Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff Mom never told you. From how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Christmas and I'm Caroline. And Caroline. We've talked about all
Speaker 1: different types of communication and how gender plays a role
Speaker 1: in that, and we're going to do the same thing
Speaker 1: today talking about one of my favorite forms of communication.
Speaker 1: Emoji's nice and it is emoji's not just like emoji
Speaker 1: and emoji as plural. Yeah, so we are deferring to
Speaker 1: the AP style guide as well. We should exactly because
Speaker 1: I'm also an editor, not not just a podcaster. I
Speaker 1: am at my heart, I am an editor. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the and the AP decided that because of its clarity,
Speaker 1: the plural of emoji is emoji's okay, So listeners, if
Speaker 1: you are an emoji plural user, which I was before
Speaker 1: I learned about the AP style rule, then now now
Speaker 1: we know it'll save you a letter. Thank god, it's settled. Um.
Speaker 1: But we're going to talk about, obviously emojis, but we're
Speaker 1: going to talk to about emoticons and gender and before
Speaker 1: we get into the meat of this conversation, because there
Speaker 1: actually is some important stuff to discuss, and there are
Speaker 1: emojis for meat, yes, particularly like the chicken ling or
Speaker 1: the drumstick. Thank goodness, so I can describe all of
Speaker 1: my meals. That's all I need because I only eat
Speaker 1: it medieval times. So really all I need is that
Speaker 1: turkey leg emogy, and that's that's a pricey meal plan. Caroline, Oh,
Speaker 1: I know it comes with the entertainment. That meat isn't cheap.
Speaker 1: Tell me about it. Um, But I really like, though,
Speaker 1: if we if we go back to pre emoticon days,
Speaker 1: how Vladimir and Nabokov told The New York Times in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixteen, line, I often think there should exist a
Speaker 1: special typographical sign for a smile, a supine round bracket.
Speaker 1: Of course, Nabokov would say, supine round bracket. You not
Speaker 1: a fan? No, I mean I'm a fan. I like
Speaker 1: it's fine, But you know he did write about a
Speaker 1: young girl in a very not so great fashion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. So what would be the emoji you would
Speaker 1: use to describe your feelings about Lolita then, Caroline, Oh,
Speaker 1: probably the one that's all straight lines across, you know,
Speaker 1: just like two lines for the eyes and one straight
Speaker 1: line for the mouth. Like I enjoyed it, but I'm
Speaker 1: also like m M yeah. See, and and that communicated
Speaker 1: your sentiment to me so effectively. Yeah. But I guess
Speaker 1: I also have that face like a lot of the
Speaker 1: because I actually didn't read Lolita until after college, and
Speaker 1: so once I did read it, and I mean I
Speaker 1: did enjoy it, you know, I did enjoy the writing
Speaker 1: and everything, but I also had that face at thinking
Speaker 1: back at guys who'd recommended Lolita and like the way
Speaker 1: that they recommended it, and it just kind of excused
Speaker 1: me out a little. Same emoji for those guys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: same emogi. Okay, So that's I'm going to consider that
Speaker 1: emoji face now on my phone, the Nabokov, the Caroline,
Speaker 1: the skeptical and somewhat disapproving Caroline emoji. Yes, yes that. Henceforth, listeners,
Speaker 1: it shall be named UM. I really enjoyed though, this
Speaker 1: swift Key sponsored survey that analyzed the most popular emojis
Speaker 1: by country. Um, Australians. I know there's so many of
Speaker 1: you listening. Uh here's the thing, y'all use the most
Speaker 1: simples indicating alcohol nice twice the worldwide average. Apparently also
Speaker 1: above average juice of drug related emojis se above average
Speaker 1: bt dubs um, as well as holidays and junk foods.
Speaker 1: I mean, it sounds like overall Australian are having a
Speaker 1: good time. Y'all are just having a great time. What
Speaker 1: are the drug emojis besides? And they're a pill? Oh
Speaker 1: there's a there's a syringe, isn't there there's a syringe?
Speaker 1: Oh my god. I hope that there's a needle sharing
Speaker 1: program for that syringe emoji. Well, hopefully those emojis are
Speaker 1: just symbolic of you know, feelings and not actual syringes,
Speaker 1: I hope. So it's like, hey, hey, lady, what are
Speaker 1: you doing later tonight? And it's just like fifteen syringes
Speaker 1: and response you would send back the Caroline skeptical phase
Speaker 1: obviously Americans. Meanwhile, I apparently love the egg plant emoji,
Speaker 1: which I have never used. Really, I've never used it
Speaker 1: because for the longest time I didn't understand this is
Speaker 1: like so typical for me. I'm like fifty years behind
Speaker 1: all popular culture, but like I didn't know what the
Speaker 1: egg planet emogi meant. For the longest time, I was like,
Speaker 1: why are these people using the egg plant? I get
Speaker 1: it now, I assure you. People are is wild about
Speaker 1: eggplant parmesan. God, yeah, I love it. Canadians, though, you
Speaker 1: threw the researchers for a loop with your your use
Speaker 1: of money, violence and sports related emoji. Yeah, Canadians, they
Speaker 1: only seem polite under the surface, they're seething with all
Speaker 1: of those knife and gun emojis. UM, and Russians tend
Speaker 1: to send a lot of cold weather symbols, not surprisingly,
Speaker 1: the French apparently send hearts all the time bljere and
Speaker 1: then the Arabic speakers use flowers and plants the most.
Speaker 1: How pleasant it's pleasant. I think they have the you know,
Speaker 1: the most charming emoji's use. Oh well, yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: that is. Yeah, it's more charming than egg plant. But now,
Speaker 1: of course, this is our uh sort of latent request
Speaker 1: to our international listeners to let us know whether this
Speaker 1: survey is reflective of what you think that your national
Speaker 1: emoji style is. Um, but Caroline, talk about you and me.
Speaker 1: What are what are our favorites? Um? Okay. The ones
Speaker 1: that I used the most are either like smiley happy ones.
Speaker 1: That's nice. Um, probably use those the most. Uh. The
Speaker 1: other one I use is like the the anxiety face,
Speaker 1: which it's got like the almost the lightning bolt looking mouth.
Speaker 1: Do you know what I'm talking about. Yes, it's yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's like looking down and like I would you
Speaker 1: know now, I wish we were on our Facebook live
Speaker 1: thing rather than in this podcast studio. Makes it hard
Speaker 1: to I really enjoy listening to you describe emojis keep going.
Speaker 1: But that's the one I use a lot too, for like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I can't believe this is happening. Are
Speaker 1: there any objects that you use a lot? Are you
Speaker 1: mostly faces? No? I think I'm I think i'm oh, well,
Speaker 1: heart the heart, But other than that, I think I'm
Speaker 1: mostly faces. Yeah, I'm pretty French as well. I send
Speaker 1: a lot of hearts, especially with tweets and just sending
Speaker 1: hearts all the time to our kind stuff. Mom never
Speaker 1: told you friends online and Caroline. I have my phone
Speaker 1: with me so that I can look at my most
Speaker 1: recently used emojis. Let's see what we've got here. It's
Speaker 1: probably hearts. You used used some flames in a text
Speaker 1: to me the other day. Oh yeah, I like the flames.
Speaker 1: Let's see my most my frequently used are all of
Speaker 1: the hearts, every single heart variety, the laugh crying emoji
Speaker 1: one hundred, the flame, the dancing woman, um, and the taco.
Speaker 1: I mean, that really sums up my life. The taco
Speaker 1: was one of the new editions, right, one of the
Speaker 1: because I haven't updated my iOS in like seventeen years,
Speaker 1: which is impressive considering the iPhone. I wonder you just
Speaker 1: use the faces you got to get the Is there
Speaker 1: is there a unicorn yet? Yes? Oh my god. Okay,
Speaker 1: let me just like do a little like quantum leap
Speaker 1: and come back in time and say that the unicorn
Speaker 1: is and will be my most used one as soon
Speaker 1: as I update my iOS. It's just such a pain,
Speaker 1: and like, my phone is so full of crap and
Speaker 1: you need so much space to update tiny violence for you.
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not living my best life. Okay. So
Speaker 1: listeners might be wondering, now, though, why on earth would
Speaker 1: we be talking about emojis? How can that possibly be serious?
Speaker 1: How can that possibly relate to stuff I've never told
Speaker 1: you at all? It's so frivolous, right well, I mean yeah,
Speaker 1: it could seem frivolous, but in a way, emoji are
Speaker 1: really changing how we communicate with each other. I mean,
Speaker 1: just look at how the Oxford Dictionary Word of the
Speaker 1: Year was not a word. It was the cry laughing
Speaker 1: emoji and no surprise because people have posted that emoji
Speaker 1: to Twitter alone more than one billion times. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean emoji, just like emoticons before of them, help people
Speaker 1: communicate to each other the sense that like the subtext
Speaker 1: to a message or a tweet. I mean, it totally
Speaker 1: makes sense that they are helping kind of bolster our communication. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: because you have so little context for text messages. You
Speaker 1: don't get in tone inflection and oh man, if you
Speaker 1: get a text from someone and it ends in a period,
Speaker 1: does that mean no. I I just yesterday send an
Speaker 1: email to a co worker with a joke in it
Speaker 1: and had a winky face, and when he responded, he
Speaker 1: had no winky face, and so I took his his
Speaker 1: response as serious and answered him as such. And then
Speaker 1: when he replied to me again, he was like, I
Speaker 1: can't believe you didn't get my joke. I can't believe
Speaker 1: you took that seriously. I was like, bro, Bro, You've
Speaker 1: got to have an emoticon. Ya. Sarcasm is challenging for
Speaker 1: me to detect in text only format. Um Also, though,
Speaker 1: when it comes to gender, there's and a lot of
Speaker 1: conversation in the weeks leading up to when we're recording
Speaker 1: this podcast about how emojis seemed to perpetuate gender stereotypes
Speaker 1: and as for why something is seemingly insignificant as these
Speaker 1: old characters on our phone might seem. Uh, Sophie Cleman
Speaker 1: over at Mike says, they are worth talking about quote
Speaker 1: because it's a small, yet clear example of a social
Speaker 1: scheme but still manages to reinforce traditional gender stereotypes at
Speaker 1: every term, even when the issue is as seemingly innocuous
Speaker 1: as a tiny digital face. WHOA. So people are saying
Speaker 1: that emojis are sexist or that they're being used in
Speaker 1: sexist ways. Not well, they might be used in sexist ways,
Speaker 1: that depends on the individual, but more that they Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're kind of subtly sexist by only providing a very
Speaker 1: narrow and stereotypical representation of the girl emojis as like
Speaker 1: the princess and the bride rather than a lady police officer, yeah,
Speaker 1: dancing woman, and most of the active emojis, the sports
Speaker 1: ones like the bike rider and the swimmer, all that
Speaker 1: all dudes, all boy emojis. The basketball player looks like
Speaker 1: it might be a girl, but upun closer inspection it's
Speaker 1: just a guy with shaggy hair, you know, so always.
Speaker 1: The Maxi Pad company did a whole ad campaign around this,
Speaker 1: created by Leo Burnett, which is brilliant. They were the
Speaker 1: ones who started the whole like a girl hashtag campaign
Speaker 1: a little while back that went viral, and now they're
Speaker 1: doing the same thing with emojis. And it's a good
Speaker 1: video and it like gives girls phones and has them
Speaker 1: talking about their emoji use and kind of points out
Speaker 1: how there aren't many girl emojis that are active and
Speaker 1: reflect like what they do on a day to day basis,
Speaker 1: and the you know, the girls getting mad about it,
Speaker 1: they get fired up. Yeah, I love angry women. But
Speaker 1: before we get like even angrier about gender stereo typical
Speaker 1: use of emojis or gender stereotypical emojis at all period,
Speaker 1: we should probably inform the people of where emojis even
Speaker 1: came from. Yeah, that's a good idea. We'd love to
Speaker 1: talk about history, right, we love history, especially smiley face history.
Speaker 1: So the thing is humans have been all about pictorial
Speaker 1: representations of words since pretty much forever. I mean before
Speaker 1: we had like the Phoenician alphabet, we had hieroglyphics, and
Speaker 1: other kinds of images to get our points across um
Speaker 1: and so for that reason, though, emojis are sometimes derisively
Speaker 1: referred to as the new hieroglyphics. Oh, we're taking our
Speaker 1: culture step backward. Oh why not? I like hieroglyphics. Pizza emoji. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the dancing lady and the pizza emoji, just to know
Speaker 1: the set in a night. That's Carol hieroglyphics. What about
Speaker 1: a little wineglass too? Oh yeah, no, bring it all.
Speaker 1: Oh that is another one I use. I do use
Speaker 1: the drinking drink ees, although I do send the drinking
Speaker 1: drinkies to friends sometimes my boyfriend. My boyfriend is sober,
Speaker 1: but he does make a great cocktail for me. So
Speaker 1: but anyway, yeah, sorry, we got off track yet again. Well,
Speaker 1: steering us back on track, we have Adam Sternberg, helpfully
Speaker 1: over at New York Magazine, who dives into that prehistoric
Speaker 1: pictorial representation of our words. So first, as he notes,
Speaker 1: we had something called pictograms, which are essentially pictures of
Speaker 1: actual things, like when you draw a sunshine indicating a sunshine,
Speaker 1: and these go back to ancient Mesopotamia, China, and Egypt.
Speaker 1: And then from there we figure out things called logograms,
Speaker 1: which are pictures to symbolize words, kind of like the
Speaker 1: money symbols, like a dollar sign or you're a signer exactly, Caroline,
Speaker 1: I'm picking up on it. And then finally we have ideograms,
Speaker 1: which are pictures to represent an idea, which might translate
Speaker 1: an emoji speak to say, the nail painting emoji if
Speaker 1: you are meaning I just don't have time to listen
Speaker 1: to you right now. Oh, I used that to symbolize
Speaker 1: an actual manicure the other day. Am I too literal?
Speaker 1: That's the thing, though, that people love about emojis is
Speaker 1: that they're open to interpretation. I like, though, I like
Speaker 1: the idea of using that to me, and I just
Speaker 1: I just ain't got time to listen to you. And
Speaker 1: one bit of emoji prehistory I really enjoyed was from
Speaker 1: a piece that Clive Thompson wrote in Woman's zene Um.
Speaker 1: He notes how in the eighteenth century especially, people really
Speaker 1: love these things called Rebus puzzles, which are kind of
Speaker 1: like proto emoji or is. He describes them deep history
Speaker 1: ancestors of emojis. So the emogi equivalent of a Rebus
Speaker 1: puzzle would be, say, like using emojis only to ask
Speaker 1: someone out for like pizza and wine. So maybe you'd
Speaker 1: send like a emoji of two people and then a car,
Speaker 1: and then a slice of pizza, and then a glass
Speaker 1: of wine and then a question mark. Oh yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I remember those, Okay, I never knew what they were.
Speaker 1: Called Rebus Puzzles. Yeah, my one of my mom's favorite books. Actually,
Speaker 1: if you ever come over to my parents house with it,
Speaker 1: just without you, just to hang out, she may very
Speaker 1: well show you this book called c dB and it's
Speaker 1: a book of Rebus puzzles. And so c dB, you
Speaker 1: have the letter C and then the letter D and
Speaker 1: then a picture of a B and it's this whole
Speaker 1: story told through Rebus puzzles, and she just she loves it. No,
Speaker 1: I remember those as kids. My dad and I used
Speaker 1: to like, you know, quote unquote read them or I
Speaker 1: guess you're literally reading them before bed. And I remember
Speaker 1: getting like super upset if they were too easy to
Speaker 1: figure out. I wanted like every word to be an
Speaker 1: image almost well, and they are fun to figure out,
Speaker 1: and they take some mental prowess to decipher. But the
Speaker 1: thing is, Caroline much like today, back in the eighteenth century,
Speaker 1: and they existed before the eighteenth century. But back then,
Speaker 1: Rebus puzzle snobs considered those picture messages suitable only for
Speaker 1: dullards and children, kind of like people whoop poop poo emoji. Today. Oh,
Speaker 1: I just enjoy emogie so much. Yeah, but I mean
Speaker 1: it's the people who would refer to them as so
Speaker 1: there's just some new hieroglyphics, so kids don't know how
Speaker 1: to write words anymore. Although I think that that's kind
Speaker 1: of a separate issue. Yeah, yeah, that is a separate issue.
Speaker 1: But now I get to leap forward in time to
Speaker 1: everyone's favorite decade right now, the nine nineties, Yes, Kristen,
Speaker 1: that's right, the era of Neon wind suits and Zach
Speaker 1: Morris um. But in the mid nineties in Japan, there
Speaker 1: was this guy named Suga Taka Kurita who's working for
Speaker 1: DoCoMo pagers and he gets this idea. He has the
Speaker 1: idea that users might like little cartoons symbols to communicate
Speaker 1: with each other. And the first that he helps develop
Speaker 1: is a cartoon heart. And this, my friends, is histories
Speaker 1: first emoji. So cute. I imagine it would be so cute.
Speaker 1: I like to imagine a little black and white like
Speaker 1: pixelated heart. My heart is pixelated for you, I mean,
Speaker 1: and surely you would be excited about that, because pagers,
Speaker 1: you know, they're rather unimpressive. Like I can spell hello
Speaker 1: with with numbers only. That's almost as exciting as when
Speaker 1: you were a kid and learned to spell blood on
Speaker 1: your calculator. Anybody remember that? Yeah, I thought you were
Speaker 1: going to talk about spelling blood with your fingers. I
Speaker 1: still can't do that. I learned that in high school
Speaker 1: because I was home schooled, right. And then as DoCoMo
Speaker 1: and others entered the cell phone game, the company expanded
Speaker 1: its emoji roster to one hundred and seventies six that
Speaker 1: they were mostly faces, but you also had things like
Speaker 1: musical notes and stuff like that because kids kids those days,
Speaker 1: kids those days loved to be able to use these
Speaker 1: early emojis to clarify messages and avoid misunderstanding the same
Speaker 1: reason we would use them today. But since those early
Speaker 1: emoji were proprietary to DoCoMo, they showed up as what
Speaker 1: are referred to as garbage characters, which is what I
Speaker 1: also like to refer to rude people as um on
Speaker 1: non DoCoMo devices. And this reminds me actually of one
Speaker 1: of my best guy friends had an old phone for
Speaker 1: so long, and I love texting emoji to him because
Speaker 1: he would just get strings of garbage characters and it
Speaker 1: would frustrate him to no end. Um. But as emoji
Speaker 1: popularity picks up, and also the Japanese cell phone market
Speaker 1: starts booming, you have this group called Unicode standard step
Speaker 1: in and Unicode is a nonprofit volunteer group founded by
Speaker 1: a Google guy named Mark Davis that standardizes digital text
Speaker 1: across different software. So it's kind of like the Rosetta
Speaker 1: Stone for digital text. Um. And essentially they're the ones
Speaker 1: that we can thank for. You know, me sending my
Speaker 1: mom and emoji. She has a different type of cell
Speaker 1: phone and she gets, you know, the emoji and not
Speaker 1: a garbage character. Um. Yeah, I don't don't hurt your
Speaker 1: mom's feelings by sending her a garbage character. I never
Speaker 1: would never would. Um. But Unicode, which I'm only noting
Speaker 1: this because it will be relevant in a moment. Unicode,
Speaker 1: which is overwhelmingly dudes. This is back in the day.
Speaker 1: Still they were aware of DoCoMo and its emojis, but
Speaker 1: they suspected that it was just gonna be a passing fad.
Speaker 1: But of course it wasn't so. Fast forward to the
Speaker 1: two thousands and US telecom vendors really want to start
Speaker 1: working with Japanese characters, but all of the emoji proprietary
Speaker 1: issues and the garbage characters are causing problems. So Unicode
Speaker 1: steps in and they standardize everything in two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: And when Apple releases its iPhone that year, it actually
Speaker 1: buried an emoji keyboard in that phone to appeal to
Speaker 1: Japanese consumers, and they were like, Americans aren't gonna care
Speaker 1: about this or just gonna like bury it, But of
Speaker 1: course we all know that it was unburied in the
Speaker 1: rest's history. Well, so buried along with all of those
Speaker 1: emojis is the smiley poop, which, fun fact, I never
Speaker 1: knew this. It's actually considered good luck because the Japanese
Speaker 1: love buns just as much as we do, and their
Speaker 1: word for poop sounds a lot like the word for luck,
Speaker 1: and so why not have fun and make the poop
Speaker 1: symbol a symbol of good luck. Yeah, so that's why
Speaker 1: the poop symbol exists in our emoji vocabulary. I never
Speaker 1: questioned it. Maybe, yeah, maybe that's just something bad about me,
Speaker 1: but I never questioned it. I just accepted that there
Speaker 1: was a smiley, googly eyed poop pile. Well, apparently the
Speaker 1: googly eyes were an add on from some Apple designers
Speaker 1: somewhere along the way. But um, yeah, there is significant
Speaker 1: to the poop emoji and this changes the whole meaning
Speaker 1: it's the symbol of good luck. Yeah, I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say that the google eyes make it
Speaker 1: more palatable. Yeah, but not so much. Um, But people
Speaker 1: that might still be wondering, like, ladies, ladies, ladies, where
Speaker 1: is the sexism here? Are you saying that the poop
Speaker 1: emoji is sexist or something that it's looking at you
Speaker 1: the wrong way? What could possibly be going on? Why
Speaker 1: am I always getting cat called by piles of crap
Speaker 1: on the street. Well, I mean fast forward to today
Speaker 1: and you have this rampant use of emojis, and it's
Speaker 1: and they're especially popular of course among younger kids, and
Speaker 1: those younger kids are seeing all of these gender stereotypical emoji.
Speaker 1: I mean, what can what can you be when you
Speaker 1: grow up? If you're a girl, according to the emoji alphabet,
Speaker 1: you could be like a dancer, You could be someone
Speaker 1: who looks kind of like a playboy, bunny like the
Speaker 1: Twinsies one. Yeah, one's always been a little curious to me. Um,
Speaker 1: you could work at a salon, or be a princess
Speaker 1: or a bride. Yeah, well, I mean, what more could
Speaker 1: a woman want? Honestly? Well, and there's the hair flip emoji, which,
Speaker 1: as you pointed out, what was it actually? Yeah, so
Speaker 1: the hair flip emoji, which, by the way, the other night,
Speaker 1: when I was looking at the sources, I had to
Speaker 1: text Kristen and I included the hair flip emoji, and
Speaker 1: I said, it is this one, the hair flip emoji.
Speaker 1: I never knew what she was. She's got like her
Speaker 1: hand up by her shoulder like you should be placing
Speaker 1: a tray onto it or something like. She works for
Speaker 1: a catering company. And I was reading something that was
Speaker 1: saying that like, oh, you know, we love our emoji
Speaker 1: so much, but we want them to mean more than
Speaker 1: perhaps they were intended to mean, and so we've renamed
Speaker 1: the service desk woman the hair flip emoji. And I
Speaker 1: was like, what what? What did any of these things
Speaker 1: mean that I just read? And so I went down
Speaker 1: a little internet rabbit hole and discover which I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know a lot of people already know this.
Speaker 1: I did not know any of this, um but the
Speaker 1: woman that symbolizes the hair flip of like again, I
Speaker 1: don't have time to listen to you, or like I'm
Speaker 1: feeling so hot today. She she was meant to be
Speaker 1: like a helpful lady behind a desk, pointing you in
Speaker 1: the right direction. Who knew and here to me, she's
Speaker 1: just been flipping her hair the whole time. But with
Speaker 1: that always emoji add going viral recently, Caroline, there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of focus on the hair flip emoji and
Speaker 1: all of the other lady emojis, and like the hashtag
Speaker 1: like a girl at it went viral, and so you
Speaker 1: have a lot of media outlets talking about and calling
Speaker 1: for Unicode directly to broaden its gender representation. I mean,
Speaker 1: you have a few years ago, I think it was
Speaker 1: in late when Unicode finally got the memo and added
Speaker 1: skin color options for some of the people, not all
Speaker 1: of the people, but some of the people. And they
Speaker 1: might similarly add gender options at some point down the road,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't really look like that's going to happen,
Speaker 1: at least not in the next round of emojis that
Speaker 1: we're going to get yeah, because it seems like Unicode
Speaker 1: is focusing more on offering male versions of the gender
Speaker 1: stereotypical female emojis, so they would have the counterpoint to
Speaker 1: the princess. So I'll have a prince, a groom, a
Speaker 1: guy dancing, thank god, finally men can dance. Um. And
Speaker 1: then they're going to have new sports emojis, things like
Speaker 1: a wrestler, but watch out. I just heard that like
Speaker 1: some wrestler caught herpies off of a mat recently, so
Speaker 1: like watch out. Um, maybe the wrestler emoji with like
Speaker 1: a caution emoji nexte um, and then maybe a water
Speaker 1: polo because why would we not need that? And handball.
Speaker 1: But these are all gonna be do yeah well, and
Speaker 1: I like them. But looking at the list of the
Speaker 1: possible emojis that they're gonna a vote on, one of
Speaker 1: the few women is a pregnant lady, which I mean,
Speaker 1: I see how that's useful, but I was like, you're
Speaker 1: not helping matters any But the one request I have
Speaker 1: to Unicode is to please not put the terrifying clown
Speaker 1: face emoji that some sick person suggests. Does it like
Speaker 1: the its face or is it just a clown. Listen,
Speaker 1: I'm not a fan of clown, but also an emoji
Speaker 1: version of a clown is it's Yeah, it's something out
Speaker 1: of nightmares. I probably probably don't need it. I could
Speaker 1: probably take a lady firefighter over a clown. I think.
Speaker 1: I think that's what I would choose. There, you go
Speaker 1: right to Unicode. Um, No, they'll just listen to this episode.
Speaker 1: So we're kind of just going to have to put
Speaker 1: a pin in the whole gender stereotyping with emojis because
Speaker 1: it's sort of out of our control. I mean, people
Speaker 1: are directly requesting Unicode do it, and they absolutely listened
Speaker 1: when people said, hey, how about some ethnicity options here.
Speaker 1: I always go with the yellow though, just because you're
Speaker 1: constantly queen Zy that would be green, or maybe that
Speaker 1: would mean I'm a witch. She's a witch. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: stick with the yellow skin tone. Okay, is that your
Speaker 1: Is that your neutral? Yeah? Yeah, that is my neutral.
Speaker 1: I have to wear so much, so much foundation to
Speaker 1: cover that up. Well, one thing I was curious about
Speaker 1: with all this emoji conversation, especially the attention to how
Speaker 1: girls use them and how stereotypical a lot of the
Speaker 1: girl ones are I wondered whether there is a gendered
Speaker 1: use to emojis and also their predecessors, old school emoticons.
Speaker 1: Caught emoticons are already considered old school totally, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about that. We come right back from a
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Speaker 1: mom stuff for ten percent off your order and a
Speaker 1: free domain. And now back to the show. So the
Speaker 1: desire for broader emoji representation, it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: But the question we know want to tackle and can
Speaker 1: to have the podcast is whether emojis are a gendered
Speaker 1: form of communication, Because I gotta say, Caroline, I do
Speaker 1: use emojis all the time in my texting with lady friends. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, I use them. Well, I use them with everybody. Honestly,
Speaker 1: the person I use them with the most is my boyfriend.
Speaker 1: Like we we have communicated strictly in emojis before. Do
Speaker 1: you all have and if this is t M I,
Speaker 1: you don't have to answer, but do you you all
Speaker 1: have a go to emoji? Honestly it's it's a lot
Speaker 1: of smiley faces and hearts, like going back to the
Speaker 1: ones I use most often. Um, But it is to
Speaker 1: indicate like this is sarcasm, or this is I'm saying
Speaker 1: this in an excited way, or I'm really happy about this,
Speaker 1: so that we don't fall into the trap of like, wait,
Speaker 1: there was a period at the end of that. Is
Speaker 1: he mad at me? Is she mad at me? What
Speaker 1: could that mean? Well? And the thing is linguists are
Speaker 1: paying attention to this. I mean, people might be snabs
Speaker 1: about emoji use, but linguists are taking them very seriously.
Speaker 1: And Stanford trained linguists. Tyler Schnabelen is one of those people,
Speaker 1: and he talked to the New Republic about that, and
Speaker 1: he says that we would assume that women use emojis
Speaker 1: more because we're supposedly more emotionally driven communicators. We want
Speaker 1: to really get our point across and as contextual of
Speaker 1: a way as possible. And the thing is that is
Speaker 1: somewhat reflected in our emoticon use. We're still in the
Speaker 1: early days, unfortunately, of emoji linguistic research, but it does
Speaker 1: seem like with our emoticon use, women are a little
Speaker 1: bit likelier to send those winky faces. Yeah, well winky faces,
Speaker 1: but also exclamation points um, which could be a whole
Speaker 1: other episode. But yeah, my boyfriend I also obsessively use
Speaker 1: exclamation points. I don't think there's anything that we say
Speaker 1: to each other that only has a single punctuation mark. Like,
Speaker 1: if it's going to have an exclamation point, it's going
Speaker 1: to have five. If it's gonna have a question mark,
Speaker 1: it's going to have at least two. What about semi
Speaker 1: Colon's Oh lord, well, I tend to stay away from
Speaker 1: writing essays. I'm not writing any Atlantic think pieces to
Speaker 1: my boyfriend so I do stay away from the semicolons.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, when it comes to emoticons, while
Speaker 1: research has shown that women are likelier to use them,
Speaker 1: it's not like we're throwing them out left and right. Um.
Speaker 1: And And the main study that people point to it
Speaker 1: was a tiny, tiny study from two thousand and ten
Speaker 1: that took place at Rice University, and the participant pool
Speaker 1: was only twenty one college students. UM. But they analyze
Speaker 1: thousand texts that this group of college students sent, and
Speaker 1: just four percent of them contained emoticons, and women were
Speaker 1: twice as likely to have sent one of those texts.
Speaker 1: But there is some interesting nuance in this, because when
Speaker 1: guys did use emoticons, they tended to use a wider
Speaker 1: range of them to exp us a wider range of emotions,
Speaker 1: whereas with emojis and emoticons alike, women tend to keep
Speaker 1: it positive. That's good, I mean, I guess you gotta
Speaker 1: stay optimistic. Question mark question mark, question mark question mark. Um.
Speaker 1: But it also seems like generally we've internalized this whole
Speaker 1: idea of the emoticon being a female expression idea UM
Speaker 1: and build an unconscious bias against guys using emoticons. I mean,
Speaker 1: my my boyfriend I know doesn't really use them with
Speaker 1: other dudes he's texting with. Yeah, I meant to ask
Speaker 1: my fiance whether he and his guy friends engage in
Speaker 1: much emoji back and forth. But from what I can tell,
Speaker 1: they tend to just send each other like funny photos
Speaker 1: a lot more often, which I feel like this like
Speaker 1: even cuter, because that's a lot more work to have
Speaker 1: to find find funny photos to send each other, more work.
Speaker 1: But there was this. Zeusk Surveys is a dating site
Speaker 1: for those of you who aren't familiar. The found that
Speaker 1: guys with winky faces in their profiles attracted less attention,
Speaker 1: whereas women with winky faces in their profiles attracted sixty
Speaker 1: percent more interest. And this to me immediately, the first
Speaker 1: thing I thought of was, like, it's because we're always
Speaker 1: expected to smile. It's the whole hey honey, give me
Speaker 1: a smile thing. Why aren't you smiling? Where guys are
Speaker 1: expected to be more stoic? Maybe so, I mean, and
Speaker 1: like emergies are considered kind of like a flirty or
Speaker 1: emergies or emoticons are kind of considered a flirty thing
Speaker 1: that more women are supposed to use, well guys and
Speaker 1: straight guys. This now gets into more like heteronormative context
Speaker 1: because linguists, come on, broaden your study pool please, um.
Speaker 1: But research finds that guys use more emoticons if they're
Speaker 1: talking in either like mixed gender groups or just talking
Speaker 1: to a woman. And and did oh for younger people, Like,
Speaker 1: younger guys are much likelier to use them in a
Speaker 1: flirtatious way with girls insert winky face. Yeah no, boyfriend
Speaker 1: dog way more likely to use them with me than
Speaker 1: anybody else, which that's how it should be. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: and speaking of flirting and emojis, Caroline, I'll go ahead
Speaker 1: and tell you the most embarrassing incident that I can remember.
Speaker 1: I've probably done worse. Um, but a long time ago, now,
Speaker 1: I was kind of sort of starting to see this
Speaker 1: guy and I really liked him, and for some reason,
Speaker 1: I thought it would be funny to send him a
Speaker 1: text saying like, marry me in all caps and then
Speaker 1: with the sunglasses smiley face, because I was like, the
Speaker 1: sunglasses smiley face will definitely let him know that I'm joking.
Speaker 1: Oh no, Yeah, he just didn't really respond to it,
Speaker 1: did you? Guys? Keep dating. Well, he's not my fiance.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I know, but like he didn't then ghost
Speaker 1: did he? No? But he put me on ice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he definitely iced me. Um see that maybe if you
Speaker 1: had tried Kristen c C. You probably didn't have enough
Speaker 1: exclamation point, probably needed fifteen of the sunglasses smiley face.
Speaker 1: Well and at that point to the like one eye
Speaker 1: closed and the tongue out face did not exist yet,
Speaker 1: you know the face that's like, I'm seriously joking, there's
Speaker 1: no way you could possibly interpret this is something you
Speaker 1: should consider to be a fact. Well, you should have
Speaker 1: just then taken a picture of yourself making the the
Speaker 1: winky tongue out face. I'm sure that would have won
Speaker 1: him over, if only I could go back in time, Caroline. So,
Speaker 1: but if we get back into this gendered speech, one
Speaker 1: other thing that was really fascinating to me, And again
Speaker 1: this goes back to a little more dated research because
Speaker 1: it's focusing on emoticons, but linguists also suspect that women
Speaker 1: might be likelier to use them in the same way
Speaker 1: that we apologize in polite ways to kind of restore
Speaker 1: the balance of the conversation. Linguists Debra Tannon calls it. Yeah, Oh,
Speaker 1: absolutely absolutely. I mean beyond just making sure my boyfriend
Speaker 1: knows that I'm like happy or even just neutral about
Speaker 1: something and just not mad. Um, I will totally do
Speaker 1: the same thing when I'm texting with friends, to be like, no,
Speaker 1: you know, everything's fine. It is totally a qualifier and
Speaker 1: a language softening thing. Yeah, especially if you if something
Speaker 1: has been obviously been misinterpreted tone wise. When you respond
Speaker 1: to that text, there's got to be a number of
Speaker 1: like jokey emojis to to let the person know like no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: did not mean that when I closed tongue out face
Speaker 1: seventeen of them. And the thing is that same body
Speaker 1: of research did find that emoticons, just the basic no
Speaker 1: frills emoticons or very helpful for people detecting the tone
Speaker 1: and context of a text message or an instant message.
Speaker 1: So imagine how more powerful our emojis are. I mean,
Speaker 1: we have hundreds to choose from now, Yeah, and a
Speaker 1: unicorn and a taco exactly, which are so fun And
Speaker 1: I thought it was really fascinating how Another study found
Speaker 1: that emoticons and emojis are especially popular among professional group
Speaker 1: communications to build positive rapport. They lighten the mood in
Speaker 1: that kind of way. Yeah. At my last job, uh,
Speaker 1: when I was working with dude roommate and this other guy,
Speaker 1: they frequently would employ the winky frownie face because, um,
Speaker 1: you know when you end up on those like terribly
Speaker 1: long corporate type of email threads with you know that
Speaker 1: are very like office space style, and you're like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, I'm so sick of these emails. You're leveraging
Speaker 1: assets to tap into the zeitgeist kind of thing. So yeah,
Speaker 1: breaking out of the silo and going deep. Um, dude
Speaker 1: roommate and this other guy would would always send like
Speaker 1: a smaller in group message with the winky frownie to
Speaker 1: be like everything is terrible, Ah, we can't escape it. Ha.
Speaker 1: And it built that rapport between you all, didn't it
Speaker 1: you know or something. It definitely drove us to drink
Speaker 1: at the bar across the street after work. Well and
Speaker 1: speaking of of gender too, one thing that really jumped
Speaker 1: out to me in a piece we read in Horizons magazine,
Speaker 1: and that is Horizons h e Er was how Rights
Speaker 1: Media education officer rose Ella Kabombo argued that putting down
Speaker 1: emoticon and emoji used as some people have. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're and especially with the excessive exclamation points. There's so
Speaker 1: many columns usually written by guys I gotta say insisting
Speaker 1: that we clean up our online speak. She says that
Speaker 1: it's linguistic privilege in action, essentially, like an established group
Speaker 1: trying to police how we lay folks are communicating. No, listen,
Speaker 1: like I you know, literally the other half of my
Speaker 1: job at how Stuff works is being an editor, and
Speaker 1: so I am very strict in that role of making
Speaker 1: sure like no, don't be so frivolous with your punctuation
Speaker 1: use and with exclamation points, and you know, emogis and
Speaker 1: emoticons obviously aren't a factor when you're editing an article.
Speaker 1: But I am absolutely like a keeper of the of
Speaker 1: the language when it comes to that role. But like,
Speaker 1: chill out, like why are you getting upset with people
Speaker 1: on whether it's text speaker, online speaker, whatever, Like why
Speaker 1: are people getting so upset about the use of exclamation
Speaker 1: points and smiley face because it's ruining the English language
Speaker 1: this dern hired glyphs and cert thumbs down emoji. I
Speaker 1: think maybe just the grumpy one, like the mean like
Speaker 1: the devil face. Oh yeah, that's scary. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like a beard. Yeah, gotta goatee, I think, But Caroline,
Speaker 1: my favorite research finding out of all of this came
Speaker 1: from a study called Gender Differences in Text Messaging, and
Speaker 1: it referenced a study which found an age difference in
Speaker 1: emoticon use, with female tweens and teens likelier to use
Speaker 1: them as a way to soften their messages. As we
Speaker 1: talked about, kind of that, you know, the polite i'm
Speaker 1: sorry kind of thing, whereas older women our age did
Speaker 1: not feel as emoticon compelled, but as a way to
Speaker 1: soften their messages. So I thought that that was kind of,
Speaker 1: uh A fascinating. Yeah, that's interesting. I'm definitely I guess
Speaker 1: I fall in line with with the younger kids, but
Speaker 1: they're still Yeah, I mean, I feel like there's something
Speaker 1: a little bit different maybe with what they were looking
Speaker 1: at with emoticons and professional emails, because I feel like
Speaker 1: for women of our narration, we are emoji happy and
Speaker 1: also we love sending each other gifts and fun things
Speaker 1: like that. That I suspect, in my armchair opinion is
Speaker 1: a way too like temper the just constant seven work
Speaker 1: life imbalance that exists today. Yeah, I do. I do.
Speaker 1: I am on like a constant group thread with with
Speaker 1: some former co workers from that job, and we do
Speaker 1: send little checkens via email a couple of times a week,
Speaker 1: and it's just gifts. It's just a conversation and gifts
Speaker 1: like how's your day going. Yeah, I mean, there's a
Speaker 1: relatability factor too, and all about building that rapport that
Speaker 1: I don't think that emoticons, just emoticons would have the
Speaker 1: power to do in the same way that emojis and
Speaker 1: of course gifts do. I'm a firm believer obviously in
Speaker 1: the power of emojis and gifts. Oh god, yeah, oh god.
Speaker 1: I had to go through and clear out so many
Speaker 1: gifts from my phone, my like photo album on my
Speaker 1: phone because I just I do tend to communicate with him.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of head desk gifts, if you know
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. I really enjoyed though. How In
Speaker 1: this gender Differences in text Messaging UH study, they found
Speaker 1: that digital natives not surprisingly just responded that we use
Speaker 1: emoticons and emojis just to save time. Hello, why are
Speaker 1: we going to type all that stuff out? True? Because
Speaker 1: you're you're certainly not going to have a phone conversation.
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, Now, I mean, who does that? Not me?
Speaker 1: I really don't have many phone conversations anymore. I don't either.
Speaker 1: I was actually on the phone with my father last
Speaker 1: night and my boyfriend beep through and he was calling me,
Speaker 1: and I like, I was like, Dad, hang on, hold on,
Speaker 1: some something's gonna be wrong. And I beeped over. He's like, hey,
Speaker 1: how's it going. I'm like, oh my god, it's what's wrong?
Speaker 1: What would you need to stop at the grocery store?
Speaker 1: Something on fire? What's happening? And he's like, yes, just
Speaker 1: calling to see what time you're going to be here, Like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, someone called me. I wish that he
Speaker 1: was calling to let you know that something at the
Speaker 1: grocery store is on fire. Yeah. I probably am the
Speaker 1: person to check on that. You're right. So, I think
Speaker 1: what is so appealing about emoji is the fact that
Speaker 1: there is this almost infinite range of potential meanings out there,
Speaker 1: and that you can develop with your friends or your
Speaker 1: significant other, even your parents kind of a secret language. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This was something that New York Times tech writer and
Speaker 1: all around rad lady Jenna Wortham has written about many times. Um,
Speaker 1: but we read an essay of hers in Woman's Scene
Speaker 1: where she describes her particular love of the Temporea shrimp emoji,
Speaker 1: which I don't think i'd ever use that emoji before.
Speaker 1: I never even really thought about it. But she loves
Speaker 1: it because she has a few different and very specific
Speaker 1: uses for it, Like she says, for some reason, it
Speaker 1: reminds her of Mariah Carey, so she will use it
Speaker 1: in those contexts. And also if she feels like someone's
Speaker 1: being kind of rispy, she'll she'll send the Tempora shrimp
Speaker 1: as well. I think the only time I've used the
Speaker 1: temper A shrimp is when I'm texting someone how hungry
Speaker 1: I am. And then I go through and I find
Speaker 1: like every food item and do them each seventeen times,
Speaker 1: and so you get like an essay length thing of
Speaker 1: food related emojis from me. And yet you told me
Speaker 1: earlier with the semicolon's you don't send essay text. How
Speaker 1: the tune has changed again? I guess I was being
Speaker 1: too literal, or maybe it's just again the power of emoji.
Speaker 1: I mean, how can you stop at just one Tempora shramp? Yeah,
Speaker 1: look at how hungry I am. Here are seven timpoor shrimps. Well,
Speaker 1: and you know what, once that avocado emoji comes, Oh
Speaker 1: my god, I'm so excited came over. Well, you've got
Speaker 1: to get the you need to update before then, Caroline.
Speaker 1: I mean, I I have an old phone, though I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe someone wants to write in and tell
Speaker 1: me what to do. I'm just imagine you carry around
Speaker 1: like a rotary telephone. Now I do full circle, I do.
Speaker 1: I just have the Zack Morris cell phone, the brick
Speaker 1: that I hold up to my head. But I want
Speaker 1: to though, Caroline, I want to get your your thoughts
Speaker 1: on this. Even when our emoji keyboards do include more
Speaker 1: active empowered girl emojis, I mean, what will be our
Speaker 1: use for them? I mean, do you think that it
Speaker 1: will change in any way how girls see themselves, or
Speaker 1: how women communicate to each other, or how we represent
Speaker 1: ourselves in text speak at all, because I'll probably still
Speaker 1: use my hair flip emoji all the time. You're helpful
Speaker 1: woman at the service desk emogi. Yes, yes, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean I think that that's total correlation causation question
Speaker 1: because I think that, um, it's a lot more in
Speaker 1: in how girls see themselves, and so you know, if
Speaker 1: they do want to represent themselves to their friends in
Speaker 1: emoji text speak as like a powerful lady. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe they will then at some point have that firefighter
Speaker 1: woman to represent themselves. Um, whereas right now they don't
Speaker 1: have as many options. Well, I mean, even just for
Speaker 1: the sports and active emojis, I could see you know,
Speaker 1: girls in middle school and high school who are playing
Speaker 1: sports who wouldn't mind using an emogi that reflects like
Speaker 1: their interests and their athletics too. Yeah, it is weird
Speaker 1: to sort of be left out of that. Well, and
Speaker 1: it reinforces the guy as the default, as the standard. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and that goes back to so many sminthy conversations we've had.
Speaker 1: We've talked about the importance of having a diverse set
Speaker 1: of people in whatever type of company it is, in
Speaker 1: whatever industry it is, um helping brainstorm and make decisions,
Speaker 1: because if you just have dudes, then they're going to
Speaker 1: be the most represented. Yeah, I mean, and that's why
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier that Unicode and I went and counted
Speaker 1: on their website Unicode is mostly guys. So um, Now,
Speaker 1: someone did have a theory that they might not have
Speaker 1: included more women. Occupation emojis because they didn't want to
Speaker 1: reflect gender stereotypes in that having like teachers and nurses.
Speaker 1: So it's like they almost overcorrected. Possibly. Well okay, so
Speaker 1: how about and then of course you would get into
Speaker 1: questions of again who's the default male or female? Um?
Speaker 1: But you know how you can click on something and
Speaker 1: choose the skin tone for some of them, for some
Speaker 1: of them, maybe you should be able to click on
Speaker 1: them and choose if you want a male dancwer a
Speaker 1: female dancer. Right, And that's I think what it will
Speaker 1: ultimately be. And I mean and worth noting speaking of diversity,
Speaker 1: the issue before that is that we had white as
Speaker 1: the standard. Yea more for me, just yellow, just like
Speaker 1: the Simpsons. I mean again, could that just go back
Speaker 1: to representation in terms of who's creating this stuff? Possibly?
Speaker 1: I mean it might again be just an oversight, you know,
Speaker 1: of people not even really thinking about the need for it. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean really they thought of tacos. So and it's
Speaker 1: because we asked for tacos, Caroline asking you shall receive
Speaker 1: you just like you gotta ask for that raise, you
Speaker 1: gotta ask for your taco emoji. That's right. The important things, Yes,
Speaker 1: and in this podcast has all been a metaphor on
Speaker 1: negotiation at work. Surprise damn. But before we wrap up,
Speaker 1: I do want to give a shout out to stuff
Speaker 1: Mo've never told you, Bessie of the show over at
Speaker 1: Maker's Amana McCall, who came up with feminist emojis of
Speaker 1: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Gloria's sign um Shonda rhyme Jamison. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: oh my god, the Gloria. The Gloria emogi. That's the
Speaker 1: one that I want in my library so that I
Speaker 1: can use that every day. There you go every day. Well, now, listeners,
Speaker 1: we want to know your thoughts on emojis, and if
Speaker 1: you want to just like tweet us your messages in emojis,
Speaker 1: you can do that at Mom's podcast or if you
Speaker 1: want to send us an old school with old school emoticons,
Speaker 1: Mom's subbit house stuffwork dot com is where you can
Speaker 1: do that. And we've got a couple of messages to
Speaker 1: share with you right now. Okay, we have a couple
Speaker 1: of let us here in response to our interview with
Speaker 1: boss stup founder Emily Aries. So this one's from Scharard Uh.
Speaker 1: He says, I just listen to the Bosstep episode, which
Speaker 1: I thoroughly enjoyed. Love your work. I'm so sorry you're busy, Kristen.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you and Caroline take the time to laugh
Speaker 1: and joke around on air. It's infectious and a great
Speaker 1: way to start my day. He goes on to say,
Speaker 1: one thing that really resonated with me was the concept
Speaker 1: of using the dollar as a method of political assertion.
Speaker 1: I moved from the South to New England because I
Speaker 1: did not want to support a state government that did
Speaker 1: not have my quote unquote homosexual agenda at heart. The
Speaker 1: winters are cold, but the equality of soul warming. I
Speaker 1: have since gone back to school for a doctorate degree,
Speaker 1: where the issues both you and Emily Aries point out
Speaker 1: a rampant There are no dividing lines between my class, says,
Speaker 1: the classes I teach, and anything resembling a home life.
Speaker 1: All nighters are day rigor, and the semester sprint melts
Speaker 1: into a thesis that feels like it goes on forever.
Speaker 1: It is just as bad for my boyfriend, who is
Speaker 1: a graduate student in the sciences, where he is at
Speaker 1: the whim of the head of his lab. Principal investigators
Speaker 1: that seems are not often trained to be teachers, making
Speaker 1: it difficult for him to find a good mentor in
Speaker 1: the field. My burnout didn't really come to a head
Speaker 1: until I realized that both breakfast and lunch consisted of
Speaker 1: a cup of coffee, and by dinner, I was positively
Speaker 1: miserable and making a lot of simple mistakes. It wasn't
Speaker 1: until my boyfriend pointed out, hey, coffee is not food
Speaker 1: that I started to look at the way I was
Speaker 1: treating myself. Every day now is an active fight to
Speaker 1: treat my body with the respect it deserves in spite
Speaker 1: of a never shrinking to do list. One more thing,
Speaker 1: I would be remiss if I did not point out
Speaker 1: that busy ness and business were once the same word,
Speaker 1: not a coincidence. Ever since I realized the connection between
Speaker 1: the two, I've pictured people in the business college across
Speaker 1: campus speed walking around was decks of paper doing busyness work,
Speaker 1: which is probably unfair but in some cases not inaccurate. Again,
Speaker 1: love what you do, keep blazing trails. We listen from
Speaker 1: the library and from the lab respectively, and sometimes now
Speaker 1: while making this new thing called breakfast together. I love it.
Speaker 1: Congratulations on breakfast, and thank you. I've got to let
Speaker 1: her hear from Lauren, and she writes, I just wanted
Speaker 1: to thank you for the boss step episode. Yesterday, I
Speaker 1: had two separate conversations about the need to create boundaries
Speaker 1: between work self and personal self so that I can
Speaker 1: perform better in both places. As a social work grad student,
Speaker 1: we talk a lot in class about the importance of
Speaker 1: self care and preventing burnout, but it's not something I've
Speaker 1: seen my fellow students or myself adopt. I've always been
Speaker 1: the one to gain a lot of my self worth
Speaker 1: from my work, which leads me to overworking, pulling the
Speaker 1: I'm so busy card, neglecting personal relationships, and not doing
Speaker 1: things I want to do, always being on the verge
Speaker 1: of burnout. Oh, Lauren, I can so relate. I'm about
Speaker 1: to graduate and start a new full time job, and
Speaker 1: I really want to be intentional about taking care of
Speaker 1: my self and being assertive so that I can be
Speaker 1: a better employee but also a better friend and girlfriend. Anyway,
Speaker 1: third Times a charm in this episode reinforced my desire
Speaker 1: to make changes to better advocate for myself and all
Speaker 1: of my relationships. To start, I finally use my grown
Speaker 1: up coloring book of friends sent me months ago in
Speaker 1: color to picture while listening to the episode. So thank
Speaker 1: you so much Lauren for that letter. And you've got
Speaker 1: to tune into our podcast on coloring books as well,
Speaker 1: and with that listeners, we also want to hear from you,
Speaker 1: mom stuff at house. Stuff works dot Com is our
Speaker 1: email address and for links all of our social media
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