There was no national voice for those of us who had the radical idea that women are people.
What was in that first issue? An article by Johnnie Tillmon, a brave organizer of women on welfare, called “Welfare Is a Women’s Issue.” We were told we absolutely could not include an article by or about lesbians in that preview issue, since, at the time, all feminists were characterized as lesbians. This only reinforced our conviction that we had to, and we did (with a piece titled “Can Women Love Women?”). And since abortion was then against the law, yet we knew that about one in three American women had needed one at some time in her life, we asked women if they would sign a petition, “We Have Had an Abortion,” demanding its legality and safety. Hundreds of women, some well known and some not, many of whom had never even told their families, signed this historic and politically powerful petition.
The cover was a challenge because we wanted all women to feel included.
An early version showed a woman’s face divided into various skin colors, but this didn’t feel real. Since I had been living in India, I suggested a woman who was blue and had many arms, like the goddess Kali, with hands holding symbols—from the cooking spoon to the car wheel—of women’s many tasks. Miriam Wosk, an artist then living in California, painted the perfect multitasking woman, and even put a tear running down her cheek and a baby in her body. It was titled “The Housewife’s Moment of Truth.” (Ms. recently published a modern-day reprise calling attention to the overburdening of women during the COVID-19 pandemic and this time putting the onus where it belongs: it’s titled “The Nation’s Moment of Truth.”)
At the time that first issue was published, there were local feminist publications here and in some other countries, but there was no national voice for those of us who had the radical idea that women are people. I didn’t know what the response would be, especially on newsstands, with no precedent or place for a women’s magazine that wasn’t about home, family, and children.
The response was shocking. Though that first issue was released in January 1972 and dated “spring 1972” so it could stay on the newsstand for months, it sold out in eight days. Soon, bags of mail began arriving in our offices, so many that there was room for little else.
The letters were irresistible to read, personal notes or small novels, as if Ms. were a friend who had entered readers’ homes. One common theme was “At last, I know I’m not alone.” A movement is a contagion of truth telling: at last, we know we are not alone.