“What do I have to do?” I asked.
“Nothing, just go in the room,” she said.
I turned the door handle and walked in.
A man who looked like an old toad sat behind a big desk.
He was stocky, his skin was bumpy, and he wore a dark-brown silk robe.
“Sit down and tell me about yourself, Amanda. How was your day at school?”
I sat down on the other side of the desk. I was wearing my school uniform, a navy-blue pleated skirt, white shirt, tie, and sweater. How did he know my name? And what else did he know about me? Did he know I was only twelve, that I was a smart but curious girl, that my parents would cry if they knew what he was up to?
I answered his question. Then another and another until finally he stopped asking questions, just like that. I felt weirdly uncomfortable and embarrassed but was relieved to be told I could go.
Later I would learn to identify that feeling as shame.
On the drive home, my babysitter counted the money, as usual, except this time she handed me some crumpled-up notes. I stared down at the bills in my hand. I had never had so much money in my life, and I wasn’t sure what I’d done to earn it. After about three or four visits, I finally figured out that The Toad, as we called him, was jerking off behind the desk. I told my babysitter I wouldn’t go back. This was a lesson that brought me close—too close—to the kinds of sexual exploitation that women and girls face every day around the world.
I’ve thought long and hard about the difference between “mild” sexual assault—the guy exposing himself outside our kitchen window, the guy jerking off on the Metro—and severe abuse. Flashers could be considered slightly comical. I mean what kind of wacko exposes his penis to the elements like that? I also once saw a guy sitting in his car with his pants pulled all the way down stroking a big boner. When he saw my look of horror, he laughed and then proceeded to drive alongside me pulling his penis and smirking at me.
I arrived instead at the same conclusion as my writer friend Kelly Oxford, who, after Donald Trump bragged about assaulting women during the 2016 presidential campaign, launched the #itsnotokay Twitter campaign. Before the week was out, she’d received twenty-seven million views and replies to her invitation for women to tweet her their first assault.
First assault, yeah, that’s the world we live in.
Kelly went first: “Old man on city bus grabs my ‘pussy’ and smiles at me, I’m twelve.”
Women tweeted stories about guys rubbing their dicks against them in pretty much every form of public transportation out there. At department stores and office parties. At sports events and family gatherings. Seriously, if you didn’t know better, you would think that dudes spend most of their days running around rubbing themselves against young girls. Women wrote about being assaulted by coworkers, uncles, husbands.
Here’s the thing: You don’t have to explain anything. You don’t have to apologize. For coming home at night on the bus. For going to a party where dudes are drinking, or where YOU are drinking. For wearing a miniskirt to the all-night market to pick up almond milk or just for being a woman in the world. It’s never okay to be assaulted in any way, ever.
13.
Pain Is Not Without Purpose
I struggled with postpartum depression after Ella and Silvan were born and throughout the first two years of their lives. I remember feeling as if I’d given so much of myself to everybody else that I literally had no identity of my own.
As unsure as I was about what was going on with me, I knew instinctively that I needed a room of my own if I was going to rebuild my fractured sense of self. I didn’t have a spare room available, so I bought a busted-up shell of a 1950s Airstream trailer for nine hundred bucks, parked it in my front yard, furnished it with a bed and a desk, and began the process of reconnecting with myself.
I loved that Airstream. It was my private space, off-limits to everyone else.
One of the best and worst things about family life is the obligation to share everything—every decision, every activity, every outing. You can’t hang a picture on the wall without asking “Hey, how do you feel about hanging this picture on the wall?” You have to consult about the thread count of the duvet cover, about what’s for dinner, about whether it’s okay to turn on the heat or the air conditioner. But being inside my little trailer, in the stolen moments when I wasn’t breastfeeding, gave me a much-needed respite from all that, and the space to remind myself of what I liked, what I was passionate about, and over time I was able to ask myself what I felt creatively motivated to do, other than sleep and snack.
I didn’t know the answer to that question, but I knew it had to be something that reflected my value system and would benefit people other than just me. It had to be so compelling it would motivate me to get out of bed in the morning, something that was a major struggle at the time.
Front and center was my struggle with postpartum depression. I had trouble finding helpful resources, and I couldn’t understand why it was so hard to get honest accounts of surviving postpartum depression. Even my internet searches were mostly unfruitful. I would often find cookie-cutter descriptions of what I was going through on some “medical” websites, but clinical terminology didn’t provide a lot of solace. You would think that it would be easy to find real-life stories about PPD online, and yet I found very few that I could relate to. I wondered why women were so reluctant to share their experiences of an affliction that affects so many of us (PPD is believed to affect up to 20 percent of women who give birth each year).
This was the first of many moments when I saw a need for honest, accessible, and relatable information that would reassure women like me that they were not alone. This realization dovetailed with my philosophy that even the shittiest of experiences can bring something positive. (I had learned this firsthand many, many times.) When you make yourself of service to other people, you are allowing for the possibility of turning every fucked-up thing that’s happened to you into a gift. Your pain is not without purpose. And, through the process of helping someone else heal, you’ll often find you are also able to heal yourself.
I also couldn’t overlook my deep desire to find a way to facilitate a dialogue that would allow women to identify their own experience through someone else’s story and in doing so, feel less alone. I wanted to shine a light on diverse voices, and give women whom we think we know the opportunity to share their stories in their own words. I’m sure that impulse had something to do with the fact that the tabloids seemed to own my story for many years of my life. If there’s one thing that unites human beings, it’s wanting to feel seen and understood for who we really are. I began to envision something that would replicate the conversations happening in my home, with my friends talking about real-life struggles, no matter how messy or strange or unconventional. Unplanned pregnancy, abortion, miscarriage, childbirth, heartbreak, sexual assault, divorce, getting fired, getting cheated on, going broke, all the hardships that so many people experience can actually provide the tools we need to help someone else survive the same moments.
At first I thought this platform for women would exist only online. I googled how to make your own website, but there were very few tutorials back then, so I taught myself basic code at night when the twins were sleeping, built a simple blogging site, and started writing posts about what really happens to your body after having a baby and about the challenges I was having with PPD. I’m not sure how it happened, but people started reading the pieces I wrote. A community began to grow and soon women from all over the world who were also seeking answers started to share their stories and experiences as well. That was the moment the first incarnation of The Conversation was born.
Even though the blog was gaining momentum, I knew there was a missing piece that could allow the stories to reach more people. I just wasn’t sure what it was right away. It occurred to me that with my experience as a photographer I already knew how to use my still cameras for video, and I knew how to light
a person, so what was stopping me from interviewing friends about all the subjects being discussed on the blog, but from my own living room? I would set up the cameras myself and then have a friend hit the record button.
Those first interviews were really low-budget DIY productions. I am forever grateful to my trusting and brave friends who agreed to be a part of the first Conversation interviews. Actress extraordinaire and one of my oldest friends Minnie Driver was the first woman to sit down with me and discuss what it was like to be a single parent, followed by Kate Bosworth, who talked about body image, and Christina Applegate, who so honestly shared her story about being a breast cancer survivor. The footage was powerful, raw, unique, and everyone who watched it was affected by the level of truth shared from these women who were usually so protective of their private lives.
Over the next couple of months, whenever I had the energy and money to do it, I would interview a woman about what was important to her and what she had learned through personal hardship. I wasn’t interested in the superficial stuff like who she was sleeping with or what she was wearing . . . and that was evident in the kind of questions I asked and the answers I was given. When you are seeking answers yourself, it’s not hard to come up with questions.
The point of The Conversation was to connect women around the world and to let them know that sure, the outfits, zip codes, and skin colors might vary, but if you’re identifying as a woman, these experiences are universal and all too familiar.
The Conversation premiered on Lifetime in spring 2012, and I was fortunate to interview some of the most iconic, smart, insightful women on the planet. Jane Fonda, Lady Gaga, Zoe Saldana, Gwyneth Paltrow, Arianna Huffington, Sarah Silverman, and Alicia Keys sat on my living room couch and shared stories about their loves, losses, successes, and failures.
Jane Fonda was one of my favorite interviews ever. Younger women don’t always look to older women for advice—they are in different life stages, and there aren’t always opportunities for different generations of women to meet or spend time together. But Jane is a pioneer for all of us; she has been producing her own content since the ’70s. While she’s most known for her acting, she’s also a feminist, an activist, a producer, and just an all-around beautiful, sexy, and smart woman. I mean—she sets the bar high for being a badass well into the final chapter of life.
I also wanted the show to offer solutions. I asked my guests how they had worked through their issues, how they’d come out even better on the other side. My question was always how? How did you recover from your breakup, your depression, your addiction? Tell us what worked for you.
In each interview I aimed to ask the questions that would help people most. And that’s what I told everyone when they sat down. They’d inevitably ask, “What are we gonna talk about?” And I’d say, “Your only goal is to think about the person that is watching this and how you can help them with what you’re saying. So you tell me. What is the thing that didn’t kill you but made you stronger? That’s what I want to talk about.”
Lady Gaga talked about sex and how it sucked when she was a teenager but got better as she got older, as well as addiction and self-harm. Portia de Rossi talked about the time she wasted obsessing about her weight and the shape of her body, and how hard it was for her to come out as a gay woman because she had no role models. Olivia Wilde talked hilariously about how she tried to save her previous marriage by endless house remodeling; asking for a divorce was the scariest thing she’d ever done, she said, but as much as admitting failure made her feel flawed, it also made her feel human. Miley Cyrus talked about the power of realizing that you don’t actually have to smile all the time, and the fear people feel when a woman expresses her true self. Sarah Silverman talked about “the bravery of just existing” as a way to survive depression.
The show was honest but not salacious. I refuse to do anything clickbaity just to snag viewers. Our culture has been feeding people that kind of shit for so long. If you feed someone McDonald’s her whole life, that’s what she’s going to want. Start giving her a home-cooked meal, and the taste for McDonald’s disappears. But it’s hard to get the home-cooked meal in there. Our viewership numbers never reached Real Housewives levels, but our audience was ardent and loyal.
I had no idea that an interview show could affect so many people in the most intense and powerful way. I cannot tell you how many emails similar to this one I’ve been lucky enough to receive.
I’m writing to say THANK YOU to Amanda for creating The Conversation. I discovered it when I was going through an excruciating breakup and it honestly saved my life and inspired me to keep working towards my dreams and gave me the hope I desperately needed. This series is everything to me and exactly what I needed when I couldn’t find anything to make me feel like things would be ok. THANK YOU.—Jessie
I have met the most extraordinary females all over the world who watched The Conversation. But for some reason Whole Foods and CVS seemed to be the spots where I would run into viewers most frequently. Women would approach me, apologize for bothering me (NEVER A BOTHER), and whilst my kids ran rampant around the store, they would share their story about how this or that interview had changed their life in some incredible way. I thought that nothing could get any better until Hillary came along . . .
Interviewing Hillary Clinton was the dream of a lifetime. I’ve admired her since she was First Lady twenty-four years ago, and I made it my mission to interview her. When she announced she was running for president I thought, This is my chance. I was badly counseled that I should wait until after the primaries, but I ignored all the advice and put in my interview request—and thank God I did.
Let me tell you, I went to every single person I knew who had any connection to her in any way—even I was surprised at my tenacity. I was relentless and determined in a way I hadn’t been in years. It was both the most exciting and the scariest day of my life when I received the call that the interview had been confirmed; Hillary was in.
I began to research obsessively. I downloaded her audiobooks so I could listen to her tell her stories. I wanted to familiarize myself with her voice, her vernacular, her cadence. I wanted to learn about her in every possible way. I watched all her long-form interviews from the last thirty years, looked at pictures of her, saw all her notable news conferences, played and replayed all her most famous speeches, like her Beijing “women’s rights are human rights” moment. I just saturated myself in all things Hillary until I felt confident that I would no longer feel nervous sitting next to her and I could take the conversation wherever she wanted it to go because I had fully studied her incredible life.
The interview was more than I could ever have hoped for. Even though I never believed any of the misogynistic crap aimed at her by opponents and haters, I was a little surprised by just how warm and down-to-earth she was, and how easy she was to talk to.
And we really did talk. I wanted to know how she got to be such a badass. I asked her about the influence of female role models in her own life.
“Your mom had a very traumatic childhood,” I said to her. “How did that impact her ability to mother you?”
“That’s a very smart question,” she answered.
If there was ever a perfect moment in my life, to have my self-worth fully validated by another person, that was it.
Then to my amazement, Hillary asked me for my advice. “Maybe you can help me with something?” she asked with a smirk, letting me know she was in on the joke. She then talked about the fine line a woman in the public eye—a woman running for president—must always walk. She should listen to what people say about her, accept criticism, and respond to it without falling into the stereotype of being “an emotional female.”
I don’t know a woman alive who doesn’t feel she has to walk that same tightrope on a daily basis. In that moment I was reminded once again of the many ways in which we are all connected. Everyone faces challenges on the path to success, and as women, we face many of the same ones.
There is not a job, relationship, body, or lottery win that gives you an exemption from that.
The Conversation helped pull me out of my postpartum depression and gave me a purpose. But the reality remains that as far as women have progressed, it’s still hard for a female who isn’t easy to categorize to be hired into the mainstream. After my Clinton interview, I was invited to take a lot of meetings. I met with some baller executives, including one who sat me down and told me she thought I was one of the best interviewers of my generation. “I wish I could give you a job,” she said. “But I don’t know where to put you. You’re not traditional news.” I went to a meeting at CNN. I went to meetings at NBC, MSNBC, CBS, HSN, Vox, and Vice. You name it, I went there. It was all a variation on the same theme: Yes, they said, we can see that you’re talented, but we just don’t have a place for you.
So, not suitable for news because I like to say fuck, but also not right for E! because I don’t care what people are wearing or whom they are sleeping with.
I will admit that my ego and my spirit took another big hit. But soon enough my desire to thrive kicked in, and yet again I reminded myself that perhaps rejection was God’s protection, and that being unemployed had historically allowed me space to dream up something magical, like The Conversation. Sure enough that’s exactly what happened, and less than a year later I launched #Girlgaze, my new media company for girl creatives.
You see, I know without a shadow of a doubt that the times I’ve trusted my instincts and been willing to risk failure one more time are the times when I have succeeded. Take the risk, no matter what anyone else tells you. The worst thing that can happen is that you fail, again, and so what? Failing is part of succeeding. If someone has never failed at anything, that tells me they’ve never really risked anything.
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