The Day Gloria Steinem Made Me Feel Like a Fraud

I was 23 and interning at a glossy women's magazine when I first read Gloria Steinem. It was late, the office mostly empty, and I was tasked with fact-checking a piece about “empowerment dressing” — the idea that certain shoes or blazers could make a woman feel like a boss. I had just finished scribbling a note about stilettos and posture when I opened a side tab and stumbled onto a video of Steinem speaking at a conference in the 1970s.

She wasn’t wearing a blazer. She was sitting cross-legged on a stage, speaking calmly but firmly about the myth of “having it all.” She mentioned that phrase with a kind of weary disbelief, and something about it lodged in me like a splinter.

I Thought I Had It All Figured Out

Before Steinem, I believed feminism was a matter of personal choice — what you wore, how you dated, whether you kept your last name. I thought the movement was about carving space for yourself and letting others do the same. That belief felt mature, modern, and above all, manageable. I could be a feminist without being confrontational. I could check the box and move on.

Then Steinem came along and made me realize how much of my feminism was surface-level performance. She didn’t just critique the patriarchy — she named its systems, its history, its economic scaffolding. She didn’t ask for permission to take up space. She claimed it. And she made it clear that feminism wasn’t about personal convenience — it was about collective change. That distinction was uncomfortable. It meant I couldn’t just opt in when it suited me.

I Didn’t Realize How Much I’d Internalized

Reading her essays, especially “I Was a Playboy Bunny,” I felt a strange sense of recognition. I’d never been a bunny, obviously, but I had internalized a version of that same performance — the smile that’s more for others than for yourself, the constant editing of your opinions to seem palatable. Steinem’s writing forced me to look at my own patterns: how I sometimes held back in meetings, how I apologized for my ideas before sharing them, how I often dressed not for myself, but to be taken seriously in a world that still equates authority with masculinity.

She didn’t shame anyone for adapting — she understood the realities of survival — but she also asked us to question those adaptations. That was harder than I expected. It meant looking at myself not just as a woman navigating a system, but as someone who had, in some ways, accepted that system as the default.

I Thought Activism Had to Look a Certain Way

Before I read Steinem, I thought activism required marches, megaphones, and manifestos. I thought it needed a certain kind of boldness I wasn’t sure I possessed. But Steinem taught me that activism is also conversation, storytelling, and listening. She helped build Ms. Magazine not as a counterpoint to fashion rags, but as a space where women could see their full selves reflected — messy, contradictory, and powerful.

That changed my view of my own work. I realized that writing, too, could be activism — not in a performative way, but in the quiet, cumulative way that shifts narratives. It wasn’t about being the loudest voice, but about asking the right questions and refusing to let certain truths be buried.

I Started Asking Different Questions

One of the most enduring shifts came from Steinem’s insistence on context. She never treated issues in isolation — gender, race, class, and power were always interconnected. That made me rethink the way I approached interviews, research, and even casual conversations. I stopped asking “What do you want?” and started asking “What are the systems shaping what you want?”

That might sound academic, but it made my conversations deeper and more honest. It made me less interested in soundbites and more interested in stories. And it made me more aware of the ways in which my own privilege — as an educated, middle-class woman — shaped what I saw as possible or necessary.

I’m Still Unlearning

I don’t talk to Gloria Steinem every day, but when I do, it’s like sitting down with a mentor who doesn’t sugarcoat anything. She doesn’t offer easy answers, but she does offer clarity. And that’s been the most lasting gift — not a set of beliefs, but a method. A way of thinking through the world that’s rooted in empathy, history, and a refusal to accept things at face value.

If you’ve ever felt like you “get it” but still aren’t sure what to do next, I recommend talking to her. She won’t give you a checklist. But she’ll give you something better: a framework for asking better questions.

Talk to Gloria Steinem on HoloDream if you’re ready to stop nodding along and start thinking differently.