Replay - Ep 314: What a Tangled Sociocultural Web We Weave with Tressie McMillan Cottom

Hey there, I'm Dory. And I'm Elise, and we are on holiday break. Hope you are enjoying one yourself. And we know a lot of your interviews are coming at us this time of year, but instead of doing a full wrap up on 2024, we picked an episode from the summer that we are replaying today in case you missed it. And it's our conversation with the sociologist and writer, Tressi McMillan Cottum. So enjoy the episode and enjoy the holidays.

Hello and welcome to Forever 35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I'm Dori Schifreyer and I'm Elise Hu and we're just two friends who like to talk a lot about serums. And today we have

I mean, I always hesitate to be like, this was one of our best conversations because I genuinely enjoy all of our conversations with our guests and think that they all bring so much. But this conversation in particular,

To me goes into the February 35 Hall of Fame. It's just one mic drop after another, after another, so much insight. I needed to have this conversation because we have been going through such a turbulent summer.

It's like age 10 years in one week and we got to speak to our guest today. She was just so wonderful so we are just going to get right into it. I'm going to introduce her and then we will.

get into our conversation because it was, it was so great. I don't, I don't want to like waste another second. Um, so today we are talking to Tressi McMillan cotton. She is a trenchant cultural critic, celebrated sociologist and award winning writer. She is known for rearranging your brain in the span of a carefully turned phrase. And

I would say she did keep track of how many times your brain gets rearranged in the course of this conversation. I'm just going to say, um, her breath is truly phenomenal. It moves from the racial hierarchy of beauty standards and the class codes of dressing for work to the predation of for-profit colleges and the stain of racial capitalism on our plural democracy all while reimagining the essay form for the 21st century as she goes.

Tressi is a professor with the Center for Information Technology and Public Life at UNC Chapel Hill, a New York Times columnist, and a 2020 MacArthur Fellow. Also her excellent 2019 collection of essays thick was a National Baguar Finalist. I mean, so good.

her fans that call her essays, Tresez. She's just so great. She's a great TikTok follow. She's just so wonderful. I just feel honored that we got to have an hour to just ask for whatever we wanted. Same. Because at one point, I was just like, Trese, what do we do? I know. It was really funny.

Also her forever 35 questionnaire for those of you on Patreon is also very enjoyable though that'll come out tomorrow So head on over to patreon at patreon.com slash forever 35 to check that out because it's it's really it's really delightful Before we get to trust see

Just a reminder, our website is feber35podcast.com. We have links there to everything we mentioned on the show. We are on Instagram at feber35podcast. Again, our Patreon is at patreon.com slash feber35. We have our newsletter at feber35podcast.com slash newsletter. And we love to hear from you. We love to hear your thoughts about episodes.

guest suggestions, questions, comments, concerns. You can call or text us at 781-5910-390. You can email us at forever35podcast at gmail.com.

I particularly love product wrecks because you all have such great ones. And that's not just for serums and essences and moisturizers or anything. It's also like Trader Joe's products and Costco products. Totally. Send in your recommendations if there are things that you love. And just a reminder for our new listeners, our schedule is to drop episodes like this one, longer conversation, interviews,

on Mondays, and then on Wednesdays, we have mini-eps where we hear from you and we play your voicemails and share your texts and share your emails and share your wrecks. And if you have questions, we answer those in the mini-eps on Wednesdays. And then we're also dropping fresh shows on Fridays, our casual chats. Where Dory and I just chop it up. We just chop it up on Fridays. And that's just for our Patreon subscribers. And of course, if you're on Patreon, you could also get ad-free episodes.

So Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Mondays, interviews, Wednesdays, Minnie Epps, Fridays, casual chats. Yes, in our monthly pop culture recommendation apps as well. Yeah, that's on the Patreon also. Yeah. All right. So here is Tressy.

Well, sometimes people ask like, who's your dream guest? I got to say, Tressi, you have been on that list for quite some time, so I'm so thrilled to have you on Forever 35. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. You know what? I don't even care how true that is. It is so lovely to hear. I really appreciate it. I don't like you a lot.

I actually do think that about you, by the way, from what I know of you from socials for years, which is how we know each other. I followed you and read you for years. No, I just wouldn't say anything. That's what she does. Yeah. That does seem like you. Yeah. So no, but in all honesty, I've just been such a fan of yours for so long and on multiple platforms, and it's just so great to get to talk to you. So thank you for coming on.

It's a pleasure. I really am happy to be here. Oh, good. Well, as I think you know, we like to start our guest interviews by asking about a self-care practice, even though we know you have a little beef with the term self-care. We're going to have to be elastic with it. Exactly. So how you're taking care of yourself, however you define it. Yep.

Listen, a lot of boundary making and learning to, um, you know, embrace the boundaries that I make is setting them as one thing, embracing them as like right and proper and that I deserve them is something else entirely. And it's an ongoing project, but I really do think.

If I compare how I make boundaries today with even just a year ago, much less five years ago, I think I'm a different person. I still fall into automatic guesses. I can still be a little passive aggressive about things I don't want to do, things like that. But I think it's a lot less. And the effect that it's had on the quality of my life is really demonstrable, like I can tell.

And you know what, I'm taking a lot of vitamin D. Mm hmm. Me too. Doctors' orders though. Yeah. Yeah. Same. And I'm even taking like a little, we are doing like this high dose. And I am telling almost every woman in my life, especially every woman of color, black woman, especially because we are chronically have vitamin D deficiencies, the impact it has had on me is wild. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So vitamin D,

That's great. Yeah. In Korea, all the babies and the toddlers have to get it because there's just not enough sunshine. You're not getting it enough naturally during the winter months. But I remember when I moved to Southern California, doctors were like, oh, you're getting enough vitamin D anyway, just from being outside. Are you taking a walk outdoors? Are you jogging? And then it was

some are all right. But you're in North Carolina, right? Isn't it? I'm in North Carolina. And yes, we do have sun. But one, it can be too hard to be in our sun because we also have humidity. Right. So even if you, I know, you're Southern California people, I'll try to describe it to you later. Okay. So, you know, you can be outside, but maybe not be out as long as you would like. And

Even with that though just the way we kind of live I mean unless you and I'm very fortunate I live in Chapel Hill North Carolina which is a super green place and super walkable which is why I choose to live here so in my daily life like I walk to the store and that's you know a little more sunshine but you know in regular life and I think how most people live even if it's sunny outside what you're in an office building and

Right? You are going from parking lot to parking lot. So like even I think when the weather is conducive to getting enough sunshine, I think being more deliberate about it is probably a good thing. And I don't know the stats off my head. I just remember them being like overwhelming and ridiculous. I know it's like over 50% of Black people in America anyway have a vitamin D deficiency. And I suspect that's not just about sunshine. Yeah. We probably should be giving all of us a vitamin D supplement.

So we're glad you're getting your vitamin D. Yeah. You said in the last five years, you've gotten so much better at holding your boundaries. Can I ask how you did that? And was there a moment where you felt there was a shift or it was just sort of a gradual thing?

It is gradual. I don't know that it's hard before and after, but boundary making, what I've come to understand is that boundary making really is just a reflection of how you think about yourself. And that necessarily self-esteem, although that's part of it, but it's like accepting who you are in the world, accepting like your place in the world, accepting your responsibilities,

And over time, mostly I've just been exhausted by not having the boundaries. And it really became critical that I figure something out. Because if your mind doesn't tell you that you need the boundaries, your body really will. And it was clear that I was chronically tired. It was clear that, and the place I can get really sensitive about it, because I don't care about bodies. I don't care about my body.

But my creative energies, I care about a lot. And so it became difficult to write or more challenging to write. And I'm just not a good happy person when that happens to me. And it was clear that I was spending more time doing things that I didn't have to do now. That's the big one. Realizing the difference between what I wanted to do and what I had to do.

um was about me accepting that oh my life is changed and just checking in with myself every once in a while and going oh no i don't have to do that anymore that was a responsibility for a different time in my life or my career or people don't need this for me anymore they have aged out they've matured they have gone on i have that problem often with like my students

Um, kind of hanging on a little too long. Uh, and so like just reflecting and making the time to go, okay, where are we in the world right now? Um, and I think a lot right now about my time in like, like a pie over time, like over six months or so. I'm like, okay, over the last six months, how much of what I have done is something that gave something back to me.

versus the things that I did out of obligation that I really didn't get much from. And I'm constantly recalibrating that at about, I'm trying to do it every six months or so.

This relates to our next question because obviously we like to say that this show is about how we take care of ourselves. And so we'd love to hear you talk about the difference between consumerist, commodified self-care in the form of baths or essential oils or exercise clubs.

And the kind of self care that really makes a difference in your life or in women's lives. And you know, and I, here's the thing, I'm a Libra and was raised an only child. And I say all of that to say this, I love stuff. Yeah. I love pretty things, sparkly things, things that fizz and the best. So like all of that, just fine. I want to put that out there to say, I'm not a hater.

of the lush bath bomb or whatever. It is just what my challenge here, you know, I interviewed Pooja Lakshmi once for New York Times, just one wonderful book about real self-care. And reading her book actually crystallized some things that I often thought, but, you know, and it picked up from other places, but she really gave me a language for it, which is there's a difference between consuming the things that pacify us when we aren't

taking care of ourselves, right? So, Calgon, taking me away at the end of the day is really just about the fact that you needed to be home earlier from that job, right? It is compensating maybe, it's pacifying, but is it really giving you more capacity to feel good, right? So, real self-care doesn't require buying anything, even though, you know, buying it makes you feel good, that's fine, but I think we can get caught up in

the panic of feeling drained, and then you'll take anything, right? I'll take any planner. I'll take anything you got. I'll take anything because I'm desperate, right? But the next day, your life is still the same. And so real self care is creating spaces where you can say no when you want to, when you have time to reflect on your priorities and your boundaries.

and when you get to do the things that you care about. And a bath bomb doesn't really do that. We are speaking to you at a particularly turbulent time. Tell me about it. Hoo boy, following a recent assassination attempt. And as America faces a very likely possibility that President Trump returns for another term and following some really monumental Supreme Court decisions.

So, trusty as one of America's foremost, you know, sociologists and cultural critics, we just want to know how do we cope and how are you coping? Okay, so I'm going to start with the second one because I feel like I need to figure that one out before I can tell other people how they should be coping. I, listen, I've got a sort of strict time limit on how much I can consume every day. I mean, you know, we go from consuming mass death and

political disenfranchisement to just straight up authoritarianism in like a matter of days. And I truly believe that the human mind we have evolved into, where we are now, maybe will be something else in the future, we just are not built to consume all of this. I don't think you are prepared or capable of processing

all of the horrible things that human beings do to each other all across a great, big, wide world. But technology makes it so that we can see that, right? Yeah. I can see that for. I can see Palestine and I can also see Seattle and I can also see climate change and Arctic, right? All of that is like in my face constantly. And I don't think this is a real good solution because probably what we need is we need better filtering of

higher quality filtering of information to help us decide what we need to know versus what people want to put before us to make us scared and manipulate us, right? So I think a lot of what

what we do and call now information, right, making an informed public is really about manipulating how people feel politically. Real information, I think, would tell you what stuff means. Like, you can see a headline about, you know, climate change, but it doesn't tell you what you're supposed to do. It doesn't tell you what it means.

And I think we just feel chronically helpless. And that's like politically convenient, but really bad for human beings. And so until we figure out a way to do, I think, more high quality information, we have to do it for ourselves. We've got to do it at the individual level, which is always just a sign of failure anyway, to my mind. I'm a sociologist, right? I want big solutions. But time limits on what you consume

being realistic about how things affect you. So for example, I cannot do dead children. It's my thing, right? And so no matter how politically committed I am to any cause, if it involves dead children, the deal I have with myself is I will not consume that. It is not worth what it will do to me for days on end.

It isn't worth triggering myself. And to say that doesn't make me any less politically committed, it's just I'm not sure what benefit the world gets from me being in a corner crying. Every organizer and sort of spiritual person that I respect pretty much says the same thing. They say, choose the thing you can do in the world and do that.

That's the thing. You actually can't solve climate change and homelessness and poverty. You have to choose your thing. Do the best you can at it with other people and hope and pray. Other people are doing that on the other.

subjects, right? But I think we don't kind of get to get to that unless we like put time limits on what we consume would be really honest about what we can and cannot do. And then I also try to make spaces when I'm feeling really bad. So yes, I actually was one of those. I called a friend who was an organizer in Kentucky. And because talking to somebody who is doing something important makes me feel better.

Yeah. One of the best tonics for feeling helpless is watching people do something together. Some of the most hopeful spaces I've been in are places that I suspect the general public thinks of as depressing. I did an interview once with abortion doulas, for example.

you would think they are super serious, right? And speak like this because they do this really hard thing during really hard times, right? I was talking to them right after dogs. Instead, I walked into their space and the music was bumping. They were eating tacos and laughing with women on the phone who were calling them to get help to travel across state lines to get an abortion.

They are having a ball. They're having a great time. I see the same thing with like housing advocates. I go in and there are these people who say to me, yeah, my landlord trying to evict me again. It's like a third time, right? And they are all sitting around telling the story and having a good time. They actually do not feel helpless and depressed. And it is because they feel like they have agency. Yeah.

And so when I am feeling my most fragile and like, oh my God, where are we supposed to? I try to talk to people who I think are actually doing something. And then of course the better thing of course is go do something yourself. Right. Yeah. Okay, let's take a break and we will be right back.

First of all, I love following you on TikTok. Me too. It's like truly such a delight. And one of my favorite TikToks of yours is your bad wig theory TikTok. Oh, yeah. Okay. This thing.

I can never anticipate what will hit with people. This is it. I get asked about this so much. This one hit, can you sum up what your bad way feeling is? Oh, man. I know it takes like six minutes in the video because it's a response to something. One of these social media things where you need the lore, right? You need all right back.

So quickly the backstory is there's a joke with a little bit of like, I think, critical truth to it, which is that there's this idea in the black community among black women that whenever your hair looks the worst, white men find you the most attractive.

right and so this starts as a joke where like black woman were like I know it's time to get my braids done because a white man told me today I like to buy hair right so this starts and then somebody starts to overlay that with this really I don't know odd

form of content as a genre of content on TikTok of like interracial couples where they literally just tag it. That's their whole brand. Yeah, they are interracial couple. Someone, by the way, needs to write that thing because that is so odd to me. 2024.

Your whole brain can be your interracial couple. I just find that very strange. Anyway, but it's very popular on the social media. And people started pointing out that in a lot of these interracial couples, the joke was among black women married to non-black men, they would go see. She has on a bad wig. That's how she got her white man.

All right, so this is the joke. You gotta need to know this. And so, what was happening is that people were like, you know, jokingly putting on bad wigs and saying, well, this is the night I'm going out, right? I'm choosing who I want to talk to me, because I'm gonna put on my bad wig. And a bad wig would be a hard wig, one that doesn't flow. That's where it comes hard wig. If you wear hard wig, you have a better chance that a soft life was the joke, right? That's right, a soft life of greater privilege and ease, right?

Um, and so I see this and again, I'm fascinated by all of these little things. I'm like, I think interracial content is weird. I love the thing about the hair, uh, critique because I think we do a lot of our popular discourse about race through beauty, right? Um, if you're not comfortable talking about race, you tend to couch it and things about like beauty and dating and relationships.

And so I found that really interesting. And I promised off the top of my head, I just was, you know, I was riffing on this literature that I just know because I, you know, have taught feminist sociology before about why and how people, especially men, value women who perform a beauty ritual.

And there's this really interesting study, because you would think, oh, of course, they like it because you look better, right? They like that you wear makeup because you're prettier. They like that you wear high heels because you look sexier, you would think. You think, all right? But then that wouldn't, then hard win wouldn't make sense, right? But this great story, this great study, which has shown and has been validated in a couple of different ways since then. I know some people who are still working on it.

But the sociologist found, using like national survey data, I just think that's important to say, like they did this whole, you know, it was quantitative for the people who care about such things. And they found that, no, what it is is that men and women to a slightly lesser extent value women who perform beauty rituals, even if the beauty ritual doesn't make them more attractive.

So even when your makeup is busted, even when the hair is wrong, what they were really giving women credit for was effort, the labor, the labor of performing. And in fact, the more they could see that you made the effort, the better, which flies in the face of like doing a natural makeup look, right? No, men want to see the red lip and the eyeliner and the

I feel like we just saw this recently with, there was a lot of discourse around the Love Island contestants on. I have read this social show, but I've read about this. Yeah, and I think a lot of people, like the discourse was sort of like, they look so old, but they're only 24 or whatever. And it was kind of what you were saying, like they clearly had had so much either like plastic surgery or fillers or Botox that their faces looked so overdone.

Mm-hmm that I think to a lot of people it was like oh they look old quote unquote, but it sounds to me like they were performing yes this you know what yours When you what you're saying when you do that is I am signing up to be a particular kind of wife Yes, let's just be honest. I'm signing up to be a full-time Pilates wife And the deal when you make one of those marriage deals the implicit contract sometimes explicit But the implicit contract is you will stay thin

you will manage your diet and your parents, and you will remain a consumable asset to your male partner. And so you are working. Your work is just on your body. It's aesthetic labor. It's just play labor. Yes. You are working your butt off, in fact, quite literally sometimes in Pilates' class, right? It's about regimens in your body, and it's really about a lot of intervention, especially as you get older, because you have to stay

in this general age group of appearing as if you're somewhere between the ages of 18 and 35. And that you are concerned about aging, right? So you also need to be in this posture of fear, which as we know, again, from lots of men like women who are afraid, they like to scare us. So a woman who is anxious about aging even and showing that she's going to try to fend that off, right? All of that is attractive. Now, I do think that what happens, like in the case of the Love Island contestants,

which is, you know, just happens, I think, on a lot of the reality shows. There was this wonderful piece I read at once that showed reality contestants from like 15 years ago compared to the reality contestant, how much normal they looked 15 years ago compared to now. So I think it's just like a phenomenon across reality TV, but I'm not sure that men are actually sexually attracted to it. They are just attracted to the power dynamic on display.

Well, and I know the particular TikTok that you stitched when you talked about bad wig theory, I mean, it was a seemingly very wealthy, older white man. I don't know how old the woman was, but she seemed younger. And it seemed like there was just totally that dynamic at play.

Mm-hmm. This you know if we for my friends who do friends who write like You know kink literature and they're like all these people are doing is performing Like kink 24 hours. They have this power dynamic relationship, but it is that yes So the tiktok was you know, she chose a life of ease with an older wealthier partner Which is you know the goal for many people?

And part of being perceived by him was that she had to show the labor she was willing to do. Yeah. And when you are a black woman, that labor has to be even more obvious because there are already questions about your femininity, right? And so being ultra feminine means an ultra performance. That's why the hair would need to be exaggerated.

you need to exaggerate certain features and performances so that someone who isn't used to looking at or observing or consuming black beauty or how black women look will notice it. And so if your hair is like really nice but understated, I'm already not used to seeing that because I don't look at a lot of black women and I doubt that black women can be super feminine and I'm probably conditioned to want the exact opposite. So you have to work really hard, right?

Thus, the hard wig, like personifies, really captures all of that labor that a black woman has to do to be legible to the type of white male partners that some people think of as like pasta and lobster being better. Get my pasta and lobster. Yeah.

Let's stay on this topic of the work that we have to do on our bodies and or the women are expected to do on our bodies, because now it's obviously not just limited to any particular sex. Everybody is having to regiment our bodies because we're living in these digital worlds and constantly on front of screens.

And we are in yet another summer of Ozempic for Americans. So I'm just curious now that there has been so much discourse about it. Where have you landed?

on the exemplification of those who can afford it. I love that, those simplification. You may see that again. Okay, so those simplification of the culture, which is, I mean, we're undergoing in some ways something that is like historically continuous, right? We have

Been doing the same with diet that are going to fix bodies, especially women's bodies. We've been doing this now for like almost 100 years. So, on one side, like olympic and GLP ones or whatever, are just part of that.

Except if you do, like I've done, and you talk to medical professionals and you talk to researchers, they are quite serious about the science of these being different than anything we've seen before, which were actually while they may have been popular, were kind of blunt tools. So you think about something like gastric bypass, that's just blunt. It was like a mechanical intervention, right? They're just going in there and changing your engine.

Right and like yeah, it worked, but it's super it's not like changing the science of how your body works What they are excited about here is that no a Zenfic and GLP ones seem to scientifically actually change How your body performs physiologically and that's like apparently great and good and I believe them right and I'm not equipped to disagree um

But that is not the same thing as saying that it is a magic pill for obesity. And so what has happened in our cultures, we have conflated those two because we want to make money off of it. Right. Right. You got to figure out how to sell it to people and nothing sells in this country quite as well.

as a promise that you can be thinner. Because to be thinner, is to be richer, is to be better, is to be perceived as nicer. We tie up so much status into being thinner, that just by promising it, Ozimpic would have already been a big seller, but then it seems to actually work, and that's even worse. So where I land on this is, it's hard to talk to as many people as I have who are so happy.

about taking GLP once, it's changed their lives. There are women who have been able to get pregnant. There are women who are beating PCOS. There are just so many happy consumers of it. If I'm going to believe women, I got to believe them when they say they're happy. But then I also got to think about how you can be happy with something that's structurally pretty bad or that's structurally unfair, we should say.

And I do think that with OZEMPIC and the way it's been promoted, advertised, and especially priced, right, the healthcare financing of it, access, means that we have a system that is poised, I think just create more inequality instead of solving a site of real inequality in our culture, which is we still have a fat bias, a fat bias.

And that, well, osmotic will only fix that if not just if the fat people who want to take it can access it and afford it, but if we stop associating fatness with morality, like both of those things have to happen for osmotic to be like a radical game changer, right? You don't end obesity by getting rid of fat people. I think you end obesity by getting rid of stigma about obesity.

Yeah, it's similar to Botox, right? It could individually relieve anxieties for those who are anxious about aging and want to remove creases or from lines and things like that. But is it good for the community?

Yeah, it doesn't change that ageism is real. It doesn't change that your income potential goes down as you get older. It doesn't change that you become more vulnerable and weaker in our society, something we don't like as you age. Yeah, it can make you feel better. And there's some value to that. But is it valuable enough for us to invest a ton of public money?

A ton of research, a ton of advertising, a ton of people's lives and health in it. I think something, I think a drug has to be far more radical socially for us to give it as much credit as we're giving Ozempic right now. And you wrote about Oprah and Ozempic and how complicated this was in particular because

If Oprah can't fall in love with her body at any size or shape, then what hope is there for the rest of us? And listen. And I want to know, like, what right, what should we even have the right to expect of Oprah or expect from Oprah to? Yeah.

I feel like I've become the Oprah defender in the culture. And I don't know how that happened, but I do. So I think a couple of things were happening. I was a little surprised as a Gen X one on late Gen X, right? And I was a little taken aback by how much anger and resentment, maybe millennials.

and maybe a little bit of Gen Z but especially millennial women had for Oprah Winfrey. It was just stunning to me. So Oprah does this special to quote unquote confess, even that we say confess, right? I think that's so weird. But to publicly announce that yes, she had lost weight using, she didn't use the brand name, she just says she took one of the GLP ones. And there was a ton of mostly critical response

And so much of it coming from a place of like personal animus, like people were personally offended. And I thought that was really strange because I didn't see Oprah that way. Yes, I know Oprah spent years talking about her body and I know she promoted Dr. Oz and the running guy and the other guy. Like I get it right. She had platformed all of these people.

but I didn't think of her as like responsible for diet culture, but millennial women absolutely do.

And so I started thinking about why that was why there could be such a difference in how I remembered it and how they had consumed her and whether or not was fair to think of Oprah as being The person responsible for that like really like I mean, yeah, she was a very big deal I mean bigger than I think even people born after her time can understand because media has changed They don't know what it means to be Oprah Winfrey in 1999, right? That's just

It's nothing is as big as that right now. I don't know about you get a car. They don't know. And you know what they also don't know. I show it sometimes in one of my classes. They don't know why we think Tom Cruise is crazy. They don't know that. Yes, they don't know that. They don't know that. They don't know the code. No, I don't know the couch. Then when he jumps on the couch, they have no idea. Wow. Anyway, I know. I know. I know. It's fascinating. I was like, oh, wow. Then you don't know why we think Tom Cruise is dead behind the eyes.

It's because he had this moment on Oprah Winfrey. She's the pinnacle of achievement for a lot of women, especially of a certain age, especially for Black women. Part of the way she became that was that, yes, she talked about bodies. Here's the difference. I think Oprah Winfrey was mostly talking about her body.

And because of her celebrity, her mega celebrity at that, millions of women projected their feelings of their body onto Oprah Winfrey, right? But Oprah has just been struggling with being, frankly, an overweight black woman in a racist, sexist society and trying to figure out why becoming a billionaire didn't fix all of that for her. And frankly, I'm empathetic to that, right? You have a billion dollars and you mean to tell me you can't buy your way?

out of weight stigma? Like you can't just force people to call you pretty? Like I don't know, isn't that what like Bezos did? He just got enough money and many people agree that he was attractive. Right? And you mean it's hell. You agree? You agree? They do when he's standing there, I think. Well, and I mean, bring it back to performing beauty. Yeah. He is with a woman who fully perform it, Sonny. Yeah.

That's labor. She shows her work. Yes. She shows her work and his ex-wife does not. So you really see how, you know, the diagonics are talking about, yeah, at work or at play. Yep. Yes. Yeah. It's the status symbol of extreme wealth. Yeah. Right. Yeah. You know, I think that type of expectation that that type of woman is who you should be with, I think comes with the maserati, the yacht. It's like a package. You go totally.

Yeah. Totally. He's got the billionaire package. But a billionaire woman doesn't have that package. A billionaire black white especially doesn't have that package. Right. And yeah, hold her accountable for being a billionaire. Listen, I'm on a board with that. Do all that stuff. But I don't think you can blame Oprah Winfrey for the fact that your mom took you to Weight Watchers. I got it. I think you're blaming Oprah Winfrey because you don't want to blame your mom.

So we're just gonna take a short break and we will be right back.

Well, I think that's actually a good segue to the next topic I'd love to cover, which is we are coming up on the new season of Bama Rush, which is something you have written quite trenchantly about and talked about.

And I'm curious, the first season of Bama Rush was 2021. So we're now like three years into this. We're now on our fourth season. People are still somehow obsessed with it. And the sort of reminds me of what you were saying about how reality stars didn't look the same 15 years ago. Now you have these young women who are going into Bama Rush with like, this is how I need to look for Bama Rush.

There's like a Bama Rush look.

And with this like full awareness that they're being watched from outside the universities in addition to being like judged inside the sorority houses. So I'd love to just hear your thoughts on how you think Bama Rush has like made an impact on the culture. Bama Rush is like Tran Wives is like

All of the women on the dating shows, yes, it's about the look of a particular kind of GOP wife. It's about the ascendance of wanting to be a stay-at-home mom, right? All of that is just a response to powerful interests wanting to claw back some power over women. And I think the Bama Rush

Phenomenon just happened to hit at that moment. We had the technology to do it. And we had people willing to participate in it. A lot of people were at home and it was going to have been at home for a while. So you were like, you know, all of us were being getting comfortable being warriors in this sort of way to keep ourselves entertained. And we love consuming young women. We love consuming young women.

And so the Bama Rochester is just a perfect stew for that. And crucially, these women don't have an issue with performing in this way, right? They want to and they find it empowering. Oh, I got tons of letters from like, yeah, you act like we're paper dolls, one of them said, you didn't give us credit for our autonomy. I was like, no, I actually gave you credit for it because I start from the position that these are willing participants.

which says to us that whatever it is they are doing to themselves, subjecting themselves to being judged, being shunned, being evaluated, being found wanting, whatever they are subjecting themselves to, the possible rewards are so great to them that they're willing to do it. So my question was, well, what are those rewards?

What's the payoff for being a Bama Rush girl, right? And the payoff is not to be a Bama Rush girl, it is to be a future Bama Rush wife. It is about their proximity to men in a really powerful system in the University of Alabama that incubates, like that state's power elite, the politicians, the financial class, all of that.

And so becoming a, you know, pledging is just a sort of way station on the way to becoming that.

And so just like saying, you know, I'm willing to do Pilates and get my Botox, I'm willing to, you know, stand in front of a phone and, you know, evaluate the, you know, my style for millions of people is being my self-worth. Yes, you're choosing it. But that's because the rewards you perceive them as being pretty great. And it's pretty weird that in 2021, 22, those rewards are pretty much what their grandmother's rewards were. So yeah, these are just like really,

elite finishing schools for access to elite society, which for women still really hinges on only two things. The family you're born into and the man you marry. That's dark.

I know. Yeah. When you start thinking about all of, and I know this is literally what you do, but when you start thinking about the web of connections and how all this stuff is so interrelated, it can really get you down. It does. You know, I take those some light pleasure in. Like, it gets me down, but I feel like if I can sometimes capture like this, you know, Bama Rush is like this moving phenomenon. I can capture something like that and show.

And it's a really concrete way how all of those things are interrelated. I get some satisfaction from maybe making visible something that derives a lot of its power from being invisible. So when people feel convicted because they are consuming those young women, which a lot of my friends did, by the way, they told me I made them feel bad.

I was like, I'm sorry. But if it means we take a moment and go, yeah, like, what am I doing? Exactly. Yeah. Why am I a 45-year-old woman? Yeah. Watching a 20-year-old tell me about her David Yerman bracelet. What's happened here? Right.

Right? I think that's, I think that's worth it. I hope it is. I'm hanging a lot of my hat on it being worth it. Yeah, this makes your work so important. Just naming it, labeling, helping create containers for what we're seeing. I love containers. Containers are my favorite thing. Thank you. Well, and that's why we love you, Trustees.

You co-hosted a podcast for a long time with Roxanne Gay here to slay. I'm curious, do you have other plans to be podcasting again regularly? And if not, what did you learn from yourself or about yourself in that podcasting journey and from those conversations?

Um, we had a lot of fun. Roxanne and I doing here to slay. Talk about like, I think just capturing a moment. I think the podcast, I was doing this, just captured a moment. When we first started talking about doing it, it was really just about two people who liked and respected each other. And every time we saw each other, we had a good time. And we said, Hey, we should do more of that. And podcasts were happening. So we were like, Oh, that's a way to do more of that.

But then the world changed almost. I mean, we'd only been recording like four months or so before, you know, COVID fall out from Trump. All of that was happening. And so, you know, it was just a moment. And I don't know that I could recreate that. But I did learn a few things. I learned, as you all well know, it's hard. It is hard work.

Making interesting relevant audio content and you have to figure it out on the fly because there's really no real guidebook. So one, I have an immense amount of respect for people who do it. So thank y'all.

Um, I also think it is super important that more women do it because a lot of what we try to do is hire women to be on our show, especially women of color and queer women. And it was really hard to find them. And that is because the system doesn't, um, apprentice them. There's not a good pipeline on the, that no, there is not, especially on that technical side. And so I learned that and that's become one of my sort of, you know, pet issues. Um, I also think I, you know, learned another way to tell stories, which I really love. Um,

I like trying to again, take these things that can be really hard to think about to consume and making them maybe a little bit more digestible. And for people feel a little less alone about trying to figure it out. I'm not sure we have enough journalism or media that helps us figure stuff out. Yeah, we got a lot that sells a sort of like brands, but I don't think we have enough that helps us figure stuff out.

Well, Tressi, before we let you go, is there anything that you feel like is bringing you hope or joy in the present moment? Yeah, I'm pretty sure there is. I've been trying to spend as much time in nature and outside as I possibly can. One of the things that media does is it lowers your sight line. You're just looking in the phone, you're looking at the TV, the computer.

And just the act of kind of going up and like looking at the horizon really does change my perspective a little bit about things. I find it helps with my anxiety and my stress level to do that, which is not news. I'm sure, you know, doctors have been telling us that forever. I just finally figured out for myself. But I think during these times it's more important probably than ever. As I said, I get a lot of sort of vicarious

um, thrill and comfort from the people I meet during the course of my work who are doing really important work and somehow make it look fun and easy. There's a, there's an elderly black woman in Louisville, Kentucky named Miss Donna. I actually just got her phone number yesterday from my friend because I said, I'm feeling bad. I need to talk to Miss Donna. Miss Donna is just this woman who has lived more life than anybody has a right to live been through enough where she

could check out and nobody would blame her she's lost her children to violence she's dealt with predatory landlords she survived the civil rights me you know just by being elderly and black you want. She's been through a lot and when i talk to miss Donna she is so future focused.

at like 68, 70 years old. She is organizing people in section eight housing or subsidized housing for better living conditions. Most of them overwhelmingly young women with children. And she's not doing that. She'll tell me, I'm not doing, I'm not going to live to see it.

She's like, I'm doing this for me. I'm done. She's like, I just want to get it done before she goes. I want to get it done before I die so I can see the young girls in my apartment complex win. She wants to see them win. She wants them to taste winning before she dies. And when I talk to people like that, I go, well, I've got some nerve, right? And so I get a lot of vicarious comfort from the fact that I think they're probably a lot more Miss Donna's out there than we know. And if you are fortunate enough to find one,

checking in with them and being in relationship with them, I think really can give you a little hope. And I'm kind of hopeful by the student movements. I know they have taken a lot of, a lot of flat in the media. Some of it earned, but a lot of it unearned because no matter what, I have a position that I never judge protesters. If my butt's not the one out there, I don't judge them.

Right? So I don't, I never judge protest tactics unless I'm part of the protest. So you can do that as much as you want. But if they are protesting, it means they are paying attention. And I am very hopeful about anybody right now who is paying attention because I think we better be. Well, here's to Miss Donna and all the Miss Donna's. Yeah. Shout out to all the Miss Donna's. And thank you again to you, Tressy.

for being such a clarifying voice. Oh, thank y'all for thinking I'm clarifying. I really appreciate it. I do. I feel like that is going to be one of the episodes that I go back to. I don't like re-listen to forever 35 episodes generally as a rule. This one though. But this one I feel like is a re-listener for sure. Yeah.

I love what she said about what she's doing to take better care of herself too, just the batteries. Yes. And that you don't have to say yes to the same things that you would have last year or two years ago or five years ago because your life has changed and you have changed or your capacities have changed and I

I have trouble with that, so. Yes, very wise. Very wise. Well, at least let's get into intentions. Okay. Last week, I said I was going to do my tennis elbow exercises, and I'm happy to report that I have been doing that. I've been keeping this little two pound weight on my desk.

And so I can just rest my hand on the armrest of my chair and just do the exercises as I'm talking, which is nice. I actually saw my doctor today, and he was like,

It's going great. Yeah, like it's going great. Like he did say tennis elbow is like very sneaky and like when you think, just when you think like everything is cool, it can come back. So he like definitely keep doing the exercises like.

You know, just stay the course, essentially. But that was, that was a nice follow up. Yes, it was great news. And then this week, we are going on a trip soon. I know that you have had a crazy travel summer. Yes, but this is my first and only trip of the summer. And I've been, I've become a little obsessed with the subreddit, her one bag.

Are you familiar? No. Are you familiar with? You're familiar with the concept of one bagging, right? I assume so. Does that mean just like everything into one bag? Yeah, like one bag and a personal item. Oh, yeah, of course. That's my whole life. Yes. So I guess there is like a bigger subreddit.

for everyone, but then women found that they had like special hacks, hacks or unique needs. And so there's a special subreddit just for women, female identifying people who want to one bag and people will post

They'll be like, I have this trip. I'm going to Italy for a week. Then I'm going to London and then I'm flying to Cairo or like, you know, so it's usually some like crazy itinerary with like multiple climates. And they'll be like, how does this look? I'm trying to one bag it. And people will like give feedback on their packing. I'm like considering posting my packing.

Yeah. Share it on the Patreon. I'll share it on the Patreon. I might post it to her one bag. I usually travel with one bag, but I am intrigued by the idea of cutting it down even more.

So one of my major, I get asked about how to pack all the time. And I just did a feature for downtime, the sub stack by Alicia Ramos about packing and how I pack only because, you know, I've been a foreign correspondent and the.

two tips that I always share about packing are one, after you've packed your whole bag, do an edit and take out a third of it. So because that you won't need, like usually you even after you pack it into one bag, you've over packed. So you still take stuff out and I do that for my toiletries in particular because it's way the most.

Yes, liquids way the most so try not to even bring liquids if you can get if you're going someplace where they're likely going to be there or you can just buy them when you're yes. And my other one.

is packing cubes. I always like, I stuff everything into packing cubes such that everything gets really, really compact. But it's tricky. It's this is all tricky during ski season and those months, like when there's just a lot of gear. And so I try to like level that up by getting the

What is it? What is that? Like, you know how you can order products from like overseas and everything's kind of like shrink wrapped? Is it shrink wrapped? Like where they... Oh, like vacuum sealed? Vacuum sealed, yes. So I've gotten one of those vacuum sealed things for a lot of winter coats. Oh smart. So that I can pack my entire family into two carry-ons. Yeah. For skiing. And that's the only way it's possible. That's really funny.

But yeah, this one bagging thing is a great intention. It's kind of fun too, and it sounds like there's a whole subreddit around it. Yeah, there's a whole culture around it that I'm kind of fascinated by. And what's also nice is that now I can one bag it with Henry, whereas when he was a baby, that was impossible because babies have so much shit, even though they were tiny humans. So that's also fun.

Yeah, I always encourage each of my kids. This is all in the downtime newsletter that we can link from our page. But I encourage my kids, especially because I don't want them dragging their own suitcases, because then I have to deal with it. I have to put them above in the overhead compartments. And so I give each daughter one packing queue.

And so it's like, here's your packing cube. This is what you can put your stuff into. So like, wait, you put your whole family's stuff in one bag? One carry on? Yeah, try to. Oh, for summer, of course.

Wow. Because they wear one pair of shoes and then the extra pair of shoes I can pack. So I usually make them wear the tennis shoes, the sneakers, and then there are sandals. I can just hold down a pack. And then, yeah, but then Rob is separate. So we do not include Rob because Rob says that he has male clothes and that it will always take up more space and he has more stuff because he's coming from a different home. So wait,

So you fit your stuff and your three children's stuff into one carry-on. One carry-on, and then they have their own backpacks for their iPad and headphones. No, I know, but like, I mean, I'm impressed.

Yeah, but I travel super, you know, I travel super light. So this is years, I got my 10,000 hours of writing. So maybe I'll just send, I'll send you my pictures of what I'm going to bring. And then you can edit it down for me. I can't help you edit. Totally. I think this is so fun. This is like my area of expertise. Yes. Okay. Great. Wonderful to help. The other thing, like I will have access to laundry. So like, yeah, I don't really have, you're right. I don't really have to bring that much. What if Henry and I bring one bag? Oh my God.

Whoa, you're blowing my mind right now. You're like, my mind is like, I'm so happy. This is your intention because this is an area where I can really help. I'm so happy. How did journaling daily go for you? As soon as I intended it, I got really good about it.

So like as soon as I set it out loud, I remembered to like, cause I use an app, a journaling app called day one. Okay. And day one is on my phone and on your, on, on my laptop and it's in the cloud. So anything I add for my phone automatically is on the laptop version. And so I have been journaling photos and making little, little gratitude.

worth funny things that the kids have said. And so I've been, it's like I said, I'm not writing essays. I'm not writing tressays in there. Sure. I'm just journaling. And I've gotten much better at it ever since I said I would. So what's it called one day? Day one day one. Sorry. Okay. Yeah, it's called day one. It's so simple. And you can put photos, you can do voice memos in there. And you can link from there if you want to if there's some like great article.

But my, um, that intention went so well that I am going to go back to a more physical intention, which I have been historically not great at, like the taking taking vitamins every day. It's not going so well. Um, so this week, my intention is going to be to foam roll.

I am sore AF. I am just like sore all the time because, and it's not always from exercise. It's often because I have decided to jump back into a tough workout, you know, like a many a former workout when I did an exercise for five days. And so, so now I'm just like sore all the time. I have to work it out.

And there's so many stretches that just won't get at wherever my soreness is, like inside my hip and my sacrum. And so I am trying to foam roll as my intention this week. I love that intention as someone who has a foam roller that sits mostly unused. But that like IT band foam roll is so good.

But ouch. But then you're like, oh, it hurts so good. I feel like a foam roll. You're really inspiring me today. You're packing you and Henry into one bag and foam roll. Oh my God. I wonder how I want. I'm actually really curious how he will react to that.

Just giving him the packing cube. Yeah, they like their cube. But when we're leaving, they're like, when we're getting ready to pack, each daughter is like, where's my cube? I need my cube. Will you send me the cubes that you use? Because I have a couple cubes and I don't love them.

Yeah, I got a set of free ones. And so I have one that I use from a free one. And then I got a set recently as a gift also. So I'll send you a photo. Are they compression cubes or they're just cube cubes? I don't even know the difference. I've been, I've been like going down a real rabbit hole here. Oh, okay. Man, I...

I've never read this subreddit. I just like, you know, I think you would enjoy it just because it's a little voyeuristic. You know what I mean? Like you're like, Oh, that, that, that's a choice to bring. You know what I mean? One time there was a woman who grabbed my bag because I have an away bag and everybody has an away bag and who grabbed my carry on by mistake and like walked off the plane. And so by the time I was grabbing my bag and I was sitting behind her

I got her bag, which was obviously the wrong bag. But I knew it wasn't mine. So I got off the plan. I was like, where do we find this woman? And we were trying to page her from the Houston airport. La la la.

can't find her. Nobody comes, nobody responds. So then I decided we should open the bag, which felt so creepy. Like we have to find something identifying like maybe she has a pill bottle or something, but there was nothing in there except we discovered how well organized she was. I was like, damn girl, I love that. That's so funny. I have no idea who you are and you have my bag. But

Bravo on your packing. That's really funny. Okay. Noted. All right. Well, thanks everyone for listening. Forever 35 is hosted and produced by me, Dorisha Freer, and Elise Yu, I'm produced and edited by Sam Hineo. Sammy Reed is our project manager and our network partner is a cast. Thanks so much, everybody. See you next time. Bye.