Speaker 1: Welcome to Go, Ask Ali, a production of Shonda Land
Speaker 1: Audio and partnership with I Heart Radio. I'm a sniper.
Speaker 1: I'm admitting it totally. Yeah. Yeah. The fact that you
Speaker 1: don't keep your mouth shut is what's so great about you. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you truly and well it's all that's my hus
Speaker 1: If you can shine as you're going to death, you
Speaker 1: can shine as you go in through middle Lange, right, Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: why not start now? I'm going to enjoy my life.
Speaker 1: At the end of the day, I'm just a little
Speaker 1: particle on an asteroid flying through space, so exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just aspect or aspects. Welcome to go, ask Allie. I'm
Speaker 1: Ali Wentworth. In this season, I'm digging into everything I
Speaker 1: can get my hands on, just peeling back the layers
Speaker 1: and getting dirty. Now listen before we jump into today's episode.
Speaker 1: It's a mail bag moment. That's right, guys, Listeners ask
Speaker 1: me this question. I thought it was such a good one.
Speaker 1: I want to answer it on the air, So here
Speaker 1: we go. Hi, Ali, I'm stuck in a friendship that
Speaker 1: I feel as run its course, but I don't know
Speaker 1: if I should do something about it or not. We've
Speaker 1: been friends for over ten years. So it's tricky and
Speaker 1: I kind of feel bad about it. I'm not the
Speaker 1: kind of person to go someone, but having to sit
Speaker 1: down we've got to talk moment feels cringe e too.
Speaker 1: I really don't know how to handle it. And then
Speaker 1: I thought I could go ask Ali l O l
Speaker 1: any advice would be great. Okay, So I sort of
Speaker 1: think that friendships are a lot like love relationships because
Speaker 1: I think much like love relationships, we grow and change,
Speaker 1: and you kind of need your friends to grow and
Speaker 1: change with you. Here's my advice. I think you can
Speaker 1: slowly pull away without hurting feelings, meaning you don't want
Speaker 1: to ghost you just you know, maybe answer every third call,
Speaker 1: be busy and slowly just pull away. And by the way,
Speaker 1: if the friend eventually comes to you and says, hey,
Speaker 1: what's going on, you know I never talked to you.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of getting my feelings. Are You owe the
Speaker 1: friendship to sit down? So as cringe e as that
Speaker 1: might be, if they request it, you should definitely go
Speaker 1: and meet and just sort of talk about some of
Speaker 1: the things that have been problematic for you and a
Speaker 1: maybe you kind of resolve those and the friendship gets
Speaker 1: deeper or be you kind of resolve those and go
Speaker 1: off on your merry ways. So that is my advice. Um,
Speaker 1: I hope that helps, And now I'm going to jump
Speaker 1: into this episode. It's all about the power of social
Speaker 1: media on new moms. When I was a new mom,
Speaker 1: I was so vulnerable because I didn't know what I
Speaker 1: was doing. How long do I breastfeed for? What does
Speaker 1: it mean when the baby spits up? Should I put
Speaker 1: these dump socks on her or are they cutting off
Speaker 1: her blood flow? Should she sleep on her stomach or
Speaker 1: her back? Should I play music or not? If the
Speaker 1: TV is on? Is it ruining her brain? Endless, endless questions.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't matter how many books you've read or
Speaker 1: how many friends you've talked to, you always feel like
Speaker 1: you're just not quite doing it right. And I didn't
Speaker 1: pay any attention to social media when I was a
Speaker 1: new mom. But thank god I didn't fall down that
Speaker 1: rabbit hole, because you don't need to be told that
Speaker 1: you're doing everything wrong or that this other mom who
Speaker 1: just gave birth two seconds ago suddenly has a bikini body.
Speaker 1: So the idea that social media can pounce on new
Speaker 1: moms and make you sort of circle the drain and
Speaker 1: feel even worse about it. Is enormous and it is
Speaker 1: why my guest today is the perfect person to break
Speaker 1: down the whole structure of the mommy influencer. Joe Piazza
Speaker 1: is a bestselling author, award winning journalist, and prolific podcaster.
Speaker 1: Her critically acclaimed novels and nonfiction books include Good Morning America,
Speaker 1: Book Club Pick, We Are Not Like Them, Charlotte Walsh,
Speaker 1: Likes to Win The Knockoff, and How to Be Married.
Speaker 1: Her work has been published in ten languages in twelve countries.
Speaker 1: Joe is a creator and executive producer of four podcasts
Speaker 1: I Have No idea how she does that with Little
Speaker 1: Kids Committed, Fierce the Pod Club, and Under the Influence,
Speaker 1: where she explores the world of Instagram influencers on New
Speaker 1: Moms and which has just started its second season. H
Speaker 1: Hello Joe Piazza By Hello Hello. I have to say
Speaker 1: we've never met, but I feel a kinship with you
Speaker 1: because you have been down in the trenches that I
Speaker 1: have been down in as well being a mom, being
Speaker 1: a writer, and you have four podcasts I can barely
Speaker 1: do one, so I'm I bow to you because of that.
Speaker 1: But the mom influencer thing is something that I have
Speaker 1: been incredibly interested in for years, because, like I could
Speaker 1: give you a sixty minute speech on how I feel
Speaker 1: about social media for teenage g girls. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: all I do is lecture my children about like, you know,
Speaker 1: no bikini shots and these are girls that have holes
Speaker 1: they're trying to fill and sexual this and sexual that.
Speaker 1: But the mom thing has sort of a similar reaction,
Speaker 1: I guess you could say, especially for new moms. And
Speaker 1: tell me the whole genesis of how Joe became nished
Speaker 1: in the mommy influencer world obsessed with mom influencers, just
Speaker 1: completely unhealthily obsessed. So my my second baby be who
Speaker 1: is now not a baby. She's two years old. She
Speaker 1: thinks she's twenty seven, sure, But when she was a
Speaker 1: baby baby, like when she was first born, she had colic.
Speaker 1: She never slept, so I didn't sleep, and all I
Speaker 1: could use while I was rocking her putting her on
Speaker 1: the boob was my thumb to scroll through my phone.
Speaker 1: I'm scrolling through my phone. I'm watching the first season
Speaker 1: of The West Wing, which for some reason I find
Speaker 1: very comforting, and I'm looking it Instagram and then Instagram
Speaker 1: because it's listening to you all the time. Start serving
Speaker 1: me up mom influencers, who are people I had never
Speaker 1: really followed before, Like it was it was not my jam.
Speaker 1: I'm a writer. I follow other authors, I followed like
Speaker 1: news accounts. But all of a sudden, I'm getting these women.
Speaker 1: They've got like four or five babies, they live in
Speaker 1: perfectly white houses. Everything in their lives is allegedly organic.
Speaker 1: They never wear shoes, you right, yeah, but it looks
Speaker 1: good on them, like it always just looks good on them,
Speaker 1: of course, And then and then, and there's often chickens
Speaker 1: running around. But I'm looking at these women and I'm
Speaker 1: there with an angry baby covered in pea and pooh
Speaker 1: and everything, And I was like, who the hell are
Speaker 1: these women? And also why are they all trying to
Speaker 1: sell me something? They will all were like it was
Speaker 1: all It was all just a massive ad, And partially
Speaker 1: because I was postpartum crazy, and partially because I'm a
Speaker 1: journalist so when I want to figure out the world,
Speaker 1: I just start reporting it. I was like, all right,
Speaker 1: I gotta do a podcast about this. It's going to
Speaker 1: be an expose of mom influencers and what this means
Speaker 1: and how that hell did we get here? And that's
Speaker 1: how the podcast Under the Influence was born. But it
Speaker 1: became so much more interesting because first off, they're creating
Speaker 1: entire magazines on Instagram like they're putting it. The work
Speaker 1: is so hard and I tried to be an influencer
Speaker 1: and I failed. So how did you fail? Just so bad?
Speaker 1: I did you have nothing to influence? I think I
Speaker 1: have nothing influence. Nothing I own is aspirational in the least,
Speaker 1: like nobody wants nobody wants to wear my like raggedy
Speaker 1: vintage sweaters, are all of the handmade outs that I
Speaker 1: have my kids in. My house is not all white
Speaker 1: and beautiful. Like I am just not aspirational. And I'm
Speaker 1: also bad at talking about myself. And I think that's
Speaker 1: true for a lot of reporters. We love talking to
Speaker 1: other people. But I couldn't even write a caption to
Speaker 1: be like, look at me today. I took b to
Speaker 1: the zoo and we dressed up in our gorgeous little
Speaker 1: bla and I just felt weird and my kids hated it.
Speaker 1: It got to the point where they could I mean,
Speaker 1: we couldn't speak. My two and a half year all
Speaker 1: at the time was like no more photos, no more photos,
Speaker 1: no more photos. Well, you actually hired a photographer right
Speaker 1: to capture adorable pajama moments. Yes, yes, yeah I did.
Speaker 1: I did because you have to. So another thing I
Speaker 1: learned is I thought, I'm like, oh, they just take
Speaker 1: the pictures and they ran a caption, they get paid
Speaker 1: for it. Like that seems like easy. I like easy money.
Speaker 1: But they're all hiring photographers to take like an entire
Speaker 1: month of content in a single day. So we tried
Speaker 1: that with my family and it ended in tears after
Speaker 1: just one outfit. But there was just like, no more,
Speaker 1: And how's your husband feeling about it? Is your husband like, okay,
Speaker 1: I'll go put on the Halloween costume for this shot. Yes. Yes.
Speaker 1: In the beginning he looked at it like, you know,
Speaker 1: with detached amusement, and then he was just like, this
Speaker 1: is so dumb. We have to stop this. Like I
Speaker 1: respect your podcasting and talking about this, but I think
Speaker 1: this is absurd. I don't think I could get my husband,
Speaker 1: George to to do that. I don't think I could.
Speaker 1: Oh you know, you guys have been married longer than
Speaker 1: us too. That's so. And we're still we're just approaching
Speaker 1: the seven year itch, and so I think he's still like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, I'm trying. I want to make you
Speaker 1: as happy as possible. Yeah, that'll go away after the
Speaker 1: seven years. That's what I think. That's what I think
Speaker 1: is good. I mean, I think, I think, I think
Speaker 1: it lost its luster while I was making this podcast.
Speaker 1: So so yeah so but so. These women are putting
Speaker 1: real work in but all of it's fake. None of
Speaker 1: it's their real lives. And they admit that too on
Speaker 1: the podcast. But a lot of them are just trying
Speaker 1: to make a living with as moms and trying to
Speaker 1: have flexible hours and still contribute to the family because frankly,
Speaker 1: the job market is not conducive to being a mom
Speaker 1: at all. When I worked in magazines, the women that
Speaker 1: had kids, and I was so in my twenties, but
Speaker 1: the women that had kids were at that office every
Speaker 1: night until eight o'clock. They never saw their kids, and
Speaker 1: so I didn't know big respect for mom influencers. I'm
Speaker 1: still very critical of the world. I think there's so
Speaker 1: many dangers inherent in social media. I think it's bad
Speaker 1: for our mental health. I think it's bad for humanity.
Speaker 1: And I mean I think it's I think it is
Speaker 1: the end of us. It's the it will be the
Speaker 1: end of Western civilization as we know it. But you know, yes,
Speaker 1: it is the end. But that's what I believe. But
Speaker 1: we're trying to do a podcast, so we're going to
Speaker 1: keep it light and fun. It's mommy Influencers. But um
Speaker 1: so tell me walk me through how a mommy influencer begins,
Speaker 1: because I I missed that when my kids were little.
Speaker 1: I mean, I have nineteen year old and a sixteen
Speaker 1: year old, and mommy influencers were not like a thing
Speaker 1: back when I had a colloquy daughter. But I think
Speaker 1: that mommy bloggers were just coming up then, right, So
Speaker 1: we're talking, yeah, but it was more about the mommy
Speaker 1: bloggers were more like we're all in this together kind
Speaker 1: of thing and less yes I'm perfect, so by this
Speaker 1: aloe juice. You know, it wasn't so commerce oriented, right,
Speaker 1: But I love to go back to the early mommy
Speaker 1: bloggers in the early two thousand's because women were hungry
Speaker 1: for community. Yes, we were trying to raise these kids
Speaker 1: and figure this out, this terrible, terrible dumpster fire of
Speaker 1: the postpartum period on our own and the early mommy
Speaker 1: bloggers were raw and honest and authentic, and I think
Speaker 1: they formed a really great community. It did because when
Speaker 1: you think about it, I mean, certainly back in the day,
Speaker 1: in the olden days, you know, it was your mom
Speaker 1: and your mother in law and your sisters were all
Speaker 1: part of the village. And so in this you know,
Speaker 1: kind of new independent world, we don't have that. So
Speaker 1: we reach, you know, we kind of put our tentacles
Speaker 1: out in other ways to get all that information. And
Speaker 1: of course now it's social media. That's how we get
Speaker 1: all our intel of it. Exactly. Yeah. Well, so I
Speaker 1: mean with our village gone, motherhood was really lonely. And
Speaker 1: then Instagram comes on the scene around and the mom
Speaker 1: blogging starts shifting into the pictures and the captions. And
Speaker 1: once the brands got involved, and it was the brands
Speaker 1: got involved in the mom blogs too, it really did
Speaker 1: turn into a lot of like hashtag sponsored content. And
Speaker 1: then that's also when it started to get very beautiful
Speaker 1: and very clean, because the brands wanted it a certain
Speaker 1: way if they were going to pay you. And it
Speaker 1: got even worse when Instagram gets involved, and then doubly worse.
Speaker 1: And I actually think the end of days started coming
Speaker 1: around when Instagram Stories was created, because then these women
Speaker 1: had to broadcast a perfect life around the clock twenty
Speaker 1: four hours a day in order to get brands to
Speaker 1: pay them and also sell, sell, sell, sell sell. So
Speaker 1: I think that when the advertising got introduced, we then
Speaker 1: had this perfect storm of commerce meeting this new form
Speaker 1: of media at this ridiculously addictive and bad for us.
Speaker 1: And now we're being sold to constantly on our phones
Speaker 1: by people who feel like there are friends, but it's
Speaker 1: actually a disturbing paris social relationship. And according to Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: soon a chip in our head. Soon they'll literally be
Speaker 1: in our head exactly exactly, which I believe we live
Speaker 1: in Black Mirror and black Squad both. So do you
Speaker 1: have to have a certain amount of likes to be
Speaker 1: able to become a mom influencer? I mean I would
Speaker 1: think a brand is not going to pay anybody under
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand followers. Oh no, that's that's actually no
Speaker 1: longer true. We're talking about at this point hundreds of thousands,
Speaker 1: maybe even millions, of women who are influencing on Instagram,
Speaker 1: and they can have anywhere from five thousand followers to
Speaker 1: a million followers and still make money, and the range
Speaker 1: of influencers it runs the gamut. But it's also touching
Speaker 1: every different kind of mother, which I think is fascinating.
Speaker 1: So there's a mom influencer for the bohemian hippie mom.
Speaker 1: There's a mom influencer for the sassy I get my
Speaker 1: eyelashes put on every three weeks mom. There's a mom
Speaker 1: influencer for every type of mom out there. It has
Speaker 1: become so incredibly pervasive that I think that the majority
Speaker 1: of moms now who are just becoming parents have no
Speaker 1: way to really escape it if they're on Instagram. What
Speaker 1: brands have found out is because brands want to infiltrate
Speaker 1: all communities, right, they've discovered that something called micro influencers
Speaker 1: and even nano influencers, which every time I hear that,
Speaker 1: I remember the iPod nano teeny tiny little iPod that
Speaker 1: slipped in her back pocket. Um, those are influencers, but
Speaker 1: with between five thousand and ten thousand followers, their community
Speaker 1: is actually really engaged, and so they can make money,
Speaker 1: not nearly as much as a big time influencer, but
Speaker 1: there's entire platforms set up to be like okay, will
Speaker 1: you put Windex in your picture. Great, we'll pay you
Speaker 1: fifty dollars. Will you make a video about how much
Speaker 1: you love this organic rubber pacifier? Amazing? Here's another. So
Speaker 1: it's not like big time set your former working salary money,
Speaker 1: but it's extra cash. And you also feel like you
Speaker 1: have a purpose, which I think a lot of new
Speaker 1: mothers feel really lost and they want to feel like
Speaker 1: they're contributing and they want a purpose, and influencing feels
Speaker 1: like something they can do while they have their babies
Speaker 1: running around and what is like ballpark? What's the most
Speaker 1: you've ever heard of a mobby influencer making a year
Speaker 1: over a million? Oh my god? Yeah? Absolutely, you need
Speaker 1: to have over You need to have over a million
Speaker 1: followers to be at that point. Yeah. Are they all celebrities?
Speaker 1: They're not. So the most the ones that get paid
Speaker 1: the most, let's be honest, are all former contestants on
Speaker 1: The Bachelor. I mean because now every former contestant on
Speaker 1: The Bachelor and Bachelorette is of mommy age because the
Speaker 1: show has been on for a gazillion years and they
Speaker 1: become really often become very successful mom influencers. They already
Speaker 1: have a large following but I kind of put them
Speaker 1: in the category of celebrity, right. I hesitate to call
Speaker 1: out anyone's salary because none of it is reportable. But
Speaker 1: I've gotten a sense by talking to some of the
Speaker 1: brands that work with these women that there are a
Speaker 1: small handful of women making seven figures. Wow, that's incredible,
Speaker 1: you know. I interviewed one mom influencer who she only
Speaker 1: started a few years ago after she had her kids.
Speaker 1: She had three kids, and she was very, very transparent
Speaker 1: about how much money she's making. She has since quit
Speaker 1: her full time job does this. She also trains other
Speaker 1: mom influencers, and she was making I think three hundred
Speaker 1: grand a year and now like she's expected to make
Speaker 1: like half a million next year. It's her name is
Speaker 1: Tina Makes and her instagram is her life Sparkles. But
Speaker 1: she had thousand followers, We're not talking a million followers,
Speaker 1: and she said she was making three hundred grand. Um.
Speaker 1: I loved Tina's story too, because she's a black woman,
Speaker 1: and black women haven't often have a harder time breaking
Speaker 1: into mom influencing because Instagram's algorithm, which they'll never admit,
Speaker 1: but it seems to favor a certain type of white
Speaker 1: blonde mom. But Tina has just kicked some serious but
Speaker 1: and she's she's making insane bank And is she completely
Speaker 1: honest about all of it? Or is she like everything's perfect,
Speaker 1: you know, everything's organic. Yeah, you know, her pictures are beautiful.
Speaker 1: There's not a single picture on her account that is
Speaker 1: not beautiful, but her captions, she does keep it real.
Speaker 1: But I like to call that kind of reality Instagram reality, like,
Speaker 1: you know, cautious honesty, right, like oh I was anxious
Speaker 1: when I woke up this morning, or I hate mondays. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's not like, oh my god, I think I want
Speaker 1: to murder my husband? Why did I have seven glasses
Speaker 1: of wine last night? Like it's never that kind of
Speaker 1: honest to be Who's going to be the first person
Speaker 1: to really do that? To be so transparent because I mean,
Speaker 1: there's aspirational and there's relatable, and there's not that many
Speaker 1: relatable mommy influencers I find. I find that they're all
Speaker 1: aspirational or they're all lies. A lot of them are
Speaker 1: lies and aspirational, and those two things intersect so much.
Speaker 1: I found some really cool moms on TikTok, which I
Speaker 1: don't go on TikTok personally because I don't understand it.
Speaker 1: I haven't found them on Instagram yet. My kids are
Speaker 1: constantly saying, get a TikTok account, Mom, And I go, why,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to dance to music. I don't. I
Speaker 1: can't do this, but yes, and I don't even I
Speaker 1: don't want to watch others dance to music either. It's
Speaker 1: not my ju And in fact, I have a book
Speaker 1: coming out in May and HarperCollins was like, will you
Speaker 1: get a TikTok account? And I go for a book
Speaker 1: that like that to me is ahead scratcher. But I
Speaker 1: guess you just TikTok your way through life. And it's
Speaker 1: time for a short break and we're back. So where
Speaker 1: do you stand with mom? Influencers? Are you into it?
Speaker 1: I respect it? You respect it? Okay, there is absolutely
Speaker 1: so much work going into it. I respect what they're doing.
Speaker 1: I respect what they're trying to do. And I think
Speaker 1: a lot of women are doing this because society fails
Speaker 1: women like it fails to give us a safety net,
Speaker 1: it fails to give us flexible ways to work. And
Speaker 1: that is why I have to respect it. But my
Speaker 1: biggest issue with it is I think it's going to
Speaker 1: screw up generations and generations of kids. One of the
Speaker 1: crazy ist stories I've come across in the second season.
Speaker 1: It's our second episode UM of a second season Under
Speaker 1: the Influence, and it's a mom influencer who would always
Speaker 1: posted pictures of her kids. She's got four kids, and
Speaker 1: someone stole those pictures because you can't screenshot it, and
Speaker 1: created a fake account that was a role playing account
Speaker 1: with all the new names for her kids and all
Speaker 1: new descriptions of their life. And like, these role playing
Speaker 1: accounts exist. Some of them are innocent but creepy as
Speaker 1: hell and terrible, and some of them are sexual predators online.
Speaker 1: And as a mom influencer, you've got to put your
Speaker 1: kids online most of the time. It's part of your brand.
Speaker 1: And I think putting kids on Instagram is dangerous and
Speaker 1: just can lead to terrible things. So a lot of
Speaker 1: the mom influencers I've met UM and some after listening
Speaker 1: to the podcast, took their kids off. One woman even
Speaker 1: completely got off Instagram, and I I was like, I'll do
Speaker 1: my podcast, I'll do my blog, but this is unhealthy
Speaker 1: for all of us. Well, I mean, more and more
Speaker 1: research points to the fact that having your kids on
Speaker 1: a public platform. Uh, you're just asking for predators. And
Speaker 1: I mean I was listening to your podcast and I
Speaker 1: heard the story about the babysitter who came up to
Speaker 1: your babysitter and said, oh yeah, I used to babysit
Speaker 1: for them. And it's somebody you've never seen or met
Speaker 1: before in your life. So you're inviting too many scary things.
Speaker 1: And for me, with our kids, they have their on
Speaker 1: private accounts, but even on the private accounts that I monitor,
Speaker 1: I always say, just cupcakes and puppies, Like I don't
Speaker 1: want to see bikini shots. I don't want to see
Speaker 1: anything sexual because we are sexualizing this whole generation of girls.
Speaker 1: We just are. And I look now at some of
Speaker 1: my sixteen year old friends and I just go, oh
Speaker 1: my god. It's like almost pornography. And of course every
Speaker 1: pedophile and their brother are out there looking at all
Speaker 1: this stuff and contacting and d m NG and you know,
Speaker 1: meet me at Starbucks, you know. So I'm glad that
Speaker 1: a lot of mom influencers understand that putting their children
Speaker 1: out there in a public arena is a really dangerous thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I am too. It was one of the great things
Speaker 1: about reporting the first season of under the influence. I
Speaker 1: didn't know what the influencers would think. I mean, it
Speaker 1: wasn't top of my mind really, I wanted to report
Speaker 1: a good podcast. But they were really into it, I
Speaker 1: think because they had never seen their careers taken seriously before,
Speaker 1: and most pressed that is just like mocking. It's like
Speaker 1: a mommy influencers, whereas when dads are on any social media,
Speaker 1: you never call them daddy influencers. You're like, look at
Speaker 1: that entrepreneurs, like how hard he's working. But right there.
Speaker 1: But also they really listened, they like really listened to
Speaker 1: the reporting to be like, oh my gosh, it is
Speaker 1: damaging what we're doing with the children. And also there's
Speaker 1: so much hate speech against all women that put themselves
Speaker 1: on social media. That was another big thing that came up. Well,
Speaker 1: I was going to ask you about that to what
Speaker 1: what happened? The hate speech is what like, you don't
Speaker 1: know what you're doing, and yeah, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: You're a terrible mom. Yeah, everything, you can't do anything right,
Speaker 1: So your own worst, your own worst internal monologue come
Speaker 1: to life. Right, But that's just a nature of social media. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: exactly everything you already hate about yourself as a human
Speaker 1: being and mother, someone is telling you. Um. So they
Speaker 1: took it to heart in the second season where the
Speaker 1: second season, here's our big reveal, which I haven't talked
Speaker 1: about yet. Oh my god, I know, I know. It's
Speaker 1: a scoop. Um. We're calling on women to get the
Speaker 1: hell off at least for a day, right, just the
Speaker 1: whole day of women, especially influencers who make the content,
Speaker 1: to get off, to see how it feels for us,
Speaker 1: but also to show the men running these companies how
Speaker 1: much power women have to make the content that brings
Speaker 1: in all of their money. That's pretty great. Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1: It's so fun. We're comparing it to the women's stay
Speaker 1: off in Iceland, which actually worked in ninety four, seventy four,
Speaker 1: seventy five. All of the women in Iceland took the
Speaker 1: day off work. They didn't go into the bank to
Speaker 1: be tellers, they didn't work at the grocery source, they
Speaker 1: weren't working at any of the television networks. Society essentially
Speaker 1: almost collapsed in Iceland for twenty four hours. And Iceland
Speaker 1: now says that's the reason they're one of the most
Speaker 1: feminist societies in the world because the ramifications of that.
Speaker 1: It's why the first female president of Iceland says that
Speaker 1: she ran for president. It's why people say they elected her,
Speaker 1: and it's why they have universal childcare and child support
Speaker 1: and all of these things that help women thrive. Wow,
Speaker 1: you know, I also think. I also think you could
Speaker 1: have a whole conversation about being off social media for
Speaker 1: a day and seeing how disconnected you feel or how
Speaker 1: much of an addiction it is anyway, because you know,
Speaker 1: I live in New York City, and when you go
Speaker 1: to a lot of the playgrounds, you know, the moms
Speaker 1: and the babysitters are just on their phones, you know,
Speaker 1: and the kids are just running around doing god is what.
Speaker 1: But you know, so there are benefits I think, all
Speaker 1: around for women. But I love the power of the
Speaker 1: mommy influences are actually bringing in so much money. But
Speaker 1: also again with no safety right, no health insurance, like
Speaker 1: no if they if they were to stop tomorrow, if
Speaker 1: Instagram were to go down tomorrow, their career is gone.
Speaker 1: But back to what you were saying about the playground.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about this the other day. Every time
Speaker 1: my husband picks up his phone when I'm like talking
Speaker 1: or something, I feel a little bad. Like I feel
Speaker 1: a little twinge and like, oh, you're not paying attention
Speaker 1: to me, You're staring at your phone. Yeah, imagine how
Speaker 1: that's making our kids feel. My kids are so little
Speaker 1: they can't voice that, But if I feel that when
Speaker 1: my husband picks up the phone, then my kids must
Speaker 1: feel completely ignored it. This is the first generation that
Speaker 1: this is happening to, and we just we can't even
Speaker 1: imagine what that's doing to them little brains. Well, I listen,
Speaker 1: We have to have moments where we're actually engaged in
Speaker 1: conversation because I see it with teenagers. You know, they're
Speaker 1: just they're addicted to it, like Grandma's playing the slots
Speaker 1: in Vegas. They are just they can't help it, you know.
Speaker 1: And I feel like, because I didn't grow up with
Speaker 1: social media, I'm constantly trying to figure out how to
Speaker 1: parent children that are growing up with it. Obviously they
Speaker 1: know a hell of a lot more than I do.
Speaker 1: Their snapchatting and doing all this ship that I don't know.
Speaker 1: I have no idea what they're doing. I mean, my
Speaker 1: sixteen year old, could you know, be dating an Arab princes?
Speaker 1: I have no idea. You want to know? And I
Speaker 1: I actually think the voice of women is the thing
Speaker 1: that's going to sort of get these blogs in place,
Speaker 1: because when there's so much money to be made, the
Speaker 1: men who are running these big tech companies, I mean
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg doesn't give a ship, you know, No, no,
Speaker 1: they don't well, And I think that's that's another part
Speaker 1: of us asking women to take the day off again,
Speaker 1: like take back your power. That story I was telling
Speaker 1: you about the mom whose photos got stolen and people
Speaker 1: were role playing with her kids. She reported to Instagram
Speaker 1: and they're like, it doesn't violate our guidelines. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: no no. There need to be regulations in place that
Speaker 1: that protects how the pictures are used. There has to
Speaker 1: be a way for them to do this. They can
Speaker 1: do everything else. I mean, they figured out how to
Speaker 1: make so much money, they have to be able to
Speaker 1: figure out how to keep kids safe if they want
Speaker 1: to keep making content around kids. Yeah, I also think
Speaker 1: for our kids too. There's a whole mental health piece
Speaker 1: of it too with social media. You know, I'm wondering,
Speaker 1: you know, I think about the being a mom influencer,
Speaker 1: and part of it is kind of shiny and exciting
Speaker 1: and hey, I'll curate a life people will want to
Speaker 1: be part of or buy from, and you know there's
Speaker 1: something kind of like, oh that's intriguing, especially if I'm
Speaker 1: a stay at home mom. There's an option. But on
Speaker 1: the other side of it, there are so many things about,
Speaker 1: particularly when you use your children, that I find a
Speaker 1: little off putting. I'll say, just you know, the marketing
Speaker 1: of the kids, and again what it does to their
Speaker 1: self esteem, you know, because imagine being a kid and
Speaker 1: the likes and the comments as a child, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, and your kids are growing up in
Speaker 1: it just like mine. I'm wondering too. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of mom influencers who are sort of in postpartum
Speaker 1: when they put their stuff out there, and so all
Speaker 1: that hate must yes, really be bad for their mental health.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so many of them. A lot of them
Speaker 1: were so honest when we did our interviews, which it's
Speaker 1: it was incredible, but they said they had to go
Speaker 1: on antidepressants. I mean, there's so much hate lobbied at them.
Speaker 1: One woman became so thin she lost like forty pounds
Speaker 1: because she's like I just I couldn't eat. People were
Speaker 1: calling me a fat pig. And it's mostly other women
Speaker 1: to be honest, it's women lobbying hate at other women.
Speaker 1: And there's an entire website Get off my Internet. But
Speaker 1: we interviewed the founder of it, and it's just a
Speaker 1: place to attack and bash influencers. It's like women bashing
Speaker 1: other women who are not famous people on this website.
Speaker 1: It's good. It's one of the grossest things that I've
Speaker 1: I've seen on the Internet. I've seen a lot of
Speaker 1: dress stuff, so it just hurt people hurting people exactly
Speaker 1: exactly yeah, but but but but I've always got to
Speaker 1: say the butt right. There are positive things that I've
Speaker 1: gotten off the Instagram, especially because I'm so deep in
Speaker 1: it right and reporting. I've met some really awesome women
Speaker 1: and formed some interesting community bonds. Some of it was
Speaker 1: actually incredibly helpful, mostly because I just wanted to see
Speaker 1: images and read stories of other women who were doing
Speaker 1: what I was doing, which, even if they were doing
Speaker 1: it better than I was doing it, I wanted to
Speaker 1: know that I wasn't the only human being doing it
Speaker 1: at that moment because I felt incredibly isolated. I definitely,
Speaker 1: in hindsight, had bad postpartum depression and anxiety, and there
Speaker 1: were accounts on Instagram where I could read about other
Speaker 1: women going through their anxiety, going through having a colicky baby,
Speaker 1: and also giving advice. You know, even though a lot
Speaker 1: of it felt very aspirational and made me feel like
Speaker 1: I wasn't enough, there was also enough community there that
Speaker 1: I have to say it made me feel less lonely,
Speaker 1: and loneliness is something we just do not talk nearly
Speaker 1: enough about for new moms. So I did actually get
Speaker 1: a real benefit out of it. And it's one of
Speaker 1: the reasons that I do respect what mom influencers have
Speaker 1: created on Instagram, even if I think that it has
Speaker 1: gone to kind of a dark place. In a lot
Speaker 1: of situations, there is so much more bad than good, right,
Speaker 1: and we'll be right back. Okay, let's get back to it.
Speaker 1: So walk me through what you're getting into with your
Speaker 1: second season. So I never thought it was gonna go
Speaker 1: be on one season. I was like, this is a
Speaker 1: contained thing. I've got this newborn, I'm so curious about
Speaker 1: this world. I'm gonna expose it and that's it with them.
Speaker 1: We're done, and you're gonna sixty minutes it exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: I'm really all over. And so I look at the
Speaker 1: first season kind of like if you've seen the documentary
Speaker 1: The Social Dilemma right where it makes you sit back
Speaker 1: and be like, oh my god, I'm participating in this
Speaker 1: world that's so much bigger than just I'm bored. I
Speaker 1: want to pick up my phone and I need to
Speaker 1: think about the ramifications of what that means. It's about
Speaker 1: mom influencers, but it's also about how all of us
Speaker 1: are using this platform. And the second season we're comparing
Speaker 1: a women's stay off the Internet, a women's stay off
Speaker 1: in Iceland. But then we're also looking at how we
Speaker 1: go beyond mom influencers in the second season, but we're
Speaker 1: still focusing on women primarily how influencers have popped up
Speaker 1: in every aspect of our lives to kind of take
Speaker 1: over something that society is failing to give us as women.
Speaker 1: So for mom influencers, who was because women were seeking community, right,
Speaker 1: But the world of ment a health influencers is absolutely crazy.
Speaker 1: Pants Everyone I know follows someone as a mental health
Speaker 1: influencer on Instagram. The majority of them are not licensed.
Speaker 1: They're giving diagnoses on social media to people who are
Speaker 1: begging for mental health help. And it's mostly because it's
Speaker 1: really hard to get mental health care in our country,
Speaker 1: particularly for women. It's more than just a kitty hanging
Speaker 1: on a branch that says hanging there. Now, these are
Speaker 1: actually like, oh, if you have these ten symptoms, you're
Speaker 1: definitely bipolar. Maybe you should take this kind of medication.
Speaker 1: It is. It runs the gamut, and both on Instagram
Speaker 1: and TikTok. Oh that's I'm fascinated by that. Yeah, especially
Speaker 1: because right now in this pandemic where I think it
Speaker 1: has a much more of an effect in US, and
Speaker 1: we even realize I think the data is in. But
Speaker 1: everybody I've I talked to these days, everybody's depressed. Everybody,
Speaker 1: mom's non mom, kids, no one's OK my mom who's seven?
Speaker 1: And the idea that you could go on social media
Speaker 1: and somebody, an unlicensed person can say, oh, well you
Speaker 1: should do this, or you should take my herbal supplement,
Speaker 1: or you should you know, mindful vegetable growing or whatever
Speaker 1: it is that they're selling is terrifying to me. Yea
Speaker 1: and everyone. I took a poll, like an informal poll
Speaker 1: of my own Instagram, which you know, it's like snidchet
Speaker 1: of people, but live. Everyone that I know messaged me
Speaker 1: and said, oh yeah, I followed this person, I followed
Speaker 1: this therapist, I followed this guru. Everyone had one and
Speaker 1: they were all different, And it just feels so dangerous
Speaker 1: to me because the most vulnerable people right now are
Speaker 1: the ones that are that are impacted the most. And
Speaker 1: then also that episode gets into the dangers of these
Speaker 1: paras social relationships that you end up having with this
Speaker 1: influencer and what happens when they give you bad at
Speaker 1: as in this level of trust that you're putting in
Speaker 1: them is so intense. So and then we have teacher Instagram,
Speaker 1: which is something I never thought about. There's so many
Speaker 1: teachers on Instagram right now doing teacher influencing where they
Speaker 1: sell school supplies and school planners. So we don't pay
Speaker 1: our teachers enough and they need to have a side
Speaker 1: hustle not just for their income, but to pay for
Speaker 1: supplies for their classrooms. And so because we're not supporting
Speaker 1: our teachers, they've turned Instagram to get extra money. It's
Speaker 1: and there's no laws protecting them of what they can
Speaker 1: and camp posts. They could be fired if one parent
Speaker 1: says I hate this Instagram post. Wow, I didn't. I
Speaker 1: don't know a lot about that. I never thought about
Speaker 1: it before, Like literally know, I never thought about it. No, no,
Speaker 1: And then it's the same territory a ton of as
Speaker 1: mental health influencers, as fertility influencers and adoption influencers, and
Speaker 1: these women get such an intense following when women are
Speaker 1: at their most vulnerable. So yeah, second, the second season,
Speaker 1: it get it gets a little darker than the first season.
Speaker 1: But I also think it's so much more of a
Speaker 1: wake up call to all of us to be like,
Speaker 1: what are we all doing? Yeah? What what? What is
Speaker 1: this ecosystem that we have created? And should we stay
Speaker 1: in it? And also but but also who are the
Speaker 1: women that are benefiting from it? And a lot of
Speaker 1: them need to benefit? Like these teachers got right, there
Speaker 1: are good influencers and there are bad influencers. I mean,
Speaker 1: like any you know, Like I always say, it's like
Speaker 1: the wild West. We still we're all trying to figure out,
Speaker 1: you know, what's good what's bad. Like we talked earlier,
Speaker 1: there's no regulations or rules. It's it's all happening in
Speaker 1: real time for us. When are you going to have
Speaker 1: the Iceland day when we all get off our Instagram?
Speaker 1: So I'm thinking we're probably going to have it close
Speaker 1: to our final episode, which will be beginning of April.
Speaker 1: In my ideal like Magical Fantasy World, it happens on
Speaker 1: like Black Friday. But you know, you know, like one
Speaker 1: of the things we talked about in the second season
Speaker 1: is a lot of us say we want to get
Speaker 1: off Instagram, and a lot of us can't because I can't.
Speaker 1: So I know I can't. I write books, and I
Speaker 1: have discovered that being engaged with an audience on Instagram
Speaker 1: definitely sold more books for me than any of the
Speaker 1: magazine articles or interviews that came out in October. I
Speaker 1: can see it. I can see what if I do
Speaker 1: something with an influencer, a story or Alive or whatever
Speaker 1: that is. I see my Amazon number go up if
Speaker 1: I post a picture of the book, and I don't
Speaker 1: see that anymore from a lot of traditional media. So
Speaker 1: I can't get off. And a lot of women feel
Speaker 1: the same way if they want to advance their career
Speaker 1: their brand network. So I think that's what we want
Speaker 1: to call attention to that some women really can't get
Speaker 1: off the Instagram. But then how can they regulate themselves? Right?
Speaker 1: Can they take their kids off like I did? Which
Speaker 1: I feel we don't judge anyone for anything they do.
Speaker 1: I'm like, you do you being a woman in the
Speaker 1: world's sucking hard. But yeah, I want them to to
Speaker 1: raise the questions. So I'm thinking, Acril, yeah, okay, I'll
Speaker 1: be part of that. I also think that um for
Speaker 1: me anyway. With Instagram, it's the same thing. And I'm
Speaker 1: not justifying it because I like to follow Victoria's Secret Models. It's,
Speaker 1: you know, as a writer, somebody with books with a podcast,
Speaker 1: I've noticed that Instagram helps a lot with the podcast.
Speaker 1: My feeling is there's also a way to post stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, use it as like, hey, this is happening
Speaker 1: without living on it, you know what I mean. Like
Speaker 1: I've learned to I don't care what people are saying
Speaker 1: about it. I post and I move on, you know,
Speaker 1: and I don't aimless, you know, scroll scroll, scroll, until
Speaker 1: I'm like, looking at people's Instagrams, I don't know who
Speaker 1: they are. I don't mean they're some they are in
Speaker 1: twenty one year old girl from Croatia, I'm going like,
Speaker 1: oh that that's just that's cute skirt. So there is
Speaker 1: a way to kind of manage it where you're not
Speaker 1: completely engulfed in it. And before we go, Joe, I've
Speaker 1: asked you so many questions. I'm going to turn around
Speaker 1: and let you ask me a question about anything. Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, it can be anything. This is, this is yeah,
Speaker 1: this is must also must be dangerous because you have
Speaker 1: journalists on the show. Yeah, and you can't rattle me.
Speaker 1: You cannot rattle me. Well, let's keep what the under
Speaker 1: the influence theme? What was your most difficult motherhood moment?
Speaker 1: I think my most difficult was with my first child,
Speaker 1: my daughter Elliott. She was very colloquy and I was
Speaker 1: not producing enough milk. So she's colloquy. I'm freaking out
Speaker 1: because it's taking me, you know, two television shows to
Speaker 1: pump half a bottle. So I was feeling inadequate, like
Speaker 1: why aren't I producing enough milk? And why she's screaming
Speaker 1: all the time. She can't be hungry. And it was
Speaker 1: actually resolved because my older sister said, I think she's
Speaker 1: got some kind of dairy issue. I think you should
Speaker 1: try soy formula, and we gave her soy formula and
Speaker 1: that kind of dissipated the issue. However, I then went
Speaker 1: through I'm a I'm a terrible mom. I didn't produce
Speaker 1: enough milk. I only breastfed her for you know, six months.
Speaker 1: I wanted to be the woman that you know, she
Speaker 1: would run to the playground and gil, mom, I want
Speaker 1: some milk. So, you know, there was a lot of
Speaker 1: shame and involved with breastfeeding, especially because I had a
Speaker 1: lot of friends who were having babies around the same
Speaker 1: time I was, and they were just like gushing milk.
Speaker 1: You know, they could have been a wet nurse for
Speaker 1: all of Washington, d C. So that was that was hard.
Speaker 1: That was a hard moment. And then I've had issues
Speaker 1: with discipline. I don't like discipline. I don't like I'm
Speaker 1: not a screamer. I'm not a and so there are
Speaker 1: times when my kids would get really sassy or obnoxious
Speaker 1: and I, you know, to say to them, like go
Speaker 1: to your room right now. I felt like I was
Speaker 1: reading a sitcom script, Like it just didn't seem authentic.
Speaker 1: And I had always had a hard time with that.
Speaker 1: And the problem is that George is not a great
Speaker 1: disciplinarian either. So we will both be like, no, I'm
Speaker 1: the good cop. No, I'm the good cop, and we're like, well, somebody,
Speaker 1: you know, she's gonna be a raging bitch if one
Speaker 1: of us doesn't teach your boundaries. So you know that
Speaker 1: that's those are the areas that I I kind of
Speaker 1: learned to parent through humor, which that that's what works
Speaker 1: for me. What does that mean. It means I use
Speaker 1: humor to sort of paint a different picture, so I
Speaker 1: didn't have to be that mom, you know, like if
Speaker 1: one of them was having a temper tantrum in Bloomingdale,
Speaker 1: I would say, if you don't stop, I'm going to
Speaker 1: lie on the ground and scream louder than you, like
Speaker 1: I'm going to embarrass the ship out of you. And
Speaker 1: then my daughter will be like, oh no, no, don't, don't,
Speaker 1: don't you know. So it's just a different way around
Speaker 1: getting to the same thing. But it's it has worked
Speaker 1: for me. Read that book. Oh god, I can't write
Speaker 1: that boocket because then you don't have to be on
Speaker 1: Instagram so much more. Then I had to be on Instagram,
Speaker 1: and then I couldn't like binge watch succession, which is
Speaker 1: what I've been doing during COVID. You know, all the coping,
Speaker 1: all the coping mechanisms, all the copying, all this stuff. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you for this. I'm very excited for for a
Speaker 1: second season. I'm excited to do I'm calling it your
Speaker 1: Iceland Day. I think that's a fantastic idea. And thank
Speaker 1: you for coming on Go ask Alli. It's gonna be good.
Speaker 1: I'm really yeah, I'm excited. We got about it. Thanks
Speaker 1: for having Thank you yea. It's so interesting, even the
Speaker 1: idea of mom influencers, and I would especially ta can
Speaker 1: buy one of the things Joe said about how so
Speaker 1: much of the hate comments are from women, and you know,
Speaker 1: and so many other cultures, women always help women, particularly
Speaker 1: around childbirth. You know, the term it takes a village
Speaker 1: is real. So it makes me sad when I hear
Speaker 1: that women aren't supporting women or that women right hate
Speaker 1: comments on mom blogger or mom influencer sites. But you know,
Speaker 1: it's social media, which is always a slippery slope because
Speaker 1: there's a lot to be learned and gained, and then
Speaker 1: there's so much to feel bad about. So Joe's podcast
Speaker 1: is just starting its second season under the Influence. Go
Speaker 1: check it out. Thank you for listening to Go Ask Ali.
Speaker 1: Be sure to subscribe, rate and review the podcast, and
Speaker 1: follow me on social media on Twitter at Ali you
Speaker 1: Wentworth and on Instagram at the Real Ali Wentworth Now.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to ask me a question or suggest
Speaker 1: a guest or a topic to dig into, I'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from you, and there's a bunch of ways
Speaker 1: to do it. You could call or text me at
Speaker 1: three to three three six four six three five six,
Speaker 1: or you can email a voice memo right from your
Speaker 1: phone to Go Ask Gali podcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: If you leave a question, you may hear it and
Speaker 1: go ask Alli. Go Ask Gali is a production of
Speaker 1: Shonda land Audio and partnership with I Heart Radio. For
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