An Afternoon With Gloria Steinem

When I began thinking about who would be my dream feature for our first Weldun Voices series, I immediately thought “GLORIA!”

Weldun was born from the belief that there is no fixed body. Our bodies change through age, illness, injury, surgery, pregnancy, disability, and countless other experiences. Yet so much of the world continues to operate as though they don't.

At 92, Gloria lived through so many seasons, both personal and cultural. She had spent her life questioning the systems that tell women who they should be, how they should behave, and what choices they're entitled to make.

It felt absurdly ambitious, but when I called Danielle to tell her my “pie in the sky” idea, she immediately said, “I don’t think it’s pie in the sky at all.” Her confidence gave me just enough courage to actually ask. And to my amazement, they said yes.

When you're building something new, particularly something that asks people to think differently, there are plenty of moments when you question whether anyone else sees what you see. Having someone like Gloria lend her time and voice didn't make the hard parts disappear. But it gave me a quiet kind of confidence. A feeling of keep going!

I appreciated her curiosity. She wanted to understand what we were actually trying to build, beyond the idea itself.

I spoke about storytelling. About connecting people to experiences they might not understand, or might never have considered. About making something people wanted to be part of, even when the underlying conversations were difficult.

Because I don't think you change people's perceptions simply by telling them they're wrong. You have to give them another way of seeing things. Something they recognize themselves in, or something that makes them curious enough to look again.

That's a large part of why we created Weldun Voices.

The people we feature aren't here to represent a diagnosis, an age, a disability, or a category. They're here because their lives and perspectives have something to teach us. Because the most interesting stories often begin where our assumptions end.

Gloria, of course, spent a lifetime challenging those assumptions.

But what I loved about our conversations that afternoon was that she didn't seem particularly interested in giving us perfectly polished answers.

When I asked what had helped her stay anchored in herself through changes in her body, she answered:

"The illusion that I wasn't changing."

I laughed.

And when we spoke about independence and caregiving, she reminded me of something easy to forget in a culture that places so much emphasis on self-sufficiency.

"We need each other."

We talk so much about independence as though it were the ultimate measure of dignity. But every one of us moves through moments when we need help, when our bodies ask something different of us, or when the way we've always done things no longer works.

There's nothing particularly exceptional about that. It's part of being human.

At another point, Paola Kudacki, who was photographing Gloria, asked the two of us to sit together on the sofa.

I should explain that I am considerably more comfortable behind the scenes of a photoshoot than participating in one.

Suddenly I had no idea how to sit, where to put my hands, or how to look natural.

Gloria, meanwhile, had had some practice…

She was funny, warm, and completely at ease. She just had a way of making the whole thing feel less serious, and before long, I felt comfortable, too. You can see it in the photographs and the footage from that day.

For all the extraordinary things Gloria accomplished, what I experienced that afternoon was a woman who was gracious, curious, funny, and generous with the people around her.

When we spoke about the expectations society places on people, Gloria returned to the idea that each of us is fundamentally unique.

"We should rethink categories," she said.

She went on to describe every individual as "a kind of unique miracle on spaceship Earth."

I love that phrase. It's wonderfully expansive, a little unexpected, and somehow both philosophical and playful.

We are so quick to organize people into categories. As though those distinctions tell us everything important about a person. They don't. And none of us remains in one category forever.

When Gloria passed away, the photographs and conversations from that afternoon took on a meaning none of us could have anticipated. I found myself returning not only to the images, but to the smaller moments surrounding them.

There is an enormous responsibility that comes with sharing someone's words and image after they pass, especially someone whose life and work meant so much to so many people. I don't pretend that one afternoon gave me a complete understanding of Gloria Steinem. It didn't. But it gave me a glimpse of the person behind the public figure, and that glimpse was a gift.

I'm deeply grateful to Gloria, to her trusted friends and colleagues Amy and Jill for their openness, and to everyone on the Weldun team who helped make that day possible.

When I think about what her participation meant to me, I return to that feeling of keep going.

Not because Gloria handed me some grand instruction or told me exactly what to do. She didn't. She asked questions, shared stories, laughed with us, and gave her time to something that was just beginning.

Sometimes that kind of generosity is enough to make you believe a little more deeply in what you're building. We went to Gloria's home hoping to create photographs and conversations that might encourage people to think differently about the bodies we live in and the choices we make. We left with all of that, and something more personal.

A reminder that curiosity matters. That humor belongs in serious conversations. That the freedom to choose how we move through the world is worth protecting. And that we owe one another a little more room to be exactly who we are.

Including, when the occasion calls for it, a woman with a brass horse head cane and a grape soda.