Ms. didn’t have to ask me to subscribe or donate to its 50-year anniversary. They had me at ‘Ms.’ Young people and especially females may not know that women used to be either Mrs. or Miss when addressed in letters, documents, news articles, party invitations, awards, etc. They were either called by their husband’s name, such as Mrs. Brandon Fields, or by their publicly implied spinster status, such as Miss Sylvia Hag. Yep, men were Mr. Man in every respectful address, their marital status left unknown, but a woman’s marital status had to be made into a Big Fat Deal. Tired of the hypocrisy and double standard, in the 1970s a lot of us collectively decided: Women don’t have to change their last names anymore just because they’re married. And from now on: Just refer to us as Ms. It’s no one’s busyness if we’re married.
If you can believe it, 50 years ago many people—men and women alike—felt as if we who decided to call ourselves Ms. were saying ‘Go to hell!’ Really, we weren’t. We’re actually a bunch of nice old ladies—yeah, our iconic feminist leader Gloria Steinem, a founder and editor of Ms. Magazine, is marching toward 90—who as younger gals decidedly determined to take charge of our lives and go all out as independent career women.
But for decades being a Ms. had its drawbacks. In the 1980s one of my male college professors always referred to me as Mzz. Bell for some reason. I don’t know how I came across as a die-hard feminist because back then I appeared frilly with long hair meticulously styled and wearing mostly skirts and dresses. Yet this professor marked me as a Ms. He never called his other female students that. Must have been my independent streak, my ability to be a straight shooter, questioning him perhaps, and blunt conversation when talking about dating … because he always asked upfront “How’s your love life, Mzz. Bell?” And stupidly I’d tell him the highs and lows of college dating. Exasperated I recall often concluding about men: “They all want the same thing.”
A long way, baby
Ms. Magazine was a nice staple to see at the checkout aisles among magazines that promoted sex appeal with cover girls in skimpy clothes, glitzy hair and makeup or the dubious tabloids and magazine covers with ideas for creative cakes, home decorating and crocheted thingies. Ms. should have been among US News & World Report and Time. Ms. took itself seriously from the first issue, featuring the cover of Hindu goddess Kali juggling with eight arms all the tasks set upon women (work, house cleaning, ironing, childcare and baby production, cooking, driving errands). Personal fulfillment was not represented, out of the picture and out of the question in the early 1970s.
Ms. went on to report the straight dope about women’s lives. It was different back then. The magazine and being a women’s libber (as liberated women were called—I include myself from age 10 at the magazine’s founding) was often joked about on TV and even preached against in churches. Preachers maintained women who were feminists had a lesbian spirit. I didn’t know what lesbian meant but understood feminists were made out to be homosexual. If you were a feminist in the 1970s, the majority of American males and many women thought you were a man hater, didn’t want to marry, had something wrong with you.
No, after living the life of career woman and proud Ms. (which we can now choose to be called on most applications along with Mr., Mrs. and Miss—a rather recent development in the modern business world—but really, there shouldn’t be a label at all)—there’s nothing wrong with me. But there was a lot wrong with our society. Still is.
That’s why Ms. remains relevant to reporting on strictly women’s issues in the U.S. and around the world. There’s plenty to spotlight. Just off the top of my head, investigative reports should include: still unequal pay for equal work, the not-yet-approved-nationwide Equal Rights Amendment, the pandemic’s unfair burden on mothers with young children, tax laws that support married couples more than single adults, that financial problem for the elderly living on Social Security who lose money if they ever marry, the tremendous backlog of rape cases with DNA evidence still unanalyzed and unprosecuted, the fact that one in every three females have been sexually molested, the recent reversal of federally-protected abortion rights and even employer blocks against contraception, and addressing generational poverty caused mostly by unwanted teen pregnancies.
It’s never been easy living the life of a woman, feminist or not.