00:00I'm Gloria Steinem, and here are some lessons I've learned.
00:13After I graduated from college, I was engaged and trying not to get married, so it was important to go
00:21far away.
00:22There was an available scholarship to go to India, so I was lucky.
00:27India had just become independent of British rule.
00:32Gandhi was already a figure of great international hope and respect.
00:38It was actually easier to travel alone as a woman in India than it was in this country,
00:45because there were women-only cars on the railroad, for instance,
00:51or hostels where you could stay overnight that were only women.
00:57I spent the first many months living in a women's dormitory at the University of Delhi.
01:06Also, we spent a lot of time in a major Indian student occupation, which was sitting in coffee houses,
01:15just talking and listening and learning.
01:17That was very important, both for learning, because you're learning about different cultures,
01:25and also for independence, because there you are on your own,
01:30hundreds and hundreds of miles from friends and family.
01:34Who was it? Dorothy Parker, who I think wrote,
01:37While I stay here, my dear, my love for you will never dim or ravel,
01:43but, oh, my dear, if I should ever travel.
01:47It's just an opportunity to learn to start relationships afresh.
01:53I heard that you're still flying coach.
01:55What would be the point of flying first class?
01:58I mean, you don't get anything.
02:00You get to the same place.
02:07We brought something fun for you.
02:09We tracked down the very first thing you wrote for Glamour.
02:14Oh, what was it? I have no idea.
02:17Here it is.
02:19Funny ways to find a man on the beach.
02:21I think I was with Robert Benton, a friend who was the art director of Esquire.
02:27I think we were writing a beach book called, a big book called The Beach Book,
02:31and I think this was part of it.
02:33What was your life like when you were writing this article?
02:36Like, this is 1963, you're freelancing.
02:39It was easier for me as a woman entering journalism
02:42because I was a freelancer.
02:45It wasn't as if I was, as many women were,
02:49the only woman going into an all-male editorial meeting.
02:54I remember just once I got a job, I think with the Ladies Home Journal, I'm not sure,
03:00and they had the nerve to expect me to be in the office.
03:04I quit.
03:08I remember walking in the street, getting an ice cream cone,
03:11walking in the sunshine and feeling happy.
03:14New York Magazine allowed me to have a column of my own
03:19and also to have the freedom of working in my own house at my own desk if I wanted to,
03:26reporting on what I was discovering and caring about,
03:30like the farmworkers movement in California.
03:33I kind of wish I had known there were more outlets than I understood
03:39where freelancers can submit and hopefully publish essays on what interests them
03:47or what they think is not getting covered in the news,
03:50and I wish I had done that more.
03:53Do what you know and yet is not showing up in the news as much as it should.
04:00See, if you're a writer, you don't have to have your makeup fixed.
04:11How many times would you say you've fallen in love?
04:17Not that many, because I think it's important and lasting, you know,
04:22when we fall in love, but at least three or four times.
04:28It makes no sense to say that falling in love is anti-feminist
04:33because being a feminist is about becoming an equal human being.
04:39If the American family is viewed as a hierarchy with the male patriarch at the top,
04:48then feminism is democratizing that structure.
04:52Well, I mean, if men are behaving badly, then we should let them know.
04:58Right, right.
04:59If a woman freely chooses to be a trad life, fine.
05:03Maybe men should be free to choose to be dependent, you know, too.
05:10It's all about choice and the power to make a choice.
05:19Because of being a writer, I was getting occasional invitations to speak,
05:26and I was absolutely terrified of public speaking.
05:29But friends like Flo Kennedy, who was a great civil rights lawyer, she was fearless.
05:37So we would go together and express different life experiences that we arrived with,
05:45but a shared purpose.
05:46In our lives every day, we hopefully, in a democracy,
05:53see people of different races, different classes, different ages.
05:59The differences are precious because you don't learn from sameness, hello.
06:05You learn from difference.
06:07I think if we are sitting in a group and everybody looks like us,
06:13there's probably something wrong, you know.
06:15It's a joy to learn in recognizing that we know more now than we did maybe 10 or 20 years
06:22ago
06:23is a process and a joy, not a criticism of who we were 10 or 20 years ago,
06:30but a testimony to the delight of changing and growing and understanding what we didn't know before.
06:40A conversation, to be a true conversation, has to be a two-way street.
06:46If it's not, it's like a lecture or a dictation.
06:56Barbara Nessim is a wonderful artist,
06:59and we met each other and knew each other when we were both living in the same neighborhood,
07:06same building.
07:06And then we also moved to this apartment.
07:11And she has always been and continues to be
07:15a really good, original, innovative, inventive artist.
07:20She was great to have as a roommate because she's so creative.
07:24So however she arranged the books or however she fixed the curtains,
07:31you know, it was always interesting.
07:33I think it's a relationship based on trust.
07:36If I call her or she calls me saying we need something,
07:42I think we would do it in a minute.
07:44And that's a form of security.
07:46I guess the key to a long-lasting friendship is trust,
07:51that you can be honest about what you need,
07:54that you can laugh together.
07:56That's very important.
07:58So do you call each other often?
07:59Is that how you...
08:00No, no, we haven't.
08:02We should.
08:03Now, good.
08:12If you had to guess what one fashion trend you would be responsible for,
08:17what do you think it would be?
08:19None.
08:21I've always heard this about aviator sunglasses.
08:24Oh.
08:25People say, like, I got these because of Gloria Steinem.
08:28Oh.
08:28Well, I got them because I'm nearsighted.
08:31So I was in my 20s, maybe.
08:34I sort of remember going to a shop of sunglasses place here on 57th Street
08:40or something in Manhattan.
08:42And the salesperson was saying, no, those are men's glasses.
08:48And I was saying, okay, but I want them anyway.
08:51I don't want to have to spend a lot of money on clothes.
08:55So I guess the clothes I have are timeless or universal.
09:00I mean, pants and a top and black or brown.
09:04I don't feel like I've ever given style advice.
09:09I mean, I wear what I wear.
09:11So I get to choose.
09:14And I'm grateful that I do.
09:22I was born in 1934.
09:24Okay, so you do the mass.
09:2692 is coming, right?
09:28I did look up online to find the oldest woman in the world.
09:32And the oldest one I could find was 130.
09:37So I have a new goal.
09:39I hope we'll be rid of Donald Trump by then.
09:45Aging is a gift because I realize it's because I've had enough to eat and a place to live
09:51and many things that most people don't have.
09:54And I love it here and I don't want to leave.
09:59Aging gracefully makes it sound as if aging is an external event and you're supposed to age in a certain
10:07way.
10:07I think you're supposed to age however the hell you want to.
10:12To lie about one's age, especially for women, is to conform to the idea that women are only okay when
10:22we are seen as sexual or reproductive.
10:25I'm not immune to society's idea of what you should look like, but I never felt the need to have,
10:35I don't know what, a facelift or something that hurt.
10:40I don't want to have to do that.
10:43I want to be someone who helps assure other women that aging is a good thing because aging has been
10:52presented as being more a penalty for women than it is for men.
10:57And it's just not true.
10:59I love it here in this world and I want to stay as long as possible.
11:05My advice for women now is don't take my advice.
11:10Do what you love.
11:11Do what you're curious about.
11:13I'm living my life as best I can, but I don't know your life.
11:19So I don't want you to take advice unless it feels like it fits your life.
11:30I don't want you to take advice, but I don't want you to take advice.
11:30But I do not want you to take advice.
11:31Amen.
