When We Were Free to Be: Looking Back at a Children’s Classic and the Difference It Made

A Thousand Fond Memories and a Few Regrets

41 A Thousand Fond Memories and a Few Regrets Letty Cottin Pogrebin It began in February 1972, with an offer I couldn’t refuse: Gloria Steinem asked me to have lunch with Marlo Thomas. Are you kidding ? What time? In those days, Gloria was one of the few women doing serious advocacy journalism. She was also a nationally known spokesperson for the civil rights, antiwar, and women’s movements. The previous summer, she had asked me to join her in starting a magazine that eventually would be called Ms., a feminist enterprise so committed to its egalitarian, nonhierarchical structure that I could never have admitted how thrilled I was to be working at a desk just feet away from hers. The truth is, I would have done anything she asked. Not that meeting Marlo was exactly a hardship. In the early 1970s, she, too, occupied a top spot on my Most Admired list. Her popular TV series, That Girl, was the first mass entertainment that overtly acknowledged the autonomy and dignity of the single woman, a category in which I had counted myself for four years after I graduated from college and before I met my husband. Defying the then-current image of the unmarried woman as a pitiful spinster, Marlo’s spunky character positively reflected my singlehood experience in that she earned her own money, didn’t live with her parents, and had an active love life. But on March 1, 1972, when we met for lunch, it turned out that Marlo didn’t want to talk about Ms. or That Girl, magazines or television . She wanted to talk about books. She’d been searching for books about smart, brave, adventurous little girls and had been shocked by the proliferation of stories about princesses, nurses, moms, stewardesses , and demure goody-goodies. Being a can-do person, she channeled her frustration into action: She decided she would produce a long-playing record album of children’s entertainment that would break the bonds of sex stereotypes and inspire girls and boys to become their best selves. To that end, she had asked Gloria to recommend some stories to be read on the album. Gloria, with no kids of her 42 Letty Cottin Pogrebin own and no reason to monitor the world of children’s literature, had put Marlo in touch with me. I was the “expert” in a field that barely existed. I had three children under the age of seven. I had written an article, “Down with Sexist Upbringing,” published in the preview issue of Ms., that had addressed the corrosive effects of sex role stereotypes on the education and rearing of children. I had also created a special feature to run in every issue of Ms., “Stories for Free Children,” that required me to comb through mountains of publishers’ catalogs looking for books for youngsters that were nonsexist, nonracist, and multicultural.With those credentials, I had become by default the go-to editor at Ms. for anything relating to children and families. While I dove into my french fries at the Ginger Man restaurant on the Upper West Side, Marlo asked for my help finding stories that could be adapted for her record. I told her I’d had trouble finding even one book a month suitable for “Stories for Free Children.” In fact, I thought I might have to buy original stories written just for Ms. The two of us began commiserating over the sad, sexist state of American culture. We talked about how both genders suffer from conventional sex-typing and about the urgency of breaking down the walls between girl land and boy land. We talked about ourselves and our childhoods, what we’d dreamed of becoming, and the barriers we’d faced. We became BFF, or, as Marlo once described our first meeting, “It was instantly obvious that we were soul mates. We both wanted to save the world and agreed the place to start was with its children.” And so began my involvement in the rollicking, intoxicating journey that resulted in the record, book, and TV special Free to Be . . . You and Me, coproduced by Marlo Thomas and the television writer and producer Carole Hart. On the back cover of the hot pink LP record album with the chubby, whimsical lettering, I am listed as “Consultant.” This basically meant I was the feminist Jiminy Cricket who sat on Marlo’s shoulder and occasionally whispered, “We need something affirmative about girl/ boy friendships.” Or “We...