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Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and you're listening to Stuff I've

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Speaker 1: Never told you. Well, it's just about Valentine's Day here

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Speaker 1: in the United States, and that means heart shaped boxes

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Speaker 1: of chocolate everywhere you go, especially now that you can't

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Speaker 1: buy those sweetheart candies, although I'm always shocked people liked

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Speaker 1: those anyway, I mean other than just for I guess

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Speaker 1: novelty of candy that has a message on it. And

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Speaker 1: along with all of these heart shaped boxes of chocolate

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Speaker 1: come the ads of women falling heads over heels for chocolate,

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Speaker 1: as if willpower goes out in the window for women

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Speaker 1: when chocolate gets introduced into any given situation, we become

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Speaker 1: wolves wolves And I have to say I love chocolate.

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Speaker 1: I don't really crave it too often. I have friends

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Speaker 1: that do, though, especially when they're sad or on their

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Speaker 1: period both, and it got me to wondering if there

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Speaker 1: is any truth to this stereotype. Luckily, we have a

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Speaker 1: classic episode looking into just that. Enjoy. Welcome to Stuff

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Speaker 1: Mom Never Told You from housetopp Works dot Com. Hello,

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Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristen

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Speaker 1: and uh. Today we're talking about a favorite topic of mine,

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Speaker 1: and I was preparing for the topic of chocolate last

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Speaker 1: night Kristen by shoving chocolate Easter eggs one after another

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Speaker 1: into my face because every year my mother I'm thirty,

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Speaker 1: my mother makes Easter baskets. She may one for Kristen

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Speaker 1: as well, don't worry, But I I feel like I

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Speaker 1: was doing some really good, hard hitting chocolate research. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think it's important to get a little meadow with

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Speaker 1: things and fuel your chocolate research with chocolate. I myself

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Speaker 1: have also been enjoying the chocolate Easter eggs your mother

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Speaker 1: so generously gave to me in my own Easter basket.

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Speaker 1: I don't know the last time my mom gave me

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Speaker 1: an Easter basket. So if I tell her that another

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Speaker 1: person's mom gave me an Easter basket, it might cause

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Speaker 1: a little friction, Yeah, a little mom friction. So I

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Speaker 1: don't know if I'll if I'll film my mom in

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Speaker 1: on that. But I'm a little surprised that it's taken

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Speaker 1: us this long to get around to women in chocolate,

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Speaker 1: because is there a more stereotypically women woman good than chocolate? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: other than shoes, I don't think so. Yeah. I mean

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Speaker 1: it's like shoes, Kathy comics, chocolate. There we go, and

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Speaker 1: the last two are basically one and the same exactly.

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Speaker 1: So we got to talk about women in chocolate because

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Speaker 1: the question I wanted to know was what's up with

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Speaker 1: the stereotype that women are just these chocolate craving monsters who,

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Speaker 1: according to commercials, also really want to have sex with chocolate. Interesting? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that I don't think that's been quite proven yet that

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Speaker 1: we do want to have sex with chocolate, or that

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Speaker 1: we would rather have chocolate van sex. Interesting. Yeah. I

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Speaker 1: would like to kick this off though, with a quote

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Speaker 1: from Kathleen Banks Nutter, who wrote an essay on sort

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Speaker 1: of the history of women in chocolate in the book

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Speaker 1: Edible Ideologies Representing Food and Meaning. She wrote, what food

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Speaker 1: is more easily gendered and eroticized than chocolate. So, ladies

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Speaker 1: and gentlemen, you're in for quite a treat with this podcast. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I um, you know, the based on the amount of

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Speaker 1: chocolate that I crave. You know, if you were if

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Speaker 1: you were to tell me in this podcast, Kristen, that

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Speaker 1: thing in women's bodies, whether it's their brain or their uterus,

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Speaker 1: is programming them to eat more chocolate, I'd be kind

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Speaker 1: of prone to believe you, because I feel like I

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Speaker 1: don't know too many dudes who are like super into

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Speaker 1: chocolate who have to have chocolate on hand. Um, But

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Speaker 1: I don't think that's what we're going to tell you,

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Speaker 1: know because also Caroline, I'm going to go ahead and

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Speaker 1: put it out there. I'm more of a salty tooth

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Speaker 1: than a sweet tooth. If you were to offer me

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Speaker 1: a bag of potato chips and a bag of chocolate chips,

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Speaker 1: I would take the potato the potato product. See, I

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Speaker 1: have a weird, a weird thing that I would love

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Speaker 1: to get rid of, which is that after every meal

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Speaker 1: that you know, typically include something savory, I have to

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Speaker 1: have something chocolate to finish it off. Either that I've

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Speaker 1: got to like shove a bunch of gum into my

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Speaker 1: face so that I don't go after whatever's chocolate around me.

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Speaker 1: I've been known to like go through the office just

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Speaker 1: like lifting up people's bags, like do you have any

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Speaker 1: I need? So well, this podcast, this is kind of

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Speaker 1: especially for you, Caroline. It's yeah, it's sounding that way.

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Speaker 1: So let's go over just a few chocolate statistics to

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Speaker 1: get an idea of what we're dealing with. Because the

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Speaker 1: thing is, when it comes to women in chocolate and

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Speaker 1: our desires for it, it seems like a lot of

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Speaker 1: it is perhaps cultural, because it's a lot more popular,

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Speaker 1: for instance, in Europe than it is in Asia. So

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Speaker 1: if we look just in the UK, of women say

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Speaker 1: that they eat it regularly, but at the same time,

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Speaker 1: seven percent of British men say that they found si chocolate. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so they're over there shoving cadberry stuff into their face.

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Speaker 1: But it's not it's not a massive gender gap. Now

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Speaker 1: maybe maybe women. Could it be that women are just

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Speaker 1: made out to be crazy for chocolate more so than men.

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Speaker 1: We'll find out, Caroline. Um, But over in Germany they're

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Speaker 1: the ones eating the most chocolate, And can I blame

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Speaker 1: them when they have things like kindre eggs, kinder eggs. Sally,

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Speaker 1: you know, speaking of my mother. Sally is a flight attendant.

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Speaker 1: She flies to Germany. She smuggles back kinder eggs for

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Speaker 1: me and has ever since I was little. Kids, so

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Speaker 1: I have all those little toys that you put together

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Speaker 1: that are a severe choking hazard. Basically, your mom gives

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Speaker 1: you the best candies, Caroline, my mom is the Easter bunny. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but moving away from Eastern looking just at Valentine's Day,

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Speaker 1: Americans purchase more than sixty million pounds of chocolate for

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Speaker 1: February four alone, and more than sevent of that chocolate

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Speaker 1: will be given by men to women. So with that,

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Speaker 1: you're starting to see what we'll talk about a lot

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Speaker 1: more in terms of this gendered economy of chocolate buying

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Speaker 1: and bestowing. And as far as cravings go, like the

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Speaker 1: cravings I have on like a ten minute by ten

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Speaker 1: minute basis throughout the day, women tend to report craving

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Speaker 1: chocolate more than men do. But again this is mainly

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Speaker 1: focused on Western women. All those studies like the one

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Speaker 1: that Kristen sided earlier about showing that there was such

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Speaker 1: a small gender gap between men and women in the

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Speaker 1: UK eating chocolate, most surveys do show that there is

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Speaker 1: a negligible gender difference, but there is a difference in

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Speaker 1: the guilt we feel. Women report more post chocolate guilt

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Speaker 1: after eating it compared to men, which I also kind

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Speaker 1: of would own up to, Like after I shove a

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Speaker 1: bunch of well, okay, maybe way after I shove a

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Speaker 1: bunch of chocolate, once the glow has faded, after I've

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Speaker 1: shoved a whole bunch of sugary chocolate in my face.

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Speaker 1: Then I'm like, maybe I shouldn't have done that. Maybe

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Speaker 1: it's just you coming down from a sugar high. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and I start like twitching and itching. Oh no. But

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Speaker 1: speaking of those chocolate cravings, just one more aside on that.

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Speaker 1: Looking at the Western women's chocolate cravings, you'll see a

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Speaker 1: lot of reports that chocolate is the most widely craved food.

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Speaker 1: But again, if you that's probably focused on westerner because

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Speaker 1: if you look at a place like Egypt, for instance,

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Speaker 1: there was a study finding that women and men both

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Speaker 1: preferred savory and had more savory cravings because it was

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Speaker 1: more related to their local cuisine, right, And and kind

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Speaker 1: of along those same lines, I mean, I would argue

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Speaker 1: you know that that, I mean, that makes sense that

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Speaker 1: based on what you typically eat, you're going to crave

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Speaker 1: certain things. And you know, I've noticed the more I

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Speaker 1: eat chocolate, the more I crave it, And the less

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Speaker 1: I eat chocolate, the less I crave it. Yeah, And

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Speaker 1: the more I eat potatoes, the more potato chips. Just raw.

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Speaker 1: Chris did so weird. She has this whole drawer full

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Speaker 1: of potatoes and she'll just rip one out like an

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Speaker 1: apple and bite into it. My podcasting secret car bloating,

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Speaker 1: constant car bloating. Um. But before we get into where

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Speaker 1: this women and chocolate connection really comes from, let's go

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Speaker 1: back in time and see where chocolate comes from. Because

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Speaker 1: within the history of chocolate we start to see how

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Speaker 1: it becomes more gendered as it moves from its origin

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Speaker 1: in meso America to Europe. Right. Yeah, they actually found

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Speaker 1: they I mean, you know, the people who look for

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Speaker 1: these things, chocolate pirates. Yep, chocolate pirates actually found cacao

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Speaker 1: residue in pottery in Honduras that dates back as far

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Speaker 1: as fourteen hundred BC. And just side note, um, in

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Speaker 1: case you're wondering throughout this podcast, anytime we say cacao,

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Speaker 1: I'm just going to think of the Portlandia sketch where

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Speaker 1: cacao is the safe word. But anyway, so, yeah, it

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Speaker 1: dates back a long time in meso America and the

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Speaker 1: Mayans were drinking it by three D a d. And

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Speaker 1: when the Aztecs, you know, like they did, conquered the Mayans,

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Speaker 1: they started taking up the drinking of chocolate as well.

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Speaker 1: And not only did they drink it, az Techs supposedly

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Speaker 1: ate it off each other's bodies during sex. They considered.

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Speaker 1: The word for chocolate in their languages is something along

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Speaker 1: the lines of like chocolattle. It's there's a lot of

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Speaker 1: consonants next to each other, but that basically translates to

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Speaker 1: a holy fetish. That's how much they liked it. That's

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Speaker 1: so cosmo of them. Yeah, I can just I'm picturing

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Speaker 1: like an ancient as tech cosmopolitan. Hey, as tech ladies,

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Speaker 1: you wanna you wanna get your man going, get some chocolottle.

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Speaker 1: You want to avoid getting sacrificed this month, it's some

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Speaker 1: chocolate during sex. So then in fifteen nineteen we have

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Speaker 1: Spanish explorer Hernando Cortez being exposed to this magical sexy

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Speaker 1: chocolate for the first time in the court of Montezuma

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Speaker 1: the second and then by fight five we have chocolate

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Speaker 1: being shipped to Europe along with these ideas of its

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Speaker 1: connections to sex, and very quickly from that it's connection

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Speaker 1: to women. By the sixteenth century, you have chocolate in

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Speaker 1: Europe being conceptualized as an aphrodisiac. Right, and one Spanish physician,

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Speaker 1: Antonio Culminero Laedisma, I'm sure I said that wrong, wrote

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Speaker 1: in the seventeenth century that chocolate vehemently incites to venus

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Speaker 1: and causes conception in women, hastens and facilitates their delivery.

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Speaker 1: And I just have to that. I I say, oh,

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Speaker 1: is that how babies are? Right? Yeah? If chocolate cause

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Speaker 1: of conception in women, thank god, I'm on birth control. Um.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, in Europe, it's it's interesting to see that. Um,

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Speaker 1: they took this, this this treat or this beverage or

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Speaker 1: this sexy time making item, and they ended up sweetening

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Speaker 1: it to make it taste better. Because back when there

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Speaker 1: were all these Spanish explorers in Mesoamerica hanging out with

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Speaker 1: the Aztecs, one of them described it as a bitter

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Speaker 1: drink for pigs. But then when it's transported over to

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Speaker 1: Europe and it's sweetened, that's when it starts to become

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Speaker 1: kind of a luxury item. Yeah, it's important to remember

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Speaker 1: that chocolate way way back in the day is not

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Speaker 1: like the chocolate Easter eggs that you might be eating.

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Speaker 1: Its super sweet and smooth. It was a pretty intense

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Speaker 1: food that was often Yeah, it was often drunk and

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Speaker 1: Casanova also side notes, supposedly ate it to aid his virility.

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Speaker 1: It was like yield viagra, or maybe he just kept

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Speaker 1: it on hand for all those chocolate love and ladies

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Speaker 1: that stopped by. Yeah, he just had like a whitman's

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Speaker 1: sampler that he could slide out. Maybe that was his secret.

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Speaker 1: So when it comes though to the gendering of chocolate,

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Speaker 1: this happens pretty soon after it's imported to Europe. According

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Speaker 1: to more rosen Bloom, for instance, who wrote a book

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Speaker 1: all about the history of chocolate. He says that once

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Speaker 1: chocolate arrived in Spain pretty quickly you have men drinking

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Speaker 1: coffee and stronger stuff and women drinking the chocolate. And

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Speaker 1: this was something too that reminded me of our research

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Speaker 1: for our episode on gender and coffee was how with

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Speaker 1: the old coffee houses in England it was mostly men

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Speaker 1: and the women were at home drinking chocolate, right Or

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Speaker 1: how even now if you walk into a Starbucks, you

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Speaker 1: know hearing from all of our listeners who work at

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Speaker 1: coffee shops saying that, oh, the men walk in and

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Speaker 1: they order espresso or black coffee and the women are

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Speaker 1: ordering mochas. Exactly interesting. Well, not only was it a

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Speaker 1: gender drink, but it was also sort of an elitist

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Speaker 1: thing too. When it made its way to Europe from

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Speaker 1: the New World, it was pretty much solely reserved for

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Speaker 1: the nobility of Spain, Italy and France. It basically became

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Speaker 1: a luxury where dainty ladies enjoyed it, and they transform

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Speaker 1: the enjoyment of chocolate into a highly refined social event.

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Speaker 1: And this is coming from Jamal Fahim's thesis Beyond Craving,

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Speaker 1: and he points out that this is sort of the

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Speaker 1: beginning of chocolate as a fetish that communicates social status

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Speaker 1: and upper class femininity, and that upper class femininity is

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Speaker 1: going to continue to broaden its reach within the growing

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Speaker 1: chocolate industry. As you see in the eighteen hundreds, how

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Speaker 1: chocolate is transformed from this grittier drink into the type

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Speaker 1: of chocolate that we think of today that's a smooth

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Speaker 1: the bar, it's really sweet, it's a very tantalizing for

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Speaker 1: our senses. And this happens through a number of innovations

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Speaker 1: starting in eighty eight with a Dutch entrepreneur named Conrad

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Speaker 1: johann has Been Houghton who figures out how to press

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Speaker 1: those cocao safe word cacao beans to separate the dry

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Speaker 1: cocoa from cocoa butter that makes chocolate less bitter and smoother.

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Speaker 1: And by eighteen fifty we have englishmen Joseph Fry mixing

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Speaker 1: sugar with cocoa butter and making the first solid chocolate bar.

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Speaker 1: So he's like Josephries, like the patron saint of of

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Speaker 1: all that is good and happy in this world. For me,

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Speaker 1: I guess I should wear like a necklace with his

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Speaker 1: picture on it. Um more developments come in eighteen seventy

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Speaker 1: nine when Rodolf Lint of you know Lint Chocolate, invented conking,

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Speaker 1: a process that also smoothed chocolate, and he actually used

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Speaker 1: a machine that looks like a conk shell, hence Cleverland.

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Speaker 1: Uh So, because of all these innovations, by the early

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Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds, you have guys like Henry nest Lee or

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Speaker 1: would that be R. Nestle, Milton Hershey and others who

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Speaker 1: are in the chocolate game. And so all of a

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Speaker 1: sudden you have at the beginning of the twentieth century

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Speaker 1: this growing chocolate business. And what's interesting too, as we

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Speaker 1: were talking about the gender of it, if you look

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Speaker 1: at the manufacturing of chocolate, all those chocolate bars that

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Speaker 1: were eating a lot of times, especially in the earlier

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Speaker 1: twentieth century, it becomes gradually feminized as well. You have

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Speaker 1: more and more women working in these factories. So not

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Speaker 1: only are women becoming the target consumers of chocolate, they're

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Speaker 1: also often the ones on the factory floors making the chocolate.

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Speaker 1: So every day it was like Lucy and Ethel, you're

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Speaker 1: working the chocolate. Okay, great, I'll just keep that image

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Speaker 1: in my head as well as the Portland a sketch,

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Speaker 1: So my brain is is at pacity. There is a

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Speaker 1: darker side, of course, um to chocolate making, and this

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Speaker 1: is something that still goes on today in some parts

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Speaker 1: of the world where they grow cow trees and make chocolate.

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Speaker 1: And that is the fact that there are child labor

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Speaker 1: issues that that we struggle with, as well as environmental

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Speaker 1: issues like rainforest being stripped, the soil being stripped of

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Speaker 1: nutrients by planting these trees over and over again. So

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Speaker 1: that has actually driven some companies to, you know, get

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Speaker 1: into the fair trade thing, make sure that they're having

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Speaker 1: positive sources for their beans basically. Yeah, and and those

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Speaker 1: those sourcing issues are as relevant to chocolate as they

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Speaker 1: are to our conversation on coffee. But we're not going

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Speaker 1: to focus so much on the manufacturing side of it,

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Speaker 1: but rather the advertising of chocolate, because you can actually

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Speaker 1: trace women's history in the twentieth century in the United

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Speaker 1: States through chocolate ads. Essentially, just by the way that

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Speaker 1: chocolate is framed really shows women's level of social mobility

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Speaker 1: and their relationship to men. It's fascinating, Yeah, it's fascinating

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Speaker 1: because this is coming. You know, this starts after the

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Speaker 1: Industrial Revolution, when you've got guys like Milton Hershey making

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Speaker 1: a cheaper, more available chocolate bar. I guess he's like

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Speaker 1: the Henry Ford of candy, making it more available to people.

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Speaker 1: And so once it is more readily available, you have

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Speaker 1: to sell it. You have to make people aware that

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Speaker 1: it is not something for just uppercrust elite ladies, that

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Speaker 1: it's for everyone. Yeah, and we already have these longstanding

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Speaker 1: connotations of chocolate with sex and romance and luxury, and

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Speaker 1: so what better thing to sell to dainty ladies. But

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Speaker 1: in the Victorian era, depictions of women gorging on chocolate

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Speaker 1: in the same way that we think of today, like,

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Speaker 1: you know, just chocolate crazed women that would not have

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Speaker 1: been kosher, That would have totally violated the female norms

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Speaker 1: of the time, because this was at the time too

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Speaker 1: when women would not have been you would not want

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Speaker 1: to be seen like eating a lot of food, like

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Speaker 1: all you can eat buffets not okay for Victorian women

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Speaker 1: to indulge in, so they were supposed to eat more

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Speaker 1: like ladies. So a lot of times if you see

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Speaker 1: Victorian ads for chocolate, the women aren't necessarily eating the

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Speaker 1: chocolate in the ads, but maybe holding it close to

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Speaker 1: their mouths just sort of tantalizingly. If you want to

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Speaker 1: find a good way to get me to gorge on chocolate,

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Speaker 1: it's to make me hold it away from my face

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Speaker 1: for too long before I eat it, and then it's

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Speaker 1: just like cookie monster, it's just over. But yeah, you

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Speaker 1: couldn't with these, with these proper Victorian ladies, you couldn't

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Speaker 1: show them over indulging. You couldn't have them exhibiting any

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Speaker 1: type of desire because again, chocolate being kind of an aphrodisiac,

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Speaker 1: considered to be an aphrodisiac, tied in with wooing people

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Speaker 1: and whatnot. If a woman is shown to not only

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Speaker 1: gorge on it, but really want it and desire it,

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Speaker 1: then it's getting hot up in those Victorian homes. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but when you move into the progressive era, out of

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Speaker 1: the Victorian era into the progressive era, you have the

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Speaker 1: rise of the new woman. You have the suffrage movement

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Speaker 1: taking place. You have women having a little bit more

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Speaker 1: social mobility. They might be driving cars every now and then. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and and the whole rituals updating outside the home are

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Speaker 1: starting to take shape. And so chocolate advertisers are thinking, Okay,

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Speaker 1: how are we going to advertise to this new woman.

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Speaker 1: How are we going to frame chocolate as something that

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Speaker 1: she needs in her life? Oh dating, gentleman callers, what

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Speaker 1: better gift for this new woman than a box? So

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Speaker 1: chockole lots right. It's kind of like when we talked

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Speaker 1: about diamonds. How diamond advertising put it in men's heads

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Speaker 1: that you're not a good husband, fiance, boyfriend, et cetera

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Speaker 1: if you don't present a diamond, and then that leads

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Speaker 1: the woman to expect it and think, oh, well, you're

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Speaker 1: not a good fiance if you didn't give me a diamond.

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Speaker 1: It's kind of the same thing in in this you know,

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Speaker 1: smaller scale, less expensive, but it's kind of the same

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Speaker 1: thing with chocolate. It's like, oh, well, he must not

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Speaker 1: really like me, Yeah, exactly, And it's because they're courting

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Speaker 1: female consumers, but ultimately courting men to buy the chocolate, saying, hey,

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Speaker 1: what better gift for a gal than a box of chocolate?

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Speaker 1: It's Johnny, yeah, and there is um yes. And they

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Speaker 1: were addressing Johnny in a Whitman's ad that gave me

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Speaker 1: pause when I read the copy for it, because it

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Speaker 1: sounds so opposite of the whole idea of of keeping

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Speaker 1: chocolate in the Victorian area era away from sounding to

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Speaker 1: um sensual. So in this ad they said, a visit

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Speaker 1: to Pleasure Island is best when made by a man

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Speaker 1: and a maid, and together they enjoy the plunder from

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Speaker 1: this wonderful chest of chocolates. Now, tell me that's not

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Speaker 1: one big euphemism, right, Oh yeah, chocolate as are all euphemism.

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Speaker 1: I mean, even in the Victorian era. As you get

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Speaker 1: creep closer and closer to the twentieth century, you see

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Speaker 1: how chocolate is still it's still sort of symbolizing the

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Speaker 1: physical consumption that may ensue after you know, proper marriage

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Speaker 1: and whatnot. Right, Yeah, I can't believe they were giving

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Speaker 1: chocolate to women when they were just dating. Well, in

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Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties, you even have companies like Romance Chocolates

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Speaker 1: just going ahead and putting it from the center, like, hey,

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Speaker 1: Romance Chocolates, what else are you going to get for

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Speaker 1: a for a date than these? Right? But so in

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Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties, as you know, women are wearing shorter clothes,

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Speaker 1: tighter clothes. They've they've shed the bustle and the corset,

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Speaker 1: Lucky Strike begins advising women to reach for a cigarette

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Speaker 1: instead of chocolate to keep that figure slim to fit

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Speaker 1: into all of your new garments. Yeah, this is around

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Speaker 1: the time too when you start seeing alongside the suffrage movement,

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Speaker 1: you also see the first big wave of a dieting

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Speaker 1: push for women. And to me this was really significant

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Speaker 1: because I feel like today, even with all this overt

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Speaker 1: chocolate advertising, there's always still that underpinning of guilt, and

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Speaker 1: we're never like advertisers, never let us forget that we

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Speaker 1: have female figures that you know, we're supposed to keep

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Speaker 1: in shape. And so in the late n when this

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Speaker 1: Lucky Strike ad comes out, you have women having the

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Speaker 1: right to vote, more freedom theoretically than ever before. But

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Speaker 1: also too, this is a time when you're also seeing

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Speaker 1: the first kind of dieting push for women as well.

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Speaker 1: There's always this balance between like, ladies, go ahead and

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Speaker 1: indulge but not too much, feel bad about yourselves, but

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Speaker 1: enjoy yourself, but then feel bad about yourself. Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: a terrible yo yo effect. And I mean it is

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Speaker 1: interesting to think about how, like every time women are

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Speaker 1: on the verge of getting more power in society and

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Speaker 1: they're outside of the home, all of a sudden, people

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Speaker 1: are like, yeah, but you should probably be thinner and

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Speaker 1: and remember not to eat too much. Well, that's the

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Speaker 1: thing I think. Naomi Wolf points us out in The

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Speaker 1: Beauty Myth, which now is such an old text, but

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Speaker 1: still the point I think is uh sort of time immemorial,

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Speaker 1: because she's talked about how any time, like you said,

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Speaker 1: women are experiencing the most liberation, you have the most

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Speaker 1: sort of reactionary um messages regarding our bodies of like

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Speaker 1: of dieting, of exercise. So, moving from the twenties o

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Speaker 1: into World War two, chocolate becomes advertised as almost a

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Speaker 1: sexual surrogate for absent soldiers, which I found so fascinating.

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Speaker 1: There was a Witman ad, for instance, is depicting a

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Speaker 1: woman wistfully staring at a soldier's photo while holding a chocolate.

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Speaker 1: So it's basically like ladies. You know, old Johnny, Old

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Speaker 1: Johnny's off fighting the Nazis, So while you're home, stay

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Speaker 1: faithful and eat some chocolate to tie you over. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the joy you get from chocolate is almost like having

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Speaker 1: sex with a loved one, which is still the same

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Speaker 1: kind of advertising we see today of like lone woman,

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Speaker 1: always with the background of billowing silk, like I don't

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Speaker 1: need anything but this chocolate. Yeah, my hair would just

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Speaker 1: be all over the place. But moving into the nineteen

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Speaker 1: sixties and seventies, you know, Chris and I were just

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Speaker 1: talking about um, that whole control, that body control of

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Speaker 1: like okay, well, more women are in positions of power.

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Speaker 1: They're they're taking power for themselves. We have the second

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Speaker 1: wave feminist movement, but we also, alongside that at the

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Speaker 1: same time, have this whole concern about health and fitness

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Speaker 1: and how do we advertise sweet treats to health conscious

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Speaker 1: feminists of this era. Yeah, so this is when you

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Speaker 1: start to see the entrance of and I hope this

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Speaker 1: is not offensive to anyone's ears, but let's face it,

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Speaker 1: their masturbatory chocolate ads. Basically, instead of you could replace

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Speaker 1: a chocolate bond bond with a vibrator in a woman's

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Speaker 1: hands and a lot of these ads and it would

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Speaker 1: be the exact same thing. You wouldn't even have changed

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Speaker 1: the copy. And you also see the re entry too,

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Speaker 1: of chocolate being seen as this aphrod zac. For instance,

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Speaker 1: this I gotta kick out of this. In nine five

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Speaker 1: High Times, the weed culture magazine that we mentioned in

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Speaker 1: our Women in Weed episode, I had a cover story

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Speaker 1: on chocolate as an aphrodisiac because you have the flow

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Speaker 1: chart of smoking pot plus munchies equals chocolate, which then

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Speaker 1: may or may not lead to groovy sex intimacy true

426
00:25:59,800 --> 00:26:03,560
Speaker 1: into missy. And so here's the return of chocolate being

427
00:26:03,600 --> 00:26:06,240
Speaker 1: considered an aphrodisiac. But in the nineteen eighties you also

428
00:26:06,280 --> 00:26:09,320
Speaker 1: have the return of it being considered a status symbols

429
00:26:09,359 --> 00:26:12,760
Speaker 1: going all the way back to sixteenth century Spain when

430
00:26:12,760 --> 00:26:15,320
Speaker 1: it was considered only for the elite. So in the

431
00:26:15,359 --> 00:26:18,480
Speaker 1: era of Gordon Gecko and greed is good, you don't

432
00:26:18,560 --> 00:26:21,359
Speaker 1: just want to get your special girl a drug store brand.

433
00:26:21,400 --> 00:26:24,159
Speaker 1: You don't just want to go and get Whitman's. You

434
00:26:24,240 --> 00:26:27,879
Speaker 1: have to get some like crazy boxed chocolate that's a

435
00:26:28,080 --> 00:26:30,760
Speaker 1: million dollars to show that you can afford it and

436
00:26:30,760 --> 00:26:33,679
Speaker 1: that she's worth it. Yeah, in the nineteen eighties you

437
00:26:33,720 --> 00:26:37,239
Speaker 1: see a sixty percent rise in dark chocolate sales. This

438
00:26:37,280 --> 00:26:40,040
Speaker 1: is when you start, you know, hearing more about like, oh,

439
00:26:40,160 --> 00:26:43,320
Speaker 1: dark chocolate, that's the good stuff. And this is too,

440
00:26:43,359 --> 00:26:45,600
Speaker 1: a trend that seems to have continued today as you

441
00:26:45,640 --> 00:26:48,840
Speaker 1: see more and more not only specialty brands of chocolate,

442
00:26:48,880 --> 00:26:52,639
Speaker 1: but just the hyper specialization of dark chocolate. Two, as

443
00:26:52,640 --> 00:26:54,840
Speaker 1: we're being told like okay, yeah, no, it's actually good

444
00:26:54,840 --> 00:26:57,160
Speaker 1: for you, so it's a little more okay to eat

445
00:26:57,240 --> 00:27:00,320
Speaker 1: dark chocolate. But then you go to Whole fit ododes

446
00:27:00,640 --> 00:27:03,480
Speaker 1: and you find these organic chocolate bars and it's like

447
00:27:03,840 --> 00:27:07,720
Speaker 1: chocolate and bacon, or chocolate and Serrano chilies or something,

448
00:27:07,760 --> 00:27:12,160
Speaker 1: all these kinds of exotic flavor combos, and they are

449
00:27:12,560 --> 00:27:16,399
Speaker 1: crazy expensive. Yeah. I I almost hate to admit this

450
00:27:16,520 --> 00:27:20,200
Speaker 1: because it makes me sound like a really big idiot.

451
00:27:20,480 --> 00:27:25,120
Speaker 1: But when I was Christmas shopping back in December. Uh,

452
00:27:25,200 --> 00:27:27,879
Speaker 1: I was going through this store and I was getting

453
00:27:27,880 --> 00:27:30,000
Speaker 1: my niece and nephew mostly candy for their stocking. It

454
00:27:30,040 --> 00:27:32,280
Speaker 1: was neat candy. I mean it was like kind of fancy,

455
00:27:32,320 --> 00:27:34,800
Speaker 1: because you know, they don't like anything that I get them,

456
00:27:34,840 --> 00:27:36,520
Speaker 1: so I'm just like, I'll just get them candy. Ha ha ha.

457
00:27:36,760 --> 00:27:39,919
Speaker 1: My brother will have to deal with it. Well. So anyway,

458
00:27:39,960 --> 00:27:43,480
Speaker 1: I grabbed this like three pack of chocolate bars because

459
00:27:43,480 --> 00:27:45,399
Speaker 1: I'm like, how I didn't even I literally didn't even

460
00:27:45,440 --> 00:27:47,960
Speaker 1: have the thought of how expensive good chocolate b because

461
00:27:48,080 --> 00:27:52,680
Speaker 1: why would I? Chocolate is not that expensive, right, thirty dollars?

462
00:27:53,000 --> 00:27:55,360
Speaker 1: Thirty dollars. I know, I'm the biggest idiot. Why did

463
00:27:55,359 --> 00:27:57,240
Speaker 1: I not check that ahead of time? But I didn't

464
00:27:57,240 --> 00:27:59,480
Speaker 1: even think too. It's because it was from like this.

465
00:28:00,080 --> 00:28:03,080
Speaker 1: It was all dark chocolate, different types of it, and

466
00:28:03,119 --> 00:28:06,680
Speaker 1: it was from like this teeny tiny, like artisan chocolate

467
00:28:06,680 --> 00:28:10,320
Speaker 1: place in San Francisco. And I just the regret. I

468
00:28:10,359 --> 00:28:12,600
Speaker 1: don't think I've ever felt deeper regret for anything in

469
00:28:12,640 --> 00:28:15,040
Speaker 1: my life. And then did you sad eat the chocolate?

470
00:28:15,040 --> 00:28:18,320
Speaker 1: I couldn't. I gave it to my boyfriend. I was like,

471
00:28:18,359 --> 00:28:21,359
Speaker 1: I can't even like look at this, you just take it,

472
00:28:21,560 --> 00:28:24,680
Speaker 1: consider it part of your Christmas present. Talk about chocolate

473
00:28:24,720 --> 00:28:28,240
Speaker 1: guilt seriously, But no, I mean I think that the

474
00:28:28,320 --> 00:28:33,360
Speaker 1: dark chocolate thing does kind of point to or highlight

475
00:28:33,840 --> 00:28:38,040
Speaker 1: interesting aspects of the whole chocolate guilt conversation, because like

476
00:28:38,680 --> 00:28:41,040
Speaker 1: we're supposed to feel guilty, or we do feel guilty

477
00:28:41,080 --> 00:28:43,720
Speaker 1: after we eat too many sweets, but then dark chocolate,

478
00:28:43,800 --> 00:28:46,400
Speaker 1: Like celebrities and magazines are preaching to us that like,

479
00:28:46,560 --> 00:28:49,000
Speaker 1: if you eat dark chocolate, it has antioxidants and so

480
00:28:49,040 --> 00:28:51,280
Speaker 1: you will never get cancer. But you're only allowed to

481
00:28:51,320 --> 00:28:54,480
Speaker 1: have a square a day, maybe a square every other day. Well,

482
00:28:54,520 --> 00:28:59,840
Speaker 1: and then how many celebrity interviews with you know, beautiful,

483
00:29:00,280 --> 00:29:04,440
Speaker 1: very thin, fit women who say, oh, my weakness is chocolate.

484
00:29:04,520 --> 00:29:08,080
Speaker 1: I mean, it's always all these conflicting messages. There's one

485
00:29:08,120 --> 00:29:13,040
Speaker 1: thing that Katherine Nutter points out about chocolate ads today

486
00:29:13,280 --> 00:29:19,200
Speaker 1: is that the models in these ads clearly don't indulge in,

487
00:29:19,520 --> 00:29:24,760
Speaker 1: you know, chocolate fests on the regular chocolate festate. My

488
00:29:24,760 --> 00:29:26,760
Speaker 1: mouth just started watering. I think I need to start

489
00:29:26,840 --> 00:29:30,080
Speaker 1: that or maybe never never al burn it down. So

490
00:29:30,200 --> 00:29:32,640
Speaker 1: from the nineteen eighties where we see all of that

491
00:29:32,720 --> 00:29:37,520
Speaker 1: fancy chocolate rising, to the two thousands, we see this

492
00:29:37,600 --> 00:29:42,200
Speaker 1: whole self empowerment message come about, one of which came

493
00:29:42,200 --> 00:29:46,520
Speaker 1: from Godiva in two thousand four with their tagline every

494
00:29:46,560 --> 00:29:50,479
Speaker 1: woman is one part Diva, much to the dismay of

495
00:29:50,520 --> 00:29:54,120
Speaker 1: every man. And I have no idea side note what

496
00:29:54,200 --> 00:29:57,520
Speaker 1: that means. I don't get that the whole just also

497
00:29:58,400 --> 00:30:02,080
Speaker 1: side note to any and marketing listening, if you call

498
00:30:02,160 --> 00:30:05,480
Speaker 1: me a diva, I'm not gonna want your product. Yeah,

499
00:30:05,560 --> 00:30:08,600
Speaker 1: I don't get that. Who like who? Who thinks that

500
00:30:08,720 --> 00:30:11,280
Speaker 1: women want to be I want to be diva's. I

501
00:30:11,320 --> 00:30:13,120
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm sure there are probably some women listening

502
00:30:13,160 --> 00:30:15,720
Speaker 1: thinking that that's fun, but I don't know. I just

503
00:30:15,760 --> 00:30:18,000
Speaker 1: think it's so hokey. I think it is hokey. And

504
00:30:18,000 --> 00:30:20,560
Speaker 1: I think when you have people like I'm just trying

505
00:30:20,560 --> 00:30:23,000
Speaker 1: to think of an example, somebody like Mariah Carrier, you know,

506
00:30:23,080 --> 00:30:29,640
Speaker 1: somebody who's like a stereotypically high demand, high maintenance celebrity

507
00:30:29,680 --> 00:30:32,640
Speaker 1: calling themselves a diva. That makes me want to call

508
00:30:32,680 --> 00:30:35,920
Speaker 1: myself that even less so. But then you're telling me

509
00:30:36,000 --> 00:30:39,080
Speaker 1: that I am want if I eat your chocolate and Godiva,

510
00:30:39,240 --> 00:30:43,040
Speaker 1: which really is like the Gray Goose vodka of candy,

511
00:30:43,160 --> 00:30:47,320
Speaker 1: like its chocolate burn, old chocolate burn. Because you know,

512
00:30:47,400 --> 00:30:49,720
Speaker 1: you take something that's really kind of basic and just

513
00:30:49,800 --> 00:30:52,440
Speaker 1: mark up the price, just putting a fancy ribbon or

514
00:30:52,520 --> 00:30:55,600
Speaker 1: some you know, geese on, it doesn't actually make it

515
00:30:55,640 --> 00:30:58,320
Speaker 1: worth the price. Yeah, there was an article, I forget

516
00:30:58,360 --> 00:31:00,640
Speaker 1: which one it was that we read a talking about

517
00:31:00,680 --> 00:31:05,680
Speaker 1: how some chocolate experts, like small gays of chocolate essentially

518
00:31:06,120 --> 00:31:09,440
Speaker 1: tried Godiva and they did not give it very high mark.

519
00:31:09,600 --> 00:31:12,440
Speaker 1: Now what did they say, like a box of sugar

520
00:31:12,480 --> 00:31:15,040
Speaker 1: had been poured into candlewax or some something like that,

521
00:31:15,160 --> 00:31:18,880
Speaker 1: or that it was very chalky. They just weren't big fans.

522
00:31:19,000 --> 00:31:22,200
Speaker 1: But I do think it's it's interesting how there's now

523
00:31:22,240 --> 00:31:24,920
Speaker 1: that self empowerment aspect. It's like the men have sort

524
00:31:24,920 --> 00:31:29,640
Speaker 1: of been removed from these chocolate ads. So instead of

525
00:31:29,760 --> 00:31:34,120
Speaker 1: the old dynamic of wooing men into buying chocolate to

526
00:31:34,160 --> 00:31:39,960
Speaker 1: give to women, it's now Dove, for instance, telling us, oh, ladies,

527
00:31:40,160 --> 00:31:44,600
Speaker 1: treat yourself. You go buy chocolate for yourself, stay at home.

528
00:31:45,400 --> 00:31:48,880
Speaker 1: It's just stay at home and read the inspirational messages

529
00:31:48,920 --> 00:31:51,440
Speaker 1: that are on the inside of Dove wrappers, right, and

530
00:31:51,440 --> 00:31:55,760
Speaker 1: and give yourself a gentle, you know, hug, and then

531
00:31:55,840 --> 00:31:59,080
Speaker 1: go eat some yogurt. But can we talk no more

532
00:31:59,080 --> 00:32:03,040
Speaker 1: about this issue with chocolate, because this isn't something that

533
00:32:03,160 --> 00:32:05,680
Speaker 1: came up in any of the papers. But what it

534
00:32:05,760 --> 00:32:09,360
Speaker 1: sounded an awful lot like the more we read about

535
00:32:09,560 --> 00:32:12,760
Speaker 1: how chocolate is, you know, basically is sold to women

536
00:32:12,800 --> 00:32:18,040
Speaker 1: as sex. It's the one acceptable sexy vice that women

537
00:32:18,520 --> 00:32:22,440
Speaker 1: can have, according to society. And yet there's that guilt

538
00:32:23,200 --> 00:32:26,080
Speaker 1: undergirding it of like if you eat too much of it,

539
00:32:26,960 --> 00:32:29,880
Speaker 1: then boys aren't gonna like you because you'll have a

540
00:32:29,960 --> 00:32:35,200
Speaker 1: chocolate belly. It's so weirdly slut shamy. It's like it's

541
00:32:35,240 --> 00:32:39,920
Speaker 1: like a candy analog to slut shaming, where it's like, well, ladies,

542
00:32:40,040 --> 00:32:43,200
Speaker 1: if you do too much of that, then boys aren't

543
00:32:43,240 --> 00:32:47,120
Speaker 1: gonna like you. Am I am I making too big

544
00:32:47,160 --> 00:32:50,800
Speaker 1: of a leap? Now, I think it's absolutely parallel. I

545
00:32:50,800 --> 00:32:55,320
Speaker 1: think there are some very weird and they always have been, apparently,

546
00:32:55,720 --> 00:32:58,040
Speaker 1: some very weird things going on with the way we

547
00:32:58,080 --> 00:33:00,480
Speaker 1: look at chocolate and think about chocolate, and you know,

548
00:33:00,720 --> 00:33:03,560
Speaker 1: we have the Aztecs in the Spanish to think. But um,

549
00:33:03,600 --> 00:33:07,400
Speaker 1: we'll actually get into some more ick nous behind chocolate

550
00:33:07,440 --> 00:33:18,360
Speaker 1: advertising when we come back from a quick break. So

551
00:33:18,400 --> 00:33:21,000
Speaker 1: when we left off, we had gone through the history

552
00:33:21,120 --> 00:33:24,160
Speaker 1: of women in chocolate and advertising. But one thing that

553
00:33:24,200 --> 00:33:28,200
Speaker 1: we didn't mention as we were going through that twentieth

554
00:33:28,240 --> 00:33:33,360
Speaker 1: century timeline was that really the main target of chocolate ads,

555
00:33:33,520 --> 00:33:36,320
Speaker 1: especially in the first half of the twentieth century, were

556
00:33:36,320 --> 00:33:41,440
Speaker 1: exclusively white women. And there are some issues of race

557
00:33:41,520 --> 00:33:45,480
Speaker 1: and racism and chocolate that we would be remiss to

558
00:33:45,640 --> 00:33:50,800
Speaker 1: not address as well, because you see, for instance, racial

559
00:33:50,880 --> 00:33:56,080
Speaker 1: anxieties surrounding chocolate going all the way back to when

560
00:33:56,160 --> 00:33:59,800
Speaker 1: it was first brought from the New World to Europe.

561
00:34:00,520 --> 00:34:03,520
Speaker 1: Right there was this uh story that mort rosen Bloom,

562
00:34:03,600 --> 00:34:05,800
Speaker 1: who we said it earlier, the author of Chocolate A

563
00:34:05,800 --> 00:34:08,600
Speaker 1: Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light Uh, talks about in

564
00:34:08,719 --> 00:34:11,480
Speaker 1: his book about a woman by the name of Madame

565
00:34:11,800 --> 00:34:15,600
Speaker 1: de Saveni writing to her daughter warning her against drinking

566
00:34:15,600 --> 00:34:19,120
Speaker 1: too much chocolate because she knew of another woman who

567
00:34:19,200 --> 00:34:22,719
Speaker 1: drank it and her child came out black as the devil. Yikes,

568
00:34:23,200 --> 00:34:26,560
Speaker 1: yikes indeed, okay, well, and and there are all these

569
00:34:26,640 --> 00:34:30,920
Speaker 1: chocolate anxieties to probably linked to this early idea of

570
00:34:30,920 --> 00:34:34,239
Speaker 1: it as an aphrodisiac and being linked to sex, where oh,

571
00:34:34,360 --> 00:34:36,320
Speaker 1: if you eat too much of it you might become

572
00:34:36,760 --> 00:34:40,399
Speaker 1: you know, some kind of sex monster. But then too

573
00:34:40,440 --> 00:34:44,879
Speaker 1: if you look at advertising in the nineteenth century, these

574
00:34:44,920 --> 00:34:49,960
Speaker 1: chocolate duds typically portrayed women of color representing chocolate in

575
00:34:50,000 --> 00:34:55,360
Speaker 1: its raw, unrefined form, whereas the white women were used

576
00:34:55,440 --> 00:34:59,200
Speaker 1: to evoke a sense of luxury and romance, which is

577
00:34:59,360 --> 00:35:03,640
Speaker 1: very pro oblematic, right, Yeah, women of color being seen

578
00:35:03,680 --> 00:35:06,960
Speaker 1: as the workers, white women being seen as the consumers,

579
00:35:07,760 --> 00:35:10,879
Speaker 1: going from raw to refine. There's all sorts of really

580
00:35:10,920 --> 00:35:14,000
Speaker 1: icky racial things there, which makes sense because it ties

581
00:35:14,040 --> 00:35:16,880
Speaker 1: so much into those issues of class and the evolution

582
00:35:16,920 --> 00:35:19,000
Speaker 1: of chocolate and how it kind of became a mass

583
00:35:19,040 --> 00:35:24,759
Speaker 1: marketed good. And I was hoping to find more scholarship

584
00:35:24,960 --> 00:35:31,120
Speaker 1: on the race aspects of chocolate advertising, but unfortunately didn't

585
00:35:31,200 --> 00:35:34,200
Speaker 1: because I feel like today's still and maybe it's just

586
00:35:34,960 --> 00:35:37,759
Speaker 1: just advertising in general, but I still feel like you

587
00:35:37,800 --> 00:35:44,560
Speaker 1: mostly almost exclusively see white women in chocolate ads. Well,

588
00:35:44,680 --> 00:35:46,919
Speaker 1: I'm yeah, I mean, we're We're definitely not in any

589
00:35:46,960 --> 00:35:50,879
Speaker 1: sort of post racial utopia by any means, especially when

590
00:35:50,880 --> 00:35:54,560
Speaker 1: it comes to discussing chocolate. The whole racist thing of

591
00:35:54,600 --> 00:35:58,360
Speaker 1: calling women of color chocolate is referring to well, any

592
00:35:58,400 --> 00:36:01,480
Speaker 1: person of color as being vocolate. Yeah, then you get

593
00:36:01,480 --> 00:36:05,560
Speaker 1: into issues of exoticizing and eroticizing people of color by

594
00:36:05,560 --> 00:36:10,200
Speaker 1: referring to them as chocolate. Again, didn't find any you know,

595
00:36:10,440 --> 00:36:12,920
Speaker 1: deep research on it, just a few blog posts here

596
00:36:12,960 --> 00:36:16,320
Speaker 1: and there, mostly from black women asking like, please stop

597
00:36:16,440 --> 00:36:19,640
Speaker 1: calling me chocolate, because it's also notable that it's not

598
00:36:19,760 --> 00:36:22,719
Speaker 1: like we refer to white women as vanilla, except to

599
00:36:22,840 --> 00:36:27,920
Speaker 1: indicate how boring we are when we have sex. Uh. Yeah, Well,

600
00:36:27,960 --> 00:36:32,000
Speaker 1: there was that one Cadbury ad that was addressing Naomi

601
00:36:32,120 --> 00:36:35,560
Speaker 1: Campbell by saying, move over, Naomie, there's a new diva

602
00:36:35,600 --> 00:36:38,680
Speaker 1: in town talking about a chocolate bar. And so that's

603
00:36:38,760 --> 00:36:41,640
Speaker 1: that's combining. We already had the diva conversation. That's combining

604
00:36:41,680 --> 00:36:45,480
Speaker 1: like the worst of all chocolate ads. Yeah, and she

605
00:36:45,520 --> 00:36:49,680
Speaker 1: did not appreciate it. I would an entire campaign to

606
00:36:49,800 --> 00:36:52,360
Speaker 1: get them to take it down, because I mean some

607
00:36:52,400 --> 00:36:54,759
Speaker 1: people are saying, oh, it's not you know, it's not racist.

608
00:36:54,880 --> 00:36:57,839
Speaker 1: It's not, but yeah, it's it's a it's a little

609
00:36:57,840 --> 00:37:01,600
Speaker 1: bit racist, and then it is just the awkwardness of

610
00:37:01,719 --> 00:37:06,920
Speaker 1: More recently, Ferrero launched an ad campaign in Germany for

611
00:37:07,040 --> 00:37:11,440
Speaker 1: their white chocolate and they're like big commercial tagline was

612
00:37:11,560 --> 00:37:16,359
Speaker 1: Germany votes White, to which Germans were like, hey, yeah, no,

613
00:37:16,680 --> 00:37:22,000
Speaker 1: you remember, remember Nazis and that whole thing. You please

614
00:37:22,080 --> 00:37:26,480
Speaker 1: don't do this. Ah, there's some people in some marketing

615
00:37:26,520 --> 00:37:30,680
Speaker 1: departments somewhere who were laid off after that. I'm assuming, well,

616
00:37:30,680 --> 00:37:32,960
Speaker 1: what did you think? Did you see the Axe Dark

617
00:37:33,000 --> 00:37:36,680
Speaker 1: Temptation ad? Where I didn't? Okay, so what happens? I mean,

618
00:37:36,719 --> 00:37:39,720
Speaker 1: it's an axe body spray ad. So basically the premise

619
00:37:39,760 --> 00:37:42,080
Speaker 1: of every single ax body spray ad is that the

620
00:37:42,160 --> 00:37:45,320
Speaker 1: guy puts it on and then he just becomes irresistible

621
00:37:45,600 --> 00:37:49,080
Speaker 1: chick magnet to use the worst phrase on the planet. Um.

622
00:37:49,160 --> 00:37:53,680
Speaker 1: So with the Dark Temptation ad, he puts on the

623
00:37:53,719 --> 00:37:56,280
Speaker 1: body spray and it turns him into a chocolate man.

624
00:37:56,480 --> 00:37:59,440
Speaker 1: And what do women love more than chocolate, Caroline, and

625
00:37:59,520 --> 00:38:02,480
Speaker 1: so women to start coming up to him and you know,

626
00:38:02,600 --> 00:38:06,279
Speaker 1: eating away at his chocolate body. And then finally it's

627
00:38:06,280 --> 00:38:08,399
Speaker 1: revealed that oh, he's just like, he's just a white

628
00:38:08,400 --> 00:38:10,879
Speaker 1: guy under there. But the fact that it's called dark

629
00:38:10,880 --> 00:38:14,960
Speaker 1: temptation and it's all it's it's fine because there's a

630
00:38:14,960 --> 00:38:17,520
Speaker 1: white guy under there still, you know, just some just

631
00:38:17,600 --> 00:38:20,520
Speaker 1: some issues, just some issues kind of all piling up

632
00:38:20,520 --> 00:38:24,439
Speaker 1: there together. Yeah, that is that is a pile of issues. Yeah,

633
00:38:24,520 --> 00:38:27,960
Speaker 1: lots of lots of women eating away at your very core. Yeah,

634
00:38:28,080 --> 00:38:35,120
Speaker 1: lots of just symbolism loaded into one terrible commercial. Um.

635
00:38:35,160 --> 00:38:39,080
Speaker 1: But what though, Okay, so speaking, women eating men made

636
00:38:39,120 --> 00:38:45,200
Speaker 1: out of chocolate. Yikes, What about the science of this?

637
00:38:45,280 --> 00:38:47,680
Speaker 1: Because we've talked all about advertising. We have clearly been

638
00:38:47,760 --> 00:38:51,440
Speaker 1: sold this idea that chocolate is a food for women,

639
00:38:51,480 --> 00:38:54,400
Speaker 1: that we love it more than anything else, including shoes.

640
00:38:55,880 --> 00:38:59,880
Speaker 1: But what does science have to say about this? You

641
00:39:00,040 --> 00:39:04,320
Speaker 1: would think, right that science would have been, like, ladies,

642
00:39:04,840 --> 00:39:07,520
Speaker 1: every time you bite into a chocolate bar and you

643
00:39:07,520 --> 00:39:09,560
Speaker 1: you get obsessed with the idea of eating more chocolate

644
00:39:09,600 --> 00:39:11,920
Speaker 1: and you feel addicted to it, it's because it's releasing

645
00:39:11,920 --> 00:39:15,120
Speaker 1: all of these amazing things, and it's not really that

646
00:39:15,400 --> 00:39:19,120
Speaker 1: it's they've found that there's not a huge like cause

647
00:39:19,160 --> 00:39:23,920
Speaker 1: and effect chocolate seratonin link. It's probably more that it

648
00:39:24,080 --> 00:39:28,600
Speaker 1: chocolate is fatty and sugary and it tastes real good. Yeah.

649
00:39:28,640 --> 00:39:31,360
Speaker 1: There have been a lot of studies actually looking at

650
00:39:31,400 --> 00:39:36,200
Speaker 1: the psychopharmacological effects of chocolate, essentially how groups of chemicals

651
00:39:36,280 --> 00:39:41,000
Speaker 1: such as cannabinoids and chocolate react in our brain and

652
00:39:41,040 --> 00:39:44,640
Speaker 1: make us chocoholics. I guess, And the study results have

653
00:39:44,760 --> 00:39:47,400
Speaker 1: kind of been mixed. They really haven't been able to

654
00:39:48,120 --> 00:39:54,759
Speaker 1: pin down one specific chocolate craze chemical in there. So

655
00:39:54,840 --> 00:39:58,560
Speaker 1: it's like, well, some people really like it, and I

656
00:39:58,600 --> 00:40:01,759
Speaker 1: guess it's I guess it's good. Um. But there was

657
00:40:02,239 --> 00:40:05,200
Speaker 1: the study called Chocolate and Cheese their effects on Mood,

658
00:40:05,440 --> 00:40:07,600
Speaker 1: sort of looking at okay, well, we know that it

659
00:40:07,640 --> 00:40:09,840
Speaker 1: probably has something to do with the fat and chocolate.

660
00:40:10,000 --> 00:40:12,680
Speaker 1: So if we take a sweeteness savory like cheese and

661
00:40:12,760 --> 00:40:17,880
Speaker 1: compare it, what happens and their best conclusion was that

662
00:40:17,960 --> 00:40:23,440
Speaker 1: it's probably the oro sensory effect of eating chocolate. Essentially,

663
00:40:23,760 --> 00:40:27,160
Speaker 1: we like how it smells, how it feels in our mouth,

664
00:40:27,520 --> 00:40:32,759
Speaker 1: just all of the sensory sensations of eating chocolate. The

665
00:40:32,880 --> 00:40:35,120
Speaker 1: look on your face right now, Caroline, I feel like

666
00:40:35,200 --> 00:40:37,560
Speaker 1: you've been whisked away. I need to get fund that

667
00:40:37,640 --> 00:40:41,080
Speaker 1: Easter basket. You need to go to Pleasure Island from

668
00:40:41,120 --> 00:40:46,480
Speaker 1: the said, I absolutely do. Um. Speaking of health stuff,

669
00:40:46,520 --> 00:40:48,759
Speaker 1: one thing that does get brought up in women's magazines

670
00:40:49,000 --> 00:40:53,759
Speaker 1: a lot is if you like chocolate, ladies, not only

671
00:40:53,800 --> 00:40:56,760
Speaker 1: are you gonna get fat, but you're gonna break out. Yeah,

672
00:40:56,800 --> 00:41:00,279
Speaker 1: what about what about that? Connection. Yeah. Um, that's something

673
00:41:00,320 --> 00:41:03,560
Speaker 1: that I've always been worried about because I had so

674
00:41:04,320 --> 00:41:07,719
Speaker 1: many pimples when I was a young girl, and even

675
00:41:07,760 --> 00:41:10,080
Speaker 1: now my horm I'm thirty, right, like, I shouldn't break

676
00:41:10,080 --> 00:41:13,280
Speaker 1: out anymore, but I still do. Adult acne totally exists

677
00:41:13,560 --> 00:41:17,360
Speaker 1: hormones anyway, So they looked at whether researchers looked at

678
00:41:17,400 --> 00:41:21,239
Speaker 1: whether um, chocolate actually does produce acne, and again the

679
00:41:21,280 --> 00:41:24,000
Speaker 1: results were kind of mixed, but they did find that

680
00:41:24,120 --> 00:41:27,959
Speaker 1: among the people who broke out who did break out

681
00:41:28,040 --> 00:41:32,120
Speaker 1: and experience acne, here's here's a little bit of what happened.

682
00:41:32,640 --> 00:41:36,640
Speaker 1: So after people ate chocolate and then we're exposed to

683
00:41:36,719 --> 00:41:40,680
Speaker 1: the bacteria that caused acne, they found that the blood

684
00:41:40,760 --> 00:41:43,920
Speaker 1: was shown to have more markers of inflammation than the

685
00:41:43,920 --> 00:41:47,000
Speaker 1: people who had not eaten chocolate. But they're just not

686
00:41:47,040 --> 00:41:50,880
Speaker 1: sure what component of chocolate actually caused that inflammation, whether

687
00:41:50,920 --> 00:41:52,960
Speaker 1: it is the fat or whether it is the sugar.

688
00:41:53,000 --> 00:41:55,440
Speaker 1: I mean, we know that sugar causes inflammation in the body,

689
00:41:55,480 --> 00:41:58,600
Speaker 1: but they're not quite sure about the acne link. It

690
00:41:58,640 --> 00:42:01,920
Speaker 1: seems like that's the story with everything regarding women in chocolate.

691
00:42:02,000 --> 00:42:04,800
Speaker 1: We're just not quite sure. But here have some chocolate

692
00:42:04,800 --> 00:42:07,120
Speaker 1: in the meantime while we try to figure this out,

693
00:42:07,680 --> 00:42:12,200
Speaker 1: let's also talk about the stereotype of periods making women

694
00:42:12,200 --> 00:42:16,680
Speaker 1: crave chocolate even more. Yeah, I I am. I was.

695
00:42:16,800 --> 00:42:19,600
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell the truth here. I was a little

696
00:42:19,680 --> 00:42:23,920
Speaker 1: dismayed to find out that there is no scientific link

697
00:42:24,040 --> 00:42:29,080
Speaker 1: really supporting the hypothesis that you crave chocolate more around

698
00:42:29,080 --> 00:42:32,719
Speaker 1: your period, because I swear I don't know what it

699
00:42:32,840 --> 00:42:35,279
Speaker 1: is in my brain, in the brain of Caroline Urban

700
00:42:35,440 --> 00:42:39,359
Speaker 1: Podcast or Extraordinaire, I don't know what's going on that

701
00:42:39,520 --> 00:42:42,600
Speaker 1: like leading up to my period, I'm just like gorging

702
00:42:42,640 --> 00:42:45,400
Speaker 1: on chocolate, and like as I'm stuffing the fifteen candy

703
00:42:45,400 --> 00:42:49,000
Speaker 1: bar in my face, I'm like, oh, Okay, I see

704
00:42:49,000 --> 00:42:51,440
Speaker 1: what's happening. But I wonder if it's just not so

705
00:42:51,520 --> 00:42:57,400
Speaker 1: much the chocolate as maybe a connection between menstrual cycles

706
00:42:57,440 --> 00:43:00,120
Speaker 1: and comfort food. And some scientists say that, you know,

707
00:43:00,200 --> 00:43:03,480
Speaker 1: chocolate contains minerals like magnesium and iron, which we may

708
00:43:03,520 --> 00:43:06,680
Speaker 1: be deficient in around our periods. Things like that. All

709
00:43:06,719 --> 00:43:09,000
Speaker 1: I know is just I just want it. And one

710
00:43:09,000 --> 00:43:12,839
Speaker 1: of the reasons so why this period chocolate hypothesis has

711
00:43:12,880 --> 00:43:18,400
Speaker 1: been debunked is because chocolate cravings don't diminish with menopause.

712
00:43:18,760 --> 00:43:21,120
Speaker 1: If it was a period thing, then we would see

713
00:43:21,160 --> 00:43:25,160
Speaker 1: a massive drop off in women over fifty wanting chocolate.

714
00:43:25,239 --> 00:43:27,080
Speaker 1: But that all happened. Well, maybe it's a mood thing

715
00:43:27,120 --> 00:43:31,040
Speaker 1: because I know, like when I'm sick or hungover or

716
00:43:31,080 --> 00:43:33,400
Speaker 1: just generally not feeling good, I want comfort food. I

717
00:43:33,480 --> 00:43:36,799
Speaker 1: want like fried chicken and mashed potatoes and soup and

718
00:43:36,840 --> 00:43:40,239
Speaker 1: like you know, salty, mushy, amazing things that have really

719
00:43:40,239 --> 00:43:44,400
Speaker 1: strong flavors um. And so maybe chocolate just fits into that,

720
00:43:44,480 --> 00:43:46,880
Speaker 1: like making you feel good. Well, speaking of making you

721
00:43:46,920 --> 00:43:49,800
Speaker 1: feel good, the one thing that we do know about chocolate,

722
00:43:49,840 --> 00:43:53,920
Speaker 1: specifically dark chocolate, is yes, the rumors are true. Dark

723
00:43:54,000 --> 00:43:57,520
Speaker 1: chocolate does appear to have some health benefits. There was

724
00:43:58,320 --> 00:44:02,760
Speaker 1: a study published link king it to lower rates of stroke,

725
00:44:03,000 --> 00:44:08,440
Speaker 1: coronary heart disease, blood pressure, and other cardiovascular conditions. But

726
00:44:08,760 --> 00:44:10,799
Speaker 1: in an interview with The New York Times about this

727
00:44:10,840 --> 00:44:14,080
Speaker 1: study finding, one of the lead authors said, police, don't

728
00:44:14,120 --> 00:44:16,799
Speaker 1: get us wrong. This doesn't mean that you can eat

729
00:44:16,840 --> 00:44:19,040
Speaker 1: all of the chocolate that you want. We're just saying

730
00:44:19,080 --> 00:44:24,879
Speaker 1: it's a correlation, it's not a causation, right, Yes, antioccidents. Yes,

731
00:44:25,360 --> 00:44:29,960
Speaker 1: gorging on chocolate until you throw up pretty much destroys

732
00:44:30,000 --> 00:44:32,360
Speaker 1: any of the positive effects of chocolate, although I was

733
00:44:32,440 --> 00:44:35,880
Speaker 1: thinking about studies exactly like this one when Sally also

734
00:44:35,960 --> 00:44:42,759
Speaker 1: gave me a solid dark chocolate Easter Bunny. But no,

735
00:44:42,880 --> 00:44:44,640
Speaker 1: don't try to comfort me. I don't care. I don't. Yeah,

736
00:44:44,719 --> 00:44:46,400
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't feel guilt. I mean I do,

737
00:44:46,440 --> 00:44:48,279
Speaker 1: but I don't. But see, that's good. That's great that

738
00:44:48,320 --> 00:44:51,040
Speaker 1: you don't feel guilt. You shouldn't feel any guilt. If

739
00:44:51,040 --> 00:44:52,799
Speaker 1: you want chocolate, eat the chocolate. I don't know. I

740
00:44:52,880 --> 00:44:55,080
Speaker 1: just I'm so yeah, I'm at the point of I'm

741
00:44:55,120 --> 00:44:57,000
Speaker 1: just tired of hearing about it. I'm tired of seeing

742
00:44:57,040 --> 00:45:01,360
Speaker 1: those weird ads. I don't get it, you know, I don't. Uh,

743
00:45:01,400 --> 00:45:03,680
Speaker 1: it's the same things, Like I'm surprised there's not more

744
00:45:03,800 --> 00:45:06,640
Speaker 1: terrible chocolate stock photography. I mean, I know there is.

745
00:45:07,160 --> 00:45:09,960
Speaker 1: But you know, the way we see women laughing over salads,

746
00:45:10,000 --> 00:45:13,000
Speaker 1: the same way we see women eating yogurt, like chocolate

747
00:45:13,080 --> 00:45:16,720
Speaker 1: is in that same ballpark. As far as like women

748
00:45:16,760 --> 00:45:18,920
Speaker 1: are so stupid. Look at what you're eating and how

749
00:45:18,920 --> 00:45:20,960
Speaker 1: you're eating it, and like you're pinning all of your

750
00:45:21,000 --> 00:45:24,880
Speaker 1: hopes and dreams on it, whereas men are just told

751
00:45:24,920 --> 00:45:28,120
Speaker 1: that they really want a grill meat. Yeah, you want

752
00:45:28,120 --> 00:45:34,719
Speaker 1: a hamburger? Have a hamburger? Sloppy, Joe's sloppy. Joe's not sloppy,

753
00:45:34,800 --> 00:45:38,319
Speaker 1: jays Nope. Well, Caroline, I think we've now pretty much

754
00:45:38,320 --> 00:45:41,239
Speaker 1: exhausted all of our chocolate knowledge, and now it's time

755
00:45:41,280 --> 00:45:43,480
Speaker 1: to hear from listeners. I want to know if there

756
00:45:43,480 --> 00:45:46,480
Speaker 1: are guys out there who are also a self identified chocoholics.

757
00:45:46,480 --> 00:45:48,759
Speaker 1: I want to know who the ladies are like me,

758
00:45:48,920 --> 00:45:51,520
Speaker 1: who could care less about a bag of Eminem's, Give

759
00:45:51,560 --> 00:45:54,279
Speaker 1: me some dol Rito's please, or like any kind of

760
00:45:54,320 --> 00:45:57,640
Speaker 1: chip you get me. I'm saying savory rather than sweet,

761
00:45:58,120 --> 00:46:00,480
Speaker 1: and anyone who I don't I don't know. What are

762
00:46:00,520 --> 00:46:05,080
Speaker 1: your thoughts on chocolate? Let us know. Mom's Stuff at

763
00:46:05,120 --> 00:46:07,799
Speaker 1: Discovery dot com is where you can email us. You

764
00:46:07,800 --> 00:46:10,560
Speaker 1: can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or send

765
00:46:10,640 --> 00:46:13,080
Speaker 1: us a Facebook message. And we have a couple of

766
00:46:13,080 --> 00:46:21,799
Speaker 1: messages to share with you right now. So I've got

767
00:46:21,840 --> 00:46:26,000
Speaker 1: a couple of messages here about our new male Grooming episode.

768
00:46:26,040 --> 00:46:30,280
Speaker 1: This one is from Jess, who writes in My Dating

769
00:46:30,400 --> 00:46:33,200
Speaker 1: Career I despised male body hair. I thought it was

770
00:46:33,280 --> 00:46:35,920
Speaker 1: just plain unattractive and probably wouldn't have looked twice at

771
00:46:35,920 --> 00:46:39,600
Speaker 1: a hairy dude. However, a few years ago I met

772
00:46:39,600 --> 00:46:43,160
Speaker 1: a guy and film madly in love with an extremely

773
00:46:43,440 --> 00:46:46,720
Speaker 1: hairy dude. I mean his back has started to connect

774
00:46:46,920 --> 00:46:50,560
Speaker 1: with his chest hair level of Harry Anyway, his hair

775
00:46:50,640 --> 00:46:53,399
Speaker 1: a nous drives me crazy too, but in a good way.

776
00:46:53,800 --> 00:46:55,960
Speaker 1: I think a huge part of what we find attractive

777
00:46:56,320 --> 00:46:58,719
Speaker 1: is just what we see on TV. The unknown is

778
00:46:58,760 --> 00:47:02,480
Speaker 1: always scary. It's really frustrating because he, as you mentioned

779
00:47:02,560 --> 00:47:05,680
Speaker 1: many men are, is very self conscious about his man

780
00:47:05,760 --> 00:47:08,920
Speaker 1: for He's even asked me to tweeze hairs from areas

781
00:47:08,920 --> 00:47:11,799
Speaker 1: that bother him. Once you associate body hair with a

782
00:47:11,840 --> 00:47:15,160
Speaker 1: manly dude who treats you like gold, it's very sexy.

783
00:47:15,600 --> 00:47:20,360
Speaker 1: Here's hoping for more hair representation in the media. Ah

784
00:47:20,520 --> 00:47:23,239
Speaker 1: and for love, and I hope, I hope that letter

785
00:47:23,400 --> 00:47:26,560
Speaker 1: makes that gentleman feel better who wrote us very concerned

786
00:47:26,560 --> 00:47:30,239
Speaker 1: about whether he'd find a date. Yeah, don't worry about

787
00:47:30,239 --> 00:47:32,680
Speaker 1: your hairy backs. Don't worry about it. I have a

788
00:47:32,760 --> 00:47:37,360
Speaker 1: letter here from Gretchen who wrote in about beards as well,

789
00:47:37,440 --> 00:47:39,600
Speaker 1: and she said, well, I can definitely see a trend

790
00:47:39,600 --> 00:47:42,480
Speaker 1: in the popularity of beards on men on TV. I

791
00:47:42,520 --> 00:47:45,160
Speaker 1: wonder if this is just a trend in certain social circles.

792
00:47:45,480 --> 00:47:47,440
Speaker 1: Maybe it's because I live in Alaska that I have

793
00:47:47,480 --> 00:47:49,800
Speaker 1: never thought of a beard is something trendy, just something

794
00:47:49,920 --> 00:47:52,719
Speaker 1: some men had and others didn't. When I was growing up,

795
00:47:52,760 --> 00:47:55,239
Speaker 1: my father sported a beard, and my husband grows when

796
00:47:55,280 --> 00:47:57,200
Speaker 1: every fall and shaves it off in the spring. He

797
00:47:57,239 --> 00:47:59,800
Speaker 1: does this as he works outside and below zero weather,

798
00:48:00,040 --> 00:48:02,080
Speaker 1: and it often helps keep him warm and when spring

799
00:48:02,120 --> 00:48:04,719
Speaker 1: comes it's too warm. I know other men up here

800
00:48:04,719 --> 00:48:07,680
Speaker 1: who also follow this practice. I like my husband's appearance

801
00:48:07,760 --> 00:48:10,160
Speaker 1: both ways, so whatever he wants is fine with me.

802
00:48:10,800 --> 00:48:13,000
Speaker 1: On a recent trip this winter to London, England, we

803
00:48:13,080 --> 00:48:15,680
Speaker 1: did take an interesting notice of the lack of beards there.

804
00:48:16,000 --> 00:48:18,320
Speaker 1: In fact, my husband's caught the attention of one small

805
00:48:18,360 --> 00:48:21,560
Speaker 1: boy who marveled at his appearance, exclaiming and pointing at

806
00:48:21,600 --> 00:48:24,040
Speaker 1: him out of pure amazement. I also think, if a

807
00:48:24,040 --> 00:48:26,640
Speaker 1: man isn't well endowed in the facial hair department, what

808
00:48:26,840 --> 00:48:29,120
Speaker 1: is wrong with being clean shaven if that suits him.

809
00:48:29,160 --> 00:48:33,280
Speaker 1: Butter and then Gretchen has uh, some more comforting words

810
00:48:33,680 --> 00:48:38,439
Speaker 1: for our hairy men out there, She says, on the

811
00:48:38,520 --> 00:48:41,600
Speaker 1: topic of other body hairman, it's personally, I like a

812
00:48:41,640 --> 00:48:43,480
Speaker 1: guy with some chest hair and find the idea of

813
00:48:43,480 --> 00:48:45,600
Speaker 1: waxing it or shaving it off because that is what

814
00:48:45,680 --> 00:48:49,960
Speaker 1: women like. Silly, so fear not men, some women dig it.

815
00:48:50,600 --> 00:48:53,319
Speaker 1: So thanks, Gretchen. I'm sure a lot of listeners out

816
00:48:53,320 --> 00:48:57,080
Speaker 1: there appreciate your viewpoint, and thanks to everybody who's written

817
00:48:57,080 --> 00:48:59,440
Speaker 1: into us mom. Stuff at Discovery dot com is our

818
00:48:59,480 --> 00:49:01,319
Speaker 1: email age us and if you want to find links

819
00:49:01,320 --> 00:49:04,520
Speaker 1: to all of our social media, all of our podcast,

820
00:49:04,600 --> 00:49:07,800
Speaker 1: blogs and videos, you should head on over to stuff

821
00:49:07,840 --> 00:49:13,320
Speaker 1: Mom Never Told You dot com for more on this

822
00:49:13,480 --> 00:49:16,000
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works

823
00:49:16,000 --> 00:49:24,640
Speaker 1: dot com