When I was in elementary school we would have occasional assembly days — often toward the end of the school year — when we would just watch a movie. I’m sure it was to give the teachers a break. The two movies I remember seeing over and over again, year after year, were Old Yeller and Free to Be… You and Me.
The first, of course, was that classic, heartbreaking Disney film about two boys and their dog. The second was a show (originally a television special) made up of different spoken and musical segments, starring Marlo Thomas “and friends.”
Free to Be… You and Me was originally a record album and a book, something I didn’t know until I was well into adulthood. The television special, which was based on the album, came out in 1974. According to the album’s liner notes, the project was conceived when Thomas was searching for a bedtime story for her niece Dionne “and found, with few exceptions, shelf after shelf of books and records, for boys and girls, which charmingly dictated who and what they must be. … I wanted something… to celebrate who she was and who she could be, all the possibilities and all the possible Dionnes.”
Free From Gender Stereotypes
The value of Free to Be… You and Me is the way it defies gender stereotypes. If you’re inclined to roll your eyes and think, “Oh, great — feminist brainwashing,” hear me out. The unfortunate stereotype of feminism is “male-bashing,” but that’s not at all what this (or what true feminism is). Free to Be… You and Me is just as much about liberating males from stereotypes as it is about liberating females. Is there anything more freeing than not having to suppress your emotions simply because you’re male? And possibly no one could deliver that message more powerfully than retired football player Rosey Grier.
Those who are suspicious of feminism might also rejoice in the message of the “Ladies First” segment — being a “lady” doesn’t entitle you to special treatment.
But while Free to Be… taught girls not to abuse their gender, it also taught them that their gender didn’t need to confine them. In the early to mid-1970s, girls still were surrounded by messages that their ultimate goal should be marriage. We read fairy tales that ended in marriage and “happily ever after,” played with bride paper dolls, and married Barbie off to Ken. The message from the “Atalanta” segment was refreshing: There’s nothing wrong with marriage, but you don’t need to be married to live “happily ever after.”
Somewhat Dated But Still Necessary
There’s no doubt that Free to Be… You and Me can appear a bit out-of-date in a culture that has, in some ways, changed dramatically since the album and film came out. In 2012, one millennial writer wrote, “I also laughed out loud during my first listen to ‘Parents Are People,’ where Harry Belafonte and Marlo Thomas list of all the things that mommies and daddies can be, but point out that mothers ‘can’t be grandfathers. Or daddies.’ Tell that to Thomas Beatie, the transgendered Oregon man who gave birth to a girl in 2008.”
But despite the writer’s assertion that she grew up believing that she could be anything, “a doctor, a lawyer, a musician, whatever,” there are still occupations, such as construction and nursing, that are dominated by people of a particular gender. And there’s a more subtle message in the song that’s right there in the title: parents are people. I’m afraid that didn’t really sink in for me until I was an adolescent, but it’s good for children to hear. Child, you are an important part of your parents’ lives, but they are more than just your parents.
What strikes me about Free to Be… is how so much of it is still relevant today. When I read the comments on the “It’s Alright to Cry” video on YouTube, it’s clear that the message is still one that people, particularly boys, need to hear. And in the Instagram age, girls still need to hear Roberta Flack (or, on the album, Diana Ross) sing, “I like what I look like” in “When We Grow Up.” If only we women would absorb that message instead of “you aren’t pretty enough.”
The clip below, from the television special, features Flack and Michael Jackson.
Perhaps someday the entire album or show will be updated and remade. In the meantime, the theme song was redone by musician Sara Bareilles. It may be old and somewhat obscure these days, but Free to Be… still has a lot to say.
9 replies on “How “Free to Be… You and Me” Shaped Me and Why I Wish It Was Still Popular”
I love this and hadn’t thought about this in years. But, yes, it still holds true and there are still people trying to others in boxes. Break out of the box.
This has many fine moments, thanks, Kate.
I was pondering the central question — how do we find the best way of using our life? — with a friend. Both of us grew up in the 1960s when school expectations (in Australia) were for each student in high school to do as well as possible, for as long as possible, in Mathematics and Sciences, if possible. (Not everyone can cope with the mathematical demands of algebra, and trigonometry, and then calculus.) Otherwise, do as well as possible, for as long as possible, in humanities. Otherwise, leave school and get a job, based on a combination of how well you managed with school subjects, and what you think you might be interested in, and what your family and friends are aware of as possible jobs.
My friend and I persisted in mathematics and science until we completed university, and I became a teacher (and later teacher-trainer) and he became a university lecturer and research zoologist. Another friend went with us into undergraduate mathematics and science, but dropped out to do a vocational course in auto-mechanics. He had developed a strong personal interest in motor cars, and later became a lecturer in auto-mechanics.
Eventually, we all found working careers in aspects of the school subjects in which we had been successful, combined with subjects we were interested in. If we weren’t interested, we changed direction. Another of our friends moved from teaching university mathematics and mathematics research, into radio broadcasting, presenting programs of Classical music. THAT was his driving interest.
We were all males.
At that time, in the 1960s, females were presented with the same school expectations, and some followed the same career paths as their male classmates. But for many women, then, marrying and being stay-at-home mothers was also practical.
How times have changed. Men and women need to work.
But in many ways the advice of the 1960s is still good. Do as well as you can in the school subjects where you can succeed, and, preferably, that you like. Then blend that academic success with work-tasks that use your training and satisfy your interests.
Male of female: follow your abilities and personal interests.
There are, nowadays, many more “boxes” than ever before, and virtually any “box” can be appropriate for the right person. Keep an open mind to possibilities, and know yourself.
For almost all jobs, being male, or being female, is irrelevant.
Hi John, Kate’s little sister, here.
To your central question, I can attest that the best way of using our lives can change multiple times over the course of our working years. Career changes have added richness to my life.
I have been, in no particular order, a VP at a global financial institution, a welder, a special education math teacher, a health food store manager, and now am a licensed massage therapist. Somehow, I managed to do each of these things fairly well. I get bored easily. 🙂 I love the idea of your friend who ended up in auto-mechanics.
“But for many women, then, marrying and being stay-at-home mothers was also practical. How times have changed. Men and women need to work.”
This is true, families are squeezed so tightly the two income family is a necessity for most. However, there’s another angle to more women in the workforce.
I don’t strictly HAVE to work based on my husband’s income. But I was back at work when our son was 3 1/2 months because I can’t stand not working outside the home. There is no thanks, and very little sense of fulfillment for me, in being the sole homemaker. I’d sooner gouge out my own eyes than not work outside the home.
I think in an ideal world, women or men could freely choose to stay home or not. It’s too bad that so often the choice is made for many of us due to the circumstances of our lives.
Yes, Kate (and, G’day, Kirstie!), you are right about the freedoms we hope for in an ideal world, to stay home or not as a parent, to change jobs, to be the person we want to be doing the things we choose to do.
But, naturally, we live in a human world, where our family, and our community, and our nation, surround us with expectations and demands (laws, in the extreme case). Where we have choice, we can only choose among the options we know about. Vocational guidance counsellors can tell us about many jobs we may never have heard of before. But even they do not know all the possible jobs that exist, even within our local community. We can glimpse this when we visit, for example, museums and historic theme-parks, and realise there are people who preserve old books, read ancient languages, create catalogs and indexes, and people who use the tools of a blacksmith to hand-make nails, and hand-tools, or turn flax into linen thread and use hand-looms to weave.
We are also constrained by personal limits and failures. I aspired to become an astronomer. But I was not diligent enough during senior high school, studying trigonometry, and, later at university, lacked the technical mathematics (advanced calculus, that relied on that absent knowledge of trigonometry) to succeed. The result was a change of path from applied mathematics to pure mathematics. I was able to complete an honours degree (cumma sum lauda, I think it is often termed in the USA), but not clever enough to become a research mathematician. That led me to train to be a high school mathematics teacher. I was not a particularly good teacher, but, perhaps surprisingly, I was widely interested in education. As a result, I spent almost all of my working career training teachers, mainly in mathematics education. Fortunately, I was reasonably effective in that role, despite the preceding succession of failures and career-path swerves. I could add to that a failed aspiration to be a published poet. Similarly my possible career as a pianist never got past Grade 5! (Lack of diligent practice mainly, of course, and I know whose fault that was.)
To conclude, freedom of choice is ideal, but the reality is that we make compromises, hemmed in by circumstances that we have little control over. And we can’t choose our parents, or our genes, also. We do the best we can, or try to, with what we have, in the situations we find ourselves in.
Very true, John!
I have had this album in my collection since Lincoln was born! He knows it. I wish I had the movie available in a watchable format (not so grainy) to show him, although now he’d just roll his eyes. I, too, have fond memories of watching this at Mount Vernon Elementary School.
Trigger warning needed for video footage of Michael Jackson. Deplorable human being. I used to love his music and am just so disgusted by him now that I don’t anymore.
I had mentioned Michael Jackson just above the video footage as a sort of subtle trigger warning. Do you think I need to be more overt? Happy to do so.
Oh, I honestly hadn’t noticed because the visual of him was so identifiable that I saw that first.