[00:16] Meg: Welcome to Desperately Seeking The ‘80s! I am Meg.

[00:19] Jessica: And I am Jessica. And Meg and I have been friends since 1982. We got through middle school and high school together here in New York City, where we still live!

[00:29] Meg: And where we’re podcasting about New York City in the ‘80s. I do rip from the headlines...

[00:34] Jessica: And I handle pop culture.

[00:35] Meg: And I've got one little thing to say, Jessica, before we get started.

[00:40] Jessica: Okay?

[00:41] Meg: Our story about Sunny von Bülow.

[00:44] Jessica: Yes!

[00:45] Meg: My mother texts me and says, “I remember seeing the security guards sitting outside Sunny's hospital room when I went to visit Henriette, who was recuperating after an operation”. And she reminded me that I had read about how Sunny's room was guarded because people were so scared that someone was going to sneak in and kill her.

[01:09] Jessica: Chilling!

[01:09] Meg: Yeah.

[01:10] Jessica: Interesting.

[01:11] Meg: And do you remember Henriette? I already told you about Henriette. That's a callback.

[01:15] Jessica: Oh, my God, you're right.

[01:16] Meg: Our neighbor [Jessica: Yes, your neighbor who –] who spied on the cult members!

[01:19] Jessica: Well, no – did she spy on them, or was she the one who rented her..?

[01:24] Meg: No, she saw them –.

[01:25] Jessica: Oh, it was your house! That's right. She spied on them.

[01:28] Meg: She saw them dancing in the window of our house. The cult members.

[01:35] Jessica: Oh, my God.

[01:36] Meg: So, in honor of my mother, who likes callbacks and likes to know which episodes we are actually calling back to, that was episode 25, Follow The Leader and Kings Of Club Fed, and episode 35, Wife In A Coma, Rabbit Holes And Glory Holes.

[01:57] Jessica: Sunny's in a coma. I know, I know. It's serious.

[MUSIC PLAYS]

[02:19] Meg: Jessica, do you remember "900" numbers?

[02:22] Jessica: 1-"900". Wait, what was it? What was the “p” with an extra “e” for extra “p”?

[02:30] Meg: Oh, my God.

[02:31] Jessica: Do you remember that one?

[02:31] Meg: No.

[02:32] Jessica: It was part of the Channel J offering. That's a callback to episode number one.

Meg: Ooh!

Jessica: See how I did that?

Meg: Very well done. So, yeah, explain what a "900" number was.

Jessica: A "900" number was a number that you would call and in one way or another receive a service via the phone. So it might be one of the, like, Dionne Warwick had her Psychic Friends Network. That was 1–900 – you know – friend, psychic. There were, you know, the porno lines where you talk dirty with someone, and that was one of the 1–900 something extra “p”.

Meg: There were joke ones?

Jessica: There were joke ones. There was weather, there was — the time was free. But, yeah, like, you could do your horoscope. "900" horoscope.

[03:22] Meg: Right? The craziest one I heard of was “What makes people cry?”. And you could call up, and apparently they would tell you something that would make you cry. They guaranteed it. And that was $2 a minute.

[03:35] Jessica: And when was that? In the ‘80s?

[03:37] Meg: Yeah.

[03:37] Jessica: Wow. That says a lot about the ‘80s psyche and the need for catharsis. Like, wow.

[03:43] Meg: Ooh, that's such a good transition into my story! May I?

[03:48] Jessica: I believe you shall.

[03:50] Meg: My sources: The New Yorker, The New York Post, and a podcast called The Apology Line. One night in 1982, men hit the dark streets of Tribeca and Soho and Chelsea and the East Village, putting up dozens of yellow flyers on walls and lamp posts. They had bold lettering in all caps and little slits cut out on the bottom so you could tear off the phone number listed. The flyers said, “ATTENTION, AMATEURS, PROFESSIONALS, CRIMINALS, BLUE COLLAR, WHITE COLLAR. YOU HAVE WRONGED PEOPLE. IT IS TO PEOPLE THAT YOU MUST APOLOGIZE. NOT TO THE STATE, NOT TO GOD. GET YOUR MISDEEDS OFF YOUR CHEST. CALL ‘APOLOGY’: 212-255-2748 THE IDEA OF ‘APOLOGY’ IS TO PROVIDE A WAY FOR PEOPLE TO APOLOGIZE FOR THEIR WRONGS AGAINST PEOPLE WITHOUT JEOPARDIZING THEMSELVES. ‘APOLOGY’ WILL AUTOMATICALLY TAPE RECORD YOUR ANONYMOUS PHONE CALL. DO NOT IDENTIFY YOURSELF, AND CALL FROM A PAYPHONE TO PREVENT TRACING. DESCRIBE IN DETAIL WHAT YOU HAVE DONE AND HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT IT. WHEN ENOUGH STATEMENTS HAVE BEEN COLLECTED, THEY WILL BE PLAYED TO THE PUBLIC AT A TIME AND PLACE TO BE ADVERTISED. ‘APOLOGY’ IS A PRIVATE EXPERIMENT. ITS SOLE PURPOSE IS TO PROVIDE A NEW AVENUE OF COMMUNICATION. IT IS NOT ASSOCIATED IN ANY WAY WITH ANY POLICE, GOVERNMENTAL, RELIGIOUS, OR OTHER ORGANIZATION”. So, just to clarify, the Apology Line is not a "900" number, because "900" numbers cost like, $2 a minute. Apology Line is just somebody's answering machine.

[05:42] Jessica: There's so much I want to talk about already.

[05:45] Meg: Okay, hold on. Just bottle it up. Back at his Chelsea loft, Allan Bridge, a conceptual artist, had set up an answering machine that would record all incoming calls. The outgoing message reminded callers not to identify themselves and said they could talk as long as they wanted. The calls came in fast and furious. Initially, they were straightforward; “I want to say I'm sorry to so and so for this and that”. But soon the line began to attract lonely people who wanted to talk, angry people who wanted to vent, people who sounded like they were role playing, possibly, but maybe they were for real. There was no way to really know. There were confessions of violence, infidelity, and lots and lots of theft. One girl called in, quote: “Um, hi, I'm a runaway, and all I want to say is that I'm kind of sorry that I left. See, I'm 15. I saw your number in the newspaper, and when I saw it, I had to call because it's like, I mean, you walk around on the streets all day long just looking for someone who just might say, hey, want a place to go? Come with me. I'll give you food and everything. And they won't ask for anything back. That's all I want. I guess I take up too much time on the tape, but I just gotta talk”. In 1981, Allan, who remained anonymous, known only as “Mister Apology” as he was getting some pretty disturbing phone calls, had an exhibit of Apology at The New School where he set up three telephone booths where people could go into a booth, pick up the phone and listen to all the recorded apologies.

[07:28] Jessica: That's so intense.

[07:30] Meg: It was really intense, apparently. After the exhibit, which could have been the culmination of his project, Allan actually decided to evolve it. By 1983, people could call the line and press one for crime, two for cheating, et cetera. People could also –

[07:47] Jessica: That almost feels glib, doesn't it?

[07:50] Meg: I apologize. I don't think it was intended that way. He was just trying to categorize it.

[07:57] Jessica: No, no, no, I know. Why would you apologize about that?

[08:00] Meg: Because it's probably my delivery that made it seem to me.

[08:02] Jessica: No, not at all. Not at all. I think the evolution of something so raw immediately lends it an air of being slick. So that's where I was going with that, but please, continue.

[08:17] Meg: Ok, well that’s interesting, because it keeps evolving. But anyway, so at this point, he's just trying to categorize the different kinds of apologies. And also people could listen to recorded confessions, which hadn't happened before, so you could actually hear what he heard. It was the first time – Before people were just leaving apologies. Now you could hear some. And it became like a chat room with regular callers leaving messages for each other.

[08:46] Jessica: Oh, that's so interesting.

[08:47] Meg: Right? One woman called in often to talk about how guilty she felt that she didn't leave her increasingly violent, abusive husband. And then callers left messages for her of encouragement and advice and some of condemnation. “What's wrong with you? Why can't you just walk out?” Allan, as Mister Apology, got in on it, too, and he felt conflicted about his responsibility for her. He was like, “Now if you die, I feel like I should have done something for you”. And they had a very interesting back-and-forth about that because it seemed inevitable that she would be killed if she stayed. He felt conflicted about a lot as his art project took over his life. Should he share information with the police? He would often pick up the phone if someone sounded suicidal, which could happen at any time, day or night. The apology line became all-consuming. When he began to get death threats he told his upstairs neighbor Tina, who was a therapist and had never been a fan of the project. She had experience, professional experience, with disturbed people who became fixated and wasn't very excited about living upstairs with her two children from someone who was attracting that kind of attention. There were calls from child molesters and someone who said he'd killed his mother and “Johnny, the Dick Of Death”, who claimed to spread aids on purpose to both men and women.

[10:17] Jessica: Okay, time out. When you started explaining this, that was the first thing I thought of, that because of the time period I was like, “who is going to be that guy” that you just described? For some reason, I felt that it was inevitable that someone like that was going to pop up. Isn't that weird?

[10:36] Meg: And, the question is, is he for real, or is he playing a role? There's no way to know.

[10:42] Jessica: Therein lies the problem with the experiment. But, yes.

[10:45] Meg: Allan came to believe that the act of apologizing for these people was an attempt to make their life into a moral tale: a beginning, a middle, and an end. “I did this. I learned this. And the moral is this” so that a confession becomes a story. One regular caller left this message, “I want to apologize for something, and maybe, well, I guess it's too late to apologize for, but I want to apologize for it now. My mother was bedridden for a while, and she used to get Social Security and welfare, and I had no job, and I had no way of making money. And when she was hungry or thirsty, I used to make her give me money to give her a drink. Like, she'd have to give me $5 for a glass of water, $10 for a sandwich. And now… now she's passed away. And I can't say I'm sorry to her because I know what I did was probably the most horrible thing in the world. And I'll never be able to say I'm sorry to her. And I hope I go to hell and burn there for this, because it wasn't right. And if there's some way that she can hear me, I just want to tell her I'm sorry. Thank you.”

[11:51] Jessica: I'm stricken.

[11:52] Meg: One man called and said he wanted to apologize to “One person who's my lover, who is on the extension, listening. I'm sorry that I've made his life difficult.” Isn't that wild?

[12:04] Jessica: This is one of the few moments I wish that everyone could see this. We're just sitting directly across from each other with giant saucer eyes and our jaws hanging down.

[12:15] Meg: Can you imagine them? They're in separate rooms. And he says, “Just get on the line and just hang on”. Right? And then he talks about him in the third person while he's apologizing to him. That's so wild.

[12:26] Jessica: I have so – I have so much to say about this.

[12:31] Meg: Good-good-good-good, because we’re – yeah – many people became emotionally dependent on the line. One regular would call when he was angry and wanted to lash out. And also when he was sad and wanted sympathy. He noted that his mood, whatever it was, was echoed in the responses. The same people who were kind to him when he was vulnerable attacked him when he raged.

Jessica: Ooh, interesting.

Meg: Keeping the apology line going became like a community service. The regular callers had a back-and-forth with each other that was therapeutic. But others confessed to deeply disturbing violence and violent thoughts. And again, what was Allan's responsibility? He's not a therapist or a doctor or a priest or a cop. Those professions, there are rules of engagement. There are rules of responsibility. He was making up his own rules.

[13:24] Jessica: Yes. Allan was outside the system. He was officially off the map.

[13:31] Meg: Allan struggled to stay solvent and to support his art, which was almost solely apology-related. For the last 15 years of his life. He sold the rights to his story, a novel was written, and eventually a tv movie was made. In the tv movie, Mister Apology was played by Lesley Ann Warren.

[13:50] Jessica: What?

[13:52] Meg: Right? Naturally, they needed a woman to be Mister Apology.

[13:55] Jessica: So Mister Apology is indeed stalked by these people. So, they needed…

[13:59] Meg: Yeah, by a psycho killer. And they needed, obviously, the person who's stalked by the psycho killer to be a woman.

[14:05] Jessica: What's the name of this movie?

[14:07] Meg: Oh, I think it's Apology.

[14:09] Jessica: All right, Lesley.

[14:10] Meg: I'll look it up.

[14:11] Jessica: Okay. Lesley Ann Warren?

[14:13] Meg: Lesley Ann Warren. The first time we've mentioned her, I think, on this podcast, and I hope not the last.

[14:19] Jessica: Oh, I mean, do we – you know what? I'm gonna have to do an entire episode on the importance of Victor/Victoria.

[14:25] Meg: All right. There we go. By the way, Allan Bridge, the actual Mister Apology was, like, sick to his stomach when he watched this tv movie. He was so embarrassed. It's just totally schlocky and horrible.

[14:36] Jessica: One might say that he did have reason to feel a little nauseated about his own choices.

[14:42] Meg: He started Apology magazine, a monthly collection of the best confessions, which had a circulation of more than 4000 and was “an archive of the secret life of Americans”. That's his quote. His increasingly complicated phone line system – because now he's got all these different lines and you can press this number and get this number and listen to this, and it took over his entire loft – and the magazine were run by volunteers who were similarly devoted to the cause. One of them, a teenager, came up with fun ways to publicize the line, like sticking scraps of paper in telephone booth coin slots, which said, “Apology: 255-2748”. When he died in 1995, very unexpectedly – Do you want to know how?

[15:29] Jessica: Was he murdered by a cuckoo person?

[15:32] Meg: No. It's crazy.

[15:34] Jessica: Did he die of shame over the Lesley Ann Warren movie?

[15:37] Meg: He was scuba diving and a jet ski hit him, and it was a hit and run. They never found the person who was on the jet ski.

Jessica: That’s bananas.

Meg: in Hampton Bays. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, when he died, his wife put the announcement of his death on the outgoing message and invited people to come for an informal memorial at Strawberry Fields. That was the first time many regular callers saw each other.

[16:04] Jessica: Oh, my God.

[16:05] Meg: And many were shocked at how different they looked in person than what they had imagined.

[16:09] Jessica: Everything about this is the creepiest.

[16:12] Meg: And in 2022, the urge to talk anonymously is just as strong as ever. I'm obsessed with – do you ever listen to Beautiful Anonymous?

[16:21] Jessica: No.

[16:21] Meg: It is a podcast hosted by Chris Gethard. Gethart? Gettert? Gethert?

[16:27] Jessica: It's spelled “get-hard”, right?

[16:28] Meg: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a comedian. And the tagline is: “One phone call, one hour, no names, no holds barred”.

[16:36] Jessica: Wow.

[16:37] Meg: And it is addictive. It's amazing.

[16:40] Jessica: I actually have a friend who lives in London who has published a book, Eleanor Tattersfield. Her project is called Sex Secrets. You leave an anonymous recorded secret on Secrets.FM, and her book you can buy on Amazon UK; Sex Secrets. And the way that her project started was she got people to write on a postcard what their terrible secret was, obviously all having to do with sex. So, an example from hers – and some of them are like two lines and some are postcards stapled together – and here's… I'm trying to find, like, a good one here. “The second time I had sex with my girlfriend was in the library at university. The librarian was deaf”. And then there's some really not nice ones. But anyway, so this is… And there was that project PostSecret. Do you remember that? It was basically like Sex Secrets. It was the precursor, and it was whatever your darkest secret was so you could unburden yourself – which became a book.

[17:50] Meg: Right? And I guess that’s the idea, I mean, but specifically about apologizing, I think it's interesting to sort of focus in on that for a second. We all know how lovely it is to receive an apology – doesn't often happen. But the idea that it's also therapeutic to give an apology, that there's a release in that, or that there's some kind of positive effect that it will have on the giver as well as the receiver.

[18:17] Jessica: Well, isn't that also part of – I could be wildly incorrect – but part of twelve step programs when you make amends?

Meg: Oh, yeah, I guess so.

Jessica: Isn't that part of the process is like, you have to forgive yourself and you have to ask forgiveness, and then, you know, whatever – that person might not forgive you and that's their decision. But, yeah, I don't know. I think – I’m sorry, is there more of the story?

[18:43] Meg: No, the rest of it is just sort of chat. I have to say about the podcast, though, The Apology Line podcast, it's not a great podcast. I don't think it does fantastic storytelling. But they have these apologies recorded. You can actually hear their voices. And what was interesting to me was how different New Yorkers sounded in the '80s. People's accents change over time. Also, they were all New Yorkers. Why? Because it was a low – it would cost more money to call long distance. So most of the –

[19:18] Jessica: Well, and they were doing guerrilla marketing, which was all around town.

[19:21] Meg: Right, that too. But then they did get some national attention; they wrote about in the Times. But they really. People were not going to do a long distance call. They weren't gonna. They weren't going to pay $2 a minute. It really is just a microcosm of a bunch of New Yorkers saying the horrible things they've done and asking for forgiveness.

[19:39] Jessica: That it's true. Like, it is amazing that it's just New Yorkers and what they were getting up to. And the accents. You're absolutely right. I mean, everything has become so blended that anytime I hear, like, a real New England accent or a New York accent, I have a thrill.

[19:58] Meg: Right.

[19:58] Jessica: And people, and when people tell me, like, you really sound like you're from New York, I was like, you don't know what you're talking about, because I might have a couple of the markers, but, you know, toity, toide and toit is long gone.

[20:14] Meg: There are lots of stories. I couldn't get into all them, obviously, but there is one person who kept calling who claimed to be “Hard Times”. That was his name. He's like, “It's Hard Times”. And he sounded like a guy straight out of like, a “blacksploitation” film. But I think he was white. I think it was being put on.

[20:31] Jessica: Why do you think that?

[20:33] Meg: There's something about it that just doesn't read true. I don't buy it. I don't buy it. I think it was role playing.

[20:37] Jessica: Is it have you heard the recording or the…

Meg: Yeah!

Jessica: Oh, really?

[20:41] Meg: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[20:42] Jessica: That's very weird.

[20:44] Meg: I mean, maybe I'm wrong, but as it turns out, some people admitted that they were role playing, and when they showed up at the memorial, they were like, yeah, I'm not actually the Zodiac killer.

[20:54] Jessica: But what a weirdo to roleplay and then show up. Like, what's that psychological profile? Like, “I've been lying and playing, and now I'm going to make you see me”.

[21:06] Meg: Honestly, it kind of sounds like people, when they play video games now or when they have avatars or whatever, they showed up and they were like, “Yeah, I was just being a bad boy”. But really, some of that bad boy stuff was, like, really dark and, like, violent fantasies. What – is that?

[21:22] Jessica: But I think it's even more bizarre than avatars right now, because now having an avatar is part of the fabric of our culture. And at the time, that was real outlier behavior. Creepy.

[21:34] Meg: Well, somehow they forgave themselves enough to admit to his widow that “That was me! Hey, I'm Jim. Remember Jim?” And she's like, “Oh, my God!”. He's like, “Don't worry, don't worry. Well, I actually didn't do any of the things that I said I did”.

[21:48] Jessica: The thing about this that I'm sure is not lost on you or anyone listening is that it feels like the act of apologizing in this way is the most self-centered, self-serving act on the planet.

[22:07] Meg: Oh, because it's not actually reaching the person that it’s intended for.

[22:09] Jessica: And it's not doing it in – in the same way that we say, we talk now about how – and I'm glad that you said what you did about the avatar – that now you can do anything online and you're not held responsible. Right. All the trolls. This is the same thing. These are people who are just using this as a vehicle to either unburden themselves or whatever, but there is no connection to the real cause-and-effect, to the actual human engagement of what created the situation that made them feel compelled to call in the first place. They're still not accountable. And the more I think about it, even though there are some people who are out and out role-playing, it still seems like performance.

[22:55] Meg: But, I mean, people do this with their therapist. They do this with priests, right?

[23:00] Jessica: But those are social contracts. And the therapist is there, at least theoretically, to help you get past either the bad behavior or the self-critical behavior or whatever.

[23:13] Meg: In twelve step groups, too.

[23:15] Jessica: Right? And with a priest, you know, if you are a believer, you really are going to transcend whatever it is that you did or that was plaguing you. This? There is no other half of the conversation.

[23:31] Meg: But it will be heard publicly.

[23:32] Jessica: Yeah. Well, please give me a break.

[23:35] Meg: I don't know, I don’t know.

[23:36] Jessica: I don't know. But I think it's absolutely fascinating. And even with my friends' project and PostSecret before it, the need that people have to unburden themselves is a core human compulsion, I guess. And I think it's really one of the scariest things to have to do.

[23:58] Meg: Absolutely.

[23:58] Jessica: And so having a codified way to do it, I understand the appeal.

[24:05] Meg: Can I apologize for something?

[24:06] Jessica: Oh, God. What did you do!?

[24:08] Meg: It's actually really bad.

[24:10] Jessica: Is it? To me?

[24:11] Meg: No.

[24:11] Jessica: Oh, yes. Then absolutely. What did you do?

[24:14] Meg: Well, I was thinking of, what could I apologize for that happened in the ‘80s when I was a child, that would actually be a meaningful apology, instead of “I shoplifted”, which, frankly, who cares? In third grade – this is before you got to school.

[24:31] Jessica: Okay.

[24:31] Meg: Have I told you about this?

[24:32] Jessica: I don't even know. How do I know? No, I don't know.

[24:34] Meg: Okay my heart is beating out of my chest right now.

[24:36] Jessica: I can't believe that you're choosing to do this. This is crazy.

[24:40] Meg: I might cut it, I don't know.

[24:40] Jessica: Okay. Now that you've said that, you can't. All right.

[24:46] Meg: There was a girl, a new girl in third grade, Doris. And I don't remember why people ostracized her, but they absolutely did. And remember how in the lunch room, there were two sides? They were benches. They were like long tables with two benches – oh, my gosh – on either side. And as soon as she sat down on one side, absolutely every other third grader sat on the other side.

[25:17] Jessica: That's horrible.

[25:18] Meg: It's absolutely horrible. And that happened. That happened to that girl. I looked her up on Facebook. She's doing great.

[25:27] Jessica: Oh, thank God!

[25:29] Meg: But, like, I was part of that. I absolutely was part of that.

[25:32] Jessica: Well, that only proves my point that everybody is somebody's mean girl. And again, it's a human nature thing. And I think it's part of growing up that we don't, as children, understand the impact that we have on other people. Our brains are just not developed yet to do that. You know, the way that kids are so wretched to each other is amazing.

[25:59] Meg: I can't believe we did that. It was awful.

[26:03] Jessica: Well, I can attest to the fact that you are in tears over it. And so I think that maybe this catharsis was good for you. That's great. I don't think it did Doris a whole lot of good.

[26:17] Meg: Nope.

[26:19] Jessica: But I think that was very brave of you, honestly. And I, of course, am now trying to think of what I could apologize.

[26:25] Meg: You don't have to.

[26:25] Jessica: No, no, I'm not going to. And that's the point, is, like, anything that I would think of off the cuff is either so shaming that, like, I'm gonna have to go back to therapy for it, or trivial to the point of just being an entertainment, but now I'm obsessed. I have to think, well, we do know that I was someone's mean girl, so I apologize for being a mean girl in Glee club. You know.

[MUSIC PLAYS]

Jessica: My turn!

Meg: Indeed.

Jessica: So I'm going to start off, and this is not about New York City specifically, but I want to talk about Gen X with you.

Meg: Okay.

Jessica: Okay. So how would you typify, you know, like, the Gen X profile? And there's, you know, there are memes.

[27:25] Meg: I mean, there are memes.

[27:26] Jessica: Yes, there's all of that stuff.

[27:28] Meg: I mean, the memes say that we were latchkey kids, nobody put a seatbelt on us, that it's a miracle we're alive.

[27:35] Jessica: But, you know, the other way that Gen X is now snuck into pop culture is, you know, like, the cooler… Like, we had the coolest bands. It was the '80s and, you know–

Meg: Yeah! Self-proclaimed but sure.

Jessica: But yes, yes, like, disaffected youth. And, you know, and that forced independence made you cool and strong and all this kind of stuff, right? And definitely not boomer, right? [Meg: NOOO] Cause there's all of this, like, millennials are screaming at the boomers. They're screaming at the millennials. And look, Gen X is in the middle like, whaaaat? Right?

[28:13] Meg: Exactly. I like those memes. Those are fun.

[28:15] Jessica: Right? Cause of course they make us look really cool. I joined a couple of Facebook – you know, if you grew up in the '80s or Gen X, whatever – which I know is the most meta thing in the world – on Facebook for old people. I joined a Facebook group. Like, it's like “I'm in my AOL chat room about being Gen X”. I recently got out of the, really, the one that was constantly like – and I have not posted on Facebook in easily a year and a half, if not two years. But of course, I can't help doom scrolling through everyone else's nonsense. So I'm constantly getting all this stuff. And what I realized is that most of the posts are Gen X people saying how awful everyone else is. Younger people.

[29:07] Meg: Younger people?

Jessica: Younger people.

Meg: Because that’s a very Boomer thing to do.

[29:11] Jessica: Well, exactly. Hold your horses.

[29:14] Meg: I jumped the gun again.

[29:16] Jessica: Don't you go stealing my thunder, Meg.

Meg: I'm sorry

Jessica: No, no, no. But here's the thing. So they're all like, if we didn't catch the school bus, we had to get on our bikes or walk. There's none of this, you know, helicopter parents. No one looked after us, blah, blah, blah. We're the tough generation. We. Ba da ba da ba da ba da.

[29:36] Meg: But we were neglected and very bitter about it.

[29:38] Jessica: Well, exactly. And to your point, yes, I was like, “Oh, my God, these people are becoming everything that they say they don't wanna be”, right?

[29:49] Meg: Braggy young people?

[29:50] Jessica: Yeah, like on the Simpsons, old-man-shakes-fist-at-cloud, it's smacks of that. And in fact, some of the people are getting so nasty and with such insulting stuff on that particular Gen X page.

[30:05] Meg: “That was 1967, not 1966, moron!”

[30:07] Jessica: No, like, much worse than that. That people are constantly getting, like, kicked off the page. And then, like, people are yelling at the admin and there's all – and like, and then they're like, “We're shutting down this page and doing a new one where if you can't –”, they're all like, “if you can't take it and you're just a pussy, then fuck you. You're not really Gen X!!” And I was like, “Eek, [Meg: No thank you] this is just a bridge too far [Meg: Where is the exit sign?]. Exactly. So with this in mind, it's caused me to grapple a little with where is the identity of Gen X going? And is it just this group of lunatics on Facebook, or is this a larger thing? I don't know. I was walking around the “neighb”, and as you know, there are a lot of all-girls private schools in my neighborhood. Nightingale among them. Indeed. And I looked at these girls who clearly, like, they had, like, a part of their uniform on, and they were also – and I was like, “These kids look abominable.”

[31:12] Meg: Oh, Jess.

[31:13] Jessica: No, no, no, no. Wait for it.

[31:15] Meg: Okay.

[31:16] Jessica: And I was like, instantly, “Oh, my God, I am old-lady-shakes-fist-at-cloud”. This is really, really bad. What did we do that was trashy or whatever, as teenagers are wont to do? And I came up with a couple of things, but I realized that it all centered around the school uniform. And as you know, one of our dearest friends now has her daughter at Nightingale. Every time she leaves to go to school, our friend says, “You're going to school in that?” because the uniform has changed so dramatically that it's not really a uniform anymore.

[31:58] Meg: Well, Alice just graduated in 2020, and it already didn't look like a uniform.

[32:04] Jessica: So here's my question to you – and I warned you ahead of time – that today's pop culture portion is really – It should be retitled: “Jessica Has A Rant And Drags Meg Into Her Rant”.

[32:18] Meg: Is it going to be about what they're wearing?

[32:20] Jessica: No, no. I want to talk about school uniforms and how in the '80s when we were in high school and, you know, the whole gestalt of what we talk about on this podcast, school uniforms were a very big deal.

[32:36] Meg: I loved it.

[32:37] Jessica: So I wanted to ask you about what you thought about the uniform and how it affected your sense of self in the group and individually. And when you were no longer wearing a uniform when you went to college, what was that like? And after we do that, then we can compare it to what kids are wearing now and perhaps my rant will continue. But what did you think about it? At the time?

[33:04] Meg: Well, at the time I enjoyed it because I didn't really want to think about much at seven in the morning and I was always running late. So if I could just grab my kilt and throw on a white polo shirt, I'm good to go. I don't have to like, plan out my outfits for the week. Everything was just sort of preordained. I loved it. No pressure. I mean, sure, there were certain shirts that I liked more than other shirts. And when we were seniors, we had a little bit more freedom. We could have a pink shirt.

[33:36] Jessica: We could have wear sweaters that… sweaters that had a pattern on them.

[33:42] Meg: Were we allowed to wear…? I think we were not allowed to wear sweaters with a pattern. Maybe on Fridays. It was pretty strict for us.

[33:48] Jessica: I mean, it was really strict. Really strict.

[33:51] Meg: And they didn't want us – and we might have even talked about this already on the podcast, I can't remember – but they didn't want us to have logos on our clothes, which was difficult in the '80s because Izod, Polo, those logos, what are you supposed to do? Take them off, the sweaters?

[34:07] Jessica: I don't remember. I remember that there was a logo ban.

[34:09] Meg: I remember.

[34:11] Jessica: Interesting. Well I know that it was —

Meg: It might have been short-lived.

Jessica: matched. The fundamental point of the uniform, which was “We're all the same”.

[34:19] Meg: And it's pretty cool if you are in a neighborhood like we were in, that had lots of uniform schools. Sacred Heart, Spence. You can recognize who goes to what school.

[34:31] Jessica: Well, and that's something that I really loved about it. It showed what tribe you were in.

[34:35] Meg: “That’s the Sacred Heart gang”.

[34:36] Jessica: Yeah. You knew it. But it made you part of a tribe, right? I mean, and you play survivor, so tribes are close to your heart.

[34:46] Meg: In the neighborhood too, when people would hang out on stoops you always knew what school they were part of. So the schools were like, “Please don't smoke on other people's stoops, because they will associate you with our school”. “You represent us when you're out in the world”. “Don't be asshole on the public bus, please”.

[35:04] Jessica: And the answer was: “Take off your kilt”. “Wear sweatpants”. Definitely. And that's actually – that's a callback to… What was the episode where I talked about… Oh! Cult leaders. What was – what number is the cult leader, where I talked about how our friend and I got kicked out of glee club and she taught me how to smoke on the street?

[35:23] Meg: Oh, 25.

[35:23] Jessica: Okay.

[35:24] Meg: Follow The Leader. Yeah, we just talked about it earlier today.

[35:27] Jessica: Yes. So we have a double callback to episode 25. There you go, baby. But, yeah, like, I found it – I had the same feeling about it. I wasn't so naive as to think that it was genuinely a complete great leveler, because, you know, there's a white shirt and there's a white shirt, so. But it definitely took the sting out of a lot of that. It took the emphasis off of status, not how much money your parents might have. But – and I guess this is the point about the logos, that status was not in the equation at all.

[36:07] Meg: And as far as developing personal style, it probably did take me a heartbeat to figure that out. But honestly, I don't know if I would have figured that out in high school. Anyway. I did have it. I think I did actually figure out how to have a personal style…

[36:23] Jessica: You've always had the same aesthetic. Really. It's just become more and more pronounced as you've gotten more confident as an adult, you know? So funny. I remember your – a pair of shoes that you had in high school, and I think you got them in France when you were abroad. Do you recall this? They had, like, a little bit of a heel, and they were lace-up, and they had a slightly pointy toe.

[36:44] Meg: I don't remember.

[36:45] Jessica: Yeah, I still remember those.

[36:46] Meg: They sound great.

[36:47] Jessica: They were very cute. You wore them with Bobby Socks. I remember distinctly having some trial and error with personal style. You know, I guess I think when I got – when I went to college. Cause I went to such a preppy, incredibly homogenous school.

[37:05] Meg: Kenyon.

[37:05] Jessica: Yes, Kenyon. It was sort of like there was another uniform, you know, like, oh, yeah.

[37:10] Meg: You've talked about that a little bit.

[37:11] Jessica: Like long prairie skirt, Paddock boots, tights, long Shetland sweater, hair up in a beret, like a turtleneck. It was so preppy. And Laura Ashley… and we wore khakis without irony, you know, like, it was, you know, and to that point, like things that were considered fashionable when we were in our uniform years, there was not a lot of skin showing.

[37:39] Meg: Oh, that's true.

[37:40] Jessica: And I was thinking about how, you know, what girls deal with today is this, you know, hypersexuality, you know, and it's not like there's an outlier who's doing this. It's generally. There's a lot of skin.

[37:53] Meg: Yeah. I guess I'd just gotten used to it because of Alice and her friends who were expressing themselves.

[38:02] Jessica: And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it. I'm just saying, could you imagine wearing a little crop top when we were in high school? No, not in a million gajillion years. And then to add to that, think about this. So we're teenage girls, and what was the style that we were going for? We were all doing some weird, like, Annie Hall thing.

[38:24] Meg: Everything was oversized [Jessica: And MENZ!] MENZ buttoned up to the very top. I did a lot of that with big old pants and…

[38:31] Jessica: And, like, lace up shoes that looked like wingtips.

[38:37] Meg: Right. That I got at Army Navy. Not delicate wear.

[38:42] Jessica: No. Yeah. And the only times that there was anything kind of, in giant air quotes, “flashy” was that that was also the era of the strapless dress.

[38:53] Meg: Mmm.

[38:54] Jessica: Remember?

Meg: I love a strapless dress.

Jessica: There is a very ‘50s aesthetic. And everyone was wearing sweetheart neckline, very tight corset, very big skirt. Like, that was “the” look.

[39:07] Meg: Still my favorite kind…

[39:10] Meg: I wore a Betsy Johnson dress to a school gala in the springtime. And I ran into some of those parents more recently at curriculum night. And one of them, who I hadn't seen since the spring, said, “Oh, I remember you. You were wearing a costume”. I was like, “Oh, God. Yeah. Kinda. Okay. I guess so.”

Jessica: But also, in the end…

Meg: I guess I was wearing a costume!

[39:35] Jessica: And I also think that we haven't really evolved past whatever our style was at the time.

Meg: No, I think that was exactly what I wore in college.

Jessica: And I have that – now we've alluded to that famous New Year's Eve party that you had.

[39:53] Meg: I could post a picture of that New Year's Eve party.

[39:55] Jessica: Okay, well. And that dress that you wore [Meg: Strapless!] is burned into my – pink satin, strapless, sweetheart neckline, very tight bodice. And the photo that I have of you is with you gesticulating wildly to our friend Nick with a champagne bottle.

[40:15] Meg: If you have any pictures from that night.

[40:17] Jessica: I do, actually.

[40:18] Meg: Okay, it might be better from mine. I have some pretty awkward ones.

[40:22] Jessica: Oh, no, no, no. They're. Oh, honey, they're awkward. You don't necessarily want to be seen in this, but, you know…

[40:29] Meg: Well, clear them with me first before you…

[40:31] Jessica: I'm not. Trust me. I wouldn't ever do anything else. You know? And I was thinking going back to old-lady-shakes-fist-at-cloud, that I was like, oh, my God, have we become those women who, when we were young, there were the holdovers from the ‘60s who were still wearing a sort of modified beehive and frosted lipstick, living in Florida, and it was like, “Oh, my God, are we them?” And the answer is kind of yes. And I think that's something that just happens when you age. You settle on what worked for you or you really liked.

[41:09] Meg: Although… Alice has asked for some of my Betsy Johnson dresses, and we've had them tailored so that they fit her so it’s not that bad.

[41:16] Jessica: No, no, no. We're just lucking out that it's come around again. That's – That's, you know, and it's like, again, sort of like, am I really so decrepit that my style is now not even retro? It's – But anyway, so back to my original point about, you know, then versus now, when we started out with our mission for this podcast, we were talking about looking at what was going on at the time through the lens of today, you know, as ostensibly grown up people. I think that everything that we talked about, about liking our uniforms, which have essentially been dispensed with, which I am not fond of, because just from what we've talked about, it showed you what tribe you were in. It took away a focus on self. You know, like, “Do I look right?”. Do – I mean, we were barely like. I mean, we were messy. We did not look great. It took that away, and it – And it got rid of status. Not that it got rid of it. It mitigated status. And I think that it's sort of amazing that young women and teenage girls are still grappling with exactly the same issues. And I wonder if it wouldn’t be better if they could have that. Although, of course, now everything is so about expressing yourself that now here I'm wrapping up as old-lady-shakes-fist-at-cloud; “Stop fucking expressing yourself so much. I'm tired of it”. Looking back on it, I think that part of the reason I loved our single-sex school, which I've commented on just in conversation with others. God, I speak to other people than you? That's so weird. But I've commented on how much I loved it, and I always recommend single-sex education. And I think that the uniform was central to that. Not central. A piece of it.

[43:19] Meg: Well –

[43:20] Jessica: And it made me think of one other thing about the '80s, here's the true '80s – our true '80s nugget is those all girls schools. We all had essentially the same uniform, and we all looked really different. We all had really different style. And for those who love New York magazine and Gossip Girl, I'm going to run through really quickly what the looks were and what I put this in air quotes “the boys” said about each of these groups. So at Nightingale, we were – we had a proclivity wearing thermal long johns with big socks and loafers or this similar under the kilt and big baggy sweaters or turtlenecks. And if there were no thermals, you know, sweatpants, we'd wear our gym sweatpants under the – the kilt. The kilt was never professionally hemmed because we might get in trouble. So they were rolled at the waist to look – you know – I mean, it just added lump to bump. It was so frumpalicious. Spence? perfect? Perfect. Hair, perfect. Swept up in the front with the '80s bump and a bow barrette, perfectly tailored uniform skirts. They all looked catalog ready. Do you agree with me?

[44:50] Meg: Yeah.

[44:52] Jessica: Chapin was kind of somewhere between. And Brearley really leaned into their blue stocking reputation. So even at, you know, age 16, they all had the look of frazzled academics. And I remember that because, you know, our brothers went to collegiate. The basic rule was Nightingale are the girls you want to be friends with and go have a beer with. You want to have sex with Spence girls, Chapin girls will have sex with you. And that the Brearley beavers were only interested in each other.

[45:31] Meg: Oh, my gosh.

[45:31] Jessica: So that was. That was what it was back in the day.

Meg: Okayyyy.

Jessica: You don't – are you debating me?

[45:38] Meg: I'm not debating that that was the word around town. Ridiculous. I don't care what they…

[MUSIC PLAYS]

[45:54] Jessica: So, Meg, you told me something really, really exciting earlier today about the direction in which our podcast is trending.

[46:04] Meg: Yes.

[46:05] Jessica: Up! Yes. We’re just trending up, we are. It seems like we're getting a little more – like, we go through these, you know, like, up and then a plateau and then up a plateau. And I think that we're on a big upswing right now because–

Meg: Yesterday was notable.

Jessica: Yes! So we seem to be going, like, the last couple of weeks. Every day that it drops, we're going up somewhere between 10 to 20%, and that number is climbing. So I would love to ask our listeners to help us with this trend and make it a growing trend that doesn't plateau. And for all of our listeners who are our faithful listeners and those who are our new friends of the podcast, we ask you very cordially to please invite someone who you know, who likes podcasts and who you think will get a kick out of this. Please recommend it to them and, and maybe leave us a little note in our Apple reviews or on, you know, slide into our DM's.

[47:10] Meg: Please, we love to know who's listening.

[47:12] Jessica: Yeah, we were very excited about it and obviously excited about you guys. Thank you.

[MUSIC PLAYS]