Description
Collector's Note – Why This Issue Matters
There are a handful of first issues in American magazine history that function as genuine cultural events rather than merely commercial launches. The July 1972 inaugural issue of Ms. magazine — Volume 1, Number 1 — is unambiguously one of them. Founded by Gloria Steinem and Dorothy Pitman Hughes, with Steinem as the public face and editorial driving force, Ms. arrived as the first nationally distributed magazine to be owned and operated by women, written for women, and unapologetically organized around feminist politics. The cover image — Wonder Woman, the DC Comics superhero, striding over a city skyline with the headline "Wonder Woman for President" — was a deliberate provocation and a carefully constructed argument simultaneously. Wonder Woman had been stripped of her superpowers and reduced to a more conventionally feminine role in the comics during the late 1960s, and the feminist movement had already begun campaigning for her restoration. Placing her on the cover of the first issue of Ms. was a statement about reclamation — of a fictional character, and by extension of female power more broadly. For collectors building an archive of vintage Ms. magazine issues, Volume 1, Number 1 is the foundational document, the issue from which everything else in the publication's history radiates.
The timing of the launch was precise and intentional. The Equal Rights Amendment had passed both houses of Congress in March 1972 and was moving through state ratification processes. Title IX had been signed into law in June 1972, just weeks before this issue's publication date. Shirley Chisholm was actively running for the Democratic presidential nomination — the first Black woman ever to do so for a major party. The political infrastructure of second-wave feminism was being built in real time, and Ms. was conceived as both a document of that construction and an instrument of it. The magazine had previously appeared as a forty-page insert in New York magazine in December 1971 — that preview issue had sold out its print run of 300,000 copies in eight days, demonstrating an audience that the existing magazine market had entirely failed to serve. The July 1972 standalone launch was the answer to that demonstrated demand. Among magazines from 1972, no other first issue carries the same combination of political urgency, cultural significance, and lasting influence on American media.
The no-label attribute is particularly meaningful for this issue. Ms. built its initial circulation through newsstand sales and direct subscription simultaneously, and the Wonder Woman cover was designed as a newsstand object — a visual argument intended to stop a potential reader in her tracks. A newsstand copy without subscription label damage preserves that cover image exactly as the founding editors intended it to be encountered, which for a document of this historical weight matters considerably.
About the Publication
Ms. magazine was founded in 1971 and launched as a standalone monthly in July 1972, created explicitly as a feminist publication at a moment when no major American magazine was addressing women as political agents rather than consumers. Gloria Steinem, already one of the most prominent feminist voices in the country through her journalism and activism, served as a co-founder and editor, bringing both editorial vision and public visibility to the project. The magazine's format combined reported journalism, personal essays, political commentary, fiction, and cultural criticism — all approached through an explicitly feminist lens that treated the personal and the political as continuous rather than separate. Its audience was women who had been made to feel invisible or condescended to by existing women's magazines, which in 1972 were still overwhelmingly organized around domesticity, beauty, and heterosexual romance. Ms. assumed a reader who was politically engaged, intellectually serious, and hungry for a publication that reflected her actual life and ambitions. The magazine would go on to publish for decades, change ownership and format multiple times, and remain a reference point for feminist media throughout its history — but the July 1972 first issue remains the document that established everything that followed.
Key Highlights Inside
- Wonder Woman cover and "Wonder Woman for President" feature: The founding editorial statement of American feminist magazine publishing, using a reclaimed pop culture icon to argue for female power at the precise moment the ERA was moving through state ratifications and Shirley Chisholm was running for president.
- Inaugural issue editorial content: As a Volume 1, Number 1, this issue established the magazine's voice, editorial commitments, and political framework from the ground up — making every page a primary document of second-wave feminism's media strategy rather than merely a collection of articles.
- Reflection of the 1972 political moment: Published between the ERA's congressional passage in March and the November presidential election, this issue arrived at the most concentrated moment of feminist legislative momentum in American history, and its editorial content was shaped entirely by that context.
- Specific interior articles beyond the cover feature are unconfirmed in this listing; the accompanying photographs should be consulted for the complete table of contents. Given the significance of this issue, interior content has been documented in feminist media scholarship and library archives for researchers requiring that level of detail.
Condition & Rarity
The excellent condition with light wear noted for surviving copies of this issue is a meaningful characterization for a publication now more than fifty years old. The original print run of the July 1972 standalone launch was substantial — the December 1971 preview insert had demonstrated demand clearly — but first issues of culturally significant publications are subject to a particular collector dynamic: many copies were read hard and discarded, while others were saved precisely because their owners recognized the moment. The result is a market where condition varies widely, and copies presenting with clean covers, no label damage, and intact interior pages occupy the upper tier. The no-label attribute is the single most important condition factor for this cover specifically, as the Wonder Woman image is the primary visual and historical object. The plastic protective covering indicates storage with preservation intent. For collector evaluation, the key attributes in any surviving copy are cover image clarity, spine integrity, and the completeness of the interior pages, which together constitute the issue's research and display value.
Looking for More Issues Like This?
The first issue of Ms. in no-label condition is one of the more actively sought items in feminist periodical collecting, and finding a clean copy takes real patience. The full archive of vintage Ms. magazine issues spans the publication's run and is the strongest resource for collectors building a comprehensive record of the magazine's history beyond this founding issue. For those organizing a collection around the early 1970s political and cultural moment, the complete 1972 magazine archive brings together titles from one of the most legislatively significant years in American women's history and provides rich context alongside this landmark first issue.