July 7, 2021 • 36 mins
Today, we hear what happened to Cathy at the height of the comic’s popularity in the late 1980s until now. Cathy Guisewite tells Jamie all!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
She burst into the world in nineteen seventy six. She's
at what. She's out on dates and she don't like politics.
From Mama and urban to with feminist friends. She's fighting
all the stands it with chocolate and head. Kathy, She's
fighting back to stress with success. Let's cut her some slack, oh, Kathy, Kathy, Cathy,
(00:26):
She's gotta like go in all shame. An idea for
a Kathy TV show had been in place since the
(00:48):
early eighties and a piece from the Tennessee in two.
The proposed version of the show would have been live
action with only animated titles, which honestly sounds tight. What's
also very a frint from the pitch and the actual
product that came out five years later is the hook
of the show. According to John McMahon of producing partner
Johnny Carson Productions, Kathy would be quote unquote the Mary
(01:11):
Tyler Moore of the eighties. When the fully animated specials
aired five years later, the reality was a bit different.
Kathy of these specials is not particularly empowered, but Kathy
guys White remained deeply involved in the creative throughout all
three specials. She wrote, an executive produced, Kathy, Kathy's Last Resort,
(01:33):
and Kathy's Valentine, which were all built off storylines that
had previously appeared in the comic. As Kathy tells it,
she had a lot of creative control in this process,
but the high level decisions were made by CBS executives
and they played it very safe. And by safe I
mean Irvings and all of them. The Kathy character was
(01:54):
voiced by actor Kathleen will Hoyt why not best as
the voice of Pepperran. Although I'm probably millennializing myself there,
here's what she sounds like. My name is Cathy. I
spend last Saturday night celebrating my Employee of the Year
nomination with a box of Oreo cookies. The first special,
titled Kathy, aired on CPS in May. It follows Kathy
(02:18):
as she's set to receive an award at work and
is putting in a lot of overtime. Irving says that
he isn't going to her awards ceremony, which her friends, family,
and co workers disapprove of. Kathy tries to make the
best of it, saying that she's an independent woman, but
she's really disappointed. She then surprises Irving at his apartment
only to find him cheating on her. After five years
(02:41):
in a relationship, and no, he still can't say I
love you. I cannot believe it. Mom. Does a man
have to say he cared for me in exactly your
words or doesn't count? We have five solid years of
avoiding any kind of actual burble commitment with each other. Mom?
Did a tressfertors liked to account for nothing? Well, you
are wrong, Mom, you are wrong. Wrong, I hated. Kathy
(03:08):
is completely humiliated and she dumps him. She goes on
a date with another guy to try to bounce back,
but he sucks. On the night of her award, Cathy
decides to show up in her robe and rollers still
upset that Irving hasn't called her. Eventually, Irving does call
and Cathy takes him back. Immediately they make up and
it ends like this. I'm trying to learn not to
(03:30):
be so moto, and I'm going to try to learn
that even employees of the Year have to make time
for a date if they want a relationship. And I'm
going to try to not run out and meet someone
else every time you get busy. Yeah, yeah, you wait,
if you went out trying to meet other people. When
did you do that better? Stay on your toes, Irving.
(03:51):
There are lots of single men in this town. It's
an amazing time to be single, all right. We're all
free to be anything, but under hundred new pressures to
be everything. We work for deeper, more meaningful relationships and
then try to make them work in the ten three
minutes we have a day. It's always been easier to
(04:11):
leave a relationship with your single I guess in the
eighties it's just a little more challenging to stay in Irving.
Very much takes center stage in these specials in a
way that puts him firmly at the center of Kathy Cannon,
even though there's whole years in the comic strip where
he doesn't appear at all. But this special holds a
(04:34):
special place in Kathy guys White's career. She won a
goddamn Emmy for it. Here's her speech brought our first
time any winners. I'd like to say a special thanks
to my sisters Marianne and Mickey, who are not only
my best editors, but the whole foundation of my sense
(04:54):
of humor. When I started the comic strip, Kathy, I
was sure that I was the only woman in the
world who came home from a day in my brilliant
career and stood in the kitchen squirting ready whipped whip
topping directly into my mouth. I was sure that I
was the only professional, enlightened, professional business person who balanced
(05:16):
my checkbook by switching banks and starting all over every
six months, or or who coped with relationship problems by
eating a cheesecake. I'm first grateful to my parents, not
only for encouraging me to believe that I was not
the only one, but for forcing me to send the
(05:37):
humiliating moments of my own life to Universal Press Syndicate
for publication. The second special, Cathy's last resort, also revolves
around Irving's inability to tell Kathy that he loves her,
but this time on vacation. Want to help me? You
always act like a lunatic after you've been to the shrink.
(05:58):
Just a second, take a muption risk of kay, I
did that humiliate itself with erotic suggestion. I did that
just just a sect maintain romantic mood. I don't love
how you're strong job moves when you call me a lunatic.
(06:25):
The final special is Kathy's Valentine from and is mostly
a long protracted fight between Kathy and Irving. Again, Kathy
isn't therapy in this special, and she's trying to make
the relationship work, but Irving thinks therapy is ridiculous and
complaints because he's himself. Forget it, Kathy, Okay, I am
sick of being the perfect guy, just to get yelled at.
(06:48):
They break up twice over the course of the episode,
but are somehow back together by the end. Oh my god,
I hate Irving so much. Uh, Chid to get things
you know, rekindled before Valentine. For heaven's sake. Man has
(07:08):
nothing to do with what you wear, what you have
in the cupboard. These TV specials were the runway up
to the peak of the comics presence in merchandizing and
public recognition in the early to mid nine nineties. However,
looking back on these TV specials now, Cathy doesn't necessarily
stand by the content. Yeah. I banned them from being
(07:31):
made available for purchase. There was just like, you know,
there's like everything and it's just so you know, dated.
So they That was very exciting to work on those.
Um I wanted to write the scripts. Of course, that
was a giant argument because I wasn't a TV writer,
(07:51):
so that was a huge argument. But I wanted to
write the script. So I did write the first one.
It you know, got altered it by the network, but
you know, you know, it was basically it was basically
my story and mine was my original versions or like
pack dialogue, because I was finally liberated from the four
(08:15):
boxes so I could tell us, you know, I could
tell a real story, you know, with real dialogue. And
I wanted him. I wanted the characters to you know,
to talk fashion, for it to be like more that
banter that you would see on TV now. And so
that was that was rejected because, um, because it was
so outside of the kind of the timing that that
(08:38):
that team all everything was, everything was brought up in
the eighties and I kind of like everything the decade
before you were born. Everything was happening, Jamie. I missed,
you missed everything. It always happening. Then I'm not going
to tell you about it because it was done. Uh yeah,
(09:00):
So we pursued a live action a few times. Who
did you pictures had as Cathy? Well, that was always
kind of a problem when I was I don't think
anybody could ever quite figured that out. You know, it
got it got to the point where somebody else wrote
scripts that I hated. Then I wrote scripts that they hated,
(09:20):
and then we got you know, it went a little
ways down the road a few times, and then ultimately
that didn't happen. The late eighties continued to bring success
for the whole Guy Swite family and Guy S. White.
Cathy's mom actually released a book called Motherly Advice from
(09:41):
Cathy's Mom in se and, knowing her education and pedigree
as a writer, I thought this was very cool. Cathy
also collaborated with her younger sister, Mickey Guy Swhite on
a book In with Mickey writing and Cathy illustrating. All
of the Guys White women's styles gel very close with Kathy's.
Nearly all of this work is built around the day
(10:04):
to day anxieties of women from different generations. Brought Kathy's
biggest flare up controversy wise, when the comics showed Andrea
campaigning extensively for Michael Ducacus, who was running for president
in eight against George Bush Sr. The blowback was so
severe that Kathy eased off explicitly political references for the
(10:27):
next two decades. I think I was always pretty cautious
about being controversial, you know that when I'm sure you
wrote a book. When I did the strips for Andrew
was actively campaigning for Ducacus, and I'm I'm sure they
did not go over wall um with a lot of
(10:48):
editors and people. They just weren't expecting that one sided
opinion from me um And they said, at the time,
you know this is not you know, it was not
political strip. And if world we'd run it on the
editorial page. In my now my stand at that time
was it, you know, a written I wrote was sort
(11:10):
of political onliness. And in the early nineties, Kathy Mania
reached its peak. While there weren't any more TV specials,
the merchandizing craze exploded. There's actually video footage of my
mom at this work Christmas party in showing off her
cubicle being like, I'm so happy before I had kids,
and what is behind her? Yes, it is a Kathy
(11:33):
comic strip proudly pinned to her divider wall and a
Detroit Free Press poll from Kathy was ranked the fourth
favorite comic by women in the fifth least favorite comic
by men. Classically polarizing. Kathy guys White remained the CEO
of her own company while continuing to turn out comics
week by week, and in had a wild ear personally
(11:57):
and professionally. She won the rub In A Ward, the
prestigious National Cartoonist Society honor, and was only the second
woman to have ever done so in the ceremonies forty
plus year history. In her personal life, after decades of
living as a single woman and putting her career front
and center, at forty one, Cathy adopted her daughter, Ivy
(12:19):
and raised her as a single parent. You know, in
the nineties, when the licensing had gotten really big and
we were just built this this whole other office just
got designed for us to move into and the comic
strip was doing great. That's and I had, i mean
(12:40):
six waking hours six six seconds you know per day
where I wasn't just completely overwhelmed. That's when it occurred
to me that I should adopt a baby. So that
that's because why not, you know, It's just that I look,
I'm like the I'm like the luckiest person on earth
that I've had opportunities that I've had, and I've had
(13:01):
the chances I've had to make all the mistakes I
did make, and that that I was. I was given
this amazing opportunity for self expression at a time there
weren't other women doing that. And then out of the
all of it that I was a complete workaholic, born
into a generation that like we were instructed to not
(13:23):
have children, you know, we were going into the workforce.
That was the mindset. You know, it wasn't It wasn't
at all what it is now, which is you know,
going into adulthood knowing that you could combine motherhood with working.
It was the opposite of that. It was you were
choosing one path or the other. You were going to
be a wife and mother or you're going to be
a single working person. Period. That was it. And so
(13:46):
I was obedient to that to the max, you know,
until um, until I hit um forty and you know
it was going to like steal somebody's baby, I mean,
my mother, you know something. I had to be a mother.
So but but that I somehow that I was. Among
my blessings were that I was able to have this
(14:09):
great career. I was able to have the possible the
opportunity to make all the mistakes that I did and
I still kept having a great career, and that I
was able to have the blessing of motherhood like right
in the middle of that, and that that worked. It's
just like very, very lucky person. This is one of
(14:35):
the only times that Cathy took some time off and
sent the comic into repeats to spend time with her newborn.
According to The New York Daily News writer David Hinckley,
she sent out a letter personally apologizing for taking time off.
In a column from he writes, this what did take
two thirds of a page was her apology. I'm really
(14:56):
sorry to be doing this, she said. It's my own fault.
I can't get ahead like a should, but I just
don't have any choice now that the adoption is so near.
I offer my deepest thanks, she writes, if you can
give this extra support to me right now, he continues, Now,
two things come to mind. First, this is exactly what
Guy's wife's Kathy character would do exactly. Second, if this
(15:18):
were a mail cartoonist, any mail this letter would not exist.
Newspapers would only get letter number one saying this artist
was taking time off. He wants it, he deserves it.
See you in July and He's right. There was a
long tradition of male comic writers taking time off, many
of them Kathy's contemporaries Gary Trudeau of Doonesbury, Gary Larson
(15:40):
of The Far Side, Bill Waterson of Calvin and Hobbes,
and she wasn't even completely taking time off. She was
still doing Sunday comic strips. By the ninety nineties, Kathy's
personal life had begun to stray from the storylines of
her comic pretty significantly, as Kathy the artist headed into
motherhood and later marriage, while remaining the owner of her
own business. Her character continued to navigate single doom and
(16:05):
worked for the same company she started at in the
nineteen seventies. Kathy writes this, I really have devoted myself
to the comic strip a long time. I want my
own identity. I need that more than I did in
the beginning. I need to feel like I had my
own life. Mind you, there are certain traits that we
certainly share, and we always will. At the height of
(16:28):
the comics popularity, Cathy's life was also changing. She met
her now ex husband, the screenwriter Christopher Wilkinson, at a
daycare group where he was bringing his son and Kathy
was bringing her daughter. Wilkinson wrote, Nixon, if you saw that,
I didn't, but they're divorced, so I don't have to.
The two got married, and Kathy lived with her daughter, stepson,
(16:52):
and husband while continuing to run the company and make
the comic. The licensing business continued to thrive, including a
Memory Morble campaign for weight Watchers featuring both Kathy and Irving,
using illustrations that referenced a storyline from the comic where
the two of them began to go to the gym
together to get in shape and lose weight. The late
(17:12):
nineties brought a cookbook that Kathy collaborated on with chef
Barbara Albright called Girl Food. I have this cookbook because
I'm a girl and I need food, and it features
recipe titles like I really really really deserve a raise,
buttermilk doughnuts and never the same size, low calorie coleslaw.
(17:33):
We'll be talking about this book later and it is
one of the last major merchandizing efforts of the comic
strip because the merchandise and company did not last for
the entire duration of the comic, closing its doors by
the early two thousands. During this period, of time, Kathy
was more recognizable and making more money than ever, but
(17:54):
she says that the compounded roles of CEO, artist, wife
and mom result did in the cheapening of her brand
for a period of time. So the doing the actual
comic strip that um got squashed into shorter and shorter
amount of time. Again, when I look back at life
(18:15):
now and I go, I wish, I wish I had
had this perspective now, And it is my wisdom now
of oh, this is what I was doing that was
kind of unique and good, was doing the comic strip
and some maybe greeting cards. Those I could have achieved
in my own and my own little office without without
(18:37):
all the hubbub. But I also could have maybe taken
some time to better reflect on what I was doing
and the opportunity I was given to have this very
unique voice for women in the newspaper where there was
nothing else happening for women in the paper. But you know,
I kind of kind of wish that I had h M.
(19:02):
I wish I had not been so busy. At the
turn of the century, Cathy was syndicated in over fifteen
hundred newspapers and had amassed about seventy million readers. By
two thousand and five, Kathy the Artist had been married
long enough that she was ready for her fictional character
to join her. There something that many people felt betrayed
(19:23):
by after the character was famously single for almost thirty
years at that point. And while yes, it's pretty petty
to be mad about the marital status of a cartoon character,
Kathy guys White had explicitly promised many times to never
have the character get married. This is the woman who
said this to the Detroit Free Press in about her
(19:46):
own singleness. My syndicate threatens that if I ever get
close to marriage, they'll lock me up. In seven Cathy
says this, I know how abandoned I feel when one
of my friends gets married. I won't let Kathy do
that to her readers. Here's what she says about that decision. Now,
was it always going to be irving? I mean he
(20:07):
was obviously, he was like such a presence over the years,
but he would disappear and then he would come back
a couple of years later, and you know what, what
what made you land on like? No, it is irving?
I don't know know I'm married the wrong guy too,
So what can I say. I never had time to
step back from this strip and like plan it out,
(20:27):
like you know, like I mentioned that, like one would
think it would be smart to do. I felt that
when they got married they had both grown and changed,
and they really had. I mean, he was he was
in the beginning, he was the definition of a Chaubno's pig,
and he wasn't when they got married. He was. He
was a man trying to who was also vulnerable, who
(20:49):
was trying to be in a relationship. He loved Kathy,
and um, I know it was okay. And as it
turns out, Kathy the character's marriage outlasted the real life
Kathy's marriage that had motivated it. Kathy and her husband
split in two thousand and eight, at which point she
(21:10):
reclaimed her space by hanging up a neon Ax sign
in the house. Two years later, she decided to end
the Kathy comic in newspapers in October two thousand and
ten on her own terms. You may remember that Kathy
the character announces that she's pregnant in the final comic strip,
(21:31):
maybe four or five months or six months before I
and before the strip ended, I talked to the syndicate
about you know the fact that I needed to end
it so um. So, on one hand, you would think
that I had lots of time to plan how it
would end. On the other hand, I still was running
(21:51):
in front of the train, you know, ever a week
trying to do them. And then I was also trying
to feel all of the stuff about the strip ending.
So you know, it was it wasn't again as usual,
like I had two months to sit back and go, Okay,
how how is this all going to wrap up? I
knew that when I ended this trip that I wanted to, um,
(22:11):
you know, I wanted to revisit all the characters a bit,
and I knew that I wanted I knew that I
wanted to end the strip with Kathy expecting a baby girl,
so that in readers fantasies, at least they could imagine
that the circle of life, the circle of mother daughter aggravation,
(22:32):
was going forth into the future. The circle of ac continues. Yeah,
and it's worth noting that Kathy Guiswide's choice to end
a spectacularly successful comic strip in this way was and
is extremely unusual. More often than not, comics that are
(22:54):
on the page for this long thirty four years, in
Cathy's case, go into syndication. That basically means that old
strips from past years will continue to run in the
paper to keep artists relevant and to continue to make
them money. Cathy elected not to do this, leaving a
lot of money on the table in the process. When
doing interviews towards the end of the comics run, she
(23:17):
said this to The Washington Post. I feel like I
have always been and continued to be humbled to have
that space on the page. I feel like I need
to earn it every day to do my best news stuff. Now.
I love the idea of releasing my space to another
cartoonist who can have a chance in the papers. It
(23:39):
wouldn't seem right to do reruns. The comic strip ending
also revitalized interest in Kathy for those who had fallen
out of the habit of reading the comic or who
no longer read physical newspapers as news increasingly migrated online,
and with that interest came a lot of those same
old criticism and jokes that popped up via the hashtag
(24:03):
ways Kathy should end tag taking off on Twitter in
two thousand ten, and some of them are pretty funny
and an orgy of blood violence Garfield devoured her whole,
but most of them were based on the caricature like
stereotypes that had calcified around Kathy Guy's wife's work over
the past couple of decades. Overhead shot of her laying
(24:24):
face down in an empty room next to the half
eaten lean cuisine that she choked to death on hashtag
ways Kathy should end. Hoarding experts arrived too late to
find Kathy flattened under a heap of diet aids, cats,
and dating books. Hashtag ways Kathy should end. The tone
of this criticism does not change much at all between
(24:46):
the nineteen seventies and the nine nineties, and it affected
Kathy Guy's White quite a bit. She writes about how
the criticism affected her in her essay collection Fifty Things
(25:09):
That Aren't My Fault. This comes in the middle of
the titular essay where guys White discusses and defends her
choice to talk about the issues that affected her in
her comic strip. I had the amazing platform of an
internationally syndicated comic strip, which some people said I should
have used to voice triumphant stories of unwavering feminism, but
which I instead used to voice the insecurities, relationship frustrations, mother, daughter, angst,
(25:36):
career grief, and food blunders under which so many of
our triumphant dreams get squashed. Some people thought my work
reinforced the negative stereotype of women being obsessed with shopping, weight,
and love. But it wasn't my fault that we still
live in a world that partly judges women by what
we wear, how much we weigh, and whether or not
(25:57):
and who or how we love. Not my fault that
with every glorious new possibility for women came an extra
sense of isolation when we not only couldn't keep up,
but we're told we shouldn't talk about the things that
held us back. She continues later in the essay, I
would try to sum up days of research and perspective
(26:18):
and the real life experience of living in this culture
into four tiny newspaper comic strip boxes with a bit
of hope in the last panel, and would be heartbroken
sometimes honestly, when some people would say, there she goes
writing about shopping again. I wanted to write notes to
all the people who were unhappy with my work and
explain myself. I wanted to write notes to all the
(26:38):
people who were happy with my work and tell them
how deeply grateful I was. They let me know that
I wasn't alone. Kathy and I spoke about this criticism
as well. I am well aware that my strip was
ridiculed a lot, Okay, ridiculed by by some. I'm not
just not liked by others, actively just liked by women
(27:01):
who are in a much stronger, um more self assured
place of feminism than I was when I wrote a
lot of it. After the comic ended, Kathy guys White
lived her life. She had two elderly parents that she
spent more time with in Florida, and she was able
to spend time with her daughter, Ivy during her senior
(27:22):
year of high school. Starting in she started inching back
into the art world, developing a following on Instagram. These
comics tended to reference current events as they were happening.
Kathy supports Christine blasi Ford's testimony. Kathy supports the Walk
for Our Lives. Kathy tells you a vote in the
mid terms, and on and on. Two thousand nineteen brought
(27:44):
Kathy's first book that wasn't comics, an essay collection where
she's the most open she's ever been about her life
and experiences throughout her career. Branded as Essays from the
grown Up Years, it was a really enjoyable read that
invokes the kind of work that Nora Ephron was doing
in her essay collections later in her career. There's a
lot of talk about the indignities and frustrations of aging,
(28:08):
of being caught between caring for a young adult daughter
and elderly parents, reflections on love and marriage, and on
the passing of her father during the two thousand tens.
The book was well received, and for the first time
in ten years, Kathy was back on the press circuit,
speaking to a whole new generation of women that younger
(28:28):
people like me mainly knew through people dunking on it
rather than actually engaging with it. And this relevance surged
once again in two thousand and twenty when the pandemic
lockdown began in the United States, because Kathy started creating
comics on a regular basis again. So, after ten years
of absence, what's it like to be back the woman
(28:51):
with her face in the mash mash potatoes and that proud,
that proud icon of feminism? Right? How did they feel
having like the comic back in your in your life,
and like a in a very regular sense. The first
word that comes to mind is guilt ridden. You know,
when I did the comic strip, I would you know,
(29:12):
I would do it weeks ahead, and then weeks later
I might get a letter or two in the mail saying,
G I like that one, or G I hated that one.
So that was that. But this way, you know, ten
seconds after I draw it, I can post it, and
then ten seconds after that somebody has something to say
about it. And then there's kind of the the need
to kind of communicate with everybody and then to follow
(29:36):
what other people are doing, and it's it's you know,
I'll just say it's a lot. I have loved um
having a place to dump my anxieties. I have loved that.
I never, I never in a million years thought I
would be drawing regularly again. And I'm also I'm not
sure how long I'm going to do it. But I
(29:57):
think when when I started doing them, I mean, of course,
it originally just for me to dump my frustrations on paper,
but I know from doing the comic strip that one
thing I can contribute to the world is uh, you know, commiseration.
I'll say, well, well, everybody I think during the pandemic
was kind of doing what they could do, you know,
(30:19):
to help be of service to others or to help others.
I was not going to go out of the house
and do anything, but this is something I could, I
could contribute, and a lot of people, I think also
the pandemic has um made a lot of people kind
of reflective and nostalgic for something normal or something you know,
some friends. A lot of people kind of reconnected with friends,
(30:42):
you know, online or on the phone. And I heard
from a lot of people that they just said, oh,
Kathy's was my friend for so long, and thank god,
you know, there she is again, and that that she's
I love that. I love feeling like I could kind
of had the character be there as a friend to
(31:03):
people during this time. The pandemic comics are emblematic of
this old friend vibe. Like so many people, the Kathy
character struggles with managing anxiety about the state of the world,
with food, issues, with boredom, with missing friends and family,
referencing the extreme discomfort and darkness of this time without
(31:25):
actually getting too dark and that brings us up to
today as I record this. Kathy is chilling with her
year old mom doing zoom yoga classes together in Florida.
She's living. Maybe something that really strikes me about Kathy
Guys White is that in my experience talking with her,
(31:47):
she still very much embodies a lot of that insecurity
and willingness to believe unkind things that people have said
about her. And this is another point where I personally
connect with her. Of course, the shitty stuff is always
going to stick with you more. I was never I
am not a funny person. I've never told the joke.
I only have uh. Over time, I acquired a skill
(32:15):
of finding um, the the bright moment in not you
know and not right moments, and then putting it down
on paper. But I'm not I'm not uh comedian. Her
career is one built on self deprecation. But taking Cathy's
(32:38):
view of herself at face value without looking at the
scope of her accomplishments and the foundation built by those
who came before her, would be to make a huge mistake.
Cathy's work, while remaining pretty narrow in its scope, tried
to talk about things that made women feel bad about themselves,
and a lot of the criticism thrown at her is
rooted in the character being not a good enough role
(33:00):
model for other women. This specific criticism is so bizarre
to me because the comic is written for adults, like
I don't think there was a single person who is
modeling their behavior after Cathy comics. And adding to this,
the amount of pressure that was on the few women
working in this industry, Cathy Guyswaite and Lynn Johnston primarily,
(33:21):
and expecting one comic book character to represent all women
is an impossible bar to clear. And it's not an
expectation or criticism that was ever lobbed at her male cohort.
You know, in retrospect, there were a zillion issues that
I could have taken on Um more strongly in the
comics trip, And you know, part of me thanks she
(33:44):
if i'd really, if I've ever gotten ahead enough to
really step back, you know, could I should? I would?
I have Um presented a stronger stand on on a
lot of things. And yet I also know that I
think that my character's contribution to the world is one
(34:06):
of offering women a relief and commiseration and helping you
know that there's no getting out and conquering the world
if you can't get out the front door if you
don't feel good enough for about yourself to get out
the front door, and you can't you know, if you
can't get through the next five minutes, you know, a
(34:27):
little bit of optimism. So I think that that is
a you know, the character's main service is not not
always a good role model, but always a friend. But
also like you have to speak on behalf of you know,
your entire gender, Like that's that's such a huge additional
(34:51):
weight to be to be put on you. Well, thank
you for that acknowledgement. Throughout her career, Cathy bounced between
accepting the press projection that she and her character are
one and the same in the more nuanced reality that
she had her own private life that she never spoke
of in detail in public, and a clear mission on
creating artistic comfort food for the adult women of her era.
(35:15):
I think this quote from and the Detroit Repress sums
it up perfectly. Nobody has it totally together, and that's okay.
I'll be speaking with Kathy guys White a lot more
throughout this series, but I wanted you to know her too.
We hold up so many writers and figureheads like her
and Kathy deserves her flowers to her work is representative
(35:38):
of dealing with the pressures of being a woman in
the late twentieth century. In practice, characters who are aware
of and supportive of the feminist movement, but who have
trouble logistically and personally applying it to their own lives.
But to this day, feminists remain some of Kathy's biggest critics.
We're gonna look at why and where Kathy's work falls
(35:59):
in the history of American women next week on ac
cast Where where are you and the children thing? Wow? Okay,
I'm I'm definitely not there yet. H yeah, I've I've been.
(36:22):
A Cast is an I Heart radio production. It is written, researched,
and hosted by me Jamie Loftus. Sophie Lichtman is the
world's Greatest producer, Isaac Taylor is the world's greatest editor,
Zoe Blade writes the world's greatest music, and Brendan Dickert
wrote the world's greatest theme. Huge thank you to Kathy
guys White for this episode in particular, and in today's episode,
(36:44):
you heard the vocal talent of Anna, host Na Julia
Claire and Isaac Taylor.
She burst into the world in nineteen seventy six. She's
at what. She's out on dates and she don't like politics.
From Mama and urban to with feminist friends. She's fighting
all the stands it with chocolate and head. Kathy, She's
fighting back to stress with success. Let's cut her some slack, oh, Kathy, Kathy, Cathy,
(00:26):
She's gotta like go in all shame. An idea for
a Kathy TV show had been in place since the
(00:48):
early eighties and a piece from the Tennessee in two.
The proposed version of the show would have been live
action with only animated titles, which honestly sounds tight. What's
also very a frint from the pitch and the actual
product that came out five years later is the hook
of the show. According to John McMahon of producing partner
Johnny Carson Productions, Kathy would be quote unquote the Mary
(01:11):
Tyler Moore of the eighties. When the fully animated specials
aired five years later, the reality was a bit different.
Kathy of these specials is not particularly empowered, but Kathy
guys White remained deeply involved in the creative throughout all
three specials. She wrote, an executive produced, Kathy, Kathy's Last Resort,
(01:33):
and Kathy's Valentine, which were all built off storylines that
had previously appeared in the comic. As Kathy tells it,
she had a lot of creative control in this process,
but the high level decisions were made by CBS executives
and they played it very safe. And by safe I
mean Irvings and all of them. The Kathy character was
(01:54):
voiced by actor Kathleen will Hoyt why not best as
the voice of Pepperran. Although I'm probably millennializing myself there,
here's what she sounds like. My name is Cathy. I
spend last Saturday night celebrating my Employee of the Year
nomination with a box of Oreo cookies. The first special,
titled Kathy, aired on CPS in May. It follows Kathy
(02:18):
as she's set to receive an award at work and
is putting in a lot of overtime. Irving says that
he isn't going to her awards ceremony, which her friends, family,
and co workers disapprove of. Kathy tries to make the
best of it, saying that she's an independent woman, but
she's really disappointed. She then surprises Irving at his apartment
only to find him cheating on her. After five years
(02:41):
in a relationship, and no, he still can't say I
love you. I cannot believe it. Mom. Does a man
have to say he cared for me in exactly your
words or doesn't count? We have five solid years of
avoiding any kind of actual burble commitment with each other. Mom?
Did a tressfertors liked to account for nothing? Well, you
are wrong, Mom, you are wrong. Wrong, I hated. Kathy
(03:08):
is completely humiliated and she dumps him. She goes on
a date with another guy to try to bounce back,
but he sucks. On the night of her award, Cathy
decides to show up in her robe and rollers still
upset that Irving hasn't called her. Eventually, Irving does call
and Cathy takes him back. Immediately they make up and
it ends like this. I'm trying to learn not to
(03:30):
be so moto, and I'm going to try to learn
that even employees of the Year have to make time
for a date if they want a relationship. And I'm
going to try to not run out and meet someone
else every time you get busy. Yeah, yeah, you wait,
if you went out trying to meet other people. When
did you do that better? Stay on your toes, Irving.
(03:51):
There are lots of single men in this town. It's
an amazing time to be single, all right. We're all
free to be anything, but under hundred new pressures to
be everything. We work for deeper, more meaningful relationships and
then try to make them work in the ten three
minutes we have a day. It's always been easier to
(04:11):
leave a relationship with your single I guess in the
eighties it's just a little more challenging to stay in Irving.
Very much takes center stage in these specials in a
way that puts him firmly at the center of Kathy Cannon,
even though there's whole years in the comic strip where
he doesn't appear at all. But this special holds a
(04:34):
special place in Kathy guys White's career. She won a
goddamn Emmy for it. Here's her speech brought our first
time any winners. I'd like to say a special thanks
to my sisters Marianne and Mickey, who are not only
my best editors, but the whole foundation of my sense
(04:54):
of humor. When I started the comic strip, Kathy, I
was sure that I was the only woman in the
world who came home from a day in my brilliant
career and stood in the kitchen squirting ready whipped whip
topping directly into my mouth. I was sure that I
was the only professional, enlightened, professional business person who balanced
(05:16):
my checkbook by switching banks and starting all over every
six months, or or who coped with relationship problems by
eating a cheesecake. I'm first grateful to my parents, not
only for encouraging me to believe that I was not
the only one, but for forcing me to send the
(05:37):
humiliating moments of my own life to Universal Press Syndicate
for publication. The second special, Cathy's last resort, also revolves
around Irving's inability to tell Kathy that he loves her,
but this time on vacation. Want to help me? You
always act like a lunatic after you've been to the shrink.
(05:58):
Just a second, take a muption risk of kay, I
did that humiliate itself with erotic suggestion. I did that
just just a sect maintain romantic mood. I don't love
how you're strong job moves when you call me a lunatic.
(06:25):
The final special is Kathy's Valentine from and is mostly
a long protracted fight between Kathy and Irving. Again, Kathy
isn't therapy in this special, and she's trying to make
the relationship work, but Irving thinks therapy is ridiculous and
complaints because he's himself. Forget it, Kathy, Okay, I am
sick of being the perfect guy, just to get yelled at.
(06:48):
They break up twice over the course of the episode,
but are somehow back together by the end. Oh my god,
I hate Irving so much. Uh, Chid to get things
you know, rekindled before Valentine. For heaven's sake. Man has
(07:08):
nothing to do with what you wear, what you have
in the cupboard. These TV specials were the runway up
to the peak of the comics presence in merchandizing and
public recognition in the early to mid nine nineties. However,
looking back on these TV specials now, Cathy doesn't necessarily
stand by the content. Yeah. I banned them from being
(07:31):
made available for purchase. There was just like, you know,
there's like everything and it's just so you know, dated.
So they That was very exciting to work on those.
Um I wanted to write the scripts. Of course, that
was a giant argument because I wasn't a TV writer,
(07:51):
so that was a huge argument. But I wanted to
write the script. So I did write the first one.
It you know, got altered it by the network, but
you know, you know, it was basically it was basically
my story and mine was my original versions or like
pack dialogue, because I was finally liberated from the four
(08:15):
boxes so I could tell us, you know, I could
tell a real story, you know, with real dialogue. And
I wanted him. I wanted the characters to you know,
to talk fashion, for it to be like more that
banter that you would see on TV now. And so
that was that was rejected because, um, because it was
so outside of the kind of the timing that that
(08:38):
that team all everything was, everything was brought up in
the eighties and I kind of like everything the decade
before you were born. Everything was happening, Jamie. I missed,
you missed everything. It always happening. Then I'm not going
to tell you about it because it was done. Uh yeah,
(09:00):
So we pursued a live action a few times. Who
did you pictures had as Cathy? Well, that was always
kind of a problem when I was I don't think
anybody could ever quite figured that out. You know, it
got it got to the point where somebody else wrote
scripts that I hated. Then I wrote scripts that they hated,
(09:20):
and then we got you know, it went a little
ways down the road a few times, and then ultimately
that didn't happen. The late eighties continued to bring success
for the whole Guy Swite family and Guy S. White.
Cathy's mom actually released a book called Motherly Advice from
(09:41):
Cathy's Mom in se and, knowing her education and pedigree
as a writer, I thought this was very cool. Cathy
also collaborated with her younger sister, Mickey Guy Swhite on
a book In with Mickey writing and Cathy illustrating. All
of the Guys White women's styles gel very close with Kathy's.
Nearly all of this work is built around the day
(10:04):
to day anxieties of women from different generations. Brought Kathy's
biggest flare up controversy wise, when the comics showed Andrea
campaigning extensively for Michael Ducacus, who was running for president
in eight against George Bush Sr. The blowback was so
severe that Kathy eased off explicitly political references for the
(10:27):
next two decades. I think I was always pretty cautious
about being controversial, you know that when I'm sure you
wrote a book. When I did the strips for Andrew
was actively campaigning for Ducacus, and I'm I'm sure they
did not go over wall um with a lot of
(10:48):
editors and people. They just weren't expecting that one sided
opinion from me um And they said, at the time,
you know this is not you know, it was not
political strip. And if world we'd run it on the
editorial page. In my now my stand at that time
was it, you know, a written I wrote was sort
(11:10):
of political onliness. And in the early nineties, Kathy Mania
reached its peak. While there weren't any more TV specials,
the merchandizing craze exploded. There's actually video footage of my
mom at this work Christmas party in showing off her
cubicle being like, I'm so happy before I had kids,
and what is behind her? Yes, it is a Kathy
(11:33):
comic strip proudly pinned to her divider wall and a
Detroit Free Press poll from Kathy was ranked the fourth
favorite comic by women in the fifth least favorite comic
by men. Classically polarizing. Kathy guys White remained the CEO
of her own company while continuing to turn out comics
week by week, and in had a wild ear personally
(11:57):
and professionally. She won the rub In A Ward, the
prestigious National Cartoonist Society honor, and was only the second
woman to have ever done so in the ceremonies forty
plus year history. In her personal life, after decades of
living as a single woman and putting her career front
and center, at forty one, Cathy adopted her daughter, Ivy
(12:19):
and raised her as a single parent. You know, in
the nineties, when the licensing had gotten really big and
we were just built this this whole other office just
got designed for us to move into and the comic
strip was doing great. That's and I had, i mean
(12:40):
six waking hours six six seconds you know per day
where I wasn't just completely overwhelmed. That's when it occurred
to me that I should adopt a baby. So that
that's because why not, you know, It's just that I look,
I'm like the I'm like the luckiest person on earth
that I've had opportunities that I've had, and I've had
(13:01):
the chances I've had to make all the mistakes I
did make, and that that I was. I was given
this amazing opportunity for self expression at a time there
weren't other women doing that. And then out of the
all of it that I was a complete workaholic, born
into a generation that like we were instructed to not
(13:23):
have children, you know, we were going into the workforce.
That was the mindset. You know, it wasn't It wasn't
at all what it is now, which is you know,
going into adulthood knowing that you could combine motherhood with working.
It was the opposite of that. It was you were
choosing one path or the other. You were going to
be a wife and mother or you're going to be
a single working person. Period. That was it. And so
(13:46):
I was obedient to that to the max, you know,
until um, until I hit um forty and you know
it was going to like steal somebody's baby, I mean,
my mother, you know something. I had to be a mother.
So but but that I somehow that I was. Among
my blessings were that I was able to have this
(14:09):
great career. I was able to have the possible the
opportunity to make all the mistakes that I did and
I still kept having a great career, and that I
was able to have the blessing of motherhood like right
in the middle of that, and that that worked. It's
just like very, very lucky person. This is one of
(14:35):
the only times that Cathy took some time off and
sent the comic into repeats to spend time with her newborn.
According to The New York Daily News writer David Hinckley,
she sent out a letter personally apologizing for taking time off.
In a column from he writes, this what did take
two thirds of a page was her apology. I'm really
(14:56):
sorry to be doing this, she said. It's my own fault.
I can't get ahead like a should, but I just
don't have any choice now that the adoption is so near.
I offer my deepest thanks, she writes, if you can
give this extra support to me right now, he continues, Now,
two things come to mind. First, this is exactly what
Guy's wife's Kathy character would do exactly. Second, if this
(15:18):
were a mail cartoonist, any mail this letter would not exist.
Newspapers would only get letter number one saying this artist
was taking time off. He wants it, he deserves it.
See you in July and He's right. There was a
long tradition of male comic writers taking time off, many
of them Kathy's contemporaries Gary Trudeau of Doonesbury, Gary Larson
(15:40):
of The Far Side, Bill Waterson of Calvin and Hobbes,
and she wasn't even completely taking time off. She was
still doing Sunday comic strips. By the ninety nineties, Kathy's
personal life had begun to stray from the storylines of
her comic pretty significantly, as Kathy the artist headed into
motherhood and later marriage, while remaining the owner of her
own business. Her character continued to navigate single doom and
(16:05):
worked for the same company she started at in the
nineteen seventies. Kathy writes this, I really have devoted myself
to the comic strip a long time. I want my
own identity. I need that more than I did in
the beginning. I need to feel like I had my
own life. Mind you, there are certain traits that we
certainly share, and we always will. At the height of
(16:28):
the comics popularity, Cathy's life was also changing. She met
her now ex husband, the screenwriter Christopher Wilkinson, at a
daycare group where he was bringing his son and Kathy
was bringing her daughter. Wilkinson wrote, Nixon, if you saw that,
I didn't, but they're divorced, so I don't have to.
The two got married, and Kathy lived with her daughter, stepson,
(16:52):
and husband while continuing to run the company and make
the comic. The licensing business continued to thrive, including a
Memory Morble campaign for weight Watchers featuring both Kathy and Irving,
using illustrations that referenced a storyline from the comic where
the two of them began to go to the gym
together to get in shape and lose weight. The late
(17:12):
nineties brought a cookbook that Kathy collaborated on with chef
Barbara Albright called Girl Food. I have this cookbook because
I'm a girl and I need food, and it features
recipe titles like I really really really deserve a raise,
buttermilk doughnuts and never the same size, low calorie coleslaw.
(17:33):
We'll be talking about this book later and it is
one of the last major merchandizing efforts of the comic
strip because the merchandise and company did not last for
the entire duration of the comic, closing its doors by
the early two thousands. During this period, of time, Kathy
was more recognizable and making more money than ever, but
(17:54):
she says that the compounded roles of CEO, artist, wife
and mom result did in the cheapening of her brand
for a period of time. So the doing the actual
comic strip that um got squashed into shorter and shorter
amount of time. Again, when I look back at life
(18:15):
now and I go, I wish, I wish I had
had this perspective now, And it is my wisdom now
of oh, this is what I was doing that was
kind of unique and good, was doing the comic strip
and some maybe greeting cards. Those I could have achieved
in my own and my own little office without without
(18:37):
all the hubbub. But I also could have maybe taken
some time to better reflect on what I was doing
and the opportunity I was given to have this very
unique voice for women in the newspaper where there was
nothing else happening for women in the paper. But you know,
I kind of kind of wish that I had h M.
(19:02):
I wish I had not been so busy. At the
turn of the century, Cathy was syndicated in over fifteen
hundred newspapers and had amassed about seventy million readers. By
two thousand and five, Kathy the Artist had been married
long enough that she was ready for her fictional character
to join her. There something that many people felt betrayed
(19:23):
by after the character was famously single for almost thirty
years at that point. And while yes, it's pretty petty
to be mad about the marital status of a cartoon character,
Kathy guys White had explicitly promised many times to never
have the character get married. This is the woman who
said this to the Detroit Free Press in about her
(19:46):
own singleness. My syndicate threatens that if I ever get
close to marriage, they'll lock me up. In seven Cathy
says this, I know how abandoned I feel when one
of my friends gets married. I won't let Kathy do
that to her readers. Here's what she says about that decision. Now,
was it always going to be irving? I mean he
(20:07):
was obviously, he was like such a presence over the years,
but he would disappear and then he would come back
a couple of years later, and you know what, what
what made you land on like? No, it is irving?
I don't know know I'm married the wrong guy too,
So what can I say. I never had time to
step back from this strip and like plan it out,
(20:27):
like you know, like I mentioned that, like one would
think it would be smart to do. I felt that
when they got married they had both grown and changed,
and they really had. I mean, he was he was
in the beginning, he was the definition of a Chaubno's pig,
and he wasn't when they got married. He was. He
was a man trying to who was also vulnerable, who
(20:49):
was trying to be in a relationship. He loved Kathy,
and um, I know it was okay. And as it
turns out, Kathy the character's marriage outlasted the real life
Kathy's marriage that had motivated it. Kathy and her husband
split in two thousand and eight, at which point she
(21:10):
reclaimed her space by hanging up a neon Ax sign
in the house. Two years later, she decided to end
the Kathy comic in newspapers in October two thousand and
ten on her own terms. You may remember that Kathy
the character announces that she's pregnant in the final comic strip,
(21:31):
maybe four or five months or six months before I
and before the strip ended, I talked to the syndicate
about you know the fact that I needed to end
it so um. So, on one hand, you would think
that I had lots of time to plan how it
would end. On the other hand, I still was running
(21:51):
in front of the train, you know, ever a week
trying to do them. And then I was also trying
to feel all of the stuff about the strip ending.
So you know, it was it wasn't again as usual,
like I had two months to sit back and go, Okay,
how how is this all going to wrap up? I
knew that when I ended this trip that I wanted to, um,
(22:11):
you know, I wanted to revisit all the characters a bit,
and I knew that I wanted I knew that I
wanted to end the strip with Kathy expecting a baby girl,
so that in readers fantasies, at least they could imagine
that the circle of life, the circle of mother daughter aggravation,
(22:32):
was going forth into the future. The circle of ac continues. Yeah,
and it's worth noting that Kathy Guiswide's choice to end
a spectacularly successful comic strip in this way was and
is extremely unusual. More often than not, comics that are
(22:54):
on the page for this long thirty four years, in
Cathy's case, go into syndication. That basically means that old
strips from past years will continue to run in the
paper to keep artists relevant and to continue to make
them money. Cathy elected not to do this, leaving a
lot of money on the table in the process. When
doing interviews towards the end of the comics run, she
(23:17):
said this to The Washington Post. I feel like I
have always been and continued to be humbled to have
that space on the page. I feel like I need
to earn it every day to do my best news stuff. Now.
I love the idea of releasing my space to another
cartoonist who can have a chance in the papers. It
(23:39):
wouldn't seem right to do reruns. The comic strip ending
also revitalized interest in Kathy for those who had fallen
out of the habit of reading the comic or who
no longer read physical newspapers as news increasingly migrated online,
and with that interest came a lot of those same
old criticism and jokes that popped up via the hashtag
(24:03):
ways Kathy should end tag taking off on Twitter in
two thousand ten, and some of them are pretty funny
and an orgy of blood violence Garfield devoured her whole,
but most of them were based on the caricature like
stereotypes that had calcified around Kathy Guy's wife's work over
the past couple of decades. Overhead shot of her laying
(24:24):
face down in an empty room next to the half
eaten lean cuisine that she choked to death on hashtag
ways Kathy should end. Hoarding experts arrived too late to
find Kathy flattened under a heap of diet aids, cats,
and dating books. Hashtag ways Kathy should end. The tone
of this criticism does not change much at all between
(24:46):
the nineteen seventies and the nine nineties, and it affected
Kathy Guy's White quite a bit. She writes about how
the criticism affected her in her essay collection Fifty Things
(25:09):
That Aren't My Fault. This comes in the middle of
the titular essay where guys White discusses and defends her
choice to talk about the issues that affected her in
her comic strip. I had the amazing platform of an
internationally syndicated comic strip, which some people said I should
have used to voice triumphant stories of unwavering feminism, but
which I instead used to voice the insecurities, relationship frustrations, mother, daughter, angst,
(25:36):
career grief, and food blunders under which so many of
our triumphant dreams get squashed. Some people thought my work
reinforced the negative stereotype of women being obsessed with shopping, weight,
and love. But it wasn't my fault that we still
live in a world that partly judges women by what
we wear, how much we weigh, and whether or not
(25:57):
and who or how we love. Not my fault that
with every glorious new possibility for women came an extra
sense of isolation when we not only couldn't keep up,
but we're told we shouldn't talk about the things that
held us back. She continues later in the essay, I
would try to sum up days of research and perspective
(26:18):
and the real life experience of living in this culture
into four tiny newspaper comic strip boxes with a bit
of hope in the last panel, and would be heartbroken
sometimes honestly, when some people would say, there she goes
writing about shopping again. I wanted to write notes to
all the people who were unhappy with my work and
explain myself. I wanted to write notes to all the
(26:38):
people who were happy with my work and tell them
how deeply grateful I was. They let me know that
I wasn't alone. Kathy and I spoke about this criticism
as well. I am well aware that my strip was
ridiculed a lot, Okay, ridiculed by by some. I'm not
just not liked by others, actively just liked by women
(27:01):
who are in a much stronger, um more self assured
place of feminism than I was when I wrote a
lot of it. After the comic ended, Kathy guys White
lived her life. She had two elderly parents that she
spent more time with in Florida, and she was able
to spend time with her daughter, Ivy during her senior
(27:22):
year of high school. Starting in she started inching back
into the art world, developing a following on Instagram. These
comics tended to reference current events as they were happening.
Kathy supports Christine blasi Ford's testimony. Kathy supports the Walk
for Our Lives. Kathy tells you a vote in the
mid terms, and on and on. Two thousand nineteen brought
(27:44):
Kathy's first book that wasn't comics, an essay collection where
she's the most open she's ever been about her life
and experiences throughout her career. Branded as Essays from the
grown Up Years, it was a really enjoyable read that
invokes the kind of work that Nora Ephron was doing
in her essay collections later in her career. There's a
lot of talk about the indignities and frustrations of aging,
(28:08):
of being caught between caring for a young adult daughter
and elderly parents, reflections on love and marriage, and on
the passing of her father during the two thousand tens.
The book was well received, and for the first time
in ten years, Kathy was back on the press circuit,
speaking to a whole new generation of women that younger
(28:28):
people like me mainly knew through people dunking on it
rather than actually engaging with it. And this relevance surged
once again in two thousand and twenty when the pandemic
lockdown began in the United States, because Kathy started creating
comics on a regular basis again. So, after ten years
of absence, what's it like to be back the woman
(28:51):
with her face in the mash mash potatoes and that proud,
that proud icon of feminism? Right? How did they feel
having like the comic back in your in your life,
and like a in a very regular sense. The first
word that comes to mind is guilt ridden. You know,
when I did the comic strip, I would you know,
(29:12):
I would do it weeks ahead, and then weeks later
I might get a letter or two in the mail saying,
G I like that one, or G I hated that one.
So that was that. But this way, you know, ten
seconds after I draw it, I can post it, and
then ten seconds after that somebody has something to say
about it. And then there's kind of the the need
to kind of communicate with everybody and then to follow
(29:36):
what other people are doing, and it's it's you know,
I'll just say it's a lot. I have loved um
having a place to dump my anxieties. I have loved that.
I never, I never in a million years thought I
would be drawing regularly again. And I'm also I'm not
sure how long I'm going to do it. But I
(29:57):
think when when I started doing them, I mean, of course,
it originally just for me to dump my frustrations on paper,
but I know from doing the comic strip that one
thing I can contribute to the world is uh, you know, commiseration.
I'll say, well, well, everybody I think during the pandemic
was kind of doing what they could do, you know,
(30:19):
to help be of service to others or to help others.
I was not going to go out of the house
and do anything, but this is something I could, I
could contribute, and a lot of people, I think also
the pandemic has um made a lot of people kind
of reflective and nostalgic for something normal or something you know,
some friends. A lot of people kind of reconnected with friends,
(30:42):
you know, online or on the phone. And I heard
from a lot of people that they just said, oh,
Kathy's was my friend for so long, and thank god,
you know, there she is again, and that that she's
I love that. I love feeling like I could kind
of had the character be there as a friend to
(31:03):
people during this time. The pandemic comics are emblematic of
this old friend vibe. Like so many people, the Kathy
character struggles with managing anxiety about the state of the world,
with food, issues, with boredom, with missing friends and family,
referencing the extreme discomfort and darkness of this time without
(31:25):
actually getting too dark and that brings us up to
today as I record this. Kathy is chilling with her
year old mom doing zoom yoga classes together in Florida.
She's living. Maybe something that really strikes me about Kathy
Guys White is that in my experience talking with her,
(31:47):
she still very much embodies a lot of that insecurity
and willingness to believe unkind things that people have said
about her. And this is another point where I personally
connect with her. Of course, the shitty stuff is always
going to stick with you more. I was never I
am not a funny person. I've never told the joke.
I only have uh. Over time, I acquired a skill
(32:15):
of finding um, the the bright moment in not you
know and not right moments, and then putting it down
on paper. But I'm not I'm not uh comedian. Her
career is one built on self deprecation. But taking Cathy's
(32:38):
view of herself at face value without looking at the
scope of her accomplishments and the foundation built by those
who came before her, would be to make a huge mistake.
Cathy's work, while remaining pretty narrow in its scope, tried
to talk about things that made women feel bad about themselves,
and a lot of the criticism thrown at her is
rooted in the character being not a good enough role
(33:00):
model for other women. This specific criticism is so bizarre
to me because the comic is written for adults, like
I don't think there was a single person who is
modeling their behavior after Cathy comics. And adding to this,
the amount of pressure that was on the few women
working in this industry, Cathy Guyswaite and Lynn Johnston primarily,
(33:21):
and expecting one comic book character to represent all women
is an impossible bar to clear. And it's not an
expectation or criticism that was ever lobbed at her male cohort.
You know, in retrospect, there were a zillion issues that
I could have taken on Um more strongly in the
comics trip, And you know, part of me thanks she
(33:44):
if i'd really, if I've ever gotten ahead enough to
really step back, you know, could I should? I would?
I have Um presented a stronger stand on on a
lot of things. And yet I also know that I
think that my character's contribution to the world is one
(34:06):
of offering women a relief and commiseration and helping you
know that there's no getting out and conquering the world
if you can't get out the front door if you
don't feel good enough for about yourself to get out
the front door, and you can't you know, if you
can't get through the next five minutes, you know, a
(34:27):
little bit of optimism. So I think that that is
a you know, the character's main service is not not
always a good role model, but always a friend. But
also like you have to speak on behalf of you know,
your entire gender, Like that's that's such a huge additional
(34:51):
weight to be to be put on you. Well, thank
you for that acknowledgement. Throughout her career, Cathy bounced between
accepting the press projection that she and her character are
one and the same in the more nuanced reality that
she had her own private life that she never spoke
of in detail in public, and a clear mission on
creating artistic comfort food for the adult women of her era.
(35:15):
I think this quote from and the Detroit Repress sums
it up perfectly. Nobody has it totally together, and that's okay.
I'll be speaking with Kathy guys White a lot more
throughout this series, but I wanted you to know her too.
We hold up so many writers and figureheads like her
and Kathy deserves her flowers to her work is representative
(35:38):
of dealing with the pressures of being a woman in
the late twentieth century. In practice, characters who are aware
of and supportive of the feminist movement, but who have
trouble logistically and personally applying it to their own lives.
But to this day, feminists remain some of Kathy's biggest critics.
We're gonna look at why and where Kathy's work falls
(35:59):
in the history of American women next week on ac
cast Where where are you and the children thing? Wow? Okay,
I'm I'm definitely not there yet. H yeah, I've I've been.
(36:22):
A Cast is an I Heart radio production. It is written, researched,
and hosted by me Jamie Loftus. Sophie Lichtman is the
world's Greatest producer, Isaac Taylor is the world's greatest editor,
Zoe Blade writes the world's greatest music, and Brendan Dickert
wrote the world's greatest theme. Huge thank you to Kathy
guys White for this episode in particular, and in today's episode,
(36:44):
you heard the vocal talent of Anna, host Na Julia
Claire and Isaac Taylor.
Host
Jamie Loftus
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