Why Golden Girls Matters!

This week we're exploring Golden Girls after the 34th anniversary of first airing on television. 

Join Amber and Kendra as we explore how Golden Girls addressed social stigmas such as aging, aids, LGBT issues, and more! 

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This is episode 13. Why golden girls matter?

Speaker 2: 0:19

[inaudible]

Speaker 1: 0:20

welcome to why blank matters. Well, we discuss how small topics have big impacts. I'm your host, Kendra Clark, and I'm your host. Amber Williams. Hey Amber. Yes. Kendra, what do you call a grandma on speed dial? Um, Instagram. Oh my gosh. So today we're talking about the golden girls and this week is actually the anniversary of their premiere, which was 34 years ago this week, which was actually an intentional, but we do want to let you know for anybody who's familiar with golden girls, if you have kids in the car when you are listening to this, while we're not going to buy anything graphic, we will allude to the idea that sex exists. So it will be sexual in nature. So just heads up there. So this might be a good time to go ahead and change this to another podcast, but then come back later. So the golden girls is a TV show about four older women who are living together in Miami. You have blanche Devereaux, Rose Niland, Borth, these bore neck and Sophia Petrella. The show aired on NBC from 1985 to 1992 and the thing that was really interesting about this show at the time was it was the first show to really kind of have older people as the main characters, right? Marsha Posner Williams who was the co-producer and she said they set out to tell stories of an over often overlooked population and she said this was a way of showing that even though you might be a certain age, that you're not dead, you're full of life, full of laughter, full of sarcasm, and it can be quite joyful. Right? Right. At it's peak, it had an average viewership of 21 million households and there's something about golden girls that still really resonates with people today. So like even the generations that weren't alive during this time really find belonging with golden girls. Yeah, I know my sister is a nanny during the summer and she has two kids that she watches and one of them is a nine year old girl and she loves golden girls. Oh my gosh. You know, I got into golden girls was actually like I dated this guy for like three years. He loved golden girls and that's actually how I found out about it cause I didn't really have a lot of TV growing up so I didn't know about golden girls. But my introduction was a guy that I dated when I think that we tend to think that it is geared more towards women, but it really kind of covers a bunch of different Sprite spectrums because it does deal with a lot of different issues that are still relevant today when it comes to characters. Everybody had somebody they could kind of relate to. So you had Rose who was the very compassionate and very naive widow from st Olaf, Minnesota. Uh, you had Dorothy's Bornite who was very intelligent and sarcastic. She was a substitute teacher at an Italian American and was divorced. She was a substitute teacher in the show. Yeah. Interesting. You have her mother, Sofia patroller who is very Italian and very proud of being Italian. And we'll just say anything that comes to her mind and in the real life. The actress was actually two years younger than her daughter Dorothy. Yeah, I think he was the two years it was, it was a year or two, I can't remember exactly. But yeah, they put like aging makeup on her to like make her look older. Um, and then you of course you have blanch who's was a very sexually adventurous, adventurous person. Um, and she was also a art lover and a widow from the South. So she was the Southern Belle of the group. Okay. And actually the one who owned the house. So the way they kind of all come together, you find out when you watched the show is blanche had bought house but needed some roommates to help pay the mortgage. And Rose and Dorothy separately found ads and reached out. And then Sophia ended up moving in after the nursing home. She was in caught on fire. Oh, okay. Oh, that sounds similar to what I've been dealing with it the last year. My grandma's nursing home caught on fire and yeah, that's the thing is that's very relatable. Yes. But it's like, Oh, I can really relate to this or Oh, these are things I didn't think about when it comes to getting older and I wanted to, I wanted to add to that that my grandma was okay. Everybody got out of it. Okay. A few people went to the emergency room but there were no serious injuries, thank goodness. But in a lot of older women when they are like interviewed about their experience with golden girls, they talked about how they enjoyed it because there were so few shows during that time that showed strong female characters who also were employed and older. They said the characters were sexual and confident. They weren't defined by men or lack of men in their life, but mainly by their friendship and their ability to entertain. But they traveled, they worked, they remain sexually active. Romantically they dated, they got engaged and got married, so they just like had these full lives right there on TV, which was very progressive by the eighties standards, but also by today's standards to some extent. Absolutely. There's lots of different things that you can judge shows by and whether they are female friendly and some are more relevant than others. Of course you hadn't the Bechdel test, which measures representation of women and fiction. So basically you have to have at least two women who have a name who talked to each other about something other than men. Right. Right. So that one's easily broken. And with this, um, but there's also the Mako Maury test, which asks whether a female character has a narrative that is not supporting a man story. Oh. And it's named after the character from Pacific rim. Okay. Which she met that test during the first movie, but then in the sequel she ends up dying a few minutes into the movie to further her brother's story. Oh, great. So, so it was named after her, but then she ended up breaking her own role. And that was very much Sara chasm in my voice. Yeah. Um, the, I think my favorite is, uh, the sexy lamp test. The what? The sexy lamp test. Okay. And this was created by Kelly Sue Taconic, who we mentioned in the comics episode. Okay. But she basically said if you replace your female character with the sexy lamp and the story still works, you probably need another draft. Interesting. It makes me think of like two movie references, which is the Christmas story with the lamp, the sexy lamp leg. And then also like, what was the movie with I love lamp. Oh, what was that? I don't know if I know what this is. Oh my goodness. It was like something I heard in high school all the time and it was so annoying. It was like I love lamp. I don't know what movie it was. So if you are in love with one of those movie quotes, um, I hope I offended you because I hate that movie quote. Oh no. One of the most immediate impacts that gold girls had was the way they created the story because there were four females all living in the same house together for main characters. It created the comedy formula known as the golden rule of four, which basically you have the brain, the slut, the debts, and the big mouth. And that varies like in some sort of, so what kind of shows have that? So a sex in the city, sex in the city you had designing women living single, desperate Housewives. Um, hot and Cleveland mostly shows. I haven't seen devious maids. Um, I don't watch a lot of TVs for anybody. A lot of TV shows for anybody that's listening. Oh. And then of course, um, HBO is girls. Okay. I haven't listened to that either. But really before golden girls, do you[inaudible] were the common format, so you'd have two characters that kind of bounce, do you think of like Starsky and Hutch and um, I can't think of anything. I know there's more, my mind's going blank, but yeah, so it kinda like broken down and gives you more characters to be able to relate to. Okay. It was me and girls mean girls head for, yeah, let's just try, actually, they kind of fit that. The only thing that kind of sucks is that with the shows that you named, and I know it's all white women, are there any, are there any, is there any diversity of baby? Yeah. So I'm living single, I think living single was a show with primarily black actors. Okay. Devious maids was primarily Latin. Okay. And, uh, there was also a show called Noah's Ark, which was an LGBTQ show. Oh, all right. So, so yeah, it, it branched out beyond race as well. And Susan Harris, the show creator talked about how they like to tackle, not necessarily outrageous issues but issues that were important and things that she knew people went through that hadn't been addressed on television. And that's probably the place that is the most revolutionary is a bit strong. But it was definitely before its time in some of the topics they covered. So obviously they talked about a lot of things related to aging, kind of shattering the silence and the visibility around that. So they talk about obviously menopause, Alzheimer's, um, age discrimination, all of which are issues that deal with getting older. I'm also quality of nursing homes that are, there was an episode where Sophia goes to visit a friend and realize that she's not really being taken very good care of. Oh. Um, but probably the thing that is most well known for talking about and addressing is, um, homosexuality and the gay population. Right? Right. And so blanche, his brother comes out as gay. Um, and at first Blanche's very supportive of his desires, I guess. I don't know how to phrase that. But then later on, was it a few seasons later after the fact where they get married and now all of a sudden she's not very supportive. And so, um, she is confiding in Sophia during this time. So Sophia has a lot of really great quotes about LGBT thing. So I think she has a conversation with Dorothy about LGBT stuff. She definitely has a conversation with blanche to Dorothy. The quote was, I'll tell you the truth, Dorothy, if one of my kids was gay, I wouldn't love them one bit less. I would wish him all the happiness in the world. And then in the conversation with blanche where she's talking about marriage[inaudible] like, Oh, well, I'm fine with you, love who you love, but like, why do you have to get married? That's nice. Southern Southern. I know that that's probably the best Southern accent I've ever heard you do. Like Southern accident is notoriously awful, but she says everyone wants someone to grow old with. Shouldn't everyone have that chance? And so that's when she kinda changes the mind to plant a little bit. And then maybe this was rows. I don't really remember. Um, so this was maybe one of the first references. Yeah, so in season two, um, was the first time this topic really came up is because Dorothy's childhood friend gene, um, who was a lesbian came to visit them after her partner Pat had died. And Jean after she's been there for a couple of days, starts kind of having feelings for Rose. Okay. And so, so FIA said, Jean is a nice person. She happens like girls instead of guys. Some people like cats instead of dogs. Frankly, I'd rather live with a lesbian than a cat unless a lesbian sheds at that. I don't know. I think she has the best quotes from the whole series from what I've seen. But yeah, Sophie is amazing. Um, but to all of the actresses that were apart of the show were also advocates for LGBTQ rights offscreen as well. So they've kind of become like icons within the gay community. And when blanked his brother Clayton and the episode where he talks about getting married, it was really one of the first times that the idea of who man getting married had ever been discussed on TV. Right. That wasn't something that was really talked about her. Yeah. And I think that's one of the things when they talk about these things they're talking about in a way that is not putting down that community, but also being realistic in the way that friends and family, I guess, behave or react when those kinds of things happened. Especially, I mean this is 30 years ago. So having that like realistic stance that having those kind of hard conversations that I do think my favorite is when blanche is talking to her brother and the episode where he comes out to her, they're talking about how they were both irresistible demand. Wait, who's your resistible? Twin blanche or[inaudible] and her brother. So it's just one of the things I have in common. Um, and the other thing that kind of goes somewhat hand in hand with that was golden girls was one of the first Epic or one of the first TV shows to address the AIDS epidemic. Yes. So they had an episode called 72 hours, which aired in 1990 it was only the second sit-com on U S TV to tackle this issue. And in the episode, Rose gets a letter from the hospital where she's basically had a surgery and had a blood transfusion and she's told that she may have received HIV infected blood. And so, and she was, her whole perception of AIDS was like, I'm not a bad person or something along those lines. And blanche is like, AIDS is not a bad person's disease. Disease doesn't happen because you live in immoral lifestyle. And she was like, AIDS just happens because it's a disease and lot or like it doesn't affect any type of person. And the other thing about this episode was it kind of broke out of the stereotype that AIDS was a disease for gay people. Right. Um, and it showed that it's something that can affect anybody. And that's why when, when AIDS was introduced to society and even president Reagan, they took a real like hands off approach to dealing with it because they thought it just affected gay people. And so their outlook kind of was, well like if you don't want AIDS, don't you know, do the deed with other dudes, you know, which is really unfortunate. Right. And Estelle Getty who plays Sophia, she was a big AIDS activist and in 1989 she had an interview where she stated, I've been in show business all my life in the majority of my friends are gay and a lot of my friends have died from AIDS. Wow. So that was part of the reason they brought these things up because it was people in their lives who were affected by it. So it was very important to them to get that out. Wow. And the reason the episode was called 72 hours is because that's how long, how long it took to get the test results back then. So you'd have to wait 72 hours to find out if the test was positive or negative. Oh. Um, another big topic that I think is super relevant today and it blows my mind that they were talking about this 30 years ago and we're really just now starting to address it is prescription pain pill addiction. Right. Um, there's episode called high anxiety where Sophia accidentally knocks a bottle of medication into the sink and Rose is like looking for the pills and she starts having these heavy mood swings. And for people who've watched the show, Rose is like the super nice, like always friendly, but she's getting very like mean with people and it's a completely different character change. And what they find out is she had a back injury 30 years ago and the doctor prescribed her pain pills for that back injury. Gotcha. The way she hurt her back is kind of funny. Um, it was a plowing incident because apparently the cow got too old to be able to plow the field. So she did it herself, like plowed it, like pulled the plow. Oh. Because Raja stories are ridiculous. Um, but I mean, she's been taking these pain pills for 30 years. Oh my gosh. And they convinced her to stop and that lasts for a few hours. But then she starts sneaking the medication and they eventually convinced her to go to a recovery center and she goes to treatment. And when she comes back home she says, I know I'll never be cured, but I know that I can live without drugs. My whole life, one day at a time, which honestly for dealing with people with substance abuse as one of the things we teach them is don't think about forever, cause forever seems like a really long time and very daunting, but just focus on, you know, can I be clean today? Wow. And focusing on one day at a time. So this is 30 years ago and they were addressing the opioid epidemic that is rampant now 30 years later. So it's a really good quote. That's really good quote. They also talked about sexual harassment or there's an episode where blank starts taking night classes and she's struggling with one of the classes and goes to her professor asking him for help. And basically he sat, tells her that if she sleeps with him then he'll give her an a and she goes to complained to the school about it and they don't take her seriously. Uh, they basically dismiss it saying as a he said, she said thing which is also relevant today with the me too movement and we see how these kinds of things have not really been addressed appropriately in workplaces and schools, politics and the entertainment industry. Um, I didn't realize that that was an episode. I mean what do you think about like professor's harassment? It's, you get an image of your head in a young woman who's like in her late teens or early twenties and you know, as, as much as people dismiss that situation, you put a middle age women talking about sexual harassment and I think amount of people that believe that situation go down instead of, you know, well and I think in particular that it was important that they used blanche who is someone who is more sexually promiscuous, right. And saying even though that's your, that's your choice, your lifestyle, people are not entitled yes to your body. Because of the choices you make. And that's still very much a narrative we're trying to overcome as a society. Another episode has Dorothy. I'm going to, the doctors called sick and tired and she keeps telling the doctor that she's in pain, that she's exhausted, that she doesn't know what's wrong with her. And she goes from doctor to doctor and they keep telling her that nothing's wrong. And when they finally send her to a specialist, he basically tells her that she's just getting old, um, that it's just all in her head that there's nothing wrong with her. And throughout the episode she's like, I just feel like I'm a crazy person cause I know there's something wrong with me, but everybody keeps telling me there's not. And she finally makes it to a different specialist who discovers that she has chronic fatigue syndrome, which is something that wasn't really widely known back then. Right. And she runs into the doctor who told her she was crazy at like a restaurant and choose them out, which is amazing. But the better thing is his wife is just sitting there looking at him like, how dare you? And that's still a real thing because like if you go to, if a woman sees a doctor per particularly a male doctor, they don't take women's pain as seriously as they do men's pain. And so, I mean, I remember learning that in sociology in college and I was like, wow. Like I just remember how many times people were dismissive of like certain injuries I had had or so like, so for instance, I broke my foot in Afghanistan and everybody told me I jammed my toe and I needed to walk it off. And so I, I walked it off for months and I got home and I got x-rays and they're like, have you been walking? Okay? And it was like, Oh. I was like, well, it really hurt, but people just don't take women's pain very seriously. So yeah, I know when I looked it up, there were articles by the BBC, the Atlantic, the New York times, there's even a Harvard study, all that talks about how doctors take women's pain less seriously. And one study found that women are seven times more likely to be misdiagnosed and sent home when they're having a heart attack. Right. So like I said, the show is way before its time cause he's talking about things that are still the same today. Maybe if we'd learned the lessons when the golden girls were trying to teach us being a better rice. Yeah. Cause I always see the studies about heart disease and heart attack in particular, like with, with doctors not believing, but it's kinda hard to quantify, um, woman's pain versus a man's pain because women typically are more pain tolerant. But how do you measure that? How do you measure somebody's perception of pain versus another person's and, but you know, women are either we're not human and we don't feel pain or we just don't matter. Women matter don't that sarcasm. Golden girls also addressed suicide. Ah, there's episode where Sophia's friend asked her to hold her hand as she takes her life. Cause she says she's tired of living in pain and loneliness. And so fear really struggles with this because she wants to be there for her friend. But also she like, she doesn't want her friend to kill herself, obviously. Right. And she eventually talks her friend out of it and she said, Hey, she's like, you want me to be here for your death? How about letting me be here for your life? Um, and there's a blog that I found called Gisele plus movies and they were talking about how when they were in college, they had, I think they had like some family illnesses and then a bunch of things going on and they were having a lot of issues and they talked about how watching this episode encouraged them to hold on when they kind of needed it most. So I mean that's what good TV and movies do is they reach out to you and like hit home and make you feel things. So I feel like in the TV things that I do see in passing, there's been two mentions of suicide that I can come up with. Like there's 13 reasons why, and I haven't watched 13 reasons why, but I know that there's a lot of speculation that it actually caused some suicides or it kind of influenced somebody if they were already kind of thinking about it. But then there was a other show, um, and I did watch this one for a little while and I was so disgusted. Oh goodness. I don't remember what it was. Oh, what was it about? So basically this dad or the, he has got a family, I think it's like two kids. He's a businessman and he's got friends. One of his friends is also contemplating suicide in the first episode. And then they all get the call that he jumped off of roof or jumped off a building somehow. And then the whole season is about how like he's been planning his suicide all along and, but he really did it to save his family. And I'm like, you not being here does not make anybody's life any better. So it was like, Oh, and he saved his business by doing this and he did this and the keys been a hero all along. And that's a really, really dangerous narrative because when you have somebody that is on the verge of committing suicide or maybe they haven't, they've been in proximity in their community to somebody who's committed suicide. When you have that narrative and when you memorialize them as like a organization, you're actually just encouraging people to do the same thing because then they're like, if somebody else is thinking about it, then they're like, Oh well I can be remembered as a hero if I do this can remember be remembered for all these good things. They're saying all these good things and not to say that you can't remember good things about somebody that has has died because like I've definitely had people I care about that have killed themselves and it's devastating and it sucks, but if we keep highlighting them as heroes, that narrative repeats itself over and over again and in my college town, this was like a huge problem in bowling green, Ohio. They were just, I think it was in the high school is just suicide after suicide after suicide. And it was because of that narrative. And so likely that if you are in proximity to somebody that's committed suicide, that there's going to be copy catters because it's just really hard and people don't always know how to cope with what they're feeling. But um, don't, don't, do you know, your, you bring more value here forever. You can't bring that back. What I think that's something that is hard for entertainment to find a balance in. But I think the way golden girls is one, they validated her friend's feelings. They're not trying to make her seem like she's crazy or that her feelings don't matter. But also showing like how Sophia could be a good friend and like still be that support and kind of walk her friend through that decision. Right. And kind of at one point her friends, like, I just don't know what to do. And Sophia is like, well that's exactly why this is important because you can't change your mind tomorrow. Right, right. And so being able to be respectful about the people who are in that situation also find a way to help them, which is a hard balance to do, especially in the ratings, uh, industries. So, and I just want to add that September is suicide prevention month. Yes. Um, so this is a good time to talk about all of this. So if you are considering suicide or anything of that nature, you can call the national suicide prevention lifeline, which uh, you can call at one 800, two, seven, three, eight, two, five, five, and then it's available 24 hours a day. And again, that number is one 800, two, seven, three, eight, two, five, five. Um, and golden girls wasn't scared of dealing with tough issues as you see. Um, they even did a couple episodes talking about poverty and homelessness and things like that. Right? Um, the first one was called, brother, can I have your jacket? Which I'm just going to go on and say the premise of this episode is ridiculous. Like what happens is Rose buys a lottery ticket for everybody and they're scratching it off. And one of them wins for$10,000 and they put it in blanches coat pocket. And the guy from the thrift store comes by to pick up some stuff and Sophia thinks the jacket goes with that. And so she gives it to the thrift store. Okay. So they go to the thrift store to try to get the jacket and Michael Jackson has balled it. But then Michael Jackson basically wears at his concert that night and then puts it on auction the day. This must be a really eccentric jacket. No, it's like literally just like a beat up aviator jacket.[inaudible] and um, and then like there's a politician who ends up paying$10,000 for the jacket at the auction because he, apparently he's made fun of homeless people and all the money's going towards helping the homeless PR campaign to get in the right. Okay. And then as a symbolic gesture, he then donates the jacket to the homeless shelters as well. Okay. So the girls decide to go pretend like they're homeless and stay in the homeless shelter for the night to try to find the jacket. The, they, they kind of behave really terrible cause they meet some people in the homeless shelter and then after all the people in the homeless shelter fall asleep, they start like digging around to everybody stuff trying to find it. Um, but the people they meet really tell a story about people who experienced poverty that we don't really think about or kind of break some of the stereotypes that we have. Um, Rose meets a guy that's from Minnesota, so of course they connect on that as Rose from miss Minnesota. Yes. She's from Saint Olaf, Minnesota. This guy was fired from work because they didn't want to train someone his age and he was living on the streets up in Minnesota, but it was too cold. So he found a way to come to Miami, so he basically wouldn't freeze to death. Wow. Um, and then Sofia runs into one of her friends from shady Pines, the retirement home that she was in, and her friend ran out of money and couldn't afford to stay there anymore. So ended up in the shelter. Wow. That's, I mean, these all feel very real. Absolutely. And these are all really important topics. So even though the premise of the show is cheesy and ridiculous, yes. And they still acted like terrible people after they found out all this information. But at the end of the episode, they do donate the lottery ticket to the homeless shelter. Okay. But still, and then the other episode where they really address as called, have yourself a Merry little Christmas where they go and volunteer at a church to serve dinner to the homeless. Okay. And they find Dorothy's ex-husband stand there, the Reverend that they're talking to, cause they're trying fairly, how are all these people here? And he says poverty is an experience rather than a moral failing. He said, you'd be surprised how many people are only two to three paychecks away from being on the street. The suddenly poor are all around us. And once you've been knocked down like that, it's very hard to recover. Right. Which I think is such an important message because there are so many stereotypes about why people end up like that and not knowing that. Right. It doesn't take a lot for a lot of people. Right. I think the perception is that people automatically go to is like they're homeless because they got into drugs and they can't pick themselves back up because of drugs, when in reality, most homeless people aren't actually doing drugs. From what I understand or can't, I don't, I don't know what the statistics are for homeless people, but I know when it comes to people in poverty, so like people who are getting some sort of like financial assistance or things like that through the government. Um, there have been States that have implemented mandatory drug screens for like welfare recipients and States that have implemented it usually end up getting rid of it because I spend more money on the drug testing. Exactly, yes. Then they save on the benefits because what they find is only like 5% of the people that they're drug testing actually are using drugs. So by doing that, you're just furthering the stigma that if you're on welfare, you're on drugs. Right. Um, but also it's not cost effective and it doesn't help. So. Right. Those, we'll talk about interracial relationships. Um, Dorothy's son ends up marrying a older black lady and she's more upset about the 20 year age difference than she is about the fact that she's black. Okay. Um, they talk about verbal abuse and domestic violence when blanches daughter comes home with the guy that she's met and he's just really mean to her the entire time, just calling her fat and things like that. Uh, they talk about immigration. Dorothy has a student who wins a writing contest and once he wins, it draws attention to the fact that he's here in the U S undocumented. Wow. So they really just covered a lot and they didn't in a way that most of the time wasn't very preachy. And then also by having those variety of people in different situations, different sexual orientations, it helps the viewers come to relate to those people more. Um, there was a study by MIT researcher, Edward Sheba, and he found that TV affects people's perspective of minority groups. And he says that as we grow attached, as we grow emotionally attached to characters who are part of a minority group, our prejudices tend to recede. And so by having all these issues, it helps create empathy. Empathy, yes. So those are all the things that it kind of did before his time and kind of in some of the ways that it addressed audiences back then, but even audiences now. But how does it affect our modern day? I'm one of the biggest things that has done this has changed the way that people retire. The golden girl showed future retirees that you can save money by splitting cost, but also build a social network. According to the ARP in 2013 4 million women, 50 and older were living in us households with at least two women in the same age group. This helps provide help at home, companionship, financial help, but also health and safety. So you think about those commercials like I've fallen and I can't get up and people who live by themselves, I don't have people who can find them. And after my granddad and grandpa died, both of my grandmas were living on their own. And that was like the biggest concern for one. She actually did fall and she was, we we didn't know for several hours. And then with my other grandma, that was the fear as well. So, and having that companionship is also important because loneliness can have negative health effects. The American psychological association says that social isolation could be a greater threat to public health than obesity. It obesity. Interesting because it increases your risk factors for cardiovascular elements, Alzheimer's stroke. So having that companionship can also help in health that way. Right. And so, you know, with me being in the military, the air force has their four pillars of resiliency. So that's social, that spiritual, um, physical and mental. And so they really, really emphasize that the social part is like a whole pillar in and of its own. And I think people neglect that when they think about your overall wellbeing. And there are even programs that have been developed to help older people find other people to live with. There's even one program that specifically called the golden girls network, which has 1500 members, but there are other ones that are geared specifically towards women. So I'm just towards me. And they give you tips on what to look for in a roommate so you can make sure you're matched with someone good. And it's becoming more and more common for people. Um, so there was even a member of parliament in Canada who passed a bill called the Goldens girls act because in Toronto there was actually some laws that restricted but people, older people living together. And so this law was passed to make it where it was easier. So he said, we don't want to punish people who are trying to be innovative in the way they're living from being able to do that, especially our elderly population. Because I know one of the ladies I spoke with talked about how her mother had been placed in a nursing home and really enjoyed it there. But when she started running the number, she didn't know if she could afford that herself. Okay. And so when she got to the age, she just did it the golden girls way and started finding other women to live with. Okay. There's even article on money.com that said these real life golden girls moved in together in retirement. It says how four women took control of their finances and futures or create a place where they can grow old together. That's awesome. So this is becoming more and more common and they've even done entire research articles about communal living for older generations. So it seems that golden girls has really been a huge factor in driving empathy within our society and kind of doing it in a very subtle fashion, which is good. I mean, I definitely feel more in tune with golden girls, sin, other media that's out there, I guess. So like, yeah, I know. I feel like I relate to it more than even some of the modern shows that, yeah, yeah, I do too. Yeah. So cause I am not, um, yet a person in retirement age, but so many of the things are even relevant to my life. Right. And also helping me to think about what my life's going to like a retirement is still quite a bit away, but you know, you got to start preparing for that now again. Right. Right. Um, so yeah. So, uh, so I think that concludes today's episode. You can find us on Facebook at why blanked matters and on Instagram and Twitter at Y underscore underscore matters. We're also on Pinterest and you can find all of this information in our show notes. So until next time, we'll see you next week. See ya.

Speaker 2: 36:28

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