Feminish

What does it look like to change our relationship to food and nourishing ourselves over time? Can we love characters we hate in fiction? Are we all manifestations of the same consciousness living simultaneously across all humans? Casual questions as always! This week we tackle women characters in fiction--including the Bible as literature, because Olivia is reading Paradise Lost (yes the one from...

Jessie and Olivia are BACK for season three! We started with a book we both read, 'I Who Have Never Known Men,' and discuss its themes, genre, and the nature of freedom and existence (we know, super light topics). The conversation explores the impact of relationships on personal growth and the importance of community. It’s really fun! Some light plot spoilers between around 8 minutes and 2...

After an unintentional break, we're back to discuss what's been going on in the world -- really, not a lot, right?! The U.S. presidential election gives us yet more opportunity to talk through a key feminist ideal, that the personal is political. Jessie's also kept reading in the ACOTAR series. In true form, she also brings us the story of some everyday women who lived in a neighborhood that happe...

If there was a way to connect WWI to the Blake Lively PR controversy, you know Jessie and Olivia will find it. Today, a robust conversation about media literacy, freedom of the press, and how many of our issues with access to accurate information and using essential critical thinking skills are not new problems. Jessie talks about one postmaster general's single-minded mission to prevent sharing a...

Today Olivia and Jessie talk about the surreality of #tradwives on social media. They have a massive following, but the audiences are there for as many different reasons as we can imagine--to stare, to envy, to learn, to be infuriated, to be sad, to look at beauty, to feel human, to feel inhuman. We talk about @ballerinafarm (on Instagram and TikTok) and Nara Smith (@naraazizasmith on TikTok). We...

This summer, we've swapped reading content - Olivia reads the nonfiction and Jessie has entered the ACOTAR universe. We discuss bodies and faeries, it's all Feminish on this one! Olivia's books: The Body is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love by Sonya Renee Taylor; The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk. Jessie's book: A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maa...

We really fell off there, y'all! Jessie and Olivia are back to catch up on all the Feminish-relevant pop culture goss since we last met. It's the bear-versus-man of it all. Plus, we dream up a summer plan to swap our podcast personas in the most fun way: Olivia is going to bring some important nonfiction works on body and body image in culture and Jessie is going to read ACOTAR(!). More fr...

Back on our bullsh*t, Olivia and Jessie discuss the new Taylor Swift and Beyoncé albums and the continued violence that capitalism inflicts on us, inhibiting our best feminist intentions. In true form, we cover some pop culture with a dose of reality from Jessie as she continues reading Naomi Klein's book, Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World (it keeps staying good, staying relevant). In...

This week our pop culture and book discussion overlap big-time, with a conversation on what it means to have a public image, to "be" in public, including and especially on the internet. We discuss The Duchess of Wales's Photoshop mishap and the fallout it caused, and what all this suggests about being a persona in the media (for famous people) and on the internet (for the rest of us)...

This week we go full ’90s nostalgia, from Lisa Frank to Scholastic Book Fairs. Jessie brings a book that is as much about dolls and sleepovers as it is about the history that was central to Pleasant Company’s American Girl Dolls. Olivia brings the ~ hot goss ~ from TikTok: Who Did I Marry? and more. Did we miss something that was an unforgettable part of your ‘90s experience? Let us know! We made...

In this episode, we discuss the sexism that continues in Hollywood (too topical not to talk about tbh), as well as how it seems to make some men so angry that women enjoy sports the way they want to. Let us enjoy sports, and also—can we get better merch? We have money and will buy it. We also finally get into a book Jessie spent most of 2023 reading: Debt: The First 5000 Years. It changed the way...

We are back for season 2! We talk resolutions - do you make them, why or why not? We are a split camp on this show. Olivia brings some pop culture updates for us. Also, Jessie kicks off the season with discussion of a book she read about the unexpected and quite complicated history of the field of home economics / domestic sciences. Was the field progressive and feminist, or oppressive and sexist?...

Final Girl, Final Season 1 Episode! Olivia and Jessie knew they could not pass up a bonus 13th episode to release on Friday, Oct. 13, during their favorite season: spooky season! If you've listened even once, you've probably heard us mention our love for horror movies. We frequently hang out to watch horror movies together, and they are really the BEST genre for exploring human emotions an...

Today our guest is Ammie, a ceramic artist and small business owner living in Atlanta. She’s kind of a big deal on social media (find her at @ammieyall on Instagram) but today she’s here to talk pop culture and our deepest questions. You’ll get some bonus knowledge of Dublin, Georgia, the small town in the middle of the state where Ammie grew up and where Jessie first met her (when she was in midd...

We’re back this week to reflect on what we’ve achieved in the past year. We take a moment to appreciate our labors and celebrate almost a whole season of our podcast! Jessie brings a book that complicates the history of HIV/AIDS activism in the United States. Olivia brings a book that got her back into a reading groove--a sci-fi novel following a near-future scientist and android contemplating the...

We are excited to have our first-ever GUEST to the show. Jasmine Pochynok is an Atlanta-based communications specialist, pop culture enthusiast, and “very online” advocate of social media. We discuss Jasmine’s time in the Coast Guard as a fireman, her excitement to have kids, and why she cried when she finally deleted her Twitter account last month. Come for the “girl money” talk, stay for the tea...

In a podcast about pop culture, feminism, and rhetoric, true crime lands itself solidly at the epicenter of those themes. Since the Roman courts held public trials, people have been interested in following along with crime stories (see, Jessie got ancient philosophers in there). But there is something about the relationship women have with true crime. Today, Olivia and Jessie offer their takes on...

Olivia’s deep interest in Greek myths informs the two book suggestions she brings to this episode, as well as the compelling question of gender norms in storytelling. If we swapped all the lead (male) characters in Greek myths for female characters, what fundamental aspects of the story do (must) change? What does this say about story tropes from Ancient Greece to today? Jessie brings the central...

Chaos episode! We are all over the map today discussing embodied rhetoric, which is basically all the communication caught up in how we move and have bodies in the world. As you might expect, it’s an enormous, fraught topic. We discuss why work-from-home is a feminist issue (and highly embodied), being a person in a modern workplace and on Zoom, and the recent experience Olivia had at the art muse...

This week, we talk about the marketing that was actually published to recruit (white) women to jobs during WWII, because spoiler, it wasn’t the famous Rosie the Riveter image. This leads us into the immense world of visual rhetoric, which includes so much of what we consume and what is marketed to us as people in the world today. Is Olivia a rhetor, based on her professional work in design? Absolu...

In this episode, we dig into the concept of “good taste” and why it was so white and so cishet male for centuries. We talk about the refreshing pink world of Barbie that we all need in 2023. What was Cyndi Lauper really getting at when she reminded her father that he’s taking things a little too seriously? This episode is an homage to embracing the things you like, regardless of social concepts of...

Olivia and Catherine the Great have a lot in common. They are both trying to do a LOT in the 24 hours we have in a day. Running a country, running a business, dealing with family, love, body issues, and trying to choose what dress to wear to the government ball on top of that? Feels impossible. If the Empress of Russia also struggled with these things, and managed to be a complete legend, maybe we...

In our third episode, we’re talking about sex. We’re looking at the first era in American history when women went out and dated for the joy of it, without the expectation of looking for a husband (even though marriage + a household was very much still what the larger culture expected of her…). Think it was the 1960s? Think much earlier! We talk about how our current TV and film culture has left us...

Today on the podcast we’re talking about the history of feminist movements in the United States - they are probably a lot more complex and nonlinear than you think. We discuss whether it’s fair for Olivia to ask men outright if they are feminists. We talk about what “feminism” encompasses today (spoiler: it’s a lot more than just “women’s equality”). Jessie’s read today is Feminism Unfinished: A S...

It’s the launch of our new podcast! Join Jessie and Olivia as we talk at the intersection of pop culture, feminism, and rhetoric. We hope, if you come for one, you’ll be hooked on the other. We love to read but we read very different stuff, Feminish embraces that difference; we’re looking for the overlaps in our culture and history - and there are many! We’ll talk TikTok trends and the troubled na...