Yahoo TV (old)Gloria Steinem TV Special Stirs the Web
Move over, Kim Kardashian. Take a seat, Sarah Palin. Gloria Steinem has words for you. The feminist leader is getting her due on HBO tonight, in a documentary titled "Gloria: In Her Own Words." According to the press release, the biopic is an "intimate biographical portrait of Gloria Steinem, an enduring feminist icon for more than 40 years."
Steinem -- who founded Ms. Magazine, went undercover as a Playboy bunny, and became a leader of the women's movement in the 1970s -- has been the face of feminism for decades: She put younger fans "on notice" by famously smooching Stephen Colbert during an interview on "The Colbert Report" while promoting a now-defunct women's radio network.
News of her upcoming HBO documentary instantly inspired Yahoo! searches on "gloria steinem," "gloria steinem expose," and "gloria steinem playboy."
[Photos: More Photos of Gloria Steinem Through the Years]
Now 77, the activist who spent a lifetime being political has also struggled personally: She survived breast cancer at 50, and got married for the first time at age 66 to entrepreneur David Bale, father of actor Christian Bale. Steinem's husband died three years later.
The spirited Steinem, who is featured in Newsweek, has offered tart comments about current female figures. She dismissed possible presidential candidate Sarah Palin as "a woman only a man can love," adding that the Mama Grizzly is "up there with [Supreme Court Justice] Clarence Thomas."
On the Kardashians, she told the New York Daily News, "They're not empowering other women, but there's no point in blaming the people who take advantage of the system without changing the system."
Steinem can definitely take credit for changing the system. In 1963, the journalist went undercover at New York's Playboy Club and wrote a groundbreaking expose of the place. Forty years later, the women's rights crusader has called for a boycott of the NBC show "The Playboy Club." She told Reuters, "It was the tackiest place on earth. It was not glamorous at all." (NBC defended the show, calling it a "really fun soap opera.")
"Gloria: In Her Own Words" premieres Monday, 8/15 at 9pm on HBO.
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