Ms. Magazine’s ‘Feminist’ Rebrand Is Just a Glow-Up for Your Grandma’s Book Club
Well, well, well. Look who crawled out of the Smithsonian archives to remind us that feminism used to come with a paper smell and a subscription card. Ms. Magazine, the publication that basically invented the concept of telling your husband to fuck off in print, just announced a massive rebrand. And by “rebrand,” I mean they slapped a fresh coat of millennial-pink paint on a 50-year-old pile of kindling and called it a “digital renaissance.” Cue the eye-roll so hard I nearly pulled a muscle in my soul.
Let’s be real for a second. The news broke that Ms. is ditching the dusty print era for a shiny new website, a new logo that looks like it was designed in Canva by an intern who just discovered sans-serif fonts, and a “bold, intergenerational” mission statement that reads like a LinkedIn influencer’s fever dream. They’re promising “intersectional coverage,” “activist journalism,” and probably a podcast where three women talk over each other about the patriarchy while sipping oat milk lattes. Groundbreaking, right? It’s 2024, and we’re acting like a website is a revolutionary act.
Oh, but let’s not forget the absolute galaxy-brain move of tapping none other than the ghost of Gloria Steinem to headline the relaunch. Steinem, who is presumably preserved in amber and powered by sheer spite, came out swinging with quotes about how “the fight is far from over.” No shit, Gloria. We know. We’ve got states actively banning abortion, book burnings happening in Florida like it’s the 1930s, and a Supreme Court that thinks “precedent” is just a suggestion. You don’t need a rebrand; you need a time machine and a crowbar to pry the country out of the hands of a theocratic minority.
The actual content of this new Ms. is what’s making my blood pressure spike. They’re claiming to be the “home for feminist journalism” and are hyping up features on “mutual aid networks” and “trans-inclusive reproductive justice.” That’s all well and good, but it feels like they’re trying to be everything to everyone. It’s the feminist equivalent of a Kardashian launching a shapewear line—technically for women, but really just a hollow vehicle for branding.
Here’s the thing, though: The old Ms. was raw. It was angry. It was the magazine you hid under your mattress because it had an article about clitoral anatomy that would make your Catholic mother faint. It didn’t have a “safe space” comment section; it had letters to the editor that were basically flame wars fought with typewriters. It was messy, it was loud, and it pissed off the right people.
This new iteration? It feels like it was focus-grouped to death by a committee of corporate sponsors who are terrified of alienating their donor base. The new website is probably going to be a sterile wasteland of “10 Signs You’re in a Toxic Workplace” listicles and soft-focus photo essays about female farmers in Ohio. Where’s the fire? Where’s the radical demand for systemic overhaul? Where’s the article that tells the Democratic Party to stop sucking up to wealthy donors and actually fight for paid leave?
And don’t even get me started on the design. The new logo is a lowercase “ms.” with a period that looks like a stray pubic hair. It’s trying to be “clean” and “modern,” but it just looks like a wellness brand that sells overpriced vaginal steam kits. The color palette is apparently “Bleached Bone” and “Gaslight Green.” They’ve traded the iconic, bold, second-wave block lettering for something that looks like it belongs on a CVS receipt.
The most infuriating part of this whole charade is the framing. They’re acting like this is an act of defiance in the face of the “anti-woke” backlash. “We’re doubling down!” they scream, while simultaneously hiring a diversity, equity, and inclusion consultant to make sure their pronouns are in order. Look, I’m all for progress, but you can’t fight a firehose of fascism with a squirt gun of corporate-approved hashtags.
We live in an era where women are losing bodily autonomy by the minute. We have a frontrunner for the presidency who is a convicted felon and a serial assaulter. We have a generation of Gen Z women who are more radicalized than the boomers ever were, but they’re getting their news from TikTok and their community organizing from Discord servers. They don’t give a flying fuck about Ms. Magazine’s rebrand because they’ve already moved on to decentralized, horizontal organizing that doesn’t require a goddamn masthead.
So, congratulations, Ms. Magazine. You’ve successfully modernized yourself into irrelevance. You’ve captured the aesthetics of the resistance without the teeth. You’re the feminist equivalent of a participation trophy. This isn’t a rebirth; it’s a hospice care plan with a Spotify playlist. Enjoy your viral moment on Twitter, before the algorithm moves on to the next outrage du jour and you’re left wondering why your “bold relaunch” didn’t stop the fall of Roe v. Wade.
You had one job, ladies. ONE. And you blew it on a rebranding committee’s powerpoint presentation. A true masterclass in missing the point. But hey, at least the logo is cute.
Final Thoughts
Having tracked the ebb and flow of feminist media for decades, my conclusion is that *Ms.*'s true legacy isn't merely its archive of groundbreaking exposés, but its stubborn insistence that a woman's personal turmoil is always a political fault line. The magazine’s genius was never just reporting on the movement, but in forging a direct, unmediated line between the reader's kitchen table and the halls of power, making systemic critique feel urgently intimate. It weathered ridicule, financial crises, and cultural backlash not as a relic, but as a living barometer of how far the conversation has truly come—and a stark reminder that the silence it once shattered is always threatening to creep back in.