Fictional Attraction

Where do celebrity crushes, affections for fictional characters and hero worship come from? Cristen and Caroline shed light on the fascinating spectrum of parasocial relationships we develop with people in books, television and tabloids.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff mom never told you. From house Supports
dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline
and I'm Kristin. Today is a listener request. Um, we
got a letter, uh, you know, suggesting that we look

(00:23):
into shipping and one true pairing, and of course I
immediately was like, I don't I don't know what that like.
Shipping like transporting things, but I don't understand. Oh my goodness.
And looking into this topic, did we uncover a ton
of research? Yeah, it's fascinating and I have a feeling
they're probably still listeners saying I know it. Shipping is

(00:46):
one tree pairing. Of course, like you, Caroline, I was
unfamiliar with this term, but once I started reading about it,
I started out over at Know your Meme dot com.
It's like the first Google result that you'll get when
it comes up, and it gives you a pretty good
um rundown of what it is. And shipping is essentially

(01:07):
short for relationshipping. You will also hear about relationshippers, which
would be shortened to shippers. And it started out with
fans of the X Files who were split between relationshippers
who really wanted to see Molder and Scully get together
versus the no romos who felt that any kind of

(01:29):
romance would been Molder and Scully would totally ruin the show.
And the term has also pinned on Pokemon fans who
rooted for Jesse and James of Team Rocket to get
together and decided to call themselves Rocket shippers. So all
of that is shortened to ship or shipping, and this
whole thing is just people feeling so attached to these

(01:52):
characters that they start rooting for or against certain things
to happen in the show. Yeah, and we intentionally did
this episode during the week of Valentine's because it's a
different angle of attraction and emotional investment that we don't
hear much about. And obviously that the shipping side of
it gets really deep into the world of fandom and

(02:15):
fan fiction. But as we kind of jump into this
rabbit hole of shipping, it emerges into a lot of
areas that we probably all have some experience with. But first,
you mentioned one true pairing. That's something that comes up
a lot in shipping, and essentially it's a couple that

(02:37):
a fan or a group of fans prefers over all
the other ships or relationships. Right, And they're not necessarily
the main characters. Sometimes people focus fan fiction on, you know,
side characters who they want to get together and maybe
if they think the main guy should really be in
love with some other girl over here. But you know,
you could think of one true pairing as like Buffy

(02:58):
and Angel or Ross and Rachel, who are cited an
insane amount in some of these studies. Yeah, and this
all segues into this thing called a para social relationship.
And it's an actual psychological term which was coined by
Donald Horton and Richard Wall in nineteen fifties six to

(03:20):
describe sort of an illusion of a relationship that a
viewer or a listener will have with a performer or
some kind of character. Right. And it's you know, by definition,
a one sided relationship where the feelings extend past the
viewing and into real life. You find yourself thinking about
this person or character in real life and just the

(03:44):
act of watching or listening to uh this performance will
just reinforce those feelings. It's kind of like if you
develop a crush on someone, the more you see them,
the more you like them. It's just that this happens
to be with someone that you probably never meet. Yeah,
and the manifest stations of these kinds of para social
relationships via shipping fan fiction and with our celebrity crushes

(04:08):
that we get aren't new at all. With with fandom specifically,
know your meme talks about how in nineteen thirteen a
book called Old Friends, New Fancies was published and it
was a remix, an old school fan fix, remixing characters
from three Jane Austen novels. And there's even Mr Darcy

(04:29):
fan art side note that goes back to the early
nineteen hundreds. Um. And with celebrity culture, obviously it's you know,
it's been around for quite a while, but it goes
all the way back to really the eighteenth century, which
is when you have the emergence of the celebrity while
all these other new ideas are kind of boiling at

(04:50):
the time in terms of selfhood, individuality, in the pursuit
of passions. Yeah, that's not something that I ever realized
that celebrity quote unquote started so early, I mean relatively.
You know, it comes along with new consumerism, and this
is when we also get gossip column no idea. Well,
then you can tie into that not just with our

(05:13):
cult of celebrity, but also digging into shipping and one
true pairing and fan fiction. The evolution of all of
this stuff has really gone alongside the development of different
types of communication technologies. Whether you have, for instance, in
the late nineteenth century, the rise of photography, which helped

(05:33):
stoke the popularity of stage star Sarah Bernhardt, and then
in the nineteen twenties, with mass journalism starting to rise,
you have something called jazz journalism, which I guess for
the like the early celebrity tabloids. Yeah, really focusing on
entertainment over news, glorifying celebrities, you know, people like Charles Lindberg,

(05:54):
you know who is a huge celebrity for his beats
of aviation. Um so why why the long held focus?
What are we what are we so obsessed with celebrities for? Yeah?
I mean, and this is looking more moving away a
little bit from the fan fiction element and into actual
living people living in Hollywood A lot of times that

(06:15):
we want to see photos of while they're getting their groceries,
Like why why do we care when celebrities do everything?
And guess what, folks, there are so many theories about
its Scholars think about this stuff too. Yeah, a lot
of it. Theories include just the facts, simple fact that
we enjoy living vicariously through really beautiful, rich people. That

(06:38):
doesn't seem that hard to figure out. There's also, of
course schadenfreud, where we take pleasure and the misfortune of others.
So if Lindsay Lohan gets arrested again, or you know,
somebody there's a picture somebody tripping and falling, we tend
to get a kick out of it. When you move
into the more kind of literary look at things, linguist
George Lakeoff, who in his book The Political Mind, posited

(07:03):
that certain frame based scenarios like rags to richest stories
really appeal to us because they trigger an emotional response.
They're imprinted in our brains. Rags to riches story like
Anaicle Smith or bad boys stories like Charlie Sheen. They're
very familiar to us, and so they gain traction pretty easily.
And because we are all sort of exposed in different

(07:25):
levels to these celebrities, it makes sense that Fred English,
who authored A Short History of Celebrity, describes celebrity as
a type of quote unquote social adhesive because I mean
it can help us find common ground it gives us
something to talk about. And when you don't know someone

(07:46):
very well, if you can find a celebrity or a
television show or a book that you have in common
Boom conversation. I mean I know every party I go to,
I talk about Ryan Gosling. Hear that. I mean, I
really don't talk about anything else. Sorr Well, Ryan Gosling
and Cortes pretty much all I talk about. But Daniel

(08:07):
Boorsten back in nineteen sixty two had a different theory.
He said that, um, we are subbing in celebrities for
gods and heroes of your Basically, we're losing our religion,
we're losing our traditions, and so we are looking to
these beautiful rich people to fill holes left. Well, but
you still have room for real life heroes too, of say, uh,

(08:31):
maybe a Hillary Clinton or a insert famous athlete whose
name isn't readily coming to mind. But no matter whether
that person is a movie star or a politician or
an athlete, who remember, they are Evolutionary psychology maintains that
it's really ingrained in our humanity to want to, you know,

(08:55):
pay attention to higher status people, right exactly, Yeah, like
Slate calm this Robert Wright who wrote that keeping up
with all of the gossip about people, whether it's people
at work, you know, celebrities in the news, it can
quote inform social maneuvering for sex and other vital resources.
And that sort of information about who's up, who's down,

(09:17):
who's doing what, who's doing whom uh is the sort
of information that's conducive to fitness. Yeah, and also it's
Slate calumnist Jack Schaefer even ties it to reproduction, saying that, well,
we're paying attention to these people and who they're having
babies with. I mean thinking about how, oh my god,
pregnancy pictures of movie stars these days. It's kind of crazy.

(09:41):
And in a very simplicit kind of way, Schaefer describes how,
way way back in you know, our our human ancestors time,
we didn't need an US Weekly to tell us what
the higher status individuals were doing, who they were having
babies with. You look around, you see your group, and
you know what's up. But today we almost need the

(10:02):
celebrity culture to keep us clued in to what the
higher status folk are up to and wearing and buying
and where they're vacationing. Right, and he opines that women
make up the bulk of the readers of tabloids and
the subjects of tabloids because we are supposedly checking out
the alpha competition. Well, I wonder if that's you could

(10:24):
make that same kind of statement to about Like, Yeah,
women might pay attention more attention to Hollywood, but plenty
of guys are watching ESPN for a lot of hours
of a day too. Yeah. So in all of this
kind of constant checking on our favorite celebrities or least
favorite celebrities, depending, you know, we're kind of seeing that

(10:44):
they've succeeded in society. Maybe we want to attain some
of what they have. But when you start focusing too
much on some things, you might start to become obsessive
and actually developed celebrity worship syndrome. Yeah, this is an
actual sessive addictive disorder in which, as you might guess,

(11:04):
a person becomes overly involved with the details of US
celebrities life. And this really came to light uh in
two thousand two when a team of psychologists developed the
Celebrity Attitude Scale to rank people along the spectrum of
how deeply embedded celebrity culture is in their lives right,

(11:28):
and they found three dimensions to celebrity worship, basically three
tiers of how freaking obsessed you are and how much
of a role it plays in your life. You've got
the bottom tier, which is entertainment social. It basically has
attitudes like I just like to chat with a friend
about how hot this celebrity is. UM. It just reflects
the social aspects of celebrity worship, getting around the water cooler,

(11:50):
talking about the hot GUYE on the show last night.
There's the next tire, which is intense personal and it
reflects individuals intensive and compulsive feelings around the celebrity. So
you're not just talking about what a good character the
kid is or whatever. You're going into fandom. Then the
next here is borderline pathological, which is basically like if

(12:14):
X y Z celebrity told me to steal, I would
do it. Yeah. It's that level of obsession where you
get into scarier issues of stalking UM and speaking to
the BBC, Dr John Malty, who is a cycle instructor
at the University of Leicester who has studied the celebrity
worship syndrome, says that around one person of people that

(12:37):
he studied at least show more of those obsessional tendencies.
But a majority of us are on that first here
of the entertainment social we pay attention. We might you know,
go to I don't know, Delisted every now and then,
but it doesn't consume our lives. Sure exactly, Um, but

(12:58):
you know, I mean this this us move out of
the realm of real, live people and back to what
we started talking about at the top of the podcast,
which is fan fiction developing relationships with characters not necessarily
real people. Yeah, you can develop very real in a
way para social relationships, not just with celebrities on the street,

(13:21):
but also with either characters that celebrities might be portraying
in shows or you know, in literature, with your favorite
characters in books. And NPR commentator Jake halpern I had
a great piece about this, talking about his paras social
relationship with a cast of cheers. I loved it, I know,
or he just really wanted to go and hang out

(13:42):
with him. He felt like he could go and get
a beer and make conversation, right, And it goes back
to that continuing relationship that that Horton and Wall talked
about when they coined the term para social relationship just
that you know, Helper and watches the show every week.
He knows what Cliff and arm we're talking about at
the bar, and he wants to join them, and that

(14:02):
relationship feels all the stronger for the fact that he
checks in with them every week and they're exactly the same.
That's another big part of these paras social relationships with
characters is that they're kind of always the same. Yeah,
And I kind of experienced this earlier this year with
Breaking Bad and and in a not so positive sense,

(14:23):
like I did not want to go hang out with Walt,
don't get me wrong, but I in order to catch
up for the final season. And don't worry, I'm not
going to spoil anything for anyone who hasn't seen all
of it, um, but in order to catch up, I
binge watched it because a lot of it was on Netflix.
And I found myself, Caroline, thinking about Jessie and Walt,

(14:45):
and you know, like in reactions to like things would
happen in my day, and I think, oh, Skyler would
totally not be down with that, you know, like it
was starting to get weird. And the beginning of the
show when I had very low investment. That wasn't something
that I ever thought would happen, but I developed a
very real, kind of strange and unwanted attachment to these characters.

(15:07):
But when it comes to the thought of making emotional
psychological connections with fictional characters or with celebrities, you might think, well,
that might be a sign that something is not so
well adjusted, either in your social life or your brain.
But research bears out different and kind of counterintuitive results,

(15:31):
which we will get into. And we come right back
from a quick break and now back to the podcast.
So we were just talking about connections to characters on TV,
characters and movies. Uh, fake people who you develop these
connections with after repeated viewings of a show, And Kristen
had been saying that, you know, a lot of the

(15:52):
research is counterintuitive that you would think like the loneliest,
saddest people would be the ones to develop all these relationships,
and that's not necessary. They're really true, although some studies
have connected some degree of loneliness with these para social relationships. Yeah,
there was a study published in the Journal of Experimental

(16:12):
Psychology that it came out in two thousand nine, and
it essentially found that absolutely these familiar television shows are
sort of loneliness bridges for us. We turn it on
to kind of keep his company. Maybe if we're at
home alone or if we are going through sort of
a downer period, we might be more likely to watch

(16:34):
our favorite television shows. Right, And they just said that
it's basically a lot less work to turn on the
TV than too struggle to maintain connections with real people,
if especially if you are feeling down, And they tested
the social surrogacy hypothesis, theorizing that loneliness actually motivates people
to seek out relationships even if those relationships aren't real.

(16:58):
Which not to make me sound like I'm off the
charts on the Paris Social Relationship Skill, Caroline. This also
reminds me of when I a while ago went through
a pretty awful breakup and I just started compulsively out
of nowhere watching How I Met Your Mother, and I
had to have it on, like in like a couple
of weeks, Like I just had to have it on

(17:18):
in the background, just to have something on. And even
though I don't love the show, but I couldn't stop
watching the show, you know, and it's about like and
it totally makes sense reading this research because it's about
a group of friends like who are dealing with relationships. Yeah, exactly.
And when I lived by myself in Augusta, you know,

(17:39):
I'd be cooking dinner at night and I would find
myself turning the TV on to feel less kind of
lonely during dinner time, you know, like having those voices
they're having people on TV, either reading the news or
a sitcom or something made it feel like the house
was full. And if we move from things like television
programs back in to the realm of fan fiction and

(18:02):
getting more online with shipping and one true pairing, I
think it serves a similar kind of not just as
a creative outlet, but also I think it does serve
as social function as well, because with one true pairing
in particular, people are so heavily invested in these couples.

(18:23):
And it's funny though, like side note how Ross and
Rachel from Friends are examples of almost every trope yeah
in in fan fiction, because like you could look at
them as the one true pairing, you can also look
at them as going through the quote unquote official couple
or deal syndrome, where you know, people are identifying with
these characters, but these characters are being put through hell

(18:44):
there the show creators are toying with your emotions. But
then what's interesting to see with one true pairing is
that it's so more active than us just passively watching
television or even just having it on in the background,
because they really become the architects of these fictional characters
live to the point that you get into slash fiction

(19:07):
where characters are having sex with other characters, and they're
all sorts of different pairings, whether it's a ho yea
ship which is homo erotic positive shipping, or sister ship
which yep, gets incestuous uh and on and on and on,
and this this is such a deeper level of investment. Yeah, well,

(19:33):
I mean, I think it's worth looking at how you
even get that involved, because I don't think. I mean,
there have been a few characters I just don't watch
a lot of TV disclaimer, but there have been characters
historically where I have been like super invested in them.
You know, I am obsessed with them almost, but I
have no idea what's behind that and what even got

(19:55):
me there. And one example that I can think of
is during high school when I'm going to bring it up, Christen,
when I watched La fem Nikita, Okay, my favorite show.
How many times have I mentioned this? But so I'm
a teen in high school and I'm watching this really
incredibly powerful kick butt woman every week, and you know,
it was toying with my emotions because they were going

(20:16):
to cancel that show like three thousand different times, but
that she stayed on the air, and I just I
really did feel like I developed this relationship with her, like, well,
if only she knew me, But she's fake, so she doesn't.
But it's interesting you say, though, that you were in
high school, because one factor that psychologists have identified as

(20:37):
sort of predisposing you to forming paras social relationships is
being in periods of transition. I was going through a
breakup when I went through my How I Met your
Mother almost dark spell, I wouldn't leave my apartment. Um,
and you were going through high school. Is there a
more transitional time than that, right? And so yeah, people

(20:57):
who end up with this over the time, either celebrity
worship for real life people or paras social relationships with characters,
they tend to be going through life transitions and the
same goes for elderly folks. That's another big period of
transition with limited mobility. And one study was looking specifically

(21:17):
at the paras social relationships that elderly people form with
like TV shopping hosts. Because they are in that period
of transition where maybe they don't see their family as much,
they have fewer sources of information. They are more susceptible
to these paras social relationships because they can't get out
and so they are lonely. We have said already that

(21:39):
loneliness is a motivating factor for pursuing connections, and so
they end up being more likely to overuse TV shopping
channels because those hosts are like friends to them because
they're probably talking directly to them. Right, it's not like
a sitcom necessarily where I mean, obviously you can develop
paras social relationships, etcetera, etcetera. But you know, sitcom stars
are talking to each other. That TV host on the

(22:00):
shopping network is looking right at you. Ah, that makes
so much sense in the saddest way possible. I know,
go hug a grandmother someone. But I mean, research has
shown that these paras social relationships can influence I mean
so much. They can influence our views of social issues
like gay rights. If there are gay characters on TV
then and you feel like you know them, then you're

(22:22):
more likely to change your view of gay rights. It
can even influence teens views of how to achieve goals
that are related to the development of their identities. Yeah,
it's one thing that can also make p s a
s more effective, as if that's why you have celebrities
who are saying, Hey, uh, don't flush tampons, that's not

(22:42):
a p s A anyone's ever done, probably, or or
learn to reading that right. Don't drink and drive, that's
a p s A thing. You learn to read tampon labels.
I would make a horrible p s A writer. Um.
But speaking of tampons, let's talk a little bit about gender,
because my assumption going into this was that this is

(23:05):
something that probably is more appealing to women and younger women.
And it's not that it doesn't occur with a lot
of women. It's just that men and women both experienced it,
and we kind of experienced it for different reasons. We
have different motivations for turning the TV on, and we
have different motivations for leaving it on and coming back
week after week. Yeah, there was one interesting study that

(23:29):
came out in It's a little dated, but it was
looking at the intersection of dating, gender, and para social relationships,
and it found that men tended to form stronger ps
rs with TV characters when they were anxious in their
dating situation, whereas women were the opposite. We tended to

(23:51):
form those para social relationships when we were more secure.
So it was in a way we were we as
in women were using these characters and TV shows is
a way of sort of more firmly securing our dating situation. Yeah.
They they found that women tendencye TV as a friend
or companion, whereas men are turning to TV to solve problems,

(24:14):
which is pretty interesting. Well, what's also interesting is that
twilighting the whole team Edward, team Jake. I mean, Twilight
is just rife with para social relationships, fan fiction, one
true pairing, and go on and on and on. I
mean to the point that, uh, fifty Shades of Gray
was born out of the fan fiction. You could call

(24:36):
it some kind what kind of ship would that be?
Where you take a Bella character and you pair her
up with a guy who's really into B D S M.
I don't know. I'm sure it exists. Um. But Twilighting, though,
is a double form of para social relationship where you
have fans of Twilight who transpose their para social relationships

(24:57):
with characters in the book onto actors, right, right, And
so that led Robert Pattinson at one point to say, like,
they know that I'm playing a character, right, I'm I'm
just some brit from you know, over across the pond.
I'm not a guy. But those kinds of para social
relationships they do have really that they do have really

(25:18):
real results. Is they are a more eloquent way to
say that it's really real, but they do have results
on us, not just in terms of making PSA is
more effective, etcetera, etcetera, or alleviating loneliness for the time being,
but also when those characters like Robert Pattinson and Kristin Stewart,
Bella and Edward break up, we also feel that too.

(25:41):
Oh the horror, the heartbreak. No, I mean yeah, And
these these breakup feelings can be felt for characters in
a movie or on TV, or for real life people
who you don't know but you sure are sad. About
their divorce. Yeah, I had, really it made me feel
a word to myself, having a an emotional reaction to

(26:05):
the announcement of Amy Poehler and well our nets divorced
two people I would love to meet, probably never will
and who I thought was, Oh, I love both of
the things that they do in television and movies. Why
did I care? It was the strangest thing, Caroline. Yeah,
I mean I I've felt that too, you know, just

(26:26):
like extreme sadness over like you guys can't work it out,
there's not anything. What happened, what happened, what happened. And so, Kristen,
not to make this completely about La fem Nikita, like
I do everything, but they have been studies that look
at people's feelings about the end of a show and

(26:47):
so the end of a relationship a para social relationship
that they have with the character. And like I said,
you know, USA was going to cancel A fem Nikita
like fifteen thousand times, and the fan base, I mean
I was only in high school, but like the active
online fan base went crazy and actually got the show
back because people were so intensely invested in the story. Yeah,

(27:08):
Jonathan Cohen is a researcher who has done a couple
of studies actually on these para social breakups, and he's
found in a nutshell that yes, we do feel them too,
but the level that we feel them is very much
tied to our psychological attachment style. You hear this a
lot with a relationship psychology, where you are usually fall

(27:31):
into one or three categories of being securely attached, avoidantly attached.
Was just like who don't call me, I'll call you,
or you have anxious attachment, And people who are more
anxiously attached, people who might be in real life a
little more nervous about the status of their relationships, tend
to feel these kinds of para social breakups a little

(27:55):
more strongly than avoidantly or securely attached people, right, and
Cohen was saying that because it's not necessarily the people
we would think having these para social relationships, that we
should probably view PSRs as an extension of people's social relationships,
not necessarily compensation for a lack of them, because like

(28:19):
we said, you know, men are if they're anxious about
their relationships, they'll turn to TV. If women are feeling
great about theirs, they'll turn to TV. It's not necessarily
that you completely avoid human contact, because he argues, if
you were an avoidant personality, you wouldn't want to create
relationships with characters on TV either, right, right, Well, and
it's also good to point out too, that there have

(28:41):
been a number of studies, you know, confirming and reconfirming
that para social relationships are not red flags that you
are a shut in and don't know how to make friends.
It's actually more tied to characteristics of extraversion and sociability.
It's like you said, it's an extension of these relationships. Um,
there's one other study which found that we tend to

(29:02):
rate these characters as closer than acquaintances, but not as
close as close friends. That's good, Yeah, yeah, that is
that's good. I'm I'm glad that we do rate our
friends higher than fictional characters. And to bring up yet
another gendered aspect of this research, Cohen points out in

(29:23):
his study of basically anticipating the end of a series
that women who generally report stronger PSRs did not report
expecting higher levels of distress as the show was ending
in their relationships with these characters are ending, and he
says that that probably has something to do with the
fact that we're better able to cope with the end
of real life relationships slightly better than men anyway, well

(29:47):
and regardless of gender. The one thing that with all
of this information on para social breakups, great part about
shipping and once pre pairing in fandom and online fan
fiction and all these communities that exist is that you
never have to break up. Now you can simply dive
into these new worlds and create these new worlds and

(30:09):
new relationships. And and we also now have like more
accessibility to real life celebrities than ever before. And you
also have I bet there's some listeners who might be
familiar with the YouTube series The Lizzie Bennett Diaries, where
they did an incredible job of having social media updates

(30:29):
in real time as the show is going on. So
you felt like you knew these characters as people because
they're in your Twitter feeds making comments and people got,
you know, so into it. I think because of that
closer relationship they were able to form. Mhm. This is interesting.

(30:50):
It is interesting. I mean, it definitely made me think
about my media consumption differently. Yeah, it made me extra
thankful that I don't do much TV watching. Although you
know what, I will say this Sally, my mother, Sally
like goes she would be so embarrassed if she knew
I was saying this. She goes to the store every

(31:11):
Friday to pick up the new tabloid round um, and
when I go home for dinner or whatever, like, she'll
hand them off to me. And so that's the only
time I ever read tabloids is when Sally hands them
to me. And it's easy to get caught up in that,
Like as you're reading it, I'm like, oh, my god,
she's pregnant again, or like, oh, she looks so beautiful
in that design her gown, you know, like it's I

(31:33):
can see how it is very easy to get caught
up in in the celebrity worship. Yeah, I mean, And
since this is a podcast, I feel like I need
to admit my own paras social podcast relationships that I
have with the ones that I listened to on a
regular basis, Like Professor blast Off fans listen Tigna Taro
is like a friend to me in my head. I

(31:55):
wish I wish in my in my living room too. Well,
it's easy because you know, especially It's not like with
a lot of things like podcasts or whatever. It's not
like people are very formally talking about very formal things,
you know. It's it's like we're having a conversation right now,
and I'm sure people out there also feel included in
the conversation as we want you to. Yeah. I would

(32:18):
love for people to form paras social relationships with us,
yeah for sure. But I hope that this was entertaining.
I know that we covered a lot of territory, from
the fictional to the more celebrity focus stuff, but it
all ties together, and I don't know, to me, it
was it was nice to see how the world of fandom,

(32:41):
which we might think of as as sort of a
niche thing that we might not be that engaged with,
we all engage in some form of it. Yeah, we
all do. It's just the fact that I have ever
felt disappointed that a celebrity couple has broken up, Like
when I when I saw that Carrie Russell who okay
here here multi layered. I was obsessed with Felicity when

(33:03):
it was on TV, and I started rewatching it on
Netflix not too long ago. So I'm just like Carrie Russell,
I just freaking love you. I think she's adorable, and
then she gets married in real life and I think
her husband's all handsome and she's so pretty and they've
got this pretty kid. And then I hear that they're
getting a divorce and I'm like, no, Felicity, No, And

(33:25):
so well, because that probably ties back into the theory
of how, you know, we sort of live through them
a little bit. Yeah, and if they're at the top
of the social hierarchy and and we see them, you know,
not being able to quote unquote make it work, right,
then sure it can give us pause, like, well, that

(33:46):
can't If they can't be perfect, how can I be perfect?
But I don't think people should feel too bad about it,
you know, because it's kind of like just if you're
a freshman in high school looking at the seniors in
high school and their cool cars and their cool clothes,
and they get to do things, you know, they have
you know, cell phones or whatever whatever the kids have
these days, their snapchats, their snapchats and there roulettes and whatnot. Um,

(34:12):
it's kind of the same thing. It's just like, what
are the cool kids doing? Yeah? Yeah, well, I definitely
want to hear from listeners on this this this ring
bells for you who do you have a pair of
social relationship with Let us know. You can write to
us mom Stuff at Discovery dot com or just tweet
us at mom Stuff Podcast. You can always send us
a message over on Facebook. And we've got a couple

(34:35):
of messages to share with you now about our episode
on gender reveal parties. So I've got one here from Megan,
and she writes, I have attended a small party, but
I haven't hosted one. The one I went to had
no gifts involved in just an hour or so, a

(34:56):
fun chit chat and a delicious cake. If people want
to continue to have party like this in all caps,
she says, go for it. I don't have to bring
a gift, but I do get cake and get to
talk to people I mostly like. So sure, but I
have heard of these parties going a little overboard, and
I just can't stand behind that. I agree, if you're
going to have a shower, then that should be the

(35:17):
only time I should have to buy a gift for
your baby, And too many parties seems like too much work.
But I am a mom, so I have a different
point of view than you. Guys, might I like the
idea of this type of thing. It seems super fun
and I plan to do something similar when my husband
and I have another child. It wasn't something I knew
of when I had my daughter, and for me, and
like the party I went to, I will likely only
invite close family and friends, provide cake, and keep it short.

(35:39):
But I think sharing that moment when you find out
whether you're having a boy or a girl, it's kind
of sweet. Whether we have some kind of dyed cake,
or I sing or stuff balloons in a box, I
don't know, but most of these I've seen her pretty
cute and make for an adorable picture. To me, it
just seems like one of those things that if someone
wants to take the effort to do it, let them
have it, as long as they don't expect too much
of other people. So thanks Megan. You know, right after

(36:02):
we recorded that episode, I got on Facebook and a
friend of mine from college had posted pictures of her
gender revealed party, and I looked at the picture and
I was like, is this what I think it is?
Because it was a picture of a small white cake
and on it were two football helmets and one was
pink and one was blue and it said pink versus blue.
And then the next picture was the cut cake that

(36:23):
had pink cake inside of it. I was like, man,
Kristen and I are on the ball. We got our
fingers on the pulse. That's right, of something, of something.
The cake trends um well. This letter is from Jennifer.
She said, in November, I found out that not only

(36:44):
was I pregnant, but that I was twenty six weeks pregnant.
Three negative pregnancy tests, no weight gain, and very mild symptoms,
all of which could be put down to other things,
led me to believe I was going through early menopause.
I found out at a regular doctor's appointment. My husband
got off work or early that day and we got
an ultras down that afternoon. We had already had too
many surprises that day and decided not to find out

(37:06):
the gender at the time, so we were given a
sealed envelope. We wanted to keep the surprise for a while,
and we wanted to make sure not to get too
many gender specific clothes, toys, or decor for our child. However,
both of our mothers were really keen to know where
they whether they were getting a granddaughter or a grandson. Also,
answering the question got to be kind of an annoyance.
With the agreement of the friends who were throwing our

(37:27):
shower for us. In January twelve, we gave the envelope
to our cake maker another friend and had her do
a gender reveal cake for our baby shower. That way,
a lot of the gifts we would get would be
gender neutral, we wouldn't be having a second party that
people might think they were required to bring gifts for,
and we could answer the question and share our reaction
with an awful lot of people at once. Because our

(37:49):
mothers and extended families lived more than a thousand miles
away from us in opposite directions, they couldn't be there,
but we were able to have friends set up webcams
for live streaming so that everyone could share the info.
One cutting into that cake and pulling out the pink
slice was a wonderful moment for us to share with
our families and our extended chosen families. A k A friend,
I will say that I am a bit unsure about

(38:09):
making it a whole separate party, and very much of
the belief that it is crassed beyond acceptability to make
it a second expected gift giving event. So thank you, Jennifer.
I think your story is great and I'm glad you
got to share your special moment with people via webcam.
And thanks to everybody who's written in to us. Mom
Stuff at Discovery dot com is our email address and

(38:31):
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