Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff Mom Never told you. From House top
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Caroline and I'm Kristen, and uh today we're talking about
Speaker 1: a favorite topic of mine and I was preparing for
Speaker 1: the topic of chocolate last night, Kristen by shoving chocolate
Speaker 1: Easter eggs one after another into my face because every
Speaker 1: year my mother, I'm thirty, my mother makes Easter baskets.
Speaker 1: She may one for Kristen as well, don't worry, but
Speaker 1: I I feel like I was doing some really good,
Speaker 1: hard hitting chocolate research. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's important
Speaker 1: to get a little meadow with things and fuel your
Speaker 1: chocolate research with chocolate. I myself have also been enjoying
Speaker 1: the chocolate Easter eggs your mother so generously gave to
Speaker 1: me in my own Easter basket. I don't know the
Speaker 1: last time my mom gave me an Easter basket. So
Speaker 1: if I tell her that another person's mom gave me
Speaker 1: an Easter basket, it might cause a little friction, Yeah,
Speaker 1: a little mom friction. So I don't know if I'll
Speaker 1: if I'll film my mom in on that. But I'm
Speaker 1: a little surprised that it's taken us this long to
Speaker 1: get around to women in chocolate, because is there a
Speaker 1: more stereotypically women woman good than chocolate? Yeah, other than shoes,
Speaker 1: I don't think so. Yeah. I mean it's like shoes,
Speaker 1: Kathy comics, chocolate. There we go, and the last two
Speaker 1: are basically one and the same exactly. So we got
Speaker 1: to talk about women in chocolate because the question I
Speaker 1: wanted to know was what's up with the stereotype that
Speaker 1: women are just these chocolate craving monsters who, according to commercials,
Speaker 1: also really want to have sex with chocolate. Interesting? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that I don't think that's been quite proven yet that
Speaker 1: we do want to have sex with chocolate, or that
Speaker 1: we would rather have chocolate van sex. Interesting. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: would like to kick this off though, with a quote
Speaker 1: from Kathleen Banks Nutter, who wrote an essay on sort
Speaker 1: of the history of women in chocolate in the book
Speaker 1: Edible Ideologies Representing Food and Meaning. She wrote, what food
Speaker 1: is more easily gendered and eroticized than chocolate. So, ladies
Speaker 1: and gentlemen, you're in for quite a treat with this podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I um, you know, the based on the amount of
Speaker 1: chocolate that I crave. You know, if you were. If
Speaker 1: you were to tell me in this podcast, Kristen, that's
Speaker 1: something in women's body is whether it's their brain or
Speaker 1: their uterus, is programming them to eat more chocolate. I'd
Speaker 1: be kind of prone to believe you, because I feel
Speaker 1: like I don't know too many dudes who are like
Speaker 1: super into chocolate who have to have chocolate on hand. Um.
Speaker 1: But I don't think that's we're going to tell you
Speaker 1: know because also Caroline, I'm going to go ahead and
Speaker 1: put it out there. I'm more of a salty tooth
Speaker 1: than a sweet tooth. If you were to offer me
Speaker 1: a bag of potato chips and a bag of chocolate chips,
Speaker 1: I would take the potato the potato product. See, I
Speaker 1: have a weird, a weird thing that I would love
Speaker 1: to get rid of, which is that after every meal
Speaker 1: that you know, typically include something savory, I have to
Speaker 1: have something chocolate to finish it off. Either that I've
Speaker 1: got to like shove a bunch of gum into my
Speaker 1: face so that I don't go after whatever's chocolate around me.
Speaker 1: I've been known to like go through the office just
Speaker 1: like lifting up people's bags, like do you have any
Speaker 1: I need? So well, this podcast, this is kind of
Speaker 1: especially for you, Caroline. It's yeah, it's sounding that way.
Speaker 1: So let's go over just a few chocolate statistics to
Speaker 1: get an idea of what we're dealing with, because the
Speaker 1: thing is, when it comes to women in chocolate and
Speaker 1: our desires for it, it seems like a lot of
Speaker 1: it is perhaps cultural, because it's a lot more popular,
Speaker 1: for instance, in Europe than it is in Asia. So
Speaker 1: if we look just in the UK, of women say
Speaker 1: that they eat it regularly. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: seven percent of British men say that they fancy chocolate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they're over there shoving cadberry stuff into their face.
Speaker 1: But it's not it's not a massive gender gap. Now
Speaker 1: maybe maybe women. Could it be that women are just
Speaker 1: made out to be crazy for chocolate more so than men,
Speaker 1: we'll find out, Caroline. Um. But over in Germany they're
Speaker 1: the ones eating the most chocolate, And can I blame
Speaker 1: them when they have things like kinder eggs? Kind Sally,
Speaker 1: you know, speaking of my mother. Sally is a flight attendant.
Speaker 1: She flies to Germany. She smuggles back kinder eggs for
Speaker 1: me and has ever since I was little kids, So
Speaker 1: I have all those little toys that you put together
Speaker 1: that are a severe choking hazard. Basically, your mom gives
Speaker 1: you the best candies, Caroline, my mom is the Easter Bunny. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But moving away from Eastern looking, just at Valentine's Day,
Speaker 1: Americans purchased more than sixty million pounds of chocolate for
Speaker 1: February fourteenth alone, and more than sevent of that chocolate
Speaker 1: will be given by men to women. So with that,
Speaker 1: you're starting to see what we'll talk about a lot
Speaker 1: more in terms of this gendered economy of chocolate buying
Speaker 1: and bestowing. And as far as cravings go, like the
Speaker 1: cravings I have on like a ten minute by ten
Speaker 1: minute basis throughout the day, women tend to report craving
Speaker 1: chocolate more than men do. But again this is mainly
Speaker 1: focused on Western women. All those studies like the one
Speaker 1: that Kristen sided earlier about showing that there was such
Speaker 1: a small gender gap between men and women in the
Speaker 1: UK eating chocolate, most surveys do show that there is
Speaker 1: a negligible gender difference, but there is a difference in
Speaker 1: the guilt we feel. Women report more post chocolate guilt
Speaker 1: after eating it compared to men, which I also kind
Speaker 1: of would own up to like, after I shove a
Speaker 1: bunch of well, okay, maybe way after I shove a
Speaker 1: bunch of chocolate, Once the glow has faded, after I've
Speaker 1: shoved a whole bunch of sugary chocolate in my face,
Speaker 1: then I'm like, maybe I shouldn't have done that. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's just you coming down from a sugar high. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I start like twitching and itching. Oh no. But
Speaker 1: speaking of those chocolate cravings, just one more aside on that.
Speaker 1: Looking at the Western women's chocolate cravings, you'll see a
Speaker 1: lot of reports that chocolate is the most widely craved food.
Speaker 1: But again, if you that's probably focused on Westerners, because
Speaker 1: if you look at a place like Egypt, for instance,
Speaker 1: there was a study finding that women and men both
Speaker 1: preferred savory and had more savory cravings because it was
Speaker 1: more related to their local cuisine, right, And and kind
Speaker 1: of along those same lines, I mean, I would argue
Speaker 1: you know that that, I mean that makes sense that, uh,
Speaker 1: based on what you typically eat, you're going to crave
Speaker 1: certain things. And you know, I've noticed the more I
Speaker 1: eat chocolate, the more I crave it, and the less
Speaker 1: I eat chocolate, the less I crave it. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the more I eat potatoes, the more potato chips just raw, Chris,
Speaker 1: It's so weird. She has this whole drawer full of
Speaker 1: potatoes and she's rip one out like an apple and
Speaker 1: bite into it. My podcasting secret car bloating, constant car bloating. Um.
Speaker 1: But before we get into where this women and chocolate
Speaker 1: connection really comes from, let's go back in time and
Speaker 1: see where chocolate comes from. Because within the history of chocolate,
Speaker 1: we start to see how it becomes more gendered as
Speaker 1: it moves from its origin in Mesoamerica to Europe. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they actually found they I mean, you know, the people
Speaker 1: who look for these things, chocolate pirates. Chocolate pirates actually
Speaker 1: found cacao residue in pottery in Honduras that dates back
Speaker 1: as far as fourteen hundred BC. And just side note, um,
Speaker 1: in case you're wondering throughout this podcast, anytime we say kacao,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to think of the Portlandia sketch where
Speaker 1: cacao is the safe word. But anyway, so, yeah, it
Speaker 1: dates back a long time in Mesoamerica and the Mayans
Speaker 1: were drinking it by three a d. And when the Aztecs,
Speaker 1: you know, like they did conquered the Mayans, they started
Speaker 1: taking up the drinking of chocolate as well, and not
Speaker 1: only did they drink it, as tech, supposedly ate it
Speaker 1: off each other's bodies during sex. They considered The word
Speaker 1: for chocolate in their language is something along the lines
Speaker 1: of like choco lattle. It's there's a lot of consonants
Speaker 1: next to each other, but that basically translates to a
Speaker 1: holy fetish. That's how much they liked it. That's so
Speaker 1: cosmo of them. Yeah, I can just I'm picturing like
Speaker 1: an ancient as tech cosmopolitan. Hey, as tech ladies, you
Speaker 1: wanna you wanna get your man going, get some chocol
Speaker 1: you want to avoid getting sacrificed this month, it's so
Speaker 1: chocolate during sex. So then in fifteen nineteen we have
Speaker 1: Spanish explorer Hernando Cortez being exposed to this magical sexy
Speaker 1: chocolate for the first time in the court of Montezuma
Speaker 1: the second and then by five we have chocolate being
Speaker 1: shipped to Europe along with these ideas of its connections
Speaker 1: to sex, and very quickly from that it's connection to women.
Speaker 1: By the sixteenth century, you have chocolate in Europe being
Speaker 1: conceptualized as an aphrodisiac. Right, and one Spanish physician, Antonio
Speaker 1: Culminero de Laedisma, I'm sure I said that wrong, wrote
Speaker 1: in the seventeenth century that chocolate vehemently incites to venus
Speaker 1: and causes conception in women, hastens and facilitates their delivery.
Speaker 1: And I just have to that I I say, oh,
Speaker 1: is that how babies are? Right? Yeah, if chocolate cause
Speaker 1: of conception in women, thank god, I'm on birth control. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, in Europe, it's it's interesting to see that, Um,
Speaker 1: they took this, this this treat or this beverage or
Speaker 1: this sexy time making item and they ended up sweetening
Speaker 1: it to make it taste better. Because back when there
Speaker 1: were all these Spanish explorers in Mesoamerica hanging out with
Speaker 1: the Aztecs, one of them described it as a bitter
Speaker 1: drink for pigs. But then when it's transported over to
Speaker 1: Europe and it's sweetened, that's when it starts to become
Speaker 1: kind of a luxury item. Yeah, it's important to remember
Speaker 1: that chocolate way way back in the day is not
Speaker 1: like the chocolate Easter eggs that you might be eating.
Speaker 1: It's super sweet and smooth. It was a pretty intense
Speaker 1: food that was often Yeah, I was often drunk. And
Speaker 1: Casanova also side notes, supposedly ate it to aid his virility.
Speaker 1: It was like yield viagra. Or maybe he just kept
Speaker 1: it on hand for all this chocolate loving ladies that
Speaker 1: stopped by. Yeah, he just had like a witness sampler
Speaker 1: that he could slide. Maybe that was his secret. And
Speaker 1: so when it comes though to the gendering of chocolate,
Speaker 1: this happens pretty soon after it's imported to Europe. According
Speaker 1: to more Rosen Bloom, for instance, who wrote a book
Speaker 1: all about the history of chocolate. He says that once
Speaker 1: chocolate arrived in Spain pretty quickly you have men drinking
Speaker 1: coffee and stronger stuff and women drinking the chocolate. And
Speaker 1: this was something too that reminded me of our research
Speaker 1: for our episode on gender and coffee. Was how with
Speaker 1: the old coffee houses in England it was mostly men
Speaker 1: and the women were at home drinking chocolate, right or
Speaker 1: how even now if you walk into a Starbucks, you know,
Speaker 1: hearing from all of our listeners who work at coffee
Speaker 1: shops saying that, oh, the men walk in and they
Speaker 1: order espresso or black coffee and the women are ordering mochas.
Speaker 1: Exactly interesting. Well, not only was it a gender drink,
Speaker 1: but it was also sort of an elitist thing too.
Speaker 1: When it made its way to Europe from the New World,
Speaker 1: it was pretty much solely reserved for the nobility of Spain, Italy,
Speaker 1: and France. It basically became a luxury where dainty ladies
Speaker 1: enjoyed it, and they transformed the enjoyment of chocolate into
Speaker 1: a highly refined social event. And this is coming from
Speaker 1: Jamal Fahim's thesis Beyond Craving, and he points out that
Speaker 1: this is sort of the beginning of chocolate as a
Speaker 1: fetish that communicates social status and upper class femininity, and
Speaker 1: that upper class femininity is going to continue to broaden
Speaker 1: its reach within the growing chocolate industry. As you see
Speaker 1: in the eighteen hundreds, how chocolate is transformed from this
Speaker 1: grittier drink into the type of chocolate that we think
Speaker 1: of today. That's a smooth bar that's really sweet. It's
Speaker 1: a very tantalizing for our senses. And this happens through
Speaker 1: a number of innovations, starting in eighty eight with a
Speaker 1: Dutch entrepreneur named Conrad Johannes van Houghton who figures out
Speaker 1: how to press those cocao safe word cacao beans to
Speaker 1: separate the dry cocoa from cocoa butter that makes chocolate
Speaker 1: less bitter and smooth. And by eighteen fifty we have
Speaker 1: englishmen Joseph Fry mixing sugar with cocoa butter and making
Speaker 1: the first solid chocolate bar. So he's like Joseph Frys,
Speaker 1: like the patron saint of of all that is good
Speaker 1: and happy in this world. For me, I guess I
Speaker 1: should wear like a necklace with his picture on it.
Speaker 1: Um More developments come in eighteen seventy nine when Rodolf
Speaker 1: Lint of you know Lint Chocolate, invented conking, a process
Speaker 1: that also smoothed chocolate, and he actually used a machine
Speaker 1: that looks like a conk shell, hence Cleverland. Uh So,
Speaker 1: because of all these innovations, by the early nineteen hundreds
Speaker 1: you have guys like Henry Nestley or would that be
Speaker 1: Onree Nestle, Milton Hershey and others who are in the
Speaker 1: chocolate game. And so all of a sudden you have
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the twentieth century this growing chocolate business.
Speaker 1: And what's interesting too, as we were talking about the
Speaker 1: gender of it, if you look at the manufacturing of chocolate,
Speaker 1: all those chocolate bars that were eating a lot of times,
Speaker 1: especially in the earlier twentieth century, it becomes gradually feminized
Speaker 1: as well. You have more and more women working in
Speaker 1: these factories. So not only are women becoming the target
Speaker 1: consumers of chocolate, they're also often the ones on the
Speaker 1: factory floors making the chocolates. So every day it was
Speaker 1: like Lucy and Ethel, you're working the chocolate. Okay, great,
Speaker 1: I'll just keep that image in my head as well
Speaker 1: as the Portland a sketch, so my brain is is
Speaker 1: at capacity. There is a darker side, of course, um
Speaker 1: to chocolate making, and this is something that still goes
Speaker 1: on today in some parts of the world where they
Speaker 1: grow cow trees and make chocolate, and that is the
Speaker 1: fact that there are child labor issues that that we
Speaker 1: rugle with as well as environmental issues like rainforest being stripped,
Speaker 1: the soil being stripped of nutrients by planting these trees
Speaker 1: over and over again. So that has actually driven some
Speaker 1: companies to you know, get into the fair trade thing,
Speaker 1: make sure that they're having positive sources for their beings basically. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and those those sourcing issues are as relevant to
Speaker 1: chocolate as they are to our conversation on coffee. But
Speaker 1: we're not going to focus so much on the manufacturing
Speaker 1: side of it, but rather the advertising of chocolate, because
Speaker 1: you can actually trace women's history in the twentieth century
Speaker 1: in the United States through chocolate ads. Essentially, just by
Speaker 1: the way that chocolate is framed really shows women's level
Speaker 1: of social mobility and their relationship to men. It's fascinating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fascinating because this is coming. You know, this starts
Speaker 1: after the Industrial Revolution, when you've got guys like Milton
Speaker 1: Hershey making a cheaper, more available chocolate bar. I guess
Speaker 1: he's like the Henry Ford of candy, uh, making it
Speaker 1: more available to people. And so once it is more
Speaker 1: readily available, you have to sell it. You have to
Speaker 1: make people aware that it is not something for just
Speaker 1: uppercrust elite ladies, that it's for everyone. Yeah, and we
Speaker 1: already have these longstanding connotations of chocolate with sex and
Speaker 1: romance and luxury, and so what better thing to sell
Speaker 1: to dainty ladies. But in the Victorian era, depictions of
Speaker 1: women gorging on chocolate in the same way that we
Speaker 1: think of today of like, you know, just chocolate crazed
Speaker 1: women that would not have been kosher. That would have
Speaker 1: totally violated the female norms of the time, because this
Speaker 1: was at the time too when women would not have
Speaker 1: been you would not want to be seen, like eating
Speaker 1: a lot of food like all you can eat buffets
Speaker 1: not okay for the Torrian women to indulge in. So
Speaker 1: they were supposed to eat more like ladies. So a
Speaker 1: lot of times if you see Victorian ads for chocolate,
Speaker 1: the women aren't necessarily eating the chocolate in the ads,
Speaker 1: but maybe holding it close to their mouths just sort
Speaker 1: of tantalizing. If you want to find a good way
Speaker 1: to get me to gorge on chocolate, it's to make
Speaker 1: me hold it away from my face for too long
Speaker 1: before I eat it, and then it's just like cookie monster,
Speaker 1: it's just over. But yeah, you couldn't with these, with
Speaker 1: these proper Victorian ladies, you couldn't show them over indulging.
Speaker 1: You couldn't have them exhibiting any type of desire because again,
Speaker 1: chocolate being kind of an aphrodisiac, considered to be an
Speaker 1: aphrodisiac tied in with wooing people and whatnot. If a
Speaker 1: woman is shown to not only gorge on it, but
Speaker 1: really want it and desire it, then it's getting hot
Speaker 1: up in those Victorian homes. Yeah. But when you move
Speaker 1: into the progressive air, out of the Victorian era, into
Speaker 1: the progressive air, you have the rise of the new woman.
Speaker 1: You have the suffrage movement taking place. You have women
Speaker 1: having a little bit more social mobility. They might be
Speaker 1: driving cars every now and then. Yeah, and and the
Speaker 1: whole rituals of dating outside the home are starting to
Speaker 1: take shape. And so chocolate advertisers are thinking, Okay, how
Speaker 1: are we going to advertise to this new woman. How
Speaker 1: are we going to frame chocolate as something that she
Speaker 1: needs in her life? Oh, dating, gentleman callers, what better
Speaker 1: gift for this new woman than a box o chockole lots? Right.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like when we talked about diamonds. How
Speaker 1: diamond advertising put it in men's heads that you're not
Speaker 1: a good husband, fiance, boyfriend, et cetera. If you don't
Speaker 1: present a diamond, and then that leads the woman to
Speaker 1: expect it and think, oh, well, you're not a good
Speaker 1: fiance if you didn't give me a diamond. It's kind
Speaker 1: of the same thing in in this you know, smaller scale,
Speaker 1: less expensive, but it's kind of the same thing with chocolate.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, well, he must not really like me. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And it's because they're hurting female consumers but ultimately courting
Speaker 1: men to buy the chocolate, saying it what better gift
Speaker 1: for gal than a box of Chocolate's Johnny, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: there is um yes. And they were addressing Johnny in
Speaker 1: a whitman's ad that gave me pause when I read
Speaker 1: the copy for it, because it sounds so opposite of
Speaker 1: the whole idea of of keeping chocolate in the Victorian
Speaker 1: area era away from sounding to um sensual. So in
Speaker 1: this ad they said, a visit to Pleasure Island is
Speaker 1: best when made by a man and a maid, and
Speaker 1: together they enjoy the plunder from this wonderful chest of chocolates.
Speaker 1: Now tell me that's not one big euphemism, right, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: chocolate as are all euphemism. I mean, even in the
Speaker 1: Victorian era. As you get creep closer and closer to
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, you see how chocolate is still it's
Speaker 1: still sort of symbolizing the physical concer omption that may
Speaker 1: ensue after you know, proper marriage and whatnot. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't believe they were giving chocolate to women when
Speaker 1: they were just dating. Well, in the nineteen twenties, you
Speaker 1: even have companies like Romance Chocolates just going ahead and
Speaker 1: putting it friends center, Like, hey, Romance Chocolates, what else
Speaker 1: are you going to get for a for a date
Speaker 1: than these? Right? But so in the nineteen twenties, as
Speaker 1: you know, women are wearing shorter clothes, tighter clothes. They've
Speaker 1: they've shed the bustle and the corset. Lucky Strike begins
Speaker 1: advising women to reach for a cigarette instead of chocolate
Speaker 1: to keep that figure slim to fit into all of
Speaker 1: your new garments. Yeah. This is around the time too
Speaker 1: when you start seeing alongside the suffrage movement you also
Speaker 1: see the first big wave of a dieting push for women.
Speaker 1: And to me this was really significant because I feel
Speaker 1: like today, even with all this over chocolate advertising, there's
Speaker 1: always still that underpinning of guilt, and we're never like advertisers,
Speaker 1: never let us forget that we have female figures that
Speaker 1: you know, we're supposed to keep in shape, and so
Speaker 1: in the late when this lucky strike ad comes out,
Speaker 1: you have women having the right to vote, more freedom
Speaker 1: theoretically than ever before. But also too, this is a
Speaker 1: time when you're also seeing the first kind of dieting
Speaker 1: push for women as well. There's always this balance between like, ladies,
Speaker 1: go ahead and indulge but not too much, feel bad
Speaker 1: about yourselves, but enjoy yourself, but then feel bad about yourself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a terrible yo yo effect. And I mean it
Speaker 1: is interesting to think about how like every time women
Speaker 1: are on the verge of getting more power in society
Speaker 1: and they're outside of the home, all of a sudden
Speaker 1: people are like, yeah, but you should probably be thinner
Speaker 1: and and remember not to eat too much. Well, that's
Speaker 1: the thing I think. Naomi Wolf points this out in
Speaker 1: The Beauty Myth, which now is such an old text
Speaker 1: but still Uh. The point I think is uh sort
Speaker 1: of time immemorial, because she talked about how any time,
Speaker 1: like you said, women are experiencing the most liberation, you
Speaker 1: have the most sort of reactionary um messages regarding our
Speaker 1: bodies of like of dieting, of exercise. So moving from
Speaker 1: the twenties Zoe into World War Two, chocolate becomes advertised
Speaker 1: as almost a sexual surrogate for absent soldiers, which I
Speaker 1: found so fascinating. There was a Whitman ad, for instance,
Speaker 1: depicting a woman wistfully staring at a soldier's photo while
Speaker 1: holding a chocolate. So it's basically like, ladies, you know,
Speaker 1: old Johnny, Old Johnny's off fighting the Nazis, So while
Speaker 1: you're home, stay faithful and eat some chocolate to tie
Speaker 1: you over. Yeah. Yeah, the joy you get from chocolate
Speaker 1: is almost like having sex with a loved one, which
Speaker 1: is still the same kind of advertising we see today
Speaker 1: of like lone woman, always with a background of billowing silk,
Speaker 1: like I don't need anything but this chocolate. Yeah, my
Speaker 1: hair would just be all over the place. But moving
Speaker 1: into the nineteen sixties and seventies, you know, Chris and
Speaker 1: I were just talking about um, that whole control, that
Speaker 1: body control of like okay, well, more women are in
Speaker 1: positions of power, they're they're taking power for themselves. We
Speaker 1: have the second wave feminist movement, but we also, alongside
Speaker 1: that at the same time have this whole concern about
Speaker 1: health and fitness and how do we advertise sweet treats
Speaker 1: to health conscious feminists of this era. Yeah, so this
Speaker 1: is when you start to see the entrance of and
Speaker 1: I hope this is not offensive to anyone's ear, but
Speaker 1: let's face it, their master a tory chocolate ads. Basically, instead,
Speaker 1: you could replace a chocolate bond bond with a vibrator
Speaker 1: in a woman's hands and a lot of these ads
Speaker 1: and it would be the exact same thing. You wouldn't
Speaker 1: even have to changed the copy. And you also see
Speaker 1: the reentry to of chocolate being seen as this aphrodisiac.
Speaker 1: For instance, this I gotta kick out of this. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five, High Times, the weed culture magazine that
Speaker 1: we mentioned in our Women in Weed episode, I had
Speaker 1: a cover story on chocolate as an aphrodisiac because you
Speaker 1: have the flow chart of smoking pot plus munchies equals chocolate,
Speaker 1: which then may or may not lead to groovy sex, intimacy,
Speaker 1: true intimacy. And so here's the return of chocolate being
Speaker 1: considered an aphrodisiac. But in the nineteen eighties you also
Speaker 1: have the return of it being considered a status symbols
Speaker 1: going all the way back to sixteenth century Spain, when
Speaker 1: it was considered only for the elite. So in the
Speaker 1: era of Gordon Gecko and Greta's Good, you don't just
Speaker 1: want to get your special girl a drug store brand.
Speaker 1: You don't just want to go and get Whitman's. You
Speaker 1: have to get some like crazy boxed chocolate that's a
Speaker 1: million dollars to show that you can afford it and
Speaker 1: that she's worth it. Yeah, in the nineteen eighties you
Speaker 1: see a sixty percent rise in dark chocolate sales. This
Speaker 1: is when you start, you know, hearing more about like, oh,
Speaker 1: dark chocolate, that's the good stuff. And this is too,
Speaker 1: a trend that seems to have continued today as you
Speaker 1: see more and more not only specialty brands of chocolate,
Speaker 1: but just the hyper specialization of dark chocolate. Two, as
Speaker 1: we're being told like, okay, yeah, no, it's actually good
Speaker 1: for you. So it's a little more okay to eat
Speaker 1: dark chocolate. But then you go to Whole Foods and
Speaker 1: you find these organic chocolate bars and it's like chocolate
Speaker 1: and bacon, or chocolate and Serrano chilis or something, all
Speaker 1: these kinds of exotic flavor combos, and they are crazy expensive. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I I almost hate to admit this because it makes
Speaker 1: me sound like a really big idiot. But when I
Speaker 1: was Christmas shopping back in December. Uh, I was going
Speaker 1: through this store and I was getting my niece and
Speaker 1: nephew mostly candy for their stocking. It was neat candy.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was like kind of fancy, because you know,
Speaker 1: they don't like anything that I get them, so I'm
Speaker 1: just like, I'll just get them candy. Ha ha. My
Speaker 1: brother will have to deal with it. Well. So anyway,
Speaker 1: I grabbed this like three pack of chocolate bars because
Speaker 1: I'm like, how I didn't even I literally didn't even
Speaker 1: have the thought of how expensive could chocolate be? Because
Speaker 1: why would I? Chocolate is not that expensive? Right? Thirty dollars?
Speaker 1: Thirty dollars. I know, I'm the biggest idiot. Why did
Speaker 1: I not check that ahead of time? But I didn't
Speaker 1: even think too. It's because it was from like this.
Speaker 1: It was all dark chocolate, different types of it, and
Speaker 1: it was from like this teeny tiny, like artisan chocolate
Speaker 1: place in San Francisco. And I just the regret. I
Speaker 1: don't think I've ever felt deeper regret for anything in
Speaker 1: my life. And then did you sad eat the chocolate?
Speaker 1: I couldn't. I gave it to my boyfriend. I was like,
Speaker 1: I can't even like look at this. You just take it,
Speaker 1: consider it part of your Christmas present. Talk about chocolate
Speaker 1: guilt seriously, but no, I mean I think that the
Speaker 1: dark chocolate thing does kind of point to or highlight
Speaker 1: interesting aspects of the whole chocolate guilt conversation, because like,
Speaker 1: we're supposed to feel guilty, or we do feel guilty
Speaker 1: after we eat too many sweets, but then dark chocolate,
Speaker 1: like celebrities and magazines are preaching to us that like,
Speaker 1: if you eat dark chocolate, it has antioxidants and so
Speaker 1: you will never get cancer. But you're only allowed to
Speaker 1: have a square a day, maybe a square every other day. Well,
Speaker 1: and then how many celebrity interviews with you know, beautiful,
Speaker 1: very thin, fit women who say, oh, my weakness is chocolate.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's always all these conflicting messages. There's one
Speaker 1: thing that Katherine Nutter points out about chocolate ads today
Speaker 1: is that the models in these ads clearly don't indulge in,
Speaker 1: you know, chocolate fests. On the regular chocolate fest, my
Speaker 1: mouth just started watering. I think I need to start
Speaker 1: that or maybe never never alburn it down. So from
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, where we see all of that fancy
Speaker 1: chocolate rising to the two thousands, we see this whole
Speaker 1: self empowerment message come about, one of which came from
Speaker 1: Godiva in two thousand four with their tagline every woman
Speaker 1: is one part Diva, much to the dismay of every man.
Speaker 1: And I have no idea side note what that means.
Speaker 1: I don't get that the whole just also side note
Speaker 1: to anyone in marketing listening. If you call me a diva,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna want your product. Yeah, I don't get that.
Speaker 1: Who like who? Who thinks that women want to be
Speaker 1: want to be diva's? I don't know. I'm sure there
Speaker 1: are probably some women listening thinking that that's fun, but
Speaker 1: I don't know. I just think it's so hokey. I
Speaker 1: think it is hokey. And I think when you have
Speaker 1: people like I'm just trying to think of an example,
Speaker 1: somebody like Mariah Carrier, you know, somebody who's like a
Speaker 1: stereotypically high demand, high maintenance celebrity calling themselves a diva.
Speaker 1: That makes me want to call myself that even less so.
Speaker 1: But then you're telling me that I am one if
Speaker 1: I eat your chocolate and Godiva, which really is like
Speaker 1: the gray Goose vodka of candy, like Chocolate Burn, old
Speaker 1: chocolate Burn, because you know, you take something that's really
Speaker 1: kind of basic and just mark up the price. Just
Speaker 1: putting a fancy ribbon or some you know, geese on
Speaker 1: it doesn't actually make it worth the price. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: was an article, I forget which one it was, that
Speaker 1: we read talking about how some chocolate experts, like Small
Speaker 1: Gaze of Chocolate essentially tried Godiva and they did not
Speaker 1: give it very high mark. Now what did they say,
Speaker 1: like a box of sugar had been poured into candlewax
Speaker 1: or some something like that, or that it was very chalky.
Speaker 1: Just weren't big fans. But I do think it's it's
Speaker 1: interesting how there's now that self empowerment aspect. It's like
Speaker 1: the men have sort of been removed from these chocolate ads.
Speaker 1: So instead of the old dynamic of wooing men into
Speaker 1: buying chocolate to give to women, it's now Dove, for instance,
Speaker 1: telling us, oh, ladies, treat yourself, you go buy chocolate
Speaker 1: for yourself. Stay at home. It's just stay at home
Speaker 1: and read the inspirational messages that on the inside of
Speaker 1: dove rappers, right, and and give yourself a gentle, you know, hug,
Speaker 1: and then go eat some yogurt. But can we talk
Speaker 1: a bit more about this guilt issue with chocolate, because
Speaker 1: this isn't something that came up in any of the papers,
Speaker 1: but what it sounded an awful lot like the more
Speaker 1: we read about how chocolate is, you know, basically is
Speaker 1: sold to women as sex. It's the one acceptable sexy
Speaker 1: vice that women can have, according to society, and yet
Speaker 1: there's that guilt undergirding it of like if you eat
Speaker 1: too much of it, then boys aren't gonna like you
Speaker 1: because you'll have a chocolate belly. It's so weirdly slut shamy.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like a candy analog to slut shaming,
Speaker 1: where it's like, well, ladies, if you do too much
Speaker 1: of that, then boys aren't gonna like you. Am I
Speaker 1: am I making too big of a leap? No, I
Speaker 1: think it's absolutely parallel. I think there are some very
Speaker 1: weird and they always have been apparently, some very weird
Speaker 1: things going on with the way we look at chocolate
Speaker 1: and think about chocolate. And you know, we have the
Speaker 1: Aztecs in the Spanish to think, but um, we'll actually
Speaker 1: get into some more ickiness behind chocolate advertising when we
Speaker 1: come back from a quick break. When we left off,
Speaker 1: we had gone through the history of women in chocolate
Speaker 1: and advertising. But one thing that we didn't mention as
Speaker 1: we were going through that twentieth century timeline was that
Speaker 1: really the main target of chocolate ads, especially in the
Speaker 1: first half of the twentieth century, were exclusively white women.
Speaker 1: And there are some issues of race and racism and
Speaker 1: chocolate that we would be remiss to not address as well,
Speaker 1: because you see, for instance, racial anxieties surrounding chocolate going
Speaker 1: all the way back to when it was first brought
Speaker 1: from the New World to Europe. Right there was this
Speaker 1: uh story that mort rosen Bloom, who we saided earlier,
Speaker 1: the author of Chocolate A Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light, Uh,
Speaker 1: talks about in his book about a woman by the
Speaker 1: name of Madame de Saveny writing to her daughter warning
Speaker 1: her against drinking too much chocolate because she knew of
Speaker 1: an another woman who drank it and her child came
Speaker 1: out black as the devil. Yikes, yikes, indeed, okay, well,
Speaker 1: and and there are all these chocolate anxieties to probably
Speaker 1: linked to this early idea of it as an aphrodisiac
Speaker 1: and being linked to sex, where oh, if you eat
Speaker 1: too much of it, you might become, you know, some
Speaker 1: kind of sex monster. But then too if you look
Speaker 1: at advertising in the nineteenth century, these chocolate dads typically
Speaker 1: portrayed women of color representing chocolate in its raw, unrefined form,
Speaker 1: whereas the white women were used to evoke a sense
Speaker 1: of luxury and romance, which is very problematic, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: women of color being seen as the workers, white women
Speaker 1: being seen as the consumers, going from raw to refine.
Speaker 1: There's all sorts of really icky racial things there, which
Speaker 1: makes sense because it ties so much into those issues
Speaker 1: of class and the evolution of chocolate and how it
Speaker 1: kind of became a mass marketed good. And I was
Speaker 1: hoping to find more scholarship on the race aspects of
Speaker 1: chocolate advertising, but unfortunately didn't, because I feel like today
Speaker 1: it's still and maybe it's just just advertising in general,
Speaker 1: but I still feel like you mostly almost exclusively see
Speaker 1: white women in chocolate ads. Well, yeah, I mean, we're
Speaker 1: we're definitely not in any sort of post racial utopia
Speaker 1: by any means, especially when it comes to discussing chocolate.
Speaker 1: The whole racist thing of calling women of color chocolate
Speaker 1: is referring to well, any person of color as being chocolate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: then you get into issues of exoticizing and eroticizing people
Speaker 1: of color by referring to them as chocolate. Again, didn't
Speaker 1: find any you know, deep research on it, just a
Speaker 1: few blog posts here and there, mostly from black women
Speaker 1: asking like, please stop calling me chocolate because it's all
Speaker 1: so notable that it's not like we refer to white
Speaker 1: women as vanilla except to indicate how boring we are
Speaker 1: when we have sex. Uh. Yeah, Well, there was that
Speaker 1: one Cadbury ad that was addressing Naomi Campbell by saying,
Speaker 1: move over, Naomi, there's a new diva in town talking
Speaker 1: about a chocolate bar. And so that's that's combining. We
Speaker 1: already had the diva conversation. That's combining like the worst
Speaker 1: of all chocolate ads. Yeah, and she did not appreciate it.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't an entire campaign to get them to take
Speaker 1: it down, because I mean some people are saying, oh,
Speaker 1: it's not you know, it's not racist, it's not, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's a little bit racist. And then
Speaker 1: there is just the awkwardness of More recently, Ferrero launched
Speaker 1: an ad campaign in Germany for their white chocolate and
Speaker 1: they're like, big commercial tagline was Germany votes White, so
Speaker 1: which Germans were like, Hey, yeah, no, you remember, remember
Speaker 1: Nazis and that whole thing. You please don't do this. Ah,
Speaker 1: there's some people in some marketing departments somewhere who were
Speaker 1: laid off after that. I'm assuming, well, what did you think?
Speaker 1: Did you see the Axe Dark Temptation ad? Where I didn't? Okay,
Speaker 1: so what happens? I mean, it's an axe body spray ad.
Speaker 1: So basically the premise of every single ax body spray
Speaker 1: ad is that the guy puts it on and then
Speaker 1: he just becomes irresistible chick magnet use the worst phrase
Speaker 1: on the planet. Um. So with the Dark Temptation ad,
Speaker 1: he puts on the body spray and it turns him
Speaker 1: into a chocolate man. And what women love more than
Speaker 1: chocolate caroline, And so women start coming up to him
Speaker 1: and you know, eating away at his chocolate body, and
Speaker 1: then finally it's revealed that oh he's just like, he's
Speaker 1: just a white guy under there. But the fact that
Speaker 1: it's called dark temptation and it's it's fine because there's
Speaker 1: a white guy under there still, you know, just some
Speaker 1: just some issues, just some issues kind of all piling
Speaker 1: up there together. Yeah, that is that is a pile
Speaker 1: of issues. Yeah. Lots of lots of women eating away
Speaker 1: at your very core. Yeah, lots of just symbolism loaded
Speaker 1: into one terrible commercial. Um. But what though, okay, so speaking,
Speaker 1: women eating men made out of chocolate. Yikes, what about
Speaker 1: the science of this? Because we've talked all about advertising.
Speaker 1: We have clearly been sold this idea that chocolate is
Speaker 1: a food for women, that we love it more than
Speaker 1: anything else, including shoes. But what does science have to
Speaker 1: say about this? You would think, right that science would
Speaker 1: have been, like, ladies, every time you bite into a
Speaker 1: chocolate bar and you you get obsessed with the idea
Speaker 1: of eating more chocolate and you feel addicted to it,
Speaker 1: it's because it's releasing all of these amazing things, and
Speaker 1: you're it's not really that. It's they've found that there's
Speaker 1: not a huge like cause and effect chocolate. Sarah tonin
Speaker 1: lank It's probably more that it chocolate is fatty and
Speaker 1: sugary and it tastes real good. Yeah, there have been
Speaker 1: a lot of studies actually looking at the psychopharmacological effects
Speaker 1: of chocolate, essentially how groups of chemicals such as cannabinoids
Speaker 1: and chocolate react in our brain and make us chocoholics,
Speaker 1: I guess, And the suity results have kind of been mixed.
Speaker 1: They really haven't been able to pin down one specific
Speaker 1: chocolate craze chemical in there. So it's like, well, some
Speaker 1: people really like it and I guess it's I guess
Speaker 1: it's good. But there was the study called Chocolate and
Speaker 1: Cheese their effects on mood, sort of looking at okay, well,
Speaker 1: we know that it probably has something to do with
Speaker 1: the fat and chocolate. So if we take a sweeteness
Speaker 1: savory like cheese and compare it, what happens and their
Speaker 1: best conclusion was that it's proba probably the oro sensory
Speaker 1: effect of eating chocolate. Essentially, we like how it smells,
Speaker 1: how it feels in our mouth, just all of the
Speaker 1: sensory sensations of eating chocolate. The look on your face
Speaker 1: right now, Caroline, I feel like you've been whisked away.
Speaker 1: I need to go find that Easter basket. You need
Speaker 1: to go to Pleasure Island from the I absolutely do um.
Speaker 1: Speaking of health stuff, one thing that does get brought
Speaker 1: up in women's magazines a lot is if you like chocolate, ladies,
Speaker 1: not only are you gonna get fat, but you're gonna
Speaker 1: break out. Yeah, what about what about that connection? Yeah? Um,
Speaker 1: that's something that I've always been worried about because I
Speaker 1: had so many pimples when I was a young girl,
Speaker 1: and even now my horm I'm thirty, right, like, I
Speaker 1: shouldn't break out anymore, but I still do. Adult actnate
Speaker 1: totally exists hormones anyway, So they looked at whether researchers
Speaker 1: looked at whether, um, chocolate actually does produce acne, and
Speaker 1: again the results were kind of mixed, but they did
Speaker 1: find that among the people who broke out, who did
Speaker 1: break out and experience acne, here's here's a little bit
Speaker 1: of what happened. So after people ate chocolate and then
Speaker 1: we're exposed to the bacteria that caused acne, they found
Speaker 1: that the blood was shown to have more markers of
Speaker 1: inflammation than the people who had not eaten chocolate. But
Speaker 1: they're just not sure what component of chocolate actually caused
Speaker 1: that inflammation, whether it is the fat or whether it
Speaker 1: is the sugar. I mean, we know that sugar causes
Speaker 1: inflammation in the body, but they're not quite sure about
Speaker 1: the acne link. It seems like that's the story with
Speaker 1: everything regarding women in chocolate. We're just not quite sure.
Speaker 1: But here have some chocolate in the meantime while we
Speaker 1: try to figure this out, let's also talk about the
Speaker 1: stereotype of periods making women crave chocolate even more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I am. I was. I'm gonna tell the truth here.
Speaker 1: I was a little dismayed to find out that there
Speaker 1: is no scientific link really supporting the hypothesis that you
Speaker 1: crave chocolate more around your period, because I swear I
Speaker 1: don't know what it is in my brain and the
Speaker 1: brain of Caroline Urban Podcast or Extraordinaire. I don't know
Speaker 1: what's going on that like leading up to my period,
Speaker 1: I'm just like gorging on chocolate, and like as I'm
Speaker 1: stuffing the fifteen candy bar in my face, I'm like, oh, Okay,
Speaker 1: I see what's happening. But I wonder if it's just
Speaker 1: not so much the chocolate as maybe a connection between
Speaker 1: menstrual cycles and comfort food. And some scientists say that,
Speaker 1: you know, chocolate contains minerals like magnesium and iron, which
Speaker 1: we may be deficient in around our period things like that.
Speaker 1: All I know is just I just wanted. And one
Speaker 1: of the reasons so why this period chocolate hypothesis has
Speaker 1: been debunked is because chocolate cravings don't diminish with menopause.
Speaker 1: If it was a period thing, then we would see
Speaker 1: a massive drop off in women over fifty wanting chocolate.
Speaker 1: But that all happens. Well, maybe it's a mood thing,
Speaker 1: because I know, like when I'm sick or hungover or
Speaker 1: just generally not feeling good, I want comfort food. I
Speaker 1: want like fried chicken and mashed potatoes and soup and
Speaker 1: like you know, salty, mushy, amazing things that have really
Speaker 1: strong flavors um And so maybe chocolate just fits into that,
Speaker 1: like making you feel good. Well, speaking of making you
Speaker 1: feel good, the one thing that we do know about chocolate,
Speaker 1: specifically dark chocolate, is yes, the rumors are true. Dark
Speaker 1: chocolate does appear to have some health benefits. There was
Speaker 1: a study published linking it to lower rates of stroke,
Speaker 1: coronary heart disease, blood pressure, and other cardiovascular conditions, but
Speaker 1: in an interview with The New York Times about this study,
Speaker 1: finding one of the lead authors said, police, don't get
Speaker 1: us wrong. This doesn't mean that you can eat all
Speaker 1: of the chocolate that you want. We're just saying it's
Speaker 1: a correlation. It's not a causation, right, Yes, antioccidents, Yes,
Speaker 1: Gorging on chocolate until you throw up pretty much destroys
Speaker 1: any of the positive effects of chocolate. Although I was
Speaker 1: thinking about studies exactly like this one when Sally also
Speaker 1: gave me a solid dark chocolate Easter Bunny. But no,
Speaker 1: don't try to come from me. I don't care. I don't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't feel guilt. I mean I do,
Speaker 1: but I don't. But see, that's good, that's great that
Speaker 1: you don't feel guilt. You shouldn't feel any guilt. If
Speaker 1: you want chocolate, eat the chocolate. I don't know, I
Speaker 1: just I'm so yeah, I'm at the point of I'm
Speaker 1: just tired of hearing about it. I'm tired of seeing
Speaker 1: those weird ads. I don't get it, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. Uh, it's the same things. Like I'm surprised
Speaker 1: there's not more terrible chocolate stock photography. I mean, I
Speaker 1: know there is, but you know, the way we see
Speaker 1: women laughing over salads, the same way we see women
Speaker 1: eating yogurt, like chocolate is in that same ballpark, as
Speaker 1: far as like women are so stupid, look at what
Speaker 1: you're eating and how you're eating it, and like you're
Speaker 1: pinning all of your hopes and dreams on it, whereas
Speaker 1: men are just told that they really want a grill meet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you want a hamburger? Have a hamburger? Sloppy? Joe's sloppy.
Speaker 1: Joe's not sloppy jays Nope. Well, Caroline, I think we've
Speaker 1: now pretty much exhausted all of our chocolate knowledge and
Speaker 1: now it's time to hear from listeners. I want to
Speaker 1: know if there are guys out there who are also
Speaker 1: a self identified chocoholics. I want to know who the
Speaker 1: ladies are like me who could care less about a
Speaker 1: bag of Eminem's, Give me some dol Rito's please, or
Speaker 1: like any kind of chip you get me. I'm saying
Speaker 1: savory rather than sweet. And anyone who don't, I don't
Speaker 1: know what are your thoughts on chocolate? Let us know.
Speaker 1: Mom's Stuff at Discovery dot com is where you can
Speaker 1: email us. You can also tweet us at mom Stuff
Speaker 1: podcast or send us a Facebook message, and we have
Speaker 1: a couple of messages to share with you right now.
Speaker 1: So I've got a couple of messages here about our
Speaker 1: new male grooming episode. This one is from Jess, who writes,
Speaker 1: in My Dating career, I despise male body hair. I
Speaker 1: thought it was just plain unattractive and probably wouldn't have
Speaker 1: looked twice at a hairy dude. However, a few years
Speaker 1: ago I met a guy and film madly in love
Speaker 1: with an extremely hairy dude. I mean his back has
Speaker 1: started to connect with his chest. Hair level of Harry anyway,
Speaker 1: his hair a nous drives me crazy too, but in
Speaker 1: a good way. I think a huge part of what
Speaker 1: we find attractive is just what we see on TV.
Speaker 1: The unknown is always scary. It's really frustrating because he,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned many men are, is very self conscious
Speaker 1: about his man for he has even asked me to
Speaker 1: tweeze hairs from areas that bother him. Once you associate
Speaker 1: body hair with a manly dude who treats you like gold,
Speaker 1: it's very sexy. Here's hoping for more hair representation in
Speaker 1: the media. Ah and for love and I hope, I
Speaker 1: hope that letter makes that gentleman feel better. Who wrote
Speaker 1: us very concerned about whether he'd find a date. Ye,
Speaker 1: don't worry about your hairy bags. Don't worry about it.
Speaker 1: I have a letter here from Gretchen who wrote in
Speaker 1: about beards as well, and she said, well, I can
Speaker 1: definitely see a trend in the popularity of beards on
Speaker 1: men on TV. I wonder if this is just a
Speaker 1: trend in certain social circles. Maybe it's because I live
Speaker 1: in Alaska that I have never thought of a beard
Speaker 1: is something trendy, just something some men had and others didn't.
Speaker 1: When I was growing up, my father sported a beard,
Speaker 1: and my husband grows when every fall and shaves it
Speaker 1: off in the spring. He does this as he works
Speaker 1: outside and below zero weather, and it often helps keep
Speaker 1: him warm and when spring comes it's too warm. I
Speaker 1: know other men up here who also follow this practice.
Speaker 1: I like my husband's appearance both ways, so whatever he
Speaker 1: wants is fine with me. On a recent trip this
Speaker 1: winter to London, England, we did take an interesting notice
Speaker 1: of the lack of beards there. In fact, my husband's
Speaker 1: caught the attention of one small boy who marveled at
Speaker 1: his appearance, exclaiming and pointing. Adam out of pure amazement.
Speaker 1: I also think if a man isn't well endowed in
Speaker 1: the facial hair department, what is wrong with being clean shaven?
Speaker 1: If that suits in better? And then Gretchen has uh
Speaker 1: some more comforting words for our harryman out there. She
Speaker 1: says on the topic of other body hairmanance, personally, I
Speaker 1: like a guy with some chest hair and find the
Speaker 1: idea of waxing it or shaving it off because that
Speaker 1: is what women like. Silly, so fear not men, some
Speaker 1: women dig it. So thanks Gretchen. I'm sure a lot
Speaker 1: of listeners out there appreciate your viewpoint, and thanks to
Speaker 1: everybody who's written into us. Mom. Stuff at Discovery dot
Speaker 1: com is our email address, and if you want to
Speaker 1: find links to all of our social media, all of
Speaker 1: our podcast, blogs and videos, you should head on over
Speaker 1: to stuff Mom Never Told You dot com for more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com S