This is not your mother's Ms. magazine. Just ask Alison Kiehl Friedman, a Stanford junior and one of the younger investors in the new Ms., which resumed publication in April with a snappier format and turn-of-the-millennium takes on everything from adultery to personal finance.
Using family money, Friedman joined a group of women investors to fund Liberty Media for Women, which bought the venerable title from McDonald Communication Corp. in December. "I invested because it's so important to have a counterbalance to all the other women's magazines you see out there," says Friedman, 20. "I read Cosmo and Glamour, but they only give you a small percentage of what women are all about."
Friedman comes by her feminism honestly. Her mother co-founded Voters for Choice with Gloria Steinem while pregnant with Alison. Her grandmother and 16-year-old sister also are investors in Ms. And she's on the board of Choice USA, an organization of younger women devoted to teaching the feminist agenda to a new generation.
Founded in 1972, Ms. abruptly shut down last August. Friedman likes the spruced-up version, but she thinks it could benefit from more stories on women's sports and covers with more newsstand appeal. "I'm not saying we need an unrealistically thin woman with huge breasts," she says. "You can have an enticing cover that still has substance."
