Get Some for Dr. Ruth

Then Take a Vacation

I don’t want to talk about Trump’s ear or J.D. Vance’s extremism. It’s too much. The barrage of bad news has been endless over these last few weeks, and it’s time for all of us to take a vacation. Personally, I’m going to bury my head in the sand of Cape Cod for the next two weeks. (Okay, I’ll probably only literally bury my feet, but I’m planning on a news blackout of sorts.)   

Before I go, I want to take a minute to honor Dr. Ruth who died this week at 96. Whether it’s YouTube, Tik Tok, Instagram, lifestyle websites, Netflix, or [clears throat] Substack, the sexual health and advice space today is pretty crowded with therapists, gynecologists, educators, and influencers (some more qualified than others). But that wasn’t the case in 1980 when Dr. Ruth Westheimer burst on the scene with an after-midnight advice show (for which she was paid $25 an episode).

Sexually Speaking!, the call in radio show, ran from 1980-1990, and she hosted a series of television shows, including Good Sex!, on Lifetime during that same time. She also authored 45 books on sexuality.

Dr. Ruth’s advice was decidedly sex positive. She wanted everyone to have good sex and not feel guilty about it. In an early New York Times article Dr. Ruth said, “Anything two consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedroom or kitchen floor is alright with me.”  

She answered questions about orgasms, G-spots, and premature ejaculation, promising callers that they were okay. (We educators quickly learn that all sex questions are versions of the same one: “Am I normal?”) She also educated viewers on STIs and HIV as her peak popularity coincided with the early days of the AIDS epidemic. She was in favor of contraception and abortion. She closed many of her shows by telling listeners to “get some.”

In addition to her own shows and books, Dr. Ruth was a fixture on talk shows from The Arsenio Hall Show to The Ellen DeGeneres Show to The Conan O’Brien Show to The Daily Show. A cultural icon, she appeared as herself in movies and television, like the sci-fi series Quantum Leap which built an episode around her. (Oh, Scott Bakula, how I loved you.)  

Unlike some of today’s influencers, she had the credentials to back up her advice. She studied psychology in Paris under Jean Piaget and went on to teach at the Sorbonne. Once in the United States she got an MA in Sociology from the New School and a doctorate in Family-Life Studies from Teachers College at Columbia University. Her sexuality career began with a part-time job at Planned Parenthood where she trained others to be sex educators. After that she trained as a sex therapist under Helen Kaplan-Singer at Cornell Medical Center.

Part of her appeal—and how she got away with talking about sex openly—was that she was perky (“Zeks!”), tiny (only 4 feet, 7 inches tall), and older (her media career didn’t start until her 50s). Hearing advice on how to give a blow job (“pretend it’s an ice cream cone”) from her was a lot less threatening to both men and women than hearing it from a hotter, younger woman. And she was far less likely to be branded a slut for daring to say these things out loud.

She also had an incredible life story. Born in Germany to Orthodox Jewish parents, Ruth was one of hundreds of children sent away to escape the Nazis. She was 10 when she went to an orphanage in Switzerland and has said she was never hugged as child after that. Both of her parents died during the war: her father was killed at Auschwitz, and her mother was listed as “disappeared/murdered.” All her other relatives were killed in concentration camps.

After the war, Ruth went to Israel where she was trained as a sniper. She’s said she had surprisingly good aim both with a rifle and a grenade and that her diminutive size was an advantage. At age 90, she demonstrated that she was still able to put together an assault rifle with her eyes closed.

Her own romantic life was also complicated. She explained that she’d “first had sexual intercourse on a starry night, in a haystack, without contraception." And went on to say, “I am not happy about that, but I know much better now, and so does everyone who listens to my radio program.”

Ruth married at 22 and followed her first husband to Paris but divorced when he decided to return to Israel. She married again when she got to the United States, had a daughter, and quickly divorced, leaving her a single mother who worked as a maid as she put herself through graduate school. In 1961, she married her third husband, Manfred Westheimer. They had a son and remained together until his death in 1997.

I didn’t grow up wanting to be Dr. Ruth like many of my professional peers did (I was gunning for Judy Blume’s job), but like anyone else who considers themselves a sex health expert, I owe her a lot. She paved the way for us to talk about sex openly.   

While we’re taking our much-deserved news break, perhaps we should all “get some” in her honor.