Speaker 1: You're listening to Amma Mia podcast. Mamma Mere acknowledges the
Speaker 1: traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is
Speaker 1: recorded on. Hello, I'm Holly Wayne Wright, and I am
Speaker 1: mid conversations for gen X women who are anything but
Speaker 1: welcome to our show. This is a special drop. We
Speaker 1: said to you at the beginning of season four that
Speaker 1: we were going to be doing some little drops in
Speaker 1: the feed of conversations, maybe essays. I've written things that
Speaker 1: we just wanted to talk about because they're playing on
Speaker 1: our minds as mid women of various kinds. And I
Speaker 1: did one about Baby Girl. Scroll back and listen. If
Speaker 1: you've only recently seen that movie, the one with Nicole
Speaker 1: Kidman where she has a very it's not hot. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't say I don't think the sex in that movie
Speaker 1: is meant to be hot. It's a very provocative and
Speaker 1: interesting view of mid life sexuality, and Kidman's amazing in it. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I did one about that, and today I couldn't stop
Speaker 1: thinking about the three friends in The White Lotus. Now,
Speaker 1: you might not be watching The White Lotus. It is
Speaker 1: one of those shows that everybody thinks you should be
Speaker 1: watching and tells you that you should be watching, and
Speaker 1: sometimes I really resist those kind of shows, prestige TV
Speaker 1: as it's called. But whether you're watching it or not,
Speaker 1: you're going to recognize this story I'm about to tell
Speaker 1: you because the three friends in that show are some
Speaker 1: of the many representations of midwomen that we're seeing on
Speaker 1: TV at the moment. They're all in their forties, they've
Speaker 1: been friends for a long time. The dynamic between them
Speaker 1: is fascinating, from their sort of passive, aggressive, endless compliments
Speaker 1: to each other, you look amazing, you look amazing, well
Speaker 1: also whispering a little bit behind each other's back about
Speaker 1: how they seem to actually know very little about each other,
Speaker 1: from their politics to their surgery choices. It's a really
Speaker 1: interesting dynamic and a really interesting representation of friendship at
Speaker 1: this stage of life. Anyway, there is a scene in
Speaker 1: the most recent episode that I can't stop thinking about,
Speaker 1: and whether you've seen it or not, I think you're
Speaker 1: going to know what I'm talking about. So here I'm
Speaker 1: going to read you a piece that I wrote for
Speaker 1: Mamma Mia about that White Lotus Paul scene. There's a
Speaker 1: moment in every woman's life when she catches sight of
Speaker 1: herself through other people's eyes, and it's a jolt. That
Speaker 1: moment happened to Jacqueline Lemon in episode four of The
Speaker 1: White Lotus, and oh was this scene a rich text.
Speaker 1: If you're not watching The White Lotus and not everyone is,
Speaker 1: of course, let me sketch you a quick outline. Among
Speaker 1: the groups of characters who've checked into a luxurious Thailand
Speaker 1: hotel are three longtime girlfriends, Jacqueline, who lives in Hollywood
Speaker 1: and is on TV, Kate, who lives in Austin, Texas
Speaker 1: and is married to a rich man, and Laurie, who
Speaker 1: lives in New York and has a corporate job. Jacqueline
Speaker 1: is paying for everyone, and Kate's husband thinks that this
Speaker 1: is a midlife crisis trip. It's not specified how old
Speaker 1: these three school friends are exactly, but let's land at
Speaker 1: later mid forties, and my, these are some stunning, groomed, toned,
Speaker 1: plumped and smoothed mid forties friends. Even Lourie, who can't
Speaker 1: relate to Jacqueline and Kate's who's your doctor tweakment talk
Speaker 1: is slim, shiny and stylish. There's a whole other conversation
Speaker 1: to be had about being the lorry and a friend
Speaker 1: group of Jacquelines and Kates who will tell you that
Speaker 1: you look amazing while hinting at your bravery and relatability.
Speaker 1: But we'll get to that another day. The creator of
Speaker 1: the White Lotus, Mike White, has captured a perfect, thin
Speaker 1: slice in these characters. This is what the new forties
Speaker 1: looks like, and it's nothing like the old forties, nothing
Speaker 1: like middle age aspirationally still hot. These are not your
Speaker 1: mother's foreheads, and this is not your mother's resort were still.
Speaker 1: When Jacqueline asks their young hotel butler if he can
Speaker 1: direct them to a vibey place for cocktails, she runs
Speaker 1: perfect face first into the realation that even Hollywood forty
Speaker 1: something is not in fact twenty something. This brings us
Speaker 1: to the pool. Jacqueline, whose confidence is already shaky because
Speaker 1: her younger actor husband has been mysteriously hard to reach
Speaker 1: while she's been away, realizes that the other people at
Speaker 1: this supposedly vibey cocktail spot are old, like proper old,
Speaker 1: not in numbers, although there's a doubtless higher than hers,
Speaker 1: but in body, in face, in vibe. First, she notices
Speaker 1: the women their kaftans and playsuits might be the same
Speaker 1: swirling camillary prints as hers, but the skin inside them
Speaker 1: is creepy. Under arms wobble bulges peek out from underswimsuit straps.
Speaker 1: Their chins are soft, their jawlins loose. There's gray hair wrinkles.
Speaker 1: Then she sees the men weathered, untoned, white haired, sleazy.
Speaker 1: If my words are harsh, so is the camera, because
Speaker 1: we're seeing these people through Jacqueline's eyes. Aging, visible physical
Speaker 1: aging is her worst nightmare. It's something she spends copious
Speaker 1: amounts of money and time avoiding these people. Real people
Speaker 1: are not who she's prepared to drink with. Being thrown
Speaker 1: into a sea of bargain basement retirees is a literal
Speaker 1: horror story for her. But then the realization, the jolt
Speaker 1: of recognition. The hot butler sent them here. He thought
Speaker 1: they'd fit in, he thought they'd enjoy it. He thought
Speaker 1: they belonged as glamorous and lineless as Jacqueline, Kate, and
Speaker 1: Lourie may be through the eyes of a man in
Speaker 1: his twenties, they're in the same broad bucket as these
Speaker 1: ordinary mortals. Over forty equals old. This is the moment
Speaker 1: of uncomfortable truth for all of us. At some point
Speaker 1: the moment we confront our own age and our own ageism.
Speaker 1: I have an ugly memory of being in a taxiq
Speaker 1: many years ago, somewhere in all Sydney, late at night.
Speaker 1: An obnoxious drunk man was going down the line, pointing
Speaker 1: at the women and guessing their ages. I have no
Speaker 1: idea why, and let's not waste any brain cells on that,
Speaker 1: but I imagine he was aiming to humiliate us in that
Speaker 1: super adorable way that drunk men sometimes do. Eighteen, he'd say,
Speaker 1: leering at a young woman who'd rather be anywhere else.
Speaker 1: Twenty six, twenty one, he came to me and he
Speaker 1: tried to focus on my face for a long, beery
Speaker 1: smelling moment. I, like every other woman in that queue,
Speaker 1: looked at the ground, silently willing him away. Thirty five,
Speaker 1: he shouted, thirty five too old to be out? Listener.
Speaker 1: I was thirty five, and I was mortified as the
Speaker 1: men in the queue giggled because I didn't think I
Speaker 1: looked thirty five, and I didn't think I was too
Speaker 1: old to be out. But this man saw me and
Speaker 1: my age. He saw through me. Even a decree had
Speaker 1: been delivered, and because of hundreds or thousands of years
Speaker 1: of conditioning. This drunk man's opinion of me felt like
Speaker 1: it had validity. Wait, and my age was an embarrassment. Now,
Speaker 1: of course I believe thirty five year olds to be babies,
Speaker 1: certainly still permitted to be out drinking cocktails and getting
Speaker 1: cabs home. And I believe smoothed face Jacqueline to be
Speaker 1: a baby too. But she just got age shamed by
Speaker 1: someone she thought understood who she was and who she
Speaker 1: was and is is not an old person. This isn't me,
Speaker 1: she's thinking, not yet, it's not, nor will it be.
Speaker 1: Don't put me there with these people who are closer
Speaker 1: to their end than their beginning, and who look like
Speaker 1: it too. Don't put me here with a window seat
Speaker 1: to the next act, too close to facing the very
Speaker 1: thing that I'm fighting that I've convinced myself will never
Speaker 1: happen if I just try hard enough to resist it, pay, pray,
Speaker 1: work at it. We and when I say we, I
Speaker 1: mean the culture broadly say all the right words about
Speaker 1: embracing aging and the beauty of a lived in face,
Speaker 1: and how lines tell stories, and that there's a welcome
Speaker 1: softening to a wise older woman. But do we believe
Speaker 1: them when we're facing the reality ourselves that it's our
Speaker 1: faces and our bodies that are going to be the
Speaker 1: horror story to the hot young butler. What Jacqueline is
Speaker 1: thinking as she's running away, screaming as she grabs her purse,
Speaker 1: ditches her drink, and ushers her friends away from the
Speaker 1: visibly aged as if they were in infection she might catch,
Speaker 1: is they're not like us. We will never be them.
Speaker 1: I am alive, I am still young. And to the
Speaker 1: man whose eyes saw her age before her beauty, she's saying,
Speaker 1: how dare you call me old? Even without words, it's
Speaker 1: still the very worst thing that any woman can be.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to our little drop about the
Speaker 1: white Loaders. Tell us what you thought. Listen to mid
Speaker 1: Braden review. We'll see you next time.