listened intently. She responded in a very personal way. Every time.

To Gloria, every woman: each of us, all of us, has mattered to her. We are not just a formidable, critical cause, we are women who one by one by one have been living the lives women live, unequal, unheralded, amazing lives.

It is this that has made her the most remarkable of leaders, of change agents and of women. Never, in all the marches and speeches and honors and sadnesses has she forgotten that each one of us is all of us. She is not just a leader, she is a shining example. And inside each of us, we know it.

Happy Birthday Gloria – and thanks, from all of us here now and the girls and women yet to come.

Take a look at this MAKERS profile, too.

For Ellie Greenwich, Who Really WAS Leader of the Pack, With Thanks

When our kids were little, we used to sing. All the time. And early on, many of the songs they loved were written by this woman: Ellie Greenwich. She was a tough cookie I think. She was also one of the great song writers of her generation. Ever heard Be My Baby? (“Bee my, bee my bay bee, my one and only baybee…”) Chapel of Love? (“Goin’ to the Cha pull and we’re gonna’ get ma a a reed”) River Deep, Mountain High ?(“Do I love you my oh my, river deep, mountain high” that was Tina Turner.) Ever hear of girl groups? Then you’ve heard of Ellie Greenwich. There’s a reason she’s in the Song Writers Hall of Fame. She died August 26, the same day as Senator Kennedy, so I’m a little late, but I have a lot to thank her for.

Freshman year we lived in a dorm with a big porch facing Seelye Hall, the main classroom building. We’d put our stereo speakers in the windows over the porch and blasted whatever we liked at the time, especially in the spring, as the snow melted and spirits rose. One of our classics was “Leader of the Pack.” All of us, the Gang of Four as we were then, could re relied upon, for no reason, to belt out “Hey there, where’d you meet him?” to which another would reply (in song, of course, and I know you know this) “I met him at the candy stoh – ore.” It sounds so silly, doesn’t it? But it wasn’t.

The tribal music Greenwich gave us was alive with the spirit that was all of us, before the War tore everything apart, when we just had fun and our minds were full of ideas and ambitions, and songs, and romantic daydreams, and songs, and learning how to be grown ups (slowly) and songs. And her songs were so universal, so full of a love of living and living for love – way before we even heard of our sister alums Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan. Somehow, as things became more serious, Doo Wa Diddy Diddy Dum Diddy Doo didn’t flow off the tongue so easily. That’s why I was so glad when a Broadway musical, Leader of the Pack, opened in the 80’s and gave us another chance – and a great cast album, full of many of her greatest songs.

My own favorite is all tangled up in a memory. It was a sunny fall day and my six-year-old and I were walking down a street someplace in the Village. And we were arm-in-arm. And our walk had a rhythm – right feet at the same time, left feet at the same time, just the two of us. And the rhythm? It came because, together, crossing the nearly 30 years between us, together, we were singing –Da Doo Ron Ron.”

Not quite this great, but not bad, either. So thanks Ellie. And the rest of you – see for yourselves.

G-L-O-R-I-A! Happy Birthday Gloria Steinem

I have known Gloria Steinem for a very long time. March 25th was her birthday and she is an amazing seventy-five years old! I've admired her since my teens. There used to be a magazine called SHOW, kind of a cross between Vanity Fair and New York Magazine. In 1963, when I was a senior in high school, Gloria published a piece there called "I Was a Playboy Bunny." Describing her three weeks as an "undercover" Bunny, the piece launched her career. I remember saying something half derogatory about it — remember I was 17 — and my mother saying to me "You're just jealous." She was right. What a great job, what an elegant woman, offers from magazines, everything I was determined to have for myself – she'd done it. If she could get out of Toledo, I could get out of Pittsburgh. (I did.)

I've had my eye on her ever since and as she helped to lead all of us out of the wilderness I felt a special ownership since we both attended Smith College. In those years, as I became more involved in what would be called the Second Wave of Feminism, Gloria was a spearhead for most of it. In fact, I once told a colleague of hers, a well-respected writer herself, how much I admired her. Her response "The way you feel about me? That's how I feel about Gloria."

On the tenth anniversary of Ms. Magazine, which Gloria had helped to found, I produced a series for The Today Show . For one segment, a camera crew and I followed her on a day-long trip to Philadelphia to make a speech. That was when I realized that her role was larger, and more personal, than I had understood.

Here's what happened: We got on the Metroliner in Penn Station and a woman came up to us to tell Gloria how she had changed her life. We arrived in Philadelphia and, right in the station, another women did the same. So it was all through the day. At the evening event, she could barely make her way through the room as an endless stream of women approached to thank her, express admiration, just talk to her. Through all of it, woman after woman after woman, she was unfailingly courteous and engaged. Each was the only one she was talking to. None was made to feel out of place or inappropriate. I don't know about you, but that's tough for a public person to do; Gloria has done it for years. In other words, she wasn't leading Feminism, she was being Feminism.

It's been like that ever since. In the public eye or out, hugely famous or less famous, she's always been there to keep the focus where it belongs and carry us further toward equality, and it's always been about all of us, not her. It's been an honor to know her, even a little bit, and to see personally that she's not just a fine leader, she's a fine person. Happy Birthday Gloria (a little bit late). We're lucky to have you.