February 13, 2012 • 35 mins
As Valentine's Day approaches, Cristen and Caroline take a closer look at floriography and the meaning of flowers. Where do Valentine's bouquets come from? What's it like for women working in the flower industry? Tune in to learn more.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom never told you?
From House Stepworks dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline, and may I also say
(00:23):
Happy Valentine's Day. Eve. Wait, thank you? You welcome? Are
you gonna get me anything? Um, I'm gonna give you
a podcast straight from the heart. Oh yeah, well we
better get started then, yeah. Uh. And today we're going
to talk about flowers, because it is the typical Valentine's
(00:45):
Day gift from one beloved to another or just to
a friend. My dad sometimes will send me flowers on
Valentine's Day, which is always a kind gesture. Um. But
Valentine's Day also reminds me of high school because is
I don't know how your school worked, Caroline, but mine
it was a really big deal, and it was a
(01:06):
big deal that made me probably unnecessarily so, but it
made me really uncomfortable because there was this competitive edge
too Valentine's Day because the whole week or two beforehand,
kids would go around whatever kind of like class officers
(01:26):
would go around and they would sell carnations, for a
dollar that you could give to other classmates. So obviously
all little high school sweethearts would give each other carnations
and you would either get them in white for friendship,
pink for love, and read for passion. In high school, yeah,
(01:47):
and so you always kept your fingers crossed that your
crush was going to give you a red one, that
there would be a random red rope or credit scene. Yeah,
random carnation, uh, sitting in your locker. The most popular
kids would have collected just a bundle of carnations by
the end of the day. So yeah, I really those
(02:12):
that kind of obvious competition where you can count up
your number of friends and lovers always really put me
on edge. So that's what I associate valca'see with cheap
carnations and high school angst. Interesting, I said, see, And
it was buying a new shirt with a heart on
(02:33):
it every year, wearing it to school. Do you wear
Valentine's themed clothes? Not anymore? But now we um in
well know, I'm sorry. That was middle school and middle
school we had we had dances, and so I would
always buy like a heart themed T shirt because I
was really cool like that. And now we just have
(02:53):
those celebrity montage movies that we can watch by ourselves
with the bottle of wine at a terrible movie. Valentine's Day, obviously,
is one of the largest days in the floral industry,
seconded only by Mother's Day. And just to give a
hint of how we're going to turn this Valentine's bouquet
(03:17):
into a withered handful of terrifying facts. Um, we know
the vald Tine's Day is really really booming for the
floral industry because women on the plantations in Africa and
South America harvesting all those flowers have been working up
to sixty hours a week in preparation for it. Some
(03:39):
of the flower farms in South America triple the number
of workers, most of them women, leading up to Valentine's Day.
So yeah, January, February, March late and lead you know
then leading up to Mother's Day. It's big business. Yeah,
just I mean, if that doesn't doesn't warm your heart
for this romantic occasion. But let's go back to a
(04:01):
simpler time. Yes, the Victorian era, so simple and yet
so repressed, and that's what leads us to floriography, which
is the language of flowers, and in the Victorian area era,
excuse me, it was really popular to give flowers that
had meaning. You know, you've all I feel like everybody's
(04:23):
heard about you know, different flowers have different meanings, and
you know you mentioned the different colors of carnations, the
same thing for roses. Different rose colors have meaning everything
from from sympathy and remembrance to love and passion. Well,
in the Victorian era, you know, emotions that couldn't be vocalized.
You know, you couldn't just walk up to somebody be like,
I love you. I mean, maybe you could if you
(04:45):
were like that, if you were very full award um.
But people tended to give their their their crush or
whatever um a bouquet that meant something, and everything from
the flower ors themselves down to the way you handed
the bouquet over meant something. So the way you tied
the bow, the hand you used, and God forbid you
(05:08):
handed the bouquet over upside down, that was just what
that meant, the opposite of what the flowers were supposed
to mean. You give someone an opposite day bouquet, fairly
fairly opposite Day's been around a lot longer than I thought,
I mean talk about salt in the wound, I know,
but okay, so so every you know, bouquets of flowers
(05:30):
had a lot of meaning, and Beverly Seaton, in her
book The Language of Flowers History, talks about how home
manuals of the time illustrated very elaborate arrangements of cut flowers.
So if you were high falutin, if you were in
high society, you were expected to have a lot of
cut flowers in your home. But not just in faces,
not just going to the store and putting them in
a glass of water. Now, you were expected to have
(05:51):
these elaborate arrangements because you were expected to either have
the um the help around your house to help you
arrange them, or you were expected to take the time
to do it yourself to have these beautiful floral arrangements
in your home. And this also wasn't just a product
of Western domesticity. It reminds me of ikubana, which is
the Japanese art of flower arranging, which is one of
(06:13):
the typical skills acquired by geishas. Yeah, it's it was
definitely uh also seen as a womanly pursuit. But I
want to know what some flowers mean if you were
to give me a special bouquet, if I were to
give you an iris, it would mean that I had faith,
hope and wisdom in you, or hoped to impart that
(06:35):
to you. Carnations, which there's a lot of talk of
carnations and sex in the city, and we'll go into it,
but carnations symbolize love and fascination, and there's a difference
between a striped carnation and a solid one. But I
can't recall that. One of my favorite flowers is the
gerber A daisy, and there's you know, a million different colors.
Those signify beauty, innocence, and cheerfulness. Yeah, you're all three
(06:59):
of those right up in a daisy, Caroline blushing. Um,
it's actually the Gerbera daisy is the fifth most popular
flower in the world, in the whole world, and according
to literature, it was discovered in eighty four by a
Scotsman in South Africa, even though I'm pretty sure other
people had probably seen the flower before. But yeah, the
(07:22):
Gerbera daisy as we know it today, and it's been
bread and mixed. Said that, that's why we have so
many colors and orchids rare and delicate beauty roses of
course love and appreciation, and they range like I said,
red is love, pink, admiration, etcetera, etcetera. So the floral
industry traces all the way back to the seventeenth and
(07:44):
eighteenth century. Uh. It's starting off, not surprisingly in the
Netherlands with the development of greenhouses, and that practice then
is taken to the United States. Um And one fun
fact about the the Netherlands are all known for their tulips,
and tulip comes from the Turkish word for durban really
(08:08):
because it was initially um taken from Central Asia and
then across to Holland. I do love a good tulip,
and I don't mean turban, I mean tulip um. Yeah.
The industry really grew in America with the advent of
air transport and refrigerated trucks, so now you could take
them much longer distances in a short amount of time.
(08:28):
You didn't have to worry about them, Wilton, because flowers
pretty much have to be kept around thirty four degrees
basically right about freezing when they're being transported. And in
the mid nineteen sixties, you know, we've got all the
development of where where this industry is moving. And in
the mid nineteen sixties the first carnation production started in Bogata, Columbia,
an area that offered great light and temperature, not to
(08:49):
mention low production costs compared with North America. UM and
large fail US producers are hard hit by all of
the flowers that are being import it and the floral industry,
like so many other industries here in the States, has
largely been outsourced. UM California produces of the domestic flowers
(09:13):
grown here, but it's it's largely moved abroad and UM.
One place that I did not realize was such a
major hub of the international floral industry is Kenya. If
you live in the EU, if you're listening right now
in the UK, hello, talking directly to you. If you
(09:35):
have If you're looking right now at a vase of flowers,
British friends and Irish friends and Welsh ones too, chances
are they came from Kenya. Now, if Caroline and I
here in the States, we're looking at some some flowers
and fresh cut well not so fresh cut roses, they
be coming from South America. But Kenya supplies of all
(09:57):
the flowers sold in the EU right, and there's a
lot of talk about as you can expect, there's a
lot of talk about the environmental impact of importing all
of these flowers. UM. But it's interesting that UM twelve
thousand Kenyon roses that creates raising them, you know, whatever,
(10:18):
growing them, that creates third two hundred pounds of carbon
dioxide released from from the growth of these roses. The
equivalent number of Dutch roses releases seventy seven thousand, one
hundred and sixty pounds of c O two because they
require all that artificial light, heat and cooling over the
(10:39):
eight to twelve week growing period, so you don't have
the hot sun that's constant in Kenya and in Colombia.
So while you're you're importing all these roses and you
you might think it's horrible for various reasons that we
will get into here shortly. UM. It actually releases less
uh c O two into the atmosphere because they have
(10:59):
to tinker with that actual growing environment, less UM which
would outweigh them the cost I guess of transporting it,
of producing them and transporting them over UM. And this
is coming from the Globe and Mail in Canada, imported
twenty three point five million dollars worth of roses from Columbia,
(11:19):
and almost a third of all cut flowers sold in
Canada are imported from Columbia, including fourteen point one million
dollars worth of carnations and nine point six million dollars
worth of chrystanthemums. And the government has incentivized uh this
floral trade between Canada and Columbia because their free trade
(11:40):
agreement that they recently signed removed a ten point five
percent tariff on roses. So it's even cheaper now for
them to bring these flowers way up uh the land,
way of way up the lands. But we we did
the same thing in one um. The US really was
(12:02):
seeking to offset all the coca production in Colombia, and
so we thought, I mean, I don't know what they thought,
but they were like, hey, well, let's just have them
make flowers instead, And so we suspended import duties on
Colombian flowers. And this was in and just just to
show you what that did to flower imports in the US,
(12:24):
in ninety one, the US produced one point to billion
flowers and imported one hundred million, and in two thousand
three that totally reversed the US was producing two hundred
million blooms and imported two billion. That's according to the Smithsonian,
who took a big look at um the flower trade.
And now, according to the Society of American Florist, Columbia,
(12:47):
not so surprisingly is the number one import country of
flowers to the United States, comprising sixty five percent of
that trade, followed by Ecuador at sixteen percent scent and
the Netherlands at six percent. And then we actually get
four percent of our flowers from from Canada. So I
wonder if Canada is is somehow kidding some flowers from
(13:10):
Colombia and then marking them up and selling them to us.
You're saying that we're going to recycle Valentine's Day flowers.
I don't know, Canada, what's behind this? What's going on? Canadians?
Let us know? UM, there is. There is quite a
process in all of this. Um. It involves chemicals, lots
of transportation, and a lot of labor. This is from
(13:31):
the New Statesman, which describes the process and says that
flowers are typically harvested, de leafed, semi dehydrated in refrigeration units,
steeped in chemicals, packed in boxes, sometimes by machinery and
sent in refrigerated trucks to the airport. That's already that's
already quite a lot of stuff. Yeah, and then once
they get to the supermarkets and floris where they're sold,
(13:52):
they are usually chemically rehydrated and in the weeks preceding St.
Valentine's Days. St. Valentine's Day, so proper, proper, because that's
how I am h and Mother's Day. Women on the
plantations in Africa and South America frequently work sixty hours
a week, like you said, So that's all part of
this huge I have never I'm so ignorant. I mean
(14:15):
I I just haven't thought about it. You know, when
you go to the grocery. I like to buy flowers
at the grocery store all the time. I never thought
of this huge, long process. And so that's why I
think it's important to talk about stuff like this, because
something so simple as just buying a bunch of daisies
while you're getting your grocery shopping done, there's a lot.
There's a lot behind that, just like there is with
your food. Of course. Well, I'm thinking about them going
through the process of being semi dehydrated and then chemically rehydrated.
(14:41):
That blows my mind. Yeah, it's because they found this
great growing location with all this sunlight and constant temperature.
But then they have to get out to all the
people who want to spend the money on it. And
Americans and Europeans been just millions of dollars every year
on flowers which are mostly just to feel good purchase.
It's not like we need it, but you know, it's
how and somebody, And that's the big question of is
(15:03):
it is it really helping someone? Um? Or are we
because of this luxury purchase? Are we destroying the environment
and perpetuating low wage um industries that treat women unfairly?
And we will get to the bottom of this um.
This is in scientific Americans. Stewart Or of the World
(15:24):
Wildlife Fund International, sums it up this way. He and
this is talking specifically about Kenya and Lake Naivasha, which
is where a lot of those flower farms are located around.
He says it's one of the most perfect places to
grow flowers at a high altitude with plenty of water
and sunshine, and flower farms employ people and generate income great, excellent,
(15:48):
but they're also big water and pesticide users, right, and
like you said, Kristen Kenya supplies of Europe's cut flowers.
That's that's a very large chunk and the best are
sold to flourish through Dutch auctions and then not so
perfect end up in European supermarkets. So you know, same
(16:08):
thing with me buying daisies at the grocery store Gerbera
daisies to be exact, Yes, beauty and innocence. Um. But
at the Assyrian farm on Lake Naivasha. This is from
Scientific American also roses. They talk about the the environmental
impact and what companies are are seeking to do to
offset some of this impact. Roses are now grown with
(16:30):
geothermal waste heat to save energy and no roses are
raised within a third of a mile of the lake
to prevent pesticide runoff from reaching it. But it hasn't
always been like this. Um. There were some alarm bills
that were raised in two thousand three which were largely
attributed to a special report in the Guardian newspaper about
worker conditions, and it was specifically conditions for female workers
(16:55):
that make up a bulk of that labor force. Yeah,
the the Guardian made public concerns about chemical spraying, long
working hours, and harassment of female workers who were working
under male supervisors. And concerns remain over wages today and
whether the large flower companies are paying their fair share
of taxes um. But let's look at two thousand nine
(17:19):
as far as the lake goes that supplies all of
the water to these flower farms in kenya Um. In
two thousand nine, a major drought shrank the size of
the lake two levels they hadn't seen since the nineteen
But that was been followed by a major storm that
washed sewage and possibly chemical residue from the farms into
the lake. So here you're you're they're using all this water,
(17:41):
but then all of a sudden it's polluted, endangering all
the ecosystems. And just to give listeners an idea of
how much Lake Naivasha has been affected, not just because
of the flower farming, but also because of that drought
in two thousand nine, it has receded over one mile
and ken is really trying to revitalize that ecosystem while
(18:05):
sustaining these flower farms, which are so important. I want
to say that the floral industry is the fifth largest
in Kenya, it's very important for for their economy. And
depending on what flower farm you work at in Kenya,
you might have a great situation. There are some farms
that provide worker housing, education for their children, playgrounds, UM benefits. UH.
(18:30):
There are some that are transitioning more to permanent employment
instead of using contract work, but that's obviously not true
across the board UM, and so there's still a lot
of concerns about wages and fairness and UM female workers
and the things that they have to deal with. But
UM the environmental issues with the lake. It has led
a couple of companies to start investing a lot of
(18:53):
money and sustainability efforts. And there's the company Flamingo Homegrown
UH does follow fair trade standards UH and the company
says that it has slashed pesticide use, replaced contract positions
with permanent ones like I was just saying, and made
efforts to actually train and promote women's supervisors. But UM
University of Lester ecologists David Harper still has some concerns
(19:17):
and in February eleven he basically said that the UK's
demand for fresh flowers was bleeding Lake Naivasha dry and
he's urging the supermarkets that are buying these flowers to
take more responsibility by promoting policies that would help conserve
the lake's ecosystem. So he's saying that the people who
are selling you the flowers in your own country need
(19:38):
to be more responsible. Right, People who are worried from
the more environmental standpoint can look out for flowers that
are fair trade certified, or you can go local or
and buy more native plants that are native to your
the ecosystems that you're living in. Obviously you can buy
plants from and flowers from low coal greenhouses and other
(20:01):
things like that. But let's let's turn now to another
part of the world. In Columbia and Ecuador have a
very similar situation to the one in Kenya, which is,
like we said, the the environment, the growing situation is perfect.
It's on a it's on a savannah. There's plenty of
water and sunshine and constant temperatures. But we've got the
(20:25):
same issues with pollution, pesticides, female workers, all of that.
And I thought it was fascinating how the Colombian floral
trade got started. This is coming from a report in
the Smithsonian magazine, and it all began because a guy
named David Schiever wrote a term paper in grad school
(20:45):
in nineteen sixty seven suggesting that the savannah near Bogatat
was an ideal spot to grow flowers to sell the
US because it had an excellent climate. The flowers would
take off and they could apply assembly lines and modern shipping.
PRAC just says to to get things going. And boy,
howdy was David Chiever right? Yeah? He he and three
(21:09):
partners started Flora America, which used assembly lines and modern shipping.
So right off the bat, they're like, we're going to
make the model tea of flowers. And it really, it
really took off. And now Colombia is the second largest
exporter of cut flowers, behind only the Netherlands, and it
commands of the U S market, which you know, or
(21:30):
sixty five depending on where you're getting your where you're
getting your numbers, so it's between sixty five and stuff.
So basically a lot lot flowers. Uh. And this employs
more than a hundred thousand people working in the greenhouses,
and the majority of folks who are trying to work
there have been women, many of whom are single mothers.
And this is where the you know, this issue of
(21:52):
what kind of female labor we are supporting when we're
buying all of these Valentine's Day Mother's Day flowers. Um,
Because on the one hand, employment for single moms that
sounds great. It is needed. Economists have gone and said, hey,
this is a new form of job opportunities that would
not be there otherwise. Not necessarily a bad thing. But
(22:17):
according to the International Labor Rights Fund, the typical South
American flower picker um is unmarried, she's got an elementary
school education, and she has three or more children, and
a lot of times she's not making enough money to
really support herself and her family. Right, women at the
at the farm MG consul tories were surveyed and they
(22:38):
found that most had previously worked on substance subsistence farms
or as maids, jobs that paid lower wages than in
the flower industry. But we have to ask, which is
exactly the point you raised, are these the right kind
of jobs? Uh? You know it. It is wonderful that
single mothers can have employment, but if they're being exposed
to pesticides and being hunched over all day with the rippers,
(23:01):
I mean, are we again, it's it's kind of a
toss up. They're getting employed, they're getting paid, but it's
putting their children in their own health at risk. So
for those sixty hour weeks that they're working, um, in
anticipation of Valentine's Day. Not to be a total Valentine's
Day down er, um, but these women are making minimum wage.
They're working obviously long hours, and a lot of them
(23:22):
will suffer repetitive stress injuries with no treatment or time off,
and if they do try to get any kind of treatment,
they will be asked to not come up come back. Um.
And there are also stories and this is from um,
that two thousand three Guardian article that really raised alarm bells.
And things have gotten a little bit better, um, but
(23:44):
you know, some women were saying that when inspections would
happen to make sure working conditions were safe and equitable,
the supervisors would ask certain people to stay home so
things would would look more above board. Um. One of
those things that's not looking above board is that as
recently as the mid nineties, a Colombian sociologists found children
(24:07):
as young as nine working in the greenhouses on Saturdays,
and children eleven and of working forty six hour work weeks.
So it's not only um, you know, taking advantage of
women cheap labor from women, but also from children. Um.
But talking about that exposure to chemicals. UM. One survey
(24:28):
of nine thousand flower workers found that they had been
exposed to as many as one hundred and twenty seven
different chemicals, mostly fungicides and pesticides. And this is echoed.
The problems that come from this have been echoed in
several studies. Right. UM, you might be thinking, oh, a
survey that's totally outdated. Well here about how about this
(24:51):
two thousand nine University of Mexico study finding that women
working in the flower industry in Ecuador reported more pregnancy
losses than among women out side the industry, and the
researchers linked that to the need for an evaluation of
the reproductive health effects of employment in that specific industry
(25:11):
linked to pesticide use. Right, yeah, if you're going to
have this population doing this work, we should definitely take
a look at how to make it safer. Um At
two thousand six study of female flower workers in Ecuador.
This was study. The study was published in Pediatrics found
that a pregnant woman's exposure to pesticides was associated with
(25:32):
the child's neurological impairment and higher blood pressure later in life.
And of course we know that higher blood pressure can
you know if if if it stays, it can eventually
lead to cardiovascular problems. And in addition to UH these
kind of pesticide exposures and those repetitive stress injuries, there were,
(25:53):
according to the Smithsonian magazine, also a lot of reports
of sexual harassment by male bosses. UM. But again, these
are these are issues that a lot of companies have
tried to go in and rectify, but largely because watchdog
groups have been formed to pay attention to these kind
(26:14):
of working conditions, right, and I mean as far as
creating better work environments. You know, we talked about several
of the companies in Kenya that are really seeking to
be sustainable to help their workers and the workers families. UM.
According to that Smithsonian article, the flower industry in Columbia
created floor Verde, a voluntary certification program that requires participating
(26:37):
farms to meet targets for sustainable water use and follow
internationally recognized safety guidelines for chemical applications. So there are
people really trying to um improve the quality of their
workers lives and going back to the situation in Kenya
the Economist magazine was talking about, but more the the
(26:58):
importance of the ural industry and kind of an unstable
economy over there, and the report that the average monthly
salary of eighty dollars plus benefits is actually considered a
good wage. UM. So I guess that's why, um it
was it was challenging to weigh the pros and the
(27:18):
cons of what's going on in this industry because whenever
we trace back a lot of the products that we
take for granted, these simple luxuries like a bouquet of flowers,
a lot of times it does trace back to people, um,
not earning very much money. Uh. And and that can
be I don't know, it's it's it's hard to justify
(27:39):
in your mind because you can contextualize it and say, well,
for those for those Kenyan women, that eighty dollars a
month is really great, But should we be pushing for
somehow more for them, I don't know, higher wages, better
safety precautions. Um yeah, taking more across and precautions excuse me,
(28:00):
for pregnant women, right. And I think that's why it's
hardening to see that organizations like fair trade are going
in they are um, you know, you can actually find
those kind of certified bouquets, or of course if you
want to, you can always go local and native by
by your your love e dovy person a potted plant. Yeah,
(28:24):
because the thing is, at the end of the day,
people like people who buy flowers. H now granted. This
study at Rutgers University in two thousands six was funded
by the Society of American flora'sts okay, but they did
conclude that people perceive others based on the types of
(28:46):
gifts they give, and flower givers rose straight to the top.
We think of people who give flowers as making the
best impression, and they are considered more likable, friendly, and
emotion really intelligent. I love getting flowers. But it's funny
because apparently a lot of people out there think that
guys need help in this arena, because there are several
(29:09):
everything from flower websites, from from flower companies themselves over
to that website. The art of Manliness and decided before
has told you know, guys, you really you really need
a man up and buy some flowers for your lady.
But don't just buy carnations. You better buy some lily. Yeah,
and they suggest they do. They go over the meaning
of different flowers. And I think that it was the
(29:31):
art of manliness that suggested buying your lady friend one
of those manuals about the meaning of the Victorian manuals
on the meaning of flowers, making sure that you have
the same one because they weren't all the same. So
you don't want to offend her and try to say that,
you know, like, oh, I think you're really dumb, but
you know, like god, I don't know what flower would
symbolize the dumbness. And he hands it to her upside
down and the oh gods in the bow is time
(29:53):
the wrong way? You know? Just take take the pressure
off and get her a chia pet. Oh god, noth says,
I love you like a bearded potted play exactly. That's
what I say all the time. I have that knitted
on a pillow back to you'd be expectations low, ladies, right,
So yeah, I want to know who out there is
(30:15):
getting flowers for someone on Valentine's Day. And if you
thought at all about the big line of places that
it has been, well, I'm wondering now too, if we're
accidentally dissuading people from giving flowers to their beloved. Well,
maybe they'll go to a local florist, or maybe they'll
(30:38):
make their own bouquet out of construction papor. Yeah, I
don't know. Let's combine the Martha Stewart podcast with this one.
All you need is some dried macaron and that's a
good thing. So hopefully you thought this podcast was a
good thing, not to be a total downer on Valentine's
Day eve. Either way, let us know your thoughts. Send
(30:59):
us a Valentine how about? Yeah, you know you can't
send me flowers, I guess because that might take too long.
But you can send us an E card Mom Stuff
at Discovery dot com. Draw us the flower and MS
paint I like that, very high tech. You can send
it to Mom's stuff at Discovery dot com. I repeat
(31:24):
moms stuff at Discovery dot com. I will be awaiting
your MS paint roses. Yes, and we would like a
guide of what each m S paint flower you have
drawn means. Yes, hopefully it is all love and endearment
obtain Yeah, at least wait until after BALI. So I've
(31:45):
got an email here to read from Tina, and this
is in response to our episode on gender differences in
exercise and Tina is a soccer player and avid soccer player,
and she brought up something that we came across in
our research for that podcast, but did not end up mentioning.
(32:06):
In that episode, she writes, I can speak for the
sport I know best, which is soccer, and after recently
tearing my A c L and having to undergo surgical reconstruction,
I learned a lot about how being a lady played
into my injury. My surgeon told me that women are
actually up to eight times more likely to tear their
A c L in sport because of our biomechanics and
(32:29):
weight distribution. Men tend to have stronger upper bodies, while
women tend to carry their weight in the hip and
thigh region, and this means that when a woman pivots
or twists on her feet during a sport, there's a
lot more torque in the ligaments on the knee. This
extra tension is what causes female soccer players to have
more ligament injuries, and I guess I'm a living example
of this. Because of this fact, my physiotherapist has told
(32:51):
me that most female varsity teams at my university undergo
some form of a cl and injury prevention training sessions
to build up certain stable ysing muscles in their legs
to counteract the torque on their ligaments. Ladies, got torque?
That sounds so bad? Put that on a pillow. Uh.
This this is from Janna. The subject line, I'll let
(33:13):
it speak for itself is jim gender pandemonium. She says.
I'm a student at Memorial University in Newfoundland, Canada, and
we've had a bit of crisis on our hands up here.
As students. We all have access to the gym on campus,
which has a specific freeweights room that is often crowded
by many guys. Well, the decision was made by the
gym to promote more females to get into this kind
(33:34):
of muscle toning workout, and so the gym began to
offer female only hours on non peaked times. Oh sure,
non peaked times. Well, it has been an uproar, she says.
I thought it was funny and even laugh loudly when
you said the boys are more upset when they miss
their workouts, Because it has been crazy. Guys have written
our campus newspaper started a Facebook group in protest, calling
(33:57):
this an act of reverse sexism. Now, mind you, they
still have ninety two hours a week to have access
to the room. I think they are being kind of silly,
but each to their own I guess, I guess Jenna. Yeah,
asked Jenna to keep us informed to see whether or
not the school caves to the Jinder Jim Gender pandemonia,
(34:20):
Jim Jim Boree pandemonium. I just people people running around
the gym with their hands in the air like, yeah,
I'm thinking of a dance marathon now. So on that
note again, our email addresses mom Stuff at Discovery dot com.
If you have a letter or Valentine to send our way,
or you can send us a Valentine up on the facebooks.
(34:40):
We'd like that. Why don't you send us a Valentine
by liking us? That would be the best Valentine's present
you could possibly give to me and Caroline. We would
love you for that. And you can also follow us
on Twitter at Mom's Stuff podcast, and you can check
out the blog during the week. It is at how
stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out our
(35:04):
new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how staff
Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing
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Download it today on iTunes. Brought to you by the
reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom never told you?
From House Stepworks dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline, and may I also say
(00:23):
Happy Valentine's Day. Eve. Wait, thank you? You welcome? Are
you gonna get me anything? Um, I'm gonna give you
a podcast straight from the heart. Oh yeah, well we
better get started then, yeah. Uh. And today we're going
to talk about flowers, because it is the typical Valentine's
(00:45):
Day gift from one beloved to another or just to
a friend. My dad sometimes will send me flowers on
Valentine's Day, which is always a kind gesture. Um. But
Valentine's Day also reminds me of high school because is
I don't know how your school worked, Caroline, but mine
it was a really big deal, and it was a
(01:06):
big deal that made me probably unnecessarily so, but it
made me really uncomfortable because there was this competitive edge
too Valentine's Day because the whole week or two beforehand,
kids would go around whatever kind of like class officers
(01:26):
would go around and they would sell carnations, for a
dollar that you could give to other classmates. So obviously
all little high school sweethearts would give each other carnations
and you would either get them in white for friendship,
pink for love, and read for passion. In high school, yeah,
(01:47):
and so you always kept your fingers crossed that your
crush was going to give you a red one, that
there would be a random red rope or credit scene. Yeah,
random carnation, uh, sitting in your locker. The most popular
kids would have collected just a bundle of carnations by
the end of the day. So yeah, I really those
(02:12):
that kind of obvious competition where you can count up
your number of friends and lovers always really put me
on edge. So that's what I associate valca'see with cheap
carnations and high school angst. Interesting, I said, see, And
it was buying a new shirt with a heart on
(02:33):
it every year, wearing it to school. Do you wear
Valentine's themed clothes? Not anymore? But now we um in
well know, I'm sorry. That was middle school and middle
school we had we had dances, and so I would
always buy like a heart themed T shirt because I
was really cool like that. And now we just have
(02:53):
those celebrity montage movies that we can watch by ourselves
with the bottle of wine at a terrible movie. Valentine's Day, obviously,
is one of the largest days in the floral industry,
seconded only by Mother's Day. And just to give a
hint of how we're going to turn this Valentine's bouquet
(03:17):
into a withered handful of terrifying facts. Um, we know
the vald Tine's Day is really really booming for the
floral industry because women on the plantations in Africa and
South America harvesting all those flowers have been working up
to sixty hours a week in preparation for it. Some
(03:39):
of the flower farms in South America triple the number
of workers, most of them women, leading up to Valentine's Day.
So yeah, January, February, March late and lead you know
then leading up to Mother's Day. It's big business. Yeah,
just I mean, if that doesn't doesn't warm your heart
for this romantic occasion. But let's go back to a
(04:01):
simpler time. Yes, the Victorian era, so simple and yet
so repressed, and that's what leads us to floriography, which
is the language of flowers, and in the Victorian area era,
excuse me, it was really popular to give flowers that
had meaning. You know, you've all I feel like everybody's
(04:23):
heard about you know, different flowers have different meanings, and
you know you mentioned the different colors of carnations, the
same thing for roses. Different rose colors have meaning everything
from from sympathy and remembrance to love and passion. Well,
in the Victorian era, you know, emotions that couldn't be vocalized.
You know, you couldn't just walk up to somebody be like,
I love you. I mean, maybe you could if you
(04:45):
were like that, if you were very full award um.
But people tended to give their their their crush or
whatever um a bouquet that meant something, and everything from
the flower ors themselves down to the way you handed
the bouquet over meant something. So the way you tied
the bow, the hand you used, and God forbid you
(05:08):
handed the bouquet over upside down, that was just what
that meant, the opposite of what the flowers were supposed
to mean. You give someone an opposite day bouquet, fairly
fairly opposite Day's been around a lot longer than I thought,
I mean talk about salt in the wound, I know,
but okay, so so every you know, bouquets of flowers
(05:30):
had a lot of meaning, and Beverly Seaton, in her
book The Language of Flowers History, talks about how home
manuals of the time illustrated very elaborate arrangements of cut flowers.
So if you were high falutin, if you were in
high society, you were expected to have a lot of
cut flowers in your home. But not just in faces,
not just going to the store and putting them in
a glass of water. Now, you were expected to have
(05:51):
these elaborate arrangements because you were expected to either have
the um the help around your house to help you
arrange them, or you were expected to take the time
to do it yourself to have these beautiful floral arrangements
in your home. And this also wasn't just a product
of Western domesticity. It reminds me of ikubana, which is
the Japanese art of flower arranging, which is one of
(06:13):
the typical skills acquired by geishas. Yeah, it's it was
definitely uh also seen as a womanly pursuit. But I
want to know what some flowers mean if you were
to give me a special bouquet, if I were to
give you an iris, it would mean that I had faith,
hope and wisdom in you, or hoped to impart that
(06:35):
to you. Carnations, which there's a lot of talk of
carnations and sex in the city, and we'll go into it,
but carnations symbolize love and fascination, and there's a difference
between a striped carnation and a solid one. But I
can't recall that. One of my favorite flowers is the
gerber A daisy, and there's you know, a million different colors.
Those signify beauty, innocence, and cheerfulness. Yeah, you're all three
(06:59):
of those right up in a daisy, Caroline blushing. Um,
it's actually the Gerbera daisy is the fifth most popular
flower in the world, in the whole world, and according
to literature, it was discovered in eighty four by a
Scotsman in South Africa, even though I'm pretty sure other
people had probably seen the flower before. But yeah, the
(07:22):
Gerbera daisy as we know it today, and it's been
bread and mixed. Said that, that's why we have so
many colors and orchids rare and delicate beauty roses of
course love and appreciation, and they range like I said,
red is love, pink, admiration, etcetera, etcetera. So the floral
industry traces all the way back to the seventeenth and
(07:44):
eighteenth century. Uh. It's starting off, not surprisingly in the
Netherlands with the development of greenhouses, and that practice then
is taken to the United States. Um And one fun
fact about the the Netherlands are all known for their tulips,
and tulip comes from the Turkish word for durban really
(08:08):
because it was initially um taken from Central Asia and
then across to Holland. I do love a good tulip,
and I don't mean turban, I mean tulip um. Yeah.
The industry really grew in America with the advent of
air transport and refrigerated trucks, so now you could take
them much longer distances in a short amount of time.
(08:28):
You didn't have to worry about them, Wilton, because flowers
pretty much have to be kept around thirty four degrees
basically right about freezing when they're being transported. And in
the mid nineteen sixties, you know, we've got all the
development of where where this industry is moving. And in
the mid nineteen sixties the first carnation production started in Bogata, Columbia,
an area that offered great light and temperature, not to
(08:49):
mention low production costs compared with North America. UM and
large fail US producers are hard hit by all of
the flowers that are being import it and the floral industry,
like so many other industries here in the States, has
largely been outsourced. UM California produces of the domestic flowers
(09:13):
grown here, but it's it's largely moved abroad and UM.
One place that I did not realize was such a
major hub of the international floral industry is Kenya. If
you live in the EU, if you're listening right now
in the UK, hello, talking directly to you. If you
(09:35):
have If you're looking right now at a vase of flowers,
British friends and Irish friends and Welsh ones too, chances
are they came from Kenya. Now, if Caroline and I
here in the States, we're looking at some some flowers
and fresh cut well not so fresh cut roses, they
be coming from South America. But Kenya supplies of all
(09:57):
the flowers sold in the EU right, and there's a
lot of talk about as you can expect, there's a
lot of talk about the environmental impact of importing all
of these flowers. UM. But it's interesting that UM twelve
thousand Kenyon roses that creates raising them, you know, whatever,
(10:18):
growing them, that creates third two hundred pounds of carbon
dioxide released from from the growth of these roses. The
equivalent number of Dutch roses releases seventy seven thousand, one
hundred and sixty pounds of c O two because they
require all that artificial light, heat and cooling over the
(10:39):
eight to twelve week growing period, so you don't have
the hot sun that's constant in Kenya and in Colombia.
So while you're you're importing all these roses and you
you might think it's horrible for various reasons that we
will get into here shortly. UM. It actually releases less
uh c O two into the atmosphere because they have
(10:59):
to tinker with that actual growing environment, less UM which
would outweigh them the cost I guess of transporting it,
of producing them and transporting them over UM. And this
is coming from the Globe and Mail in Canada, imported
twenty three point five million dollars worth of roses from Columbia,
(11:19):
and almost a third of all cut flowers sold in
Canada are imported from Columbia, including fourteen point one million
dollars worth of carnations and nine point six million dollars
worth of chrystanthemums. And the government has incentivized uh this
floral trade between Canada and Columbia because their free trade
(11:40):
agreement that they recently signed removed a ten point five
percent tariff on roses. So it's even cheaper now for
them to bring these flowers way up uh the land,
way of way up the lands. But we we did
the same thing in one um. The US really was
(12:02):
seeking to offset all the coca production in Colombia, and
so we thought, I mean, I don't know what they thought,
but they were like, hey, well, let's just have them
make flowers instead, And so we suspended import duties on
Colombian flowers. And this was in and just just to
show you what that did to flower imports in the US,
(12:24):
in ninety one, the US produced one point to billion
flowers and imported one hundred million, and in two thousand
three that totally reversed the US was producing two hundred
million blooms and imported two billion. That's according to the Smithsonian,
who took a big look at um the flower trade.
And now, according to the Society of American Florist, Columbia,
(12:47):
not so surprisingly is the number one import country of
flowers to the United States, comprising sixty five percent of
that trade, followed by Ecuador at sixteen percent scent and
the Netherlands at six percent. And then we actually get
four percent of our flowers from from Canada. So I
wonder if Canada is is somehow kidding some flowers from
(13:10):
Colombia and then marking them up and selling them to us.
You're saying that we're going to recycle Valentine's Day flowers.
I don't know, Canada, what's behind this? What's going on? Canadians?
Let us know? UM, there is. There is quite a
process in all of this. Um. It involves chemicals, lots
of transportation, and a lot of labor. This is from
(13:31):
the New Statesman, which describes the process and says that
flowers are typically harvested, de leafed, semi dehydrated in refrigeration units,
steeped in chemicals, packed in boxes, sometimes by machinery and
sent in refrigerated trucks to the airport. That's already that's
already quite a lot of stuff. Yeah, and then once
they get to the supermarkets and floris where they're sold,
(13:52):
they are usually chemically rehydrated and in the weeks preceding St.
Valentine's Days. St. Valentine's Day, so proper, proper, because that's
how I am h and Mother's Day. Women on the
plantations in Africa and South America frequently work sixty hours
a week, like you said, So that's all part of
this huge I have never I'm so ignorant. I mean
(14:15):
I I just haven't thought about it. You know, when
you go to the grocery. I like to buy flowers
at the grocery store all the time. I never thought
of this huge, long process. And so that's why I
think it's important to talk about stuff like this, because
something so simple as just buying a bunch of daisies
while you're getting your grocery shopping done, there's a lot.
There's a lot behind that, just like there is with
your food. Of course. Well, I'm thinking about them going
through the process of being semi dehydrated and then chemically rehydrated.
(14:41):
That blows my mind. Yeah, it's because they found this
great growing location with all this sunlight and constant temperature.
But then they have to get out to all the
people who want to spend the money on it. And
Americans and Europeans been just millions of dollars every year
on flowers which are mostly just to feel good purchase.
It's not like we need it, but you know, it's
how and somebody, And that's the big question of is
(15:03):
it is it really helping someone? Um? Or are we
because of this luxury purchase? Are we destroying the environment
and perpetuating low wage um industries that treat women unfairly?
And we will get to the bottom of this um.
This is in scientific Americans. Stewart Or of the World
(15:24):
Wildlife Fund International, sums it up this way. He and
this is talking specifically about Kenya and Lake Naivasha, which
is where a lot of those flower farms are located around.
He says it's one of the most perfect places to
grow flowers at a high altitude with plenty of water
and sunshine, and flower farms employ people and generate income great, excellent,
(15:48):
but they're also big water and pesticide users, right, and
like you said, Kristen Kenya supplies of Europe's cut flowers.
That's that's a very large chunk and the best are
sold to flourish through Dutch auctions and then not so
perfect end up in European supermarkets. So you know, same
(16:08):
thing with me buying daisies at the grocery store Gerbera
daisies to be exact, Yes, beauty and innocence. Um. But
at the Assyrian farm on Lake Naivasha. This is from
Scientific American also roses. They talk about the the environmental
impact and what companies are are seeking to do to
offset some of this impact. Roses are now grown with
(16:30):
geothermal waste heat to save energy and no roses are
raised within a third of a mile of the lake
to prevent pesticide runoff from reaching it. But it hasn't
always been like this. Um. There were some alarm bills
that were raised in two thousand three which were largely
attributed to a special report in the Guardian newspaper about
worker conditions, and it was specifically conditions for female workers
(16:55):
that make up a bulk of that labor force. Yeah,
the the Guardian made public concerns about chemical spraying, long
working hours, and harassment of female workers who were working
under male supervisors. And concerns remain over wages today and
whether the large flower companies are paying their fair share
of taxes um. But let's look at two thousand nine
(17:19):
as far as the lake goes that supplies all of
the water to these flower farms in kenya Um. In
two thousand nine, a major drought shrank the size of
the lake two levels they hadn't seen since the nineteen
But that was been followed by a major storm that
washed sewage and possibly chemical residue from the farms into
the lake. So here you're you're they're using all this water,
(17:41):
but then all of a sudden it's polluted, endangering all
the ecosystems. And just to give listeners an idea of
how much Lake Naivasha has been affected, not just because
of the flower farming, but also because of that drought
in two thousand nine, it has receded over one mile
and ken is really trying to revitalize that ecosystem while
(18:05):
sustaining these flower farms, which are so important. I want
to say that the floral industry is the fifth largest
in Kenya, it's very important for for their economy. And
depending on what flower farm you work at in Kenya,
you might have a great situation. There are some farms
that provide worker housing, education for their children, playgrounds, UM benefits. UH.
(18:30):
There are some that are transitioning more to permanent employment
instead of using contract work, but that's obviously not true
across the board UM, and so there's still a lot
of concerns about wages and fairness and UM female workers
and the things that they have to deal with. But
UM the environmental issues with the lake. It has led
a couple of companies to start investing a lot of
(18:53):
money and sustainability efforts. And there's the company Flamingo Homegrown
UH does follow fair trade standards UH and the company
says that it has slashed pesticide use, replaced contract positions
with permanent ones like I was just saying, and made
efforts to actually train and promote women's supervisors. But UM
University of Lester ecologists David Harper still has some concerns
(19:17):
and in February eleven he basically said that the UK's
demand for fresh flowers was bleeding Lake Naivasha dry and
he's urging the supermarkets that are buying these flowers to
take more responsibility by promoting policies that would help conserve
the lake's ecosystem. So he's saying that the people who
are selling you the flowers in your own country need
(19:38):
to be more responsible. Right, People who are worried from
the more environmental standpoint can look out for flowers that
are fair trade certified, or you can go local or
and buy more native plants that are native to your
the ecosystems that you're living in. Obviously you can buy
plants from and flowers from low coal greenhouses and other
(20:01):
things like that. But let's let's turn now to another
part of the world. In Columbia and Ecuador have a
very similar situation to the one in Kenya, which is,
like we said, the the environment, the growing situation is perfect.
It's on a it's on a savannah. There's plenty of
water and sunshine and constant temperatures. But we've got the
(20:25):
same issues with pollution, pesticides, female workers, all of that.
And I thought it was fascinating how the Colombian floral
trade got started. This is coming from a report in
the Smithsonian magazine, and it all began because a guy
named David Schiever wrote a term paper in grad school
(20:45):
in nineteen sixty seven suggesting that the savannah near Bogatat
was an ideal spot to grow flowers to sell the
US because it had an excellent climate. The flowers would
take off and they could apply assembly lines and modern shipping.
PRAC just says to to get things going. And boy,
howdy was David Chiever right? Yeah? He he and three
(21:09):
partners started Flora America, which used assembly lines and modern shipping.
So right off the bat, they're like, we're going to
make the model tea of flowers. And it really, it
really took off. And now Colombia is the second largest
exporter of cut flowers, behind only the Netherlands, and it
commands of the U S market, which you know, or
(21:30):
sixty five depending on where you're getting your where you're
getting your numbers, so it's between sixty five and stuff.
So basically a lot lot flowers. Uh. And this employs
more than a hundred thousand people working in the greenhouses,
and the majority of folks who are trying to work
there have been women, many of whom are single mothers.
And this is where the you know, this issue of
(21:52):
what kind of female labor we are supporting when we're
buying all of these Valentine's Day Mother's Day flowers. Um,
Because on the one hand, employment for single moms that
sounds great. It is needed. Economists have gone and said, hey,
this is a new form of job opportunities that would
not be there otherwise. Not necessarily a bad thing. But
(22:17):
according to the International Labor Rights Fund, the typical South
American flower picker um is unmarried, she's got an elementary
school education, and she has three or more children, and
a lot of times she's not making enough money to
really support herself and her family. Right, women at the
at the farm MG consul tories were surveyed and they
(22:38):
found that most had previously worked on substance subsistence farms
or as maids, jobs that paid lower wages than in
the flower industry. But we have to ask, which is
exactly the point you raised, are these the right kind
of jobs? Uh? You know it. It is wonderful that
single mothers can have employment, but if they're being exposed
to pesticides and being hunched over all day with the rippers,
(23:01):
I mean, are we again, it's it's kind of a
toss up. They're getting employed, they're getting paid, but it's
putting their children in their own health at risk. So
for those sixty hour weeks that they're working, um, in
anticipation of Valentine's Day. Not to be a total Valentine's
Day down er, um, but these women are making minimum wage.
They're working obviously long hours, and a lot of them
(23:22):
will suffer repetitive stress injuries with no treatment or time off,
and if they do try to get any kind of treatment,
they will be asked to not come up come back. Um.
And there are also stories and this is from um,
that two thousand three Guardian article that really raised alarm bells.
And things have gotten a little bit better, um, but
(23:44):
you know, some women were saying that when inspections would
happen to make sure working conditions were safe and equitable,
the supervisors would ask certain people to stay home so
things would would look more above board. Um. One of
those things that's not looking above board is that as
recently as the mid nineties, a Colombian sociologists found children
(24:07):
as young as nine working in the greenhouses on Saturdays,
and children eleven and of working forty six hour work weeks.
So it's not only um, you know, taking advantage of
women cheap labor from women, but also from children. Um.
But talking about that exposure to chemicals. UM. One survey
(24:28):
of nine thousand flower workers found that they had been
exposed to as many as one hundred and twenty seven
different chemicals, mostly fungicides and pesticides. And this is echoed.
The problems that come from this have been echoed in
several studies. Right. UM, you might be thinking, oh, a
survey that's totally outdated. Well here about how about this
(24:51):
two thousand nine University of Mexico study finding that women
working in the flower industry in Ecuador reported more pregnancy
losses than among women out side the industry, and the
researchers linked that to the need for an evaluation of
the reproductive health effects of employment in that specific industry
(25:11):
linked to pesticide use. Right, yeah, if you're going to
have this population doing this work, we should definitely take
a look at how to make it safer. Um At
two thousand six study of female flower workers in Ecuador.
This was study. The study was published in Pediatrics found
that a pregnant woman's exposure to pesticides was associated with
(25:32):
the child's neurological impairment and higher blood pressure later in life.
And of course we know that higher blood pressure can
you know if if if it stays, it can eventually
lead to cardiovascular problems. And in addition to UH these
kind of pesticide exposures and those repetitive stress injuries, there were,
(25:53):
according to the Smithsonian magazine, also a lot of reports
of sexual harassment by male bosses. UM. But again, these
are these are issues that a lot of companies have
tried to go in and rectify, but largely because watchdog
groups have been formed to pay attention to these kind
(26:14):
of working conditions, right, and I mean as far as
creating better work environments. You know, we talked about several
of the companies in Kenya that are really seeking to
be sustainable to help their workers and the workers families. UM.
According to that Smithsonian article, the flower industry in Columbia
created floor Verde, a voluntary certification program that requires participating
(26:37):
farms to meet targets for sustainable water use and follow
internationally recognized safety guidelines for chemical applications. So there are
people really trying to um improve the quality of their
workers lives and going back to the situation in Kenya
the Economist magazine was talking about, but more the the
(26:58):
importance of the ural industry and kind of an unstable
economy over there, and the report that the average monthly
salary of eighty dollars plus benefits is actually considered a
good wage. UM. So I guess that's why, um it
was it was challenging to weigh the pros and the
(27:18):
cons of what's going on in this industry because whenever
we trace back a lot of the products that we
take for granted, these simple luxuries like a bouquet of flowers,
a lot of times it does trace back to people, um,
not earning very much money. Uh. And and that can
be I don't know, it's it's it's hard to justify
(27:39):
in your mind because you can contextualize it and say, well,
for those for those Kenyan women, that eighty dollars a
month is really great, But should we be pushing for
somehow more for them, I don't know, higher wages, better
safety precautions. Um yeah, taking more across and precautions excuse me,
(28:00):
for pregnant women, right. And I think that's why it's
hardening to see that organizations like fair trade are going
in they are um, you know, you can actually find
those kind of certified bouquets, or of course if you
want to, you can always go local and native by
by your your love e dovy person a potted plant. Yeah,
(28:24):
because the thing is, at the end of the day,
people like people who buy flowers. H now granted. This
study at Rutgers University in two thousands six was funded
by the Society of American flora'sts okay, but they did
conclude that people perceive others based on the types of
(28:46):
gifts they give, and flower givers rose straight to the top.
We think of people who give flowers as making the
best impression, and they are considered more likable, friendly, and
emotion really intelligent. I love getting flowers. But it's funny
because apparently a lot of people out there think that
guys need help in this arena, because there are several
(29:09):
everything from flower websites, from from flower companies themselves over
to that website. The art of Manliness and decided before
has told you know, guys, you really you really need
a man up and buy some flowers for your lady.
But don't just buy carnations. You better buy some lily. Yeah,
and they suggest they do. They go over the meaning
of different flowers. And I think that it was the
(29:31):
art of manliness that suggested buying your lady friend one
of those manuals about the meaning of the Victorian manuals
on the meaning of flowers, making sure that you have
the same one because they weren't all the same. So
you don't want to offend her and try to say that,
you know, like, oh, I think you're really dumb, but
you know, like god, I don't know what flower would
symbolize the dumbness. And he hands it to her upside
down and the oh gods in the bow is time
(29:53):
the wrong way? You know? Just take take the pressure
off and get her a chia pet. Oh god, noth says,
I love you like a bearded potted play exactly. That's
what I say all the time. I have that knitted
on a pillow back to you'd be expectations low, ladies, right,
So yeah, I want to know who out there is
(30:15):
getting flowers for someone on Valentine's Day. And if you
thought at all about the big line of places that
it has been, well, I'm wondering now too, if we're
accidentally dissuading people from giving flowers to their beloved. Well,
maybe they'll go to a local florist, or maybe they'll
(30:38):
make their own bouquet out of construction papor. Yeah, I
don't know. Let's combine the Martha Stewart podcast with this one.
All you need is some dried macaron and that's a
good thing. So hopefully you thought this podcast was a
good thing, not to be a total downer on Valentine's
Day eve. Either way, let us know your thoughts. Send
(30:59):
us a Valentine how about? Yeah, you know you can't
send me flowers, I guess because that might take too long.
But you can send us an E card Mom Stuff
at Discovery dot com. Draw us the flower and MS
paint I like that, very high tech. You can send
it to Mom's stuff at Discovery dot com. I repeat
(31:24):
moms stuff at Discovery dot com. I will be awaiting
your MS paint roses. Yes, and we would like a
guide of what each m S paint flower you have
drawn means. Yes, hopefully it is all love and endearment
obtain Yeah, at least wait until after BALI. So I've
(31:45):
got an email here to read from Tina, and this
is in response to our episode on gender differences in
exercise and Tina is a soccer player and avid soccer player,
and she brought up something that we came across in
our research for that podcast, but did not end up mentioning.
(32:06):
In that episode, she writes, I can speak for the
sport I know best, which is soccer, and after recently
tearing my A c L and having to undergo surgical reconstruction,
I learned a lot about how being a lady played
into my injury. My surgeon told me that women are
actually up to eight times more likely to tear their
A c L in sport because of our biomechanics and
(32:29):
weight distribution. Men tend to have stronger upper bodies, while
women tend to carry their weight in the hip and
thigh region, and this means that when a woman pivots
or twists on her feet during a sport, there's a
lot more torque in the ligaments on the knee. This
extra tension is what causes female soccer players to have
more ligament injuries, and I guess I'm a living example
of this. Because of this fact, my physiotherapist has told
(32:51):
me that most female varsity teams at my university undergo
some form of a cl and injury prevention training sessions
to build up certain stable ysing muscles in their legs
to counteract the torque on their ligaments. Ladies, got torque?
That sounds so bad? Put that on a pillow. Uh.
This this is from Janna. The subject line, I'll let
(33:13):
it speak for itself is jim gender pandemonium. She says.
I'm a student at Memorial University in Newfoundland, Canada, and
we've had a bit of crisis on our hands up here.
As students. We all have access to the gym on campus,
which has a specific freeweights room that is often crowded
by many guys. Well, the decision was made by the
gym to promote more females to get into this kind
(33:34):
of muscle toning workout, and so the gym began to
offer female only hours on non peaked times. Oh sure,
non peaked times. Well, it has been an uproar, she says.
I thought it was funny and even laugh loudly when
you said the boys are more upset when they miss
their workouts, Because it has been crazy. Guys have written
our campus newspaper started a Facebook group in protest, calling
(33:57):
this an act of reverse sexism. Now, mind you, they
still have ninety two hours a week to have access
to the room. I think they are being kind of silly,
but each to their own I guess, I guess Jenna. Yeah,
asked Jenna to keep us informed to see whether or
not the school caves to the Jinder Jim Gender pandemonia,
(34:20):
Jim Jim Boree pandemonium. I just people people running around
the gym with their hands in the air like, yeah,
I'm thinking of a dance marathon now. So on that
note again, our email addresses mom Stuff at Discovery dot com.
If you have a letter or Valentine to send our way,
or you can send us a Valentine up on the facebooks.
(34:40):
We'd like that. Why don't you send us a Valentine
by liking us? That would be the best Valentine's present
you could possibly give to me and Caroline. We would
love you for that. And you can also follow us
on Twitter at Mom's Stuff podcast, and you can check
out the blog during the week. It is at how
stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out our
(35:04):
new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how staff
Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing
possibilities of tomorrow. The hou Stepp Works iPhone app has arrived.
Download it today on iTunes. Brought to you by the
reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
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