Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Women in Power

Episode Date: September 16, 2022

What do Hatshepsut and Hillary Clinton have in common?Well, what do they have in common with the vast majority of women who have been so successful as to gain power? Women like Britain’s new Prime Minister, Liz Truss, just the third woman to hold the title.They have been subject to some very specific criticism which, whether it’s based on their looks or their character, would be unlikely to be directed at men in the same position.We’re joined again Betwixt the Sheets by Eleanor Herman, whose new book ‘Off With Her Head: Three Thousand Years of Demonising Women in Power’ is out now.*WARNING there are naughty words and adult themes in this episode*Produced by Charlotte Long and Sophie Gee. Mixed by Sophie Gee.For more History Hit content, subscribe to our newsletters here.If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters. This is Kate Lister, jumping in to give you your regular fair do's warning. Fair dues, this episode is going to contain naughty words, reference to naughty themes, and just general adulty naughtiness. And do you know what, if you've wandered here thinking betwixta sheets is some kind of interior design podcast,

and you've just realised horror of horrors, it's not. We're talking about sex today. You just want to get out of here. That's completely fine. You can give this one a swerve. Fair do's you've been warned. For the rest of you that are still with me, let's get into it. Bossy, bitchy, witchy, overambitious, not ambitious enough. Too many partners, not enough partners. Fridid, promiscuous, too clever, too dumb. I could go on, but women can just never win, can they? And these insults are often intensified for any woman who's in a position of power. And this isn't a new phenomenon. The way we talk about Hillary Clinton

shares a lot in common with how the ancient Egyptians and Romans spoke about Queen Cleopatra. Today we're going betwixta sheets to find out more about women in power and the kind of criticism they receive, not for being powerful, not for their political moves, but just for being women. What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course.

You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. perfect copons of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing the body. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, for beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Dary. Hello, and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the History of Sex Scandal and Society. With me, Kate Lister. It's going to come as no surprise to absolutely anyone that men and women are treated differently. We know this, but it's particularly pronounced when we're talking about men and women in power. From Cleopatra to Catherine D'emichy to Anne Boleyn and Joan of Arc, women in power

always receive very different criticisms to men, whereas men are heroic, women are bloodthirsty, whereas men are dynamic, women are emotional, whereas men have questionable policies, women have questionable clothes. And we have a return visit to the sheets this week from Eleanor Herman, his new book, Off With Her Head, looks at the history of how we've criticized women in power. Let's find out more. To betwixt the sheets, Eleanor Harmon, how are you? I am fine, Kate, and delighted to be back.

I remember we had so much fun on our other show. You are the first person that I've had back in my bed on this show. So that's how excited I was about your first episode. And how could I not have you back with your new book coming out? Off with her head, 3,000 years of demonising. women in power? Well, it's a fun book, even though the subject is rather somber, and it's really, really eye-opening. The book is a history of misogyny, specifically against women in positions of power. So it could be a queen hundreds of years ago or women in politics today, but it's the same

stuff going on. And I really can't look at anything the same anymore. And I've even found certain misogynistic tendencies in myself. I mean, this is really an eye-opening book. I love that about the book. You go way, way, way, way back into history, and we'll talk about that in a minute, but you're always bringing out links. You're always sort of saying, yeah, they were doing that. This was happening to Cleopatra. This was happening to these ancient queens and rulers, but we still do the same thing. It's the same tropes. It's the same conversations emerging again and again. Well, you know, that was the shocker. And how I even came up with this title was a few years ago, I was reading Stacey Schiff's beautiful biography of Cleopatra.

And as I was reading it, I saw that the attacks that the Roman Republic, this patriarchal society, lodged against Cleopatra, were so very similar to what was done to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. I mean, the same stuff. She's untrustworthy. She's not trustworthy. She's not pretty enough. She's unlikable. And when I looked back, it went back much further than that to Hatshepsut in about 1500 BC. So more than 3,000 years of demonizing women in power using the same method. And you still today have a lot of bullshit rumors about Cleopatra doing the rounds. One that I still get asked on Twitter. Someone will once or twice a year will crop up and go, is that true? Is the one about did she invent a vibrator that had bees in it?

You know, I haven't heard that one. Sounds like a good idea, you know, before batteries were invented. But you see the slut-shaming trope. The Roman Republic brooded it about that Cleopatra was such a slut. She had thousands of lovers. And as far as we know, she had two. One was Julia Caesar, and the other one was Mark Antony, whom she married. And so the same things have been said about so many other women.

Look at Catherine the Great. The story is that she died when she was. was trying to have sex with a horse, and the straps holding the horse up broke, and the horse fell on her and crushed her. And the fact was that she died of a stroke at the age of 67. But when a female ruler, like Catherine the Great, was so very successful, they had to do something to trash her reputation forever. So they made up the horse story, and it was so successful because people pick up these stories. And these are the stories that come down in history, rather than all of the good that the women did, that if you ask most people today, what do you know about Catherine the Great Empress of Russia?

The first thing is the horror story. And when you actually say it out loud, of course it's nonsense, but these myths and stories have gained such currency. And the thing is just even if people don't believe it, just the fact that that story is still associated with that person is quite telling, isn't it? Well, and most of these stories were invented by one or two enemies of the powerful woman. at the time. And there were plenty of other stories going around that she was a saint, she was kind, and those stories have disappeared. If you look, for instance, at Anne Boleyn. According to popular history, she was this vicious vixen who went out of her way to satisfy her overweening ambition to be queen to force Henry VIII to divorce his dutiful middle-aged first wife. And the fact is

that when Henry first started pursuing Anne, she actually ran away from him. a year. And then when he made it clear that he would have his marriage annulled and Mary, then she went along with it. But all of the reports that she gave most of her income as queen to the poor and sent poor scholars to university and all of her kindness and her zeal for religious reform and for keeping a very pious court of ladies and waiting who were well-behaved, these things have just fallen by the wayside. And the reports of Eustace Chappuis, who was the Spanish ambassador, who was very fond of Catherine, who was a Spanish princess, every vicious, vile thing that was heard at court about Anne Boleyn, he reported.

And this is what has come down to us about Anne Boleyn. Not all the other good things that other people at the time were writing about her. I've always felt a bit sorry for Anne, because she is represented as this femme fatale, seductress, who derailed a nation. But she was quite young, and he was the king. He was the king. How did you say no to a king? The power imbalance of that is spectacular.

And she did say no, and that didn't work. So finally she said yes, and she became queen. And this is why I call my book off with her head, because some of these women, they either lost their head like Anne Boleyn or Marie Antoinette is another one. The Austrian whore, they called her, didn't they? Exactly. Yeah, the Austrian bitch. Right.

Cleopatra also was a victim. And there are some modern politicians. One was in Britain a few years ago who was stabbed. There is just so much rage. I find against women in power. Why do you think it's the sex thing? Because it's weird. Just as you were explaining that,

then, I was trying to think if there are parallels of powerful men and their sex lives. Is there like a rumor that Julius Caesar died having sex with a badger or something like, but if there is a rumor, it tends to be the other way around. It's like, oh, he's so virile. He's got so many lovers and he's so sexually potent. Why do you think when it comes to male politicians historically, it's like, yeah, go on, son, get in there. but for women they're attacked as liking sex at all.

And it doesn't matter if any of that is true. It doesn't matter. Like Joan of Arc, she was derided as a whore, wasn't she? And she apparently died a virgin. Women are always derided for their sex lives. Either they're frigid or they're a nymphomaniac or they're, you know, lesbian, a whore or all of the above. And so this is a weapon, a tactic used by what I call the patriarchy to keep women in their place.

You know, back in 1950, my father graduated university and went to apply for a job at a newspaper. And at the time, there were three white men, probably all Christian, sitting there for this job. And he ended up getting it. But, you know, this day and age, you have women, you have people of color, you have people of all different cultures and religions vying for that same job. And I think that it is very threatening to men who, going back thousands of years, have been raised to feel that their most important. important role in the world is to work hard and take care of their family. Now, imagine if you removed all of the women from the workplace, how much easier it would be for men to get the jobs that they were. I don't know, frankly, that this rises to the level of conscious thought of men who are being

misogynistic, but I do think it's in their consciousness somewhere swirling around in there. Wow. I've wondered as well if, like, the reason that women are attacked for their sexuality, and it's always the sort of the same idea. It's either that they're not having enough sex, is that they're frigid, or if nothing else works, it's like, well, I wouldn't want a fuck her, but she's sexually unattractive. Occasionally, you find these idiots who tweet something or say something on TikTok, and it tends to be along the lines of like, oh, if you're a powerful, successful woman, no man will want you. And it's kind of like, you still think that that's a terrible threat. But it's so interesting when you see it that these narratives are still absolutely in force.

And one of the things that I really like about the book was that you bring out the fact that these narratives are still in currency. And reading through it, I found myself looking at powerful women today and identifying the same narratives. I mean, you have a lot to say about the Camilla Harris election and Hillary Clinton, obviously, and about how they were attacked in similar lines and derided for their sexuality. Kamala Harris is extremely well qualified, you know, given her past work experience. And as soon as Joe Biden chose her as his VP pick, the meme started blooming all over the internet. Joe and the hoe. Why would they call a woman as qualified as Kamala Harris a ho? Well, back in the mid-90s, she had had a relationship with a man who was, yes,

admittedly married, but he had been legally separated from his wife for 13 years. Maybe they were Catholic. I don't know. They still haven't gotten a divorce. But they lived separately, had different lives. She had dated him for a year or two. So suddenly, they're painting Kamala Harris. as a whore because of this thing that happened in 1995. I would like to read to you a few comments made in recent elections. They were actually made about female politicians. And we're going to switch the gender. And you tell me if they sound ridiculous. Sometimes I ask myself, is this particular situation the result of misogyny or is this a reasonable criticism of this woman, a reasonable thing to say about her? Because all of us, including women, the minute we take our first break,

We're starting to inhale misogyny. It's just at every point in our society. And it can be confusing, right? Okay, so let me read these things that were said about women. Men who are sweet, cheery, and non-confrontational will be rewarded. He should show a little modesty. He's too bitchy. Humility is not one of his strong points.

Unbelievable. In the same week, he wore the same suit twice. He doesn't have the right sort of box. to be on TV. He should smile a lot more. Now, I have found dozens and dozens more of these things, but let's end this with my personal favorite. He launched his political career in the bedroom by sleeping with a powerful woman. You would never hear it. No, they sound so weird, but if you hear them about a woman, it's like, oh, okay, like you don't really even question it. And having done this work, and I hope that everyone who reads my book will find this shift so that maybe even

when they start to speak, it's like, whoa, that's really sexist. I can't do that, right? Somebody pointed out to me a while ago, and I was thinking about it when I was reading your book. Our current Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. Yes, that's good. Picture Boris Johnson as a woman. He would never have become Prime Minister. Now, over here, picture Donald Trump as a woman. Everything's the same except he is Donna Trump, and she's overweight, and she wears baggy blue pantsuits, and she has an orange face, and a fantastically cantilevered yellow hairdo, and she's boasting and yelling and insulting and lying,

and she's had three husbands, and she grabs men's private parts and boasts about it. Do you think Donna Trump would have been elected president of the United States? No, no. I mean, obviously, like, you're aware of it. When you point it out, it suddenly becomes really, really obvious and apparent what's happening. And I'm really interested in what you said about the book,

that it's been a learning experience for you too. Because I think that often when we're talking about this stuff, it becomes very reductive and simple to go, men did it, boo! But that's not what your book says. And I think that's really important. It's that the patriarchy, that's actually a shared responsibility

and that women are just as guilty of it. And I think that's a far more difficult process to listen to and to unpack, is what are you doing without realizing that you're doing it? Right. There have been studies made, which I cited in my book, book that showed that sexist memes and tweets, they're done by something like 52% are women.

And then the question is, why would women be sexist? And I get into that question in my book, too. I think that there's something comforting about knowing your place, about what to do, what you're supposed to do. When society changes, it can be a bit scary. And I think some women are happier with a more traditional role. And they see these female politicians perhaps as a thing. thread and maybe there's also a deeply rooted thread of jealousy. Maybe some women wish they had the balls to go out there and do that and they can or they don't. So they just attack the women. Can you find, have you found examples of this throughout history? Is this a modern phenomenon? I can't imagine it is that women attack other women. I can't imagine it is either, but in an era

before social media and the media, as we know it, it's hard to really say. There've been newspapers around for hundreds of years, but women certainly didn't write them. So I don't really know. But I think that what we're looking at is human behavior that goes back in a very similar way to the cave. I'll be back with Eleanor after this. Over on the Warfare podcast by History here, we bring you brand new military histories from around the world. Each week, twice a week, we release new episodes with world-leading historians, expert policy makers, and the veterans who served. From the greatest tanks of the Second World War. And so what are you actually trying to get out of your tank?

You're trying to get maneuverability and you're trying to get a really big gun. Your tiger and your pamph are there to dominate the battlefield, primarily on the eastern front and in the North Africa and all that sort of stuff. But by the time, they're actually coming in in decent numbers, that moment has already passed. Through to new histories that help us understand current conflicts. Any invader, any attacker, any adversary will exploit gaps within society. It was true then, it's true today.

But the Finns signaled that they were united, and I think that's what the Ukrainians should signal today too. Subscribe to Warfare from History Hit wherever you get your podcast and join us on the front lines of military history. Whenever you get feminist movements throughout history, you'd get a backlash and women tend to be there. Like, I know there was anti-suffraget groups and organisations who genuinely didn't think that women should have the vote and campaigned quite hard on that front. Which is just mind-boggling, isn't it? When you look back and it kind of makes you think, what's happening now? Are people helping or hindering feminism?

And one of the things that I've got is a list of questions by a fairness guide for covering women and people of colour in politics. It's done by ultra-violent. Ultra-violent. I just said, that's a Freudian slip. Ultra-violet. And these are some of the questions. I think these are really interesting, not just for people in politics and now, but just anybody. So are you punishing women and celebrating men for doing the same thing?

Are you suggesting that ambition is a bad thing? Are you putting too much emphasis on appearance? Are you focusing on her tone of voice, shrill, bitter, angry rather than the substance of her statements? Are you analysing or focusing on her clothing? Are you focusing on her weight? Are you focusing on her makeup and hair? Are you telling a candidate to smile or talk about whether she smiles? Are you hypersexualising a candidate or a politician? Are you commenting on her attractiveness? Are you using words like unlikable and unelectable? Are you questioning her commitment to, in this case the United States, based on the colour of her skin or

her country of origin? Are you calling a black woman angry? I thought that was really really. insightful. Are those things ever done for men? No. When was the last time he'd walk past a man and went, cheer up, love, give us a smile. If you think about it, I mean, we're so used to it. Like, you know, men always say that to me and I smile and say, how are you? But they're actually telling us what to do with our face. You might as well say, hey, you, woman on the street, I want you to hop on your left foot and clap your hands. They might as well be doing it. They're telling us what to do with our bodies. It's such a weird one that, isn't it? I've had that so many times. Cheer up, love. Give us a smile. Fuck off. Yeah, fuck off.

Right? Like, how do you know that my mother hasn't just died? Right? Why do men do this? I think the smile of a woman on them, it does this incredible thing. It makes them feel big and strong. Maybe it reminds them of the kindness of their mother. Maybe it makes them think their wife is going to make them a hot dinner or have sex with them. I mean, there are all of these things going on somewhere in the mind. There again, they might not be consciously aware of why they're doing it, but, you know, they're doing it. And we put up with it. Who really says fuck off to a guy who says, Come on, love, give us a smile. It's dangerous. That's the other bit is you don't know what their repercussions of that are going to be. But I promise you, every woman thinks it. I wrote a piece for a website called Gender on the Ballot last week that's coming up next week about my book. And they said, oh, we want a biography from you. So, you know, I wrote this thing up.

I'm a New York Times bestseller. I've done these TV shows and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And in the track changes, I wrote, does this sound too self-aggrandizing? Like, should I turn this down? And then I wrote, wait. If I were a man, would I be writing this to you right now? I wouldn't. No.

I think it's because we're kind of conditioned from a very young age to be a good girl, be modest, be humble. And that manifests itself later on in life of being quite reluctant to take up any kind of space, which just isn't something that a lot of guys, they're not trained to do it from childhood. It's their toys are outside, active, be confident. And girls, if they are like that, they'll be called bossy. Right, or bitchy or witchy. Yeah. And it's had really serious repercussions throughout history.

hasn't it? I mean, how are some of the famous women throughout history that you found have been taken down by this stuff? His reputation was just torn to pieces and it never recovered. Well, let's look for a moment at Catherine Domenici, who was the queen mother of France. For many years, her husband died in a jousting accident. She was queen mother for her young son, who was completely crazy. And then he died and she was queen mother for the second son. And if you ask anyone about Catherine D' Medici, they'd say, oh yes, she planned the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572. in which the Catholics rose up and killed thousands of Huguenots. It was this big bloody disaster, and she was sitting there dressed in black like a big fat

tarantula, gleefully watching everybody being dismembered in the streets of Paris. And this story was written by an enemy of hers who, it was a Huguenot, anonymous, who escaped the massacre along with many others. They went to Geneva, Switzerland. And they wrote stories about what had happened. And the other books blamed her son, the king, who in fact had the power, or other people and the other men in the royal family or a general. And this one man wrote a book just completely destroying this woman's reputation and blamed the whole massacre on her. And this is the story

that has come down to us. Now, anyone who takes the time to research this woman's life as queen mother, before the massacre, she spent 12 years doing her utmost to create peace because France was being burned down, torn apart, villagers killed in this civil religious war. The next 17 years, afterwards until her death, she spent every moment of that trying to flatter and cajole and reconcile and bribe to stop the civil war. So why would she, in the middle of her lifetime work, suddenly say, ah, fuck it, let's just kill them all. If she'd been around today doing what she did then, she would have won the Nobel Peace Prize, not be blamed for this massacre. And when you hear that name today, you do tend to think ruthless ambition. That tends to be what comes to mind as she was

a kind of a lady Macbeth character. Right. Ruthless ambition. Her husband was dead. She was Italian, so they hated her for being foreign. Her sons were hopeless monarchs, and she did her best to keep the country together. She was an amazing woman, and she's gone down in history as a murderer. I'm trying to think of, like, there's successful examples of a woman who has been powerful throughout history, who hasn't had to put up with this crap, and I really can't think of many. Some were more successful than others. I think the most successful one was Elizabeth I first. Of course, the Virgin Queen. She had to like rebrand herself.

I'm a virgin. I'm a virgin. And that still didn't prevent stories of her sexual depravity, especially at Catholic courts because they didn't like her for being a Protestant or for being a woman. But she had tons of lovers. She had illegitimate children. She was physically deformed, which is why she never married. She actually menstruated out of her left foot into her shoe. No, they did not say that.

Just imagine that would have been quite a mess. She only had sex with black men. There were very strange stories, but generally speaking, not in England. They loved her. She was probably the most successful monarch of all time, and she was a woman. And the reason she was successful is because she did not marry because, you know, a man, no matter who he was, would have taken over control. In the early years of her reign, when foreign ambassadors sent official letters to her,

her counsel was very upset that she would actually read them first. They were waiting for her to marry so they could deal with her husband. And she was clever enough to just say, screw you, I'm never getting married. You're going to have to deal with me. And that is actually something that research is bearing out more and more today, not being a queen. But there's been so much research that shows that statistically the happiest demographic are women that don't marry and don't have kids. Just like, oh my God, what does that say about our culture? So what happened after Elizabeth the first?

Because it's not a case that Elizabeth, she had a really long reign. Hurrah, we loved a brilliant virgin queen, couple of nastiness. rumors. And then when she was gone, we all went, do you know what, Queens are brilliant. Women in charge are brilliant. There seems to have been like a backlash, actually, after she went. There was a backlash, much as what happened later with Catherine the Great. It's like, oh my God, all of these lies and false stories, we've been telling about, you know, how women are incapable and hormonally unruly, and you can't trust them with their hormones ranging like that. And all of these were proved false by Elizabeth's reign. So there was a backlash.

After she was gone in the reign of James I, there was a lot of. of literature about, you know, what a hormonal mess women are and they can't be trusted and that kind of thing. And there was that, was it the arraignment of immoral and inconstant women became a really successful pamphlet? Yeah, if you wanted to have a bestseller, you just wrote about how awful women are and everybody would buy your work. So that went into dozens of editions for decades, yeah, lewd, idle and forward women. Where do you think we are with all of this madness today? Because the message is getting through that at least we can challenge this narrative, but as you said, that so much of it is unconsciously done that

you might not even realize that you're doing it. For example, when the Hollywood stars walk the red carpet, it's the women that are asked about where did you get your clothes, where did you get your shoes, who did your nails, or they're the ones that are asked, how do you do all of this and have a family? And it's not that the person asking the question has just thought, I hate women, I want to be a dick. It's ingrained into us. I think it's something that we need to remember to look at this with a bit of kindness and understanding. You know, each one of us is born in a particular time, place, culture, and family. And we are raised just unconsciously learning most of the time certain values, what's acceptable, what's normal. And just because someone says or does

something that we now realize is sex, it doesn't mean that they're a bad person. Most of them are probably very good people. You know, it's certainly different when someone is lobbying threats of rape or violence against female politicians. I think those are certainly the minority that most of us are trudging ahead, doing the best we can with what we know. And to answer your question, we are at a crossroads. And I hope my book can just make clear what is sexist. You need to identify the problem before you can really work to find a solution. And I hope that's what my book will do. It's absolutely fabulous, but doing exactly that. And I think that what you did when you point out the obvious is if you said this about a man, how does that sound? I think that that's so powerful.

And when you look at women in politics today, we're still doing that. Like, no one would ask Boris Johnson where he got his suit from, for many reasons. Like, no one would say that to him. Nobody would suggest that he wasn't spending enough time at home. Nobody would ask something about his face or about his weight or about any of those things. But they do about women. So let's look at Boris Johnson. You know, the hair looks like it's a bale of hay caught in a windstorm.

You know, the sloppy clothes, the gut, the ties that are all crooked, the shirt collars that are curling up. Picture a woman who dressed in such a slovenly way and the constant barrage of criticism she'd be receiving every day. But men get this boys will be boys pass, right? Yeah. All people in power, regardless of gender, are criticised. That's what happens is when you get any kind of platform. But the narrative that is aimed at women is thousands of years old and still in force.

We still do it today. And you're right. A woman who did that would not make it to Prime Minister. They just wouldn't. And women often can't win with regards to the clothing no matter what they do. If you look at Marie Antoinette, as Queen of France, she was expected to wear the wide panniers. It looked like she had a buffet table under her silk gown and hair three feet tall with ostrich feathers and gigantic diamond necklaces. And she was criticized because there was drought and famine and there was a kind of climate disaster going on at the time.

and she would wear a cotton frock with a ruffle. I mean, she looked lovely. She had a portrait painted like that. Then she was harshly criticized for lacking in royal dignity. She couldn't win. So Prime Minister of Australia from 2010 to 2013 was Julia Gillard. And I think of all women I research, I think she even surpassed Hillary Clinton in just the vicious nastiness that she had to put up with. So there were horrific floods in one part of Australia.

went there to meet with the local governor or premier, I forget the title. And she wore a somber black suit because she thought, well, you can't criticize me for wearing a somber black suit to such a somber event because people had been killed in these floods. And the local governor was a woman who wore a rumpled white shirt and khakis and boots and her hair was sort of a mess because it looked like she'd been up working all night to try to save these people from the flood. And Julia goes in, you know, in the somber black suit. And she is, lambasted all over the country in the press, why didn't she know she should have worn a rumpled shirt and looked like she was too concerned to comb her hair? The woman could not win.

No, you can't, can you? And if you look at the members of the royal family, Kate and Megan, for example, they're damned if they do and they're damned if they don't. If they wear a really nice item of clothing that costs thousands of pounds from Gucci, they're going to get ripped apart. If they wear something from Primark that they found on eBay for 50p, they're going to be laughed at. They can't win. So in this country, we have a congresswoman from New York named AOC. And Fox News, our conservative news station, reported that she had gone to a D.C. hairstylist and spent, I don't know, a couple hundred dollars on highlights and a cut and a bloat, you know.

And then they compared her to a Republican congressman who had his hair cut for $20. And, you know, they made her look like, you know, here she is supposedly a socialist spending hundreds of dollars on her hair. And I'm like, you know, they could have at least have compared her to a woman. Men get their haircuts basically for free. Women need to look into taking out a second mortgage on their homes. And if she had had her mother cut her hair at home, it would have been noticed in the press. And they would say that she's just really cheap

and she doesn't even care about her appearance. It's even what the Roman said about Cleopatra, like she spent too much money on clothes. And oh my God, I don't know if it's ever going to stop. I was asked in an interview yesterday, will this ever stop? And the thing is, I don't think so really. But I think, you know, we can certainly improve it.

I think being mindful of it and being aware of what's happening is half the battle. Because as you said, so much this stuff is unconsciously done. And what we have to realize is that we're all guilty of it. There is nobody out there who has absolutely nailed this. It's like you might not even be aware that you're doing it. You've got to try and catch these things and think, you know, why am I thinking that about this particular? You know, I do that myself.

When a woman comes on the news, like a talking head, an expert on the FBI, eye or whatever. My first thought is, you know, she really needs some lipstick. And at this point, I'm like, Eleanor, what the hell? Like, you just wrote this book, right? But it's like my first thought, you know, and I don't do it about men. Like he ought to trim his eyebrows that are out. So, yeah, it's a journey. We're all a work in progress. At least my second thought is, Eleanor, what the hell? Not my first thought. That's true. I mean, and it's important that thought's there now, right? Is that at least you can catch it. You can. I think the second thought is more important than the first.

The first is a reaction. It's like when the doctor hits your knee with that little rubber hammer. It's like, you can't help it. And be kind with yourself. It's not your fall. This is how we grew up. But it's the second thought that counts. Oh, Eleanor, you've just been incredible to talk to again.

If people want to know more about you and about this amazing book, and they should, where can they find you? My website is eleanorherman.com. I'm on Twitter. I'm on Facebook. I'm on Instagram. I'd love it if people would contact me, ask me questions, let me know how you like the book. Please do. Oh, thank you so much. And I'm going to be constantly mindful of this from now on. Yeah, and you know what? You could use a little lipstick. I could do. Can't they? Just kidding. You look splendid.

Thank you so much for coming to talk to me. Bye-bye. Thank you for listening. And thank you so much to Eleanor for coming back. I'm so want to have you back again. I just love talking to you. And if you like what you've heard, please don't forget to like, review and subscribe wherever it is that you get your podcasts. I know that they say that everywhere,

but it does actually really help us out. Join me again betwixt the sheet at the History of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast includes music by Epidemic Sounds.