Free to Be ... You and Me

"Feminism... I think the simplest explanation, and one that captures the idea, is a song that Marlo Thomas sang, 'Free to be You and Me'."
Ruth Bader Ginsburg



"Free to Be ... You and Me" was a children's entertainment project starting in 1972 including a record album, an illustrated book, and an ABC special using poetry, songs and sketches to encourage gender neutrality (via).

The idea for Free to Be came to Marlo Thomas - then most famous for her starring role on That Girl, in which she played Ann Marie, a career girl who didn’t want to get married - as she was reading a bedtime story to her 5-year-old niece Dionne. Thomas was shocked to discover all the books available to her niece were the same books she had been read when she was a little girl, and “it had taken me 30 years to get over them.” When Thomas went to the bookstore the next day in search of better fare, she found the state of children’s fiction was “worse than I thought.” On the shelves she discovered the especially abyssmal I’m Glad I’m A Boy, I’m Glad I’m A Girl. Sample text: “Boys invent things, girls use what boys invent.” Says Thomas: “I almost had a heart attack right there.”

According to Thomas, there were three pieces the TV powers-that-be wanted to cut from the special. The first two were "William Wants A Doll" and "It’s Alright to Cry," because the network was worried showing them “would make every boy in America a sissy…that wasn’t the word they used.”

They also had a problem with "Parents are People," not because of the lyrics, says Thomas, but because there was concern that the scene featuring her and Harry Belafonte wheeling their own baby buggies down a sidewalk made it seem as though the two were married. The network told Thomas they “couldn’t put that out and certainly couldn’t play it in the South.” (via)

"When We Grow Up" by Roberta Flack and Michael Jackson:



When we grow up will I be pretty?
Will you be big and strong?
Will I wear dresses that show off my knees?
Will you wear trousers twice as long?

Well, I don't care if I'm pretty at all
And I don't care if you never get tall
I like what I look like and you're nice small
We don't have to change at all.

When we grow up will I be a lady?
Will you be on the moon?
Well, it might be all right to dance by its light
But I'm gonna get up there soon.

Well, I don't care if I'm pretty at all
And I don't care if you never get tall
I like what I look like and you're nice small
We don't have to change at all.

When I grow up I'm going to be happy
And do what I like to do,
Like making noise and making faces
And making friends like you.

And when we grow up do you think we'll see
That I'm still like you
And you're still like me?
I might be pretty
You might grow tall
But we don't have to change at all.
(via)

More "Free to Be You and Me" on YouTube:

::: Parents are People (Harry Belafonte): LISTEN/WATCH
::: Sisters and Brothers (song starts at 2.29): LISTEN/WATCH
::: William Wants a Doll: LISTEN/WATCH
::: Princess Atalantis: LISTEN/WATCH
::: Ladies First: LISTEN/WATCH
::: Boy Meets Girl: LISTEN/WATCH
::: It's Alright to Cry: LISTEN/WATCH

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image via