Confessions of a Girls Gone Wild Merch Girl

In 2005 Courtney Kocak was a “merch girl” on the Girls Gone Wild tour bus. She doled out the swag, T-shirts, thongs, drinks, to help get the GGW parties started. The GGW party on wheels rolled through places like Red Deer, Banff, Kelowna, and promised small town kids a “wild” time. By the time the tour was over Courtney and the bus crossed back across the border with boxes of release forms and video of marketable footage of young Canadian women flashing their breasts at the camera and having sex with each other. Courtney has been processing this experience ever since. Was it fun? Was it coercive? Was it even legal? Was she exploited or was she the exploiter? Or was it all of the above? Courtney Kocak (Writer and presenter), Julie Shapiro (Executive Producer), Michael Castaneda (Sound Design), Tristan Capacchione (Audio Editor & Technical Producer), Bruce Thorson (Senior Producer), max collins (Director of Audio), Jesse Brown (Editor and Publisher) Fact checking by Julian Abraham Additional music by Audio Network Sponsors: Fizz: Visit https://fizz.ca to learn more about Fizz and its long list of added-value features, and activate a first plan using the referral code CAN25 to get 25$ off & 10GB of free data. The Oat Company: Head over to https://oatcompany.com and use code CANADALAND20 for 20% off your order. They ship across Canada so you can enjoy them anywhere. BetterHelp: Visit https://betterhelp.com/canadaland today to get 10% off your first month. If you value this podcast, support us! You’ll get premium access to all our shows ad free, including early releases and bonus content. You’ll also get our exclusive newsletter, discounts on merch at our store, tickets to our live and virtual events, and more than anything, you’ll be a part of the solution to Canada’s journalism crisis, you’ll be keeping our work free and accessible to everybody. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music—included with Prime. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.