Hello Nurse! Why Do Children's Shows Treat Nurses As Sexy?

Malcolm and Simone have a thought-provoking discussion on the origins and psychology behind sexy nurse and teacher fetishes. They argue these tropes became popular because those were some of the only roles where men were expected to submit to women in a caring yet dominant context. This fulfilled an innate need for submission among many men that society doesn't provide outlets for. They trace how dominance displays evolved through sexuality due to evolution "borrowing code." The conversation covers daddy/daughter fetishes, male sexuality, confidence as the ultimate dominance signal, and more.

Simone: [00:00:00] Hey, Malcolm. Did you watch like Looney Tunes when you were a kid?

Malcolm: Yes, but you're not thinking of Looney Tunes.

Simone: No, I am. I think I'm thinking about like little scenes in which a Bugs Bunny dressed up like a sexy nurse.

Malcolm: Oh, you are. Oh, I was thinking of the sign. Hello nurse from Animaniacs.

Simone: Yeah, I mean, I think that it's interesting in like several generations of children's cartoons and we're talking about cartoons that probably like a huge segment of our viewers like have no exposure to, but like that in, in children's programming, there's this concept of a sexy nurse and it's like, wait a second, like you're putting up, you're putting a fetish In a kid's cartoon.

Simone: What is going on?

Malcolm: What is going on here? Where did this fetish? Well, I mean, the other one you have is like the disciplinarian teacher which is another or the nun,

Simone: the sexy nun, but there's this whole like, yeah, like Bugs Bunny is a sexy nurse. Other like this. This trope, I, it's interesting. Cause like when I saw this as a kid, I just assumed that like, [00:01:00] like nurses had special powers.

Simone: Like, I mean, cause I didn't like, how are you going to understand this as a kid? It's just the weirdest

Malcolm: thing. What's interesting is that this has been a part of human sexuality for a while. So in the Regency era, something developed that was called the English Vice. And it was a tendency, from the perspective of the French at least, that English people seem to disproportionately have a fetish around being spanked by people dressed as teachers and paddled with like these big paddle things.

Malcolm: And they believed that the reason for this was because that was the way kids were punished at the elite English schools, like, you know, Eaton or whatever. No, it turns out that's not really the way sexuality works. And we can get deeper into that. But what it shows is that this. Cluster of fetishes has existed for a long time.

Malcolm: And the question is why it seems very odd that fetishes would [00:02:00] cluster around specific professions. So what's happening here well, actually, sorry, before I get into why it is, I'm going to give another. Fetish that comes from the same region.

Malcolm: Why are daddy daughter little girl fetishes so common? AKA DDLG. DDLG, which is basically a fetish for girls where they like acting like the daughter of the guy that they are sleeping with and will Sort of infantilize themselves to an extent.

Simone: Again, something that shows up in popular media in for example, Gentleman Prefer Blondes with Marilyn Monroe, her character in that, in that movie with her primary love interest, she calls him daddy.

Simone: Like, yeah,

Malcolm: it's What's going on here? And it's all the same thing. And it all is unfortunately fairly simple.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm: It's that dominance and submission are a very important part of human sexuality. In fact, in our studies in women, they are the dominant [00:03:00] factor in human sexuality. The field of sexuality, we argue, had been invented by women.

Malcolm: Like if the early researchers had been women and not men. We may, instead of the primary access of sexuality being predominant attraction to male or females, the, the primary access of sexuality would be predominant attraction to submission or dominance. Because in women, that matters more. To the average woman, obviously this isn't true for all women, but to the average woman submission arousal.

Malcolm: than the gender of the person they're engaging with and specifically gendered features. So they might, like, psychologically care about the gender, but they would be more turned on by submission or dominance than they would be by seeing either the naked female or male form which is really fascinating.

Malcolm: So it's a very, very big part, but also for males it's a big part of sexuality. The

Simone: problem we have Yeah, I have this right, I remember it correctly. More men would prefer to be submissive than [00:04:00] dominant. And of course, like, men who are city dwellers are more likely to tend toward submissive, and men who are, who grew up in rural environments are more likely to tend toward dominance.

Simone: But still, even more men than women would prefer

Malcolm: to take a submissive role. No, not more men than women. Women prefer to

Simone: be submissive. No, no, I mean, sorry but more, more men... So basically, like, it's something like more than 50% of men. I think that might be

Malcolm: But I'd have to go to the book again. Yeah.

Malcolm: But the number of men who prefer to be submissive is large. Yeah, like, surprisingly,

Simone: like, we would expect most women to prefer dominance, but we wouldn't expect most men to prefer dominance. But I, I, I'm pretty sure, because I looked at this fairly recently, Yeah, well,

Malcolm: so we can talk about why that's the case, right?

Malcolm: Why did dominance evolve as a thing that mattered at all? It, it, it, it was because evolution is a cheap programmer and it borrows other things. So, when humans were evolving, if you look at other social mammals. They often use sexual displays where the more submissive gender display is used [00:05:00] to signal submission within intergroup conflicts or intergroup dominance things.

Malcolm: So this would be like a dog showing it's submissive to another dog by presenting it. Whether it's male or female, right? And the reason I made clear that it matters what gender is in control of that society is spotted hyenas where females are dominant but also have a pseudo penis. You get into that an erection is a sign of submission.

Malcolm: And, and this is because evolution when it's looking for, it's like, Oh, I need a system to signal to other people of my tribe, right? That I am submissive or dominant to them. It's just going to borrow pre existing code. It's basically going to Substack and looking for pre existing code. And one of the code types that makes the most natural sense to use is the sexuality system.

Malcolm: Because it's already there most things. Now, I've got to explain a little bit how evolution works for people to understand why it would do this. Evolution is going to pull on, you know, [00:06:00] slight mutations that might happen within an individual that can then sort of cause positive feedback loops. And a slight mutation is much more likely to happen within a pre existing system than with a entirely new system.

Malcolm: So almost every time. Communal mammals have developed intergroup dominance displays. It has