Introducing Aack Cast by Jamie Loftus

Aack! Cathy, the iconic and much-maligned comic strip by Cathy Guisewite, chronicled the day-to-day tribulations of its titular working woman for 35 years, met with equal praise and derision. In this podcast, Jamie Loftus (Lolita Podcast, My Year in Mensa) weaves between reporting and fiction, putting a cruelly treated cartoon everywoman in context.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hi. My name is Jamie Loftus, and I have read
every single Kathy comic and I have some thoughts. Kathy
guys Whites comic strip which ran from chronicled middle class
American womanhood day by day for over three decades, and
in between acts and irving jokes came really sharp commentary

(00:24):
on women's struggles in the workplace, rampant Reagan era consumerism,
and predatory diet culture. So why don't we remember it
that way? In my new show ac Cast. Yes, Kathy
chose the name for the show herself. I'm going to
take a look at these comics in context and take
a look from all advantage points. Why is this comic

(00:45):
remember the way it is? Who is Kathy guys White?
Who was the only woman in the Funny Pages when
the strip debut, who went on to win cartoons, highest
Honor and Emmy and wrote a cookbook called girl Food.
What else was in the Funny Pages during her tenure?
What topics and artists were relegated to the fringes? And
what influence has her work had? What does it say

(01:07):
about the rightfully despised white boomer demographic. Where does this
strip fall in the messy history of mainstream American feminism
and at what point did the Kathy character's frustration and
vulnerability around issues like diet culture and a pressure to
succeed professionally and toxic relationship dynamics and sexual harassment turned

(01:28):
into this big punch line. If you've never thought about
Kathy comics before, I have made the Summer podcast for you,
because the popular image of who Kathy is chocolate, chocolate, act,
et cetera, can be pretty at odds with the character's reality.
This is my favorite example. Kathy gets harassed by her

(01:48):
boss in the early eighties and she literally punches him
in the phase and he passes out. He's passed out
for an entire night because Kathy punched him in the face.
We've got a lot to talk about, and I will
be consulting the experts to do so. Of course, I'll
be talking to Kathy guys White, these strips creator, as
well as contemporary conic artists who are either influenced by

(02:12):
or are discovering Kathy's work for the first time. I'll
be speaking to women of Kathy's generation from a lot
of backgrounds. It's a lot of moms. I'll be talking
to experts on diet culture, comic strip history, boomers and more,
and I'll have some of my favorite comedians acting out
the strips for you. If you're a fan of my
previous shows, Lolita Podcast and My Year in Mensa, this

(02:34):
is another wormhole where there's a lot more to the
eye than it may originally seem. It's gonna be fun,
it's gonna get a little dark sometimes and at the
summer podcast for the girls. So listen to act Cast
That's a a c K by me Jamie Loftus, starting
on June on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

(02:55):
or wherever you get your podcasts.