Wedding Season
6/27/14 - We discuss wedding survival tips, innovation, (not) watching the World Cup, why we love Pitbull so much and dressing for success. Plus our pal Cord Jefferson tells us about the glamorous life of a Hollywood screenwriter.
Transcript below.
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CREDITS
Producer: Gina Delvac
Hosts: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman
Theme song: Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn
TRANSCRIPT: WEDDING SEASON
[Ads]
(0:32)
Ann: Hi, welcome to Call Your Girlfriend.
Aminatou: A podcast for long-distance besties everywhere.
Ann: I am Ann Friedman.
Aminatou: And I'm Aminatou Sow.
Ann: And we're besties, although at the moment we're in the same room and not long-distance.
Aminatou: We're having a blast. This week on Call Your Girlfriend we'll be talking about wedding season. We will be talking to Cord Jefferson.
Ann: Our dear friend.
Aminatou: Wonderful, wonderful human. We are watching the World Cup so therefore we have a defense of Pitbull on deck. We'll be discussing new emoji standards, how to address seriously via a Hillary Clinton article, we will be making fun of innovation and obviously there's menstruation news and very important pregnant -- Beyonce pregnancy rumors.
Ann: Rumors.
[Theme Song]
(1:44)
Ann: Personal check-in, what are we doing in upstate New York?
Aminatou: Ann, it is very hot in this room right now. We're in a beautiful house in the Hudson Valley. We're basically in upstate because it's wedding season.
Ann: It's so wedding season. I'm going to two within the span of eight days.
Aminatou: Yeah, I have three more this summer. I will only be going to two more. Sorry to one of you whose wedding I'm not going to.
Ann: Oof, unnamed.
Aminatou: Yeah, shall not be named. Yeah, we went to the wedding of our dearest friends Mercedes and Ryan. Shout-out Mercedes and Ryan, hope you're enjoying your honeymoon. And had a blast. I had a great time. Drank a lot, gave a toast, had a good time.
Ann: Do you know what I really appreciate? And this is definitely Mercy and Ryan but I really appreciate when people don't pretend that their wedding is something special.
Aminatou: Yes.
Ann: Like obviously everyone is different, we are all unique snowflakes, but when you go to a wedding and everyone's like "Oh, you know, it's just like it's so unique, like we're drinking out of mason jars and there's hand-lettered place cards" and whatever other Etsy shit that's going on. You know, this is a very real like this is just a thing where we're all hanging out together which I really appreciated.
Aminatou: I know. I think too that I've really come around to wedding season. I think that I went through a phase in life where I was very dismissive of it. I don't know why. You go to people's parties and get to drink wine on their tab, like why wouldn't you be into this? But I really think that it's also a function of having adult friends, right? I obviously went to a religious high school and so went to a lot of weddings really young. There was no drinking, there was no dancing, and there was no fun time so . . .
Ann: I grew up in Iowa so I also went to lots of weddings very young.
Aminatou: Right? You're just like dry wedding, why? Those are always the weddings you need booze at. But yeah, I think there's something also really special about watching two humans that you love get together and throw a really bomb party and realize that they have more friends than family there. It's just a delight.
(3:55)
Ann: Adult weddings are definitely better. I mean major downside, crippling financial blow if you go to all of them.
Aminatou: Yes.
Ann: We sort of have a shared tactic of buying gifts jointly frequently which I think alleviates some of the cost.
Aminatou: I know. This is the first time that we have not bought a joint wedding gift and I won't lie I was a little sad about it.
Ann: Aww. The Sow-Friedmans give good gifts.
Aminatou: The Sow-Friedmans do give good gifts. Sorry Mercy-Ryan, you're going to have to get individual gifts.
Ann: Here's something else about adult weddings: I really struggle to get drunk at weddings. Like I feel like I never get there.
Aminatou: I can never get drunk at weddings and I don't know what it is because I drink an ungodly amount of booze at weddings.
Ann: It's true, it's magical. I just drink and drink and drink and never get drunk, partially because there's dancing. We definitely danced to this podcast theme song on the dance floor where it was magically emptied of men and it was just all women for a brief moment.
Aminatou: Yeah. You know, I think also it's just this control freak part of me where I don't want to be that terrible wedding guest. Like I will never be that person that will leave their shoes behind when they go home.
Ann: Or like swings on the pole and collapses the whole tent.
Aminatou: Yeah, exactly. Can't be that person. So I don't know what it is. Maybe some scientist friend of Call Your Girlfriend can study this.
Ann: Right, can weigh in. We might have to come back to that. Anyway, so this is oddly two out of three episodes where we are physically in the same place for our long-distance podcast but we're going to call someone who's far away luckily. We've planned for the long-distance element. Our friend Cord.
Aminatou: Yeah, let's go into our weird space booth phone and call Cord who is a delightful human and writer and friend to us.
Ann: Yeah, he used to be a Gawker writer and these days he is an up-and-coming shall we say screenwriter for television. He lives in L.A.
Aminatou: He's arrived?
Ann: He's up and came?
Aminatou: He's arrived. He up and came. [Laughter]
Ann: Okay, we're going to call him now.
(5:55)
[Interview Starts]
Ann: All right, hi Cord. Thanks for being a guest on our podcast.
C: Of course. Thank you both for having me. I appreciate it.
Aminatou: How's your day going today? What are you up to?
C: It's going really well. I've been watching a lot of soccer all day. That's all I plan on doing for the next few weeks. I figure I didn't really think about it when I initially quit Gawker that it was going to be right before the World Cup and so it was kind of a pleasant surprise that now I can just sit around and watch soccer all day.
Aminatou: That's very exciting.
Ann: You make it sound like you are long-term unemployed. That is not true.
C: That is -- that is definitely not true but I don't . . . but now I do have a lot more time on my hands to watch soccer than I would have previously but I'm certainly not unemployed. That's true.
Ann: So tell us about the leisurely life of a television screenwriter.
C: I had never in previous iterations of my job had to take meetings as work. For a while I was like oh, I'm not doing any work. I'm just going to meetings all the time. But now I consider meetings real work and so when I look at it from that perspective I don't feel like such a lazy bag of garbage but other . . . other than that I've written now two pilots. I'm writing a treatment for a film right now so . . .
Aminatou: You're a machine.
C: Things are busy. Things are busy. Yeah, it's been going well and besides that I'm keeping busy with other journalistic enterprises. I just finished up a piece for ESPN Magazine. I just finished up that piece for Medium. I've got some other irons in the fire on those fronts so it's going well. It's going really well.
Aminatou: When you go into all these meetings I just assume that in L.A. meetings people just listen to you talk and then they go "Oh my god, I want to find a way to work together" and really they're never going to work with you.
C: [Laughs] The one thing that I've learned is if you're in the room at all then they do see some potential for something. Now whether that means they are going to buy something from you and give you a bunch of money or whether that means they just like the first three pages of your script that they read you can't really tell. But the fact that you're in the room does mean that there is some promise there. I was talking to one of my good friends, Tracy, who writes on a bunch of different shows and she was involved with that show Awkward Black Girl for a while. She's great. And she was saying that before she ever got her first staff job she went to she said 60 to 70 meetings before anything materialized.
Aminatou: Whoa.
(8:30)
C: But now since she's taken those meetings she has really steady work working in staff writing rooms. I think she's sold two projects now, sold two of her own personal pilots that are in development in different places. So you're building towards something. At the end it can feel kind of sisyphean at first but I always kind of need to come back to the idea that I've only been doing this now for four months.
Ann: I mean Amina and I were discussing when we were driving through Malibu several months ago that you are the friend of ours who is most likely to own a Malibu beach house someday.
C: [Laughs]
Aminatou: Bags of money.
Ann: We're putting all our money on you.
C: I think that that's funny because I feel like I would be the . . . like I don't have a bunch of money. [Laughter]
Aminatou: I realize you don't have a bunch of money.
Ann: Someday.
Aminatou: Someday you will have bags of money.
C: [Laughs] I mean that's very nice but I would be shocked. What gives you that inclination? I don't think I . . .
Aminatou: We'll check in in a year. We'll check in in a year and tell me that you are now making considerably more money.
Ann: Also you never wear socks which I feel like is a marker of Malibu wealth and success.
Aminatou: Yeah, rich man. Always beautiful loafers, no socks. That's basically why I picked you for friendship.
(9:55)
C: [Laughs] You know what that is? I was thinking about that the other day. I was watching Pretty in Pink and I realized that so much of my aesthetic is just due to James Spader in Pretty in Pink and just that evil guy who I hate everything about him but I also love everything about the way that he looks.
Aminatou: [Laughs]
Ann: Is there a personality disorder that is trying to become what you hate?
C: Possibly. Potentially. It's not a mistake that the villain in that movie also looks the coolest, right? And is the most -- is easily the most attractive person in that movie. James Spader is way hotter than Blaine in that movie.
Aminatou: That's true. In the movie of our lives you are unmistakably the most attractive person. That's fair.
Ann: I'm going to speak up for Blaine. I like Blaine.
Aminatou: Who speaks up for Blaine ever?
C: Yeah, you think that Blaine is more attractive than Stef in that movie? He obviously has . . . he's the nicer guy.
Ann: Spader has this kind of like -- Spader has like a bred lapdog vibe about him like it's just too perfect.
C: [Laughs] I also . . . I love that there was an era when it totally made sense to put a 17-year-old in grey linen suits and smoking in the halls of his high school. Like that wasn't so outlandish of an idea.
Ann: Okay, we've gotten very far afield. We wanted to talk about your Matter piece about fatigue and writing about racism.
C: Oh.
Ann: Maybe you can explain that to people.
C: Okay. I didn't know we were going to cover that subject actually.
Aminatou: Yeah, we're a very serious podcast Cord. Sometimes we cover serious things.
Ann: Hi-low. We're hi-low.
C: Yeah, that piece just came to me after . . . I mean I'd been thinking about it for a while. I'd been thinking about this idea of how difficult and taxing psychologically it can be to just be writing about suffering all the time and to be explaining why people who look like you don't deserve to be treated like shit and to be -- can I swear? Am I allowed to swear?
Aminatou: Yes.
Ann: All the time.
(12:05)
C: Okay, treated like shit and killed and beaten and unjustly arrested. And writing about that is just -- it hurts your psyche a lot. And I think there was a time when like a woman, I don't know if you guys have seen this video but it was like a viral video a couple weeks ago after . . . I can't remember if it came out before or after I published that piece. But there was a woman in Buffalo, New York who was videotaped in that parking lot.
Aminatou: Oh, yeah.
C: Calling that guy nigger over and over. And so I think that it's really interesting nowadays that that has become something that people have to cover. I think it may have been easier back in the day to cover the racism beat because every piece of racism wasn't something you had to touch on. Like it was interesting for me to think about the fact that had I been writing about this still there might be . . . it might've been something that came across my desk like you should write about this just strange woman calling this guy a nigger in Buffalo, New York. Like she's not a person of note. She's not famous for any reason. She's only famous for saying this racist thing in a parking lot one day. And how we've gotten to the point when it's like all of these . . . normally you wouldn't necessarily be writing about these things but now the racism beat -- and everybody's beat has grown to include like viral videos and this random . . . what this one woman said on her Facebook and all these kids who called Obama a nigger the night after he was elected on Twitter.
Aminatou: That's a catch a racist beat.
C: Yeah, exactly. And it's just like it's become this thing where it happens all the time just because what is newsworthy now has changed so differently from what it was even ten years ago, like what news is now.
Ann: Well and also at the time you were writing for Gawker.
C: Yeah.
Ann: Which defines news in some ways by virality.
(14:00)
C: Exactly. Exactly. But it's even more than Gawker. I went looking for that video and it was on the Huffington Post. It was on New York Magazine's website. It was on Gawker obviously. It was in places that weren't just necessarily known for their viral videos but are now on that train where it's like okay, this is newsworthy now I guess. A woman in upstate New York who's a racist who said something racist in a parking lot once is something we should cover just because everybody's talking about it for some reason.
Ann: Which is why you're so happy to now be taking meetings.
C: Yeah, right? It's . . . I mean I would personally say that that woman isn't necessarily something that a lot of people should be paying attention to but I also don't ever want to be the guy who used to write a lot for the Internet who now looks down my nose at Internet culture because I don't think that that's right. I think that the Internet is good for a lot of things. I think personally, yeah, am I glad I wasn't asked to write about some lady calling somebody a slur somewhere? Yeah, I am glad that I didn't have to do that but I also don't think that the Internet's viral culture is ever something I want to put down after being involved with it for so long.
Ann: Cord, thank you so much for being on our podcast.
C: Thank you guys so much for having me. I was so honored that you asked me to be on it. I'm so proud of you and I love you both so much. I'm really happy to be here.
[Interview Ends]
[Music]
Aminatou: Cord. What a delight, huh?
Ann: What a delight. Always a delight. That man was always in good spirits. I think I've only seen Cord sad like once and we used to work together every day.
Aminatou: I know, he's always in a really good mood. Man, I wish we had talked to him about wedding season. He just has the best wedding outfit game.
Ann: Men who don't wear socks love weddings. [Laughter]
Aminatou: You know what else has been really fun though about being in the same room together is watching the World Cup with you or me watching you watch the World Cup.
(16:00)
Ann: I don't know how to tell you this, I'm not watching. I'm just sitting in the same room as the World Cup being on the television and half-watching.
Aminatou: I know but Ann even, you know, like a year ago I didn't think that it was possible to have you near a sporting event. And the World Cup is obviously very important to me so every once in a while I'm terrified that something dismissive will come from that side of the room but so far you've been a really good sport.
Ann: I mean a good sport. International sportsmanship award? I mean I'm mostly just bored by it. It's hard to get too worked up. I mean professional sports are just like who did we purchase? This is like where are people from? It seems a little deeper.
Aminatou: Yeah, hello? Nationalism and sports, it's the best thing that can happen to you. But also I don't know. This is really interesting because you don't strike me as an indoorist person, you know, like the NSGU No Sports Growing Up people that you can never trust and you're always like eh, there's something a little loose there. But I think you are a little mystery to me that way but I think that it's hilarious. My fantasy is that one day you will get really into tennis. I feel like individual sports are more for you.
Ann: Here's my theory. So what did you say, NSGU? No Sports Growing Up?
Aminatou: Yeah.
Ann: I'm the opposite of an NSGU where it was like my family were addicts or something like that. I was scarred by how much sports was forced down my throat and I think that in the same way that I rejected Catholicism and living in a small town and lots of other things and did not adopt them into my adult lifestyle sports are just along with the ride.
Aminatou: Yeah, that's funny. So in my family we did not always get along but the one thing that we could do very well was watch sports together. And I think that that's also part of the reason that I'm really into international sporting events because it's the one time that I could have normal conversations with my dad. And my brother and I bond over it and even my sister and I, so I don't know. One thing I know that you enjoyed though about the world cup was obviously Pitbull opening the ceremony.
(18:00)
Ann: Oh my god, those white pants.
Aminatou: We are big Pitbull fans in this family. It's kind of ridiculous.
Ann: It's kind of controversial, let's pause button for a second, because I feel like you were the one that really got me to love Pitbull. In 2004 I worked in a building at Hudson and Houston Street in New York which is the Hot 97 building.
Aminatou: [Laughs]
Ann: There was a sign at the security that was like no posses which I worked at a women's rights non-profit. But anyway my first exposure to Pitbull was showing up to work one day and there was this chanting mob outside going "Pitbull! Pitbull!"
Aminatou: I love Pitbull.
Ann: And I had to look it up to make sure it wasn't like a purebred dog enthusiast group. There was just no -- or an advocacy group. Anyway, but since I feel like you've really sold Pitbull to me.
Aminatou: I mean here is the thing about Pitbull: it is completely inoffensive sound, right? And it obviously has the EDM oonce-oonce underpinning to all of the top 40 that I like, you know?
Ann: Bass drop. Bass drop.
Aminatou: There is something really special to me watching Pitbull invade American radio that I appreciated and how it started with rap music. Pitbull was the CEO of Bad Boy Latino when P. Diddy realized that you need Latino people to also buy rap records because . . .
Ann: Thank you P. Diddy.
Aminatou: Yes, thank you Diddy. Anyway, so this whole crossover thing starts happening and you have every once in a while a rap song will drop some really foul Spanish verse in it and you're like what does that mean, give him the eggs? [Laughs]
Ann: I don't know what that means. I'm scared to look it up.
Aminatou: I know. But yeah, so it's like that happens. Then Pitbull also -- he's much older, he kind of has that dad vibe happening, but he's so in love with Miami and that explains more than half of his success, right? He's always shouting out weirdo tiny Miami neighborhoods that we don't know about. I like a good hometown boy, got to give credit.
(20:00)
Ann: Also very good on Tumblr.
Aminatou: Yeah, also he takes the hate with such strides. When the entire Internet tried to send him to Alaska -- is that what it was? -- yeah, when Reddit sent him to Alaska in that stunt he loved every minute of it and just made it the best that it can be. You know how I love an underdog.
Ann: So full disclosure we definitely watched the Timber video starring Pitbull and Ke$ha eight times in a row in a single setting.
Aminatou: Definitely.
Ann: I was a little disappointed they never appeared in the same frame.
Aminatou: Yeah, I mean that video is kind of a mess but all the Pitbull parts are great.
Ann: So anyway we are not the first to love Pitbull. There was a Deadspin article that says "He's a crossover artist who still raps in Spanglish who constantly shouts out Latinos and who will wear an admittedly ill-fitting pair of white capri pants to the World Cup opening repping his club hermanos Miami-wide." So what I have to ask about that is did he admit the pants did not fit well?
Aminatou: Listen, I don't think that Pitbull knows that the pants don't fit well but it's part of his weirdo dad aesthetic. I thought he was like 45; I think he's 33.
Ann: Also shout-out to Jenna Lyons, the rolled-up ankles visible thing really, really made it far.
Aminatou: I know. Caprants.
Ann: Caprants.
Aminatou: In the wrong hands problematic.
[Ads]
(24:05)
Aminatou: In the right hands everything you need.
Ann: Everything. Other major news today?
Aminatou: So obviously yesterday we freaked out when we heard about the new emoji standards dropping. First we were really excited and then two . . .
Ann: Wait, what are the new emoji standards?
Aminatou: So in your iPhone you have the ability to not use words and use these delightful picture frames called emojis. Shout-out Japanese teens who made them popular. And so emoji is made and governed by these terrible people at the Unicode -- that do Unicode and so you have to wait a really long time before anything gets done.
Ann: Because they have to collectively agree on the new emoji?
Aminatou: Because they have to agree on it. You know, international bodies can't do anything right.
Ann: So it's like a bunch of international programmers?
Aminatou: Basically yes. They can't do anything right and so Miley Cyrus for a long time has been the diversity warrior for emoji. Surprise, who knew Miley would be the person that we needed? Because there's like no brown people in emoji. So we hear that there's all these new emoji coming. Upon investigation it just so happens that there are still no brown people. Now you can do a Vulcan sign, Vulcan salute, but you still don't have beautiful brown people emoji. What's up with that?
Ann: This is why I ask these questions about who is on the Unicode board because I would wager a guess that maybe it's not super diverse.
Aminatou: I mean probably not but also -- so here's the deal with emoji, right? There are also all these weird Japanese things that I don't need half of these.
(25:45)
Ann: Oh man, I was telling Amina earlier today the one that looks like an Easter Island head is actually a culture that's outside of a train station in Tokyo. It does not mean Easter Island head.
Aminatou: I know. Deep history. My favorite is all the Chinese character ones though are great. Wait, what is the one that we love? The one that's like do your homework or peaceful homework. [Laughs]
Ann: Right, peaceful homework. So you know you can make Siri read emoji to you which of course we used as an opportunity to translate all of the ones we didn't know because neither of us speak Chinese.
Aminatou: Yeah, so let's keep our fingers crossed that the next time somebody decides to release 250 new emoji we'll have emojis that we're really into.
Ann: There's also no taco in that list.
Aminatou: I know, there's no avocado. There's no . . . it's very upsetting. If you want . . .
Ann: There's no bed. There's no emoji couch. How are you supposed to tell people you're staying in without an emoji couch?
Aminatou: You do the sad face emoji. If you want really bomb emoji though you should check out this app -- this texting app called Group Me that has hilarious emoji. Hey, weren't you telling me earlier today about some Hillary Clinton thing?
Ann: So this is sort of like a . . . ugh, I'm scared to start talking about Hillary already because even though I know we talk about Hillary Clinton all the time it's like . . .
Aminatou: Yeah, because she's amazing.
Ann: Right but I feel like -- I mean part of this is my profession. I'm going to write one million articles about Hillary between now and the end of 2006. Sorry, 2016. See? I'm already going backwards in time to other things that I've written. But there was an article in the Times style section this weekend that was sort of making the case for yeah, we should talk about Hillary's clothes or like women politician clothes or serious politician -- serious ladies outfits. And it mentioned this website Lady Pockets which I saw a couple of weeks ago and was very amused by that does a sort of in-style or maybe even like a Glamour/Cosmo style treatment of professional politicians business ladies outfits being like turquoise boxy suits, in for spring.
Aminatou: [Laughs]
(28:00)
Ann: And I couldn't really tell -- I couldn't really tell if it was check out these awesome women, we wish women's magazines would feature more of them or if it was a send-up of the way that political writers feel the need to exhaustively catalog what women are wearing in those contexts where they don't even blink about what men wear because there's an accepted uniform for men and there isn't for women.
Anyway, so this Times article makes what I think is a semi-compelling argument that sort of says these women are role models for women who have great professional aspirations and there's no reason why their style lessons or things that they've learned that work for them in terms of socially conveying professionalism but also having a little bit of personality and navigating what is -- like I don't know, how to get dressed is a pretty difficult question for a lot of people, not just women. There's no reason why we shouldn't examine that.
Which I sort of come down on the fact that yes, that's true, but that's something we should also talk about in the context of men and maybe segregate it to an article about, you know, I want one article about how Hillary picks her pantsuits. I don't want it to be a footnote in every single article that is supposed to be about her policy agenda.
Aminatou: I guess so, but I guess the thing that's baffling to me about this is at least the D.C. lady politician has a uniform.
Ann: Tell me, what is it?
Aminatou: So Hillary Clinton wears the pantsuit but most of the other ladies are basically in Ann Taylor fashion which is not a derogatory -- I don't mean that to be derogatory, but I think that they've all learned to dress kind of in this boring take the focus off of what you are wearing way because this is how we do business in this town. I think there's like two women on Capitol Hill that everybody's . . .
Ann: Rosa DeLauro.
Aminatou: Yeah, Rosa DeLauro. Everybody's always perplexed by her.
Ann: Ms. Frizzle.
(29:55)
Aminatou: Yeah, Ms. Frizzle. And then when what's her name, the lady who -- Kyrsten Sinema, when you read the profile about her everybody's like ah, southwest fashions.
Ann: She just wears a lot of turquoise and magenta.
Aminatou: Basically, right? I don't know. I think I am generally not interested in what any politician has to wear unless it is something of note, like Barack Obama wears very boring American-made suits also made out of that Kevlar material so that nobody shoots him. And I don't understand the . . .
Ann: Wait, sorry, Barack Obama's suits are made out of Kevlar material?
Aminatou: Yeah, there's this weird suit material that you can make now. I think it's made in Israel because doh, also LOL. And right? But the way he dresses is really boring. And also Hillary Clinton has been at this for so long if you are really writing about what she's wearing you are the boring one. Do we still care that the lady wears pantsuits and an occasional scrunchy here and there? There's just nothing there, right? I'm more interested in, you know, is there a process to how she picks her clothes? One politician -- recent politician that I was fascinated by the way that they dress is Sarah Palin because . . .
Ann: The shopping spree?
Aminatou: Yeah, because of the shopping spree, but before I knew of the shopping spree her outfits were on-point at the RNC. I was like you cannot be our next anything but you look amazing. And that's something that was of note but in general it just . . . I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm bored by politicians. I'm not offended by lady politician articles; I am bored by them.
Ann: Yeah. I mean I guess though that there's still -- I mean in some ways the same article, how to dress for whatever event tastefully, is a recycled trope of fashion magazines.
Aminatou: Yeah.
(31:42)
Ann: But I remember hearing from this woman who runs a media training program for women and it had been going for several years and finally they noticed that in all the questionnaires of "What do you wish we told you more of?" it was like actually help me shop. Like help me get dressed was a thing that came up again and again and again. And it was really interesting because they had been like, you know, this is all about getting women to sound really great and give good talking points and we all know you show up and get hair and makeup done but everyone just kept asking for it. And I think that there's this line to walk between not giving a fuck, because for women there is no Kevlar suit like Obama. I mean yeah you can maybe sort of broadly say in D.C. it's Ann Taylor and if you step outside of that you'll get noticed. But I feel like if I were in sort of a public position like that I wouldn't want to only wear a uniform. And so I'm still curious about . . .
Aminatou: Really? Do you think that?
Ann: That I wouldn't want to wear a uniform? Yeah!
Aminatou: I mean you kind of . . .
Ann: Are you saying I kind of wear a uniform?
Aminatou: I mean we're both very confident dressers but I think that a lot of what we wear is very uniformy.
Ann: I mean, yeah, that's true. So when I was an editor I had a uniform that was like a young boss lady uniform. That was a relatively high-waisted denim, no crack. Some kind of silky blouse, usually thrifted, could be a bold print, maybe not, button up all the way to the top or not really a cleave showing level and ankle boots. Accessories optional.
Aminatou: Yeah.
Ann: That's sort of what I wore every single day.
Aminatou: Babe.com editor.
Ann: Totally babe.com editor. If somebody was like "We're doing an article about power lady dressing outside the context of where you have to wear a suit, what do you wear when you're a youngish boss in an office without a dress code?" I think that's a particularly tech and media industry question. So how do you convey authority when people still have old-fashioned ideas about what women should be wearing?
Aminatou: Denim on denim. That's how you do that, my uniform.
Ann: Texas tuxedo looks good on everyone.
(33:45)
Aminatou: Texas tuxedo looks good, you know? Then you just accessorize it here and there. Maybe -- man, now I feel like the whole time we were in D.C. we were wasting our time and we should've just been stylists to powerful people.
Ann: I mean I do think there is also this art to being almost perfectly in-line with what everyone expects with one little tweak.
Aminatou: There are a couple of companies that have started doing just that, like "Hey, I'm a tech woman on this speaking circuit. How do I have a dress where you can hook a microphone up really easily or have a uniform and stuff like that?" So I don't know, hopefully somebody's working on this problem that's not me because . . .
Ann: Designers?
Aminatou: Because clearly I would fail at it.
Ann: Right.
Aminatou: Well, so listen, I overnight read the Jill Lepore innovation article in this week's New Yorker and it is pretty good and also kind of hilarious for many reasons.
Ann: So I didn't read it. Give me the top-level talking points.
Aminatou: So I'm going to give you the top-level talking point. Her top-level talking point which I wrote down right here and I'm going to read out loud to you . . .
Ann: Oh my god, you guys, she hand wrote this. This is hand written.
Aminatou: I know, but now I can't read any of my handwriting so somebody needs to disrupt handwriting.
Ann: Oh my god.
Aminatou: So she basically calls bullshit on this theory of disruptive innovation that is coined by annoying Harvard business school professor -- Harvard business school has bred some of our favorite people but also I'm afraid generally of the kind of people who come from there because they're marketing geniuses which this piece gets into. But Clay Christensen, and it's all about the process basically by which the product or commodity completely takes over. So he wrote this book in I think it was '97 and it's basically become the bible in Silicon Valley and in a lot of places.
Ann: There are a lot of bibles in Silicon Valley, P.S.
Aminatou: I know, but the point that she makes in this article I think that was so powerful to me is how tech and Silicon Valley specifically is one of the few places where there are no critical thinkers and there are no critics. Like everybody has bought in to disruptive innovation. Yes, computers came and disrupted whatever else we were doing before and now we have cell phones, and community college is disrupting real college which is a terrifying thing to think about. But even more terrifying than that is realizing that this is now shifting into the service industry and we're disrupting all these kind of "I don't want people to disrupt my healthcare the way they're disrupting cabs or disrupting legal services."
(36:24)
And so she basically goes through the book and lists all of the case studies that he has and debunks like pretty much all of them. She's obviously very nimby about this so you can tell she's just not a fan. It is hilarious to me that they're both Harvard professors so I think it'll be . . .
Ann: Drama. Drama on the quad.
Aminatou: I would like to be a fly on the wall of that conversation. It scares me a lot that this is the time that at least I'm living in and in my industry that there are people who buy all of this stuff wholesale, right? And that I sit in all these products meetings where people will say things like "If you're doing it right, you're doing it wrong." [Laughs]
Ann: Oh my god.
Aminatou: And we're basically buying into that. And the thing that she says is innovation is basically like solid marketing which if you -- you know, if you get it you know that that's true but the at-large public doesn't know that.
Ann: Well innovation is sort of one of the . . . an easy way for magazines to underwrite whole issues now. Basically the reason why hey, even the New Yorker has an innovation issue is because that's something that any corporation is excited to underwrite, like they want to be associated with the idea of innovation. But what I was going to say about this word disrupt, I don't know if she goes into this but something that's long . . . I've always wanted to hear sort of a linguist write about this because to me it's like a disruption doesn't mean you fix anything and doesn't mean you have any sort of sustainable new solution.
(37:55)
Aminatou: I'm so happy you go into this Ann because she talks about it from a very historical perspective.
Ann: Oh, good.
Aminatou: Specifically about innovation and how it is very recent that innovation has a positive connotation so it's basically all of these 18th century ideas repackaged and marketed really well and sold just wholly to business school kids who are ruining it for all of us.
Ann: Yeah, I mean I feel like we make jokes about disrupting things all the time.
Aminatou: I know. All of that said here are the things I would like to see disrupted.
Ann: Tell me. Emoji we just discussed.
Aminatou: Emoji.
Ann: Weddings.
Aminatou: Not weddings. Framing. If somebody listening has a solution to cheaper framing please talk to me. Please write us because I don't understand how it's so expensive.
Ann: I feel like I could probably think of other things. I don't know, the problem . . . it's like I don't want anything disrupted; I just want you to do it better. Like that's not what disrupt means. Disrupt means just do it differently and make the old model less relevant, but doesn't mean make a new model that is sustainable or is broadly relevant.
Aminatou: I know. All I can see right now is the season finale of Silicon Valley which . . .
Ann: Oh my god, I've only seen the first five episodes.
Aminatou: So we won't talk about it but you should watch it.
Ann: Okay.
[Music]
Aminatou: Also yesterday while we were hiking I got a 9-1-1 . . .
Ann: While you were hiking? Upstate. Phrases.
Aminatou: Were you hiking or streaming? I don't know.
(39:50)
Ann: I was at a swimming hole.
Aminatou: Combination. Combination hike/swimming.
Ann: I was swimming in a hole.
Aminatou: Some of us have work to do. You know, I got a seven siren drudge level alert rumor that Beyonce might be pregnant and I don't know how to feel about it.
Ann: So here is my first thought. Statistics say the second child is when your work output really falls off. Like women kind of hang in there after child one but child two is when they're like, you know, take a low-track position, don't get promotions, their salary really falls off a cliff. And obviously Beyonce is not a woman; she is superhuman. I know it's not maybe the same thing but I was immediately scared about what this means for post-On the Run.
Aminatou: This is true. I don't know how this is going to shake out for us because clearly this is about us. But on the other hand I'm like maybe she's smart. You know, have two kids really close together and then you can do what you need to do. Blue can have a sister or a brother. Hopefully it's a sister. Jay-Z needs more positive women influence in his life. We will not be discussing the elevator situation because I'm just personally hurt by it.
Ann: Baeghazi is a cute baby name though.
Aminatou: Baeghazi. [Laughs]
Ann: Right, anyway.
Aminatou: Do you have any menstruation news for me this week?
Ann: I'm so happy you asked because in anticipation of this podcast I obviously Google News searched for menstruation and menstrual and period which is a little less useful. But . . .
Aminatou: What's going on?
Ann: There is new research. Some professors at the University of Southern California analyzed 58 different research experiments about what women are interested in when they're menstruating or they're ovulating. So it was this sort of long-held Daily Mail style headline that women, when they're ovulating, want to sleep with more masculine men, like more manly men. And basically it's like nah. Here's a direct quote: "Fertile women desire sex with men who seem particularly masculine or genetically fit." Like how do you even conduct research that's like does this man seem genetically fit?
Aminatou: That is ridiculous.
(42:10)
Ann: It's ridiculous. But anyway the point is the women who like masculine men like them all month long, not just when they're ovulating. It's like oh, you mean beef-o-sexuals? People who like beefcakes all the time?
Aminatou: Listen, we are out there. We're out here and . . .
Ann: I'm ready for you to have a pride movement, beef-o-sexual pride.
Aminatou: There's no shame in liking beefcakes. Listen, it's a very much look, don't touch kind of relationship.
Ann: Oh, interesting. So it's an objectification?
Aminatou: Yeah, I don't want to end up with a beef-o-sexual. Are you kidding me?
Ann: Well you are a beef-o-sexual. You don't want to end up with a beefcake.
Aminatou: Oh, yeah, real talk. I don't want to end up . . .
Ann: Although you are kind of a beefcake in your own way.
Aminatou: [Laughs]
Ann: I feel like the beef-o-sexual mutual relationship could be . . .
Aminatou: That is . . . okay. Anyway . . .
Ann: That's more like a debunked menstruation research.
Aminatou: Yeah, I don't know. I feel like so much period misinformation can be attributed to just everyone. It is women's fault and it is men's fault that all this garbage news is out there.
Ann: I mean and like I said show me the details. How are you testing for genetically fit? Like they interview women and say "Does this man seem genetically fit?"
Aminatou: They go to Iceland specifically.
Ann: Like oh, he has no open sores and seems to have like . . . you know, his ears are in the right place so he seems genetically fit to me. Like I don't even know.
Aminatou: [Laughs] Yeah, that's crazy. A couple of weeks ago everybody was debating whether women should get extra days off if they have their period. It was like a sexist frame. It's like uh, these ladies . . .
Ann: But that's a good question. I think we should, extra sick days.
Aminatou: I know. I would totally take three to ten extra days off, heavy flow.
Ann: Totally. Heavy flow days. Yeah.
Aminatou: Heavy flow days to just chill at home and put my computer on my uterus. That's how I deal with it.
Ann: Let it hum. Let it hum.
Aminatou: The computer gets so hot.
(44:00)
Ann: Computerus.
Aminatou: Computerus. [Laughs] The computer gets so hot and I don't have time to reheat those beans or whatever it is that . . .
Ann: Yeah, I have a bag of beans that I microwave and put on my uterus. Different strokes, you know?
Aminatou: Yeah, sometimes you don't have time for that. Sometimes all you've got is a MacBook Pro, you know? And just chill at home. My thing that I like to do when I'm cramping up especially bad is to just sit in the tub or even in the shower and turn the water up really hot and have a glass of wine. It probably does not help scientifically but there's something very comforting about it.
Ann: Psychological comfort.
Aminatou: Yeah, I'm into it.
Ann: Yeah. I think we're out of time. Also it's really hot in this room and it's nice outside and we should go.
Aminatou: Let's go. Let's go outside. Hey, bye Ann.
Ann: Wait, before we say goodbye we have to say that you can subscribe to our podcast on iTunes.
Aminatou: Yes.
Ann: Or follow us on Twitter at callyrgf.
Aminatou: Or you can find us at callyourgirlfriend.com. Feel free to drop us a review on iTunes and . . .
Ann: We read them. We try to be very responsive to especially our negative reviews which I'm admitting right now.
Aminatou: I know. Negative reviewer I hope you're listening.
Ann: Singular. [Laughs]
Aminatou: We're trying. We're trying our best. Hey, also Ann I think this is the last time we are going to be together on this coast.
Ann: Oh my gosh. We'll be together on this coast again but it's going to be a while. It's going to be a while. Yeah, it's true. By the next time we talk -- wait, you'll still be in New York but I'll be gone.
Aminatou: Next time we talk, yeah, I'll be packing up. It'll be my last week in New York and you'll be in London.
Ann: I'll be in London.
Aminatou: Okay. I guess see you on the Internet.
Ann: See you on the Internet. Bye boo.