Latest / Stuff Mom Never Told You / SMNTY Classics: A Salty SMNTY Valentine's
Transcript
- 0:05Speaker 1: Hey, this is Anny and Smantha.
- 0:06Speaker 2: And welcome to Stuff. I've Never told you.
- 0:08Speaker 3: Protection by Heart Radio, and today we were bringing back
- 0:20Speaker 3: one that I.
- 0:21Speaker 2: Had a lot of fun with. I think you had
- 0:23Speaker 2: fun with, Samantha, but it was one we did.
- 0:25Speaker 3: Admittedly I would not find this funny now, but we
- 0:28Speaker 3: did about salty Valentines, this history of giving really mean
- 0:33Speaker 3: cruel valencines.
- 0:36Speaker 1: Oh, that was one of the first introductions to this show.
- 0:38Speaker 1: I was I like this, let's go.
- 0:40Speaker 3: Yes, it was a very fascinating one. You can find
- 0:44Speaker 3: a lot of images should you choose to do so,
- 0:49Speaker 3: but we haven't reran it. So since we're getting into
- 0:52Speaker 3: a Valentine's Day territory, we thought we would bring it back,
- 0:56Speaker 3: So please enjoy this classic episode. Hey, this is Annie
- 1:04Speaker 3: and Samantha and welcome to Stuff.
- 1:05Speaker 2: I've Never told you.
- 1:06Speaker 3: A production of Iheartmedia' is how stuff works. As this
- 1:17Speaker 3: episode comes out, it is Valentine's Day surrounded by Singles
- 1:22Speaker 3: Awareness Day, Galentine's Day, whatever you celebrate it, don't celebrate
- 1:26Speaker 3: on February fourteenth Mistress Day. Apparently Mistress Day. That seems sexist,
- 1:32Speaker 3: Yeah it does. We might get into that a little
- 1:35Speaker 3: bit later. If you're listening to this today, it comes
- 1:39Speaker 3: out Samantha and I are in LA and we might
- 1:42Speaker 3: be doing our own sort of Galentine's Day.
- 1:44Speaker 1: Though it's gonna be a full thing.
- 1:45Speaker 2: It's gonna be a full.
- 1:47Speaker 4: The Gallantines and Valentine celebrating single, all of that thing.
- 1:51Speaker 1: We're going to do all of them.
- 1:52Speaker 5: Okay, perfect, Yes, all the boxes, all of the boxes,
- 1:56Speaker 5: and hopefully we might have a coffee times with other
- 1:59Speaker 5: gal yeah, or those who I did not ask.
- 2:02Speaker 3: Come and celebrate or just what to hang with. Yeah,
- 2:05Speaker 3: totally trigger warning. A brief mentions of violence against women
- 2:10Speaker 3: in this one.
- 2:11Speaker 2: And this one.
- 2:12Speaker 3: Actually came to my mind because I learned about dating
- 2:16Speaker 3: Sunday for the first time here in the United States
- 2:18Speaker 3: at least, which is apparently a new Year's resolution post
- 2:23Speaker 3: holiday breakup thing and maybe like you're still single, questions
- 2:28Speaker 3: that you got over the holidays, or omg, Valentine's Day
- 2:31Speaker 3: is coming around the corner one of those or a
- 2:33Speaker 3: combination of those reasons that results in a bunch of
- 2:36Speaker 3: people signing up for dating apps. The first Sunday of
- 2:39Speaker 3: the new year is the busiest day of the year
- 2:43Speaker 3: for dating apps.
- 2:43Speaker 2: Do you know about this year.
- 2:44Speaker 4: Yes, I did, and I purposely stayed away from January
- 2:48Speaker 4: all the way through March when I was on the
- 2:50Speaker 4: dating sites because of that.
- 2:52Speaker 1: I will not be a statistic. You are so much
- 2:55Speaker 1: more than a statistic to me, is amanth.
- 2:57Speaker 4: I do know that there's also a tradition for New Year,
- 3:00Speaker 4: or do you know how people do things that if
- 3:01Speaker 4: you'll wear pink underwear that's supposed to usher your new
- 3:04Speaker 4: lovers or something.
- 3:05Speaker 2: I have not heard that.
- 3:07Speaker 1: Yeah, I've heard that. Okay, well I did it.
- 3:10Speaker 3: Sure you did it or didn't, It doesn't matter either way.
- 3:14Speaker 3: Some apps see an increase of new users up to
- 3:18Speaker 3: eighty percent. And one of the ways I learned about
- 3:21Speaker 3: this is I got asked out a lot in January
- 3:24Speaker 3: and it made me stop and think, something is happening here,
- 3:29Speaker 3: Something is not right, And now I know it is.
- 3:33Speaker 3: I was part of the statistics. You were in some ways,
- 3:37Speaker 3: so you were on the apps, right, No, No, I was.
- 3:39Speaker 2: Just getting asked out.
- 3:40Speaker 3: As I've said before, I do have a very long
- 3:42Speaker 3: history of dating people born on or near Valentine's State.
- 3:45Speaker 2: That has also given me pause. And a lot of
- 3:48Speaker 2: my friends.
- 3:49Speaker 3: Are born around this time, right, I don't believe in astrology,
- 3:52Speaker 3: but I'm like, huh, interesting.
- 3:54Speaker 1: Those are the types of people. Huh.
- 3:55Speaker 3: Yes, Samantha and I we were discussing what our schools
- 4:00Speaker 3: used to do for Valentine's Day, like, you know, primary
- 4:02Speaker 3: school and I was in elementary school. We would make
- 4:05Speaker 3: these little decorated shoeboxes with slots for Valentine's cards, and
- 4:10Speaker 3: you just would sort of sit around awkwardly and hope
- 4:14Speaker 3: that you got one after you'd given years out. And
- 4:17Speaker 3: I hope that the one you got wasn't mean, because
- 4:19Speaker 3: I got some mean ones.
- 4:21Speaker 1: Really, yes, I did. It's so weird.
- 4:23Speaker 3: You didn't have this experience, no, geez, well I did.
- 4:27Speaker 3: And we went to school nearish each.
- 4:29Speaker 1: Other, nearish, different timeframes.
- 4:32Speaker 2: That's true, But you'd think it would improve over time and.
- 4:35Speaker 1: Not get more. Right. Apparently y'all got meaner. I don't know.
- 4:39Speaker 2: We mean.
- 4:40Speaker 1: You have a picture of your face with a bunch
- 4:42Speaker 1: of pimples on it.
- 4:42Speaker 4: Wow, Oh my gosh, what Yes, that's elaborate.
- 4:46Speaker 1: Oh I'm a main girl. Elaborate Stephen. I haven't forgotten
- 4:50Speaker 1: Steven's but I got I got back.
- 4:52Speaker 3: Later in high school, we had this thing where you
- 4:56Speaker 3: could pay a dollar to send either white think our
- 4:59Speaker 3: red rose anonymously. White represented friendship, Pink represented a crush.
- 5:04Speaker 3: I think and read represented love. But of course my
- 5:08Speaker 3: friends and I all hijacked it and we sent each
- 5:10Speaker 3: other flowers from secreted miners.
- 5:13Speaker 2: It was great.
- 5:15Speaker 3: My mom would always make me these paper roses every
- 5:17Speaker 3: year I have when I saved them. I'm a very
- 5:19Speaker 3: sentimental person, and my dad would get me a chocolate
- 5:23Speaker 3: from our local chocolate maker. So it was like a
- 5:26Speaker 3: grab bag of some bad things but.
- 5:28Speaker 2: Some good things.
- 5:28Speaker 1: Wow.
- 5:29Speaker 4: I guess you guys did a lot more. Maybe my
- 5:31Speaker 4: school just did not care as much. We definitely did
- 5:34Speaker 4: the bio ros whatever do with those things. It wasn't
- 5:37Speaker 4: different colors to represent anything a b We were never mean.
- 5:42Speaker 4: I mean, I think for our school we did the
- 5:45Speaker 4: little dinky shoe boxes as well, but everybody brought everyone
- 5:49Speaker 4: of Valentine and you won if there was a piece
- 5:51Speaker 4: of candy on it. That's how you knew you were liked,
- 5:55Speaker 4: kind of if you got more candy or whatever whatnot.
- 5:58Speaker 4: Of course, we would also have the one where they
- 6:00Speaker 4: would send deliveries individual kids and such, and I remember
- 6:06Speaker 4: specifically that I had to have a boyfriend the third
- 6:09Speaker 4: grade because for the like I'm never, I was like,
- 6:12Speaker 4: I'm no. It was fifth grade and I was determined
- 6:14Speaker 4: to have someone deliver something to me.
- 6:16Speaker 1: I love it.
- 6:17Speaker 4: I know I was very manipulative, but to be fair,
- 6:20Speaker 4: I got him a really great thing too, And I'm
- 6:22Speaker 4: sure I think included one of those pencils with the
- 6:24Speaker 4: heart that breaks.
- 6:25Speaker 1: Oh yeah, be mine or whatever.
- 6:28Speaker 4: Right, So, I mean we gave each other gifts, but yeah, no,
- 6:33Speaker 4: never any mean ones I never saw. Maybe you were
- 6:36Speaker 4: just nicer, or maybe I just never noticed.
- 6:39Speaker 2: Yeah you things kind of been going on.
- 6:41Speaker 4: Maybe I just didn't know my friends were nicer than
- 6:44Speaker 4: your friends. I don't know, oh how friends. But I
- 6:47Speaker 4: will say I also get a box of chocolates even
- 6:49Speaker 4: to this day, every year from my father, and that's
- 6:53Speaker 4: one of the things that he loves to do, is
- 6:55Speaker 4: give my sister and I a box of chocolates, and
- 6:57Speaker 4: even with me being not home, he mels.
- 7:00Speaker 1: It and usually like prioritizes it.
- 7:02Speaker 4: You know, that has to be one day shipping all
- 7:06Speaker 4: these scenes something from Walmwater Target or something.
- 7:09Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, well it should be coming any day.
- 7:12Speaker 4: Now.
- 7:12Speaker 2: I'm around, I'm available.
- 7:14Speaker 1: Okay's just saying, okay, all right.
- 7:16Speaker 3: Well we're doing a kind of basic, very brief history
- 7:19Speaker 3: of Valentine's is actually fascinating. But before that overview, Valentine's
- 7:25Speaker 3: Day is a holiday that takes place on February fourteenth,
- 7:27Speaker 3: all about love and expressing your love, usually through things
- 7:30Speaker 3: like cards, flowers, and candy.
- 7:32Speaker 2: Yes, it is a big business.
- 7:35Speaker 3: In twenty ten, people spent around eighteen point six billion
- 7:39Speaker 3: dollars on Valentine's Day.
- 7:41Speaker 4: And these days Valentine's Day is a great way for
- 7:44Speaker 4: companies and corporations to perpetuate heterodating and gender stereotypes. Women
- 7:48Speaker 4: love chocolate, right, No, but it wasn't always a holiday
- 7:53Speaker 4: about love, No, it was so. With a brief history
- 7:56Speaker 4: of Valentine's Day, No one's entirely sure where Valentine came from,
- 8:00Speaker 4: but one popular theory goes all the way back to
- 8:03Speaker 4: the ancient Roman celebration of Lupercalia from February thirteenth to
- 8:08Speaker 4: the fifteenth. This festival call for men, who, surprise, were
- 8:12Speaker 4: usually drunk and naked, to sacrifice a goat and a dog.
- 8:15Speaker 4: How dare you? Then they would skin these animals and
- 8:18Speaker 4: whip women with the skin. Delightful, What a great celebration.
- 8:22Speaker 4: The women believed this ritual helped with fertility. There was
- 8:25Speaker 4: a matchmaking aspect as well. Men would draw the names
- 8:28Speaker 4: of women out of jars and the couple would go
- 8:30Speaker 4: off and have lots of sex for the rest of
- 8:32Speaker 4: the festival, and if they hit it off, they might
- 8:35Speaker 4: even stay together.
- 8:36Speaker 3: This sounds sort of like I just finished the Newest
- 8:40Speaker 3: Thing of Sabrina, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. I feel
- 8:43Speaker 3: like a couple of seasons back they had this.
- 8:45Speaker 4: They did they had the worship being whatever, and they
- 8:49Speaker 4: paired with each other.
- 8:50Speaker 3: You're supposed to have sex all night or something or something.
- 8:53Speaker 3: It didn't happen that way, But not for Sabrina. Yeah,
- 8:56Speaker 3: other people, who knows, not for Sabrina. As for the
- 8:59Speaker 3: name Valentine's, during the third century CE, Roman emperor Claudius
- 9:03Speaker 3: had two men named Valentine executed via decapitation on February
- 9:07Speaker 3: fourteenth on two separate years, possibly because they were Christians.
- 9:11Speaker 3: The first man, Father Valentinus, ended up arrested and in
- 9:14Speaker 3: servitude of a well off man named Asterius. Father Valentinus
- 9:18Speaker 3: kept espousing the power of Christianity and Hysterius told him, Look,
- 9:21Speaker 3: if you can get rid of my foster daughter's blindness,
- 9:23Speaker 3: you will make a believer out of me. So the
- 9:26Speaker 3: father covered the girl's eyes with his hands and recited,
- 9:29Speaker 3: Lord Jesus Christ, enlighten your handmaid, because you are God,
- 9:33Speaker 3: the true light, and the legend goes.
- 9:35Speaker 2: She regained her sight.
- 9:36Speaker 3: Mysterius converted, along with his entire family, but getting wind
- 9:42Speaker 3: of this, the emperor ordered them all to be executed.
- 9:45Speaker 3: The second Valentine to be executed had an extremely similar story,
- 9:49Speaker 3: and of so scholars suspect they're probably the same person,
- 9:52Speaker 3: just with two different names and slightly different details. Nevertheless,
- 9:56Speaker 3: the Catholic Church later honored their martyrdom with St.
- 10:00Speaker 2: Valentine's Day.
- 10:01Speaker 3: Several churches throughout Europe claim to have pieces of Saint
- 10:04Speaker 3: Valentine's skull.
- 10:05Speaker 2: One place even claims to have the whole thing.
- 10:08Speaker 3: If you're curious about where this information comes from, because
- 10:13Speaker 3: I was there was a I guess he was a priest.
- 10:17Speaker 3: He went around collecting stories for all of these saints
- 10:22Speaker 3: and compiled them into one book. So if you're ever
- 10:26Speaker 3: curious about a saint, then check it out. In the
- 10:30Speaker 3: eleventh century, a priest claiming to have Saint Valentine's head
- 10:34Speaker 3: used it to cure a whole laundry list of things,
- 10:36Speaker 3: including demonic possession and to prevent fires and epidemics.
- 10:40Speaker 1: Oh we need that today, we do.
- 10:42Speaker 2: I wonder where it is. I wonder that's the new Indiana.
- 10:46Speaker 1: Jonas getting her bed.
- 10:47Speaker 2: I mean, come on there.
- 10:48Speaker 3: It is a lot of media has romanticized the story
- 10:51Speaker 3: of Valentine, that he wrote love letters in jail or
- 10:54Speaker 3: performed marriages in jail, but there's no real historical evidence.
- 10:57Speaker 2: To back that up. What we have is on shaky
- 11:00Speaker 2: enough ground.
- 11:01Speaker 4: Speaking of the Catholic charge, in an attempt to due
- 11:03Speaker 4: away with pagan festivals, they combined Valentine's Day with Librecalia
- 11:07Speaker 4: in fifth century CE. But it was still pretty much
- 11:10Speaker 4: a day about getting drunk and fertility, but now with
- 11:13Speaker 4: clothes on, because you know Christians, right, that's the way
- 11:16Speaker 4: you got to do it. In parallel, there was Gallanton's Day,
- 11:19Speaker 4: a holiday observed by the Normans.
- 11:21Speaker 1: Gallanton meant lover of women.
- 11:24Speaker 4: Because the names are similar, It's likely they got combined
- 11:26Speaker 4: at some point in time.
- 11:28Speaker 3: Right, and then, with the help of artists like Shakespeare Ofhilia,
- 11:32Speaker 3: describes herself as hamlets Valentine and Shaucer, who wrote a
- 11:35Speaker 3: February as the seasoned birdsmate Tauru. Romantic Valentine's Day was
- 11:40Speaker 3: romanticized and popularized throughout Europe. By the Middle Ages, handmade
- 11:45Speaker 3: paper cards had become a part of this tradition. The
- 11:48Speaker 3: French Duke of Orleans described his wife as his quote
- 11:51Speaker 3: very gentle Valentine in a letter he wrote to her
- 11:54Speaker 3: in February fourteen fifteen. Sweets became a part of it,
- 11:57Speaker 3: to getting something sweet for someone you thought was sweet.
- 12:00Speaker 1: Oh, so I need to get you something sweet.
- 12:02Speaker 2: Oh you think I'm sweets?
- 12:03Speaker 1: Oh you know I do. So.
- 12:05Speaker 4: From Europe, this holiday spread, eventually making its way to
- 12:07Speaker 4: the New World. Nineteenth century industrialization added mass produced, factory
- 12:12Speaker 4: made cards to the mix, and in nineteen thirteen a
- 12:15Speaker 4: little coupling you may have heard of, oh, I don't know,
- 12:17Speaker 4: called Hallmark. Hallmark Cards started making cards in Kansas City, Missouri.
- 12:23Speaker 3: Right and from there you can imagine, oh, the birth
- 12:27Speaker 3: of cards. So yeah, well, they were very instrumental in
- 12:31Speaker 3: popularizing a lot of the holidays we celebrate.
- 12:33Speaker 1: Because that's their bread and butter.
- 12:35Speaker 3: Why you gotta get a card for this holiday in
- 12:38Speaker 3: the card exactly, but not all cards.
- 12:42Speaker 1: We were nice.
- 12:44Speaker 2: And we're going to get into that.
- 12:46Speaker 3: But first we're gonna fall for a quick break for
- 12:48Speaker 3: word from our sponsor. And we're back, Thank you, sponsor,
- 13:05Speaker 3: And we're back with something I actually learned about. I
- 13:07Speaker 3: remember the precise moment I learned about this over on
- 13:11Speaker 3: our other show that my other show that I do
- 13:12Speaker 3: is Samantha. You should just come along and be part
- 13:14Speaker 3: of it. We Savor, which is all about food and drink.
- 13:18Speaker 3: We did an episode for Valentine's Day on Sweethearts, the
- 13:21Speaker 3: candy yes, with the messages, and I somehow found this
- 13:27Speaker 3: thing about giving people mean sweethearts. And from there I
- 13:32Speaker 3: found this old tradition of giving people vinegar Valentine.
- 13:37Speaker 4: And you told me about this, and I had no
- 13:40Speaker 4: clue that was a thing. I'm still kind of baffled. Oh,
- 13:43Speaker 4: even though we've been researching it, I'm still baffled.
- 13:45Speaker 3: Oh it's baffling. Actually, it makes perfect sense in a
- 13:49Speaker 3: weird way.
- 13:49Speaker 2: And I'm going to bring it all together to.
- 13:51Speaker 4: Be fair, though I feel like I would be. This
- 13:54Speaker 4: is probably my type of Valentine anyway, Lord.
- 13:57Speaker 3: It probably is so This is something that I'm i
- 14:01Speaker 3: is hilarious, but I'm also really glad it's a thing of.
- 14:04Speaker 2: The past because they're pretty mean, and we're going to
- 14:08Speaker 2: do some examples.
- 14:08Speaker 3: But so vinegar Valentine's were previously called mocking insulting. Our
- 14:12Speaker 3: comic vinegar is actually something that we call them modernly.
- 14:15Speaker 3: That's not what they were called back then. And this
- 14:17Speaker 3: was the practice from about the eighteen forties to nineteen
- 14:20Speaker 3: forties that was particularly popular in the United States and
- 14:22Speaker 3: the UK of giving people a mean or cool card,
- 14:26Speaker 3: usually with a crude caricature, almost always anonymously. Oh even
- 14:32Speaker 3: when folks made their own Valentines before there was a
- 14:36Speaker 3: commercialization of cards, they made these vinegar versions.
- 14:39Speaker 2: They made homemade vinegar versions.
- 14:41Speaker 3: I guess that's what I was getting in elementary school.
- 14:45Speaker 3: But the commercialization of cards took that and ran with it.
- 14:48Speaker 2: They made them.
- 14:50Speaker 3: People would buy these cards for about a penny or
- 14:52Speaker 3: sometimes more for a fancy one, and they could get
- 14:54Speaker 3: pretty fancy and send them through the mail, again anonymously
- 14:58Speaker 3: to add insult to in the person receiving the vinegar
- 15:02Speaker 3: valentine usually had.
- 15:03Speaker 1: To pay for postage.
- 15:06Speaker 3: They had to pay for it It could be someone
- 15:09Speaker 3: you secretly despise, or it could be a not so
- 15:11Speaker 3: nice way to tell a suitor you were not that
- 15:13Speaker 3: into them.
- 15:14Speaker 2: That was a really popular one. We should do these,
- 15:16Speaker 2: I don't think so. I don't think so.
- 15:20Speaker 3: You could send one to a couple you didn't like,
- 15:22Speaker 3: or if they were doing PDA you didn't like, you
- 15:24Speaker 3: could send that. You could strongly advise them to change
- 15:27Speaker 3: their behavior. There A lot of them are threatening in nature,
- 15:29Speaker 3: like change your ways or else. Millions of these millions
- 15:36Speaker 3: were printed. If you think about it as I have,
- 15:41Speaker 3: they were sort of an early example of trolling.
- 15:44Speaker 1: It really is.
- 15:45Speaker 3: It's like we complain about social media today and how
- 15:47Speaker 3: terrible people are, but we've been terrible apparently as long
- 15:52Speaker 3: as we.
- 15:52Speaker 2: Can be anonymous.
- 15:55Speaker 3: Yeah, Because if you didn't want to say something to
- 15:57Speaker 3: someone's face.
- 15:59Speaker 2: Here here was a great way to do it.
- 16:00Speaker 3: And you could get them for just about anything or anyone.
- 16:05Speaker 2: They get so specific.
- 16:07Speaker 3: At one time, these cards accounted for half of all
- 16:12Speaker 3: Valentine's sales, not just cards sales in the United States.
- 16:16Speaker 5: Wow.
- 16:17Speaker 1: Yeah, the power of anonymity, I guess. Yes.
- 16:20Speaker 3: So we do want to have we want to go
- 16:21Speaker 3: through some examples.
- 16:22Speaker 1: Oh yeah, these are fine.
- 16:23Speaker 4: So there's one this image that shows a woman handing
- 16:27Speaker 4: a man a lemon, and the caption reads, to my Valentine,
- 16:30Speaker 4: 'tis a limon I hand you? Now skadoo? Because I
- 16:33Speaker 4: love another there's no chance for you. Also, I would
- 16:38Speaker 4: like to say all of these have great words that
- 16:40Speaker 4: we never use anymore, such as skadoo, and I think
- 16:44Speaker 4: I would need to bring them back.
- 16:45Speaker 1: You need the chance Atlantic accent. Oh yeah, I know,
- 16:48Speaker 1: I don't do that.
- 16:48Speaker 2: Well, I mean, we'll see how it goes.
- 16:51Speaker 3: There's one of a woman dumping a bucket of water
- 16:54Speaker 3: on a man's head that reads, here's a pretty cool reception.
- 16:58Speaker 3: At least you'll say, there's no exception. It's just as
- 17:01Speaker 3: plain as it can say, old fellow, you best step away.
- 17:04Speaker 1: That may be something you should do now, I know.
- 17:08Speaker 4: Another one shows a snake in a suit on and
- 17:10Speaker 4: a top hat, and then there's a woman looking on
- 17:12Speaker 4: in the fear in the background, and the caption goes,
- 17:15Speaker 4: I'm not attracted by your glitter for well, I know
- 17:18Speaker 4: how very bitter my life would be if I should
- 17:20Speaker 4: take you for my spouse.
- 17:22Speaker 1: A rattlesnake.
- 17:23Speaker 4: Oh no, I'd not accept the ring or evermore twould
- 17:26Speaker 4: prove us sting.
- 17:27Speaker 3: Oh also, I think that snake had a monocle. Just
- 17:30Speaker 3: want to add that in That.
- 17:31Speaker 1: Probably sounds about right.
- 17:32Speaker 2: Yes.
- 17:33Speaker 3: Another depicts a man about to kiss a donkey with
- 17:36Speaker 3: the message, Hey, lover boy, the place for you is
- 17:38Speaker 3: home upon the shelf, because the only one who'd kiss
- 17:41Speaker 3: you is.
- 17:41Speaker 1: A jackass like yourself.
- 17:44Speaker 3: Or this titled bald Head, Your bright shining pate is
- 17:48Speaker 3: seen at all shows and invariably down in the bald
- 17:51Speaker 3: headed rose, where you make conspicuous by your tender care.
- 17:56Speaker 2: Your true ardent love for one onesome hair.
- 17:59Speaker 1: Oh so mean, no one's superman.
- 18:02Speaker 4: So several were moral based about PDA or alcoholism.
- 18:06Speaker 1: Or this one called television bug.
- 18:09Speaker 4: It says at faces that are televised all day and night,
- 18:12Speaker 4: you stare, but if.
- 18:13Speaker 1: They saw your stupid mug, they'd all go off the air.
- 18:15Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I love the rhyme. Not gonna lie.
- 18:18Speaker 2: The rhymes are fun. Yeah uh. And these cars got down.
- 18:21Speaker 1: To the occupation specific.
- 18:23Speaker 3: If you had a sales lady you didn't like, there's
- 18:25Speaker 3: a vinegar valentine that had you covered like this one.
- 18:30Speaker 3: Saleslady as you wait upon the women with discuss upon
- 18:33Speaker 3: your face. The way you snap and bark at them,
- 18:35Speaker 3: one would think you owned the place. Oho, if you
- 18:39Speaker 3: weren't a fan of your physician. There was a character
- 18:41Speaker 3: named doctor Shirdeath. You could even send one to the
- 18:44Speaker 3: postman who delivered the note. They were very big during
- 18:49Speaker 3: the Civil War. TiO one shows a woman with a
- 18:52Speaker 3: large skull for a head carrying a chainsaw. The caption
- 18:56Speaker 3: reads to the surgeon, ho, ho old saw bones, here
- 18:59Speaker 3: you come. Yes, when the rebels whack as you are
- 19:02Speaker 3: always ready with your traps to mangle saw and hack us.
- 19:06Speaker 2: Oh.
- 19:07Speaker 4: There was a whole category of cars meant to masculate
- 19:09Speaker 4: men who had babies on their lap as being hen pecked,
- 19:12Speaker 4: which is also a great word, but not good.
- 19:14Speaker 1: No, But at the same time it's an old school word.
- 19:17Speaker 1: It's ridiculous.
- 19:18Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 19:18Speaker 4: And then the old maid from eighteen ninety four, 'tis
- 19:21Speaker 4: all in vain your simpering looks. You never can incline
- 19:24Speaker 4: with all of your bustles, stay in curls to find
- 19:26Speaker 4: a Valentine.
- 19:28Speaker 3: And this one she's caught a poor cat and a bird,
- 19:31Speaker 3: but she can't snare a man. So we've heard see
- 19:34Speaker 3: old maid's sad fate to lose out on a mate
- 19:36Speaker 3: and take tea.
- 19:37Speaker 2: But sh not a.
- 19:38Speaker 3: Word or this one. You've got more curves than a
- 19:43Speaker 3: roller coaster. Your clothes fit like a glove. There's one
- 19:46Speaker 3: thing wrong, glamour puss. You've a face only a mother
- 19:49Speaker 3: would love.
- 19:50Speaker 4: So many depicted women in unfeminine ways, miss nosy and
- 19:54Speaker 4: image of a woman with a large nose that reads
- 19:56Speaker 4: on account of your talk of others affairs at most dances,
- 19:59Speaker 4: you sit warming the chairs because of the k you
- 20:02Speaker 4: take to attend to all others business.
- 20:04Speaker 3: You have a a friend and speaking of unfeminine women's
- 20:08Speaker 3: suffrage ushered in a whole new wave of vinegar Valentine's
- 20:12Speaker 3: aimed at women fighting for the right to vote, Like this,
- 20:16Speaker 3: your vote for me, you will not get. I don't
- 20:18Speaker 3: want a preaching suffragette. These cards typically portrayed suffragettes as
- 20:23Speaker 3: ugly and often violent. Some women sent Valentine's to a
- 20:27Speaker 3: sure would be suitors that they weren't like those suffragists
- 20:31Speaker 3: reading in these wild days of suffragette dreys. I'm sure
- 20:35Speaker 3: you'd never overlook a girl who can't be militant. But
- 20:38Speaker 3: simply loves to cook, okay, but there were pro suffragette
- 20:42Speaker 3: Valentine's as well, So you.
- 20:45Speaker 4: Know, it's kind of like the feminists and anti feminists today,
- 20:49Speaker 4: and it's just in Twitter.
- 20:51Speaker 2: Exactly exactly.
- 20:54Speaker 3: These cards, while popular, were certainly not universally well liked,
- 20:57Speaker 3: and it's hard to say how many were jokes how
- 21:00Speaker 3: many were totally serious. An eighteen ninety five article from
- 21:04Speaker 3: the Kindergarten Primary magazine lamented the detrimental effects these cars
- 21:08Speaker 3: had on children, calling on teachers to quote make it
- 21:11Speaker 3: a day for kind remembrance than a day for wrecking revenge.
- 21:15Speaker 3: One post office in Chicago held over twenty five thousand Valentines,
- 21:20Speaker 3: deeming some of the cards to Vulgart to send. But
- 21:24Speaker 3: there are historical examples of people getting murdered or taking
- 21:28Speaker 3: their own lives over vinegar Valentine.
- 21:30Speaker 1: So it's a bullying tactic.
- 21:32Speaker 2: It is. It absolutely is.
- 21:33Speaker 4: Again, these are funny to read right now, but plenty
- 21:36Speaker 4: were super sexist and racist and fat phobic, and some
- 21:40Speaker 4: advise people to kill themselves. Really, if you think of
- 21:43Speaker 4: comment boards and Twitter fees, you doue comments. In some
- 21:46Speaker 4: ways this is still going on, actually in a lot
- 21:48Speaker 4: of ways. Yeah, going on, and people have always been terrible.
- 21:52Speaker 4: And again, the world is burning.
- 21:55Speaker 2: Sminty, the world is burning.
- 21:57Speaker 1: That's our tackling.
- 21:58Speaker 4: Oh so wow, yeah, Vinegar Valentine's I never knew it
- 22:02Speaker 4: was such a thing.
- 22:03Speaker 3: I would recommend looking it up just to see the
- 22:08Speaker 3: imagery in a lot of them.
- 22:09Speaker 4: Oh god, oh my, that sounds disheartening. Yes, but maybe
- 22:13Speaker 4: we should go on to a bitter better We're not bitter, yes,
- 22:17Speaker 4: better topics.
- 22:18Speaker 1: Such as Gallentine's Day.
- 22:20Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 22:20Speaker 4: So the actual name and celebration was first on Parks
- 22:23Speaker 4: and rec episode that aired on February eleventh, twenty ten.
- 22:27Speaker 1: Also should be noted that it was written by a man.
- 22:29Speaker 1: Oh yes, so.
- 22:31Speaker 4: In the episode, we see one of my faves, Amy Poehler,
- 22:34Speaker 4: celebrating with her gal pals with brunch and plenty of
- 22:37Speaker 4: kitschy presents and gifts, and as Leslie explained it, every
- 22:41Speaker 4: February thirteenth, my lady friends and I leave our husbands
- 22:43Speaker 4: and our boyfriends at home and we just come and
- 22:45Speaker 4: kick it breakfast style ladies celebrating ladies. It's like the
- 22:49Speaker 4: Lilith Fair minus the eighths plus for tatas and waffles.
- 22:53Speaker 1: And waffles, of course the waffles.
- 22:54Speaker 3: Yeah, as defined by Urban Dictionary, February thirteenth, The other
- 22:59Speaker 3: half of Valentine's Day, when you celebrate your love for
- 23:01Speaker 3: your lady friends single r. No, Hey, Judy, you're such
- 23:04Speaker 3: a great friend to me, and I want to celebrate
- 23:06Speaker 3: our friend love, not only my sexy love with my
- 23:08Speaker 3: boyfriend Marvin tomorrow. So let's have a dinner and get
- 23:11Speaker 3: together the day before Valentine's Day. Gallantine's Day, sexy love,
- 23:16Speaker 3: sexy love, yes, friend love and sexy love yeah.
- 23:18Speaker 1: No, you got to differentiate.
- 23:20Speaker 4: So if you have seen the show, and most likely
- 23:22Speaker 4: if a friend of yours have seen the show, then
- 23:24Speaker 4: you know that, yes, this is a maid of holiday.
- 23:26Speaker 4: But the success of it has made some great commercial success,
- 23:29Speaker 4: whether from different products being marketed towards the holiday or
- 23:32Speaker 4: from the sheer amount of publicity written in reference to
- 23:35Speaker 4: said holiday.
- 23:36Speaker 3: Yes, one thing as part of our jobs. And you
- 23:40Speaker 3: might not get this a lot yet, Samanthah, but you
- 23:43Speaker 3: will is cold emails from pr companies, and I have
- 23:47Speaker 3: probably gotten at least thirty about Galentine's Day and what
- 23:50Speaker 3: I should be doing on Galentine's Day and what I
- 23:51Speaker 3: should buy my gal Pal friends. So definitely companies have
- 23:55Speaker 3: capitalized on it. And also, as I said before, it
- 24:00Speaker 3: wasn't an official day.
- 24:01Speaker 2: But I feel like a lot of.
- 24:02Speaker 3: Us we've been doing something like this right for a
- 24:05Speaker 3: long time. We just didn't call it this, and we
- 24:08Speaker 3: didn't have all the kind of traditions. Even though it's new,
- 24:10Speaker 3: there's kind of a set here's what you do exactly.
- 24:13Speaker 1: Yes.
- 24:14Speaker 3: Spreading wide enough, it has spawned books, articles both arguing
- 24:18Speaker 3: for and against. As New York Post writer Haley Eber
- 24:21Speaker 3: stated in her twenty seventeen column celebrating female friendship is great,
- 24:25Speaker 3: but tying it to Valentine's Day reeks of an opportunistic
- 24:28Speaker 3: marketing ploy, stating she felt it was being used as
- 24:32Speaker 3: only a marketing ploy, in that February thirteenth had once
- 24:35Speaker 3: been referred to as Mistress Day, again for cheeters to
- 24:39Speaker 3: take their side pieces, as she states, out for private celebration.
- 24:43Speaker 4: Perhaps it could be stated that Valentines was the answer
- 24:46Speaker 4: to the long appropriated idea that Valentine's was single awareness day.
- 24:50Speaker 4: Side note, there seems to be a whole lot of feelings,
- 24:53Speaker 4: whether it's love, loneliness, or defensiveness, just a whole lot
- 24:56Speaker 4: of emotion around this month, right, And again speaking of
- 24:59Speaker 4: a single Awareness Day, this was created in two thousand
- 25:02Speaker 4: and five with the idea that for too long, February
- 25:05Speaker 4: fourteenth was SAD, which is the acronym for Single Awareness
- 25:08Speaker 4: Day in a negative and so taking it back and
- 25:11Speaker 4: celebrating being single and being aware of that day, I
- 25:14Speaker 4: guess is on the fifties to celebrate one's own singleness
- 25:18Speaker 4: if you happen to be single.
- 25:20Speaker 3: Right, And when I was in college, me and a
- 25:22Speaker 3: big group of my female friends would do Single Awareness
- 25:25Speaker 3: Day SAD, but we would kind of do it like ironically,
- 25:28Speaker 3: like we were single, right, but we weren't sad.
- 25:30Speaker 2: We were super happy. We would kind of joke about it.
- 25:33Speaker 1: Yes, it's a celebration of I don't need no persons.
- 25:36Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, and then we would always like, really do
- 25:39Speaker 3: it up.
- 25:40Speaker 2: It was really fun.
- 25:43Speaker 3: And of course it should be noted that there are
- 25:46Speaker 3: several other days created before Gallentine's Day, such as International
- 25:50Speaker 3: Day of Friendship, created by the UN and World Friendship
- 25:53Speaker 3: Crusade in nineteen fifty eight and celebrated on July thirtieth,
- 25:57Speaker 3: although most countries celebrate on the first Sunday, in August.
- 26:00Speaker 2: And by the way, in nineteen ninety eight, Winnie.
- 26:03Speaker 3: The Pooh but you didn't know apparently I didn't know,
- 26:06Speaker 3: was appointed as the Ambassador of Friendship by the UN.
- 26:10Speaker 2: Yes.
- 26:10Speaker 3: Also of note, National Friendship Day was created by Hallmark
- 26:13Speaker 3: in nineteen nineteen, but apparently went away in the nineteen forties.
- 26:16Speaker 2: I guess they didn't sell enough card maybe not, maybe not.
- 26:20Speaker 3: And yeah, I actually I had a brain freeze and
- 26:22Speaker 3: forgot who Winny of the Woo was.
- 26:23Speaker 1: It's all okay, I did know who you were.
- 26:25Speaker 2: Now you know, Now I know.
- 26:28Speaker 3: And we did want to talk about some traditions around
- 26:31Speaker 3: the world. But first we're going to pause for one
- 26:33Speaker 3: more quick pick for a word from our sponsor, and
- 26:49Speaker 3: we're back.
- 26:49Speaker 2: Thank you sponsor.
- 26:50Speaker 3: And yeah, we did want to talk about some traditions
- 26:53Speaker 3: from elsewhere.
- 26:54Speaker 4: Yeah, and you know, we would love to hear about
- 26:56Speaker 4: traditions from other countries. So please let us know if
- 26:59Speaker 4: you're in a different country, or even if you have
- 27:01Speaker 4: different types of traditions, let us know. Because apparently in
- 27:04Speaker 4: Denmark men give women something called a joking letter.
- 27:07Speaker 1: Traditionally. I'm as assuming anyone can do it.
- 27:10Speaker 4: Yeah, the letter has a funny joke or rhyme signed
- 27:13Speaker 4: only with a series of dots like dot dot dot.
- 27:17Speaker 3: I think, yeah, I think maybe I was thinking Morse code.
- 27:20Speaker 2: But see this is.
- 27:23Speaker 4: So if the receiver can figure out who the author is,
- 27:26Speaker 4: they get an easter egg when the holiday rolls around.
- 27:29Speaker 1: What Yeah, huh, I wonder if that's really true?
- 27:32Speaker 4: Please write it so you get an easter egg if
- 27:35Speaker 4: you Yeah, but you have to wait, you have that
- 27:38Speaker 4: long to figure out who it is. Probably is Morse code,
- 27:41Speaker 4: because I wouldn't imagine what an asterisk would be a
- 27:45Speaker 4: hint of sorts.
- 27:46Speaker 2: Yeah, and I do feel like I could be totally wrong.
- 27:50Speaker 4: So I feel like this tradition, we're gonna need to
- 27:53Speaker 4: know some answer we need we.
- 27:54Speaker 2: Have questions that need answer.
- 27:57Speaker 3: At one time, the French participated in something called the
- 28:00Speaker 3: more drawing for love.
- 28:02Speaker 2: It sort of.
- 28:03Speaker 3: Sounds like choosing a kickball team or something. Men and
- 28:05Speaker 3: women would separate and then call each other's names out
- 28:09Speaker 3: and they would couple up. The men, of course, could
- 28:12Speaker 3: choose another woman if they didn't like the one who
- 28:14Speaker 3: they ended up with, and the unmatched women would go
- 28:17Speaker 3: have a bonfire together, hurling insults and swears to men
- 28:20Speaker 3: who had wrong them, burning the pictures of those men.
- 28:23Speaker 3: This holiday got so out of hand the French government
- 28:26Speaker 3: stepped in and banned it. In England, there used to
- 28:30Speaker 3: be a tradition of women putting bay leaves under their
- 28:33Speaker 3: bed the night before Valentine's Day, one at each corner
- 28:36Speaker 3: and the center to dream of their future husbands. You
- 28:40Speaker 3: can check out the episode we did on bay leaves
- 28:42Speaker 3: ever at Savor for more on that, and we also
- 28:45Speaker 3: talked about South Korea's Black Day on April fourteenth, which
- 28:48Speaker 3: is a day where singles eat black foods.
- 28:50Speaker 2: Too mourned their single status. But being single is great, y'all.
- 28:54Speaker 2: It's all good.
- 28:55Speaker 1: Hey, I'll eat food.
- 28:58Speaker 2: Yeah, I from what I understand again, listeners right in.
- 29:01Speaker 3: It's also sort of ironic, like I don't think I
- 29:06Speaker 3: don't think.
- 29:07Speaker 2: People are really upset about it, but I could be wrong.
- 29:09Speaker 3: So we would love to hear from anybody who knows
- 29:13Speaker 3: there are black food.
- 29:14Speaker 2: So we did it.
- 29:14Speaker 3: And in our Savor episode we talked about we were
- 29:16Speaker 3: talking about cuttlefish ink and so things just.
- 29:19Speaker 2: Die like it could be anything. Noodles.
- 29:21Speaker 3: I think noodles is traditional, but like the outside of
- 29:24Speaker 3: tumblings or cupcakes all.
- 29:26Speaker 4: Ridings or kin have the black Hamburger or whatever, and.
- 29:31Speaker 2: We also talked about that.
- 29:32Speaker 4: Oh okay, yes, so I need to go listen to
- 29:35Speaker 4: that episode right now.
- 29:36Speaker 3: You do, you'll learn a lot and we would love
- 29:40Speaker 3: to learn a lot from you listeners, as we always do,
- 29:42Speaker 3: and we do have some listener male for this one,
- 29:45Speaker 3: starting with Mikhayla. She wrote, Hey, y'all, I loved your
- 29:49Speaker 3: two parter on female revengers, particularly because I'm currently in
- 29:52Speaker 3: a production of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, featuring one of the
- 29:55Speaker 3: most intense here's my bias showing female revengers to more
- 29:59Speaker 3: at Queen of the Gow. Yes, as an actor, villains
- 30:01Speaker 3: are forever juicy to play, but Tamora Tamora has been
- 30:04Speaker 3: a mind job and a challenge unlike anything I face
- 30:07Speaker 3: to date the story if you're not savvy. After losing
- 30:10Speaker 3: a ten year war against Rome, she her three sons,
- 30:13Speaker 3: and a mercenary, her secret lover Aaron the More are
- 30:16Speaker 3: dragged to Rome as trophies. Her firstborn son is chosen
- 30:19Speaker 3: for sacrifice by way of a right by the titular
- 30:22Speaker 3: character Titus. She begs she appeals to him as a
- 30:25Speaker 3: parent but he does not relent, and her son is
- 30:27Speaker 3: needlessly buy us again slaughtered. By this, she is forever
- 30:31Speaker 3: altered and irreversibly damaged, and bent on revenge. Of epic proportions,
- 30:36Speaker 3: she is elevated to Empress Yes in the same scene,
- 30:39Speaker 3: her son was murdered, and she reclaims a status that
- 30:42Speaker 3: will assist her in gaining vengeance, and.
- 30:44Speaker 2: Boy howdy does she.
- 30:45Speaker 3: She aids and abets the mutilation and rape of Titus's daughter,
- 30:48Speaker 3: as well as the murder of the daughter's new husband,
- 30:51Speaker 3: frames two of his sons for said murder, and attempts
- 30:53Speaker 3: to drive Titus and sane with grief. The thing is,
- 30:57Speaker 3: he's already pretty insane. Forty years of war will do
- 30:59Speaker 3: that someone. But he's the victor of war and so
- 31:02Speaker 3: lauded for a service to Rome, so his wild behavior
- 31:05Speaker 3: is mostly allowed, even when he kills one of his
- 31:07Speaker 3: own sons.
- 31:08Speaker 2: But I digress.
- 31:10Speaker 3: In the end, she loses her mind and believes she
- 31:12Speaker 3: has trick Titus into something that will finish him and
- 31:15Speaker 3: his remaining family. However, he hasn't actually bought the farm,
- 31:18Speaker 3: and her sons are captured, murdered, and baked into a pie,
- 31:20Speaker 3: which she eats at a banquet. She is then killed
- 31:23Speaker 3: by Titus, and it is pronounced that her body will
- 31:25Speaker 3: be tossed to the animals to feast on as it rots,
- 31:28Speaker 3: because having lived beastly, she will be food for beast
- 31:32Speaker 3: Tamora is a woman in a man's world who, when
- 31:35Speaker 3: she behaves like a man I e. Aggressively, is deemed barbarous,
- 31:38Speaker 3: without womanhood and without grace. Though when Titus and every
- 31:41Speaker 3: other man in the play behaving kind, no eyebrow gets raised,
- 31:45Speaker 3: her sexual prowess is often discussed as a negative, either
- 31:47Speaker 3: as a tool of manipulation or further evidence of her barbarism. Meanwhile,
- 31:51Speaker 3: Titus has begotten twenty six sons of one would have
- 31:54Speaker 3: to imagine twenty six separate women delivered to him upon
- 31:58Speaker 3: his returns from war, because you know, dude's gotta let
- 32:00Speaker 3: off some steam after all that warring. Furthermore, Lavinia, Titus's daughter,
- 32:04Speaker 3: exists to service her father and her husband, and is
- 32:07Speaker 3: literally referred to as an object or property throughout the play.
- 32:11Speaker 3: They are the only two women in the play, and
- 32:12Speaker 3: so the Madonna and the horror dynamic is omnipresent. I
- 32:15Speaker 3: have so much more to say, but I've already said
- 32:18Speaker 3: more than I thought I would, and I hear the
- 32:19Speaker 3: atro music spelling. Just want to make sure my favorite
- 32:22Speaker 3: Shakespearean lady villain got her due.
- 32:24Speaker 1: Nice.
- 32:25Speaker 2: I saw that.
- 32:26Speaker 3: I saw the movie, yeah, when I was a kid
- 32:29Speaker 3: in its.
- 32:31Speaker 1: Yeah, that could be a little bit horrifying. The pie
- 32:34Speaker 1: the pies.
- 32:36Speaker 3: Anyway, Whitney wrote, I thought of you both while watching
- 32:41Speaker 3: a movie recently, and how appropriate considering you ass listeners
- 32:44Speaker 3: for movie recommendations. There's a movie out of China called
- 32:46Speaker 3: The Widowed Witch about a woman who survives a factory
- 32:48Speaker 3: explosion which kills her husband. While recovering from this trauma,
- 32:52Speaker 3: she endured in other trauma. She ends up becoming a
- 32:55Speaker 3: traveling shaman. This movie seems to tick off both categories
- 32:58Speaker 3: of somewhat revenge film as well as witch film. Is
- 33:01Speaker 3: also a non white depiction of women practicing magic, perfect, perfect,
- 33:05Speaker 3: well less love recommendations. Yes, we're definitely gonna check that out.
- 33:09Speaker 1: So we need to know. How are you going to
- 33:11Speaker 1: celebrate February fourteenth or not? You don't have to, I
- 33:15Speaker 1: don't blame you.
- 33:16Speaker 4: Do you have a unique tradition or how is it
- 33:18Speaker 4: celebrated in your neck of the Woods. If you don't
- 33:20Speaker 4: do Valentine's Day, is there an equivalent.
- 33:22Speaker 2: Or any of those friendship days?
- 33:24Speaker 5: Oh?
- 33:24Speaker 4: Yes, I definitely had a Galentine's tradition for a while.
- 33:28Speaker 3: Yes, as did I. You can send your stories answers
- 33:32Speaker 3: to our questions. We had many in this episode. Yes,
- 33:36Speaker 3: please don't seen vinegar Valentines unless they're funny.
- 33:39Speaker 4: Unless I actually would appreciate a good funny one.
- 33:41Speaker 2: Yeah, a good funny one, that's okay.
- 33:43Speaker 3: You can email us at Stuff Media, mom Stuff at
- 33:45Speaker 3: iHeartMedia dot com. You can find us on Instagram at
- 33:48Speaker 3: stuff I Never Told You and on Twitter at mom
- 33:50Speaker 3: Stuff Podcast. Thanks as always to our super producer Andrew Howard,
- 33:55Speaker 3: and also.
- 33:56Speaker 1: Be part of the Galanines.
- 33:58Speaker 3: We'll allow it, and thanks to you for listening. Stuff
- 34:01Speaker 3: I Never Told You's a protection of iHeartRadio is how
- 34:03Speaker 3: stuff works for more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visits iHeartRadio app,
- 34:07Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.