In her introduction to Poems from the Women’s Movement, Honor Moore recollects a friend saying, “The women’s movement was poetry.” The women’s movement was–and is–many things, and poetry was–and is–a necessary part of it. During the 1970s, poetry provided a way for women to find their voices and validate their experiences. Poetry enabled feminists to […]
Search Results for: vagina
No Comment: Summer’s Eve Gives Your Vagina A New Monologue
Summer’s Eve has launched its “Hail to the V” campaign, a new series of print, online and television ads telling women to spend more time taking care of their “wunder down under.” According to Summer’s Eve marketing director Angela Bryant, the campaign is “all about empowerment.” You be the judge: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RosLrkIwZA Let me admit that […]
The Vagina Dialogues, Circa 1970
Before there was The Vagina Monologues, there were the pelvic instructors. These women, from Boston’s Women’s Community Health Center, were radical in not only instructing medical students in female sexual anatomy but in also using their own bodies as models. Their short-lived yet highly symbolic program took place from 1975 to 1976 at Harvard Medical […]
Guerilla Vulvas Take on Vaginal Rejuvenators
Vulva-activism is alive and well–and on its way to Las Vegas. The latest protests stem from concern about the growing number of practitioners performing female genital cosmetic surgery. The surgeries take many forms. A labiaplasty reduces the size of the labia (while often performed to correct damage to the labia during childbirth or to alleviate […]
It Wasn’t Your Resume, It Was Your Vagina
The laundry list of interview do’s and don’t’s for women job-seekers is lengthy and often contradictory. Forbes tells women to be personable on the interview–but not too chatty. Cosmo warns against looking “hot,” but features images of gorgeous women sporting leopard-print stilettos and full lips. The “pantsuit vs. skirt” question remains unanswered. The Internet and […]
Sex Sells … Even in the Soap Aisle: What Does Sydney Sweeney’s ‘Bathwater Soap’ Say About Our Porn-Dominant Culture?
“I need your thoughts on this.” Attached to this urgent text was a link my friend had forwarded to me: An article by Elizabeth Gulino titled, “You Can Buy Sydney Sweeney’s Bathwater Now.”
Upon my first glance at the article, I found myself instinctually grasping for some feminist argument of the campaign, which Sweeney claimed to be fulfilling her fans’ persistent and frankly invasive requests for her bathwater. However, the way our commercial society and the broader marketplace are structured encourages women to market themselves towards those often degrading desires and enables men to continue acting as if treating women as objects is acceptable. And the solution is not restructuring what we construe as feminism, but rather, resisting the urge to accommodate one’s power to what seems like inevitable exploitation.
Defending bathwater products in the name of feminism will not lead us to the kind of liberation we could want for ourselves.
Our Abortion Stories: ‘I Have the Privilege to Live in a State Where I Am Safe’
“If she could have put off the baby for two more years, she could have saved up a nest egg and created her family the way she wanted. Instead, she was trapped with a baby too soon.”
Abortions are sought by a wide range of people for many different reasons. There is no single story. Telling stories of then and now shows how critical abortion has been and continues to be for women and girls. (Share your abortion story by emailing myabortionstory@msmagazine.com.)
“Seven more days. To find out what is happening inside my body. What is poisoning my body. Starving my body. Starving my life of joy and laughter.”
Women’s Health in Women’s Hands: Celebrating the Life of Carol Downer
One of the founders of the women’s health movement, Carol Downer died on Jan. 13, 2025 at 91. Before the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade, she sparked the feminist self-help movement and helped to develop and popularize menstrual extraction.
(This article originally appears in the Spring 2025 issue of Ms. Join the Ms. community today and you’ll get issues delivered straight to your mailbox.)
Class-Action Lawsuit Against Crisis Pregnancy Center and Groundbreaking Massachusetts Law Regulating Ultrasounds: ‘A Chink in the Armor’
Antiabortion crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) across the United States receive state and federal funds but have operated with little or no government oversight. CPCs use unsterilized transvaginal ultrasounds wands inside of patients, delay access to lifesaving care by misdiagnosing serious medical conditions and steal patient data from real medical clinics, according to investigative reporting and lawsuits filed against them. Advocates have been stymied in their efforts to obtain any sort of CPC accountability. But that may be changing.