New Yorker writer Emily Nussbaum’s insightful and witty TV commentary has made her a must-read critic. She’s covered everything from highbrow prestige series to guilty pleasure reality TV. Her work received the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2016. Nussbaum’s latest project is Cue The Sun: The Invention of Reality TV, a new book which breaks down how a genre that began with Candid Camera in 1948 has become a defining cultural force.
More: Emily Nussbaum on reality TV’s origins and real world impact (The Treatment, 2024)
For her Treat, Nussbaum takes us back to the 1970s via her affection for Free to Be...You and Me, a beloved children’s album produced by the Ms. Foundation and Marlo Thomas. Featuring a star-studded lineup including Alan Alda, Roberta Flack, and Diana Ross, the 1972 album combined songs and sketches to promote a groundbreaking message for the time. It encouraged children to explore and embrace their diverse identities. While Nussbaum admits that the album might come off as a bit corny today, she finds its joyful and empowering themes beautiful.
This segment has been edited and condensed for clarity.
I'm going to talk about Free to Be...You and Me, which was a children's album I listened to when I was a child. I listened to it in the ‘70s. It came out in 1972; it was produced by the Ms. Foundation and by Marlo Thomas, and it's this beautiful, sunny, but also strangely penetrating album about what it is to be a child in the world. [It’s] about boys and girls, [but also] men and women, and what it is to be an adult — about being trapped in who people think you are.
That's why it's so effective, because it has such a sunny, visionary feminist [message] and that's what it was. It was an album that was meant to send the message of feminism to both boys and girls, and also ideas about your ability to be anything you wanted to be. That's the central message of the album, not to be trapped by people's expectations for you.
I was really fascinated that it was also a mixture of songs and sketches. It had “William's Doll” [and] "It's All Right to Cry.” It had "Sisters and Brothers,” which is this super stirring anthem. It had "Parents Are People,” which (embarrassingly) after I had kids, I listened to.
On the album were Alan Alda, Rosey Grier, Cicely Tyson, Carol Channing, Michael Jackson, Roberta Flack, Shirley Jones, Jack Cassidy, and Diana Ross. So it was this big collaborative thing.
I used to listen to it on vinyl in my room and I would keep moving the needle around on it and I would always skip past one song, which was this song, "Girl Land,” because it's very creepy. I actually have a whole [play]list on my Spotify of songs that have carnival barkers. That's one of them. It has a carnival barker talking about being trapped in “Girl Land,” and it's spooky and terrifying. And even as a little girl, it was like you sometimes have one track you'll skip. So I would skip that.
[Free to Be...You and Me] has this sense that you can put costumes on. You can be whoever you want to be. You can have different kinds of relationships, across gender. You can choose different jobs. You can be both a parent and a person. I mean, this sounds very, very corny, but that's maybe why it's influential on me. Sometimes I am in praise of corny types of art, even though I'm a Gen X-er and was raised on notions that things should be dark and satirical, I think there's something about art that's joyful that is so beautiful.