February 6, 2019 • 49 mins
If Valentine's Day advertising is to be believed, women cannot resist chocolate. Is there any truth to this stereotype, or is it all advertising? Find out in this classic episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, this is Annie and you're listening to Stuff I've
Never told you. Well, it's just about Valentine's Day here
in the United States, and that means heart shaped boxes
of chocolate everywhere you go, especially now that you can't
(00:29):
buy those sweetheart candies, although I'm always shocked people liked
those anyway, I mean other than just for I guess
novelty of candy that has a message on it. And
along with all of these heart shaped boxes of chocolate
come the ads of women falling heads over heels for chocolate,
as if willpower goes out in the window for women
(00:50):
when chocolate gets introduced into any given situation, we become
wolves wolves And I have to say I love chocolate.
I don't really crave it too often. I have friends
that do, though, especially when they're sad or on their
period both, and it got me to wondering if there
is any truth to this stereotype. Luckily, we have a
(01:14):
classic episode looking into just that. Enjoy. Welcome to Stuff
Mom Never Told You from housetopp Works dot Com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristen
and uh. Today we're talking about a favorite topic of mine,
(01:37):
and I was preparing for the topic of chocolate last
night Kristen by shoving chocolate Easter eggs one after another
into my face because every year my mother I'm thirty,
my mother makes Easter baskets. She may one for Kristen
as well, don't worry, But I I feel like I
(01:58):
was doing some really good, hard hitting chocolate research. Yeah. Yeah,
I think it's important to get a little meadow with
things and fuel your chocolate research with chocolate. I myself
have also been enjoying the chocolate Easter eggs your mother
so generously gave to me in my own Easter basket.
I don't know the last time my mom gave me
an Easter basket. So if I tell her that another
(02:21):
person's mom gave me an Easter basket, it might cause
a little friction, Yeah, a little mom friction. So I
don't know if I'll if I'll film my mom in
on that. But I'm a little surprised that it's taken
us this long to get around to women in chocolate,
because is there a more stereotypically women woman good than chocolate? Yeah,
(02:44):
other than shoes, I don't think so. Yeah. I mean
it's like shoes, Kathy comics, chocolate. There we go, and
the last two are basically one and the same exactly.
So we got to talk about women in chocolate because
the question I wanted to know was what's up with
the stereotype that women are just these chocolate craving monsters who,
(03:06):
according to commercials, also really want to have sex with chocolate. Interesting? Yeah,
that I don't think that's been quite proven yet that
we do want to have sex with chocolate, or that
we would rather have chocolate van sex. Interesting. Yeah. I
would like to kick this off though, with a quote
(03:28):
from Kathleen Banks Nutter, who wrote an essay on sort
of the history of women in chocolate in the book
Edible Ideologies Representing Food and Meaning. She wrote, what food
is more easily gendered and eroticized than chocolate. So, ladies
and gentlemen, you're in for quite a treat with this podcast. Yeah,
(03:49):
I um, you know, the based on the amount of
chocolate that I crave. You know, if you were if
you were to tell me in this podcast, Kristen, that
thing in women's bodies, whether it's their brain or their uterus,
is programming them to eat more chocolate, I'd be kind
of prone to believe you, because I feel like I
(04:09):
don't know too many dudes who are like super into
chocolate who have to have chocolate on hand. Um, But
I don't think that's what we're going to tell you,
know because also Caroline, I'm going to go ahead and
put it out there. I'm more of a salty tooth
than a sweet tooth. If you were to offer me
a bag of potato chips and a bag of chocolate chips,
(04:30):
I would take the potato the potato product. See, I
have a weird, a weird thing that I would love
to get rid of, which is that after every meal
that you know, typically include something savory, I have to
have something chocolate to finish it off. Either that I've
got to like shove a bunch of gum into my
face so that I don't go after whatever's chocolate around me.
(04:52):
I've been known to like go through the office just
like lifting up people's bags, like do you have any
I need? So well, this podcast, this is kind of
especially for you, Caroline. It's yeah, it's sounding that way.
So let's go over just a few chocolate statistics to
get an idea of what we're dealing with. Because the
thing is, when it comes to women in chocolate and
(05:14):
our desires for it, it seems like a lot of
it is perhaps cultural, because it's a lot more popular,
for instance, in Europe than it is in Asia. So
if we look just in the UK, of women say
that they eat it regularly, but at the same time,
seven percent of British men say that they found si chocolate. Yeah,
(05:37):
so they're over there shoving cadberry stuff into their face.
But it's not it's not a massive gender gap. Now
maybe maybe women. Could it be that women are just
made out to be crazy for chocolate more so than men.
We'll find out, Caroline. Um, But over in Germany they're
the ones eating the most chocolate, And can I blame
them when they have things like kindre eggs, kinder eggs. Sally,
(06:00):
you know, speaking of my mother. Sally is a flight attendant.
She flies to Germany. She smuggles back kinder eggs for
me and has ever since I was little. Kids, so
I have all those little toys that you put together
that are a severe choking hazard. Basically, your mom gives
you the best candies, Caroline, my mom is the Easter bunny. Yeah,
but moving away from Eastern looking just at Valentine's Day,
(06:24):
Americans purchase more than sixty million pounds of chocolate for
February four alone, and more than sevent of that chocolate
will be given by men to women. So with that,
you're starting to see what we'll talk about a lot
more in terms of this gendered economy of chocolate buying
(06:44):
and bestowing. And as far as cravings go, like the
cravings I have on like a ten minute by ten
minute basis throughout the day, women tend to report craving
chocolate more than men do. But again this is mainly
focused on Western women. All those studies like the one
that Kristen sided earlier about showing that there was such
(07:05):
a small gender gap between men and women in the
UK eating chocolate, most surveys do show that there is
a negligible gender difference, but there is a difference in
the guilt we feel. Women report more post chocolate guilt
after eating it compared to men, which I also kind
of would own up to, Like after I shove a
bunch of well, okay, maybe way after I shove a
(07:27):
bunch of chocolate, once the glow has faded, after I've
shoved a whole bunch of sugary chocolate in my face.
Then I'm like, maybe I shouldn't have done that. Maybe
it's just you coming down from a sugar high. Yeah,
and I start like twitching and itching. Oh no. But
speaking of those chocolate cravings, just one more aside on that.
Looking at the Western women's chocolate cravings, you'll see a
(07:49):
lot of reports that chocolate is the most widely craved food.
But again, if you that's probably focused on westerner because
if you look at a place like Egypt, for instance,
there was a study finding that women and men both
preferred savory and had more savory cravings because it was
(08:09):
more related to their local cuisine, right, And and kind
of along those same lines, I mean, I would argue
you know that that, I mean, that makes sense that
based on what you typically eat, you're going to crave
certain things. And you know, I've noticed the more I
eat chocolate, the more I crave it, And the less
I eat chocolate, the less I crave it. Yeah, And
the more I eat potatoes, the more potato chips. Just raw.
(08:32):
Chris did so weird. She has this whole drawer full
of potatoes and she'll just rip one out like an
apple and bite into it. My podcasting secret car bloating,
constant car bloating. Um. But before we get into where
this women and chocolate connection really comes from, let's go
back in time and see where chocolate comes from. Because
(08:54):
within the history of chocolate we start to see how
it becomes more gendered as it moves from its origin
in meso America to Europe. Right. Yeah, they actually found
they I mean, you know, the people who look for
these things, chocolate pirates. Yep, chocolate pirates actually found cacao
residue in pottery in Honduras that dates back as far
(09:16):
as fourteen hundred BC. And just side note, um, in
case you're wondering throughout this podcast, anytime we say cacao,
I'm just going to think of the Portlandia sketch where
cacao is the safe word. But anyway, so, yeah, it
dates back a long time in meso America and the
Mayans were drinking it by three D a d. And
(09:37):
when the Aztecs, you know, like they did, conquered the Mayans,
they started taking up the drinking of chocolate as well.
And not only did they drink it, az Techs supposedly
ate it off each other's bodies during sex. They considered.
The word for chocolate in their languages is something along
the lines of like chocolattle. It's there's a lot of
(09:59):
consonants next to each other, but that basically translates to
a holy fetish. That's how much they liked it. That's
so cosmo of them. Yeah, I can just I'm picturing
like an ancient as tech cosmopolitan. Hey, as tech ladies,
you wanna you wanna get your man going, get some chocolottle.
You want to avoid getting sacrificed this month, it's some
(10:21):
chocolate during sex. So then in fifteen nineteen we have
Spanish explorer Hernando Cortez being exposed to this magical sexy
chocolate for the first time in the court of Montezuma
the second and then by fight five we have chocolate
being shipped to Europe along with these ideas of its
(10:42):
connections to sex, and very quickly from that it's connection
to women. By the sixteenth century, you have chocolate in
Europe being conceptualized as an aphrodisiac. Right, and one Spanish physician,
Antonio Culminero Laedisma, I'm sure I said that wrong, wrote
(11:03):
in the seventeenth century that chocolate vehemently incites to venus
and causes conception in women, hastens and facilitates their delivery.
And I just have to that. I I say, oh,
is that how babies are? Right? Yeah? If chocolate cause
of conception in women, thank god, I'm on birth control. Um.
But yeah, in Europe, it's it's interesting to see that. Um,
(11:25):
they took this, this this treat or this beverage or
this sexy time making item, and they ended up sweetening
it to make it taste better. Because back when there
were all these Spanish explorers in Mesoamerica hanging out with
the Aztecs, one of them described it as a bitter
drink for pigs. But then when it's transported over to
Europe and it's sweetened, that's when it starts to become
(11:47):
kind of a luxury item. Yeah, it's important to remember
that chocolate way way back in the day is not
like the chocolate Easter eggs that you might be eating.
Its super sweet and smooth. It was a pretty intense
food that was often Yeah, it was often drunk and
Casanova also side notes, supposedly ate it to aid his virility.
(12:07):
It was like yield viagra, or maybe he just kept
it on hand for all those chocolate love and ladies
that stopped by. Yeah, he just had like a whitman's
sampler that he could slide out. Maybe that was his secret.
So when it comes though to the gendering of chocolate,
this happens pretty soon after it's imported to Europe. According
to more rosen Bloom, for instance, who wrote a book
(12:29):
all about the history of chocolate. He says that once
chocolate arrived in Spain pretty quickly you have men drinking
coffee and stronger stuff and women drinking the chocolate. And
this was something too that reminded me of our research
for our episode on gender and coffee was how with
the old coffee houses in England it was mostly men
(12:53):
and the women were at home drinking chocolate, right Or
how even now if you walk into a Starbucks, you
know hearing from all of our listeners who work at
coffee shops saying that, oh, the men walk in and
they order espresso or black coffee and the women are
ordering mochas. Exactly interesting. Well, not only was it a
gender drink, but it was also sort of an elitist
thing too. When it made its way to Europe from
(13:16):
the New World, it was pretty much solely reserved for
the nobility of Spain, Italy and France. It basically became
a luxury where dainty ladies enjoyed it, and they transform
the enjoyment of chocolate into a highly refined social event.
And this is coming from Jamal Fahim's thesis Beyond Craving,
and he points out that this is sort of the
(13:36):
beginning of chocolate as a fetish that communicates social status
and upper class femininity, and that upper class femininity is
going to continue to broaden its reach within the growing
chocolate industry. As you see in the eighteen hundreds, how
chocolate is transformed from this grittier drink into the type
(13:57):
of chocolate that we think of today that's a smooth
the bar, it's really sweet, it's a very tantalizing for
our senses. And this happens through a number of innovations
starting in eighty eight with a Dutch entrepreneur named Conrad
johann has Been Houghton who figures out how to press
(14:18):
those cocao safe word cacao beans to separate the dry
cocoa from cocoa butter that makes chocolate less bitter and smoother.
And by eighteen fifty we have englishmen Joseph Fry mixing
sugar with cocoa butter and making the first solid chocolate bar.
(14:38):
So he's like Josephries, like the patron saint of of
all that is good and happy in this world. For me,
I guess I should wear like a necklace with his
picture on it. Um more developments come in eighteen seventy
nine when Rodolf Lint of you know Lint Chocolate, invented conking,
a process that also smoothed chocolate, and he actually used
(15:00):
a machine that looks like a conk shell, hence Cleverland.
Uh So, because of all these innovations, by the early
nineteen hundreds, you have guys like Henry nest Lee or
would that be R. Nestle, Milton Hershey and others who
are in the chocolate game. And so all of a
sudden you have at the beginning of the twentieth century
(15:22):
this growing chocolate business. And what's interesting too, as we
were talking about the gender of it, if you look
at the manufacturing of chocolate, all those chocolate bars that
were eating a lot of times, especially in the earlier
twentieth century, it becomes gradually feminized as well. You have
more and more women working in these factories. So not
(15:42):
only are women becoming the target consumers of chocolate, they're
also often the ones on the factory floors making the chocolate.
So every day it was like Lucy and Ethel, you're
working the chocolate. Okay, great, I'll just keep that image
in my head as well as the Portland a sketch,
So my brain is is at pacity. There is a
darker side, of course, um to chocolate making, and this
(16:05):
is something that still goes on today in some parts
of the world where they grow cow trees and make chocolate.
And that is the fact that there are child labor
issues that that we struggle with, as well as environmental
issues like rainforest being stripped, the soil being stripped of
nutrients by planting these trees over and over again. So
(16:26):
that has actually driven some companies to, you know, get
into the fair trade thing, make sure that they're having
positive sources for their beans basically. Yeah, and and those
those sourcing issues are as relevant to chocolate as they
are to our conversation on coffee. But we're not going
to focus so much on the manufacturing side of it,
(16:49):
but rather the advertising of chocolate, because you can actually
trace women's history in the twentieth century in the United
States through chocolate ads. Essentially, just by the way that
chocolate is framed really shows women's level of social mobility
(17:10):
and their relationship to men. It's fascinating, Yeah, it's fascinating
because this is coming. You know, this starts after the
Industrial Revolution, when you've got guys like Milton Hershey making
a cheaper, more available chocolate bar. I guess he's like
the Henry Ford of candy, making it more available to people.
And so once it is more readily available, you have
(17:30):
to sell it. You have to make people aware that
it is not something for just uppercrust elite ladies, that
it's for everyone. Yeah, and we already have these longstanding
connotations of chocolate with sex and romance and luxury, and
so what better thing to sell to dainty ladies. But
(17:53):
in the Victorian era, depictions of women gorging on chocolate
in the same way that we think of today, like,
you know, just chocolate crazed women that would not have
been kosher, That would have totally violated the female norms
of the time, because this was at the time too
when women would not have been you would not want
to be seen like eating a lot of food, like
(18:14):
all you can eat buffets not okay for Victorian women
to indulge in, so they were supposed to eat more
like ladies. So a lot of times if you see
Victorian ads for chocolate, the women aren't necessarily eating the
chocolate in the ads, but maybe holding it close to
their mouths just sort of tantalizingly. If you want to
(18:34):
find a good way to get me to gorge on chocolate,
it's to make me hold it away from my face
for too long before I eat it, and then it's
just like cookie monster, it's just over. But yeah, you
couldn't with these, with these proper Victorian ladies, you couldn't
show them over indulging. You couldn't have them exhibiting any
type of desire because again, chocolate being kind of an aphrodisiac,
(18:56):
considered to be an aphrodisiac, tied in with wooing people
and whatnot. If a woman is shown to not only
gorge on it, but really want it and desire it,
then it's getting hot up in those Victorian homes. Yeah,
but when you move into the progressive era, out of
the Victorian era into the progressive era, you have the
rise of the new woman. You have the suffrage movement
(19:18):
taking place. You have women having a little bit more
social mobility. They might be driving cars every now and then. Yeah,
and and the whole rituals updating outside the home are
starting to take shape. And so chocolate advertisers are thinking, Okay,
how are we going to advertise to this new woman.
(19:39):
How are we going to frame chocolate as something that
she needs in her life? Oh dating, gentleman callers, what
better gift for this new woman than a box? So
chockole lots right. It's kind of like when we talked
about diamonds. How diamond advertising put it in men's heads
that you're not a good husband, fiance, boyfriend, et cetera
(19:59):
if you don't present a diamond, and then that leads
the woman to expect it and think, oh, well, you're
not a good fiance if you didn't give me a diamond.
It's kind of the same thing in in this you know,
smaller scale, less expensive, but it's kind of the same
thing with chocolate. It's like, oh, well, he must not
really like me, Yeah, exactly, And it's because they're courting
female consumers, but ultimately courting men to buy the chocolate, saying, hey,
(20:24):
what better gift for a gal than a box of chocolate?
It's Johnny, yeah, and there is um yes. And they
were addressing Johnny in a Whitman's ad that gave me
pause when I read the copy for it, because it
sounds so opposite of the whole idea of of keeping
chocolate in the Victorian area era away from sounding to
(20:47):
um sensual. So in this ad they said, a visit
to Pleasure Island is best when made by a man
and a maid, and together they enjoy the plunder from
this wonderful chest of chocolates. Now, tell me that's not
one big euphemism, right, Oh yeah, chocolate as are all euphemism.
I mean, even in the Victorian era. As you get
(21:08):
creep closer and closer to the twentieth century, you see
how chocolate is still it's still sort of symbolizing the
physical consumption that may ensue after you know, proper marriage
and whatnot. Right, Yeah, I can't believe they were giving
chocolate to women when they were just dating. Well, in
the nineteen twenties, you even have companies like Romance Chocolates
(21:30):
just going ahead and putting it from the center, like, hey,
Romance Chocolates, what else are you going to get for
a for a date than these? Right? But so in
the nineteen twenties, as you know, women are wearing shorter clothes,
tighter clothes. They've they've shed the bustle and the corset,
Lucky Strike begins advising women to reach for a cigarette
(21:55):
instead of chocolate to keep that figure slim to fit
into all of your new garments. Yeah, this is around
the time too when you start seeing alongside the suffrage movement,
you also see the first big wave of a dieting
push for women. And to me this was really significant
because I feel like today, even with all this overt
(22:17):
chocolate advertising, there's always still that underpinning of guilt, and
we're never like advertisers, never let us forget that we
have female figures that you know, we're supposed to keep
in shape. And so in the late n when this
Lucky Strike ad comes out, you have women having the
right to vote, more freedom theoretically than ever before. But
(22:41):
also too, this is a time when you're also seeing
the first kind of dieting push for women as well.
There's always this balance between like, ladies, go ahead and
indulge but not too much, feel bad about yourselves, but
enjoy yourself, but then feel bad about yourself. Yeah, it's
a terrible yo yo effect. And I mean it is
(23:02):
interesting to think about how, like every time women are
on the verge of getting more power in society and
they're outside of the home, all of a sudden, people
are like, yeah, but you should probably be thinner and
and remember not to eat too much. Well, that's the
thing I think. Naomi Wolf points us out in The
Beauty Myth, which now is such an old text, but
(23:22):
still the point I think is uh sort of time immemorial,
because she's talked about how any time, like you said,
women are experiencing the most liberation, you have the most
sort of reactionary um messages regarding our bodies of like
of dieting, of exercise. So, moving from the twenties o
(23:46):
into World War two, chocolate becomes advertised as almost a
sexual surrogate for absent soldiers, which I found so fascinating.
There was a Witman ad, for instance, is depicting a
woman wistfully staring at a soldier's photo while holding a chocolate.
So it's basically like ladies. You know, old Johnny, Old
(24:10):
Johnny's off fighting the Nazis, So while you're home, stay
faithful and eat some chocolate to tie you over. Yeah. Yeah,
the joy you get from chocolate is almost like having
sex with a loved one, which is still the same
kind of advertising we see today of like lone woman,
always with the background of billowing silk, like I don't
(24:31):
need anything but this chocolate. Yeah, my hair would just
be all over the place. But moving into the nineteen
sixties and seventies, you know, Chris and I were just
talking about um, that whole control, that body control of
like okay, well, more women are in positions of power.
They're they're taking power for themselves. We have the second
(24:52):
wave feminist movement, but we also, alongside that at the
same time, have this whole concern about health and fitness
and how do we advertise sweet treats to health conscious
feminists of this era. Yeah, so this is when you
start to see the entrance of and I hope this
(25:12):
is not offensive to anyone's ears, but let's face it,
their masturbatory chocolate ads. Basically, instead of you could replace
a chocolate bond bond with a vibrator in a woman's
hands and a lot of these ads and it would
be the exact same thing. You wouldn't even have changed
the copy. And you also see the re entry too,
(25:33):
of chocolate being seen as this aphrod zac. For instance,
this I gotta kick out of this. In nine five
High Times, the weed culture magazine that we mentioned in
our Women in Weed episode, I had a cover story
on chocolate as an aphrodisiac because you have the flow
chart of smoking pot plus munchies equals chocolate, which then
(25:54):
may or may not lead to groovy sex intimacy true
into missy. And so here's the return of chocolate being
considered an aphrodisiac. But in the nineteen eighties you also
have the return of it being considered a status symbols
going all the way back to sixteenth century Spain when
it was considered only for the elite. So in the
(26:15):
era of Gordon Gecko and greed is good, you don't
just want to get your special girl a drug store brand.
You don't just want to go and get Whitman's. You
have to get some like crazy boxed chocolate that's a
million dollars to show that you can afford it and
that she's worth it. Yeah, in the nineteen eighties you
see a sixty percent rise in dark chocolate sales. This
(26:37):
is when you start, you know, hearing more about like, oh,
dark chocolate, that's the good stuff. And this is too,
a trend that seems to have continued today as you
see more and more not only specialty brands of chocolate,
but just the hyper specialization of dark chocolate. Two, as
we're being told like okay, yeah, no, it's actually good
for you, so it's a little more okay to eat
dark chocolate. But then you go to Whole fit ododes
(27:00):
and you find these organic chocolate bars and it's like
chocolate and bacon, or chocolate and Serrano chilies or something,
all these kinds of exotic flavor combos, and they are
crazy expensive. Yeah. I I almost hate to admit this
because it makes me sound like a really big idiot.
But when I was Christmas shopping back in December. Uh,
(27:25):
I was going through this store and I was getting
my niece and nephew mostly candy for their stocking. It
was neat candy. I mean it was like kind of fancy,
because you know, they don't like anything that I get them,
so I'm just like, I'll just get them candy. Ha ha ha.
My brother will have to deal with it. Well. So anyway,
I grabbed this like three pack of chocolate bars because
I'm like, how I didn't even I literally didn't even
(27:45):
have the thought of how expensive good chocolate b because
why would I? Chocolate is not that expensive, right, thirty dollars?
Thirty dollars. I know, I'm the biggest idiot. Why did
I not check that ahead of time? But I didn't
even think too. It's because it was from like this.
It was all dark chocolate, different types of it, and
it was from like this teeny tiny, like artisan chocolate
(28:06):
place in San Francisco. And I just the regret. I
don't think I've ever felt deeper regret for anything in
my life. And then did you sad eat the chocolate?
I couldn't. I gave it to my boyfriend. I was like,
I can't even like look at this, you just take it,
consider it part of your Christmas present. Talk about chocolate
guilt seriously, But no, I mean I think that the
(28:28):
dark chocolate thing does kind of point to or highlight
interesting aspects of the whole chocolate guilt conversation, because like
we're supposed to feel guilty, or we do feel guilty
after we eat too many sweets, but then dark chocolate,
Like celebrities and magazines are preaching to us that like,
if you eat dark chocolate, it has antioxidants and so
(28:49):
you will never get cancer. But you're only allowed to
have a square a day, maybe a square every other day. Well,
and then how many celebrity interviews with you know, beautiful,
very thin, fit women who say, oh, my weakness is chocolate.
I mean, it's always all these conflicting messages. There's one
thing that Katherine Nutter points out about chocolate ads today
(29:13):
is that the models in these ads clearly don't indulge in,
you know, chocolate fests on the regular chocolate festate. My
mouth just started watering. I think I need to start
that or maybe never never al burn it down. So
from the nineteen eighties where we see all of that
fancy chocolate rising, to the two thousands, we see this
(29:37):
whole self empowerment message come about, one of which came
from Godiva in two thousand four with their tagline every
woman is one part Diva, much to the dismay of
every man. And I have no idea side note what
that means. I don't get that the whole just also
(29:58):
side note to any and marketing listening, if you call
me a diva, I'm not gonna want your product. Yeah,
I don't get that. Who like who? Who thinks that
women want to be I want to be diva's. I
don't know. I'm sure there are probably some women listening
thinking that that's fun, but I don't know. I just
think it's so hokey. I think it is hokey. And
I think when you have people like I'm just trying
(30:20):
to think of an example, somebody like Mariah Carrier, you know,
somebody who's like a stereotypically high demand, high maintenance celebrity
calling themselves a diva. That makes me want to call
myself that even less so. But then you're telling me
that I am want if I eat your chocolate and Godiva,
which really is like the Gray Goose vodka of candy,
(30:43):
like its chocolate burn, old chocolate burn. Because you know,
you take something that's really kind of basic and just
mark up the price, just putting a fancy ribbon or
some you know, geese on, it doesn't actually make it
worth the price. Yeah, there was an article, I forget
which one it was that we read a talking about
how some chocolate experts, like small gays of chocolate essentially
(31:06):
tried Godiva and they did not give it very high mark.
Now what did they say, like a box of sugar
had been poured into candlewax or some something like that,
or that it was very chalky. They just weren't big fans.
But I do think it's it's interesting how there's now
that self empowerment aspect. It's like the men have sort
of been removed from these chocolate ads. So instead of
(31:29):
the old dynamic of wooing men into buying chocolate to
give to women, it's now Dove, for instance, telling us, oh, ladies,
treat yourself. You go buy chocolate for yourself, stay at home.
It's just stay at home and read the inspirational messages
that are on the inside of Dove wrappers, right, and
(31:51):
and give yourself a gentle, you know, hug, and then
go eat some yogurt. But can we talk no more
about this issue with chocolate, because this isn't something that
came up in any of the papers. But what it
sounded an awful lot like the more we read about
how chocolate is, you know, basically is sold to women
(32:12):
as sex. It's the one acceptable sexy vice that women
can have, according to society. And yet there's that guilt
undergirding it of like if you eat too much of it,
then boys aren't gonna like you because you'll have a
chocolate belly. It's so weirdly slut shamy. It's like it's
(32:35):
like a candy analog to slut shaming, where it's like, well, ladies,
if you do too much of that, then boys aren't
gonna like you. Am I am I making too big
of a leap? Now, I think it's absolutely parallel. I
think there are some very weird and they always have been, apparently,
(32:55):
some very weird things going on with the way we
look at chocolate and think about chocolate, and you know,
we have the Aztecs in the Spanish to think. But um,
we'll actually get into some more ick nous behind chocolate
advertising when we come back from a quick break. So
(33:18):
when we left off, we had gone through the history
of women in chocolate and advertising. But one thing that
we didn't mention as we were going through that twentieth
century timeline was that really the main target of chocolate ads,
especially in the first half of the twentieth century, were
exclusively white women. And there are some issues of race
(33:41):
and racism and chocolate that we would be remiss to
not address as well, because you see, for instance, racial
anxieties surrounding chocolate going all the way back to when
it was first brought from the New World to Europe.
Right there was this uh story that mort rosen Bloom,
(34:03):
who we said it earlier, the author of Chocolate A
Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light Uh, talks about in
his book about a woman by the name of Madame
de Saveni writing to her daughter warning her against drinking
too much chocolate because she knew of another woman who
drank it and her child came out black as the devil. Yikes,
yikes indeed, okay, well, and and there are all these
(34:26):
chocolate anxieties to probably linked to this early idea of
it as an aphrodisiac and being linked to sex, where oh,
if you eat too much of it you might become
you know, some kind of sex monster. But then too
if you look at advertising in the nineteenth century, these
chocolate duds typically portrayed women of color representing chocolate in
(34:50):
its raw, unrefined form, whereas the white women were used
to evoke a sense of luxury and romance, which is
very pro oblematic, right, Yeah, women of color being seen
as the workers, white women being seen as the consumers,
going from raw to refine. There's all sorts of really
(35:10):
icky racial things there, which makes sense because it ties
so much into those issues of class and the evolution
of chocolate and how it kind of became a mass
marketed good. And I was hoping to find more scholarship
on the race aspects of chocolate advertising, but unfortunately didn't
(35:31):
because I feel like today's still and maybe it's just
just advertising in general, but I still feel like you
mostly almost exclusively see white women in chocolate ads. Well,
I'm yeah, I mean, we're We're definitely not in any
sort of post racial utopia by any means, especially when
it comes to discussing chocolate. The whole racist thing of
(35:54):
calling women of color chocolate is referring to well, any
person of color as being vocolate. Yeah, then you get
into issues of exoticizing and eroticizing people of color by
referring to them as chocolate. Again, didn't find any you know,
deep research on it, just a few blog posts here
and there, mostly from black women asking like, please stop
(36:16):
calling me chocolate, because it's also notable that it's not
like we refer to white women as vanilla, except to
indicate how boring we are when we have sex. Uh. Yeah, Well,
there was that one Cadbury ad that was addressing Naomi
Campbell by saying, move over, Naomie, there's a new diva
in town talking about a chocolate bar. And so that's
(36:38):
that's combining. We already had the diva conversation. That's combining
like the worst of all chocolate ads. Yeah, and she
did not appreciate it. I would an entire campaign to
get them to take it down, because I mean some
people are saying, oh, it's not you know, it's not racist.
It's not, but yeah, it's it's a it's a little
bit racist, and then it is just the awkwardness of
(37:01):
More recently, Ferrero launched an ad campaign in Germany for
their white chocolate and they're like big commercial tagline was
Germany votes White, to which Germans were like, hey, yeah, no,
you remember, remember Nazis and that whole thing. You please
(37:22):
don't do this. Ah, there's some people in some marketing
departments somewhere who were laid off after that. I'm assuming, well,
what did you think? Did you see the Axe Dark
Temptation ad? Where I didn't? Okay, so what happens? I mean,
it's an axe body spray ad. So basically the premise
of every single ax body spray ad is that the
(37:42):
guy puts it on and then he just becomes irresistible
chick magnet to use the worst phrase on the planet. Um.
So with the Dark Temptation ad, he puts on the
body spray and it turns him into a chocolate man.
And what do women love more than chocolate, Caroline, and
so women to start coming up to him and you know,
(38:02):
eating away at his chocolate body. And then finally it's
revealed that oh, he's just like, he's just a white
guy under there. But the fact that it's called dark
temptation and it's all it's it's fine because there's a
white guy under there still, you know, just some just
some issues, just some issues kind of all piling up
there together. Yeah, that is that is a pile of issues. Yeah,
(38:24):
lots of lots of women eating away at your very core. Yeah,
lots of just symbolism loaded into one terrible commercial. Um.
But what though, Okay, so speaking, women eating men made
out of chocolate. Yikes, What about the science of this?
(38:45):
Because we've talked all about advertising. We have clearly been
sold this idea that chocolate is a food for women,
that we love it more than anything else, including shoes.
But what does science have to say about this? You
would think, right that science would have been, like, ladies,
every time you bite into a chocolate bar and you
(39:07):
you get obsessed with the idea of eating more chocolate
and you feel addicted to it, it's because it's releasing
all of these amazing things, and it's not really that
it's they've found that there's not a huge like cause
and effect chocolate seratonin link. It's probably more that it
chocolate is fatty and sugary and it tastes real good. Yeah.
(39:28):
There have been a lot of studies actually looking at
the psychopharmacological effects of chocolate, essentially how groups of chemicals
such as cannabinoids and chocolate react in our brain and
make us chocoholics. I guess, And the study results have
kind of been mixed. They really haven't been able to
pin down one specific chocolate craze chemical in there. So
(39:54):
it's like, well, some people really like it, and I
guess it's I guess it's good. Um. But there was
the study called Chocolate and Cheese their effects on Mood,
sort of looking at okay, well, we know that it
probably has something to do with the fat and chocolate.
So if we take a sweeteness savory like cheese and
compare it, what happens and their best conclusion was that
(40:17):
it's probably the oro sensory effect of eating chocolate. Essentially,
we like how it smells, how it feels in our mouth,
just all of the sensory sensations of eating chocolate. The
look on your face right now, Caroline, I feel like
you've been whisked away. I need to get fund that
Easter basket. You need to go to Pleasure Island from
(40:41):
the said, I absolutely do. Um. Speaking of health stuff,
one thing that does get brought up in women's magazines
a lot is if you like chocolate, ladies, not only
are you gonna get fat, but you're gonna break out. Yeah,
what about what about that? Connection. Yeah. Um, that's something
that I've always been worried about because I had so
(41:04):
many pimples when I was a young girl, and even
now my horm I'm thirty, right, like, I shouldn't break
out anymore, but I still do. Adult acne totally exists
hormones anyway, So they looked at whether researchers looked at
whether um, chocolate actually does produce acne, and again the
results were kind of mixed, but they did find that
among the people who broke out who did break out
(41:28):
and experience acne, here's here's a little bit of what happened.
So after people ate chocolate and then we're exposed to
the bacteria that caused acne, they found that the blood
was shown to have more markers of inflammation than the
people who had not eaten chocolate. But they're just not
sure what component of chocolate actually caused that inflammation, whether
(41:50):
it is the fat or whether it is the sugar.
I mean, we know that sugar causes inflammation in the body,
but they're not quite sure about the acne link. It
seems like that's the story with everything regarding women in chocolate.
We're just not quite sure. But here have some chocolate
in the meantime while we try to figure this out,
let's also talk about the stereotype of periods making women
(42:12):
crave chocolate even more. Yeah, I I am. I was.
I'm gonna tell the truth here. I was a little
dismayed to find out that there is no scientific link
really supporting the hypothesis that you crave chocolate more around
your period, because I swear I don't know what it
(42:32):
is in my brain, in the brain of Caroline Urban
Podcast or Extraordinaire, I don't know what's going on that
like leading up to my period, I'm just like gorging
on chocolate, and like as I'm stuffing the fifteen candy
bar in my face, I'm like, oh, Okay, I see
what's happening. But I wonder if it's just not so
much the chocolate as maybe a connection between menstrual cycles
(42:57):
and comfort food. And some scientists say that, you know,
chocolate contains minerals like magnesium and iron, which we may
be deficient in around our periods. Things like that. All
I know is just I just want it. And one
of the reasons so why this period chocolate hypothesis has
been debunked is because chocolate cravings don't diminish with menopause.
(43:18):
If it was a period thing, then we would see
a massive drop off in women over fifty wanting chocolate.
But that all happened. Well, maybe it's a mood thing
because I know, like when I'm sick or hungover or
just generally not feeling good, I want comfort food. I
want like fried chicken and mashed potatoes and soup and
like you know, salty, mushy, amazing things that have really
(43:40):
strong flavors um. And so maybe chocolate just fits into that,
like making you feel good. Well, speaking of making you
feel good, the one thing that we do know about chocolate,
specifically dark chocolate, is yes, the rumors are true. Dark
chocolate does appear to have some health benefits. There was
a study published link king it to lower rates of stroke,
(44:03):
coronary heart disease, blood pressure, and other cardiovascular conditions. But
in an interview with The New York Times about this
study finding, one of the lead authors said, police, don't
get us wrong. This doesn't mean that you can eat
all of the chocolate that you want. We're just saying
it's a correlation, it's not a causation, right, Yes, antioccidents. Yes,
(44:25):
gorging on chocolate until you throw up pretty much destroys
any of the positive effects of chocolate, although I was
thinking about studies exactly like this one when Sally also
gave me a solid dark chocolate Easter Bunny. But no,
don't try to comfort me. I don't care. I don't. Yeah,
I don't. I don't feel guilt. I mean I do,
(44:46):
but I don't. But see, that's good. That's great that
you don't feel guilt. You shouldn't feel any guilt. If
you want chocolate, eat the chocolate. I don't know. I
just I'm so yeah, I'm at the point of I'm
just tired of hearing about it. I'm tired of seeing
those weird ads. I don't get it, you know, I don't. Uh,
it's the same things, Like I'm surprised there's not more
terrible chocolate stock photography. I mean, I know there is.
(45:07):
But you know, the way we see women laughing over salads,
the same way we see women eating yogurt, like chocolate
is in that same ballpark. As far as like women
are so stupid. Look at what you're eating and how
you're eating it, and like you're pinning all of your
hopes and dreams on it, whereas men are just told
that they really want a grill meat. Yeah, you want
(45:28):
a hamburger? Have a hamburger? Sloppy, Joe's sloppy. Joe's not sloppy,
jays Nope. Well, Caroline, I think we've now pretty much
exhausted all of our chocolate knowledge, and now it's time
to hear from listeners. I want to know if there
are guys out there who are also a self identified chocoholics.
I want to know who the ladies are like me,
(45:48):
who could care less about a bag of Eminem's, Give
me some dol Rito's please, or like any kind of
chip you get me. I'm saying savory rather than sweet,
and anyone who I don't I don't know. What are
your thoughts on chocolate? Let us know. Mom's Stuff at
Discovery dot com is where you can email us. You
can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or send
(46:10):
us a Facebook message. And we have a couple of
messages to share with you right now. So I've got
a couple of messages here about our new male Grooming episode.
This one is from Jess, who writes in My Dating
Career I despised male body hair. I thought it was
(46:33):
just plain unattractive and probably wouldn't have looked twice at
a hairy dude. However, a few years ago I met
a guy and film madly in love with an extremely
hairy dude. I mean his back has started to connect
with his chest hair level of Harry Anyway, his hair
a nous drives me crazy too, but in a good way.
(46:53):
I think a huge part of what we find attractive
is just what we see on TV. The unknown is
always scary. It's really frustrating because he, as you mentioned
many men are, is very self conscious about his man
for He's even asked me to tweeze hairs from areas
that bother him. Once you associate body hair with a
manly dude who treats you like gold, it's very sexy.
(47:15):
Here's hoping for more hair representation in the media. Ah
and for love, and I hope, I hope that letter
makes that gentleman feel better who wrote us very concerned
about whether he'd find a date. Yeah, don't worry about
your hairy backs. Don't worry about it. I have a
letter here from Gretchen who wrote in about beards as well,
(47:37):
and she said, well, I can definitely see a trend
in the popularity of beards on men on TV. I
wonder if this is just a trend in certain social circles.
Maybe it's because I live in Alaska that I have
never thought of a beard is something trendy, just something
some men had and others didn't. When I was growing up,
my father sported a beard, and my husband grows when
every fall and shaves it off in the spring. He
does this as he works outside and below zero weather,
(48:00):
and it often helps keep him warm and when spring
comes it's too warm. I know other men up here
who also follow this practice. I like my husband's appearance
both ways, so whatever he wants is fine with me.
On a recent trip this winter to London, England, we
did take an interesting notice of the lack of beards there.
In fact, my husband's caught the attention of one small
boy who marveled at his appearance, exclaiming and pointing at
(48:21):
him out of pure amazement. I also think, if a
man isn't well endowed in the facial hair department, what
is wrong with being clean shaven if that suits him.
Butter and then Gretchen has uh, some more comforting words
for our hairy men out there, She says, on the
topic of other body hairman, it's personally, I like a
(48:41):
guy with some chest hair and find the idea of
waxing it or shaving it off because that is what
women like. Silly, so fear not men, some women dig it.
So thanks, Gretchen. I'm sure a lot of listeners out
there appreciate your viewpoint, and thanks to everybody who's written
into us mom. Stuff at Discovery dot com is our
email age us and if you want to find links
to all of our social media, all of our podcast,
(49:04):
blogs and videos, you should head on over to stuff
Mom Never Told You dot com for more on this
and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works
dot com
Hey, this is Annie and you're listening to Stuff I've
Never told you. Well, it's just about Valentine's Day here
in the United States, and that means heart shaped boxes
of chocolate everywhere you go, especially now that you can't
(00:29):
buy those sweetheart candies, although I'm always shocked people liked
those anyway, I mean other than just for I guess
novelty of candy that has a message on it. And
along with all of these heart shaped boxes of chocolate
come the ads of women falling heads over heels for chocolate,
as if willpower goes out in the window for women
(00:50):
when chocolate gets introduced into any given situation, we become
wolves wolves And I have to say I love chocolate.
I don't really crave it too often. I have friends
that do, though, especially when they're sad or on their
period both, and it got me to wondering if there
is any truth to this stereotype. Luckily, we have a
(01:14):
classic episode looking into just that. Enjoy. Welcome to Stuff
Mom Never Told You from housetopp Works dot Com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristen
and uh. Today we're talking about a favorite topic of mine,
(01:37):
and I was preparing for the topic of chocolate last
night Kristen by shoving chocolate Easter eggs one after another
into my face because every year my mother I'm thirty,
my mother makes Easter baskets. She may one for Kristen
as well, don't worry, But I I feel like I
(01:58):
was doing some really good, hard hitting chocolate research. Yeah. Yeah,
I think it's important to get a little meadow with
things and fuel your chocolate research with chocolate. I myself
have also been enjoying the chocolate Easter eggs your mother
so generously gave to me in my own Easter basket.
I don't know the last time my mom gave me
an Easter basket. So if I tell her that another
(02:21):
person's mom gave me an Easter basket, it might cause
a little friction, Yeah, a little mom friction. So I
don't know if I'll if I'll film my mom in
on that. But I'm a little surprised that it's taken
us this long to get around to women in chocolate,
because is there a more stereotypically women woman good than chocolate? Yeah,
(02:44):
other than shoes, I don't think so. Yeah. I mean
it's like shoes, Kathy comics, chocolate. There we go, and
the last two are basically one and the same exactly.
So we got to talk about women in chocolate because
the question I wanted to know was what's up with
the stereotype that women are just these chocolate craving monsters who,
(03:06):
according to commercials, also really want to have sex with chocolate. Interesting? Yeah,
that I don't think that's been quite proven yet that
we do want to have sex with chocolate, or that
we would rather have chocolate van sex. Interesting. Yeah. I
would like to kick this off though, with a quote
(03:28):
from Kathleen Banks Nutter, who wrote an essay on sort
of the history of women in chocolate in the book
Edible Ideologies Representing Food and Meaning. She wrote, what food
is more easily gendered and eroticized than chocolate. So, ladies
and gentlemen, you're in for quite a treat with this podcast. Yeah,
(03:49):
I um, you know, the based on the amount of
chocolate that I crave. You know, if you were if
you were to tell me in this podcast, Kristen, that
thing in women's bodies, whether it's their brain or their uterus,
is programming them to eat more chocolate, I'd be kind
of prone to believe you, because I feel like I
(04:09):
don't know too many dudes who are like super into
chocolate who have to have chocolate on hand. Um, But
I don't think that's what we're going to tell you,
know because also Caroline, I'm going to go ahead and
put it out there. I'm more of a salty tooth
than a sweet tooth. If you were to offer me
a bag of potato chips and a bag of chocolate chips,
(04:30):
I would take the potato the potato product. See, I
have a weird, a weird thing that I would love
to get rid of, which is that after every meal
that you know, typically include something savory, I have to
have something chocolate to finish it off. Either that I've
got to like shove a bunch of gum into my
face so that I don't go after whatever's chocolate around me.
(04:52):
I've been known to like go through the office just
like lifting up people's bags, like do you have any
I need? So well, this podcast, this is kind of
especially for you, Caroline. It's yeah, it's sounding that way.
So let's go over just a few chocolate statistics to
get an idea of what we're dealing with. Because the
thing is, when it comes to women in chocolate and
(05:14):
our desires for it, it seems like a lot of
it is perhaps cultural, because it's a lot more popular,
for instance, in Europe than it is in Asia. So
if we look just in the UK, of women say
that they eat it regularly, but at the same time,
seven percent of British men say that they found si chocolate. Yeah,
(05:37):
so they're over there shoving cadberry stuff into their face.
But it's not it's not a massive gender gap. Now
maybe maybe women. Could it be that women are just
made out to be crazy for chocolate more so than men.
We'll find out, Caroline. Um, But over in Germany they're
the ones eating the most chocolate, And can I blame
them when they have things like kindre eggs, kinder eggs. Sally,
(06:00):
you know, speaking of my mother. Sally is a flight attendant.
She flies to Germany. She smuggles back kinder eggs for
me and has ever since I was little. Kids, so
I have all those little toys that you put together
that are a severe choking hazard. Basically, your mom gives
you the best candies, Caroline, my mom is the Easter bunny. Yeah,
but moving away from Eastern looking just at Valentine's Day,
(06:24):
Americans purchase more than sixty million pounds of chocolate for
February four alone, and more than sevent of that chocolate
will be given by men to women. So with that,
you're starting to see what we'll talk about a lot
more in terms of this gendered economy of chocolate buying
(06:44):
and bestowing. And as far as cravings go, like the
cravings I have on like a ten minute by ten
minute basis throughout the day, women tend to report craving
chocolate more than men do. But again this is mainly
focused on Western women. All those studies like the one
that Kristen sided earlier about showing that there was such
(07:05):
a small gender gap between men and women in the
UK eating chocolate, most surveys do show that there is
a negligible gender difference, but there is a difference in
the guilt we feel. Women report more post chocolate guilt
after eating it compared to men, which I also kind
of would own up to, Like after I shove a
bunch of well, okay, maybe way after I shove a
(07:27):
bunch of chocolate, once the glow has faded, after I've
shoved a whole bunch of sugary chocolate in my face.
Then I'm like, maybe I shouldn't have done that. Maybe
it's just you coming down from a sugar high. Yeah,
and I start like twitching and itching. Oh no. But
speaking of those chocolate cravings, just one more aside on that.
Looking at the Western women's chocolate cravings, you'll see a
(07:49):
lot of reports that chocolate is the most widely craved food.
But again, if you that's probably focused on westerner because
if you look at a place like Egypt, for instance,
there was a study finding that women and men both
preferred savory and had more savory cravings because it was
(08:09):
more related to their local cuisine, right, And and kind
of along those same lines, I mean, I would argue
you know that that, I mean, that makes sense that
based on what you typically eat, you're going to crave
certain things. And you know, I've noticed the more I
eat chocolate, the more I crave it, And the less
I eat chocolate, the less I crave it. Yeah, And
the more I eat potatoes, the more potato chips. Just raw.
(08:32):
Chris did so weird. She has this whole drawer full
of potatoes and she'll just rip one out like an
apple and bite into it. My podcasting secret car bloating,
constant car bloating. Um. But before we get into where
this women and chocolate connection really comes from, let's go
back in time and see where chocolate comes from. Because
(08:54):
within the history of chocolate we start to see how
it becomes more gendered as it moves from its origin
in meso America to Europe. Right. Yeah, they actually found
they I mean, you know, the people who look for
these things, chocolate pirates. Yep, chocolate pirates actually found cacao
residue in pottery in Honduras that dates back as far
(09:16):
as fourteen hundred BC. And just side note, um, in
case you're wondering throughout this podcast, anytime we say cacao,
I'm just going to think of the Portlandia sketch where
cacao is the safe word. But anyway, so, yeah, it
dates back a long time in meso America and the
Mayans were drinking it by three D a d. And
(09:37):
when the Aztecs, you know, like they did, conquered the Mayans,
they started taking up the drinking of chocolate as well.
And not only did they drink it, az Techs supposedly
ate it off each other's bodies during sex. They considered.
The word for chocolate in their languages is something along
the lines of like chocolattle. It's there's a lot of
(09:59):
consonants next to each other, but that basically translates to
a holy fetish. That's how much they liked it. That's
so cosmo of them. Yeah, I can just I'm picturing
like an ancient as tech cosmopolitan. Hey, as tech ladies,
you wanna you wanna get your man going, get some chocolottle.
You want to avoid getting sacrificed this month, it's some
(10:21):
chocolate during sex. So then in fifteen nineteen we have
Spanish explorer Hernando Cortez being exposed to this magical sexy
chocolate for the first time in the court of Montezuma
the second and then by fight five we have chocolate
being shipped to Europe along with these ideas of its
(10:42):
connections to sex, and very quickly from that it's connection
to women. By the sixteenth century, you have chocolate in
Europe being conceptualized as an aphrodisiac. Right, and one Spanish physician,
Antonio Culminero Laedisma, I'm sure I said that wrong, wrote
(11:03):
in the seventeenth century that chocolate vehemently incites to venus
and causes conception in women, hastens and facilitates their delivery.
And I just have to that. I I say, oh,
is that how babies are? Right? Yeah? If chocolate cause
of conception in women, thank god, I'm on birth control. Um.
But yeah, in Europe, it's it's interesting to see that. Um,
(11:25):
they took this, this this treat or this beverage or
this sexy time making item, and they ended up sweetening
it to make it taste better. Because back when there
were all these Spanish explorers in Mesoamerica hanging out with
the Aztecs, one of them described it as a bitter
drink for pigs. But then when it's transported over to
Europe and it's sweetened, that's when it starts to become
(11:47):
kind of a luxury item. Yeah, it's important to remember
that chocolate way way back in the day is not
like the chocolate Easter eggs that you might be eating.
Its super sweet and smooth. It was a pretty intense
food that was often Yeah, it was often drunk and
Casanova also side notes, supposedly ate it to aid his virility.
(12:07):
It was like yield viagra, or maybe he just kept
it on hand for all those chocolate love and ladies
that stopped by. Yeah, he just had like a whitman's
sampler that he could slide out. Maybe that was his secret.
So when it comes though to the gendering of chocolate,
this happens pretty soon after it's imported to Europe. According
to more rosen Bloom, for instance, who wrote a book
(12:29):
all about the history of chocolate. He says that once
chocolate arrived in Spain pretty quickly you have men drinking
coffee and stronger stuff and women drinking the chocolate. And
this was something too that reminded me of our research
for our episode on gender and coffee was how with
the old coffee houses in England it was mostly men
(12:53):
and the women were at home drinking chocolate, right Or
how even now if you walk into a Starbucks, you
know hearing from all of our listeners who work at
coffee shops saying that, oh, the men walk in and
they order espresso or black coffee and the women are
ordering mochas. Exactly interesting. Well, not only was it a
gender drink, but it was also sort of an elitist
thing too. When it made its way to Europe from
(13:16):
the New World, it was pretty much solely reserved for
the nobility of Spain, Italy and France. It basically became
a luxury where dainty ladies enjoyed it, and they transform
the enjoyment of chocolate into a highly refined social event.
And this is coming from Jamal Fahim's thesis Beyond Craving,
and he points out that this is sort of the
(13:36):
beginning of chocolate as a fetish that communicates social status
and upper class femininity, and that upper class femininity is
going to continue to broaden its reach within the growing
chocolate industry. As you see in the eighteen hundreds, how
chocolate is transformed from this grittier drink into the type
(13:57):
of chocolate that we think of today that's a smooth
the bar, it's really sweet, it's a very tantalizing for
our senses. And this happens through a number of innovations
starting in eighty eight with a Dutch entrepreneur named Conrad
johann has Been Houghton who figures out how to press
(14:18):
those cocao safe word cacao beans to separate the dry
cocoa from cocoa butter that makes chocolate less bitter and smoother.
And by eighteen fifty we have englishmen Joseph Fry mixing
sugar with cocoa butter and making the first solid chocolate bar.
(14:38):
So he's like Josephries, like the patron saint of of
all that is good and happy in this world. For me,
I guess I should wear like a necklace with his
picture on it. Um more developments come in eighteen seventy
nine when Rodolf Lint of you know Lint Chocolate, invented conking,
a process that also smoothed chocolate, and he actually used
(15:00):
a machine that looks like a conk shell, hence Cleverland.
Uh So, because of all these innovations, by the early
nineteen hundreds, you have guys like Henry nest Lee or
would that be R. Nestle, Milton Hershey and others who
are in the chocolate game. And so all of a
sudden you have at the beginning of the twentieth century
(15:22):
this growing chocolate business. And what's interesting too, as we
were talking about the gender of it, if you look
at the manufacturing of chocolate, all those chocolate bars that
were eating a lot of times, especially in the earlier
twentieth century, it becomes gradually feminized as well. You have
more and more women working in these factories. So not
(15:42):
only are women becoming the target consumers of chocolate, they're
also often the ones on the factory floors making the chocolate.
So every day it was like Lucy and Ethel, you're
working the chocolate. Okay, great, I'll just keep that image
in my head as well as the Portland a sketch,
So my brain is is at pacity. There is a
darker side, of course, um to chocolate making, and this
(16:05):
is something that still goes on today in some parts
of the world where they grow cow trees and make chocolate.
And that is the fact that there are child labor
issues that that we struggle with, as well as environmental
issues like rainforest being stripped, the soil being stripped of
nutrients by planting these trees over and over again. So
(16:26):
that has actually driven some companies to, you know, get
into the fair trade thing, make sure that they're having
positive sources for their beans basically. Yeah, and and those
those sourcing issues are as relevant to chocolate as they
are to our conversation on coffee. But we're not going
to focus so much on the manufacturing side of it,
(16:49):
but rather the advertising of chocolate, because you can actually
trace women's history in the twentieth century in the United
States through chocolate ads. Essentially, just by the way that
chocolate is framed really shows women's level of social mobility
(17:10):
and their relationship to men. It's fascinating, Yeah, it's fascinating
because this is coming. You know, this starts after the
Industrial Revolution, when you've got guys like Milton Hershey making
a cheaper, more available chocolate bar. I guess he's like
the Henry Ford of candy, making it more available to people.
And so once it is more readily available, you have
(17:30):
to sell it. You have to make people aware that
it is not something for just uppercrust elite ladies, that
it's for everyone. Yeah, and we already have these longstanding
connotations of chocolate with sex and romance and luxury, and
so what better thing to sell to dainty ladies. But
(17:53):
in the Victorian era, depictions of women gorging on chocolate
in the same way that we think of today, like,
you know, just chocolate crazed women that would not have
been kosher, That would have totally violated the female norms
of the time, because this was at the time too
when women would not have been you would not want
to be seen like eating a lot of food, like
(18:14):
all you can eat buffets not okay for Victorian women
to indulge in, so they were supposed to eat more
like ladies. So a lot of times if you see
Victorian ads for chocolate, the women aren't necessarily eating the
chocolate in the ads, but maybe holding it close to
their mouths just sort of tantalizingly. If you want to
(18:34):
find a good way to get me to gorge on chocolate,
it's to make me hold it away from my face
for too long before I eat it, and then it's
just like cookie monster, it's just over. But yeah, you
couldn't with these, with these proper Victorian ladies, you couldn't
show them over indulging. You couldn't have them exhibiting any
type of desire because again, chocolate being kind of an aphrodisiac,
(18:56):
considered to be an aphrodisiac, tied in with wooing people
and whatnot. If a woman is shown to not only
gorge on it, but really want it and desire it,
then it's getting hot up in those Victorian homes. Yeah,
but when you move into the progressive era, out of
the Victorian era into the progressive era, you have the
rise of the new woman. You have the suffrage movement
(19:18):
taking place. You have women having a little bit more
social mobility. They might be driving cars every now and then. Yeah,
and and the whole rituals updating outside the home are
starting to take shape. And so chocolate advertisers are thinking, Okay,
how are we going to advertise to this new woman.
(19:39):
How are we going to frame chocolate as something that
she needs in her life? Oh dating, gentleman callers, what
better gift for this new woman than a box? So
chockole lots right. It's kind of like when we talked
about diamonds. How diamond advertising put it in men's heads
that you're not a good husband, fiance, boyfriend, et cetera
(19:59):
if you don't present a diamond, and then that leads
the woman to expect it and think, oh, well, you're
not a good fiance if you didn't give me a diamond.
It's kind of the same thing in in this you know,
smaller scale, less expensive, but it's kind of the same
thing with chocolate. It's like, oh, well, he must not
really like me, Yeah, exactly, And it's because they're courting
female consumers, but ultimately courting men to buy the chocolate, saying, hey,
(20:24):
what better gift for a gal than a box of chocolate?
It's Johnny, yeah, and there is um yes. And they
were addressing Johnny in a Whitman's ad that gave me
pause when I read the copy for it, because it
sounds so opposite of the whole idea of of keeping
chocolate in the Victorian area era away from sounding to
(20:47):
um sensual. So in this ad they said, a visit
to Pleasure Island is best when made by a man
and a maid, and together they enjoy the plunder from
this wonderful chest of chocolates. Now, tell me that's not
one big euphemism, right, Oh yeah, chocolate as are all euphemism.
I mean, even in the Victorian era. As you get
(21:08):
creep closer and closer to the twentieth century, you see
how chocolate is still it's still sort of symbolizing the
physical consumption that may ensue after you know, proper marriage
and whatnot. Right, Yeah, I can't believe they were giving
chocolate to women when they were just dating. Well, in
the nineteen twenties, you even have companies like Romance Chocolates
(21:30):
just going ahead and putting it from the center, like, hey,
Romance Chocolates, what else are you going to get for
a for a date than these? Right? But so in
the nineteen twenties, as you know, women are wearing shorter clothes,
tighter clothes. They've they've shed the bustle and the corset,
Lucky Strike begins advising women to reach for a cigarette
(21:55):
instead of chocolate to keep that figure slim to fit
into all of your new garments. Yeah, this is around
the time too when you start seeing alongside the suffrage movement,
you also see the first big wave of a dieting
push for women. And to me this was really significant
because I feel like today, even with all this overt
(22:17):
chocolate advertising, there's always still that underpinning of guilt, and
we're never like advertisers, never let us forget that we
have female figures that you know, we're supposed to keep
in shape. And so in the late n when this
Lucky Strike ad comes out, you have women having the
right to vote, more freedom theoretically than ever before. But
(22:41):
also too, this is a time when you're also seeing
the first kind of dieting push for women as well.
There's always this balance between like, ladies, go ahead and
indulge but not too much, feel bad about yourselves, but
enjoy yourself, but then feel bad about yourself. Yeah, it's
a terrible yo yo effect. And I mean it is
(23:02):
interesting to think about how, like every time women are
on the verge of getting more power in society and
they're outside of the home, all of a sudden, people
are like, yeah, but you should probably be thinner and
and remember not to eat too much. Well, that's the
thing I think. Naomi Wolf points us out in The
Beauty Myth, which now is such an old text, but
(23:22):
still the point I think is uh sort of time immemorial,
because she's talked about how any time, like you said,
women are experiencing the most liberation, you have the most
sort of reactionary um messages regarding our bodies of like
of dieting, of exercise. So, moving from the twenties o
(23:46):
into World War two, chocolate becomes advertised as almost a
sexual surrogate for absent soldiers, which I found so fascinating.
There was a Witman ad, for instance, is depicting a
woman wistfully staring at a soldier's photo while holding a chocolate.
So it's basically like ladies. You know, old Johnny, Old
(24:10):
Johnny's off fighting the Nazis, So while you're home, stay
faithful and eat some chocolate to tie you over. Yeah. Yeah,
the joy you get from chocolate is almost like having
sex with a loved one, which is still the same
kind of advertising we see today of like lone woman,
always with the background of billowing silk, like I don't
(24:31):
need anything but this chocolate. Yeah, my hair would just
be all over the place. But moving into the nineteen
sixties and seventies, you know, Chris and I were just
talking about um, that whole control, that body control of
like okay, well, more women are in positions of power.
They're they're taking power for themselves. We have the second
(24:52):
wave feminist movement, but we also, alongside that at the
same time, have this whole concern about health and fitness
and how do we advertise sweet treats to health conscious
feminists of this era. Yeah, so this is when you
start to see the entrance of and I hope this
(25:12):
is not offensive to anyone's ears, but let's face it,
their masturbatory chocolate ads. Basically, instead of you could replace
a chocolate bond bond with a vibrator in a woman's
hands and a lot of these ads and it would
be the exact same thing. You wouldn't even have changed
the copy. And you also see the re entry too,
(25:33):
of chocolate being seen as this aphrod zac. For instance,
this I gotta kick out of this. In nine five
High Times, the weed culture magazine that we mentioned in
our Women in Weed episode, I had a cover story
on chocolate as an aphrodisiac because you have the flow
chart of smoking pot plus munchies equals chocolate, which then
(25:54):
may or may not lead to groovy sex intimacy true
into missy. And so here's the return of chocolate being
considered an aphrodisiac. But in the nineteen eighties you also
have the return of it being considered a status symbols
going all the way back to sixteenth century Spain when
it was considered only for the elite. So in the
(26:15):
era of Gordon Gecko and greed is good, you don't
just want to get your special girl a drug store brand.
You don't just want to go and get Whitman's. You
have to get some like crazy boxed chocolate that's a
million dollars to show that you can afford it and
that she's worth it. Yeah, in the nineteen eighties you
see a sixty percent rise in dark chocolate sales. This
(26:37):
is when you start, you know, hearing more about like, oh,
dark chocolate, that's the good stuff. And this is too,
a trend that seems to have continued today as you
see more and more not only specialty brands of chocolate,
but just the hyper specialization of dark chocolate. Two, as
we're being told like okay, yeah, no, it's actually good
for you, so it's a little more okay to eat
dark chocolate. But then you go to Whole fit ododes
(27:00):
and you find these organic chocolate bars and it's like
chocolate and bacon, or chocolate and Serrano chilies or something,
all these kinds of exotic flavor combos, and they are
crazy expensive. Yeah. I I almost hate to admit this
because it makes me sound like a really big idiot.
But when I was Christmas shopping back in December. Uh,
(27:25):
I was going through this store and I was getting
my niece and nephew mostly candy for their stocking. It
was neat candy. I mean it was like kind of fancy,
because you know, they don't like anything that I get them,
so I'm just like, I'll just get them candy. Ha ha ha.
My brother will have to deal with it. Well. So anyway,
I grabbed this like three pack of chocolate bars because
I'm like, how I didn't even I literally didn't even
(27:45):
have the thought of how expensive good chocolate b because
why would I? Chocolate is not that expensive, right, thirty dollars?
Thirty dollars. I know, I'm the biggest idiot. Why did
I not check that ahead of time? But I didn't
even think too. It's because it was from like this.
It was all dark chocolate, different types of it, and
it was from like this teeny tiny, like artisan chocolate
(28:06):
place in San Francisco. And I just the regret. I
don't think I've ever felt deeper regret for anything in
my life. And then did you sad eat the chocolate?
I couldn't. I gave it to my boyfriend. I was like,
I can't even like look at this, you just take it,
consider it part of your Christmas present. Talk about chocolate
guilt seriously, But no, I mean I think that the
(28:28):
dark chocolate thing does kind of point to or highlight
interesting aspects of the whole chocolate guilt conversation, because like
we're supposed to feel guilty, or we do feel guilty
after we eat too many sweets, but then dark chocolate,
Like celebrities and magazines are preaching to us that like,
if you eat dark chocolate, it has antioxidants and so
(28:49):
you will never get cancer. But you're only allowed to
have a square a day, maybe a square every other day. Well,
and then how many celebrity interviews with you know, beautiful,
very thin, fit women who say, oh, my weakness is chocolate.
I mean, it's always all these conflicting messages. There's one
thing that Katherine Nutter points out about chocolate ads today
(29:13):
is that the models in these ads clearly don't indulge in,
you know, chocolate fests on the regular chocolate festate. My
mouth just started watering. I think I need to start
that or maybe never never al burn it down. So
from the nineteen eighties where we see all of that
fancy chocolate rising, to the two thousands, we see this
(29:37):
whole self empowerment message come about, one of which came
from Godiva in two thousand four with their tagline every
woman is one part Diva, much to the dismay of
every man. And I have no idea side note what
that means. I don't get that the whole just also
(29:58):
side note to any and marketing listening, if you call
me a diva, I'm not gonna want your product. Yeah,
I don't get that. Who like who? Who thinks that
women want to be I want to be diva's. I
don't know. I'm sure there are probably some women listening
thinking that that's fun, but I don't know. I just
think it's so hokey. I think it is hokey. And
I think when you have people like I'm just trying
(30:20):
to think of an example, somebody like Mariah Carrier, you know,
somebody who's like a stereotypically high demand, high maintenance celebrity
calling themselves a diva. That makes me want to call
myself that even less so. But then you're telling me
that I am want if I eat your chocolate and Godiva,
which really is like the Gray Goose vodka of candy,
(30:43):
like its chocolate burn, old chocolate burn. Because you know,
you take something that's really kind of basic and just
mark up the price, just putting a fancy ribbon or
some you know, geese on, it doesn't actually make it
worth the price. Yeah, there was an article, I forget
which one it was that we read a talking about
how some chocolate experts, like small gays of chocolate essentially
(31:06):
tried Godiva and they did not give it very high mark.
Now what did they say, like a box of sugar
had been poured into candlewax or some something like that,
or that it was very chalky. They just weren't big fans.
But I do think it's it's interesting how there's now
that self empowerment aspect. It's like the men have sort
of been removed from these chocolate ads. So instead of
(31:29):
the old dynamic of wooing men into buying chocolate to
give to women, it's now Dove, for instance, telling us, oh, ladies,
treat yourself. You go buy chocolate for yourself, stay at home.
It's just stay at home and read the inspirational messages
that are on the inside of Dove wrappers, right, and
(31:51):
and give yourself a gentle, you know, hug, and then
go eat some yogurt. But can we talk no more
about this issue with chocolate, because this isn't something that
came up in any of the papers. But what it
sounded an awful lot like the more we read about
how chocolate is, you know, basically is sold to women
(32:12):
as sex. It's the one acceptable sexy vice that women
can have, according to society. And yet there's that guilt
undergirding it of like if you eat too much of it,
then boys aren't gonna like you because you'll have a
chocolate belly. It's so weirdly slut shamy. It's like it's
(32:35):
like a candy analog to slut shaming, where it's like, well, ladies,
if you do too much of that, then boys aren't
gonna like you. Am I am I making too big
of a leap? Now, I think it's absolutely parallel. I
think there are some very weird and they always have been, apparently,
(32:55):
some very weird things going on with the way we
look at chocolate and think about chocolate, and you know,
we have the Aztecs in the Spanish to think. But um,
we'll actually get into some more ick nous behind chocolate
advertising when we come back from a quick break. So
(33:18):
when we left off, we had gone through the history
of women in chocolate and advertising. But one thing that
we didn't mention as we were going through that twentieth
century timeline was that really the main target of chocolate ads,
especially in the first half of the twentieth century, were
exclusively white women. And there are some issues of race
(33:41):
and racism and chocolate that we would be remiss to
not address as well, because you see, for instance, racial
anxieties surrounding chocolate going all the way back to when
it was first brought from the New World to Europe.
Right there was this uh story that mort rosen Bloom,
(34:03):
who we said it earlier, the author of Chocolate A
Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light Uh, talks about in
his book about a woman by the name of Madame
de Saveni writing to her daughter warning her against drinking
too much chocolate because she knew of another woman who
drank it and her child came out black as the devil. Yikes,
yikes indeed, okay, well, and and there are all these
(34:26):
chocolate anxieties to probably linked to this early idea of
it as an aphrodisiac and being linked to sex, where oh,
if you eat too much of it you might become
you know, some kind of sex monster. But then too
if you look at advertising in the nineteenth century, these
chocolate duds typically portrayed women of color representing chocolate in
(34:50):
its raw, unrefined form, whereas the white women were used
to evoke a sense of luxury and romance, which is
very pro oblematic, right, Yeah, women of color being seen
as the workers, white women being seen as the consumers,
going from raw to refine. There's all sorts of really
(35:10):
icky racial things there, which makes sense because it ties
so much into those issues of class and the evolution
of chocolate and how it kind of became a mass
marketed good. And I was hoping to find more scholarship
on the race aspects of chocolate advertising, but unfortunately didn't
(35:31):
because I feel like today's still and maybe it's just
just advertising in general, but I still feel like you
mostly almost exclusively see white women in chocolate ads. Well,
I'm yeah, I mean, we're We're definitely not in any
sort of post racial utopia by any means, especially when
it comes to discussing chocolate. The whole racist thing of
(35:54):
calling women of color chocolate is referring to well, any
person of color as being vocolate. Yeah, then you get
into issues of exoticizing and eroticizing people of color by
referring to them as chocolate. Again, didn't find any you know,
deep research on it, just a few blog posts here
and there, mostly from black women asking like, please stop
(36:16):
calling me chocolate, because it's also notable that it's not
like we refer to white women as vanilla, except to
indicate how boring we are when we have sex. Uh. Yeah, Well,
there was that one Cadbury ad that was addressing Naomi
Campbell by saying, move over, Naomie, there's a new diva
in town talking about a chocolate bar. And so that's
(36:38):
that's combining. We already had the diva conversation. That's combining
like the worst of all chocolate ads. Yeah, and she
did not appreciate it. I would an entire campaign to
get them to take it down, because I mean some
people are saying, oh, it's not you know, it's not racist.
It's not, but yeah, it's it's a it's a little
bit racist, and then it is just the awkwardness of
(37:01):
More recently, Ferrero launched an ad campaign in Germany for
their white chocolate and they're like big commercial tagline was
Germany votes White, to which Germans were like, hey, yeah, no,
you remember, remember Nazis and that whole thing. You please
(37:22):
don't do this. Ah, there's some people in some marketing
departments somewhere who were laid off after that. I'm assuming, well,
what did you think? Did you see the Axe Dark
Temptation ad? Where I didn't? Okay, so what happens? I mean,
it's an axe body spray ad. So basically the premise
of every single ax body spray ad is that the
(37:42):
guy puts it on and then he just becomes irresistible
chick magnet to use the worst phrase on the planet. Um.
So with the Dark Temptation ad, he puts on the
body spray and it turns him into a chocolate man.
And what do women love more than chocolate, Caroline, and
so women to start coming up to him and you know,
(38:02):
eating away at his chocolate body. And then finally it's
revealed that oh, he's just like, he's just a white
guy under there. But the fact that it's called dark
temptation and it's all it's it's fine because there's a
white guy under there still, you know, just some just
some issues, just some issues kind of all piling up
there together. Yeah, that is that is a pile of issues. Yeah,
(38:24):
lots of lots of women eating away at your very core. Yeah,
lots of just symbolism loaded into one terrible commercial. Um.
But what though, Okay, so speaking, women eating men made
out of chocolate. Yikes, What about the science of this?
(38:45):
Because we've talked all about advertising. We have clearly been
sold this idea that chocolate is a food for women,
that we love it more than anything else, including shoes.
But what does science have to say about this? You
would think, right that science would have been, like, ladies,
every time you bite into a chocolate bar and you
(39:07):
you get obsessed with the idea of eating more chocolate
and you feel addicted to it, it's because it's releasing
all of these amazing things, and it's not really that
it's they've found that there's not a huge like cause
and effect chocolate seratonin link. It's probably more that it
chocolate is fatty and sugary and it tastes real good. Yeah.
(39:28):
There have been a lot of studies actually looking at
the psychopharmacological effects of chocolate, essentially how groups of chemicals
such as cannabinoids and chocolate react in our brain and
make us chocoholics. I guess, And the study results have
kind of been mixed. They really haven't been able to
pin down one specific chocolate craze chemical in there. So
(39:54):
it's like, well, some people really like it, and I
guess it's I guess it's good. Um. But there was
the study called Chocolate and Cheese their effects on Mood,
sort of looking at okay, well, we know that it
probably has something to do with the fat and chocolate.
So if we take a sweeteness savory like cheese and
compare it, what happens and their best conclusion was that
(40:17):
it's probably the oro sensory effect of eating chocolate. Essentially,
we like how it smells, how it feels in our mouth,
just all of the sensory sensations of eating chocolate. The
look on your face right now, Caroline, I feel like
you've been whisked away. I need to get fund that
Easter basket. You need to go to Pleasure Island from
(40:41):
the said, I absolutely do. Um. Speaking of health stuff,
one thing that does get brought up in women's magazines
a lot is if you like chocolate, ladies, not only
are you gonna get fat, but you're gonna break out. Yeah,
what about what about that? Connection. Yeah. Um, that's something
that I've always been worried about because I had so
(41:04):
many pimples when I was a young girl, and even
now my horm I'm thirty, right, like, I shouldn't break
out anymore, but I still do. Adult acne totally exists
hormones anyway, So they looked at whether researchers looked at
whether um, chocolate actually does produce acne, and again the
results were kind of mixed, but they did find that
among the people who broke out who did break out
(41:28):
and experience acne, here's here's a little bit of what happened.
So after people ate chocolate and then we're exposed to
the bacteria that caused acne, they found that the blood
was shown to have more markers of inflammation than the
people who had not eaten chocolate. But they're just not
sure what component of chocolate actually caused that inflammation, whether
(41:50):
it is the fat or whether it is the sugar.
I mean, we know that sugar causes inflammation in the body,
but they're not quite sure about the acne link. It
seems like that's the story with everything regarding women in chocolate.
We're just not quite sure. But here have some chocolate
in the meantime while we try to figure this out,
let's also talk about the stereotype of periods making women
(42:12):
crave chocolate even more. Yeah, I I am. I was.
I'm gonna tell the truth here. I was a little
dismayed to find out that there is no scientific link
really supporting the hypothesis that you crave chocolate more around
your period, because I swear I don't know what it
(42:32):
is in my brain, in the brain of Caroline Urban
Podcast or Extraordinaire, I don't know what's going on that
like leading up to my period, I'm just like gorging
on chocolate, and like as I'm stuffing the fifteen candy
bar in my face, I'm like, oh, Okay, I see
what's happening. But I wonder if it's just not so
much the chocolate as maybe a connection between menstrual cycles
(42:57):
and comfort food. And some scientists say that, you know,
chocolate contains minerals like magnesium and iron, which we may
be deficient in around our periods. Things like that. All
I know is just I just want it. And one
of the reasons so why this period chocolate hypothesis has
been debunked is because chocolate cravings don't diminish with menopause.
(43:18):
If it was a period thing, then we would see
a massive drop off in women over fifty wanting chocolate.
But that all happened. Well, maybe it's a mood thing
because I know, like when I'm sick or hungover or
just generally not feeling good, I want comfort food. I
want like fried chicken and mashed potatoes and soup and
like you know, salty, mushy, amazing things that have really
(43:40):
strong flavors um. And so maybe chocolate just fits into that,
like making you feel good. Well, speaking of making you
feel good, the one thing that we do know about chocolate,
specifically dark chocolate, is yes, the rumors are true. Dark
chocolate does appear to have some health benefits. There was
a study published link king it to lower rates of stroke,
(44:03):
coronary heart disease, blood pressure, and other cardiovascular conditions. But
in an interview with The New York Times about this
study finding, one of the lead authors said, police, don't
get us wrong. This doesn't mean that you can eat
all of the chocolate that you want. We're just saying
it's a correlation, it's not a causation, right, Yes, antioccidents. Yes,
(44:25):
gorging on chocolate until you throw up pretty much destroys
any of the positive effects of chocolate, although I was
thinking about studies exactly like this one when Sally also
gave me a solid dark chocolate Easter Bunny. But no,
don't try to comfort me. I don't care. I don't. Yeah,
I don't. I don't feel guilt. I mean I do,
(44:46):
but I don't. But see, that's good. That's great that
you don't feel guilt. You shouldn't feel any guilt. If
you want chocolate, eat the chocolate. I don't know. I
just I'm so yeah, I'm at the point of I'm
just tired of hearing about it. I'm tired of seeing
those weird ads. I don't get it, you know, I don't. Uh,
it's the same things, Like I'm surprised there's not more
terrible chocolate stock photography. I mean, I know there is.
(45:07):
But you know, the way we see women laughing over salads,
the same way we see women eating yogurt, like chocolate
is in that same ballpark. As far as like women
are so stupid. Look at what you're eating and how
you're eating it, and like you're pinning all of your
hopes and dreams on it, whereas men are just told
that they really want a grill meat. Yeah, you want
(45:28):
a hamburger? Have a hamburger? Sloppy, Joe's sloppy. Joe's not sloppy,
jays Nope. Well, Caroline, I think we've now pretty much
exhausted all of our chocolate knowledge, and now it's time
to hear from listeners. I want to know if there
are guys out there who are also a self identified chocoholics.
I want to know who the ladies are like me,
(45:48):
who could care less about a bag of Eminem's, Give
me some dol Rito's please, or like any kind of
chip you get me. I'm saying savory rather than sweet,
and anyone who I don't I don't know. What are
your thoughts on chocolate? Let us know. Mom's Stuff at
Discovery dot com is where you can email us. You
can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or send
(46:10):
us a Facebook message. And we have a couple of
messages to share with you right now. So I've got
a couple of messages here about our new male Grooming episode.
This one is from Jess, who writes in My Dating
Career I despised male body hair. I thought it was
(46:33):
just plain unattractive and probably wouldn't have looked twice at
a hairy dude. However, a few years ago I met
a guy and film madly in love with an extremely
hairy dude. I mean his back has started to connect
with his chest hair level of Harry Anyway, his hair
a nous drives me crazy too, but in a good way.
(46:53):
I think a huge part of what we find attractive
is just what we see on TV. The unknown is
always scary. It's really frustrating because he, as you mentioned
many men are, is very self conscious about his man
for He's even asked me to tweeze hairs from areas
that bother him. Once you associate body hair with a
manly dude who treats you like gold, it's very sexy.
(47:15):
Here's hoping for more hair representation in the media. Ah
and for love, and I hope, I hope that letter
makes that gentleman feel better who wrote us very concerned
about whether he'd find a date. Yeah, don't worry about
your hairy backs. Don't worry about it. I have a
letter here from Gretchen who wrote in about beards as well,
(47:37):
and she said, well, I can definitely see a trend
in the popularity of beards on men on TV. I
wonder if this is just a trend in certain social circles.
Maybe it's because I live in Alaska that I have
never thought of a beard is something trendy, just something
some men had and others didn't. When I was growing up,
my father sported a beard, and my husband grows when
every fall and shaves it off in the spring. He
does this as he works outside and below zero weather,
(48:00):
and it often helps keep him warm and when spring
comes it's too warm. I know other men up here
who also follow this practice. I like my husband's appearance
both ways, so whatever he wants is fine with me.
On a recent trip this winter to London, England, we
did take an interesting notice of the lack of beards there.
In fact, my husband's caught the attention of one small
boy who marveled at his appearance, exclaiming and pointing at
(48:21):
him out of pure amazement. I also think, if a
man isn't well endowed in the facial hair department, what
is wrong with being clean shaven if that suits him.
Butter and then Gretchen has uh, some more comforting words
for our hairy men out there, She says, on the
topic of other body hairman, it's personally, I like a
(48:41):
guy with some chest hair and find the idea of
waxing it or shaving it off because that is what
women like. Silly, so fear not men, some women dig it.
So thanks, Gretchen. I'm sure a lot of listeners out
there appreciate your viewpoint, and thanks to everybody who's written
into us mom. Stuff at Discovery dot com is our
email age us and if you want to find links
to all of our social media, all of our podcast,
(49:04):
blogs and videos, you should head on over to stuff
Mom Never Told You dot com for more on this
and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works
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