87: On Flawed Metrics Made By Old White Dudes - BMI, MBTI, & Love Languages

BMI — the deeply misleading number that's on your medical chart whether you like it or not. Myers-Briggs — astrology for the boys. Love Languages — PHYSICAL TOUCH. We're here to deconstruct, to devalue, to de...smiss, these popular measures that were developed without adequate research. (To be fair the Myers-Briggs test was created by two ladies, but it was based on the work of Carl Jung, so close enough.)

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello, and welcome to Sad Girls against the Patriarchy. I'm
Alison and I'm Alexis, and we are your sad girls.
I've realized we didn't test our levels a lot, but

(00:30):
they look okay. We didn't do thorough testing.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
I was looking good, but we could pause it and
just listen really quick. But also it's okay, we're okay,
we did it. We didn't have ye of little faith
in ourselves.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
Oh okay. And is it echoey in here? I don't know.
I'm tweaking out. It's okay, too much mess today, you
know what? Now? Man, it's like it damn it. It's
like what sounds like, don't think about breathing and then
you think about breathing now. I keep hearing echoy, God,
damn it.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Allison just seems something's off. I don't know. The vibes
are off all around.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
Yeah, it's it's been weird since we got here, so
maybe it's just one of those days. Sometimes we have those. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
I couldn't think of any preamble today, and we have
some dents and fun subjects. I did blow my nose
very obviously in front of a man who I thought
might have been looking at me, and I hate when
men perceive me.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
So that was fun.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
On the escalator going down, he was going up, and
I don't make eye contact with anyone when I'm out
in the world, and he genuinely could have just been
like looking in the distance or whatever, but I was like,
I need to blow my notes and it would be fun,
just like right in front.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
Of justah blah blah blah. Yeah, because I'm a human, right.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
It reminds me of a meme that was like I
just left the gentist office and a man cat called me,
so I opened my mouth and his mouth and let
the blood run down my chin.

Speaker 3 (01:47):
That's so good. Consequences of your actions people, mm hmmm.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
And there should be maybe more of women talking about
things they do to get men to leave them alone
in public in all sorts of ways.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
I feel like I used to be better, and last
week I was waiting by myself here and I had
no lesson. Like three dudes make comments to me, and
I tried to look as scary and like pissed off
his posslage, like on my phone, like it looked like
I was doing business, and they were like, hey, where
are you going ill dressed up. I was not dressed up,
by the way.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Someone asked alex Is out when we were going to
see the Substance. Oh yeah, I forgot to ever tell
that story. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:25):
I was waiting for Alison at the movie theater and
this guy just walks up to me, and I was
just like being friendly, and I'm wearing my wedding ring
and I'm talking and I'm like having my phone in
my hand and trying to like subtly like show off
my hand, like yeah, yeah, and he like asked me
out and was just like, oh, I'm married, Thank you
so much. And then I looked out on my phone
and I had accidentally, while clutching my phone, had called

(02:48):
my husband, so we had heard the entire interaction. He
was like, I thought you were calling me. It's like
a distressed clo because I heard some random dude talking
to you. I was like, now, it's just totally an accident.
I was just trying to grip my phone in a
way to show off my hand, and apparently just a
hand butt dialed him.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
That's what you do, though, you call someone, you like
wait until you can say call nine one one, and
then they like can trace your call or something.

Speaker 3 (03:10):
I see where his mine was at? Right, I mean
the guy was totally he wasn't. I mean, he shot
a shot, but I didn't feel like, oh God, like
he's gonna follow me out after the movie. No, I
saw him.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
I walked up to you guys, I guess as the
interaction was ending, or maybe that was the transition out
of like, okay, gotta go now yep, I'm married canby
Chow Yeah, and he seemed just nice and normal. Yeah,
but it was fun also because we were going to
see this movie that's about agism and beauty standards and
the objectification of women, and then you were objectified for

(03:43):
your looks.

Speaker 3 (03:44):
But it was cool because I feel old sometimes and
then I was like, oh wait, she still got it.
I'm still got eat. You're her acts like it all right?

Speaker 2 (03:55):
Well today, speaking of irregular standards, speaking of standard ISA,
how about that there we go standards? Maybe I don't
know how good Segway like it.

Speaker 3 (04:04):
Kinda.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
We were thinking that it would be fun to pick
a part these metrics that were designed. I think they
were all designed quite a while ago. I don't know
much about love languages or BMI, which Alexis is going
to cover. But these old metrics designed by old white

(04:26):
dudes that are still around today. I'm already lying to
MBTI is not really from an old white dude, but
it is stupid, so we'll get there.

Speaker 3 (04:35):
It's old white dude coded.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
It is based on the work of Carl Jung, but
it was actually two women.

Speaker 3 (04:42):
I will say, got that going.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
But all of these areas are non scientific and flawed
and taken as bible and take it very seriously. Yes,
and we are here to say no, nay, nay. We
are here to say nay. Let's start with bm.

Speaker 3 (05:01):
I b M I. It's time for bm I U
me but me. So the BMI is expressed as your
weight in kilograms divided by your height in meter squared. Okay,
which sounds like it's like really scientific. Yeah right, that
could be in a text book. Absolutely, And it sounds

(05:23):
really mathy because the guy who invented it was named
I'm so sorry to be Belgian and or French people
for my slaughtering of the language that I'm about to
do Adolphie quittet quit lit. I heard someone say it,
and I wrote it down, and then it still doesn't
help me when I write it down fanatically anyways, Adolphie, Yeah,
gona say. He was a Belgian astronomer, mathematician and statistician,

(05:46):
not a medical doctor. And he devised the basis of
b m I and was at MSI with oh, mindless
of indulgence. It's a similar tailback MCR like BILLI agronim,
I know we're cool bands from middle school.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
Yeah, I measure my weight and mindless self indulgent o.
God please don't, Oh that guy's a pedophile. Anyway, devise
the basis of BMI between eighteen thirty and eighteen fifty
as he developed what he called quote unquote social physics.

Speaker 3 (06:16):
Again, this is a lot of pseudoscience bullshit.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
It already sounds problematic. Yes, physics are not meant to
be social.

Speaker 3 (06:22):
No, and math doesn't necessarily equate to health.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
No.

Speaker 3 (06:27):
Like we'll get into all that, okay, But this was
a component of his study leon Mon, which is I
think direct translation is like the medium man. That sounds right,
but obviously like the study of the average man. Right.
So he looked at the idea of the average man
as like a social ideal and developed the body mass
index as like trying to discover like the ideal person,

(06:51):
which of course is a white Western European man traditionally. Yes. Yes,
and according to the Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research, his
idealization of the average man would be elaborated upon by
Francis Galton a decade later in the development of eugenics.
It all comes back to eugenics. IQ tests will as well. Yes,

(07:14):
I have a feeling a lot of these both of
these will be just a whoop, nice jumping off point
for eugenics movement, right, which we all know is super
scientific and really accurate. They pretended it was using matrics
like this, right, because if you add a bunch of
science and math that seems plow. I mean, it's real math, right,

(07:34):
it's not fake math, but it's not. You can't apply
that to human being. It's not complete. No, it doesn't
tell the whole story. When did you say that he
was bringing about this research? They said anywhere between. He
was developing it between eighteen thirty and eighteen fifty. Okay,
so it is old, Yeah, it is old and lat
man hm. But the term the modern term body mass index,

(07:58):
which is the ratio of the human body weight with
its square and height, which we talked about was coined
in a paper in July nineteen seventy two in the
Journal of Chronic Diseases by Ansel Keys. So Keys explicitly
judged Blia it's appropriate for population studies but inappropriate for
individual evaluation. So this would be a way to study
like a region or a country, or you know, something

(08:20):
like on a broader scale, like a broader average, which
makes a little bit more sense because it's like he's
kind of right, more so than on an individual level. Yeah,
because we could be like the average weight of this
country and the average height. Right, you know, you could
kind of do it more like.

Speaker 2 (08:36):
That, because I know, on the individual level it's like
not taking into certain factors. I guess when you make
that more generalized, then they become less relevant.

Speaker 3 (08:45):
Right, Okay, it's sort of like the Bell curve thing.
It's like you can kind of, you know, get rid
of the outliers a little bit and have like the
mean and the the what the median right in the
middle average, the middleman, the image man. Yeah, but he
used a study that mostly evaluated white men but also
Japanese and Bantu men from South Africa. But he actually
threw out the ban two men's data because it skewed

(09:07):
the data so it didn't fit into his nice little
bell curve. So he even threw out the data on
black men. And even the modern data that we have
on the BMI is from white and East Asian men.
That's one way to do science. Yeah, they're like, oh,
I don't like these results. Put me in the trash,
I think right. So, yes, we've had some updates to
the BMI, but it's still only studied men and only

(09:32):
certain types of men. So neat cool awesome. Yeah. So
when our Belgian guy Adolphi did his studying, he mostly
studied on Scottish Highland soldiers and French soldiers and a
lot of these men were like teenagers and again Western European,
and a lot of them were starving and malnourished because

(09:53):
they were soldiers in the eighteen hundreds and you know,
and not great conditions. And they're lean like a teenage.

Speaker 2 (10:01):
Teams always boys are very lean. Yes, they're so just
on average?

Speaker 3 (10:07):
What's average? What am I saying? On average? What do
we know? Does anyone know.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
This is making sense? So that this is the wrong
this is the wrong data set. If we're gonna talk
about averages right during women's bodies, so people of different ages,
like you get smaller as you get older, your spine compresses.

Speaker 3 (10:29):
Yeah, whats going on? Yeah, there's and people from different
parts of the world have different body types because like
say your ancestors live somewhere really cold, you might like
put on you know, out of post tissue more easily
because your ancestors needed that to stay warm. Because we're
all different.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
We talked about hidhism and our controversial on how the
patriarchy hurts mental episode of our most controversial ever controversial.
I don't know, we're just all about controversy, I guess.

Speaker 3 (10:56):
Yeah. The average height.

Speaker 2 (10:57):
In Sweden and in Norway and Finland was much taller
than here, and it was because of the climate, right,
the area that they grew up in, so historically.

Speaker 3 (11:09):
Right, So again everyone where your ancestors come from makes
a difference on how you look today. Yeah, because they
were you know, alive for millennia before we popped, along
with our good nutrition, you know, ample nutrition and everything
we have now. Right. In nineteen ninety eight, the National
Institutes of Health brought the US definition in line with

(11:29):
the World Health Organization guidelines, which lowered the normal to
overweight cut off of the BMI. So the BMI has
numbers that you calculate from this calculation, and it's really arbitrary.
But for the most part, overweight begins around twenty five
to twenty seven on the scale, and underweight is under
eighteen roughly, and obese is usually over thirty. So the

(11:51):
previous cutoff for overweight in the US and in the
world was about twenty seven to twenty eight, and then
they lowered it in nineteen ninety eight to a BMI
of twenty five. So this had the effect of redefining
proximately twenty five million Americans that were previously deemed healthy
as to being overweight. Hey guys, they just decided The

(12:11):
news says you're all fat. Nah. Yeah, we've just changed
the goalpost. So has what you do with you?

Speaker 2 (12:19):
Though?

Speaker 3 (12:19):
Yeah? Why did they lower it? What was that about?
So you're ready for the conspiracy theory. It's actually not
a theory. It's actually true. But everything sounds like a
conspiracy theory now, and it sucks that it's all fucking true,
Like it just makes me crazy, yeah, because it's like,
why is all of this true? But this was initially
spearheaded by the International Obesity Task Force, and their principal

(12:41):
founders were founders of companies that made weight loss drugs,
oh the classic nineties fenfinn. So this can explain why
there was a boom and overweight Americans in the past,
you know, twenty plus years, so they could sell them
more weight loss products. Absolutely sense, yep, yep, yep. So

(13:02):
the BMI is problematic in so many different ways, and
I'm going to list some of them, and some of
this gets a little mathy, so bear with me here.
But the BMI overestimates roughly ten percent for a large
aka like a tall frame, and underestimates roughly ten percent
for a smaller frame or a shorter stature. So in

(13:22):
other words, people with small frames might be carrying more
fat than optimal, but their BMI will indicate that they
are normal quote quote unquote normal quote unquote healthy. When
I say all these turns, I mean them in the
quoting sense.

Speaker 2 (13:34):
Yeah, because you're short, so there's less of you, right,
There might be fat on you, but you're small, so yeah,
I get that.

Speaker 3 (13:41):
Yeah. And then conversely, tall individuals might be really healthy, yeah,
with a fairly low body fat percentage, but me classified
as overweight by BMI, Yeah, because it doesn't seem to
differentiate between muscle. No, it's also the funny part. No,
and when they change that scale of the of the
BMI to be overweight, they made a joke that like

(14:01):
more than three quarters of the MLB was now considered
obese or something like that. Right.

Speaker 2 (14:05):
They people say this kind of as a joke, like
muscle weighs a lot, but like it really does.

Speaker 3 (14:09):
Yeah, muscleways, it's like three pounds of muscle versus three
pounds of fat is like a huge difference in size.

Speaker 2 (14:14):
I gained weight when I started like working out a
lot more, and it didn't bother me because I like,
I look like I could beat up a dude, and
so I was like this is fine, but like, wow,
I gained ten pounds, right, So these are not good
ways to assess your health.

Speaker 3 (14:27):
No, And people have sort of speculator or theorized way
to make it more accurate is like to change the
exponent in like how you calculate the heights instead of
like meter squared, it's like meters to the exponent of
two point five.

Speaker 2 (14:39):
It is like a little bit more accurate, but it's
also like sure, I mean, I don't know do we need.

Speaker 3 (14:46):
To exactly like, do we do we have to do
this at all? Yeah, what scientists believe is more accurate
as far as a determination of health, as far as
if we're going to be measuring people is actually a
waste to height ratio. So what your waist is compared
to your height is more accurate and determining if you're
going to have high risk health issues like type two diabetes,

(15:08):
cardiovascular risks, risk of stroke, and then mortality from these issues.
So you're like middle where you carry weight in the
middle of your body is more indicative of health.

Speaker 2 (15:17):
And all women do have the pooch that really just
really yeah, so that's the right under your belly button,
that little little pocket that we'll roll there, even like supermodels,
you know, can they try to get.

Speaker 3 (15:29):
Rid of it and can not be super flat?

Speaker 2 (15:31):
No, And it's very I think it's very attractive also cute. Anytime,
I don't complain about these things in front of people anymore. Really,
I know we can all relate to this. But also
like dudes are always just like no, like I like
when women have like soft bodies, and I like curves,
and right, yeah, and other women aren't looking at you like,
oh you're disgusting, Like no, we're told to care about

(15:54):
this more.

Speaker 3 (15:54):
Than we really need to. Yes, yeah, yeah, that was
a relieving thing I feel like in middle school when
I realized that A everyone has different tastes and b like,
for the most part, dudes kind of want you to
have like tits in an ass. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:11):
But also it's okay to be super flat and of
course that's also you know the one who loves that.
And yeah, no one is out there judging you or
worrying about it. No, we just shouldn't be skinny or
fat shaming in any direction. Body neutrality, yesock, body positivity,
body positivity.

Speaker 3 (16:28):
Yea, and more controversial ideas over here we are.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
Anti body positivity. It's just not real, like you'll always
be disappointed.

Speaker 3 (16:36):
Yes, yeah, I've always been just exactly.

Speaker 2 (16:38):
I've been very flat, I've had more goose ship, I've
never liked my body, never going to and that's just that.

Speaker 3 (16:45):
Right, And it's you know, as we've just talked about,
it's like been in doctrinated, especially on women for a
young age. But it's like there's people that want your
money and want you to feel bad so that you
buy their products, so that you earn a perpetual cycle
of like being reliant on their shit to make you
quote unquote luke better. It's an industry. Yeah, absolutely, yeah,
fucking all those ozimpic gas. I know it was shits

(17:06):
right now.

Speaker 2 (17:07):
Can't wait for the class action lawsuits ten years down
the road. I don't know if that's gonna happen.

Speaker 3 (17:10):
It's problem.

Speaker 2 (17:11):
Well, research, but when that extra head starts growing out
of the shoulder or something.

Speaker 3 (17:15):
Yes, when the when the substance, Yeah, substances.

Speaker 2 (17:19):
There's no free ride in nature. There's no free ride.
There's more one worried.

Speaker 3 (17:23):
Oh yeah, I mean, And they even say, I think
if you have a history of like medullary thyroid cancer
in your family, it's contraindicated because it can make it
pop up, so it already has like a high cancer
risk for a very specific kind of cancer. But I
would not be surprised if down the line, like a
bunch of pancreatic cancers came out or something like that.

Speaker 2 (17:41):
One of the yoga studies I go to has these
stickers on their mirrors that say, what if you said
thank you to your body instead it's like, oh, that's nice.

Speaker 3 (17:49):
I think so, like that's nice. Like I try to
do that when I'm like really mad at my I'm
going on a tangent, but I try to do that
when I'm mad at my body for like not cooperating.
I'm like, but you know what I'm thankful for like
being able to like walk down the stairs and like
be able to do my job and like I still
my hands still, you know, like are able to feed
me and like nurture me, and like we gotta be
thankful for what we have right now because you never

(18:10):
know when you're gonna lose it either.

Speaker 2 (18:11):
Oh yeah, it's scary to Yeah, I can't even think
about it.

Speaker 3 (18:15):
No exactly. I'm like, you know what, you can get
our accident tomorrow and your whole life could change. Like, oh,
let's be thankful for what we have, even if it's
not perfect. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:25):
Yeah, So neutrality and that, like we have these meat
sacks that do all these cool functions for us, and
we don't need to adore every inch of it all
the time, and we're taught not to and that's unfortunate,
but we're.

Speaker 3 (18:36):
So grateful for what it does. Yes, a tool, Yes, absolutely,
you're a tool. It's a vessel, Okay, a temple. I
live in it. You know, it's a corporeal little machine. Yes, okay, tangent.
It was applicable. Yes. The problem be I now though,

(18:57):
is that it's integrated into Western medicine and is even
improved metric by the World Health Organization. It doesn't address
muscle mass, it doesn't address women's body. It doesn't differentiate
between abdominal or like butt hip fat distribution, which, like
I said, is more indicative of high risk disease. So
if you have more middle fat versus like if you're
heavier and your like and your thighs and your hips,

(19:20):
you have a lower risk of some of these like
more systemic diseases. Okay, but if you if you thick
on the bottom, your BMI could be like you're really unhealthy.
And it's like but actually, like all my blood work
is good, my blood pressure is fine, and yeah, like
my trigly rides are like whatever it may be, like
all the metrics that they test for, it's like, all that's.

Speaker 2 (19:37):
Fine, My BMI is fine. My trigly rides suck. I'm
taking fish oil. So even these things like they don't
mean what we want them to mean all the time, right,
And it's crazy that they didn't study women's bodies because women,
of course not naturally have more fat, don't.

Speaker 3 (19:54):
I don't like ten percent more body fat. I don't.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
It's yeah, and that's just because how we're designed, and
we may babies.

Speaker 3 (20:01):
Yeah, babies, yeah, cushion, Yeah, we.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
Have tits and ass like obviously we have more in
that means different weight distributions.

Speaker 3 (20:09):
So duh, Hillary, Yeah, we're not Hello, we're not Scottish
teenage bully.

Speaker 2 (20:16):
No, and it's okay to not be a Scottish teenage
but it's also okay if you are a.

Speaker 3 (20:20):
Scottish teenage boy. We're covering all our bases here. Everyone
is welcome. That's sad, Girls against the patriarchy. Yes, but
by this metric, forty seven percent of people that are
categorized as overweight or actually metabolically healthy.

Speaker 2 (20:34):
Okay, does metabolically mean like those things what you were
saying about? Okay, yeah, so blood pressure biglyss rides are okay, Yeah,
like all your.

Speaker 3 (20:42):
Lab values that they test for, like your A one C,
your rest for diabetes, your blood pressure, your risk for stroke.
Tryglyss rides all of this stuff that we kind of
think of as like these like quote unquote obesity related
diseases quote unquote. Can you can be totally fine, but
your BMI is like you're unhealthy.

Speaker 2 (20:57):
Yeah, So that argument of like, well we're just worried
about how else falls apart. Yeah, that's what people say.
It's like, Oh, I'm not fat shaming. I just want
people to be healthy, right, but they might be. You
just don't like looking at them, right, that's your problem.

Speaker 3 (21:12):
That's the thing too. It's like, yeah, all the jokes
about like being a woman going to the doctor, it's
either like are you pregnant? Or uh, you know, just
lose weight? Like those are the only solutions. I feel
like every time I go to the doctor, they're like, oh,
but could you be pregnant? Like, first of all, I'm
coming in here for something very not even close to
a pregnancy symptom, and it wouldn't be pregnant for long. Yeah,
and if I was, it's not staying. It's non issue.

(21:37):
Last my gotten X ray, they just were like, are
you sure you're not pregnant? And I was like, I'm
on birth control and I'm on medications that like literally
make my womb a hostile environment. If I am pregnant,
that baby will die on its own. They're like, okay,
good enough for us. They just like gave me the
X ray so full of spikes. Yeah, kid, get out
of your baby and it kicks you out. So BMI
overestimates in a lot of communities of color and under estimates,

(22:00):
and a lot of Asian populations. So someone's b and
I might be considered healthy and someone in a particular
Asian population, but they might actually be metabolically unhealthy, and
then vice versa. For especially like black women, it overestimates
that a lot of Black women are obese and a
lot of them are actually metabolically healthy. So there's entire
communities that are considered healthy or unhealthy when it's not true, and.

Speaker 2 (22:24):
It's because it wasn't tested on those communities or designed
around them exactly.

Speaker 3 (22:28):
One of the best indicators of health actually is what
do you think has nothing to do with your body?
Do you have a cat at home that you get
to snuggle every night? That's my best term. Yeah, it's
not that.

Speaker 2 (22:45):
Then it's your socioeconomic status that makes sense.

Speaker 3 (22:49):
So a lot of this plays into that too, where
it's like if someone's quote unquote unhealthy, but they're from
you know, they live in a food desert, or they're
from somewhere where they have to have a sedentary lifestyle
because of like where they live or what work they
do or et cetera. So a lot of this is
playing into like racial disparities and like fast disparities and
things like that. So again it's a fun metric.

Speaker 2 (23:09):
Yeah, nutrition too, It's gonna come up in IQ tests.
It's like damaging your potential and your mental development too
if you have poor nutrition and that links to socioeconomic
status and region.

Speaker 3 (23:23):
Yeah. Absolutely, Like you're talking about with older people, so
high BMIs and older people may actually be healthier due
to their lower nutritional status because they have a hard
time keeping on muscle, weight and fat the older they get,
and it helps with their nutrition and warmth and cushioning.
Old people are more likely to fall, and older people
with higher bmi is actually have better health outcomes and
live longer. And it's harder to keep on weight once

(23:44):
you get to a certain age too, and then if
you don't have this fat and you don't gain muscle
like you did when you were younger. Hether so there's
a lot of things that you're missing out on, and
it's hard for you to keep nutritional status. It's hard
for you to keep on protein, and the less muscle
you have, the harder it also is to keep protein
and normal levels and your blood like your albumin levels
go down naturally because you have decrease blood flow, and
there's a whole bunch of other things to do with

(24:06):
elderly populations. But yes, there's science behind that that's good
for women. Actually, there is studies that the BMI that
is the healthiest with like again, the best health outcomes
and mortality outcomes actually technically go from the higher end
of normal to overweight. Hmmm. So even with what we're using,
it still shows that the best outcomes are quote unquote

(24:27):
overweight women.

Speaker 2 (24:29):
Wow, then they should change that metric because if we're saying,
on the one hand, this is overweight, on the other hand,
this means you have better health outcomes.

Speaker 3 (24:38):
Why are we calling it that because we hate fat women? Yeah,
and fat people, but especially yeah, fat women. Okay.

Speaker 2 (24:47):
Brendan Fraser, Yes, all right, I've he seems like a sweetie,
that's his reputation. Yes, and he was assaulted by a
man at a show, at like an award ceremony, and
it came out about that, and I'm empathetic to all
the trauma he's gone through and having been not public
really with his trauma, but like it's come to light.
I know you had an ex wife that was really

(25:09):
it was a whole divorce.

Speaker 3 (25:11):
It was hard.

Speaker 2 (25:11):
He seems like a good guy. He is coming back
on the scene, and he has had a leading role.
I just watched him in Doom Patrol.

Speaker 3 (25:17):
He's the lead. He's quite overweight, and that's fine.

Speaker 2 (25:21):
But can you imagine a woman having that opportunity, a
middle aged, overweight woman coming back on being a lead
in a big show. Not really not fucking possible. Noh,
I like you, Brennan, I might say you shouldn't have
those opportunities. Just the double standards exactly devastating.

Speaker 3 (25:36):
Well, and even if you think about like classic sitcom
tropes where it's about the overweight husband and like the
skinny s felt wife, like that's been around for ever. Yeah,
and we.

Speaker 2 (25:46):
Naturally have more fat so we're yeah, we're fighting asure
and less collagen. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (25:51):
I saw another guy.

Speaker 2 (25:52):
I think his name is just Charlie on Instagram which
means he's like doing something. I don't know what he
does or who he is, but yeah, just Charlie. So
he's he's doing something. And he was posting this with
his beautiful wife now and saying like she saw me
and she wanted me even though I was very overweight,
and that's so wonderful and now I'm with her. But
I was also like, well, welcome, You're allowed to have that,

(26:13):
but a woman isn't. And you're just like wow, like good,
I didn't have to change. She could still see through me.
But it's like, but I'm expected to change everything to
be desirable to men.

Speaker 3 (26:22):
Yeah. It's a double standard, it is, And it's because
we baby men so much, where it's like, well, I
you know, I'm a visual creature. You have to bow
down to my wants and needs. And it's like grow
the fuck up, and why do you look like that?
And why do you Yeah, I'm a visual creature, then
why do you look like that? Much bullshit? But it's
still kind of eugenicsy today, so a lot of people

(26:45):
that go for IVF treatments can actually be denied if
there BMI is too high.

Speaker 2 (26:50):
Okay, wow, yep, I was expecting this to go to
uh egg donors, which for sure there's height weight requirements there,
but uh just for IVF, Like, but that's.

Speaker 3 (27:01):
Your money and those are your eggs. Yep, yep. Why
Because you can always say something's high risk if you're overweight,
and to an extent it is. But usually that's like
there is I am not shaming anybody, but if you
are like morbidly obese, it can be a high risk
if you're like going under any anesthesia or anything, because
that's just more likely to have breathing complications or heart complications.

(27:24):
But for this, I can't I can't justify what the
denial is other than we decided that was a denial. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:32):
I also think it's up to that person to take
the risk and make the choice.

Speaker 3 (27:36):
Well exactly, it's like I'm doing this to my body. Yeah,
if something bad happens, like is there's no one else involved, right,
I mean, the only other thing I can think it
was like maybe there's like a slightly higher risk of
getting like blood clots, but that's the only possible thing
I can think of. So risk with birth control, right, Yeah,
anything hormonal for anybody on the planet, there's a risk
of blood clots like period, it's high risk. But apparently

(27:59):
also I don't know about in America, but I listened to
a podcast where they had they said that this has
happened in England, where in some cases people have been
denied even adopting children based on their BMI because then
they're deemed unhealthy and then having an unhealthy lifestyle to
bring a child into. It's so insane. Yeah, so we're
still kind of perpetuating eugenics by doing it even today,

(28:20):
even if it's not as blatant as like no fucking
phrenology and all this shit, Right, who are we going
to sterilize? Right? I mean, we're still using BMI in
the healthcare setting, which is so completely fucked.

Speaker 2 (28:30):
I've seen mine on papers I don't remember, but I've
definitely seen it. I didn't know they were assessing that
even because it's just basically, well.

Speaker 3 (28:37):
They automatically calculated. Yeah, like all the EMR system medical
electronic medical record systems, they most of them have a
built in calculator of right, because they take your height
and they take your weight, and then all the computers
has to do and then it just calculates it for you.
So like right next to your height, your weight, your temperature,
all that stuff is your fucking BMI. And that's how

(28:57):
it is at my work. And I know a lot
of people get about getting weight at the doctor, and
I understand that. The only argument I have against it
is sometimes we do need to know your weight because
a lot of medications are weight based, and it's a
really big difference. If we dose you for someone who's

(29:18):
you know, forty or pounds plus or minus, like, you
can have a much different reaction. You could like not
get the benefits from the medication that you need, or
you could like overdose. Like some medications, we have to
be careful because it can cause an anaphylactic reaction if
we give you too much, and that could kill you.
So sometimes your weight is absolutely important.

Speaker 2 (29:36):
Because it's like with your pet when you take them
to the vet, they always give you doses based on
like the right.

Speaker 3 (29:41):
Cat, yeah forded twelve pounds or whatever. Right, Yeah, So
I understand there is there is absolutely a shit ton
of fat phobia in modern medicine, in Western medicine, apps
to fucking lutely, but if you're needing any sort of medication,
I would highly suggest getting at least a rough at
least give them a rough estimate of your weight so
they can dose you appropriately. Because even like we talked

(30:03):
about with like Clan B, that can even change the
efficacy if you weigh over a certain amount, So sometimes
this is important. That's valid. Yep. So the last thing
I want to say is a lot of these articles
referenced a book by an author named Sabrina Strings, and
it's called Fearing the Black Body. So I'm going to
just try to make this really shorts. I think it's
very interesting, but it's it's not quite the story of BMI.

(30:24):
But I think it's as.

Speaker 2 (30:25):
Long as you want. Yeah, we could do we have
time for everything, but we could do this, oh literally
the last okay, the last part.

Speaker 3 (30:33):
So the basis of this book essentially is remember like
Renaissance paintings, Like we've all seen the Renaissance paintings, where
like the women are like voluptuous and like the But
this is sort of pre transatlantic slave trade. So once
we started enacting the slave trade, we wanted to villainize
black bodies. So then that's when some of the idealism

(30:55):
of a white body completely changed because black women sometimes
have like bigger booties, bigger bodies. So we tried to
villainize them to make that, like their body type seem
like bad or yeah, like what they it's increased your
chances of like criminality or uh like the likelihood of
you becoming a sex worker. Yeah, Like they're like, if

(31:18):
you have this body type, that means you're you have
a proclivity for crime. It's like Jesus fucking Christ. So
that changed a lot of what was considered beautiful in
white culture. Which is a whole book about it. So
it sounds really interesting. I'd love to read it sometime
if I ever got time to read.

Speaker 2 (31:34):
It's like blaming women who are assaulted for what they're wearing,
but like on an even bigger scale, like the worse scale.

Speaker 3 (31:42):
Yeah, like that thing you were born in. Yeah that
you kind of have like no choice, yeah, very little. Yeah,
you're a problematic, just like existing and the skin, the
fleshy skin machine that you were born into. Like what
the fuck? Yep, oh this I put this in a
weird place. But in history, met life insurance used a
scale to determine health and it was just based on

(32:02):
like if you were a small build, medium build, or
large build, and that's sort of when they started bringing
back up the BMI in the seventies. It was a
way to bill you for your medical care so they
could deny you. Oh yeah, so again it's always been
used to increase your rates for insurance because if your
BMI is high, then you're a quote unquote higher risk patient.

Speaker 2 (32:21):
I'm small, and I'm very expensive for my insurance company. Right,
cost him a lot of money.

Speaker 3 (32:26):
Again, another fucking flawed metric, like this is all just
in ways to fuck you over and fuck over people
of color and fuck over women like everything in America,
And that was BMI.

Speaker 2 (32:38):
Woo very educational to know more about this. I mean,
it just seems intuitively wrong, Like a child could look
at high weight ratio and just say, like someone who's muscular.

Speaker 3 (32:50):
Weighs more, right, and they're not.

Speaker 2 (32:52):
They're probably healthier because they're they're muscular. Yeah, like you
would think like like duh, right, so the fuck wasn't
Also the changing of body standards it was okay, So
it was like it was good to be heavier because
it meant you didn't have to like work outside, yeah,
and you were richer, Yeah you could stand. But then

(33:13):
as the association became that like the workers might have
bigger bodies, then it shifted.

Speaker 3 (33:18):
It sounds like correct. The history of the ideal body
and body image throughout the decades and what's been sold
to us and different things is so interesting, and that's
why I was like, I can't go too much into
that because it's like not really the story. Yeah, but
it's it's just changed so much by it. Like you said,
it's like we always think it's fashionable to do what

(33:39):
the rich do. So back in the day, you didn't
work outside, so you were really pale, and you had
access to food and especially fatty food, so you were larger.
And nowadays it's your tan because you have time to
leisurely be outside and you can be and you're skinny
because you have a personal chef.

Speaker 2 (33:54):
Yeh, workout trainer. Yeah, and that's completely opposite of It
really does kind of seem like like you're delta genetic
hand when you're born. You can work within it to
an extent, but you're delta hand and you're working with
that and if you try to hate it and change it,
it's just gonna it's not.

Speaker 3 (34:13):
Gonna help you in the long run. I understand its condition,
but it sucks body neutrality. You're always gonna be chasing
that dragon otherwise. Yeah, keep going, keep going, and then
you're gonna be like those people in Hollywood that had
way too many stuff done on their face and then
they look completely unrecognizable and then you're not yourself. It's
just it's not good. Yep.

Speaker 2 (34:30):
Let's take a break, all right. Next step, we are
going to talk about the Meyers Briggs Test or the MBTI,

(34:53):
which means Meyers Briggs Type Indicator. And I did that
thing where I spent like two hours reading about IQ
test and got really excited, and and then I had
thirty minutes left and I was.

Speaker 3 (35:02):
Like, oh fuck, I have to talk about Myers Briggs too,
God damn it.

Speaker 2 (35:04):
But I knew a lot about it already, and I
watched this Vox YouTube video that I just kind of recapped.
So if you've seen that box video and it sounds
like I'm just quoting it, pretend this is all brand
new information. Yes, Because I got my associate's degree in
business management. For some reason, I wasn't planning on continuing
in school, so I was like, I'll do something business,
ye o, our business business. That's general, and we took

(35:27):
Myers Briggs in one of my classes, and we talked
about personality tests and how they are useful in a business.

Speaker 3 (35:34):
Yeah, what corporatism, because that's what I. I never even
heard about it till I got my first quote unquote
real job. Yeah, he's been an entire, an entire eight
hour day determining our fucking Myers Briggs and doing like
activities to find who's the closest match to your Myers Briggs.
It was fucking interesting, but really I felt a waste

(35:54):
of time.

Speaker 2 (35:54):
Well, that's good that you have had that personal experience
in the workforce. So for some reason, I mean, i'll
give you the reason, but Myers Briggs became popular in businesses,
and businesses will use personality tests to try to categorize
and better understand their employees, and supposedly it's good for
team building. And the way it was pitched to me

(36:16):
in a class is like, this is great because now
if you understand people who are different from you and
how they're different, you can be more empathetic toward them,
which is great, except they don't use tests that are
based on real psychological research, right, And I took other
personality tests like at least one other I remember in
like a business class, and it was also not the

(36:39):
Big five, which is what psychologists actually use.

Speaker 3 (36:41):
And what businesses should use. Right, But there's a reason
they like these ones that are designed for the corporate world.
And I'll tell you why. Ooh, I'm so excited.

Speaker 2 (36:51):
If you keep listening, please don't leave us. So Myers
Briggs it will slot you into one of sixteen different
personality types too many, and Vox says it's the most
widely used personality test in the world.

Speaker 3 (37:07):
Yeah, I'm not surprised the company who sells the official.

Speaker 2 (37:10):
Myers Briggs test, because you can take like random knockoff things.

Speaker 3 (37:14):
You can just google. You'll find a million things. But
there's an official Myers Briggs.

Speaker 2 (37:17):
It's called CPP, and I don't know what it stands for,
but that sounds very corporate mysterious CPP. The work is
strange and mysterious or important and mysterious, and they make
twenty million dollars a year. So it's a business like
all evil things are.

Speaker 3 (37:31):
Oh wow, Yeah, the astrology for corporations is making twenty
million dollars a year. I should yeah, and I shouldn't
call it evil.

Speaker 2 (37:38):
It's just like it's just meaningless because the test wasn't
created by psychologists and it's not used by psychologists.

Speaker 3 (37:45):
I just feel like, I mean, my job's barely corporate.
It's like it is because it's a business. But like
I'm a blue collar person of the corporate area, but
I don't have to do like corporate office interpersonal politics shit.
But it sounds like it's really toxic and like a
lot and it's all about like how you use your
tone and your emails and seeing severn right. I just

(38:07):
this seems just so like like placating people to be
like everyone special and your personality is how you talk
to people. Just anyways, go on. I just don't get
corporate life. I'm like, it's it's a it's a mystery
to me. Also a lot of sitting down. Don't not
be me. Yeah I don't like that, but not be me.
I would fall asleep. I knew that as a kid.

(38:28):
I was like, I can't have a job sitting at
a computer all day because I'll fall asleep.

Speaker 2 (38:31):
So it's loosely based on the outdated work of the
Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung.

Speaker 3 (38:38):
Carl Jung Yung Jungian YOUNGI. In anyway, it's called ja
U n Gen. Well, you guys all know who we're
talking about. He came after Freud.

Speaker 2 (38:47):
He is definitely, Yeah, one of the fathers of modern psychology,
hugely influential in his time.

Speaker 3 (38:53):
He had a lot of good ideas. Yeah, but like Freud,
they're all and they're not really rooted.

Speaker 2 (39:01):
In scientific method like what we have now. When we
talk about like the fathers of a scientific field, we're
talking about people who had good ideas for their time.
But even so, he didn't really believe that people could
neatly fall into a personality type and is even quoted
as saying every individual is an exception to the rule.

Speaker 3 (39:23):
So he had his notions about different personality traits that
could be seen in people without concluding that you could
make a sixteen field. Right, He's not making a fucking
Punnett square over here, Like, he.

Speaker 2 (39:39):
Did not do that, no, Right, But in the nineteen forties,
two gals who had no psychology training, Catherine Briggs and
her daughter Isabelle Briggs Meyer, decided to take his ideas
and form it into what they call a type indicator,
which became MBTI.

Speaker 3 (39:56):
So they didn't have a background in psychology. Now do
they have the background anything. I think it was just
for business reasons.

Speaker 2 (40:05):
Business.

Speaker 3 (40:05):
We're back to business, Okay, they're doing business stuff and
they're business ladies doing business things.

Speaker 2 (40:12):
That's my memory, yeah, is that it was just like
it was kind of just creating a business and a capitalism.

Speaker 3 (40:18):
I got it. I'm following.

Speaker 2 (40:19):
Yeah, so Catherine, her daughter Isabelle. They took his ideas.
They changed the terminology and they created this model and
it means that every person gets one trait in these
four categories, and then from those four categories you get
to fall into one of sixteen types, which I'm sure

(40:41):
everyone has heard. It's like the NTP, the IRONTJ, the
isf P, whatever, there's all these different you guys know're sixteen. Yeah,
you probably do, as what's yours? We've said, we've talked
about it before, we have. Yeah, I used I used
to test as ion TJ, like when I was doing
this in community college as a teenager.

Speaker 3 (41:00):
Yes, I remember, because I was horrified here.

Speaker 2 (41:02):
I know. No, I wouldn't have wanted to be my
friend then either. And now I test as I think
E NTP or E n f P, E n TP.

Speaker 3 (41:15):
We were close, weren't you E. I'm E n TP,
E n TP. I know ours were close.

Speaker 2 (41:21):
Yeah, definitely, definitely strong E now and strong N.

Speaker 3 (41:25):
I think the F or the T were a little
That's how mine was. It was like flippy floppy.

Speaker 2 (41:29):
Yeah, and then the S and the J weren't strong either.
Those were a little closer.

Speaker 3 (41:35):
But this is the problem.

Speaker 2 (41:36):
The fundamental problem with Myers Briggs is that it's tested
on a binary right, you're either introverted or extroverted. You're
either intuitive or sensing. You're either if you'l or a thinker,
and you're either judging or perceiving. But that's just not
the way human psychology works. So one study found that
as much as fifty percent of people who took the
test again after five weeks had a different result. Oh

(41:59):
I got And yet eighty nine of the one hundred
forty one hundred companies use it to maximize individual and
team effectiveness. Oh and two hundred federal agencies use the
test internally. And they're thinking that this will help the
companies understand their workers so that they can assign them

(42:20):
appropriate training programs and responsibilities. But actual psychology research has
established that the MBTI fails to predict people's success in
their jobs.

Speaker 3 (42:30):
And not only that. Lol, if you think corporations are
like individualizing your work based on your fucking personality type, No,
they're like give me this thing by end of day Friday.
Like they're not like, well, I know that you're, you know,
an extrovert, so you might like calling these clients like
they're not fucking doing that.

Speaker 2 (42:45):
Oh yeah, I kind of knew that you would have,
like a companies don't actually care about you. They don't
feeling about this. Yeah, especially now I know absolutely. Oh
so this is why people like these kind of tests
and corporations use these kind of tests instead of actual
psychology tests. It's because the METI only gives positive results,

(43:06):
which makes you feel good.

Speaker 3 (43:08):
Right. The categories are neat and.

Speaker 2 (43:10):
Clean, and they have fun labels because see, I used
to be the mastermind, but now I'm the visionary. Wow,
And that's curious and clever, loving to understand things.

Speaker 3 (43:21):
It's so me.

Speaker 2 (43:23):
And they also have these vague descriptions that kind of
could apply to anyone. That's called the Forrror effect or
the Barnum effect, which is when individuals give a high
accuracy rating to description of their personality when that is
supposedly tailored just to them, but it's actually vague and
general enough to apply to a wide range of people.

Speaker 3 (43:43):
And this is.

Speaker 2 (43:44):
Commonly used in all sorts of pseudo scientific practices like
fortune telling. I don't want to We're not going to
get into astrology.

Speaker 3 (43:52):
Now we do. I'll just know. We won't do that. Now,
we'll do that another time. We'll do an entire song.
I'll do an entire episode on astrology. But worry, don't worry, gurlies. Yeah,
we're there for you. We like, yeah, we're not anti
but no.

Speaker 2 (44:05):
Things that are written very generally and you can assign
it to yourself.

Speaker 3 (44:12):
People tend to like those, right because you're outgoing, like,
oh yeah, I totally am. It's like you feel things, yeah,
I totally do. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:21):
It feels good to hear these things and to think
it's applied to you. Of course, But psychologists actually favor
the Big five, and we talked about our own Big
five results in our first drunk chatting episode.

Speaker 3 (44:34):
Yes, that was many moons ago, many moons ago.

Speaker 2 (44:37):
And that's the test that I see referenced in psych
studies all the time because it tests five core personality traits,
which are openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. And notice
that you can get an unfavorable score with this, like
getting low and agreeableness right or high neuroticism.

Speaker 3 (44:54):
And that's how you know it's real. Right, people suck, right.
We contain multitudes and no one's perfect and we all
have our flaws and that's fine. That's what makes us human.
And it also tests on a spectrum.

Speaker 2 (45:06):
It shows you where you land, which the last time
I took a Myers Briggs test, it did have the
option of like scrolling down and like seeing your spouse.

Speaker 3 (45:15):
That's how I saw it. Yeah, that's how I saw that.

Speaker 2 (45:17):
Like okay, strong an extraversion, but more in the middle
with like judging or perceiving or whatever. But it's still
that's still like the next step. And if you're just
going through it in your job or wherever you're taking it,
you don't decide to pursue that. You're just going to
see one of sixteen personality types, which is just so lame,
and people take it too seriously and they put on

(45:39):
their dating profile.

Speaker 3 (45:40):
I think it's all fun.

Speaker 2 (45:41):
I think it's fun to take tests and learn about
yourself and self evaluate. But when it becomes now your
job is going to treat you a certain way, or
put you in a certain program, or assign you a
certain mentor or pair you with certain people based on
this just made up thing that some girls in the
nineteen forties who had no scientific background came up with.

Speaker 3 (46:03):
That doesn't make any fucking sense.

Speaker 2 (46:04):
No, and that's all I have to say on Myers Briggs,
and we could take our second break. Yes, all right,

(46:26):
I'm gonna print an instant correction in that the creators
of Myers Briggs did not personally profit from it. According
to Wikipedia, However, there is a massive industry around it
now and it generates substantial revenue. Their goals seem to
be pure.

Speaker 3 (46:45):
All right, we will give some respect back on their name.

Speaker 2 (46:48):
I apologize Catherine and Isabelle a little bit. We're going
to talk about love languages next.

Speaker 3 (46:57):
Love languages. Is that thing to work? Oh it's probably not. No, No,
it would have been cool though if it did. It
would have There is a.

Speaker 2 (47:06):
Button that's supposed to make like a oh, like a
doctor love. Yeah, you know that, you know the sound
it's not connected? Now, Sorry, what were you gonna say?
I was just saying love languages.

Speaker 3 (47:19):
There's five of them. Yeah, Allison, quality time. I knew it.
We've talked about this too, got he remind them, what
is the first time, Alison? Sorry, okay, I'm doing a
bit for the show. Oh sorry, okay, wait, okay. What's
my love language is? I don't know. It's quality time? Yeah,

(47:39):
most millennials and gen z it's quality time. It's attention. Yeah.
Please like me as a person and spend time with me.
All right. So The Five Long Languages was a book
that was published in nineteen ninety two. It was called
The Five Love Languages Colon How to Express heartfelt commitment
to your Mate, and it was published by Baptist pastor

(48:01):
Gary Chapman. And the five love languages are words of affirmation,
quality time, gifts, acts of service, and physical touch. I
was gifted this book from my wedding photographer, and I
think he meant well. I think he was doing it
in like a I believe in marriage and I think

(48:23):
people should whatever. And he was very Christian, but he
was very cool and he did great work. And we
picked him out of like eight hundred photographers. So he
was nice. But I brought it. Oh he brought it.

Speaker 2 (48:37):
Oh my god, i'd be saying.

Speaker 3 (48:40):
An updated version. It's the same author. Okay, I've never
actually looked at the physical book. This is slightly off,
and this is the Five Love Languages, The Secret to Love.
That last nice, But it's the same. It's the same
author that wrote the original book, like an expanded edition
or something. I think so because it has a lot
of the same story from the first one. But that

(49:01):
I like flipped to a random page and I saw
the word Netflix on it, so I know it's updated. Well, right,
because the original was.

Speaker 2 (49:08):
I look at it, please do. The original was published
in nineteen ninety two. We weren't even mailing out DVDs then, no,
so I know this is definitely an updated but also, yeah,
we'll get into it.

Speaker 3 (49:20):
They have sold over thirteen million copies. Yes, and the
original book has been translated into fifty languages.

Speaker 2 (49:28):
It says on the back no gimmicks, no psychoanalyzing, which
is kind.

Speaker 3 (49:32):
Of like, I like, psycho could you please actually psychoanalyze?

Speaker 2 (49:35):
Yeah, like, can you give me a book written by
a psychologist psychiatrist who psychoanalyzes? It's not data term, but
like this is not at least in conjunction with Yeah,
this ain't it, man? No, yours is also quality of time?

Speaker 3 (49:49):
Yes, yeah, I think Okay, almost everyone I know is
quality time. Active service is my second. I think, m hmm,
because it's like you care so much that you did
a thing thinking of me that it would be yeah,
like thank you for doing the dishes when you knew
I had a hard day. You know.

Speaker 2 (50:04):
I like them all. Yeah, there's not one that I
don't want to receive. To be ale, Well, that's the thing.
That's that's part of the problem with this too. It's
just like everywhere we'll get into it, we'll get into it.

Speaker 3 (50:15):
So this was the brainchild of Baptist minister doctor Gary Chapman,
and he is a doctor of adult Education. Okay, he's
got a PhD from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary Bible School.

Speaker 2 (50:33):
I was going to say religious studies is my guess,
but adult education okay.

Speaker 3 (50:38):
But out of religious college basically, and essentially from what
I understand people that did research, the degree plan is
essentially how to be a minister and talk to adults.

Speaker 2 (50:48):
Yes, I have a family member getting their PhD and
something religious oriented, and they're like semesters that you spend
like learning how to counsel couples.

Speaker 3 (50:56):
It is that is a part of those programs. Yes,
and that's part of the basis of this book, is
that he counseled couples experiencing marital issues within his church
and during school. And he has no therapeutic or even
research background. He has no psychological background, psychiatry, medical, none

(51:18):
of that. Just being a Baptist minister in a church
that studied at a Bible college. That's that's a background.
There are two skinny white people dancing on the beach
on the cover.

Speaker 2 (51:29):
They're not doing very well though. This is poor technique.
I'm from dancer.

Speaker 3 (51:33):
I'm sure it's a horrible stock photo. Her left hand
should be a lot higher. It's okay. You know, they
got some like extras that like it's like second week
in LA and they're like, oh, I got a gig,
and that's true. I want to hate on those people. Yeah,
you're fine. What a choice for the cover? Yeah, well,
you know, it's a heterosexual white couple on the beach,
but yeah, what's more aspirational than that, Alison, That's what

(51:55):
I'm getting. Yeah, Yes, so it was published by a
Christian publisher, Moody Publishers, under the designation of Christian Literature,
so it was it was published to be Christian stuff
for the Christians to read about Christ and their marriages.
And the word got out, the good word yes. And

(52:16):
in the original there was actually a companying scripture like
for each love language, so that you could go back
to the good book nice and be like, see it's
godly because this scripture fits into my love language, so
it's all biblical. I read a really good article that
was like trashing it and was a good summation of

(52:37):
the book. And that's why I know a lot of
the stories from the original or in this beautiful copy
that I have here. But this one article is really funny.
It said, try saying your love language is receiving gifts
as a woman and not be called a gold digger.
Or the amount of times men weaponize physical touches their
love language to abuse women into submitting into them having sex.

Speaker 2 (52:57):
It's very rare that you'll see love languages on a
day profile and it's not physical touch's almost every time
you see it.

Speaker 3 (53:03):
That's why it's a meme.

Speaker 2 (53:04):
That's why it's a joke, right, Like it's like all
to touch, but I have screenshots of it where I
think I could think of maybe once where it was
like acts of service or something. But it's also yeah,
it's also the justification of like, well, I just I
need a lot of you know, I like want to
have sex all the time, and like I'm not looking
for these other things or commitment because my love language
is physical touch, right.

Speaker 3 (53:24):
And that it's just a way to weaponize, even if
you are in a romantic relationship for them to be
like I feel like you don't love me because we're
not having sex enough, and that's the way to you know,
manipulate you into having sex with someone that maybe is
kind of a piece of shit. Yep, who doesn't deserve
to have his ppe touched? New Right? If you're weaponizing that,
you don't exactly, which is another reason why this is
a problem. So a lot of this book involves stories

(53:47):
from his time as being a minister in the Baptist
Church and about these stories of couples that he counseled,
and a lot of them are really problematic and obviously
based in Christian beliefs and values, where most of them
are basically they're trying to be equal, but at the
end of the day, it's telling women to submit to
their husbands. Yep. So in one of the stories, this

(54:09):
woman talked about how her husband was like being really
like mean and emotionally abusive and like not helping around
the household. But his love language, they found out, was
physical touch. So his recommendation to this woman was to
just have sex with him more. And the husband afterwards
was like, this man's a miracle worker. He's great because
I'm having more sex. But there wasn't any update on

(54:29):
poor and on how she felt after all, this was
probably not great.

Speaker 2 (54:34):
In these Christian families, couples homes, going to their pastor
whoever's canceling them, it's just so hard to get away
from the man's the head of the house.

Speaker 3 (54:45):
The woman submits to the man.

Speaker 2 (54:46):
The man is the one who is in charge of everything,
and she is there to serve him and to please him,
and everything that they're being counseled on is going to
be based around that theology.

Speaker 3 (54:56):
Exactly, and almost all of the stories of the couples
is the woman being unsatisfied with how her man is
helping around the house or sorry, not helping around the house.
To the point one of these men didn't even wash
his own car. He made his wife hand wash his
car once a week and mo the lawn and take
out the trash, all these like classic, you know, male

(55:17):
coded chores because he just had the idea that that's
what women do. And apparently when they were dating, he
helped her do the dishes and he was so kind
and loving and like did acts of service because that
was his love language. And then she stopped doing stuff
around the house because he started bossing around and making
her do extra chores. And then his rationale to like
help this couple was okay, well, husband, you're gonna wash

(55:41):
the car and mo the lawn. And he goes, well,
that's okay because my dad did that and that's okay
for men to do. So it's a lot of continuing
the patriarchy. It's a lot of gender roles. It's a
lot of again, like I said, submitting to your husband,
and it's you know, telling him to like, oh, why
don't you, you know, help the wife and pretending like
she's getting something out of it too, when it's still
just really one sided and about the man. Like you said,

(56:05):
being the head of the fucking household, because that's what's
in the Bible. Yep, Bible. I hate the love languages
even more now. Yes, And obviously this book was written
with a very specific type of marriage in mind, a
traditional heterosexual, probably pretty white. I see those people dancing
on the beach, yeah, you see, you see them with

(56:26):
you know, usually no communication or real friendship, and no
expectation of participation from the men and domestic labor, which
makes sense for the context that the book was written in.
It was written, like we said, it was published in
nineteen ninety two, so most of these are going to
be boomer couples with Greatest Generation parents. So it's boomers,
who obviously are the best generation that ever existed and

(56:46):
totally not selfish and toxic at all, coming from parents
who had very rigid gender roles. So this was I
can't even imagine the toxicity of boomer couples. And like,
I'm sure the eighties and nineties during this time and
trying to come out from you know, the into the
seventies where we're like women's liberation and trying to navigate
all this sounds like, oh God, of being a woman
around this time being a baby boomer. Yikes. Yeah, Chapman,

(57:09):
the author is extremely religious, as we've talked about in
his anti LGBTQ, having stated in A Q and A
that any pairing outside of a man and woman is
quote unquote outside the primary design of.

Speaker 2 (57:21):
God's that's the screenshot where you can really take it
down easy because that information is on the internet.

Speaker 3 (57:28):
He really said that, yep. That yep. So he's not
thinking he's thinking of a biblical a biblical marriage between
a man and a woman where the woman submits to
the man. That's what the five love languages at the
end of the day are. That's that's the message that's
about just giving out yea, Yeah, that's what it wants
to get out to the world. And they've done some

(57:50):
studies on the love languages. You know, of course, let's
try to find some science behind the love languages and
do some data. And there has been like a shit
ton of studies or anything, and most of the studies
that they have done have been pretty inconclusive. But most
of the studies have shown that people that have differing
love languages. So if your partner doesn't have the same
love language as you, it doesn't necessarily show less satisfaction

(58:11):
or relationship failure than having the same one. Mm hm.
But another study showed that if you have the same
love language that usually your sexual satisfaction is higher.

Speaker 2 (58:22):
It's always bad though, when you have the point and
then you're working backwards to validate it. Exactly took the
other way around.

Speaker 3 (58:28):
Right, and I only saw to be fair like one
study that said, yeah, it's great, it totally makes a
difference if you have the same love language. So I
don't know. I feel like it was probably with a
with a with a skew with a bias right trying
to find the results and finding it magically and their
data and I'm sure the data pool. Again I didn't
look up the exact data pool, but I would assume

(58:50):
it would probably be only heterosexual couples in like this
one small area and maybe there's only like twelve couples.

Speaker 2 (58:56):
I mean, if the goal is to like understand your
partner better, and you can have different love languages and
putting in heavy quotes there, but you can still support
and build and all that, like that's fine, Like the
infortion of it, I get it. I just shouldn't be
like the end all be all and acted as if
this is something that we have studied and observed other

(59:18):
than this white dude with his heterosexual couples and his religion.

Speaker 3 (59:25):
And that's the thing. There is some good behind this
and a lot of like psychologists say this in the book,
it seems a little obvious to maybe people that have
like good emotional intelligence, But a lot of the book
also talks about like how to communicate with your partner
by saying but it's like really simple things like listen,
don't interrupt, like remember what they said, like teaching men

(59:48):
basically how to treat their partner like a person and
listen to them and their needs. So that part of
the book is good if you know someone needs that,
which is kind of scary if your partner needs to
learn how to listen to you through a book written
by a man. But you know what, if you do
need that, that's great and that's a good time. Like
you said, it helps with self reflections where you can

(01:00:10):
find out like what's important to me, like what are
my needs in a relationship? Like that's nice, that's good
to know, Like, oh, actually it does make me feel
good when you prepared dinner for me, or you like
took me out on a date, or you told me
that my hair looked nice. Like that's the times that
I feel closest to you, and like communicating that with
your partner. Sure, but it shouldn't be strict. And I
think a lot of people get married to like this

(01:00:32):
is my love language, and people are different, Like this
one is the one I probably care about the most,
but this one's also really important to me, And like
you can't just be like, I'm only going to do
this type of love language in all situations. I listened
to a podcast and he's he works at the Kinsey Institute,
and he's like, the example I get my students is
you call your partner because your car broke down in
the middle of the road, and you call them and

(01:00:53):
they say, oh, sweetie, I'm here for you. I love
you so much. Is that words of affirmation right there? Right? Yeah,
but you need the active ideas. I need active service
right now because my car's broken down and you need
to come here and help me and do an active service.
But yes, my love language is words of affirmation, So
you have it's not just this one size fits all
criteria you have to change, and it's based on what

(01:01:15):
your needs are. So another good analogy that one wrote
was like relationships are like a diet. So yes, you
could probably survive on just carbs, which is your one
love language, but you're not gonna be sustained unless you
have a balanced diet of like protein and carbs and
minerals and fiber and all those other things which are
the other love languages. And like maybe one point in
your time, like you're pregnant, so now you won't need
more protein during this time, So it might be a

(01:01:37):
different love language that you might need more active service
from your partner during a certain time of your life.
So it's the same thing where it's just like you
can't put people into a box and you have to
like take your partner as who they are and not
a fucking label to slap on their face.

Speaker 2 (01:01:51):
Yeah, what are you going to spend quality time together
and just like talk shit the whole time? Like that doesn't.

Speaker 3 (01:01:57):
Work on That's what I have for the love languages.

Speaker 2 (01:02:02):
Yeah, yeah, So similar to Myers Briggs where it's just
an oversimplification, prescriptionist, not comprehensive. Humans are more complicated than
that and shouldn't be used to put people in a
little box.

Speaker 3 (01:02:17):
Yeah, but it's like also the tiktokification of this kind
of stuff. That hashtag is like one of the most popular,
Like love languages is one of the biggest hashtags on TikTok,
and there's so many memes about it, like my love
language is pizza or like what the fuck ever? It's
kind of a sleeper hit because it came out ninety
two and it kind of popped off. I didn't hear
about love language until like twenty fourteen. You're right, it

(01:02:38):
did pop off later. I didn't grow up hearing about that. No,
definitely not.

Speaker 2 (01:02:41):
But I think if we could just get out that
homophobic bias this guy's got, hopefully that would because I
didn't hear that either maybe the last like four years
or something once I got more chronically online, but before
there was definitely a period where I knew about love
languages and I did not know that this dude was
a homophobic pastor right, because then it's pretty easy to

(01:03:02):
pick apart his arguments because it's like, if you're not
writing with queer couples in mind that have different dynamics
than a traditional heterosexual couple, then you're not writing for everyone.

Speaker 3 (01:03:14):
Exactly, you're not writing well, no, and without any scientific
background at all. What's up with that? The confidence of
a mediocre white man truly?

Speaker 2 (01:03:25):
Yeah, I think the intention of learning what people prioritize,
because I've definitely observed things where it's like someone is
doing something for me and they think it's going to
mean a lot, and it's like I'm not.

Speaker 3 (01:03:37):
I didn't even notice.

Speaker 2 (01:03:38):
It's like, oh sorry, like I wasn't paying it, Like
that didn't that kind of thing didn't resonate with me
or like I do. It happens, you know, you do
something for someone that you think is going to be
this very thoughtful gesture and they pass over it because
to them, like it didn't register right.

Speaker 3 (01:03:53):
Because you kind of give the love that you want.
So it's like if I'm doing something, it's like this
is because I would find this to be yeah, really
thoughtful and loving, and for them it's not. It's not
their love language.

Speaker 2 (01:04:06):
Yes, so I get that, but that that can be
very situational too, ye of like you like well drives
and drives from the airport.

Speaker 3 (01:04:14):
Everyone should know is a universal sign of love. That
is that is an intimacy.

Speaker 2 (01:04:19):
I'll tell yeah, everyone is cross checking everything against themselves.
If I did this, This is how I would feel
like if someone did this to me. This is you're
using yourself as baseline, right, And that's yep, that's.

Speaker 3 (01:04:31):
The promising yourself as the metric. And that is not
one thing I learned at the adult is don't do that. Yeah,
I know, if I could give one advice to the
young people.

Speaker 2 (01:04:41):
It is hard to get away from that. So I
get putting some of these things into words.

Speaker 3 (01:04:46):
They just it's a.

Speaker 2 (01:04:48):
Little too oversimplified. And that's how pop psychology pops off. Yes,
pop pop psychology, yeah, because it's easy to understand. It's
easy to make a TikTok about it, right, it's bite
size of digestible.

Speaker 3 (01:05:00):
It's easy. You get to be like, have a positive
category that you get to active you to yourself, and
then it's like an identity too. It's like, oh, this
is this is my Myers Briggs, this is my star sign,
this is my love language, this is my this, this
is my that, right, and you're like, think you're paying
a tapestry of your individualism, but it's you know.

Speaker 2 (01:05:17):
You're actually short change in yourself because you are more
complicated than that.

Speaker 3 (01:05:22):
And once you start to delve into that in therapy,
it gets so much more fun. True. I am as
Sandris de Memes on Instagram and I am t x
scoth Giff.

Speaker 2 (01:05:33):
And we are sad Gap dot podcast. You can email
us at Sadgap dot podcast at gmail dot com. Visit
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Speaker 3 (01:05:51):
Going over to your podcast platform a choice and give
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and write us a review. We would love to hear
what you have to say. Rate, review, subscribe and share
with a friend. I'm just opening the book. Oh random.

Speaker 2 (01:06:02):
Yeah, well this is bolded on the page, so you
know it's very important. No one likes to be forced
to do anything. Love is always freely given.

Speaker 3 (01:06:14):
I mean I don't disagree with that. No, see some
of this, some of it's okay, okay, yeah, and we're
stronger together. We'll see you next time. My