Best Of: Andrew Scott / Women Behind The Wheel

This episode focuses on an in-depth conversation with actor Andrew Scott, known for his roles in Fleabag and Sherlock, and a discussion on how automobiles have been gendered, featuring insights from journalist Nancy Nichols, author of Women Behind the Wheel.

1. Andrew Scott emphasizes the importance of not typecasting complex characters like Tom Ripley, focusing on their psychological depth rather than their labels.
2. Scott discusses the personal and societal challenges of hiding one's identity, drawing parallels between his experiences and those of Ripley's author, Patricia Highsmith.
3. The episode highlights the evolution of cars as gendered spaces, detailing how design and marketing have historically marginalized women drivers.
4. Nancy Nichols shares personal anecdotes and historical insights on how cars have been tailored for men, putting women at increased risk and inconvenience.
5. The discussion extends to the implications of automotive design on safety and usability for women, advocating for more inclusive engineering practices.

1: Introduction to Andrew Scott

Andrew Scott's journey from notable roles in Sherlock and Fleabag to his latest in Ripley. His method of approaching complex characters is explored.

• Terry Gross: "What did you need to know about the mind of Tom Ripley to play him?"

2: Women and Automobiles

Nancy Nichols discusses her book, exploring how societal norms and car designs have disadvantaged women drivers historically.

• Nancy Nichols: "Cars have mostly been designed for male bodies in ways that put women drivers at risk."

1. Explore Complex Characters: When engaging with film or literature, look beyond surface traits to understand deeper motivations, as discussed by Andrew Scott.
2. Advocate for Inclusive Design: Support initiatives and companies that prioritize gender inclusivity in product design, similar to the advocacy for safer car designs for women.
3. Challenge Stereotypes: Whether in driving or other areas, question and confront gender stereotypes, inspired by the discussions in the episode.
4. Educational Inclusivity: Encourage educational programs that offer equal opportunities for all genders, mirroring the episode's call for non-gendered access to knowledge and skills.
5. Support Transparent Practices: Patronize businesses and services that promote transparency and fairness, which can lead to more equitable treatment across different demographics.

Andrew Scott stars as a con artist with no conscience in the new Netflix series Ripley. It's an adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith novel The Talented Mr. Ripley. He spoke with Terry Gross about tapping into his darker side for the role — and playing the "hot priest" in Fleabag.

Also, we hear about how cars became our most gendered technology. Women used to be considered unqualified to drive, or just terrible drivers. Glamorous women were used to advertise cars. And yet cars have been designed for male bodies, in ways that put women drivers at risk. Journalist Nancy Nichols is the author of Women Behind the Wheel.

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Andrew Scott, Nancy Nichols

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Terry Gross

He played a priest torn between his love of God and his love for a woman, his vow of celibacy and his sexual desire. Now hes starring as a con man with no conscience in the new Netflix series Ripley, an adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith novel the Talented Mister Ripley. Also, how cars became our most gendered technology. Women used to be considered unqualified to drive or just terrible drivers. Glamorous women were used to advertise cars.

Cars have been designed for male bodies in ways that put women drivers at risk. We talked with journalist Nancy Nichols, author of Women behind the wheel. And Maureen Corrigan reviews Lionel Shriver's latest novel that's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. This message comes from NPR's sponsor, Teladoc Health. There are lots of reasons for wanting to be healthy, family, work, living a fuller life.

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Terry Gross

Like everyone who introduces my guest, I'll start by telling you that he's famous as the hot priest in the award winning comedy series Fleabag. That priest is torn between his vow of celibacy and his love for a woman who loves him. It was a lot more than Andrew Scott's looks that made him a standout. He's a magnetic and subtle actor, whether his character is delightful or a sociopath. Scott first became known in the US for his role in the british series Sherlock, which starred Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes and Andrew Scott as his nemesis, Moriarty.

A famous film you probably dont remember him in is Steven Spielbergs World War two film saving Private Ryan, where Scott played the role of soldier on the beach, one of the many soldiers on the beach in the film who landed on the Normandy beach on D Day. Scott returned to World War two with Steven Spielberg in the series Band of Brothers after doing a share of suffering and World War two stories. He played a burned out, cynical, wisecracking lieutenant in the World War one film, 1917. Recently, he won british and american acting awards, including a National Society of Film Critics award, for his role in the very quiet film all of us strangers, about a gay man who shut down his emotions. Now he stars in a new Netflix series called Ripley, which is an adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith novel the talented Mister Ripley.

He plays Tom Ripley, a con man with no conscience. I think it would be fair to call him a sociopath. After surviving financially on small time scams, he lands a bigger one when a wealthy man, Mister Greenleaf, tracks him down with a proposition involving his son, Dickey. Mister Greenleaf was told that Dickie and Tom Ripley were friends in college. Mister Greenleaf pays Ripley to go to Italy, where his son has been living with his girlfriend.

The mission Ripley is given is to convince Dickie to return home to the US. Of course, Ripley accepts the offer. But when he meets Dickie and his girlfriend and looks at Dickies luxurious home across from the beach, the art on the walls, the fine watches, the elegant clothes in the closet, he wants that life. So he plots a way to impersonate Dickie and claim the riches and the lifestyle for himself. In this scene, Ripley is alone in Dickies home trying on Dickies clothes, and hes pleased to find they fit well and he looks quite good in them.

Hes been posing in the mirror trying to get Dickies look and his voice now hes sitting on the edge of dickies bed pretending to be Dickie, breaking up with Dickies girlfriend. Marge.

Andrew Scott

Marge, I'm sorry, but you gotta understand. I don't love you. We're friends, that's all.

Come on, don't. Don't cry.

That's not gonna work, Marge. Stop it.

Because you're interfering with Tom and me.

No, no, no. It's not like that. It's not that. We're not that. No, there's a bond between us.

Can you understand that? Or are you just going to keep making accusations? Can you understand anything? Come on, mind.

Terry Gross

It's not that. Andrew Scott, welcome to fresh air. You are so terrific. It's a pleasure to have you on the show. Oh, pleasure to be here.

Terry, what did you need to know about the mind of Tom Ripley to play him? I mean, is he desperate for money? Is he a sociopath? Do you have to think about what his motivation is? I did a little.

Andrew Scott

I found all the words like sociopath and psychopath and monster eagles, evil villain, all those things, sort of largely unhelpful. And really, I just kind of thought about the character in stages, and, like a lot of shakespearean characters, when they say, when you play a shakespearean king or something, you don't play the king. Everybody else plays the king. So everybody's allowed to be as frightened and intimidated by Tom as they like and to diagnose him in whatever way they see fit. But for me, I think your first job is to sort of advocate for the character and try not to judge them.

And so I tried not to label him too much. And actually, a lot of the challenge is to sort of unlearn the stuff we might know from the character's reputation, you know, to yank it back from the possession that the audience sort of has of him. And the. You mean from the previous film adaptation or from the book? Yeah, the film adaptations.

And to sort of think, okay, well, what do I read when I read these scripts? The scripts were really extraordinary, and, you know, it's an eight hour adaptation of the novel. So we have a sort of very particular opportunity in this one to spend an inordinate amount of time with a singular character, an opportunity that you don't normally get in television, where you spend so much time with one character. Usually in television, it's maybe a couple or a family or a hospital or police department or whatever. Your eyes are so interesting in this series.

Terry Gross

Cause sometimes they're, you know, a little comical, or. But sometimes they are, and sometimes they're kind of threatening, and other times they're just blank, like, there's nothing going on. Like they're dead and there's nothing going on behind them. And it strikes me that that must be hard to achieve, since you're not dead inside, you have a conscience. Can you talk a little bit about going into that, like, dead inside blank state?

Andrew Scott

So it's not necessarily that you would be playing nothing. And I think what's interesting about Tom Ripley is that we're watching this very brilliant person think. And I think that's a great pleasure for an audience, to watch a character, particularly an intelligent character, use his brain in a very particular way and to watch him make mistakes and to watch him go through all those stages. And so a little bit like what you're talking about, that blankness might exist in the audience's mind, is actually just in the audience's mind and not necessarily a blankness that I'm consciously trying to conjure up, you know? So I find that really interesting, the audience participation in performance.

And I think some of the most interesting performances, where they are, where you invite the audience into a kind of complicity with you, and they have to do a little bit of work. And conversely, the kind of less satisfying performances are ones where you think, oh, my God, we're being spoon fed everything here, and we're left in absolutely no doubt as to what we should be thinking. So you're playing Tom Ripley, somebody who's hiding his real identity and assuming the identity of others, so he's always hiding who he is. You must identify with that and why as an actor, because you're always playing somebody else. But also Patricia Highsmith, who wrote the novel that Ripley is adapted from, she was a lesbian and had to hide that because when she was writing, like, you couldn't be out.

Terry Gross

There's no way. And you grew up in Dublin, and I think you were alive when homosexuality was against the law. So she knew stuff about hiding. You knew stuff about hiding your identity, or you knew people who probably had to hide their identity. So do you feel that sense of hiddenness in the portrayal?

Andrew Scott

Yeah, I do. I absolutely do. She's definitely talking about murky times in society, and a lot of this stuff is coded, and there's certainly stuff that she can't speak explicitly about. And I think she uses Tom Ripley as her sort of imp. She really adored the character.

And so, yeah, I do understand that feeling of hiding. There's something about this character that, to me, is quite elusive and possibly just secretive, even to himself. Yeah, definitely. It seems like he's definitely secretive to himself. Yeah, there are so many of us.

And I think this is the reason why the character is so enduring that are strangers to ourselves, you know, that we do things that aren't necessarily murderous, but that we do things we think. I have absolutely no idea where that came from, or there's parts of us that are mysterious to ourselves. And I think that's true of Tom. He certainly works as a. A con artist, and I think he's fluid.

He's a kind of fluid character. And he certainly isn't a natural born killer. And he certainly isn't a natural murderer. He doesn't like blood. He's invited to go to this, with this task.

It's not something that he seeks out himself. But to me, I think a lot of what she's talking about is class. You know, we see this very talented, isolated man who has been given no access to any of the beautiful things in life, despite being extremely gifted. And he lives in a rat filled boarding house in the Lower east side. And then he's transplanted to a beautiful country where these very entitled people with half the talent that he has are exposed to everything.

And I think a sort of rage emerges in him that he's hitherto sort of unaware of. And I think it also might unearth a sort of sexuality within him, possibly, that he's uncomfortable with and envy and a kind of passion. The film is shot in black and white, and it's really exquisite. Like, every. Every shot could be a beautiful still photograph if you just, you know, stopped it and look at the frame.

Terry Gross

And I'm wondering what it was like to shoot that way because just setting up the lighting and the composition, it's so carefully and artfully done. So did that mean a lot of time? It absolutely did, yeah. Yeah, it did. Yeah.

And did you have to be aware of exactly how the lighting was so the shadows would be. Would fall? Exactly right. To a certain extent, I certainly knew that Steve Zelien, our director, was very concerned with how the imagery looked, and he was very fastidious about that. So, yeah, it did involve a lot of waiting around.

Andrew Scott

And one of the challenges of the. Of the character is, of course, that he's isolated. And, you know, we shot it towards the end of the pandemic. And I certainly think that the atmosphere, you know, on the set and in the world at the time definitely permeated the feeling that I had in the process and probably in the. In the performance to some degree.

Terry Gross

Well, let me reintroduce you here for just joining us. My guest is Andrew Scott. He stars as Tom Ripley in the new Netflix adaptation of the talented Mister Ripley. He played the priest in the series fleabag. We'll hear more of our conversation after a break.

I'm Terry gross, and this is fresh air weekend. This message comes from NPR sponsor Redfin. Redfin updates their listings every two minutes and gives personalized recommendations based on the homes that you like so you can find the home that's just right for you. You can favorite homes, share listings with others, and even schedule tours with a local Redfin agent, all in the app. When you're ready to buy, an experienced local Redfin agent can guide you through the whole process, and they know how to help you win the right home at the right price.

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Plus, save on seasonal favorites like dragonfruit, kiwi, pineapple and more in the meat department, pick up animal welfare certified meats with tropical inspired marinades. And be sure to try the spicy hawaiian pizza back for a limited time only at Whole Foods Market. So you may be tired of talking about your role in fleabag as a priest. No, not at all. Okay.

Terry Gross

As a priesthorn between your commitment to the priesthood and your love for the main character, the woman nicknamed Fleabag, torn between your commitment to celibacy and your own sexual desire. And you know it, stars Phoebe Waller Bridge, who also created and wrote it. And she plays a single woman who really loves sex and has had a lot of partners but isn't really in love until she meets you and you're a priest who performs the ceremony for Fleabag's father's second marriage. She falls in love with you. You're drawn to her, but you're a priest, you become good friends.

And she started to hope that you'll leave the priesthood and be with her. And I want to play a scene in which she's visiting you at the parish in the evening. And the scene starts inside and then moves outside. So we just did a bit of editing to edit together those two parts of the scene. So let's hear that Phoebe Waller Bridges flubag speaks first.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge

So I read your book. Okay, great. Well, it's got some great twists, true. But I couldn't help but notice just one or two little inconsistencies. Okay, sure.

So the world was made in seven days, and on the first day, light came, and then a few days later, the sun came? Yeah. That's ridiculous. You believe that? It's not fact.

Andrew Scott

It's poetry. It's moral code. It's for interpretation, to help us work out God's plan for us. What's God's plan for you? I believe God meant for me to love people in a different way.

I believe I'm supposed to love people as a father. We can arrange that. A father of many. I'll go up to three. It's not gonna happen.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge

Two, then. Okay, two.

Do you think I should become a Catholic? No, don't do that. I like that you believe in a meaningless existence and you're good for me. You make me question my faith and I've never felt closer to God. That's Phoebe Wallabridge and my guest, Andrew Scott.

Terry Gross

That's such a great role and such a great performance. Did you ever know a young priest as attractive as you were? That's very kind. And also impossible to answer. Yeah, no, I completely adore Phoebe and.

Well, wait, let's not avoid the question here. We'll take out the comparison to you so you don't have to worry about being humble here. But did you ever know a young, very attractive priest? No. No, the priests that I knew were not young or attractive.

Right. You were raised Catholic in Dublin. What was the role of the church in your life?

Andrew Scott

Well, I think it was a huge role in my life growing up. The culture is based on the catholic church. Ireland is a small country. I was at a jesuit school. I'm not a practicing Catholic anymore.

But certainly the culture around Catholicism is one that is very hard to dispel. And parts of it are wonderful. I think the sort of focus on community within the catholic church is really wonderful. And there's also, of course, the huge amount of corruption and abuse that happened when I was growing up in the nineties. I remember driving to school.

My father would drive me to school in the mornings, and we would listen to the news in the morning. And my very strong memory is of just a whole litany of abuse cases within the catholic church just coming out every morning. Sexual abuse. Sexual abuse. And not just sexual abuse, but infidelity within marriages.

And marriages where people would be having affairs with priests, but mainly sexual abuse. Were you really angry with the church for having so many hypocrites in positions of religious power? You know, you talk about the priests who were accused of sexual abuse and, you know, infidelity and, you know, entering other people's marriages and, you know, you're gay. I don't know how old you are when you. When you realize that maybe all your life.

Terry Gross

But like I said, in the Republic of Ireland, being gay was against the law until, I think, 1993. I think that's when it was repealed and the church condemned it. And yet you have these priests abusing boys and having affairs with women and men, probably. So how did you fit all these complicated feelings into your character of the priest in fleabag? And it's a comedic role, too, as we could hear from the scene, the scene that we played, and he's wrestling with the natural sexual desire that people have and love.

Andrew Scott

Yeah. Physical expressions of love, too. So it's not the abstinence that I have the problem with. It's the silence around the abstinence and the way that people in position of power silence people who want to be able to talk about that. And so the reason that I found that character so cathartic is that, you know, when I first had the conversation with Phoebe, I don't want to play a sort of a stereotype of somebody who is extreme in that way.

This is a human being. I think that's why we like that character, because he does have a faith. I think it's a wonderful thing to be able to have romantic feelings and to also have faith and to be able to talk about the human struggle. And so I love the fact that this quite radical sexual kind of risque has at its center a real addressing for young people of what faith is, because I think there's a real gap for people of my generation who have been let down by the church and feel like it's not for them to have a still space is something that would be wonderful for them if they were made feel welcome. And I think that's perhaps why Philly Bag appealed to so many people, because it wasn't cynical.

I think we tried to talk about religion, of course, a humorous way, but also in a way that isn't just too judgmental of the Catholic Church, actually. This is a person who really is struggling and is a human being. And I love the fact that he questions his faith but constantly stays with it. Exactly. That it's okay to question it.

Terry Gross

Like, if your belief is deep enough, it's okay to challenge it and question it and remain committed. Yes, exactly. Remain committed. Exactly. To see that struggle, like.

Andrew Scott

Like in any relationship, in a marriage, you think, am I. This is tough. This relationship is hard. How do I keep it going? How do I talk about it?

It's not just blind devotion the whole time. In any relationship, you question it, and it's how you approach those crises that makes us honorable and courageous, and that's a wonderful thing to be able to convey and also, of course, just to just address. Did any priests give you feedback on your role in fleabag? Yeah, they did, actually. I had really, really positive feedback from priests.

I think because they liked, like all of us like to see themselves represented in a sort of fair way and that they're not just these pious, flawless people. I think most of the feedback I got was really, really wonderful. Andrew Scott, I want to thank you so much for talking with us. And, you know, your face changes from roll to roll. Can you pass unrecognized on the street?

I can, yeah. Yeah, I can sometimes, right? Sometimes, yeah. Do you use kind of disguise or. It depends.

I'm very lucky. I can. I can walk the streets pretty, pretty easily, you know? Yeah, we'll see how long that lasts. People have been saying that for a while, so hopefully I'll be able to duck and dive into the future.

Terry Gross

Well, congratulations on Ripley, and thank you so much for being with us. Thank you so much for having me. Andrew Scott stars in the new Netflix series Ripley, an adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith novel the Talented Mister Ripley.

Our book critic Maureen Corrigan has a review of Lionel Shrill Shriver's latest novel, a satire called Mania. Shriver is known for her 2003 breakout novel, we need to talk about Kevin and the social satires that followed novels. Like so much for that and the mandibles which lampooned the US healthcare and economic system. Maureen reminds us that Shriver is also known for the personal controversies she stirred up. Just last week, she made critical comments about trans people and hate speech laws.

Heres Maureen we probably need to talk. About the sombrero once again. As anyone versed in literary scandal will remember, back in 2016, Lionel Shriver gave the keynote address at the Brisbane Writers Festival, where she pushed back against identity politics and fiction and notions of cultural appropriation to accessorize for the occasion. Shriver, a white woman, donned a sombrero outcry ensued. That sombrero incident is key not only to understanding Shriver's cultural politics, but her outrageous methods as a provocateur in life and literature.

Maureen Corrigan

A contrarian, Shriver has continued to push back against what she would call woke culture. Although she voted for Biden in 2020 and supports reproductive rights, she endorsed Ron DeSantis in his failed presidential bid of late, her anti immigrant rhetoric has raised alarms. As some commentators have pointed out, it's hard not to read her call for the preservation of a coherent culture in Great Britain, where she lived for decades as anything other than a code for white. If Shriver weren't such a superb satirical novelist, we could just cancel her. But that would mean sacrificing mania.

Shriver's latest novel, and one of her best, the story takes place in an alternative America where something called the mental parody movement holds sway. The last acceptable bias, discrimination against those people considered not so smart is being stamped out. Words like intelligent and sharp are forbidden, thus making it hard to refer to books like my brilliant friend and everyday devices such as smartphones. When the novel opens in 2011, Pearson, Converse, an adjunct professor of English, is sitting around the dinner table with her partner, her best friend, and her three young children, all of whom attend the Gertrude Stein Primary School in Voltaire, Pennsylvania. Pearsons best friend, Emory, who hosts a local public radio arts program, summarizes the ways the Obama administration is expanding the Clinton era dont ask, dont tell guidelines to cover information related to a persons intellectual profile.

Dont ask where anyone went to school, even if you went to Yale. Well, especially if you went to Yale. Dont ever mention or fish for IQ, obviously, but also sat and aCt scores or grade point averages. And forget asking or telling about a performance on jeopardy. As we readers will learn, Obama in this alternative America is doomed to be a one term president because, as Pearson tells us, by 2012, the whole notion that one might want to look up to anyone in a position of authority had become preposterous.

Instead, the impressively unimpressive Biden steps in, after which, in 2015, the Democratic Party seizes on Donald Trump as their shoe in candidate for, among a myriad of other reasons, the fact that he never reads. Finding herself hemmed in in the international literature survey course she teaches, Pearson decides, much as Shriver herself did, to introduce an incendiary object into the lecture room. She switches out dostoevskys, crime and punishment for a later novel of his, you know, the one called the idiot. Predictably, in this anti brain shame era, when the fool has been edited out of Shakespeares plays and fictional eggheads like Sherlock Holmes and Victor Frankenstein have been banished from the curriculum, Pearson must apologize to her class or be fired. As with any good satire, mania exaggerates real world trends such as completion grading, which means giving students credit for simply turning in assignments and the death of expertise.

It also must be acknowledged that Shriver's world here is exclusively ableist. Thus avoiding the darker implications of her satire. The chief target of this novel is something more the tension between the promise of an egalitarian democracy and what historian Richard Hofstadter famously called anti intellectualism in american life. Mania is very funny, occasionally offensive, and, yes, smart. It's also, of course, elitist.

The novel's fears about the many and stupid are often alchemized into laughs. But the many are many things warped and wise in their turn, and the few writers like Shriver might imagine their, or should I say, our possibilities too. Maureen Corrigan is a professor of literature at Georgetown University. She reviewed mania by Lionel Shriver coming up, we'll talk about how cars became our most gendered technology with journalist Nancy Nichols, author of Women behind the wheel. This is fresh air Weekend support for.

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Terry Gross

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Go to bluehost.com wondersuite. Women drivers that was my father's complaint. If a woman drove too slowly or didn't signal before turning, plenty of men on the road aggravated my father, too, speeding, jumping stop signs, recklessly passing him. But they were just drivers, not men drivers. My father was nothing unusual.

Terry Gross

Lots of men of that generation had the same condescending attitude toward women drivers. My guest, journalist Nancy Nichols, has written a new book about how cars became our most gendered technology. Women weren't considered qualified to drive. Beautiful women were used to market cars and magazines and tv ads. Special clothes were designed for women.

When they did drive, cars became bedrooms for teens and adults who wanted to get away from home to have sex. Cars have mostly been designed for male bodies in ways that put women drivers at risk. Cars were major characters in Nancy Nichols life. She grew up in Waukegan, about 26 miles from Chicago. Her father was a car salesman, mostly selling used cars.

Her brother drove race cars on weekends when he was young. When her father was a child, his six year old brother was killed by a car. Decades later, Nichols father was in a car accident that resulted in a traumatic brain injury that changed his life. Nancy Nichols has written a new book called Women behind the an unexpected and personal history of the car. Her previous book, the like Effect, was an investigation into whether the elevated cancer rates in her community, including in her own family, were a result of toxic fumes from nearby paint factories and hazardous waste that was dumped in nearby Superfund sites.

Nancy Nichols, welcome to Fresh Air. I really enjoyed your book. What were your preconceptions that you were brought up with about women drivers? My first experience with the car was what I was excluded from. So, Terry, in my high school, I couldn't take shop class.

Andrew Scott

So I'm roughly 65 years old. And when I was a young girl, girls had to take home ec, and we had to learn the domestic arts, like sewing. And the boys were able to take shop classes and learned about the automobile as if that was just their purview, and ours was something very different. I was in the same situation. I remember nothing, nothing about the sewing class or the cooking classes.

Terry Gross

Zero. Your father was a used car salesman. Did he sell a lot to women? My father most likely was selling more to men. My father sold american muscle cars, the charger, the challenger.

Andrew Scott

He would not likely have sold a lot of cars to women, although he did sell more dodge darts than any other man in the state of Illinois when I was young. So those would have been vehicles that might more likely would have gone to women. But even in the venue of the showroom, it was very often the men doing the purchasing. Even if the women were quite significant in making the decision, they weren't always in the showroom. Back in the really early days of cars, before electric ignition, you had to, like, crank up the motor, right?

Correct. Was that a very strenuous thing to do? Did that require a lot of strength? I'm wondering if that had anything to do with how women were kind of not drivers early on. So the early cars, Terry, were hand cranked, and that was part of why they were very difficult for women to drive.

They were very hard to start. Also, they didn't have power steering. They didn't have power brakes. There were some models in which it was very difficult for women to even reach the pedals. It wasn't until 1910, when a man named Charles Kettering developed an electric starter for the car.

And this was a real game changer for women because it allowed women to start the car without a great deal of personal strength, and it greatly expanded their ability to use the car when there weren't men around. So did women start buying their own cars after that or driving their husbands cars? So the advent of the ladies car. Let's start there. In the first instance, the lady's car was an electric car.

It was meant for women who were largely very wealthy. For example, Clara Ford drove a Detroit electric. She did not drive a Ford. That's because in the early days, these combustion engines were thought too difficult for women to start and drive and also too dangerous. There was also some concern that the combustion engine would create unwanted sexual excitement for women.

Terry Gross

Wait, stop there. I think you need to explain how. So they vibrated. Oh, and so they were not allowed to have them. Wealthy women, by and large, had the electric.

Andrew Scott

They were kind of like golf carts today. And they drove them for their own, you know, social. They drove them around their estate. They drove them to their friends for social engagements. So the lady's car in the first instance was an electric vehicle.

But an electric vehicle didn't have the range that women needed. So about after between the periods between World War one, in World War two, let's say, the idea that a woman would have her own car became much more normalized. And a lot of that had to do with the creation of the electric starter that Charles Kettering gave women. Essentially, this enormous gift for women, because now women could easily start these combustion engines. They could more likely have a vehicle that gave them great range.

We saw with the combustion engine. What was car culture like when you were growing up, in terms of how people related to cars? What do you remember of car culture from your early years? So, that's really interesting. The car for men has always been about adventure, about power, about strength, about a performance of their own masculinity.

Right. The car for women is really very different. And this was in my experience as well. The car for women was about making sure that you could take care of your domestic duties. So what you needed to get done for your job as a mother or your job as a housewife.

So there are these dual narratives between how the men use cars and how women use cars. But so much revolved around cars. Like, a lot of men would wash the car by themselves and then wax it, because cars used to be made out of metal, and they'd rust unless you waxed it. So, like a shine, you know, is a really important thing on a car aesthetically and to prevent rust. And I don't know, people really bonded with their cars.

Terry Gross

It was big identity thing. And men often fix their cars themselves. And now, as you point out in your book, bodies of cars are made out of some kind of plastic, so you don't have to wax them anymore. They're not going to rust. They'll crumble, maybe, but then they're not going to rust.

And also, you can't, like with computerized cars, you can't take them apart in your garage unless, like, you really know a lot about computers. It's different than it used to be. What you're saying is exactly correct. That car culture has changed dramatically. And I think Saturdays, for a man to spend in the driveway washing and buffing his car, it was a very ritualized and common experience, certainly in my growing up, some scholars have argued that that was kind of a love making, that that was a time that men made love to their cars, that they cleaned them inside, they worshiped them.

Andrew Scott

And as you also suggest, they were able to work on them. And that's just not true today. Unless you have a very specific car, it's very unlikely that you're going to pop the hood and do some kind of major repairs in the driveway because you don't have the tools or you wouldn't have access to the kind of knowledge that you would have to have and the software that you would need to do the testing on that vehicle. You write about cars as a place for romance. You read almost as soon as they hit the road, cars were used for sex.

Terry Gross

And you point out something that maybe I'll sound naive, that I never thought of, that fold down seats in the front were marketed to young men for romantic reasons. And I immediately thought, yeah, but there's often, like, a stick shift or something in the middle of the two seats, which would prevent the kind of romance that the car was supposed to be designed for. I think you need to use your imagination a little, Terry. Okay, so the car that you're referring to that was marketed as the young man's car was a bench seat. And it had a bench seat.

Andrew Scott

It had a lever that you could very quickly turn it into a flat seat. When I say cars have been used for romance from the beginning, that is so true and pretty well documented that people would use the running boards, they would put pillows and blankets, and use the early vehicle in that way. Later on, the cars had bench seats that they dropped down or absolutely enormous back seats. This was so prevalent, in fact, that Henry Ford, who was a very conservative man socially, didn't like it, tried to engineer his car so that that would not happen. But what did he do to try to prevent it?

He made the back seat smaller and smaller. It's really small now, at least in my car. So car critics now have said it may be almost impossible to have sex in a car unless you are completely acrobatic. You bring up a subject in your book that's really important to me, and that's about safety concerns in cars. And as you say, no matter how much a car is designed for safety, it's not necessarily designed for a woman's safety, because it might be designed for men's safety and men's bodies.

Terry Gross

And women's bodies are different, and especially women who are short. Everything's, like, not proportion. Like, just speaking about seatbelts, if I'm not wearing, like, a winter coat, the seatbelt will strangle me if I'm in an accident, because, you know, try as I will, it usually ends up going across my neck or being close to my neck. So one thing that was fascinating to me when I researched the book was looking into the history of what we call crash dummies. Right?

Andrew Scott

In the original crash dummy was about a six foot man with a hat on, and it came from dummies that were created to test for pilots to eject out of their planes. So those dummies, those crash dummies were modified and began to be used in the manufacturing of automobiles. So there's two ways in which these dummies are used, and one is the federal government has their standards, their crash standards, and they have their dummies. And those dummies. Dummies historically have been made for men, and they don't take into account smaller women.

To their great credit, automobile manufacturers now test their vehicles using many different kinds of dummies. But the actual ratings they get come from these dummies that are used by the federal government. And there's been a push by women legislators to try to get that changed, and there's been some movement, but it's still quite concerning. And as a result of that, women are more likely to be injured in a crash because their musculature is different. Also, as you also point out, a lot of women are shorter than the average man.

Terry Gross

And so, like someone like me, you have to, you know, I'm short. You have to sit closer to the steering wheel so that you can reach the steering wheel and so that your legs can reach the pedals. And that means, you know, you're more likely to, in a crash, hit the steering wheel or to be injured by the airbag that prevents you from hitting the steering wheel. So it's not a. It's not good.

Andrew Scott

I would say this. I think that manufacturers are doing more than they did in the past to try to make cars safer for women. I don't think women historically have always been the priority. And I think that what I say to you, Terry, personally, try to push your seat back a little bit more. For sure.

But also, I think that is a general rule for women. One of the reasons I wrote my book was because we're at this really important point in the life of the automobile. We're going to have autonomous vehicles. We're having electric vehicles. We have women legislators who are arguing for better, more inclusive kinds of safety dummies.

Right. So I want women to be aware of all these aspects of the car. Right. The car is a domestic space. The car is a place where you can really be injured.

And I want them to just kind of take ownership of this. Right. We are active consumers in the automobile world to try to not force women, but actually encourage women to get involved in these topics. When you buy a car, what are you, like in the showroom? So what's your approach?

I have never bought a car. I am married to a litigator, and my husband. I have my husband by the car. And I think that that is a vestige of my understanding what the way car dealerships work and maybe me feeling a little uncomfortable because I have so much knowledge about it. I think that this will get better for women.

Right. I think that the Internet has created a lot more transparency for pricing for women. There are sites now where you can buy cars directly. I think things will change for women in the dealership, but I'm still quite intimidated by the process. Here's my advice.

Terry Gross

Would you consider bringing a copy of your book the next time you buy a car to intimidate the person who's selling you? Because it's evidence. Like, I know a lot, I wrote a book about this. I don't think this process has to be that adversarial. Right.

Andrew Scott

I think that the idea that the salesman is in this adversarial role is probably more historic than current. Really? That's good news. I do think that's probably the case. Although I will say overall, women spend about seven to $8,000 more on the car, on their cars.

Over the lifetime of a car than men do. And that's because they lack negotiating skills or power, because they pay more for repairs, they pay less in auto insurance, which is kind of interesting. But in general, cars cost women more both in terms of what they pay at the dealership and what they pay in their bodies, with their bodies in terms of accidents. NaNcy Nichols, I want to thank you so much for talking with us. Thank you so much, Terry.

I've really enjoyed this. Nancy Nichols new book is called women behind the Wheel.

Terry Gross

Fresh air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salat, Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorak, Ann Reboldonato, Sam Brueger, Lauren Krenzel, Thea Challoner, Susan Yakundi and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly CV Nessper.

Our co host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.

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