Celebrity Feminism

Honoring Gloria Steinem’s Legacy and the Black Feminists Who Shaped It

PUBLISHED 9/15/2026 by

Gloria Steinem was a person with integrity who used her celebrity to promote feminism and women’s issues—keeping them front in the public’s mind through appearances on talk shows, speaking engagements, her memoir My Life on the Road and the biographical film derived from it, The Glorias.

One moment in particular has stayed with me: Steinem’s pronouncement in a 2016 article by Zeba Blay, titled “I Learned Feminism From Black Women.” (I was so thrilled to see such a public announcement, that I used this quote in the first brochure published about the Irma McClaurin Black Feminist Archive, which I founded in 2016 at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.)

I wonder how comfortable she would be with all the hoopla that focuses attention only on her, while ignoring the countless Black, Brown, Indigenous and other white women who struggled for equal rights before her—including the Black women from whom she said she learned her feminism. Those women continued the struggle during Steinem’s lifetime, and they will continue it after her death.

I did not know Gloria well, but well enough to ask my African ancestors to welcome her soul as a kindred spirit. Asè.

‘Galaxy Brain,’ Feminist Stand-Up and Looking Beyond the Netflix Algorithm

PUBLISHED 9/14/2026 by

“I’ve prepared a lot. I’m taking this very seriously, because it’s still very rare for women to get Netflix specials. I had to have sex with so many executives over there.”

So begins comedian Mary Beth Barone’s new Netflix special, Galaxy Brain, with a joke about just how exceptional a woman apparently has to be to reach one of comedy’s biggest platforms.

A recent New York Times article, “Feminist Stand-Up Was Once Ascendant. Can Mary Beth Barone Revive It?” paints a picture of a stand-up scene that’s left women behind: one dominated by deliberately confrontational, anti-“politically correct” comedy and Netflix Top 10 lists littered with right-wing darlings like Tony Hinchcliffe and Andrew Schulz. 

Barone’s joke points to a real disparity in who receives the industry’s most visible opportunities. Women account for only a quarter of Netflix’s stand-up specials in 2026. And among 2025’s 10 highest-grossing comedy tours, Nikki Glaser’s Alive and Unwell was the only one headlined by a woman. 

But asking whether Barone can “revive” feminist stand-up mistakes limited mainstream visibility for an absence of feminist comedy. Women—particularly Black women, queer women and other performers pushed outside the industry’s center—have helped shape stand-up from its beginnings.

Gloria Steinem Lit a Revolution. The Torch Is Ours Now.

PUBLISHED 9/5/2026 by

This week, Gloria Steinem died at the age of 92, peacefully at her home in New York City and surrounded by people who loved her.

We will miss her at Ms. I will miss her personally.

There were parts of Gloria’s childhood that mirrored my own. For a period of time, Gloria did not attend school because she was tending to her mother. She later said that she chose not to have children because she had already had a mother to take care of.

We do not talk enough about stories like that: the sensitivity that came from her own childhood. Pronatalism in the United States still insists that all women should want children, care for those children, stay home and find satisfaction within the narrow boundaries others have drawn for them. Even education has historically been framed not as a path toward women’s intellectual or economic freedom, but as a place to find a husband.

To want something more—and to care about something larger than the life prescribed for you—has always carried challenging consequences for women. Gloria understood that deeply. She also understood that the freedom to shape one’s life begins with the ability to govern one’s own body.

In 2017, standing before the Women’s March in Washington, D.C., Gloria called for “a deep democracy” in which people would refuse to be quiet or controlled. “We are at one with each other,” she said. “We are looking at each other, not up. No more asking Daddy.”

Those words carry a special weight today. Democracy has never been a gift delivered from above. Equality has never arrived because people in power suddenly found it convenient. Both are built by people who recognize one another, tell the truth about their lives and refuse to accept that injustice is inevitable.

Dispatches From Daisy Chain: Olivia Rodrigo’s Feminist Festival Brought Together Music, Reproductive Freedom and the Power of Women

PUBLISHED 9/1/2026 by

On Saturday, Aug. 29, more than 45,000 music fans traveled to Irvine, Calif., for the first-ever Daisy Chain Fields music festival, organized and headlined by Olivia Rodrigo, where 100 percent of the proceeds went to organizations supporting women and girls. Under the sweltering SoCal sun, an all-women lineup—including sets from Mitski, Doechii, Garbage, Chappell Roan and others—fundraised for 10 nonprofits: Baby2Baby, Black Mamas Matter Alliance, Center for Reproductive Rights, FreeFrom, Jhpiego, Johns Hopkins Center for Indigenous Health, National Domestic Workers Alliance, National Institute for Reproductive Health National Women’s Law Center and Planned Parenthood.

The all-day festival, inspired by Sarah McLachlan’s Lilith Fair of the 1990s, raised $10 million in ticket sales. Then, during her set at the end of the day, Rodrigo announced (to massive applause) that Melinda French Gates was matching every dollar raised—bringing the festival’s total donation to $20 million for diverse nonprofits supporting sexual and reproductive health, children in need, Black mothers, gender-based violence survivors, Indigenous communities and more.

I was lucky enough to go to Daisy Chain Fields and cover the festival for Ms. In the “Daisy Chain Reaction Village,” I spoke with several of the organizations that will receive Daisy Chain Fields funds.

“We wanted to come to the festival because we feel really passionately about connecting with new audiences on the issue of reproductive rights, particularly younger audiences who may not be as aware or knowledgeable about the national and international state of reproductive rights and bodily autonomy,” said Esme Lowe from the Center for Reproductive Rights. “It’s just super exciting because we’re engaging with people we might not [otherwise] even get to talk to.”

In line outside the Daisy Chain Reaction Village, sisters Madison and Mackenzie Wong said they were excited to attend the festival in their home city of Irvine, and happy to see a lot of younger fans of Olivia Rodrigo there to learn about the causes Daisy Chain Fields was supporting. 

“I think it’s important for big artists who have a platform to use their voice,” Mackenzie said. “They have so much influence anyway, so no matter what they say, it’s going to have a broader impact.”

Dolly Parton’s Unique Feminist Power, as Told by Gloria Steinem (January 1987)

PUBLISHED 8/27/2026 by

(As the world mourns Dolly Parton, Ms. is revisiting Gloria Steinem’s tribute to the country music legend, originally published in the January 1987 issue, when Parton was named one of Ms. magazine’s Women of the Year. Steinem celebrated Parton not only as a gifted songwriter and magnetic performer, but as a shrewd businessperson who transformed femininity into a source of humor and power—and used her success to lift up working women, poor communities and the mountain people of her native Tennessee.)

If feminism means each of us finding our unique power, and helping other women do the same, Dolly Parton certainly has done both.

Her strength and capacity to dream seems to have been born into Dolly, as one of 12 children of a poor family in those mountains.

By the time she was 7, she was playing the guitar, reading books and dreaming of a world beyond the poverty and beauty of the Smoky Mountains.

By the time she was 10, she had coaxed support from her free-thinking mother, braved the opposition of her protective father, and earned her first public applause by singing before live audiences at a radio station in Knoxville. With that taste of success, she vowed to conquer the larger world beyond the mountains, but never to betray the country way of life that had nurtured her.

Rest in Power, Dolly Parton: Feminist Country Icon, Advocate for Women and Children, Philanthropist and Gifted Songwriter

PUBLISHED 8/27/2026 by

Dolly Parton understood the power of being underestimated. Beneath the rhinestones, towering blond hair and self-deprecating jokes was a gifted songwriter, a shrewd businesswoman and a philanthropist whose work transformed the lives of millions of children and families.

Parton left behind a body of work that stretches far beyond the songs and films that made her one of the most beloved performers in American life. She sang about the dignity of working women. She placed hundreds of millions of books in the hands of children. She supported healthcare, disaster relief and lifesaving medical research. And she repeatedly used her enormous cultural influence to affirm the humanity of people who were too often marginalized, including Black and LGBTQ+ Americans.

Parton’s concern for women and children was expressed not only through her art, but in what she did with the wealth and influence her art created. We heard her legacy in the songs that made working women feel seen. We saw it in the books delivered to children, the families supported after disaster and the medical research that saved lives.

May Dolly Parton rest in power. May her legacy live on in every child who discovers a new world inside a book, every woman who demands dignity in the workplace and every person who chooses compassion when indifference would be easier.

What the Lindsay Clancy Trial Reveals About America’s Failure to Support Mothers in Crisis

PUBLISHED 8/21/2026 by

News of Lindsay Clancy’s triple-murder trial is flooding the Internet, and with it, conversations about postpartum depression. In January 2023, Lindsay Clancy killed her 5-year-old, 3-year-old and 8-month-old children before attempting suicide, which left her paralyzed from the waist down. The facts of their deaths are not up for debate in this Plymouth trial, but whether or not the severe postpartum psychosis, clinical depression and bipolar disorder Clancy was experiencing meant she was criminally insane. 

Clancy’s mother-in-law explained Clancy was “begging for help” right before she killed her children. In December, just weeks before, she told her mother and then-husband Patrick (the couple are now divorced) that “she had thoughts of harming the children.”

The case has laid bare the failures of a U.S. mental healthcare system that did not protect Clancy or her children, and still leaves countless new mothers without adequate care.

While Clancy stands trial, people are mourning the loss of Hayden Panettiere, a child star who had long struggled with postpartum depression following the 2014 birth of her daughter, Kaya, and experienced domestic violence from her ex-boyfriend Brian Hickerson. This week, news outlets revisited Panettiere’s allegation that Neutrogena (one of her long-time partners) attempted to end her contract after she spoke honestly about her postpartum depression.

Madonna Is Still Rewriting the Rules For Women in Pop

PUBLISHED 8/18/2026 by

Thousands of fans, writers, nightlife legends and artists walked between the legs of a towering inflatable Madonna last month—a fitting monument to four decades of Madonna’s subversive expression of female sexuality and autonomy. The giant inflatable served as the entrance to Club Confessions at the Knockdown Center, where she celebrated Confessions II, her 15th studio album and sequel to her landmark 2005 album Confessions on a Dance Floor.

The event followed a summer in which Madonna staged a surprise album launch performance in Times Square; joined Sabrina Carpenter onstage during Carpenter’s headlining Coachella set; and opened the first-ever FIFA World Cup Final halftime show.

Widely regarded as a pioneering voice of women’s sexuality, authorship and autonomy in entertainment, Madonna has paved the way for generations of artists since the 1980s. But the industry moves at a relentless pace, with artists becoming irrelevant after a single album cycle and women in particular expected to endlessly reinvent themselves to remain culturally valuable. Against that backdrop, her newest work radically celebrates her own legacy.

Forty-three years after releasing her debut single, Madonna has fundamentally expanded the possibilities of female autonomy.

Believing Women (or Not) Shapes More Than Sexual Assault Cases

PUBLISHED 7/30/2026 by

Nearly a decade after the rise of #MeToo, public conversations about sexual harassment and assault have entered a new phase—one marked by growing skepticism.

New data from Tulane University’s Newcomb Institute 2025 Violence Experiences Survey suggests that this skepticism extends beyond individual cases. People who are more likely to doubt women’s reports of sexual violence are also more likely to question women’s leadership and their ability to make decisions about their own health.

This matters because believing women—and believing in women—shapes whether survivors come forward, whether they are taken seriously and whether women are trusted in positions of authority. Ultimately, the issue is larger than sexual violence alone. It is about women’s credibility, and whether society trusts women to speak about their own experiences, lead their communities and decide what is best for their health and safety.

The People’s Bill of Rights 250 Invites Americans to Reimagine the Constitution

PUBLISHED 7/29/2026 by , and

A new online public platform—The People’s Bill of Rights 250—invites Americans to propose, discuss and vote on ideas they believe belong in the Constitution. As the U.S. marks 250 years, the bold, interactive project asks Americans not only to reflect on the nation’s founding, but to help shape its future.

The nonpartisan organization The People and executive director Katie Fahey, alongside a coalition of civic, advocacy and cultural leaders, spearheaded the People’s Bill of Rights 250. It invites Americans to answer a simple question: What freedoms, rights and protections should every person in the country be guaranteed over the next 250 years?  

From now until Friday, July 31, Americans are encouraged to vote and share their own ideas at the People’s Bill of Rights 250’s website.