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In the winter of 1972, the first issue of Ms. magazine hit the newsstands. For some activists in the women's movement, the birth of this new publication heralded feminism's coming of age; for others, it signaled the capitulation of the women's movement to crass commercialism. But whatever its critical reception, Ms. quickly gained national success, selling out its first issue in only eight days and becoming a popular icon of the women's movement almost immediately. Amy Erdman Farrell traces the history of Ms. from its pathbreaking origins in 1972 to its final commercial issue in 1989. Drawing on interviews with former editors, archival materials, and the text of Ms. itself, she examines the magazine's efforts to forge an oppositional politics within the context of commercial culture. While its status as a feminist and mass media magazine gave Ms. the power to move in circles unavailable to smaller, more radical feminist periodicals, it also created competing and conflicting pressures, says Farrell. She examines the complicated decisions made by the Ms. staff as they negotiated the multiple--frequently incompatible--demands of advertisers, readers, and the various and changing constituencies of the feminist movement. An engrossing and objective account, Yours in Sisterhood illuminates the significant yet difficult connections between commercial culture and social movements. It reveals a complex, often contradictory magazine that was a major force in the contemporary feminist movement.
- Sales Rank: #1651805 in Books
- Published on: 1998-09-21
- Released on: 1998-09-21
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.26" h x .62" w x 6.18" l, .91 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 248 pages
From Publishers Weekly
There have been a number of books recently on the history of Ms. magazine. But unlike most of the others, Farrell's has a strong critical approach, a point of view and a sharp focus. Farrell doesn't simply run down a list of accomplishments, but examines whether or not the magazine kept its promise of bringing feminism to the masses. After a chronological account of the magazine's history, Farrell concludes with a lively section focused on readers' letters. As Farrell points out, these stand as the strongest proof that readers saw Ms. as something more than the usual magazine, and her analysis of what was published and what was not skillfully dissects that relationship. Sometimes accusatory ("I don't believe you, Ms. Magazine. In sisterhood??????") and sometimes laudatory, the letters are consistently engaged. Many readers were concerned with advertising, which was debated from the magazine's inception until its present-day incarnation as a subscription-only publication free of ads. Farrell reports that more than 100 readers sent an ad (for a Lady Bic Shaver) from Ms. itself to the magazine's "No Comment" section, which features sexist media portrayals. Farrell, a professor of American studies and women's studies, has plenty of interesting information and even opinions often lost in her academic jargon ("scholars have paid little attention to the role of popular culture in forming a collective oppositional consciousness"). It's too bad that a book examining the dissemination of "popular feminism" couldn't have a more accessible style.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Ms. magazine celebrated its 25th birthday in 1997 and has now been the subject of two books. Mary Thom's Inside Ms. (LJ 7/97) is a history of the magazine from an insider's point of view; Farrell (American studies/women's studies, Dickinson Coll.) approaches Ms. from an academic perspective, exploring the contradictions of its being a mass-market women's magazine with an explicitly feminist agenda. Ms. staff attempted to balance the demands of advertisers with the expectations of feminists, often to the dissatisfaction of both. In particular, advertising demands forced editors to focus on change at the individual level rather than advocating sweeping social reform. Farrell looks at Ms. in its social and economic context, using both primary and secondary sources to good advantage. This readable, scholarly book complements Thom's and belongs in all academic libraries as well as public libraries with women's studies collections.?Judy Solberg, George Washington Univ., Takoma Park, MD
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
It was a brave experiment: a feminist magazine, designed to provide an open forum for women, positioned on newsstands around the country next to more traditional women's magazines. For 17 years (1972^-89), Ms. struggled in the commercial marketplace. (Since 1990, it has been supported by higher subscription rates, rather than by advertising.) Farrell traces Ms.' history as a commercial publication and the key tensions it faced: a "precarious union of feminism and capitalism"; a complex relationship with its readers; and the need to "accommodate two strands of feminism, one emphasizing individual liberty, the other . . . shared sisterhood." Basing her study on interviews with Ms. staffers, archival collections of Ms.' editorial files, and both published and unpublished letters from readers, Farrell examines the magazine's goals, victories, and inadequacies. In the end, Farrell concludes that, although the economics of the marketplace and the desire for a "truly participatory, democratic, pluralistic feminist movement are mutually exclusive," women need more "hybrids like Ms." to challenge popular culture's gender stereotypes. Mary Carroll
Most helpful customer reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Elegant analysis of timely topic
By A Customer
This is a wonderful book providing a fresh perspective on the history of this all important magazine. Farrell lucidly analyzes the tensions that this publication faced as it became the most recognized publication to emerge out of the feminist movement in the United States over the past 30 years. She coins the term "popular feminism" in this book to describe what Ms. set out to accomplish. She uses this term seriously and addresses its implications with care, neither condemning the magazine or its publishers for seeking a mass audience, nor naively celebrating Ms. as a "true" mouthpiece of women everywhere. On the contrary, her text reveals the complexity of this idea: the difficult, and ultimately impossible, negotiations between commercial and social interests that the magazine attempted to negotiate, the possibilities created by a mass media periodical that addressed its audiences as political subjects, and the claim that readers made to make the magazine their own. Farrell's brilliant account of the history of Ms. comes at an important time as the publication has recently hit hard times. Some have argued that the magazine serves no useful purpose anymore, even that feminism is dead. After reading Farrell's book, it is clear to me that neither is true, and that both Ms. and feminism are involved in complex cultural dialogues and are continually evolving.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
AN INSIGHTFUL AND OBJECTIVE HISTORY OF A “MORE THAN JUST A MAGAZINE” PUBLICATION
By Steven H Propp
Amy Erdman Farrell has also written Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture.
She wrote in the Introduction to this 1998 book, “This book explores the history of Ms. magazine, from its origins in 1971 to its final commercial issue in 1989. The story of Ms. magazine is a compelling one… It is a story of dedicated editors and writers, of courageous staff members who worked to convince large and small corporations to believe in a new kind of magazine, of articulate and stubborn readers who insisted that the magazine live up to its promise to be a resource for the women’s movement… the story of Ms. is the story of the mainstreaming of feminism in the 1970s and 1980s, as the issues facing this magazine mirrored the dilemmas and advances encountered by so many feminist organizations in these decades. Moreover, the history of Ms. is about the creation of popular feminism itself, the experimental and daring attempt by a number of women’s movement activists to engage a mass audience using the commercial media as their vehicle… the history of Ms. is… about the possibilities and limitations of forging an oppositional politics within the context of commercial culture… I argue that the history of Ms. … can be seen as a dialogue among the editors, writers, advertisers, and readers as to whom the magazine should speak, for whom it should speak, and to whom… it should belong.” (Pg. 1-2)
Later, she adds, “The story of Ms. magazine is a narrative neither of decline nor of success… The choice by the Ms. founders to create a feminist mass media periodical… was a bold experiment… Its history teaches us about the gains and losses inherent in creating a popular feminism.” (Pg. 14)
She acknowledges, “I do not come to this work as one who was an avid reader of Ms. Magazine herself. When Ms. first came out in 1972 I was in elementary school; my mother never bought or discussed the magazine… When I first closely read Ms. in graduate school, finding it on the tables outside the Feminist Studies offices, I considered myself familiar with it. Ms. was simply part of the cultural landscape in which I grew up… That ‘easy familiarity’ I felt with the magazine, however, gave me my earliest impressions of the magazine---as a transparent example of ‘liberal feminism,’ as a magazine that had … [moved] from its early ‘radical’ origins to its corrupt commercial status in the late 1980s. Quickly, however, those early, false impressions gave way … as I read issue after issue of the magazine. I came to this project… as a member of the next generation… I refused the position of the daughter who ignorantly takes for granted the work of her feminist foremothers.” (Pg. 13)
She explains that Gloria Steinem and several other women met to “pursue the dream of a mass-produced feminist magazine for women. When Steinem began… she imagined launching a newsletter for women activists, not a crossover mass media periodical, one that was both political and commercial. Together [Elizabeth Forsling] Harris and [Patricia] Carbine persuaded Steinem that she should transform her goal from a newsletter to a magazine, one that would compete on the newsstands with … popular women’s magazines… a women’s movement magazine could offer a mass circulation voice for feminism and could push more mainstream women’s magazines---and the industry surrounding them---to change. Steinem finally acquiesced… It was a daring move, particularly considering the history of women’s magazines, which were clearly designed … not for politically minded women wanting to change the world.” (Pg. 27-28)
She suggests, “The founders of Ms. never rejected the institution of the mainstream women’s magazine. Rather, they sought to reclaim and revise it, to make it a resource for women in the movement. Likewise, they never rejected the Manhattan publishing industry but attempted to infiltrate it, to stake out a territory for feminists within the commercial publishing world and to shake it up a bit, make it … more answerable to women as writers, editors, publishers, and readers… This was to be a ‘real’ Madison Avenue magazine, but one that was women-centered, woman-controlled, and run in a fashion as egalitarian as possible.” (Pg. 44)
She points out, “[Ms.’s] Editors strongly refuted those who argued that the emphasis of the need to change female identity was simply a call to duplicate masculine identity… they rejected all assertions that the movement would ‘make women into men.’ … In their rejection of the masculine sphere, however, editors simultaneously evoked a superior female culture… Ms.’s focus on personal change … was rooted in an understanding of sisterhood, of underlying female culture and female superiority that would help to revolutionize our society.” (Pg. 70)
She states, “Among the constituencies that accused Ms. of misrepresentation and lack of coverage were full-time mothers and housewives. Throughout its history, Ms. grappled with the dilemma of what kind of coverage to give to housewives and how to reach this audience. Certainly, the questions raised by these debates about housewives belied the notion any notion that Ms. would be able to encompass the experiences and points of view of all women.” (Pg. 74)
She recounts, “In late 1972, the founders decided to incorporate the new Ms. Foundation for Women, despite the lack of profits forthcoming from the magazine… Although … the entire Ms. staff were optimistic about Ms.’s profit-making potential, the magazine failed to every make the money needed to support the foundation… This is not to say, however, that the magazine failed to support the foundation in any way; most obviously, it provided the name recognition of a feminist institution… By the middle of the decade, however, it became clear that the foundation would be on its own to raise funds.” (Pg. 90-91)
She notes, “From its origins, Ms. was primarily a white organization, speaking to and emerging from the white women’s movement… its limitations were clear once one began dealing with the real diversity of the magazine’s staff. Correspondence between Margaret Sloan and the Ms. staff in the early 1970s, for instance, highlights some of the strain she felt as a black woman working for Ms. … her memo expressed… anger at her coworkers’ inability to understand her life and the demands placed upon her as an African American woman. Sloan left Ms. in 1975.” (Pg. 93-94)
She acknowledges, “While Ms. did not shy away from feminist discussions and authors in the 1980s, it did redirect the packaging of those discussions. Ms. became less explicitly a magazine for the women’s movement and more a magazine for women… In the context of the conservative 1980s, this refocusing enabled Ms. to mask its oppositional perspectives so that it could fit on the newsstands with other women’s magazines and continue to solicit advertisements from companies who were skittish about buying space in a ‘political’ magazine. Thus, an increasingly mass media ‘look’… coexisted with reviews of feminist films and books, feminist analyses of contemporary issues, and the continued outpourings from readers. Ms. maintained a space for feminism within a public, commercial realm but, in transforming its shape, allowed the commodified vision of feminism to take center stage.” (Pg. 114-115)
She comments, “the problems Ms. encountered … raise numerous questions about who women were and what the movement was. The letters written to Ms. force us to abandon any notion of a universally shared experience of womanhood and sometimes suggest there was little common ground among women in the 1970s and 1980s. What is significant in terms of popular culture studies is the way so many women continued to claim this text, despite its limitations.” (Pg. 169)
She points out, “For many readers… The ads provided the most tangible evidence that the magazine did not belong to the readers but to those who paid for it---the advertisers. Readers’ dissatisfaction … can be seen most clearly in the letters concerning cigarette and alcohol ads… most readers… were particularly angry that cigarette and alcohol ads continued to show up in a magazine where editors had promised to refuse to advertise products dangerous to women… [A] Newsweek article singled Ms. out… pointing out that it had never had a full-length feature on women and smoking and that Steinem herself was a smoker… Like Steinem’s defense that she smoked but did not inhale, Ms. attempted to argue that it could accept advertising but not be affected by it.” (Pg. 174-175)
She suggests, “While a Ms. editor [Anne Summers] explicitly refusing the label of feminism for Ms. may seem heretical, from the perspective of its nearly two-decade history it seems less shocking. An essential part of the Ms. legacy was always to reach out to those who wouldn’t necessarily call themselves feminists, to those who believed in feminism’s major tenets but did not embrace it as an identity… But it was not until Fairfax, Inc… took over that this attempt to avoid ‘feminism’ became an explicit policy… to refuse the identity of ‘feminism’ in the name of reaching the most readers.” (Pg. 188)
She concludes, “At its best, Ms. worked to foster this kind of unison in diversity, particularly in the way it encouraged dialogue, interaction with readers, and the voices of many women. At its worst, Ms. spoke more for the concerns of advertisers than for the women across the nation it promised to speak for and to. This, of course, is because the magazine not only had to struggle to create a common feminism but also to articulate it within the realm of commercial media… the commercial matrix sharply curtailed its ability to be explicitly political. Now outside the commercial setting, the new Ms. appears to have lost it ‘popularity,’ its ability to speak to and mobilize a wide range of people. The elitism of the alternative rather than the censorship of the commercial now constrains Ms. … I am pessimistic because the history of Ms. makes clear the fundamental incompatibility of commercialism and feminism… then why am I insistent that we need more experiments like Ms.? … the realm of popular culture … is the most powerful arena in which ideas are created and circulated. To abdicate this space means that feminists will not have access to this important terrain… Hybrids like Ms. will not cure our problems, but they provide crucial sites of intervention we dare not give up.” (Pg. 196-197)
This is an excellent overview of the magazine (although one wishes Farrell had continued the history past 1989). More “critical” than books such as Inside Ms.: 25 Years of the Magazine and the Feminist Movement and Letters to Ms., 1972-1987, this book will be “must reading” for anyone interested in Ms. magazine, and its influence on the women’s movement, and on society.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
AN INSIGHTFUL AND OBJECTIVE HISTORY OF A “MORE THAN JUST A MAGAZINE” PUBLICATION
By Steven H Propp
Amy Erdman Farrell has also written Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture.
She wrote in the Introduction to this 1998 book, “This book explores the history of Ms. magazine, from its origins in 1971 to its final commercial issue in 1989. The story of Ms. magazine is a compelling one… It is a story of dedicated editors and writers, of courageous staff members who worked to convince large and small corporations to believe in a new kind of magazine, of articulate and stubborn readers who insisted that the magazine live up to its promise to be a resource for the women’s movement… the story of Ms. is the story of the mainstreaming of feminism in the 1970s and 1980s, as the issues facing this magazine mirrored the dilemmas and advances encountered by so many feminist organizations in these decades. Moreover, the history of Ms. is about the creation of popular feminism itself, the experimental and daring attempt by a number of women’s movement activists to engage a mass audience using the commercial media as their vehicle… the history of Ms. is… about the possibilities and limitations of forging an oppositional politics within the context of commercial culture… I argue that the history of Ms. … can be seen as a dialogue among the editors, writers, advertisers, and readers as to whom the magazine should speak, for whom it should speak, and to whom… it should belong.” (Pg. 1-2)
Later, she adds, “The story of Ms. magazine is a narrative neither of decline nor of success… The choice by the Ms. founders to create a feminist mass media periodical… was a bold experiment… Its history teaches us about the gains and losses inherent in creating a popular feminism.” (Pg. 14)
She acknowledges, “I do not come to this work as one who was an avid reader of Ms. Magazine herself. When Ms. first came out in 1972 I was in elementary school; my mother never bought or discussed the magazine… When I first closely read Ms. in graduate school, finding it on the tables outside the Feminist Studies offices, I considered myself familiar with it. Ms. was simply part of the cultural landscape in which I grew up… That ‘easy familiarity’ I felt with the magazine, however, gave me my earliest impressions of the magazine---as a transparent example of ‘liberal feminism,’ as a magazine that had … [moved] from its early ‘radical’ origins to its corrupt commercial status in the late 1980s. Quickly, however, those early, false impressions gave way … as I read issue after issue of the magazine. I came to this project… as a member of the next generation… I refused the position of the daughter who ignorantly takes for granted the work of her feminist foremothers.” (Pg. 13)
She explains that Gloria Steinem and several other women met to “pursue the dream of a mass-produced feminist magazine for women. When Steinem began… she imagined launching a newsletter for women activists, not a crossover mass media periodical, one that was both political and commercial. Together [Elizabeth Forsling] Harris and [Patricia] Carbine persuaded Steinem that she should transform her goal from a newsletter to a magazine, one that would compete on the newsstands with … popular women’s magazines… a women’s movement magazine could offer a mass circulation voice for feminism and could push more mainstream women’s magazines---and the industry surrounding them---to change. Steinem finally acquiesced… It was a daring move, particularly considering the history of women’s magazines, which were clearly designed … not for politically minded women wanting to change the world.” (Pg. 27-28)
She suggests, “The founders of Ms. never rejected the institution of the mainstream women’s magazine. Rather, they sought to reclaim and revise it, to make it a resource for women in the movement. Likewise, they never rejected the Manhattan publishing industry but attempted to infiltrate it, to stake out a territory for feminists within the commercial publishing world and to shake it up a bit, make it … more answerable to women as writers, editors, publishers, and readers… This was to be a ‘real’ Madison Avenue magazine, but one that was women-centered, woman-controlled, and run in a fashion as egalitarian as possible.” (Pg. 44)
She points out, “[Ms.’s] Editors strongly refuted those who argued that the emphasis of the need to change female identity was simply a call to duplicate masculine identity… they rejected all assertions that the movement would ‘make women into men.’ … In their rejection of the masculine sphere, however, editors simultaneously evoked a superior female culture… Ms.’s focus on personal change … was rooted in an understanding of sisterhood, of underlying female culture and female superiority that would help to revolutionize our society.” (Pg. 70)
She states, “Among the constituencies that accused Ms. of misrepresentation and lack of coverage were full-time mothers and housewives. Throughout its history, Ms. grappled with the dilemma of what kind of coverage to give to housewives and how to reach this audience. Certainly, the questions raised by these debates about housewives belied the notion any notion that Ms. would be able to encompass the experiences and points of view of all women.” (Pg. 74)
She recounts, “In late 1972, the founders decided to incorporate the new Ms. Foundation for Women, despite the lack of profits forthcoming from the magazine… Although … the entire Ms. staff were optimistic about Ms.’s profit-making potential, the magazine failed to every make the money needed to support the foundation… This is not to say, however, that the magazine failed to support the foundation in any way; most obviously, it provided the name recognition of a feminist institution… By the middle of the decade, however, it became clear that the foundation would be on its own to raise funds.” (Pg. 90-91)
She notes, “From its origins, Ms. was primarily a white organization, speaking to and emerging from the white women’s movement… its limitations were clear once one began dealing with the real diversity of the magazine’s staff. Correspondence between Margaret Sloan and the Ms. staff in the early 1970s, for instance, highlights some of the strain she felt as a black woman working for Ms. … her memo expressed… anger at her coworkers’ inability to understand her life and the demands placed upon her as an African American woman. Sloan left Ms. in 1975.” (Pg. 93-94)
She acknowledges, “While Ms. did not shy away from feminist discussions and authors in the 1980s, it did redirect the packaging of those discussions. Ms. became less explicitly a magazine for the women’s movement and more a magazine for women… In the context of the conservative 1980s, this refocusing enabled Ms. to mask its oppositional perspectives so that it could fit on the newsstands with other women’s magazines and continue to solicit advertisements from companies who were skittish about buying space in a ‘political’ magazine. Thus, an increasingly mass media ‘look’… coexisted with reviews of feminist films and books, feminist analyses of contemporary issues, and the continued outpourings from readers. Ms. maintained a space for feminism within a public, commercial realm but, in transforming its shape, allowed the commodified vision of feminism to take center stage.” (Pg. 114-115)
She comments, “the problems Ms. encountered … raise numerous questions about who women were and what the movement was. The letters written to Ms. force us to abandon any notion of a universally shared experience of womanhood and sometimes suggest there was little common ground among women in the 1970s and 1980s. What is significant in terms of popular culture studies is the way so many women continued to claim this text, despite its limitations.” (Pg. 169)
She points out, “For many readers… The ads provided the most tangible evidence that the magazine did not belong to the readers but to those who paid for it---the advertisers. Readers’ dissatisfaction … can be seen most clearly in the letters concerning cigarette and alcohol ads… most readers… were particularly angry that cigarette and alcohol ads continued to show up in a magazine where editors had promised to refuse to advertise products dangerous to women… [A] Newsweek article singled Ms. out… pointing out that it had never had a full-length feature on women and smoking and that Steinem herself was a smoker… Like Steinem’s defense that she smoked but did not inhale, Ms. attempted to argue that it could accept advertising but not be affected by it.” (Pg. 174-175)
She suggests, “While a Ms. editor [Anne Summers] explicitly refusing the label of feminism for Ms. may seem heretical, from the perspective of its nearly two-decade history it seems less shocking. An essential part of the Ms. legacy was always to reach out to those who wouldn’t necessarily call themselves feminists, to those who believed in feminism’s major tenets but did not embrace it as an identity… But it was not until Fairfax, Inc… took over that this attempt to avoid ‘feminism’ became an explicit policy… to refuse the identity of ‘feminism’ in the name of reaching the most readers.” (Pg. 188)
She concludes, “At its best, Ms. worked to foster this kind of unison in diversity, particularly in the way it encouraged dialogue, interaction with readers, and the voices of many women. At its worst, Ms. spoke more for the concerns of advertisers than for the women across the nation it promised to speak for and to. This, of course, is because the magazine not only had to struggle to create a common feminism but also to articulate it within the realm of commercial media… the commercial matrix sharply curtailed its ability to be explicitly political. Now outside the commercial setting, the new Ms. appears to have lost it ‘popularity,’ its ability to speak to and mobilize a wide range of people. The elitism of the alternative rather than the censorship of the commercial now constrains Ms. … I am pessimistic because the history of Ms. makes clear the fundamental incompatibility of commercialism and feminism… then why am I insistent that we need more experiments like Ms.? … the realm of popular culture … is the most powerful arena in which ideas are created and circulated. To abdicate this space means that feminists will not have access to this important terrain… Hybrids like Ms. will not cure our problems, but they provide crucial sites of intervention we dare not give up.” (Pg. 196-197)
This is an excellent overview of the magazine (although one wishes Farrell had continued the history past 1989). More “critical” than books such as Inside Ms.: 25 Years of the Magazine and the Feminist Movement and Letters to Ms., 1972-1987, this book will be “must reading” for anyone interested in Ms. magazine, and its influence on the women’s movement, and on society.
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