Husband's response to misogynistic podcast about women’s bodies after childbirth goes viral

A Communication Studies professor's emotional response to a sexist podcast discussing how women supposedly "let themselves go" after giving birth is going viral on social media. Professor Chesko, who goes by @speechprof on TikTok, filmed the video in response to seeing three men from the No Filter podcast speaking about how they'd break up with their child's mother if she didn't bounce back to her pre-pregnancy body. "I say, if my wife lets herself go after I've had kids with her, I'm gonna tell her once, if you don't get your sh*t together—I still want to be sexually attracted to my wife/my spouse/girlfriend—if you can't do that, I'm out," one of the hosts says, causing quite a stir on the platform from folks who do not condone the misogynistic message.

Professor Chesko reacted to the toxic idea put forth by the No Filter podcast with a personal anecdote from his marriage. "I do portrait photography and my wife once asked me why I don't edit her photos the way I edit my client photos and I didn't know what she was talking about," he shares in the video. "And she said, you know, you take off all of their flaws and their wrinkles and everything else about them. And I was like, I remove. I do the same to yours and she was like, no you don't."

"And it took me a while to realize that I can't edit her photos because there are no flaws. Every 'flaw' that she sees is part of our history. Everything she doesn't like about herself reminds me of our three beautiful children. And I just can't fathom thinking the way this guy in this video thinks," a visibly emotional Professor Chesko concluded. His video resonated deeply with many on the platform, racking in over 10.6 million views in less than a month.

Speaking to Bored Panda about how shocked he was by how much attention the video received, Professor Chesko said: "I've had a few other videos get a couple million views, but the reaction was nothing like this. The overwhelming positivity in comments, emails, stitches, and DM's from people has been one of the greatest experiences of my career and just shows why it is so important to allow yourself to be vulnerable to an audience. I just filmed one take from the heart and quickly captioned and posted it right before I had to sign into a department meeting—I think that's one of the reasons it resonated so much with people though. If I had tried scripting something like this, it would have felt very disingenuous."

The professor, who has been married to his wife for 11 years, revealed that he initially wasn't too keen on the idea of marriage. "I grew up with a single mom and a toxic father that wasn't really a part of my life, so I'm kind of winging it as I go as far as this marriage thing is concerned," he said. "I didn't actually ever even want to get married since I only knew it as this hurtful thing, but that changed almost immediately when I started dating her—I even started saving up for an engagement ring just a few months after we started dating and proposed just a couple weeks before our 1-year-anniversary."

When asked about what he believes is the key to a successful and happy marriage, Professor Chesko said it was important to "love your partner recklessly." "What I mean by that is that you need to love without reservation and concern of reciprocation and if they love you back the same way, then even all the hard stuff just seems to fade away. So even when the times are tough, and we've had rocky times just like any other couple, the love is still always there keeping us anchored to one another," he said.