Ms. Magazine Analysis

Lineta Pritchard, on a review for Ms. Magazine: “For the first time you can read a publication that expresses total female sentiment, not sentiment based on some male publisher’s assumption that all women like to read about recipes, beauty tricks, wardrobe wizardry and entertaining,”(qtd. in Pogrebin, “How Do You Spell Ms.”). In 1971, female activists and female writers came together to form a serious, yet compassionate magazine that was controlled and created by strong females. There were many proposed titles for this magazine, many being stereotypical names for women, but the chosen magazine name Ms., was conceived to indicate the inapplicability of a woman’s marital status.“It was an announcement. Using Ms. said, ‘I’m a feminist,” wrote

Magazine’s brutal honesty and their diversity from other women’s magazines is what makes it a threat to other commercial sources. ABC Nightly News anchor, Harry Reasoner, had a four minute feature on Ms. in 1972 when the magazine’s first issue was released. “I’ll give it six issues before they’d run out of things to say,” exclaimed the newscaster (qtd. in Chideya, “‘Ms’ Magazine Turns 35”). Helen Gurley Brown, editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan Magazine expressed her feelings on Ms: “Ms. felt I was the enemy. They said Cosmo was trying to turn women into sex objects. I said ‘I certainly hope so.’ I always said you could be attractive, beautiful, sexual, and you could still run General Motors” (qtd. in Beyette, “The Revolution Has Just Begun”). Commercial industries, such as ABC Nightly News and Cosmopolitan Magazine, feared the new women’s magazine because it fearlessly shed light on critical issues, unlike any other magazine. Rather than writing about sexual appeal, Ms. created a watershed event in the magazine industry by being the first mainstream media source to write about sexual harassment (“Ms. Magazine Celebrates 40th Anniversary”). Ms. set itself apart from the norm, yet again, by publicly releasing appalling reports on domestic violence, abortion, and date rape (Moore, “Ms. Magazine and Wonder Woman 40 Years Later”). Along with other media sources, advertising companies were negligent to fund a magazine that empowered all natural women. Ms.’ 1980 issue cover, featuring Soviet women feminists protesting war in Afghanistan, kept Revlon Inc. from signing a long term advertisement contract with Ms. because the women featured wore no makeup. It took 8 years for a beer ad in the magazine, 10 years for a car ad, and 4 years for airlines because they were unconvinced that women really do travel on business trips (Carmody, “The Media Business-Ms. Magazine Returns with New Spirit, but Without Ads”). Feminine advertising companies were not sponsoring Ms. due to