149 - The Bimbo Effect
Cheerleaders, flight attendants, fitness instructors, models…what if we told you they’re smarter than the rest of us?
Cheerleaders are paid criminally low wages because they’re “dancing bimbos”...according to creeps online. Flight Attendants are attacked because they’re just dumb drink servers who know how to buckle belts and sling oxygen masks. And models are really, really ridiculously good looking people without any real life skills. At least, these are the bimbo stereotypes TV and social media have agreed upon. Fortunately for us those popular stereotypes are also all wrong in hilariously overstated ways.
On this episode Todd and Joe uncover the brainy origins of the NFL cheerleaders and discuss how they went from being seen as super-smart college grads who really love their sport, to looking like the burlesque dancers they were molded after by a sleazy NFL showman. We’ll also talk about the controversial connection between intelligence and looks, which is currently under debate among scientists. And we’ll compare the actual qualifications of our ‘bimbo professions’ to find out which dummy jobs require the highest training, testing, and college degree. Spoiler: there are cheerleaders on the field who could literally perform brain surgery on you, and sleazy romance writers who gave up prestigiously nerdy fields in academia to write smut.
Links:
https://www.zippia.com/cheerleader-jobs/demographics/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXuNg60WYM8&ab_channel=Refinery29
https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2018/10/nfl-cheerleaders-history-scandal
https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/hedy-lamarr