March 14, 2023 • 46 mins
In honor of Women’s History Month, Host Roy Wood Jr. looks back at some of his favorite Beyond the Scenes moments that celebrate female trailblazers. Roy is joined by CNN contributor Kate Andersen Brower and Daily Show producer Jeff Gussow to discuss how first ladies have impacted our nation’s policies. Next, he chats with Daily Show correspondent Dulcé Sloan and producer Chelsea Williamson about how female rappers made a name for themselves in a male-dominated industry. And finally, he’s joined by Daily Show correspondent Desi Lydic and writer Kat Radley to discuss how female pleasure on screen has evolved over the years to be more sex-positive.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hey, it's Roywood Junior. Happy Women's History Month. I want
to take a look back at some of our favorite
episodes that celebrate female trailblazers. In this episode, we chat
about female rappers who made a name for themselves in
a male dominated industry, how our First Ladies impacted our
nation's policies, and we even chat about the depictions of
female pleasure on screen and how it evolved over the
(00:30):
years to be more sex positive. Freaky Dick, have a listen.
I hope you enjoy. I hope I don't get in
trouble for seeing Freaky Dick. It's too late already said
In this first clip on the First Ladies episode, I'm
joined by Daily Show producer Jeff Gusso and seeing and
contributor Kate Anderson Brower about some of the ways First
(00:51):
Ladies have impacted policy in this country. Give up a clip, Kate,
help us understand and the role of the first Lady.
You know, it's it's it's unpaid, first and formal. We
want to talk about some pay inequity. It's an unelected role.
There really doesn't seem to be a rule book on
(01:12):
what you can and can't or should and shouldn't do.
But yet everybody has an opinion on what a first
Lady should or shouldn't be doing. So what are some
of the expectations of the role. Well, it's a very archaic,
old fashioned title, right, you know. Jackie Kennedy said that
she never wanted to be called first Lady. It sounded
like a saddle horse. She said, it was like a
(01:33):
demeaning name. It's very arcane because people don't understand it,
and even years of studying it myself, I found it
to be completely dependent on the person who has the position.
One person wrote to Betty Ford, who was First Lady
in the seventies, and said, you're constitutionally required to be perfect,
(01:55):
And I think that kind of sums it up. They
are supposed to be ideal wives and others, the symbol
of what it is to be an American woman, juggling everything,
and each of them fails in their own way, and
I think they feel as though, after a little bit
of time in the position, that they just have to
(02:15):
make it their own and do what they want with it, because,
as Rosalind Carter said, no matter what, you're going to
be criticized, and you know, there's a lot of sexism obviously,
and in the world still, and I think that there's
a sense that each woman is held up to these
very unfair expectations, and so they have to make the
role their own. And there's nothing in the constitution that
(02:37):
describes what they have to do, so they can do
as little like Milannia Trump, for instance, or as much
like eleanor Roosevelt or Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama, these
women that really took the role incredibly seriously. So it
just depends on each woman. Yeah, because you know Michelle Obama,
you know, she it was the school lunch initiative, you know,
(02:58):
healthier nutrition, you know, Let's Move program. You know, you
look at everything that Betty Ford was doing with regards
to you know, just being vocal about women's issues. We
don't have to talk about Nancy Reagan and just say no,
we know the history of that. How do some of
the expectations of the first lady play into some of
the gender norms and gender roles that I believe a
(03:22):
lot of women are trying to break out of, or
at least trying to change what the base level expectations
are of a first set because you know, they're responsible
for a lot of the domestic duties in the white
not literally cleaning and cooking, but organizing the social events
and oh, you got to decorate the tree, and we
have to make sure everything is set for dinner. Like
(03:42):
how much of those expectations are part of the role.
I mean, one of the funniest things that happened during
the Trump administration was when Milania, you know there, was
caught talking to a friend on the phone and saying
something about how she just didn't want to deal with
the stupid Christmas decorations. And I think everyone was like
a ghast at that. That's what the job is, and
(04:02):
it just looked bad too. They say, I'm more uncompleted.
I'm the same like him. I support him. I don't
say enough. I don't do it enough. No, it's I
put the I'm working like a ask my ass. I
know Christmas stuff that you know, wis about Christmas stuff
and decoration, but I need to do it right. But
(04:23):
I mean, look at Michelle Obama. She was making you know,
almost three hundred thousand dollars at the University of Chicago
Medical Center in their communications office. She went to Harvard Princeton.
She's incredibly well educated, and yet her role was in
many ways to just take care of the daughters. And
there's nothing wrong with that. The mother and chief role
(04:43):
that Michelle Obama took up was really powerful, especially for
you know, a black woman. I thought that that was
really important for her to make this point that she
was going to focus on her daughters, and there was
nothing wrong with that. I think that you have to
be able to just accept women doing as much or
as little as they want. Then you see Hillary Clinton
(05:04):
who had an office in the West Wing and she
always regretted having that office because she realized that she
overstepped that the American people were not ready for it.
And I think that's unfortunate, right that we haven't moved
beyond that. And I think it's going to take a
first gentleman, if that's what we call him, to like
be okay with a woman doing as much or as
(05:25):
little as she as she wants. I mean, if Bill
Clinton were first gentleman, I think that no one would
be expecting him to be you know, baking cookies, arranging
the Christmas decoration, redesigning the White House lawn. That's why, Jeff,
that's why I was like in a weird way. During
the last election, I was kind of pulling for Corey
(05:46):
Booker just because I wanted the chaos of an unmarried
man in the White House, Like who's gonna do what?
I like? Granted he's in a relationship with Rosario Dawson
at the time, but you know, are you still a
first lady? If first girlfriend? Like I wanted chaos? Dude,
what was like the main inspiration for putting this piece together?
(06:06):
And just talk to us a little bit about the
ideation of that at the Daily Show. Yeah, I mean,
you know, it was about in November twenty twenty, the election.
I think it just happened, and we were sort of
like looking at like all the changes that were about
to happen with Joe Biden and doctor Joe Biden coming
in in January, and I think we were trying to, like,
you know, we just wanted to focus on, like what
is this role, what is this handoff between Melania Trump
(06:27):
to Joe Biden? And you know, what is the history?
What are the expectations? Four years of Donald Trump and
Melania Trump had been so chaotic and like, was what
Melanie Trump did normal? What's it not normal? What is
expected of Joe Biden. So we wanted to honor these ladies,
but we also wanted to like get the crux of, like,
you know, how the job can be good and how
the job can be bad. You know, give it, you know,
(06:47):
give people full sense of it, you know, which is
difficult in ten minutes, but you know, that was the
big idea of what we were trying to get to.
It's interesting because you know, it's a role where, you know,
traditionally they all have to champion some sort of social cause,
you know, and you know, and that's been the tradition
of Traditionally, you have to have something that you really
(07:08):
give a lot of extra, give a damn about it,
and you have to roll out a plan about that
to the American people over the next four years and
hopefully with no scandals messing it up in the meantime.
But I feel like the role has evolved over the years.
What are some of the ways that first ladies, just
in the research that you've seen, Jeff, what are some
of the ways that the first ladies have kind of
(07:29):
made this role their own? And I would love to
hear from you as well on that cape. When we
were developing the piece chronologically when we had like eleanor Roosevelt,
like that was a big one that like there was
so much to unpack, and we felt like that was
really like where it changed, where it was like more front,
where it could be visibly like you know, pushing for
these causes and you know, advocating on beliefs. Each one
(07:52):
made it their own, and so like the connecting line
through them all was like they each had their cause
like that they would believe in they were according their
husbands and the presidents, but they were also like advocating
for like women's issues and social causes that would help
further generations. From the earliest days, America's first ladies were
(08:12):
referred to as lady presidentists or Republican queen. The term
first Lady didn't come into use really until Dolly Madison's time.
The fourth first Lady, pioneered the practice of championing social causes.
She helped orphan children and supported women's rights. And it
said that at missus Madison's funeral, President Zachary Taylor, you
(08:34):
elogized her as the country's first Lady, the first time
that title was ever used. I was just thinking about
what you were saying, very earlier about if Corey Booker
had been elected, and I think his mother or his
sister or niece or someone would have stepped in to
take over the role, because there's just no way that
they would let that go, like somebody needs to fill in.
(08:56):
And we saw Thomas Jefferson, well we need a women,
get a woman. Yes, you need a woman. And I
still don't know why, but we feel the need to
have this position, and like James Buchanan was a bachelor
and his niece, Harriet Lane, you know, took over this
going back in the nineteenth century. But like the idea
(09:16):
that we would elect an unmarried person as president, I
think is such an interesting question because we attached so much,
like you know, meaning to being married and having a
family and like how that would make you responsible. And
I just I feel like we haven't moved far enough
away from those really old fashioned ideas. You know, the
(09:38):
first Lady is arguably one of the most important advisers
to the president. I don't believe that it was a
coincidence that, you know, you know, Reagan ran a big
deal on having a war on drugs and then Nancy
had just say no, how much of a role or
how much influence does the first lady have, Like in
(09:59):
what ways her first ladies impacted policy in this country.
I mean, a very recent example is Michelle Obama with
her Let's Move campaign that you mentioned earlier about you know,
having healthy lunches and catchup doesn't count as a vegetable
in school lunches and all of that mean she was
really trying to continue make it like a very healthy,
(10:22):
you know environment for kids who sometimes you know, hot
lunch is like their only meal of the day for
some kids in this country, which is just like terrible,
and so she really wanted to make sure they had
nutritious food. And Matt dovetailed with the Let's Move campaign
which was about exercise, and with her husband's childcare nutrition
bill that they were trying to get through Congress, and
(10:44):
so she would make calls to senators and members of
Congress trying to push that bill through. And that's a
real example of a first lady getting involved in policy.
Hillary Clinton wanted Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court
and let her husband know that she was the pick.
So there are actual real ways that they're getting involved,
(11:04):
and they call it pillow talk, which I still think
is kind of silly, but the idea that at night,
this is the last person there the president's presumably in
a v seeing so they can influence policy. But like
you mentioned Betty Ford, and I think a lot of
people know about what she did um to talk about
drug and alcohol addiction, but that happened after she was
(11:25):
in office, Like that app the Betty Ford Center was
years later. And so I think they have this tremendous
power for the rest of their lives if they choose
to use it. So we all know that Nancy Reagan
was onen't the people that got you know, her husband
to fire Donald Reagan who was then his chief of staff.
And then this one doesn't necessarily compare the same because
(11:46):
it was a one hundred years ago, but we also
know that you know, I think it was it was
it Woodrow Wilson that I had the stroke and Edith,
and Edith was running the country after her husband, like
not interno official capacity, but unofficially she you know, would
rouble Whisperner and this is what you need to tell
them to do, and then she would go password to
(12:07):
the Vice president. YEA. Does that support sister make the
president stronger? Or is it like, where's the line of hey,
here's what you should do versus he let me do
my job. I mean, that's such a good question when
you bring up Edith and Nancy. Those are two first ladies.
The reasons why they were so powerful as they decided
who could see their husbands, right, Like Nancy Reagan decided
(12:30):
who would be chief of staff. She decided even when
they were putting the cabinet together, who should be in
the cabinet. And then Edith Wilson was keeping people away
from her husband when he was sick. So it's the
idea of who's controlling the people who can get into
the Oval office or have the president's here. So I
think that that's where the power lies in the position
(12:50):
of first ladies, is being that person who can control
people who have access to their husband. And I think
a lot of people would say first ladies shouldn't have
any control, right because they're not elected. I would argue
that most First ladies that have kind of been doing
the pillow talk has been for the better of the country,
not necessarily for the detriment. We don't know if Milania
(13:12):
ever slept in saying that, but Trump, after maybe the
first year. But in terms of understanding just how influential
this role is. Why do women have to live in
the shadows and be unpaid in that regard? If you
have a stroke and I'm the middleman between you and
the chief of staff when the bombs Again, this is
back in the nineteen hundreds, Prohibition, World War One was
(13:36):
around the corner. Should I get a little bit of
money for being a first lady? It is ridiculous, And
that's what doctor Biden is trying to do. I think
by having a job, by being paid for that job.
She's teaching, of course, and she had taught her entire life.
The only time she took a break was during the campaign.
(13:56):
And I think that it's important that women be able
to continue their jobs. And Laura Bush, it's it's not
a partisan thing either. Laura Bush said the same thing.
She said, first ladies should be, you know, given the
opportunity to pursue whatever career they had. I mean, you
cannot expect Hillary Clinton to just sit idly by. And
I think I think that being paid for being first
(14:20):
lady is different than being paid for continuing your job
as a teacher, which is outside you know, the role.
I think that's easier to convince people it's it's okay,
especially like as much work, Like you know, there's still
expectations of like stuff doing at the White House, but
like you know, Jill Biden has been traveling all over
you know, visiting you know, tornado victims and things like that,
(14:41):
so like there's still just a lot of work as
well that they are doing and still expected to do
as well, and like to not get paid for that,
but also have an office that like with the staff
that reports to them. Like why is the boss not paid?
That's a good point, Well, you're paid for prestige book
deal after leave of is this day? Get Jeff? What
(15:03):
didn't make it into the piece? Because that's the thing
I'm always curious about you all Right, what argument did
y'all have when this piece was thirteen minutes and you
knew you had to chop it down to ten? Yeah,
I mean, you know, every woman that's been a first
lady has like you know, there's documentaries about them, there's
books about them, Like there's hundreds of sources on them
(15:24):
and stories to tell, and like it's very difficult to
like narrow it down and like right off the top,
Dolly Madison was where we sort of started this piece,
and like, you know, one of the stories that was
interesting but we just didn't have time for it was
like her saving like all these you know, government documents
in the Washington portrait when the British were storming the
White House, and it was just like a fascinating story,
but like we just didn't have the time to like
(15:44):
explain that story. Eleanor Roosevelt we spent one entire role on.
And there was like two stories that like I thought
were really interesting but we just didn't have room for.
One was that, like you know, she was very a
big advocate for the anti lynching legislation and the KKK
put it like a bounty on her. And then she
also would hold women only press conferences. A lot of
(16:04):
newspapers that only had men reporters would have to either
hire women reporters or you know, get women to report
on these stories, and to like it saved jobs and
like was a real force for like having women enter
into journalism. And so you know, you're condensing all this
history into like you know, it's a thirteen minute piece,
and like the soundbites that we use are like a
minute each roughly so you know, trying to tell Eleanor
(16:26):
Roosevelt's entire story and a minute is impossible. So we
see what women have done in the White House. After
the break, let's revisit a conversation that shows you what
they've done in the studio with them hip hippity hip
hoppity hip hippity hopping after the break, Beyond the scenes.
(16:47):
Politics isn't the only industry where women have made an
important impact. Next, let's take a look at how female
mcs helped shape hip hop. In this next clip, I
chatted with Dulce Sloan and Daily Show correspondent and Daily
Show producer Chelsea Williamson about how female rappers made a
name for themselves in this male dominated industry. Roll the clip, clip, clip,
(17:11):
that's my rap. Give him the clip now, Chelsea. I
guess we could talk broader about Dolsain, but specifically about
female mcason hip hop. Where did you start that journey
in assembling the pieces and looking at the history of
it so that then the writers can come into that
document and there's the joke. There's a joke. Then Dolsa
(17:33):
comes in and goes, that's a good point. That's a
point I want to make I want to make that point. Yeah,
I feel like a lot of it. Well, this one
specifically began through what happened with Megan the Stallion and
Tory Lanes last year. That's the shooting. Yes, the shooting
last July. PUPPERA. Tory Lanes has been charged in connection
with the shooting and fellow hip hop star Megan the
(17:54):
Stallion Lanes is accused of shooting Megan the Stallion's feet
back in July after she exited his s during a
flight in the Hollywood Hills. Both feet, yes, both feet,
after they went to the party together. So we had
been trying to figure out how are we going to
put this into some sort of piece, like we need
to do something because she is also not the first
(18:17):
like female rapper that's something like that has happened to
in this industry. So it just felt like, I don't know,
it just felt like there was like not a trend,
but like they're yeah, it's like the sexism in the
industry and how it affects like black women that specifically
occupy the rap space, which is so misogynistic I think
(18:40):
anybody would admit um. So we wanted to tackle that
in some way, shape or form, and it kind of
ended up getting to the space of, well, let's talk
about how women have influenced hip hop in general, because
it's very much thought of as only men have done everything,
and that it's it is still very male dominated. But
as we showed and as duals say said, like black
(19:00):
women literally founded and helped put together the first rap records,
so it's like we've been there since the beginning, and
you know, we deserve our flowers, and all the female rappers,
especially deserve their flowers because they never get them enough.
Now I saw the piece and I was disappointed to
see that Charlie Baltimore had been passed over. Now, there's
(19:26):
only so much time. That's not disrespect to Madame Charlie Baltimore,
one of my favorite rappers from the nineties, Thank you
very much. Um, but Chelsea, Chelsea, then doll, say, what
were some what were some pieces of the historical timeline?
Like what did you have to cut? Who were the
rappers that you didn't get a chance to get in
that Because you know, I'm a Southern guy, so I'm
already biased to like the Mida X and the gangster
(19:48):
booze of the world. X, Yes, No, we were so
much for Samba X. We wanted to include Salt Pepper
and Spinderella. I mean like they were some of the
first ones. Like correct, we had so many people you
have to men right right. It was it was like
it was literally like Sophie's choice. Um, Like it was like,
(20:10):
who are we going to mention because we know we're
gonna offend somebody, and we actually weren't even able to.
Ideally we had wanted to end like on where we
are now and like Highlight, you know, the Meghan, the Stallions,
the Cardi B's Nicki Minaj, you kind of ushered in
this entire new era um, and we weren't really able
to so we didn't. We weren't able to get them in.
We weren't able to get Trina the Baddest Bitch um.
(20:31):
You know. There were just a few that unfortunately we
couldn't you know, put in, but they mean so much
to hip hop and like that's not at all you
had to focus on the foundation of the genre, right
of the gender in this genre. They'll say, were you
okay with that? Once you all came to that decision, like, hey,
we ain't got enough time to talk about president day
hip hop were talking from you know, back in the day,
(20:53):
we're talking from Cross Color Carl Conna right right up
to TLC, and that's going to be the cutoff, right Well,
I think it's like I think us not being able
to include more present day artists was a bit of
(21:15):
a disservice, but one you got to cut stuff for
times sometimes. But also I think when it comes to
the music industry and it comes to hip hop, everything
is very much what's happening now, who's hot now, what's
going on now? Whose album just dropped, whose singles just dropped?
So I think we're very much aware of who is
(21:39):
popping currently. So I think it being a bit of
a history lesson was beneficial to people because there's a
whole generation of folks that don't know what aquilanty for
With the rapper there's only reason I don't know Ice
Cube was a rapper. Argue me down about will Smith
the youngest. He never he won the first rap griff,
(22:01):
What are you talking to? We Let'tiva burst onto the
rap scene with the pro woman message. Her song Ladies
First showed off not only her lyrical prowess but also
uplifted women and name check other female mcs. She was
shouting out more women than Mambo number five than in
nineteen ninety three. Her song called You and I t
Y called out men in hip hop for referring to
(22:23):
women as bitches and hops, bitches and holes. That's my bad.
I got called up. I can see why I shouldn't
have said that. I'm just leaving. Let's talk for a
second about your personal relationship with female mcs in hip hop,
like as women, as Black women's, as wemen's the representation
(22:47):
how I'm joking, but but seriously, how empowering was it
to see that, you know on television or did you
all always see that and feel like it was not enough? Chelsea,
I'll start with you. I mean, I feel like the
most impactful one for me actually was probably Nicki Minaj
because of when she came out, which was like the
latter half of my high school years. And I wanted
(23:08):
to say that was like the first rap album I'd
bought for myself, um with Pink Friday. I don't know
if I really got like the magnitude of the moment
when I, you know, bought it, but like I knew that, like, Okay,
this is this is gonna be great. I love this girl.
It was also because she was featured on Mariah's song
so and I'm a huge Maria Carrey fan. But other
than that, I would say yeah, and then side note
(23:31):
for that. Mariah always featured a lot of female mcs
on her remixes in the nineties and I loved those,
so yeah, yeah she did. Mariah had a nice little
relationship with hip hop in the nineties, and then she
would go yeah, she had a remixed one of her songs,
you know, a song with bone Thugs and Harmony, like,
oh my god, she got album under Tony Mottolin was like,
(23:51):
I'm with all the black people now, Negro basket. Let
me yeah, tell him to shimmy shimiya all over this track.
Do say, who were some more of the mainstreams that
you that you kind of fell in love with coming out?
I remember as a kid, uh, seeing Queen Latifa perform
(24:12):
Ladies first on TV. I don't know if it was
like a living color or it was like on a
late night show, but I remember seeing Queen Latifa perform
on TV. I was yet literal coal free stops, not
the check the cloud stick. Moll but it only seemed
like there were mainly like female rappers from like the North,
(24:32):
because like you like, you know, Queen Latifa, mcy light
Um and Salt and Pepper, and then like when de
Bratt came out, it was like, and the brat's not
from the South either, but she was with Demaine Japri
so by defaults Chicago or yeah, that's what I thought.
She'srom Chicago. So I think the only the first time
I really heard a female rapper that was from a
(24:52):
sound that I was accustomed to was when de Bratt
came out, and it would be on songs with Jermaine Dupris.
Because I grew up in the night. Yes, I remember
seeing a lot of female rappers and then there weren't
any because like mc light on where she went, and
then like you know, Trina and Gangster Boot popped up.
(25:13):
But it's kind of like when people talk about like, okay,
they can only be like one big black comic at
a time, right, So it's like it was prior and
there was Eddie Murphy and then you know, now it's
you know, the Chappelle and Kevin Hart. So there's like
and then they're just going you can only have one
big female rapper at a time when there's a bunch
(25:33):
of dudes talking nonsense all day and everyone's on board
with it. I always felt like there was a feeling
where there was proud to be a woman. There was
like a proud to be a woman era of lyricism
within female hip hop. And then it was I'm as
bad as these dudes and I'll beat your ass lyricism,
(25:54):
which is kind of the brat and which just kind
of gangster boo, which is a little bit Trina and
Trina was kind of that transition and little Kim Shade
if you want to your girl like the Army with
the Mama Lake little kids from the overlap of I'll
beat your ass, but also we can have sex if
(26:16):
you would like to have sex, which one would you prefer?
And now I feel like female rappers have given so
much space now finally to be all of the different
things that a woman could be. Like I love and
I'm not saying this because she's from Montgomery, Alabama. I
really enjoy Chica. I really enjoy from Millie two. It's
(26:36):
from Alabama, Yeah, from Alabama. And there's this expressiveness of no,
I'm going to talk about my inner thoughts and my wants,
and I don't have to if I choose to, I
don't have to sexualize my lyrics. You have the freedom
and the right too, but I can also be something
else in the industry goes ah, Yes, you come, come
get a record deal too. Yeah. I feel like there's
(26:58):
a lot more choice nowadays than there used to be.
I do feel like, you know, that gap that we
were just talking about, that kind of happened after like
Kim Foxy and all of them came up and they
changed the entire game. Like if we're being one percent honest,
you know, Kim and Foxy made women owning their sexuality
a thing it wasn't really talked about often from the
(27:20):
woman's perspective in rap and hip hop the way that
they were talking about it before them. But kind of
in consequence to that, that was then expected of all
female rappers for at least a decade, which it's just
you need to be the next Kim Foxy, which means
you need be dripped in Gabana, like they said, you
need to be talking about sex is like all the
time you'd be selling sex like it was a very
(27:40):
specific archetype that they wanted for so long, and record
labels even have said it now that they said women
rappers were just too expensive, and that's one of the
reasons there was such a long gap, is they were like,
we don't want to get a robbing rapper kis, and
we gotta pay for hair, we gotta pay for nails,
we gotta pay for your you know looks, we gotta
pay for all this stuff. You've now so expensive to
(28:01):
be a woman rapper, and then you're acting like that's
the reason to gate keep. Are the women rappers held
to a different standard, because from what I can hear,
the songs are just as hot, the flow is just
as good. Yeah, No, I definitely think that women rappers
are held to different standards. I think this is actually
something Duel Say and I were talking about. Is just
it's kind of no matter what industry you're in, um,
(28:23):
women are constantly underestimated and thought of as lower, and
especially in rap, which is so male dominated and misogynistic.
Like these women are still getting asked whether they write
their lyrics. I'm like, men don't even write their lyrics anymore,
Like why is that even still a question? Like people
are still like, oh, did Cardi b right x y
Z Da Da Da Da Da, And it's like doesn't matter,
(28:44):
like you know, like who cares. But then on top
of that, like they have to drink hell ghost writers. Okay,
I mean, I'm like that's why we have the whole
feud between him and Meek Mill M. But you know,
like even with all of that, these women are also
supposed to be super fashionable all the time. They have
to have all the hell of choreography. Like they're dancing,
(29:05):
they are giving you they're rapping, they're trying to dance
like their Janet Jackson and at the same time like
still trying to like keep a bomb flow and like
have great lyrics like and the men just aren't listen.
Megos can walk around three times and they'll be out
of breath. There's also just the fact that there's so
(29:26):
many mediocre rapping men out here, but we can't have
a female equivalent of that. Or whenever somebody is like
not to whatever x y Z standard is, it's suddenly
like the whole hip hop world is gonna, you know,
go and burst into flames because this girl can't rap
on beat or whatever. And it's like, you know, how
many men can't most of them. I mean, I think
(29:46):
for me, the true measure of equality is allowing mediocrity, truly,
because when I think of because like, only twenty percent
of comics or women, right, so, out of one hundred comics,
twenty of them are women. And I had a male
I had a conversation with, uh oh, I held the
(30:10):
shade back in. I held the shade back in. I'm
so proud of myself. I'm trying to be blessed this year.
And but he was like, I don't know a lot
of like women killers. I don't got a lot of
women killers. And I'm just like, are you looking for
male killers? Because he's like, well, you know, I'll see
a lineup and I'm like, out of ten comics, only
one of them as a woman. Out of a lineup
(30:32):
on a show, out of ten comics, there's usually one
of them as a woman. Out of these other nine
comics that are all men, four of them probably are okay,
but all every female comic is represented in this one
girl right destroy, she has to fucking destroy. And so
(30:54):
because when women succeed in a male dominated industry, it's
just like when you're you know, any marginalized group that
is trying to be successful in an industry that's either
predominantly white or predominantly male. You're going to have a
problem and you're going to be held at a different
(31:16):
standard because it's like, well, you need to show us
that you're as good as us, and I'm like, half
of your motherfuckers are trash, so I only need to
be as good as half of y'all. Technically. Big thank
you to Doc and Chelsea for that wonderful breakdown of
women in the rap game. After the break, we're gonna
talk with the homie Desildic and a Daily Show writer
(31:37):
about the way women and pleasure are often shown wrong
on screen. It's beyond the scenes. The music and entertainment
industry's portrayal of women are really important. And in this
next clip, I chatted with fellow correspondent Deasi Lydic and
Daily Show writer Kat Ratley about something that doesn't get
(31:58):
talked about often, depiction of female pleasure on screen. And
I'll talk to them about how are y'all able to
tackle this on the show. That's pretty freaky. Give them
a clip. Roll that freaky clip. Let's get into the
actual nuts and bolts of this DESI as a correspondent,
when someone brings you this piece, what was your first thought.
(32:21):
I was so excited because I had this reaction like,
oh my god, why haven't we talked about this before?
And I think on a subconscious level, it's always bothered
me that I feel like I haven't seen that many
representations of female sexuality and like an honest, authentic or
even really funny way. But it didn't hit me the
(32:46):
depths of it until I read the script. We're always
trying to figure out what topics we want to dive into,
and we look for things that are that feel like
they've been underreported or something we want to shine us
spotlight on, and they tend to be you know, we
go deep with the information and we go through the
(33:06):
history of something and and are the trap is that
it would be something that can feel a little dry, right, Well,
this one immediately is like, oh, that's fun to talk about.
That's like this one was very wet. This was very wet.
This was the opposite of dry. Thank you, ket We'll
(33:30):
get them, we'll get them halfway through, but this was um.
I wrote it with Lauren, another writer who is amazing
and the two of us have written a couple of
things for Desi, and it seems like it's just I mean,
writing for Desi is super fun, and we kind of
knew like, all right, this can be like a touchy,
difficult subject, and I mean, Desi totally nailed the performance.
(33:54):
So I'm glad that she was as on board and
excited about it as we were, because writing it was
it was fun to actually, like, like, as he was saying,
for women's history months sometimes we do like, all right,
let's look at you know, voting rights in the suffragette movement,
which is important and great, but not as fun as
talking about you know, Barbarella or Meg Ryan's aureasm. And
(34:16):
when Harry met Sally, oh oh god, oh yes, yes, yes, yes,
oh oh, oh oh god, I'll have what she's having.
We haven't really done a segment like this on the
show before, so I feel like it was like a
(34:39):
fun aspect of women's history that wasn't as like serious
and heavy as you know, having our rights taken away.
But it also just the subject matter itself. It was
something that I sort of like subconsciously knew in my
brain that I wasn't saying a lot of this out there,
but I really it wasn't. It didn't hit me until
(34:59):
I read everything in that discussion, like, oh my god, Yes,
that is how women were represented that early on. I
had no idea about the Hetty Lamar thing. The first
known female orgasm on the silver screen was in the
nineteen thirty three German film Ecstasy, when Hetty Lamar took
the brought Worst Express all the way to pleasure Burg.
(35:21):
It turns out the world wasn't ready for this. Everyone
denounced it, from Hitler to the Pope. And if you
ask me, the Pope has no place weighing in on seccines.
He's celibate. I mean, when we need your opinion on
the best stain removers for white fabrics, then we'll call you.
I didn't realize that she was the first woman to
have an orgasm on screen, and then not only that,
but like she was basically came up with the start
(35:45):
of what is WiFi now, so she was a genius. Like,
I had no idea about all of that until I
read it. Yeah, but they lowkey sex shamed her the
most of her career for daring to be that open
on camera. Do you all think that at men being
in control of the narrative of sex in the entertainment industry,
(36:07):
I mean less so now, but definitely still more so
than women. How much did that play into it? When
you look at over the decades and decades of just
the way women have been portrayed to you are the male,
the men controls you, and it's never really connected to
what a woman really wants in the bedroom or properly
(36:31):
portraying what a woman wants in a bedroom. The hetty
Lamartine went back to like the nineteen thirties, so that's
like kind of where this started, nineteen thirties films up
till now. And yeah, when you think about it, it
was mostly and still as mostly men writing and directing
and producing these movies. So they're the ones who are determining,
you know, what a female orgasm should or shouldn't look
(36:53):
like on screen, because I because it didn't make you
wonder like, okay, well why is this and you're like,
oh yeah, because men control everything for all of the
beginning of time. So I do think that has a
lot to do with it, just like who's writing these stories,
who's telling these women and directing them how to act?
On screen. Okay, so now in this next team, you're
(37:15):
gonna really erupt with pleasure. I want you to just
scream and bang the hitboard so that everyone can hear.
All Right, people, it's like ten seconds in and nothing
has happened, and you're like, oh, is that all it? Okay? Well,
I guess that's how it works. It's just that simple. Huh.
It's like almost like sound like you're getting murdered, but
(37:37):
not quite. There's like a fine line between the two.
Feed the ego of the man, so he knows he's
killing it. Yeah. Yeah. So when we do race stories
on the show, the question has always suits the intended audience,
right because black people, to a degree, kind of already
know some of the stuff we're talking about. So in
(37:58):
a way, you're having to present information to half of
the audience that already knows this topic while also presenting
it like with CP time, it's stuff that black people
may or may not have already known. But here's a
couple of jokes and we go a little deeper on
the issue. And if you are not black, then this
is a whole wealth of new information. Because I'll be
honest as a man, this is something I've never paid
(38:20):
attention to. So who was the When you think about
the intended audience, was it to serve a dual purpose
or was it to educate meatheads like myself? I mean,
I think it's always like, in my opinion, it's always
about kind of starting a conversation across the board, right,
And the feeling that I felt when I read it
(38:43):
for the first time was what I would hope that
other women felt when they saw it, and that they
felt heard and seeing like, oh, I've been feeling this
way too, I've been missing this in TV and film.
Then we do have some more work to do, and
then also to maybe perhap educate a few viewers who
maybe did not know some of this or thought about
(39:05):
it in that way. Um, and yeah, start a conversation
about it. I remember growing up watching a lot of
movies and stuff, and this is how like watching this
segment it in my brain and I started thinking back,
there's a scene in waiting to exhale shit. Oh this
is good. Yeah, yeah, good, Yeah, it was good. Oh
(39:27):
yeah he can we say or I'll say orgasm. This
is beyond the scenes and we are very tasteful show. Yes,
so he busts the way before the woman did. Does
he think he just did something here? Shit? I could
(39:49):
have had a V eight. Oh, I could have had
a V eight. Was the line that's a legendary. It's
a legendary line. But women not getting an orgasm, it's
almost seen as ha ha, you didn't get any pleasure
growing up? What was you all's personal experience and seeing
female pleasure depicted on screen? Can I ask that? Let
(40:11):
me ask that in a more hr way as you
all were matriculating this young way, how much it's menstruating.
It's called menstruating, what come on as you ministrate it
to adult? But you know, what was your what was
your experience seeing the way sex was depicted on screen?
(40:34):
I think, like you said too, that it's funny that
it was so often used as a punchline. And I
feel like that's kind of something that became ingrained without
me realizing because it is, you know, it's either funny
that she doesn't get pleasure, or like two of the
movies we do is like a Catherine Heigel scene and
Jennifer Anderson scene from Bruce Almighty, where like their pleasures
(40:57):
like so over the top and um exaggerated that it's
like it's the comedy, it's the butt of the joe.
In the years that followed, female pleasure became more and
more common on screen, but they were still often treated
as punchlines, like Jennifer Aniston getting unexpected magic high acts
and Bruce Almighty, or Katherine Hygel accidentally orgasming at dinner
(41:18):
when a little boy grabbed her remote controlled vibrating underwear. Okay,
there is so much wrong with this. It's non consensual,
it's a kid doing it, and it perpetuates the dangerous
myth that vibrating underwear gives you anything but a five
alarm electrical burn. I was like, okay, like it's it's
the way we do it is funny, or like we're
(41:40):
kind of used as a punchline as opposed to like
taken seriously. And I don't really know how that affected me,
because I feel like We're just kind of getting messages
like that from all over. So I'm kind of like,
all right, well, this is the way it is until
you kind of learned that it is different. Still getting
to learn that scene in particular, I have so many
(42:00):
mixed feelings about I feel like that because as as
like an actor doing comedy, you when you get a
scene as a woman, like you want to have the joke,
you want to get to do like the big performative
joke in this set piece, and so and men get
to joke about their orgasms all the time, like it's
(42:21):
all over the place, literally, And how many are we
at now? Three? Four? Still early, but like there were
so many problems in that scene itself, Like Kat said,
we were kind of like punching at the wrong thing.
The punchline was aimed, it seemed in the wrong direction.
And also just like there was really no consent. It
(42:45):
was kind of against their will. It was happening to
them and they were participating in it, which felt kind
of weird. And I think those movies were when Laura
and I were writing it, we were like, wait, what
year was this. I want to say it was like
two thousand and nine, Like it was ten to fifteen
years ago, when like consent was not like a term
people were thinking about her throwing around and probably like
(43:07):
movie sets at all. And I'm like, oh, yeah, like
you are like giving Katherine Heigel this orgasm in a
restaurant and it's funny, and I'm just like ooh man
that they didn't even have the C word anywhere in
their brain like at this point in time. So I
was like, I was like, there's so there's so much
wrong with this. And it was a kid right like,
(43:29):
it was like a kid, eight year old kid toy
with it. You're like, no, stop. Yeah, there's a lot
of problematic old school sex scenes that you could go
back and watch now and be like, yeah, I can.
I can remember. I just recently rediscovered the movie Young Frankenstein,
which I is like a classic mel Brooks and Gene
(43:53):
Wilder and so many funny performances in that movie. Terry
Garr and Madeleine con are comedic geniuses. And I remember
seeing that scene of Madeleine Cohn with the monster when
he comes in to like take her and he drops
his pants and then suddenly she's like very into it
(44:16):
and they have this whole sex scene. Oh oh, you
can't be serious. I'm like, oh my god, Wolf, I'm
I'm engaged and one thing too, But I didn't. He
(44:38):
was never all, oh my ha, mister live lot. I
found dude. It is like a toured divorce in her
comedic performance. It's hilarious. She should have won all the
awards for this scene. And then it cuts to them
(45:01):
sitting there side by side and they're smoking a cigarette.
But in watching it in recent years, you go back
and you're like, wait, he took her against her will. Wait,
there was no he was kidnapping her. It was so
problematic on so many levels. Is the implication that, so
Frankenstein has a big dick, Like, that's what the implication was. Yeah,
I mean, I guess that would make sense. If you're
(45:21):
able to piece together a human You're like, I guess
I'll give them the going, all out, biggest dead dick
I can find. If young boys get weird science, we
can at least have Frankenstein like give my standing. Yeah,
that's all the time we have for today. But hopefully
by now we're taking you beyond the scenes. See you
next week. Listen to The Daily Show Beyond the Scenes
(45:47):
on Apple podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get
your podcasts. Well, give a damn, just listen.
Hey, it's Roywood Junior. Happy Women's History Month. I want
to take a look back at some of our favorite
episodes that celebrate female trailblazers. In this episode, we chat
about female rappers who made a name for themselves in
a male dominated industry, how our First Ladies impacted our
nation's policies, and we even chat about the depictions of
female pleasure on screen and how it evolved over the
(00:30):
years to be more sex positive. Freaky Dick, have a listen.
I hope you enjoy. I hope I don't get in
trouble for seeing Freaky Dick. It's too late already said
In this first clip on the First Ladies episode, I'm
joined by Daily Show producer Jeff Gusso and seeing and
contributor Kate Anderson Brower about some of the ways First
(00:51):
Ladies have impacted policy in this country. Give up a clip, Kate,
help us understand and the role of the first Lady.
You know, it's it's it's unpaid, first and formal. We
want to talk about some pay inequity. It's an unelected role.
There really doesn't seem to be a rule book on
(01:12):
what you can and can't or should and shouldn't do.
But yet everybody has an opinion on what a first
Lady should or shouldn't be doing. So what are some
of the expectations of the role. Well, it's a very archaic,
old fashioned title, right, you know. Jackie Kennedy said that
she never wanted to be called first Lady. It sounded
like a saddle horse. She said, it was like a
(01:33):
demeaning name. It's very arcane because people don't understand it,
and even years of studying it myself, I found it
to be completely dependent on the person who has the position.
One person wrote to Betty Ford, who was First Lady
in the seventies, and said, you're constitutionally required to be perfect,
(01:55):
And I think that kind of sums it up. They
are supposed to be ideal wives and others, the symbol
of what it is to be an American woman, juggling everything,
and each of them fails in their own way, and
I think they feel as though, after a little bit
of time in the position, that they just have to
(02:15):
make it their own and do what they want with it, because,
as Rosalind Carter said, no matter what, you're going to
be criticized, and you know, there's a lot of sexism obviously,
and in the world still, and I think that there's
a sense that each woman is held up to these
very unfair expectations, and so they have to make the
role their own. And there's nothing in the constitution that
(02:37):
describes what they have to do, so they can do
as little like Milannia Trump, for instance, or as much
like eleanor Roosevelt or Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama, these
women that really took the role incredibly seriously. So it
just depends on each woman. Yeah, because you know Michelle Obama,
you know, she it was the school lunch initiative, you know,
(02:58):
healthier nutrition, you know, Let's Move program. You know, you
look at everything that Betty Ford was doing with regards
to you know, just being vocal about women's issues. We
don't have to talk about Nancy Reagan and just say no,
we know the history of that. How do some of
the expectations of the first lady play into some of
the gender norms and gender roles that I believe a
(03:22):
lot of women are trying to break out of, or
at least trying to change what the base level expectations
are of a first set because you know, they're responsible
for a lot of the domestic duties in the white
not literally cleaning and cooking, but organizing the social events
and oh, you got to decorate the tree, and we
have to make sure everything is set for dinner. Like
(03:42):
how much of those expectations are part of the role.
I mean, one of the funniest things that happened during
the Trump administration was when Milania, you know there, was
caught talking to a friend on the phone and saying
something about how she just didn't want to deal with
the stupid Christmas decorations. And I think everyone was like
a ghast at that. That's what the job is, and
(04:02):
it just looked bad too. They say, I'm more uncompleted.
I'm the same like him. I support him. I don't
say enough. I don't do it enough. No, it's I
put the I'm working like a ask my ass. I
know Christmas stuff that you know, wis about Christmas stuff
and decoration, but I need to do it right. But
(04:23):
I mean, look at Michelle Obama. She was making you know,
almost three hundred thousand dollars at the University of Chicago
Medical Center in their communications office. She went to Harvard Princeton.
She's incredibly well educated, and yet her role was in
many ways to just take care of the daughters. And
there's nothing wrong with that. The mother and chief role
(04:43):
that Michelle Obama took up was really powerful, especially for
you know, a black woman. I thought that that was
really important for her to make this point that she
was going to focus on her daughters, and there was
nothing wrong with that. I think that you have to
be able to just accept women doing as much or
as little as they want. Then you see Hillary Clinton
(05:04):
who had an office in the West Wing and she
always regretted having that office because she realized that she
overstepped that the American people were not ready for it.
And I think that's unfortunate, right that we haven't moved
beyond that. And I think it's going to take a
first gentleman, if that's what we call him, to like
be okay with a woman doing as much or as
(05:25):
little as she as she wants. I mean, if Bill
Clinton were first gentleman, I think that no one would
be expecting him to be you know, baking cookies, arranging
the Christmas decoration, redesigning the White House lawn. That's why, Jeff,
that's why I was like in a weird way. During
the last election, I was kind of pulling for Corey
(05:46):
Booker just because I wanted the chaos of an unmarried
man in the White House, Like who's gonna do what?
I like? Granted he's in a relationship with Rosario Dawson
at the time, but you know, are you still a
first lady? If first girlfriend? Like I wanted chaos? Dude,
what was like the main inspiration for putting this piece together?
(06:06):
And just talk to us a little bit about the
ideation of that at the Daily Show. Yeah, I mean,
you know, it was about in November twenty twenty, the election.
I think it just happened, and we were sort of
like looking at like all the changes that were about
to happen with Joe Biden and doctor Joe Biden coming
in in January, and I think we were trying to, like,
you know, we just wanted to focus on, like what
is this role, what is this handoff between Melania Trump
(06:27):
to Joe Biden? And you know, what is the history?
What are the expectations? Four years of Donald Trump and
Melania Trump had been so chaotic and like, was what
Melanie Trump did normal? What's it not normal? What is
expected of Joe Biden. So we wanted to honor these ladies,
but we also wanted to like get the crux of, like,
you know, how the job can be good and how
the job can be bad. You know, give it, you know,
(06:47):
give people full sense of it, you know, which is
difficult in ten minutes, but you know, that was the
big idea of what we were trying to get to.
It's interesting because you know, it's a role where, you know,
traditionally they all have to champion some sort of social cause,
you know, and you know, and that's been the tradition
of Traditionally, you have to have something that you really
(07:08):
give a lot of extra, give a damn about it,
and you have to roll out a plan about that
to the American people over the next four years and
hopefully with no scandals messing it up in the meantime.
But I feel like the role has evolved over the years.
What are some of the ways that first ladies, just
in the research that you've seen, Jeff, what are some
of the ways that the first ladies have kind of
(07:29):
made this role their own? And I would love to
hear from you as well on that cape. When we
were developing the piece chronologically when we had like eleanor Roosevelt,
like that was a big one that like there was
so much to unpack, and we felt like that was
really like where it changed, where it was like more front,
where it could be visibly like you know, pushing for
these causes and you know, advocating on beliefs. Each one
(07:52):
made it their own, and so like the connecting line
through them all was like they each had their cause
like that they would believe in they were according their
husbands and the presidents, but they were also like advocating
for like women's issues and social causes that would help
further generations. From the earliest days, America's first ladies were
(08:12):
referred to as lady presidentists or Republican queen. The term
first Lady didn't come into use really until Dolly Madison's time.
The fourth first Lady, pioneered the practice of championing social causes.
She helped orphan children and supported women's rights. And it
said that at missus Madison's funeral, President Zachary Taylor, you
(08:34):
elogized her as the country's first Lady, the first time
that title was ever used. I was just thinking about
what you were saying, very earlier about if Corey Booker
had been elected, and I think his mother or his
sister or niece or someone would have stepped in to
take over the role, because there's just no way that
they would let that go, like somebody needs to fill in.
(08:56):
And we saw Thomas Jefferson, well we need a women,
get a woman. Yes, you need a woman. And I
still don't know why, but we feel the need to
have this position, and like James Buchanan was a bachelor
and his niece, Harriet Lane, you know, took over this
going back in the nineteenth century. But like the idea
(09:16):
that we would elect an unmarried person as president, I
think is such an interesting question because we attached so much,
like you know, meaning to being married and having a
family and like how that would make you responsible. And
I just I feel like we haven't moved far enough
away from those really old fashioned ideas. You know, the
(09:38):
first Lady is arguably one of the most important advisers
to the president. I don't believe that it was a
coincidence that, you know, you know, Reagan ran a big
deal on having a war on drugs and then Nancy
had just say no, how much of a role or
how much influence does the first lady have, Like in
(09:59):
what ways her first ladies impacted policy in this country.
I mean, a very recent example is Michelle Obama with
her Let's Move campaign that you mentioned earlier about you know,
having healthy lunches and catchup doesn't count as a vegetable
in school lunches and all of that mean she was
really trying to continue make it like a very healthy,
(10:22):
you know environment for kids who sometimes you know, hot
lunch is like their only meal of the day for
some kids in this country, which is just like terrible,
and so she really wanted to make sure they had
nutritious food. And Matt dovetailed with the Let's Move campaign
which was about exercise, and with her husband's childcare nutrition
bill that they were trying to get through Congress, and
(10:44):
so she would make calls to senators and members of
Congress trying to push that bill through. And that's a
real example of a first lady getting involved in policy.
Hillary Clinton wanted Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court
and let her husband know that she was the pick.
So there are actual real ways that they're getting involved,
(11:04):
and they call it pillow talk, which I still think
is kind of silly, but the idea that at night,
this is the last person there the president's presumably in
a v seeing so they can influence policy. But like
you mentioned Betty Ford, and I think a lot of
people know about what she did um to talk about
drug and alcohol addiction, but that happened after she was
(11:25):
in office, Like that app the Betty Ford Center was
years later. And so I think they have this tremendous
power for the rest of their lives if they choose
to use it. So we all know that Nancy Reagan
was onen't the people that got you know, her husband
to fire Donald Reagan who was then his chief of staff.
And then this one doesn't necessarily compare the same because
(11:46):
it was a one hundred years ago, but we also
know that you know, I think it was it was
it Woodrow Wilson that I had the stroke and Edith,
and Edith was running the country after her husband, like
not interno official capacity, but unofficially she you know, would
rouble Whisperner and this is what you need to tell
them to do, and then she would go password to
(12:07):
the Vice president. YEA. Does that support sister make the
president stronger? Or is it like, where's the line of hey,
here's what you should do versus he let me do
my job. I mean, that's such a good question when
you bring up Edith and Nancy. Those are two first ladies.
The reasons why they were so powerful as they decided
who could see their husbands, right, Like Nancy Reagan decided
(12:30):
who would be chief of staff. She decided even when
they were putting the cabinet together, who should be in
the cabinet. And then Edith Wilson was keeping people away
from her husband when he was sick. So it's the
idea of who's controlling the people who can get into
the Oval office or have the president's here. So I
think that that's where the power lies in the position
(12:50):
of first ladies, is being that person who can control
people who have access to their husband. And I think
a lot of people would say first ladies shouldn't have
any control, right because they're not elected. I would argue
that most First ladies that have kind of been doing
the pillow talk has been for the better of the country,
not necessarily for the detriment. We don't know if Milania
(13:12):
ever slept in saying that, but Trump, after maybe the
first year. But in terms of understanding just how influential
this role is. Why do women have to live in
the shadows and be unpaid in that regard? If you
have a stroke and I'm the middleman between you and
the chief of staff when the bombs Again, this is
back in the nineteen hundreds, Prohibition, World War One was
(13:36):
around the corner. Should I get a little bit of
money for being a first lady? It is ridiculous, And
that's what doctor Biden is trying to do. I think
by having a job, by being paid for that job.
She's teaching, of course, and she had taught her entire life.
The only time she took a break was during the campaign.
(13:56):
And I think that it's important that women be able
to continue their jobs. And Laura Bush, it's it's not
a partisan thing either. Laura Bush said the same thing.
She said, first ladies should be, you know, given the
opportunity to pursue whatever career they had. I mean, you
cannot expect Hillary Clinton to just sit idly by. And
I think I think that being paid for being first
(14:20):
lady is different than being paid for continuing your job
as a teacher, which is outside you know, the role.
I think that's easier to convince people it's it's okay,
especially like as much work, Like you know, there's still
expectations of like stuff doing at the White House, but
like you know, Jill Biden has been traveling all over
you know, visiting you know, tornado victims and things like that,
(14:41):
so like there's still just a lot of work as
well that they are doing and still expected to do
as well, and like to not get paid for that,
but also have an office that like with the staff
that reports to them. Like why is the boss not paid?
That's a good point, Well, you're paid for prestige book
deal after leave of is this day? Get Jeff? What
(15:03):
didn't make it into the piece? Because that's the thing
I'm always curious about you all Right, what argument did
y'all have when this piece was thirteen minutes and you
knew you had to chop it down to ten? Yeah,
I mean, you know, every woman that's been a first
lady has like you know, there's documentaries about them, there's
books about them, Like there's hundreds of sources on them
(15:24):
and stories to tell, and like it's very difficult to
like narrow it down and like right off the top,
Dolly Madison was where we sort of started this piece,
and like, you know, one of the stories that was
interesting but we just didn't have time for it was
like her saving like all these you know, government documents
in the Washington portrait when the British were storming the
White House, and it was just like a fascinating story,
but like we just didn't have the time to like
(15:44):
explain that story. Eleanor Roosevelt we spent one entire role on.
And there was like two stories that like I thought
were really interesting but we just didn't have room for.
One was that, like you know, she was very a
big advocate for the anti lynching legislation and the KKK
put it like a bounty on her. And then she
also would hold women only press conferences. A lot of
(16:04):
newspapers that only had men reporters would have to either
hire women reporters or you know, get women to report
on these stories, and to like it saved jobs and
like was a real force for like having women enter
into journalism. And so you know, you're condensing all this
history into like you know, it's a thirteen minute piece,
and like the soundbites that we use are like a
minute each roughly so you know, trying to tell Eleanor
(16:26):
Roosevelt's entire story and a minute is impossible. So we
see what women have done in the White House. After
the break, let's revisit a conversation that shows you what
they've done in the studio with them hip hippity hip
hoppity hip hippity hopping after the break, Beyond the scenes.
(16:47):
Politics isn't the only industry where women have made an
important impact. Next, let's take a look at how female
mcs helped shape hip hop. In this next clip, I
chatted with Dulce Sloan and Daily Show correspondent and Daily
Show producer Chelsea Williamson about how female rappers made a
name for themselves in this male dominated industry. Roll the clip, clip, clip,
(17:11):
that's my rap. Give him the clip now, Chelsea. I
guess we could talk broader about Dolsain, but specifically about
female mcason hip hop. Where did you start that journey
in assembling the pieces and looking at the history of
it so that then the writers can come into that
document and there's the joke. There's a joke. Then Dolsa
(17:33):
comes in and goes, that's a good point. That's a
point I want to make I want to make that point. Yeah,
I feel like a lot of it. Well, this one
specifically began through what happened with Megan the Stallion and
Tory Lanes last year. That's the shooting. Yes, the shooting
last July. PUPPERA. Tory Lanes has been charged in connection
with the shooting and fellow hip hop star Megan the
(17:54):
Stallion Lanes is accused of shooting Megan the Stallion's feet
back in July after she exited his s during a
flight in the Hollywood Hills. Both feet, yes, both feet,
after they went to the party together. So we had
been trying to figure out how are we going to
put this into some sort of piece, like we need
to do something because she is also not the first
(18:17):
like female rapper that's something like that has happened to
in this industry. So it just felt like, I don't know,
it just felt like there was like not a trend,
but like they're yeah, it's like the sexism in the
industry and how it affects like black women that specifically
occupy the rap space, which is so misogynistic I think
(18:40):
anybody would admit um. So we wanted to tackle that
in some way, shape or form, and it kind of
ended up getting to the space of, well, let's talk
about how women have influenced hip hop in general, because
it's very much thought of as only men have done everything,
and that it's it is still very male dominated. But
as we showed and as duals say said, like black
(19:00):
women literally founded and helped put together the first rap records,
so it's like we've been there since the beginning, and
you know, we deserve our flowers, and all the female rappers,
especially deserve their flowers because they never get them enough.
Now I saw the piece and I was disappointed to
see that Charlie Baltimore had been passed over. Now, there's
(19:26):
only so much time. That's not disrespect to Madame Charlie Baltimore,
one of my favorite rappers from the nineties, Thank you
very much. Um, but Chelsea, Chelsea, then doll, say, what
were some what were some pieces of the historical timeline?
Like what did you have to cut? Who were the
rappers that you didn't get a chance to get in
that Because you know, I'm a Southern guy, so I'm
already biased to like the Mida X and the gangster
(19:48):
booze of the world. X, Yes, No, we were so
much for Samba X. We wanted to include Salt Pepper
and Spinderella. I mean like they were some of the
first ones. Like correct, we had so many people you
have to men right right. It was it was like
it was literally like Sophie's choice. Um, Like it was like,
(20:10):
who are we going to mention because we know we're
gonna offend somebody, and we actually weren't even able to.
Ideally we had wanted to end like on where we
are now and like Highlight, you know, the Meghan, the Stallions,
the Cardi B's Nicki Minaj, you kind of ushered in
this entire new era um, and we weren't really able
to so we didn't. We weren't able to get them in.
We weren't able to get Trina the Baddest Bitch um.
(20:31):
You know. There were just a few that unfortunately we
couldn't you know, put in, but they mean so much
to hip hop and like that's not at all you
had to focus on the foundation of the genre, right
of the gender in this genre. They'll say, were you
okay with that? Once you all came to that decision, like, hey,
we ain't got enough time to talk about president day
hip hop were talking from you know, back in the day,
(20:53):
we're talking from Cross Color Carl Conna right right up
to TLC, and that's going to be the cutoff, right Well,
I think it's like I think us not being able
to include more present day artists was a bit of
(21:15):
a disservice, but one you got to cut stuff for
times sometimes. But also I think when it comes to
the music industry and it comes to hip hop, everything
is very much what's happening now, who's hot now, what's
going on now? Whose album just dropped, whose singles just dropped?
So I think we're very much aware of who is
(21:39):
popping currently. So I think it being a bit of
a history lesson was beneficial to people because there's a
whole generation of folks that don't know what aquilanty for
With the rapper there's only reason I don't know Ice
Cube was a rapper. Argue me down about will Smith
the youngest. He never he won the first rap griff,
(22:01):
What are you talking to? We Let'tiva burst onto the
rap scene with the pro woman message. Her song Ladies
First showed off not only her lyrical prowess but also
uplifted women and name check other female mcs. She was
shouting out more women than Mambo number five than in
nineteen ninety three. Her song called You and I t
Y called out men in hip hop for referring to
(22:23):
women as bitches and hops, bitches and holes. That's my bad.
I got called up. I can see why I shouldn't
have said that. I'm just leaving. Let's talk for a
second about your personal relationship with female mcs in hip hop,
like as women, as Black women's, as wemen's the representation
(22:47):
how I'm joking, but but seriously, how empowering was it
to see that, you know on television or did you
all always see that and feel like it was not enough? Chelsea,
I'll start with you. I mean, I feel like the
most impactful one for me actually was probably Nicki Minaj
because of when she came out, which was like the
latter half of my high school years. And I wanted
(23:08):
to say that was like the first rap album I'd
bought for myself, um with Pink Friday. I don't know
if I really got like the magnitude of the moment
when I, you know, bought it, but like I knew that, like, Okay,
this is this is gonna be great. I love this girl.
It was also because she was featured on Mariah's song
so and I'm a huge Maria Carrey fan. But other
than that, I would say yeah, and then side note
(23:31):
for that. Mariah always featured a lot of female mcs
on her remixes in the nineties and I loved those,
so yeah, yeah she did. Mariah had a nice little
relationship with hip hop in the nineties, and then she
would go yeah, she had a remixed one of her songs,
you know, a song with bone Thugs and Harmony, like,
oh my god, she got album under Tony Mottolin was like,
(23:51):
I'm with all the black people now, Negro basket. Let
me yeah, tell him to shimmy shimiya all over this track.
Do say, who were some more of the mainstreams that
you that you kind of fell in love with coming out?
I remember as a kid, uh, seeing Queen Latifa perform
(24:12):
Ladies first on TV. I don't know if it was
like a living color or it was like on a
late night show, but I remember seeing Queen Latifa perform
on TV. I was yet literal coal free stops, not
the check the cloud stick. Moll but it only seemed
like there were mainly like female rappers from like the North,
(24:32):
because like you like, you know, Queen Latifa, mcy light
Um and Salt and Pepper, and then like when de
Bratt came out, it was like, and the brat's not
from the South either, but she was with Demaine Japri
so by defaults Chicago or yeah, that's what I thought.
She'srom Chicago. So I think the only the first time
I really heard a female rapper that was from a
(24:52):
sound that I was accustomed to was when de Bratt
came out, and it would be on songs with Jermaine Dupris.
Because I grew up in the night. Yes, I remember
seeing a lot of female rappers and then there weren't
any because like mc light on where she went, and
then like you know, Trina and Gangster Boot popped up.
(25:13):
But it's kind of like when people talk about like, okay,
they can only be like one big black comic at
a time, right, So it's like it was prior and
there was Eddie Murphy and then you know, now it's
you know, the Chappelle and Kevin Hart. So there's like
and then they're just going you can only have one
big female rapper at a time when there's a bunch
(25:33):
of dudes talking nonsense all day and everyone's on board
with it. I always felt like there was a feeling
where there was proud to be a woman. There was
like a proud to be a woman era of lyricism
within female hip hop. And then it was I'm as
bad as these dudes and I'll beat your ass lyricism,
(25:54):
which is kind of the brat and which just kind
of gangster boo, which is a little bit Trina and
Trina was kind of that transition and little Kim Shade
if you want to your girl like the Army with
the Mama Lake little kids from the overlap of I'll
beat your ass, but also we can have sex if
(26:16):
you would like to have sex, which one would you prefer?
And now I feel like female rappers have given so
much space now finally to be all of the different
things that a woman could be. Like I love and
I'm not saying this because she's from Montgomery, Alabama. I
really enjoy Chica. I really enjoy from Millie two. It's
(26:36):
from Alabama, Yeah, from Alabama. And there's this expressiveness of no,
I'm going to talk about my inner thoughts and my wants,
and I don't have to if I choose to, I
don't have to sexualize my lyrics. You have the freedom
and the right too, but I can also be something
else in the industry goes ah, Yes, you come, come
get a record deal too. Yeah. I feel like there's
(26:58):
a lot more choice nowadays than there used to be.
I do feel like, you know, that gap that we
were just talking about, that kind of happened after like
Kim Foxy and all of them came up and they
changed the entire game. Like if we're being one percent honest,
you know, Kim and Foxy made women owning their sexuality
a thing it wasn't really talked about often from the
(27:20):
woman's perspective in rap and hip hop the way that
they were talking about it before them. But kind of
in consequence to that, that was then expected of all
female rappers for at least a decade, which it's just
you need to be the next Kim Foxy, which means
you need be dripped in Gabana, like they said, you
need to be talking about sex is like all the
time you'd be selling sex like it was a very
(27:40):
specific archetype that they wanted for so long, and record
labels even have said it now that they said women
rappers were just too expensive, and that's one of the
reasons there was such a long gap, is they were like,
we don't want to get a robbing rapper kis, and
we gotta pay for hair, we gotta pay for nails,
we gotta pay for your you know looks, we gotta
pay for all this stuff. You've now so expensive to
(28:01):
be a woman rapper, and then you're acting like that's
the reason to gate keep. Are the women rappers held
to a different standard, because from what I can hear,
the songs are just as hot, the flow is just
as good. Yeah, No, I definitely think that women rappers
are held to different standards. I think this is actually
something Duel Say and I were talking about. Is just
it's kind of no matter what industry you're in, um,
(28:23):
women are constantly underestimated and thought of as lower, and
especially in rap, which is so male dominated and misogynistic.
Like these women are still getting asked whether they write
their lyrics. I'm like, men don't even write their lyrics anymore,
Like why is that even still a question? Like people
are still like, oh, did Cardi b right x y
Z Da Da Da Da Da, And it's like doesn't matter,
(28:44):
like you know, like who cares. But then on top
of that, like they have to drink hell ghost writers. Okay,
I mean, I'm like that's why we have the whole
feud between him and Meek Mill M. But you know,
like even with all of that, these women are also
supposed to be super fashionable all the time. They have
to have all the hell of choreography. Like they're dancing,
(29:05):
they are giving you they're rapping, they're trying to dance
like their Janet Jackson and at the same time like
still trying to like keep a bomb flow and like
have great lyrics like and the men just aren't listen.
Megos can walk around three times and they'll be out
of breath. There's also just the fact that there's so
(29:26):
many mediocre rapping men out here, but we can't have
a female equivalent of that. Or whenever somebody is like
not to whatever x y Z standard is, it's suddenly
like the whole hip hop world is gonna, you know,
go and burst into flames because this girl can't rap
on beat or whatever. And it's like, you know, how
many men can't most of them. I mean, I think
(29:46):
for me, the true measure of equality is allowing mediocrity, truly,
because when I think of because like, only twenty percent
of comics or women, right, so, out of one hundred comics,
twenty of them are women. And I had a male
I had a conversation with, uh oh, I held the
(30:10):
shade back in. I held the shade back in. I'm
so proud of myself. I'm trying to be blessed this year.
And but he was like, I don't know a lot
of like women killers. I don't got a lot of
women killers. And I'm just like, are you looking for
male killers? Because he's like, well, you know, I'll see
a lineup and I'm like, out of ten comics, only
one of them as a woman. Out of a lineup
(30:32):
on a show, out of ten comics, there's usually one
of them as a woman. Out of these other nine
comics that are all men, four of them probably are okay,
but all every female comic is represented in this one
girl right destroy, she has to fucking destroy. And so
(30:54):
because when women succeed in a male dominated industry, it's
just like when you're you know, any marginalized group that
is trying to be successful in an industry that's either
predominantly white or predominantly male. You're going to have a
problem and you're going to be held at a different
(31:16):
standard because it's like, well, you need to show us
that you're as good as us, and I'm like, half
of your motherfuckers are trash, so I only need to
be as good as half of y'all. Technically. Big thank
you to Doc and Chelsea for that wonderful breakdown of
women in the rap game. After the break, we're gonna
talk with the homie Desildic and a Daily Show writer
(31:37):
about the way women and pleasure are often shown wrong
on screen. It's beyond the scenes. The music and entertainment
industry's portrayal of women are really important. And in this
next clip, I chatted with fellow correspondent Deasi Lydic and
Daily Show writer Kat Ratley about something that doesn't get
(31:58):
talked about often, depiction of female pleasure on screen. And
I'll talk to them about how are y'all able to
tackle this on the show. That's pretty freaky. Give them
a clip. Roll that freaky clip. Let's get into the
actual nuts and bolts of this DESI as a correspondent,
when someone brings you this piece, what was your first thought.
(32:21):
I was so excited because I had this reaction like,
oh my god, why haven't we talked about this before?
And I think on a subconscious level, it's always bothered
me that I feel like I haven't seen that many
representations of female sexuality and like an honest, authentic or
even really funny way. But it didn't hit me the
(32:46):
depths of it until I read the script. We're always
trying to figure out what topics we want to dive into,
and we look for things that are that feel like
they've been underreported or something we want to shine us
spotlight on, and they tend to be you know, we
go deep with the information and we go through the
(33:06):
history of something and and are the trap is that
it would be something that can feel a little dry, right, Well,
this one immediately is like, oh, that's fun to talk about.
That's like this one was very wet. This was very wet.
This was the opposite of dry. Thank you, ket We'll
(33:30):
get them, we'll get them halfway through, but this was um.
I wrote it with Lauren, another writer who is amazing
and the two of us have written a couple of
things for Desi, and it seems like it's just I mean,
writing for Desi is super fun, and we kind of
knew like, all right, this can be like a touchy,
difficult subject, and I mean, Desi totally nailed the performance.
(33:54):
So I'm glad that she was as on board and
excited about it as we were, because writing it was
it was fun to actually, like, like, as he was saying,
for women's history months sometimes we do like, all right,
let's look at you know, voting rights in the suffragette movement,
which is important and great, but not as fun as
talking about you know, Barbarella or Meg Ryan's aureasm. And
(34:16):
when Harry met Sally, oh oh god, oh yes, yes, yes, yes,
oh oh, oh oh god, I'll have what she's having.
We haven't really done a segment like this on the
show before, so I feel like it was like a
(34:39):
fun aspect of women's history that wasn't as like serious
and heavy as you know, having our rights taken away.
But it also just the subject matter itself. It was
something that I sort of like subconsciously knew in my
brain that I wasn't saying a lot of this out there,
but I really it wasn't. It didn't hit me until
(34:59):
I read everything in that discussion, like, oh my god, Yes,
that is how women were represented that early on. I
had no idea about the Hetty Lamar thing. The first
known female orgasm on the silver screen was in the
nineteen thirty three German film Ecstasy, when Hetty Lamar took
the brought Worst Express all the way to pleasure Burg.
(35:21):
It turns out the world wasn't ready for this. Everyone
denounced it, from Hitler to the Pope. And if you
ask me, the Pope has no place weighing in on seccines.
He's celibate. I mean, when we need your opinion on
the best stain removers for white fabrics, then we'll call you.
I didn't realize that she was the first woman to
have an orgasm on screen, and then not only that,
but like she was basically came up with the start
(35:45):
of what is WiFi now, so she was a genius. Like,
I had no idea about all of that until I
read it. Yeah, but they lowkey sex shamed her the
most of her career for daring to be that open
on camera. Do you all think that at men being
in control of the narrative of sex in the entertainment industry,
(36:07):
I mean less so now, but definitely still more so
than women. How much did that play into it? When
you look at over the decades and decades of just
the way women have been portrayed to you are the male,
the men controls you, and it's never really connected to
what a woman really wants in the bedroom or properly
(36:31):
portraying what a woman wants in a bedroom. The hetty
Lamartine went back to like the nineteen thirties, so that's
like kind of where this started, nineteen thirties films up
till now. And yeah, when you think about it, it
was mostly and still as mostly men writing and directing
and producing these movies. So they're the ones who are determining,
you know, what a female orgasm should or shouldn't look
(36:53):
like on screen, because I because it didn't make you
wonder like, okay, well why is this and you're like,
oh yeah, because men control everything for all of the
beginning of time. So I do think that has a
lot to do with it, just like who's writing these stories,
who's telling these women and directing them how to act?
On screen. Okay, so now in this next team, you're
(37:15):
gonna really erupt with pleasure. I want you to just
scream and bang the hitboard so that everyone can hear.
All Right, people, it's like ten seconds in and nothing
has happened, and you're like, oh, is that all it? Okay? Well,
I guess that's how it works. It's just that simple. Huh.
It's like almost like sound like you're getting murdered, but
(37:37):
not quite. There's like a fine line between the two.
Feed the ego of the man, so he knows he's
killing it. Yeah. Yeah. So when we do race stories
on the show, the question has always suits the intended audience,
right because black people, to a degree, kind of already
know some of the stuff we're talking about. So in
(37:58):
a way, you're having to present information to half of
the audience that already knows this topic while also presenting
it like with CP time, it's stuff that black people
may or may not have already known. But here's a
couple of jokes and we go a little deeper on
the issue. And if you are not black, then this
is a whole wealth of new information. Because I'll be
honest as a man, this is something I've never paid
(38:20):
attention to. So who was the When you think about
the intended audience, was it to serve a dual purpose
or was it to educate meatheads like myself? I mean,
I think it's always like, in my opinion, it's always
about kind of starting a conversation across the board, right,
And the feeling that I felt when I read it
(38:43):
for the first time was what I would hope that
other women felt when they saw it, and that they
felt heard and seeing like, oh, I've been feeling this
way too, I've been missing this in TV and film.
Then we do have some more work to do, and
then also to maybe perhap educate a few viewers who
maybe did not know some of this or thought about
(39:05):
it in that way. Um, and yeah, start a conversation
about it. I remember growing up watching a lot of
movies and stuff, and this is how like watching this
segment it in my brain and I started thinking back,
there's a scene in waiting to exhale shit. Oh this
is good. Yeah, yeah, good, Yeah, it was good. Oh
(39:27):
yeah he can we say or I'll say orgasm. This
is beyond the scenes and we are very tasteful show. Yes,
so he busts the way before the woman did. Does
he think he just did something here? Shit? I could
(39:49):
have had a V eight. Oh, I could have had
a V eight. Was the line that's a legendary. It's
a legendary line. But women not getting an orgasm, it's
almost seen as ha ha, you didn't get any pleasure
growing up? What was you all's personal experience and seeing
female pleasure depicted on screen? Can I ask that? Let
(40:11):
me ask that in a more hr way as you
all were matriculating this young way, how much it's menstruating.
It's called menstruating, what come on as you ministrate it
to adult? But you know, what was your what was
your experience seeing the way sex was depicted on screen?
(40:34):
I think, like you said too, that it's funny that
it was so often used as a punchline. And I
feel like that's kind of something that became ingrained without
me realizing because it is, you know, it's either funny
that she doesn't get pleasure, or like two of the
movies we do is like a Catherine Heigel scene and
Jennifer Anderson scene from Bruce Almighty, where like their pleasures
(40:57):
like so over the top and um exaggerated that it's
like it's the comedy, it's the butt of the joe.
In the years that followed, female pleasure became more and
more common on screen, but they were still often treated
as punchlines, like Jennifer Aniston getting unexpected magic high acts
and Bruce Almighty, or Katherine Hygel accidentally orgasming at dinner
(41:18):
when a little boy grabbed her remote controlled vibrating underwear. Okay,
there is so much wrong with this. It's non consensual,
it's a kid doing it, and it perpetuates the dangerous
myth that vibrating underwear gives you anything but a five
alarm electrical burn. I was like, okay, like it's it's
the way we do it is funny, or like we're
(41:40):
kind of used as a punchline as opposed to like
taken seriously. And I don't really know how that affected me,
because I feel like We're just kind of getting messages
like that from all over. So I'm kind of like,
all right, well, this is the way it is until
you kind of learned that it is different. Still getting
to learn that scene in particular, I have so many
(42:00):
mixed feelings about I feel like that because as as
like an actor doing comedy, you when you get a
scene as a woman, like you want to have the joke,
you want to get to do like the big performative
joke in this set piece, and so and men get
to joke about their orgasms all the time, like it's
(42:21):
all over the place, literally, And how many are we
at now? Three? Four? Still early, but like there were
so many problems in that scene itself, Like Kat said,
we were kind of like punching at the wrong thing.
The punchline was aimed, it seemed in the wrong direction.
And also just like there was really no consent. It
(42:45):
was kind of against their will. It was happening to
them and they were participating in it, which felt kind
of weird. And I think those movies were when Laura
and I were writing it, we were like, wait, what
year was this. I want to say it was like
two thousand and nine, Like it was ten to fifteen
years ago, when like consent was not like a term
people were thinking about her throwing around and probably like
(43:07):
movie sets at all. And I'm like, oh, yeah, like
you are like giving Katherine Heigel this orgasm in a
restaurant and it's funny, and I'm just like ooh man
that they didn't even have the C word anywhere in
their brain like at this point in time. So I
was like, I was like, there's so there's so much
wrong with this. And it was a kid right like,
(43:29):
it was like a kid, eight year old kid toy
with it. You're like, no, stop. Yeah, there's a lot
of problematic old school sex scenes that you could go
back and watch now and be like, yeah, I can.
I can remember. I just recently rediscovered the movie Young Frankenstein,
which I is like a classic mel Brooks and Gene
(43:53):
Wilder and so many funny performances in that movie. Terry
Garr and Madeleine con are comedic geniuses. And I remember
seeing that scene of Madeleine Cohn with the monster when
he comes in to like take her and he drops
his pants and then suddenly she's like very into it
(44:16):
and they have this whole sex scene. Oh oh, you
can't be serious. I'm like, oh my god, Wolf, I'm
I'm engaged and one thing too, But I didn't. He
(44:38):
was never all, oh my ha, mister live lot. I
found dude. It is like a toured divorce in her
comedic performance. It's hilarious. She should have won all the
awards for this scene. And then it cuts to them
(45:01):
sitting there side by side and they're smoking a cigarette.
But in watching it in recent years, you go back
and you're like, wait, he took her against her will. Wait,
there was no he was kidnapping her. It was so
problematic on so many levels. Is the implication that, so
Frankenstein has a big dick, Like, that's what the implication was. Yeah,
I mean, I guess that would make sense. If you're
(45:21):
able to piece together a human You're like, I guess
I'll give them the going, all out, biggest dead dick
I can find. If young boys get weird science, we
can at least have Frankenstein like give my standing. Yeah,
that's all the time we have for today. But hopefully
by now we're taking you beyond the scenes. See you
next week. Listen to The Daily Show Beyond the Scenes
(45:47):
on Apple podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get
your podcasts. Well, give a damn, just listen.
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