00:05:35.760And so I learned she was pulled into this coercive system that was designed to turn, quote unquote, bad girls into proper women and wives and mothers.1.00
00:05:45.480It was meant to control women's sexuality, promote marriage, bolster the white nuclear family norm.0.71
00:05:53.900And in this research, I came to understand that my own life had been profoundly shaped by my mother's past.0.86
00:06:01.060But I also uncovered a bigger story about shame and family secrets and race, the control of women's bodies.0.62
00:06:08.920And also probably most relevant to what we're talking about here today, everything that we inherit from our mothers in a world that hates them.
00:06:20.720One of the questions that we actually didn't use because it actually got so like straight to the heart of the issue is it was like, why do so many boomers moms like hate other women?
00:06:31.780um and it's just like it's this internalized misogyny that is really really really difficult
00:06:39.200to grapple with um and our goal with this episode is to complicate the way that we think about
00:06:45.620boomer moms it is not to like rag on boomer moms we have a lot of boomer moms in the audience and
00:06:53.180like obviously we are not boomer moms so we are talking from the perspective of boomer daughters
00:06:58.700So we're going to be doing our best to like talk about what we understand, but would also love, of course, any boomer moms who are listening to come and offer further context and experience in the comments.
00:07:12.580But I think like there's this quote that I get that from the very beginning of your book that I keep coming back to.
00:07:18.280And you're talking about like looking at the home for unwed mothers, like you go and visit it and you like are looking at it outside and you're like, this building is part of my origin story.
00:07:27.760And you say, I understand that now. I spent so much of my life facing off with shame as a young woman grasping for sexual empowerment and as a journalist exploring taboo subcultures. I wanted to believe that I was free of that wagging finger, but I inherited my mom's shame along with the world that shamed her.
00:07:47.660You know, I just thought I would open the book up with a very light moment.
00:07:53.500or there's another moment where you're talking about like just thinking back on how your mom
00:08:01.440like grappled with the daughter that she had was forced to give away for adoption and like
00:08:08.020all of these years of not knowing what happened to her and trying to like really reconcile herself
00:08:12.280to that fact and you say like kind of offhandedly you're like how did it not eat away at her
00:08:18.320and then you realize like oh it fucking did like every day it was always there in the room with us
00:08:26.500right I mean that was the thing is like I I definitely had a moment in my life where0.91
00:08:32.440she finally told me about my sister and about being sent away and so much of what I'd observed
00:08:40.600in my mom started to make sense but it was really just only the beginning right like I had detected
00:08:47.980as a little kid, the secret at the heart of our family. You know, I had some sort of sense even
00:08:54.840of a sister, it seems. Like I would lay in bed at night as a little kid and concoct stories about
00:09:01.640the secret sister that my parents were keeping down the hall from me. And I would hold my breath
00:09:07.000in hopes of being able to hear her breathing. So there's this way in which like my mom's secret
00:09:13.720was sensed, was there, was always in the room with us. And so to some degree, when she sat me
00:09:20.860down finally as a teenager and told me the very basic details of what had happened, it was like,
00:09:30.180oh, okay, some of this is starting to make sense. But it was really only once I found my sister,
00:09:37.120dove into the research, understood what these homes were, that I made these bigger ties to
00:09:43.720like you mentioned the fact that my mom was sent away in shame and I in some ways turned shame into
00:09:51.100my career by confronting it investigating it continually as a journalist covering the sex
00:09:56.900beat yeah yeah which is like so fitting but also like you know you're still doing the work like
00:10:02.500you still have to like confront that shame over and over and over and over and over and never and
00:10:06.980never fully escaping it either I mean that's the thing that's so interesting I think it it was both
00:10:12.460I was writing against what had been done to my mom.
00:10:16.920The earliest histories, one of the things that I was most fascinated by and just totally
00:10:22.040stunned me was that the earliest histories of these homes, they started as an attempt
00:10:27.420to, quote unquote, save sex workers before they redirected their attentions to unwed
00:10:40.240Like, you know, and it just was like, oh, my God, I didn't even realize that like this thing has been driving me.
00:10:47.940And so I was writing against what had been done to her, her being sent away in shame.
00:10:51.420Right. Yeah. But I was also stuck in it.
00:10:55.700You know, it was both at once like like, you know, the fact of publishing very personal essays about sex on the Internet and then being met with like messages from vile, misogynistic Internet trolls.0.73
00:11:09.320You know, like this was this constant re-experiencing of shame.
00:11:33.500And then there are also boomers who are younger than that.
00:11:36.380Like one of my good friends, I think her experience is markedly different than my mom because she's another like five, six, seven years younger.
00:11:44.080Yeah. Right. So like we're going all the way from your mom to my friend's experience in terms of like they're it's like millennials, right?
00:11:52.120Like an elder millennial has a very different experience than the youngest millennial.
00:11:57.080But I just keep thinking about like I was looking at, OK, birth control is introduced in 1960.
00:12:01.900And I think people often point to that date is like, oh, yeah, sexual revolution.
00:12:05.160It was not legal to have if you were an unmarried woman in like 23 states until 1972.
00:12:15.000Right. Yeah. It was taboo. I mean, it was like you had women putting on fake wedding rings to
00:12:21.780go to the doctor to try to get a prescription, right? It's not like it was suddenly just0.70
00:12:26.460we're swimming in birth control pills. I know. And I think sometimes we're like,
00:12:30.520oh everything changed when our parents were growing up like oh like there was all of these
00:12:35.480different like people believed in integration suddenly and everyone like understood that
00:12:40.840queer people were people like no right like a lot of these beliefs are hard won over the course of
00:12:46.160their adult life it's like totally and I think about like specifically for my mom who was sent
00:12:52.240away in 1965 like she was very much like just a little too early yeah to kind of have been
00:13:01.960protected by some of the winds of the sexual revolution totally and so it was it was like0.69
00:13:07.000it was right at this kind of turning point where she was still sent away in shame she was a bad
00:13:12.760girl she was all of those things um and it was as the sort of narratives about unwed mothers were
00:13:19.360starting to shift where it was like it had been that they were kind of like a species of mental
00:13:25.120patient almost and then it was like they're dangerous sexual revolutionaries right and
00:13:30.300and she was kind of caught up in the swirl of all of that pathologizing you know well and also just
00:13:38.300like patriarchal control and I don't just mean like the patriarchy like I mean like their dads
00:13:43.060controlled what happened to them like my mom this is a story I've heard my entire life and like I
00:13:48.160don't think it always sinks in the way that it should my beloved granddad who i loved so much
00:13:54.140he told my mom like you cannot leave the state for college yeah like she had a national merit
00:14:01.000scholarship she could have gone to so many different places and he was like no you're
00:14:05.180not leaving the state yeah her older brother was allowed to leave the state but not her yeah
00:14:10.380right well and gosh i mean i i've thought about this so much in the context of these homes because
00:14:15.660in terms of like what felt possible for these women. And certainly when my mom presented this
00:14:21.900story to me initially, she said, my father sent me away. So, you know, there was a lot of clarity
00:14:28.920there. And I also do, you know, I do a lot of writing in this book around this generational
00:14:35.880inheritance, even just going back to my grandmother, like my grandmother spent basically every day of
00:14:44.400her marriage, hoping that her husband would die so that she would be free. And she was very
00:14:50.700explicit about that at the end of her life. When she was on her deathbed, she called the whole
00:14:55.340family into the room and said to him for all to hear, I should have left you the day I married
00:15:01.480you. You promised me a second shot, a second chance at a happy life. And he literally had0.90
00:15:08.700promised her that he would die first. So just hang in there. I will die first and then you'll
00:15:15.140be set for life. And like just holding on for that, right? Holding on for that and then for it0.99
00:15:21.360to come out, you know, turn out to not be true. And so I just I'm thinking about that in the
00:15:26.780context of these. My mom always called that a deal with the devil. And it was like this story
00:15:32.320that she told me growing up. And it was a warning about how a woman could find herself trapped in
00:15:38.520marriage. Right. But then my mom had her own deal with the devil in the sense that a lot of1.00
00:15:44.540these adoptions in that era are like the, the, these histories about that era refer to them
00:15:51.300explicitly as such that here you can place your baby for adoption and then you can return to a
00:15:57.620normative life. And especially since most of these women were white, it was a promise that you could0.93
00:16:03.180return to white privilege, that you had fallen off your pedestal by getting pregnant. And now0.71
00:16:08.640here, let us help return you to it. Granted, they were also left traumatized and grieving
00:16:14.960and struggling with mental health issues for the rest of their lives. So it was quite a lie what
00:16:21.620they were sold. Right. We should also note here, and this is like very central to the book too,
00:16:25.780in part because your sister is Black. And part of the reason that there was even more shame and
00:16:31.800taboo on your mom becoming pregnant when she did was because the father of the baby was black
00:16:38.180and i didn't realize though that they did not have similar institutions for black women because
00:16:47.140these institutions were understood as a way of like reinstating white privilege like keeping the
00:16:55.860moral purity of these white women whereas black women were just supposed to just have the baby
00:17:02.500yeah yeah and then i mean it's it really is just like when you when you look at the way that0.93
00:17:08.420unwed pregnancy like the paths were determined along racial lines so clearly so black women
00:17:15.040were expected to raise their own children often within their extended families and then they
00:17:19.820faced a host of associated consequences like lost education, poverty, they were targeted
00:17:26.280with harassment by welfare officials, sterilization, and then the visibility of black single mothers
00:17:34.960was then used to make arguments around segregation in schools and stuff like that. You know, it was
00:17:41.580like used to argue against the civil rights movement. You know, it's very clear, you very
00:17:47.000clearly see the conspiracy at play here yeah yeah it played out and and if they did try to give
00:17:52.920their kids up for adoption they could be like accused or persecuted for um abandonment like
00:17:59.020yeah what a like systematic piece of fuckery going on yeah like yeah yeah it's really yeah it's i
00:18:09.040mean that was the thing that really um that it totally overhauled my sense of my mom's story0.89
00:18:15.180because I had thought of her as having faced a difficult personal choice or predicament.
00:27:13.140I think one thing we have to remember is that feminism was like exoticized like turned into bra burners right like do you remember this from when you grew up in a different cultural context than I did in North Idaho in the 1990s but like the images of like the bra burners were so salient to me like as what feminism was was like not shaving your armpits
00:27:42.980and like not wearing a bra like such a very simplistic like and that was passed down to me
00:27:48.400not just by the media right but like people who were older than me talking about what feminism0.81
00:27:53.020was and also just an incredible feminist backlash through the 80s and 90s like we did not say the
00:28:00.400word feminism like it was an embarrassing thing to talk about out loud yeah um yeah but when i hear
00:28:05.500emily talk about her mom i'm like oh this is a girl boss right like there are a lot of things
00:28:11.120that are similar between like what emily's mom is doing and like trying to navigate like this0.94
00:28:16.640whole world like she just wants to succeed on her own terms yep and not have it be about her gender1.00
00:28:23.480and like not interrogate these larger systems that or like leaning in like emily's mom would
00:28:29.120love to lean in yeah right right exactly like it's like oh i just need to behave like men
00:28:36.080instead of I need to change the system to like not make it so everyone has to behave like men.
00:28:43.620Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And I can I mean, to empathize with her mom, I really can in the0.75
00:28:50.640sense that like, I think it's scary to face the lie of it all. Yeah. Like the lie that you can
00:28:57.680just lean in. Yeah. The lie that it's possible to like individually navigate out of patriarchy,
00:29:04.580especially when you're not even like able to say the word patriarchy to start you know yeah it's
00:29:09.220like yeah you're just like oh these people don't respect me but if I work harder they should
00:29:14.800respect me I'll just keep trying it's very meritocracy right like like a hundred percent
00:29:20.500I don't know I mean I don't know why I'm thinking this just now but it like makes me think about
00:29:25.800even just like how little kids will like personalize whatever dysfunction is happening
00:29:31.720in their family and then maybe like start acting out and then they get negative attention and it
00:29:37.280and they can say like oh well i caused that there's this sense of like agency that's created
00:29:43.260even you know like who knows her mom's like larger backstory her childhood all those things like
00:29:50.280what is it that makes her feel like she needs to kind of like take this on as like this is mine i
00:29:56.440i don't know there's there it feels like there's something deep there yeah and also just like the
00:30:01.500anger that somehow like i i see this sometimes too when people including people of color are
00:30:09.580very anti-affirmative action like they don't want someone blaming a larger like political movement
00:30:16.920for their success yeah um and i think that that is sometimes at the root of anti-feminism as well
00:30:24.400it's like yeah feminism didn't do this for me i did this for me yeah well and there's something
00:30:30.100too about like wanting to be the exceptional woman like again with the like internalized
00:30:34.580misogyny like it's like you want to set yourself apart from all of that badness that we're told is
00:30:42.260women yeah yeah yeah yeah but not me and and a lot of these women and this is something that
00:30:48.000we have to remember like a lot of these women were first right or the onlys and I think about
00:30:54.040this all the time when I think about like my family doctor who was one of the first women
00:30:59.640like not first first but one of the first class of medical students that also had a significant1.00
00:31:05.600amount of women and like then was the only woman in her like the larger practice one of just a1.00
00:31:11.320handful of women or like some of my professors who were sometimes the first professors in their1.00
00:31:16.860field right or the only person in their grad program that was a woman and what do you come
00:31:22.540up with you come up with a protective armor that's like coldness directness all of these things and1.00
00:31:30.540sometimes you have a larger feminist politic that goes alongside that and sometimes you're like i'm
00:31:36.920just as good as men and do not talk about my gender and my gender doesn't matter right i am
00:31:43.340proof that you don't need feminism yeah and that and that and that women who are who are clinging1.00
00:31:48.020to that are have a victim mentality. Yes. Okay. Next question. This is about boomer moms and their1.00
00:31:56.400relationship with boomer dads. This is from Emma and Melody's going to read it. As I get older,
00:32:01.480I find that a lot of my frustrations with my own boomer mom stem from the lack of support she has
00:32:06.380received from my boomer dad. I don't want to let her off the hook for everything, but I can't help
00:32:11.240put most of the blame on the type of men available in the 80s and 90s when she got married. My dad
00:32:16.540wasn't abusive, absent or controlling. He's just not a partner in the sense that we expect partners
00:32:22.020to act in 2026. Raising kids with an emotionally unavailable partner must have been incredibly hard
00:32:27.940and without a true partner to turn to, it's no wonder she struggles with some of the stuff she
00:32:32.340deals with today. Besides encouraging therapy, I find I have little to say to her other than
00:32:37.360I'm sorry you didn't have the help you needed. How can I encourage her personal growth without
00:32:42.000fully throwing my dad under the bus and criticizing their relationship.
00:32:46.000So Tracy, your dad seems pretty great, at least the way he comes off on the page.
00:32:51.240Oh, yeah. I mean, he's wonderful. I mean, I do, you know, if I'm totally honest,
00:32:56.760and I'll say this, because I'm pretty sure he doesn't listen to your podcast.
00:33:02.600You know, like he was like a very present father. And that was like a really big part of like my
00:33:08.600narrative growing up was like my mom was like so emphatic around the luck of me having a good dad
00:33:15.960like a cuddly dad a warm present father you know like this was you know in many ways i feel like
00:33:21.080she'd chosen him for me you know in this way because it wasn't what she had from her father
00:33:27.400who was like this 1950s like you know tyrant yeah um who sent her away and so there was definitely
00:33:34.280that feeling of like her correcting upon you know the previous generation's mistakes right um
00:33:40.660but i will also say like they had inequities within their relationship like her doing most
00:33:48.380of the cooking however my mom inherited money from her father who had sent her away wow that allowed0.95
00:33:58.960her that she then like maintained as her own within their marriage that allowed her a degree
00:34:05.820of freedom around food and cooking which is to say we ate out a lot like she and so it was like
00:34:14.800this very fraught in literal inheritance for her of the the father whose like love was very much
00:34:23.000like conditioned upon her being sent away placing her baby for adoption you know being traumatized
00:34:30.460by the experience then you know gave her money across the course of his life that allowed her
00:34:37.480some degree of freedom within her marriage that made it so that they didn't ever have to confront
00:34:42.940that particular kind of domestic inequity yeah so okay so correct my timeline if i'm wrong here so
00:34:50.980uh your mom got pregnant with you when she was 37 yeah or 39 is something around there
00:34:57.660in 84 and uh they had been together for a while like they've been married for like seven years
00:35:05.240seven years and then together I'm assuming before that for for a bit and like yeah your mom had like
00:35:11.620lived some life like she got I mean apart from everything that we've already been talking about
00:35:16.560but like had lived her 20s like had um she went she got a master's degree like yeah she like she
00:35:24.120had lived her life and your parents had a long relationship before you arrived yeah and I think
00:35:30.620I mean we see this now that I think oftentimes like if you have a time to kind of figure out
00:35:35.520who you are in relationship to one another and who you are as a person it's oftentimes a little
00:35:40.220bit easier to negotiate parenthood and only having one kid in the family at that time, right?
00:35:47.600Yes. Well, and also like I think about my mom was very clear that like before she met my dad,
00:35:52.840she was very clear. She thought she was going to never get married. In her own words, she was like,
00:35:58.360I figured I would have affairs for the rest of my life because she didn't see herself becoming a
00:36:02.720wife because she couldn't imagine finding a man who would treat her as an equal. And so it's like,
00:36:08.640it's really interesting she was like i'm not gonna do that and then she found my dad who she felt
00:36:12.620like was a man who was you know willing to treat her equally enough right and as an intellectual
00:36:18.120equal yes which i think that was number one for her yeah whereas my mom got married immediately
00:36:24.800out of graduating from college which was very standard at that time and so many people got0.71
00:36:32.200married in part because like there was still significant taboos in the 1970s about having
00:36:39.520like having living with someone if you weren't married to them like yes absolutely living in sin
00:36:45.580like really not okay um and your parents like still had this legislative control over your life
00:36:51.280even after you graduated from college yeah and I think a lot of my mom's future
00:36:55.900was directed in other ways because she got married that young yes um and also had babies
00:37:04.260pretty young yeah and like it was the right decision for her in so many ways but also like
00:37:08.740my parents shouldn't have gotten married like yeah they got divorced when i was 15
00:37:12.540in part because they like that's the person like if i got married to the person i was dating when
00:37:17.240i graduated from college oh my god oh my gosh i feel like so many of my friends we've like had
00:37:22.360that sort of mental exercise of like can you imagine right and like the person I was then
00:37:28.200and the person I've become and so I think about that with this question that like yeah it's really
00:37:35.220hard when you obviously there's so many people who get married that young and figure it out
00:37:39.100but also if you go straight from your mother's care to your wife's care yeah what skills as a
00:37:47.340man are you developing, I guess I would say. Yeah, it's such a good point. Yeah. And I think
00:37:52.600too about how this sense of a generational divide between a daughter looking at her mother,
00:38:00.460because I think my mom had this reaction to her mom's unhappy married existence in terms of who
00:38:08.740she chose as a partner, right? And then I had a reaction to my parents' relationship and who I
00:38:15.180chose as a partner. And I think like, these reactions to can create this like real divide
00:38:22.240that is, I mean, I think a really positive thing in the sense that it is in the best cases, like
00:38:29.080a case of kind of, we're evolving, we are moving forward, we're, you know, kind of escaping some of
00:38:35.840the traps of the past. But then it can be kind of hard to like meet each other and understand each
00:38:42.500other across that divide yes and I think about this all the time I've talked to my mom about
00:38:47.340this like and I've written about it a lot like how so many of my larger choices are in some ways
00:38:53.260reactive to like I'm not going to have the life that my mom had I'm going to try to figure out
00:38:59.240more active choices like whether that's like like I'm not married I could totally be married but
00:39:04.720like I'm not married I think in part because I want to like keep choosing that choice or like
00:39:08.660always having a life raft so that I'm not in situations where like you have to stay in a
00:39:14.980marriage or anything like that. Right. Yeah. But sometimes that like becomes just this like
00:39:20.240fetishized independence as well. Well, I know. And it's hard because it's like we can also become
00:39:25.900so trapped in our reaction to our moms. That's like when I think about, you know, again, like
00:39:31.960with like me writing about sex, it's like there's both the like very positive here, like where it's
00:39:36.860like, you know, my mom was sent away in shame and it was all just like she was her experience was
00:39:42.220shrouded in secrecy. Right. And then I kind of did the opposite. Like, here's a personal essay
00:39:47.320about sex that I'm going to put on the Internet. And I think that's like a positive sort of like,
00:39:53.440you know, movement away from shame. But also you you get trapped in these things where you are
00:40:01.060you're trying to like prove yourself against your mom's past her unhappiness her pain
00:40:09.640that is not always the best way to kind of move through and process that pain
00:40:16.860okay our next question comes from lisa and we got so many variations on this one0.83
00:40:24.900melody's gonna read it for us are boomer moms more critical my mom is the kind of mom who once
00:40:30.500greeted me by telling me my roots were showing. My mother says she's critical because she wants
00:40:35.260what's best for me and others to think well of me. That it's a form of love. Is this a mother
00:40:40.280daughter thing? Did generations play into it? Immigration and proving ourselves in this place?
00:40:46.360Okay, so what do we think? Is this boomer specific? Or is this mom specific?
00:40:52.220It's I don't know. That's a tough one. Like, I mean, I'm like instantly hearing this,
00:40:56.660I'm flashing to this memory of my mom who was not like very typically feminine in her
00:41:19.060And then like, you know, comfortable, flexible, flat-soled shoes.
00:41:22.300And I remember her putting her makeup on because she had a graphic design business that she started in San Francisco and she's putting her makeup on and she's like, I don't like doing this, but I have to do it to look professional.
00:41:37.320all and and so i just think about this generation of women in the workplace and what they tied how
00:41:48.120they tied their appearance and self-presentation to legitimacy like the ability to excel yeah to1.00
00:41:57.580strive um but also how appearance was like you know it's like this is how you get a husband also
00:42:04.640like growing up with those kinds of messages so both like the like in the romantic marital sphere
00:42:11.580but also in the career world like how important that like appearance was part of what we were
00:42:18.920talking about about before this kind of personal savvy of navigating this world um and excelling
00:42:26.520within patriarchy like yeah it's you don't want your roots to show my mom's mom was incredibly
00:42:33.120critical like she also had tremendous amounts of anxiety uh to the point that like at various
00:42:40.560points in her life and again this is these are things that my mom would tell me all the time
00:42:43.820is like part of our family lore is like she had so much anxiety that she she couldn't learn to
00:42:49.140drive um she would like just like i think her life would be very different now with the medications
00:42:56.380that we have now but maybe not because she might have been too ashamed to seek them um but like
00:43:01.960lived in suburban St. Paul and didn't drive was absolutely terrified and it got worse as she got
00:43:08.900older of like being around other moms and how they would think about her um just like so much
00:43:16.360going on that I think my mom reacted to that very strongly as I'm not going to be critical of you
00:43:22.500like I really want you to be like playful and like figure out what you like to do with your
00:43:27.020appearance and all these things and and also like your mom loves to be comfortable yeah and and has
00:43:33.780her own sense of style but like it's not it doesn't align with like the professional norms and0.94
00:43:39.020when I was a kid all I wanted was for her to be critical in that way all I wanted was for her to0.64
00:43:44.580like be like let's go get you a better bra or like you know what I mean like just to care I wanted0.99
00:43:50.800her to care about all of the things that my friends' moms cared for. Right. That is really1.00
00:43:57.480interesting. I mean, I had a similar experience of like growing up with a mom who didn't care
00:44:02.100and then comparing her to the moms of my friends who really did care. And I just like have like,
00:44:08.180like as it lives in my brain, it was like all my friends' moms were the kinds of moms who had like
00:44:13.900VHS workout tapes and like in the living room and they had like the little, you know, like
00:44:19.360workout gear and all that stuff. And my mom was so adamantly against that, which now I'm like,
00:44:24.780oh, I feel like so lucky and grateful in many ways to have grown up with my mom, given that.
00:44:32.380But I remember at that time feeling like, oh, like my mom is not like other moms.
00:44:38.020You know, there was some like adolescent embarrassment around that, that she just,
00:44:44.100that she didn't care and that she wouldn't wear makeup unless she really had to for
00:44:48.520professional reasons there was an after school meeting and people who read the hairpin I wrote
00:44:53.280a piece about this at one point but um there was an after school meeting for cheerleading
00:44:56.780that I wrote a letter to my mom about exactly which dress she should wear one of her teaching
00:45:02.220dresses and was like like don't wear a sports bra because she wore a sports bra oh my god and then
00:45:09.660at the end of like if you could please just do these things love your daughter Annie Peterson
00:45:14.120and uh the full name just always gets to me but I think that like I was trying to like
00:45:20.300I was trying to get her to access these ideological norms and to like yeah uh like to put them on
00:45:29.200herself and to put them on me because I was already working so hard to put them on me you
00:45:33.320know I think that's that's such a good point too because I think I think that is part of0.64
00:45:40.060the criticism comes not just from moms wanting to protect their daughters from sort of consequences
00:45:49.640of appearing not right, but also that they feel their daughters reflect upon them. And I think
00:45:58.120that's like this, like it's both at once. It's like they're wanting to protect you and like
00:46:06.020themselves yes and i think like sometimes moms have done more work to excavate themselves from
00:46:13.180this larger stew and like maybe have figured out their own sense of style and like what feels
00:46:18.560important to them and sometimes they haven't sometimes like and that doesn't mean they're a
00:46:22.640worse person it means that like maybe the constrictions were were stronger where they
00:46:29.140grew up maybe there wasn't any other options maybe they saw like very vivid evidence of what
00:46:34.160happened and how people talked about people who didn't meet these these ideas right and you0.99
00:46:41.740internalize that shit like you can try to unlearn it but it's just there it's just this well of0.91
00:46:46.480judgment right right well that's the thing is i think it's like there are some like critical0.99
00:46:51.940periods in our life where we really absorb these kinds of things and it is remarkable but it is
00:47:00.920also true that like for some for a woman in her 70s like that it's really hard to escape
00:47:09.100that socialization that she got when she was in middle school like all the intervening decades
00:47:14.960like you know yeah maybe there there's there's probably been some growth in that period around
00:47:20.480this stuff but it's it's always gonna kind of haunt you I think yeah and I even think about
00:47:25.940that phrase like what it you look nice and like I think oftentimes what moms are looking for is for
00:47:33.100their daughters to look nice yeah and what does that actually mean right it means like it looks
00:47:39.740like you are a person who fits in it looks like you are a person who is nice well and there's like
00:47:44.720there's like an implied just like compliance yes there right right too which feels so important
00:47:51.020And I think that is part of I think it's part of what all of this is, is like signaling compliance, like a willingness to conform.
00:47:59.300Yeah. And I, you know, we didn't get any specific questions about this.
00:48:02.540Maybe one that I like the difficulty sometimes I think of dealing with some gender unruliness to like experimenting with different ways of self-presentation.
00:48:12.160And, like, I think that can be hard because that was absolutely not allowed for our moms.1.00
00:48:19.300Like, my mom had to wear a dress or a skirt to school until she entered middle school.1.00
00:48:34.900right but that is kind of like i think what this the stakes feel like for many of these women is
00:48:41.900that it's like you won't have a job you'll be unhirable or you won't find love you love too
00:48:47.580that you won't have security in this world and that those things and this gets to our larger
00:48:53.220point that those things matter safety matters more than happiness yeah yeah yeah
00:49:03.900Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a really kind of traumatized perspective. Like, that's like, that is the perspective of someone who's in survival mode. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Who's kind of learned that and taken that on and never been able to let go. Yeah.
00:49:21.860the culture study podcast is sponsored by ollie so i have kind of a gross story are you ready for
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00:53:45.140Okay, this next question comes from Jackie. We got, I'm not kidding you, I think like 25 versions
00:53:50.460of this one. So it is clearly a thing that people are still dealing with. Here we go.
00:53:55.280Why are boomer moms often so progressive and willing to learn and grow about so many things, but still unable to let go of diet culture?1.00
00:54:03.720My mom was a lifelong progressive and feminist, despite living in a small town and having a somewhat conservative family.1.00
00:54:09.940But she never stopped wanting to be skinny. What's up with that?0.94
00:54:13.500So I have to plug Virginia Sol Smith's piece from a few years ago called The Grandparents Are Not Okay.
00:54:18.660this is actually like I did an interview with her even before that piece about what what I was
00:54:27.660noticing about a certain generation in the way that they talked about food and she's just super
00:54:32.160smart on like the lessons that this generation had to internalize yeah but what do you think
00:54:38.780what are your thoughts here oh man I mean so many things like I mean okay my first memoir
00:54:45.520was titled Want Me. And it was a sexual coming of age memoir that was in part about me channeling
00:54:52.980my wants into being wanted by men. And so maybe I'm a little biased here, but I think that this
00:55:02.960want to be wanted runs so deep in women's socialization across generations. And that
00:55:11.680desirability is deeply tied to like measurable real world rewards and punishments. Yes. And
00:55:20.100fat phobia is fundamental to ideas about desirability in our culture. Right. So it makes
00:55:27.640sense. I mean, and that's across generations. I also think across generations, it's true that,
00:55:33.080you know we can hold certain political beliefs that might be in tension with our own private
00:55:42.660sort of struggles and insecurities yeah um and we might feel bad about having those insecurities
00:55:49.260given the way that they might seem to contradict with our politics um yeah but i i guess for boomer
00:55:56.960moms especially I wonder about the pop culture that they grew up with oh my god um you know0.98
00:56:03.640like I guess I'm just thinking about Weight Watchers and I don't know the the diet soda boom
00:56:10.600and like Slim Fast and all of that stuff like I mean that was also like I feel like that was also
00:56:16.640in the mix for me growing up but I think it was directed very much at my mom's generation yes
00:56:23.500absolutely and then there weren't like positive representations of of people being fat and happy
00:56:30.000right like this is again a way that like people were othered and made abject and like you
00:56:35.020internalize that that like if you are that sort of person this is how people are going to talk about
00:56:39.000you and i think we see this i i've just heard this from a lot of people talk like they're boomer moms
00:56:44.580the way that they gossip is about like this person got fat and this is a way of regimenting control0.99
00:56:50.580and like normalizing this over and over again like when people get fat we talk shit about them0.95
00:56:56.040yeah and it's so harmful for so many kids but it also like this is a programmed thing of like how0.94
00:57:02.800you police yourself is you have to like show that it this is how people will talk about you
00:57:08.340yeah well and that feels so related to what we're talking about with the the like makeup stuff and
00:57:14.660self-presentation stuff and it like being a way to signal compliance like thinness or you know
00:57:23.360feeling bad about food is like a way of signaling compliance right like I'm so bad I'm so bad like
00:57:32.000I'm eating this thing I shouldn't yeah exactly exactly the other thing I'll note and this is
00:57:38.120just trying to like really really be empathetic it's like a lot of moms of this generation did
00:57:44.900not get to exercise control in their professional lives like did not get to pursue the things in the
00:57:51.180public sphere that they might have wanted and so what you do get to control is the private sphere
00:57:56.020and that can be the ways that you raise your kids it can be your house like being very fastidious
00:58:02.180about cleaning is another thing that I see a lot of um but then also you exercise that like
00:58:08.800that control on your own body yeah right yeah yeah that makes a lot of sense right you exercise
00:58:16.340power where you can I'm like immediately just in hearing you say that I'm thinking about how in the
00:58:21.960book like there's this moment where I am like confronted with all the like various teacups
00:58:28.660Yeah. And little serving dishes that my grandmother collected. And this family member remarked like that she, you know, she was going to have to entertain my grandfather's, you know, business, you know, associates, she was going to have like the nicest dishware set possible.
00:58:47.760And it was like, this family member remarked, like, she exercised power where she could.
00:58:54.020And so it's like that idea of, like, exercising it on the body, exercising it within the home, in the domestic sphere.