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After watching the "Good Mythical More" this morning as the guys tried to make themselves cry, I was upset to hear Link talk about "spoiled women" (i.e. women in first-world countries) crying more. Those may be the results of the study (we have no idea what sort of methods the scientists used or any other information about the validity of said study), but Link, I'm upset by your word choice (and you're usually my favorite!). When I posted a comment about how I didn't like the wording, other women quickly agreed.

Boys, you have wives (and a daughter) that you love. You have tons of female viewers of all ages all over the world. Be careful what you say!

Please post here if you would like to see Rhett and Link do an episode (or maybe a week-long series?) learning about women's contributions to societies around the world throughout the ages. Look at suffrage, goddess cultures, modern treatment of women, pain-inflicting fashion, etc -- the sky's the limit!

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I know for certain that Link meant no offense when he said that. He simply read the statistic and made a "silly" joke about it. "Silly" in this case, I would agree, utilizes the connotations for both "attempting to be humorous" and "foolish or ill-conceived". So though I agree it was a bit of an off-color remark, I also know that he did not mean for it to be interpreted that way. Having things come out the wrong way is a peril of "live" entertainment, and with around 15 minutes of verbal content each weekday, R&L are sure to encounter that occasionally.

So I hope you really aren't too offended! Link is a nice guy, and he realizes that women are nice, too!

Totally not offended, just jumping on a good moment to make a point and help everybody learn something! Trust me, from my own extemporaneous speaking experiences, it's hard to always get the words right, but all the more reason to think about what you're saying; rather than laughing and repeating the phrase "spoiled women" several times, they could've taken a split second to say, "Whoops, just kidding, I didn't mean 'spoiled,' I meant..."

So, I'm definitely not taking it too seriously, just want them to think about what they say and maybe learn from it. I mean, like we would be ill served by them learning from a mistake they make in one episode and making a whole new episode to change the mistake into a positive thing!

I thought it was a little off-key for him to say that, but I'm sure it was meant as a casual joke. But I do get where you're coming from. I agree, they should do an episode about why women are pretty awesome. Girl power ;D

It bothered me too. The first time I heard it, I thought, "Did he really just say that? Nah, I must have misheard..." and then he said it again.

He quoted the article directly when he said, "Women in wealthier Western economies cry much more than woman in poorer countries where women have fewer rights." And his sentence immediately afterward was "So spoiled women cry a lot, they just didn't want to say it in that way."

Maybe in his mind he was making the connection between wealth and crying, but the way it came across was that women who have more rights are "spoiled." The more I think about it, the more I don't like it. Thank you for speaking up. 

You're welcome! Glad you went back and found the direct quote so that everyone can see it, word-for-word (I didn't really feel like listening to them cry-scream again)! Let's keep bugging them about it! We want a girl-power episode!!!

The cry-screaming is only funny the first time xD And yes, thanks for getting the quote. And, yes, to quote you,  "the more I think about it, the more I don't like it." 

I'm not sure that an episode about women's issues is a realistic thing to ask for. :\ For two reasons:

1) They rarely if ever talk about social justice issues on GMM.

2) They tend to give topics a very superficial treatment that easily trends toward mocking or generalizing, which could just lead to more unintentional offense.

I'd be happy to be proven wrong, though! But I think I'd just be content with some acknowledgement from Link that it wasn't a great choice of words.

I disagree that it sounded like he was connecting having more rights with being spoiled. He was clearly targeting the wealth aspect of what he read about the study -- evidenced by the fact that he then said, "Channel your inner spoiled woman. You know, like a Beverly Hills wife type." The women of Beverly Hills have a reputation for being rich, preppy, spoiled people; they do not have any strong association with being credible practitioners of increased women's rights. Therefore, as far as I can tell, Link's intention was clear.

While any exploration of historically powerful and influential women is great, proposing a week-long educational series on women as some kind of punishment for a misunderstanding seems rather over the top.

But it also doesn't make any sense to interpret the study that way. The study didn't say that women who have more money (spoiled Beverly Hills types) cry more often. It said that women in wealthier countries cry more. There are certainly still poor women living in wealthy countries, and it would be interesting to know if these women also cry more often than women in poor countries (even the comparatively wealthier ones) and if the study had any ideas as to why that might be.

I realize this is expecting WAY too much out of a video about how to make yourself cry. Women's rights in the developing world are kind of a big deal, though, and I wish it hadn't been brought up at all rather than misconstrued the way it was.

Your second paragraph says it all

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