MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Long before she died Wednesday, at the age of 92, Gloria Steinem had become the face of second-wave feminism. A journalist as well as an activist, she helped launch Ms. magazine in 1971, which helped millions of women see themselves in that movement. Letty Cottin Pogrebin co-founded Ms. alongside Steinem. I spoke with her just a few hours after Steinem's death was announced, and she told me about how they met at a Washington hotel as the idea for Ms. was taking shape.
LETTY COTTIN POGREBIN: I was a baby feminist, and she was an icon even then. And so by the time I met Gloria, I knew all about her. I'd read everything she wrote. So I met her at the founding conference of the National Women's Political Caucus. I was down there with Betty Friedan, and she asked me to cover a bunch of the workshops and then give her my notes so she could write her closing speech. And I went into one of those rooms to work on it on my little legal size pad, and there was Gloria sitting there. She was writing on her little yellow pad.
And I said, oh, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry to disturb you. And she said, no, no, come in. I'm Gloria Steinem. And I'm like, yes, yes, you know? Yes, I do know you. And I'm Letty Pogrebin, and, you know, I've read everything you wrote, and thank you. And I'll just let you, you know, work here, and I'll find another room. She said, no, no, come in, and we'll work on it together. And we just talked into the night, 2, 3 o'clock in the morning. And by the end of it, she said, you know, I'm working with a few other women to start a magazine. I'd like you to join us.
Just from that, I had a column in the Ladies' Home Journal, and I had just published a book called "How to Make It In A Man's World," which was not a feminist book. It was kind of how to adjust to a man's world. And here I was with a woman who said, wait a second. It shouldn't be a man's world. We're going to fight it. We're going to change it.
MARTIN: Wow.
POGREBIN: And I was on board.
MARTIN: So let me just play a little bit from an interview that Linda Wertheimer did with her in 1972, when she was talking to her about the debut of Ms. magazine. So this is what she said about the alternative that Ms. was offering to what was on newsstands for women at the time.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
GLORIA STEINEM: It's all beautiful and glossy and sweetness and light, and all the stories turn out well and so on. And that's a function. You know, that's like going to movies on Saturday afternoon. But it doesn't help you when you come out of the movie. It doesn't help you to change your life, and it's not really allowing women to tell the truth about their daily experiences.
MARTIN: What was the truth that this magazine was allowing women to express?
POGREBIN: Well, the women's magazines at that time were telling women how to please their husbands, you know? They were like Cosmo, but they were also a kind of decorous version for the housewife. Cosmo was for the "single girl," in quotes. But they were, you know, 40 ways to make hamburger, and they were how to decorate your porch. They were not about what it was like to be a victim of incest. And let me tell you that in the bags of mail that we got when Ms. first was published, I would say a full 20% of the mail was about women having survived incest.
MARTIN: Wow.
POGREBIN: So there were lives that were in the shadows. And suddenly we were doing stories on incest. We were doing stories on what it's like to be a, quote, "welfare mother." And suddenly, you know, there was a women's movement, and we were there in glossy form.
MARTIN: We are in a moment now where many of the things that you and she fought so hard for, like, reproductive rights, for example, the advancement of women in all spheres of society, is being threatened. Did she feel - what's the word here? - like she'd failed?
POGREBIN: No. I used to have that conversation with her because I was so depressed. And she was not ever depressed. She would always refocus me on what young women were doing. She would talk about the last campus she spoke on, how there's this group doing that. Women are still doing that, Letty, she said. Like, look at abortion. Abortion is now seen all over the country as healthcare. There was not an I in her life. There was a we. It was always we. And she was always nudging somebody else in front of the camera.
MARTIN: Before we let you go, I know she was your friend as well as a colleague. How are you going to remember her?
POGREBIN: I am going to remember her every day or every time I do anything that is in her footsteps. She's my template - for a person of conscience, for a person so true to herself, for somebody with no ego, no ego whatsoever. I really would like to grow up and be Gloria, and I'm 87 (laughter). But I - in 55 years of knowing her, she's been my template for how to be a real human being.
MARTIN: That's Letty Cottin Pogrebin. She co-founded Ms. magazine, alongside Gloria Steinem, who died Wednesday at the age of 92. Letty Cottin Pogrebin, thank you so much for your time.
POGREBIN: Thank you, Michel.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Wow, Michel. So many lines I just wrote down. She was not ever depressed, focused on the young, no I, only we.
MARTIN: Yeah.
INSKEEP: This is beautiful.
MARTIN: It was beautiful.
INSKEEP: This is beautiful. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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