“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, we are pleased to present the first-ever recipient of the Women’s Media Center Pat Mitchell Lifetime Achievement Award, given to a media professional who has used her work to empower other women through media: Pat Mitchell!”
Healthy applause as the lights dimmed and a carefully curated video chronicling my twenty-five years in media began to play. All my greatest hits were there: my years in Boston, taking the stage at Yes, We Can, hosting Woman to Woman, peppering DC’s famous and infamous with questions on Panorama, interviewing Fidel Castro, taking the stage at TEDWomen, and so much more. I should have been filled with pride. After all, here were hard-won triumphs from more than a quarter century of blazing trails, breaking barriers, being the first. Instead, a cruel inner monologue was playing in my head. Why did I wear that sparkly pink pantsuit? Oh my god, I look like a salmon-colored fullback with those huge shoulder pads! Ugh, my hair!
“How could one woman have that many different hairstyles?” I quipped at the podium. “Or bad wardrobe choices?”
I got a big laugh at the time but later wondered, how many times have we, in a moment of great accomplishment—delivering an important speech or accepting an award or hosting a forum or interviewing a world leader—been in our heads judging ourselves rather than being fully present for the full meaning of the moment, thinking instead, “What was I thinking with this outfit?”
So much of how we see ourselves and how others view us, like it or not, is to one degree or another determined by appearance. One good friend describes her morning makeup routine as “putting on her war paint.” Another refers to dressing for the day as “girding for battle.” But in this chapter, I want to set our preparations in a bigger, bolder context: getting ready! Getting ready to go out and fight the good fight. Getting ready to champion the causes that mean the most to us. Getting ready to get really personal, which I am going to do now. This part of my journey began that night when watching my career review. When I was receiving an award that means so much to me, but also worrying about how I looked and judging my choices, I decided to take this thorny issue of appearance head-on in order to truly get ready to be my most effective and dangerous self.
LOOKS HAVE ALWAYS been a loaded topic for me. One of my deepest, most difficult-to-disassemble confusions resulted from my girlhood identity as “Pretty Patsy.” Pretty enough to attract comments and smiles from strangers… yes. Pretty enough to get attention from boys as I grew older, for sure, so what was the value of pretty? Had I been less attractive, would I have gotten the lead in the school play?
Once I got on TV in Boston, my appearance became the property of high-paid consultants who endlessly critiqued my hairstyle, makeup, and clothes—never what stories I should tell or how to communicate them more effectively. “Always wear scarves, darling. They give you a little color and look a little bit like men’s neckties.”
They wanted me to look like a man—hence the tie stand-ins—but also like a woman—but not too much, which meant a lot of blazers. They wanted me to look authoritative but not too authoritative, smart but not too smart, relatable but not too ordinary, attractive but not too distracting, colorful but not too colorful. If I wore the same thing multiple times in a month, I’d get a letter about it. “Wow, you really like that flowered blouse; you’ve worn it twice this month.” Men never have to deal with that! And let me take a pause to give a shout-out to Australian news anchor Karl Stefanovic, who decided after his female coanchor reported on how viewers criticized her wardrobe, that he would wear the exact same outfit—a cheap navy-blue suit—every day on camera for an entire year to protest the sexism. No one noticed!
“I’m judged on my interviews, my appalling sense of humor—on how I do my job, basically,” he told People magazine. “Whereas women are quite often judged on what they’re wearing or how their hair is.”
The ever-present reminder of my looks in comments or attempts by bosses and boyfriends or consultants to influence what I wore or how I styled my hair sowed deep doubts in me. The most lasting effect of being considered pretty was that I couldn’t fully believe in my own accomplishments because my outward appearance didn’t match my inner life. The conflict deepened with age.
I was forty-six when I returned to NBC to produce the Woman to Woman segments for The Today Show. I was doing well by all measurements, with good reviews and testing high on those pesky audience surveys that still influenced the fate of on-air personalities. I was even chosen to do some substitute hosting for Jane Pauley herself. Then my boss knocked on my door.
“You’re over forty now,” he remarked not so gently, “and a lot of women in television start to think about a little nip and tuck at this age. It might increase your chances of being named Jane’s replacement if she doesn’t return to work.” Jane was then on maternity leave.
I spent a few days depressed and looking too closely in the mirror, finally choosing to take the boss’s advice and have a little nip and tuck to give my neck and eyes a more “youthful” look. I liked the results, and I got approving nods from management, but I didn’t get the host job, and I was losing my enthusiasm for the “looks trump talent” dilemma that comes at some point to most women on television.
Shortly after the surgery, I decided to leave the network and devote my talents and time to work behind the camera, making documentaries. No more anchor blazers or scarves that looked like ties were needed to report from the front lines of conflict. My hair, of course—never easy to style in any way that survived bad weather or that didn’t need strong hair dryers, curling irons, and lots of product—was pretty much a disaster throughout my travels as often none of those necessities were easily attainable. I was on camera from time to time in my first documentary, Women in War, but the good news is no one commented about my hair or clothes—at least not to me. Soon I stopped thinking so much about it, too, although I couldn’t ever fully banish the judgmental narrative in my head.
MY INTERNAL NARRATIVE about my appearance isn’t only about the TV critics or even the male gaze. My harshest judges have often been other women. More than once, I’ve been greeted with a head-to-toe appraisal by a sister in the feminist movement, too—judged for looking too dressed up or made up, interpreted by some as suspicious signs of subservience to the dictates of the patriarchy—as if there’s a dress code for resistance or equality. When Time magazine chose Gloria Steinem for the cover story on the women’s movement, the responses most often heard were about her hair, her aviator specs, her short shirt, and her good legs. Sadly, our physical appearances, wardrobe, hair, and yes, bodies, are far too often still the focus of comments and conversation about women political candidates and executives.
Let’s be clear: there is no dress code or hairstyle that defines a feminist… although the press continues to try to impose one. Most importantly, I believe it’s time to fess up about the time we’ve spent in the sisterhood talking about each other’s appearance and recognize it as a big distraction and source of destructive divisiveness. We’re still holding ourselves back, battling feelings of not looking good enough or not having the right clothes or worrying about what other people might say. Yes, if you’re in a public-facing career, of course there will be comments, but the challenge for women in public spaces is how much attention is paid to it.
Read the research that the Women’s Media Center did on the unequal amount of attention the press gives to women candidates’ hair and wardrobe and how unfair and judgmental—and ultimately damaging—this attention can be for a candidate trying to bring attention to her policies and platforms… and I don’t mean shoes! Numerous studies, such as those from Presidential Gender Watch 2016, indicate strong bias in how women candidates for office are covered. Witness the sexist language used to describe Secretary Hillary Clinton, with criticism of her “cankles,” “cackle,” and cleavage. Given this bias, I’m not surprised that our numbers at the tops of companies and countries are still shockingly low. Even in 2018, with the largest number of women elected to serve in the US Congress, the reports from their swearing-ins and first weeks on the job included a lot of attention to their clothing choices. And the focus on women leaders’ appearance and wardrobe isn’t only in the United States.
In the online magazine BRIGHT, Rula Ghani, the first lady of Afghanistan, discusses her choice to wear a headscarf to an international development conference called Devex World. She did so to make a point—that a veiled woman “can have ideas and can express herself.” As First Lady Ghani told the interviewer, “What I have noticed in my not-very-short life is that people react to who they’re meeting based on what they’re wearing, and how they’re dressed, and what kind of shoes they have. I think it’s really the wrong attitude.… People attribute all sorts of opinions and ideas to women wearing headscarves that are probably very far from what they’re actually thinking.” This independent, brilliant woman is choosing to make a powerful statement about her values by wearing her headscarf while engaging world leaders with her ideas for promoting a better future for Afghanistan. The same judgments about whether Muslim women leaders should cover their head have been leveled at the extraordinarily effective Queen Rania of Jordan. She has responded to questions about her lack of head cover with the statement, “I’m more concerned about what is in my head than what is on it.” And she proves how much is in her head and in her heart by speaking up for the world’s refugee populations, and for supporting girls’ education and women’s empowerment programs and by staying true to her faith and being focused on positive outcomes for her country.
These women leaders aren’t denying the importance of appearance as a leader, but they are prioritizing what matters most. For me, finding a style that reflected what mattered most to me became a priority.
I DECIDED TO view my choices of wardrobe and hairstyle by how closely they reflected what I did or wanted to do. I’ve given away every structured jacket in my closet. I never felt like somebody who wore those blazers, but it was how executive women were described in every profile I’d ever read: “in her well-tailored suit.” I tried so hard as a CEO and president to conform to that made-up standard. Now I’ve given that up; I’ve donated all the TV anchor and executive suits and blazers to the nonprofit Dress for Success, which offers important clothing options for women without the means to have a lot of choices and who want to apply for jobs where having a well-tailored suit might make a difference.
For the last ten years or so, as I’ve made going global a part of my life, my clothes have to be easy to pack and ready to wear when I arrive in Africa or India or Colombia or the Congo. Dresses that roll up and don’t wrinkle are a staple. One color scheme per trip, so one pair of heels and flats. I confess I haven’t given up heels—being short in stature and enjoying feeling a little taller, and having grown up in the South where you wore heels from an early age, I’m actually as comfortable in them as flats. But I must also confess another aspect of growing up in the deep South is that my feet are accustomed to being barefoot—and these days, I’ve been known to entertain at home in a total lack of footwear.
One of the most positive aspects of coordinating my travel with my work with women around the world has been diversifying my accessory choices. I buy scarves and jewelry that reflect the style and the culture of places I visit. It’s a way of extending the experiences—keeping Jordan with me because I’m wearing a Jordanian designer’s earrings or remembering visits to women’s collectives in Kenya and South Africa because I met the women who made the bracelets and necklaces. This is how I bring home a part of every journey, every adventure—and a big part of the way I prepare for another one. I call these accessories my special effects, a term I borrow from my friend Jacqueline Novogratz, whom you met in Chapter 12. She told me her young niece had referred to her stylish ethnic jewelry as her special effects and that felt just right for me, too.
I even joined the board of the Alliance for Artisans so that I could learn even more about the amazing artisans around the world and offer some support other than purchasing their creations, which I still do, of course. Through the alliance’s network of artisans, I can support initiatives that create new opportunities for women carrying on important traditions and skills. Buying such products has a double positive special effect—it feels good to wear or carry these works of art, and even better to know that the money spent for the purchase is providing a school or a hospital and, at the very least, employment and independence for the artisan who made it.
For three years, Peggy Clark, who leads the Artisan Alliance, created Global Showcases at TEDWomen conferences so that attendees could meet the artisans, learn about their work, purchase their art, and support their communities. TEDWomen attendees positively responded, and considering the annual revenues reported from these kinds of opportunities, women everywhere buy more when they know their money is going to good causes. According to a recent Case Foundation report, women seek out brands “that—directly or indirectly—promote physical and emotional well-being, protect and preserve the environment, provide education and care for the needy, and encourage love and connection.”
Susan Hull Walker, who founded the Ibu Movement (Ibu comes from the Malay word for “woman of respect”) to help women from thirty-five different countries achieve economic self-sufficiency through sales of their artisanal designs, captured in one of her weekly blogs the special appeal that I feel when I buy something another woman created.
“To bead… or not to bead. That is the question. For me, I will side with the work of beads; the word, as you may know, means prayer, and so to bead is to pray, a legacy coming down to us from the rosary. In the long, slow, painstaking work of ornamentation, a woman is not just making her world more beautiful; she is making it more hers. She is connecting the tiny dots of her life into an expansive, liberating story of who she is and what powers she commands and where she sits in this world.”
FOR ME, CONNECTING the dots from my earlier fretting about wardrobe choices and hairstyle changes to the special effects styles I adopt today likewise exemplifies so many important parts of my life story, including the way I think about getting older.
I started to observe the special power of older women during a series of stories I produced and hosted for NBC’s The Today Show. No one wanted to do this series, reminding me often that older women weren’t an important consumer group for advertisers. Nevertheless, I persisted. The first one I profiled started an important internal shift for me in my thinking about what life could be after sixty, seventy, eighty, or even ninety.
I met the fabulous and famous ceramist, Beatrice Wood, when she had just celebrated her ninety-eighth birthday. This highly regarded painter and actress had first sat down at a potter’s wheel in her mid-sixties and had become one of the few ceramists to have her pots displayed in the Smithsonian and around the world. I drove out to see her in her pink adobe home on a mountaintop in Ojai, where she greeted me at the door, clad in a gorgeous sari, with clashing, clanging bangles running up both arms. She introduced the handsome, much younger man standing behind her as her partner—and she wasn’t referring to business.
“Women should only wear saris,” Beatrice declared when I admired hers. “Saris hide all the flaws.” Every day, clad in a different vibrant sari, she’d sit at her potter’s wheel and throw pots, unheeding of the spattering clay. Beatrice became one of my earliest models for being a powerful older woman. She didn’t care what people thought or said; she was bold and spoke her truth.
“What is your secret to living to one hundred?” I asked at her annual birthday party. “Chocolate and young men,” she answered.
Visiting Beatrice in Ojai became a treasured annual pilgrimage. One year I brought my new romantic partner, soon to be husband, Scott. “Pat!” Beatrice exclaimed. “You’ve always brought chocolate. Finally you brought me a young man!” Beatrice lived fully engaged, still taking risks and throwing her extraordinary pots, until she was 105. Because of her influence, I have a closet shelf full of saris, and every time I can find any excuse to wear one, I do, but with consideration of the issues of cultural appropriation: I’m careful to acknowledge with great admiration the women for whom saris are a part of a national and personal identity.
The personal-identity question for older women has profoundly shifted in the past few years, redefined by more older women at the top of organizations. When Susan Zirinsky took over CBS News in March 2019, she became the first woman, and the oldest person, to hold the job.
Her appointment was announced just days after Nancy Pelosi, seventy-eight, was reelected Speaker of the House of Representatives, making her the most powerful elected woman in US history. Meanwhile, Representative Maxine Waters became the first woman and African American to lead the House Committee on Financial Services, at age eighty.
Additionally, in the same week of all this good news about older women in political leadership, seventy-one-year-old Glenn Close received the Golden Globe for best actress, winning over four younger women in the film business, which, until recently, was obsessed with and has a long history of prizing youth.
But the demographic changes in the global population are creating seismic shifts in the way older women are viewed in nearly every country and in the opportunities we now have to create a big shift in every aspect of global life and culture. Statistics indicate that there are more women over fifty in the United States today than at any other point in history, according to data from the United States Census Bureau, and at least in the United States, older women are healthier, are working longer, and have more income than previous generations.
“Age—don’t worry about it. It’s a state of mind,” Ms. Zirinsky was quoted as saying when asked about the effect of her age on her new job leading CBS News. “I have so much energy that my staff did an intervention when I tried a Red Bull.”
Because of a greater focus on health and well-being, exercise, and just taking better care of ourselves, age is becoming less defined by looks, too. I notice that older women have a kind of vibrancy and energy that comes from within, maybe as a result of having less of the mothering and nurturing responsibilities that fill so much of our earlier lives and of finding unconditional love and joy in our roles as grandmothers, which is, as one of my friends describes it, “our reward for surviving the adolescent years as mothers.”
I have also noticed that men age differently. We used to think this was a good thing—“men get better looking with age; women just look older” was a prevailing mythology, certainly in Hollywood: note the numbers of gray-haired leading men romantically linked to women young enough to be their daughters, an on-screen reality that is still mirrored offscreen in lots of May/December partnerships.
What seems to be shifting in the gender-based aging paradigm is that more and more older women are still eager to stay engaged and active while the men in their lives would rather play a round of golf or take a nap or stay home. I’m glad that’s not true of my husband, but it’s a phenomenon to ponder in terms of the long-term impact of longer lives on much longer life partnerships than any generations before us experienced.
You most certainly don’t need a life partner to be happy, as many women and men are choosing a different path, but if you’re going to have one, let me add to the “getting ready” suggestions that you find someone fully supportive of who you are, inside and out! As a woman who never received unconditional love from the first man in her life, her father, I gave away my power far too many times to please a romantic partner, sometimes changing my appearance; once or twice, a career direction; or even whom I spent time with or didn’t. I look back on those relationships not with regrets, since gratefully I chose essentially good men who never abused, demeaned, or even judged me as harshly as I judged myself. But I was too much of a pleaser, and that sometimes got in the way of being prepared.
Before I met Scott, at age fifty-four, I had decided that I felt more powerful, more whole, actually, and happier without a life partner—that I would be single and have a full life of work I loved and friends I enjoyed. But then I met the man who changed everything about what I knew or thought I knew about love and true partnership.
With Scott, I am more powerful, more whole, and happier than I have ever been. I never have to hide or diminish my power so as to make him feel bigger and better, and he is always 100 percent supportive of me, my work, my dreams and ambitions. I’ve certainly never had a greater fan than Scott. He records all my speeches and every moment of celebration or me in the spotlight and sends videos around to all his friends and family, eager to show me off and spread news of the work I’m involved with. I’ve never met anyone so dedicated, so caring, so up for anything!
But I wasn’t sure I was ready for marriage and neither was Scott. By the time he proposed, his four older children were either married or finishing college or working, and he had two granddaughters. But when we first began seeing each other, there was one child still at home—eight-year-old Clark. Clark had not been enthusiastic about our romance, fearing a loss of his dad’s time. (He’d also told me he preferred his father’s earlier girlfriend, who owned her own private plane; I told him I agreed that was a solid choice.) Scott was wise enough to realize Clark just needed time—and so did we. It was nearly seven years after we started dating that he asked me to marry him.
We had a special wedding at Sundance. Three hundred friends came, and it was an unforgettable weekend, beginning with an American Indian ceremony with family and then a wedding program written by Eve Ensler and performed by various friends and family, including Eve, Jane Fonda, Marilyn and Alan Bergman (who sang their famous song, “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?”), Sir Jeremy Isaacs (my co–executive producer of the Cold War series), his wife and co-producer Gillian, all of Scott’s children, the new grandchildren who had arrived during our courtship, and my son, Mark.
Parts of the ceremony featured Eve at her most provocative, and my mother, already a bit hard of hearing, asked loudly in the middle of one of the poems Eve had written for me, “What is she talking about?” I’ll leave the answer to your imagination.
Among the vows that we wrote and spoke to each other that day was a promise that we would redo the vows and the wedding every seven years. Scott had observed that I changed jobs roughly every seven years—and since science says every cell in our bodies is replaced every seven years, there is something real in that seven-year itch.
So seven years later, we sent out invitations saying “Pat and Scott Are Getting Remarried—to Each Other!” Our second ceremony was at Sundance, just like the first. The third was at Massimo Ferragamo’s restored Italian village, Castiglion del Bosco, where Bunker Roy, founder of Barefoot College, did the ceremony and all the guests were attired in saris—thank you, Beatrice!
I’m quite sure I would not have become as bold as I am without the partner I have. Scott is nurturing by nature. His five children give him both Father’s Day and Mother’s Day cards because he raised them as a single father; and they respect and recognize the role he played and still plays in their lives. If I tell him I’m going to the Congo for ten days, he never questions my decision or whines about how long I’ll be away. When I’m having meetings at the house—which is often—he’ll say, “Don’t spend your time cleaning up the kitchen; I’ll take care of that.” He believes in splitting household chores 50/50, but if I’m being completely honest—and I am—he does much more, like 80/20 on the household stuff. I confess that I’m not sure how to operate the washing machine, and as he reminds me frequently, “I do my best thinking while folding the laundry or making the bed.”
But don’t be misled; Scott is also a great businessman and a committed and highly engaged environmental leader, the CEO of a company he started and a force on multiple environmental boards. He’s as passionate and purposeful about saving the planet as I am about supporting and advocating for women and girls. As a chemical engineer, he’s innovating ways to reuse resources (which sometimes means our pantry is a lab for growing veggies without dirt) and making coatings for grocery bags to make them compostable. He lives his values, and at the center of our fully engaged life is a mutual love and respect that tops my gratitude list every day.
LOVE AS WE age is one thing. Hair is another. Let’s talk about it.
For me, it’s been a lifetime challenge and barrier to many things, including, perhaps, all the potential accomplishments listed above and more. During my on-camera career, I tried every style—from Jane Fonda’s Klute shag, which never worked, to Julie Andrews’s marmalade pixie (the color orange was terrible on me). Nothing worked well. My hair was always fixed, but only after hours of effort.
Then I hit menopause and started to lose my already thin hair. One day during my annual physical at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, I stopped in a wig shop. I started trying them on and found one that was the style of my dreams—the one I could get close to on my best hair days. I bought it, and this was a life-changing purchase. For less than three hundred dollars, I avoided spending hundreds more dollars for monthly colors and cuts, and an endless supply of hair-thickening products and hair spray, and more hours than I can calculate on blow-drying, curling, and spraying. The wig is wash-and-wear; I shampoo mine and it returns to its original style in a few hours. With this single purchase, I got back at least an additional hour in every day, not to mention that I eliminated so much stress and gave myself more time to focus on what was important. I haven’t even begun to calculate the money I’ve saved already.
Now I want to be clear that I am not suggesting that this is a solution for every woman similarly struggling with her hair, but I am suggesting that for me, the ability to pop on a great-looking wig in five minutes and use the other fifty-five minutes to prepare a speech, create the agenda for a meeting, or write this book or any other more worthwhile activity has been a game changer in my life. That’s why, in the spirit of speaking my truth and sharing my story, I’m going public with this “getting ready” secret.
My longtime struggle to better align external appearance—and the time devoted to it—with internal values gets a boost from my “wig” solution, especially when I’m in Eastern Congo, visiting City of Joy, and spending time with the always inspiring survivors of sexual violence. Beautiful women, inside and out. How they manage to keep their colorful pagnes so neatly pressed is their secret, given the power outages and water shortages, but what is even more impressive is how their inner strength, resilience, and courage radiate from every part of their presence. I could be bald and feel beautiful in their presence, but I love popping on the wig, often over unwashed hair, and dancing with them in the rain with abandon.
When I shared the story of my new “friend” and the difference it had made in my life and in getting ready with my other good friend Elizabeth Nyamayaro, the deputy executive director for UN Women, she laughed and said, “Pat, what took you so long? You’re just realizing what African women have known for generations. Hair can be your biggest distraction or a great asset and you just have to use it.” Elizabeth recently cut off her long hair that she spent lots of time straightening to go for an African version of a buzz cut. When she walked into her office at UN Women with her striking new do, a colleague shot her a horrified look and said, “Elizabeth, you can’t go to a UN meeting with that haircut, you know, it’s too African!” She went to the meeting, and everywhere she goes, she looks great—and powerful. When I get tired of this wig style, I might try a buzz cut too!
What I’m trying to share is that in this one, small way, I’ve aligned time and purpose with a practical solution that works for me. I might not have been able to embrace such a solution earlier in my life, but when it comes to clothes and hair, I’m newly liberated from worry about what others think or the expectations of jobs or bosses or even children or grandchildren—although my grandchildren do approve of my special effects and have nominated me for inclusion in the New York Times Glamorous Grandmas of Instagram!
GETTING READY TAKES less time, for sure, but managing time remains a challenge.
Having been a CEO for twenty-one years, I’d always had someone helping me manage my overscheduled schedule. When I left the Paley Center for Media, I thought, “Oh, I can get along without an assistant.” After all, I was retiring from the daily grind. That lasted less than a month. Could I do it? Sure. Could I be as engaged, effective, determined? No!
When I finally realized I needed administrative help, I had to figure out how to pay for it. How could I afford an assistant anymore, when it was coming out of my own funds set aside for my later life? But I realized this was money I needed to invest in myself.
I advise everyone to make an honest assessment of whether they’re giving themselves all the tools and support they need, really investing in themselves, in order to be effective in the world. Creating more time to do what matters should be a line item in your time budget. Figure out what you can pay someone else to do, do without, barter, or do a just-good-enough job on so that you can free yourself up and get ready.
Getting ready means that today I own a pair of boots that resemble the ones the protesters wore during the Yes, We Can broadcast as they marched to the stage and joked about my TV-friendly but dreadful pastel pink pantsuit. They judged me on appearance, and I had judged them the same way. No more! Those boots come in handy when walking through the farm that V-Day bought and donated back to City of Joy in Bukavu, a farm that the women and girls have made so productive that it is providing food for the whole community.
In some ways, all my fashion statements today are about place and story, not about what’s fashionable or trendy or even age appropriate. What does that mean, anyway? I’ve had my share of fashion mishaps, and one stands out in my memory and that of my friends who witnessed it.
We were attending a V-Day gala when Eve decided to surprise me with a Vagina Warrior Award. As I practically ran from my chair to the stage to accept the award from Eve and good friend Glenn Close, I noticed they were staring at the scarf on my shoulder. At least I had assumed it was a scarf, but apparently, I’d grabbed in haste from the huge stack of scarves on my shelves without noticing the grommets on the hem where the rings go to hang it. It was a shower curtain! Glenn Close, laughing out loud, asked, “Is that a shower curtain you’re wearing?” How could I deny it? A standing ovation followed, and I’m sure that in part I was being applauded for going onstage with a shower curtain colorfully draped on one shoulder—a curtain that now hangs in a shower at home and always makes me smile.
Getting ready now means that I’m old enough—no, free enough—to wear what I want, dress as I please, pop on a wig or get a buzz cut, dress up or dress down with equal fun because what matters is whether my outside appearance is aligning with my place, my story, my purpose, and my priorities. I wish I had come to this place of outside-inside alignment much earlier on my journey, and it’s my strong hope that in getting personal, I’ve given you some new ways to think about getting ready.
DANGEROUS TIMES CALL FOR DANGEROUS WOMEN
In Conversation with Ruth Ann Harnisch
Ruth Ann is a fellow media-industry glass-ceiling crasher. The first woman ever to anchor the evening news in Nashville, Tennessee, Ruth Ann spent two decades as a news anchor, radio talk-show host, reporter, columnist, and coach (she continues to offer pro bono services to support women and girls). In 1998, she became president of the Harnisch Foundation, which focuses on diversity, gender equity, and racial equality. She’s also a cofounder of SupporTED, which offers coaching and mentoring to TED fellows. Plus her Awesome Foundation offers one thousand dollars to women-owned start-ups, helping Ruth Ann earn the sobriquet of “the punk-rock fairy godmother of feminism.”
When I think of women who know how to reframe definitions, I think of Ruth Ann.
Do you think of yourself as a dangerous woman?
Ruth Ann: I’ve always been a dangerous person because I will always speak my truth. I will speak against what I think is unfair, unjust, discriminatory, not great for humanity, for peace on Earth, goodwill toward all. And that’s always dangerous to people of privilege, whether that privilege comes from their skin color, age, status, or wealth.
Nobody wants to trade their power. Anybody who’s white and my age has had to have a tremendous reeducation about race and how much invisible privilege has advantaged anyone with white skin in the United States. The idea of reparations is terrifying to people. What could be more dangerous than justice if you have been on the wrong side of it?
We need to be dangerous to the status quo. Dangerous to privilege. Dangerous to traditional gender roles, which for some people is a matter of religious truth. At this stage of my life, I feel called to use any power I have to give voice to those who have been waiting in line behind me. I used to hope that those who had privilege and power would be generous enough, big enough to give others a chance. Some gave me a chance; now it’s my turn to step back and use whatever I’ve got to be even more inclusive.
What does danger feel like in your life now?
Ruth Ann: What makes me dangerous now is the ability to do things that I couldn’t have done when all I had was an opinion. Money equals power. Women have traditionally been herded to spend what little money we get on making ourselves conventionally attractive. We get tricked into wearing expensive shoes that make it hard for us to keep up. We get tricked into wearing clothes that change with the seasons, while men don’t invest in their wardrobes in that way. We get tricked into expensive grooming, makeup, hair color, and style.
It’s expensive to be a girl, to be an attractive woman, to try to stay relevant. That ties up our money and keeps us from investing in what really counts in ourselves.
Now I own my age. I also own that the real power in this age is recognizing that there’s no way that I can be as relevant. It’s as impossible as if I were trying to be a teenager. I cannot inhabit the consciousness of that younger self. Part of my power is in self-awareness. Part of my power is in money, knowing where to apply it, knowing that I have to invest in creating power for others. That’s where my big investments that are going to change anything have to be. I invest in leaders and leaderful communities, not in myself.
Is there an age component to being dangerous?
Ruth Ann: I used to be young and cute. Being an attractive female was a certain kind of power and currency. I had television, then radio, then newspaper, all available as currency that people wanted to trade. That was powerful, but it’s nothing like the obsequious seeking when one has money. There’s a joke that says when you become head of the Ford Foundation, you’ve eaten your last bad meal and told your last unfunny joke, because when you control that kind of money, everybody wants to take you out to dinner and thinks you’re the funniest.
What role does financial well-being play in becoming more dangerous?
Ruth Ann: I’m very respectful of that power because I used to be broke, and I know how low it feels, how uneven it feels when the power differential is money. I know how it feels to go hat in hand. I try to use the power of money responsibly and kindly and, for the most part, I try to use it to give people the same kind of opportunities I had, to rewrite their own stories, to find ways to their own power.