The Good Girls Revolt

by Lynn Povich

  At the same time, the mainstream media were spreading the feminist message in the public arena. By the end of 1971, stories on the new women’s movement had appeared on the covers of Time, Newsweek, the New York Times Magazine, Look, Life, the Atlantic, and the Saturday Review. There was also a spate of “first” stories in the media—the “first woman” firefighter, police officer, stock broker, auto mechanic, telephone installer, you name it. The exploding coverage of the feminist movement not only was changing old institutions, but it also was creating new ones. Feminist bookstores, magazines, coffee shops, and health care clinics were springing up, bringing women’s previously private issues into the public domain.

  Distrusting the coverage of the women’s movement in the mass media, feminists focused their press on their own experiences and testimonies. Beginning in 1968, publications calling for social change—liberation or revolution rather than just equality—began to proliferate, including the Voice of the Women’s Liberation Movement out of Chicago, No More Fun and Games in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Lilith in Seattle, and Notes from the First Year in New York (which published Anne Koedt’s famous 1970 essay on “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm”). In all, more than five hundred feminist periodicals were published between 1968 and 1973.

  Ms. magazine, which began publication in 1972, had a major impact on the media as the first mainstream publication written, edited, owned, and operated by women. It featured cover stories on domestic violence and sexual harassment, commissioned a national study on date rape, and publicized such issues as sex trafficking and the sexist portrayal of women in advertising. In 1973, a group of women in Boston who had been studying their own anatomy and sexuality published Our Bodies, Ourselves, which revolutionized how the world looked at women’s health and popularized the radical notion that women’s bodies were as worthy of research as men’s.

  Inside the traditional media, women at newspapers, television networks, and local TV stations were busy forming committees and filing lawsuits. In early 1972, the Federal Communications Commission granted a petition from the National Organization for Women requiring that women be included in affirmative action programs for radio and television stations as a condition for the renewal of their broadcast licenses. That same year, NOW filed a petition to deny the license renewal of WABC-TV in New York and of WRC-TV in Washington, D.C. In February 1973, fifty women at NBC filed a sex discrimination complaint with the EEOC, the US Department of Labor, and the New York City Commission on Human Rights, which “found cause to believe” the complaint had merit. NBC conceded that “the commission’s report for the years 1967 to 1972 reflects the historical trends in American society—that women have been under-utilized in managerial positions and over-utilized in clerical positions.” (The case would be settled in 1975 for $2 million, awarding $540,000 in back pay to 2,600 women—between $500 and $1,000 each, with more going to the original sixteen plaintiffs.)

  Things were more complicated for the women at Time Inc., partly because they were older and better paid than we were and partly because the leaders of their movement didn’t involve all the women employees from the very beginning as we had. (Time magazine, however, counted six women among its fifty-six writers.) In March 1970, a reporter for the British news-magazine the New Statesman called a female Fortune employee and asked whether, after the Newsweek women sued, the women at Time Inc. were planning any action. That spurred a small group of women at several Time Inc. magazines to start meeting secretly. They decided to file sex discrimination charges with the New York State Division of Human Rights. When the complaint was ready to be signed, they called a meeting of the rest of the women to enlist their support. But, as one woman put it, it turned into “the Bay of Pigs,” a similarly ill-fated mission. Some women who had made it out of the research ranks didn’t feel discriminated against, others wanted to go to management first, and a number of women did not like having the decision imposed upon them.

  A group of sixty Time Inc. women actually split off into a dissident group and drew up a petition simply to “bear witness” to the truth of the allegations of discrimination, which they presented to top management. Two months after our legal complaint, on May 1, 1970, ninety-six women at Time Inc. filed a sex discrimination complaint against Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated. Seven months later, in February 1971, a conciliatory agreement was signed between 147 women and management stipulating, among other things, that the Human Rights Commission would monitor the company’s progress in interviewing, hiring, and promoting women on a quarterly basis. We were envious of this legal accountability, but in the end, it fizzled out.

  At Newsweek, we were moving ahead. After we signed the second memorandum of understanding with management in June 1973, more women were given tryouts as reporters and writers, and some were promoted. Lucy Howard, who had refused a bureau internship in 1972—“I was always the last person to try something,” she explained—was sent to the Washington bureau in 1973 to fill in during Watergate. The following year, she returned to New York to work in the newly created Justice section. “Technically I was a researcher but I never checked a story—I was reporting,” she recalled. “One of the women told me that according to Guild rules, if you don’t check anything for six months they have to promote you.” After six months, Lucy went to Ed Kosner, the managing editor, and showed him that she had not fact-checked a single story. She was promoted to reporter in 1974. “I was pushed into it,” she said. “I was asked to do the reporting and I was a good girl, so I did it. I was competitive and I didn’t want to get left behind, but I didn’t think of this as a career until long after the suit.”

  Pat Lynden left the magazine in May 1971, when she got pregnant. Margaret Montagno ended up writing in Nation and Religion before moving to Newsweek’s international edition, which, she said, “I preferred because it was much less pressure.” Judy Gingold was given a writing tryout in “Where Are They Now?” but it didn’t work out. As Judy’s close friend, I was upset, knowing how smart and talented she was. I went to Ed Kosner and suggested that he give her a tryout editing the guest essays in the “My Turn” section. Until then, Ed had been selecting the pieces himself, but he was taking on more responsibility for editing the magazine, so he agreed. Not surprisingly, Judy was brilliant at it, especially handling famous contributors, such as Henry Kissinger and Lionel Tiger. She was promoted to “My Turn” editor in 1974.

  When Mimi McLoughlin, the Religion researcher, had a writing tryout, she showed so much talent that Dwight Martin hired her. “If I have to have one of these women, I want to have a good one,” he said. Mimi became the Education writer, where she proved to be a star. Mariana Gosnell, the Medicine and Science reporter, also tried out with Dwight, but after writing in Education and on Newsweek International, she languished and returned to her old position in the back-of-the-book. “I preferred reporting,” she recalled. “I was always very verbose and didn’t like to do the seventy-liners.”

  Even after she had turned down a promotion to be a reporter in the Los Angeles bureau, Trish Reilly found herself being groomed as a writer in the Arts sections. Her editor, Jack Kroll, kept giving her story assignments. “I don’t know why I was targeted for success,” Trish recalled. “I just assumed that Jack was under pressure to promote women.” After a year or so, Jack told Trish he was going to promote her to writer and she panicked. “I felt so humiliated and ashamed that I was being given these opportunities and couldn’t say, ‘I don’t want to be a writer,’” she explained. “I remember walking out of Jack’s office saying, ‘I’ve got to get out of here.’” In 1973, she bolted to CBS News.

  I was doing better as a writer since my boss and nemesis, Joel Blocker, was fired in 1972. I felt vindicated. The senior editors who filled in liked my copy and in August that year, I was assigned my first cover story. It was on Halston, a young fashion designer who outfitted fashionable ladies, including Kay Graham, in chic Ultrasuede shirtdresses and sweater sets with wraparound skirts. I spent da
ys hanging out with Halston, going to Studio 54, and interviewing his clients, including a heady lunch on his terrace with actress Liza Minnelli and photographer Berry Berenson, designer Elsa Schiaparelli’s granddaughter. Given that we had sued Newsweek three months earlier—and kept asking to give the women a chance to succeed—I felt under enormous pressure. In a letter to my parents, my husband described my agony: “Lynn just wrote her first cover story. She had trouble sleeping at night and it was a sure sign of maturity. In the past, if she was nervous she would fall asleep in a second. Oz decided to cut short the chain of command and the article only went through one set of hands before he had a look at it. He was delighted with the story and gave it a very light edit.” Afterward, Oz sent me a note that revealed questionable taste but unquestionable enthusiasm. It said, “Congratulations on losing your virginity in such style.”

  Over the next year, more women from outside were being hired as writers. Susan Fraker, who had graduated near the top of her class at Columbia Journalism School, got a job on Newsweek’s international edition in August 1973, the only woman writer on that staff. “I learned about the women’s suit months afterwards,” she recalled, “but clearly that must have been why I was hired.” That fall, Margo Jefferson became the first black woman writer at Newsweek and the first woman to write in the Arts department, an area populated in the general press by many female bylines. “I was a direct beneficiary of the women’s suit,” said Margo, who went on to become a Pulitzer Prize–winning critic for the New York Times, “and I was stunned by the systemic, genteel, upper-middle-class sexism of the place.” When she was being interviewed by Jack Kroll, movie critic Paul Zimmerman wandered in to ask Kroll a question. Recognizing Margo from Columbia Journalism School, where he taught an arts writing course, he said, “You were one of Judy Crist’s students. I wanted one of my best students to get an interview here but he didn’t because he wasn’t black or a woman.” Margo was stunned. Kroll made a little joke that got Paul out of the office, “but that’s how angry, how beleaguered and besieged and maltreated certain kinds of men were already feeling,” she said.

  By then, there were several black reporters at Newsweek and at least one bureau chief, but there was never any attempt to organize among them. “There wasn’t a critical mass of blacks on the magazine,” recalled Margo. “Although if there were more than two of us standing together talking, you could guarantee that someone would walk by and say jokingly, ‘Planning an uprising?’”

  When it came to finding a female senior editor, the editors first looked outside the magazine. I was told that they approached Gloria Steinem, who wasn’t interested because she was editing her own magazine, Ms. Gloria later told me that she couldn’t remember whether she was asked but, she added, “it would make perfect sense because at a certain point, I became like José Greco—I was the only Spanish dancer they knew.” In the end, they decided to see whether a Newsweek woman could do the job. “I think after the Helen Dudar thing, they thought the women would be really mad if the first woman senior editor came from outside,” recalled Ed Kosner. “And as for inside, there weren’t too many candidates.”

  Oz offered Liz Peer a tryout as a senior editor in the summer of 1974. Liz had returned to New York in May 1973 as a swing writer in various back-of-the-book sections. In 1974, she won a Page One Award for her cover story on Barbara Walters (in her stylish prose, Liz described Barbara’s probing interrogations as “some of the toughest questions in TV journalism—dumdum bullets swaddled in angora”). Liz was by far the most senior and most talented woman on the staff, and it was right that she would be the first to shatter Newsweek’s glass ceiling. But Liz was complicated. “Liz was very ambitious and not easy,” said her close friend, sculptor Helaine Blumenfeld. “When the armor was on, she was clever, brilliant, and sassy. But nobody really knew her. She was so sweet, so vulnerable—just a gorgeous human being.” With her spiked heels and conical bras, she always talked about her “beaux” and was famous for hanging a full-length ball gown—and feather boa—on her office door to show that she had better things to do after work. On seeing a dress hanging on her door one night, Dwight Martin popped into her office and said, “I know where you’re going, Liz—to a women’s lib meeting.”

  Oz had wanted Liz to be the first female senior editor. But although she was the consummate Newsweek writer and reporter, she wasn’t cut out to be an editor. “She was very talented,” recalled Ed Kosner, Newsweek’s managing editor at the time, “but she wasn’t a good manager.” She could be volatile. Her tryout ended when she threw an ashtray across the room because she was furious at someone or something. “They immediately said it was because she was a woman,” recalled Nancy Stadtman, “but Russ Watson [another senior editor] used to throw things, too.” (Betsy Carter said Russ once threw a typewriter at her.)

  When Liz was trying out in the fall of 1974, I was on leave, trying to save my failing marriage. Unfortunately, the feature film that Jeff made had not done well and in 1973, he moved to Los Angeles to find work. For more than a year, we had been commuting back and forth every six weeks. Jeff desperately wanted me to move to LA, but I didn’t want to give up my job until I was sure he could earn a steady living. In October 1974, I took a three-month leave of absence to see if we could make a go of it. Things were better there, and I felt that before any decision was made, we needed to live together again. In December, I came back to Newsweek and asked Ed Kosner for another, longer leave beginning February 1. I also offered to do some work out of Newsweek’s LA bureau. Ed said fine.

  As I was cleaning out my office in January, Ed called me down to his office. “I’m going to complicate your life,” he said. “How?” I asked. “I want you to try out as a senior editor,” he replied. I was surprised and, frankly, unnerved. How could I do this now? What would happen to my marriage? Would Jeff understand? Not to mention the job—was I up to it? Could I really do the work? Could I edit guys who had been my bosses and were far more experienced than I was? And, every editor’s nightmare, would I be able to rewrite a cover story or a disastrous feature that needed to be turned around overnight? Not wanting to show my doubts or fears, I told Ed I was flattered and would talk it over with my husband.

  I went home that night worried about telling Jeff the news. But as I mulled over Ed’s offer, I found myself getting more and more excited just thinking about it. I had been working at Newsweek for ten years and writing for almost six. How could I turn down this opportunity to move up the ladder? To be the first woman senior editor? I knew Jeff would be disappointed, that he was counting on our being together in LA, as was I. But a tryout lasted only a few months and I wasn’t sure I would get the job anyway—I just knew I wanted to try.

  I called Jeff and told him about the offer. I said I had to stay in New York, that I felt I needed to prove to myself that I could—or couldn’t—be an editor, and that if I never tried out, I would never know. There was silence and then Jeff said, “Either you come to Los Angeles or our marriage is over.” I was shocked. I couldn’t believe he really said that. He couldn’t mean it. My stomach began to churn and it took me a minute to find my voice. Shaking, I told him that if he didn’t understand how important this was to me after all these years at Newsweek, then he must not love me. He said that of course he loved me, which is why he wanted me in Los Angeles. We talked a few more minutes but there was nothing more to say.

  The next day I had an appointment with my therapist at lunchtime. I remember walking into his office, sitting down, and saying, “Well, I guess my marriage is over.” I was so confused between feeling elated by Ed’s offer and feeling depressed that my husband couldn’t understand the opportunity I was handed. It clarified some things in my mind that I had been talking about with my shrink: why our life always seemed to revolve around him and what I had to do for myself after spending so many years encouraging him. I walked out of the office still not believing that after seven years our marriage was actually ending. That night, Jeff called me fr
om LA. He apologized and told me he loved me. He said he would come back to New York to be with me. The next month, he returned and found a job directing a soap opera.

  My tryout lasted several months that spring of 1975. I was nervous and exhausted, staying late several nights a week to get the job done. But I quickly realized that I enjoyed editing more than writing. I felt more suited to it and it fit my nurturing personality. I had lots of ideas and a strong sense of structure, and I enjoyed working with talented writers, relishing the give-and-take in making their work better. What proved more daunting was being the only woman in the story meetings. Despite Ed’s support, it was clear that most of the editors didn’t take me seriously. In a room filled with testosterone and egotism, I had to learn to speak up and defend my stories and my writers. As I struggled to push myself forward, I was surprised by the passivity of some of the men. One of my former editors, who was always insisting that he had fought hard for our stories, just rolled over whenever he encountered an objection from the top guys. And he wasn’t the only one.

  My relationships with my writers were more rewarding. The most surprising was with Harry Waters, my old boss whom I now was editing. Mensch that he was, Harry couldn’t have been more supportive or less threatened. We continued to work well together and I always valued his counsel. Ken Woodward was more skeptical of the decision to let me audition for the job. Ken was the longtime Religion writer at Newsweek and a man with old-fashioned values. But he was a good writer and an expert on religious topics. One day, Ken came into my office to tell me that initially he had been against my becoming a senior editor. He was against affirmative action and felt I was being considered only because I was a woman. But he had changed his mind after he realized I really was interested in the material and not just using the position as a stepping stone to get ahead, as had the men before me. He also told me that he had never asked to leave early to attend his son’s baseball game because he was afraid to say that to a male boss; instead, he would say he had a doctor’s appointment. But he felt that he could tell me the truth and I would understand. We had come to a truce.