How Did It Become Cool to Belittle Your Husband? (An Anthropology of Sassy)

In this episode of Based Camp, Simone and Malcolm Collins dive deep into the cultural phenomenon of the “sassy wife” trope—how it’s been normalized, celebrated, and even weaponized in media and real-life relationships. From celebrity scandals to sitcom stereotypes, they explore the history and impact of wives publicly belittling their husbands, why this behavior became so widespread, and how it affects modern couples.

Listen in for a breakdown of viral moments, analysis of personal experiences, and insights on building healthier, more respectful partnerships. Whether you’re curious about relationship dynamics, pop culture, or just want a thought-provoking conversation, this episode is for you!

Episode Transcript:

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Malcolm. I’m so excited to be speaking with you today because you didn’t leave me after I did a bunch of toxic things when we were first married and dating.

And that actually is, is, is pretty big because it was one of the biggest points of conflict in our lives and I, I wanted to actually do a podcast on it because you spent years deprogramming me. From doing well. So

Malcolm Collins: what the podcast theme is gonna be on is we are gonna be digging into how normalized and, and, and, and sort of praised sassy behavior is in wives towards husbands.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And sassy is the word I’d use. But there’s other words that you can use to, you know, behavior that is designed to put the husband down in front of other people. Yeah. And everybody sort of knows that this was normalized by media. We went through this as kids. Yeah. But now there’s a phenomenon where a bunch of celebrities, like big celebrities ranging from like Obama to like, you know, will Smith, to like, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll go over them all.

And, and this was [00:01:00] brought to our plate because we saw this, Brett Cooper was covering this. Mm-hmm. And I was like, when I saw the clips she had found, because like, obviously I don’t watch what celebrities are doing. I was You’re kind of horrified, shocked. Yeah. At the degree to which these women.

Actively and intentionally we’re degrading their husbands. Yeah.

Simone Collins: If y’all wanna watch this, it’s called Ranking the Top four Worst Hollywood Wives, and it’s horrifying. I’ll put

Malcolm Collins: a clip right here. From, from when it, I’ll put the feet clip right here, because that one just was like.

Simone Collins: Oh it’s, it’s bad

Speaker: he crazy eyes like, look at the end there. Like look at his face there. At the very end as he is rubbing her feet, he is like, oh, this is what my life has come to.

Simone Collins: .

But I mean, I, and what I wanna explore, in addition to exploring some of these examples and like kind of poking into what is going on here, I also wanna look into what has caused this to become programmed. ‘cause actually there’s, there’s a longer history behind all of this and there’s a really interesting tipping point, and I wanna get into it because I think getting to the [00:02:00] heart at what is causing this problem is going to, to play a key role in helping both men and women systemically dismantle it from their lives.

Yeah. Because you and I struggled with this as a couple well, hold on. You

Malcolm Collins: and I did not struggle with it. You struggled with, and I put the kaya collar on you and had to kaya.

Simone Collins: Please, please.

Gotta stay in that little place for eight hours.

Simone Collins: Well, where you struggled was how exactly to communicate to me. To, to get me in a way that got me to stop.

‘cause I knew what I was doing was bad. And it took years for you to figure out the right way to message to me, to get me to stop doing this. Literally about three years of dating before you really respond. I think it took more than that. I think it took five to seven years. Well, no, not seven. Not seven, five.

I’m gonna say five. You haven’t, yeah. You haven’t done it in

Malcolm Collins: at least three years. I, I would say but we’ve been together

Simone Collins: for. 12 or 13 years now. So, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But, but what’s [00:03:00] interesting about this is, you know, you grew up in San Francisco, you grew up surrounded in the heart of the urban monoculture, progressive culture.

And you grew up even starting dating me and internalized this sort of mindset, but

Simone Collins: no. Mm-hmm. This is not an urban monoculture thing. It, it, or even it’s not a progressive thing. This is a pervasive, deep, heavy thing. I think it has to do with a lot of, I, we’ll, we’ll parse into it when we go into the history boot.

Let’s start with the salacious. Okay. Let’s go Celebrity gossip. Because celebrity gossip, it’s so powerful and, and, and amazing. And so I, there’s obviously the examples that were, were highlighted by Brett Cooper in her ranking, the top four Worst Hollywood wives video. She talks about hilarious Baldwin and a Barwin.

And she also talks about Jada Pickett Smith and Will Smith. So with hilarious Bal Barwin. Who Malcolm highlighted at the beginning of this, it’s not just the social media clips that she posts of Alec Baldwin, who really comes across [00:04:00] almost like. A captured animal.

Speaker: I mean, look at this photo. We don’t even know what is going on here. And yet you have her playing chess, smoking a pipe, and somehow she was able to convince Alec Baldwin, see, this is now where I feel bad for him. I feel guilty. He’s wearing a made outfit with a little cap and he’s bringing bunny slippers.

Like, is this how bad his career has gotten? That

Simone Collins: Yeah. No, he, oh God. Yeah. I was, I was so, I, I’ll, I’ll send you a link to, I, I, I literally would

Malcolm Collins: rather be kaya than, than Alec

Simone Collins: Baldwin.

No, I would, I would rather be kaya than a baller in right now. Like I, I swear we, it’s not ‘cause like, so, Brett Cooper surfaced a bunch of the really worst, most egregious things that hilarious had posted on her Instagram. However, if you just scroll through there in general, she’s just using him as a shill for her really stupid vanity projects like Dancing With the Stars and it’s like hostage videos where he’s like, text ex to this number to vote for hilarious [00:05:00] Baldwin on dancing with a star.

Like, he looks like a hostage who’s being forced to read off of a script to do her bidding. And it, it just, everything, everything where, where she uses his face just feels like he, he is being parasitized by this woman. Whoa. They have eight children. Yeah, they’re actually doing seven with her

Malcolm Collins: and one with someone else.

Simone Collins: I know it is. That’s the thing that’s, that’s, that’s really, you know, but I mean, maybe that’s one of the reasons why he’s so, he is a man is taking all this from her because something that I’ve seen from many men who have a lot of kids with a woman is when she’s had a lot of kids, they’re like, listen, I love my kids.

Like, I’m so grateful for my kids that I will endure a lot. And I think that might be a factor for why he’s tolerating this. But the thing that I found most egregious, yeah, I would,

Malcolm Collins: even if you went crazy like this, if I had had seven kids with you at that point, I’d be like, yeah, you’d be

Simone Collins: like, whatever, man.

But the thing that got me the [00:06:00] very most was the re