[00:00:00]

Stumble out of bed and I stumble to the kitchen for myself, a cup of ambition and yawn and stretch and try to come to life. Jump in the shower and the blood starts pumping out on the streets. The traffic starts jumping with folks like me on the job from nine to five working to.

Todd: All right, here we go. My name’s Todd. This is Cathy. Welcome back to another episode of Zen Pop Parenting. My voice is already starting to crack. I know. Great. Lucky me. Um, so today we are talking about two [00:01:00] separate films, but we’re blending them together. Correct. Little nine to five action and a little Working Girl Action.

Cathy: So basically, first of all, welcome to Zen Pop Parenting, where Gen X pop culture meets real life reflection. We are so pleased to have you. And if you were listening last week, you heard our daughters who were talking about the Hunger Games, and now Todd and I are back and we’re gonna be talking about how Gen X feminism, um, is in nine to five and Working Girl.

Cathy: And, um, basically what we learned growing up from these movies, these are like the, there are plenty of movies out there and other things, but these were kind of the eighties, nineties versions of what feminism looked like.

Todd: What year was Working Girl? It was in the eighties, wasn’t it? Um, am I making that up?

Todd: It was

Cathy: end of the eighties, 1988. So you’re right. It wasn’t really nineties, I think nineties. We were crossing over into more office. We were

Todd: watching on repeats on in the, yeah,

Cathy: but we kind of came into an a more, uh, Alanis Morrisette kind of, um, little more anger, a little more, [00:02:00] um, you know, different ways of seeing ourselves.

Cathy: The, you’re right, a lot of the eighties was kind of crumbling, just like we discussed in our podcast about, um. I think we called, it fell on black days about the, you know, bands from the nineties and we were talking about how at the beginning of the nineties is when like hair bands and kind of this whole um, way of looking at the world started to crumble and we started to get more authentic.

Cathy: Yeah, so. Let’s just stay in the eighties then, Todd.

Todd: Yeah. Let’s you like the eighties.

Cathy: I sure do. It’s when, uh, so nine to five was 1980 and working Girl was 1988.

Todd: Um, I’m gonna set the scene,

Cathy: you know, before you set the scene. Can I say one thing that we don’t really do anymore? Sure. Um, number one, um, I’ve been right.

Cathy: I have a Substack. Oh, good idea that, um, I sometimes write about what we’re talking about on this podcast. So if you, I was, I was explaining to your sister the other day about Substack, ’cause I know it can be confusing. Substack is the [00:03:00] platform. Okay. It’s like the platform. And then I have two versions. Zen Parenting Moment, which is free.

Cathy: You can subscribe to that. You can also subscribe to something called Ping, which is my paid subscription. You don’t have to do that, but that’s a deeper dive and that goes more, I take a lot more time. Right? More in depth. And so if you like what you’re reading, it’s an opportunity for you to get. More plus it supports me and us, you know, it goes towards end parenting.

Cathy: So there’s that. And then a lot of the things we’re talking about, especially today, um, kind of corresponds with my book, restoring Our Girls. So while I’m not gonna keep calling out my book over and over again, I just want you to know I am a Gen Xer who learned from these movies and have had to unlearn some things as well.

Cathy: Um, that’s what a lot of this is, is like, where did we come from? And then what do we need to let go of? And I write about a lot of that in restoring our girls.

Todd: Well, and I’ll just add that, um, like this, we’re recording this on the 4th of August, but I don’t think the podcast goes out [00:04:00] until the 12th or something like that.

Todd: Yeah. But we do do these Zen talks, and one of the things that we, it’s like an interactive podcast, and one of the things that I want to continue to do is bring your moment into the Zen Talks

Cathy: and, and you just said Zen talks, but what, like. What does that mean for people? They don’t know what that is. An

Todd: interactive podcast on Zoom.

Todd: Right. But isn’t that Team Zen that you’re talking about? Yeah. It started out saying we have Team Zen, I believe. No, you said Zen talks. Okay. That’s what it meant. So we have this Team Zen and we have these Zen talks. Yeah. On Team Zen. And I bring your sub stacks into the conversation. Correct. In a Zen talk.

Todd: So some people are like, I’m Ms. Un Parenting Radio. You guys talk about self-awareness and parenting the entire time. Uh, the way to do that is to join Teams up.

Cathy: We still do that there. So join us there. Yeah. But for now, we will set the scene. Alright.[00:05:00]

Todd: All right. I think I want to set the scene a little bit. How’s your, my, uh, headphones

Cathy: up. It’s not very loud. It’s kind of quiet, so I don’t know if that will stay quiet or if that is my earphone. Let me

Todd: know if that’s better. Ooh.

Cathy: Okay.

Todd: Better now I

Cathy: can hear. Yeah. Okay, good. We turned up.

Todd: All right. So go ahead Todd.

Todd: Um, I just wanna like remind people ’cause some people haven’t seen this movie. We saw nine to five. We watched it with our daughters and a few friends a few weeks ago, so it’s top of mind for us. Right. I didn’t rewatch working girl in prep for this, but I feel like we just saw it not too long ago. Yeah, we watch it a lot, but, uh, nine to 5, 19 80.

Todd: We got Jane Fonda, we got Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton and Dabney Coleman. Those are the four top dogs in that movie. Is there anybody else, actor wise, that springs to mind for you? Not really.

Cathy: I mean, you know, there are people in it that are kind of what we’d call VA guys. You know, like people, you’d be like, oh, I remember that person.

Cathy: You know, there is a vac guy in that

Todd: movie. It’s the, the, the doctor in the Terminator movies is in this movie. Oh, really? Do you remember the doctor from the Terminator who’s trying to certify [00:06:00] whether or not Sarah Connor is, um. You know, uh, should be in. Yeah. Institutionalized.

Todd: Institutionalized.

Todd: So that’s one that guy.

Todd: So that is, um, uh, nine to five. And then working girls. Melanie Griffith, Harrison, Ford, Sigourney, we Weaver, uh, Alec Baldwin. Joan Cusack. Those are the top talks.

Cathy: Yeah. Well, you know, going back to nine to five, like, I think it’s funny, first of all, just a few things about the people. You said this was Dolly Parton’s first role in a movie.

Cathy: So it was her first acting opportunity. And also just so funny to see Dabney Coleman, because he was in so much stuff in the eighties. Like he recently passed. Actually he did, he died. Um, and for, you know, it’s not that I had seen him recently, but geez, that’s an actor we grew up with. No doubt. You know, like I, I mean, I’m thinking war games.

Cathy: I’m thinking, um, on Golden

Todd: Pond. On

Cathy: Golden Pond. Yeah. Like, so how funny. So he is with Jane Fonda again. He’s

Todd: also in Tootsie. And you’ve got mail.

Cathy: Yeah. I mean, come on. You know you’ve got mail. Yeah. Dabney. [00:07:00] Did Dabney get his due? We should do. Uh, he was

Todd: kind of, was he ever a good guy? It seems like he was Golden Pond kind of.

Todd: No, he was kind of a jerk. Was he a jerk? I mean, he stood up, uh, to um, Henry Fonda’s character a little bit.

Cathy: Yeah. But he wasn’t a great partner.

Todd: Um, I think loved Jane Fond. It’s funny, the Jane Fonda through line that’s, think about it. Did you? I just said, okay. Sorry. I’m, I’m looking at a lot of different, I know you are, which is why I try and cut you a lot Slack.

Todd: But a lot of times you just say what I just said. Okay. Um, and, but he’s a bad guy in more games. Yes. He’s a bad guy in, uh, Tootsie, for sure. Yes. Um, for sure. He’s a bad guy in this. Yeah. Yeah, it’s, he’s like the Vernon

Cathy: of the

Todd: eighties.

Cathy: Yeah. He got typecast as we would say, where he became this person. Um, but yeah, so, you know, do you want me to like dive in more or would you like to talk more about dive the, okay.

Cathy: So let’s talk about what was going on. Um, you know, like [00:08:00] overall with these movies in the eighties, so post-second wave feminism, we had some, some legal wins, you know, title ix, that kind of thing. But obviously everyday sexism persisted still does. Didn’t know if you know that, but it does. Um, women were entering the workforce in larger numbers, but it was usually secretarial, thus nine to five.

Cathy: And working girl, they’re, you know, all of our characters are secretaries or low level administration. Um, sexual harassment was definitely widespread, but this is what I think is so crazy, and we’re gonna get into this more later in the podcast, but it was not legally recognized as discrimination until 1986.

Cathy: So sexual discrimination was just completely normalized. And if you go back and watch, um, you know, nine to five and you watch the harassment Yeah. You know, from DNE Coleman, like my daughters, part of the reason I wanted them to see the movie was for that reason. Like this used to be a thing Yeah. Where you could like look down your secretary shirt or you could, you know, chase her [00:09:00] around or you know, and anybody who really got into Mad Men, you know,

Todd: very, very normalized, misogynistic, sexist behavior.

Cathy: Absolutely. Things that women learn to deal with, tolerate work around versus get any help. Sure. You know, it was like a totally different time and then, you know, it’s. The idea of having it all, which is what we grew up with as Gen Xers, you know, having a career and looking good and having love and having motherhood.

Cathy: It was a total pressure point for women. And, and I always talk about my dad because he is such a dad from this generation where he would tell me I could have all these things and he really believed it, but I I, he couldn’t see the big picture of how much pressure that would put on women to do all those things simultaneously because the thing that didn’t change were men.

Todd: Yeah.

Cathy: Do you know what I mean? Like, men kept doing what they were doing. And I’m not saying that it, that there weren’t slight shifts, but the [00:10:00] societal expectation of men didn’t change. So it, you know, we’re still kind of in that process of like sharing more roles and, you know, more equality when it comes to work and home and everything.

Cathy: Um. So nine to five is basically the whole movie was about the growing frustration about workplace inequality. And it was, if I read correctly, you may have read some similar things. I don’t wanna go too much into random facts, but Jane Fonda, when she signed on, she thought it was gonna be a drama.

Clip: Mm-hmm.

Cathy: Yeah. Did you read that too? I did, yeah. And she, and it eventually, it got turned into more of a comedy, but

Todd: the, because it was, nobody would go see it. This was a big enough gamble to begin with. Right. If we just wanna make it a drama about where the protagonists are three women, which was rare, if ever, um.

Todd: They’re like, there’s no way that people are gonna go see this, but if we make it a comedy, maybe there’s a possibility. And it succeeded. It was the second best, um, movie of the year.

Cathy: Was [00:11:00] it real? When you say second best, like, made the most money. Highest producing? Yeah. Wow.

Todd: You know what number one was?

Cathy: Um, God no.

Cathy: 1980 Empire Six back.

Todd: Oh,

Cathy: duh.

Todd: And then the other one just for fun. Yeah. Uh, stir Crazy. Never really liked that movie. Airplane. One of my two top favorite comedies of all time. Any which you way you can. Never really got into that movie, did you?

Cathy: Yes. I loved the, I loved Clin, clin Eastwood. And then he had that, uh, monkey.

Cathy: He had the, he was an orangutan. He was an

Todd: orangutan.

Cathy: Say the, say it the way you’re supposed to though. Um, orangutan. There’s like, the way people say it now. I don’t think we say it right.

Todd: Oh, I’m not familiar. I’m familiar with Orangutan.

Cathy: I am too. But I feel like we’ve learned recently that it’s like orangutan or something.

Todd: The other movies are Raging Bull. Okay. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that movie. I have, but not really. My wife A rough watch. Yeah. Ordinary people. The shining coal miners’ daughter and caddy. She, okay.

Cathy: So in that group, you know what? Well, um, I think it’s orangutan

Todd: anyway. Oh boy. You’re, you’re really [00:12:00] worried about this.

Todd: Sorry. It’s, it is totally even something, the orangutans are going to be very miffed if they don’t hear us, pronounce their species properly.

Cathy: Wanna explain? I am not worried about the listeners not thinking we’re doing No, you’re

Todd: worried about the orangutans.

Cathy: I’m worried

Todd: they’re, they’re not monkeys.

Todd: Monkeys are. Monkeys are like the little guys that jump in and out. I think they may be part of it, but you know, there’s spider monkeys. Monkeys are usually smaller. Ang is like a different beast.

Cathy: So let me explain. Is this is all something that’s been going on in my mind where like I hear other people say it and I think two of them are other podcasters.

Cathy: I think one of ’em is Dax Shepherd and then one of them was Glennon and they say it so differently, or maybe it was Abby, I don’t know. But I was like, wait, how do you say that word? And I never figured it out. And here we are talking about every which way, but loose and, okay, can I give you a little, every which way, but loose, uh, trivia.

Todd: That’s what everybody’s waiting for anyway.

Cathy: Okay. So interesting. It was, um, you know, what’s his [00:13:00] name? Clintwood Clint Eastwood. Thank you. It is Clin Eastwood. And his girlfriend was Sandra Locke and she was in the movie. And then his sidekick, I think is, I can’t remember what his sidekicks name was, but it was a guy, not the, not the orangutan.

Cathy: And he is Juliette Lewis’s.

Todd: Juliette Lewis is dead. Uhhuh not Okay. Um, so that’s the girl from, uh, Christmas vacation Juliette Lewis. I’m just making sure.

Cathy: Well, that’s one of her roles. That was her first big, but I would do Cape Fear or yellow jacket. Right. You know, a little more updated. But yeah. So I did watch that movie a lot.

Cathy: And then they did a, uh, sequel called Every Which Way You Can.

Todd: Right. Was that any good? I don’t remember. I think we gotta find out. Gotta watch that stat. We gotta, we should do a Zen pop Parenting of Ringu Tang movies about movies with monkeys in them. Yes. I know

Cathy: you’re saying they’re not monkeys, but they are monkeys.

Todd: They’re probably in the monkey house. Yeah. At the zoo.

Cathy: Right.

Todd: But I still

Cathy: like, is a gorilla a monkey? [00:14:00] No, it’s an ape. Okay. I don’t understand that. I need, I need a, a lesson about evolution. Oh, I don’t understand

Todd: this monkey. Yeah, we gotta work on that. All right.

Cathy: So what do you, do you want me to talk about working girl now?

Cathy: Uh, yeah, go ahead. Okay. So working girl 1988. So basically this was released at the height of the whole corporate ambition image culture. Um, it was a more individualistic career driven kind of empowerment. So Tess Miguel, that is played, um, by our, our girl. Uh.

Todd: Dakota Johnson’s mom come

Cathy: up with Sandra Locke.

Todd: Yeah,

Cathy: but I can’t come. Melanie Griffith up with Melanie Griffith there. You, thank you very much for helping me. Melanie Griffith. So her character test, she plays the game. So basically the whole idea of like the, you know, being in the work world in the late eighties and nineties, even when I got into the work world, was about learn to play the game and kind of work around things so you could get what you needed.

Cathy: [00:15:00] And it wasn’t about a systemic approach to it, like, let’s change the rules here. Mm-hmm. So this is fair. It was about how do I get my needs met in this system that was not built for me. So that’s really what, and you know, nine to five is about that too, but so. The other part of Working Girl is it definitely portrayed women who were competing with each other.

Cathy: We just didn’t seem to have enough room yet for more than a few women. Mm-hmm. Who wanted to rise to the top. And it also echoed that whole bootstraps idea. If you work hard enough, you can succeed. Um, you know, which is, uh, I think we call that a autocracy, uh, a meritocracy. What do we call that? Meritocracy.

Cathy: Meritocracy. Thank you. Yep. We call that a meritocracy, you know? And, but is, is it really, if you’re going into a system that wasn’t built for you at all, where you have to go around and deceive and you know, of course the visuals of working girl, you know, the shoulder pads, the heels, you know, putting on shoes, uh, to walk to work, you know, putting on your tennis shoes to walk to work and the, the huge [00:16:00] jackets.

Cathy: Do you remember that even the basketball players like Michael Jordan? Oh yeah. Remember his huge suits, huge suit. Yeah.

Todd: Really expensive suits too.

Cathy: And women would wear that too. Like we didn’t know what a tailor was. Mm-hmm. I mean, so it was very Wall Street. I, wall Street ish. And, um. It was, you know, like nine to five is more of like a shared frustration, fantasy kind of driven rebellion.

Cathy: And working girl is more like the individual triumph. Again, like I said, the boots, the bootstrap kind of optimism. And, and these are the questions that they asked us, can women lead? And if so, how, what’s the cost of getting ahead and do we change the system?

Clip: Mm-hmm.

Cathy: Or do we change us? And so again, I wanna reiterate, this is what I grew up with.

Cathy: Like, this is how I think about the work world. Like I remember, oh, I don’t wanna dive into remember when.

Todd: Yeah. Don’t be stepping out categories. Okay.

Cathy: I’m not. Okay, so I’ll stop with this. Do you have anything more to say about set the scene,

Todd: uh, negative.

Cathy: Okay. Let’s go into this. I [00:17:00] remember when.

Clip: You couldn’t wait

Todd: to love me. Um, I do not have anything for either of these two movies. Really? I barely remember watching it as a little kid. I mean, o obviously I can share stories about the idea of this movie, these movies, like sexism in the workplace, but,

Cathy: but what about your experience? Like, did your mom like them?

Cathy: Did I remember we had a, like Beta max. Okay. Or

Todd: VHS, and it was one of the first tapes we had. Mm-hmm. Um, don’t remember watching it. I was too busy watching Star Wars for the hundred 52nd time.

Cathy: Knowing your mom. Mm-hmm. I bet she loved this movie. There’s no doubt about

Todd: it.

Cathy: A nine to five. That is both of ’em, actually,

Todd: probably both of them.

Todd: And, but she also was not the type of mom to say, Hey, like, my dad would do this. He’d be like, come on in here. There’s a Nightline on Drunk driving. And we would have to like go watch it. My mom would not force us to watch any of her stuff.

Cathy: Yeah, he kind of, your dad still does that a [00:18:00] little bit? Yes, he does.

Cathy: He wants you to watch those. But no, I don’t have

Todd: a remember win.

Cathy: Okay. So I have a few Remember wins. Um, I definitely remember seeing nine to five. I definitely watched, uh, nine to five probab. I mean, I can’t even count. It was on the movie channel. I watched it all the time. Um, it was one of my favorite movies probably ever.

Cathy: And you know, obviously I lost it for many, many years. It’s not like I’ve watched it a ton since my thirties. You know, it kind of got lost somewhere. But as Todd said for my birthday, um. Every year I choose a movie that I want my girls to watch, and because it’s my birthday, they’re willing to do it. Why

Todd: don’t you go ahead and throw a few of the movies that you have had, uh, us all watch in the last three or four years?

Todd: Okay.

Cathy: So the last couple years that I can remember, I had them watch, uh, Madonna’s documentary Truth or Dare. Yeah. Um, I did that because my girls were so, including me. We were so into Lady Gaga and I would say things like, without Madonna, there probably wouldn’t be Lady Gaga and they would get really uptight about it.

Cathy: Yeah. Like, think I, and I’m like, no, no, you have to [00:19:00] watch what this woman did. Yeah. So we watched Truth or Dare, um, we watched Swingers last year. Yeah. Which was one of my favorite movies in the nineties. And it connected Todd and I a little bit. Um, you’re so money you don’t even know it. And uh, Cameron got a headache though that night.

Cathy: She didn’t get that. She bailed on it, but Wyatt watched it with us too. So just, and Skyler loved it and Skyler loved it. Like, I just like to, first of all, Todd and I quote movies all the time and our girls have watched. So who’s the big winner

Clip: here tonight at the

Cathy: casino?

Clip: Huh? Mikey,

Cathy: that’s who Mikey’s the big winner.

Cathy: Mikey wins. Mikey wins. And so I kind of want the girls to know where these quotes come from and, and the fact that the movies are good. Mm-hmm. It’s not like we’re showing them bad movies. These are really good movies for sure. Um, so anyway, I think so I remember watching 95. I’ll just say that it was such a part of my like early adolescence.

Cathy: Um, and then Working Girl, uh, I think I saw it in the theater. And guess who? I think I saw that movie with your dad? [00:20:00] My dad love it. Um, he took me to movies, um, that were really good all the time. And I remember it being like, yeah, that’s a good movie. And then it became more important to me later. I watched it over and over again.

Cathy: And here’s a really deep, remember when, and I had to do some really deep thinking about this one, why this happened, who. This is my deep remember win, uh, 2016 election. Todd was traveling and I think I was optimistic that night and ended up

Todd: as a lot of us were

Cathy: not being optimistic when I saw what was happening and I couldn’t sleep.

Cathy: Um, and I felt the need to watch working Girl, and I thought it was very strange. It was like, I know I can’t watch anything that brings out a lot of emotion. I need something sturdy and steadfast.

Clip: Mm-hmm.

Cathy: And I chose working girl and I had to kind of do a deep dive to why, because it was a very. It obviously I wanted to get outta my head and I think there was part of me [00:21:00] that wanted to go back in time a little bit, and there was also a few things that came up.

Cathy: Number one, that like women’s ambition kind of hits a wall.

Clip: Yeah.

Cathy: I think that was part of it. Um, I think it was kind of a betrayal of female solidarity, you know? And we thought we were going somewhere and it didn’t happen. Yeah. It didn’t have a woman president. We were so naive. Oh. And then the whole like, idea of feminist, um, you know, collective power rising.

Cathy: Like I wasn’t there yet. Like that night I had no feeling of that. Like I was just scared and sad and disappointed. But it was interesting what happened after this feminist power, you know, that was the first time I took the girls to the women’s march. Um, you know, things like that, that started changing and happening.

Cathy: But, so that’s a, you know, a remember win that I have about that. And then one thing that is not about these two movies, but I have to bring into this mix is the movie Grease. Um, and the reason I need to bring it in is because, can you, when did Greece [00:22:00] come out? 78.

Todd: Uh, let’s, or

Cathy: 75.

Todd: Let’s just say that it happened in 78, even though we don’t know.

Cathy: Okay. Well, are you looking it up or are you I can, it’s just take me a second. Okay. So. Another thing that my whole generation grew up with. Obviously many generations continue, enjoy, enjoying it. But we really grew up with Greece in a big way. June six,

Todd: June 16th,

Cathy: 1978. 1978. Okay. And the message at the end of Greece, um, is basically, uh, Hey girl, go out there and get some leather pants and get that boy back.

Cathy: You know? Mm-hmm. I mean, that’s really what the message was, because the crazy irony is through that whole movie, Sandy is like maintaining herself. Mm-hmm. Right? She is like, no, I wanna do this, and no, I don’t wanna smoke and, and no, I’m gonna be myself and I’m gonna date this guy and I’m gonna do cheerleading, even though my friends don’t.

Cathy: And, and Danny, you can’t do that. And, and I don’t wanna, there she was just holding [00:23:00] her own and then she sings, you know, this.

Cathy: And while I loved Sandy’s outfit and it was awesome, and she looked awesome, she kind of just let go of all of her ideals and said, screw it. I’m putting on the leather pants. I’m smoking a cigarette. I’m gonna get my hair really pretty and I’m gonna get my boyfriend back.

Todd: Mm.

Cathy: So

Todd: that’s, she changed herself to accommodate a man.

Cathy: She sure did. Um, especially with the whole front part of the movie. Not changing. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? It’s almost like the message is that didn’t work.

Clip: Yeah.

Cathy: So again, there’s little pieces in here. Danny shows up that day with his Letterman jacket.

Todd: So would you say that maybe, um, nine to five is the evolution of the shortcomings of some of the feminist energy that may or [00:24:00] may not have come from Greece?

Cathy: We’re getting there. Like I kind of feel like there’s just so many things, you know, this, this gets too involved. ’cause we have all these categories we have to go through. And Todd and I don’t wanna get too off, you know, target here, but you know, when, when we decided to do this, I didn’t just think about working girl in nine to five.

Cathy: I was thinking about what we, gen Xers grew up with and I always. Share or throw out there? When Todd and I talk about this, I throw out the rock stars I was into. I throw out that I loved Pat Benatar in my, when I was in elementary school, and I loved Juice Newton and I loved Joan Jett and I loved the Go-Go’s.

Cathy: In fifth grade, Go-Go’s was exact same time as nine to five. It was the same year, and I loved all of, I felt so much feminist energy, but it wasn’t really.

Todd: Just bringing everybody back,

Cathy: which I think is why when [00:25:00] my dad was like, you can do anything. I was like, I know. I’m like, here’s the best rock stars are women and or to me they were the best and these movies. And I felt very empowered by what was going on. I think the realization that I had in maybe the connection a little bit to the 2016 election, like I’m trying to pull a lot of threads together, is it kind of wasn’t what it seems.

Cathy: Mm-hmm. It was a little more surfacey. It wasn’t grounded, it wasn’t legislated. It was, it was almost like showmanship.

Clip: Yeah.

Cathy: Um, and I’m glad I didn’t know that for a long time because I did things that. Maybe I wouldn’t have, you know, uh, made assumptions about my ability to do certain things and I continue to do that.

Cathy: But, um, I don’t know. I just kind of, I just, any, so anyway.

Todd: I like your tangents. You like, by the way. I do. Well, yeah. And you’re trying to tie a bunch of things together, which I appreciate. And I just, I have a new sound effect for whenever we kind of veer off track.

Clip: Stay on [00:26:00] target.

Todd: That’s from Star Wars.

Todd: Glad you like that one.

Cathy: You’re gonna have to use that a lot. And you’re gonna have to play it right now. ’cause I’m going on another day. Stay

Clip: on Target.

Cathy: Here’s where we’re going. We are going into Anita Hill.

Clip: Okay. Oh, wow. Here we,

Cathy: you ready?

Clip: Stay on target.

Cathy: Okay. I’m just get, I hope she comes up later too, but I just wanted tell. Yeah, you gotta, you gotta mention her. My God, I, I gotta bring this up because this was 1991 and why I remember when so well is because I was in college and my best friend Manisha was at, uh, American University that semester in DC and so was my friend Nancy.

Cathy: And, um, I, I, I went there to see them and the Anita Hill [00:27:00] trial or whatever was going on. So it was really funny because I came from like Iowa where no one was talking about it at all.

Clip: Yeah.

Cathy: And then I went there and every kid in their, they all had these, you know, huge TVs and they’d be sitting there watching what was going on.

Cathy: ’cause they were living DC you know, and everything that was going on on the hill. So. Basically what happened, Anita Hill testified before the Senate about, uh, Clarence Thomas, um, who was a Supreme Court nominee, and he, she talked about him sexually harassing her when he was her boss at the EEOC. So she was, it was a televised hearing.

Cathy: It was a huge watershed moment for women at least that saw work, what workplace harassment actually looked like. Like if you dig into what she said, and I will, you know, I don’t have the exact quotes, but it was like total harassment, like things around porn and things. I got it.

Clip: I got

Cathy: it. Okay.

Clip: Look at pornographic films.

Clip: But you told the FBI specifically. [00:28:00] He never asked you to watch the film, is that correct? The fact is flatly, he never asked you to look at pornographic movies with him. And the name

Todd: of this YouTube clip is called What? Watch. The most outrageous question Senators asked Anita Hill in 1991.

Cathy: Oh my God.

Todd: So anyways.

Cathy: Well, and here’s the crazy thing. Do you wanna know who was in charge of that? Henry? Joe Biden. Joe Biden. So it’s so weird how all these things are connected and, and it’s not about blaming Joe Biden, but he was in charge of it. Yeah. And they, and here’s the thing. We knew this was, you know, there was a lot of, there was so much to it.

Cathy: Like Clarence Thomas was the first, um, you know, man of color to be nominated for the Supreme Court. No, that’s not true. No, because we had somebody, anyway, there was a lot of. History there was George Bush was doing this. Um, correct. It was George Bush, not Reagan. Help me with the history.

Todd: 1991 was HW

Cathy: hw.

Cathy: Thank you. [00:29:00] And I feel like people knew this guy was gonna make it on the Supreme Court. There was just, um, a sense of like, this woman has this thing to say and this is televised and we’re all seeing it. And her calm, composed presence, it challenged every stereotype of women. Yeah. Because everything was about women being hysterical or vindictive and she’s just like, here’s the story.

Cathy: And so it totally sparked a surge in women speaking out. And this is the cool thing, a record number of women elected to Congress in 1992 because that like kind of changed. The

Todd: narrative. The narrative. Yeah. The possibilities. And

Cathy: 1992 was called the Year of the Woman. So, um, obviously we know Clarence Thomas still made it.

Cathy: Yeah. After all that,

Todd: he’s up there judging.

Cathy: He’s up there, you know, doing, is that what we call it? Is that what he’s doing? He’s

Todd: a judge. He judges,

Cathy: I don’t know. Um, so, you know, basically it catalyzed a national conversation around gender and race [00:30:00] and power in the workplace because a lot of people, um, were mad at Anita Hill because she is a black woman.

Cathy: Mm-hmm. And he is a black man. And they’re like, why are you trying to keep him out of power? And she was just telling her story. Yeah. This is what he did. And it, you know, it has a lot of. Resonance from the Christine Blasey Ford thing with, you know, Brett Kavanaugh. It’s like when people talk about, yeah, what are you talking about, Kathy, about misogyny or what are you talking about that women don’t have this or that, or that people don’t believe women and we’re living it right now.

Cathy: Yeah. But again, with this whole Epstein thing, like women are saying, here’s what happened, and people are like, no, it didn’t.

Todd: Well, and I’ll own my own ignorance. Um, I don’t know when I realized this, but anyway, I was way too old to have this realization. But, um, without giving it any context, um, I just assumed that white women were allowed to vote before men of color.

Todd: Right. And that is not close to true. Nope. Men of color, um, [00:31:00] were, had the right to vote before, um, you know, white women. And it’s just, uh, ugh. It’s, the whole thing is just a debacle.

Cathy: It is. And, and by the way, just so I can clear up what I was saying before, uh, Thurgood Marshall was the first black man on the Supreme Court.

Cathy: He was nominated by Lyndon Johnson. There you go. So I just wanna make sure that I, you know, came, came full circle there. Um, but yeah, Todd, like there’s so much, like it’s why we have to understand history, um, and why some people don’t want us to remember history. Yeah. Is because history then informs what’s happening right now.

Cathy: So the last thing I’ll say is all this stuff with Anita Hill and these movies and this shift it, you know, created cultural shifts in TV and film besides nine to five, which was before this and working girl. Thelman Louise came out in 1991, Murphy Brown, which again was, I keep bringing about my dad, but he was such a great feminist.

Cathy: Yeah, he loved Murphy Brown. So that was on, that was a show we watched all the time. And then of course, [00:32:00] ally McBeal, which was one of my favorite shows. Um, that was when I was first in the workplace, so I loved Ally McBeal. Um, and so it was less about just a cool girl or a sidekick and more about the, you know, main character.

Todd: I pulled up a few of the other, um, you know, women’s power movies.

Cathy: Yeah, let’s hear it.

Todd: Aside from the two that we’re covering today. Um, hidden Figures. Yes. First Wives Club and I, I, I never saw that.

Cathy: It’s good. Is it good? I mean, it’s, it’s got that nine to five vibe and the comedy and you know, you’ve got, they do a whole like, musical number at the end.

Todd: Yeah. Um, steel Magnolias.

Cathy: Yeah. That’s your favorite movie.

Todd: It’s not my favorite movie, sweetie.

Cathy: But you always say it’s one of your favorite movies.

Todd: It’s a movie I truly, truly love, but I would never categorize it as one of my favorite. You always,

Cathy: every time we talk about it, you’re like, I love that movie.

Todd: I do.

Todd: I most certainly do. I just would never put it in [00:33:00] the Shelby. Uh, well, and, and one thing, ’cause I’ve seen that movie so many times. Um, the, the title of the movie is Steel Magnolias and Magnolia is a flower which indicates. Gentleness, softness, blah, blah, blah. Steel is toughness. The women in that movie particularly Sally Field, is the Steel Magnolia.

Todd: Correct. Versus the flight instructor from Top Gun. Correct. And Julia Roberts’ husband in that movie can’t stay with Julia Roberts as she’s dying. The brothers, they all bail and she sits there and, and watches her daughter die.

Cathy: As women do.

Todd: As women do.

Cathy: I mean, I, you know, we birth babies. Yeah.

Todd: You guys are stronger.

Todd: We take care

Cathy: of children when they’re sick. We walk them through everything and, and, and, and it’s, and again, we get into these things this, like women do and men don’t. It’s not the binary, it’s just that. Our societal belief system. These like undercurrent belief systems about what women [00:34:00] are and weakness and soft skills and, and you don’t wanna be a girl and throw like a girl and talk like a girl.

Cathy: And yet we’re so strong.

Clip: Yeah.

Cathy: It make, it’s like such a, an obvious, uh, uh, a desire to paint women in an unflattering way, which is, you know, I could say that more extreme, but to, you know, keep women down and we are actually, you know, ridiculously strong. So anyway, you

Todd: wanna hear some other movies? Sure. Go ahead.

Todd: Legally Blonde.

Cathy: Yes.

Todd: Devils Wear Prada,

Cathy: sweetie. It’s not Devils Wear.

Todd: Brought up the Devil Wears product. There you go. Pretty Woman. Yes. Erin Brockovich. Yes. Silkwood. Never seen it. Yeah. Ooh, sweetie. Cher, that was Meryl Streep and Cher. I’m not a Cher fan. I’m a Meryl Streep fan.

Clip: Boy. Boy,

Cathy: sweetie. That’s a hot take.

Cathy: Is it not being a Cher fan?

Todd: Yeah. Yeah, I am. She was good in mask, I guess. Her and Gar and um, and

Cathy: Moonstruck.

Todd: Yeah, I never saw that.

Cathy: And, uh, mermaids. Is that what it never

Todd: saw that

Cathy: Winona Rider,

Todd: [00:35:00] Belman Louise.

Cathy: I, yeah, I said that one.

Todd: Color, purple

Cathy: and

Todd: bombshell. Those are the kind of the women empowerment movies the last 20, 30 years.

Cathy: I like, I like that list.

Todd: All right.

Cathy: Yeah. So final thing is the whole lean in years, you know, the Sheryl Sandberg’s thing in 2013 about leaning into corporate structures that aren’t built for us. That was still years away, but we’re still, we’re still in the eighties. So, um, let’s, uh, let’s move on here.

Clip: Do you know the human headways eight pounds here?

Clip: Do you know the human head weights eight pounds.

Todd: Alright, I actually have some stuff for this. Let’s hear it. Uh, let me scroll up. Random facts. Um. Melanie Griffith’s addiction. Nearly derailed filming. Yes, it did. She showed up high. I think she was on cocaine. Mike Nichols, the director, shut down production for 24 hours and made her pay 80 K out of pocket for the lost day.

Todd: But he told her that he was gonna report her to the studio. So he basically said, I’m finding you 80 k because you are. [00:36:00] Position to work that day. So I sent everybody home a kind of like a genius move because it woke her up.

Cathy: Well and you know, she went into rehab actually a couple weeks after three, helping it over three weeks.

Cathy: Yeah. Yeah. But the other thing is, is it’s kind of interesting to watch the movie. ’cause you can see when she had tough nights, which parts? Um, you know, there’s certain scenes like closeups where like, um, she’s a little puffy and her eyes are very red. How interesting. Now here’s the thing, again, I’ve seen this movie so many times and I know all this history, so it’s easy for me to look for.

Cathy: It’s not about criticizing her performance, it actually works with her character a little bit. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Not because her character was an addict in any way, but her character was not supposed to be. Yep. Like refined. Yeah. There needed to be some kind of grittiness to her. So I never looked at it and said, oh

Todd: shit.

Todd: And you built it into the story. Correct. So anyway, uh, Mike Nichols, the director, was also battling cocaine addiction at the same time. Oh geez. The irony of directing someone through the same struggles he was facing. He mentioned that in one of his [00:37:00] memoirs years later.

Cathy: And, you know, Mike Nichols is a very interesting, uh, director.

Cathy: He, um, did a really good job with, you know, focusing on women.

Clip: Mm-hmm. Like,

Cathy: uh, so I was just listening to something where they said when they did like a tribute to Mike Nichols, um, every single person who got up on stage and talked about him was a woman.

Clip: Mm-hmm. You

Cathy: know, like he really did a great job highlighting, and he had many marriages, but his last marriage was to Diane Sawyer.

Todd: Um, Mike Nichols movies, who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff. Mm-hmm. The Graduate Catch 22 Carnal Knowledge, Silkwood Working Girl Postcards from the Edge, bird Cage, primary Colors. Oh, he was a busy dude. Yeah. Um, okay. Getting back to my random facts. Um, triple Crown, a Tree, uh, triple Crown Achievement. Carly Simon became the first artist to win Oscar Golden Globe and Grammy for a song she wrote, performed, and arranged entirely herself.

Todd: Play,

Cathy: play a little bit of it so people can hear it again. Do you remember?

Todd: I don’t know. You

Cathy: played it at [00:38:00] the beginning of the show. Oh, okay. I can do

Todd: that. Sure, I can do that. I just need to scroll over a little bit. Um, here we go with Cocoon,

Todd: kinda sounds like a Disney Lion King type of song. What am I thinking of?

Clip: You’ve never even seen the odds of your

Cathy: Oh, so good. Parley Simon is one of the best of the best ast.

Todd: Isn’t that James Taylor’s ex-wife?

Cathy: They were married, but I wouldn’t, and again, I know you’re just trying to make the point, but they were in their own right. Separate course. Famous, amazing musicians, but yet they were married and they had two children.

Cathy: They do not speak anymore.

Todd: No. Well, not yet, sweetie. Maybe we can bring ’em back together.

Cathy: Oh, I just think that’s just heartbreaking. But yes, they did some songs together. We like Mockingbird Mock. Yeah. Gang. [00:39:00] Yeah.

Todd: Bird. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um. Max Massive box office success. $103 million worldwide on a $28 million budget.

Todd: We’re talking about Working Girl. Nice job. Six Oscar nominations. Yes, including, can I do ’em Best picture? Sure. Oh, best picture. Okay.

Cathy: So I think Melanie Griffith got nominated. Oh, I don’t know what they are. Oh, Joan Cusack got nominated. Yep, she did for sure. Obviously we know Song got nominated. Uhhuh Best picture.

Cathy: So that’s four, so I’m missing two.

Todd: Uh, best picture. Best director. Best director. Best actress. Best supporting actress. Both Joan and Sigourney. Did you? Sigourney did too. Yeah. Okay, I didn’t know

Cathy: that.

Todd: And then Best original song. So six. That’s pretty good.

Cathy: That’s really good. And you know, a movie like this would never get Oscar consideration these days.

Cathy: First of all, this movie would never be made for, it would be on Netflix, right? I don’t know.

Todd: I mean, do you think most movies we like nowadays, uh, don’t go to the theater because if we don like ’em, they don’t make [00:40:00] movies for us. They make movies for younger people

Cathy: and for world. It not, you know what I mean?

Cathy: It has to be like a Marvel or something like, yeah.

Todd: Right.

Cathy: It has to be sold to other countries.

Todd: Right. Um, okay. Are we ready for nine to five? Random facts? Yeah, let’s hear it. Dolly Parton wrote nine to five using her acrylic nails as rhythm On set.

Cathy: Yeah. Like this?

Todd: Yeah. Bu um, it’s, uh, American Film Institutes 74th funniest movie of all time.

Todd: 74th. Okay. 74th. Ronald Reagan watched it Valentine’s Day, 1981 and wrote in his diary. Loved it, but was mad about the marijuana scene. It was an endorsement of pot smoking for any young person. Oh, that’s ’cause his wife created, just say no. Just gotta say no. Uh, 2018 reunion attempt with Rashida Jones. But Dolly pulled the plug in 2019.

Todd: Huh? I didn’t know that. So that’s all I got.

Cathy: Yeah. So a few other things, random facts. Uh, one of ’em I already said Dolly Parton had never acted before. That was her first film. Um, the, [00:41:00] you know, the movie was almost called The Secretaries, but was Changed to Nine to Five because partly because it was, you know, a better title and also because Dolly’s song.

Cathy: Yeah. Um, it obviously became a total cultural juggernaut. Um, there was, it led to a short-lived TV show. Of course. I feel like every time we talk about an eighties movie, it leads to a TV show that fails.

Todd: They’re all trying, they’re all aspiring to be Cobra Kai, sweetie.

Cathy: They are. And Cobra Kai’s the only one who’s been able to do it well.

Cathy: Um, or maybe not the only one, but one of the only, yeah. Uh, it became a Broadway musical. It just has a really long legacy. Um, so nine to five crushed, um, in a good way. Yeah. Working girl. 1988, uh, Melanie Griffith was almost passed over. Um, they saw her more as a sex symbol than like being able to take on this role.

Cathy: And it’s interesting because her, her other. The things she did before it, um, before working girl, were very sexual. Yeah. Something wild. Yeah, exactly. And so it kind of makes sense, but you kind of feel like that’s what you want in Tess, right? [00:42:00] I mean, well, I don’t wanna step on my other categories. I have things to say about her.

Cathy: Um,

Todd: but can I quickly tell you about my interpretation or my, um, observation of Melanie Griffith as a sex symbol? Sure. When she has the big hair. It does not turn me on at all, but as soon as she gets that haircut, forget about it.

Cathy: Well, it’s kind of a Cinderella story, right. You know what I mean? Like, it’s like you’re this, you look this way and then all of a sudden they dress you up and you look amazing.

Cathy: I,

Todd: yeah. ’cause she probably goes heavy on the makeup when she’s got the big hair. Like is it just the hair? Like does she do a whole, like, redo or is it just the hair?

Cathy: It’s mostly the hair. There’s some makeup there. And then her clothes. I mean, she doesn’t have, like, when she goes into Catherine’s closet and gets that black dress, that’s the biggest dress of the whole thing.

Cathy: Yeah. Where she’s at the bar. I mean, she doesn’t have access to that kind of

Todd: great. Those clothes. Yeah. Good stuff.

Cathy: Um, another piece is Alec Baldwin, who plays Mick. Mm-hmm. Her like fiance or boyfriend. He was supposed to be Jack. Oh. And he was actually offered the role because Harrison Ford passed and then Harrison [00:43:00] Ford came back and said, no, I’ll do it.

Cathy: And so he got demoted to Mick.

Todd: Um, speaking of Mick s will you marry me?

Clip: Maybe it’s an answer. You want another answer? Ask another girl.

Cathy: Mm-hmm. Ask another girl and come on. I don’t, I don’t, I again, it’s a WTF. Should I go into my WTF or Go ahead. Uh oh. No, it’s,

Todd: can we go right into it right

Cathy: now? No, because I’ve a few other things. Oh, go ahead. Actually go into it.

Clip: Boy, that escalated quickly.

Clip: I mean, that really got outta

Todd: hand fast. It jumped up a notch. It it did, didn’t it? I always screw that up.

Cathy: So,

Todd: not

Cathy: this time. The WT F1 of my first ones is the fact that part of working girl is that. Tess comes home and finds Mick in bed with Doreen DiMucci, or is that her name?

Todd: I love the [00:44:00] fact that, you know, not just the first, but the last name

Cathy: Doreen.

Cathy: Well, because she says it. Yeah, like Doreen DiMucci. And then he’s like, oh, I thought you were supposed to be at class, or whatever. And then of course, so she kind of walks out and goes on the ferry for a while. And I think she spends the night on the ferry, but then the next time they’re together, he’s like, will you marry me?

Todd: Totally makes sense.

Cathy: And the fact that Cindy, who is Joan Cusack, is like, give him, give Mick a break. Like WTF. Come on.

Todd: Yeah.

Cathy: Like unfair. Um, so anyway, that’s just my first one.

Todd: I just wanna just plug into something here. I’m trying to, when you talked about Mick getting busted in bed with the girl, what?

Todd: Doreen DiMucci. I immediately thought of Billy Hicks, um, getting busted in a hot tub. In the hot tub. Um, and I, is there any other, um, movies that, or scenes you can think of where a guy’s getting busted?

Cathy: Busted? Uh, let’s see. [00:45:00] Um, I feel like I’m seeing Andrew McCarthy in my head. Didn’t Rob Lowe walk in on him with his mom and clap?

Cathy: There you go. That’s a good one. Um, let’s see what else, where someone’s getting busted. God, there’s so many movies where people get busted. Oh, I know. Uh, boogie Nights.

Todd: Oh yeah. Oh, that’s like the worst scene of all time.

Cathy: That’s bad. Um, and yeah, there’s others, but those are the ones that come off the top of my head.

Todd: All right, so we are on WTF.

Cathy: Yes. So a few more.

Todd: Yeah, I got a few too.

Cathy: Kevin Spacey in the limo.

Todd: Yeah.

Cathy: Who he, she’s told Tess is told, this is before she gets her other job. She’s told that she’s gonna go with this guy, I think it’s from Albatross or something. I don’t remember all the names, but she’s gonna like meet this guy and he’s gonna help her get ahead and she gets in the limo and it’s Kevin Spacey and he’s not gonna help her get ahead.

Cathy: He just wants to do cocaine and have sex.

Todd: Yeah.

Cathy: So she realizes that and then I think [00:46:00] goes back to the workplace and like types in so and so is a sleazy. Mm-hmm. Pimp or something. Yeah. Anyway, so Kevin Spacey just kind of doing his, uh, you know,

Todd: his thing.

Cathy: Little did we know what would happen in the future.

Todd: Right.

Cathy: Um, and then again, WTF, Joan Cusack’s hair and Makeup.

Todd: But that’s why it’s so good.

Cathy: And that’s what it was like. Yeah. And again, they were from Long Island.

Todd: Yeah.

Cathy: So there is like, we can say the eighties were excessive, but I think Long Island was even more excessive. Yeah. And so there was a normalcy to it, but when, if, if our girls were to watch Working Girl, which was potential for my birthday.

Cathy: Yeah. But we’ll maybe do it next year. You should have done a double feature. I should have. I should have made them stay. That’s right. Um, this would be a great double feature, by the way.

Todd: Oh yeah.

Cathy: But if my girls were around, they’d be like, what’s going on? They’d be like WTF.

Todd: Yeah. Um, do you have any more? I No, go

Cathy: ahead.

Todd: Um, I said this while we were watching it and it kind of reminded me of the deer hunter and Are we talking about nine to [00:47:00] five now? Talking about nine to five. Okay. In the Deer Hunter. Kathy and I watched that a while back, or at least part of it. And it’s like three hour long movie. Mm-hmm. One best picture.

Todd: It’s in this incredible sad movie beast. Mm-hmm. It is so slow. So slow. Like there’s scenes where like, nothing’s happening for like three minutes.

Cathy: I don’t agree with this take, but I know I’m talking about the deer hunter right now. Oh, okay. I thought you were talking about nine to five minutes.

Todd: I’m about to pivot over to nine to five.

Todd: The

Cathy: deer hunter. I

Todd: fully agree, Todd, but thank you for helping me stay on target. Um, now I’m gonna pivot over to nine to five. Okay. Um, the, the three sequences of each of the woman’s fantasies. Yeah. About, I understand that it’s an important piece of the movie puzzle. It’s, I just feel like if that movie got made today, it would be so much shorter.

Todd: Condensed. Yeah. Condensed. Because each one is like six minutes long. Like a good 20 minutes is just the, the fantasy of what they might do for the [00:48:00] boss. And I remember I watched, um, an interview with the woman that Jane Fonda connected with, that was the inspiration of this movie. And they were like, they were surveying all these secretaries and they asked a question that finally got the creative juices flowing.

Todd: And the question was, do you ever fantasize about doing something horrible to your boss? Mm-hmm. And that was what created the inspiration for the movie.

Cathy: So I’m gonna put you on the spot. Do you remember what their three, um, fantasies were about killing the box? No. You don’t remember? I was

Todd: like two and a half vodka Red Bulls in by then.

Todd: I just remember like, this has taken a while.

Cathy: Okay. So I will tell you.

Todd: Yeah.

Cathy: The first, and first of all, they all bond. They go to Charlie’s to get a drink and then they all go back to do’s house, to smoke pot because, um. Violet, that’s Lily Tomlin. Her son gave her a joint.

Clip: Yeah.

Cathy: Um, so they go back to Dole’s house to smoke pot.

Cathy: They start smoking and then they all share their fantasy of how they [00:49:00] wanna kill their boss, what they do. And Judy, that is, you know, Jane Fonda her, she says she wants to hunt him down. And the reason that that’s a big deal is when she goes in his office, she sees that he has a deer on his wall. Yeah. And she’s like, oh, a deer.

Cathy: And he’s like, so proud of shooting this animal. So she’s kind of like, I want him to get a taste of being hunted. Yeah. You know, so there’s like, it’s not just about I wanna shoot someone, it’s about he hunts people. Yeah. Or hunts animals. So that’s hers. And then, um. Doles is that she gives him a taste of his own medicine and because he hits on her all the time, she’s his main secretary and he’s totally inappropriate with her.

Cathy: So he, she’s inappropriate with him and the fantasy and then she hog ties him.

Clip: Mm-hmm.

Cathy: Then Violets is that, and she does a whole snow white thing that she puts poison in his coffee. And I love that part of the movie. Now I know you said while we were watching, wow, this is long. I don’t feel that way just because [00:50:00] that’s one of my favorite parts.

Cathy: Mm. Interesting. You know what I mean? Like, and everything in the movie is based off of those fantasies. Yeah. Because that’s then how we jump into what happened. Yeah.

Todd: That’s the framework for the rest of the movie.

Cathy: Right. So I, it’s not that I don’t see what you’re talking about because it is slow, you know what I mean?

Cathy: It’s like, but our attention span is so

Todd: crappy. Right. Totally. Um, do you want me to play any of the clip on a good old fashioned ladies pot party? ’cause you did have that built in.

Cathy: Sure. Go ahead and play them when they’re at Charlie’s what? It’s my turn at God.

Clip: I really got it. What’s that? Well, didn’t think you smoked.

Clip: Do you roll your own? This is a gift from my son. Let’s just pop over to the ladies’ room and light up. Is that one of them? Marijuana cigarettes. We don’t have enough for everybody. Cool it. Come on. I, no, no, we can’t do that. Violet. Someone might come in. It is dangerous fact. Would you two show a little spunk?

Clip: I mean, what are you a man or a mouse? I mean a woman or a mouse. [00:51:00] Hey, why don’t we talk? Is

Todd: that good?

Clip: That’s good.

Todd: And then they go to decide to go to Door. Lees, I’m gonna ask you unfair questions. Sure. Who’s your favorite character of these three? Viole? Oh, really? Mm-hmm.

Cathy: I mean, I love Doley. I love Dolly Parton, and I like, you’re not supposed to like Judy, Jade Fonda, right?

Cathy: Yeah. But Judy, she’s the most boring. So tight. And she’s boring. And I like her. She has a, like a big moment where she yells at her ex-husband and everybody claps and it’s all good. But Violet is the bomb. I mean, violet, she’s the leader. She’s the leader. A b she’s been in that office forever. She trained Mr.

Cathy: Hart. Yeah. So that’s how long she’s been there. She’s trying, she’s vying for this promotion that he ends up having a man take over because he says, she, he says to her, you’re, you know, he’s got a family to raise. And she’s like, and I don’t mm-hmm. Like, she’s raising children by herself. Yeah. You know, and then she also stand, actually there’s a clip I have, um, where, let me see if I can figure out which one it is.

Cathy: But it’s [00:52:00] one of my, I’d say it’s like my favorite quote. Okay. Um. Is it from

Todd: working girl or No, it’s

Cathy: from nine to five. And I think, um, the p pop party, um, best girl from Working Girl. I killed the boss. No, not that one. Um, do I don’t know which one it is. I don’t know. I can’t pull it up, but it’s, you just tell me

Todd: if this is it.

Cathy: Okay. Do you want me to change? Think so I just sit right here. I’m gonna lose my job. No, it’s not that, it’s not that you’re gonna save that for later. It’s, it’s more about something he, she says, um, in front of Doley, but anyway, I, it doesn’t matter. Okay. I will, we’ll pull those up later. Right. Um, but then, and, and at the same time, what I will say is that it is kind of WTF, the whole plot of nine to five is WTF.

Cathy: Yeah. Yeah. They kidnap their boss. Yeah.

Todd: It’s over the top.

Cathy: It’s so over the top. But it’s a comedy.

Todd: Yeah.

Cathy: And it felt like, because in reality we couldn’t. Have, get power. Yeah. You know, there was so much working against [00:53:00] us, um, that, that felt like a nice fantasy for a moment.

Todd: Could I share something that has nothing to do with the movie, but, uh, something to do with one of the actresses from the movie?

Todd: Um, I think you’ll know what our, where I’m going here, Melanie Griffith Uhhuh and her marital history. Sure. Um, she married Don Johnson when she was 18

Cathy: and they had been dating since

Todd: she was 14.

Cathy: Yes.

Cathy: Right.

Todd: How old was Don when she was 14? I

Cathy: don’t know.

Todd: Let’s just say I don’t think he was 14.

Cathy: No, he was not.

Todd: Like, didn’t Jerry Lee Lewis like marry his,

Cathy: his cousin?

Todd: He was step cousin who was 13. Like

Cathy: Priscilla Presley as well. She was, she was a child. I just

Todd: wonder if there’s ever a better example of WTF than those three examples.

Todd: I know.

Cathy: Yeah. So basically they got married. They got divorced, but then they got married again. Yeah.

Todd: So it ends

Cathy: well. And so now they’re married. When she went to the Academy Awards, [00:54:00] uh, when she was nominated, she was pregnant with Dakota, her daughter, Dakota Johnson, who is now an actress in her own right.

Cathy: Who kind of has a very similar vibe to her mom.

Clip: Mm-hmm. Do you know

Cathy: what I mean? Like, they’re not that different. And I think that’s true with, um, Meryl Streep’s daughters too. I mean, because they look similar to their moms and everything. But she kind of, Dakota Johnson, I mean, she did 50 Shades. Yeah. Like, she did a very sexual role.

Cathy: That’s how she came out. And now she’s been in a bunch of really good things, some bad things too. Um, I think she’s, um, very well respected in the industry, but she’s kind of got a Melanie Griffith vibe.

Todd: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, are we ready for, um, best quote? I think,

Cathy: um, yeah, we’re getting there, but one more thing in the WTF.

Cathy: Yeah. And, and I kind of said this already, but um, is the whole idea of, and I’m gonna talk about working girl, um. Celebrating individual women’s success in the system without questioning how the system harms women. So there’s a lot of like, how can I get ahead [00:55:00] personally within this system? Again, that’s not built for me.

Cathy: Um, and it’s like a, if I work harder, if I speak up more instead of, instead of asking why workplaces are so unequal or exclusionary. And so it focuses on representation at the top instead of like, equity across all the levels. And you know, I think we call that neuro neoliberal feminism. Okay. Where it’s about individualized success versus a, it being a system that is, you know, works.

Cathy: So, so when Tess at the end of working girl gets the job in the office and the man, it’s without addressing the system at all, the one that kind of kept her down. You know what I mean? So it’s a personal victory inside of an unchanged system. Mm-hmm. Now. That’s what most movies in the eighties and nineties were about.

Cathy: And that’s kind of what I mean about what Gen X grew up with.

Clip: Yeah.

Cathy: Is that it really shaped that the system is [00:56:00] rigged. We’re never gonna get ahead. But if we do things differently or scheme or kidnap the boss or you know, show up in this certain way or have this surprise or take someone else down, maybe we can get to the top And you can see how that kind of mentality then makes it feel like there can only be one woman.

Cathy: Yeah. You know? And so of course in this movie Catherine played by Sigourney Weaver has to be a villain. You know, we hate her.

Clip: Sure.

Cathy: So, you know, so I’m just saying that as far as less about criticizing, ’cause it, it was of the time, but more about that. We grew up with that. Mm-hmm.

Todd: Okay. Yeah. Are we ready for best seen?

Todd: Let’s do it.

Clip: Hey Dad, you must have this thing about 50. It’s not to be proud of Russy. I. Yards.

Todd: Um, I think we have a similar best, uh, maybe we don’t, I don’t know. What do you have for a best scene?

Cathy: Well, my favorite scene, you know, when you just, when you said why did you, you just came upstairs and you said, why did you choose this number?

Cathy: ’cause it’s just [00:57:00] music.

Todd: Yeah.

Cathy: Can you play that?

Todd: Sure. I think this is

Cathy: it.

Todd: No, it’s not it. I think this is it. Yes.

Cathy: So this is my favorite scene in nine to five.

Todd: So can you describe

Cathy: Yes. What’s happening right now as this music is playing is Violet thinks that she has found. Mr. Hart’s body. So she’s deciding to take his body and get rid of it. So this whole scene is probably the whole thing in the hospital is great.

Todd: Yeah.

Cathy: Hospital scene is really funny. And actually, Todd, there’s another quote there that I have where it says he’s dead.

Todd: Um, let’s see. Is this possible yet? I think so.

Clip: I just sit right here. I’m gonna lose my job. Viol now. Just calm out.

Todd: It’s the other one. It’s the other one.

Clip: Oh my God. They found out about it already.

Clip: Don’t panic. Please don’t panic. Yeah. How is he, doc? Hi dude. [00:58:00] Oh. Can you tell what caused it now without an autopsy? You fellas can come into my office. I’m fairly certain it was some kind of poison, poison.

Todd: Not a lot of empathy from that doctor.

Cathy: I know. We just, we laughed. ’cause that, they totally play that for laugh.

Cathy: So you’re not getting the whole gist of the scene. But he just comes out, he’s like, oh, he is dead. Yeah, he is dead. Um, so that whole scene is my favorite in nine to five. What’s your favorite scene in nine to five? Um,

Todd: oh, I, I just did favorite scene in both movie in combining them and it was, I don’t even know if I can explain it, but I think it’s when she’s talking to Trask, when Tess is so in working girl, is that the elevator or does she have a few different

Cathy: Uh, it’s so funny, I wrote down the wedding scene.

Todd: Oh, the wedding scene. Is that

Cathy: your favorite, the wedding? Um, no,

Todd: it is not the wedding scene. If in

Cathy: the elevator.

Todd: Yeah.

Cathy: So I actually have some of that. Okay. Um, when he gets off the elevator and asks Catherine, I sent it to [00:59:00] you. Yes, you did. Um, so you can play this part. All right.

Todd: No, it’s not that one. It’s this one. I think.

Clip: Or any, we really don’t have any more time for fairytales. Is this it? Yeah. Ms. Park. Um, let me ask you a question. How did you come up with the idea for Prath to buy up Metro? How did I, uh, well, let’s see. The, um, the impulse. What led you to put the two together? Well, you know, I would have to check my files.

Clip: I can’t recall exactly the, um, well, generally it’s not as if it was in the mainstream, you know, it would have to be the, um,[01:00:00]

Clip: Jack, help me out here,

Clip: or, I beg your pardon, but if. If you are insinuating, Ms. Parker, if I were you, I go to your office and take a long last look around because in about five minutes I’m going to see to it that you get the boot. But good. Or, and this is a simple misunderstanding and I, you cannot, I can and I will now get your, what did you call it, right?

Clip: Only ass out of my sight.

Cathy: So did you like what happened before that? No,

Todd: no. That was it. That was the, that was mine.

Cathy: So basically what happened before that is Tess is trying to explain to the main guy, this was my idea, and Catherine stole it. So she gets on an elevator with him and says, here’s how I came up with it.

Cathy: Which is hilarious because it’s about radio. Yeah. Which radio doesn’t exist anymore, you know, but she’s like, he should, instead of [01:01:00] I buying a television station, he should buy a radio station. Here’s how I came up with the idea. And I was reading this in the, you know, wall Street Journal or whatever, and she totally explains, so then when they get off, he asks, Catherine, how did you come up with this idea?

Cathy: Yeah. So, so it’s a very, um, what is it satisfying?

Todd: Yeah. Oh, you like to see a person who is got, who got busted to get busted. Exactly. Fun to witness.

Cathy: And then my other favorite scene, which I didn’t give you at, you know, nothing to pull up but is when they go, you know, in, in the movie, she picks up Jack and Heath.

Cathy: He thinks that they’re gonna go to a meeting, but really they’re gonna go to Trask Wedding. Wedding. Yeah. For his daughter Bitsy and, um, or someone named Bitsy, I can’t remember. Anyway, and they go there and she gets a dance with him and then gives him her idea. So it’s just a really cool way of like, you know, engaging.

Cathy: Yeah. That’s a fun scene for, it’s a fun scene. Yeah. They get away with it, you know. Um, so are you ready for Zen parenting [01:02:00] or do you have more?

Cathy: All right. What do you got? All right. So just a few things in rolling in the deep, we’ve kind of discussed some of it. ’cause we’ve talked about Anita Hill and we’ve talked about, you know Yeah. The history of sexism and, uh, everything like that. But, um, so feminism for Gen X, it wasn’t about what the sixties were about.

Cathy: Okay. Because the sixties were about like the burning of the brass and it was like that, I don’t know what wave it is. I, I get, my daughter is a global studies and Can I ask

Todd: a dumb question? Okay. The burning of the brass uhhuh, I know that that was like what a lot of the women did, uh, in the sixties at Woodstock and all that because the bras represented.

Todd: Men wanting women to be a certain way?

Clip: Yeah, I guess so. ‘

Todd: cause But don’t you have with, as somebody with breasts, like bras because it,

Cathy: it’s, it’s a representation babe. It’s [01:03:00] not like literal. Right. Like I don’t wanna wear a bra. Yeah. It’s a representation. So of course we meet them and like them. Yeah. But man, they

Todd: kind of sucked too.

Todd: Well, one of my fa my mom’s favorite part of the day was taking her bra. Yeah, I remember that. It’s kind of, and she’d like slide it out of her shirt and she’s like, oh my God. Thank goodness.

Cathy: And it’s one of your wife’s favorite things too. Yeah. Yeah. It’s it, but it’s, you know, it’s not about the literal Yeah, it’s about the metaphorical or whatever we wanna call it.

Cathy: Oh yeah. You know, it’s the, the point. Yeah. Um, but I was gonna say that, you know, JC is a global studies and women’s major, women’s studies major. Yeah. And so she understands these waves of feminism better than I do. I I get, I have the gist, but she has the deep history, so I try to not use the language incorrectly.

Cathy: ’cause sometimes she, uh, rightly corrects me in how I say it. But what I will say is that in the eighties, our feminism was about getting a job, doing things better than everybody else. You know, I can bring home the bacon,

Todd: fry it up in the pan.

Cathy: Yes, you can, you vin that? [01:04:00] Yeah, of course. Um, and then also getting.

Cathy: Paid fairly or at least getting paid in that realm. It was never really fair. You know, we’ve always been paid less than men, but that was the goal. So it was about navigating like the office politics, sexual harassment, which finally was labeled in 86 glass ceilings and, um, surviving and bending in inside the culture rather than outside of it.

Todd: You ready for this? Yeah, let’s

Cathy: go.

Todd: Go.

Clip: You can put the washing on the pipe. Feed the kids. Get dressed.

Clip: Is that the one? Yeah. Keep going. Give her a Jolene the eight hour perfume for the 24 hour woman. There we go.

Clip: Forget because I’m,

Todd: as long as you are helping me not forget, I’m a man. You’re fine. [01:05:00]

Cathy: I knew you were gonna say that. I mean, come on. So basically, let’s think about that. Like, I’m gonna be a sociologist here for a second. It’s like, woman, you can get ahead, but man, don’t be scared.

Todd: Yeah. ‘

Cathy: cause I’m still gonna come home.

Todd: Yeah. And make sure your ego, I still need you to be a woman and I still do need to make sure that you think I’m a man.

Cathy: Yes. And that I’m gonna stroke your ego, you know, all the other things and make you feel good about who you are. But I’m gonna try and get ahead and you’re like, as long as you keep me as number one.

Cathy: So there was a lot of like, I don’t know, there’s a word, capitulating. I don’t know. I wanna come up with a word like maneuvering inside of that box. Yeah. You know, like, how do we get ahead but still not make men feel upset about it. Oh, I think we’re still doing

Todd: that. Yes, we are. Um, you still do it with me.

Todd: I do. It’s, I do. Part of cultural conditioning It sure is, is women know how to. Speak in such way, navigate it. It’s the, it’s the Meryl Streep [01:06:00] thing. Women know how to speak

Cathy: men. We know how to speak men and no men do not

Todd: know how to speak women.

Cathy: When men get we, yeah, pull that up because we’ve used it in other podcasts, like when we were doing Zen Parenting Radio.

Cathy: But it’s worth playing. Like women have all this experience in how to speak in a way that men can hear it and men don’t have that same experience with women.

Todd: All right. I think this is it. Okay. Um,

Clip: women have learned the language of men have lived in the house of men all their lives. We can speak it. You know how when you learn language, you learn French, you learn Spanish, it doesn’t really, it isn’t your language until you dream in it.

Clip: And the only way to dream in it is to speak it. And women speak men, but men don’t speak women. Women, they don’t dream in it. I think what Meryl’s trying to [01:07:00] say.

Todd: You know who says that?

Cathy: Uh, Bradley Whitford.

Todd: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Such a, that’s such a funny line.

Cathy: It is. He’s such a, he’s a great feminist. Oh yeah. He is.

Cathy: He’s not only does he is he outward about it, but every, you know, you think West Wing, you think Handmaid’s Tale, and that

Todd: gives him. Permission

Cathy: to do that. To make

Todd: that

Cathy: joke. Exactly. ’cause he’s not one of the people who does that. Right. Right. Mm-hmm. And it was good timing.

Todd: It was really funny. Yeah.

Cathy: It was good timing.

Cathy: He was mansplaining for her. Um, but he, you know, that’s the thing is like we, and we can fight these battles and people be like, but with my wife, blah, blah. I hear you. I know that there we’re

Todd: talking about the collective.

Cathy: We’re talking about the collective and women have marinated in it. We know. How to pull back and how to not make a man feel uncomfortable.

Cathy: And why do we do that? Survival.

Clip: Mm-hmm. We

Cathy: do that because to survive in a workplace. To survive literally. Yeah. To not be harmed. Primally primally. We have learned how to speak in such a way. And so this is, again, [01:08:00] this is so much a part of what every culture has learned this, but this was big in the eighties.

Cathy: Yeah. Because we brought this kind of instinct into the workplace and kept ourselves small in the attempt to get big. Yeah. And so it was, again, it’s just so important for us. Those of us who are my age and even, you know, some millennials too, it’s, we don’t have to go by Gen X. I think it’s true. It’s still true.

Cathy: I, I was listening to some girls Gen Z girls, ’cause obviously my book, uh, restoring Our Girls, gen Z Girls are Who helped me write that. And they still struggle with these things. They’ll be like, I’ve learned all these things. I know. That I’m supposed to focus on myself and not believe I’m less than. And how do I keep the culture from seeping in?

Cathy: Mm-hmm. Like how do I maintain what I know? And, and then we end up feeling ashamed ’cause we’re not holding all those things like equally. Yeah. And we’re we, it’s everywhere. We can’t feel ashamed when the culture is telling us get smaller.

Todd: So what are you [01:09:00] swimming?

Cathy: I mean like, you know, and I think this is very literal for most people, but I’m gonna say it, the whole thing with women being obsessed with bodies and, and body type and diets and eating and clean and raw and, you know, being small and weighing themselves.

Cathy: It’s all connected to telling women to be smaller. Like, don’t take up as much space. Don’t speak out. Be a smaller presence. Don’t be any, you know, and so there’s obviously, it’s not literal, it’s not about then we should be big, big, big people. It’s just about. Yes, we should be big people, but it’s not just about body type.

Cathy: It’s, but do you see how all this is connected? Yeah. Like we all get so distracted by our looks because we’re told to be something and then it becomes internalized into our bodies. Yeah. Of we should be smaller. Yeah. And take up space. It’s very, there’s very many layers to this. So anyway, um, again, on that note, [01:10:00] appearance was power, but it was also a trap.

Cathy: So like in Working Girl, it taught us that transforming your look opens doors. Like tease your hair less, talk softer. Remember how Melanie Griffin talks? Mm-hmm. You know, dress the part, it was a requirement to be taken seriously. You had to look differently. And I get that there is a corporate culture, and I’m not saying that’s completely brand new, but there is, it’s, it’s that same thing with all the movies in the nineties and the eighties where the woman would take off her glasses and then all of a sudden she was a totally different human being.

Cathy: You know, remember

Todd: that on Brady Bunch? One of the Bobby or Greg’s or Peter’s girlfriend had the glasses and had a hair do and then she took her glasses off and did her hair and all of a sudden she was a different person.

Cathy: Yeah. And there’s totally so many teen movies about that. Even the summer, I turned pretty right now, which is like just the, you know, it’s called the Summer.

Cathy: I turned pretty.

Todd: Yeah. And ’cause she wasn’t pretty before,

Cathy: right? She wasn’t pretty before. ’cause she had glasses and braces.

Todd: Yeah.

Cathy: And you know, so there it’s the point of like, then one summer my [01:11:00] glasses came off and then all of a sudden both brothers loved me. You know, so, and again, I watched the show so I’m not throwing shade ’cause I watch it too.

Cathy: I, but it’s like, let’s see where all this came from. Right. So again, another thing about feminism, it was filtered through. A lens of performance. Like if you want to succeed, you learned the code of how to succeed. You pretended it was yours. Like there was a lot of like inauthenticity, you know, and again, that’s what Catherine’s doing.

Cathy: Yeah. Um, you know, she’s like pretending she’s some big wig and taking other people’s ideas and, you know, pretending to play the part and literally Tess is pretending to be her.

Clip: Yeah.

Cathy: Like there’s all this pretense. And then, um, you know, the message we get basically is feminism is allowed, but only if you’re pretty.

Cathy: Polite right about your feminism fall in the line. Um, so, uh, a lot of these things I already said working girl, is that it’s about one woman winning, but it wasn’t about all of us winning. Right. It was about one woman winning

Todd: and one woman losing.

Cathy: [01:12:00] Right? Exactly. And then nine to five was a vision of women working together.

Cathy: Um, but it really didn’t end up with them getting promoted. They just got away with.

Todd: Well, what’s his name? Name was sent to Brazil, right? Correct. And then who ends up being the boss?

Cathy: We, we don’t find out. Yeah. All we know is that they’re not gonna go to prison for, you know, yeahing their boss and they did all of these things to like make the office better.

Clip: Yeah.

Cathy: But do you know why the guy who looks like Colonel Sanders Yeah. Showed up to promote, you know, Dabney Coleman or, you know, Mr. Hart. He was making more money because they were making more money. Yeah. It was not about the fact that the office was brighter, that they had a new, a program for people who had addiction issues that they were doing, um, shared work responsibility.

Cathy: That they had a daycare he didn’t care about. I mean, he, he liked that because it helped with money. His long, long, it’s gonna

Todd: help me make more money. Exactly. So the whole, you know, it was not a disman. Well that’s kind of the cool part about the whole story is if you treat people well. Then you’ll make more money.

Todd: [01:13:00] Right. And, and maybe that is we have a backwards Yeah. Usually we’re just trying to make money at the expense of people.

Cathy: Right. And we scare them. Yeah. We use fear Yeah. To motivate them. So, you know, you know, again, from, you know, nine to five, feminism was about personal empowerment, but not a collective change.

Cathy: ’cause not much really changed Mr. Hart, even though he was getting sent to Brazil and that’s not great. Still getting

Todd: promoted.

Cathy: Still got promoted. Yeah. Right. You know, so, um, and then we know that women could be the vi, you know, the villain Catherine Parker and, um, working girl. And even in nine to five, remember Roz.

Todd: Yeah.

Cathy: You know, she was a bad, she she was,

Todd: she was a bad

Cathy: guy. She was a bad guy. And then, you know, again. I’m reiterating this feminism is framed as personal strategy and not social justice. And the reason why I think this is really important is I’m going to, you’re gonna have to do the stay on target ’cause I’m going in another direction.

Clip: Stay

Cathy: on target. I’m gonna talk about, um, MLMs, um, which are multi-level marketing schemes, okay? And I’m using the word scheme on purpose. I am, you know, I’ve said this a lot, if [01:14:00] you’ve been listening to Zen Parenting, I’ve done all sorts of research into cults, and I read about them all the time and watch every documentary under the sun and have been in a few of my own, um, less big than Scientology and Nexium, but still experiences that were very cult-like, and m MLMs, the marketing, the, the multi-level marketing.

Cathy: I’ll just start with this so you guys know I’m on track here. 99% of people who join MLMs either lose money or make nothing at all. So that means less than 1% of participants in an MLM make a profit. What’s an MLM where you basically have somebody who, you know, who’s like an individual salesperson who sells things to you, but they also bring in a team of people.

Cathy: So then there’s something called like a downline, where the person at the very top makes money, but the people that they’re bringing in at the bottom to sell things do not make money. And so there’s a lot of makeup that is sold this way. There’s, um, like, you know, products for the kitchen that are sold this way, products for cooking that are sold this way.

Cathy: [01:15:00] Um, there are, you know, it, it’s a very girl bossy hashtag girl boss kind of scheme. Like the pants that everyone was selling, Lulu LuLaRoe or whatever. They did a whole documentary on that. Like it, there are people at the very, very, very, very top who make money and everybody else loses money. And because they’re expected to buy inventory and then figure out how to sell it.

Cathy: Yeah. So usually they’re left with closets of things they never sell. Why am I connecting this to the whole personal strategy? Is because it preys on women, MLMs prey on women who are home with their children, or women who are not allowed to, and what I’m saying, allowed, cannot go out to work because they have to take care of kids or whatever it may be.

Cathy: So an MLM comes in and says, you wanna be your own boss? Yeah. Come work for me. You know, you can start selling this makeup, you can start selling all these products and you’re gonna feel good about it. And we’re going, you know, you can come to the conference once a year and we’re gonna cheer you, you know, we’re gonna cheer [01:16:00] you on and you’re gonna, you know what, this has been around forever.

Cathy: Todd Tupperware, Mary Kay Cosmetics. Yeah. These, they’re all MLMs. Yeah. And so, remember, what, do you remember what, uh, Mary Kay cosmetics that the women would want to win? Pink Cadillac. Pink Cadillacs. Now you would see them, so you know, some people had them. Mm-hmm. But actually getting to that level was virtually impossible.

Cathy: 1%. And so I’m saying this because feminism as a personal strategy. We become targets for these.

Todd: I had to do, I know,

Todd: um, just real quick, I, uh, I, uh, I got introduced by a multi NMLM when I was like, whatever, 21. And it was about phones. It had something to do with phones or long distance or all that. But everything you just said does more. Point towards women because of their lack of choices.

Cathy: Well, and I think if you looked up the stats, [01:17:00] the amount, the percentage of women versus men in an MLM are extreme.

Cathy: Yeah. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t men in it. Sure. Of course. It just means that women are targeted, and I know this because I’m targeted by the women who are doing it. Like I know so many women who have done MLMs. You know what an MLM was also Young Living oils. Yeah. And I, I did young living oils.

Cathy: Now the thing is, is if you remember correctly, I’d say, I’m never gonna sell this now, but one of my yoga teachers, she said, but go ahead and just be a seller and you’ll be in my downline. Yeah. I didn’t understand any of that at the time. I’m like, okay. I never sold it, just bought it for myself. ’cause you could get it wholesale.

Cathy: Yeah. Right. And then I remember the day I decided, I called her and or I didn’t call her. I emailed her and said, I’m done. I’m not gonna do this anymore. And she was so angry with me

Todd: as well as she should be because you chose to stop. Buying oils, sweetie was, how dare you.

Cathy: I screwed up her downline.

Todd: Yeah.

Cathy: And so basically all the oils that I was buying for myself or maybe buying for one of my daughters or whatever, she was getting a kickback from that, of course. So she was [01:18:00] pissed at me for like being done, taking money

Todd: out of her pocket.

Cathy: So these are all things like, and please, anybody who’s listening who’s like, no, Kathy, go Google this.

Cathy: Like, this is not, this is not a Kathy opinion. This is like statistically real. Yeah. Like, and, and the thing is, is there’s all sorts of things about this as far as like legislation that has been passed to protect MLMs. Because the people at the top are good lobbyists, are good lobbyists. And so there’s all sorts of like, and this is, goes back to the Reagan era.

Cathy: Like this is not just recently. Like this is it, it’s a mess. But my point is, is that when we don’t think about systems and building a quality into a system, we end up leaving women, you know, to do it on their own and to rise through something that often like this, they get taken advantage of. Yeah. Um, so anyway, um, so that was my stay, stay on target.

Clip: Okay.

Cathy: Um, but I think, uh, I think I’m good. Do you wanna do parental [01:19:00] guidance now?

Clip: Cat, those. I’m,

Todd: hi, what do you got?

Cathy: Well, one thing I wanna say that kind of blends between rolling in the deep and parental guidance is just to be very clear, the, the feminists in these movies, they weren’t bad. They were just feminists of their time. Mm-hmm. So I don’t have this thing where I cancel movies from history.

Cathy: Obviously you guys can tell because we’ve been doing some movies that have some serious flaws in them. Yeah. It’s just about recognizing it’s of their time and how it shaped us as a generation into something more pragmatic or, you know, uh, it’s a, it’s a feminism of survival. Like wherever you are, you’re just doing what you can.

Cathy: Yeah. With the time. So parental guidance, like I, I, I guess I’ll just reiterate that we told our girls they could do everything, anything, but we didn’t always show them how the system worked or how it would backfire on them

Todd: because we’re trying to protect them from their innocence.

Cathy: Correct.

Todd: But now, you know, one’s 23 years old.[01:20:00]

Cathy: Right. So like working girl nine to five made us believe in possibility. And so we encourage our daughters to dream big and to get educated and to speak up and to not settle. But we didn’t always talk about the real costs of that. Like the sexism, the gatekeeping, the double standards we all still face.

Cathy: We raised girls to believe they could have it all, but we left them unprepared with how they’d have to continually fight for it.

Todd: I think that’s a hard part of parenting because obviously, like, let’s be extreme, we’re not gonna tell our 6-year-old, um, well, 9-year-old, whatever, whatever the age is, where they might watch a movie like this about all of the deeper kind of darker systemic things, and then you just kind of forget about it and then you just, you like, I don’t know when.

Todd: Like, nothing like shakes you and says, okay, it’s now it’s time to teach your daughters of the reality of the system that they’re being born into.

Cathy: So the reason I did a little commercial at the beginning of this podcast about restoring our girls is that’s what my [01:21:00] book is about. Yeah. Is in pre-adolescence, adolescents, teenage years, we have to start talking to them Yeah.

Cathy: About the obstacles that they will deal with and normalizing the experiences they’ve had. A lot of times girls feel guilty, or God forbid, ashamed because they, uh. You know, don’t know how to navigate a system or they get passed over or hit on or, and they feel like they did something wrong.

Clip: Yeah.

Cathy: And versus understanding the gatekeeping aspects of certain cultures.

Clip: Yeah.

Cathy: And so that’s kind of what, you know, I have all sorts of stories in my book about, some of them are about my own daughters and about girls I’ve worked with where, you know, things that are extreme like date rape situations where they feel like it’s their fault. And you know, situations where, like the story I told, you know, the first time Jason went downtown wearing makeup with her friend and all these college guys were hitting on them and how they kind of thought it [01:22:00] was funny, but they were also scared.

Cathy: And how to have that conversation with your girls about it’s normal to like attention. Yeah. It’s okay to wear what you wanna wear, but at the same time if something like that happens, what will you do? Yeah. Not how will you feel ashamed and never wear those clothes again or whatever. It’s not like it was even inappropriate, but.

Cathy: Like one of the big complaints, Todd and I just went to Lollapalooza last weekend, and um, which we enjoyed very much in our city of Chicago, but a lot of the complaints is about how girls are dressed. And I totally get it. Some girls are dressed really? Um, they don’t have a lot of clothes on and they’re very young.

Cathy: Like we saw a lot of young girls, didn’t we, Todd? Yeah. They’re half naked. Yeah. And I’m

Todd: so old by the way,

Cathy: and those were very young girls, women grown women. We should be able to wear what we wanna wear. Like we are grown women and we, you, nobody tells me you guys what to wear. Nope. You know? And so now there’s a lot of, well, what do you expect from men?

Cathy: So then we blame [01:23:00] women for what they wear instead of saying to men, how men, can you learn how to handle this?

Clip: Yeah.

Cathy: Can you kind of take care of yourselves and not blame women for whatever feelings you’re having and not acting on those? Like, and that, you know, there’s a lot of pressure on women to. You know, modulate what, um, what are the word I’m looking for?

Cathy: To change themselves in some way, or to hold back or to wear more clothes or to, and again, I know there’s all sorts of nuance in here. You know, you have to think about where you are and what’s appropriate in a certain setting. I get it. You know, I’m parented three daughters, believe me. I’ve had these conversations a million times.

Cathy: But I also think we need to point out who gets blamed. Yeah, right. And so talking to our girls about this, these obstacles. Yeah. That’s all I’ll say. All right. Um, so, uh, a, a few other things, um, for our girls. We, we encourage, you know, and these movies kind of demonstrate this, a resilience and an [01:24:00] independence.

Cathy: Um, but we often still expect them to be perfect within this, you know, these movies kind of glorified, clever, hardworking women who figure it out on their own. Um, but so we start emphasizing all those things like independence and self-reliance, but at the same time, we expect them to do it flawlessly and without being too emotional, like there’s this, again, this box, and I know there’s a man box too.

Cathy: Um, but that we’re kept in. Like we can, we should be resilient and go out there and take risks. But don’t be too loud. Yep. While you do it, don’t make a fuss. So we, we raise girls to be both powerful and but palatable at the same time. Um, but we didn’t really change our parenting for boys through these movies.

Cathy: We didn’t talk about, like of course, don’t be a Mr. Girl is

Todd: a girl. This is a girl’s movie. I know I, I’m being sarcastic, right? This is a movie. I don’t, I don’t need to see nine to five because one, it paints the boss who’s a man as a bad guy. So why would I wanna see that movie?

Cathy: Yeah. Like these [01:25:00] films, they like focused on breaking women’s barriers, but they didn’t offer any new model of masculinity.

Todd: No. It’s like a wonderful, teachable movie for us to show our young men. And I, you know, maybe my mom shared nine to five with my sister,

Cathy: maybe.

Todd: Right. But not me and John, because what do we have to learn from that?

Cathy: Yeah. It’s like we encourage girls to take up space, right? We’re like, you gotta take up more space.

Cathy: But we don’t talk to sons about making space. Well and rethinking what power looks

Todd: like. And my example of that is when Dr. John Duffy was bringing his son, his niece, and his nephew to Indiana University as freshman, he spent most of his time teaching his niece how to stay safe at Barnes. Right. And he did not spend much time.

Todd: By his own admission, his own embarrassing admission. He didn’t spend much time with his son and his nephew about how to, uh, look out for women

Cathy: or to just in their own [01:26:00] brain to understand consent. Yeah. And not because yeah, they can look out for women and be like a caretaker in some way, but they also need to understand that it’s sometimes the nice guys who make poor choices.

Cathy: Yeah. Because nobody has taught ’em, talked to them about what consent is. So there’s all sorts of levels to this. Yeah. Um, so I’m ready for what did it teach us, if you are

Todd: All right. Um, I feel like we’ve been talking about this the whole time.

Cathy: Yes, we have. And so I’m going to, you know, stay on Target here. I am gonna go off Target and talk, stay on target. I’m gonna talk about something different and maybe you can look this up while I’m talking about it. So I wanna talk about Reese Witherspoon talking about ambition.

Cathy: Can you look up her? Sure. Her speech, um, there’s a specific part of it that I really wanna talk about it, but see if you can find it. ’cause ambition is totally central to these movies, to nine to five and Working girl.

Todd: Um, like a two and a half minute clip of her talking about ambition [01:27:00] is not a dirty word.

Cathy: Yes. And that’s what I’m looking for. So before you play it, okay. Um, she’s, she’s speaking this at, it’s in 2015, so it’s a long time ago, 10 years ago, about at the Glamour Women of the Year Awards. And she kind of reframed ambition for the first time as something that women should own. Mm-hmm. And not downplay.

Cathy: We’re often times, uh, when women talk about being ambitious, we’re often called selfish or, you know, self-focused or we’re not care, we’re not caring enough about motherhood or our partner. Or we’re more worried about money than we should be. And has anyone talked to men about that? They shouldn’t be worried about money.

Cathy: Right? Like why do women, why can’t women have ambition

Clip: right

Cathy: now? The irony is I’m actually in a conversation with a friend right now about how my ambition has changed. You know, like I used to be a certain kind of ambitious and my thirties, another kind of ambitious in my forties and now in my fifties.

Cathy: It’s not that my ambition has gotten. Small, it’s just shifted in what I’m [01:28:00] ambitious

Todd: about. Well, you’re ambitious about family time and vacations and not as ambitious about being the New York Times bestseller.

Cathy: There’s, there’s been a shift in that area for sure. But I still wanna work. Of course you do.

Cathy: Like I still, I’m ambitious about It’s less about not to feed your ego the fame. Exactly. I, you know, that used to be a thing, and now it’s more about I wanna be a good writer. Yeah. And I wanna connect with good writers. Yeah. And I wanna, like teach a really good class and I want to, you know, uh, do a great podcast that you and I enjoy.

Cathy: My ambition is changing in how it looks, but do you wanna play some of that clip, uh, what Reese said,

Clip: please and gentlemen, I think we are in a cultural crisis in every field, in every industry. Women are underrepresented and underpaid in leadership positions. The reason we’re all talking about it tonight, under 5% of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are women.

Clip: Only 19% of Congress is women. No wonder we don’t [01:29:00] have the healthcare we deserve or paid family leave or public access to early childhood education. And that really worries me. How can we expect legislation with our rights and our needs being preserved if we don’t have equal representation? So here’s my hope.

Clip: If you’re in politics, the media, the tech industry, working as an entrepreneur or a teacher, or a construction worker or a caregiver, you know the problems we are all facing. And I urge each one of you to ask yourselves, what do we do now? That’s a big question. What is it in your life that you think you cannot accomplish?

Clip: Or what is it that people have said that you cannot do? Wouldn’t it feel really good to prove them all wrong?

Cathy: So there’s more to that and I encourage everyone to go on YouTube and look at it. Um, but one of the things she says later is, I believe ambition is [01:30:00] not a dirty word. It’s just believing in yourself and your abilities.

Cathy: Imagine this, what would happen if we were all brave enough to be a little more ambitious, I think the world would change. And right after this is when she started Hello Sunshine, um, which is her production company, and she has since sold it for billion dollars or something like that. And she started, you know, taking movie or books written by women doing a book club, promoting their books, and then having those books be turned into movies through her production company.

Cathy: So she and lived it. Um, and so,

Todd: so she was actually about to say that. Oh, oh,

Clip: ahead then, I’m sorry. Believe ambition is not a dirty word. Thank. It’s just believing in yourself and your abilities. Imagine this what would happen if we were all brave enough to believe in our own ability to be a little bit more ambitious.

Clip: I think the world would change. Thank you. Thank you.

Cathy: [01:31:00] Sorry that I cut you off. It’s okay, babe. Um, you know, it, it’s a big, it’s a, it’s, I remember hearing it ’cause again it was 10 years ago. Yeah. So in when you’re older, that goes fast, but it’s a decade. Right. But it hits hard because girls are so taught to be nice and to be liked and to be modest and to stand back and to be small.

Cathy: And we’re not taught to be ambitious unless we have a dad like my dad or other, you know, there you’re like this with the girls and teaching about ambition with understanding again, the obstacles and that it’s not, that’s sometimes there’s a lot to negotiate and navigate when you are a woman who is ambitious and you know, these movies.

Cathy: These two movies kind of help shift that narrative a little bit to kind of broaden what feminism means, what we can do, that it’s not just about making money, it’s about expanding, being less fear-based, feeling more collaborative like nine to five. I love, ’cause it’s three women together, right? Um, [01:32:00] and that ambition isn’t selfish and it isn’t masculine, it’s human.

Cathy: Ambition is human and it doesn’t have to look ruthless. It can be community and compassion and connection. Um, you know, in nine to five, the women don’t just want promotions. They want a better world. They want better workplace environment for their friends. They want equal pay, childcare, flexible hours, dignity.

Cathy: And you know, so as parents we can start telling our daughters, I know all of you probably already are, but you can do anything. Don’t let people tell you to shrink. Go after what you want. Um, you know. Teach ambition as something that’s generous and that’s helpful to others. Um, it’s not just self-serving.

Cathy: It’s not about stepping over people, it’s about bringing people with you. They’re, I have this great video that I reposted a while ago, and it’s this, these women, uh, they’re on N-W-N-B-A team, so they’re on a basketball team and they’re coming out of [01:33:00] this door of the bus and it’s kind of a tight door. So every single one of them turns around and helps the next person off the bus.

Cathy: Mm-hmm. They just like come off the bus and they lend their hand back, and then the next person comes off and then the next person lends their hand back. And I wrote like, that’s what women do. You know what I mean? Again, yes. All the time. No, but I think the women, I know that’s what we do. And Michelle Obama talked about this long time ago, like, what we have to do when we have power or responsibility is we put our hand back and help others come through that door.

Cathy: That’s what women do, and men can do that too. You know, this is again, it’s human. Um, so anyway,

Todd: all right, we ready?

Cathy: That’s it. Cringe are classic.

Clip: Nobody puts baby in the corner.

Todd: Um, I think they’re both classics. Um, [01:34:00] specifically just calling out sexual harassment. And, uh, just seeing women power. Yeah. Like forget about it.

Cathy: Yeah. I like the cringe is like, you know, I, I agree with you. Both movies to me are classics. I love them both. They’re in my, I know you always get mad ’cause I say everything’s in my top 10, but they’re two of my favorite movies of all time.

Cathy: Um, but it’s a lot of, you know, it’s not very racially diverse, you know, we gotta at least call that out. It’s a lot of white feminism, so there’s no race analysis. Um, glamorizing, overworking, the idea that, you know, changing your hair changes your life, that kind of stuff. But the, it’s good humor, it’s sisterhood, it’s, you know, speaking truth to power.

Cathy: I love them.

Todd: Yeah. So, um, are we ready for best quote?

Cathy: I got a hot take. Oh,

Todd: well I got a soundbite for a hot take. Okay.

Clip: Boy, it’s hot. This is hot. Never got this hot in Brooklyn, just like Africa. Hot Tarzan [01:35:00] couldn’t take this kind of.

Cathy: Okay. In the clips that I sent you, I have hot take.

Todd: Do you know what number it is by?

Cathy: Um, well, you gave me the numbers and I took a picture of it, so let me see. That was my way of figuring out, uh, number 6,

Todd: 5, 6. I think

Cathy: this is

Todd: it.

Clip: No names, no business cards. That’s it. Oh, you must know so and so. No resumes. Let’s just meet like human beings for once.

Clip: Well, it’s nice to meet you, whatever your name is, but I really do have to go. Please, please. One drink.

Cathy: Okay, so that is Harrison Ford playing Jack Trainor, and he sees Tess at the bar and basically comes over and said, when I saw you, I promised myself I would drink tequila with you or something like that.

Cathy: And then she’s like, well, I’m looking for a guy named Jack Trainor. And then he says that, he’s like, no, no, [01:36:00] no. Let’s not do that. That’s creepy. Mm-hmm. That’s stalkerish. So that’s just my hot take. Yeah. I love you. Harrison Ford. I love Jack. Ends up being an amazing character, but that’s a kind of creepy moment.

Cathy: And then she gets really drunk ’cause she took a few, like Xanax or Valium or something, plus had all these tequila shots and then he takes her home and takes her dress off.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Cathy: And,

Todd: um, that, that’s a whole thing in TV and movies. They, they did it in, um, fever Pitch, fever pitch, which I love. I love that movie.

Todd: The idea of taking somebody home and undressing them and dressing them. Yeah. It’s weird. It’s completely unnecessary because usually, I mean, drew Barry Moore’s character in Fever Fish away. She was sick. Yeah. She had food poison. But if somebody is like inebriated. They don’t care if they’re wearing pajamas take or just their underwear take their shoes off like it’s such a movie thing.

Cathy: Well, and let’s talk about that for a second. I know we’re trying to finish [01:37:00] up here, but Yeah,

Todd: we’re at an hour and 36. I

Cathy: know, but this is my feminine. I know.

Todd: That’s why, that’s why I’ve been quiet.

Cathy: Okay, so. And this is a positive thing, Melanie, and I should have said this with, remember when, I love how comfortable she is with her body.

Cathy: And her body is a very, uh, she, she’s amazing. Her body’s amazing, but it’s a normal woman’s body like she’s wearing. Um, and I’m taking this off of the whole Jack trainer thing. This is just her, like when she’s cleaning the house in her underwear and, you know, vacuuming and stuff, she’s so comfortable with herself.

Cathy: And I remember the first time seeing this and being, and feeling very like, oh, that’s more like me. Mm-hmm. Do you know what I mean? Like, I, you know, and she’s

Todd: not a size zero

Cathy: Exactly. And, and feeling like. Not only is it about you feel similar. Yeah. Like you, you know, you’re not that different looking but her comfort with it.

Cathy: Yeah. And so I just wanna give Melanie Griffith like that, kind of like props, because I think she really spoke to a lot of women. Now I’m not wearing garter [01:38:00] belts and everything like she does in this movie, but there was something very empowering about her love of her own body.

Todd: Yeah.

Cathy: I really liked that.

Todd: Are we ready for best quote? Yes.

Clip: May the force be with you. May the force be with you. May the force be with you. May the fool be with you.

Todd: May the force be

Clip: with you.

Todd: All right. Thank you. Master Yoda. Um, I. I think the best quote, it’s kind of the, I guess the famous one from nine to five. Let’s start there.

Todd: I’m gonna get that gun of mind and change you from a rooster to a hen.

Cathy: In one shot.

Todd: In one shot. Dolly Parton. Um, and I have a few different quotes from working Girl, you ready to hear it? Yeah. So this isn’t necessarily my favorite, but the most famous I guess. Okay.

Clip: Doing? Yeah. So do I screw up your life? No, I’m trying to make it better.

Clip: I’m not gonna spend the rest of my life working my ass off and getting nowhere just because I followed rules that I had nothing to do with setting up. Okay. Thank you Tess. You’re the first woman I’ve seen in one of these damn things that dresses like a woman. Not like a woman thinks a man would dress [01:39:00] if he was a woman.

Clip: Already heard that one. You wanna be taken seriously. You need serious hair. Can I get you anything, Mr. Trainer? Coffee Tea? Me? I have a head for business and I’m pod for sin. Is there anything wrong with that?

Todd: Just get that sexy list.

Clip: Mm-hmm. Please don’t yell at me. You treat me like I’m, why are we always talking about the way you get treated?

Clip: Who the fuck died and made you Grace Kelly? I am. That steak. You can’t just order me.

Todd: He, he’s the worst. Alec Baldwin in that movie. Thank care. Mick, he got a, he got the loan for his boat. Yes.

Cathy: Um, I go to number eight, uh, and you have to go to 1 49. It’s just part of nine to five. That always, that always gets a good laugh.

Cathy: Uh, I think it’s right here.

Clip: Right here. I’m gonna lose my job viol. Now just calm down, you know, fool. I’ve killed the boss. You think they’re not gonna fire me for a thing like that? Hush. And just sit here. We’ll be right back.

Cathy: Is that [01:40:00] good?

Clip: Uhhuh?

Cathy: I just always like that ’cause she’s that whole scene. Like, I basically sent Todd a scene that was like five minutes long and within that is my favorite quote, my favorite scene.

Cathy: My favorite. Like, it’s just a great scene. Yeah. At the hospital, like it’s, it’s just humor after humor, after humor. And then when they get pulled over and the body’s in the trunk and then when Dora Lee goes to the trunk and realizes it’s not Mr. Heart, it’s just great comedy. Yeah. So, okay. That’s it.

Todd: Are we ready for the music

Cathy: game?

Cathy: Music game,

Clip: playing that song. Makes me go on.

Todd: So for the first time, I feel like it’s possible we may pick the same song and because I don’t want to be seen as a copycat, I am going to play my song first. Right. Just everybody knows music game is, you’re just trying to catch the vibe of the podcast topic or the movies that we’re talking about or whatever.

Todd: So here’s mine.

Todd: [01:41:00] Is this yours?

Todd: Is this yours too?

Cathy: I had, I have three written down and I knew you’d go first so I could choose a different one. Oh, okay. Perfect. So Respect is one of mine, which is a perfect song for this. What movie do you think

Todd: of when you hear this song?

Cathy: Saint. Almost Fire.

Todd: Very good. Alright, so what do you got?

Cathy: Uh, I am gonna do, Desiree Gotta be.

Cathy: Ooh,

Todd: that’s a good

Cathy: one. Yeah, I.

Todd: Gotta be, gotta be down, gotta be. Don’t go.

Clip: Please stand up and be counted. Don’t be ashamed to cry. You gotta be, you gotta be bad. You gotta be bold, you gotta be wiser. You gotta be hard. You gotta be tough. You,

Todd: yeah, yours is better than mine. It just gets the whole thing. Yeah.

Todd: It’s more, it’s more complete. [01:42:00]

Cathy: And my other choice was I’m choosing gotta be as my selection. Yeah. I don’t think you can beat that one that’s done, but I had express yourself also.

Todd: Oh. Comes back to Madonna, doesn’t it? It

Cathy: does, doesn’t it always.

Todd: And my hot take is that, uh, what’s the Lady Gaga song that I think she stole off of the going

Cathy: this way.

Todd: Yeah, it sounds like that.

Cathy: That was 11 pages. That’s a lot of pages, a lot of notes and a lot of things that I thought I didn’t get through half of it, but you know what we did pretty well.

Todd: Um, should we do any trivia? I it’s not that good.

Cathy: Yes, gimme, go ahead. Fine. I’ll give you, let’s finish it up.

Todd: First. We gotta do this.

Clip: Okay. No,

Todd: I don’t wanna play the whole thing.

Todd: Um, alright, a few, nine to fives. Uh, what ubstance does Violet accidentally put in heart’s coffee instead of sweetener rep poison. And what does Violet get promoted [01:43:00] to? And I don’t know if this is true. What does Violet get promoted to at the end of the film?

Cathy: I

Todd: don’t think she

Cathy: does.

Todd: I mean, maybe

Cathy: she does. I, but it’s,

Todd: according to the trivia thing, it says vice president, I don’t know.

Todd: I’m not buying it.

Cathy: Wait, wait. You know what she does? Do you remember when they do the post script? The post script? Yeah. The animal house thing. So

Todd: that actually, so there is a good ending? Yes,

Cathy: she did. Okay, I take that back.

Todd: Working girl. What borough is TSS McGill from? She’s from.

Cathy: The Bronx?

Todd: No.

Cathy: Queens?

Todd: No,

Cathy: uh, Brooklyn?

Todd: No.

Cathy: Long Island.

Todd: No.

Cathy: Look. Where is she from? Staten Island. Staten Island. You know what? Everybody from that area. I’m sorry. I said Long Island before and I met Staten Island.

Todd: Yeah, we’re Chicagoan, so we don’t, I’m so sorry. We’re not intimately familiar with the different boroughs

Cathy: we should be though, because No, we, why?

Cathy: Because it that’s cultural literacy. You should know the boroughs of New York. And I’m sorry. That, well, we, we [01:44:00] know them. We just don’t know which one.

Todd: Um,

Cathy: but I said at the beginning of the show, I said she’s from Long Island because I was talking about their makeup, but she’s not. She’s from Staten Island.

Cathy: Okay. Okay. Keep going.

Todd: Uh, what does Ka, how does Catherine Parker injure herself?

Cathy: Skiing accident?

Todd: Yeah. And what song? One, Carly Simon, the Triple Crown Let the River Run. And what’s the name of Tess’s girlfriend who helps her with the transformation?

Cathy: Cindy. Cynthia.

Todd: Cynthia. But they call her Sin

Cathy: sin.

Todd: CYN.

Todd: Mm-hmm. Uh, what happens when test first meets Jack Trainor at the bar?

Cathy: Uh, they do shots together and then he, she gets drunk and passes out

Todd: very good. Passes out a cam from Valium and alcohol, and he takes her to his apartment. Mm-hmm. Um, that’s it. Do we have any kind of closing music?

Cathy: Yeah. I thought, why don’t you just play the Working Girl theme.

Cathy: It’s number two. It looks like it’s number. No, no. Uh, have it be number four. It’s kind of like a nice instrumental version of The Working Girl theme. And thanks for [01:45:00] listening to everybody. We really enjoy talking about these things. At least I do. Do you enjoy this?

Todd: I do.

Cathy: I love that it would be here

Todd: if I didn’t enjoy it, sweetie.

Cathy: I mean, honestly, if someone came over, I’d be like, let’s just talk about this all day. I would do this without recording.

Todd: Um, is that, is the Working Girl theme the same as Let the River Run? It is, but it’s the instrumental. Oh, so it’s number four? Uh, yeah. I lost that one. Uh, maybe I got it here. Four. There it is.

Cathy: Yeah. So if this is your first Zen Pop parenting, go back and look at all the other ones we’ve done. That’s right. And enjoy.

Todd: You got about 850 or so other podcasts that you can listen to. Keep [01:46:00] trying.

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