Revisiting The Red Pill (2016) Seven Years Later

Upon a second viewing with seven years of growth under our belts, this “documentary” is a technically mediocre attempt at a propaganda piece. It’s dishonestly framed (there’s no way the documentarian, Cassie Jaye, stumbled on Paul Elam’s anti-feminism site by searching “rape culture” in Google, folks), staged to the point of being comical, and manipulatively edited and arranged to coerce the viewer into drawing a very specific conclusion.

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Brooke MorrisComment
Who's to Blame for Child Beauty Pageants?

After weeks of learning about everything from child development to criminology to sociology, I’ve finally closed the book on child beauty pageants. We covered child beauty pageant origins, rules, and practices, child physical, cognitive, and sexual development from infancy to teens, the effects of pageantry on developing brains, and now we wrap it all up by asking the big societal question: Why are we still doing these pageants?

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Brooke Morris
Child Pageants May be Worse for Kids Than We Thought

With such a long episode, I can’t really get into the details in a blog post, but this one was an exercise in finding out that, sometimes, you can do a bunch of nuanced research and the conclusion could still come out as un-nuanced as can be… If the question is whether pageants are good for kids, the answer is clear regardless of the number of peer-reviewed studies: Absolutely not.

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Brooke Morris
Is The Postman (1997) the Worst Move Ever Made?

This movie is one of the biggest artistic fuckups we’ve ever seen. It can’t be the worst movie we’ve ever seen because 1) we’ve seen My Boss’s Daughter and 2) too much money was poured into this for it to be aesthetically ugly. But despite that mountain of cash spent on dolling up this mid-90s blockbuster, it still manages to be one of the most insufferable film experiences we’ve ever had. Hilarious, but completely inexcusable.

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Brooke Morris
Child Pageants: Childhood on a Stage

I watched Toddlers & Tiaras when I was 13 or 14, and it did exactly what it set out to. I sat with my mom and watched wide-eyed at the families I didn’t yet know were being exploited, both judgmental and thankful I didn’t have to go through what I saw on the screen. I’m now (much) older, and I can clock TLC’s formula for what it is: finding people with fringe beliefs or practices, spicing their lives up with editing and scripted drama, and setting it forth for the “normies” to laugh at.

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Brooke MorrisComment
Cam (2018): A Guide on How Not to Be a Cam Girl

I’m going to keep this short and sweet: From the moment of writing this, Olivia is getting married tomorrow and I’m in Boston to celebrate! We figured we’d give you all a fun spooky movie review to get into the spirit of things while you wait for my heavy hitter.

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Brooke Morris
We Weren't Ready for So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993)

It’s another movie review as a palette cleanser before Olivia’s final episode on the adoption and foster industry - this time a mid-90s romantic comedy that has been a staple in Olivia’s family since she was a kid. Incidentally, I had never heard of it, making for a fabulously surreal film experience.

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Brooke Morris
Mini Heavy Hitters: Getting Old and Hating Women

It’s the last episode of the season! While we’re out for the next few months, our task for you (should you choose to accept it) is to tell your friends to listen to our cool podcast and to write a review - it’s the second best way to support us other than straight up giving us money, and it makes us feel all warm and fuzzy. Do it, I double dog dare you.

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Brooke Morris
Cyclical Trauma and Why We Justify Nukes

I honestly considered just copying and pasting my notes from this episode because I’m so tired of reading and thinking about war and death, but my notes are 16 single-spaced pages long. This has been one of the most viscerally unpleasant episodes I’ve ever had to write, but I do feel something akin to enriched. I’ve learned more about this than I ever thought possible (especially considering how dismally our public schools handle teaching it).

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Brooke Morris