"Gloria Steinem, lodestar of the modern women’s movement, dies at 92."

A Washington Post obituary (gift link).

In a tribute to feminism, the obit waits until the 6th paragraph to tell us how she looked: "With her willowy physique, her fashionable miniskirts and her straight, parted hair, she brought glamour as well as passion to her work, challenging the popular perception of feminists as bra-burning radicals."

Paragraph 8: "Ms. Steinem burst to the fore in the 1960s not as an activist, but as a high-flying freelance journalist for publications including Esquire, Cosmopolitan and Vogue. She experienced firsthand the sexism that she would later fight on behalf of other women. Ms. Steinem recalled a taxicab conversation between the renowned writers Gay Talese and Saul Bellow, in which she said Talese remarked in her presence, 'You know how every year there’s a pretty girl who comes to New York and pretends to be a writer? Well, Gloria is this year’s pretty girl.'"

Here's the NYT obituary: "Gloria Steinem, Personification of the Women’s Movement, Dies at 92/She challenged sexist assumptions, helping women develop a sense of self-worth and gain a measure of equality at work, at home and in society at large" (gift link).

The NYT tells us how she looked in paragraph 4: "For more than half a century, she personified the women’s movement and became its most enduring symbol; her tinted aviator glasses and curtain of streaked-blond hair parted in the center made her one of the most recognizable women in the world."

That's only about her glasses and her hairstyle. It doesn't inform us that she was prettier than other girls. The next paragraph is: "She was an unlikely revolutionary. Growing up a transient in the Midwest, she was 10 when her parents divorced and she was left to mother her mentally anguished mother — a formative experience that reverberated throughout her life. She had scant formal education until sixth grade; her big dream, as a budding tap dancer, was to become a Rockette."

She was less fortunate than other girls.

At paragraph 13-12: "Despite her fearless public persona, Ms. Steinem was somewhat diffident, initially terrified of speaking in public and wrestled with a lack of self-esteem. She was also insecure about her looks. She said in an interview for this obituary in January 2026 that she wore her large aviator glasses and cloak of long hair partly to hide her face. 'What I felt like inside,' she wrote in 'Revolution From Within,' her 1992 book about self-esteem, 'was a plump brunette from Toledo, too tall and much too pudding faced.'"

Whatever she thought about how she looked, didn't it help her? "When she was first job-hunting in New York, an editor at Life turned her away. 'We need a reporter,' he told her, 'not a pretty girl.' An editor at The New York Times Magazine propositioned her, she said. Clay Felker, the editor of New York magazine and Ms. Steinem’s mentor, said he gave her an assignment because she had 'great legs.'"

Here's what she did on that assignment: "A Bunny Tale."