Transcript | Ep. 74: How to Thirst with Bim Adewunmi and Nichole Perkins

Cristen: Y'all mentioned someone who I, from a very young age, had thought was hot and I am talking about the hot fox in Disney's animated Robin Hood.

Caroline: That was one of my formative crushes!

Cristen: Right? Right?

Bim: So many women.

Cristen: He's so hot!

Bim: So many women of all sexualities are just kind of like. So listen, hot, hot Robin Hood. What was that about? Fox Robin Hood. Isn't it remarkable that they distilled pure sexual energy into a children's cartoon character?

Caroline: Yeah

Cristen: yeah, yeah.

Caroline: I would still fuck that Fox.

[Theme music]

Caroline: Hey y’all, and welcome to Unladylike, the show that finds out what happens when women break the rules - and develop early sexual feelings for an animated fox. I’m Caroline.

Cristen: I’m Cristen. And Caroline, I'm just gonna say it. I'd fuck that fox, too.

Caroline: Right?

Cristen: I mean, he's got a hot accent, he’s also got the swagger to pull off not only a feathered cap, but also a belted tunic with no pants! You know? It's Big Fox Energy, Caroline!

Caroline: Yes it is. Yes it is. But, Cristen, I did have crushes on humans too — like, don’t worry. And I have to say that my biggest teen obsession was Gavin Rossdale … Like, that hair

Cristen: Ooh yeah.

Caroline: Those tight jeans

Cristen: Also hot accent

Caroline: Yes, I just wanted to make sweet, sweet… MUSIC… with that man.

Cristen: Well Caroline, I see your Gavin and raise you my first and definitely most intense celebrity crush — Prince William.

Caroline: Ooooh.

Cristen: May I read you this excerpt I found from my 12-year-old diary?

Caroline: You absolutely have to

Cristen: OK, so um… Prince William is a real babe in the largest sense of the word. He also has a very compassionate spirit which shines through in his eyes. The people love him, and I am beginning to, too.

Caroline: The people!

Cristen: Yes

Caroline: Oh man, I could just picture you next to him, although aren’t you glad you’re not now?

Cristen: Yeah, Kate - Kate can have him.

Caroline: Yeah, right? But so like that passion — I felt the same way for Gavin Rossdale, I just knew that if I could get rid of Gwen Stefani, then Gavin would be mine.

Cristen: And we're in good company, Caroline, because our guests today take celeb crushing very seriously in the best possible way

Bim: I mean, I love having a crush. I think it gives me something to do besides my job and my hobbies.

Cristen: That's producer and playwright Bim Adewunmi. She co-hosts the podcast Thirst Aid Kit with writer Nichole Perkins. And while Bim’s thirst style is more domesticated goddess, Nichole says her fantasies are lighter on the foreplay

Nichole: I am going to have the man who, you know, is building me a fire. And then he turns to me on his knees and I keep him there for the rest of the night.

Caroline: Nichole and Bim have crafted Thirst Aid Kit as a judgment-free celebration of thirst — and being openly horny.

Cristen: Like, Bim had some serious thoughts about Manny Jacinto from The Good Place who was one of her biggest thirst objects of 2019.

[Thirst Aid Kit Clip]

Bim: I want to know the angel that was put in charge of crafting his face because that angel went on a long break. Maybe a smoke break and came back and was like, now watch me work, because the whole configuration, it just feels like an indulgence. It feels like somebody was like, “All right, guys, I’ve been taking a little bit easy. I’m going to show you what I’m capable of.”

Caroline: So, today we’re talking to Bim and Nichole about pop cultural thirst objects, how we define hunks, and lusting out loud — even in the #metoo era.

[Stinger]

Cristen: How would you just define what thirst is. And how is it distinct from lust or attraction? Or is it?

Nichole: Thirst is - is more harmless fun, almost always funny. Usually there's some sort of comedic element in the expression of it. And you know that it's not. It's when I say it's harmless, you know that you're not actually going to pursue that person or that group of people, you know, is just kind of like, here's a little steam I need to release from the kettle of my desire, I guess.

Bim: Yeah, I like that. I like the steam analogy. It's kind of like. Exactly right. Like we have to. There has to be some kind of comedy to it. The thing that we always said, especially at the beginning of the podcast, was that thirst is an expression. It's a performance. It is very much a sort of a - sort of like a joke in a standup set. Like it's kind of like here's something outrageous and ridiculous and so funny but also at its core is a kernel of truth because you do in fact fancy the person. But it's also funny and harmless. Like, for so long women weren't allowed by various means, cultural and otherwise, sometimes internalized, weren’t really allowed to express their desire. You know, this idea of female sexuality being this deeply mysterious dark arts and it's like, well, actually, I think, you know, it's - it is what it is, and thirst is a way to kind of perform it.

Caroline: Bim and Nichole launched Thirst Aid Kit in 2017 to look at desire through a pop culture lens. And they do an excellent job of explicitly pinpointing what makes thirst objects like Chris Evans, Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan so worth our thirst.

Cristen: Yeah, Thirst Aid Kit reminds me of like Tiger Beat meets the New Yorker — because it’s all of the unabashed crushing but from super smart culture critics. Also side note: Michael B. Jordan … oh, don't get me started - [SFX]

Caroline: Sounds like you already got started, Cristen, but OK, we gotta warm up first. We just heard what thirst means to Bim and Nichole, but Cristen, it’s a term that’s evolved, right?

Cristen: Yeah, so coming into this episode, I had a negative connotation of thirst. As in, like, thirsty desperation … or like my post-getting-dumped Instagram feed that’s just like selfies of me having a GREAT time while showing a little bit of cleave, yknow?

Caroline: God, #universallyrelatable. But as Nichole explains, those thirst roots run deeper than we might realize …

Nichole: I've been on message boards and things like that since the late 90s, early aughts and thirst was a part of the vernacular on the message boards that I frequented. But most of the time it was portrayed negatively. You know, if you're thirsting after someone, then that means you're a little - you're showing a little too much need. And I think over time it became OK to express that need as people began to relax their expectations and rules of what it means to be online and what it means to meet someone online and things like that.

Bim: I think also it's important anyway for me to think about thirst also as like so many elements of popular culture as being kind of black. And for me, I think about certain kind of words in the common pop culture lexicon that are kind of just like swallowed up as pop culture. And actually, I think a lot of them is - a lot of it is black culture that is kind of like spread out. Thirst has always seemed to me to be a kind of uniquely, especially at the beginning, expression of some, I suppose, black - the black manner with - with words and with language. It's very much about the kinds of rhythms and cadences of black vernacular. And it always felt to me like it was kind of like, you know, in Nichole, and I's case, sort of ours. And then it kind of filtered out to the rest of the world. And I'm not mad at it, but I just wanted to kind of note it.

Caroline: How do you feel or do you feel that you are carving out sort of a space in the conversation for black women?

Bim: I mean, I don't think that we are necessarily claiming that we are pioneers in a field. I would never presume to say that. And I'm also wary of, you know, inadvertent labels put on black creative people as kind of signal bearers or, you know, whatever the term might be. So I think the thing that we do say all the time is that we are two straight cis black women. We're very aware of our isms, were very aware of our privileges and the societal structures that hold us back, et cetera. And we know all those things exist alongside still fancying people. And so we we are not necessarily kind of like, oh, we are definitely changing the conversation for black women, but we are aware that we are black women and that the things that we say take up space in a way that, you know, previously that was not something that was always accessible to many black women. So we are definitely aware of it. And oftentimes that comes up when we are discussing thirst objects. You know Nichole has a wonderful way of saying, you know, she all her life she resisted fancying “blonde and blue” because she, as a black girl, also knew the way the beauty hierarchy worked. And in many people's eyes, the fairest of them all is blond haired and blue eyed. And so it's a kind of a personal resistance to this idea of here's the thing to prescribe to. It's - we are thinking about it, it is just another lens for us to look at thirst through. But it's not the only one.

Cristen: Bim and Nichole are right about the blond haired, blue eyed hunk standard. Like, as you and I learned, Caroline, in an EXCELLENT book by Carol Dyhouse called Heartthrobs: A History of Women and Desire, in early Hollywood, the only deviations from that were racist tropes of Latin lovers and Arab Sheikhs played by white actors — and sometimes in brownface -- as well as Asian actors cast as handsome but evil villains.

Caroline: Not to mention, the leading ladies and female audiences Hollywood had in mind were exclusively white AND exclusively interested in men...

Cristen: We are four cis straight identified women having this conversation. And I did want to ask whether you see a sort of fluidity to thirst, because it doesn't feel like thirst is dictated necessarily by sexual orientation.

Bim: No, it's common to literally everybody of every sexuality. One of the things I really hate is when you mention fancying someone and someone replies and they go, well, it's a shame he's gay. And I'm like, what's that got to the price of fish? Like, I just fancy someone. I don't - it doesn't matter. I'm not looking to go out and pursue a relationship with them right now. I just like looking at them and thinking about them. And I just that's - that for me is pleasurable. I don't need to know whether or not they would sleep with me or they would fancy me. It's really not about them in a way. So much of it is me wading through my own thoughts and feelings about desire. And this person is the perfect canvas on which to kind of paint that.

Nichole: That's what makes these celeb crushes usually so fun and harmless. It's because we know that nothing is going to come from them. And then - and that's part of why thirst is so fun, because you can just get it - get it out there and go on about your business. What makes crushes in real life so awful is that there could possibly be a reaction to it. Like what happens when your crush actually likes you back and then you have to figure out that dance and how to move forward. And that's where all the pressure comes from.

Bim: Or, worse, they don't fancy you. And then you're crushed.

Nichole: Yes. Yeah.

Bim: And that's not what this is!

Nichole: No. So thirst is, you know, hopefully a safe way of, you know, admitting that you like someone. We tell our audience over and over, we are not here to be prescriptive. We're not telling you who to lust after. We're not telling you exactly how to lust after. We're just kind of giving you the tools. We're showing you an example. And then you can take that example. You can take these tools and build your own thirst house to your own, you know, specifications. And you don't need us to approve your thirst object. We get so many people who are like, what do you think about this person? It's like it doesn't matter what we think. You know how we talk about the people that we like. So you talk about the person you like in that same way or whatever works for you.

Caroline: So, one of the signature tools Thirst Aid Kit gives listeners to build their own thirst houses are “drabbles” — or super short, erotic fan fic.

Cristen: Yeah, each episode starts with a drabble that either Bim or Nichole writes, with the most explicit bits bleeped out. And for a taste, here’s Bim on Dan Levy from Schitt’s Creek

[Thirst Aid Kit clip]

Bim: “I told you it wouldn’t fit,” Dan said as his **** He held **** in his left hand. “Here, hold this,” he said, putting it in my hand. Dropping to his knees he began *** for the *** I could tell when he found it. “There it is,” he said with satisfaction.

Cristen: Bim, I had never thought about Dan Levy in that light! And if you’re a Schitt’s Creek fan and are thinking ew, David!, here’s a basic ground rule for Thirst Aid Kit. Just because you don’t care to drabble with someone doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with folks who do.

Caroline: Or as Nichole and Bim put it, don't yuck my yum.

Nichole: I pushed back on a lot of the stuff that I was fed as a child that what beauty meant. And I don't want anyone else to kind of have to go through that. And like a lot of people, adults are still like grappling with who they feel they should be attracted to and who they really are attracted to and things like that. So we just don't want to put pressure on anybody to change their idea of beauty or change their idea of attraction. And just it's OK to like who you like as long as they're good people and they’re not not, you know, murdering somebody or something.

Bim: Right. In general, we - we don't focus only on very specific ideas of beauty. We don't just look at the face or the body. We all - or we look at the body in - in disparate ways. You know, from a different angle. So the idea of kind of like beauty is this built up, muscly guy. And, you know, we'll say actually you know, what we really fancy a skinny dude today. And, you know, we'll focus on different parts like eyebrows and elbows, and wrists um, you know, forearms.

Caroline: I love a forearm.

Bim: Listen. Yes, potent.

Nichole: See? Yes. Yes.

Bim: So potent and so underutilized in the grand lexicon of thirst

Cristen: Bulging biceps? Who needs em? Like, gimme a potent forearm any day!

Caroline: Oh god yes. Alright, y'all — it sounds like we both need to take a cold shower break! When we get back, we’re gonna talk about how thirst today gets … complicated.

Cristen: Stay hydrated and stick around.

[Midroll ad 1]

Caroline: All right. Fuck. Marry. Kill. Chris Evans. Mark Ruffalo. Chris Hemsworth.

Nichole: Wow.

Bim: OK.

Nichole: Oh, my gosh. OK.

Cristen: We’re back — objectifying Marvel superheroes — with Thirst Aid Kit hosts Bim and Nichole.

Bim: At this point, we've got to know Chris Evans a little bit. So it feels a little bit um personal. And not great, Bob, but.

Cristen: We chose them intentionally.

Bim: I mean. Oof, OK. It's very difficult because like I said, we've come to know Chris Evans as a human person. So it feels very difficult to say this. But I'm sorry, babe. It's going to have to be fuck Chris Evans. I will have to marry Mark Ruffalo because he just looks like a good father. And sadly, it's through no fault of my own. Merely the rules of the game. We'll have to kill Hemsworth.

Nichole: I have the exact same thing. And we didn't even look. We were like scratching notes on a little notepad here. We didn't even look at each other. So, yeah. I have the exact same thing.

Bim: What a shame.

Cristen: Well, understandable of killing Chris Hemsworth because you got the other brothers, you know.

Bim: That's true. There are other copies out in the world. There's a DNA match elsewhere.

Caroline: In case y’all didn’t catch that, Bim and Nichole have come to know Chris Evans IRL as a human person

[Thirst Aid Kit clip]

Bim: When did you realize you were hot Chris?

Chris: [laughs] Oh man. Goodness. I mean, I still feel like I’m just trying to pull a fast one over on people.

Nichole: Oh, please! Come on!

Chris: Hey listen you don’t know what I look like first thing in the morning. It’s rough.

Bim: I mean, I literally haven’t seen that but I find that very hard to believe.

Cristen: True fact, Caroline: I found Chris Evans at least 25% more attractive after hearing him on Thirst Aid Kit. Also true is that ol’ Captain America is but a footnote in the history of mega-hunks

Caroline: Yeah, as long as mass media and popular culture have existed, so have thirst objects.

Cristen: Yeah, let’s rewind all the way back to the early 19th century. So there’s an English poet George Gordon Byron — aka Lord Byron — and he drove ladies lovesick with his sonnets. Seriously!

Caroline: Ooh, sonnets.

Cristen: Yes, yes, yes!

[Sexy music starts]

Cristen: So many women were hot for the Lord’s verse, it was dubbed Byronmania.

Caroline: But Cristen, Byronmania seems pretty chill compared to Lisztomania, and I am not talking about getting organized and making to-do lists. In the early 1840s, there was this Hungarian composer and pianist named Franz Liszt. He had this kinda long, shaggy hair, and you can just imagine him at the piano because he played from memory which was both tacky and super ballsy, like such a rock star move, and he was just pounding on those keys, just shaking his sweaty, shaggy hair as he’d get more and more into the music.

Cristen: He sounds kind of like a proto Gavin Rossdale. But at concerts, horny women would literally attack Liszt to grab pieces of his clothes, get a broken piano string, a lock of that sweaty hair…. I even read that women would take his discarded cigar butts and put them in their cleavage.

Caroline: Mm, OK, well, toward the end of the century, nervous observers — you know, men — were diagnosing all of these hot n bothered women with so-called “idolitis,” basically pathologizing female lust per use

Cristen: So given the historical side-eye toward of female lust and idolitis, we wanted to know from Bim and Nichole what role gender plays today and whether women's thirst is expressed and perceived differently from men's

Nichole: You know, some of the language is the same, obviously, like Thirst Trap, which is usually a photo that you will post online on Instagram or Twitter because you want some attention. And it's a picture that shows you in a very flattering way whether you are naked or half naked or in a very form fitting outfit. And then you caption it something like, you know, “thinking about all the lives out there.” I don't know. Just something ridiculous.

Bim: Also my favorite one is something like “God doesn't give you more than you can handle.” And I'm like, sis put your butt away. I love it so much.

Nichole: That arch is really deep for this conversation.

Bim: Like the back of your head is touching your butt and you're like “anyway. Blessings to everyone.” You're like sis, no. Or like, my good sir you like you put that - you put the camera at an angle that catches you know; the light is glistening in your beard in a very specific oil. Like, you know what you're doing.

Nichole: Yeah. And I think. Women are still using a bit of humor in their thirsting to soften the thirst, to soften the desire so that no one again thinks that they're too sexual. Right. And but men are just very much like I'll suck the fart out of your ass. And it's like, oh, come on, like, can you.

Bim: I've seen that. Too many times that exact caption like you didn't you didn't need to write that down. You didn't need to press send on that. You didn't need to put that on twitter. That would have been a terrible thought inside your brain.

Nichole: Right.

Bim: But you put it out there. You bastard.

Nichole: So you’ll have something like that. Like let me chew your tampon out

Caroline: Ohh

Bim: Exactly

Nichole: vs. a woman who is like, you know, Mbaku can blow my 'm back out. You know, that kind of thing, which is very funny as a pun. You know, it's cute and it's very relatable.

Bim: It's more sophisticated. It's just a little bit better. And I think the reason why women are so much more sophisticated with it is, like Nichole said, because you have to - society has taught you to soften it. If you can't be too forward, too sexual, too much. So it makes sense to kind of offer it, as you know, with a spoonful of sugar, aka humor. But yeah, I mean, I have seen some women type some truly disgusting things. It's kind of like, you know what Brava Brava would be like if I - if I could I throw roses at your feet like you were at the opera, just like beautiful. But, you know, for the most part, I think women are just a little bit more sophisticated about this stuff. They - they are so much more thoughtful. And I'm always grateful whenever somebody coins a very specifically thirsty phrase, I'm just kind of like, wow, hats off like you really did that sis like, good job.

Cristen: I'm curious if there are I don't know any particular listener responses that have really surprised you all or stuck with you all, whether that is sort of the search for - for approval for their own personal thirst objects or reactions to people that y'all have talked about.

Nichole: Yes. So I think the thing that surprised me the most was the oh my goodness the - the emails that we get from sexual assault survivors who tell us that the podcast helps them figure out - figure their way back to desiring men and a safe way and a comfortable way in a way that they don't feel guilty about or through a way that they don't feel pressure about. And that was very surprising. And it always moves us when we get those emails and we you know, we get a lot of emails and sometimes we can't respond to every last one, but we always respond to those to let those people know that we hear them and we appreciate them. So that's always really beautiful to get those kinds of messages. I'm also very surprised when we get messages from people who are asexual because, you know, they don't express desire, they don't feel sexual attraction in the way that Bim and I do or are expressing in the show. But when they email us or send us messages on Tumblr or Twitter and they tell us that, you know, it helps them figure out the different languages that they can use for whatever feelings they do have are the way that they can enjoy the fandom part of what we do.

Caroline: Thirst Aid Kit launched right around when the Harvey Weinstein story broke and the #metoo hashtag first started to overtake Twitter

Cristen: And one thing we definitely wanted to talk to Nichole and Bim about is how lusting after straight men in the #metoo era can feel kind of … un-arousing ....

Bim: I saw someone on Twitter say something like, I can't believe any of you are still caping for any straight white men. And I was like, fair enough, fair. I think in terms of how I approach stuff, and I guess this is also kind of like how a lot of women that I know, is to - is to kind of open up any kind of thirst conversation or participation with a caveat like I don't know if he's done something but. And so it's changed even the structure of - of these discussions, because you sometimes - people will sometimes just say, like, oh, has he got anything? Is anything pending? Is, you know, has someone reported something? As an opening gambit, like you say a dude's name and everybody's gone, like, hang on, let me like. Let me do my Googles real quick. Let me just make sure. So it has colored. It's like - it's like a kind of a blanket of just like extra due diligence that you have to do now before you can actively - it's one thing to kind of like passively observe, you know, a man handsomely doing something, whatever. But once you take the step to make it an active sort of thing, which is what we do on Thirst Aid Kit where we pick a name and we select someone and we talk about their work and who they are and how they come across, et cetera, then there is an extra level of responsibility to make sure that you are not inadvertently highlighting someone who has been abusive. And that takes many forms, not just sexual assault. For every story, there are, you know, a trail of usually women who have suffered, so beyond even our kind of like “aw that would break my heart” is the fact that, oh, my God, if he's done that, then there is a trail of hurt women, usually women in his wake. And we don't want to be a part of, you know, raising someone's name, putting their name in lights when they may have done terrible things. So I guess in many ways, the podcast is an act of faith.

Nichole: Yeah. And when we talk about these thirst objects, we always stress that we don't talk about their personal lives unless it's something factual. Like he's married, he has children, something like that, that his - his team or he has already said out of his mouth, things like that. We try to stay away from rumors. But when it comes to my own, the way I look at my own celeb crushes in this era of metoo, it is hard. You do have this filter now where you're trying to figure out, you know, is he awful or not? And I think the podcast, without being propaganda for men, I think the podcast gives its listeners just a break from hearing all the bad stuff that men and women are doing right now, whether it's on, you know, in politics or just, you know, still in entertainment or whatever. It's just like, you know, they want to - for about 45 minutes, they just want to listen to somebody be happy about someone else. And that's - I think that's part of why our listeners keep coming back. They just like hearing people talk about something with enthusiasm that is a bit contagious.

Bim: Kind of piggybacking off of what Nichole said, we do these events here in New York, thirsty movie nights where we kind of take over a cinema somewhere and we play a film and people buy tickets and eat popcorn and have a lovely time. And it's kind of noisy and raucous. And just like people are encouraged to thirst out loud. And people tend to. And there was one that we did last September, which came on the day of the Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanagh hearings. So people were feeling a little bit tender. There was a lot of delicate feelings that day. And on that same day we had a screening and it was Dirty Dancing

[Dirty Dancing Clip]

Baby: I’m scared of everything! I’m scared of what I saw, I’m scared of what I did, of who I am, and most of all I’m scared of walking out of this room and never feeling the rest of my whole life the way I feel when I’m with you.

Bim: And we filled that cinema. People were in tears. And, you know, like, I love Dirty Dancing. It's not really a movie to move me to tears. But I think there was something about seeing Baby take control of her sexuality with someone like Patrick Swayze, RIP, sexy ghost. And so it was just like joyous.

Caroline: Ohhhhh Johnny Castle, you’re still dancing the cha-cha and the merengue in my dreams.

Cristen: Caroline, I’ve gotta watch Dirty Dancing sometime

Caroline: Oh god

Cristen: I know! But after the break, Nichole and Bim break out their crystal balls and forecast the future of thirst.

Caroline: Stick around. Don’t put Baby in a corner.

[Midroll ad 2]

Nichole: The most unladylike thing about me is that I like porn that just gets right to it. I don't need the setup. I don't need the, you know, the kissing and all of that, you know, trying to ease into it. I just want the pizza delivery guy to come in and get to it. You know, just don't talk. Just get to what you're there for so I can see what I need to see and handle my business. And then we can all go about our lovely day.

Caroline: We’re back with our horny guests, Nichole and Bim.

Cristen: Now, as hunk anthropologists, they've noticed how thirst objects are coming in more shapes n sizes — washboard abs and square jawlines not required

Caroline: Yeah, and on the flip side, we’re finally learning to not yuck our own yums…

Nichole: Yeah, I think more people are giving themselves permission not to like very muscly muscular men. They're giving themselves permission to like the dad bods. They're giving themselves permission to like, my favorite, the skinny guy that is not, you know, filled with muscles all over the place. They're giving themselves permission to like men with big noses or men with like strong features, shall we say. And that it's OK to move past the, I don't know, the teen crushes.

Bim: Right. The pretty boys.

Nichole: Yeah. The pretty boys, the ones that are, you know, a little - have been kind of feminized in a way to make them safe for girls. You know, I'm thinking about like boy bands and things like that. Those crushes that I get put on Seventeen magazines and things like that. I think people are realizing it's OK to like somebody who's got an interesting face. And is not just stunning, you know. And I think people. Are learning to - they're learning to say what they like and what they dislike.

Caroline: Well, and I feel like, too. So, you know, I watched Fleabag season two more than once. And something that I thought that was interesting about the conversation on the Hot Priest in particular was, you know, my - my Twitter timeline was losing its mind over him, as was I. But I saw one person argue, I don't know what y'all are talking about. Like he's not even that hot. He's not even that cute. And it melted my brain for a second because of a lot of things that y'all talk about and emphasize in your conversations, which is that it's more than just his face. It's that like melting chemistry between them and his - like seeing her and seeing like the way that she looks off camera. And what does that mean?

[Fleabag clip]

Priest: Celibacy is a lot less complicated than romantic relationships.

Fleabag: What if you meet someone you like?

Priest: I talk and drink and laugh and give them Bibles and hope they eventually leave me alone.

Fleabag: What if you meet someone you love?

Priest: … We’re not gonna have sex.

Caroline: Do you feel like - do you feel like some of those thirst objects are getting more, I don't know, attention and respect, like acknowledgment?

Nichole: Yes. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And, and people are learning that being hot is more than just the physical. It is about listening. It's about paying attention. It's about those little small things like, you know, remembering someone's favorite candy bar or something like that, that those are all the things that can may - make a person hot or not. And, you know, I know I have said, too, that we can't just say somebody is hot just because he's tall, you know, that kind of thing. And we sometimes joke that, you know, is he hot or is he just white? Like, we have to think about things like that. So for a lot of people, it's hard for them to let go that beautiful has to be only physical, you know, but beautiful is so much more than that. And I think Hot Priest was a perfect example of that.

Bim: Desire is made up of so many different components of which, you know, physical beauty, aesthetics, are only a very small part, it turns out like, I think Hot Priest had a very specific energy to him. Like, you know, he comes on screen, you see him - that moment when they're in kind of like outside the restaurant having a cigarette. And he kind of, you know, jokingly swears at her, she kind of turns back, like she looks over her shoulder and he kind of grins at her and she grins back. That moment of recognition just kind of set the tone for the rest of their relationship. And it just kind of - it lights something in you as a viewer because you're like, oh, my God, wait, wait. Is this like a meeting of equals? Are they - is something happening here? And, you know, it's - it's the kind of thing that I think a lot of us also very quietly without ever really admitting out loud, kind of crave. We want someone to see us as we are and to not flinch from it, to kind of be like, “Oh, no, I like you, you're a weirdo. And that's OK. Like, I like this very specific brand of weird.”

Caroline: Cristen, truly, this makes me melt. Like, thirst is so layered! And it can involve Hot Priest soulmates!

Cristen: Totally! And Caroline I also think that Fleabag example points to a positive thirst side effect to women’s rage over the 2016 election and the MeToo movement and just generally having enough of shitty men. Like, in the process of identifying the sexualized attention we DON’T want, maybe we’re reclaiming some autonomy over what or who DOES give us the Hot Priest-ly attention we crave...

Nichole: I do think women are feeling a bit more empowered to express their desire in whatever way they feel it. And I think that's great. That's something that I have worked toward all my life, whether I knew it or not. You know, I was just I've always been fascinated with sex and the way that people express desire in, you know, reading romance novels and watching love rom coms and things like that. So I've always been fascinated by this whole of this particular aspect of humanity. And I've always talked about sex in a way that made a lot of people uncomfortable around me. I'm from the South. I'm a black woman. I am Christian. And those are not things that we're supposed to be talking about, because I was told more than once that if I talked about sex, then men would want to have sex with me. And that's a bad thing. And that means that I’m loose or fast or, you know, whatever. And that's not true. I just - I just want people to feel good and I want people to be OK with expressing how they want to be made to feel good, you know? So I do think that women are out there. They're becoming much more comfortable in expressing their desire and then saying no to the things that they don't like. And they have been told that they just have to suffer through and deal with.

Cristen: Well Bim and Nichole we’ve talked a lot about celebrity crushing and thirsting, but we were wondering if y’all had any tips for listeners on managing like our IRL, real-world crushing, which can sometimes feel unmanageable - do y’all have any words of wisdom or advice?

Bim: I'm not someone who generally shoots her shot, but I'm coming round after almost 40 years on earth — just say it. If you fancy someone and you think they might fancy you back, or you hope they might, just say it. And if it's a yes. Great. If it's a no, you get to move on like the limbo is often the worst part. So if you are struggling with the crush, you're thinking, oh, my God, just say it. And I swear because I've done it a couple of times where I've admitted a crush and the person was like, “Oh, my God, I'm so flattered. No, thanks.” And then you think to yourself, well, it's time for death. And then it turns out, no. It turns out you just keep on living and it's fine and you get over it eventually. It's embarrassing. It hurts. You might have a little cry and then you just have lunch and then just go about your day. But I would say that my tip for myself as well as other people is to go forth and just say what you want. Like it's not enough to just say it inside your head. I mean, it might be. But also, if you can say it out loud, if - if it - if it causes, you no harm or pain to say it out loud, just say it because imagine if it's a yes.

Nichole: You know I am a terrible flirt. And so I will just own that to - to, you know, somebody that I'm talking to. And I’ll say, look, I'm really bad at this. I'm just going to tell you directly, you know, come over or whatever, you know, that kind of thing. So I think just learning how to accept our weaker areas or our areas of improvement to use resume speak or job interview speak, just embrace those and then figure out a way to work with them because some people may find that really charming. “Oh, that's so sweet that you don't know how to flirt. But I appreciate that you're being very direct with me. And sure, I will come over and tap that just the way you like.” So, that kind of thing. You never know where honesty and, you know, just being forthright will get you.

Caroline: Directness is sexy.

Nichole: It is. It is. And it doesn't have to be crude.

Nichole: I think a lot of people don't understand that being direct does not necessarily mean being vulgar and.

Caroline: Totally.

Nichole: Yeah. So

Bim: Although there's a lot of room for vulgar too. Choose your fighter.

Caroline: Yeah. I'm gonna go watch Robin Hood now…

Bim: Excellent. You take your time, OK? You take your time.

Caroline: Cristen, I’m just gonna say: Yes, at 36, I don’t think I will ever fully recover from the Disney fox.

Cristen: Nor do you need to! You know? But, listeners, now we want to hear from you: Where are our fellow animated fox fanatics? Who are you thirsting over? And has thirsting out loud gotten harder or easier for you? Tell us your thoughts… you can email us at hello@unladylike.co, hit us up on social @unladylikemedia or join our private facebook group and find the thread for this episode.

Caroline: Head over to our site, unladylike.co to find this episode’s sources AND the transcript. PLUS, y’all, If you’d like to get MORE Unladylike in your ears, we now have a PATREON where you can support us AND get brand new bonus episodes year-round. Just head over to patreon.com/unladylikemedia

Cristen: Sam Lee and Nora Ritchie are the producers of Unladylike. Abigail Keel is our senior producer. Gianna Palmer is our story editor. Shruti Marathe transcribes our tape. Our music is by Flamingo Shadow, Amit May Cohen and Sarah Tudzin. Mixing, sound design, and additional music is by Casey Holford. Our executive producers are Chris Bannon and Daisy Rosario.

Caroline: Special thanks to Jared O'Connell at Stitcher in NYC.

Cristen: We are your hosts, Cristen Conger

Caroline: and Caroline Ervin. Next week…

Jocellyn Harvey: I never realized at the time that a lot of my drinking was like tied to feeling anxious as a black person and just always being in very white spaces and wanting to feel like I was accepted.

Cristen: Dry January has come and gone, and we wanted to know about y’all’s relationships with alcohol. And we heard from so many listeners. Make sure you’re subscribed to Unladylike so you don’t miss this episode. Find us in stitcher, spotify, apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Caroline: And remember, got a problem?

Cristen: Get unladylike.

[Stinger]

Caroline: The hot priest was a good guy.

Cristen: And also, he turned into a hot fox!!!

Caroline: Yes!!!

Cristen: What?!

Cristen and Caroline: FULL CIRCLE!!!!