Speaker 1: You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2: Mamma mea acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
Speaker 2: that this podcast is recorded on Hello and welcome to
Speaker 2: Mamma Mia Out Loud. What women are actually talking about
Speaker 2: on Monday, the seventeenth of June. I am Holly Wainwright, I'm.
Speaker 3: Mea Friedman and I'm Jemma Bath filling in for Jesse Stevens.
Speaker 3: I host another podcast from Mamma.
Speaker 1: Mia called True Crab Conversations. It's less murders on this show. Yes, good,
Speaker 1: that's a good thing.
Speaker 2: And on the show today a Princess's brave face, the
Speaker 2: very planned optics of Kate's return to work. And it's
Speaker 2: a fact it's never been harder to be the thirty
Speaker 2: something in Australia. But also millennials are about to get really,
Speaker 2: really rich. And what's different about the sex scenes you
Speaker 2: spent the weekend watching? But first, Jemma Bath.
Speaker 3: In case you missed it, a name that might be
Speaker 3: familiar to you, Bruce Werman. He's expected to appear in
Speaker 3: a Toomber court today for a committal hearing over rape charges.
Speaker 3: He's been charged with two counts of rape dating back
Speaker 3: to October twenty twenty one. Now we don't know the
Speaker 3: identity of his accuser, but we know that she is
Speaker 3: twenty nine and she allegedly met Lehman at a strip
Speaker 3: club in his hometown of Toowoomba.
Speaker 1: She says he gave her a.
Speaker 3: False name, Bryce, pretty close to Bruce, and she alleges
Speaker 3: that they left the club and went to a friend's
Speaker 3: house and got into bed together. She told him they
Speaker 3: wouldn't be having sex without a condom. They kissed and
Speaker 3: she fell asleep. She claims when she woke up, he
Speaker 3: was having sex with her, and says the next day
Speaker 3: he took her to get a morning after pill. Originally,
Speaker 3: when this story broke, Lehman was only referred to as
Speaker 3: a high profile man in media reports. That Queensland laws
Speaker 3: changed in October last year which allowed.
Speaker 1: Us to name him.
Speaker 3: This is the first time he's appeared in court in
Speaker 3: person for this matter, and basically this hearing will decide
Speaker 3: whether the chargers will be taken to trial.
Speaker 2: That sounds you can hear is me Mia and Jebba
Speaker 2: biding our tongues just a little bit. And if you're
Speaker 2: wondering if there should have been any more details in
Speaker 2: that segment. There are legal reasons why there aren't in
Speaker 2: last week's chaotic Royal rundown. I told you, gentle listeners,
Speaker 2: as out Loud's Fancy Society correspondent as I am, that
Speaker 2: Kate watch was back. It had been three months since
Speaker 2: those edited pictures of the Princess of Wales had made
Speaker 2: photo experts of the entire world, and we were getting restless.
Speaker 2: How is she going as she goes through her cancer treatment.
Speaker 2: Kate listened clearly to MEA's gentle urging for an update
Speaker 2: on her health, and on Friday night, Our Time, the
Speaker 2: Prince and Princess of Wales's official Instagram account released an
Speaker 2: image of Kate forest bathing, which is walking in the.
Speaker 1: Woods with some news.
Speaker 2: She said, I am making good progress, but as anyone
Speaker 2: going through chemotherapy will know, there are good days and
Speaker 2: bad days. On those bad days, you feel weak, tired
Speaker 2: and you have to give into your body resting. But
Speaker 2: on the good days, when you feel stronger, you want
Speaker 2: to make the most of feeling well. My treatment is
Speaker 2: ongoing and will be for a few more months. On
Speaker 2: the days I feel well enough, it's a joy to
Speaker 2: engage with school life spend personal time on the things
Speaker 2: that give me energy and positivity, as well as starting
Speaker 2: to do a little work from home. I'm looking forward
Speaker 2: to attending the King's Birthday parade this weekend with my family,
Speaker 2: and I hope to join a few public engagements over
Speaker 2: the summer, but equally knowing I'm not out of the
Speaker 2: woods yet. Catherine was coming back to work, and she
Speaker 2: did less than twenty four hours later in her first
Speaker 2: official appearance, that is an appearance not in a paparazzi
Speaker 2: photo taken with a long lens since Christmas. The next day,
Speaker 2: you would have had to be entirely out of Wi
Speaker 2: Fi range to have missed the photos of her attending
Speaker 2: the Trooping of the Color, which is the King's birthday,
Speaker 2: big deal in England.
Speaker 1: It's like a big.
Speaker 2: Military parade, and Prince William was in the parade. He
Speaker 2: was on a horse in one of those big furry hats.
Speaker 2: Don't ask me what all that means. Kate looked immaculate,
Speaker 2: healthy and happy, riding in a carriage with her kids
Speaker 2: and doing the traditional balcony appearance where she was given
Speaker 2: prime position next to the King. It would have been knackering,
Speaker 2: no question, but Kate's appearance was roundly received as a
Speaker 2: reassuring and joyous display that one of the most famous
Speaker 2: women in the world is okay. The thing is, of course,
Speaker 2: she's not quite okay, as she says so herself, some
Speaker 2: days she's shit, although she didn't put it quite like that. Mia,
Speaker 2: did you love Kate's brave face.
Speaker 4: I'm so overjoyed, first of all, to see her face.
Speaker 4: And I know that it sounded silly when I was
Speaker 4: saying last week, I'm just on an update. The parasocial
Speaker 4: relationship we have with people in the public eye who
Speaker 4: we feel we know is a real thing. I mean,
Speaker 4: the relationships not real, but the fact that we care
Speaker 4: for them and we want them to be okay. I
Speaker 4: mean not everybody does, but some of us do. I
Speaker 4: scrutinized her more than I've ever scrutinized anyone in a
Speaker 4: public appearance, and I was very observant of myself doing that.
Speaker 4: I thought the fact that she wore a very fitted
Speaker 4: white dress or white suit was very interesting, and what
Speaker 4: I realized is HARKing back to something that I read
Speaker 4: a few months ago. When she disappeared. That first photo
Speaker 4: came out and turned out to be airbrushed, and there's
Speaker 4: this sense of when the only access you have to
Speaker 4: someone is looking at them, which is the case pretty
Speaker 4: much for the royal family. Right, we don't know really
Speaker 4: anything about them. We just know essentially what they look
Speaker 4: like and what they choose to tell us. So we
Speaker 4: have to draw a lot of conclusions from what they wear,
Speaker 4: what their body looks like, what their facial expressions are,
Speaker 4: and now of course lip readers. And there's something about
Speaker 4: being a princess more than anything else, that their value
Speaker 4: is in their physicality. It's in literally showing up bodily
Speaker 4: for events, for official things, bringing attention to charities, And
Speaker 4: so the burden of that, even when you don't have cancer,
Speaker 4: in the whole world is not particularly looking at you
Speaker 4: must be unimaginable. And all I could think about was
Speaker 4: the pressure that she must have been under. And maybe
Speaker 4: she was like, this is her job, So maybe she
Speaker 4: was genuinely over joyed to be out of the house.
Speaker 4: We've all been locked down with illness and we know
Speaker 4: what that feels like. But I felt for all the
Speaker 4: cancer sufferers, survivors, people who were battling it, who looked
Speaker 4: at it and went ah.
Speaker 3: Right, I felt Similarly, I have quite a few people
Speaker 3: in my family and in my close circle that are
Speaker 3: have just gotten through cancer treatment or are currently going
Speaker 3: through it. And when I saw her, of course I
Speaker 3: was happy for her the individual, but I felt a
Speaker 3: bit sad for my family members at home, thinking I
Speaker 3: don't look anything like that in fact, my body, my face,
Speaker 3: my hair. I compare it to the beauty standards conversation
Speaker 3: where we look at super skinny, beautiful women and we
Speaker 3: compare ourselves to that and the expectations we put on that.
Speaker 3: In the same sense, here cancer patients looking at her,
Speaker 3: going yeah, well, if I don't look like that, am
Speaker 3: I doing something wrong?
Speaker 1: Letting the side down?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hear that, and I have read it. There
Speaker 2: was a comment in out loud as from somebody who
Speaker 2: clearly felt similarly and not very understandably, who said, did
Speaker 2: she get a special type of no hair loss, no grayskin,
Speaker 2: no mouth soors chemo. Honestly, I wish her well, of
Speaker 2: course she's a mom and a human being. But for
Speaker 2: the cancer patients who lose every hair on their body
Speaker 2: and think they'll never look human again, it seems demoralizing,
Speaker 2: not inspiring, And I thought that was really interesting and
Speaker 2: of course entirely valid. But what a lot of people
Speaker 2: have pointed out is that chemotherapy is not one experience
Speaker 2: for everybody, and there are plenty of ordinary in inverted
Speaker 2: commas have to work through chemo. A lot of women do,
Speaker 2: un men, obviously, but we're talking about women who have
Speaker 2: to put on a brave face, as it were, not
Speaker 2: to the Kate level, but to keep going, keep moving,
Speaker 2: keep putting their foot forward. And I don't know, I
Speaker 2: think I agree that in some ways it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: but she looks fine, but I think she had no choice.
Speaker 2: You've got to remember that to get her out of
Speaker 2: the house that day. Whatever Kate looks like on an
Speaker 2: ordinary Tuesday morning when she's finding it hard to get
Speaker 2: out of bed, to get her out of that house
Speaker 2: that day, she has a team. She has literally a team,
Speaker 2: and their number one job would have been make Kate
Speaker 2: look like Kate always looks, to reassure everybody that she
Speaker 2: is fine. That shit holds.
Speaker 4: That's what drives me crazy is this insistence that women,
Speaker 4: no matter what we're going through, we've just had a baby,
Speaker 4: we're pregnant, we're old, we're getting a hip replacement we're
Speaker 4: undergoing chemo. We must look perfect, we must look the same,
Speaker 4: We must be unchanged physically by any experience that happens
Speaker 4: to you.
Speaker 2: I don't think that's necessarily true of this, because I
Speaker 2: think we really applaud people who publicly come out and
Speaker 2: show their shaved heads or their masectomy scars.
Speaker 1: Like we do.
Speaker 2: We really applaud that because it reflects reality. But we're
Speaker 2: not looking at the Royal family for reality. What this
Speaker 2: whole very very stage managed return to work. I actually
Speaker 2: think they've handled it brilliantly. I think that their team
Speaker 2: has worked out all the messes that they made earlier
Speaker 2: in the year when they were with the airbrush pictures,
Speaker 2: and to give them benefit of the doubt, they're in
Speaker 2: uncharted waters there. But this has been handled brilliantly, with
Speaker 2: the announcement from Kate very quickly before it happened, so
Speaker 2: there's not too much speculation to be able to build up.
Speaker 2: But literally, her team would have been their brief would
Speaker 2: have been, she needs to look perfect, and with that
Speaker 2: amount of effort around you and all the hair pieces
Speaker 2: in the world and all the makeup teams and the
Speaker 2: cat anybody can look like.
Speaker 1: That for a day. Can I clarify.
Speaker 4: Also, none of what I'm saying is a criticism, it's observation,
Speaker 4: and I think those two things it's really important to
Speaker 4: make that distinction because it's like, she owes us nothing
Speaker 4: in terms of could she have come out in a
Speaker 4: headscarf and would she have done that, would she have
Speaker 4: appeared in public if in fact she never had hair.
Speaker 4: That is completely up to her to decide, and every
Speaker 4: person has to make their own decisions. But I was
Speaker 4: interested in this collective relief that you could feel that
Speaker 4: Kate looks exactly the same and is completely unchanged. And
Speaker 4: that was like reassuring for the masses, I guess on
Speaker 4: some level, but frustrating from a beauty standards point of
Speaker 4: view that we just never get a fucking break. But
Speaker 4: that's why two truths can live in the same world.
Speaker 4: We can be happy for Kate, but we can be
Speaker 4: sad for the people that looked at her on the
Speaker 4: weekend and struggled.
Speaker 2: I don't think that's about beauty standards though. I don't
Speaker 2: think it's about beauty standards. I think this is very
Speaker 2: much about royals and about that very like at all times,
Speaker 2: appearance is what matter. When you're royals, as you already
Speaker 2: said me, or it's literally their job and they don't
Speaker 2: want everybody to freak out. As we know, Royal family
Speaker 2: are on sort of rocky ground at the moment on
Speaker 2: all kinds of fronts, from the fact that they've lost
Speaker 2: two very prominent members to the fact that the King
Speaker 2: is unwell to the fact that the whole institution is
Speaker 2: on the nose. I don't think that we should be
Speaker 2: looking at this as a straight up beauty standard story.
Speaker 2: This is very much about the image that they had
Speaker 2: to project. It's not beyond the realms of possibility that
Speaker 2: down the line we might get a photo release of
Speaker 2: a very different version of Kate that's also very stage managed.
Speaker 2: But the idea that she would go out on the
Speaker 2: King's birthday looking anything other than how she looked is
Speaker 2: kind of unimaginable in royal world.
Speaker 4: It is, but that's what's depressing to me that if
Speaker 4: she doesn't meet that beauty standard, and imagine how this
Speaker 4: must feel for her, right she doesn't meet this beauty standard.
Speaker 4: Best we stay indoors.
Speaker 3: We're millennials.
Speaker 1: We work hard and have nothing to show for it.
Speaker 2: We're millennials, are dogs, have more.
Speaker 4: Followers than you on Instagram from millennials.
Speaker 1: We google it sixty times a day.
Speaker 3: There's good and bad news for millennials this week. The
Speaker 3: good news is we're potentially about to be really, really
Speaker 3: rich over the next twenty years. Millennials are poised to
Speaker 3: inherit ninety trillion dollars worth of assets and become the
Speaker 3: richest generation in history according to the Wealth Report.
Speaker 1: But it's by a few houses with that amount of money.
Speaker 3: Holy but but but this will only be the case
Speaker 3: for those who already come from affluent families, which could
Speaker 3: potentially deepen wealth inequality further. The thing is, this is
Speaker 3: quite about the bad news because that don't sound great.
Speaker 3: It's coming, it's coming. There's more bad news because the
Speaker 3: thing is this is quite a few years off for
Speaker 3: most millennials.
Speaker 1: People are living longer and longer, which is great.
Speaker 3: I as a millennial myself, don't even want to think
Speaker 3: about my parents not being here. But the bad news.
Speaker 3: Here's the bad news is that there's never been a
Speaker 3: worse time in Australian history to be thirty year old.
Speaker 4: Well, you don't want to hurry your parents along because
Speaker 4: that's a bit rude, but you would like their money.
Speaker 2: Yes, could I have a question about the thirty year
Speaker 2: olds because I have also heard this and I have
Speaker 2: changed my opinion about it since I fought with Jesse
Speaker 2: about it because I just didn't want to give us
Speaker 2: something to feel sorry for a self about. So I
Speaker 2: recognize that this is a real thing. But when we
Speaker 2: say the worst time ever, do we mean financially?
Speaker 3: I want to play a little grab to start off.
Speaker 3: It's from the ABC show gruin last week.
Speaker 1: Russell Holcroft.
Speaker 3: He's a panelist on the show. He's also a marketing guru.
Speaker 5: He said this, It's a fact that when I was thirty,
Speaker 5: the house cost me three times my salary. Now eight
Speaker 5: times plus for a thirty year old is what it's
Speaker 5: going to cost you to get into the housing market.
Speaker 5: It's true that hex has doubled in the last fifteen years, right,
Speaker 5: doubled from a fifteen thousand dollar bill to a thirty
Speaker 5: thousand dollar bill. It's true that a baby boomer paid
Speaker 5: half the tax that a thirty year old pays now
Speaker 5: when they were thirty years of age.
Speaker 4: So for context, Russell Holcroft is genexa. He would be
Speaker 4: like us. I remember my parents bought their first house
Speaker 4: together for I think forty six thousand dollars. That is
Speaker 4: mind blowing, Sydney.
Speaker 3: I'm thirty three, and honestly, hearing Holcroft say that made
Speaker 3: me feel quite relieved because I thought I was going
Speaker 3: a bit crazy. It feels like right now everyone in
Speaker 3: my generation is talking about the cost of living and
Speaker 3: how hard it is to make those big purchases in
Speaker 3: our life, like houses and weddings and big life moments.
Speaker 1: Because really it's really really.
Speaker 3: Tricky, and it made me feel quite validated hearing him
Speaker 3: spell it all out like that, because it feels like
Speaker 3: we're pushing against a brick wall.
Speaker 1: Away the brick wall.
Speaker 2: We're not the brick wall people. One of the things
Speaker 2: we have to think about when we have these generational fights, right,
Speaker 2: is that the reason people get defensive about it, and
Speaker 2: I get a bit defensive about it as gen Xa,
Speaker 2: Like when Jesse brought this up before, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: you make it so like I heard it easy. I
Speaker 2: didn't have it easy. And the thing is is, because
Speaker 2: there isn't anything you can do about the generation you're
Speaker 2: born into, right, it's not the boomer's fault that they
Speaker 2: were the baby boomers. They've just played the hand that
Speaker 2: they got. The thing you can change is the thing
Speaker 2: that made the boomers so successful, which is much better
Speaker 2: social policies around access to things like education and keeping
Speaker 2: it cheap, and like inflation and keeping it down the
Speaker 2: problem with this conversation is it too often becomes a
Speaker 2: generational bond fight, as if we're like the gen Y
Speaker 2: and Z are really mad with the boomers, as if
Speaker 2: they've done something wrong.
Speaker 1: I'm not mad at you. I'm really not. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I know you're not a millennial. I'm not boomers.
Speaker 4: Just to be clear, people have come on this podcast
Speaker 4: as guest hosts. I've really learned a lesson the hard
Speaker 4: way when they have referred to holly and ized boomers.
Speaker 4: So you have been warned that is your first strike strike.
Speaker 2: I know that you, personally, GENMA are not mad and
Speaker 2: as Mia says, we're not boomers, we're gen XI is
Speaker 2: a very the forgotten generation. But generally it does get
Speaker 2: like that. You look at the dialogue on social media
Speaker 2: and it's kind of like give us your house, Boomer, right,
Speaker 2: that's kind of the vibe, and I understand it. But
Speaker 2: that's not the solution, is it.
Speaker 1: But the solutions aren't.
Speaker 2: They're going to give you their houses in the end.
Speaker 3: They are, but it's Gen X and the boomers that
Speaker 3: are currently in positions of power to be able to
Speaker 3: change said social policies, to be able to make it
Speaker 3: easier for us. So we're not annoyed at everyday boomers
Speaker 3: and Gen X. I'm annoyed that our governments are ignoring
Speaker 3: our pleas for help. That's what I'm annoyed at. I'm
Speaker 3: running my own race. There's a little millennial in my
Speaker 3: little millennial pool. I just want to be able to
Speaker 3: do things. And you know the way, we need more
Speaker 3: millennials in our fers. Like seriously, you always need a
Speaker 3: real cross section of generations. I was hearing over the
Speaker 3: weekend that they're trying to put an age cap in
Speaker 3: Congress in the US because it's full of eighty and
Speaker 3: ninety year olds. I think that the average age of
Speaker 3: a senator or a congressman in Washington is.
Speaker 4: Like eighty What a thirty year old needs and want,
Speaker 4: So they're trying to cap it at like eighty one,
Speaker 4: and they don't things like childcare and things like legislation
Speaker 4: around the internet and social media. You need a real
Speaker 4: cross section in every parliament, of ages, of genders, of
Speaker 4: socioeconomic groups.
Speaker 1: It's crucial.
Speaker 2: In Australia, it's not too bad, but I hear you
Speaker 2: you one hundred percent do me or you're right. But
Speaker 2: also one of the reasons why this is difficult to
Speaker 2: grapple with is it hasn't happened for generations, right. The
Speaker 2: reason why this is such a tragedy really, and what
Speaker 2: Horcroft is trying to explain there, and he does it
Speaker 2: very well, is that for millennials and gen Z is
Speaker 2: this is the first time in three generations that the
Speaker 2: children are going to be worse off than their parents,
Speaker 2: which is where this inheritance thing comes in, Right, Baby
Speaker 2: Boom is inherited next to nothing from their parents because
Speaker 2: the Great Depression, all of those things. Gen X, we're
Speaker 2: not going to get much, right, Millennials are going to
Speaker 2: get a lot of money one day. They're calling it
Speaker 2: the Great Wealth Transfer. This isn't only in Australia, it's
Speaker 2: in America. It's in all kinds of countries, and it's
Speaker 2: going to be so seismic. You're right, gem that on
Speaker 2: an in visual level, this is only going to benefit
Speaker 2: you if your parents are doing well. But the reason
Speaker 2: why it's a bigger picture thing is it literally is
Speaker 2: the first time that your standard of living is going
Speaker 2: to be lower than your parents by the time you
Speaker 2: reach a significant point in your career, and so they're
Speaker 2: figuring out how to handle that. And the argument about
Speaker 2: whether or not you should be hurrying your parents along
Speaker 2: is kind of humorous, except it's not. Because one of
Speaker 2: the big conversations is about whether or not boomers and
Speaker 2: older gen xers should be disincentivized to keep hold of
Speaker 2: their family homes, for example, to force them back onto
Speaker 2: the market for young people. But then the young people
Speaker 2: aren't going to be able to afford to buy them anyway.
Speaker 2: And they just did this survey in Australia about whether
Speaker 2: or not boomers were willing to drop their lifestyle expectations
Speaker 2: to help their kids out. And while lots of people
Speaker 2: are doing that, another lot of boomers are also like, well, no,
Speaker 2: because I worked really hard for this and why should
Speaker 2: I be on two minute noodles in my retirement. And
Speaker 2: that's where all the emotions and the argument stuff.
Speaker 3: But this is why the bank of Mum and Dad
Speaker 3: people scoff at that and at those headlines but it's
Speaker 3: actually such an important part of our current society. I
Speaker 3: know that I probably wouldn't have had a wedding if
Speaker 3: I hadn't have had help from my parents. I also
Speaker 3: wouldn't be in the relatively comfortable apartment i'm in if
Speaker 3: my parents and in laws hadn't helped me, because even
Speaker 3: though my husband and I are on relatively good incomes,
Speaker 3: we couldn't afford what is currently out there in the world.
Speaker 1: We do live.
Speaker 3: One of the most expensive cities in Australia in the world.
Speaker 3: It shouldn't be this tough, and that is why my
Speaker 3: generation is looking to their parents to help them now,
Speaker 3: not once they die, because now is when we need it.
Speaker 3: I'm currently trying to build a family.
Speaker 4: That if giving with a warm hand rather than a
Speaker 4: cold exactly. I learned recently that something like more than
Speaker 4: fifty percent of kids at private schools have their fees
Speaker 4: paid by their grandparents, not their parents.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 4: So it's interesting seeing that privilege entrenched as well across generations.
Speaker 2: I think it's a lot to ask a generation to
Speaker 2: hand over their money. As I say, every generation thinks
Speaker 2: they did it tough to a point. The boomers will say,
Speaker 2: we worked really hard. But actually what helped them is
Speaker 2: a lack of debt. And I didn't own a home
Speaker 2: until I was in my late thirties. It's not like
Speaker 2: we were all walking around snapping up properties at twenty two.
Speaker 2: You know, I think there's like, you've got to have
Speaker 2: a bigger picture on what is affecting this, And I
Speaker 2: think you're right, gem is this it's more about putting
Speaker 2: the pressure on the people in power rather than kicking
Speaker 2: the boomers out of their houses.
Speaker 3: But it's not handing over wealth to another generation. It
Speaker 3: is giving your children and your grandchildren an opportunity to
Speaker 3: live a comfortable life now money within the family. That's
Speaker 3: what it is.
Speaker 4: I hope your parents are listening. I had a funny
Speaker 4: conversation with my mum yesterday. I haven't seen her for
Speaker 4: sureis because my parents have had COVID, so they've been
Speaker 4: kind of isolating themselves, and.
Speaker 1: Before that they're away.
Speaker 4: So we were talking about it and they were on
Speaker 4: these antivirals, and you know, if anyone's been on antivirals
Speaker 4: for COVID, which they recommend, if you're in a high
Speaker 4: risk group or over a certain age, you can often
Speaker 4: think you're recovering, and then it comes back and you
Speaker 4: test positive again. Anyway, so it's been a long process.
Speaker 4: And I said, yesterday I was asking about my dad
Speaker 4: and she said, yeah, well you know, the end is near.
Speaker 1: And I was like, you're not that old. Things have
Speaker 1: got a bit dark.
Speaker 3: My grandma, And she goes, she laughed, and she goes, Oh, no, darling,
Speaker 3: I just meant the end of.
Speaker 1: Like our COVID isolation. Oh, I went to the same
Speaker 1: place as you.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I just have to say something for the gen xs though, right,
Speaker 2: because one of the things that I struggle with about
Speaker 2: the bank of Mom and dad idea is like, I
Speaker 2: live in the same economy that you live in, right,
Speaker 2: jem If the expectation now is that not only do
Speaker 2: I have to work from now until whenever I may
Speaker 2: or may not retire to pay off my mortgage and
Speaker 2: live in this economy and feed everybody and drive a
Speaker 2: car and all those things, but I also have to
Speaker 2: somehow magically save enough money to give my kids a
Speaker 2: deposit for a house in the most expensive corner of
Speaker 2: the most expensive city in the world. It's like, no, babes,
Speaker 2: You'll be making your own way and you'll be dealing
Speaker 2: with what you're dealing with.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I find that it feels like extra pressure.
Speaker 3: It is and it shouldn't be happening. It shouldn't be happening.
Speaker 3: But I feel like my generation is screaming at that wall.
Speaker 3: Let's bring the wall back. The wall is the politicians,
Speaker 3: the people in charge, and until they change it, this
Speaker 3: is what we've been doing to do.
Speaker 1: What do you want them to do?
Speaker 3: Change the policies, like with the housing market, make it
Speaker 3: easier for us to break in. We used to have
Speaker 3: first home buyers grants. That's no longer really a thing.
Speaker 3: I didn't get a baby bonus.
Speaker 4: I got a baby bonus, and then they worked out
Speaker 4: everyone was using it to buy plasma TVs, so they
Speaker 4: took it away.
Speaker 1: How much was it? I think my first one was
Speaker 1: three second. Do you know what I could do with
Speaker 1: three thousand dollars?
Speaker 4: People like some people were buying like fancy prans because everybody.
Speaker 3: Got it right to share people let them buy the
Speaker 3: fancy prean. No I got buying orf fucking dumb tree.
Speaker 2: Although you know, again I didn't spend my baby bonus
Speaker 2: on a plasma TV. It went to trying to have
Speaker 2: some time off work. It's not true that it all
Speaker 2: got fritted away.
Speaker 1: It was like part of it.
Speaker 2: At that time they didn't have paid maternity leave, so
Speaker 2: the baby bonus stood. So again it's this resentment of like,
Speaker 2: you guys had it easy. Everyone was giving you money
Speaker 2: to buy TVs. It's like, no, it isn't like that.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like that.
Speaker 2: You know. It's also true that in places like Germany,
Speaker 2: where there's much less of an expectation that everyone will
Speaker 2: own their own home, like renting is more part of
Speaker 2: the culture, they make renting more secure because that's another thing, right,
Speaker 2: is that if you're facing that, you're definitely going to
Speaker 2: be renting till you're in your forties. One of the
Speaker 2: reasons why that's a problem, apart from wealth building up,
Speaker 2: is the insecurity of it. So you can change policies
Speaker 2: around that. You can change policies around HEXTEP, which this
Speaker 2: government is doing a little bit but not enough. You
Speaker 2: can relieve some of the burden of pressure on this
Speaker 2: generation to be under a pile of debt from the
Speaker 2: minute they step out of UNI.
Speaker 3: Trust me, I don't want to take money from my parents.
Speaker 3: I don't want to I want to do it all
Speaker 3: by myself. But it's like, until they change stuff, I
Speaker 3: am having to take some handouts here and there to.
Speaker 1: Be able to pursue what I want in life.
Speaker 4: Do you want daily outloud access?
Speaker 1: Why wouldn't you?
Speaker 4: We dropped episodes every Tuesday and Thursday exclusively for Mum
Speaker 4: and Me A subscribers. Follow the link in the show
Speaker 4: notes to get us in your ears five days a week,
Speaker 4: and a huge thank you if you're already a subscriber.
Speaker 4: There's a sex scene everyone's talking about this week, which
Speaker 4: is kind of interesting in itself because sex scenes are
Speaker 4: rarely controversial anymore. The last controversial sex scene I can
Speaker 4: think of was that time a few years ago when
Speaker 4: Miranda got finger banged in the kitchen by her new
Speaker 4: non binary partner Chay while Carrie recovered from surgery in
Speaker 4: the next room and had to wean a bottle.
Speaker 1: Remember that was a vibe.
Speaker 2: That was a good time.
Speaker 1: They were good times.
Speaker 4: The sex scene in question is from the third season
Speaker 4: of Bridgeton, and there's a lot of sex in the
Speaker 4: TV show bridget And we've seen all kinds of sex,
Speaker 4: including in this season. Why is this particular scene causing
Speaker 4: such a buzz. And it's not just because it was
Speaker 4: a six minute sex scene. If you thought it went
Speaker 4: on for a long time, it did. It's kind of
Speaker 4: was the whole sex in real time, which I really appreciated,
Speaker 4: because sometimes sex can either be really fast on camera
Speaker 4: or it can seem like it goes sort of for
Speaker 4: hours in time lapse. Is it a same sex scene? No?
Speaker 1: Is it a threesome? No moral anal? No?
Speaker 4: No, it's actually a very vanilla, sweet, loving, losing my
Speaker 4: virginity scene between a man and a woman who are
Speaker 4: engaged to be married. Penelope and Colin or Pollen as
Speaker 4: their portmanteau.
Speaker 1: Has become cute.
Speaker 4: The reason this scene is and I don't want to
Speaker 4: use the word controversial, but maybe surprising is a better word,
Speaker 4: because I certainly felt surprised when I saw it, is
Speaker 4: because the actress in this scene, Nicola Coughlin, whose body
Speaker 4: is not the same size or shape as every other
Speaker 4: female body that we're used to seeing in sex scenes
Speaker 4: on TV shows and in movies. Nicola, who stars as
Speaker 4: Penelope Featherington, has been asked by a lot of media
Speaker 4: who have referred to her bravery for being semi naked
Speaker 4: in that scene because her body is curvier than the
Speaker 4: type of body that you usually see in a Hollywood
Speaker 4: sex scene. Here's how Nicola responded when she was asked
Speaker 4: about her bravery when filming that scene.
Speaker 2: You know it is because I think women with body tied,
Speaker 2: women with perfect rests.
Speaker 1: I love that. That's so good.
Speaker 4: It was such a great clapback. But I think that
Speaker 4: the question is kind of valid because there is a
Speaker 4: surprise in c that scene. The other thing that was
Speaker 4: interesting about it is how consent was handled. There were
Speaker 4: two sex scenes. Actually, there's another finger banging scene in
Speaker 4: a carriage with Colin and Penelope, and that consent is
Speaker 4: done so well and then made to look really sexy.
Speaker 4: I haven't seen that before where he just looks at
Speaker 4: her and raises his eyebrows to say can I do this?
Speaker 4: And she nods and same when they have the actual
Speaker 4: losing her virginity scene, he checks in with.
Speaker 1: Her, must stop. We do not watch for that? Do
Speaker 1: you thot watch for you to stop? I really loved it.
Speaker 1: I thought it was amazing.
Speaker 2: Hole.
Speaker 4: You were a bit on the fence about this season
Speaker 4: of Bridgeton. Did you find that scene as horny is
Speaker 4: everyone else?
Speaker 2: I loved it. I've had to issue a formal apology
Speaker 2: to me because when the first half of this season
Speaker 2: dropped because they're dropping Bridgeton in two sections on a
Speaker 2: Friday night, I watched the first two or three and
Speaker 2: I was like, Man, I'm over this the whole, Like,
Speaker 2: who's the diamond of the season, Who's going to marry her?
Speaker 1: Whatever?
Speaker 2: I'm done. It seems so silly. And then I just
Speaker 2: inhaled this second half over the weekend and loved every
Speaker 2: bit of it, which leads me to believe I must
Speaker 2: have been in a very bad mood when I started
Speaker 2: watching it, or maybe I was just waiting for the
Speaker 2: sex scenes. And they have not disappointed.
Speaker 1: I love this.
Speaker 2: And the thing is is that we had a conversation
Speaker 2: the other week that went on and on and many
Speaker 2: out louders joined in about beauty standards and about whether
Speaker 2: or not we should call everybody beautiful, like the idea
Speaker 2: everybody's beautiful is a good idea or not? The thing
Speaker 2: I love about Bridgeton and they've done it in this
Speaker 2: season with different body types, but they did it last
Speaker 2: season with different ethnicities. Because the sexy female lead last
Speaker 2: year was South Asian descent. Kate Schwama, she's called in
Speaker 2: the show Simon Ashley in real life, and that was
Speaker 2: a mixed race couple. Like the first season was where
Speaker 2: this woman was just so beautiful, and I know that
Speaker 2: m Vernon wrote a piece about how happy she was
Speaker 2: to see that reflected in this one. They've taken a
Speaker 2: woman who in the first couple of seasons was generally
Speaker 2: perceived to be a bit of a wallflower and the
Speaker 2: butt of the joke and her being a wallflower is
Speaker 2: a big thing, and they have shot her. She is beautiful.
Speaker 2: She is so beautiful, her skin, her perfect breasts as
Speaker 2: she describes them, and they really are. I absolutely loved it.
Speaker 2: The thing I think is good about this is, even
Speaker 2: though it's silly and maybe a bit embarrassing that everybody's
Speaker 2: questioning Nicola Cochlan about how she feels about her body,
Speaker 2: we're watching beauty standards expanding in real time because women
Speaker 2: love this. Why do women love it seeing this conventionally hot,
Speaker 2: sexy dude mad with lust for this woman who is
Speaker 2: not tall, skinny, straight sized. It's because it makes us
Speaker 2: feel seen. And she is beautiful.
Speaker 1: She's also hot.
Speaker 3: She's so hot, but she's also as amazing off screen
Speaker 3: as she is on screen, which.
Speaker 1: Is what I love about her.
Speaker 3: So the script actually called for her to be more
Speaker 3: covered up than she is in the show. She's the
Speaker 3: one that actually was like, no, I want to be
Speaker 3: more naked.
Speaker 1: Paint me like your French girls.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like, let me be as naked as the
Speaker 4: other straight sized women who get sex scenes.
Speaker 3: She kind of said she wanted to do it as
Speaker 3: a bit of a fuck you, which I just think
Speaker 3: is amazing. And that's not the first time she's been asked.
Speaker 1: That grab that we heard about her.
Speaker 3: Body, and it's always journalists that bring up those, you know,
Speaker 3: words like bravery, But when you actually watch Bridgeton, there's
Speaker 3: no mention of weight. There's no mention of the fact
Speaker 3: that that is an issue for Colin or for her.
Speaker 3: It's just a non issue. It's just a thing.
Speaker 1: It's just what I think is so amazing.
Speaker 4: Shonda Rhimes, who is responsible for this show and Gray's
Speaker 4: Anatomy and so many other shows, I think she's done
Speaker 4: more for expanding beauty standards in our culture, in our
Speaker 4: pop culture, and our broader culture than anybody I can
Speaker 4: think of, because she has consistently done this from the
Speaker 4: beginning of her career when she didn't have much power casting.
Speaker 4: Sandra was one of the leads on Grades Anatomy and
Speaker 4: having mixed race couples and people different body shapes and
Speaker 4: ages and sizes in all of her shows. She's extraordinary
Speaker 4: and I think this is yet another example of that.
Speaker 4: And I love the fact that appearance is never mentioned
Speaker 4: in this show.
Speaker 1: It just isn't.
Speaker 3: I could see another director, though, taking that story and
Speaker 3: doing what the books did, which was make nicholas character
Speaker 3: Penelope lose weight.
Speaker 1: In the books, she loses weight.
Speaker 2: She she has a different kind of makeover.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, whereas she made an actual decision, Well that's
Speaker 3: not happening.
Speaker 1: Yes, Shonda wouldn't have been into that.
Speaker 2: Well, the only thing is is that they might not
Speaker 2: mention weight directly. But the whole point of this storyline
Speaker 2: is that she's an unexpected choice for the Heartthrop right
Speaker 2: like her walla Flower status is mentioned constantly. The other
Speaker 2: fancy people on the circuit are all like, oh, as
Speaker 2: if you know so, it is reference. The only thing
Speaker 2: is I'm just going to argue against myself for a
Speaker 2: minute because I was celebrating this so much. But then
Speaker 2: Mia when you said, paint me like your French girls.
Speaker 2: Obviously I got excited. Who doesn't love that? But it
Speaker 2: made me remember that, actually, do these kind of big
Speaker 2: pop culture moments really expand beauty standards Because all the
Speaker 2: way back then in the nineties, when Kate Winslet was
Speaker 2: Rose in Titanic, the headlines were all about her body.
Speaker 2: Kate Wincelet got very much pigeonholed as a larger woman,
Speaker 2: someone who is exceptional to the beauty standards of the day,
Speaker 2: and she was constantly asked about that being curvy, being larger,
Speaker 2: which now seems almost ridiculous, but that was the obsession.
Speaker 2: Then we kind of went back to skinny ladies for
Speaker 2: a long time, and I know that sounds disparaging, but
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, that the beautiful heartthrom had
Speaker 2: to look a certain way. Then remember when Girls came
Speaker 2: out and Lena Dunham was in sex scenes with this
Speaker 2: body that we weren't used to seeing naked, and headlines
Speaker 2: and headlines about her bravery. How remarkable it was that
Speaker 2: she would consent to be semi naked on screen when
Speaker 2: she didn't look like a supermodel. And then we go
Speaker 2: back to the beauty standards for a while, and then
Speaker 2: Nicola breaks through. I wonder like, do we expand and
Speaker 2: stay or do we just expand and contract.
Speaker 4: I think that it takes a long time of tapping
Speaker 4: on that glass ceiling of beauty standards until you break through.
Speaker 4: And I think that you have to have a creator.
Speaker 4: I can't speak for Titanic, but you look at Lena
Speaker 4: Dunnan was the creator of Girls. Shonda Rhimes is the
Speaker 4: creator of Bridgeton. Who spend the capital that they've earned
Speaker 4: from their success and push that through because it's not easy.
Speaker 4: Studios don't like it, marketing team don't like it. It's
Speaker 4: not a selling point as such. You've got to have
Speaker 4: someone who really fights for it.
Speaker 2: Why don't studios and marketing teams like it anymore? When
Speaker 2: what this shows again and again by the way that
Speaker 2: these that when we see it, women are so unbelievably
Speaker 2: embracing and love it that it's good for business.
Speaker 3: Because there's plenty of people out there that are still
Speaker 3: of the opinion that it's not good, even Nikola.
Speaker 4: Because men make decisions whole Like the argument when I
Speaker 4: used to try to put women of different shapes and
Speaker 4: sizes on the cover of Cosmo. I had to fight
Speaker 4: and fight and fight and fight for that, and I
Speaker 4: kept saying it's good business, like forget about what your
Speaker 4: personal preferences are. It's good business. But when you're trying
Speaker 4: to do something different and move away from the norm
Speaker 4: and put forward a beauty standard that isn't the preferred
Speaker 4: beauty standard of our culture, of course that's a risk.
Speaker 1: And no one wants to take risks.
Speaker 3: And Nicholas being trolled, so she rode on Instagram if
Speaker 3: you have an opinion about my body, please don't share it.
Speaker 3: I'm just one real life human being and it's really
Speaker 3: hard to take the weight of thousands of opinions on
Speaker 3: how you look being sent to you every day. So
Speaker 3: even though there is one half of society that is
Speaker 3: celebrating her, and I saw so many women on my
Speaker 3: own social media kind of putting up Instagram stories being like,
Speaker 3: oh my gosh, I saw my body on screen. I
Speaker 3: saw a woman's body with folds and moving in a
Speaker 3: way that mine moves when I have sex.
Speaker 1: So there's that side, but there's still these people that.
Speaker 3: Are dropping into Nicholas dms being like you're not worthy.
Speaker 4: It's also just not the shape of her body. It's
Speaker 4: the idea of someone being sexual, like being portrayed in
Speaker 4: a sexual way, because if you look at Rebel Wilson's career,
Speaker 4: it's all just about comedy and the butt of the joke.
Speaker 4: It's never about her actual desire and someone desiring her
Speaker 4: without a gag. And even someone like Melissa McCarthy. You know,
Speaker 4: you look at the women who are not straight sized
Speaker 4: who are in Hollywood, and they are played for laughs generally.
Speaker 4: And that's not a criticism of those women in particular,
Speaker 4: because my god, there's so little work and it's so hard.
Speaker 4: Whatever they can do to get roles and work is great.
Speaker 4: But I think that's the difference here portraying her as
Speaker 4: a sexual creature, the same as Lena Dunham.
Speaker 2: The massive success of Bridgeton has been that it's saucy scenes,
Speaker 2: as I described them to my daughter when she's like,
Speaker 2: why are you watching that show? And I'm like, it's saucy.
Speaker 2: That's what anyway, the saucy scenes from the female gaze,
Speaker 2: and that's what people love about them. Right, It's the
Speaker 2: same with outline of female gaze is good for business,
Speaker 2: but you know who else is being trolled, which is
Speaker 2: interesting is Colin the man who plays Colin, because he
Speaker 2: was pictured last week with his actual, real life new
Speaker 2: girlfriend and she doesn't look like Nicola cochlan. She looks
Speaker 2: much more like a very stereotypically hot young thing, and
Speaker 2: the internet's lost its mind in fury at him. So
Speaker 2: now it's like, it's like, how very dare you actually
Speaker 2: not be that? So, you know, our expectations are enormous.
Speaker 3: Do you think there will ever be a time when
Speaker 3: this is not a conversation where we don't even have
Speaker 3: to do a segment like this because it's a non event.
Speaker 4: I mean, I'd like to think that. I just think
Speaker 4: it's important without wanting to make things any harder. For
Speaker 4: Nikola Coglin, it's important to applaud and recognize when something
Speaker 4: is subversive and pushes the boundaries and support it so
Speaker 4: that then the next time someone has to make that decision,
Speaker 4: they also will push those boundaries and push those boundaries.
Speaker 4: It's always hard being the first. So she's brave.
Speaker 2: She's also unquestionably great, you know, like she creates shows,
Speaker 2: she's a brilliant performer. She's great than this, Like, I'm
Speaker 2: very glad she's having her moment.
Speaker 3: Our entertainment podcast The Spill, had an interesting conversation about
Speaker 3: this on Friday.
Speaker 1: Here's a taste.
Speaker 6: Obviously, the character of Colin is a lot more experienced
Speaker 6: and a very experience and they talk about that in
Speaker 6: the sex scene, which I thought was interesting. Obviously is
Speaker 6: set hundreds of years ago, but it felt like a
Speaker 6: conversation you'd almost be having now in modern times, about
Speaker 6: like there's a lot of consent in and of him
Speaker 6: saying like I'm about to do this? Is this okay?
Speaker 3: A link to that episode will be in the show
Speaker 3: notes out Louder.
Speaker 4: Sometimes we need each other to help solve dilemmas. We
Speaker 4: have a segment called group therapy where we help solve
Speaker 4: a dilemma, and this week we solved the dilemma of
Speaker 4: an out louder whose twenty three year old daughter was
Speaker 4: out for her birthday. Her boss was there, and it
Speaker 4: ended in some really inappropriate behavior from her boss and
Speaker 4: a whole lot of other men there. And we had
Speaker 4: a really interesting conversation.
Speaker 2: Didn't we hold Yes, I'm not sure we did solve it,
Speaker 2: to be honest, but like I've been replaying that conversation
Speaker 2: in my head all weekend, and I.
Speaker 4: Know out louders have here's a little stening peak of
Speaker 4: how it went down.
Speaker 2: I can't believe that you said that she should change
Speaker 2: her job?
Speaker 1: What do you mean?
Speaker 2: Of course she shouldn't change her fucking job? Like that's outrageous.
Speaker 2: Why should he get to keep his job and as
Speaker 2: sleazy coworkers get to keep his job and she has
Speaker 2: to go through all the drama and change in trauma
Speaker 2: of changing a job because I know he will end.
Speaker 6: Up a job, keeping his job, and the only person
Speaker 6: that will get really sad and about this and get
Speaker 6: really hurt about this will be her.
Speaker 2: My first line would be complain about him.
Speaker 1: It's not always that simple.
Speaker 4: If you want to hear what Holly m Vernam and
Speaker 4: I thought and make up your own mind, we'll put
Speaker 4: a link in the show notes you can listen to that.
Speaker 1: Right now.
Speaker 2: That is all we have time for on this Monday,
Speaker 2: my friends. A big thank you to all of the
Speaker 2: out louders for listening to our show and supporting it.
Speaker 2: Tell your friends, share it all that we're having the
Speaker 2: best conversations here on out loud, and thank you for
Speaker 2: our team for helping us put together today's show. We'll
Speaker 2: be back in your ears tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Good Bye, bye bye.
Speaker 2: Shout out to any MoMA Mia subscribers listening. If you
Speaker 2: love the show and you want to support us, subscribing
Speaker 2: to Momma Mia is the very best way to do it.
Speaker 2: There's a link in the episode description