Episoder
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The voters have spoken! The topic of Series 14 will be: The Woman Behind the Man.
I’ll be looking at women across the ages who had a hand (sometimes a major hand) in the success of some very well-known men. I’m hoping you’ll have heard of the men: I’m choosing the blockbusters. But I suspect the women you have not heard of. Most of them anyway.
The research has already begun, but if you know of a woman who should be included, please get in touch!
Visit the website (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures.
Support the show on my Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=83998235) for bonus episodes, polls, and a general feeling of self-satisfaction. Or make a one-time donation on Buy Me a Coffee.
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I make no comment on the current US election because this is a history podcast. But the entire concept of a woman running a country with even the semblance of an election involved is a recent phenomenon, historically speaking. We’re not even at a century yet. We’re not even at three quarters of a century yet.
This episode will give you the rundown on women who have done it, from Sri Lanka to Iceland. Then I turn to women who served in the parliament/Congress in various countries, and finally women as mayors, state senators, and even one all-female city government.
Visit the website (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures.
Support the show on my Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=83998235) for bonus episodes, polls, and a general feeling of self-satisfaction. Or make a one-time donation on Buy Me a Coffee.
Join Into History (intohistory.com/herhalfofhistory/) for a community of ad-free history podcasts plus bonus content.
Visit Evergreen Podcasts to listen to more great shows.
Follow me on Twitter (X) as @her_half. Or on Facebook or Instagram as Her Half of History.
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Manglende episoder?
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Throughout history and around the globe, women have routinely squeezed, bound, crushed, tweezed, poisoned, pricked, and stretched various portions of their anatomy, sometimes with permanent ramifications, sometimes with excruciating agony, all in the name of beauty. Why was beauty so important? There's no perfect answer, but I explain five theories:
Darwinian Evolution
To Catch a Man (economically)
Outer Beauty Meant Inner Beauty
Peer Pressure from Other Women
For Herself Alone
All of those elements were present well before the 20th century, and while economics did shift dramatically for many women in the past 100 years, did anything else really change?
Visit the website (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures.
Support the show on my Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=83998235) for bonus episodes, polls, and a general feeling of self-satisfaction. Or make a one-time donation on Buy Me a Coffee.
Join Into History (intohistory.com/herhalfofhistory/) for a community of ad-free history podcasts plus bonus content.
Visit Evergreen Podcasts to listen to more great shows.
Follow me on Twitter (X) as @her_half. Or on Facebook or Instagram as Her Half of History.
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Most of the episodes in this series have been about shaping the female body in the name of beauty. But there is at least one major reshaping that has nothing to do with beauty and everything to do with survival. Breast cancer was known to the ancient Egyptians and nearly every culture since, but for most of that time there was no effective treatment. The early modern period saw a growing recognition that the tumor or maybe the whole breast needed to go: a terrifying treatment plan in an age that didn't know much about anesthesia and nothing at all about germ theory. Science got better before feminism did, but celebrities in the 1970s began to break the stigma and the silence about this sadly common disease.
It is also time to vote on the topic of series 14! Make your voice heard on the website at herhalfofhistory.com.
Visit the website (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures.
Support the show on my Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=83998235) for bonus episodes, polls, and a general feeling of self-satisfaction. Or make a one-time donation on Buy Me a Coffee.
Join Into History (intohistory.com/herhalfofhistory/) for a community of ad-free history podcasts plus bonus content.
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Follow me on Twitter (X) as @her_half. Or on Facebook or Instagram as Her Half of History.
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They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and history proves it: blackened teeth, modified skull shapes, extended necks, lip plates, and piercings of various body parts. All of these have been considered the height of beauty, and women went to great lengths to achieve it. This week's episode gives the details.
It is also time to vote on the topic of series 14! Make your voice heard on the website at herhalfofhistory.com.
Visit the website (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures.
Support the show on my Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=83998235) for bonus episodes, polls, and a general feeling of self-satisfaction. Or make a one-time donation on Buy Me a Coffee.
Join Into History (intohistory.com/herhalfofhistory/) for a community of ad-free history podcasts plus bonus content.
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Jane Wenham was accused of witchcraft in 1712. One of the trials was a search of her body. Did she or did she not have a witch's mark where her familiar sucked her blood? Or maybe a Devil's mark where he sealed her as his after a nocturnal initiation.Most of the episodes have been on what women did to make themselves beautiful (whatever that happened to mean at the time). This episode is doing double duty as my second annual Halloween episode, and it is about what calamity might happen if perchance your body happened to have a blemish. Music for this episode is the "Dream of a Witch's Sabbath" by Hector Berlioz (Symphonie Fantastique, Mvmt 5). The recording is in the public domain and available on the Internet Archive.Sound effects for this episode are freely available on freesound.org and include work by Dvideoguy, SoundFlakes, visionear, lotteria001, and others. Visit the website (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures.Support the show on my Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=83998235) for bonus episodes, polls, and a general feeling of self-satisfaction. Or make a one-time donation on Buy Me a Coffee.Join Into History (intohistory.com/herhalfofhistory/) for a community of ad-free history podcasts plus bonus content.Visit Evergreen Podcasts to listen to more great shows.Follow me on Twitter (X) as @her_half. Or on Facebook or Instagram as Her Half of History.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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If you do have one, you are part of a very long-standing worldwide tradition. Tattoos have existed since prehistoric times in many cultures, where they were often (but not always) for women.
Evidence for henna is not nearly so old, but then again, how could we expect it to be? There may have been any number of women and cultures who used henna without leaving us any record. This episode tells the story from Spain to India.
Visit the website (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures.
Support the show on my Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=83998235) for bonus episodes, polls, and a general feeling of self-satisfaction. Or make a one-time donation on Buy Me a Coffee.
Join Into History (intohistory.com/herhalfofhistory/) for a community of ad-free history podcasts plus bonus content.
Visit Evergreen Podcasts to listen to more great shows.
Follow me on Twitter (X) as @her_half. Or on Facebook or Instagram as Her Half of History.
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Women continued to make their own cosmetics in the 18th century. Then it was suddenly immoral in the 19th century (not that some women didn't do it anyway). And then they came roaring back in the 20th century. The revival was led by actresses and eagerly followed by the vast majority of other women. Lipstick! Face powder! Rouge! Mascara! Eyeliner! Eye shadow! There was no end to the number of beauty products you could buy in the 20th century.
Visit the website (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures.
Support the show on my Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=83998235) for bonus episodes, polls, and a general feeling of self-satisfaction. Or make a one-time donation on Buy Me a Coffee.
Join Into History (intohistory.com/herhalfofhistory/) for a community of ad-free history podcasts plus bonus content.
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Follow me on Twitter (X) as @her_half. Or on Facebook or Instagram as Her Half of History.
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Cosmetics are nothing new. Women (and sometimes men) were using them in Egypt, Greece, Rome, China, and India. This is an overview of the art of making up your face across the millennia with white lead, poppy juice, mercury, and more. Also what the menfolk thought about it. (Hint: They were largely against the idea.)
Visit the website (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures.
Support the show on my Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=83998235) for bonus episodes, polls, and a general feeling of self-satisfaction. Or make a one-time donation on Buy Me a Coffee.
Join Into History (intohistory.com/herhalfofhistory/) for a community of ad-free history podcasts plus bonus content.
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I hope you’ve never had a hair day quite like that of Corinna, the mistress to whom the Roman poet Ovid wrote Amores, or The Loves. Corinna dyed her hair so hard, it all fell out. And of all the strange things, Ovid wrote a poem about it.
It's possible that Corinna was not a real person or that this wasn't a real incident. But the poem ranges from hair dye, to hair texture, to ancient Roman curling irons, and the proper treatment of hairdressers, so it is enlightening about Roman women and their hair anyway.
Visit the website (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures.
Support the show on my Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=83998235) for bonus episodes, polls, and a general feeling of self-satisfaction. Or make a one-time donation on Buy Me a Coffee.
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To cover the history of hair would be a podcast in and of itself, and the host should not be me. But hair has been very, very important to a great many women, both past and present, so I am going to give it a go, hitting only the points that caught my eye.
Topics included are:
Cornrow braids
Romans who sewed their hair into place
Medieval women who prized a receding hairline
French women who put battleships on their heads
Slave women who brushed their hair with the tools meant for sheep
The Marcel wave
The bob
and more
Visit the website (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures.
Support the show on my Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=83998235) for bonus episodes, polls, and a general feeling of self-satisfaction. Or make a one-time donation on Buy Me a Coffee.
Join Into History (intohistory.com/herhalfofhistory/) for a community of ad-free history podcasts plus bonus content.
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Surely I am not the only woman who has ever eyed the razor and the shaving cream and wondered "Why?"
Women have been questing for hairlessness at least since Egyptian times, and though the record is mostly silent on this question, there are occasional hints about why and when and how women through the ages did it (mostly painfully and sometimes lethally).
Visit the website (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures.
Support the show on my Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=83998235) for bonus episodes, polls, and a general feeling of self-satisfaction. Or make a one-time donation on Buy Me a Coffee.
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The origins of footbinding are lost in time, but I think it is safe to say that the first woman to do it could not possibly have imagined what was coming. This episode covers the earliest evidence (in the 1100s) through to the final demise of the practice in 1957. The historical records are heavy on hormone-inspired odes to beauty. They are relatively light on the actual lived experiences of hundreds of millions of women, but to the extent that I can, I talk about how it was done and why it was done, and finally why it finally stopped.
Visit the website (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures.
Support the show on my Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=83998235) for bonus episodes, polls, and a general feeling of self-satisfaction. Or make a one-time donation on Buy Me a Coffee.
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The mostly male writers of historical records were reasonably interested in breasts, but quite uninterested in the day-to-day management of them. For most of history, there's not much to go on, but this episode covers time periods where women bound up their breasts to make them as small as possible. It also covers time periods where women used incredible ingenuity to create devices that boosted those breasts up to as large as they could possibly go, and then some extra on top of that.
Visit the website (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures.
Support the show on my Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=83998235) for bonus episodes, polls, and a general feeling of self-satisfaction. Or make a one-time donation on Buy Me a Coffee.
Join Into History (intohistory.com/herhalfofhistory/) for a community of ad-free history podcasts plus bonus content.
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Corsets are infamous as torturous devices, specially designed to keep women in their place and helpless. But reality is a little more complicated than that, as it always is. This episode discusses:
the origin of the corset
the evolving function of the corset
the 19th century corset
how small could a woman go?
who enforced this idea anyway?
how bad for your health was it?
where did the corset go?
Visit the website (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures.
Support the show on my Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=83998235) for bonus episodes, polls, and a general feeling of self-satisfaction. Or make a one-time donation on Buy Me a Coffee.
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Women have been chasing impossible beauty standards for at least hundreds of years and probably longer. But just what we think is beautiful keeps changing. This is an overview look of what body shape different historical cultures found desirable. Whether you are stick thin or medically obese, well-endowed or small-breasted, firm or fleshy, it has all been beautiful at some point.
Visit the website (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures.
Support the show on my Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=83998235) for bonus episodes, polls, and a general feeling of self-satisfaction. Or make a one-time donation on Buy Me a Coffee.
Join Into History (intohistory.com/herhalfofhistory/) for a community of ad-free history podcasts plus bonus content.
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What woman doesn't love chocolate? (Okay, I do know a few, but still.) Guest writer Pamela Toler tells us about the history of chocolate in this episode.
Please check out Pamela's other work! She has an excellent book called Women Warriors and an upcoming book called The Dragon from Chicago. Find both and more at the following links:
Website: https://www.pameladtoler.com/
Blog: http://www.historyinthemargins.com/
Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/pdtoler.bsky.social
Threads https://www.threads.net/@pamelatolerauthor
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/pamelatolerauthor/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pamela.toler
Linked-In https://www.linkedin.com/in/pamelatoler/
I am on research break for one more week. Next week starts Series 13, Shaping the Female Body.
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For the 4th of July, learn about Peggy Shippen Arnold! She's the wife of Benedict Arnold, the most famous American traitor. Had things gone just a little differently, we might not be celebrating independence today.
I am on research break to prepare Series 13: Shaping the Female Body, so this is a guest episode by Dr. Lynn Price Robbins and Isaac S. Loftus of the 2 Complicated 4 History podcast. You can find them ad-free on the Into History network (intohistory.com) or at any of the following locations:
Podcast website: 2c4hpod.com
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/2-complicated-4-history/id1664183536
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3svQpZfxhVQnYJMESpp842?si=514780ada34d4aab
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLX2x56DEw1y7EYWxfufgfSR951RrdsXet&si=TuDcpAjaeQx-vjkH
Twitter: https://twitter.com/2c4h_Podcast
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/2c4hPodcast
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/2c4h_podcast
Visit my website (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures.
Support the show on my Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=83998235) for bonus episodes, polls, and a general feeling of self-satisfaction. Or make a one-time donation on Buy Me a Coffee.
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I am on research break to prepare Series 13: Shaping the Female Body. But in the meantime, here is a beautiful speech by Sojourner Truth, the emancipated slave, abolitionist, feminist, preacher, and all around fabulous woman.
Visit the website (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures.
Support the show on my Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=83998235) for bonus episodes, polls, and a general feeling of self-satisfaction. Or make a one-time donation on Buy Me a Coffee.
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Alexandra was born German, but she married into the Romanov dynasty of Russia. Her marriage is one of European royalty's few great love stories. But the world of the late 19th century was one where absolute monarchies were crumbling, and her family's fall is also one of European royalty's saddest tragedies.
Visit the website (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures.
Support the show on my Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=83998235) for bonus episodes, polls, and a general feeling of self-satisfaction. Or make a one-time donation on Buy Me a Coffee.
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Follow me on Twitter (X) as @her_half. Or on Facebook or Instagram as Her Half of History.
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