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SMNTY Classics: Men and Cars · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha.
0:06
Speaker 2: I'm welcome to stefan Never Told You production of iHeartRadio.
0:18
Speaker 2: And recently we got a listener mail about driving and
0:26
Speaker 2: the history of women and driving, and I am actually
0:30
Speaker 2: really excited to do that episode. I've been looking into it.
0:33
Speaker 2: There is a lot to talk about there. We talked
0:37
Speaker 2: about it in a recent Monday Mini a little bit,
0:39
Speaker 2: but there was a lot of angles I wasn't anticipating
0:43
Speaker 2: in this conversation. In the meantime, we wanted to bring
0:47
Speaker 2: back this classic episode about men and cars, especially I'm
0:53
Speaker 2: getting ready to drive for the first time.
0:55
Speaker 3: In a long time for the holidays, so it's a
1:01
Speaker 3: very busy travel time of the year, so please enjoy
1:04
Speaker 3: this classic episode.
1:08
Speaker 4: Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from how Stuff
1:11
Speaker 4: Works dot com.
1:17
Speaker 1: He Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
1:19
Speaker 5: I'm Caroline and I'm Kristin Kristen and listeners, buckle up,
1:24
Speaker 5: get ready. We're about to turn on the ignition room
1:27
Speaker 5: of this episode looking at women and cars.
1:31
Speaker 6: And we've got a lot of ground to cover.
1:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, we have a lot of miles to go.
1:35
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're going to talk about women, cars, driving, stereotypes,
1:42
Speaker 4: the Industrial Revolution, Emily Post. Yeah.
1:45
Speaker 5: I mean that's like this is get ready, this is
1:47
Speaker 5: going to be a three hour podcast.
1:49
Speaker 6: Be ready. You need to get some snacks for sure, and.
1:52
Speaker 1: Maybe do listen in your car.
1:54
Speaker 6: Yeah.
1:55
Speaker 1: I hope you are on a long road trip, very long.
1:57
Speaker 4: Yes, Okay, Well let's start off Caroline.
2:00
Speaker 1: Yeah.
2:01
Speaker 5: Well, so, you know, we have a lot of stereotypes
2:03
Speaker 5: about women and driving and women drivers, and I feel
2:06
Speaker 5: like we don't have to educate you on those. We
2:08
Speaker 5: don't have to spend any time talking about what those
2:10
Speaker 5: stereotypes are. But it is interesting to see that so
2:14
Speaker 5: many of them stem from the Industrial Revolution.
2:19
Speaker 4: Yeah, they really started off pretty soon after cars first
2:24
Speaker 4: hit the consumer market. Because once we have the industrial Revolution,
2:29
Speaker 4: we have you know, work moving outside of the home
2:32
Speaker 4: and the emergence of men and women's separate spheres, right,
2:37
Speaker 4: and so.
2:38
Speaker 5: Work is where men go to be manly and make money,
2:41
Speaker 5: and home is where women stay to protect the morality
2:45
Speaker 5: and comfort of the rest of the family. But helping
2:49
Speaker 5: this move outside of the home though, where advances in
2:51
Speaker 5: transportation technology in the second half of the eighteenth century.
2:54
Speaker 5: So you've got horses and buggies moving to carts and
2:59
Speaker 5: you know, train cars and things like that. And then
3:01
Speaker 5: of course you get the automobile.
3:04
Speaker 4: Yeah, and so you have people, mostly men with above
3:08
Speaker 4: average incomes, who are enabled thanks to these.
3:11
Speaker 7: Old school cars, to work farther from home and work
3:15
Speaker 7: in home.
3:16
Speaker 6: Though had very.
3:16
Speaker 4: Different values and this idea of you know, the separate spheres,
3:21
Speaker 4: they should be separate, giving, you know, the aggressiveness of
3:24
Speaker 4: the man's world, like preventing it from infiltrating the more peaceful,
3:29
Speaker 4: moralistic woman's world, because you want to keep the home
3:32
Speaker 4: a more sacred, feminine space for the child rearing.
3:36
Speaker 5: Really right, And so then you have automobiles basically fostering
3:41
Speaker 5: the rise of suburban areas suburbs.
3:44
Speaker 6: So that's an.
3:45
Speaker 5: Even clearer demarcation because you're literally separating the home and
3:49
Speaker 5: the workplace geographically more so than ever before. And if
3:55
Speaker 5: we're looking at the era before nineteen ten, which is
3:58
Speaker 5: interesting society women, if we're looking just at like the
4:01
Speaker 5: uppercroast of society, society women drove for recreation just as
4:06
Speaker 5: freely as their wealthy male counterparts did. They were actually
4:10
Speaker 5: called and Kristen correct me, show schoffuses. I believe it's shoffuses.
4:14
Speaker 5: It's the feminine of chauffeur. So it's such a fun fact.
4:20
Speaker 6: I love it.
4:21
Speaker 4: These wealthy women who were toodling around and their old
4:25
Speaker 4: geloppies were called shoffuses. But their social roles were evident
4:30
Speaker 4: in their driving patterns. These women tended to drive downtown
4:35
Speaker 4: more rarely than men, and they typically stayed within their
4:38
Speaker 4: suburban communities and tended to simply drive to social events,
4:43
Speaker 4: shops and school functions.
4:46
Speaker 5: But you know, those darn gasoline cars sure are dirty
4:50
Speaker 5: and hard to crank up, That's.
4:52
Speaker 4: What I mean, because you literally had to hand crank, Yeah,
4:55
Speaker 4: and you don't want to rip your arm out of
4:56
Speaker 4: the socket or whatever.
4:57
Speaker 6: Of course not.
4:58
Speaker 5: But you know, this was part of an we'll get
5:00
Speaker 5: into marketing and advertising and that kind of stuff in
5:02
Speaker 5: a minute, but like this is part of the whole
5:04
Speaker 5: push of like women are too dainty to drive, and
5:07
Speaker 5: so then you literally see the development of separate spheres
5:13
Speaker 5: in driving too, because we have the development.
5:15
Speaker 6: Of electric cars.
5:17
Speaker 5: Blow my mind, Chris and I did not realize that
5:20
Speaker 5: we had electric cars back then.
5:22
Speaker 4: Yeah, And a lot of the research we're going to
5:23
Speaker 4: talk about was initially conducted by a woman named Virginia Sharp,
5:27
Speaker 4: who is an expert in women's roles in automobile history,
5:31
Speaker 4: and she talks about how the electric car was clearly
5:37
Speaker 4: marketed to women once they were trying to figure out
5:40
Speaker 4: where their foothold would be in the market, they realized, Huh,
5:44
Speaker 4: this car doesn't have to be hand cranked, it's quieter,
5:48
Speaker 4: it can't go as far as a gasoline car.
5:51
Speaker 6: What better like automotive option for women could there be?
5:58
Speaker 2: Right?
5:58
Speaker 5: And so manufactures associate the comfort and convenience and aesthetic
6:02
Speaker 5: appeal with women, linking them to the electric cars, while
6:06
Speaker 5: things like power and range and economy those gas cars
6:10
Speaker 5: which were so powerful and noisy, they were faster, they
6:13
Speaker 5: had greater range, and they had to be cranked, all
6:15
Speaker 5: of that was associated with men.
6:18
Speaker 6: Yeah.
6:18
Speaker 4: In nineteen oh eight, in fact, the year that Henry
6:20
Speaker 4: Ford introduced the Model T, he also bought his wife Clara,
6:24
Speaker 4: a lady appropriate electric car.
6:27
Speaker 5: Yeah, and she would use it for short trips around town.
6:29
Speaker 5: But usually when the driving had to be done, it
6:32
Speaker 5: was all Henry behind the wheel and she was riding shotgun.
6:35
Speaker 5: But so we have magazines at the time which are
6:38
Speaker 5: talking about this automotive trend causes so fancy, but they
6:43
Speaker 5: describe electric vehicles as being perfectly suited to the needs
6:47
Speaker 5: of women.
6:47
Speaker 1: We have the very patronizing author H.
6:51
Speaker 5: Claudie who is talking about electric cars, and he said
6:54
Speaker 5: that they have a circumscribed radius. What a delight it
6:59
Speaker 5: is to have a machine she can run herself with
7:01
Speaker 5: no loss of dignity, for making calls, for shopping for pleasure, ride,
7:05
Speaker 5: and for paying back of small social debt.
7:07
Speaker 8: Well, this is also sort of educating the public that
7:11
Speaker 8: it's okay too for women to drive cars because it
7:15
Speaker 8: can serve this domestic function of getting her from here
7:18
Speaker 8: to there to either.
7:20
Speaker 4: There was one advertisement, for instance, talking about how well
7:23
Speaker 4: you know, a wife can go drive to a farm
7:27
Speaker 4: and pick up fresh produce for her family, or she
7:29
Speaker 4: can safely drive little Johnny to school and back, you know,
7:33
Speaker 4: but it's always within that, as Claudie calls it, the
7:36
Speaker 4: circumscribed radius.
7:38
Speaker 5: Yeah. And so, leading up to World War One we
7:41
Speaker 5: do have more and more articles on electric vehicles or
7:44
Speaker 5: on women drivers, and these features show photographs of women driving,
7:51
Speaker 5: charging and maintaining their electric cars, sort of driving home,
7:56
Speaker 5: sort of driving home.
7:57
Speaker 1: That whole division. Electric clean, quiet cars are for women,
8:01
Speaker 1: the noisier cars are for men.
8:03
Speaker 5: And that's reflected also in an ad for the Detroit Electric,
8:07
Speaker 5: which was the last word in luxury and beauty as
8:10
Speaker 5: well as efficiency. They talk about how to the well
8:13
Speaker 5: bred woman, the Detroit Electric has a particular appeal in it.
8:16
Speaker 5: She can preserve her toilet, immaculate her coiffure, and tax
8:20
Speaker 5: she can drive it with all desired privacy, yet safely
8:23
Speaker 5: in constant touch with the traffic conditions all about her.
8:27
Speaker 4: So this is reminiscent too of when we've talked about
8:31
Speaker 4: how revolutionary the bicycle was for women in transportation, but
8:35
Speaker 4: there were still those concerns about women showing ankle or
8:41
Speaker 4: riding around unchaperoned. And you see a similar kind of
8:45
Speaker 4: like patronizing fear.
8:48
Speaker 6: Of okay, well, well women have left the house.
8:50
Speaker 4: We can't stop them now, so let's just figure out
8:54
Speaker 4: this etiquette and rules for how you can still be
8:57
Speaker 4: ladylife and also be behind the wheel of the car.
9:00
Speaker 7: And what's interesting, though, is you see.
9:02
Speaker 4: The drop off in the electric car because it was
9:05
Speaker 4: more expensive than a gasoline car and clearly really never
9:08
Speaker 4: caught on, partially because of that, because they could never
9:11
Speaker 4: really make them to scale in the same way like Ford,
9:14
Speaker 4: for instance, could make these cheaper model ts and in
9:17
Speaker 4: the nineteen twenties they start having the gasoline car. Companies
9:22
Speaker 4: have to start targeting women because everybody's getting a car,
9:27
Speaker 4: and they were like, well, you know what would make
9:29
Speaker 4: things better for us two cars. Families need to have
9:31
Speaker 4: two cars, and so as they start indoctrinating the public too, well,
9:35
Speaker 4: you don't need just one, you need two. And listen, women,
9:38
Speaker 4: gasoline cars are still going to be okay because you
9:42
Speaker 4: can drive.
9:42
Speaker 6: The kids in them. It's always that the advertising is
9:45
Speaker 6: always you can.
9:46
Speaker 4: Take the kids out to the country to go butterfly
9:49
Speaker 4: catching orself.
9:50
Speaker 1: You'll be a better mother if you can drive your kids.
9:52
Speaker 7: To seat, you will be a better wife and a
9:54
Speaker 7: better mother with a car.
9:56
Speaker 4: It's fascinating the kind of the way that they advertise
9:59
Speaker 4: cars to women.
10:00
Speaker 5: Right, But so I mean, speaking of electric cars with
10:04
Speaker 5: having such a circumscribed radius, As Claudie said, there were
10:09
Speaker 5: some pretty fancy ladies out there motoring around on long
10:13
Speaker 5: distances and writing about them. During World War One, for instance,
10:17
Speaker 5: you have young women of means, many of whom were
10:20
Speaker 5: graduates of Vassar and Wellesley who were trained as nurses,
10:23
Speaker 5: had their fancy cars shipped to Europe. It was kind
10:26
Speaker 5: of like an adventure travel experience. They ended up volunteering
10:30
Speaker 5: as nurses and driving injured soldiers to military hospitals.
10:33
Speaker 4: And there were also books that were starting to pop
10:36
Speaker 4: up about accounts of these female road trips. For instance,
10:41
Speaker 4: in nineteen oh eight, Edith Wharton, yes that Edith Wharton
10:44
Speaker 4: wrote one of the earliest travel books about.
10:47
Speaker 7: An auto journey called a Motor Flight through France.
10:51
Speaker 5: And in nineteen sixteen we have the first commercially successful
10:55
Speaker 5: book published by Emily Post later Etiquette Expert, and it
10:59
Speaker 5: was an account of her cross country journey in a car.
11:03
Speaker 4: And in the nineteen twenties, the book Travels with Zenobia
11:06
Speaker 4: Zenobia by the way, it was the name of a car.
11:09
Speaker 4: It provided a detailed account of a trip by two
11:11
Speaker 4: American women from Paris to Albania in a model Ford
11:16
Speaker 4: and one of the authors was Daughter of Little House
11:20
Speaker 4: in the Prairie author Laura Ingles Wilder. But these kinds
11:23
Speaker 4: of tales of women driving and also women were competing
11:27
Speaker 4: every now and then in cross country road trips, sometimes
11:30
Speaker 4: beating men and like making a name for themselves and
11:33
Speaker 4: making all these headlines because it was revolutionary for women
11:35
Speaker 4: to be driving.
11:37
Speaker 6: But even though you have the new woman.
11:40
Speaker 4: Emerging at the same time who was a bit more
11:41
Speaker 4: feminist and a bit more liberated, it was kind of
11:46
Speaker 4: terrifying for more conservative folks at the time who did
11:49
Speaker 4: not want to see women like ironically Emily pos driving
11:54
Speaker 4: all around I know.
11:56
Speaker 5: How scandalous. So by the nineteen twenties and thirties, as
12:00
Speaker 5: Kristen said, it was becoming more accepted that women, Look,
12:04
Speaker 5: women are going to have to use the freaking car. Okay,
12:06
Speaker 5: electric cars just aren't cutting it. We're going to have
12:09
Speaker 5: to drive kids to school, and that's gonna have to
12:11
Speaker 5: be okay. But that is sort of the image that
12:14
Speaker 5: was pushed by both conservatives and advertisers as part of
12:18
Speaker 5: like the car still being part of your domestic sphere.
12:23
Speaker 5: And while society was changing and that was terrifying for
12:26
Speaker 5: a lot of people, we could still maybe we can
12:30
Speaker 5: still use this scary new technology to keep women in
12:33
Speaker 5: their place.
12:34
Speaker 4: Yeah, when I first started reading about the history of
12:36
Speaker 4: women in cars, I expected to see a trend in
12:40
Speaker 4: this earliest advertising of selling cars to women on the
12:43
Speaker 4: basis of that kind of new woman. Hey, ladies, here's
12:46
Speaker 4: the keys to your liberation. But no, it was completely
12:51
Speaker 4: the opposite. The heads of these companies and advertisers at
12:55
Speaker 4: the time were saying no, no, no.
12:57
Speaker 6: No, we need to we need to.
12:58
Speaker 4: Keep the status quo, but still sell these cars. And
13:01
Speaker 4: it was all too like largely a product of suburbanization.
13:06
Speaker 4: Like they were kind of painted into a corner of like, well, women,
13:10
Speaker 4: you gotta drive.
13:11
Speaker 5: Yeah, But so all of this strategy that's going on
13:15
Speaker 5: in this time from conservative Society members and from advertisers,
13:22
Speaker 5: part of the strategy was to paint women as completely
13:25
Speaker 5: incompetent when it comes to cars, whether knowing anything about them,
13:29
Speaker 5: understanding how they work. It was sort of assumed that
13:32
Speaker 5: women were only interested in the style or in the
13:34
Speaker 5: color or how it would match their dress or their
13:36
Speaker 5: nail polish or something. And it's not to say that
13:39
Speaker 5: was true or to say that it was untrue in
13:42
Speaker 5: some cases, but just that that was the image that
13:44
Speaker 5: was pushed by people who did not want women to
13:47
Speaker 5: be out driving around independent.
13:49
Speaker 7: Yeah.
13:50
Speaker 4: Even though even at this time in the nineteen twenties,
13:54
Speaker 4: women were making forty one percent of household car buying decisions,
14:00
Speaker 4: had a voice in what cars.
14:02
Speaker 6: Would be bought.
14:03
Speaker 4: But over and over again you have this, you know,
14:07
Speaker 4: reiteration that women basically just want cars with interiors to
14:11
Speaker 4: match their coats.
14:13
Speaker 5: He wrote ridiculous things like quote, boys and men, on
14:17
Speaker 5: the average greatly exceed women and girls in the ability
14:19
Speaker 5: to manipulate mechanical contrivances, and as a result, women shrink
14:24
Speaker 5: from acting when facing a crisis, work by fits and
14:27
Speaker 5: starts when under high pressure, and work well consistently only
14:30
Speaker 5: when there is no pressure. He describes women as being
14:33
Speaker 5: over cautious, making poorer drivers than men. He says they
14:37
Speaker 5: cause more accidents, and then he goes so far as
14:39
Speaker 5: to say that, owing to their inferior motor outlets, i e.
14:45
Speaker 5: Like their motor skills, not motor car, but like their brains,
14:49
Speaker 5: women succeed best in relatively simple motor activities such as sweeping, washing,
14:55
Speaker 5: and ironing.
14:56
Speaker 6: I would just like to say that I'm horrible at
14:58
Speaker 6: ironing and only fair at sweeping. So Walter Pitkin put
15:04
Speaker 6: that in your pipe.
15:05
Speaker 5: That's right.
15:07
Speaker 4: Well, And it wasn't just guys like Pitkin who were
15:11
Speaker 4: saying this. There was also a woman named Alice Hamilton
15:14
Speaker 4: who was riding in the late nineteen twenties early nineteen thirties,
15:18
Speaker 4: describing for the public what women really think about when
15:22
Speaker 4: car shopping. One choice quote was, she considers how her foot, ankle,
15:27
Speaker 4: and calf will look as she steps smartly upon the
15:30
Speaker 4: running board. Does this fawn gray upholstery go with most
15:33
Speaker 4: of her clothes?
15:35
Speaker 6: Alice? Which I think?
15:37
Speaker 5: Alice, Come on, well, okay, let's counter that Alice with
15:41
Speaker 5: automobile adventuress Alice Heuler Ramsey, to whom I hope I
15:45
Speaker 5: am related. I have Ramses in my family. It would
15:48
Speaker 5: be fantastic if she and I were relatives. Anyway, She
15:51
Speaker 5: became famous by driving across country with three women passengers
15:54
Speaker 5: in a Maxwell Brisco Model double A. It's a gasoline car,
15:58
Speaker 5: non electric car, and it was part of a promotion
16:00
Speaker 5: to sell the car. It was more affordable than other models,
16:03
Speaker 5: and so it was kind of a promotional thing. But
16:06
Speaker 5: Alice didn't this, Alice the Cool Alice didn't stop there.
16:10
Speaker 5: She actually soon after was defeating men in races at
16:13
Speaker 5: county fairs, at state fairs, and she ended up getting
16:16
Speaker 5: herself banned from Race Car Driver.
16:18
Speaker 6: Association because she was too good.
16:20
Speaker 1: Just too good.
16:20
Speaker 6: That's hilarious.
16:21
Speaker 4: Yeah, there was really no empirical data whatsoever to back
16:25
Speaker 4: up these claims that women were awful drivers, and clearly,
16:28
Speaker 4: like the cool alice proved, women.
16:30
Speaker 6: Could be perfectly capable.
16:33
Speaker 4: But it's just this message that we've been told over
16:35
Speaker 4: and over again women are horrible drivers, and they don't
16:39
Speaker 4: care anything about mechanics or how you know, speG. Saw
16:43
Speaker 4: a car actually runs. We just want something apparently that
16:46
Speaker 4: looks pretty. But there was one segment of the population
16:50
Speaker 4: that was a bit of an exception to these rules
16:53
Speaker 4: that kind of dodgey stereotypes that Virginia Chef talks about,
16:56
Speaker 4: which were farm girls, women who are out in the
16:59
Speaker 4: country who perhaps weren't as impacted by this mass suburbanization,
17:04
Speaker 4: were taught to drive cars in the same way that
17:09
Speaker 4: their brothers would have been.
17:10
Speaker 5: Sure, because all of a sudden, now you know, so
17:12
Speaker 5: you're on a farm, you're out in the rural country,
17:14
Speaker 5: far away from cities, city centers. But all of a sudden,
17:17
Speaker 5: now you've got a car or a truck that you
17:20
Speaker 5: can load up with all of your goods and take
17:23
Speaker 5: to the market instead of a horse drawn buggy or
17:25
Speaker 5: whatever you were using before. Yeah, so you know it
17:27
Speaker 5: made sense. You only had a certain number of people
17:29
Speaker 5: working on your farm. You had to make good use
17:31
Speaker 5: of everybody.
17:32
Speaker 4: And so this lays the foundation for where these car
17:36
Speaker 4: stereotypes about women come into play from the get go,
17:42
Speaker 4: and today we still see ripple effects of that when
17:47
Speaker 4: you look at who does the driving. So today more
17:52
Speaker 4: women than men have driver's licenses, at least in the
17:55
Speaker 4: United States, and this is probably a little bit due
17:59
Speaker 4: to there being a few more women on the planet
18:02
Speaker 4: than men. But according to the University of Michigan's Transportation
18:06
Speaker 4: Research Unit, the study took place between nineteen ninety five
18:11
Speaker 4: and twenty ten.
18:12
Speaker 7: The share of teens and young adults.
18:14
Speaker 4: Of both sexes with driver's licenses is declining, but the
18:17
Speaker 4: decline is actually greatest among young men.
18:22
Speaker 5: Yeah, so for men ages twenty five to twenty nine
18:24
Speaker 5: with licenses that dipped ten point six percent, but among
18:28
Speaker 5: women of the same age group that only declined four.
18:30
Speaker 1: Point seven percent. So it's like a war of attrition whatever.
18:34
Speaker 5: But this has serious implications for the industry because women
18:38
Speaker 5: and men are not shopping for the same cars. Necessarily,
18:41
Speaker 5: women are more likely than men to purchase smaller, safer,
18:44
Speaker 5: and more fuel efficient vehicles. We're also more likely to
18:47
Speaker 5: drive less and to have a lower fatality rate per
18:50
Speaker 5: distance driven.
18:52
Speaker 4: Which is hilarious because you and I both drive compact
18:57
Speaker 4: hatchbacks that are extremely safe.
18:59
Speaker 6: That's right, we totally fit into that.
19:01
Speaker 4: We do mold and this has been part of a
19:04
Speaker 4: longer trend in terms of women essentially catching up to
19:08
Speaker 4: men in the number of drivers out on the road.
19:10
Speaker 6: And now eclipsing them.
19:13
Speaker 4: And some theories behind the decline, particularly of young male
19:18
Speaker 4: license holders, are things like technology making face to face
19:23
Speaker 4: connections less important, the erosion of the quote unquote car
19:27
Speaker 4: fetish society, and also economic troubles. Kids these days are
19:32
Speaker 4: less likely to have an income large enough to.
19:36
Speaker 6: Be able to afford to buy a car.
19:37
Speaker 5: Yeah, to buy a car, or to afford auto insurance.
19:40
Speaker 5: Side note, I love that you said kids these days,
19:42
Speaker 5: kids these.
19:42
Speaker 7: Days, I know and assigned that. I think I just
19:44
Speaker 7: sprouted four new gray hairs.
19:45
Speaker 6: And I said that.
19:46
Speaker 5: But the number of young people working has declined, so
19:51
Speaker 5: they're making less money. But the number of young men
19:53
Speaker 5: ages eighteen to thirty four living at home has surged,
19:56
Speaker 5: So maybe that's also a reason that fewer men are
19:58
Speaker 5: holding licenses and drive cars.
20:00
Speaker 1: Maybe it's because Mom is still driving them.
20:02
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, and that's more guys than young women
20:06
Speaker 4: who are also returning home, even though I mean it
20:09
Speaker 4: is more of a millennial trend, being like the boomerang
20:12
Speaker 4: kids who leave and then come back.
20:14
Speaker 6: But I also think, Caroline, I have.
20:16
Speaker 4: A pet theory as well that cars for people our
20:19
Speaker 4: age and younger just might not be seen as as
20:22
Speaker 4: much of a necessity because rather than the suburbanization of
20:26
Speaker 4: the baby boom generation, we're far more about urbanization public transit.
20:32
Speaker 6: Like it's cool to take the train when you can.
20:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, I miss it. I'm moved and can no longer well.
20:39
Speaker 4: And we also, I'm sure have plenty of listeners who
20:43
Speaker 4: prefer to bike places.
20:44
Speaker 6: Sure as well.
20:45
Speaker 4: Yeah, but even though in raw numbers more women have
20:50
Speaker 4: driver's licenses in their wallets, when a guy and a
20:55
Speaker 4: woman get in the car together, there is a good
20:59
Speaker 4: chance that he he is gonna drive. And that's the
21:02
Speaker 4: same thing for my boyfriend and me. We ride around,
21:06
Speaker 4: he's probably driving. So we're gonna look into this persistent
21:10
Speaker 4: pattern of men being the drivers when we come right
21:13
Speaker 4: back from a quick break.
21:16
Speaker 7: And now back to the show.
21:20
Speaker 5: So Kristen was just telling us before the break about
21:23
Speaker 5: how when she's in the car with her boyfriend, he's
21:25
Speaker 5: more likely to drive.
21:27
Speaker 1: I feel like when I'm in the car with my boyfriend, he.
21:30
Speaker 5: Would laugh if we even started talking about this, because
21:32
Speaker 5: I'm such a control freak, especially like I know Atlanta
21:35
Speaker 5: better than he does. I'm more of an aggressive driver
21:38
Speaker 5: than he is, and I think you kind of have
21:40
Speaker 5: to be to drive in Atlanta. And so all of
21:42
Speaker 5: those factors combine mean that I normally drive more.
21:46
Speaker 4: See. I prefer to be driven around because it gives
21:51
Speaker 4: me a little bit of me time.
21:53
Speaker 6: That's when I hop on.
21:54
Speaker 4: I'm a smartphone and check my email, get on Twitter.
21:59
Speaker 6: Instat.
22:01
Speaker 4: It seriously feels like extra time in my day. So
22:05
Speaker 4: it is it's purely selfish on my part.
22:07
Speaker 5: See, but I'm kind of I'm kind of the opposite.
22:09
Speaker 5: Like driving means I can't do anything else. Oh yeah,
22:13
Speaker 5: so it's like I have to focus on driving, and
22:15
Speaker 5: but I do.
22:16
Speaker 1: Yell, I'm I'm kind of a road ragie type of person.
22:18
Speaker 6: Oh, I'm super road ragie. I enjoy driving.
22:21
Speaker 7: I do, and I drive myself around a lot.
22:23
Speaker 4: And oh man, yeah, it's not a good idea for
22:26
Speaker 4: small children to be in a car with me because
22:28
Speaker 4: they might hear some some R rated language.
22:31
Speaker 5: Caroline, Well, well, we're just a couple of show fuses.
22:35
Speaker 4: That's right, show that should be our new vanity place effuses.
22:40
Speaker 7: So what is up though with this gender gap?
22:44
Speaker 4: This like kind a fascinating gender gap in car driving
22:47
Speaker 4: and oh I should mention too. Anecdotally, I was talking
22:51
Speaker 4: to Scott Benjamin, who hosts the House Stuff Works podcast
22:55
Speaker 4: car Stuff before we came in the studio and mentioned
22:59
Speaker 4: the day going to talk about women and driving, and
23:02
Speaker 4: we kind of parted ways, and a few minutes later
23:04
Speaker 4: he came back by my desk and said, Kristen, I
23:07
Speaker 4: just realized that in the fifteen years of being married
23:11
Speaker 4: to my wife, he's like, I can probably count on
23:13
Speaker 4: one hand the number of times we've driven, and he
23:16
Speaker 4: had never thought about it before. He's like, we've even
23:19
Speaker 4: taken cross country road trips before, I'll drive the whole
23:22
Speaker 4: way and I.
23:23
Speaker 7: Have is because he prefers it, or it's just kind of.
23:27
Speaker 6: How it's always been done.
23:28
Speaker 4: And when I did a stuff I've never told you
23:31
Speaker 4: video on why men drive more, just because I was
23:34
Speaker 4: digging into the research for this episode, and anecdotally it
23:38
Speaker 4: seemed like a lot of people. It wasn't necessarily men
23:42
Speaker 4: always driving, but in couples there was always a driver.
23:46
Speaker 4: One person tended to drive more often than the other person.
23:49
Speaker 4: You're pointing at yourself.
23:50
Speaker 5: Yeah.
23:50
Speaker 7: There were women though, who tweeted us who were.
23:53
Speaker 6: Like, I drive, I totally drive. It'saw me.
23:55
Speaker 4: So I think it just might be one of those
23:57
Speaker 4: couple things where someone ends doing it more often.
24:01
Speaker 7: Yeah, I'm kind of like the dishwasher, all right, hat
24:04
Speaker 7: that's me.
24:04
Speaker 5: I hate the dishwasher. Um then, anyway, not that I
24:09
Speaker 5: hate you. I realized that that sounded loud.
24:11
Speaker 6: Chrestens the dishwasher, and I hate her. But if you
24:13
Speaker 6: want to drive me around, I'll low the dishes. That
24:16
Speaker 6: all right?
24:17
Speaker 5: So sociologist Pepper Schwartz was looking at that. Pepper Schwartz,
24:20
Speaker 5: by the way, sounds like a Marvel Comics name.
24:23
Speaker 6: She does.
24:24
Speaker 5: Even in self described feminist households, men are more likely
24:28
Speaker 5: to drive when couples ride together, and this is confirmed
24:30
Speaker 5: by several studies, one of which is the American Time
24:32
Speaker 5: Youth Survey that found women do indeeds than a disproportionate
24:36
Speaker 5: share of their in car time as passengers twenty nine percent.
24:39
Speaker 5: This is more than twice the share of men who
24:42
Speaker 5: spend only fourteen percent of their time as passengers.
24:45
Speaker 4: And similarly, and this information, by the way, was coming
24:48
Speaker 4: from the Freakonomics blog because they did a couple of
24:51
Speaker 4: uh posts on this looking at why men tend to
24:54
Speaker 4: drive more often, and they also cited the two thousand
24:57
Speaker 4: and one National Household Transportation Survey, which found that when
25:01
Speaker 4: you have household members sharing a car, men are three
25:04
Speaker 4: times likelier to be the driver as opposed to the passenger,
25:09
Speaker 4: and for women it's the reverse. When traveling with a
25:12
Speaker 4: household member, we're about twice as likely to be the
25:15
Speaker 4: passenger as opposed to the driver and for On that blog,
25:20
Speaker 4: they solicited reader comments as well, just to get a
25:23
Speaker 4: little anecdotal, you know, feedback on why that might be.
25:27
Speaker 4: And overwhelmingly, the most common answer as to why the
25:32
Speaker 4: men tended to drive more often in their households were
25:34
Speaker 4: women saying.
25:34
Speaker 6: I just ask him to it's easier.
25:38
Speaker 4: It's just, you know, we don't have to talk about it.
25:40
Speaker 4: He drives, there's no backseat driving. It gives me a
25:43
Speaker 4: little me time and a lot of it's a lot
25:46
Speaker 4: of times just kind of it's almost like waving the
25:48
Speaker 4: white flag, just like just do it, you do that.
25:51
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think my dad always drives when it's the
25:54
Speaker 5: two of them. I've never seen my mother drive if
25:56
Speaker 5: my dad's in the car. Yeah.
25:57
Speaker 4: When I actually talked to my boyfriend about that, and
26:00
Speaker 4: he pointed out that a kind of a similar pattern
26:02
Speaker 4: with his parents too, and suggested that it's sort of
26:06
Speaker 4: that old school chivalry of a lady shipn't drive herself around.
26:11
Speaker 6: And I mean because my dad, oh, my dad totally drives.
26:14
Speaker 4: I would not want to be in the car if
26:15
Speaker 4: my mom was driving it my dad was riding.
26:17
Speaker 6: Because it would just be too stressful.
26:22
Speaker 1: Lots of backseat.
26:22
Speaker 6: Driving, so much backseat driving.
26:25
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, even in professional circles, the driving still
26:28
Speaker 5: skews mail. We looked at a recent Bureau of Labor
26:31
Speaker 5: Statistics report that showed us that the overarching category of
26:35
Speaker 5: transportation and material moving occupations is just fifteen point five
26:40
Speaker 5: percent women. The area where women are most represented is
26:44
Speaker 5: among bus drivers forty five point seven percent of whom
26:47
Speaker 5: are women.
26:48
Speaker 4: Yeah, but then if you look at taxi drivers and
26:50
Speaker 4: chauffeurs not schoffuses, only just under fifteen percent are women
26:56
Speaker 4: and fewer than five percent of what are categorized as
27:00
Speaker 4: driver slash sales workers. Basically, the people driving the big
27:03
Speaker 4: rigs down the highway are women. And one more anecdote.
27:07
Speaker 4: I know I'm being very anecdotal today, but I was
27:10
Speaker 4: recently in a cab with a female driver and I
27:14
Speaker 4: had such a like stuff mom never told you moment
27:17
Speaker 4: when I got in and was really pumped to see
27:20
Speaker 4: like a woman in the front seat, and I wanted
27:22
Speaker 4: to ask for questions, but then I was like, I
27:23
Speaker 4: don't want to be that person who because I'm sure
27:25
Speaker 4: she gets this all the time, you know, like, oh,
27:28
Speaker 4: you're a woman driving a taxi. But I will say
27:31
Speaker 4: I gave her an extra big tip because not only
27:34
Speaker 4: was it a woman driver. She turned on the car
27:36
Speaker 4: Caroline and Madonna came on. I was just like, this
27:41
Speaker 4: is amazing, this is this is fun, this is a
27:43
Speaker 4: lot of fun.
27:45
Speaker 5: I'm just picturing like this movie montage in my head
27:47
Speaker 5: of you guys like driving around and the sunshine listening
27:50
Speaker 5: to Madonna.
27:50
Speaker 4: The thing is, there was that montage going on in
27:53
Speaker 4: my head throughout that cab ride.
27:56
Speaker 6: I don't I just kept quiet because I was like,
27:58
Speaker 6: I'm gonna freak this.
27:59
Speaker 4: Woman out my say anything right now, come out of
28:02
Speaker 4: the gate to enthusiastic.
28:03
Speaker 6: Yeah.
28:04
Speaker 1: But so as far as men driving more.
28:07
Speaker 5: And that whole stereotypical association we have of men preferring
28:10
Speaker 5: cars cars are a man thing, a lot of people
28:14
Speaker 5: have questioned whether biology has something to do with it.
28:17
Speaker 6: Yeah.
28:17
Speaker 4: For instance, there was the study at Canada's John Molson's
28:21
Speaker 4: School of Business at current Cordia University in Montreal which
28:25
Speaker 4: measured the testosterone of men while driving Porsches and driving Camri's.
28:31
Speaker 6: And they had the.
28:32
Speaker 4: Men drive on both a crowded street with lots of
28:37
Speaker 4: ladies on the sidewalk who would see them driving either
28:40
Speaker 4: a Cameray wampomp or a Porsche ooh la la. And
28:44
Speaker 4: they found that men's levels of testosterone went up surprise, surprise,
28:49
Speaker 4: when they were driving a Porsche, but it was regardless of.
28:52
Speaker 6: Whether they were driving around women or not.
28:56
Speaker 4: They thought that there was something to do with that
28:59
Speaker 4: status being in a Porsche because societally, because of our
29:04
Speaker 4: associations with cars masculinity sex, cars are sort of a
29:10
Speaker 4: modern form of sexual signaling saying hey, I'm driving this Porsche,
29:15
Speaker 4: so means got a lot of money.
29:17
Speaker 5: This made me think of when I was in traffic
29:18
Speaker 5: the other day waiting to turn and a guy turned
29:20
Speaker 5: in front of me in like some little boxy expensive
29:23
Speaker 5: sports car and he like.
29:25
Speaker 1: Whoa like dred that engine and drove away.
29:28
Speaker 5: It was so loud, and I was like, oh, I
29:30
Speaker 5: wonder if he's sexually signaling anyone.
29:32
Speaker 4: It's probably I think he was probably sexually signaling all
29:35
Speaker 4: of Atlanta with that. But the thing is with this study, Caroline,
29:41
Speaker 4: they did not include women. I wonder if our levels
29:45
Speaker 4: of testosterone would similarly go up, yeah, if we were
29:48
Speaker 4: driving a Porsche aarone.
29:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, or just like something sporty.
29:51
Speaker 5: I know, because this is this is I'm ridiculous.
29:54
Speaker 1: But so I used to drive Jeeps. I drove a
29:56
Speaker 1: Jeep forever and I heard jeep yeah.
29:58
Speaker 5: And I just switched recently to a small little compact
30:01
Speaker 5: car that it has a lot of gideap and I
30:04
Speaker 5: love being able to like get around people and accelerate
30:07
Speaker 5: quickly and all that stuff. And I know, I mean
30:09
Speaker 5: there is an exhilarating feeling of like I can get
30:12
Speaker 5: out of this traffic mess yeah, and you know, get
30:15
Speaker 5: past all these people, Whereas with my Jeep.
30:16
Speaker 1: It's like, okayl I'll just sit here, so yeah, come on.
30:21
Speaker 5: I would love to see the study replicated with women,
30:24
Speaker 5: although they'd have to figure out the conditions on the street,
30:26
Speaker 5: Like who would they put on the side of the
30:27
Speaker 5: street instead of women?
30:28
Speaker 1: Would it have to be like muscling men, Ryan Gosling.
30:31
Speaker 4: I think it could still be women because it would
30:34
Speaker 4: still I would suspect that there would still be a
30:37
Speaker 4: surge in testosterone because it wouldn't be as strong of
30:40
Speaker 4: a thing of you know, strong of a.
30:42
Speaker 6: Sex signaling effect.
30:43
Speaker 4: Probably for a woman to pull up next to a
30:46
Speaker 4: guy in a you know, in a convertible and be like, hey, guy,
30:50
Speaker 4: you want to get in my car for a variety,
30:52
Speaker 4: be like whoa, don't maculate me? Whereas you know, for women,
30:56
Speaker 4: I think it would just be like just the joy
30:59
Speaker 4: of you know, kind of having that like power symbol
31:04
Speaker 4: or yeah.
31:04
Speaker 5: Maybe maybe they're signaling to the other woman that they
31:06
Speaker 5: are the alpha female exactly.
31:08
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it might we might actually have more of
31:10
Speaker 4: a surge of test sasterone driving past women than men.
31:13
Speaker 5: Yeah. No, that's actually my vanity plate is alpha. That's
31:16
Speaker 5: not true. I don't vanity plates are really stupid. And
31:21
Speaker 5: wece did take an evolutionary biology look at it, questioning
31:25
Speaker 5: whether this was sexual signaling, but the writer was like, yeah,
31:28
Speaker 5: it's probably just more of the thrill, like we're saying, like,
31:30
Speaker 5: it's probably just the the revving of the engine, the
31:33
Speaker 5: speeding up, the getting out of traffic, and it doesn't
31:35
Speaker 5: hurt to be like, hey, look how powerful my expensive
31:37
Speaker 5: car is.
31:38
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, I do think that there are so
31:41
Speaker 4: many pop cultural stereotypes too when it comes to men
31:44
Speaker 4: women dating and the kind of all the you've probably
31:49
Speaker 4: heard Hackney jokes about, you know, a girl's excited about
31:53
Speaker 4: going on a date with this really hot guy and
31:56
Speaker 4: then he pulls up in a insert kind of junk
32:00
Speaker 4: car and it's.
32:02
Speaker 7: Like, oh no, well is he hot enough then?
32:05
Speaker 6: Okay?
32:06
Speaker 4: And so I do think that there is something too
32:09
Speaker 4: that whole sex signaling kind of thing.
32:12
Speaker 6: But I will also.
32:13
Speaker 4: Say this that if it's so obvious the guy's driving
32:17
Speaker 4: a car because he thinks it's sexy, it's a total
32:20
Speaker 4: turn off.
32:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, and which only which.
32:24
Speaker 4: Only also for probably some men listening, confirms that women
32:28
Speaker 4: are terribly confusing, won't whah?
32:32
Speaker 5: Well, So, I mean, do we have an answer as
32:34
Speaker 5: to as to who the better driver is.
32:37
Speaker 1: Is there science there?
32:38
Speaker 4: Oh, my gosh, Caroline when it comes to the question
32:41
Speaker 4: of who is a better driver, because we've talked about
32:44
Speaker 4: all of these stereotypes of women being terrible drivers basically
32:48
Speaker 4: rooted in you know, Victorian era sexism.
32:52
Speaker 6: If you look at research on who are who's the
32:56
Speaker 6: better driver?
32:56
Speaker 7: Men or women, it's the results are totally mixed.
32:59
Speaker 4: It depends on a million different things and who you
33:02
Speaker 4: ask and what you're looking at, whether you're looking at
33:04
Speaker 4: insurance rates or accidents or pedestrian run ins.
33:10
Speaker 5: Yeah. Well, University of Michigan researchers Michael Sevac and Brandon
33:14
Speaker 5: Shuttle looked at police reports of two vehicle traffic accidents
33:18
Speaker 5: across the US from nineteen eighty eight to two thousand
33:20
Speaker 5: and seven, so quite a large sample, and they found
33:24
Speaker 5: that a woman is far more likely to crash into
33:27
Speaker 5: another woman than into a man, but a man is
33:31
Speaker 5: less likely than expected to crash into another man. So yeah, basically,
33:37
Speaker 5: crashes involving two female drivers were over represented. Based on
33:41
Speaker 5: what their expectations of the results were, they expected it
33:44
Speaker 5: to be a little more even because you know, men
33:48
Speaker 5: drive more, as you know, when two people are in
33:51
Speaker 5: a car and they're of opposite sexes, you know, men
33:54
Speaker 5: drive more, so they expected men to be involved in
33:55
Speaker 5: more accidents, but they found that based on their expectations,
34:00
Speaker 5: women were overrepresented in two vehicle car accidents.
34:03
Speaker 4: And similarly, there was a study out of Johns Hopkins
34:07
Speaker 4: which found that women were involved in slightly more crashes
34:12
Speaker 4: than men, but the difference was not all that great.
34:15
Speaker 6: They said that it wasn't.
34:15
Speaker 4: Statistically significant, but age might be a more important predictor
34:22
Speaker 4: of how crash prone you are compared to gender, especially
34:27
Speaker 4: for teenage boys. Basically the most dangerous drivers on the
34:30
Speaker 4: road are teenage boys because they start off pretty badly,
34:34
Speaker 4: having about twenty percent more crashes per mile driven compared
34:39
Speaker 4: to teenage girls.
34:41
Speaker 5: I got into a wreck almost immediately after getting my
34:43
Speaker 5: driver's license.
34:44
Speaker 1: How scary it was, stupid. It was in standstill traffic,
34:48
Speaker 1: so you can imagine did.
34:50
Speaker 6: You hit it a female driver?
34:52
Speaker 4: No?
34:52
Speaker 5: Male?
34:52
Speaker 6: Okay?
34:53
Speaker 5: Yeah, he was a jerk though, which I don't blame him.
34:58
Speaker 5: And the whole age thing was confirmed in a Purdue
35:01
Speaker 5: University study that found that both older men and women
35:04
Speaker 5: are much more likely to die from traffic injuries than
35:07
Speaker 5: younger people regardless of gender.
35:09
Speaker 4: But then again, to shake things up a little bit,
35:11
Speaker 4: more women do think that they are better drivers than men.
35:15
Speaker 4: I think that's the prevailing stereotype that we are overall
35:18
Speaker 4: safer drivers because a lot of times our insurance rates
35:23
Speaker 4: are slightly lower, possibly because men are more likely to
35:27
Speaker 4: die behind the wheel than women are, at least according
35:31
Speaker 4: to US traffic data. And also, for instance, there was
35:35
Speaker 4: some research done on traffic in New York City and
35:39
Speaker 4: found that eighty percent of all crashes in a five
35:41
Speaker 4: year period in which pedestrians were seriously injured or killed
35:45
Speaker 4: involved men who are driving. So again, you know that
35:49
Speaker 4: might be because men are driving more. Men do tend
35:51
Speaker 4: to have longer commutes than women do.
35:55
Speaker 5: But yeah, it really depends insurance company. Yeah, like you said,
36:00
Speaker 5: insurance companies sure do think that women are better drivers.
36:04
Speaker 4: Yeah, but it might also be because of the commute
36:08
Speaker 4: factors fewer fatalities, yeah.
36:12
Speaker 6: Fewer pedestrians. That possibly, but I think that it's not.
36:17
Speaker 6: It's one of those questions that is.
36:19
Speaker 4: There really a point in spending so much spending our
36:21
Speaker 4: wheels caroline, spending so much time like pondering this, because
36:26
Speaker 4: if you It's such a pervasive question on the internet.
36:29
Speaker 6: If you look just.
36:30
Speaker 4: Google who is better driver? You get a million different
36:35
Speaker 4: you know results from that.
36:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think you know it.
36:39
Speaker 5: It's a question that people ask, but I think, personally,
36:42
Speaker 5: like in doing this research, the far more interesting aspect
36:46
Speaker 5: of this discussion is where these stereotypes came from and
36:51
Speaker 5: why they even popped out to begin with.
36:53
Speaker 1: You know, the.
36:54
Speaker 5: Separate spheres, the conservative segment of society being afraid of
36:59
Speaker 5: women venturing out of the home, and so they have
37:01
Speaker 5: to do what they can to be like patronizing jerks
37:04
Speaker 5: about it.
37:04
Speaker 6: Yeah.
37:05
Speaker 4: Well, and it's like, what is it that we're ultimately
37:08
Speaker 4: really really asking when we're asking who's the better driver?
37:11
Speaker 4: I feel like it's so tied up with the roots
37:14
Speaker 4: of those negative stereotypes of kind of fears about gender
37:20
Speaker 4: and norms being violated right, movements away from the home perhaps,
37:25
Speaker 4: and not valuing domesticity as much as we used to,
37:28
Speaker 4: all of those different things that sort of underlie this question. Yeah,
37:36
Speaker 4: so curious now to hear from listeners, we have covered.
37:40
Speaker 1: A lot of ground, many miles, so many miles driven
37:44
Speaker 1: in this journey, this podcast journey.
37:46
Speaker 7: Yeah, so if you want to let us know who
37:48
Speaker 7: tends to be the driver.
37:49
Speaker 4: Are you a woman driver? Proud of your driving skills?
37:51
Speaker 4: Do you tend to be the driver in your household?
37:56
Speaker 6: What do you think?
37:57
Speaker 4: Moms Stuff at discovery dot com is where you can email.
38:00
Speaker 6: You can also.
38:00
Speaker 4: Tweet us at mom Stuff Podcasts, or send us the
38:03
Speaker 4: message on Facebook.
38:05
Speaker 6: And we have a couple of.
38:06
Speaker 4: Messages to share with you right now about one stereotype
38:10
Speaker 4: breaking lady Beyonce Knowles.
38:15
Speaker 5: I have a letter here from Caitlin's subject line, mother
38:19
Speaker 5: Nole's best.
38:21
Speaker 1: Get it Beyonce? Yeah, Okay.
38:22
Speaker 5: This year I started both listening to your podcast, which rules,
38:26
Speaker 5: Thanks Caitlin, and listening to Beyonce's music.
38:28
Speaker 6: I love it.
38:29
Speaker 5: She empowers women and girls, encouraging them to strive toward
38:31
Speaker 5: their goals and demand respect and equality while doing it.
38:35
Speaker 5: You described it perfectly by calling her a modern feminist.
38:38
Speaker 1: It's true.
38:39
Speaker 5: She's not the classic twentieth century feminist trope who dresses
38:42
Speaker 5: conservatively or shun societal standards of beauty. Because her wardrobe
38:46
Speaker 5: is ultimately her choice, her actions are also her choice.
38:49
Speaker 5: By this, I mean the way she decides to present
38:52
Speaker 5: herself and dances in videos or concerts. Wearing the clothes
38:55
Speaker 5: she does and dancing the way she does is telling
38:57
Speaker 5: women to be comfortable with our bodies and sexualities so
39:00
Speaker 5: we can just have fun without worrying about what society
39:02
Speaker 5: has to say. Feminism is all about choice and equality,
39:06
Speaker 5: so if Beyonce expresses her feminism through dance or clothes,
39:08
Speaker 5: she's free to do it. Beyonce is killing it at
39:11
Speaker 5: the overwhelming balancing act of being a tenacious businesswoman, loving wife,
39:15
Speaker 5: and devoted mother, all while trying her best to promote
39:17
Speaker 5: feminism in an industry where that.
39:19
Speaker 1: Word is doomed.
39:20
Speaker 5: I agree that there are no perfect feminists, but Beyonce
39:23
Speaker 5: comes pretty close.
39:25
Speaker 1: So thank you for your input.
39:26
Speaker 6: Caitlin Well, and.
39:27
Speaker 4: I'm going to let her hear from Renee and she
39:30
Speaker 4: had lots of thoughts on the Beyonce episode. She writes,
39:34
Speaker 4: I couldn't help but feel angry at all these women
39:36
Speaker 4: calling her out for not being a proper feminist. I'll
39:39
Speaker 4: say straight up that I don't really know much about Beyonce,
39:42
Speaker 4: but that is more the debate on what feminism shouldn't
39:45
Speaker 4: be that gets me all cranky pants. I think for starters,
39:50
Speaker 4: we as women should take a step back and look
39:52
Speaker 4: at the objectification of men that we all partake in
39:55
Speaker 4: all the time. You yourselves had a good old verbal
39:58
Speaker 4: perve at jay Z in the podcast. If you were
40:01
Speaker 4: two men talking about a woman, I'm sure you would
40:03
Speaker 4: have had angry feminists after you. So why is it
40:06
Speaker 4: okay for men to get all shirtless, showing their nipples,
40:08
Speaker 4: stomach muscles and flashing their sexuality on screen or in public,
40:12
Speaker 4: but not Beyonce or Madonna?
40:14
Speaker 6: And why are we.
40:14
Speaker 4: Allowed to talk about their bodies as objects yet when
40:18
Speaker 4: the shoes on the other foot, men are torn to shreds.
40:21
Speaker 6: Isn't this just slutshaming?
40:23
Speaker 4: I find that it is a question less of feminism
40:25
Speaker 4: than outdated profiling and judgment that makes sex a thing
40:28
Speaker 4: that is taboo, less than human, less.
40:31
Speaker 7: Than normal, which it is not.
40:33
Speaker 6: And why are we not speaking of Lady Gaga this way?
40:36
Speaker 4: She seems to think she has some brand of feminist
40:38
Speaker 4: Also is it because she's weird and not so.
40:40
Speaker 6: Mainstream form of pretty?
40:42
Speaker 4: And also why is it okay for Dolly Parton with
40:44
Speaker 4: her big boobs modeled after the image of a prostitute,
40:47
Speaker 4: to be labeled feminist yet Beyonce is not although interjection,
40:51
Speaker 4: neither Lady Gaga nor Dolly Parton have ever called themselves
40:55
Speaker 4: a feminist. But going back to the letter, she says,
40:59
Speaker 4: it appears that women don't require men to suppress them
41:02
Speaker 4: because they're doing a.
41:02
Speaker 6: Great job of it themselves.
41:04
Speaker 4: I could go on and on and on, and yeah,
41:06
Speaker 4: I mean I think that is the disheartening part of
41:09
Speaker 4: the conversation, you know, which you brought up, Caroline, is
41:13
Speaker 4: how it's frustrating to see this like regurgitation of like
41:18
Speaker 4: your your feminism isn't okay, but my feminism is okay,
41:21
Speaker 4: And this is how you should do your feminism. Yeah,
41:24
Speaker 4: and it doesn't help anybody at all. So thanks Renee
41:29
Speaker 4: for those observations and for everybody who's written in moms
41:32
Speaker 4: Stuff at Discovery dot com is where you can send
41:34
Speaker 4: us your letters. You can also find us all over
41:37
Speaker 4: social medias, all of which you can find in addition
41:40
Speaker 4: to our blogs, podcasts, and videos over at stuff Mom
41:44
Speaker 4: Never Told You dot com for more.
41:49
Speaker 6: On this and thousands of other topics.
41:51
Speaker 4: Is it how Stuffworks dot com