American Masters

-It's sometimes surprising to discover the cumulative progress women have made in recent times. Just think. What field has not been enriched by females in art, theater, finance, politics, law, entrepreneurship, science? The list is as impressive as it is enlightening. To realize that we're no longer pioneers, the startling exception, the first to fly or swim or sail prodigious distances in bad weather. No longer the first to be elected, the first to discover cures in medicine or the first to untangle problems in science, math, or physics. No. We are multitudes, and society is clearly the better for our peaceful invasion. There is no modernity and no justice without the talent, the passion, and the steely intelligence of women. [ Lesley Gore's "You Don't Own Me" plays ] You don't own me I'm not just one of your many toys You don't own me Don't say I can't go with other boys And don't tell me what to do Don't tell me what to say And please, when I go out with you Don't put me on display 'cause You don't own me Don't try to change me... -As a young girl growing up where I did, you know, you see a young person, you see vulnerability probably, you see naivet\, all of those things, and so I tried my best to cover all of that up.

Laughs

I was just so tough around the edges. I always had on Timberlands, baggy jeans. I always pulled my hair back in a super-tight bun. I didn't wear any makeup. I always had headphones on. I was always listening to hip-hop. I was listening to Nas, Biggie. I was listening to Jay Z. And then at home, I was studying classical piano. I was studying Chopin and Satie, but I was definitely a little tough cookie.

Laughs

I'm definitely a nerd. I'm a cool-ass nerd, but I am definitely a nerd.

Laughs

I did graduate valedictorian of my high school, and I also graduated early. I always knew how to speak to people, because my mother is an extremely phenomenal, strong...intense woman who will grill you to no end, and if you don't know how to speak and defend yourself, you are lost. She really taught me how to communicate to people because of that and express myself clearly, and to also identify what it was about people that I could kind of, you know, relate to and relate them to me. Being able to see women like that showed me you can claim what you want out of your life. When I do sing or when I write, you know, I'm writing about these women, I'm writing about myself. I guess I'm maybe not comfortable being a celebrity. But I've definitely gotten used to what it means and how I would like to handle it. Somebody told me once that when you become successful, you are only the person that you've always been. So, if you are suddenly some type of tyrant, completely big-headed and out of this world, that's who you always were. You just felt like you had to hide it because you were trying to do what you had to do. Stevie Wonder said in his song, he said, "So make sure that you're in it but not of it." And I've always liked, when I heard that line, I was like, "That's me." You can be in it but not of it. I love the concept of rebel, challenging the mainstay. Sometimes you'll find yourself almost, you know, being told what you can't do, what you shouldn't do, what women don't do, what women aren't supposed to do. You'll hear a lot of those things, I think, sometimes, and I find that to be just because people are totally and utterly fearful. And we are so, so incredibly capable, to do everything that we can possibly imagine and the things we don't even know that we can do. We can do that, too. So, just be brilliant, you know, and be yourself. -Leaders are made by the situations that they're involved in. I think that some rise to the occasion and some do not. I spent World War II in London subjected to The Blitz. I spent a lot of time in air-raid shelters. After the war, my father became ambassador to Yugoslavia. And so, the little girl in national costumes who gives flowers at the airport -- that's what I used to do for a living. My parents' families had all probably been pretty well-to-do in their lives, but we came to America as immigrants. My greatest wish was to become a bona-fide American. I went to Wellesley, and I do think that it made a difference, because, first of all, I got a great education. Also, all the leadership roles were women roles -- you know, the president of the student body and the editor of the newspaper. You get used to leading. I had actually thought I might be a foreign correspondent. My husband was a reporter, and I thought I could get a job as a reporter. We were having dinner with his managing editor, and he said, "So, honey, what are you going to do?" And I said, "I'm going to get a job on a newspaper." And he said, "I don't think so. You can't work on the same paper as your husband, and you wouldn't want to compete with him on the other paper, so why don't you find something else to do?" When my name came up to be Secretary of State, people said that a woman couldn't be Secretary of State. The challenge, I think, was not so much how foreign leaders would regard me, because they knew that I was representing the United States, and besides, I arrived in a very large plane. In some ways, I had more problems with the men in our own government. Now, if I asked anybody if they would like to spend some time at Camp David, they would definitely say yes. And I'm saying that after two weeks in the rain with the Palestinians and Israelis, I didn't care if I ever went back. Ehud Barak, who was the Israeli Prime Minister at the time, had requested to go to Gettysburg. But he did not want to take Chairman Arafat with him, so I had to think up something for Chairman Arafat. So, I said to him, "You can either go to Harper's Ferry or come to my farm," and he decided to choose coming to my farm. All of a sudden, I realized that my daughter and all her friends were out there. As we're driving over, I thought, "I must be out of my mind." My youngest grandson at the time, who was 2, woke up from a nap, took one look at Arafat, and started screaming, and I thought, "This is a disaster." But it really all turned out to be very pleasant. It was one of those diplomatic moments that you couldn't have set up or rehearsed. My three daughters, in many ways, have kept my groundedness. No matter who I was, I am still their mother. We do talk about how do you do everything? And my answer -- I have no formula for anything, but I do say that women's lives come in segments. And I keep telling them, "You don't have to do everything all at once." One of the most important messages to young women is that it's a wonderful time of opportunity, but basically, young women can't forget how hard it's been. We need to respect each other and we need to help each other. -My dad always challenged me to fail, which really ended up being one of the greatest gifts of my life. He'd say, "What did you fail at?" And I would come home and say, "Dad, I tried out for this, and I was horrible." And it just reframed my thinking on failure. So for me and for my brother, failure wasn't the outcome. It ended up being not trying. Spanx really came from my own butt. I did not like the way that it looked in white pants. I had $5,000 in savings and an idea and some cellulite, thank God.

Laughs

At the time that I cut the feet out of control top pantyhose, I was selling fax machines door to door, I had never taken a business class, I'd never worked in fashion or retail, and I just simply wanted a better solution under my clothing. Spanx exists because I actually kept the idea a secret for one whole year. The moment you have an idea, that is when they are very, very vulnerable, but that's also the moment when we want to turn to a friend, a coworker, or a husband or a wife and say it. And out of love and concern, million-dollar ideas and billion-dollar ideas get squashed. And when I sat my friends and family down one year into it, I mean, I said, "Are you guys ready? It's footless pantyhose." I think they thought I was punking them. They were like, "What? Sweetie, if it's such a good idea, why doesn't it already exist? And even if it is a good idea, you'll spend your life savings and then the big guys will knock you off six months later." Because I had already been doing this for a year, I wasn't going to turn back. But I think if I had heard those things the day I cut the feet out of my pantyhose, I'd still be selling fax machines. The men making our undergarments were not spending all day in them, and if they were, they were not admitting it. So, I had a real tough time getting it made. Once I had the product made, I cold-called Neiman Marcus and asked the buyer to give me five minutes of her time. And she was the most impeccably dressed woman I've ever seen in my life. And I'm sitting in front of her -- I mean, I think even her pen matched her outfit. I was so nervous. I had my lucky red backpack from college, the Spanx in a ziplock bag, and a color copy of the package. And I said, "Okay," and I got it out, and I was in the middle of the explaining it to her, and then all of a sudden, I just stopped and said, "You know what? You got to come to the bathroom with me." And that's when she said, "Excuse me?" I said, "I know. it's a little -- Just please come to the bathroom with me." I went in the stall and put it on and came out of the stall without it on in the white pants, and she stood back and went, "I get it." That was a big moment of when all of the self-doubt, everybody telling me "no," which happened mostly on the manufacturing side -- I got to this "yes." Arriving at this level of success and knowing I got here being true and authentic and kind -- that's more important to me than the destination or where I've ended up. For women becoming really successful, there is a lot more attached to that than for men. I've got this fabulous husband who's just so proud of my accomplishments. I sat my husband down about 30 days before we got married, and I said, "Honey, I got to tell you something. I think I make more money than you think I do." -I am probably 1 of 25 women that fly for a major airline, so I understand when I'm at work walking through the terminals I get different types of looks. Some are looks of shock. Some are looks of admiration. I've been hugged, I've been kissed going through the airport. I've felt like a superstar. You know, I walk and people smile. They'll give me a thumbs-up. I just nod my head and smile back. Because I know what they're saying. I know what they're thinking. They're happy. They're happy to see me because they don't see someone that looks like me in this uniform flying an airplane like the one I fly. My mom came home one day, and she brought me this article. It was from like 1922 about Bessie Coleman. She actually had to go over to Europe to learn to fly. She just persevered. She was very determined. And I like to think that I took those characteristics from her. She was my first mentor -- a piece of paper, an article about a black female pilot. It just makes a difference to see someone who looks like you doing something that you want to do. I made a point to tell people that I wanted to be a pilot. And I had a history teacher. She approached me and said, "Nia, I have this article. It's an obituary." Something inside of me said, "You have to get to this funeral. You need to go there because you've never seen a black female pilot. Although she is dead, you need to see her -- someone that looks like you." I ditched school the next day. I went across town. And when I went there, I was quite disappointed because there was no body. While I was at the back of the church, trying to figure out how to leave the church to go back to school, I came across a black female who was in uniform, and I was like, "Oh, my goodness. I came here to see a dead one, and there's a live one." There was really never a time where I thought I was not going to fly. It's just something I've always wanted to do. Except there was one time where I was done, I was going to walk away. I had no desire to fly any more. That was it. And that was September 11th. I started taxing out to the runway for departure, and there was a lot of chatter on the radios. People were asking what was going on. Ground controllers weren't saying anything. In fact, they said -- At one point, they said, "Well, we do know, but we'd rather not say." That's when I'm looking over there, and I see another -- a plane flying low. When we watched it turn and hit the south tower, immediately the tower cleared us for takeoff. And...we took off. We took off. You train to handle an aircraft when you lose an engine, when your gear won't come down. You're trained for these situations. But this... The Red Cross counselor, she said, "Don't quit. Don't give up. That's exactly what they want you to do." It's a great feeling to fly. The best are the takeoffs. Those are the best for me. It's exhilarating. You have all this power.

Laughs

From that perspective, you just see things differently. Me, personally, I don't know how you can think there's not a God. Because when you're looking at all that's there, all that He created, it's just magnificent. -I was a sky worshiper as a child. And I grew up with, you know, 180 degrees of sky. And I spent a lot of time looking at it. I had a traditional American childhood with two parents, one father, one mother, four brothers, three sisters, lots of pets, like a monkey whose head had to be chopped off when he got rabies. Some psychotic relatives -- a crazy uncle in the attic the way most American families have. I am a New Yorker, one. I'm an artist, two. I'm a woman, three. When I started out as an artist, it was not like now, where there's a lot more attention to men and women. We were artists first of all, and we all kind of wore the same sort of clothes and we made the same sort of jokes. We just all worked together in a way that was, I'd have to say, comradely. It was not a sexless situation. Everybody had affairs with everybody else. I have a God complex, so I like to make things that were not there. And then I put them there. I'm just a control freak, an average American control freak. And I also like to see how my own mind works and put it out there. I never say what my work is about. I try to leave that up to people. As a person who often does public things, I get to see people and see their reactions to that. Or, like, eh... Or... Not that I want everybody to love it. In shows sometimes, I alter the voice because I get so sick of hearing myself. This has probably happened to you. You're just like, "What an idiot, going on and on like that. If I have to hear that voice... It's like torture." Also, I find that if I have a different voice, I'll have different things to say. And I'll say them differently. So, Fenway Bergamot is a character, sort of like an alter ego, I guess, who is somebody I use to try to get into the backs of people's minds. I was an MC for a celebration of the work of William Burroughs. That night, I was backstage.

Deep voice

And I had done this voice electronically altered, as the MC.

Normal voice

Bill is sitting on the desk, and he's going, "I liked your... I liked your speech." And I suddenly realized he thinks I'm a guy. He's coming on to me. And I was like...

Deep voice

"Thanks." -I was given to my aunt when I was a week old by my mom. It was a house filled with love, with excitement, with laughter, and then, unfortunately, my mom came back and took me away and put me in a convent. And my time with the nuns was not always pleasant. They used to beat the crap out of us. They firmly believed, you know, spare the rod, spoil the child. But the nuns also, because of their religion, taught me discipline and taught me how to be very tenacious. The nuns did give me that. I never had any aspirations to become an actor, but my time with the nuns in the convent, they always would pick me for all the shows they would put on. And since they were Catholic, you know it was a production. It never occurred to me, "Maybe I should pursue this as a career." For the film "Fearless," we were in Europe on a promotional tour. I get a knock on my hotel room late at night, and they go "Rosie, you got nominated for an Oscar!" And I go "Yeah, okay. Whatever." Slam the door. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. "What?" They go, "No, we're serious. You got nominated for an Oscar." I couldn't speak. I was in shock.

Voice breaking

'Cause here's the girl whose mom gave her away... and just wanted so much out of life... and I was being recognized by my peers, saying, "We see your hard work." It was a wonderful moment for me. Women of color, if you're over 40 and you get fat, you will work. But if you're hot and over 40 and a woman of color, they don't know what to do with you. Tell me what woman of color, whether she be Asian, Black, Latin, Native American -- ooh, they get the worst of it right? -- that is hot, got body going on, the hair is still sparkling, how many leads do you see them have? You have this big, fat, blubbery, male actor having a love scene with like a 20-year-old, and you're like, "For real? For real? But are you going to do that for us, too?" Doesn't happen. Put on the weight -- Welcome to "Big Momma's House."

Laughs

-It's an objective fact that I am a double amputee, but it's very subjective opinion as to whether or not that makes me disabled. I was raised to be very self-reliant. Figure it out. People are going to stare at you. People are going to point. In actuality, not being sheltered from any of that was a huge gift. I always understood people who just said that they just wouldn't take no for an answer. As a child, when doctors would tell me, "You're never going to be able to do this. You're not going to be able to do that," I just knew they were wrong. And they were. I would determine what I was going to do on these legs. I had set three world records in track. I had just gotten some notoriety as an athlete, and people would come up to me and say, "You're really pretty. You don't look disabled." And I thought, "That's so interesting, 'cause I don't feel disabled." I mean, in fact, the first time I ever saw that word put with my name, I was 19. It was the cover of a magazine, and it was something to the effect of like, "Disabled Athlete Aimee Mullins runs faster than you can." I was like, "Right. So why am I disabled?"

Chuckles

Inside the magazine, I was talking about how interesting it would be to use the fashion world and beauty advertising as a way to have a conversation that would only ever happen in these kind of heavy social-advocacy circles. That you could provoke people to think. Working with Alexander McQueen, I remember him rolling out, like, an architect's paper and there it was -- sort of life-size rendering of his vision of these incredible legs carved from solid ash and had grape vines and magnolias and were some of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

Voice breaking

And, um... And he made them for me. Maybe it's a Cinderella story in some way. The girl that never gets to go to the ball finally gets to go. And she gets to be the most beautiful one there. Yes, there are times when I have self-doubt. I just don't allow myself to stay there. And I think, "How is this going to contribute to me being able to be Aimee Mullins and not 'the disabled runner'?" "Right, oh, do you mean the disabled model?" "Oh, you mean the... chick with the legs"? I knew that between my stubborn nature and the insistence of society needing to see me in a certain way, I was going to win. The idea that that presumption isn't coupled with... the category of being less is the shift that I'm most excited about and grateful for. -My mother had this rule that I could read whatever I wanted as long as I went to the dictionary to look up whatever words I didn't understand. She didn't really believe in the whole censoring thing, so I read everything and anything. I mean, I was the kid who read "French Lieutenant's Woman" when I was 8, because I wanted to. I always knew I wanted to be a writer. I was dictating stories into a tape recorder when I was like 3 or 4 years old and trying to get my mother to type them up. I was a writer, but I always thought I had to then go get a job. My parents did not understand how they had spent all this money on my education and I would go off and be a staving writer. So I moved to San Francisco, and I was living in my sister's basement with her and her two kids and her husband and trying to figure out what I wanted to do. The idea that there's suddenly no plan is, I don't know, breathtaking in its terror. I don't see obstacles as obstacles, and I don't feel challenged by challenges. If somebody is saying no to you and closing a door on your face, that doesn't mean you're no good. It means that that's their problem. You just go on to the next thing. There's a great amount of arrogance that comes with that that I am really proud that I was instilled with, because it really does make me resilient. I always feel like my characters do most of the talking for me. They're much more eloquent than I am, and they say it much better than I could. Every single time. They're the feminist voice every single time. I've always knew I wanted to have kids, but was never quite sure I wanted to have a husband. Like, I was always, "Maybe he could live next door. Maybe he could live across the street." I stare into my daughter's face, I, like, see my childhood reflected back at me, and I think, "Oh, my God. I am so grateful to my mother." Because I now realize how much she probably wanted to kill me and did not. I was talking to somebody, and she said, "Everybody is supposed to say they're a mother first. That's the boldest thing you ever said." And I thought, "I didn't think that was that bold." I've been a writer for 45 years. I've only been a mother for 12. In other times, women weren't expected to do all of the things that they do. Working women always try to pretend they do everything. I don't cook. I don't clean. So when I am at home, the time I'm spending with my kids is fun. Nobody ever asks a man how he gets stuff done. Nobody asks a man how he finds balance. Gender equality is something that we should all be going for. I don't know why anybody wouldn't want that to happen. I'm disturbed by the fact that people think that "feminist" is a bad word. I'm disturbed by the fact that young women think that "feminist" is a bad word. It's as if they want guys to think they're cute and they'd rather be cute than equal, which is really disturbing. -When I was born in Baltimore, Maryland, many years ago, we were devoutly Catholic, deeply patriotic, and staunchly Democratic. My father was a member of Congress, and when I was in first grade, he became the mayor of Baltimore. Our family was involved in every local, state, or national election. If you walked into our home, at the entrance you would always see placards, pins, buttons, bumper stickers. I never had any interest in going into politics myself. You have to remember this was a long time ago, and the focus was always on young men in politics. I went from the kitchen to the Congress, from the home to the House Speaker. So it wasn't as if I was on a road or a path to this job. I only returned to political life as an extension of my role as mother. It just seemed so unfair to me that our children had every possible advantage in terms of personal attention, love and affection, opportunity, and the rest and so many other children did not. I always say to young women to know their power. Whatever it is that you have done, be it at home or at work or in the academic world or wherever it is -- in the military -- understand that it has made you uniquely qualified. There's nobody like you. Nothing has been more wholesome for the political and governmental process than the increased participation of women. In this arena -- and it's an arena in every sense of the word -- if you throw a punch, you better be ready to take one. When I went to my first leadership meeting at the White House, President Bush was president, and I realized that this was unlike any other meeting I had ever been to at the White House. In fact, it was unlike any meeting that any woman had ever been to at the White House. I could feel it very crowded on my chair. And then I realized that on my chair, right then and there, in that White House, was Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, you name it -- all sitting on that chair with me. I could hear them say, "At last, we have a seat at the table." And then they were gone. My first thought was, "We want more. We want more. We want more women. We want more minorities. We want more diversity." So you cannot let political jabs deter you ever. I always said that because the American people are so far ahead of the political arena and Congress that it'd be easier for a woman to be elected President than to be elected Speaker of the House. Little did I know that I would be that Speaker. What felt also very gratifying was the response that I got from across the country. I was particularly impressed by fathers. Fathers wrote to me saying now they knew that their daughter had another opportunity available to her. When I was growing up, say, in the '50s, it wasn't quite the same. Fathers were more protective, and now fathers saw all the possibilities for their daughters. -I got a call to audition for a thing called "Sopranos." I thought it was about singers. I read the part and thought, "Yeah, this is really good. I know exactly who this person is. They'll never cast me 'cause I don't look like an Italian wife." People loved this thing I was a part of. People talk about it in regard to television history and things like that, and you don't get that in a lifetime. I love what I do for a living, and people are acknowledging me for it. It seems like an embarrassment of riches, frankly. I completely believe that I am who I am when I am them.

Laughs

So, Nurse Jackie is as real to me as Carmela was when I was being her. She's also trying to be a parent and also not doing it perfectly and in the face of an addiction, which she only periodically cops to. Something with the show, that, you know, I am... I'm a sober person, so I didn't -- It's funny to be doing a comedy where she's a drug addict. So it was important to me that there be, at some point, there be ramifications for the life that she's living. I was walking down the street, and some guy -- some kind of scary-looking dude came out of the subway and said "Aah, Nurse Jackie, I do the same drugs you do." And I thought to myself, "Holy crap."

Laughs

That's not the feedback I was going for. It did make me realize at a certain point that if people are watching the stuff that I do, that I got to think long and hard about the jobs I take. There is no question that sobriety has made me a better actor, made me a better person. I'm in therapy. I have been for a very long time. Hugely helpful. The sort of kinks in your personality that you'd rather not really look at, they're getting fewer and further between, which means that all those little secret places are now available to me to express when I'm working. I'm so excited by what I get to do. My love for acting has only grown, and when I see someone who's doing it so beautifully, it brings me such tremendous joy. There's no room for jealousy. Huge -- that's a huge thing in my book. I've made a lot of decisions in my life that were, at the moment, a little bit confusing, even though an external part of me is saying, "Oh, my gosh, Edie, what the hell is the plan here? You know, what...?" And there was a little bit of that when I started filling out the paperwork for adoptions. I thought, Really?" Without fail, in retrospect, I am, you know, beyond grateful that I have some sort of guidance that I'm not consciously aware of that has always led me to these phenomenal places, like being the mother of two kids by myself. Couldn't have asked for a better life. -In my business, you like being scared. You like the edge. So you never really know, does somebody like it or not? You just have to put it out there and pray and hope that there's somebody that relates to it. Mademoiselle magazine ran this contest every year where they selected 20 girls out of America. I still have the telegram from Betsey Blackwell, "Congratulations. You are 1 of our 20 guest editors." And I was wearing my own clothes to work. Everyone's saying, "You should be a designer." I said, "Yeah, I'd love to be a designer, but I have no credits in college." So I couldn't get an interview. I went to Paul Young, who was the genius behind the store Paraphernalia. But it was literally go-go dancers in the window, and it was weirdly filled with heavy-duty socialites, power, money and it was all about "art." I go in there with color crayon drawings and my suitcases. He said, "Could you just start working in 2 weeks"? So I just did what I wanted every day. The only trick was it had to sell. When I was in the business, making my clothes, nobody was kind of seeing the street America. I would do the costumes for the Velvets. Lou wanted gray suede with a good crotch. Nico wanted white, white, white, and John wanted black velvet and he wanted his hands on fire. And I thought, "That's the guy for me."

Laughs

We decided to get married. I went in a beautiful pantsuit. It was a velvet pantsuit. They sent me home. I went back with the tiniest little crotch skirt, and they married me. And you literally could see my rear, my crotch. They didn't care about that. You could take LSD, but you couldn't wear a pantsuit.

Laughs

My last husband liked boobs. He says, "You make sexy clothes. Why don't you get boobs?" I said, "Okay." I didn't like them, but somehow I forgot about them. And 10 years later, I go to have a massage and I'd always have to roll a towel under me. I go to roll the towel under, and there's no left boob. But there's this P. There's this hard-as-a-rock P. You'd think that there would be a woman in the industry that has cancer that would talk about it, but I didn't tell anyone but my daughter Lulu, because I thought I wouldn't stay in business. People wouldn't sell me fabric. "She's going to die. Don't sell her fabric." Nobody knew. I did my fashion show and the cartwheel through it. So you got -- That's my big cause. I'm a grandma, which I never thought I'd live to know. Even though my work still is the pull on my life and my head, which I'm happy about, I finally have another pull, so I finally feel a little completely happy rather than happy here or happy there. I kind of feel I have it all now. -Oh, my mother loves when I make fun of her. The funniest thing is she thinks it should be somehow polished and embellished and highlighted, but the raw truth of who she is is really the exciting thing. When I was 14, I told her I was going to drop out of high school and go do stand-up comedy. All she said was, "Oh, maybe it's better if you just die." Because it was killing her that I was doing this. I think that's why I talk about her a lot in my work and my stand-up comedy -- She's a very comical figure to me. She's also the voice of my Asianess. She's the voice of the part of me that is eternally an immigrant and eternally an outsider. When I was born, my father was immediately deported. I spent a lot of time shuttling back and forth to Korea because that was the only way that they could see me. It was sort of the only way that they could really be in contact with each other. They didn't have Skype. They would give me to a stewardess and just, "Bye!" I could not imagine parents today putting their infant in the arms of a stranger, even though that stranger's got a cute little jaunty Pan Am outfit. They would actually pass me back and forth on a plane, on a 13-hour flight from San Francisco to Seoul. My father and I shared a love of comedy, and it's probably inappropriate, but he was showing me Richard Pryor films when I was like 9, 10 years old and laughing at the television laughing at George Carlin, laughing at Flip Wilson. Throughout the process of coming up as a comedian, there's so much comradery and friendship that women are not privy to. Women are really looked at as outsiders, and so oftentimes the women that are successful in comedy, as far as I know, are women who don't care what men think. A lot of my Asian-American peers had trouble going into professions that they wanted to go into because their parents were pressuring them so much for their entire lives to be doctors or lawyers or professions that they could understand and control. And, for me, I kind of didn't care what anybody thought. When I was working on the television show "All American Girl," which was the first Asian-American family on television, we were faced with so much scrutiny in terms of "racial accuracy." And if you look at all of television, there really is no "racial accuracy" for white people. You can sort of tell white people stories, and you can make up. You are able to fantasize "What if?" You know, there is a lot of "What if?" We were not allowed that. So we had experts in Korean culture and language come -- that we had to be accurate - culturally accurate. And now I realize that that's... I am a lot of different things that we don't expect comedy to be, but I'm also a very successful stand-up comedian. I love the art form. I love it so deeply and so intensely. Of course the accolades and everything are great. It's all amazing. But to me, the simple act of actually writing a joke and going on stage and having it work is so profoundly joyous that it's something that is as essential as breathing. You know, it's like the way I communicate with the world. -My family wanted me to be curious about the world. That led to me running around on a small pink tricycle during one of the cicada storms, and all the little boys on our street running and screaming from the cicadas and me collecting them so that I could dissect them to determine what a cicada was structured like. My first attempt at an invention was a time machine, which I was completely convinced could be built. I have a whole lab notebook detailing these designs. What I was interested in was not necessarily where I would go, but how you would build it. This concept of quantum mechanics and quantum physics. I got very interested in what that means at a technical level at a pretty early age. I have gone through what so many people have gone through, seeing what it means for people you love to get really sick. If only we'd known sooner, if only there was something that we could've done. I've never felt empowered, either as a patient in our healthcare system, or as a loved one. I have to do something to change this, because it is incredibly painful. I was at Stanford studying chemical and electrical engineering. I called my parents and I told them that I was going to leave to build this company, and they let me take the money that I know would have let my parents retire to work to build a system that could empower people with access to this incredibly powerful information to realize a world in which prevention becomes a reality. That, to me, was the greatest dream that I could pursue with my life. I believe in the unlimited power of women in the context of science and engineering. Wherever there is a glass ceiling, there's an iron woman right underneath it. One of the most important things that I can now do with my life is to try to serve as a proof point, especially for young girls, around what you can do. I am inspired all the time by the women who work in this company. What's so wonderful about it, in addition to seeing them live their potential in terms of their technical excellence, is to listen to them talk about their daughters. How their daughters see them being incredible mothers and being incredibly successful as engineers and leaders in a cutting-edge technology company and how we set that paradigm. This is a new generation that's growing up seeing that and believing that's normal, and that's how we make a change. -Being tall and big was probably more painful than being black. And then you pair that with a bigger-than-life personality, which I've always had, and you get somebody who's up for a lot of ridicule. "Oh, shut up, fatso," you know? I've been used to being ridiculed so much in my life that now, as an adult, going against the grain is just a way of life. If I fall, if my wig is tilted, if my eyelash is unglued, warts and all, here I am. When I became a freshman in college, my major was communications and my minor was journalism. And I started out doing news, until one day, one of the deejays was sick and they asked me to be a deejay. I quickly realized that I could not live the life of a newscaster. You know, I don't like newscaster-type husbands. I don't want newscaster fingernails. I don't want newscaster hair. I can't be a newscaster. I'm going to be a radio deejay. I've had to fight the fight all of my life. And if you're going to tell me that I got something because I'm a woman, I'll say, "Well, thanks. But I'm going to show you that I would've gotten it anyway." I enjoy being able to be saucy and bossy, you know, at work and going home and being soft and pink. I love being married. I've been married now for 17 years. And my husband's younger than me. And I like it that way. I'm like a junkyard dog, okay? I scrap and fight and bite and kick. And I fought tooth and nail to be a mother. I suffered several miscarriages, including two at 5 months. That's when you have the clothes, you know, already picked out, the nursery is already painted, they ask you do you want a funeral or do you want a cremation or -- I mean, you know, we went through that not once but twice, me and my husband. So our Kevin is a hard-won child. I would've loved to have had more children, but I don't want to test my blessing. Being a mother is for me. It's not for everybody. It's for me. 21st century woman thinks she can do it all... but she can't. I know because I'm one of those women. You can't do it all well. How are you supposed to be a good lover a good friend, a good mother? How are you supposed to be at your "how you doin'" best when you go out and people say, "How you doin'?" I attempt to do it all, but I'm not good at all of it. I've been asked where did I get my style. A style is something that you eventually get tired of and you put it in the back of your closet like clothing. I am who I am. Wendy. -I remember when I first had my daughter, and I was home ironing and watching "I Love Lucy" -- Always in a constant state of rebellion, wanting something more in her life and yet always being denied it. But she would always find a creative way to get, or try to get, what she wanted. When I was about 25 years old, I decided that I wanted to move from Philadelphia to California. I had two suitcases, $100, a 5-year-old child, and a lot of dreams. And I was a single parent. One year after the Watts riots, there had been a great deal of white flight of teachers out of the schools, and I asked to teach in Watts. I felt there was nothing to fear, even though the neighborhood had been burned down, because I knew they were just young people and that they wanted change and they wanted a better life. In civil rights, we are not politicians. We are attorneys. What we seek is often not popular at the moment, but later it is. And if people call me names, I see that as a victory because I know they don't have any good argument on the merits. Most people who recognize me are very supportive. People ask me for assistance when I am on airplanes, in a parking lot, and one time someone even asked me for my card when I was in the stall of a women's restroom. I encourage those who have been the victims of injustice to be assertive and to seek out those who will help them. The reason that I am a feminist and so dedicated to winning justice for women is because of my own life experience. I have been also myself a victim of sexual assault, a person who was unable to get an abortion when it was safe and legal and almost died. Because I recognized, for example, that I was a person who had difficulty collecting court-ordered child support and then found there were millions of other mothers who also couldn't collect their child support and therefore had to live lives of poverty and often go onto welfare, where they didn't want to be, I realized that I had a duty to help to win change. Men of quality are not threatened by a woman of equality. A feminist is simply a person who believes in legal, social, political, and economic equality for women with men. It should not be a dirty word. It should be a word of which we are all proud. If a person is not a feminist, I have to believe they are a bigot. I believe in first-class citizenship. And so, we should all be proud to be feminists. [ Aretha Franklin's "Respect" plays ] Ooh What you want Ooh Baby, I got it Ooh What you need Ooh Do you know I got it? Ooh -To learn more about "The Women's List" and other American Masters, visit pbs.org/americanmasters or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. Mister Just a little bit -"The Women's List" is available on DVD. To order, visit ShopPBS.org or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS. Ooh All I'm askin' Ooh Is for a little respect when you come home Just a little bit Baby Just a little bit When you get home Just a little bit Yeah Just a little bit I'm about to give you all of my money And all I'm askin'...