Aackt 1: Cathy Comics, Revisited

Allow me to be the first to advise you: Cathy comics are good as hell — but it’s complicated. Today, Jamie takes a look at what exactly happens in the 34 years of Cathy lore, and it’s way more than you think.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
M if. I strapped my silver word to five pound
weights while I burn more calories than I eat eat,
having worn yoga pants for twelve months in a row,
I greet the universe with not my stock. I look
for achievement. I only see worry, worry. Why are my
blunders so clear my triumph so blurry? A AC, sorry, ac, sorry, okay.

(00:35):
I want to talk to you about Kathy comics. She
burst into the world in nineteen seventy six. She's at what,
She's out on dates and she don't like politics. From
mama and urban to feminist friends. She's fighting all the
stands it with chocolate and hay. She's fighting back to

(00:56):
stressed with success. Let's go to see that o Cathy
Bacayan cat. She's got a luck going all. My name

(01:23):
is Jamie Loftus. I am a comedian and podcaster in
that order, by the way, and I've created shows like
Lolita Podcast, a show about the lingering cultural impact of
Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, and My Year in Mensa, a show
about joining me high i Q Society Mensa and accidentally
making my life a complete disaster for a year. I'm

(01:46):
very excited to be talking to you this summer about
Kathy comics. My favorite fixations tend to be sort of
innocuous things that have been floating around in pop culture
for a long time that we don't really think about.
And that's very, very much what's going on with the
Kathy comics. And as someone who grew up listening to
the Kathy comic character be used as shorthand for woman

(02:10):
who's stressed, I was really interested to find out if
the criticism around this property was valid or perhaps lazy
and full of ship. I grew up with a completely
warped idea of who this cultural figure was. By the
time I was a sentient person. Sometimes in the two thousands,
Kathy was more frequently used as a punchline than as

(02:30):
a work that evolved considerably over time. My mom loved Kathy,
and I knew I was legally obligated to think that
anything my mom loved sucked. Until I came back to
her work now in my late twenties, no one had
really challenged that at all, and so I was fascinated
when I started to read these comics to find that

(02:51):
most of these impressions that I had formed as a
kid seemed more based on the comics, advertising and merchandizing
rather than the actual thirty four years of daily content
that it produced. There are definitely elements of satire and
commentary that never really got the attention that I think
that they deserve. Even Kathy guys A White has told

(03:11):
me throughout the process of making this show that she
was initially nervous about me trying to make this show
at all because a lot of feminists have been very
quick to dismiss her work instead of actually reading and
engaging with it over the years. So I get her hesitation,
But there's a lot more than meets the eye here.
So I ask that you leave your cultural osmosis lazy
Kathy takes at the door and let's take an actual look.

(03:34):
So let me tell you about Kathy. Kathy was a
newspaper comic strip that ran from nineteen seventy six until
two thousand and ten. Every strip was written and illustrated
by Kathy guys White, a woman who left her job
at the advertising agency she'd worked her way up at
in the nineteen seventies, submitted her drawings to the Universal

(03:54):
Press Syndicate at the insistence of her own mom and
continued to work at that ad agency until she was
sure the comic strip was a hit, and it was
a hit. The Cathy strip began when Kathy guys White
was only twenty six years old, and it quickly grew
into a national phenomenon in the United States, peaking in

(04:16):
the late nineteen eighties and early nineteen nineties. And that's
not for no reason. For many loyal comic readers, Kathy
was the first consistent comic strip in the newspaper that
dealt with a woman's life, written by a woman who
was also carrying the same name as her creator. The
Kathy comic character, while not a direct reflection of her author,

(04:40):
shared the traits of being a single working woman in
the nineteen seventies who struggles with dating, overeating, work, and
her relationship with her mother and friends. Here's how Kathy
guys White herself described the themes of the comic in
four piece in the Detroit Free p Us Food. Men

(05:02):
eat because they're hungry. Women eat to reward themselves for
good behavior and to comfort themselves for pain, sorrow, or
because they're bored or excited or tired or full of pep.
Any problem can be solved by consuming large quantities of eminem's.
For example, every woman knows that love relationships are very

(05:23):
confusing to career women. If you're so self sufficient, why
do you feel like you need a man, especially an
MCP like Irving. Don't know what m c P means.
If you prize your independence, how come you want to
make yourself vulnerable and dependent upon Irving. Such contradictions in
love relationships drive career women nuts, and to the Sarah

(05:45):
Lee Cheesecake Box mother's a woman's first and most powerful
role model is mom, and mom is frequently quite different
from that which the career woman hopes to be herself.
We love mom, but we want to be independnt and
something else. When we find ourselves needing her comfort again,
taking her advice and mimicking her in thought word, indeed,

(06:08):
we are miffed at ourselves. We suspect she's pleased. She
usually is. Careers, we want it all. As previously noted,
job and home life conflict. What we believe is possible
to achieve may seem impossible in the daily reality. Unquote.
That context might make it easier to understand why there

(06:31):
was so much criticism of Cathy comics and it's the
criticism of her that seems pretty preserved in amber, at
least in terms of how it's been referenced in pop
culture in the last twenty years. Whenever Cathy comics come
up in pop culture, it's in a very particular way,
or that's the only runs I know about are the

(06:53):
ones in my panty hos my sighs one out time
I fell asleep on the sand and when I woke up,
I was in the tank at sea World, Embarrassments, Fladges,
swept drops, hot Flash, Herbic, Monday's at This is a
Kathy cartoon. Yeah, that cartoon copied exactly what you said
to the other date. Chocolate chocolate, chocolate ac She said

(07:19):
every night, every night, the same thing. That's a tad
bitchy for a takeout lady. Do you think I'm gonna
rut a food ruts. I'm sitting home with my cat
ordering the same thing almost every night. The only thing
that can make it sadder if I had a Kathy
comic taped to my refrigerator door. Can never say Kathy's
comic to me again. All three of these examples, to me,

(07:42):
exemplify the popular image of the Kathy comic. The critics
of this comic portray Kathy the character as pathetic as
this caricature of womanhood. A woman who can't lose ten pounds,
a woman who can't get a date, a woman who
has an overbearing mother who's two involved in her life

(08:02):
well into her thirties forties. At some point in the comic,
her age of the cubs kind of ambiguous. At her peak,
the Kathy character was as loved by her fans for
being terminally stressed out and overextended as she was hated
by her detractors for being cringe e. And I'm here

(08:22):
to tell you that these haters, these detractors simply have
not read enough Kathy comics. Are you going to believe
Carrie Bradshaw rich coming from her? By the way, She's
a literal Kathy comic over someone who spent the entire
spring of reading thousands of acts too, feminist movements worth

(08:45):
of acts, seven full presidencies worth of acts. Listener, I
ask you because I have read every single Kathy comic
and I really like to talk to people about it.
Here's a sample of the people I've entered you for
this show. Comic artists from multiple generations, women in the workforce,
at the height of the comics popularity, cultural anthropologists, experts

(09:09):
and critics of diet culture, and my mom saying what
their immediate association with Kathy comics is. Here's what my
mom thinks it's about. Well, that's a lot of questions
because I have so many thanks feelings um that she's
underappreciated and I always wanted her to work on, you know,

(09:31):
be presented better with her self confidence. I don't know
how to say that she's always aiming to please others
and suffering in silence. Okay, that wasn't helpful. Here's what
Kathy guys White says it's about. I think when when
I started doing them, I mean, of course it was

(09:53):
originally just for me to dump my frustrations on paper,
but it also I know from doing the comic strip
that one thing I can contribute to the world is
uh uh, you know, commiseration. I'll say, so, why am
I doing this show? Well, first, because I think Kathy

(10:15):
as a cultural touchstone is really interesting. The majority knee
jerk reaction to Kathy Cannon is rooted in dismissal, in oversimplification,
and not the kind of reception you'd associate with the
legacy of other long running, fairly repetitive comic strips. As
the years have passed, while some of Cathy's colleagues have

(10:37):
ascended to near sthood Think You're Charles schultz Is and
others have become full on Trump supporting n F T.
Hawking nightmares think Mr Dilbert, this popular view of Cathy's
work has remained pretty static. I think that Kathy is
a symbol of how women's anxieties and concern can be

(11:00):
considered embarrassing or not worthy of discussion if the character
in question isn't a perfect role model. Also, I just
wanted to make a fun little summer podcast for the girls.
Also I love Kathy. So today we're going to look
at who Cathy was as a character on the newspaper

(11:22):
page from six and who she's become. Because yes, the
Kathy comic strip made a quiet but regular comeback last
year on Instagram to document Guyswhite's feelings about the pandemic lockdown.
And yes, you may find the Kathy character frustrating at times,

(11:42):
and no, you might not like girl all the time.
And no it's not the peak of feminist discourse. But
it never said it was going to be. That's what
Cathy is about. She tries a lot and she fails
a lot, and that doesn't make the existence of her
work not worth discus using. I think it makes it
especially worth discussing. What's included in the comic strip is important.

(12:06):
What is left out of the discussion of the comic
strip is equally important, and we're going to be discussing
it all. So please join me in getting Act pilled.
This is your last chance. After this, there is no
turning back. You take the blue pill. The story ends,

(12:27):
You go back to your podcasting app, you turn on
the Daily or whatever ship you listen to, and believe
whatever you want to believe. You take the act pill.
You stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep
the Cathy rabbit hole goes. Remember all I'm offering is
the truth, nothing more. I hope that was good. I

(12:53):
haven't seen the movie. Okay. Like many people my age
and many people not my age, I old a lot
of anger and resentment towards the Boomer generation, and Kathy
is unavoidably an icon of the Boomer generation and viewed
one way, Kathy guys Wides work is a day to

(13:14):
day chronicle of a boomer woman over the course of
thirty four years. And with this boomer womanhood comes a
lot of taglines. It goes without saying that there are
a lot of Kathy comics, and the collections released had
titles like men should come with instruction booklets, fourteen dollars

(13:35):
in the bank and a two d doll face in
my purse. I'd scream, except I look so fabulous, abs
of steel, buns of cinnamon. You get the idea, and
the taglines sold big time, And I will admit it
is easy and tempting to discuss Kathy as a protagonist
who says chocolate, chocolate, chocolate, ac because well, she does

(13:57):
say that chocolate, chocolate, chocolate what. But I think dismissing
her entirely as an insult to every woman who's ever
existed is a huge mistake. Kathy occupies a pretty interesting
place in American history and American feminism. She's a part
of a generation of women working full time to support themselves,

(14:18):
the boomers, putting off marriage but still desiring a fulfilling
and equitable ish relationship, struggling with whether she wants a
child of her own, while receiving a lot of external
pressure from her mother, who is a member of the
Silent generation. Women of Cathy's mother's generation were generally not
allowed to have careers and had to define themselves primarily

(14:42):
through being mothers. Kathy, the character was created by a
woman who was navigating many, if not all, of these
struggles herself, who also happened to win the highest award
in cartooning doing it, the Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist
of the Year, who also happened to win an Emmy
for Outstanding Animated Program for a Kathy special that ran

(15:05):
on CBS in the nineteen eighties, who also adopted and
raised a child on her own, who got married, who
got divorced, and who ended her comic strip in two
thousand ten on her own terms. I grew up aware
of Kathy comics, but had basically no idea what they
were supposed to be about. There's plenty of daily comics

(15:27):
for kids, your Garfield, your Calvin's and Hobbs is is,
and your family circuses if you're not the brightest uh.
But Kathy's audience is adults, specifically adult women of that time.
Reading it back as an adult now I kind of
get it. I also have a complicated history with food,

(15:49):
past and present. I have worried about the role love
has in my life, whether it's romantic or with friends
or with myself. I don't want to even talk about
my mom with you in a public setting. And I
feel shitty about work constantly, especially now that my algorithm
seems fine tuned to see my peers just rocketing past

(16:11):
me each and every day. I also have a lot
of worries that the Kathy comic does not seem to.
I have notes for the issues that she chooses to
tackle versus the ones she doesn't. But the function of
this character is taking very commonly held insecurities for women
of that time and saying them out loud in the

(16:32):
newspaper every day. And whether you love it or you
hate it, no one else was doing that. As we'll
be discussing quite a bit in this show. Kathy the
character is also a very particular type of woman. She
is an upwardly mobile, straight white woman with a steady
white collar office job and a disposable income that would

(16:52):
honestly be impressive even without inflation for today's money. She's
got a support system through her parents who are very
present in her life, and she's got her girlfriends. She
truly embodies someone who feminism in America has traditionally served.
She doesn't seem to have friends who are not straight

(17:12):
or white. And while she struggles with money, she never
struggles with poverty. She's a middle class, white boomer lady,
and that comes with significant baggage, and it's what a
lot of this series is about. Kathy guys White has
gone viral on Twitter a couple of times this year
when pictures of her in her twenties started circulating. In

(17:36):
these pictures, she is a traditionally attractive, thin woman with
straight brown hair, holding her Kathy comics. Where were you
when you found out the lady who made Kathy comics
is super hot? One person said, the woman who made
Kathy comics was skinny and hot. The comic wasn't a
self insert at all. Another person said, just learned that

(17:58):
the woman who drew the Kathy comics was thin and
conventionally hot. All right, said a creator, I really like
five years ago. Now, these were all on Twitter, so
this barely made saying. But these takes are very clicky
and more stream of consciousness than actually saying anything. Kathy
guys White does look conventionally hot in these pictures from

(18:22):
the seventies, Yes, but that's obviously operating on a pretty
rigid interpretation of hot, and a simple Google would have
revealed that Kathy guys White struggled with her weight and
body image significantly as a young adult, and continued to
obsessively monitor her weight and try diets throughout her adulthood.

(18:43):
Another Google would have revealed that the Kathy character wasn't
intended as a one to one insert for its author,
and that naming the character after herself was the only
way that the Universal Press Syndicate would agree to publish
her work at all. So, no, she's not a fraud.
It's not as Sunday funny as psi op situation. It's

(19:06):
just people on Twitter being unwilling to do a single
fact check in their entire lives. I digress. In this case,
the shocking revelation is this that a single press photo
from nineteen seventy eight may not reveal all of the
pertinent details of a person's life or career, much less

(19:29):
the history of their body or their mind. It's shocking,
I know. To me, Kathy is an often frustrating contradiction
that feels familiar. She wants to have it all the
way she thinks women deserve to, but her attempts to
do that leave her feeling unsatisfied and exhausted. She fails constantly.

(19:51):
She fails at dieting, she fails at negotiating a fair salary,
she fails at establishing boundaries. She fails at loving herself.
We were watching a normal woman with a normal body
and a lot of insecurities, contradictions, and neuroticisms, fail and
be made to feel like a failure all the time.

(20:13):
I don't think this has no value because it's hard
to think of pop culture where I've seen that reflected,
where it doesn't just resolve in the space of a
single comic strip or a single episode, depending on how
you feel, the Cathy comic strip concluding with her getting
married and having a baby could either resolve nicely or,
as many fans indicated, could be seen as her settling

(20:37):
for what she thought she deserved, what she thought that
she should want, or what others wanted for her. It
doesn't seem like the Cathy of the comic strip ever
really found herself. So let's set the stage. Here I
got a chance to look at a Funnies page from
the day The Kathy comic debut in the Detroit Free

(20:57):
Press on November twenty second, nineteen seventy six. Here is
who she was sharing the page with. Don't worry if
you haven't heard of these. There was The Dumplings by
Fred Lucky, a comic about a young couple who are
very in love, and most of the jokes are about
how they're overweight. There was Big George by Virgil Parch,

(21:20):
with George being a single comic strip husband whose wife
father's him. There was Broomhilda, the green skinned comic strip
which by our Myers, who made a big splash in
the seventies. There was Dondee by Gus Edson and Erwin Haysen,
a strip about a World War Two orphan who remained
a World War Two orphan well into the nineteen eighties

(21:43):
for some reason. There was Gasoline Alley by Frank King
and Dick Moore's a comic strip that's now been running
for over a century and is about quote traditional American values,
unquote drier conclusions. There there was High and Lowis by
Mort Walker and Dick Brown, a spinoff of the Beatle

(22:03):
Bailey strip that was a celebration of mundane white American suburbia.
There was The Girls by Franklin Folger, who was a
man in a suit who described his strip as quote
poking fun at adult women in funny hats unquote that
ran for over twenty years and was about how rich
women with husbands are so shallow. There was Brother Juniper

(22:26):
by Fred McCarthy, a comic strip about Catholic friars by
a Catholic friar. And there was Modesty Blaze by Peter O'Donnell,
a serialized story about a fem fatale who was written
and illustrated by men for almost forty years. Are we
noticing a pattern here? And then there was the first

(22:46):
Cathy comic strip. But before I tell you what happens
in the strip, we have to introduce a few people
to voice the people in Cathy's life. So here they are.
This is Cathy, played by Jackie Michelle Johnson. Hi, I'm Kathy.
Here's Kathy's on and off boyfriend who she eventually marries,

(23:07):
even though that is annoying to me. His name is
Irving and he's played by Miles Gray. Hi. I'm irving.
This is Kathy's friend Andrea, who's best known for encouraging
Kathy to get more involved in the women's movement in
the nineteen seventies and eighties. She's played by Melissa Losada Oliva. Hi,

(23:28):
I'm Andrea. Here's Charlene, Cathy's work wife, who falls on
the other side of Kathy ideologically. She is extremely interested
in finding a husband and is often accused of being desperate.
She is played by Maggie may Fish. Hi, I'm Charlene.
And of course, there's Kathy's mother, Anne, who is most

(23:50):
commonly referred to in the strip as Mom. She's a
lifelong housewife who wants her daughter to get married and
have children, and struggles between being supportive of her daughter's
career and modern lifestyle and with her own self image.
She's played by my producer Sophie Lichtman's Mom. Hi, I'm ann.
So the rest of this episode is going to be

(24:10):
a look at the Kathy character's life in the strip,
beginning on November two. In this first strip, Kathy is
in her twenties. She's standing by the phone and she's
thinking to herself, Kathy, he's hurt you too. Many times.
Next time he calls, just bite your tongue and give
him your answer. The phone rings, Kathy seems to literally

(24:34):
bite her tongue. In the last frame of the comic,
she picks up the phone with a swollen tongue and says, yes, Kathy,
she's funny. Okay. So here's what happens to Kathy over
the years, and it's a lot more than you'd think.
At the start of the comic, Kathy's in her twenties
and in a relationship with Irving that he refuses to define.

(24:57):
She has a low level job at an office call
Product Testing Services Incorporated, working door to door for a
man named Mr. Pinkley who doesn't respect her or treat
her equally. Her friends are Andrea, who lives in the
same apartment building as Kathy, and Charlene, the secretary at
Product Testing ink that makes even less money than Kathy does.

(25:20):
Early on, Andrea tries to get Kathy involved in second
wave feminism by attending consciousness raising sessions with other women
and learn to live life without a desire or dependency
on men. Kathy, while supportive, is clearly uncomfortable. Welcome to
the Women of Today Club, Please repeat our motto after me.

(25:42):
I am woman. I am woman, I am equal and independent.
I am independent. I can survive without men? Are you nuts?
In the seventies and eighties, there is a particular focus
on this theme. Kathy is torn between the second wave
feminism of the nineteen seventies that was pioneered on the

(26:04):
liberal end with figures like Betty free Dan of the
Feminine Mystique and Gloria Steinham, and on the radical end
by figures like student activist Casey Hayden and Mary King.
We'll be talking more about this movement in future episodes,
particularly it's centering of white women, but as far as
its effect on Kathy's storyline, Kathy believes that women should

(26:27):
be respected as professionals and is doing what many women
of her generation did, putting off marriage and children in
order to build a career. But she still feels that
she doesn't fit into the movement that Andrea is representative
of because she's still craves male attention and love. Here's
how Irving treats her in those early years. You don't

(26:50):
need a cigarette, Kathy, just concentrate on other things. Oh, Irving,
maybe we could do something to take my mind off
it I have a cigarette, Kathy, Because there are other
men in Kathy's life besides Irving. While it's never shown
in the comic, obviously, Kathy Fox she Fox, and to

(27:13):
think that she only dreams of fucking but never does
is to fundamentally misunderstand Kathy. Here are some of her
boyfriends that sorry she fox. There's Emerson, a guy who
is completely hung up on her, but Kathy is put
off by his cleanliness. There's also Alex, Kathy's male secretary,
who Kathy is attracted to, but she can't get used

(27:36):
to the power dynamic of being in charge of a
man in the workplace. She deals with this pressure by
caving and ends up not giving Alex much to do,
which he kind of takes advantage of. There's this guy
from the late seventies who tries to take advantage of
the rhetoric of the women's lip movement as a way
to get someone in bed faster than they're comfortable with. Hey, baby,

(27:59):
how about if we don't you even want to hear
the question? No, but Kathy, my sweet, this is a
new age. There's no right and wrong anymore, No right
and no wrong. No, Kathy, there's no ethical standard anymore.
Nothing's morally good or bad. No ethics, no morals. There

(28:19):
are no rules anymore, Kathy, you can't worry about breaking
the rules because there aren't any rules. No rules, no right,
no wrong, no ethics, no morals, no rules. This leaves
me with only one question, Walter, where does all the
guilt come from? Other guys? She dates around this time,

(28:39):
pullsh it like you can get to check, Kathy, if
you want to be equal to me so badly. At work,
Cathy starts a class that is consciousness Raising for men.
It's a play on the women's consciousness raising sessions of
the nineteen seventies, where women would gather to discuss inequality
and organize. At Kathy's session for men, men can learn

(29:01):
about the changing roles of women in the late seventies,
and she ends up trying to teach them how to
do basic cleaning tasks at home to be less useless
in that arena. Ultimately, none of the men care and
everyone flunks out of the class, a classic Cathy failure.

(29:31):
From the beginning of the strip, Kathy is in a
nearly constant battle with her body image. She always feels
that she weighs about ten pounds too much and has
that standard reinforced even by feminist Andrea. Body acceptance and
fat activism was definitely not a prominent component of the
second wave feminist movement, and so Cathy struggles with fashion

(29:53):
trends and dreads being seen in a bathing suit above
all else. And as the seventies come to a close,
as the Equal Rights Amendment fails, and Kathy hasn't made
much progress in her love life or her career, so
Kathy gets generally frustrated. The men in her life are
frustrated that she wants to be independent. The women in

(30:13):
her life don't think she's independent enough. Here's an example.
Kathy is standing with Andrea outside in the rain in
this strip from nine Irving has deserted me, Andrea, And
it's no wonder I've been devoting all my time to
my work. I've been too caught up in May. Kathy.

(30:34):
This is nineteen seventy nine. You're supposed to be caught
up in me. You're supposed to rejoice in me. You're
supposed to revel in me. Wonderful. Now I'm stuck with me. Okay.
Here's a strip from the same year that reflects Kathy's
view of herself. I spent twelve hours a day working
at a meaningless job for a pathetic salary. I spend

(30:55):
the other twelve hours trying to save a floundering relationship
from jealousy boredom. In mutual disguise, I am woman. I
have it all, the worst of both worlds. In the
early nineteen eighties, there's a lot going on at Cathy's work.
She is eventually promoted to a full time office position,
where she remains in vaguely middle management for the most

(31:17):
of the strip. She's bad with money, but she is
financially comfortable. She's firmly upper middle class. She's sickened by yuppies,
and yet she aspires to be a yuppie. This is
known as the eighties suburban white woman paradox. In her
place of work, a few things of note happen. First,
she is sexually harassed by her boss, Mr. Pinkley after

(31:38):
work when he guilts her into letting him into her
home and then forces a kiss on her. Cathy is shocked,
punches him in the nose. He passes out from her
punching him in the nose overnight, and he still goes
into the office next day and sort of plays it cool,
as if spending the night at Cathy's passed out and

(32:00):
we're punching him in the face as if they had sex.
Charlie and empathizes with Kathy and says that she'll start
a whisper network to set the record straight and it's
never a problem again. So going back a little, here
is how Pinkley weasels his way into Cathy's apartment. I
appreciate the ride home, Mr Pinkley, but you're my boss.

(32:21):
You can't invite your boss in for a drink. All
my other business associates have me in for a drink now,
and then I'd be hurt if you thought so little
of our professional relationship that you couldn't even have me
in for a drink. Cathy, Oh okay, come on in,
Mr Pinkley. Earl. And here's how Andrea reacts when she

(32:41):
learns that Kathy has been harassed. Kathy, do you realize
that sexual harassment is a power play of the worst kind? Yes?
Do you think it's right that millions of women suffer
because they're too afraid for their jobs to take a
stand against it? Nope? Right, then, what are you going
to do about Mr Pinkley. I'll show him. I'll quit

(33:05):
my job. Wrong, wrong, wrong, I do better on the
yes or no questions. During this storyline, it's never brought
up that Mr Pinkley might get fired for this behavior
at this time. Based on how Kathy and the other
women communicate with each other, as well as the real
life uptick in workplace harassment in the United States in

(33:28):
the nineteen eighties, it's clear that this is an outcome
that would make them safer, but wouldn't ever actually happen,
to the point where it doesn't even seem worth discussing.
This storyline crops up again a couple of years later
when Kathy and Mr Pinkley have to go on a
business trip together, but this time she successfully gets him

(33:49):
to funk off for reasons we will get to later
in the show. Kathy sees the Big Chill in theaters
five times in a row in We'll put a pin
in that. As the decade goes on, Cathy continues to
date irving on and off, but in the Kathy verse,
you are canonically considered single until you're either engaged or married,

(34:12):
so she's still dating like a ton of people on
the side. Maybe they were open. I don't really get it. Uh.
There is Paul, who has a kid. There's Bill, who
Kathy realizes is hung up on his ex, but she
doesn't know how to break things off with him because
Bill keeps saying he's definitely not hung up on his ex.
She dates a guy named Jake, who she's really into
until she realizes he's a self absorbed eighties Reagan adult

(34:35):
business bitch, and she breaks up with him. There's Max,
who's way too into tech gadgets, which is a continuing
theme in the comic because in this rigid gender binary
Cathy verse, women hate technology and men use acquiring tech
gadgets to avoid expressing their feelings. This is technically game
or girl erasure. But I don't play games and I

(34:58):
don't even have a driver's license, so didn't bother me
too much. Then there's a favorite storyline of mine, one
that puts Kathy in the Don Draper role. Cathy starts
hooking up with her younger assistant, Grant, who was both
very hot and very bad at his job. She tries
to get off on this power imbalance in the way

(35:18):
that a male executive typically would, but she ends up
getting annoyed at the fact that Grant is so bad
at his job and is using Cathy as an excuse
to continue to be bad at his job. She breaks
it off, but I repeat Kathy Fox, and younger men
are obsessed with her. Andrea gets married in the mid
nineteen eighties, marking a distinct point of departure for the comic.

(35:42):
In Pique Andrea Fashion, Andrea schedules herself one week and
her supercharged career woman having it all schedule to find
a husband and is actually successful at doing this. She
meets a guy named Luke on a chat site who
is up to her standards, and they get married that
same year. It's worth saying that it is implied in

(36:02):
the comic that Andrea hasn't had sex for maybe ten
years before this happens, But anyways, she has a big
traditional wedding and all of her friends comment on how
the feminist wants to wear a white dress. Andrea getting
married sends Kathy into a tail spin because by the
mid eighties from where she's sitting, she has been encouraged

(36:25):
to establish herself in the workplace instead of focusing on
relationships as a part of participating in the women's liberation movement,
and now the same friends who were encouraging her to
do that, we're starting to settle down. It's an act situation.
The back half of the nineteen eighties focuses on Kathy's
reaction to the progressive women's movement of the seventies, settling

(36:48):
in and backsliding into the more conservative Reagan values of
the Deep eighties, and the rampant rise in consumerism and
diet culture that came with that. And the babies, the
wave of babies in the mid to late eighties through
Kathy and Charlene for a goddamn loop. Here's Charlene on
the loudspeaker at work in her capacity as secretary in

(37:11):
the mid eighties. Attention, all employees. Four of our programmers,
two of our lawyers, and our entire accounting department are
announcing their pregnancies today. Margot, who's lectured us all on
the joys of childlessness, has changed her mind. Jan who's
been in therapy for five years because of her mother,
has decided to become one. Julie, who has convinced me

(37:34):
to call off my engagement because it conflicted with my career,
is waltzing around like she's sprouted wings and Sheila who
Cathy turns off the microphone. Babies make me very emotional.
He is kind of funny. Then Irving cheats on Kathy,
because of course he does, and he then disappears from
the comic for a couple of years. Andrea is very

(37:56):
much a part of this wave of reproduction, something that
Kathy and Charlene initially view, like the marriage, as hypocrisy
and betrayal. Andrea overprepares for the birth of her kid
in a classically yuppy way. She plays baby classical music
and French tapes to her pregnant stomach, only to find

(38:17):
that her baby, Zenith, is pretty overwhelmed by all this attention.
Upon arriving into the world, Andrea goes to the matt
fighting for parental leave in her workplace, but ultimately loses.
In spite of the millions of mothers in this same
era facing this exact same issue, Andrea tries to raise
Zenith in a gender neutral environment, but she fails at

(38:40):
this too. The toys of the eighties were so extremely
binary that she ends up giving up due to lack
of options and lack of energy. Kathy, in the meantime,
continues to struggle at work and with irving, but buys
her own home and adopts a dog name Elektra. Remember
when people could just buy Holmes. I'm kidding, It's not

(39:02):
going to happen. She spends over a week in the
comic psyching herself up to ask for a raise at work,
but she's only successful in getting a raise that is
much less than her male co workers, and even that
is only after her boss, Mr. Pinkley, finds out she's
actively interviewing with other places. She starts to date a
superior at work, this time a guy named Mitch, but

(39:23):
then she finds his personality annoying and breaks it off.
I'm telling you, she doesn't give a fuck. She's fucking
It's around this time where Kathy's mom comes into play
quite a bit, and we see a series of Mom's
insecurities be reflected in the comic. Mom constantly bristles with
Kathi and Andrea's views on feminism, but she also expresses

(39:46):
her own confusion at her role in the world. Starting
in the late seventies, Mom starts to question her life
as a housewife, and the eighties brings in a series
of small businesses that Mom starts with her friend Low
in order to give their lives more structure and more purpose.
Most of these businesses are somehow tangentially related to Kathy.

(40:09):
They start a body building business to get Kathy in shape,
they pivot to muffin making, then they pivot again to childcare.
None of the businesses are successful, and at one point
Kathy's dad gets threatened by Mom's latest business scheme and
she has to give it up. In Kathy makes the

(40:29):
only overt political statement of the comics Run Andrea and
her mom friends convinced Kathy to canvas from Michael Ducacus.
More on this in a bit, But Andrea in particular
is a big fan of Ducaucus is because of his
initial plans to support working parents mothers in particular. Du
Caucus loses, and the comic never gets specific in its

(40:52):
politics again. By the end of the eighties, Kathy has
secured what she was told she needed to secure. She
has a steady job that she doesn't like, she owns
a home that she's in the hole four, and she
has a dog. No notes. Because she is Kathy, she
also is struggling with the same body image issues, the
same money management problems, and has the same desire for

(41:16):
a true equitable partnership. So things have changed, but the
expectations of what Kathy should be doing with her life
continue to shift. Now firmly in her mid thirties, Kathy
and Charlene are constantly trying crash diets and reading self
help books. Between dates. Irving shows up again and has
a midlife crisis, and by the early nineties and they're

(41:40):
back together. Andrea then has her second child and marks
the change in time by being much chiller raising her
second kid. Here's an early nineties strip between her and Kathy.
You named your daughter Zenith, and you're naming your son Gus.
Different decade, Cathy. When we had Zenith, we were in

(42:01):
that a whole eighties over achieververy yuppy thing. But Gus
will be our baby for the nineties, wholesome, down to
our earth, a return to simple, honest family values. Of course,
we're redoing our home and naughty country pine with heirloom
quilts and rustic hand their own pots filled with azaleas
snip from mommy's organic garden, with our stainless steel smith

(42:24):
and hock and gardening shears grown in the rich soil.
From Daddy Sharper image compostmaker. Who what a departure. I
just can't believe we ever used to be so materialistic.
In the early nineties, Product Testing, Inc. Deals with the
fallout of the Anita Hill sexual harassment case, mainly through
many men in the workplace becoming extremely self conscious of

(42:47):
themselves and their behavior, especially the men who were actually
active sexual harassers. Kathy and Charlne kind of roll their
eyes at the men panicking because their coworkers added, it
is very a man can't do anything in the workplace
anymore without getting called out, which is just time is
a flat circle. Here's a conversation that Kathy has with

(43:10):
Mr Pinkley, who, I will remind you has been sexually
harassing her for years following the Anita Hill case. Ever
since the Thomas Hill flap, employee morale has been in
the toilet, Cathy, No, I didn't mean toilet. I meant
the bathroom. No. I didn't mean bathroom, I meant the restroom. No.
I'm in the ladies room. No, the women's room, no,
the men's room no. No. The unisex room no, not unisex. No. Sex.

(43:33):
I didn't mention sex. I didn't say anything. Strike the record,
I am innocent. Cathy says, it's okay, Mr Pinkley, we're
all kind of flirting with disaster right now. I was
not flirting. No flirting. That wasn't flirting. Instead of doing
anything for the women in his workplace, Mr Pinkley waste
company money to take the men in his office on

(43:54):
a warriors retreat to quote unquote reclaim their manhood again.
Was something that actually happened around this time. After this,
Charlene gets engaged to her boyfriend Simon, and she is
repeatedly judged in bridal stores for being a quote unquote
mature bride. I think she's close to forty at this point.

(44:15):
Kathy is very supportive of the wedding, but now is
insecure that she's the only single woman left in her group. Meanwhile,
Andrea returns to the workplace after having her second child, Gus,
after spending over ten years building her career to vaguely
high powered eighties executive lady. For context, she was making

(44:35):
sixty thousand dollars a year in the early nineteen eighties.
By the late eighties, things have changed. Having children and
George Bush Senior as a president instead of Ducacus has
completely destroyed Andrea's career progression, so instead she begins working
as attempt at Product Testing, Inc. At six dollars and

(44:56):
fifty cents an hour. It's infuriating. Here's how Kathy is
feeling by the mid nineteen nineties, a full twenty years

(45:18):
into the comic To Do nineteen fifty five, Mary Well
To Do, Transform the role of women in society. To do.
Earn living by, furnish and maintain home. Pay all bills,
do all laundry, by all groceries, cook all meals, located,

(45:42):
marry husband, have unraised children, Tone all muscles. Rebel against aging,
save planet by and maintain automobile. Fight against evil, Take
charge of life. Go into therapy to regain vulnerability. I
am woman, hear me snore. Kathy starts dating Alex, her
young hot trainer. As I said, young men love Kathy.

(46:06):
They love her, and they're in love with her. Why
don't we ever talk about that anyways? Alex Alex loves
fitness and dating Cathy. Cathy does not love fitness and
is hesitant to commit to Alex at first. She does
fall for him after a while, until in he proposes

(46:26):
and Cathy turns him down. He leaves the ring with
her and asks her to think about it, and then
comes back with her name tattooed on his bicep. Young
men love Kathy. Ultimately, she does dump him, and he
takes it very well. Here's a conversation from the aftermath
of Cathy turning down his proposal with her. Mom, you

(46:47):
couldn't try being engaged to Alex, Cathy. You entitled me
with high standards. Mom. You couldn't overlook a few little flaws.
You taught me that I deserved the best. You couldn't
just give it a whirl. You gave me the values discretion,
self respect, and patience to wait until the end of
time for a man who's worthy of my heart. Never

(47:08):
the mother of the bride, always the mentor of the bride.
And there's Irving's que to return. He comes back in
the late nineties after a couple of years of complete
absence from the strip. This time, he's pivoted in his
career to be a downsizer, which means that he fires
people from other companies as a job gross. Here's how

(47:31):
he comes back. He is hired as a downsizer by
Product Testing, Inc. And in his first face to face
with Cathy in years, he tells her she's been laid off,
fucking irving. Kathy has to adjust to this, and does
by beginning her own small consulting company from home. When

(47:52):
she goes back to visit product testing, inc later, she
learns that a twenty two year old has taken her
old position. This becomes a pattern later in the comic.
Kathy has a tendency to get annoyed with women younger
than her at first, but then realizes that they share
a lot of the same anxieties and usually end up

(48:12):
making a truce or forming a friendship. Her first reactions
to this twenty two year old taking her job is
very funny, though. Here's her gut response to meeting her
as she speaks with Charlene, she got my job right
out of college. Does she know it took me ten
years to create that position. Does she know it took
a generation of women to earn her right to have
a career? Does she know how hard we fought for

(48:36):
what she assumes as her birthright? Ask her, Kathy, ask
her what we all want to know. Then Cathy walks
over to the twenty two year old and says was
pants or those anyway a size too. So Kathy is
pretty successful as a one woman business operation, but she
does struggle with the work from home life. She gains

(48:57):
weight she's not happy about, and she lose his touch
with her friends. By the end of the nineties, she
negotiates her way back into Product Testing, Inc. With a
higher salary and position title because guess what, the damn
place doesn't run without her. Even as her career reaches
this peak, Cathy's self esteem is at an all time low.

(49:18):
She dates an older guy for a little bit strictly
because she's convinced that that's the only person she has
a chance with. Then she breaks things off when she
realizes that that was a bit of an overreaction. Irving
returned to the comic with a broken heart after a
woman named Lydia dumped him. He and Cathy rekindle a

(49:39):
platonic friendship and seemed to grow genuinely closer and build
some trust that we hadn't seen in their romantic relationship.
Irving's career pivots again and he becomes a Y two
K consultant and decides that he wants to be an
Internet millionaire. At the peak of the dot com boom
and uh it doesn't work out Cath He thinks that

(50:00):
Irving is getting a little to midlife crisis for her taste,
and he disappears again. In the early two thousand's let's
see Irving and Cathy do get back together and break
up again. She goes to her almost fiance Alex's wedding
and brings a midlife crisis Irving as a date. Mr
Pinkley gets bow talks. There's an obligatory patriotic cartoon Thanksgiving

(50:24):
two thousand one because Hinda Levin Kathy doesn't understand computers
or phones. Real boomer content there. Honestly, I think it's
the last ten years of the comic that most closely
matched this popular criticism. There are a lot of strips
in these years. That's a lot of women be like this,
men be like this. There are diet storylines that aren't

(50:46):
as critical of diet culture as they were in earlier decades.
There is a lot of chocolate, and there is a
lot of act By two thousand three, Irving has done
some work on himself and shows up at Cathy's door,
calling himself of the King of Vulnerability. Kathy gives him
ship for it, but it's the first step in them
remaining together for the rest of the comic. He pops

(51:09):
the question in oh four, and in two thousand and
five they get married. I hate Irving. Here's how Kathy
guys White introduces this plot point in the last major
published collection of Kathy comics, The Wedding of Kathy and Irving.
They dated for twenty seven years, two months, three weeks,

(51:30):
and one day. She was devoted. He was a pig.
She became enlightened. He remained oblivious. She aspired to goddess.
He clung to king. She walked, He wooed her back.
She came back. He ran away. She studied books, tapes,
and astrological charts to understand him. He watched sports. She

(51:54):
went to workshops, retreats, psychics, seminars, and shrinks. He took
up golf. They survived the most divisive years in history
between men and women. They weathered the me Decade, the
we Decade, the Information Age, the Digital Revolution, the communication explosion,

(52:15):
the militancy of the seventies, the greed of the eighties,
the regrouping of the nineties, the humility of the two thousand's.
At least nine thousand, eight hundred and sixty five diets
and many, many, many total eclipses of the sense of humor.
So yeah. After twenty seven years, Kathy and Irving get married. Irving,

(52:38):
of course, hates the wedding planning process, always asking really
annoying questions like could someone explain why you get to
be a control freak and a victim. Kathy and Irving
also struggle with deciding how they're going to combine and
negotiate their finances. Everyone in Cathy's life is thrilled about
this upcoming wedding, except for Andrea. During wedding prep, Cathy

(53:03):
gets back in touch with Andrea after falling out of
touch for a good seven or eight years, and they reconnect.
This storyline is really really sweet. Andrea still hates Irving
on principle because Irving sucks, but loves Kathy and agrees
to be a bridesmaid. Kathy gets to tell Zenith, Andrea's daughter,

(53:23):
who is now a teenager in the wedding's flower Teen,
how Andrea inspired Kathy to be a better person over
the years. This one always makes me tear up. It
is Kathy talking to a teen Zenith, who she's known
and loved since she was a baby. Your mom fought
for years against women being viewed as sex object, Zenith.

(53:46):
She worked tirelessly to elevate women's dignity and respect. Because
of the sacrifices of your mom, young women like you
can have the confidence and personal power, Zenith says, to
assert my right to show as much skin as I want.
Andrea says oof, and Kathy comforts her. Makes it all worthwhile,
doesn't it? Kathy guys White felt some kind of way

(54:09):
about third wave feminism at this time. We'll get there.
A few strips later, Kathy speaks more on her relationship
with Andrea to teen Zenith and Gus. I wanted you
to be in my wedding, Zenith and Gus, because your
mom has had so much to do with making me
who I am today. She was my guiding light, my mentor.
Because of what I learned from her, I'll be a stronger,

(54:31):
more confident, and equal partner for the rest of my life.
Zenith and Gus say, Wow, someone actually listened to our mother. Anyways,
Kathy and Irving get married and then they buy a
house together. Fine. Their house hunt is actually pretty interesting
because their shopping in the housing bubble that is ultimately
shorted in the two thousand eight recession, and that is

(54:53):
made very clear based on how out of range the
house they get approved for. Is the wedding happens, fine,
they don't funk on the wedding night. What they go
on a honeymoon, and then it's literally six months of
real estate and move in comics, Okay, home stretch. Charlene
gets pregnant in two thousand and seven, and Kathy realizes

(55:15):
that she wants to have kids after all, now in
her early forties, she worries about conceiving. Meanwhile, Kathy and
Irving watch mad Men, thirty Rock and Heroes Remember that one.
Then the recession happens in two thousand and eight, and
Kathy and Irving have to reduce their spending after realizing
they're in debt, which means Kathy can't shop as much.

(55:41):
The strip doesn't really get into the absolute wreckage the
recession caused for families that weren't uh white and well off,
but the theme is explored in the most Kathy way possible.
Here is a strip from November one, two thousand and eight.
The first panel is happy reading a newspaper. It says

(56:02):
stocks down, bonds down, funds down, commodities down, confidence down,
credit down, sails down, jobs down. In the second panel,
she's walking somewhere with her coffee. Only one system in
the universe is resilient enough to defy the trend and
go in the exact opposite direction. The third panel is

(56:26):
Kathy standing on her bathroom scale with a little steam
above her head. It says, wait up, it's funny. Irving's
mom then moves into the house with Kathy and Irving.
In two thousand and nine, Kathy gets a Facebook and
she can't choose a profile picture. Irving has I think

(56:49):
the fifth midlife crisis. He might just be in crisis,
and then the comics starts to wind down and we
see these beloved characters for the last time. Andrea's last
parents is really interesting. In OH nine, she and Kathy
meet to catch up over coffee, and we learned that
Zenith has just graduated college, gotten married, and is going

(57:10):
to have a baby. Cathy is shocked and asks if
this is somehow against all that Andrea had been fighting
for for her entire adult life. But Andrea is very
excited to be a grandma. I love it. Here's a
slice of their conversation. I devoted my life to breaking
down barriers, changing laws, rejecting stereotypes, and opening a new

(57:35):
universe of equal opportunities so my daughter could have options
I never dreamed of. So when your daughter decided to
become stay at home all right out of college, it's
the option I never dreamed of. Wow, you created a
true independent thinker. Even success is more complicated for our generation.
And here is what happens in the last comic strip

(57:58):
ever published on October third, two thousand ten. It's Kathy
and Irving who are now married to the horror for
everyone except the people in the comic strip, and they're
going over to Cathy's parents house too. Well, you'll see, Mom, I, I,
whatever it is, sweetie, Dad and I are here for you.

(58:20):
Unless we're too suffocating. Then we'll stand over there, or
dead could stand here and I could stand over there,
or we can hop around trading places, or what am
I saying? You don't need us to fix anything. You're
an incredible woman from an incredible time for women. Your generation.
Open doors, demanded chances, raised expectations, transformed society, and exceeded

(58:42):
the dreams of every generation before you. You have to
know anything's possible. I do know anything's possible. Mom, There's
going to be another girl in the world, and I
ship you not. A small act is heard coming from
Kathy's apparently pregnant stomach. Mom says, I'm going to be

(59:04):
a grandma, Cathy's dad says to Irving, buckle up son.
Irving says, I want to see the ultrasound on my iPhone.
And with that happy comic strip concluded in the newspapers. Anyways,
for ten years. In two thousand twenty, as you are
certainly aware, there was a massive lockdown across the world

(59:26):
due to the coronavirus that, as I write and record,
this continues to affect the entire world. It was at
this time, after ten years of silence in the Funny Pages,
and a year or so after releasing her book of
essays called Fifty Things That Aren't My Fault, Kathy Guys
why it's Instagram began to post the first consistent Kathy

(59:48):
comics in a decade. So there was this little media
burst around Kathy. But here's what's interesting to me about
the comics. These new Kathy's were only one panel at
a time, and there is no Irving, no daughter, and
they were firmly rooted in the present. During the pandemic
induced lockdown, there had been sporadic one panel comics posted

(01:00:12):
to Guyswhite's Instagram since two thousand eighteen, occasionally featuring Electra,
the dog or Kathy's mom. Many commented on something happening
in the news. One supported the March for Our Lives
following the Parkland shootings. Another shows Kathy with a box
of tissues and a flag with a heart on it,
the day that Christine blasi Ford gave her testimony about

(01:00:34):
Brett Kavanagh. One shows support of the Time's Up movement.
One encourages people to vote in the mid terms. One
is a p s A about climate change. But it's
during the pandemic that these comics became nearly daily. There's
one of Kathy and Electra gazing out their window peacefully
labeled church. There were references to the toilet paper shortage.

(01:00:56):
There were jokes about Zoom. There were reminders to wear
a mask, anxious eating, and so on. Irving isn't there
The little act emanating from Cathy's womb in October never materializes,
and that at least at the time of this release
is Kathy Cannon. Maybe you're surprised at the amount of

(01:01:17):
things that did happen during this comics run. Maybe it's
not enough for you, but it's a lot and a
lot more than I expected. As I was going through
these thousands and thousands of pages and comic strips, one
thing really stuck out to me, and it's that the
women of Cathy lose. They fail a lot. And this

(01:01:38):
might be something that isn't immediately clear unless you read
strip after strip. Not really the way any comic was
meant to be enjoyed, and because I am scary how
I consumed it. Sometimes these women lose because of their
own human frailties. Other times they lose because the system
is pitted against them or they don't have the tools

(01:01:58):
they need to be successful. What the comic is to
me is a lighthearted exploration of one character's experiences failing
and being failed and how she reacts to it. Even
if it's not your cup of tea, this is really
singular for this time. Kathy might not be clinically depressed

(01:02:18):
because she's a boomer lady and doesn't believe in therapy.
For the majority of the comic strip. But she's very
weighed down by the expectations that came with being alive
when she was that weight, not the thigh weight or
whatever the fuck. That emotional weight is where I feel
most connected with her. The weight of her anxiety that

(01:02:40):
she isn't living correctly ends up preventing her from really
living at all. There's a lot to talk about here,
what Kathy gets right, what Kathy gets wrong, what Kathy
leaves out, what she says about the generation and the
lifestyle she represents, and how the backlash against her was
extremely questionable. The Kathy character we see now exists basically

(01:03:04):
out of context, finding a new life as a punchline
on Twitter, but the reality of the character is far
more interesting. In some ways, the character's presence shook up
the funny pages in a very unprecedented way, and in
others it upheld a status quo that some people found infuriating.
For this show, I'll be speaking with a number of

(01:03:25):
cartoonists who are currently working in the autobiographical comic space
as it has grown far beyond the funnies, and we'll
also take a look back at how it even became
possible for a woman to have a widely syndicated comic.
Will learn more about what was going on in the
women's movement as Kathy was being released, how diet culture

(01:03:46):
became so pervasive in the time this strip was on
the pages, and more so. Now you know what the
character does. But who is more interesting to me and
in many ways more emblematic of her generation. Is Kathy
Guys White herself. So we're going to learn all about
her and talk with her next week on ac Cast.