by Kari Byron
There was even a weird backlash from male fans who didn’t like to see their accessible nerd girl next door turn into an expectant mother. Their perception about me changed, and my hotness cooled. The irony killed me: My sexiness quotient dropped when the result of my active sex life became apparent. Another irony: Pregnancy sex was the best. I’ve been chasing that dragon ever since. It’s an evil joke that you have the best orgasms in your life when you feel the least sexy.
The fan site threads about my pregnancy were not kind. But when I came back after my maternity leave, they lit up again about how quickly I “got my body back.” I hadn’t realized it’d been gone. Of course, no man deals with this scrutiny. The sexism around my pregnancy bothered me far more than the fetish sites about my feet. Having Stella was the greatest thing I’d ever done, but my post-pregnancy weight loss, according to some fans, was a more worthy accomplishment. You had a baby? Who cares. Looking sexy again was all that mattered to them.
The only way to normalize pregnancy is for more women on TV to get out from behind counters and tote bags.
They have to put their bellies front and center, and show that pregnancy is just a normal state of body, a thing that occasionally happens. I love the character of Laurie on HBO’s Silicon Valley, who barely even acknowledges that she’s pregnant while starting her own company. One of my heroes is stand-up comedian and writer Ali Wong. Her show Baby Cobra (view on Netflix) was filmed when she was seven months pregnant. She was up there, all over the stage, on all fours, cracking jokes about feminism, marriage, motherhood, killing it—while gorgeous. It’s like mothers are supposed to be sexless June Cleavers, or hot-and-horny MILFs who seduce the pizza delivery guy, but neither stereotype generally exists.
Is Bigger Better?
Sexuality is in the eye of the beholder, and that eye is in your own head. In the MythBusters boob experiment, people gave bigger tips to a curvy barista, and we learned that some aspects of sexuality are predictable. But when you go a fraction of an inch below the surface, sexuality is unpredictable. You can’t control what makes you appear sexy to someone, beyond obvious cues, which, let’s face it, won’t sustain a relationship for long. If women hope to progress at all, we have to be comfortable striking our own balance, even if you don’t get bigger tips or a men’s magazine changes you to make you “sexier” than you are naturally.
On the other hand, burying your sexuality to be taken seriously is no solution. It’s limiting and gives a society that fears and marginalizes women’s sexuality permission to define you.
IF YOU CAN’T GET OUT OF IT, GET INTO IT
I see sexuality as another tool in my belt, the one I use to make the world bend to my will. It’s okay to use your sexuality intentionally, on your terms. I know for a fact that if I smile and play to a man’s ego, he’ll give me a chance. You wouldn’t be serving yourself if you didn’t use whatever you had to get your foot in the door. For me, it comes down to being myself, and being in control of how I present myself.
I wouldn’t have been on MythBusters if not for my feminine charms. I’m aware of that, and just as aware that my shapely behind would only get me so far. You have to stay the long hours, do the hard work. I was a vegetarian, but I scraped chicken guts off the wall and ate bugs. I had to prove that I deserved to be there, despite having a cute butt. My creative contributions had to be excellent without fail.
But, if I didn’t want to, say, move something too heavy, I could get the job done with a machine or use a pipe for leverage. In some cases, a smile was my leverage.
My women’s studies professor in college used to say that strippers could be feminists who used their sexuality to serve their own purpose. I wrestled with the concept, and learned to apply it to my own life. How to contain the beast of male desire and use it for your own benefit? There are risks. You might lead the wrong man a little too far. If you get a job using too many wiles, your bosses and colleagues might resent you, and you’ll have your work cut out for you to earn their respect.
Let’s face it: Being a man is still a huge advantage. Women are underrepresented in science TV, government, science, tech, engineering, math, robotics. Even the “woke” corporations in tech are only 11 to 14 percent female. If it comes down to a man vs. a woman, the man will get the job, and he’ll be offered more money to do it, too.
A long time ago, I realized that the only way I was going to change the world—at least my small world of science entertainment TV—was from the inside out. The only way I could be “one of the only women” or “one of the first women” was to get in the door in the first place and dig my claws into the role. My female butt broke through that firewall. Then, once I was there, I had to prove myself. I did it again, and again, every single week. By the time MythBusters ended, I wasn’t the “first” and “only” female host in my field. There were a handful of us, and I was proud to have had something to do with the presence of women in science TV. I hope in some small way, being the token girl made a difference for others. In the final analysis, that’s a net gain.
You might not be able to get out of an inherently sexist culture at work, which is awful and uncomfortable, but you can use critical thinking to turn a bad situation into a crash test. What can you get out of it? What can you learn from it? How can you use it to your advantage? Ride those waves, no matter how over your head they seem.
Chapter Eight
Depression
On White Rabbit Project, we did an episode about mind control. We were trying to replicate the superpower using technology to control another human’s brain. The first step was to test on a cockroach, a really huge one that I had to touch with my hands. After anesthetizing it in ice, I affixed a tiny circuit board to its back, and put electrodes in each of its antennae. When he woke up, he’d been transformed into a cyborg. I could control my roboroach’s movement by sending signals from my iPhone to the electrodes in his antennae, and direct him around the table where I wanted him to go.
The next step was to use some of the same technology on a human subject. I invited Tory to dinner at an Italian restaurant and had my new neuroscientist friend hook up both of us with electrode pads on our arms and jaws, and, through a small computer, link them to each other. When I signaled my brain to move my arm, the signal went through the electrodes and into Tory’s arms, forcing him to make the same movements I did. I had control and could contract his muscles, and he couldn’t stop it from happening either.
So, when I asked Tory to pour the wine, I jerked my arm, making his spasm, and the wine got all over his clean white shirt. When the spaghetti and meatballs came out, I made Tory fling them all over the table, along with his fork. He couldn’t take a bite if I flexed my jaw, and the sauce dribbled down his chin. Why do I love torturing him so much? I was snort laughing at how much fun it was to exert mind control on my human puppet. And the more wine I drank, the more sadistic this experiment became. It was the most fun I had on that show.
Tory? Not so into it.
We called this “mind control” but it was technically just me in control of his reflexes. Real-life mind control is a harder experiment. Nothing has taken my brain hostage like the reality of depression. That is the real mind control.
Depressed
During the MythBusters years, my role was to be the happy girl, the one who could be relied on to laugh and squeal at gross things. I was doing plenty of hard-core work, but always with a smile and a giggle. No one on the show or in my wider social circles knew a secret I’d kept for some thirty years: I contend with severe bouts of depression. They started when I was a kid, and still affect me now to a lesser degree. The most demanding aspect of being on camera for me is smiling through depression. It’s been way tougher than forced vomiting or sawing through bone.
For most of my life, I never told anyone about my problem for a bunch of reasons. I blamed myself for feeling bad, and didn’t want to burden anyone else, which would have only made it worse. I was afraid that people would stigmatize m
e as weak or defective. My mood wasn’t anyone else’s business. It was my private hell, and I made a conscious choice to wrestle with it on my own. It was my crazy to control.
The late, great Carrie Fisher, one of my all-time heroes, once said, “Take your broken heart and turn it into art.” We all know how she struggled with mental health issues and substance abuse right up until her tragic heart attack, but she talked about it, she wrote about it, and she resisted it. She was the leader of the resistance in so many ways! At the Women’s March the day after Trump’s inauguration day, I cheered for all the signs with Princess Leia’s face that read, Join the resistance. If only she got to live long enough to see that. I wish I believed in heaven so that Carrie Fisher could see herself become a symbol for strong women who will not be silenced or shamed for anything their bodies or minds might do.
In the spirit of Carrie, I want to share the story of my experiences with the illness, which, I promise, will not be too depressing to read.
HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH DEPRESSION?
White Knuckles
At twelve, I met depression for the first time.
It was in the ’90s when people weren’t depressed per se. They were just sad. You “got the blues,” or “were on the rag.” Everyone knew that girls lost their minds at that time of the month. In hindsight, I think my depression was triggered by sudden adolescent hormonal surges, and has been a part of my life ever since.
I knew what I was experiencing was beyond run-of-the-mill teen angst. It felt like falling into a deep maw of self-doubt. A crippling heaviness pressed me into my bed all day, and my mind went feral with dark thoughts: You’re worthless. You have no friends. You’re no value to anyone. I visualized the depression as a dark purple stone inside my heart that was like a lead weight. I prayed (in my atheist way) that my big red heart would, eventually, crush the stone heart, and I’d go back to normal.
In the meantime, my strategy was to wait it out. I distracted myself with escapes that didn’t require me to get out of bed. After school, I would go to my room, lock the door, and crawl into bed like a wounded animal to read a book or watch TV. Three’s Company reruns or 21 Jump Street provided some relief.
If my parents wondered why I spent so much time in my room, they didn’t ask. I had no idea what or why the sudden depression was happening, and the mystery probably exacerbated the condition. I might’ve Googled my symptoms, diagnosed myself, and read about what to do, but the internet didn’t exist back then. I was in the dark about the darkness. I did have an inkling about what was going on, having seen glimpses of it before when my grandmother and my father would disappear into black moods. My grandmother lived to be eighty-seven, so the “heaviness” wasn’t fatal. Dad always bounced back, too, and his example strengthened my resolve to white-knuckle through.
I could have talked to my mom, a woman who seemed to know everything medical, but I was too ashamed. In my family, we swallowed negative emotions and presented a happy front. I was afraid that if I told my parents the truth, they’d be destroyed. With them working so hard to take care of my sister and me, they had enough to worry about. So I kept my mouth shut and got really good at hiding my symptoms.
Sometimes, the self-loathing would grip me for only a few days. Sometimes, it would last for weeks with wavering intensity. When it was really awful, I would set my alarm to wake up at 5:00 a.m. so that I could watch reruns of Little House on the Prairie, and lose myself in the simple pioneer life for a couple hours. I wanted to be Laura Ingalls, that spunky little optimist, so badly. Channeling her powered me out of bed and got me through school for the day. By the time I returned home, I was exhausted by hours of pretending to be normal.
The same patterns continued through high school and college, when I lived in dorms or in apartments. When I crawled into my cave, my roommates probably just thought I was “in a mood” that lasted for weeks. They were focused on their own lives, and gave me space. Eventually, I’d snap out of it and be the perky party girl again.
While traveling, I could be in the most beautiful place in the world, and holed up in some grubby hostel by myself, wallowing. If I clued in to the fact that I was missing out on the wonders around me, I’d force myself outside and start walking. Alleviating depression was like that Santa song, put one foot in front of the other. I would just start walking, and miles would pass. The scene would slide over me like fabric in the wind, and fly right over my head. I’d be miles away before I realized how far I’d gone. My knees would be achy and I could barely breathe, but I felt better. I walked through it.
I’d talk, too. Walk and talk. I would go up to strangers and just start chatting with them, pretend like I wasn’t depressed, and they never guessed that I was. By making myself look someone in the eye and listen to his words and process what he was saying, I was able to connect back into the real world. Without TV, I turned people into my new escape. I remember once meeting a couple of artists from Paris in Prague who were posting lost kitten signs. They would take flyers from other countries and make copies and post them far from home. Somewhat mysteriously, it was a statement about isolationism (I love the French; life is art even when there is no gallery or audience besides the artist). Their project became my own. I jumped into it and started to help. Making a statement on isolationism while traveling alone and battling depression in a far-off land was beautifully symbolic. Putting up flyers got me out of my head, and that was a huge relief. Eventually, the heaviness did fade.
WHITE-KNUCKLING WORKS, BUT AS A STRATEGY, IT IS PAINFUL AND PASSIVE
I reveled in the recovery, though. Once the darkness lifted, I’d feel euphoric, mitigated by the knowledge that this, too, would pass. My entire adolescence felt like walking a tightrope. I was unsteady socially, physically, emotionally, and mentally. My inner world was constantly changing, and I had to learn to adapt or die.
I wish I’d tried to get help, if not from my parents, then from a counselor at school or a doctor. I think of that twelve-year-old girl riding out the storm alone in her bed with the covers up, and my heart just breaks. I didn’t know any better at thirteen, sixteen, or twenty. I endured it for years with nothing but grit and patience—and by being a very good actor.
JUST TAKE A PILL! YOU’LL BE FINE
Girl meets Pill: I finally talked to a doctor when I was in my late twenties, and got a diagnosis. Previously, I had always blamed my depressions on outside sources—being broke or in a fight with someone—because I couldn’t figure out why I was crushingly sad. Well, for the last episode, I had nothing to point the finger at. I was in love, had a great apartment, a dream job, and I was in perfect health. I had to face reality: The problem was in me. The doctor prescribed Wellbutrin and Celexa. I thought I must have it bad if I had to take pills morning and night.
Girl takes Pill: Like a good patient, I took the pills exactly as prescribed. The effects didn’t kick in for two weeks, and when they did, I hated them. They robbed me of the good stuff, like my artistic impulse and hunger. Plus, the pills caused disturbing heart palpitations. I clenched my jaw until my dentist gave me a mouth guard. I kept with the regimen because I wasn’t crying. I wasn’t feeling anything.
END MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE
Girl loses Pill: I tried and tried. My chemical romance lasted on and off for longer than it should have. I had a great life and a dream job and I didn’t want to screw that up with my episodes of sadness, so I put in my best effort to fix it with a magic pill. I experimented with different ones. But they all made me feel like I wasn’t myself. Pills did not make me happy, or solve my problems. They just created new ones. In the end, I stopped taking them. I didn’t want to be sad but I also didn’t want to lose the realness of life.
The End.
The Horror, the Horror
The first years on MythBusters were both thrilling (I loved the work and, for the most part, the people) and disheartening. One of the bosses was a sadistic producer who got off on humiliating and tormenting the staff with pranks and prac
tical jokes that, believe me, were so not funny.
Once, I was at the shop, sitting on a wooden table, working on a project, and he poured a powerful superglue and then an accelerator on my butt where I was sitting. It created a fast thermic chemical reaction that was so hot, I screamed. He thought it would be so funny to glue me to the table, but it was reckless and burned me. My underwear and jeans were glued to my burned skin. In the bathroom, I had to tear the cloth and a layer of skin to get my jeans off. I walked around for the rest of the day with my pants held together with duct tape.
Hilarious, right?
I didn’t complain, though. At the time, my attitude was “Screw you, asshole, you don’t get to see how you affect me.” I dried my pain and humiliation tears, and kept a straight face around him. The way I retained my dignity, I thought, was to never let him know he got to me.
Secretly, he was known as Colonel Kurtz after Marlon Brando’s insane despotic character in Apocalypse Now. As a woman, I was a particular target for his “jokes,” but he humiliated everyone. He just kept upping the level of his sadism, moving the line of what was considered acceptable behavior, and we got used to it. Awful became the acceptable norm. We chalked up his bullying antics—like pantsing a new hire on his first day in front of the entire team, underwear and all—as just another of his plague of “jokes.” The others at work sympathized with the victims, and would say, “I’m sorry he did that to you,” but we were all too intimidated to complain.
The problem was, he was both in power and incredibly intelligent. He always made you believe that you were the weak one or overreacting if you got upset. According to him, it was just good ol’ workplace hazing. He was regarded as a creative genius, a huge asset, and he was far more important than the little people, even the ones who appeared on camera. He was in charge of us, and his bosses weren’t accessible to us. They were just too far up the totem pole. It always bothered me that they knew and would “talk” to him about it but never really do anything or create any consequences.