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" Jane Fonda is on a mission.The 78-year-old\u00A0Oscar-winning actress and long-time activist is showing no signs of slowing down or holding back,\u00A0a sentiment that&amp;#039;s also conveyed on\u00A0her hit Netflix series, Grace and Frankie. Last year, Fonda reunited with her\u00A09 to 5 co-star and real-life friend\u00A0Lily Tomlin for\u00A0the series,\u00A0which follows two women whose husbands come out as gay and leave them for each other. Sticking true to Fonda&amp;#039;s feminist roots, Grace and Frankie&amp;#039;s storyline, though\u00A0hilarious and quirky,\u00A0empowers\u00A0women to realize that it&amp;#039;s never too late to discover yourself and\u00A0reinvent your life\u2014no matter how old you are. If there&amp;#039;s anyone to inspire you to believe\u00A0that life doesn&amp;#039;t stop once you hit 60, it&amp;#039;s Jane Fonda, who&amp;#039;s only getting\u00A0better with age.\u00A0 Ahead of Season 2 of Grace and Frankie, Fonda reflects on the importance of the show&amp;#039;s message, working with Lily Tomlin and the state of feminism today (and yes, that includes naked celebrity selfies).\u00A0 Harper&amp;#039;s BAZAAR: Is there anything you don&amp;#039;t like about your character, Grace?\u00A0 Jane Fonda:\u00A0She&amp;#039;s more uptight and more conservative than I am but I think it&amp;#039;s fun to play somebody who&amp;#039;s different than you are. We also have a lot of things in common. We&amp;#039;ve shot the first two seasons\u2014the second season starts to air May 6\u2014and in the course of those two years I&amp;#039;ve come to know her better and I&amp;#039;ve grown more fond of her. I&amp;#039;m having fun with her. HB:\u00A0 What&amp;#039;s your favorite part about being on Grace and Frankie? JF:\u00A0 Being with Lily Tomlin! It&amp;#039;s a real pleasure and honor to work with Lily. We laugh a lot. It&amp;#039;s\u00A0a lot of fun going to work every day and working with her. And of course, Sam Waterston and Martin Sheen too, we all have a good time.\u00A0 HB:\u00A0 What was it like reuniting with Lily\u00A0since 9 to 5?\u00A0 JF:\u00A0 We stayed in touch over the years. We&amp;#039;re both activists and when she asks me to show up at a fundraiser or when someone asks me to introduce her because she&amp;#039;s getting an award\u2014which she does a lot\u2014I show up for her and vice versa. I have a non-profit in Georgia and we&amp;#039;re having our big annual gala in October and she&amp;#039;s going to come and we&amp;#039;re going to be together doing something fun. We&amp;#039;ve stayed friends, we really have. HB: How do you feel about being on a show that lives solely on Netflix? JF:\u00A0Oh, I like it! It&amp;#039;s fun. It&amp;#039;s an experience because you don&amp;#039;t get ratings the way you do if you&amp;#039;re on network television, but Netflix tells us we&amp;#039;re one of the three most popular series.\u00A0We&amp;#039;ve all been very pleasantly surprised at how popular it is among young women. It&amp;#039;s big on college campuses\u2014we didn&amp;#039;t expect that!\u00A0But what really took me by surprise was when almost a year ago, Lily and I were in New York promoting\u00A0the first season and it started to air at midnight on a Thursday night. Lily and I went to bed and we got up around 10 o&amp;#039;clock the next morning to catch a plane to go home to Los Angeles and\u00A0by the time we landed in Los Angeles we were already\u00A0getting emails saying, &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;ve already seen the entire season!&amp;quot; Oh my god, I was thinking. &amp;quot;No! Already?! This could never happen!&amp;quot;  HB:\u00A0Right now Grace and Frankie is one of the only shows, unfortunately, that really represents women of your age\u2014is there anything in particular you wanted to convey about\u00A0what it means to be an older woman today? JF:\u00A0 Well, the main reason I wanted to do a TV show was that I wanted to give a cultural face to older women and that&amp;#039;s what I love about being on Grace and Frankie. We tried to show the downsides of being older, like the fear of falling and breaking your hip or the fact that nobody pays any attention to you because you&amp;#039;re not young and beautiful anymore, the worries about having boyfriends and what they&amp;#039;re going to think of your body and all those kinds of things. But we also wanted to say, &amp;quot;Hey, don&amp;#039;t count us out! We&amp;#039;re still smart, we can still be funny, we can still be active, we can still have sex.&amp;quot; Life goes on even when you have the rug pulled out from under\u00A0you the way Grace and Frankie did when their husbands fall in love with each other. That&amp;#039;s a huge trauma, a crisis, really. It&amp;#039;s hard to come back from that but we do come back from it. An amazing number of older women have said to me, &amp;quot;Thank you for Grace and Frankie, it&amp;#039;s given me hope.&amp;quot; And so what more can you ask for? That&amp;#039;s really great. So many women who&amp;#039;ve gone through a marital crisis, including some whose husbands left them because they were gay, interestingly enough, have found great solace and strength in watching Grace and Frankie.\u00A0 HB: How does your role in being a major voice in the feminist movement play into the show? JF: Well, Grace is not exactly a feminist. I think little by little Frankie rubs off on her, so who knows what&amp;#039;s going to happen in the future. But in the first season, Frankie says to her, &amp;quot;Where the heck have you been, under a rock for the last 25 years?!&amp;quot; Because my character is so non-feminist. It&amp;#039;s kind of fun to play that.  HB: If you had to give one piece of advice for the new, younger generation of feminists, what would it be? JF: Don&amp;#039;t give up. Don&amp;#039;t take it for granted.\u00A0 HB: On the topic of feminism, there&amp;#039;s been a lot of conversation lately about what is and what isn&amp;#039;t feminist\u2014one of those things being celebrity women posting naked photos of themselves. Kim Kardashian posted a naked selfie a few weeks ago.\u00A0Piers Morgan\u00A0claimed\u00A0&amp;quot;Feminism is now dead&amp;quot; due to the picture.\u00A0Do you think that women posting naked photos hurts or helps feminism?\u00A0 JF:\u00A0One of the problems that feminism is trying to address is the objectification of women as sex objects, so I think posting a nude picture of yourself doesn&amp;#039;t exactly help that. I think it plays into the\u00A0objectification of women. Women being strong, women being brave, women being entitled to equal pay and equal respect isn&amp;#039;t the same as posting a nude photograph of yourself. I don&amp;#039;t think the fact that Kim Kardashian posts a photograph means that feminism is dead, I mean come on. Look, there are many forms of feminism. There&amp;#039;s the visible, professional feminism which means moving women through the glass ceiling to seats of power. It means women getting equal pay, being able to be in positions of decision-making in the media\u2014those kinds of things. You can quantify those things and while we&amp;#039;re making some progress, we have a long way to go. That&amp;#039;s one kind of feminism. There&amp;#039;s another kind of feminism, which is a psychological feminism, which took me a long time to get to. I wrote an article for Lena Dunham&amp;#039;s Lenny Letter on psychological feminism, which took me 60 years to get to. Psychological feminism isn&amp;#039;t something outside people can see, but something rather you know and feel. It&amp;#039;s not feminist, not right and not healthy to be in a relationship where both people can&amp;#039;t show up fully because they&amp;#039;re afraid if they do so they won&amp;#039;t be loved. It&amp;#039;s not a healthy &amp;quot;feminist&amp;quot; relationship if one party, say the woman, gives up her voice in order to please her partner.\u00A0 You come to realize that a feminist relationship is a relationship where both people are standing on their own two feet helping each other through life but also not forgetting themselves. There&amp;#039;s many different forms of feminism and I don&amp;#039;t think that we should criticize or browbeat men or women who say they&amp;#039;re not feminists if what they do and how they live is feminist. It doesn&amp;#039;t matter if they use the label. And what does that mean, if the way they live and what they do is feminist? It means that they understand that people of all genders deserve to be treated with respect, they deserve equality on every level. It means that one gender is not less important than another which is what the patriarchal paradigm that governs the world right now says\u2014men are at the top of the hierarchy, white men and then it goes down from there. Feminism is inclusive, it recognizes interdependence, that&amp;#039;s what it means to live as a feminist even if you don&amp;#039;t like the word. HB: As a woman you&amp;#039;ve\u00A0transformed yourself many times throughout your career, what advice do you have for women looking to do the same as they age? JF: Read my memoirs! There&amp;#039;s two books that I&amp;#039;ve written, one is My Life So Far, which is my memoir, and another is Primetime, which is about successful aging. I think both of them have been very helpful to women of all ages. Also read Gloria Steinem&amp;#039;s books. Gloria has a way of explaining things that makes you sit up and take notice and say, &amp;quot;Oh! I get it!&amp;quot;  HB: There are plenty of scenes on the show where you really showcase how flexible and in-shape you still are. What&amp;#039;s your secret to staying fit?\u00A0 JF: I stay active, I hike, I walk, do resistance bands, pilates and yoga\u2014you&amp;#039;ve gotta move.\u00A0The saying &amp;quot;move it or lose it&amp;quot;\u00A0is so incredibly true but more so especially when you&amp;#039;re older. If you don&amp;#039;t keep moving you go downhill really fast when you&amp;#039;re older. Young bodies are more forgiving, so if you&amp;#039;re not regular about working out, it doesn&amp;#039;t show up right away but it does when you&amp;#039;re older. And by working out, I don&amp;#039;t mean doing very hard things or running marathons and things like that, we have to be more careful with our joints and bones\u00A0so\u00A0you do things forward and you do things that don&amp;#039;t have as much impact. But\u00A0you&amp;#039;ve got to keep moving, it&amp;#039;s so important.\u00A0  HB: And what can we expect to see on\u00A0Grace and Frankie in Season 2?  JF: I&amp;#039;m not supposed to give away those kinds of things but I can tell you, it&amp;#039;s even better than the first season! Grace and Frankie: Season One, arrives on DVD + Digital April 12 from Lionsgate and Skydance Television. Season 2 of Grace and Frankie premieres May 6\u00A0on Netflix.\u00A0 "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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