11/27/2025
In 1963, she went undercover as a Pl***oy Bunny to expose the exploitation—they made her wear a corset so tight she couldn't breathe and told her to smile while men grabbed her. The exposé launched her career, but the Pl***oy empire never forgave her.
Her name was Gloria Steinem. And before she became the face of American feminism, she was a struggling freelance journalist desperate for a story that would get her taken seriously.
New York, 1963. Gloria Steinem was 28 years old, broke, and tired of being handed "women's interest" stories—fashion features, beauty tips, celebrity gossip. Editors looked at her blonde hair and conventionally attractive appearance and assumed she couldn't handle hard news.
She wanted to do serious investigative journalism. But as a woman in the early 1960s, serious assignments went to men.
Then she heard about the Pl***oy Club—Hugh Hefner's exclusive nightclub where beautiful women dressed as "Bunnies" in revealing costumes served drinks to wealthy men. The clubs were portrayed as glamorous, sophisticated, the height of cosmopolitan culture.
Gloria pitched an undercover story: she'd apply to work there and document what really happened behind the fantasy.
Most editors said no. It was too risky, too controversial, too beneath serious journalism. But Show magazine finally agreed to publish it.
Gloria applied to the Pl***oy Club in New York using a fake name and claimed to be younger than her actual age (Pl***oy preferred very young women). She passed the audition and was hired.
What she found was nothing like the glamorous image Pl***oy sold to the public.
The first day, they handed her a costume: a corset so tight she could barely breathe, fishnet stockings, high heels designed to hurt after standing for hours, and a "bunny tail" she had to keep "fluffy." The ears and bow tie completed the objectification.
The costume wasn't designed for the wearer's comfort. It was designed to display women's bodies for men's consumption while maintaining just enough pretense of sophistication to avoid being labeled prostitution.
Then came the rules—pages and pages of degrading regulations:
Maintain your weight exactly. Any variation meant suspension or firing.
Never gain more than one pound. Your body is company property.
Keep your tail fluffy at all times.
Smile constantly. Your feelings don't matter—only the customer's pleasure.
Let men touch you "appropriately" (which meant constantly being groped).
Never date customers (officially), but flirt as if you might.
Accept tips gracefully, even when they come with inappropriate propositions.
The work itself was brutal. Gloria spent eight hours on her feet in painful heels, carrying heavy trays, being grabbed and propositioned constantly. The corset restricted her breathing. Her feet bled. The constant forced smiling made her face hurt.
And the men—the sophisticated, wealthy men who were supposedly Pl***oy's enlightened readership—treated the Bunnies like property. They grabbed without asking. They made explicit comments. They propositioned constantly. They seemed to believe that buying a drink entitled them to touch a woman's body.
Management's response? Smile more. Don't complain. That's the job.
After a few weeks, Gloria had documented enough. She wrote "A Bunny's Tale" and Show magazine published it in two parts in 1963.
The article exploded.
It was funny, sharp, devastating. Gloria wrote with wit and precision, letting the absurdity speak for itself. The tail that had to stay fluffy. The mandatory gynecological exam before hiring (ostensibly for "health" but really to shame applicants). The handbook that treated women's bodies as products to be maintained.
The article exposed Pl***oy's "sophistication" as a thin veneer over straightforward exploitation. Hugh Hefner's carefully crafted image of the enlightened modern man who respected women while also enjoying their sexuality was revealed as marketing—these clubs treated women as commodities while dressing it up in high-class aesthetics.
The Pl***oy empire was furious. They never forgave Gloria. For decades afterward, they dismissed her as a liar seeking attention, claimed her story was exaggerated, suggested she was bitter because she wasn't pretty enough to be a real Bunny (despite having been hired as one).
But the damage was done. Women read "A Bunny's Tale" and recognized the exploitation they'd experienced but hadn't had words for. Men read it and some—not all, but some—began questioning whether this "sophisticated" culture was actually just misogyny with better PR.
Yet Gloria's path to that moment had been shaped by hardship long before she put on rabbit ears.
Born in 1934 in Toledo, Ohio, Gloria's childhood was marked by instability. Her father was a traveling salesman who disappeared for long stretches, eventually leaving the family when Gloria was around 10-11 years old. Her mother struggled with severe mental health issues—what was likely depression and anxiety but went largely untreated in that era.
Gloria spent much of her childhood caring for her mother, living in run-down houses, moving constantly, missing school. She learned early what it felt like to be invisible, to have your needs dismissed, to be seen as less important than the men around you.
By the time she got to journalism in the early 1960s, she was already intimately familiar with how the world looked past women—especially women who were struggling, vulnerable, or simply inconvenient to acknowledge.
Editors handed her "women's pieces"—fashion, lifestyle, beauty, all the supposedly frivolous topics that weren't "real" journalism. So Gloria did what she'd learned to do as a child: she turned those limitations into weapons. She used the assignments they gave her to pry open deeper truths about women's lives.
The Bunny story made waves and established her as a serious journalist. But it was the 1970s where Gloria Steinem became an icon of second-wave feminism.
In 1971, she co-founded Ms. magazine—the first national magazine run by women, for women, covering feminism seriously. The premiere issue in 1972 sold out in days. Women were hungry for content that treated their experiences, their anger, their ambitions as legitimate.
Gloria gave electrifying speeches about women's liberation. She wrote incisive essays about reproductive rights, workplace equality, domestic violence. She testified before Congress. She marched. She organized.
And she became, almost despite herself, the face of the movement—her aviator sunglasses and long center-parted hair becoming iconic, a visual representation of feminist cool that made the movement look young and accessible rather than frumpy and angry (the stereotype opponents desperately wanted to perpetuate).
But with visibility came attacks.
Critics called her "too pretty to be serious"—as if being conventionally attractive meant her brain didn't work. They claimed she was a CIA agent (a bizarre conspiracy theory based on her having briefly worked for an agency-funded organization in the 1950s). They suggested she was secretly bitter about men, secretly jealous of feminine women, secretly trying to destroy families.
Conservative opponents painted her as a radical extremist. Some radical feminists accused her of being too mainstream, too concerned with respectability politics, too willing to work within existing systems rather than burning them down.
Gloria endured it all while battling something few people knew about: crippling self-doubt and introversion.
She described herself repeatedly as "an introvert in public"—someone who found public speaking and constant attention exhausting. She preferred listening to talking, preferred writing to speaking, preferred small conversations to large crowds.
Yet she carried the weight of a movement because someone had to, and she had the platform. She gave women language for experiences they'd been told to endure silently. She made feminism visible in mainstream culture in ways it hadn't been before.
What's often hidden in Gloria Steinem's story is how reluctant she was about the spotlight, how much she struggled with being the "face" of feminism when she believed in collective action rather than individual leadership.
She's now 90 years old, still writing, still organizing, still showing up for causes she believes in—from reproductive rights to transgender equality to economic justice.
But her most important contribution might be this: she learned early how the world looked past women who didn't fit comfortable narratives. So she slipped into disguises—both literal (the Bunny costume) and metaphorical (using "women's assignments" as cover for serious journalism)—until she made the country pay attention.
Born in 1934. Unstable childhood caring for mentally ill mother. Became journalist in sexist 1960s. Went undercover as Pl***oy Bunny. Exposed exploitation. Co-founded Ms. magazine. Became face of second-wave feminism. Endured decades of attacks. Still fighting at 90.
Gloria Steinem's story isn't just about feminism. It's about a woman who learned that invisibility could be turned into armor, that the assignments meant to diminish you could become platforms, that sometimes the only way to be heard is to slip into spaces you're not supposed to occupy and report back what you find.
She put on rabbit ears and a corset that restricted her breathing so women wouldn't have to smile while being groped anymore.
She turned "women's interest" stories into exposés of systemic oppression.
She became famous for fighting for equality while simultaneously being attacked for being too attractive, too radical, too mainstream, too everything.
And she proved that sometimes the most powerful journalism comes from someone willing to experience exploitation firsthand and then refuse to stay silent about it.
Every time a woman reports workplace harassment and is taken seriously—that's partly Gloria Steinem's work. Every time reproductive rights are defended in court—that's partly her work. Every time women's experiences are treated as legitimate news rather than frivolous gossip—that's partly her work.
She's still here at 90, still working, still refusing to accept that women should smile while being diminished.
The Pl***oy empire never forgave her for "A Bunny's Tale." They spent decades trying to discredit her, to claim she lied, to suggest she was bitter or attention-seeking.
But she told the truth. And millions of women recognized their own experiences in her words.
That's not just journalism. That's transformation—turning personal humiliation into public awakening, turning a costume designed to objectify into armor that protected other women.
Gloria Steinem went undercover in 1963 wearing a corset she couldn't breathe in and a tail she had to keep fluffy.
She emerged with a story that helped women breathe freely and refuse to be decorative anymore.
That's not just courage. That's alchemy—turning degradation into dignity, invisibility into voice, and a rabbit costume into revolution.
