Book Review: ‘50 Years of Ms,’ edited by Katherine Spillar

Still, the book contributes a lot more to the conversation than it ignores. For one thing, there are the pictures. Reprints of the magazine’s art chart the publication’s evolution, from stories about feminists’ supposed lack of humor to the 2022 repeal of Roe v. Wade. On Page 59, a tasteful female nude accompanies a provocative 1974 story about masturbation by the sex educator Betty Dodson. From 1973: impactful, celebratory, close-up photographs of Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm and Frances “Sissy” Farenthold, who, a year prior, had sought the Democratic nominations for president and vice president. Closer to the book’s end are the three covers featuring Nancy Pelosi.

The recurring reader letters are fascinating and often powerful. Women write in to comment on the sexual harassment of Anita Hill, or to bear witness to and embrace their identities as survivors of domestic or sexual violence. One letter, published in the September 1978 issue, details how its correspondent, upon arriving at a county clerk’s office to get married, was handed a “New Homemaker’s Kit” that included bottles of Fantastik and Bufferin, pantyhose and a can of Spray ’n Wash.

Last month, I took “50 Years of Ms.” to my hometown to show my mother. My mom is currently in an assisted living facility and suffering from dementia. Her short-term memory is all but gone, and her long-term memories are on their way out. (This year, for the first time, she forgot my birthday.)

But Ms. is not something my mother — the first feminist I ever knew and the inspiration for much of the work I’ve done as an adult — has yet forgotten. As I sat next to her recliner in the small apartment where she now lives, we looked at the book and she reminisced about stories she remembered and covers she loved.

It occurred to me, then, that it doesn’t feel like a coincidence that as Ms. turns 50, so do I. It also doesn’t feel like a coincidence — and don’t hate me for saying this — that this was the year of “Barbie.” My mother refused to let me play with Barbies. I certainly can’t imagine that the editors of Ms. ever imagined that there would someday exist a subversive, feminist salute to the much-maligned doll that would involve close to a dozen mentions of the word “patriarchy,” not to mention the sign-off of the manufacturer. But at its best, American media has a way of taking a country by surprise, of meeting a moment of political and personal potential and changing the way we see our culture.