The Goon Line 029: Free to Be... You and Me, 50 years later

Today I am sharing with you something that is so, so important to me, and has been since I was born in 1947.* Buckle in.

Earlier this month, the television special Free to Be… You and Me celebrated its 50th birthday (the album on which it was based did so a year and a half earlier). Created by Marlo Thomas, it is a thoughful, exuberant and incisive piece of children’s entertainment that asks its primary audience to challenge what they have been taught and perhaps already internalized about gender roles. The message still plays.

This work has been in my life for as long as I can remember. I sang along to it as a toddler, watched it on a rolled-in tube television during rainy indoor-recess days as an elementary schooler, wrote papers about how necessary it was for feminism as a college student, drunkenly played the DVD (probably secured via eBay.com**) for friends against their will during late nights at my home as a 20- and 30-something.***

James Poniewozik wrote a thoughtful, contemporary response to FTB in the New York Times earlier this month to celebrate this anniversary. He’s a little bit older than I am, and probably more squarely in the target audience. But, really, it’s for everyone.

I always say that if I were able to start my career path from the beginning, I’d try to work in children’s television. Sesame Street is the most important program that has ever been put on the air, and I tell you this as someone who has watched every episode of Vanderpump Rules about 600 times. This hourlong show holds up astonishingly well — for good and sad reasons — and if you are, were or have a kid, or just want to be moved by beautifully, simply told stories by artists whose dedication to the message is very apparent — I really encourage you to consume this, either all at once or piecemeal, alone or with younger people in your life.

This week, Gloria Steinem celebrated her 90th birthday; Free to Be was produced in partnership with the Ms. Foundation. Last fall, I saw Gloria Steinem in real goddamned life as a fellow audience member at a production of Merrily We Roll Along, another gorgeous and sometimes maligned 40+-year-old piece of art that asks us about gender, aging and the passage of time.

These themes prevail, y’all. When we grow up, indeed.

^{*Sorry, this is a stupid joke frequently made at my expense (USUALLY BY ME, TO VERY FEW LAUGHS) about how I’ve missed out on a few decades but overindex on a few others before my time, as far as popular culture goes.
**Scroll through to the third slide, I can’t be bothered to find this on YouTube
***And wrote way too many words about it in a poorly received “newsletter” in my 40s}