Feminish

In this episode, we discuss the sexism that continues in Hollywood (too topical not to talk about tbh), as well as how it seems to make some men so angry that women enjoy sports the way they want to. Let us enjoy sports, and also—can we get better merch? We have money and will buy it. We also finally get into a book Jessie spent most of 2023 reading: Debt: The First 5000 Years. It changed the way she understands not just concepts of money and debt (both imaginary ideas) but honestly, history, politics, and war. Low-key.

Book: Debt: The First 5000 Years by David Graeber

Culture Study Podcast episode on Formula 1

We are back for season 2! We talk resolutions - do you make them, why or why not? We are a split camp on this show. Olivia brings some pop culture updates for us. Also, Jessie kicks off the season with discussion of a book she read about the unexpected and quite complicated history of the field of home economics / domestic sciences. Was the field progressive and feminist, or oppressive and sexist? Yes.

The Secret History of Home Economics by Danielle Dreilinger

Final Girl, Final Season 1 Episode!

Olivia and Jessie knew they could not pass up a bonus 13th episode to release on Friday, Oct. 13, during their favorite season: spooky season! If you've listened even once, you've probably heard us mention our love for horror movies. We frequently hang out to watch horror movies together, and they are really the BEST genre for exploring human emotions and imagination.

On this ep, we do a deep dive on some of the feminist themes central to the horror genre (including the Final Girl trope), and some of the scary movies formative to their childhoods (yes, we watched scary movies as kids and they deeply shaped our love for the genre!). Also somehow, we go a full hour+ and forget to mention The Ring.

Jessie's top five scary movies: The Ring, Halloween (1978), The Shining, It Follows, The Haunting of Hill House (yes, we can put shows on this list, it's our podcast, our rules). Honorable mention to Us, noted on the podcast, since she literally forgot The Ring and said on the episode "I feel like I'm forgetting an important one." Jessie has even watched and enjoyed The Ring on her birthday.

Olivia's top five scary movies: Nope, Suspiria, Hereditary, It Follows, The Haunting of Hill House (take the hint, what this show!)

Today our guest is Ammie, a ceramic artist and small business owner living in Atlanta. She’s kind of a big deal on social media (find her at @ammieyall on Instagram) but today she’s here to talk pop culture and our deepest questions.

You’ll get some bonus knowledge of Dublin, Georgia, the small town in the middle of the state where Ammie grew up and where Jessie first met her (when she was in middle school).

Ammie’s books:

We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman and You, Again by Kate Goldbeck

We’re back this week to reflect on what we’ve achieved in the past year. We take a moment to appreciate our labors and celebrate almost a whole season of our podcast!

Jessie brings a book that complicates the history of HIV/AIDS activism in the United States. Olivia brings a book that got her back into a reading groove--a sci-fi novel following a near-future scientist and android contemplating the consciousness of octopuses who start forming a culture.

We talk about what it means to be alive, the value of art to make it through our days, and the importance of healthcare access (and providers that believe you).

Olivia’s book(s):

The Mountain in the Sea: https://bookshop.org/a/81323/9781250872272

Time Management for Mortals: https://bookshop.org/a/81323/9780374159122

Jessie’s book:

Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT-UP New York 1987-93

https://bookshop.org/a/81323/9781250849120

We also talked about:

The Water Knife: https://bookshop.org/a/81323/9780804171533

Debt: The First Five Thousand Years: https://bookshop.org/a/81323/9781612194196

From the New York Times and Serial: The Retrievals Podcast:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/22/podcasts/serial-the-retrievals-yale-fertility-clinic.html

We are excited to have our first-ever GUEST to the show. Jasmine Pochynok is an Atlanta-based communications specialist, pop culture enthusiast, and “very online” advocate of social media.

We discuss Jasmine’s time in the Coast Guard as a fireman, her excitement to have kids, and why she cried when she finally deleted her Twitter account last month.

Come for the “girl money” talk, stay for the tea on the unreality behind all of Pete Davidson’s hot celebrity girlfriends. We pick Jasmine’s brain and she graciously tells us about life from her Feminish angle, after a pretty dramatic week of ups and downs for her!

In a podcast about pop culture, feminism, and rhetoric, true crime lands itself solidly at the epicenter of those themes. Since the Roman courts held public trials, people have been interested in following along with crime stories (see, Jessie got ancient philosophers in there). But there is something about the relationship women have with true crime. Today, Olivia and Jessie offer their takes on why women make up 80% of the readership of true crime. They also discuss theories presented by Rachel Monroe in her book length rumination and Kate Tuttle in her take for the New York Times.

This episode is also a joyful romp through some of our favorite TV shows that engage thriller, suspense, and crime (think Dark, Yellowjackets, Haunting of Hill House).

Links to books we talk about: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz and Savage Appetites: True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession by Rachel Monroe

Olivia’s deep interest in Greek myths informs the two book suggestions she brings to this episode, as well as the compelling question of gender norms in storytelling. If we swapped all the lead (male) characters in Greek myths for female characters, what fundamental aspects of the story do (must) change? What does this say about story tropes from Ancient Greece to today? Jessie brings the central historical moment of her dissertation research to the table: what was the Equal Rights Amendment, why did it fail, what could it have meant for women, and why do so few people know about it as part of U.S. history?

If you have a question for us about today’s episode, submit it here [https://www.feminishpod.com/contact]. We would love to hear from YOU, our fab listeners!

What Olivia brought:

Lore Olympus by Rachel Smythe https://bookshop.org/a/81323/9780593356074

Gender Swapped Greek Myths by Kerrie Fransman and illustrated by Jonathan Plackett

https://bookshop.org/a/81323/9780571371327

What Jessie brought:

Divided We Stand: The Battle over Women’s Rights and Family Values that Polarized American Politics by Marjorie J. Spruill https://bookshop.org/a/81323/9781632863164

We the Women: The Unstoppable Mothers of the Equal Rights Amendment by Julie C. Suk https://bookshop.org/a/81323/9781510771789

Chaos episode! We are all over the map today discussing embodied rhetoric, which is basically all the communication caught up in how we move and have bodies in the world. As you might expect, it’s an enormous, fraught topic. We discuss why work-from-home is a feminist issue (and highly embodied), being a person in a modern workplace and on Zoom, and the recent experience Olivia had at the art museum where she cried while looking at art (a rare form for her). Plus, we finally discuss what you’ve all been waiting for: Wide Theory and Motion Theory, our nascent ideas about Hollywood men (come for the learning stay for the Old Chairison Ford conversation).

What Olivia brought:

Photograph: Untitled, 2005, Chromogenic print, by Gregory Crewdson. On display at the Telfair Museum, Savannah, GA.

What Jessie brought:

Article: Flexible work is feminist–and women won’t return to a system that hasn’t served them well to spare the feelings of powerful men, by Erin Grau in Fortune Magazine, May 2023.

Chapter: ”Bodies of Praise: Epideictic Figures in the Independent Women” by Risa Applegarth, in Women at Work: Rhetorics of Gender and Labor.

This week, we talk about the marketing that was actually published to recruit (white) women to jobs during WWII, because spoiler, it wasn’t the famous Rosie the Riveter image. This leads us into the immense world of visual rhetoric, which includes so much of what we consume and what is marketed to us as people in the world today. Is Olivia a rhetor, based on her professional work in design? Absolutely. We also talk about some of the takeaways from Jessie’s students’ final projects, the brilliant rhetoric and themes in Mad Men, and why anyone who sells you anything these days can then send you emails forever.

Jessie’s book: Women at Work: Rhetorics of Gender and Labor, edited by David Gold and Jessica Enoch

Olivia’s show: Mad Men