Across decades, feminists have wrestled with whether femininity is self-expression, social constraint—or both.
Dive into feminist history with “In the Ms. Archives,” a new monthly column exploring key concepts and debates from over five decades of Ms. magazine’s groundbreaking coverage. Written by mother-daughter duo, professor Juliet A. Williams and Ms. intern Roxana Behdad, this column connects past and present feminist ideas, inviting readers to uncover the rich stories and surprising insights hidden in the Ms. archives. Whether you’re a longtime feminist or new to the movement, this column offers fresh perspectives and inspiration drawn straight from the Ms. Magazine Archive. For the first time, you can explore the entire digital collection of Ms. magazines, from 1972 till present, at your public or university library through ProQuest. Ask your librarian to add the new Ms. Magazine Archive to their collections if you can’t find it.
From its earliest days, Ms. has explored how prevailing ideals of what it means to “be a man” harm women and men alike. With a sitting U.S. president who is a veritable poster boy for “toxic masculinity,” and following a summer dominated by the trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs and lingering controversy surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, this necessary work continues. (See Ms. print issue Summer 2025’s “Special Report on Men.”)
If the feminist mandate to challenge prevailing ideals of masculinity is resoundingly clear, the feminist take on femininity is … complicated.
Femininity has long been the elephant in the room of feminism. On the one hand, femininity doesn’t just name what it means, culturally, to be a woman—femininity lies at the heart of many women’s own sense of self. And yet, feminists identify femininity as a source of oppression, a straight-jacket imposed on women to keep us in our place. (See “Locked Knees, the Debutante Slouch, and Hair Twisting: The Contrived Postures of Femininity.”)
A search of the Ms. archive—a comprehensive database of print issues published from 1972 to the present—reveals that the terms feminine and femininity have appeared over 1,000 times (more often, in fact, than the terms masculine and masculinity, which have been mentioned a combined 743 times). Unsurprisingly, the terms masculine and masculinity frequently have arisen in discussions that are critical of its dominant expressions. (See “Toxic Masculinity.”) Until more recently, the same could be said of the terms feminine and femininity too.
To understand feminism’s conflicted relationship with the idea of femininity, it is helpful to recall that the feminist second wave began as a revolt against the cultural expectations imposed on white, middle-class women. The very title of Betty Friedan’s 1963 classic The Feminine Mystique gestures at the argument that women’s subordination is rooted in culturally pervasive conceptions of femininity. (See “She Changed Our Lives: Betty Friedan.”)
In 1968, the burgeoning women’s liberation movement burst into national visibility with media coverage of the historic No More Miss America protest in Atlantic City. Inside the auditorium, undercover activists used vials of Toni Home Permanent as makeshift stinkbombs, while activists outside filled a Freedom Trash Can with girdles, high heels and copies of Playboy magazine.
The No More Miss America protest predictably drew criticism from defenders of the traditional gender order, who seized upon women’s liberationists’ rejection of beauty culture to mock them as “big, ugly man-haters.” (See “Now Does Hollywood.”) Even among those sympathetic to the movement, however, the protest proved controversial, with some worrying that activists had crossed the line from vilifying the idea of femininity, to attacking actual women who embodied the feminine ideal.
From its inception, Ms. has taken a different approach. As founding editor Gloria Steinem once explained, the magazine has always been open to advertising beauty products—so long as the ads avoid demeaning gender stereotypes. (See “Sex, Lies & Advertising.”) In all but rare cases, that condition has proved too demanding for potential sponsors.
While Ms. has been open to engaging with the beauty industry, Ms. authors have been uncompromising in calling out the way that unrealistic standards of feminine beauty harm women. (See “Faith Healers and Holy Oils: Inside the Cosmetics Industry.”) Still, Ms. has avoided the mistakes of the No More Miss America protest, with surely the harshest words about femininity to appear in its pages directed not at real women, but instead, a plastic
avatar: Barbie.
Throughout the decades, references to Barbie appear again and again as a symbol of oppressive femininity. The first critique of Barbie in Ms. magazine appeared in December 1972—just three months after the first standalone issue of Ms. hit newsstands. As early as 1974, Ms. author Letty Cottin Pogrebin proclaimed that Barbie’s enduring popularity was the cause of “a feminist anxiety attack.” (See “Gifts for Free Children.”)
Over the years, Mattel has scrambled to keep up with feminist demands to free children from limiting gender stereotypes when it comes to imaginative play. In the 1970s, Mattel promoted “career” Barbies. In the 1990s, Mattel seemed to get the intersectional memo and launched more Barbies of color. Subsequent decades have seen Barbies of different body sizes.
Despite these efforts, references to Barbie in Ms. remained overwhelmingly critical. (See “When Ms. Met That Girl.”) In an article published in the early 1990s, Patricia Williams characterized Barbie as “an anorexic instrument of white women’s oppression,” and wondered aloud whether Barbie is even “capable of being Black.” (See “From Stereotype to Archetype”.) Even Julia Serrano’s 2014 essay urging feminists to “empower femininity” takes pains to distinguish that notion from “simply calling for more Barbie dolls and glitter for everyone.”
But something changed in 2023. That year, writer/director Greta Gerwig’s film Barbie became a global blockbuster, outperforming Oppenheimer at the box office to become the highest-grossing film of the year. At the premiere, Gerwig proclaimed, “Hell yeah, this is a feminist movie.”
Ms. authors agree. The Summer 2023 print issue poked fun at a Wall Street Journal reviewer who noted incredulously that Barbie “contains more swipes at ‘the patriarchy’ than a year’s worth of Ms. magazine.”
A flurry of Ms. articles followed, highlighting the movie’s feminist implications.
- In one of 2023’s most-read Ms. stories, Faith Crittendon argues that playing with Black Barbie encourages Black girls “to imagine beyond their wildest dreams, embrace the power of being a girl, and find comfort in defining their femininity.”
- In “Barbie Makes Girlhood Great Again,” Aastha Jani urges Ms. to rethink its perennial advice to parents to “put down that Barbie!” when selecting holiday gifts for their kids, and instead appreciate how “the complicated push-and-pull of hyperfemininity” depicted in the Barbie movie helps “create a world where femininity is being celebrated in the mainstream.”
- Jackson Katz praises the film for the “mainstreaming of critical feminist insights,”and to learn from Ken that patriarchy doesn’t just harm women; it’s bad for men too.
The Barbie movie marks a turning point when it comes to feminist engagement with Barbie the doll. But will this shift extend to feminist attitudes towards the issue of femininity more broadly?
Recent trends like tradwife and “conservative girl makeup” make clear that the politics of femininity are not going away anytime soon. Moving forward, we encourage feminists to continue to wrestle with the subject of femininity by learning from, and building upon, the rich engagement with this issue reflected in the pages of Ms. over more than five decades.
Great Job Roxana Behdad & the Team @ Ms. Magazine Source link for sharing this story.
