Stuck on the Sidelines

During the Super Bowl, the only women on the football fields will be on the sidelines. Cristen and Caroline highlight historical landmarks of women in sports journalism and American football's troubling tradition of relegating women reporters to the sidelines to serve as on-camera "eye candy."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff mob never told you. From how Supports
dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline. And today, since the Super Bowl is
right around the corner, we're going to talk about women
sports reporters, and specifically we're focusing on football, Yes, American football.

(00:27):
Apologies to listeners outside the United States, but chances are, Caroline,
when we watched the Super Bowl, or if we watch
the Super Bowl, I probably will because I enjoy the
dips go along with it. The only women were going
to see on screen will be cheerleaders, female halftime performers.

(00:47):
I don't know at the moment who's performing, and if
it's not Beyonce, so why'm I'm not probably gonna just
change the channel. But the only other women will be
sideline reporters. Right. And the thing about sideline report, as
you would think that's great, right, getn't getting women into
sports reporting because women know just as much about sports
and care just as much about sports as guys do.

(01:08):
I mean, this is not a solely male domain. Yeah,
I mean, when we had our episode on female football
fans not too long ago, is well established there are
rabid female fans out there and a lot of them. Yeah,
and so these these female sideline reporters, they know their stuff,
and so that's that's a positive thing. Right, Well, they're

(01:30):
not necessarily, as we'll talk about, used correctly exactly. Um,
But first of all, let's establish that when it comes
to sports journalism, and yeah, we're narrowing in on this
sideline reporting issue since it's the Super Bowl, but when
it comes to women in sports journalism is tough out there.

(01:51):
For instance, we we got a couple of choice quotes
to kick things off. Sports broadcaster Frank Gifford once said
to Melissa lud Key, who is a very important woman
in the evolution of women in sports journalism, as we'll
get to, he once commented to her, you know a
lot of sports for a girl, and and to play

(02:16):
devil's advocate and give the bright side of that. Gifford
did invite lud Key to ABC where she met Billy
gene King. It's not like he just you know, craft
on her head. Yeah, but that was him be impressed
with with the knowledge. But then next thing, we have
Andy Rooney and he's more talking about the sideline reporters,

(02:39):
and I'm talking about Andy Rooney, the Late sixty Minutes
guy who said, the only thing that really bugs me
about television's coverage is those women they have down on
the sidelines who don't know what that they're talking about.
And he didn't say that in he said that in

(03:00):
two thousand five, and then I think it was last year.
Charles Barkley, who is now you know, professional basketball player
now turned commentator, equipped that if you are an ugly woman,
you're never going to get on television for sports reporting.
So there's just a mess of stuff happening. Yeah, and

(03:21):
and it starts with just the fact that generally sports
reporting is a pretty heavily male domain. You've got people
the top who are mail, people in the middle who
are mail, people to the bottom who are mail, all
hiring more male humans to do more of the sports reporting.
So there was a report on race and gender diversity
from the Institute for Diversity and Ethics and Sport that

(03:43):
found that among one hundred and fifty newspapers and websites,
nine four percent of sports editors were men and eight
point three percent of sports reporters were men. Yeah. Of
the eleven women who were sports editors, six of them
worked for ESPN, So that leaves just five out there
among one d and fifty newspapers and websites. And I

(04:07):
dug around and tried to find comparable statistics for sports broadcasting,
but wasn't able to get any hard data. I think
because sports broadcasting is even more overwhelmingly male, that the
line you just hear over and over again is anecdotally like,
I mean, just look at the faces on the screen.
It's always the tables full of those guys and those

(04:30):
massive suits. That's so big. Suits are so huge, and
I mean they're pretty big. Yeah, I mean a lot
of them are like x NFL players, but the shiny
ties and they've all got their bling rings from their
past wins. And it's just it's it's just guys talking.
It's a lot of guys talking until you get down
to halftime, when you have twenty seconds of the female

(04:55):
sideline reporter talking to a coach who would rather be
doing anything else. Yeah, And I'm wondering, you know, we
we we gave you those those two terrible quotes about
women in sports, and and I'm wondering if that attitude
that it's okay to continue to say things like that.
It's because maybe these men who are in these positions

(05:16):
of reporting or hiring reporters or whatever, um, they just
feel like it's comfortable, like like there aren't even any
women around, so I can just talk however I want.
I think it might be some of that. I think
it's also just the culture of sport and the hyper
masculinity that often goes along with that, especially since we're
talking about professional football, which I say is probably the

(05:39):
worst out of all of them. Um. And so today
there's this problem for women who are sports journalists who
really want to be reporting on sports and be calling
games and analyzing games, and there's this desire for credibility
in a market that really just wants I Candy, or

(06:03):
at least just downplays them to just being I candy.
Oh well, yeah, like Brent Musburger, who in January about
a year ago called Holly Row sports reporter smoking. Yeah.
I mean then right after ESPN was like no, no, no,
no no. He said that the the sporting event she

(06:25):
was kind of reporting on was smoking. But Musburger was
not helping himself out because he had previously gotten a
wrist lap for ogling a college quarterbacks girlfriend for an
extended period of time during the BCS Championship, wouldn't shut up, like,
wouldn't stop talking about her, even to the point where

(06:46):
he's like, hey, little boys out there watching TV, you
better go play with the pigskin in the backyard dad,
so that you can get a girlfriend like that. Yeah,
Or it's just like can we talk about football? Can
we talk about some football? Um? So there was a
study though, driving this point home. There was a study
female sports Journalists, Are We There Yet No? Published in

(07:07):
two thousand five by Marie Harden and Stacy Shane, which
found of women working in sports journalism, this is not
just the sideline reporting type of stuff. This is sports
journalism on the whole feel as though they're not seen
as equals because of their gender. And Rachel Nichols, who's
a CNN sports reporter said just kind of backed us up.

(07:29):
She said, when I meet players for the first time,
they can be a bit guarded right off the bat,
based too, you don't know what you're talking about. It's
harder to get the story sometimes. And speaking of harder
to get the story sometimes, just researching. Doing basic research
for this podcast was a little bit challenging off the
bat because when you look up women's sideline reporters. You

(07:51):
know what Google gives you. It gives you about a
million galleries of the hottest sideline reporters sexiest sex spots
on the football field. For instance, there is one of
I'm sure many over a bleacher report written by Zach
Pomerantz who said, quote, whether they possess impeccable journalistic skills

(08:14):
or look amazing in a tight skirt, these broadcast beauties
are all ready to instill chaos on camera. Well, it
makes me sad because already it's you know, women are
being told, you know, you're not wanted, You're not welcome here.
You know, this is this is a safe space for men,

(08:36):
and we're going to talk about you however we want,
you know, And it's it's I think that much more
impressive for the women who have broken through. Do have
that credibility, Are you know, able to call games, whether
you know, in any sport? I think it's not much
more impressive that they've broken through and become successful. Yeah.

(08:56):
But at the same time too, with that success, they
also have to deal with being pitted against women who
have been hired by broadcast network specifically for how they look.
You know. I mean, if you think about football and
the fact that who's on the field who are women,

(09:16):
it's cheerleaders, and then sometimes these women who also are
doing Playboy spreads, it's it's like setting it's setting us
up for for this kind of problem. Um. But the
the history though of women in the sideline reporting is
kind of fascinating, and a lot of this is coming
from an article in the Washington Post and also the

(09:39):
study the Credibility of Female Sports Broadcasters by Amantha Gunther,
Daniel Cowts, and Alison Roth, who note that in the
nineteen thirties and forties, a woman named Mrs Harry Johnson
just a fact that we don't even ever first time
and I searched for it and it is lost to history.
She's just necessary. Johnson was a sports commentator during her husband,

(10:04):
Harry Johnson, we can only assume, during his broadcast for
Central States Broadcasting in Omaha, Nebraska. And she's considered kind
of the first female sports broadcaster. Mrs Harry john Oh,
Mrs Harry um been in the mid sixties. You have
Jane Chastain, who became the first woman to conduct play

(10:25):
by play coverage of a live sporting event. In Miami.
But in the nineteen seventies, that's when stuff really starts happening,
because in nineteen seventy two you have, for instance, a
passage of Title nine. And also around this time you
have The New York Times in Washington Post being hit
by gender discrimination class action suits and being legally forced

(10:46):
to bring on their first female sports writers as a result.
And so then in nineteen seventy four, CBS brings on
the same Jane Chastain as the first female NFL announcer
and Leslie Vissi as the first female sideline reporter. And
Leslie Vissi is a huge pioneer, should have a ton

(11:09):
of first in terms of NFL reporting, and she's considered
one of the legends. Yeah. Well, then right away you've
got the that back and forth between do we hire
someone who knows her stuff or do we just hire
someone who's pretty. Not that you can't have both, but
there is that dividing line there. Uh In, CBS hires

(11:31):
former Miss USA Phyllis George as a sportscaster as part
of this new trend to hire former beauty queens and
cover girls. Yeah, I mean that also reminds me this
is a total stuff. I've never told you, Tangent, but
it reminds me of in our episode on Barbara Walters
when she got her slot on the Today Show. And
I don't have the year in front of me, but

(11:53):
how notable it was that she got that role on
camera because before that it had all been beauty queens,
because actresses and just people who were there to be
a pretty face. Yeah, I mean, because these networks are
being run by guys who you know, assumed that that's
what the consumer wants to see right on the TV um.

(12:14):
But then in nineteen seven we have a big event.
This is when Melissa lud Key, the woman who was
told that, you know, a lot of sports for a girl.
She was working for Sports Illustrated and her the publisher
Sports Illustrated Time, Inc. Sued Major League Baseball for not
allowing her to enter into male locker rooms, and the

(12:39):
Major League Baseball commissioner at the time said, well, we
haven't been able to pull players wives about whether that
would be appropriate, so lud Key can't come in. Well,
also that he was saying that their children, these players
children would be made fun of at school. I have
no idea, but lud Key one. Yeah, probably because that's
sort of a laughable defense. Um, but she won, and

(13:01):
this was this was a huge deal at the time.
And uh, a lot of these professional sports teams would
bully and I mean, the sad thing is this did
not stop in the seventies, but these teams would bully
women and also put like a sexual spin on it,
saying that, well, women wouldn't be able to handle it
if they went into locker rooms, because that's when men are,

(13:23):
you know, in various states of undressed, and it's just
you know, oh, they wouldn't be able to contain themselves.
Whereas these sports writers like lead here saying, seriously, I
don't want to have to go into a locker room.
It's disgusting and smelling in there, But this is part
of my job. It's like, if if you want to
scoop somebody or get a hit a deadline, you gotta

(13:44):
be in there right after the game. Yeah. Well, there
were a lot of instances of like team managers and
people saying, fine, nobody can come into the locker rooms
at all. And so then you have that that heated,
that anger between the male reporters and the female reporters
being like well, you've screwed us all and it's you know,
just simply to keep women out of out of locker rooms.
And the following year, in nine, we have another milestone

(14:07):
with Jane Kennedy, who replaces Phillis George, becoming the first
African American woman to host a network sports TV broadcast. Um,
but Kennedy was another one of the pretty faces. I
think she also ended up becoming the first African American
woman to be on the cover of Playboy, for instance.

(14:27):
So it's still that kind of trend happening, and I
hate that because that's a it's a great first in
a way with the you know, the first black woman
to be doing the sports broadcasting, but then it's only
continuing this I candy factor. Yeah, I mean, I think
it's I just don't like that from the get go,

(14:49):
the sexiness has to be paired with the woman being
a sports reporter, like from the very beginning that those
two things go hand in hand. Yeah, m there was
The NFL did bring on one female announcer at the
end of the seven season. Gayl Syrians called a Chiefs

(15:10):
Seahawks game for NBC, and when The Washington Post published
this article, I think it was in two thousand nine
all about its legacy of women being relegated to the sidelines.
The NFL stock response that they gave was quote, the
NFL network certainly will consider these and other female broadcasters

(15:30):
for future play by play roles based on their interests
and opportunities to do play by play on the NFL network,
which at this point is very limited, Which basically says
it just shut up and let us play football. You know,
we don't really care. Well, as Kristen said, the harassment
that these women reporters faced was not limited just to

(15:51):
the seventies. In the nineteen nineties, we have sports writer
Lisa Olsen who ended up becoming so fed up with
player harassment, particularly from a New England Patriots players, she
eventually left for Australia. And that harassment was a result basically,
you know, she had she had been subjected to some
pretty horrible stuff in the locker rooms, she sued. The

(16:13):
Patriots were fined and individual players were fined also, and
the fans just like couldn't handle it. They The harassment
that she ended up facing resulted in her moving to
a different continent. So that wasn't too long ago, Caroline
in the nineteen nineties, and as we move into the
situation for women's sports reporters and especially female football announcers today,

(16:40):
things have changed and yet they haven't changed so much.
And we will get into that when we come right
back from a quick break and now back to the show.
It's funny how some have said, well, you know, we
have all these women being allowed into male locker rooms,
but what if a male sports writer and to go

(17:00):
into female locker rooms, to which one female sportswriter once quipped, well,
we would love for you to come into women's locker rooms.
But the problem is that, you know, women's sports are
often also relegated to the sidelines in a way because
people typically don't care about them nearly as much as

(17:21):
they do men's professional sports. Come onto the locker room,
come on, come on in and interview our players about
the sports that they just participated in. The Please talk
to us about athletics. Um so, again and again and again,
we have this issue of women sports reporters when it
comes to football, especially being stuck in these sideline roles

(17:45):
where you have the conundrum of the credibility versus the
eye candy. You have some people asking whether or not
they should even be there, whether sideline reporters have any
value whatsoever, and whether or not women are ever going
to be able to get up into the announcer booth.
And Lori Orlando, who is a senior vice president for ESPN,

(18:07):
said to Washington Post, quote, women have historically moved towards
sideline reporters because that's what has been acceptable. The industry
is changing, and of course this tool will change. That
wasn't two thousand nine. Nothing has changed. Yeah, nothing has changed.
And and you know, her quote is so nice to read,

(18:28):
but it's it's you know, we've people have talked about this,
the issue just solely of sideline reporters, women sideline reporters
since there have been sideline reporters, and really not much
has changed. People still look to those reporters as being
just eye candy. Yeah. Um. It was interesting to Pam Ward,

(18:52):
who has been an ESPN sideline reporters since two thousand,
very well respected in her field, said quote, more than
of women who asked me for career advice want to
do sidelines because that's what they see as possible. They
see it as a female role. And she almost feels
bad for encouraging them so much to get into sideline

(19:14):
reporting because she realizes experientially that that's the ceiling a
lot of times. Yeah, it's it's unfortunate, like to picture,
you know, women being funneled. They're going up the funnel
from college into their careers and they just sort of
like go to the side, like literally in this case,
sideline reporters instead of continuing up the pipe into the

(19:35):
more coveted sports reporting positions. Yeah. I mean, and someone
like Andrea Kramer, who, like pay Word, is a very
well respected football reporter. She argues that there is a
value in sideline reporting because of all the action going
on on the field. But if you know your stuff,
if you have institutional knowledge of a team, that you

(19:57):
really can ask the right questions and really be able
to inform the commentators, the play by play callers in
the booth of what's going on on the field and
whether or not momentum is changing. But I mean, she's
having to argue against a lot of people who are
saying that the job really isn't necessary because a lot
of times sidebutin reporters are given what three thirty second

(20:21):
slots one in the first half, one in the second half,
and one at halftime when they're like chasing down a
coach who's not going to say anything to them, right,
and so what your only question is like, hey, coach,
what are you planning for the second half? And he's like,
keep winning or try to score more points. Yeah, I
can see how you. And I mean I as someone

(20:43):
who really does not watch football. When I do watch football,
those sideline reports are cringe inducing and I hate it
because I'm like, Oh, she's just this beautiful woman and
like a really beautiful jacket, and they're just putting her
down there to fail. And I mean, I think, you know,
Kramer and others argue that sideline reporters are very valuable because,

(21:04):
like you said, Kristen, if you know your stuff, if
you're able to read lips and you know, kind of
observe what's going on and funnel that knowledge up to
the booth, then you're earning your keep. But I would
have to then agree with other people's assessment that like,
if you're not even allowed to do that, if you're
just hired because you're pretty faced and you don't have

(21:24):
that knowledge of the game of the team of what's
going on. If you don't even know the right questions
to ask, then you're set up to fail and you're
not going to be contributing the way that people would
like to see. Well. Unfortunately, it also makes all of
those more earnest sports reporters look bad in a way.
Not that attractiveness and uh an in depth sports knowledge

(21:46):
is mutually exclusive at all, but this is something that
Isabel Markham, who is an aspiring sports reporter, was writing
about over the Daily Beast and she called it the
beauty Premium and said that it's aspired its damage excuse
me to aspiring sports reporters like her. And when she
interviewed espn W reporter Jane McManus, um mcmah has made

(22:10):
a really interesting point which was quote, it's definitely a
job that pits two different kinds of journalists against each other,
and that does not happen to men in our industry.
Basically the the I candy versus the more hard nosed,
credible journalist. Yeah. I feel like with men, there doesn't
have to be that the dividing line. It's like, well,

(22:32):
you're a man, so you know football and so. And
that's another thing that these reporters are coming up against,
which I think we we kind of highlighted earlier with
that quote as far as just like you just look
at me and I'm a woman and he's a man,
and you just automatically assume that he knows more than
I do. You know, when you might have a mediocre
male sports reporter and a fantastic educated in the no

(22:53):
female reporter and she's just not going to get the
same scoops sometimes that her male colleague would get. Right,
And then in terms two of the beauty premium for
women in broadcasting, I mean, unfortunately, this is a snapshot
of the broader fact of the matter where yeah, I mean,
prettier faces for women are often going to get jobs

(23:16):
more often. Because when that Musburger thing happened where he
called Holly Row smoking, so many jokes were made about like, well,
Musburger certainly isn't smoking. Look at all of these men
calling the the plays in the booth that we're having
to see their faces and it's not like they're on
the covers of g Q. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And

(23:37):
then we have the issue of the fact that there's
just very little racial diversity as well. Um, this is
coming from a study called on the Sidelines, Sex and
Racial Segregation and Television Sports Broadcasting, and they point out
that people of color are not gonna really be in
the booth either. They said they're most likely to be
found doing competition level reporting followed by studio analysis. They're

(24:00):
less likely to work as play by play announcers. Well,
there is one analog to the issue for female sports
reporters of the looks versus the credibility issue that was
actually brought up in the comments section of that Daily
Beast piece by Isabel Markham, which is that now you're
seeing more and more ex professional players automatically being moved

(24:22):
into those massive suits and calling games and not necessarily
being so good at it. So some would say, well,
you're seeing the same thing. It's these it's these like
huge dudes who are just being given jobs by virtue
though of their actual experience on the field. I don't
feel like it's a valid argument, and it's still part
of the system. Yeah, and by the system, I mean

(24:43):
like the capital s system. So yeah, that's not not equitable.
And this might seem like a frivolous issue to spend
an entire podcast episode talking about but if there's one
thing that comes up over and over and over again,
whether it's something like women in sideline reporting or women
in stem vincibility makes a big difference, you know for sure.

(25:08):
And there are there are some big names that that
we should talk about as far as women who have
played a big role in sports reporting. UM. One is
Mary Carrillo, who will be serving as an Olympic correspondent
for the upcoming Winter Olympics in so She but she's
a former tenant pro tennis player who did an incredible

(25:29):
job as a tennis analyst. She was actually named tennis's
top analyst by Sports Illustrated. She's won two Peabody Awards
for her work on sports documentaries looking at women's participation. UM,
I mean, you know, she she has made quite a mark. Yeah.
I feel like tennis is one of the rare exceptions
in pro sports where you are a lot more likely

(25:51):
to see Mary Carrillo, Billy Jane King women commentating. And
I'm not exactly sure why that is. Maybe it's because
they're maybe men and women have more of an equal
playing field with tennis. Maybe because of Billy jen King
winning the Battle of the Sexes against Bobby Riggs and
proving that women, you know, have their stake in that game.
I don't know, but I would argue that tennis is

(26:12):
completely devoid of the culture that surrounds football. Like there's
no I mean, I don't when I when you say
picture tennis fan, I don't immediately picture a man necessarily.
I mean, I just picture someone wearing white. Try to
picture a Wimbledon dip, you know, Wimbledon wings. Sure, yeah, no, no,

(26:35):
but I mean wings. I picture wings and I am happy.
But no, I mean, yeah, it's it's it's not that same.
But also you have to think about, like I feel
like football is like this American macho, stereotypical, dude like
kind of culture around it, whereas tennis it's all over
the world. It's men and women playing. You know, it's

(26:58):
it's just you can it's apples to orange almost and
so well, it's fantastic that tennis has more female commentators
and announcers and all that stuff. Um, it's not the same. Yeah,
it's not necessarily as impactful, at least speaking to you know,
American audiences for girls who might want to be sports journalists.

(27:20):
You know, I mean, it's like the quote from Pam
Worde where like all of the women she talks to,
or of them at least aspire to be sideline reporters
as as good as it gets, it's like, no, think bigger,
I think bigger. Well because in a lot of ways too,
I mean, football is such, uh, you know, one of
the last bastions of just like exclusively like men stuff.

(27:43):
You know, you don't have female football teams. You night
have like I mean, you have cheerleaders on the field
and that's it. So and and the laing Arree League
which doesn't count. But for that reason though, it is
great to have role models like a LA's Leavis or
who we mentioned earlier, who was the first female beat
reporter to cover the NFL, the first female member of

(28:06):
the Monday Night football announcing team, the first woman's sportscaster
to preside over the post Super Bowl presentations being of
Super Bowls, of the events Lombardi Trophy, and even the
first female sportscaster took carry the Olympic Torch. What hasn't
she done because she actually is one of the rare
women who has called an NFL game. Leslie, Leslie, I know,

(28:30):
and then you know we mentioned Andrea Kramer earlier, and
she uh is actually working with the NFL network focusing
on player health and safety issues, and she's worked on
more than twenty Super Bowls. Yeah, it's a lot of
Super Bowls. I remember growing up watching Robin Roberts, who
is a lot better known now for working I believe,
with Good Morning America, but she got her start on

(28:53):
Sports Center that I used to watch back in the
day with my brother. I always enjoyed to the women
on Sports Center. Robin Roberts had what was her catchphrase?
It was something like, go on with your bad self. Yeah. Yeah, anyway, Well,
then you also have Hannah Storm. She's the first woman
to buy herself host a national show for the Major

(29:16):
League Baseball from thousand. She's with ESPN SportsCenter now, but
she's covered the NFL, NBA, and Wimbledon. Yeah, I mean.
And the thing too about this is that even though
we've talked over and over again about football, specifically American football,
this is not just an issue with football. If you
watch an n C double a basketball game, if you

(29:38):
watch the Master's golf tournament, if you watch NASCAR, if
you watch baseball, you know, if even if you watch
soccer or football, depending on where you were listening to
this podcast, it's still overwhelmingly men who are who are
calling the game. And you also too with European football
you have the sexy sideline reporters as all. Yeah, so

(30:02):
I mean, I think you know, we we can hammer
it over your head. So we've talked about it before.
But just visibility, visibility of visibility. I mean getting girls,
little girls to dream bigger and and aspire to be
the sports editor, the one who does the hiring, the
one who goes out there and gets all the stories

(30:22):
and something to watch out for, aside from the commercials
in the Super Bowl. So, female sports fans, especially when
I hear from you, I mean, what do you think
about this sideline reporter issues? It frustrating to see women
always relegated to the side. Is it frustrating to see
women obviously maybe being on camera because they are very pretty?

(30:44):
I mean a lot of them are very attractive, great hair,
great hair. I love their jacket and I said, oh man,
and then also getting hit in the head sometimes by
football's tough out there. Tough out there. Yeah, So email
us mom stuff at Discovery dot com. You can also
tweet a some mom stuff podcast or messages over on Facebook,
and we've got a couple of messages to share with

(31:05):
you right now. Well, I've got a Facebook message here
from Laura in response to episode on women and Hunting,
and she lives in central Wisconsin, a place, she says
where deer hunting is of the utmost importance to most people. Seriously,
I almost typed something that most people live for here rights.

(31:27):
Here are a few things that you might find interesting,
by which I mean problematic. Number One, in my middle
and high school, parents could sign permission slips that would
allow their child to miss school during the first part
of the gun deer season, and many of them did.
Attendance was often so low during those days that those
of us that did attend got to watch movies. Number Two,
there's widow's weekend, which is a term used widely by

(31:50):
most people in the media to describe the first weekend
of the gun dear season, when women will go shopping,
or go to the spa, or do other girly things
because their men are out hunting. And the number three
one of the things you didn't really touch on in
your podcast is the fact that many women participate in
hunting as a way to bond with the males in
their lives father's, brothers, boyfriends, etcetera. Some women genuinely love

(32:11):
these interactions. However, some women and girls will pretend to
be more into hunting than they actually are because they
think it makes them a cool girl slash wife slash daughter.
When I was a teenager, many couples went deer shining,
which is when you drive around with a large light
and try to spot deer as a date. I'm not
sure how many of the women actually thought this was romantic,

(32:31):
but it was definitely a pervasive part of the teenage
dating culture in my small town. So thanks for those insights, Laura.
Deer shining. I can't say that I would have been
really interested in that, but I went mud dogg and
in my youth, mud dog it's when it's very dangerous.
It's when you go into the woods and preferably a

(32:53):
truck after it's rained, and there's a lot of mud,
and you drive recklessly through the mud to splash around. Children.
Don't go mud dogging, Oh, it's just you make mud
splash with cars. Fun, Yeah, mud splash. Um. Well, I
have a letter here from David about our crafting episode.
Um I guess episodes plural, He says. I am a

(33:13):
gentleman with a degree in fiber and it was always
fascinating having conversations about making work using quote women's work
as my medium. I grew up loving cross stitching and
all kinds of crafts, and I was stoked to find
out I could major in it in art school. Since then,
I have made my living as a puppet maker, prop designer,
and installation artist. I am mostly contacting you, though, to

(33:35):
introduce you to the work of ben Venom, who does
this beautiful but almost cartoonishly masculine type of quilt at
ben venom dot com. So thank you for your letter, David. Yeah,
and definitely check out ben Venom's work. It's uh they're
extreme quilts, I'll put it that way. Uh. So thanks
to everybody who's written into us again. Mom Stuff at

(33:56):
Discovery dot com is our email address, and if you
want to find out all the different places we are
on social and also check out every single one of
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and you should go there right now and many times after.
It's Stuff Mom Never Told You dot com For more

(34:18):
on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how
stuff works dot com