Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to stuff.
Speaker 1: I never told your prospection of I Hiart Radio's house
Speaker 1: staff works. This week's classic episode is inspired to you
Speaker 1: by the Everywhere podcast, which is a new podcast that
Speaker 1: UM is done my good friend of mine, Daniel. Um.
Speaker 1: He's one of those people that when you meet your
Speaker 1: somehow just friends, you've hardly said anythinking to each other,
Speaker 1: but you're just friends connection. And it could be because
Speaker 1: he really loves to travel. I really love to travel.
Speaker 1: Do you love to travel? I do love to travel.
Speaker 1: I love it, um Bridget and I we did an
Speaker 1: episode on women traveling alone a while ago. Um. It
Speaker 1: can just be it's not for everyone, I will say that,
Speaker 1: but it can be really empowering and just really a
Speaker 1: space for personal growth. Right. I love doing that actually right.
Speaker 1: I missed my college graduation because I got a good
Speaker 1: deal to go to Europe for three weeks and I
Speaker 1: did it by myself. Yeah, I loved it. I missed
Speaker 1: those moments I do too. Um. For a while, my
Speaker 1: friends had a cardboard cut out of my head and
Speaker 1: it was the spirit of Annie because I would always
Speaker 1: travel like whenever I could, during like spring breaks or whatever.
Speaker 1: It was I was just gone. So there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of great pictures of me, like my group of friends
Speaker 1: in this cardboard. I really really love it. Um. But
Speaker 1: Everywhere was cool because it's things that you won't find
Speaker 1: in guide books. UM. It's kind of a way if
Speaker 1: you're if you're looking to travel on any budget to anywhere,
Speaker 1: how can you do that? And he has these commandments
Speaker 1: of travel and getting the best out of it and
Speaker 1: being respectful when we travel. Um. So I I really
Speaker 1: did it, UM, and I think some of the listeners
Speaker 1: will really enjoy it. And UM for this classic episode
Speaker 1: Women's Wander list Um, it fits right in to kind
Speaker 1: of the spirit of Everywhere. So we hope you enjoyed.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff Mob Never Told You from House Supports
Speaker 1: dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
Speaker 1: and I'm Caroline. And over the past few weeks on
Speaker 1: the podcast, we have been delving into the world of
Speaker 1: women and exploration and women adventurers who are going all
Speaker 1: around the world doing all sorts of incredible things. And
Speaker 1: to close out this series, partially because it's summer travel
Speaker 1: season and partially because it just seems like the right
Speaker 1: and natural thing to talk about is the issue of
Speaker 1: women traveling alone, women's wander lust, what it is like,
Speaker 1: whether you are a stem explorer or someone who wants
Speaker 1: to climb the highest mountain in the world or not. Not.
Speaker 1: Just women leaving their homes to see something they have
Speaker 1: never seen and doing that alone. It's it's a super
Speaker 1: big deal to a lot of people for women to
Speaker 1: be traveling by themselves, whether we're talking about women today,
Speaker 1: women in a golden age of expiration so like the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, or whether we're talking about women in fourth
Speaker 1: in the fourth century. Yeah, Susan Jacobi at The New
Speaker 1: York Times writes about how women traveling alone has always
Speaker 1: been looked at a little suspiciously because there immediately all
Speaker 1: of these questions raised that essentially repeat over and over again, Well,
Speaker 1: why would a woman want to travel alone? What is
Speaker 1: wrong with her? And she mentions how in the fourth century,
Speaker 1: Christian pilgrims were the first quote unquote respectable women who
Speaker 1: traveled alone, and really, for a long time, religious pilgrimages
Speaker 1: and family emerge seas were the only situations when it
Speaker 1: was socially appropriate for a woman to set off on
Speaker 1: her own without any kind of chaperone or male companion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: God forbid a woman travels without some sort of male protection,
Speaker 1: because everybody's going to assume, whether we're talking about the
Speaker 1: fourth century or whether we're talking about today, people are
Speaker 1: going to make some crazy assumptions as far as like
Speaker 1: her sexuality goes. For instance, people are going to think
Speaker 1: like she's a loose woman, that uterus is floating about,
Speaker 1: making her crazy, or she's just terribly lonely. She's either
Speaker 1: she's either hyper sexual and looking for anonymous sex, or
Speaker 1: she is just desperate and lost in the world, or
Speaker 1: maybe both. Yeah and and Jacobe writes about these this
Speaker 1: this trope of the solo woman traveler and talks about
Speaker 1: how even today we have these lingering, internalized stereotypes about
Speaker 1: what it means for a woman to travel unencumbered and
Speaker 1: unaided by a man or family entourage. And this is
Speaker 1: something that Sarah Hepola over at Salon echoed. She talks
Speaker 1: about how a woman traveling alone threatens tradition and propriety,
Speaker 1: and because women often doubt themselves, we tend to stay
Speaker 1: towards safe harbors and soft landings, hiding behind the needs
Speaker 1: and wants of others and It was really in the
Speaker 1: mid nineteenth century, which is considered by some the Golden
Speaker 1: Age of female travel, that more and more women, particularly
Speaker 1: well healed women, started to brave away from those safe
Speaker 1: harbors and soft landings. And it was partially due to
Speaker 1: advancements in transportation technology. You have steamships and railroads that
Speaker 1: made travel more feasible. Yeah, and this allows women to
Speaker 1: go forth to explore, to learn to see the unseen
Speaker 1: and therefore gain some autonomy, break some of those gender norms,
Speaker 1: that status quo. And this is particularly true though, and
Speaker 1: we would be remissed to skip over this. It's particularly
Speaker 1: true for white middle class women. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: privilege at play when you talk about exploration, particularly during
Speaker 1: this area of this era, because when you look at men,
Speaker 1: for instance, white upper class men traveling abroad, seeing the Empire,
Speaker 1: their heroes, their heroes, and the way they talk about
Speaker 1: the quote unquote natives is very patronizing. It's very like
Speaker 1: a racist, very racist as well. But you know what
Speaker 1: a lot of women during that time, especially the upper
Speaker 1: class white women who were traveling the Empire as well.
Speaker 1: I mean, they weren't that far off either, and they
Speaker 1: by leaving the gender norms of the modern West. They
Speaker 1: were able to go into these you know, so called
Speaker 1: uncivilized societies and feel as though they were at the
Speaker 1: top of some power hierarchy. Yeah, it was interesting that
Speaker 1: if you read a lot of the travel women's travel
Speaker 1: writings at the time, a it is usually coming from
Speaker 1: women who could afford to travel, and so you have
Speaker 1: that element of privilege going on there, and then you
Speaker 1: have the element of white privilege going on, but you
Speaker 1: also have the subtext of them starting to question their
Speaker 1: female status, their gender role in the West because in
Speaker 1: these other places, due to these elements of privilege, they
Speaker 1: are higher on the hierarchy than they are at home.
Speaker 1: And this is something that Aziza Ahmed, writing for the
Speaker 1: post Colonial Studies Department at Emory, talks about saying that
Speaker 1: the East was seen and that's capital e east. The
Speaker 1: East was seen as a place for women to regain
Speaker 1: power through race, which was lost at home because of gender.
Speaker 1: And while that is that's not that's not necessarily something
Speaker 1: to celebrate because it's obviously like the Indigenous people who
Speaker 1: are being thrown under the bus, uh for the sake
Speaker 1: of a woman finding herself a little bit more. But
Speaker 1: but it's it's an interesting snapshot of the time of
Speaker 1: how sort of the socio cultural element of travel in
Speaker 1: the mid nineteenth century when these women were going out
Speaker 1: in corsets and skirts and heavy clothes and hats and
Speaker 1: going into these what they would call uncivilized foreign lens. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, Kristen, you mentioned so as they go to
Speaker 1: other lands and travel and see other things, and they
Speaker 1: they find themselves on top of this perceived hierarchy, and
Speaker 1: how that translated into the perception of how they were
Speaker 1: treated at home. I mean, if we talk about explorers
Speaker 1: the way we have defined it so far in this
Speaker 1: series explores being there's people who have to go out
Speaker 1: and they have to find answers. I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: as if women who did and wanted to research, it's
Speaker 1: not like they were welcomed into explorers groups. So a
Speaker 1: lot of the time, if you were a woman who
Speaker 1: had scientific or mathematical or anything leaning you, you kind
Speaker 1: of did have to pick up and leave and go
Speaker 1: elsewhere to perform research. Yeah, this was a lot of
Speaker 1: kind of anthropological research happening under the guise of just
Speaker 1: being a wealthy woman traveling. And there were a lot
Speaker 1: of popular women travel writers at this time, which which
Speaker 1: is a little surprising that they were so well received,
Speaker 1: but I guess it was because they were bringing back
Speaker 1: news of an unknown land. And so you have people
Speaker 1: like Isabella Bird, Lady, Mary Wortley Montague, and Mary Kingsley
Speaker 1: who wrote a lot and made their names in their
Speaker 1: travel writing, which again tended toward objectifying indigenous people and
Speaker 1: their quote unquote savage ways. And talking about these women
Speaker 1: writing um a lot of the time and I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that this applies specifically to the women Christian decided,
Speaker 1: but a lot of the times these women travel writers
Speaker 1: would sort of maybe embellish a little, maybe make the
Speaker 1: native people's seem more savage or uh, sort of outside
Speaker 1: the norm than they really were. And so these travel
Speaker 1: logs attracted a lot of attention and uh Rachel Friedman
Speaker 1: over at Bitch cites Lady Helen Defriends eighteen sixty three
Speaker 1: satiric Listings from Low Latitudes, which basically makes fun of
Speaker 1: this trend of women travel writers and their travel logs.
Speaker 1: She writes about a trip made by the fictional Impulsia Gushington,
Speaker 1: who when I first was skimming over this article, I
Speaker 1: was like, there was a woman named Impulse. Okay, I
Speaker 1: get it. I did the same thing. It's like that's
Speaker 1: the worst name, but I get it. Um, But Impulse
Speaker 1: thea sort of stood in as a figure mocking the
Speaker 1: era's upper class female travelers in their wide eyed, sort
Speaker 1: of naive and shocked observations about the people that they
Speaker 1: encountered in foreign lands. But it also served to sort
Speaker 1: of I don't know, I think it kind of served
Speaker 1: as a backlash to women having this freedom, like how
Speaker 1: weird are you You're writing all of this like trite
Speaker 1: stuff about traveling and how you're so special and how
Speaker 1: they're so shocking. And but the thing is dufferin A
Speaker 1: is a woman writing the satire, and b was inspired
Speaker 1: to write about Impulsia Gushington, which I don't know. I
Speaker 1: find out they're very funny. Dufferin, You're quite a whit.
Speaker 1: But it was she was inspired to write this after
Speaker 1: taking a trip down the Nile, which was a very
Speaker 1: passionateing to do at the time with her son, so
Speaker 1: she herself a travel writer. To me, it read as
Speaker 1: what today would be a satire on Eat, Pray, Love,
Speaker 1: you know, essentially saying, oh, here we have another white
Speaker 1: woman going into a foreign land to find herself. If
Speaker 1: only we could talk to dufferin, Yeah, if we could
Speaker 1: get different on the podcast, that could clear some things
Speaker 1: up for us. Right, But there is another book that
Speaker 1: we found from eight sixty five called Women Adventurers, written
Speaker 1: by Mini Muriel Downey, in which she profiles I think
Speaker 1: it's five women travelers of the day, and she writes
Speaker 1: those in our book followed husbands and lovers for love.
Speaker 1: So they say how much more might be made of
Speaker 1: their stories if only they themselves were not the narrators. Basically,
Speaker 1: she was saying, it's just too bad that these women
Speaker 1: were not alone traveling, because if women are on alone traveling,
Speaker 1: then you know they realized so much more instead of
Speaker 1: just following men. And that's still the refrain now, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean absolutely every you know, when you read uh
Speaker 1: travel essays by young women on various website at various
Speaker 1: travel magazines, etcetera, etcetera, you know a lot of them
Speaker 1: do talk about these personal journeys of discovery, discovery of themselves,
Speaker 1: discovery of new places, discovery perhaps of a future husband
Speaker 1: or temporary lover. Right, But but how rich the experience
Speaker 1: was for them to go on their own. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: for that reason, I would say that in the early
Speaker 1: twenty first century where we are today, that we might
Speaker 1: be in this golden er age of female travel and
Speaker 1: travel writing because you have more women than ever before
Speaker 1: traveling alone. Uh and freedmen. For instance, reported in New
Speaker 1: York Magazine a two thousand thirteen poll of travel agents
Speaker 1: which found that it's much more common for women to
Speaker 1: travel alone than men, and seventy of the agents they
Speaker 1: pulled noted that more female travelers embark on solo trips
Speaker 1: in their male counterparts. And the average age of a
Speaker 1: solo traveler is not the young woman fresh out of college,
Speaker 1: but a forty seven year old female. Yeah, and usually, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, something has happened in her life that's pushed
Speaker 1: her out on this journey, whether it's just divorced or
Speaker 1: maybe the death of a loved one or parent. And
Speaker 1: I mean, I think those reasons, even if those are
Speaker 1: things specific to a certain age group, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think that those major life changes are what push a
Speaker 1: lot of people out into the world on a journey
Speaker 1: of discovery. And that reminds me of reading that Bitch
Speaker 1: article by Rachel Friedman in which she talks to a
Speaker 1: travel expert who started leading workshops for women travelers, and
Speaker 1: her main demographic was women in their forties and fifties who, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had like hit some kind of dramatic point in
Speaker 1: their life and just felt the need to flee. And
Speaker 1: I've felt that before, just like I need to get
Speaker 1: on a plane and be in a place that looks
Speaker 1: nothing like my home as soon as humanly possible. And
Speaker 1: I don't want anyone I know to come with me. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I um I after going through a breakup, well it
Speaker 1: was actually like a super like TRIPLI doubly traumatic thing
Speaker 1: of heartbreak for so many Anyway, I ended up hopping
Speaker 1: in the car and just driving to Charleston, South Carolina
Speaker 1: by myself and just wandering around and eating all the
Speaker 1: food and seeing all the sites because I was like,
Speaker 1: I just don't want to I just don't want to
Speaker 1: talk to anybody. I don't want to be at home,
Speaker 1: you know, I want to go out and think about
Speaker 1: things for a little while. Well, and people might say,
Speaker 1: but Caroline, weren't you so lonely eating all of the
Speaker 1: food by yourself? No? No, Yeah, I did a similar
Speaker 1: thing after a friend of mine died in a very
Speaker 1: tragic car accident, and my knee jerk reaction was to
Speaker 1: go to l A. I'd never been there before, and
Speaker 1: I went for my birthday. I also prefer to spend
Speaker 1: my birthdays in places I have never been before because
Speaker 1: it just makes planning so much easier. And like you,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to be alone. I didn't want to
Speaker 1: be around anyone. I wanted to observe and sort of
Speaker 1: just be alone with my thoughts. And it felt and
Speaker 1: it was lonely at times when you're surrounded by a
Speaker 1: lot of people, especially I think if you're in morbitisty area.
Speaker 1: But it was a good kind of loneliness. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's that's the thing. I you know, I um,
Speaker 1: I took a trip. I did study abroad the semester
Speaker 1: after I graduated college, which is weird, but that summer
Speaker 1: I went to England and then after everybody else went
Speaker 1: back to school, I stayed over there by myself for
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks, just traveling and seeing the sites.
Speaker 1: And yeah, you get these like pangs, especially around meal time,
Speaker 1: like I wish somebody was sitting across the table for me.
Speaker 1: But it's it's so nice. Also, it's it's it's a
Speaker 1: good feeling. It's like pressing on a sore muscle, almost
Speaker 1: that you're like, I'm doing something for myself. I'm focusing inward.
Speaker 1: I don't know not to sound to Eat Pray Love
Speaker 1: about it. But speaking though of Eat Pray Love, one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why we're seeing more women travel memoirs
Speaker 1: than ever before it's become this hugely popular genre is
Speaker 1: largely due to two thousand sevens Eat Pray Love by
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Gilbert. And I read Eat Pray Love. It might
Speaker 1: have been because I was also going through a breakup,
Speaker 1: so reading the book was perfectly timed. But I enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I know it gets a lot of flak,
Speaker 1: but I loved it and I cried. Yeah, I think.
Speaker 1: I think it gets a lot of flak from people
Speaker 1: who don't want who want to distance themselves from anything
Speaker 1: that even looks or smells like chick lit. But Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Gilbert is a very respectable writer, and while there are
Speaker 1: more high minded books out there, I mean, I enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: I've never seen the movie. I heard it was, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I've seen parts of it on TV, and it's
Speaker 1: it's not great. But yeah, I think, um, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think people need to not to get off on
Speaker 1: a tangent. I think people need to lighten up about
Speaker 1: the book. It's her journey, it's her story. You can
Speaker 1: tell yours two if you want. Yeah, I will say
Speaker 1: that I enjoyed Sheryl Strad's Wild more than Eat, Pray Love.
Speaker 1: They're often held up as like the two women travel memoirs,
Speaker 1: but there's such They're also so different and written from
Speaker 1: like very different times and places. And Sheryl straight goes
Speaker 1: out and hikes the Pacific Crest Trail, which is far
Speaker 1: different than eating lots of pasta in Italy. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I mean people forget that women don't all have one voice,
Speaker 1: although a lot of times, if you are a woman
Speaker 1: travel writer, you're expected to have the voice of other
Speaker 1: women travel writers. And so often women who are write
Speaker 1: the books or these essays are expected to write about
Speaker 1: their transformation, the personal journey, that the emotion and not
Speaker 1: that that's bad, not that they shouldn't, but it is
Speaker 1: interesting to see the contrast between what women do right
Speaker 1: and are expected to write versus what men are expected
Speaker 1: to write and what they end up publishing. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel like women's travel memoirs are also expected to spring
Speaker 1: from a place of extreme heartache and despair, whereas we
Speaker 1: can jump right in with a man on a road
Speaker 1: in the middle of his travels. At least that's what
Speaker 1: Lavinia Spaulding, who was the editor of the two thousand
Speaker 1: eleven Best Women's Travel Writing Anthology, reported. She said, a
Speaker 1: lot of travel writing by men is focused on what
Speaker 1: I saw, did eight, where I went, what goal I accomplished,
Speaker 1: whereas with women, it's who I met, what I learned,
Speaker 1: how I felt, how I changed. And that might be
Speaker 1: due to men and women maybe traveling different, maybe traveling
Speaker 1: for different reasons. Um, but it also might be due
Speaker 1: to editors and publishers sort of pushing women travel writers
Speaker 1: in that type of way. Well, this this got me
Speaker 1: thinking about the travel shows, what types of travel shows
Speaker 1: I enjoy watching, and like, I will watch for thirty
Speaker 1: hours at a time Anthony Bourdaine, But um, I cannot
Speaker 1: stomach Samantha Brown. And I started thinking about I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh no, am I a woman hater and myself hater?
Speaker 1: What's going on? Oh no? And then I thought no, no, no,
Speaker 1: because I would watch a women a women's travel show too,
Speaker 1: if it were led by a woman who was also
Speaker 1: like Anthony Bourdine, like maybe led by too feminist minded
Speaker 1: young podcasters, but like if you put Janine Garoffalo on
Speaker 1: an airplane and center overseas, I would totally watch that.
Speaker 1: I'm not as interested in what Samantha Brown is selling,
Speaker 1: you know, but does she is it? Because she has
Speaker 1: more of a like a gender stereotypical approach. Is that
Speaker 1: what it is? I don't know what it is. Maybe
Speaker 1: she's more touristy and more like, hey, guys, like pack
Speaker 1: your Fannie pack or whatever, whereas Anthony Bourdain's very much
Speaker 1: like I'm going to go into this back alley squid
Speaker 1: shop and I'm going to eat a bunch of squid
Speaker 1: and then I'm going to go to a bar with
Speaker 1: the squid shop owner. You know. It's it's very much
Speaker 1: more of like a more of it off the beaten
Speaker 1: path type thing. Well, and that's such a good distinction
Speaker 1: to bring up between the traveler and the tourist, because
Speaker 1: the tourist is what you never want to be, but
Speaker 1: the traveler is the person that we you know that
Speaker 1: that you want to sit next to them at a
Speaker 1: dinner party and hear all of their tales. Whereas a tourist,
Speaker 1: you're going to be like, oh no, well so I
Speaker 1: I think, because we still even today, there is the
Speaker 1: danger of falling into that trap of still looking at
Speaker 1: people in the country you visit as like an exotic other,
Speaker 1: you know, And so there is that danger of falling
Speaker 1: into that trap, and I I feel like it. Maybe
Speaker 1: I'm wrong, but a tourist is more likely to fall
Speaker 1: into that trave versus someone who is a traveler who
Speaker 1: is more willing to more willing and desirous of jumping
Speaker 1: into that culture learning all that they can, not looking
Speaker 1: at it from like a patriarchal You're this exotic other
Speaker 1: I have to to encapsulate somehow and put into a box.
Speaker 1: But I want to join you, yeah, or I need
Speaker 1: to come and change your problematic gender norms that that
Speaker 1: that I feel are like hyper repressive. Instead, a traveler
Speaker 1: would go in and say, oh no, actually, I am
Speaker 1: going to go hang out with the women and see
Speaker 1: how they live their lives and not try to insert
Speaker 1: myself into into their way of life, but rather absorb
Speaker 1: it and learn about it. But getting back though to
Speaker 1: these princes and at least how travel writing by men
Speaker 1: and women is marketed. Straight herself has talked about how
Speaker 1: male travel stories are often seen as universal, perhaps because
Speaker 1: of the thing of how they tend to focus on
Speaker 1: you know what I did, saw eight, whereas women's and
Speaker 1: this goes for writing by women in general often is
Speaker 1: pigeonholed as being very particular and only for women. Um,
Speaker 1: and that's one reason why when she was writing Wild,
Speaker 1: she pushed for a gender neutral cover. So if you, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, if you have a copy of Wild, you'll
Speaker 1: see that there's a boot on the front. She was like,
Speaker 1: I wanted I didn't want men on the subway to
Speaker 1: be embarrassed having my book out reading it. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot of women authors out there, travel writers talk about
Speaker 1: how everybody wants everybody goes to pink first. They're like,
Speaker 1: let's make a pink cover. One author talks about how
Speaker 1: well I finally succeeded by getting a yellow cover. Another writer,
Speaker 1: a woman of color, talks about how her travel book
Speaker 1: was was not even given the broad audience of women.
Speaker 1: Hers was pigeonholed as African American studies. And she's like,
Speaker 1: I'm not some anthropological like study you're you know, I'm
Speaker 1: a woman travel writer, Like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1: And I'm pretty sure The title of her book is
Speaker 1: The Black Girl's Guide to Traveling, which clearly is a
Speaker 1: travel book, not an African American studies book, but that
Speaker 1: also touches on our conversations about, you know, women in
Speaker 1: literature and marketing and all of that. But um, it
Speaker 1: also leads us to these two major themes that come
Speaker 1: up with women's solo traveling, where it has to be
Speaker 1: both transformational and also terrifying. And so that first theme
Speaker 1: of transformation is one that we've heard a lot about.
Speaker 1: We've already talked a lot about it. That often a
Speaker 1: woman's journey that ends up the whether it's published or
Speaker 1: whether it's just you know, a woman who's not a
Speaker 1: writer going off and traveling. It's often sparked by some
Speaker 1: emotional moment in her life or something something like heartache
Speaker 1: or trauma that sets her off on this journey of
Speaker 1: self discovery. And a lot of times, I feel like
Speaker 1: any women's travel essay that you read, the resounding message
Speaker 1: is to do it because it will transform you, and
Speaker 1: especially if you do it alone. You have Sarah Heppola
Speaker 1: at Salon, who we sited earlier, who talks about how
Speaker 1: she essentially just got in her car and drove around
Speaker 1: the United States for months alone. And you have Jill
Speaker 1: Philipovic at The Guardian writing about how I think it
Speaker 1: was post breakup she went to Europe and Freedman, who
Speaker 1: we site all the time on the podcast. She's essentially
Speaker 1: the patron saint of Semanthy at this point. But she
Speaker 1: similarly talks about how when she was in her early
Speaker 1: twenties she went traveling alone and she was nervous at
Speaker 1: first but so quickly relieved to be by herself. And
Speaker 1: so there's that recurring theme over and over and over
Speaker 1: again of travel fourth young woman for it will be
Speaker 1: transformative and also feminist. Absolutely. Even Toby Israel at Salon
Speaker 1: talks about female hitchhiking about how you, as a woman,
Speaker 1: you know, are much more likely to be hit by
Speaker 1: a car than you are to be killed and raped
Speaker 1: while hitchhiking, and so she talks about how that was
Speaker 1: a major she she overcame a major hurdle of fear
Speaker 1: and trepidation when she decided to accept that for that
Speaker 1: first hitchhiking offer, and how even though there were some
Speaker 1: bumps along the way that she was so glad she
Speaker 1: did it. Yeah, and she ended up traveling more than
Speaker 1: thirty seven thousand miles hitchhiking through Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, and Germany,
Speaker 1: which I cannot fathom. I don't know if my bravery
Speaker 1: extends to the point of hitchhiking, because whether you're a
Speaker 1: male or female, you know, how many times have we
Speaker 1: been told since we were we children and to never
Speaker 1: accept her hide from strangers. Yeah, yeah, I I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know. She she does point out, like we've
Speaker 1: already said, she does point out that she had this
Speaker 1: double pronged privilege of being female, so she was not
Speaker 1: threatening to people who might stop and pick her up. Also,
Speaker 1: people like couples and grandparents would stop because they felt
Speaker 1: protective of this young white woman out on the side
Speaker 1: of the road. But also that whole white thing where
Speaker 1: she enjoys the privilege of being a white female, and
Speaker 1: so you know, other drivers don't, you know, feel threatened
Speaker 1: or whatever. So she she points that out that there
Speaker 1: it's not the same for everyone, right, um, But what
Speaker 1: does seem to be the same for a lot of
Speaker 1: solo female travelers, at least according to a two thousand
Speaker 1: to study out of the University of Florida, is that, yes, indeed,
Speaker 1: setting out on your own is empowering. These researchers talked
Speaker 1: to a number of women who had traveled on their own,
Speaker 1: and they found that the women described the experiences is liberating,
Speaker 1: not terrifying. Even though we're often warned over and over
Speaker 1: again that oh, if you are a woman traveling alone,
Speaker 1: you had better watch out. You better put on a ring,
Speaker 1: better get a ripe whistle, get too, and keep it
Speaker 1: in your mouth. All yeah, get some bare repellent, because
Speaker 1: it is a grizzly world out there. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think it's I think it's funny that they even studied this. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and they found too that after traveling alone,
Speaker 1: these women still prefer traveling alone because it gave them
Speaker 1: more opportunities to make new friends. Because when I went,
Speaker 1: for instance, I went on study abroad in college with
Speaker 1: one of my best friends still one of my best friends,
Speaker 1: and we had so much fun together and we made
Speaker 1: lots of memories. But there were also times that I
Speaker 1: know and like recognized as it was happening that we
Speaker 1: were kind of so caught up in like our own
Speaker 1: friendship with like doing things together, that we weren't making
Speaker 1: really friends outside of ourselves, which could have been cool there.
Speaker 1: I mean, we ended up doing that more once we
Speaker 1: had been there for a little bit. Um, but I
Speaker 1: think there there can be some missed opportunities. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: I UM, when I was by myself over in England
Speaker 1: and Ireland, I lost my lugg. I didn't lose the luggage.
Speaker 1: The airline lost the luggage. And so I get to
Speaker 1: Ireland after being awake for thirty six hours, and I'm
Speaker 1: feeling a little down in the dumps because I don't
Speaker 1: have any underwear, you know, like I have nothing, and
Speaker 1: I'm by myself and it's raining because it's Ireland, and
Speaker 1: I'm just like, oh God. So anyway, I'm walking up
Speaker 1: to Trinity College in Dublin, and who should I see
Speaker 1: but this girl that I did study abroad with. And
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, you stayed too, Hello. Can we
Speaker 1: be best friends for the next couple of hours? And
Speaker 1: so she and I um went all over the city.
Speaker 1: We saw a bunch of things together, we ate together,
Speaker 1: We talked to a bunch of like the local restaurant owners,
Speaker 1: and gotten to a bunch of great conversations. We eventually
Speaker 1: win our separate ways, but it was great to have
Speaker 1: that experience of kind of enjoying a foreign country and
Speaker 1: a new city with someone, so you could rely on
Speaker 1: that that extra presence, but then taking your own way
Speaker 1: and then diving deeper into all of these things you
Speaker 1: want to learn more about. Yeah, I've never traveled abroad
Speaker 1: by myself. I've gone places in the US, but usually
Speaker 1: I have some point of contact, whether I'm staying with
Speaker 1: a friend or you know, somebody to call, someone to
Speaker 1: meet up with, Because there comes that point of the
Speaker 1: free time, the after the sun sets, and is it
Speaker 1: safe to go out? Where do you go and eat alone?
Speaker 1: It can be, I mean, it can be kind of
Speaker 1: nerve racking. Yeah, And I mean that leads us into
Speaker 1: the next major theme of anyone discussing women traveling alone,
Speaker 1: which is danger. Danger. You've got to wear all those
Speaker 1: rate whistles. Don't go out after dark, certainly, don't go
Speaker 1: to clubs like watch your Back, don't stay on the
Speaker 1: first floor of a hotel. And while there is merit
Speaker 1: to a lot of the travel advice, I mean, certainly,
Speaker 1: don't be stupid but you don't want to do stupid
Speaker 1: things at home either. Yeah. I mean, when you look
Speaker 1: at the statistics of how dangerous travel for women actually
Speaker 1: is compared to how much we hear about how what
Speaker 1: a terrible idea. Essentially it is because we're just like
Speaker 1: putting ourselves at risk for the worst possible things to
Speaker 1: happen to us. Apparently there's such a vast gulf between
Speaker 1: the reality of traveling alone and what we are warned
Speaker 1: about traveling alone. And that's one reason in that women
Speaker 1: are likelier to plan, like to overplan, excuse me, their itinerary,
Speaker 1: because we're so nervous about that free time because everyone's
Speaker 1: been telling us that we're going to be murdered and
Speaker 1: or raped. Well, I don't know, I mean, I think,
Speaker 1: I mean, not to totally go off on a tangent,
Speaker 1: but I think that having that free time is so awesome,
Speaker 1: That unplanned free time is so awesome, just as long
Speaker 1: as you are smart about it and you're paying attention
Speaker 1: to your surroundings. Well, and I have a feeling too
Speaker 1: that you know, yes, be smart about it, um, but
Speaker 1: I also feel like they're there's this undercurrent of victim
Speaker 1: blaming in regard to the worst case scenario of being
Speaker 1: murdered and or raped, which has happened, and I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to make light of that, um but whenever the
Speaker 1: worst case scenario happens, the blame is immediately focused on
Speaker 1: the solo female traveler of well, why was she out
Speaker 1: there alone to begin with? Right, an Alice Driver at
Speaker 1: the Feminist Wire says that basically, by repeating these stories
Speaker 1: over and over again and telling women not to go
Speaker 1: out by themselves, we are limiting their movement. And I
Speaker 1: would say that by then limiting women's movement, making them
Speaker 1: too afraid to go out in the dark by themselves. Ever,
Speaker 1: we're also not allowing that to become normalized. We're not
Speaker 1: allowing the image of a woman at a cafe at night,
Speaker 1: or at a club or wherever she is at night
Speaker 1: by herself. We're not allowing that to become normalized. Well.
Speaker 1: And then there's also this deeper level too, as The
Speaker 1: New York Times talked about of how if and when
Speaker 1: a white female traveler, in particular, if something happens to her,
Speaker 1: it's often amplified by the media, which makes individual incidents
Speaker 1: seem like part of a larger pattern. Um and Christina Finch,
Speaker 1: who's the director of Amnesty Internationals Women Human Rights Program,
Speaker 1: told The New York Times on average, attacks against white
Speaker 1: women worldwide received more coverage than attacks against women of color.
Speaker 1: And then on top of that, you also have um
Speaker 1: the response to violence against Western tourists being met with
Speaker 1: a much faster response than violenced against local women, right.
Speaker 1: And then that leads us, of course to the story
Speaker 1: of Sarai Sierra, who in was murdered while traveling alone
Speaker 1: in Turkey. And so there's a lot of handwringing around this,
Speaker 1: I mean, admittedly horrific story about like why was she
Speaker 1: even alone in the first place, what was she possibly thinking?
Speaker 1: When in reality, like and it got a very fast
Speaker 1: and strong police response in Turkey. But this was a guy.
Speaker 1: This was like a crazy homeless man who tried to
Speaker 1: kiss her and she fought back, and then she threw
Speaker 1: a rock at him, and he bashed her head in
Speaker 1: with a rock basically, And so I mean, this is
Speaker 1: something that could have happened to any woman, but it
Speaker 1: happened to take play as violence against an American woman
Speaker 1: traveling by herself, and people seemed so outraged, particularly at
Speaker 1: her for traveling because she not only was a woman
Speaker 1: traveling alone, but she was also married, and people, some
Speaker 1: people were like, well, why wasn't your husband with you?
Speaker 1: Why weren't you? Are you one of those going back
Speaker 1: to that early trope, that mistrust of the woman traveling alone.
Speaker 1: She must have just been out trying to cheat on
Speaker 1: her husband. Why was she even talking to a man
Speaker 1: in the first place. It's so victim blaming, but more
Speaker 1: level headed responses to that admittedly horrific incident. It's the
Speaker 1: fact that when you look at things like domestic violence rates,
Speaker 1: murder rates, and sexual assault rates in the US, a
Speaker 1: lot of times there is a statistically greater chance of
Speaker 1: the worst case scenario happening at home rather than abroad.
Speaker 1: So in Sierra's case, for instance, according to data collected
Speaker 1: by the U. S. State Department, which keeps tabs on
Speaker 1: violence against American tourists, it found that there had been
Speaker 1: three murders of US tourists in Turkey, and I think
Speaker 1: it was either five or ten year long period, and
Speaker 1: Sierra was a New Yorker, which meant that in two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven alone, there were five hundred and two murders.
Speaker 1: So statistically speaking, in a way, she was actually safer
Speaker 1: in Turkey than she was in New York City. Right.
Speaker 1: And when we look over to Dysan McClain, who's the
Speaker 1: former New York Times Frugal Traveler columnist, she talks about
Speaker 1: how she has actually felt safest in countries that tend
Speaker 1: to have a more patriarchal or repressive society because those
Speaker 1: cultures tend to have lower crime rates and the local
Speaker 1: women tend to be more protective of traveling women, particularly
Speaker 1: those women that they see traveling by themselves. Now, obviously,
Speaker 1: in those kinds of societies, women travelers need to pay
Speaker 1: attention to the clothes that they're wearing. They need to
Speaker 1: be respectful of the local customs and not just try
Speaker 1: to bulldoze in and say free the nipples. I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna come in here and change everything. Um. And when
Speaker 1: you are being a respectful traveler, tourists, whatever you wanna
Speaker 1: call it, yeah, it's a lot of women travelers talk
Speaker 1: about how local women reach out to them and you know,
Speaker 1: try to kind of give them help along the way.
Speaker 1: And this is not to say thumbs up to super repressive,
Speaker 1: patriarchal societies, but rather to re examine Okay, how realistic
Speaker 1: is this overwhelming fear of women traveling alone? Is this
Speaker 1: rooted in reality or rooted in our fears about women
Speaker 1: traveling alone? Because I think one of the biggest fears, um,
Speaker 1: and I've felt this fear before as well of traveling alone,
Speaker 1: is the risk of sexual assault. We made a joke
Speaker 1: about rape whistles, but I've think that you know, putting
Speaker 1: yourself out in the world, in a in an unknown
Speaker 1: place does can make you feel very vulnerable. But again,
Speaker 1: when you look at the statistics, leaving your home doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily make you less safe or more at risk for
Speaker 1: sexual assault. So, for instance, um, there isn't hard data
Speaker 1: on all sexual assaults reported by female travelers, but the
Speaker 1: New York Times reports that from two thousand twelve to
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen, three British travelers requested consular assistance after
Speaker 1: alleged sexual attacks. For comparison, the Rape Crisis England and
Speaker 1: Whales Center estimates that five thousand women are raped in
Speaker 1: those countries every year. So yet, again, what are we
Speaker 1: so afraid of? Is it reality or is it just
Speaker 1: our concerns about the general vulnerability of women being out
Speaker 1: on their own? Yeah, I mean, I do think it.
Speaker 1: There's a lot about how society or societies view women
Speaker 1: and how they move through those societies well, and it
Speaker 1: could because it's that fear and the warning that we
Speaker 1: shouldn't do that, and then if something happens, we are
Speaker 1: the ones to blame. It's a bit rape culturally when
Speaker 1: you think about it, and you know, we've we've already
Speaker 1: said that. There are situations where, whether you're at home
Speaker 1: or abroad, honestly, you know, you just want to be
Speaker 1: smart and be aware, and so there are some tips
Speaker 1: to keep in mind when you are traveling by yourself. Um.
Speaker 1: One that Jody Edinburgh at Legal Nomad brings up is
Speaker 1: that it's a balance that you have to strike between
Speaker 1: thinking smart and trying to stay safe and also not
Speaker 1: succumbing to the fear. She recommends carrying a rubber doorstop
Speaker 1: to use in your hotel room, a safety whistle, staying
Speaker 1: in well lit areas, watching your drink, which is just
Speaker 1: at advice for life. Dress conservatively. This is a common
Speaker 1: refrain that we hear on a lot of travel tip blogs.
Speaker 1: Don't give away details about what you're staying to strangers,
Speaker 1: be careful with your eye contact, and maybe option wearing sunglasses.
Speaker 1: There's the example that one blog gave of being in
Speaker 1: like Northern Europe versus Southern Europe, and if you're in Italy,
Speaker 1: there's the whole thing about eye contact and a smile
Speaker 1: being considered an invitation to engage, and that maybe if
Speaker 1: you're not looking to engage in conversation, put on some
Speaker 1: some big old sunglasses. Should you wear your sunglasses at night?
Speaker 1: Like the song goes totally, And going back to that
Speaker 1: University of Florida study that we talked about earlier, some
Speaker 1: of the tips from the veteran women travelers who were
Speaker 1: involved with that talked about how important it was to
Speaker 1: really know where you're going, in the sense of knowing
Speaker 1: the country, knowing the culture, and on top of that,
Speaker 1: and this is stressed over and over and over again,
Speaker 1: and particularly for women traveling alone, to select accommodations in
Speaker 1: safer parts of town. You might want to spend more
Speaker 1: money on going to, say, a name brand hotel, rather
Speaker 1: than staying at a hostle off the beaten path that
Speaker 1: might not have twenty four hour security um. And I
Speaker 1: think those are one of the things where it's not
Speaker 1: so much fearmongering, but that's just a basic safety measure.
Speaker 1: But I hated I hated. I hate it because, like
Speaker 1: what I mean, I was a college student who didn't
Speaker 1: have the money to stay in a hotel. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, so I I picked hostels instead, stayed with strangers,
Speaker 1: slept in a room in on the west coast of
Speaker 1: Ireland with like twenty other people, one of whom was
Speaker 1: a ginormous man on the bunk below me who snored
Speaker 1: all night. But when you're like like a terrible level
Speaker 1: of tired, you can sleep through it. I show you.
Speaker 1: But um no, but I hate that advice that you
Speaker 1: need to stay in a nicer hotel because that is
Speaker 1: incredibly limiting. Well that's one thing that this came up
Speaker 1: actually in the New York Times Frugal Traveler column, which
Speaker 1: is written right now by a guy, and he gets
Speaker 1: a lot of responses from people saying, we really need
Speaker 1: to hear from women. There have been I think two
Speaker 1: or three women before him who were at the helm
Speaker 1: of a column, and you know, he hears from people
Speaker 1: saying like, well, sure you can go and live on
Speaker 1: a dime because you're a guy and you can travel anywhere,
Speaker 1: and that might be more of a challenge for a
Speaker 1: woman who really wants to be as take as many precautions.
Speaker 1: I should say as possible. I don't want to say
Speaker 1: as safe as possible, because I feel like that also
Speaker 1: still feeds into this whole like, you know, threatening message
Speaker 1: that women get who want to travel on their own.
Speaker 1: But if you want to take as many precautions as possible,
Speaker 1: staying at the nicer spot in a well lit area
Speaker 1: is a big one. Yeah, just prepare yourself some hustles
Speaker 1: like have dance parties all night. I'm just gonna warn
Speaker 1: you about that. And on top of that, there is
Speaker 1: an even more depressingly common piece of advice, which is
Speaker 1: to where a wedding ring real or fake, And even
Speaker 1: as a travel expert, Rick Steves suggested carry a picture
Speaker 1: of a real or fake husband. And I feel so
Speaker 1: conflicted about this one, particularly going to the extent of
Speaker 1: carrying a photo of a husband, because it's yet another
Speaker 1: example of whether you are abroad or if you are
Speaker 1: at a bar down the street, where if someone is
Speaker 1: giving you unwanted sexual attention, the quickest way to stop
Speaker 1: it is to not say no, thanks, not interested, but
Speaker 1: to rather say I have a boyfriend, I have a husband.
Speaker 1: Even if you were to say, and it is the truth,
Speaker 1: oh I have a girlfriend, won't stop it. You gotta
Speaker 1: say I have a boyfriend. You need to show the
Speaker 1: presence of another male in your life. And I want
Speaker 1: to hear from listeners on that one, because, like I like,
Speaker 1: the feminists inside of me wants to fight that one
Speaker 1: so much. But I mean, like we said earlier, we
Speaker 1: can't go into other societies, other cultures, you know, determined
Speaker 1: to change the way things are, because we're just not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not our job to go and fight the patriarchy, right,
Speaker 1: and so it stinks. But if you want to avoid hassle,
Speaker 1: you gotta wear your sunglasses. And maybe you got to
Speaker 1: wear a wedding ring. Well, And I could see, okay,
Speaker 1: I could see if I was traveling alone, and particularly
Speaker 1: if I wanted to go out at night, then putting
Speaker 1: on the wedding ring, because I feel like that's when
Speaker 1: it's you know, the fear probably creeps in the most. Um.
Speaker 1: So if you wanted to go have a nice dinner,
Speaker 1: have a drink at a bar, maybe it would just
Speaker 1: kind of you know, it serves like it put a
Speaker 1: radar shield around you. Um. But I mean, I think
Speaker 1: to that just depends on what country you're traveling in,
Speaker 1: what type of culture you're traveling in. When I was traveling,
Speaker 1: I had zip zero problems with people harassing me. The
Speaker 1: only time I was harassed is when I had been
Speaker 1: up for thirty six hours or so in Dublin and
Speaker 1: some guys were hassling me about taking up an entire
Speaker 1: booth in a pub by myself. Like, listen, I'm sorry
Speaker 1: that I'm not really caring about etiquette right now as
Speaker 1: far as where I sit. I'm just so tired. But no,
Speaker 1: they weren't. There was no sexual advances there, so that's good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because look, you are yet another one of the women
Speaker 1: who have traveled alone and come back to tell the
Speaker 1: tale that it is okay out there in the world.
Speaker 1: It's awesome, it's I I I enjoyed, I super enjoyed
Speaker 1: traveling by myself. Well, and they're also advantages of being
Speaker 1: a solo female traveler. I feel like a lot of
Speaker 1: times the conversation stops at the fear factor, but there
Speaker 1: are plenty of advantages, such as, first and foremost, being
Speaker 1: able to see the world on your own terms and
Speaker 1: your own schedule. You could sit in that booth at
Speaker 1: the pub in Ireland as long as you wanted, Caroline, well,
Speaker 1: until those guys until they until they were complaining too loudly. Um.
Speaker 1: And then there's the whole thing about women tending to
Speaker 1: get invited to people's homes more often and maybe being
Speaker 1: more protected by locals. I this is absolutely something that
Speaker 1: I experienced when I was on the West Coast of Ireland.
Speaker 1: I wandered into this pub and I didn't have any cash,
Speaker 1: but they had a twenty five euro credit card minimum,
Speaker 1: Like just kill me, right, So I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: give me all the fish and chips and as much
Speaker 1: guinness as I can swallow. So I'm sitting there and
Speaker 1: I'm like stuffed to the gills and I'm drunk because
Speaker 1: I've been drinking all this guinness. And I walk up
Speaker 1: to the bar and I'm like, have I reached the
Speaker 1: minimum yet? And this couple next to me, here's my
Speaker 1: accent and they start talking to me and they it
Speaker 1: turns out they are a couple from New Jersey who
Speaker 1: quit the rat race. Their kids were done with school,
Speaker 1: they quit the rat race, moved to the West Coast
Speaker 1: of Ireland. In this tiny town of Dulin opened to
Speaker 1: stained glass shop and lived above it, and they were
Speaker 1: so sad to hear my story about losing my luggage
Speaker 1: and that all I wanted to do was take a
Speaker 1: hot shower after a day of traveling, and they were like, well,
Speaker 1: wait here, and the wife ran back to the house
Speaker 1: and got me a towel so that I could shower
Speaker 1: that night, and we just sat there at the bar
Speaker 1: and talked. Turns out their son, I don't know if
Speaker 1: he still is, but was a police officer from around
Speaker 1: where I am from in Georgia. So small world, very
Speaker 1: small world. But I think there is something to be
Speaker 1: said for being a woman traveling by yourself being open
Speaker 1: to those experiences. I think it's important to not shut
Speaker 1: yourself off, but to look and feel open to talking
Speaker 1: to strangers absolutely, because you never know that you're going
Speaker 1: to meet in a good way. In a good way. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One tip that was brought up by traveler Emily Baron
Speaker 1: talking to the New York Times Frugal Traveler was that
Speaker 1: one other advantage you might not think abouting a woman
Speaker 1: traveling alone is that you are likelier to have a
Speaker 1: tampon on you. And she talks about how tampons can
Speaker 1: serve as the you know, build the bridge between you
Speaker 1: and local women, because I mean, we've all been there.
Speaker 1: If you are in a situation where your period came,
Speaker 1: you don't have a tampon, and the woman who has
Speaker 1: one and hands it to you, it's almost as if
Speaker 1: you can hear the angels saying like that, Oh, and
Speaker 1: you're bonded immediately. And also if you break your nose,
Speaker 1: you can shove one up your nose too. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: all sorts of survival uses for tampons. If you don't
Speaker 1: believe me, google it. It's true. So I mean, guys,
Speaker 1: obviously you can carry tampons too. It's just, you know,
Speaker 1: it might be if a guy hands at a woman
Speaker 1: a tampon, a local woman a tampon, I don't know
Speaker 1: if it would necessarily be a bridge builder in the
Speaker 1: same way as if you or I were to hand
Speaker 1: her one that might halt the conversation. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: could a little bit um. And on top of all
Speaker 1: of it, the advantages, obviously are just the confidence building,
Speaker 1: the personal transformation that we hear about so often. You
Speaker 1: can go, you can eat, you can pray, you can love,
Speaker 1: if that's what you so desire. That was my mom
Speaker 1: telling me about that. Yeah, I I absolutely, I absolutely
Speaker 1: encourage people to do it. And there's plenty of resources
Speaker 1: out there for you to learn about traveling, whether you're
Speaker 1: traveling solo or a friend whoever, if you want to
Speaker 1: go do this as a lady explorer. Yeah, there are
Speaker 1: so many women focus travel sites and travel magazines. Caroline,
Speaker 1: didn't we read that women traveling is so hot right now? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Consumer Affairs quoted. Uh, someone is saying that it's the
Speaker 1: new trend in travel, to which I said, wrong. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's good to see that that more people are actually
Speaker 1: paying attention to this this section of the population. Apparently
Speaker 1: that woman had never heard of Impulse the A Shington
Speaker 1: that's right. I don't know, but yeah, they're all sorts
Speaker 1: of websites out there for women's specific travel tips, such
Speaker 1: as Women's Adventure Magazine. There's Wanderlust and Lipstick, which I
Speaker 1: know the name might sound a little hokey, but it's
Speaker 1: actually really good resource. There's Black Girl Travel. There's also
Speaker 1: You Go Girl, which is from the author of the
Speaker 1: Black Woman's Book of Travel and Adventure and Women on
Speaker 1: the Road, etcetera. Etcetera. I mean, really, it's all just
Speaker 1: a Google search away. And what's so encouraging I think
Speaker 1: about it is that when you google like these types
Speaker 1: of resources for women, there's so many different kinds. There
Speaker 1: is stuff that's on the girl group side, so you're
Speaker 1: going with a lot of women. It's a journey of
Speaker 1: self discovery all the way to like the rustic strikeout
Speaker 1: on your own to climb that mountain. So there's there's
Speaker 1: just everything in between. And I like how people, whether
Speaker 1: you're a woman entrepreneur starting a group like this or whatever.
Speaker 1: I like that the fact that women are different is
Speaker 1: being recognized. Yeah. Yeah, we want different things and we
Speaker 1: enjoy different things, and that's fantastic. And I just love
Speaker 1: though I've honestly really enjoyed just sitting here listening to
Speaker 1: your travel stories but I've never heard before, and I
Speaker 1: love hearing and reading other women's travel stories as well,
Speaker 1: because not just sound cheesy, but they're very inspiring, you know,
Speaker 1: because it can be I've been fearful before about hopping
Speaker 1: on a plane and going to the other side of
Speaker 1: the world, probably why I've never done it alone before.
Speaker 1: But I tell you what, Caroline, after this podcast, I
Speaker 1: am ready to go somewhere, do it. My boyfriend might
Speaker 1: be like, hey, where are you going? You and I
Speaker 1: should just go and then we'll just split off and
Speaker 1: come back together at the end of it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then swap our swap our stories. But now we
Speaker 1: want to hear your stories and not just women. Any
Speaker 1: solo traveling adventures and photos we would love to read
Speaker 1: and to see, so please send us all of them.
Speaker 1: Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com is our
Speaker 1: email address. You can also tweet us places you've been
Speaker 1: pictures at mom stuff Podcasts. You can also message us
Speaker 1: on Facebook, and we have a couple of messages to
Speaker 1: share about our episode on World War two and Rosie
Speaker 1: the Riveters right now, So Caroline, I have one here
Speaker 1: from Megan, who writes my maternal grandpa dropped out of
Speaker 1: high school in nineteen forty two and fibbed about his
Speaker 1: age to enlist in the Marines. While on leave in
Speaker 1: late forty four or early forty five, he married my grandmother,
Speaker 1: who was sixteen at the time and not working due
Speaker 1: to her age. She did take part in scrap metal
Speaker 1: drives and gardened extensively. She became pregnant pretty much right
Speaker 1: away and didn't work until the early nineteen fifties. However,
Speaker 1: her older sister, my great aunt, did work. My family
Speaker 1: is from East Tennessee, and my Aunt Vernell worked on
Speaker 1: the Manhattan Project. WHOA, that's so cool. Workers in Oakridge
Speaker 1: were not permitted to tell friends and family that they
Speaker 1: worked for what they were doing. Maryville, where my family lives.
Speaker 1: In oak Ridge are some thirty miles apart, and it's
Speaker 1: possible my family wasn't aware that the secret city existed.
Speaker 1: My aunt has told me that none of the workers,
Speaker 1: including her, had any idea they were building bombs. Each
Speaker 1: line of production was subdivided and kept hidden from the
Speaker 1: other lines. And when the war ended, she married her
Speaker 1: soldier boyfriend, had a couple of kids, worked as a
Speaker 1: hospital nurse, and collects a pension from the government for
Speaker 1: her help in aiding the war effort. Their oldest sister
Speaker 1: was a war nurse and has unfortunately passed away. I
Speaker 1: know I've heard some of her stories, but at the
Speaker 1: time I was too young to realize the significance of
Speaker 1: what I was hearing. Yeah, so thanks so much Megan
Speaker 1: for sharing those stories. Aunt Vernell. Well, I have one
Speaker 1: here from Laura says my great aunt who I used
Speaker 1: to love to visit work during World War Two in
Speaker 1: a more unusual setting. She was in the Air Force
Speaker 1: and stationed for at least part of the time in Hawaii,
Speaker 1: where she drew maps of enemy territory from descriptions given
Speaker 1: to her by pilots. She was quote unquote older, being
Speaker 1: in her mid twenties at the time, so I got
Speaker 1: the impression that she had a higher rank than the
Speaker 1: young men she was stationed with. I believe it was
Speaker 1: during this time she interacted with some of the higher
Speaker 1: up people, including Winston Churchill, as they needed to view
Speaker 1: her work. Also, from what I understand, you can see
Speaker 1: some of her work today at the Smithstonian. Her name
Speaker 1: is Mary Taylor. Heis that's h I s E. So
Speaker 1: thank you, Laura. I am so blown away by our
Speaker 1: cool listeners and they're really cool grandmothers and great aunt,
Speaker 1: great aunts and well, if you have cool stories about
Speaker 1: your Rose of the riveter, grandmother, a great aunt, or
Speaker 1: travel stories, you want to hear all of them. Mom
Speaker 1: Stuff at how stuff works dot com is where you
Speaker 1: can email us and for links to all of our
Speaker 1: social media's as well as all of our blogs. Podcasts
Speaker 1: and videos to perhaps keep you entertained on your travels
Speaker 1: and beyond. There's one place to go, and it's Stuff
Speaker 1: Mom Never told you dot com For more on this
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