Madge Love Talks is a series of live conversations and discussions held on Instagram where various dimensions of women’s wellness are unpacked and explored by experts and members of our community. The series supplements and enhances the educational information available on Madge Love, our blog and community platform, while advancing MADGE AND MERCER’s mission to destigmatize cannabis and other topics related to women’s wellness including aging, perimenopause and menopause, stress and anxiety, intimacy issues and many more.
For our fifth episode of Madge Love Talks, Shauna connected with the iconic Jeanne Beker for a candid conversation on topics including fashion, wellness, motherhood, and more. Jeanne shared stories from her time as the host of Fashion Television, her perspective on aging, and how she balanced a fabulous career with motherhood. Jeanne is currently the host of Style Matters on Today’s Shopping Choice and also hosts the podcast Beyond Style Matters that goes beyond trends, clothes, and material fashion and looks at how we move through the world. Read on to get the scoop on Jeanne’s trajectory, the importance of sleep, and how she’s come to accept and love herself with time.
Everyone wants to know... How did you get started?
To make a long story short, I started out at 16 in show business – I wanted to be an actress. I was working as an actress, doing bits and pieces locally here in Toronto and then I moved to New York to study acting. I came back and studied theater at York University for a while, then I decided that I wanted learn an exacting art, an art that had a great technique to it, a performance art that was about pure communication and I decided mime was my thing. So, I moved to Paris in 1973 to study mime with Étienne Decroux, who taught Marcel Marceau and David Bowie. Then I came back to Toronto, went back to university and did some more performing. I had a chance to move to St. Johns Newfoundland in the mid 70s and got a job in radio. I was the only mime artist in the entire province and was reporting on the arts for CBC radio! I spent 3 years there, then moved back to Toronto and knocked on every radio station door until I got a gig at 1050 Chum – the top 40 station at the time. Chum bought City TV, and they decided to cross-promote their personalities, so I was the Chum good news girl and JD Roberts was the boss jock. They handpicked the two of us to go over to City TV to do a groundbreaking show called the New Music – a weekly magazine show. This was 1979, before MTV. I got to meet all my teen idols and did a lot of cool music reporting. Around about 1985 I was growing tired of riding all the smokey tour busses, and it was time to think of something new. There was an interesting young producer at City TV who wanted to do a fashion video show...
Before we get to fashion – I want to know, who was your favourite music interview?
There were so many... I interviewed Paul McCartney a few times, that was a thrill of a lifetime. I interviewed Keith Richards on a beach in Antigua; all the time I spent with The Police, I went on tour with them and I interviewed Andy Sumers in a bathtub! I interviewed Ronnie Hawkins at Graceland... I just had such a blast.
Jeanne and Paul McCartney
… so you had a colleague who wanted to do a fashion journalism show?
Jake Dean was a producer in the promo department of City TV and he wanted to do a fashion video show and wanted to hire a cute young model to be the fashion VJ... When I caught wind of this, I knew I wanted in on it because I was tired of doing the rock and roll thing. I marched up to the station managers office and said you have to let me do this – I can interview the designers the way I interviewed rock stars, we can find out who these people really are, we can go into the studio with them, and go behind the scenes and back stage... I kicked and screamed and somehow, they eventually said fine. They let me do the pilot episode of the show called Fashion Television and we did that for 27 years. It was great, and it was at a time when fashion was really just on fire. It was really an amazing time.
I think there were a couple of stories you once told me about the crazy lengths you had to go to get interviews with certain designers
We were making a lot of it up as we went along. There weren’t really any shows of that nature at the time – shows that saw fashion as entertainment and reported on it that way. I wasn’t a fashion journalist with a capital J, or a magazine editor. I didn’t have that kind of background the way that Tim Blakes did who started Fashion File did. I was an entertainment reporter from City TV coming from a rock and roll background and I just wanted to have as much fun with the scene as possible. And the characters were so much larger than life – it was such a theatrical arena.
The serious fashion press looked down their noses at us because the magazine editors wanted to critique fashion and intellectually analyze it, whereas we were talking to people on a human level. It really worked for us because all the designers seemed to love our approach and loved my enthusiasm. It’s not that I didn’t know what I was talking about, but I was never going to be esoteric about what I was talking about because I would lose the viewers - I wanted to do a show that everyone could enjoy. I was a stranger in a strange land – I wasn’t of that world, I just happened to be in that world.
It was a wonderful time. But it wasn’t easy, we had to go through a lot of crap to get what we needed. But I was a girl on a mission, it was survival of the fittest and I needed those precious soundbites and that interview no matter what, I wasn’t going to give up. My parents, who were Holocaust survivors brought me up that way; don’t be afraid and never give up, and as long as your fearless and tenacious you can achieve just about anything.
Tell us about a designer who inspired you. I wore an Alexander McQueen blouse because I know you really loved McQueen and I remember you saying how gentle he was as a person.
If anyone has seen the beautiful McQueen documentary that my friends Peter Ettedgui and Ian Bonhôte did, I think it’s quite beautiful. I think they capture a bit of who McQueen really was, probably a lot of who McQ really was. There was a side to McQueen that I don’t think a lot of people got to see, but happily we had a special kind of relationship, I think he trusted me. He was a very sensitive guy and could drive people crazy and be cantankerous. He was a poet, a tormented soul really, certainly misunderstood. Big business was really coming up and he was under a lot of pressure, and it was so sad to see what happened to him. He was a beautiful guy underneath a lot of that and I absolutely adored him and miss him so much.
The late Karl Lagerfeld is another one – absolutely adored him, although he could be a very bad boy. I loved Jean Paul Gaultier. He was very much in touch with his inner child, which always delighted and charmed me. I was lucky enough to have interviewed the great Gianni Versace, what a gentle soul he was. A beautiful man. Having the opportunity to get up close with so many great designers was the real joy of the job.
Jeanne on Fashion Television
Is there anyone you can think of in fashion who’s dealing with ageism in a way that you think is positive?
There will always be those wonderful spirits who are dealing with ageism in a positive way because it’s the way they see themselves and the way they see the world and the images they project there. Norma Kamali comes to mind, first and foremost for me because I absolutely adore her. I don’t know if you’ve read her recent book I am Invincible but that’s recommended reading. It’s all about her journey through the ages, what it’s like in your 20s, 30s,40s, 50s – she just turned 76 and got married this summer, and she’s gorgeous as ever.
Age is definitely a frame of mind, and it’s definitely something that you don’t have to come to in a negative way if you don’t want to. Your body parts may fail you and it becomes increasingly hard as you age to keep your energy up and keep in top shape, but a lot of it is a lens through which you see the world and see yourself, and keeping in touch with your inner-youth is of utmost importance.
I still very much feel like the 17-year-old girl bopping up on stage with Ronnie Hawkins. I don’t think I’d wear that little bikini top, some things have to change, but not everything. A lot doesn’t have to change.
Is there ageism in this business, in the world at large? Absolutely. It’s the next big thing we're really going to have to battle in a big way.
That was part of my motivation with MADGE AND MERCER, because in consumer-packaged goods in general and in cannabis in particular, women in the later parts of life are being ignored. We go through a lot of shifts during this period of our lives that is hormonally induced, or related to the whole notion of the sandwich generation – we have ageing parents and are raising children – so there’s a lot of emotional and psychological stuff going on, but no one is talking to us. We’re a demographic that can really benefit from this kind of wellness. That’s important to me. We talk about almost every subject related to our sexuality in the media today, but when it comes to menopause that's one area that no one really gives a platform that can be embraced by a lot of women. It has to change in terms of how we talk about it, and I think that will help us to deal with ageism.
A lot of it has to do w the younger generation. I have a lot of faith in young people today, and the people I come into contact with the most are the friends of my girls, who I think are so fabulous and open minded. I don’t find ageism coming so much from that generation, as I do from people who are borderline getting older, and they’re always afraid of what’s down the road so they start getting weird about stuff.
I hate the whole idea of demographic in marketing – it's such BS. It’s a psychograph. I edited a magazine for quite a few years called FQ, Fashion Quarterly and we always said we aren’t addressing a demographic we’re addressing a psychograph. Mothers and daughters can and should enjoy the same kinds of things – not all, but there’s a lot of stuff that can and should be cross-generational. Everyone seems to want to put the generations into different boxes, and that creeps me out.
When you were doing all this fantastic stuff, travelling around the world, interviewing all these amazing people you had two little girls at home. How did you do it all?
I was a single mom – their dad left when they were 8 and 10. I was in the throes of this big, fabulous career I’d created for myself and I thought how do you do this? But somehow you do it. You cry yourself to sleep in hotel rooms all around the world, which I’m sure a lot of working mothers can relate to. All of a sudden the job is not so glamourous because a big part of your heart is at home with those little girls. But you keep doing what you do because it’s who you are and you’re not going to short change yourself and your passions to that degree because you can’t because you have to be the best version of yourself possible for those girls as a role model – for me anyway. I wasn’t about to give up the career I’d worked by my whole life to cultivate, I didn’t want to turn my back on it. It was just as important for me to have a career as it was to raise and nurture the girls. I do think that you can have it all in bits and pieces. You may not be able to have it all at once, or all at the same time but I proved to myself that I could.
Speaking of balancing it all, for me that’s part of the whole discussion around wellness and self-care, and so I’d like to talk about that with you. What are the things you do in your life that are part of your self-care toolkit?
I’m not that conscious of doing this or that, it just becomes an organic thing. I make sure I get enough sleep because for many years I was sleep deprived. I do admit that that’s how I did so much, because I was usually up until 4 in the morning, or I’d get up at 5 in the morning. I prided myself, perhaps stupidly, on only needing 4 hours of sleep a night. As I got older, I realized you really need your sleep. So getting the right about of sleep now is something that’s very important for me – I love my sleep.
I’m usually a good sleep, but if I do have trouble, a little bit of MADGE AND MERCER’s LA CALMA oil helps. It’s delicious – I've tried other CBD oils at very mild doses, but yours has a great little flavour to it. I put a couple of drops under my tongue and you feel the gingery lemongrass taste and in about 10 or 15 minutes you’re in dreamland. You get at least 4 hours and then if you need more you can take more, depending on the kind of restless night you're having. On the nights I am having trouble sleeping it’s absolutely fabulous.
I just want to tell people because other women are watching, and as women of a certain age – or maybe women of all ages – we have so much on our time, we’re multi-tasking and being pulled in so many different directions but you really need your sleep. So many of my friends struggle with sleep but don’t want to take anything that will make them sluggish afterwards, but I feel that there’s something pure and healthy in CBD so I’m all for it.
Sleep is one thing, exercise is another. In the past little while with the pandemic, because I’m in the country, I no longer go to the gym several times a week so I’m not exercising as religiously as I ought to. Diet is also ultra-important. I’ve been trying to shed some of the weight we put on during the pandemic, so really trying to eat good stuff, more vegetables, less processed food. Being conscious of what you put in your mouth. Trying not to drink so much - I love my martinis. The good thing is there are fewer parties and social outings happening these days, although starting up again... This month I’ve really almost sworn off the stuff which I think is good to do from time to time.
I always remove my makeup every night, I never sleep with makeup. My mother studied cosmetology right after the war while living in a displaced person camp in Austria for three years – she'd make herself these egg yolk facials, and she always said to “give your skin a drink” - moisturize, moisturize, moisturize and protect yourself from the sun!
You’ve got to really love yourself. It’s hard sometimes because you know the worst of yourself, but you also know the best of yourself. And if you really concentrate on that, you do fall in love with yourself increasingly the older you get. I would hope – for me anyway - I've just accepted myself with age. I’m 69, I’ll be 70 in March and I just feel like this is my time – thank God a lot of pieces in my life have fallen into place, there’s always going to be stuff and life isn’t a perfect picture for anyone, ever. But trying to concentrate on the fabulous bits and make the bad bits better or ignore them.
As I’ve gotten older, I feel like now I totally get it – if I don’t want to go, I don’t have to go.
It’s wonderful when you can just really be who you know you are, and you don’t have to make apologies. You realize that life doesn’t go on forever, better do what you really want to do, and don’t do what you don’t want to do because that’s just going to make you unhappy.
Is there anything else you want to share with your fans before we wrap?
I feel so grateful that I am still able to dance as fast as I can, and I just want to tell everybody to hang in there no matter what, we all go through these patches where we think that things are insurmountable in life and how are we going to get through it and what’s going to happen. Don't despair, there’s a lot of light out there, you just have to really look for it sometimes. Just shine as much as you possibly can, because it helps other people on this journey and we’re all in this together.
Thank you again Jeanne for sharing your time and your stories with us. If you want to explore earlier episodes of Madge Love Talks, you can episodes one through four saved on our Instagram.