Women's Wanderlust

Women who travel alone have long raised suspicious eyebrows for bucking convention in order to see the world. Cristen and Caroline take a trip from the 19th-century Golden Age of Travel to today to find out why women travel solo and whether their independent itineraries are really a safety risk.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff Mob Never Told You. From how Supports
dot com. 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 and women adventurers who are going all

(00:24):
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 wanderlust, what it is like, whether

(00:45):
you are 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, uh,

(01:09):
women in a golden age of expiration so like the
nineteenth century, or whether we're talking about women in fourth
in the fourth century. Yeah. Susan Jacob 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 essentially repeat over and over again, Well,

(01:32):
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 emergencies were the only situations when it was

(01:55):
socially appropriate for a woman to set off on her
own and 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 century or whether we're talking about today, people are
going to make some crazy assumptions as far as like

(02:15):
her sexuality goes. For instance, people are gonna 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
is just desperate and lost in the world, or maybe both. Yeah,

(02:37):
and and Jacoby 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 a
man or family entourage. And this is something that Sarah
Heppola over at Salon echoed. She talks about how a

(03:00):
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 of others.
And it was really in the mid nineteenth century, which
is considered by some the golden Age of female travel,

(03:22):
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.
You have steamships and railroads that made travel more feasible. Yeah,
and this allows women to go forth to explore, to

(03:44):
learn to see the unseen, and therefore gained some autonomy
break some of those gender norms that status quo. And
this is particularly true though, and we would be remiss
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,

(04:06):
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
is very patronizing. It's very like racist, very racist as well.
But you know what a lot of women during that time,

(04:27):
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 into these you know, so
called uncivilized societies and feel as though they were at

(04:49):
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, and then
you have the element of white privilege going on. But
you also have the subtext of them starting to question

(05:11):
their female 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.
And this is something that Aziza Ahmed writing for the
post Colonial Studies Department at Emory talks about saying that

(05:34):
the East was seen and that's capital e 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
to celebrate because it's obviously like the indigenous people who

(05:55):
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 it's sort of the socio cultural element of travel
in the mid nineteenth century when these women were going
out in corsets and skirts and heavy clothes and hats

(06:20):
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
how that translated into the perception of how they were
treated at home. I mean, if we talk about explorers

(06:41):
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
lot of the time, if you were a woman who
had scientific or mathematical or anything leaning you you kind

(07:03):
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 just
being a wealthy woman traveling. And there were a lot
of popular women travel writers at this time, which is
which is a little surprising that they were so well received,

(07:25):
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
travel writing, which again tended toward objectifying indigenous people and

(07:47):
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 applies 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
native people's seem more savage or uh, sort of outside

(08:09):
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 Defriends eighteen sixty three
satiric Listings from Low Latitudes, which basically makes fun of
this trend of women travel writers and their travel logs.

(08:31):
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
era's upper class female travelers in their wide eyed, sort

(08:54):
of naive and shocked observations about the people that they
encountered in foreign land. 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 stuff
about traveling and how you're so special and how they're

(09:15):
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 they're very funny, Dufferin, You're quite a whit, But
it was she was inspired to write this after taking
a trip down the Nile, which was a very postionateing

(09:36):
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 woman going
into a foreign land to find herself. If only we

(09:58):
could talk to Dufferin. Yeah, if we could get different
on the podcast, that could clear some things up for us. Right.
But there's another book that we found from eighteen sixty
five called Women Adventurers, written by Meni Muriel Downey, in
which she profiles I think it's five women travelers of
the day, and she writes those in our book followed

(10:20):
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, then you know,
they realized so much more instead of just following men.

(10:42):
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 the themselves, discovery of
new places, discovery perhaps of a future husband or temporary lover. Right,

(11:07):
But I bet 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 er age of female travel and travel writing, because

(11:28):
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 seventy of the agents they pulled noted that more

(11:48):
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 in year old female. Yeah. And usually, uh, you know,
something has happened in her life that's pushed her out
on this journey, whether it's just divorced or maybe the

(12:09):
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

(12:29):
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 felt that before, just like I need to get

(12:52):
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 no, 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

(13:14):
up hopping 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

(13:36):
a similar 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 and

(14:01):
like you, 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,

(14:21):
I took a trip. I did study abroad the semester
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,

(14:43):
like I wish somebody was sitting across the table for me.
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 too eat Pray Love
about it, but speaking though of Eat Pray Love, one

(15:04):
of the reasons why we're seeing more women travel memoirs
than ever before it's become this hugely popular genre is
largely due to two thousand sevens Eat Pray Love by
Elizabeth Gilbert. And I read Eat Pray Love. It might
have been because I was also going through a breakup,

(15:26):
so reading the book was perfectly timed. But I enjoyed it.
Oh yeah, I know, it gets a lot of flak,
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

(15:51):
more high minded books out there, I mean, I enjoyed it.
I've never seen the movie. I heard it was, Yeah.
I I've seen parts of an 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

(16:11):
tell yours too if you want. Yeah, I will say
that I enjoyed Sheryl Strade's Wild more than Eat, Pray Love.
They're often held up as like the two women travel memoirs,
but they're such they're also so different yea, and written
from like very different times and places. And Sheryl Strad
goes out and hikes the Pacific Crest Trail, which is
far different than eating lots of pasta in Italy. Yeah,

(16:35):
And I mean people forget that women don't all have
one voice, 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
write these books or these essays are expected to write
about their transformation, the personal journey, that the emotion, and

(16:59):
not that that's bad, not that they shouldn't, but it
is 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

(17:21):
road in the middle of his travels. At least that's
what Lavinius Spaulding, 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

(17:44):
might be 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

(18:06):
for thirty hours at a time Anthony Bourdaine, but um,
I cannot stomach Samantha Brown. And I started thinking about
I'm like, oh no, my a woman hater 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 Bourdine, like maybe led by too feminist

(18:31):
minded 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 then 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

(18:52):
she's more touristy and more like, hey, guys, like pack
your Fannie pack or whatever, whereas Anthony Bourdaine is very
much like gonna 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 to

(19:14):
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, so, I
I think because we still even today, there is the

(19:37):
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 it 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 jumping

(20:00):
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 that
that I feel are like hyper repressive. Instead, a traveler
would go in and say, oh, no, actually, I am

(20:22):
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
to these differences in at least how travel writing by
men and women is marketed. Straight herself has talked about

(20:44):
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
and this goes for writing by women in general often
is pigeonholed as being very particular and only for women. Um,

(21:07):
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
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

(21:28):
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
was was not even given the broad audience of women.
Hers was pigeonholed as African American studies. And she's like,

(21:49):
I'm not some anthropological like study you'r 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 travel book, not an African American studies book. But
that also touches on our conversations about, you know, women

(22:10):
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 transformational and also terrifying. And so that first
theme of transformation is one that we've heard a lot about.

(22:33):
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 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

(22:54):
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 Heppola
at Salon, who we sited 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

(23:15):
philip Povic at The Guardian writing about how I think
it was post breakup she went to Europe and Freedman,
who we site all the time on the podcast. She's
essentially the patron saint of Cementthi at this point. But
she similarly talks 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.

(23:38):
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 female hitchhiking about how you, as a woman,
you know, are much more likely to be hit by
a car than you are to be killed and raped

(24:00):
a hitchhiking, 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 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,

(24:25):
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 have we
been told since we were we children to never accept
her hide from strangers. Yeah, yeah, I I don't know.
I don't know. She she does point out, like we've

(24:46):
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,
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 a white female. And

(25:10):
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 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,

(25:30):
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,
not terrifying. Even though we are often warned over and
over again that oh, if you are a woman traveling alone,

(25:51):
you had better watch out. You better put on a ring,
better get a ripe whistle, get too, and keep it
in your mouth at all. Yeah, get some bare repellent
because it is a grizzly world out there. I mean,
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

(26:15):
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
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

(26:37):
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
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

(26:58):
by myself over and 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
the dumps because I don't have any underwear, you know,
Like I have nothing and I'm by myself and it's

(27:18):
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
the next couple of hours? And so she and I

(27:39):
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 went our separate ways,
but it was great to have that experience of kind
of enjoying a foreign country and a new city with
someone so you could rely on that that extra presence,

(28:03):
but then taking your own way and then diving deeper
into all of these things you want to learn more about. Yeah,
I've 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
to call someone to meet up with, because there comes

(28:24):
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 discussing women traveling alone, which is danger. Danger. You've

(28:48):
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 things at home either. Yeah. I mean,
when you look at the statistics of how dangerous travel

(29:12):
for women actually is compared to how much we hear
about how what a terrible idea, essentially it is because
we're just like putting ourselves at risk for the worst
possible things to happen to us. Apparently there's such a
vast gulf between the reality of traveling alone and what

(29:34):
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 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

(29:56):
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 that you know, yes, be smart about it, um,
But I also feel like they're there's this undercurrent of

(30:16):
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 worst case scenario happens, the blame is immediately focused
on the solo female traveler of well, why was she

(30:37):
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 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

(30:59):
allowing the inch 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
New York Times talked about of how, if, and when
a white female traveler, in particular, if something happens to her,

(31:24):
it's often amplified by the media, which makes individual incidents
seem like part of a larger pattern. Um and Christina Finch,
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.

(31:47):
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.
And then that leads us, of course to the story
of Sarrise Era, who in was murdered while traveling alone
in Turkey. And so there's a lot of handwringing around this,

(32:08):
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 and it got a very
fast 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

(32:28):
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 traveling by herself. And people seemed so outraged,
particularly at her for traveling because she not only was

(32:50):
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 at mistrust of the
woman traveling alone. 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,

(33:11):
but more level headed responses to that admittedly horrific incident.
It's the fact that when you look at things like
domestic violence rates, murder rates, and sexual assault rates in
the US, a lot of times there is a statistically
greater chance of the worst case scenario happening at home

(33:31):
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 it was either five or ten year
long period, And Sierra was a New Yorker, which meant

(33:53):
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, And when we look over to Dysan McClain,
who's the former New York Times Frugal Traveler columnist, she

(34:14):
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 tend to be more protective of traveling women,
particularly those women that they see traveling by themselves. Now,

(34:34):
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 are being a respectful traveler, tourists, whatever you
wanna call it, Yeah, a lot of women travelers talk

(34:59):
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 rather to re examine, Okay, how
realistic is this overwhelming fear of women traveling alone? Is

(35:19):
this rooted in reality or rooted in our fears about
women traveling alone, Because I think one of the biggest
fears um, and I've felt this spear 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 yourself out in the world, in a

(35:41):
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 on all sexual assaults reported by female travelers,

(36:05):
but The New York Times reports that from two thousand
twelve to two thousand thirteen, three British travelers requested consular
assistance after alleged sexual attacks. For comparison, the Rape Crisis
England and Whales Center estimates that thousand women are raped

(36:27):
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 on their own? Yeah, I mean, I do think
it says a lot about how society or societies view

(36:48):
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 said that. There are situations where, whether you're at
home or abroad, honestly, you know, you just want to

(37:09):
be smart and be aware, and so there are some
tips to keep in mind when you are traveling by yourself. Um.
One that Jody 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
succumbing to the fear. She recommends carrying a rubber doorstop

(37:31):
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 in a lot of travel tip blogs.
Don't give away details about what you're staying to strangers,
Be careful with your eye contact, and maybe option wearing sunglasses.

(37:53):
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
some big old sunglasses. Should you wear your sunglasses at night?

(38:14):
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
the country, knowing the culture, and on top of that,

(38:35):
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 hostile off the beaten path that might
not have twenty four hour security. Um and I think

(38:56):
those are one of the things where it's not so
much fearmongering, but that's a basic safety measure. But 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 hostiles instead, stayed with strangers,
slept in a room in on the west coast of

(39:18):
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 at I shure 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
actually in the New York Times Frugal Traveler column, which

(39:42):
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
a don because you're a guy and you can travel anywhere.

(40:03):
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,

(40:24):
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 where a wedding ring real or fake and even

(40:48):
as a travel expert, Rick Steve's suggested carry a picture
of a real or fake husband, And I feel so
conflicted about this one, particularly going to the the extent
of carrying a photo of a husband, because it's yet
another example of whether you are abroad or if you

(41:09):
are at a bar down the street, where if someone
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 gotta say I have a boyfriend. You need to

(41:30):
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,

(41:51):
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 got to wear
your sunglasses and maybe you got to wear a wedding
ring well, and I could see, Okay, I could see
if I was traveling alone, and particularly if I wanted

(42:14):
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,
it serves like it put a radar shield around you. Um.

(42:36):
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
me about taking up an entire booth in a pub
by myself. Like, listen, I'm sorry that I'm not really

(42:57):
caring about etiquette right now. As far as where I said,
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 tale that
it is okay out there in the world. It's awesome,
it's Hi. I enjoyed. I super enjoyed traveling by myself well.

(43:21):
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. You
could sit in that booth at the pub in Ireland
as long as you wanted, Caroline, well until those guys

(43:41):
so they until they were complaining too gladly. 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. Hi, this is absolutely something that I
experienced when I was on the West coast of Ireland.
I wandered into this pub and I didn't have any cash,
but they had a twenty five euro credit card minimum, Like,

(44:01):
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 minimum yet?
And this couple next to me, here's my accent, and

(44:22):
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 Duelin, opened to stained glass
shop and lived above it. And they were so sad

(44:42):
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, very

(45:06):
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 that you're going
to meet in a good way. In a good way. Yeah. Um.

(45:27):
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 are likelier to
have a tampon on you. And she talks about how
tampons can serve as the you know, build the bridge

(45:49):
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 had as one and hands it to you, it's
almost as if you can hear the angels saying 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

(46:10):
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 out 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

(46:33):
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 encourage

(46:59):
people to do it, and there's plenty of resources out
there for you to learn about traveling, whether you're traveling
solo or 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?

(47:20):
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,
you don't know, but yeah, they're all sorts of websites

(47:41):
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.

(48:04):
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 strikeout on your own to
climb that mountain. So there's there's just everything in between.

(48:25):
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

(48:45):
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 just 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,

(49:08):
after this podcast, I am ready to go somewhere do it.
My boyfriend might be like, hey, 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, yeah,
and then swap our swap our stories. But now we
want to hear your stories and not just women, any

(49:28):
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 es
on Facebook and we have a couple of messages to
share about our episode on World War two and Rosie

(49:50):
the riveters right now, So Caroline, I have one here
from Megan, who writes My maternal and pa dropped out
of high school in nineteen forty 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

(50:12):
working due to her age. She did take part in
scrap metal drives and gardened 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 Oakridge

(50:33):
were not permitted 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

(50:56):
soldier boyfriend, had a couple of kids, worked as a
hospital nurse and collects at 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. Yeah, so thanks so much Megan

(51:17):
for sharing those stories. And Vernell, 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 stationed 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,

(51:41):
being in 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 Smithsonian. Her name

(52:02):
is Mary Taylor. 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,
great aunts and well, if you have cool stories about
your Rose of the Riveter grandmother, great aunt, or travel stories,
you want to hear all of them. Mom stuff at

(52:23):
how stuff 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

(52:44):
of other topics, does it how stuff works dot com