Ms. Magazine | Spring 2004

spring 2004
table of contents

UP FRONT

Letter from the Editor
Contents
Unquote

NEWS

National
Abortion Rights Periled
Ashcroft Wants Your Records
Gay Marriage
Women Physicists Take Charge
Softball Rights
Overhauling WIC Program
Seattle Girls Build Plane
San Francisco's Chief Women

Global
Tree's Fruit Helps Moroccan Women
Japan's Birthrate Backlash
Baghdad's Ms.
Secret Dancing in Tehran
Portugal's Abortion Trials
Israeli Mom Marches
Helping Afghan Women

March for Women's Lives
Rocking out for Choice -- and for the April 25th March for Women's Lives in Washington, D.C.

FEATURES

Cover Story
Who Needs First Ladies? | Ellen Hawkes
Teresa Heinz Kerry and Elizabeth Edwards Speak | Ellen Hawkes
Laura Bush and Lynne Cheney -- Opposites Attract | Laura Flanders

DEPARTMENTS

Health
An Unhealthy Idea of Beauty | Kari Browne

Law
Rape Shield Laws | Gloria Allred and Margery Somers

Fiction
Now is the Time to Open Your Heart | Alice Walker
Biscuit Baby | Anne Harleman

Poetry
One Secret Thing | Sharon Olds
Disobedience | Jane Mayhall

Touching History
Encounters with women of renown: Gwendolyn Brooks, Joan Didion, Anita Hill and Terry Tempest Williams

Book Reviews
Rebecca Brown on The Mystery of Breathing by Perri Klass;
Melissa Fay Greene on The Amateur Marriage by Anne Tyler;
Jennifer Baumgardner on Silences: 25th Anniversary Edition by Tillie Olsen;
Noel Riley Fitch on The Radical Lives of Helen Keller by Kim E. Niensen;
Lynell George on A Woman's Worth by Tracy Price-Thompson

Keywords
Robin Morgan

No Comment

Send a Letter to the Editor >>

First Ladies

Letter from the Editor:

"To think that we have at our disposal the biggest thing in the universe, and that it is language. What one can do with language is ... infinite." -- Helene Cixous

So writes the French philosopher/feminist, and we celebrate her words ever day.

Now before I risk flight into liturgy about words and actions, let me say ... it ain't easy these days. The language of modern political discourse, for instance, dishonors us, and we are only halfway through that most political of years.

Online Now

Who Needs First Ladies?

by Ellen Hawkes

Be grateful, as they say, for small favors. As the presidential primary season winds down, we can at least say that we have survived The Great American First Lady Analysis.

An Activist First Lady

Teresa Heinz Kerry Talks with Ms.
	by Ellen Hawkes "I don’t think of the role as a formative or life-changing one. It’s a time-changing job but not a life-changing exercise."

The Strategist

Elizabeth Edwards Talks with Ms.
	by Ellen Hawkes “I still vividly remember an early issue of Ms. magazine with the famous article about the ‘click’ moment when women finally recognize the stereotypes that are imposed on them."