MS Magazine Just Dropped Its First Endorsement Ever—And Boomers Are Fuming
Oh, look. Another sacred cow from the Before Times has decided to grow a pair of ovaries and actually wade into the cesspool of electoral politics. MS Magazine—the feminist bible that your aunt kept on the coffee table next to a scented candle and a half-empty glass of chardonnay—just issued its first presidential endorsement in its 52-year history. And let me tell you, the resulting meltdown is more entertaining than a TikTok of a Karen getting arrested at a school board meeting.
For those of you who weren't forced to read Gloria Steinem in a Women’s Studies 101 class, MS Magazine is the publication that basically invented mainstream second-wave feminism. Founded in 1971, it was the place where women could talk about reproductive rights, workplace equality, and why their husbands were useless lumps of testosterone without getting edited by some dude named Chad in a tweed blazer. It was groundbreaking, it was radical, and for half a century, it maintained a strict "we don't endorse candidates" policy. Because, you know, principles. Or maybe because they wanted to seem above the partisan grime. Who knows.
Well, grab your pearls, because that policy is now deader than the concept of a "family wage." MS Magazine just threw its full weight behind Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Yes, the same Kamala Harris who can't decide if she's a cop or a prosecutor or a progressive or a moderate or whatever focus group tells her to be on any given Tuesday. And Tim Walz—the guy who looks like he coaches high school football and yells at clouds about the defense budget.
But hey, let's not bury the lede here. The real circus isn't the endorsement itself. It's the response. Because apparently, in the year of our Lord 2024, there are still people who think a feminist magazine should just shut up and stick to articles about glass ceilings and "leaning in" while the world burns. And they are *pissed*.
The comments section on MS Magazine’s website is a disaster zone. It's like a Reddit thread where someone accidentally posted a pro-choice meme in a MAGA sub. We're seeing a glorious spectrum of outrage, ranging from "This is why I stopped reading" (as if they ever read it) to "You've lost your integrity" (as if integrity was ever a thing in political endorsements) and my personal favorite: "You're just a bunch of liberal shills now." Wow, Brenda, you mean the magazine founded by literal feminist icons is liberal? Call the press. This is a shocking development that nobody could have predicted.
But the real irony is that MS Magazine waited 52 years to make this move. FIFTY-TWO YEARS. That means they stayed silent through Nixon, Reagan, both Bushes, Clinton's impeachment circus, the Iraq War debacle, and the rise of reality TV politics. They watched the Equal Rights Amendment die a slow, agonizing death. They watched Roe v. Wade get dismantled by a bunch of dudes in robes who clearly never had to deal with a surprise pregnancy and a trip to Tijuana. They watched all of that and said, "Nah, we're not going to endorse anyone. We're above it all."
Then a woman who's not white and not a septuagenarian gets the nomination, and suddenly they're all in. It's almost like they were waiting for a candidate who didn't make them want to gargle bleach. Go figure.
And let's be real here: this endorsement is less about Kamala's stunning political vision and more about a desperate attempt to signal that the feminist establishment is still relevant. Because let's face it, MS Magazine has been circling the drain for years. Print media is dying, and legacy feminist print media is basically on life support. The average age of their subscriber is probably 74, and they're losing them to Alzheimer's and retirement communities in Florida.
So what do you do when your product is becoming obsolete? You chase the youth vote. You try to get on TikTok. You endorse the candidate that your base—or what's left of it—wants you to endorse. It's not bravery. It's marketing. It's a Hail Mary pass from an institution that knows its days are numbered.
But the boomer backlash is the real gift that keeps on giving. These are the same women who burned their bras and marched on Washington in the '70s, but now they're clutching their pearls because a magazine they haven't picked up since 1998 has a political opinion. They're the same women who post "MAGA 2024" memes on Facebook while complaining about how the younger generation is ruining feminism. They want the good old days back when feminism was about white women in pantsuits bitching about their husbands, not about intersectionality, trans rights, and—God forbid—Palestinian liberation.
Seriously, if you want a good laugh, go read the comments from the "I'm a lifelong Democrat but..." crowd. They're like "I support women's rights, but Harris is just too radical. Also, I voted for Biden in 2020, but only because I hated Trump. Also, I'm definitely voting for Jill Stein this time. Also, I don't understand why anyone would call me a Russian asset."
It's the same tired song and dance. The left eats its own. The center-right pretends to be centrists. And the actual right sits back with popcorn, watching the dumpster fire while their candidate openly talks about "protecting women whether they like it or not."
The funniest part of this whole debacle is that MS Magazine's endorsement is essentially worthless in the grand scheme of things. Who's reading it? Women over 60 who already vote blue. It's not swaying any swing voters in Pennsylvania or Michigan. It's not convincing any disillusioned Gen Zers who are sitting at home bitching about Gaza. It's just a symbolic gesture, a flex from a dying institution trying to remind everyone it still exists.
But hey, at least they did *something*. They didn't just publish another lukewarm think-piece about how "both sides are
Final Thoughts
Having tracked the feminist press for decades, it's clear that *Ms.*'s true legacy isn't merely its scoops on abortion or the ERA, but its audacious refusal to treat women's lives as a niche sidebar to "real" news. The magazine's pivot from a one-off insert to a foundational, ad-free institution proves that ideological consistency and reader trust are more durable currencies than any glossy page revenue. In an era of algorithmic noise, revisiting *Ms.* is a bracing reminder that journalism can be both a movement's megaphone and its most rigorous fact-checker—a balance we've arguably lost in the chase for clicks.