SMNTY Classics: Villainesses

From the Wicked Witch to Ursula and Maleficent, portrayals of pop culture villainesses can tell us about views of real-world women. Find out more in this classic episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to Stephane.
Never told your protection of I Heart Radio's house Toffer.
Did you have a favorite villainous as a kid, Oh yeah,
of course. Um I did love somefent me too, she

(00:28):
was my favorite. Um but the Wicked Witch, not the
Wicked Arsula was really fun too because she could change forms. Yeah,
and she just looked like like her and her little eels. Yeah,
that's pretty fantastic. Yeah, I love Ursula as well. Um.
I I haven't seen um one hundred one Dalmatians since Yeah,

(00:50):
I haven't seen that movie in so long, But like,
looking back, I'm curious how disturbing it is as an adult.
I was quite very disturbing because for sure, like trying
to kill all these like she has jackets, already coats
of fur, so obviously she's already did this. She's already
done this. Yeah, so and she's just getting more and
it's like, oh my gosh. And she has those wild eyes,

(01:13):
the wild eyes, that's true. I felt like Maleficent had
a very cool like she can't be bothered air, you know,
like you can't ruffle her feathers. Um. I feel like
with all the live action versions. I'm like, they've done
pretty well with these. Well, that's one of the reasons
I wanted to bring back this classic because, um one,

(01:34):
I've been in Disney recently, but too like the Maleficent
movie with Angelina Jolie, the second one came out recently,
and then I know there's two versions of Ariel coming
out and one is coming out soon, the one, the
TV one, the live action one with Queen Latifa as
Ursla is coming out soon. So I do feel like,

(01:56):
right now we have a cultural fascination with uh, these villanesses. Yeah,
it was actually a whole board game, adult board game.
I actually really liked it. It It was hard, you've told
me about it. I really was really fun. I think
I was Maleficent you were, Yeah, and I won? Of course?

(02:19):
Did you Did you get to pick who you were?
Is it no? You get to pick? Because but it
was like Maleficent Arcela Sheriff from Sheriff Nottingham, Sure, and
um defar okay, of course far of course, Well we
should play that together sometimes. It was fun. We should
play it together, for sure. Yeah. I guess the Queen

(02:40):
of Hearts. She's another pretty She's a good Oh no,
it was Queen of Hearts. I'm a liar from who
Queen of Hearts? And uh Cheff Nottingham, Arcela and Maleficent.
Oh that's a pretty female. Yeah it was, which could
say a lot about that's true, that's true. I would

(03:02):
love to go through and kind of because I know
we've done an episode on the betrayal of evil stepmothers
in Disney and how it seems like you have your
your princess who's waiting to get married and then you're
evil stepmother who wants to kill the young the young
girl or charged. And that's kind of the dynamic that

(03:24):
the economy in those movies. And yeah, I guess a
lot of the villains, a lot of the memorable villains
are our women. M M. Talking about how do we
see women and why are they betrayed this way? Okay,

(03:45):
no one can hear you just whispering. People love it.
People do seem to whispering. But you know what villains
are in right now? I feel like they kind they
kind of have a flip between like the snow white malifice.
They're having a small flip, yes, And the psychology behind

(04:07):
that is something that I am personally fascinated in um
and we can. This classic episode is going to look
into that a little bit. What what these portrayals of
women as villains? What we can learn about our our
culture and our view of women. So please enjoy. Welcome

(04:33):
to Stuff Mom Never told you from how stupp works
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline. And since it is Halloween's season when
we are recording this episode, we are honoring, celebrating the villainess. Yes,

(04:55):
the bad girl of pop culture and fairy tales and
comic books, the evil stepmother, the giant octopus with really
cool hair. Let's be honest, Ursula's hair is so on
trend right now. We've got to admit, though, or acknowledge
that Ursula was based on Divine the drag Queen. Oh yeah,
hence big beautiful Ursula with her big beautiful hair. No wonder,

(05:19):
she's so fabulous and and evil true true, yes, um yeah.
The post that inspired this episode was over at tour
dot com and it was titled in Defense of Villainess
is basically arguing that lady villains do not get their

(05:39):
proper dues in pop culture. Sure, they're brushed off. Is
just mad, bitter, resentful old women, or they just aren't
as visible or as fleshed out, yeah, as male villains are.
And in fact, there was some villain a snooze recently

(06:02):
that kind of gets to the heart of the marketing
machine behind villains and maybe one reason why we don't
see more women villains. Yeah. So, when you search for
anything on the Google about lady villains, villain essas whatever,
one of the only things that comes up on page
one is the fact that the original Iron Man three

(06:26):
villain was gender swapped right before production, and and not
in a good way. If you've if you've seen the movie,
you know that the villain was supposed to be a
woman and ended up not being a woman anymore. Why
did they do that, Well, I'll tell you so. In
the original script, the plan was to have this lady villain,
but a memo came down to the filmmakers saying, Nope,

(06:50):
don't do a lady villain. A female villain toy will
not sell as well. And that kind of blows my mind.
I I maybe I'm naive, but I didn't realize that
like pre production, not even after the fact. It's one
thing to like market something differently. But I didn't realize
that the making of a film could be influenced by

(07:11):
the toy making machine. Oh yeah, it's all about that money, honey,
I know. And so director Shane Black was like, guys, guys, guys,
calm down. The president of Marvel Studios had nothing to
do with this, because everybody was like, are you serious,
And they were trying to find out who to blame, basically,
and he said that we had to change the entire
script because of toy making. It was the marketing machine.

(07:33):
It was the higher ups at the studio. It was
not the director or the head of Marvel. Well, I
wonder if that also has to do with them, uh,
presuming that the audience for Iron Man is going to
skew mail, so maybe you'll have more boys who are
gonna be interested in buying Iron Man related toys compared

(07:53):
to girls. And the thinking goes that boys would be
less likely to buy a girl villains sure, or that
parents would be less likely to buy it for their son. Yeah. Maybe,
But I would just think, like, and I'm maybe I'm projecting,
I don't know, but I would just think that a
villain is a villain is a villain, and if it's
a woman like that just seems really fun too. I

(08:16):
imagine she has like dark lipstick and dark hair and
and cool accessories and oh see, I guess I am
a girl. Though we'll see. That gets to what it
seems to be the two categories of female villain that
you have in pop culture. Usually she's either kind of

(08:38):
vampi and a seductress, but also evil of course, she's
like an evil woman in that yellow song. Or she
is older and undesirable by virtue of her like lack
of sexiness. She's the anti seductress. She's the old hat

(09:00):
with the apple, the poison apple. Yeah. So, I mean
it's still a similar pattern that you see with female protagonists,
where a lot of times they are defined by their
relation to men and their sexual attractiveness. And with with
films too, cartoon or live action, you know, you have

(09:21):
to provide some degree of coding so that the audience
sort of knows what to expect from that character. And
so making her um, you know, a brunette, uh, you know,
she maybe she's wearing all black and she's super sexy
like that codes as like the evil vamp villain just
the same way that painting her as a witch an

(09:42):
old hag is like, Oh, the signals to me that
I need to watch out for her and not trust her. Well,
and what you're describing, especially with the woman dressed in
all black like a Donna Karen outfit from head to
toe is just reminding me of Angelica Houston and witches.
I'll just watch that so flawless she is that woman,

(10:04):
she's so stylish, she's stunning. And then of course on
the inside she really is is this terrifying haggard witch
who looks like the Sanderson sisters which in hocus Pocus.
It's just watched hocus Pocus last night. Oh my gosh, Caroline,

(10:24):
I watched hocus Pocus this past weekend too. Okay, can
we talk cocus Pocus for a second for sure? And
this will listeners tie back into our conversation on villains,
because they are like the archetypal like evil Crone, and
they've got in that group of three sisters, they have
it all right. Oh yeah, they've got bet Middler's kind

(10:46):
of she's not the old hag in terms of like
the snow white evil witch with a poison apple but
she is still made to look with the buck teeth
that are yellow and the crazy red curly hair. She's
made to look a little more old and haggard compared
to her sister's right, and she's the most powerful too, correct.
And then you've got Kathine and Jimmy who she's They

(11:09):
make her do this weird like crooked thing with her mouth. Yeah,
she kind of talks the side of her mouth. They
give her a speech impediment. Yeah, and she yeah, she
is the dumber. Well, she's dumber than uh Winifred. But
then you've got Sarah Jessica Parker's Sarah who she is
the vamp. She's the skinny blonde with the big boobs

(11:29):
coming out over her dress, and she is super air
heady and jumps around and claps all the time and
says a makamuk a muck and she really wants to
make out with any male who enters their premises. Correct. Um,
So I gotta tell you that I loved the Witches,
the Three Witches. Could have watched them all night long,

(11:53):
but I stopped watching hocus Pocus. Couldn't get through it, y'all.
This was my first time. Wait, this Weekend. Yes, at
thirty one years old. This was my very first viewing
of Focus Pocus, and I couldn't finish it because that
like poor Man's Jonathan Taylor Thomas kid. It was just

(12:19):
the worst because it starts off with him just lusting
after like the girl who looks like a young Hillary Swank,
and it's like weirdly like overtly sexual, and he doesn't
listen to anyone. And you know what, during the selection season,
when we've had a man who is not listened to

(12:41):
women mucking a lot of stuff, I was like, I
can't do this. I can't watch you. So where where
did you stop? The witches had come back and I
don't know, like uh like fake j T T had
just done something else fool ish, and I was like,

(13:01):
I can't thora Birch, You're perfect all the which is
you're perfect, even young Hillary Swank I think you have
a horrible taste in middle school boys, but didn't at all, um,
But I was like, why why does it have to
be centered around this kid? Um? Also, this is a
cautionary tale of waiting to watch children's movies when you

(13:23):
are a thirty one year old professional feminist. Yeah, I
definitely have the benefit of the nostalgia factor having watched
it growing up, But it was funny watching it this
time around. I hadn't seen it in a couple of
years that I definitely was like, why why does it
have to center on this guy? Why can't it center
on Hillary Swank or yeah, who's perfect? Because by the

(13:47):
end of the movie, by the very end, which you
didn't get to, what's weird about it is that it
does feel like it is centered around her basically, Like
the ending shot is brother and sister like hugging or whatever.
But it's all about thora Birch saying goodbye to these
two characters, two of the characters in the movie. And
I wanted to be like this, this just should have

(14:08):
been the movie. Let the two girls, who are clearly
smarter than this boy run the show well and getting
back to you our convo on Villainess's villains. Uh, I
love that the Witches, the Sanders and sisters are just
purely evil and have no qualms about it whatsoever. You know.

(14:32):
They there's that moment early in the film where they
get some some youthfulness back and are restored to their
their younger looking selves. Um so you have like a
touch of uh, stereotypical like female vanity going on. But
then they're they're so powerful and terrifying and they love it.

(14:54):
And also I love that Bette Midler um despite her
extreme buck teeth and wild hair. I mean, she thinks
she looks phenomenal. I know they all do, and they're
they are, They're so wonderful. And I love how funny
that Middler is allowed to be in that movie. How

(15:15):
funny Winifred is allowed to be that she's not entirely
one dimensional. But let's talk about their fashion, because this
leads us into something that is pretty consistent across pop
cultural villains who happen to be women. So they've got
some good style. Yeah, so I love that the Sanderson

(15:35):
sisters they do have these like flowing gowns and capes. Um.
And you know you mentioned Angelica Houston in which is
she is fabulous with her lob, her long bob, her
you know, crazy good makeup. It was the eighties, um,
and her she's got this tight off the shoulder black dress,

(15:58):
which when she turns in to the ghoulish version of herself,
she's still wearing a gorgeous off the shoulder black dress.
I do love that that. Sarah Gailey over at tour
dot Com pointed this out, as did Lucy Hutchings when
she wrote about villainous fashion for Vogue UK. What were

(16:19):
some of her favorites? So I think one of the
main ones that is sited across all of these listical
sites has to be Maleficent, both the cartoon version and
Angelina Jolie's version of Maleficent. Of course, Maleficent is the
witchy evil villain from Sleeping Beauty. Yeah. She she has

(16:40):
that amazing headpiece. Yeah, she has that amazing headpiece. It's
so elegant, you know, for being like horn shaped and whatever.
Um and other villains with amazing accessories, Like you've got
to think of l Driver's eyepatch. She's uh, Darryl Hannah
in Kill Bill Searcy's queenly armor. So Searcy finally, spoiler

(17:04):
Searcy in Game of Thrones finally gets to be on
the throne. Who knows how long she'll be there, but
to indicate that she has transitioned from just being like
run of the mill evil queen into like run of
the mill super evil, super powerful queen. She's wearing all
black with her an all black gown complete with like

(17:25):
super badass looking armor on her shoulders. Yeah. Well, and
that reminds me of when a couple of seasons back
now where Sanza is off with Little Finger, and I
start worrying that she's about to go to the dark
side because she starts wearing this intense black gown that
has uh those like feather yas. Yeah, what way to

(17:49):
go wardrobe department, But I mean those killer wardrobes. I
mean they might be wearing robes like Maleficent or o
Riny she also from kill Bill. They might have fabulous
coats depending on how you view. For if you look
at Cruella de Ville or Miranda Priestley from Devilware's Products,
she's kind of the villain of that movie. Obviously that's
not a comic book movie or anything. Obviously she's supposed

(18:11):
to be Anna Wintour, right, so she must be well dressed.
But she's a villain for sure in that movie, and
she has fabulous coats. Uh. And one very common wardrobe choice,
particularly when it comes to comic book and superhero movies,
is the cat's suit. And so not only obviously do
you have Catwoman wearing the cat's suit, even though one

(18:31):
might argue that Catwoman is really more of an anti
hero than a villain. Let's let's go back right Ghostbusters
number one, Zul. Right, even though Zula is not technically
a woman, Zuel can take whatever form here she wants.
When Zul shows up on top of Sigourney Weaver's building,
Zula is dressed as like the white version of Grace Jones.

(18:54):
Basically anyway, You've also got Nebula and Guardians of the Galaxy,
uh and Harley Quinn not in the latest live action movie,
but in the comics she's wearing kind of like a
Joker type cat suit. Well, and then there's also Poison Ivy,
who wears a cat suit made of ivy. Yes, but
this is this is what I'm getting at though, where

(19:15):
we have like the more mature woman who might be
dressed all in black. She might be chic, but she's
probably not outright sexy. And then you have the cat
suit villains who are very sexualized. Yeah, I mean they
all like it is fun to look at them, and
I'm sure it's fun to create them. They have fabulous

(19:37):
crazy hair, like their hair is allowed to be the
Ursula swoop or Zul's flat top. Or if you're going
with like a woman who is putting on femininity to
describe to disguise her evilness, you've got amy from gone
girl who has like the most perfect, fabulous blonde, long,

(19:59):
luscious hair her she just puts on that luscious hair
and then just like Lego hair, just puts it on
in the morning, bamboozle has been afflick. That's right, And
you know, tied in with the whole like having fun
with appearance thing is the fact that a villain, like
I was saying, a villainess is allowed to look different.
She's allowed to have these different physical attributes than just

(20:21):
like the perfect Disney princess, well because she's loud. I mean,
this reminds me of our episode on Curly Hair, where
a lot of times you see coded in movies. If
you have sort of a life montage where suddenly a
female character kind of like gets her act together, she's
going to go from having curly hair to straight hair

(20:43):
or vice versa. Like when Um on Scandal, for instance,
whenever we see Olivia Pope Um like kind of teetering
on the edge of sanity, or she is off on
a deserted island like no longer. Yeah, Caroline's squinty, but
they're fans of scandal, know what I'm talking about. Um?

(21:05):
When uh, when she's not her put together Olivia Pope
um self, she usually has curly hair. Interesting, see, but
it's coading. It's it's signaling to the audience that, like,
even if you're not literally thinking like, oh, she has
really curly hair hair versus straight and put together. Um,

(21:26):
it's still signaling to you that something is different because
it's all it all kind of boils down to what
we associate with acceptable femininity, which is modest. You're not
going to wear a bold red lip like Maleficent. You're
not going to wear a gaudy fur coat like Cruella.

(21:47):
And you could see this as both a pro and
a con, but you are also likelier with villains, female
villains in pop culture for her to not necessarily be
white in the same way as so many female protagonists are. Yeah, okay,
so yes, that like virginal white femininity that is like

(22:12):
the crux of so many protagonists in these like fairy
tales or in these comic book stories, just the same
way that the villainess is coated as evil or crazy
by the way her hair is, or her makeup or
her clothes. You know, the protagonist, the fairy tale heroine
is so often just like the traditional feminine that we
think of, the traditional white feminine that we think of. Um,

(22:35):
but you can have plenty of different types of villains
in comic book movies. In fairy tales, You've got verat
Din a k a fatality, She's a comic book villain.
With d C comics. You've also got zen Z she's
a new villain actually for the ten Black Panther comic
series by Tana Hassi Coates. Um. And if you move

(22:58):
out of the comic book realm too, I mean, just
look at kill Bill by itself. You've got go go
you bari O, Rainy, she and Vernita Green All trying
to kill Uma Thurman's character. Or if you go to Batman,
you have my favorite villain of all, who is Catwoman
played by earth A Kit Oh yeah, she's perfect. And

(23:19):
then you later have Halle Berries Catwoman. And I mean
earlier you described like the quote unquote like traditional white femininity. Um.
I don't know if it's so much traditional as it
is racist ultimately, Oh, I mean yes, and I mean
traditional in terms of how that protagonist is shown on screen, right, Um,

(23:46):
Because I I feel like, with with exceptions obviously two
things like Zenz and Black Panther and and some of
these other characters. Um, But to me, the the chance
that these villains have differently colored skin, let's say, um,

(24:07):
does say a lot about how we perceive women of
color because also consider how um, black women in particular
historically have been so framed as Jezebels and sirens and seductresses.
And I would imagine that there is that that that

(24:29):
feeds into some of these especially older school villains. Yeah.
That no wonder it's more acceptable to have women of
color of some sort, right because they're already deviant by
virtue of them not being white, right exactly. And I
think that ties into the next point of why it
is so common slash acceptable to have a villain who

(24:50):
plays on the whole vamp trope, who is that sexy,
made up, you know, busty evil woman, Because even if
she's playing on her sexuality and toying with men and
taking advantage, it's like, you can't you can't hate her
for it. That's her power because she's evil. So it's

(25:10):
okay for a woman to display outright sexuality if she's
evil and will be defeated in the end. Well, and
then by by that logic, then doesn't that mean that
a woman doesn't that suggest then that a woman who
is open with her sexuality and wields it in such
a way that that is the evil thing about her. Yeah?

(25:33):
I know. And and some of my favorite villain essa's
do do this. I mean, but it's an old trope.
Oh yeah, I'm so easy to rely on. Like okay,
So one of my favorites is in one of my
favorite movies to watch around Halloween, which is The Sleepy
Hollow with Johnny Depp. Love it, Love it. It's one
of my favorite movies. And Miranda Richardson's Lady van tassel

(25:58):
Uh in that movie is so freaking brilliant. She gets
to be beautiful, she gets to be glamorous, right, she
wears these big gowns. Even when she's mid like crazy
evil woman and her hair's coming out of her up do,
she still looks like so fabulous and glamorous when she's
totally losing touch with reality. Um and and all of

(26:22):
this evil stuff she's doing and controlling the Headless Horseman,
the way that she picks her victims and seduces them
and everything, like she tempts them with her sexuality and
her beauty, and it's so she's such a fun villain
to watch. This is also reminding me of a movie
I was watching last night also for the first time, y'all,

(26:44):
I've really been trying to catch up on pop culture
from like way back. I was watching Casino and Sharon Stone,
who plays Robert De Niro's wife hustler turned wife, is
such an embodiment of the Vampi villain because you know
from the first moment you see her on screen that

(27:06):
she is going to be his downfall because she is
so captivating in her whole presentation. Of course she's gorgeous,
but also in how they outfit her as just this
very glamorous but ultimately money hungry and self destructive um

(27:28):
like Vegas queen. Well, yeah, because how could beauty and
sexuality coexist with a woman who doesn't implode beauty, sexuality,
and ambition. I mean, granted, her ambition was just to
be like obnoxiously wealthy, but nonetheless as we're gonna get
into that. I mean, a lot of these villains are ambitious. Yeah,

(27:52):
you know, not to be a villain apologist. They leaned in,
They really did. Ursula who leans in part of than
Ursula come on's feeling people's voices. She's got pet eels um. Yeah.
So this whole beauty thing and femininity is something that

(28:14):
Shannon Austin wrote about in Batman's Female Foes, which appeared
in the journals Popular Culture back in April, and she
quotes author Mary J. Russo talking about how often in
these stories where the woman villain is powerful and also beautiful,
that she uses her femininity as a mask and to

(28:36):
put on femininity with a vengeance, she writes, suggests the
power of taking it off and purposely disguising themselves in
this way and acting feminine to gain certain ends. Thus
allows them more power because they can remove this mask
at times convenient for them, revealing the so called monsters underneath.

(28:57):
And I you know, I'd love to walk with you
more about this and get your opinion, but to me,
it just reminded me of every time on the Internet
a man criticized as a woman for wearing makeup. Uh.
But but you know, I mean quite literally, that's what
Angelica Houston's which villain does in which is she puts
on the mask of a beautiful, statuesque, distinguished, fashionable woman

(29:22):
and then takes it off and she's the haggard, disgusting
witch monster underneath, right, which I mean talking about rude
dudes on the internet. That that reminds me of, uh,
the whole thing of makeup being deceptive, correct, Yeah. Yeah,
And you know, a villain, no matter male, female, old, young, whatever,

(29:45):
deceit is probably part of that part of the storyline
is that you need to deceive the hero or the heroine.
And so in this way that Austin and Russo are
talking about, femininity is like a super dangerous disguise because
look at poison ivy. You know, she's beautiful, you know,
and she'll tempt you with that beauty and then her

(30:07):
kisses are fatal. She will kiss you and it will
kill you. Yeah. I am highly allergic to poison ivy.
I can look at that stuff. Oh god, I had to, like,
I got it so bad a couple of years ago.
I had to take steroids for it, and I just
lost my freaking mind. I was rage crying all the time.
So I don't take steroids anymore. But anyway, and we
also do not need to go around kissing Uma Thurman apparently, Yeah, no,

(30:28):
don't do that. But if we look at how a
lot of times, especially with more traditional fairy tales like
Grimm's fairy Tales and a lot of the Disney Princess
plot lines, you have these villains who are older, and
there there's like this Catch twenty two of those kinds

(30:50):
of fairy tales, obviously rewarding feminine youth, fertility, and beauty,
but at the same time, Malai ning these older women
who have lost that and who are trying doing everything
that they can to get it back because they realize
that that's the only way that society will value them.
And so we're like shaking a finger at them, but

(31:11):
at the same time, we are upholding the very thing
that is allegedly making them evil. Yeah, oh yeah, I know.
And and we're so scared. We're so scared of elderly women,
especially if they are elderly and alone. It would be
one thing if it was an old woman and she's married,
because then she's she's just a grandmother. She's gonna make cookies.

(31:31):
You know, that's how she would be characterized. And in
a story, she would not be the villain if she
were married or paired with a man in some sort.
And there was this great NPR article that talked to
a couple of academics and folklorists about the appearance and
the presence of these older women in folk tales. And

(31:52):
they talked to Ivory coastwriter Veroniq Tajo, who said that
the old witch who destroys people's souls is a super
common African folklore figure. And she says, she's usually a
solitary woman. She's already marginal, she's angry at something, at
life or whatever, and she will eat people's souls in
the sense that she's going to possess people and then

(32:13):
they die a terrible death. There's something scary about a
woman who does not possess that youth and that beauty
um and that traditional femininity, and who's also alone, like,
oh my god, where did all the norms go? And
she's like a nag. You know, if we if we
have to deal with her, if we have to hear
her complain about anything, we don't like it. And it's

(32:36):
certainly not unique to African folklore. I mean, if we
look more at like Western history and some of the
mythology that we've built up around, say cat ladies and
I Salem witch trials and um. Also if we go
even farther back to medieval times when old women living

(32:57):
by themselves were so reviled um that if they were
found to be complaining too much and too loudly, they
could be punished by having to wear what was called
a scolds bridle, which was literally like a muzzle that
they would have to wear to shut them up. Yeah.
People didn't want to see or hear elderly women on

(33:18):
their own. Gosh, Like, we don't want the burden. So
children are to be seen and not heard. Old ladies,
we don't want to hear from you. When when can
we talk? That's why we have a podcast. I guess
I think we're in that sweet spot of people still
allowing us to talk. Yeah, yeah, we're still We're still
fertile as far as we know, so we can keep

(33:39):
making podcasts. Oh thank god. Well. Harvard Folklore and Mythology
professor Maria Tatar could be Tater Tater Tott, Maria Tater Tott,
Maria tator tot. I like that. Um, I'm sorry. Uh.
She talks about how the powerful old witch woman in
mythology is the one who can work magic and transform.

(34:03):
In other words, hello, what have we just been talking about?
In other words, she can exert power and deceive. And
there's like nothing worse than an old woman deceiving you
with something. It's why people get so upset when women
wear makeup. It's why, you know, people criticize older women
for getting plastic surgery that's visible. It's like, what are

(34:24):
you trying to do? Are you trying to deceive us
about how old you are? You should go live in
a hut in the woods and biked children? Are you're
trying to avoid being rendered invisible by our sexist and
age of society? How dare you? What are you thinking? Um?
And you know, Uh, this Harvard professor points out something
that I hadn't even thought about, which is the transformation

(34:45):
sequence that's in some of these Disney movies that we've
talked about. She says, I always looked at the Disney
film Snow White and that charismatic wicked queen who's down
in the cellar with their chemistry set. There's a sequence
in which she turns from a beautiful, arismatic, wicked queen
into an old hag. And then of course she points out,
I think there's a scene that's probably more frightening for

(35:07):
adults than children because it compresses the aging process and
about twenty seconds, um. But it also reminded me of
the scene and Game of Thrones or Melisandra takes off
her magic necklace at the end of the night and
transforms from this beautiful, seductive, redheaded witch into this ancient

(35:27):
old woman who's hunched over and sagging and her hair
is falling out. And I mean, I like, hello, trophy trope,
trop nous of displaying just how powerful and evil someone
is by how they deceive you with their appearance and
their femininity. Right, because if she weren't disguised as that

(35:50):
sexy witch and just looked like an old crone, no
one would listen to her. Right. But but there are
really fun ways that these villains get to flout a
lot of feminine conventions, and we're going to get into
that when we come right back from a quick break, now, Caroline,

(36:20):
as soon as I said feminine convention, I felt like
I should distinguish that from the Witch convention in The
Witches starring Angelica Houston, which is sort of a feminine
convention if you think about it. Yeah, yeah, totally feminine convention.
Not feminine norms per se exactly, but definitely a feminine convention.

(36:42):
They do eat children or no, they turn them into mice,
they don't eat them. Yeah, yeah, so that's fine. Um,
but I do think it's fun. I mean, you know,
I think it's fun to look at villains and talk
about them because they do flout so many conventions. And
we've already talked about, you know, the stereotypical image. You
know that they flout traditional femininity as it's as it

(37:04):
tends to be presented to us on screen. Um. But
because of a lot of that flouting, all of this
flouting going on, they can make a lot of people
nervous too well. And one of the reasons behind that,
some people have suggested is because I r L outside
of Grimm's fairytale Land, we don't really understand female criminality

(37:30):
all of that much. It's it's still kind of hard
for us to wrap our heads around it. Yeah, there's
a lot of assumptions, and this is coming from Brenda Russell,
who write perceptions of female offenders. According to Russell's research
and the research of others, we do tend to think
a female criminals as an anomaly, like it's weird, something

(37:52):
must have happened, and we tend to view them either
as victims who were acting in self defense, or they
were under the control of others, like oh, well, she
must have been like one of Manson's women. She must
have been told what to do and duped into being
so evil and unnurturing. Or they are crazy, criminal deviance
whose actions strayed from typically female behavior, like she does

(38:16):
have to be some comic book superhero villain, Like I
can't imagine a woman who's like a run of the
mill cluptimaniac, basically your run of the mill, average, every
day Clapton. She's just got sticky fingers. It's just one
own a writer. I love Wyn and I love you. Um.

(38:36):
But then, of course there's a thing Kristin that you
mentioned earlier which is tied into this as well, that like, ah,
none of this is normal for a woman to do,
to be a criminal, But when it comes to women
of color who commit crimes, we tend to be less
sympathetic because it's like, oh, well, no, she's that's just
to be expected from a black woman because they're unchased

(38:58):
and untrustworthy. Yeah. Yeah, there's there's a lot of It's
it's a hot mess really when you start unpacking. Yeah,
views of what women are capable of or not capable
of are so inextricably tied up with issues of race
and class as well. And speaking to that for listeners
who want to learn more, we did a whole episode

(39:22):
on kleptomania UM, which speak a lot to race and class.
So definitely go back in our massive archive and dig
that one up because it's a good episode. But of
course too, you have a lot of female villains who
symbolize what we repress, and that immediately makes me think

(39:45):
of Carrie's mom. Yeah, what dirty pillows? Yes, your your
breasts or dirty pillows. And she's terrified of Carrie getting
her period because that means that she's send sexually mature
fears about female sexuality. Yeah, I mean, is that really

(40:05):
like at the heart of female villain e is sex panic.
It's I mean it it seems like it. And well,
and the thing about that too is like, Okay, let's
think back to older, older tropes, fairy tales, folklore, and
you've either got that temptous villain, which type lady, or
you've got the old hag. And the more of the

(40:26):
stories are repeated, the more they've become deeply ingrained into
our collective subconscious basically, And so when we I say
we like I'm a screenwriter, when we create new stories,
what are we doing but reaching back into what we
think of in terms of what a female villain looks like,
and frequently that goes all the way back to sexy

(40:48):
witches basically, or I would argue that it goes all
the way back to the Garden of Eden. Oh snap
and Eve original sin. Yeah, I might see like a
stretch to call Eve a villain. Now it totally works. Yeah,
I mean she's she is, uh, you know, lured into
this by the snake Satan in the form of the snake.

(41:11):
But nonetheless she deceives Adam. Yeah, you've got deceit. You've
got a naked lady, you've got long hair, don't care.
And we know what some dirty pillows because you know
they weren't wearing clothes. Well, you know what Hippocrates thought
of long hair? That it was full of semen. That's right,
that is a fact. That is a fact. Listeners, Yeah,
that goes back to a couple episodes now that we've done.

(41:34):
We just love talking about Hippocrates and hair. It's my
favorite Hippocrates fact for sure. But in terms of repression,
Shyla Fairfax over at Current Vlog in June cited film
theorist Robin Wood and looking at Horror Cinemas in particular,
quote Return of the Repressed tool. Uh. Wood said that

(41:55):
monsters are manifestations of our tendency to enforce surplus repression
within our communities, ensuring we're all monogamous, heterosexual, bourgeois patriarchal capitalist. Alright,
so translate please, um. Basically, as Wood explains, in this theory,
women are a counterpoint to male domination. They are therefore

(42:17):
a threat to patriarchal society, and so men project their
repressed femininity, which they hate because it's not powerful and
it goes against patriarchal structure. They project all of that
onto women. And when a woman rises up in power,

(42:38):
so when that femininity returns to face them, uh, that
female character is clearly a monster who must be subdued
and so when you look at all of this horror
film stuff, a female villain then is often the horror
trope combo of the rich, hern of the repressed, tool

(43:01):
female victimization and punishing women who attempt to assume power,
and that whole female victimization thing. It's because so often
with these bad girls, these female villains, her motivation is
so often revenge. Yeah, I mean, and revenge for social

(43:22):
rejections sometimes. I mean, you do have in the Judy
Garland Wizard of Oz, for instance, you you do have
the Wicked Witch of the West who goes after her
because she thinks that um Dorothy has killed her sister.
So that makes sense, she knows she wants to avenge
your sister's death. But as Elena doctor men Over at

(43:44):
Time Magazine pointed out not too long ago, one thing
that a lot of female Disney villains have in common
is revenge for just straight up social rejection. So I
didn't realize that Ursa Lah gets mad at the beginning
and targets Ariel because she sees Ariel leaving for a

(44:07):
party and she's just bummed out that she's no longer
invited to those kinds of event. I didn't remember that
at all. Similarly, Cinderella, you have the evil stepmother and
stepsisters who are terrified that old Cindy is gonna outshine
them at the party. Um. In the animated Sleeping Beauty,
Maleficent is upset that she wasn't invited to Aurora's christening.

(44:33):
Oh right, well, but in the live action Maleficent with
Angelina Jolie, her backstory is that she got her heartbroken
by some man and now like anyone who experiences love
or whatever is just too gross and she's got to
hurt them or whatever. Yeah, that was a disappointing choice. Yeah,
I mean, think of all of the crazy, weird backstories.

(44:55):
You're literally recreating a fairy tale in whatever way you want,
and like that's what you go go for. Well, and
Dr Men points out that, meanwhile, you have male villains
who tend to be allowed in the Disney cannon, tend
to be more allowed to just be like evil for
the sake of wanting to cement power. So with scar

(45:19):
in the Lion King and Jaffar in Aladdin, they just
want to be king. That's also a song I will
not sing it. Oh come on, um, But for some
of the same reasons that these female villains in these
tropes make people nervous, whether it's in real life according
to researchers, or just whether she's scaring people in the film. Uh,

(45:44):
there's plenty of reasons to like her. Oh Yeah, she's fun,
she's fierce. She wears a bold lip. Oh yeah, no,
seriously love it. Uh. She's unapologetically power hungry. She doesn't
have to just be spunky and rely on the hero
to get her where she needs to be. She tends
to be brilliant, if not a mad scientist type. She's unpredictable,

(46:05):
she's independent. Her storyline, her reason for being doesn't have
to rely or revolve around a man. It can have
something totally different. I mean, frequently it does involve a
man to some extent, but it doesn't have to well
with a lot of the social rejection lines. Though. It's
more anger over competition with other women, which is also

(46:28):
an interesting twist to consider. Yeah, and typically the thing
with these lady villains, whether it's live action, cartoon, folklore, whatever,
she's typically not afraid to go after what she wants
at any cost. Typically that involves killing someone. Yeah. Granted,
her motives are questionable, sure, but these women are often ambitious. Yeah.

(46:53):
So someone who maybe is not a villain, but it's
a fabulous anti hero who I think encapsulates a lot
of what we're talking about is Sigourney Weaver's character and
working girl, right, super ambitious, deceitful, beautiful. Uh you know, Petty,
She's like all of these complicated things wrapped up in

(47:15):
a shoulder padded businesswoman package. Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. Yeah.
I mean, all of the villains that we've cited by
name all have that massive internal drive. You know. Nebula
is gonna freaking kill, Serc's gonna kill, Zula is gonna kill,
They're all gonna kill. Cruella is gonna kill puppies. Like,

(47:36):
all of these women are driven to accomplish something, and
usually it's killing, killing in order to get something that
they want. And sometimes though, they will team up with
other women. Yeah, okay, So this goes back to that
Shannon Austin Batman paper that we sided earlier. She talks
a lot and I didn't realize there was this much

(47:59):
to talk about out Austin proved me wrong. She talks
a lot about the relationship between Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy,
and I was not aware of this. I basically only
know anything about Batman from what I've seen in the movies,
the live action movies. Mine's more Adam West base, so
yours probably even more accurate. I don't know about that. Um.

(48:23):
But so Harley Quinn, who it is worth noting her
entire character, Her persona is in reaction to a man.
So she meets and sort of falls in love with
the Joker, and he manipulates her into becoming this villain
for him or with him. Um. But anytime she starts
to act up and try to kill someone on her own,

(48:45):
he basically smacks her down and he's like, no, I
want to do that. You don't get to make decisions
about murder. You don't get to kill people for me. Yeah.
And so you know, there's all of this stuff that's
lady villains and Batman in reaction two men. But at
one point Harley Quinn is almost killed, but Poison Ivy
saves her. Poison Ivy the woman with lethal kisses who's

(49:08):
dressed in Poison Ivy, which sounds terrible. Um. And as
Austin points out, it's these women's closeness that gives her
her strength back, not the stereotypical like cattiness and fighting
that makes them weaker. And so she says that the
cements the almost terrifying idea that while a woman with

(49:29):
power is dangerous, women helping women achieve power is an
even more serious threat. Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn are
always running around together, helping each other even when they're
in a fight. Well, and talking about Harley Quinn, of
course makes me think of Suicide Squad, which I did
not see, because I'll never be able to get those
two hours of my life back if I do. But

(49:52):
the one bright spot critics said in the movie is
Harley Quinn, and she might get her own spin off movie, etcetera.
So I am curious from listeners who are in the
know what they think about her portrayal in that film,
because more broadly, I would be curious, um to see

(50:14):
whether and how the dynamics and motivations of female villains
changes it all in more ensemble roles where they are
usually the only female villain in the room, surrounded by
their their dude villain friends um or they might be
one of two. But I'm just curious from from listeners

(50:36):
if that changes changes things at all, or if they're
still just kind of the same but hanging out with
batty friends. Yeah. And you know, we've talked a lot
about ambition and female power and the fears around it,
and Sarah Gailey over at Tour wrote that the dividing
line between a protagonist and a villainist typically ends up

(50:59):
the villainous actually gets what she's been working for, meaning power.
And you know, still, what we've been talking about is
that what makes the villainous a villainous is that she's
still striving for more. She's still striving for more power
um typically over the protagonist or the heroine, And Gaily writes,

(51:23):
somewhere in there, they stop caring about what other people think,
and they get what they want, and they turn it
into cautionary tales. Something bad is waiting for the woman
who goes that way. We believe it and we repeat it.
I mean, we're basically trained through everything from folk tales
to being read stories as we're growing up, to watching

(51:44):
movies now as grown ups trying to catch up on
nineties pop culture, we're told that women with power are
to be we're to be suspicious of them. Well, and
that up until recently. I do think the narrative is
changing um, in part because of major successes like Frozen Um.
But for so long, the underlying message was that really

(52:09):
the only honorable aim for a woman would be to
find her prince charming. Yes, to be quiet and sweet
and modestly dressed and wait for the hero to come
save you in the tower, be the damsel in distress,
rather than doing it for yourself, like Maleficent with a
head dress. That's right. I wonder if I could start

(52:32):
wearing a head dress. Listen, you can. The only thing
stopping you it was getting getting a head dress. You're right.
Maybe I could just get like a fascinator, you know,
maybe you know Holly from stuff you missed in history
class can hook you up. I know, But I just
always wear a T shirt and jeans. Would it be weird? Maybe?
If it's would be like your flair? You know, you're

(52:54):
like how pick up artists are encouraged to always like
wear something that will spark conversation, So years can be
a fascinator. I think I have killed this idea for
you now. Yeah. Also, my soul, that's fine, I'm turning
into a villainess as we speak. But because of all
of these rich layers and convention defiance that these villainesses

(53:20):
tend to exhibit, a lot of people are calling for
more of them and more fleshed out, more interesting female villains,
Like give us more. Yeah, I know, I mean, I
feel like we typically have been so starved for women
who don't fall into stereotypical save the damsel in distress
categories that of course we would be excited to see

(53:43):
women in these crazy villainess roles. I mean, I would
argue that, like, maybe we should just get more three
dimensional women characters in general, rather than having them need
to be amazing amy from Gone Girl. Well, and one
thing we haven't mentioned that we absolutely need to highlight
is how, arguably, nowhere else in mainstream cinema big screen,

(54:09):
small screen do you so reliably see any sort of
body diversity like you do with villainess is now. Of course,
if they are the more sexualized cat suit wearing ones,
they're gonna look, you know, like supermodels are gonna look
like halle Berry. But when you think about the Sanderson

(54:31):
sisters and Ursula, you know you do have fuller figured
women in there now. Of course, it also says something
about the fact that they are deviating from you know,
that uh thin ideal, and that also says a lot
about our fat phobic society for sure. But that's also
a convincing argument to see more of them and to

(54:54):
also have them be more three dimensional. Yes, yes, because,
as we've clearly been talking king about, even though the
Sanderson's sisters are villains and they're evil, we love them.
I love those women, even though you know all your
faiths are problematic. Um. And Kelsey McKenney over at vox says, yeah. Maybe. Um.

(55:15):
She argues that, yes, male villains have tended to get
the juicier, more complex roles, with fleshed out backstories and
rich motivations. Um. Possibly, she says, because we love the
bad boys. We love complicated, difficult, evil genius men. She
does point out by the way that whole entire books
have been dedicated to pop cultures difficult men. I feel

(55:37):
like there's one that has Tony soprano in the title. Well,
you do have the whole Wicked series, and how incredibly
successful that's been. That's true, which is all focused on
the Witches. Um yeah, and she uh McKenny goes back
through our pop culture villainous history and says that, yeah,

(55:58):
I mean they're great in their fabulous um, but they
have tended to be, like Maleficent, a little bit flatter.
They tend to be used as plot devices. Um like,
she says, the original Maleficent and um, the wicked Witch
of the West, who, yes, she has the motivation to
avenge her sister's death, but is really just kind of

(56:19):
shrieking and vengeful on screen before she melts um Or.
She points out Nurse Ratchet in One flu Over the
Cucous Nest, who's evil but she has no real backstory. Okay, Also,
I had totally forgotten even though I've read the book
and seen the film. In One flu Over the Cuckoo's Nest,
Nurse Ratchet ends up getting hers at the end in

(56:43):
the most horrifying way. Like, yes, she is pure evil
and she treats patients in this psychiatric word terribly um,
but her come upance is like very close to sexual assault.
So to. At the end of the film, Randall, who's
played by Jack Nicholson um ends up getting in a

(57:06):
brawl with Nurse Ratchett and he rips her uniform and
I can't remember if it's like more graphic in the book,
but he yeah, like tears her clothes off, and it's
just it's very violent. And while okay, she's she's horrible. Um,

(57:28):
female villains having their come up and be sexual violence
is not cool like that that says a lot about
just like an outright hatred for women across the board.
But I mean, I think that that ties in and
meshes perfectly with all of those theories about femininity and

(57:51):
sexuality being deceitful and a disguise used to tempt the
helpless pure man. Well and and Nurse Ratchet is such
the opposite of the stereotypical like nurturing perhaps kind of
sexy nurse. And also the fight between them is precipitated
by Randall, like sneaking to women into the hospital. Um.

(58:15):
So anyway, I had I had kind of blocked that out,
I think until I started reading for this episode, because
at first I was like, oh, yeah, Nurse Ratchet, she's awful,
and then I was like oh wait, but then then
at the end things get very very uncomfortable and not okay. Yeah,
And I mean, I I think you know a lot
of what you were talking about with body representation and

(58:37):
you know, just having women who look different and speak
differently and act differently than the traditional heroin on screen.
I think a lot of that goes to just under
representation of women in general, um and how we do
tend to with the way that women are represented on screen.
It is so easy still to fall back on tropes

(58:59):
to punish women for their sexuality or or breaking gender
norms and uh. This was also coming from mckenny's box piece.
She says that male characters outnumber female characters three to
one in family films, so like a Disney movie, and
of male TV characters are shown on the job in

(59:20):
comparison to just twenty of female characters. So women either
aren't there or when they are there, they're not shown
in positions of power. We're seeking power. But some would
argue that it's definitely getting better, not necessarily because we're
seeing um more three dimensional maleficens everywhere, but because of

(59:41):
the rise of the female anti hero. Oh my god,
my favorite anti hero right now is Phoebe waller Bridge
on fleabag O You and Me both girl. Oh, I
Binge watched there's six episodes on Amazon. I Binge watched it.
I I belly laugh the entire time I was watching that,

(01:00:02):
And at the end the last episode, I was alternating
between laughing and sobbing like a crazy person. It was
such a good show. She is such an amazing character.
I'm a little obsessed. And I just saw an article
where was it? Was it on Refinery I just saw
an article about what her lipstick shade is on that
TV show. Such a good lipshade. Oh yeah, she's wearing

(01:00:24):
the statement lip um. I would also like to give
a shout out to Sharon Horgan, who stars in Catastrophe
UM and she's also the showrunner of Sarah Jessica Parker's
new HBO show Divorce, which I'm not loving, but I
love Sharon Horgan. She's she's hilarious. I mean, if you

(01:00:47):
can share the screen with Rob Delaney and uh, hold
your own, it's just amazing. And their chemistry is fantastic,
and she is flawed and three dimensional and wonderful. Well,
and that you said something, it's so key and it's flawed.
And whether you're a villain or an anti hero, and

(01:01:09):
typically if it's not a fairy tale anti hero equates
to just regular woman with flaws and bumps and bruises
and all. But um McKenney writes about how when you
don't let women be either the villain or just the
flawed anti hero, that ties into ideas about benevolent sexism,

(01:01:31):
that like, make sure if we're gonna have a heroine,
she's going to be upstanding and you know, pure and
innocent and in need of help. You know, we can't.
We can't let the woman hero have flaws and potentially
be angry. Well, that's why Jessica Jones is such a
refreshing change from all of that too. Although still all

(01:01:53):
the people that we've been naming so far white. Yeah,
so we've still got catching up to you. Well, and
let me tell you so I noticed this as I was,
you know, pulling notes out of all of these sources
that we read, and I was like, where are the
black women? Where are the Asian women? Like? And so
I I did some searches on comic book sites. But listeners,

(01:02:17):
I need your help because I am not a comic
book person. And so I was specifically googling, for instance,
black comic book supervillains, and I came across a couple
of names. But when I tried to search for them elsewhere,
like they either weren't true villains or I couldn't find
more and better fleshed out info well. On TV, though,

(01:02:42):
we do have women of color being anti heroes. You've
got Cookie on Empire, and you have Analyst Keating in
How to get Away with Murder. There are times for
sure when you could argue that Olivia Pope is an
anti hero. Is the show Gotham still on because Jada
Pink GTT Smith played Fish Mooney on that show. That's

(01:03:02):
a villain. I don't know if Gotham still on though,
I'm I'm not sure. I've never watched it. It's not
my cup of tea, but I know I know some
people love it, Gotham watchers. But okay, Kristen, Um, I
forgot to mention, you know when you talked about Nurse
Ratchet being punished in almost a sexual assault style way. Um,

(01:03:22):
that's one theory that Dan wall Over The Mary Sue
in June talked about that there are issues when it
comes to screenwriters grappling with how to defeat a villain
and that villain is a woman. Because typically when you've
got a villain, the bad guy and the good guy fighting.
It's fighting, and it's bloody, and it's violent, and it

(01:03:43):
can be scary and awful and the and the bad
guy ends up dying or whatever. Um. And so Dan
wall Is like, I just wonder if screenwriters are nervous
about having some big epic final scene battle between a
man and a woman and and his thing, I know,
Kristen shaking her head walls. Thing that he argues is like,

(01:04:04):
if that really is what it is, because that's just
a theory that he's wondering about. Just right, write better
stories that don't have to involve punishing nurse Ratchet by
taking her clothes off or whatever. Yeah, there are all
other forms of confrontation that might not necessarily involve violence
a So, yeah, be more creative. Also, uh talked to
Joss Weeden because he made Buffy the Vampire Slayer if

(01:04:27):
he can make a seven season hit show where Buffy
is getting beaten up sometimes, I mean granted, and she's
defending herself, but like when early in uh, what is
it in the second season when spoiler alert she and
Angel fight, it is harrowing to watch. Um. And the

(01:04:49):
same with Jessica Jones, where like she's fighting, um, and
it can be difficult to watch, but there's a difference
between scenes of women fighting and depictions of violence against women. Yes,
which also going back to Casino right quick, Oh my god,

(01:05:10):
there's a little bit of that in there, which is
I just don't. I don't have the stomach for it anymore.
My threshold is so low for that, I can't. So,
I mean, we need better villains, We need people to
write better villains, but we also just need people to
write better women right well. And something really telling about

(01:05:32):
some of the shows that we've been talking about recently,
with say Scandal, how to Get Away with Murder, Um,
you have a woman of color who's a showrunner. You've
got Shonda rhymes with Jessica Jones, you have also a
woman's show runner, and they just announced for season two
every single episode will be directed by a woman. Like
this is why diversity is not just a buzzword that

(01:05:53):
it matters. And same thing for Black Panther and tanahassee
Coates coming in and taking that over and completely reimagining
that world with a black superhero at the center, because
maybe now we can get more stories that reflect richer
inner lives, but also don't just fall back on tropes

(01:06:16):
about woman as sexy equals bad and dangerous, woman as
ambitious equals dangerous, woman as anything over size, too bad,
and over the age of what like, which means that
you and I are just old hags. Yeah, so, who

(01:06:38):
are your favorite villains? Listeners? Were there any that we
didn't mention? I'm sure there are who you were hoping
that we would cover, but we didn't. Let us know.
Help us fill in our our villainous cannon. And we'd
love to know all of your thoughts. We know so
many of you are pop culture junkies, so give us
all of your insights. Mom Stuff at how Stuff Work

(01:07:00):
dot com is our email address. You can also tweet
us at Mom's Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook. And
we've got a couple of messages to share with you
when we come right back from a quick break. We
have some letters here about a woman who has decidedly

(01:07:21):
a hero. I have a letter here from Polly in
response to our Shirley Chisholm episode. She says, the first
I heard of Shirley Chisen was on a trip to
New York, where I wandered into a Brooklyn Delhi alone
and was grace to sit with a sweet older fellow
while I devoured my pastrami. He told me how he'd
worked right beside the late great unbossed and unbought Chishlm

(01:07:43):
in her campaigns. That man had the twinkliest twinkle in
his eye as he taught me about her. Flash forward
a year and I'm a field organizer for Denise Juno
to take Montana's soul seat in the House of Representatives.
Who I noticed you gave a shout out to on
your Facebook page? What's so special a out? Her potential
nomination comes not only from the fact that she's a
two term state superintendent who radically lifted graduation rates on reservations,

(01:08:08):
or that she would be the first American Indian and
not to mention, lesbian woman elected to Congress, but that
she'd be taking the seat on the one hundredth anniversary
of the first woman ever being elected to the House
of Representatives. And that's right. It was Montana who voted
Jeanette Rankin into office in nineteen sixteen, before women even
won the right to vote nationally. Montana has not sent

(01:08:30):
a woman to Congress in a hundred years, and it's
about time, I seriously could not get through the hours
of canvassing all over my city without listening to Sminty
between the doors I knock on. I always enjoy pressing
play on my phone after suffering thinly veiled racist, sexist,
homophobic reasons that a person at the door won't vote
for Denise to know, I just love skipping past the

(01:08:51):
men mowing their lawns as the two of you take
a nuanced, intersectional look at something or another. I've stopped
turning down the volume when I passed these men and
Trump sign in the yard. Be damned. I'll end my
letter with a current ZEITGEISTI quote from Jeanette Rankin, our
first ever congresswoman. If I had my life to live over,
I would do it all again, but this time I

(01:09:12):
would be nastier. And that, my friends, is what we
call a good omen for Hillary's nomination. All my best, Polly,
I love that quote. I want that cross stitched. I
bet it's already on at State. Okay, I have a
letter here from Leslie, also about Shirley Chisholm, and Leslie writes,

(01:09:34):
I'm not sure if you all know about this, but
surely is one of the few women who have an
official portrait in the US capital. Similarly to uh, fellow
badass Congresswoman Jeanette Rankin from Montana, Chisholm's portrait is extremely unique.
Not only does it depict her standing in front of
the White House in a fabulously loud printed dress, but

(01:09:57):
it's painted in such a beautiful, vivid color that it
man's attention. I used to be a Congressional intern and
would always make sure to point out the portrait on
tours that I would give to constituents, outlining her importance
in political history, not only as a woman, but a
woman of color, usually concluding that she was quote an
overall awesome lady, Caroline. We've got to take a field

(01:10:21):
trip now. Yeah, that portrait ps is incredible. I want
to see it. I love it in in person. Listeners,
Thank you so much for your delightful letters that charm
us every day mom. Stuff at how stuff works dot
com is where you can send them and for links
to all of our social media as well as all
of our blogs, videos and podcasts with our sources so

(01:10:42):
you can learn even more about Villain's head on over
to stuff Mom Never Told You dot com for more
on this and thousands of other topics. Visit how stuff
Works dot com, m