Best of Design Matters: Gloria Steinem

Curtis Fox (0:01)

Gloria Steinem passed away last week at the age of 92 To celebrate her extraordinary life, we want to replay Debbie's interview with her from 2023

Gloria Steinem (0:12)

Righteous anger, anger at injustice, unfairness, pain, cruelty, is an energy cell. And if we look at it that way, this is a gift, this is energy I can use.

Curtis Fox (0:30)

From the TED Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Millman.

For 18 years, Debbie Millman has been talking with designers and other creative people about what they do, how they got to be who they are, and what they're thinking about and working on. On this episode, Gloria Steinem talks about the past and the future.

Gloria Steinem (0:51)

Optimism is a form of planning. If we don't imagine something positive that is possible, it's way less likely to happen.

Debbie Millman (1:04)

She is an award-winning journalist, a New York Times bestselling author several times over, a co-founder of one of the most significant magazines of the 20th century, and an activist whose work has impacted the place women and girls now have in the world. She's also co-founded the National Women's Political Caucus, the Women's Action Alliance, and the Women's Media Center. For over 60 years, she has been in the thick of American cultural and political life, where she has been instrumental in shaping our ideas about feminism, humanity, and equal rights for all people.

She is, of course, the legendary Gloria Steinem, and I have the great honor of interviewing her today in my studio at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Gloria Steinem, welcome to Design Matters.

Gloria Steinem (2:02)

Thank you so much, and now listening to your introduction, I'm only worried about living up to it.

Debbie Millman (2:08)

Oh, you already have. That's the great thing. You've already done these things.

Gloria, I understand that your older sister Suzanne was actually the person in your family who named you. Is it true you were named after her favorite doll?

Gloria Steinem (2:25)

Yes, I think so. My parents had had another child, a boy, who was stillborn between us, and that meant that my sister was almost a decade older than I. So she was another mother, in a way, and I looked up to her and followed her around, much to her alarm.

And yes, she did name me.

Debbie Millman (2:49)

I wonder what type of doll we could find now back in the 50s that is named Gloria. I think we're going to have to do an eBay search to figure that out.

Gloria Steinem (3:00)

The dolls that I adored, and I did have a collection of dolls, were named after Sonia Henney, who was a great figure skater of the era. I don't know, they came with names, not mine, but I was in love with dolls.

Debbie Millman (3:15)

You were born in 1934 in Toledo, Ohio.

Your father's mother, Pauline Perlmutter Steinem, was a suffragist and the first woman in the state of Ohio to be elected to the national board. This was before women had the right to vote nationally. How did she manage such a victory?

Gloria Steinem (3:37)

First of all, I'm so impressed with your research. Thank you for that. Because I think Pauline deserves notice and attention.

She had come from either Russia or the country close to Russia, we're not sure, when she was a teenager, then lived in Vienna, I think, not sure. And my grandfather went there to find a bride in a very European traditional way. So she arrived in her late teens as a bride, and she did become a suffragist. Also, she founded the first vocational high school. Otherwise, they were all learning Latin and Greek, whether that was going to be useful in their lives or not, in Toledo. And she was greatly admired. I only remember her in a sensory way, because I was too little. I remember her kitchen and food.

But my mother was definitely in love with her mother-in-law.

Debbie Millman (4:40)

Did her activism even subliminally influence you at all? Did you look back at what she was doing and feel like that was something you also wanted to do at that age?

Gloria Steinem (4:52)

You know, I'm not sure. I mean, I certainly admired the fact that she had made it possible for women to vote by organizing them to vote in a group. Otherwise, they were harassed and scared away from the voting places by gangs of men and boys who were hostile to women voting. I knew that. I knew about the vocational high school. I knew she was very admired. But I'm not sure. Maybe it made me assume that I could go to college, which my older sister did, too, that was possible in my family for women to be educated.