Transcript
Podcast Host / Advertiser (0:00)
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. Everyone deserves to be connected T Mobile and US Cellular are joining forces. Our networks are coming together bringing more T Mobile coverage all over the country. Switch to T Mobile and save up to 20% versus Verizon by getting built in benefits they leave out ch the math. @t mobile.com switch and now t mobile is available in a US cellular store near you bigger network the combination of T Mobiles and US Cellular's network footprints will enhance the T Mobile network's coverage savings versus comparable Verizon plans plus the costs of options, benefits, plan features and taxes and fees vary. Savings with three plus lines include third free line free via monthly bill credits Credit stop if you cancel any lines.
Advertiser / Sponsor Voice (0:47)
Qualifying credit required Underwear drawers are like the wild west of wardrobes. You never know what pair you're going to pull out or what shape it's in. It's time to upgrade your underwear drawer with the buttery, soft comfort of meundies. Meundies signature fabric is as soft as a warm hug from your favorite sweater. Plus it's breathable and oh so comfy, making it ideal for all day wear. Get 20% off your first order plus free shipping at Meundies.com acast Enter promo code acast that's Meundies.com acast Code acast.
Katie Charlwood (1:34)
Hello delicious friends, and welcome to who did what Now? The history podcast. That is not your history class with me, your host, Katie Charlwood, history harlot and reader of books. I think I may have bitten off a little bit more than I can chew this month or next month I should say. So I decided that April being the month that it is that I was going to cover the Titanic. You know, I don't know if you know this, but I was on the BBC as a Titanic expert so that was quite fun. So I was like, oh, I know lots of weird information about this but like what do people want to know? I'll ask and you know, I'll get a couple of questions and I'll answer them in videos and it'll help like pad out, you know, the bits of the month that I don't have structured. Now that's all fine and well until I was looking, you know, I went onto Instagram and I was like, oh, there's so many questions. That's fantastic. And then I go into Facebook and there's like 900 questions. Now, some of them are the same one like, and I shit you not, could Jack and Rose fit on the door? Which is a question I am actually going to answer because it annoys me so much. So I'm going to do it. I have to talk about physics, which is my least favourite thing in the world. Well, maybe not my least favourite, but, like, it's not my top level of subject that I like to chat about. Fucking physics. I don't have a brain for physics, guys. And yet I have to explain this. Just like the glass slipper. We're not going to get into it. We're going to. We're going to breathe in positivity and we're going to breathe out negativity. There we go. It's all good, it's all good. But, yeah, it was. That was a choice that I made and I had a really fun weekend. I went to see my friend Paul, who was telling me his wonderfully terrible, like, speed dating, like, stories because he decided he was gonna, like, try his hand at speed dating. Spoiler alert. It did not go well. It did, however, go quite funny. But, yeah, that was a good time. So we did an escape room. And I'm gonna complain about an escape room now, I'm not gonna tell you which one it is, but effectively the very first clue is like, oh, the first thing to change was time. And then even, like, I'm looking for clocks or something like time related, right? And you know, the, you know, the game master will sometimes give you a hint if you're struggling and they're like, yeah, no, you need to look for a clock. There was no clock in this room. There was no clock. There was, however, a dial that went from zero to nine, but it's a dial and not a clock, so I wasn't looking. Okay, if you're asking me to look for a clock, I expect it to be a clock. I don't care if it's digital or analog or whatever, but a dialogue that goes from zero to nine does not a clock make. So anyway, basically that knocked us back because we were looking for a damn clock. And I just. I just like, if you're going to make a puzzle room, your puzzles actually have to make sense. I just feel like that's a basic. But anyway, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, carrie, quit your jibber jabber. In fact, me. In fact, you I will. But first we've got to get our source on. Our sources are Miss Peggy's Guide to Life by Miss Peggy. The Diva Coat by Miss Piggy. The Muppets Wiki. I know. I'm like, don't never use wiki as a source. I know. I know I say that to you. I also have. There's a lot of television interviews. A lot of TV has been watched for this amount of research, by the way, because I thought it was so important that we talk about an icon, you know, to finish Women's History Month. I thought, who better than body positivity champion, like, absolute diva, you know, somebody who came from humble beginnings to superstardom. Okay. Purveyor of wigs. Okay. The one, the only, Miss Peggy. Now, I use it in comfortably. Good. Then let's begin. When one starts researching Miss Peggy, it becomes quite clear that her life, quite a lot of it, is shrouded in secrecy. And I just feel that she's quite a private person. And in today's ageist society, I can understand why she doesn't want to share certain parts of her life and why she doesn't want to give these very specific time frames. I understand. Like, she is, you know, of an era, and I think she deserves that respect. Now, where I do have dates, I have them in. And sometimes we're just gonna have to accept that we're never gonna have all the answers for some people in history. But Miss Peggy. Miss Peggy was born Miss Peggy Lee in Iowa. You're welcome. Right. So she was named after Peggy Lee, the famous singer. Now, that in itself is actually quite cute, because Peggy Lee's name isn't Peggy Lee. It's Norma Dolores Eggstrom. And. And she became Peggy Lee. And if you're thinking, why do I know that name? Well, she was a famous singer. And you may know her as the voice of darling Peg and the Siamese cats from lady and the Tramp. Like classic Disney movie, not the remake. No, but this story isn't about Peggy Lee. It's about Peggy Lee. And I understand to some of you those words will sound the same. Like, I'll say Miss Piggy and you'll think I'm saying Miss Peggy. I have an accent. Please, you're just going to have to suffer through it. And I only just realized that at this moment when I was doing this, and I'm like, oh, no. People are going to think I'm saying Peggy when I'm saying Peggy. Oh, this is going to cause confusion. So Peggy Lee, Miss Piggy has long maintained an air of mystery, shall we say, around her early life. She has on occasion, however, let slip a few details. Like her name is actually Pegathias, or like, more formally, her name is actually Ms. Pigathea Lee. Right, it's, it's a lot of syllables going on there. Now here's the thing. Like many aspects of her identity, this exists somewhere between fact and a self created mythology. What is more consistently documented is that she was born in a small town above a butcher shop, specifically Becca's butcher shop. Now this setting in itself is significant because it placed her from, from the beginning in this precarious relationship with her own identity as a pig in a human dominated world. Now, her childhood wasn't the most stable of living conditions. Like, according to accounts from her longtime performer, Frank Oz, Piggy's father was rather unfaithful and largely absent. He was always chasing after other sows while her mother was overwhelmed raising many, many piglets, thus giving her very little emotion of attention. And this is in Iowa. So she ends up living in this farm in Iowa. Her father is like chasing after all these sows. Like her mother is so focused on dealing with all the piglets that she has that she doesn't really give enough attention to each of them. And I think this is where Peggy's need for attention comes from, you know, because she wasn't getting it anywhere else and so she demanded it. Now, unfortunately, when she was still a little, little pig, her father would die in a tractor accident, like, and she's still quite young, right? I don't know the details of the incident with the tractor. All I know is, is he did not survive. Now, whether this was him, you know, taking control of the tractor or whether he was mowed down by it, I could not find that specific information because death of pigs on farms rarely makes it to the front pages of the newspapers, even in Iowa. So she's still a piglet when her dad dies. She's young and her relationship with her mother continues to be strained. And over the years. Peggy would later describe her upbringing as something she was determined to escape. She said that growing up, her life was humble and she never liked being humble. She never wanted a humble experience. She wanted big, amazing, you know, trumpets blaring. She wanted it all. And from an early age she demonstrated ambition and dissatisfaction with her circumstances. Like, there was an often repeated account which describes her declaring she would never love the life she saw around her. And it is this resolve which led her to leave home. As a teenager before entering show business, she Pursued self improvement in structured ways. She attended charm school, where she refined the manners and poise that would become central to her public Persona. Now, over the years, her accent would kind of evolve and change. Sometimes it would verge on British, like a high upper clip, or it would veer into French. This sort of ambiguity with her accent, as it would kind of meld and flow, I think was her way of becoming who she was meant to be. So after this, this charm skill, she worked in a department store selling gloves. And this is one of these several early jobs that placed her in proximity to fashion and presentation, both of which she would later elevate into defining traits. Now, the fact that I haven't seen Miss Piggy at the Met Gala is a tragedy. No tragedy. Travesty. You know what tragedy? I've decided it's a tragedy. It is both. It is bad and Miss Piggy should be walking the red carpet at the Met Gala because I think she would have the most amazing outfit. I'm just saying. So her early years in the city, this darling babe, this pig in the city, they were financially unstable. Now, like many, many performers and creatives starting out, she took whatever work she could find. At one point, she walked with a sandwich board advertising a barbecue stand. Now, that. That is an especially difficult job, given the implications. She also posed for ads, you know, including promotions for bacon products. Now, how humiliating must that have been for her? You know, it's like, I know we talk about selling flesh, but it's literally selling her flesh. You know, it's. It's selling pigs. She's a pig. And she's promoting the murder and consumption of her own people. Like, that's not. That's not great. Now, this work she does, it is completely out of necessity and not by choice. I mean, why else would she do it? Like, she doesn't want to live this life? And it's during this period that she briefly adopts the stage name Laverne. Right? Because, listen, things are not going great for her. She needs a new start. And so she enters beauty pageants as a means of survival. These contests, they. They were a turning point in her life. She developed her stage presence, learned how to command attention, and began shaping the Persona that would later define her career. Her first major breakthrough came when she won the Miss Bogan County Beauty contest. This victory marked her transition from struggling performer to emerging personality. It was also at this point that she first encountered her amphibian friend, Kermit the Frog, a meeting that would become central to her personal and her professional life.