Transcript | Ep. 78: How to Unscramble Egg Freezing

[Stinger]

Nicole Ellis: It's hard to make a good decision when you don't have enough information to make an informed decision. Fertility clinics aren't telling people exactly what they're getting and exactly how the process works in advance. It's just like buying a house, right? Like you go through this process, it's like, oh, my God, you don't know how hard it is until you do it. But that doesn't necessarily have to be the case with egg freezing  

[Theme music]

Caroline: Hey y’all, and welcome to Unladylike, where we find out what happens when women break the rules. I’m Caroline.

Cristen: I’m Cristen. And, y’all, I don’t mean to be glib, but egg freezing is so hot right now.

Caroline: Yes, it’s VERY on trend!

Cristen: Right?! For instance, Caroline, you know I love my Bravo Reality Television universe. I spend far too much time in it. And egg freezing has become almost like a new trope on shows like the Real Housewives of New York, which brought us THIS unforgettable moment

[Real Housewives clip]

Tinsley: I wanted to give you guys a credit card to make sure that you sure that you keep my eggs on ice

Doctor: Well let’s take a look at. We have a little picture here of your beautiful eggs.

Tinsley: Oh my god! What?!

Dale: Oh my god! I want to see those little babies.

Tinsley: Oh my god!

Dale: Three, four, five, six, SEVEN!

Tinsley: [wailing]

Doctor: Yep. These are unfertilized … it means that they … [drowned out by Tinsley and Dale weeping]

Cristen: Caroline, that was disgraced socialite Tinsley Mortimer and her mother Dale facetiming with the doctor who froze Tinseley’s eggs. I’m just curious what you think about that.

Caroline: Um … That was a lot of wailing considering that they are looking at eggs not babies.

Cristen: Yeah. And unfertilized eggs at that. I mean, truly unforgettable. But egg freezing is a plotline on scripted TV, too, like The Bold Type and Mindy Project. You’ve got celebs from Amy Schumer to former Bachelorettes making press for doing it … Caroline, it’s EGG-RYWHERE,!

Caroline: Oh God.

Cristen: Yeah, I said it. EGG-rywhere, OK?!

Caroline: And even though egg freezing on demand has been available for less than a decade, y’all, it seems like everybody with ovaries is thinking about it. In fact, "Should I freeze my eggs?" is the question reporter and filmmaker Nicole Ellis set out to answer in an eight-part video series she made last year for The Washington Post

Nicole: Because I was on deadline. It just forced me to take a step back and take a look at the drawing board and think with my journalist’s hat on not with my emotional hat on about how to move forward.

Caroline: So, we wanted to talk to Nicole for this episode because she was asking herself that question of whether to freeze her eggs, but she set out to answer it as a reporter. In other words, she had to gather the facts … and interrogate her own feelings around family and fertility. What she uncovered in the process really surprised her.

Cristen: So today, we’re tagging along with Nicole to better understand how the whole process works and what’s driving its growing popularity.

Caroline: All to find out: Is egg freezing all it’s cracked up to be? … And how many egg puns can you fit in a single podcast?  

[Stinger]

Caroline: It’s incredible how quickly egg freezing has gone mainstream because, Cristen, it was only back in 2012 that it became available to anyone who wants it.  

Cristen: Then, two years later, I remember when Facebook and Apple made like all of the headlines by announcing they were offering egg freezing as an employee benefit — and I totally cheered for it at the time!

Caroline: Oh yeah! I mean, now, It’s like the ‘woke,’ prestige perk that a lot of A-list companies provide, and it’s meant to appeal precisely to young women like Nicole.

Nicole: I had been talking about egg freezing with friends probably for like a year or two before the series became a reality. And it was more so like - it was more so like having ideological debates with people because most of the the articles I was reading were about whether or not you should do it, not how to do it. So as I was having some of these conversations and arguments, there were obvious gaps in our - in our debates because neither of us knew what we were talking about. Like we didn't know the ins and outs of egg freezing. We just knew what every other article told us like we should be caring about or we should feel about something. And we don't fully know the consequences of it.  

Caroline: Nicole and her friends aren’t alone here — I mean, before we started this episode, I had absolutely zero idea how egg-freezing worked.

Cristen: Same.

Caroline: Granted, like, I’m not in the market for frozen eggs, but folks like Nicole might be. So what is it?

Cristen: OK, so let’s quickly unscramble the mystery of what egg freezing is. The whole point is to retrieve as many mature eggs at one time as possible — up to 15 to 20 eggs. And those eggs are made by the follicles, which are part of the ovaries. Problem is: Follicles only produce ONE mature egg a month. So egg freezing involves a three-step process.

Caroline: First, you basically like douse your ovaries in miracle gro — or synthetic hormones — to get them to make a whole bunch of eggs instead of just the one. This takes a couple weeks.

Cristen: Yeah, then once the eggs are mature — like they’ve got a really good head on their shoulders — it’s time for egg retrieval. And this means that you’re gonna be sedated because the doctor is going to guide a needle through the vagina to the follicles and suction off those eggs. ... It’s like picking grapes.

Caroline: Oh god! And last step but not least, those fresh eggs are essentially flash frozen and dropped into liquid nitrogen like Dippin Dots. Then it’s off to the freezer.

Cristen: But Caroline, that’s all what happens after you’ve decided to go forward with the process. Nicole wasn’t even close to that point yet.

Caroline: So tell us what first even prompted you to start thinking about freezing your eggs?

Nicole: So I had just broken up with my boyfriend at the time, and I was 29, and it was the first time I realized that a relationship was not going to work out, and instead of letting it kind of peter out or just letting it self-implode, I just ended the relationship. And for me, it was a really great moment of self-awareness, of realizing that I am in control of my relationships and I'm in control of how I build the family that I'd like in my life, but also that I am still learning how to own that agency. And it just got me thinking about my bigger dreams in life. Of family planning. Of wanting kids. Of wanting a life partner and how to be more intentional in taking my time to find the right life partner, but also buy myself some time because I needed it to figure out, you know, what that looks like and how to achieve that.

Caroline: So from what we've read, it really seems like post-breakup egg freezing is fairly common. So did that prospect of egg freezing, preserving your fertility, help you process that breakup in any way or play into it?

Nicole: Not really, to be honest. Right after the break up, I was like, woof! That was a great decision.

Caroline: Relatable!

Nicole: The two are related in the sense that I didn't want to rush a relationship, but I also did not want to clutter my dating life with any priorities outside of wanting to enjoy dating and considering the possibilities of spending the rest of my life with this person or letting them go like my ex.

Cristen: So how did we get here, Caroline? Like, why is egg freezing suddenly factoring into planning families and dates?

Caroline: Well, like we mentioned earlier, egg freezing used to be done only for medical reasons, like if you were going through chemo or radiation - treatments that can damage the body's ability to produce viable eggs.

Cristen: But once the American Society for Reproductive Medicine approved the procedure for anyone with ovaries in 2012, the industry took off. And in less than a decade since, egg freezing has essentially been rebranded as the new birth control beyond birth control. Like, why just protect against unintended pregnancy when you could protect against unintended NOT-pregnancy, too?

Caroline: Now, fertility companies are encouraging younger and younger folks to buy space in an egg freezer — and supposedly hit snooze on their biological clocks until they’re good n ready to make a baby.

[Egg freezing ad]

Egg 1: Having a baby doesn’t have to feel like now or never.

Egg 2: Yeah! Don’t stress!

Egg 1: Cause when you freeze your eggs all your fertility worries are ova easy.

Egg 2: Did you just say OVA easy?

Egg 1: I did

Egg 2: Oh, you’re better than that!

Cristen: That was an Instagram ad from Extend Fertility featuring two cartoon eggs. And, Caroline, we’re not better than those puns

Caroline: No we are not. So, Extend is one a growing number of egg-freezing startups that are flush with venture capital. In fact, the egg freezing industry is now valued in the low BILLIONS. For comparison, that's actually about TWICE as much as the IVF industry. Which is WILD to me!

Cristen: And in theory, egg freezing on demand sounds great! The more reproductive autonomy, the better, right?

Caroline: Yeah totally! AND It’s become increasingly available to trans men who want to preserve their eggs before undergoing hormone replacement therapy.

Cristen: But for all the positive press, there’s still a lot we don’t know. For example, how many of your frozen eggs will be viable and for how long? And what are the chances of getting pregnant from one of one of those frozen eggs?

Nicole: We probably won't have a clear picture of success rates for a while because there are so many startups in the fertility space that, you know, a good number of them have not reported their numbers yet. And some of them we may never know their numbers because they might not be around long enough for us to have a clear sense of the success rates of their labs and clinics.

Caroline: Yeah, like I saw there was one article from I think just a year or two ago that was talking about one of those very fashionably decorated startups. And by the time I was reading the article a couple weeks ago, it had already closed. So, yeah, it does feel a little like, oh, god, it feels a little scary to be watching some of these like start ups and pop ups and traveling fertility vans and things like that that.

Nicole: Right. That are literally sticking needles in your uterus, just like something to think about.

Cristen: Those cartoon eggs did not mention needles in the ute, Caroline!

Caroline: Yeah, maybe not so ova easy after all

Cristen: Before needles get anywhere near your ute, the very first thing you’re gonna do is undergo a fertility assessment. That primarily involves bloodwork to test hormone levels, a transvaginal ultrasound, and if you’re Nicole ... a camera and a producer in the room while it’s happening.

[Clip from Episode 2]

Doctor: Slide all the way down to the bottom of the table till you feel like you’re almost falling off… Perfect. So just relax. Knees to the sides a little bit. Cold and pressure.

Caroline: That ultrasound — which Nicole featured in her episode called The Pelvic Tour — essentially checks out the uterus, ovaries and follicles to get a better sense of how everything’s working.

Nicole: The pelvic tour was so stressful because I'd never done anything like that. Like it was - it was a lot. As I was going in there, I was thinking like, why did I sign up for this? Like, I have no one to blame but myself. And - and it was actually a breeze.

[Clip from Episode 2 “The Pelvic Tour”]

Doctor: How are you doing?

Nicole: I’m OK

Doctor: OK, good. So you can see exactly what’s going on on the screen up there. That’s your uterus. It looks wonderful. A perfect baby cave

Nicole: Yay!

Doctor: — for when and if you decide to use it for that purpose. So we’re gonna now go over to your right ovary. I’m seeing about eight fluid-filled sacs. And then on the left ovary I see about six follicles over there on the left side. There’s a great example of one you can see there on the screen

Nicole: Oh that’s huge.

Doctor: See that? Where I’m putting my little green marker? That is a follicle, and it looks fantastic.

Cristen: With her follicles looking fantastic and her baby cave on point, Nicole was about to get some news she definitely wasn’t EGG-specting.

Caroline: There it is.

Cristen: Sorry, Caroline.

Caroline: That’s after the break. Stick around.

[Midroll ad 1]  

Cristen: We’re back and when we left off, Washington Post reporter Nicole Ellis was getting uterus compliments from her doctor.

Caroline: Her follicles look fantastic!

Cristen: But remember — that pelvic tour was just one part of her fertility assessment. Next came the results of her hormone level testing.

Nicole: What's interesting about the bloodwork is that it's in some ways kind of framed like a pop quiz, if that makes sense. You take these blood tests and then they come back, and the only way doctors really know how to frame them is in the parameters of good and bad. And good being, “We'll get a lot of eggs from you.” Or bad being, “We won't get a lot of eggs from you.” And the terms they use are ovarian reserve. So you have a high ovarian reserve. You have a low ovarian reserve. In my case, I had a low ovarian reserve, and when you're sitting in a doctor's office, it's really hard not to take language like that personally. So for me, I immediately correlated low ovarian reserve with low fertility. But that's not actually what that means.

Cristen: We'll explain what it DOES mean in just a second. But in that moment at the doctor’s office, all Nicole heard was low fertility.

Nicole: So at the time, you know, it was like, I just like remember not remembering any of what she was saying because my eyes were just glazed over because I just could not focus. And it felt like a ton of bricks. And it was disappointing. As an overachiever, the idea that my uterus was underachieving or my ovaries were underachieving was a tough blow.

Cristen: Did those feelings, that - that disappointment you're describing, surprise you at all? Were you surprised to kind of feel that way?

Nicole: I think what was surprising to me was not the disappointment, but the sense of helplessness. Like when you get news like that, it's not just hearing that you have a low ovarian reserve, it's hearing that you have a low ovarian reserve and it'll cost $21,000 to put yourself in a safe place to hopefully get one or two kids out of freezing your eggs, so it's a lot to unpack in a pressure cooker.

Caroline: A lot to unpack? Well ya know what that means, Cristen...

Cristen: Yeah I do! It's time to unpack some claptrap

[Clap, clap]

Caroline: Unpack the claptrap is the part of the show where we unscramble patriarchy's omelet to find why things are the way they are. Specifically, what egg freezing is selling us and why fertility can feel like a mindfuck.

Cristen: First, let’s get back to what Nicole said about low ovarian reserve NOT being the same thing as low fertility.

Caroline: Right. So, fertility is an umbrella term for your overall ability to get pregnant and carry a baby to term. Ovarian reserve is just one factor underneath that fertility umbrella.

Cristen: And “ovarian reserve” sounds like you’re talking about the literal number of eggs you have, but in fact, it’s just referring to hormone levels, which give doctors a sense of how easy it will be to retrieve a big ole batch of eggs …  

Caroline: Right, so for Nicole, that low-ovarian-reserve test result actually meant that she has lower chances of a big ol’ egg harvest and would probably need to go through a couple rounds of ovary stimulation and egg retrieval to collect enough eggs

Nicole: Low ovarian reserve might you go to somebody meet might to one person mean, all right. I'm not going to freeze my eggs, going to cost too much money? Like, why would I go through this whole process to maybe get, you know, five or six eggs from one round if a round costs $7,000. Why would I do that? Someone with a high ovarian reserve might say, all right, let's do this. One round, 50, 11,000 eggs. I'll take it. And five years from now, those two people might both conceive naturally and had they not done that test, be none the wiser about the difference in their ovarian reserves. Ovarian reserve doesn't have any bearing on your ability to conceive a child.

Cristen: And realistically … neither does freezing your eggs. We’ve read that each frozen egg carries anywhere between a 2 and 12 percent chance of resulting in an actual baby, but in fact ... egg freezing is so new, and so many factors influence the outcome, like your age and the number of eggs you’ve frozen, that right now, there is no concrete success rate.

Caroline: So when we hear egg freezing pitched as a way to extend your biological clock, just beware. And sidenote, y’all — that phrase, biological clock, is some bullshit.

Cristen: Yeah, it’s not a medical term, for one thing — a dude just literally made it up! In 1978, before Nicole was even born, another Washington Post reporter named Richard Cohen coined it in a trend piece headlined "The Clock Is Ticking For the Career Woman.” In it, Cohen declares that modern career gals, specifically between the ages of 27 and 35, were all secretly distraught about how to square their ambition with baby fever.

Caroline: And that clock is STILL ticking. Like, if you take a look at the fertility and egg freezing ads and influencer campaigns all over Instagram, a lot of them emphasize getting those eggs on ice before it’s too late! So when does fertility actually, statistically decline?

Cristen: Well, the CDC says that your chances of a successful pregnancy will "decrease rapidly every year after the age of 30," but that decrease is not as swift as the CDC is making it sound. In fact, other healthcare providers maintain that the real, like, nosedive happens closer to 40.

Caroline: But here’s the thing: Every body is different, and your age and hormone levels aren’t the only fertility variables. Yes, they matter, but as Nicole quickly learned, in a lot of ways, trying to forecast your fertility is a crapshoot. As her doctor put it:

[CLIP from Episode 4]

Doctor: The only way to know you can actually have a baby is to try to get pregnant.

Nicole: OK. All right. Well. I don’t know if I’m gonna do that tomorrow, but … (laughs) I appreciate the advice.

Cristen: Because egg freezing is often sold as a one-size-fits-all-follicles empowering process, the realities can really throw you for a loop.

Nicole: I had gone into this process eager to diffuse any potential pressure on, you know, my dating life finding a partner, and family planning in the baby-making sense of the word and her news made me feel like I've taken a step back in that mission and not a step forward because I felt helpless, so the disappointment is like, yeah. Who would not be disappointed? But the helplessness is the thing that really shook me.

Caroline: OK, let’s talk about something else that can make folks feel helpless — the price tag.

Cristen: So, like we mentioned earlier, the goal is to harvest around like 15 to 20 eggs. And some people might be able to do that in just one round of egg retrieval. But for Nicole, whose ovarian reserve numbers were low, she learned that it might take up to three rounds to get 20 eggs.

Nicole: So at $7,000 a round that was gonna be around $21,000 for the services of the clinic and extraction itself. That doesn't include the cost of drugs. I do not remember at all what the cost of the hormones were, but it was not cheap.

Cristen: Did you in that moment, do you remember experiencing any sticker shock or were you like that tracks?

Nicole: No, I was freaked out. I was so freaked out, because you learn both at the same time, so, you know, you know generally what the cost is. And in my mind, I - I was really hoping to get this done in one round. Like, OK, I can do this. It'll be done. Boom. Bada bing bada boom. And I’m done. So hearing that my ovaries were not overachievers and that that was going to cost me more money at the same time was shocking. And I love saving money. I don't love spending it. So, yeah, it wasn’t an easy pill to swallow.

Caroline: Most health insurance plans aren’t going to cover elective egg freezing. But you know who will spot you the cash? A growing number of lenders and financial companies now offering loans specifically for egg freezing and other fertility options.

Cristen: So yes, even though it might mean going into debt, folks are still signing up for it. According to the latest clinical data we could find, in 2017, nearly 11,000 mostly cisgender and mostly white women in the US froze and banked their own eggs —

Caroline: And the time and money it takes to freeze your eggs raises an important question: Who even gets to choose this form of reproductive choice?

Cristen: We put that question to Nicole.

Cristen: To quote the title of a New York Times op ed from 2016, “Is Egg Freezing for White Women?”

Nicole: Well, I'm not white, so. No, I feel like egg freezing. It's an access question and it - and it costs money. It's expensive. It's safe to say that more white women are doing it because they can afford to. I think the real question here is: Is egg freezing another extension of privilege? Whether it's white privilege, whether it's financial privilege - it's something that only people with the privilege of having the financial ability can even consider doing. I guess as like, to be honest, as like a privileged black woman who, you know, sits across the table from so many high achieving black women who are thinking about the same thing. It’s like “No, egg freezing is not for white women. Egg freezing’s for women who want to spend money on it.” Because I feel like I hear from so many other women of color who are also thinking about these exact same things. I think the question is, you know: Do fertility clinics think only white women can afford this?

Caroline: I mean, that’s who so many of those fertility clinics seem to be targeting in their ads. But what Nicole’s saying is that getting your eggs frozen today is less a question of race and more one of class.

Cristen: And I totally get how freezing your eggs could feel like money well spent - I mean, even if you go into debt! - especially if you know you want kids at some point.

Caroline: On the flip side, there’s soooo much money to be made off our eggs in exchange for soooo few babies actually born from them.

Cristen: But Caroline…

Caroline: Yes

Cristen: If you freeze your eggs, don't you thaw them out at some point?

Caroline: Yes … and no. And I’m gonna leave you with that cliffhanger while we take a quick break.  

[Midroll ad 2]

Cristen: We're back, and Caroline, the suspense is killing me! What happens after folks freeze their eggs? Down the road, do they call up their doc and say like, “Hiii, I think it’s time to thaw my eggs, thank youuu!”  

Caroline: Not exactly … Based on the research available so far, more than 90 percent of the time, folks never end up using their eggs because they conceive naturally.

Cristen: OK, so what happens to all those egg Dippin Dots??

Caroline: Well … They keep chilling out in a medical freezer somewhere and typically have a 10-year-long shelf life. And you're basically paying $50 to $100 per month in egg rent, which adds up!    

Cristen: Yeah, so is it like Storage Wars where if you default on rent they can auction off your stuff?! … like is there a possibility that I could buy one of Tinsley Mortimer's egg babies??

Caroline: That would make a great story, but there is not, you weirdo! Nicole says that you'll probably keep paying that egg rent regardless

Nicole: You know, there's a level of attachment there that's kind of weird to say, “Hey, I'm not going to pay egg rent anymore.” So you just keep paying it for years and years and years.  

Cristen: And it makes total sense! The appeal of egg freezing on demand isn't so much about the eggs

Nicole: So for me, I just - I know that I want to have a family that involves children. And ideally, I want to have kids that are genetically related to me and biologically related to me. And there's a lot of emotion in that, right? There's a lot of emotion in forcing yourself to think through the possibility that that might not happen. And there's a lot of fear in trying to prevent that from happening and you know, that's where impulse comes in, like you just want to, like, stave off that fear as much as you - as much as you possibly can and that's why egg freezing is popular. Whether or not it's - it's serving its clinical purpose is up for debate, but for a lot of people, it's serving a psychological purpose. But it's a really expensive antidote for some people.

Caroline: And if that really expensive antidote appeals to you, by all means go for it! As long as you’re clear-eyed about what it is you’re paying for

Nicole: If you're buying the desire to sleep well at night because your eggs are in the freezer, the thing to keep in mind is that egg freezing is elective and conflated with preventative care in some ways. So, you know, you don't want to get the flu, so you take a flu shot, but you know, you want to have babies, so you freeze your eggs, like those aren't the same thing.  

Cristen: Hear that, y’all? Freezing your eggs is not like a flu shot to keep your future fertility healthy. Also, getting those eggs on ice doesn’t guarantee that they’ll be viable for fertilization should you decide to use them down the road.

Nicole: So you've got to look at the success rates. Even the estimates that are given by clinics. Those estimates aren't their specific success rates, they’re general success rates and averages. They're not for that specific clinic. And you need to know that kind of thing before you decide to move forward, because if you think, all right, I've got a deal, this place is gonna do a round for $5,000. Well, are they going to know how to turn those eggs into embryos successfully? Are they going to be able to implant them in your body? What's the experience level of the clinic? Of the doctors? They're all factors that go into this. And no, egg freezing is not an insurance policy.

Caroline: You also can’t weigh your fertility odds solely based on the number of eggs you’ve banked. In order to make a baby from those eggs, you have to undergo IVF in order to get pregnant. So Nicole also wanted to find out whether there were racial disparities in IVF success rates.

Nicole: And we did learn that there are racial disparities in IVF success rates and that there is a significant relationship between fibroids and success rates specifically for black women. And that knowing your family history is really important.

Cristen: Fibroids are abnormal growths in the uterus that are often hereditary. They’re usually really painful and cause heavy bleeding — and they disproportionately affect black women.

Caroline: Yeah, so studies show that black women respond great to the ovary stimulation, egg freezing and fertilization process. But their actual birth rates are lower — likely because of fibroids and other uterine issues — and that’s why folks with fibroids or a higher risk of developing them aren’t ideal candidates for egg freezing

Cristen: When Nicole turned to her own family history as part of her reporting, she found out that her mom and many of her aunts suffered from fibroids, which put her at risk, too.

Nicole: Doing this series taught me more about my body than I had ever learned or that any of the women around me knew about their bodies. That was the buried lede in all of it. Right it's like we don't know enough. We're still figuring out how to be leaders in taking on having that information instead of sort of like walking through the world, either accepting or pretending like we know more than we do, because that's what was going on with egg freezing, at least in my mind. That's why I was having ideological conversations when I had never really taken a step back to be like, well, how does my body work? Like, I just didn't know.

Cristen: What Nicole does know … is that now is not the time for her to freeze any eggs. But she hasn’t written it off entirely, either.

Caroline: Yeah, so the answer to her question — Should I freeze my eggs? — is … maybe in the future. Right now, she’s continuing to save up her money and is really happy to have learned so much about her body, her family and herself.

Cristen: Is there anything - is there anything that you that you know now that you wish you had known at the start of this whole journey?

Nicole: In egg years, 30 is like - 30 is all right. Like, there's no reason to be freaking out, ringing the alarm at 30. In the grand scheme of things, like, it's not a do-or-die moment. So if you are feeling that way. I think it's a great time to do some sort of soul searching about what you want and how you want to get there. But by no means is it the time for anxiety to set in and like to be going on those Tinder dates you know you wanted to swipe left on.

[Music]  

Caroline: Make sure to check out Nicole’s video series, Should I Freeze My Eggs? For the Washington post. We’ll have a link on the source post for this episode.

Cristen: In the meantime, tell us your thoughts: Have you frozen your eggs? Are you thinking about it? Email us at hello@unladylike.co, find us 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 transcript. While you’re there, get a ticket for our upcoming TOUR!!!! Chicago, NY, PHilly, Boston, DC and ATL, we’re coming to you this spriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing!  

Cristen: Also, if you want to support us directly, we’ve got brand new bonus episodes over on Patreon! To support us, go to patreon.com/unladylikemedia and subscribe

Caroline: Unladylike is produced by Sam Lee and Nora Ritchie. 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. Executive producers are Chris Bannon, Daisy Rosario and Unladylike Media. Special thanks to Naseem Amini at the Washington Post. This podcast was created by your hosts, Caroline Ervin

Cristen: And Cristen Conger of Unladylike Media.

Caroline: Next week…

Zoey Luna: Having a quinceanera is like the best representation of entering adulthood and being like, OK, this is your show from here on out, girl, start creating. This is your chance.

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