She burst into the world in nineteen seventy six. She's at what. She's out on dates and she don't like politics. From Mama and urban to with feminist friends. She's fighting all the stands it with chocolate and head. Kathy, She's fighting back to stress with success. Let's cut her some slack, oh, Kathy, Kathy, Cathy, She's gotta like go in all shame. An idea for a Kathy TV show had been in place since the early eighties and a piece from the Tennessee in two. The proposed version of the show would have been live action with only animated titles, which honestly sounds tight. What's also very a frint from the pitch and the actual product that came out five years later is the hook of the show. According to John McMahon of producing partner Johnny Carson Productions, Kathy would be quote unquote the Mary Tyler Moore of the eighties. When the fully animated specials aired five years later, the reality was a bit different. Kathy of these specials is not particularly empowered, but Kathy guys White remained deeply involved in the creative throughout all three specials. She wrote, an executive produced, Kathy, Kathy's Last Resort, and Kathy's Valentine, which were all built off storylines that had previously appeared in the comic. As Kathy tells it, she had a lot of creative control in this process, but the high level decisions were made by CBS executives and they played it very safe. And by safe I mean Irvings and all of them. The Kathy character was voiced by actor Kathleen will Hoyt why not best as the voice of Pepperran. Although I'm probably millennializing myself there, here's what she sounds like. My name is Cathy. I spend last Saturday night celebrating my Employee of the Year nomination with a box of Oreo cookies. The first special, titled Kathy, aired on CPS in May. It follows Kathy as she's set to receive an award at work and is putting in a lot of overtime. Irving says that he isn't going to her awards ceremony, which her friends, family, and co workers disapprove of. Kathy tries to make the best of it, saying that she's an independent woman, but she's really disappointed. She then surprises Irving at his apartment only to find him cheating on her. After five years in a relationship, and no, he still can't say I love you. I cannot believe it. Mom. Does a man have to say he cared for me in exactly your words or doesn't count? We have five solid years of avoiding any kind of actual burble commitment with each other. Mom? Did a tressfertors liked to account for nothing? Well, you are wrong, Mom, you are wrong. Wrong, I hated. Kathy is completely humiliated and she dumps him. She goes on a date with another guy to try to bounce back, but he sucks. On the night of her award, Cathy decides to show up in her robe and rollers still upset that Irving hasn't called her. Eventually, Irving does call and Cathy takes him back. Immediately they make up and it ends like this. I'm trying to learn not to be so moto, and I'm going to try to learn that even employees of the Year have to make time for a date if they want a relationship. And I'm going to try to not run out and meet someone else every time you get busy. Yeah, yeah, you wait, if you went out trying to meet other people. When did you do that better? Stay on your toes, Irving. There are lots of single men in this town. It's an amazing time to be single, all right. We're all free to be anything, but under hundred new pressures to be everything. We work for deeper, more meaningful relationships and then try to make them work in the ten three minutes we have a day. It's always been easier to leave a relationship with your single I guess in the eighties it's just a little more challenging to stay in Irving. Very much takes center stage in these specials in a way that puts him firmly at the center of Kathy Cannon, even though there's whole years in the comic strip where he doesn't appear at all. But this special holds a special place in Kathy guys White's career. She won a goddamn Emmy for it. Here's her speech brought our first time any winners. I'd like to say a special thanks to my sisters Marianne and Mickey, who are not only my best editors, but the whole foundation of my sense of humor. When I started the comic strip, Kathy, I was sure that I was the only woman in the world who came home from a day in my brilliant career and stood in the kitchen squirting ready whipped whip topping directly into my mouth. I was sure that I was the only professional, enlightened, professional business person who balanced my checkbook by switching banks and starting all over every six months, or or who coped with relationship problems by eating a cheesecake. I'm first grateful to my parents, not only for encouraging me to believe that I was not the only one, but for forcing me to send the humiliating moments of my own life to Universal Press Syndicate for publication. The second special, Cathy's last resort, also revolves around Irving's inability to tell Kathy that he loves her, but this time on vacation. Want to help me? You always act like a lunatic after you've been to the shrink. Just a second, take a muption risk of kay, I did that humiliate itself with erotic suggestion. I did that just just a sect maintain romantic mood. I don't love how you're strong job moves when you call me a lunatic. The final special is Kathy's Valentine from and is mostly a long protracted fight between Kathy and Irving. Again, Kathy isn't therapy in this special, and she's trying to make the relationship work, but Irving thinks therapy is ridiculous and complaints because he's himself. Forget it, Kathy, Okay, I am sick of being the perfect guy, just to get yelled at. They break up twice over the course of the episode, but are somehow back together by the end. Oh my god, I hate Irving so much. Uh, Chid to get things you know, rekindled before Valentine. For heaven's sake. Man has nothing to do with what you wear, what you have in the cupboard. These TV specials were the runway up to the peak of the comics presence in merchandizing and public recognition in the early to mid nine nineties. However, looking back on these TV specials now, Cathy doesn't necessarily stand by the content. Yeah. I banned them from being made available for purchase. There was just like, you know, there's like everything and it's just so you know, dated. So they That was very exciting to work on those. Um I wanted to write the scripts. Of course, that was a giant argument because I wasn't a TV writer, so that was a huge argument. But I wanted to write the script. So I did write the first one. It you know, got altered it by the network, but you know, you know, it was basically it was basically my story and mine was my original versions or like pack dialogue, because I was finally liberated from the four boxes so I could tell us, you know, I could tell a real story, you know, with real dialogue. And I wanted him. I wanted the characters to you know, to talk fashion, for it to be like more that banter that you would see on TV now. And so that was that was rejected because, um, because it was so outside of the kind of the timing that that that team all everything was, everything was brought up in the eighties and I kind of like everything the decade before you were born. Everything was happening, Jamie. I missed, you missed everything. It always happening. Then I'm not going to tell you about it because it was done. Uh yeah, So we pursued a live action a few times. Who did you pictures had as Cathy? Well, that was always kind of a problem when I was I don't think anybody could ever quite figured that out. You know, it got it got to the point where somebody else wrote scripts that I hated. Then I wrote scripts that they hated, and then we got you know, it went a little ways down the road a few times, and then ultimately that didn't happen. The late eighties continued to bring success for the whole Guy Swite family and Guy S. White. Cathy's mom actually released a book called Motherly Advice from Cathy's Mom in se and, knowing her education and pedigree as a writer, I thought this was very cool. Cathy also collaborated with her younger sister, Mickey Guy Swhite on a book In with Mickey writing and Cathy illustrating. All of the Guys White women's styles gel very close with Kathy's. Nearly all of this work is built around the day to day anxieties of women from different generations. Brought Kathy's biggest flare up controversy wise, when the comics showed Andrea campaigning extensively for Michael Ducacus, who was running for president in eight against George Bush Sr. The blowback was so severe that Kathy eased off explicitly political references for the next two decades. I think I was always pretty cautious about being controversial, you know that when I'm sure you wrote a book. When I did the strips for Andrew was actively campaigning for Ducacus, and I'm I'm sure they did not go over wall um with a lot of editors and people. They just weren't expecting that one sided opinion from me um And they said, at the time, you know this is not you know, it was not political strip. And if world we'd run it on the editorial page. In my now my stand at that time was it, you know, a written I wrote was sort of political onliness. And in the early nineties, Kathy Mania reached its peak. While there weren't any more TV specials, the merchandizing craze exploded. There's actually video footage of my mom at this work Christmas party in showing off her cubicle being like, I'm so happy before I had kids, and what is behind her? Yes, it is a Kathy comic strip proudly pinned to her divider wall and a Detroit Free Press poll from Kathy was ranked the fourth favorite comic by women in the fifth least favorite comic by men. Classically polarizing. Kathy guys White remained the CEO of her own company while continuing to turn out comics week by week, and in had a wild ear personally and professionally. She won the rub In A Ward, the prestigious National Cartoonist Society honor, and was only the second woman to have ever done so in the ceremonies forty plus year history. In her personal life, after decades of living as a single woman and putting her career front and center, at forty one, Cathy adopted her daughter, Ivy and raised her as a single parent. You know, in the nineties, when the licensing had gotten really big and we were just built this this whole other office just got designed for us to move into and the comic strip was doing great. That's and I had, i mean six waking hours six six seconds you know per day where I wasn't just completely overwhelmed. That's when it occurred to me that I should adopt a baby. So that that's because why not, you know, It's just that I look, I'm like the I'm like the luckiest person on earth that I've had opportunities that I've had, and I've had the chances I've had to make all the mistakes I did make, and that that I was. I was given this amazing opportunity for self expression at a time there weren't other women doing that. And then out of the all of it that I was a complete workaholic, born into a generation that like we were instructed to not have children, you know, we were going into the workforce. That was the mindset. You know, it wasn't It wasn't at all what it is now, which is you know, going into adulthood knowing that you could combine motherhood with working. It was the opposite of that. It was you were choosing one path or the other. You were going to be a wife and mother or you're going to be a single working person. Period. That was it. And so I was obedient to that to the max, you know, until um, until I hit um forty and you know it was going to like steal somebody's baby, I mean, my mother, you know something. I had to be a mother. So but but that I somehow that I was. Among my blessings were that I was able to have this great career. I was able to have the possible the opportunity to make all the mistakes that I did and I still kept having a great career, and that I was able to have the blessing of motherhood like right in the middle of that, and that that worked. It's just like very, very lucky person. This is one of the only times that Cathy took some time off and sent the comic into repeats to spend time with her newborn. According to The New York Daily News writer David Hinckley, she sent out a letter personally apologizing for taking time off. In a column from he writes, this what did take two thirds of a page was her apology. I'm really sorry to be doing this, she said. It's my own fault. I can't get ahead like a should, but I just don't have any choice now that the adoption is so near. I offer my deepest thanks, she writes, if you can give this extra support to me right now, he continues, Now, two things come to mind. First, this is exactly what Guy's wife's Kathy character would do exactly. Second, if this were a mail cartoonist, any mail this letter would not exist. Newspapers would only get letter number one saying this artist was taking time off. He wants it, he deserves it. See you in July and He's right. There was a long tradition of male comic writers taking time off, many of them Kathy's contemporaries Gary Trudeau of Doonesbury, Gary Larson of The Far Side, Bill Waterson of Calvin and Hobbes, and she wasn't even completely taking time off. She was still doing Sunday comic strips. By the ninety nineties, Kathy's personal life had begun to stray from the storylines of her comic pretty significantly, as Kathy the artist headed into motherhood and later marriage, while remaining the owner of her own business. Her character continued to navigate single doom and worked for the same company she started at in the nineteen seventies. Kathy writes this, I really have devoted myself to the comic strip a long time. I want my own identity. I need that more than I did in the beginning. I need to feel like I had my own life. Mind you, there are certain traits that we certainly share, and we always will. At the height of the comics popularity, Cathy's life was also changing. She met her now ex husband, the screenwriter Christopher Wilkinson, at a daycare group where he was bringing his son and Kathy was bringing her daughter. Wilkinson wrote, Nixon, if you saw that, I didn't, but they're divorced, so I don't have to. The two got married, and Kathy lived with her daughter, stepson, and husband while continuing to run the company and make the comic. The licensing business continued to thrive, including a Memory Morble campaign for weight Watchers featuring both Kathy and Irving, using illustrations that referenced a storyline from the comic where the two of them began to go to the gym together to get in shape and lose weight. The late nineties brought a cookbook that Kathy collaborated on with chef Barbara Albright called Girl Food. I have this cookbook because I'm a girl and I need food, and it features recipe titles like I really really really deserve a raise, buttermilk doughnuts and never the same size, low calorie coleslaw. We'll be talking about this book later and it is one of the last major merchandizing efforts of the comic strip because the merchandise and company did not last for the entire duration of the comic, closing its doors by the early two thousands. During this period, of time, Kathy was more recognizable and making more money than ever, but she says that the compounded roles of CEO, artist, wife and mom result did in the cheapening of her brand for a period of time. So the doing the actual comic strip that um got squashed into shorter and shorter amount of time. Again, when I look back at life now and I go, I wish, I wish I had had this perspective now, And it is my wisdom now of oh, this is what I was doing that was kind of unique and good, was doing the comic strip and some maybe greeting cards. Those I could have achieved in my own and my own little office without without all the hubbub. But I also could have maybe taken some time to better reflect on what I was doing and the opportunity I was given to have this very unique voice for women in the newspaper where there was nothing else happening for women in the paper. But you know, I kind of kind of wish that I had h M. I wish I had not been so busy. At the turn of the century, Cathy was syndicated in over fifteen hundred newspapers and had amassed about seventy million readers. By two thousand and five, Kathy the Artist had been married long enough that she was ready for her fictional character to join her. There something that many people felt betrayed by after the character was famously single for almost thirty years at that point. And while yes, it's pretty petty to be mad about the marital status of a cartoon character, Kathy guys White had explicitly promised many times to never have the character get married. This is the woman who said this to the Detroit Free Press in about her own singleness. My syndicate threatens that if I ever get close to marriage, they'll lock me up. In seven Cathy says this, I know how abandoned I feel when one of my friends gets married. I won't let Kathy do that to her readers. Here's what she says about that decision. Now, was it always going to be irving? I mean he was obviously, he was like such a presence over the years, but he would disappear and then he would come back a couple of years later, and you know what, what what made you land on like? No, it is irving? I don't know know I'm married the wrong guy too, So what can I say. I never had time to step back from this strip and like plan it out, like you know, like I mentioned that, like one would think it would be smart to do. I felt that when they got married they had both grown and changed, and they really had. I mean, he was he was in the beginning, he was the definition of a Chaubno's pig, and he wasn't when they got married. He was. He was a man trying to who was also vulnerable, who was trying to be in a relationship. He loved Kathy, and um, I know it was okay. And as it turns out, Kathy the character's marriage outlasted the real life Kathy's marriage that had motivated it. Kathy and her husband split in two thousand and eight, at which point she reclaimed her space by hanging up a neon Ax sign in the house. Two years later, she decided to end the Kathy comic in newspapers in October two thousand and ten on her own terms. You may remember that Kathy the character announces that she's pregnant in the final comic strip, maybe four or five months or six months before I and before the strip ended, I talked to the syndicate about you know the fact that I needed to end it so um. So, on one hand, you would think that I had lots of time to plan how it would end. On the other hand, I still was running in front of the train, you know, ever a week trying to do them. And then I was also trying to feel all of the stuff about the strip ending. So you know, it was it wasn't again as usual, like I had two months to sit back and go, Okay, how how is this all going to wrap up? I knew that when I ended this trip that I wanted to, um, you know, I wanted to revisit all the characters a bit, and I knew that I wanted I knew that I wanted to end the strip with Kathy expecting a baby girl, so that in readers fantasies, at least they could imagine that the circle of life, the circle of mother daughter aggravation, was going forth into the future. The circle of ac continues. Yeah, and it's worth noting that Kathy Guiswide's choice to end a spectacularly successful comic strip in this way was and is extremely unusual. More often than not, comics that are on the page for this long thirty four years, in Cathy's case, go into syndication. That basically means that old strips from past years will continue to run in the paper to keep artists relevant and to continue to make them money. Cathy elected not to do this, leaving a lot of money on the table in the process. When doing interviews towards the end of the comics run, she said this to The Washington Post. I feel like I have always been and continued to be humbled to have that space on the page. I feel like I need to earn it every day to do my best news stuff. Now. I love the idea of releasing my space to another cartoonist who can have a chance in the papers. It wouldn't seem right to do reruns. The comic strip ending also revitalized interest in Kathy for those who had fallen out of the habit of reading the comic or who no longer read physical newspapers as news increasingly migrated online, and with that interest came a lot of those same old criticism and jokes that popped up via the hashtag ways Kathy should end tag taking off on Twitter in two thousand ten, and some of them are pretty funny and an orgy of blood violence Garfield devoured her whole, but most of them were based on the caricature like stereotypes that had calcified around Kathy Guy's wife's work over the past couple of decades. Overhead shot of her laying face down in an empty room next to the half eaten lean cuisine that she choked to death on hashtag ways Kathy should end. Hoarding experts arrived too late to find Kathy flattened under a heap of diet aids, cats, and dating books. Hashtag ways Kathy should end. The tone of this criticism does not change much at all between the nineteen seventies and the nine nineties, and it affected Kathy Guy's White quite a bit. She writes about how the criticism affected her in her essay collection Fifty Things That Aren't My Fault. This comes in the middle of the titular essay where guys White discusses and defends her choice to talk about the issues that affected her in her comic strip. I had the amazing platform of an internationally syndicated comic strip, which some people said I should have used to voice triumphant stories of unwavering feminism, but which I instead used to voice the insecurities, relationship frustrations, mother, daughter, angst, career grief, and food blunders under which so many of our triumphant dreams get squashed. Some people thought my work reinforced the negative stereotype of women being obsessed with shopping, weight, and love. But it wasn't my fault that we still live in a world that partly judges women by what we wear, how much we weigh, and whether or not and who or how we love. Not my fault that with every glorious new possibility for women came an extra sense of isolation when we not only couldn't keep up, but we're told we shouldn't talk about the things that held us back. She continues later in the essay, I would try to sum up days of research and perspective and the real life experience of living in this culture into four tiny newspaper comic strip boxes with a bit of hope in the last panel, and would be heartbroken sometimes honestly, when some people would say, there she goes writing about shopping again. I wanted to write notes to all the people who were unhappy with my work and explain myself. I wanted to write notes to all the people who were happy with my work and tell them how deeply grateful I was. They let me know that I wasn't alone. Kathy and I spoke about this criticism as well. I am well aware that my strip was ridiculed a lot, Okay, ridiculed by by some. I'm not just not liked by others, actively just liked by women who are in a much stronger, um more self assured place of feminism than I was when I wrote a lot of it. After the comic ended, Kathy guys White lived her life. She had two elderly parents that she spent more time with in Florida, and she was able to spend time with her daughter, Ivy during her senior year of high school. Starting in she started inching back into the art world, developing a following on Instagram. These comics tended to reference current events as they were happening. Kathy supports Christine blasi Ford's testimony. Kathy supports the Walk for Our Lives. Kathy tells you a vote in the mid terms, and on and on. Two thousand nineteen brought Kathy's first book that wasn't comics, an essay collection where she's the most open she's ever been about her life and experiences throughout her career. Branded as Essays from the grown Up Years, it was a really enjoyable read that invokes the kind of work that Nora Ephron was doing in her essay collections later in her career. There's a lot of talk about the indignities and frustrations of aging, of being caught between caring for a young adult daughter and elderly parents, reflections on love and marriage, and on the passing of her father during the two thousand tens. The book was well received, and for the first time in ten years, Kathy was back on the press circuit, speaking to a whole new generation of women that younger people like me mainly knew through people dunking on it rather than actually engaging with it. And this relevance surged once again in two thousand and twenty when the pandemic lockdown began in the United States, because Kathy started creating comics on a regular basis again. So, after ten years of absence, what's it like to be back the woman with her face in the mash mash potatoes and that proud, that proud icon of feminism? Right? How did they feel having like the comic back in your in your life, and like a in a very regular sense. The first word that comes to mind is guilt ridden. You know, when I did the comic strip, I would you know, I would do it weeks ahead, and then weeks later I might get a letter or two in the mail saying, G I like that one, or G I hated that one. So that was that. But this way, you know, ten seconds after I draw it, I can post it, and then ten seconds after that somebody has something to say about it. And then there's kind of the the need to kind of communicate with everybody and then to follow what other people are doing, and it's it's you know, I'll just say it's a lot. I have loved um having a place to dump my anxieties. I have loved that. I never, I never in a million years thought I would be drawing regularly again. And I'm also I'm not sure how long I'm going to do it. But I think when when I started doing them, I mean, of course, it originally just for me to dump my frustrations on paper, but I know from doing the comic strip that one thing I can contribute to the world is uh, you know, commiseration. I'll say, well, well, everybody I think during the pandemic was kind of doing what they could do, you know, to help be of service to others or to help others. I was not going to go out of the house and do anything, but this is something I could, I could contribute, and a lot of people, I think also the pandemic has um made a lot of people kind of reflective and nostalgic for something normal or something you know, some friends. A lot of people kind of reconnected with friends, you know, online or on the phone. And I heard from a lot of people that they just said, oh, Kathy's was my friend for so long, and thank god, you know, there she is again, and that that she's I love that. I love feeling like I could kind of had the character be there as a friend to people during this time. The pandemic comics are emblematic of this old friend vibe. Like so many people, the Kathy character struggles with managing anxiety about the state of the world, with food, issues, with boredom, with missing friends and family, referencing the extreme discomfort and darkness of this time without actually getting too dark and that brings us up to today as I record this. Kathy is chilling with her year old mom doing zoom yoga classes together in Florida. She's living. Maybe something that really strikes me about Kathy Guys White is that in my experience talking with her, she still very much embodies a lot of that insecurity and willingness to believe unkind things that people have said about her. And this is another point where I personally connect with her. Of course, the shitty stuff is always going to stick with you more. I was never I am not a funny person. I've never told the joke. I only have uh. Over time, I acquired a skill of finding um, the the bright moment in not you know and not right moments, and then putting it down on paper. But I'm not I'm not uh comedian. Her career is one built on self deprecation. But taking Cathy's view of herself at face value without looking at the scope of her accomplishments and the foundation built by those who came before her, would be to make a huge mistake. Cathy's work, while remaining pretty narrow in its scope, tried to talk about things that made women feel bad about themselves, and a lot of the criticism thrown at her is rooted in the character being not a good enough role model for other women. This specific criticism is so bizarre to me because the comic is written for adults, like I don't think there was a single person who is modeling their behavior after Cathy comics. And adding to this, the amount of pressure that was on the few women working in this industry, Cathy Guyswaite and Lynn Johnston primarily, and expecting one comic book character to represent all women is an impossible bar to clear. And it's not an expectation or criticism that was ever lobbed at her male cohort. You know, in retrospect, there were a zillion issues that I could have taken on Um more strongly in the comics trip, And you know, part of me thanks she if i'd really, if I've ever gotten ahead enough to really step back, you know, could I should? I would? I have Um presented a stronger stand on on a lot of things. And yet I also know that I think that my character's contribution to the world is one of offering women a relief and commiseration and helping you know that there's no getting out and conquering the world if you can't get out the front door if you don't feel good enough for about yourself to get out the front door, and you can't you know, if you can't get through the next five minutes, you know, a little bit of optimism. So I think that that is a you know, the character's main service is not not always a good role model, but always a friend. But also like you have to speak on behalf of you know, your entire gender, Like that's that's such a huge additional weight to be to be put on you. Well, thank you for that acknowledgement. Throughout her career, Cathy bounced between accepting the press projection that she and her character are one and the same in the more nuanced reality that she had her own private life that she never spoke of in detail in public, and a clear mission on creating artistic comfort food for the adult women of her era. I think this quote from and the Detroit Repress sums it up perfectly. Nobody has it totally together, and that's okay. I'll be speaking with Kathy guys White a lot more throughout this series, but I wanted you to know her too. We hold up so many writers and figureheads like her and Kathy deserves her flowers to her work is representative of dealing with the pressures of being a woman in the late twentieth century. In practice, characters who are aware of and supportive of the feminist movement, but who have trouble logistically and personally applying it to their own lives. But to this day, feminists remain some of Kathy's biggest critics. We're gonna look at why and where Kathy's work falls in the history of American women next week on ac cast Where where are you and the children thing? Wow? Okay, I'm I'm definitely not there yet. H yeah, I've I've been. A Cast is an I Heart radio production. It is written, researched, and hosted by me Jamie Loftus. Sophie Lichtman is the world's Greatest producer, Isaac Taylor is the world's greatest editor, Zoe Blade writes the world's greatest music, and Brendan Dickert wrote the world's greatest theme. Huge thank you to Kathy guys White for this episode in particular, and in today's episode, you heard the vocal talent of Anna, host Na Julia Claire and Isaac Taylor.

She burst into the world in nineteen seventy six. She's at what. She's out on dates and she don't like politics. From Mama and urban to with feminist friends. She's fighting all the stands it with chocolate and head. Kathy, She's fighting back to stress with success. Let's cut her some slack, oh, Kathy, Kathy, Cathy, She's gotta like go in all shame. An idea for a Kathy TV show had been in place since the early eighties and a piece from the Tennessee in two. The proposed version of the show would have been live action with only animated titles, which honestly sounds tight. What's also very a frint from the pitch and the actual product that came out five years later is the hook of the show. According to John McMahon of producing partner Johnny Carson Productions, Kathy would be quote unquote the Mary Tyler Moore of the eighties. When the fully animated specials aired five years later, the reality was a bit different. Kathy of these specials is not particularly empowered, but Kathy guys White remained deeply involved in the creative throughout all three specials. She wrote, an executive produced, Kathy, Kathy's Last Resort, and Kathy's Valentine, which were all built off storylines that had previously appeared in the comic. As Kathy tells it, she had a lot of creative control in this process, but the high level decisions were made by CBS executives and they played it very safe. And by safe I mean Irvings and all of them. The Kathy character was voiced by actor Kathleen will Hoyt why not best as the voice of Pepperran. Although I'm probably millennializing myself there, here's what she sounds like. My name is Cathy. I spend last Saturday night celebrating my Employee of the Year nomination with a box of Oreo cookies. The first special, titled Kathy, aired on CPS in May. It follows Kathy as she's set to receive an award at work and is putting in a lot of overtime. Irving says that he isn't going to her awards ceremony, which her friends, family, and co workers disapprove of. Kathy tries to make the best of it, saying that she's an independent woman, but she's really disappointed. She then surprises Irving at his apartment only to find him cheating on her. After five years in a relationship, and no, he still can't say I love you. I cannot believe it. Mom. Does a man have to say he cared for me in exactly your words or doesn't count? We have five solid years of avoiding any kind of actual burble commitment with each other. Mom? Did a tressfertors liked to account for nothing? Well, you are wrong, Mom, you are wrong. Wrong, I hated. Kathy is completely humiliated and she dumps him. She goes on a date with another guy to try to bounce back, but he sucks. On the night of her award, Cathy decides to show up in her robe and rollers still upset that Irving hasn't called her. Eventually, Irving does call and Cathy takes him back. Immediately they make up and it ends like this. I'm trying to learn not to be so moto, and I'm going to try to learn that even employees of the Year have to make time for a date if they want a relationship. And I'm going to try to not run out and meet someone else every time you get busy. Yeah, yeah, you wait, if you went out trying to meet other people. When did you do that better? Stay on your toes, Irving. There are lots of single men in this town. It's an amazing time to be single, all right. We're all free to be anything, but under hundred new pressures to be everything. We work for deeper, more meaningful relationships and then try to make them work in the ten three minutes we have a day. It's always been easier to leave a relationship with your single I guess in the eighties it's just a little more challenging to stay in Irving. Very much takes center stage in these specials in a way that puts him firmly at the center of Kathy Cannon, even though there's whole years in the comic strip where he doesn't appear at all. But this special holds a special place in Kathy guys White's career. She won a goddamn Emmy for it. Here's her speech brought our first time any winners. I'd like to say a special thanks to my sisters Marianne and Mickey, who are not only my best editors, but the whole foundation of my sense of humor. When I started the comic strip, Kathy, I was sure that I was the only woman in the world who came home from a day in my brilliant career and stood in the kitchen squirting ready whipped whip topping directly into my mouth. I was sure that I was the only professional, enlightened, professional business person who balanced my checkbook by switching banks and starting all over every six months, or or who coped with relationship problems by eating a cheesecake. I'm first grateful to my parents, not only for encouraging me to believe that I was not the only one, but for forcing me to send the humiliating moments of my own life to Universal Press Syndicate for publication. The second special, Cathy's last resort, also revolves around Irving's inability to tell Kathy that he loves her, but this time on vacation. Want to help me? You always act like a lunatic after you've been to the shrink. Just a second, take a muption risk of kay, I did that humiliate itself with erotic suggestion. I did that just just a sect maintain romantic mood. I don't love how you're strong job moves when you call me a lunatic. The final special is Kathy's Valentine from and is mostly a long protracted fight between Kathy and Irving. Again, Kathy isn't therapy in this special, and she's trying to make the relationship work, but Irving thinks therapy is ridiculous and complaints because he's himself. Forget it, Kathy, Okay, I am sick of being the perfect guy, just to get yelled at. They break up twice over the course of the episode, but are somehow back together by the end. Oh my god, I hate Irving so much. Uh, Chid to get things you know, rekindled before Valentine. For heaven's sake. Man has nothing to do with what you wear, what you have in the cupboard. These TV specials were the runway up to the peak of the comics presence in merchandizing and public recognition in the early to mid nine nineties. However, looking back on these TV specials now, Cathy doesn't necessarily stand by the content. Yeah. I banned them from being made available for purchase. There was just like, you know, there's like everything and it's just so you know, dated. So they That was very exciting to work on those. Um I wanted to write the scripts. Of course, that was a giant argument because I wasn't a TV writer, so that was a huge argument. But I wanted to write the script. So I did write the first one. It you know, got altered it by the network, but you know, you know, it was basically it was basically my story and mine was my original versions or like pack dialogue, because I was finally liberated from the four boxes so I could tell us, you know, I could tell a real story, you know, with real dialogue. And I wanted him. I wanted the characters to you know, to talk fashion, for it to be like more that banter that you would see on TV now. And so that was that was rejected because, um, because it was so outside of the kind of the timing that that that team all everything was, everything was brought up in the eighties and I kind of like everything the decade before you were born. Everything was happening, Jamie. I missed, you missed everything. It always happening. Then I'm not going to tell you about it because it was done. Uh yeah, So we pursued a live action a few times. Who did you pictures had as Cathy? Well, that was always kind of a problem when I was I don't think anybody could ever quite figured that out. You know, it got it got to the point where somebody else wrote scripts that I hated. Then I wrote scripts that they hated, and then we got you know, it went a little ways down the road a few times, and then ultimately that didn't happen. The late eighties continued to bring success for the whole Guy Swite family and Guy S. White. Cathy's mom actually released a book called Motherly Advice from Cathy's Mom in se and, knowing her education and pedigree as a writer, I thought this was very cool. Cathy also collaborated with her younger sister, Mickey Guy Swhite on a book In with Mickey writing and Cathy illustrating. All of the Guys White women's styles gel very close with Kathy's. Nearly all of this work is built around the day to day anxieties of women from different generations. Brought Kathy's biggest flare up controversy wise, when the comics showed Andrea campaigning extensively for Michael Ducacus, who was running for president in eight against George Bush Sr. The blowback was so severe that Kathy eased off explicitly political references for the next two decades. I think I was always pretty cautious about being controversial, you know that when I'm sure you wrote a book. When I did the strips for Andrew was actively campaigning for Ducacus, and I'm I'm sure they did not go over wall um with a lot of editors and people. They just weren't expecting that one sided opinion from me um And they said, at the time, you know this is not you know, it was not political strip. And if world we'd run it on the editorial page. In my now my stand at that time was it, you know, a written I wrote was sort of political onliness. And in the early nineties, Kathy Mania reached its peak. While there weren't any more TV specials, the merchandizing craze exploded. There's actually video footage of my mom at this work Christmas party in showing off her cubicle being like, I'm so happy before I had kids, and what is behind her? Yes, it is a Kathy comic strip proudly pinned to her divider wall and a Detroit Free Press poll from Kathy was ranked the fourth favorite comic by women in the fifth least favorite comic by men. Classically polarizing. Kathy guys White remained the CEO of her own company while continuing to turn out comics week by week, and in had a wild ear personally and professionally. She won the rub In A Ward, the prestigious National Cartoonist Society honor, and was only the second woman to have ever done so in the ceremonies forty plus year history. In her personal life, after decades of living as a single woman and putting her career front and center, at forty one, Cathy adopted her daughter, Ivy and raised her as a single parent. You know, in the nineties, when the licensing had gotten really big and we were just built this this whole other office just got designed for us to move into and the comic strip was doing great. That's and I had, i mean six waking hours six six seconds you know per day where I wasn't just completely overwhelmed. That's when it occurred to me that I should adopt a baby. So that that's because why not, you know, It's just that I look, I'm like the I'm like the luckiest person on earth that I've had opportunities that I've had, and I've had the chances I've had to make all the mistakes I did make, and that that I was. I was given this amazing opportunity for self expression at a time there weren't other women doing that. And then out of the all of it that I was a complete workaholic, born into a generation that like we were instructed to not have children, you know, we were going into the workforce. That was the mindset. You know, it wasn't It wasn't at all what it is now, which is you know, going into adulthood knowing that you could combine motherhood with working. It was the opposite of that. It was you were choosing one path or the other. You were going to be a wife and mother or you're going to be a single working person. Period. That was it. And so I was obedient to that to the max, you know, until um, until I hit um forty and you know it was going to like steal somebody's baby, I mean, my mother, you know something. I had to be a mother. So but but that I somehow that I was. Among my blessings were that I was able to have this great career. I was able to have the possible the opportunity to make all the mistakes that I did and I still kept having a great career, and that I was able to have the blessing of motherhood like right in the middle of that, and that that worked. It's just like very, very lucky person. This is one of the only times that Cathy took some time off and sent the comic into repeats to spend time with her newborn. According to The New York Daily News writer David Hinckley, she sent out a letter personally apologizing for taking time off. In a column from he writes, this what did take two thirds of a page was her apology. I'm really sorry to be doing this, she said. It's my own fault. I can't get ahead like a should, but I just don't have any choice now that the adoption is so near. I offer my deepest thanks, she writes, if you can give this extra support to me right now, he continues, Now, two things come to mind. First, this is exactly what Guy's wife's Kathy character would do exactly. Second, if this were a mail cartoonist, any mail this letter would not exist. Newspapers would only get letter number one saying this artist was taking time off. He wants it, he deserves it. See you in July and He's right. There was a long tradition of male comic writers taking time off, many of them Kathy's contemporaries Gary Trudeau of Doonesbury, Gary Larson of The Far Side, Bill Waterson of Calvin and Hobbes, and she wasn't even completely taking time off. She was still doing Sunday comic strips. By the ninety nineties, Kathy's personal life had begun to stray from the storylines of her comic pretty significantly, as Kathy the artist headed into motherhood and later marriage, while remaining the owner of her own business. Her character continued to navigate single doom and worked for the same company she started at in the nineteen seventies. Kathy writes this, I really have devoted myself to the comic strip a long time. I want my own identity. I need that more than I did in the beginning. I need to feel like I had my own life. Mind you, there are certain traits that we certainly share, and we always will. At the height of the comics popularity, Cathy's life was also changing. She met her now ex husband, the screenwriter Christopher Wilkinson, at a daycare group where he was bringing his son and Kathy was bringing her daughter. Wilkinson wrote, Nixon, if you saw that, I didn't, but they're divorced, so I don't have to. The two got married, and Kathy lived with her daughter, stepson, and husband while continuing to run the company and make the comic. The licensing business continued to thrive, including a Memory Morble campaign for weight Watchers featuring both Kathy and Irving, using illustrations that referenced a storyline from the comic where the two of them began to go to the gym together to get in shape and lose weight. The late nineties brought a cookbook that Kathy collaborated on with chef Barbara Albright called Girl Food. I have this cookbook because I'm a girl and I need food, and it features recipe titles like I really really really deserve a raise, buttermilk doughnuts and never the same size, low calorie coleslaw. We'll be talking about this book later and it is one of the last major merchandizing efforts of the comic strip because the merchandise and company did not last for the entire duration of the comic, closing its doors by the early two thousands. During this period, of time, Kathy was more recognizable and making more money than ever, but she says that the compounded roles of CEO, artist, wife and mom result did in the cheapening of her brand for a period of time. So the doing the actual comic strip that um got squashed into shorter and shorter amount of time. Again, when I look back at life now and I go, I wish, I wish I had had this perspective now, And it is my wisdom now of oh, this is what I was doing that was kind of unique and good, was doing the comic strip and some maybe greeting cards. Those I could have achieved in my own and my own little office without without all the hubbub. But I also could have maybe taken some time to better reflect on what I was doing and the opportunity I was given to have this very unique voice for women in the newspaper where there was nothing else happening for women in the paper. But you know, I kind of kind of wish that I had h M. I wish I had not been so busy. At the turn of the century, Cathy was syndicated in over fifteen hundred newspapers and had amassed about seventy million readers. By two thousand and five, Kathy the Artist had been married long enough that she was ready for her fictional character to join her. There something that many people felt betrayed by after the character was famously single for almost thirty years at that point. And while yes, it's pretty petty to be mad about the marital status of a cartoon character, Kathy guys White had explicitly promised many times to never have the character get married. This is the woman who said this to the Detroit Free Press in about her own singleness. My syndicate threatens that if I ever get close to marriage, they'll lock me up. In seven Cathy says this, I know how abandoned I feel when one of my friends gets married. I won't let Kathy do that to her readers. Here's what she says about that decision. Now, was it always going to be irving? I mean he was obviously, he was like such a presence over the years, but he would disappear and then he would come back a couple of years later, and you know what, what what made you land on like? No, it is irving? I don't know know I'm married the wrong guy too, So what can I say. I never had time to step back from this strip and like plan it out, like you know, like I mentioned that, like one would think it would be smart to do. I felt that when they got married they had both grown and changed, and they really had. I mean, he was he was in the beginning, he was the definition of a Chaubno's pig, and he wasn't when they got married. He was. He was a man trying to who was also vulnerable, who was trying to be in a relationship. He loved Kathy, and um, I know it was okay. And as it turns out, Kathy the character's marriage outlasted the real life Kathy's marriage that had motivated it. Kathy and her husband split in two thousand and eight, at which point she reclaimed her space by hanging up a neon Ax sign in the house. Two years later, she decided to end the Kathy comic in newspapers in October two thousand and ten on her own terms. You may remember that Kathy the character announces that she's pregnant in the final comic strip, maybe four or five months or six months before I and before the strip ended, I talked to the syndicate about you know the fact that I needed to end it so um. So, on one hand, you would think that I had lots of time to plan how it would end. On the other hand, I still was running in front of the train, you know, ever a week trying to do them. And then I was also trying to feel all of the stuff about the strip ending. So you know, it was it wasn't again as usual, like I had two months to sit back and go, Okay, how how is this all going to wrap up? I knew that when I ended this trip that I wanted to, um, you know, I wanted to revisit all the characters a bit, and I knew that I wanted I knew that I wanted to end the strip with Kathy expecting a baby girl, so that in readers fantasies, at least they could imagine that the circle of life, the circle of mother daughter aggravation, was going forth into the future. The circle of ac continues. Yeah, and it's worth noting that Kathy Guiswide's choice to end a spectacularly successful comic strip in this way was and is extremely unusual. More often than not, comics that are on the page for this long thirty four years, in Cathy's case, go into syndication. That basically means that old strips from past years will continue to run in the paper to keep artists relevant and to continue to make them money. Cathy elected not to do this, leaving a lot of money on the table in the process. When doing interviews towards the end of the comics run, she said this to The Washington Post. I feel like I have always been and continued to be humbled to have that space on the page. I feel like I need to earn it every day to do my best news stuff. Now. I love the idea of releasing my space to another cartoonist who can have a chance in the papers. It wouldn't seem right to do reruns. The comic strip ending also revitalized interest in Kathy for those who had fallen out of the habit of reading the comic or who no longer read physical newspapers as news increasingly migrated online, and with that interest came a lot of those same old criticism and jokes that popped up via the hashtag ways Kathy should end tag taking off on Twitter in two thousand ten, and some of them are pretty funny and an orgy of blood violence Garfield devoured her whole, but most of them were based on the caricature like stereotypes that had calcified around Kathy Guy's wife's work over the past couple of decades. Overhead shot of her laying face down in an empty room next to the half eaten lean cuisine that she choked to death on hashtag ways Kathy should end. Hoarding experts arrived too late to find Kathy flattened under a heap of diet aids, cats, and dating books. Hashtag ways Kathy should end. The tone of this criticism does not change much at all between the nineteen seventies and the nine nineties, and it affected Kathy Guy's White quite a bit. She writes about how the criticism affected her in her essay collection Fifty Things That Aren't My Fault. This comes in the middle of the titular essay where guys White discusses and defends her choice to talk about the issues that affected her in her comic strip. I had the amazing platform of an internationally syndicated comic strip, which some people said I should have used to voice triumphant stories of unwavering feminism, but which I instead used to voice the insecurities, relationship frustrations, mother, daughter, angst, career grief, and food blunders under which so many of our triumphant dreams get squashed. Some people thought my work reinforced the negative stereotype of women being obsessed with shopping, weight, and love. But it wasn't my fault that we still live in a world that partly judges women by what we wear, how much we weigh, and whether or not and who or how we love. Not my fault that with every glorious new possibility for women came an extra sense of isolation when we not only couldn't keep up, but we're told we shouldn't talk about the things that held us back. She continues later in the essay, I would try to sum up days of research and perspective and the real life experience of living in this culture into four tiny newspaper comic strip boxes with a bit of hope in the last panel, and would be heartbroken sometimes honestly, when some people would say, there she goes writing about shopping again. I wanted to write notes to all the people who were unhappy with my work and explain myself. I wanted to write notes to all the people who were happy with my work and tell them how deeply grateful I was. They let me know that I wasn't alone. Kathy and I spoke about this criticism as well. I am well aware that my strip was ridiculed a lot, Okay, ridiculed by by some. I'm not just not liked by others, actively just liked by women who are in a much stronger, um more self assured place of feminism than I was when I wrote a lot of it. After the comic ended, Kathy guys White lived her life. She had two elderly parents that she spent more time with in Florida, and she was able to spend time with her daughter, Ivy during her senior year of high school. Starting in she started inching back into the art world, developing a following on Instagram. These comics tended to reference current events as they were happening. Kathy supports Christine blasi Ford's testimony. Kathy supports the Walk for Our Lives. Kathy tells you a vote in the mid terms, and on and on. Two thousand nineteen brought Kathy's first book that wasn't comics, an essay collection where she's the most open she's ever been about her life and experiences throughout her career. Branded as Essays from the grown Up Years, it was a really enjoyable read that invokes the kind of work that Nora Ephron was doing in her essay collections later in her career. There's a lot of talk about the indignities and frustrations of aging, of being caught between caring for a young adult daughter and elderly parents, reflections on love and marriage, and on the passing of her father during the two thousand tens. The book was well received, and for the first time in ten years, Kathy was back on the press circuit, speaking to a whole new generation of women that younger people like me mainly knew through people dunking on it rather than actually engaging with it. And this relevance surged once again in two thousand and twenty when the pandemic lockdown began in the United States, because Kathy started creating comics on a regular basis again. So, after ten years of absence, what's it like to be back the woman with her face in the mash mash potatoes and that proud, that proud icon of feminism? Right? How did they feel having like the comic back in your in your life, and like a in a very regular sense. The first word that comes to mind is guilt ridden. You know, when I did the comic strip, I would you know, I would do it weeks ahead, and then weeks later I might get a letter or two in the mail saying, G I like that one, or G I hated that one. So that was that. But this way, you know, ten seconds after I draw it, I can post it, and then ten seconds after that somebody has something to say about it. And then there's kind of the the need to kind of communicate with everybody and then to follow what other people are doing, and it's it's you know, I'll just say it's a lot. I have loved um having a place to dump my anxieties. I have loved that. I never, I never in a million years thought I would be drawing regularly again. And I'm also I'm not sure how long I'm going to do it. But I think when when I started doing them, I mean, of course, it originally just for me to dump my frustrations on paper, but I know from doing the comic strip that one thing I can contribute to the world is uh, you know, commiseration. I'll say, well, well, everybody I think during the pandemic was kind of doing what they could do, you know, to help be of service to others or to help others. I was not going to go out of the house and do anything, but this is something I could, I could contribute, and a lot of people, I think also the pandemic has um made a lot of people kind of reflective and nostalgic for something normal or something you know, some friends. A lot of people kind of reconnected with friends, you know, online or on the phone. And I heard from a lot of people that they just said, oh, Kathy's was my friend for so long, and thank god, you know, there she is again, and that that she's I love that. I love feeling like I could kind of had the character be there as a friend to people during this time. The pandemic comics are emblematic of this old friend vibe. Like so many people, the Kathy character struggles with managing anxiety about the state of the world, with food, issues, with boredom, with missing friends and family, referencing the extreme discomfort and darkness of this time without actually getting too dark and that brings us up to today as I record this. Kathy is chilling with her year old mom doing zoom yoga classes together in Florida. She's living. Maybe something that really strikes me about Kathy Guys White is that in my experience talking with her, she still very much embodies a lot of that insecurity and willingness to believe unkind things that people have said about her. And this is another point where I personally connect with her. Of course, the shitty stuff is always going to stick with you more. I was never I am not a funny person. I've never told the joke. I only have uh. Over time, I acquired a skill of finding um, the the bright moment in not you know and not right moments, and then putting it down on paper. But I'm not I'm not uh comedian. Her career is one built on self deprecation. But taking Cathy's view of herself at face value without looking at the scope of her accomplishments and the foundation built by those who came before her, would be to make a huge mistake. Cathy's work, while remaining pretty narrow in its scope, tried to talk about things that made women feel bad about themselves, and a lot of the criticism thrown at her is rooted in the character being not a good enough role model for other women. This specific criticism is so bizarre to me because the comic is written for adults, like I don't think there was a single person who is modeling their behavior after Cathy comics. And adding to this, the amount of pressure that was on the few women working in this industry, Cathy Guyswaite and Lynn Johnston primarily, and expecting one comic book character to represent all women is an impossible bar to clear. And it's not an expectation or criticism that was ever lobbed at her male cohort. You know, in retrospect, there were a zillion issues that I could have taken on Um more strongly in the comics trip, And you know, part of me thanks she if i'd really, if I've ever gotten ahead enough to really step back, you know, could I should? I would? I have Um presented a stronger stand on on a lot of things. And yet I also know that I think that my character's contribution to the world is one of offering women a relief and commiseration and helping you know that there's no getting out and conquering the world if you can't get out the front door if you don't feel good enough for about yourself to get out the front door, and you can't you know, if you can't get through the next five minutes, you know, a little bit of optimism. So I think that that is a you know, the character's main service is not not always a good role model, but always a friend. But also like you have to speak on behalf of you know, your entire gender, Like that's that's such a huge additional weight to be to be put on you. Well, thank you for that acknowledgement. Throughout her career, Cathy bounced between accepting the press projection that she and her character are one and the same in the more nuanced reality that she had her own private life that she never spoke of in detail in public, and a clear mission on creating artistic comfort food for the adult women of her era. I think this quote from and the Detroit Repress sums it up perfectly. Nobody has it totally together, and that's okay. I'll be speaking with Kathy guys White a lot more throughout this series, but I wanted you to know her too. We hold up so many writers and figureheads like her and Kathy deserves her flowers to her work is representative of dealing with the pressures of being a woman in the late twentieth century. In practice, characters who are aware of and supportive of the feminist movement, but who have trouble logistically and personally applying it to their own lives. But to this day, feminists remain some of Kathy's biggest critics. We're gonna look at why and where Kathy's work falls in the history of American women next week on ac cast Where where are you and the children thing? Wow? Okay, I'm I'm definitely not there yet. H yeah, I've I've been. A Cast is an I Heart radio production. It is written, researched, and hosted by me Jamie Loftus. Sophie Lichtman is the world's Greatest producer, Isaac Taylor is the world's greatest editor, Zoe Blade writes the world's greatest music, and Brendan Dickert wrote the world's greatest theme. Huge thank you to Kathy guys White for this episode in particular, and in today's episode, you heard the vocal talent of Anna, host Na Julia Claire and Isaac Taylor.