i am sassa

I decided to paint Dr. Ruth this morning because I realized I was on painting number sixty-nine. It was a juvenile move and it made me laugh really hard. I have no regrets. I ended up completely shocked by her story.

Dr. Ruth has been on my list since the beginning. I thought she was a worthy badass because she brought non-judgemental, open-minded sex education to the American public at a time when we really needed it. She was instrumental in changing the stigma of the AIDS crisis, and countless fans claimed that she saved their life by being the only person they ever heard speak openly and lovingly about gay relationships. I was intrigued by the fact that in her nineties, she is still working. That was about the extent of my knowledge. To my surprise, pretty much every part of her life makes her a next level badass.

Dr. Ruth was born in Germany and was an only child. Her parents were Orthodox Jews, and she grew up with a grandmother who doted on her. She was around ten when Hitler came to power. First, her father was taken to a labor camp. Before he got to return home, Ruth was forced to travel by train with other Jewish children to an orphanage in Switzerland, where they would serve and care for the Swiss children. She was heartbroken to leave her family, and kept in touch with them frequently through letters. After a few years, the letters stopped.

Ruth went years not knowing what happened to her family. Girls at the orphanage were not permitted to attend high school, and she was determined to learn. She had a boyfriend at the orphanage who snuck her his books every night and taught her what he learned each day. It is here that I have to beg you to watch the documentary called Ask Dr. Ruth on Hulu. It came out in 2019 and shows Ruth reunited with this boyfriend, who hid under her bed at night with his books, and it is friggin PRECIOUS. IT IS PRECIOUS.

Ruth left the orphanage and went to Palestine as a teenager, where she was trained by the Jewish underground army to be a sniper, because of course she was. Apparently being 4’9” made her perfect for the job, and though she is thankful she never had to kill anyone, she was a wicked shot. When Ruth was twenty, she was wounded in action during the Palestine war. Two women right beside her died from the blast, and Ruth nearly lost both her feet. While being cared for by a handsome nurse, she pretended that she couldn’t feed herself so he would feed her three times a day. I guess this is the secret to health, because she healed perfectly.

Ruth finally got a break from all the conflict and was able to pursue her education. She taught herself English by reading romance novels and studied psychology and taught at the Sorbonne in France. Eventually she settled in the United States, where she became a citizen and earned a PhD from Columbia. She found her calling working with Planned Parenthood, and sought training to become a sex therapist. She started providing sex ed to the masses via a call-in radio show that became surprisingly popular. Turns out maybe we should have been speaking openly about this totally normal part of life all along. Apparently it was a bad call for us to instead surround it with a cloud of shame while simultaneously over-sexing every aspect of our culture. WHO KNEW.

Anyway, Ruth was like the coolest German grandma ever, talking about all the dirty things, and people loved her. She ended up with her own TV show, and though watching it now might not seem like a big deal, back then it was BANANAS. But totally enlightening and progressive and so terribly needed. But also bananas.

Ruth keeps on keepin’ on, and while some youngsters have tossed her aside due to being kind of square about open relationships and what not, I say this to them: This woman hand wove the chrysalis from which your flamboyant lil’ wings emerged. Show some respect.

Thank you, Dr. Ruth.