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Speaker 1: Do you think your lower management job, which is on

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Speaker 1: the brink of extinction, is your ticket to a lifelong

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Speaker 1: career at that same company? Yes? Okay, okay. Do you

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Speaker 1: think our social programs, which are already crumbling, will be

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Speaker 1: there to support you fully in your old age? Yes?

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Speaker 1: Do you think that, in the face of potential financial catastrophe,

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Speaker 1: buying it another pair of chunky waffles old sneakers was

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Speaker 1: the best use of your life savings? Yes? The classic

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Speaker 1: baby boomer heart in the fifties wallet in the nineties. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Cathy is a boomer. I know, I know, because you

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Speaker 1: might be liking her a lot more than you used to.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, she is extremely so. That was a strip

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Speaker 1: from the nines with a cheery dough eide Kathy talking

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Speaker 1: to her tax accountant about her financial history, then walking

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Speaker 1: away from him in blissful a narrance. In the final panel,

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Speaker 1: it's sharp satire from Kathy guys White. Her generation was

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Speaker 1: notorious for being bad spenders, worst savers, and aggressive holders

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Speaker 1: onto the reins of power while the earth shrivels to

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Speaker 1: a crisp before our very eyes. There are a generation

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Speaker 1: that began with a gasp of social change, who went

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Speaker 1: on to ditch progressivism for an aggressive cultural conservatism that

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Speaker 1: still holds the United States and their generation to this day.

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Speaker 1: Like most people my age, I'm a late millennial. I

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Speaker 1: don't like boomers, and so going into researching this episode,

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Speaker 1: I found the generation at large to be aggressively, selfish,

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Speaker 1: deflective when confronted, and just the epitome of wealth. That's

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Speaker 1: just the way things are. And to interrogate the ideas,

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Speaker 1: I found the Cathy character to be a pretty solid

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Speaker 1: usher to guide us through how the boomers got to

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Speaker 1: where they started to where they are now. Because most

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Speaker 1: of what I find frustrating about the Kathy comic strips

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Speaker 1: are the same things that I find frustrating about my parents,

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Speaker 1: my aunt's, my uncle's. While yes, no generation is a monolith,

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Speaker 1: there are through lines, and this commentary was something that

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Speaker 1: Kathy guys White was doing very deliberately, along with many

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Speaker 1: other comic artists of her generation like Gary Trudeau with Doonesbury,

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Speaker 1: like Alison Bechdeal with Likes to Watch out For, like

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Speaker 1: Keith Knight with the k Chronicles, and on and on.

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Speaker 1: So in this episode, we're going to take a look

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Speaker 1: at what Kathy's work said about her generation, who she represented,

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Speaker 1: what issues Kathy, guys, whites were tackled, and how it

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Speaker 1: resonated with a wide swath of boomer women across race

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Speaker 1: and class lines. So let's get into a baby. This

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Speaker 1: is Oh. Can I cue the song? God damn it?

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Speaker 1: Three days of no Cathy, sleep, paralysis, demon streak and

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Speaker 1: it's and it's broken. What do you want? Why the song? Fine?

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Speaker 1: She paced into the world in the nineteen seventy six.

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Speaker 1: She's at what, She's out on dates and she don't

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Speaker 1: like politics. From mama and herban to with feminist friends.

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Speaker 1: She's fighting all the stands it with chocolate and hand Kathy,

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Speaker 1: She's fighting back to stressed with success. Let's go slack,

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Speaker 1: Oh Cathy, Bakathy Cathy, She's gotta like go in all. Okay,

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Speaker 1: boomers get it. Okay, we're gonna drop that, but let's

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Speaker 1: get acquainted. I'm a millennial. Zoomers hate us both, so

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Speaker 1: we have that in common. Right, and in ten years,

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Speaker 1: people who are currently in kindergarten will hate zoomers. That's

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Speaker 1: the generational circle of life. And sure generational divides were

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Speaker 1: designed and sort of siloed for the benefit of predatory

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Speaker 1: advertisers more than anything else, but they do provide some

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Speaker 1: sort of order and Jesus Christ, Boomers, there are a

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Speaker 1: lot of you, the Baby Boomer generation, and for this episode,

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Speaker 1: I'll define them as people born in the US between

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Speaker 1: nineteen and nineteen sixty four, grew up in the post

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Speaker 1: World War two economic boom, and either came of age

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Speaker 1: or had their earliest memories shaped by things like the

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Speaker 1: Vietnam War protests, the civil rights movement, and second wave feminism.

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Speaker 1: Bruce Givney wrote a book called A Generation of Sociopaths,

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Speaker 1: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America, and described the generation

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Speaker 1: like this in an interview with Box. I focus on

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Speaker 1: the first two thirds of boomers because their experiences are

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Speaker 1: pretty homogeneous. They were raised after the war and so

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Speaker 1: have no real experience of trauma or the Great Depression,

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Speaker 1: or even any deprivation at all. More importantly, they never

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Speaker 1: experienced the social solidarity that unfolded during wartime and that

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Speaker 1: helped produce the New Deal. But it's really the white

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Speaker 1: middle class boomers who exemplify all the awful characteristics and

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Speaker 1: behaviors that have defined this generation. They became a majority

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Speaker 1: of the electorate in the early nineteen eighties, and then

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Speaker 1: they fully consolidated their power in Washington by January nine,

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Speaker 1: and they've basically been in charge ever since. Boomers, He

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Speaker 1: is not wrong. This is more or less accurate, and so,

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Speaker 1: with all due respect, I think the best way to

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Speaker 1: get started here would be to recap the events of

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Speaker 1: your generation so far anyways, because you don't seem interested

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Speaker 1: in giving up power anytime soon. Do you take it easy? Millennial?

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Speaker 1: You're not my mommy, You're fictional. We'll talk to my

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Speaker 1: mommy later in the episode. Bruce Givney said in this

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Speaker 1: same box interview that boomers quote were born into great

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Speaker 1: fortune and had a blast while they were on top.

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Speaker 1: But what have they left behind? This is a generation

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Speaker 1: that is dominated by feelings, not by facts. The irony

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Speaker 1: is that boomers criticize Millennials for being snowflakes, for being

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Speaker 1: too driven by feelings. But the Boomers are the first

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Speaker 1: big feelings generation. So what are these big feelings that

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Speaker 1: Gibney's talking about. Let's go back to the source. Boomers

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Speaker 1: were raised by either the Silent or the Greatest generations

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Speaker 1: born anywhere between nineteen hundred and ninety five, generations that

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Speaker 1: had survived two world wars and a Great Depression, and

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Speaker 1: hadn't been born into the relative economic stability and the

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Speaker 1: global superpower that American boomers had. In the Kathy Comics,

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Speaker 1: our look into this previous generation is through Mom, Cathy's

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Speaker 1: overbearing mother whose old world values constantly chafed with Kathy's

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Speaker 1: struggle to balance a career and a satisfying personal life.

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Speaker 1: You might remember from episode two. Mom is both a

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Speaker 1: character built on stereotypes about her generation, who also drew

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Speaker 1: from Kathy, guys White's real life kick ass mother and

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Speaker 1: Guys White Anne emigrated to the US as a young

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Speaker 1: girl and went on to get a degree in journalism,

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Speaker 1: only to be forced to give that career up when

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Speaker 1: her husband, Kathy's father returned from World War Two. She

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Speaker 1: went on to get her master's but didn't tell anyone

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Speaker 1: until years later. This story reflected the realities of many

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Speaker 1: women of the Silent generation. They were welcomed into the

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Speaker 1: workplace while men were away at war, then forced out

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Speaker 1: when those men returned, and the issues they faced definitely

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Speaker 1: influenced the politics of the liberal mainstream second wave feminist movement,

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Speaker 1: and while the Mom character is mainly remembered as a loving,

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Speaker 1: if kind of naggy old world presence guys. White found

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Speaker 1: opportunities to satirize her generation's predicament in the storyline from

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Speaker 1: the late seventies in which Kathy's mom has a crisis

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Speaker 1: of faith in herself. So here's a strip from that series.

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Speaker 1: Kathy is on the phone with her mom. Mom, you

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Speaker 1: just can't be depressed about being a mother and a housewife.

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Speaker 1: People like you are the heart and soul of the world.

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Speaker 1: You're the creator of life, the keeper and nurisher of life.

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Speaker 1: You're at the beginning, the home, the foundation, the reason

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Speaker 1: behind everything else anybody ever does. In the final panel,

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Speaker 1: Mom is standing in her kitchen. She's holding a broom

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Speaker 1: and she's surrounded by housework. She says, how can something

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Speaker 1: so important be so boring? In the next trip, Kathy

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Speaker 1: and her mother are together in her mom's kitchen, continuing

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Speaker 1: the same discussion. Did you like being a housewife when

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Speaker 1: you were first married? Mom? No, Kathy, I used to

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Speaker 1: cry every morning when your dad went off to work

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Speaker 1: because he had someplace important to go, and all he

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Speaker 1: had to do was wait for him to come home. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but you got over crying every morning, didn't you never.

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Speaker 1: Just about the time I quit crying about him, I

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Speaker 1: discovered soap operas. Kathy guys White sticks the landing on

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Speaker 1: a joke, as she always does, but the message here

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Speaker 1: is clear. The expectations put on Mom to be a

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Speaker 1: housewife aren't ones that she invited or even enjoyed. They

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Speaker 1: were just ones that the culture she lived in forced

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Speaker 1: her to accept. This is hinted at in other storylines

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Speaker 1: later in the comic, when Mom begins a series of

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Speaker 1: small businesses to provide structure and meaning to a life

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Speaker 1: that she wasn't supposed to derive those things from. This

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Speaker 1: was the way that many mothers of the boomer generation

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Speaker 1: came up, and as Kathy's trips explore, these old school

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Speaker 1: values and constructs conflicted with the social movements that boomers

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Speaker 1: were growing up around. When the oldest boomers were in

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Speaker 1: their early twenties and the youngest were in grade school,

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Speaker 1: social movements of in eighteen sixties brought a great deal

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Speaker 1: of American trauma to the forefront, from the Civil rights

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Speaker 1: movement to Second Way feminism to anti Vietnam War protests.

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Speaker 1: The boomers often take credit for these movements, but there's

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Speaker 1: a strong argument that there is a case of kind

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Speaker 1: of stolen valor going on there. I got a chance

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Speaker 1: to interview writer Jill Philippovic, author of Okay, Boomer, Let's

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Speaker 1: talk how my generation got left behind? On the mythos

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Speaker 1: that surrounds early boomer activism. You know, whenever critiques of

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Speaker 1: boomers come up, I think, especially in progressive spaces, what

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Speaker 1: I hear from a lot of boomers themselves is, you know, well,

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Speaker 1: wait a minute, We're not all these kind of reactionary

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Speaker 1: boomer Trump conservatives. Where the people who are on the

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Speaker 1: front lines of the civil rights movement, Where the people

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Speaker 1: who were on the front lines of the second wave

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Speaker 1: feminist movement. Um. But when we think of who were

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Speaker 1: the leaders of the second way feminist movement, um, you know,

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Speaker 1: people like Gloria Sinum for example. Um. Those folks from

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Speaker 1: are older than boomers. Um Sum I believe was a

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Speaker 1: member of the silent generation. Um. So it's not it's

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Speaker 1: not that baby boomer women were not feminists. They they

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Speaker 1: certainly were. Um, they just weren't necessarily the folks that

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Speaker 1: we think of leading the movements in the nineteen sixties

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Speaker 1: and nineteen seventies. Our idea of what the nineteen sixties

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Speaker 1: and seventies were UM, which is very focused on the

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Speaker 1: activism and the very successful activism UM of many progressive

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Speaker 1: baby boomers, does not encompass the fact that the vast

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Speaker 1: majority of Americans, the vast majority of Baby Boomers, were

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Speaker 1: not participants in these movements. Right. Most boomers were not

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Speaker 1: going to anti war protests. UM. Most boomers were not

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Speaker 1: going to civil rights marches or feminist marches. As much

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Speaker 1: as every single boomer I'm sure we'll say they were there, um,

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Speaker 1: most of them were not, and many of them opposed

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Speaker 1: those movements as they were happening. So Boomers are and

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Speaker 1: have long been an incredibly politically divided generation. UM. Millennials

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Speaker 1: are much more politically cohesive. We are, as a generation,

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Speaker 1: much more politically progressive. UM. Boomers have always had this

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Speaker 1: kind of not always right down the middle, you know,

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Speaker 1: it shifts a bit from from decade to decade, but

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Speaker 1: a half that is a rough half that is very progressive,

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Speaker 1: in a rough half that is pretty conservative. A lot

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Speaker 1: of critics say that the boomers did not experience any

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Speaker 1: national trauma in their young lives. This is a point

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Speaker 1: that's invoked pretty often. Oh, the boomers grew up in

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Speaker 1: this cushy, leave it to beaver environment. The silent generation

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Speaker 1: had the Great Depression in World War two, millennials had

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Speaker 1: draconian nine eleven policies, the Iraq War, the Great Recession.

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Speaker 1: And this is true enough. Boomers grew up in a

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Speaker 1: nation with more financial and environmental stability than the ones

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Speaker 1: before or after. But consider how the Vietnam Draft affected

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Speaker 1: a great deal of male boomers. The draft ran from

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four to nineteen seventy three, from men eighteen

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Speaker 1: to twenty five, and a Duke University paper from two

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Speaker 1: thousand and for stated that a third of early male

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Speaker 1: boomers served in the Vietnam War. That said, there is

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Speaker 1: some dissonance with how the boomer generation tends to characterize itself.

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Speaker 1: There were some older boomers, or cuspy boomers, that were

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Speaker 1: instrumental in these social movements because they got involved very young.

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Speaker 1: Chairman Fred Hampton was a boomer. Ruby Bridges is a boomer.

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Speaker 1: And I don't want to discredit the effective youth organizing

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Speaker 1: that went on during that time, but the majority of

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Speaker 1: leaders that we associate with this era are from the

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Speaker 1: previous generation, the silent generation. Your glorious Steinem's You're Angela,

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Speaker 1: Davis's The Chicago Seven, Malcolm X. The list goes on

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Speaker 1: all silent generation. Marcia Johnson was a CUSP, So we'll

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Speaker 1: give the boomers that one. And while these generational divides

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Speaker 1: are deeply arbitrary, to say that the Boomers were an

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Speaker 1: inherently anti establishment group is kind of a stretch. But

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Speaker 1: they definitely grew up around and often benefited from the

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Speaker 1: progress made from these movements. So the leaders of the

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Speaker 1: sixties and early seventies weren't boomers. Who are the boomers?

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Speaker 1: I asked Jill to give me an idea of what

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Speaker 1: the demographics of boomers were and whether the popular interpretation

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Speaker 1: of them as suburban nights who grew up on TV

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Speaker 1: and prosperity was actually accurate. As we said, baby Boomers,

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Speaker 1: especially when they were younger, were an overwhelmingly white generation.

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Speaker 1: Boomers have gotten less white through time, um, in large

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Speaker 1: part because of immigration. UM. So they're and reationally have

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Speaker 1: become more diverse UH as they've aged, because more folks

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Speaker 1: from other countries have gotten into the US and helped

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Speaker 1: to diversify the baby boomers. But you know, the sort

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Speaker 1: of defining characteristic of Baby boomers, So being born into

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Speaker 1: post war prosperity, UM, living in the kind of single

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Speaker 1: families suburban home that you know, perhaps you're that your

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Speaker 1: parents owned, and we're perhaps the first generation of people

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Speaker 1: in your family to ever be able to own a

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Speaker 1: home thanks to the federal government. UM. That's a very

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Speaker 1: white boomer story, right, because the all of the laws

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Speaker 1: that we're setting out UM where investment in building new

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Speaker 1: suburban homes were who could live in those homes, who

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Speaker 1: qualified for government backed mortgage. UM, how certain neighborhoods were

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Speaker 1: assessed about you for whether or not uh they would

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Speaker 1: qualify for these government back mortgages, and at what rates.

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Speaker 1: All of that was highly highly racialized. So you probably

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Speaker 1: heard the term redlining. UM. That was what was happening.

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Speaker 1: You know, majority black neighborhoods during the Keeno neighborhood as well.

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Speaker 1: We're getting redlines in nine UM, while majority white neighborhoods

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Speaker 1: were getting blue lines, which essentially invent these are good investments.

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Speaker 1: We will give preferential mortgages to these areas, uh, enabling

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Speaker 1: the parents of white the white parents of hype baby

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Speaker 1: boomers to set their kids up for successful adulthood. Boomers

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Speaker 1: aren't as diverse as the generations that came after them,

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Speaker 1: but it is very common for the experiences of marginalized

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Speaker 1: boomers to be kind of cast aside. These issues still

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Speaker 1: persist now. Non white boomers were faced with persistent racist

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Speaker 1: policy being made by a government whose officials barely represented them,

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Speaker 1: and these days black and brown boomers are retiring later

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Speaker 1: and have less access to consistent healthcare. According to a

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Speaker 1: paper called Baby Boomers of Color by Melvin Delgado, that

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Speaker 1: Duke University study from two thousand and four highlights and

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Speaker 1: challenges the tendency to homogenize the Boomers as a completely

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Speaker 1: white block or a completely progressive block. The study highlights

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Speaker 1: a strong streak of conservatism and Boomers from a very

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Speaker 1: early age, saying that quote in nine, many of George

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Speaker 1: Wallace's supporters were young, southern, and rural unquote. So while

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Speaker 1: there is this popular narrative that the boomers started as

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Speaker 1: radicals and gradually sold out, some just started there. Early

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Speaker 1: boomers were a much more diverse group than the white

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Speaker 1: dominated pop culture and TV of the time indicated twelve

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Speaker 1: percent of Early Boomers and nearly fifteen percent of Lake

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Speaker 1: Boomers were immigrants and one third of later boomers aren't white.

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Speaker 1: Boomers in the l g B, t q I A

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Speaker 1: plus community were frequently erased from the narrative as well,

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Speaker 1: a generation that was antagonized by anti queer policies, a

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Speaker 1: cultural intolerance of coming out, and being disproportionately affected by

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Speaker 1: the AIDS epidemic. So there's no typical boomer really, like

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Speaker 1: any group, they differ in political leanings and by race

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Speaker 1: and gender and sexuality, but there was a specific lack

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Speaker 1: of Boomers that were drawn to Kathy comics. Working Boomer women.

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Speaker 1: I asked Jill Philipovic who the average boomer woman was.

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Speaker 1: Boomers generally, and Boomer women in particular surged into institutions

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Speaker 1: of higher education, their generation to college in astounding numbers, um,

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Speaker 1: and women particularly were, uh, we're surging into college. Um.

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Speaker 1: Boomer women also were a huge new and emergent force

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Speaker 1: in the paid workforce. Uh. So, what I'm looking for

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Speaker 1: running into these really unfair structures, whether that was the

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Speaker 1: glass ceilings, or not being promoted given your gender, whether

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Speaker 1: that was sexual harassment at work, whether that was realizing

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Speaker 1: that as life for American women was changing really radically,

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Speaker 1: and women themselves were changing and so coming up against

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Speaker 1: that tension both in the workplace and in the home. Um,

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Speaker 1: you know, Boomer women really were on the front lines

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Speaker 1: of all those cultural, social, and political shifts. They were

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Speaker 1: living them. The average boomer woman, I think, is somebody

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Speaker 1: who probably entered early adulthood with a lot of optimism

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Speaker 1: about how things were changing in her favor because they were, um,

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Speaker 1: only to encounter a whole bunch of roadblocks. Um that

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Speaker 1: you know indelibly shaped her personal and family life. UM. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think there's a reason why Boomer women were the

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Speaker 1: ones who have put words on what a lot of

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Speaker 1: even women of our generation now faced, you know, things

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Speaker 1: like sexual harassment, um, things like domestic violence. Right, that

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Speaker 1: was not particularly well understood concept until Boomer women were

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Speaker 1: coming into adulthood. And so I do think, you know,

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Speaker 1: the average boom or a woman could probably look at

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Speaker 1: who she would be if she had been born in

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Speaker 1: the eighties or the nineties or the two thousands and

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Speaker 1: see your wife for herself, um, you know, but can

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Speaker 1: also be in a position to look at her mother's

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Speaker 1: life and see all the ways in which she lived

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Speaker 1: with much more freedom and many more opportunities and kind

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Speaker 1: of any generation of women before her, and if this

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Speaker 1: description doesn't exactly match up with Queen Cathy guys White.

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Speaker 1: She was born in nine fifty to an immigrant parent,

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Speaker 1: went to college, but wasn't encouraged to dream too big,

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Speaker 1: and she tried to build her own career in life

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Speaker 1: for herself instead of getting married and having kids right away.

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Speaker 1: Here's a bit of my interview with her from this

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Speaker 1: spring to that effect. You know, I think for me

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Speaker 1: it was a gradual awareness of of a different world

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Speaker 1: for women than the one I had grown up expecting.

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Speaker 1: And my mom, who I've also written about is who

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Speaker 1: is just remarkably a remarkable traditionalist and feminist. At the

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Speaker 1: same time, working boomer women loved Kathy comics, but the

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Speaker 1: idea of women in the workplace wasn't a Boomer invention.

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Speaker 1: Working class women had been doing it for millennia, and

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Speaker 1: women across class lines were expected to contribute labor during

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Speaker 1: World War Two, but the idea of women entering the

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Speaker 1: workplace and staying there was a newer concept, and so

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Speaker 1: the girl Boss pipeline was introduced. Beginning in the seventies,

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Speaker 1: American women had increased access to capital and capitalism without

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Speaker 1: having to be married The Kathy strips were well equipped

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Speaker 1: to comment on this through Kathy the reluctant middle class feminist,

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Speaker 1: Andrea the hardline feminist determined to work at the highest

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Speaker 1: level possible, Girl Waltz, and Charlene the underpaid, overworked secretary.

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Speaker 1: Here's a strip from the late nineteen seventies. Kathy is

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Speaker 1: on the phone with Andrea. Hi, Andrea, it's Kathy. I'm

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Speaker 1: real sorry if I woke you up, but I've been

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Speaker 1: thinking about what you said. Just let me see if

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Speaker 1: I have this straight, Andrea. If I've become a housewife

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Speaker 1: and cook meals, I'll be a subservient slave. But if

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Speaker 1: I were a chef in a restaurant, I'd bring dignity

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Speaker 1: to all of womanhood. If I spend my days cleaning

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Speaker 1: bathtubs and toilets, my status as a female is equal

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Speaker 1: to a groveling worm. But if I go work for

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Speaker 1: the sewer company, I'll make headlines as a feminist star.

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Speaker 1: What's the difference, Andrea? What makes the same masly job

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Speaker 1: an insult if you do it at home, but an

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Speaker 1: honor if you can make it a career. There's a pause.

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Speaker 1: Andrea answers money, especially once the nineteen eighties and the

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Speaker 1: Reagan administration hit. This emphasis on capital for the individual

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Speaker 1: and proving one's worth through labor and consumption became a

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Speaker 1: huge emphasis of the boomers. Here's another strip from this

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Speaker 1: AM era showing Kathy running around doing her daily tasks

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Speaker 1: and thinking to herself. And I want to be specific

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Speaker 1: about the fact that she is thinking this to herself,

359
00:23:09,480 --> 00:23:12,560
Speaker 1: because so much of the criticism of Kathy comics relies

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Speaker 1: on the assumption that she's just saying all of this

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Speaker 1: out loud to anyone who will listen. In this trip,

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Speaker 1: she's thinking, I got up at seven and showered and

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Speaker 1: dressed for work, just like a man. I shoved down

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Speaker 1: a cup of coffee and charged in a rush our traffic,

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Speaker 1: just like a man. I worked all day, I thought

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Speaker 1: the evening traffic, and now I'm home, just like a man.

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Speaker 1: She sits on the easy chair in her apartment, looking confused.

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Speaker 1: I thought I was supposed to feel fulfilled by now.

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Speaker 1: Cathy's critics felt that her issues were redundant in whiny,

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Speaker 1: and I had to ask myself, is there any angle

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Speaker 1: where I can see their point? You're kidding? I thought

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Speaker 1: we were cool. We are cool. Kathy I just have

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Speaker 1: to consider the full picture here. I thought you weren't

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Speaker 1: a both sides, sir, I thought that was your thing, Kathy.

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Speaker 1: Could you give me the benefit of the doubt. This

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Speaker 1: is going somewhere. I am so sick of being called

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Speaker 1: a whiner when women who love the comic felt the

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Speaker 1: same way I did, but couldn't say it out loud.

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Speaker 1: I totally agree with you. I and the fact that

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Speaker 1: men disliked it so much just proves my point. If

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Speaker 1: you said any of it out loud, you were called

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Speaker 1: a loser. You were pathetic, Kathy. I know I was

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Speaker 1: just setting up the next segment. Say what you will

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Speaker 1: about boomer women. But Kathy, you were not real. You

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Speaker 1: were my sleep paralysis demon. And I swear I know

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Speaker 1: a lot of women resonated with you. I talked to them.

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Speaker 1: You you talked to them, I did. I spoke with

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Speaker 1: ten boomer women from a variety of different backgrounds in

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Speaker 1: class and race who Kathy comics had resonated a bit

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Speaker 1: specifically about their experience asas in the workplace. Oh that

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Speaker 1: sounds nice, it is, Please leave my room, jeez. I

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Speaker 1: interviewed boomer women about their early experiences in the workplace

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Speaker 1: after being raised by Silent generation parents, and I found

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Speaker 1: that even the exaggerations in the Kathy strip were for

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Speaker 1: many people based in real experiences. Particularly during the Reagan

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Speaker 1: and Bush senior years. These were the backlash years, where

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Speaker 1: the games that the women's liberation movement made in the

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Speaker 1: seventies was met with strong retaliation both systemically and an

399
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Speaker 1: individual workplaces. The nineteen eighties were a critical turning point

400
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Speaker 1: for boomers. With the Reagan presidency came a wave of

401
00:25:44,800 --> 00:25:49,720
Speaker 1: American conservatism. We're talking policies that widened the gap between

402
00:25:49,720 --> 00:25:52,720
Speaker 1: the rich and the poor, with declining wages and a

403
00:25:52,800 --> 00:25:56,000
Speaker 1: lower standard of living for the working class. We're talking

404
00:25:56,320 --> 00:26:00,159
Speaker 1: rampant deregulation and tax breaks to the finance industry that

405
00:26:00,200 --> 00:26:04,080
Speaker 1: made Wall Street ridiculously rich and would end in a

406
00:26:04,080 --> 00:26:07,560
Speaker 1: recession that really and truly fucked everyone over in two

407
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Speaker 1: thousand and eight. These were years where Reagan claimed to

408
00:26:10,680 --> 00:26:14,520
Speaker 1: want to scale government down all well, increasing government spending,

409
00:26:14,720 --> 00:26:18,040
Speaker 1: slashing programs that supported the environment and the working class,

410
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Speaker 1: and increased the military budget. He put the US into

411
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Speaker 1: debt all well, saying government is not a solution to

412
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Speaker 1: our problem. The government is the problem. This was a

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00:26:26,960 --> 00:26:31,960
Speaker 1: time where American rugged individualism was stressed. If you didn't succeed,

414
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Speaker 1: it was inconceivable that a system had failed you. It

415
00:26:35,000 --> 00:26:37,840
Speaker 1: was your fault and your fault alone. Uh. I need

416
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Speaker 1: to stop talking about Ronald Reagan. I needed, I need

417
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Speaker 1: to dissociate. I need a Mike's Hard. Here are my

418
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Speaker 1: talks with boomer women, and to be clear, I am

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Speaker 1: changing their names for privacy reasons. Here's a conversation I

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Speaker 1: had with Amelia, who grew up in a working class

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Speaker 1: Hispanic family in the nineteen seventies, became a first generation

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Speaker 1: college graduate, and eventually went to work for a T

423
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Speaker 1: and T. Amelia got her start as a toll operator

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Speaker 1: for the phone company, which was then called Mountain Bell,

425
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Speaker 1: and then worked her way up to secretary and then

426
00:27:08,920 --> 00:27:12,879
Speaker 1: into the low executive level in the engineering department. She

427
00:27:12,920 --> 00:27:15,680
Speaker 1: didn't work around many women or people of color at all,

428
00:27:16,000 --> 00:27:18,439
Speaker 1: and told me how she would bond with the women

429
00:27:18,520 --> 00:27:22,639
Speaker 1: in her office in particular. So when I was in

430
00:27:22,760 --> 00:27:27,639
Speaker 1: high school, I remember thinking, Oh, I'm gonna be like mom,

431
00:27:27,680 --> 00:27:31,280
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna graduate from high school and I'll get married,

432
00:27:31,320 --> 00:27:34,840
Speaker 1: and I'll have two boys and two girls, and I'll

433
00:27:34,840 --> 00:27:38,119
Speaker 1: be a secretary. That was my career goal. I'll just

434
00:27:38,200 --> 00:27:41,639
Speaker 1: be a secretary. That was. And that then in the

435
00:27:41,760 --> 00:27:45,880
Speaker 1: late sixties, certainly somebody who was in high school could

436
00:27:45,920 --> 00:27:49,960
Speaker 1: aspire to having a career as a secretary, you know,

437
00:27:50,400 --> 00:27:56,480
Speaker 1: totally reasonable. Um. And then my high school counselor encouraged

438
00:27:56,520 --> 00:28:00,879
Speaker 1: me to go to college. And that was something that

439
00:28:00,920 --> 00:28:05,240
Speaker 1: if you were born and raised in Colorado of Hispanic

440
00:28:05,280 --> 00:28:09,720
Speaker 1: origin in the fifties and the sixties, not many people

441
00:28:09,920 --> 00:28:13,719
Speaker 1: encouraged you to do. The particular group that I fell into. Actually,

442
00:28:13,760 --> 00:28:15,760
Speaker 1: I'm still friends with one of the women that was

443
00:28:15,800 --> 00:28:22,000
Speaker 1: in that group day Um. And that was nineteen seventy

444
00:28:25,040 --> 00:28:29,399
Speaker 1: three and four. Um. Yeah. A couple of the women

445
00:28:29,400 --> 00:28:31,800
Speaker 1: were married, and they were a little bit older, maybe

446
00:28:31,840 --> 00:28:36,200
Speaker 1: ten years older than me. Um. Couple of them were single.

447
00:28:36,880 --> 00:28:40,960
Speaker 1: One was a single mom. So we had a variety

448
00:28:41,000 --> 00:28:43,960
Speaker 1: of women. They were all Anglo. There weren't very many

449
00:28:44,080 --> 00:28:49,240
Speaker 1: Hispanics at all at all, engineering maybe a handful. I

450
00:28:49,280 --> 00:28:53,479
Speaker 1: am curious about. Yeah, your experiences in that space as

451
00:28:53,560 --> 00:28:56,400
Speaker 1: a as a Hispanic woman as well. It sounds like

452
00:28:56,840 --> 00:28:59,560
Speaker 1: there were not many other Hispanic women to talk to.

453
00:29:00,280 --> 00:29:02,560
Speaker 1: Is that correct? What was I guess what was what

454
00:29:02,680 --> 00:29:06,640
Speaker 1: was your experience from that perspective. I'm trying to remember

455
00:29:06,720 --> 00:29:11,320
Speaker 1: if there were any, and I'm going back. I'm going down.

456
00:29:11,640 --> 00:29:19,320
Speaker 1: Probably through the seventies, there were a handful of Hispanic

457
00:29:19,560 --> 00:29:24,920
Speaker 1: and black men who were in the engineering department, but

458
00:29:25,040 --> 00:29:31,880
Speaker 1: there weren't many Hispanic women. Again, maybe a handful in

459
00:29:32,000 --> 00:29:35,200
Speaker 1: the various groups. And I'm talking a building of probably

460
00:29:35,560 --> 00:29:39,840
Speaker 1: a thousand people, and I have to work with engineers

461
00:29:40,160 --> 00:29:49,600
Speaker 1: to get that done. Electrical engineers, Anglo male engineers. I

462
00:29:49,640 --> 00:29:53,160
Speaker 1: can remember their names. And there were a couple of

463
00:29:53,200 --> 00:29:57,520
Speaker 1: them that were particularly fun to work with because they

464
00:29:57,600 --> 00:30:01,800
Speaker 1: would refuse to get view the information that you needed.

465
00:30:03,080 --> 00:30:08,000
Speaker 1: And I don't I I never really thought that their

466
00:30:08,240 --> 00:30:12,640
Speaker 1: refusal was because I was his fanic. I always felt

467
00:30:12,640 --> 00:30:15,400
Speaker 1: it was because I was a woman, okay. And of

468
00:30:15,480 --> 00:30:17,520
Speaker 1: course in those days, you didn't want to just go

469
00:30:17,560 --> 00:30:19,720
Speaker 1: to your boss and say, Joe won't work with me.

470
00:30:20,280 --> 00:30:24,040
Speaker 1: Go talk to his boss, because now you're whining, you know.

471
00:30:26,000 --> 00:30:29,080
Speaker 1: Amelia told me that beginning around the late nineteen eighties,

472
00:30:29,360 --> 00:30:32,960
Speaker 1: there were more efforts to educate employees on sexual harassment

473
00:30:33,000 --> 00:30:36,520
Speaker 1: and racism in the workplace, but these didn't move the

474
00:30:36,520 --> 00:30:38,800
Speaker 1: needle by much. While she worked at a T and T,

475
00:30:39,240 --> 00:30:42,160
Speaker 1: she told me while pulling out some notes, very much

476
00:30:42,200 --> 00:30:45,080
Speaker 1: still in executive mode. While into retirement, she told me

477
00:30:45,120 --> 00:30:49,240
Speaker 1: that for every white male executive, the employee breakdown was this.

478
00:30:49,800 --> 00:30:53,120
Speaker 1: White men were in the workplace two to one, men

479
00:30:53,160 --> 00:30:55,920
Speaker 1: of color were in the workplace one to forty eight.

480
00:30:56,360 --> 00:30:59,880
Speaker 1: White women were one to one three, and women of

481
00:31:00,040 --> 00:31:04,080
Speaker 1: color were less than one and two hundred employees. And

482
00:31:04,120 --> 00:31:07,520
Speaker 1: even when people of color and women were promoted, it

483
00:31:07,600 --> 00:31:11,320
Speaker 1: was rarely past a certain point. Top brass remained very

484
00:31:11,360 --> 00:31:14,840
Speaker 1: wide and very male. Amelia left the company when her

485
00:31:14,840 --> 00:31:17,360
Speaker 1: son was six. We'll get back to that, and she

486
00:31:17,480 --> 00:31:22,000
Speaker 1: was adamant that while the inclusivity training was a workplace shift,

487
00:31:22,280 --> 00:31:24,760
Speaker 1: the only way to actually change things is on a

488
00:31:24,800 --> 00:31:28,960
Speaker 1: systemic level. Here's what she had to say. Well, we

489
00:31:29,000 --> 00:31:32,320
Speaker 1: would promote you all if you were qualified. We will

490
00:31:32,400 --> 00:31:35,240
Speaker 1: promote you if you had the experience. Well, we would

491
00:31:35,280 --> 00:31:38,240
Speaker 1: put you in those positions. But you've never been in

492
00:31:38,280 --> 00:31:41,840
Speaker 1: those positions. Well, don't you have to raise your families.

493
00:31:42,320 --> 00:31:46,400
Speaker 1: Well how can you travel like executives do and take

494
00:31:46,720 --> 00:31:50,920
Speaker 1: three year developmental positions in another state? If you have

495
00:31:51,320 --> 00:31:54,320
Speaker 1: children at home, you can't just up and leave for

496
00:31:54,400 --> 00:31:57,680
Speaker 1: three years, can you. So you started getting all of

497
00:31:57,680 --> 00:32:03,320
Speaker 1: those kinds of things thrown back at you, just like yeah, yeah,

498
00:32:03,360 --> 00:32:06,640
Speaker 1: they're all excuses and and so there was a period

499
00:32:06,680 --> 00:32:09,719
Speaker 1: of time, I would say in the in the early

500
00:32:09,800 --> 00:32:16,280
Speaker 1: two mid eighties where the company did try with different

501
00:32:16,320 --> 00:32:20,800
Speaker 1: programs and training programs. Always called him programs and programs

502
00:32:20,840 --> 00:32:24,960
Speaker 1: don't work. What works is systemic change. I also spoke

503
00:32:25,040 --> 00:32:28,320
Speaker 1: with Susie, who started her career working as one of

504
00:32:28,360 --> 00:32:30,800
Speaker 1: a handful of women in a mind. She had been

505
00:32:30,880 --> 00:32:34,040
Speaker 1: raised by a firmly feminist mother who brought her to

506
00:32:34,120 --> 00:32:36,200
Speaker 1: women's groups when she was a kid, but when she

507
00:32:36,280 --> 00:32:39,320
Speaker 1: came of age, she felt her only options for careers

508
00:32:39,400 --> 00:32:43,040
Speaker 1: were as a teacher, a nurse, a social worker, or

509
00:32:43,080 --> 00:32:46,400
Speaker 1: a secretary. So she decided to go a different way.

510
00:32:46,640 --> 00:32:48,960
Speaker 1: Here's a little bit of our conversation. I'll add a

511
00:32:49,040 --> 00:32:52,000
Speaker 1: quick trigger warning here. This interview does describe an incident

512
00:32:52,120 --> 00:32:56,360
Speaker 1: of sexual harassment. So you made this decision to go

513
00:32:56,480 --> 00:32:59,000
Speaker 1: into mining. How old were you when you did that?

514
00:32:59,080 --> 00:33:01,880
Speaker 1: And um, what what what was the experience of being

515
00:33:01,920 --> 00:33:05,040
Speaker 1: in I was turning twenty when I went into the

516
00:33:05,040 --> 00:33:09,120
Speaker 1: first mine, and that is I mean, you kind of

517
00:33:09,160 --> 00:33:11,560
Speaker 1: alluded to this in your email as well, but that

518
00:33:11,560 --> 00:33:16,800
Speaker 1: that's a very male dominated space. Yes, there was very

519
00:33:16,840 --> 00:33:19,760
Speaker 1: few women working there. It was probably a town of

520
00:33:19,880 --> 00:33:23,280
Speaker 1: two thousand, and although I don't know exactly how the

521
00:33:23,280 --> 00:33:25,960
Speaker 1: women got hired. When I did work there, there were

522
00:33:26,000 --> 00:33:29,200
Speaker 1: other women working there, and they tended to be wives

523
00:33:29,920 --> 00:33:33,920
Speaker 1: of the men that worked there. Uh. And they may

524
00:33:34,000 --> 00:33:37,480
Speaker 1: have gotten the job because they needed the staff, they

525
00:33:37,520 --> 00:33:41,040
Speaker 1: needed the employee the employees, and it may have been

526
00:33:41,480 --> 00:33:43,480
Speaker 1: you know, if there's what else are you going to

527
00:33:43,600 --> 00:33:45,400
Speaker 1: do there? There's not much to do in a little

528
00:33:45,400 --> 00:33:47,640
Speaker 1: town of two thousand, so you might as well get

529
00:33:47,640 --> 00:33:50,600
Speaker 1: everybody working. So it may have been that as well.

530
00:33:51,160 --> 00:33:53,320
Speaker 1: So it all in in all of the Like, I

531
00:33:53,360 --> 00:33:57,520
Speaker 1: worked in two minds and one oil finery and this

532
00:33:57,560 --> 00:34:02,240
Speaker 1: will only happened to me once that somebody sexually harassed me. Um,

533
00:34:02,280 --> 00:34:04,640
Speaker 1: and it was under the guise of res housing and

534
00:34:04,720 --> 00:34:09,400
Speaker 1: tickle fighting. Yeah, So they were like, this guy was

535
00:34:09,480 --> 00:34:12,280
Speaker 1: rough housing and tickle fighting with me, and the woman

536
00:34:12,320 --> 00:34:14,400
Speaker 1: that I worked with, she was a little more aggressive

537
00:34:14,440 --> 00:34:17,400
Speaker 1: and out there, and I'm like, I'm just not like that. Anyways,

538
00:34:17,440 --> 00:34:19,480
Speaker 1: this guy is tickling me, and you know, of course

539
00:34:19,480 --> 00:34:22,080
Speaker 1: he's going to grab my breass. So he grabbed my

540
00:34:22,120 --> 00:34:25,279
Speaker 1: breass and I was like, what the you know? And

541
00:34:25,320 --> 00:34:28,359
Speaker 1: then and then like it happened kind of quickly and

542
00:34:28,360 --> 00:34:30,399
Speaker 1: then it was over with. But everybody in the room

543
00:34:30,480 --> 00:34:32,759
Speaker 1: knew what was going on. There was like four or

544
00:34:32,800 --> 00:34:36,160
Speaker 1: five guys there and me and Judy, and this patty

545
00:34:36,280 --> 00:34:39,920
Speaker 1: guy was the one that grabbed me and grabbed my breast.

546
00:34:40,560 --> 00:34:43,920
Speaker 1: So okay, so here's the big revenge. There was always

547
00:34:43,920 --> 00:34:46,799
Speaker 1: a dance in the local dance hall, and he was

548
00:34:46,880 --> 00:34:51,160
Speaker 1: there with his wife and all of those buddies all

549
00:34:51,200 --> 00:34:54,520
Speaker 1: sitting at a big table, and Judy and I, twenty

550
00:34:54,600 --> 00:34:58,439
Speaker 1: year old women dressed to the nines, We went over

551
00:34:58,480 --> 00:35:03,239
Speaker 1: there and just come completely flirted with them in front

552
00:35:03,280 --> 00:35:07,759
Speaker 1: of his wife. Wow. The guys looked like they were

553
00:35:07,880 --> 00:35:11,600
Speaker 1: going to die, and she looked like she was going

554
00:35:11,640 --> 00:35:16,600
Speaker 1: to kill her husband. Complete revenge. Nobody ever went near

555
00:35:16,680 --> 00:35:20,960
Speaker 1: us again. Many women I spoke with had stories like this,

556
00:35:21,560 --> 00:35:26,040
Speaker 1: experiencing harassment at work and then with the understanding that

557
00:35:26,080 --> 00:35:30,080
Speaker 1: there would never be repercussions for a male coworker, finding

558
00:35:30,080 --> 00:35:34,080
Speaker 1: a way to reconcile the experience these moments of revenge.

559
00:35:34,520 --> 00:35:37,040
Speaker 1: Susie went on to leave the mind to work at

560
00:35:37,080 --> 00:35:39,640
Speaker 1: an oil refinery, where she once had to put out

561
00:35:39,680 --> 00:35:43,279
Speaker 1: a chemical fire and threw up green flegm while pregnant.

562
00:35:43,800 --> 00:35:46,799
Speaker 1: I know she and the baby were fine, luckily, but

563
00:35:46,960 --> 00:35:49,479
Speaker 1: Susie left the industry to be a stay at home mother.

564
00:35:49,640 --> 00:35:52,480
Speaker 1: Shortly after that, she started her own small business from

565
00:35:52,480 --> 00:35:56,280
Speaker 1: home and then later became a Somalia. She's pretty cool.

566
00:35:57,560 --> 00:36:00,759
Speaker 1: One thing that does really interest me was the seventies,

567
00:36:00,920 --> 00:36:05,160
Speaker 1: being married was not. You almost aspired not to be married.

568
00:36:05,200 --> 00:36:07,400
Speaker 1: You know, it was cool. You you live together, you know,

569
00:36:07,600 --> 00:36:11,319
Speaker 1: you do the hippie thing. You live together, and the

570
00:36:11,400 --> 00:36:16,800
Speaker 1: institution of marriage was in jeopardy at that time, although

571
00:36:16,840 --> 00:36:19,720
Speaker 1: people were still getting married, and I would certainly say

572
00:36:19,760 --> 00:36:23,040
Speaker 1: that being married. I pretty much had to get married

573
00:36:23,880 --> 00:36:27,840
Speaker 1: to get the job at sin Crude. The Kathy character's

574
00:36:27,840 --> 00:36:30,920
Speaker 1: frustrations in the workplace was the point that most women

575
00:36:30,960 --> 00:36:34,080
Speaker 1: I spoke with connected with her on. For every Bilbert

576
00:36:34,120 --> 00:36:37,279
Speaker 1: comic strip into a cubicle wall, there was one where

577
00:36:37,400 --> 00:36:40,160
Speaker 1: Kathy was venting to Charlene or putting one over on

578
00:36:40,360 --> 00:36:43,799
Speaker 1: Mr Pinkley and again, guys. White is directly pulling from

579
00:36:43,840 --> 00:36:47,400
Speaker 1: the experiences of her own life and her friends in

580
00:36:47,440 --> 00:36:49,439
Speaker 1: a way that really struck a nerve. Here's a strip

581
00:36:49,480 --> 00:36:52,320
Speaker 1: from the nineties where Kathy is arguing for a raise

582
00:36:52,520 --> 00:36:56,840
Speaker 1: with Mr Pinkley. I'm happy to discuss your raise, Kathy.

583
00:36:57,040 --> 00:37:00,560
Speaker 1: Know why you have what I call the executive attitude.

584
00:37:00,719 --> 00:37:03,920
Speaker 1: You have a real knowledge of the financial strain this

585
00:37:04,040 --> 00:37:06,560
Speaker 1: company has been under. You have the vision to see

586
00:37:06,600 --> 00:37:09,680
Speaker 1: past a quick cash fixed to the long term rewards.

587
00:37:10,080 --> 00:37:13,799
Speaker 1: And you have something even more important, a list of

588
00:37:13,840 --> 00:37:22,760
Speaker 1: the salaries of all the other employees. Accurly Abbott, Thousand, Bailey,

589
00:37:24,719 --> 00:37:27,920
Speaker 1: and like the women I spoke with, the Cathy character

590
00:37:28,080 --> 00:37:31,839
Speaker 1: never achieves pay equity. For all of the complaints about

591
00:37:31,880 --> 00:37:35,840
Speaker 1: the futility of the Canthy characters existence, what most critics

592
00:37:35,840 --> 00:37:39,600
Speaker 1: didn't admit is that these futile efforts were reflective of

593
00:37:39,680 --> 00:37:43,640
Speaker 1: most women working in and outside of office environments at

594
00:37:43,640 --> 00:37:48,920
Speaker 1: this time. Here's Melanie, a retired California ad executive, discussing

595
00:37:48,960 --> 00:37:51,719
Speaker 1: the pay equity issue that led to her leaving a

596
00:37:51,760 --> 00:37:56,759
Speaker 1: long time position. And I'm like, wait a minute, wait

597
00:37:56,800 --> 00:37:59,480
Speaker 1: a minute, this isn't right. So I go to the

598
00:38:00,040 --> 00:38:02,640
Speaker 1: head boss, who was the head of the entire corporation.

599
00:38:02,760 --> 00:38:06,839
Speaker 1: So he's the head of talent payments central casting. Um,

600
00:38:06,840 --> 00:38:12,760
Speaker 1: he's not my Uh, he's not. He's what he's above her. Um,

601
00:38:12,760 --> 00:38:18,520
Speaker 1: he's the one who is basically setting setting more of

602
00:38:18,560 --> 00:38:22,399
Speaker 1: the salaries. Um. And I said, I don't understand why

603
00:38:22,440 --> 00:38:27,760
Speaker 1: Mark is making more than I am. He's like, because

604
00:38:27,760 --> 00:38:29,279
Speaker 1: I asked. I said, can I come in and talk

605
00:38:29,280 --> 00:38:31,440
Speaker 1: to you about salary? And he's like, oh, I just

606
00:38:31,480 --> 00:38:35,879
Speaker 1: thought you're the cute blonde that works down the hall. Wow.

607
00:38:36,520 --> 00:38:39,480
Speaker 1: I said, I'm the cute blonde who's building you three

608
00:38:39,560 --> 00:38:45,120
Speaker 1: million dollars a year, who subsidizes them. And I, this

609
00:38:45,200 --> 00:38:48,480
Speaker 1: isn't fair. I supervise eight people. I have a huge

610
00:38:48,560 --> 00:38:52,400
Speaker 1: budget and he's paid twenty dollars more and he has

611
00:38:52,440 --> 00:38:56,200
Speaker 1: a lot less responsibility. And his answer was, well, you know,

612
00:38:56,840 --> 00:38:58,759
Speaker 1: maybe in a little bit, we'll see what we can do.

613
00:39:00,360 --> 00:39:03,600
Speaker 1: And while the Kathy character wasn't raising kids during the

614
00:39:03,640 --> 00:39:08,080
Speaker 1: comics run, Kathy guys White was and speaks extensively about

615
00:39:08,120 --> 00:39:11,200
Speaker 1: the struggles of single parenting on top of a thriving

616
00:39:11,280 --> 00:39:15,200
Speaker 1: career in her twenty nineteen essay collection Fifty Things that

617
00:39:15,239 --> 00:39:19,160
Speaker 1: Aren't My Fault. In the Kathy comics, Andrea was the

618
00:39:19,239 --> 00:39:23,280
Speaker 1: character who advocated for working mothers. After the high powered

619
00:39:23,320 --> 00:39:26,240
Speaker 1: girl boss had her first kid, Zenith in the eighties

620
00:39:26,400 --> 00:39:29,760
Speaker 1: and later her son Gus in the nineties, andreas given

621
00:39:29,840 --> 00:39:33,000
Speaker 1: an extremely hard time by the company she had built

622
00:39:33,040 --> 00:39:36,280
Speaker 1: her career up at for a decade. Boomers are widely

623
00:39:36,320 --> 00:39:39,280
Speaker 1: considered to be the last American generation where it's common

624
00:39:39,360 --> 00:39:42,080
Speaker 1: to stay with one company your entire career. And while

625
00:39:42,120 --> 00:39:45,799
Speaker 1: Andrea comes armed with information, she's still spoken down to

626
00:39:46,000 --> 00:39:49,680
Speaker 1: when asking for parental benefits. These strips are some of

627
00:39:49,719 --> 00:39:53,239
Speaker 1: the best of Geistwaite satire. I think. Here's a strip

628
00:39:53,280 --> 00:39:56,920
Speaker 1: from the eighties following Zenis birth, Andrea is talking to

629
00:39:57,000 --> 00:40:01,680
Speaker 1: an HR person. If businesses to support parental leave policies,

630
00:40:01,880 --> 00:40:05,480
Speaker 1: it's because we hold the old fashioned family units so sacred.

631
00:40:05,880 --> 00:40:08,040
Speaker 1: Only ten percent of the families in this country live

632
00:40:08,080 --> 00:40:11,400
Speaker 1: in an old fashioned family unit. We hold motherhood sacred.

633
00:40:11,600 --> 00:40:14,799
Speaker 1: Sixty percent of mothers with children under age three work

634
00:40:14,880 --> 00:40:20,160
Speaker 1: full time. We hold the male breadwinner sacred. The woman

635
00:40:20,200 --> 00:40:21,920
Speaker 1: who work are married to the men who earned less

636
00:40:21,920 --> 00:40:24,400
Speaker 1: than fifteen thousand dollars a year, and one fifth of

637
00:40:24,400 --> 00:40:27,319
Speaker 1: all families have no male breadwinner at all. We hold

638
00:40:27,320 --> 00:40:32,320
Speaker 1: the days of no statistical analysis sacred. Andrea makes great

639
00:40:32,440 --> 00:40:35,640
Speaker 1: and very real points in these strips, but Kathy Guyswhite

640
00:40:35,719 --> 00:40:38,960
Speaker 1: doesn't give her a win. In her fictional world. Andrea

641
00:40:39,120 --> 00:40:42,680
Speaker 1: was advocating for herself to get parental leave and flex

642
00:40:42,719 --> 00:40:46,279
Speaker 1: hours at work and was denied them by her workplace.

643
00:40:46,560 --> 00:40:50,320
Speaker 1: As we've covered in past episodes, Andrea is eventually forced

644
00:40:50,400 --> 00:40:52,760
Speaker 1: out of her job and has to build her career

645
00:40:52,800 --> 00:40:55,960
Speaker 1: from the ground up. Every single woman I spoke with,

646
00:40:56,360 --> 00:40:59,200
Speaker 1: even though they were from a wide variety of backgrounds

647
00:40:59,239 --> 00:41:04,040
Speaker 1: and industry and classes, described issues like Andreas when starting

648
00:41:04,040 --> 00:41:08,040
Speaker 1: families of their own and reference this pay exorbitant child

649
00:41:08,120 --> 00:41:11,560
Speaker 1: care fees or get out of the workplace altogether. System

650
00:41:11,600 --> 00:41:14,600
Speaker 1: that had a stronghold on the American workplace during the

651
00:41:14,600 --> 00:41:18,960
Speaker 1: Reagan era and yes still to an extent now. Amelia,

652
00:41:19,080 --> 00:41:22,400
Speaker 1: the a T and T executive, like Kathy and her cohort,

653
00:41:22,640 --> 00:41:26,960
Speaker 1: postponed marriage and motherhood until her career was already well established.

654
00:41:27,320 --> 00:41:29,880
Speaker 1: She got married at thirty seven in the late eighties,

655
00:41:30,120 --> 00:41:33,719
Speaker 1: had her son in and left the company when her

656
00:41:33,760 --> 00:41:36,240
Speaker 1: son was six. And here's what she told me about

657
00:41:36,280 --> 00:41:43,120
Speaker 1: that experience. You just keep taking on more, you know.

658
00:41:43,200 --> 00:41:46,160
Speaker 1: I I loved my career. I was single, I was free.

659
00:41:46,200 --> 00:41:48,919
Speaker 1: I owned my own home, I had, you know, I

660
00:41:48,960 --> 00:41:52,239
Speaker 1: was unencumbered. Um, so I could come and go and

661
00:41:52,239 --> 00:41:55,600
Speaker 1: do what I wanted and balance it and manage it.

662
00:41:56,320 --> 00:42:00,000
Speaker 1: And then I got married and then pretty quickly, Francisco

663
00:42:00,120 --> 00:42:03,200
Speaker 1: was born a year and a half after we got married.

664
00:42:03,239 --> 00:42:08,319
Speaker 1: And and your life changes completely because now you have

665
00:42:08,400 --> 00:42:13,520
Speaker 1: this little person that you have to care for and

666
00:42:14,120 --> 00:42:18,680
Speaker 1: train and mentor and feed, and you know, all of

667
00:42:18,719 --> 00:42:23,720
Speaker 1: those things have to be done. Here's Susie, the former

668
00:42:23,800 --> 00:42:26,239
Speaker 1: miner who left the office to work from home and

669
00:42:26,280 --> 00:42:29,080
Speaker 1: be with her kids. She shared that prior to leaving

670
00:42:29,080 --> 00:42:34,920
Speaker 1: her job, this happened. Yeah, I was pregnant. Wow, you did.

671
00:42:35,080 --> 00:42:36,839
Speaker 1: I was just like a few days pregnant. They had

672
00:42:36,840 --> 00:42:39,360
Speaker 1: to do a blood chest to find out, Oh my goodness.

673
00:42:39,800 --> 00:42:42,000
Speaker 1: And then they did a big study on me because

674
00:42:42,120 --> 00:42:44,799
Speaker 1: how many women are pregnant on an all refinery. So

675
00:42:44,960 --> 00:42:48,200
Speaker 1: I was a good Yeah, so hygiene did a big

676
00:42:48,200 --> 00:42:51,200
Speaker 1: study on me. Wait, tell me about that. That's fascinating.

677
00:42:51,640 --> 00:42:53,680
Speaker 1: You know, they just took about eight vows of blood

678
00:42:53,719 --> 00:42:56,640
Speaker 1: out of me and then you know, started just you know,

679
00:42:56,680 --> 00:42:58,640
Speaker 1: there was never any real follow up. They you know,

680
00:42:58,680 --> 00:43:00,719
Speaker 1: they would ask me questions and I did have a

681
00:43:00,719 --> 00:43:03,840
Speaker 1: healthy pregnancy and everything was fine. And they said, because

682
00:43:03,840 --> 00:43:06,719
Speaker 1: my pregnancy was so early that there was really not

683
00:43:06,840 --> 00:43:10,120
Speaker 1: much there yet. You know, it's just a few cells really,

684
00:43:10,840 --> 00:43:14,920
Speaker 1: So then it was a stay home mom. Uh and uh,

685
00:43:16,600 --> 00:43:21,480
Speaker 1: I did businesses out of my house. So okay. So

686
00:43:21,640 --> 00:43:24,160
Speaker 1: I I, you know, I just could never worked in

687
00:43:24,160 --> 00:43:26,880
Speaker 1: an office. Like the whole idea of sitting at a

688
00:43:26,960 --> 00:43:30,440
Speaker 1: desk just drove me crazy. So you know, I was

689
00:43:30,480 --> 00:43:33,719
Speaker 1: just a really active person and very tactile. I'm a

690
00:43:33,800 --> 00:43:37,239
Speaker 1: very tactile learner. So I just I just, you know,

691
00:43:37,560 --> 00:43:39,479
Speaker 1: decided I was going to stay home with my kids

692
00:43:39,480 --> 00:43:44,440
Speaker 1: and figure something out. And here's Melanie, the retired AD executive,

693
00:43:44,600 --> 00:43:49,719
Speaker 1: discussing how she eventually left the workforce for motherhood. Once

694
00:43:49,760 --> 00:43:54,360
Speaker 1: I had two kids, it became more difficult to um

695
00:43:55,360 --> 00:44:00,160
Speaker 1: to keep doing. How I remember is breastfeeding the middle wild.

696
00:44:00,280 --> 00:44:05,440
Speaker 1: Julia Spencer is two and a half hanging on me.

697
00:44:05,560 --> 00:44:08,320
Speaker 1: I'm on the phone at home, talking to a client

698
00:44:08,320 --> 00:44:11,279
Speaker 1: in New York, trying to keep everybody quiet, and all

699
00:44:11,320 --> 00:44:13,800
Speaker 1: I can think of is I can't do this. I

700
00:44:14,480 --> 00:44:16,319
Speaker 1: can't do this. How do I do this? One kid

701
00:44:16,400 --> 00:44:35,920
Speaker 1: was okay? Um, two kids became harder. I want to

702
00:44:35,960 --> 00:44:39,400
Speaker 1: acknowledge that the ability to leave the workforce for motherhood

703
00:44:39,640 --> 00:44:43,120
Speaker 1: is a degree of privilege. Parents working paycheck to paycheck

704
00:44:43,239 --> 00:44:46,359
Speaker 1: or don't have a partner earning additional income wouldn't even

705
00:44:46,360 --> 00:44:49,600
Speaker 1: be able to consider this, But consider these options to

706
00:44:49,719 --> 00:44:52,600
Speaker 1: leave the choice for American mothers of this era to

707
00:44:53,080 --> 00:44:57,040
Speaker 1: work and patch together affordable childcare solutions with family and friends,

708
00:44:57,600 --> 00:45:01,400
Speaker 1: or work and go for broken child care, or not

709
00:45:01,480 --> 00:45:04,400
Speaker 1: work at all and be the child care. Let's the

710
00:45:04,400 --> 00:45:08,600
Speaker 1: American system of labor off the hook entirely. These are

711
00:45:08,600 --> 00:45:13,080
Speaker 1: not individual failures of parenting or professionalism. Every woman I

712
00:45:13,080 --> 00:45:15,920
Speaker 1: spoke with was successful in her line of work, but

713
00:45:16,000 --> 00:45:19,040
Speaker 1: it was the organizations they worked within that made it

714
00:45:19,080 --> 00:45:23,279
Speaker 1: impossible to meet the mark professionally and parentally without either

715
00:45:23,480 --> 00:45:28,239
Speaker 1: additional income or sheer luck. Kathy Strips addressed this frustrating

716
00:45:28,320 --> 00:45:32,200
Speaker 1: split all the time. And then there's the boomer to

717
00:45:32,480 --> 00:45:37,799
Speaker 1: end all others. My mommy, Seriously, this was very much

718
00:45:37,880 --> 00:45:41,120
Speaker 1: the story of my own boomer mom. She was a

719
00:45:41,200 --> 00:45:45,200
Speaker 1: first generation college graduate who worked at the Massachusetts Treasury

720
00:45:45,360 --> 00:45:48,759
Speaker 1: as a low ranking bond accountant through her twenties, then

721
00:45:48,840 --> 00:45:51,440
Speaker 1: became a full time mom and the runner of an

722
00:45:51,480 --> 00:45:54,680
Speaker 1: extremely illegal day care center in our house while I

723
00:45:54,719 --> 00:45:57,440
Speaker 1: was growing up. We were very fortunate that my dad's

724
00:45:57,480 --> 00:46:00,239
Speaker 1: income was enough to supplement this, but the day care

725
00:46:00,239 --> 00:46:03,640
Speaker 1: that she ran was born out of this community necessity

726
00:46:03,719 --> 00:46:06,839
Speaker 1: within our pretty big family. My mom took care of

727
00:46:07,000 --> 00:46:09,960
Speaker 1: eight cousins and me during the day because my aunts

728
00:46:09,960 --> 00:46:14,160
Speaker 1: and uncles couldn't afford expensive child care and needed to work. Later,

729
00:46:14,360 --> 00:46:17,279
Speaker 1: she would go back to school, get her masters, and

730
00:46:17,400 --> 00:46:20,680
Speaker 1: become a teacher, where she's been working for twenty years now.

731
00:46:20,840 --> 00:46:23,000
Speaker 1: But it wasn't really until I was an adult that

732
00:46:23,080 --> 00:46:26,399
Speaker 1: I heard much about her career at the Treasury at all.

733
00:46:26,760 --> 00:46:29,240
Speaker 1: So I decided to ask her what those years before

734
00:46:29,400 --> 00:46:32,799
Speaker 1: I existed in the eighties in the early nineties were like,

735
00:46:33,200 --> 00:46:37,040
Speaker 1: and she, in her typical way, did not hold back.

736
00:46:38,440 --> 00:46:43,560
Speaker 1: When I went into Boston, I I learned the hard

737
00:46:43,600 --> 00:46:46,479
Speaker 1: way that I was goddamn. I was going to look good,

738
00:46:46,640 --> 00:46:49,080
Speaker 1: and I was going to drag them along, and I

739
00:46:49,160 --> 00:46:52,279
Speaker 1: was going to meet my own goals, giving up my

740
00:46:52,320 --> 00:46:57,200
Speaker 1: morals because I wasn't a player. I never, you know,

741
00:46:57,239 --> 00:46:59,520
Speaker 1: slipped my way to the top. I never did anything

742
00:46:59,560 --> 00:47:03,920
Speaker 1: like that. Hair, the hair, the makeup, definitely the accessories,

743
00:47:05,200 --> 00:47:10,160
Speaker 1: everything had to match. It was very um you know,

744
00:47:10,280 --> 00:47:14,120
Speaker 1: a fashion forward idea. Your body entered the room before

745
00:47:14,160 --> 00:47:16,680
Speaker 1: you did. Your brain wasn't a part of the room.

746
00:47:16,920 --> 00:47:20,040
Speaker 1: Your body was a part of the room. And if

747
00:47:20,040 --> 00:47:22,120
Speaker 1: you didn't look good, it didn't get the attention. And

748
00:47:22,160 --> 00:47:24,600
Speaker 1: if it didn't get the attention, you didn't get the opportunity.

749
00:47:26,160 --> 00:47:29,840
Speaker 1: This office madonna whore complex was commented on in a

750
00:47:30,000 --> 00:47:32,840
Speaker 1: lot of nineties Kathy strips. Here's one of my favorite.

751
00:47:33,040 --> 00:47:37,600
Speaker 1: Mr Pinkley is talking to Kathy and Charlene. If women

752
00:47:37,680 --> 00:47:40,040
Speaker 1: want to be respected in the office, they have to

753
00:47:40,080 --> 00:47:44,399
Speaker 1: stop wearing short skirts. That does it, Mr Pinkley, When

754
00:47:44,400 --> 00:47:47,359
Speaker 1: we wore pants and didn't respect us because we looked

755
00:47:47,400 --> 00:47:51,760
Speaker 1: too militant. When we were long skirts, men didn't respect

756
00:47:51,840 --> 00:47:55,120
Speaker 1: us because we were too frumpy. For fifteen years, we've

757
00:47:55,120 --> 00:47:57,799
Speaker 1: been buying a discarding clothes, trying to find a respectable

758
00:47:57,840 --> 00:48:00,839
Speaker 1: balance between femininity and professional As a man, we're sick

759
00:48:00,920 --> 00:48:03,720
Speaker 1: of it. If you can't keep your eyeballs where they belong,

760
00:48:04,239 --> 00:48:08,640
Speaker 1: it is not our problem. Charlene says, very eloquent, Kathy,

761
00:48:09,120 --> 00:48:11,719
Speaker 1: never underestimate the fury of a woman who just paid

762
00:48:11,760 --> 00:48:15,759
Speaker 1: to have all of her clothes shortened. My mom's experience

763
00:48:15,800 --> 00:48:19,799
Speaker 1: in her office years also mirrored the Kathy character's experience

764
00:48:19,880 --> 00:48:24,239
Speaker 1: with Mr. Pinkley from when she is sexually harassed and

765
00:48:24,440 --> 00:48:27,960
Speaker 1: forcibly kissed, and the character is only able to cope

766
00:48:27,960 --> 00:48:30,560
Speaker 1: with this by discussing it with other women in her

767
00:48:30,600 --> 00:48:35,439
Speaker 1: office and beginning a whisper network. It was so not

768
00:48:35,840 --> 00:48:41,200
Speaker 1: you and Caitlin, because it was just understood that either

769
00:48:41,320 --> 00:48:44,160
Speaker 1: you took the path to play the game the game

770
00:48:44,200 --> 00:48:47,719
Speaker 1: to sweep to the top, or you could play the

771
00:48:47,719 --> 00:48:52,800
Speaker 1: game to flirt towards your goal. I chose to flirt

772
00:48:52,880 --> 00:48:58,040
Speaker 1: toward my goal, and I flirted mercilessly towards my goals.

773
00:48:59,480 --> 00:49:02,680
Speaker 1: And I will say that hearing something like this from

774
00:49:02,719 --> 00:49:07,520
Speaker 1: your mom is um interesting and also kind of difficult

775
00:49:07,560 --> 00:49:13,000
Speaker 1: to imagine in practice. Fortunately and unfortunately I didn't have

776
00:49:13,080 --> 00:49:16,320
Speaker 1: to imagine it. Last year, I found some old VHS

777
00:49:16,360 --> 00:49:18,680
Speaker 1: tape from when my mom worked at the Treasury when

778
00:49:18,680 --> 00:49:22,040
Speaker 1: she was my age, and I was pretty horrified by

779
00:49:22,120 --> 00:49:25,759
Speaker 1: the way I saw men treating her on camera, So

780
00:49:25,800 --> 00:49:27,920
Speaker 1: I asked her if she would be willing to watch

781
00:49:28,000 --> 00:49:31,120
Speaker 1: these tapes back with me over zoom with my aunt

782
00:49:31,320 --> 00:49:33,960
Speaker 1: and her former co worker, So it took us a

783
00:49:33,960 --> 00:49:37,320
Speaker 1: few seconds to all get on the same page over zoom.

784
00:49:37,360 --> 00:49:40,279
Speaker 1: Now what she's doing, Mary, is she's taping us while

785
00:49:40,400 --> 00:49:44,640
Speaker 1: with showing Well, she's showing this to us. But we

786
00:49:44,719 --> 00:49:47,319
Speaker 1: figured it out, and I asked my mom and my

787
00:49:47,320 --> 00:49:50,759
Speaker 1: auntie Mary, who is technically my mom's friend, but your

788
00:49:50,760 --> 00:49:53,040
Speaker 1: mom's friends or your aunts, that's just how it works.

789
00:49:53,360 --> 00:49:56,160
Speaker 1: I asked them both whether this treatment I was seeing

790
00:49:56,520 --> 00:49:59,759
Speaker 1: ever bothered them, because the way that the older men

791
00:50:00,000 --> 00:50:03,160
Speaker 1: in their workplace spoke to them is, well, here's a clip,

792
00:50:05,040 --> 00:50:10,680
Speaker 1: I'm going to see this, Lee, I'm gonna grab your

793
00:50:17,320 --> 00:50:34,600
Speaker 1: other guys happen through at a Christmas party here, and

794
00:50:34,760 --> 00:50:37,760
Speaker 1: the men talking to them are at least twice their age,

795
00:50:37,920 --> 00:50:40,399
Speaker 1: And so I was a little surprised to find that

796
00:50:40,719 --> 00:50:44,319
Speaker 1: they didn't seem bothered by this. Now, I understand why

797
00:50:44,400 --> 00:50:47,440
Speaker 1: you thought we'd be shocked, But we felt so safe.

798
00:50:48,960 --> 00:50:51,560
Speaker 1: That's interesting to me. Was only one time that I

799
00:50:51,600 --> 00:50:55,799
Speaker 1: did not feel safe, and I don't even remember who

800
00:50:55,840 --> 00:51:00,960
Speaker 1: it was. I mean, to think that would come on

801
00:51:01,040 --> 00:51:06,120
Speaker 1: to me for real, Um wasn't even a thought. I

802
00:51:06,120 --> 00:51:08,960
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, it's not like their feelings are

803
00:51:09,000 --> 00:51:13,920
Speaker 1: wrong or my feelings are wrong, but they're certainly different,

804
00:51:14,360 --> 00:51:17,520
Speaker 1: because I would be curious if someone talked to me

805
00:51:17,640 --> 00:51:19,880
Speaker 1: like that at work. I mean, the guy who's talking

806
00:51:19,960 --> 00:51:22,720
Speaker 1: like this, Mr, I'm going to grab you he wants

807
00:51:22,840 --> 00:51:26,120
Speaker 1: threatened to kill my dad. And apparently he didn't even

808
00:51:26,360 --> 00:51:29,440
Speaker 1: work at that office. This could also very much be

809
00:51:29,600 --> 00:51:32,359
Speaker 1: a Boston in the nineteen eighties thing. But to me,

810
00:51:33,000 --> 00:51:37,120
Speaker 1: there was absolutely misogyny going on in this workplace, as

811
00:51:37,160 --> 00:51:41,279
Speaker 1: well as possible mob activity. Here's my mom reacting to

812
00:51:41,400 --> 00:51:46,319
Speaker 1: a different work party tape from that's what we would

813
00:51:46,400 --> 00:51:51,400
Speaker 1: hide his desk, and he had doing other business. He

814
00:51:51,520 --> 00:51:56,200
Speaker 1: wasn't just doing trait repy to this god. He was

815
00:51:56,280 --> 00:52:00,880
Speaker 1: running from that quarter. Whatever's going on there is another

816
00:52:00,920 --> 00:52:04,239
Speaker 1: podcast altogether, and I wash my hands of it, but

817
00:52:04,520 --> 00:52:07,640
Speaker 1: they're accepting this behavior as a part of what the

818
00:52:07,719 --> 00:52:10,719
Speaker 1: workplace was. Lines up with the other boomer woman I

819
00:52:10,760 --> 00:52:14,440
Speaker 1: spoke with, and with an interview with Kathy guys White herself.

820
00:52:14,480 --> 00:52:17,040
Speaker 1: This came up in episode two when I asked Kathy

821
00:52:17,200 --> 00:52:20,760
Speaker 1: about a convention from early in her comic strip career

822
00:52:20,840 --> 00:52:22,680
Speaker 1: when she and a few other women were asked to

823
00:52:22,800 --> 00:52:28,120
Speaker 1: parade around wearing sashes that read women Cartoonist. This lovely

824
00:52:28,160 --> 00:52:31,480
Speaker 1: group of very supportive men declared at the Year of

825
00:52:31,520 --> 00:52:35,000
Speaker 1: the Woman Cartoonist, it wasn't a big graving thing. It

826
00:52:35,120 --> 00:52:37,600
Speaker 1: was an honor. But I'm going to say it was

827
00:52:37,640 --> 00:52:42,600
Speaker 1: an honor in um in a product like a little

828
00:52:42,760 --> 00:52:47,640
Speaker 1: a bit oblivious away. So they did have a skirt

829
00:52:47,719 --> 00:52:49,960
Speaker 1: up in front the women who were doing commis roofs.

830
00:52:50,000 --> 00:52:51,920
Speaker 1: They did have a skirt up in front of everybody,

831
00:52:52,120 --> 00:52:55,799
Speaker 1: and they did place banners on us that said woman cartoonist.

832
00:52:56,560 --> 00:53:03,880
Speaker 1: So God. And of course this is an extremely small

833
00:53:03,920 --> 00:53:06,479
Speaker 1: sample size of women I spoke to. In no way

834
00:53:06,520 --> 00:53:09,759
Speaker 1: as this a comprehensive view of boomer womanhood, but I

835
00:53:09,800 --> 00:53:12,760
Speaker 1: hope it does serve to demonstrate that the Cathy characters

836
00:53:12,920 --> 00:53:16,759
Speaker 1: prolific anxiety about thriving in the workplace as a part

837
00:53:16,840 --> 00:53:20,040
Speaker 1: of the first American generation of women to be expected

838
00:53:20,080 --> 00:53:23,359
Speaker 1: to do so really wasn't much of an overreaction at all.

839
00:53:23,800 --> 00:53:27,160
Speaker 1: The workplace was the intersection of a lot of issues,

840
00:53:27,520 --> 00:53:32,440
Speaker 1: financial inequity, the need to postpone parenthood for career because

841
00:53:32,440 --> 00:53:37,239
Speaker 1: companies expected but did not support parenthood, extreme pressures to

842
00:53:37,360 --> 00:53:40,480
Speaker 1: look and act a certain way, and the acceptance that

843
00:53:40,560 --> 00:53:46,200
Speaker 1: your coworkers. Usually men were just that way. I understand

844
00:53:46,239 --> 00:53:49,440
Speaker 1: why the that was just how it was. Mentality could persist,

845
00:53:49,680 --> 00:53:53,560
Speaker 1: but it's so frustrating. I had to google that guy

846
00:53:53,600 --> 00:53:56,480
Speaker 1: who was harassing my mom to make sure he had died,

847
00:53:56,760 --> 00:53:59,279
Speaker 1: and she wasn't even bothered by it. So as the

848
00:53:59,320 --> 00:54:02,800
Speaker 1: boomers and to their thirties and forties and the nineteen nineties,

849
00:54:03,120 --> 00:54:07,759
Speaker 1: the first boomer president, Bill Clinton, was elected, breaking the

850
00:54:07,960 --> 00:54:13,360
Speaker 1: decade plus of Republican administrations. Liberal voters were initially hopeful.

851
00:54:13,719 --> 00:54:18,640
Speaker 1: Clinton said this while campaigning for the election. The Reagan

852
00:54:18,760 --> 00:54:23,600
Speaker 1: Bush years have exalted private gain over public obligation, special

853
00:54:23,640 --> 00:54:28,040
Speaker 1: interests over the common good, wealth, and fame over work

854
00:54:28,360 --> 00:54:32,920
Speaker 1: and family. The nineteen eighties ushered in a gilded age

855
00:54:33,040 --> 00:54:40,360
Speaker 1: of greed and selfishness, of irresponsibility and excess, and of neglect.

856
00:54:41,880 --> 00:54:45,560
Speaker 1: But what happened when he was elected, Clinton, a credibly

857
00:54:45,600 --> 00:54:49,120
Speaker 1: accused sex offender, began his first term by pushing for

858
00:54:49,160 --> 00:54:52,400
Speaker 1: a gun and healthcare reform, and while there were economic

859
00:54:52,480 --> 00:54:56,960
Speaker 1: and job gains, including taxes on wealthier Americans during his presidency,

860
00:54:57,360 --> 00:55:01,319
Speaker 1: many Reagan era issues remained an even worsened by the

861
00:55:01,400 --> 00:55:04,720
Speaker 1: end of his two terms. The Clinton administration had slashed

862
00:55:04,719 --> 00:55:08,640
Speaker 1: welfare benefits and continued the War on drugs, which claimed

863
00:55:08,680 --> 00:55:13,440
Speaker 1: to increase public safety, all while perpetuating the mass incarceration

864
00:55:13,480 --> 00:55:17,719
Speaker 1: of Black Americans. Clinton introduced the Don't Ask, Don't Tell

865
00:55:17,800 --> 00:55:23,000
Speaker 1: policy that suppressed queer identity in the military and encouraged discrimination.

866
00:55:23,320 --> 00:55:26,600
Speaker 1: He didn't provide any military assistance during the Civil War

867
00:55:26,640 --> 00:55:30,239
Speaker 1: in Rwanda, and his legacy has been increasingly called into

868
00:55:30,280 --> 00:55:33,680
Speaker 1: question as the years go on. And Cathy comics remained

869
00:55:33,680 --> 00:55:37,880
Speaker 1: extremely popular throughout the Clinton years, having huge success in

870
00:55:37,960 --> 00:55:42,920
Speaker 1: syndication and merchandizing throughout the nineties. The Cathy character resonated

871
00:55:42,920 --> 00:55:46,160
Speaker 1: with women across the country, even from her position of

872
00:55:46,200 --> 00:55:49,840
Speaker 1: relative privilege as a middle class, white CIS woman, because

873
00:55:49,840 --> 00:55:53,960
Speaker 1: her concerns and anxieties generally mirrored that of many others

874
00:55:53,960 --> 00:55:58,560
Speaker 1: in the boomer generation. Did Dilbert do that he did not?

875
00:55:59,239 --> 00:56:02,440
Speaker 1: Dilbert was a creep and his dog was a fascist.

876
00:56:02,680 --> 00:56:07,360
Speaker 1: Let's keep things moving, shall we. A major characteristic of

877
00:56:07,400 --> 00:56:10,800
Speaker 1: American boomers is their status as some of the biggest

878
00:56:10,840 --> 00:56:16,040
Speaker 1: consumers in our country's history, and not particularly ethical consumers.

879
00:56:16,440 --> 00:56:18,840
Speaker 1: This is a burden shared with their parents as well

880
00:56:18,920 --> 00:56:22,479
Speaker 1: as the silent generation definitely benefited from the post war

881
00:56:22,560 --> 00:56:26,560
Speaker 1: economic boom in the US, but these extreme consumption habits

882
00:56:26,600 --> 00:56:31,560
Speaker 1: continued long into boomer adulthood, peaking in the eighties and nineties.

883
00:56:31,880 --> 00:56:34,360
Speaker 1: As someone with a boomer mom who spent the first

884
00:56:34,360 --> 00:56:38,040
Speaker 1: decade of my life compulsively buying woven baskets and putting

885
00:56:38,040 --> 00:56:42,160
Speaker 1: them on credit cards, the Cathy comics document this consumption

886
00:56:42,200 --> 00:56:47,040
Speaker 1: habit triggeringly. Well. Here's Jill Philipovic of Okay Boomer to

887
00:56:47,200 --> 00:56:53,640
Speaker 1: unpack that. There's really no question that boomers are America's

888
00:56:54,000 --> 00:57:00,520
Speaker 1: kind of first major consumer class. Boomers spend a ton

889
00:57:00,560 --> 00:57:02,600
Speaker 1: of money. They spent a ton of money. They're kind

890
00:57:02,640 --> 00:57:07,280
Speaker 1: of the first generation of children to be advertised to. UM.

891
00:57:07,600 --> 00:57:09,840
Speaker 1: So they are a generation that has been on the

892
00:57:09,880 --> 00:57:14,680
Speaker 1: receiving end of advertisements their entire life. UM. I'm not

893
00:57:15,000 --> 00:57:17,720
Speaker 1: sure it was quite true for their parents. That it's

894
00:57:17,720 --> 00:57:21,840
Speaker 1: certainly not to the same degree. UM. And when you

895
00:57:21,920 --> 00:57:26,080
Speaker 1: look at consumer spending habits now, I mean, boomers still

896
00:57:26,120 --> 00:57:29,080
Speaker 1: spend a tremendous amount of money on consumer goods. It's

897
00:57:29,120 --> 00:57:35,280
Speaker 1: also because boomers have disposable income. UH. Boomers have long

898
00:57:35,320 --> 00:57:40,360
Speaker 1: been and remain a very spending generation. UM. You know,

899
00:57:40,360 --> 00:57:42,560
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting that you point to the eighties

900
00:57:42,680 --> 00:57:47,160
Speaker 1: as the kind of turning point there, because I just

901
00:57:47,240 --> 00:57:49,400
Speaker 1: I think that's right. I'd be curious. I don't know

902
00:57:49,440 --> 00:57:51,160
Speaker 1: the answer to this, but I'd be curious if you

903
00:57:51,200 --> 00:57:54,840
Speaker 1: looked at American consumers spending, what kind of shifts happened

904
00:57:54,840 --> 00:57:58,360
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties, What did this spending look like

905
00:57:58,480 --> 00:58:01,080
Speaker 1: in practice. Let's go back to one of the boomer

906
00:58:01,120 --> 00:58:04,240
Speaker 1: woman I spoke with who is uniquely suited to comment

907
00:58:04,280 --> 00:58:08,560
Speaker 1: on this phenomenon. Melanie, the ad executive. She's now retired

908
00:58:08,640 --> 00:58:12,480
Speaker 1: and living in the Northwest, but grew up in Santa Monica, California,

909
00:58:12,720 --> 00:58:15,720
Speaker 1: raised by a feminist single mother who got a degree

910
00:58:15,720 --> 00:58:19,240
Speaker 1: in social work after her divorce, Melanie began her career

911
00:58:19,320 --> 00:58:22,800
Speaker 1: at an attorney's office, where it was quickly made clear

912
00:58:22,800 --> 00:58:25,280
Speaker 1: to her that she was not being judged for her

913
00:58:25,320 --> 00:58:29,120
Speaker 1: competence at the job. The main thing I remember in

914
00:58:29,160 --> 00:58:32,800
Speaker 1: applying for the job was how fast you type? And

915
00:58:33,080 --> 00:58:37,160
Speaker 1: in the newspaper was written front office appearance. What do

916
00:58:37,240 --> 00:58:41,240
Speaker 1: we think that means? I don't know what. What does

917
00:58:41,280 --> 00:58:45,960
Speaker 1: it mean? You had to be attractive? Okay? Melanie was

918
00:58:46,000 --> 00:58:49,439
Speaker 1: not having it and she pivoted to advertising at a

919
00:58:49,480 --> 00:58:53,040
Speaker 1: big deal California ad agency in the nineteen eighties, just

920
00:58:53,080 --> 00:58:56,320
Speaker 1: as the concept of the supermodel was really taking off.

921
00:58:56,600 --> 00:58:59,320
Speaker 1: And I was especially interested to hear about this because

922
00:58:59,360 --> 00:59:02,720
Speaker 1: Melanie literally had a hand in shaping some of the

923
00:59:02,760 --> 00:59:06,800
Speaker 1: ads that the Kathy character is constantly comparing herself to

924
00:59:06,920 --> 00:59:10,080
Speaker 1: in this trip. The same ad that Kathy guys white

925
00:59:10,320 --> 00:59:14,320
Speaker 1: was very often satirizing. So what was that job? Like,

926
00:59:15,600 --> 00:59:18,880
Speaker 1: we were and we were at the forefront of the supermodel,

927
00:59:19,400 --> 00:59:25,720
Speaker 1: the Sheryl Tigues, the Christie Brinkley's the that generation of woman. Interesting. Okay,

928
00:59:26,080 --> 00:59:28,440
Speaker 1: I did do Virginia Slims casting, which was one of

929
00:59:28,480 --> 00:59:31,520
Speaker 1: the biggest accounts, which my mother was horrified at because

930
00:59:31,560 --> 00:59:35,440
Speaker 1: it started young women smoking. Right. I promised her when

931
00:59:35,480 --> 00:59:38,120
Speaker 1: I worked for myself, which I did eventually, that I

932
00:59:38,120 --> 00:59:41,120
Speaker 1: wouldn't accept that account. But since I didn't work for myself,

933
00:59:41,160 --> 00:59:45,439
Speaker 1: I could not say no. Um. And I think that's

934
00:59:45,440 --> 00:59:49,080
Speaker 1: when it started because the women and they were called girls,

935
00:59:49,360 --> 00:59:53,120
Speaker 1: they were not called women. Um. I took ballet for

936
00:59:53,160 --> 00:59:55,680
Speaker 1: about twelve years and we all were all called girls

937
00:59:55,680 --> 00:59:58,320
Speaker 1: and boys too, so it wasn't you know. It depends

938
00:59:58,400 --> 01:00:01,000
Speaker 1: upon the context when we were using that term. So

939
01:00:01,040 --> 01:00:03,360
Speaker 1: it was like I was always we were all girls

940
01:00:03,360 --> 01:00:07,240
Speaker 1: and boys in ballet um. But the models certainly were

941
01:00:07,280 --> 01:00:12,440
Speaker 1: called girls. Um they had to. But they wanted them

942
01:00:12,480 --> 01:00:17,040
Speaker 1: to look eight team. They didn't want any wrinkles, they

943
01:00:17,080 --> 01:00:21,720
Speaker 1: didn't want you know, any I mean, they wanted them

944
01:00:21,760 --> 01:00:26,919
Speaker 1: to look pristine. Um. It was brutal. Melanie was very

945
01:00:26,960 --> 01:00:30,240
Speaker 1: frank with me about what the expectations were for models

946
01:00:30,240 --> 01:00:33,560
Speaker 1: at this time, not beauty standards that she had invented,

947
01:00:33,840 --> 01:00:36,720
Speaker 1: but ones that it was part of her job to reinforce.

948
01:00:37,200 --> 01:00:40,960
Speaker 1: She told me about the racism, colorism, and featurism that

949
01:00:41,040 --> 01:00:44,840
Speaker 1: came into this industry, the rampant body issues that models

950
01:00:44,880 --> 01:00:48,520
Speaker 1: developed in order to remain competitive, and confirmed a lot

951
01:00:48,560 --> 01:00:52,560
Speaker 1: of what we knew. Eight supermodel culture was extremely rigid

952
01:00:52,560 --> 01:00:56,000
Speaker 1: and its beauty standards and, as Melanie describes in that

953
01:00:56,120 --> 01:01:00,520
Speaker 1: smoking anecdote, morally bankrupt in a way that only American

954
01:01:00,560 --> 01:01:04,400
Speaker 1: advertising can be. After doing her time at the ad agency,

955
01:01:04,560 --> 01:01:08,280
Speaker 1: Melanie started her own company, where she was thrilled to

956
01:01:08,400 --> 01:01:11,560
Speaker 1: turn down any and all cigarette ads and was able

957
01:01:11,600 --> 01:01:13,960
Speaker 1: to set a higher standard of how her models were

958
01:01:14,000 --> 01:01:18,160
Speaker 1: treated and, as she described earlier in this episode, Melanie

959
01:01:18,240 --> 01:01:21,400
Speaker 1: became overwhelmed running her own company while raising her kids

960
01:01:21,720 --> 01:01:24,720
Speaker 1: and elected to shutter the business and become a full

961
01:01:24,760 --> 01:01:29,880
Speaker 1: time mom. It's a distinctly boomer story. The women in

962
01:01:29,920 --> 01:01:35,240
Speaker 1: the comic are aggressively marketed to being told to optimize themselves,

963
01:01:35,440 --> 01:01:39,000
Speaker 1: to constantly spend on fashion and beauty to achieve that

964
01:01:39,280 --> 01:01:43,240
Speaker 1: front office look that Melanie was speaking about earlier, and

965
01:01:43,280 --> 01:01:47,680
Speaker 1: Boomer men were aggressively pursued by advertisers as well, and

966
01:01:48,080 --> 01:01:52,040
Speaker 1: boy did Insecure Irving fall for it every goddamn time.

967
01:01:52,160 --> 01:01:54,720
Speaker 1: Here's a strip from the nineties where he and Cathy

968
01:01:54,840 --> 01:01:59,240
Speaker 1: are talking about their new expensive hall of useless things.

969
01:02:00,200 --> 01:02:04,360
Speaker 1: Anodized aluminum multi lens three B mini excavation spotlight that

970
01:02:04,400 --> 01:02:07,360
Speaker 1: will live its life in the junk drawer with dead batteries,

971
01:02:07,680 --> 01:02:11,200
Speaker 1: high tech epoxy finished heavy gage steel grid hanging unit

972
01:02:11,240 --> 01:02:14,200
Speaker 1: for home repair tools that require two carpenters to install

973
01:02:14,280 --> 01:02:17,280
Speaker 1: and is now used as a scarf wreck safari clothes

974
01:02:17,720 --> 01:02:20,880
Speaker 1: that will never be near a jungle, aerobic footgear that

975
01:02:20,920 --> 01:02:23,600
Speaker 1: will never set foot in an aerobics class deep sea

976
01:02:23,680 --> 01:02:26,600
Speaker 1: dive watch that will never get damp. Keys to a

977
01:02:26,600 --> 01:02:29,040
Speaker 1: four wheel drive vehicle that will never experience a hill.

978
01:02:29,320 --> 01:02:32,920
Speaker 1: Professional designs magnifying drafting lamp that will never be in

979
01:02:32,920 --> 01:02:36,080
Speaker 1: a room with an idea industrial stainless steel pasta vat

980
01:02:36,080 --> 01:02:38,720
Speaker 1: that will never see a noodle, or a group architectural

981
01:02:38,760 --> 01:02:43,280
Speaker 1: magazines we don't read, filled with pictures of furniture we

982
01:02:43,320 --> 01:02:46,560
Speaker 1: don't like. Ten function answering machine with an anti tapp

983
01:02:46,600 --> 01:02:49,840
Speaker 1: device for a telephone that never rings, twenty seven time

984
01:02:49,960 --> 01:02:53,640
Speaker 1: zone international clock in an indestructible molded alloy briefcase that

985
01:02:53,680 --> 01:02:57,600
Speaker 1: will never leave our zip code, financial strategy software, key

986
01:02:57,640 --> 01:02:59,880
Speaker 1: to a checkbook that's lost somewhere under a computer. No

987
01:03:00,000 --> 01:03:02,600
Speaker 1: one knows how to work. Art bolster from an art

988
01:03:02,600 --> 01:03:05,560
Speaker 1: exhibit we never went to of an artist we never

989
01:03:05,600 --> 01:03:09,960
Speaker 1: heard of. Abstract materialism has arrived. We've moved past the

990
01:03:10,000 --> 01:03:12,040
Speaker 1: things we want in need, and are buying things that

991
01:03:12,080 --> 01:03:16,960
Speaker 1: have nothing to do with our lives. Oh boy, guys,

992
01:03:16,960 --> 01:03:20,880
Speaker 1: Waite isn't just commenting on materialism at large. Here, She's

993
01:03:20,920 --> 01:03:24,840
Speaker 1: referring to how boomers of different genders were aggressively targeted

994
01:03:24,880 --> 01:03:28,600
Speaker 1: by marketers in different ways. And yeah, what Irving and

995
01:03:28,680 --> 01:03:32,560
Speaker 1: Cathy are being pressured to buy are rigidly binary. But

996
01:03:32,680 --> 01:03:35,240
Speaker 1: keep in mind what the marketing from this era sounded like.

997
01:03:36,720 --> 01:03:38,960
Speaker 1: You can feel the anticipation in the pit of your

998
01:03:38,960 --> 01:03:41,760
Speaker 1: stomach because you're about to take the first real drive

999
01:03:41,800 --> 01:03:45,520
Speaker 1: and your new Firebird transamp. Your pulse quickens as the

1000
01:03:45,600 --> 01:03:53,840
Speaker 1: exhilarating five Leader of the eight comes to life. Now

1001
01:03:54,000 --> 01:03:59,720
Speaker 1: the road beckons and freedom is just a few miles away.

1002
01:04:00,280 --> 01:04:05,920
Speaker 1: That's safe. That's safe. That cover girl thing, it glows,

1003
01:04:06,360 --> 01:04:13,240
Speaker 1: it shows for skin them. It's fresh and natural. There's

1004
01:04:13,320 --> 01:04:16,040
Speaker 1: nothing like cover go clean makeup. It's sacks him up,

1005
01:04:16,080 --> 01:04:25,560
Speaker 1: pure stays fresh, stays natural, stays that stays point taken.

1006
01:04:26,040 --> 01:04:30,760
Speaker 1: Before settling down with Irving, Cathy also subscribed to every

1007
01:04:30,920 --> 01:04:34,160
Speaker 1: dating trend in the book. She did personal ads in

1008
01:04:34,160 --> 01:04:39,160
Speaker 1: the newspaper video dating, when that searched, in the online

1009
01:04:39,240 --> 01:04:42,960
Speaker 1: dating when that started in the nineties, and surprise. She

1010
01:04:43,120 --> 01:04:48,120
Speaker 1: was routinely frustrated by the constantly changing landscape of technology.

1011
01:04:48,360 --> 01:04:50,959
Speaker 1: It's all turned up to an eleven for the comics,

1012
01:04:51,000 --> 01:04:54,360
Speaker 1: But every one of these things were cultural trends. The

1013
01:04:54,680 --> 01:04:59,720
Speaker 1: video dating, especially Oh my God, Hi, my name's Mike,

1014
01:04:59,760 --> 01:05:02,680
Speaker 1: and it you're sitting there watching this tape smoking your cigarette, Well,

1015
01:05:02,840 --> 01:05:05,000
Speaker 1: hit the fast forward button because I don't smoke, and

1016
01:05:05,040 --> 01:05:09,320
Speaker 1: I don't like people who do smoke. Okay, Mike Jesus.

1017
01:05:09,880 --> 01:05:13,400
Speaker 1: Even when Irving isn't in Cathy's life romantically, he's a

1018
01:05:13,400 --> 01:05:17,040
Speaker 1: tool to comment on boomer men. Irving has a couple

1019
01:05:17,120 --> 01:05:20,440
Speaker 1: different midlife crises throughout the strip, and mostly deals with

1020
01:05:20,440 --> 01:05:23,680
Speaker 1: it through consumption. In the strip you just heard, he's

1021
01:05:23,800 --> 01:05:28,480
Speaker 1: channeling insecurity about aging and his own masculinity by buying

1022
01:05:28,520 --> 01:05:32,200
Speaker 1: this entirely new hyper masculine image. He does the same

1023
01:05:32,200 --> 01:05:35,240
Speaker 1: thing again when the Y two K late nineties era

1024
01:05:35,360 --> 01:05:38,680
Speaker 1: comes along. He shows up on Cathy's doorstep with a

1025
01:05:38,720 --> 01:05:43,280
Speaker 1: new persona yet again, like wearing these sunglasses. After he's

1026
01:05:43,320 --> 01:05:46,320
Speaker 1: decided that he's going to become an Internet millionaire, which

1027
01:05:46,400 --> 01:05:51,200
Speaker 1: didn't work, God, Irving. Here's the strip from It's the

1028
01:05:51,240 --> 01:05:56,720
Speaker 1: New met Cathy, Millennium man Net Savvy, HDTV Ready, Why

1029
01:05:56,800 --> 01:05:59,760
Speaker 1: do K compliant? I got my lease at eight percent,

1030
01:06:00,040 --> 01:06:03,160
Speaker 1: my mortgage at six, and my Amazon dot Com stock

1031
01:06:03,280 --> 01:06:10,160
Speaker 1: at sure Irving. Another way that Irving reflected trends among

1032
01:06:10,240 --> 01:06:15,200
Speaker 1: boomer men was his resistance to accept Kathy's career, particularly

1033
01:06:15,240 --> 01:06:18,440
Speaker 1: towards the beginning of the comic. It's his frustrations with

1034
01:06:18,480 --> 01:06:21,440
Speaker 1: her career that causes him to have a meltdown and

1035
01:06:21,560 --> 01:06:24,120
Speaker 1: force a breakup between the two of them. It became

1036
01:06:24,160 --> 01:06:26,840
Speaker 1: such a popular plot point in their relationship that it

1037
01:06:26,920 --> 01:06:30,080
Speaker 1: appeared in one of the animated Kathy specials that aired

1038
01:06:30,080 --> 01:06:33,200
Speaker 1: on CBS in the late eighties. So the comic does

1039
01:06:33,200 --> 01:06:37,120
Speaker 1: a pretty solid job of tracking the consumption habits, the

1040
01:06:37,240 --> 01:06:41,200
Speaker 1: political apathy, and the emphasis on finding a job where

1041
01:06:41,240 --> 01:06:45,160
Speaker 1: you can be financially comfortable over a job you're passionate

1042
01:06:45,200 --> 01:06:48,800
Speaker 1: about that defined the boomers as they entered middle age.

1043
01:06:49,160 --> 01:06:52,160
Speaker 1: As I was talking to people listening to Boomers described

1044
01:06:52,200 --> 01:06:55,560
Speaker 1: their careers can feel kind of dissonant. A lot of

1045
01:06:55,600 --> 01:06:59,480
Speaker 1: them were young feminists who ended up becoming executives for

1046
01:06:59,680 --> 01:07:03,880
Speaker 1: multi billion dollar companies. They were against rigid beauty standards,

1047
01:07:03,920 --> 01:07:07,600
Speaker 1: but also worked to enforce them. They were strong proponents

1048
01:07:07,640 --> 01:07:10,320
Speaker 1: that their daughters not be harassed in the workplace, but

1049
01:07:10,640 --> 01:07:14,960
Speaker 1: sometimes recalled their own harassment with defensiveness in favor of

1050
01:07:15,000 --> 01:07:18,760
Speaker 1: the harasser. The Clinton years gave way to the George W.

1051
01:07:18,920 --> 01:07:22,600
Speaker 1: Bush years, and Kathy Strips didn't comment quite as often

1052
01:07:22,760 --> 01:07:25,240
Speaker 1: on the issues of the day. By this time, Cathy

1053
01:07:25,320 --> 01:07:27,680
Speaker 1: was very settled in her job and was trying to

1054
01:07:27,840 --> 01:07:31,360
Speaker 1: navigate if that notion that she should put her career

1055
01:07:31,560 --> 01:07:35,320
Speaker 1: over all else was actually what she ever wanted. We

1056
01:07:35,400 --> 01:07:39,280
Speaker 1: also get some commentary on aging, and of course, an

1057
01:07:39,280 --> 01:07:43,520
Speaker 1: obligatory nine eleven remembrance strip. Throughout these years, the cast

1058
01:07:43,600 --> 01:07:47,640
Speaker 1: of the Kathy Strip navigates their world and problems with

1059
01:07:47,760 --> 01:07:50,960
Speaker 1: the same attitude that a generation of white Americans that

1060
01:07:51,000 --> 01:07:54,280
Speaker 1: didn't feel the need to worry about politics did until

1061
01:07:54,960 --> 01:07:57,040
Speaker 1: late in the strips run in the mid to late

1062
01:07:57,080 --> 01:08:01,080
Speaker 1: two thousands, where the cracks in the Boomer legacy began

1063
01:08:01,200 --> 01:08:05,080
Speaker 1: to show hard. Kathy in Irving get married in two

1064
01:08:05,160 --> 01:08:08,240
Speaker 1: thousand five, and a lot of strips are devoted to

1065
01:08:08,520 --> 01:08:11,360
Speaker 1: their trying to find a house together, right in the

1066
01:08:11,400 --> 01:08:14,400
Speaker 1: middle of a housing bubble that would prompt the Great Recession.

1067
01:08:14,600 --> 01:08:16,840
Speaker 1: Here they are talking to a real estate agent in

1068
01:08:16,880 --> 01:08:20,880
Speaker 1: the mid two thousand's. For Baby Boomers, the biggest challenge

1069
01:08:20,880 --> 01:08:26,960
Speaker 1: in house hunting is, of course, the factor, the factor entitlement,

1070
01:08:27,640 --> 01:08:29,960
Speaker 1: what you think you're entitled to versus what you can

1071
01:08:30,000 --> 01:08:36,440
Speaker 1: actually afford. I mean, she's good. And when the recession

1072
01:08:36,600 --> 01:08:39,280
Speaker 1: hit the US, it hit the Kathy Strip as well.

1073
01:08:39,680 --> 01:08:43,800
Speaker 1: Because nothing makes one act like the realization that the

1074
01:08:43,840 --> 01:08:46,120
Speaker 1: comfortable world they grew up in and took for granted

1075
01:08:46,200 --> 01:08:49,400
Speaker 1: could be completely dismantled by a couple of Wall Street

1076
01:08:49,479 --> 01:08:51,360
Speaker 1: buck boys in the space of a couple of months.

1077
01:08:51,840 --> 01:08:54,320
Speaker 1: This is a strip from two thousand and eight featuring

1078
01:08:54,400 --> 01:08:57,240
Speaker 1: Kathy panicking as she looks at the news in the

1079
01:08:57,320 --> 01:09:01,240
Speaker 1: papers and on TV on a emloyment. Articles are eating

1080
01:09:01,240 --> 01:09:04,760
Speaker 1: away my sense of security. Aging baby boomer stories are

1081
01:09:04,800 --> 01:09:07,840
Speaker 1: eating away at my illusion of youth, and every other

1082
01:09:07,880 --> 01:09:09,840
Speaker 1: thing I see on TV is eating away at my

1083
01:09:09,880 --> 01:09:13,640
Speaker 1: peace of mind, my trust, my hope, and my schwadeviva

1084
01:09:13,800 --> 01:09:17,400
Speaker 1: in general. The strip ended its run in papers in

1085
01:09:17,439 --> 01:09:19,880
Speaker 1: two thousand and ten, so we don't get a full

1086
01:09:19,920 --> 01:09:22,960
Speaker 1: look at the cultures hard turn on the boomer generation.

1087
01:09:23,439 --> 01:09:26,640
Speaker 1: What we do get is a big chunk of their journey.

1088
01:09:26,840 --> 01:09:31,320
Speaker 1: Kathy begins as an aspiring women's liber and ends as

1089
01:09:31,320 --> 01:09:34,439
Speaker 1: a woman who postponed marriage and kids for a career.

1090
01:09:34,520 --> 01:09:37,440
Speaker 1: She hadn't been fulfilled by in the way she'd expected,

1091
01:09:37,640 --> 01:09:40,720
Speaker 1: with no savings because of the mass consumption that the

1092
01:09:40,760 --> 01:09:44,680
Speaker 1: culture had encouraged and sometimes demanded, and was living in

1093
01:09:44,720 --> 01:09:51,320
Speaker 1: a world that her generation had irrevocably damaged. Act no

1094
01:09:51,479 --> 01:09:54,719
Speaker 1: number of Kathy comics over twelve thousand that I read

1095
01:09:54,760 --> 01:09:59,240
Speaker 1: to be exact could endear me to the Boomer generation's legacy,

1096
01:09:59,439 --> 01:10:03,720
Speaker 1: as it is unquestionably a bleak one. Boomer policies have

1097
01:10:03,840 --> 01:10:07,759
Speaker 1: a dark legacy. They're the creators and purveyors of triple

1098
01:10:07,840 --> 01:10:11,800
Speaker 1: down economics. They are the accruers of massive national debt.

1099
01:10:11,960 --> 01:10:15,000
Speaker 1: They are pushers of the war on drugs. The Boomer

1100
01:10:15,040 --> 01:10:18,920
Speaker 1: block at large routinely voted against taking action on climate

1101
01:10:19,000 --> 01:10:22,880
Speaker 1: change and still do. They eroded national safety nets like

1102
01:10:23,000 --> 01:10:27,240
Speaker 1: social Security and Medicare, and repeatedly failed to tax the

1103
01:10:27,400 --> 01:10:32,320
Speaker 1: massively wealthy, allowing mega billionaires like Bezos, Musk and Gates

1104
01:10:32,560 --> 01:10:35,799
Speaker 1: Gate keep wealth and privatize the ability for the average

1105
01:10:35,800 --> 01:10:39,920
Speaker 1: person to live. And today we have our fifth consecutive

1106
01:10:39,960 --> 01:10:44,280
Speaker 1: Boomer president in office, long after the center liberal policies

1107
01:10:44,280 --> 01:10:48,680
Speaker 1: of that generation have revealed themselves to be largely capitalistic

1108
01:10:48,920 --> 01:10:53,320
Speaker 1: and unsustainable. These policies aren't the fault of any one Boomer,

1109
01:10:53,640 --> 01:10:57,679
Speaker 1: particularly ones that don't hold massive influence, power, and capital.

1110
01:10:58,120 --> 01:11:00,760
Speaker 1: But what I did notice in researching this episode was

1111
01:11:00,840 --> 01:11:04,000
Speaker 1: this there was a cultural shift in the Boomer generation

1112
01:11:04,240 --> 01:11:07,680
Speaker 1: to the well being and survival of the individual and

1113
01:11:07,760 --> 01:11:11,960
Speaker 1: proving oneself through labor and consumption that had a net harm.

1114
01:11:12,400 --> 01:11:14,840
Speaker 1: Most boomers I spoke with didn't choose a job they

1115
01:11:14,880 --> 01:11:17,960
Speaker 1: were necessarily passionate about, but one that would allow for

1116
01:11:18,000 --> 01:11:21,200
Speaker 1: them to thrive in a society that was structured like this.

1117
01:11:21,720 --> 01:11:24,720
Speaker 1: Kathy strips reflect this. We know that the character is

1118
01:11:24,840 --> 01:11:27,760
Speaker 1: proud and aware that she's good at her job, but

1119
01:11:27,880 --> 01:11:30,679
Speaker 1: at no point are we led to believe that Product

1120
01:11:30,760 --> 01:11:35,720
Speaker 1: Testing Services Incorporated is something that she's passionate about. As

1121
01:11:35,800 --> 01:11:39,280
Speaker 1: Jill Philip Povic explains in her book, the millennial generation

1122
01:11:39,600 --> 01:11:42,000
Speaker 1: is far more likely to take a pay cut in

1123
01:11:42,120 --> 01:11:44,760
Speaker 1: order to do something that they feel good about. Like

1124
01:11:44,840 --> 01:11:47,639
Speaker 1: a lot of people from her generation, the Kathy character

1125
01:11:47,760 --> 01:11:49,640
Speaker 1: was trying her best to live up to what she

1126
01:11:49,800 --> 01:11:52,400
Speaker 1: was told her potential was, at first because of the

1127
01:11:52,439 --> 01:11:57,040
Speaker 1: Women's liberation movement, but eventually just to keep up. It

1128
01:11:57,320 --> 01:12:01,280
Speaker 1: is within Gen X, Millennials and Gen z's power to

1129
01:12:01,479 --> 01:12:04,799
Speaker 1: vote boomers out of office, but it is a slow

1130
01:12:04,960 --> 01:12:09,320
Speaker 1: and arduous process. Congress is currently sixty eight percent boomers,

1131
01:12:09,439 --> 01:12:12,640
Speaker 1: the House of Representatives is fifty three percent Boomers, so

1132
01:12:12,680 --> 01:12:15,559
Speaker 1: all those of voting numbers exist for boomers to not

1133
01:12:15,640 --> 01:12:18,840
Speaker 1: be in power. And this doesn't even take voter suppression

1134
01:12:18,880 --> 01:12:24,000
Speaker 1: into account. Jesus Christ, are boomers still holding a lot

1135
01:12:24,040 --> 01:12:28,320
Speaker 1: of power for a generation of their sorry age? And

1136
01:12:28,360 --> 01:12:31,080
Speaker 1: if any one of you boomers launches into my mentioned

1137
01:12:31,360 --> 01:12:34,160
Speaker 1: saying I'm being aged on this point, I will launch

1138
01:12:34,160 --> 01:12:37,280
Speaker 1: myself into the sun with a circus cannon. For this

1139
01:12:37,560 --> 01:12:43,679
Speaker 1: large and complicated generation, Kathy Comics provide a pretty solid mirror.

1140
01:12:43,880 --> 01:12:46,559
Speaker 1: So I want to close this episode with another classic

1141
01:12:46,600 --> 01:12:49,639
Speaker 1: strip from the nineties. It features Kathy in her office,

1142
01:12:49,800 --> 01:12:51,840
Speaker 1: sitting in front of a blank sheet of paper in

1143
01:12:51,880 --> 01:12:55,479
Speaker 1: this hulking early desktop computer, with her hands on her

1144
01:12:55,520 --> 01:12:59,680
Speaker 1: temples and her tongue out. She is alone, thinking and panicking.

1145
01:13:00,880 --> 01:13:04,160
Speaker 1: I can't believe I'm here? Why am I here? What

1146
01:13:04,160 --> 01:13:07,519
Speaker 1: am I doing? What was I thinking? Is this? It?

1147
01:13:08,720 --> 01:13:10,800
Speaker 1: Is this? Am I going to spend the rest of

1148
01:13:10,800 --> 01:13:15,000
Speaker 1: my life in this office? Am I worthy? Aren't I superior?

1149
01:13:15,680 --> 01:13:24,920
Speaker 1: What about my big dreams? Who am I? Why? This

1150
01:13:25,040 --> 01:13:28,720
Speaker 1: is the essence of Cathy Comics. Something that looks like

1151
01:13:28,760 --> 01:13:32,280
Speaker 1: it's prosperous or a sign of progress from the outside

1152
01:13:32,720 --> 01:13:37,520
Speaker 1: women in the workplace, but the interior reality is panicked

1153
01:13:37,560 --> 01:13:41,080
Speaker 1: and insecure, falling short of what she thought life was

1154
01:13:41,120 --> 01:13:44,759
Speaker 1: going to be. Like boomers as a generation were given

1155
01:13:44,920 --> 01:13:48,200
Speaker 1: a lot, those in power, squandered it to the benefit

1156
01:13:48,280 --> 01:13:51,719
Speaker 1: of select few, and not as much changed as many

1157
01:13:51,760 --> 01:13:55,080
Speaker 1: would like to think. Like most generations, white boomers tend

1158
01:13:55,120 --> 01:13:58,400
Speaker 1: to deflect the blame for this falling short on younger

1159
01:13:58,439 --> 01:14:02,600
Speaker 1: generations and marginalized people instead of scrutinizing the systems and

1160
01:14:02,640 --> 01:14:05,920
Speaker 1: power structures that enabled it. And oh my god, I

1161
01:14:05,960 --> 01:14:08,080
Speaker 1: really hope I don't listen back to this episode from

1162
01:14:08,080 --> 01:14:10,760
Speaker 1: a climate bunker in a decade and think, Oh no,

1163
01:14:10,960 --> 01:14:13,639
Speaker 1: my generation did the same fucking thing. I guess we'll see.

1164
01:14:13,920 --> 01:14:16,679
Speaker 1: Kathy guys White showed the daily life of a working

1165
01:14:16,680 --> 01:14:19,880
Speaker 1: boomer woman trying to have it all, and how having

1166
01:14:19,920 --> 01:14:23,720
Speaker 1: it all was this myth that both offered women more

1167
01:14:23,800 --> 01:14:27,240
Speaker 1: options and ways to be than ever before, while also

1168
01:14:27,360 --> 01:14:31,280
Speaker 1: presenting a whole new slew of impossible expectations to make

1169
01:14:31,320 --> 01:14:35,439
Speaker 1: her feel bad. While definitely not a comprehensive one, it's

1170
01:14:35,439 --> 01:14:38,439
Speaker 1: a lighthearted chronicle of a generation that did wrong by

1171
01:14:38,520 --> 01:14:42,360
Speaker 1: their own and by their children's generation, and the periods

1172
01:14:42,400 --> 01:14:46,519
Speaker 1: of mass consumerism that distracted from cultural moments that weren't

1173
01:14:46,520 --> 01:14:49,840
Speaker 1: harnessed for social change, because while the Boomers may have

1174
01:14:49,920 --> 01:14:52,720
Speaker 1: come of age in the hippie days of focusing on

1175
01:14:52,760 --> 01:14:59,640
Speaker 1: the collective, they became a generation of individuals fully embracing

1176
01:15:00,080 --> 01:15:06,479
Speaker 1: good individualism that prioritized consumption, optimization, looking and being the

1177
01:15:06,720 --> 01:15:12,640
Speaker 1: right way over all else. They lived in a society,

1178
01:15:12,680 --> 01:15:16,680
Speaker 1: and it's here in this struggle to look the right way,

1179
01:15:16,680 --> 01:15:20,040
Speaker 1: both in fashion and with her body image, that the

1180
01:15:20,120 --> 01:15:24,680
Speaker 1: Kathy Strips might spend the majority of their time panicking

1181
01:15:24,760 --> 01:15:28,320
Speaker 1: in the changing room, trying every crash diet under the sun,

1182
01:15:28,720 --> 01:15:32,240
Speaker 1: and failing to be cool. That's who the Kathy character is,

1183
01:15:32,560 --> 01:15:35,679
Speaker 1: and the story it tells was reflected in the lives

1184
01:15:35,800 --> 01:15:38,880
Speaker 1: of millions of American women. So you know what's happening,

1185
01:15:38,960 --> 01:15:46,719
Speaker 1: right Cathy Wicked Bodies, Bodies Baby. Next week on ac Cast,

1186
01:15:50,120 --> 01:15:52,880
Speaker 1: I want to send an extra special thank you to

1187
01:15:52,920 --> 01:15:55,960
Speaker 1: the women who share their time and their experiences with

1188
01:15:56,040 --> 01:15:58,240
Speaker 1: me for this episode. We're going to be hearing more

1189
01:15:58,280 --> 01:16:01,240
Speaker 1: from them and others later in this series, so thank

1190
01:16:01,280 --> 01:16:04,439
Speaker 1: you so much for trusting me with your stories. Back

1191
01:16:04,560 --> 01:16:07,559
Speaker 1: Cast is an I Heart Radio production hosted, written, and

1192
01:16:07,640 --> 01:16:11,400
Speaker 1: researched by me Jamie Loftus. The show is executive produced

1193
01:16:11,400 --> 01:16:15,120
Speaker 1: by the wonderful Sophie Lichterman, edited by the wonderful Isaac Taylor.

1194
01:16:15,400 --> 01:16:18,760
Speaker 1: Music is from Zoe Bladed and The Slapper That is

1195
01:16:18,880 --> 01:16:24,120
Speaker 1: Our themes song Keep the Compliments Coming comes from Brad Dinkert.

1196
01:16:24,520 --> 01:16:28,360
Speaker 1: Voices who heard today include Ben Loftus, my brother, I'm

1197
01:16:28,400 --> 01:16:30,559
Speaker 1: home for the summer and my whole family is working

1198
01:16:30,600 --> 01:16:33,919
Speaker 1: on this. Miles Gray is Irving and Mr Pinkley, Melissa

1199
01:16:33,960 --> 01:16:38,960
Speaker 1: Lozada Oliva is Andrea and Jackie. Michelle Johnson is our Kathy.

1200
01:16:39,520 --> 01:16:40,400
Speaker 1: We'll see you next week.