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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 stump Mom Never told

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Speaker 1: you From house Stop Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome

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Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Kristen, I'm Molly Molly. At your request,

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Speaker 1: I am starting off this episode with a personal anecdote.

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Speaker 1: I think it's a pretty cute one. Myself cut the

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Speaker 1: right world. Well, nothing's cute when you're that age that

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Speaker 1: you're about to tell the story about. Thanks, It's an

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Speaker 1: awkward time. It is an awkward time. And the time

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Speaker 1: that we were talking about is when I first shaved

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Speaker 1: my legs. Old were you? I was probably eleven? Oh no,

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Speaker 1: everything's cute at eleven, I thought you were older. Okay, okay,

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Speaker 1: I'm about stop ruining my story, mom, Let me tell

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Speaker 1: my story. So about eleven years old, it is the

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Speaker 1: day before Easter. It's a Saturday. Obviously, Easter bunnies on

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Speaker 1: his way. Easter bunnies on his way. I've got my

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Speaker 1: my new Easter Sunday dress, an Easter bonnet. No Easter bonnet.

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Speaker 1: That year, Um and I decided that along with my

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Speaker 1: new Easter dress, I wanted to debut some freshly shaven legs.

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Speaker 1: So so I asked my mom if I could shave

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Speaker 1: my legs, and she was a little hesitant about it.

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Speaker 1: Had you asked her before? Was this the first time?

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Speaker 1: I think that there had been a build up. I'd

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Speaker 1: been willing to do this for a while. I was

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Speaker 1: starting to feel like I was really coming into my

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Speaker 1: own as a woman at that age, and so she

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Speaker 1: relented and said, you can shave your legs on the

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Speaker 1: one condition that you don't go past your knees. I said, okay,

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Speaker 1: and I kind of see the reasoning behind that. I

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Speaker 1: think the knee is a tough area to shave. It's

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Speaker 1: all bumpy. Yeah, but she was talking about, you know,

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Speaker 1: I had to stop like at my kneecap. I couldn't

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Speaker 1: even go over my knee cap. Yeah, and it is,

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Speaker 1: it is. It is tough territory. Still, so I shaved

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Speaker 1: my legs and I felt like a woman that next

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Speaker 1: day in church in my new dress and my my

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Speaker 1: cool um shaved calves. But then there came a point

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Speaker 1: when UH really started to bug me that I, you know,

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Speaker 1: had harry knees. That line existed, Yeah, it was a line,

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Speaker 1: and finally my breaking point came a little while later

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Speaker 1: when a boy that I liked at the time asked

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Speaker 1: me what was up with my legs? And he pointed

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Speaker 1: to the hairline. God, and I was mortified, and I

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Speaker 1: came home that night and I took it all off.

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Speaker 1: I kind of can't believe that a boy of that

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Speaker 1: age had the the you know, the nerve to say

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Speaker 1: something like that. I feel like boys don't like to

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Speaker 1: point out things about I think he just didn't really

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Speaker 1: know what was going on, because it probably did look

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Speaker 1: a little odd. And I remember it very vividly. We

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Speaker 1: were sitting Indian style, side by side, like at playtime

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Speaker 1: of some sort, and uh, yeah, and he just looked

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Speaker 1: down and said, what's up your legs? He's got a

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Speaker 1: gross I said, omg, wow, said at that point, I

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Speaker 1: can see why you had a crush on that boy.

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Speaker 1: He looked like Jonathan Taylor Thomas. No, now you get it.

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Speaker 1: I do get it a little bit. So there we go.

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Speaker 1: That's my story of when I started sharing my legs

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Speaker 1: for the first time. But what I didn't realize until

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Speaker 1: we started doing this podcast was that, uh, I actually

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Speaker 1: have Harper's bizarre Thank can we make that transition? Is

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Speaker 1: that it's me with transition. I don't think it is.

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Speaker 1: But today we're going to talk about why I wanted

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Speaker 1: to shave my legs in the first place. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: this is one of our most often requested podcasts. People

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Speaker 1: want to know why they're taking their body hair off.

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Speaker 1: And it's not that people are posed to it. Um.

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Speaker 1: You know. Sometimes you might see some sort of feminist

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Speaker 1: analysis of shaving legs and they'll say, oh, women are

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Speaker 1: fine just the way they are, don't shave your legs.

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Speaker 1: It's not the people who like that who are writing us.

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Speaker 1: It's people who do it anyway. You don't have a

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Speaker 1: problem doing it, thinks it looks nice. They just wonder

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Speaker 1: why they do it, Why do we do it? Why

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Speaker 1: do we keep up as women all of this hair removal?

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Speaker 1: And we're just gonna stick to the legs today. In

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Speaker 1: terms of hair remove what we're talking about, why are

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Speaker 1: we shaving our legs? That's it pretty focused. But the

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Speaker 1: thing about it is didn't really start with the legs.

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Speaker 1: We had to start somewhere else to get down to

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Speaker 1: the legs. But I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself,

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Speaker 1: that's right, Christen. And that is one of the coolest

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Speaker 1: facts to me about shaving legs, as it did not

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Speaker 1: start with the legs. And to explain the story of

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Speaker 1: how women began to shave their legs specifically in the

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Speaker 1: United States, it's very US focused. Today. We have to

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Speaker 1: go back to two and a scholar named Christine Hope

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Speaker 1: who wrote a very monumental article called called Caucasian Female Body,

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Speaker 1: Hair and American Culture, a well named study, if I

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Speaker 1: do say so myself, that kind of gets to the point,

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Speaker 1: gets to the point very quick. And what she does

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Speaker 1: is she goes through all these old magazines to figure

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Speaker 1: out when the first ads for razors and hair removal

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Speaker 1: creams when they start appearing, and tries to make some

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Speaker 1: conclusions about that. And as Kristen said, the first ad

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Speaker 1: that appears to tell the men to remove their hair,

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Speaker 1: it's about your under arms. Yes, that's where we started.

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Speaker 1: And I think that we should point out too that

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Speaker 1: in terms of the history of shaving legs and hair removal,

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Speaker 1: this isn't something that women have been doing for all

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Speaker 1: the ages. Yes, if you go back to ancient Egypt,

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Speaker 1: you have records of women using like hot wax and

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Speaker 1: crushed up shells to scrape hair off of off their bodies.

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Speaker 1: But it really isn't. It isn't something that we continue

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Speaker 1: throughout time. It's something that all of a sudden, in

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Speaker 1: the early twentieth century comes up again, and it has

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Speaker 1: to do with surprise. The Gillette Corporation, Okay, Gillette, the

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Speaker 1: manufacturers of disposal razors. Gillette had had a lot of

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Speaker 1: success selling disposal razors to men, and so obviously they

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Speaker 1: wanted to grow their business and therefore needed to expand

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Speaker 1: their markets. So they wanted to figure out how they

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Speaker 1: could sell the same product to women. Right in nineteen fifteen,

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Speaker 1: that's when they had their first razor for women come

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Speaker 1: onto the market. And then in and that will be

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Speaker 1: the year that we see the first razor ad in

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Speaker 1: Harper's Bazaar. But we've got to talk about some other

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Speaker 1: things that are happening at the same time. Fashions are

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Speaker 1: a changeing. They are changing, Yes, all of a sudden,

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Speaker 1: we have the emergence of popular dresses that are either

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Speaker 1: sleeveless or have very sheer sleeves so that you might

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Speaker 1: be able to get a peek at some underwarm hair.

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Speaker 1: And the headlines start to rise around the same time.

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Speaker 1: But those aren't as big a factor because the other

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Speaker 1: thing happening is stockings and pantyhose are coming on the market,

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Speaker 1: so you wouldn't necessarily have to shave your legs to

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Speaker 1: wear those. Um. But then later people start to say, well,

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Speaker 1: shave our legs and wear stockings. Now, it's significant that

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Speaker 1: the first ad for razors pop up in Harper's Bazaar

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Speaker 1: because Harper's Bazaar was marketed specifically toward upper class women. Right,

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Speaker 1: So there's some scholars you say, it's a very much

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Speaker 1: a top down phenomenon that these are the women who

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Speaker 1: can first afford these beautiful sleeveless dresses, and these dresses

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Speaker 1: become sort of the justification for moving your underarm hair, right,

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Speaker 1: because it's not going to be until two years later,

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Speaker 1: in nineteen seventeen, that we start seeing anti underarm hair

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Speaker 1: ads pop up in more middle class magazines like McCall's. Now,

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Speaker 1: let's talk about this first ad this nineteen It was

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Speaker 1: in Harper's Bazaar's Kristen said, and the copy read fashion says,

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Speaker 1: evening gowns must be sleeveless or made with the mere

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Speaker 1: suggestion of gazzie sleeves of tall or lace. The woman

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Speaker 1: of fashion says the under arms must be as smooth

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Speaker 1: as the face, right, because that was another interesting distinction

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Speaker 1: that Gillette made between men's shaving and women's shaving. Whereas

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Speaker 1: men shave off their beards, they're stubble on their faces.

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Speaker 1: They marketed under arms shaving as smoothing. Shaving was never

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Speaker 1: said because that's something the men do, right, and even

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Speaker 1: mentioning the fact that you know, at this point we

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Speaker 1: aren't really shaving our legs yet, and that's probably because

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Speaker 1: even talking about a woman's legs was very risque at

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Speaker 1: the top of mine, because we know that women's legs

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Speaker 1: lead up to the private parts, the private parts. In fact,

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Speaker 1: when the first ads started appearing about shaving the legs,

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Speaker 1: they don't even say legs because these limbs limbs, and um.

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Speaker 1: The ad is, as you can tell, it makes this

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Speaker 1: excuse out of the fact that you're wearing this beautiful dress.

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Speaker 1: Everything about you should be smooth, including the dress. And

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Speaker 1: uh ads that followed up after that were very kind

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Speaker 1: of educational. They would instruct thement on how to use

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Speaker 1: their product, and the product itself may not be front

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Speaker 1: and center so much as the instructions on how to

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Speaker 1: use it. While you're using it. These these these product

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Speaker 1: makers really had to educate the women on why they're

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Speaker 1: shape having their legs and are there their under arms

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Speaker 1: and how to do it just because, as we said,

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Speaker 1: no one was doing it up to this point. I

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Speaker 1: have to and and not just educating them in terms

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Speaker 1: of how to remove the hair, but educating them in

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Speaker 1: the sense of quote unquote teaching them this idea that

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Speaker 1: underarm hair is offensive. Woman's underarm hair is something that

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Speaker 1: it's unclean. This is also during the Victorian era. They're

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Speaker 1: all about you know, like bizarre sanitation, personal um sanitation,

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Speaker 1: and so they attached under oarm hair is this filthy,

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Speaker 1: filthy thing. Because this is also around the time that

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Speaker 1: we have the emergence of deodorants and mouthwashes. Yeah, when

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Speaker 1: it's when we have the uh, this idea that things

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Speaker 1: like body odor and bad breath and now underarm hair

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Speaker 1: are things that a woman, you know, just should not

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Speaker 1: associate herself with at all. If you want to be feminine,

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Speaker 1: you smell good and you have smooth under arms, right,

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Speaker 1: I think I was doing the listerine was it even

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Speaker 1: originally used as a mouthwash, and it was just because

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Speaker 1: they needed to build up this idea of a woman's

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Speaker 1: daily toilet if you will. That they started, you know,

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Speaker 1: just throwing these products at it. So if if you

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Speaker 1: resent shaved legs, you kind of have to resent the

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Speaker 1: whole part of parcel. Like no one resents brushing their teeth.

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Speaker 1: It's just something you do. But it's because I think

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Speaker 1: this one is so gender specific that you know, people

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Speaker 1: are like, why are we doing this? Um, And you know,

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Speaker 1: that was the one thing they've played on ideas of hygiene,

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Speaker 1: but they also played on the idea of this is

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Speaker 1: what a proper woman does, and at that point, every

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Speaker 1: wanted to be the proper woman who had the latest fashion,

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Speaker 1: who had the smoothest under arms, and who followed all

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Speaker 1: these trends that these ladies magazines like Harper's Bazar, which

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Speaker 1: were becoming so popular, we're pushing out it. So it's

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Speaker 1: it's kind of a convergence of a lot of factories.

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Speaker 1: You've got fashion magazines, um, and all these other products

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Speaker 1: coming on the market of the corporations wanting to I

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Speaker 1: guess not corporations at the time, but these businesses that

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Speaker 1: are growing and become these household brands today pushing their products.

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Speaker 1: But it takes. Like we said earlier, it takes a

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Speaker 1: while for under arms shaving to trickle down to the masses,

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Speaker 1: because it's not until nineteen to that Sears Roebuck starts

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Speaker 1: to sell not only the sheer sleeve dresses but also

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Speaker 1: women's razors and hair removal creams. So now once we're

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Speaker 1: in the twenties, it's pretty firmly established that women are

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Speaker 1: shaving their under arms. But what about the legs, only

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Speaker 1: we haven't even gotten to the legs. Well, the first

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Speaker 1: ad promote hair moval from the limbs, as we said,

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Speaker 1: you can't say the word legs, appeared in May of

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Speaker 1: nineteen eighteen, so that's a full three years after the

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Speaker 1: underarm ad. And you know a lot of these scholars,

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Speaker 1: especially Christine Hope, who was sort of the pioneer, and

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Speaker 1: looking at all these ads, When you look at the

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Speaker 1: number of under arm ads that there were about smoothing

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Speaker 1: or under arms, it was astronomical, like every issue had

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Speaker 1: so many. But when we get to these limb removal ads,

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Speaker 1: they don't explode in the same way that the under armstead.

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Speaker 1: The number is just not as great and the focus

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Speaker 1: is different. They don't have to talk women into doing

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Speaker 1: it the way they had to with under arm ads.

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Speaker 1: So the ads are completely different, They're fewer, and they're

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Speaker 1: they're just sort of selling the product, not the idea

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Speaker 1: of removing the leg the hair from their legs. So

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Speaker 1: just how changing fashions had a big role in women

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Speaker 1: starting to shave their under arms. Once again, fashion comes

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Speaker 1: into play for shaving legs because around World War Two

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Speaker 1: we have hemlines start to rise. We also have this

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Speaker 1: kind of rise of the pin up girl who's wearing

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Speaker 1: the short shorts, the Betty graybels, okay and um. Christine

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Speaker 1: Hope points out that maybe that's one of the reasons

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Speaker 1: why women start shaving their legs. We have bikinis coming

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Speaker 1: into style. All of a sudden, women's legs are on

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Speaker 1: fuller display. And with World War Two we have the

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Speaker 1: silk stockings going away because of the silk shortage. So

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Speaker 1: all of a sudden women are parading around more with

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Speaker 1: bare legs. Nuh gotta get that hair off. Yeah, And

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Speaker 1: it was because I think that you know of the

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Speaker 1: under arm, you know, Bonanza, I mean, just all these

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Speaker 1: ads you saw about your under arm staking smooth. I

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Speaker 1: think women got the point that if this hair nes

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Speaker 1: fear moved. The rest of the hair needs to go

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Speaker 1: as well, so it wasn't as big a cell as

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Speaker 1: it had to be with under arms, but we, uh,

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Speaker 1: we absorbed it nonetheless. And I think it's interesting that

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Speaker 1: it's it's such a short history. I think that because

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Speaker 1: we hear all these facts about like ancient Greek statues

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Speaker 1: not having pubic hair, or women using hot tar to

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Speaker 1: take off their legs hair and in ancient times, we

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Speaker 1: think this is something that's been going on forever. But

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Speaker 1: the fact of the matter is nineteen twenties for under arms,

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Speaker 1: nineteen forties it hits hard for the legs, and and

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Speaker 1: we've just kept going since then. Yeah, Christine Hope pinpoints

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Speaker 1: it down to nineteen to ninety five, which she calls

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Speaker 1: a minor assault on leg hair. Yeah, when it really

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Speaker 1: starts to take off. And I guess once we're in

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Speaker 1: the late forties and fifties, it just becomes part of

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Speaker 1: a lady's toilet, like you said, And you know, there's

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Speaker 1: always this kind of I think a knee jerk feminist

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Speaker 1: thing to say is that, you know, some man decided

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Speaker 1: this was attractive, and we're all doing it to be attractive.

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Speaker 1: To men. But when you realize that it was sort

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Speaker 1: of a combination of fashion, these dresses that women wanted

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Speaker 1: to wear in these magazines that them were helping to

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Speaker 1: edit and right and selling to their friends. Um, you know,

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Speaker 1: it's a lot of scholars to say it's, uh, it's

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Speaker 1: more of a consumer up product, you know, consumer up

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Speaker 1: idea than it was necessarily like the patriarchy down. Kristen Hansen,

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Speaker 1: a researcher at Barnard, brought up this point in a

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Speaker 1: paper that she wrote that went back and re examined

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Speaker 1: Christine hop two paper and also took another took another

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Speaker 1: crack at why women shaved their legs, and she also

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Speaker 1: makes the point that, you know, women aren't necessarily victims

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Speaker 1: to some kind of ad campaign. Sure, Jolette had a big,

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Speaker 1: a big hand in, you know, perpetuating this idea that

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Speaker 1: women need to smooth their bodies out, But at the

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Speaker 1: same time, like you said, it's the women who are

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Speaker 1: buying these magazines who are doing it, who are passing

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Speaker 1: along this information to their friends, creating these trends. And

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Speaker 1: I think that that's a good thing to keep in

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Speaker 1: mind when we're talking about these kinds of social things

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Speaker 1: that we're taught constitute femininities such as smelling good and

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Speaker 1: wearing makeup and shaving our legs and shaving our under arms.

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Speaker 1: A lot of times, I think in feminist discourse it's

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Speaker 1: sort of painted as women being the victims to these

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Speaker 1: evil advertising campaigns. At the same time, you know, we're

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Speaker 1: just as active in adopting them. And that is a

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Speaker 1: perfect segue christin to another paper we read for this

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Speaker 1: podcast called The Hairless Ideal by Susan A. Bass Out,

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Speaker 1: and she talks about how there is this ideal of

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Speaker 1: femininity associated with shaving legs, and how you know, in

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Speaker 1: the sixties and seventies, when we've got first wave feminism

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Speaker 1: coming up, a lot of feminists chose not to shave

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Speaker 1: their legs, that they weren't taking part in that sort

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Speaker 1: of you know, cultural ideal of womanhood and saying that

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Speaker 1: a woman can be any of these things. So what

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Speaker 1: Vassa does in the year of when you know, some

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Speaker 1: of this this feminism has settled down, she wants to see,

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Speaker 1: you know, if we still maintain this as an ideal

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Speaker 1: of femininity. And what she does is she gets a

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Speaker 1: bunch of women from the National Women's Studies Association and

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Speaker 1: a bunch of women from the American Psychological Association, and

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Speaker 1: she wants to find out why they shave their legs

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Speaker 1: here in the nineties because she figures that these women

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Speaker 1: from the women's studies group are more exposed to these

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Speaker 1: feminist arguments about you know, you're just buying into this

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Speaker 1: male gaze, to what men find attractive, to what society

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Speaker 1: tells you to do. And she figures that the group

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Speaker 1: from the a p A Is a little bit more

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Speaker 1: of a control group that these women who probably share

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Speaker 1: their legs for you know, a boyfriend or a husband,

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Speaker 1: or for a more superficial reason than she imagines these

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Speaker 1: women studies that gals will um. But what she finds

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Speaker 1: is there's no real big difference between the groups. That yes,

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Speaker 1: feminism does correlate with the women who don't shave their

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Speaker 1: legs um. But come, you know, when you put them

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Speaker 1: all together, pretty much they're all shaving their legs. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: By and large majority of women shave their legs. And

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Speaker 1: even in follow up studies that have been done not

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Speaker 1: by the same researcher but other women who have taken

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Speaker 1: these kinds of surveys to find out how many women

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Speaker 1: really are shaving their legs and under arms. There was

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Speaker 1: a study as recent as two thousand eight that found

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Speaker 1: that of the women that they surveyed shave their legs

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Speaker 1: or under arms or some kind of hair removal on

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Speaker 1: a regular basis. Yeah, I don't think that you turned

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Speaker 1: up a study that had a percentage of less than

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Speaker 1: of women shaving their legs. No matter the group, you know,

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Speaker 1: they'll try and separate them out by all these ways

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Speaker 1: they think women won't shave their legs, and um, it

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Speaker 1: just just keeps coming up. But the reasons why women

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Speaker 1: shave their legs um do differ, at least as indicated

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Speaker 1: in that paper that you're talking about depending on sexuality.

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Speaker 1: She tries to make the point that depending on your sexuality,

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Speaker 1: you will shave your legs for um, with different motivations.

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Speaker 1: So that's how did in this paper is she not

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Speaker 1: only pulled the women on how often they shaved, whether

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Speaker 1: they shaved, etcetera, but she also pulled them on how

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Speaker 1: they identified sexually. What she found was for the lesbians

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Speaker 1: and the group who shave their legs, their major motivation

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Speaker 1: for shaving was to essentially fit in socially that they

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Speaker 1: didn't they were worried that they would get odd looks

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Speaker 1: if they, you know, were sporting hairy under arms or

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Speaker 1: hairy legs. And then heterosexual women did it essentially to

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Speaker 1: look attractive, just feel attractive, not necessarily to attract men,

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Speaker 1: but just to feel feel nice, feel good, though having

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Speaker 1: a partner did predict frequency that which they shaved their legs.

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Speaker 1: And then bisexuals apparently just liked the feeling of the

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Speaker 1: smooth skin. And you know, we talked about how when

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Speaker 1: they were first trying to settlement on this idea of

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Speaker 1: for moving body hair, they talked about this Victorian ideal

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Speaker 1: of body hair being unclean, that it was gross and

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Speaker 1: needs to be removed just for hygienic reasons. And when

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Speaker 1: Bassil went through and asked people, you know, is this

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Speaker 1: a factor? No one rd it that as a factor,

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Speaker 1: right that that sort of discuss sensitivity. As some researchers

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Speaker 1: have turned it is not a factor anymore in women

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Speaker 1: shaving their legs. It's been become so wholly adopted by us.

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Speaker 1: In such a short period of time, remember is the

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Speaker 1: Great leg assault, as a hope termed it. And in

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Speaker 1: that short period of time, we uh, you know, it's

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Speaker 1: just something that we do naturally. It was the thing

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Speaker 1: to do, is the number one reason for starting to

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Speaker 1: shave your leg and both of those groups that that

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Speaker 1: passed out investigating it was the thing to do, followed

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Speaker 1: by the number two reasons, which was women are supposed

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Speaker 1: to shave, So it's just something we know that we

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Speaker 1: do as women. And fashion still influences a lot as well,

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Speaker 1: because also in these surveys, they found that women tend

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Speaker 1: to shave more daring say this summer when their legs

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Speaker 1: might be on parade, as opposed to the winter, when

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Speaker 1: we can throw on some tights and leggings and jeans,

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Speaker 1: no one's gonna see those hairy legs. Kind of take

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Speaker 1: a break for let her legs go to hibernation and

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Speaker 1: for a little while. Maybe that's just me. Now. One

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Speaker 1: footnote that we do want to end on is as

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Speaker 1: we said, Hopes paper puts the word Caucasian front and center, Yes,

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Speaker 1: front and centers the first word in the article. Um

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Speaker 1: And there is not as much data on what women

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Speaker 1: of other ethnicities or colors do with their leg hare.

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Speaker 1: So while Bassel surve it a majority white women, the

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Speaker 1: black women that she pulled did shave their legs less

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Speaker 1: frequently than white women. It's not as at least according

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Speaker 1: to her small data set. And she pointed that out,

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Speaker 1: she said, this is you know, this is a small

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Speaker 1: population that I'm pulling right here. However, there's already, even

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Speaker 1: within a small population, a big difference in terms of

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Speaker 1: percentage of women who just don't shave at all. And

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Speaker 1: then of course we can remember, um the Oscars when

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Speaker 1: Monique didn't shave her legs and everyone freaked out. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and you know, there's a tram piece in the New

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Speaker 1: York Times that they pulled up that talks just about

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Speaker 1: how black women view it differently than white women, how

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Speaker 1: we were more shocked when someone like you know, que

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Speaker 1: pulls up her skirt and has these huge unshaved legs.

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Speaker 1: Then when Julia Roberts lifted her arm at one premiere

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Speaker 1: and had unshaved under arms. Yeah, well, I mean people

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Speaker 1: freaked out just as much, especially with the with the

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Speaker 1: under arm here, because it's supposed to be so smooth. Exactly,

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Speaker 1: We're supposed to smooth our skin, ladies, and smooth our limbs,

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Speaker 1: not our legs. Not our legs are limbs. Well, on

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Speaker 1: that note, we want to know what you guys think

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Speaker 1: about shaving legs? Is it? Have you given up on it?

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Speaker 1: Do you still do it? You can get by yourself.

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Speaker 1: Do you think it's a bad thing that we've completely

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Speaker 1: adopted this idea of shaving legs as part of women's

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Speaker 1: hygiene routine. And do you buy the reasons if if

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Speaker 1: our women just really doing it because they think they

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Speaker 1: have to, are they secretly doing it to be attractive

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Speaker 1: to men? Because no one really owned up to that

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Speaker 1: in pass house paper. So those are the questions we've

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Speaker 1: got we want to hear from you. It's mom stuff

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Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com, or leave a comment

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00:21:49,720 --> 00:21:51,800
Speaker 1: on our Facebook page, leave a common on our Facebook

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Speaker 1: page or on our blog and we will read really quick.

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Speaker 1: A few emails. I have one about the Scandinavia podcasts,

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Speaker 1: and it's from someone who is Norwegian, Kristen, but she

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Speaker 1: lives in Belgium. She writes, Norway is not perfect when

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Speaker 1: it comes to gender equality, but the difference between Norway

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Speaker 1: and a lot of other countries is that it takes

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Speaker 1: women seriously. The parental leave is obviously wonderful, but I

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Speaker 1: think mentality is our biggest asset. Girls do not grow

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Speaker 1: up thinking they can't do something because they are girls

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Speaker 1: and boys are taught to help around the house. Of course,

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Speaker 1: girls play with dolls and boys with cars, but they

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Speaker 1: are not treated very differently. I see a big difference

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Speaker 1: between Belgium and Norway when it comes to women's roles

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00:22:32,320 --> 00:22:34,359
Speaker 1: in the family. I'm a mother, but I do not

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Speaker 1: simply see myself as that. I am still me and

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Speaker 1: I think this is what being treated equally does to you.

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Speaker 1: In Norway, women are more independent and they are not

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Speaker 1: afraid to put themselves out there. It's not about caring

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00:22:44,320 --> 00:22:47,160
Speaker 1: for your kids or an husband. You're allowed, actually encouraged

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Speaker 1: to have the proverbial room of one's own and to

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00:22:49,320 --> 00:22:51,920
Speaker 1: keep on developing and learning throughout your life. I think

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Speaker 1: that's pretty cool and I do too so. Also in

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Speaker 1: our podcast about Scandinavia Molly, we brought up a politician

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00:23:01,320 --> 00:23:05,600
Speaker 1: named Mona Saleen and she is running for the presidential

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Speaker 1: ticket in Sweden for the Social Democratic Party, and we

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Speaker 1: talked about this New York Times article. I believe it

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Speaker 1: was in that we ran across saying that her gender

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00:23:14,359 --> 00:23:19,520
Speaker 1: might have um might be one reason why her campaign

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00:23:19,560 --> 00:23:24,600
Speaker 1: isn't going so hot. So we have an anonymous listener

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00:23:24,920 --> 00:23:27,200
Speaker 1: who wrote in to kind of give a see inside

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Speaker 1: scoop because she's been living in Sweden for the past year,

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Speaker 1: and she says, yes, the Social Democratic Party is a

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00:23:31,760 --> 00:23:34,280
Speaker 1: bit of a mess right now. However, I honestly believe

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Speaker 1: that if a man were in her position, he would

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00:23:36,119 --> 00:23:38,520
Speaker 1: have taken just as much of a hit as Salien

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Speaker 1: has in this past election. Without going into details and

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Speaker 1: the issues of the party, many Swedes believe that much

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Speaker 1: of a Stallion's issue wasn't that she was a woman,

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Speaker 1: but since this election was fought much on personality, she

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00:23:49,119 --> 00:23:51,480
Speaker 1: simply didn't have the curisma that a party leader needed

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Speaker 1: for the Social Democrats to bounce back in this election.

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Speaker 1: As for the competence of the US media, I think

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Speaker 1: so few people give two thoughts about Sweden that they

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Speaker 1: need to say, except whatever articles do make it depress.

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Speaker 1: Among political types like myself who are plugged into Swedet

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Speaker 1: Swedish politics, not one person I spoke with, nor media

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00:24:09,000 --> 00:24:12,320
Speaker 1: source I read focused on known as gender. So it

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Speaker 1: is sort of the media playing it up. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: absolutely think the media plays it up interesting and we

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00:24:16,480 --> 00:24:20,360
Speaker 1: should say that. Right after that podcast came out, the

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Speaker 1: newest list of the most gender friendly Countries in the

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Speaker 1: World was published. I guess who won, Molly Iceland. Iceland

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Speaker 1: the spot for our next vacation together. Yes, so if

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00:24:32,960 --> 00:24:35,720
Speaker 1: you're from Iceland, please write us and Twas writ us,

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00:24:35,720 --> 00:24:37,919
Speaker 1: send us, send us some airplane tickets and he'd like

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00:24:37,960 --> 00:24:40,119
Speaker 1: to go to Iceland. Everyone else can write us too.

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00:24:40,320 --> 00:24:42,240
Speaker 1: And like I said, it's mom Stuff at how stuff

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Speaker 1: fars dot com and as Kristen said, we're also on

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Speaker 1: Facebook and I'd love to see your comments there. We're

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00:24:47,440 --> 00:24:50,960
Speaker 1: also on Twitter. It's mom Stuff podcast, and we also

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00:24:51,040 --> 00:24:53,200
Speaker 1: have a blog. We have every single kind of social

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00:24:53,200 --> 00:24:55,880
Speaker 1: media you could have, and our blog is at how

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

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00:25:01,800 --> 00:25:06,000
Speaker 1: of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Want

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00:25:06,040 --> 00:25:08,679
Speaker 1: more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the

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Speaker 1: house stuff works dot com home page. Brought to you

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Speaker 1: by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are

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Speaker 1: you