Reporters: Thinking Man's Shrimpton

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One of the best dates to take to a New York party these days — or, failing such luck, one of the most arresting names to drop — is Gloria Steinem. Writers, politicians, editors, publishers and tuned-in businessmen are all intensely curious about her. Gloria is not only a successful freelance writer and contributing editor of New York magazine; she is also a trim, undeniably female, blonde-streaked brunette who has been described as "the thinking man's Jean Shrimpton." She does something for her soft suits and clinging dresses, has legs worthy of her miniskirts, and a brain that keeps conversation lively with out getting tricky.

In the past six years, more than 40 articles in many magazines, including Glamour, Esquire, Look, LIFE and New York, have established her as a prolific and competent journalist. Escorted by the likes of Mike Nichols and John Kenneth Galbraith, she has become a quiet celebrity in her own right. Unmarried at 32 (her steady boy friend is TV Writer Herb Sargent), she is one of the few fascinating singles left in the literary set since George Plimpton took the vows.

Bitter Division. No dilettante for all that, Steinem is a political activist whose subjective accounts in New York of the anguish of the antiwar left are among her best reporting. An early supporter of Eugene McCarthy, she switched to Robert Kennedy and tried to unite her friends in the two factions. "Because of preference for one or another of two men whose platforms were not very different," she wrote, "friends no longer spoke to friends. Gossip about who had switched to whom politically was suddenly as juicy as who was having an affair with whom. But less tolerant."

A ten-day tour with the Nixon campaign in September produced a totally negative picture of the candidate ("When Nixon is alone in a room, is anyone there?"), but her interview with Pat Nixon provided a striking glimpse into Mrs. Nixon's personality. Made uncomfortable by Gloria's questioning about "what she identified with, other than daughters and husband," Mrs. Nixon finally spoke, "low-voiced and resentful; like a long accusation, the words flowed out. 'I never had time to think about things like that — who I wanted to be, or who I admired, or to have ideas. I never had time to dream about being anyone else. I don't have time to worry about who I admire or who I identify with. I've never had it easy. I'm not like all you ... all those people who had it so easy.' " Gloria is now persona non grata among the Nixon entourage, but else where she is in much demand. Her mail and phone calls one recent week included offers to: work as a woman's newscaster on a national network, collaborate on setting her interview with Pat Nixon to music, write the introduction to a German movie on sex education, appear on ABC's The Dating Game, work with a studio on a movie based on her life, and cohost, with Senator George McGovern, a fund-raising benefit for Cesar Chavez, the leader of the migrant workers in California. She turned down all but the last and spent most of the week in her Upper East Side brownstone writing an article.