The Competitive Extreme Ironing Expertease

Good evening. Welcome to the world's foremost knowledge podcast. Our audience tonight is composed mostly of extreme ironers. And Danno, since extreme ironing is your expertise, we're going to probe your area. What? That's spelled wrong. Naturally. You're listening to Expertise, spelled wrong. The podcast where the world's most expert experts discuss their areas of expertise expertly. Expert comedy writer Clare Sera and expert comedy writer Danno Sullivan bring their expertise to other unrelated expertises. I am so excited to have our guest here tonight at Expertise, Danno Sullivan.

Good evening. Good evening. You know, quite often we get folks asking to come on and share their expertise in our podcast. But as you well know, Mr. Sullivan, I went out looking for you because I am so fascinated and so impressed. You'll be more impressed by the time we're done talking about ironing. I am ready to let off a little steam. Well, let us iron out a few facts. For folks in our podcast listening universe who may not be familiar with extreme ironing, I should let you explain your expertise. This is competitive ironing amongst housewives and house husbands.

This is derived from the original Household Olympics that started in the 1920s when household appliances were first becoming available to the common homeowners. Folks were so excited about being able to tidy up, clean up without the hard, sweat-breaking work that it used to be, that they actually went to the other extreme and made it something fun. They made it competitive. You may have heard about the Dust Bunny Bowl. Yeah. I've heard about the machine wash races. Yes. Those are incredibly difficult. You need to be a true athlete to be able to race with a machine washer on your back.

Oh, I always assumed that the machine washing machines were the vehicle. That's the way it began, Claire. You know, when a washing machine gets a little off balance and it starts rocking and it can sort of walk away from the wall, that's the way the races began. Right, right. The races were just a foot or two, the length of the hose that connected the machine to the plumbing system. Now, this was all done for recreation and fun, but extreme ironing came out of an actual need. I mean, all of the materials used for our clothing back then were raw, cotton, organic, hemp, linen. I mean, there is not a stretchy fabric to be seen until 1943.

Burlap had been outlawed under FDR without burlap to make clothes out of. For the working class, what are you going to wear? And it's so interesting that burlap actually came from those sort of risqué shows where the ladies would dance. The burlap burlesque was really... Yes. It was not as exciting as it sounds like it would be because by the time they stripped off those rough, rough garments, they were just these puffy, raw, chapped ladies. And I tell you, you could not pay someone to get a burlap dance after seeing someone peeled and raw and chafed. Yeah, tips in that sense took on a completely different meaning.

Um, side note, if you don't mind me asking, um, could burlap be ironed? Oh, sure, sure. But here's the thing with wrinkled clothing. Yeah. Wrinkled clothing was very desirable for a very long time. Underneath all those wrinkles, your body shape was completely indiscernible. I see. So, folks felt very comfortable walking around in their wrinkled, wrinkled clothes. It was an equalizer. It was in a way, it was sort of like living in a bag. Right. A lot to be said for that. Lot to be said for that. You've got your own little ecosystem. You can have little compartments in there for food sources.

Companions. Yes. Yes. Speaking of FDR, you know, Eleanor lived in a pocket of his inner bag for almost three years before they were wed. And that is what led to his bad leg, if I recall my history. A lot of people attribute it to polio. It was a severe limp due to having another human to support on that side. But what companionship. What a delight. They were together for life, Claire. I meant him and his limp. Oh, right. Yes. Also, he and Eleanor. Eleanor was very responsible, in a way, for doing away with the heavy burlap bags that people had been wearing. She was a forward looker and a forward...

She had a forewood for playing golf. She was a forward looker. She was a forward thinker. And she was an early icon for women's liberation. They didn't call it that at the time. They just called it, let me out of the bag. You know, I could be wrong. I'm not the expert here. I know that extreme ironing is a sport now. And I made an assumption that in its early days, it came from the need for rich people to be ironed in difficult places. So, if you think of that time, Claire, which was the Edwardian era, the post-Gilded Age. There were still a lot of gilded folks roaming this earth.

That's it. And what they were developing was a need to be nicely pressed to look good wherever they went. Right. Because they were so rich, you can only imagine the places they'd go. And it was the beginning of far travel. It had only been near travel up to that point. Yes. And often very near travel. In-house travel. In-house travel was big in the pre-Edwardian era. Those were very, very near travelers at that point. Indeed. Except for the rich. And it was part of the Industrial Revolution that made the rich suddenly able. It was a confluence of factors. There was the automobile, the airplane, the submarine.

All of which, if I may point out, wrinkled clothes terribly. And what else was coming along at that time, Claire, was rayon, dacron, man-made silk, woman-made silk. Silkworm-made silk. Suddenly these were much lighter fabric. So people felt like they were doubly justified in far travel. They had the means to get away from the spot where they had been standing. And they had the attire that made it comfortable to do so. Right. What's the downside? Wrinkles. Wrinkles. That is the wrinkle in this story. Suddenly, if you're out being seen in the world, you don't want to look dumpy, frumpy, rustic, and red.

You want to look smooth and nice. You want to appear as rich as you are. This is when the starch industry began to skyrocket. It's all tied in, Claire. I don't know if you pay attention to the starch index, but it all began around this time when folks started investing in starch because the ironing called for it. And that's probably around the same time that we discovered potatoes. This ties in with the Irish potato famine. Right. What were they going to do with all those potatoes they couldn't eat? They started dipping them in water, extracting that starch, giving the potato water to the poor Irish to drink in their raw, rubbed, rough selves.

Burlap. Yes. The starch itself was carried to the rich on the backs of the poor to be put on the backs of the rich in their nice man-made fabric shirts. So it was the ancestors of these high-flying ironers to the rich on their crazy adventures that shunned the ways of the aristocracy and their ironing against the poor and turned it into a sport. This began at the 1971 Summer Olympics. All those uniforms. I don't know if you were aware of the changes in the weather that year, but the Winter Olympics and Summer Olympics are usually separated. They decided to do them simultaneously that year.

What would you wear if summer and winter are one season? What would you wear? Layers, right? Layers. Multiple thin layers. And what do thin layers need? They need to be flat, smooth, and durable. So enter the competitive ironers. This was really a wonderful adjunct to the same old dumb old Olympics that had been the same since 4000 BC, every four years, one after another. Suddenly, each sport had an associated associate sport. There would be snow skiing, ironing. So you rush in right after the snow skiers have done their jumps, iron them up and get them ready for the next round.

Oh my gosh. Would they even iron them on the way down their jump so that they land in perfect- As it became more and more extreme, each ironer had to take on the skill of the person he was ironing. Right. You'll often find an ironer on his own skis. That is so exciting. I mean, they're double skilled. To me, this is Ginger Rogers, you know, doing all the same as Fred Astaire, only backwards and in heels. Yeah. That's a very good way to explain it. Doing the same thing as the superstar athletes, only behind them and with a heated iron. Wow. And this was done for skiers.

This was done for the swimmers, which I know became a lot of fatalities. Yeah. They never really worked it out with the swimmers. You don't want the electric iron in the water. But you know, you have to try it. You have to try it, and they did. God rest their souls. They were scientists first, garment lovers second, athletes third. Ooh, yeah. It's like Brian's song. Here's the thing, Claire, it's like so many advances in technology and advances in society, are they advances at all? Oh gosh, don't get me started. Did God mean for us to fly in airplanes or did he mean for us to eventually evolve and have wings of our own?

Well, we'll never know now. And in the world of athletics, are we meant to be supporting these modern technologies, these modern fabrics that make the athletes seem so sleek and shiny? Seam is the key word. Because when they were still shot putting in burlap, you knew who was a super athlete. You know, have you ever seen people swim in a burlap Speedo, Claire? I have not. Is it on YouTube? Some people are kind of bringing it back specifically for YouTube. Oh, okay. All right. Look that up. But you got to ask yourself, are we better off to have these sleek, shiny, spandex-clad athletes or were we better off when there was an ecosystem that supported a gang of workers, a gang of ironers, and the athletes had to really earn their money by lugging around all that extra weight, the wrinkles that made them stars.

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