Speaker 1: You're listening to a MoMA mea podcast.
Speaker 2: Mamma Mere acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
Speaker 2: that this podcast is recorded on. Are we Ready?
Speaker 1: We are?
Speaker 2: Jesse Stevens, Yes, three two one, Hello, and welcome to
Speaker 2: Mom and Me Are out Loud. It's all women are
Speaker 2: actually talking about. On Wednesday, the tenth of July.
Speaker 3: I'm Holly Wayne.
Speaker 4: Right, I'm Me Friedman, and I'm Jesse Stevens and out louders.
Speaker 4: If you're listening to this episode, I poll you're listening
Speaker 4: on Spotify. It has come to our attention that a
Speaker 4: great many of you do not follow us, and that
Speaker 4: means that the episode does not automatically go.
Speaker 1: Into your feature. Who would be one of those people?
Speaker 4: Jesse Stevens, Holly and I are that personality type, so
Speaker 4: probably as Sagittarius.
Speaker 1: Okay, this was a very strange conversation for me to
Speaker 1: have because I don't understand how you listen to a
Speaker 1: podcast if you're not following it. I go and search
Speaker 1: it every time you want to listen to a podcast. Look.
Speaker 2: Also, my Spotify has on the front page it'll say
Speaker 2: your show's new episodes. I don't need to do that,
Speaker 2: but however that you do talking gates myself.
Speaker 1: Yes, so what you.
Speaker 4: Need to do is you've said and then in the
Speaker 4: top right hand corner on Apple I know it says
Speaker 4: follow and you can click the follow button. And on
Speaker 4: Spotify it's exactly the same. It's the word that says follow.
Speaker 4: It has six letters wow, and it starts with air.
Speaker 1: This is great and then tap it. Where do I
Speaker 1: put my ear buds my air pods? Which holes do
Speaker 1: they go?
Speaker 2: In podcasting? Okay, okay, so we've started with the ear
Speaker 2: buds in the vagina On Wednesday show, I Am going
Speaker 2: to get this train.
Speaker 1: Back on the tracks baby.
Speaker 2: On today's show, why absolutely everybody is talking about a
Speaker 2: major Australian fashion brands body count. Also does an adult
Speaker 2: child get us say? And who their mom dates? Welcome
Speaker 2: to the new age of endless parenting. And people are
Speaker 2: posting strangers gossip sessions on TikTok and someone really needs
Speaker 2: to tell Sarah that her friends hate her. But first
Speaker 2: mea Friedman in.
Speaker 1: Case you missed it, meant are raw dogging on flights?
Speaker 2: That sounds I think it's not.
Speaker 1: What you think.
Speaker 4: Dogging flights. I don't think we're doing on flights is
Speaker 4: quite accurate.
Speaker 1: What do you think real dogging means?
Speaker 4: This is I've heard young people use it, and I've
Speaker 4: wanted to say, I don't think you fully understand what
Speaker 4: does so? Because doesn't it mean having sex without a condo? Yes,
Speaker 4: that's what I'm meaning.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Also bear backing. But this word, this phrase, this term,
Speaker 1: this idea has been co opted for a different and
Speaker 1: yet related meaning. Let me explain, raw dogging flying, raw
Speaker 1: or bearbacking on a flight refers to sitting there through
Speaker 1: the whole flight without any form of entertainment or stimulation
Speaker 1: or distraction to help the time pass. So no podcasts,
Speaker 1: no reading, no watching a movie, no watching a TV show.
Speaker 1: All you're allowed to do is watch the flight path map.
Speaker 1: That's as exciting as it gets.
Speaker 4: It's a sign of psychopath Yeah.
Speaker 1: So a twenty six year old guy from London called
Speaker 1: west Re simply went viral for the concept because he
Speaker 1: was showing himself raw dogging on a flight. There was
Speaker 1: a twenty one hour trip just prepared to laden and
Speaker 1: he told GQ magazine, who did a story on it
Speaker 1: that came out this week, he said he likens raw
Speaker 1: dogging to meditation. He said I got sick of watching
Speaker 1: the same movies. Visually, you are kind of impaired. You
Speaker 1: only get to look at the seat in front of you,
Speaker 1: to your right or your left. If you're at the window,
Speaker 1: all you hear is that drumming sound of the engine.
Speaker 1: It's just white noise. And he says, that's lovely. Jesse.
Speaker 1: You recently wrote I'm a Mayor about your experience traveling
Speaker 1: twenty six hours with Todd Luod. Does raw dogging sound
Speaker 1: like it could have made things better?
Speaker 4: This is why this story has pissed me off. I've
Speaker 4: seen the headlines and I'm like, oh, you think you
Speaker 4: werew a dog to fly? You roar dog to flight?
Speaker 1: Did you?
Speaker 4: Was it hard? Like I roar dog to flight against
Speaker 4: my will? I would have loved to sit there and
Speaker 4: watch a movie, or even just sit there quietly. They
Speaker 4: think that they're doing some tough muttershit by not putting
Speaker 4: in any stimulation. Throw in a baby throwing who there's
Speaker 4: your challenge. There's your tough mutter like.
Speaker 1: Not a lot of movies when you're looking after a
Speaker 1: small child exactly.
Speaker 4: I'm like people looking after babies have been raw dogging
Speaker 4: flights forever.
Speaker 1: So you did raw dogging.
Speaker 4: Plus I did not relaxing hard, which sounds even worse.
Speaker 2: I thought this story was nonsense, and then I remembered
Speaker 2: that I actually sat next to a young man who
Speaker 2: did this on my recent flight.
Speaker 4: He told us about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So when I went back to Manchester in April
Speaker 2: for my dad's Adith on the plane back, but sat
Speaker 2: down next to this young man and he was very
Speaker 2: fits this demo right, like a young cool kind of
Speaker 2: jen z Eddy guy. He was coming to Australia for
Speaker 2: the first time ever for a job. He's got a
Speaker 2: tech job and he's doing something techie, techie, he's like
Speaker 2: that tech guy. And he said, I've never done a
Speaker 2: long haul flight before, have you? And I was like,
Speaker 2: I've never done a long half flight. I was like, friends,
Speaker 2: I've been doing this flight for twenty five years now.
Speaker 2: And he says, what are your tips? And I was like,
Speaker 2: have a drink.
Speaker 1: Watch a movie, like just wait till it's over, wait
Speaker 1: till it's ever. It's just a day out of your life.
Speaker 2: That's what we always say is And he said, I'm
Speaker 2: going to use this as a challenge to myself to unplug.
Speaker 2: And I was like, you are an idiot. This is
Speaker 2: not the moment.
Speaker 1: Very slowly, but he did.
Speaker 4: This fits into our idea that men don't understand little
Speaker 4: treat culture. It's true because women will treat it if
Speaker 4: they can, if they don't have their hands full. It's
Speaker 4: just a series of treats.
Speaker 2: It's an amazing a rom com, exactly a bad food in.
Speaker 4: A mush yes, whereas men are like, how can I
Speaker 4: make this more painful?
Speaker 2: It's like just watch a movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, come shopping with me at Witchery. I've never shopped
Speaker 1: here before, but I had to check it out because
Speaker 1: they did a whole new rebrand and were dropping some
Speaker 1: amazing new pieces this week.
Speaker 4: For better or for worse, everyone is talking about Australian
Speaker 4: fashion brand Witchery. Witchery has been around since the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 4: but at the end of last month they virtually wiped
Speaker 4: their Instagram account. They deleted it everything, and they then
Speaker 4: posted something that read coming soon a fresh design direction
Speaker 4: and new look for Witchery. On the second of July,
Speaker 4: they launched their brand new collection. It's called Bold Awakening
Speaker 4: and it is led by their new head of design
Speaker 4: named Kirby Hanrahan and the target is women who want
Speaker 4: to feel forever thirty and Hanrahan explained that everything has
Speaker 4: been designed to mix and match together to make a
Speaker 4: capsule wardrobe. This is a direction we've seen a lot
Speaker 4: of fashion brands go down, So Dish is an example
Speaker 4: seed assembly label. We're seeing less patterns and sequins sorry
Speaker 4: maya less sort of leopard print and more classic shapes.
Speaker 4: And the idea behind this is that it's smart merchandising
Speaker 4: because it addresses cost of living. It takes a lot
Speaker 4: more to have a woman spend her hard earned cash
Speaker 4: and she doesn't want something that's going to be out
Speaker 4: of fashion or look dated in two months. But with
Speaker 4: the new range a swift wave of criticism. Some customers
Speaker 4: noticed that sizing went from four to eighteen, meaning that
Speaker 4: Witchery had removed a size twenty and customers commented on
Speaker 4: the new range, saying, it's not a bold awakening. If
Speaker 4: you cannot do the bare minimum for size inclusivity, read
Speaker 4: the room, Witchery. It's twenty twenty four. You should be
Speaker 4: expanding sizing, not reducing it. Witchery swiftly released a statement
Speaker 4: that said if you're a twenty in the previous range,
Speaker 4: we invite you to try a size eighteen because this
Speaker 4: range is a more relaxed fit, and they added the
Speaker 4: size twenty that they previously had accounted for a small
Speaker 4: percentage of our sales, so there was also a business
Speaker 4: reason for it. We asked some women what they thought
Speaker 4: of the Witchery rebrand. Here's what they said.
Speaker 5: Yes, in terms of the rebrand, I think the actual
Speaker 5: PR launch was really cool, but I think a fell flat.
Speaker 5: I actually don't think it's very different than what they've
Speaker 5: done before.
Speaker 1: It still feels like old Witchery.
Speaker 5: I think they've completely alien needed like a big cohort
Speaker 5: of their customers, and also when they're trying to connect
Speaker 5: with the younger generation who cares about inclusivity, I think
Speaker 5: they've polarized a lot of people.
Speaker 3: Through doing that.
Speaker 1: I just think, in this day and age, to be
Speaker 1: cutting out a size twenty and then.
Speaker 6: Expect people to try the eighteen instead, it's pretty wild.
Speaker 7: I don't mind the direction they're going in. I think
Speaker 7: it's quite fresh and new in terms of the different
Speaker 7: sizing and removing the size twenty. I did hear through
Speaker 7: the grapevine that they might actually be bringing it back,
Speaker 7: but the reason that they took it off the market
Speaker 7: was because it wasn't accurate enough. So I think it's
Speaker 7: once they understand a more accurate size twenty, they are
Speaker 7: probably going to bring that back into stores.
Speaker 6: So the Witry rebrand looks exactly the same. I can't
Speaker 6: believe there spend time and energy trying to put out
Speaker 6: a new range or a new style and they made
Speaker 6: it so similar to what they were already doing ofense
Speaker 6: to them. The thing that's upset me the most, though,
Speaker 6: is the fact that they're bragging about using vanity sizing.
Speaker 6: Why is there more value in a smaller number on
Speaker 6: my shirt than a bigger number. My size is my size,
Speaker 6: I'm cool with it. Why are you witchery telling me
Speaker 6: that I should be happier in a smaller size than
Speaker 6: the number I actually am.
Speaker 4: Maya, what is vanity sizing? So?
Speaker 1: Vanity sizing is based on this idea that women put
Speaker 1: a lot of self esteem based on the size on
Speaker 1: their clothes, and that the smaller the size, the better
Speaker 1: a woman feels. So even though some people wonder why
Speaker 1: they might be a size ten in one label and
Speaker 1: a size fourteen in another and a size six in another,
Speaker 1: there's no such thing as standardized sizing. Every label size
Speaker 1: is depending on their customer base. So say you have
Speaker 1: four or five sizes, except for Brandy Melville, which only
Speaker 1: has one five. If your customers tend to be a
Speaker 1: certain age or they like a certain style of clothes,
Speaker 1: they might be a different body shape to the brand
Speaker 1: of another company that might target older women who might
Speaker 1: be larger, or you know, they might have different body shapes.
Speaker 1: So what I think we've got to remember, and I'd
Speaker 1: completely understand why people feel really upset about this. Fashion
Speaker 1: brands are businesses. They're not community services, and so they
Speaker 1: are going to do what's good for business. And I
Speaker 1: agree with that person who said, why did they capitulate
Speaker 1: this idea of vanity sizing and that women will feel
Speaker 1: better and more predisposed to the Witchery brand if they're
Speaker 1: a size eighteen when they used to be a size twenty.
Speaker 1: That's a big problem for Witchery to fix in terms
Speaker 1: of generations of beauty standards and oppression that we've inhaled.
Speaker 4: As that vanity sizing still stands because my experience, and
Speaker 4: I'm not plus sized, but my experience is that I
Speaker 4: will walk into a shop, I will look at the label.
Speaker 4: I hate trying things on, and I think that in
Speaker 4: spects to a lot of women's experience if they don't
Speaker 4: have the number that I see as the one that
Speaker 4: fits me, I'm not trying on a size smaller.
Speaker 2: I'm just And also, if you're buying online, which most
Speaker 2: people are these days, most people, but lots of people are.
Speaker 2: I live regionally, all the shopping is online, right then
Speaker 2: I have to go by sizes. I'm not trying things on,
Speaker 2: So they have to mean something.
Speaker 1: People used to know though they used to be a
Speaker 1: joke about. I'm a country Road size eight, which means
Speaker 1: women who were not a size eight in any other
Speaker 1: label were a country Road size eight who interestingly also
Speaker 1: owned Wittery. Country Road has always had generous sizing, whereas,
Speaker 1: for example, a size eight in Soupre or sports Girl
Speaker 1: might be a lot smaller because their target market is
Speaker 1: a lot smaller.
Speaker 2: Quite literally, that's what they're saying, though, isn't it right?
Speaker 2: How does this not become a self fulfilling prophecy? Do
Speaker 2: you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: You mean?
Speaker 2: So, the average Australian woman is a size fourteen to sixteen,
Speaker 2: and the sizing at Whicher is rebrand goes from a
Speaker 2: size five or to a size eighteen. We understand what
Speaker 2: average means, right, So why are there five sizes under
Speaker 2: the average and only one above it?
Speaker 1: Well that's alarming too, isn't it.
Speaker 2: So that is alarming because the thing is is it's
Speaker 2: a self fulfilling prophecy because you are marketing who I
Speaker 2: want to wear my clothes. It doesn't matter whether the
Speaker 2: eighteen is an eighteen or a twenty or a sixteen
Speaker 2: or whatever. By taking the twenty off the label, you
Speaker 2: are signaling to a portion of the population you're not
Speaker 2: welcome in this shop. We don't make clothes for you.
Speaker 2: It doesn't really matter whether the clothes fit, it's what
Speaker 2: it says. Because they're saying five sizes underneath the average,
Speaker 2: we want you, can you come in? Please? Can you
Speaker 2: come in and wear our clothes?
Speaker 1: And that's the right.
Speaker 2: People are really upset because they feel like a brand
Speaker 2: that they liked and trusted and thought was a mainstream
Speaker 2: brand that made relatively accessible clothes was for them and
Speaker 2: they've just been told that they're not. And that's not great.
Speaker 1: So brands do this in lots of different ways. They
Speaker 1: tell you who their target market is they do it
Speaker 1: with the music they play in stores, they do it
Speaker 1: with the people that they hire to work in their stores,
Speaker 1: they do it with of course they're advertising their social media,
Speaker 1: and they do it with their sizing. So I think
Speaker 1: that what Witcher is clearly from a business point of view,
Speaker 1: taking all emotions out of it. What has been clear
Speaker 1: to them It seems like their audience was aging out
Speaker 1: and perhaps those people who were older were not buying
Speaker 1: enough clothes, and so they need to go for a
Speaker 1: younger demographic, and they are trying to reposition themselves as
Speaker 1: younger and cooler, and by definition that will be exclusionary.
Speaker 2: But younger and cooler people care about inclusivity in a
Speaker 2: way the older clients don't.
Speaker 1: You're right about that, because younger people care about inclusivity,
Speaker 1: even if they themselves will not buy that. So the
Speaker 1: question is from a business point of view, and I
Speaker 1: know a lot of small businesses struggle with this as well,
Speaker 1: this expectation that every business needs to have a really
Speaker 1: wide inclusive size range. That's not always possible to manufacture
Speaker 1: because the more sizes you manufacture, the more expensive it
Speaker 1: is to produce those clothes.
Speaker 4: I understand that, but I also see what Holly's saying
Speaker 4: about self fulfilling. If I know that if I go
Speaker 4: to Westfield, I am not going to find in any
Speaker 4: shop something that fits me, I'm not going to go
Speaker 4: to Westfield, so I'm opting out. So it's this weird
Speaker 4: chicken and egg, right. It's like if everyone were to
Speaker 4: start offering those sizes, and you can't just start offering them,
Speaker 4: You've got to market them. You've got to tell people
Speaker 4: you've got them. So there are some places that do
Speaker 4: have a wide size range, but people have in their heads, oh,
Speaker 4: that would never fit me, that would never fit me.
Speaker 1: And we've all been in that position. If I remember,
Speaker 1: there was a brand called Patinalaliano, which interestingly enough doesn't
Speaker 1: exist anymore, but in the nineties it used to be
Speaker 1: famous that you would go in there and the very
Speaker 1: skinny sales girls would say, if you're a bigger than
Speaker 1: a size ten, oh, we don't have anything for you here.
Speaker 1: And I don't even think they went past a size ten.
Speaker 1: And that was very clearly they were trying to say,
Speaker 1: we only want a certain type of people wearing our clothes.
Speaker 1: And again I'm not defending this, I'm just explaining it
Speaker 1: because Brandy Melville is another example of that. There's only
Speaker 1: one side.
Speaker 2: But here's the thing that I don't understand about if
Speaker 2: this is just smart business, I don't see how it's
Speaker 2: possibly just smart business because they're still making the same
Speaker 2: size clothes if you believe their story, they're eighteen is
Speaker 2: a twenty. They've just changed the numbers, so they're not
Speaker 2: saving any money, they're not making any efficiencies. They're just
Speaker 2: making a very clear marketing call that we don't want
Speaker 2: bigger women in our shops.
Speaker 1: No, but they're not because but the women who are
Speaker 1: size twenty, they're saying, still come, still buy. But guess what,
Speaker 1: you've just gone down to size Ah.
Speaker 2: But going to this idea that they're appealing to a younger,
Speaker 2: cooler demo, the younger, cooler demo is unpicking this idea
Speaker 2: of vanity sizing. I'm talking to my like, my teenager
Speaker 2: is buying clothes and she's buying online as I say,
Speaker 2: we live recently. Also, it's crazy because they're competing these
Speaker 2: brands with Timu and Sheen and all these places where
Speaker 2: the clothes are so much cheaper and come in a
Speaker 2: much wider range of sizing. So it is really silly,
Speaker 2: this elitist approach. But also it's this idea that young people.
Speaker 1: I just hang on a second, Hey, let's unpack that
Speaker 1: for a second, because what are we asking here. If
Speaker 1: you want to mass produce, yes, you can afford, because
Speaker 1: you're going to reach millions and millions of people. It's
Speaker 1: going to be incredibly cheap. What things are happening in
Speaker 1: that production line to create that jacket that costs eight
Speaker 1: dollars from Timu. They might have all sorts of sizes,
Speaker 1: but we know that so these are business decisions.
Speaker 2: As I've just said, they haven't changed their business model.
Speaker 2: They say they're eighteen is a twenty. It's a marketing decision,
Speaker 2: and I get that that's a business decision. But my
Speaker 2: question is if we're working hard to unpick. As one
Speaker 2: of our Voxpop people said there, that a smaller number
Speaker 2: is a better number always, and I think that we
Speaker 2: really have been making headway there, particularly with younger people.
Speaker 2: So when I talk to my daughter and I'm like, well,
Speaker 2: you might buy this size, you might buy this size,
Speaker 2: It's got nothing to do with your body. It's to
Speaker 2: do with the way the clothes are made. I'm trying
Speaker 2: really hard not to give her a message that a
Speaker 2: ten is better than a twelve is better than a fourteen,
Speaker 2: and so it just seems regressive.
Speaker 1: Clothing labels have to have sizes, right. And it's interesting
Speaker 1: what you say, Jesse about if you go in and
Speaker 1: you don't see anything in your size, the number you've
Speaker 1: got in my head. I don't have a number in
Speaker 1: my head because in my wardrobe I've got everything from
Speaker 1: a size six to a size fourteen, depending on how
Speaker 1: I like it to fit, depending on what label it is,
Speaker 1: depending on when I go.
Speaker 4: I think there are different types of consumers, right. And
Speaker 4: the other thing that's happening here is I wonder, in
Speaker 4: terms of the economics of the whole thing, people who
Speaker 4: are straight sized probably buy more clothes. Why do they
Speaker 4: buy more clothes because there are more clothes available?
Speaker 1: Correct?
Speaker 4: Yes, So it's like it's self fulfilling because if I'm
Speaker 4: a size twenty, then it's like I don't feel like
Speaker 4: I have lots of options. The world has told me
Speaker 4: that there are only certain styles that suit me.
Speaker 1: I'm going to push back on that. I think there
Speaker 1: are more options now than there ever have been before,
Speaker 1: with just a diversity of sizes.
Speaker 2: But we've just established that the average Australian woman is
Speaker 2: a fourteen to sixty, So that means that the average
Speaker 2: is the middle. Think of the amount of people who
Speaker 2: are above that not being so.
Speaker 1: I think what's interesting here, as you said, Wholly and
Speaker 1: again I'm not divining Witchery, is the fact that it
Speaker 1: used to be the smaller size, the fact that we
Speaker 1: are now going down to a four.
Speaker 4: What is that saying, Well, it's probably saying something about
Speaker 4: the teen segment or kind of the you know, fifteen,
Speaker 4: sixteen seventeen. You used to go and almost shop as
Speaker 4: a child, or we had I remember I did soup
Speaker 4: pre right. It was like I never shopped in the
Speaker 4: same shop as my mother. But now we kind of are.
Speaker 4: But on the size fourteen to sixteen.
Speaker 2: I looked it up.
Speaker 4: I looked at Witchery's competitors. I couldn't find one of
Speaker 4: Witchery's competitors that went above a sixteen. So Witchery is
Speaker 4: already doing like one more, which isn't you know, to
Speaker 4: give them too much credit. But if the average is
Speaker 4: fourteen to sixteen, and that is an extra on, some extra, extra,
Speaker 4: extra large, well that is why.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why this has become such in a motive
Speaker 2: conversation this week, right, because a lot of people are
Speaker 2: really mad about it. A lot of people are very upset.
Speaker 2: And that's the reason why, because as you just said,
Speaker 2: there are enormous amount of Australian women who are just
Speaker 2: cut out of being able to enjoy fashion and able
Speaker 2: to enjoy clothes. I have one more question on this though,
Speaker 2: from my business expert friend, Meir Friedman. There's a little
Speaker 2: cynical bit of me that thinks this was a deliberate
Speaker 2: fuss because, as you said, Jesse, they wiped their instir.
Speaker 2: They've come back all big. They needed a big splash.
Speaker 2: They apparently haven't changed anything except the numbers.
Speaker 1: No, that's not true. They've really changed the range.
Speaker 2: No no, no, sorry, I mean in terms of the sizing,
Speaker 2: and they haven't changed anything except the numbers. No, no, I
Speaker 2: know the clothes are different, But what I mean is
Speaker 2: they haven't actually cut size twenty. They've just rebranded it.
Speaker 2: That's what they're telling us. So the decision to do
Speaker 2: it was it just a publicity play because everybody's been
Speaker 2: talking about Witchery for five days now, negatively positively. Oh
Speaker 2: maybe I'll go and have a look. I went online
Speaker 2: looked at this new range. Was very representative of the
Speaker 2: clothes I see the young people around the office. It
Speaker 2: was very expensive. There was a really beautiful blue shirt
Speaker 2: and I'm like, oh, I might buy that, and then
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, I don't know if I should
Speaker 2: because maybe it's bad. But so was this just smart
Speaker 2: marketing to cause a storm for Witchery.
Speaker 4: And did it work well?
Speaker 1: It has worked, because sales are up forty one percent,
Speaker 1: But I don't think anyone would say that you would
Speaker 1: deliberately try to have a backlash against and criticism of
Speaker 1: a new launch. I really feel for the young designer Kirby,
Speaker 1: who's been brought in clearly with an objective, here's what
Speaker 1: we want you to do for the business. She's done
Speaker 1: that clearly, and she's personally copped a lot of backlash
Speaker 1: because we've sort of lays it in on the size thing.
Speaker 1: But there's also a bubbleskirt that people were really angry
Speaker 1: about because it's like, oh, I always depended on Witchery
Speaker 1: for corporate wear and sort of grown up clothes, and
Speaker 1: Witchery models were a little bit older, and now it
Speaker 1: does look cooler in their marketing, in the clothes that
Speaker 1: they've done. It's also more expensive, as you say. And
Speaker 1: I think what's been interesting to me is to see
Speaker 1: it's been a good thing for Witchery in some ways,
Speaker 1: because you've got a whole cohort of women who've said,
Speaker 1: I feel really betrayed. This is not what I thought
Speaker 1: Witchery was, and I feel that Witchery doesn't want me anymore,
Speaker 1: and I feel betrayed, and I feel rejected because what
Speaker 1: I thought Witchery was, Witchery is telling me it no
Speaker 1: longer wants to be. And so that speaks a lot
Speaker 1: to Witchery's position in the psyche for Australian women. But also,
Speaker 1: you don't do a refresh like that unless you have
Speaker 1: a problem, unless you are losing audience share, unless sales
Speaker 1: are down, unless you need to change and get a
Speaker 1: different and a bigger and a higher spending customer base.
Speaker 1: Because a lot of the people that are saying I'm
Speaker 1: really angry at Witchery, I'd be interested to know how
Speaker 1: long since they've shot there, because I went through a
Speaker 1: phase where I bought so much Witchery. I loved it.
Speaker 1: But I've found myself really going off it over the
Speaker 1: last few years because I kind of haven't known what
Speaker 1: it is, Like it isn't country Road, but it isn't
Speaker 1: Q but it isn't. Yeah, it's like I know what
Speaker 1: cotton On is, I know what Zara is, I know
Speaker 1: what country Road is, but I don't really know what
Speaker 1: Witchery is anymore. And I used to. I even know
Speaker 1: what Seed is, but I would argue that Seed is
Speaker 1: another brand that's gone a little bit that way. So
Speaker 1: they're sort of in that middle that's a bit of
Speaker 1: a no man's land where they're not particularly cheap, they're
Speaker 1: not particularly cool, they're not particularly fancy. Are they for
Speaker 1: old people? They're not for young people, but they're not
Speaker 1: really for old people. They're just a bit nothing. They
Speaker 1: didn't they lost their brand personality, so they have followed
Speaker 1: the path of dish. Dish has been around for decades,
Speaker 1: but people have only started talking about it in the
Speaker 1: last year.
Speaker 4: I wrought it about twenty twenty when they launched the
Speaker 4: Capsual wardrobe.
Speaker 2: So you don't think they deliberately provoked to.
Speaker 1: Find No, no, no, no, no no. It's never the conspiracy,
Speaker 1: it's always the fuck up. So I think they were
Speaker 1: naive in not perhaps seeing this coming. The other mistake
Speaker 1: they made is in that first tranch of social media
Speaker 1: content that they created, there were only straight sized, very
Speaker 1: young women. And I think that's interesting what you found out, Jesse,
Speaker 1: about the objective of the new range and the new
Speaker 1: look for Witchery is forever thirty. So that was just
Speaker 1: to me. But with my fashion, do I want to
Speaker 1: look around thirty? I don't work with my face, but
Speaker 1: with my fashion, yeah, maybe I don't want to look
Speaker 1: fifty because the idea to.
Speaker 2: Me, if don't I want to look twenty, well no,
Speaker 2: I definitely don't want to look I don't know. I
Speaker 2: don't want to look twenty. But if I'm twenty four,
Speaker 2: don't I want to look twenty or thirty?
Speaker 1: So that's what's interesting. So people always want to age
Speaker 1: down or up. So for example, when I used to
Speaker 1: do Cosmo, we used to pitch even though our average
Speaker 1: reader was eighteen to twenty four. That was our sweet spot,
Speaker 1: but we pitched at a twenty seven year old. And
Speaker 1: so with fashion, you pitched down to attract an older.
Speaker 1: So if they're pitching at thirty, I would say that
Speaker 1: means their demographic is twenty five to forty five.
Speaker 4: And look, I don't know much about fashion, but I
Speaker 4: would think if the average woman is a size fourteen
Speaker 4: to sixteen and she's looking at clothes, she wants to
Speaker 4: know what they're gonna look like on her.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 4: And we had an article on Mama Maya buy a
Speaker 4: Millia Morris. She is exactly that size and she went
Speaker 4: into Witchery and tried it on and she went it
Speaker 4: looked amazing, so good.
Speaker 1: And she's a stylist. So I really love that story.
Speaker 1: Instead of reading all the reaction.
Speaker 4: To it, it's just like, he's what it actually looks
Speaker 4: that we.
Speaker 1: Sound like an ad for witchery.
Speaker 3: We forget that.
Speaker 1: But I know here to defend witchery or spook witchery.
Speaker 2: As we've discussed today, there is an enormous section of
Speaker 2: the female community in Australia who cannot walk into a
Speaker 2: shop and find things that fit them.
Speaker 3: And it hurts.
Speaker 4: We're putting the house.
Speaker 1: On the market. What about us. You're adults. It's time
Speaker 1: you started acting like adults. Mom. It's taking children longer
Speaker 1: to grow up and become adults. You may have noticed,
Speaker 1: because most people think of parenting being something that you
Speaker 1: do for little kids. But a piece in the Atlantic
Speaker 1: this week has flagged that we are living in an
Speaker 1: age of endless parenting. This hu to be called failure
Speaker 1: to launch. There was even a movie by that name
Speaker 1: about it, like a thirty year old who never moved
Speaker 1: out of home, and it referred to this idea of
Speaker 1: someone who didn't leave the nest and transition into that
Speaker 1: next life phase where you are meant to separate from
Speaker 1: your family of origin and perhaps go and start a
Speaker 1: family of your own and certainly become more independent. But
Speaker 1: it's no longer failure to launch now, it's just normal.
Speaker 2: So forty five.
Speaker 1: Percent of young adults aged eighteen to twenty nine reported
Speaker 1: living with their parents in a new Pew survey, making
Speaker 1: it the most common living arrangement for that age group
Speaker 1: for the first time since just after the Great Depression.
Speaker 1: Some people are freaked out by that number. I imagine Holly
Speaker 1: would be one of them, and they say that it
Speaker 1: is evidence of a mushrooming over dependence among a generation
Speaker 1: of hapless grown babies and of caregivers parents who can't,
Speaker 1: for God's sake stop giving care. Well, the helicopter generation, right, Yeah, but.
Speaker 2: It's also impossible to look at that stat and I
Speaker 2: also consider how expensive it is to move out of home. Right,
Speaker 2: So that's true. There are a number of factors coinciding
Speaker 2: to make that the reality.
Speaker 1: Yes, But in terms of whether we should have an
Speaker 1: existential panic about the fact that more people are in
Speaker 1: more regular contact with their grown children than used to
Speaker 1: be the case, there's another angle in this story in
Speaker 1: The Atlantic that was written by Faith Hill, not the singer.
Speaker 1: She said, today's average parent child bond does seem to
Speaker 1: involve near constant communication. Yet it also comes with an
Speaker 1: intensified emotional closeness of the kind once reserved for friends
Speaker 1: and romantic partners. So it's almost like the takeaway of
Speaker 1: this are our parents the new friends.
Speaker 4: So this was very evident in a film that you
Speaker 4: both made me watch last night, which I'm really pissed
Speaker 4: off about.
Speaker 2: We're going to make you talk about it too in
Speaker 2: a minute tomorrow.
Speaker 4: We're doing a subscriber episode on it, A Family Affair
Speaker 4: for any out louder who watched it. I know lots
Speaker 4: of people have been posting in the Facebook grip about it.
Speaker 4: You don't need to have watched it to kind of
Speaker 4: understand the dynamic, which is that you've got Nicole Kidman,
Speaker 4: who's a woman. What do you think she's meant to
Speaker 4: be fifty early early fifties. She has a daughter who's
Speaker 4: twenty four, and she is sort of pursuing this romantic
Speaker 4: interest and her daughter is horrified and disgusted and angry.
Speaker 4: And it's this tension between being a good mother and
Speaker 4: dating someone that you like. Right, what was he like
Speaker 4: twenty years longer than you?
Speaker 1: Sixteen? Oh?
Speaker 6: Pardon me, I thought you're wor smarter than this mom?
Speaker 4: To fuck with this love bombing bullshit.
Speaker 1: I mean, you don't care how I feel about this.
Speaker 4: And I was watching it. I know there's a lot
Speaker 4: of angles out of that movie, but thinking, maye, you're
Speaker 4: twenty four, like get out of your parents' house. The
Speaker 4: idea was always have heard women say I'll wait till
Speaker 4: my kids leave school and then I'll think about dating.
Speaker 4: But now because their kids never move out, it's like
Speaker 4: you've got.
Speaker 1: Or getting a divorce. That used to be the thing,
Speaker 1: like we just stay together until the kids have finished
Speaker 1: school and left home.
Speaker 4: So you just put it off and off and off
Speaker 4: until it's like you've got a twenty four year old
Speaker 4: daughter who still has emotional needs and you can't have
Speaker 4: a relationship.
Speaker 2: This is what it made me wonder, right because basically
Speaker 2: there's a bit in this and I wrote it down
Speaker 2: because I wanted to ask me how what she thought.
Speaker 2: Basically in the movie, the daughter is asking her mum
Speaker 2: or telling her mom that please do not date this
Speaker 2: man for a lot of reasons that you don't need
Speaker 2: to worry about here, but do not date this man.
Speaker 2: And the conundrum that is posed here is, as a
Speaker 2: good mother, do you date this man even though your
Speaker 2: adult daughter really doesn't want you to. And what it
Speaker 2: made me think is does the endless parenting which we've
Speaker 2: just said caused by all these things mean that once
Speaker 2: you become a parent, once you have a child, every
Speaker 2: single choice you make from now on, not for five years,
Speaker 2: not for ten, not for twenty, but forever, have to
Speaker 2: center that person as the number one decision making factor
Speaker 2: forevermore so, whether that's who you date, what job you take,
Speaker 2: where you choose to live, maybe you choose to move
Speaker 2: away from them even though they'd like you to be
Speaker 2: the nanny for their kid all the time, whether that's
Speaker 2: spending your money rather than saving it, or giving it
Speaker 2: to them to buy a house, Like any of the
Speaker 2: decisions you make about your life, they should be the
Speaker 2: number one factor what I think. Do you think that's true?
Speaker 1: That's not how I read this, and that's being resected. No,
Speaker 1: that was not my takeaway from this idea that parents
Speaker 1: are the new friends, because in a friendship, it's not
Speaker 1: a parent child relationship, right, you become kind of equals.
Speaker 1: So Jesse and I are really good examples of, you know,
Speaker 1: both even before our families became connected. The kinds of
Speaker 1: relationships we have with our parents, and for me with
Speaker 1: my growing up and grown up children is much more
Speaker 1: ameshed than perhaps of different generations and in your experience,
Speaker 1: and not everyone is like that now. But it's not
Speaker 1: about you always stay in that parent child dynamic, which
Speaker 1: is what that movie was, a real parent child dynamic
Speaker 1: where the child was just not she was being a dick.
Speaker 2: But we all know people right who their kids have said,
Speaker 2: don't do that thing. Yeah, why you're making well call.
Speaker 1: As faith Hill wrote, she said, this doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: adult kids are failing to launch or that their parents
Speaker 1: are suffering. Rather, the way our society understands child rearing
Speaker 1: is evolving. The assignment, which was once to raise an
Speaker 1: independent child and set them off into the world, is
Speaker 1: now to foster a deep, lasting relationship with them as friends.
Speaker 1: So it's not like, right, it's a fixed period of time.
Speaker 1: Then you go off into the world and we not
Speaker 1: go our separate ways, but we have a different relationship. Now.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, once you grow up, we will transition
Speaker 1: into being friends and we will stay close and talk
Speaker 1: all the time in the same way that romantic partners
Speaker 1: or friends would.
Speaker 4: I reckon that's Pollyanna, though, because a family affair as
Speaker 4: well as what zi Anne Hathaway the Idler review I
Speaker 4: dea review. Right, So there's two films very similar in
Speaker 4: a very short period of time. So they're trying to
Speaker 4: tell us something. Both women in this similar ages had
Speaker 4: adult daughters living at home, and the dynamic at the
Speaker 4: beginning of the films was that they were just make
Speaker 4: they were friends, and they were talking about work and
Speaker 4: life and quite equal equal partnership.
Speaker 1: Well, in the idea of you, even though she looked
Speaker 1: like she was about twenty five, she was meant to
Speaker 1: be a teenager because remember she went to summer camp,
Speaker 1: so she was still in high school.
Speaker 4: She went to college at the end, so there was
Speaker 4: something she was kind of getting into adulthood. But then
Speaker 4: there was a cornerstone moment in both films where the
Speaker 4: parent relationship was kind of takes takes priority.
Speaker 1: The children demanded that of their mother. Well the girls did.
Speaker 4: Yes, And so I think that what they were also
Speaker 4: trying to say, or what these films are trying to
Speaker 4: interrogate or look at culturally, is whether desire can coexist
Speaker 4: with motherhood and the idea that it can is revolutionary,
Speaker 4: but it can only coexist if you are given permission
Speaker 4: from the child, which is this really kind of sick codependency.
Speaker 2: And also I find it really interesting that idea that
Speaker 2: even once they're adults, you have to prioritize their needs, Like,
Speaker 2: I find that really interesting.
Speaker 4: And in fact, because I was thinking with a family affair, right,
Speaker 4: I was thinking about the child parent relationship and then
Speaker 4: I went there were moments in that where in fact
Speaker 4: the child was parenting the mother. A lot of her
Speaker 4: concerns were like, oh, but you're going to get hurt,
Speaker 4: You're going to get and I keep coming across this
Speaker 4: word it's sort of therapy speak, but it's parentification. You
Speaker 4: had a miss and it occurs when parents look to
Speaker 4: their children for emotional or practical support rather than providing it.
Speaker 4: And I think there are a lot of people who
Speaker 4: with their enmeshment with their parents, often experience this either
Speaker 4: with one or with both, where they're living together and
Speaker 4: they feel like the roles have been reversed, where suddenly
Speaker 4: the parent child dynamic exists. But it can invert, but
Speaker 4: it should.
Speaker 1: Invert if you look, but it follow it to its
Speaker 1: natural conclusion. We will be looking after our aging parents
Speaker 1: if they're thankfully lived to a ripe old age. It
Speaker 1: does invert, and in its extreme forms people talk about
Speaker 1: changing their parents' nappies at the end of life. That's
Speaker 1: in its extreme form. The way I see this is
Speaker 1: the onness isn't just on the parent to parent forever,
Speaker 1: because I agree with you that sounds like a very
Speaker 1: bad deal, and be selfless and not be an actualized person.
Speaker 1: The onus is also on the young adult to stop
Speaker 1: seeing their parent as mummy and daddy and start seeing
Speaker 1: them as a woman or a man who has their
Speaker 1: own wants, needs, flaws, flaws.
Speaker 2: I think that's trickier than it's ever been right because
Speaker 2: of what we've done to parenting over the past couple
Speaker 2: of generations, which is the model for motherhood. Even as
Speaker 2: women's lives have become more crowded and more demanding with
Speaker 2: outside the house work and all those responsibilities, a model
Speaker 2: of motherhood is still this all consuming, self sacrificing thing.
Speaker 2: The kind of ideal mummy on the Instagram is she's
Speaker 2: only ever thinking of her baby, and she's only ever
Speaker 2: making amazing food for them from the you know, virgin
Speaker 2: organic pumpkins from wherever, you know, Like it's that model,
Speaker 2: and so we've made that the model of parenting that
Speaker 2: we like, and then we also seem to be extending
Speaker 2: the amount of time you're supposed to do it for
Speaker 2: I remember very clearly when I was young that the
Speaker 2: sort of typical gen X parenting that I got well
Speaker 2: as in from the boomers, but I'm gen X, was
Speaker 2: that sort of they call it benign neglect, which I'm
Speaker 2: fine with, Like that was fine for me. But I
Speaker 2: was very aware alway is that my parents were people.
Speaker 2: They had interests outside the home. They had jobs and
Speaker 2: friends and lives and interests and things they wanted to
Speaker 2: do that weren't really about me and my brother and personally,
Speaker 2: and I know you can't generalize, but that's okay. And
Speaker 2: I try and model that to my kids. Right It's like,
Speaker 2: I love you to bits the center of my world,
Speaker 2: blah blah. But I'm a human and Dad is a human,
Speaker 2: and we also have needs too, and we also have
Speaker 2: things we want to achieve and all those things. So
Speaker 2: I think it's become harder than ever for kids who
Speaker 2: were moving into that early adult phase to start seeing
Speaker 2: their parents are separate from themselves, because we've pushed that
Speaker 2: and meshment, and we've also pushed the job of parenting
Speaker 2: into this all encompassing existence.
Speaker 1: I think also what I've always noticed as my children
Speaker 1: have grown up is that helicopter parenting, of which I
Speaker 1: am very much a helicopter parent because Gen X's are
Speaker 1: the first generation to have got that memo in the hospital,
Speaker 1: Hey make sure nothing bad ever happens to this child.
Speaker 1: Their self esteem and their lack of having a negative
Speaker 1: emotion is your performance review. Helicopter parents make helicopter children.
Speaker 1: So when you sort of go, right, okay, off you go,
Speaker 1: and when you throw COVID into that as well, when
Speaker 1: they couldn't leave the house, then suddenly the cage doors
Speaker 1: were thrown open, and the kids didn't want to go
Speaker 1: outside because they'd been inside for so long and they'd
Speaker 1: almost depending on what age they are, they sort of
Speaker 1: missed that stage of their development. So it's hard to
Speaker 1: sort of helicopter, helicopter, helicopter and then just go right, well,
Speaker 1: you're eighteen, I'm landing the helicopter. You're on your own bye,
Speaker 1: because they're like, wait what. I don't know.
Speaker 2: When I was growing up, I had a friend whose
Speaker 2: family you had to move our eighteen the on your
Speaker 2: eighteenth birthday, you had to move out that with that,
Speaker 2: we all used to be kind of incredulous at that,
Speaker 2: but also there was a lot of grudging respect for it.
Speaker 2: And I was sent to bread the other day.
Speaker 3: Can we implement that?
Speaker 2: I don't know that we can because times have changed,
Speaker 2: things are expensive, But twenty one, surely, come on out
Speaker 2: of the fucking house.
Speaker 1: Colie. You'll just move to a different state. I know you.
Speaker 2: I definitely will, and I won't tell them where.
Speaker 1: No forwarding address. I love you, but it's time for
Speaker 1: you to go, and if you don't, I will.
Speaker 4: Every Tuesday and Thursday we drop new segments of Mummy
Speaker 4: are out Loud just for Mummy A subscribers follow the
Speaker 4: link in the show notes to get your daily dose
Speaker 4: of out Loud and a big thank you to all
Speaker 4: our current subscribers.
Speaker 2: Can someone please tell Sarah that all her friends hate her?
Speaker 2: People are posting strangers bitch sessions on TikTok, and Sarah
Speaker 2: is a good example. Stranger gossip is a thing. So
Speaker 2: let's say that a woman films a group of women
Speaker 2: she doesn't know bitching about Sarah.
Speaker 3: Maybe you're in.
Speaker 2: A queue at the coffee shop, or you're in the
Speaker 2: park eating your sandwich or whatever. There's a group of
Speaker 2: women nearby and they're bitching about Sarah. You surreptitiously film them.
Speaker 2: You post that video, and you say, look at these
Speaker 2: bitches bitching about Sarah. If anyone knows Sarah, they should
Speaker 2: tell her. Right. The arching assumption about this trend is
Speaker 2: a stop the Internet. I want to get off because
Speaker 2: fu and b all gossiping is a bad thing, right,
Speaker 2: Having a little vent about someone in your life is
Speaker 2: bad and dirty and it needs to be exposed immediately,
Speaker 2: and you need to be called out. Jesse, you love
Speaker 2: a gossip? I do, please defend the women coming for Sarah.
Speaker 4: I'm going to defend gossiping and defend the people bitching
Speaker 4: about Sarah. Firstly, Sarah might in fact probably deserves it.
Speaker 1: I don't know, objectively annoying.
Speaker 4: I think's bitch, And in fact I would like to
Speaker 4: know why Sarah's a bitch, and I could probably get involved.
Speaker 4: I don't know her, but like I have an opinion.
Speaker 2: Sarah tries too hard. Yes, Sarah follows your x on
Speaker 2: Instagram exactly, Sarah got that job you wanted. Sarah's got
Speaker 2: terrible tasting shoes.
Speaker 1: To me, this is like wiki leaks. There are some
Speaker 1: things that need to be secret, and you don't need
Speaker 1: them spread all over the Internet for the society to
Speaker 1: function and then not to be anarchy in the streets
Speaker 1: and in our group chats, we need some privacy to
Speaker 1: talk about people.
Speaker 4: And talking about people is so important to social cohesion, Yes,
Speaker 4: and a thriving democracy. For the person spoken about Holly,
Speaker 4: and they won't know if this bitch isn't recording it.
Speaker 1: It's called TikTok tattle tale. I don't like it, and
Speaker 1: the Internet's full of it. It's very upsetting. I don't
Speaker 1: like it because I also am like there's a real person.
Speaker 1: The people who are doing this and exposing these conversations
Speaker 1: and sharing them act as though they're these vigilantes that
Speaker 1: are helping Sarah.
Speaker 2: How Sarah gon to feel.
Speaker 4: They're ruining Sarah's day. That doesn't make you know.
Speaker 1: That my friendship, You're only going to upset Sarah.
Speaker 4: And the thing about gossiping is that when you are
Speaker 4: talking to your friends about something that's occurred, or you're
Speaker 4: prosecuting a dilemma you've had, what you're really doing is
Speaker 4: you're talking about morals and ethics and trying to understand
Speaker 4: the world around you. It's also a bid for connection.
Speaker 4: We've talked about bids off.
Speaker 2: It's a pebble.
Speaker 1: It's a pebble exactly as a bid for connection where we're.
Speaker 2: Trying to go Sarah, I hate Sarah, let's connect.
Speaker 4: Yes, you're also going I trust you enough to tell
Speaker 4: you I hate Sarah. So this is about trust, it's
Speaker 4: about venting, it's about taking off a certain amount of baggage. Look,
Speaker 4: it's not always is good, but it's how a lot
Speaker 4: of connections.
Speaker 2: Question can I ask a question right? And I know
Speaker 2: I'm playing Pollyanna in this situation, when you have sat
Speaker 2: down with your friend's sister, workmates, whatever, and had a
Speaker 2: really good bitch about somebody, like, you've just sledged them. Me,
Speaker 2: you've just sledged them for twenty minutes.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Do you walk out of that room feeling good? Or
Speaker 2: do you walk out of that room feeling like you
Speaker 2: need a shower?
Speaker 1: Yes, that's how I feel. I need, whether it's in
Speaker 1: the room, or it's in a group, or in a shower. Shower, shower, absolutely, shower.
Speaker 4: So I was reading this article on The Guardian recently
Speaker 4: about different types of friendships. Right, You've got the common
Speaker 4: enemy friend, which means that you bonded over a shared
Speaker 4: hatred of someone.
Speaker 2: Or something that's very often at work.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 4: Now, whenever that person annoys you, you go, I'm going
Speaker 4: to go to them because that's our connection. Right. And
Speaker 4: there's also another type of friend called the resting bitch friend,
Speaker 4: and they're harsher than you. I have a friend like this,
Speaker 4: She's harsher than me. So when you need to get
Speaker 4: something out that's mean spirited and bitchy, you go to
Speaker 4: them and they take it one step further and you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: Now the common enemy friend in defense. I have a
Speaker 4: friend at the moment that's not very well. She's going
Speaker 4: through a very very hard time. We have a common enemy,
Speaker 4: and when she's having a bad day, you chair her
Speaker 4: up with I'm chair her up with a little.
Speaker 1: Bit of a chat about that common enemy. Yes, yeah, distraction.
Speaker 4: It's just a bit of distraction. It's a bit of
Speaker 4: a connection, it is. And again it's going I'm just
Speaker 4: going to test my reality here, because what this person
Speaker 4: we're talking about is doing seems bizarre, seems unethical, seems mean,
Speaker 4: seems whatever. And you and I connecting over that is
Speaker 4: just giving you a second to not think about existential shit.
Speaker 4: It seems like I am going to I'm.
Speaker 1: Going to say two things about this quickly. Firstly, I
Speaker 1: do that too, but for a different reason. You know
Speaker 1: that Reddit thread am I the Asshole? I'll often do
Speaker 1: it as a reality check where I will go and
Speaker 1: I will need to see how I feel about something
Speaker 1: mirrored back by someone else who will meet my intensity
Speaker 1: of irritation, frustration, loathing.
Speaker 4: But am I the asshole? Is always really funny, right,
Speaker 4: because you would only have asked that question if you
Speaker 4: don't think you're being the asshole, If you come to me,
Speaker 4: and God, am I being the asshole? This person is
Speaker 4: a total.
Speaker 1: Bitch and put so you're looking for people to go
Speaker 1: no validation, So I'm looking for validation. The second thing
Speaker 1: I'm going to say about this is that I have
Speaker 1: had a very clarifying experience many years ago where I
Speaker 1: was having a bitch with a mutual friend about someone
Speaker 1: else and my phone accidentally rang them.
Speaker 4: And they heard it, and that's actually my worst night.
Speaker 1: And it also sounded worse than it actually was, Like
Speaker 1: I am the part of the conversation, well it did.
Speaker 1: The part of the conversation they heard sounded worse than
Speaker 1: the whole context of the conversation. Anyway, our friendship managed
Speaker 1: to survive, and it was touch and go. And what
Speaker 1: it's done is that it's always been every time I'm
Speaker 1: bitching about someone I love, because sometimes, I mean, everyone
Speaker 1: fucks you off, right, I'm always thinking about that.
Speaker 4: You're thinking about a check, but I've seen you actually
Speaker 4: check your phone, and when you realize that, then.
Speaker 1: I'll just turn my face silent. Here's my thak the battery.
Speaker 2: If we are operating from a position where we're going
Speaker 2: bitching about people is fine, then we have to be
Speaker 2: fine with being bitched about I am.
Speaker 1: That has to be fine. People don't do it behind
Speaker 1: you back. They do it literally on your own Instagram page.
Speaker 2: But I don't know if that's true, Jesse Stevens, because,
Speaker 2: as discussed on this podcast more than once, you know
Speaker 2: how to hold a grudge. And I'm not convinced that
Speaker 2: if you overheard a couple of people bitching about you
Speaker 2: in the kitchen, they wouldn't go straight on your.
Speaker 4: Ship list the issue that they bitched badly. But I'm
Speaker 4: also because.
Speaker 1: You too must. I just know when you two are like, oh,
Speaker 1: that fucking she is such like I just know.
Speaker 4: Have you ever tried to pitch with Holli?
Speaker 1: She's difficult to beat? And you know what, I really
Speaker 1: value the people in my life have got quite a
Speaker 1: few of them who just dead bat you when you
Speaker 1: do it. And it's also quite frustrating in the moment,
Speaker 1: but ultimately it makes me a better person. I will
Speaker 1: be drawn then I feel ashamed of myself. It's very
Speaker 1: hard to draw you in every holiday, it is, Jesse's
Speaker 1: much Alia.
Speaker 4: I was listening to a podcasts recently which elucidated to
Speaker 4: me why why I need a good gossip every now
Speaker 4: and then. It was with a psychologist called Dr Emily Musgrove,
Speaker 4: and she was saying that the people who gospel a lot,
Speaker 4: who bitch a lot, who complain a lot, are the
Speaker 4: people who don't know how to set boundaries. So your
Speaker 4: way of asserting your boundaries, so, for example, MEA, because
Speaker 4: I can't do it to your face. What I'll do
Speaker 4: is I'll go and just bitch to Holly about the
Speaker 4: ways in which you overstacked.
Speaker 1: My boundary instead of going MEA, you're always late, can you? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you always interrupt instead of being able to say
Speaker 1: that to me, that's hard to say.
Speaker 4: That's hard.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, have you noticed how cranky
Speaker 1: Holly's been lately? And then I thought, I'll just say
Speaker 1: it to Holly.
Speaker 2: This is the thing, though, is that our relationship is
Speaker 2: different to lots of relationships, right, because actually, don't bitch
Speaker 2: about you very much, because it's like we can usually
Speaker 2: address things like if we're attatchy with each other and
Speaker 2: we feel the tension, we also know how to like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's much harder with some other friendships and some other relationships,
Speaker 2: you're like, oh, there's something wrong here, either we have to,
Speaker 2: you know, so I think it's a bit dependent.
Speaker 1: Like I'm also very aware of how corrosive it is.
Speaker 4: Oh, It's incredibly corrosive. And that's why I believe in
Speaker 4: what I'll call cross circle bitching. So what I'll do, He's.
Speaker 2: Going to vend rab bitching in order.
Speaker 1: To so you can bitch.
Speaker 4: You don't bitch with family to family. You don't bitch
Speaker 4: with work to work. That's why I particularly like gossip
Speaker 4: and bitching about people.
Speaker 1: I don't know what's the difference between venting and bitching.
Speaker 4: To me, I'm thinking it's the same. I mean, I'm
Speaker 4: never gonna sit down and be like, have you seen
Speaker 4: her eyebrows?
Speaker 2: That's not my thing.
Speaker 4: What I'm going to do is interrogate someone's behavior and
Speaker 4: talk about how that made me feel. And it's probably
Speaker 4: because in that moment I should have said or done
Speaker 4: something that I didn't do.
Speaker 1: Do you know what I'm going to advocate for is
Speaker 1: more bitching in private and less fucking leaving horrible comments
Speaker 1: and yeah, because remember when what social media has done
Speaker 1: is that it's introduced performativeness into bitching. Yea, So it's
Speaker 1: like I'm going to bitch about this person so that
Speaker 1: I can get social status with all the people watching me, bitch.
Speaker 1: And I think that is fun.
Speaker 4: It's quite addictive to watch, and it's also rewarded, and
Speaker 4: I've seen people do it. Like let's say there, you
Speaker 4: know a brand or a something even you know we're
Speaker 4: talking about witchery, not quite that, but let's say something
Speaker 4: happened on an airline that you didn't like, and they'll get
Speaker 4: their phone up and go blah blah blah. It's like,
Speaker 4: you probably should have just told the airline because not
Speaker 4: particularly interesting to us. I agree, don't put it on Instagram,
Speaker 4: have a private chat, make sure the phone's off, make
Speaker 4: sure you're not recording it, and then leave it. Speaking
Speaker 4: of a gossip.
Speaker 2: Oh this was a good one.
Speaker 1: What we wait seguay. We didn't even deliberately plan.
Speaker 4: This, but we were too ashamed to have this conversation
Speaker 4: on the podcast, so we went to do it as
Speaker 4: a subscribers. Our subscribers will understand. And there is a
Speaker 4: blind item circulating at the moment about an incident that
Speaker 4: occurred in Gwyneth Paltrow's house and someone apparently had a
Speaker 4: bowel movement in one of her guest beds.
Speaker 2: Actually we would guess cottages. We're not even certain about
Speaker 2: the locations.
Speaker 4: Well, what we had to do was talk about all
Speaker 4: the details and then decide. And this is gossip at
Speaker 4: its best. What would we have done? Right? What do
Speaker 4: you do? Do you tell Gwyneth? Do you not?
Speaker 1: What do we think happened?
Speaker 4: What do ea thing happened? We talked about it for
Speaker 4: too long. We did feel a bit dirty afterwards, but
Speaker 4: it was fun while it lasted. So if you need
Speaker 4: a gossip, go and listen to yesterday's Subs episode. Here's
Speaker 4: a sneak peek me ya.
Speaker 2: You are our expert spin doctor here. Yeah, our friend
Speaker 2: who were not naming, who is paying all the money
Speaker 2: to the spin doctors because the people keep leaving the
Speaker 2: fuo emojis on his Instagram account? What is he being
Speaker 2: advised to do?
Speaker 1: Right now? I've read that he'd fled and left that she.
Speaker 1: I can't believe that anyone would do that, because obviously
Speaker 1: Gwyneth knew who was sleeping in that bed.
Speaker 2: I can oh, you left also, I would imagine that
Speaker 2: he was probably also thinking, like in that state, in
Speaker 2: that freaked out state, Gwyneth herself is not stripping the bed,
Speaker 2: so he's probably thinking the staff are going to have
Speaker 2: to deal with it. They're probably not going to tell her,
Speaker 2: or maybe he's not thinking straight. He's just in the pattern.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you out louders for listening to us
Speaker 2: on this Wednesday episode, and a big thanks to our team.
Speaker 2: Of course, we're putting the show together. We are going
Speaker 2: to be back in your ears tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Bye by shout out to any Muma mia subscribers listening.
Speaker 1: If you love the show and want to support us
Speaker 1: as well, subscribing to MoMA mia is the very best
Speaker 1: way to do so. There is a link in the
Speaker 1: episode description.