Word: ms
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...voice over the loud speaker at Paul's Mall resonates clearly. "Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Mr. Taj Mahal." Mr. Taj Mahal? The name sounds pretentious enough. I can't help but wonder how many people in the world have been similarly introduced as Mr. Westminister Abbey. Ms. Parthenon, Dr. Eiffel Tower or Mrs. Coliseum. But as soon as the lights come on and the man struts on stage, all preconceived doubts about Mr. Taj Mahal are quickly erased. His presence is charged with a playfulness that know of no pretentions and his music oozes with the mmmmmmmmmmm...
This month's issue makes the answer very clear. The communally run Ms. editorial staff must finally have decided just who its target-group should be. If the ad of the skinny young woman in her Danskin leotard and silk skirt that also recently ran in the New Yorker doesn't give it away, the articles on how to buy a sewing machine, or on Buffy Sainte-Marie, or the photographs of Andre Malraux and Jean Cocteau will. This magazine is for the wealthy, skinny, urban woman who probably has a job as well as a husband and household...
THERE ARE SAVING graces to Ms. It does credit its readership with having brains. A section in each issue ("Gazette") printed on newsprint rather than glossy paper, deals with issues of legislative and judicial reform as they relate to women all over the country. This month "Gazette" reports on an emergency shelter for the families of alcoholics in Los Angeles, the fight of a woman in Ohio to be the manager of a Union 76 gas station...
...rest of the magazine, with its ads for Helena Rubenstein face masks and articles on abstract expressionist painters, serves only to reinforce, the misconception that the women's movement is only for the well-off and well-educated. The women Ms. directs its articles at need its help a lot less than other women in this country. The women Ms. attracts can also be seen reading Susan Sontag's battle on feminism with Adrienne Rich in the current New York Review of Books, Young women, fat women, poor women, ugly women and old women have no place to go--except...
...basic problem is, of course, that there are 100-million women in this country, and one magazine cannot possibly meet the needs of them all. It's unfortunate that Ms. has had to become the most well-known, commercialized mouthpiece of the women's movement, for it ignores the lives so many women lead. The only national magazine that reassures women that they have brains ignores the fact that they might also have dishpan hands...