Who

The founder of Ms. Magazine, Gloria Steinem is the world's most famous feminist.

Backstory

Steinem's upbringing was far from charmed: She spent her childhood traveling the U.S. in a trailer with her antique-dealer parents until they divorced when she was eight. During her teenage years, she took care of her mentally ill mom, and then left home to study government at Smith College. Moving to the city in the early '60s, she got a job at a humor rag called Help! and wrote freelance for Esquire and Glamour. In the late '60s, she joined the founding staff of New York, where she wrote a political column.

Steinem says she really became an activist while covering abortion hearings for the mag—a personal topic, since she'd had an illegal abortion after college. In 1971, she founded the pro-choice group National Women's Political Caucus with Betty Friedan, and the following year Steinem launched feminist bible Ms. with funding help from New York's founding editor, Clay Felker. Now more than 35 years old, the magazine's an icon in the publishing world (despite near-constant financial woes), and Steinem now sits on the Ms. advisory panel.

Steinem published her first book, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, in 1983; others followed including Marilyn: Norma Jean (a biography of the movie star) and Revolution From Within: A Book of Self-Esteem.

Of note

To many, Steinem's feminist stance has been at odds with her always glamorous appearance. It was her beauty that helped her get her big break as a journalist in 1963, when she went undercover as a Playboy Bunny—the interview included a gynecological exam—and wrote a exposé of the experience for New York. While she's admitted to fears that her career has been bolstered by her foxiness, she's also confessed to having her eyes done. And though she famously claimed that "a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle," she's been linked to a string of powerful men, including film director Mike Nichols and real estate mogul Mort Zuckerman. So clearly she gave a fitting response when a writer recently asked her for advice for today's young women: Steinem recommended that they do "whatever they fucking well please."

Personal

Steinem made headlines in 2000 by finally getting married at age 66; the groom was environmentalist David Bale, father of actor Christian Bale. Bale died of brain lymphoma just three years later, and Steinem now lives alone with her dog Moji and cat Galahad, in the same Upper East Side apartment she's had since the '60s.

Medical file

Steinem was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1986. She also suffered from trigeminal neuralgia—a rare nerve disorder that causes intense facial pain—in the early '90s.

No joke

In 1990, Steinem supported a boycott of Bret Easton Ellis's novel American Psycho—not knowing her future stepson Christian Bale would someday star in the film adaptation.