Could Fall 2026 kick our asses any harder with losing so many giants? Gloria Steinem. Dolly Parton. Dolores Huerta.
We’re in a moment where iconic women are transitioning to become ancestors. Some are cultural icons; others are leaders who organized our movements and became their public faces. As someone who got my start in organizing, this moment is hitting me hard. It’s also bringing up big questions about legacy, how leaders change over time, and the public narratives that become our cultural history.
The Art of Being Dolly
In August, Dolly Parton died at the age of 80. There was an outpouring of grief for this tiny, blond woman with a voice that could make you cry. Her songwriting legacy alone is beyond the scope of many artists, dead or alive. She wrote more than 3,000 songs, with over 450 recorded by herself or other artists.
Later, I came to learn how much her embrace of the LGBTQ+ community meant to queer folks, about her library project that sent books by diverse authors all over the country, and about her philanthropy that helped support the development of the COVID vaccine.
My parents didn’t listen to music much, and as a South Asian kid growing up in the PNW in the ’80s, country music was not my thing. My exposure to Dolly was limited to the crossover hits that made it to the Top 40 because, frankly, country music didn’t feel safe to listen to. It took until college and karaoke bars for me to get familiar with more of her songs.
As a kid, Dolly also represented a kind of white woman beauty that just didn’t feel accessible. Frankly, it was off-putting. For a nine-year-old brown girl with a moustache, it was hard to look at. It wasn’t until much later that I understood she was performing femininity, that she was in on the joke. She understood how to use that persona, and the assumptions men in the music industry made about her, to get what she was due.
Feminist Icon or White Woman Devil
Just like in life, Gloria Steinem is a Rorschach test of our perceptions, lived experiences, and identities as they relate to feminism.
I should have expected the wave of criticism about her legacy. But I wasn't prepared for quite how quickly it came.
From the moment of her death, critiques proliferated across the internet. Some of the familiar charges: Gloria was a sellout who briefly worked for a CIA-funded program; she erased Black women from feminism; she endorsed Hillary over Barack.
Yeah.
As someone who met Gloria regularly through my work at the Ms. Foundation for Women, I had a different experience of her. She was humble, a good listener, and genuinely curious about how younger women's experiences and analysis differed from, or expanded upon, the work of second-wave feminists. Gloria wasn't perfect. Second-wave feminism wasn't perfect. And, for FFS, she knew that.
I didn't agree with all her opinions or political choices, either. I didn't understand her endorsement of Hillary over Barack. But having a strategic disagreement with someone I admire doesn't make everything else they've worked for suss.
What gets lost in some of the critiques is the extent to which Gloria herself acknowledged Black women as her teachers. She repeatedly said some version of, "I thought that [Black women] invented the feminist movement. I learned feminism disproportionately from Black women."
After her death, critics invoked Alice Walker's famous resignation from Ms. Magazine over its lack of representation of Black women and women of color. That's an important part of the history, but it isn't the whole story. Walker and Steinem eventually repaired their relationship and spent years as friends and colleagues. Similarly, bell hooks' critiques of white women's feminism helped sharpen Steinem's thinking, and the two developed a years-long friendship.
I'm not suggesting that friendship absolves anyone of their shortcomings or that personal relationships resolve structural critiques. But I do think there's something meaningful about being able to maintain relationships with women who publicly challenge your work, take their criticism seriously, and allow it to change your thinking.
Was Gloria perfect at this? No. But she demonstrated a real commitment to learning from Black women, acknowledging their influence, and attempting to share the spotlight with women whose contributions feminism too often overlooked.
The price of being a woman in the movement
Many people today know that Dolores Huerta was a co-founder of the United Farm Workers alongside César Chávez. But for much of her career, Chávez held the spotlight and was publicly recognized by politicians and the media as the leader of the farmworker movement.
Like other women of color, Huerta fought within her own community against the norms that silenced women and put them in supporting roles behind men. In 1986, after spending months living in DC and lobbying Congress for the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which included amnesty for farmworkers, she wasn't even invited to the bill-signing ceremony. At the time, she didn't speak up. Later, she said, "I realized afterward [male farmworker leaders] just wanted to get me out of the way so they could take credit for the work."
Ouch.
Her experience speaks to the compromises women make to lead within movements that don't always recognize their leadership. Like Black women in the Civil Rights movement, Huerta understood that the movement's credibility with white politicians and the media—never mind within her own community—was shaped by gender norms that made women's leadership less visible, even when their labor was indispensable.
Earlier this year, the NYT broke the story of Chávez's years of predatory behavior, grooming, and sexual abuse of young women and girls in the movement. Huerta's own disclosure of sexual assault by Chávez revealed another dimension of the abuse and the power dynamics within the movement. Her story also forces us to ask hard questions about the cost of leadership, the price women pay, and the ways our bodies become sites of power and control, just as our movements do.
Expecting perfection, settling for human
I guess I'm sitting with legacy: what it means for icons and leaders to pass, how we examine their contributions, and how we apply the certainties of today to the uncertainties of the choices they faced. We want our icons to be infallible. Putting someone on a pedestal is understandable, but it's like building a statue with clay feet. Inevitably, our icons will disappoint us. They will make mistakes.
Someone doesn't need to be perfect to be admirable or to have made a contribution. Making mistakes is human. Changing your mind is human. Being defensive and unable to see your shit is human. The ability to grow and change is also deeply human. Thank goodness I don't have to be who I was 10 years ago, or heaven forbid, 30 years ago (she was a tad self-righteous).
I don't want perfect icons. I want honest histories. I want movements that are bigger than our leaders and strong enough to reckon with their failures. I want us to be able to hold two truths at once: that the people who built our movements were human, and that the movements they built must be capable of being better than they were. Honoring our ancestors doesn't mean agreeing with everything they did. It means taking responsibility for what they left us.
Gloria, Dolores, Dolly. Rest in Power.
