Fearless Aging:
a Feminist sHero
As an ongoing piece, I like to highlight folks that are truly senior rockstars – these are folks that are passionate, committed, contributing, pushing boundaries or are in someway really challenging our assumptions about what it means to age.
First up, a rockstar in general who also happens to be aging quite fantastically, Gloria Steinem. Just last week, Terry Gross interviewed Gloria (who is 81), including excerpts from their 1982 interview, which also adds an interesting aging perspective. Obviously Gloria is a rockstar – her tireless advocacy and activism, her founding of Ms magazine, endless traveling and presentations, focus on including women of color, etc. But what I especially loved is how down to earth and blunt she was, whether she was talking about living out of suitcases for years or what finally inspired her to talk about her abortion at 22yrs old. One thing in particular that left an impression is when Gloria mentions never having older role models that she could look to, as a career driven women, living alone and aging. What a profound yet obvious situation. Being at the front of the feminist movement, she is providing the generations of women after her with the role model she never had.
Gloria is just full of great quotes and stories, like this one:
“Remember when you were 9 or 10 and you were this independent little girl climbing trees and saying, ‘I know what I want, I know what I think’? That was before gender descended for most of us. Ironically, I found by 60 you’re free again. So you’re the same person you were at 9 or 10, only now you have your own apartment, you can reach the light switch, you hopefully have a little money. So you can do what you want.”
I highly recommend listening to THIS interview! Apparently Gloria also released a new memoir, My Life on the Road, which is definitely on my “to read” list.
Referenced:
“Fresh Air” with Terry Gross, NPR, link to interview HERE