From the Magazine

Survivors Describe How Epstein Used Their Modeling Dreams to Abuse Them

PUBLISHED 10/2/2026 by

Jeffrey Epstein “used the modeling industry as a lever to try to get girls into his orbit,” says survivor Lisa Phillips.

Phillips describes how Epstein operated: He asked about her career, about how often she talked to her father (she told him not often), and he specifically wanted to know about her goals as a model. She told him her “big dream” was to work for Ford Models. He told her that she and the other model had to stay over on the island, then assaulted her later that night.

Months later, she says, he called to say he had arranged a meeting with his “great friend” Katie Ford, the CEO of Ford Models. Phillips met with Ford and became a model for the agency.

“Models were being sent to every charity event, every modeling party,” she says, “everything organized through Katie Ford and agents. … It was always us younger girls and older men. We [felt] our bodies weren’t ours and we would just have to put up with it to keep [our] career.”

Part 1 of The Pipeline to Predators, a four-part Ms. investigation into the modeling industry’s connections to Jeffrey Epstein and survivors’ fight for accountability.

After Sept. 11, the U.S. Press Corps Chose Patriotism Over Scrutiny

PUBLISHED 9/11/2026 by

(This article originally appeared in the December 2001/January 2002 issue of Ms. magazine.)

A free, independent and critical press is never more crucial than in wartime, when millions of lives and the course of history can turn on small bits of information.

But since the Sept. 11 attacks, corporate media outlets have been busy doing what News Corp owner Rupert Murdoch called their “patriotic duty”: waving the flag, toeing the government’s line, and ceding their major editorial judgment calls to Condoleezza Rice and other administration bigwigs. These insiders have pressured news executives to suppress information ranging from Al Qaeda statements and security details to public health data available under the Freedom of Information Act.

Rest in Power, Robin Morgan—Ms. Editor, Poet, Feminist and Architect of the Women’s Movement

PUBLISHED 9/5/2026 by

Longtime Ms. editor and “architect of the contemporary women’s movement,” Robin Morgan died peacefully in her sleep on Sept. 5, 2026, just days after her friend and feminist partner Gloria Steinem.

Morgan called Ms. “a real family,” citing the depth and longevity of the relationships many people established through it. She would go on to found the Women’s Media Center alongside Ms. cofounder Gloria Steinem and actor and activist Jane Fonda in 2005.

“Robin Morgan was one of the architects of the contemporary women’s movement,” said Julie Burton, president and CEO of the Women’s Media Center. “Her global leadership for justice and equality, her work as a pioneering journalist who gave voice and visibility to women, and her fierce artistry as an internationally recognized poet and author of more than 20 books—these all constitute the legacy she has forged over decades of creative, cultural, and political work. 

Fall 2026 Cover Reveal: Gloria Steinem Changed the Story, and Taught Us to Keep Telling It

PUBLISHED 9/4/2026 by

In our Fall 2026 issue, we remember Gloria not only for the words she wrote, the organizations she helped build or the barriers she broke, but for the connections she made.

Perhaps her greatest gift was her ability to listen, to make people feel capable of changing the world, and to build relationships across generations and movements. She knew that the work would outlast any one of us. The responsibility was to keep telling the story—and to make room for those who would tell it next.

Join today to get our newest issue delivered straight to your mailbox—and help sustain the independent feminist journalism Gloria worked to make possible.

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.

After Dobbs, the ERA Offers a New Path to Abortion Rights

PUBLISHED 8/25/2026 by

For 250 years, women have been fighting for inclusion in the nation’s founding promise of equality. The Equal Rights Amendment would finally guarantee that equality under the U.S. Constitution—and could give Congress and the courts powerful new tools to address discrimination in education, employment, healthcare and safety. It could also provide a constitutional basis for challenging abortion bans and restrictions as forms of sex discrimination.

But feminists do not have to wait for federal recognition of the ERA to put equality guarantees to work. State constitutions are already providing a path forward.

In Nevada, advocates successfully challenged the state’s ban on Medicaid funding for abortion under its Equal Rights Amendment; in Pennsylvania, courts have opened the door to treating restrictions on abortion funding as sex discrimination; and in Colorado, feminist lawyers are arguing that parental-notification requirements impose unequal burdens on young women while placing no comparable restrictions on young men.

At a moment when abortion rights no longer have federal constitutional protection, state ERAs offer feminists another constitutional path—not only to challenge abortion restrictions, but to confront the stereotypes and unequal burdens beneath them. Building strong interpretations of equality at the state level can protect women now while laying the groundwork for the expansive vision of sex equality a federal ERA could one day deliver nationwide.

(This essay is part of FEMINIST 250: Democracy’s Feminist Future, a special series examining the next chapter of American democracy through a feminist lens. As the nation marks its 250th anniversary, the series taps the thought leaders of today to debut game-changing ideas for the next 250 years.)

Saving Seneca Falls: The U.S. Birthplace of ‘All Men and Women Are Created Equal’ Must Be Preserved

PUBLISHED 7/17/2026 by

A caved-in roof. A crumbling porch. A memorial water wall in need of restoration.

These are just a few areas of the $10 million of deferred maintenance needed at the Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls, N.Y., one of 11 sites on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s 2026 list of “Most Endangered Historic Places.” The Women’s Rights National Historical Park celebrates the first Women’s Rights Convention, held on July 19 and 20, 1848. Of the 433 parks within the National Park System, only 13 are dedicated to women’s history, making the inclusion of the Women’s Rights park on the “most endangered” list even more imperative. Rather than merely lament a need for restoration, the list, according to the trust, aims to increase “visibility, public attention and new resources to save and activate historic places for the public good.”

The story of suffrage, like so many stories in our nation’s history, is neither uncomplicated nor is it a “single story” that’s “preserved in amber,” insists Miranda Johnson-Haddad, president of the Friends of the Women’s Rights National Historical Park, the non-profit philanthropic group that supports the park. Johnson-Haddad emphasizes that the park’s leadership wants to continue to have “brave conversations about difficult subjects,” including that some suffragists, like Stanton, succumbed to white supremacist thinking—despite being active in the abolition movement—championing the right to vote for white women, but not for Black men and women. No Black women were known to be in attendance at the first Seneca Falls Convention, and only one Black man, Frederick Douglass, signed the declaration.

Still, “these are stories that belong to all of us in all their messiness and complexity,” Johnson-Haddad stresses, “and that can guide us through the current messy complexity.” She cites “Bread and Roses,” a protest song dating back to 1912: “As we go marching, marching, we bring the greater days / The rising of the women means the rising of the [human] race.”

Join Ms. Magazine and Get Our Landmark FEMINIST 250 Print Issue for This Pivotal Moment in American History

PUBLISHED 6/16/2026 by

As the U.S. prepares to mark its 250th birthday on July 4, 2026, questions loom over the celebration: Whose America gets remembered, whose gets erased—and how do we imagine and build a democracy that includes all of us? 

In the Summer issue of Ms., we revisit the nation’s founding through a feminist lens, reclaiming the stories too often left out of the official narrative: women who challenged the authors of the Declaration of Independence and later the U.S. Constitution for deliberately writing women out of America’s founding documents, Black women who resisted oppression from the start, Indigenous societies built around women-led governance, queer lives in revolutionary America, Asian women’s struggles for belonging and the long fight to make disability visible in our history.

We also look back at 54 years of feminist reporting from the pages of Ms.—proof that the battles for bodily autonomy, equality and democracy did not begin yesterday—and forward to the bold new ideas that could shape a freer, fairer future for the next 250 years.

Get a year of Ms. for just $20 (a 43 percent discount off our usual price) when you join today!

How ICE Became the Enforcement Arm of the Patriarchy

PUBLISHED 5/4/2026 by

Speaking in early February, while the nation was still reeling from the killings of Minneapolis residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents, Jackson Katz, a leading voice in gender violence prevention and masculinity studies, and Loretta Ross, a celebrated Black feminist scholar and cofounder of SisterSong, examined the deadly ways misogyny and racism intersect in Donald Trump’s America.

The two of them had a nuanced exploration of how government institutions, cultural narratives and political movements shape—and weaponize—issues of gender and race. Their candid exchange critiques the forces behind U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and right-wing populism, and challenges us to rethink empathy, identity and our strategies for building a more inclusive feminist movement.

At Rikers, a Book Club Is Helping Women Imagine Life Beyond Bars

PUBLISHED 4/23/2026 by

In 2024, comedian Nora Fried started the Rosebuds Reading Collective, a monthly book club for women incarcerated at Rikers Island, New York City’s island jail.

“I was looking forward to this all month,” Fried recalls multiple women telling her. “This is the only thing I had to look forward to.”

The women read Down the Drain, a memoir by actor Julia Fox. After the discussion, Fried tagged Fox on Instagram. Fox, whose brother was incarcerated at Rikers at the time, agreed to visit the group.

Fox learned that her book was a particularly hot commodity and that one woman’s copy had been stolen. Still, all were curious about how a girl like them had become a published author. The room resonated with laughter, from both the incarcerated women and the guards.

“It made me think to myself, I would do this every weekend. I want to come back. I love these girls,” Fox says. “They are amazing, remarkable, intelligent young women [who] made mistakes. We’ve all made mistakes. Some of us are lucky enough not to get caught.”