That’s What The Job Is with Jenny Hagel

So first of all, Jenny, I want to ask you if you can reflect back on your own teenagehood.

When you were a child, what were your parents like to you? Did they give you a lot of advice? Was there a kind of code of conduct in your family that was strict or that you were expected to adhere to, or did you rebel against everything?

No, I will say my household was very strict.

I grew up in a very strict traditional household.

My parents didn't really give advice.

It was more like, I think when I was talking earlier about how like the previous generation had a certain very firm idea of etiquette and the idea that etiquette is fixed and there are just certain rules that are always true.

And that was very much the kind of household I grew up in.

So it was less about giving advice and more just like imparting the rules of etiquette and then... expect and then making sure that we're being here to expecting that they were here too so i grew up in a very very traditional conservative like like um in terms of behavior like conservative like etiquette focused house um i did you curse

at

home oh god no i know i still would never i would never okay same same same same i would never which is so funny because then i had to have a I had to really think about how I want to handle cursing in my house, in my relationship with parents.

Because at one point when my son was very little, I was pushing him on a swing and he said some three-year-old version of a bad word.

So I'm like, whatever, bathroom word.

And I started to be like, hey, we don't do that in our house.

And then I thought for a nanosecond about what I do for a living and about how many hours of footage there are of me online saying bad words in segments and that's what i do for a job and i'm not ashamed of it like i really enjoy it but there's plenty of stuff where i'm using swear words and or telling like racy jokes or whatever it's not my whole body of work but it exists and i'm thinking one day he will google and then i will look like a hypocrite if i'm like we don't use bad words so i think to the point i think it's like yeah i think the previous generation had this fixed idea of what's appropriate and i was like how can i have a more nuanced relationship with this so i i had to have a conversation with them and i said hey There are words that are appropriate for different situations.

And I was like, you can use bathroom words, but those are words you have to know that if you use it at school, you will be in trouble.

If you go to someone else's house, you will be in trouble.

So there are times when those words are okay.

And then I also said, and there are some words that are just for grownups.

They are not necessarily terrible words, but they're words that are only appropriate for grownups to use.

And that's kind of how I talk.

But anyway, I had to figure out what's a more nuanced way to that, other than just being like, we're never saying the F word.

Yeah.

And we're, I mean, now 12.

I mean, it's just, and New York.

I mean, we walk, I say to my son, you can't say these words.