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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.

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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom never told you?

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Speaker 1: From house stuff works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to

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Speaker 1: the podcasts. I'm Christens and I'm Caroline, and you're in

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Speaker 1: for another edition of Summer Shorts where we talked about

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Speaker 1: some summary related topics that might not warrant a full

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Speaker 1: length episode, and today we're talking about lifeguards. And I'll

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Speaker 1: offer you a quick anecdote. Okay, I almost drowned as

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Speaker 1: a child often, No, there was really only one time

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Speaker 1: that I can think of. I was probably four, maybe

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Speaker 1: five years old, and we were swimming out at this um.

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Speaker 1: It was called Sandy Creek, but it was like almost

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Speaker 1: like a water front, you know, and they had a

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Speaker 1: beach area roped off in a shallow area that I

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Speaker 1: was supposed to stay in because I was the baby.

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Speaker 1: And I remember seeing my older siblings swimming farther out

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Speaker 1: in the deep end. So what did I do. I

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Speaker 1: wanted to play with them, so I just started walking

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Speaker 1: and I remember all of a sudden like walking, walking, walking,

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Speaker 1: and next thing I knew I was underwater and I

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Speaker 1: couldn't touch the floor. And I remember trying to yell

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Speaker 1: for my mom, and I'm sure there was a lifeguard

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Speaker 1: on or multiple lifeguards on duty, but it was my

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Speaker 1: mom the lifeguard who saved me. Yeah, because kids often

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Speaker 1: drown quietly and quickly. So it's a good thing to

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Speaker 1: your mother. And that's the end of this episode. No,

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Speaker 1: it is true that a lot of times we think

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Speaker 1: that lifeguards can spot drowning swimmers because they'll send up

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Speaker 1: on some kind of distress signal, but a lot of

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Speaker 1: times it really is, you know, you're handicapped under water.

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Speaker 1: So thank goodness for lifeguards. Because once swimming, which you've

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Speaker 1: been known as bathing, became more popular as a recreational

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Speaker 1: activity in the US in the eighteen hundreds, people started drowning. Yeah, nobody, actually,

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Speaker 1: no one had ever drowned before um And by the

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Speaker 1: early twentieth century, as many as nine thousand people were

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Speaker 1: drowning each year in the US. So that's a lot

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Speaker 1: of people who are taken up swimming as a fun

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Speaker 1: recreational activity, but who were not properly educated on how

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Speaker 1: to safely swim well. And at first they thought that

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Speaker 1: on these large public beaches like you had out at

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Speaker 1: Atlantic City, that maybe something like a lifeline that they

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Speaker 1: could extend across um certain areas of the water could

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Speaker 1: save people because if you're in distress, you can just

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Speaker 1: just swim over to it. But then they quickly realized like, oh, wait,

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Speaker 1: if you're drowning, you can't really swim over, because you

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Speaker 1: could swim you wouldn't be drowning. Yes, and yeah, this

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Speaker 1: is the time when they came up with the rescue board. Also,

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Speaker 1: because the whole theory about saving people was that actually

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Speaker 1: jumping in the water and performing a water rescue was

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Speaker 1: the last resort because you didn't want to go down

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Speaker 1: flailing with the panicked drowning person. Yeah, and that rescue

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Speaker 1: board was invented in nineteen ten, and two years later

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Speaker 1: it was the y m c A, in fact, that

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Speaker 1: developed a volunteer National Life Saving Service because initially um

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Speaker 1: some cities were using police officers for water rescues. But

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Speaker 1: they're like, hey, this is diverting law enforcement reef sources

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Speaker 1: for the rest of the city, and so some beaches

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Speaker 1: started hiring people specifically trained for water rescue, and then

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Speaker 1: it grew with the y m c A and these

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Speaker 1: volunteer services, and then in nineteen fourteen, the American Red

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Speaker 1: Cross followed up with Commodore Wilbert E. Longfellow, establishing its

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Speaker 1: Life Saving Corps, which trained swimmers across the US in

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Speaker 1: life saving and resuscitation. Yeah, moving up closer to now,

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Speaker 1: but only slightly. UH. In nineteen sixty four, the United

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Speaker 1: States Life Saving Association was formed by members of several

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Speaker 1: California surf lifeguard agencies. And now that is actually open

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Speaker 1: to basically anyone who's a lifeguard. And it wasn't until

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Speaker 1: to night six that the y m c A and

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Speaker 1: the Red Cross both developed standardized lifeguard trainings for people

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Speaker 1: across the country. UM and as a result, we mentioned

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Speaker 1: that in the early twentieth century, there were about nine

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Speaker 1: thousand people drowning each year in the U s. And

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Speaker 1: that's probably specifically at those popular beaches like Atlantic City.

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Speaker 1: And according to the c d C that number, even

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Speaker 1: though there are far more people who swim recreationally now,

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Speaker 1: the number of drownings per year is about still four

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Speaker 1: thousand people every year. But statistically, if you think about

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Speaker 1: how many more people swim compared to how many fewer

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Speaker 1: people are drowning, it speaks to um the service that

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Speaker 1: lifeguards due for US and UM. There was a report

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Speaker 1: on lifeguard effectiveness from the CDC which cited an estimate

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Speaker 1: that your chance of drowning at a beach protected by

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Speaker 1: lifeguards can be less than one in eighteen million. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and lifeguards actually are doing their jobs because they end

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Speaker 1: up saving more than a hundred thousand people from drowning

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Speaker 1: each year. And I would like to know too, if

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Speaker 1: you heaped onto that the number of mothers who saved.

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Speaker 1: They're drowning Christian's per year, They're drowning Kristens, They're an

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Speaker 1: expand name. There's so many, so many rescues going on.

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Speaker 1: But of course, since we're talking about well anything that

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Speaker 1: we talked about on the podcast, let's talk about women

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Speaker 1: and lifeguarding. We were not able to find any kind

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Speaker 1: of statistical breakdown of male versus female lifeguards. But in

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Speaker 1: the Los Angeles County in particular, there have been some

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Speaker 1: issues with gender discrimination on the beaches. Yeah, this article,

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Speaker 1: it's a little dated, but it still is interesting and

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Speaker 1: it still raises some valid points. This is the l

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Speaker 1: A Times article about gender discrimination and lifeguarding, and they

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Speaker 1: point out that before nineteen seventy three, no women had

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Speaker 1: worked as ocean lifeguards in Los Angeles County, and it

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Speaker 1: was that year that Kai Noel and Wendy Paskin were

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Speaker 1: hired as the first lady lifeguards. And they point out

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Speaker 1: that in the late eighties, as we move forward, the

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Speaker 1: county actually changed its qualifying standards to encourage more women

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Speaker 1: and minorities to seek lifeguarding jobs. And while this did

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Speaker 1: encourage more people to you know, apply for the job

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Speaker 1: and get the job, they then had to face on

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Speaker 1: top of discrimination and harassment, then they had to face

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Speaker 1: the whole attitude of well, you wouldn't be here if

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Speaker 1: it weren't for that quota system. And the thing about

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Speaker 1: these women too, is that they were supreme athletes. A

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Speaker 1: lot of these women were all star swimmers, some compete

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Speaker 1: in the Olympics somewhere like in the Olympic trials. These

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Speaker 1: ladies were no joke. But nevertheless they still had to

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Speaker 1: deal with things such as not having proper bathrooms or

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Speaker 1: changing facilities. And of course you can assume and you

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Speaker 1: probably assumed right. They they cite male colleagues sexual references

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Speaker 1: about women, harassment and jokes from men on the beach,

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Speaker 1: and interestingly, apparently they they had to deal with struggling

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Speaker 1: male swimmers who refused female lifeguards aid and those male

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Speaker 1: swimmers who also refused to heed their warnings just because

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Speaker 1: they were women. Now, that story that we're talking about

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Speaker 1: is from nine two. But then in California as well.

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Speaker 1: November eleven, a California jury awarded standingo lifeguard all Cent

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Speaker 1: Terry a hundred thousand dollars after unanimously deciding that the

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Speaker 1: city's lifeguard service discriminated against women by discouraging their promotions.

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Speaker 1: And this took over five years of litigation, which Terry

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Speaker 1: said completely exhausted her mentally and emotionally, and she lost

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Speaker 1: a lot of friends because of it because she had

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Speaker 1: to drag all these male lifeguard colleagues kind of down

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Speaker 1: with her in a way. Yeah. She was actually the

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Speaker 1: fifth female lifeguard to sue the city for gender discrimination

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Speaker 1: and the first to win. She ended up resigning in

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Speaker 1: two thousand nine just out of pure frustration, and finally

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Speaker 1: wasn't until twenty eleven that she finally one. But the

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Speaker 1: trial exposed some interesting things, one of which is that

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Speaker 1: only six out of the ninety four full time lifeguard

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Speaker 1: positions were held by women at the time. That's six

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Speaker 1: point four percent. However, seven percent of the seasonal lifeguards,

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Speaker 1: those who earn an hourly wage and receive fewer benefits,

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Speaker 1: were women. So it doesn't sound like it's really about ability.

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Speaker 1: It sounds like, you know, women are doing the job.

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Speaker 1: It's just that they weren't giving those full time benefits

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Speaker 1: paying jobs to women. Yeah, and Ali sin Terry also

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Speaker 1: alleged that, uh, this city was actually setting up false

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Speaker 1: roadblocks for women who wanted to take the different courses

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Speaker 1: certification courses needed to climb the ranks. Um. For instance,

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Speaker 1: there was a personal watercraft certificate that you would have

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Speaker 1: to earn in order to be promoted. And she said

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Speaker 1: that any time that she would want to go out

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Speaker 1: and like schedule her certification course, for some reason, the

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Speaker 1: watercraft would be mysteriously being used or something like that,

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Speaker 1: Like she was never able to get in, even though

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Speaker 1: she knew full well that there would be times when

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Speaker 1: it was available for her to do so. Whereas these

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Speaker 1: real life, real world female California lifeguards, some of which

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Speaker 1: we've sided, not all of them, of course, but some

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Speaker 1: of them have historically cited some gender discrimination that's gone

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Speaker 1: on on the beaches. While all this is going on,

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Speaker 1: we have the rise of a TV phenomenon that we

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Speaker 1: would be remiss to not mention, and that created an

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Speaker 1: entirely different portrayal of female lifeguards on California beaches. By that,

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Speaker 1: I'm talking about Baywatch. Yeah. Baywatch has been credited with

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Speaker 1: everything from encouraging young women giving them role models to

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Speaker 1: providing reason for harassment of American travelers overseas. Yes, Baywatch,

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Speaker 1: and this is because Baywatch is actually one of the

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Speaker 1: most successful television shows in television history. By the time

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Speaker 1: it was in its tenth season, it was syndicated around

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Speaker 1: the world. It had over a billion viewers every week.

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Speaker 1: That's billion with a bee in a hundred and forty

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Speaker 1: different countries, translated into thirty three languages. It's one of

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Speaker 1: those shows that was kind of a flop in the

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Speaker 1: US and just took off an international syndication, which we

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Speaker 1: see a lot too. We talked about um a long

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Speaker 1: time ago in our episode about soap operas well. It

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Speaker 1: did have David Hasselhoff, yes, who became very popular in Germany.

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Speaker 1: UM Well. The La Times had an article in two

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Speaker 1: thousand written by Susan Spano. She talked to author Robert

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Speaker 1: Young Pelton, who had written a book about basically dangerous

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Speaker 1: travel situations that women find themselves in, and he connected

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Speaker 1: harassment of American women travelers with Baywatches syndication because there's

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Speaker 1: this perception of American women apparently not only because of

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Speaker 1: the show, he points out, but because of other movies

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Speaker 1: and media, but as like they're all blond and rich

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Speaker 1: and beach babes and you know, and wearing high cut

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Speaker 1: bikinis and or not or one pieces. It was the

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Speaker 1: one pieces right exactly, which so incredibly high cut. Um, yeah,

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Speaker 1: well it was. It's funny though that this is brought

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Speaker 1: up because Esquire did this huge oral history of Baywatch,

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Speaker 1: and Alexandra Paul, who was on the show from two

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Speaker 1: to nine seven, argued that are showed it a lot

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Speaker 1: of good things, especially in places like China or Iran,

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Speaker 1: where people saw women wearing bathing suits, and it was

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Speaker 1: okay to me in a way. Culturally, we did a

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Speaker 1: lot of good I think people don't give us credit

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Speaker 1: for that, and I will say I try to do

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Speaker 1: some scholarly, scholarly research on the global cultural impact of

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Speaker 1: bay Watch and whether or not it did seeing those

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Speaker 1: those tan and toned thighs of Pamela Anderson and the

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Speaker 1: rest did something for women, and I didn't find a

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Speaker 1: lot of supporting evidence, but apparently this one travel writer

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Speaker 1: thinks that it's uh on the downside. The reason why

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Speaker 1: it might be endangered right. Well, one of the people

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Speaker 1: in that Eskbuire interview was Gary Cole, the director of

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Speaker 1: photography at Playboy, and he was talking about what kind

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Speaker 1: of woman the show was looking for looking to cast,

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Speaker 1: and he says that the show was looking for an

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Speaker 1: outdoor girl, all natural, all American. You had to be

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Speaker 1: able to run down the beach fast, and the girl

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Speaker 1: obviously had to have breast large enough to move the

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Speaker 1: right way under those bathing suits. But so he's saying

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Speaker 1: all all natural, all American. But according to casting director

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Speaker 1: Susan Glickman, she said it varied from character to character,

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Speaker 1: but they were like, find us somebody who's sexy. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: no one. But for both the male and female actors

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Speaker 1: on the show, written in their contract was a clause.

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Speaker 1: This is according to that oral history on Esquire, that

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Speaker 1: no one was allowed to gain weight, even hasslehof I bet, yeah,

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Speaker 1: you know, you gotta stay trim on the beaches of Baywatch. Uh,

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Speaker 1: so it's kind of it's kind of weird to think

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Speaker 1: of the the contrast between the real world sort of

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Speaker 1: battles on the beaches and this strange thing that is Baywatch,

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Speaker 1: which might seem like a relic of a bygone cultural

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Speaker 1: era here and now. But I wonder too for international listeners,

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Speaker 1: uh is does Baywatch still come on all the time?

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Speaker 1: Is it kind of like how, I don't know, what's

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Speaker 1: the show that's always in syndication. It's like Frasier here,

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Speaker 1: Frazier is always Frasier is always on somewhere, and has

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Speaker 1: it shaped your perception of American lifeguards? Frasier Frasier certainly

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Speaker 1: has um So, so that's what we've got for you

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Speaker 1: on lifeguards. That's the long and the short of it

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Speaker 1: for this summer short and lifeguards out there, especially female lifeguards,

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Speaker 1: have you encountered, you know, male people, male people, guys

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Speaker 1: who are struggling, who don't want to be rescued by you,

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Speaker 1: any kind of impediments to climbing up the lifeguarding ladder.

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Speaker 1: Because there is an annual all women lifeguard tournament sponsored

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Speaker 1: by the National Park Service that I was reading about,

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Speaker 1: and the challenges that you have to go through are intense. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this year, it's in July and July there's like ten

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Speaker 1: different challenges and they involve lots of paddling and running

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Speaker 1: and swimming and being way more athletic than I am.

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Speaker 1: It's like Iron Woman. I now imagine female lifeguards as

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Speaker 1: Iron Women, all of them bionic, and I still can't

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Speaker 1: swim very well. So with that, email us your thoughts. Mom.

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Speaker 1: Stuff at Discovery dot com is where you can send

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Speaker 1: us your letters. And in the meantime, we've got one

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Speaker 1: here about our episode on women and Archaeology. Yes, this

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Speaker 1: is from Jessica. She says, I just finished listening to

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Speaker 1: your Women in Archaeology episode and loved it. You mentioned

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Speaker 1: the Indiana Jones effect a few times and lamented that

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Speaker 1: there was no female equivalent. However, I think that Elizabeth

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Speaker 1: Peter's Amelia Peabody Mystery series is just that Amelia is

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Speaker 1: an English lady of independent means in the late nineteenth

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Speaker 1: century that becomes an Egyptologist. She's brilliant, self confident, and

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Speaker 1: always very practical. It's a great series, and after reading

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Speaker 1: it in high school, I too wanted to become an archaeologist.

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Speaker 1: In the end, I decided not to go into that

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Speaker 1: field when I found out that it involved a lot

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Speaker 1: of sorting pot shards in museum basements, and eventually I

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Speaker 1: found the wildlife by all g was much more my speed. Still,

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Speaker 1: it's a great series about a woman who can hold

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Speaker 1: her own against murderers and her male colleagues alike. And

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Speaker 1: I have to point out that there is who's that

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Speaker 1: character in that Rachel Vice plays and the money she's

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Speaker 1: she's an archaeologist, right, Yeah? But she was? Yeah? Isn't

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Speaker 1: that also starts Brendan Fraser. Uh So, Yes. Mom Stuff

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Speaker 1: at Discovery dot com is our email address. You can

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Speaker 1: also find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter

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Speaker 1: at Mom's Stuff podcast. And if you would like more

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Speaker 1: information on how to have fun in the sun safely

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Speaker 1: this summer, that on over to our website. It's how

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Speaker 1: stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands

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Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com

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Speaker 1: brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.

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