Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and you're listening to Stuff I've
Speaker 1: Never told you. Well, it's just about Valentine's Day here
Speaker 1: in the United States, and that means heart shaped boxes
Speaker 1: of chocolate everywhere you go, especially now that you can't
Speaker 1: buy those sweetheart candies, although I'm always shocked people liked
Speaker 1: those anyway, I mean other than just for I guess
Speaker 1: novelty of candy that has a message on it. And
Speaker 1: along with all of these heart shaped boxes of chocolate
Speaker 1: come the ads of women falling heads over heels for chocolate,
Speaker 1: as if willpower goes out in the window for women
Speaker 1: when chocolate gets introduced into any given situation, we become
Speaker 1: wolves wolves And I have to say I love chocolate.
Speaker 1: I don't really crave it too often. I have friends
Speaker 1: that do, though, especially when they're sad or on their
Speaker 1: period both, and it got me to wondering if there
Speaker 1: is any truth to this stereotype. Luckily, we have a
Speaker 1: classic episode looking into just that. Enjoy. Welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: Mom Never Told You from housetopp Works dot Com. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristen
Speaker 1: and uh. Today we're talking about a favorite topic of mine,
Speaker 1: and I was preparing for the topic of chocolate last
Speaker 1: night Kristen by shoving chocolate Easter eggs one after another
Speaker 1: into my face because every year my mother I'm thirty,
Speaker 1: my mother makes Easter baskets. She may one for Kristen
Speaker 1: as well, don't worry, But I I feel like I
Speaker 1: was doing some really good, hard hitting chocolate research. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's important to get a little meadow with
Speaker 1: things and fuel your chocolate research with chocolate. I myself
Speaker 1: have also been enjoying the chocolate Easter eggs your mother
Speaker 1: so generously gave to me in my own Easter basket.
Speaker 1: I don't know the last time my mom gave me
Speaker 1: an Easter basket. So if I tell her that another
Speaker 1: person's mom gave me an Easter basket, it might cause
Speaker 1: a little friction, Yeah, a little mom friction. So I
Speaker 1: don't know if I'll if I'll film my mom in
Speaker 1: on that. But I'm a little surprised that it's taken
Speaker 1: us this long to get around to women in chocolate,
Speaker 1: because is there a more stereotypically women woman good than chocolate? Yeah,
Speaker 1: other than shoes, I don't think so. Yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: it's like shoes, Kathy comics, chocolate. There we go, and
Speaker 1: the last two are basically one and the same exactly.
Speaker 1: So we got to talk about women in chocolate because
Speaker 1: the question I wanted to know was what's up with
Speaker 1: the stereotype that women are just these chocolate craving monsters who,
Speaker 1: according to commercials, 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
Speaker 1: thing in women's bodies, whether it's their brain or their uterus,
Speaker 1: is programming them to eat more chocolate, I'd be kind
Speaker 1: of prone to believe you, because I feel like I
Speaker 1: don't know too many dudes who are like super into
Speaker 1: chocolate who have to have chocolate on hand. Um, But
Speaker 1: I don't think that's what 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 found si 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 kindre eggs, kinder eggs. 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 purchase more than sixty million pounds of chocolate for
Speaker 1: February four 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 westerner 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
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.
Speaker 1: Chris did so weird. She has this whole drawer full
Speaker 1: of potatoes and she'll just rip one out like an
Speaker 1: apple and bite into it. My podcasting secret car bloating,
Speaker 1: constant car bloating. Um. But before we get into where
Speaker 1: this women and chocolate connection really comes from, let's go
Speaker 1: back in time and see where chocolate comes from. Because
Speaker 1: within the history of chocolate we start to see how
Speaker 1: it becomes more gendered as it moves from its origin
Speaker 1: in meso America to Europe. Right. Yeah, they actually found
Speaker 1: they I mean, you know, the people who look for
Speaker 1: these things, chocolate pirates. Yep, chocolate pirates actually found cacao
Speaker 1: residue in pottery in Honduras that dates back as far
Speaker 1: as fourteen hundred BC. And just side note, um, in
Speaker 1: case you're wondering throughout this podcast, anytime we say cacao,
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 meso America and the
Speaker 1: Mayans were drinking it by three D a d. And
Speaker 1: when the Aztecs, you know, like they did, conquered the Mayans,
Speaker 1: they started taking up the drinking of chocolate as well.
Speaker 1: And not only did they drink it, az Techs supposedly
Speaker 1: ate it off each other's bodies during sex. They considered.
Speaker 1: The word for chocolate in their languages is something along
Speaker 1: the lines of like chocolattle. It's there's a lot of
Speaker 1: consonants next to each other, but that basically translates to
Speaker 1: a holy fetish. That's how much they liked it. That's
Speaker 1: so cosmo of them. Yeah, I can just I'm picturing
Speaker 1: like an ancient as tech cosmopolitan. Hey, as tech ladies,
Speaker 1: you wanna you wanna get your man going, get some chocolottle.
Speaker 1: You want to avoid getting sacrificed this month, it's some
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 fight five we have chocolate
Speaker 1: being shipped to Europe along with these ideas of its
Speaker 1: connections to sex, and very quickly from that it's connection
Speaker 1: to women. By the sixteenth century, you have chocolate in
Speaker 1: Europe being conceptualized as an aphrodisiac. Right, and one Spanish physician,
Speaker 1: Antonio Culminero 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: Its super sweet and smooth. It was a pretty intense
Speaker 1: food that was often Yeah, it 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 those chocolate love and ladies
Speaker 1: that stopped by. Yeah, he just had like a whitman's
Speaker 1: sampler that he could slide out. Maybe that was his secret.
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
Speaker 1: know hearing from all of our listeners who work at
Speaker 1: coffee shops saying that, oh, the men walk in and
Speaker 1: they order espresso or black coffee and the women are
Speaker 1: ordering mochas. Exactly interesting. Well, not only was it a
Speaker 1: gender drink, but it was also sort of an elitist
Speaker 1: thing too. When it made its way to Europe from
Speaker 1: the New World, it was pretty much solely reserved for
Speaker 1: the nobility of Spain, Italy and France. It basically became
Speaker 1: a luxury where dainty ladies enjoyed it, and they transform
Speaker 1: the enjoyment of chocolate into a highly refined social event.
Speaker 1: And this is coming from Jamal Fahim's thesis Beyond Craving,
Speaker 1: and he points out that this is sort of the
Speaker 1: beginning of chocolate as a fetish that communicates social status
Speaker 1: and upper class femininity, and that upper class femininity is
Speaker 1: going to continue to broaden its reach within the growing
Speaker 1: chocolate industry. As you see in the eighteen hundreds, how
Speaker 1: chocolate is transformed from this grittier drink into the type
Speaker 1: of chocolate that we think of today that's a smooth
Speaker 1: the bar, it's really sweet, it's a very tantalizing for
Speaker 1: our senses. And this happens through a number of innovations
Speaker 1: starting in eighty eight with a Dutch entrepreneur named Conrad
Speaker 1: johann has Been Houghton who figures out how to press
Speaker 1: those cocao safe word cacao beans to separate the dry
Speaker 1: cocoa from cocoa butter that makes chocolate less bitter and smoother.
Speaker 1: And by eighteen fifty we have englishmen Joseph Fry mixing
Speaker 1: sugar with cocoa butter and making the first solid chocolate bar.
Speaker 1: So he's like Josephries, like the patron saint of of
Speaker 1: all that is good and happy in this world. For me,
Speaker 1: I guess I should wear like a necklace with his
Speaker 1: picture on it. Um more developments come in eighteen seventy
Speaker 1: nine when Rodolf Lint of you know Lint Chocolate, invented conking,
Speaker 1: a process that also smoothed chocolate, and he actually used
Speaker 1: a machine that looks like a conk shell, hence Cleverland.
Speaker 1: Uh So, because of all these innovations, by the early
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds, you have guys like Henry nest Lee or
Speaker 1: would that be R. Nestle, Milton Hershey and others who
Speaker 1: are in the chocolate game. And so all of a
Speaker 1: sudden you have at the beginning of the twentieth century
Speaker 1: this growing chocolate business. And what's interesting too, as we
Speaker 1: were talking about the gender of it, if you look
Speaker 1: at the manufacturing of chocolate, all those chocolate bars that
Speaker 1: were eating a lot of times, especially in the earlier
Speaker 1: twentieth century, it becomes gradually feminized as well. You have
Speaker 1: more and more women working in these factories. So not
Speaker 1: only are women becoming the target consumers of chocolate, they're
Speaker 1: also often the ones on the factory floors making the chocolate.
Speaker 1: So every day it was like Lucy and Ethel, you're
Speaker 1: working the chocolate. Okay, great, I'll just keep that image
Speaker 1: in my head as well as the Portland a sketch,
Speaker 1: So my brain is is at pacity. There is a
Speaker 1: darker side, of course, um to chocolate making, and this
Speaker 1: is something that still goes on today in some parts
Speaker 1: of the world where they grow cow trees and make chocolate.
Speaker 1: And that is the fact that there are child labor
Speaker 1: issues that that we struggle with, as well as environmental
Speaker 1: issues like rainforest being stripped, the soil being stripped of
Speaker 1: nutrients by planting these trees over and over again. So
Speaker 1: that has actually driven some companies to, you know, get
Speaker 1: into the fair trade thing, make sure that they're having
Speaker 1: positive sources for their beans basically. Yeah, and and those
Speaker 1: those sourcing issues are as relevant to chocolate as they
Speaker 1: are to our conversation on coffee. But we're not going
Speaker 1: to focus so much on the manufacturing side of it,
Speaker 1: but rather the advertising of chocolate, because you can actually
Speaker 1: trace women's history in the twentieth century in the United
Speaker 1: States through chocolate ads. Essentially, just by the way that
Speaker 1: chocolate is framed really shows women's level of social mobility
Speaker 1: and their relationship to men. It's fascinating, Yeah, it's fascinating
Speaker 1: because this is coming. You know, this starts after the
Speaker 1: Industrial Revolution, when you've got guys like Milton Hershey making
Speaker 1: a cheaper, more available chocolate bar. I guess he's like
Speaker 1: the Henry Ford of candy, making it more available to people.
Speaker 1: And so once it is more readily available, you have
Speaker 1: to sell it. You have to make people aware that
Speaker 1: it is not something for just uppercrust elite ladies, that
Speaker 1: it's for everyone. Yeah, and we already have these longstanding
Speaker 1: connotations of chocolate with sex and romance and luxury, and
Speaker 1: so what better thing to sell to dainty ladies. But
Speaker 1: in the Victorian era, depictions of women gorging on chocolate
Speaker 1: in the same way that we think of today, like,
Speaker 1: you know, just chocolate crazed women that would not have
Speaker 1: been kosher, That would have totally violated the female norms
Speaker 1: of the time, because this was at the time too
Speaker 1: when women would not have been you would not want
Speaker 1: to be seen like eating a lot of food, like
Speaker 1: all you can eat buffets not okay for Victorian women
Speaker 1: to indulge in, so they were supposed to eat more
Speaker 1: like ladies. So a lot of times if you see
Speaker 1: Victorian ads for chocolate, the women aren't necessarily eating the
Speaker 1: chocolate in the ads, but maybe holding it close to
Speaker 1: their mouths just sort of tantalizingly. If you want to
Speaker 1: find a good way to get me to gorge on chocolate,
Speaker 1: it's to make me hold it away from my face
Speaker 1: for too long before I eat it, and then it's
Speaker 1: just like cookie monster, it's just over. But yeah, you
Speaker 1: couldn't with these, with these proper Victorian ladies, you couldn't
Speaker 1: show them over indulging. You couldn't have them exhibiting any
Speaker 1: type of desire because again, chocolate being kind of an aphrodisiac,
Speaker 1: considered to be an aphrodisiac, tied in with wooing people
Speaker 1: and whatnot. If a woman is shown to not only
Speaker 1: gorge on it, but really want it and desire it,
Speaker 1: then it's getting hot up in those Victorian homes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but when you move into the progressive era, out of
Speaker 1: the Victorian era into the progressive era, you have the
Speaker 1: rise of the new woman. You have the suffrage movement
Speaker 1: taking place. You have women having a little bit more
Speaker 1: social mobility. They might be driving cars every now and then. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and the whole rituals updating outside the home are
Speaker 1: starting to take shape. And so chocolate advertisers are thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: how are we going to advertise to this new woman.
Speaker 1: How are we going to frame chocolate as something that
Speaker 1: she needs in her life? Oh dating, gentleman callers, what
Speaker 1: better gift for this new woman than a box? So
Speaker 1: chockole lots right. It's kind of like when we talked
Speaker 1: about diamonds. How diamond advertising put it in men's heads
Speaker 1: that you're not a good husband, fiance, boyfriend, et cetera
Speaker 1: if you don't present a diamond, and then that leads
Speaker 1: the woman to expect it and think, oh, well, you're
Speaker 1: not a good fiance if you didn't give me a diamond.
Speaker 1: It's kind of the same thing in in this you know,
Speaker 1: smaller scale, less expensive, but it's kind of the same
Speaker 1: thing with chocolate. It's like, oh, well, he must not
Speaker 1: really like me, Yeah, exactly, And it's because they're courting
Speaker 1: female consumers, but ultimately courting men to buy the chocolate, saying, hey,
Speaker 1: what better gift for a gal than a box of chocolate?
Speaker 1: It's Johnny, yeah, and there is um yes. And they
Speaker 1: were addressing Johnny in a Whitman's ad that gave me
Speaker 1: pause when I read the copy for it, because it
Speaker 1: sounds so opposite of the whole idea of of keeping
Speaker 1: chocolate in the Victorian area era away from sounding to
Speaker 1: um sensual. So in this ad they said, a visit
Speaker 1: to Pleasure Island is best when made by a man
Speaker 1: and a maid, and together they enjoy the plunder from
Speaker 1: this wonderful chest of chocolates. Now, tell me that's not
Speaker 1: one big euphemism, right, Oh yeah, chocolate as are all euphemism.
Speaker 1: I mean, even in the Victorian era. As you get
Speaker 1: creep closer and closer to the twentieth century, you see
Speaker 1: how chocolate is still it's still sort of symbolizing the
Speaker 1: physical consumption that may ensue after you know, proper marriage
Speaker 1: and whatnot. Right, Yeah, I can't believe they were giving
Speaker 1: chocolate to women when they were just dating. Well, in
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties, you even have companies like Romance Chocolates
Speaker 1: just going ahead and putting it from the center, like, hey,
Speaker 1: Romance Chocolates, what else are you going to get for
Speaker 1: a for a date than these? Right? But so in
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties, as you know, women are wearing shorter clothes,
Speaker 1: tighter clothes. They've they've shed the bustle and the corset,
Speaker 1: Lucky Strike begins advising women to reach for a cigarette
Speaker 1: instead of chocolate to keep that figure slim to fit
Speaker 1: into all of your new garments. Yeah, this is around
Speaker 1: the time too when you start seeing alongside the suffrage movement,
Speaker 1: you also see the first big wave of a dieting
Speaker 1: push for women. And to me this was really significant
Speaker 1: because I feel like today, even with all this overt
Speaker 1: chocolate advertising, there's always still that underpinning of guilt, and
Speaker 1: we're never like advertisers, never let us forget that we
Speaker 1: have female figures that you know, we're supposed to keep
Speaker 1: in shape. And so in the late n when this
Speaker 1: Lucky Strike ad comes out, you have women having the
Speaker 1: right to vote, more freedom theoretically than ever before. But
Speaker 1: also too, this is a time when you're also seeing
Speaker 1: the first kind of dieting push for women as well.
Speaker 1: There's always this balance between like, ladies, go ahead and
Speaker 1: indulge but not too much, feel bad about yourselves, but
Speaker 1: enjoy yourself, but then feel bad about yourself. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a terrible yo yo effect. And I mean it is
Speaker 1: interesting to think about how, like every time women are
Speaker 1: on the verge of getting more power in society and
Speaker 1: they're outside of the home, all of a sudden, people
Speaker 1: are like, yeah, but you should probably be thinner and
Speaker 1: and remember not to eat too much. Well, that's the
Speaker 1: thing I think. Naomi Wolf points us out in The
Speaker 1: Beauty Myth, which now is such an old text, but
Speaker 1: still the point I think is uh sort of time immemorial,
Speaker 1: because she's talked about how any time, like you said,
Speaker 1: women are experiencing the most liberation, you have the most
Speaker 1: sort of reactionary um messages regarding our bodies of like
Speaker 1: of dieting, of exercise. So, moving from the twenties o
Speaker 1: into World War two, chocolate becomes advertised as almost a
Speaker 1: sexual surrogate for absent soldiers, which I found so fascinating.
Speaker 1: There was a Witman ad, for instance, is depicting a
Speaker 1: woman wistfully staring at a soldier's photo while holding a chocolate.
Speaker 1: So it's basically like ladies. You know, old Johnny, Old
Speaker 1: Johnny's off fighting the Nazis, So while you're home, stay
Speaker 1: faithful and eat some chocolate to tie you over. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the joy you get from chocolate is almost like having
Speaker 1: sex with a loved one, which is still the same
Speaker 1: kind of advertising we see today of like lone woman,
Speaker 1: always with the background of billowing silk, like I don't
Speaker 1: need anything but this chocolate. Yeah, my hair would just
Speaker 1: be all over the place. But moving into the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies, you know, Chris and I were just
Speaker 1: talking about um, that whole control, that body control of
Speaker 1: like okay, well, more women are in positions of power.
Speaker 1: They're they're taking power for themselves. We have the second
Speaker 1: wave feminist movement, but we also, alongside that at the
Speaker 1: same time, have this whole concern about health and fitness
Speaker 1: and how do we advertise sweet treats to health conscious
Speaker 1: feminists of this era. Yeah, so this is when you
Speaker 1: start to see the entrance of and I hope this
Speaker 1: is not offensive to anyone's ears, but let's face it,
Speaker 1: their masturbatory chocolate ads. Basically, instead of you could replace
Speaker 1: a chocolate bond bond with a vibrator in a woman's
Speaker 1: hands and a lot of these ads and it would
Speaker 1: be the exact same thing. You wouldn't even have changed
Speaker 1: the copy. And you also see the re entry too,
Speaker 1: of chocolate being seen as this aphrod zac. For instance,
Speaker 1: this I gotta kick out of this. In nine five
Speaker 1: High Times, the weed culture magazine that we mentioned in
Speaker 1: our Women in Weed episode, I had a cover story
Speaker 1: on chocolate as an aphrodisiac because you have the flow
Speaker 1: chart of smoking pot plus munchies equals chocolate, which then
Speaker 1: may or may not lead to groovy sex intimacy true
Speaker 1: into missy. 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 greed is good, you don't
Speaker 1: just 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 fit ododes
Speaker 1: and you find these organic chocolate bars and it's like
Speaker 1: chocolate and bacon, or chocolate and Serrano chilies or something,
Speaker 1: all these kinds of exotic flavor combos, and they are
Speaker 1: crazy expensive. Yeah. I I almost hate to admit this
Speaker 1: because it makes me sound like a really big idiot.
Speaker 1: But when I was Christmas shopping back in December. Uh,
Speaker 1: I was going through this store and I was getting
Speaker 1: my niece and nephew mostly candy for their stocking. It
Speaker 1: was neat candy. I mean it was like kind of fancy,
Speaker 1: because you know, they don't like anything that I get them,
Speaker 1: so I'm just like, I'll just get them candy. Ha ha ha.
Speaker 1: My 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 good chocolate b 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 festate. My
Speaker 1: mouth just started watering. I think I need to start
Speaker 1: that or maybe never never al burn it down. So
Speaker 1: from the nineteen eighties where we see all of that
Speaker 1: fancy chocolate rising, to the two thousands, we see this
Speaker 1: whole self empowerment message come about, one of which came
Speaker 1: from Godiva in two thousand four with their tagline every
Speaker 1: woman is one part Diva, much to the dismay of
Speaker 1: every man. And I have no idea side note what
Speaker 1: that means. I don't get that the whole just also
Speaker 1: side note to any and marketing listening, if you call
Speaker 1: me a diva, I'm not gonna want your product. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't get that. Who like who? Who thinks that
Speaker 1: women want to be I want to be diva's. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm sure there are probably some women listening
Speaker 1: thinking that that's fun, but I don't know. I just
Speaker 1: think it's so hokey. I think it is hokey. And
Speaker 1: I think when you have people like I'm just trying
Speaker 1: to think of an example, somebody like Mariah Carrier, you know,
Speaker 1: somebody who's like a stereotypically high demand, high maintenance celebrity
Speaker 1: calling themselves a diva. That makes me want to call
Speaker 1: myself that even less so. But then you're telling me
Speaker 1: that I am want if I eat your chocolate and Godiva,
Speaker 1: which really is like the Gray Goose vodka of candy,
Speaker 1: like its chocolate burn, old chocolate burn. Because you know,
Speaker 1: you take something that's really kind of basic and just
Speaker 1: mark up the price, just putting a fancy ribbon or
Speaker 1: some you know, geese on, it doesn't actually make it
Speaker 1: worth the price. Yeah, there was an article, I forget
Speaker 1: which one it was that we read a talking about
Speaker 1: how some chocolate experts, like small gays of chocolate essentially
Speaker 1: tried Godiva and they did not give it very high mark.
Speaker 1: Now what did they say, like a box of sugar
Speaker 1: had been poured into candlewax or some something like that,
Speaker 1: or that it was very chalky. They just weren't big fans.
Speaker 1: But I do think it's it's interesting how there's now
Speaker 1: that self empowerment aspect. It's like the men have sort
Speaker 1: of been removed from these chocolate ads. So instead of
Speaker 1: the old dynamic of wooing men into buying chocolate to
Speaker 1: give to women, it's now Dove, for instance, telling us, oh, ladies,
Speaker 1: treat yourself. You go buy chocolate for yourself, stay at home.
Speaker 1: It's just stay at home and read the inspirational messages
Speaker 1: that are on the inside of Dove wrappers, right, and
Speaker 1: and give yourself a gentle, you know, hug, and then
Speaker 1: go eat some yogurt. But can we talk no more
Speaker 1: about this issue with chocolate, because this isn't something that
Speaker 1: came up in any of the papers. But what it
Speaker 1: sounded an awful lot like the more we read about
Speaker 1: how chocolate is, you know, basically is sold to women
Speaker 1: as sex. It's the one acceptable sexy vice that women
Speaker 1: can have, according to society. And yet there's that guilt
Speaker 1: undergirding it of like if you eat too much of it,
Speaker 1: then boys aren't gonna like you because you'll have a
Speaker 1: chocolate belly. It's so weirdly slut shamy. It's like it's
Speaker 1: like a candy analog to slut shaming, where it's like, well, ladies,
Speaker 1: if you do too much of that, then boys aren't
Speaker 1: gonna like you. Am I am I making too big
Speaker 1: of a leap? Now, I think it's absolutely parallel. I
Speaker 1: think there are some very weird and they always have been, apparently,
Speaker 1: some very weird things going on with the way we
Speaker 1: look at chocolate and think about chocolate, and you know,
Speaker 1: we have the Aztecs in the Spanish to think. But um,
Speaker 1: we'll actually get into some more ick nous behind chocolate
Speaker 1: advertising when we come back from a quick break. So
Speaker 1: when we left off, we had gone through the history
Speaker 1: of women in chocolate and advertising. But one thing that
Speaker 1: we didn't mention as we were going through that twentieth
Speaker 1: century timeline was that really the main target of chocolate ads,
Speaker 1: especially in the first half of the twentieth century, were
Speaker 1: exclusively white women. And there are some issues of race
Speaker 1: and racism and chocolate that we would be remiss to
Speaker 1: not address as well, because you see, for instance, racial
Speaker 1: anxieties surrounding chocolate going all the way back to when
Speaker 1: it was first brought from the New World to Europe.
Speaker 1: Right there was this uh story that mort rosen Bloom,
Speaker 1: who we said it earlier, the author of Chocolate A
Speaker 1: Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light Uh, talks about in
Speaker 1: his book about a woman by the name of Madame
Speaker 1: de Saveni writing to her daughter warning her against drinking
Speaker 1: too much chocolate because she knew of another woman who
Speaker 1: drank it and her child came out black as the devil. Yikes,
Speaker 1: yikes indeed, okay, well, and and there are all these
Speaker 1: chocolate anxieties to probably linked to this early idea of
Speaker 1: it as an aphrodisiac and being linked to sex, where oh,
Speaker 1: if you eat too much of it you might become
Speaker 1: you know, some kind of sex monster. But then too
Speaker 1: if you look at advertising in the nineteenth century, these
Speaker 1: chocolate duds typically portrayed women of color representing chocolate in
Speaker 1: its raw, unrefined form, whereas the white women were used
Speaker 1: to evoke a sense of luxury and romance, which is
Speaker 1: very pro oblematic, right, Yeah, women of color being seen
Speaker 1: as the workers, white women being seen as the consumers,
Speaker 1: going from raw to refine. There's all sorts of really
Speaker 1: icky racial things there, which makes sense because it ties
Speaker 1: so much into those issues of class and the evolution
Speaker 1: of chocolate and how it kind of became a mass
Speaker 1: marketed good. And I was hoping to find more scholarship
Speaker 1: on the race aspects of chocolate advertising, but unfortunately didn't
Speaker 1: because I feel like today's still and maybe it's just
Speaker 1: just advertising in general, but I still feel like you
Speaker 1: mostly almost exclusively see white women in chocolate ads. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm yeah, I mean, we're We're definitely not in any
Speaker 1: sort of post racial utopia by any means, especially when
Speaker 1: it comes to discussing chocolate. The whole racist thing of
Speaker 1: calling women of color chocolate is referring to well, any
Speaker 1: person of color as being vocolate. Yeah, then you get
Speaker 1: into issues of exoticizing and eroticizing people of color by
Speaker 1: referring to them as chocolate. Again, didn't find any you know,
Speaker 1: deep research on it, just a few blog posts here
Speaker 1: and there, mostly from black women asking like, please stop
Speaker 1: calling me chocolate, because it's also notable that it's not
Speaker 1: like we refer to white women as vanilla, except to
Speaker 1: indicate how boring we are when we have sex. Uh. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: there was that one Cadbury ad that was addressing Naomi
Speaker 1: Campbell by saying, move over, Naomie, there's a new diva
Speaker 1: in town talking about a chocolate bar. And so that's
Speaker 1: that's combining. We already had the diva conversation. That's combining
Speaker 1: like the worst of all chocolate ads. Yeah, and she
Speaker 1: did not appreciate it. I would an entire campaign to
Speaker 1: get them to take it down, because I mean some
Speaker 1: people are saying, oh, it's not you know, it's not racist.
Speaker 1: It's not, but yeah, it's it's a it's a little
Speaker 1: bit racist, and then it is just the awkwardness of
Speaker 1: More recently, Ferrero launched an ad campaign in Germany for
Speaker 1: their white chocolate and they're like big commercial tagline was
Speaker 1: Germany votes White, to which Germans were like, hey, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: you remember, remember Nazis and that whole thing. You please
Speaker 1: don't do this. Ah, there's some people in some marketing
Speaker 1: departments somewhere who were laid off after that. I'm assuming, well,
Speaker 1: what did you think? Did you see the Axe Dark
Speaker 1: Temptation ad? Where I didn't? Okay, so what happens? I mean,
Speaker 1: it's an axe body spray ad. So basically the premise
Speaker 1: of every single ax body spray ad is that the
Speaker 1: guy puts it on and then he just becomes irresistible
Speaker 1: chick magnet to use the worst phrase on the planet. Um.
Speaker 1: So with the Dark Temptation ad, he puts on the
Speaker 1: body spray and it turns him into a chocolate man.
Speaker 1: And what do women love more than chocolate, Caroline, and
Speaker 1: so women to start coming up to him and you know,
Speaker 1: eating away at his chocolate body. And then finally it's
Speaker 1: revealed that oh, he's just like, he's just a white
Speaker 1: guy under there. But the fact that it's called dark
Speaker 1: temptation and it's all it's it's fine because there's a
Speaker 1: white guy under there still, you know, just some just
Speaker 1: some issues, just some issues kind of all piling up
Speaker 1: there together. Yeah, that is that is a pile of issues. Yeah,
Speaker 1: lots of lots of women eating away at your very core. Yeah,
Speaker 1: lots of just symbolism loaded into one terrible commercial. Um.
Speaker 1: But what though, Okay, so speaking, women eating men made
Speaker 1: out of chocolate. Yikes, What about the science of this?
Speaker 1: Because we've talked all about advertising. We have clearly been
Speaker 1: sold this idea that chocolate is a food for women,
Speaker 1: that we love it more than anything else, including shoes.
Speaker 1: But what does science have to say about this? You
Speaker 1: would think, right that science would have been, like, ladies,
Speaker 1: every time you bite into a chocolate bar and you
Speaker 1: you get obsessed with the idea of eating more chocolate
Speaker 1: and you feel addicted to it, it's because it's releasing
Speaker 1: all of these amazing things, and it's not really that
Speaker 1: it's they've found that there's not a huge like cause
Speaker 1: and effect chocolate seratonin link. It's probably more that it
Speaker 1: chocolate is fatty and sugary and it tastes real good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There have been a lot of studies actually looking at
Speaker 1: the psychopharmacological effects of chocolate, essentially how groups of chemicals
Speaker 1: such as cannabinoids and chocolate react in our brain and
Speaker 1: make us chocoholics. I guess, And the study results have
Speaker 1: kind of been mixed. They really haven't been able to
Speaker 1: pin down one specific chocolate craze chemical in there. So
Speaker 1: it's like, well, some people really like it, and I
Speaker 1: guess it's I guess it's good. Um. But there was
Speaker 1: the study called Chocolate and Cheese their effects on Mood,
Speaker 1: sort of looking at okay, well, we know that it
Speaker 1: probably has something to do with the fat and chocolate.
Speaker 1: So if we take a sweeteness savory like cheese and
Speaker 1: compare it, what happens and their best conclusion was that
Speaker 1: it's probably the oro sensory effect of eating chocolate. Essentially,
Speaker 1: we like how it smells, how it feels in our mouth,
Speaker 1: just all of the sensory sensations of eating chocolate. The
Speaker 1: look on your face right now, Caroline, I feel like
Speaker 1: you've been whisked away. I need to get fund that
Speaker 1: Easter basket. You need to go to Pleasure Island from
Speaker 1: the said, I absolutely do. Um. Speaking of health stuff,
Speaker 1: one thing that does get brought up in women's magazines
Speaker 1: a lot is if you like chocolate, ladies, not only
Speaker 1: are you gonna get fat, but you're gonna break out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what about what about that? Connection. Yeah. Um, that's something
Speaker 1: that I've always been worried about because I had so
Speaker 1: many pimples when I was a young girl, and even
Speaker 1: now my horm I'm thirty, right, like, I shouldn't break
Speaker 1: out anymore, but I still do. Adult acne totally exists
Speaker 1: hormones anyway, So they looked at whether researchers looked at
Speaker 1: whether um, chocolate actually does produce acne, and again the
Speaker 1: results were kind of mixed, but they did find that
Speaker 1: among the people who broke out who did break out
Speaker 1: and experience acne, here's here's a little bit of what happened.
Speaker 1: So after people ate chocolate and then we're exposed to
Speaker 1: the bacteria that caused acne, they found that the blood
Speaker 1: was shown to have more markers of inflammation than the
Speaker 1: people who had not eaten chocolate. But they're just not
Speaker 1: sure what component of chocolate actually caused that inflammation, whether
Speaker 1: it is the fat or whether it is the sugar.
Speaker 1: I mean, we know that sugar causes inflammation in the body,
Speaker 1: but they're not quite sure about the acne link. It
Speaker 1: seems like that's the story with everything regarding women in chocolate.
Speaker 1: We're just not quite sure. But here have some chocolate
Speaker 1: in the meantime while we try to figure this out,
Speaker 1: let's also talk about the stereotype of periods making women
Speaker 1: crave chocolate even more. Yeah, I I am. I was.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell the truth here. I was a little
Speaker 1: dismayed to find out that there is no scientific link
Speaker 1: really supporting the hypothesis that you crave chocolate more around
Speaker 1: your period, because I swear I don't know what it
Speaker 1: is in my brain, in the brain of Caroline Urban
Speaker 1: Podcast or Extraordinaire, I don't know what's going on that
Speaker 1: like leading up to my period, I'm just like gorging
Speaker 1: on chocolate, and like as I'm stuffing the fifteen candy
Speaker 1: bar in my face, I'm like, oh, Okay, I see
Speaker 1: what's happening. But I wonder if it's just not so
Speaker 1: much the chocolate as maybe a connection between menstrual cycles
Speaker 1: and comfort food. And some scientists say that, you know,
Speaker 1: chocolate contains minerals like magnesium and iron, which we may
Speaker 1: be deficient in around our periods. Things like that. All
Speaker 1: I know is just I just want it. 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 happened. 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 link king 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
Speaker 1: study finding, one of the lead authors said, police, don't
Speaker 1: get us wrong. This doesn't mean that you can eat
Speaker 1: all of the chocolate that you want. We're just saying
Speaker 1: it's 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 comfort 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, I don't. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's the same things, Like I'm surprised there's not more
Speaker 1: terrible chocolate stock photography. I mean, I know there is.
Speaker 1: But you know, the way we see women laughing over salads,
Speaker 1: the same way we see women eating yogurt, like chocolate
Speaker 1: is in that same ballpark. As far as like women
Speaker 1: are so stupid. Look at what you're eating and how
Speaker 1: you're eating it, and like you're pinning all of your
Speaker 1: hopes and dreams on it, whereas men are just told
Speaker 1: that they really want a grill meat. Yeah, you want
Speaker 1: a hamburger? Have a hamburger? Sloppy, Joe's sloppy. Joe's not sloppy,
Speaker 1: jays Nope. Well, Caroline, I think we've now pretty much
Speaker 1: exhausted all of our chocolate knowledge, and now it's time
Speaker 1: to hear from listeners. I want to know if there
Speaker 1: are guys out there who are also a self identified chocoholics.
Speaker 1: I want to know who the ladies are like me,
Speaker 1: who could care less about a bag of Eminem's, Give
Speaker 1: me some dol Rito's please, or like any kind of
Speaker 1: chip you get me. I'm saying savory rather than sweet,
Speaker 1: and anyone who I don't I don't know. What are
Speaker 1: your thoughts on chocolate? Let us know. Mom's Stuff at
Speaker 1: Discovery dot com is where you can email us. You
Speaker 1: can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or send
Speaker 1: us a Facebook message. And we have a couple of
Speaker 1: messages to share with you right now. So I've got
Speaker 1: a couple of messages here about our new male Grooming episode.
Speaker 1: This one is from Jess, who writes in My Dating
Speaker 1: Career I despised male body hair. I thought it was
Speaker 1: just plain unattractive and probably wouldn't have looked twice at
Speaker 1: a hairy dude. However, a few years ago I met
Speaker 1: a guy and film madly in love with an extremely
Speaker 1: hairy dude. I mean his back has started to connect
Speaker 1: with his chest hair level of Harry Anyway, his hair
Speaker 1: a nous drives me crazy too, but in a good way.
Speaker 1: I think a huge part of what we find attractive
Speaker 1: is just what we see on TV. The unknown is
Speaker 1: always scary. It's really frustrating because he, as you mentioned
Speaker 1: many men are, is very self conscious about his man
Speaker 1: for He's even asked me to tweeze hairs from areas
Speaker 1: that bother him. Once you associate body hair with a
Speaker 1: manly dude who treats you like gold, it's very sexy.
Speaker 1: Here's hoping for more hair representation in the media. Ah
Speaker 1: and for love, and I hope, I hope that letter
Speaker 1: makes that gentleman feel better who wrote us very concerned
Speaker 1: about whether he'd find a date. Yeah, don't worry about
Speaker 1: your hairy backs. Don't worry about it. I have a
Speaker 1: letter here from Gretchen who wrote in about beards as well,
Speaker 1: and she said, well, I can definitely see a trend
Speaker 1: in the popularity of beards on men on TV. I
Speaker 1: wonder if this is just a trend in certain social circles.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's because I live in Alaska that I have
Speaker 1: never thought of a beard is something trendy, just something
Speaker 1: some men had and others didn't. When I was growing up,
Speaker 1: my father sported a beard, and my husband grows when
Speaker 1: every fall and shaves it off in the spring. He
Speaker 1: does this as he works outside and below zero weather,
Speaker 1: and it often helps keep him warm and when spring
Speaker 1: comes it's too warm. I know other men up here
Speaker 1: who also follow this practice. I like my husband's appearance
Speaker 1: both ways, so whatever he wants is fine with me.
Speaker 1: On a recent trip this winter to London, England, we
Speaker 1: did take an interesting notice of the lack of beards there.
Speaker 1: In fact, my husband's caught the attention of one small
Speaker 1: boy who marveled at his appearance, exclaiming and pointing at
Speaker 1: him out of pure amazement. I also think, if a
Speaker 1: man isn't well endowed in the facial hair department, what
Speaker 1: is wrong with being clean shaven if that suits him.
Speaker 1: Butter and then Gretchen has uh, some more comforting words
Speaker 1: for our hairy men out there, She says, on the
Speaker 1: topic of other body hairman, it's personally, I like a
Speaker 1: guy with some chest hair and find the idea of
Speaker 1: waxing it or shaving it off because that is what
Speaker 1: women like. Silly, so fear not men, some women dig it.
Speaker 1: So thanks, Gretchen. I'm sure a lot of listeners out
Speaker 1: there appreciate your viewpoint, and thanks to everybody who's written
Speaker 1: into us mom. Stuff at Discovery dot com is our
Speaker 1: email age us and if you want to find links
Speaker 1: to all of our social media, all of our podcast,
Speaker 1: blogs and videos, you should head on over to stuff
Speaker 1: Mom Never Told You dot com for more on this
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