I once sat next to Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the beloved sex educator and therapist, at an event in New York City. Sitting next to her that night, I realized that while her feet literally never touched the ground (she stood at 4’ 7”), she was the most grounded voice in sexuality for her time.
She was this powerhouse of pleasurable permission –a pioneer of the media’s sexual revolution and evolution, an educator, therapist, mother, author, TV and radio host, grandmother, and survivor. And by her mere presence in the chair next to me, she delivered a message that she had clearly delivered many times in her almost century of life: size doesn’t matter.
Dr. Ruth, who died last month at the age of 96, was a fighter. She fled Nazi Germany without her parents at age 10, was orphaned by the Holocaust by age 14, and years later, went on to train as a sniper in Mandatory Palestine for what became the modern-day Israel Defense Force. She survived an artillery shell attack which killed others in her barrack. She had three husbands, earned multiple degrees and became the authoritative voice of sexual health at age 52.
Despite not receiving a formal education as a teenager, she earned a doctorate in Education from Columbia University. She showed the world she that she was a bad ass. A bad ass who could talk about ass as much as she wanted, and still look sweet doing it.
She knew discrimination as a Jew and a woman living in a man’s world, so she didn’t discriminate. She brought awareness, understanding and compassion to those who lost their voices, families, and lives to AIDS. She encouraged women to take charge of their own sexuality, and not become second class citizens when it came to ecstasy and orgasms. She made it a point to notice the discriminatory language around sex and she spoke out against it.
She banned the term “frigid” from her radio show. She once mentioned to talk show host Conan O’Brien that “blue balls” was sexist, and proposed “blue lips” as its counterpart. She talked to the world about how banging each other, or banging ourselves, was far better for our relationships than banging our heads trying to understand what was wrong with us.
Dr. Ruth got explicit when she talked about penises, which made her a great fit as the sex advice columnist for Playgirl starting in 1985. In one of her columns she suggested, “You can do a lot to build his confidence and self-esteem by petting his penis and calling it cute names.” This example illustrates how Dr. Ruth made sex fun and funny, and she did this well into her 90s. In the 2019 documentary “Ask Dr. Ruth,” she even asked the virtual assistant Alexa to find her a boyfriend. She never stopped learning, teaching, loving and speaking her truth.
She was incredible. Think about it. A young woman, discriminated against over and over again finds a way to make everyone feel like they belong. She turned pain into pleasure and left a legacy for the whole world to love.
