Emotional Labor Is Labor!

What is emotional labor? If you're a woman you're probably doing it already. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hello, this is Annie, and this is Bridget, and you're
listening to stuff Mom never told you. And today we're
talking about something that I kind of stumbled into because
I've been thinking a lot lately about the whole idea

(00:28):
that girls mature earlier than boys, and I was thinking
about it in wondering if there's any actual scientific evidence
to that or if it's just more Yes that, um,
it's expecting girls to take on more responsibility younger and
kind of giving boys a free pass. This definitely sounds
like one of those things that we just say without

(00:50):
any real evidence, you know, along the same lines as
women are cleaner than men, therefore women do the cleaning,
or women are better at blah blah blah, therefore men
you're off the hook. Just one of those easy things
that we say, never bothering to see if there's any
actual evidence to whether or not it's true. Yes, Um,
So I went to see if there is any evidence

(01:13):
if it's true, and I did find several studies, kind
of recent studies. I think that suggests that female brains
do go through neural pruning earlier, which is basically being
able to like cut out extraneous facts and sort of
see that this is something useful. Therefore, I will remember this. Sorry,

(01:33):
we'll focus on this. And it makes me think of
her money, her mind, a granger of Harry Potter and
the Deathly Hall is when she says, who should I
do my hermony accent? Yes, you absolutely, Oh no, Actually,
I'm highly logical, which allows me to look past extraneous
detail perceived clearly that was others of a look. She
even says it and like that, Cadence, the accident wasn't good,

(01:55):
but the timing was very good. I thought it was good.
I thought it was good. This reminds you of when
I was I used to teach young people. So when
I was teaching like a summer program with boys and
girls who were all around age eight or nine, the
girls would be sitting quietly, like working on their workbooks,
and the boys would be murdering each other. They'd be

(02:17):
they'd be climbing things and jumping all the things. The
girls just wanted to sit quietly. Meanwhile the boys were terrors.
And I always thought, gee, I I know it sounds
a bit gendered, but maybe there is some truth to this,
to this idea. Yeah. I remember, in particular, one time
having what was a useless fight with my mom about

(02:39):
how my younger brother got away with so much more
than I did at that age, and she said something
along the lines of, well, girls mature fast, like he's
he's not going to be how you were at that age,
and I just remember being so angry about different rules

(03:00):
and rules, and also your mom is basically saying if
you did the things that your brother did, you would
get in more trouble, but he quote unquote can't control himself,
so he kind of gets a pass. It's it is annoying, right,
and it's I think when we say girls mature faster
than boys, we're not talking about neural purning. I think

(03:20):
what we're talking about is they're more well behaved at
a younger age. And I think that that has to
do with what society says is acceptable for girls versus
boys at younger ages. And I did see more than
once that this was an argument so that older men

(03:44):
could date younger women. Oh, they'll use older guy who
wants to date a younger woman will use I've seen
so many things used to justify that. Now there's anything
wrong with it, guys. The things I've seen to justify
why that's a hearing that makes that is the most natural. Yes, exactly, Like,
if that's the I don't really have a problem with

(04:05):
that type of relationship as long as it's it's strange
to hear outside society. Justify it on like a big
scale with oh, girls which are faster than boys? Same?
I agree completely. Yes. And if you're listening to this
and you're looking at the episode title, like what all
of this lead to today's topic, which is emotional labor?

(04:27):
And a disclaimer right off the top, most of the
research and discussion about emotional labor that we found was
very heterosexual susgendered. We'd love to hear from listeners outside
of that narrow window. But all right, let's talk about
emotional labor. Let's break it down. So it's actually been
coming up kind of a lot if you're someone who
spends a lot of time online or in feminist spaces.

(04:49):
I feel like it's a it's a term that we
are all sort of collectively thinking, Oh, that's the word
for it. You can think of emotional labor as the
often mental work of caring, and in our society, most
of that work, while it pretty much falls on women, yeah, Um,
it can be performed by anyone, but women have been
conditioned to do a majority, whereas men typically get to

(05:13):
opt in or opt out. They opted and they opt out,
and when they opt in, I feel like we give
them we basically throw a parade. Oh my god, he
remembered to do this thing that I do all the time,
per like confetti ratings down from the sky. Meanwhile, where's

(05:33):
our parade for doing the emotional labor? Not at at
ten times, which I think is when it falls to us.
A lot of things about emotional labor do tie into
things we've discussed a lot on the show. Um, women's
fear being called a nag. Um. How even in the
most equal relationships, women do seem to do a lot
of the managing of scheduling an appointments, kind of house management. Um.

(05:57):
And so examples of emotional labor would be asking questions
and listening, listening to the response, scheduling things, remembering important
dates like birthdays, coming up with gifts, anticipating needs, reminding
someone that they are loved, detecting a change in mood,
patiently allowing someone to vent a lot of things like

(06:18):
that that do sound to me like yes, these are
the things that you do in relationship. I'm sure for
a lot of the women listening the list of things
that you just gave sound like things they do every
day without giving it much thought, because we kind of
have to we you know, if you're in a relationship,
if you have kids, if you're even in a workplace,

(06:40):
these are things that need to get done, and if
men aren't doing them, they just sort of faul to
us and we sort of just have to pick up
the slack and it's not there. But I don't like
when I first heard of this concept of emotional labor,
it had not even occurred to me. That was the
first time that I saw how unequal it was. Like
will put it that way, that even in places that

(07:02):
are not you know, romantic relationships in workplaces, you know,
it's like you get somebody a coffee once and you're
the person who gets coffee. You plan a birthday, you
you buy a birthday card for someone once, and you're
the person who remembers birthdays. And if you don't, it's you.
You know, you're dropping the ball. But why was that
ball falling to you in the first place? You know,
Like I never quite noticed how many different tasks that

(07:27):
were frankly like, not my job dealt to me because
it just did right. Yeah, And there is a huge,
huge amount of filter thread where a common or put
it this way, my partner is deeply and willfully blind
in this area. He, like many men, is convinced that

(07:47):
engaging in emotional labor is voluntary because for him it
always has been, and I think for women it's just
expected of us it is. That's why I found this
sample that another woman shared on the thread to be
so interesting. Basically, she was married and her husband handled
most of their daughter's ballet stuff, taking in her practice

(08:08):
to recitals, doing her hair, all of that. So then
one day she actually shows up to drop off something
and she said, oh, hello, I'm you know, Susie's mom,
And the other people at the studio were shot. They
were like, oh, she has a mother, what are you
doing here? If you listen to the episode that we
did around roll Overload, Tiffany Doofu, the author of Dropped
the Ball, actually talks about this really eloquently in her

(08:30):
own marriage, that she has an explicit arrangement with her
with her husband that anything to do with the social
life of their kids is his responsibility. So if it's
a kid's birthday party, a kids dance recital, if it's
a social event that's regarding their children, that is his purview.
And that people will still send her notes to recall

(08:51):
her to be like, oh, can your daughter come to this?
Can your daughter come to that? And she has to say,
my husband handles that. Please direct this to him. And
it's just such a strange. It seems like it's such
a strange thing for people to wrap their heads around
that she's the mom, yet she is not the one
that they're supposed to contact to arrange all of this.
And it does sound like in her particular relationship it

(09:13):
only functions that way because they have an explicit agreement
that that is how it will function. It's not functioning
that way because you know, he's just picking up the slack.
And so I think that's a really interesting note, which
is that if you want to have a more fair
split of emotional labor in a romantic relationship, you might
just have to make that very explicit and say, these

(09:34):
things are gonna be things that I'm never going to
be concerned about. You need to handle them. Yes, yes, absolutely, um,
And I did want to note UM, partially because I
like the term, but also because it's useful to know UM.
In extreme cases of this, where one person is in
a relationship the de facto emotional labor and the other
person kind of feeds off that and never reciprocates and

(09:57):
in fact probably disregards the other person UM, the person
doing the feeding is called an emotional vampire. I don't
want to make this a trash your ex podcast. I'll
just say this, that sounds very familiar to me, and
I'm sure it sounds very familiar to a lot of people. UM.

(10:17):
The example I always give is in a in a
relationship I had once the other person, if it was
their birthday, I would plan a big thing, a big party,
invite everybody, do all the things, by the cake, at
the present book, the place decorated. When it was my birthday,
I did the same thing for myself, so it was

(10:39):
it regardless. It was me doing all the things. And
it's tiring, and I think it creates a resentment. I
think it's not sustainable. I think that nobody wants to
feel like everything false to them all the time, and
that your duty in a relationship or your role in
a relationship is just to dole out support, appointments and

(11:01):
reminders and all of that for someone else and for yourself. Well,
I I agree in referencing that meta filter meta filter
threat again. UM I remember reading a comment somewhere in
there that um, someone pointed out, no one wants to
feel like they're your parents, like they're managing your life.

(11:25):
They're automatically going to start to like not feel. But
that's the thing about those kinds of relationships, that's that
slip happened so fast you don't even realize it. Like
the first the at first, you're thinking, it's just me
making sure they're they're they're going to their doctor's appointments,
it's just me making sure that the dishes are done,

(11:46):
it's just me booking the repair person, or making sure
the bills paid. Whatever. I'm here to tell you you
slip into that vibe. I'm there. I'm basically their caregiver
and their parents so quickly that I don't think either
person in the relationship really sees it. And it's not
until least in my case, it's not until someone It's
not until something happens that holds a mirror up to it.

(12:07):
When you think, my God, is my? Is this really
my relationship? Is my? Is my relationship really? A situation
where I'm essentially someone's mom that I didn't give birth to,
like an adult? What how did this happen? Yeah? I
think I think it. It's such a gradual thing that

(12:28):
you don't realize it until you do. You find yourself
doing something real out of pocket, and you think, oh
my God, like this, need we need a hard refresh yes.
Um of One other note too, is that single people
do engage in emotional labor. Um Often they don't come
up in the conversation because it is more about relationships,

(12:49):
but studies show that single people are far more likely
to care for an aging family member asked to stay
at work more often situations where emotional labor is certainly involved. Definitely.
I mean that that sounds very familiar right now. As well,
the idea that you know as the not just this,
not just a single sibling, but like one that has

(13:11):
assumed to I don't know how to put it, but
I think in some families there is a sibling that
I mean you you've talked about this in your own experience,
is that it seems as though your family doesn't is
not holding out hope for you to like get married
and settled down anytime soon, and thus your life is
kind of I mean, I don't want to put words
in your mouth, but thus it seems like you're what

(13:33):
you have in your life is kind of assumed to
be not as important. And I've I've experienced that quite
a bit, that you know, and I we talked about
it on the episode that we did around single women
at work, and I actually people people weren't happy with
what I said, but I remember it distinctly that when
I was teaching, because I was the youngest person in

(13:53):
my in my department and I wasn't married, that it
was just explicit that I would get the teaching shifts
that nobody wanted. And it didn't matter that at the
time I was teaching full time and preparing to take
the elside because I wanted to go to law school.
None of that mattered because I was single, and that
it was explicitly said, oh, well, the people that have families,

(14:13):
they need to get home and like do family stuff.
And I agree they do, but you know, my life
will also had value. Absolutely. Um, there's actually quite a
quite quite a bit, quite a many, a lot of
studies about um, specifically looking at in families where the

(14:34):
single sibling is just almost always the one that has
to deal with kind of every family problem that comes up.
So well, it's because because we have nothing of value
in our lives. Do you your cat, your Netflix, your vibrator? Please?
People have real problems any but my Netflix it was

(14:57):
so loud, had things to do. If you've seen my
DVR AND's so full, it's so full, I gotta I
got things to do. I don't want to be spoiled.
Come on, okay, um? Well. The term emotional labor was
first used in Arlie hug child book The Managed Heart,
and it was describing the practice used by bill collectors

(15:20):
and flight attendants of keeping your own feelings in check
while trying to influence the emotions of clients. And this
was tricky, and it was task largely two women and
the low income workers, and it was unpaid. And hush
Child expressed concern that not acknowledging the work that emotional

(15:41):
labor is would lead to resentment, anxiety, stress, and ultimately burnout.
But we don't acknowledge that work. I've actually seen some
radical progressive spaces on the left trying to add financial
compensation to emotional labor and saying, you know, if you

(16:03):
you know, we're gonna give money to someone and have
them be a fellow, and their job is going to
explicitly be explaining to some dumb guy why what he
just said to his coworker was was sexist, or helping
the boss write an apology email when he when he
missteps things that largely women and other marginalized folks have

(16:24):
had to do on top of their regular jobs for free.
I've actually seen some interesting, super radical, super super lefty
ways of tying that to financial compensation. Um, someone I know,
Jill Rainey, they have an organization. It's all about funding
emotional labor. And so if you need someone to you know,

(16:47):
do something, rather than task that out unpaid to someone
in your organization who most times is going to be marginalized,
is going to be a woman, a person of color,
a trans person, or some kind nation they're in, pay
someone and they will do it for you. Don't just
don't just pile that on someone else. So they already

(17:07):
had their other things going on. Yeah, yeah, and this, um,
the that definition of emotional labor has definitely not gone away,
And I kind of thought of it as like service
with a smile um, which is still uncompensated in the workplace,
particularly in the service economy. UM. The practice of tipping
illustrates it pretty well. Here in the US, the federal

(17:29):
tip minimum wage is two dollars and thirteen cents, And
the customer is expected to pay for that emotional labor
aspect of it. If they're being nice to you, do
they remember your name? Are they personable, approachable, likable, friendly,
all that stuff. So we're as the customer paying for
that emotional labor. Um. And since women do make up

(17:49):
a higher percentage of lower paid restaurant jobs and UH
also most likely to be her asked compared to any
industry in the US, is the restaurant industry. We used
to a whole episode on that because it's out of control.
It really is. It's so out of control. Yeah, it's
pretty pretty upsetting. Um. And the concept of emotional labor

(18:13):
is something that sex workers have tweeted about within their
occupation as well. How they get paid for their sexual labor,
but what about the emotional labor that they're expected to
put in on top of that for no money? And
I found a lot of articles saying that the on
demand economy should be a part of this conversation as well.

(18:33):
So if you think about ride sharing services where drivers
are expected to maintain a really high rating from customers,
like four point seven out of five, and it's vague
as to how they are expected to go above and beyond.
It's clear that they're supposed to do more than just
drive customers from point A to point B. But gum

(18:54):
water conversation, no conversation, it's not clear, it's not made clear. Um.
And so that's another kind of aspect of emotional labor
that's still still part of the like working conversation that
we should keep having. And he just had of curiosity.

(19:14):
H when you get into a ride share situation, do
you want is a four star ride? The ride with
a driver doesn't make to chat with you? Yeah? I UM,
I wish there was a way to indicate when you
got in, like, no conversation please, because I I understand,

(19:37):
I completely understand if you are expected to get this
super high rating. You want to seem friendly, you want
to make conversation. But I'm usually just tired. My brain
is like I can't I can't make conversation right now,
or maybe I'm working and I feel really antisocial and
horrible about it. Yeah, it's it is awkward. I mean,

(19:58):
I love nothing more than your um brilliant suggestions for
technology that are rooted in your like mild antisocial tendencies.
It is one of my favorite things about you. I had.
I had a situation recently where I was in a
ride share and I was going to I was going
to the airport, like four am, so already. In that situation,
I think that generally the person is exhausted and doesn't

(20:20):
want to talk. And the driver was very very friendly
but kept asking me, you know, what are you doing,
where are you going? How are you And the truth
of the matter was I was going to see my
father in the hospital because he's very sick, and you know,
it is got to a point where I was like,
you're ignoring all of my cues and I don't want
to talk about it, but okay, you want to talk
about it, Let's talk about it. Like you keep asking, fine,

(20:42):
let's get into the nitty gritty, like what do you
what do you know about long term care? You know?
And clearly he was like, like, definitely should not have. Yeah,
I gotten down this conversation path, but it is it
is difficult, I think, both for the driver and for
the passenger to know where that line is. And we
don't make it clear. We don't make it clear what
they are supposed to provide, to provide that kind of service.

(21:04):
And I think what it is that they're supposed to
provide is this kind of invisible and impossible to determine
emotional labor? Yeah, yeah, exactly like reading the person in
your card and trying to suss out is this just
how they are? Do they want to talk? Do they
not want to talk? What are they expecting? On mad Men?
When Peggy Olsen it's her first day being Don Draper's

(21:27):
secretary or assistant, Joan tells her what the men are
actually looking for is somewhere between a waitress, a nurse,
and a housewife. So they want you to, you know,
service with a smile, bring them what they need, sort
of be kind of a wife to them in a
kind of way. But it's clear that they are performing
tasks that are that go away above and beyond, you know,

(21:50):
book my appointments, Do this make copies kind of thing?
And there was this viral article by Jimma Hartley published
and bizarre, and she gave a lot of really good
examples of an emotional labor imbalance. So for Mother's Day,
she wanted a cleaning service for the house, and um,

(22:10):
she asked her husband, says she, her husband and two
kids live in this house and she wanted to not
be the manager of the household for a day. She
wanted to her husband to get quotes from cleaning services,
to do the research in the wedding and the scheduling
all of that stuff, and the house cleaning was a bonus,
something that needed to be done, but the real gift

(22:31):
was being free of the emotional labor it entailed. But
her husband, whom she adores and loves and likes and
is a feminist ally she frequently describes him as that
sort of kept waiting around for her to change her
mind to a simpler gift, like a gift card or something.
And it wasn't until the day before Mother's Day. He
called one service, um, heard the price and decided it

(22:54):
was too high, and decided he would clean the bathrooms
and stuff. Um, okay, pause, First of all, if they're
the kind of couple that haven't if they're the kind
of couple that's in a financial situation where, you know,
calling a cleaning service was in the cards. It's such
a lesser gift to have someone I'm non professional do

(23:16):
it for you. That's all I'm saying. Yes, so beyond
the conversation of like him his misstep, also, having your
husband clean the bathtub is not a good gift, Yes, agreed, agreed, um,
and he he kind of presented the question to her
like do you really want to pay this much for cleaning?

(23:36):
Or I could just do it? I mean I could
do it, and she she tried to get him to
understand it, told me, this is the point of what
she wanted, which is for him to do what she
would have done, and that is investigate all the options,
get recommendations from friends, handle the scheduling. And he did
end up doing it. Um. But when Hartley, the woman

(23:58):
who wrote this article, when she passed by him to
put away like his clothes that he had left on
the floor, she tripped over some gift wrapping he'd left
out for two days and then went into the kitchen
and retrieved a chair to put it away, and her
husband was like, oh, you had to do was ask,
and she responded, that's the point. I don't want to
have to ask. And she later tried to walk him

(24:18):
through the concept of emotional labor, and she she wrote
about how it was such a fine line to present
it in such a way that Um didn't come off
to him. Are he didn't see it as an attack
on his personal character. Again, like, this episode was kind
of revelation for me because this was a very big

(24:39):
thing in my house. In my house, you didn't have
negative emotions because that would upset my dad. And so
now I have a really hard time expressing emotions and
communicating about things that accept upset me. And this is like,
come all full circle to calls problems with my dad.
Was like, you've never communicate with me. I'm like, yes, yeah,

(25:03):
I remember how I wasn't allowed to be sad as
a kid. Um And uh yeah again, women are the
drama queens right anyway. Hayley Swenson over at Slate argues
that emotional labor is not the correct term for what
Hartley is describing, and in fact, most of what people
call emotional labor, we're not giving it, we're not calling

(25:27):
it by the correct name. She thinks a lot of
these things are better described as maybe mental load, or
clerical labor, or domestic labor or educational labor um, and
she points out that sociologists might refer to some of
this as maternal gate keeping. Are setting the terms for
the appropriate ways for housework and parenting to be done,
which is no good for anyone. Um. According to Swenson,

(25:49):
when we say emotional labor, what we mean is patriarchy.
And I thought about this a lot um and I
kind of agree, But I also think it is useful
to have a term for this that a lot of
women connected with this thing that we're all kind of doing. Yeah,
I sort of think both can be true. I mean,

(26:11):
clerical labor does not or domestic labor does not describe
you know, some of the examples that you lead the
show with, you know, letting someone vent, or understanding when
someone is upset and knowing how to perceive that and
knowing how to deal with it. I think that as women,
so much of what we talked about when we talk
about emotional labor is emotional is about percepting and and

(26:35):
sort of knowing how to deal with people in an
emotional way. And you know, that's not clerical work, Like
clerical work is being asked to make the copies because
you're a woman or something like that. Right, I think
that's I think, what what how I think of emotional labor?
I think is so different where it's maybe mental load
is is the right term, but again, so much of
it is emotional. Like when sex workers are talking about

(26:57):
what they have to do, that's not clerical work. That's
at emotional being expected to be sweet and charming and
loving and like, listen to the story that you really
could give two about as if it's the most interesting
story in the world. Right, these things are emotional tasks
in a kind of way, and I think that we
do need to have an explicit understanding of their value

(27:19):
as such, because they're not valued and they I I
almost actually i'm as I'm saying, list, I'm figuring out
why I don't like this, because calling emotional labor, at
least to me, clerical work or mental load divorces it
from what I see as the as the emotionally charged
nature of the work. And I think that just plays

(27:40):
into the idea that emotional work, because we are so
often associated with women, we don't put value on it,
and so I think by saying, yeah, it is emotional,
and guess what emotional can be labored too, and that
labor should be compensated and affirmed and when you do
it you should be thanked or whatever. I think that
by taking the emotion out of it, I almost think

(28:02):
that it's we should acknowledge it as emotional and then
affirm it as such and attached the word labor to it,
because emotional stuff, it's hard. It takes work. You know,
people are born being emotionally literate. It takes work, and
we need to acknowledge that. The reason why I like
that term emotional labor is because it seems to acknowledge that. Yeah.

(28:22):
One of the things people often respond to conversation about
emotional labor with is, well, it is. If you don't
want to do it, then don't do it. But we
can't really check out. And even if we could, again,
that's not really the point. Um, that's not a healthy relationship.
And another another common refrain, as kind of illustrated about

(28:42):
the story we just spoke about. Um, you just had
to ask again. So there's this great comic by this
artist Emma. I think her last name might be clipped. Uh,
at least that's what her website is, Emma clip dot com,
and it really, it really kind of explores this, and
basically it describes her being in a relationship and she's

(29:05):
making dinner, and she's making dinner and then the the
you know, the stove is boiling over and this is happening,
and that's happening, and everything turns into a mess. And
her husband comes in and he's like, you should have
asked if you needed help, and she sort of charts
that phrase you should have asked? Why didn't you ask?
To this idea that Listen, when you say when you
tell someone you should have asked, you are basically deeming

(29:27):
them the project manager of the household, and being the
project manager takes more work. And so basically what you're
saying is you are the person in charge here and
I am the underling. I'm happy to do what you want,
but you need to assign me to things otherwise I
won't do them. And that's not an equal balance of labor,
even if you are. I happen to think that when

(29:48):
people say, oh, why don't you ask, they don't actually
want to help, because if you wanted to help, I
mean I pulled up. You should have asked all the time,
but I don't actually want to do something, so you
don't play a player because I know what's up. But
if you wait to be asked to help out around
your own household, you are saying that you are the

(30:08):
underlying and the person who is doing the asking is
the project manager or the boss, and that that that
alone does not illustrate an equal balance of labor. Right.
And there's another quote from the meta Felter thread on
why no isn't an option um. Sometimes, especially when vulnerable
children and elderly are involved, caregivers who are overwhelmingly women,

(30:29):
get trapped as the final decision makers. Everyone else has
been able to say no, but the woman who is
the caregiver, her no is treated as the worst of
all the nose possible, visible in a way that the
rest of the nose from the people and society around
her who failed to help so she finally had to
say no, is held as a judgment on her, a
judgment with punishment, social isolation, the withdrawal of practical support,

(30:54):
down to outright misogynistic attacks because she's a quote such
a cold bitch. Yes, yes, yes, yes, I've seen it
in a million times. It's true. I think that as women,
one of the words that we just can't say without
some sort of harsh judgment is no. If someone asked

(31:14):
you to do something and you're like, no, I can't
just I mean, honestly, people who are listening, try saying
no to you don't actually want to do and see
how people react to it. Because people react very strongly
when a woman says no. And I think when it
comes to household tasks, especially when you're when you opt
out of that, I think that people really hold you

(31:35):
to a really harsh standard. Yeah. Yeah, And another common
argument that really really bothers me, um, those things are pointless.
So um. People like to get fixated on gift cards
or birthday cards or gifts, and a lot of people
who say, well, let's stop talking about emotional labors say, um,

(31:58):
those are a waste of time. But it's it's the
thought that counts, right, And it's showing someone you care,
whether with a card or gift or however that translates
to you. I personally prefer drinks and food for some
kind of fun thing, but it's thinking about the other person,
it's remembering that it's the the work that goes behind.

(32:22):
I mean, coming up with gift ideas is generally not
easy in my in my opinion, um, and those things
are the social glue that hold together relationships and communities.
And maybe in isolation, one or two of these things
dropped doesn't matter, but all of them. Yeah, and think

(32:44):
of it another way, could you really if you had
a family and had kids, could you really say, oh,
we'll give us are pointless so when it's Christmas time
and because you've opted out of this pointless exchange of gifts, Yeah,
and yeah, I think I mean this this is this
was my household of the bit where my mom was
the one who made sure that we all have a
nice Christmas, on nice birthday. My dad was totally the

(33:06):
dad who like snuck his name on the card. How
come my mom would write it? And you know, that
was the way it was. And if my mom had
not been around, I don't think my dad would have
gotten anybody a gift ever. And that was just a
task that completely felt to her on that as a
man he was just able to opt out of. Hopefully, hopefully,

(33:29):
these days, I think with changing gender norms and gender roles,
I hope that that is changing for for hetero sexual parents,
but I know a lot of friends that would say
the same thing that when it came to the little
the little things that parents do that make their kids
feel like their parents care or makes them feel special,

(33:50):
that was the mom that was their mom, and their
dad just sort of was sort of around for it. So,
so improvements, improvements. We're gonna take a pause for a
quick brick, and then we're gonna be right back with
more talk about emotional labor. H and we're back, Thank you, sponsor. So.

(34:18):
Gender sociologist Dr Lisa Hoover said quote In general, we
gender emotions in our society by continuing to reinforce the
false idea that women are always naturally and biologically able
to feel, express and manage our emotions better than men.
This is not to say that some individuals do not
manage emotion better than others as part of their own

(34:38):
individual personality, but I would argue that we still have
no firm evidence that this ability is biologically determined by sex.
At the same time, and I would argue, because it
is not a natural difference, we find all kinds of
ways in society to ensure that girls and women are
responsible for emotions and then men get a pass. So
I actually have a anecdotal but I think correct theory

(35:02):
about this, which is that, of course there is not
a biological grounding for women being better at management managing
their emotions. But I think that we are. We are
taught that our emotions and the emotions of others are like,
that's our business, right, And you know, think about shows

(35:23):
like sex in a city where it's four friends sitting
around trying to parse a text message a guy set right.
It's it's ingrained in women from an early early age
that you should be talking about how you feel, and
not just that you should be talking about how the
people around you feel, especially men. And you know, there

(35:47):
aren't a lot of shows out there where it's a
guy parsing how a woman is feeling. I think that
we grow up as women with that just tacit understanding
that one you have to understand your emotions, So talk
to your friends about how you're feeling. You know, right
in your journal about how you're feeling whatever. However it
expresses itself, sometimes I think in a healthy way, sometimes

(36:09):
not in a healthy way, but it's important to think
about how you're feeling and talk about it with your friends.
Blah blah blah. Two retell women, it is important to parse,
even if it's a guess, parts the minusha, how men
and other people in your orbit are feeling. And so
when you have you know, magazine articles and are like

(36:31):
ten ways to please your man, what's he thinking? That
kind of thing? You know, that the old trope of
asking a man after sex, you know, what are you
thinking right now? I think that we are early on
in grain that it is our job to not just
understand our own emotions, but understand the emotions of those
in our orbit. And I don't think men feel the
same way. And I saw this really great tweet recently

(36:52):
that said a man who was only in touch with
his own emotions is not actually sensitive, right, because if
you were actually sensitive, you would be like women are
kind of forced to be, which is that thinking about
the other people's needs, how other people are doing, how
are they feeling, what are they thinking, what do they need?
And your own? But I think that we ask so
little of men emotionally speaking, that if a man is

(37:15):
in touch with his own emotions, like that's good enough.
In a kind of way. Yeah, And I would say
probably most of us. If you had to stereotypically think
of the more emotional sex, you would say women. And
that's something that we see over and over again, where
like if a woman expresses emotions, she's being emotional. We
just have this like assumption that women they are the

(37:38):
more emotional sex than that men are not. Um So
there's probably a lot of that that's in the mix
as well. Yeah, And I describe myself as emotional. I'm
I'm a very emotional person. I don't think it's a
bad thing. And I think that the reason why I'm
emotional is because it's taken a lot of work to

(37:59):
get to a place in life where I can identify
very clearly and feel very clearly my emotions. And I'm
really proud of that work. And I think getting to
understand yourself emotionally and others emotionally is something that we
you know, emotional literacy. Like I wasn't born with it,
but it's a skill and I choose. It's a skill

(38:20):
I choose to work on and refine. And I think
that we when we say that women are emotional, I
think what we actually mean is, oh, women have been
up to the task of flexing their emotional literacy muscles,
and men have never been asked to. So I think
when we say women are emotional, what we actually mean is, oh,
women understand the work that goes into being emotionally aware

(38:41):
of your own feelings and emotionally literate. Yeah, I agree,
um Over. At Huffington's post, Christine Hutchinson, who is a
therapist and the executive editor for Psyched in San Francisco magazine,
wrote about her observations when counseling hetero couples, and she wrote, quote,
when I work in therapy with heterosexual couples, the disparity

(39:03):
of training each gender receives an emotional management is stark.
Often the woman is aware of her male partner's knees
and feelings at the expense of her own. Or as
the male partner struggles to identify and understand both his
his own and his partner's emotions, he has been taught
that it is either dangerous, not manly, or not his
job to feel and respond to feelings, including his own.

(39:24):
It's tragic. I could honestly, I mean, I could talk
all day, but I think that I want to note that.
So that's annoying and burdens some in regular ish relationships,
but if you take that to its ultimate location, it
can be really toxic. A man who does not feel

(39:48):
any responsibility to navigate or understand his own emotions, that
can be really toxic to the point where it's dangerous.
And I think, you know, we have these men who
are feeling intense feelings and they have no clue how
to navigate them, and so they take those feelings out

(40:08):
on other people, or they burden other people with them,
or in the like ultimate perversion of that, they you know,
they harm others because they don't understand their own feelings
and are not up to the challenge of like navigating
their own feelings. And so in rom in a in
a healthy issue romantic relationship, having a partner who is
not taking responsibility for their feelings is annoying. But I

(40:30):
think the ultimate perversion of that can be really dangerous.
Not not just like, oh, this relationship isn't working out,
but actually dangerous. Oh yeah, absolutely. Um. And she also
talked about um when male clients tell her that their
partners blew up at them or that something came out

(40:52):
of nowhere. Uh, and she she would wonder if it
really had, or perhaps that the woman in these relationships
had been communicating and the men who had never really
been expected to listen or respond. I didn't listen to
or respond. It's the dishes again, Bridget. I know when
are we gonna get to read your was it thirty pages?

(41:13):
Thirty pages on the dishes? You're the Martin Luther of
dishes who just mail it on the podcast studio door
um And despite what it may sound like, kind of
going off while you were saying, Bridget, this is definitely
a case of the patriarchy hurts everyone. Studies have found
that not only do men have less meaningful relationships, but

(41:35):
that widowers face a far tougher time adjusting to their
new single status and have higher rates of mental disorders
and suicides. Divorce men cope more poorly than divorced women
as well, and both have been attributed to the fact
that they don't have meaningful contact with their family and friends.
Harvard study found an eighty two higher risk of heart

(41:57):
disease and isolated men when compared to those that stronger
meaningful relationships, and another study from the New England Research
Institute found that for six or six percent of the
men surveyed their wives were their main source of social support,
and the study concluded, quote, clearly, subtracting a wife greatly
increases a man's risk of isolation. And it's fair to

(42:18):
say there are a lot of things that factor factors
that play there. But UM, I would love to see
what the numbers are for women. How many women rely
almost entirely on their spouse for their primary social support? UM.
A lot of examples people gave. They are talking about
the kind of the emotional labor that they do for
the their husband or significant other. Was, um, having to

(42:41):
keep up with that person's family. Now, like not just
your own your own family's birthdays and anniversaries or whatever,
but having to keep up with your husbands or significant
other their family. Now, Yeah, I remember someone telling me
that they were. It was a man married couple of
I'm friends with. They're gonna hear this and think, thank

(43:02):
you for airing my dirty laundry on the podcast. But
it was her husband's mother's birthday and her husband didn't
do jacket, didn't get a gift, didn't do anything, and
somehow it fell on her that because the mother had
not been given a gift, rather than thinking, oh, my
son dropped the ball, it was you didn't. You didn't

(43:23):
remind him, You didn't you know, buy a gift. You
didn't do this. And the way that I think that's
probably true for a lot of a lot of families
where when do you become someone and in a you know,
partnership like that, you now have double responsibility. You know, um,

(43:45):
I know that's my mom is usually calling my dad's family. UM.
So if you, if you do go off of like, well,
women are biologically better at this, because that's what science says, right,
So wary should man even try? There is no science
to bear this. Our research has found that emotion related
work is tied to gender construction rather than sex. Um

(44:09):
And here's another quote from the MetaFilter that I loved.
It's in all caps, so just put that emphasis on
my reading of it. Being soft and comforting and nursing
is really hard work. It is not something that comes
naturally just because I identify as female. It takes effort
and time, and it is exhausting and draining. Yes, yes, yes, yes,
yes yes. And also outside of the context of a

(44:32):
romantic relationship, if you were doing the work of being
comforting and soft and a good listener blah blah blah.
And in a workplace, we should acknowledge that is extra
work that you're doing. Whether it's compensated or not, or
valued or not, it is work. It's work. We're not
just good at being you know. I mean, I don't
know how many dumb jokes I've had to laugh at

(44:53):
in meetings and I didn't think it was funny. But
you do that because you're That's what we're socialized to do,
and it is work. One thing I kept coming across
two is that since women who we've been trained to
not make men feel inferior, and since a lot of
these dudes are good dudes, um and we don't want
to make them feel like we're attacking them, we are

(45:14):
having trouble finding a good way to approach it, which
may lead to women blowing up um, are becoming overly
critical or continuing in silence UM. And women who do
try to broach the topic with the men in their
life find that they become defensive or avoidant, or even
make fun of the women for their desire to have
the conversation at all. Well, kind of going off of that,

(45:37):
I think if men don't see emotional labor, if they
think they live in a house with the magic birds
from Cinderella, where this stuff, all this gets done by
pixie dust and and like angel wings, and like no
one's actually doing it. If this labor is invisible to them,
how do you broach the subject? You know, if if

(45:57):
someone that you live with does it just thinks that
his doctor's appointments get made by magic, he doesn't know
what person does it, how can you even sit down
and broke the conversation of why you don't think it's fair. Yeah, yeah,
you have to have like a starting place for the
conversation to happen. Um And I did find that this

(46:20):
whole thing extends to the bedroom, to sex um or
whenever wherever you having your sex. It's not in the bedroom.
So like take faking orgasms. It speaks to the fact
that we're still perceiving sex in a male centric way
and in a way that most um uh, we don't
want to upset the mail ego. And so ladies be facing,

(46:42):
ladies be facing, be facing. How many women out there
are faking orgasm? Sandy two thousand eleven study found that
sevent of respondents faked in orgasm during penetrative vaginal sex
more than half the time. Wow, that's a lot of
moaning and grown hanging. Oh and I should all be
getting Academy Awards streps out there. Really faked it more

(47:09):
than nine of the time, and one of the main
reasons given for faking it seven percent was to boost
the man's self esteem. I would love to see the
numbers on this one for um same sex couples, two
for men. Are men who are having sex with women?

(47:29):
Are they faking orgasms? I bet they're not. I would
love to see the data. I'm at I would as well.
And also um A listeners sent as an article about
how um we describe bad sex and how it's completely
different for men and women. For men it means like,
I don't know, I didn't orgasm as quickly as I thought.

(47:51):
But for women it means it wasn't painful. Yeah. Yeah,
so I definitely want to come back to that topic
for sure. Yeah. I've had some that's in situations where
I was like, oh, that was bad and my bad.
I mean it was active, it was he was doing
an active discomfort right, and when it was over, I
was relieved right, Yes, it's a little different, um. And

(48:15):
I would like to say about the study about the
faking orgasms. It was seventy one straight women, so limited
in that way, but I do think that it probably
speaks to we can probably extrapolate a bit, I think so,
I think. So all right, well we have a little
bit more to say, but we're gonna take one last
quick break for from our sponsor and we're back. Thank

(48:46):
you sponsor. So we're all riled up about this emotional
labor thing. What can we do? Okay? So, relationships are
hard work, for sure. It takes two people working at
it um and to have a truly egalitarian relationship or
as close as we can get to one, we need
to find a way to split up the emotional labor

(49:07):
aspect of it. Some things I read suggested identifying the
emotional labor um that your partner or whoever it is
in your life has done over the past week and
call of call all of those things out, or think
of ways to express your appreciation, um, think of ways
that you can contribute more to achieve more equitable situation.

(49:29):
And it does go back to the conversations the many
we've had about dishes and the point that some people
are more okay with leaving things around for a bit
and others aren't, and this can lead to an imbalanced inshore.
So you you might have to learn to work with that.
If your partner is on the opposite side of the spectrum,
then you are. And there is this other quote I
want to mention from the meta filter threat um. Women

(49:51):
consider emotional labor to be the backbone of relationships, not
the entry fee. So a lot of women in this
thread pointed out that when they first started dating someone,
he did do all of these things. He did remember
the birthday or do something special just because, or go
out of his way to make to do this emotional work.

(50:17):
But then once they got married or just were more
settled into the relationship, that went away because they had,
you know, gotten what they The emotional labor was just
the means to an end. Oh that's I know you
didn't mean it that way, but that's a that's such

(50:37):
a gross way to think about it. It is Oh,
I was a functional human and did all the tasks
that functional humans need to complete just to win your affection.
Now that I got it, yep, I'm done. Yep. That
makes me, sad, it is it is sad. I do
think that that is a different If we can change
the the way we look at relationships, I think that

(51:00):
that has a very beneficial conversation to have, because I
do I see men and women looking at relationships in
different ways. And I've kind of gotten that you're saying
women are from Venus, meta from Mars Annie, you know,
bridget Maybe that is what I'm saying, Maybe that is
maybe I need to revisit that. Another tip, another chip.

(51:23):
The probably shouldn't need to be said, but we're gonna
say it is listening, actually listening. Yeah, listen to your
partner or listen to their needs. You know. I think
kind of like what you were saying about how when
women blow up of them, men sometimes say, oh, came
out of nowhere, blah blah blah. But actually it seems
like she probably might have been saying the same thing

(51:44):
over and over and go again in different ways and
then got very frustrated that she was not being heard. Um.
And this is something that starts at a really young age.
Studies showed that by three years old, kids recognize gender.
So by modeling different behavior, we can change things for
younger generations um A quote from Dr Michelle Ramsay, the

(52:05):
Associate Professor of Communications and Sciences at Penn State burghs
um quote. For parents, this means making sure that one
spouse does not do more of that type of labor
than the other. Speaking in terms of how emotional labor
is currently divided, girls will hopefully learn not to expect
to have to do that labor, and boys will hopefully
learn not to expect females to do that labor for them.

(52:27):
Children watching parents share that emotional labor will be more
likely to be children who expect that labor to be
shared in their own lives. So we need to start
early and redivine some gender roles. To me, some of
this sounds so basic, but maybe people don't know. Yeah,
maybe I don't know. Another tip I have if you

(52:48):
are in a workplace, uh and you find that, you know,
women are doing a lot more of the emotional labor
in a professional setting, things like office birthday parties, you know,
getting that birthday card, any of of little things that
aren't someone's job that they end up doing. Try to
find a more equitable, equitable way to do that, you know,
a chore wheel, something like that. You know, if one

(53:08):
person is always washing everyone's mug in the kitchen and
it's not their job trying to figure out why that is.
You know, if if you're someone who is a decision
maker in a workplace, you have the power to make
a change and and have that not be the case.
Absolutely yuh So I hope that, um, this episode is
useful to to you listeners. It was certainly useful for

(53:31):
me because I hadn't really been able to express that.
Like I knew that this was happening, I just didn't
really have the words to express it. So um, it
was really eye opening episode did do the research on

(53:51):
for me. SAME's it's an impact Again, this is sort
of like our gas lighting episode. It's empowering to have
a language, a shared language, to understand a lot of
the crap we're all dealing with and have been dealing with,
maybe without a way to describe it. So I think
adding it sounds so dumb and so basic and so surface.
But being able to have a word to describe something

(54:14):
that so many of us are dealing with and sometimes
dealing with alone and silently and in a frustrated way,
I think it's empowering. I do too. And as someone
who I've seen so many of my friends, moms get
kind of stuck in divorces where they can't leave because

(54:36):
they don't have any money. Um, and just to hear
them say like I wish I had gone to work,
or I would say something away, and I always feel
so frustrated because you were working, like you were raising children,
and you just weren't getting compensated for That's I don't

(54:56):
even get me started. That's a whole other episode. But
times A D yes, like, we do not value the
labor of women. Would you not value labor that is
associated with women? Do not value domestic labor, labor within
the household, the work that you just described that woman doing.
If you if her husband paid for that work outside

(55:17):
of the home, do you know how much she would
be making a lot of money. So it is work,
very clearly, and we don't value it, and it's we should.
And if she was charging her husband in an itemized
fashion for all the stuff she did, cooking, cleaning, raising kids,
shuggling people, places, appointments, she would have so much money
if it was compensated. It just happens to not be compensated. Yep,

(55:41):
all right, no, I so agree, and I I like
wrote out, I tried to like show show a woman
in my life this where I like wrote out, this
is how much you would have made per year you
would make so Nick Bank, Yeah, if you like, if
if someone had to hire someone to do this all
the things. Yeah, So definitely we've given ourselves more homework.

(56:04):
But in the meantime, it's time for listener mail. Oh
Dylan at that, I mean, producer, Dylan, I got you handled.
Don't worry about that blizzer male sound effect. I'm gonna
do them from now on. Bridget does all the sound
effects from here on out. Okay, so this first one
is from patrese Um. I just listened to your episode

(56:25):
from at KIMK and Appetite Supressants. This one really hit
me hard because about a year ago, one of my
coworkers started using Isogenics, which is essentially a pyramid scam.
One person starts using this meal replacement shake and doing
cleanses and they lose a bunch of weight and feel great,
and then they start selling it to their friends and
so on. So last year my co worker got me
on it, and you replaced two meals a day with

(56:46):
these shakes and then only have one hundred calorie snacks
in between. You did this for five days, and then
you did two days of cleanses where you drink this
nutrient supplement and are only allowed one apple or one
one of their way snacks to eat throughout the day.
After the first day I tried this, I felt a
little off and lightheaded, but I was committed to finishing
because one I wanted to lose the weight and see results,

(57:09):
and too, I had already spent the money on these products.
So after the first two months of this crazy schedule,
I was starting to see results. I lost weight and
inches around my waist, so naturally I ordered more shake
powder and cleansing kits. Now I'm the type of person
that gets bored with food very easily, and after about
another month of this, I was starting to miss food.
I felt constantly hungry because I had lowered my calorie

(57:30):
intake and I just straight up miss chewing food and
all the different flavors that come with it. So I
gave up this crazy shake fad, and guess what, I
gained all the weight back and then some. Being a
person who has been referred to as skinny for most
of their life. It was really difficult for me to
realize how much weight I had gained over the past
eight months. I had gotten a new job where I

(57:51):
set a desk for eight hours a day, and I
hadn't been going to the gym with this new schedule.
Looking back, I can understand where all this weight came from.
But at first it seemed like I game ten pounds overnight.
None of my clothes fit, and then I made the
mistake of stepping on the scale. Being an avid Instagram user,
it was difficult to scroll through my feet and see
all of these get Skinny Quick solutions being advertised everywhere.

(58:13):
I even spiraled into a period of depression because I
was so upset to how big I had gotten and
not having a flat stomach like all of the quote
pretty girls on Instagram. Thankfully, I have the amazing support
of my boyfriend, who reminds me how silly it is
to lose my mind over a little bit of weight.
He also motivates me to work out and eat better,
and it goes to show I'm important it is to
have a good supportive network around you. I also quit

(58:36):
following many of the people on Instagram that made me
wish I looked like them and started following more body
positive accounts. Seriously, just look up hashtag body positivity and
you'll find so many more real accounts and people who
are truly trying to make a difference in the way
we look at ourselves. Over the last four months, I
had become a vegetarian and have been going to the
gym and playing tennis and just enjoying life. I don't

(58:56):
worry about the number on the scale. We don't even
have a scale in my house, and I eat to
feel good and full, and becoming vegetarians made me start
cooking in the kitchen and using real foods, and it's
honestly the best decision I've made in a while. I
truly wish for all the young women out there to
not fall into the chap of these fat diets and
meal suppressants or supplements, because once you stop, you just
feel worse than before you started. Yeah. Um, I'm someone

(59:22):
who at one time would have definitely tried this, have
definitely tried something like this, and it is I mean,
when you think about it, when you step away, it's
it's so almost disturbing. Not necessarily this story, but I
remember reading back in the worst days for me, I

(59:43):
remember reading this tip and it was watch yourself eat
in the mirror, because you were supposed to be disgusted
with how you like perceived yourself and the fact that
you're eating. And it's it's just so upsetting that these
messages are so powerful and they're like everywhere and prevalent.

(01:00:03):
So I do hope that um, we we move away
from that and we learned to enjoy life. Yeah, what
I wanted to point out in this in this letter
was that I'm so happy that it sounds like she's
gotten to a place where she has a positive and
a healthy relationship with food, where she's cooking at home

(01:00:23):
and using healthy ingredients and eating too, eating it because
food tastes good and it's it's fun to eat, and
you know, eating to feel good. Uh, you should not
be repulsed by the idea of you consuming food, which
we all need to do to live. Eating. I mean,
at least for me, it's it's it's and I think
for you as the host of a food podcast, you know,

(01:00:44):
it should be something that can bring joy. And I'm
happy that she's found a place where it sounds like
cooking a big vegetarian meal in her kitchen full of healthy,
fresh ingredients makes her feel good. It makes me happy,
and please, please, We'll be there. Our next letter is
from Marin beautiful name Marion M E H E R

(01:01:05):
I N. Gorgeous name. I'm a little behind on episodes
and I just listened to the episode on stalking. First
of all, I want to thank you guys for doing
an episode on this topic, as it's important and scary.
I agree that the media, both fiction and journalism, are
complicit and normalizing stalking behaviors. I did, however, want to
share my perspective on one of my favorite movies, Love. Actually,

(01:01:27):
this movie is about different types of love and how
that plays out in our lives. Bridget You said that
the woman who chooses to take care of her brother
is vilified, but by whom her new suitor seems to understand.
Is an example of how her love for her brother
outweighs other loves in her life. With Alan Rickman and
Emma Thompson's characters, Alan Rickman cheats on her, whether emotionally
or physically, we do not know, and it breaks her heart.

(01:01:48):
That as an example of how love can hurt just
because someone betrays you, doesn't negate your love for them,
and in the end we see that she stays with him,
but their relationship is strained. The movie does not teach
us that cheating is okay. It just shows that, unfortunately,
cheating happens. And the most controversial character the guy with
an undercredit crush. I'm Kira Knightley's character one. He thinks

(01:02:08):
he's quote in love with his best friend's partner. He
keeps that to himself. He doesn't pursue her. He actively
tries to act cold and distant toward her so they
don't become close. Too. He takes that creepy video of
her at her wedding. This is definitely stockery. It is
not okay and shouldn't be romanticized. However, he wasn't the
official videography. His videography was creepy, but he didn't ruin

(01:02:28):
their wedding. Three. In the end, he gives that speech
on the note cards in order to quote explain himself
to Juliet after she watches the creepy video that he
didn't intend for her to watch and allow him to
quote get it out of his system so he can
move on. I always viewed it as Hey, I've always
liked you, I think you're special, and then he left.
I don't think it's childish or stock rish at all.

(01:02:50):
Should Juliet tell her husband about the situation. That's her
ethical call, not that guy's any who. I just wanted
to share because I feel like our interpretations of the
same movie were so different. Keep up the good work, y'all. Maren,
thank you for writing in It's Funny. I actually got
a lot of push back on my strong stances on love. Actually, Maren,
I gotta say she makes the case very very well

(01:03:11):
for the movie, showcasing different ways that love can play out.
I will say that I do so no one in
the movie shames Laura Lenny's character who was taking care
of her sick brother. But I feel so like there's
there's not a character who was like, oh, how dare you?
I feel like we as the viewer are meant to
see her choice as sad or or bad, like like

(01:03:36):
Maren is corrector is not a character in the movie
that says, Laura, Linny, what are you doing? But I
believe that we as the audience are supposed to say, Laura, Lenna,
you've got this hot guy that makes you jump up
and down when he's in your apartment because he's so
hot and you're gonna choose your ailing brother. I don't know,
that's just my interpretation. Actually, Mary is making me want
to go back and watch it again. Um we had

(01:03:58):
it to her ever growing I know, kind of invite Marin,
we do, I did. I really appreciated how m several
several listeners wrote in and like kind of defending of
like a favorite movie of theirs. And it is interesting
to have like such different takes on on movies. I've

(01:04:21):
been really fascinated reading kind of these really different viewpoints. Um,
we Bridget and I love we love media movies. If
it's not clear, so we could we could probably have
a whole like many side podcasts. You know what we
should do. I would just think it would be so
interesting get to listeners who have drastically different takes on

(01:04:43):
the same movie. So somebody who thinks love actually is
the greatest love story of our time and someone who
thinks it's garbage, and have them both make their case.
That'd be hilarious. And then we like, would we get
to vote at the end anything where I get to
judge the opinion of others. I'm so in sign me
up perfect. We'll we'll get We'll get to the drawing

(01:05:07):
board on that one. Um. In the meantime, please keep
those emails coming. Our email is mom Stuff at how
stuff works dot com. You can also find us all
over the social means. We're on Instagram at stuff but
I've Never Told You and on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast.
And thanks as always to our producer Dylan Fagan and

(01:05:28):
Kathleen Killian as well. Another time y'all listen to this.
Annie will be at Italyanta road Race champion so early.
Congrats to her. All right, oh guy,