[00:16] Meg: Welcome to Desperately Seeking the 80s. I am Meg.

[00:18] Jessica: And I'm Jessica. Meg and I have been friends since 1982. We got through middle school and high school together here in New York City,

[00:27] Meg: where we still live and where we podcast about New York city in the 80s. I do ripped from the headlines and

[00:32] Jessica: I do pop culture.

[00:34] Meg: So Gabriel Rotello, who wrote the wonderful CBGB Conspiracy, listened to our episode and was so cool and sweet and lovely to write in and tell us what he thought. We felt a big old hug.

[00:53] Jessica: It was so affirming. I hope he's listening. That was one of the best correspondences I think I've ever been party to.

[01:02] Meg: And how about the fact that he knew Kathie Durst's best friend, Gilberta? How insane is that?

[01:10] Jessica: I was on the floor.

[01:15] Meg: And the fact that he thought that maybe perhaps she did influence him to write about the fact that the friends were the ones who were solving the murder.

[01:26] Jessica: I mean, how, Jessica, how did we

[01:29] Meg: pick up on that? That's crazy.

[01:30] Jessica: I. This is just, you know, it proves my constant theory, which is everything is connected and the things that we are interested in. It's a very small pool of people. And I think it almost feels inevitable that that was the case. It made me think a lot about being a writer. Being a writer is a lonely business. It is a solitary business. And once your stuff is published, it's a sudden and stark end to something that has consumed you for years. And then you may never hear feedback. You may. Like, that might be it. You put it out into the world, you hope something happens. And even if it's just that one person is positively affected by your book or even entertained, that's great. And you might never know. What he wrote to us was so kind, but it was also so moving for me because I know that this podcast that we just did about his book was such an affirmation and a confirmation that he was not yelling into the void. You know, that he's moved out of the solitary life of the writer, and now hopefully, a community can rise around him. So for anyone who loved the book, I'll bet you anything he's got a website or, you know, his publisher forwards emails or information, like, reach out. Read the book. Reach out to him. Let him know what you think. It's. It's the best thing that can happen to a writer and a nice guy.

[03:08] Meg: Such a nice guy. And we've gotta get him into town. I'm pretty sure he lives in, like, Connecticut. I think he's like a train ride Away?

[03:16] Jessica: Yes.

[03:16] Meg: We just gotta lure him into the city for the day. Walk around in this beautiful weather, do a little field trip with Gabriel.

[03:23] Jessica: Oh, I think that's a necessity.

[03:26] Meg: We can walk around the Bowery. Go to Phoebe's.

[03:29] Jessica: He suggested. Yeah. And he suggested going to the bunker, which I think is fantastic. Totally.

[03:35] Meg: Anyway, yay, playdate. Jessica, what do you remember about our sex ed when we were, like, in middle school? Did we have any?

[03:59] Jessica: Well, I wasn't at Nightingale for middle school.

[04:02] Meg: Oh, that's true.

[04:03] Jessica: I got to Nightingale in eighth grade. Okay, so which is technically middle school. Yes.

[04:09] Meg: What was your sex ed like at Fleming?

[04:12] Jessica: I have a vague memory. Vague. Roughly third or fourth grade. There being a really uncomfortable. Oh, my God. It's really coming back to me in real time right now.

[04:26] Meg: I love it.

[04:27] Jessica: Oh, my God. So we had, like, it was a group, and then the boys and girls split into two separate groups. And it was sort of like a bio class. Like, this is your body. This is what it does. This is what it's for. But they didn't talk about puberty in that, like, exactly. What's going to happen to you? That was when we were split into groups. But I remember very bizarrely, this is like. It all came into a weird focus later in life. We had this music teacher, lovely man, named Mr. Garvey. And Mr. Garvey always wore a little lapel pin that looked like two tiny feet. And he encouraged the kids to wear them, too. Okay. And this is the person who is sort of the pro. Like the. He led. Like, feet with toes, like. Like the soles of two little feet

[05:22] Meg: together next to each other. Yeah.

[05:23] Jessica: Like little feet.

[05:25] Meg: Naked feet.

[05:26] Jessica: Naked little feet. Okay.

[05:27] Meg: I think I can picture that.

[05:28] Jessica: Well, you will in a second. Years later, I found out that that was an anti abortion.

[05:35] Meg: What?

[05:35] Jessica: Yes, it was an anti abortion solidarity kind of pin. Or for some. And Mr. Garvey was hardcore Catholic. Things that we didn't get as kids. But, like, as we grew up and the Fleming people stayed in touch, suddenly, like, everyone was like, wait a minute, do you remember that I had that pin? Why did you have that? What? Oh, my God. He was really Catholic. That's right. Oh, my God.

[06:00] Meg: Indoctrinate you.

[06:01] Jessica: Yes. And I. And he was the person who led this one day of sex ed activity at Fleming. So it was super weird in hindsight.

[06:14] Meg: Oh, my God.

[06:14] Jessica: Just super uncomfortable at the time. And every. And everyone was so uncomfortable that there wasn't. There weren't too many shenanigans. Everyone just wanted the floor to swallow them.

[06:27] Meg: Fascinating. Yeah.

[06:28] Jessica: So that's. That is a memory that I had no ability to conjure up. Never would have, unless you had just asked that question.

[06:36] Meg: Well, I could have asked you a much more personal question, but I didn't because this is a public podcast and you probably don't want to talk about the intimate details of what this podcast is going to be about.

[06:52] Jessica: Oh, May.

[06:54] Meg: It's okay. It's going to be okay.

[06:56] Jessica: Should I hold Alfie for this? Do I need an Alfie?

[06:59] Meg: You should close his ears.

[07:01] Jessica: Okay. Alfie, don't listen.

[07:03] Meg: My sources are the New Yorker and a documentary called the Disappearance of Cher Height.

[07:10] Jessica: Oh, Cher Height. Okay, okay.

[07:12] Meg: You know who she is.

[07:12] Jessica: I know who she is.

[07:13] Meg: All right. I did not. In 1982 on the mike Douglas Show, Mike interviewed David Hasselhoff about his runaway hit Knight Rider, and then turned to his second guest, Cher Height, author of the Height A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality and most recently, the Height Report on Male Sexuality. Cher dressed glamorously in a black cocktail dress with long, curly strawberry blonde hair and sleepy scarlet lipstick, smoked a cigarette and spoke quietly and confidently about how most women achieve orgasms not from penile thrusting, but from stimulation of the clitoris. Can you picture her? Do you know what she looks like? Yeah, she looks sort of like Carol Kane.

[08:07] Jessica: Yes.

[08:07] Meg: Right?

[08:08] Jessica: Yes. That's a really good description. Yes.

[08:11] Meg: Mike kind of giggled and David tried to add to the conversation.

[08:16] Jessica: Oh, no, no, no, David. No, no, no, no. It's not gonna be good. Quote.

[08:22] Meg: I know a lot of women, though, that, that, that don't. How do you talk about this stuff? He squirmed. Cher showed him everyone was new to the word. Claire. When her first book came out in 1976, the New York Times elucidated their readers that it was a, quote, pea sized hooded organ above the vagina that sexologists regard as the female sex organ equivalent to the penis of the male. Yeah. No one knew. Revelatory. In the late 70s, the prevailing assumption, thanks to Freud, was. Was that women's orgasms were weak and hard to achieve because of women's neurotic blocks. If you can't come, it's your own fault. In the 60s, going back in time, Masters and Johnson had discovered that the clitoris was in fact the place to go. But they still recommended heterosexual vaginal intercourse was the best way to get the traction necessary. Now, Cher had a very different approach than Freud, Alfred Kinsey and William Masters and Virginia Johnson, and she reached what felt like a radical conclusion. We don't need the penis at all. Manual and oral stimulation of the clitoris is, in fact, the way to go. In their interview, Mike Douglas asked her about how the women's movement had affected women, quote, the male sexual response. Cher responded that it should help. She argued that it would take the pressure off men to, quote, perform if a woman's orgasm isn't dependent on the man's erection. There are so many more options to make everybody happy. And removing the whole idea of only, quote, real men being able to make their partners come through intercourse would be a relief to men. Right. David Hasselhoff seemed to agree.

[10:35] Jessica: I am. I don't.

[10:37] Meg: I think, actually, to be honest, like, he. He really held his own. You can see it on YouTube.

[10:42] Jessica: Aw, he comes off as a pretty.

[10:44] Meg: Pretty cool guy. Yeah.

[10:46] Jessica: That's sweet.

[10:47] Meg: Leather jacket, of course. Was it members only, I'm sure.

[10:50] Jessica: Ah.

[10:51] Meg: But by and large, most men who heard about the height reports were threatened, defensive, and defiant. To them, it sounded like men were being erased. Radical feminism at its most aggressive. They didn't like the sound of that at all. But let's back up a bit. Scherheit moved to New York in 1969 to go to graduate school at Columbia. But her professor doubted she'd written her master's thesis and insisted she wouldn't have had access to the books she cited at the University of Florida, which was her alma mater. Cher saw this as a bold example of gender and class bias, and she dropped out of Columbia. Fuck them. She saw she had four choices going forward. Be a prostitute, a secretary, get married, or be a model. She decided to model because it required the least personal involvement, and she managed to support herself. She was a bombshell type. She was the inspiration for many pulp paperback illustrations, including the James Bond publications. And she was in an ad for Olivetti typewriters where she posed as a secretary, and the tagline was, quote, the typewriter that's so smart that she doesn't have to be.

[12:22] Jessica: Oh, how charming.

[12:25] Meg: Now, around this time, the women's movement was gaining steam, and this ad and others like it led to protests by the National Organization for Women and other feminist groups. Cher heard about the protests. So funny. I'm in that ad. And added her voice to the movement, and she started going to marches and meetings. This is a quote from Cher. The conversations we had in the movement and the esprit de corps were wildly intoxicating. The movement's intellectual debates made Columbia universities look pale and anemic, and she eventually made the connection between women's Role in society and. And their role in sex. In the early 70s, she came up with a questionnaire that asked women detailed long form questions about their sexual life. She mimeographed thousands of copies on pink paper with red ink.

[13:25] Jessica: Ooh.

[13:26] Meg: Because she wanted it to feel like a diary, and she was hoping that that would elicit frank responses. She distributed the questionnaires all over New York boroughs, and there was a return address. Then she put ads in mademoiselle and bride's magazines and sent them to church groups and university women's centers all over the country. Guess how many she got back? 10, 3,000.

[13:53] Jessica: That's it.

[13:55] Meg: That's pretty cool.

[13:58] Jessica: I'm thinking that if she was doing this all over the country, that's an incredibly small number. I mean, it's a great number to start for a study, but wow, think of how many women. Think of how women didn't know how to talk about it, didn't want to talk about it. Like they had been told forever. This is something, I mean, not to be really ridiculous about it, but lie back and think of England was not that long before that. So I'm right.

[14:28] Meg: And the fact that, you know, first you had to fill out the questionnaire and it's completely voluntary, and then you have to get a stamp and an envelope and address it and send it back, I mean, that's. It's. It's. It's a commitment.

[14:44] Jessica: And how many women also were with men who would have said, well, what's that? What are you doing?

[14:49] Meg: Right.

[14:49] Jessica: You know, not.

[14:50] Meg: Maybe not so good, but she got 3,000 back. And she was actually like, wow. She didn't expect to get that many back.

[14:56] Jessica: So she was phenomenal. Thrilled. Yay.

[14:59] Meg: And then she started the work of quantifying the answers. She published her findings in the height report. And the news that got the most press of all of her findings was that the clitoris was the star of the show. It's not like she discovered the clitoris, but the fact that women were like, actually, the most reliable way to have an orgasm is this and that. That was sort of across the board. And she wrote about that in the book. And people were like, oh. And that's what made the book sell many, many, many copies. Women of all walks of life wrote in to thank Cher they weren't crazy after all. Quote, when I recall all the ridiculous apologies I've made and the doctors I've seen, I could scream, you've changed my life forever. From a woman who was having a hard time having an orgasm and the doctors and her husband were just like, well, it's all in your head, honey. Get with it. Get with program, babe. Many men, too, were grateful, but others were eager to discount her findings, especially when she came out with her book on men's sexuality in 1981. That one was published by our dear friend Bob Gottlieb, who said when he read the questionnaires that the men filled out. I haven't had many sadder experiences as an editor in my life.

[16:36] Jessica: Oh, my God. Why?

[16:38] Meg: They wrote that they didn't have anyone to talk to. They felt isolated. They couldn't talk to their wives. They couldn't talk to their friends. What those questionnaires revealed was just how lonely men were.

[16:55] Jessica: You mean, talking about their sexuality, talking

[16:58] Meg: about themselves in their life. It started with just, you know, tell me about the same. Same questions. How many times do you have an orgasm? Under what circumstances? In a relationship, outside of a relationship, all the stuff, you know. But because they were long form questions, men started writing a lot. And what was revealed was that they were just extremely lonely. When Cher wrote about that loneliness in her book, it turned out that many men really didn't want to hear about that. They felt the book criticized masculinity, and

[17:43] Jessica: they attempted toxic masculinity. By definition, toxic fellas, right?

[17:49] Meg: And they attempted, as a result, to discount her methodology. What kind of guy would fill this thing out anyway? No one I know. And the only kind of guy who would fill out this kind of questionnaire is the kind of guy I don't even want to be in the same room with.

[18:04] Jessica: Right? He doesn't represent me.

[18:05] Meg: He doesn't represent me. I don't know anyone who's lonely. Lonely. What the hell is that about? Okay. I mean, it's interesting because you watch the documentary, it wasn't like they were just rolling their eyes going, oh, silly lady who thinks she knows men. They were angry. Angry at her.

[18:24] Jessica: Well, I mean, you. You take someone's mask off and they are revealed. And that. I could imagine that for men like that, if. If the women in their lives or the women they want to have in their lives in the future have read this, they are going to be under a really different microscope, and they are not going to be able to, you know, sell whatever story about themselves they had in the past that they were used to. Right? And that must be really terrifying because we're, you and I both, we've talked about this before, but women have community. Think about the movie, the women, right? So that's the 1930s women at the salon, gossiping about everything.

[19:07] Meg: Right.

[19:08] Jessica: Men. And men know.

[19:10] Meg: I mean, they do have, like, the golf course or whatever, but apparently they're not really sharing. No, no.

[19:15] Jessica: That's.

[19:16] Meg: They're posturing for each other. And so Cher's assumption, or hope, rather, that exposing that toxic masculinity wasn't really all that great for men as well, would be a relief to men. Not so much for a lot of them. They didn't want to hear that at all. It was scary and threatening.

[19:42] Jessica: I'm just imagining, like, at one of, like, in some unknown locker room, some bowling alleys. Like, what are all the stereotypical, like, golf course. One poor soul being like, I have a feeling, and the other's, like, stomping him into the ground. Because if you do, then I must. So no one talk about it.

[20:05] Meg: Well, interesting, because she went on a talk show, and the panel were three or four men who hadn't even read her book. They hadn't even read it, but they were like, that's ridiculous.

[20:18] Jessica: I.

[20:18] Meg: That doesn't make any sense to me. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And one of the guys goes, for example, when I was a little kid, I was probably about five years old, I tripped and fell, and I cried, and my friends beat the shit out of me, and I never cried again. So I don't believe that these men are telling you that they want to cry. I don't believe it. And she's like, I'm sorry, what? I think I recognize your questionnaire, sir.

[20:45] Jessica: Oh, my God.

[20:46] Meg: Like, the fact that he thought that that was an example of how she was wrong.

[20:51] Jessica: Well, and that. That's a normal.

[20:53] Meg: It was an example of how she was right.

[20:55] Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. No, that's. That's chilling, actually. Very sad.

[21:01] Meg: Well, and that's the thing, Jessica. It just wasn't that long ago. We're talking about in our youth. We're talking about the early 80s. Oh, no.

[21:09] Jessica: I know.

[21:10] Meg: Okay. The backlash was swift and harsh. Cher, after her first book, sold like hotcakes. She'd made quite a bit of money and moved into a gorgeous apartment on Fifth Avenue and 64th Street.

[21:27] Jessica: Oh, well done.

[21:28] Meg: I know. And she decorated it with rococo artwork and invited fabulous friends over. Her neighbors were Gene Simmons and Donna Summer.

[21:38] Jessica: Stop it.

[21:39] Meg: Her parties were filled with feminist icons and artists and musicians and intellectuals and rock stars, but she was getting pummeled in the press, and it was really taking a toll. If you see how she. In the documentary, how she starts, you know, her quest for knowledge with These just bright eyes and this eager spirit and bringing her brochure or her. Sorry, her questionnaires all over the city on her bike. And then you get to the mid-80s and it's just the life has gone out of her. It's. It's like the people who talk about getting attacked on social media and how it just. You would think, like, oh, well, don't read the comments. Right. She couldn't help it. She had to read the comments.

[22:31] Jessica: Well, also, at the time. We've talked about this before, a bad review shuts you down.

[22:37] Meg: Well, there's that too. The book, the second book did not do well. And we'll get to that in a moment. But right now she's just trying to friggin promote it. So she's going on every talk show that will have her. And she was really famous. I mean, you'd heard of her. I had not. But according to the documentary, like, she was, as, you know, famous as Ruth Westheimer.

[23:01] Jessica: Mm.

[23:02] Meg: All right. Oprah invited her on to address a studio audience of only men. So the only two women in the room are Oprah and Cher. Everyone else is a man. And those men were pissed. They took out all their frustrations with the women's movement on Cher. It went so far that even Oprah started looking a little freaked out and found herself defending women's right to have a job. I mean, these guys felt buoyed by each other and they just went for blood. And they were like, get pregnant and barefoot and back in the kitchen and I don't even wanna see you anymore.

[23:46] Jessica: It was really crazy to watch. Well, I mean, is it so different from the manosphere now? No, it's exactly the same thing. Interesting. It never goes away. It only goes quieter. Dormant or not. Not dormant.

[24:02] Meg: It just gets quieter underground.

[24:04] Jessica: Yeah. It's just so fricking vile. Go ahead.

[24:09] Meg: Well, it shocked the shit out of Oprah, I'll tell you. It was brutal. The men yelled or laughed at Cher. Few had read the book. Now Cher held her own, but the strain was showing. Shortly after that, the Sally Jesse Raphael Show.

[24:27] Jessica: Oh, God. That bastion of journalism. Boo.

[24:31] Meg: Sent limo driver Frank Nicoletti to pick Cher up for a live taping they taped in Connecticut. Cher was over an hour late and it was pretty weird that she hadn't come out. I mean, she was really late. And the way they tell the story in the documentary, I mean, I'm like, she was. I think she was having a panic attack. I think she was like, I. I can't do this because it was a little weird.

[25:00] Jessica: My brain just went to. Because you named the guy that he did something to her.

[25:04] Meg: Well, this is what happened.

[25:06] Jessica: Oh, dear.

[25:07] Meg: So he's waiting, and he's waiting and he's waiting. And finally he goes to her door and knocks on the door. And she answers the door, and he said, I'm sorry, dear, but you've gotta come with me now. And Cher flipped the fuck out. And according to Frank, she hit him. Now, Frank was very happy to tell Maury Povich all about it.

[25:32] Jessica: Oh, my God.

[25:33] Meg: Next day on A Current Affair, when Maury Povich set up an interview with Cher and she thought it was just about her book, when really he ambushed her live on the air with this frigging limo driver, Frank. Then she got really upset and she tried to say, you brought me here under false pretenses. And Maury Povich also clearly hated her. I mean, this was not like, ooh, this is such good tv. It was like, I get to roast this woman right now. She storms off the air. She storms off camera. And she shoved a cameraman on her way out. And you can hear the cameraman snickering at her. Like, he's laughing and snickering at her. Can you imagine?

[26:22] Jessica: Yeah, I can. Because, you know, those tabloid shows, and they were not being called tabloid yet, but eventually they were recognized as such. You know, Maury Povich's entire show became, are you the baby's daddy? Like, they were the bottom of the barrel bully pulpits for these assholes.

[26:44] Meg: Right? But I'm just imagining from her vantage point, just all of the hate and the laughter and the mockery coming at her. She just was not prepared or able to handle.

[26:59] Jessica: No. Who. Who gets trained to handle that? No. And. And I have no idea what media training was at the time, but I can't imagine it was terribly advanced.

[27:11] Meg: Right? I mean, if even Oprah was caught off guard. There's also something in the air right now that is a little scary.

[27:20] Jessica: No, no. That many men in a room yelling and being aggressive, get the fuck out of the room.

[27:26] Meg: Yeah, get the fuck out of the room. That's the atmosphere that she's living in all the time. And like fucking Frank coming to her door. Dear. The height report had been revolutionary, but her subsequent books were not taken seriously. And to your point, she couldn't sell them, and she was forced to sell her apartment. And soon after, she left for Europe with her concert pianist husband. Recent findings by sexologists reveal there is still to this day, I don't know if this Will shock you or not. An orgasm gap between men and women in heterosexual relationships. Apparently, lesbians, it's not much of a gap. They have it all figured out. But heterosexual couples, they still have a lot to learn. A, quote, cultural overvaluing of intercourse and a quote, tendency for women to feel less entitled to sexual pleasure than men do.

[28:31] Jessica: To this day, I am not surprised. And I will share something with you that you may have known at one point. I wouldn't be surprised if you've forgotten or I may not have told you. I think I was still married. That was prior to 2010, was the first time that I came up with the idea for Nice Girls don't say that. And it was originally going to be a book about, essentially this. It was, what do you feel you can't talk about? What do you feel you're not allowed to say? What? I mean, it could be about a partner. It could be sexual. It could be about work, it could be about anything. But I was really interested because after my second book came out and I was roasted for talking about what I did in the book. So I do understand what it is to be lambasted. I do know what that is. Not at that level. But I remember sobbing at one point. And my dad was like, there's no such thing as bad publicity. And I'm like, I don't know if you're right about that. And have you read the book, Daddy? No, I bet he didn't. No, he did not. And so better off that one. No, don't wanna. No, thank you. Wouldn't be prudent. And what people said to me in. In, you know, and it was only, like, Amazon readers. Right. But it was. Someone actually wrote, you were raised better than to talk about these things. Oh.

[29:59] Meg: Huh.

[30:00] Jessica: Interesting. And, you know, because I talk about Upper east side, Nightingale, all that kind of stuff in the book. And then the other stuff that I did, and I got really intrigued by that. And I also saw that another. I can't. I think it was like, Pamela Debar. Do you remember her?

[30:16] Meg: Of course.

[30:17] Jessica: And her book. I'm with the Band. Yes. And she was celebrated for talking about much more explicit sexual things. So I realized the expectation of someone like Pamela Debar was nothing whereas a nice girl. Shut your mouth.

[30:34] Meg: Yeah. Yeah.

[30:35] Jessica: And so I was like, oh, my God. And so I did exactly what Sheer Height did. I had questionnaires and I did focus groups, and I had women. The findings were very similar. And then I started interviewing men and I interviewed them differently, and I focused on questions that went straight to the things that men are afraid of or that we think they are. So one of the first things I asked and I interviewed. I remember. I think I even still have the recordings. Interviewed a couple of guys that I. For hours. And I asked them, does penis size matter? Like, all the stuff about. And they were so candid and some of the things that came out of that and why I'm so interested to hear about Cher Heights experience. But the findings are, to me, like, the ultimate in. Yeah, obviously, because even in 2007, let's say this was. They were saying that they faked orgasms when wearing a condom so that they could get out of the experience when they felt they couldn't come, and they felt so lesser for not being able to do. And I was like, men are faking orgasms. Like, I didn't know that. And they're like. They were like, the same way that women have said to men, it's happened to you. You just don't know. There was a lot of that. And they were talking about. They would say, like, well, I'm not insecure about, you know, myself. But then one of them told was like, yeah, but I don't ever want to hear about her former boyfriends, because then I'm only thinking about myself in relation to them. And it was so convoluted and so over the top. And I was like, these guys have zero conversations with one another, and their. Their confidence is zero. When confidence is low and a group of men get together, violence is obviously the thing that's gonna happen. So listening to the Oprah story, I'm just like, yeah, right.

[32:48] Meg: You know, I thought it was really interesting. I can't wait to talk to my mother about it when I see her again on Friday, because I haven't seen her since I saw the documentary and read this great article in the New Yorker. But she was right in the middle of the whole second wave feminism movement. You know, having been born in the 40s and, you know, reached maturity in the 50s and getting married in the 60s. And then second wave feminism. It's a very interesting time to be a woman. I think she's like, almost exactly Cheryl Height's age. Obviously, she, you know, had a very different life, but they were in the same city at the same time. And I'm just so interested to hear, like, what her perspective is on this and also how, as we know, you know, second wave feminism brought culture forward a few paces. But then the backlash of the 80s and fundamentalism and fragile patriarchy pushed it back maybe not all the way to the beginning, but pushed it back a little bit. And then here we are, all the incel. And all of these. The manosphere. Like, all of that. That's happening now, that feels really scary. Like Elon Musk wanting to impregnate every young woman as far as his eye can see. I mean, what.

[34:12] Jessica: No, there's a movement about that.

[34:14] Meg: Oh, I'm well aware.

[34:16] Jessica: Well, and did. You know. But on the. On the brighter side, you know that all three Alexander brothers were just sentenced.

[34:22] Meg: Yes.

[34:23] Jessica: Like, basically forever, goodbye and good luck.

[34:25] Meg: I mean, right. We've got, like, me too. We have Weinstein, we have Epstein to a certain extent, we've got the Alexander, but these things are being exposed. But at the same time, there's just this, like, angry backlash.

[34:38] Jessica: Well, because. Well, there are two things that I have to say. And also, by the way, Andrew Tate has now been. He's incarcerated in some country that's not this one for rape. I think it's trafficking. But I saw a woman. This just made me laugh about how women. How women fight back. And in our social media world, a woman created a meme that looks kind of like the poster for Lawrence of Arabia, but the face is Andrew Tate and it's Lawrence of Dry Labia. And I was like, I am officially dead. Well played, lady.

[35:18] Meg: Well played.

[35:19] Jessica: But, you know, I have said this to you before. I'm not breaking ground here, but I think that what's interesting about the Oprah thing is that it was so unusual to get so many angry men in a room at once, and how overwhelming that was. And an eye opener. Well, social media is. And the Internet is all of these men and more and more and more putting themselves into communities that are on a feedback loop. That's why it's getting as bad as it is.

[35:51] Meg: But to your point, too, the women are getting really good at the social media as well. So thank God there's that. But it's terrifying. It's scary. The. The whole trad wife thing, you know, they're trying to, like, basically take away all birth control.

[36:05] Jessica: Yeah. How about the fact that you. I think you said this on our last podcast that to vote, you have to have the same name women do as on their birth certificate. So married women.

[36:17] Meg: I'm not sure if I did say that on the podcast, but, yes, I. I have read about that.

[36:21] Jessica: So I. I try to take some comfort in the notion that the death rattle of outmoded ways of existing can be loud right before the death. I could Be so incredibly wrong.

[36:36] Meg: Let's just, like, make our day just a little bit happier thinking that that's what we're witnessing right now is just the death rattle that's just very loud and very scary.

[36:46] Jessica: Well, I mean, to your point, it's harder to be dominant when women have such a vocal platform where they can get together. It's different now. It's different than having to stand in front of Bloomingdale's with a placard just yelling about Hustler magazine. Like it's. It's very different.

[37:07] Meg: And having domestic situations where you feel like you can silence your wife.

[37:14] Jessica: Well, and also, how about this? There are more women in medicine and law than ever.

[37:19] Meg: But then we also have people like Carolyn Levitt and Kristi Noem and all these people who are trying so hard to keep this disgusting thing going strong.

[37:31] Jessica: I agree with you, but I'm just saying that the number of women who might find a female judge on the bench with whatever it is that they're

[37:41] Meg: arguing, more likely now there's a lawyer

[37:44] Jessica: who's going to represent them properly and listen to them properly. There's a doctor that's gonna listen to what the problem is with the same experience as the patient. All of those things are.

[37:55] Meg: I'm so glad you said that, because that's actually how I wanted to close out the. This whole segment is that it felt like Cher Height, who did pass away just a couple years ago, three years ago or so, felt like she hadn't made any ground, that all of her efforts were for naught. And I. I just wanna, like, say to her angel, and to all the second wave feminists out there who fought the good fight when we were just little girls, thank you. And it did make a difference. Even though it feels really shitty right now. You absolutely made a difference. And we'll just keep trying to make some traction.

[38:34] Jessica: I mean, to your point about trad wives, I feel like the women who believe in that. I feel like, as with so many things, there's so little awareness, if any at all, about what was happening before. You know, let's just say starting in the 50s. And these are young women. So for them, we are what our mothers were. So, you know, 70s, the riot girls of the 90s, like all of that stuff. Did you see the. The Lilith Fair documentary, Building a Mystery?

[39:09] Meg: I haven't, no.

[39:10] Jessica: Oh, maybe we should do a watch party on that.

[39:12] Meg: Ooh, fun.

[39:12] Jessica: You know, they were talking about. Record labels were telling them no one's going to go to a concert. That's an all female lineup and they exploded. Yeah. I think that these trad wife girls, I don't know what they're looking for.

[39:28] Meg: I don't know what their point is. I think they are looking for safety and they're being told if you have this traditional life, that that is the most safe that you can can be. And it looks real again and it looks pretty on Instagram. I'm sorry, the muted tones, they're pretty. But I think after like maybe the sixth baby, they might begin to feel a little worn down.

[40:05] Jessica: Meg? Yes. You went out on the town as a teenager, which we have discussed and we talked about the bars of second Avenue. True. But did you ever go to any small music venues? So not like a big place to hear a concert, but like a local band kind of place?

[40:24] Meg: I did in like the 90s, early 90s when I was in college and I would come home from school.

[40:32] Jessica: Cool.

[40:33] Meg: I couldn't tell you the names of them. It was like one of those situations where a friend would be like, ooh, let's go. And I'd be like, all right. I wasn't getting the tickets, let's put it that way.

[40:42] Jessica: New York City was a place where local bands would play original music. And A and R guys from record labels would go out every single night to listen to whoever is local and starting to make a splash and hopefully sign them. And that was how you got a record deal. It was playing out locally. Maybe you and your friends would get in a van and go to Poughkeepsie or what have you, but that's what it was and that's how it was and it worked. And lots and lots of local bands got their start that way until there was a bit of a crisis. On March 11, 1985, there was an article in the New York Times that caught my eye. The article was about how rock clubs, their nomenclature, were going to be under siege and they. They were not going to survive in 1985, 1986, really, because lo and behold, the drinking age was changing.

[41:52] Meg: Indeed.

[41:53] Jessica: So we have talked on this podcast about the Jennifer Levin murder. We've talked about the impact on teenage drink and from the summer of 1986. But as of December 1, 1985, so really think about it as January 86, the drinking age in New York City went from 19 to 21.

[42:15] Meg: I remember it well. It was a big fat bummer for those of us who were approaching that age.

[42:20] Jessica: Suddenly the senior year you were excited about is gone.

[42:24] Meg: Right. I mean, you know the story that that's why Dorian's became so popular. Because one of the Dorian boys, it might have been Michael, was at nyu and he was like, oh, guys, just come to my dad's bar and he'll serve you. Because the drinking age had just gone up and a lot of college guys, especially freshmen, sophomores, where else are they gonna go?

[42:49] Jessica: So, yeah, the kids were suddenly very nervous because also, what 14 year old is really gonna have a fake ID that makes them look like they're 21? Not so easy. But what surprised me was that small rock venues all over the city freaked out. And they freaked out because their contention was that that age group from 19 to 21 made up such a huge bulk of their bar sales and that the, the, the liquor sale was actually what kept the venues and business. Not the door charge, nothing else. Not the money that the bands made. And if the bands were young people, the people they were gonna be bringing in were now under the drinking age. So they were like, forget it, everything's going to close. And it was a huge anxiety over a death knell. But the question was, was it going to happen? One of the people interviewed who was like, rock is over in New York City was the manager of the Peppermint Lounge.

[43:56] Meg: Went to the Peppermint Lounge.

[43:57] Jessica: I know you did. And he was, he was absolutely like, this is it. The guys who ran the Ritz that later, of course, became Webster hall for the second time, they were like, it's all over. There's. There's no place local bands aren't going to be able to play. Cbgb, of course, was still around. And there were all kinds, and they were. There were a couple of places. CBGB was one of them. They kind of had some weird immunity where they had so many bands playing that were teenagers, like our friend Guy Richard Smith, they had so many teenagers playing that if they stopped having the teenagers come in, they wouldn't even have bands playing.

[44:41] Meg: Well, they had special nights though, didn't they? To get around it, they didn't serve alcohol on certain nights. Right, but they had Sundays.

[44:49] Jessica: Right, but that was a cover. Like they really had them there all the time. And because maybe they had the, the special night, whoever was enforcing looked the other way anyway. So there was all of this hysteria about this happening. And what interested me also is why this happened. I never knew this and unsurprisingly, because of how we get around the city, which is relevant, but the drinking age increase was started by six governors from northeastern states, including New York City, who wanted the drinking age to Rise. Because if it didn't, it would cut off highway funds for those states. And it was part of Ronald Reagan's initiative to stop drunk driving.

[45:37] Meg: Yeah, I mean, that makes sense. But why New York City? We don't drunk drive. Well, we don't drive.

[45:42] Jessica: We don't drive. Exactly. But, you know, you can't say everyone in New York except New York City, because.

[45:48] Meg: Why not?

[45:49] Jessica: Well, clearly you and I think that. So there were, There were a lot of venues that closed because even though it's a very small group of people, if you think about it, kids who are older, high school and through college are the ones who are going to Those bars getting 19 and 20, that's probably what a third of the audience that they used to have out of the way. That's a huge drop in revenue. So everyone was freaking out about this. It did come to pass. But what I also really liked was I was looking for, well, what do the kids have to say about this? Like, it's not just that your bar is going to close, like now kids aren't going to have a place to go to go out who love to listen to music. Well, lo and behold, a letter did come in to the New York Times from Jeff Tullo. And Jeff said, cities rock Club fear increases in drinking age from March 11 brings up some valuable points for, quote, younger club goers in the metropolitan area. I agree clubs may be hurt if the drinking age is raised, but few clubs and only rarely enforce present drinking age restrictions. In other words, stop your yammering. No one's doing it anyway now. So, you know, like, come on, this is word from the street. He said, I always had my fake ID handy. When the drinking age went up to 19, the clubs proofed for roughly the first month of the new law and then abandoned it again. What I found says Jeff at all New York City clubs is that drinks are so expensive that I rarely buy one. Anyway, the under 21 crowd pre games their drinking and brings flasks.

[47:41] Meg: They do that now too.

[47:42] Jessica: Jeff. I love Jeff. His tone is so indignant.

[47:46] Meg: You know, can I just tell you one thing, please. I hope Kathy doesn't mind my telling you this, but she used to pre game because drinks are so expensive at Dorian's and so she would pregame at Chinese restaurants every.

[48:00] Jessica: Of course I did that. I was there. Yes, that was at Sichuan, Hunan Cottage. Anyway, so Jeff follows up with perhaps a solution to all of this nonsense would be a simple hand stamp system. Those who are over the drinking age would get a hand stamp indicating to the bartenders that it's permissible to serve them in this way. Clubs could keep a very strict age policy without losing business. And guess what? That is exactly what many of them did. So, Jeff, wherever you are, you may have been the guy to turn the tides and get kids of all ages into clubs. As always, on this podcast, you look for two things or three things. You look for the money, you look for the real estate, or you look for Ronald Reagan.

[48:54] Meg: I just love how whenever anyone in New York goes, this is gonna be dead. This is gonna be past. Say we can't get past any of this, and New Yorkers just figure out a workaround. We have ingenuity.

[49:10] Jessica: Yes, we do. We are also stubborn, and we don't like anyone to tell us what to do.

[49:16] Meg: Yeah.

[49:17] Jessica: So that is a perfect combination for Jeff Tullo. And just stamp your hand with green if you're overage and red if you're underage. And he also made a point about what about covers? You're all charging covers. Come on. You know, someone once had a quote that I read about how, like, Cher is like a cockroach and that there could be a nuclear winter and the only things that would live were cockroaches and Cher. Cause Cher will not die. And I really love that. And I, I feel that's kind of the same thing as this, Like, New York nightlife will go through ups and downs. And right now it's definitely a down,

[49:59] Meg: But I don't know about that. I don't know about that.

[50:02] Jessica: Well, think we are. I don't feel like we're the city that never sleeps at the moment. I think that our nightlife is a little.

[50:08] Meg: I don't know, Jessica. I need to start sending you some of my particles.

[50:13] Jessica: Oh, well, I'm so glad things are happening. I'm so glad that your rich social life is what it is.

[50:17] Meg: I just, I, I, I'm just telling you there's a lot of really fun stuff going on. Okay, so what is our tie in? I, I kind of have it, but I don't have the words for it. But I was thinking when I was working on the Cher height story, how. Oh, my God, the 80s were so fucking conservative.

[50:36] Jessica: Yes, it was a fucking shit show. It was a throwback to the 50s. You and I, we were going to parties in stockings and high heels and cocktail dresses, and we thought that was just dandy. The generation and a half before us were, you know, dropping acid in bare feet and running around fucking each other every place. Of course, it was Conservative. And we absolutely had no awareness at the time.

[51:04] Meg: I didn't realize that the 80s, which was when we came of age, was actually when culture was being pushed back.

[51:13] Jessica: Do you feel that this silliest thing. Do you feel that this podcast has made that clear for you now? The 80s was the 50s redux.

[51:26] Meg: I know we've said that, but I just.

[51:28] Jessica: It.

[51:28] Meg: It became extremely clear to me. You had a story this week.

[51:33] Jessica: You had a visceral response to what was going on in a way that was maybe an intellectual response before.

[51:39] Meg: Sure. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, your story was also about like, oh, let's like, raise the drinking age and let's like. Reactionary.

[51:49] Jessica: Yes, I think that's actually the best word. It's not that getting drunk drivers off the road is a bad idea.

[51:55] Meg: Yeah, let's not. We don't like drunk drivers.

[51:57] Jessica: No, it's that it's a reactionary. If it's coming from Reagan, the first question is, who is benefiting from this other than, you know, who he says? That's kind of my thought process. And of course, the fact that all of these governors were pushing it because if they didn't, they weren't going to get funding for highways. Like, so the states were not looking out for us with the drinking issue. It was entirely taken over by, are we going to get funding? And by the way, the funding that they're getting for their highways in these states, not all of that money is going to the highways. You can bet your bottom dollar on that one. Grrr.

[52:36] Meg: The amount of graft and corruption.

[52:38] Jessica: Oh, really? In the government. Why, Meg? I think there might be. Boo. Not all of that's gonna go to the right place. So, you know, and again, what did I say earlier? And you have said so many times, follow the money. Where is that money gonna go? Anyway, so our. Our tie in reactionary 80s, I think. I think. I know I've got it.

[53:03] Meg: Okay.

[53:04] Jessica: The men reacting to her presence and her study and all of that, in a way, it was similar to what these rock venue guys who had a system that had been working for a long time were saying, which is don't fuck up our good thing. So that's what I think. Ooh. Okay. That's what I think the tie in is.

[53:26] Meg: Well done. Thank you, Sam.