Dr. Ruth: A total fucking icon
A short tribute/fan girl exploration into her life
Last week Dr. Ruth passed away at the age of 96 (#goals). I know of Dr. Ruth as there was a period of time where it felt like you couldn’t miss her doing quick cameos on TV in the 90s, but I don’t really know a ton about her. I would love to be able to pop on here with this new career path and give some long sincere memorial of the great impact she made on my life but I won’t because she didn’t.
But I did want to honor this bad ass old lady who has been talking about sex since forever and do some research about why she was so important and why so many in this field are writing incredible sincere memorials about her.
You guys… I got exactly 3 sentences in to her Wikipedia page and I was blown away by this INCREDIBLE woman. Then I watched her 2019 documentary, Ask Dr. Ruth, and I am now bursting at the seams with admiration for this woman. Gushing, if you will. And like most things in my life, quite a few years too late to really be able to experience the treasure that really is and was Dr. Ruth Westheimer.
Early Life (An almost disrespectfully short summary of her younger years)
Quick summary: Born to jewish parents in 1928, Karola Ruth Siegel was only 10 years old when her parents sent her to Switzerland for her safety and to escape from the Nazis. Both of her parents were lost in concentration camps. After the war, when she was 17 and stood a whopping 4’7, she was relocated to British controlled Palestine where she joined the IDF and trained as a sniper. Literally she could have stopped there and been a remarkable women with a powerful legacy.
After that she moved to Paris with her first husband and began studying psychology. Her husband was far less into completing his studies and wanted to return to Israel, which he did after their divorce. In Paris she met her future second husband, with whom she had her first child with. She received notice around this time that due to the fact that her early education was impacted by the war and Holocaust, she was given a $1,500 stipend from the government. With this cash, her family immigrated to the US.
At the time she spoke very little English and eventually divorced her husband because “he wasn’t an intellectual” (what a badass). She was a single mom in the 50s, making $1/hr working as a maid until she worked toward completing her masters in sociology in 1956, and then got her doctorate at age 42. This little fact made my future-sex-educator heart flutter because I regularly worry that 40 is too late to try to get into this field. But hey, if it worked for Dr. Ruth who am I to question greatness?! I’m summarizing her early life here because I really want to dive into the impact she’s made on the world of sex therapists and educator but she had a very fascinating, complex, tragic, uplifting (etc. etc.) life before she even had a single session as a sex therapist.
Early Career
After completing her doctorate, Dr. Ruth continued on her path of being a real one and worked at Planned Parenthood in Harlem training other women to be sex educators and family planners. After working with Planned Parenthood she decided this work was the shiz and decided to stay the course and dive further into human sexuality. She worked all over New York in various hospitals and as an adjunct professor at many top universities and basically everywhere that would elicit an earnest “oh wow” if you heard the name. She eventually opened a private practice on the Upper East Side.
Queen of Media
In 1981, Dr. Ruth (aged 52) had a radio call-in show called Sexually Speaking (think a precursor to Loveline) and by 1983 it was the top radio show in the biggest market in America. It was a first of it’s kind type of call-in show and studio executives had major doubts about it so they gave her the midnight airtime on Sunday nights. So “Grandma Freud” as they called her, started with a 15 minute show that eventually blossomed into a full 2 hours. At the height of her show’s popularity the AIDS crisis hit and she never shied away from it. Always an ally for the LGBTQIA+ community, Dr. Ruth was speaking about the atrocities of the AIDS epidemic when it was something that was condemnable, something that could have ended her career.
The show ran for a decade and then she launched her TV show, The Dr. Ruth Show which collected over 2 million weekly viewers.
“She became known for giving serious advice while being candid, but also warm, cheerful, funny, and respectful, and for her tag phrase: "Get some".”
I’m sorry, what?! Her tag phrase was “Get some”?! What a fucking icon.
By the time she was 57 she had already conquered radio and television and had been talking about sex in front of the public for almost 20 years. She hosted various series on the Lifetime network, she was a regular on talk shows, was on the cover of mainstream magazines, sang on a popular album, was in commercials, did work with Playboy and authored some 45 books. She even had a board game. There was also a one-woman play written about her and a 2019 documentary about her life.
Also Pattie Brooks wrote the most 80s sounding 80s banger about Dr. Ruth and promoting safe sex:
The 80s were wild.
Anyway by the time the 90s came along, Dr. Ruth was literally everywhere. This is where my memories start to kick in but considering for most of the 90s I was really focused on Power Rangers and Hanson, I wasn’t really the target market nor did I pay a ton of attention.
But dayum, I’m paying attention now.
In fact, I think after what I’ve learned today I’m even MORE excited to start this work later in life. The fact that a female immigrant in her 40s, talking about a very taboo topic, sky rocketed to being a household name in the 80s is beyond legendary. It’s inspirational.
So I’ll leave you with a quote that I snagged from the documentary that I feel like sums up her approach to life and may just become my new mantra:
“From my background, of all of the things I’ve survived, I have an obligation to live large and make a dent in this world.”
Rest in power, Dr. Ruth.