It was legends on legends in the latest installment of the 4D With Demi Lovato podcast, guest starring Jane Fonda.
The longtime activist and Hollywood mainstay, whose career spans six decades and as many seasons of Grace and Frankie, spoke to Lovato about her ongoing work in the fight for environmental justice.
When the conversation turned, as it inevitably does, to the patriarchy, Lovato opened up about their journey to identifying as nonbinary. Fonda grew emotional as she listened to Lovato’s story, dabbing away tears before telling the singer, “I’m just so proud of you and I’m so glad, and I admire it so much.”
The moment began, naturally enough, with Lovato asking Fonda to talk about the importance of the Green New Deal.
“If there was no patriarchy, there would be no climate crisis,” Fonda said, adding, “You boil it all down, and the roots are patriarchy, racism, colonialism — it’s a mindset that creates a hierarchy of humanity, with rich, white men at the top.”
All the while, Lovato snapped and nodded into the camera.
Fonda later asked Lovato, “When did that come to you, the realization that patriarchy is at the root of it?”
Lovato explained that it partly began when they attended a poetry slam, where a friend expressed their resistance to gender conformity.
“When I heard their take on that, I identified with it so much that I thought to myself, ‘Oh, there’s something here,’” Lovato said. “‘There’s something that I’ve never known about my entire life but it’s clicking now and I need to research this, I need to do more work, I need to sit with this.’”
The pop icon then explained why they changed their hairstyle earlier this year.
“The reasoning behind me cutting my hair off was because I was shedding all of the gender norms that had been placed on me growing up female in this world,” Lovato explained. “And I just always found that men were at the root of pushing their agendas on me — to be a sexy pop star, whatever would make other people the most money. I had to break that mold because I had to find the freedom for myself in order to survive, to live.”
Fonda grew visibly emotional listening to Lovato. The 83-year-old became a reluctant sex symbol early in her career with the release of Barbarella in 1968, and was perhaps the reigning emboyment of feminine beauty ideals for several decades, even as her career grew in several different directions.
