As a young actress, Jane Fonda experienced sexism in multiple forms. In a 2016 essay, she wrote that from childhood she'd been taught, "that to be loved, a female has to be perfect: thin, pretty, having good hair, being nice rather than honest, ready to sacrifice, never smarter than a man, never angry." She added, "I assumed I was paid less than the men and that I didn't deserve more."
A year later, in an interview with Brie Larson, Fonda said that she'd been molested as a child, and fired for refusing to sleep with a boss. "I always thought it was my fault; that I didn't do or say the right thing," she said. She told the New Yorker, "For me, being a woman meant being a victim, being the loser, being the one that'll be destroyed."
Today, Fonda is a proudly outspoken feminist. She starred in 1980's 9 to 5, a comedy criticizing gender workplace discrimination, and in 2018 she pressed lawmakers to expand workplace protections for female domestic and farm workers facing pay inequality and sexual harassment. But even after she'd begun to publicly identify as a feminist, it took Fonda decades to address the sexism in her personal relationships with men. "It took me 30 years to get it, but it's OK to be a late bloomer as long as you don't miss the flower show," she wrote in the essay.
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