The famous sex and relationship expert Ruth Westheimer has died.
She was 96 years old.
As Dr. Ruth, the famous therapist and radio show host gave sexy advice for many years.
People all over the world loved her honest personality and straight-forward advice, which made her a star in her own right.
The New York Times says that Dr. Ruth’s spokesman, Pierre Lehu, told the press that she had died at her home in New York.
Westheimer was Jewish and was born in Germany in 1928. She lived through World War II and saw it happen.
She came very close to going to one of the Holocaust’s concentration camps before she moved to the United States as a teenager.
She often said that her view of sex as something to be enjoyed came from bad things that happened to her as a child.
The star started her career in the 1980s by taking mailed-in questions from radio listeners about sex and relationships. She was in her 50s at the time.
She wrote over 40 books, some of which were how-to guides on health and sexuality. These books talked about things that most doctors still don’t talk about openly.
Dr. Ruth used to have a regular column in Playgirl magazine, and an educational board game and a computer game both used her well-known name.
She was admired by college students, and having her come to campus was often one of the biggest events of the year.
Her face started showing up in commercials and small roles in well-known TV shows and movies very quickly.
In the 1985 French movie One Woman or Two, which starred Gérard Depardieu and Sigourney Weaver and came out in the US in 1987, she had a small but well-known part.
COMPARED TO NO OTHER
People knew Dr. Ruth for how she did therapy and how she thought about sex and relationships.
Back then, people who were honest about their sexual relationships usually only did so in very medical settings or behind closed doors, talking about what their friends had learned in their personal lives.
It was easy to remember Westheimer because she was a short woman (4 feet 7 inches) with a wry smile and a light accent who gave out sex tips.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the way she talked and acted was “like a cross between Henry Kissinger and a canary.”
Many of the things she said on her radio show are now part of her legacy.
Finding pleasure in sex is just as important as making your partner happy. This is bad for both of you if you don’t do it, she said.
“Experience bad sex as little as possible.
“Sexuality should be celebrated, not hidden or shamed.”
It’s said: “Sexual pleasure is the most wonderful thing in the world.”
An excellent life lived
Karola Ruth Siegel Westheimer was born on June 4, 1928, in Wiesenfeld, Germany. She was the only child of Julius and Irma Siegel, who were an Orthodox Jewish couple.
She had a good life with her parents and grandparents until Germany started to treat Jews worse all over the country.
Her family sent her to an orphanage in Switzerland after the Nazis took away her father in 1938. There, she says she was treated like a second-class citizen.
It’s likely that she lost her parents and grandparents in Auschwitz and never saw them again.
When Dr. Ruth was young, she moved to Israel and married her first husband. However, the marriage didn’t last long and ended.
Later, she married a Frenchman and had a child with him, but she later said that marriage was also not sustainable.
Later, when she moved to New York City in the 1950s, she finally met the right person in telecommunications engineer Manfred Westheimer.
In the early 1960s, they got married and stayed married until Manfred’s death in 1997.
Her son Joel Westheimer, her daughter Miriam Westheimer, and her four grandchildren will miss her.