2. Gloria Steinem and Marlo Thomas

Gloria Steinem (left) at the news conference, Women’s Action Alliance. Photo of Garry Marshall (right) as a fashion photographer and Marlo Thomas as Ann-Marie from the television program That Girl. Images via Wikimedia Commons users Tom and We hope

The other pioneers of the women’s rights movement (but this time for feminism’s second lap around the block), are activists and icons Gloria Steinem and Marlo Thomas, who became fast friends in perhaps the most fitting way possible for such fiery feminists. As Marlo Thomas recalls, she and Steinem were brought together in meetings after Thomas’ first successful season of That Girl was wrapping up in 1967. The agent wanted Thomas to portray the part of Steinem in a biopic about the then-recent revelation of Steinem’s time as the undercover journalist in the Playboy mansion. That’s when the agent, according to Thomas, made his fatal flaw. As Thomas writes in her article, A Candid Conversation With Gloria Steinem:

“A meeting was set up by the agent, and no more than thirty seconds into it, he beamed at us appreciatively from across his desk, and delivered that jaw-dropping hello.

‘Boy, I don’t know which one of you I’d like to f**k first.’

Boy, did he pick the wrong two women to say that to. I don’t think we heard anything else he said that day. The meeting — and the idea — came to an immediate end. But for Gloria and me, it was just the beginning.”

That conversation, did indeed mark “just the beginning” between Thomas and Steinem and the work they would do together. Along with fellow women’s rights activists, Patricia Carbine and Letty Cottin Pogrebin, together they would go on to found the Ms. Foundation in 1972– the first and still one of the largest women’s funds in the country. The Ms. Foundation has remained in New York City throughout the duration of its existence, first headquartered in Manhattan before it made a move in 2008 to its current flagship office at the Metro Tech Center in the outskirts of Brooklyn Heights.