Speaker 1: Why uzzy media productions. So you know, let's say a
Speaker 1: woman's places in the home, and I suppose as long
Speaker 1: as she's in the home, she might as well be
Speaker 1: in the kitchen. Welcome to the new wave of feminism.
Speaker 1: Welcome to each other, Welcome home. A new movement for
Speaker 1: women's liberation is launched. This is no simple reform. It
Speaker 1: really is a revolution. It was a simple but bold idea,
Speaker 1: even a radical one, to create a magazine by women
Speaker 1: for women. The first issue hit news stands in July
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two and sold out in eight days. It
Speaker 1: was called MS Magazine. Thousands of letters poured into the
Speaker 1: magazine's tiny Manhattan office from grateful women across the United States.
Speaker 1: The backlash against MS was just as pronounced, and his
Speaker 1: primary target was one of the magazine's founders, Glorious Dinah
Speaker 1: Steinen was an outspoken thirty eight year old feminist and writer,
Speaker 1: a leader of the growing women's movement in America, and
Speaker 1: she was about to find herself on the pages of
Speaker 1: another magazine. A popular men's tabloid called Screw decided to
Speaker 1: do its own special profile of Steinham. I saw it
Speaker 1: on the news stands, hanging open outside our offer Miss
Speaker 1: magazine offices. It was open to a centerfold which was
Speaker 1: a new drawing of a woman clearly intended to be
Speaker 1: me because it had my hair and my sunglasses. And
Speaker 1: then there was drawing of penis along the side, and
Speaker 1: it said pin pin the cock on the feminist, like
Speaker 1: pin the tail on the donkey. And just in case
Speaker 1: Steina missed her pin up and news stands across New York,
Speaker 1: Screws editor the flamboyant pornographer Al Goldstein made sure that
Speaker 1: copies were posted outside her office. Steinn's lawyer sent a
Speaker 1: letter to Goldstein to protest the demeaning centerfold. In return,
Speaker 1: he sent me back a box of chocolates with a
Speaker 1: note that said eat it. Steinham was humiliated, but she
Speaker 1: wasn't about to eat it. From that point on, I
Speaker 1: just decided, you know, just you just have to ignore
Speaker 1: it and go on. You stand. I'm Sean Braswell, and
Speaker 1: this is the threat. Each season, we unraveled the stories
Speaker 1: behind some of the most important lives and events in
Speaker 1: history to discover essentially how one thing leads to another.
Speaker 1: To do so, we will travel back through history, one
Speaker 1: story at a time to explore the origins of an
Speaker 1: important event, a big idea, or an iconic figure. This
Speaker 1: season how Glorious Steinham became a leading voice for women
Speaker 1: and helps spark a revolution for social change that still
Speaker 1: rages on today. Gloria Steinham has been a foot soldier
Speaker 1: in the fight for social justice and women's rights for
Speaker 1: more than half a century, and she's endured far more
Speaker 1: than just Screw magazine along the way. Steinham was an
Speaker 1: early silence breaker, and her path to feminist icon runs
Speaker 1: through some surprising places. In this episode, we'll hear from
Speaker 1: Steinham about some of those places, including the time she
Speaker 1: went undercover as a playboy bunny and one of Hugh
Speaker 1: Hefner's famous playboy clubs during the nineteen sixties. This season's
Speaker 1: thread is also about much more than Gloria Steinham. In
Speaker 1: the course of six episodes, we will bear witness to
Speaker 1: a remarkable chapter in American history, one that runs from
Speaker 1: the casting couches of early Hollywood to the doorstep of
Speaker 1: the Me Too movement today. It is a tale of power, glamour,
Speaker 1: and coercion. It is also a tale of liberation. Steinhm
Speaker 1: put it best, the truth will set you free, but
Speaker 1: first it will piss you off. The Women's March brought
Speaker 1: nearly half a million people to Washington, d C. In January.
Speaker 1: In Washington, the crowd was so big plans to march
Speaker 1: near the White House had to be canceled by organizers,
Speaker 1: not far from where Trump yesterday took the oath of office.
Speaker 1: Others took to the stage. There were many high profile
Speaker 1: speakers at the Women's March that day, Madonna, Michael Moore,
Speaker 1: Angela Davis, Ashley Judd, Bernie Sanders. But there was one
Speaker 1: who stole the show. You look great. I wish you
Speaker 1: could see yourselves. It's like an ocean. And it was
Speaker 1: that woman, the eight two year old activist Gloria Steine,
Speaker 1: who could put the moment and that ocean in its
Speaker 1: true context. This is the upside of the downside. This
Speaker 1: is an outpouring of energy and true democracy like I
Speaker 1: have never seen in my very long life. Steinham has marched,
Speaker 1: given speeches, and raised money for feminist causes and other
Speaker 1: civil rights issues for much of her life. But to
Speaker 1: discover where Steinham's journey began, we have to first travel
Speaker 1: back back to the nineteen sixties nineteen sixty three. To
Speaker 1: be precise, that's when Betty for Dan Penn The Feminine Mystique,
Speaker 1: the book often credited for launching feminism so called second
Speaker 1: wave in the twentieth century. The National Organization for Women
Speaker 1: Are Now was founded three years later. This is Steinham
Speaker 1: biographer Patricia Marcello. It was starting to be a thing.
Speaker 1: You know, women were burning their bras everybody has heard
Speaker 1: about that um and you know, starting to say, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, women being mothers and wives is okay
Speaker 1: if that's what you want, But if that's not what
Speaker 1: you want, then there need to be other options. Are
Speaker 1: Glorious Dinham was a reporter and editor for New York
Speaker 1: Magazine at the time. She had her own feminist awakening,
Speaker 1: her big click moment in nineteen sixty nine. This is
Speaker 1: Glorious Dinham for me, it was going as a journalist
Speaker 1: to cover a hearing about abortion. I listened to people
Speaker 1: women stand up and tell the truth about something that
Speaker 1: was unacceptable, illegal, and just tell their stories. She was
Speaker 1: very moved by the women whose stories were told. She
Speaker 1: really took that the heart because that was her, you know,
Speaker 1: she had lived through that same thing. I had had
Speaker 1: an abortion when I was about twenty two, and I
Speaker 1: suddenly thought, wait a minute, if if so many of
Speaker 1: us have had this experience in our lives, and democracy
Speaker 1: should start with controlling our own bodies, what's going on here?
Speaker 1: And she decided then that she was on the path
Speaker 1: to help women do whatever they wanted to do here.
Speaker 1: Steinham addresses a rally for women's liberation in nineteen seventy. Now,
Speaker 1: thanks to the spirit of equality in the air, and
Speaker 1: to the work of many of my more four sighted sisters,
Speaker 1: I no longer accept society's judgment that my group is
Speaker 1: second class. Feminists were often portrayed at the time as
Speaker 1: a motley crew of unattractive, sex starved radicals whose message
Speaker 1: would have a limited appeal to other women in America.
Speaker 1: This is news legend Walter Cronkite in nineteen seventy, on
Speaker 1: the fiftieth anniversary of women earning the right to vote.
Speaker 1: On this anniversary, the modan minority of women's liberationists was
Speaker 1: on the streets across the country to demand equal employment
Speaker 1: for women, care centers, for mother's child abortions running one
Speaker 1: who wants them, and generally equality between women and men.
Speaker 1: Steinen began to write about women's issues. Her male editors
Speaker 1: warned her she was getting too close to the quote
Speaker 1: crazies in the movement. That didn't stop her. Steinham realized
Speaker 1: that ginger equality would never come about and less women
Speaker 1: organized and supported each other and forced it to happen.
Speaker 1: Being an organizer is kind of being an entrepreneur of
Speaker 1: social change. Steinham began criss crossing the country in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen seventies. Her hair was long and streaked. She
Speaker 1: often wore aviator sunglasses, turtlenecks, and blue jeans. Steinham campaigned
Speaker 1: for the Equal Rights Amendment. She worked on behalf of
Speaker 1: Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman to run for president.
Speaker 1: She said what many others were afraid to say. This
Speaker 1: is no simple reform. It really is a revolution. This
Speaker 1: is Steinham addressing the National Women's Political Caucus in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one. Sex and race, because they are easy, visible
Speaker 1: differences have been the primary ways of organizing human beings
Speaker 1: into superior and inferior groups. We are talking about a
Speaker 1: society in which there will be no role other than
Speaker 1: those chosen or those earned. We are really talking about humanism.
Speaker 1: Steinham undermine the media's caricature of feminism. She was low key,
Speaker 1: soft spoken and approachable, a very mainstream radical. But how
Speaker 1: Gloria more than anything was her ability to get along
Speaker 1: with folks. She could talk to them intelligently, and they
Speaker 1: loved that about her. But Steinham's colleagues in the media
Speaker 1: zeroed in on another one of her traits. They would
Speaker 1: always focus on her because of her looks. She was
Speaker 1: tall and thin and beautiful, and so they made her
Speaker 1: the face of the women's movement. Steinham's critics also trivialized
Speaker 1: her as glamorous and sexy. They focused on her personal
Speaker 1: life and her relationships with men. They suggested there were
Speaker 1: other reasons for her growing influence. You know, if women
Speaker 1: could sleep their way at the top, there would be
Speaker 1: a lot more women at the top. It just doesn't work.
Speaker 1: So the whole idea of attributing your accomplishments or lack
Speaker 1: of accomplish most to your appearance is not something we
Speaker 1: do with men. Why do we do it with women?
Speaker 1: The focus on Steinham's personal life and appearance didn't stop.
Speaker 1: The Washington Post called her the mini skirted pin up
Speaker 1: girl of the intelligentsia. Elsewhere, she was labeled a manizer,
Speaker 1: an overseex frustrated spinster and much worse. For the most part,
Speaker 1: she was berated in public, just treated like she was
Speaker 1: trying to do something wrong instead of trying to do
Speaker 1: something very right. Esquire magazine published a damning profile of
Speaker 1: Steinham in one called she it transformed Steinham into a
Speaker 1: feminist fim fatale, one whose fame stemmed from her effect
Speaker 1: on men. No man who seeks to know how the
Speaker 1: wind blows, Leonard Levitt wrote, can afford to ignore Gloria.
Speaker 1: The article implied that her methods and motivations were also
Speaker 1: less than noble. He was characterizing me as someone who
Speaker 1: just cynically or self aggrandizing. Lee attached myself to movements
Speaker 1: and came complete with a cartoon strip. As I remember,
Speaker 1: so it was. It was quite painful. Steinham's treatment by
Speaker 1: men in the media only made her more determined to
Speaker 1: change things. She knew there was really nothing for women
Speaker 1: to read on newsstands that was controlled by women, which
Speaker 1: brings us back to Miss magazine. So, you know, we
Speaker 1: just had the revolutionary idea of working for a magazine
Speaker 1: we read because there there were, and I have to
Speaker 1: say there's still are very few publications for women that
Speaker 1: are owned and controlled by women. Then there was absolutely not.
Speaker 1: It was a totally new idea and it was the
Speaker 1: first publication that took us seriously, you know, and said, yes,
Speaker 1: you are a citizen in the world. Yes you are
Speaker 1: equal to men in every way, Wake up and realize it.
Speaker 1: The first issue of Miss carried a petition signed by
Speaker 1: hundreds of women saying they'd had abortions and demanding an
Speaker 1: end to its criminalization. Here is Steinham in a interview
Speaker 1: describing what made MISS magazine special. What makes us different
Speaker 1: from other women's magazines is that, first of all, our
Speaker 1: bottom line is we assume that women are equal human beings.
Speaker 1: We're not still arguing about it like other magazines. Miss
Speaker 1: Magazine published stories about abortions, gender bias in the English language,
Speaker 1: the views of presidential candidates on women's issues, and more.
Speaker 1: It was communal, cooperative, and democratic. Inside the magazine's offices,
Speaker 1: there was no hierarchy. The masthead was an alphabetical list
Speaker 1: of its staff and Steinham and still the organization with
Speaker 1: a deep sense of purpose and intensity. If she didn't
Speaker 1: like the people that were coming in, if they didn't
Speaker 1: have the same mindset as she did, they didn't work there.
Speaker 1: In fact, um. She required that they were to be
Speaker 1: able to say the F bomb, and if they couldn't
Speaker 1: say that, you know, they didn't work at Miss magazine.
Speaker 1: But there were major obstacles to starting a women's magazine.
Speaker 1: The biggest getting advertisers. We UM tried to get ads
Speaker 1: that otherwise we're directed at man cars and insurance and
Speaker 1: wine and so on. Such efforts met with little success,
Speaker 1: and it was nearly impossible to find advertisers who didn't
Speaker 1: want to dictate the editorial content of a women's magazine.
Speaker 1: But after a while we discovered that actually we were
Speaker 1: economically better off if we didn't take any advertising, because
Speaker 1: what readers wanted and what advertisers wanted were two different things.
Speaker 1: And so if you look at Miss magazine to this day,
Speaker 1: you will see there's no commercial advertising. Gloria Steinham and
Speaker 1: Miss faced more than reluctant advertisers. Many critics could not
Speaker 1: see the point of the magazine. One national news anchor
Speaker 1: gave the publication six months before it ran out of
Speaker 1: things to say. MS did not run out of material
Speaker 1: and left its mark on the world. Steinham herself, however,
Speaker 1: left her first big mark nearly a decade for the
Speaker 1: launch of Miss Magazine. Up next, we turned the clock
Speaker 1: back to Steinham's frustrating early years as a journalist and
Speaker 1: a pivotal experience that kick started her journey to feminist icon.
Speaker 1: Gloria Steinem was a voracious reader as a young woman
Speaker 1: in Toledo, Ohio. I mean I would just pick up
Speaker 1: one and keep reading until I finished, regardless of whether
Speaker 1: it was a day and a half later. So I
Speaker 1: think that that's why I wanted so much to be
Speaker 1: a writer. She eventually moved to New York City in
Speaker 1: the late nineteen fifties to start her career in journalism.
Speaker 1: Stein and biographer Patricia Marcello again, and you know, if
Speaker 1: you've watched any TV shows or movies about that period,
Speaker 1: and I lived through it, so I know, women were
Speaker 1: not considered to be equal to men. They didn't want
Speaker 1: women writers, They didn't think we were capable bull of
Speaker 1: producing it, you know, proper news story. At that time,
Speaker 1: female college graduates were considered overqualified for the secretarial pool
Speaker 1: but underqualified for just about everything else. When I first
Speaker 1: graduated from college, I tried to get a job as
Speaker 1: a researcher at Time magazine because there was a system
Speaker 1: there which meant that women researched and men wrote. There
Speaker 1: were no women writing, and uh, I could see therefore
Speaker 1: that it wasn't wasn't going to lead to writing. Steinham
Speaker 1: struggled as a freelance journalist for years. She was the
Speaker 1: quote girl reporter who often settled on penning lightweight women's
Speaker 1: stories for outlets like Glamour and Vogue. Then, in nineteen three,
Speaker 1: at an editorial meeting for Show, an arts magazine, the
Speaker 1: young Steinen was thrust into an assignment that would change
Speaker 1: her life. I was sitting in a magazine editorial meeting,
Speaker 1: and because the Playboy Club was just opening in Manhattan,
Speaker 1: I suggested that Lillian Ross, who was a wonderful New
Speaker 1: Yorker writer, great great writer, go be a bunny. But
Speaker 1: I was kidding, you know, because she was, you know,
Speaker 1: much too old and too smart to ever be a bunny.
Speaker 1: And the editors said, aha, you do it, so she did.
Speaker 1: Playboy clubs strive to entertain and titillate their wealthy male
Speaker 1: members and guests. They were the offspring of Hugh Hefner,
Speaker 1: founder of the popular Playboy magazine. The magazine had become
Speaker 1: famous for its nude centerfolds, known as Playmates of the Month.
Speaker 1: The Playboy clubs were quickly becoming known for another species
Speaker 1: of female sex object, The playboy bunny. Bunny is an
Speaker 1: American creation. She's a cross between a hostess, showgirl and
Speaker 1: the bomb maid waitress, well versed in the art of
Speaker 1: charming the cash customers in a string of plush international clubs.
Speaker 1: Yes it's true, proclaimed the Playboy Club ads. Attractive young
Speaker 1: girls can now earn two hundred three hundred dollars a
Speaker 1: week at the fabulous New York Playboy Club. Please bring
Speaker 1: a swimsuit or leotar it the twenty year olds. Dynham
Speaker 1: did exactly that. She showed up at the Playboy Club
Speaker 1: under an assumed name and with no legal identification. She
Speaker 1: was certain she would be rejected and her undercover assignment
Speaker 1: would soon be over, but it turned out they were
Speaker 1: so desperate for employees that they hired me. Steinham later wrote,
Speaker 1: hippote Hop, I'm a bunny. She soon began her bunny training.
Speaker 1: So they just sort of made you take off your
Speaker 1: coat and walk around and see if you could pronounce
Speaker 1: the name of drinks uh, And then they showed you
Speaker 1: the costume, which it was incredibly barbaric. I mean it
Speaker 1: left welts on your ribs and they stuffed your bosom
Speaker 1: with plastic dry cleaning bags. So they had to be
Speaker 1: packed into a bunny suit, which was more like a
Speaker 1: one piece bathing suit strapless bathing suit. They had to
Speaker 1: work cuffs with cuff links, uh black tights that they
Speaker 1: had to buy for themselves. They had to have shoes
Speaker 1: that matched their costumes, which they had to have died
Speaker 1: to match the same color as their costume, and they
Speaker 1: had to pay for all of that. The bunny is
Speaker 1: paid the best part of two thousand pounds a year.
Speaker 1: She's trained to perfection, the meticulously groomed, and the rules
Speaker 1: are sticked. No dating customers, for instance, is permitted on
Speaker 1: plane of dismissals. Every new Bunny was given the Club Bible,
Speaker 1: the Playboy Club Bunny Manual. It proclaimed you were holding
Speaker 1: the top job in the country for a young girl.
Speaker 1: I remember one part of the Bunny manual said always
Speaker 1: remember your proudest possession is your bunny tail. This is
Speaker 1: Russell Miller, author of Bunny, The Real Story of Playboy
Speaker 1: in These Days, So Fat you lu to Chris. The
Speaker 1: manual also provided detailed instructions on proper bunny protocol and behavior,
Speaker 1: and experienced club trainers showed aspiring bunnies the ropes good,
Speaker 1: I'm your gunny. Izzy. Noticed that she smiles and gives
Speaker 1: eye contact with all four of us. We imagine that
Speaker 1: there's another gentleman sitting there. She places the napkin. Now,
Speaker 1: you noticed that she placed the napkins for the ladies
Speaker 1: first and with the bunny emblem facing the guests. Now
Speaker 1: when she places this one, you notice that she is
Speaker 1: doing what we call a bunny dip. The bunny dip
Speaker 1: was one of several prescribed bunny poses. You leaned back
Speaker 1: when you placed drinks on low tables in parts, so
Speaker 1: you wouldn't fall out of your costume. Bunnies were also
Speaker 1: given to merits if they're tights, head runs, or if
Speaker 1: their ears were bent. They were told that company spies
Speaker 1: were watching them if they fell out of line. Steinham
Speaker 1: shared these inside details and many more with the world. Well,
Speaker 1: she was taking on the playboy bunny image. You know.
Speaker 1: Everybody thought it was so cool and oh, if you
Speaker 1: could work in a club like that, how cool would
Speaker 1: that be? Well, it wasn't cool at all. Steinham served
Speaker 1: drinks as a table bunny, and took coats as a
Speaker 1: hat check bunny. The exclusive club was unlike anything else
Speaker 1: in the city. Smooth orchestra playing, there'd be a dance floor,
Speaker 1: there'll be a bar area. Um, that would be a restaurant.
Speaker 1: But the Playboy Club offered this unique facility of the
Speaker 1: bunny who was always pretty, always smiling, the and um.
Speaker 1: You know, it was the tremendous successful concept, a great
Speaker 1: night out for the lads. Some of the lads, as
Speaker 1: Steinham wrote about, did more than admire the club's costume staff.
Speaker 1: They pinched and pulled tails, they padded and propositioned. You know,
Speaker 1: I was just wanting to show the reality of those
Speaker 1: working women. It was subject to constant what we would
Speaker 1: now term sexual harassment, but there wasn't even a word
Speaker 1: for it then. It was a terrible job. Steinin remembers
Speaker 1: one customer who grabbed a hold of her after his
Speaker 1: fourth martini. When she pulled away, he grew angry. He yelled,
Speaker 1: what do you think I come here for the roast beef.
Speaker 1: Steinham worked less than two weeks at the club. She
Speaker 1: with swollen feet, but also one hell of a story.
Speaker 1: Her subsequent essay about her undercover stint, A Bunny's Tale,
Speaker 1: made a big splash, but it did not receive the
Speaker 1: kind of reception she had hoped for. For the most part,
Speaker 1: it was taken as lighthearted and frivolous. Steinham received suggestions
Speaker 1: from editors at other magazines that she posed as a
Speaker 1: call girl and do an expose on prostitution. They weren't joking.
Speaker 1: I was just beginning to get serious assignments, journalistic assignments,
Speaker 1: and after I did that, I was, you know, getting
Speaker 1: a lot less serious ideas directed at me. For years,
Speaker 1: she regretted the Playboy story. However, in retrospect, you know,
Speaker 1: once the women's wovement got started, I was I was
Speaker 1: glad I did it. The story improved working conditions for
Speaker 1: women at the Playboy clubs, and it also opened Steinham's
Speaker 1: eyes in new ways to how women were treated and perceived.
Speaker 1: Steinham later wrote, eventually feminism made me understand that reporting
Speaker 1: about phony glamor and the exploitative employment policies of the
Speaker 1: Playboy club was a useful thing to do. She says
Speaker 1: she came to realize that in many ways, all women
Speaker 1: are bunnies, and that was one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: she got into feminism. She saw the women were being
Speaker 1: mistreated on a regular basis in all walks of life,
Speaker 1: not just as playboy bunnies. Working at the Playboy Club
Speaker 1: gave Gloria stein Him the chance to challenge the world
Speaker 1: of male privilege for the first time and to break
Speaker 1: the silence on how women were being treated there. It
Speaker 1: was an endeavor that would change her life and with it,
Speaker 1: the lives of countless other women. The playboy world that
Speaker 1: helped transform Steinem and helped her transform the lives of others,
Speaker 1: was the brainchild of a very different kind of American icon.
Speaker 1: Next time on the Thread, Hugh Hefner, the audacious playboy,
Speaker 1: set out to reinvent what it meant to be a worldly,
Speaker 1: sophisticated man, only to become the poster boy for man's
Speaker 1: baser instincts. Thank You Stand, We Must From the Threat
Speaker 1: is produced by Libby Coleman and me Sean Braswell. Chris
Speaker 1: Hoff engineered our show special thanks to Gloria Steinhum, Cindy
Speaker 1: Carpi and Tracy Moran and James Watkins. This episode features
Speaker 1: music by Bill McGarvey, with a song called Standing Next
Speaker 1: To Gloria Stye. To learn more about the thread, visit
Speaker 1: ausi dot com. Slash the thread all one word, and
Speaker 1: make sure to subscribe to the thread on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 1: Check us out at ausi dot com or on Twitter
Speaker 1: and Facebook. If you love surprising, engaging stories from history,
Speaker 1: look no further than the flashback section of ausi dot com.
Speaker 1: That's o z y dot com.