There are many ways in which you can refuse to join modernity. Some people carry brick phones. Other people convince themselves the Earth is flat.
For my part, I almost never listen to podcasts. It’s not because podcasts aren’t compelling and interesting, it’s because they interrupt my own little inner monologue, the space in my head where I can stop, and think, and be weird, and be a writer. I am a prose person. If my monologue interrupts me when I’m reading or writing prose, I simply pause for a moment. But podcasts are so discursive that instead I simply lose my place.
Maybe I just respond to written words more. Who knows, really.
That’s not the point, of course. The point is, there are very few podcasts which I can actually pay attention to. Call Her Daddy is one of them.
It’s popular for a reason. It’s name brand, big budget locker talk for women. Celebrities join in – which is how the entire world found out just when Katy Perry would want to suck the dick of her then-husband, who happened to be Orlando Bloom at the time. (If that sounds shocking, that’s actually pretty tame by Call Her Daddy standards)
It’s popular for a reason. It’s name brand, big budget locker talk for women
I also really liked the Miley Cyrus episode, because Cyrus has the kind of old-school, deeply textured American voice that defines pain when you put on her music late at night, and it was interesting to get a glimpse of the singer behind that voice, and what she actually does with that pain.
Yes, she’s a little crazy, but that’s the point.
Most of all, I’ve come back for the candid sexual discussions, because they’re messy and funny and kind of gross and human. Sex from the perspective of the much-derided girl boss, which the internet seemingly has no patience for (especially now, when the internet is constantly rediscovering and admonishing old Sex & the City episodes).
You put on these episodes when it’s late at night, and you’ve been out in a strange town, and you miss your female friends a little, or a lot. When you feel like you have no one to talk to about that thing that that guy did the other night. Maybe to brag – or maybe to moan and complain.
I think it speaks to its humor that even an older nerd like me could get something useful and good out of it
The thing about us women is that we do so much of our bonding via dirty conversations. It’s a ritual you miss when your friends are away (a lot of my friends have recently had babies or have young children at home; I got married way before they did and have a teenager on my hands, the rhythms of our lives are not the same).
I was always older than the target audience of the podcast, and I think it speaks to its humor that even an older nerd like me could get something useful and good out of it.
So imagine my irritation when the conservative reactionary corner of the internet decided to go bananas because host Alex Cooper recently announced her pregnancy. “She promoted having fun sex, and then she had the nerve to get married! The nerve to start a family! And nobody stripped her naked and marched her through the streets like Cersei Lannister!”
The thing about Alex Cooper is that she’s public about everything, from the way she likes a dude to go down on her to settling down and having kids. She has always been very open about the importance of partnering up, as she put it herself, “there is nothing sexier than falling in love.” And then follows it up with an honest discussion on how a woman must be self-aware, and ask herself if she is aligned with the man she wants to spend her life with.
While some may claim that she has sold her female listeners a false version of female empowerment – dooming them to singledom after they slut around – the truth is, love and sex are assortative. Most fun women who listen to Cooper partner up with fun dudes.
It’s not complicated, unless you like to seethe online about all of the sex that you’re not having.
Call Her Daddy is not for everyone, podcasts are not for everyone (just look at me, I think this is the first time I have written about a podcast in my life), but a good thing is there to be shared. Especially when the world’s stodgiest, most miserable people are yelling about it.