"I can put five bullets into this little red circle," she said in the interview.
So she's a gun-wielding warrior; is it any wonder she can be a little blunt when it comes to the bedroom? Maybe it's her hostile background that gives her the edge on other sex therapists. Maybe it's her exotic German accent. Maybe it's the fact that she can fluently speak about sex in four different languages: English, German, French, and Hebrew. Whatever the reason, Dr. Ruth has become a pioneer regarding openly sexual discourse in the media.
After her war years, Dr. Ruth studied and taught psychology at the University of Paris. Later, she moved to New York City, received her master's in sociology and an Ed.D. from Columbia University, and completed postdoctoral work on human sexuality at New York-Presbyterian Hospital.
After she completed these studies, Dr. Ruth was discovered speaking at a conference in New York and was recruited for NBC's New York-based radio station. Her wit and charm led executives to give her a weekly talk show which would air Sunday nights for 15 minutes.
Little did anyone know that her controversial novice show would become a national and cultural phenomenon.
At first, she responded directly to listeners' letters, but she later changed to live radio in a segment called "Sexually Speaking," which developed into a TV program on Lifetime with the same name.
Dr. Ruth is a remarkable example of someone with the capacity to break into the media industry with a background in healthcare. She has a quick wit and was never scared to be honest about her work and theories. Why should she have been? She was a sniper, after all.
She is well respected as an authority on sex and one of the few with the wit, humor, and sensibility to be able to cross over to popular culture. While viewed as controversial at first, Dr. Ruth has proven herself capable and has transformed our culture's perception of sex itself, making it acceptable to speak of both on the social level and the clinical level.
