Gloria Steinem
Writer and feminist organiser
First a horse rancher, then a dancer.
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Question
What inspires you to learn?
Attention & the world
Question
What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession or area of expertise?
Craft & work
Question
What advice would you give your twenty-year-old self, and what should they ignore?
Time & hindsight
Question
What is your greatest fear?
Identity & self
Question
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Identity & self
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
This is a standing question in The Guardian's decades-long The Q&A and also recurs independently in career and life interviews.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
When I was growing up I wanted to be a minister. I wanted to preach.
Academy of Achievement interview, Chicago, 10 June 2004 source ↗
Others on this question
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Edward Enninful
Ghanaian-born English editor and stylist
In African families, you can be one of three things: a doctor, a lawyer or a failure. I wanted to be an Egyptologist, but things worked out in the end.
An actor. I watched a lot of TV because we lived in the countryside and the weather was so bad.
Shirley Ballas
English ballroom dancer
Dancing was in my bones from when I started ballet at two.
More from John Lewis
View profile →I wanted to know. I asked a lot of questions and she would say, "Read, read."…So she inspired me a great deal.
Recorded
Julian Bond, Explorations in Black Leadership interview, Explorations in Black Leadership, University of Virginia
source ↗
I would come home and ask my mother, my father, my grandparents, my great-grandparents, 'Why?'. And they would say, 'That's the way it is. Don't get in the way, don't get in trouble!'
Recorded
Emory University Quadrangle, Atlanta, Speakola (speech transcript archive), 12 May 2014
source ↗
You must find a way to get in the way, you must find a way to get into trouble — good trouble, necessary trouble.
Recorded
Emory University Quadrangle, Atlanta, Emory News Center, Emory University, 12 May 2014
source ↗
As a participant in the movement, as I was sitting in, I came to that point where I lost all sense of fear.
When I was growing up on a farm in rural Alabama, I fell in love with raising chickens. They seem truly innocent. Whenever I'm around chickens, I feel happy.
My tendency to skip meals.
More on identity & self
Also answered this
Desmond Tutu, Malcolm Gladwell, Gloria Steinem, Jess Phillips, Robert Peston, Zack Polanski
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