My Life So Far, Jane Fonda

My Life So Far, by Jane Fonda

I had not expected to read this book. Not because I have any problem with Jane Fonda’s antiwar activities, but because I have very little interest in celebrities. Usually, I find celebrities to be undereducated and shallow thinkers. However, I was in a situation in which I was away from home, with little to do, and this book was lying there; so I began to read it. After 50 or 100 pages, I found that I was drawn into the book, first by her writing abilities, and also by her thinking. Jane Fonda is a very smart woman, and she is also a very good writer. In addition, she has led an interesting life.

Fonda organized the book around her three marriages and called the parts of her life the acts in a play – Act I (for her first marriage to Roger Vadim), Act II (for her marriage to Tom Hayden), and Act III (for her marriage to Ted Turner). She calls the current part of her life Act IV. I found this organization to be very interesting, although I think of her life prior to her first marriage as Act I (in which her father was the principal male in her life). In her three marriages, she lived very different lives, almost as different people entirely, and yet, one aspect of her life was completely constant – her dependence on a strong dominant male figure. Her dad dominated her life early life, then Roger Vadim, Tom Hayden, and Ted Turner. Now, at last, she has let go of dominant men, and directs her own life.

The characteristic that I found most interesting about this book was her search for a paradigm to guide her thinking. Until her divorce from Ted Turner, her paradigm had been to rely on a strong man to guide her life. All her life, she was controlled by strong-willed men; to one extent or another, she let go of her own identity to accept the identity that each man desired for her. In each instance, she first accepted the identity that each man chose for her, but then eventually she found that identity unacceptable and moved on to another.

In each part of her life, under each dominant male, she found and developed a part of herself, her own identity. Under her father, she grew up, became educated, and began a career in acting in her own way, which was quite different from her father’s way. Under Roger Vadim, she became a star actress. Under Tom Hayden, she flourished as an actor, and also developed as an activist and then as a very successful business woman. Under Ted Turner, she developed as a philanthropist and human rights leader. And yet, under each of these men, she developed her own self-image almost in opposition to the desires of the man. In the end, she had to let go of each of her relationships in order to continue the development of a self that she wanted for herself.

Throughout her life, she lived in the present, working at the tasks that were before her at the time, taking direction from the dominant man in her life. She does not seem to have thought much about spiritual matters. Now, after letting go of the dominant men, she seems to be thinking of spiritual matters. She tried Christianity as espoused by one church, and now feels less comfortable in that paradigm. She does not seem to know where her thinking will go next, but she realizes that she is on a spiritual path. (Is she simply looking for the next dominant male to guide her?)

For me, I enjoyed reading this book. I enjoyed seeing her life as a spiritual journey. I was interested in the way in which she was guided by Spirit. I believe that all relationships are arranged by Spirit, and all relationships are helpful spiritually, which is the purpose of the relationships. With this thought in mind, it was interesting to me to try to find the way in which Spirit guided her, not only toward Spiritual thought, but also to success in life. She was guided to success as an actress under her father and Roger Vadim, and to huge success as a business woman under Tom Hayden. However, it was not clear to me how she was guided to success under Ted Turner; it seemed to me that his desire was for to give up herself completely and live only to give emotional support to him. Now Spirit has set her free from dominating men to complete her final Act.

In addition to finding her relationships and her spiritual journey interesting, I also found her career interesting. She is a very accomplished woman. She has won two academy awards, she established and ran for many years her own production company, developing a long series of very successful movies, and she invented the use of videos for home exercise. She has developed 24 home exercise videos, and her original Jane Fonda’s Workout is still the top grossing video of all time. I found her descriptions of making movies interesting.

Her deep emotional concerns for human issues first burst forth during her anti-war activities, and it has continued to the present. In 1994, she was named Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Population Fund. She founded the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention in 1995, and continues to be active in that organization. In 2001, she established the Jane Fonda Center for Adolescent Reproductive Health at Emory University. She is also a member of the Women & Foreign Policy Advisory Committee of the Council of Foreign Relations.

I recommend this book; it was interesting to me.