Witches, Bitches, and Sluts
Witch. Bitch. Slut. These are just a sample of the many names women have been called throughout history through today.
Witches, Bitches, and Sluts is a twice-weekly show about how women get discredited through these labels, and why the false version so often outlives the real one. Every week, Xtina Rose digs into how women get reduced to one word. Some episodes tell one woman's story — the accusation, the truth, and why the myth stuck. Others go deeper into the research behind the pattern.
Rigorously researched, casually told — this isn't a lecture, it's the conversation you'd have with a friend who did way too much reading before showing up.
Episodes
10 episodes
Tituba: "The Devil Came to Me"
"I have done nothing." That's the first thing the 1692 court record says Tituba told the magistrates. By the end of the day, she'd confessed to meeting the Devil, and the Salem witch trials had begun.In the first of three Salem episodes,...
Stevie Nicks: "I'm not a witch. Get a life!"
It's SPOOKY Season! ...Aaaaand I'm sick, so pardon my nasal voice. This is the first of our Spooky Season Witch episodes, and I am starting with an ICON. Although most of my episodes focus on women who were damaged by their labels, occasionally...
The Trap of Mammy, Jezebel, and Sapphire
The fastest way to misunderstand a Black woman is to reach for a familiar label. We start with the one Michelle Obama names so plainly: how easily Black women get tagged as “angry,” then we pull the thread back through history and forward into ...
Hattie McDaniel - Not Your Mammy
Hattie McDaniel's Oscar Speech"Any Kind of Man Would be Better than You" by Hattie McDaniel
Dragon Lady, Lotus Blossom, and Asian Women
A character shouldn’t be able to haunt an actor on the sidewalk, yet Lucy Liu’s fear after playing Ling Wu points to something bigger than celebrity. We’re digging into the Dragon Lady and Lotus Blossom stereotypes and how they teach audiences ...
Anna May Wong: A Thousand Deaths
Hollywood didn’t just typecast Anna Mae Wong, it built a whole set of “acceptable” fates around her and then acted like those limits were natural. We pull apart how a third-generation Chinese American woman from Los Angeles became one of the fi...
Dumb or Deadly? Examining the Dumb Blonde and the Femme Fatale
A single look can get a woman filed as sweet and harmless or cold and dangerous, and the switch can happen in seconds. We start with Dolly Parton’s iconic joke about the “dumb blonde” label (and the way Marilyn Monroe and Britney Spears echo th...
"Are Women Human?"
Content note: this episode discusses slurs, sexual shaming, racism, and harassment.Are women human? Obviously. So why do we have so many words that turn women into categories: the b*tch, the sl*t, the witch, the gold digger, the...
BIO: Marilyn Monroe - "You have to be smart to play dumb"
They called Marilyn Monroe a “dumb blonde,” and the world repeated it so often that the label started to sound like a fact. We’re not buying it. We trace how Norma Jean became “Marilyn,” how studios shaped her image, and how the public confused...
