I had a very feminist mother who exposed me not only to Planned Parenthood - my first job - but also to Betty Friedan and Colette and Naomi Wolf.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Now my mother, interestingly enough, was not a feminist in her own mind.
My father who was there in the house, he wasn't at all a role model. And my mother, who was trying to protect me from him as best she could, she took me everywhere with her, which gave me a tremendous amount of sensitivity to the things women go through.
My mom was a big feminist, and when I was growing up, I wasn't allowed to have typical girl toys: she did not let me have dolls. Barbies were banned in our household. She read feminist books to me; my mom was a major feminist.
My mother was against me being an actress - until I introduced her to Frank Sinatra.
My mother, brave woman, lost her whole family when she decided to marry a black man in the '60s. When the marriage fell apart, she had to come back to her family.
Motherhood has brought me many joys and insights, but the new perspective it granted me on the role I had inadvertently played in young women's lives for the 2 decades I spent in the modeling industry was downright sobering.
Motherhood was the great equaliser for me; I started to identify with everybody.
My position in the family turned out to be a lucky one; I bore neither the brunt of my mother's newness to parenthood nor the force of her middle-aged traumas, as my younger sister, Ruth, did.
My mother died of a stroke in 1974, and for a long time, I blamed myself. She was utterly devastated when I told her I was a lesbian not long before.
My mother didn't want me to be a feminist, a radical, political person, because she was scared. She wanted me to be protected and safe, but my life never was.