June 18, 2012 • 16 mins
Lifeguards work at pools and coasts around the world, but where do they come from? In this episode, Caroline and Cristen dive into the world of lifeguards, from the history of lifeguarding to discrimination, the global impact of 'Baywatch' and more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom never told you?
From house stuff works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcasts. I'm Christens and I'm Caroline, and you're in
(00:21):
for another edition of Summer Shorts where we talked about
some summary related topics that might not warrant a full
length episode, and today we're talking about lifeguards. And I'll
offer you a quick anecdote. Okay, I almost drowned as
a child often, No, there was really only one time
(00:42):
that I can think of. I was probably four, maybe
five years old, and we were swimming out at this um.
It was called Sandy Creek, but it was like almost
like a water front, you know, and they had a
beach area roped off in a shallow area that I
(01:02):
was supposed to stay in because I was the baby.
And I remember seeing my older siblings swimming farther out
in the deep end. So what did I do. I
wanted to play with them, so I just started walking
and I remember all of a sudden like walking, walking, walking,
and next thing I knew I was underwater and I
couldn't touch the floor. And I remember trying to yell
(01:25):
for my mom, and I'm sure there was a lifeguard
on or multiple lifeguards on duty, but it was my
mom the lifeguard who saved me. Yeah, because kids often
drown quietly and quickly. So it's a good thing to
your mother. And that's the end of this episode. No,
(01:45):
it is true that a lot of times we think
that lifeguards can spot drowning swimmers because they'll send up
on some kind of distress signal, but a lot of
times it really is, you know, you're handicapped under water.
So thank goodness for lifeguards. Because once swimming, which you've
(02:05):
been known as bathing, became more popular as a recreational
activity in the US in the eighteen hundreds, people started drowning. Yeah, nobody, actually,
no one had ever drowned before um And by the
early twentieth century, as many as nine thousand people were
drowning each year in the US. So that's a lot
of people who are taken up swimming as a fun
(02:28):
recreational activity, but who were not properly educated on how
to safely swim well. And at first they thought that
on these large public beaches like you had out at
Atlantic City, that maybe something like a lifeline that they
could extend across um certain areas of the water could
save people because if you're in distress, you can just
(02:51):
just swim over to it. But then they quickly realized like, oh, wait,
if you're drowning, you can't really swim over, because you
could swim you wouldn't be drowning. Yes, and yeah, this
is the time when they came up with the rescue board. Also,
because the whole theory about saving people was that actually
jumping in the water and performing a water rescue was
the last resort because you didn't want to go down
(03:11):
flailing with the panicked drowning person. Yeah, and that rescue
board was invented in nineteen ten, and two years later
it was the y m c A, in fact, that
developed a volunteer National Life Saving Service because initially um
some cities were using police officers for water rescues. But
(03:33):
they're like, hey, this is diverting law enforcement reef sources
for the rest of the city, and so some beaches
started hiring people specifically trained for water rescue, and then
it grew with the y m c A and these
volunteer services, and then in nineteen fourteen, the American Red
Cross followed up with Commodore Wilbert E. Longfellow, establishing its
(03:56):
Life Saving Corps, which trained swimmers across the US in
life saving and resuscitation. Yeah, moving up closer to now,
but only slightly. UH. In nineteen sixty four, the United
States Life Saving Association was formed by members of several
California surf lifeguard agencies. And now that is actually open
to basically anyone who's a lifeguard. And it wasn't until
(04:18):
to night six that the y m c A and
the Red Cross both developed standardized lifeguard trainings for people
across the country. UM and as a result, we mentioned
that in the early twentieth century, there were about nine
thousand people drowning each year in the U s. And
that's probably specifically at those popular beaches like Atlantic City.
(04:42):
And according to the c d C that number, even
though there are far more people who swim recreationally now,
the number of drownings per year is about still four
thousand people every year. But statistically, if you think about
how many more people swim compared to how many fewer
(05:03):
people are drowning, it speaks to um the service that
lifeguards due for US and UM. There was a report
on lifeguard effectiveness from the CDC which cited an estimate
that your chance of drowning at a beach protected by
lifeguards can be less than one in eighteen million. Yeah,
(05:23):
and lifeguards actually are doing their jobs because they end
up saving more than a hundred thousand people from drowning
each year. And I would like to know too, if
you heaped onto that the number of mothers who saved.
They're drowning Christian's per year, They're drowning Kristens, They're an
expand name. There's so many, so many rescues going on.
(05:44):
But of course, since we're talking about well anything that
we talked about on the podcast, let's talk about women
and lifeguarding. We were not able to find any kind
of statistical breakdown of male versus female lifeguards. But in
the Los Angeles County in particular, there have been some
(06:05):
issues with gender discrimination on the beaches. Yeah, this article,
it's a little dated, but it still is interesting and
it still raises some valid points. This is the l
A Times article about gender discrimination and lifeguarding, and they
point out that before nineteen seventy three, no women had
worked as ocean lifeguards in Los Angeles County, and it
(06:25):
was that year that Kai Noel and Wendy Paskin were
hired as the first lady lifeguards. And they point out
that in the late eighties, as we move forward, the
county actually changed its qualifying standards to encourage more women
and minorities to seek lifeguarding jobs. And while this did
encourage more people to you know, apply for the job
(06:46):
and get the job, they then had to face on
top of discrimination and harassment, then they had to face
the whole attitude of well, you wouldn't be here if
it weren't for that quota system. And the thing about
these women too, is that they were supreme athletes. A
lot of these women were all star swimmers, some compete
(07:07):
in the Olympics somewhere like in the Olympic trials. These
ladies were no joke. But nevertheless they still had to
deal with things such as not having proper bathrooms or
changing facilities. And of course you can assume and you
probably assumed right. They they cite male colleagues sexual references
about women, harassment and jokes from men on the beach,
(07:29):
and interestingly, apparently they they had to deal with struggling
male swimmers who refused female lifeguards aid and those male
swimmers who also refused to heed their warnings just because
they were women. Now, that story that we're talking about
is from nine two. But then in California as well.
November eleven, a California jury awarded standingo lifeguard all Cent
(07:54):
Terry a hundred thousand dollars after unanimously deciding that the
city's lifeguard service discriminated against women by discouraging their promotions.
And this took over five years of litigation, which Terry
said completely exhausted her mentally and emotionally, and she lost
a lot of friends because of it because she had
to drag all these male lifeguard colleagues kind of down
(08:15):
with her in a way. Yeah. She was actually the
fifth female lifeguard to sue the city for gender discrimination
and the first to win. She ended up resigning in
two thousand nine just out of pure frustration, and finally
wasn't until twenty eleven that she finally one. But the
trial exposed some interesting things, one of which is that
only six out of the ninety four full time lifeguard
(08:36):
positions were held by women at the time. That's six
point four percent. However, seven percent of the seasonal lifeguards,
those who earn an hourly wage and receive fewer benefits,
were women. So it doesn't sound like it's really about ability.
It sounds like, you know, women are doing the job.
It's just that they weren't giving those full time benefits
paying jobs to women. Yeah, and Ali sin Terry also
(08:58):
alleged that, uh, this city was actually setting up false
roadblocks for women who wanted to take the different courses
certification courses needed to climb the ranks. Um. For instance,
there was a personal watercraft certificate that you would have
to earn in order to be promoted. And she said
that any time that she would want to go out
(09:20):
and like schedule her certification course, for some reason, the
watercraft would be mysteriously being used or something like that,
Like she was never able to get in, even though
she knew full well that there would be times when
it was available for her to do so. Whereas these
real life, real world female California lifeguards, some of which
(09:42):
we've sided, not all of them, of course, but some
of them have historically cited some gender discrimination that's gone
on on the beaches. While all this is going on,
we have the rise of a TV phenomenon that we
would be remiss to not mention, and that created an
entirely different portrayal of female lifeguards on California beaches. By that,
(10:08):
I'm talking about Baywatch. Yeah. Baywatch has been credited with
everything from encouraging young women giving them role models to
providing reason for harassment of American travelers overseas. Yes, Baywatch,
and this is because Baywatch is actually one of the
most successful television shows in television history. By the time
(10:32):
it was in its tenth season, it was syndicated around
the world. It had over a billion viewers every week.
That's billion with a bee in a hundred and forty
different countries, translated into thirty three languages. It's one of
those shows that was kind of a flop in the
US and just took off an international syndication, which we
(10:53):
see a lot too. We talked about um a long
time ago in our episode about soap operas well. It
did have David Hasselhoff, yes, who became very popular in Germany.
UM Well. The La Times had an article in two
thousand written by Susan Spano. She talked to author Robert
Young Pelton, who had written a book about basically dangerous
(11:13):
travel situations that women find themselves in, and he connected
harassment of American women travelers with Baywatches syndication because there's
this perception of American women apparently not only because of
the show, he points out, but because of other movies
and media, but as like they're all blond and rich
and beach babes and you know, and wearing high cut
(11:35):
bikinis and or not or one pieces. It was the
one pieces right exactly, which so incredibly high cut. Um, yeah,
well it was. It's funny though that this is brought
up because Esquire did this huge oral history of Baywatch,
and Alexandra Paul, who was on the show from two
to nine seven, argued that are showed it a lot
(11:57):
of good things, especially in places like China or Iran,
where people saw women wearing bathing suits, and it was
okay to me in a way. Culturally, we did a
lot of good I think people don't give us credit
for that, and I will say I try to do
some scholarly, scholarly research on the global cultural impact of
(12:20):
bay Watch and whether or not it did seeing those
those tan and toned thighs of Pamela Anderson and the
rest did something for women, and I didn't find a
lot of supporting evidence, but apparently this one travel writer
thinks that it's uh on the downside. The reason why
it might be endangered right. Well, one of the people
(12:43):
in that Eskbuire interview was Gary Cole, the director of
photography at Playboy, and he was talking about what kind
of woman the show was looking for looking to cast,
and he says that the show was looking for an
outdoor girl, all natural, all American. You had to be
able to run down the beach fast, and the girl
obviously had to have breast large enough to move the
right way under those bathing suits. But so he's saying
(13:04):
all all natural, all American. But according to casting director
Susan Glickman, she said it varied from character to character,
but they were like, find us somebody who's sexy. So yeah,
no one. But for both the male and female actors
on the show, written in their contract was a clause.
This is according to that oral history on Esquire, that
(13:25):
no one was allowed to gain weight, even hasslehof I bet, yeah,
you know, you gotta stay trim on the beaches of Baywatch. Uh,
so it's kind of it's kind of weird to think
of the the contrast between the real world sort of
battles on the beaches and this strange thing that is Baywatch,
(13:49):
which might seem like a relic of a bygone cultural
era here and now. But I wonder too for international listeners,
uh is does Baywatch still come on all the time?
Is it kind of like how, I don't know, what's
the show that's always in syndication. It's like Frasier here,
Frazier is always Frasier is always on somewhere, and has
(14:10):
it shaped your perception of American lifeguards? Frasier Frasier certainly
has um So, so that's what we've got for you
on lifeguards. That's the long and the short of it
for this summer short and lifeguards out there, especially female lifeguards,
have you encountered, you know, male people, male people, guys
(14:33):
who are struggling, who don't want to be rescued by you,
any kind of impediments to climbing up the lifeguarding ladder.
Because there is an annual all women lifeguard tournament sponsored
by the National Park Service that I was reading about,
and the challenges that you have to go through are intense. Yeah,
this year, it's in July and July there's like ten
(14:54):
different challenges and they involve lots of paddling and running
and swimming and being way more athletic than I am.
It's like Iron Woman. I now imagine female lifeguards as
Iron Women, all of them bionic, and I still can't
swim very well. So with that, email us your thoughts. Mom.
Stuff at Discovery dot com is where you can send
(15:16):
us your letters. And in the meantime, we've got one
here about our episode on women and Archaeology. Yes, this
is from Jessica. She says, I just finished listening to
your Women in Archaeology episode and loved it. You mentioned
the Indiana Jones effect a few times and lamented that
there was no female equivalent. However, I think that Elizabeth
Peter's Amelia Peabody Mystery series is just that Amelia is
(15:39):
an English lady of independent means in the late nineteenth
century that becomes an Egyptologist. She's brilliant, self confident, and
always very practical. It's a great series, and after reading
it in high school, I too wanted to become an archaeologist.
In the end, I decided not to go into that
field when I found out that it involved a lot
of sorting pot shards in museum basements, and eventually I
found the wildlife by all g was much more my speed. Still,
(16:02):
it's a great series about a woman who can hold
her own against murderers and her male colleagues alike. And
I have to point out that there is who's that
character in that Rachel Vice plays and the money she's
she's an archaeologist, right, Yeah? But she was? Yeah? Isn't
that also starts Brendan Fraser. Uh So, Yes. Mom Stuff
(16:22):
at Discovery dot com is our email address. You can
also find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter
at Mom's Stuff podcast. And if you would like more
information on how to have fun in the sun safely
this summer, that on over to our website. It's how
stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
(16:43):
of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com
brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom never told you?
From house stuff works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcasts. I'm Christens and I'm Caroline, and you're in
(00:21):
for another edition of Summer Shorts where we talked about
some summary related topics that might not warrant a full
length episode, and today we're talking about lifeguards. And I'll
offer you a quick anecdote. Okay, I almost drowned as
a child often, No, there was really only one time
(00:42):
that I can think of. I was probably four, maybe
five years old, and we were swimming out at this um.
It was called Sandy Creek, but it was like almost
like a water front, you know, and they had a
beach area roped off in a shallow area that I
(01:02):
was supposed to stay in because I was the baby.
And I remember seeing my older siblings swimming farther out
in the deep end. So what did I do. I
wanted to play with them, so I just started walking
and I remember all of a sudden like walking, walking, walking,
and next thing I knew I was underwater and I
couldn't touch the floor. And I remember trying to yell
(01:25):
for my mom, and I'm sure there was a lifeguard
on or multiple lifeguards on duty, but it was my
mom the lifeguard who saved me. Yeah, because kids often
drown quietly and quickly. So it's a good thing to
your mother. And that's the end of this episode. No,
(01:45):
it is true that a lot of times we think
that lifeguards can spot drowning swimmers because they'll send up
on some kind of distress signal, but a lot of
times it really is, you know, you're handicapped under water.
So thank goodness for lifeguards. Because once swimming, which you've
(02:05):
been known as bathing, became more popular as a recreational
activity in the US in the eighteen hundreds, people started drowning. Yeah, nobody, actually,
no one had ever drowned before um And by the
early twentieth century, as many as nine thousand people were
drowning each year in the US. So that's a lot
of people who are taken up swimming as a fun
(02:28):
recreational activity, but who were not properly educated on how
to safely swim well. And at first they thought that
on these large public beaches like you had out at
Atlantic City, that maybe something like a lifeline that they
could extend across um certain areas of the water could
save people because if you're in distress, you can just
(02:51):
just swim over to it. But then they quickly realized like, oh, wait,
if you're drowning, you can't really swim over, because you
could swim you wouldn't be drowning. Yes, and yeah, this
is the time when they came up with the rescue board. Also,
because the whole theory about saving people was that actually
jumping in the water and performing a water rescue was
the last resort because you didn't want to go down
(03:11):
flailing with the panicked drowning person. Yeah, and that rescue
board was invented in nineteen ten, and two years later
it was the y m c A, in fact, that
developed a volunteer National Life Saving Service because initially um
some cities were using police officers for water rescues. But
(03:33):
they're like, hey, this is diverting law enforcement reef sources
for the rest of the city, and so some beaches
started hiring people specifically trained for water rescue, and then
it grew with the y m c A and these
volunteer services, and then in nineteen fourteen, the American Red
Cross followed up with Commodore Wilbert E. Longfellow, establishing its
(03:56):
Life Saving Corps, which trained swimmers across the US in
life saving and resuscitation. Yeah, moving up closer to now,
but only slightly. UH. In nineteen sixty four, the United
States Life Saving Association was formed by members of several
California surf lifeguard agencies. And now that is actually open
to basically anyone who's a lifeguard. And it wasn't until
(04:18):
to night six that the y m c A and
the Red Cross both developed standardized lifeguard trainings for people
across the country. UM and as a result, we mentioned
that in the early twentieth century, there were about nine
thousand people drowning each year in the U s. And
that's probably specifically at those popular beaches like Atlantic City.
(04:42):
And according to the c d C that number, even
though there are far more people who swim recreationally now,
the number of drownings per year is about still four
thousand people every year. But statistically, if you think about
how many more people swim compared to how many fewer
(05:03):
people are drowning, it speaks to um the service that
lifeguards due for US and UM. There was a report
on lifeguard effectiveness from the CDC which cited an estimate
that your chance of drowning at a beach protected by
lifeguards can be less than one in eighteen million. Yeah,
(05:23):
and lifeguards actually are doing their jobs because they end
up saving more than a hundred thousand people from drowning
each year. And I would like to know too, if
you heaped onto that the number of mothers who saved.
They're drowning Christian's per year, They're drowning Kristens, They're an
expand name. There's so many, so many rescues going on.
(05:44):
But of course, since we're talking about well anything that
we talked about on the podcast, let's talk about women
and lifeguarding. We were not able to find any kind
of statistical breakdown of male versus female lifeguards. But in
the Los Angeles County in particular, there have been some
(06:05):
issues with gender discrimination on the beaches. Yeah, this article,
it's a little dated, but it still is interesting and
it still raises some valid points. This is the l
A Times article about gender discrimination and lifeguarding, and they
point out that before nineteen seventy three, no women had
worked as ocean lifeguards in Los Angeles County, and it
(06:25):
was that year that Kai Noel and Wendy Paskin were
hired as the first lady lifeguards. And they point out
that in the late eighties, as we move forward, the
county actually changed its qualifying standards to encourage more women
and minorities to seek lifeguarding jobs. And while this did
encourage more people to you know, apply for the job
(06:46):
and get the job, they then had to face on
top of discrimination and harassment, then they had to face
the whole attitude of well, you wouldn't be here if
it weren't for that quota system. And the thing about
these women too, is that they were supreme athletes. A
lot of these women were all star swimmers, some compete
(07:07):
in the Olympics somewhere like in the Olympic trials. These
ladies were no joke. But nevertheless they still had to
deal with things such as not having proper bathrooms or
changing facilities. And of course you can assume and you
probably assumed right. They they cite male colleagues sexual references
about women, harassment and jokes from men on the beach,
(07:29):
and interestingly, apparently they they had to deal with struggling
male swimmers who refused female lifeguards aid and those male
swimmers who also refused to heed their warnings just because
they were women. Now, that story that we're talking about
is from nine two. But then in California as well.
November eleven, a California jury awarded standingo lifeguard all Cent
(07:54):
Terry a hundred thousand dollars after unanimously deciding that the
city's lifeguard service discriminated against women by discouraging their promotions.
And this took over five years of litigation, which Terry
said completely exhausted her mentally and emotionally, and she lost
a lot of friends because of it because she had
to drag all these male lifeguard colleagues kind of down
(08:15):
with her in a way. Yeah. She was actually the
fifth female lifeguard to sue the city for gender discrimination
and the first to win. She ended up resigning in
two thousand nine just out of pure frustration, and finally
wasn't until twenty eleven that she finally one. But the
trial exposed some interesting things, one of which is that
only six out of the ninety four full time lifeguard
(08:36):
positions were held by women at the time. That's six
point four percent. However, seven percent of the seasonal lifeguards,
those who earn an hourly wage and receive fewer benefits,
were women. So it doesn't sound like it's really about ability.
It sounds like, you know, women are doing the job.
It's just that they weren't giving those full time benefits
paying jobs to women. Yeah, and Ali sin Terry also
(08:58):
alleged that, uh, this city was actually setting up false
roadblocks for women who wanted to take the different courses
certification courses needed to climb the ranks. Um. For instance,
there was a personal watercraft certificate that you would have
to earn in order to be promoted. And she said
that any time that she would want to go out
(09:20):
and like schedule her certification course, for some reason, the
watercraft would be mysteriously being used or something like that,
Like she was never able to get in, even though
she knew full well that there would be times when
it was available for her to do so. Whereas these
real life, real world female California lifeguards, some of which
(09:42):
we've sided, not all of them, of course, but some
of them have historically cited some gender discrimination that's gone
on on the beaches. While all this is going on,
we have the rise of a TV phenomenon that we
would be remiss to not mention, and that created an
entirely different portrayal of female lifeguards on California beaches. By that,
(10:08):
I'm talking about Baywatch. Yeah. Baywatch has been credited with
everything from encouraging young women giving them role models to
providing reason for harassment of American travelers overseas. Yes, Baywatch,
and this is because Baywatch is actually one of the
most successful television shows in television history. By the time
(10:32):
it was in its tenth season, it was syndicated around
the world. It had over a billion viewers every week.
That's billion with a bee in a hundred and forty
different countries, translated into thirty three languages. It's one of
those shows that was kind of a flop in the
US and just took off an international syndication, which we
(10:53):
see a lot too. We talked about um a long
time ago in our episode about soap operas well. It
did have David Hasselhoff, yes, who became very popular in Germany.
UM Well. The La Times had an article in two
thousand written by Susan Spano. She talked to author Robert
Young Pelton, who had written a book about basically dangerous
(11:13):
travel situations that women find themselves in, and he connected
harassment of American women travelers with Baywatches syndication because there's
this perception of American women apparently not only because of
the show, he points out, but because of other movies
and media, but as like they're all blond and rich
and beach babes and you know, and wearing high cut
(11:35):
bikinis and or not or one pieces. It was the
one pieces right exactly, which so incredibly high cut. Um, yeah,
well it was. It's funny though that this is brought
up because Esquire did this huge oral history of Baywatch,
and Alexandra Paul, who was on the show from two
to nine seven, argued that are showed it a lot
(11:57):
of good things, especially in places like China or Iran,
where people saw women wearing bathing suits, and it was
okay to me in a way. Culturally, we did a
lot of good I think people don't give us credit
for that, and I will say I try to do
some scholarly, scholarly research on the global cultural impact of
(12:20):
bay Watch and whether or not it did seeing those
those tan and toned thighs of Pamela Anderson and the
rest did something for women, and I didn't find a
lot of supporting evidence, but apparently this one travel writer
thinks that it's uh on the downside. The reason why
it might be endangered right. Well, one of the people
(12:43):
in that Eskbuire interview was Gary Cole, the director of
photography at Playboy, and he was talking about what kind
of woman the show was looking for looking to cast,
and he says that the show was looking for an
outdoor girl, all natural, all American. You had to be
able to run down the beach fast, and the girl
obviously had to have breast large enough to move the
right way under those bathing suits. But so he's saying
(13:04):
all all natural, all American. But according to casting director
Susan Glickman, she said it varied from character to character,
but they were like, find us somebody who's sexy. So yeah,
no one. But for both the male and female actors
on the show, written in their contract was a clause.
This is according to that oral history on Esquire, that
(13:25):
no one was allowed to gain weight, even hasslehof I bet, yeah,
you know, you gotta stay trim on the beaches of Baywatch. Uh,
so it's kind of it's kind of weird to think
of the the contrast between the real world sort of
battles on the beaches and this strange thing that is Baywatch,
(13:49):
which might seem like a relic of a bygone cultural
era here and now. But I wonder too for international listeners,
uh is does Baywatch still come on all the time?
Is it kind of like how, I don't know, what's
the show that's always in syndication. It's like Frasier here,
Frazier is always Frasier is always on somewhere, and has
(14:10):
it shaped your perception of American lifeguards? Frasier Frasier certainly
has um So, so that's what we've got for you
on lifeguards. That's the long and the short of it
for this summer short and lifeguards out there, especially female lifeguards,
have you encountered, you know, male people, male people, guys
(14:33):
who are struggling, who don't want to be rescued by you,
any kind of impediments to climbing up the lifeguarding ladder.
Because there is an annual all women lifeguard tournament sponsored
by the National Park Service that I was reading about,
and the challenges that you have to go through are intense. Yeah,
this year, it's in July and July there's like ten
(14:54):
different challenges and they involve lots of paddling and running
and swimming and being way more athletic than I am.
It's like Iron Woman. I now imagine female lifeguards as
Iron Women, all of them bionic, and I still can't
swim very well. So with that, email us your thoughts. Mom.
Stuff at Discovery dot com is where you can send
(15:16):
us your letters. And in the meantime, we've got one
here about our episode on women and Archaeology. Yes, this
is from Jessica. She says, I just finished listening to
your Women in Archaeology episode and loved it. You mentioned
the Indiana Jones effect a few times and lamented that
there was no female equivalent. However, I think that Elizabeth
Peter's Amelia Peabody Mystery series is just that Amelia is
(15:39):
an English lady of independent means in the late nineteenth
century that becomes an Egyptologist. She's brilliant, self confident, and
always very practical. It's a great series, and after reading
it in high school, I too wanted to become an archaeologist.
In the end, I decided not to go into that
field when I found out that it involved a lot
of sorting pot shards in museum basements, and eventually I
found the wildlife by all g was much more my speed. Still,
(16:02):
it's a great series about a woman who can hold
her own against murderers and her male colleagues alike. And
I have to point out that there is who's that
character in that Rachel Vice plays and the money she's
she's an archaeologist, right, Yeah? But she was? Yeah? Isn't
that also starts Brendan Fraser. Uh So, Yes. Mom Stuff
(16:22):
at Discovery dot com is our email address. You can
also find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter
at Mom's Stuff podcast. And if you would like more
information on how to have fun in the sun safely
this summer, that on over to our website. It's how
stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
(16:43):
of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com
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