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Speaker 2: Hello out Louder friends, It's Holly and welcome to hot
Speaker 2: pod summer. As you listen to this, hopefully I am
Speaker 2: pottering around in my garden and avoiding my children and
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Speaker 2: wherever you are, I am excited to share a little
Speaker 2: treat with you the best out loud podcasts from twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four. Whether I'm taking a stroll with Tuna, my dog,
Speaker 2: or having a bit of a rest in the shade,
Speaker 2: I'm going to be listening to this handpicked selection of
Speaker 2: Out Loud episodes because hey, we only get better by
Speaker 2: critiquing ourselves, and they're perfect for your someone listening. Think
Speaker 2: of this series as our holiday get together where we
Speaker 2: dive into the stories and laughs that made the year special.
Speaker 2: Grab a drink, settle in, let's explore the best Out
Speaker 2: Loud moments from twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3: An article in The Cut went absolutely viral this week,
Speaker 3: and we've been desperate to talk about it, so much
Speaker 3: so that we keep having to say to each other, stop,
Speaker 3: save it, save it for the show favor. This is
Speaker 3: why I'm so excited to finally do brief. The piece
Speaker 3: is called the Case for Marrying an Older Man. It
Speaker 3: argues that a woman's life is all work and little rest.
Speaker 3: An age gap relationship can help. The author, Gracie Sophia Christie,
Speaker 3: married a man ten years older, and that wasn't an accident.
Speaker 3: She actively pursued an older, wealthier, more established man, and
Speaker 3: she explains why.
Speaker 4: When she was.
Speaker 3: Twenty, she was at Harvard and she realized that while,
Speaker 3: of course she could spend the next few decades proving
Speaker 3: how exceptional she was like everyone else in her class,
Speaker 3: it would be more efficient and in fact, cleverer to
Speaker 3: use the one thing on her side that would soon fade,
Speaker 3: and that was her youth. She would go to Harvard
Speaker 3: Business School like the actual location and purposely sit among
Speaker 3: fifty of what she calls the world's most eligible bachelors.
Speaker 3: She couldn't understand why her female classmates weren't joining her
Speaker 3: her youth, as she understood it.
Speaker 2: Because they had some self respect.
Speaker 1: Sorry, I just want to understand this a little bit more.
Speaker 1: I no, this is very nerdy. But so she was
Speaker 1: studying at Harvard. She was probably starting, I don't know, whatever,
Speaker 1: Bachelor of Arts, whatever you did, Harvard, right, But the
Speaker 1: business school is quite specific and there are people of
Speaker 1: school all ages at.
Speaker 3: The How I understand it is I think the business
Speaker 3: school is a little bit more postgraduate. Yeah, and if
Speaker 3: you postgraduate, your older, right. So this is for the
Speaker 3: big dogs who maybe already are running their own business, okay,
Speaker 3: whereas all the other people are just silly undergrads Harvard yuck. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So she thought, why not take advantage of this? Well,
Speaker 3: I can this situation where I've got proximity to these
Speaker 3: rich people. She met her husband at twenty when she
Speaker 3: snuck into a graduate school event, and she fell in love.
Speaker 3: Rather than get stuck in these discussions about fair and unfair,
Speaker 3: equal or unequal, she says she preferred instead a thing
Speaker 3: called ease. Christy rightly points out that every relationship is
Speaker 3: a transaction, but many read her deal the trade she
Speaker 3: made as a bad one. Her marriage, where she was younger,
Speaker 3: more beautiful, he was older, more wealthy, was something those
Speaker 3: around her took very personally, for example Holly. Meanwhile, she
Speaker 3: says young women were bringing up young men, teaching them
Speaker 3: to floss and do their washing before passing them over
Speaker 3: to the person they'd marry.
Speaker 1: In part of the essay, she talks about how when
Speaker 1: we see her fifty year old walking down the street
Speaker 1: with the twenty five year old, mentally make calculations like
Speaker 1: who got the better deal. Yes, she talks about she
Speaker 1: went very deliberately to this party. She snuck in. It was,
Speaker 1: you know, graduates were there, so they were all older
Speaker 1: than her. She said, I ate for free, I doubts
Speaker 1: for free, and then one of the organizers asked me
Speaker 1: to leave. I called anew but I got into it,
Speaker 1: and then I got straight out when I saw this
Speaker 1: guy walk out of the revolving doors. He was thirty.
Speaker 1: Turns out he was French. She asked him for a cigarette.
Speaker 1: They went on a date, and she said a really
Speaker 1: interesting thing. She said, until then, I'd loved men in
Speaker 1: the way that men usually love women, which is not
Speaker 1: very well and kind of without a plan because she
Speaker 1: was twenty. Yeah, and she said, but not this time.
Speaker 1: This time, I filled his fridge with his favorite foods.
Speaker 1: I spoke fondly of my family. I wrote a thank
Speaker 1: you note to his mum. And basically she played the game.
Speaker 1: She does say we did fall in love, so it's
Speaker 1: not like she had to force herself. He was frenchship.
Speaker 1: But she also said the way a decade year age
Speaker 1: gap reads is different, Like she said, twenty to thirty
Speaker 1: is very different to thirty and forty. And she said
Speaker 1: that there was a lot of hostility from his friends,
Speaker 1: and she was once in the bathroom and she heard
Speaker 1: his female friends sort of saying, what does he see
Speaker 1: in her?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the transaction feels personal. And also people would
Speaker 3: look at it and be like, this is a terrible deal.
Speaker 4: I know, it's like four yeah.
Speaker 3: And ultimately, she writes, there is no brand of feminism
Speaker 3: which has achieved female rest but what she earned herself
Speaker 3: by marrying an older, richer man was that she got
Speaker 3: some time and it alleviated the rush other women feel
Speaker 3: to climb the corporate ladder while potentially planning a family Holly,
Speaker 3: she says, she gets to live the life of a writer.
Speaker 3: She has a lot of leisure time. Her life sounds
Speaker 3: so aspirational. She has to go on holiday.
Speaker 4: Do you regret not marrying an older richer man.
Speaker 1: I think Helle's jealous.
Speaker 4: That's what it is. I think that's why this feels
Speaker 4: like a personal attack.
Speaker 2: I don't know where to start with you, Stady a
Speaker 2: therapist about your reaction to this essay. Discuss because I
Speaker 2: entirely respect her choice to make her choices. But the
Speaker 2: whole she chooses her choice. The whole a case for
Speaker 2: marrying an older man. Yeah, the word that isn't in
Speaker 2: that sentence that needs been there is a rich older man.
Speaker 2: Is that very much needs to be in there, because
Speaker 2: you can marry older men, some of them. Any exactly
Speaker 2: what she's basically bought herself is like a five star
Speaker 2: backpacking holiday right. Her twenties have been she says to herself,
Speaker 2: traveling around the world, living in a beautiful apartment. There's
Speaker 2: a bit in it where she talks about him showing
Speaker 2: her where they were going to live, and she said
Speaker 2: it was like she was introducing myself to me. This
Speaker 2: is the wine we're going to drink. This is where
Speaker 2: we live. This is like he is in control of
Speaker 2: everything they do. It's not their apartment, it's his apartment.
Speaker 2: She has to ask for the keys to get in
Speaker 2: and out. It's his life and she's living in it.
Speaker 2: And that might work really well for her, But the
Speaker 2: way that she talks with the sort of disdain about
Speaker 2: the people she knows who are like messily building a
Speaker 2: life together or on their own or whatever, is really
Speaker 2: judgmental because it assumes that everybody wants what she's got,
Speaker 2: which is like she doesn't want to have a career.
Speaker 2: I mean, she wants to be a writer, and she's
Speaker 2: a beautiful writer. The essay is gorgeous, as one of
Speaker 2: the reasons it's gone viral, I'm sure, but it's like,
Speaker 2: I didn't want to have to do the crappy jobs
Speaker 2: that most people have to do while they work their
Speaker 2: way to a career that they actually love. I didn't
Speaker 2: want to have to do any of that stuff. Well,
Speaker 2: that's fine for her, but it kind of makes this
Speaker 2: assumption that we could all by ourselves some ease if
Speaker 2: we just agreed to hunt down a dude who is
Speaker 2: going to pay for everything, which I just find regressive
Speaker 2: and dangerous.
Speaker 1: I was trying to summon feelings when I read this,
Speaker 1: because I was like, this is the piece that's gone
Speaker 1: viral and everyone's talking about it, and people seem to
Speaker 1: have really strong feelings about it, and I read it
Speaker 1: and I could not summon a strong feeling, and I
Speaker 1: don't know why. Am I broken. I feel like just
Speaker 1: what she says is kind of obvious, and I don't
Speaker 1: feel defensive about it. I don't feel incredulous or insulted.
Speaker 1: It just seems really obvious.
Speaker 2: But she doesn't feel, to you, very old fashioned. This
Speaker 2: is what every movie's ever been about, like older rich man,
Speaker 2: young beautiful woman. You get to live this life for
Speaker 2: a while, then he'll probably pass you over for a
Speaker 2: new model. And she does say that the only time
Speaker 2: that she gets worried is when she realizes that if
Speaker 2: he betrayed her and she would have to take a stand,
Speaker 2: she would lose everything, right like she lose the beautiful
Speaker 2: house and the holidays and all those things. She said,
Speaker 2: she realized that too much work had left my husband
Speaker 2: by thirty jaded and uninspired. He'd burnt out. But I
Speaker 2: could re enchant things. I danced at restaurants when they
Speaker 2: played a song I liked. I turned grocery shopping into
Speaker 2: an adventure, pleased by what I provided. He needed someone
Speaker 2: smart enough to sustain his interest, but flexible enough in
Speaker 2: her habits to build them around his hours. I could,
Speaker 2: I do. I make my self free. I materialized beside
Speaker 2: him when he calls for me.
Speaker 4: She is a puppy.
Speaker 2: She is a cute puppy, and the puppy will grow
Speaker 2: into a dog, and then you want another cute puppy
Speaker 2: where she's not building anything of her own.
Speaker 4: Where's the space for meaning in this life? And this
Speaker 4: is the thing?
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: I read this and I went, I know women.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 3: If I asked them straight up, did you marry that
Speaker 3: person for money? They would say yes. And I have
Speaker 3: had a real issue with that and dealt with my
Speaker 3: own judgment because I've gone it's a transaction. I superficially
Speaker 3: would go, I know why he married you. You were
Speaker 3: able to give him more children?
Speaker 1: Is in every relationship some kind of transaction.
Speaker 3: But the reason why I thought about this, the reason
Speaker 3: why this transaction riles me is twofold. The first is
Speaker 3: she's offering advice, and this advice is dangerous. It's regressive,
Speaker 3: and it has made women miserable for a lot of
Speaker 3: excus Why is it dangerous because it is telling women
Speaker 3: You're the one who always.
Speaker 1: Says tells a financial plan and everything plan.
Speaker 3: And the second reason why this is not a good
Speaker 3: long term solution is that the issue with finding a
Speaker 3: man who loves a compliance submissive twenty something year old
Speaker 3: is when you become a thirty something year old, he
Speaker 3: probably still wants a compliance submissive twenty something year old.
Speaker 4: And then what do you do?
Speaker 1: And Taylor Swift's lyrics when she sang about Jillenhall, no
Speaker 1: I was never good.
Speaker 2: It's hell joges, but the Punchland goes, I'll get Oh
Speaker 2: the butcher lovers staying my.
Speaker 4: Age from when you're brother.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I say, it's not about the age gap, right.
Speaker 2: This is what's interesting about this the case for marrying
Speaker 2: an older man, the age thing is almost irrelevant, except
Speaker 2: in as much in this is she deliberately wanted someone
Speaker 2: much more well established so they could look after her.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So that's the age piece. But as we said, not
Speaker 2: all older men are rich. And her specific financial thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and her worldview, she sees it as this very
Speaker 3: obvious thing, and I don't think she realizes that that
Speaker 3: dynamic does not exist in every partnership, and in fact,
Speaker 3: a lot of people are marrying for reasons that are
Speaker 3: not financial or are not necessarily to do with power.
Speaker 3: So she's saying basically that within the institution of marriage,
Speaker 3: women's value is decreasing at the same time that men's
Speaker 3: value is increasing, and that happens with eight. She describes
Speaker 3: it as like a funnel, like women are on this
Speaker 3: funnel where things are getting slimmer and slimmer and slimmer
Speaker 3: in terms of opportunities, and men's are getting broader and
Speaker 3: broader and broader.
Speaker 2: But to agree with that, you have to completely discount
Speaker 2: all of the work that we've been doing in the
Speaker 2: last fifty years to make women's value a lot more.
Speaker 4: Than just value of being a human being. We have
Speaker 4: thoughts and ideas, and you guys are idealistic. What I
Speaker 4: thought was interesting.
Speaker 1: I commend you for that. It's not a criticism. What
Speaker 1: I found interesting apart from she just liked the holidays.
Speaker 2: Which I mean I would like that.
Speaker 1: Lack of friction and the lack of having to strive.
Speaker 1: To me, it was also about the attraction to someone
Speaker 1: who was already formed. That was interesting. It meant that
Speaker 1: the mental labor of having to work out who she
Speaker 1: was what she liked, having to kiss a lot of frogs,
Speaker 1: not just in romantic relationships, but like having the wrong jobs,
Speaker 1: living in the wrong places, like that struggle. He was
Speaker 1: just further down the road, and she wanted to just
Speaker 1: fast track at a decade oudulthood. She wanted to skip
Speaker 1: the messy part.
Speaker 2: But the thing is, and again this is why it
Speaker 2: might be a perfect choice for her, but the fun
Speaker 2: is in the figuring it out, like having a life
Speaker 2: just handed to you on a plate, like this is
Speaker 2: literally what he did, this is where we live, this
Speaker 2: is where we're going there. It's lovely for her, but
Speaker 2: like I can honestly say, with the age in hindsight
Speaker 2: and even all the difficult times in the skin times,
Speaker 2: and that that's where the fun is. Like I don't know,
Speaker 2: it doesn't appeal to me except for five minutes.
Speaker 3: On the surface, it seems like she's happy and she's
Speaker 3: offering advice. If there are a few very very telling
Speaker 3: lines about there's only so many times you can say
Speaker 3: thank you to someone, and there was some line about
Speaker 3: almost being told that you're ungrateful or that you're not
Speaker 3: being thankful enough sup supportive enough, is code for you're
Speaker 3: indebted to me.
Speaker 2: Because also, if she's writing a novel, unsurprisingly, she's probably
Speaker 2: going to get big money for it after this viral essay.
Speaker 4: If her work does.
Speaker 2: Become demanding and she cannot be constantly available to literally
Speaker 2: materialize beside him when he calls for me, as she says,
Speaker 2: he's not going to like that. That's not the way
Speaker 2: it works. No.
Speaker 1: I once had a conversation. I was sitting next to
Speaker 1: this guy at a dinner and he was very wealthy,
Speaker 1: and he liked the idea of a partner who was
Speaker 1: kind of like me, like ambitious and feisty and all
Speaker 1: of that stuff. But when we spoke more, and he
Speaker 1: wasn't propositioning me or anything, but when we were talking
Speaker 1: about what he needed from his partner, it was exactly
Speaker 1: what you said. It was a kavoodal. Essentially, it was
Speaker 1: someone a skeleton that they were just really malleable around
Speaker 1: his life because when he needed to go overseas and
Speaker 1: play polo or when he needed to he wanted someone
Speaker 1: who could just drop everything and be with him. But
Speaker 1: then he was also frustrated by that because he said,
Speaker 1: I would come home and I'll say to you know,
Speaker 1: the pretty model, Oh, I'm so stressed at work, and
Speaker 1: she would go, Babe, just quit, you know, We'll just
Speaker 1: move to the South of France and just get high. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because her life could be that. So she wasn't his
Speaker 1: intellectual equal, but his intellectual equal was not going to
Speaker 1: logistically fit in his life.
Speaker 2: It's very interesting. It's interesting as why this essay went viral, right,
Speaker 2: And as I've said, it's a beautifully written personal essay.
Speaker 2: But to me, it feels part of this whole thing
Speaker 2: that I'm seeing everywhere I look at the minute about
Speaker 2: trad wives, stay at home girlfriend's soft girls. I'm not
Speaker 2: saying that there isn't credence and credibility to what she
Speaker 2: saying about. When I think of same age, same stage relationships,
Speaker 2: what I tend to picture as a woman who's doing
Speaker 2: too much for too little. That's really interesting, and her
Speaker 2: point about no view of feminism having ease in it,
Speaker 2: She's not wrong. I think that all of this sort
Speaker 2: of yearning for this kind of easy, soft life where
Speaker 2: someone looks after you is a very understandable reaction to
Speaker 2: what we're seeing all around us, which is the reality
Speaker 2: for women is that mostly they're doing everything all the time.
Speaker 2: It's the opposite of ease. They've got the job, but
Speaker 2: they're also taking care of this boy child you know,
Speaker 2: who is supposed to be their partner, but really isn't
Speaker 2: doing his like looking after himself and looking after a
Speaker 2: home and looking after kids, and looking after their extended
Speaker 2: family and all of those things. It's very understandable that
Speaker 2: there's like this attractive pull, whether it's through lovely, hazy
Speaker 2: pictures on Instagram or beautiful essays like this about like
Speaker 2: my life is there's time for me. I get to
Speaker 2: wander around and think thoughts and look.
Speaker 4: At flowers and sounds great. But how much agent do
Speaker 4: you have?
Speaker 1: Well? Agency is the most important thing for everybody, it's
Speaker 1: not and I think that we have to be careful
Speaker 1: of not projecting our values onto other people. But you know,
Speaker 1: you know, and mind independent.
Speaker 2: It's one of my very highly value.
Speaker 1: Yes, to be clear, I agree with you. But where
Speaker 1: these relationships come unstuck is when kids come along. Because
Speaker 1: she's able to supplicate her desires, her wants, her needs
Speaker 1: to him and make him the center of the universe.
Speaker 1: When a child comes along, suddenly he's not the center
Speaker 1: of the universe. He goes down on the leaderboard to
Speaker 1: number two, or at least he should when there's a
Speaker 1: baby in the house and newborn baby, and that tends
Speaker 1: to really mess with the dynamic or do they have.
Speaker 3: The perfect dynamic for a baby to come along? And
Speaker 3: in fact, that's why this went viral because the dynamic,
Speaker 3: it's obvious the baby comes along, very obvious who's going
Speaker 3: to look after the baby? They have room in that
Speaker 3: relationship for a baby, whereas it's almost like what she.
Speaker 1: Don't know what gives her babying of him?
Speaker 3: Well, it is clear that he's the one with the
Speaker 3: career who gets to go and pursue this.
Speaker 4: She's about to get a book deal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, but she's playing that down very much
Speaker 3: because she likes the holidays. But I thought that it
Speaker 3: was almost saying this approach to life where we just
Speaker 3: accept gender dynamics as they are. We accept the way
Speaker 3: that society values women and we play by those rules.
Speaker 3: Means that I can take my time and then before motherhood,
Speaker 3: I've had the holidays, I've had the rest, and I'm
Speaker 3: ready to look after a baby. If you compare that
Speaker 3: to the relationship like lucronize relationship, where we're both on
Speaker 3: this treadmill to work, work, work, work, work, work, work,
Speaker 3: and then the baby comes, it's like divorce.
Speaker 1: What time is it.
Speaker 3: You've got two people who are heavily invested in their
Speaker 3: careers looking at each other going, wait, what was the plan?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 4: So, I think that's almost what this is a reflection
Speaker 4: of as.
Speaker 3: Well, is that the disillusionment feminism has set up isn't
Speaker 3: working either, and the fact that this is a reaction
Speaker 3: to that, to me, that's what's.
Speaker 2: But it's not feminism that doesn't work, right, I agree,
Speaker 2: I know what I was just saying. I think it's
Speaker 2: a reaction to going hold on, I'm still doing everything.
Speaker 2: I thought this was going to be a fifty to
Speaker 2: fifty situation, and it's not. It's not feminism's fault. I love,
Speaker 2: there's a problem in that fifty to fifty time. The
Speaker 2: other part of it isn't doing everything.
Speaker 3: There's a line in it where she says, when we
Speaker 3: decided we wanted to be equal to men, we got
Speaker 3: on men's time. Of course, the problem with that is
Speaker 3: that if you want to have babies, you turn around
Speaker 3: and then you've got the mental load of that at thirty.
Speaker 3: You never get sort of your room of one's own.
Speaker 3: That kind of women the feminists thought we might half
Speaker 3: a century ago. I can see how there's something aspirational
Speaker 3: about that. But then there was a really good critique
Speaker 3: which basically said, this is the Republican plan from others, like,
Speaker 3: this is the conservative plan in the US, And this
Speaker 3: is my theory exactly. This is my theory about why
Speaker 3: we're seeing this tradwife, soft girl retreating to the home.
Speaker 3: Thing is that one is like a counter cultural reaction
Speaker 3: to the feminism has got to, but the other is
Speaker 3: a pushed republican conservative agenda because women aren't having enough
Speaker 3: babies progressive like in western countries, we're not replacing the
Speaker 3: population enough, and you're seeing this very unsubtleed messaging which
Speaker 3: is like women go back home and have more babies, please.
Speaker 2: One hundred percent. And it's also what comes from governments
Speaker 2: whenever they want women to get out of the workforce
Speaker 2: and make more room for the guys. Like, let's be honest,
Speaker 2: men are being pushed out of the workforce by smart women,
Speaker 2: and like, in another generation, women's value in society won't
Speaker 2: be how young they look. It just won't be so
Speaker 2: Please if you want to keep that going, and you
Speaker 2: want your independence and you want your choices, don't be
Speaker 2: sucked into this bullshit, unless, of course, you can find
Speaker 2: a really lovely billionaire.
Speaker 1: Actually fair.
Speaker 2: Did you enjoy that Out louders, Of course you did.
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