Carrie Brownstein, Megan Rapinoe, Lucy Sante, Kara Swisher, and Kirsten Vangsness reflect on their journeys and careers in this special Pride episode of Design Matters.
“Really, until I figured out that I was gay and I was like, “Okay, this all makes a lot more sense.”
“Oh, I swear. Wasn’t there a field hockey coach you’re like, hmm…”
“I think I still am invested in being a little bit of a weirdo, but really I was so weird.”
Announcer:
From the Ted Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Millman. For 19 years, Debbie Millman has been talking with designers and other creative people about what they do, how they got to be who they are, and what they’re thinking about and working on. On this episode, we’re breaking format, and in celebration of Gay Pride month, we’re going to hear excerpts from some recent interviews Debbie has done.
“I would love a tub of [inaudible 00:00:44]. It was a truly virginal version.”
“I was trying to talk myself back into the closet.”
Debbie Millman:
One of my deepest curiosities is how people become who they are professionally and personally. As a gay woman who came out much later in life, I’m curious about how some of my guests have come to terms with their own sexual and gender identities.
So this week, in celebration of Gay Pride month, I want to play a few excerpts from the last year or so. They’re not all about sexual or gender identity, but they all touch on the awkward, sometimes painful process of people becoming who they want to be.
First up, soccer legend, Megan Rapinoe. She’s a two time World Cup champion and an Olympic gold medalist. She came out publicly in 2012 back when most gay athletes didn’t talk about such things. I spoke with her in December of 2022.
You were born and raised in Redding, California. Your dad worked as a commercial fisherman, a car salesman, a crane operator, and was the owner of a construction company. Your mom worked as a dental assistant, a clerk at a shipping company, and for over 30 years has worked the late shift at Jack’s Grill. So I assume, it’s safe to say you inherited their work ethic?
Megan Rapinoe:
I think so, yeah. Both of them just continue to be hard workers. We’re at the point now where I’m like, “You just retire, you guys, we’re done with the working. You can just live your lives now.” Yeah, you get up and you do your job every day, and it’s hard, sometimes, and you don’t like it, and it’s not always what you want to do. But it’s oftentimes in service of the things that you do want to do. So that sort of makes it all worth it.
Debbie Millman:
You’re the youngest of the family, but also have a fraternal twin sister named Rachel. I understand when you were a child, you were shy, and let Rachel speak for you. That went back and forth several times, that sort of dynamic changed over the years, but when did you start speaking up for yourself?
Megan Rapinoe:
Yeah, it’s really interesting. We’ve gone through these sorts of ebbs and flows. We’re like each other’s yin and yang, our sort of perfect balance. So I was pretty gregarious, I think, growing up. When we first went to kindergarten, I was the one speaking for her. She was painfully shy, and for that reason, my mom split us up. My parents split us up, once we got into 1st grade, pretty much all the way through. In high school, we started taking classes together, just because it was… You don’t have the same class all the time.
But around 5th and 6th grade, I think that’s when puberty started to happen. I feel like I showed up for 5th grade, or 6th grade, and everything was different, it was so bizarre. I could never really figure it out, really, until I figured out that I was gay and I was like, “Okay, this all makes a lot more sense to me. Everything is making a lot more sense now.”
I mean, I still definitely found so much comfort in sports, and being able to just be myself there. But really, from 6th grade until college, it was, especially in middle school, I mean, quite literally, following Rachel around.
We tell this funny story, at times, she would turn around and actually run into me, because I was just right there. She’s like, “What are you doing?” I’m like, “I don’t know. I have no idea what I’m doing. You’re the one that’s supposed to know what you’re doing, so I can follow you.” High school was a little bit better, found my feet a little bit more. But I think, once I figured out I was gay, it just seemed like the whole world made sense for the first time.
Debbie Millman:
Megan Rapinoe. Oh, and the awkwardness of those years, almost everyone can relate. Except, maybe, Kara Swisher. She’s now one of the premier tech journalists of our time. She’s also a New York Times bestselling author. As a young person, she seemed to know exactly who she was. Her problem was her mom. I spoke with her in front of a live audience in the fall of 2023, and I was joined on stage by my wife, Roxane Gay.
Speaking of mothers, Kara, I understand that you knew you were gay when you were four years old?
Kara Swisher:
Four years old.
Debbie Millman:
Bravo, by the way.
Kara Swisher:
Yeah. Thank you.
Debbie Millman:
But didn’t come out to your mom-
Kara Swisher:
But you were a little later, right?
Debbie Millman:
50.
Kara Swisher:
50? Wow. Come on.
Debbie Millman:
Very different upbringings.
Kara Swisher:
Come on.
Debbie Millman:
Very different.
Kara Swisher:
I don’t believe you. It’s like-
Debbie Millman:
Oh, I swear. I swear.
Kara Swisher:
Wasn’t there like a field hockey coach, you’re like, “Mm?”
Roxane Gay:
Oh, well, I mean, I think she’ll admit she came out at 50, but-
Debbie Millman:
I dabbled pre-50. I call it dabbling. I dabbled. But yeah, and I mean, you and I are at the same age, so I think you know how it was sometimes scary to-
Kara Swisher:
No.
Debbie Millman:
No? For me it was scary. I grew up in a somewhat homophobic environment.
Kara Swisher:
Yeah, me too.
Debbie Millman:
Yes, I know. When you told your mother, she told you… Well, you said that you told her in a spectacular way over the phone.
Kara Swisher:
Yes.
Debbie Millman:
I want to know what that spectacular way was. But at that point, she told you she would never speak to you again and then wouldn’t stop speaking to you for the rest of your life.
Kara Swisher:
Yes, exactly. I knew it was an empty threat. She’s full of empty threats, so that’s why I’m like, “Yeah, whatever. Sure.”
Debbie Millman:
So what spectacular way did you tell her?
Kara Swisher:
I always said, every now and then, and I think I’m going to forgive her, but one of the… Because people grew up, you have to at some point say, okay, this is how they grew up. Although my grandmother was fantastic. She’s like, “Yeah, I knew.” Then she was like, “Yeah, whatever.” Then I was going out with someone and she’s like, “She’s too pretty for you.” My grandmother said that, and I was like, she is. Yeah, that’s fair. That’s fair.
Debbie Millman:
But what about the boy in 12th grade?
Kara Swisher:
He was a nice guy. He’s a good guy. Actually, I had a lot of boyfriends, actually. But what happened was she’d say little things like, “If you were gay, I won’t speak to you.” That was the… I was like, okay, got it. I always promised if she said it to me, asked me directly, I would answer directly. I was going to dinner with someone, I think it was 22 years old or something, with the person I was seeing at the time. We were just going out to dinner for my birthday. She’s like, “What are you doing for your birthday?”
I said, “Oh, I’m going out with this woman.” She goes, “Alone?” I go, “Yeah, that’s right.” This is this phone call. You can hear that. She goes, “It’s almost like you’re going out.” That’s what she said. You’re going out with her. I go, “Mom, you have won the Chrysler Cordoba. You finally had the guts to ask the question you’ve always wanted to ask, and you’ve been spinning around. You win. Fantastic.” Then she said the most horrible things to me. It was terrible. Said she wouldn’t speak to me and this and that.
I had had to go up to New York for a family thing that weekend, which was really uncomfortable. What happened is it’s an Italian family, so there’s a lot of strategy going on with this group of people. So I immediately called my brothers, my grandmother. I got everyone in line on my side, and she was too late. I was too fast with the phone. So I went up and I had to see her, and she tried everything. “You don’t like men?” I’m like, “I love my brothers. I’ve had boyfriends. I like men. Why would I…” There’s an old joke, lesbians don’t hate men. They don’t have to sleep with them. I said, that joke, she didn’t like that. It didn’t go over well.
Then I tried a bunch of things like hate men. I’ve got these… I don’t know, just, “The people will never speak to you.” I was like, “Everyone’s talking to me. They’re kind of irritated by you.” When you’re in that kind of relationship, you know where you have to have your ammo, essentially. Over time, she got better. She was actually getting a divorce from my stepfather, and she needed me.
So very soon after, she needed my help. So I think that was better. But it’s been a struggle until I had kids, and even after I had kids, she was difficult, I would say. She would buy worse presents for my girlfriends, which drove me crazy. I would make her take them back and get a better present. Whenever she did something nice, she goes, “See, I’ve been nice.” I’m like, “We don’t negotiate with terrorists. You have to behave.” The whole thing. I would do that. It was really tough on her.
Even when I had one of my kids and obviously adopted the other, my ex had the other one, before the kid was born. She was like, “I’m not a grandmother.” That kind of thing. Stuff like that. But she loves all the kids. It just didn’t stick. Once you start to get the familiarity…
Debbie Millman:
Kara Swisher. Now from someone who seems to have always known who she was to someone who really had a rough time of it growing up, Kirsten Vangsness is most famous for playing Penelope Grace Garcia on the popular TV show Criminal Minds. Her becoming a successful actor was not an obvious outcome for someone who grew up in a troubled, chaotic household.
You started keeping a journal when you were in the 4th grade. Were you writing stories? Were you recounting episodes from your life?
Kirsten Vangsness:
I was writing about things that were happening. I mean, I have a Snoopy journal that’s just like the sweetest little Snoopy journal with a lock and whatever, and you open it up and it’s like, “My mom and dad are bitches. I’m going to kill everyone.” I mean, it is lewd. It’s terrible. My sister stole it one time, and she wrote this very long diatribe.
But I counted how I felt. I’ve always felt like if I can write it down and I can see it on a piece of paper, because my memory is so strange, and then to be, I’m going to say gaslighted growing up, and being told, “That’s not what happened. Kirsten, you lie.” You have to take that, when it gets told to you so much, you take that into your world.
So now I just, “Oh, I lie. Kirsten’s a liar.” Okay, got it. I’m just going to write in here what I want because it’s not going to hurt anybody. I can be as explicit as I need to be, and if I’m lying, okay. It gave me a place. I just think it’s so valuable for anybody at first. It’s a pain, but it’s like there is somebody there reflecting back, eventually. At first, no, but eventually there’s a witness. There’s a something.
I mean, it took me a bit. I mean, I was bananas until my… I mean, I was bad bananas for a while. But it’s turned around. It takes a bit. But yeah, it really helped me.
Debbie Millman:
I feel that way too. I was bad bananas until I was about 40.
Kirsten Vangsness:
Okay, that makes me feel good.
Debbie Millman:
Maybe even into the ’40s.
Kirsten Vangsness:
Into the ’40s, I was making some terrible decisions, some dangerous, terrible decisions. To be sweet, or to be nice, or I hate the word nice, to be kind or whatever. But then even in the background, in the shadow, having someone over here that I’m intimate with that knows I’m terrible, so that out in the world I’m celebrated. But over here, this is who I really am.
That split that I grew up with because in my house it was so you don’t share. I couldn’t help but share. That’s the other reason why the journal is very helpful is because there are no secrets. I’ve been told I’m a liar my whole life, and yet I cannot keep things about me to myself. I’m compelled to share. So it’s a weird dichotomy. The journal helped.
Debbie Millman:
Well, it’s so interesting that you were writing so much, but you were also painfully shy. I know that by the time you entered 8th grade, you were so shy, you stopped talking.
Kirsten Vangsness:
Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
You did poorly in school. By the time you went to Cerritos High School, your mom gave you an ultimatum. You had to take shop or drama. Now I find this so interesting. Why did she choose those particular topics?
Kirsten Vangsness:
Well, I think that getting me out of my shell, and I had already, since I had done the community college, and when I was in junior high in Porterville, I really did love drama class. But I was bullied, thrown in trash cans, and I was the girl that people invite… I got invited to one sleepover once, and it was legitimately just, this is the girl we’re going to terrorize. It was relentless and it was slightly better than being at home, but I didn’t like it. You know what I mean?
You don’t know when you’re going to get punched in the face. I would make it worse. I would say things like, “I’m like, Gandhi, I’m a peacekeeper.” Well, you’re getting punched. Or I would make jokes about it or whatever. I would make it, it would become more of a thing. I mean, I think I still am invested in being a little bit of a weirdo, but really, I was so weird.
When we moved, we had moved and I was like, I can’t take it. We moved to Cerritos. Cerritos was, I remember that people had money, and there were girls in whole outfits in yellow. I thought, how much money do you have to have if you could have a whole outfit in the color yellow? I just decided to stop. It was very hard to pay attention in school. My parents were in tumultuous situations, so they’re not really paying attention and sort of every person for themselves.
But my mother is wonderful and was struggling in this relationship with a guy that I really think she came from a place of, you’re supposed to be with a man for the girls to be in a stable… So I really think she was trying. I mean, I know, she was trying really hard. But I think that she has these moments my whole life where she’s just done these sorts of incredible things that someone else might be like, what is that?
It’s like she’s the perfect mom for me. That was one of those things where she was like, you can do this or do this. I didn’t want to do shop, because that seemed scary. Drama seemed a different kind of scary. Shop seemed boring scary and rules, and drama just seemed terrifying, but I would love to do it. But I’ve always had that thing of like, oh, I’m not invited to that party. That seemed like no one wants me. I’m not the person that gets to go to that party.
Then I went into class and our first two assignments, we didn’t have to talk. I got an A-
Debbie Millman:
It was pantomime, right?
Kirsten Vangsness:
Yeah. I had never gotten an A on anything. I mean, teachers would always go, “Kirsten’s really creative or whatever,” and they liked me and all that. But just to get an A in something for just trolloping around in my imagination, it was… Yeah. I was hooked.
Debbie Millman:
Kirsten Vangsness.
Debbie Millman:
King Princess is a celebrated singer-songwriter who is still in their mid-twenties. Most of my guests have more of their life behind them, and if King Princess seems like an old soul, it may be because she got a headstart. Is it true you wrote your first song called Jackie the Dog when you were five?
King Princess:
Yeah, that is my first song.
Debbie Millman:
Any chance you remember any of the lyrics?
King Princess:
I don’t. It was kind of a blues number, a bit of a classic 1, 4, 5, and my dad would just, I mean, he thought it was so entertaining to just put me on a microphone and just play a little Diddy and just have me sing. He thought it was so funny. He thought I had really good timing.
Debbie Millman:
Well, didn’t he also have you redo backup vocals for musicians who provided backups that he didn’t like?
King Princess:
Yeah, I mean, I would do that sometimes. I was kind of like a fun party trick. “She can really sing.” I was like, yeah, I did that. I sang some background vocals for people, kind of just wanted to participate wherever I was welcome. I’d bring my homework in there and not do it and just sit and watch everybody because it was so interesting to me.
Debbie Millman:
Oh my God, I can’t imagine. It seems like just paradise. As you were growing up, I read that you liked Madonna and Cher, Lauryn Hill, and femme Rock and Roll Boys like Prince and David Bowie and Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin and Roger Daltrey from The Who, who you once referred to as femme motherfuckers, which I kind of loved.
King Princess:
They are.
Debbie Millman:
What did you like most about them?
King Princess:
I think I related to them gender-wise. I felt like maybe I didn’t fit in any traditional idea of femininity and that these men were the closest thing I had to what I felt like I was, which was just a gender-amorphous, femme but not femme person. There wasn’t a wealth of queer representation like there is now, or at least queer representation that I related to.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It’s so interesting that masculinity is allowed to be feminine, but not the other way around without a lot of controversy.
King Princess:
Well, back in the day, I mean, I feel like it was like the hot guys dressed in ladies’ clothes.
Debbie Millman:
Oh yeah. I mean, look at the lead singer from Aerosmith, who I think looks like an old lesbian at this point.
King Princess:
Oh my God. Legend.
Debbie Millman:
Steven Tyler. Right?
King Princess:
So I saw Steven Tyler one time. I was walking home really drunk in high school from my friend’s house. I was walking to the train and I passed by him and he’s got his scarves and he’s with his entourage, and I walked by him and I was like, “Oh my God.” And I turned around and him and I at the same time threw up a peace sign.
Debbie Millman:
Your mother worked in clothing throughout your childhood and you’d go to trade shows and enjoyed the performative nature of it and experimenting with who you could be. And I read that you said that you realized that clothing and makeup were armor, and I was wondering if you felt like that was a good thing or a bad thing?
King Princess:
I think it’s a really powerful thing that can be wielded to make incredible art and to promote self-expression, especially with the young people. For a really long time, I feel like clothes were used to promote conformity and makeup was used to mask your face to be traditionally feminine and again, conform to society. And now it’s like, I just think that there’s so much fun to be had with those things. When you look at drag culture, when you look at ballroom culture, when you look at just eighties and nineties in New York, it’s like, look at the way people were using clothes and makeup, especially people who didn’t have the money for quote-unquote “designer”. It was about making things, making creations, whether it was makeup or clothing and using them as costume. Whereas I think sometimes people think costume is to become someone else, I think that costume can be used to figure out parts of yourself you didn’t know.
For me, the thought of going into a Sephora as a kid was horrifying. I just had no idea where to start. That was not my zhuzh. I didn’t understand makeup, and now it’s like I do my makeup every night before a show and it’s become this thing that is, it’s a ritual and it makes me feel powerful. And I experiment and I try new things and I’ve had people like my makeup artist, Sarah, who’s lovely enough to teach me. There’s a great power in clothing and in makeup, and I think that the more that we see people play with it, the more the needle turns away from these informative, outdated uses.
Debbie Millman:
I read about, or no, actually, I heard about it on your origin story that you did with Audible where somebody gave you a Barbie head and it made you cry.
King Princess:
It was so funny. It was at Thanksgiving at my girlfriend’s family’s house, and they pulled out this massive tub of Barbies that Quinn and her mother collected, and they had really rare ones. Now I’m obsessed. When I have kids, I want Barbies because it’s so sick. But when I was a kid, it just felt like somebody was telling me, “You should play with this.” It just felt hurtful because I don’t know if I had the language, I didn’t have the language to be like, “That doesn’t feel right. That’s not really my zhuzh. That’s not my thing.” But I’m so comfortable with myself now that it’s like I would love a tub of Barbies. You know what I mean?
Debbie Millman:
King Princess, also known as Mikaela Mullaney Straus. Now to another singer-songwriter, Carrie Brownstein. In the 1990s, she co-founded the band Sleater-Kinney, but several years before that, she had an important encounter with the material girl.
Your dad took you to your first concert when you were in the fifth grade. Tell us about who you saw.
Carrie Brownstein:
Yes. Well, in 1985, Madonna was touring for her seminal album Like a Virgin. So she was on the Virgin tour and she actually started that tour in Seattle. She played three nights at the Moore Theatre, which is… Actually, it might be the Paramount, so someone can fact-check that. Anyway, a really small theater. 2,000 capacity. Beastie Boys were opening, they were booed off-stage, by the way. People hated those guys.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, I read that in your memoir and was laughing out loud.
Carrie Brownstein:
People just thought, “What a bunch of brats up there.” And I went to the first night and it was incredible. I mean, there were costume change after costume change and all the hits and it was exhilarating,
Debbie Millman:
And I believe you dressed up as Madonna at that time.
Carrie Brownstein:
I mean, my very young version of that. My parents were, they weren’t strict, but you can do a lace glove like Madonna, but you’re certainly not going to have a bra. I probably wasn’t even wearing a bra. What would be showing? So it was a very chaste, it was a virginal, it was a truly virginal version.
Debbie Millman:
I believe that it was seeing that show that first ignited the feeling that you would much rather be the object of desire than dole it out from the sidelines. Did you have a sense of what that feeling meant in regard to who you wanted to be or become?
Carrie Brownstein:
I think it was actually a slightly later show. It was George Michael’s Faith tour because I remember at that show my friend turned to me and she basically said that she wanted to just make out with George Michael. She was just…
Debbie Millman:
It was slightly more-
Carrie Brownstein:
It was dirtier than that.
Debbie Millman:
… lascivious in the book.
Carrie Brownstein:
Yeah, it was dirtier than that. What she wanted to do to George Michael, yes, was unholy. But I was sort of surprised, taken aback because the way I was watching George Michael was thinking, I don’t want to do something to him. I don’t want to be a side piece or accessory. I want to be that. I want to be the person that’s on stage that is making people feel excited and I want to have people projecting their fantasies and imaginations onto me. And so that was the moment where I thought, “Oh, I’m in a different place than my friend.” The way that I’m experiencing this is not sort of witnessing. I want to participate in this not just as a fan. And so I think that really sowed the seed for me wanting to perform.
Debbie Millman:
A few years ago when she was almost 70 years old, Lucy Sante came out. The writer formerly known as Luke, announced she was transitioning. Lucy Sante writes about the experience in her 2024 memoir, I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition.
In I Heard Her Call My Name, you write that you can’t say with certainty when the idea that you might or should be a girl first took hold, but it was probably around age nine or 10. How did that manifest to you?
Lucy Sante:
How did it first start? I saw myself as a girl. I thought about looking like a girl. I thought my interests were pretty much a girl’s interests, although, well, they were artistic, not very domestic. And I didn’t really know any girls. That was another component, so I had really nobody to measure myself against, but it crept in and very soon it was a very strong emotion that I immediately started at one the same time indulging in and trying to suppress.
Debbie Millman:
At the time, you thought you were the only person in the world who had ever wanted to change genders. You said at the time that you prayed for Jesus to turn you into a girl overnight in your sleep, but don’t remember whether Jesus proposed this or if you requested it. And wrote, “There it was, and it wouldn’t leave me alone. I trembled from both desperate wishfulness and naked fear.” What scared you most at that point?
Lucy Sante:
Oh, gosh. Well, I was young enough to still believe in a certain kind of magic and thought that something dramatic like that could actually happen, and how would my life change? I was just entering the period that never stopped really of conflict with my parents, and this seemed like an additional point of conflict. So I was very wary of it. I desired it, but I also knew it was an impossibility, except that I believed in magic. You see all the contradictions, right? Yeah. I was very confused. I had no guidance of any sort and didn’t for many years afterward, even though a trickle of news items would come my way, and I realized, “No, I’m not the only one, but there are like 48 of us.” Something like that, really.
Debbie Millman:
Had you ever shared with anyone in your life that you felt like you were a female?
Lucy Sante:
I came close only once in my whole life, and that was when I had this wonderful therapist in the late eighties named Paul Pavel, who by the way was also Art Spiegelman’s therapist, and he appears as a character in Maus II. He was a great man, wonderful person, and to him, I admitted that I tried out my mother’s clothes. And we never quite got back to it because not long after I shared that memory with him, he died of a massive heart attack 20 minutes after I left his office. Wasn’t that same day, but it was not long thereafter. I don’t know. I mean, if Pavel had lived, might I have come out 30 years earlier than I did? It’s not entirely impossible.
Debbie Millman:
I didn’t come out until I was 50. I’m 62 now, so it’s only been 12 years and it’s a very different life internally in terms of the amount of freedom that I feel to be who I am. Growing up in the sixties and seventies, even being lesbian was almost a ticket to a very different kind of life. And I already felt so othered that I didn’t want to be any more othered.
Lucy Sante:
Bingo.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. After you sent the letter to your friends and came out to your partner and your therapist, what made you almost send another letter to your friends taking it all back?
Lucy Sante:
I mean, obviously when I was a kid, it was a different story. But when I became an adult, there remained two major impediments to my acknowledging my trans nature. One of them was my ambition. The other was the fact that I am attracted to women romantically, sexually, exclusively. And I thought it would at worse disgust them, and at best get me sympathetic hearing, but shut the door to romance forever. And so I knew that my relationship, which had gone on for 14 years with somebody who we’re still very, very close, but I knew the romantic part was gone. She would not have wanted to keep going down that road. So I was trying to talk myself… I was so loath to lose her, or in fact, to lose the prospect of love, that I was trying to talk myself back into the closet.
Debbie Millman:
You can hear my full interview with Lucy Sante and the full interviews of everyone you’ve heard in this episode on DesignMattersMedia.com, or wherever you love to get your podcasts. This is the 19th year we’ve been podcasting Design Matters, and I’d like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman, and I look forward to talking with you again soon. And Happy Pride.
Speaker 5:
Design Matters is produced for the TED Audio Collective by Curtis Fox Productions. The interviews are usually recorded at the Masters in Branding program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, the first and longest-running branding program in the world. The editor-in-chief of Design Matters Media is Emily Weiland.