All my life I've been waiting for someone and when I find her, she's... she's a fish.
When Tracie and Emily saw the 1984 Ron Howard film Splash as little girls, they fell in love with the badass mermaid played by Daryl Hannah. She was smart, determined, and romantic—and she had a gorgeous tail she could unfurl in Tom Hanks' bathtub. But on revisiting the movie this week, Tracie found some rather ugly and sexist assumptions bundled together with the romantic notions. Madison the mermaid learns how to be a human woman by shopping and her devotion to Allen makes very little sense. But like Disney's The Little Mermaid, it's possible to look at Splash as a trans allegory, which makes their romance and Allen's decision to join her in the sea a much more subversive story.
Sit back, relax, soak your fins, and take a listen!
We are Tracie Guy-Decker and Emily Guy Birken, known to our extended family as the Guy Girls.
We both have super-serious personas in our "day jobs." No, really. Emily is a Finance writer who used to be a classroom teacher. Tracie writes and consults on social justice and mindfulness and works as a copywriter and project manager for non-profits. If you really need to see the bona fides, please visit our individual websites:tracieguydecker.com and emilyguybirken.com
For our work together, what you need to know is that Tracie is older (3 years), Emily is funnier (by at least 3 percent), and we're both hella smart, often over-literal, and completely unashamed of our overthinking prowess. We love movies and tv, science fiction and murder mysteries, good storytelling with liberal amounts of dramatic irony, and analyzing pop culture for gender dynamics, psychology, sociology, and whatever else we find there.
Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus episodes, video version, and early access to Deep Thoughts by visiting us on Patreon.
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