Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - We Survived Girls Gone Wild Just to Get Tradwives？

00:00:00.660 I don't think I can be your friend, Isabella said.

00:00:04.060 Rebecca's stomach flipped.

00:00:06.340 This is the love story of real hinge couple Isabella and Rebecca,

00:00:09.900 written and read by me, Temmie Denton-Hurst.

00:00:12.360 Listen to the free audiobook now.

00:00:22.400 What were you doing in 1999?

00:00:25.860 I had just started college.

00:00:27.700 I joined the tri-delt sorority, make all of the delta, delta, delta, can I help you, help you,

00:00:33.040 help you jokes that you want. I loved it. Every minute of it. And my girlfriends and I were

00:00:38.600 dressing up to go to a frat party looking exactly like Britney Spears in the Hit Me Baby One More

00:00:44.820 Time video. The late 90s and early aughts were a gorgeous, beautiful, and super fun time to be a

00:00:52.500 young woman. They were also incredibly fraught and terribly toxic in numerous ways. Despite all

00:01:00.160 the nostalgia that we have for that time period, right now, there was a serious problem with how

00:01:05.980 pop culture treated young women. Third wave and riot girl feminism collapsed into this period of

00:01:12.420 hyper-objectification and sexualization. Today we're talking to Atlantic critic Sophie Gilbert

00:01:19.260 about her new book, Girl on Girl, how pop culture turned a generation of women against themselves.

00:01:27.020 Gilbert trains her keen analytic eye on the most revealing cultural objects of the era,

00:01:32.320 from American pie to Britney Spears. Any woman around my age is going to identify with just how

00:01:40.260 deeply these pop culture icons burned themselves into our brains. And so much about what was

00:01:49.240 happening back then has led us directly to the America that we're living in now in the post-MeToo

00:01:54.540 era, where trad wives and soft girls are thriving, and men in power are once again celebrated for

00:02:01.340 their constant objectification of women. Hello, Sophie. Hi, thank you so much for having me. I'm 0.81

00:02:08.840 so excited. Thank you for being here. I have to say, reading your book, reading your recent piece

00:02:16.120 in the Atlantic, it took me back like in a hot tub time machine, essentially,

00:02:22.300 to my late teenage years, early 20s, the 2000s, which I think there's a lot of nostalgia for

00:02:32.960 right now. But we forget what a terrible time it was in pop culture for women. 1.00

00:02:41.460 we do and and especially i think a lot of the nostalgia right now seems to be coming from

00:02:47.220 gen z who never experienced it the first time around and so all they see is like the sparkles

00:02:52.680 the juicy couture the pink bedazzled phones and like the fake tan everywhere and it it looks sort

00:02:57.920 of thrilling aesthetically i think it really does actually yeah yeah and there was a lot about the

00:03:03.620 era that was so fun and like so enticing in so many ways um and i didn't want to rain on anyone's

00:03:10.140 paramed with any of that with this book. But I did want to revisit a lot of the culture of the era

00:03:17.920 because I just had my suspicions that it had sort of shaped us in ways that we hadn't quite

00:03:22.320 processed yet. And that was sort of based on my own experiences. But I'm glad hearing from other

00:03:27.640 people that they're sort of connecting with it in similar ways. Yeah, no, I think it definitely

00:03:32.180 shaped who we are as grownups now. For me, I'm a mom of two young girls, a five-year-old and

00:03:39.020 a two-year-old and looking back it shapes the things that i do and don't want for them in this

00:03:46.500 world and the thing that i really want to say is that you can love anything that you love and

00:03:52.100 anything that connects with you and like nothing nothing is is out of range i think um for me it's

00:03:58.720 less about indicting any one thing or any one artist or any one product in the book it's more

00:04:03.900 about drawing connections and so what was fascinating to me was trying to understand

00:04:08.480 how we got from the riot girl era of girl power to britney spears 1999 you know 16 dancing in

00:04:15.020 her school uniform baby one more time and like how did that happen how do we get from this sort

00:04:20.160 of really activist energetic movement that was all about making change for women and being vocal

00:04:25.500 about what needed to happen and being vocal about sexual assault and being vocal about safety

00:04:29.900 um like how did how did that change in music happen and one thing that was really interesting

00:04:35.300 and slightly unfortunately gloomy to me as a fan was that the Spice Girls were kind of the gateway

00:04:39.860 they were the act that helped this shift really enabled this shift to happen and they were

00:04:46.520 specifically the ones who took this slogan girl power that was really sort of had its own agenda

00:04:52.520 and was about forcing change through and kind of made it about nothing like it was very fun

00:04:56.360 the Spice Girls were very fun girl power I mean it was great it was thrilling it was like okay we

00:05:00.380 can have our friends and we can go out we can have a good time and spend money and everything's like

00:05:04.360 thrilling and colorful and absurd um but the way that they claimed girl power it really didn't

00:05:10.580 stand for anything and this was so successful as as um salespeople as people who could sell

00:05:19.100 products that it became clear very early on i think to people in the music industry that

00:05:23.680 that there was a lot of money to be spent that could be that could be shaped by by like beautiful 1.00

00:05:30.740 women in pop and that they were very effective branding tools and mechanisms and that maybe 1.00

00:05:36.260 they would make more money for these men in suits than the sort of angry, angry, more 0.90

00:05:41.340 political, more charged artists of the 90s.

00:05:44.700 Yeah, as someone who's kind of traced the celebrity branding movement, for me, they

00:05:53.040 do feel like the start of a lot of the consumerism and the capitalism that comes along with celebrities.

00:05:58.820 I mean, there's a direct through line, I think, from the Spice Girls directly then to the Paris Hiltons and Kim Kardashians who are selling literally every aspect of their lives.

00:06:09.560 They do feel kind of the 1.0 version of what we then saw in the 2000s and the hyper reality of celebrity branding today.

00:06:20.600 It's so true. I mean, in some ways, people often think of reality stars as the first influencers.

00:06:24.660 But you're right that the Spice Girls were really kind of proto-influencers in that way.

00:06:28.240 I mean, one fact that I learned in the book that really blew my mind was something like within the first year and a half of being a band, they had made something like five hundred million dollars worth of deals, commercial deals.

00:06:39.640 And they were selling everything.

00:06:40.460 They were selling lollipops.

00:06:41.460 They were selling like shoes, lipstick, but really, I mean, household items.

00:06:45.900 It was it was crazy.

00:06:47.340 I think someone told me once they had like a Spice Girl toaster or something.

00:06:50.820 Oh, I believe that.

00:06:52.040 That feels right to me.

00:06:53.520 That feels very right.

00:06:54.240 They were so spectacular at selling things because their energy was so contagious and it was so enthusiastic. And I think what happened after that was also people in corporations tapped into the idea that actually teenage girls have a lot of money to spend. They have babysitting money. They don't have mortgages. They have cash that they will spend on frivolities at the mall.

00:07:16.680 And in that way, they're a very powerful marketing demographic.

00:07:19.840 And so suddenly, like, as the Spice Girls proved that, you see suddenly artists like Britney Spears and Christina and then people like Paris and Kim come along as these influencers who are really able to dominate that market.

00:07:31.300 Yeah, absolutely.

00:07:32.720 So for people who did not live through this the way that we did, let's set the scene of the late 90s, early 2000s.

00:07:41.280 What is the world like?

00:07:43.420 What is happening?

00:07:44.140 and and who are our pop culture icons so i think when i start the book it's 1999 i am 16 years old

00:07:54.120 um and there are so many things that happened that year that seemed formative to me but

00:07:59.460 obviously baby one more time comes out and britney spears is on the cover of rolling stone

00:08:03.460 clutching a tally tubby doll and wearing like a hopping bra this sort of really absurdist uh

00:08:08.880 David LaChapelle shoot. American Beauty comes out, a movie about a man who has sexual fantasies 0.98

00:08:15.320 about his teenage daughter's best friend. Which proceeded to win many Oscars. Yes,

00:08:20.480 yes. It was highly prestigious. It won five Oscars and no one sort of seemed to question

00:08:25.780 what was going on with the Kevin Spacey story. No, no. And we later find out that Kevin Spacey

00:08:31.320 is a sex offender. So yeah, really full circle here. Yes. Yeah. American Pie came out in 1999,

00:08:37.320 which was this movie that I think in so many ways is kind of lovable and sweet

00:08:41.560 and really trying to make what's called in Hollywood the teenage sex comedy

00:08:45.380 which is a kind of horrific term when you think about it

00:08:47.420 but was really trying to sort of broaden the horizons of that genre of filmmaking

00:08:52.340 but also is all about this heroic male bonding quest to lose one's virginity

00:08:57.820 and the girls are the ones standing in the way

00:08:59.600 they're the objects, they're the gatekeepers of sex for the men

00:09:02.880 and they're the ones who sort of have to be overcome in lots of different ways

00:09:06.500 so there were all these things happening when I was growing I was obviously growing up in London

00:09:10.500 at this time and there was a children's television presenter named Gail Porter who I'd grown up

00:09:15.380 watching on like kids tv in the mornings and also in 1999 without her knowledge or consent

00:09:21.120 a naked picture of her was projected onto the houses of parliament in London

00:09:24.740 as a stunt for a magazine that she'd posed for and so I mean what a symbol to girls of my age 1.00

00:09:33.180 it's like okay here's the building of power the seat of power in great britain uh you women do

00:09:38.200 not belong inside making laws you belong outside naked on 50-foot projections it was it just kind

00:09:44.400 of embodied so much about the era so yeah these were the these were i mean every virtually every

00:09:49.180 form of media at this point was kind of enthralled to sexualized images of women fashion music

00:09:55.480 movies there were a lot of books coming out it was it was really really dominant and it was obvious

00:10:01.080 to me at the time that sex was power. That was what power meant for women. That was how we 1.00

00:10:05.280 could feel and be powerful. Yeah, I was slightly older, I mean, very slightly. I was 19 in 99.

00:10:14.160 It was my freshman year of college. And I remember dressing as Britney Spears in the

00:10:20.240 Hit Me Baby One More Time video for Halloween. And also feeling very powerful in doing that

00:10:28.280 Because the messaging was, just like you said with American Pie, which I have not watched in years, did you watch it when you were researching the book?

00:10:40.900 Yeah, I've watched it more times than anyone over the age of 20 should at this point because I watched it for research and then I watched it again and then I watched it for fact-checking purposes.

00:10:49.480 So I'm very familiar with it.

00:10:50.800 You're very well-versed.

00:10:52.140 I would actually be curious to watch it again.

00:10:54.280 And I think I'd have to be slightly drunk and maybe on a plane to do it.

00:10:58.960 Because I've also made a lot of American Pie references.

00:11:02.640 I feel like we still reference that movie constantly.

00:11:06.380 Yeah, Stifler's mom.

00:11:07.620 Stifler's mom, exactly.

00:11:09.600 But I feel like it probably doesn't hold up.

00:11:12.320 There are probably so many things that just offend our sensibilities these days.

00:11:18.440 So much of it is sort of sweeter than I remember it.

00:11:20.780 But then there's this, the treatment of Nadia in the film.

00:11:23.820 is is sort of horrific and it was in this moment when we didn't really have boundaries around the

00:11:29.600 internet yet because the internet was still so new so no one had a sense of like what was

00:11:33.820 appropriate what was ethical so you have this scene where jim invites nadia over to study at

00:11:40.400 his house and and jim is jason bix right jim is jason bix nadia is shannon elizabeth and his

00:11:46.140 friends encourage him to set up a webcam in his room so that he can broadcast whatever happens

00:11:50.000 between them on the internet so that his friends can watch but he accidentally sends the link to

00:11:55.020 his entire school listserv so basically everyone in town watches the video and the idea is not that

00:12:00.820 this is humiliating for nadia that she's been set up or exploited it's that this is humiliating for

00:12:05.820 jim and nadia is kind of after that i think she's sent her she's a exchange student she what when

00:12:11.480 her host family find out what's happened she's sent home in disgrace but that's really the end

00:12:14.760 of it like we don't get to hear anything about what this means to her to have been really like

00:12:19.580 tricked in this very horrific way and it's sort of not quite turned into revenge porn but turned

00:12:24.520 into non-consensual porn. And as you said earlier in the film and what I remember does set it up

00:12:34.720 as though because women are the gatekeepers of our virginity we're the we're the ones who decide

00:12:39.320 right that that is what gives us power that our sexuality gives us power and I thought that I

00:12:45.440 I mean, I really internalized that message as a young woman.

00:12:50.420 And I don't think that it did me any favors when I started dating in my 20s, when I was in the workplace, trying to negotiate for myself.

00:13:00.540 And I do think that it just instilled a lot of really harmful messages for me.

00:13:06.940 I want to talk a little bit more about that when we get back from a quick break.

00:13:10.720 i didn't like what you said odin pauses about the future this is the love story of real hinge

00:13:22.540 couple odin and edward written and read by me curtis garner listen to the free audiobook now

00:13:29.260 Okay, we are back. Sophie, so much went into this book. Why do you want to write it in the first

00:13:41.660 place? I've been a critic for almost two decades now. And I've always been curious about culture

00:13:49.700 and identity. And in 2020, I had twins during COVID in New York City. And it was such a kind

00:13:57.680 of breakdown of self moment because you're so isolated and sleep deprived and like really

00:14:04.500 struggling in so many ways I lost my sense of self and I couldn't do any of the things that

00:14:09.960 I'd previously done to sort of find myself I couldn't read books I couldn't watch movies I

00:14:13.400 could I'd like I just couldn't focus on anything for more than a second um and so it sort of led

00:14:20.660 me to this process of like wondering how much the things that we consume really give us that sense

00:14:25.840 of identity and so when i went back to work i was really circling stories that this was kind of in

00:14:30.920 the post me too moment and we had a lot of memoirs about women who had found um both great meaning

00:14:36.860 and also had found had been made vulnerable through literature through through writers

00:14:42.440 um and through films i mean harvey weinstein thinking about him like his so many of his films

00:14:47.680 i think contoured my imagination in different ways like they they're he had tremendous power

00:14:53.720 and also tremendous influence um and so i wanted to have a look back at the culture from this

00:15:00.860 moment for a variety of reasons and then after roe v wade was overturned i remember just being

00:15:05.060 really obviously really outraged really angry really upset and i remember thinking like why

00:15:11.240 can't we do anything about this why don't we have more power we are 51 of the population 0.76

00:15:15.800 obviously women are not a monolith like we don't all want the same things but like we should 1.00

00:15:19.860 be able to do something about this like we should have ways to make our presence felt and it it just 1.00

00:15:27.760 made me realize that sort of women in power have always been kind of disembodied in culture like 1.00

00:15:32.140 they've always been divorced from each other um and I did I it just occurred to me that if I could 0.98

00:15:37.540 go back and look at this period of of the 2000s and then it ended up being a much broader period

00:15:41.820 because so much was relevant from the 90s and the 2010s if I could go back and look at this period

00:15:46.720 and imagine, not imagine, but like analyze a little bit more what it did to millennial women,

00:15:52.840 that there might be some sense, there might be some patterns, there might be something that we 0.95

00:15:57.180 could use to kind of change the ways that we think and consume media. And what are some of

00:16:03.220 the patterns that you did discern by looking at the late 90s, early 2000s that we are seeing

00:16:11.720 kind of come to fruition today yeah i mean the the one question i really had was this treatment

00:16:18.820 of women in the 2000s like the girl's gone wild of it or the way that we were persuaded to

00:16:23.320 objectify ourselves and to think that it was all a really hysterical joke and that the only thing

00:16:28.520 that mattered to us our only currency was sexual like we we had nothing else to aspire to and we

00:16:33.520 like our most important purpose in life was to gratify men like how did that happen like what

00:16:40.360 What was shaping that?

00:16:42.740 I actually completely forgot about Girls Gone Wild until I re-read your writing.

00:16:51.560 And yes, it still baffles me that it was a thing.

00:16:57.540 Can you explain Girls Gone Wild for people who, again, younger women who may not know that this is a thing that was everywhere?

00:17:04.840 where girls gone wild um i think it was sold late at night via infomercials but it was kind of like

00:17:11.940 like a scam where you get subscribed to um this list that you could never unsubscribe but they

00:17:19.380 would send you vhs tapes of girls in college towns or on spring break who would be very drunk and

00:17:26.080 cameramen would follow them around and apply them with alcohol and persuade them to take off their

00:17:30.500 tops to flash the camera to make out with each other to engage in like uh like weird titillating

00:17:37.560 content for for male gratification and it was it was so weird because it was so gross but it was

00:17:43.920 such a powerful cultural product i mean i think you had like justin timberlake and ashton kutcher

00:17:49.340 wearing girls gone wild trucker caps out in public and stuff it was this thing that like everyone was

00:17:54.020 supposed to understand was really funny and cool and and then obviously since then there were there

00:17:59.420 It was reporting and a lot of women said that what had happened to them, a lot of the girls featured were actually underage. 0.94

00:18:05.800 And then women had come forward and had explained different ways in which they were exploited by the cameramen.

00:18:10.260 And they felt that they'd been tricked and set up.

00:18:12.700 And I mean, put aside, even if all of it was consensual, it was still profoundly gross.

00:18:17.720 And it was a commercial on just regular TV.

00:18:21.000 Yeah.

00:18:21.020 Yeah, so you're just watching pretty much anything after maybe 10 o'clock, and you're seeing Girls Gone Wild commercials just on almost every commercial break.

00:18:30.760 Yeah, and the man who is behind all this, Joe Francis, is kind of pivotal to the rise of the Kardashians. He was a close family friend. I think he has said, the Kardashians have denied, that he was the one who broke up the deal of Kim Kardashian and Ray J. Suss J.

00:18:44.540 so I mean the thing I learned in my book is everything is connected like the Mike Fleiss

00:18:50.420 the the creator of The Bachelor was the also the producer of the hostel movies so and also the

00:18:56.020 cousin of the Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss so everything is connected in all these fascinating

00:19:00.260 ways that will make you crazy if you try to map them out everything is connected it's it's so true

00:19:06.360 I I used to be a celebrity reporter and I became a gossip columnist at the New York Daily News

00:19:14.380 during the rise of Paris Hilton and then was at celebrity magazines during the rise of the

00:19:21.420 Kardashians. I mean, I was literally in the office when deals were being brokered, essentially to get

00:19:28.860 the Kardashians press in the early days. So you were on the front lines, you were on the celebrity

00:19:34.120 2007 trenches. I was also there when Britney Spears shaved her head. Oh my God, I was telling

00:19:40.560 someone about this because i was waitressing at the time i was working in a restaurant in london

00:19:44.460 saving money for grad school and i remember my manager coming to get me and being like blow by

00:19:48.820 like you need to come away and see what's happening like you need to understand it was like the tiktok

00:19:53.180 of it all the live updates press hilton like photos in real time and at the time it didn't

00:19:59.400 seem as obscene as it seems to me now that we were all doing this we were all spectating on

00:20:04.360 this woman's mental breakdown which now of course you're like this is horrific we were monsters we

00:20:09.160 I mean, I literally think that I was a monster, actually, to be honest. At the time, I was doing my job, which is they're like, go cover this crazy story. The Amanda Bynes breakdown happened around the same time with the same level of press coverage.

00:20:26.360 And this is actually the same year that I had my own come to Jesus moment where I was like, oh, gosh, I need to do something else with my life.

00:20:36.000 Because it was the same year that there was the Eliot Spitzer prostitute scandal.

00:20:41.260 Oh, wow.

00:20:42.440 Yeah, yeah. 0.96

00:20:43.360 Where the young woman involved was objectified so much more than this married politician who had solicited sex from her. 0.55

00:20:52.900 Isn't that always the way, though?

00:20:53.860 That's like the Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky story.

00:20:55.840 I mean, she was a vulnerable intern, and he was the most powerful man in the world.

00:20:59.680 And who is blamed? Who is slut-shamed? 0.97

00:21:01.920 Who was slut-shamed and raked over the coals? 0.99

00:21:05.140 And as I was reading all of your writing, I was thinking about Monica Lewinsky a lot.

00:21:10.260 Because she is such a pivotal character from the late 90s, early 2000s.

00:21:18.020 We were almost trained to slut-shame her from the way that women were portrayed in media. 0.99

00:21:23.700 Yeah. And in some ways, I give her so much credit, too, because I think she is someone who has really forced this moment of revisionism that my book is a part of by refusing to go away, refusing to be silenced, refusing to be ashamed.

00:21:37.880 Like she has always been present. She has always spoken about what happened to her.

00:21:41.420 She has never retreated and she has forced us to kind of reckon over the years with the fact that what happened to her was profoundly cruel and unjust.

00:21:48.640 And so, like, I mean, mad credit to her for doing that.

00:21:52.500 Mad credit.

00:21:52.980 Because it must have been enormously hard.

00:21:55.480 But she really has made a change, I think, in ways that few people can claim.

00:21:59.300 No, she really has.

00:22:00.340 She really has.

00:22:00.820 And I also know that it hasn't been easy.

00:22:03.060 I've read so many things that she's written and everything that she's had to go through to reclaim her narrative.

00:22:09.460 Yeah.

00:22:10.800 It often feels impossible when I read about it.

00:22:13.860 And I don't know if I would have had the strength to do that after having lived through what she did.

00:22:19.100 Yeah, I don't know that I would have either.

00:22:20.520 But it's incredible.

00:22:21.760 And I think so much of why I wanted to write my own book was after this moment of 90s, just like revisiting the stories of women like her and Tonya Harding and understanding how flawed the tabloid treatment of them was.

00:22:37.420 And then Nicole Smith, I mean, all these women who were really, really victimized in the media and were only sort of starting to put together pieces now of what happened and why the culture was so cruel.

00:22:50.700 So but it's it's really I think it helps us all in learning about it to be able to hope that we can do things differently.

00:22:59.540 One of the college classes that I would teach in my fantasy college, if I could, is covering women from Kardashians to Clinton to Catholic nuns just to write.

00:23:13.140 Doesn't it sound so much fun because I've covered all of these women.

00:23:16.220 And just to look at the different ways that media has evolved their treatment of women, because I think a lot about when I was on this celebrity beat and where the messaging was coming down from.

00:23:35.420 The majority of the highest up editors were male.

00:23:39.880 Oh.

00:23:40.440 And I will say that in the newsroom at the New York Daily News, as a young 20-something reporter, and I ended up in celebrity gossip completely by accident.

00:23:52.680 It was the only job I could get in New York City.

00:23:55.100 But I was also a general assignment reporter.

00:23:57.500 And they would send me out on the most sexualizing assignment possible. 0.89

00:24:02.340 they're like you are going to try to be a boxing ring girl for a day at this celebrity boxing match

00:24:10.820 where you'll wear a bikini you will try to be a jets cheerleader again where you wear a teeny

00:24:19.760 tiny outfit and at that point to go back to where we thought our power came from i thought this was

00:24:26.980 my way to move ahead. I'm like, I am your girl Friday in a bikini. I will get out there and

00:24:34.240 cheerlead. And it was always a male photographer. And if you Google, you can go back, there's some

00:24:39.240 very revealing pictures of me in this newspaper. And no one saw anything wrong with it, including

00:24:46.380 our female editors who were kind of just going along to get along. Yeah. I mean, one thing that

00:24:51.800 has really become clear to me is that during the 2000s, if you were a woman and you were

00:24:56.760 ambitious and you wanted to be successful and you especially wanted to be visible in media

00:25:00.700 the only way to do it was to present yourself in a sexual way a commodified way because otherwise

00:25:05.780 no one else would care no one else would pay attention you'd be this like figure of fun

00:25:09.180 um it really was the only path i think for women to to have a voice in some ways like to to be out

00:25:16.640 there to be to be i mean the movies of the era certainly were just they weren't interested in 1.00

00:25:21.680 women's stories at all women were skulls they were shrews they were nags or they were sex objects that

00:25:26.280 was that was basically it and and I obviously like we absorbed that and when you're telling 0.94

00:25:32.280 me now that like the workplace was actively endorsing this and and it was the only way for

00:25:36.880 you to sort of get your stories it's so it's so dark it's so so dark but it does also make you

00:25:43.620 realize how far we've come in some ways I think we have come really far but in some ways I also

00:25:50.740 think we're backtracking in in really strange ways i cover trad wives probably too much than i

00:25:58.540 much more than i should uh they have they have sunk into my brain so much so that i've now

00:26:06.020 written a murder mystery about them but oh yeah oh yeah i've done that uh comes out this summer

00:26:12.720 i cannot wait to read that oh well i'm gonna i will get you a copy actually it's coming out in

00:26:17.800 uk too and we just got the uk cover and it's fantastic so you'll be able to get it at waterstone 0.95

00:26:21.680 but uh yeah i i do see kind of a through line between what was happening to women

00:26:28.700 in the 90s and now this trad wife soft girl movement of your virginity is your power

00:26:38.980 things like that i want to get into that a little bit more after we take our last break

00:26:47.800 I want to date with Rawls, Carty says.

00:26:51.100 Rawls? Rucka asks.

00:26:53.220 This is the love story of real hinge couple Carty and Rucka.

00:26:57.300 Written and read by me, Nicola Dynan.

00:27:00.060 Listen to the free audiobook now.

00:27:08.140 Okay, we are back.

00:27:10.880 Have you noticed this at all?

00:27:13.500 you know looking at all of the pop culture from the 90s to the 2000s how did we get to all of

00:27:19.820 the social media tiktok trends of soft girls and trad wives these days i think the thing to know

00:27:27.560 is that there is nothing new under the sun and the same iterations and trends come around again

00:27:32.880 and again and again and they take different forms and they have different technology

00:27:36.480 but they will always recur um as long as there's an audience to them as long as there are people

00:27:42.380 willing to buy what they're selling and so much of sort of trad wife culture it reminds me a lot

00:27:47.720 of like the in britain we had a real footballers wives culture in the 2000s where there were all 0.97

00:27:52.920 these like the wags the wives and girlfriends and these were women who didn't have jobs but they 0.94

00:27:58.240 were very famous for being married to sporting stars and they would inevitably get cheated on

00:28:02.480 and then they would get a new handbag or a new diamond and they were very present in the media

00:28:06.560 And it was like this real source of aspiration for a lot of people because it was the idea that they'd made it.

00:28:13.660 They'd married a rich man.

00:28:14.800 They had kids.

00:28:15.480 I mean, yeah, God knows what happened in their domestic lives.

00:28:18.380 But they were famous.

00:28:19.860 They were visible.

00:28:20.460 Everyone wanted to be like them.

00:28:22.380 And I think what happens with that deal that you make is you trade agency in some ways for protection, financial protection, safety.

00:28:30.860 And I think we see that a lot now with the Trad Wife movement too. 0.66

00:28:34.100 Like they claim to not want sort of responsibility for their own lives or agency in their own homes. 0.96

00:28:41.720 And the reward for that is that they don't have to think about how to make money or how to engage with the world.

00:28:47.160 It's sort of the same deal over and over again. 0.76

00:28:50.680 And it's the same deal that like you had all these Republicans in the 1970s, these Republican women, like making very lucrative jobs out of telling other women to stay home. 0.68

00:29:02.000 It's sort of interesting, right? 1.00

00:29:03.360 Because Tradwaves are content creators and that is very much a job.

00:29:07.060 Yes, it is.

00:29:08.380 Absolutely.

00:29:09.380 So it's sort of they're not quite buying what they're selling.

00:29:12.880 No, I think about the Phyllis Shapley of it all, all the time.

00:29:16.200 I mean, the irony is that, yes, these women are saying, you stay home, you quit your job, you let your man be the breadwinner.

00:29:24.600 and they are making so much money as content creators that the majority of them that I have

00:29:30.480 reported on are the breadwinners in their household. Their husbands have quit their jobs

00:29:34.880 and are running their multimedia brands at this point. And yet the messaging is so strong and also

00:29:42.320 I think so appealing for women who have been burnt by the workforce. It is so hard to be a

00:29:48.660 working mother in the world, in the corporate world, that women are very willing to accept 0.98

00:29:54.020 their message right now and be like that does sound nice when the reality is these women are 0.96

00:29:58.520 running media companies yeah i mean that's really visible on the secret lives of mormon wives i mean 0.94

00:30:04.020 you see how these women are the breadwinners for their families and yet their husbands are still

00:30:07.960 telling them what to do even while they're supporting these same husbands through medical

00:30:11.380 school yeah yeah exactly it's just the dynamic um i know it's it's it's it's very hard to ask

00:30:20.620 sometimes um but i'm grateful for all your analysis and coverage of it because it is it

00:30:27.160 is really rich and it's really fascinating oh it's fascinating although one day i do wish i

00:30:32.120 can stop thinking about it one day but but even the imagery around trad wives and the way they

00:30:39.920 dress like dressing up for your husband a lot of cleavage a lot of big eyelashes it reminds me of 0.99

00:30:46.360 lot of the imagery of the early or late 90s early 2000s of just you know women wearing as little as

00:30:53.900 possible and dressing for the male gaze which I feel like we did get away from a little bit in

00:31:01.000 the later 2000s when I was in my late 20s early 30s and now it does feel like the pendulum is

00:31:06.980 swinging back yeah we really I mean I think one thing that kind of represents how we had moved

00:31:12.960 away from it is in i'm sure you remember in 2013 miley cyrus's performance with robin thick oh

00:31:18.620 yeah it was the grammys or the vmas but she did a performance of blurred lines with him and she

00:31:25.700 was wearing this teeny teeny tiny little pvc bikini um and a giant foam finger i'm not sure

00:31:31.060 what the foam finger was for but everyone was just kind of like i think we've moved past this

00:31:36.780 Ew. No, we're not here anymore. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think women are willing to be treated

00:31:43.340 this way anymore. And so, you know, this was this kind of surreal moment in lots of ways,

00:31:47.860 but it did seem to exemplify that the trends at least had changed, if not the motivations behind

00:31:56.160 them. Well, and one of the things that you point out, too, is that people have used pop culture

00:32:01.940 to cope. It was very interesting for me working as a gossip columnist at a New York City tabloid

00:32:08.780 right after 9-11. Because there was at first this idea that no one would want this. They're like,

00:32:16.940 oh my God, we should... I think they paused the columns. I wasn't there when 9-11 happened. I was

00:32:22.240 there a year later and they paused the columns. They're like, oh gosh, no, we should stop. This

00:32:26.360 isn't right. But people craved it so much. Then we saw the rise of Perez Hilton, the explosion of

00:32:32.560 celebrity weekly magazines. People were desperate for that level of pop culture. Our new pop culture

00:32:40.140 is watching people on social media. And so and I think that times are very difficult and weird and

00:32:45.820 strange right now. So there is definitely a parallel there. What do you think? Well, it's so

00:32:50.740 funny because I actually get into this in the book in the reality TV chapter, how it's not

00:32:55.560 coincidental that so much reality tv was born the year after 9-11 um and the reason why i came to

00:33:00.480 this was in during covid i reported a story for the atlantic on um why people were streaming

00:33:06.460 contagion during covid and oh i did did you yeah of course yeah of course yeah i talked to a media

00:33:13.260 researcher and she told me that there are two ways that people deal with fear and anxiety um with

00:33:18.380 culture like either they anesthetize themselves with comforting fluff like stream new girl or

00:33:23.680 Frasier 10,000 times like I also do or they lean all the way into the thing that scares them

00:33:28.100 and so much of what happened after 9-11 like there was literally a column I think in TV week that

00:33:33.900 was like America doesn't care about Anne Heche anymore and who she's dating but they did yes we

00:33:39.600 did yes we did it cared more than ever and so the impulse to kind of lean into comforting and

00:33:45.060 aesthetizing fluff in this moment of profound trauma and profound national pain was was sort

00:33:49.980 of really amplified by shows like American Idol and by the the birth of these gossip magazines

00:33:57.040 that suddenly had all this space to fill and the rise of the internet gossip machine it was all

00:34:01.480 kind of changing what celebrity meant and it had left this it created this void for a new breed of

00:34:07.640 celebrity a new breed of celebrity who didn't necessarily have to have a talent or you know

00:34:12.380 to even really be famous they just had to be willing to pose for the cameras and then when

00:34:16.500 that brand of celebrity was born what that meant was that anyone figured if they could pose for

00:34:20.540 their cameras they could be famous and so that i think set the rise for the influencer and so much

00:34:25.660 of the dynamics of what's going on in our media now oh it really did yeah i had a whole chapter

00:34:29.960 on this uh in my book celebrity inc which i wrote so long ago and my husband keeps telling me to

00:34:35.560 update it i'm like i don't have time i have to write another mysteries about trad wives killing

00:34:40.040 their husbands nick i don't i can't i can't think about it but it was there was a news hole because

00:34:45.580 suddenly you needed to fill so many inches that that's when the reality stars became famous and

00:34:52.200 and also and now you know the news glut is even bigger if you think about things like reddit

00:34:57.660 message boards yeah as as news as as places where people go for entertainment of course now the

00:35:04.440 influencers the influencer snark reddit boards are so fascinating to me because i do think they

00:35:10.220 fill the same hole that the us weekly stars they're just like us used to fill a hundred percent um it

00:35:16.720 was so there was a wall street journal story i think from 2006 that was analyzing how something

00:35:21.060 like two-thirds of us weekly covers that year had been reality stars on the cover and it was just

00:35:26.500 this massive shift in what it meant to be famous who could be famous but yeah no i mean what's so

00:35:32.300 interesting about fame now like you see these sort of fake celebrity feuds being propped up on tiktok

00:35:39.660 and people will spend hours talking about them and going through the dynamics.

00:35:42.700 And they're manufactured because there's infinite space to fill.

00:35:46.100 Like people need something to talk about.

00:35:47.500 They need outrage.

00:35:48.320 They need subjects.

00:35:49.420 They need things to analyze.

00:35:50.780 And so it's sort of, again, it's the same impulses playing out in different forms of media.

00:35:55.540 But the problem is that people do not have enough things to analyze.

00:36:00.780 So in some cases, they often like take things way too seriously.

00:36:05.100 And then things have to be manufactured.

00:36:06.700 But you're so right.

00:36:07.380 Like, all of this did come about in the early 2000s.

00:36:10.380 This is when we saw so much of this being born in the world of agents and publicists,

00:36:16.240 all of whom had always been my best sources, from manufacturing all of these events for celebrities.

00:36:23.640 And a lot of it had happened before, speaking of shifts in technology, in the sort of cable news era.

00:36:28.600 Because all of a sudden, like, you didn't have one news show at 10 o'clock and another one at 4 o'clock, whatever.

00:36:33.680 But you had rolling news all day long and people needed content, like they needed stories to talk about.

00:36:40.140 So, I mean, it's just it's all echoing all throughout time.

00:36:43.440 Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my gosh.

00:36:44.700 That's when I was a celebrity talking head constantly on CNN headline news and Fox and because they just had to fill the hours.

00:36:53.220 And now we fill the hours with Instagram reels.

00:36:56.480 It's the same thing, just like a new outfit, to be honest.

00:36:59.920 yeah and we just i think so often i'm on instagram because i just don't want to be present i don't

00:37:05.120 want to totally say yelling or they're watching a terrible show on netflix and i just i just want

00:37:10.280 to zone out for a little bit it does offer that escape it does i'm what i'm trying to be better

00:37:15.160 about now as i'm you know just also trying to monitor how much my kids see me staring at a

00:37:21.600 small thing in my hand is having things to read around strategically around the house

00:37:27.500 so I will have a magazine like on the coffee table within reach like I try to have or even a book that

00:37:34.560 I'm reading and if I just read a page I'm like I would rather I'm trying to train myself to pick up

00:37:39.020 something other than my phone and I'm failing at it every day failing but but it's you know I think

00:37:45.680 it's worth trying for sure because I do use it as a crutch I think a lot of us do yeah it's so funny

00:37:52.620 I do the same thing.

00:37:54.080 I have two books right next to the shelf next to it by our TV.

00:37:58.420 And one is a cookbook, like an Alison Roman cookbook,

00:38:00.800 which actually is pretty good because you're good into it.

00:38:02.660 Yes, yes.

00:38:03.540 You look through the recipes and you don't need to get absorbed.

00:38:06.500 You can kind of pick it up, put it down.

00:38:07.820 Then the other is this work of historical feminist criticism from the 70s.

00:38:11.360 I don't know why it's there.

00:38:12.840 I'm sure like one, probably in January when I was making resolutions,

00:38:15.980 thought I would read that year.

00:38:16.920 I put it there and I was like, I will read this, but I have not picked it up.

00:38:20.060 You have not picked that up.

00:38:21.060 But the Elf and Roman cookbook, having a cookbook around is such a good idea because it's like one and done, right?

00:38:27.600 You're like, I'm just going to look at this pretty picture.

00:38:29.940 I'm going to, you know, scan this list of ingredients that we don't have half of right now.

00:38:34.740 And yeah.

00:38:35.400 You might have them.

00:38:36.060 I mean, at worst, it's a fun distraction.

00:38:37.780 At best, you get ideas for what to cook this week.

00:38:40.520 Well, and it's kind of the same thing as looking at an Instagram, right?

00:38:43.300 Because I'm just scrolling people's pictures of sourdough that I'm never going to bake.

00:38:49.020 That is a good idea.

00:38:50.000 I have Dwell Magazine, and that one is a good one because it feels very Instagram-y, right?

00:38:57.020 Like it's beautiful and totally aspirational, but not a screen.

00:39:02.160 Yeah, I have homes and gardens.

00:39:03.560 And the only thing is also like Instagram, it makes me dissatisfied with my surroundings because I don't have $3,000 chairs and beautiful curtains and lovely wallpaper drawn on the walls.

00:39:14.280 But it is nice to look at.

00:39:15.820 But it is nice to look at.

00:39:17.440 It really, really is.

00:39:19.160 uh will you tell everyone where they can find your wonderful book and also more of your writing

00:39:25.680 which which i love every time i come across your name in the atlantic i get so excited

00:39:29.780 oh thank you i love i love this podcast too i loved your bridget jones episode that movie

00:39:34.920 recently made me sob i cried so hard my content lens fell out but also i cried i cried and i

00:39:41.380 laughed so hard uh and and just watched it again yeah absolutely yeah i uh am a staff

00:39:49.000 writer at the atlantic my work is there you can always find me there um i'm on instagram i'm sophie

00:39:54.120 gilbert writes i'm on blue sky um but my book girl on girl is out april 29th and hopefully

00:40:01.280 is easy to find at bookstores or online

00:40:19.000 We'll see you next time.

00:40:49.000 you matched on hinge you're vibing then her energy completely changes what do you do

00:41:00.380 i'm raven smith and i wrote and read a real love story about this exact

00:41:04.880 sitch listen to the free audiobook now

Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - April 29, 2025

We Survived Girls Gone Wild Just to Get Tradwives？

Episode Stats

Transcript