What We Left Behind: Girdles, Silence and Illegal Abortion

When I went to work at Ms. in 1972, I wore a matching pink skirt and blouse—and a girdle. I had just gotten married and was, therefore, not able to get a bank loan without my husband’s approval. I had given up playing basketball (half-court for girls) in college because no coach or court could be found. [...]

It’s a Dress, Not a Yes

“It’s a dress, not a yes,” is a rallying cry at the SlutWalk marches, which demand an end to rape and victim blaming. The movement started in January 2011, when a Toronto constable warned students that to avoid getting raped they shouldn’t dress like sluts. Within months, anti-rape activists began taking to the streets in [...]

Whose Vagina Is It, Anyway?

Q: I’m a 32-year-old woman being driven up the wall by my fiancé always saying that he can tell I’m playing with my toys when he’s at work because I’m loose that day. I swear to him up and down that I haven’t, and even tell him the last time that I have done something [...]

If He Could Get a “Hot” Girl, Why Would He Want a Fat Girl?

In honor of Love Your Body Day (Wednesday, October 16), sex-and-relationships columnist Heather Corinna takes on standards of desirability around weight. Q: I’m very pretty, but overweight. Close to 200 lbs. A guy has expressed serious romantic interest in me. I know he’s usually attracted to much smaller girls. I find it very difficult to believe [...]

We Are the 99%, Too: Creating a Feminist Space Within Occupy Wall Street

As most people know by now, something big is happening on the streets of New York City. It began on September 17, where a growing number of protestors began occupying Wall Street, many of them camping out in Liberty Plaza. Though first largely ignored by the media, Occupy Wall Street has gained steadily increasing attention—especially [...]

Pan Am: Will Women Take Flight?

Though I agree with Nancy Franklin of the New Yorker that you can’t judge a show by its pilot, I would counter that, in the case of Pan Am, there is quite a bit we can glean from the season opener. Indeed, just as one can gather quite a bit from a book’s cover–is the [...]

Go East, Young Woman

Ever since I made my decision to attend Wellesley College, I find myself having to defend it to most of my high school classmates. Many of them know nothing about the school, and when I tell them about it they ignore its academic reputation and amazing alumnae. To them, it is simply a women’s college. [...]

Watch “Gloria,” Support Ms.!

In the terrific new HBO documentary running this week, Gloria: In Her Own Words, we see some priceless early footage of Ms. cofounder Gloria Steinem in the first New York offices of the magazine–a cramped space in which editors seemed to be working elbow-to-elbow. But the dormitory-like conditions just seemed to add to the sisterhood [...]

My Letter to Gloria Steinem

In 1970, having decided to become a feminist, I did the only thing I could think of to join the “movement”: I wrote a letter to Gloria Steinem. She was on staff at New York Magazine then, and because my aunt and uncle had a subscription I often read her articles when I was at [...]

SlutWalk, Bahia-Style

Early this summer, I was in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, directing a five-week study-abroad program for Spelman College students when I began to hear buzz about the upcoming Marcha das Vadias, or SlutWalk. The first SlutWalk was held in Toronto, Canada on April 3 as an outraged response to a Toronto police officer’s comment that, in [...]

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