Empowerment or Equality?: Legacies of Free to Be … You and Me

Abstract

Since to Be... You and Me marked its fortieth anniversary in 2012, I've spoken about this groundbreaking children's album, book, and television special to audiences across country. Along with historian Laura Lovett, I coedited a collection titled When We Were to Be, which documents production of to project by Mario Thomas and her creative team during 1970s. Our volume also explores reception of to among critics, parents, and children and offers personal reflections and social critiques by journalists, scholars, and artists today.From moment vinyl LPs first hit record store shelves, to became a cultural phenomenon. For first generation of to kids, this musical melange of songs and stories still stirs up a heady mix of emotions, memories, and even tears. Revisiting to prompts adults to time travel back to their elementary school days to reclaim those bygone moments when future beckoned with a boundless sense of open possibility.Free to influenced listeners' values, politics, and even core identities in two fundamental ways. First, it provided an affirming narrative to boys who did not conform to dominant, heteronormative standards of masculinity. As Mario Thomas recounts, over decades, countless gay men have told her that William's Doll and It's All Right to Cry provided the first inklings that were going to okay (Thomas 2012,13). Many straight fathers, too, recall finding in these lyrics reassuring license to grow into nurturing parents. Although to Be's creators still assumed existence of only two genders linked to biological sex, families of LGBT youth often praise album as a pioneering manual of social acceptance.Second, to schooled young children in a particular set of liberal feminist ideals. With some important exceptions (discussed below), to s feminist politics are strongly individualistic: it asserts that children should pursue their interests and talents regardless of stereotypes, and it invites them to embrace their uniqueness (and thus to accept differences among other people, too.) The story Atalanta teaches girls to relish independence, adventure, curiosity, and competition rather than value marriage as life's crowning achievement. And as expressed in song Parents Are People, to affirms importance of paid work and parental roles for both mothers and fathers within heteronormative, nuclear family life.Indeed, we might regard to as original primer of what is now sometimes called empowerment feminism: a be it all-have it ethos that tells girls and women that they can succeed in all realms of life by aiming high, working hard, staying confident, and-dare I say it-leaning in. Countless women have testified to to s emboldening influence on their identities as equal-opportunity feminists; fittingly, Mario Thomas's own niece, Dionne Gordon Kirschner, offers a representative account of this experience. Raised during 1970s by a capable single mother-and also benefiting from supportive ties with Mario's extended family-Dionne sees little distinction between independent women who raised her and to philosophy that suffused her childhood:My aunt has always been Free to Be in my eyes. I grew up feeling that I wanted to attack life in same way. I knew that whatever dreams I had would my own and not a product of what others wanted for me____ Along with my mom and my aunt as role models, to empowered me in its one of a kind, progressive, and skillful storytelling. As a young person, it left me feeling energized, transformed, and capable of taking on anything that might come my way. (Kirschner 2012,22)Reading these words, it's hard not to feel impressed that a children's album could leave such an inspiring imprint. I myself was a to kid in suburban St. Louis during this time; I, too, belted out these melodies, scarcely realizing, until many years later, how profoundly they would shape my aspirations, ambitions, and beliefs. …