On Being Basic (Kate Kennedy)
Listen now (60 mins) | "When I went back and looked at some of these shows that I loved, I noticed that the writer's room was all adult men with the exception of one or two episodes in "Saved...
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Kate Kennedy is a brilliantly astute historian of millennial culture, which she explores, in depth in One in a Millennial: On Friendship, Feelings, Fangirls, and Fitting in, a bestselling book that’s part memoir, but really a love letter and a critique of the culture so many of us grew up in.
As part of my book tour I went on Kate’s podcast, Be There in Five, where I was immediately taken by her intelligence and deep, deep knowledge of the programming that shaped our consciousness, from Jessie Spano’s feminism in Saved by the Bell—and the laugh track it inspired—to the way so many women and girls were taught that our interests were dumb, shallow, and silly. Or, to use the parlance of the day: Basic. In One in a Millennial, Kennedy points to this long tradition of the veneration of action figures, Marvel, and football—and the deprecation of pretty much anything that girls and women value, whether it’s romance novels, the Spice Girls, or American Girl Dolls. While her point is not new—and certainly aligned with our summer of the Barbie movie, Taylor Swift, and Beyoncé—her exploration of how it shaped her own mind in childhood, and the way she experiences herself now as a result of it, is revelatory, and something we explore in this conversation.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Kate Kennedy Episode
MORE FROM KATE KENNEDY:
One in a Millenial: On Friendship, Feelings, Fangirls, and Fitting in
Kate’s Website
Instagram: Follow Kate and Be there in Five