SMNTY Classics: Wanderlust

A & B revisit a classic SMNTY episode by Cristen and Caroline about solo travel.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hi, this is Annie and this is Budget and you're
listening to stuff Mom never told you. And in this update, Uh,
we have been talking a lot lately about travel and

(00:26):
specifically recently were we released an episode on traveling alone
as a woman, and Kristen and Caroline did an episode
on this a couple of years ago where they looked
into the history of it, kind of where did it start,
that the concern and fear around it, and then there
was a golden age of it. Um so kind of

(00:48):
a history bent to maybe give more context to the
modern day stuff that Bridget and I talked about in
our recent episode. Yes, so we hope you enjoyed. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline
And over the past few weeks on the podcast, we
have been delving into the world of women in exploration

(01:10):
and women adventurers who are going all around the world
doing all sorts of incredible things. And to close out
this series, partially because it's summer travel season and partially
because it just seems like the right and natural thing
to talk about, is the issue of women traveling alone,
women's wander lust, what it is like whether you are

(01:34):
a stem explorer or someone who wants to climb the
highest mountain in the world, or not. Just women leaving
their homes to see something they have never seen and
doing that alone. It's it's a super big deal to
a lot of people for women to be traveling by themselves,
whether we're talking about women today, women in the golden

(01:58):
age of exploration, so like the nineteenth century, or whether
we're talking about women in fourth in the fourth century. Yeah,
Susan Jacobi at The New York Times writes about how
women traveling alone has always been looked at a little
suspiciously because there immediately all of these questions raised that

(02:18):
essentially repeat over and over again. Well why would a
woman want to travel alone? What is wrong with her?
And she mentions how in the fourth century, Christian pilgrims
were the first quote unquote respectable women who traveled alone,
and really, for a long time, religious pilgrimages and family

(02:38):
emergencies were the only situations when it was socially appropriate
for a woman to set off on her own without
any kind of chaperone or male companion. Yeah, God forbid
a woman travels without some sort of male protection, because
everybody's going to assume, whether we're talking about the fourth

(02:59):
century or where we're talking about today, people are going
to make some crazy assumptions as far as like her
sexuality goes. For instance, people are going to think like
she's a loose woman, that uterus is floating about, making
her crazy, or she's just terribly lonely. She's either she's
either hyper sexual and looking for anonymous sex, or she

(03:20):
is just desperate and lost in the world, or maybe both.
Yeah and and Jacobi writes about these this this trope
of the solo woman traveler and talks about how even
today we have these lingering, internalized stereotypes about what it
means for a woman to travel unencumbered and unaided by

(03:40):
a man or family entourage. And this is something that
Sarah Hepola over at Salon echoed. She talks about how
a woman traveling alone threatens tradition and propriety, and because
women often doubt themselves, we tend to stay towards safe
harbors and soft landings, hiding behind the needs and wants

(04:00):
of others. And it was really in the mid nineteenth century,
which is considered by some the golden age of female travel,
that more and more women particularly well healed women started
to brave away from those safe harbors and soft landings.
And it was partially due to advancements in transportation technology.

(04:22):
You have steamships and railroads that made travel more feasible. Yeah,
and this allows women to go forth to explore, to
learn to see the unseen and therefore gain some autonomy,
break some of those gender norms, that status quo. And
this is particularly true though, and we would be remiss

(04:43):
to skip over this. It's particularly true for white middle
class women. There's a lot of privilege at play when
you talk about exploration, particularly during this area of this era,
because when you look at men, for instance, white upper
class men traveling abroad, seeing the Empire, their heroes, their heroes,
and the way they talk about the quote unquote natives

(05:05):
is very patronizing. It's very like a racist, very racist
as well. But you know what a lot of women
during that time, especially the upper class white women who
were traveling the Empire as well. I mean, they weren't
that far off either, and they by leaving the gender
norms of the modern West, they were able to go

(05:29):
into these you know, so called uncivilized societies and feel
as though they were at the top of some power hierarchy. Yeah,
it was interesting that if you read a lot of
the travel women's travel writings at the time, a it
is usually coming from women who could afford to travel,
and so you have that element of privilege going on there,

(05:51):
and then you have the element of white privilege going on,
but you also have the subtext of them starting to
question they're email status, their gender role in the West
because in these other places, due to these elements of privilege,
they are higher on the hierarchy than they are at home.

(06:14):
And this is something that Aziza Ahmed, writing for the
post Colonial Studies Department at EMERY, talks about saying that
the East was seen and that's capital East. The East
was seen as a place for women to regain power
through race, which was lost at home because of gender.
And while that is that's not that's not necessarily something

(06:38):
to celebrate because it's obviously like the Indigenous people who
are being thrown under the bus, uh for the sake
of a woman finding herself a little bit more. But
but it's it's an interesting snapshot of the time of
how and sort of the socio cultural element of travel
in the mid nineteenth century, and these women were going

(07:01):
out in corsets and skirts and heavy clothes and hats
and going into these what they would call uncivilized foreign lens. Well,
you know, Kristen, you mentioned so as they go to
other lands and travel and see other things, and they
they find themselves on top of this perceived hierarchy, and

(07:21):
how that translated into the perception of how they were
treated at home. I mean, if we talk about explorers
the way we have defined it so far in this
series explores being those people who have to go out
and they have to find answers. I mean, it's not
as if women who did and wanted to research, It's
not like they were welcomed into explorers groups. So a

(07:43):
lot of the time, if you were a woman who
had scientific or mathematical or anything leaning you you kind
of did have to pick up and leave and go
elsewhere to perform research. Yeah, this was a lot of
kind of anthropological research happening under the guise of us
being a wealthy woman traveling. And there were a lot

(08:03):
of popular women travel writers at this time, which is
which is a little surprising that they were so well received,
But I guess it was because they were bringing back
news of an unknown land. And so you have people
like Isabella Bird Lady, Mary Wortley Montague, and Mary Kingsley
who wrote a lot and made their names in their

(08:27):
travel writing, which again tended toward objectifying indigenous people and
their quote unquote savage ways. And talking about these women's
writing um a lot of the time. And I'm not
saying that this supplies specifically to the women Christen decided,
but a lot of the times these women travel writers
would sort of maybe embellish a little, maybe make the

(08:50):
native people's seem more savage or uh, sort of outside
the norm than they really were. And so these travel
logs attracted a lot of attention and uh Rachel Friedman
over at Bitch cites Lady Helen de Friends eighteen sixty
three satiric Lispings from Low Latitudes, which basically makes fun

(09:13):
of this trend of women travel writers and their travel logs.
She writes about a trip made by the fictional Impulsia Gushington,
who when I first was skimming over this article, I
was like, there was a woman named Impulse. Okay, I
get it. I did the same thing. It's like, that's
the worst name, but I get it um, but impulse
THEA sort of stood in as a figure mocking the

(09:36):
era's upper class female travelers and their wide eyed, sort
of naive and shocked observations about the people that they
encountered in foreign lands. But it also served to sort
of I don't know, I think it kind of served
as a backlash to women having this freedom, like how
weird are you You're writing all of this like trite

(09:58):
stuff about traveling and how you're so a special on
how they're so shocking, and but the thing is dufferin
A is a woman writing this satire, and b was
inspired to write about Impulsia Gushington, which I don't know,
I find out a very funny Dufferin You're quite a whit,
But it was she was inspired to write this after

(10:19):
taking a trip down the Nile, which was a very
postioning to do at the time with her son, so
she herself a travel writer. To me, it read as
what today would be a satire on Eat, Pray, Love,
you know, essentially saying, oh, here we have another white

(10:39):
woman going into a foreign land to find herself. If
only we could talk to Dufferin, Yeah, if we could
get dfferent on the podcast that could clear some things
up for us. Right, But there is another book that
we found from eight sixty five called Woman Adventurers, written
by Meni Muriel Downey, in which she profiles I think

(11:00):
gets five women travelers of the day, and she writes
those in our book followed husbands and lovers for love,
so they say how much more might be made of
their stories if only they themselves were not the narrators. Basically,
she was saying, it's just too bad that these women
were not alone traveling, because if women are out alone traveling,

(11:23):
then you know, they realized so much more instead of
just following men. And that's still the refrain now, Yeah,
I mean absolutely every you know, when you read uh
travel essays by young women on various websites, various travel magazines, etcetera, etcetera,
you know a lot of them do talk about these
personal journeys of discovery, discovery of themselves, discovery of new places,

(11:47):
discovery perhaps of a future husband or temporary lover. Right,
But but how rich the experience was for them to
go on their own. Yeah, And for that reason, I
would say that in the early twenty first century where
we are today, that we might be in this golden

(12:07):
er age of female travel and travel writing because you
have more women than ever before traveling alone. Uh. And Friedman,
for instance, reported in New York Magazine a two thousand
thirteen poll of travel agents which found that it's much
more common for women to travel alone than men, and

(12:29):
seventy three of the agents they pulled noted that more
female travelers embark on solo trips in their male counterparts,
and the average age of a solo traveler is not
the young woman fresh out of college, but a forty
seven year old female. Yeah, and usually, uh, you know,
something has happened in her life that's pushed her out

(12:52):
on this journey, whether it's just divorced or maybe the
death of a loved one or parent. And I mean,
I think those reasons, even if those are things specific
to a certain age group, I mean, I think that
those major life changes are what push a lot of
people out into the world on a journey of discovery.
And that reminds me of reading that Bitch article by

(13:14):
Rachel Friedman in which she talks to a travel expert
who started leading workshops for women travelers and her main
demographic was women in their forties and fifties. Who Yeah,
I had like hit some kind of dramatic point in
their life and just felt the need to flee. And
I've felt that before, just like I need to get

(13:37):
on a plane and be in a place that looks
nothing like my home as soon as humanly possible. And
I don't want anyone I know to come with me. Yeah, now,
I um I after going through a breakup, well it
was actually like a super like tripoli doubly traumatic thing
of heartbreak for so many. Anyway, I ended up hopping

(13:59):
in the car and just driving to Charleston, South Carolina
by myself and just wandering around and eating all the
food and seeing all the sites because I was like,
I just don't want to I just don't want to
talk to anybody. I don't want to be at home,
you know, I want to go out and think about
things for a little while. Well and people might say,
but Caroline, weren't you so lonely eating all of the
food by yourself? No? No, Yeah, I did a similar

(14:21):
thing after a friend of mine died in a very
tragic car accident, and my knee jerk reaction was to
go to l a I'd never been there before, and
I went for my birthday. I also prefer to spend
my birthdays in places I have never been before because
it just makes planning so much easier. And like you,

(14:46):
I just wanted to be alone. I didn't want to
be around anyone. I wanted to observe and sort of
just be alone with my thoughts. And it felt and
it was lonely at times when you're surrounded by a
lot of people, especially I think if you're in morabituristy area.
But it was a good kind of loneliness. Yeah, I
think that's that's the thing. I you know, I um,
I took a trip. I did study abroad the semester

(15:09):
after I graduated college, which is weird, but that summer
I went to England and then after everybody else went
back to school, I stayed over there by myself for
a couple of weeks, just traveling and seeing the sites.
And yeah, you get these like pangs, especially around meal time,
like I wish somebody was sitting across the table for me.

(15:30):
But it's it's so nice. Also, it's it's it's a
good feeling. It's like pressing on a sore muscle almost
that You're like, I'm doing something for myself. I'm focusing inward.
I don't know not to sound to Eat Pray Love
about it. But speaking though of Eat Pray Love, one
of the reasons why we're seeing more women travel memoirs

(15:54):
than ever before. It's become this hugely popular genre is
largely due to two thousands evans, Eat Pray Love by
Elizabeth Gilbert. And I read Eat Pray Love. It might
have been because I was also going through a breakup,
so reading the book was perfectly timed. But I enjoyed it.
Oh yeah, I know it gets a lot of flak,

(16:16):
but I loved it and I cried. Yeah, I think.
I think it gets a lot of flak from people
who don't want who want to distance themselves from anything
that even looks or smells like chick lit. But Elizabeth
Gilbert is a very respectable writer, and while there are
more high minded books out there, I think I enjoyed it.

(16:39):
I've never seen the movie. I heard it was Yeah,
I I've seen parts of it on TV and it's
it's not great. But yeah, I think, Um, I don't know.
I think people need to not to get off on
a tangent I think people need to lighten up about
the book. It's her journey, it's her story. You can
tell yours too if you want. Yeah, I will say
that I enjoyed Sheryl Strad's Wild more than Eat, Prey Love.

(17:02):
They're often held up as like the two women travel memoirs,
but there's such They're also so different and written from
like very different times and places, And Sheryl straight goes
out and hikes the Pacific Crest Trail, which is far
different than eating lots of pasta in Italy. Yeah, and
I mean people forget that women don't all have one voice,

(17:25):
although a lot of times if you are a woman
travel writer, you're expected to have the voice of other
women travel writers. And so often women who are write
these books or these essays are expected to write about
their transformation, the personal journey, that the emotion and not
that that's bad, not that they shouldn't, but it is

(17:46):
interesting to see the contrast between what women do right
and are expected to write versus what men are expected
to write and what they end up publishing. Yeah, I
feel like women's travel memoirs are also expected to spring
from a place of extreme heartache and despair. Whereas we
can jump right in with a man on a road
in the middle of his travels. At least that's what

(18:08):
Lavinia Spalding, who was the editor of the two thousand
eleven Best Women's Travel Writing Anthology, reported. She said, a
lot of travel writing by men is focused on what
I saw, did eight, where I went, what goal I accomplished,
whereas with women, it's who I met, what I learned,
how I felt, how I changed. And that might be

(18:29):
due to men and women maybe traveling different, maybe traveling
for different reasons. Um, but it also might be due
to editors and publishers sort of pushing women travel writers
in that type of way. Well, this this got me
thinking about the travel shows, what types of travel shows
I enjoy watching, and like, I will watch for thirty

(18:50):
hours at a time Anthony Bourdain, but um, I cannot
stomach Samantha Brown, and I started thinking about him, like,
oh no, am I a woman? Hey her? And myself hater?
What's going on? Oh no? And then I thought no, no, no,
because I would watch a women a women's travel show too,
if it were led by a woman who was also
like Anthony Bourdaine, like maybe led by too feminist minded

(19:15):
young podcasters. But like if you put Janine Garoffalo on
an airplane and center overseas, I would totally watch that.
I'm not as interested in what Samantha Brown is selling,
you know, but does she is it? Because she has
more of a like a gender stereotypical approach. Is that
what it is? I don't know what it is. Maybe

(19:35):
she's more touristy and more like, hey, guys, like pack
your Fannie pack or whatever, whereas Anthony Bourdane's very much
like I'm going to go into this back alley squid
shop and I'm going to eat a bunch of squid
and then I'm going to go to a bar with
the squid shop owner. You know. It's it's very much
more of like a more of it off the beaten
path type thing. Well, and that's such a good distinction

(19:57):
to bring up between the traveler and the tourist, because
the tourist is what you never want to be, But
the traveler is the person that we you know, that
that you want to sit next to them at a
dinner party and hear all of their tales, whereas a
tourist you're going to be like, oh no, well, all, so,
I I think, because we still even today, there is

(20:20):
the danger of falling into that trap of still looking
at people in the country you visit as like an
exotic other, you know, And so there is that danger
of falling into that trap. And I I feel like,
and maybe I'm wrong, but a tourist is more likely
to fall into that trap versus someone who is a traveler,
who is more willing to more willing and desirous of

(20:42):
jumping into that culture learning all that they can, not
looking at it from like a patriarchal You're this exotic other.
I have to to encapsulate somehow and put into a box.
But I want to join you, yeah, or I need
to come and change your problematic gender norms that I
that that I feel like hyper repressive. Instead a traveler

(21:02):
would go in and say, oh no, actually, I Am
going to go hang out with the women and see
how they live their lives and not try to insert
myself into, uh, into their way of life, but rather
absorb it and learn about it. But getting back though

(21:28):
to these differences in at least how travel writing by
men and women is marketed. Straight herself has talked about
how male travel stories are often seen as universal, perhaps
because of the thing of how they tend to focus
on you know what I did saw eight, whereas women's

(21:50):
and this goes for writing by women in general often
is pigeonholed as being very particular and only for women. Um,
and that's one reason why when she was writing Wild,
she pushed for a gender neutral cover. So if you, uh,
you know, if you have a copy of Wild, you'll

(22:10):
see that there's a boot on the front. She was like,
I wanted I didn't want men on the subway to
be embarrassed having my book out reading it. Yeah, a
lot of women authors out there, travel writers talk about
how everybody wants everybody goes to pink first. They're like,
let's make a pink cover. One author talks about how
well I finally succeeded by getting a yellow cover. Another writer,
a woman of color, talks about how her travel book

(22:33):
was was not even given the broad audience of women.
Hers was pigeonholed as African Americans studies. And She's like,
I'm not some anthropological like study your you know, I'm
a woman travel writer, Like what are you talking about?
And I'm pretty sure the title of her book is
The Black Girl's Guide to Traveling, which clearly is a

(22:54):
travel book, not an African American studies book, but that
also touches our conversations about you know, women in literature
and marketing and all of that. But um it also
leads us to these two major themes that come up
with women's solo traveling, where it has to be both

(23:16):
transformational and also terrifying. And so that first theme of
transformation is one that we've heard a lot about. We've
already talked a lot about it. That often a woman's
journey that ends up being whether it's published or whether
it's just you know, a woman who's not a writer
going off and traveling. It's often sparked by some emotional

(23:37):
moment in her life or something something like heartache or
trauma that sets her off on this journey of self discovery.
And a lot of times, I feel like any women's
travel essay that you read, the resounding message is to
do it because it will transform you, and especially if
you do it alone. You have Sarah Hepola at Salon,

(23:57):
who we sided earlier, who talks about how she essentially
just got in her car and drove around the United
States for months alone, and you have Jill Philipovic at
the Guardian writing about how I think it was post
breakup she went to Europe and Freedman, who we cite
all the time on the podcast. She's essentially the patron
saint of Seminty at this point. But she similarly talks

(24:20):
about how when she was in her early twenties she
went traveling alone and she was nervous at first, but
so quickly relieved to be by herself. And so there's
that recurring theme over and over and over again of
travel fourth young woman for it will be transformative and
also feminist. Absolutely. Even Toby Israel at Salon talks about

(24:43):
female hitch hiking about how you as a woman, uh,
you know, are much more likely to be hit by
a car than you are to be killed and raped
while hitch hiking, And so she talks about how that
was a major she she overcame a major hurdle of
fear and trepidation when she decided to accept that for
that first hitchhiking offer, and how even though there were

(25:05):
some bumps along the way, that she was so glad
she did it. Yeah, and she ended up traveling more
than thirty seven thousand miles hitchhiking through Croatia, Slovenia, Austria,
and Germany, which I cannot fathom. I don't know if
my bravery extends to the point of hitchhiking, because whether
you're a male or female, you know, how many times

(25:26):
have we been told since we were we children to
never accept the hide from strangers? Yeah, yeah, I don't know.
I don't know. She she does point out, like we've
already said, she does point out that she had this
double pronged privilege of being female, so she was not
threatening to people who might stop and pick her up. Also,

(25:48):
people like couples and grandparents would stop because they felt
protective of this young white woman out on the side
of the road. But also that whole white thing where
she enjoys the privilege of being white female, and so
you know, other drivers don't, you know, feel threatened or whatever.
So she she points that out that there it's not
the same for everyone, right, Um, But what does seem

(26:12):
to be the same for a lot of solo female travelers,
at least according to a two thousand to study out
of the University of Florida, is that, yes, indeed, setting
out on your own is empowering. These researchers talked to
a number of women who had traveled on their own,
and they found that the women described the experiences is liberating,

(26:34):
not terrifying. Even though we're often warned over and over
again that oh, if you are a woman traveling alone,
you had better watch out. You better put on a ring,
better get a ripe whistle, get to get and cute
in your mouth. Alto, Yeah, just get some bare repellent,
because it is a grizzly world out there. I mean,

(26:55):
I think it's I think it's funny that they even
studied this. Well, yeah, I mean, and they found too
that after traveling alone, these women still prefer traveling alone
because it gave them more opportunities to make new friends.
Because when I went, for instance, I went on study
abroad in college with one of my best friends still

(27:17):
one of my best friends, and we had so much
fun together and we made lots of memories. But there
were also times that I know and like recognized as
it was happening that we were kind of so caught
up in like our own friendship, with like doing things together,
that we weren't making really friends outside of ourselves, which
could have been cool there. I mean, we ended up

(27:39):
doing that more once we had been there for a
little bit. Um, but I think there there can be
some missed opportunities. Yeah, Like I UM, when I was
by myself over in England and Ireland, I lost my leg.
I didn't lose the luggage, the airline lost the luggage.
And so I get to Ireland after being awake for
thirty six hours, and I'm feeling a little down in

(28:04):
the dumps because I don't have any underwear, you know,
like I have nothing, and I'm by myself and it's
raining because it's Ireland, and I'm just like, oh God.
So anyway, I'm walking up to Trinity College in Dublin,
and who should I see but this girl that I
did study abroad with. And I was like, oh, oh
you stayed too, Hello. Can we be best friends for

(28:26):
the next couple of hours. And so she and I
um went all over the city. We saw a bunch
of things together, we ate together, we talked to a
bunch of like the local restaurant owners, and gotten to
a bunch of great conversations. We eventually win our separate ways,
but it was great to have that experience of kind
of enjoying a foreign country and a new city with someone,

(28:49):
so you could rely on that that extra presence, but
then taking your own way and then diving deeper into
all of these things you want to learn more about. Yeah,
I never traveled abroad by myself. I've gone places in
the US, but usually I have some point of contact,
whether I'm staying with a friend or you know, somebody

(29:11):
to call someone to meet up with, because there comes
that point of the free time, the after the sun sets,
and is it safe to go out, where do you
go and eat alone? It can be I mean, it
can be kind of nerve racking. Yeah, And I mean
that leads us into the next major theme of anyone

(29:34):
discussing women traveling alone, which is danger. Danger. You've got
to wear all those rate whistles. Don't go out after dark, certainly,
don't go to clubs like watch your back, don't stay
on the first floor of a hotel. And while there
is merit to a lot of the travel advice, I mean, certainly,
don't be stupid, but you don't want to do stupid

(29:55):
things at home either. Yeah, I mean when you look
at the statistics of how dangerous travel for women actually
is compared to how much we hear about how what
what a terrible idea? Essentially, it is because we're just
like putting ourselves at risk for the worst possible things

(30:16):
to happen to us. Apparently there's such a vast gulf
between the reality of traveling alone and what we are
warned about traveling alone. And that's one reason that women
are likelier to plan, like to overplan excuse me, their itinerary,
because we're so nervous about that free time because everyone's

(30:37):
been telling us that we're going to be murdered and
or raped. Well, I don't know, I mean, I think,
I mean not to totally go off on a tangent,
but I think that having that free time is so awesome,
that unplanned free time is so awesome, just as long
as you are smart about it and you're paying attention
to your surroundings. Well, and I have a feeling too

(30:59):
that you know, yes, be smart about it, um, but
I also feel like there there's this undercurrent of victim
blaming in regard to the worst case scenario of being
murdered and or raped, which has happened. And I'm not
trying to make light of that. Um, but whenever the

(31:19):
worst case scenario happens, the blame is immediately focused on
the solo female traveler of well, why was she out
there alone to begin with? Right? An Alice Driver at
the Feminist Wire says that basically, by repeating these stories
over and over again and telling women not to go
out by themselves, we are limiting their movement. And I

(31:39):
would say that by then limiting women's movement, making them
too afraid to go out in the dark by themselves. Ever,
we're also not allowing that to become normalized. We're not
allowing the image of a woman at a cafe at night,
or at a club or wherever she is at night
by herself. We're not allowing that to become normalized. Well.
And then there's also this deeper level too, as The

(32:02):
New York Times talked about of how if and when
a white female traveler, in particular, if something happens to her,
it's often amplified by the media, which makes individual incidents
seem like part of a larger pattern. UM And Christina Finch,

(32:24):
who's the director of Amnesty Internationals Women's Human Rights Program,
told The New York Times on average, attacks against white
women worldwide receive more coverage than attacks against women of color.
And then on top of that, you also have um
the response to violence against Western tourists being met with
a much faster response than violence against local women, right,

(32:46):
and then that leads us, of course to the story
of Sarai Sierra, who in was murdered while traveling alone
in Turkey. And so there's a lot of handwringing around this,
I mean, admittedly horrific story about like why was she
even alone in the first place, what was she possibly thinking?
When in reality, like and it got a very fast

(33:07):
and strong police response in Turkey, but this was a guy.
This was like a crazy homeless man who tried to
kiss her and she fought back and then she threw
a rock at him, and he bashed her head in
with a rock basically, And so I mean, this is
something that could have happened to any woman, but it
happened to take place as violence against an American woman

(33:30):
traveling by herself, and people seemed so outraged, particularly at
her for traveling, because she not only was a woman
traveling alone, but she was also married, and people some
people were like, well, why wasn't your husband with you?
Why weren't you? Are you one of those going back
to that early trope, that mistrust of the woman traveling alone.

(33:50):
She must have just been out trying to cheat on
her husband. Why was she even talking to a man
in the first place. It's so victim blaming, yeah, But
more level headed responses to that admittedly horrific incident is
the fact that when you look at things like domestic
violence rates, murder rates, and sexual assault rates in the US,

(34:12):
a lot of times there is a statistically greater chance
of the worst case scenario happening at home rather than abroad.
So in Sierra's case, for instance, according to data collected
by the U. S. State Department, which keeps tabs on
violence against American tourists, it found that there had been
three murders of US tourists in Turkey, and I think

(34:35):
it was either five or ten year long period, And
Sierra was a New Yorker, which meant that in two
thousand eleven alone, there were five hundred and two murders.
So statistically speaking, in a way, she was actually safer
in Turkey than she was in New York City. Right,

(34:56):
And when we look over to Dysan McClain, who's the
former York Times Frugal Traveler columnist. She talks about how
she has actually felt safest in countries that tend to
have a more patriarchal or repressive society because those cultures
tend to have lower crime rates and the local women

(35:17):
tend to be more protective of traveling women, particularly those
women that they see traveling by themselves. Now, obviously, in
those kinds of societies, women travelers need to pay attention
to the clothes that they're wearing. They need to be
respectful of the local customs and not just try to
bulldoze in and say free the nipples. I'm just gonna
come in here and change everything. Um. And when you

(35:40):
are being a respectful traveler, tourists, whatever you wanna call it, Yeah,
it's a lot of women travelers talk about how local
women reach out to them and you know, try to
kind of give them help along the way. And this
is not to say thumbs up to super repressive patriarchal societies,
but either to re examine, Okay, how realistic is this

(36:05):
overwhelming fear of women traveling alone. Is this rooted in
reality or rooted in our fears about women traveling alone,
because I think one of the biggest fears um and
and I've felt this fear before as well of traveling alone,
is the risk of sexual assault. We made a joke
about rape whistles, but I think that you know, putting

(36:27):
yourself out in the world, in a in an unknown
place does can make you feel very vulnerable. But again,
when you look at the statistics, leaving your home doesn't
necessarily make you less safe or more at risk for
sexual assault. So, for instance, um, there isn't hard data

(36:49):
on all sexual assaults reported by female travelers, but the
New York Times reports that from two thousand and twelve
to two thousand thirteen, three British travelers requested consular assistance
after alleged sexual attacks. For comparison, the Rape Crisis England

(37:09):
and Whales Center estimates that thousand women are raped in
those countries every year. So yet, again, what are we
so afraid of? Is it reality or is it just
our concerns about the general vulnerability of women being out

(37:30):
on their own? Yeah, I mean, I do think it
says a lot about how society or societies view women
and how they move through those societies. Well, and it
could because it's that fear and the warning that we
shouldn't do that, and then if something happens, we are
the ones to blame. It's a bit rape culturally when
you think about it, and you know, we've we've already

(37:51):
said that. There are situations where, whether you're at home
or abroad, honestly you know you just want to be
smart and be aware, and so there are some to
keep in mind when you are traveling by yourself. Um.
One that Jodie Edinburgh at Legal Nomad brings up is
that it's a balance that you have to strike between
thinking smart and trying to stay safe and also not

(38:14):
succumbing to the fear. She recommends carrying a rubber doorstop
to use in your hotel room, a safety whistle, staying
in well lit areas, watching your drink, which is just
good advice for life. Dress conservatively. This is a common
refrain that we hear on a lot of travel tip blogs.
Don't give away details about what you're staying to strangers,

(38:37):
be careful with your eye contact, and maybe opt wearing sunglasses.
There's the example that one blog gave of being in
like Northern Europe versus southern Europe, and if you're in Italy,
there's the whole thing about eye contact and a smile
being considered an invitation to engage and that maybe if
you're not looking to engage in conversation, put on some

(38:58):
some big old sunglasses. Should you wear your sunglasses at night?
Like the song goes totally, And going back to that
University of Florida study that we talked about earlier, some
of the tips from the veteran women travelers who were
involved with that talked about how important it was to
really know where you're going, in the sense of knowing

(39:19):
the country, knowing the culture, and on top of that,
and this is stressed over and over and over again,
particularly for women traveling alone, to select accommodations in safer
parts of town. You might want to spend more money
on going to say, a name brand hotel, rather than
staying at a hostle off the beaten path that might

(39:39):
not have twenty four hour security. Um. And I think
those are one of the things where it's not so
much fearmongering, but that's just a basic safety measure that
I hate it. I hate it. I hate it because
like what I mean, I was a college student who
didn't have the money to stay in a hotel. I mean,
you know, so I I picked hostels instead, stayed with strangers,

(40:02):
slept in a room in on the west coast of
Ireland with like twenty other people, one of whom was
a ginormous man on the bunk below me who snored
all night. But when you're like like a terrible level
of tired, you can sleep through it, I assure you.
But um no, but I hate that advice that you
need to stay in a nicer hotel because that is
incredibly limiting. Well that's one thing that this came up

(40:24):
actually in the New York Times Frugal Traveler column, which
is written right now by a guy, and he gets
a lot of responses from people saying, we really need
to hear from women. There have been I think two
or three women before him who were at the helm
of the column, and you know, he hears from people
saying like, well, sure you can go and live on

(40:46):
a dime because you're a guy and you can travel anywhere.
And that might be more of a challenge for a
woman who really wants to be as take as many precautions,
I should say, as possible. I don't want to say
as safe as possible, because I feel like that also
still feeds into this whole, like, you know, threatening message
that women get who want to travel on their own.
But if you want to take as many precautions as possible,

(41:11):
staying at the nicer spot in a well lit area
is a big one. Yeah, just prepare yourself. Some hustles
like have dance parties all night. I'm just gonna warn
you about that. And on top of that, there is
an even more depressingly common piece of advice, which is
to wear a wedding ring, real or fake. And even

(41:35):
as a travel expert, Rick Steves suggested carry a picture
of a real or fake husband. And I feel so
conflicted about this one, particularly going to the extent of
carrying a photo of a husband, because it's yet another
example of whether you are abroad or if you are

(41:56):
at a bar down the street, where if some one
is giving you unwanted sexual attention, the quickest way to
stop it is to not say no, thanks, not interested,
but to rather say I have a boyfriend. I have
a husband. Even if you were to say, and it
is the truth, oh I have a girlfriend, won't stop it.
You got to say I have a boyfriend, you need

(42:16):
to show the presence of another male in your life.
And I want to hear from listeners on that one, because,
like I like, the feminist inside of me wants to
fight that one so much. But I mean, like we
said earlier, we can't go into other societies, other cultures,

(42:37):
you know, determined to change the way things are, because
we're just not. Yeah, it's not our job to go
and fight the patriarchy, right, and so it stinks. But
if you want to avoid hassle, you gotta wear your sunglasses,
and maybe you got to wear a wedding ring. Well,
And I could see, Okay, I could see if I

(42:58):
was traveling alone, and particularly if I wanted to go
out at night, then putting on the wedding ring, because
I feel like that's when it, you know, the fear
probably creeps in the most. Um, So if you wanted
to go have a nice dinner, have a drink at
a bar, maybe it would just kind of you know,

(43:18):
it serves like put a radar shield around you. Um.
But I mean I think too that just depends on
what country you're traveling in, what type of culture you're
traveling in. When I was traveling, I had zip zero
problems with people harassing me. The only time I was
harassed is when I had been up for thirty six
hours or so in Dublin and some guys were hassling

(43:39):
me about taking up an entire booth in a pub
by myself. Like, listen, I'm sorry that I'm not really
caring about etiquette right now as far as where I sit,
I'm just so tired. But no, they weren't. There was
no sexual advances there, so that's good. Yeah, because look,
you are yet another one of the women who have
traveled alone and come back to tell the aale that

(44:00):
it is okay out there in the world. It's awesome.
That's I I I enjoyed, I super enjoyed traveling by
myself well. And they're also advantages of being a solo
female traveler. I feel like a lot of times the
conversation stops at the fear factor, but there are plenty
of advantages, such as, first and foremost, being able to
see the world on your own terms and your own schedule.

(44:22):
You could sit in that booth at the pub in
Ireland as long as you wanted, Caroline, well, until those guys,
until they until they were complaining too loudly. Um. And
then there's the whole thing about women tending to get
invited to people's homes more often and maybe being more
protected by locals. I this is absolutely something that I
experienced when I was on the West Coast of Ireland.

(44:42):
I wandered into this pub and I didn't have any cash,
but they had a twenty five euro credit card minimum,
Like just kill me, right, So I was like, Okay,
give me all the fish and chips and as much
guinness as I can swallow. So I'm sitting there and
I'm like stuffed to the gills and I'm drunk because
I've been drinking all this guinness. And I walk up
to the bar and I'm like, have I reached the

(45:03):
minimum yet? And this couple next to me, here's my
accent and they start talking to me and they it
turns out they are a couple from New Jersey who
quit the rat race. Their kids were done with school,
they quit the rat race, moved to the West coast
of Ireland in this tiny town of Dulin, opened a
stained glass shop and lived above it. And they were

(45:27):
so sad to hear my story about losing my luggage
and that all I wanted to do was take a
hot shower after a day of traveling, and they were like,
well wait here, and the wife ran back to the
house and got me a towel so that I could
shower that night, and we just sat there at the
bar and talked. Turns out their son, I don't know
if he still is, but was a police officer from
around where I am from, in Georgia. So small world,

(45:51):
very small world. But I think there is something to
be said for being a woman traveling by yourself being
open to those experiences. I think it's important to not
shut yourself off, but to look and feel open to
talking to strangers absolutely, because you never know who you're
going to meet in a good way, in a good way. Yeah. Um.

(46:12):
One tip that was brought up by traveler Emily Baron
talking to the New York Times Frugal Traveler was that
one other advantage you might not think about of being
a woman traveling alone is that you were likelier to
have a tampon on you. And she talks about how
tampons can serve as the you know, build the bridge

(46:34):
between you and local women, because I mean, we've all
been there. If you are in a situation where your
period came, you don't have a tampon, and the woman
who has one and hands it to you, it's almost
as if you can hear the angels seeing like that. Oh,
and you're bonded immediately. And also if you break your nose,
you can shove one up your nose too. Yeah, they're

(46:56):
all sorts of survival uses for tampons. If you don't
believe me, google it. It's true. So I mean, guys,
obviously you can carry tampons too. It's just you know,
it might be if a guy hands at a woman
a tampon, a local woman a tampon, I don't know
if it would necessarily be a bridge builder in the
same way as if you or I were to hand

(47:18):
her one that might halt the conversation. Yeah, yeah I
could a little bit um. And then on top of
all of it, the advantages obviously are just the confidence building,
the personal transformation that we hear about so often. You
can go, you can eat, you can pray, you can
love if that's what you so desire. That was my
mom telling me about that. Yeah, I absolutely, I absolutely

(47:44):
encourage people to do it. And there's plenty of resources
out there for you to learn about traveling, whether you're
traveling solo with a friend whoever, if you want to
go do this as a lady explorer. Yeah, there are
so many women focus travel sites and travel magazines. Caroline,
didn't we read that women traveling is so hot right now? Yeah?

(48:04):
Consumer Affairs quoted. Uh, someone is saying that it's the
new trend in travel, to which I said, wrong. But yeah,
it's good to see that that more people are actually
paying attention to this this section of the population. Apparently
that woman had never heard of Impulsia Gushington, that's right.
I don't know, but yeah, they're all sorts of websites

(48:26):
out there for women's specific travel tips, such as Women's
Adventure Magazine. There's Wanderlust and Lipstick, which I know the
name might sound a little hokey, but it's actually really
good resource. There's Black Girl Travel. There's also You Go Girl,
which is from the author of the Black Woman's Book
of Travel and Adventure and Women on the Road, etcetera, etcetera.

(48:48):
I mean, really, it's all just a Google search away.
And what's so encouraging I think about it is that
when you google like these types of resources for women,
there's so many different kinds. There is stuff that's on
the girl group side, so you're going with a lot
of women. It's a journey of self discovery all the
way to like the rustic strike out on your own
to climb that mountain. So there's there's just everything in between.

(49:10):
And I like how people, whether you're a woman entrepreneur
starting a group like this or whatever. I like that
the fact that women are different is being recognized. Yeah. Yeah,
we want different things and we enjoy different things, and
that's fantastic. And I just love though I've honestly really

(49:30):
enjoyed just sitting here listening to your travel stories that
I've never heard before. And I love hearing and reading
other women's travel stories as well, because not to sound cheesy,
but they're very inspiring, you know, because it can be
I've been fearful before about hopping on a plane and
going to the other side of the world, probably why
I've never done it alone before. But I tell you what, Caroline,

(49:52):
after this podcast, I am ready to go somewhere do it.
My boyfriend might be Okay, what where are you going?
You and I should just go and then we'll just
split off and come back together at the end of it. Yeah,
and then swap our swap our stories. But now we
want to hear your stories and not just women. Any

(50:13):
solo traveling adventures and photos we would love to read
and to see, so please send us all of them.
Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com is our
email address. You can also tweet us places you've been
pictures at mom stuff Podcasts. You can also message us
on Facebook. And we have a couple of messages to
share about our episode on World War two and Rosie

(50:34):
the Riveters. So Caroline, I have one here from Megan,
who writes My maternal grandpa dropped out of high school
in nine two and fibbed about his age to enlist
in the Marines. While on leave in late forty four
or early forty five, he married my grandmother, who was
sixteen at the time and not working due to her age.

(50:57):
She did take part in scrap metal drives and arden extensively.
She became pregnant pretty much right away and didn't work
until the early nineteen fifties. However, her older sister, my
great aunt, did work. My family is from East Tennessee
and my aunt Vernell worked on the Manhattan Project. WHOA,
that's so cool. Workers in oak Ridge were not permitted

(51:18):
to tell friends and family that they worked for what
they were doing. Maryville, where my family lives. In oak
Ridge are some thirty miles apart, and it's possible my
family wasn't aware that the secret city existed. My aunt
has told me that none of the workers, including her,
had any idea they were building bombs. Each line of
production was subdivided and kept hidden from the other lines,
and when the war ended, she married her soldier boyfriend,

(51:40):
had a couple of kids, worked as a hospital nurse
and collects a pension from the government for her help
in aiding the war effort. Their oldest sister was a
war nurse and has unfortunately passed away. I know I've
heard some of her stories, but at the time I
was too young to realize the significance of what I
was hearing. WHOA, yeah, so thanks so Megan for sharing

(52:01):
those stories. And Ronell Well, I have one here from Laura.
She says. My great aunt, who I used to love
to visit, work during World War Two in a more
unusual setting. She was in the Air Force and station
for at least part of the time in Hawaii, where
she drew maps of enemy territory from descriptions given to
her by pilots. She was quote unquote older, being in

(52:24):
her mid twenties at the time, so I got the
impression that she had a higher rank than the young
men she was stationed with. I believe it was during
this time she interacted with some of the higher up people,
including Winston Churchill, as they needed to view her work. Also,
from what I understand, you can see some of her
work today at the Smithsonian. Her name is Mary Taylor.

(52:46):
Heis that's h I s E. So thank you, Laura.
I am so blown away by our cool listeners and
they're really cool grandmothers and great aunt and great aunts
and well, if you have cool stories about your Rosie
the riveter grandmother, great aunt or travel stories, we want
to hear all of them. Mom Stuff at how stuff

(53:07):
works dot com is where you can email us and
for links to all of our social media's as well
as all of our blogs, podcasts, and videos to perhaps
keep you entertained on your travels and beyond. There's one
place to go, and it's stuff Mom Never told You
dot Com For more on this and thousands of other topics,

(53:28):
Isn't How Stuff Works dot com