Radiolab - Butt Stuff

Episode Date: November 11, 2022

Why do we have a butt? Well, it’s not just for the convenience of a portable seat cushion. This week, we have a conversation with our Contributing Editor Heather Radke, who has spent the last several years going deep on one of our most noticeable surface features. She’s been working on a book called Butts, a Backstory and in this episode, she tells us about a fascinating history she uncovered that takes us from a eugenicist’s attempt in the late 1930s to concretize the most average human, to the rise of the garment industry, and the pain and shame we often feel today when we go looking for a pair of pants that actually fit. Special thanks to Alexandra Primiani and Jordan Rodman Episode Credits:Reported by Heather RadkeProduced by Matt KieltyOriginal music and sound design contributed by Matt Kielty and Jeremy BloomMixing by Jeremy BloomFact-checking by Emily Krieger Citations:You can Pre-order Heather’s book “Butts: A Backstory” here (https://zpr.io/QVFVLTTW9vpN) Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [e-mail].   Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Wait, you're listening. Okay. Alright. Okay. Alright. Dord listening. To Radio Lab. Radio Lab.

From WNYC. To C! C! Yeah. So, do you want to start? Do you want to wait? Hold on, I'm just up to you. Blue has a whole idea here.

Oh, we're... Hey, I'm Lative Nasser. I'm Lula Miller. She's just texting me, let's see. Who was running late? This is Radio Lab. Well, the question that we wanted me to ask you to start actually is,

what do you think butts are for? What do I think butts are for? I mean, I think they're a, it's a portable cushion to sit on, right? Huh. The cheeks, I'm thinking the cheeks are like a portable. Okay, so today on Radio Lab, we're gonna share with you all a conversation that we had with our contributing editor. Well, I'm not quite sure.

Heather Radke. Yeah, over the last few years, Heather has been putting her blood, her sweat, her tears, her back into a book all about... Butts. Specifically the butt cheeks. Yeah, the cheeks. The junk and the trunk. The booty and the back. Straight up, it's a book about the cheeks, not the whole.

So if you're looking for butt-hole stuff, it's not here. It's not happening. No. Butt. Heather's book. It's called Butts, a backstory. It's pretty here. It's not happening. No, but Heather's book, it's called Butts, A Back Story, is, it's pretty hefty. And cheeky, and juicy. But no, seriously, it is a deep thing on something that we don't usually think that deeply about. The gluteus maximus, which is the butt muscle, it's one of like three butt muscles.

It goes into the why and how of the butt muscle. Yeah, there's like a little bit of a debate. Is the butt for running or is it more for like jumping? Not for cushions, apparently. Uh, but also, there's this other part, which is actually the part that's like way more complicated and fraught, which is the fat part. Because Heather explained it,

it's the fat that makes the butt the thing that society obsesses over. And that's why like the Brazilian butt lift is one of the most popular cosmetic surgery procedures in America today Brazilian butt lift. I've never heard of such a thing. Oh my god. I thought if you're gonna learn so much Okay, great. I'm so excited. Oh, hi. I'm so sorry. I'm late. I've been so excited for this for weeks So can't just keep going and I will orient as you go. Okay. So I guess that just like to finish the thought. Lots of it's like so butts are also highly sexualized. Right. So there's a question that becomes like is part of the reason they look the way they do is because of sexual selection, not just natural selection.

And I guess your book kind kinda looks at how even just in a few different eras, which are pretty close to what another, just how much the invoked but in a certain society changes. Right, that becomes the question. Yeah. Because, you know, like elbows, for example, we don't put a lot of meaning into how elbows look.

But what a butt looks like is like it's a sign of beauty, it's a sign of disgust, it's been highly racialized, it's like was used to put people into hierarchies. And there's a real question of like why have butts come to mean so much when they could just mean nothing. And so a lot of the book is sort of an exploration of all the things they've come to mean and why they've come to mean that. Oh yeah, I mean, so what is the one so we talked about butts from every possible angle, but the part of the conversation we want to play for you today pretty much straight through actually, was about more than just the butt yeah because at a certain point in Heather's reporting, she uncovered this moment

in time where the ideal that so many of us measure our bodies up again, such as our butts, our whole bodies, became concrete in a way that even today still haunts us. Yeah. All right. Go for it. So I want to tell you about two statues that were made in the late 1930s, the early 1940s. Okay. They were created by these two artists, or actually one guy was a gynecologist, and one guy was an artist, Dickinson and Belzky. A classic gyno art duo. So Belzky is the artist, Dickinson is the gynecologist, and these guys were trying to make these statues.

One was of a man, and one was of a a woman and they were called Norma and Norma and Norma is spelled N-O-R-M-M-A-N so it's like Norma. Norma, man. Okay. Norma, man. He's normal. Well, you kind of get what they were probably up to. They weren't trying to be coy, I think. Right. Yeah. So they were a kind of a kind of eugenicist push in the 1930s to show people what like a good body is. So the people...

Yeah, go ahead. Oh, yeah. No, no, no. Just one thing that just popped to mind when you first said it before you went into the eugenics route, was this... Were these statues supposed to be like, oh, this is the average person or was it like, this is the exemplary person?

Well, I mean, lots of you hit on it right there. It's the, so one of the things that's so interesting about these statues is, and this time, is that the normal is the exemplary. So, okay, first of all, the purpose of them was they were going to go into the American Museum of Natural History in New York. They were going to be put on display there to show the everyday New York person what like a normal American body should look like. And the 30s in America and the 30s across the world were a time when people were trying to optimize humans.

It was a time obsessed with data and like new data was available. And what they were actually doing was they were like, we're going to make statues of the perfectly average, the perfectly normal American. So it turns out if you want, if it's 1939 or eight or whatever and you want to make the a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very were one, but they actually had no data for women. They looked and looked and looked. The data wasn't as easy to come by, and then they found a data set. And it's a pretty exciting data set for many reasons. This is where Heather's story about eugenics and the birth of Norma, the perfectly average woman, crosses paths with another notable arc in our history, starting back in the 1800s,

which is the way we make the clothes we wear. We're talking about the 19th century. We're talking about the rise of the garment industry. Now you should be thinking like sweatshops, New York City, like the cotton is coming up from the South. They're turning it into clothes for an increasingly large white color male workforce. So a huge amount of money is going into garment manufacturing. And in order to make money, you're always trying to lower costs of production. If you can have a machine that cuts everything, it's like, let's say you have,

like ideally you have three sizes, small, medium, large, you have one machine that's cutting small, one machine that's cutting medium, one machine that's cutting large. So if you have a hundred sizes, all of a sudden it costs you a lot more, right? So the more nuance, the less profitable. Exactly. And there had been a sizing system for men, but half the population is still having to make all of their own clothes, or hiring someone to make all of their own clothes. Because of economics or because they can't afford it or what? Why? The half is women. Oh, the half is women. So there aren't sizes really at all for women? They're just, yeah, not really.

I mean, they're trying because they realize, yeah, because the men's size is like going at gangbusters. It's like really helpful. And catalog shopping had become this really big thing. You know, it's like Sears catalog is like everyone's buying out of the Sears catalog, but people women were sending back all these clothes because they didn't fit. But then in the 30s, this woman named Ruth O'Brien comes along and she's at the Bureau of Home Economics. Which was a bureau of the government, yeah. Okay. A bureau of like the US government?

Yeah, Ruth decided that she's gonna try to tackle the problem of coming up with the standard set of clothing sizes for women. And oddly enough, she actually ends up confronting the same problem that Dickinson and Belzky had when they're trying to create norma, which is that they don't have enough data. Like what is a woman's body actually look like?

And so like if you're gonna, I mean it makes sense, right? If you, if the three of us were like, let's figure out a sizing system. It feels like the first thing we'd wanna do is be like, all right, so what are the different sizes of bodies? And it's the, it's the 30s. So the WPA hires women across the country to go out into little towns and whatever.

They're called measuring squads. And they... I didn't know. Like measure their neighbors? Well, it's like they have these little measuring parties kind of. And they like, when they gather, they put on these kind of government-issued bras that are like, you know, those like, bandeau bras, like that are just like, boob covers. And

look cotton undies. I think there's like 26 different measurements. So it's like elbow to their wrist, their thigh girth, their heel length, these kinds of things. So they're measured a bajillion different ways. And the idea was to try to find like as many different kinds of American women, but like let's put a special Lee large asterisk there. So how did they? Okay, so there were some problems with this as you might guess. One is that older women didn't want to do this. So a lot of the the data skewed younger and they had to adjust for that. The other thing was that Ruth O'Brien erased all the data from non-white women.

Whoa. What was that about? But they didn't get, but if they had to erase it, you had to get some, right? Well, so okay, so imagine it this way. It's like, I'm like, Susie Q, measure, and I'm like, okay, I'm going to put an ad in the newspaper in Cleveland or Cincinnati or whatever and say, come to this place, maybe you everyone gets a cracker or they get some money or something. And some of the people come are not white. And especially, let's just remember, this is a time when white is also like Italians probably weren't

considered white. Eastern Europeans, Jewish women, these people were probably not considered white. So, you know, maybe a Jewish woman, maybe a black woman shows up. So, Ruth Albrine actually says in her materials that we should still measure these women so as to not create bad feelings amongst the group, but then we will throw out the data. Wow. That's just, I'm not, so we're getting this data, but I don't care.

I know, it's so weird. And you would also think, oh, sorry, go. Well, yes, you would also think women who are not white by clothes and so maybe it would be. That's what I was about to say. That it's in their financial best interest. It's in the garment industry's financial best interest to have this be as representative

of as many people as possible. I mean, I think I guess a thought I've had about it and this just is like further racist. It's just more specifically racist is, you know, at this point in history race wasn't just being codified based on skin color, but also based on morphological difference, invented or not. And so probably she was thinking something like, well, if we have black women and Italian

women and Jewish women, the clothes won't fit white women. And did it seem to, even though it was only for white women, did it seem to, like, did women clump to the sizes? Like, was there a, like, an obvious, small, medium, large, or was it, like, just like... So we're gonna talk about that, and it's a whole complicated answer. But let me, I'm just gonna, first, let's talk about Dickinson and Belzky and what happened with the statues,

Norma and Norma. Okay. Great. So they found Ruth's data and they were like super psyched because as we have discussed, it was a time of data and they, I mean, for sure they thought that thing about the, her throwing out all the non-white people was a feature, not a bug, you know. And they made these statues. And then they were first displayed at the American Museum of Natural History as part of like one of those eugenics

congresses and people could come and see them, you know, just like they go see the T-Rex now. Can we take a second to all look at Norma and Norman together? Okay, yeah, for sure. Okay, I just found one. Are you probably having one? I just shoot it in the slack. Well, I'll send, there's this, there was a cat here. I'll put it in the...

Yeah, put it in the slack. Okay, let's see. Where's the cat? Oh, that's Norm. Oh, Norm. Oh, yeah, wait, this is a good one too. This is... Oh.

It is weird looking at these statues, these white alabaster visions of the eugenicist brain and the eugenicist vision. Like it feels almost like looking at something evil to look at them. I mean, it does, it does, it does do that. It also, there's also something about it though that it feels ridiculous a little bit. Like, when I look at Norma, first of all, she has nobody hair, which is, I find weird, although Norma does. Oh my god, you're right.

She has their naked. Oh, Norma does, Norma does. Like, how messed up? I also think her breasts are so strange. Like, it's like somebody who had never seen breasts. She'll just dress. They put two grapefruit on a torso. Yeah, so he's got, so they're naked.

You're right. So norm, norm man has like a pubic hair and she does not. Yeah. She does not. And I think, I mean, I have a picture, it took me a long time to actually get a picture of her from behind, which I always say. Oh, yeah.

It's also to tell us about her butt. Tell us about her butt. I mean, it's very normal. I don't know how to say it. It's like exactly the butt you have mashed on the other side. It's like not that big. It's not that flat. It's sort of a little bit strong.

It's kind of pert. It doesn't seem like it would like fill out a pair of pants completely. But seeing them in this, there's this one picture here with them side by side and they look like robot. They're standing stick straight and they're just these like specimens of like stepford wives or something? Yeah, there you go. That's like a stepford wife and husband that are just like... One of the things about them is like,

they're not artistic. Like they're like, you're saying they're like, Ramrod's straight. It's like, it's not meant to evoke something emotional. It's meant to evoke something intellectual, maybe? Yeah. It's just like, here is normal, Come be hold. Yeah, come behold normal. And you know, okay, so normal is a very exciting idea at this moment in history for reasons that I think we can be critical of and also sympathetic towards. Like it's this, you know, World War II is happening in this era, like the other headlines in the newspaper are like Hiroshima bomb.

Yeah, right. And it's like a big moment where like people are like, I'd really like for my person who's fighting in the war to come home and maybe like we just get married and have like a pretty simple straightforward life. Like you can sort of see why in this moment, normal and normand and norma is an appealing ideal. Like even though we can be kind of critical of it, I also think it's like, like I'm saying, it's kind of a reasonable thing. Yeah.

Okay. And so then after they were displayed at the American Museum of Natural History, they were bought by this hygiene museum in Cleveland. And hygiene museums are a very eugenicist project. They're like the guy who ran this museum. He was, he had, his thing is like, I want people to want to be normal. So, and when I say normal,

I want them to be like properly white, et cetera, et cetera, all the stuff that we've been talking about. So, he decides that he's going to have a contest to find the most normal girl in Cleveland. And like, was it truly a contest? It was like, yes. So this is like, big news in Cleveland, like it's in the Cleveland plane dealer. So they're what they're encouraging women to do is measure themselves and send in their measurements. So all these women are sending in their measurements, like your ankle width and your knee to hip ratio.

It's not just like, you know, like when you've been sure for clothes, you measure like three or four things. This is 10 or 12 things and you're sending this in. All told 3,864 women enter this contest. Yeah. How many sort of like how many winners are there in this contest, do you think? No, I don't think any are like exactly Norma. That's my guess. I think there's one winner. Well, you sort of both right. None of them are Norma's measurements, but they had to choose a winner because they did all this stuff. So they choose this woman named Martha Skitmore, who's the most normal girl in Cleveland. And she apparently is the closest. And she also,

like, just so perfectly fits the story of the time. She's the ticket taker at the local movie theater. She has recently quit her job as like a gauge grinder at a factory so that like the boys coming home can have have the job back. And this is the quote from the newspaper. She likes to swim dance and bowl and thought she was an average individual in her taste, and nothing out of the ordinary had ever happened to her until the enormous search came along. Until the act of being chosen herself as the most normal maid, or not normal anymore. Wow. And then I tried to track her down.

I like really tried. She's dead, but I tried to find some people who had newer or something. I found her obituary and you know, you we can't know how the rest of her life planned out, but she, you know, the obituary suggests she did have a pretty like quote unquote normal life for the rest of her life. She had a couple of kids. She never left Ohio. And that's all we know about Martha Skidmore. So, hi, oh. And that's all we know about Martha Skidmore. Okay, we're gonna take a quick break.

When we come back, we're gonna hear how norm man and norma are still haunting us and all of our bodies today. And we will actually hear about a living, breathing, modern day flesh and blood, norma. Lulu. Lutth. Radialab, we are back with our contributing editor, Heather Radke, talking about her new book, Butts, a backstory.

And when we left off, she told us the story about how this one data set of women, almost entirely white women, planted the seed for this statue, Norma, who was supposed to be the perfectly average woman back in the 1930s. And now we're going to take it from the museum where the statues are to the dressing room. How that same data set was part of a giant manufacturing puzzle. It is part of what for many is kind of just a personal hell of trying to find a piece of clothing that actually fits your body.

Okay, so we talked about Ruth O'Brien's study. And I kind of love this and also hate it because it's like in a very practical way. This would be a good problem to have solved at some point. Out of her data, she creates like 26 or 27 different sizes. Huh. That's too many. Clearly too many, right. We still kind of use a version of this. So the garment industry sort of takes her 26 sizes and then turns it into like a version of the sizing system we have now for women,

which is like two, four, six, eight, 10, 12. There's not 26 sizes. Even if you had the 26 sizes, it probably still wouldn't work because human bodies are diverse enough that they're consistently resisting the standardization of sizing. There's no odd number sizes. No. Do you? Does it work to men have the same size? No. Oh, they don't. No. They don't have. Wait, you live your whole life without 246. They have 8, 10, 12. You know how men sizes work. I know what I am. I don't no, they don't have wait you live your whole life without two four six they have eight ten twelve

You know how men's eyes I know what I am. I don't know what anybody else is what are you okay? So for my pants, let's say right? Yeah, I'm like sometimes a 28 sometimes a 29 oh Cuz that's the actual it's that's the thing. Oh, that's different that's not a side different thing the thing. Oh, that's different. That's not a side. That's just like, no, no, no, no, no. That's why it's smart. Wait, men don't have like size pants. They just have, well, oh, my God, we're in different. Yeah, they do have kids. They're just, they make sense. It's like the 29 is, it's like 29 is in 29 ages or whatever. Right. A size eight has no meaning of any time. So weird. Okay. I just need a moment from that, my mind being blown, that like men don't go to there forever, 21 section and half no sizes as well. Okay. But in the story, yeah.

After Ruth gets a decent data set and then messes it up by throwing away anyone who's a person of color apparently. Does that literally then turn into sizes? It does. It's not just like, here's a recommendation. It's like that. No, it is our size. It's a recommendation.

And then it becomes standard. She recommends 26 sizes. Yeah. And then they're like, that's, we're not doing that. That's undoable, but we'll do 10. And then they come up with a different set. Right. And based on her data, based on her data,

then that sizing system, they keep it for a while as like the rule, if that makes any sense, like that's like, like this is how it's supposed to be. Then it becomes optional by the 70s. It becomes optional. By the 70s, it's optional. By the 80s, it's like completely. It's completely like a company.

If they had their own schema that they wanted to use, they could use it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And also basically, it means that a size eight is no longer standardized. And now, which seems stupid. So what happens is like, okay, I work at H&M or whatever Levi's or one of these companies,

and I'm like, okay, I'm gonna make a pair of jeans. First, I design the pair of jeans on a mannequin. Yeah. So a mannequin is like pretty far from human. It's hard and immobile. And these things actually kind of start to matter in a way like I hadn't actually thought that much about. Like, doesn't have digestion.

So I'm like, I need the expandable waistband if you ate the plate of nachos. Right. All right, so they designed it on the mannequin. The next step after that is they get their fit model to come in and try it on. A fit model? Yeah.

Because there is one person who every garment fits. What? It's a fit model. So it's like the king, the king's foot. Yeah, basically, except it's like a woman named Natasha, who's but is the but that jeans companies use to make the jeans fit. Even different company, I would have imagined that there was one king for each company, but there's one king for even multiple companies.

She's the king, she's the king for like seven or eight companies. And it's like, she's like got the, the butt disorder. She got like the sort of body disorder for the, who chose her? How was she chosen? How was she anointed? She was like, how was she crowned? She was like a, in college, and she went with her friend to pick up a check at her modeling company and the

the eight modeling agent was like, Hey, you kind of got like a good, a good butt. Basically, like, maybe you want to do some fit modeling and then these companies like her because her, basically her butt's not too small and it's not too big. It's her life just like incredible and she just walks around and she has like everything. Like no problems at all. Everything is modeled on her body. I mean, I think close fit her really well and she's kind of it's kind of the thing I think about is like she's the only person they fit. I mean, unless you have her exact body, you know, in her exact measurements.

I mean, she tried and you know, it's like this whole process, she tries them on several times, she like helps the, I mean, she's lovely, you know, it's like not her fault that she's like, no, sure, she makes sure that the, like the belt loops are in the right place. And yeah, and she's a white lady. White lady, yeah, in LA. Is it the Rousseau Bryan constructed butt though? Were they like, wow, you're exciting to us because you're so normal. Quote unquote, normal. Is it like you are?

It is a little like she's normal. She's the new normal. She's the new normal. I mean, it's a little, there's like some ways it's different than normal, but I think the idea is that normal is actually this kind of ideal. It's a fantasy just like perfect or best or, you know, most beautiful is because there's

kind of no such thing. There was no such thing with Norma. I guess if we are going to call Natasha the most normal lady in the world, there is one person who fits that ideal, but like no one else does. And also like Natasha, you know, she's a relatively thin white woman. You know, I'm not sure we would quite call her average either in the sense that like the average American woman weighs surely more than her and has very different proportions than her. So, but at least that's a, that's like a real person who exists, who we know, those proportions make sense.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, because this is what happens. They take the thing they made for the mannequin and then they give it to Natasha and she puts it on and she's like, actually, like, there's a huge gap in the front. Or like, when I pull up these pants, the belt loops are gonna fall off. I kind of love this part, because it's about having an actual body,

no matter how perfect your body is. The fact that it's fleshy and has a digestive system, and needs to sit down. I'm like, bless. I mean, yes, what is the fit? Is it just in in a nice clean air condition room or are they like go take them first spin for two days and make sure you run some stressful errands so that you sweat? No, it's not like that, but it is like they do several rounds

of this where she'll sort of try on like a a first draft and they'll go like through several drafts. And basically like they like they make them fit her perfectly. Yeah. So like let's say she's a size six. They're making her to be the size six. Now of course, I'm not a size six. Most people aren't. So they have to make size two, four, eight, 12. And that is a matter of proportion. And it's all mathematical measurement. So there's no, it's not like there's a size. There's no other, there's like a two Natasha. There's not a two or four, an eight, a 12 Natasha. But you can sort of start to see how this might be flawed, right?

I know. So it is possible that no human being actually fits any of the other sizes. That's right. That is insane. Yeah. Because I keep, I keep it imagine, trying to imagine, like, analogs to in other industries. Well, I think one way I think about it is like this. It's

like manufacturing was meant for like, if you make a car, okay, we're going to get iron ore, turn it into something that's uniform, and then we're going to turn that thing into the hood of your car and we're going to make them all exactly the same. In this case, bodies cannot be forced into that kind of interchangeability, but we have to treat them as though they're interchangeable in order to be... I mean, in order to make clothes for them, like for cheap, basically. Like, we have to treat our bodies like they're all the same, even though they are not in any way the same at all. Maybe is it because as the expectations of fashion

have gotten more brutal, it's like, have it be, it's not, it's like sure, a small, medium, large t-shirt could probably fit everyone, but as we want like a well tailored, hand that's tight here, but loose here and has room to breathe, and like, maybe it's just that our, that fashion is getting like the tunic and the belt worked. But as we want, we want, you know, like, like, I just, that maybe it's just that as fashion is closing in and we want every millimeter to look good. And it's not, yeah, I think that's right. Because it's not just that we want to look good. And it's not, yeah, I think that's right, because it's not just that we want to look good, it's that we have imparted this idea of what it means

to have something fit you. Right. Like, I mean, it's the moment in the dressing room where you're like, why doesn't anything fit my body? Something's wrong with my body. It means something to us when clothes fit or don't fit. And it doesn't mean something about the clothes, it means something about us when clothes fit or don't fit. And it doesn't mean something about the clothes, it means something about us.

Like we ascribe the problem to our bodies rather than to the object. And you're saying like that humiliating feeling, feeling I'm not measuring up. Like I think something many people have been told is like, oh, it's a false standard of beauty. Like normalcy isn't real, but to see it so nakedly laid out,

like you finding that creation story of a norm and a norma, like there's something that is relief that you can just be like, this is a specific concept of norm, that like I can just reject, because I don't like their science, I don't like their mission, like it doesn't matter if it doesn't fit, because that's norma and that is a monster. I don't like their science, I don't like their mission. Like, it doesn't matter if it doesn't fit.

Because that's norma. And that is a monster. I don't want to be haunted. But there's something empowering about you finding its genesis story. Oh, yeah, for sure. I think I said this last time too. It's like, I sort of love now that like, the idea that bodies

can't be fit into these mechanized creations. Like that, it's like the 20th century and the 19th century, too, to some extent, it's like all these people are trying so hard to make bodies into interchangeable parts, but they can't be. And it's because we're all sort of specific and particular and exciting in our own ways. And I don't know.

It's sort of corny, maybe. Or is it like you'll just never dream of something fitting because you're like, it never will. Bodies are cooler than the fashion industry. Or bodies are more expansive. Yeah. I mean, I think that would be the ideal. But then at the same time, I mean, actually, this is the conclusion of the book. Like I, at the same time, I, you know, I go and I try and close and I still feel like you can't unbrain. Yeah. Like it's like, even knowing that you can't stop projecting the like, yeah,

just knowledge, bust shame. Does knowledge like bust your shame? Yeah, does it? Or do you? Yeah, do you? No, of course it doesn't, but it does. You know what it does is like you can sort of go in that dressing room and you can try on your jeans and you can be like, oh, dang, I wish these jeans fit me. And then you can sort of go in that dressing room and you can try on your jeans and you can be like, oh dang, I wish these jeans fit me and then you can sort of be like,

but they don't, they fit Natasha. Yeah. And Norma. And I can sort of tell myself a different story. It's the story isn't there's something wrong with my body, my butts too big, my thighs are the wrong proportions, whatever the story is that you're telling yourself about your body. I have like a different story, which is like the sizing can never work, even if they wanted it to, they can't make it work. And this isn't supposed to fit, you know? That was our contributing editor, Heather Radke, her book Butts A Back Story. We'll be out very soon. You can find a link to pre-order it on our website, radiolab.org.

And just biggest thanks to Heather for sharing this story with us for all the years of research it took to find it and make it. It really is a special book. It's kind of a Trojan horse of a book that looks silly on the outside, but is deep on the inside. I at least came away thinking very differently about my own body and the times that it feels like it doesn't fit. So thanks. This episode was produced by Matt Kilti with sound and music from Matt Kilti and Jeremy Bloom and mix from Jeremy Bloom, special thanks to Alexandra Primeyani and Jordan Rodman. That's it for us. We're gonna go to a watch party for our favorite sitcom, The Most Normal Girl in Cleveland.

We'll see you next time. Past the Unbuttered popcorn. Past the Unbuttered popcorn. Pass the Unbuttered popcorn. Pass the Unbuttered popcorn is good. MUSIC MUSIC Radio Lab was created by Dad Abberrod and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Laptop Master are our pro hosts.

So the lectin bird is our executive producer. Dylan Keith is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Rachel Kusik, Akari Foster Keys, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Pasco-Tieres, Sindhu Nara Sanban Dan, Matt Kielte, Annie McEwan, Alex Neeson, Sour Carrey,ora Squittbast, Sarah Sandak, Ariane Watt, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster, with help from Andrew Vignale. Our fact-truckers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleson. Hi, my name is Teresa. I'm coding from Coachester in Essex UK. Leadership support for Radio Lab Science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betsey Moore Foundation.

Science sandbox, the Seymund Foundation initiative, and the John Tampotent Foundation. Foundation support for Radio Lab was provided by the Alfred P. Stone Foundation.