January 28, 2021 • 42 mins
What's Her Story with Sam & Amy speaks with legendary writer, lecturer, political activist, and feminist organizer Gloria Steinem. In this episode, Steinem shares prolific insights on democratizing the family structure, the importance of young girls playing sports, the "fan-fucking-tastic" freedom she's found in aging, and the myth of fairytale romance.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi, I'm Sam Edis and I'm Amy Nelson. Welcome to
What's Her Story? With Sam and Amy. This is a
show about the world's most remarkable women, their professional and
personal journeys. Together, we'll hear from gold medalists, best selling authors,
and leaders of the world's most iconic brands. Today's guest
(00:21):
almost needs no introduction. We have Glorious dynam I, kind
of the women's movement journalist and activist. Well, we have
a lot of questions to try to tackle with you. Okay,
I don't know if I have answers, but I feel
like you do. Um, So, you had a very unusual childhood.
(00:42):
How did that impact your early decisions in adulthood, what
job to take, where to live? Because I'm not sure,
of course, but I think because I didn't go to
school that much. I don't think I went to school
a full year until I was in high school. So uh.
(01:02):
And because my family was traveling and so on, that
may have contributed to the fact that I've never also
had job. I've always been a freelancer. Perhaps I never
got accustomed to the idea of going to the same
place every day, so um, it's been an advantage for
a writer because I am accustomed to working at home
(01:25):
and to an irregular schedule, not to mention an irregular paycheck.
At age ten year, parents separated and you became your
mom's primary caretaker. How do you think that impacted decisions
you made in your adult life? Well, that's deep, you know. Um.
I think I never wanted to become a woman alone
(01:47):
with a child, which is what my mother was. And
I also think in a way, because I had been
a caretaker, it probably assisted in my feeling that I
didn't have to have children. I didn't need to be
a caretaker. Again, I'm not sure, but I think so.
So you talk about growing up in a neighborhood where
(02:08):
men were valued by what they did and women were
valued by how they look and what their husbands did.
Now I have to say I live in a neighborhood
a lot like that today. So why does this construct
still exists? Has it changed? Well, it's changed a lot.
It's changed a huge, huge amount. It's almost unrecognizable since
(02:30):
the ancient days when I was growing up. But it
is still true that, especially if a woman has children,
it's very difficult for her to make enough money to
support herself in those children even if she wishes to.
So the traditional dependency is way less frequent, but it's
(02:53):
still present. And it's interesting to me that in a
categorical way, those are the women who elected Trump. It
was white women in the suburbs who were dependent on
their husband's income, and so in a sense, we're voting
their interests, not their own interests. And why if your identity,
(03:14):
your name, and your income depends on someone else, you
vote for them. So I have to share a personal
anecdote with you. When I met you was at the
Maker's Conference in two thousand and fourteen, and I imagine
you have some of these moments in your life where
you look back on them and you just are mortified
and embarrassed. And my moment of meeting you is one
(03:37):
of those in my life. And I'll tell you why.
It's because I asked you to take a picture with me,
and then I didn't like the way I looked and
asked you to retake it. And I was that so terrible?
I mean, maybe I didn't like the way I well,
I just felt like, here you are this icon of
(03:57):
you know, women's empowerment and strength, and I was focusing
on something so superficial. I was so excited to meet you,
and I transformed it into something so superficial. Well, I
don't remember it in that way. You remember it in
that way, so you're endowing it with the feelings that
went into it. But it probably was a perfectly reasonable request. Well,
(04:21):
in general, how do you think about beauty? I mean,
beauty has been such a theme in how people talk
about you, and then when I just read your book,
The Revolution from Within, it really seemed like you are
this incredible intellect and academic and a lot of people
only see you as this beautiful feminist. So how do
(04:44):
you think of beauty in your life? First of all,
beauty is no credit to us, and also it perishes,
so it's not a good thing to depend on. And
I certainly resented that in the earlier years UM when
the movement was just getting started, and I remember, I mean,
(05:07):
the most symbolic event for me was that Newsweek magazine
asked me to pose for a cover when they were
doing their first ever cover story about the women's movement,
which they thought, oh, maybe this little thing is newsworthy,
you know, So so I said, are you kidding me?
I'm not going to you know one white woman and
(05:28):
you know that can't that you know that so does
not represent a movement. And they anyway took a photographed
with a telephoto lens at a rally and put me
on the cover of Newsweek anyway, And I so resented
that because I thought it was bad for the movement
to have a singular image. That isn't what a movement is.
(05:50):
And how do you think about beauty today? I don't.
One of the one of the great things, it's the
great fan fucking tasting things about being old is you
don't think about it that much. I mean, you you know,
you you wash and maybe you color your hair, you
guys it. But the idea of being identified by how
(06:15):
you look is sort of gone. You know. It's a
prison that starts when you're about ten and starts to
end when you're fifty or sixty. So it's kind of great,
you know, it's free at last. You wrote that women
may be the only group that grows more at radical
with the age. What do you mean by that, Well,
(06:37):
it's part of what we were just discussing, that you're
you're pretty much not totally out of the beauty prison.
I mean, probably neither men nor women are totally out
of that. They're all kinds of men with two pays
and you know, plastic surgery. So but but you're you're
much more out of it. Uh. And you're past the
(06:59):
time when you if you have been identified with a
partner or husband's uh social identity, you're probably past that point.
So I do think that that women over sixty or so,
like girls before their nine or ten, are the most free.
(07:21):
So how do we break out of that prison between
the ages of ten and fifty or sixty. How do
we get past that? Well, I think we're encroaching on it,
don't you. I mean, because uh, you know, Marilyn Monroe
famously thought her life was over at thirty. So at
least we've we've gotten to sixty. Uh. And I think
(07:42):
I think that little girls have been freed, especially by athletics.
You know, for girls to identify with what their bodies
can do as opposed to how their bodies look is huge.
And there's also getting rid of racism, because uh, that's
profound in this country, and colorism used to exist within
(08:06):
the black community is pretty much gone. So you know,
we can make a lot of progress by just understanding
that each of us is born as a unique miracle
that could never have happened before and could never happen again.
You know, one of the things you just touch upon.
There has recently been a breakthrough regarding the awareness of
(08:27):
systemic racism. Do you think the same strikes have been
made regard regarding gender bias? And if not, why not? Uh?
You know, I think they're not exactly different because black
women are the leadership of the women's movement, in part
(08:49):
because they experienced double discrimination and in part because they
see both kinds of discrimination. Even from the very first
uh public opinion poll that was done about women's opinions
about what was then called the Women's Liberation movement, black
women were more than twice as likely to support it
(09:13):
as white women were. And and look at the vote.
I mean, I think of black women voted for Hillary
Clinton and pent of white women voted for Donald Trump.
I mean I resked my case. I want to pivot
to your career and can you talk about the launch
of your career in your twenties. Well, I never thought
(09:33):
I was launching a career. I mean I didn't the
term career didn't for for one thing, we were working
until we got married, because that's it was still the
pattern of the day that it was more following what
I cared about. I mean, I did notice that when
I was writing, it was the only time I didn't
think I should be doing something else. So I was
(09:54):
freelancing and I was trying to write about what I
loved and care about cared about, which was not that
easy in the beginning because women's magazines were way more likely.
I mean, they weren't interested in political articles or you know,
they had to have articles to support their advertisers about,
so I h profiles was really were as far away
(10:17):
as I could get. What was the first piece that
you remember being paid for? I think it was a
piece in the New York Times on the up ed
page about Barbara Walters. I think maybe because she had
just become the first woman on the Today Show who
wasn't just serving coffee. So how did you start Miss Magazine? Well, um,
(10:40):
I had been working at New York Magazine and helped
to start it, so I understood a little bit of
how you could start a women's magazine. Um I I
asked a lot of friends to come and sit in
my living room and see how they felt about it
because they were also men who had been writing for
(11:02):
a variety of publications and especially women's magazines, and we
were all just kind of despairing of the women's magazines
that existed, not because the editors weren't smart, great women,
they were, but because they mainly were called upon for
articles that supported advertisers. So there would be a whole
(11:23):
article about hair care, even though we know how to
shampoo our hair, and another one about mess Garra and
maybe a celebrity thrown in there. So we looked at
Esquire in the Atlantic, and I don't know what else existed,
and we thought, well, you know, why can't there be
a magazine for women that has articles about things we
(11:48):
actually want to read? Um. So, because I was working
at New York Magazine, I had the luck of and
the kindness of Clay Felker, who was the editor, who
let us do a sample issue of of Miss Magazine
with a separate cover in in as a bind in
(12:08):
in New York Magazine and then as an independent one
shot issue, and it was on the newsstands. And I
remember going to traveling to California. I was on a
television show and someone called and said you know, we
can't find it on the newsstands. And I called Clay
(12:28):
Felker in a panic, and I said, oh, you know,
it never got here. It never got it. And it
turned out it had sold out. We had we had
cover dated its spring in case it just was there
like a lox on the newsstand for a long time.
We didn't want to be we didn't want to embarrass
the movement. Uh. And it sold out in eight days.
(12:50):
So we realized how how crucial it was. And we
got the most extraordinary letters, bags and bags full of
letters that are now residing in the Smith College archive.
I hope with women saying, you know, I feel as
if a friend came into my house. I feel as
(13:10):
if I've been alone. But now you know, I know
that I'm not crazy. The system is crazy. How did
you finance the magazine poorly? Well, we had the success
of the preview issue to go on, and so we
(13:30):
had uh subscribers already, you know, that was very important.
And then because of a group then called Warner Communications,
so they gave us a million dollars and so with
what should have been many times that and and the
subscribers we had still from the new York insert we
(13:55):
started it and now for a quick break. So you
were engaged your senior year of college and you broke
it off and this is in the nineteen fifties and
this is unusual. How did you make that decision? Well?
I just felt that if I got married, it was
the last decision I would ever make. And it wasn't
the fault of the man, who was a wonderful person
(14:17):
and still the handsomest person I've ever seen in my life.
He looked like trying of a cash mary friends, very tempting,
and he had a way more interesting life than I did,
which is why I had to go to India, because
I knew that if I stayed home and took a
job as a researcher at Time magazine. In those days,
women researched and men wrote you could only get a
(14:40):
job as a researcher, that I would be too tempted.
And I remember walking around New Delhi and getting a
telegram from him saying that this is my last chance
and unless I was coming home, he was going to
get engaged to someone else. And I remember, you know,
writing a kind of say add but congratulatory telegram to him,
(15:03):
you know, We do these things little by little. It
isn't as if we say hello, I'm going to live
this kind of life forever. We do it one step
at a time. So, speaking of marriage, you made a
very deliberate choice not to get married, not to have children,
and then when you were sixty six you met David
(15:24):
Bail and married him. Why well, we we loved each
other and we would have been together in any case.
And he needed a green card, so he had been
born in South Africa, lived in England. He was constantly
worried that that the immigration office was going to knock
(15:46):
on the door and take him away. Uh So I thought, well,
you know, we've worked for thirty years to change the
marriage laws. I would no longer lose my name, my credit,
eating my legal residence. Also, we were going to see
my friend Wilma man Killer, who's the chief was the
(16:07):
chief of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, and she offered
us a Cherokee ceremony, so we got married kind of
walking around the fire on her lawn. You know, who
can resist that. It just seemed to make sense. I mean,
if it had not been for his legal status, there
would have been no reason to do it legally, was
(16:27):
he the great love of your life? No? I mean,
you know what, That's what drives me crazy. Doesn't it
drive you crazy that just because you've got a marriage
license suddenly it's the great love of your life. There
is no great love of your life. There are unique
individual loves of your life. And I'm still friends with
(16:49):
all my old lovers. I mean, you know, yeah, I
mean I also think it's really interesting growing up like
we are, you know, taught about this fairy tale of
the love of your life. And I just turned party
this year. And for me, one thing I learned in
my adulthood is that some of the great loves of
my life I'm my best friends, yes, I don't know,
our women friends absolutely, and our men friends right and
(17:11):
our old lovers. Marlo Thomas always refers to her old
lovers as her council of advisors. And who who are
your best friends? I'm sorry that Wilman man Killer is
no longer here, but she was certainly a best friend.
Alice Walker, uh Amy Richards, who's a colleague as well.
We work together all the time. Victoria Jackson, wonderful human being.
(17:37):
It's a circle of women and old lovers can you
talk about the role of money in feminism. I think
it's a measure of inequality for us. That's very important.
When we see a man who's a parking lot attendant
(17:58):
getting twice as much money as a woman who's a
childcare attendant, you know, we say, wait a minute, it
gives us a measure of what needs changing. Why is
teaching still not well paid? Well? Largely because it's still
more a female profession than most other professions, you know,
and you can just see that wherever. So what we're
(18:22):
trying to do is to say, not equal pay for
equal work, but equal pay for comfortable work, so that
the amount of skill or education involved is the measure,
not not race and not not gender. And do you
think that's changed over time? Yes, no, it has changed
over time. It just is still very far. There's still
(18:46):
a big gender and a big racial divide. So we
just elected our first woman vice president. Have we made
as much progress as you would have thought when you
started Miss magazine? No? You have to remember, you know,
in Let's see, it was in that surely Chisholm all
(19:06):
by herself took the white male only sign off the
White House door. That was a long time ago. Uh,
she was running for president. She was only on the
ballot in fourteen states, I think, but you know, she
did raise people's hopes and imaginations. Now we have a
(19:27):
vice president and a wonderful vice president. I mean, I'm
so proud, you know that to feel represented by her
in every way. But there was still a lot of resistance,
say to Hillary Clinton when she ran. And I think
it's deep, you know, because I think that as long
(19:49):
as children are raised mainly by women, that we are
going to associate female authority with childhood. And people, not
only men, but men especially seem to feel regressed childhood
when they see a powerful woman. It's as if they're
they're unmanned. It's as if they're eight again, which was
(20:13):
the last time they saw one. Uh. And because I
noticed that and even my smart, wonderful grown up journalists
men friends, and how they treated Hillary in the press,
I think it's really interesting to see with Kamala if
she's very close to her sister, who became a single
mother when she was a high school senior in Mina.
(20:35):
Kamala's niece are very close, and it's interesting to think
about how we can reconstruct what we see is as families.
How do you think we could reconstruct all of that
to kind of change how we view women. Well, I
think that the most important parts to include men in it,
you know, because until men are raising infants and little
children as much as women are, it won't be equal
(21:00):
because men won't be able to develop the uh, nurturing
an emotional part of themselves, which they have just as
much as women too. And of course we see men
who are loving, wonderful parents, so we you know, we
know that this is possible, and women are less likely
to develop the um achieving talent, whatever part of themselves
(21:26):
they develop outside the home. You know, until we have
democratic families, will never have a democracy outside the home.
So true. One of the things I noted from your
your book was that you talk about the kindness of
your father and how because of him you never selected
(21:47):
men who weren't kind to you. You know, you never
selected violent men. That was not something you ever attracted to.
Talk about the role of self esteem in all of this, well,
I think in what you just described, I think it's
harder for a girl and a young woman who to
(22:07):
know that there are men different from her father. So
if she has grown up with the controlling or violent
or cruel father. It's hard for her to harder anyway,
for her to know that there are men who are
not like that. It's normalized a little bit for her,
(22:28):
or maybe it takes longer. So I think we see
that in in say women who have married several times,
that they often first married a man who was like
their father before they could discover that there were other
men to follow up on the relationship point, how do
you manage conflict in relationships? You seem to do it
(22:50):
so gracefully because you've been in a lot of situations
full of conflict. But you mean conflict within the relationship. Yeah, yes,
of course you have differences, but I think there's been
It's been easier for me because I've been able to choose.
(23:11):
I mean, most of the men I've met, i've met
because we were in some social justice movement together, so
we shared a lot of values. Um, I suppose a
disproportionate number of men have been in a racial justice
movement have been of a different quote unquote race, because
(23:33):
that kind of gave us a shared context and they
tended to understand what women were up against. Two. So
I just I think we've been able to share values,
and I was not with somebody, at least not since
(23:57):
the very beginning who expected me to lead a traditional
role every day. As women especially, we all face microaggressions
like any persecuted group. How do you deal with those microaggressions? Well,
I mean I face fewer, so I'm not saying that,
(24:18):
you know, my advice is totally valuable, because clearly I
face fewer. But I try to name it or to
try to fix it, you know, I mean, if you
one sign of of an equal relationship is that each
person is both talking and listening. So I try to
(24:38):
remember myself to talk as much as I listen, and
listen as much as I talk, and whether that's with
women or men, that helps to create an equality in
the moment that then becomes organic. And now for a
quick break, can we talk about Phillish laugh? I watched
(25:02):
Mrs America. How did you feel about that? Well? I
didn't watch it actually because I knew it would drive
me crazy. I mean, the uh they, the people who
were doing it, had had given me and uh others
scripts in advance, so I knew it was Bonker's from
the beginning, and I told them. It was bonkers because
(25:24):
Fellows Lafly had absolutely nothing to do with stopping the
Evil Rights Amendment. It was the insurance industry, the state
by state, you know, because the insurance industry was and
maybe still is. I don't know that the one big
national industry that isn't governed by federal regulations. It's governed
state by state. So they did not want to equalize
(25:47):
their actuarial tables because it would have cost them a fortune.
And when we got within three states of victory, they
suddenly realized, wait a minute, you know, uh, this is
going to cost us a lot of money, and so
probably they hired I don't know exactly how Philosophic got involved.
I think in the series it implied that she had
(26:09):
been recruited elsewhere by the John Birch Society or somebody.
Somehow she got involved, but she, as far as I know,
she never changed one vote. Oh wow, okay, this is
this is amazing my jaws on the So yeah, well
that's that's a problem with that series. I mean, people
are you know, writers and directors are welcome to do
whatever they want. But it falsified history and it made
(26:35):
it seem that women were each other's problem. Yes, there
were women who were against the Equal Rights Amendment, but
they weren't what stopped it. It was the economic interests
that stopped it. Did you ever feel the weight of
having an entire movement rest on your shoulders? No, because
I doesn't. If I had disappeared anywhere along the way,
(26:56):
and if I disappeared tomorrow, the movement goes right on
it never ever, what's true? What do you worry about
when you go to sleep? Now? Uh? Why I haven't written,
you know, the any part of the book that I'm
supposed to be working on During the day, I've just
(27:17):
been answering my emails. What book are you working on? Well?
With two friends, I'm writing a book about the black
women who were always a dispropo as I was saying,
a disproportionate part of the women's movement from the sixties
and seventies forward. Um, it's kind of just because of
(27:41):
the way it was reported. I mean, you know, even
even when I was speaking, I was always almost always
speaking together with Flow Kennedy or Margaret Sloan or you know,
we were consciously speaking as as a black woman and
a white woman together, and the newspaper reports would still
report her as the civil rights movement and me as
(28:03):
the women's movement, and we would always say, actually, this
is a scene in in uh the movie of the
Glorious Too, in the Julie Tamore movie, that a reporter
is treating Flow as if she's the part of the
so and we're saying no, no, no, we're both here
as part of the women's movement. So it's it's a
definitional problem that has always been wrong. Do you have
(28:26):
any regrets? Oh? Yes, tons of regrets, right, tons, tons, tons?
I mean, I mean they're not they're not big regrets
or conventional regrets, maybe because it's not like I regret
I don't know, not having children, or conventional family or
(28:48):
a job, you know, things like but I regret wasting time.
Mm hmmm, because time is all there is. Really, what
do you feel you we the time on you know,
watching television series and writing little things instead of something
that that might last for a little longer. What what
(29:12):
role in your life does guilt play? Well? It certainly plays,
you know, a role in the sense of what did
I do today? How did I end up only doing emails?
You know? Uh, also with friends, I think, um, oh,
this friend is maybe not in such a good situation.
(29:36):
Is she Okay? You know I want to call her? Um,
It's it's more, you know, it's because I feel an
emotional tie or a tie of purpose that I haven't
really attended to. How do you take care of yourself?
You mean, do I exercise? No, I've never been a
(29:57):
person who exercised in a classic way or in a
regular way. How do you think about the rest of
your life unfolding? Well, I occasionally try to remind myself
that even if I lived to a hundred, it's not
that long. But that does not seem to interfere with
my thinking that I'm immortal, and sometimes some way, and
(30:22):
thinking you're immortal does not cause you to plan well. Well.
We end every episode with a lightening round, so we
would love to ask you a few quick questions that
are more lighthearted. Okay, all right, Sam? Do you want
to start? Sure, but I can't promise it's going to
be lighthearted though, Amy, I can't promise it's going to
(30:44):
be quick either. Do you take anything personally? What was
the last thing that hurt your feelings? I was reading
something about a long ago campaign for Shirley Chisholm, and
there was something very misunderstanding. You know, I had run
(31:07):
as a delegate for Shirley Chisholm, and it made it
seem as if I hadn't supported her, and that hurt
my failings. What book are you reading right now? Well,
I'm actually not reading a book so much as referring
to books I have read looking for quotes. For instance,
here's Sex and World Peace, a totally wonderful book by
(31:28):
a group of people, mainly Valerie Hudson, and it's very
helpful because it explains that the status of women is
a bigger predictor of world peace than anything else, more
than economics, more than hunger, more than border conflicts. Not
because women are more important, but because, as I was
(31:51):
saying about families, the conflict between males and females in
the family normalizes conflict, or normalize this hierarchy. Other places,
I have to ask what is Glorious Dynam's morning beauty regimen?
And do you color your hair? I do? I do?
(32:13):
We we don't know what's under here, right uh? And
I started doing that in India. I mean I was
coloring my hair darker because I was wearing saries. Then
I came home and I was greatly influenced by breakfast
at Tiffany, So I streaked my hair. I just have
continued to do that. That's my favorite movie. I love
(32:37):
it is a wonderful movie, right. Um. And other than that,
I mean, it's just you know, soap washing and moisturizer
and kind of some some kind of cream tinted. It's
tinted moisturizer, I think, yeah, And and and completing my eyebrows.
(32:58):
I think I've lost the end of my eyebrows. So
do you have a favorite cocktail? No, I don't like
to drink. It's I'm so not interested in wine or
any kind of drink. It just doesn't taste good to me.
I'd wave rather have ice cream. What flavor? Ice cream?
Practically anything? I mean, you know, there's not I've never
(33:19):
met a flavor I didn't like. If you could wave
a magic one and change one thing about the world,
what would it be? Mm hmm. Labels? Because we made
up race and colorism and so on. Uh, and gender,
we made up gender. So I would do my best
(33:43):
to remove labels and try to allow us to see
our individual uniqueness and are shared humanity, and I think
in a way COVID may help us do that conscious
business wise because it does not care about race or class,
or gender or national boundaries. Blue is our male perspective
(34:06):
on the show, and he's been listening to this interview
and then he comes out with his one big question.
No pressure, you know, especially for me being a black
man in America. And you touched on a lot of topics,
you know that's related to the current I guess climate
of the country. And my dad will always tell me
because he he passed away in but when I was
(34:29):
coming up, he would always tell me to go around
older people and ask them what they would do, you know,
like if they could relive their life, because that can
possibly be my be my foresight and things that I
can focus on. Um, if you were thirty years old,
what would be your primary like driving force and focus.
Oh that's hard because part of our uniqueness is the
(34:53):
time we came up in as you you know, so
it's hard to separate those things. But I think it
would be trying earlier. I'm not sure I at that
point had realized the I still thought there were boundaries,
if you know what I mean. I still thought that
(35:14):
there was such a thing as a national boundary that
mattered as opposed to us all living on spaceship Earth
or I I maybe didn't yet understand that you don't
learn from sameness, you learn from difference. So for my
own security, I was maybe too much looking for people
(35:36):
who shared experience as opposed to people who had different experiences.
It took me longer to to learn that. Well, thank you,
I wrote that down. You don't learn from sameness, you
learn from difference. This is so amazing. One of my
big takeaways glare I just said. You know which I'm
going to repeat everywhere, is equal pay for comparable work.
(35:57):
I've never heard it said that way, and that is
exactly how we should talk. Yes, absolutely, because there's such
occupational segregation um by by gender and race, and you know,
so we we don't think about it that way, but
we should, especially when we look at all these people
in boardrooms doing nothing or very very little. I loved
(36:24):
what she said about comparable work, and I also was
fascinated when she said that she felt if she got married,
it would be the last decision she'd ever make, which
I think she was alluding to. You know, she wouldn't
be able to have her own bank account, credit cards,
work would be different. So many laws that have changed
since then. Yeah, I think it's interesting. I think very
(36:45):
few of us today know that as late as in
eighteen seventies a woman could not get a credit card
aside from one paired with her husband. Right, like, that
is not very long ago. I also thought, I mean,
the thing I loved that Gloria said when she was
talking about marriage is that her husband wasn't the great
love of her life. That we can have many great loves.
(37:07):
And I think that's just it's important. It's an important
thing to say. I have to tell you so. So
my last book, as you know, it's about work life balance.
And one of the things that always struck me is
I felt like if someone had a confidence crisis, which
is honestly an epidemic among women across our country. If
if there is a confidence crisis, it's impossible to teach
(37:29):
someone how to negotiate a salary or ask for a raise,
or advocate for themselves at home. It's all about self esteem.
And when I read her new book, actually it's a
new forward to her old book, which is an extraordinary
book that I highly recommend everyone read called a Revolution
from within. This was like the Bible of self esteem.
It's not just like new ag meditation, yoga, you know,
(37:52):
go have a bath. It was all about like statistics
and stories and the history of self est deem. And
I can't even express how valuable the book is, Like
I was highlighting almost every sentence. You know, Sam, I
don't think we've really talked about this, but you know,
I've struggled with self esteem since I was a little girl.
(38:13):
I was teased when I was in first grade for
being overweight, and that really just kind of spiraled me
into doubting my self esteem for decades. But I do
think it is a crisis and it's definitely a book
to And that's really hard to believe knowing you now,
because you are so confident and it's such a big
part of who you are, and I think so many
women look up to you because you exude confidence. So
(38:36):
what for you, Amy, what helped you recover that confidence? Well,
it's interesting, particularly following up with this conversation with Gloria,
because what helped me gain confidence was becoming a mother,
because just what was really important crystallized for me and
I stopped giving a ship about everything else, like truly,
(38:57):
like I don't care what people think of me anymore,
because it doesn't matter. As long as I'm kind and
I'm good to my friends and my family and the
people I love and that I work with. Um, that's
what's important. There must be more to it than that,
like think about it. Most the problem is amy that
most women who are listening who have become moms didn't
(39:18):
have that switch for them. In fact, a lot of
women when they become moms lose their confidence. What was
it for you? There must be more than just I
treat people well? I mean what was it? When was
it that you were like I'm a badass? Like when
did that happen? I mean, honestly, like I well, yeah,
I mean yes, it's like listen, I think the biggest
(39:39):
transition for me was when I left my corporate job
to start the Riveter and I was going to start
a small business and through a series of conversations decided
to raise millions of dollars and build this national company
and realizing that like, oh, like anybody can actually do
this right, Like you don't have to have a special degree,
you don't have to have a special set of skills,
like you can just make a run at it and
(40:00):
you can do it. So it sounds like you realized
what you were capable of when you started a company.
But I do. But I do go back to becoming
a mother because that was a shift for me. And
it was this thing of like, you've really got to
clarify your priorities, how you spend your mental energy, all
of these things because and part of it was that
I had four kids in four years, Like let's not
lie like I don't have space for a lot um
(40:21):
but and maybe I don't know, maybe there's some metapoint
sam that like once I had kids, my own mortality
and what it meant and my legacy started to mean more.
So I was just like what matters for me? Like
I was. I always credit my confidence with having parents
who made me think I like walked on water and
could do anything. And when I've interviewed famous people, you know, leaders, whoever,
(40:44):
people who excel in their field, that is one thing
they all have in common is that they had parents
who made them feel they could be anything. And when
I read glorious book, even though she had a lot
of challenges in her childhood me and she had a
mom who struggled with mental illness and a father who
was always on the road. They did make her feel
She even cites the fact that they never once spanked her.
(41:06):
They never made her feel anything less than she could
be anything, and they really really gave her tons of
love and confidence. And I do think that you know,
as parents, will will trip and follow and will make
so many mistakes. But if you can give your kids
that one gift, which is making them believe in themselves,
(41:26):
then you've you've overcome a lot of weaknesses. I completely agree.
Thanks for listening to What's Her Story with Sam and Amy.
We would so appreciate if you would leave her of
you wherever you get your podcasts, and of course connect
with us on social media at What's Her Story of podcast.
What's Her Story with Sam and Amy is powered by
(41:48):
my company, The Riveter at the Riveter dot c o
in Sam's company, park Place Payments at park place payments
dot com. Thanks to our producer Laurel Mowglin, our podcast
associate Emma Harror, and her male perspective lue berths M
Hi, I'm Sam Edis and I'm Amy Nelson. Welcome to
What's Her Story? With Sam and Amy. This is a
show about the world's most remarkable women, their professional and
personal journeys. Together, we'll hear from gold medalists, best selling authors,
and leaders of the world's most iconic brands. Today's guest
(00:21):
almost needs no introduction. We have Glorious dynam I, kind
of the women's movement journalist and activist. Well, we have
a lot of questions to try to tackle with you. Okay,
I don't know if I have answers, but I feel
like you do. Um, So, you had a very unusual childhood.
(00:42):
How did that impact your early decisions in adulthood, what
job to take, where to live? Because I'm not sure,
of course, but I think because I didn't go to
school that much. I don't think I went to school
a full year until I was in high school. So uh.
(01:02):
And because my family was traveling and so on, that
may have contributed to the fact that I've never also
had job. I've always been a freelancer. Perhaps I never
got accustomed to the idea of going to the same
place every day, so um, it's been an advantage for
a writer because I am accustomed to working at home
(01:25):
and to an irregular schedule, not to mention an irregular paycheck.
At age ten year, parents separated and you became your
mom's primary caretaker. How do you think that impacted decisions
you made in your adult life? Well, that's deep, you know. Um.
I think I never wanted to become a woman alone
(01:47):
with a child, which is what my mother was. And
I also think in a way, because I had been
a caretaker, it probably assisted in my feeling that I
didn't have to have children. I didn't need to be
a caretaker. Again, I'm not sure, but I think so.
So you talk about growing up in a neighborhood where
(02:08):
men were valued by what they did and women were
valued by how they look and what their husbands did.
Now I have to say I live in a neighborhood
a lot like that today. So why does this construct
still exists? Has it changed? Well, it's changed a lot.
It's changed a huge, huge amount. It's almost unrecognizable since
(02:30):
the ancient days when I was growing up. But it
is still true that, especially if a woman has children,
it's very difficult for her to make enough money to
support herself in those children even if she wishes to.
So the traditional dependency is way less frequent, but it's
(02:53):
still present. And it's interesting to me that in a
categorical way, those are the women who elected Trump. It
was white women in the suburbs who were dependent on
their husband's income, and so in a sense, we're voting
their interests, not their own interests. And why if your identity,
(03:14):
your name, and your income depends on someone else, you
vote for them. So I have to share a personal
anecdote with you. When I met you was at the
Maker's Conference in two thousand and fourteen, and I imagine
you have some of these moments in your life where
you look back on them and you just are mortified
and embarrassed. And my moment of meeting you is one
(03:37):
of those in my life. And I'll tell you why.
It's because I asked you to take a picture with me,
and then I didn't like the way I looked and
asked you to retake it. And I was that so terrible?
I mean, maybe I didn't like the way I well,
I just felt like, here you are this icon of
(03:57):
you know, women's empowerment and strength, and I was focusing
on something so superficial. I was so excited to meet you,
and I transformed it into something so superficial. Well, I
don't remember it in that way. You remember it in
that way, so you're endowing it with the feelings that
went into it. But it probably was a perfectly reasonable request. Well,
(04:21):
in general, how do you think about beauty? I mean,
beauty has been such a theme in how people talk
about you, and then when I just read your book,
The Revolution from Within, it really seemed like you are
this incredible intellect and academic and a lot of people
only see you as this beautiful feminist. So how do
(04:44):
you think of beauty in your life? First of all,
beauty is no credit to us, and also it perishes,
so it's not a good thing to depend on. And
I certainly resented that in the earlier years UM when
the movement was just getting started, and I remember, I mean,
(05:07):
the most symbolic event for me was that Newsweek magazine
asked me to pose for a cover when they were
doing their first ever cover story about the women's movement,
which they thought, oh, maybe this little thing is newsworthy,
you know, So so I said, are you kidding me?
I'm not going to you know one white woman and
(05:28):
you know that can't that you know that so does
not represent a movement. And they anyway took a photographed
with a telephoto lens at a rally and put me
on the cover of Newsweek anyway, And I so resented
that because I thought it was bad for the movement
to have a singular image. That isn't what a movement is.
(05:50):
And how do you think about beauty today? I don't.
One of the one of the great things, it's the
great fan fucking tasting things about being old is you
don't think about it that much. I mean, you you know,
you you wash and maybe you color your hair, you
guys it. But the idea of being identified by how
(06:15):
you look is sort of gone. You know. It's a
prison that starts when you're about ten and starts to
end when you're fifty or sixty. So it's kind of great,
you know, it's free at last. You wrote that women
may be the only group that grows more at radical
with the age. What do you mean by that, Well,
(06:37):
it's part of what we were just discussing, that you're
you're pretty much not totally out of the beauty prison.
I mean, probably neither men nor women are totally out
of that. They're all kinds of men with two pays
and you know, plastic surgery. So but but you're you're
much more out of it. Uh. And you're past the
(06:59):
time when you if you have been identified with a
partner or husband's uh social identity, you're probably past that point.
So I do think that that women over sixty or so,
like girls before their nine or ten, are the most free.
(07:21):
So how do we break out of that prison between
the ages of ten and fifty or sixty. How do
we get past that? Well, I think we're encroaching on it,
don't you. I mean, because uh, you know, Marilyn Monroe
famously thought her life was over at thirty. So at
least we've we've gotten to sixty. Uh. And I think
(07:42):
I think that little girls have been freed, especially by athletics.
You know, for girls to identify with what their bodies
can do as opposed to how their bodies look is huge.
And there's also getting rid of racism, because uh, that's
profound in this country, and colorism used to exist within
(08:06):
the black community is pretty much gone. So you know,
we can make a lot of progress by just understanding
that each of us is born as a unique miracle
that could never have happened before and could never happen again.
You know, one of the things you just touch upon.
There has recently been a breakthrough regarding the awareness of
(08:27):
systemic racism. Do you think the same strikes have been
made regard regarding gender bias? And if not, why not? Uh?
You know, I think they're not exactly different because black
women are the leadership of the women's movement, in part
(08:49):
because they experienced double discrimination and in part because they
see both kinds of discrimination. Even from the very first
uh public opinion poll that was done about women's opinions
about what was then called the Women's Liberation movement, black
women were more than twice as likely to support it
(09:13):
as white women were. And and look at the vote.
I mean, I think of black women voted for Hillary
Clinton and pent of white women voted for Donald Trump.
I mean I resked my case. I want to pivot
to your career and can you talk about the launch
of your career in your twenties. Well, I never thought
(09:33):
I was launching a career. I mean I didn't the
term career didn't for for one thing, we were working
until we got married, because that's it was still the
pattern of the day that it was more following what
I cared about. I mean, I did notice that when
I was writing, it was the only time I didn't
think I should be doing something else. So I was
(09:54):
freelancing and I was trying to write about what I
loved and care about cared about, which was not that
easy in the beginning because women's magazines were way more likely.
I mean, they weren't interested in political articles or you know,
they had to have articles to support their advertisers about,
so I h profiles was really were as far away
(10:17):
as I could get. What was the first piece that
you remember being paid for? I think it was a
piece in the New York Times on the up ed
page about Barbara Walters. I think maybe because she had
just become the first woman on the Today Show who
wasn't just serving coffee. So how did you start Miss Magazine? Well, um,
(10:40):
I had been working at New York Magazine and helped
to start it, so I understood a little bit of
how you could start a women's magazine. Um I I
asked a lot of friends to come and sit in
my living room and see how they felt about it
because they were also men who had been writing for
(11:02):
a variety of publications and especially women's magazines, and we
were all just kind of despairing of the women's magazines
that existed, not because the editors weren't smart, great women,
they were, but because they mainly were called upon for
articles that supported advertisers. So there would be a whole
(11:23):
article about hair care, even though we know how to
shampoo our hair, and another one about mess Garra and
maybe a celebrity thrown in there. So we looked at
Esquire in the Atlantic, and I don't know what else existed,
and we thought, well, you know, why can't there be
a magazine for women that has articles about things we
(11:48):
actually want to read? Um. So, because I was working
at New York Magazine, I had the luck of and
the kindness of Clay Felker, who was the editor, who
let us do a sample issue of of Miss Magazine
with a separate cover in in as a bind in
(12:08):
in New York Magazine and then as an independent one
shot issue, and it was on the newsstands. And I
remember going to traveling to California. I was on a
television show and someone called and said you know, we
can't find it on the newsstands. And I called Clay
(12:28):
Felker in a panic, and I said, oh, you know,
it never got here. It never got it. And it
turned out it had sold out. We had we had
cover dated its spring in case it just was there
like a lox on the newsstand for a long time.
We didn't want to be we didn't want to embarrass
the movement. Uh. And it sold out in eight days.
(12:50):
So we realized how how crucial it was. And we
got the most extraordinary letters, bags and bags full of
letters that are now residing in the Smith College archive.
I hope with women saying, you know, I feel as
if a friend came into my house. I feel as
(13:10):
if I've been alone. But now you know, I know
that I'm not crazy. The system is crazy. How did
you finance the magazine poorly? Well, we had the success
of the preview issue to go on, and so we
(13:30):
had uh subscribers already, you know, that was very important.
And then because of a group then called Warner Communications,
so they gave us a million dollars and so with
what should have been many times that and and the
subscribers we had still from the new York insert we
(13:55):
started it and now for a quick break. So you
were engaged your senior year of college and you broke
it off and this is in the nineteen fifties and
this is unusual. How did you make that decision? Well?
I just felt that if I got married, it was
the last decision I would ever make. And it wasn't
the fault of the man, who was a wonderful person
(14:17):
and still the handsomest person I've ever seen in my life.
He looked like trying of a cash mary friends, very tempting,
and he had a way more interesting life than I did,
which is why I had to go to India, because
I knew that if I stayed home and took a
job as a researcher at Time magazine. In those days,
women researched and men wrote you could only get a
(14:40):
job as a researcher, that I would be too tempted.
And I remember walking around New Delhi and getting a
telegram from him saying that this is my last chance
and unless I was coming home, he was going to
get engaged to someone else. And I remember, you know,
writing a kind of say add but congratulatory telegram to him,
(15:03):
you know, We do these things little by little. It
isn't as if we say hello, I'm going to live
this kind of life forever. We do it one step
at a time. So, speaking of marriage, you made a
very deliberate choice not to get married, not to have children,
and then when you were sixty six you met David
(15:24):
Bail and married him. Why well, we we loved each
other and we would have been together in any case.
And he needed a green card, so he had been
born in South Africa, lived in England. He was constantly
worried that that the immigration office was going to knock
(15:46):
on the door and take him away. Uh So I thought, well,
you know, we've worked for thirty years to change the
marriage laws. I would no longer lose my name, my credit,
eating my legal residence. Also, we were going to see
my friend Wilma man Killer, who's the chief was the
(16:07):
chief of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, and she offered
us a Cherokee ceremony, so we got married kind of
walking around the fire on her lawn. You know, who
can resist that. It just seemed to make sense. I mean,
if it had not been for his legal status, there
would have been no reason to do it legally, was
(16:27):
he the great love of your life? No? I mean,
you know what, That's what drives me crazy. Doesn't it
drive you crazy that just because you've got a marriage
license suddenly it's the great love of your life. There
is no great love of your life. There are unique
individual loves of your life. And I'm still friends with
(16:49):
all my old lovers. I mean, you know, yeah, I
mean I also think it's really interesting growing up like
we are, you know, taught about this fairy tale of
the love of your life. And I just turned party
this year. And for me, one thing I learned in
my adulthood is that some of the great loves of
my life I'm my best friends, yes, I don't know,
our women friends absolutely, and our men friends right and
(17:11):
our old lovers. Marlo Thomas always refers to her old
lovers as her council of advisors. And who who are
your best friends? I'm sorry that Wilman man Killer is
no longer here, but she was certainly a best friend.
Alice Walker, uh Amy Richards, who's a colleague as well.
We work together all the time. Victoria Jackson, wonderful human being.
(17:37):
It's a circle of women and old lovers can you
talk about the role of money in feminism. I think
it's a measure of inequality for us. That's very important.
When we see a man who's a parking lot attendant
(17:58):
getting twice as much money as a woman who's a
childcare attendant, you know, we say, wait a minute, it
gives us a measure of what needs changing. Why is
teaching still not well paid? Well? Largely because it's still
more a female profession than most other professions, you know,
and you can just see that wherever. So what we're
(18:22):
trying to do is to say, not equal pay for
equal work, but equal pay for comfortable work, so that
the amount of skill or education involved is the measure,
not not race and not not gender. And do you
think that's changed over time? Yes, no, it has changed
over time. It just is still very far. There's still
(18:46):
a big gender and a big racial divide. So we
just elected our first woman vice president. Have we made
as much progress as you would have thought when you
started Miss magazine? No? You have to remember, you know,
in Let's see, it was in that surely Chisholm all
(19:06):
by herself took the white male only sign off the
White House door. That was a long time ago. Uh,
she was running for president. She was only on the
ballot in fourteen states, I think, but you know, she
did raise people's hopes and imaginations. Now we have a
(19:27):
vice president and a wonderful vice president. I mean, I'm
so proud, you know that to feel represented by her
in every way. But there was still a lot of resistance,
say to Hillary Clinton when she ran. And I think
it's deep, you know, because I think that as long
(19:49):
as children are raised mainly by women, that we are
going to associate female authority with childhood. And people, not
only men, but men especially seem to feel regressed childhood
when they see a powerful woman. It's as if they're
they're unmanned. It's as if they're eight again, which was
(20:13):
the last time they saw one. Uh. And because I
noticed that and even my smart, wonderful grown up journalists
men friends, and how they treated Hillary in the press,
I think it's really interesting to see with Kamala if
she's very close to her sister, who became a single
mother when she was a high school senior in Mina.
(20:35):
Kamala's niece are very close, and it's interesting to think
about how we can reconstruct what we see is as families.
How do you think we could reconstruct all of that
to kind of change how we view women. Well, I
think that the most important parts to include men in it,
you know, because until men are raising infants and little
children as much as women are, it won't be equal
(21:00):
because men won't be able to develop the uh, nurturing
an emotional part of themselves, which they have just as
much as women too. And of course we see men
who are loving, wonderful parents, so we you know, we
know that this is possible, and women are less likely
to develop the um achieving talent, whatever part of themselves
(21:26):
they develop outside the home. You know, until we have
democratic families, will never have a democracy outside the home.
So true. One of the things I noted from your
your book was that you talk about the kindness of
your father and how because of him you never selected
(21:47):
men who weren't kind to you. You know, you never
selected violent men. That was not something you ever attracted to.
Talk about the role of self esteem in all of this, well,
I think in what you just described, I think it's
harder for a girl and a young woman who to
(22:07):
know that there are men different from her father. So
if she has grown up with the controlling or violent
or cruel father. It's hard for her to harder anyway,
for her to know that there are men who are
not like that. It's normalized a little bit for her,
(22:28):
or maybe it takes longer. So I think we see
that in in say women who have married several times,
that they often first married a man who was like
their father before they could discover that there were other
men to follow up on the relationship point, how do
you manage conflict in relationships? You seem to do it
(22:50):
so gracefully because you've been in a lot of situations
full of conflict. But you mean conflict within the relationship. Yeah, yes,
of course you have differences, but I think there's been
It's been easier for me because I've been able to choose.
(23:11):
I mean, most of the men I've met, i've met
because we were in some social justice movement together, so
we shared a lot of values. Um, I suppose a
disproportionate number of men have been in a racial justice
movement have been of a different quote unquote race, because
(23:33):
that kind of gave us a shared context and they
tended to understand what women were up against. Two. So
I just I think we've been able to share values,
and I was not with somebody, at least not since
(23:57):
the very beginning who expected me to lead a traditional
role every day. As women especially, we all face microaggressions
like any persecuted group. How do you deal with those microaggressions? Well,
I mean I face fewer, so I'm not saying that,
(24:18):
you know, my advice is totally valuable, because clearly I
face fewer. But I try to name it or to
try to fix it, you know, I mean, if you
one sign of of an equal relationship is that each
person is both talking and listening. So I try to
(24:38):
remember myself to talk as much as I listen, and
listen as much as I talk, and whether that's with
women or men, that helps to create an equality in
the moment that then becomes organic. And now for a
quick break, can we talk about Phillish laugh? I watched
(25:02):
Mrs America. How did you feel about that? Well? I
didn't watch it actually because I knew it would drive
me crazy. I mean, the uh they, the people who
were doing it, had had given me and uh others
scripts in advance, so I knew it was Bonker's from
the beginning, and I told them. It was bonkers because
(25:24):
Fellows Lafly had absolutely nothing to do with stopping the
Evil Rights Amendment. It was the insurance industry, the state
by state, you know, because the insurance industry was and
maybe still is. I don't know that the one big
national industry that isn't governed by federal regulations. It's governed
state by state. So they did not want to equalize
(25:47):
their actuarial tables because it would have cost them a fortune.
And when we got within three states of victory, they
suddenly realized, wait a minute, you know, uh, this is
going to cost us a lot of money, and so
probably they hired I don't know exactly how Philosophic got involved.
I think in the series it implied that she had
(26:09):
been recruited elsewhere by the John Birch Society or somebody.
Somehow she got involved, but she, as far as I know,
she never changed one vote. Oh wow, okay, this is
this is amazing my jaws on the So yeah, well
that's that's a problem with that series. I mean, people
are you know, writers and directors are welcome to do
whatever they want. But it falsified history and it made
(26:35):
it seem that women were each other's problem. Yes, there
were women who were against the Equal Rights Amendment, but
they weren't what stopped it. It was the economic interests
that stopped it. Did you ever feel the weight of
having an entire movement rest on your shoulders? No, because
I doesn't. If I had disappeared anywhere along the way,
(26:56):
and if I disappeared tomorrow, the movement goes right on
it never ever, what's true? What do you worry about
when you go to sleep? Now? Uh? Why I haven't written,
you know, the any part of the book that I'm
supposed to be working on During the day, I've just
(27:17):
been answering my emails. What book are you working on? Well?
With two friends, I'm writing a book about the black
women who were always a dispropo as I was saying,
a disproportionate part of the women's movement from the sixties
and seventies forward. Um, it's kind of just because of
(27:41):
the way it was reported. I mean, you know, even
even when I was speaking, I was always almost always
speaking together with Flow Kennedy or Margaret Sloan or you know,
we were consciously speaking as as a black woman and
a white woman together, and the newspaper reports would still
report her as the civil rights movement and me as
(28:03):
the women's movement, and we would always say, actually, this
is a scene in in uh the movie of the
Glorious Too, in the Julie Tamore movie, that a reporter
is treating Flow as if she's the part of the
so and we're saying no, no, no, we're both here
as part of the women's movement. So it's it's a
definitional problem that has always been wrong. Do you have
(28:26):
any regrets? Oh? Yes, tons of regrets, right, tons, tons, tons?
I mean, I mean they're not they're not big regrets
or conventional regrets, maybe because it's not like I regret
I don't know, not having children, or conventional family or
(28:48):
a job, you know, things like but I regret wasting time.
Mm hmmm, because time is all there is. Really, what
do you feel you we the time on you know,
watching television series and writing little things instead of something
that that might last for a little longer. What what
(29:12):
role in your life does guilt play? Well? It certainly plays,
you know, a role in the sense of what did
I do today? How did I end up only doing emails?
You know? Uh, also with friends, I think, um, oh,
this friend is maybe not in such a good situation.
(29:36):
Is she Okay? You know I want to call her? Um,
It's it's more, you know, it's because I feel an
emotional tie or a tie of purpose that I haven't
really attended to. How do you take care of yourself?
You mean, do I exercise? No, I've never been a
(29:57):
person who exercised in a classic way or in a
regular way. How do you think about the rest of
your life unfolding? Well, I occasionally try to remind myself
that even if I lived to a hundred, it's not
that long. But that does not seem to interfere with
my thinking that I'm immortal, and sometimes some way, and
(30:22):
thinking you're immortal does not cause you to plan well. Well.
We end every episode with a lightening round, so we
would love to ask you a few quick questions that
are more lighthearted. Okay, all right, Sam? Do you want
to start? Sure, but I can't promise it's going to
be lighthearted though, Amy, I can't promise it's going to
(30:44):
be quick either. Do you take anything personally? What was
the last thing that hurt your feelings? I was reading
something about a long ago campaign for Shirley Chisholm, and
there was something very misunderstanding. You know, I had run
(31:07):
as a delegate for Shirley Chisholm, and it made it
seem as if I hadn't supported her, and that hurt
my failings. What book are you reading right now? Well,
I'm actually not reading a book so much as referring
to books I have read looking for quotes. For instance,
here's Sex and World Peace, a totally wonderful book by
(31:28):
a group of people, mainly Valerie Hudson, and it's very
helpful because it explains that the status of women is
a bigger predictor of world peace than anything else, more
than economics, more than hunger, more than border conflicts. Not
because women are more important, but because, as I was
(31:51):
saying about families, the conflict between males and females in
the family normalizes conflict, or normalize this hierarchy. Other places,
I have to ask what is Glorious Dynam's morning beauty regimen?
And do you color your hair? I do? I do?
(32:13):
We we don't know what's under here, right uh? And
I started doing that in India. I mean I was
coloring my hair darker because I was wearing saries. Then
I came home and I was greatly influenced by breakfast
at Tiffany, So I streaked my hair. I just have
continued to do that. That's my favorite movie. I love
(32:37):
it is a wonderful movie, right. Um. And other than that,
I mean, it's just you know, soap washing and moisturizer
and kind of some some kind of cream tinted. It's
tinted moisturizer, I think, yeah, And and and completing my eyebrows.
(32:58):
I think I've lost the end of my eyebrows. So
do you have a favorite cocktail? No, I don't like
to drink. It's I'm so not interested in wine or
any kind of drink. It just doesn't taste good to me.
I'd wave rather have ice cream. What flavor? Ice cream?
Practically anything? I mean, you know, there's not I've never
(33:19):
met a flavor I didn't like. If you could wave
a magic one and change one thing about the world,
what would it be? Mm hmm. Labels? Because we made
up race and colorism and so on. Uh, and gender,
we made up gender. So I would do my best
(33:43):
to remove labels and try to allow us to see
our individual uniqueness and are shared humanity, and I think
in a way COVID may help us do that conscious
business wise because it does not care about race or class,
or gender or national boundaries. Blue is our male perspective
(34:06):
on the show, and he's been listening to this interview
and then he comes out with his one big question.
No pressure, you know, especially for me being a black
man in America. And you touched on a lot of topics,
you know that's related to the current I guess climate
of the country. And my dad will always tell me
because he he passed away in but when I was
(34:29):
coming up, he would always tell me to go around
older people and ask them what they would do, you know,
like if they could relive their life, because that can
possibly be my be my foresight and things that I
can focus on. Um, if you were thirty years old,
what would be your primary like driving force and focus.
Oh that's hard because part of our uniqueness is the
(34:53):
time we came up in as you you know, so
it's hard to separate those things. But I think it
would be trying earlier. I'm not sure I at that
point had realized the I still thought there were boundaries,
if you know what I mean. I still thought that
(35:14):
there was such a thing as a national boundary that
mattered as opposed to us all living on spaceship Earth
or I I maybe didn't yet understand that you don't
learn from sameness, you learn from difference. So for my
own security, I was maybe too much looking for people
(35:36):
who shared experience as opposed to people who had different experiences.
It took me longer to to learn that. Well, thank you,
I wrote that down. You don't learn from sameness, you
learn from difference. This is so amazing. One of my
big takeaways glare I just said. You know which I'm
going to repeat everywhere, is equal pay for comparable work.
(35:57):
I've never heard it said that way, and that is
exactly how we should talk. Yes, absolutely, because there's such
occupational segregation um by by gender and race, and you know,
so we we don't think about it that way, but
we should, especially when we look at all these people
in boardrooms doing nothing or very very little. I loved
(36:24):
what she said about comparable work, and I also was
fascinated when she said that she felt if she got married,
it would be the last decision she'd ever make, which
I think she was alluding to. You know, she wouldn't
be able to have her own bank account, credit cards,
work would be different. So many laws that have changed
since then. Yeah, I think it's interesting. I think very
(36:45):
few of us today know that as late as in
eighteen seventies a woman could not get a credit card
aside from one paired with her husband. Right, like, that
is not very long ago. I also thought, I mean,
the thing I loved that Gloria said when she was
talking about marriage is that her husband wasn't the great
love of her life. That we can have many great loves.
(37:07):
And I think that's just it's important. It's an important
thing to say. I have to tell you so. So
my last book, as you know, it's about work life balance.
And one of the things that always struck me is
I felt like if someone had a confidence crisis, which
is honestly an epidemic among women across our country. If
if there is a confidence crisis, it's impossible to teach
(37:29):
someone how to negotiate a salary or ask for a raise,
or advocate for themselves at home. It's all about self esteem.
And when I read her new book, actually it's a
new forward to her old book, which is an extraordinary
book that I highly recommend everyone read called a Revolution
from within. This was like the Bible of self esteem.
It's not just like new ag meditation, yoga, you know,
(37:52):
go have a bath. It was all about like statistics
and stories and the history of self est deem. And
I can't even express how valuable the book is, Like
I was highlighting almost every sentence. You know, Sam, I
don't think we've really talked about this, but you know,
I've struggled with self esteem since I was a little girl.
(38:13):
I was teased when I was in first grade for
being overweight, and that really just kind of spiraled me
into doubting my self esteem for decades. But I do
think it is a crisis and it's definitely a book
to And that's really hard to believe knowing you now,
because you are so confident and it's such a big
part of who you are, and I think so many
women look up to you because you exude confidence. So
(38:36):
what for you, Amy, what helped you recover that confidence? Well,
it's interesting, particularly following up with this conversation with Gloria,
because what helped me gain confidence was becoming a mother,
because just what was really important crystallized for me and
I stopped giving a ship about everything else, like truly,
(38:57):
like I don't care what people think of me anymore,
because it doesn't matter. As long as I'm kind and
I'm good to my friends and my family and the
people I love and that I work with. Um, that's
what's important. There must be more to it than that,
like think about it. Most the problem is amy that
most women who are listening who have become moms didn't
(39:18):
have that switch for them. In fact, a lot of
women when they become moms lose their confidence. What was
it for you? There must be more than just I
treat people well? I mean what was it? When was
it that you were like I'm a badass? Like when
did that happen? I mean, honestly, like I well, yeah,
I mean yes, it's like listen, I think the biggest
(39:39):
transition for me was when I left my corporate job
to start the Riveter and I was going to start
a small business and through a series of conversations decided
to raise millions of dollars and build this national company
and realizing that like, oh, like anybody can actually do
this right, Like you don't have to have a special degree,
you don't have to have a special set of skills,
like you can just make a run at it and
(40:00):
you can do it. So it sounds like you realized
what you were capable of when you started a company.
But I do. But I do go back to becoming
a mother because that was a shift for me. And
it was this thing of like, you've really got to
clarify your priorities, how you spend your mental energy, all
of these things because and part of it was that
I had four kids in four years, Like let's not
lie like I don't have space for a lot um
(40:21):
but and maybe I don't know, maybe there's some metapoint
sam that like once I had kids, my own mortality
and what it meant and my legacy started to mean more.
So I was just like what matters for me? Like
I was. I always credit my confidence with having parents
who made me think I like walked on water and
could do anything. And when I've interviewed famous people, you know, leaders, whoever,
(40:44):
people who excel in their field, that is one thing
they all have in common is that they had parents
who made them feel they could be anything. And when
I read glorious book, even though she had a lot
of challenges in her childhood me and she had a
mom who struggled with mental illness and a father who
was always on the road. They did make her feel
She even cites the fact that they never once spanked her.
(41:06):
They never made her feel anything less than she could
be anything, and they really really gave her tons of
love and confidence. And I do think that you know,
as parents, will will trip and follow and will make
so many mistakes. But if you can give your kids
that one gift, which is making them believe in themselves,
(41:26):
then you've you've overcome a lot of weaknesses. I completely agree.
Thanks for listening to What's Her Story with Sam and Amy.
We would so appreciate if you would leave her of
you wherever you get your podcasts, and of course connect
with us on social media at What's Her Story of podcast.
What's Her Story with Sam and Amy is powered by
(41:48):
my company, The Riveter at the Riveter dot c o
in Sam's company, park Place Payments at park place payments
dot com. Thanks to our producer Laurel Mowglin, our podcast
associate Emma Harror, and her male perspective lue berths M
Hosts And Creators
Samantha Ettus
Amy Nelson
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