, alongside resorts and safaris. The entire ship or resort is hired out for each trip, a strategy intended to ensure guests feel free to be themselves. “The most important thing Olivia does is create an environment where women come and feel stronger when they leave,” says Judy Dlugacz, president of Olivia Travel, who’s been there since the beginning.
She looks back on those days with pride, remembering fearless moves such as the release of a 1977 “Lesbian Concentrate” compilation, in response to an anti-gay campaign by the singer Anita Bryant. “We were just so bold about it,” she says. in New York, she planned to announce the end of Olivia Records. Only, of course, that’s not what happened.Photograph: Bethany Mollenkof/The Guardian
Dlugacz wrote to the Olivia Records mailing list. She advertised a four-night cruise to the Bahamas and needed six hundred women to do it. It sold out. When she offered a second cruise, the same thing happened. “There was so much discrimination against women, and lesbians in particular, that we wanted women to feel free to come out and be themselves,” says Dlugacz.