Speaker 1: You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast. Mama Mayer acknowledges
Speaker 1: the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast
Speaker 1: is recorded on. Welcome to Mama Mea are out loud?
Speaker 1: What women are actually talking about on Wednesday the thirty.
Speaker 2: On What how About?
Speaker 1: We's done Again? Hello, and welcome to Mama Mea Out
Speaker 1: loud What women are actually talking about on Wednesday, the
Speaker 1: thirteenth of November. I'm Meya Friedman sitting in the big
Speaker 1: chair while Holly wayIn Wright is away.
Speaker 3: I'm Jesse Stevens and today we are joined by Mama
Speaker 3: Maya's US correspondent and the deputy editor of Foreign Policy magazine,
Speaker 3: our friend, Amelia Lester.
Speaker 1: Hello, Hello, welcome, And on the show today it's equal
Speaker 1: parts chaotic and iconic. Yes, we're talking about the Martha
Speaker 1: Stewart Netflix stocko and why the original influencer Jailbird and
Speaker 1: Snoop's best friend hates it? And why did Kate Middleton's
Speaker 1: face attract so much attention after Remembrance Day's service in London?
Speaker 1: Have we just forgotten what women actually look like? Plus
Speaker 1: dating as a job the new method for single people
Speaker 1: looking to be unsingle that boasts a scorched earth policy
Speaker 1: and some very strict criteria. But first, Jesse Stevens.
Speaker 3: In case he missed it, Armie Hammer's mum has spoken
Speaker 3: about a very special birthday present she gifted her son,
Speaker 3: who is definitely not a literal cannibal. In case you're wondering,
Speaker 3: Hamma has a new podcast is called Army hammer Time Podcast,
Speaker 3: and he dropped the second of a two part interview
Speaker 3: with his mother Drew. Here's what she said.
Speaker 4: What did you get?
Speaker 5: So I call Army and I go, Army, what would
Speaker 5: you like for your birthday this year?
Speaker 6: And he goes, oh, I don't know, you know, maybe
Speaker 6: maybe money whatever. And I was like, I believe I'm
Speaker 6: going to give you a vas sect to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so yeah, my mom got me a sex to.
Speaker 6: Me for that stupid and by the way, you know,
Speaker 6: as the church lady, I would love to say, okay, Army,
Speaker 6: I'm really praying that you don't have sex outside of
Speaker 6: marriage because under God, sex you know, is in the
Speaker 6: purity of a marriage and.
Speaker 5: All this, and I'm thinking that's not gonna work. So
Speaker 5: now I'm out here blasting away, bro, just throwing it
Speaker 5: all over the place.
Speaker 3: She also went on to say how many young women
Speaker 3: would love to have Armie Hammer's little babies.
Speaker 1: I love this interview. It's made my whole week and
Speaker 1: you can watch the video of it. It's quite extraordinary.
Speaker 1: It's just the two of them. I think Army's wearing
Speaker 1: like shorts and thongs and sitting in a chair and
Speaker 1: his mum's just sitting on the couch and they just
Speaker 1: set up I think a phone. But she goes on
Speaker 1: to say it's a miracle after he talks about blasting
Speaker 1: it everywhere. It's a miracle we don't have a bunch
Speaker 1: of little hammers running around and he said, yeah, I
Speaker 1: ate them.
Speaker 3: Wow, that is fucked and a less blasting, Army, less blasting.
Speaker 3: She also had some thoughts about those allegations that were
Speaker 3: made in twenty twenty one. Here is how she directly
Speaker 3: referenced them.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I even.
Speaker 5: Called you one time and I was like, okay, let
Speaker 5: me just get this straight. I go, are there any
Speaker 5: women out there with ribs or limbs missing? That's what
Speaker 5: I want to know as a mother, because end of conversation,
Speaker 5: if there are limbs or ribs missing.
Speaker 1: She's not having any of these accusations. She's not buying
Speaker 1: it her Army would not eat a person.
Speaker 2: I do want to say, I'm all for normalizing vasectoms
Speaker 2: for men. I think it's really important that men take
Speaker 2: responsibility for family planning. And my husband, for the record,
Speaker 2: did instagram his vasectomy live, not live, but before and
Speaker 2: after shock.
Speaker 1: Can you explain? Is it true? I heard that there's
Speaker 1: a big thing on Super Bowl someday in the US
Speaker 1: where men go and get their vasectoms and then recover
Speaker 1: on the couch watching like the day before, and then
Speaker 1: recover on the couch watching football.
Speaker 2: Yees, it's a movie. I have heard that. But it
Speaker 2: is interesting to note that for sectomy rates in the
Speaker 2: US are much lower than they are in Australia. Culturally,
Speaker 2: it's much more taboo, So it's interesting that Army's breaking
Speaker 2: the fourth wall, as it were.
Speaker 1: I'm also interested when she said I gave him a
Speaker 1: vasectomy for his birthday. Look, this story is strange. Army
Speaker 1: is clearly not your usual bear, and I was like,
Speaker 1: did she just get out the scissors?
Speaker 2: I don't know. You love an overshare amongst family members.
Speaker 3: So Jamia, would you pay for your son's v sectomy?
Speaker 1: For example, I'd pay for it to be reversed so
Speaker 1: I could have my grandchildren.
Speaker 3: I get it.
Speaker 1: The documentary about Martha Stewart, who is eighty three, dropped
Speaker 1: on Netflix a couple of weeks ago, and we are
Speaker 1: ready to talk about whether Martha is actually the original influencer.
Speaker 1: A quick snapshot of who Martha is in case you've forgotten.
Speaker 2: She is the.
Speaker 1: Queen of homemaking, cooking, and everything lifestyle. She's a TV personality,
Speaker 1: a business mogul, and the original sort of DIY expert
Speaker 1: who built an entire empire around making everyday life look fabulous.
Speaker 1: She started as a model. She then became an investment
Speaker 1: banker and a stockbroker, and she started her own company.
Speaker 1: After she wrote a cookbook and then made a magazine,
Speaker 1: started a media company called Omnimedia, and it listed on
Speaker 1: the New York Stock Exchange. I think she was on
Speaker 1: the board of the New York Stock Exchange. And she
Speaker 1: became America's first female self made billionaire. So she's got
Speaker 1: an extraordinary legacy, really, most of which I didn't know
Speaker 1: what had forgotten about. So her brand is all about
Speaker 1: like fancy recipes, home dcort tips, gardening ideas, entertainment advice,
Speaker 1: and this documentary covered her whole life because she's got
Speaker 1: a fascinating life. As if that wasn't interesting enough, She
Speaker 1: then went to prison for insider trading, well not quite
Speaker 1: insider trading, but for a scandal around insider trading, and
Speaker 1: she was in prison for about five months. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and four, there was a big, very public celebrity
Speaker 1: court case. Her legacy is that she's basically a household name,
Speaker 1: and if you've ever googled how to set a table,
Speaker 1: I don't know do people google about you would have
Speaker 1: found her. A few key moments from the documentary have
Speaker 1: gone viral, including a chat that she had about infidelity
Speaker 1: in her marriage. So she was married to this guy
Speaker 1: called Andrew Stewart from when she was quite young, I
Speaker 1: think she was nineteen. She kissed someone else on her honeymoon.
Speaker 1: She was in Italy in the Duomo and a moment
Speaker 1: overcame her and she had a quick past with a stranger,
Speaker 1: and then she had another short lived affair. But her
Speaker 1: husband had many affairs before they eventually divorced. Here's the
Speaker 1: conversation she had with the interviewer in the documentary about infidelity.
Speaker 7: I don't know how many different girlfriends he had during
Speaker 7: this time. But I think there were quite a few
Speaker 7: young women. Listen to my advice. If you're married and
Speaker 7: you think you're happily married and your husband started to
Speaker 7: cheat on you, he's a piece of shit, and look
Speaker 7: at him. It's a piece of shit, and get out
Speaker 7: of it, get out of that marriage. But I couldn't
Speaker 7: do that, couldn't walk away. Didn't you have an affair
Speaker 7: early on in the relationship or when you were a Yeah,
Speaker 7: but I don't think Andy ever knew about that.
Speaker 8: He did say anything about it.
Speaker 7: He did, Yes, you would confess to him.
Speaker 2: Sess He didn't straight from the marriage until you told
Speaker 2: him you had already straight.
Speaker 7: Oh that's not true. I don't think.
Speaker 1: Amelia and I've watched this documentary. We adored it. Jesse
Speaker 1: hasn't seen it yet. What was interesting to me was
Speaker 1: realizing that all this talk about Ballerina farm and Nara Smith,
Speaker 1: all these tradwives and influencers who make the work of
Speaker 1: homemaking and parenting look effortless while running these big businesses
Speaker 1: and making a huge amount of money from looking effortless.
Speaker 1: She really was the original influencer. Didn't you think, Amelia
Speaker 1: so What was your takeaways from the documentary.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it got me thinking about what an influencer is
Speaker 2: and what makes for an influencer. There was this recent
Speaker 2: survey of the American Labor Force that said seven percent
Speaker 2: of Americans describe themselves as influencers as their job. Now,
Speaker 2: this climate can't be true, the figure cannot be that high.
Speaker 2: But when you think about what makes for an influencer,
Speaker 2: it comes down to a person who can get other
Speaker 2: people to spend money. That's what it comes down to.
Speaker 2: I read a great definition of it recently by Emily
Speaker 2: Sunberg at the newsletter The Feed. She wrote, what the
Speaker 2: followers of these women really want is to step into
Speaker 2: their lives for a few minutes each day. And that
Speaker 2: got me thinking about how you can draw a straight
Speaker 2: line from Martha Stewart to Gwyneth Paltrow, and then I
Speaker 2: would argue a dotted line from both those women to
Speaker 2: Zoe Foster Blake.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. So all women who have built incredible business
Speaker 1: empires and who other women are really obsessed with their lives.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they get us to take out our wallets. They've
Speaker 2: successfully monetized not just their taste, I would say, but
Speaker 2: their lives. We think, for a few minutes each day,
Speaker 2: if we buy a Martha Stuart Kmart piece of home wears,
Speaker 2: or if we buy Gwyneth's new skincare line or Zoe
Speaker 2: foster Blake skincare line, we're actually wanting to grab a
Speaker 2: piece of their lives.
Speaker 1: But isn't that the same with every celebrity who's ever
Speaker 1: endorsed a product, every celebrity who has a fragrance.
Speaker 3: I don't think so. And this is where I actually
Speaker 3: think Martha Stewart is unlike a lot of influencers, and
Speaker 3: that is that she is, as far as I can tell,
Speaker 3: extremely talented. For example, it started with cooking and catering.
Speaker 3: That is a real skill. It can be kind of
Speaker 3: disparaged in the treadwife world, but being a great cook
Speaker 3: is like it's a really good skill. And then there's
Speaker 3: interior design and then even like how to set a table,
Speaker 3: like there is real status in that. And it's the
Speaker 3: same with Zoe Foster Blake. I think this pouchhow is
Speaker 3: very good at marketing. But I wonder if that's a
Speaker 3: bit of the tension that's emerged between them.
Speaker 1: I would call Zoe and Gwyneth and Martha influential, not
Speaker 1: influenzas I would actually put Zoe quite separate. Although it's
Speaker 1: interesting for all of those women, they are naturally talented
Speaker 1: at a particular thing. For Zoe it's writing, she's a
Speaker 1: brilliant writer. For Gwyneth, it's acting. For Martha, it was
Speaker 1: actually cooking and homemaking. And I think what's interesting about
Speaker 1: her and what the documentary, which she didn't like. By
Speaker 1: the way, she's come out and said a whole lot
Speaker 1: of things that she didn't like about it. You could
Speaker 1: hear she probably didn't like that in exchange about the infidelity,
Speaker 1: but she critiqued almost everything, from camera angles to music choices.
Speaker 1: She told The New York Times she hated the scenes
Speaker 1: at the end, where she said she looked like a
Speaker 1: lonely old lady walking hunched over in the garden. She
Speaker 1: didn't like how she looked on camera. She thought there
Speaker 1: should have been more rap music involved and that would
Speaker 1: have been more interesting. And it made me see how
Speaker 1: many documentaries that we watch about celebrities, and there's a
Speaker 1: whole host of them at the moment, from Harry and
Speaker 1: Meghan to the David Beckham documentary. They're now making one
Speaker 1: about Victoria Beckham, Taylor Swift. Of course, they all have
Speaker 1: creative control and approval. And even Oprah, who Apple was
Speaker 1: making a documentary about and they finished and she paid
Speaker 1: to buy it back so it would never be released
Speaker 1: because she didn't like it. And I think that's why
Speaker 1: I like this documentary. What did it make you feel
Speaker 1: about Martha herself?
Speaker 2: Amelia, Well, I think that's why I want to push
Speaker 2: back on Jesse's idea that it's about skill. I think
Speaker 2: all three of these women are so smart, so brilliant,
Speaker 2: they deserve every dollar that they've made. But I think
Speaker 2: that their greatest skill is marketing. And is marketing an
Speaker 2: idea of perfect imperfection or imperfect perfection. This word perfect
Speaker 2: comes up for Martha all the time. That's what she
Speaker 2: was selling with the perfectly made tables and the perfect
Speaker 2: Thanksgiving turkeys.
Speaker 1: But the idea is that she lets us.
Speaker 2: In to tiny parts of her life that are anything
Speaker 2: but perfect, and she keeps us wanting more from it.
Speaker 2: So a couple of things that come up in the dosh.
Speaker 1: You mean in the documentary, because not in her before
Speaker 1: she went to prison, like her magazines and her public persona,
Speaker 1: does she let us in she certainly didn't used to
Speaker 1: because there was all that stuff about how she was
Speaker 1: the Queen of mean before it came out about Ellen.
Speaker 1: It reminded me so much of that thing about the
Speaker 1: worst thing a woman can do in business or in
Speaker 1: life is be assertive. And it showed some scenes of
Speaker 1: Martha's Stewitt in the kitchen with people who were working
Speaker 1: with her for her, and she was really rude to
Speaker 1: them and really short.
Speaker 2: That's true, but she's now a huge influencer in her
Speaker 2: own right coming out of prison letting it all hang
Speaker 2: out in this documentary. The New York Times had recently
Speaker 2: that she is a gen Z beauty influencer, and she specifically,
Speaker 2: what do you mean? So she advertises clay to Postkincare,
Speaker 2: which is a really expensive skincare brand. The creams are
Speaker 2: all four hundred dollars and up on TikTok from her
Speaker 2: Connecticut mansion. She's routinely getting seventy eighty million views for
Speaker 2: these skincare advertisements, and so the relatability of it is
Speaker 2: part of why she's taken off with a new generation.
Speaker 2: So let's run through a few things that she talks
Speaker 2: about quite frankly in this documentary the first marriage ending
Speaker 2: in divorce, as we've discussed, and she shares with the
Speaker 2: documentary makers letters that she sent her ex husband begging
Speaker 2: him to take her back. That's an extraordinary amount of disclosure.
Speaker 1: That was quite j lo. I thought it was.
Speaker 2: She's admitted that she didn't feel naturally maternal towards her
Speaker 2: daughter Alexis, and this is something that her daughter has
Speaker 2: spoken about over the years, the fact that while she
Speaker 2: and her mother are very close, her mother was never
Speaker 2: a straightforwardly maternal figure for her. She didn't come.
Speaker 1: Across as very warm. And I kept finding myself texting, you,
Speaker 1: have you ever seen a more unlikable woman like her? Unlikability?
Speaker 1: And I know this is a real weapon that we
Speaker 1: use against women, this idea of needing to be likable.
Speaker 1: What was interesting is that she wasn't trying to be likable.
Speaker 2: No, when Nora's Gwyneth, by the way, Gwyneth is also I.
Speaker 1: Feel like Gwyneth tries to be likable. I think Martha
Speaker 1: is really like, yeah, I didn't like being a mum
Speaker 1: that much. My husband was a dickhead. People need to
Speaker 1: be better.
Speaker 2: She was on Drew Barrymore's show this week and Drew's
Speaker 2: famously touchy with her guests, and she just pushed her away.
Speaker 2: I loved that.
Speaker 3: I think it's the complexity that makes her a complicated
Speaker 3: monet painting that we can't stop staring at, because in
Speaker 3: a lot of ways she actually subverts the feminine. It's like,
Speaker 3: in one way she's the antitrad wife. Even her voice
Speaker 3: is a bit deeper, she's disagreeable. She doesn't come across
Speaker 3: as pleasant. It doesn't seem to be like her aim
Speaker 3: to come across as pleasant. Like compare that to a
Speaker 3: ballerina farm Hannah Nielman, who from the high voice to
Speaker 3: the slow talking to the there's something so tranquil about
Speaker 3: it and subservient.
Speaker 1: They're both very much with Hannah Nielman's husband and Nara
Speaker 1: Smith's husband, Lucky Blue. It's always in the service. They're
Speaker 1: working in the service of their husband and children, and
Speaker 1: they're always very much in the service. Whereas that's so interesting,
Speaker 1: Martha's more about I'm doing this because I like, I
Speaker 1: want a nice table, and I want to be gardening,
Speaker 1: and I want to be making a nice Christmas dinner
Speaker 1: because it gives me joy.
Speaker 2: And she fucked the rest of you and she flirts
Speaker 2: with the male gaze, but she also rejects it. So
Speaker 2: she's on the cover of Sports Illustrated. She dates famous man.
Speaker 2: She dated Anthony Hopkins, which I didn't know, but she
Speaker 2: broke up with him because she said she couldn't stop
Speaker 2: thinking about Hannibal Lecter. And she's spoken up very openly
Speaker 2: about how difficult it has been for her to date
Speaker 2: in midlife and beyond.
Speaker 1: She's quite beyond midlife. I would say she's eighty three.
Speaker 1: Is she still dating?
Speaker 2: She is, And she.
Speaker 3: Says that she's got no plans to retire, like she
Speaker 3: doesn't see anything appealing about retirement. But I was thinking
Speaker 3: about a quote I read recently about fame and how
Speaker 3: people become famous to feel understood. That's the number one
Speaker 3: reason is that they want people to understand them. And
Speaker 3: after that documentary, there was a headline that said she
Speaker 3: still doesn't feel understood, and she doesn't, and I wonder
Speaker 3: if that's why she doesn't want to retire. She's not
Speaker 3: done yet. She feels like people don't fully get her.
Speaker 3: And that's my question, as someone who hasn't watched the documentary.
Speaker 3: Are we laughing at Martha Stuart or are we laughing
Speaker 3: with Martha Stuart because she's become this cultural icon in
Speaker 3: the last few years. She kind of pops up with
Speaker 3: Snoop Dogg. She's like, again, this complicated figure and I've
Speaker 3: seen viral clips from this, like the one about her
Speaker 3: affairs and her relationships and stuff, and I have a laugh.
Speaker 3: But do you think she feels like we're laughing at her?
Speaker 1: What a great question. No, I think that she's more like,
Speaker 1: you know, how Betty White became iconic, Yeah, and Ruth
Speaker 1: Baty Ginsburg was iconic. I know that's different. She was
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court judge and has her own complicated history.
Speaker 1: But I don't I think people are laughing at her.
Speaker 1: I'm not laughing.
Speaker 2: About Miron's another one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the Queen. Like it's kind of like, I
Speaker 1: hate to say it, but like they're so old they're cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, It's like they've come back again. It's like retro.
Speaker 3: Was this documentary good for her brand or bad?
Speaker 2: Well? I think the very fact that she's still selling
Speaker 2: really expensive skincare to gen z on TikTok means that
Speaker 2: it was great for her brand. I think we now
Speaker 2: crave the deconstruction of perfection that she's revealing to us
Speaker 2: in this, don't you think, Miah, Yeah, And I think
Speaker 2: that what it did do Jesse, that's so interesting what
Speaker 2: you say about they want to be understood.
Speaker 1: I think that's incredibly astute. I think what it reminded
Speaker 1: me a little bit like watching the Menendez Brothers documentary.
Speaker 1: I think, I know what I think about these people.
Speaker 1: And I thought I knew what I thought about Martha Stewart,
Speaker 1: but I changed my mind after watching the documentary and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, that was bullshit that she got
Speaker 1: sent to prison. Yeah, it is like, yeah, soso bad.
Speaker 1: And similarly to the Menandez brothers, like I thought that
Speaker 1: they'd made up all those allegations. That was my understanding
Speaker 1: because the reason I think that where relooking at all
Speaker 1: of these things. You know, we've got this segment all
Speaker 1: or nothing where you either know everything about a topic
Speaker 1: or nothing. The Internet allows you to know everything about
Speaker 1: any topic if you want to. But back in the
Speaker 1: nineties and the eighties and until the last ten years,
Speaker 1: there was a limited amount of information you could get
Speaker 1: about a certain topic. You know, if you wanted to
Speaker 1: dive deep, there wasn't really a way you could particularly
Speaker 1: for someone like Martha Stewart who wasn't iconic in Australia,
Speaker 1: and same with the Menendez brothers. I was kind of
Speaker 1: dimly aware of that story, but now it's like these
Speaker 1: stories are international.
Speaker 2: You're also making me think about how I felt after
Speaker 2: watching Harry and Meghan's documentary versus how I felt watching this.
Speaker 2: Once I'd watched Harry and Megan's documentary, I didn't need
Speaker 2: to know anything else. But having watched the Martha documentary,
Speaker 2: it's like Jesse said, she's a monet painting. I want
Speaker 2: to know everything, and I still don't know everything.
Speaker 1: When you say that about Harry and Meghan, do you
Speaker 1: mean I'd like I'd eaten too much at the buffet,
Speaker 1: Like all the mystery was gone, all the interest was gone.
Speaker 2: There wasn't the push pull of that collaboration between a
Speaker 2: director and their subject. This was more of a push
Speaker 2: pool dynamic, and so there were points where it was uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of points where it was uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: The filmmaker would leave the camera on Martha as she
Speaker 2: finished a thought and then wanted the camera to be
Speaker 2: turned off, and I felt like that push pool made
Speaker 2: me want to know more.
Speaker 3: The other thing that Martha appears to have done, at
Speaker 3: least in what I've read and clips I've seen, is
Speaker 3: that she owns that she's really, really rich, and she
Speaker 3: quite likes being really really rich, which we don't see
Speaker 3: very often with women in Australia. You would never ever
Speaker 3: get away with it. But watching that and watching a
Speaker 3: woman who owns it is sort of refreshing, but also complicated.
Speaker 1: The fact that she's self made. And I keep coming
Speaker 1: back to what you say about not feeling understood. She
Speaker 1: doesn't get the credit she deserves, as so many female
Speaker 1: business owners don't, and I would include Zoe among them,
Speaker 1: where it's like they have built these multi million dollar
Speaker 1: empires entirely on their own, and that's pretty bloody impressive.
Speaker 1: Is she still as culturally relevant in America as she
Speaker 1: used to be?
Speaker 2: I think she's even more so. They talk about in
Speaker 2: the documentary. This big turning point for her was when
Speaker 2: she went on a roast of Justin Bieber in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2: That's when she actually met Snoop Dogg and they became
Speaker 2: very good friends. She had been out of the public
Speaker 2: eye for a long time after prison. She was a
Speaker 2: punchline to your earlier question, Jesse, she was a South
Speaker 2: Park punchline in fact, But then when she went back
Speaker 2: on Comedy Central and this roast of Justin Bieber, people
Speaker 2: thought that the jokes were really ribald and funny and
Speaker 2: definitely pushed the envelope. Were you shocked by that? I didn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't get to that part of the documentary.
Speaker 1: I got distracted.
Speaker 2: Well, I was shocked by the jokes and how like,
Speaker 2: what were they? They really pushed the envelope.
Speaker 1: Rip bold is not a word you hear often on
Speaker 1: this podcast.
Speaker 2: There were jokes that sort of pushed the envelope in
Speaker 2: terms of how you talk about race. There were jokes
Speaker 2: that also people made fun of her for being really,
Speaker 2: really old, and she laughed about it, wearing her leather
Speaker 2: leggings and her Dreasman note and embroidered jacket. I mean,
Speaker 2: she just came across as tough as nails, and I
Speaker 2: think we really at this point respond to that and
Speaker 2: with no fucks to give.
Speaker 3: It's nice to see Snoop again.
Speaker 7: One of the highest rated episodes on my show, Martha
Speaker 7: Stewart Living was when Snoop and I made brownies together.
Speaker 7: And I've used this recipe ever since. As a matter
Speaker 7: of fact, I ate three of them right before they
Speaker 7: called and asked me to do this.
Speaker 2: Rose in a moment. A UK TV presenter made a
Speaker 2: comment about Kate Middleton on the weekend and let's just
Speaker 2: say it got us all thinking out loud.
Speaker 3: An article ran in Grazia on Tuesday with the headline
Speaker 3: She's aged so much. The vile commentary around Kate Middleton's
Speaker 3: appearance needs to stop. At first, I rolled my eyes
Speaker 3: because it felt like one of those classic Internet tropes
Speaker 3: of using mock horror to incentivize people to click on
Speaker 3: a less than flattering photo. I thought, this is just
Speaker 3: engagement baiting. The publication says, they're saying this is a
Speaker 3: terrible photo. They're saying she looks old, how offensive. Here's
Speaker 3: the photo, please leave comments below. And from that I
Speaker 3: just went I'm not going to engage. But then I
Speaker 3: saw where the comments had come from and I thought
Speaker 3: that this actually was a valid news story. First, I
Speaker 3: should say Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales, appeared at
Speaker 3: a remembrance Sunday service in London and since completing her
Speaker 3: chemotherapy treat in September, She's been slowly returning to royal duties,
Speaker 3: and images of her in a black dress and a
Speaker 3: black hat were published widely online. We can, of course
Speaker 3: expect the internet to be cruel, there's nothing new about that.
Speaker 3: But there was one particular comment on X from a
Speaker 3: high profile British TV presenter who regularly appears on Good
Speaker 3: Morning Britain and Loose Women. Her name is Narinda Corp.
Speaker 3: She shared an image of Middleton with the comment genuine question,
Speaker 3: why has Kate aged so much? Isn't she only forty two?
Speaker 3: Is she a smoker? It's the only explanation.
Speaker 1: Was she high? This woman?
Speaker 3: It's the most bizarre tweet.
Speaker 1: If you want to think it. I can't control what
Speaker 1: you think, but like, firstly, did you miss the cancer part?
Speaker 1: And secondly why share that with the world? Like what
Speaker 1: did she think she was doing?
Speaker 3: Yes? So she's since apologized. Unsurprisingly, she faced a lot
Speaker 3: of backlash. She apologized with a video on social media,
Speaker 3: and here's what she said.
Speaker 4: I put out a stupid tweet that wasn't my intention.
Speaker 4: My intent was not to be malicious or nasty or anything.
Speaker 4: I'm not like that. Anybody who knows me it was
Speaker 4: stupid to ask about the aging. I've admitted that, and
Speaker 4: I put my hands up and I've apologized if it
Speaker 4: caused offense. I didn't wish death on anyone. I didn't
Speaker 4: do anything like that. I asked about aging. She smoked
Speaker 4: nothing to do with cancer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think that the emission of the cancer
Speaker 3: was actually kind of the problem. But Google trends, since
Speaker 3: all this has happened, Google Trends shows a spike in
Speaker 3: searchers for Kate Middleton looks Tired, Kate Middleton aging, and
Speaker 3: Kate Middleton looks old. My question is what is wrong
Speaker 3: with us?
Speaker 2: My question is how are those Google searchers. Kate Middleton
Speaker 2: looks tired is a statement.
Speaker 1: I would defend that, not defendant explain it in saying,
Speaker 1: if you're looking for the original, you'd heard something about
Speaker 1: it and you wanted you knew it would link you
Speaker 1: with the photo or the original apsource material. I'm going
Speaker 1: to now not defend nerindacal, but kind of defend her
Speaker 1: after saying I think she was high, and of course
Speaker 1: she should never have said it. What I think this
Speaker 1: is an indication of, however, is actually nothing to do
Speaker 1: with Kate Middleton it's about the fact that we don't
Speaker 1: know what women look like anymore. We're just not sure
Speaker 1: what women are meant to look like because everyone famous
Speaker 1: kind of looks this same weird age, whether they're Nicole
Speaker 1: Kidman who's almost sixty, or Kylie Jenner. Everyone is sort
Speaker 1: of this nondescript, strange age. So if there's a time
Speaker 1: that a woman is perhaps not having the tweakments that
Speaker 1: she once had, or she is tired, or maybe she's
Speaker 1: recovering from cancer, or who knows what is happening, we're
Speaker 1: just like, oh, wait, what does a female face look
Speaker 1: like anymore? I actually don't know. And it's something that
Speaker 1: friends and I in my group chats often do when
Speaker 1: we see someone's not in this way where it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: doesn't she look tired. It's almost like a CSI forensic
Speaker 1: analysis of trying to understand how women look a certain way,
Speaker 1: not necessarily because we want to emulate them, but just
Speaker 1: trying to understand this look that people have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like the old adage that cosmetic surgery doesn't
Speaker 2: necessarily make you look younger, it just makes it look
Speaker 2: like you had cosmetic surgery. And when now there's this
Speaker 2: growing bucket of women for whom age is just a
Speaker 2: number and they're sort of untethered from the timeline.
Speaker 3: I think that the chemo, the health context, and the
Speaker 3: smoking comment is all really critical to this story. The
Speaker 3: smoking comment was so revealing, and it was revealing because
Speaker 3: we look at aging now as a personal failing, almost
Speaker 3: like I can see that you haven't prioritized your health, But.
Speaker 1: Isn't it I know you haven't prioritized your face.
Speaker 3: Yes, but I think that what we've done is we
Speaker 3: have made your face a proxy for health in a
Speaker 3: way that's not the truth, but that's what we It's
Speaker 3: like the shorthand now is someone goes and gets the
Speaker 3: tweakments and they look well, and so it's almost like
Speaker 3: this moral failing if you don't get all of those,
Speaker 3: because people go, oh, that is the number one reason
Speaker 3: women I know say they've had the tweagments is that
Speaker 3: they don't want to look tired. Not that they want
Speaker 3: to look younger, but that they want to look well.
Speaker 3: They want to look healthy.
Speaker 1: Because we're a raising effort. Isn't that what it's all about?
Speaker 1: Isn't that what beauty standards are about? Back to Martha Stewart,
Speaker 1: and influencers. We're raising the effort and we're also raising
Speaker 1: the biology of growing older because ironically, if Kate and
Speaker 1: it's just seems so yucky to even be talking about this,
Speaker 1: but if Kate is looking a certain way, you know,
Speaker 1: she also got criticized and people commented when she looked
Speaker 1: completely untouched by her cancer treatment when she was first
Speaker 1: appeared at the Trooping of the Color in that white dress.
Speaker 1: And I think that's so interesting, Jesse, because it made
Speaker 1: me think about the controversy that happened in twenty thirteen
Speaker 1: when Hillary Mantel, the late book Or Prize winner, gave
Speaker 1: a lecture at the British Museum called Royal Bodies. And
Speaker 1: it was around the time, ironically, Kate had withdrawn from
Speaker 1: public life because she had severe morning sickness. And what
Speaker 1: she said was she was talking about the role of
Speaker 1: royal women and how essentially their role is purely to
Speaker 1: be ornamental and it is purely about their esthetics and
Speaker 1: also breed. And she said Kate seems to have been
Speaker 1: selected for her role of princess because she was irreproachable,
Speaker 1: as painfully thin as anyone could wish, without quirks, without oddities,
Speaker 1: without the risk of the emergence of character. She appears
Speaker 1: precision made, machine made, so different from Diana, whose human
Speaker 1: awkwardness and emotional incontinence showed her every gesture. I thought
Speaker 1: this was so interesting because as much like that is
Speaker 1: Kate's role. It's not to have a person or opinions,
Speaker 1: or to do a physical job. It's to be ornamental
Speaker 1: and shine the light of her attractiveness on whatever she's
Speaker 1: standing next to, whether it's the king or the heir,
Speaker 1: her son, or the charity that she's promoting.
Speaker 2: Mantel got a lot of criticism for that at the time,
Speaker 2: I remember, and then eventually she came out and said, look,
Speaker 2: that wasn't intended as criticism. I was actually trying to
Speaker 2: sympathize with Kate's plight. She is trapped. She has to
Speaker 2: be perfect no matter what, and that's very much a prison.
Speaker 2: And it made me think of the fact that she
Speaker 2: got all this criticism Kate did when that video came
Speaker 2: out recently of her and the family announcing that she
Speaker 2: had completed her treatment. A Guardian article by Hillary Osborne,
Speaker 2: which was published about that video, described it as soft focus.
Speaker 2: She was very disparaging. She said that look. The author
Speaker 2: had been through cancer treatment, and she said, I found
Speaker 2: this video upsetting because it seemed to underplay the strain
Speaker 2: of cancer treatment. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was joking with my friends if she's out scouting
Speaker 1: for fields to run through. But I don't blame Kate
Speaker 1: Middleton for doing that, because that's what the public needs.
Speaker 2: If she doesn't do it, she's told that she's a
Speaker 2: secret smoker who's tired. Yeah, she really is trapped in
Speaker 2: that way that Hillary Mantel highlighted. That same article had
Speaker 2: a phrase in it that I've been thinking about a lot.
Speaker 2: I have some loved ones going through cancer treatment. She
Speaker 2: talked to in the article about how after you finish chemo,
Speaker 2: you linger in a sort of grayness, and that idea
Speaker 2: of grayness and the physical aftershocks of it go beyond
Speaker 2: the hair that we all think of, for instance, to
Speaker 2: this overall grayness of demeanor. And it must be really
Speaker 2: hard if you are expected to be a perfect plastic princess,
Speaker 2: as Hillary Mantel put it, when you're feeling that grayness.
Speaker 3: Yes, there is the particular role that a princess plays,
Speaker 3: but even for women who have survived cancer, and that
Speaker 3: is a whole you know, physical experience I can't begin
Speaker 3: to imagine. But a lot of my friends who have
Speaker 3: then me into the next stage have talked about struggling
Speaker 3: with body image, have talked about like, as you say,
Speaker 3: from the skin to weight fluctuations, to the hair to
Speaker 3: even like sex drive, all that kind of stuff, which
Speaker 3: feels like such a silly thing to even worry about
Speaker 3: in the wake of a brush with your own mortality.
Speaker 1: But you're not free of beauty standards even when you're facing,
Speaker 1: you know, a serious illness.
Speaker 3: And this is just the classic. Yeah, it's a comment
Speaker 3: about Kate, and it's very specific to that scenario, but
Speaker 3: also to anyone who's had a really rough year and
Speaker 3: is thinking I'm not looking my best. They just got
Speaker 3: told you know exactly what everyone's thinking of you. Like,
Speaker 3: let's remember Kate's year. In January, she underwent major abdominal surgery.
Speaker 3: By March, it was that photoshopping controversy. Later that month,
Speaker 3: she announces the cancer diagnosis. She then shares an update
Speaker 3: in June, we know that she's undergoing preventative September, she
Speaker 3: releases the video that we all saw, and she's only
Speaker 3: just in the last few months returned to any royal duties.
Speaker 3: That is a shit year, Like that is a really
Speaker 3: shit year. And she turned up to this event over
Speaker 3: the weekend for Remembrance Day, which obviously you know was
Speaker 3: important to her and it's an important part of her role,
Speaker 3: and people tell her she looks like shit. Like that
Speaker 3: is just the cruelty of that and what it reveals
Speaker 3: about our culture is so disturbing.
Speaker 1: But it's not as though she's not aware of her
Speaker 1: role and of society's expectations. And it was so interesting
Speaker 1: seeing her at the trooping of the color and everything
Speaker 1: she did was so coded. She had a tight white
Speaker 1: dress on. I read a lot of think pieces around
Speaker 1: that afterwards, and some people were disappointed that she looked
Speaker 1: untouched by cancer and felt that it didn't, as you say,
Speaker 1: reflect their experience, and others were comforted because they thought, oh,
Speaker 1: after my cancer experience, I too could be back to
Speaker 1: my normal self. And it reminded me of those bodies
Speaker 1: bouncing back after babies, and that whole disgusting thing that
Speaker 1: used to be on magazine covers and is now on
Speaker 1: Instagram in many places where it's like we must raise
Speaker 1: all signs of pain, trouble, emotional frailty, physical change from
Speaker 1: women's faces and bodies. That's what our culture demands.
Speaker 2: But I think it's interesting you bring up birth because
Speaker 2: Kate's always been quietly courageous on this front. I don't
Speaker 2: think Hillary Mantel ultimately gave her enough credit. Remember when
Speaker 2: after her oldest son was born, George, they came out
Speaker 2: of the hospital and she had still a visible bump,
Speaker 2: but it was physically impossible for her not to have
Speaker 2: had a physical change of shape, right, But she didn't
Speaker 2: have to come out and do that right then and there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think she did. That was before Meghan had
Speaker 1: reset the standards. That was a you know, it was
Speaker 1: the son of the heir to the throne. I don't
Speaker 1: think she couldn't, but I know what you mean. She
Speaker 1: did choose a dress that showed I remember thinking at
Speaker 1: the time feeling so grateful and how pitiful it was
Speaker 1: because she looked perfect in every other way. You're right,
Speaker 1: there was this tiny trace that was of course gone
Speaker 1: by the time we next saw her. And again, not
Speaker 1: criticism of her, but it's this beauty standard that insists women,
Speaker 1: no matter what we're going through, no matter how old
Speaker 1: or young we are, you can even see it in
Speaker 1: Martha Stewart. She's eighty three, and yet she still has
Speaker 1: to be relevant. She has to pose for the cover
Speaker 1: of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit is she.
Speaker 3: And the irony of this is that when you look
Speaker 3: at that photo, she has had her makeup professionally done,
Speaker 3: she's had her hair professionally done, she's had all the
Speaker 3: clothes are immaculate, and still it wasn't enough. It's not
Speaker 3: like she wasn't trying. She was, and still it was
Speaker 3: like there was still criticism.
Speaker 1: Before we move on, I want to just do a
Speaker 1: little quick bit of feedback as a gift.
Speaker 8: Oh, thanks for the feedback.
Speaker 3: Great, I'd love your feedback.
Speaker 7: What a gift.
Speaker 3: I always worry that you've got feedback for me that
Speaker 3: you're saying is a gift. Every time you bring this up,
Speaker 3: I bristle because I am scared.
Speaker 1: No, it's a new segment that I want to introduce
Speaker 1: where anyone can bring a little bit of feedback, because feedback,
Speaker 1: as we say here at MMA mea feedback is a gift.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you told me last week my shirt was terrible.
Speaker 2: That was a gift.
Speaker 1: That was a gift. I said, burn your linen short
Speaker 1: sleeved shirt. That was my feedback. It was indeed a gift.
Speaker 1: My gift this week is to women writers on the
Speaker 1: internet and also people interviewing women or men. It's a
Speaker 1: mostly female thing. Please stop writing letters to your younger self.
Speaker 3: Why has this riled you? What has come up in
Speaker 3: your life? Because this is it. It's a thing. I'm
Speaker 3: sure that we have dozens of them on a website
Speaker 3: called Mamma Maya. Why today has this upset you?
Speaker 1: It's been growing on me. The feedback has been brewing
Speaker 1: for some time. I find it lazy, I find it boring.
Speaker 1: I find it self indulgent, which is ironic given how
Speaker 1: much I write about myself on the internet. It's not
Speaker 1: that I'm not interested in women's opinions or women's experiences
Speaker 1: or women's stories. Hell that's my business quite literally. But
Speaker 1: this whole idea of when you write a letter, it's
Speaker 1: like a letter to my twenty five year old self, like,
Speaker 1: just stop it. I don't know why it annoys me
Speaker 1: a merely does it annoy you?
Speaker 2: Well, you know who would never do this, Martha Stewart,
Speaker 2: because she had it all figured out from the age
Speaker 2: of twenty five.
Speaker 1: I just don't see the relevance I do. So I
Speaker 1: feel like it's like saying I had this dream last
Speaker 1: night and it was a bird, but it wasn't a bird,
Speaker 1: it was actually my English teacher from fourth grade, and like,
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 3: Care, I'm going to defend it. We're obsessed with youth
Speaker 3: and we're always pandering to the young people. And if
Speaker 3: I'm hearing my wisdom from Maya Friedman, who is in
Speaker 3: her fifties, then what I want to know is how
Speaker 3: well your life and your experience is are directly relevant
Speaker 3: to me. And if I'm twenty five, what I would
Speaker 3: like is for you to write a letter to me
Speaker 3: and tell me how to make better decisions. And I
Speaker 3: think that that's what it's about. It's also a very
Speaker 3: low touch form of journalism in that you don't have
Speaker 3: to do any research, you don't have to interview anyone
Speaker 3: except yourself, and it's a very stream of consciousness. It
Speaker 3: might just be your journal.
Speaker 1: My letter would be very short. You're an idiot, but
Speaker 1: you know everyone's an idiot when they're younger, and then
Speaker 1: hopefully you become less of an idiot as you get older.
Speaker 2: Finn me as feedback on feedback to your younger self,
Speaker 2: stop doing.
Speaker 3: It after the break. Dating is a job, not a hobby.
Speaker 3: There is a new way to find love and it
Speaker 3: is not for the fainthearted.
Speaker 2: Loud design to be deleted. That's the tagline of one
Speaker 2: of the most popular dating apps, which also promises to
Speaker 2: be the dating app for people who want to get
Speaker 2: off the dating apps. But a new investigation by the
Speaker 2: UK publication The Observer has found that dating apps are
Speaker 2: becoming more like gambling products. They're more like Poky's. They
Speaker 2: encourage you to buy more and more extras, they get
Speaker 2: you into game like features, and then they lock users
Speaker 2: into what experts have called a perpetual pay to play loop.
Speaker 2: So one woman has the answer to this loop, and
Speaker 2: it starts with accepting that dating is not a game,
Speaker 2: but rather a very serious business. So get out your
Speaker 2: pen and paper take some notes. Her name is Jenny Young.
Speaker 2: She is a fifty six year old professor of English
Speaker 2: in the US, and last year she pioneered something called
Speaker 2: the burned Haystack method. So she was back on the
Speaker 2: dating market in midlife. She watched her daughter unsuccessfully swiping
Speaker 2: through apps. She realized she did not have the energy
Speaker 2: to do the same thing. She googled how to find
Speaker 2: a needle in a haystack, and she realized you have
Speaker 2: to burn the haystack to find the needle. You burn
Speaker 2: the haystack and the needle is left on the ground
Speaker 2: because metal doesn't burn. Okay, so it's a needle, a guy,
Speaker 2: the girl. It's your romantic partner. The needle is your
Speaker 2: love of your life. The basic principle as it applies
Speaker 2: to dating, and by the way, this assumes you want
Speaker 2: a long term monogamous relationship, which not everyone does. Caveat
Speaker 2: there is to filter out time wasters and red flags
Speaker 2: as soon as possible. You need to hard yes or
Speaker 2: hard no anyone who comes into your own box on
Speaker 2: the dating app as soon as possible. It's like Marie
Speaker 2: Kondo for dating. And then you block anyone who's a no.
Speaker 2: Rather than let them keep circulating around or do the
Speaker 2: fade out or the slow burn. Forget it, you just
Speaker 2: got to block them. So here's some examples. You might
Speaker 2: match with someone who lives two hours away who might
Speaker 2: be interested in a long term relationship. You block them.
Speaker 2: The match doesn't want to meet in public, they just
Speaker 2: want to meet it his or her apartment. You block them,
Speaker 2: and the result is that the apps are suddenly working
Speaker 2: for us instead of driving us mad. Is blocking different
Speaker 2: to just not swipe? I haven't been on the apps?
Speaker 2: How does it work? So part of what the apps
Speaker 2: are doing by keeping you there is that no one
Speaker 2: ever actually leaves your universe. You might stop sort of
Speaker 2: dming with someone, but they might then show up again.
Speaker 2: And it's very frustrating to have to keep interacting with
Speaker 2: these people who you've decided you're not interested in.
Speaker 1: So you swipe left or right, whatever it is if
Speaker 1: you're not interested in them, But unless you block them,
Speaker 1: they might be served to you again, like changed your mind? Yes,
Speaker 1: Larry's still got two dogs.
Speaker 2: And likes fishing. Yes. And the thing about Larry is
Speaker 2: that you might be in a conversation with Larry and
Speaker 2: then it might kind of die on the vine, and
Speaker 2: then Larry might come back in two weeks time to
Speaker 2: tell you about his new fishing escapades, and you just
Speaker 2: got to block Larry because you're not interested in him.
Speaker 2: So this was interesting to me, not because I'm on
Speaker 2: the apps, but because.
Speaker 1: Were you when you were single in New York?
Speaker 2: A little bit? A little bit. I'm about to get
Speaker 2: to that. Actually, it's formalizing an approach to finding love
Speaker 2: that is quite familiar to me. I lived in New
Speaker 2: York for eleven years, and New York women have known
Speaker 2: for a long time that if you want a relationship,
Speaker 2: you have to approach looking for it with the same
Speaker 2: single minded ruthlessness that you apply to your career. That
Speaker 2: is a given. So at first this was quite hard
Speaker 2: for me when I lived in New York because I'm
Speaker 2: Australian and you're not meant to show any kind of
Speaker 2: effort or expend any energy on anything. Things are just
Speaker 2: meant to forn.
Speaker 1: Your app We barely want to commit to an actual date.
Speaker 1: It's like, do you want to kind of meet up?
Speaker 1: I'm going to be at the pub this time.
Speaker 2: People's day maybe the word date in Australia until relatively recently.
Speaker 2: And so I remember I used to roll my eyes
Speaker 2: at this one friend of mine because she was a
Speaker 2: real go getter, and she'd schedule drinks with one person,
Speaker 2: dinner with another, post dinner drinks with someone else, and
Speaker 2: she approached it like a job and I rolled my
Speaker 2: eyes at it. And then she found the love of
Speaker 2: her life on a drink s date, and I thought, well,
Speaker 2: maybe she's onto something here. So here's what I did.
Speaker 2: I am an older millennial, so dating apps were around,
Speaker 2: but they were by no means as ubiquitous as they
Speaker 2: are now. So instead, what I did was I asked
Speaker 2: every single person I met to set me up with someone. Everyone.
Speaker 2: This included, no joke, my boss. My boss set me
Speaker 2: up with someone. Didn't go very well, but he did.
Speaker 2: My dentist set me up with someone. Again, didn't go
Speaker 2: very well, but he did. I met an entire table
Speaker 2: of women at a work dinner, never met them before.
Speaker 2: First question was, do any of you know anyone that
Speaker 2: I can date? What do you know? What happened after
Speaker 2: that dinner? One of the random women at that dinner,
Speaker 2: who I'd never met before, told me that she thought
Speaker 2: I'd get along with her brother. And he is the
Speaker 2: person who got the visectomy I mentioned at the start
Speaker 2: of this episode. Oh so my question to the romantic
Speaker 2: that is actually no, it is actually my question to
Speaker 2: the two of you is can the pursuit of love
Speaker 2: be approached like a business deal? And if you are
Speaker 2: uncomfortable right now, tell me why I am.
Speaker 3: Not uncomfortable, because Amelia, I did exactly the same thing.
Speaker 3: I got to the end of my tether and I
Speaker 3: said to my friend. I knew he had handsome friends,
Speaker 3: and I said to him, I see you hanging out
Speaker 3: with all these and some of them must be single.
Speaker 3: I don't know why you're not setting me up. And
Speaker 3: then he ended up setting me up with someone and
Speaker 3: I went to the wrong restaurant and I didn't like him,
Speaker 3: and it all went quite pear shaped, and I was like, Ah,
Speaker 3: this is why you're not setting me up, because I
Speaker 3: have potentially really thrown a spanner in the works of
Speaker 3: your friendship with this person.
Speaker 2: But which is why it's better to ask your dentists.
Speaker 3: By the way, yes, I think acquaintances there's way less
Speaker 3: pressure on it, and then you don't really have to
Speaker 3: debrief with them. It's just like, go on one date,
Speaker 3: see how it happens. My cousin maybe she was early
Speaker 3: thirties and she was single, had just come out of
Speaker 3: a long term relationship, and I said, I work with
Speaker 3: this guy at the golf club. He's quite nice, don't
Speaker 3: know him that well. Go on a date. Three kids
Speaker 3: engaged now, So I have done this before for my friends.
Speaker 3: I think it's great wingman behavior.
Speaker 1: I have never set anyone up successfully hasn't occurred to me.
Speaker 3: Really, my worry with this thing about going on dating
Speaker 3: apps and being very quick in our filtering is that
Speaker 3: I think how filtering methods are flawed. And this is
Speaker 3: why Dolly Alderton said this the other night at her show,
Speaker 3: and it is exactly what I think about dating, which
Speaker 3: is that the biggest lesson you can learn is not
Speaker 3: to have a type. And the issue with going on
Speaker 3: your apps is that I found there was an inverse
Speaker 3: relationship between the men who had a great opening line
Speaker 3: or great chat on apps and being a good date,
Speaker 3: like they were completely different. I was going for the
Speaker 3: same man because as an Australian woman who thought I
Speaker 3: was meant to sit back and just wait or whatever,
Speaker 3: I just kept dating the same guy who was the
Speaker 3: type of guy to make a move, whereas the guy
Speaker 3: I should have ended up with was a guy who
Speaker 3: doesn't make a move. Dating apps, to me, I just
Speaker 3: feel incredibly nihilistic about all of them. I was reading
Speaker 3: that there's a class action suit against some of the apps,
Speaker 3: which you know. The claim is that they are working
Speaker 3: to keep you on the app and not necessarily serving
Speaker 3: you your best matches, because then you'll leave them when
Speaker 3: you are on it. It feels like gambling more than anything,
Speaker 3: Like you are playing a slot machine and you're actually
Speaker 3: not being served. This is a theory. You're not being
Speaker 3: served your best matches because then they might lose you.
Speaker 3: I'm all for your strategy, Amelia, which is go on
Speaker 3: a date and go with unlikely people rather than thinking
Speaker 3: you're filtering method, because my filtering method was broken.
Speaker 1: I want to come back to the part where you said,
Speaker 1: does this make you uncomfortable? And it does only because
Speaker 1: I've internalized this belief that, like everything else women do,
Speaker 1: finding a partner should be effortless. It should just happen.
Speaker 1: It's like I woke up looking beautiful. I just bumped
Speaker 1: into him, like we cut, you know, met eyes across
Speaker 1: a crowded room. So I think at the beginning, there
Speaker 1: was so much stigma around dating apps, dating websites, as
Speaker 1: it used to be with RSVP, because it was like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're trying so hard, yes, and it's so strange, Like
Speaker 1: we accept that people have to try to have nice
Speaker 1: hair and they have to try, well, maybe not with
Speaker 1: beauty standards, but they have to try at work.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think if there's anywhere else that we
Speaker 1: accept that people need to try. Everything else just has
Speaker 1: to be effortless, which means that it's of course, it's
Speaker 1: not effortless. Whether it is your hair or your skin,
Speaker 1: or your relationship or meeting someone or your friendships. None
Speaker 1: of it's effortless. And so not only do we have
Speaker 1: to put in the work, but then we also have
Speaker 1: to make it seem like we're not working.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Jenny Young has thoughts on this too. One of
Speaker 2: the things that she says, and remember how every generation
Speaker 2: has these kinds of dating orthodox is so they used
Speaker 2: he has to have his cab light on. In the
Speaker 2: nine Sex in the City, Sex and the City, this
Speaker 2: idea that men will only get into a relationship once
Speaker 2: they're ready to have their cab light on. The nineties
Speaker 2: were very heteronormative. It was always men's cab lights, I think. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Then in the two thousands there was he's just not
Speaker 2: that into you also from Sex and City actually, and
Speaker 2: the idea of that was don't read between the lines
Speaker 2: too much. If he's not returning your calls or he
Speaker 2: doesn't seem very eager to meet up, that's because he
Speaker 2: doesn't really like you.
Speaker 1: I think that was very freeing. I think that was
Speaker 1: actually a really helpful thing, even though it seems a
Speaker 1: bit mean. I think that that gave us, you know,
Speaker 1: a framework for not kidding ourselves.
Speaker 3: But it was the New yorkerfication of dating, which was
Speaker 3: that you need to divorce yourself from the emotions of dating.
Speaker 2: But you do, Jesse, I think you do. And I
Speaker 2: think this latest method the burned Haystack. She's coming from
Speaker 2: a background of reading books through a living and figuring
Speaker 2: out what words mean, and she's saying, if the words
Speaker 2: someone is sending to you are unappealing or don't seem
Speaker 2: particularly excited, it's actually a new version of just he's
Speaker 2: just not that into you. Cut him loose. There's no
Speaker 2: point continuing to read the subtext. I'm sure we've all
Speaker 2: been there, reading a text from a love interest and
Speaker 2: figuring out if talk to you later actually means I
Speaker 2: want to have a phasectomy eventually with you. And so
Speaker 2: I think that it is very freeing for women, in
Speaker 2: particular to think my feelings. I'm always worried about being hurt,
Speaker 2: but women also worry about hurting men. This is obviously
Speaker 2: in street relationships, and this is saying don't worry about
Speaker 2: hurting them, They're fine.
Speaker 3: I was speaking to a friend recently about how we'd
Speaker 3: had experiences in our early to mid twenties. Say a
Speaker 3: bad relationship, a bad date, say you were ghosted, that
Speaker 3: throws you off kilter, and then what happens is you
Speaker 3: have a series of either dates or situationships or relationships
Speaker 3: that looking back, you sort of sabotaged. Like you can
Speaker 3: be thrown off kilter by one experience and then you
Speaker 3: can't get your groove back. So it's like, to me,
Speaker 3: dating felt like I was on a sporting field and
Speaker 3: I sprained my ankle and I tried to come off,
Speaker 3: and it was like get back on, and then I
Speaker 3: broke my arm, and then it was like go back on,
Speaker 3: and then I had all these ines and I was
Speaker 3: like do you love me? And they were like no,
Speaker 3: You're a total mess. Like I felt. For me, I
Speaker 3: probably needed to.
Speaker 2: Just sit You need it to be benched.
Speaker 3: I needed to be benched for a prolonged period of
Speaker 3: time and then just sit next to Luca at work
Speaker 3: and go from there. But I was not match fit
Speaker 3: and throwing myself out and out again with multiple injuries.
Speaker 3: Was not good for anyone, I think.
Speaker 1: Thank you to all of the out louders for listening
Speaker 1: to today's show if you still are, and also to
Speaker 1: our fabulous team for helping us put this show back
Speaker 1: together after breaking it as I did at the start
Speaker 1: of the show when I didn't know how to even
Speaker 1: say hello. I'm ending it strongly as I started by
Speaker 1: making a fool of myself. Let me tell you what
Speaker 1: I should have told my twenty five year old self.
Speaker 1: Pull up a chair. We will be back in your
Speaker 1: ears tomorrow. Thank you Amelia for sitting next to me, and.
Speaker 3: Bye, out Louders. If you ever wondered what Mayor Friedman
Speaker 3: is like as a mother in law, and you might
Speaker 3: want to listen to yesterday's subscriber episode. Actually, before we go, Amelia,
Speaker 3: how would you feel if your mother in law came
Speaker 3: to your house, went through your children's clothes, threw out
Speaker 3: bags of their clothes and rearranged them just hypothetically. How
Speaker 3: would that make you feel?
Speaker 2: Are you asking for a friend, Jesse, Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: yeah yeah right? Is the friend's mother in law the
Speaker 2: same mother in law who again told me last week
Speaker 2: that my shirt was terrible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yep, she's a nightmare to be that.
Speaker 1: So we've got time for on the show today.
Speaker 3: Here is a taste Mia.
Speaker 8: You have gone into Jesse's home, yeah, and rearranged him
Speaker 8: when I was there, when Jesse was buried with you
Speaker 8: not home, and you rearranged her daughter's wardrobe and decided
Speaker 8: which clothes should go and which should stay.
Speaker 1: And that's what you did without being asked.
Speaker 2: Am I correct?
Speaker 1: Twice?
Speaker 2: I would be really annoyed.
Speaker 3: As always, will pop a link in the show notes
Speaker 3: shout out to any Mum and me A subscribers listening.
Speaker 3: If you love the show and you want to support us,
Speaker 3: subscribing to Mom and Mia is the very best way
Speaker 3: to do so. There's a link in the episode description