Origins
Co-founder Gloria Steinem has explained the motivation for starting Ms. magazine, stating "I realized as a journalist that there really was nothing for women to read that was controlled by women, and this caused me along with a number of other women to start Ms. magazine." As to the origin of the name chosen for the magazine, she has stated, "We were going to call it 'Sojourner', after Sojourner Truth, but that was perceived as a travel magazine. Then we were going to call it 'Sisters', but that was seen as a religious magazine. We settled on 'Ms.' because it was symbolic and also it was short, which is good for a logo."
The title of Ms. magazine was suggested by a friend of Gloria Steinem who had heard the term in an interview on WBAI radio and suggested it as a title for the new magazine. Modern use of Ms. as an honorific was promoted by Sheila Michaels. Michaels, whose parents were not married to each other, and who was not adopted by her stepfather, had long grappled with finding a title that reflected her situation: not being "owned" by a father and not wishing to be "owned" by a husband. Her efforts to promote its use were ignored in the nascent Women’s Movement. Around 1971, during a lull in an interview with "The Feminists" group, Michaels suggested the use of the title "Ms." (having chosen a pronunciation current for both in Missouri, her home).
Controversy raged in the early 1970s over the "correct" title for women. Men had Mr. which gave no indication of their marital status since the formal address term "master" for an unmarried man had fallen largely into disuse; etiquette and business practices demanded that women use either Miss or Mrs. Many women did not want to be defined by their marital status and, for a growing number of women who kept their last name after marriage, neither Miss nor Mrs. was a correct title in front of that name.
Read more about this topic: Ms. (magazine)
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“Lucretius
Sings his great theory of natural origins and of wise conduct; Plato
smiling carves dreams, bright cells
Of incorruptible wax to hive the Greek honey.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“Grown onto every inch of plate, except
Where the hinges let it move, were living things,
Barnacles, mussels, water weeds—and one
Blue bit of polished glass, glued there by time:
The origins of art.”
—Howard Moss (b. 1922)