Has there already been a more essential moment for a documentary than on the manufacture of MME magazine? Although it was founded more than half a century ago, almost all the subjects that it has raised and debated continue to feel urgent.
Namely, “Dear MS: A Revolution in Print” opens with the narration of the founding editor Letty Cottin Pogrebi: “Try to imagine the life where you are detained or controlled by men.” There may be women who can still imagine what it might look like today.
The directors Salima Koroma, Alice Gu and Cecilia Aldarondo are well aware of the speed of their subject and subtly allow us to draw parallels while they bring us back in the 1970s.
They chose to divide the film into three chapters, each director telling a different part of the history of the magazine. This tripartite structure means that the film feels a little fragmented, but many participants and themes behave throughout.
The Koroma section, about the magazine foundation in 1971, presents the women we will get to know as things progress. The most important of them is Gloria Steinem. At the time, Steinem alternated between political journalism and celebrities. She was probably the most famous for her exhibition of the Hugh Hefner Playboy Club, in which she became under cover as a rabbit. But she also wrote a job like “Paul Newman: the problem with being too good”.
She then went to cover a women’s liberation meeting for New York magazine. The experiences that the participants shared – to be neglected, overloaded with all of this – convinced Steinem that this movement deserved much more than one article. And so Mme’s first issue was actually an emanation from New York, an experience built on a small amount of uncertainty. Steinem was, in fact, one of the few public figures courageous enough to be called feminist aloud, and we see her using her dominant beauty – who is commented by the media several times – as a means of overthrowing the expectations of “radical liberation”. (That is, equality.)
We see some other standing celebrities, including Lily Tomlin, Lucille Ball and Alan Alda. But Koroma also shows us the overwhelming backlash that immediately met the magazine. This general disdain is crystallized by the presenter of news ABC News, shamelessly, Harry Reason: “The first edition of Mme, described as a new magazine for women, is at hand and it’s quite sad,” announces the reasoning to its millions of viewers. “It is so clearly just another in the great tradition but not relevant to American shock magazines.” Reasoner then shares his certainty that he will fold up imminently.
He was wrong, of course: it still exists and lasted longer than many of her contemporary publications. We learn his first successes – and trips – in the chapter of Alice Gu, entitled “A portable friend”. As Steinem notes, female magazines at the time “were mainly catalogs that were used to rent advertisers” – advertisers being cosmetic companies, weight loss pills and household appliances. On the other hand, Ms. was often the only one to generate discussions widely seen on abortion, sexual harassment, domestic violence, the dynamics of power and – finally – the revolution.
Should it be so revolutionary to suggest that women deserved to be treated fairly? Anyway, it was certainly the case. And so the magazine began to obtain lots of mail, countless women expressing its gratitude to find support for the first time, and countless men expressing the fury of the challenge to the sex quo of their household.
GU also deepens intersectionality, a concept that required great education for mainly white, mainly recent and middle -class writing. Indeed, the film is often at its best when it extends beyond the magazine’s conference rooms to further explore the history and manufacturers of history of the time, notably Alice Walker, Shirley Chisholm and Essence (and later Mme) editor-in-chief Marcia Ann Gillespie.
In the third part, Aldarondo takes us further into sex and sexuality (sample of the MME cover line: “Eroticism and pornography: do you know the difference?”). She too takes advantage of the opportunity to start with a relatively simple theme and travel to the outside. Thus, a chapter on sex is a chapter on gender, work, politics and the economy. It is also a story of the confrontations of culture, and we learn a lot about the intestine battles of the feminist movement, between women like the erotic filmmaker Royal Candida and the anti-Porn activist Andrea Dworkin.
Curiously, after being so deeply in the history of the magazine, the film ends very suddenly; Only one line tells us what has happened to him in the past 25 years. This also emphasizes a global lack of cohesion between the three chapters, which never completely puts itself in the fluid way.
The general to remember, however, is that it is a fascinating and complex story that must be told. And the three directors make great use of both archive images and contemporary interviews. At one point, we hear someone asking a young Steinem just who she tries to reach. “Everyone,” she replies. And in 2025, it is also which should see this documentary exasperating, inspiring and still so significant.
