March 13, 2013 • 34 mins
Do advice columns dole out good advice? Join Caroline and Cristen as they explore how Dear Abby and Ann Landers were rival twin sisters, well as examining Dan Savage and the rise of the sex columnist.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you from how stupp
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Christen and I'm Caroline. And this is part two of
our two parter on advice columns. In case you missed
the last episode, stop what you're doing and go listen
(00:25):
to it right now. No, you can keep listening to
this one in case you missed the last episode for
a quick recap, we talked about the history of the
advice column, which goes all the way back to I
can hear your brains exploding right now. It is incredible,
I know, um. And we talked about how the content
(00:46):
of advice columns changed over time to be more less
about propriety and more about personal issues. And by personal
I do means six Yeah. Well no, just as we
mentioned we talked a little bit about this in our
last episode. As time went on, the attitudes towards sex,
(01:08):
both in society and within the safe realm of the
advice column did change, and Adrian Bingham writes about this
in newspaper Problem Pages and British Sexual Culture since nineteen eighteen,
in which he talks about how in the interwar period
and into the forties, these problem pages, these advice columns
(01:30):
almost invariably provided staunch defenses of conventional morality and portrayed
sexuality as a dangerous instinct. You have to protect yourself
from these dangerous instincts. But moving on into the fifties
and sixties and even the seventies, sexuality was increasingly depicted
as positive, and moving even forward in time, these problem
(01:52):
pages and advice columns have even developed a more hedonistic approach.
He says, yeah, which is why the title of this
episode is from Dear Abbey two Dan Savage, who would
take I'm sure pleasure being described as hedonistic um. And
he also talks about how they've been presented more overtly
(02:14):
as entertainment. So two women who really get things going
at that started that shift toward more open sexuality, more
sex positivity in advice columns. Who also rescue the advice
column from its death in the newspapers as it was
(02:35):
starting to trickle off were a pair of sisters, twin
sisters who were born July four, nine eighteen in Sioux City, Iowa.
And that is don't get these mixed up folks. Pauline
Esther Freedman and Esther Pauline Friedman, better known as Dear
(02:56):
Abbey and in Landers. Yeah, these were they were identical twins.
They studied journalism at the same college. They were even
married on the same day. So you think, like, oh,
that's adorable. They must be so close, they must love
each other so much. They were feuding advice column nous. Yeah.
So the first one to jump into this business is
(03:19):
Esther Pauline Freedman Letterer. That's that's her married last name,
otherwise known as Eppie. She she took over the and
Lander's column, which started at the Chicago Suntimes under Ruth Crowley,
and she entered a contest right to get that column. Yeah,
in nineteen five, the Chicago Suntimes had a contest for
(03:42):
the and Lander's column because I believe Ruth Crowley had
passed away. And the thing about and Landers was it
was one of the remaining big names in the business.
By the nineties, some newspapers had stopped syndicating advice columns altogether.
And so Eppie enters this contest, lo and behold she wins.
(04:06):
And apparently Eppie had a knack for writing advice columns
because within the first eighteen months she took the an
Lander's column from twenty six to a hundred and ten papers,
and she was known for a homie, more detailed style. Yeah.
So about a year later, you know you're thinking, okay,
(04:26):
that's great. One sister went off and you know she
she won this contest. Now she's a really successful columnist.
I bet you're happy for her sister, sister, twin sister,
twin sister. But no, Pauline Esther goes out and uh
pitches Dear Abbey under under the pen name Abigail van Buren. Yeah,
(04:48):
the feud between Dear Abbey and a Landers starts because
Pauline claims, in those early days of Eppie taking over
as Ann Landers that she would call up all Pauline
and say what do you think about this? And Pauline
would help her write the columns Now, of course, and Landers,
now becoming a household name, was not pleased that her
(05:09):
sister was spilling these secrets. So it starts this feud
and Pauline's like, well, I'll just start my own thing.
And it was funny because her motivation for starting it, Yeah,
it was she seemed to be pretty good at it,
and perhaps it was some kind of competition with her sister,
but she publicly said that she really just wanted to
(05:30):
be more than a housewife because her husband was very wealthy,
and she at one point said, quote, there has to
be something more to life than ma young. My mother
would disagree, um, And that was her motivation for taking
Abigail van Buren a k a. Dear Abbey to the
San Francisco Chronicle, and it kicks off in nineteen fifty six,
(05:52):
and her style was far more quippy, and we have
we have some some examples of a dear be responses
because one of the reasons why we did want to
do this two part on advice columnists was because of
the recent passing of Dear Abbey and Lander's her sister,
Esther Friedman Letterer had died in two thousand two, but
(06:14):
Dear Abbey died in early two thirteen. Right, Yes, you
mentioned her quippy style. She she did have some great zingers,
some one liners. One person wrote in to say, you know,
my son married this woman and in February, and the
baby was born in August at eight and a half pounds.
How is it possible for such a premature baby to
(06:35):
be so big? And Dear Abbey's response was the baby
was on time, the wedding was late. Forget it, you know,
and like, I mean, that's that's pretty not racy, but
I mean that's pretty advanced for the time that this
person was writing in well, talking about advanced. Dan Savage,
who we brought up a lot in the podcast before.
(06:56):
He is the host of the podcast Savage Love, better
known for his sex advice column in Seattle's The Stranger
All Weekly. Um, and he was talking in a in
a fairly recent episode of Savage Love about Dear Abbey's
legacy and this was his favorite letter and her very
quippy response. So the letter goes about four months ago,
(07:19):
the house across the street was sold to a quote
unquote father and son, or so we thought. We later
learned it was an older man about fifty and a
young fellow about twenty four. This was a respectable neighborhood
before this odd couple moved in. They have all sorts
of strange looking company. Men who look like women, women
who look like men, Blacks, whites, Indians. Yesterday I even
saw two nuns going there. Abby. These weirdos are wrecking
(07:43):
our property values. How can we improve the quality of
this once respectable neighborhood signed up in arms. Dear Abbey
rights deer up, you could move. That's great. Just killing
that biggest tree with with three words, that's all she needs.
And dance Bag goes on to talk about how with
the whole father's son thing. At the time in California,
(08:05):
it wasn't uncommon for one partner in a gay couple
to adopt the other so that they could live together
and share legal rights, you know, those those civil rights
that they are still fighting for. But um, in that way,
Abby was uh, pretty pretty liberal voice at the time. Yeah.
(08:27):
The New York Times characterizes her thus lee, they say,
with her comic and flinty, yet fundamentally sympathetic voice. And
Mrs Phillips helped wrestle the advice column from its weepy
Victorian past into a hard nosed twentieth century present. There
for you know, saving it and getting more and more
people to write in, because she's writing about modern problems
(08:48):
and she's answering in such a way that it just
kind of cuts through the bs. Yeah, and her daughter
Jean has since taken over the Dear Abbey column, And
I was surprised to learn that it's still receives over
ten thousand letters per week. And I was mentioned in
the New York Times obituary for Pauline Esther Friedman Um
(09:08):
And it's funny that the feud between Dear Abby and
and Landers has continued since now both of the women
have died. Um and Lander's daughter, Margot Howard, initially took
over Slate's Dear Prudence column, but she later started up
a feud with Amy Dickinson, who took over the and
(09:30):
Lander's column after Eppie stepped down. So this is a
strange back and forth. Yeah, and there were a lot
of ugly words. Uh, this is coming from Slate. In
February two thousand nine, Margot accused Amy Dickinson of claiming
to be the quote next and Landers, you know you're
you're not. You can't replace an original. Of course, you
know Eppie wasn't the original either. But anyway, Dickinson said,
(09:52):
you know that's not the case. I never build myself
that way. And she says that she in fact distanced
herself from Landers when she entered the Advice realm, and
then she kind of maybe sticks sticks at to her.
She says, my column is a whole new venture. It's
funnier and snappier and more entertaining. Yeah, and now she
writes ask Amy. So she spun off into her own thing.
(10:15):
But even though Eppie and Pauline are gone, advice columns
are still thriving, both in print and online. And the
interesting thing is the queries have not changed all that much.
We talked about in the first Advice Column episode. How
in the very first publication of Advice Columns and the
(10:35):
Athenian Mercury, someone asked whether or not it was okay
for a couple to shack up before they got married. Um.
And there's something so abiding about the advice column format
in terms of having those anonymous personas UM, and the
(10:56):
common questions that come up, and just the comfort that
we take in them simply existing, be able, being able
to read and possibly relate and maybe just be voyors
into other people's lives and their problems. Um, and dear
Abbey once said quote, most people just want someone to
listen to them without moralizing or sermonizing or sitting in judgment.
(11:17):
That's good therapy, just to get it out of your
system and tell somebody. Yeah and sing, I mean things
are changing obviously with with technology, but our problems do
remain the same. Emily Yaffi, who writes Slate's Dear Prudence column,
now says that yeah, there they are a very old form,
and they are a reflection of the times and of
the of the fact that basically human beings continue to
(11:40):
grapple with the same issues that they always have despite
these advances in technology. And she says, when I started
the column seven years ago, I got no letters about
social media. But now Facebook is a frequent topic. People
write about it all the time, the jealousy, boasting, cheating, manipulation.
But these are still the same tradition sational issues that
(12:01):
deer Abbey and landers and people way back in the seventeenth,
eighteenth and nineteenth century dealt with. Yeah, And one thing
that Yaffie and Amy Dickinson told The Atlantic was that
the number one topic that comes up so much that
kind of makes both of them sick, how much we
freak out over at weddings. Advice columns will exist as
(12:24):
long as weddings exists, because there there are so many
etiquette questions tied up in a people's emotions flying off
of the handle. Uh was was it? Amy? Dickinson, who
was like, I don't care about your bridesmaid problem. Yes, um,
But one thing too that hasn't changed is how few
male advice columnists there are. I mean, Dan Savage is
(12:46):
such an exception to the rule. He is America's foremost
sex columnists. But in terms of the day to day
advice columnists agony ants over in the UK, we don't
hear much about agony uncles. Um, we don't see a
lot of male advice calumnists. And when I was looking
into research on maybe why that is, maybe gendered patterns
(13:06):
of advice or gender and advice columns, all I got
were these silly internet comics about how if men were
to write advice columns they would just be mean and
straightforward and and essentially just say I don't care about
your bridesmaids. Yeah. I mean, there's what there's ask a
Guy or ask a dude. There there's asked men dot Com,
(13:29):
which you could say is one massive advice column. But
this is pretty timely because speaking of Slate, it just
launched in February Gentleman Scholar, which is a male advice
column written by Troy Patterson. But even still looking at
gentleman scholar. It's not so much of the personal queries
(13:52):
of I have this personal problem and how do I
deal with it? It's still obviously like geared toward men
of like we'll be talking about how to pour a
proper scotch something like that. Yeah, is it? Is it
bad for me to admit that when I started reading
his stuff that I just kind of got lost in
his language. I'm like, why are you writing like you're
(14:13):
so opaque? I just want to read some information and
you're just like, basically if if some people write in
straight lines, he writes in curly cues, and it just
drives me crazy. Troy Patterson, Yeah, maybe you should write
an advice column to the Gentleman's Skull. Yeah, hey, listen, No,
that's all right. There there are other people out there
to read who are more interesting, like Dan Savage. Like
(14:33):
Dan Savage. Now I realized that Dan Savage is podcast.
Let's say it's very in SFW. It is very it's
it's not necessarily uh family friendly, but but it's still
providing that community. Yes, it's still letting you know you're
not alone out there. It's still an informative and educational
(14:55):
tool and it's just very interesting, entertaining, sympathetic and kind
all at the same time. Yes, and and so so straightforward.
I'm a huge Dan Savage fan. And I love the
fact that when Anne Landers's personal effects were auctioned off
years ago, he bought her desk, and that is the
(15:18):
desk at which he writes his Stranger column. And a
couple of years ago there was a cover story on
Savage for the Washington Monthly magazine because obviously The Stranger
is published in Seattle, and the profiler talks about how
Savage attributes his advice giving empire to the combined influence
(15:40):
of Anne Lander's an Xavier Hollander, who wrote the Call
Me Madam advice column for Penthouse, which seems like it
makes so much sense when you think about Dan Savage's
style with the topics that he covers, which is not
always so lovey dovey. No it's not, but I think
know talking about and Landers like cutting, cutting straight to
(16:03):
the point. You know, somebody might write a long letter
about something that's obviously off the beaten path, not mainstream,
but he cuts through all of like the crazy details
and just says, you know, don't be a mean person.
Be upfront with your partner, etcetera, or dump. I can't
say that word him or her him. Yeah, there are
even some calls on the podcast. It's always give me
(16:25):
a bit of a chuckle when the caller is going
on and on and on about their problem, to the
point that Dan will just stop the call and just say,
you just cut through all of the noise and give
them some straightforwar advice because a lot of times when
people have to spend so long describing their problem, the
(16:48):
solution is much simpler, which is often you need to
check yourself, or you need to walk away or things
like that. But speaking of sex columnists, this is a
little bit tangential, but I feel like it still ties
in a lot to things we talked about on the podcast,
and it is something that we might not initially think
(17:09):
of in terms of advice columns. Uh that might be
more mainstream. But thanks to possibly Dance Savage and more
specifically to Sex in the City, there has been a
sex column revolution on college campuses. You're shaking your head, Caroline.
I'm shaking my head because Kristen Congre and I worked
(17:32):
at the same college newspaper, and I swear I mean
like steam is coming out of my ears, like why
it makes me wish the college newspapers had a longer
institutional memory slash editorial advisors who would shake these young
people who feel the need to write these ill informed,
ignorant sex columns. You said it. I've been meaning to
(17:55):
get that out for a long time. But they're they are,
They're very popular, And yeah, I don't it's great get
sex advice from a nineteen year old. That's fine. Well,
it's a relatively new thing. And I would argue that
it's another chapter in this timeline of advice columns, because
it's just another signal of us opening up in terms
(18:17):
of our acceptance of sexuality and how we approached that.
Because we have younger people. It's not agony and who
we're talking about it. It's agony sorority sisters who are
talking about it. And Daniel Reimold wrote the book Sex
and the University, Celebrity, Controversy and a Student Journalism Revolution,
(18:37):
charting this proliferation of campus sex columns starting with the
launch of Sex on Tuesday at University of California at Berkeley,
and he says that during any given semester, more than
two hundred sex and dating columns are being published in
student newspapers, magazines, online outlets. But in the mid nineties,
(18:59):
before that Sex on Tuesday column at Berkeley, the number
of sex student columns was zero, and a lot of
the people who write them, mostly women, say that you
cannot overestimate the Carrie Bradshaw effect. Carrie Bradshaw for those unfamiliar,
being the protagonist sex columnists in Sex in the City. Yeah,
(19:24):
now that was That's a complaint. I might have voiced
a time or tier in college, like why do all
these people think they are Carrie Bradshaw Because it was
very glamorous. I was in journalism school at the time
when Sex in the City was still on HBO, And
I am not gonna lie that it painted a very
romantic portrait in my head of the combination of writing
(19:46):
and dating and and being open with your sexuality and
sharing all of these things. Because there's a point where
these sex columns are not so much advice giving but
just over sharing, yes, and so it is another outlet
to let people know that you might be going through
(20:06):
the same thing that they are. However, I just I
just don't like it. I don't like that No, I
don't like it. And it's not because I don't like
sex columns or don't like reading about dating issues and
that kind of thing. I just you're just saying it's
more of like blind leading the blind. I think it's
just I think it tends to be ridiculous. Yeah, well
how about this soap Caroline. There is an argument that
(20:30):
just as relationship advice columns have been stand ins for
direct communication, like how with the Victorian problem pages, it
was often women writing in asking how to decode male
signals because she couldn't, you know, they couldn't sit down
and have face to face dates. They couldn't go to dinner,
she couldn't say do you want to date me? Or what? Dude? Um?
(20:52):
You could argue that perhaps sex columns on campuses are
stand ins for proper sex said, so maybe that help us.
Well that's the thing. Maybe that it's a it's a
signal of a greater need to, you know, be informed
about what's what. Sure. You could also argue that some
(21:13):
of these people are writing columns just so they can
talk about like the fancy place they went to dinner,
and then sexual positions after dinner, and two and in
the cachet, perhaps of calling oneself a sex columnist. Yes, yeah,
there's a lot. I thought we could do it. We
could even do like a spin off episode just on
sex columns, because they are they are so common, and
(21:35):
I have known sex columnists and it is it is
interesting to to talk to them about I don't know,
I guess to see what what spends their motors about
wanting to be so personal in public. Um. But another
thing that has, you know, come alongside this. Yeah, you
(21:56):
have the more traditional like campus sex columns, but it's
also a sign of this, perhaps the oversharing as an
extension of us being so online and sharing everything and
putting everything out there. And you would think in a
way that living in the Internet age as we do,
(22:16):
that it would have signaled the death of advice columns,
because why would you need advice if there's Google Now.
I would just think that you would go out and
search for your little niche advice column Exactly. There are
more than ever before. Yeah, yeah, we mentioned Dear Prudence
over at Slate. Salon has since you asked the New
York Times, the ethicist Jezebel pot psychology, although that's been retired.
(22:40):
Correct every now and then but there's a there's a
book coming out. Okay, so the Hairpin has asked a
still in the blank resident expert person that they're bringing in.
And then there's Columbia Universities Go ask Alice, which we've
actually referenced a lot on the podcast because it's not
only very informative, but it's very detailed and not it
(23:02):
doesn't shy away from honestly answering sex questions and body questions. Yeah,
it's a it's a great resource. I mean it's more
cut and dried sex education, but still a really good resource.
And it goes on and on and on from there
on the internet. And one columnist who has emerged thanks
to the Internet who would be remiss to not mentioned
(23:25):
is Deer Sugar over at the Rumpus, and a couple
of years ago she came out from behind her anonymous
Deer Sugar chitle because she was publishing a book. It's
Cheryl Strait, who's two thousand twelve memoir Wild is still,
I believe, a New York Times bestseller and it has
become one of the most beloved online advice columns. And
(23:47):
I don't know if you've ever read Deer sugar Caroline.
But I got sucked into it last year, and I
remember the first time I read one of her responses
and I couldn't stop, just kept clicking through more and
more and more, because she not only is a wonderful writer,
but in she she writes with a style that she
(24:09):
refers to as radical empathy, where she ties in a
lot of her own personal experiences. And also you can
tell that she really thinks about and cares about the
person who is writing to her. And maybe we love
it so much because that's something that's often missing from
the Internet because it's so fast and the attention span
(24:31):
is so brief. And finally, here's a space where someone
clearly sat down and took time and is not only
giving them an answer, but also giving them part of herself.
You can tell it. I really love it. Yeah, you do. Um. Well,
you know, before before she revealed her true identity, uh
(24:51):
Ruth Franklin at The New Republic was talking about just
the whole the internet phenomenon that got But it's an
Internet phenomenon, but it goes way back to the origins
of advice columns as far as anonymity, And it doesn't
really matter what about her is real and what about
her is fake because the advice she gives is so
(25:14):
thorough but so touching. And so you know those people
who created quote unquote societies to answer questions in the
seventeenth century, that was their version. And now we have
people like Sugar Slash Cheryl Straad, who you know, she
existed behind this sort of curtain hiding her true identity.
But it just let people feel more comfortable coming to
(25:34):
her with very private things. Yeah, and um, it was
something else that might resonate with some of our stuff.
Mo'm never told you listeners. Um. In an interview with
Straad uh to Bitch Magazine, she talks about how feminism
informs the column she She says, feminism is who I am.
It's the lens from which I view the world. Everything
(25:55):
in Sugar is feminists. It should be stamped this is
written by a feminist and uh, if you haven't checked
out Dear Sugar over at the Rumpus, I highly recommended.
There's now a collection of some of her advice columns
in the book Tiny Beautiful Things that you can also
look at as well. Tiny Beautiful Things is one of
(26:16):
the most popular. One of those clicked on columns from there, um,
but I feel like she's really she. She hasn't reinvented
advice columns, but I think she represents the best of
what it can be in terms of like the personal stuff.
Dan Savage has a sex stuff covered, shery austra it,
She's got your personal stuff covered, and in between, who
(26:36):
knows what it in between? You have nineteen year olds
on college campus. Is driving Caroline insane? I know, Well,
they don't drive me insane anymore because I don't read
college newspapers. One I did have a favorite in middle school.
I had a favorite online advice columnist, breakup Girl. Do
you remember her at all? She ended up transitioning to
I want to say MSN and I want to say
(26:58):
her column was just like schlenn someone out there needs
to correct me if I'm wrong. But she was so great,
and her column it was that anonymity. It was just
break up girls. And her picture was a cartoon of
a blonde woman with a cape and a little outfit
in some boots. And she answered so sensitively and with
humor and kindness, and you know, she just cut through
(27:21):
the through the bs. Also, all of these relationship questions
from young people. She took young people seriously, and so
as a middle schooler, it was so even though I
wasn't necessarily having these problems, I wasn't dating yet or
any of that stuff, it was so nice to read that,
like somebody taking young people seriously. Yeah, that reminds me
of Rookie Meg's feature Ask a Grown Man, which is
(27:44):
a video advice column and they've they've talked to John
Hamm and other people. Really John Hamd, I need to
say more John Hamd, but where they take younger people's questions,
younger girls questions and these grown men answer them. And
it's very endearing because it's the same thing. It's taking
these problems seriously. Because I mean, when we're still if
(28:09):
you look at the advice columns you and I were
probably reading when we were fourteen fifteen and the ones
we might be reading today, it's it's all different versions
of the same stuff that goes over and over and
over again. And Uh. One thing though, that we weren't
able to find in our research on advice columns was
any kind of analysis on the quality of the the
(28:32):
advice that's given, because I feel like a lot of
it's more like a psychological thing that we gleaned from it.
This is like comfort of knowing that other people have problems,
maybe their problems aren't as bad as ours, seeing that
there's a solution, so maybe the maybe it doesn't matter
all that much. I mean, there there were a couple
(28:52):
of papers looking at sex health questions and health specific
like medical advice, and usually the prognosis was it's not
so great talk to your doctor, but in terms of
the personal quandaries, it's a little more vague. Yeah. As
far as the effect that it has on people, yeah, well,
(29:15):
I mean maybe a lot of that has to do
with the fact that we've been asking the same questions
for four hundred years. And why Yeah, I guess because
we just I don't know. It sounds like I need
to write to an advice column Well do your Athenian Mercury.
Why must we keep asking the same questions? And then
at Michael Jackson's song human Nature queues up, I wish
(29:37):
that song could cue up right now to take us,
to take us out, because I think that's all we
got on advice columnists. I had a lot of fun
researching it, and I have obviously it's soft, soft spot
for advice columns, and I appreciate when listeners trust us
enough to to ask our advice on things as well
(29:59):
because had experiences. We've had experiences, and we try to
practice radical empathy as much as we can as well,
because I think that is an excellent guiding principle. Indeed,
so with that thoughts quandaries, let us know all of them,
mom stuff. A Discovery dot com is where you can
send your letters, and of course you can hit us
(30:21):
up on Facebook as well. And now for some letters, well,
we've got a couple of letters here in response to
our episode on vaginal rejuvenation Slash labya plasts slash designer
vaginas and these are from some female listeners. In the
(30:44):
last podcast, we read some responses from a couple of
male listeners. Here's what's some ladies guest to say A
listen rights I really identify with this podcast. I can
understand how a lot of women can be self conscious
about the appearance of their vaginas because usually the only
other one as we see are in porn. What else
do we have to compare ourselves to. I was extremely
(31:05):
self conscious during puberty, not about my vagina, but my
breasts for the same reason. I hadn't seen porn yet,
but all the breasts I did see we're in movies,
and they were always really perky and round, with small,
hard nipples. Mine started growing in more cone shaped with
larger nipples, and I was so afraid that my breasts
were ugly and no man would find them attractive, and
I'd never get to go skinny dipping with my friends
(31:25):
or do other random naked activities that I imagined I
would do when I got older. However, porn actually helped
in my situation because it wasn't professional porn, it was
amateur porn. Amateur point is normal people. So once I
got older and started seeing it, I was exposed all
kinds of different looking breasts and vaginas, and I realized
that my breasts were actually pretty normal looking. The perky,
(31:46):
round ones in the movies are pretty rare, and when
they actually do exist, I'm sure they don't stay that
way for long. So thank you, Alissa, and I have
a letter here from Caitlin, who wants to alert us
to a new perspective. She says, I, like most women,
was not aware of the variety of vulva sizes and
shapes out there and have definitely looked at my own
(32:06):
and wondered if it is quote unquote Okay. It wasn't
until I watched the British documentary The Perfect Vagina that
I discovered that many women have labia minora. They're longer
than their labia majora. My vulva is naturally close to
what you and Jezebel have described as the barbie, with
clamshell like labia majora and minora that are very small
and are hidden completely by the majora. In both the documentary,
(32:29):
in the Jezebel article and comments, there were many people
saying that the barbie style vulva is horrifying, not because
of the surgery involved, but because it creates an aesthetic
that is prepubescent, non sexual and like a little girl.
Well as a woman who has tiny labia minora, I
just have to say, my vulva and I are definitely
not prepubescent and are very much sexual. I hope that
(32:50):
all of these conversations help people realize that there is
no best kind of vulva and that people will not
demean small minure in the process of celebrating all sizes
of labia. So thank you. Katie for lending that perspective
there is no correct vola. Yeah, and that is such
a good point of in the process of kind of
(33:11):
taking a more critical eye to the ideal, to not
say that if someone does have that poor an ideal,
but that is bad in any any way whatsoever. So
thanks to everyone who's written into us. Keep the letters coming.
Mom Stuff at discovery dot com is where you can
send them. You can also contact us on Facebook start
(33:31):
a conversation. They're like us. While you're at it, you
can tweet us at mom Stuff podcast, and you can
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You dot tumbler dot com. And if you would like
to do a good thing for your brain this week,
you should head over to our website it's how Stuff
Works dot com for more on this and thousands of
(33:56):
other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com. Five
seven
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you from how stupp
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Christen and I'm Caroline. And this is part two of
our two parter on advice columns. In case you missed
the last episode, stop what you're doing and go listen
(00:25):
to it right now. No, you can keep listening to
this one in case you missed the last episode for
a quick recap, we talked about the history of the
advice column, which goes all the way back to I
can hear your brains exploding right now. It is incredible,
I know, um. And we talked about how the content
(00:46):
of advice columns changed over time to be more less
about propriety and more about personal issues. And by personal
I do means six Yeah. Well no, just as we
mentioned we talked a little bit about this in our
last episode. As time went on, the attitudes towards sex,
(01:08):
both in society and within the safe realm of the
advice column did change, and Adrian Bingham writes about this
in newspaper Problem Pages and British Sexual Culture since nineteen eighteen,
in which he talks about how in the interwar period
and into the forties, these problem pages, these advice columns
(01:30):
almost invariably provided staunch defenses of conventional morality and portrayed
sexuality as a dangerous instinct. You have to protect yourself
from these dangerous instincts. But moving on into the fifties
and sixties and even the seventies, sexuality was increasingly depicted
as positive, and moving even forward in time, these problem
(01:52):
pages and advice columns have even developed a more hedonistic approach.
He says, yeah, which is why the title of this
episode is from Dear Abbey two Dan Savage, who would
take I'm sure pleasure being described as hedonistic um. And
he also talks about how they've been presented more overtly
(02:14):
as entertainment. So two women who really get things going
at that started that shift toward more open sexuality, more
sex positivity in advice columns. Who also rescue the advice
column from its death in the newspapers as it was
(02:35):
starting to trickle off were a pair of sisters, twin
sisters who were born July four, nine eighteen in Sioux City, Iowa.
And that is don't get these mixed up folks. Pauline
Esther Freedman and Esther Pauline Friedman, better known as Dear
(02:56):
Abbey and in Landers. Yeah, these were they were identical twins.
They studied journalism at the same college. They were even
married on the same day. So you think, like, oh,
that's adorable. They must be so close, they must love
each other so much. They were feuding advice column nous. Yeah.
So the first one to jump into this business is
(03:19):
Esther Pauline Freedman Letterer. That's that's her married last name,
otherwise known as Eppie. She she took over the and
Lander's column, which started at the Chicago Suntimes under Ruth Crowley,
and she entered a contest right to get that column. Yeah,
in nineteen five, the Chicago Suntimes had a contest for
(03:42):
the and Lander's column because I believe Ruth Crowley had
passed away. And the thing about and Landers was it
was one of the remaining big names in the business.
By the nineties, some newspapers had stopped syndicating advice columns altogether.
And so Eppie enters this contest, lo and behold she wins.
(04:06):
And apparently Eppie had a knack for writing advice columns
because within the first eighteen months she took the an
Lander's column from twenty six to a hundred and ten papers,
and she was known for a homie, more detailed style. Yeah.
So about a year later, you know you're thinking, okay,
(04:26):
that's great. One sister went off and you know she
she won this contest. Now she's a really successful columnist.
I bet you're happy for her sister, sister, twin sister,
twin sister. But no, Pauline Esther goes out and uh
pitches Dear Abbey under under the pen name Abigail van Buren. Yeah,
(04:48):
the feud between Dear Abbey and a Landers starts because
Pauline claims, in those early days of Eppie taking over
as Ann Landers that she would call up all Pauline
and say what do you think about this? And Pauline
would help her write the columns Now, of course, and Landers,
now becoming a household name, was not pleased that her
(05:09):
sister was spilling these secrets. So it starts this feud
and Pauline's like, well, I'll just start my own thing.
And it was funny because her motivation for starting it, Yeah,
it was she seemed to be pretty good at it,
and perhaps it was some kind of competition with her sister,
but she publicly said that she really just wanted to
(05:30):
be more than a housewife because her husband was very wealthy,
and she at one point said, quote, there has to
be something more to life than ma young. My mother
would disagree, um, And that was her motivation for taking
Abigail van Buren a k a. Dear Abbey to the
San Francisco Chronicle, and it kicks off in nineteen fifty six,
(05:52):
and her style was far more quippy, and we have
we have some some examples of a dear be responses
because one of the reasons why we did want to
do this two part on advice columnists was because of
the recent passing of Dear Abbey and Lander's her sister,
Esther Friedman Letterer had died in two thousand two, but
(06:14):
Dear Abbey died in early two thirteen. Right, Yes, you
mentioned her quippy style. She she did have some great zingers,
some one liners. One person wrote in to say, you know,
my son married this woman and in February, and the
baby was born in August at eight and a half pounds.
How is it possible for such a premature baby to
(06:35):
be so big? And Dear Abbey's response was the baby
was on time, the wedding was late. Forget it, you know,
and like, I mean, that's that's pretty not racy, but
I mean that's pretty advanced for the time that this
person was writing in well, talking about advanced. Dan Savage,
who we brought up a lot in the podcast before.
(06:56):
He is the host of the podcast Savage Love, better
known for his sex advice column in Seattle's The Stranger
All Weekly. Um, and he was talking in a in
a fairly recent episode of Savage Love about Dear Abbey's
legacy and this was his favorite letter and her very
quippy response. So the letter goes about four months ago,
(07:19):
the house across the street was sold to a quote
unquote father and son, or so we thought. We later
learned it was an older man about fifty and a
young fellow about twenty four. This was a respectable neighborhood
before this odd couple moved in. They have all sorts
of strange looking company. Men who look like women, women
who look like men, Blacks, whites, Indians. Yesterday I even
saw two nuns going there. Abby. These weirdos are wrecking
(07:43):
our property values. How can we improve the quality of
this once respectable neighborhood signed up in arms. Dear Abbey
rights deer up, you could move. That's great. Just killing
that biggest tree with with three words, that's all she needs.
And dance Bag goes on to talk about how with
the whole father's son thing. At the time in California,
(08:05):
it wasn't uncommon for one partner in a gay couple
to adopt the other so that they could live together
and share legal rights, you know, those those civil rights
that they are still fighting for. But um, in that way,
Abby was uh, pretty pretty liberal voice at the time. Yeah.
(08:27):
The New York Times characterizes her thus lee, they say,
with her comic and flinty, yet fundamentally sympathetic voice. And
Mrs Phillips helped wrestle the advice column from its weepy
Victorian past into a hard nosed twentieth century present. There
for you know, saving it and getting more and more
people to write in, because she's writing about modern problems
(08:48):
and she's answering in such a way that it just
kind of cuts through the bs. Yeah, and her daughter
Jean has since taken over the Dear Abbey column, And
I was surprised to learn that it's still receives over
ten thousand letters per week. And I was mentioned in
the New York Times obituary for Pauline Esther Friedman Um
(09:08):
And it's funny that the feud between Dear Abby and
and Landers has continued since now both of the women
have died. Um and Lander's daughter, Margot Howard, initially took
over Slate's Dear Prudence column, but she later started up
a feud with Amy Dickinson, who took over the and
(09:30):
Lander's column after Eppie stepped down. So this is a
strange back and forth. Yeah, and there were a lot
of ugly words. Uh, this is coming from Slate. In
February two thousand nine, Margot accused Amy Dickinson of claiming
to be the quote next and Landers, you know you're
you're not. You can't replace an original. Of course, you
know Eppie wasn't the original either. But anyway, Dickinson said,
(09:52):
you know that's not the case. I never build myself
that way. And she says that she in fact distanced
herself from Landers when she entered the Advice realm, and
then she kind of maybe sticks sticks at to her.
She says, my column is a whole new venture. It's
funnier and snappier and more entertaining. Yeah, and now she
writes ask Amy. So she spun off into her own thing.
(10:15):
But even though Eppie and Pauline are gone, advice columns
are still thriving, both in print and online. And the
interesting thing is the queries have not changed all that much.
We talked about in the first Advice Column episode. How
in the very first publication of Advice Columns and the
(10:35):
Athenian Mercury, someone asked whether or not it was okay
for a couple to shack up before they got married. Um.
And there's something so abiding about the advice column format
in terms of having those anonymous personas UM, and the
(10:56):
common questions that come up, and just the comfort that
we take in them simply existing, be able, being able
to read and possibly relate and maybe just be voyors
into other people's lives and their problems. Um, and dear
Abbey once said quote, most people just want someone to
listen to them without moralizing or sermonizing or sitting in judgment.
(11:17):
That's good therapy, just to get it out of your
system and tell somebody. Yeah and sing, I mean things
are changing obviously with with technology, but our problems do
remain the same. Emily Yaffi, who writes Slate's Dear Prudence column,
now says that yeah, there they are a very old form,
and they are a reflection of the times and of
the of the fact that basically human beings continue to
(11:40):
grapple with the same issues that they always have despite
these advances in technology. And she says, when I started
the column seven years ago, I got no letters about
social media. But now Facebook is a frequent topic. People
write about it all the time, the jealousy, boasting, cheating, manipulation.
But these are still the same tradition sational issues that
(12:01):
deer Abbey and landers and people way back in the seventeenth,
eighteenth and nineteenth century dealt with. Yeah, And one thing
that Yaffie and Amy Dickinson told The Atlantic was that
the number one topic that comes up so much that
kind of makes both of them sick, how much we
freak out over at weddings. Advice columns will exist as
(12:24):
long as weddings exists, because there there are so many
etiquette questions tied up in a people's emotions flying off
of the handle. Uh was was it? Amy? Dickinson, who
was like, I don't care about your bridesmaid problem. Yes, um,
But one thing too that hasn't changed is how few
male advice columnists there are. I mean, Dan Savage is
(12:46):
such an exception to the rule. He is America's foremost
sex columnists. But in terms of the day to day
advice columnists agony ants over in the UK, we don't
hear much about agony uncles. Um, we don't see a
lot of male advice calumnists. And when I was looking
into research on maybe why that is, maybe gendered patterns
(13:06):
of advice or gender and advice columns, all I got
were these silly internet comics about how if men were
to write advice columns they would just be mean and
straightforward and and essentially just say I don't care about
your bridesmaids. Yeah. I mean, there's what there's ask a
Guy or ask a dude. There there's asked men dot Com,
(13:29):
which you could say is one massive advice column. But
this is pretty timely because speaking of Slate, it just
launched in February Gentleman Scholar, which is a male advice
column written by Troy Patterson. But even still looking at
gentleman scholar. It's not so much of the personal queries
(13:52):
of I have this personal problem and how do I
deal with it? It's still obviously like geared toward men
of like we'll be talking about how to pour a
proper scotch something like that. Yeah, is it? Is it
bad for me to admit that when I started reading
his stuff that I just kind of got lost in
his language. I'm like, why are you writing like you're
(14:13):
so opaque? I just want to read some information and
you're just like, basically if if some people write in
straight lines, he writes in curly cues, and it just
drives me crazy. Troy Patterson, Yeah, maybe you should write
an advice column to the Gentleman's Skull. Yeah, hey, listen, No,
that's all right. There there are other people out there
to read who are more interesting, like Dan Savage. Like
(14:33):
Dan Savage. Now I realized that Dan Savage is podcast.
Let's say it's very in SFW. It is very it's
it's not necessarily uh family friendly, but but it's still
providing that community. Yes, it's still letting you know you're
not alone out there. It's still an informative and educational
(14:55):
tool and it's just very interesting, entertaining, sympathetic and kind
all at the same time. Yes, and and so so straightforward.
I'm a huge Dan Savage fan. And I love the
fact that when Anne Landers's personal effects were auctioned off
years ago, he bought her desk, and that is the
(15:18):
desk at which he writes his Stranger column. And a
couple of years ago there was a cover story on
Savage for the Washington Monthly magazine because obviously The Stranger
is published in Seattle, and the profiler talks about how
Savage attributes his advice giving empire to the combined influence
(15:40):
of Anne Lander's an Xavier Hollander, who wrote the Call
Me Madam advice column for Penthouse, which seems like it
makes so much sense when you think about Dan Savage's
style with the topics that he covers, which is not
always so lovey dovey. No it's not, but I think
know talking about and Landers like cutting, cutting straight to
(16:03):
the point. You know, somebody might write a long letter
about something that's obviously off the beaten path, not mainstream,
but he cuts through all of like the crazy details
and just says, you know, don't be a mean person.
Be upfront with your partner, etcetera, or dump. I can't
say that word him or her him. Yeah, there are
even some calls on the podcast. It's always give me
(16:25):
a bit of a chuckle when the caller is going
on and on and on about their problem, to the
point that Dan will just stop the call and just say,
you just cut through all of the noise and give
them some straightforwar advice because a lot of times when
people have to spend so long describing their problem, the
(16:48):
solution is much simpler, which is often you need to
check yourself, or you need to walk away or things
like that. But speaking of sex columnists, this is a
little bit tangential, but I feel like it still ties
in a lot to things we talked about on the podcast,
and it is something that we might not initially think
(17:09):
of in terms of advice columns. Uh that might be
more mainstream. But thanks to possibly Dance Savage and more
specifically to Sex in the City, there has been a
sex column revolution on college campuses. You're shaking your head, Caroline.
I'm shaking my head because Kristen Congre and I worked
(17:32):
at the same college newspaper, and I swear I mean
like steam is coming out of my ears, like why
it makes me wish the college newspapers had a longer
institutional memory slash editorial advisors who would shake these young
people who feel the need to write these ill informed,
ignorant sex columns. You said it. I've been meaning to
(17:55):
get that out for a long time. But they're they are,
They're very popular, And yeah, I don't it's great get
sex advice from a nineteen year old. That's fine. Well,
it's a relatively new thing. And I would argue that
it's another chapter in this timeline of advice columns, because
it's just another signal of us opening up in terms
(18:17):
of our acceptance of sexuality and how we approached that.
Because we have younger people. It's not agony and who
we're talking about it. It's agony sorority sisters who are
talking about it. And Daniel Reimold wrote the book Sex
and the University, Celebrity, Controversy and a Student Journalism Revolution,
(18:37):
charting this proliferation of campus sex columns starting with the
launch of Sex on Tuesday at University of California at Berkeley,
and he says that during any given semester, more than
two hundred sex and dating columns are being published in
student newspapers, magazines, online outlets. But in the mid nineties,
(18:59):
before that Sex on Tuesday column at Berkeley, the number
of sex student columns was zero, and a lot of
the people who write them, mostly women, say that you
cannot overestimate the Carrie Bradshaw effect. Carrie Bradshaw for those unfamiliar,
being the protagonist sex columnists in Sex in the City. Yeah,
(19:24):
now that was That's a complaint. I might have voiced
a time or tier in college, like why do all
these people think they are Carrie Bradshaw Because it was
very glamorous. I was in journalism school at the time
when Sex in the City was still on HBO, And
I am not gonna lie that it painted a very
romantic portrait in my head of the combination of writing
(19:46):
and dating and and being open with your sexuality and
sharing all of these things. Because there's a point where
these sex columns are not so much advice giving but
just over sharing, yes, and so it is another outlet
to let people know that you might be going through
(20:06):
the same thing that they are. However, I just I
just don't like it. I don't like that No, I
don't like it. And it's not because I don't like
sex columns or don't like reading about dating issues and
that kind of thing. I just you're just saying it's
more of like blind leading the blind. I think it's
just I think it tends to be ridiculous. Yeah, well
how about this soap Caroline. There is an argument that
(20:30):
just as relationship advice columns have been stand ins for
direct communication, like how with the Victorian problem pages, it
was often women writing in asking how to decode male
signals because she couldn't, you know, they couldn't sit down
and have face to face dates. They couldn't go to dinner,
she couldn't say do you want to date me? Or what? Dude? Um?
(20:52):
You could argue that perhaps sex columns on campuses are
stand ins for proper sex said, so maybe that help us.
Well that's the thing. Maybe that it's a it's a
signal of a greater need to, you know, be informed
about what's what. Sure. You could also argue that some
(21:13):
of these people are writing columns just so they can
talk about like the fancy place they went to dinner,
and then sexual positions after dinner, and two and in
the cachet, perhaps of calling oneself a sex columnist. Yes, yeah,
there's a lot. I thought we could do it. We
could even do like a spin off episode just on
sex columns, because they are they are so common, and
(21:35):
I have known sex columnists and it is it is
interesting to to talk to them about I don't know,
I guess to see what what spends their motors about
wanting to be so personal in public. Um. But another
thing that has, you know, come alongside this. Yeah, you
(21:56):
have the more traditional like campus sex columns, but it's
also a sign of this, perhaps the oversharing as an
extension of us being so online and sharing everything and
putting everything out there. And you would think in a
way that living in the Internet age as we do,
(22:16):
that it would have signaled the death of advice columns,
because why would you need advice if there's Google Now.
I would just think that you would go out and
search for your little niche advice column Exactly. There are
more than ever before. Yeah, yeah, we mentioned Dear Prudence
over at Slate. Salon has since you asked the New
York Times, the ethicist Jezebel pot psychology, although that's been retired.
(22:40):
Correct every now and then but there's a there's a
book coming out. Okay, so the Hairpin has asked a
still in the blank resident expert person that they're bringing in.
And then there's Columbia Universities Go ask Alice, which we've
actually referenced a lot on the podcast because it's not
only very informative, but it's very detailed and not it
(23:02):
doesn't shy away from honestly answering sex questions and body questions. Yeah,
it's a it's a great resource. I mean it's more
cut and dried sex education, but still a really good resource.
And it goes on and on and on from there
on the internet. And one columnist who has emerged thanks
to the Internet who would be remiss to not mentioned
(23:25):
is Deer Sugar over at the Rumpus, and a couple
of years ago she came out from behind her anonymous
Deer Sugar chitle because she was publishing a book. It's
Cheryl Strait, who's two thousand twelve memoir Wild is still,
I believe, a New York Times bestseller and it has
become one of the most beloved online advice columns. And
(23:47):
I don't know if you've ever read Deer sugar Caroline.
But I got sucked into it last year, and I
remember the first time I read one of her responses
and I couldn't stop, just kept clicking through more and
more and more, because she not only is a wonderful writer,
but in she she writes with a style that she
(24:09):
refers to as radical empathy, where she ties in a
lot of her own personal experiences. And also you can
tell that she really thinks about and cares about the
person who is writing to her. And maybe we love
it so much because that's something that's often missing from
the Internet because it's so fast and the attention span
(24:31):
is so brief. And finally, here's a space where someone
clearly sat down and took time and is not only
giving them an answer, but also giving them part of herself.
You can tell it. I really love it. Yeah, you do. Um. Well,
you know, before before she revealed her true identity, uh
(24:51):
Ruth Franklin at The New Republic was talking about just
the whole the internet phenomenon that got But it's an
Internet phenomenon, but it goes way back to the origins
of advice columns as far as anonymity, And it doesn't
really matter what about her is real and what about
her is fake because the advice she gives is so
(25:14):
thorough but so touching. And so you know those people
who created quote unquote societies to answer questions in the
seventeenth century, that was their version. And now we have
people like Sugar Slash Cheryl Straad, who you know, she
existed behind this sort of curtain hiding her true identity.
But it just let people feel more comfortable coming to
(25:34):
her with very private things. Yeah, and um, it was
something else that might resonate with some of our stuff.
Mo'm never told you listeners. Um. In an interview with
Straad uh to Bitch Magazine, she talks about how feminism
informs the column she She says, feminism is who I am.
It's the lens from which I view the world. Everything
(25:55):
in Sugar is feminists. It should be stamped this is
written by a feminist and uh, if you haven't checked
out Dear Sugar over at the Rumpus, I highly recommended.
There's now a collection of some of her advice columns
in the book Tiny Beautiful Things that you can also
look at as well. Tiny Beautiful Things is one of
(26:16):
the most popular. One of those clicked on columns from there, um,
but I feel like she's really she. She hasn't reinvented
advice columns, but I think she represents the best of
what it can be in terms of like the personal stuff.
Dan Savage has a sex stuff covered, shery austra it,
She's got your personal stuff covered, and in between, who
(26:36):
knows what it in between? You have nineteen year olds
on college campus. Is driving Caroline insane? I know, Well,
they don't drive me insane anymore because I don't read
college newspapers. One I did have a favorite in middle school.
I had a favorite online advice columnist, breakup Girl. Do
you remember her at all? She ended up transitioning to
I want to say MSN and I want to say
(26:58):
her column was just like schlenn someone out there needs
to correct me if I'm wrong. But she was so great,
and her column it was that anonymity. It was just
break up girls. And her picture was a cartoon of
a blonde woman with a cape and a little outfit
in some boots. And she answered so sensitively and with
humor and kindness, and you know, she just cut through
(27:21):
the through the bs. Also, all of these relationship questions
from young people. She took young people seriously, and so
as a middle schooler, it was so even though I
wasn't necessarily having these problems, I wasn't dating yet or
any of that stuff, it was so nice to read that,
like somebody taking young people seriously. Yeah, that reminds me
of Rookie Meg's feature Ask a Grown Man, which is
(27:44):
a video advice column and they've they've talked to John
Hamm and other people. Really John Hamd, I need to
say more John Hamd, but where they take younger people's questions,
younger girls questions and these grown men answer them. And
it's very endearing because it's the same thing. It's taking
these problems seriously. Because I mean, when we're still if
(28:09):
you look at the advice columns you and I were
probably reading when we were fourteen fifteen and the ones
we might be reading today, it's it's all different versions
of the same stuff that goes over and over and
over again. And Uh. One thing though, that we weren't
able to find in our research on advice columns was
any kind of analysis on the quality of the the
(28:32):
advice that's given, because I feel like a lot of
it's more like a psychological thing that we gleaned from it.
This is like comfort of knowing that other people have problems,
maybe their problems aren't as bad as ours, seeing that
there's a solution, so maybe the maybe it doesn't matter
all that much. I mean, there there were a couple
(28:52):
of papers looking at sex health questions and health specific
like medical advice, and usually the prognosis was it's not
so great talk to your doctor, but in terms of
the personal quandaries, it's a little more vague. Yeah. As
far as the effect that it has on people, yeah, well,
(29:15):
I mean maybe a lot of that has to do
with the fact that we've been asking the same questions
for four hundred years. And why Yeah, I guess because
we just I don't know. It sounds like I need
to write to an advice column Well do your Athenian Mercury.
Why must we keep asking the same questions? And then
at Michael Jackson's song human Nature queues up, I wish
(29:37):
that song could cue up right now to take us,
to take us out, because I think that's all we
got on advice columnists. I had a lot of fun
researching it, and I have obviously it's soft, soft spot
for advice columns, and I appreciate when listeners trust us
enough to to ask our advice on things as well
(29:59):
because had experiences. We've had experiences, and we try to
practice radical empathy as much as we can as well,
because I think that is an excellent guiding principle. Indeed,
so with that thoughts quandaries, let us know all of them,
mom stuff. A Discovery dot com is where you can
send your letters, and of course you can hit us
(30:21):
up on Facebook as well. And now for some letters, well,
we've got a couple of letters here in response to
our episode on vaginal rejuvenation Slash labya plasts slash designer
vaginas and these are from some female listeners. In the
(30:44):
last podcast, we read some responses from a couple of
male listeners. Here's what's some ladies guest to say A
listen rights I really identify with this podcast. I can
understand how a lot of women can be self conscious
about the appearance of their vaginas because usually the only
other one as we see are in porn. What else
do we have to compare ourselves to. I was extremely
(31:05):
self conscious during puberty, not about my vagina, but my
breasts for the same reason. I hadn't seen porn yet,
but all the breasts I did see we're in movies,
and they were always really perky and round, with small,
hard nipples. Mine started growing in more cone shaped with
larger nipples, and I was so afraid that my breasts
were ugly and no man would find them attractive, and
I'd never get to go skinny dipping with my friends
(31:25):
or do other random naked activities that I imagined I
would do when I got older. However, porn actually helped
in my situation because it wasn't professional porn, it was
amateur porn. Amateur point is normal people. So once I
got older and started seeing it, I was exposed all
kinds of different looking breasts and vaginas, and I realized
that my breasts were actually pretty normal looking. The perky,
(31:46):
round ones in the movies are pretty rare, and when
they actually do exist, I'm sure they don't stay that
way for long. So thank you, Alissa, and I have
a letter here from Caitlin, who wants to alert us
to a new perspective. She says, I, like most women,
was not aware of the variety of vulva sizes and
shapes out there and have definitely looked at my own
(32:06):
and wondered if it is quote unquote Okay. It wasn't
until I watched the British documentary The Perfect Vagina that
I discovered that many women have labia minora. They're longer
than their labia majora. My vulva is naturally close to
what you and Jezebel have described as the barbie, with
clamshell like labia majora and minora that are very small
and are hidden completely by the majora. In both the documentary,
(32:29):
in the Jezebel article and comments, there were many people
saying that the barbie style vulva is horrifying, not because
of the surgery involved, but because it creates an aesthetic
that is prepubescent, non sexual and like a little girl.
Well as a woman who has tiny labia minora, I
just have to say, my vulva and I are definitely
not prepubescent and are very much sexual. I hope that
(32:50):
all of these conversations help people realize that there is
no best kind of vulva and that people will not
demean small minure in the process of celebrating all sizes
of labia. So thank you. Katie for lending that perspective
there is no correct vola. Yeah, and that is such
a good point of in the process of kind of
(33:11):
taking a more critical eye to the ideal, to not
say that if someone does have that poor an ideal,
but that is bad in any any way whatsoever. So
thanks to everyone who's written into us. Keep the letters coming.
Mom Stuff at discovery dot com is where you can
send them. You can also contact us on Facebook start
(33:31):
a conversation. They're like us. While you're at it, you
can tweet us at mom Stuff podcast, and you can
also follow us on Tumbler. It's stuff Mom Never told
You dot tumbler dot com. And if you would like
to do a good thing for your brain this week,
you should head over to our website it's how Stuff
Works dot com for more on this and thousands of
(33:56):
other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com. Five
seven
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
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Samantha McVey
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