Unladies Room exclusive: Who is Sophie “MAGA Barbie” Cunningham, and why is this “middle-of-the-pack” player suddenly the center of WNBA attention? Pro women’s basketball non-expert Cristen gives the play by play of why it’s a major season for the league, what sparked Cunningham backlash and how the anti-trans movement is leveraging her to force their playbook on the WNBA, which just so happens to be a predominantly Black and queer league at the height of its cultural power. Plus! A brief “protecting girls’ sports” debunking with history, healthcare and flagrant cursing.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Who's living in your vaginal village? Kate and a friend with recurring UTIs take microbiome tests, discuss their results, and talk to a provider to understand how what's living in their "villages" impacts yeast infections, UTIs, BV, fertility, and so much more.CRAMPED episodes are intended for informational and entertainment purposes only, and are not medical advice.Support CRAMPED by joining the Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/CRAMPEDYou can find Vienna here: https://thecuntsultant.comAbout CRAMPED: Tired of suffering from "death cramps" for 20 years, Kate Helen Downey has to find her own answers. She interviews top doctors and researchers, and delves into topics from period poops to endometriosis surgery to TikTok wellness scams, all to figure out why menstrual pain is so often dismissed and untreated. What she finds will change how you think about your own body and the medical system. Because having a microphone gets you more answers than having a uterus.About Kate: Kate Helen Downey is a podcast producer and host based in Los Angeles. She is the host and creator of CRAMPED, a podcast investigation into period pain, and has developed podcasts and live shows for Wondery, Pushkin, and independent creators. She is the co-founder of the science comedy theater Caveat NYC, and used to give renegade feminist tours of the Metropolitan Museum of Art that involved taking shots of whiskey in the security cameras' blind spots.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The femosphere speaks the language of feminism – pro-women empowerment, anti-capitalist caregiving – and addresses valid material concerns. But its pink-pilled message of bioessentialist fatalism and “hardwired” gender and racial hierarchies offers little in the way of liberation. Dr. Jilly Kay, the scholar who coined “femosphere,” demystifies its manosphere mirror logics, reactionary politics, eugenicist undercurrents and the term’s swift hijacking to scaremonger about gen-Z women’s progressivism. Jilly's research:The reactionary turn in popular feminism. Through the looking glass: Feminism and reactionary politics in the digital hall of mirrors. A tale of two angers: The manosphere, the femosphere and the gender politics of mediated rage.  ~ get in touch @unladylikemedia on Instagram or email [email protected] ~ special thank you to Unladies' Room Patreon supporters! this wouldn't exist without you ~ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What do femcels, tradwives, and "dark feminine" dating coaches have in common? The pink-pill pipeline of antifeminist feminisms. Cristen unpacks the rise of the femosphere, aka womanosphere – a digital ecosystem of looksmaxxers, female dating strategists, TERFs and trads selling women warped visions of empowerment rooted in biological destiny, gender essentialism and divine femininity. But is the femosphere itself also getting misinterpreted as a far-left phenomenon of radicalized misandrists? ~ get in touch @unladylikemedia on Instagram or email [email protected] ~ special thank you to Unladies' Room Patreon supporters! this wouldn't exist without you ~ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Imagine discovering you’re pregnant and you’re given no choice but to go into hiding, secretly give birth, never see your baby again and pretend it never happened. That was the norm during the pre-Roe “Baby Scoop Era” when roughly 1.5 million mostly white women were sent off to homes for unwed mothers. It was also a secret Tracy Clark-Flory uncovered about her own mom and the sister she never knew she had. Tracy talks to Cristen about the system designed to conceal white women’s sexuality, stigmatize single Black mothers and forcibly reallocate babies to “deserving” parents, as well as its generational ripple effects she writes about in her new memoir, My Mother’s Daughter: Finding Myself in My Family’s Fractured Past. ~ get in touch @unladylikemedia on Instagram or email [email protected] ~ special thank you to Unladies' Room Patreon supporters! this wouldn't exist without you ~ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From prediction markets like Kalshi and its youngest self-made female billionaire cofounder to sports betting partnerships with the WNBA, the gambling boom's play for women has all the predictable moves of a gendered marketing story, except they're inside of an unreal game playing out, thanks to the wonders of capitalism (and MAGA).Cristen got on Polymarket, Kalshi and is still spiritually recovering from the amount of $$$ Americans bet on sports last year, prediction markets embedding in journalism and a certain someone's resemblance to former youngest self-made female billionaire, Elizabeth Holmes. ~ get in touch @unladylikemedia on Instagram, or email [email protected] ~ special thank you to Unladies' Room Patreon supporters! this wouldn't exist without you ~ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Better late than never read! In March, Adult Braces – and three unfortunate emails to a Slate reporter – inspired a thousand Substack hot takes, reactionary declarations of failed feminism and social media rage against Lindy West’s husband, Aham Oluo. Now that Cristen’s finished the book, and the controversy’s faded out from our feeds, the drama looks a lot like a feminist Scandoval: a parasocial fandom reckoning with the gaps between a woman's public politics, private relationships and the marriage she’s choosing to stay in. ~ get in touch @unladylikemedia on Instagram, or email [email protected] ~ special thank you to Unladies' Room Patreon supporters! this wouldn't exist without you ~ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The perimenopause boom is old news, but where did it come from, and why does it make some ob-gyns wary? Cristen investigates what we do – and don’t – know about perimenopause and what to expect when you’re expecting The Change(s). And as an industry “growth opportunity” at the intersection of beauty, aging and healthcare (usually in that order), how do we tell the difference between our own perimenopause needs and what’s being sold to us? Highlights include: perimenopause, the TikTok personality; the study that set hormone therapy back a generation; and why the menopause market is now coming for women in their thirties.~ get in touch @unladylikemedia on Instagram, or email [email protected] ~ special thank you to Unladies' Room Patreon supporters! this wouldn't exist without you ~ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the “soft swinging” scandal that launched it all to leaked domestic violence footage, restraining orders, and The Bachelorette cancellation, Cristen breaks down the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives chaos, what it reveals about our appetite for female dysfunction, relationship abuse as reality TV drama, and whether we've officially hit peak Mormon cultural moment.~special thank you to Unladies' Room Patreon supporters! this wouldn't exist without you~ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Birth rates are down, pronatalism is up, and having two kids isn't enough (allegedly). Cristen unpacks the trio of contradictions defining "real" American womanhood right now: the political pressure to procreate, fake science masquerading as chivalry, and "zero trimester" influencers monetizing fertility anxiety. Plus: medication abortion in the courts, maternal regret in The Cut, and seeking comfort in adult cradles. ~special thank you to Unladies' Room Patreon supporters! this wouldn't exist without you~ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.