Feminish

Jessie and Olivia are BACK for season three! We started with a book we both read, 'I Who Have Never Known Men,' and discuss its themes, genre, and the nature of freedom and existence (we know, super light topics). The conversation explores the impact of relationships on personal growth and the importance of community. It’s really fun! Some light plot spoilers between around 8 minutes and 20 minutes, but we hope small spoile...

After an unintentional break, we're back to discuss what's been going on in the world -- really, not a lot, right?! The U.S. presidential election gives us yet more opportunity to talk through a key feminist ideal, that the personal is political. Jessie's also kept reading in the ACOTAR series. In true form, she also brings us the story of some everyday women who lived in a neighborhood that happened to be built on a chemical waste...

If there was a way to connect WWI to the Blake Lively PR controversy, you know Jessie and Olivia will find it. Today, a robust conversation about media literacy, freedom of the press, and how many of our issues with access to accurate information and using essential critical thinking skills are not new problems. Jessie talks about one postmaster general's single-minded mission to prevent sharing any minority opinions, even after wa...

Today Olivia and Jessie talk about the surreality of #tradwives on social media. They have a massive following, but the audiences are there for as many different reasons as we can imagine--to stare, to envy, to learn, to be infuriated, to be sad, to look at beauty, to feel human, to feel inhuman. We talk about @ballerinafarm (on Instagram and TikTok) and Nara Smith (@naraazizasmith on TikTok). We also get into the Kamala Harris of ...

This summer, we've swapped reading content - Olivia reads the nonfiction and Jessie has entered the ACOTAR universe. We discuss bodies and faeries, it's all Feminish on this one!

Olivia's books: The Body is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love by Sonya Renee Taylor; The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk.

Jessie's book: A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas. Olivia also recommends the serie...

Back on our bullsh*t, Olivia and Jessie discuss the new Taylor Swift and Beyoncé albums and the continued violence that capitalism inflicts on us, inhibiting our best feminist intentions. In true form, we cover some pop culture with a dose of reality from Jessie as she continues reading Naomi Klein's book, Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World (it keeps staying good, staying relevant). In the meat of the book, Klein discus...

This week our pop culture and book discussion overlap big-time, with a conversation on what it means to have a public image, to "be" in public, including and especially on the internet. We discuss The Duchess of Wales's Photoshop mishap and the fallout it caused, and what all this suggests about being a persona in the media (for famous people) and on the internet (for the rest of us). Naomi Klein's book about her ...

This week we go full ’90s nostalgia, from Lisa Frank to Scholastic Book Fairs. Jessie brings a book that is as much about dolls and sleepovers as it is about the history that was central to Pleasant Company’s American Girl Dolls.

Olivia brings the ~ hot goss ~ from TikTok: Who Did I Marry? and more. Did we miss something that was an unforgettable part of your ‘90s experience? Let us know!

We made a Pinterest board that captures t...

In this episode, we discuss the sexism that continues in Hollywood (too topical not to talk about tbh), as well as how it seems to make some men so angry that women enjoy sports the way they want to. Let us enjoy sports, and also—can we get better merch? We have money and will buy it. We also finally get into a book Jessie spent most of 2023 reading: Debt: The First 5000 Years. It changed the way she understands not just concepts o...

We are back for season 2! We talk resolutions - do you make them, why or why not? We are a split camp on this show. Olivia brings some pop culture updates for us. Also, Jessie kicks off the season with discussion of a book she read about the unexpected and quite complicated history of the field of home economics / domestic sciences. Was the field progressive and feminist, or oppressive and sexist? Yes.

The Secret History of Ho...

Final Girl, Final Season 1 Episode!

Olivia and Jessie knew they could not pass up a bonus 13th episode to release on Friday, Oct. 13, during their favorite season: spooky season! If you've listened even once, you've probably heard us mention our love for horror movies. We frequently hang out to watch horror movies together, and they are really the BEST genre for exploring human emotions and imagination.

On this ep, we do a...

Today our guest is Ammie, a ceramic artist and small business owner living in Atlanta. She’s kind of a big deal on social media (find her at @ammieyall on Instagram) but today she’s here to talk pop culture and our deepest questions.

You’ll get some bonus knowledge of Dublin, Georgia, the small town in the middle of the state where Ammie grew up and where Jessie first met her (when she was in middle school).

Ammie’s books:

W...

We’re back this week to reflect on what we’ve achieved in the past year. We take a moment to appreciate our labors and celebrate almost a whole season of our podcast!

Jessie brings a book that complicates the history of HIV/AIDS activism in the United States. Olivia brings a book that got her back into a reading groove--a sci-fi novel following a near-future scientist and android contemplating the consciousness of octopuses who st...

We are excited to have our first-ever GUEST to the show. Jasmine Pochynok is an Atlanta-based communications specialist, pop culture enthusiast, and “very online” advocate of social media.

We discuss Jasmine’s time in the Coast Guard as a fireman, her excitement to have kids, and why she cried when she finally deleted her Twitter account last month.

Come for the “girl money” talk, stay for the tea on the unreality behind all of P...

In a podcast about pop culture, feminism, and rhetoric, true crime lands itself solidly at the epicenter of those themes. Since the Roman courts held public trials, people have been interested in following along with crime stories (see, Jessie got ancient philosophers in there). But there is something about the relationship women have with true crime. Today, Olivia and Jessie offer their takes on why women make up 80% of the reader...

Olivia’s deep interest in Greek myths informs the two book suggestions she brings to this episode, as well as the compelling question of gender norms in storytelling. If we swapped all the lead (male) characters in Greek myths for female characters, what fundamental aspects of the story do (must) change? What does this say about story tropes from Ancient Greece to today? Jessie brings the central historical moment of her dissertati...

Chaos episode! We are all over the map today discussing embodied rhetoric, which is basically all the communication caught up in how we move and have bodies in the world. As you might expect, it’s an enormous, fraught topic. We discuss why work-from-home is a feminist issue (and highly embodied), being a person in a modern workplace and on Zoom, and the recent experience Olivia had at the art museum where she cried while looking at...

This week, we talk about the marketing that was actually published to recruit (white) women to jobs during WWII, because spoiler, it wasn’t the famous Rosie the Riveter image. This leads us into the immense world of visual rhetoric, which includes so much of what we consume and what is marketed to us as people in the world today. Is Olivia a rhetor, based on her professional work in design? Absolutely. We also talk about some of th...