In Retrospect Transcripts

EPISODE 15 – THE MARRIAGE MYTH (Pt 2): WHO NEEDS ‘MR. RIGHT,’ ANYWAY?

Please note: This transcript has been automatically generated.

Jessica Bennett (00:00):

Hey everyone, this is part two of our Newsweek marriage episode. If you haven’t listened to part one yet, I recommend starting there. Susie, I feel like we need to pause for a moment and spend a little time talking about us because I couldn’t help but wonder, are we desperate single women

Susie Banikarim (00:19):

Good Carry Bradshaw reference.

Jessica Bennett (00:26):

That’s us in part one where we unraveled the lasting panic over a 1986 Newsweek cover story that claimed a woman over 40 was more likely to be killed by a terrorist than to get married. But guess what? We kind of are those women. So we thought we’d spend a bit more time talking about us, our views on marriage, some of its history, and how the way we define modern day partnership has changed. I am Jessica Bennett.

Susie Banikarim (00:59):

And I’m Susie Banikarim.

Jessica Bennett (01:01):

This is In Retrospect where each week, we revisit a cultural moment from the past that shaped us.

Susie Banikarim (01:07):

And that we just can’t stop thinking about.

Jessica Bennett (01:09):

Today we’re talking about that sensational 1980s cover story from Newsweek, but we’re also talking about the enduring myth it tapped into, that of the desperate, single woman. This is part two. Okay, so here we are, Susie. I’m now married at 40. You, of course, are partnered but not married.

Susie Banikarim (01:33):

Yeah. It’s so funny because I never really know how to describe Mike, who is, I guess, my boyfriend, but feels like a little silly at my age to be like, “This is my boyfriend.” But when I say partnered, I feel like people are also very confused by that because that’s not really, I don’t know, it’s not very common vernacular, so I guess I’ll just refer to him as my lover from now on.

Jessica Bennett (01:58):

Oh my God. Yeah. I mean, honestly, there’s not a great word. Husband is also a disgusting word that I refuse to use. I say spouse.

Susie Banikarim (02:05):

Oh, okay.

Jessica Bennett (02:05):

Or I sometimes say partner, which is what I said before we were married.

Susie Banikarim (02:10):

It doesn’t say I have a partner, but I don’t know, but partnered feels weird. Like, I’m partnered, you know?

Jessica Bennett (02:14):

Oh, right. I’m partnered. Anyhow. Yes. But do you feel pressure to marry?

Susie Banikarim (02:20):

Me? No. No. I mean, I think there are a couple things is that for me, first of all I don’t like weddings, which people find very weird. But I was in so many weddings, and I remember saying that once to someone and they were like, “That’s such a humble brag.” I’m like, it’s not a humble brag. I spent all my money in my twenties.

Jessica Bennett (02:36):

It’s like, no one wants to be in that.

Susie Banikarim (02:37):

Yeah, no one wants to be in a wedding. All the dresses are ugly.

Jessica Bennett (02:40):

You spend tens of thousands of dollars.

Susie Banikarim (02:41):

It’s like a forced fun event. You’re like, “Here we are spending thousands of dollars on this weekend with people I generally don’t know.” So I’m not that into weddings to start with. I never dreamed of some big wedding. But also, I’m not planning on having kids, so for me, I really struggled to figure out what the difference is between us living together and getting married. I guess tax breaks is what everyone says to me, but that just feels like a weird reason to do something that we don’t feel super compelled either of us to do. Did you feel pressured to get married?

Jessica Bennett (03:14):

No. And in fact, for a long time I was really anti-marriage. I mean, honestly, I still am, I just happened to have done it at some point. I mean, I really don’t think that I or we felt this pressure, and to some degree, I would argue it was the opposite. In our worlds, being partnered too early was really looked down upon and it was like, “Well, don’t you want to establish your career first? Don’t you want to be an independent first? Don’t you want to think for yourself? Why would you want to attach yourself to someone else so young?” Which, in New York, [inaudible 00:03:47] is like 40.

Susie Banikarim (03:47):

Exactly.

Jessica Bennett (03:52):

So I was engaged for 45 minutes in my late twenties.

Susie Banikarim (03:55):

That’s so weird. I don’t think I knew that.

Jessica Bennett (03:57):

Yes. I mean, basically I ended up breaking it off after the 45 minutes because I had a total panic attack and my ring finger swelled up so that I couldn’t get to the ring off of it to give it back.

Susie Banikarim (04:10):

Seriously?

Jessica Bennett (04:12):

Yes. So I wrote a modern love column about this.

Susie Banikarim (04:15):

Wait, how do I not know about any of this? Now I’m going to have to go find your modern love column.

Jessica Bennett (04:18):

You can Google it. When I started dating my current spouse, I was like, “Just so you know, I wrote this modern love column. You might want to Google it. Everything you need to know is there so just spare me having to explain it.”

Susie Banikarim (04:32):

See, that’s why Sam is great, because he was like, “This does not scare me.”

Jessica Bennett (04:36):

Yeah. I’ve had a long time to unpack that and why I panicked and why my finger swelled up, because honestly, it wasn’t that I didn’t love him, it was that suddenly flashing before my eyes were these images of being a domestic and being chained to the kitchen and I don’t know, somehow this antiquated notion of being a wife and giving up this career that I barely just gotten my footing in. None of which were things that he would’ve expected nor I would have done, but there is so much baggage when it comes to that for women.

Susie Banikarim (05:16):

Especially with hetero marriage.

Jessica Bennett (05:17):

Exactly, and that’s the thing. We all know no matter how progressive you are, no matter how much effort you put into it, heterosexual marriage is not good for women.

Susie Banikarim (05:27):

No.

Jessica Bennett (05:28):

Especially if you have children.

Susie Banikarim (05:29):

It’s when salaries dip, it’s when women start pulling the backbreaking double shift of working inside and outside the home, and then eventually they care for their parents. We just expect so much of women and marriage feels like a part of that. I mean, it’s interesting because I remember in my twenties, I had a guy friend say to me, you think of being married as taking something away, but it’s adding something. And I was like, yeah, for you. But is that true for me? I don’t know. It will take away from some of the things I want to do in my twenties, in my thirties. So not only did I not get married, I also didn’t find a really serious partner until I was in my forties because I think I just only saw it as a distraction and it I wasn’t because I was this hard bitten career woman, it was because I just didn’t prioritize that.

(06:20):

I remember one day waking up and looking around and being like, oh, everybody got married and that didn’t occur to me as a necessity in my life, which I do think makes us fairly unusual. I mean, you were kind of an anti-marriage [inaudible 00:06:33], it sounds like.

Jessica Bennett (06:34):

Yeah. So after that happened, it was like I really, really dug my heels in. And this was also right around the time that the Defense of Marriage Act was being challenged and I was covering gay marriage for Newsweek, and I really felt like I didn’t want to take this right that I didn’t even really want when so many others couldn’t have it. And so I ended up… So this goes back to my Newsweek days, but I ended up with a friend and colleague writing this cover story for Newsweek called I Don’t; The Case Against Marriage. Now, you can imagine that my recently broken off engagement, but still boyfriend…

Susie Banikarim (07:12):

Yeah, he must’ve loved this.

Jessica Bennett (07:13):

Did not love this at the time.

Susie Banikarim (07:15):

Awkward on a lot of levels.

Jessica Bennett (07:19):

But that article basically made the case that aside from yes, maybe tax benefits and of course some things that come with parenting or end of life decisions, arguably with enough money and lawyers and privilege, you could figure those things out without a marriage certificate. And so what, for women, was the actual reason to want to get married. There are all of these things working against you, and if you really start digging into the history of marriage, which I did, and I’m obsessed with Stephanie Coontz, she’s a professor, she’s the preeminent historian of marriage, she’s written all these books on it through a feminist lens, you start to realize just how sexist an institution it is. Marriage literally began as an economic contract because women didn’t have rights or money.

Susie Banikarim (08:09):

Right. Well, I mean in a lot of ways, it was also the only way to secure your financial future. You literally had to have a husband to have your own credit card until what? The seventies?

Jessica Bennett (08:18):

1973.

Susie Banikarim (08:19):

Wow.

Jessica Bennett (08:19):

Yes. And so really, marriage was how women, yes, they had financial security, it was like how they got the fathers of their children to stick around. In some cases, it was how they gain access to all sorts of legal rights, including, yes, getting something as simple as getting a credit card. So there was that side of it, but culturally too, for a long time, and I think this still persists in some circles today, the worst thing a woman could be was a spinster. That was the term for an unmarried woman that has been used against single women since the dawn of time, and I think back to the Newsweek article, not mine, but the one about the terrorism and marriage line, was part of the fear that that was tapping into.

Susie Banikarim (09:07):

Yeah. It’s interesting because I feel like the concept of being a spinster, at least for me, evokes an old timey kind of aunt. So what’s interesting is they took this thing that was already considered not great, but they made it more sad and pathetic. It was like suddenly it was a woman with a lot of cats knitting in her room by herself. Which, if you think of someone like Emily Dickinson, she was, I guess, technically a spinster, but she’s not described as this sad, lonely, pathetic person. I mean, she was one of the greatest poets of our time.

Jessica Bennett (09:40):

Well, and I think a lot of the great women in history were in fact spinster because they couldn’t be married because they had to focus on their art or their career or fighting for the right to vote, and they couldn’t have a husband getting in the way of that, which literally would get in the way in that time. I don’t want to get us too off track here, but I just need to, for the record, give a little history lesson on spinsters.

Susie Banikarim (10:06):

Please. I love a little history lesson.

Jessica Bennett (10:09):

Okay. Spinster, a word that actually comes from women who spun wool in the Middle ages, which was one of the only jobs or one of few jobs, and a low paying job, that was available for unmarried women. So that’s where the unmarried…

Susie Banikarim (10:24):

Totally unsurprising

Jessica Bennett (10:25):

From spinning wool.

Susie Banikarim (10:26):

Women’s work is not valued or well paid.

Jessica Bennett (10:30):

Exactly. And so because of that, the term came to be shorthand and then ultimately a real legal term for an unmarried woman, which eventually morphed into a pejorative. And so, if you look back when women were fighting for the right to vote, and you look at all of the suffrage posters and the anti suffrage posters, those who were arguing against suffrage, against the right to vote, would put out all this propaganda basically painting the suffragists as these old, ugly man hating, unfuckable spinsters essentially. And so it was like, “Oh, you women, you don’t want to be one of those spinsters, so stick with us. Don’t gain any rights.”

Susie Banikarim (11:08):

I mean, it’s interesting, right? Because it makes me think of all the sort of Pride and Prejudice, like that whole genre, which is, the reason you’re ugly and unfuckable if you’re a spinster is because so much of your currency is literally how you physically look and whether or not you’re going to be able to land a man based on that because it’s not like you get to know each other. In a lot of cases, you’re basically like, you meet a few times and then you get married. So there’s just this common idea that if you’re at all attractive, you’re not going to be sitting home by yourself, which is also just an interesting and fascinating way to think about why women choose to be single.

Jessica Bennett (11:44):

And actually to bring it back to that Newsweek article, I think that’s what this is tapping into. This is really where you start to see this enduring persistent tension between having a career and having a family, and this idea that you have to choose. And all the way up until 2009 or whatever year it was that I was briefly engaged to this person, still in my mind, that was the tension. I couldn’t do both.

Susie Banikarim (12:10):

And things have changed somewhat though, right?

Jessica Bennett (12:12):

Yeah. I mean there’s been huge change since the 1980s. So in 1986 when the article came out, the average age of marriage was about 24 years old in the United States, now it’s 30, which still seems young to those of us in urban areas like New York. I think something like 7% of adults in the United States identify as queer. That number is higher among Gen Z. And the average age of marriage for non-hetero couples is older, it’s 33 for women, 38 for men. So this is all happening, things are shifting, less people are getting married overall, and I think this is why you have books. I don’t know if you read Rebecca Tracer’s All The Single Ladies. It was about the political power of single women, which is huge because there are many.

Susie Banikarim (13:02):

And I think also now, there’s a slightly different version of being single, which is the auntie, the fun aunt who has some money to spare. That sort of thing about being an auntie, which is I am very much, as you know, committed aunt or aunt. I don’t know how you’re supposed to say that word. But I think that’s become kind of a fun alternative to this idea of the spinster, which we didn’t really have before. That’s really emerged in the last 10 years.

Jessica Bennett (13:31):

That’s so true. That’s an alternative to the spinster. But the amount of discussion and ink spill to the question of having it all is absurd at this point. And I even remember in subtle ways… I mean, okay, how long ago was this? This might’ve been a decade ago, but I was reporting a story for Cosmo, specifically about women who hid their achievements in online dating because they worried that they wouldn’t get dates. These were heterosexual women, straight women, and they basically were like, “I’m fun and flirty, and I like to go to the beach. I love travel and Coca-Cola,” Rather than, “I’m an executive at a law firm,” Or whatever, which was their real title because they just weren’t getting as many matches. And then since then, there’s been all this data and research into it, and yes, that’s true, they weren’t crazy to be worried.

Susie Banikarim (14:25):

What’s funny is it reminds me that around that time, there was a little bit of a moment where they were doing a lot of these stories about what to do if you made more money, how to deal with that when you were dating. And I remember reading in something, it might’ve been furnished to Robbie’s book, When She Makes More, that there was a woman who would literally buy tickets to go to the movies but pretend she’d been given them for free at work so as not to intimidate her boyfriend. And I remember just being like, that is the saddest, weirdest thing. And this also kind of reminds me of that Steve Harvey book that became a movie, Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, the movie was called Think Like a Man, I remember there’s a character in that who is a CEO, I think, and she’s dating a chef, which is sort of ironic because I’m actually with a baker.

(15:13):

And it’s this whole thing where people are like, “Don’t freak him out. Let him be the man.” And it’s like… I don’t know. I have to be honest, that’s never been an issue in my relationship with Mike. He just doesn’t care. It’s not that he doesn’t care about my career or doesn’t support it, but he’s not intimidated by it because he’s just happy for me, and that’s what your partner should be. It shouldn’t be that you have to hide your achievements so that you can cater to some man’s ego. That’s not going to work long-term anyway. That’s not a relationship that’s going to work.

Jessica Bennett (15:45):

I remember interviewing this friend of mine who is now married to someone entirely different, but she got this big promotion at work, and she was making much more money than her male partner, and she said to me, “I’ve started giving more blow jobs since I started making more money.” And he didn’t ask for that, but some sort of internal thing that was like, I don’t know, I have to make up for this in some way.

Susie Banikarim (16:09):

Yeah, like I owe him.

Jessica Bennett (16:11):

Anyway, so this is tapping into real things, but I also think that even from 10 years ago, the culture has really, really shifted.

Susie Banikarim (16:19):

I mean, I think to some degree, when you look at something like Sex in the City, I feel like it’s kind of a good example of something that started as one thing, which was very much a show about four women desperately trying to land men and really focused on their dating, and over time, has kind of morphed into a series about the value of female friendship and its enduring presence in your life, and how whether or not your relationships come and go, you always have each other. And that’s definitely not what the series was initially intended to be. It was meant to sort of glamorize the sort of 20 something Manhattan single and that it was okay to want to have sex and to want it to be good.

Jessica Bennett (16:58):

Yeah. I mean, I think you’re right. To a large extent, Sex in the City was a show about friendship, and it did a lot for making singledom chic. But I do think about how even in that show, at the end of the series, they all end up partnered. Samantha then breaks up with that hot younger guy whose name I’m forgetting and has that amazing line, “I love you, but I love me more.” So it’s nuance, but…

Susie Banikarim (17:23):

That’s in the movie. So I think it’s interesting also that the series kind of ends with them all partnered, and then the movies actually kind of unravel that…

Jessica Bennett (17:31):

Which is a few years later. So I mean, maybe that does show something for the times.

Susie Banikarim (17:37):

Like a little bit of progress. I mean obviously now the Cynthia Nixon character, Miranda, is queer, which is the whole…

Jessica Bennett (17:45):

Finally. Obviously we knew that.

Susie Banikarim (17:45):

And they’ve added women of color. It’s a whole new world in this new version, which is called And Just Like That, I think, on HBO. Which, I’m saying I didn’t watch it, but to be clear, I watched it and I will be watching the next season. So I guess the real question, Jess, is you who were so against marriage, how did you end up getting married in the end?

Jessica Bennett (18:07):

Great question, Susie, and I will answer that question after the break. We’ll be right back. Okay, so going back to my modern love column, not to be hiding my modern love column.

Susie Banikarim (18:28):

No, I’m very excited to read it.

Jessica Bennett (18:31):

But part of the whole thing was, so I broke off this engagement, we stayed together. I thought we were happy. Turned out he could never get over the broken engagement. And so, when we finally did break up, he just dumped me, it was on New Year’s Eve.

Susie Banikarim (18:47):

Oh God.

Jessica Bennett (18:48):

Anyway. I’ve worked through it in therapy. But after eight years, it was just like, I’m done, I’m out. We had just thrown away all of our suitcases because we lived in a tiny studio apartment in the East Village, so we had no suitcases anymore. So he was like, “This is over.” And then I couldn’t pack up any of his stuff.

Susie Banikarim (19:07):

I’m just picturing him with garbage bags slung over his shoulder.

Jessica Bennett (19:10):

Yeah. I mean, that’s basically what happened, but part of the modern love column was like… At the time, my friend Jesse Ellison and I were writing this anti-marriage article. We remember her mom saying to us, “Well, one thing about marriage is it makes it harder for the person to leave.” And we were like, “Oh, that’s so pathetic.” We were like, “I can’t believe that.”

Susie Banikarim (19:30):

Like, if he wants to go, let him. Yeah.

Jessica Bennett (19:33):

Exactly. But then when this was happening to me, I was like, wow, so after eight years, you can just overnight walk out, no attempt at couples therapy, no anything. And I remember thinking to myself, I guess if we were married, we maybe would’ve had a conversation about it, maybe we would’ve separated. I don’t know. That’s where this…

Susie Banikarim (19:54):

Would be legal entanglement.

Jessica Bennett (19:56):

So that’s sort of where this modern love column ends. So I don’t know. At a certain point, I felt like I was established in my career, I had written a book, all of these things, and I felt much more comfortable in my independent self that I felt ready to get married to this person who is a very progressive human, who wasn’t going to buy into so much of the around weddings.

Susie Banikarim (20:21):

You didn’t really have a super traditional wedding.

Jessica Bennett (20:24):

I went to great lengths to plan an epic party that had none of the trappings of utterly sexist wedding institutions, which, by the way, let me just name, the father gives away his daughter. That’s because he was literally giving ownership.

Susie Banikarim (20:42):

Right. So you didn’t do that.

Jessica Bennett (20:45):

I have a great relationship with my dad. He did not walk me down the aisle. We walked ourselves down. It wasn’t really an aisle. The brides family typically pays for the wedding, that’s sort of like a dowry…

Susie Banikarim (20:54):

A version of a dowry.

Jessica Bennett (20:55):

No, we were established in our careers, we split the cost. We had one of my best friends, Amanda, officiate our wedding, and she quoted Gloria Steinem in it. But you typically declare someone man and wife, man always comes first, first of all, and then it’s wife. So the man is still a human, independent person, and the woman is now just a wife. Is she in service of him?

Susie Banikarim (21:17):

There’s that line about honoring and obeying, and I always found that so weird. Like, I’m not obeying anybody.

Jessica Bennett (21:21):

It’s also weird. And even the wearing of white, that’s literally to represent purity. Why do people still do that?

Susie Banikarim (21:28):

Yeah, like, “I’m a virgin,” Which they never are anymore. Let’s just be honest. It’s crazy.

Jessica Bennett (21:33):

Obviously I didn’t take my husband’s last name. So I didn’t do any of this stuff.

Susie Banikarim (21:36):

Didn’t you also go down the aisle to a Smashing Pumpkin song.

Jessica Bennett (21:40):

Yes, we did. We walked ourselves together down to a Smashing Pumpkin song. It was a grunge wedding. We also, instead of, I don’t know if this is cheesy at this point now because everyone’s California sober and doing microdosing, but instead of choosing chicken or fish or whatever you do at normal weddings, we had people choose their drug of choice and we provided it in the gift bags.

Susie Banikarim (22:02):

What was the primary drug of choice, just out of curiosity?

Jessica Bennett (22:05):

Microdosing mushrooms.

Susie Banikarim (22:06):

Nice. Yeah, that makes sense to me.

Jessica Bennett (22:08):

Oh, basically everyone did it. My parents…

Susie Banikarim (22:09):

Oh, really? I love that. And also, that would not be my family.

Jessica Bennett (22:14):

It was a desert wedding. It was a desert wedding. It was all very hippie. But as we were planning this, it was just so interesting and funny to come across all of the little origin stories for these things that most people I know still do, even the throwing of the bouquet. So my big plan was that I was going to get a poisonous cactus bouquet. Our wedding was in the desert in Joshua Tree. And so I was going to be like, “Don’t you dare tell me to throw this.” Anyway, I didn’t have a bouquet at all.

Susie Banikarim (22:45):

The thing about me was that when I was single, I refused to participate in that ritual. I found it so degrading.

Jessica Bennett (22:52):

A disgusting ritual.

Susie Banikarim (22:53):

I was like, I do not want to catch this bouquet, and people would always, “Go, go.” And I was like, “Get the fuck away from me.”

Jessica Bennett (22:58):

No, it’s so weird. I wrote a story about this once, I don’t know, in the 2010s or something, about how the new thing that I was noticing, this was the time I was going to 2 million weddings, was they would do the bouquet toss and everyone would run away.

Susie Banikarim (23:10):

Yes, exactly.

Jessica Bennett (23:12):

And it would just thud on the floor. No one wanted to catch the fucking bouquet.

Susie Banikarim (23:16):

Don’t stand in the middle of the room and be like, look at these…

Jessica Bennett (23:18):

And also, one wanted to get married. A few years ago, I was doing a piece about Helen Fisher. She’s an anthropologist who studies love. She’s written a bunch of books. And part of her research has found that monogamy is not natural, essentially, and that couples and partnerships often tend to go in stages of seven, I think it’s around seven years.

Susie Banikarim (23:41):

Seven years. It’s like the seven year itch, right?

Jessica Bennett (23:44):

Yeah. I guess that’s probably where that comes from. And so it’s us who’ve created this necessity, this idea of together forever. And she was married at the time and actually lived next door to her husband.

Susie Banikarim (24:02):

This is actually one of my dreams, honestly.

Jessica Bennett (24:04):

Me too.

Susie Banikarim (24:05):

I always wanted this. I mean, I think Mike thinks this is crazy, so we’re definitely not going to do this, but my dream is to live in apartments either next door to each other or across from each other because I feel like then you just both get to have your own space. And also, I think it’s a New York fantasy, right? Because if you have a big house, fine, but in New York, in an apartment, it’s tight, so you do kind of wish you had this way to own your own little piece of the world and that’s definitely something that’s complicated for me. I mean, even with getting married, I own my apartment, this apartment is probably my greatest achievement if we’re just being honest. What it took for me to be able to buy this apartment was a lot of work and sacrifice, so it’s hard for me to imagine leaving this apartment, even though that’s a choice I might have to make to be in a relationship.

Jessica Bennett (24:55):

Or maybe you don’t. I think that’s the thing. You can really create your own version of family today, and it’s like, choose your own adventure and go forth.

Susie Banikarim (25:07):

Yeah, it just does feel like there are lots of ways to have family now.

Jessica Bennett (25:10):

There are lots of ways to have family and chosen family.

Susie Banikarim (25:13):

Yes. Chosen family.

Jessica Bennett (25:14):

Actually, Susie, I thought it would be interesting to bring Sharon on, Sharon Attia, one of our producers on this podcast slash our friend, because she has a pretty interesting domestic arrangement that we can let her talk about. Hi, Sharon.

Sharon Attia (25:42):

Hi.

Susie Banikarim (25:43):

Hi, Sharon.

Sharon Attia (25:45):

Hello. Hello. It’s so nice to be unmuted.

Jessica Bennett (25:50):

Amazing. So you have a, I think what you would call life partner slash chosen family in M.

Sharon Attia (25:59):

Yes.

Jessica Bennett (25:59):

Your roommate.

Sharon Attia (26:00):

Yes.

Jessica Bennett (26:00):

Could you talk to us a little bit about that?

Sharon Attia (26:02):

Absolutely. So Susie, I don’t think you’ve met Em yet, but we were randomly assigned freshman year roommates, so we owe a lot of credit to the NYU housing department, and we have never lived with anyone else ever since. We’re hitting our 10 year anniversary this August.

Susie Banikarim (26:20):

I got the invite for the party.

Sharon Attia (26:22):

Yeah, it’s going to be lit. I can’t believe I said lit. We are very much treating this kind of like a wedding, but not a wedding. There’s going to be merch. If people want to give us gifts, I would prefer money so we could go on a trip.

Jessica Bennett (26:38):

I’ve offered to officiate just in case you decide you want to.

Sharon Attia (26:44):

No, but I really do think that that kind of speaks to our relationship in that over the last 10 years, even our closest friends and family are sort of confused as to what the relationship is. They’re like, “Okay, you’re roommates and your best friends, but are you more than that? Is there an asterisk or a plus there?” And I think part of that is because we both came out in college, and so then people are like, “Oh, you actually could be really together.” But then we confuse them more because we’re not. And I always joke that if we were actually together, why would we be paying rent for a two bedroom in New York? Why wouldn’t we just do a one bedroom?

Jessica Bennett (27:23):

I mean, the way you’ve described…. It’s more than platonic.

Sharon Attia (27:28):

Right. Yeah, I think absolutely it’s more than that. I think we go on dates, we factor each other into life plans, we plan these big trips together, we’re always invited together to things, not even as a plus one, both people, even if it’s only one of our friends.

Susie Banikarim (27:44):

Do you guys go on dates with other people too, or do you consider this the primary relationship in your life?

Sharon Attia (27:50):

Oh, like do we romantically date people outside of the two of us?

Susie Banikarim (27:54):

Yes.

Sharon Attia (27:55):

Yes but no. We famously don’t really care about dating. Occasionally I go on dates, not really. I think the way I think about it is, either I go on a shitty date where maybe there’s sparks, but it’s probably awkward and the small talk’s mediocre, or I get to hang out with my favorite person and do life. They’re an amazing chef, we might go to a restaurant we’ve been wanting to, go see a play. I think I have the ideal setup.

Susie Banikarim (28:27):

Em’s an amazing cook, by the way.

Sharon Attia (28:29):

Yes.

Susie Banikarim (28:30):

I have a question we don’t have to use if it’s too personal, but…

Sharon Attia (28:32):

No, go for it.

Susie Banikarim (28:34):

Don’t you miss sex?

Sharon Attia (28:36):

Oh, I mean, I have sex. No, I definitely date and stuff, but the idea of looking for someone where it’s like, and that person’s going to be my best friend and my lover, and we’re going to live together, I just don’t really view relationships in that sort of hierarchy, and so I don’t put romance as the top of it, and I just haven’t found my person yet. I actually feel really fulfilled by my relationships. And when I date people, they absolutely feel intimidated and threatened by them.

Jessica Bennett (29:06):

Yeah, I was going to say. Right.

Sharon Attia (29:08):

Oh, big time. And I don’t even do anything to appease that person. I’m like, “Yeah, absolutely.”

Susie Banikarim (29:14):

You’re like, “This is the setup.”

Jessica Bennett (29:15):

This is my primary person. It’s interesting you say that though about not putting all your eggs in one… Like, you can get different things from different people because if you actually look at the history of marriage, this idea of a soulmate, an all encompassing soulmate, is a relatively new invention.

Sharon Attia (29:35):

Definitely.

Jessica Bennett (29:36):

It didn’t used to be that you were supposed to find one all fulfilling person for every aspect of your life, sexually, romantically, friendship, intellectual stimulation.

Susie Banikarim (29:48):

On some level, for women, you weren’t supposed to get those things. It was like nobody gave a shit whether or not you felt romantically.

Jessica Bennett (29:52):

You didn’t get those things at all.

Susie Banikarim (29:54):

You had a soulmate, they were like, “This is what you do to pay your bills.”

Jessica Bennett (29:57):

But there was some time in between when it became like you are looking for everything. I mean, think from…

Susie Banikarim (30:05):

It’s not realistic.

Jessica Bennett (30:06):

The time of my broken off, long-term relationship to the time of my present relationship and marriage, I sort of got more comfortable with the idea that my girlfriends are my intellectual stimulation, they’re who I… My husband doesn’t need to fulfill all of that, and that’s okay.

Susie Banikarim (30:24):

I didn’t even want that. I mean, I think for me, also, I was single for a long time before I found a partner, and I just wouldn’t want to have the kind of partner who wanted to go with me to everything and be with me. That wouldn’t be appealing to me because so much of my friendships are about the relationship I have with that person on my own. I don’t want someone else to be inserted in every single aspect of my life.

Jessica Bennett (30:48):

Sharon, do you feel pressure to Mary at any point and explain how you explain your relationship with Em to your immigrant parents?

Sharon Attia (30:58):

Yeah. I think it was really helpful that they sort of met Em as my roommate, you know what I mean? And so for the very first year, they were just like, we’re so happy that she’s far away in New York, but that she has a best friend and has created a family. And I call Em’s family my in-laws, and they live on the East coast so I actually go visit them often, more sometimes than flying out to LA and I have a really close relationship with them. But yeah, how do I describe it to my friends and family? I think sometimes I think it’s hilarious, the murkiness. So every year on our anniversary, I post something and my sister will get a call from an aunt or an uncle or a message from a cousin every year like clockwork, and they’ll be like, “Okay, but are they…” Because I mean, I’ll post a very romantic caption photo. I’ll be like, “I love our life together, the life we’ve built,” Things that I think straight people, straight girls maybe aren’t posting about their friendships.

(31:58):

But yeah, I think there’s murkiness and I find a lot of humor in the confusion and confusing people. In terms of feeling pressure to have a wedding. I am, to my core, a middle child, and I mean that in that it has seeped into every part of my personality. And so my older sister has been with her partner and has been now for 15 years, and they were high school sweethearts, and when they were getting married, I very much kind of looked at my parents, and maybe also said something where I was like, get this out of your system. This is the wedding where you invite the uncles and that guy who was a lawyer for you on that one deal because even if I get married someday, which I’m not closed off to, but I have no goals to get married. I’m not like, by 30 or 40… But I’m also the only out queer person in my ginormous family, and so people just don’t ask me questions about marriage.

Jessica Bennett (32:55):

They’re afraid to ask questions.

Sharon Attia (32:58):

If anything, I think if I said yes, they’d be like, “Oh, fuck. We love her so much. What does that mean? Is it going to be a gay wedding?” And so I’m the fun aunt. I’m the fun cousin. I’m the fun granddaughter. And whether or not I have a big party, I don’t…

Jessica Bennett (33:14):

And you’re about to, it’s coming up. Yeah. I mean, okay. So to bring it back to the Newsweek story, I think probably a lot of us would just kind of shrug or roll our eyes if that headline were to come out today, but Sharon, what would your reaction be?

Sharon Attia (33:28):

I think I would just probably be deep in sharing all of the hilarious memes and following along on TikTok and Twitter. I also think it just feels like a really straight conversation, and so I think amongst my queer group chats, we would just be like, okay, this changes nothing.

Jessica Bennett (33:47):

Well, it’d be like, are the straights okay?

Sharon Attia (33:51):

Yeah, yeah. Literally, which we’re asking all the time. We’re like, are straights okay?

Susie Banikarim (33:54):

I mean, it’s really debatable whether or not we’re okay.

Sharon Attia (33:56):

I think the answer’s no.

Susie Banikarim (33:59):

Feels like no. I mean, generally speaking,

Jessica Bennett (34:01):

It just wouldn’t exist.

Susie Banikarim (34:02):

Wouldn’t exist in that way.

Jessica Bennett (34:04):

I’m sure you could find data to show that likelihood of women marrying was low, but it would not be framed in such a hetero way.

Susie Banikarim (34:12):

Or if it was, it would be on Fox News. So you’d be like, I don’t care what Fox News says anyway.

Jessica Bennett (34:17):

Right. So I think the reality is that this headline, in retrospect, it’s kind of funny and it wouldn’t exist today, however some of that tension around work and partnership, whatever the partnership you create for yourself is, does still exist.

Susie Banikarim (34:35):

Well, it’s interesting because Sharon, the way you’re describing your relationship, it doesn’t really exist for you, right? You don’t feel some kind of tension where you have to choose between having this relationship in your life and work. And maybe that’s just something that is generational, but I think it’s heartening to see Sharon feel like she can just… Because I think relationships like this have probably existed in the past, but they weren’t…

Jessica Bennett (34:59):

They weren’t represented.

Susie Banikarim (34:59):

They weren’t represented, and also people weren’t open…

Jessica Bennett (35:02):

Certainly not in the media, right?

Susie Banikarim (35:02):

They felt like they had to pretend to be best friends externally. But you get to decide what you want from your life, and nobody gets a say, and that’s great.

Jessica Bennett (35:11):

Honestly, Susie, maybe that’s a good place to end it. It’s like build the life that you want, lean into what your ambition is in whatever way that may play out, and screw the headlines, whether it’s coming from Newsweek or elsewhere.

Susie Banikarim (35:24):

Yeah, all the noise is just noise. Ignore it.

(35:31):

This is In Retrospect. Thanks for listening. Is there a cultural moment you can’t stop thinking about and want us to explore in a future episode? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram @inretropod.

Jessica Bennett (35:46):

If you love this podcast, please rate and review us on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. If you hate it, you can post nasty comments on our Instagram which we may or may not delete.

Susie Banikarim (35:56):

You can also find us on Instagram @jessicabennett and @susiebnyc. Also check out Jessica’s books, Feminist Fight Club and This is 18.

Jessica Bennett (36:05):

In Retrospect is a production of iHeart podcast and The Meteor. Lauren Hansen is our supervising producer. Derrick Clements is our engineer and sound designer. Sharon Attia is our researcher and associate producer.

Susie Banikarim (36:17):

Our executive producer from The Meteor is Cindi Leive. Our executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stumpf and Katrina Norvell. Our artwork is from Pentagram. Additional editing help from Mary Dooe and Mike Coscarelli. Sound correction and mastering by Amanda Rose Smith. We are your hosts, Susie Banikarim.

Jessica Bennett (36:36):

And Jessica Bennett. We’re also executive producers. For even more, check out inretropod.com. See you next week.

EPISODE 14 – THE MARRIAGE MYTH (Pt 1): WHEN NEWSWEEK STRUCK PANIC IN SINGLE WOMEN EVERYWHERE

Please note: This transcript has been automatically generated.

Jessica Bennett (00:02):

In June 1986, Newsweek Magazine published this cover story that read, “If you’re a single woman, here are your chances of getting married.” The crux of the article was that, due to an alleged man shortage, things weren’t looking great for women north of 35, and in fact, if you were a woman over the age of 40, you were more likely to be killed by a terrorist than to get married. The article pierced the zeitgeist so intensely that even seven years later, it was a plot point in Nora Ephron’s Oscar-nominated romantic comedy, Sleepless in Seattle.

Clips (00:39):

There are a lot of desperate women out there looking for love.

(00:41):

Especially over a certain age.

(00:43):

You know it’s easier to be killed by a terrorist than it is to get married over the age of 40?

(00:46):

That’s not true. That statistic is not true.

(00:48):

That’s right, it’s not true, but it feels true.

Jessica Bennett (00:51):

The terrorism line was indeed not true, and Newsweek would even go on to print a retraction. But nevertheless, that urban myth endured, married by 40 or end up a sad old maid. I’m Jessica Bennett.

Susie Banikarim (01:12):

And I’m Susie Banikarim.

Jessica Bennett (01:14):

This is In Retrospect, where each week we revisit a cultural moment from the past that shaped us.

Susie Banikarim (01:19):

And that we just can’t stop thinking about.

Jessica Bennett (01:22):

Today we’re talking about that sensational 1980s cover story from Newsweek, but we’re also talking about the enduring myth it tapped into, that of the desperate single woman. This is part one.

Susie Banikarim (01:41):

So Jess, we started with a clip from Sleepless in Seattle, which is obviously a classic rom-com and Nora Ephron movie. And the reason we’re talking about that movie is because it references this absurd claim that a woman over 40 is more likely to be killed by a terrorist than to get married. So remind me, where did this idea come from?

Jessica Bennett (02:03):

Right. Okay. So it didn’t come from Nora Ephron, and it is not true, by the way.

Susie Banikarim (02:09):

Good, good.

Jessica Bennett (02:10):

Where it came from was this 1986 cover story in Newsweek Magazine, which was one of the most read and respected magazines of its era. And that story would send American women into a panic.

Susie Banikarim (02:22):

No wonder I would feel panicked if someone told me I was more likely to get killed than married.

Jessica Bennett (02:26):

Right. And so the fact that seven years later when this movie comes out, Meg Ryan and Rosie O’Donnell, those are the voices you hear in the clip, are still talking about it gives you some sense of just how firmly this idea cemented into the American psyche.

Susie Banikarim (02:43):

Yeah, I do remember this really being part of the zeitgeist. So what made you choose this moment to talk about?

Jessica Bennett (02:48):

So for starters, I am a woman newly over 40. And while I did ultimately get married, I have a lot of complicated feelings about the subject.

Susie Banikarim (02:56):

Yes, as do I.

Jessica Bennett (02:58):

And also, as you know, we both have a personal connection to Newsweek, the magazine where this story ran. This was where I began my career. It’s where you and I would meet working a decade later, and it’s where when I did start working 20 years after this story ran, people were still talking about it. Literally in the year 2006 when I was a junior reporter at Newsweek in one of my first jobs, the magazine decided to write another cover story about that now debunked cover story for the 20th anniversary of the cover story.

Susie Banikarim (03:30):

Really, it’s wild.

Jessica Bennett (03:32):

But I think also at its core, I’m fascinated by this story because it’s a microcosm in a lot of ways for the way that the media tends to take these subtle or sometimes not so subtle jabs at women for the way that Hollywood and so much of our popular culture still sends this message that a single woman is something to be afraid of or ashamed of. And ultimately for how that silly little statistic, which was proven wrong in the 1980s, can still sometimes feel very real or it has resonance even four decades later.

Susie Banikarim (04:07):

So where should we begin in terms of breaking this down?

Jessica Bennett (04:10):

So I think we should start with a little context. To understand the impact of that article, you have to understand the place that Newsweek held in the culture in the 1980s. Newsweek was one of the classic news magazines back when people still paged through magazines physically. And the internet was a dial-up modem that took 25 minutes to connect and got disconnected every time your mom would pick up the phone to call someone. Newsweek was in every dentist and doctor’s office. I don’t know if you remember that.

Susie Banikarim (04:39):

Yes, I do remember that.

Jessica Bennett (04:41):

It was in classrooms at schools. It was displayed on actual newsstands alongside other magazines, such as US News and World Report and Businessweek and Time, and all of these magazines, many of which no longer exist, where you would eagerly go to actually see the week’s headlines.

Susie Banikarim (04:59):

Actually, the crazy thing is when I went to Iran for the first time, where my family is from and my mom has lived until pretty recently, I remember the only English language news I could find because that was pre-internet was a Newsweek Magazine.

Jessica Bennett (05:12):

That’s so interesting. And that’s the thing. It held a lot of weight. And when I was in college, and I think even high school, working at Newsweek was my literal dream job. That’s where I wanted to work. I wanted to be a journalist. And where would an aspiring ambitious journalist want to work? They would want to work a Newsweek Magazine.

Susie Banikarim (05:28):

That makes sense. I also grew up loving Newsweek. I remember I used to as a very small child, like eight or nine years old, I used to read it to my parents’ friends as a party trick. My dad would call me out from bed and be like, “Show everyone how you read Newsweek.” And honestly, I think I just read the ads. I didn’t really know what I was reading, but I wanted to be like my dad and he read the magazine so I would flip through it and read it too.

Jessica Bennett (05:52):

Right. And so Newsweek was always, and I don’t know if you would remember this from that time, I think I only learned it later, but it was considered to be the scrappier more progressive of the two. And I remember when I started there, that was a point of pride. Newsweek had run a cover story about the AIDS epidemic long before most people had heard of it. It was ahead of its time on subjects like gay marriage. And so while Newsweek and Time were known for covering really serious international affairs and politics, obviously, they were also known for these splashy covers on social trends, like the kind of stories that, for me anyway, that I dreamed of writing. Fun fact, you might remember this, I used to run the Newsweek Tumblr.

Susie Banikarim (06:34):

Oh, I do remember that.

Jessica Bennett (06:36):

So I have this whole collection of Newsweek covers, many of which are just incredible. I have this image of the cover story about Anita Hill, which has this iconic image of her during those hearings. And it says a special report on sexual harassment. And then the headline is “Why Women Are So Angry.”

Susie Banikarim (06:56):

Maybe they’re angry because getting sexually harassed, it seems like the question answers itself.

Jessica Bennett (07:01):

There’s also another cover I have saved. It has Sally Ride on it with the title “Space Woman” when she became the First American woman to go into space. That was this iconic cover that I still remember.

Susie Banikarim (07:13):

It feels a little bit like a superhero name, so there’s that.

Jessica Bennett (07:15):

Yes, completely. And then there are the more hilarious ones. There’s one that I post every June for pride from 1983 with this incredible closeup image of two women against this hazy school photo backdrop. One is wearing a velvet body suit and the other is in pearls and a jean jacket. And the cover just says in giant block letters, “Lesbians.”

Susie Banikarim (07:41):

With an exclamation point, like “Lesbians!”

Jessica Bennett (07:43):

It doesn’t. I just always refer to it as having an exclamation point, but it’s giant block letters. And then I think the subtitle is “What are the Limits of Tolerance?” But it’s just an incredible cover and says a lot about the 1980s.

Susie Banikarim (07:58):

So I guess lesbians were coming out of the closet. What else was going on in the world at that time?

Jessica Bennett (08:03):

Yeah, so the 1980s is key here. One, feminism had made great strides. The Women’s Liberation Movement in the 1970s was in full force. You now have more women in the workforce. Labor participation has risen from 42% in the early 1970s to nearly 60% by the late 1980s. So women are dramatically more visible. There were all of these representations of working women, single women in film and on television. You had examples like Charlie’s Angels. You had depictions of single working women like Mary Tyler Moore, and you had magazines like Cosmopolitan and Glamour, the more women’s magazines, that were starting to elevate or talk about this single woman lifestyle.

Susie Banikarim (08:51):

That’s funny. It’s like the classic image of the working mom in her boxy business suit and her white sneakers with her heels and her purse. It feels very much of a certain kind of era where we started to see women emerge in this very public way.

Jessica Bennett (09:06):

And on the heels of that, this is three years after that lesbians cover came out, the story about women’s chances of getting married hits news stands.

Susie Banikarim (09:14):

Okay, I really want you to get into the article, but can we please talk about this cover? It’s so bad.

Jessica Bennett (09:21):

It’s hideous. It features a full page line graph, basically, that looks like it was made on a, I don’t know, 1980s early Apple computer. It’s red, white, and blue, and it has this dramatic drop to this graph. And that is what they want you to see. It’s going down and down and down along the headline, “If you’re a single woman, here are your chances of getting married.”

Susie Banikarim (09:45):

It’s funny because this is like the original clickbait. It’s like a version of the curiosity gap. If you’re a woman and you’re seeing this cover, you’re going to definitely pick it up, if you’re worried in some way, you have some anxiety around getting married, and then you’re going to be horrified by the answer. It’s very clear the answer is not good if marriage is in your sights.

Jessica Bennett (10:06):

Yes, yes. It’s like your odds of finding love are in free fall, and thus, due to the conventional wisdom of the 1980s, your life is in free fall.

Susie Banikarim (10:16):

Well, also, it’s just this idea that if marriage is the goal, if you’re 40 already, there’s no recourse. It’s not like they’re saying there’s something you could do differently. So it’s just like, “All right, pack it in, ladies. You’re going to have to go home without a mate.”

Jessica Bennett (10:30):

Right. And that’s exactly what the article did. It made women seem helpless and the prospect of finding a mate hopeless. So the article itself opens with a woman who can’t stop hearing about this so-called man shortage. Her mom is calling her to warn her about it. Her sisters are all talking about it. It’s on the news. It’s everywhere.

Susie Banikarim (10:49):

Can you just imagine how many women got calls from their mom about this? So many.

Jessica Bennett (10:53):

And it goes on to explain that there was this study out of Harvard and Yale, so of course this sounds very formal, these are great institutions, that, “Confirmed what everybody suspected all along, that many women who seem to have it all good looks, good jobs, advanced degrees and high salaries will never have mates.”

Susie Banikarim (11:16):

The horror. First of all, is it that they will never have mates or they will never have male mates because it really does seem to be focused on men, so their lesbian cover must not have come soon enough.

Jessica Bennett (11:28):

Oh my God, exactly. And in fact, there are multiple headlines for this story, but the headline, once you open it up and are reading it in the middle of the magazine is, “Is it Too Late for Prince Charming?” So clearly we’re talking about princes here. Now, the article itself was written by four women and two men, some of whom were still at Newsweek when I was there two decades later. And as we’ve mentioned, it was based on data from a Yale and Harvard study, which made basically everyone believe it.

Susie Banikarim (11:56):

Yeah, it automatically gives it a sense of credibility.

Jessica Bennett (11:59):

And this is how the data was presented, that if you were a white college educated woman over 30, you had a 20% chance of ever getting married for the rest of your life. By age 35, your odds would drop to 5%. And by 40, and this is where the famous infamous line comes in, a woman is “more likely to be killed by a terrorist than to get married with her chances of marriage for the rest of her life at 2.6%.”

Susie Banikarim (12:28):

Okay. I have so many questions about this because I just don’t believe there was ever a time in this country where the likelihood of getting killed by a terrorist was at 2.6%. That can’t be correct.

Jessica Bennett (12:42):

No, totally. And you’re right, it wasn’t. It would turn out that this line was meant to be taken humorously, I guess, and to be totally hyperbolic. But of course, why would anybody think that coming from this serious, well-respected news magazine that had six reporters who were reporting this story?

Susie Banikarim (12:57):

Yeah, it’s interesting because I feel like at that time, especially in the 80s, there was more airplane hijackings. So I guess most people would’ve been thinking about that versus what we think about now, which is 9/11. But back then, I guess the fear of being hijacked was a much more common fear that people had.

Jessica Bennett (13:15):

Yeah, absolutely. And like you said, I don’t think you’d ever use that phrasing today, but I think the article was tapping into not only that terrorism anxiety, but this other anxiety that was bubbling up at the time about women’s place in the world.

Susie Banikarim (13:29):

So, okay, more women are working, but what’s going on in their personal lives? I feel like the 80s was still very much a classic hetero family vibe.

Jessica Bennett (13:38):

Yeah, definitely. The nuclear family was still intact, but it’s also shifting. So in 1986 when the Newsweek article comes out, less people are getting married, more people are divorcing. That’s becoming more common. And those who still are getting married are doing so at a later age than before.

Susie Banikarim (13:56):

So that’s a good thing though, right? Because doesn’t research show that every year you wait to get married, the chances of divorce drop?

Jessica Bennett (14:03):

Yep, it does, which is why getting married later is actually better. And the other thing is, women had more freedom at this time when it came to relationships. This was post birth control pill. It was post sexual revolution. Women were in various roles pushing against traditional expectations.

Susie Banikarim (14:20):

Honestly, all of this sounds like good news to me.

Jessica Bennett (14:25):

Yes and no. Good for women, but the thing was society was getting uncomfortable with it.

Susie Banikarim (14:30):

Right, so I guess people are questioning whether or not having more women in the workforce is a good thing, or does it come at the expense of a nuclear family? I guess it really fundamentally gets back to that thing we always talk about, which is can women ever “have it all?”

Jessica Bennett (14:45):

A few more lines from the article that I must note, it talks about a major shift for the institution of marriage, yes, true. It noted that many women no longer need husbands for economic security, also true, and that they no longer need them for sex, LOL. It also mentioned women in their 30s, “facing biology’s ticking clock,” which, side note, we will discuss in a future episode of this podcast.

Susie Banikarim (15:10):

I just am really trying to figure out how they decided women didn’t need men anymore for sex. Is that because a vibrator? It’s such a weird thing to put in a magazine, I’m sorry.

Jessica Bennett (15:20):

This is after the sexual revolution. I think the point is that you didn’t need to marry for sex. You could have sex before marriage.

Susie Banikarim (15:26):

Oh, you could just have sex freely without it.

Jessica Bennett (15:28):

You didn’t need a husband for sex, not you didn’t need men for sex.

Susie Banikarim (15:31):

That makes more sense.

Jessica Bennett (15:33):

So you also didn’t need men for sex, but I don’t know that they had discovered that at that point.

Susie Banikarim (15:37):

Yeah, it sounds like they discovered masturbation, honestly.

Jessica Bennett (15:40):

Well, and maybe that is also true to some extent. I think masturbation was being normalized in the sexual revolution, yada, yada, yada. So also, there’s this funny quote from a New York therapist who says that, “Everybody was talking about it and everybody was hysterical.” But of course, them quoting this therapist in this article makes everyone all the more hysterical because they’re making it such a big deal.

Susie Banikarim (16:03):

Yeah, you really can picture this, right? All these women going to their therapists, sitting in the therapist’s office sniffling with a tissue like, “I’m never going to meet someone to marry.” It’s such a funny quote, but it evokes a thing that must really have happened.

Jessica Bennett (16:18):

100%. So I actually called up E. Jean Carroll, who as you probably know, is the woman who successfully sued Donald Trump for sexual assault, which was a case I covered. But I remembered as I was working on this research that she had been dispensing romantic advice at the time this article came out.

Susie Banikarim (16:35):

I loved Ask E. Jean. She was the longtime advice columnist for Elle Magazine. I read it religiously.

Jessica Bennett (16:41):

And she wrote that column for 30 years. And when I spoke to her, she told me that even years later, women were writing her letters about that Newsweek line.

1. Jean Carroll (16:54):

It had been seared into the brains of… What am I talking about, women’s brains? It had been branded on the uteruses of every single woman from sea to shining sea.

Jessica Bennett (17:10):

By the way, E. Jean Carroll was 42 at the time this story ran.

1. Jean Carroll (17:13):

Oh, Jessica, I can remember where I was, where I was, when this Newsweek story hit. I remember I was with my friend Barbara Shailor. Now, that name rings a bell with you because she was one of the 20th century’s most devastatingly beautiful and charming women. Barbara Shailor was one of the great leaders in the labor movement in this country, and fought day and night for women to receive equal pay among machinists. Even Barbara Shailor was worried about getting married. Here’s the thing, I think Candace Bushnell said, “It struck terror in the hearts of women.” Of course, I never disagree with Candace because she’s always right about everything. But I think what it did was it struck women dumb. It took us decades to figure out that the thing was a lie and that it was stupid, and that why would you worry about getting married anyway? Your whole life can’t be wrapped around a man. And also, it didn’t occur to anybody that, of course, you could marry a woman if you wanted.

Susie Banikarim (18:23):

Okay, so even smart clued in successful women like E. Jean Carroll are shocked, but also shaken by this article and study. I can imagine knowing what I do about the media that this was probably a feeding frenzy, right?

Jessica Bennett (18:37):

Oh, absolutely. And to be clear, while Newsweek did invent that terrorism line, they were not the first or the last to cover this study itself. Like Phil Donahue, who hosted a popular daytime talk show at that time, had done a whole segment on it before Newsweek. People Magazine had put a giant photo of your former boss, Susie, award-winning broadcast journalist Diane Sawyer, along with three other famous women of that era with the headline, got this, “Are These Women Old Maids?”

Susie Banikarim (19:07):

Wild, and also the subhead is a Harvard, Yale study says that most single women over 35 can forget about marriage, which I have to tell you, as someone who worked for Diane Sawyer, she is a very attractive woman. She’s an attractive person, and I don’t think her chances of getting married were ever a real problem. But also, 1986 is literally the year she met Mike Nichols, who would go on to be her husband. Mike Nichols was one of the best filmmakers of our time. He made The Graduate. Diane Sawyer was fine.

Jessica Bennett (19:38):

In the immediate weeks and months following that Newsweek story, this story was really everywhere. It wasn’t just People Magazine, it was ABC, it was CBS. And even two years later, this is pretty remarkable, it was a subject of a special report on PBS, the Nightly News, which called the study the “Infamous Spinster Report.”

Clips (20:01):

Otherwise known as the Yale, Harvard study of marriage patterns in the United States. It showed that the odds of a college educated woman over 35 getting married were about the same as being kidnapped by martians. Suddenly, the women of the post-war generation were thrown into a panic. They’d always intended to marry, to have a family, but they wanted to develop their own identities first, to avoid all the traps that had ensnared all those millions of smart women who loved men, who hated them for loving them too much. But now the game was over and they’d lost.

Susie Banikarim (20:37):

The whole thing is amazing and just feels so 80s, but the writing is also just so crazy to me. To be clear here, your odds of getting kidnapped by martians are zero. So she’s basically just saying, “Ladies, you’re out of luck. Time to put on your spinster outfits and go knit in your living room or something.”

Jessica Bennett (20:56):

With your cats.

Susie Banikarim (20:56):

With your cats, yes. So we are talking about this wild cover story from the 80s that Newsweek ran about women being very unlikely to get married if they’re not married by the time they’re 40. It sounds like the media really ate up the story, but was there pushback? Were there people who were saying, “This is crazy,” even at the time?

Jessica Bennett (21:29):

Yes, there was a great deal of pushback and memorably, one of the greatest bits of pushback came from Susan Faludi. Now, Susan Faludi, I think you probably have read her book, her 1991 blockbuster bestseller, Backlash. It’s a feminist classic, but at the time, she was 27 years old and a reporter at the San Jose Mercury News, and she criticized this article. She was one of the first earliest and harshest critics of it, and it was actually this article that would inspire her to write that book.

Susie Banikarim (22:01):

I remember reading Backlash at Barnard. It was a huge book.

Jessica Bennett (22:04):

And what she would do is she dug into the study itself and really damned its methodology. She argued that it was flawed, that it was used to beat women over the head for having pursued education and jobs. And her broader argument was basically about how women face these competing narratives. Essentially, on the one hand, during this time, women were being told they could have it all. They were being told they’d made it, that the fight for equality had been won and that they were so equal, they didn’t even need additional rights. But at the same time, they’re being depicted by pop culture and the news media as hysterical, melting down, depressed, burned out, desperate to be married, and unfortunately, facing an infertility epidemic and a man shortage on top of everything else.

Susie Banikarim (22:56):

Honestly, it feels like for women in this era and maybe in every era, it’s like you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. You have to pursue a career, but you also have to find a way to get married. There’s no breaks here.

Jessica Bennett (23:08):

And here’s the thing, that terrorism line, the core message that educated career focused women risk spending their lives alone, it stuck. Starting in 1989, it is mentioned in When Harry Met Sally. This is also a Nora Ephron film. This stars Meg Ryan, and you may remember if you’ve seen this, the part where she’s weeping to Billy Crystal about her ex who didn’t want to marry her.

Clips (23:31):

Though I drove him away and I’m going to be 40.

(23:37):

When?

(23:37):

Someday.

(23:39):

Someday, like in eight years. It’s so crazy.

Jessica Bennett (23:43):

Right. So again, that looming dead end, terrifying number of 40. So that’s When Harry met Sally. But then four years later, you have Sleepless in Seattle. This is 1993. And in Sleepless, the line is not mentioned only once, but actually twice. First in the scene we heard at the top, which is also Meg Ryan, she was in everything in that era. And she’s playing a journalist who’s talking with her editor, played by Rosie O’Donnell about basically what story she should do next.

Susie Banikarim (24:10):

Yeah, I remember this because they’re basically talking about this sad widower whose son has called into a radio show saying he needs a new wife. And thousands of women have called into volunteer.

Jessica Bennett (24:23):

Yes, exactly. And then one of Meg Ryan and Rosie O’Donnell’s colleagues jumps in to say…

Clips (24:28):

There are a lot of desperate women out there looking for love.

(24:30):

Especially over a certain age.

(24:32):

You know it’s easier to be killed by a terrorist than it is to get married over the age of 40?

(24:35):

That’s not true. That statistic is not true.

(24:37):

That’s right, it’s not true. But it feels true.

(24:40):

It feels true because it is true.

(24:42):

There’s practically a whole book about how that statistic is not true.

(24:44):

Calm down. You brought it up.

Jessica Bennett (24:46):

And so then later in the movie, this comes up again. This time Tom Hanks is at home in Seattle having dinner with his sister and her husband, and they’re talking about all the women who called into that show. And the husband is adamant that those women must be absolutely desperate.

Clips (25:02):

Just because someone is looking for a nice guy, it doesn’t make them desperate.

(25:06):

How about rapacious and love-starved?

(25:07):

No.

(25:07):

It is easier to be killed by a terrorist than to find a husband after the-

(25:11):

That is absolutely untrue.

Jessica Bennett (25:14):

Nora Ephron, she’s clearly doing something. She’s read Faludi. She’s not just regurgitating that line. She’s debunking it again and again, and it’s worth noting, this is a bit of a deep cut, that Nora Ephron actually began her career at Newsweek. She was a mail girl in the 1960s, but then smartly and quickly quit when she learned that women at the time were not allowed to be writers at Newsweek.

Susie Banikarim (25:37):

Okay. I don’t want to get off track because obviously this is something you’ve told me before, but I feel like you have to explain that women weren’t allowed to be writers at Newsweek in the 60s.

Jessica Bennett (25:48):

Okay. Yes, how much time do you have? But TLDR up until the 1970s, women were told when they started working at Newsweek that they could be a mail girl, they could be a researcher, they could be a reporter, but they could not have bylines because women were not writers at Newsweek. This would lead to a landmark gender discrimination suit in the 1970s by the women who worked at Newsweek against the magazine. This would go on to spark all sorts of similar lawsuits. It basically changed the way journalism was done. This probably paved the way for us as writers and editors.

Susie Banikarim (26:24):

That’s such an interesting detail. But we know she’s right, because now we’ve established that it was wrong a million times. Newsweek did eventually retract this article, right?

Jessica Bennett (26:35):

Yes, 20 years later. There’s a few things to note, but the first one is that the study, as it was published in the article, was not actually a published study. It was a working paper, which yes, sometimes reporters report on working papers, but that basically means a paper from an academic institution that’s in its early stages. It had not yet been put out in a peer reviewed journal.

Susie Banikarim (26:57):

That does seem like a very significant detail.

Jessica Bennett (27:00):

Totally significant. And also by the time the study was in fact completed and published in an academic journal, it would ultimately become two studies. The first one, about Black women’s marriage rates, which were and are much lower than white women. And this was mentioned in the Newsweek article, but almost as a passing aside. And then the second study was about educated white women, which is what that terrorism line is actually referring to, and which is what became the focus of the article.

Susie Banikarim (27:29):

But did the data hold up? Was it actually true?

Jessica Bennett (27:31):

The data did not hold up. The problem was that they were looking at 40 year olds and making predictions for 20 year olds at a time when there were huge shifts in marital attitudes and behavior. So as a result, the statistics would later be challenged by a separate demographer in the US Census Bureau, who would ultimately calculate that 30 year olds actually had a much higher likelihood of marrying. And for 40 year olds, it was not 2.6%, it was 17% to 23%.

Susie Banikarim (28:05):

Well, you know what’s funny is I actually read the retraction, and didn’t the majority of the women who were featured in the original story end up getting married, like 80% of them?

Jessica Bennett (28:14):

Of course they did, of course they did.

Susie Banikarim (28:16):

It’s so silly. And then how did the terrorism line get in?

Jessica Bennett (28:19):

So that’s the other part of this. The way that this often worked in news magazines at that time is that you would have multiple reporters working on a single story. This was before the internet. So you would have someone in San Francisco, you would have someone in Los Angeles, you’d have someone in Chicago, they would all be interviewing women about this story. And then because you weren’t emailing and everything wasn’t digital, you weren’t slacking, you would pick up the phone and you would call-

Susie Banikarim (28:44):

I guess you could fax it.

Jessica Bennett (28:45):

Yeah, you could fax it, and they probably were sometimes, but you had these people I think they were called shepherds at the time. We still had them when I began at Newsweek. And their job was to basically pick up the phone when a correspondent would call from some far away place and type down their notes, which they would live, read to you, and then you would give those notes to whomever the assigned person was in New York, who is going to take everything and write up the article. So what was then revealed was that the terrorism line was basically a funny aside, written down by one of the handful of reporters who worked on the story, and it was sent in some sort of memo from the Newsweek San Francisco Bureau to the main office in New York, and the writer in New York inserted the line to the story.

Susie Banikarim (29:35):

So it was meant to be funny?

Jessica Bennett (29:36):

What they said in the retraction article was that yes, they thought it was funny, and they thought it would be clear that it was hyperbole. It wasn’t intended to be taken literally, but obviously it was taken literally.

Susie Banikarim (29:49):

Well, so this actually explains why they don’t cite any data on how likely you are to be killed by a terrorist, because they thought it was very obvious that it wasn’t real data. That’s fascinating. So just to recap what you’ve just told me is that Newsweek had concocted this sensational line, and the data behind it was also flawed.

Jessica Bennett (30:08):

Yes. Multiple problems with this story.

Susie Banikarim (30:11):

It’s a good thing they issued a retraction.

Jessica Bennett (30:14):

I guess, except who remembers any of this? The point is this thing stuck in the zeitgeist, that original flawed statistic and the line about terrorism stuck in the zeitgeist. It stayed there. It was repeated again and again and again, and nobody remembers any of these details except for, of course, the smart people who will be listening to our podcast.

Susie Banikarim (30:33):

So what’s wild about this is that I actually was watching something recently, this show on Netflix called Firefly Lane, which is cheesy, but I watch, and they did a whole episode about this Newsweek cover.

Jessica Bennett (30:47):

They did?

Susie Banikarim (30:48):

Yeah, one of the characters is an anchor, is a local news anchor, and she leads rhe nightly news with this statistic, and then someone else on the staff, an older woman challenges her. And so throughout the episode, she realizes that, in fact, the statistic isn’t true. But the idea that this stuck with people for so long that a writer on this show that just got made last year remembered it is fascinating.

Jessica Bennett (31:14):

It’s fascinating and it’s telling. I think part of what it’s showing us is that as silly as some of these moments seem now, or as much as they feel like a blip from the 1980s, they’re teaching us something really important.

Susie Banikarim (31:28):

Yeah, really about the time we grew up in.

Jessica Bennett (31:31):

With this story in particular, as I was doing the research, I started to realize this wasn’t even really about marriageable women or “man shortage” or an age of expiration or even about undermining magazine articles or sexist editors. This was about women’s place in the world more broadly.

Susie Banikarim (31:51):

Right, it was about putting them in their place.

Jessica Bennett (31:53):

Exactly. And I think to understand that you have to look at what was happening in the 1980s and what was happening in the 1980s is the ton of pushback to all of these societal gains. So you can see it and hear it in this time a lot in the way conservative leaders talked about feminism and working women. This was of course the Reagan era. So Ronald Reagan, who had proclaimed feminism of “straight jacket” for women, he also introduced the term welfare queen as part of efforts to demonize poor Black single mothers. And so while Americans are navigating the consequences of the baby boom, women’s liberation, sexual revolution, Reagan is basically reeling against feminism.

(32:34):

And so when this Newsweek article comes out in 1986, there are some feminists and people at large who see it as part of this backlash. Taken within the context of all of these other things, it was part of this conservative push against progress. So I actually called up Susan Douglas. She is a professor of communication and media studies at the University of Michigan. She studies this subject. She looks at gender representation in media, but she also happened to be 36 at the time that this article came out and recently married so lucky for her, she didn’t have to panic.

Susan Douglas (33:14):

No advance in feminism occurs without an almost instantaneous backlash against it. By the 1980s, you had more women in the workforce than ever before. You had women postponing marriage and childbirths because they wanted to get established in their careers, and this was a threat to the patriarchal order. And so you get this ridiculous story terrorizing women who if they’re 32 and they’re not married, they are doomed to a life of loneliness. Let’s also remember between 1975 and 1985, you had a revolution in single mothers entering the workforce. They entered the workforce because feminism had given them permission to do so, and they entered the workforce because they had to because they had to support their families, and they wanted to work. And they did this in the face of non-existent or utterly crappy childcare, against all kinds of prejudice.

(34:19):

It transformed the American family. And so some of this threat was not just for women who were never married. This was also, oh, so you divorced your husband because you, a liberated woman, thought that you were unhappy. Well, too bad for you. Good luck finding number two. No advance in feminism occurs without an almost instantaneous backlash against it.

Jessica Bennett (35:02):

That’s Susan Douglas again. It’s interesting to hear her talk about what was happening politically in the 80s as women are gaining more power at work, and then knowing that this Newsweek cover lands right in the middle of it.

Susie Banikarim (35:14):

Right, like a ton of bricks.

Jessica Bennett (35:15):

So you can look at these things as isolated, or you can, as Faludi did, see them as interconnected. You can draw this straight line from that article and the so-called man shortage to what you’re seeing in the culture around that time. Susan Faludi talks in her book, Backlash, about how in film and television, we begin to see this shift away from characters that are scrappy working heroines toward these sad sacks desperate to get married. She cites Sally Field in the movie Surrender.

Clips (35:47):

You know what? If I’m not married again by the time I’m 41, there’s a 27% chance I’ll end up a lonely alcoholic.

Jessica Bennett (35:54):

But I’m even thinking of later, like the Bridget Jones types.

Clips (35:58):

I have two choices to give up and accept permanent state of spinsterhood or not. In this time, I choose not.

Jessica Bennett (36:08):

And then if they aren’t sad sacks desperate to get married, these once independent women are depicted as straight-up murderous bunny boiling sociopaths. Of course, I’m referring to Glenn Close’s character in Fatal Attraction.

Clips (36:27):

What are you doing, huh? Showing up in my apartment?

(36:27):

Well, what I’m supposed to do. You won’t answer my calls. You change your number. I’m not going to be ignored, Dan.

Susie Banikarim (36:32):

Right, like it’s not enough that the women are pathetic. Their career ambitions have to actually turn them into dangerous and deranged characters.

Jessica Bennett (36:41):

Yeah. So basically this myth, this lie about these desperate, sad single women has become accepted truth in the culture.

Susie Banikarim (36:50):

It definitely does. And you still see that myth, this desperate single woman playing it on TV. It makes me think of The Bachelor, which has been running on ABC for 20 years, in which I occasionally still watch. And the whole premise of that show is that it’s this group of women who are pretty young, in their early 20s, and they’re so desperate to get married and have the approval of a man. And God forbid, occasionally there’s one who’s in her 30s and they’re so mean to her like, “You’re the worst. You’re so old and desperate. What are you even doing here?” So I don’t know how much progress we have made. It’s hard to say.

Jessica Bennett (37:30):

I think we’ve made some. The Bachelor’s a certain kind of television.

Susie Banikarim (37:35):

Oh, do you mean super trashy? Because I love it.

Jessica Bennett (37:37):

But that said, I’m still sitting here trying to rack my brain for an example of a show that doesn’t end in a relationship. Honestly, if those listening can think of anything, feel free to send us your thoughts. But okay, Susie, I feel like we need to pause for a moment and spend a little time talking about us.

Susie Banikarim (37:59):

Okay.

Jessica Bennett (38:00):

Because I couldn’t help but wonder, are we desperate single women?

Susie Banikarim (38:03):

Good Carrie Bradshaw reference?

Jessica Bennett (38:05):

Thank you so much. I’ve been practicing, but I think this is actually a good spot to pause for our listeners before we get real personal. So we’ll pick this up again with my bad Carrie Bradshaw impression, but also both of our views are complicated views on marriage, in part two.

Susie Banikarim (38:28):

This is In Retrospect. Thanks for listening. Is there a cultural moment you can’t stop thinking about and want us to explore in a future episode? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram @inretropod.

Jessica Bennett (38:43):

If you love this podcast, please rate and review us on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. If you hate it, you can post nasty comments on our Instagram which we may or may not delete.

Susie Banikarim (38:53):

You can also find us on Instagram @jessicabennett and @susiebnyc. Also check out Jessica’s books, Feminist Fight Club and This is 18.

Jessica Bennett (39:02):

In Retrospect is a production of iHeart podcast and The Meteor. Lauren Hansen is our supervising producer. Derrick Clements is our engineer and sound designer. Sharon Attia is our researcher and associate producer.

Susie Banikarim (39:14):

Our executive producer from The Meteor is Cindi Leive. Our executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stumpf and Katrina Norvell. Our artwork is from Pentagram. Additional editing help from Mary Dooe and Mike Coscarelli. Sound correction and mastering by Amanda Rose Smith. We are your hosts, Susie Banikarim.

Jessica Bennett (39:33):

And Jessica Bennett. We’re also executive producers. For even more, check out inretropod.com. See you next week.

EPISODE 13 – THE SECRET POLITICS OF HIGH HEELS

Please note: This transcript has been automatically generated.

Jessica Bennett (00:04):

It is taking the most feminized object of all objects, the heel, and a spike stiletto heel at that, and it is masculinizing it to show that she is tough by making it a weapon. I’m Jessica Bennett.

Susie Banikarim (00:21):

And I’m Susie Banikarim.

Jessica Bennett (00:22):

And this is In Retrospect, where each week we revisit a cultural moment that shaped us.

Susie Banikarim (00:27):

And that we just can’t stop thinking about.

Jessica Bennett (00:29):

Most of the time we talk about the past, but sometimes the past and present collide. That happened this week in politics when an age-old dispute about high heels made its way onto the Republican debate stage.

Susie Banikarim (00:43):

Jess, it might surprise some of our friends to know that late last week we were texting well into the night about high heels, and so I thought we should bring it to the podcast because I feel like I learned a lot of things and laughed a lot during that text exchange. High heels had come up in the most recent Republican debate and you’re writing a story about it, so that’s why we were making all these jokes. Do you want to tell us a little bit about the story?

Jessica Bennett (01:12):

Yes. So I’ve been working on this piece that is out now about Nikki Haley, who is one of the Republican candidates, and the debate that is occurring that really came to a head at the actual debate, it was the third Republican debate, it was in Miami, and there was this moment that immediately went viral, was making all the rounds where Vivek Ramaswamy, he is the tech entrepreneur candidate, he’s sort of brash, he’s one of the younger-

Susie Banikarim (01:42):

He’s so smarmy.

Jessica Bennett (01:44):

Yes.

Susie Banikarim (01:44):

Yeah, he’s a know-it-all. Whenever they do a poll after the debates, everyone’s like, “He’s such a know-it-all.”

Jessica Bennett (01:49):

Yes, so him. There was a question from the moderator about the US role in Israel and Gaza, and he was trying to differentiate himself from what he believes is the old guard, the other people on stage. And so the way he does that is he says-

Clips (02:03):

Do you want a leader from a different generation who’s going to put this country first or do you want Dick Cheney in three-inch heels? In this case, we’ve two of them on stage tonight.

Jessica Bennett (02:13):

So Haley takes a beat to respond. She lets this question play out. She waits until the next question, and then she first corrects him. She says-

Clips (02:22):

Yes, I’d first like to say they’re five-inch heels and I don’t wear them unless you can run in them.

Jessica Bennett (02:28):

And then she says-

Clips (02:30):

I wear heels. They’re not for a fashion statement, they’re for ammunition. What we need to be doing…

Susie Banikarim (02:35):

Okay. I have a lot of things to say here. First of all, five-inch heels are impressive. I do want to say that standing at a podium for hours in five-inch heels is impressive and that she says she can run in them at some point. I think that’s great. But what is she talking about? What does it mean they’re not for fashion, they’re ammunition? Is she going to use them as a weapon or is she going to bludgeon someone with the heel? I don’t know what that means.

Jessica Bennett (03:03):

I was just like, “Isn’t that inevitably going to bring up bad single white female references?” Remember how she truly bludgeons someone with her stiletto heel in that movie?

Susie Banikarim (03:13):

I did not remember that. But-

Jessica Bennett (03:15):

In retrospect.

Susie Banikarim (03:16):

Wow, in retrospect. I mean, we talked about this last week, I did remember that cover with Hillary Clinton’s heel with a little man dangling from it. That was in the 2016 election. Right?

Jessica Bennett (03:27):

Yeah, that was actually in 2014. It was before she was running. But high heels are so symbolic in many ways. And if you look back at what they have represented over time, and particularly for women in politics, yes, Hillary Clinton was pictured on the cover of Time Magazine in 2014 with this sort of stiletto heel, except it was more of a sensible-

Susie Banikarim (03:49):

Pump. It’s what it felt like.

Jessica Bennett (03:50):

Like it was maybe meant to be kind of dowdy.

Susie Banikarim (03:52):

Yeah. Well, because in D.C., the women don’t wear stiletto heels, or at least they didn’t used to in my day. They wore a sensible pump.

Jessica Bennett (03:56):

They didn’t use to.

Susie Banikarim (03:58):

Yeah.

Jessica Bennett (03:59):

Exactly. And on this cover, like you said, there’s this tiny little man underneath the heel and she’s supposed to be squashing him. And then also there’s that Ginger Rogers quote. She was a famous actress and her dance partner was Fred Astaire, and she had to do everything he did, but backwards and in high heels.

Susie Banikarim (04:18):

It’s true. I mean, high heels do represent, it’s kind of an interesting thing because they represent a sort of female power, but they also do have sort of a sexual connotation. So there’s something interesting about the imagery because it’s not actually a powerful thing to have to be in five inch heels. I mean, there is something that feels powerful about being in heels, but then if you have to walk in them, you feel much less powerful because you have to be so careful.

Jessica Bennett (04:45):

I was reading something recently about Sarah Palin who had complained about how in 2008 when she had to debate Joe Biden, she and Biden had to stand up there, but she was of course in heels. And how in the previous VP debates, they had all been seated.

Susie Banikarim (05:00):

I mean, fair.

Jessica Bennett (05:01):

So standing in heels for many hours, not super comfortable. But the other element of this that is relevant is that this diss by Vivek was not just targeted at Haley. Obviously, Haley is the only one in heels. She’s the only woman on stage. But I don’t know if you’ve been following this whole thing-

Susie Banikarim (05:19):

Oh, I’ve been following. You know I have been following.

Jessica Bennett (05:19):

… about Ron DeSantis, his cowboy boots, and whether he’s wearing lifts in them.

Susie Banikarim (05:26):

I mean, it seems to me, again, I’m not a shoe expert, it seems very clear that he is wearing lifts and essentially walking on tiptoe all the time. So I do think this was a practice line that was supposed to have two meetings.

Jessica Bennett (05:40):

Oh, absolutely. And he was so pleased with himself.

Susie Banikarim (05:42):

Get it? Haley. But it was also like a subtle dig for everyone who knows, because Vivek is very much of the online troll generation. He’s very in those communities and on X and on TikTok. So I feel like he was throwing them a little subtle Easter egg that they could use for all the memes about DeSantis and his heels.

Jessica Bennett (06:05):

Well, and the meme. So then I went down this rabbit hole of the memes. I mean, they’re not even memes, they’re actual images of DeSantis in his cowboy boots in different scenarios, in different media appearances where they’ve actually diagrammed the bend of the foot, where the toe pops out, where you can see the line of them through his pants, how they make him walk. Every single element of this man walking in these cowboy boots has been dissected to the point that Politico actually sent a menswear writer to go interview shoemakers about what they thought. And so this writer finds this shoemaker who’s a bespoke boot maker who specifically makes cowboy boots for Texas politicians with lifts.

Susie Banikarim (06:49):

Oh, my God. Great find.

Jessica Bennett (06:50):

Who then goes on and says, absolutely this man is lifting his shoes. And then he goes on to say, what that lift does is it gives you the equivalent of five inch heels.

Susie Banikarim (07:03):

So him and Haley were wearing the same size heels.

Jessica Bennett (07:05):

So they’re on a level playing field, except that they’re not.

Susie Banikarim (07:09):

I mean, also, I think what’s interesting about this is how much stigma there is around the idea that DeSantis would be wearing lifts. Right? Well, there’s just obviously this clear sense that it’s feminizing or somehow shameful that he would be doing this and that he must also feel that himself. It’s not like a projection from other people because I mean, I think he has denied it. Right? Has the campaign officially denied it?

Jessica Bennett (07:47):

Yeah. So I mean, what you do, if you are a man running for president in 2023 and someone lodges some silly critique at you is you go for their balls. And so what he did was he immediately attacked Trump who had been mocking him over this and said, “I dare you to have the balls to show up to the next debate, and if you do, I’ll wear a boot on my head.”

Susie Banikarim (08:13):

What? The second.

Jessica Bennett (08:15):

And then his campaign began actually selling golf balls that say, Ron DeSantis has a pair, he shows up.

Susie Banikarim (08:23):

Okay. That is really… The state of the Republican primary is in and of itself a really sad state of affairs.

Jessica Bennett (08:29):

Right? We’re literally living in a boy’s locker room. But I think what you’re touching on is something really important and that this is actually why we’re talking about this, which is that the gender dynamics on both sides of a male candidate who may be padding his heels, and a woman candidate who is wearing high heels is so intertwined and complex, and while she’s trying to take her high heel and show that she can use it as a weapon in a masculine way, I guess, I’m feminine, but I’m tough also. He, while knowing that tall men do in fact get ahead, there are studies showing that most presidents have been above six feet tall. So he knows this is an advantage, but he can’t possibly admit to it because that would be gay.

Susie Banikarim (09:15):

I guess that’s the thing is it’s like he’s afraid that it somehow puts his sexuality in question. But also, it’s interesting because he must have occasionally appeared not in his cowboy boots. It’s like, who is he fooling? He’s going to get caught.

Jessica Bennett (09:33):

He seems to be wearing them all the time. I mean, I think a little bit, honestly, now he is stuck in his proverbial boots.

Susie Banikarim (09:39):

Let me ask you a serious question.

Jessica Bennett (09:41):

Can I stop making puns?

Susie Banikarim (09:43):

You think he wears those cowboy boots to bed?

Jessica Bennett (09:45):

Oh. Well, I wonder if you have lifts in them or they’re very hard to get off? Boots are hard to get off like that.

Susie Banikarim (09:51):

Oh, yeah. I mean, maybe easier to get off because you’re basically on tiptoe, you’re just sliding that leg right off.

Jessica Bennett (09:57):

Oh, they’re already off your feet. No, I mean, it’s so funny. And then of course, Trump is having a heyday with this, and he’s saying like, “Well, I don’t know. Why don’t you get platforms and go on RuPaul’s Drag Race?” And it’s become this total spectacle. But meanwhile, Haley is sort of using it to her advantage in a way.

Susie Banikarim (10:16):

It’s so weird because it’s so rooted in sexism and homophobia.

Jessica Bennett (10:19):

Yes.

Susie Banikarim (10:20):

So I guess not surprising coming out of this particular group of GOP candidates.

Jessica Bennett (10:25):

There’s a long history of masculinity in politics in this country. And I don’t just mean literally because men have been politicians, but the way that you’ve had to show your masculinity, whether it’s hunting or cowboy boots, or when there was that whole thing about calling Jeb Bush a wimp or Trump and Marco Rubio talking about the size of their hands, just disgusting, stuff like that.

Susie Banikarim (10:47):

Well, also, there’s clearly some weird underpinning under all the crowd size conversations that Trump has. He’s constantly arguing about how big his crowd is, and it feels very much like a metaphor or euphemism for something else. And there’s also that whole thing about female politicians have to lower their voice. They have to literally lower the timbre of their voice when they give speeches because it’s seen as more masculine or just more authoritative.

Jessica Bennett (11:14):

Yeah, Margaret Thatcher famously did that.

Susie Banikarim (11:15):

Yeah. And also actually, not in the political realm. There’s the whole thing about the woman who ran Theranos, right?

Jessica Bennett (11:21):

Yes. Elizabeth Holmes.

Susie Banikarim (11:22):

She had that Steve Jobs look and then the deep voice, and now her voice doesn’t sound anything like that at trial. So there is this kind of subconscious sense that things that are masculine, have more authority, are more serious. So for a politician like a Hillary, I remember this was a big issue when she was running because on the one hand, she didn’t want to come off as too feminine. She was criticized for being too masculine too. She was like, oh, the pants suits and that she was too tough. And then she had to have that moment. Do you remember she had that moment in New Hampshire where she teared up and everyone was like-

Jessica Bennett (12:00):

Yeah, the tear.

Susie Banikarim (12:01):

… “Oh, it’s humanizing”? So it’s kind of like an impossible thing, right? It’s like you can’t be too feminine. You can’t be too masculine. It’s like you’re constantly having to perform your gender in a political sphere, which is kind of interesting, just given the climate around gender in this country.

Jessica Bennett (12:19):

Exactly. That’s what I was going to say. It’s like, yeah, sure, gender progress may be happening culturally, although you could argue that both ways, but certainly there’s a more expansive view of it. But when it comes to politics and the people who are growing up on stage, it’s the same old square box to the extent that, yeah, of course the female candidates have to wear high heels. They have to show that they’re appropriately feminine and they have to balance the idea that they’re likable with also being able to run a country, which you’re probably not going to be very likable when you’re having to make hard decisions. We all know that. But it is so interesting what you say these costumes for men and women. For men, it’s like blue or black suit, and that crisp white shirt with a tie that’s probably silk. And you always have the jacket on, and the suit. Unless you’re on the road talking to real people, and then maybe you take the jacket off and you roll up your sleeves.

Susie Banikarim (13:18):

Sleeves, because you’re getting to work.

Jessica Bennett (13:19):

… Your arms. That’s like, “I’m a man of the people.” But a woman could never do that. And for a woman, it’s like, okay, you have to make the choice. Am I a pantsuit gal or am I a skirts woman?

Susie Banikarim (13:30):

Well, and also it says so much about you. Even, do you remember when Obama wore the tan suit?

Jessica Bennett (13:35):

Oh, I don’t remember this. I forget.

Susie Banikarim (13:37):

Oh, you don’t remember this? This was a huge scandal. He literally wore a tan suit-

Jessica Bennett (13:41):

A tan suit.

Susie Banikarim (13:42):

And that was the scandal. The scandal was that he wore the suit, and the Republicans were like, it’s undignified for the president.

Jessica Bennett (13:47):

Oh, wow. Okay.

Susie Banikarim (13:48):

And I felt like there was a tinge of racism in that, right? Because it was like he has to perform a certain version of what it’s like to be president. If he makes any choices that veer away from that, he’s roundly criticized. And then Trump got into office and did all sorts of crazy things.

Jessica Bennett (14:02):

Oh my God.

Susie Banikarim (14:02):

It made the fact that that was a scandal seems so ridiculous. Right? And so there are these ways in which the men are examined too, but it does feel like Haley in particular in her race, has had to walk a real tightrope because the men get really down and dirty with each other as proven by this story you told about Ron DeSantis and his golf balls. But she also can’t do that because that would also be seen as unladylike and undignified.

Jessica Bennett (14:34):

She has to be like dignified.

Susie Banikarim (14:35):

She has to be careful. Yeah. Her zingers have to be lady-like.

Jessica Bennett (14:38):

Yeah, appropriate.

Susie Banikarim (14:39):

Yeah.

Jessica Bennett (14:40):

Yes, I know. Well, and that’s why so many people after she gave that retort about her heels being ammunition, and then she actually liked the retort so much that she went on Twitter or X and posted it again, and all of the responses were like-

Susie Banikarim (14:54):

Again, nonsensical, it doesn’t make any sense.

Jessica Bennett (14:55):

But I feel like maybe it is a good line because, I mean, it’s not-

Susie Banikarim (14:58):

It’s objectively very confusing.

Jessica Bennett (15:00):

Objectively a bad line, but it is doing something which is, it is taking the most feminized object of all objects, the heel and a spike stiletto heel at that, and it is masculinizing it to show that she is tough by making it a weapon. But then she’s also doing it in a way that’s like she’s got humor about it. She didn’t immediately jump into correct when this exchange was happening. She gave it a beat. She didn’t come off as emotional. She waited and then she delivered this line that in fact, she has practiced many times. She’s been using a version of this high heels line for many years.

Susie Banikarim (15:39):

Wow.

Jessica Bennett (15:40):

It turns out, yeah. This is-

Susie Banikarim (15:41):

She just loves this line.

Jessica Bennett (15:41):

She loves it.

Susie Banikarim (15:42):

That makes no sense. But I do have to say that all I keep thinking about in this conversation is how Exhausting it is to be a woman. I just have to say this. I feel this way even when I was going in the office every day, it’s like a guy can just take a shower and put on a button down and some nice pants and he’s good. But if I’m going into the office, I have to think about a million different things. My hair can’t look crazy. I have to be in an appropriate outfit. I have to put on makeup. I just think that we expect so much of women, and then there’s so many ways in which women are criticized. It’s like this constant thing that you have to be on guard for. So I’m kind of happy DeSantis is getting a tiny taste of that medicine, honestly.

Jessica Bennett (16:27):

Yeah, he is. And actually, that reminds me of something that Barack Obama said in 2008 after he had beat Hillary Clinton. It was after he had been inaugurated, and he was complimenting her essentially on running a tough race. And he used the Ginger Rogers line about having to walk backward in high heels, because he’d been talking about how he would go to the gym and be able to relax, and she’d have to spend hours and hours and hours in hair and makeup. At the time, I remember thinking, is that a degrading comment? It was a little flip. It was akin to your likable enough Hillary. But it was also pointing out a real double standard in that way.

(17:05):

When I was thinking about this and researching it, I actually learned that heels were invented for men originally.

Susie Banikarim (17:29):

Oh really?

Jessica Bennett (17:29):

Did you know this?

Susie Banikarim (17:29):

I don’t think I did know that. It’s like vaguely familiar.

Jessica Bennett (17:31):

So I’ll just give you a little history of the high heels. So back in the 1600s, they invented high heels for men because in particular, they were good for horse riding. They would stay in the stirrup and secure your foot in there.

Susie Banikarim (17:43):

Oh, that makes sense, yeah.

Jessica Bennett (17:44):

And so then during war or battle or whatever men did back then, when you were standing up on your horse to fire your musket, your heel would stay in the stirrup. And so for years and years and years, this was considered a manly thing. Kings in Europe would walk the cobblestone streets and wear their tights in their heels. I’m sure you’ve seen photos of men from that era in their tights and their heels.

Susie Banikarim (18:10):

It feels very Renaissance era to me.

Jessica Bennett (18:11):

Yes, very much so. And so I was like, when did this thing become the most feminized and eroticized thing for women in a way? And as it turns out, women eventually were like, “Well, men have all the power. They’re wearing the heels. We want to try out these heels.” And so initially, I found this amazing fact in this textbook written by a sociologist, Lisa Wade, where it explains how in the 1600s in Massachusetts, if you were a woman who was caught wearing heels, you would be subject to the same punishment as a witch.

Susie Banikarim (18:47):

Oh my God.

Jessica Bennett (18:48):

That’s how much they didn’t want women wearing heels. But then of course, at some point, women were doing it in mass, and so the men gave up. And so then suddenly it became like, well, we don’t want those heels. Those are stupid and silly, and why would we want to be associated with those?

Susie Banikarim (19:03):

So it’s like women adopted them and that’s why they went out of fashion for men? That is so interesting.

Jessica Bennett (19:08):

Isn’t that fascinating? And so then fast-forward hundreds of years, I’m sure I’m egregiously skipping over tons of history, but then it’s like the flapper era and the pin up era, and they become this really sexual thing up until now.

Susie Banikarim (19:20):

And the other part of that history that’s interesting is such a image of the eighties was women taking off their heels, putting on those white sneakers to go to work-

Jessica Bennett (19:30):

Sneakers.

Susie Banikarim (19:30):

And then changing into their heels.

Jessica Bennett (19:32):

I think of Maria Cantwell, who is from my state of Washington, and she was the mom in heels and tennis shoes, and that was the famous image of this politician. But now it’s interesting because they would never admit to wearing tennis shoes. It’s like, I am in my heels and I keep them on.

Susie Banikarim (19:49):

Yeah. Well, I bet you that the squad, that the AOCs and the Ilhan Omars, they’re probably just wearing sneakers. I mean, when they can, I know there’s a lot of issues about decorum, the whole thing with John Fetterman or whatever, but it feels like it’s a very dated idea that heels make the woman. There’s this idea that your shoes have to be a certain way to represent a polished presentation. And so I don’t think heels are fashionable the way they used to be, but I do think that if you’re traditional in your views, you kind of have to embrace that look.

Jessica Bennett (20:32):

Yeah. Well, it sends a message about your femininity, still. We could sit here and do an entire episode unpacking what the size of the heel says about you because it’s too low and it’s dowdy and too sensible, ala Hillary Clinton. Too high, it’s like Melania Trump. I don’t know if you remember, there was at one point when Donald Trump and Melania were going to visit a hurricane site in Florida, I believe, and she was wearing these stilettos, and the press was like, “There’s a literal hurricane, you’re going to wear those stilettos? And it made her seem unserious.

Susie Banikarim (21:06):

And it’s actually interesting because when you go to a concert, one of the things I remember noticing when I went to see Beyonce for the first time, that’s a humblebrag ladies, I’ve seen Beyonce twice, is that she’s dancing an entire routine in heels. And I remember being like, wow, that is so wild. I mean, she looks amazing, and she does it in a way that makes you feel like it’s easy, which I know it is not. So it just is also interesting that even in situations which are really athletic, a concert is an athletic performance as much as it’s a singing exercise, women still feel like that’s part of the look. That’s part of the vibe.

Jessica Bennett (21:43):

I just find it so fascinating how these fashion objects are viewed with so much symbolism, whether it’s a single white female villain, predator jabbing her lover or whoever he was, I can’t remember, in the eye or strength, and drawing attention to the fact that women in a lot of ways still do have to be able to balance-

Susie Banikarim (22:05):

Everything.

Jessica Bennett (22:05):

Literally and figuratively.

Susie Banikarim (22:06):

Backwards and in high heels. Right. I mean.

Jessica Bennett (22:08):

Exactly.

Susie Banikarim (22:09):

Well, so the interesting thing is, or at least to me, the interesting question remains is what is Ron DeSantis going to do with all this hubbub? Is he ever going to come forward and admit it?

Jessica Bennett (22:21):

I don’t know.

Susie Banikarim (22:21):

There must be an actual record of his height somewhere, right?

Jessica Bennett (22:25):

Well, it’s supposedly 5’11. I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know.

Susie Banikarim (22:29):

Oh my God, it must be so uncomfortable.

Jessica Bennett (22:32):

It’d be interesting to see.

Susie Banikarim (22:32):

It must be so uncomfortable to walk around on tiptoe all the time. I don’t envy a man who is so insecure about his height, who has to do that. Because as someone who’s had to do a lot of things in high heels, that is not a choice I would make if I could avoid it. So he must really be sad that he got himself into this mess.

Jessica Bennett (22:49):

Well, I’m not defending Ron DeSantis in any way, but it’s a bit of an impossible situation for a man in a position like that because you can’t admit to it. You’re trying to be seen as masculine and tough, and that’s why you’re lifting your heels in the first place. You know that there’s a real actual truth to politicians being taller. And yet you had to literally just stand there uncomfortably during this exchange and probably hope that the mic was not going to come to him at that moment.

(23:19):

But there was one funny thing that I discovered after we started texting when I couldn’t sleep late at night, which was I wanted to examine her exact heels. And so I saw that they had been in some article and I found the name of the photographer, the heels from the debate I mean. And so I went on to Getty Images, and I searched this photographer, and then I found a couple of different images, and there was one close-up up shot of the exact high heels, and they’re really beautiful blue suede, like royal blue suede or darkish blue suede. And so then I was examining them, and then I found these shoes that were for sale that looked very, very similar. And anyway, I’m getting to a point, which is by my feminine analysis, they really look like four inch heels to me, not five inch heels, which like, okay-

Susie Banikarim (24:11):

So you’re fact checking heels? I love it. I love it.

Jessica Bennett (24:15):

I mean, this is inconsequential. Who gives a shit? However, I just think it’s funny that in a political dick measuring contest, she too can play this game where she is exaggerating her height.

Susie Banikarim (24:29):

Yeah. Okay. I like that. That feels like a good place to end it actually.

(24:43):

This is In Retrospect. Thanks for listening. Is there a cultural moment you can’t stop thinking about and want us to explore in a future episode? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram @inretropod.

Jessica Bennett (24:58):

If you love this podcast, please rate and review us on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. If you hate it, you can post nasty comments on our Instagram which we may or may not delete.

Susie Banikarim (25:08):

You can also find us on Instagram @jessicabennett and @susiebnyc. Also check out Jessica’s books, Feminist Fight Club and This is 18.

Jessica Bennett (25:17):

In Retrospect is a production of iHeart podcast and The Meteor. Lauren Hansen is our supervising producer. Derrick Clements is our engineer and sound designer. Sharon Attia is our researcher and associate producer.

Susie Banikarim (25:29):

Our executive producer from The Meteor is Cindi Leive. Our executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stumpf and Katrina Norvell. Our artwork is from Pentagram. Additional editing help from Mary Dooe and Mike Coscarelli. Sound correction and mastering by Amanda Rose Smith. We are your hosts, Susie Banikarim.

Jessica Bennett (25:47):

And Jessica Bennett. We’re also executive producers. For even more, check out inretropod.com. See you next week.

EPISODE 12 – WE REGRET TO INFORM YOU

Please note: This transcript has been automatically generated.

Jessica Bennett (00:04):

Do you think Wife Swap is going to come after us for this episode?

Susie Banikarim (00:07):

I mean, God, I hope not. I’m Susie Banikarim.

Jessica Bennett (00:12):

And I’m Jessica Bennett.

Susie Banikarim (00:14):

This is In Retrospect where we delve into cultural moments that shaped us.

Jessica Bennett (00:17):

And that we just can’t stop thinking about.

Susie Banikarim (00:20):

Most of the time we talk about the past, and today we’re going to do that also, but we wanted to give you a little more context about how we got here.

Jessica Bennett (00:32):

This show is devoted to looking back at news moments we consumed often as teenagers, but sometimes older, but we’re also working journalists, so obviously we have our own, in retrospect, moments, things that we wish we could have or would have done differently.

Susie Banikarim (00:47):

Yes. I have a lot of those.

Jessica Bennett (00:48):

Okay. And so Susie, one of the things I love about hearing stories from your career is that you’ll just bust out with these facts or little anecdotes about behind the scenes things that happened. I mean, you worked for Diane Sawyer, you worked for Katie Couric, you worked for George Stephanopoulos. You have these war stories, often celebrity based war stories.

Susie Banikarim (01:10):

Yes. I kicked around a long time, so I have a lot of crazy stories.

Jessica Bennett (01:14):

And you’ve produced interviews with presidents. You’ve interviewed Loretta Lynn, Leonardo DiCaprio, Claire Danes, like all of these very impressive things. But one thing I learned only recently about you is that you actually worked at Wife Swap.

Susie Banikarim (01:30):

Yes, yes. My first-

Jessica Bennett (01:31):

The reality show where people swap wives. To be clear.

Susie Banikarim (01:34):

Well swap wives in the non-sexual sense. But yes, I did work on the first season of Wife Swap. It was a British show that had been brought over to the States, so no one had seen it.

Jessica Bennett (01:45):

This was like what, early 2000s?

Susie Banikarim (01:47):

Early 2000s, 2004. And I think the thing is I had worked at NBC, and while I was there, I had done a little tour at Dateline, which is their magazine show. And as part of that, we had done an hour on the Apprentice, and I was really intrigued by reality TV. I always was. It wasn’t as huge. Well, it was huge, but it wasn’t as common as it is now, I would say. So I was kind of like, well, if I’m going to do news about these reality shows, what would it be like to go work on one? I was kind of curious to cross over. And interestingly actually, by the way, is that when I made the decision to leave NBC to go to Wife Swap, this woman, this executive who was very senior to me, said to me, “You’ll never work in news again if you take that job.” They were trying to convince me to stay, and they did it by being mean to me. Someone else said to me, “You’re too ambitious.” These are all the things they said to me.

Jessica Bennett (02:38):

About going to Wife Swap? [inaudible 00:02:42]

Susie Banikarim (02:42):

I was way too ambitious also-

Jessica Bennett (02:43):

But they paying much better is the reality, right?

Susie Banikarim (02:46):

They were paying much better, and they gave me a better title. I was an associate producer on that show, and that woman who told me I would never work in news again, ended up going to Bravo, and that’s where she spent the majority of her career.

Jessica Bennett (02:55):

So she never worked in news again.

Susie Banikarim (02:58):

She didn’t work in news again. Yeah, it’s just funny because there was a real stigma to reality TV at that time. I will say that, and I don’t know why I did it. I just was like, fuck it. I want to see what this feels like. It was a pretty terrible experience, I’d say. I’m not sorry I did it because it kind of felt like being in a war zone. So I learned a lot about how to think on my feet and about how to produce in really difficult situations, but it definitely wasn’t news, and that became clear really quickly. Your whole job was to manipulate the people involved and not just manipulate them in the moment, but to prepare to manipulate them the whole time.

Jessica Bennett (03:36):

Wait, back up for a second. So the people that you are bringing on to swap wives?

Susie Banikarim (03:41):

Yeah, I should probably explain what the concept of the show is just for people who might not have watched it.

Jessica Bennett (03:46):

That includes me.

Susie Banikarim (03:47):

So the premise of the show is that there are two families who are diametrically opposed to each other, very different in different ways. So some of the episodes I worked on was a lesbian couple and an interracial couple who didn’t believe in gay marriage.

Jessica Bennett (04:01):

I see.

Susie Banikarim (04:02):

Or I worked on a racist episode where it was a racist family and a Black family, which now you would not do because it’s putting someone in the most toxic situation. And oh God, the craziest one we did was a family who lived on a bus. The dad had lost his job, taken a Greyhound bus and had turned it into, it was before Tiny homes. It was not aesthetic.

Jessica Bennett (04:24):

It was not hashtag vanlife.

Susie Banikarim (04:27):

Yeah, no hashtag vanlife. It was just this weird situation where they were living in this Greyhound bus that he, I guess, tricked out with a woman whose husband was a funeral director. So it was just these very weird, you were trying to find kind of quirky weirdos who then would swap wives, and the premise is that the wives swap and for the first week in the new home, they live by the rules of the mom who is in that family. And then they get to change all the rules for the second week. And then at the end they come together and they find common ground. They all meet together and they’re like, “There’s some benefit to what you do and some benefit to what I do.”

Jessica Bennett (05:05):

And were they paid for this?

Susie Banikarim (05:06):

Well, that’s an interesting thing about Wife Swap. So when I did the show, the families only got paid $5,000 for 10 days of shooting. So it wasn’t really two weeks. That’s the first thing because it’s expensive to shoot a lot of days. And the point of the show was conflict. Because it hadn’t aired in America before we were selling it to people, there was a casting team, but as APs, we worked on casting as well. We were selling it to people as a documentary, and it had won a BAFTA, which is the British equivalent of an Emmy. So we were like, this is a serious documentary about people experimenting with other ways to live, and there’s so much this family can learn from you. You’re so amazing. So your job, once we identified a family, the casting team identified a family. They would send out the AP, which would be me in this case.

Jessica Bennett (05:57):

Associate producer.

Susie Banikarim (05:58):

The associate producer. And my job was to basically butter them up. These were women who for whatever reason, and sometimes men, sometimes we do dad swaps, or in the lesbian case, obviously it was a woman and a man who swapped or a woman and a woman. But with the man. These were people who didn’t get a lot of attention, were often people who were desperate to feel seen, which is why they wanted to be on this TV show. And your job was to act like literally everything they did was fascinating because as the AP, your job was to write the rule book because when they showed up at the house, they would get this book and it would have all the rules they had to live by before the rule change. And it was your job to write it. And so you’d literally be like, “How do you make breakfast? Tell me everything about how you clean the house”, just showering this person with attention that they weren’t getting. And I think everyone would be really seduced by that on some level.

Jessica Bennett (06:51):

Yes. I mean what you’re describing is not that different from what you do in an interview when you want someone to open up.

Susie Banikarim (06:57):

Yes. Although I will say that the difference is we were sort of told, do whatever it takes, say whatever it takes. As journalists, we have ethics, so there’s some things I’ll say and some things I won’t. I won’t ask someone to do. Something I think is unethical. We were just told to come back with a signed contract, no holds barred. So we would go out with these really thick contracts. And actually I kept some of my files from that first season just because I thought it was an interesting time in my life, and I found one of these contracts, I went looking and it’s 23 pages long, and one of the craziest things in it is that if the families violate the contract in any way, so if they refuse to participate in a scene or they quit the show at any time for any reason, it says that they would owe the production company, which was RDF Media or the Network $5 million.

Jessica Bennett (07:49):

For the $5,000 they were getting.

Susie Banikarim (07:51):

Yeah, I mean it’s just crazy because they were basically saying the damage to them was worth $5 million, which by the way, is way beyond what it would’ve cost to make the episode. But the actual language is that it would result in substantial damages and injury to the producer and/or the network, the precise amount of which would be extremely difficult or impracticable to determine. And so I guess even though it’s difficult, they came up with $5 million as the estimate for fair compensation, which is insane, and also unlikely that they would’ve tried to enforce this, but these people had no way of knowing that.

Jessica Bennett (08:32):

Do you think Wife Swap’s going to come after us for this episode?

Susie Banikarim (08:35):

I mean, God, I hope not. First of all, Wife Swap off isn’t around anymore. I think the most recent version of it was in 2020 on Paramount Network.

Jessica Bennett (08:42):

Okay, fine.

Susie Banikarim (08:42):

But also, I don’t know. I mean, I feel like things were different. I mean, that’s sort of what this show is about. The world was different. Reality TV was much more manipulative. I think there are some things you just wouldn’t get away with in the same way today. This was one of my only two jobs in reality TV, and then I went back to news.

(09:00):

The other thing you can do in these shows is you can literally splice answers. We would change word by word someone’s answer if we needed to. You can do whatever you want. You can manipulate it completely. So when you work as a producer in TV news, if you’re out on a shoot, you can’t ask someone to do something they don’t do naturally.

(09:19):

You can’t be like, “I want you to get out of this car or walk to this place and go there.” On reality TV that’s all you’re doing, and you’re making them do it over and over again. Actually, a really good show about this if people are interested is this show Unreal that was on Lifetime that was written by a former Bachelor producer and watching it was wild because I was like, oh, this is exactly what it’s like, except for the murders, there’s some murders in that show. But other than the murdering, it really did feel like a documentary about producing reality TV.

(09:48):

And so I worked on this show. It was a really brutal experience. You’d go out with these contracts and your job was basically to get them to sign it without reading it. Literally just, “Page through, just initial here. No, it doesn’t, none of that. It’s just legally, it’s like, don’t worry.”

Jessica Bennett (10:23):

Do you remember any of the people that you had signed that, do you think about these people?

Susie Banikarim (10:27):

Oh God, yes. Yeah, one of them, I kept in touch with the lesbian mom who switched into the family I was in Texas. She was a lovely person. We stayed friendly for years. I think we’re still Facebook friends. I don’t know, I’d have to look her up. But you did feel, at least I felt, really terrible a lot of the time you were there to get them to say things you knew were going to be embarrassing for them to say, and you went out with a script, but they didn’t know that. So you have story points you had to hit and you had to convince them that those story points were happening naturally. I mean, that’s what a good producer did. A bad producer would just be like, “I need you to say this”, and just bully them into saying it. But our job was to be like, “God, wouldn’t it be nice if these kids had a horse that seems like something you’d like, right?”

(11:11):

And then two days later you’d be like, “Didn’t you say that the kids should get a horse to learn responsibility?” And then suddenly that would be in the rule changes. It was this really weird way in which you were pulling strings all the time. So what happens is a lot of the times as the AP, you’re responsible for the children. For me, that was the hardest part because their parents sign up for better or for worse.

Jessica Bennett (11:36):

Do they always have children?

Susie Banikarim (11:37):

Yeah, it just wouldn’t have worked as well for two people who didn’t have kids because you needed the extra dynamics of a family. And those kids, I mean, sometimes they were really young, like six or whatever, but all the way up into teenagers and they didn’t get a vote. This was often done by their parents who wanted the attention or thought it would make them famous or whatever they thought.

(11:59):

And so a lot of the storylines required you to manipulate the children into saying something. And so the one I think about the most was this mom who had a really difficult relationship with her teenage daughter. And we knew from the pre-interviews that she had told her daughter she hated her, which is just as a mother, I’m sure that’s a really terrible moment, a moment of weakness like you regret, but not something you want broadcast on national television. And it was my job to get the daughter to tell me that on camera, and I did. And I mean, it didn’t feel good. I would come back from those shoots and just shower and just sit in my apartment. I was just like, this is so awful. It would take days for me to detoxify from that. And it was a really toxic environment in general.

(12:46):

Our executive producer was kind of awful to us. On top of that, we were working 20-hour days. We were also being manipulated and sort of tortured. So you were doing this thing that you felt was terrible, and then you would go home and you would try and recover before you got sent out again in three weeks or whatever the turnaround was.

Jessica Bennett (13:04):

You were telling me recently that there was something on TikTok with a woman who was one of these kids.

Susie Banikarim (13:11):

So I recently came across this TikTok, and it’s why I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, is there’s this woman, Heidi May, who is a TikTok content creator. And she was a kid on Wife Swap. She was a different season for me. So I only worked on the show one season, and then I got out of there. I was like, “This is the worst experience of my life.” And this girl was featured in season six. She was in a family, like a traveling show. They had a family show and they lived in an RV. And she talked about what a horrible experience it was for her and how traumatic it’s been for her to deal with the things that came up in that show and how she felt really tricked by it. So the story was they did this very family-friendly, wholesome, conservative show. And then they traded places with this family who was obsessed with low riding, which is like a car culture I don’t know anything about.

(14:05):

And they were really into dressing, I mean this is not my, but the way it was described was dressing like sluts, basically. She was like, “I don’t let my daughters wear shirts that have anything revealing.” And the other mom was like, “My ta-ta’s are going to be at the whole time.” It was just this really, and those are the families you wanted on a show that’s all about conflict. Obviously the people you want are people who are a little unhinged, ideally. I’m not saying they were all like that. Some of them were lovely.

(14:34):

So she tells this story about how she had shared at some point during pre-production that one of her triggers was feeling lonely because her family’s on the road all the time and she doesn’t have a lot of friends. And then in her very first fight with the other mom, the mom brings this up. Sort of nowhere she says, “Do you really think having a friend is seeing someone for 30 minutes once a year?” Or whatever. And then Heidi May, the girl says, “Well, I think having friends are people who care about you.” And then the other mom turns to her and says, “They don’t care about you”, which is just a really mean thing to say to a teenage girl. And also they’ve used something that she thought she was telling producers-

Jessica Bennett (15:16):

Right? Okay, so they’re feeding this information to the other mom.

Susie Banikarim (15:21):

Right. I mean, that’s the job. When you work on a show like this, your job is to direct the story. They think it’s happening organically, but you have story points you have to hit. So in this case, they’re feeding this information to get the conflicts they need.

Jessica Bennett (15:35):

I mean, I guess I knew that happened on reality TV, but when you describe it that way, it’s so overt.

Susie Banikarim (15:41):

Yeah. And I think the other thing is the first season where I worked, they hadn’t seen the show, but as the season started to air, it got a little easier to produce on some level because they knew they were supposed to fight. So at least there was a little bit more understanding of what they’d gotten themselves into. But for the initial set of families, I felt so bad for them. They thought they were going to be on a PBS show. And then they get there and they’re like, “What is happening here?” There were times where people got violent. There were definitely physical altercations we had to break up. It was a really traumatic experience for those families. And I kind of am surprised more people haven’t come forward. There is another kid-

Jessica Bennett (16:24):

Well, maybe they’re afraid of still being sued. I mean, did they have to sign NDAs or?

Susie Banikarim (16:29):

Yeah, so the NDA A was part of this contract that said that they couldn’t talk about it or they’d get sued. And Heidi, this girl who did these TikToks did mention that NDA and how afraid she was to come forward, but now she’s been talking about it for a few years and nobody’s come after her because even at the time, I remember being like, I wonder why none of these families realize that ABC is not going to come after them if they quit the show because what are they going to do? Make this family go bankrupt? It was never a real threat or enforceable, but you were picking people who often didn’t have a lot of money or who didn’t have a lot of resources.

Jessica Bennett (17:04):

She didn’t know how to read a twenty-page contract, how many people don’t.

Susie Banikarim (17:08):

Right. And so you were picking someone who wasn’t going to feel like they could fight back. The other thing she mentioned is that this basically destroyed their family business. This family business that they went on the show to promote was somewhat picked apart by this experience. And so yeah, that would be my biggest regret, I think.

Jessica Bennett (17:25):

Was working on it at all?

Susie Banikarim (17:26):

Listen, I was really young. It was my first job in anything other than a straight news job. I didn’t really understand what I was getting myself into, and I certainly didn’t have the power to fight back. And when I tried occasionally to be like, “We shouldn’t be doing this or we shouldn’t do that”, they were like, “Shut fuck the up.” They were not interested in having an opinion or a voice.

Jessica Bennett (17:47):

You were there to do the thing.

Susie Banikarim (17:48):

I was there to do the job, and eventually I was just like, this job isn’t for me. And then I went on to work on a show called Trailer Fabulous, which sounds terrible, but was actually the best job I ever had to this day, maybe.

Jessica Bennett (17:59):

Really?

Susie Banikarim (18:00):

Yeah, it was really fun. So it was an MTV show. It was when Extreme Home Makeover was starting to become a big thing. And so MTV had this idea that they would trick out kids trailers, like people who lived in trailer parks, but we’d basically go do an extreme home makeover, but on a trailer. And I didn’t really know anything about trailer parks.

Jessica Bennett (18:17):

So it was actually bringing joy to peoples lives.

Susie Banikarim (18:19):

It was bringing joy to peoples lives. And my job was just to drive to trailer parks on the east coast with a camera and just go find kids who lived in these trailers. We’d set up little auditions and just talk to them on camera. I mean, it was really fun for me. It was like I just learned about this entire subculture. I knew nothing about how trailer parks work. They’re a really interesting little ecosystem. And while I was working on that show, I got a call about going to work at World News.

(18:49):

A really funny story about that is that I interviewed with Peter Jennings for that job. Somebody connected me to the executive producer of World News Tonight, and I assumed because I had worked at Wife Swap that he was going to be like, here’s someone you can talk to at the Today Show. I didn’t think they were going to take me seriously, but I met with him and he was like, “I think you should meet with Peter.” And I was like, “Jennings?” It just didn’t occur to me that Peter Jennings, who some people might not know, but who was a really famous news anchor at that time. My family watched him when I was growing up. I revered him, would be interviewing an associate producer. So I was just so confused, but I was-

Jessica Bennett (19:25):

Who had come from Wife Swap.

Susie Banikarim (19:27):

Who had come from Wife Swap. So I go in for this interview for freaking out. I remember I was sweating through my suit. I was like, oh my God. And I thought he was going to give me a really hard time about Wife Swap, but he was like, “Yeah, no, that show’s fine. My wife and I watched a couple episodes”, whatever. He was like, “But what I really don’t understand is why you went to journalism school.” He famously didn’t go to college. So he was, the thing he gave me a hard time about is why I thought I needed to go to journalism school to be a journalist, which I just love that story. So that is my Wife Swap story and all its glory.

(20:00):

Let’s talk about you. I feel like I’ve been talking a lot on this episode. You have hilarious stories too about getting snowed in with Pam Anderson and peeing in Jennifer Aniston’s bathroom. I think you told me something interesting about she her toile roll holder.

Jessica Bennett (20:28):

Yeah, she has an Emmy that holds her toilet roll.

Susie Banikarim (20:32):

That is a boss move. I do like that. And getting propositioned, covering a polyamory convention

Jessica Bennett (20:38):

That happened. It did happen. I declined, obviously.

Susie Banikarim (20:41):

I mean, obviously to who, yeah, you’ve done a lot of these very fun things. You earned an honorary degree from the Nation’s First Pot school, which you know I love.

Jessica Bennett (20:53):

Oaksterdam University.

Susie Banikarim (20:55):

I wish I had an honorary degree from Amsterdam University.

Jessica Bennett (20:58):

Oaksterdam is Oakland.

Susie Banikarim (21:00):

Oaksterdam.

Jessica Bennett (21:01):

Oakland combined with the Amsterdam. Back then Amsterdam was where it was legal and it wasn’t legal here.

Susie Banikarim (21:06):

I like that. But I think you wanted to talk about something a little more serious for your regret, which probably makes sense.

Jessica Bennett (21:13):

Yeah. So I have this story that I still think about all the time. It was a sexual assault story, so I’ll take you back. I guess this was when we were working together because it was news beast, Newsweek Daily Beast. And at some point, this young woman, she was a college student, she’d reached out to me and she told me the story of being sexually harassed repeatedly by her professor, and I think her advisor and her mentor, she was a philosophy student.

Susie Banikarim (21:43):

Where was she a student? I’m just curious.

Jessica Bennett (21:45):

Yale. And maybe she was getting her PhD. I’m trying to remember now. Anyway, we spent months talking. Getting someone to open up about harassment or assault is really delicate. It takes a lot of sensitivity. And so we spent months and months talking. And then when I thought that there was enough there for a story, I started doing the legwork to find out more about this professor, more about showing a pattern of abuse. There had been other people who had also reported him. Looking at in general, the way that her institution and her college dealt with complaints.

Susie Banikarim (22:25):

Oh, interesting.

Jessica Bennett (22:25):

And cases like this.

Susie Banikarim (22:27):

I mean, there have been plenty of cases since at Yale that show that they did did not handle them well.

Jessica Bennett (22:31):

Many, and more broadly in the field of philosophy, which the more I dug and the more I uncovered it turned out this seemed to be a really big problem. And I think the other thing about philosophy as a field is that you’re constantly asking questions about moral inquiry and you’re getting really close, and you can ask crazy things about a person’s life or intimacy or family that could have to do with the field of study or not.

Susie Banikarim (23:02):

This kind of reminds me of, do you remember that New Yorker article that came out not that long ago?

Jessica Bennett (23:05):

Yes. About the marriage philosophy.

Susie Banikarim (23:07):

Which is the philosophy professor who ended up dating her graduate student, with her graduate student, even though she’s married, I do feel like something’s going on in philosophy.

Jessica Bennett (23:14):

So what happened was, this was at the time that Newsweek and the Daily Beast had merged and it was pretty chaotic. And was the magazine going to still print and was it not? And I don’t think I even really had an editor at the time. So I started working on this and no one was really interested in it. And so I ended up taking it to another outlet. I think I got permission to do so I took it to Elle Magazine. And so I found this editor there, and we worked together on this story. And this is one of those cases. And at the time, I hadn’t covered a lot of cases like this where you had to find corroboration. So of course she hadn’t really told a lot of people, but she had told her boyfriend at the time, and I spoke with him and he verified it. She had filed multiple complaints with the institution. So there was a paper trail of all of this.

Susie Banikarim (24:00):

Which honestly, for people who don’t do this kind of coverage, contemporaneous accounts of what happened are considered very valid ways to figure out if a story really happened.

Jessica Bennett (24:11):

Absolutely. And this is years before I would then go on to work at the New York Times, right in the midst of Me Too. And years later I would learn how you actually do report these cases. And there are probably some things I didn’t do, but a lot of it is really going and finding a paper trail, talking and corroborating with anyone that the person told at the time. I think at the times we did something like three plus corroborations was a very strong case, and you would look at things like diaries, anything from that time period to verify that this thing had happened. Of course, you would then go to the person and give them a chance to respond. But I didn’t really know all of those things. Then there wasn’t a lot of framework or guidance on how to report on sexual assault cases. So I did what I thought was the right thing, which was looking at, yeah, the paper trail, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages of documents.

Susie Banikarim (25:07):

I mean, it sounds like you did actually do the right thing.

Jessica Bennett (25:09):

I think that I did. But what ended up happening was I spent months and months writing this draft and working closely with her, and you spend so much time talking to someone and you build this real intimacy. We were close, we were talking constantly.

Susie Banikarim (25:25):

And also they’re being really vulnerable with you, and that does create a bond that’s hard to explain if you’ve never done that with someone.

Jessica Bennett (25:33):

Definitely. And so I turned in the story to Elle and I was waiting to hear back from the editor, and at this point, we hadn’t gone to the person she was accusing yet. I wanted to wait for the first edit. And then typically what you do is you prepare all of your questions in advance, and you go to that person and you say, “We have this story. We want to give you a chance to respond.” And maybe they bring a lawyer or maybe someone else is involved.

Susie Banikarim (25:57):

And you give them a deadline. Otherwise, what they’ll do is they’ll try and drag it out forever so that you don’t publish.

Jessica Bennett (26:01):

And they’ll spend that time trying to get the story killed if they are a person in power, which this person was. So we’re waiting for all of that. And then basically what happened was the editor came back to me, I didn’t know him well, he was a senior editor there at the time, and he basically said, I think it was in an email.

Susie Banikarim (26:18):

Oh, good.

Jessica Bennett (26:19):

But I was so traumatized by the whole thing that I just wanted to push it out of my mind. And so I hadn’t thought much about it since then. But he said, “This is not a publishable draft. This is a case pf he said, she said, we can’t possibly publish this.”

Susie Banikarim (26:35):

I mean, that would really mean that no cases could get published in a lot of cases. I mean, it’s very rare in a case of harassment or assault where there is literally corroborating evidence that is tangible like videotape.

Jessica Bennett (26:46):

I mean, or it’s like what is the one thing that is considered enough? Well, a police report and we know all of the reasons why women don’t go to police and in many cases why police botch these cases. So that’s what the editor said, and I was so ashamed because I thought I had screwed this up, journalistically that-

Susie Banikarim (27:06):

Of course you took it on yourself.

Jessica Bennett (27:08):

That I just was like, oh my God, this is so embarrassing. I’m not going to tell anyone this happened.

Susie Banikarim (27:11):

You felt humiliated by it, which is crazy.

Jessica Bennett (27:13):

I felt like I had done something terrible. First of all, I had to tell the woman that this wasn’t going to be published. And then it was like, okay, well could we take it to another publication? Could we try this? Could we try that? And at this point, I was just so exhausted and kind of humiliated. I mean, I’m in my twenties, I’ve been at Newsweek for a number of years. That was my only job up until that point. So I’m like, not inexperienced, but don’t have much power. And this is the first freelance piece that I had ever done, and it was the first time I was supposedly going to write for Elle Magazine. So anyway, I just took it completely personally, and I was so ashamed, and then I felt so terrible for this woman, and I basically explained it, and that was the end of that. And I never did anything about it.

Susie Banikarim (28:01):

Did you keep in touch with her? Has she ever come forward since?

Jessica Bennett (28:03):

Here and there over the years, and I think ultimately what happened is somebody did tell her story, and I think that this professor was exposed in one way or another, perhaps during Me Too, but essentially 10 years later or whatever, when Me Too is happening, and I am now the gender editor at the New York Times, a person who both has power, has more of an understanding of how this type of reporting works. I thought back to this case and I was like, “God damn it, I should have pushed back”, because I didn’t push back at all. I didn’t say, “Okay, well, you need more verification. We’ll go get it. What do you need to make this publishable? What is the issue here?” And I had hardly met this editor before, but what I would do now is I would be storming into that office being like, “Okay, if there’s something that’s missing, we will get it. That is my job as a reporter.”

Susie Banikarim (28:56):

Or you would take it elsewhere because you have the confidence to know it’s not you who’s made the mistake. It’s not like you did bad reporting or you didn’t do a good job. But it’s kind of interesting how you sort of took it to mean you weren’t doing a good job at the time, but also now you look back on it and feel like it’s something you did wrong. You could have done something differently, but maybe there really wasn’t in that environment, something you could do differently.

Jessica Bennett (29:16):

That is interesting. Maybe so. But I could have at least tried. I typically-

Susie Banikarim (29:21):

But that does come with experience and confidence to know.

Jessica Bennett (29:24):

It does. And I think that ultimately what I think our in retrospect stories have in common is that we didn’t have a lot of power at the time. And so to push back on something like that, and this was less a story of being embarrassed because I had done something “problematic” as we’ve discussed, and more like, I wish I’d fought for this thing. But once you gain a little bit of power, you can push back. You can push these stories through. And I think part of the reason that we see so many more of these types of stories now, of looking back on cases in the past or looking back on news events or characters or people or celebrities and saying, “Hey, how we treated them back then wasn’t really fair”, is in part because people like us have grown up.

Susie Banikarim (30:09):

And actually been given positions where we can greenlight those kinds of stories or make sure they get told. Yeah, I mean, although I will say the funny thing about this is that my regret is something where I behave terribly, and your regret is something where you actually were totally in the right.

Jessica Bennett (30:27):

I mean, well, I don’t know. I could have fought harder for it, and I still feel bad about that.

Susie Banikarim (30:29):

No, I know, but it’s just a funny, it’s classic, actually, I was a monster, and you’re like, “No, I was just naive and sweet.” Which really, I mean, fair to be honest.

(30:52):

This is In Retrospect. Thanks for listening. Is there a cultural moment you can’t stop thinking about and want us to explore in a future episode? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram @inretropod.

Jessica Bennett (31:07):

If you love this podcast, please rate and review us on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. If you hate it, you can post nasty comments on our Instagram which we may or may not delete.

Susie Banikarim (31:17):

You can also find us on Instagram @jessicabennett and @susiebnyc. Also check out Jessica’s books, Feminist Fight Club and This is 18.

Jessica Bennett (31:26):

In Retrospect is a production of iHeart podcast and The Meteor. Lauren Hansen is our supervising producer. Derrick Clements is our engineer and sound designer. Sharon Attia is our researcher and associate producer.

Susie Banikarim (31:38):

Our executive producer from The Meteor is Cindi Leive. Our executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stumpf and Katrina Norvell. Our artwork is from Pentagram. Additional editing help from Mary Dooe and Mike Coscarelli. Sound correction and mastering by Amanda Rose Smith. We are your hosts, Susie Banikarim.

Jessica Bennett (31:56):

And Jessica Bennett. We’re also executive producers. For even more, check out inretropod.com. See you next week.

EPISODE 11 – ‘LONG ISLAND LOLITA’ (Pt 2): AMY FISHER TRIES TO MOVE ON

Please note: This transcript has been automatically generated.

Susie Banikarim (00:00):

Hey everyone, this is part two of the Amy Fisher story. If you haven’t listened to part one yet, I recommend starting there. Just to note that we discuss sexual violence and abuse in this episode.

Clip (00:11):

The final chapter in the saga of the Long Island Lolita: Amy Fisher coming face to face with her victim.

Susie Banikarim (00:19):

Just six months after 17-year-old, Amy Fisher shot Mary Jo Buttafuoco, the wife of her 38-year-old boyfriend, or statutory rapist based on his later conviction, Amy appeared before a judge for sentencing.

Clip (00:32):

It was the first time Amy Fisher had seen Mary Jo Buttafuoco since May 19th, 1992. This time the two met in a court to hear a judge sentence Amy Fisher.

Judge (00:43):

You are a tragedy and disgrace to yourself, to your family, to your friends, and to society. You deserve no less than a maximum sentence I can impose by law.

Susie Banikarim (00:57):

Her punishment? 15 years in prison. But going away wouldn’t end the media frenzy around Amy or help her escape that label, the Long Island Lolita, that still follows her to this day.

(01:15):

I’m Susie Banikarim.

Jessica Bennett (01:16):

And I’m Jessica Bennett.

Susie Banikarim (01:18):

And this is In Retrospect, where each week we revisit a cultural moment from the past that shaped us.

Jessica Bennett (01:24):

And that we just can’t stop thinking about.

Susie Banikarim (01:26):

This week we’re talking about Amy Fisher and how she came to be known as the Long Island Lolita. But we’re also talking about the way that word Lolita and that trope is used to paint young girls as precocious and seductive.

(01:40):

This is part two.

(01:45):

Jess, I’ve been thinking about what happens to Amy Fisher in all of this and that she’s punished, but she’s punished so much more heavily than Joey Buttafuoco, who she claims really was essentially a co-conspirator, right? She claims that he talked a lot about wanting his wife gone, that he talked about his insurance policy, that he wanted her dead. And so she comes up with this plan to ingratiate herself with him or to please him. This is really something she does because she’s doing something that he wants.

(02:18):

She goes away for five to 15 years, and he gets four months, right? That is really telling about the way society looked at her versus him.

Jessica Bennett (02:29):

How does this compare to other people in similar situations at that time? Or I don’t know if anything could be really similar, but you know what I mean.

Susie Banikarim (02:36):

Well, there are actually things that are not exactly similar, but give you a sense of how disproportionate the way she was punished was, and what that said about the blood thirst around her.

(02:48):

Another really famous tabloid case at the time was the Preppy Killer, Robert Chambers. For people who don’t remember that case, Robert Chambers killed a woman that he was having a sexual encounter with in Central Park and claimed it was consensual rough sex. He choked her to death, so doesn’t seem like a consensual encounter. But he got the same sentence as Amy Fisher. He literally killed someone. She did try to kill someone, but it’s interesting that they got the exact same sentence.

(03:16):

But the other thing that’s interesting is she got two million for bail and he got 150,000. That’s a really big contrast in terms of how dangerous they assessed her to be as compared to him, who was an actual killer.

Jessica Bennett (03:30):

This also reminds me of what I think was the biggest tabloid story before Amy Fisher, which was William Kennedy Smith, JFK’s nephew, who was accused of raping a woman on the beach in Palm Beach, Florida where he was with his uncle, Ted Kennedy.

Susie Banikarim (03:45):

Yes.

Jessica Bennett (03:46):

He was acquitted in, I think, one of the shortest deliberation periods ever, in less than 80 minutes by a jury.

Susie Banikarim (03:53):

Yeah, I think it’s interesting because a lot of people have forgotten about this case. But to give you an idea of just how big a case it was at the time, when I was in high school, I had a poster in my room that said, “William Kennedy Smith meet Thelma and Louise,” and it was a picture of Thelma and Louise. I mean-

Jessica Bennett (04:10):

What?

Susie Banikarim (04:10):

At the time, it was a very, very prominent case. If you cared about women and rape and feminist issues, you were following it because it felt like he got away scot-free because he was a Kennedy.

Jessica Bennett (04:25):

Thelma and Louise, that was basically saying he should be killed?

Susie Banikarim (04:30):

Yes, basically. They had a gun in their hand.

Jessica Bennett (04:32):

[inaudible 00:04:33]

Susie Banikarim (04:32):

It was like a picture of Thelma and Louis with a gun in their hand. I should have been clear about that. It was a photocopied poster. William Kennedy Smith meet Thelma and Louise.

Jessica Bennett (04:40):

Wow, that’s very scum manifesto of you.

Susie Banikarim (04:44):

Well, you can imagine at boarding school I was really out there.

Jessica Bennett (04:48):

Okay. My sense is that Joey, he goes to jail for four months. He gets out, he moves on, and this continues to follow Amy into here we are in 2023 talking about this case.

Susie Banikarim (05:02):

Yeah, I mean what’s interesting is that the only reason he doesn’t fade into obscurity is he really tries to stay in the spotlight, right? He moves to LA, he tries to become an actor, he has a public access show. He loves the attention. He’s constantly giving press conferences, and he just never stops trying to be in the spotlight.

(05:20):

Whereas she has attempted in various different ways over the years to move on. One of the things she said in an interview at some point was, “Any time he does something crazy or he does something buffoonish or he gets arrested, all across the newspapers again it’s the Long Island Lolita. I’m the one that can’t get away from this, even though he’s the one that is often keeping this story in the headlines,” and that this is a label she just cannot escape for the rest of her life.

(05:47):

It’s also so recognizable, right? The minute you put Long Island Lolita in the headline, most people who were alive during that story have an immediate recollection of her. They can picture her: the long hair and the bangs, and the Long Island of it all.

Jessica Bennett (06:01):

I think you were telling me earlier that some of the adjectives used for Amy in all of these stories and newscasts about her were things like sick, spoiled, whore, teenage troublemaker-

Susie Banikarim (06:11):

Deranged-

Jessica Bennett (06:11):

… arrogant. Exactly.

Susie Banikarim (06:13):

… perverted, revolting. All the adjectives used for her are about how crazy she is, how sex hungry she is. But they also really go out of their way to generally refer to her as a woman. The prosecution only ever refers to her as a woman. She’s very rarely called a girl, although she is quite literally still a girl. She’s under 18.

(06:35):

But there’s this real need to make her into an adult with agency and to make her into this very sexually aggressive being because there’s no way that she can be a victim, right? She has to be the perpetrator, and that’s partially because she has done something violent, right?

(06:53):

The thing about this case that’s complicated is that there is this innocent woman, Mary Jo, who she has harmed in this extremely aggressive way. And so it is, I think, impossible for the public imagination to hold the idea that both Mary Jo and Amy might be victims, not that Mary Jo is the victim, and Amy is this sort of monster who has wrought vengeance on her.

Jessica Bennett (07:25):

Yeah. What stands out is that in the beginning, I’m thinking of her as a villain. But as you begin to learn all these different little things about the case and her background and how she was treated, and you peel back these layers, it’s almost like she becomes more of a victim. And yet she never totally sheds that villain archetype or whatever you want to call it.

Susie Banikarim (07:47):

Totally because it feels like when you go back and read the coverage now that she’s as much being punished and villainized for being this sexual being as she is for what she did to Mary Jo.

(07:59):

It’s like there’s this sense that because she is seen as promiscuous, she needs to be punished and put in her place, right? That it’s like she can’t just be like a teen girl who came to that promiscuity through abuse, which we know was in her background. Or because she’s been victimized by Joey, the fact that she’s a prostitute is meant to indicate that she’s some sort of harlot that deserves to be punished.

(08:27):

In fact, there’s this really interesting detail that when the prosecutor is trying to convince the judge to give her a $2 million bail, one of the justifications for that he uses is that she’s a prostitute. He’s like, “If we let her out, she will just fade into a life of prostitution and never be found again,” as if she’s not literally the most famous person in the country. There is no way for her to fade into obscurity. She’s on every newspaper cover in New York City. But it’s like they continuously go back to this prostitution as a way to make it seem like she’s this deranged, sick person that needs to be boxed up and put away.

Jessica Bennett (09:17):

Okay, I mean I think we should talk about that directly because we’re talking about this really complicated case. There are many things at play here, but we are largely talking about one thing, which is the Lolita trope.

Susie Banikarim (09:30):

Yes.

Jessica Bennett (09:30):

I almost think we need to pause for a minute to remind our listeners and ourselves maybe the origins and connotations of that word.

Susie Banikarim (09:39):

Yes, of Lolita, which is from the 1955 novel written by the Russian American novelist, Vladimir Nabokov. The book, for those who don’t remember, is about a middle-aged professor who becomes obsessed with a 12-year-old girl, who he nicknames Lolita. Eventually, he becomes her stepfather and then kidnaps and sexually abuses her.

(10:00):

What’s so interesting about the Lolita trope is that it is quite literally a book about a man who kidnaps and rapes a child. But over time, over the course of the last 70 years, the definition of a Lolita has changed so much that it is no longer considered the term for someone who’s abused. But instead Merriam-Webster literally defines it as a precociously seductive girl.

Jessica Bennett (10:29):

Today? That is the 2023 definition?

Susie Banikarim (10:31):

Today. That is the today definition of it.

Jessica Bennett (10:32):

[inaudible 00:10:32]

Susie Banikarim (10:32):

So it’s become this shorthand for a girl who’s sexual before her time, like a seductress, when that’s fundamentally not what the character is in the book.

(10:42):

And in fact, in my conversation with Amy Pagnozzi, that’s the New York Post reporter we spoke to earlier, she mentioned that she really fought them New York Post on using the term Lolita for that infamous headline.

Amy Pagnozzi (10:53):

Yeah, I was a lit major in school. It was always one of my favorite books, and it’s about a pedophile. I kept saying this is not what that means. But I think it’s something that a lot of men like to think, that women that age actually want them.

Jessica Bennett (11:10):

I think that my most vivid recollection of that idea of the Lolita is the movie American Beauty, which I loved growing up-

Susie Banikarim (11:18):

Oh, yeah. Oh, interesting.

Jessica Bennett (11:19):

… starring Kevin Spacey, who we, along with many people, think of in a new way now. But he’s basically playing a man who has a midlife crisis and becomes completely infatuated with his teenage daughter’s best friend.

Susie Banikarim (11:32):

You may not know this because I did not know this until we were researching this episode, but American Beauty was inspired by the Amy Fisher story. The screenwriter said that he saw this comic book that was released after she went to prison, and it inspired him-

Jessica Bennett (11:49):

A comic book about Amy Fisher?

Susie Banikarim (11:50):

About Amy Fisher and Joey Buttafuoco, and it inspired him to finish the movie.

Jessica Bennett (11:56):

This is Alan Ball the screenwriter?

Susie Banikarim (11:58):

Yeah, so there’s actually a quote from him, and I’ll read you some of it. He says, “I had been working on the basic premise for eight years. The genesis of the idea for me was the Amy Fisher, Joey Buttafuoco business in New York City. When I was living there, I was working at Adweek. I came out one day and some guy was selling a comic book about Amy and Joey. On the one side was this virginal looking Amy and a big leering, lecherous, predatory Joey. You flip it over and he’s all buttoned up, and she’s all tarted up in predatory slutty vixen. I remember thinking the truth is somewhere in those and we will never know what it is.”

Jessica Bennett (12:30):

Wow, fascinating.

Susie Banikarim (12:32):

Isn’t that fascinating? Which is also is the truth somewhere in the middle? We know that she was a teen girl. So again, it’s this need to turn the teen girl into someone who is tempting, who is seducing, who is calculating, who has agency, and is in fact the instigator.

(12:52):

When in reality that is rarely the case, right? Young girls are rarely these evil geniuses who are trying to seduce men.

Jessica Bennett (13:03):

And even if they are, by the way, you’re a grown-ass adult, so maybe-

Susie Banikarim (13:07):

Yeah, exactly.

Jessica Bennett (13:08):

… have a little perspective. Yeah, good point.

(13:10):

But this is far from the first film to be inspired by the Amy Fisher story, correct?

Susie Banikarim (13:17):

Yes, this is far from the only movie to be inspired by Amy Fisher. In fact, the most famous movies that were inspired by her are these three TV movies that came out right after she went to jail. They came out one right after the other. Two of them I think aired on the same night, and one of them aired the week before.

(13:33):

As you might remember, the way that Amy makes bail is she sells her version of the story. And then Joey and Mary Jo Buttafuoco sell their version of the story. And then there’s a third version that gets made, and this one is based on Amy Pagnozzi’s New York Post columns. She’s actually a character in the film.

(13:51):

Here’s Amy again.

Amy Pagnozzi (13:53):

I got a lot of offers from a lot of different people, and the one from ABC seemed to be the best one. I really, really loved being a columnist more than anything. But the movie money was great because all I had to do was give them access to the notes that I had.

(14:10):

The screenwriter was wonderful. I actually think of all of the three movies, it was the best one.

Susie Banikarim (14:14):

I agree.

Amy Pagnozzi (14:15):

And the person who played me was incredibly nice. I don’t know. I mean, do we need three Amy Fisher movies? Do we need one Amy Fisher movie? No, of course not. There were much, much more important things to cover.

Jessica Bennett (14:26):

Yeah, I mean, that’s a very good point. But it really shows how much the Amy Fisher story literally became entertainment.

Susie Banikarim (14:33):

Yeah. I mean, these TV movies were really popular and starred pretty big name actresses at the time. Drew Barrymore starred in one.

Jessica Bennett (14:40):

Alyssa Milano was in one of the other ones, right?

Susie Banikarim (14:42):

Yeah, Alyssa Milano was in one called Casualties of Love: The “Long Island Lolita” story.

Jessica Bennett (14:48):

Okay.

Alyssa Milano (14:49):

It’s just that I like older guys. I mean, the boys in my school, one, two, three, and it’s over.

Susie Banikarim (14:55):

And then there was a little known actress named Noelle Parker who was in the lethal Lolita version.

Noelle Parker (15:02):

I mean, I know what I did, but I just don’t understand how it all began.

Jessica Bennett (15:07):

And then Drew Barrymore is in the most popular one, The Amy Fisher Story?

Susie Banikarim (15:10):

The Amy Fisher Story.

Drew Barrymore (15:12):

Joey is the only man I love, and I will do whatever it takes to get his wife out of the way.

Jessica Bennett (15:16):

Which side note interesting because Drew, as a child actress, has talked, I think in more recent years, about being very sexualized from a young age.

Susie Banikarim (15:25):

Yes, and actually one thing that’s interesting is that in the research, Sharon, who works on the show, found this clip of her talking about playing Amy Fisher. In that interview with Conan O’Brien, he is sexualizing her in really creepy ways. He’s asking about her tattoos in this creepy way.

(15:42):

It should be noted that Drew Barrymore was also underage. She must have been maybe 18 when she did this interview. So she is in fact in playing this character being sexualized, and then experiencing the same sort of media reaction to it, which is like a weird meta thing that goes on.

(16:00):

But what’s also interesting is that these films are so much more popular than the networks expect, right? They all air in primetime, which is just not a thing you would see. Now they would just become lifetime movies or whatever, but they all air on primetime television. They do really well. In some ways, they are the beginning of this true crime era that now is so huge, especially in podcasts.

(16:25):

But this is the beginning of entertainment executives beginning to understand how much of an appetite there is for these true stories. And actually, this is part of a genre of film in the ’90s that becomes really popular. It starts in 1992, the year that Amy shoots Mary Jo. In fact, in the same month there is this movie Poison Ivy, also starring through Barrymore, that comes out about a teenage girl who becomes obsessed with her friend’s father. She murders her friend’s mother to try and get to the father. So again, this seductress, this young girl-

Jessica Bennett (17:03):

And this is not based on Amy and Joey’s story? This just happens to be coming out at the same time?

Susie Banikarim (17:08):

Yes, isn’t that crazy? It literally-

Jessica Bennett (17:09):

Oh, that’s so interesting.

Susie Banikarim (17:10):

… comes out the month that this incident occurs.

Jessica Bennett (17:12):

And this is also the Fatal Attraction era, right? Yes.

Susie Banikarim (17:15):

So this is right after Fatal Attraction. Amy is constantly compared to Fatal Attraction in early coverage before she becomes her own cautionary tale. She is-

Jessica Bennett (17:24):

Right. We love a sexy, murderous woman.

Susie Banikarim (17:27):

Yes, but also vengeful. Essentially, they’re all the original Eve, right? They’re the women who tempt these good men away from their good wives. They lure them into this horrible life that otherwise they would not be lured into.

(17:42):

It’s just really removes agency from men, which is, I think, why men love these stories, right? They’re never responsible for their bad behavior.

Jessica Bennett (17:49):

Well, to be fair, I think women love these stories, too.

Susie Banikarim (17:52):

Yeah, it’s true. I don’t know why women love these stories.

Jessica Bennett (17:54):

It’s not largely men who are watching these, is it? And maybe we don’t know, but I bet it’s not.

Susie Banikarim (18:00):

I think it’s both. Yeah, I definitely don’t think it’s just men who love these stories.

Jessica Bennett (18:03):

Wasn’t there another one? Wasn’t there a Crush or something like that?

Susie Banikarim (18:07):

Yes.

Jessica Bennett (18:07):

Was there one with Alicia Silverstone?

Susie Banikarim (18:09):

Yes, yes. And Cary Elwes, who I love, from the Princess Bride. That movie was inspired by Amy Fisher-

Jessica Bennett (18:18):

Oh, okay. It was.

Susie Banikarim (18:19):

… or at least compared to it. It came out in ’93. It’s about this precocious child, who is played by Alicia Silverstone in her first movie. She becomes obsessed with Cary Elwes, who’s a writer, who’s renting an apartment from her family.

(18:33):

She’s a genius, which is also very weird. The need to make them really smart, I think, is fascinating. Because again, it’s why they’re able to manipulate these perfectly innocent men-

Jessica Bennett (18:42):

Oh, right. These dum-dums. Yeah.

Susie Banikarim (18:43):

Into doing these outrageous things who can’t keep it in their pants.

(18:48):

And then there’s this weird scene where she tries to kill his girlfriend by trapping her in a room with bees. I mean, it’s an absolutely-

Jessica Bennett (18:58):

Oh, my gosh.

Susie Banikarim (18:59):

… wild tale.

Jessica Bennett (19:01):

Also, I was just going to say about Alicia Silverstone such an interesting character. Also in the Drew Barrymore vein, because remember that Aerosmith song that I loved crazy and the music video for it where she’s like this hot, I think underage or much younger-

Susie Banikarim (19:17):

I mean, I think she looked like she was like 12 at the time.

Jessica Bennett (19:19):

And with Steven Tyler.

Susie Banikarim (19:22):

Yes, who… You know the thing about Steven Tyler, right?

Jessica Bennett (19:25):

Oh, I forget.

Susie Banikarim (19:26):

Steven Tyler, in fact, was recently sued by a woman who says that he adopted her when she was under age-

Jessica Bennett (19:35):

Oh, I’ve read this. Okay.

Susie Banikarim (19:35):

… so that-

Jessica Bennett (19:36):

In order to be in a relationship with her.

Susie Banikarim (19:38):

In order to be in a relationship with her and to take her out on the road, so he became her literal guardian.

Jessica Bennett (19:42):

Her legal guardian. I read this story. I read this story, and he is also the father of Liv Tyler, who was in the crazy video with Alicia Silverstone, right?

Susie Banikarim (19:49):

Yes.

Jessica Bennett (19:50):

I remember thinking they were the hottest thing that I wanted to be. That video was so hot.

Susie Banikarim (19:56):

That video was so cool. I think music videos don’t really have the same cachet they did then, but that music video was in itself a huge cultural moment. Everybody saw it. It was a very popular video. I think it was the number one video.

(20:12):

It was at the height of MTV when MTV has really become its own part of the zeitgeist. So that video really was something that everybody saw-

Jessica Bennett (20:22):

So it’s like these things are all circling, and it’s like Amy Fisher and Joey Buttafuoco are somewhat at the center.

Susie Banikarim (20:28):

Somewhat at the center, right? They inspire but also reflect what’s happening in the culture at the time, which is this sexualization of young girls in this very specific way. That’s not as innocent children, but as seductresses and temptresses in their own right.

(20:46):

And one thing that I think is so interesting about the movie Crush is that there’s actually a review of it I found, which I think speaks to how disturbing these movies were and were never acknowledged to me… I saw Crush when it came out, and I remember liking the movie. I was a teen girl at the time, right? The critic writes, “The movie is virtually an invitation to child abuse. In shot after shot, Shapiro pans his camera up one side of Silverstone’s body and down the other as if it was perfectly all right for us to visually caress the thighs of a 14-year-old.”

Jessica Bennett (21:19):

Wow, this was in the Washington Post?

Susie Banikarim (21:21):

Yes.

Jessica Bennett (21:21):

Hal Hinson. I’m looking at it now.

Susie Banikarim (21:23):

Yeah.

Jessica Bennett (21:24):

Thanks, Hal.

Susie Banikarim (21:25):

And also, the way that quote ends is he says, “My guess is that most people will find the whole business creepy, and even creepier still the people who made it.” But in fact, people didn’t find them creepy. The movie did well. It was a success.

Jessica Bennett (21:45):

I mean, I guess it’s not really that surprising that people loved those movies at the time. They were fantasy. There was something enticing about how dark and twisted they were.

Susie Banikarim (21:54):

Yeah, and it’s a little taboo. Even though these girls were always punished in the end, there was something compelling about seeing girls who were aggressive and open about wanting men. As a teen girl, you didn’t see that very often. In a lot of ways, that’s what was underlying the coverage of Amy.

Jessica Bennett (22:09):

Oh, that’s a good point. Of course she’s punished for the actual crime she commits, but one thing the media continues to fixate on is how freely she talks about sex and wanting it.

Susie Banikarim (22:19):

Yeah, which now of course we would interpret as an immediate red flag of some kind of trauma in her past. But back then, that was just another freakish point to zero in on.

Jessica Bennett (22:29):

And to make fun of. Don’t you remember how this became a huge bit on SNL?

Clip (22:33):

You’ve seen the other three now, the fourth network presents the fourth Amy Fisher story. Tori Spelling is Amy Fisher in Aaron Spellings, Amy Fisher, 10516.

Susie Banikarim (22:47):

Yeah, I mean, I think that’s the other side of the coin, right? So on the one hand, Amy is being presented in this very villainous way. But also the story lends itself to comedy, right? So the late night comics love it because honestly, the name is so ridiculous, right? Buttafuoco is a ridiculous name.

Jessica Bennett (23:05):

Joey Coco Puff, yeah.

Susie Banikarim (23:05):

It just sounds funny. And so his name alone just becomes a punchline that the late night comics are using over and over again.

Clip (23:15):

Number three, get one more cheap laugh by saying the word Buttafuoco.

Susie Banikarim (23:20):

Also, a thing we haven’t really talked about is there’s this real obsession about Amy and Joey’s accents at the time. They have these very thick, Long Island accents that I don’t think were all that commonly heard outside of the tri-state area.

(23:36):

And so their accents are really rife for impressions, right? I mean, you can really hear the Long Island in them, and that culture feels very unique to the rest of the country. Because I love it so much, let’s listen to this great example from the sketch comedy show in Living Color with Jim Carrey.

Clip (23:53):

I’m Amy Fisher. You know, the Long Island Lolita? And this is Joey Buttafuoco over here.

Clip (23:57):

Hey!

Jessica Bennett (24:14):

I want to take us back to the case itself. This obviously becomes a huge media spectacle. I don’t think I had any idea that that many works of film were based on this story.

(24:24):

But you mentioned, Susie, that Amy is really never able to live a normal life after this. So what actually happens?

Susie Banikarim (24:31):

She tells her own story a few different ways. She does an interview with Inside Edition. There’s also a book she writes in 1994 with Sheila Weller, who is a very well-known journalist and has gone on to write a number of books about very famous women: Carrie Fisher, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Christiane Amanpour.

(24:52):

It’s really the first time that Amy extensively tells her side of the story. She was raped by a handyman in her home when she was around 13. This book reveals that she had also been sexually abused by a person close to the family when she was very young, starting around three or four years old. Also, it just paints a very different picture of Amy. It’s a much more nuanced portrait of her as shy and naive, still hoping that Joey’s going to come in and save the day. Or that Joey still loves her, desperate for male approval from anyone who’s willing to give it to her.

(25:36):

It starts to give you a hint that she has some mental illness that’s untreated and contributes to her thinking that this shooting never registers for her as a real crime when she’s doing it. She doesn’t really have a sense of consequences when she embarks on this thing that forever changes her life. It’s almost like she’s so naive and so detached from reality she’s more worried about her parents grounding her than she is about going to jail.

(26:07):

The interviews in the book take place right before she goes to jail then continue throughout her first couple years. It also describes what that transition is of going to jail and the shock of that.

Jessica Bennett (26:18):

Wen is she actually released from prison?

Susie Banikarim (26:20):

She’s released in 1999. And interestingly, Mary Jo, who spends years talking about how sick she is and saying that she doesn’t feel safe with Amy out and about, is instrumental in her release. She appears at a parole hearing for her. Amy apologizes to her directly. They have this moment in court. It is ultimately what causes the judge to decide she’s served enough time and change her deal and release her.

Jessica Bennett (26:50):

What happens then? What does she do with her life?

Susie Banikarim (26:54):

She actually marries a man she met on an online dating site after she got out of prison. He’s an older man, another one. He’s videographer, I think a mostly wedding videographer. They have three kids. At some point, they moved to Florida.

(27:07):

In keeping with every other man in her life, eventually he betrays her. There’s a period where they’re separated in 2007, and she does this weird thing. Her and Joey do this weird thing where they pretend to get back together because they’re trying to shock a reality show. Her husband says that this makes him angry, and so he releases one of their sex tapes. Like every other man that she’s ever trusted, he essentially betrays her with revenge porn. He releases this sex tape of her.

(27:41):

But it is hugely successful. And-

Jessica Bennett (27:44):

The sex tape is?

Susie Banikarim (27:45):

The sex tape is successful.

Jessica Bennett (27:46):

What does that mean successful? He releases it on the internet?

Susie Banikarim (27:49):

It makes money and lots of people watch it.

Jessica Bennett (27:51):

Okay.

Susie Banikarim (27:51):

But despite the fact that the tape is released without her consent, she decides to lean into it and start doing porn regularly. She says about it at the time, “I have two choices: I can sit there and say it doesn’t exist, which it does exist, or I can do the intelligent thing,” which for Amy Fisher means making the best of the situation and making money.

Jessica Bennett (28:11):

So she starts doing porn?

Susie Banikarim (28:13):

She starts doing porn. She does her own pay-per-view adult film called Amy Fisher: Totally Nude & Exposed.

Jessica Bennett (28:20):

Oh, wow. Okay.

Susie Banikarim (28:20):

Yeah, she makes a handful of adult movies.

(28:22):

That starts in 2007. But in 2011, she stops making the films. She decides to leave the porn industry. In 2015 she gets a divorce, and then she moves home to Long Island. The New York Post continues to hound her.

(28:39):

The last published report about her is a New York Post piece where they have found her doing camgirl stuff that’s before OnlyFans. She’s doing sex work through Camgirl. They portray it as incredibly seedy. It’s a very sad story. They confront her. She denies that it’s her, even though she used her name and they have her image. She’s living with her mom again, actually. That’s really the last we hear from Amy Fisher.

Jessica Bennett (29:07):

When is that?

Susie Banikarim (29:08):

That’s in 2017. Then after that, I think that year or the year following, she changes her name. She goes to court. She solicits to have a name change, and she no longer does press. That’s really when she stops being in the public eye.

(29:22):

The thing that’s interesting is that many of the occasions where she goes back into the public eye, the the porn and the reality show, are occasions when she’s trying to make money from her past. One thing you realize is that she goes to jail when most kids are going to college. She doesn’t have anything to fall back on-

Jessica Bennett (29:42):

Right. Skills, yeah.

Susie Banikarim (29:42):

… so the only thing she has to fall back on is her notoriety. It’s interesting that finally in the late 2010s, she just gives up on that and decides to move on. When she’s contacted to be part of projects that Mary Jo or Joey are still willing to do, she refuses.

Jessica Bennett (30:02):

Okay, so Joey is still doing interviews. What’s his deal?

Susie Banikarim (30:06):

Yes, Joey and Mary Jo are still somewhat in the public eye.

(30:10):

Joey is essentially just like a buffoon for a long time. As I mentioned, he moves to California to become an actor. He has some bit parts. He is arrested again in 1995 for soliciting an undercover cop as a prostitute. He is obviously in violation of his probation at that time, so he goes back to jail. He’s just generally a very sketchy dude.

(30:33):

Mary Jo eventually divorces him in 2003. Mary Jo stood by Joey for such a long time, and I think that’s also a really interesting part of the story that we haven’t had a chance to explore. Which is that there’s this psychological thing that happens with Mary Jo where she is so defensive of Joey. It’s almost like she needs to deny the affair to somehow not give Amy any excuse for what she did. For so many years, she denies that the affair even happened. She stands by him, she calls Amy names.

(31:10):

But then eventually she realizes that Joey is a sociopath, literally releases a book-

Jessica Bennett (31:16):

She calls him a sociopath?

Susie Banikarim (31:16):

… called Getting It Through My Thick Skull: Why I Stayed, What I Learned, and What Millions of People Involved with Sociopaths Need to Know. She writes that book in 2009.

Jessica Bennett (31:28):

Wait, sorry, one clarification. Is she still with Joey when she’s helping Amy to get out of jail?

Susie Banikarim (31:35):

Yes, she is still with him. I think that’s one of the interesting details about it. She doesn’t divorce him until 2003. And then in 2005 she goes on Oprah and tells her story for some reason, like a, where are they now or whatever.

(31:49):

Actually, a plastic surgeon reaches out to her after that appearance. She still has paralysis on one side of her face, and he offers to fix it. She accepts. And in fact later on, there’s an Oprah show where the results of her plastic surgery are revealed, so it’s still-

Jessica Bennett (32:05):

Oh, wow. So it’s like-

Susie Banikarim (32:06):

… this like-

Jessica Bennett (32:06):

… they just can’t stop doing this media… They’re trapped in this-

Susie Banikarim (32:12):

They’re trapped in it, right?

Jessica Bennett (32:14):

… endless. And then the next generation becomes part of it.

Susie Banikarim (32:16):

Yeah. I mean, obviously we don’t talk about the Buttafuoco children that much, right? They were nine and 12 when this happened, and at the time we just didn’t really think about generational trauma.

(32:25):

But they saw their mother shot. They saw their father behave like an absolute creep on television for years, and then this story follows them forever. I mean, they have the Buttafuoco last name. In fact, the son has changed his last name. You cannot find him.

Jessica Bennett (32:40):

Right. Also, it’s not like Smith. This is the most recognizable. I mean, this is the same when I was reporting on Monica Lewinsky. Same deal. It’s like that name is so specific-

Susie Banikarim (32:50):

So loaded.

Jessica Bennett (32:51):

… and memorable.

Susie Banikarim (32:52):

Yes, it’s impossible to run away from. Either you change your name like the son does, or you do what the daughter did, which is just accept that it’s part of her history and talk about it publicly.

(33:05):

In 2019, actually, Mary Jo and Joey and the daughter do a special on ABC called Growing Up Buttafuoco, where Jessie, the daughter, shares what it was like for her to be part of the story.

Jessica Bennett (33:17):

The daughter actually has a relationship with her father?

Susie Banikarim (33:20):

Yeah. Jessie was talking to him at the time of the special. But within a year, she says on a podcast that she stopped speaking to Joey. That she’s basically gone no contact and that he’s toxic, and she no longer wants to have any relationship with him.

Jessica Bennett (33:34):

I mean, good for her.

Susie Banikarim (33:36):

Yeah. I mean, she’s talked extensively about what the shooting and all that followed it did to her. She went through a lot of depression and anxiety. She had eating disorders and addiction to alcohol. So you can see why she blames him for a lot of that.

Jessica Bennett (33:50):

It’s really like Jessie’s experience shows us how this story really continues to affect everyone involved.

Susie Banikarim (33:58):

I mean, ultimately, I think the option Amy has chosen to try and live a quiet and private life as much as that’s even possible for her is the choice I would make, too.

(34:07):

But I’m sure it’s not easy. I don’t think there is a right answer here.

(34:12):

I did try and contact Amy for this story because I wanted to let her have the last word if she wanted it, but I wasn’t able to reach her. I found something she said in 2008 when a reporter asked her if she still cared about the public perception of her.

Amy Fisher (34:25):

You know what? At this point, maybe this is awful to say, I am known for something that is not a good thing. I’ve had a lot of negative media attention. People have said a lot of horrible things about me.

(34:41):

Over the years, it’s made my shell a little bit hardened. And no, I don’t care what people think about me anymore. If people like me, that’s wonderful. I think I’m a nice person, and I think because of everything I’ve been through in my life that it’s made me actually a kinder, more understanding person.

Jessica Bennett (34:59):

That’s so interesting. I mean, I hope for her sake that is true. But I do wonder if she’d still say that today.

(35:06):

Susie, I know you mentioned we tried to contact her for the podcast, but maybe it’s worth saying. Amy, if you’re listening, we would still love to talk to you. I do hope for her sake that she has been able to move on.

Susie Banikarim (35:18):

Yeah, me too. I think that’s a good place to leave it for today.

(35:25):

This is In Retrospect. Thanks for listening. Is there a cultural moment you can’t stop thinking about and want us to explore in a future episode? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram @inretropod.

Jessica Bennett (35:40):

If you love this podcast, please rate and review us on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. If you hate it, you can post nasty comments on our Instagram which we may or may not delete.

Susie Banikarim (35:50):

You can also find us on Instagram @jessicabennett and @susiebnyc. Also check out Jessica’s books, Feminist Fight Club and This is 18.

Jessica Bennett (35:59):

In Retrospect is a production of iHeart podcast and The Meteor. Lauren Hansen is our supervising producer. Derrick Clements is our engineer and sound designer. Sharon Attia is our researcher and associate producer.

Susie Banikarim (36:12):

Our executive producer from The Meteor is Cindi Leive. Our executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stumpf and Katrina Norvell. Our artwork is from Pentagram. Additional editing help from Mary Dooe and Mike Coscarelli. Sound correction and mastering by Amanda Rose Smith. We are your hosts, Susie Banikarim.

Jessica Bennett (36:30):

And Jessica Bennett. We’re also executive producers. For even more, check out inretropod.com. See you next week.