‘The Goddess of Good Sex’
“All RRRRRRight!”
It’s January 2018, and Dr. Ruth is visiting the place where her fame began, roughly 40 years ago: a radio studio in New York City. This time around, though, she isn’t the host of the show, dispensing advice about sex and relationships with candid words and a signature accent (“a cross between Henry Kissinger and Minnie Mouse,” The Wall Street Journal put it). Now she is the guest. Her legs dangling lightly from a chair that is, like most chairs, far too big for her—she is 4 foot 7—the woman who spent years answering other people’s questions is now answering some about herself.
“We are back,” her host says into the studio’s microphone. “This is Midday on WNYC. I’m Jonathan Capehart, and I am speaking with the iconic, world-renowned sex and relationship therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer. In her latest book—”
“Jonathan, wait!” his interviewee interrupts.
“Yes, ma’am!” he replies.
“I would say the word sex with more emotion.”
“Oh!” he says.
“Say that word sex as if you really mean it. With some warmth! With”—she thrusts up her hands—“some excitement! With some aRRRRRRousal!”
“Start again.”
“Okay, yes, ma’am,” Capehart says, grinning. “Um, I am speaking with the iconic, world-renowned”—he adds a newly guttural emphasis to his delivery—“seeeeeex and relaaaaationship therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer.”
He looks over at Dr. Ruth. “How’s that?”
“That,” she says, “was wonderful.”
A century ago, Edward Carpenter, the poet and activist, wondered, “Why, we may ask, should people be afraid of rousing passions which, after all, are the great driving forces of human life?” It was a question about religion; it was a question about politics; it was a question that never got fully answered. In American culture, instead, sex has existed in a kind of haze: It has been everywhere, and yet, in a more
