Susan Dominus

AI Summary

→ WHAT IT COVERS NYT Magazine writer Susan Dominus reflects on the deaths of Gloria Steinem and Dolly Parton within days of each other in September 2025, examining how these two women advanced feminist ideals through opposite approaches — explicit political organizing versus embodied personal example — and how both shaped generations of women. → KEY INSIGHTS - **Complementary feminism:** The feminist movement required two distinct archetypes to reach its full cultural impact. Steinem provided explicit political organizing, legal advocacy, and structural change — co-founding Ms. Magazine and the National Women's Political Caucus. Parton provided lived embodiment of the same values — financial independence, creative control, unapologetic self-expression — without claiming the label. Neither approach alone was sufficient. - **Strategic label avoidance:** Parton deliberately distanced herself from the word "feminism" during the Nine to Five press tour, framing the 1980 film as a comedy about one difficult boss rather than a statement on workplace injustice. This was not evasion but calculated reach — by refusing the label, she brought women alienated from formal feminism into alignment with its core values of equal pay, harassment-free workplaces, and fair credit. - **Ms. Magazine's downstream cultural impact:** Steinem's Ms. Magazine, launched in the early 1970s as the first women's magazine run entirely by women, directly pressured mainstream publications to cover reproductive rights, sexual harassment, and workplace equality. By 1992, outlets like Glamour were aggressively covering these topics — a shift Dominus credits directly to Ms. Magazine normalizing them as legitimate editorial territory. - **Business ownership as feminist act:** Parton's creation of Dollywood — naming a major commercial enterprise after herself — modeled a form of female power rarely seen in business history. Women face measurable social penalties for self-promotion, yet Parton claimed her name publicly while framing the motivation as community economic development, effectively neutralizing backlash while establishing a template later echoed by figures like Taylor Swift reclaiming her masters. - **Steinem's formal recognition of Parton:** In 1987, Steinem personally wrote Parton's Women of the Year tribute in Ms. Magazine, explicitly arguing that feminism defined as helping women find unique power and supporting other women applied fully to Parton — regardless of label rejection. This cross-endorsement between the movement's public face and its most prominent non-self-identified practitioner validated both approaches as legitimate and mutually reinforcing. → NOTABLE MOMENT Dominus describes her feminist awakening arriving not through Steinem's organizing but through watching Nine to Five at age ten with her sister. A comedy about three secretaries outsmarting a harassing boss delivered every core feminist workplace demand — equal pay, childcare, harassment protections — wrapped in laughter rather than ideology. 💼 SPONSORS None detected 🏷️ Gloria Steinem, Dolly Parton, Feminist Movement History, Ms. Magazine, Workplace Equality