Dr. Ruth Westheimer attends the “Ask Dr. Ruth” panel at the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour on February 11, 2019 in Pasadena, California. , died at the age of 96.
Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP
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Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP
NEW YORK — Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the petite sex therapist who became a pop icon, media star and best-selling author for her candid conversations about once-taboo bedroom topics, has died. She is 96 years old.
Westheimer died Friday at her home in New York City, surrounded by her family, according to publicist and friend Pierre Lehu.
Westheimer never promoted risky sexual behavior. Instead, she encourages open dialogue about previously undisclosed issues that impact millions of viewers. One of her recurring themes is that there is nothing to be ashamed of.
“I still have old-fashioned values, and I’m a little bit stuck in a rut,” she told Michigan City High School students in 2002. “Sex is a private art and a private matter. But it’s still something we have to talk about. topic.
Westheimer’s giggly German accent, combined with her 4-foot-7 frame, made her look and sound an unlikely outlet for “sexual literacy.” This contradiction is one of the keys to her success.
But it was her wealth of knowledge and training, combined with her humorous, nonjudgmental attitude, that propelled her local radio show “Sex Talk” into the national spotlight in the early 1980s. She takes a nonjudgmental approach to conduct between two consenting adults in the privacy of their home.
In June 1982, she told a concerned caller: “Tell him you’re not going to take action. Tell him Dr. Westheimer said if he doesn’t have sex for a week, you’re not going to die.”
Her radio success opened new doors, and in 1983 she wrote the first of more than 40 books: Dr. Ruth’s Guide to Good Sex, which unraveled the secrets of sex with reason and humor. Mystery. There’s even a board game, Dr. Ruth’s Beautiful Sex Game.
She soon became a regular on late-night television talk shows, bringing her personality to the national stage. Her rise coincided with the early days of the AIDS epidemic, when frank conversations about sex became a necessity.
“If we could talk about sexual activity like food, like food, without this incorrect connotation, then we would go a step further. But we have to do it in good taste,” she told Johnny Carson in 1982.
Her regular use of words like “penis” and “vagina” on radio and television was aided by her grandmotherly Jewish accent, which the Wall Street Journal once described as “a cross between Henry Kissinger and Minnie Mouse.” body”. People magazine named her to its list of “The Most Interesting People of the Century.” She even put it into a Shania Twain song: “No, I don’t need proof to tell me the truth/Not even Dr. Ruth can tell me how I feel.”
Westheimer defends abortion rights, recommends that older adults have sex after a good night’s sleep, and is an outspoken advocate for condom use. She believes in monogamy.
In the 1980s, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, she stood up for gay men and spoke out for the LGBTQ community. She said she defends people who are considered “subhuman” by some far-right Christians because of their pasts.
She was born Karola Ruth Seigel in Frankfurt, Germany in 1928, an only child. At the age of 10, she was sent to Switzerland by her parents to escape Kristallnacht, the Nazis’ 1938 pogrom and precursor to the Holocaust. She never saw her parents again. Westheimer believed they were killed in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
At 16, she moved to Palestine and joined the Haganah, an Israeli independent underground movement. She was trained as a sniper, although she said she never fired at anyone.
She was seriously injured in both legs when a bomb exploded in her dormitory, killing many of her friends. She said it was only through the efforts of a “superb” surgeon that she was able to walk and ski again.
In 1950 she married her first husband, an Israeli soldier, and they moved to Paris while she was a student. Although Westheimer was not a high school graduate, he was admitted to the Sorbonne University after passing the entrance examination to study psychology.
The marriage ended in 1955. The next year, Westheimer went to New York with her new boyfriend, a Frenchman who would become her second husband and father of her daughter Miriam.
In 1961, after her second divorce, she finally met her life partner: Manfred Westheimer, a refugee from Nazi Germany. The couple married and had a son, Joel. Their marriage lasted 36 years until “Fred” (as she called him) died of heart failure in 1997.
After earning her doctorate in education from Columbia University, she went on to teach at Lehman College in the Bronx. There, she developed a specialty coaching professors on how to teach sex education. It would eventually become the centerpiece of her course.
“I soon realized that while I knew enough about education, I didn’t know enough about sex,” she wrote in her 1987 autobiography. Westheimer then decided to take classes with renowned sex therapist Dr. Helen Singer Kaplan.
It was there that she discovered her calling. Soon, she was dishing out sex advice “like good chicken soup,” as she put it in a typically folksy comment.
“I come from an Orthodox Jewish family, so sex was never considered a sin for us Jews,” she told The Guardian in 2019.
In 1984, her radio show was broadcast nationwide. A year later, she made her television debut on her own television show, The Dr. Ruth Show, which went on to win an Ace Award for excellence in cable television performance.
She also wrote a nationally syndicated advice column and later appeared in a series of videos produced by Playboy promoting the virtues of open discourse and good sex. She even has her own board game called “Dr. Ruth’s Beautiful Sex Games” and a series of calendars.
Her rise was noteworthy in a culture at the time, when President Ronald Reagan’s administration was hostile to Planned Parenthood and aligned with pro-conservative voices.
The staunch anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly wrote in a 1999 article “The Dangers of Sex Education” that Westheimer, along with Gloria Steinem, Anita Hill, Madonna, Ellen DeGeneres and others are promoting “provocative sexual chatter” and “rampant sex education.”
Father Edwin O’Brien, communications director for the Catholic Archdiocese of New York and later a cardinal, called her work disturbing and morally damaging.
“This is pure hedonism,” O’Brien wrote in a 1982 review for The Wall Street Journal. “‘The message is just to indulge yourself; whatever feels good is good. There is no higher law than morality, and no responsibility.
Westheimer has appeared on “The Howard Stern Radio Show,” “Nightline,” “The Tonight Show,” “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” “The Dr. Oz Show” and “David “Late Man Late Show”. She played herself in Quantum Leap and The Love Boat: The Next Wave.
Her books include Sex for Dummies, her autobiographical work All in a Lifetime (1987), and Musical Speech: Living Through Song (2003). The documentary “Ask Dr. Ruth” aired in 2019.
During her time as a radio and television personality, she remained committed to teaching, holding appointments at Yale, Hunter, Princeton, and Columbia universities and a busy schedule of university lectures. She remained in private practice throughout her life.
Westheimer received an honorary doctorate from Hebrew Union College’s School of Religion for his work on human sexuality and commitment to the Jewish people, Israel and religion. In 2001, she received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor and the Leo Baker Medal, and in 2004 she received an honorary Doctor of Letters from Trinity College.
Ask Dr Ruth director Ryan White told Vice in 2019 that Westheimer has never been one to follow trends. She remained an ally for gay rights and an advocate for Planned Parenthood.
“She was at the forefront of both of those things her whole life. Friends I met with her at the orphanage said that even when she met gay people in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, she always accepted them and always It means people should be respected.
She leaves behind two children, Joel and Miriam, and four grandchildren.
