0:02

She burst into the world in nineteen

0:04

seventy six. She's at what, She's

0:06

out on dates, and she don't like politics,

0:09

from Mama and urban to feminist

0:12

friends. And she's fighting all the stands

0:14

with chocolate and hand Kathy,

0:18

She's fighting back. She stressed

0:20

with success. Let's call her some slack

0:23

Kathy, Mycathy fan Cathy.

0:27

She's gotta like go in all

0:36

baby. Welcome

0:46

back to ac cast. I am Jamie

0:49

Loftus, and today we're gonna keep digging

0:51

into the assortid and frustrating

0:53

history of American beauty standards

0:55

that were commented on in the Kathy comics.

0:58

We're picking up at the dawn of second

1:00

feminism in the late nineteen sixties

1:02

and nineteen seventies and the expectations

1:04

of women's bodies that existed when

1:06

the Kathy strip first debuted.

1:09

Body positivity was not

1:11

a part of the second wave American mainstream

1:14

feminism that Kathy Guy's White released

1:16

her comic strip into hell. Body

1:18

acceptance wasn't in the popular conversation.

1:21

Body neutrality doesn't come up

1:23

once, But that doesn't mean that fat

1:25

activism wasn't happening. The fat

1:28

rights movements started in nineteen sixty

1:30

nine by Bill Fabri, which led

1:32

to the establishment of the National

1:35

Association to Advance Fat Acceptance.

1:37

Then, a group of radical California feminists

1:40

formed the Fat Underground in nineteen

1:42

seventy three and released the Fat

1:44

Manifesto, which demanded equal

1:46

rights for fat people and condemned quote

1:49

unquote reducing industries wholesale

1:52

but in the mainstream, just as white

1:54

feminist did in the first wave of feminism,

1:56

rigid control of the body was

1:58

co opted by femine is m as this

2:01

showing of competence and control,

2:04

a control that was rare

2:06

for a woman to have over herself at the

2:08

time. Second wave mainstream feminism

2:10

very much subscribe to this, and so

2:12

what we see in a lot of early Kathy

2:14

comics feels very bizarre.

2:17

In thees. From the very beginning

2:19

of the strip in nine, the Kathy

2:22

character is extremely self conscious

2:24

about her weight. This is originally

2:27

prompted by her gaining some weight

2:29

after successfully quitting cigarettes

2:31

early in the strips run good on your Babe,

2:33

not easy to do, but this fixation

2:36

on her weight and her body continues

2:38

in the strip for the next thirty four years. The

2:40

Kathy characters weight loss goals shift

2:43

throughout the strip and remained pretty vague.

2:45

She usually seems to be looking to lose

2:48

between ten and forty pounds and

2:50

is willing to try almost any fad,

2:52

diet or fitness trend to accomplish

2:55

that. Like many of the themes explored

2:57

in the Kathy strips, the subject of food

2:59

and even gaining weight after quitting

3:01

cigarettes came from Kathy guys White's

3:04

own life. She wrote on this shared

3:06

struggle with her character to ditch cigarettes,

3:08

which was at the time considered to be a popular

3:11

weight loss and weight maintenance tool.

3:13

In a collection

3:15

of the strip, guys White says this, on

3:19

one hand, it seems a little cruel

3:21

to share this particular vice with Kathy.

3:24

On the other hand, in light of the number

3:26

of women whose liberation has included

3:28

the freedom to start smoking, it

3:30

seemed very appropriate. Besides,

3:33

I didn't think it was fair that Kathy should

3:35

go completely untouched by something that made

3:37

me so miserable. And

3:40

the most hardline feminist character

3:42

in the comic strip, Kathy's friend Andrea,

3:45

is fully in support of Kathy's weight

3:47

loss goals, in spite of the fact that we're never

3:49

led to believe that these goals have anything

3:52

to do with Kathy's health or that

3:54

her weight is negatively affecting

3:56

her health. Her goals and Andrea's

3:58

support of them are completely aesthetic

4:01

based, and for a hardline feminist,

4:03

it's bizarre to hear her kind

4:05

of bullying Kathy over dieting.

4:08

Here's a strip from the late nineteen seventies, from

4:10

the first collection of Kathy comics ever

4:12

to be released. Kathy and Andrea are

4:14

sitting in the kitchen, Kathy in front

4:16

of a plate of milk and cookies. What

4:19

do you think you're doing, Kathy?

4:22

I'm eating cookies, Andrea, but you're

4:24

within four pounds of your goal. You can't

4:26

give up your diet now. I don't

4:28

think I'm ready to deal with success. The

4:32

difference that forty plus years can

4:34

make here. The intention of this strip

4:36

is clearly that Kathy has failed

4:38

at her goal. She hasn't restricted the

4:40

way she was supposed to, and picking

4:43

up the cookie is a sign of weakness.

4:45

But with a modern lens turned on this, Andrea's

4:48

kind of the villain. Why is this her

4:50

business? Why are you yelling at your

4:53

physically healthy friend, as far as we know, over

4:55

a cookie like get a life? You

4:58

cop early Kathy strips also established

5:01

the themes of dieting, weight, and restriction

5:04

as a cornerstone for Kathy's relationship

5:06

with her mother. Throughout the strip's history, it

5:08

becomes a very recognizable dynamic

5:11

between these characters to first take

5:13

on a diet, then try to reinforce

5:15

the rules with each other, and eventually quit

5:18

the diet in celebration and eat

5:20

food together. Another common dynamic

5:23

is Cathy's tendency to break her

5:25

diet and gain weight while visiting

5:27

her parents. It's a recognizable

5:29

dynamic with a lot of families,

5:31

but it makes a Kathy character double down

5:34

on associating time with her family

5:36

as times to police her body

5:39

extra carefully. Here's Kathy and her mom

5:41

talking in mom's kitchen in that same

5:43

nineteen seventies collection, The Kathy

5:45

Chronicles. I thought

5:47

you were out shopping for new clothes today, Kathy.

5:50

I tried, Mom, but I'm still too

5:52

fat to fit into anything. Dacent, Kathy

5:55

takes a back of chips off the counter and starts

5:57

eating them. So why are you stuffing

6:00

yourself again? I figured I might as well

6:02

put my money where my mouth is. By

6:05

the time these strips were written and released,

6:07

the concept of women publicly

6:09

discussing their weight with each other and

6:12

encouraging each other to achieve the body

6:14

standards of the time was deeply

6:16

normalized. Part of this was thanks

6:18

to the continued success of women's magazines,

6:21

but by the nineteen seventies there were also

6:23

groups like weight Watchers, which was

6:25

invented in the nineteen sixties by

6:28

a former Queen's housewife named

6:30

Gene Nititch. Weight Watchers

6:32

is still massively popular

6:34

today Oprah as their current big name

6:36

representative, but it began as essentially

6:39

a rip off of a nineteen fifties diet from

6:41

the U. S Board of Nutrition that was

6:43

built around lean meat, fish,

6:46

skim milk, and fruits and veggies.

6:48

What Gene Nititch added to the equation

6:51

was the idea of community. Weight

6:53

Watchers wasn't just a diet, it

6:55

was also a weekly meeting with the

6:57

same group of locals, mostly women.

7:00

It provided structure, a sense

7:02

of being beholden to your fellow weight

7:04

watchers, and sometimes friendship. I

7:06

can't tell you how many moms and aunts

7:08

of my friends growing up were in programs

7:11

like this and held the communities created

7:13

by them very very closely. The

7:15

history of Gene Ninitch's life,

7:18

her company, and the persistent existence

7:21

of weight Watchers is chronicled in the

7:23

book This Is Big by writer

7:25

Marissa mets Her. The book also follows

7:28

Marissa's own experience as a millennial

7:30

woman being pressured in socially conditioned

7:33

to engage with diet culture for

7:35

most of her life, which culminates

7:37

and her trying weight Watchers as a social

7:39

experiment that doesn't give the

7:41

result promised, but did yield

7:44

really incredible insights into how

7:46

diet culture works today. She also

7:48

speaks on her thoughts on the pitfalls

7:50

of body positivity messaging and

7:53

much of diet cultures rebranding

7:55

as wellness culture, and she was kind

7:57

enough to speak with me about how diet

7:59

clure became so popular during

8:02

the second wave of feminism and how diet

8:04

culture and white feminism aren't

8:06

as at odds as history would

8:08

like you to believe. Here's some of our interview.

8:12

It does seem like during

8:14

the second wave feminist movement, Geane

8:17

and weight Watchers were at least making these,

8:19

however flawed attempts to interact

8:23

with that movement, which I found

8:25

kind of surprising, honestly, um,

8:28

so, could you speak to that a little bit and just

8:30

kind of contextualize how diet culture

8:32

has kind of overlapped with feminist

8:34

movements. So, you know, one way

8:37

to view weight watchers and is that it's

8:39

always kind of this mirror to

8:41

the culture. One way

8:43

to that I really looked at weight Watchers

8:46

was through Weywatchers magazine because

8:49

there was at complete archive that I could

8:51

look at, and Um,

8:53

Gene knight Ish, the founder, had

8:56

a column. It was an advice column,

8:59

and so every once in a while she get

9:01

these pieces, these

9:03

like letters from people asking

9:05

about things like feminism.

9:08

So you could see sort of what weight watchers

9:10

thought about these things firsthand.

9:13

And it's you

9:15

know, it is interesting because so

9:19

the magazine would do things like tackle

9:22

women going to work, and

9:27

um, you know there's like a picture of Gene

9:29

with Gloria Steinem

9:32

and so feminism was

9:35

Feminism was not ignored, but

9:38

it also wasn't necessarily

9:40

something that was like

9:43

a linked society, and

9:45

I maybe that era there was a little

9:47

less of that sort of like connecting

9:50

everything you do back to feminism.

9:53

And then you know, as

9:55

like the eighties went on,

9:58

you start to see part tenants of

10:00

weight Watchers that are more sort of reflective

10:04

of feminism in a big picture way,

10:06

like maybe women were

10:08

working and not making food

10:10

at home as much, so weight Watchers

10:13

allowed or made it easier to

10:16

eat out in restaurants. And

10:19

this is where Gene Nightich and weight Watchers

10:21

really took hold on the culture. The

10:23

way that Knightag's involvement in this

10:26

company that she built from the ground

10:28

up declined over time was

10:30

very telling of the period and American

10:32

feminism that she was prominent during.

10:34

Jean was born only three years after

10:37

women got the vote. She was a lower

10:39

middle class housewife who, unhappy

10:41

with how others perceived her fatness, ripped

10:44

off an existing diet and made it marketable

10:46

to women like herself. In the early days

10:48

of weight Watcher's massive success,

10:51

Nightitch was an essential part of the brand.

10:53

She lived large, she spoke in a

10:55

motivational capacity, She had

10:57

a consistent column and weight Watcher's magazine,

11:00

The Whole Bit. She and her first husband

11:02

eventually split due to his frustrations

11:05

with her career coming before her

11:07

being a wife. Then, in nineteen three,

11:10

Nightitch stepped down from weight Watchers

11:12

during the company's tenth year, and she sold

11:14

the company to the Heinz Corporation for

11:17

over seventy one million dollars.

11:19

As she grew older, her image and

11:21

legacy were slowly stripped from

11:24

the picture. Metzer shares an anecdote

11:26

that, towards the end of her life, Nightitch

11:28

has claimed to have called Weight Watchers corporate

11:30

headquarters to ask secretaries

11:32

if Jeane Nightitch was still alive,

11:35

and that sometimes the person picking up

11:37

the phone had no idea. Marissa

11:39

Metzer is no stranger to wait Watchers

11:42

and programs like it, having been pushed

11:44

into them from a very young age. So I

11:46

asked her what her experience was

11:48

coming of age in the eighties and nineties in

11:50

the same period of diet culture that

11:53

Kathy Comics comments on extensively.

11:56

Here's some more of our interview. I

11:59

remember are going to a

12:01

Weight Watchers location in

12:04

um, Santa Cruz, California,

12:07

where I grew up. And UM

12:09

it was in you know, like some kind

12:12

of like strip mall and UM,

12:15

and I was definitely the youngest person

12:17

there. I was probably like eight

12:19

or something like that. My mom and I did it

12:22

together because that

12:24

was a totally acceptable thing thing

12:26

to do in the eighties, and

12:29

UM, I had been on kind

12:32

of my parents has probably put me on

12:34

my first diet when I was about I don't

12:36

know, four or so, so

12:38

you know, dieting was not um

12:41

new to me at all, probably

12:43

unfortunately. And

12:46

um, I don't feel like

12:48

I lasted very long on Weight

12:50

Watchers, mostly because I just didn't

12:52

laugh very long on any diet. Like

12:55

it's hard to

12:58

really like be disciplined when you don't

13:00

really understand why you're on a diet,

13:03

and like it's hard enough to kind of be on a diet

13:05

when you decide you need to lose weight and

13:07

you want to be on it, and instead, I

13:09

feel like I was always just put on these diets

13:12

and it was like, you know, like now you

13:14

can't have lemonade or whatever,

13:16

and it was always just sort of like, you

13:18

know, just confusing and

13:21

um, so you

13:23

know, I just the

13:25

overall sensation of

13:29

diety in that era was that,

13:31

you know, it was something that I had

13:33

to do because my body

13:36

was sort of too big and wrong, and

13:38

that it was something that's sort of like all

13:41

women or most women kind of did

13:43

and worried about. The

13:46

Cathy character's life was filled

13:48

with diet moments like Marissa

13:50

is describing and Cathy guys white always

13:53

approached the futility of bad

13:55

diets with the knowledge that the vast majority

13:57

of them were a scam. While

14:00

fat liberation movement continued throughout

14:02

the eighties and nineties, the mainstream

14:04

did not accept it. The message

14:06

of restrictive diets and bodily

14:09

discipline reigned over women

14:11

of this time, feminists or not. Often,

14:14

the Kathy character would enlist her friends

14:16

and later in the strip her on

14:18

and off partner irving to lose weight

14:21

with her. Here's Kathy talking with Andrea

14:23

on a walk in the early eighties. I

14:26

can't believe you're actually going through with the membership,

14:29

and Merric spark. Kathy, you

14:31

can't afford it. Well, the

14:33

lady pointed out to me that if I spend that

14:35

much on a membership, the guilt will

14:37

really drive me to use the place. She

14:40

said that when I see how fast my

14:42

anches disappear, it'll be worth

14:44

any price. Andrea,

14:47

it's gotta make me lose weight. Andrea

14:50

walks away, and Cathy's optimism

14:52

melts into anxiety. In the last

14:55

panel, I just spent my whole

14:57

year's food budget on it. And

15:00

let's get that fat diet music going

15:02

again, because here is just a

15:04

smattering of fad diets that existed

15:07

during the Cathy Comics run. There

15:10

was, of course, wait Watchers,

15:12

Jenny Craig slim Fast.

15:15

I didn't have time to eat right. I was constantly on

15:17

the go. All I was doing was grabbing jump food.

15:19

I've lost twenty two pounds on the slim Fast

15:21

plan. This has been the easiest plan I've

15:23

ever been on. The Atkins Low

15:25

Carb diet, the South Beach diet

15:28

that had good carbs and bad carbs,

15:30

the Cabbage diet, the Grapefruit

15:32

diet, the Cottage Cheese diet,

15:35

the Beverly Hills diet. If edra

15:37

pills, those ones are bad, the Scarsdale

15:40

diet, and liquid diets,

15:42

most famously endorsed when Oprah

15:44

pulled out a little red wagon full

15:47

of sixty pounds of fat that

15:49

she lost live on the air after

15:51

a six week liquid starvation

15:54

diet. But

15:56

up until six weeks, I absolutely

15:59

nothing. I want you to know that whatever diet

16:01

you choose, and this audience is filled with people who

16:03

have had great successes, you can do

16:05

with the help of your family doctor, and

16:08

if you can believe in yourself

16:10

and believe that this is the most important

16:12

thing in your life is Scott said to us earlier,

16:15

you can conquer it because if I did

16:17

it, if Scott did it, if

16:20

Billy did it, you can do it.

16:22

I thank you very much, thank you. And

16:25

let's take a second for Oprah here. There's

16:28

a great episode of Maintenance Phase that examines

16:30

some of the more dangerous diets that she

16:32

pushed. But Oprah was more

16:35

than just a tastemaker for American

16:37

women of the late twentieth century.

16:53

From the debut of her daytime talk show in through

16:57

now as a Weight Watchers ambassador,

17:00

Oprah was the boomer woman who

17:02

told other boomer women how to

17:04

empower themselves. And being

17:06

a massively popular daily show,

17:09

Oprah covered and often pushed

17:11

fads in diet and exercise. And

17:13

for all of the good that she's done and the

17:15

unquestionable icon that she is,

17:18

she's also introduced figures into

17:20

the American zeitgeist who continue

17:22

to how you say reek,

17:24

absolute havoc on the general public

17:27

to this day. Your doctor phills, your

17:29

doctor os is just a litany of

17:31

scary and sometimes fake doctors.

17:34

Kathy Strips mentioned Oprah in text

17:36

a number of times. Because of who Oprah

17:39

was, she served as a cultural stand

17:41

in for a woman who struggled to meet

17:43

the societally accepted body norm

17:45

of the time, and both succeeded

17:47

and failed very publicly. So

17:50

she definitely would have been a person that the Cathy

17:52

character would have compared herself to and

17:54

taken advice from as far as the wagon

17:57

of fat goes. Not for nothing, Oprah

17:59

did say in two thousand five that this liquid

18:01

diet was extremely unhealthy

18:03

and that she wouldn't do it again. As the

18:06

third wave of feminism crusted in the early

18:08

nineties, the mainstream engaged in

18:10

diet and fitness fads and promoted

18:12

them as a part of how women

18:14

could feel empowered. It presented

18:17

this illusion of control in

18:19

a way to better oneself that simultaneously

18:23

preyed on women's time and

18:25

their money and their sense of self.

18:27

Here's a Cathy strip from the nineties, as

18:29

she's standing outside the gym with her

18:31

friend Charlene. She's about to start a

18:33

new diet, a fad called the Healthy

18:36

Food Plan for Life that was all the rage

18:38

at the time. The grapefruit

18:40

diet three weeks and it

18:42

was over. The Healthy Food

18:44

Plan for Life. Sixty

18:46

more years of fat free salad dressing,

18:49

the Hollywood diet four weeks

18:51

and it was over the Healthy Food

18:54

Plan for Life, sixty more

18:56

years of boneless, skinless chicken

18:58

breast, the fruit juice

19:00

Fast thirty six hours, and it

19:02

was over the Healthy Food Plan for

19:05

Life. Sixty more years

19:07

of melon balls for dessert. In

19:09

the last panel, Kathy and Charlene leave

19:11

the gym looking at their diet plans.

19:14

Crash diets never worked, but

19:16

at least they had an end sixty

19:18

more years of brand flakes and skim

19:21

milk. The county character's

19:23

long standing battle with body image

19:26

intersected with two other common themes

19:28

in the comic, fashion and exercise

19:30

pads. The exercise trends and Cathy's

19:33

constant struggle to abide by them were

19:35

referenced in the characters merchandizing

19:37

all the Time. I actually owned

19:39

some of these oversized T shirts. One

19:42

reads body language and shows

19:44

Kathy frantically jazzer sizing

19:46

as thought bubbles surround her body. They

19:48

say ac grumble, crunch out,

19:50

and on and on. Another T shirt shows

19:53

five Kathy's a hiker, a walker,

19:55

a runner, a biker, and an

19:58

eater. Another shirt shows for Kathy's

20:01

one is power stepping one is power

20:03

walking, one is power sliding, and

20:05

the last is her collapsed on

20:07

the gym floor power outage.

20:10

So even the merch explicitly references

20:12

that the Kathy character fails but

20:15

keeps trying. As we talked about

20:17

at the top of this episode, Kathy and Irving

20:19

lent their image to wait Watchers for a

20:21

couple's workout program, and

20:24

Kathy and Mr Pinkley's images were used

20:27

to promote a weight Watchers at Work

20:29

program. The character tried to

20:31

keep up with workout trends in the strip.

20:33

She got a home gym, she got an overpriced

20:36

gym membership that she barely used,

20:38

and at the same time, real life workout

20:40

fads came and went in the US

20:43

think step classes, jazz er

20:45

size, buns of steel, the Thigh

20:47

Master. Richard Simmons piloates

20:50

the Jane Fonda workout, which I did do

20:52

in Quarantine quite a bit, but I hear it's

20:54

actually not good for you. And then there's the

20:56

subject of fashion. The Kathy character

20:58

is seen literally hundreds

21:00

of times in the strips run looking at

21:02

herself in the mirror of a department store

21:05

changing room and being unhappy with

21:07

what she sees In many strips.

21:09

Kathy Geiswhite is commenting on the

21:11

consumer fashion industry itself,

21:14

how it often failed to take anyone

21:16

but the supermodel into consideration,

21:19

and how stores targeted women to pressure

21:21

them into buying an excess of clothes

21:23

they didn't actually need. Here's an example

21:25

with Kathy talking to the department store

21:28

employee who serves as the service

21:30

industry character stand in across

21:32

the board for the duration of the comic.

21:35

This one's from the seventies. Hi,

21:38

I'd like some blue jeans. What collar

21:40

do you want? Kathy is behind

21:42

the changing room partition and hands

21:44

the sales lady a pair of jeans. These

21:47

jeans are great, except they're nine inches too

21:49

long. Can I try the same size,

21:51

only shorter? Now? The

21:54

women's geans only common wan leg

21:56

If you want the right length, you'll have to go with

21:58

men's jeans. I your pardon,

22:01

living jeans coming one length, men's genes

22:03

coming all different lengths. Does someone

22:05

out there think all women have the same size

22:07

legs? Now? I

22:10

guess they just figure out women know how to sell. Look,

22:12

let's just forget it. I'll take these,

22:15

but I want them altered. No candy

22:17

that either. We only do alterations on the

22:19

men's side. The men don't need

22:21

alterations there janes come the

22:23

right length. Oh wow,

22:25

and we girls when wear blue jeans.

22:28

I that one of the little things, and we

22:30

have that one up. Kathy's

22:33

fashion dilemmas are almost always

22:35

telling of the cultural moment they're released

22:38

into, and that strip we see the

22:40

double standards of second wave feminism,

22:42

where women are promised the genes

22:44

that men have been wearing, but are still met

22:46

with increased aesthetic pressure. This

22:49

carries throughout the nine eighties. The feminist

22:51

backlash brought with it a new wave

22:53

of constantly changing fashion trends

22:56

and pressure put on women of all classes

22:58

to keep up with them. The chronicling

23:01

very specific fashion trends became the norm,

23:04

and the strip normally Kathy arrives

23:06

at the department store only to be frustrated

23:08

by yet another trend made only

23:10

for thin women, that she's expected to spend

23:13

money on in order to be accepted. Here

23:15

we are in the nineties, Cathy is trying

23:17

on an ill fitting suit with a miniskirt.

23:20

The same sales lady speaks with her. Nothing

23:23

mirrors our emancipation from the workaholic

23:25

eighties than our quest for the nineties quality

23:27

of life, like the refined women's suit.

23:30

Every feminine inch says, Oh sure, I may

23:32

be going to a board meeting, but I may

23:34

also be popping out for tea. I may

23:36

go for a stroll in the museum. I may

23:39

spend the afternoon at the theater. In

23:41

short, it's business attire that says

23:44

I have better things to do with my life than sitting

23:46

this boring office. In the final

23:48

panel, the sales lady places a hat

23:51

on Cathy's head as Cathy checks

23:53

the price tags on the suit. Cathy

23:55

rolls her eyes and says, for instance,

23:58

I could go stand in the unemployment law.

24:00

Oh ha ha, here hot

24:02

pink, your lips still look a bit serious.

24:06

Cathy's experiences in the department

24:08

store comments on everything from shoulder

24:11

pads in the coke days of the eighties

24:13

to the grunge trend of the nineties to my

24:15

personal favorite, the hot topic got

24:18

trend of the mid two thousand's.

24:20

But Cathy's most memorable brushes

24:22

with fashion and looking at herself

24:25

with dissatisfaction was in

24:27

the swimsuit department, a trope

24:29

so associated with the comic that Kathy

24:31

guys white herself talked about it on late night

24:34

appearances. Here she is with Jay Leno. Look

24:37

at a bathing suits you wants have like a couple of bathing suit

24:39

things, ex abaiting suit things.

24:41

Well, women have two main figure

24:44

problem areas the top half

24:46

of our bodies and the bottom half of our bottom.

24:49

And every year the fashion industry

24:52

finds a way to make things worse. You know,

24:54

it used to be that a woman could depend on a one piece suit

24:56

which at least covered more. And now the one

24:58

piece suits that they have out their I'm sure

25:00

the women in this audience have had that experience.

25:02

If you pull them up high enough to cover the

25:04

top, then the length hoole comes up to

25:06

the waist and the entire rear end

25:09

is on displaying

25:12

when I wait. And if you come the top pull

25:15

the suit down far enough to cover the rear, then the

25:17

top is either smashed as flat as a pancake

25:19

or entirely exposed. And if

25:21

you find that one miraculous bathing

25:23

suit that that actually covers both

25:25

the top and the rear, then they

25:27

will have laminated a sequin leopard

25:30

on the stomach with a hole for all the

25:32

flat points out of his mouth, like

25:35

in this clip. Guy's White talked in the strip

25:37

about how bathing suit were not made

25:40

for regular women's bodies, and her

25:42

character tended to interpret this as

25:44

a frustrating but ultimately

25:47

personal failing. The Kathy character

25:49

vocalizes her anger that swimwear

25:51

isn't made for her, but ultimately buckles

25:53

to the pressure that it's her who must

25:56

change, not the fashion industry.

25:58

Here's Kathy bringing a tiny one piece

26:00

into a changing room. She thinks to herself,

26:04

swimwear shopping Stage one, I

26:07

want a bathing suit that's fabulous,

26:09

looking, sexy, flirty, and fun.

26:12

Swimwear shopping stage two. I

26:14

want a bathing suit that's attractive and fits

26:17

my life and personality. In the third

26:19

panel, Cathy is in the changing room

26:21

after putting the swimsuit on, leaning outside

26:23

the curtain and panicking. Swimwear

26:25

Shopping Stage three. I want something

26:27

that's not gross. I'll consider

26:30

anything that isn't grows.

26:32

In the last panel, the curtain of the changing

26:35

room is entirely closed. A

26:37

narration box reads once again,

26:40

the quest for a bathing suit parallels

26:42

the search for a date. Cathy's voice comes

26:44

from inside the changing room. Okay,

26:46

fine, A little grows,

26:48

but not really really grows.

26:53

This is where the Cathy versus stood on

26:55

body image in the ninety nineties, and

26:57

the merchandizing continued to capitalize

26:59

on now well established connection

27:02

between the Kathy character and diet

27:04

culture. This brings me to

27:06

the mother of all Kathy

27:09

food crossovers. I

27:12

still can't believe this exists. I'm kind of obsessed

27:15

with it. It's a cookbook

27:17

called and I cannot stress this enough Girl

27:20

Food, Girl Food,

27:23

Girl Food. I am genuinely

27:25

thrilled to report that this isn't a

27:27

diet cookbook wholesale. There

27:29

are some low calorie recipes, but there's

27:32

plenty of food as well.

27:34

It was co authored by Barbara Albright,

27:37

a cookbook author who had also made cookbooks

27:39

with the likes of Regis and Kathy Lee,

27:41

and with Jim Davis on a Garfield

27:43

cookbook. Girl Food is separated

27:46

into five sections with different recipes

27:48

according to these themes romance

27:50

food, swimsuit food, sweatsuit

27:53

food, grown up food, and

27:56

consolation food. The

27:58

introduction from Kathy S. White

28:00

reads like this,

28:03

this is the cookbook that speaks to women.

28:05

Women who want romance, women who require

28:07

chocolate, women who dream of wearing a swimsuit

28:10

somewhere besides the bathroom. Women who

28:12

need to entertain like a sophisticated grown

28:14

up. Women who want to lie on the sofa in a sweatsuit

28:17

and eat cookie dough in short, women

28:19

whose lives are a little too complex

28:21

to only have one sort of recipe on hand

28:23

at any given moment. The

28:26

book consists of simple recipes written

28:28

by Barbara Albright, with dishes named

28:31

by Kathy guys White, along with a

28:33

series of original Kathy cartoons

28:35

and the recipe titles. If I may

28:37

do not disappoint, Let's get a music

28:40

bed, going something vacation e recipe

28:45

titles from the Girl Food Cookbook. While

28:47

he casually reads the morning paper, I'll

28:49

be silently planning out the course of our entire

28:51

relationship. Waffles. Instead

28:54

of using the old seran wrap and stiletto

28:56

heel's approach to spice things up, I

28:58

think I'll try some fru dsac

29:00

asparagus vinagrette. Love

29:03

means never having to say, of course,

29:06

I like football pork tenderloin.

29:09

After five hundred and two dinners and four hundred

29:11

and twenty seven cups of coffee, I think it's

29:13

time to get serious. Marry me. Moose,

29:16

always a bridesmaid, never the

29:18

same size, low calorie cole

29:21

Slaw. Why did I buy an

29:23

itsy bitsy teeny weeny bikini

29:25

Linguini? That one is my favorite

29:27

one. I got this book five months ago, and I think about

29:30

that recipe title every day of my life.

29:32

I go to the gym, but I seem to have misplaced

29:34

my energy art to choke mushroom tortalini

29:37

salad. And I woke up

29:39

late anyway, So why bother leaving the house

29:41

spiced struzel apple bunt coffee

29:43

cake. And look, I haven't

29:45

cooked any of these recipes. But if you

29:47

don't think that this woman deserves a

29:49

Pulitzer for coming up with why

29:52

did I buy an itsy bitsy teeny

29:54

weeny bikini Linguini? Turn

29:57

off the podcast Hemingway wishes. So

30:00

that's the cookbook, and I legally must

30:02

tell you again that it is called girl

30:04

food. Try the most avoid

30:07

the cole Slaw, trust me.

30:24

Kathy Guy's White towed this line of

30:26

disparaging diet culture while

30:29

also dipping her toe into it at

30:31

a time where the pressure to consume

30:33

products diets ideas was

30:36

reinforced by advertising

30:38

and the women who were advertising

30:41

clothes were overwhelmingly thin and

30:43

traditionally attractive, going back

30:45

to that American beauty standard

30:47

that have been taking shape for a hundred fifty years.

30:50

Kathy comics were popular at the same

30:52

time that supermodels reigned supreme

30:55

over the fashion industry. In our episode

30:57

on the Boomer generation, I spoke

30:59

with Elanie, a retired ad

31:01

executive from California who was working

31:04

at a high level at the time some of the

31:06

most successful supermodels in history

31:08

were coming to prominence. Your Christie

31:10

Brinkley's, your Naomi Campbell's, your Cindy

31:12

Crawford's. While these women were presented

31:15

to the world as care free and effortless,

31:18

it's commonly known now that the modeling

31:20

industry was, and to a degree

31:22

remains, rooted in promoting disordered

31:24

eating and food restriction, as

31:26

well as perpetuating racist standards of

31:28

colorism and featurism in order

31:31

to curate and promote the version

31:33

of American beauty that Kathy was trying

31:35

to live up to. To better understand

31:37

how these images are constructed, I

31:40

returned to an interview that I did for

31:42

our episode on Boomers with a

31:44

former ad executive. I'm going to call Melanie,

31:46

who worked high up in the model driven

31:48

advertising world of the nineteen eighties

31:50

and nineties. Here's a little bit of our talk.

31:54

You know, there's a whole whatever. There's so many

31:56

Kathy comics that are about body image

31:58

and about comparing her self to magazine

32:00

images and commercial images. What

32:03

was it like curating those kinds

32:05

of images, especially

32:07

with um the beauty

32:09

products, Revlon Um,

32:13

Mabeling, I mean, you

32:15

name it, we did at Claire all Um,

32:18

the Virginia Slims. A lot of it was

32:22

wanting the women, the

32:25

girls, and when

32:27

it was beauty they had to be eighteen. They didn't

32:29

and some of them they could even slide younger than

32:31

that. If they were younger, if

32:34

they were fifteen, sixteen. They wanted them to

32:36

look thirty but with

32:39

no wrinkles. So

32:41

there was a very unrealistic thing

32:44

of what the thirty year old might look like. A

32:46

thirty year old might have a few lines.

32:49

Um, they might have a few lines

32:52

here, um.

32:56

Breasts were augmented

32:58

right and left. UM.

33:01

I did a lot of things. I do remember doing

33:04

the first Self magazine

33:07

cover, and

33:09

the main thing about Self was that

33:11

I just remember a lot of times I would have to ask

33:14

they need to come in in a bathing suit or eliotard

33:16

because we need to see their body. And unless

33:18

they asked for someone ethnic, it

33:22

meant white, okay,

33:24

just without question, without

33:26

question, without question,

33:28

there would if they asked for they

33:30

would ask for an ethnicity.

33:33

Um. If

33:35

they wanted Hispanic, they would ask Hispanic.

33:37

If they wanted Asian, they would ask Asian.

33:40

If they wanted black, they would ask black.

33:42

But the black always

33:45

had to have whider features.

33:48

Much of mainstream advertising,

33:51

diet culture, and the bulk of

33:53

how women are told to feel about their bodies

33:55

in the West is tied back to white colonialism.

33:58

That's just what it is and what see

34:00

And Kathy is a middle class

34:02

white woman failing to meet an impossible

34:05

standard. But we didn't see in the newspaper

34:07

funnies very often at all were women

34:09

who were excluded from the notion of

34:11

American beauty altogether. What

34:14

I feel sure of is that, in spite

34:16

of occasionally profiting from it, Kathy

34:18

guys White knew that diet culture

34:20

was bullshit. We don't just know

34:22

this because her heroine fails to change

34:25

her body, but because Guy's white

34:27

is explicitly telling us that it's bullshit,

34:29

and her work all the time.

34:32

Here's a strip where Kathy, Charlene,

34:34

and another friend talk about their years

34:37

of monitoring their bodies while getting

34:39

changed for an aerobics class. It

34:42

will never be like it was the first time,

34:44

Charlene. Yeah, I know,

34:47

Kathy. I was so innocent,

34:49

so full of hope, and it worked.

34:51

It worked because I didn't sabotage

34:54

it with analysis and distrust. It

34:56

worked because I just believed

34:58

it would work. Their friend walks in

35:01

and she only catches the end of Kathy's

35:03

sentence, first love,

35:05

first diet. In

35:07

the last panel, Kathy is inconsolable.

35:10

I've never even heard of trans fatty

35:13

acids for the Kathy

35:15

character. Body optimization

35:17

is a zero sum game for

35:19

American women. Body optimization

35:22

as a zero sum game, and as comfortable

35:24

as it is to consider this an issue of

35:26

the past, it isn't. Young

35:29

people of all races, genders, classes

35:31

are still targeted by this culture to this

35:33

day. And you're kidding yourself

35:36

fifth and I'm about to sound five hundred

35:38

years old, but you're kidding yourself if you think we won't

35:40

be talking about the body image repercussions

35:43

of social media filters and influencers

35:45

very soon. They're the most recent way

35:48

to reinforce those same standards

35:50

that white Western men have been pushing four

35:52

hundreds of years. And

35:55

the gen Z end of this story is still

35:57

unfolding, But I feel pretty comfortable

35:59

saying at millennials have been pretty

36:01

firmly fucked up by the body standards

36:04

they grew up around. The good news is

36:06

that the body positivity movement and

36:08

fat activism is firing on

36:10

more cylinders than at any other time

36:13

in history. There's now a number

36:15

of prominent celebrities that are rejecting

36:17

diet culture and embracing themselves,

36:19

emphasizing that their self worth and personal

36:22

health are what take precedent over aesthetics,

36:24

and activists who are demanding fair

36:26

treatment. Legally, that's not

36:29

nothing, because that's not the messaging

36:31

that most millennials and all previous

36:33

generations received in magazines

36:35

and pop culture when they were growing up. Fun

36:37

fact about me, I used to work at Playboy

36:40

magazine as a fact checker. They paid me

36:42

ten dollars an hour before taxes. Anyways,

36:44

the time that millennials became media

36:47

cognizant in the late nineties

36:49

through the early twenty tons, depending on when you

36:51

were born, we're actually kind of a low on

36:54

how rigid body standards were enforced.

36:56

Here's a viral tweet from writer Lucy

36:59

Huber from a few months ago that I think sums

37:01

this up really nicely. If

37:03

any gen z you're wondering why every

37:05

millennial woman has needing disorder, it's

37:08

because in the two thousand's, a normal thing to

37:10

say to a teenage girl was when

37:12

you think you feel hungry, you're actually thirsty,

37:14

So just drink water and you'll be fine. There's

37:18

a great essay on this topic by the wonderful

37:21

writer Ann Helen Peterson called the

37:23

millennial vernacular of fat phobia.

37:25

She begins by talking about how a cover of seventeen

37:28

magazine from the summer of featured

37:31

a photo of a quote unquote regular

37:34

girl on the cover. This girl is

37:36

still sis, white, thin and wearing

37:38

a bikini, but I guess isn't

37:41

quite the supermodel level of thinness.

37:43

Honestly, I wouldn't have guessed that until Peterson

37:45

draws your attention to the fact that this was very

37:48

deliberately done by seventeen their

37:51

reason to be inclusive of other

37:53

kinds of bodies. A link of photo of

37:55

this cover, because it truly is like what

37:58

that just looks like a model? Peterson writes,

38:01

if this body was non ideal, I

38:03

remember thinking, then what was

38:05

mine? This is

38:08

a question that Kathy geist White seeks

38:10

to answer through her characters with

38:12

varying degrees of success, because

38:14

she did sometimes profit from the diet culture

38:17

that she criticized. Cathy's Trips,

38:19

as you know by Now ended in two thousand

38:21

and ten. But I'd be interested to see how

38:23

the character would have received the body

38:26

positivity and wellness movements

38:28

that became prominent in the through

38:30

now. Anne Helen Peterson sites writer

38:33

Sarah Miller's New York Times

38:35

essay the diet industrial Complex

38:38

got me and it will never let me go.

38:40

Miller writes, this suddenly

38:43

about a decade ago, when I started to notice

38:45

that fat women were a calling themselves

38:47

fat with pride and be walking

38:50

down the streets of our nation's great cities, nonchalantly

38:53

wearing tight or revealing clothing with a general

38:55

air of yeah, I will

38:57

wear this, and I will wear whatever

38:59

I want. And I am hot too.

39:02

I will be hot forever, long

39:04

after you have all died. I thought

39:06

to myself, Oh my god, what

39:10

the solution is not the

39:12

diet I started seeing

39:14

fat, beautiful models and actresses and

39:16

catalogs and on television shows.

39:18

I would have liked to see more, but I

39:20

was pleased to see them at all. I was and

39:23

remain in awe of their confident beauty.

39:25

I feel tenderness for them as well, for what

39:28

they endured and still endured to achieve

39:30

it. I sometimes choke up with love for them

39:32

and for the idea of how I could have lived

39:34

if I had allowed myself to just weigh

39:37

what I weighed. It's worth

39:39

acknowledging that this is not and

39:41

I can't think of a worse phrase to use here,

39:43

so I apologize. But this is not a

39:46

one size fits all ideology,

39:48

and everyone has a pretty personal

39:50

connection to how body standards

39:53

and diet culture have affected them

39:55

specifically. I started disordered

39:57

eating when I was eight years old, and

39:59

I'm trying to push past it. I

40:01

still have these vivid memories of

40:03

how women's bodies were discussed

40:06

by other people. I don't know why this

40:08

is the thing that's stuck with me, but there's a very

40:10

specific episode of Family Guide that informed

40:12

my anorexia through high school. This

40:15

ship is hard to shake and

40:17

and it's still everywhere Marissa

40:19

Metzer, who we spoke with earlier, has written

40:22

on modern body positivity and

40:24

how wellness culture that's popular right

40:26

now tends to rebrand

40:28

old diet culture standbys extensively,

40:31

and she spoke with me about how the body

40:33

positivity movement has affected her

40:35

on a personal level. Here's some of our conversation.

40:39

When coupled with something like

40:41

Instagram, which is so visual, there

40:45

was this kind of bastardization

40:49

where instead of being about

40:52

um, you know, the

40:54

idea that any body

40:56

is entitled to exist and

40:58

live and not harassed and

41:01

you know, right on

41:03

roller coasters and wear great

41:06

clothes and all of that, the message

41:08

was becoming more and more about

41:10

just, you know, I love myself.

41:12

And it was so often in the guys

41:15

of you know, attractive women

41:18

who had proportionate our

41:20

glass bodies, you know, like

41:23

selfies with your like, you know, boyfriend

41:25

with like a David Beckham haircut, and

41:28

he's like, you know, like scaring your

41:30

crevide or whatever. Like it just drove

41:32

me crazy and I

41:35

started, you know, thinking about it critically

41:37

because I was just feeling like, not

41:41

only am I a failure um

41:44

at dieting, and that I can't

41:46

keep the weight off and I, you

41:48

know, at all diet and I'll stop

41:50

dieting and I'll diet again. Um,

41:53

but I'm also a failure at loving

41:55

myself. You know. This idea of

41:58

like failure on top of fail Elier was

42:00

really interesting to me and really pled

42:03

me, and frankly still does. I

42:05

think the core that I come

42:07

to is that our

42:09

relationship with our

42:12

bodies is of course

42:14

going to feel really important and

42:16

really central, which is why something

42:19

like the idea of body neutrality is

42:21

hard for me, because I'm never

42:23

going to feel neutral about my body, and

42:26

so we have this really

42:28

important relationship with our body,

42:30

but at the same time we're told to

42:32

just kind of like manage

42:34

our feelings with it, is if that's something

42:37

that's easy to do or to change.

42:41

To be clear here, fat activism and body

42:43

positivity are not the same movement.

42:45

Fat activists have criticized the body

42:48

positivity movement for lacking an

42:50

explicit political goal. It's

42:52

a complicated topic, and I encourage

42:54

you to learn more about the activist work

42:56

that's being done. With all that in mind,

42:59

it's pretty is safe to say that

43:01

the Kathy character never had body

43:03

positivity in her vocabulary,

43:06

much less fat activist, and

43:08

the very fact that these movements have continued

43:11

to thrive and grow is a testament

43:13

to hard one progress. But

43:15

that doesn't mean that the hundreds and

43:18

arguably thousands of years connected

43:20

to controlling and mothering women's

43:22

bodies just goes away in a handful

43:25

of years. One of the most talented

43:27

actors and comedians working today is

43:29

jannasch Meeting, who is currently

43:31

on Rutherford Falls on Peacock. You should

43:34

watch it, and she gave an interview with Bona

43:36

Petite recently about her experience

43:39

as a mini Kanju and Lakota

43:41

woman and her evolving relationship

43:43

with food. Her sadly defunct podcast

43:46

is called Woman of Size and is another

43:48

I would strongly recommend. But I've been thinking

43:50

about this interview for weeks and

43:52

it came right to my mind when I sat down to record

43:55

this. Jenna says this, there's

43:58

a direct link between culture

44:00

and anti blackness and anti indigenousity.

44:04

The Settler Gaze Center's piety

44:06

and purity in the way that, especially

44:08

for women, means you have to be anti

44:10

savage. It says you should practice

44:13

control and suppression over food.

44:15

Over all of these that we find joy in

44:18

over a lot of the things that were celebrated

44:20

by indigenous people and enslaved African

44:22

people. Later in the interview, she

44:25

continues, I can't stand

44:27

the rhetoric that food is fuel.

44:30

It is directly linked to weight loss and

44:32

what I would call white wellness culture,

44:34

which I feel is a very hard thing to

44:37

vilify because then people think your anti

44:39

wellness. Well, how

44:41

come we're not looking at wellness more holistically?

44:44

How are we not looking at justice as

44:46

well We're not looking at restoring

44:48

food ways as wellness, We're not looking

44:51

at reparations as wellness. And that

44:53

doesn't make any sense to me. I

44:56

mean, I sure as hell can't say it better

44:58

than that. The Cathy's Trip always

45:00

seemed aware that the issues that Cathy

45:02

had with her body, with her job stress,

45:05

with her spending habit to look the right way

45:07

in a body she didn't like, at a job

45:09

she felt stressed out at, were all

45:12

connected. What challenged readers

45:14

is that she never overcame it. But honestly,

45:17

especially in this era, how many people

45:19

did. Here's a strip from the nineties featuring

45:22

Cathy at her desk, snacking and

45:24

surrounded by a tall pile of work in the

45:26

form of loose leaf paper. She thinks

45:28

this to herself. Problem.

45:32

Over eating cause

45:35

job stress problem,

45:39

overspending cause

45:42

job stress problem,

45:45

crankiness cause job

45:47

stress problem, exhaustion,

45:50

disorganization, wrinkles to decay,

45:53

eroding social skills, hostility,

45:55

flab cause job

45:58

stressed, job stress, job stress, job

46:00

stress, And the last panel, Cathy

46:03

relaxes and smiles. On

46:05

the bright side, I believe I've identified

46:07

or remarkably productive area of my career.

46:11

So here's the thing. American beauty standards

46:13

are unquestionably racist

46:15

and fat phobic distractions intended

46:18

to perpetuate white supremacy and

46:20

drain women of their capital to fit

46:22

a randomized normal made up

46:25

by some guy.

46:27

But it's one thing to know it, and it's another

46:29

thing to untrain it. It's

46:32

not impossible, as demonstrated by

46:34

some of the people I've talked with and about,

46:36

but it's hard, and to people who are still

46:38

struggling with it, I'm right there with

46:40

you. If this is your first time hearing about a lot

46:42

of this, I hope it's a start for you. But

46:45

as it always has, it still makes

46:47

a lot of assholes a lot of money, making

46:49

people feel like shit about themselves. Kathy

46:52

guys. White knew that, and so did her heroine,

46:54

but it didn't stop either from trying

46:56

to meet that impossible standard.

46:59

In their heyday, this was talked about as

47:01

a sign of woman's hope, but in

47:03

retrospect I see it more as

47:05

a commiseration with others

47:07

over an inevitable defeat.

47:10

So thank you, Kathy. It's nice

47:12

to know that other people are feeling like shit about

47:14

themselves, even in the fictional realm.

47:17

You're welcome,

47:19

and they were all being ridiculous. You're extremely hot.

47:22

Look, it's been eleven years since

47:24

the comic ended. I know, I

47:26

fuck, and that's our gal.

47:29

In spite of the haters, the Kathy

47:31

comics were able to pull rightful frustration

47:34

at ridiculous standards and put them in

47:36

the newspaper every day. But that was not an

47:38

opportunity available to everyone.

47:40

Next week, I'm going to speak with artists who

47:42

have worked through other channels to get

47:44

their semi autobiographical work out there

47:47

and how works like Kathy and

47:49

from within your own communities made

47:51

it possible. Artists telling their

47:53

stories in zines, web comics,

47:56

and more. That's next week

47:58

on act Cast. Why

48:01

did I buy an itsy Bitsy

48:04

teeny Weeny Bikini Linguini,

48:07

Oh My God. Act

48:10

Cast is an I Heart Radio production. It

48:12

is written, researched, and hosted by

48:14

me Jamie Loftus. Sophia

48:16

Lichtman is the best producer on the

48:18

planet, Isaac Taylor is the best

48:21

editor on the planet. Zoe Blade writes

48:23

the best music on the planet, and Brandon

48:25

Dickert wrote the best theme

48:28

ever written. In this

48:30

episode, you heard the vocal talents of Sharene

48:33

Lonnie unas Maggie Cannon, Isaac

48:35

Taylor, and Julia Claire. Our

48:37

cast is Jackie Michelle Johnson as Kathy,

48:40

Melissa Lozada Oliva as Andrea,

48:42

and Maggie Mayfish as Charlene

48:44

and the Sales Lady. See you next

48:47

week.