Gloria Steinem Transcript
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everyone. You are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe, and I'm your host, Kerry Diamond. I'm the founder and editor of Cherry Bombe magazine.
Today's show is just the burst of inspiration we all need right now. It's the icon, Gloria Steinem, recorded live at our Jubilee conference in New York this past April. The writer, activist, and trailblazing feminist was interviewed by her longtime collaborator, Amy Richards, an author, producer, and powerhouse organizer in her own right. Together, they've spent decades working to expand what's possible for women and girls everywhere. Gloria and Amy were introduced by Padma Lakshmi, author, activist, and host of “Taste the Nation,” alongside her daughter, Krishna Lakshmi-Dell. If you know Padma, you know how she uses her platform to speak up for what she believes in, whether that's immigrant rights, reproductive freedom, or telling the real stories of the people who feed America. Gloria and Amy talk politics, progress, and Gloria's powerful goal of living past 100. She turned 91 earlier this year and remains a force. If you need a dose of hope and a reminder that the fight for progress is always worth it, this is it.
Speaking of Jubilee, our next Jubilee conference is taking place in Los Angeles on Sunday, September 28th. If you're new to Jubilee, it's our conference that's all about connection, community, and celebrating the creatives who make the world of food and drink so vibrant. Join us in L.A. at Hudson Loft for a full day of inspiring speakers, delicious bites and sips from your favorite brands, and the chance to connect with thoughtful food folks. We're thrilled to be heading to L.A. and to give the city the love it deserves. Head to cherrybombe.com for tickets and more information. If you're a Bombesquad member, be sure to use your ticket link for special pricing. Not a member? You can still join and receive the private link. All the details are at cherrybombe.com. The link is in our show notes.
Today's episode of Radio Cherry Bombe is presented by Square. Some of you might not know this, but years ago, I owned a cute little coffee shop in Brooklyn. I sold it because I couldn't do Cherry Bombe and the coffee shop at the same time. But I learned so much about running a small business and having a brick-and-mortar location. One of my favorite tools was our Square POS. We did everything from there. Ring in sales, keep an eye on inventory, and track the discounts we offered every time customers brought in their reusable coffee cups. I appreciated how easy it was to use for me and the team. Training was a snap because the interface was so clean and well-designed. Today, Square, the point of sale technology that helps you manage everything, from payments to staff, customers, insights, and lots more, has the backs of more than 7,000,000 businesses. The team at Square knows how hard you're hustling to keep your businesses alive and thriving, and that you're looking for ways to save time and be more efficient. Just in time for summer dining, Square has a new lightweight POS device that literally fits in your pocket. Called Square Handheld, it lets you take tableside orders, process payments, and manage inventory. I would have loved to have had that back in the day. When your restaurant is on your mind, which is probably all the time if you're like I was, think big and stress less with Square. Go to square.com/big to see how Square can help you. That link is in our show notes.
Now, here's Padma and Krishna to kick things off.
Padma Lakshmi:
Hi, everybody.
Krishna Lakshmi-Dell:
Hi, everyone. I'm Krishna Lakshmi-Dell, and this is my mom, Padma Lakshmi. By the way, she just wrote a cookbook, “Padma's All American,” based on a show, “Taste the Nation,” and it's out this November. I didn't really help with the cookbook, but you could call me a consultant.
Padma Lakshmi:
A consultant?
Krishna Lakshmi-Dell:
Yeah, you can list me that way in the acknowledgements. I'm fine with that.
Padma Lakshmi:
Good to know.
Krishna Lakshmi-Dell:
I can't believe how many people are here. This is my very first Jubilee, but I think it's my mom's third.
Padma Lakshmi:
Or fourth or fifth. I've lost track over the years, but I do remember the earliest Jubilee, though. Who was here for that? Anybody? Where are you? You weren't there, honey. You were just a baby. Having so many of you here today in this room really represents progress.
Krishna Lakshmi-Dell:
But you can't take progress for granted. It's one of the many lessons we're learning this year, and it's something our final speaker knows all too well.
Padma Lakshmi:
For almost 70 years, Gloria Steinem has been an activist, a feminist, and a champion of equality for all. She was a founder of New York Magazine and Ms. Magazine, without which there would be no Cherry Bombe.
Krishna Lakshmi-Dell:
She also co-founded the National Women's Political Caucus, the Ms. Foundation for Women, the Free To Be Foundation, and the Women's Media Center.
Padma Lakshmi:
And her list of achievements could fill a whole phone book.
Krishna Lakshmi-Dell:
What's a phone book?
Padma Lakshmi:
Forget it. Keep talking.
Krishna Lakshmi-Dell:
Gloria Steinem is a hero to my mom, me, and to so many women in this room. My generation is grateful to Gloria for leading the way and fighting for so many of the freedoms we enjoy. I'm honored to have her in my life and call her a family friend.
Padma Lakshmi:
And I'm honored to have Gloria as a friend, as a mentor, a sounding board, and a guiding light. Gloria will be interviewed by her longtime collaborator, Amy Richards, the author, producer, and organizer.
Krishna Lakshmi-Dell:
Everyone, please welcome Gloria Steinem and Amy Richards.
Amy Richards:
I'm not Gloria, I'm Amy.
Gloria Steinem:
I'm not Amy, I'm Gloria.
Amy Richards:
When they said she was active for 70 years, I thought, "I haven't been alive that long." It is true that we've been collaborating since 1990, so it's a great treat for us to be here. Thank you, Cherry Bombe. Thank you, Padma. Thank you, everybody, for being here. It is a bit ironic to be here because Gloria is the least foodie person I know. And so I thought I would, just to let you in on some of the secrets, I thought I would start with some softball questions.
If you had a tuna fish sandwich, would you do it on white or wheat bread?
Gloria Steinem:
Wheat bread, and I would have bought it from around the corner. I wouldn't have made it myself.
Amy Richards:
Are you more likely to have a meal standing at your refrigerator or seated at a formal dining room table?
Gloria Steinem:
Standing at my refrigerator. When I first moved to New York, I made a list of things that made me afraid of New Yorkers, and one was they didn't eat standing up out of the refrigerator.
Amy Richards:
If you had to host a dinner party for a dozen people or drive to JFK at rush hour, which would stress you out more?
Gloria Steinem:
I am one of the few New Yorkers who doesn't drive. So that would be out of the question.
Amy Richards:
And is it true that you lived in your apartment for a number of years before you realized the stove didn't work?
Gloria Steinem:
Absolutely. Right. It's all true. Right, right, right.
Amy Richards:
Okay, so you can see where Gloria is on the food landscape. That said, food is political. The consumption of it, the making of it, the love that goes into it is political and personal, and that is not unfamiliar to you. And one of the first things, long before you were, I think, known as a feminist, you were organizing farm workers. What drew you to that? How did you get involved?
Gloria Steinem:
Well, because Cesar Chavez, a figure I hope you know, was an irresistible force. And in order to succeed in California, to keep slave labor conditions from continuing, he began to organize restaurants and markets in other cities so they would pledge not to sell non-union food. And so that started in New York, and that started our friendship.
Amy Richards:
And not only did you help to organize and go and picket grocery stores about the conditions of grapes, but you organized a press conference in California around and brought politicians and media people to the farm workers. And what was symbolic about that? Why did they need to see those conditions?
Gloria Steinem:
Well, I think there was just a huge separation. First of all, people didn't understand the conditions under which their food and their wine and so on was being grown. And Cesar was so important in telling people by organizing in other cities what labor their food represented. Very, very important, including the fields of Long Island here. Those areas were not exempt from the bad conditions of California.
Amy Richards:
My favorite part of that story is that Gloria was doing this at the last minute and didn't think about how she was going to pay for all these people to get there, so put it on her American Express card and got to the point where they came to her door to take it from her.
Gloria Steinem:
Yes, I can tell you what happens if you don't pay.
Kerry Diamond:
We'll be right back. Team Cherry Bombe and I are having the best time on our Summer Tastemaker Tour, presented by the Visa Dining Collection by OpenTable and Visa. So far, we've visited the Commodore Perry Estate in Austin and Wildflower Farms in the Hudson Valley, both beautiful locations, and each stop an unforgettable celebration of food and community. Thank you to everyone who joined us. But we're not done yet. We've got two stops left. We'll be in the gorgeous Willamette Valley in Oregon at The Ground this Friday, July 25th. And then we're wrapping things up in one of my favorite cities, Nashville, Tennessee, at the Frist Art Museum on Friday, August 15th. Tickets are sold out, but you can join the waitlist at cherrybombe.com. The link is in our show notes. Access is available for eligible Visa credit card holders. Terms and conditions apply. We hope to see you on the road.
Amy Richards:
Around the same time that you were organizing the farm workers, there were a lot of bars where women weren't allowed. And I think you picketed in New York at the Plaza, and whether or not you remember this, there was also a famous restaurant bar in Chicago too that they said they didn't admit women until you and other people from the National Organization for Women protested. So why didn't they allow women, and why was it important for women to be in those rooms?
Gloria Steinem:
I think that the Plaza Hotel here and in the past and other top eating and drinking places felt that it somehow devalued the place itself to have women present, that it was a place where men did business. And I think that Marlene Dietrich did something much more symbolic than I ever did, which was when they told her she couldn't come in, well, in that case, it was her dress because she was wearing pants, and when they told her she couldn't come in, she stood in the door, took her pants off, said her jacket was a dress, and walked in anyway.
Amy Richards:
I'm glad you stayed clothed. And you were doing all of this organizing before you were, I think, known to much of the rest of the world as a feminist. And what was your click moment of feminism?
Gloria Steinem:
Well, I think there were a lot of people, including the women in India. After I graduated from college, I went to live in India for two years, partly because I was fascinated with India, and partly I was engaged and trying not to get married. Because the Gandhian movement had really started with women, which I didn't understand, actually. So I was going around interviewing women about Gandhi, and finally a great woman named Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, a great woman, listened to me patiently and said, "Finally, we taught him everything he knew." That the march to the sea to get salt illegally and all of this that we might think of as Gandhian tradition was really started by women.
Amy Richards:
And not only did you get a lot of your feminism from India, but your palate, I would say. Aren't some of your favorite dishes Indian?
Gloria Steinem:
Yes, I think I've lost it, my ability to eat hot, hot, hot food now, but I totally grew to love it. I grew to love being a vegetarian because that is much more elaborately worked out in India than it is here.
Amy Richards:
And a lot of the early feminist organizing, even though it wasn't known for being around food, it was known to happen around the kitchen table. And symbolically, what is that about?
Gloria Steinem:
Yeah, the kitchen table really was the organizing space of the early women's movement because it was women's territory. I mean, for good and bad reasons, the kitchen table was not men's territory, so it became very important politically.
Amy Richards:
Some of the early feminist organizing was about identifying that things that happened to women were negative and unpaid.
And I think you've said something along the way, and I'm sure many people in this room have identified it as well, that women were good at cooking when it was in their home, but the second it became professionalized, they suddenly weren't so good.
Gloria Steinem:
Yes, and they didn't get credit. They weren't the top chefs, all of that. It was clearly, clearly unfair. And I don't know actually if it has completely changed, you all would know better whether a top male chef on the average now earns more than a top female chef.
Amy Richards:
Is that true still to be... Yeah? Probably gets more book deals, more TV time, you name it. But that's why we're here. We're changing that. This room is changing that, so thank you. And today, I think is a happy day because we're here together and being in community with people who share our values. But I think there's a lot of us that also are feeling a lot of anxiety about the world and how it's changing around us. And you are known for being a hopeaholic, and so how should we feel hopeful?
Gloria Steinem:
I'm not here with shoulds, right? I mean, because you each get to decide how you feel about this. But I never thought that I would be living these years of my life under Trump. I mean, Trump is a guy who is 95% unpopular in New York where we know him, and yet there he is in the White House. And it's a problem in India where Modi is an unpopular chief of state too. So we have a lot of organizing to do and in this room, maybe as a future president.
Amy Richards:
And how has your approach to feminism changed over the years? We talked about picketing and being out on the front lines, and now you're often in your living room shouting, sometimes just the TV, but how have you evolved in your activism over the years?
Gloria Steinem:
I think you're right. The main way is that I'm not traveling anymore in the way that I used to, from campus to campus, to community groups, to church basements. Also, because I was afraid to speak by myself, because I'm a writer, not a speaker, I asked Dorothy Pitman Hughes and Flo Kennedy and others. And because they're African American and I'm European American, it was useful actually to show that the movement itself was more universal. And I worry that that is not as evident as it was when we were more likely to show up in halls like this. But I hope it is. I hope it's understandable because, for one thing, the country is no longer majority white. The first couple of generations of babies who are majority babies of color have already been born. So it's crazy if we don't recognize the diversity of this country.
Amy Richards:
And you have quoted scientists that say that the flap of a butterfly's wing can change the weather around the world. And another version of that is just every single thing we do matters. And what are the little and big things that you do on a daily basis that can maybe be lessons?
Gloria Steinem:
Not enough. Not enough.
Amy Richards:
Well, you watch “Call the Midwife.”
Gloria Steinem:
It's a great... On television, “Call The Midwife.” It's about London. Right, right. Well, fortunately, I am lucky to have a brownstone apartment with a big living room so I can have all kinds of meetings of up to 50 people or so in my living room, which I do all the time. It's just a great... I mean, there's no substitute for being in the all five senses presence of people. We all have different experience and sitting in a circle and making clear that everybody has the same chance to speak. Now, we thought that we invented this, but I once invited a woman who was the chief of the Cherokee Nation, and she said, "Well, when we do this, we pass around a talking stick." I mean, we had reinvented the world's oldest institution, which is the talking circle.
Amy Richards:
You are very good at creating community, creating those talking circles. There was one point in your life where you'd finished writing a book in the '90s, and there was some women, Marilyn French and Carol Jenkins and Esther Broner, people that you admired and wanted to know, and you brought them together and created a coven. And what are other ways that you've brought that type of community into your life?
Gloria Steinem:
A coven. I hope you know what coven is, which is... Because witches were good people. That's how they got a bad rep. They were doing medical treatment for women and-
Amy Richards:
They were the midwives.
Gloria Steinem:
They were the midwives and so on. So we referred to ourselves as witches. And I also just want to say, I mean, we're all together in this room, and that's a great gift. We also need small groups in our living rooms or offices where we can talk to each other. We don't produce oxytocin, which is an actual hormone in us, unless we are together. It's only when we are communal. And oxytocin is what if you are on the sidewalk and you see somebody falling ahead of you, you want to help them, right? That's oxytocin. That's our communal, hormonal instinct. So I hope that each of you, in your daily life, has a communal space where you can say anything and feel understood and valued.
Amy Richards:
One of your first jobs was writing for a show, “That Was the Week That Was,” which became the precursor for “Saturday Night Live.” As was true for many of your other jobs, I think you were the only woman, and your beat was surrealism and everyday life. What is surrealistic about the world we live in today?
Gloria Steinem:
Trump, Trump. No, I mean, did we ever believe... We who know him on this island are 95% against him, and everybody has a right to run for office, clearly, but this is not our proudest moment.
Amy Richards:
You have said about being a writer that you knew it was what you were supposed to do because when you do it, you don't want to be doing anything else.
Gloria Steinem:
No, that's true. And also, when I was growing up, writers like Louisa May Alcott who wrote “Little Women” and who wrote adult stories as well, and just so many authors were important to me. Now, hopefully, there are television shows that serve the same purpose that didn't exist then, but we are communal animals. We need each other. And I hope that we, because of meetings like this, which is very precious, because of the books we read, because of the movies we see, feel included and equal and consensual and inspired by the world around us.
Amy Richards:
You have said, tell you a fact and you'll forget it, tell you a story and you'll remember it. There are lots of creators in this room of Substacks and books and TV. And what are some of the stories that you feel the most drawn to?
Gloria Steinem:
Well, it's hard. I mean, there's so many. It's hard. I'm watching “Call the Midwife” now.
Amy Richards:
Before that, it was “Dance Moms.” So we're really happy that...
Gloria Steinem:
But I think we need that, and we don't necessarily get it from the media as most of us experience it. So it's helpful if we seek it out in our neighborhoods, whatever that means. Or in our religious, if we have one, community. I mean, there's a reason why solitary confinement is the worst punishment in every country in the world. It's because we are communal creatures. We need each other.
Amy Richards:
And you just celebrated your 91st birthday.
Gloria Steinem:
Shocking. Listen, I am totally shocked by this. I looked up online, the oldest woman in the world, and she is or says she is 135, living in the Himalayas someplace. So this is my new ambition.
Amy Richards:
To get you to 128, I think you need to keep creating and being creative, and you're writing a book, you're hosting talking circles, you're watching “Call the Midwife.” What else occupies your day?
Gloria Steinem:
Well, my living room has become a kind of stopping off point for people who are women who are traveling. I just had a friend from Seattle there who's one of the big organizers of Seattle, and we went to college together. I don't know. I mean, to use whatever space we have, which may be different in each of our lives, as communal and as a place to invite people who have a shared purpose but different experience, whatever it is. Hopefully, represent also different ethnicities, different races, and so on, because there is nothing on Earth more precious than that. That is our community. Making a microcosm that we hope will become the macrocosm is the chief way of doing it.
Amy Richards:
Going backwards in your life, you had to be the caretaker for your mother, so you didn't grow up in a home that had a conventional mother making the meals and providing that. And how do you think that informed this great independent person that you've become?
Gloria Steinem:
I think there are tons of people who were, for one reason or another, children taking care of an adult. That informs our decision, I think. I kind of felt like been there, done that. I assumed that I would get married and have children because everybody does, or I thought everybody did, which of course, wasn't true. But once you've been a child taking care of an adult, I realized from seeing other people who had done this too, perhaps some people in this room, that it changes your idea of what caregiving is. And rightly or wrongly, you're probably less likely to want to do it again. But of course, we need to relieve children of the necessity of taking care of adults. I mean, we have to reach out to those children too.
Amy Richards:
Yeah, I think that it's hard to live a less expected childhood. I didn't know my father and I was raised by a single mother, but I do think you get instilled with a sense of independence and you just have to go out there and do it, even though it feels alienating when you're younger.
Gloria Steinem:
Yes, well, that little phrase that you just said is like a whole novel of courage and heroism that Amy represents.
Amy Richards:
Gloria's just impressed that I Citi Bike everywhere, so that's the...
Okay, we've just got a little over a minute left. What would you regret not leaving this room, telling these people? What is one thing that they should walk out into the world to make it a better place?
Gloria Steinem:
Oh, gosh. That's very hard. I guess I would say: trust yourself and don't be alone. You are the authority in your own world, and you are also a social animal. We all need those two things, the ability to have our individual voice heard, and to have it heard by a community that understands us.
Amy Richards:
Meet often, trust yourself, create community, reach out, be in diverse communities, whatever that means for each-
Gloria Steinem:
And dance. Dance.
Amy Richards:
Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you, Gloria.
Gloria Steinem:
Thank you, Amy.
Amy Richards:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
That's it for today's show. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow Radio Cherry Bombe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. And by the way, if you'd like to learn more about Gloria Steinem and the story of Ms. Magazine, which she co-founded in the early 1970s, there's a new HBO documentary called “Dear Ms.” streaming right now on Max. I highly recommend. And don't forget, tickets for Jubilee L.A. are on sale right now at cherrybombe.com. You can find the link in our show notes. Our theme song is by the band Tralala. Joseph Hazan is the studio engineer for Newsstand Studios here at Rockefeller Center. Our producers are Catherine Baker and Jenna Sadhu, and our editorial coordinator is Sophie Kies. Thanks for listening, everybody. You're the Bombe.