Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print
(USA, 110 min.)
Dir. Salima Koroma, Alice Gu, Cecila Aldarondo
“Ms. Would have been really boring if we all agreed about everything all the time,” Ellen Sweet says about contributing to the iconic feminist magazine. The ongoing process of refining the voice that helped define generations of feminists receives an attentive look in the anthology documentary Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print. Navigating over 50 years of publication and hundreds of issues of discourse, that’s a huge history to synthesize. But directors Salima Koroma (Bad Rap), Alice Gu (The Donut King), and Cecilia Aldarondo (You Were My First Boyfriend) embrace the challenge.
Each director tackles one angle in Ms.’s tumultuous history, charting the linear narrative of the publication while situating the conversations that unfolded in the pages of the magazine and spilled out into culture more broadly within the socio-political context that still makes it a trusted source today. The filmmakers draw from the spirit of Ms. to find a novel way to explore the history of the magazine. Each part of the documentary selects key cover stories to fuel the retrospective. These selections, ranging from wonder women to men’s roles in feminism to the pornography vs. erotica debate, let voices from Ms.’s back issues illuminate the editorial process, but they also share the ways in which readers’ responses—and those of the TL;DR crowd—helped Ms. and its articulation of feminism evolve.
The magazine’s origin story fuels part one, “A Magazine for All Women,” which Koroma directs. The chapter tells of that pivotal cover—Ms.’s first—as co-founder Gloria Steinem pushed to create a space for feminist perspectives when women’s magazines were generally limited to catalogues and recipe guides. Steinem, along with founding editors Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Pat Carbine, and first editor Suzanne Braun Levine, offer new interviews that consider what Ms. got right in the early days. Refreshingly, they’re equally candid about what didn’t work while aspiring to represent the feminist perspective.
Dear Ms. charts a journey of recognizing that no magazine can represent “the” feminist perspective. The doc tells how Steinem conceived of the first Ms. cover as an illustration of the Hindu goddess Kali. The image of the deity with eight arms conveys the many roles that women juggle daily. A telephone, pan, iron, and hairbrush are among the items that visualize how women circa 1971 were expected to balance myriad domestic and professional skills. Steinem and company tell how the stakes were high, as Ms. had to prove that women could run a magazine in which women were the target audience—and that women had time to read it between all their duties inside and outside the household. But Kali’s many hands also symbolize a clue that the founders seemingly overlooked: the many arms of feminism, so to speak.
Faith in Ms. from the publishing establishment was so low that it first ran as a preview issue published by New York magazine with 300,000 copies. Those copies—a bonanza by comparison to today’s circulation numbers for any print mag—sold out in three days, the interviewees recall. Soon after, Ms. was reaching tens of thousands of subscribers with controversy generated by naysaying men fuelling the interest towards hundreds of thousands.
Dear Ms. tells how Ms. charted an unapologetic voice. It introduced itself with an open letter signed by women who’d had abortions—a provocative first impression at the time when the procedure was illegal. But as readers’ letters flooded in and men ranted on their pedestals, the Ms. team knew they were striking a right chord.
Subsequent covers, however, exemplify the tricky process of finding an outlet that seemingly speaks to and for everyone. Interviewee Marcia Ann Gillespie, recruited for editorial from Essence, tells how Ms. inadvertently perpetuated politics of exclusion. Gillespie looks back on the focus of white feminism that didn’t adequately reflect the experiences and needs of Black women. The magazine’s coverage of Presidential hopeful Shirley Chisholm, moreover, brought conversations from mainstream discourse into the Ms. offices as the editors had to consider their own blind spots. Refreshingly, the contemporary interviews with the Ms. team see the founding parties recognize their shortcomings. They don’t make excuses and instead convey how these reality checks gave Ms. a better understanding of intersectional feminism.
Part two of Dear Ms. adds a surprising juncture to the magazine’s outlook: men! This chapter directed by Gu charts Ms. magazine’s groundbreaking cover stories on domestic violence and sexual harassment. The film gives audiences a taste of some truly provocative covers as Ms. controversially put a battered woman—a model shaded with make-up—on the cover. It’s a powerful image that speaks to the publication’s determination to be a forum for difficult topics. But, again, the barrage of letters tells how the story hit its target. Snippets from letters to the editor reveal countless readers who felt validated, seen, and strengthened by the stories Ms. presented about women abused by their husbands.
The documentary builds upon the clicks with women and quips from men introduced in the first part. But the second act illuminates how Ms. advanced feminist conversations by including men within them. (A point that hopefully makes it okay that this review comes from a man!) Interviewees like Alan Alda add to the conversation about pay gaps and workplace harassment. Images from back issues demonstrate how Ms. ushered in new language, and eventually, helped inspire laws, as women fought for equal footing in spheres both personal and professional. Unsurprisingly, some men need to hear from a man that interests were shared across genders.
The most complicated chapter of Dear Ms. and no doubt one of the most controversial tête-à-têtes in the magazine’s history comes in part three. “No Comment,” directed by Aldarondo, largely focuses on the 1978 cover story “Erotica and Pornography: Do you know the Difference?” The film again builds upon conversations introduced in the first chapters to highlight how Ms. confronted misogyny and violence against women by putting pornography in the spotlight. Here, Dear Ms. changes shape formally as the straightforward taking heads-style interviews of parts one and two yield to a collage of magazine snippets with voiceover. The film features perspectives of women from all sides of the debate atop a collage of snipped and sculpted archival images of women’s bodies.
The film lets Steinem and company share their sides of the story as they recall tackling the pornography taboo. Their interest, they note, relates to the objectification, subjugation, and degradation of women in pornography. At the same time, they see the male gaze of such smut bleeding into all facets of media as men create works with a male audience in mind. Cut to some horrifically laugh-out-loud archival images of clippings sent to Ms. by readers. Advertisements for bowling lessons catch one’s eye with “beat your wife” puns, while a notorious Hustler cover encapsulates the meat market and proves the last straw.
This chapter adds a fascinating angle to the story, as the Ms. editors and contributors straddle debates of censorship. They understand that pushing too forcefully and taking too hard a line jeopardizes depictions of sexuality they find gratifying. The film asks how one charts such debates with criteria as subjective as the line between erotica and pornography. But that prompts another reality check about feminism itself when women become some of the fiercest voices in the debate.
Women within the adult entertainment business, ranging from actors to producers to strippers—including late Canadian doc icon Lindalee Tracey—give Ms. another check by articulating how debates about women’s sexuality need to, again, consider all women. But pointed criticism from anti-porn advocate and former contributor and Andrea Dworkin sees one voice exit the magazine for including both sides at all. Her departure echoes that of Alice Walker in the first chapter, who left because the mag lacked fair representation for women of colour: finding a unifying voice proves an impossible task.
These chapters merely provide three stories among many, but they’re a fitting encapsulation of the Ms. legacy. Koroma, Gu, and Aldarondo admirably give Ms. credit for both reflecting and shaping essential conversations. The doc does away with rose coloured glasses while asking how publications stay true to their editorial integrity in a challenging field, all the while straddling voices of objectivity and advocacy. As the founding members of Ms. note throughout the documentary, many of the conversations from early issues remain at the forefront of conversations today, feminist or otherwise. While Dear Ms. pens an appropriately celebratory note, it holds a level of cautious optimism by understanding that there’s always going to be another letter to add to the story.
