September 30, 2025 • 40 mins
Ever notice how the “good old days” always look like a movie set? We pull back the velvet curtain on the myths that won’t die—women who “didn’t work,” men who “provided alone,” teens “married off” en masse—and replace them with what the archive, archaeology, and everyday logic actually show. From hunter-gatherer bands to early farms, women hunted, gathered, planted, harvested, brewed beer that kept people safer than water, spun and wove the clothes on everyone’s backs, and shared childcare across kin and community. That picture is messier than a corseted fainting scene, and far more true.
We dig into why marriage ages were historically in the early-to-mid 20s, how land access changed timelines in 18th‑century America, and why later menarche and basic biology made “child brides everywhere” a poor read of the record. We talk fertility: cycle tracking long before apps, herbal knowledge that both protected pregnancies and ended them when needed, and the tragic ways witch hunts and gatekeeping erased that expertise. Then we follow the fashion: corsets as practical support rather than torture, gowns that survived because elites wore them once, and a photographic history literally retouched to create tiny waists. If your mental image of the past is brown cloth and breathless women, blame nobility’s archive and Hollywood’s shortcuts.
The stakes are current. Myths about “women at home” and “men as sole providers” feed modern policy and personal pressure, from wages to parental leave to how we judge each other’s roles. We argue for better education, smarter filmmaking, and asking a simple test of any historical claim: could you harvest in that outfit, feed a family with that schedule, and keep a village alive with those rules? If not, you’re looking at costume, not history. Listen for the full breakdown, a lively toxicity rating (how many green potatoes is this, really?), and a clear case for ditching nostalgia in favor of nuance.
If this conversation challenged a story you grew up with, share the episode, leave a review, and tell us which myth you want us to debunk next. Subscribe for more sharp, funny, evidence-first takes on the past—and the stories that shape our present.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_02 (00:16):
Hi, and welcome to the Toxic Cooking Show, where we
break down toxic people intotheir simplest ingredients.
I'm your host for this week,Lindsay McLean, and with me is
my fantastic co-host.
SPEAKER_00 (00:26):
Christopher Padgett, LCSW.
SPEAKER_02 (00:29):
Not too long ago in Podcast World, you did an
episode looking at kind of thestereotype of this idea we have,
oh, we gotta go back to the olddays when things were good.
You know, you could you couldafford all the house, and you
could, you know, wife sits athome and husband goes to work
(00:51):
and there's two and a half kids,and how that, you know, maybe
was semi-feasible then, and itain't feasible now.
And during that episode, youkind of touched on some
interesting stereotypes aboutwomen that are incorrect.
Did you know that?
SPEAKER_00 (01:07):
Ruhro.
SPEAKER_02 (01:09):
Ruhro.
But in fairness, this is a typeof stereotype that many people
get wrong, including myselfsometimes.
This is something that I have towork on to remember that's like,
oh, it's it's actually not theway that we think it was.
Back in the day.
(01:30):
For instance, you know, we havethis idea that women just stayed
at home all day, like sat aroundin pretty dresses, looked cute.
And that was because they gotmarried and started popping out
kids when they were 15.
Because uh, what is birthcontrol?
How did babies happen?
What is medicine?
(01:50):
And that they were just kind ofnothing without men as a result,
and that's just not true.
SPEAKER_00 (01:56):
I I definitely am looking forward to seeing where
this is going.
Yeah, when I think of like womenin the 1940s, 1950s, that that
is definitely something thatcomes to my mind that the only
time that they did go out of thehouse was to go grocery
shopping.
SPEAKER_02 (02:10):
Exactly.
And even if I say a woman in the1800s, you're going to have a a
certain image that pops intoyour head, probably of like a
woman in like a giant dress orsomething like that.
If I say a woman during theVictorian period, you're gonna
imagine maybe the like, youknow, super cinched in corset
and the big dress, and you know,tons of children, and she's just
(02:33):
she's what does she do?
She she is woman.
Yeah, good enough.
That that's her job.
And we go, we do this all theway back through history.
You even see it when people arelike, oh, you know,
hunter-gatherers, man go huntfor big important meat, and
woman stay home with 18 babiesand maybe pick some berries.
(02:53):
So you can see it like allthrough history that we have
this this idea that's there.
And that has almost never neverbeen true.
So we'll start off with thefirst fallacy that women don't
work.
Women have always worked, rightalongside men in many cases.
Going right back to the idea oflike the hunter-gatherers of man
(03:15):
go hunt meet, women, woman pickberries with baby.
We have proof from the Vikings,from the Scythians, from
Peruvian societies.
Basically, every time we do anarchaeological dig, we find
further proof that women werevery active when it came to
stabbing things.
Regularly we come across thatproof that women were very
(03:35):
active in all aspects and rolesin a community.
And studies actually show thenabout 79% of hunter-gatherer
societies, women hunted, whichmakes sense.
You can't just exclude half ofyour population from hunting.
That's that that doesn't makeany logistical sense.
(03:57):
If we're a society, you know,3,000, 4,000 years ago, you need
people participating, or evenlonger ago.
You need every able-bodiedperson participating in this.
And even if women were not themain hunters, they were still
participating in hunting.
And gathering is a little bitimportant too.
Fruits, berries, nuts, grains,materials for building.
(04:22):
You do need those.
You cannot survive on meatalone.
Don't listen to the carnivorediet, people.
SPEAKER_00 (04:27):
So there's two things that I do know of.
So the the meat diet that thatwe all like crave or you know,
the big craze of the day isn'ttrue because it was like if we
got meat, that was like a treat.
SPEAKER_02 (04:43):
Exactly.
Meat was not like a three mealsa day type thing.
Like, we're not hunting thatmany deer.
You know, you hunted what youcould because it was important,
but yeah, this was not a likeroutine every single day.
It was, you know, 60% of themeal.
No.
SPEAKER_00 (05:02):
I do know another thing is that one of the reasons
why dogs kind of gotincorporated into our lives is
because the fact that we neededbasically a babysitter.
We needed someone where we couldleave for short periods of time
and that we would trust to notonly protect the baby, but not
(05:24):
to eat the baby as well.
SPEAKER_02 (05:25):
Very important.
Don't eat the baby.
SPEAKER_00 (05:30):
Yes, here at the toxic cooking show, we are very
anti-eating babies.
SPEAKER_02 (05:35):
Maybe that can be our fourth and final.
You know, we we've sometimeswe're like, it's gotta be more
than antifreeze, baby.
I'll get canceled in three, two,one.
So you have that.
You also have the fact that upuntil very, very recently, we
may touch on this a little bitlater too.
(05:57):
The family, like the nuclearfamily, looks very different
from what it does now.
Like you had grandparents whowere kind of around, you had
aunts, uncles, cousins, othersociety community members who
were there who were helping takecare of all of the children.
Uh, and you see this in modernday, well, not so much
(06:17):
hunter-gatherer societies perse, but like, you know, kind of
the modern version of that, thatbaby doesn't just stay with mom.
Baby gets passed around towhoever is there.
Baby cries, somebody will pickup baby and take care of them.
So mom does not have to bephysically present at all times
with the baby.
Mom can be out helping thecommunity.
(06:39):
Hunting, gathering, building,working.
Like, I mean, all those thingsare working, but you know, work
in the modern sense.
You can do all of those thingsbecause somebody else is there.
SPEAKER_00 (06:51):
Like Mali.
SPEAKER_02 (06:52):
Like a Mali.
So you have that in like moreancient societies, even within
the past like couple thousandyears, men and women have worked
equally in the fields duringplanting and harvesting.
Again, you cannot have 50% ofyour population not
participating in events that arethis important.
(07:13):
Like when you need to plant theseeds, you need to plant the
seeds.
When you need to harvest, likeyou need to harvest.
You can't just be like, oh, it'sa woman.
She just sits in the house andlooks pretty.
No, you are right there.
SPEAKER_00 (07:27):
Unless you're Molly.
SPEAKER_02 (07:29):
Unless you're Molly, in which case you are protecting
your eyelids.
The insides of the eyelids, ofcourse.
SPEAKER_00 (07:37):
Yes, you just sit there and look pretty.
Always.
Pretty Dougie.
SPEAKER_02 (07:44):
We do kind of see the change of like women working
less outside of the house asChristianity spread.
And this is gonna be a verylike, like most of our stuff is,
but just you know, that littlethat little note in there.
This is very Western societyfocused.
I do not have the time andresources to do the whole world.
If somebody wants to create aPatreon for us and just like
(08:04):
donate a whole bunch of moneyevery month, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (08:08):
But otherwise, we're looking at UCEO.
SPEAKER_02 (08:12):
Exactly.
Otherwise, this is what you get.
unknown (08:16):
Focus.
SPEAKER_02 (08:17):
Look, what we both live in the West.
That's what we're gonna focuson.
But because then women wereforced into or forced out of the
jobs they previously held, thenyou see women kind of pull back
from the society where they theyused to be like very much
present in.
And even with Christianity,though, women still played huge
(08:39):
roles in their work that theycontributed.
Up until like you know, 1300s,women were doing the cooking,
the brewing, the spinning, thelivestock care.
And before you make some littleyou know, cooking make me a
sandwich joke, uh you miss thebrewing part.
So no beer for you.
And that is doubly bad becauseA, no beer, and B, that means
(09:02):
you're drinking water which isabsolutely full of tasty, tasty
parasites and disease.
That's why beer was so importantback in the day.
I don't know if you would everlike run into that, but you see
people like, oh, they drankbeer, even the children got
beer.
Because beer was mildlyalcoholic, and we're not talking
like an 8% stout here.
We're talking like very lowalcohol.
It was more safe than the waterin many cases, because the water
(09:25):
livestock were just shitting init, people were shitting in it.
The beer is alcohol, so a lot ofthat has been killed off.
SPEAKER_00 (09:31):
Extra flavor.
SPEAKER_02 (09:33):
Yum.
So you're drinking parasitewater now because you didn't get
any beer because the woman madethe beer, and you're also
butt-naked because you have noclothing because the sheep all
died because nobody was takingcare of them, and then you
weren't even able to benefitfrom taking the wool and
(09:54):
spinning it into thread andweaving it into cloth.
Just some mildly importantthings there.
SPEAKER_00 (10:01):
Mild.
SPEAKER_02 (10:02):
Mild, yeah.
It's all good.
The second historical thing thatwe typically get wrong is that,
you know, in addition to womenjust sitting at home, they were
sitting at home because theywere definitely married and
pregnant when they were 12.
That's something that comes up alot of people.
Like, oh yeah, people gotmarried back in their like teens
(10:23):
all the time, like 11, 12, youwere just married off.
Did you know that up until aboutthe 1950s, the average age of
marriage was in the early tomid-20s?
Throughout the 1800s, you weregetting married in your 20s.
SPEAKER_00 (10:39):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (10:40):
And you have this drop around like 1940, 50, uh,
where suddenly it really dips,and then it's been going back up
since then.
SPEAKER_00 (10:52):
Yeah, I I well, you know, I think that especially
nowadays where I mean a lot ofwomen aren't even getting
married until their 30s.
SPEAKER_02 (11:02):
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, we're at the highestit's ever been since people kind
of started recording that, whichyou know, probably accurately
tracks.
But I think a lot there's thisreally big stereotype that you
see, like, you know, likepictures from back in the day,
and the bride is definitely, youknow, she would still be in in
middle school in today's world.
(11:24):
You're like, oh no.
But that that was extremelyuncommon.
And again, the facts kind ofshow that you weren't you you
were in your your 20s.
So not we're not so far offthese days from what has been
the historical kind of average.
SPEAKER_00 (11:42):
I I'm I'm kind of curious because I I mean like I
think I well, I think that isprobably just the fact that it's
so far off in our our mind thatwe do tend to we hear these
stories of like I forget whatpresident it was, but he ended
up marrying the the the girlthat he babysat.
SPEAKER_02 (12:03):
Oh, yeah.
I feel like I ran into that whenI was like doing the research
for this.
It was one of them he had hislike first wife, and they were
like around the same age, andthen his next wife was like the
same age as his first wife, butnow he was like 25 years older.
SPEAKER_00 (12:20):
Yeah, yeah.
So like I I think we hearstories of that, and it's like,
holy shit, that's fucked up.
And though those are the storiesthat that we formed that that
stereotype around.
SPEAKER_02 (12:32):
It's true, and we'll we'll talk a little bit about
why we have a lot of thesestereotypes soon.
SPEAKER_00 (12:38):
Ooh.
SPEAKER_02 (12:38):
I know.
I even give you like the reasonsfor it, but they all have the
same reasons.
I'm gonna wait until the end.
But the reason why you actuallymost people were waiting until
their 20s for this is like afirst marriage for everybody, is
because you had to be able tosupport your family.
(13:02):
Men needed to have a profession,they needed to have been like
earning money because you neededto have land, you needed like a
place to live, you needed to beable to provide, like, you know,
buying food and all of that typeof thing for everything your
family's going to need.
Interestingly, to kind of backthat up, you see that in 18th
century America, the typical agefor marriage was lower than what
(13:26):
it was in England at the time.
And that's because in America,you had ready access to land.
Everybody could get land forreal cheap.
So it was easier to start yourhomestead, your family, which
meant that then you could getmarried, as opposed to other
places where you actually had towork for a little while as a man
(13:48):
to earn enough money to buy thethings for your family to have.
And then women also, again,women were working.
Let's not forget, women wereworking outside of the house and
inside of the house.
Women needed to gain the skillsto support a family.
Like you needed to know how tocook, you needed to know how to
(14:08):
clean, you needed to know how tosew, you needed to have the
money, the items that went intoyour dowry.
So, you know, livestock, allthat type of thing.
That doesn't just happen overthe course of a year.
That's something that kind ofhas to be built up over time.
And for women, in addition toneeding to have like the skills
(14:30):
to support your family, you alsohad to be physically mature
enough to have kids.
That's that's a big thing.
You don't want to be trying tohave kids if your hips are too
narrow, if you haven't like gonethrough puberty all of the way,
that can create some major,major problems in terms of
having children.
(14:51):
We know that in general, youknow, that really young girls
and women like maybe higherpregnancy risks because of that.
Also, something interesting tonote is up until like our age,
even for you, I think itprobably would be your cohort.
Women haven't been startingmenstruation until their mid to
(15:12):
late teens, anyway.
There's a variety of reasons ofwhy it's dropping, and like now
it's around the age of like 10to 12, is when you'll start.
Some of that is due to havinghigher body fat and better
nutrition.
That's why women who playcompetitive sports may not get
their period until later.
If you don't have enough bodyfat, or if you have like really
(15:32):
low body fat, it may not triggerit.
And even if it has started, ifyou are actively, like really
actively training, it can it'llstop.
It'll start back up again.
But it can stop as a result ofthat.
It's not like you you train toomuch for one month and it's like
switches turned off.
(15:54):
But yeah, if you think about,you know, 100, 200 years ago,
yeah, you had less access tonutritious food.
It's gonna take a little bitlonger for your body to get that
point where it's like, oh yeah,we we can support, we can
support having a baby.
So you didn't have like thishuge period of time when women
were able to have children butwere choosing not to get married
(16:15):
and have children.
That was when they were theywere still children, they were
still learning things, they werestill in their family's
household, contributing to that,working, then they got married,
then they started having babies.
Speaking of babies, the laststereotype that we're gonna
cover is that you think aboutwomen back in the day, and she's
(16:36):
got like 84 kids hanging off ofher because how do babies
happen?
What is birth control?
I don't know how to stop this,and I got married when I was 12
and just pop out a kid everyyear.
SPEAKER_00 (16:48):
See, I think of the Irish when I think that Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (16:53):
I mean, it is true that historically people did
have a lot more kids than theydo now for a variety of reasons.
You, you know, kids were morelikely to die.
So you needed them, and you didneed kids to help support, you
know, the farming or to takeover the business that dad has
or to just, you know, helparound the house.
(17:14):
Like that was an importantthing.
And if you knew that a certainpercentage of them were gonna
like kick the bucket before theyhit five, you needed more.
You did need more of them.
And you know, the birth controlmethods that we had back then
are maybe not as effective asthe ones we have now.
But they they were stilleffective and we did still know
(17:35):
them.
We've known for centuries likewhat type of herbs you need to
uh a hundred percent avoid tokeep the baby, you know, def
definitely don't eat way toomuch of this.
SPEAKER_00 (17:47):
Oh my god.
So like as soon as I hear that,I'm I'm now thinking like of
like Instagram, of like allthose times that we see like if
you want if you want moremuscles, avoid these.
And it's just like, oh god.
unknown (18:04):
Fuck.
SPEAKER_00 (18:07):
So it's good to know that Instagram was around before
Instagram was around.
SPEAKER_02 (18:10):
Yep.
Avoid these three herbs if youdon't want to lose your baby.
I'm sure that's what the old youknow, women back in the day were
peddling walking around town.
1300's Instagram.
Oh yeah.
But it goes back even furtherthan that.
Like the Romans actually drovean herb to extinction because it
(18:32):
was such a great abortifagant.
Abortifigant?
Is that how you say the word?
It caused abortions.
You you ate this thing and babywas no more.
And the Romans thought this wasso fantastic they they used it
all up.
SPEAKER_00 (18:42):
Huh.
Romans were kinky littlemotherfuckers.
Fucking Romans.
SPEAKER_02 (18:48):
I know, right?
So if you are sitting here andyou're like, well, how how come
I've ever heard about like anyof this stuff?
Like, you know, we've knownabout this for centuries that
there are certain herbs andthings that you need to avoid.
I'm not talking about stufflike, you know, oh, sushi or
something.
That's because of the witchhunts.
(19:08):
Everyone's favorite.
SPEAKER_00 (19:10):
Come on, uh, the 1600s.
SPEAKER_02 (19:12):
Uh, such a great time to not be alive.
You know, because we can't havethe women knowing about all
these, you know, herbs andconcoctions and stuff like that.
Like that's that's no good.
Can't have them doing stuffthat's not under our control.
Which is also why women wereblocked from the medical
professions for so long, amongstso many other things that they
(19:35):
were blocked from.
And to be honest, we've probablylost like a ton of knowledge
because of that, because thiswas the type of thing that
wouldn't necessarily have beenwritten down for a variety of
reasons.
You don't want people to findout.
You may not have been literateenough to write it down.
And even if you could, couldsomebody else read it?
Yeah.
Unclear.
So you've just passed oralknowledge down from person to
(19:59):
person.
It's like, yeah, you know, youmight want to eat a whole bunch
of this, or you might want tonot eat a whole bunch of this.
Because it goes both ways.
It's not just about like, oh,everyone was having abortions
left, right, and center becausethey didn't want these kids.
It also is the fact that, youknow, if you're pregnant, you
want to avoid eating really highdoses of vitamin C.
(20:23):
That that is something that isgood to know.
SPEAKER_00 (20:26):
I did not know that.
SPEAKER_02 (20:27):
Yes.
SPEAKER_00 (20:28):
But then again, I've never been pregnant, so I am not
surprised to hear that.
SPEAKER_02 (20:33):
Not a worry for you.
You know, and again, this is notlike a surefire way.
Like, this is that is not thepoint of this podcast, is to
tell you how to have an abortionor how to not have an abortion.
But, you know, especiallyconsidering like there weren't
other options, could you haveused something like this, or
would it have been helpful toknow to avoid something like
(20:54):
this?
Yes, very, very helpful.
Also with the 10,000 kids thatwe imagine everyone having, your
body can only kind of handle somany full-term pregnancies,
especially if they're superclose together, especially if
you have limited nutrition.
Because babies will leechwhatever nutrients they need
(21:15):
from you.
SPEAKER_00 (21:16):
So 9,000's good, but 10,000.
SPEAKER_02 (21:21):
Yeah, no teen.
SPEAKER_00 (21:23):
No teen.
SPEAKER_02 (21:23):
No teen.
Okay.
But yeah, if you uh fun fact, ifyou have a whole bunch of kids
back to back to back to back,and you're not paying close
attention to your nutrition,your teeth will start to fall
out.
SPEAKER_00 (21:38):
I will remember that.
SPEAKER_02 (21:40):
I I know that's really helpful for you.
I know you were really worriedabout getting pregnant 10 times
in a row and your teeth fallingout.
Good times, the toxic cookieshow.
We're so focused.
(22:01):
So, yeah, you you were nothaving in general tons and tons
and tons of kids back to back.
You will see it start to getspaced out.
And that's also partiallybecause giving birth was
dangerous.
There's a lot that can go,there's a lot that can go wrong
now in 2025.
There was a lot that could gowrong, you know, in 1825.
(22:23):
And so people were maybe alittle more cognizant.
That's like, yes, we need a lotof kids.
Yes, we have limited birthcontrol, you know, methods.
We do know how children happen.
So we we can kind of you knowwork around that a little bit.
Because women also like, we'veknown how our cycles work.
Just because men don't know itor haven't been aware of it
doesn't mean that women haven'tbeen tracking that type of thing
(22:45):
and are aware that's like, ohyeah, it seems like it's about
this long, which means thatduring this part and this part,
something's okay.
And then this part, like,oopsies.
The last little one that I dowant to talk about is that and
this one I've I've left it forlast because there is some
(23:07):
validity to it.
But hold hold your excitementtill I finish.
And that's this idea, like kindof all of this put together.
You know, women are nothingwithout men.
You know, women couldn't doanything without a man in her
life.
And there's some truth to that.
You know, we've talked aboutthis before on the show that
like you know, women in moderntimes, you know, couldn't open a
(23:29):
bank account, you know, couldn'tcouldn't hold down a job without
a a male of someone, you know,husband, a father, whatever, you
know, saying yes, they'reallowed to do this, going back
in time.
Certainly, divorce has not beenan option in many societies.
You know, if you have this ideaof like what is a marriage, then
(23:52):
you're probably gonna have thisidea of like what is a divorce.
And that usually up until veryrecently has just not been
possible for anybody, for formen, for women, but I think
women in this case would haveprobably suffered the most
because you're the one who says,like, oh, I want out because you
know, maybe husband's beingabusive, or I'm trapped having
(24:13):
more children than I want to,and I don't have access to all
these other things to not havethe children.
SPEAKER_00 (24:19):
And we can thank uh King Henry VIII for that.
SPEAKER_02 (24:22):
Yep.
I was about to say, if you wantto look and see like how
difficult abortion could be.
This man created his own church,not abortion.
How bad like how how difficultdivorce could be.
There we go.
Own church.
Just so he could get divorced,because within the Catholic
Church, like you could youcouldn't.
unknown (24:44):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (24:46):
But we do know that there have been plenty of
instances where women were givenrights, more or less.
For instance, in 18th centuryRomania, women were actually
given some control over theirdowry, which meant that they
could prosecute their husbandfor squandering it.
(25:07):
Which I think is beautifulbecause that meant that like if
your husband was going to be adeadbeat and a horrible person,
you did have a way out.
And so you weren't completely,you know, up shit screak without
a paddle.
If you needed to leave and youhad kids or something like that,
like that you had a little bitof something to fall back on.
You had your dowry.
In case you've forgotten, likedowry obviously in many cases
(25:28):
could include like land.
It often included goods that youneeded for the home.
So sheets, quilts, clothing.
It might include livestock, itmight include just household
goods.
It was that payment that wasmade that the woman then took
with her.
And in many cases, that thenbecame the man's.
(25:50):
But we do have a lot ofinstances where some or part of
that actually got to stay withthe woman and her family.
As I I hinted at before, you'relike, well, why then do we have
these stereotypes of like prettytiny woman sits at home, does
nothing, needs man foreverything?
Nobility.
It's always the bourgeoisie, youknow?
(26:12):
Gotta just cut off their headsand we'd be so much better.
That's where we get this idea,though.
So, okay, so was it that theywere trying to push something
onto the common person, or notso much that, but more so that
(26:33):
you know, when when you got themonies, you can kind of do
whatever you want.
And it's gonna be a lot moreabout like politics.
So that's why you had girlsgetting married off when they
were like 10, 11, 12, wasbecause this was a political
thing.
This was we need like we needthe two of you to be linked up
so that we're not gonna go towar with each other, or so that
(26:56):
we have access to these things.
And so that's this the the youknow, the 12-year-old bride,
that's where a lot of that comesfrom.
That's also why we have a lot ofclothing, historical clothing,
that's really small, because itwould have been worn by somebody
like that who was higher classone time in their life, which is
(27:17):
why it survived because itwasn't worn every day.
It was like a one-time event.
And so that's not necessarily agood example of what average
people looked like or whataverage people wore.
You know, these huge fancydresses that you would just lie
around all day.
And yeah, you can wear a hugefancy dress like that if you are
(27:37):
not working in the fields.
No woman in 1700s France waswearing like the giant panier
hoops, you know, the ones thatlike stick out to the side, like
you were not picking turnipswearing that.
SPEAKER_00 (27:52):
You know, it's funny because like when you when when
you first start talking aboutlike like the 1800s, there's
there's a game that I absolutelylove.
Red Dead of Redemption 2.
And you see every woman wearingthat type of dress.
SPEAKER_02 (28:09):
Yeah.
No.
SPEAKER_00 (28:11):
No.
And the th the thing is, the thefunny thing is, is that they put
in a lot of research into thatinto that game to try to make it
as accurate as possible.
But yeah, I mean, I I've neverseen a single picture of a woman
without that dress.
SPEAKER_02 (28:31):
Exactly, because that was and you know, within
different time periods, you'regonna have, you know, what was
fashionable, what was notfashionable.
And sometimes things got bigger,sometimes things got smaller.
But if you look at what workingclass people, i.e.
the majority of the population,were wearing, it's going to be a
lot more toned down because youhad to be able to do your daily
(28:55):
activities and your work whilewearing it.
And so you might have a bigfancy dress as a woman for
wearing to like a ball or amarriage or an important event
in your life, but your dailyclothing had to be it, you you
had to be able to do your job init.
SPEAKER_00 (29:14):
And then you kind of figure, like, at the time, like
pictures were extremelyexpensive.
SPEAKER_02 (29:19):
Exactly.
So the only people who had theirpicture made were people who had
money, which meant they werealso wearing their nicest shit.
They were gonna be like topfashion at the moment.
Again, not representative ofdaily daily life at all.
So yeah, there you go.
It's it's mainly nobility, justdoing nobility things.
(29:41):
Oh, yeah, same thing for thecorset.
That's another kind ofstereotype of like, oh, why why
women couldn't work?
Because they're wearing thesecorsets that cinched them in to
the point of you know, theycouldn't breathe if they walked
more than six steps.
You see that in movies all thetime.
You know, the corset, andthey're like it like really,
really tight, and she Like andcan't breathe and has this like
(30:02):
minuscule little waist.
First off, the Victorians wereyou know when photographs came
out.
As soon as they realized theycould take photographs, they
started photoshopping the shitout of those photographs.
That's where those tiny wastescome from.
They photoshopped them.
1800s Photoshop.
SPEAKER_00 (30:19):
I'm curious how that would look.
SPEAKER_02 (30:22):
I've seen info about, and I don't remember it
off the top of my head, but theywere able to, like as the photo
was developing, or somehow afterthere was a way to go in and
like very, very carefully, youknow, remove stuff or change
something in it.
And again, this was not foreverybody, but if you were super
(30:42):
rich and fancy and you'd paidfor this, you know, photo to be
taken of you, why not pay extraand have them make your waist
look snatched?
SPEAKER_01 (30:50):
Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_02 (30:51):
Yeah.
Now corsets were the bras.
That's that's what that's thejob they were doing, and they
may have come down a littlefurther, but most of history,
they were not there to like inyour waist at all.
That was again a nobility thingwho were not necessarily
working.
The men weren't working either,if you were nobility.
The Duke is not out plowing hisfields.
SPEAKER_00 (31:18):
They were just, you know, having incest uh sex.
SPEAKER_02 (31:21):
Yum.
The other thing, in in additionto like nobility being like the
vast, vast majority reason whywe like have these stereotypes
is people just cherry pickingstuff throughout history, as we
like to do.
Like, this is not just anexclusive against women.
There is so many of these thatyou think about, oh, in the XYZ
(31:45):
period, people did this, this,and this.
And it's like that is not true.
SPEAKER_00 (31:49):
Vikings were in how or horns.
People believe that the earthwas flat until uh Columbus.
And yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (31:57):
Exactly.
This this is just it's stuff welike to do because it's it looks
cool when you say stuff likethis.
You're like, oh, see this,whatever, you know.
Wow, people back in the day werecrazy.
Who the thunk?
Like, we like that type ofthing.
We eat that shit up.
You have that, you have peoplewho are also cherry-picking it
to prove a point, to say, well,you know, that's why women in
(32:20):
this case, you know, need tostay home and just cook and
clean, is because this is whatyou've done for centuries.
Like, this is the woman's job.
She she's in the house, she hasbabies, she's barefoot.
All these you know, beautifulthings to serve her husband.
And so if you can point back tosome examples and be like, ah,
it was see, in the 1600s, that'swhat it was.
(32:41):
In the 1800s, that's what itwas.
So, where do you see us goingfrom here regarding false
stereotypes?
SPEAKER_00 (32:52):
Education.
I mean, flat out, like uh it'sit's because I mean, I remember
like I first learned aboutColumbus in in fourth grade or
something, and that was the wayit was taught.
SPEAKER_02 (33:07):
1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
SPEAKER_00 (33:12):
That that everybody thought the earth was flat, and
that's why, oh my god, Columbuswants to uh go around the world,
like he's gonna fall off theedge, and it's like find out
fucking you know, decades laterthat people have known that the
world was round since the timeof the Egyptians.
(33:33):
So I think that's getting thatinformation out there and being
able to actually prove thatthings are wrong, because again,
I mean we hear about this allthe time, and I would like to
think of myself as beingknowledgeable of history, and I
mean, if up until now, if youwould have asked me the the
(33:56):
woman in the 1800s, the firstthing that would come to mind is
like the the big big dress andeverything like that.
I think another thing that thatadds to it is is movies.
So like I remember when I didthe episode on uh gaslight
lighting, the movie was takenmovie was actually filmed in the
(34:18):
1940s, but it was taking placein the 1880s, and that's how
everybody was dressed.
SPEAKER_02 (34:27):
Yeah, yeah, I would agree with you that it just it's
education, and I think peopleneed to stop being lazy.
People being those who createstuff about this, like you said,
movies, because that's why wehave so many of these ideas
about stuff.
Is yes, we you know, we havelimited paintings from back in
(34:48):
the day.
So if you want to see stuff thatwas made back then, you're
you're not gonna see thepeasants.
Nobody was out there paintingthe peasants, unfortunately.
But filmmakers, you know, inparticular, like I do point to
them because that's where youget a lot of these images of
women wearing the super tightcorsets, and oh, it's so
terrible, she can't breathe.
(35:08):
It's it's an easy stereotype,it's a cheap stereotype.
Same thing for peasants inEngland just wore brown.
We know how to dye clothing.
Yes, there were certain dyesthat like were very hard to do,
certain colors, because thematerial that you needed to
create the dye was not readilyavailable, it was super
(35:29):
expensive, or it didn't takevery well.
Sure, so there were certaincolors that you wouldn't see
that often, you'd only see withnobility or just never.
But we we do know how to makethings pretty.
Everyone was not wearing justlike brown, you know, 16 shades
of brown clothing all of thetime.
And it's an easy, cheapstereotype to throw in there,
and people can instantly belike, aha, English peasants.
(35:53):
Yes.
Recognize them by brown.
It you don't have to.
You can you can have color, youcan have all of that, and maybe
do a little more research intowhat the things really look like
and how are they actually goingto better portray?
And that would go, I think, along way to correcting people's
false images about all of thisstuff.
(36:15):
So, with that being said, wherewould you rate historical false
historical stereotypes aboutwomen on our scale O toxicity?
Would you say that this is agreen potato?
Just shave off the green bit andit's just fine.
Is this death cat mushroom 50-50chance of death or survival?
(36:39):
Or is this antifreeze, adelicious but deadly last meal?
SPEAKER_00 (36:44):
I want to say green potato, but maybe two green
potatoes.
Just because of the fact that itdoes become slightly harmful
when we do kind of have thiswhole thing, like especially
now, where it's like we need togo back to the uh, you know, the
(37:06):
uh good old days and things likethat.
And it's like, yeah, you'regoing for an image that never
was.
SPEAKER_02 (37:14):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (37:16):
But I don't think it's quite yet, or I don't think
it's quite deathcap.
So I would say two greenpotatoes, not not peeling off
the uh the green.
SPEAKER_02 (37:28):
I would I would agree with that.
It's definitely a couple greenpotatoes because it's not death
cap, just because we have somany of these stereotypes, not
just about women, about men,about in certain ex society or
ex time period here.
Like it just it runs rampant,the type of things where like,
yes, back in the day it was verystraightforward, and it wasn't.
(37:52):
But as you pointed out, thistype of thing is really harmful
when people get a hold of it andstart trying to use it to be
like, this is why you have to doXYZ, because this is your role,
you know, since time memorial,like you have been this type of
person.
And men are also hurt by thistoo.
(38:14):
When you say say to women, it'slike, oh, you're just supposed
to stay at home and cook andclean and have babies, and the
man has to go out and work, thatperpetuates that stereotype of
the man has to work now in 2025.
You have to provide for thewhole family.
The man didn't do that 2,000 or5,000 years ago.
(38:35):
He was not providing for hisfamily all on his own.
So why would he need to do itnow?
So I I would say this is fourgreen potatoes.
I counter your two greenpotatoes with four.
Just because it can so easily beturned into modern propaganda
(38:56):
that has a negative effect on usall today.
SPEAKER_00 (38:59):
Yeah, yeah, I'll go with that.
Okay.
SPEAKER_02 (39:03):
Glad we could get it up to four.
Five.
SPEAKER_00 (39:07):
I'm I'm I'm I'm gonna say three.
I'm I'm going middle there.
SPEAKER_02 (39:12):
Okay.
All right.
You say three green potatoes, Isay four green potatoes.
If you think it's a differentnumber of green potatoes, you
can let us know by email, toxicat awesome life skills.com.
You can find us on social media.
We are occasionally active onFacebook, Instagram, Blue Sky,
(39:33):
Twitter.
Let us know.
You can also follow us there.
You can like and rate the showwherever you're listening to it.
That is very helpful.
And until next week, this hasbeen the Toxic Cooking Show.
Bye.
SPEAKER_00 (39:47):
Bye.
Hi, and welcome to the Toxic Cooking Show, where we
break down toxic people intotheir simplest ingredients.
I'm your host for this week,Lindsay McLean, and with me is
my fantastic co-host.
SPEAKER_00 (00:26):
Christopher Padgett, LCSW.
SPEAKER_02 (00:29):
Not too long ago in Podcast World, you did an
episode looking at kind of thestereotype of this idea we have,
oh, we gotta go back to the olddays when things were good.
You know, you could you couldafford all the house, and you
could, you know, wife sits athome and husband goes to work
(00:51):
and there's two and a half kids,and how that, you know, maybe
was semi-feasible then, and itain't feasible now.
And during that episode, youkind of touched on some
interesting stereotypes aboutwomen that are incorrect.
Did you know that?
SPEAKER_00 (01:07):
Ruhro.
SPEAKER_02 (01:09):
Ruhro.
But in fairness, this is a typeof stereotype that many people
get wrong, including myselfsometimes.
This is something that I have towork on to remember that's like,
oh, it's it's actually not theway that we think it was.
Back in the day.
(01:30):
For instance, you know, we havethis idea that women just stayed
at home all day, like sat aroundin pretty dresses, looked cute.
And that was because they gotmarried and started popping out
kids when they were 15.
Because uh, what is birthcontrol?
How did babies happen?
What is medicine?
(01:50):
And that they were just kind ofnothing without men as a result,
and that's just not true.
SPEAKER_00 (01:56):
I I definitely am looking forward to seeing where
this is going.
Yeah, when I think of like womenin the 1940s, 1950s, that that
is definitely something thatcomes to my mind that the only
time that they did go out of thehouse was to go grocery
shopping.
SPEAKER_02 (02:10):
Exactly.
And even if I say a woman in the1800s, you're going to have a a
certain image that pops intoyour head, probably of like a
woman in like a giant dress orsomething like that.
If I say a woman during theVictorian period, you're gonna
imagine maybe the like, youknow, super cinched in corset
and the big dress, and you know,tons of children, and she's just
(02:33):
she's what does she do?
She she is woman.
Yeah, good enough.
That that's her job.
And we go, we do this all theway back through history.
You even see it when people arelike, oh, you know,
hunter-gatherers, man go huntfor big important meat, and
woman stay home with 18 babiesand maybe pick some berries.
(02:53):
So you can see it like allthrough history that we have
this this idea that's there.
And that has almost never neverbeen true.
So we'll start off with thefirst fallacy that women don't
work.
Women have always worked, rightalongside men in many cases.
Going right back to the idea oflike the hunter-gatherers of man
(03:15):
go hunt meet, women, woman pickberries with baby.
We have proof from the Vikings,from the Scythians, from
Peruvian societies.
Basically, every time we do anarchaeological dig, we find
further proof that women werevery active when it came to
stabbing things.
Regularly we come across thatproof that women were very
(03:35):
active in all aspects and rolesin a community.
And studies actually show thenabout 79% of hunter-gatherer
societies, women hunted, whichmakes sense.
You can't just exclude half ofyour population from hunting.
That's that that doesn't makeany logistical sense.
(03:57):
If we're a society, you know,3,000, 4,000 years ago, you need
people participating, or evenlonger ago.
You need every able-bodiedperson participating in this.
And even if women were not themain hunters, they were still
participating in hunting.
And gathering is a little bitimportant too.
Fruits, berries, nuts, grains,materials for building.
(04:22):
You do need those.
You cannot survive on meatalone.
Don't listen to the carnivorediet, people.
SPEAKER_00 (04:27):
So there's two things that I do know of.
So the the meat diet that thatwe all like crave or you know,
the big craze of the day isn'ttrue because it was like if we
got meat, that was like a treat.
SPEAKER_02 (04:43):
Exactly.
Meat was not like a three mealsa day type thing.
Like, we're not hunting thatmany deer.
You know, you hunted what youcould because it was important,
but yeah, this was not a likeroutine every single day.
It was, you know, 60% of themeal.
No.
SPEAKER_00 (05:02):
I do know another thing is that one of the reasons
why dogs kind of gotincorporated into our lives is
because the fact that we neededbasically a babysitter.
We needed someone where we couldleave for short periods of time
and that we would trust to notonly protect the baby, but not
(05:24):
to eat the baby as well.
SPEAKER_02 (05:25):
Very important.
Don't eat the baby.
SPEAKER_00 (05:30):
Yes, here at the toxic cooking show, we are very
anti-eating babies.
SPEAKER_02 (05:35):
Maybe that can be our fourth and final.
You know, we we've sometimeswe're like, it's gotta be more
than antifreeze, baby.
I'll get canceled in three, two,one.
So you have that.
You also have the fact that upuntil very, very recently, we
may touch on this a little bitlater too.
(05:57):
The family, like the nuclearfamily, looks very different
from what it does now.
Like you had grandparents whowere kind of around, you had
aunts, uncles, cousins, othersociety community members who
were there who were helping takecare of all of the children.
Uh, and you see this in modernday, well, not so much
(06:17):
hunter-gatherer societies perse, but like, you know, kind of
the modern version of that, thatbaby doesn't just stay with mom.
Baby gets passed around towhoever is there.
Baby cries, somebody will pickup baby and take care of them.
So mom does not have to bephysically present at all times
with the baby.
Mom can be out helping thecommunity.
(06:39):
Hunting, gathering, building,working.
Like, I mean, all those thingsare working, but you know, work
in the modern sense.
You can do all of those thingsbecause somebody else is there.
SPEAKER_00 (06:51):
Like Mali.
SPEAKER_02 (06:52):
Like a Mali.
So you have that in like moreancient societies, even within
the past like couple thousandyears, men and women have worked
equally in the fields duringplanting and harvesting.
Again, you cannot have 50% ofyour population not
participating in events that arethis important.
(07:13):
Like when you need to plant theseeds, you need to plant the
seeds.
When you need to harvest, likeyou need to harvest.
You can't just be like, oh, it'sa woman.
She just sits in the house andlooks pretty.
No, you are right there.
SPEAKER_00 (07:27):
Unless you're Molly.
SPEAKER_02 (07:29):
Unless you're Molly, in which case you are protecting
your eyelids.
The insides of the eyelids, ofcourse.
SPEAKER_00 (07:37):
Yes, you just sit there and look pretty.
Always.
Pretty Dougie.
SPEAKER_02 (07:44):
We do kind of see the change of like women working
less outside of the house asChristianity spread.
And this is gonna be a verylike, like most of our stuff is,
but just you know, that littlethat little note in there.
This is very Western societyfocused.
I do not have the time andresources to do the whole world.
If somebody wants to create aPatreon for us and just like
(08:04):
donate a whole bunch of moneyevery month, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (08:08):
But otherwise, we're looking at UCEO.
SPEAKER_02 (08:12):
Exactly.
Otherwise, this is what you get.
unknown (08:16):
Focus.
SPEAKER_02 (08:17):
Look, what we both live in the West.
That's what we're gonna focuson.
But because then women wereforced into or forced out of the
jobs they previously held, thenyou see women kind of pull back
from the society where they theyused to be like very much
present in.
And even with Christianity,though, women still played huge
(08:39):
roles in their work that theycontributed.
Up until like you know, 1300s,women were doing the cooking,
the brewing, the spinning, thelivestock care.
And before you make some littleyou know, cooking make me a
sandwich joke, uh you miss thebrewing part.
So no beer for you.
And that is doubly bad becauseA, no beer, and B, that means
(09:02):
you're drinking water which isabsolutely full of tasty, tasty
parasites and disease.
That's why beer was so importantback in the day.
I don't know if you would everlike run into that, but you see
people like, oh, they drankbeer, even the children got
beer.
Because beer was mildlyalcoholic, and we're not talking
like an 8% stout here.
We're talking like very lowalcohol.
It was more safe than the waterin many cases, because the water
(09:25):
livestock were just shitting init, people were shitting in it.
The beer is alcohol, so a lot ofthat has been killed off.
SPEAKER_00 (09:31):
Extra flavor.
SPEAKER_02 (09:33):
Yum.
So you're drinking parasitewater now because you didn't get
any beer because the woman madethe beer, and you're also
butt-naked because you have noclothing because the sheep all
died because nobody was takingcare of them, and then you
weren't even able to benefitfrom taking the wool and
(09:54):
spinning it into thread andweaving it into cloth.
Just some mildly importantthings there.
SPEAKER_00 (10:01):
Mild.
SPEAKER_02 (10:02):
Mild, yeah.
It's all good.
The second historical thing thatwe typically get wrong is that,
you know, in addition to womenjust sitting at home, they were
sitting at home because theywere definitely married and
pregnant when they were 12.
That's something that comes up alot of people.
Like, oh yeah, people gotmarried back in their like teens
(10:23):
all the time, like 11, 12, youwere just married off.
Did you know that up until aboutthe 1950s, the average age of
marriage was in the early tomid-20s?
Throughout the 1800s, you weregetting married in your 20s.
SPEAKER_00 (10:39):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (10:40):
And you have this drop around like 1940, 50, uh,
where suddenly it really dips,and then it's been going back up
since then.
SPEAKER_00 (10:52):
Yeah, I I well, you know, I think that especially
nowadays where I mean a lot ofwomen aren't even getting
married until their 30s.
SPEAKER_02 (11:02):
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, we're at the highestit's ever been since people kind
of started recording that, whichyou know, probably accurately
tracks.
But I think a lot there's thisreally big stereotype that you
see, like, you know, likepictures from back in the day,
and the bride is definitely, youknow, she would still be in in
middle school in today's world.
(11:24):
You're like, oh no.
But that that was extremelyuncommon.
And again, the facts kind ofshow that you weren't you you
were in your your 20s.
So not we're not so far offthese days from what has been
the historical kind of average.
SPEAKER_00 (11:42):
I I'm I'm kind of curious because I I mean like I
think I well, I think that isprobably just the fact that it's
so far off in our our mind thatwe do tend to we hear these
stories of like I forget whatpresident it was, but he ended
up marrying the the the girlthat he babysat.
SPEAKER_02 (12:03):
Oh, yeah.
I feel like I ran into that whenI was like doing the research
for this.
It was one of them he had hislike first wife, and they were
like around the same age, andthen his next wife was like the
same age as his first wife, butnow he was like 25 years older.
SPEAKER_00 (12:20):
Yeah, yeah.
So like I I think we hearstories of that, and it's like,
holy shit, that's fucked up.
And though those are the storiesthat that we formed that that
stereotype around.
SPEAKER_02 (12:32):
It's true, and we'll we'll talk a little bit about
why we have a lot of thesestereotypes soon.
SPEAKER_00 (12:38):
Ooh.
SPEAKER_02 (12:38):
I know.
I even give you like the reasonsfor it, but they all have the
same reasons.
I'm gonna wait until the end.
But the reason why you actuallymost people were waiting until
their 20s for this is like afirst marriage for everybody, is
because you had to be able tosupport your family.
(13:02):
Men needed to have a profession,they needed to have been like
earning money because you neededto have land, you needed like a
place to live, you needed to beable to provide, like, you know,
buying food and all of that typeof thing for everything your
family's going to need.
Interestingly, to kind of backthat up, you see that in 18th
century America, the typical agefor marriage was lower than what
(13:26):
it was in England at the time.
And that's because in America,you had ready access to land.
Everybody could get land forreal cheap.
So it was easier to start yourhomestead, your family, which
meant that then you could getmarried, as opposed to other
places where you actually had towork for a little while as a man
(13:48):
to earn enough money to buy thethings for your family to have.
And then women also, again,women were working.
Let's not forget, women wereworking outside of the house and
inside of the house.
Women needed to gain the skillsto support a family.
Like you needed to know how tocook, you needed to know how to
(14:08):
clean, you needed to know how tosew, you needed to have the
money, the items that went intoyour dowry.
So, you know, livestock, allthat type of thing.
That doesn't just happen overthe course of a year.
That's something that kind ofhas to be built up over time.
And for women, in addition toneeding to have like the skills
(14:30):
to support your family, you alsohad to be physically mature
enough to have kids.
That's that's a big thing.
You don't want to be trying tohave kids if your hips are too
narrow, if you haven't like gonethrough puberty all of the way,
that can create some major,major problems in terms of
having children.
(14:51):
We know that in general, youknow, that really young girls
and women like maybe higherpregnancy risks because of that.
Also, something interesting tonote is up until like our age,
even for you, I think itprobably would be your cohort.
Women haven't been startingmenstruation until their mid to
(15:12):
late teens, anyway.
There's a variety of reasons ofwhy it's dropping, and like now
it's around the age of like 10to 12, is when you'll start.
Some of that is due to havinghigher body fat and better
nutrition.
That's why women who playcompetitive sports may not get
their period until later.
If you don't have enough bodyfat, or if you have like really
(15:32):
low body fat, it may not triggerit.
And even if it has started, ifyou are actively, like really
actively training, it can it'llstop.
It'll start back up again.
But it can stop as a result ofthat.
It's not like you you train toomuch for one month and it's like
switches turned off.
(15:54):
But yeah, if you think about,you know, 100, 200 years ago,
yeah, you had less access tonutritious food.
It's gonna take a little bitlonger for your body to get that
point where it's like, oh yeah,we we can support, we can
support having a baby.
So you didn't have like thishuge period of time when women
were able to have children butwere choosing not to get married
(16:15):
and have children.
That was when they were theywere still children, they were
still learning things, they werestill in their family's
household, contributing to that,working, then they got married,
then they started having babies.
Speaking of babies, the laststereotype that we're gonna
cover is that you think aboutwomen back in the day, and she's
(16:36):
got like 84 kids hanging off ofher because how do babies
happen?
What is birth control?
I don't know how to stop this,and I got married when I was 12
and just pop out a kid everyyear.
SPEAKER_00 (16:48):
See, I think of the Irish when I think that Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (16:53):
I mean, it is true that historically people did
have a lot more kids than theydo now for a variety of reasons.
You, you know, kids were morelikely to die.
So you needed them, and you didneed kids to help support, you
know, the farming or to takeover the business that dad has
or to just, you know, helparound the house.
(17:14):
Like that was an importantthing.
And if you knew that a certainpercentage of them were gonna
like kick the bucket before theyhit five, you needed more.
You did need more of them.
And you know, the birth controlmethods that we had back then
are maybe not as effective asthe ones we have now.
But they they were stilleffective and we did still know
(17:35):
them.
We've known for centuries likewhat type of herbs you need to
uh a hundred percent avoid tokeep the baby, you know, def
definitely don't eat way toomuch of this.
SPEAKER_00 (17:47):
Oh my god.
So like as soon as I hear that,I'm I'm now thinking like of
like Instagram, of like allthose times that we see like if
you want if you want moremuscles, avoid these.
And it's just like, oh god.
unknown (18:04):
Fuck.
SPEAKER_00 (18:07):
So it's good to know that Instagram was around before
Instagram was around.
SPEAKER_02 (18:10):
Yep.
Avoid these three herbs if youdon't want to lose your baby.
I'm sure that's what the old youknow, women back in the day were
peddling walking around town.
1300's Instagram.
Oh yeah.
But it goes back even furtherthan that.
Like the Romans actually drovean herb to extinction because it
(18:32):
was such a great abortifagant.
Abortifigant?
Is that how you say the word?
It caused abortions.
You you ate this thing and babywas no more.
And the Romans thought this wasso fantastic they they used it
all up.
SPEAKER_00 (18:42):
Huh.
Romans were kinky littlemotherfuckers.
Fucking Romans.
SPEAKER_02 (18:48):
I know, right?
So if you are sitting here andyou're like, well, how how come
I've ever heard about like anyof this stuff?
Like, you know, we've knownabout this for centuries that
there are certain herbs andthings that you need to avoid.
I'm not talking about stufflike, you know, oh, sushi or
something.
That's because of the witchhunts.
(19:08):
Everyone's favorite.
SPEAKER_00 (19:10):
Come on, uh, the 1600s.
SPEAKER_02 (19:12):
Uh, such a great time to not be alive.
You know, because we can't havethe women knowing about all
these, you know, herbs andconcoctions and stuff like that.
Like that's that's no good.
Can't have them doing stuffthat's not under our control.
Which is also why women wereblocked from the medical
professions for so long, amongstso many other things that they
(19:35):
were blocked from.
And to be honest, we've probablylost like a ton of knowledge
because of that, because thiswas the type of thing that
wouldn't necessarily have beenwritten down for a variety of
reasons.
You don't want people to findout.
You may not have been literateenough to write it down.
And even if you could, couldsomebody else read it?
Yeah.
Unclear.
So you've just passed oralknowledge down from person to
(19:59):
person.
It's like, yeah, you know, youmight want to eat a whole bunch
of this, or you might want tonot eat a whole bunch of this.
Because it goes both ways.
It's not just about like, oh,everyone was having abortions
left, right, and center becausethey didn't want these kids.
It also is the fact that, youknow, if you're pregnant, you
want to avoid eating really highdoses of vitamin C.
(20:23):
That that is something that isgood to know.
SPEAKER_00 (20:26):
I did not know that.
SPEAKER_02 (20:27):
Yes.
SPEAKER_00 (20:28):
But then again, I've never been pregnant, so I am not
surprised to hear that.
SPEAKER_02 (20:33):
Not a worry for you.
You know, and again, this is notlike a surefire way.
Like, this is that is not thepoint of this podcast, is to
tell you how to have an abortionor how to not have an abortion.
But, you know, especiallyconsidering like there weren't
other options, could you haveused something like this, or
would it have been helpful toknow to avoid something like
(20:54):
this?
Yes, very, very helpful.
Also with the 10,000 kids thatwe imagine everyone having, your
body can only kind of handle somany full-term pregnancies,
especially if they're superclose together, especially if
you have limited nutrition.
Because babies will leechwhatever nutrients they need
(21:15):
from you.
SPEAKER_00 (21:16):
So 9,000's good, but 10,000.
SPEAKER_02 (21:21):
Yeah, no teen.
SPEAKER_00 (21:23):
No teen.
SPEAKER_02 (21:23):
No teen.
Okay.
But yeah, if you uh fun fact, ifyou have a whole bunch of kids
back to back to back to back,and you're not paying close
attention to your nutrition,your teeth will start to fall
out.
SPEAKER_00 (21:38):
I will remember that.
SPEAKER_02 (21:40):
I I know that's really helpful for you.
I know you were really worriedabout getting pregnant 10 times
in a row and your teeth fallingout.
Good times, the toxic cookieshow.
We're so focused.
(22:01):
So, yeah, you you were nothaving in general tons and tons
and tons of kids back to back.
You will see it start to getspaced out.
And that's also partiallybecause giving birth was
dangerous.
There's a lot that can go,there's a lot that can go wrong
now in 2025.
There was a lot that could gowrong, you know, in 1825.
(22:23):
And so people were maybe alittle more cognizant.
That's like, yes, we need a lotof kids.
Yes, we have limited birthcontrol, you know, methods.
We do know how children happen.
So we we can kind of you knowwork around that a little bit.
Because women also like, we'veknown how our cycles work.
Just because men don't know itor haven't been aware of it
doesn't mean that women haven'tbeen tracking that type of thing
(22:45):
and are aware that's like, ohyeah, it seems like it's about
this long, which means thatduring this part and this part,
something's okay.
And then this part, like,oopsies.
The last little one that I dowant to talk about is that and
this one I've I've left it forlast because there is some
(23:07):
validity to it.
But hold hold your excitementtill I finish.
And that's this idea, like kindof all of this put together.
You know, women are nothingwithout men.
You know, women couldn't doanything without a man in her
life.
And there's some truth to that.
You know, we've talked aboutthis before on the show that
like you know, women in moderntimes, you know, couldn't open a
(23:29):
bank account, you know, couldn'tcouldn't hold down a job without
a a male of someone, you know,husband, a father, whatever, you
know, saying yes, they'reallowed to do this, going back
in time.
Certainly, divorce has not beenan option in many societies.
You know, if you have this ideaof like what is a marriage, then
(23:52):
you're probably gonna have thisidea of like what is a divorce.
And that usually up until veryrecently has just not been
possible for anybody, for formen, for women, but I think
women in this case would haveprobably suffered the most
because you're the one who says,like, oh, I want out because you
know, maybe husband's beingabusive, or I'm trapped having
(24:13):
more children than I want to,and I don't have access to all
these other things to not havethe children.
SPEAKER_00 (24:19):
And we can thank uh King Henry VIII for that.
SPEAKER_02 (24:22):
Yep.
I was about to say, if you wantto look and see like how
difficult abortion could be.
This man created his own church,not abortion.
How bad like how how difficultdivorce could be.
There we go.
Own church.
Just so he could get divorced,because within the Catholic
Church, like you could youcouldn't.
unknown (24:44):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (24:46):
But we do know that there have been plenty of
instances where women were givenrights, more or less.
For instance, in 18th centuryRomania, women were actually
given some control over theirdowry, which meant that they
could prosecute their husbandfor squandering it.
(25:07):
Which I think is beautifulbecause that meant that like if
your husband was going to be adeadbeat and a horrible person,
you did have a way out.
And so you weren't completely,you know, up shit screak without
a paddle.
If you needed to leave and youhad kids or something like that,
like that you had a little bitof something to fall back on.
You had your dowry.
In case you've forgotten, likedowry obviously in many cases
(25:28):
could include like land.
It often included goods that youneeded for the home.
So sheets, quilts, clothing.
It might include livestock, itmight include just household
goods.
It was that payment that wasmade that the woman then took
with her.
And in many cases, that thenbecame the man's.
(25:50):
But we do have a lot ofinstances where some or part of
that actually got to stay withthe woman and her family.
As I I hinted at before, you'relike, well, why then do we have
these stereotypes of like prettytiny woman sits at home, does
nothing, needs man foreverything?
Nobility.
It's always the bourgeoisie, youknow?
(26:12):
Gotta just cut off their headsand we'd be so much better.
That's where we get this idea,though.
So, okay, so was it that theywere trying to push something
onto the common person, or notso much that, but more so that
(26:33):
you know, when when you got themonies, you can kind of do
whatever you want.
And it's gonna be a lot moreabout like politics.
So that's why you had girlsgetting married off when they
were like 10, 11, 12, wasbecause this was a political
thing.
This was we need like we needthe two of you to be linked up
so that we're not gonna go towar with each other, or so that
(26:56):
we have access to these things.
And so that's this the the youknow, the 12-year-old bride,
that's where a lot of that comesfrom.
That's also why we have a lot ofclothing, historical clothing,
that's really small, because itwould have been worn by somebody
like that who was higher classone time in their life, which is
(27:17):
why it survived because itwasn't worn every day.
It was like a one-time event.
And so that's not necessarily agood example of what average
people looked like or whataverage people wore.
You know, these huge fancydresses that you would just lie
around all day.
And yeah, you can wear a hugefancy dress like that if you are
(27:37):
not working in the fields.
No woman in 1700s France waswearing like the giant panier
hoops, you know, the ones thatlike stick out to the side, like
you were not picking turnipswearing that.
SPEAKER_00 (27:52):
You know, it's funny because like when you when when
you first start talking aboutlike like the 1800s, there's
there's a game that I absolutelylove.
Red Dead of Redemption 2.
And you see every woman wearingthat type of dress.
SPEAKER_02 (28:09):
Yeah.
No.
SPEAKER_00 (28:11):
No.
And the th the thing is, the thefunny thing is, is that they put
in a lot of research into thatinto that game to try to make it
as accurate as possible.
But yeah, I mean, I I've neverseen a single picture of a woman
without that dress.
SPEAKER_02 (28:31):
Exactly, because that was and you know, within
different time periods, you'regonna have, you know, what was
fashionable, what was notfashionable.
And sometimes things got bigger,sometimes things got smaller.
But if you look at what workingclass people, i.e.
the majority of the population,were wearing, it's going to be a
lot more toned down because youhad to be able to do your daily
(28:55):
activities and your work whilewearing it.
And so you might have a bigfancy dress as a woman for
wearing to like a ball or amarriage or an important event
in your life, but your dailyclothing had to be it, you you
had to be able to do your job init.
SPEAKER_00 (29:14):
And then you kind of figure, like, at the time, like
pictures were extremelyexpensive.
SPEAKER_02 (29:19):
Exactly.
So the only people who had theirpicture made were people who had
money, which meant they werealso wearing their nicest shit.
They were gonna be like topfashion at the moment.
Again, not representative ofdaily daily life at all.
So yeah, there you go.
It's it's mainly nobility, justdoing nobility things.
(29:41):
Oh, yeah, same thing for thecorset.
That's another kind ofstereotype of like, oh, why why
women couldn't work?
Because they're wearing thesecorsets that cinched them in to
the point of you know, theycouldn't breathe if they walked
more than six steps.
You see that in movies all thetime.
You know, the corset, andthey're like it like really,
really tight, and she Like andcan't breathe and has this like
(30:02):
minuscule little waist.
First off, the Victorians wereyou know when photographs came
out.
As soon as they realized theycould take photographs, they
started photoshopping the shitout of those photographs.
That's where those tiny wastescome from.
They photoshopped them.
1800s Photoshop.
SPEAKER_00 (30:19):
I'm curious how that would look.
SPEAKER_02 (30:22):
I've seen info about, and I don't remember it
off the top of my head, but theywere able to, like as the photo
was developing, or somehow afterthere was a way to go in and
like very, very carefully, youknow, remove stuff or change
something in it.
And again, this was not foreverybody, but if you were super
(30:42):
rich and fancy and you'd paidfor this, you know, photo to be
taken of you, why not pay extraand have them make your waist
look snatched?
SPEAKER_01 (30:50):
Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_02 (30:51):
Yeah.
Now corsets were the bras.
That's that's what that's thejob they were doing, and they
may have come down a littlefurther, but most of history,
they were not there to like inyour waist at all.
That was again a nobility thingwho were not necessarily
working.
The men weren't working either,if you were nobility.
The Duke is not out plowing hisfields.
SPEAKER_00 (31:18):
They were just, you know, having incest uh sex.
SPEAKER_02 (31:21):
Yum.
The other thing, in in additionto like nobility being like the
vast, vast majority reason whywe like have these stereotypes
is people just cherry pickingstuff throughout history, as we
like to do.
Like, this is not just anexclusive against women.
There is so many of these thatyou think about, oh, in the XYZ
(31:45):
period, people did this, this,and this.
And it's like that is not true.
SPEAKER_00 (31:49):
Vikings were in how or horns.
People believe that the earthwas flat until uh Columbus.
And yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (31:57):
Exactly.
This this is just it's stuff welike to do because it's it looks
cool when you say stuff likethis.
You're like, oh, see this,whatever, you know.
Wow, people back in the day werecrazy.
Who the thunk?
Like, we like that type ofthing.
We eat that shit up.
You have that, you have peoplewho are also cherry-picking it
to prove a point, to say, well,you know, that's why women in
(32:20):
this case, you know, need tostay home and just cook and
clean, is because this is whatyou've done for centuries.
Like, this is the woman's job.
She she's in the house, she hasbabies, she's barefoot.
All these you know, beautifulthings to serve her husband.
And so if you can point back tosome examples and be like, ah,
it was see, in the 1600s, that'swhat it was.
(32:41):
In the 1800s, that's what itwas.
So, where do you see us goingfrom here regarding false
stereotypes?
SPEAKER_00 (32:52):
Education.
I mean, flat out, like uh it'sit's because I mean, I remember
like I first learned aboutColumbus in in fourth grade or
something, and that was the wayit was taught.
SPEAKER_02 (33:07):
1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
SPEAKER_00 (33:12):
That that everybody thought the earth was flat, and
that's why, oh my god, Columbuswants to uh go around the world,
like he's gonna fall off theedge, and it's like find out
fucking you know, decades laterthat people have known that the
world was round since the timeof the Egyptians.
(33:33):
So I think that's getting thatinformation out there and being
able to actually prove thatthings are wrong, because again,
I mean we hear about this allthe time, and I would like to
think of myself as beingknowledgeable of history, and I
mean, if up until now, if youwould have asked me the the
(33:56):
woman in the 1800s, the firstthing that would come to mind is
like the the big big dress andeverything like that.
I think another thing that thatadds to it is is movies.
So like I remember when I didthe episode on uh gaslight
lighting, the movie was takenmovie was actually filmed in the
(34:18):
1940s, but it was taking placein the 1880s, and that's how
everybody was dressed.
SPEAKER_02 (34:27):
Yeah, yeah, I would agree with you that it just it's
education, and I think peopleneed to stop being lazy.
People being those who createstuff about this, like you said,
movies, because that's why wehave so many of these ideas
about stuff.
Is yes, we you know, we havelimited paintings from back in
(34:48):
the day.
So if you want to see stuff thatwas made back then, you're
you're not gonna see thepeasants.
Nobody was out there paintingthe peasants, unfortunately.
But filmmakers, you know, inparticular, like I do point to
them because that's where youget a lot of these images of
women wearing the super tightcorsets, and oh, it's so
terrible, she can't breathe.
(35:08):
It's it's an easy stereotype,it's a cheap stereotype.
Same thing for peasants inEngland just wore brown.
We know how to dye clothing.
Yes, there were certain dyesthat like were very hard to do,
certain colors, because thematerial that you needed to
create the dye was not readilyavailable, it was super
(35:29):
expensive, or it didn't takevery well.
Sure, so there were certaincolors that you wouldn't see
that often, you'd only see withnobility or just never.
But we we do know how to makethings pretty.
Everyone was not wearing justlike brown, you know, 16 shades
of brown clothing all of thetime.
And it's an easy, cheapstereotype to throw in there,
and people can instantly belike, aha, English peasants.
(35:53):
Yes.
Recognize them by brown.
It you don't have to.
You can you can have color, youcan have all of that, and maybe
do a little more research intowhat the things really look like
and how are they actually goingto better portray?
And that would go, I think, along way to correcting people's
false images about all of thisstuff.
(36:15):
So, with that being said, wherewould you rate historical false
historical stereotypes aboutwomen on our scale O toxicity?
Would you say that this is agreen potato?
Just shave off the green bit andit's just fine.
Is this death cat mushroom 50-50chance of death or survival?
(36:39):
Or is this antifreeze, adelicious but deadly last meal?
SPEAKER_00 (36:44):
I want to say green potato, but maybe two green
potatoes.
Just because of the fact that itdoes become slightly harmful
when we do kind of have thiswhole thing, like especially
now, where it's like we need togo back to the uh, you know, the
(37:06):
uh good old days and things likethat.
And it's like, yeah, you'regoing for an image that never
was.
SPEAKER_02 (37:14):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (37:16):
But I don't think it's quite yet, or I don't think
it's quite deathcap.
So I would say two greenpotatoes, not not peeling off
the uh the green.
SPEAKER_02 (37:28):
I would I would agree with that.
It's definitely a couple greenpotatoes because it's not death
cap, just because we have somany of these stereotypes, not
just about women, about men,about in certain ex society or
ex time period here.
Like it just it runs rampant,the type of things where like,
yes, back in the day it was verystraightforward, and it wasn't.
(37:52):
But as you pointed out, thistype of thing is really harmful
when people get a hold of it andstart trying to use it to be
like, this is why you have to doXYZ, because this is your role,
you know, since time memorial,like you have been this type of
person.
And men are also hurt by thistoo.
(38:14):
When you say say to women, it'slike, oh, you're just supposed
to stay at home and cook andclean and have babies, and the
man has to go out and work, thatperpetuates that stereotype of
the man has to work now in 2025.
You have to provide for thewhole family.
The man didn't do that 2,000 or5,000 years ago.
(38:35):
He was not providing for hisfamily all on his own.
So why would he need to do itnow?
So I I would say this is fourgreen potatoes.
I counter your two greenpotatoes with four.
Just because it can so easily beturned into modern propaganda
(38:56):
that has a negative effect on usall today.
SPEAKER_00 (38:59):
Yeah, yeah, I'll go with that.
Okay.
SPEAKER_02 (39:03):
Glad we could get it up to four.
Five.
SPEAKER_00 (39:07):
I'm I'm I'm I'm gonna say three.
I'm I'm going middle there.
SPEAKER_02 (39:12):
Okay.
All right.
You say three green potatoes, Isay four green potatoes.
If you think it's a differentnumber of green potatoes, you
can let us know by email, toxicat awesome life skills.com.
You can find us on social media.
We are occasionally active onFacebook, Instagram, Blue Sky,
(39:33):
Twitter.
Let us know.
You can also follow us there.
You can like and rate the showwherever you're listening to it.
That is very helpful.
And until next week, this hasbeen the Toxic Cooking Show.
Bye.
SPEAKER_00 (39:47):
Bye.
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