July 20, 2021 • 60 mins
Would you whisper sweet nothings to your sweeheart through a six-foot tube with your Puritan grandmother in the room? Would you force feed your children to make them more attractive for a potential groom? It's often said the course of true love never did run smooth -- and it sure takes some odd turns on the path from courtship to marriage. In part one of this special two-part series, Ben and Noel welcome special guests Eli and Diana banks, the hosts of Ridiculous Romance, to explore some of history's strangest courtship rituals.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so very much for tuning in. This is a very
special two part episode. We couldn't be more Over the
moon and shout out to our super producer, the one
and only Max Williams. I'm ben uh No, you know,
we're well. I would say that we're not the worst,
(00:52):
worst people when it comes to dating right there. No,
we're not. We're not the worst historically because that's what
we talked about here. Um. But also I gotta comment
be your excitement level. I think it is like two
clicks higher than it usually is, and I think it's
for a good reason. Yeah. Yeah, well, I'm trying to
I'm trying to come in hot because we have we
(01:12):
have some special guests on the show today. You and
I have talked about our good friends on Ridiculous Romance,
which is the next step in what we're calling the
Ridiculous Universe. And there you are, you the extended Ridiculous Universe,
and we are we are excited today because we're talking
(01:34):
about weird courtship rituals, the course of love. It said,
never did run smooth, but it got pretty much derailed
multiple times, and it can definitely run weird. It doesn't
run smooth, but it definitely runs weird. And we are
joined today to our mutual delight by Diana and Eli
(01:55):
from Ridiculous Romance. Welcome than having us so awesome to
be here. Thanks for being here. We've got a max.
Thanks for putting in that applause que as well. That
was a cute. Yeah. See behind the curtain, we don't
(02:16):
hear that now, but it's there as though it was
always meant to be. It's sort of like Jack Nicholson
and the Overlook. He's always been there the whole time.
So I'm just conditioned to hear thunderous plause when I
hear my names, so I just hear it anyway. I
didn't realize it was coming from the outside. That's a
good survival instinct in comedy. I think modesty. Modesty is
a very important comedy instant. Elis always telling me, because
(02:41):
we've known each other for number of years, he's always said,
I am he is the most modest person that will
ever meet, And it's probably true. It's one of my
greatest traits among many yes yes to the big one.
Uh so, so, Diana Eli, could you all tell us
a little bit about Ridiculous Romance and what it is,
(03:02):
how it came together in some episode you really enjoy. Yeah, absolutely, yeah.
Oh well I can start if you want to do it. Well,
let's see. So ridiculous Romance was an idea that initially,
Ben you came to us with uh in talking about
wanting to expand the ridiculous universe, and you said, hey,
you guys are a married couple. You've done sketch comedy
(03:23):
together for many years. We have work together in creating
and comedy and all kind of stuff as long as
we've known each other, even longer than a little bit
longer than we've been dating. And now we've been a
little just a little bit, only a few years and
then uh and now we've been married for three almost
four before going on five years. Now, Oh my god,
(03:49):
is this? Can this marriage last? We've been together for
thirteen years, so hopefully it's all just been a big,
beautiful blur, that's what it is. So we decided that
we should put our comedy stylings in our romantic history
to to good use and dig through history and find
(04:10):
other bizarre, strange, random, freaky, awesome couples and uh and
tell their stories uh in our in our trademark ridiculous way. Well,
and at first we were like, well, I don't know
this one. Seems like it would be hard to find
enough couples to make an episode of making a whole
(04:31):
year of episodes. And then we looked it up and
we're like, oh, actually no, Oh my god, Wow, people
are crazy. So there's been so many great stories so far,
and we have so many more to get to. It's
it's gonna be awesome. I'm not gonna lie. I'm actually
a little jealous because Ben and I arbitrarily placed a
rule on Ridiculous History where we only do shows like
(04:51):
leading up to apartheid or topics leading up to apartheid,
because we had a top the line line. I know,
it seems weird, but it was because there was one
picular topic about like this guerrilla that that did a thing.
He like, I think he caught a criminal in South
Africa that was running away from the authorities during apartheid, um,
and that was in like ninety three or ninety four,
(05:13):
and we both thought it was remarkable that a historical
event as epic and meaningful as apartheide happened in the nineties,
so we were like, you know what, this is the
this is the cut off from us. But y'all go
a little more recent than that, because honestly, history is
being written as we live. As Ben says, it would
be considered us something of a palem test right that.
(05:35):
Yet the word I like that, it's Bend's word, trademarked.
It's a good one. So I say this all of
this to say that your most recent episode is one
that I'm excited to listen to about Sid Vicious and
Nancy Sponging I've uncovered. Yeah, well, I assure you will
have some people writing into you to tell you how
you pronounced it incorrectly. But it's, like you say in
(05:58):
the description for the show, sort of a weird punk
rock Romeo and Juliette story for the Ages that ends
very very poorly, uh spoiler alert. But um, it's it's
one that I'm excited to listen to. It's a very
intense episode that was that was a difficult one to
research because they are both such tragically horrible, miserable people.
(06:19):
As we did nothing but bad things almost the whole
time individually to each other exactly. You're kind of piste
out on the whole episode, like what are you doing?
Good lord? It's like when you see the woman in
the horror movie that keeps running up the stairs. No one,
good choice, please, A single one is fine. Yeah, it's
(06:42):
right up there with the person who hears a noise
in a horror movie and goes, what is that? Who's there?
That's if we're speaking of poor choices, But you guys
have made some really excellent choices in your show and
peek behind the curtain. I think we told you all this,
but not on air, so we'll go forward with it.
Noel and I got together after listening to some of
(07:03):
the first episodes and had a little bit of a
dark night of the podcast soul. We actually went and
we actually went and got some beers together. We're like,
is there a show? Are they funnier than us? And
we were, we were, we were worried, And then you know,
to three beers later, we're like, it'll be fine as
(07:24):
long as they don't do an episode on our relationship,
and then two or three beers that are like, no, no,
we're definitely funny here. It's not a competition, it's not,
but it's where it's two different shows. Um, you guys
definitely are able to venture maybe into the more raunchy
side of things, especially as romance is concerned. I mean,
you're gonna get into some raunch. It really does, yes,
(07:47):
sometimes more than others. Raunchiest episode yet so far. Oh well,
I guess it depends on who you are. Yeah, yeah,
Vanilla ice cream. Yeah, mean we had we did, like um,
William Marston and his and Elizabeth and Olive and they
kind of had like a polyamorous thing going on with
(08:09):
like some bondage action and they invented wonder Woman and
all of that is kind of wrapped up in her character.
So that was kind of run and yeah, that's true.
But Evelyn Nesbit, Harry Thaw, Stanford White one had a
lot of nasty sex cult type sex club I guess
I should say, rather than a cult, but it's like
a yeah, hot sex club action from the turn of
(08:31):
the century. So you will learn those stories in full
and even when they're heavy topics, you've got the that
inn all ridiculous guarantee that you'll still you'll still have fun,
you'll still learn something I particularly love the re enactments
you all do. Not to not to put you on
(08:52):
the spot today, but we uh, we were working on
weird ideas, ostensibly weird ideas of courtship throughout human history,
and so Nolan I decided that we needed to go
to the experts, uh, which which meant that we are
(09:13):
We wanted to uh lean on you alls expertise because
we know that already you found so many, so many strange,
surprising things like you just blew my mind at least
about romance in the world of pirates. Uh So we thought,
who better to help our fellow ridiculous historians explore the
(09:35):
trials and tribulations of dating and marriage or trying to
get married, then Diana and Deli, the host of Ridiculous Romance.
I wish that we could just publish our group thread
for this episode, because nol I think it's fair to
say that all four of us were just firing on
all pistons with some great ideas. We kept thinking like, Okay,
(09:58):
we've got a gotta trim these down. Yeah, oh yeah,
they were definitely pistons involved. I do have to say
researching this was kind of fun because when you Google. Uh,
strange courtship rituals. You get a lot of stuff about
the animal kingdom. Um, it kind of comes up first
and foremost, so we had to dig a little deeper
in our googlins. But um, what say you we lead
(10:22):
off with Diana. You found a particularly fascinating, ridiculous courtship
that we're going to talk about right now. Yeah, I went.
I went for the Puritans because you know, they're so prudish.
I was kind of like, surely they have some weird,
(10:43):
you know, awkward stuff that would be fun people to
actually banned Christmas. Banned Christmas. They thought it was pagan
well missiles, very pig and well anyway, but they actually,
(11:04):
um I was surprised to learn, didn't have anything anything
against sex at all. It was just it had to
be within marriage. But they really wanted you to be
sexually compatible because then you would go forth and multiply
and you know, bring forth a lot more Christians and Puritans.
And so they were actually had quite a few rituals
that kind of allowed you, in their very strict way,
(11:25):
to get to know each other and kind of like
flirt a little bit and figure out if you actually
liked each other. And so there were a couple of
these that I thought were so fun. For example, the
courtship tube is this sort of a hole in the
sheet kind of situation. The kind of it's it's like, say, you,
you know, you're very interested in in me, goody Proctor,
(11:47):
and you want to come over to my house and
and see if maybe we have something to do with
each other. And in a Puritan house, it's very small.
You have your whole family in the same room with you,
and you if you come over to see a girl,
Grandma's going to sit in between y'all. So it's not
I mean, I don't know about y'all, but I would
be not interested in being sexy. Unlet's that's the thing,
(12:15):
you know, we'll describe the grandma. Depends on the grandma,
depends on the grandma. Um. So what they would do
if they wanted to have a private conversation was bust
out the six to eight foot long talking tube. Basically
that they could put on each other's ears, even behind
Grandma's back, so they could whisper at each other like
(12:36):
a tin can phone situation. Right, I was like great
COVID protocol. First of all, where where was this last
year I could have been I think we call that
the internet is what we call right, what is it
called the romance tube? I don't know when or the
(12:57):
recording stick either way, but it's stick to me. Doesn't
seem like it's hollow. Well true, that's a good point. Uh,
maybe it is made of bamboo. I doubt it because
there was in New England. What I love is the discretion.
You know, Grandma will never know sling this six ft
stick behind. Admittedly Grandma's hearing is going a little bit,
(13:20):
so probably a good whisper would have done the trick.
But I love the ritual of this, and that's sort
of the the red thread. And in this two part
episode is the is these rituals. It becomes a little
more like almost rather than functional. It's got this kind
of like ritualistic quality. So I think that's fascinating. Also
in defense of the matriarch question here, uh it is
(13:42):
probably older, right, her amorous days maybe behind her. So
there's there's a little bit of a possible like vicarious titulation,
you know, because they could probably hear this stuff and
they're like wounds talking about ankles. I wonder if there
was any sort of like generational, like if the was
a new technology. Grandma didn't understand kids these days with
(14:05):
their tubes. Back in my day, we wrote a lot
of how common was this? I think it was pretty common.
It was pretty common because this was the only way
to kind of get to know a girl more officially.
I think they had surely some some less some more
casual kind of like let's walk next to each other
(14:28):
on the way to church maybe one day and chat.
But if he wanted to come over and like make
his intentions known that he's like actually really seriously interested
in this girl, I think they would pretty commonly have this.
And I kind of wondered, like you, Eli, I was like,
I wonder if they the tube got shorter over time
and they'd be like five feet No, no, it's gotta
(14:52):
be six to eight. Well, also like is the tube
is the tube blessed by a member of the clergy?
Is this a community tube is? Or a tube per household?
I have so many questions, and one of that too
is like does he bring the tube with him or
is it already there and everyone has one? Is it
also for like mom and dad to kind of be like, hey,
when I get busy tonight or something like, I mean,
(15:15):
how many potential romances were ruined because because you know,
Elijah forgot his tube at Homelija com prepared. Man, how
scandalous if you find that someone has reused the tube,
you know, and it's like, that's the same tube you
had with Goody Walthrop, unclean, unclean. And then the other
(15:39):
question would be like, uh is it. I wonder if
they became heirlooms, you know, if there's some mother it's like,
or some father who's like, I'm gonna pick on your eli.
He's like, and I asked, my boy, I'm here, you know,
at twelve now, and it's time you became a man. Yeah,
(15:59):
he is my courting tube and my rifle and us
and the parts of the Bible I agree with go forth.
Or the mom pulls it out from under the bed
and it's like telling her daughter, like it was with
this tube that your father first told me he loved me,
(16:19):
the old tube. I can't wait till a boy uses
a tube with me. I found my mom's tube when
I get your tubes tied after that? So what Okay,
So let's assume maybe that this this conversation goes really well.
(16:40):
They managed to do their whatever. Yeah, yeah there, what's
the guy snake from who always sneaks around in video games?
Metal heavy Metal Metal Snake. He's just solid snaked. Okay,
so they solid Snake the grandma and she did like
literally really bad. Well, we managed to make it past
(17:04):
courting stick without calling it to euphemism. So we're we're
doing all right, We're doing and and and then they
hit it off. They've got to like a lot in
common or you know, they they revealed that they each
like each other. Then I mean, what happens next? Like
when do you how long do you tube it? Well,
(17:26):
I don't actually know how long you would too, but
as soon as you were like, oh yeah, I like
tube and with this guy, I need to know more.
I need to get I need to get further into
this relationship. He would go to your parents and say,
let's say, I'm I'm goody. I guess before she's goody.
Really just for for the audience, goody was just a
(17:48):
generic term for a woman. I think it means good wife.
So I'm pretty good wife. I'm not a wife yet.
I think you would say good like Mrs was gooddy. Um,
it he proct her um. So yeah, if you're real
into each other, he'd go to the parents and be like, hey,
I'd kind of like to take this to the next level,
(18:10):
and the parents were like on it. But again, you know,
they all share personal space. There's not a lot of
privacy in Puritan society. So what they would do is
have you come over on a Saturday night, because a Saturday,
you know, the night for flirting and forgetting it on.
And so what they would do is they would put
they would tie the girls ankles together and then put
(18:34):
her in a sack and that tied at her waist
or at her neck, and then they would put her
in the sack in her bed, and then you, the boy,
would have to be fully clothed, sometimes also put in
a sack, but not always, And then you would get
in the bed as well, and they would put a
thick plank of wood in between the two of you
(18:54):
and you would get to spend the night together. I'm sorry, no,
you gotta you gotta bring your own plank if you
want to have a hole in. But this was really
interesting because it sounds crazy. I mean I was like, uh, please,
don't tie me up and put me in a sack.
That sounds so claustrophobic. I'm so scared. And why are
we sleeping in the same bed Before we even i
(19:17):
mean kissed and stuff. So far we've been eight feet apart.
I don't think we've held hands. Um. Apparently the idea though,
was that you would get to know each other really well.
You get a little time together, you know, hours of
the night. You get to see if you actually wanted
to wake up next to this person for the rest
of your life. And they kind of expected like some
handsy stuff to happen. They sort of expected you to
(19:40):
kind of do some heavy petting, but the board was
there so that you wouldn't actually get pregnant. Although apparently
that was not super successful because in the seventeenth century,
before they started this practice, which is called bundling by
the way, uh, it was like ten percent of women
were pregnant when they got married. And after they started bundling,
(20:00):
it was so a lot of a lot of a
lot of them just went ahead and anticipated their vows,
you might say, and went ahead and took care of
business in that bed. Probably wouldn't use it on our podcast,
but but yeah, they they they were kind of like,
(20:26):
at least if we if you get pregnant, if you
mess up and you have sex, like you're not supposed to,
wag wag um. We know who it is. There's a
million witnesses who was over here last night? So you're
getting married even if you didn't intend to. So it's
kind of worked out pretty well. I guess we're all involved.
But I don't know, do you guys want to sit
(20:47):
fully clothe it in a bag next to you? Why?
My question is why aren't clothes enough? Why do you
need the extra layer of the bag? Clothes come off
nor I thought the same. I guess it was just
like you have so many layers, it's like two annoying
was like a new technology at the time that mystified
(21:08):
and confused people know it was It came from Ireland
and rural UK societies and the Puritans brought it with
them and they got very Apparently it enjoyed a little
revival among Amish communities in the nineteen sixties and something,
and like up until the nineties or something, they were
doing it. I guess my thing is this like the
(21:28):
dress you know we've been and I literally just did
an episode on the history of underwear, and we know
about this period, like the dress was very prohibitive in
terms of getting it off, even us in the bathroom.
So it just seems like a little extra to to
insist on including this bag when you already you are wearing,
like you know, your outer gear and then your shift
or whatever that you have tucked in and it's very
(21:51):
difficult to get off. It takes a lot of doing.
So it's just it really speaks to the purity of
the Puritans that they would insist on this extra layer
uh of prohibitive you know, fabric between a man and
a woman. Plus this board is a whole board, the board.
We also have to remember that this is a little
(22:13):
bit of speculation, but people at this time probably had fewer,
let's say, outlets for their amorous impulses, and therefore we're
a little more likely to be excited and go the
extra mile, right to actually have a sexual experience. Yeah,
(22:34):
and you would have to because to your point, all,
you're not only wearing so many clothes plus a sack,
plus blankets on the bed, plus a board, but also
your whole family sleeps in the same room, So you
got to be real quiet with all that wrestling you're
gonna be doing if you don't want to wake up anybody.
So the handsy stuff happens, and then they hear, just
(22:54):
in the darkness the grandmother either say hold on, which
is bad embarrassing, or nice, which is way worse. She's
just like, I don't think he's the one for you, doll.
He didn't really have a lot of funness, I could tell.
The girl says, wait, wait, is there anyone awake? No?
(23:16):
The chorus of no, no from the room way tougher
than dating in uh well this, this is way tougher
than dating in the modern age. I guess, yeah, yeah,
but it is funny because yeah, right, I I don't
want to deal with the sack. Either nobody tied me
by the ankles or that just feels very confident. Somehow
(23:40):
it's not not for me. I don't. I don't know
why this makesically think of this, but for some reason,
my mind goes to a very incredible passage of dialogue
from the movie The Silence of the Lambs, where Hannibal
Lecter is kind of trying to freak out Clarius and
he says, all those clumsy, sticky fumblings in the backseats
of cars. You know, it's like the Puritan verse of that.
(24:00):
They're clumsy, sticky fumblings in the room with your grandma, right,
and you foul. Okay, So now we're following this fictional
couple and they've they've been having they've gone through their trials,
you know, like a tray, you having to go through
those three gates. Never in story. Yes, they got they
(24:23):
got through the sack night swamps of sadness, the swamps
of sadness, and they found one. Um, Dana, you found
one one other. Almost uniquely puritanical courting practice, is that correct? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
After you got hands e, after you tube all that stuff, Um,
(24:43):
it's time to commit. So usually, you know, we would
think you get a ring, you put a ring on it.
But Puritans didn't wear jewelry. They thought that was real frivolous,
and you know, they were very plain and not adorned,
so they were like, jewelry is not our thing. So
instead a Puritan man would give his intended goodie a thimble,
(25:05):
and the thimble she would use and I guess dream
over all her linens that she would sew in her
clothes that she would sew for her new married life. Uh,
and then on the on the day they got married,
they would cut the thimble cup off and she would
wear the rim as a wedding band. It's very practical.
It's a very practical gift. Don't give it to me,
(25:26):
but it's a very practical wedding ring if you've got
a crafty girl in your life. Wait, so, okay, Like
what you just shear off literally the bottom of this
tiny thimble, presumably with some sort of metal like sheer, Like,
how do you even do that? Yeah? I guess the
blacksmith is at your wedding and he just brings brings
a little weldern table with them or something I would
(25:49):
like to like. Thimbles are pretty mall, A lot of them,
I hope they. I mean, how do you guess while
he's there, he like makes it, he like sizes it
for you smaller back in the Puritan days, you know, less,
less hormones in the milk over your thumb. It could
probably slip around your ring finger, maybe because it only
(26:10):
goes up to the first knuckle of your thumb. I
don't know if that would get over the women notoriously
huge thumbs. I was gonna say it's I read that
in a scientific journal earlier. It's like the main like,
that's why Puritans left England, right because they're huge hands. Yeah, yeah,
they had their thumbs were like big toes and the
(26:31):
rest of their fingers were normal. It's very weird pissed
about that. It was like, I can tell a perodi
from a mile way, what went we out into this
wilderness to find acceptance for our overly large thumbs, Like
the taste of that always our touch point for for
Puritan chat is the witch live ach that would like
(26:55):
to live thim maliciously thimously symbols. Just that's that's a
great Hans Christian Anderson's story. Actually I believe that's correct. Yeah.
So so this is first off, I feel like for
anybody listening to this in the modern day apparently as
opposed to anybody listening to this from the Puritan days, Um,
(27:16):
this this is pretty instructive because, uh, it feels like
the average person in you know what became the US
probably has an easier time dating in general. Right, there's
no sacks unless it's like a very specific consensual thing
for that couple. Right, you can talk to people post pandemic,
(27:40):
you can talk to people in person. I guess to
that point about the Internet, there was definitely speaking to
vibe as people are kind of pandemic dating. Um. But
what so, how how long did this continue? I'm gonna
have my mind, like I'm I'm quitting the show. If
this is still happening in Boston, I'm lose my mind.
(28:01):
Please don't know. I think I don't know about the
thimble thing. I'm sure that got you know, tossed aside.
When engagement rings and jewels rings started really popular, yeah,
teramter beers, um. But as for bundling, it really went
out of favor in like the eighteenth century. Um. They
(28:21):
there was a lot of reverends who were like, this
is so raunchy. You're letting the children have their sexual
awakenings together and they are getting they are getting pregnant.
And they had like a whole outrage. They wrote poems
about working they were still getting pregnant. I'm confused. Well, yeah,
(28:42):
because remember sometimes they would go ahead and do it
and get That's why the number of Puritan women who
were pregnant when they got married shot up to they
would have their babies eight months instead of nine. And
I'm like, oh, because you went ahead and jumped that board,
I guess. But this was this was sex for prokri asia,
not for pleasure, Like sex for pleasure was right out,
(29:03):
and this was absolutely functional sex to make more little Puritans,
to put out the world, cause they come out fully
formed like that with So they stopped this because tying
them up in a sack, putting them in bed together,
and putting a board between them was encouraging sex too
(29:25):
much somehow, Yes, but it puts a whole new meeting
to wood in bed. Yeah, Max, thank you for that.
(29:47):
Thank you for that. Whatever that was, So you worked
on that? Did you work on that offer? No? No, Max, Ma,
it would have been better if I worked right. So
with this with this in mind, then, first, I don't
(30:07):
know about you all, but I have definitely gained greater
appreciation for what what Puritan couples had to go through.
I mean, let's also, you know, not forget that they
were doing this amid the constant threat of starvation, violence, disease,
and possession. Yeah right, that's pretty pretty impressive. I mean
(30:29):
with doctor in his side, you know. And I'll say
the women wanted to keep bundling. The women specifically were like, uh,
if we don't bundle, then we won't have any fun
until our wedding day. And I was like, Randy Beard
and ladies were like, let me get handsy. Before I
thought it was the way around. I thought they wanted
to protect themselves against hans Nous. But it's all it's
(30:52):
all the It was all the male reverence who were like, oh,
this is really too much for me, and the women
were like, I like this. I like trying to figure
out if I want to actually see this guy every
single morning or if we you know, if we have
no chemistry, if we if I he wakes up and
I'm like, so sick of this dude after eight hours.
Like it's nice to know there's actually an interesting parallel
(31:13):
in the story that I'm going to do, which will
save for for the next episode. But in terms of
like this being somewhat progressive, would think that Puritans would
be like, so it makes sense that like the reverence
did eventually kind of walk it back. But for a time,
I would argue, this is a pretty progressive sexually progressive,
(31:33):
you know rich it was? It kind of was because
again it went out of fashion when the idea of
women being a sexual and pure and like we you know,
sex is literally functional, we don't have any reaction to
it at all, it's all for the baby part. That
kind of ideal started to grow in the eighteenth century,
(31:54):
so that's when it went away. I guess in this
point they were still like, oh well, there's still human beings,
and they have of, you know, a reaction to being
rubbed up on. Some reverends like woman't control thyself and
like I picture like the flappy arm inflatable. Yeah, car dealerships.
(32:15):
Did you know those were invented for the Atlanta Olympics.
What a weird thing, you like. They had to figure
out what to do with them afterwards, you know. They
made them like in this massive array, you know, which
is probably a lot cooler than just a single weird
kind of like dingy one that you see outside a
used car lot. But I was recently clued into that fact.
It's pretty cool. Strengthened numbers. That's that's how they work.
(32:39):
I don't know why I said that, like their threatening.
I'm sorry, honestly I did a sketch about that. I forgot. Yeah,
I imagine that these reverends. The first reverend to have
a real problem with it was a guy who got
rejected after the girl was like the girl was like, oh,
he's all thumbs. I'm not having it. He bungled the
(33:01):
bundle and she was like, I'm not wasting this, Oh,
the little bundle bungler Taylor's oldest. Well, Diana, thank you
so much for for looking into this one and bringing
this one to us. I think this is something that
I certainly didn't know about, and uh, I have a
feeling that others didn't either. Yeah, I was saying I
was happy to learn about it because this was a
(33:22):
new one for me too. I thought I was also,
I'm with you. I thought it was all witches and
burning and prayers and but no, they had sticks and stuff. Yeah,
they had technology. And uh, I believe you may be
able to see a cinematic reference to this and the
mel Gibson vehicle The Patriot, where one of the yeah,
(33:43):
one of the characters is you know, he's courting and
the family really likes him and they're like, all right,
we're sewing you into the bag. Yeah, nodding intensely with approval. Here,
Max Will for the record, Dana and Eli Uh sit
(34:04):
for an entire episode knowing a question that Nolan and
I are fumbling with, only to tell us after the episode, like,
you guys know, it's Pensacola, I'm making We were saying
Pennsylvania the whole time. We sounded like a real asshole. Yeah,
(34:27):
very far away And speaking of far away and awkward segues,
why don't we travel to Mauritania next? This is a
bit of a downer, but it's an important story that
I think a lot of people aren't aware of, and
(34:51):
we're returning with the host of ridiculous romance Diana and
Eli Banks. Then did you just do an ad throom?
I did? I think I did? Yeah? Yeah, is that
our first one? I think it might be, Max says is,
once again nodding intensely with approval. Yes, can keep doing them. Also,
it would be really nice. Okay, Okay, never sorry, I'm
(35:12):
not gonna do it. We're already improving the show for
Mac at least. Okay, don't don't go too hard on
the honor student vibe, you guys. Okay, I guess if
we keep it up, we'll have to start wearing ties
or something. But while we were on break and ridiculous historians.
We hope you had a bully break as well. We were.
(35:34):
We've left off right before we went to uh segue
and our segue takes us to Mauritania and other parts
of the African continent to a a controversial practice that
more people should know about called l e b l
(35:56):
o u h. It is also known as gavage. And
we are lucky enough to have to have Eli here today. Eli,
you have studied French bit in the past in your
sketchier years, are you? Are you familiar with the synonym gavage?
I am uh not no, well uh, by my sophomore
(36:20):
year at college. It's a very specific one. It would
be weird for your professor in college to have like
lead with this word. It's the French term for force
feeding geese to create fa ra oh. Yeah, and if
any you know foodie's out there. I like a good
fog gra as much as the next uh barbarian. But
(36:41):
it is really truly a despicable practice. If you see
videos of it, it's grow, it's gross, it's bad times.
Um yeah, you really do have to do a little
suspension of disbelief to truly enjoy some fua gras once
you see the video, though, it's probably hard to ever
go back. And actually, Ben, I can tell you the
reason I didn't know that French word now that you
mentioned it is because I'm a lifelong vegetarian and have
(37:04):
to work that into every episode. And uh so I was.
I was permitted to leave class before we talked about
that one. No. No, but the lifelong vegetarian part is true. No,
that's true, and I didn't believe it for like the
first two years I knew Eli Banks, I thought I was.
(37:24):
I was not to the level where I was one
of those annoying people who was like, are you sure?
You what about the oil? Are you sure? Because that's
just so boorish. But but Eli, you once described this
has nothing to do with anything. But you once described
yourself as a French fry vegetarian because I asked you.
I don't know if you remember, but god, this must
(37:45):
have been decade ago. Now. I was like, hey, man,
you're healthy. How do I do that? No? No, no,
no doubt. Being a vegetarian and being a healthy are
not inherently linked. There a pizza and French fries or
vegetarian and that was most of my age sixteen to eight.
(38:06):
Probably when you say lifelong, was this because of your family, Like,
did you literally grow up vegetarian like as a child.
That's my mom started when she was a teenager and
raised me and all my sisters that way. That's really cool.
And my my dad is effectively vegetarian at home. He
doesn't care. Certainly makes it easier for you than like
making a switch, you know in your thirties. The way
I have made to switch is my point. I am
(38:29):
incapable of making the switch. I never would have. Yeah,
it's tough, but this also to set the record straight.
Uh Eli's old band is definitely not a vegetarian. That's
an awkward step I had one time. We're out there,
but but why are we talking about food? Why are
we talking about controversial food practices. It's because of a
(38:50):
practice that dates back to the eleventh century. Uh It's
primarily known in rural areas of Mauritania, but it occurs
in Sudan, in Uganda, it occurs in Nigeria, Tunisia, a
lot of places, and it is a practice wherein as
part of the path to marriage and courtship, young women, girls,
(39:15):
children from the age of five to nineteen are force
fed because in some of these communities, obesity is typically
regarded as a desirable trait, a body type of form
of wealth that I would be cool with that. Well, well,
god knows, you know. Um, I don't think it's a
(39:37):
controversial statement that Puritan times, in the in the in
the eleventh century, pretty much anywhere you look across human history,
there's some dudes trying to control women's bodies right one
way or another. They're like, they're like, hey, it's uh
not like when we were talking about underwear recently, there
was this whole thing of like, let's make your butt
(39:58):
look like a big balloon kind of hidden by a
long dress. Certainly, I mean the same way that it
is today. A lot of those ideals of beauty and
fashion are driven largely by the patriarchy. I mean that
hasn't changed. I mean, it certainly has changed to some degree,
but it's certainly still out there in terms of who
controls advertising and who controls you know, the biggest fashion brands. Yeah,
(40:24):
this is so, this process is um, it is a
long term process, you know what I mean, It's not
just one unpleasant weekend. The girls, specifically in Mauritania, are
forced to swallow gallons of milk, loads of couscous peanut
oil and then check this out. You'll love this. He
like cups of pure animal fat. This. You can see
(40:48):
his excitement. Uh, you make this a video show. So
there's there's something crazy here if you look at the science. Uh,
the one of the most reliable statistics can find for
this is that about every twenty four hours, these people
are being forced to consume on average, fourteen thousand to
(41:09):
sixteen thousand calories. Jeez, it sounds like the kind of
ritual like a method actor would use to fatten up
for a role. Yeah, it's Christian Bale, hard at work.
Maybe that's how he got started. I don't know, a
story for another day, but I'm not sure if his
activities are Mauritania. To be honest with you, but this
(41:29):
is this is literally force feeding. Because some people, you know,
do participate of their own free will. But if there
is a young girl who refuses to drink the crazy
amount of milk, like twenty liters of milk a day,
then they get subjected to these various punishments. One of
(41:49):
which is called toe squeezing. Oh god, I mean it
seems like the description, but just let's hear it. Let's
hear it. Then, Yeah, it's a there's this thing made
of sticks that is pinched on the skin so it
crushes the toes. This has, of course some echoes of
(42:10):
the horrific practice of footbinding, but it's less permanent because
they will be able to recover. Uh. The most common
reason that children are forced into this is that the
family believes this is the best way to ensure that
their daughter is marriageable and has financial uh financial security,
(42:33):
and that the you know, the courtine men of the
community are able to will look at them and say like, oh,
that's awesome. I guess you should get married. So is
this something that starts when their kids or is it
when like after puberty or like when are they starting
to try to like fatten them up? Like it must
(42:58):
start it pretty early, and it's it's more of a
regiment like a diet than it is some sort of
thing for public consumption, Like this isn't done with people
watching where it's like a like a you know, eating
competition or something. Right. So, yeah, there are older women
who are called fatteners who are kind of the the
head mistresses of this process, and they're they're private, like
(43:23):
their private Yeah, it's not it's not a public spectacle.
So at least people aren't getting around and you know,
pointing and laughing and being like ha ha, drink more milk,
which would just be insult to injury at this point.
But the thing that's strange about this too is that
(43:44):
the people who are subjected to this have about thirty
fo higher odds of being married in this community because
it is a in these areas, and of course this
is not all of Mauretania, nor all of any of
the other countries I mentioned. In this area, in these communities,
(44:05):
the men will have this belief that a larger spouse
will bear healthier children or have a higher chance of
doing so, and so they're willing to pay a higher
bride price for these people, or a dowry. I'm sorry,
bride price. That's the first I've heard of that expression. Dowry.
I know, bride price sounds very uh callous and kind
(44:30):
of like transactional, but I guess that's what marriage was.
I don't know why it sounds surprised. Yeah, it's a dowry,
you know, is the same thing as a bride price
is just a different word really from the same practice.
So when when we look at this, we know that clearly, right, clearly,
this can be linked to profoundly harmful physical consequences, including
(44:56):
stuff like cardiovascular disease. But it's it's tough to trace
the origins of it. But people believe that it dates
back to uh the time when the majority of the
population in modern day Mauritania was comprised of nomadic societies.
(45:17):
And so because people were, you know, constantly on the
move and maybe food insecurity was just a daily fact
of life in a harsh environment, this would have been
seen as um as a status symbol. Well, and they're
also getting their steps in at least, you know, so
that's that's a good thing. I you know, it's strange
(45:38):
because when we read about these kind of things, it's
all too tempting to say something like, well, you know,
that's something for the dusty footnotes of history. People figured
out the medical advantages to not force feeding their children.
I'm sad report does not entirely the case in this uh,
(46:00):
in this current age, there are still people who are
forced to consume you know that sixteen thousand, fourteen thousand
calories a day, which is more than four times that
of a male bodybuilder or male identifying bodybuilder. Uh. And
I wanted to I want to throw it, throw it
to you all, like what what is the situation that
(46:24):
it feels very patriarchal? Right like this this is now
a symbol of my wealth or something right like this
person um, But why do you think it persists? Well?
I sort of have another question kind of along that
line too, is is there an economic factor in this?
Like this sounds like a lot of resources going to this.
(46:46):
Is this something that only here families can afford? Is
this something that you know, a substantial personal population wishes
they could be part of and are left out of
or vice versa. Yeah, that's that's a that's a good question.
So there is a socio economy factor, because again it
is it is seen as for the family of of
(47:07):
you know, for like the daughter's family, and for the
perspective groom, it's seen as a public statement that we
are doing well right, and so it's kind of like
it's just inherently identified with prosperity. And you can read
you can read a lot of articles about this that
(47:30):
give lie to the idea that it's an ancient practice.
There's one in Marie Claire from two thousand eleven by
Abigail Howorth that really hit home and I recommend reading
it for anybody who wants to learn more. It goes
into detail about the diet, about how the process begins. Uh.
It is a sobering read. But you hear directly from
(47:53):
some of these children, and you hear directly from some
of the fatteners, and one of them, identified as El Hassan,
definitely seasoned as a business. She makes a hundred and
fifty five dollars every three months for each girl she
forced feeds through the program, just like a force feeding
doulah or like a force feeding kind of mystic or
(48:15):
something that's so weird. Yeah, and uh she was the
Some of the interviewers naturally asked the question like, hey,
so I've eaten too much in the past. How do
you force children to do this? And uh, El Hassan
specifically says, quote, I'm very strict. I beat the girls
(48:38):
or torture them by squeezing a stick between their toes.
I isolate them, and I tell them that thin women
are inferior. Is that the same as toe squeezing or
is that something different? I think it's a variation on
a theme, very toe oriented, can I say, And I
think a lot of people know this, But Marie Claire
excellent work, Like they're a source for my story that
(48:59):
we'll do in the next episode. But they sort of
turned a corner. They used to be sort of like
kind of a fruit fru tween magazine, I think when
we were younger. But they've actually done some really excellent
journalism over the last maybe ten years or so, kind
of like teen Vogue amazing or I'll see it. BuzzFeed
News has done some good stuff. They did they got
(49:22):
a pulitzer they yes, and like a tweet round up,
like we can have it all. But here's another thing
I thought, because this is a very serious thing and
it needs more awareness. Um and you know, there's a
whole conversation about cultural imperialism, right telling people uh not
(49:45):
to practice their traditions or something. But there's also the
importance of informed consent, and there's importance of protecting people's health,
and they're right to choose what they want to do.
One of my first questions I can't be the only
one thinking this is Uh, how did the guys get
all so easy? You know what I mean? What's that
conversation like where they're like, we're fattening up our children
(50:07):
to show how successful we are. And I'm marrying this
person because she was forced to gain weight to show
how successful I am. As nobody ever said like, okay, cool,
what what what about? You wouldn't what would And when
you said the guys get off so easy, in my
mind went instantly to the gutter. And that's just guys
(50:30):
for you, you know, it's just easier. Um, But no,
it's true. And that's the thing we I mean, you know,
you you really don't see many societies that put the
same you know, um prohibitively ridiculous strictures on dudes as
they do on women. You know. Um, It's a sad
fact of humanity, it seems, but there it is. And
(50:53):
younger people, for their part in Mauritania, are less into
this actice less approving of it as time goes on.
But there's still you know, one thing we know is
the body image or what is considered attractive from one
culture to the next, is not constant. Right there, have
been uh errors of history where the sexiest thing you
(51:17):
could have is like totally blacked out teeth and that's
really solid unibrow or that still happens, the row is
still for sure. I you know, I I make no judgments.
I think there's nothing wrong with a with a good brow.
But this, this gets us to this gets us to
(51:40):
maybe where we start to sow up or bundle part
of this episode because thank you it was you know
segways callbacks, we got them all and sound effects back
to hit us with what just rather is what gus?
(52:06):
So this um, this issue is is something where you
could argue that cultural imperialism can be harmful because if
you ask people, you know, men or women, however they identify,
like what what an attractive body type is, then you'll
(52:28):
see cases where people are genuinely appalled by a female
figure that they feel is too skinny. They say like, oh,
they look sick or they look like they have liposuction,
and it ranges to mockery. So it's it's tough to
see how how to fix this, and I think it's
an interesting counterpoint to what we hear often in the West,
(52:54):
where so many kids, so many young women grow up
feeling like they're not good enough because they don't have
the you know, the typical like skinny or our glass
body type. That's that's here. I don't I don't know
what the solution is. Well, that's what I was about
to say, because it would be like really hard to
(53:14):
want to bring our thing about being thin and given,
you know, bringing a whole other eating disorder, possibly to
the to the people of this community and stuff by
shoving our own unhealthy you know, body body shaming practices
on them. And uh, I don't know. I just think
that would be a hard line to walk, to be like,
(53:36):
what's healthy, you know, depending on the diet of where
you are, and like the climate. I mean, there's so
many factors that affect how you develop over time as
a as a community. I don't know, it would just
be really hard to be like, let's send them some
Marie Clayers and see what changes. Maybe look get into
thigh gaps. All of a sudden, I'm like, oh, I
don't want that. It's so interesting. You know, I have
(53:58):
a twelve year old daughter, and I mean, you know,
with the Internet and the kind of democratization of information
and the availability of like literally every thing that's ever
been out there throughout history. Um, it's still like so
toxic the way body image is just pushed upon young
girls in particular, and how trippy would it be to
be like, oh, if only I were thirty pounds heavier,
(54:20):
you know, and then for that. But at the same time,
when you look at it on a long enough timeline,
it really is just different strokes for different eras kind
of you know, and it's like we associate skinniness and
you know, all of this body and stuff as being
that's of course what is attractive, but that can absolutely
change depending on the culture and depending on the time
that you're living in. And I think it ties into
(54:42):
the image where I see people trying to break down
now of ascribing one body type too healthy and and
another body type to not, whereas that's going to be
different per individual. I don't think force feeding anyone is
going to be a healthy habit, no matter how you
do it. But not there is, you know what, we
kind of forced starved people here, and force any cultural
(55:04):
way usually seems like a bit of a red flag. Yeah,
that's that's one of the that's one of the biggest
things because if it were something where it seemed as
though the entire the entirety of community was kind of
into it. Uh, and these children weren't like being beaten,
being forced and then try literally trying to run away
(55:27):
from these fattening camps. Then that would be that would
be a different conversation. And I know that's you know,
maybe not as not as funny as somebody squeezing an
apple under their armpit for the entirety of a dance.
That's another weird one. If you search, if you search
(55:48):
swent soapple. I think that's right. I had a hard
time finding enough information about that one to warrant a
whole conversation, but it's definitely on a few listicles of these,
uh these weird courtship or jewels, but god, these two,
I mean, we always do this, or we have like
a couple of guests on I think we've done it
with Miles and Jack from the Daily Zeit Guy. So yeah,
(56:09):
we'll bring to a piece and then one a piece
ends up being more than enough for like two episodes.
So I think we found our way to the end
of part one of Ridiculous Courtship Rituals with Eli and
Diana of Ridiculous Romance. Thank you guys so much for
joining us, and gosh, I can't even imagine what the
second episode is going to be like spoiler spoiler to
(56:32):
go back, The thing is that if the girl in
Austria likes you after she's dancing with the apple and
her armpit, and you like her, then you have to
eat the apple slice. And would you eat an apple
slice that I kept under my armpit for the entirety
of If that was the rule of courtship, I would
(56:52):
be celibate for life. Okay, you won't even eat a
sweat soapple slice on the table. That's okay. I wouldn't
eat your sweat soaked apple slice either. If you ate
my apple soaked in sweat, I'd leaved like we can't.
(57:14):
Honesty is the key to any good relationship, and a
good relationship is the key to uh any excellent podcast,
I would argue. So as as we said at the top,
please do go check out Ridiculous Romance and come back
to Ridiculous History even if you like the show. Better
to check out part two of Weird Courtship Rituals Diana Eli,
(57:38):
Where can people learn more about the show and your
work well. You can find us on anywhere you get
your podcast, you can find Ridiculous Romance. You can also
reach out to us. Uh that our email address Romance
at I heart media dot com, or you can find
us on the Twitters and the Instagram's. Uh my handle
is at Oh great, it's Eli, and I'm at dianamite
(58:01):
Boom and we're at ridic Romance as well. If you
just want to follow the show and keep up with
episodes and memes and stuff, we we have that one too. Yeah,
you guys do a really great job with your social
media account. Just at Ridiculous Romance. Um, we do a
piss poor job on ours. It's literally just images of
the new episodes, so kudos to you for that. Thanks. No, no,
(58:26):
it's we're being honest. Um, this we're not. This is
no smoke. We want to thank you guys so much
for coming on the show. Of course, as always, thanks
to our super producer Max Williams h Noel. Thank thank
you man. This is I'm excited for part two because
the five of us know what's on the horizon, so
we're not gonna we're not gonna spoil it too much,
(58:48):
I hope because we want everybody to tune in, right absolutely,
you can find our instagram um at ridiculous history. But
if you want a little more maybe dynamic content, you
can find Ben and I as individuals. I am at
how now Noel Brown on Instagram. You can give behind
the scenes look at my various misadventures and rabbit holes
of research at Ben Bullen in a burst of creativity.
(59:12):
It's not all misadventures, right, yeah, you know, under promise
over deliver. That's uh at Ben Bullen bo w l
i in on Instagram and at Ben bulland hs W
on Twitter. Uh fakes of course, as always to our
old you know, we almost sabotaged you, Eli and Diana.
We have an MSCs. You've heard the name Jonathan Strickland
(59:34):
DK the Twister. We didn't want to do that to
you sort of Boldemore type figureas we try not to
use his name. We just recorded in the studio for
the first time and he was in the buildings, so
we had to whisper his name like scheming around ye
beetle juice rules on the show, so we try not
to see his name three times. But but with that,
since we've already I think reached two times, maybe saying
(59:55):
his name. Let's let's what do you say? We? Uh?
We hit the podcast room from now. We'll be back
this Thursday to hear even more weird courtship rituals. We'll
see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from My
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(01:00:17):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so very much for tuning in. This is a very
special two part episode. We couldn't be more Over the
moon and shout out to our super producer, the one
and only Max Williams. I'm ben uh No, you know,
we're well. I would say that we're not the worst,
(00:52):
worst people when it comes to dating right there. No,
we're not. We're not the worst historically because that's what
we talked about here. Um. But also I gotta comment
be your excitement level. I think it is like two
clicks higher than it usually is, and I think it's
for a good reason. Yeah. Yeah, well, I'm trying to
I'm trying to come in hot because we have we
(01:12):
have some special guests on the show today. You and
I have talked about our good friends on Ridiculous Romance,
which is the next step in what we're calling the
Ridiculous Universe. And there you are, you the extended Ridiculous Universe,
and we are we are excited today because we're talking
(01:34):
about weird courtship rituals, the course of love. It said,
never did run smooth, but it got pretty much derailed
multiple times, and it can definitely run weird. It doesn't
run smooth, but it definitely runs weird. And we are
joined today to our mutual delight by Diana and Eli
(01:55):
from Ridiculous Romance. Welcome than having us so awesome to
be here. Thanks for being here. We've got a max.
Thanks for putting in that applause que as well. That
was a cute. Yeah. See behind the curtain, we don't
(02:16):
hear that now, but it's there as though it was
always meant to be. It's sort of like Jack Nicholson
and the Overlook. He's always been there the whole time.
So I'm just conditioned to hear thunderous plause when I
hear my names, so I just hear it anyway. I
didn't realize it was coming from the outside. That's a
good survival instinct in comedy. I think modesty. Modesty is
a very important comedy instant. Elis always telling me, because
(02:41):
we've known each other for number of years, he's always said,
I am he is the most modest person that will
ever meet, And it's probably true. It's one of my
greatest traits among many yes yes to the big one.
Uh so, so, Diana Eli, could you all tell us
a little bit about Ridiculous Romance and what it is,
(03:02):
how it came together in some episode you really enjoy. Yeah, absolutely, yeah.
Oh well I can start if you want to do it. Well,
let's see. So ridiculous Romance was an idea that initially,
Ben you came to us with uh in talking about
wanting to expand the ridiculous universe, and you said, hey,
you guys are a married couple. You've done sketch comedy
(03:23):
together for many years. We have work together in creating
and comedy and all kind of stuff as long as
we've known each other, even longer than a little bit
longer than we've been dating. And now we've been a
little just a little bit, only a few years and
then uh and now we've been married for three almost
four before going on five years. Now, Oh my god,
(03:49):
is this? Can this marriage last? We've been together for
thirteen years, so hopefully it's all just been a big,
beautiful blur, that's what it is. So we decided that
we should put our comedy stylings in our romantic history
to to good use and dig through history and find
(04:10):
other bizarre, strange, random, freaky, awesome couples and uh and
tell their stories uh in our in our trademark ridiculous way. Well,
and at first we were like, well, I don't know
this one. Seems like it would be hard to find
enough couples to make an episode of making a whole
(04:31):
year of episodes. And then we looked it up and
we're like, oh, actually no, Oh my god, Wow, people
are crazy. So there's been so many great stories so far,
and we have so many more to get to. It's
it's gonna be awesome. I'm not gonna lie. I'm actually
a little jealous because Ben and I arbitrarily placed a
rule on Ridiculous History where we only do shows like
(04:51):
leading up to apartheid or topics leading up to apartheid,
because we had a top the line line. I know,
it seems weird, but it was because there was one
picular topic about like this guerrilla that that did a thing.
He like, I think he caught a criminal in South
Africa that was running away from the authorities during apartheid, um,
and that was in like ninety three or ninety four,
(05:13):
and we both thought it was remarkable that a historical
event as epic and meaningful as apartheide happened in the nineties,
so we were like, you know what, this is the
this is the cut off from us. But y'all go
a little more recent than that, because honestly, history is
being written as we live. As Ben says, it would
be considered us something of a palem test right that.
(05:35):
Yet the word I like that, it's Bend's word, trademarked.
It's a good one. So I say this all of
this to say that your most recent episode is one
that I'm excited to listen to about Sid Vicious and
Nancy Sponging I've uncovered. Yeah, well, I assure you will
have some people writing into you to tell you how
you pronounced it incorrectly. But it's, like you say in
(05:58):
the description for the show, sort of a weird punk
rock Romeo and Juliette story for the Ages that ends
very very poorly, uh spoiler alert. But um, it's it's
one that I'm excited to listen to. It's a very
intense episode that was that was a difficult one to
research because they are both such tragically horrible, miserable people.
(06:19):
As we did nothing but bad things almost the whole
time individually to each other exactly. You're kind of piste
out on the whole episode, like what are you doing?
Good lord? It's like when you see the woman in
the horror movie that keeps running up the stairs. No one,
good choice, please, A single one is fine. Yeah, it's
(06:42):
right up there with the person who hears a noise
in a horror movie and goes, what is that? Who's there?
That's if we're speaking of poor choices, But you guys
have made some really excellent choices in your show and
peek behind the curtain. I think we told you all this,
but not on air, so we'll go forward with it.
Noel and I got together after listening to some of
(07:03):
the first episodes and had a little bit of a
dark night of the podcast soul. We actually went and
we actually went and got some beers together. We're like,
is there a show? Are they funnier than us? And
we were, we were, we were worried, And then you know,
to three beers later, we're like, it'll be fine as
(07:24):
long as they don't do an episode on our relationship,
and then two or three beers that are like, no, no,
we're definitely funny here. It's not a competition, it's not,
but it's where it's two different shows. Um, you guys
definitely are able to venture maybe into the more raunchy
side of things, especially as romance is concerned. I mean,
you're gonna get into some raunch. It really does, yes,
(07:47):
sometimes more than others. Raunchiest episode yet so far. Oh well,
I guess it depends on who you are. Yeah, yeah,
Vanilla ice cream. Yeah, mean we had we did, like um,
William Marston and his and Elizabeth and Olive and they
kind of had like a polyamorous thing going on with
(08:09):
like some bondage action and they invented wonder Woman and
all of that is kind of wrapped up in her character.
So that was kind of run and yeah, that's true.
But Evelyn Nesbit, Harry Thaw, Stanford White one had a
lot of nasty sex cult type sex club I guess
I should say, rather than a cult, but it's like
a yeah, hot sex club action from the turn of
(08:31):
the century. So you will learn those stories in full
and even when they're heavy topics, you've got the that
inn all ridiculous guarantee that you'll still you'll still have fun,
you'll still learn something I particularly love the re enactments
you all do. Not to not to put you on
(08:52):
the spot today, but we uh, we were working on
weird ideas, ostensibly weird ideas of courtship throughout human history,
and so Nolan I decided that we needed to go
to the experts, uh, which which meant that we are
(09:13):
We wanted to uh lean on you alls expertise because
we know that already you found so many, so many strange,
surprising things like you just blew my mind at least
about romance in the world of pirates. Uh So we thought,
who better to help our fellow ridiculous historians explore the
(09:35):
trials and tribulations of dating and marriage or trying to
get married, then Diana and Deli, the host of Ridiculous Romance.
I wish that we could just publish our group thread
for this episode, because nol I think it's fair to
say that all four of us were just firing on
all pistons with some great ideas. We kept thinking like, Okay,
(09:58):
we've got a gotta trim these down. Yeah, oh yeah,
they were definitely pistons involved. I do have to say
researching this was kind of fun because when you Google. Uh,
strange courtship rituals. You get a lot of stuff about
the animal kingdom. Um, it kind of comes up first
and foremost, so we had to dig a little deeper
in our googlins. But um, what say you we lead
(10:22):
off with Diana. You found a particularly fascinating, ridiculous courtship
that we're going to talk about right now. Yeah, I went.
I went for the Puritans because you know, they're so prudish.
I was kind of like, surely they have some weird,
(10:43):
you know, awkward stuff that would be fun people to
actually banned Christmas. Banned Christmas. They thought it was pagan
well missiles, very pig and well anyway, but they actually,
(11:04):
um I was surprised to learn, didn't have anything anything
against sex at all. It was just it had to
be within marriage. But they really wanted you to be
sexually compatible because then you would go forth and multiply
and you know, bring forth a lot more Christians and Puritans.
And so they were actually had quite a few rituals
that kind of allowed you, in their very strict way,
(11:25):
to get to know each other and kind of like
flirt a little bit and figure out if you actually
liked each other. And so there were a couple of
these that I thought were so fun. For example, the
courtship tube is this sort of a hole in the
sheet kind of situation. The kind of it's it's like, say, you,
you know, you're very interested in in me, goody Proctor,
(11:47):
and you want to come over to my house and
and see if maybe we have something to do with
each other. And in a Puritan house, it's very small.
You have your whole family in the same room with you,
and you if you come over to see a girl,
Grandma's going to sit in between y'all. So it's not
I mean, I don't know about y'all, but I would
be not interested in being sexy. Unlet's that's the thing,
(12:15):
you know, we'll describe the grandma. Depends on the grandma,
depends on the grandma. Um. So what they would do
if they wanted to have a private conversation was bust
out the six to eight foot long talking tube. Basically
that they could put on each other's ears, even behind
Grandma's back, so they could whisper at each other like
(12:36):
a tin can phone situation. Right, I was like great
COVID protocol. First of all, where where was this last
year I could have been I think we call that
the internet is what we call right, what is it
called the romance tube? I don't know when or the
(12:57):
recording stick either way, but it's stick to me. Doesn't
seem like it's hollow. Well true, that's a good point. Uh,
maybe it is made of bamboo. I doubt it because
there was in New England. What I love is the discretion.
You know, Grandma will never know sling this six ft
stick behind. Admittedly Grandma's hearing is going a little bit,
(13:20):
so probably a good whisper would have done the trick.
But I love the ritual of this, and that's sort
of the the red thread. And in this two part
episode is the is these rituals. It becomes a little
more like almost rather than functional. It's got this kind
of like ritualistic quality. So I think that's fascinating. Also
in defense of the matriarch question here, uh it is
(13:42):
probably older, right, her amorous days maybe behind her. So
there's there's a little bit of a possible like vicarious titulation,
you know, because they could probably hear this stuff and
they're like wounds talking about ankles. I wonder if there
was any sort of like generational, like if the was
a new technology. Grandma didn't understand kids these days with
(14:05):
their tubes. Back in my day, we wrote a lot
of how common was this? I think it was pretty common.
It was pretty common because this was the only way
to kind of get to know a girl more officially.
I think they had surely some some less some more
casual kind of like let's walk next to each other
(14:28):
on the way to church maybe one day and chat.
But if he wanted to come over and like make
his intentions known that he's like actually really seriously interested
in this girl, I think they would pretty commonly have this.
And I kind of wondered, like you, Eli, I was like,
I wonder if they the tube got shorter over time
and they'd be like five feet No, no, it's gotta
(14:52):
be six to eight. Well, also like is the tube
is the tube blessed by a member of the clergy?
Is this a community tube is? Or a tube per household?
I have so many questions, and one of that too
is like does he bring the tube with him or
is it already there and everyone has one? Is it
also for like mom and dad to kind of be like, hey,
when I get busy tonight or something like, I mean,
(15:15):
how many potential romances were ruined because because you know,
Elijah forgot his tube at Homelija com prepared. Man, how
scandalous if you find that someone has reused the tube,
you know, and it's like, that's the same tube you
had with Goody Walthrop, unclean, unclean. And then the other
(15:39):
question would be like, uh is it. I wonder if
they became heirlooms, you know, if there's some mother it's like,
or some father who's like, I'm gonna pick on your eli.
He's like, and I asked, my boy, I'm here, you know,
at twelve now, and it's time you became a man. Yeah,
(15:59):
he is my courting tube and my rifle and us
and the parts of the Bible I agree with go forth.
Or the mom pulls it out from under the bed
and it's like telling her daughter, like it was with
this tube that your father first told me he loved me,
(16:19):
the old tube. I can't wait till a boy uses
a tube with me. I found my mom's tube when
I get your tubes tied after that? So what Okay,
So let's assume maybe that this this conversation goes really well.
(16:40):
They managed to do their whatever. Yeah, yeah there, what's
the guy snake from who always sneaks around in video games?
Metal heavy Metal Metal Snake. He's just solid snaked. Okay,
so they solid Snake the grandma and she did like
literally really bad. Well, we managed to make it past
(17:04):
courting stick without calling it to euphemism. So we're we're
doing all right, We're doing and and and then they
hit it off. They've got to like a lot in
common or you know, they they revealed that they each
like each other. Then I mean, what happens next? Like
when do you how long do you tube it? Well,
(17:26):
I don't actually know how long you would too, but
as soon as you were like, oh yeah, I like
tube and with this guy, I need to know more.
I need to get I need to get further into
this relationship. He would go to your parents and say,
let's say, I'm I'm goody. I guess before she's goody.
Really just for for the audience, goody was just a
(17:48):
generic term for a woman. I think it means good wife.
So I'm pretty good wife. I'm not a wife yet.
I think you would say good like Mrs was gooddy. Um,
it he proct her um. So yeah, if you're real
into each other, he'd go to the parents and be like, hey,
I'd kind of like to take this to the next level,
(18:10):
and the parents were like on it. But again, you know,
they all share personal space. There's not a lot of
privacy in Puritan society. So what they would do is
have you come over on a Saturday night, because a Saturday,
you know, the night for flirting and forgetting it on.
And so what they would do is they would put
they would tie the girls ankles together and then put
(18:34):
her in a sack and that tied at her waist
or at her neck, and then they would put her
in the sack in her bed, and then you, the boy,
would have to be fully clothed, sometimes also put in
a sack, but not always, And then you would get
in the bed as well, and they would put a
thick plank of wood in between the two of you
(18:54):
and you would get to spend the night together. I'm sorry, no,
you gotta you gotta bring your own plank if you
want to have a hole in. But this was really
interesting because it sounds crazy. I mean I was like, uh, please,
don't tie me up and put me in a sack.
That sounds so claustrophobic. I'm so scared. And why are
we sleeping in the same bed Before we even i
(19:17):
mean kissed and stuff. So far we've been eight feet apart.
I don't think we've held hands. Um. Apparently the idea though,
was that you would get to know each other really well.
You get a little time together, you know, hours of
the night. You get to see if you actually wanted
to wake up next to this person for the rest
of your life. And they kind of expected like some
handsy stuff to happen. They sort of expected you to
(19:40):
kind of do some heavy petting, but the board was
there so that you wouldn't actually get pregnant. Although apparently
that was not super successful because in the seventeenth century,
before they started this practice, which is called bundling by
the way, uh, it was like ten percent of women
were pregnant when they got married. And after they started bundling,
(20:00):
it was so a lot of a lot of a
lot of them just went ahead and anticipated their vows,
you might say, and went ahead and took care of
business in that bed. Probably wouldn't use it on our podcast,
but but yeah, they they they were kind of like,
(20:26):
at least if we if you get pregnant, if you
mess up and you have sex, like you're not supposed to,
wag wag um. We know who it is. There's a
million witnesses who was over here last night? So you're
getting married even if you didn't intend to. So it's
kind of worked out pretty well. I guess we're all involved.
But I don't know, do you guys want to sit
(20:47):
fully clothe it in a bag next to you? Why?
My question is why aren't clothes enough? Why do you
need the extra layer of the bag? Clothes come off
nor I thought the same. I guess it was just
like you have so many layers, it's like two annoying
was like a new technology at the time that mystified
(21:08):
and confused people know it was It came from Ireland
and rural UK societies and the Puritans brought it with
them and they got very Apparently it enjoyed a little
revival among Amish communities in the nineteen sixties and something,
and like up until the nineties or something, they were
doing it. I guess my thing is this like the
(21:28):
dress you know we've been and I literally just did
an episode on the history of underwear, and we know
about this period, like the dress was very prohibitive in
terms of getting it off, even us in the bathroom.
So it just seems like a little extra to to
insist on including this bag when you already you are wearing,
like you know, your outer gear and then your shift
or whatever that you have tucked in and it's very
(21:51):
difficult to get off. It takes a lot of doing.
So it's just it really speaks to the purity of
the Puritans that they would insist on this extra layer
uh of prohibitive you know, fabric between a man and
a woman. Plus this board is a whole board, the board.
We also have to remember that this is a little
(22:13):
bit of speculation, but people at this time probably had fewer,
let's say, outlets for their amorous impulses, and therefore we're
a little more likely to be excited and go the
extra mile, right to actually have a sexual experience. Yeah,
(22:34):
and you would have to because to your point, all,
you're not only wearing so many clothes plus a sack,
plus blankets on the bed, plus a board, but also
your whole family sleeps in the same room, So you
got to be real quiet with all that wrestling you're
gonna be doing if you don't want to wake up anybody.
So the handsy stuff happens, and then they hear, just
(22:54):
in the darkness the grandmother either say hold on, which
is bad embarrassing, or nice, which is way worse. She's
just like, I don't think he's the one for you, doll.
He didn't really have a lot of funness, I could tell.
The girl says, wait, wait, is there anyone awake? No?
(23:16):
The chorus of no, no from the room way tougher
than dating in uh well this, this is way tougher
than dating in the modern age. I guess, yeah, yeah,
but it is funny because yeah, right, I I don't
want to deal with the sack. Either nobody tied me
by the ankles or that just feels very confident. Somehow
(23:40):
it's not not for me. I don't. I don't know
why this makesically think of this, but for some reason,
my mind goes to a very incredible passage of dialogue
from the movie The Silence of the Lambs, where Hannibal
Lecter is kind of trying to freak out Clarius and
he says, all those clumsy, sticky fumblings in the backseats
of cars. You know, it's like the Puritan verse of that.
(24:00):
They're clumsy, sticky fumblings in the room with your grandma, right,
and you foul. Okay, So now we're following this fictional
couple and they've they've been having they've gone through their trials,
you know, like a tray, you having to go through
those three gates. Never in story. Yes, they got they
(24:23):
got through the sack night swamps of sadness, the swamps
of sadness, and they found one. Um, Dana, you found
one one other. Almost uniquely puritanical courting practice, is that correct? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
After you got hands e, after you tube all that stuff, Um,
(24:43):
it's time to commit. So usually, you know, we would
think you get a ring, you put a ring on it.
But Puritans didn't wear jewelry. They thought that was real frivolous,
and you know, they were very plain and not adorned,
so they were like, jewelry is not our thing. So
instead a Puritan man would give his intended goodie a thimble,
(25:05):
and the thimble she would use and I guess dream
over all her linens that she would sew in her
clothes that she would sew for her new married life. Uh,
and then on the on the day they got married,
they would cut the thimble cup off and she would
wear the rim as a wedding band. It's very practical.
It's a very practical gift. Don't give it to me,
(25:26):
but it's a very practical wedding ring if you've got
a crafty girl in your life. Wait, so, okay, Like
what you just shear off literally the bottom of this
tiny thimble, presumably with some sort of metal like sheer, Like,
how do you even do that? Yeah? I guess the
blacksmith is at your wedding and he just brings brings
a little weldern table with them or something I would
(25:49):
like to like. Thimbles are pretty mall, A lot of them,
I hope they. I mean, how do you guess while
he's there, he like makes it, he like sizes it
for you smaller back in the Puritan days, you know, less,
less hormones in the milk over your thumb. It could
probably slip around your ring finger, maybe because it only
(26:10):
goes up to the first knuckle of your thumb. I
don't know if that would get over the women notoriously
huge thumbs. I was gonna say it's I read that
in a scientific journal earlier. It's like the main like,
that's why Puritans left England, right because they're huge hands. Yeah, yeah,
they had their thumbs were like big toes and the
(26:31):
rest of their fingers were normal. It's very weird pissed
about that. It was like, I can tell a perodi
from a mile way, what went we out into this
wilderness to find acceptance for our overly large thumbs, Like
the taste of that always our touch point for for
Puritan chat is the witch live ach that would like
(26:55):
to live thim maliciously thimously symbols. Just that's that's a
great Hans Christian Anderson's story. Actually I believe that's correct. Yeah.
So so this is first off, I feel like for
anybody listening to this in the modern day apparently as
opposed to anybody listening to this from the Puritan days, Um,
(27:16):
this this is pretty instructive because, uh, it feels like
the average person in you know what became the US
probably has an easier time dating in general. Right, there's
no sacks unless it's like a very specific consensual thing
for that couple. Right, you can talk to people post pandemic,
(27:40):
you can talk to people in person. I guess to
that point about the Internet, there was definitely speaking to
vibe as people are kind of pandemic dating. Um. But
what so, how how long did this continue? I'm gonna
have my mind, like I'm I'm quitting the show. If
this is still happening in Boston, I'm lose my mind.
(28:01):
Please don't know. I think I don't know about the
thimble thing. I'm sure that got you know, tossed aside.
When engagement rings and jewels rings started really popular, yeah,
teramter beers, um. But as for bundling, it really went
out of favor in like the eighteenth century. Um. They
(28:21):
there was a lot of reverends who were like, this
is so raunchy. You're letting the children have their sexual
awakenings together and they are getting they are getting pregnant.
And they had like a whole outrage. They wrote poems
about working they were still getting pregnant. I'm confused. Well, yeah,
(28:42):
because remember sometimes they would go ahead and do it
and get That's why the number of Puritan women who
were pregnant when they got married shot up to they
would have their babies eight months instead of nine. And
I'm like, oh, because you went ahead and jumped that board,
I guess. But this was this was sex for prokri asia,
not for pleasure, Like sex for pleasure was right out,
(29:03):
and this was absolutely functional sex to make more little Puritans,
to put out the world, cause they come out fully
formed like that with So they stopped this because tying
them up in a sack, putting them in bed together,
and putting a board between them was encouraging sex too
(29:25):
much somehow, Yes, but it puts a whole new meeting
to wood in bed. Yeah, Max, thank you for that.
(29:47):
Thank you for that. Whatever that was, So you worked
on that? Did you work on that offer? No? No, Max, Ma,
it would have been better if I worked right. So
with this with this in mind, then, first, I don't
(30:07):
know about you all, but I have definitely gained greater
appreciation for what what Puritan couples had to go through.
I mean, let's also, you know, not forget that they
were doing this amid the constant threat of starvation, violence, disease,
and possession. Yeah right, that's pretty pretty impressive. I mean
(30:29):
with doctor in his side, you know. And I'll say
the women wanted to keep bundling. The women specifically were like, uh,
if we don't bundle, then we won't have any fun
until our wedding day. And I was like, Randy Beard
and ladies were like, let me get handsy. Before I
thought it was the way around. I thought they wanted
to protect themselves against hans Nous. But it's all it's
(30:52):
all the It was all the male reverence who were like, oh,
this is really too much for me, and the women
were like, I like this. I like trying to figure
out if I want to actually see this guy every
single morning or if we you know, if we have
no chemistry, if we if I he wakes up and
I'm like, so sick of this dude after eight hours.
Like it's nice to know there's actually an interesting parallel
(31:13):
in the story that I'm going to do, which will
save for for the next episode. But in terms of
like this being somewhat progressive, would think that Puritans would
be like, so it makes sense that like the reverence
did eventually kind of walk it back. But for a time,
I would argue, this is a pretty progressive sexually progressive,
(31:33):
you know rich it was? It kind of was because
again it went out of fashion when the idea of
women being a sexual and pure and like we you know,
sex is literally functional, we don't have any reaction to
it at all, it's all for the baby part. That
kind of ideal started to grow in the eighteenth century,
(31:54):
so that's when it went away. I guess in this
point they were still like, oh well, there's still human beings,
and they have of, you know, a reaction to being
rubbed up on. Some reverends like woman't control thyself and
like I picture like the flappy arm inflatable. Yeah, car dealerships.
(32:15):
Did you know those were invented for the Atlanta Olympics.
What a weird thing, you like. They had to figure
out what to do with them afterwards, you know. They
made them like in this massive array, you know, which
is probably a lot cooler than just a single weird
kind of like dingy one that you see outside a
used car lot. But I was recently clued into that fact.
It's pretty cool. Strengthened numbers. That's that's how they work.
(32:39):
I don't know why I said that, like their threatening.
I'm sorry, honestly I did a sketch about that. I forgot. Yeah,
I imagine that these reverends. The first reverend to have
a real problem with it was a guy who got
rejected after the girl was like the girl was like, oh,
he's all thumbs. I'm not having it. He bungled the
(33:01):
bundle and she was like, I'm not wasting this, Oh,
the little bundle bungler Taylor's oldest. Well, Diana, thank you
so much for for looking into this one and bringing
this one to us. I think this is something that
I certainly didn't know about, and uh, I have a
feeling that others didn't either. Yeah, I was saying I
was happy to learn about it because this was a
(33:22):
new one for me too. I thought I was also,
I'm with you. I thought it was all witches and
burning and prayers and but no, they had sticks and stuff. Yeah,
they had technology. And uh, I believe you may be
able to see a cinematic reference to this and the
mel Gibson vehicle The Patriot, where one of the yeah,
(33:43):
one of the characters is you know, he's courting and
the family really likes him and they're like, all right,
we're sewing you into the bag. Yeah, nodding intensely with approval. Here,
Max Will for the record, Dana and Eli Uh sit
(34:04):
for an entire episode knowing a question that Nolan and
I are fumbling with, only to tell us after the episode, like,
you guys know, it's Pensacola, I'm making We were saying
Pennsylvania the whole time. We sounded like a real asshole. Yeah,
(34:27):
very far away And speaking of far away and awkward segues,
why don't we travel to Mauritania next? This is a
bit of a downer, but it's an important story that
I think a lot of people aren't aware of, and
(34:51):
we're returning with the host of ridiculous romance Diana and
Eli Banks. Then did you just do an ad throom?
I did? I think I did? Yeah? Yeah, is that
our first one? I think it might be, Max says is,
once again nodding intensely with approval. Yes, can keep doing them. Also,
it would be really nice. Okay, Okay, never sorry, I'm
(35:12):
not gonna do it. We're already improving the show for
Mac at least. Okay, don't don't go too hard on
the honor student vibe, you guys. Okay, I guess if
we keep it up, we'll have to start wearing ties
or something. But while we were on break and ridiculous historians.
We hope you had a bully break as well. We were.
(35:34):
We've left off right before we went to uh segue
and our segue takes us to Mauritania and other parts
of the African continent to a a controversial practice that
more people should know about called l e b l
(35:56):
o u h. It is also known as gavage. And
we are lucky enough to have to have Eli here today. Eli,
you have studied French bit in the past in your
sketchier years, are you? Are you familiar with the synonym gavage?
I am uh not no, well uh, by my sophomore
(36:20):
year at college. It's a very specific one. It would
be weird for your professor in college to have like
lead with this word. It's the French term for force
feeding geese to create fa ra oh. Yeah, and if
any you know foodie's out there. I like a good
fog gra as much as the next uh barbarian. But
(36:41):
it is really truly a despicable practice. If you see
videos of it, it's grow, it's gross, it's bad times.
Um yeah, you really do have to do a little
suspension of disbelief to truly enjoy some fua gras once
you see the video, though, it's probably hard to ever
go back. And actually, Ben, I can tell you the
reason I didn't know that French word now that you
mentioned it is because I'm a lifelong vegetarian and have
(37:04):
to work that into every episode. And uh so I was.
I was permitted to leave class before we talked about
that one. No. No, but the lifelong vegetarian part is true. No,
that's true, and I didn't believe it for like the
first two years I knew Eli Banks, I thought I was.
(37:24):
I was not to the level where I was one
of those annoying people who was like, are you sure?
You what about the oil? Are you sure? Because that's
just so boorish. But but Eli, you once described this
has nothing to do with anything. But you once described
yourself as a French fry vegetarian because I asked you.
I don't know if you remember, but god, this must
(37:45):
have been decade ago. Now. I was like, hey, man,
you're healthy. How do I do that? No? No, no,
no doubt. Being a vegetarian and being a healthy are
not inherently linked. There a pizza and French fries or
vegetarian and that was most of my age sixteen to eight.
(38:06):
Probably when you say lifelong, was this because of your family, Like,
did you literally grow up vegetarian like as a child.
That's my mom started when she was a teenager and
raised me and all my sisters that way. That's really cool.
And my my dad is effectively vegetarian at home. He
doesn't care. Certainly makes it easier for you than like
making a switch, you know in your thirties. The way
I have made to switch is my point. I am
(38:29):
incapable of making the switch. I never would have. Yeah,
it's tough, but this also to set the record straight.
Uh Eli's old band is definitely not a vegetarian. That's
an awkward step I had one time. We're out there,
but but why are we talking about food? Why are
we talking about controversial food practices. It's because of a
(38:50):
practice that dates back to the eleventh century. Uh It's
primarily known in rural areas of Mauritania, but it occurs
in Sudan, in Uganda, it occurs in Nigeria, Tunisia, a
lot of places, and it is a practice wherein as
part of the path to marriage and courtship, young women, girls,
(39:15):
children from the age of five to nineteen are force
fed because in some of these communities, obesity is typically
regarded as a desirable trait, a body type of form
of wealth that I would be cool with that. Well, well,
god knows, you know. Um, I don't think it's a
(39:37):
controversial statement that Puritan times, in the in the in
the eleventh century, pretty much anywhere you look across human history,
there's some dudes trying to control women's bodies right one
way or another. They're like, they're like, hey, it's uh
not like when we were talking about underwear recently, there
was this whole thing of like, let's make your butt
(39:58):
look like a big balloon kind of hidden by a
long dress. Certainly, I mean the same way that it
is today. A lot of those ideals of beauty and
fashion are driven largely by the patriarchy. I mean that
hasn't changed. I mean, it certainly has changed to some degree,
but it's certainly still out there in terms of who
controls advertising and who controls you know, the biggest fashion brands. Yeah,
(40:24):
this is so, this process is um, it is a
long term process, you know what I mean, It's not
just one unpleasant weekend. The girls, specifically in Mauritania, are
forced to swallow gallons of milk, loads of couscous peanut
oil and then check this out. You'll love this. He
like cups of pure animal fat. This. You can see
(40:48):
his excitement. Uh, you make this a video show. So
there's there's something crazy here if you look at the science. Uh,
the one of the most reliable statistics can find for
this is that about every twenty four hours, these people
are being forced to consume on average, fourteen thousand to
(41:09):
sixteen thousand calories. Jeez, it sounds like the kind of
ritual like a method actor would use to fatten up
for a role. Yeah, it's Christian Bale, hard at work.
Maybe that's how he got started. I don't know, a
story for another day, but I'm not sure if his
activities are Mauritania. To be honest with you, but this
(41:29):
is this is literally force feeding. Because some people, you know,
do participate of their own free will. But if there
is a young girl who refuses to drink the crazy
amount of milk, like twenty liters of milk a day,
then they get subjected to these various punishments. One of
(41:49):
which is called toe squeezing. Oh god, I mean it
seems like the description, but just let's hear it. Let's
hear it. Then, Yeah, it's a there's this thing made
of sticks that is pinched on the skin so it
crushes the toes. This has, of course some echoes of
(42:10):
the horrific practice of footbinding, but it's less permanent because
they will be able to recover. Uh. The most common
reason that children are forced into this is that the
family believes this is the best way to ensure that
their daughter is marriageable and has financial uh financial security,
(42:33):
and that the you know, the courtine men of the
community are able to will look at them and say like, oh,
that's awesome. I guess you should get married. So is
this something that starts when their kids or is it
when like after puberty or like when are they starting
to try to like fatten them up? Like it must
(42:58):
start it pretty early, and it's it's more of a
regiment like a diet than it is some sort of
thing for public consumption, Like this isn't done with people
watching where it's like a like a you know, eating
competition or something. Right. So, yeah, there are older women
who are called fatteners who are kind of the the
head mistresses of this process, and they're they're private, like
(43:23):
their private Yeah, it's not it's not a public spectacle.
So at least people aren't getting around and you know,
pointing and laughing and being like ha ha, drink more milk,
which would just be insult to injury at this point.
But the thing that's strange about this too is that
(43:44):
the people who are subjected to this have about thirty
fo higher odds of being married in this community because
it is a in these areas, and of course this
is not all of Mauretania, nor all of any of
the other countries I mentioned. In this area, in these communities,
(44:05):
the men will have this belief that a larger spouse
will bear healthier children or have a higher chance of
doing so, and so they're willing to pay a higher
bride price for these people, or a dowry. I'm sorry,
bride price. That's the first I've heard of that expression. Dowry.
I know, bride price sounds very uh callous and kind
(44:30):
of like transactional, but I guess that's what marriage was.
I don't know why it sounds surprised. Yeah, it's a dowry,
you know, is the same thing as a bride price
is just a different word really from the same practice.
So when when we look at this, we know that clearly, right, clearly,
this can be linked to profoundly harmful physical consequences, including
(44:56):
stuff like cardiovascular disease. But it's it's tough to trace
the origins of it. But people believe that it dates
back to uh the time when the majority of the
population in modern day Mauritania was comprised of nomadic societies.
(45:17):
And so because people were, you know, constantly on the
move and maybe food insecurity was just a daily fact
of life in a harsh environment, this would have been
seen as um as a status symbol. Well, and they're
also getting their steps in at least, you know, so
that's that's a good thing. I you know, it's strange
(45:38):
because when we read about these kind of things, it's
all too tempting to say something like, well, you know,
that's something for the dusty footnotes of history. People figured
out the medical advantages to not force feeding their children.
I'm sad report does not entirely the case in this uh,
(46:00):
in this current age, there are still people who are
forced to consume you know that sixteen thousand, fourteen thousand
calories a day, which is more than four times that
of a male bodybuilder or male identifying bodybuilder. Uh. And
I wanted to I want to throw it, throw it
to you all, like what what is the situation that
(46:24):
it feels very patriarchal? Right like this this is now
a symbol of my wealth or something right like this
person um, But why do you think it persists? Well?
I sort of have another question kind of along that
line too, is is there an economic factor in this?
Like this sounds like a lot of resources going to this.
(46:46):
Is this something that only here families can afford? Is
this something that you know, a substantial personal population wishes
they could be part of and are left out of
or vice versa. Yeah, that's that's a that's a good question.
So there is a socio economy factor, because again it
is it is seen as for the family of of
(47:07):
you know, for like the daughter's family, and for the
perspective groom, it's seen as a public statement that we
are doing well right, and so it's kind of like
it's just inherently identified with prosperity. And you can read
you can read a lot of articles about this that
(47:30):
give lie to the idea that it's an ancient practice.
There's one in Marie Claire from two thousand eleven by
Abigail Howorth that really hit home and I recommend reading
it for anybody who wants to learn more. It goes
into detail about the diet, about how the process begins. Uh.
It is a sobering read. But you hear directly from
(47:53):
some of these children, and you hear directly from some
of the fatteners, and one of them, identified as El Hassan,
definitely seasoned as a business. She makes a hundred and
fifty five dollars every three months for each girl she
forced feeds through the program, just like a force feeding
doulah or like a force feeding kind of mystic or
(48:15):
something that's so weird. Yeah, and uh she was the
Some of the interviewers naturally asked the question like, hey,
so I've eaten too much in the past. How do
you force children to do this? And uh, El Hassan
specifically says, quote, I'm very strict. I beat the girls
(48:38):
or torture them by squeezing a stick between their toes.
I isolate them, and I tell them that thin women
are inferior. Is that the same as toe squeezing or
is that something different? I think it's a variation on
a theme, very toe oriented, can I say, And I
think a lot of people know this, But Marie Claire
excellent work, Like they're a source for my story that
(48:59):
we'll do in the next episode. But they sort of
turned a corner. They used to be sort of like
kind of a fruit fru tween magazine, I think when
we were younger. But they've actually done some really excellent
journalism over the last maybe ten years or so, kind
of like teen Vogue amazing or I'll see it. BuzzFeed
News has done some good stuff. They did they got
(49:22):
a pulitzer they yes, and like a tweet round up,
like we can have it all. But here's another thing
I thought, because this is a very serious thing and
it needs more awareness. Um and you know, there's a
whole conversation about cultural imperialism, right telling people uh not
(49:45):
to practice their traditions or something. But there's also the
importance of informed consent, and there's importance of protecting people's health,
and they're right to choose what they want to do.
One of my first questions I can't be the only
one thinking this is Uh, how did the guys get
all so easy? You know what I mean? What's that
conversation like where they're like, we're fattening up our children
(50:07):
to show how successful we are. And I'm marrying this
person because she was forced to gain weight to show
how successful I am. As nobody ever said like, okay, cool,
what what what about? You wouldn't what would And when
you said the guys get off so easy, in my
mind went instantly to the gutter. And that's just guys
(50:30):
for you, you know, it's just easier. Um, But no,
it's true. And that's the thing we I mean, you know,
you you really don't see many societies that put the
same you know, um prohibitively ridiculous strictures on dudes as
they do on women. You know. Um, It's a sad
fact of humanity, it seems, but there it is. And
(50:53):
younger people, for their part in Mauritania, are less into
this actice less approving of it as time goes on.
But there's still you know, one thing we know is
the body image or what is considered attractive from one
culture to the next, is not constant. Right there, have
been uh errors of history where the sexiest thing you
(51:17):
could have is like totally blacked out teeth and that's
really solid unibrow or that still happens, the row is
still for sure. I you know, I I make no judgments.
I think there's nothing wrong with a with a good brow.
But this, this gets us to this gets us to
(51:40):
maybe where we start to sow up or bundle part
of this episode because thank you it was you know
segways callbacks, we got them all and sound effects back
to hit us with what just rather is what gus?
(52:06):
So this um, this issue is is something where you
could argue that cultural imperialism can be harmful because if
you ask people, you know, men or women, however they identify,
like what what an attractive body type is, then you'll
(52:28):
see cases where people are genuinely appalled by a female
figure that they feel is too skinny. They say like, oh,
they look sick or they look like they have liposuction,
and it ranges to mockery. So it's it's tough to
see how how to fix this, and I think it's
an interesting counterpoint to what we hear often in the West,
(52:54):
where so many kids, so many young women grow up
feeling like they're not good enough because they don't have
the you know, the typical like skinny or our glass
body type. That's that's here. I don't I don't know
what the solution is. Well, that's what I was about
to say, because it would be like really hard to
(53:14):
want to bring our thing about being thin and given,
you know, bringing a whole other eating disorder, possibly to
the to the people of this community and stuff by
shoving our own unhealthy you know, body body shaming practices
on them. And uh, I don't know. I just think
that would be a hard line to walk, to be like,
(53:36):
what's healthy, you know, depending on the diet of where
you are, and like the climate. I mean, there's so
many factors that affect how you develop over time as
a as a community. I don't know, it would just
be really hard to be like, let's send them some
Marie Clayers and see what changes. Maybe look get into
thigh gaps. All of a sudden, I'm like, oh, I
don't want that. It's so interesting. You know, I have
(53:58):
a twelve year old daughter, and I mean, you know,
with the Internet and the kind of democratization of information
and the availability of like literally every thing that's ever
been out there throughout history. Um, it's still like so
toxic the way body image is just pushed upon young
girls in particular, and how trippy would it be to
be like, oh, if only I were thirty pounds heavier,
(54:20):
you know, and then for that. But at the same time,
when you look at it on a long enough timeline,
it really is just different strokes for different eras kind
of you know, and it's like we associate skinniness and
you know, all of this body and stuff as being
that's of course what is attractive, but that can absolutely
change depending on the culture and depending on the time
that you're living in. And I think it ties into
(54:42):
the image where I see people trying to break down
now of ascribing one body type too healthy and and
another body type to not, whereas that's going to be
different per individual. I don't think force feeding anyone is
going to be a healthy habit, no matter how you
do it. But not there is, you know what, we
kind of forced starved people here, and force any cultural
(55:04):
way usually seems like a bit of a red flag. Yeah,
that's that's one of the that's one of the biggest
things because if it were something where it seemed as
though the entire the entirety of community was kind of
into it. Uh, and these children weren't like being beaten,
being forced and then try literally trying to run away
(55:27):
from these fattening camps. Then that would be that would
be a different conversation. And I know that's you know,
maybe not as not as funny as somebody squeezing an
apple under their armpit for the entirety of a dance.
That's another weird one. If you search, if you search
(55:48):
swent soapple. I think that's right. I had a hard
time finding enough information about that one to warrant a
whole conversation, but it's definitely on a few listicles of these,
uh these weird courtship or jewels, but god, these two,
I mean, we always do this, or we have like
a couple of guests on I think we've done it
with Miles and Jack from the Daily Zeit Guy. So yeah,
(56:09):
we'll bring to a piece and then one a piece
ends up being more than enough for like two episodes.
So I think we found our way to the end
of part one of Ridiculous Courtship Rituals with Eli and
Diana of Ridiculous Romance. Thank you guys so much for
joining us, and gosh, I can't even imagine what the
second episode is going to be like spoiler spoiler to
(56:32):
go back, The thing is that if the girl in
Austria likes you after she's dancing with the apple and
her armpit, and you like her, then you have to
eat the apple slice. And would you eat an apple
slice that I kept under my armpit for the entirety
of If that was the rule of courtship, I would
(56:52):
be celibate for life. Okay, you won't even eat a
sweat soapple slice on the table. That's okay. I wouldn't
eat your sweat soaked apple slice either. If you ate
my apple soaked in sweat, I'd leaved like we can't.
(57:14):
Honesty is the key to any good relationship, and a
good relationship is the key to uh any excellent podcast,
I would argue. So as as we said at the top,
please do go check out Ridiculous Romance and come back
to Ridiculous History even if you like the show. Better
to check out part two of Weird Courtship Rituals Diana Eli,
(57:38):
Where can people learn more about the show and your
work well. You can find us on anywhere you get
your podcast, you can find Ridiculous Romance. You can also
reach out to us. Uh that our email address Romance
at I heart media dot com, or you can find
us on the Twitters and the Instagram's. Uh my handle
is at Oh great, it's Eli, and I'm at dianamite
(58:01):
Boom and we're at ridic Romance as well. If you
just want to follow the show and keep up with
episodes and memes and stuff, we we have that one too. Yeah,
you guys do a really great job with your social
media account. Just at Ridiculous Romance. Um, we do a
piss poor job on ours. It's literally just images of
the new episodes, so kudos to you for that. Thanks. No, no,
(58:26):
it's we're being honest. Um, this we're not. This is
no smoke. We want to thank you guys so much
for coming on the show. Of course, as always, thanks
to our super producer Max Williams h Noel. Thank thank
you man. This is I'm excited for part two because
the five of us know what's on the horizon, so
we're not gonna we're not gonna spoil it too much,
(58:48):
I hope because we want everybody to tune in, right absolutely,
you can find our instagram um at ridiculous history. But
if you want a little more maybe dynamic content, you
can find Ben and I as individuals. I am at
how now Noel Brown on Instagram. You can give behind
the scenes look at my various misadventures and rabbit holes
of research at Ben Bullen in a burst of creativity.
(59:12):
It's not all misadventures, right, yeah, you know, under promise
over deliver. That's uh at Ben Bullen bo w l
i in on Instagram and at Ben bulland hs W
on Twitter. Uh fakes of course, as always to our
old you know, we almost sabotaged you, Eli and Diana.
We have an MSCs. You've heard the name Jonathan Strickland
(59:34):
DK the Twister. We didn't want to do that to
you sort of Boldemore type figureas we try not to
use his name. We just recorded in the studio for
the first time and he was in the buildings, so
we had to whisper his name like scheming around ye
beetle juice rules on the show, so we try not
to see his name three times. But but with that,
since we've already I think reached two times, maybe saying
(59:55):
his name. Let's let's what do you say? We? Uh?
We hit the podcast room from now. We'll be back
this Thursday to hear even more weird courtship rituals. We'll
see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from My
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
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or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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