Make That Ms. Partner

The subway stop is the first indication that things have changed more than slightly. Wall Street is not the first term one associates with Ms. magazine. This urban canyon, where stone scrapes sky and morning sun barely dribbles here and there onto the sidewalk, may be the perfect lair for number crunchers and financiers, but feminists?

Twenty Exchange Place, the magazine’s address, is halfway down an odd, dim alley where coats flap in ricochet winds. The lobby is sleek and swell, and a high-speed elevator yanks passengers to the 22nd floor with ear-popping efficiency, and there on double doors is the name Liberty Media for Women--the latest, and probably last, owners of the country’s best-known feminist publication.

Within is all that missing sun and a plush carpet as green as any country club fairway. The walls are a warm white, the wood doors all match, the desktops are slick and unblemished, each one complete with a computer and a phone. There are two lovely upholstered chairs in the reception area. There is a reception area.

For a former Ms. editor, whose first desk was a paint-splattered fire hazard wedged between file cabinets and a wall of cardboard boxes in a dirty, linoleum-lined hallway, the effect is hallucinogenic. Only the presence of a very familiar face prevents instant flight.

“Finally we have a grown-up office,” says Gloria Steinem, laughing quietly at my dropped-open mouth. “It really makes a big difference, not to have to work in a hallway.”

Shedding the various black bags--tote, purse, smaller purse--requisite for New York women, she heads into the office she shares with three other women, including her assistant, Amy Richards. In her decades-long association with the magazine, in all its Manhattan-hopping travels, Gloria Steinem has never had a private office.

She’s also never had her own company, but she does now. As of December, when she, Ms. Editor in Chief Marcia Ann Gillespie and a group of women investors formed Liberty Media and bought Ms. from MacDonald Communications Corp.

The launch of the redesigned Ms.--the April-May issue--will take place at the end of March, coinciding neatly with Steinem’s 65th birthday.

“Twenty-seven years ago,” she said at a recent editorial meeting, “I thought it would be fun to work on this new magazine for a year or two . . . and here I am.”

Here she is, a graceful figure in black, her signature streaky-blond hair a bit darker now, a bit shorter, pulled back from her face. She seems smaller than she did to me 15 years ago, when I was a star-struck 20-year-old starting her first job, but still glamorous.

For most feminists, for most women, this combination of glamour and social significance makes Steinem a bit mythic; one stammers in her presence or falls inexplicably mute. But only for the first moments. Then there is the rush to converse, to question, to confide. Long the living proof that the shrill, didactic feminist is a cliche, Gloria Steinem has that talent so rare among intellectual icons: the ability to listen.

Her brown eyes, magnified slightly by her glasses, are warm and direct, and she conjures an air of intimacy, of significance; even in the most fleeting exchange, one feels that a connection has been made and valued.

Which may go far in explaining why Steinem has probably been the most influential feminist of her time. And why the future of Ms., which many people think died long ago, is bound, for better or worse, with hers.

Except for a few years in the late ‘80s when Fairfax Ltd. owned Ms., Steinem has held the sometimes participatory, sometimes titular position of consulting editor. When MacDonald, a publishing company, purchased the advertising-free magazine from Lang Publications in 1996, a condition of Steinem’s continued association was that she be given first bid rights should MacDonald ever decide to sell. Last fall, frustrated by dwindling subscription rates (down from a late ‘80s high of about 700,000 to 200,000), MacDonald suddenly shut the magazine down. Steinem and Gillespie realized that what had been a fuzzy sort of contingency plan was suddenly the only way the magazine would survive.

‘We Have to Do It Now’

“It got down to Marcia and me sitting in my living room saying, ‘If we’re going to do it, we have to do it now,’ ” she says. “Frankly, I was not at all sure I wanted to. Those first 15 years were the hardest of my life. So I bought all the women’s magazines and pored through them, thinking, ‘Surely someone else is doing this, surely I don’t need to do this again.’ And there were some changes, but not many.

“Women’s magazines,” she continues, “still talk down to women, still refuse to do anything that would displease their advertisers.”

So, bolstered by Gillespie’s unwavering confidence, Steinem made the rounds of potential backers and investors, pitching her magazine one more time.

“I was still feeling anger and fatigue,” she says. “All those years of begging. Ms. never had enough money, ever. We were underfunded to begin with and we couldn’t get advertisers because we wouldn’t cater to them, so we were always begging people for money. And that,” she says, with a small laugh and an open-palmed shrug, “can wear you down. I said to Marcia, ‘OK, I’ll go out, but it’s in the lap of the Goddess, I can’t promise anything.’ ”

What convinced her that this crazy scheme might just work were the investors. Women investors. Who renewed her faith in her mission by (a) existing and (b) not making her beg.

“We’ve always had women financial supporters,” she says. “But only a few. Now there were networks of women with money. They were so amazing. I had never imagined I would come across so many people who cared and were willing to invest.”

The group includes Sandy Lerner, a founder of Cisco Systems Inc., the computer networking company; Martha Crowninshield, managing director of the venture capital firm Boston Ventures; Alix Ritchie, publisher of the Provincetown Banner; and Abby Disney, a philanthropist and grand-niece of Walt Disney. Together, they put up $3 million, and Ms.--which will remain advertising free with a $5.95 newsstand price--was at long last a woman-owned business.

“It purged the bad feelings I had from before,” Steinem says. “For the first time ever, our finances are now in sync with our editorial mission. “

A Meeting, but No Table

The conference room at the far end of the office is empty, save several stacks of boxes. There is no conference table, so everyone plunks themselves and their papers and their coffee cups onto the green, green floor.

“Welcome to 1973,” says Executive Editor Barbara Findlen, adding quickly, “We are getting a table, it just isn’t here yet.”

“My dining room table,” says Steinem, already cross-legged beside some boxes.

“Gloria,” says Findlen, “you don’t have to do that, we can buy a table.”

“I’ve been wanting a new table for years,” Steinem says. “This one is too big.”

Women begin wandering in, a bit late for the 10:30 editorial meeting, some of them old-timers like Findlen--who joined the staff as an intern 15 years ago, some the new generation--20-somethings wearing boots and jeans and with a familiar tension of exhilaration and righteous anger.

The meeting starts despite the absence of Editor in Chief Gillespie and Editor Gloria Jacobs; they come in separately a few minutes later. Meanwhile, various pieces--a fiction excerpt, a feature on women’s music--are introduced by the associate editors and discussed at great length.

It’s an interesting process to watch, especially for someone for whom it is infused with a certain nostalgia. The younger women do much of the talking, though their statements often morph into questions by the upswing intonation particular to their generation. The conversation moves from a critique of structure to a question of topical value to a whole new subject matter and then back again with exhausting elasticity. Lilith Fair is scrutinized, Madonna assailed, girls’ coaches discussed.

No one is cut off in mid-thought, no one is asked to cut to the chase or consider the time. The meeting is by no means out of control--Gillespie steps in when necessary to pull the conversation out of the stratosphere. She and the senior staff, including Steinem, now and then scoop up a handful of the more amorphous ideas and mold them into a concrete edit, or an assignable story. But all thoughts are welcome, imagination encouraged.

After 2 1/2 hours, it is clear that Ms. does indeed have relevance among the younger generation. Which is the largest criticism the magazine has faced since it was about a year old.

“The first line of criticism is that women don’t need it,” Steinem says. “The second is that they used to need it but now they don’t anymore.”

“People place on the magazine all the cliches they have about feminism,” Gillespie says. “People who say the magazine is irrelevant haven’t been reading the magazine.”

Focus Is on Work, Family

She and Steinem believe the issues of work and family continue to be a cornerstone of their mandate.

“The barrier for my generation was when you got married,” says Steinem, who never has.

“That’s when you basically lost your civil rights. Now the barrier is when your first child is born. Women won’t be equal outside the home until men are equal partners inside the home.”

Gillespie decries what she calls this country’s “faux love affair” with babies. “We keep hearing how family-friendly we’re becoming, and yet the number of children in poverty has doubled.”

But the new Ms., she says, is a work in progress. “The major change is that we’re lightening up. There’s a real change in tone, we want it to be more conversational, more like talking around that kitchen table.”

Across the hall from Steinem’s office, the page proofs of the first issue are pinned to the wall. Like the offices, the design is cleaner, lighter, the copy has more room to breathe. There are no bright collages of celebrities or knickknacky pages of trendy items. It is still a magazine for readers, but it is less intimidating than some previous issues.

“We definitely want to reach out to a younger audience,” Findlen says. “We have to.”

So will “Ally McBeal’s” Calista Flockhart be gracing the cover any time soon? “Not outside the realm of possibility,” she answers laughing. “Anorexics are feminists too.”

Gillespie acknowledges that past issues of Ms. have been a bit formidable. “We don’t want to be the institution lecturing women about what feminism is. It’s like being on the edge of a cliff, and everyone says go ahead, step off, it really is solid ground. Women don’t need an analysis of the ground. We need some folks who are out there a couple of miles yelling back, saying, ‘This is how I got here, this is what I’ve learned, is it of any use to you?’ ”

Gillespie also stresses the need for diversity, and in the office shared by three of the younger editors, that’s the word that comes up the most.

“Younger women have a lot of mixed feelings about the magazine,” says associate Ophira Edut, who was born the same year as Ms. “They feel it hasn’t fully included a lot of women. So there’s a lot of pressure. We don’t want to scare off loyal readers, but we want to reflect feminism today, which is more casual, joyful, diverse. We have to please a lot of people, as women always do.”

The reactions she and other staffers get from peers who learn their place of employment range from puzzled to dismissive.

“The term feminism seems so ‘70s to our friends,” adds Research Director Anaga Dalal. “So we have a tremendous responsibility to represent different cultures and classes. The power structure is so subtle now, you don’t want to make any mistakes.”

The energy in this room is different than in the offices of some of the more veteran staffers. It’s higher-pitched, tempered less by those things one collects only with time--humor, patience, fatigue.

The push-me-pull-you struggle between generations is a crucial force in any movement, but particularly feminism with its complicated topography of emotion and experience. The women who traverse it are as much expeditionists as activists, and their progeny are part of the exploration process. Like the babies born in the covered wagons, this generation knows little of what was left behind; children of the movement, they simply expect to keep moving.

Role Model for Decades

For that, they could have no better role model than Steinem, who seemingly never stops moving. At an age when most of us begin considering retirement, she is setting up a business and returning to a more hands-on role in the editorial process.

For almost 40 years, she has also been engaged in the demanding task of being Gloria Steinem. That job description includes writing three books and working on a fourth; following an endless schedule of speaking engagements around the country; being available for interviews on any topic pertaining to women (which is every topic under the sun); as well as working on behalf of organizations including the Ms. Foundation for Women and the Women’s Political Caucus.

And despite nearly 40 years as a player, she still can be surprised by the political vagaries. An editorial she wrote recently in the New York Times arguing that President Clinton’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky did not constitute sexual harassment (because the relationship was so obviously consensual) provoked howls of protest that left her speechless.

“Just when you think you’re not going to get angry again, you get angry again,” she says. “I wrote this piece, which I do not think was perfect but that I still believe was perfectly reasonable, and the next day or so there’s this unbelievable response. I really thought I had gone mad.”

Her voice is calm; even when saying the most rebellious, emphatic things, her voice is always calm. Steinem does not show emotion through volume or theatrics, but through enunciation--precise, pointed phrasing.

“Of course, this is how I knew I was right,” she says. “When the right wing tells me I’m wrong, I always know I’m right.”

But, she says, it was a rough couple of days. “It’s hard when people willfully misunderstand you. It makes you feel invisible. It’s the old, ‘Oh, you’re so cute when you’re angry.’ ”

Anger, of course, is a prerequisite for any revolutionary; the ability to cope with it year after year, however, is a feat not many can pull off.

“I’ve been very lucky,” Steinem says. “I’m a freelance person and I’ve always been able to support myself. I’ve always had a place to put the anger. I’ve learned that if you can find other people to talk to, then you can always have some sort of impact.”

As she repeatedly points out, Steinem is not alone in her lifetime commitment to feminism--”I am not one of a few long-distance runners”--but certainly she has been the most visible.

And whatever the benefits of being an icon, restfulness is not one of them. So she continues to suit up and make the rounds and say her piece and sign the books and bring the ideas back to the table-less conference room of the magazine she started more than a quarter of a century ago.

“However hard it is to do it,” she says in that unflappable voice of hers, “it’s harder not to do it.”