Salon Media Circus | What the world needs now: A feminist bikini

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Ethnic stereotypes in the movies. Name your selection for the most idiotic portayals in this discussion in the Movies area of Table Talk

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Swing Nation RIP
By Steve Erickson
Rat Pack Sinatra, khaki pants and frosty martinis may have been vapid, but just wait for the next horror on the cultural horizon
(03/30/99)

I can't get arrested in this town!
By James Poniewozik
A tale of the thin blue rope line
(03/30/99)

$400,000 misunderstanding
By Susan Lehman
So maybe Vanity Fair writers don't actually make 400 grand. Who needs it, when editor Graydon Carter is constantly sending them sweet personal notes on blue stationery?
(03/25/99)

Why Elia Kazan should not receive an Oscar
By Steve Erickson
By bestowing a special honor on the director, who already has won two Oscars, the academy is glossing over history
(03/17/99)

Strange fruit
By James Poniewozik
Garden Escape is a new publication grown from the fertile soil of Garden.com. You might call it a catalog; they call it the ultimate service magazine. What if they're right?
(03/16/99)

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What the world
-----needs now: A feminist bikini
------------• MS. MAGAZINE LIGHTENS UP;
------------• MAXIM PLAYS THE BLOKE CARD;
------------• SALMAN'S VISION THING.

BY SUSAN LEHMAN

"WE'RE BACK! Wake up and Smell the Estrogen." With this bold, if vaguely inscrutable, cover line, Gloria Steinem's revamped 26-year-old feminist rag hit newsstands on Tuesday afternoon.

The estrogen line, says Ms. editor Marcia Ann Gillespie, "is meant to convey a sense of who we are as women -- powerful and smart. Plus it's a great goof line and I hope it makes people laugh. We want to signal, 'We're laughing!'"

Anxious to shed its dowdy, menopausal image, the new Ms. tries hard to keep the laughter up. Hip to the new media-saturated sensibility, the magazine offers lots of what Gillespie calls "light bites and tastes." "Many women don't want to read a whole article," she says, "but they do want to be enlightened, jarred, awakened or simply amused." The magazine's pages are sprinkled with telling facts and observations. Examples include: "Graham crackers were invented in 1829 by clergyman Sylvester Graham, who believed that they, along with a vegetarian diet, cold baths and fresh air, could curb young men's urge to masturbate"; and information about a financial service, sexquotes.com, that reportedly relieves the tedium involved in checking one's stock portfolio by combining "real-time ticker information with erotic images of women."

It's not all fun and games inside the re-tooled pages of Ms. There are pieces about the limits of Title IX, terrorist assaults on abortion clinics and the rise of religiosity and conservative sentiment among women. In fact, there's a little something for everyone here: a sports story about the defunct women's basketball league, the ABL; an article about Turkish headgear; a fashion essay in which fat-girl zine creator Nomy Lamm reveals that though she once "figured nobody would want to see a fat, hairy amputee dressed up like a hussy," she now enjoys doing same; and, for feminist cooks, an article that probes health questions surrounding the use of soy.

Ironically, the best pieces are the ones you'd be most likely to find in conventional women's magazines, including Laurie Stone's story (accompanied by inspirational photos) about her face lift, and a package about adultery with perspectives from the unlikely crew of Andrea Dworkin, Candace Gingrich, Betty Friedan and pornographer Candida Royalle.

Ms. suspended publication in October while Steinem rounded up financing for the relaunch. Now owned by Liberty Media for Women, a consortium of feminist investors, Ms. bills itself as "the only national publication that is truly women-owned." Liberty investors, who paid $3 million for the magazine, include Walt Disney's grandniece Abigail Disney, Steinem, Cisco Systems co-founder Sandy Lerner and 15-year-old Anne Kiehl Friedman and her sister Alison, an undergrad at Stanford.

The magazine has been reader-supported since its last relaunch in 1990. It will continue to publish without ads in its new incarnation. As part of its general plan to attract young readers without alienating its 200,000 core readers, Ms. promises a number of newfangled ventures, including a Web site set to launch sometime in the months ahead, and merchandising ventures. "Ms. clothing is a possibility, maybe even makeup," says a magazine spokeswoman, who acknowledges there has been talk of possible Ms. bikinis. "We want to do things that are consumer-oriented, that are fun," she says.

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