Gloria Steinem, the writer and organizer who became the public face of American feminism for half a century, died Wednesday at her home in Manhattan. She was 92. Her foundation announced the news on Instagram, saying she "passed away peacefully at her home, surrounded by some of the many who loved her."
A Life That Tracked the Movement Itself
Steinem's path to activism began in hardship. Born in Toledo, Ohio, in 1934, she spent much of her childhood caring for her mother, who struggled with mental illness, in a home she later described as overrun and unstable. She didn't attend school full-time until she was 11 or 12. "I lived in books. I really was an observer of life," she said in a 2011 interview.
She graduated from Smith College in 1956 and broke into journalism in New York, eventually co-founding New York magazine in 1968. Her 1963 undercover exposé of working conditions at a Playboy Club, published after she spent 11 days as a Bunny, made her a household name and, for a time, made her nearly unemployable as a
Source: Washington Blade
Cover photo: İrem Çilingir / Pexels
