Free To Be You And Me After 40 Years: Why Marlo Thomas Had To Create It

The now-classic children’s album’s driving force remembers, in 1971, searching for books for her 3-year-old niece – and finding only (what now seem to us) rigid gender stereotypes. “My god, she thought. This is what she’s going to be reading. This is all there is for her to read. What am I going to do? Then she thought: I’ve got to make something that will obliterate this.”