Gloria Steinem once quipped: “I can’t mate in captivity” – a reference to her disinterest in marriage. But she publicly enjoyed a healthy dating life with a number of rich and famous bachelors, giving critics more ammunition to use against her.
They included Frank Thomas who was head of the Ford Foundation; film director Mike Nichols and Olympic decathlete Rafer Johnson (who helped tackle the man who assassinated Robert F Kennedy in 1968).
“I was the one always accused of using men, of being too sexual. Someone once sent me a cartoon of a tombstone that said ‘at last she sleeps alone’,” she wrote.
But in 2000, aged 66, she wed David Bale, a South African-born entrepreneur-environmentalist, and father of actor Christian Bale.
At the time, the union drew gasps of surprise and even disappointment from some feminists, who had spent years following Steinem’s heated debates surrounding marriage laws.
But she said those laws had finally changed. “If I had married when I was supposed to get married, I would have lost my name, my legal residence, my credit rating, many of my civil rights. That’s not true anymore. It’s possible to make an equal marriage,” she explained years later.
Steinem also confessed to it being a “green card marriage” because Bale’s US visa was running out – but said that they loved each other and were going to be together regardless.
