This podcast is for general information only and should not be taken as psychological advice. Listeners should consult with their healthcare professionals for specific medical advice.
Well. Hello, I'm Amanda Keller and I'm Anita McGregor, and welcome to Double a Chattery. Anita, how are you feeling? I know you've had a call.
Oh my lord, have I got a cold. I'm at that stage now where my head feels as though it's just emptying out my nose, which is i'm plastomers.
Well, thank you for sharing. Yeah, you say you're feeling better, But if we need to take a break so mucus can pour down the back of your throat or out through your nose, please let us know. I will let you know.
This.
The other day my brother still uses a hanky hanky. It's something. Even though apparently it's more hygienic or better for everyone that tissues, the idea of it makes me want to gag.
Does Carrie have to wash them? Yes, of course, or Cameron doesn't wash them?
Well, they have their own, you know, as many households do. My chores and he is yours and that's her choice. I think it might be you. I know anyway, enough of that pleasant, nice to see.
Nice to see you too. Films are so like it's been a thousand years.
Look, it has been a thousand years of snot. I love that film, Amanda. I want you to tell me about this glorious jacket, yes, that you are wearing. It is spectacularly beautiful. Well, thank you. And I bought it on consignment from someone who's raising money for a fabulous charity called Police Day Foundation. So it's a it's an original dult jakeer Barna. But I would never buy an original adult jakeer Barna. It's I think it looks like it's from the seventies or something. It doesn't that.
Spectacause it's it's like kind of down to your knees and it just oh.
And it's almost like hippy ish in the different colors and materials. Well, thank you, thank you. It's it's weird when someone else this morning at work said that they like this jacket and I sort of deflected once again and said, oh, this this this old thing. Literally I bought it on consignment. It's an old thing, and blah blah blah. And she said, you always deflect when someone gives a compliment to your clothes.
Isn't that I do the same thing? I like? I for me, it's like, oh you know, oh, I've had this forever. It's stuck in the back of my closet, and it's it's so weird, Like why do we do this? Amound it?
Well. Even the young girl woman at work who said that about my jacket, she said, she does the same thing. She says, so I got this on sale. Blah blah blah. Why. I don't know why we do it? I think very hard to accept a compliment, b to just say thank you and let it go. We have to undercut it somehow, don't we.
Do you think that our choice in clothes is somehow we think is a reflection of our character, Like when you think about it in the morning and you think about what you're going to dress in, is it kind of a reflective of your mood? Or is it more reflective of you know, who is Amanda Keller?
Probably all of those things. Harley used to get up in the morning as a joke, saying what will I go as today? You'd say it as a joke, but I think there's absolute truth in that, and maybe that's why we deflect it because we see it as an extension of our personalities. So if someone said to you, gee, you're so smart, you absolutely deflect that. Gee you're funny, you deflect it. Yeah, so this is an extension of that. Yeah.
But one of the things that I've always admired about you, Amouanda, is you have this great sense of style. Like really, yeah, I'm.
Going to have to deflect that because that's embarrassing to hear.
Please don't because I don't know, Like, you know, every time I see you, you have amazing stuff, you know, you know, and sometimes you are dressed for a show or that kind of thing, and often you don't have the choice in that. But when it has been like when I see you, when it's your choice about what you wear, and the choices that you've worn for some of the award shows and all that kind of they're beautiful.
See I'm going to say thank you. It's funny because I'm doing breakfast radio, people always think, oh, aren't you lucky you can wear your pajamas to work, But I mean lots of people have jobs where no one season. These days, we're constantly being filmed, so people do see you. But lots of people have jobs where no one sees I mean, you'd never say, like being a bank teller or someone behind the scenes at the bank. Well, unlike the tellers, you can wear your pajamas to work.
You just wear nothing from the waist down. If you're a bank teller.
Rated, I know what that's That's exactly what happens. But it's I in the morning get dressed as if I'm going for a full day at work, which i am. I see hundreds of other people and I can't wake up on this. I think I've put myself together. But you also, Anita, I think you have a fabulous sense of style. I thank you, and other people must have commented about.
That too, well. It's It's interesting when I was ending a position in Canada that the entire clerical staff was saying that they really looked forward to seeing what I was going to wear every day, and I and I hadn't really I didn't know that that was part of their routine. But it was a lovely compliment to kind of say, because they were saying, you dress in a really unique way and eat it like you.
Be clear, it was a compliment. Now that I'm got clown shoes on today.
It could have been that, but no, But I think that what they were trying to say is that I was dressing in a way that reflected my personality, which was really lovely.
You and I would not survive on a capsule wardrobe, oh no. And this isn't about having to have a lot of things. But a capsule wardrobe is about not having a lot of things. But it's about having just a few basics. You and I, I think, have a flamboyance to what we add to things in the capsule wardrobe, which has been very popular of late in this new trying not to fill landfill and being more sustainable has
taken off again. But it is having one pair of pants, one jump of one jacket, and occasionally mixing other things in with it, but basically sticking to your basics. I don't think i'd be capable of that.
I don't well, I guess technically i'd be capable of it, but I like there would be days that I kind of go, this is. I just don't feel like this. You know, this is?
You know?
I think that's kind of like Steve Jobs again, I mean, and it's I feel actually quite blast that. You know, men can go in the same suit for a year and nobody would probably notice. There's probably been times where men have done that and nobody's noticed.
Carl Stephanovic, hosting The Today Show, did exactly that. He wore the same suit every day for a year to see if anyone would make a comment because people were always commenting about the female co host's clothes, and he said, no one noticed. Wow, the wardrobe people obviously knew of this. He wore the same suit every day and not a single comment.
Wow, I'm not surprised, but it's interesting that we are somehow judged on what we wear.
And often I think for those bigger ward nights and things, I think guys are lucky they put on a suit, flat shoes done. But you make an interesting point. Would you like that, Anita? Would you like to have less options?
There are some days where I can't think of what to wear, and it would be you know, we had this whole thing when we moved here, is that you know, the boys had a school uniform here. They didn't have one in Canada, and I have such a weird concept to us. Oh it's but I've got to say that I really I really appreciated that the boys could just go and wear the same thing day to day. There was no comparison about, you know, who had the great sneakers or who had the you know, cool this or that.
Having teenage girls that would be so hot, it.
Would be so hard. So I kind of appreciated it. But I also, you know, I think sometimes people, you know, young people, they hit eighteen, and I think, do they know how to dress? Now? Like all of a sudden they have this freedom, and do they do they know how to put? Maybe that's where the capsule wardrobe came from.
This was in The Guardian and as a woman called Kate Lever, and she said she despairs the limited opportunities to look like an absolute mess in public. She sees the pressure that women have on them that you can't go to the letterbox, that lipstick on, you can't have a baby and for the next week look dreadful. You've got to get yourself together. Women would blow dry their hair just leaving the house, all that sort of stuff.
And she says, I've seen more than one glamorous one on TikTok warn their followers don't go to the gym without wearing makeup and a cute outfit in case you see your crush.
Um yeah, and don't get sweaty, and don't obviously don't get sweaty, don't work out, Anita, don't work out, but she said, the chance to look like an absolute mess.
The only loophole she has found is when you're walking your dog. She has said, with her handsome shit sou by her side, I can go out in the most unhinged ensembles and no one seems bothered. I'm invisible, I'm untouchable. I'm immune to the judgment of others because I'm out with my dog, and she says the sort of thing
she wears. She says, I might step out in a pair of fuse linen hair and pants my mum brought me in grease that have a hole in the crotch, paired with Britney spears, concert memorabilia T shirt, knee high shark print compression socks and some old birkenstocks. I might be in striped box a shre a tank top and no shoes. I might be in my pajama pants tucked into gum boots, an old jumper of my dad's et cetera, et cetera. She says, I love seeing other old other
dog walkers. They're in they're outside in stained clothes from the previous week's walk, with a dog's dirty prints from men, and she says, and no one blinks an eye, no one raises their phonomenalsly to film me for an Instagram round up of the worst dress strangers. I'm free. I'm a mess. I'm just a girl walking her dog.
Oh I love it.
But you know you and I go for walks. I'm not walking you like a dog and eater, though I do bring a spare bag just in case, just in case.
I like that.
But on our Saturday or Sunday morning walks, I'm quite happy not to wear makeup some morning because I feel like I will because I wake up my skin feels red and blotchy. But I'm quite happy not to wear makeup and just to wear an old tracksuit. But I don't think i'd still go out wearing an electric blanket and gum boots.
I do that for you, but I don't think.
You do either. I don't know if i'd. I love the idea of being that free, but I don't think I don't think I could be.
But I also don't have, like, you know, the it sounds as though there's like these layers of craziness that are going on, and I don't know that I have the layers of craziness. You know, the tartan you know, the plaid shirts and the and then and then a parka and then a you know, like all that stuff that goes over and then.
If you looked hard enough in anyone's wardrobe you'd find something.
You would you probably would, But yeah, I you know. The the question that that comes up for me is and I love that this woman is saying, yep, you can, you can look as unhinged as you want there, But where is that the last basting because we were, you know, thinking about what happens with school drop offs, what happens with going to the beach, what happens with going like, you know, going to a workout. How how where.
Are those where it's interesting where are the lines? Because some schools have had to ask moms not to come to the school drop off in your pajamas, saying, for the sake of your child, think about how you are dressed, not meaning dress up in a PUNSI way because you're not wear your pajamas.
Is the concern that the you know kids are going to go and taunt the other kid. You know, I think your mom is going to look like you know, your mom looks like a you know, you know, homeless person or why she why is she dressed like that.
I think they were saying, you need to have pride in yourself so your child a isn't embarrassed. I think this is the conversation at the time, and also your child learns to have pride in their appearance as well. Fair Enough, I think that the school yard is not your bedroom. It's pretty much what they were saying. I'm at once doing a shopping center promotion and one of the women there, I thought she was in fancy dress, but she wasn't she This is the middle of the day.
She had pajamas and she had no mental health issue that I could see, and I could be wrong, but she was just doing her shopping pajamas, brunch coat and hair en'rollers.
So there's this part of me that says, good on you.
There cares?
Yeah, well who cares? And who should care? And is it my? Is it me being judgmental? In saying I think that you should wear lipstick before you go out the door, or is it you know? Is it just my you know this? And there should be some standards like how do where do you sit on this?
I tend to agree with you. I would think there should be some standards. But really, when I read that Guardian article, I thought, who are we to say? Though she's saying, really, that's the only place she can get away with it now. And you know, they say dance like no one's watching. Should we be dressed like no one's watching?
Yet? You know, sometimes when I'm walking around at UNI or shopping or whatever, I well see people in their pajamas and you know, fuzzy YOUG boots and that kind of stuff, and I think, I don't know, like there is a bit of judgment. I think that if I'm absolutely honest, I'm thinking, did you like, is there no pride in how you are presenting yourself?
I don't know these days though, when you say the ug boots, there's a designer line of ug boots that are probably quite acceptable, track suits that are incredibly acceptable. But there is a different level of you looking like you just got out of bed. And I think There is judgment about that, whether we should or not. I think we tend to judge people who look like that. You sort of think I've had to get myself together, Whether we like it or not, it's easy to judge
others for that. On another note, I saw a thing A woman was saying that she sort of on a TikTok that she had a party where she encouraged all the girlfriends to wear their quote nowhere to wear it clothes. We all forget our pajamas in the cupboards. What about the stuff that you have bought when you think I'm going to be that person and you never wear it, and she's had this party. People turned up in glamorous gowns. Someone turned up in a tight fitting outfit that didn't
quite look any good. Didn't have to didn't have to be glamorware. But the stuff that you've bought that you've had nowhere to wear it.
Or did it? Also include things like at one point I had I think five bridesmeans gowns stuck in the back of my closet that I had worn once. They were all like polyester, you know, and in crazy shades of you know, apricot Apricott Apricott taffeta.
You're not going to wear that again.
You're never going to wear that again unless maybe at a party like this.
So that's a great idea. The sort of stuff though that I buy every year. I will buy a dress thinking I'm going to be a person this year who wears a dress, and I just can't do it. Anything that feels tight, like I've got a pair of jeans on in a belt. But anything that feels like an all like a dress, and it feels like a dress. I think most of you know what a dress that's sort of one shape all the way, even if it fits you to not have it broken up with a
pair of pants. I can't imagine feeling comfortable wearing that you sit down your I think it does. But I can wear trousers and things. I just think I'm going to be the person that buys a dress. And I've got a few dresses, and every time I'm invited to a certain event, I think, oh, I'll wear this dress I put on. I just don't feel comfortable, just can't do it.
So you would wear like a skirt and a shirt, but not a dress.
I rarely wear skirts. It's usually pants and things. But I could wear a skirt and a shirt, and I could wear a dress had a jacket over it. I don't. I just don't feel right just wearing a dress. What would be the thing in your wardrobe that you would think you're nowhere to wear it? Stuff?
Oh gosh, I think I've mentioned it before, but there was you know, there have been dresses that I have woar, that I bought thinking I'm going to be person. Well, most of it is that I thinking I'm thinking I'm
going to grow somehow. I don't know what I'm thinking that that I'm going to somehow be tall and well awe, and that I'm gonna aware of this, and it's you know, it's often a piece like often addressed that I think is going to look great if I was six two, and I'm not, and I keep thinking it's going to look good on me, and then I keep putting forget that you're not six two, and I keep forgetting that, Amanda.
I buy a variety of beautiful Camilla kaf tans, and I just look like a lot of people. On most people, they look amazing. On me, I look like I'm an eighty year old on the costa del soul and getting ready to play shuffleboard or something. How it makes me look.
Oh, and they're beautiful. They are beautiful clothes. They are amazed, absolutely beautiful clothes. And I have I have certainly looked at those and I've thought, oh, that would be that would be beautiful. I haven't even actually taken the chance to take put one on, because I just I think I would be so disappointed.
Well, often go this is the year that this is really going to work for me. So I've got a number of them in make up. You know, we're talking before about when you're walking the dog, you can wear stain clients, et cetera. Even if you're sitting at home and you put on a jumper or a sweatshirt or something, he's got a major stain on it, even a minus stain. Do you go out? Who cares? I'm at home?
You know, No, I cannot do it. And and and I remember during COVID when there would be weeks, you know, it felt like that I wasn't leaving the house, and you know, but and yet I'd be like I'd been working from home, and I'd you know, pick up the same track suit that i'd worn the day before, and if I saw that there was a stain on it, I couldn't put it on. I had to, you know,
I had to have a clean something clean whatever. And I and I and I think, if I, if I actually think about what I was thinking about it at the time, it felt as though there had to be some kind of standard for me that if I had, you know, fallen belows out that it would have like I think I would have fallen in a heap.
Yeah, yeah, I think I'd be the same. Even if if I've got pulled something out of the cupboard that's a stain on it, chances I'll put it back in the cupboard, but I wouldn't wear it. I have standards in it.
Standard absolutely, somehow the stein is going to go away between this time and the next.
Day you pull it out of the drawer. I was walking through the park the other day and the dog did it, just a big dribbly poop, one that's almost impossible to pick up. But I tried to get it. But before I could even get to it, little there were two kids in the park, probably about four years old. One ran right in front of me and just stood in it. Oh, I thought, you've got the whole park. And I was with Liam, my son, and we both
laughed and said, oh, what a fool. And I bent down to try and get it, and I smeared my entire sleeve in it. The world's really smallest pooh. A kid trod in it, and then I smeared it all over my sleeve. So in a fit of I had to take my jacket off and rub it in the grass at the at the park, thinking that that somehow would dispel my situation. Did you for me?
The first thing I would do when I got home was just to take it off. I mean, yes, yes, an, that's exactly.
Until next time. A woman I know was a wedding photographer and she said, there's some beautiful rocks. It's not a beach, but some rocks, and she was getting some lovely photos in the park above it, but the groom insisted that they head down to the water level to get some photos. So the bridebag grudgingly heads down there, and of course there's a piece of dog poo that she smears all on the bottom of a dress. She
was in floods of tears. There's no that, there's nothing to wipe it up with it's just the photographer and them. There's you know, she's trying to say, don't cry, you make up, will smear, you know, twenty years later, twenty minutes later, who cares. But in that moment, just oh my god.
You think it's going to be this amazing? Yeah? Yeah.
This is another part of the same story I think as to where how we judge people for what they wear. This a woman I follow called the cat Can Cook is her site, and I started following her because she was a caterer and a cork and great look fabulous food. She does other lifestyle things. Now she has been on holidays. She lives in Connecticut, I think, and so summer holidays and she's posting stuff and she's putting food together or discussing this and this, and she's wearing the swimming costume.
You'll see her from the way start wearing a swimming costume. And as she has said, the number of comments she got has just appalled her, people saying why are you on this site, Instagram or whatever in a swimming costume. Your son's friends are at your home. Her son is like seven or eight. No, that's just so strong and she was so affronted. It wasn't just one comment, a whole swaye of them, as if she was trying to do some click bait kind of first trap stuff. And
she said, are you kidding me? It's boiling hot, it's summer holidays. I'm filming my life around the pool in her own in her own pool, in her own yard, wearing a swimming costume. And so in solidarity, a whole lot of her followers have posted pictures of themselves, all shapes and size, are saying, here, I am standing in my garden in my swim in costume. Suck it.
So wow.
Yeah, but it's interesting, as we were just saying where we all draw the line on where we think people's standards should be. We're all different.
I guess, oh absolutely, And I you know, I think what I'm taking away from this conversation is I just need to be really aware of my own bias about you know, somebody does come into the shops and they're wearing curlers in their hair, should I care like?
And dogs who want to sleeve? It can happen, Anita, It can happen.
It can happen, Amanda.
And also in light of that thing. It's about bride'smaid's dresses that don't get worn again. I saw a great thing where this woman sent off her wedding dress to an artist who puts together extraordinary wall hangings made from the bride's dress. So it doesn't look like you've got a bright You don't have a wedding dress on your wall.
It's not framed.
It's not framed like that. It's a work of art that only you would know is actually something that means something to you.
You showed me this and it was this beautiful It almost looks like her I'm calling it machrome. You'd call it something different. Krahmae, m krahmae.
Mate.
But this war hanging and it almost looks as though it's like kind of woven with all the parts of the really beautiful parts of this dress.
Ah.
There, it is beautiful. It's beautiful, and it just, you know, it reminded me that sometimes upon retirement, men will have their other business ties made into like a blanket or really while hanging or something. It's I think, which is a great idea. It's kind of saying I want to honor the you know, the the experience I had as a you know, person in the in the workforce.
But I'm done with ties and would they let the dogs sleep on it? Is it that kind of thing of you know, I am not that anymore? Or is it done respectfully? Both?
I think it could be both, but I guess it depends on how you how you see your work life.
But it's imagine our wardrobes, Anita. We tried to make a macramae or macroma of all these things. We look completely unhim.
We would shall we get to our glimmers, my friend.
Let's do it.
Let's do it.
My glimmer this week is something, Anita, that you and I both have, and I didn't realize just how it was until I for a post about it. You and I both have rings that are made of fordyte and fordyite. We bought them when we're in Canada together.
We did we were going to go and get these beautiful ammonit this kind of fossilized rings when we were in bound, but we ended up getting these four to eight ones instead.
And it's kind of all these colored swirls in it. And there's a whole exhibit there for fordyite and what ford eyed is is. Let me just follow this site that tells us here. Fordite, also known as Detroit agate, is a man made material made from the layers of the automobile of automobile paint which is hardened to be cut and polish like a stone. So it used to be more black and white, and initially dark and muted and neutrals. But over the years in the seventies, more
colored cars were made. But this is so rare now because of the more efficient way they spray the cars. This was all from the over spray, wasn't it. It's the spray that went onto the walls and hardened, and they cut that down and made it into jewelry, and it's a limited resource. It's very rare to get it now.
I didn't know that. I remember when we went and looked at it that the story at the time was it was that this it was this guy and when they did take it all down, they had to go and do it every few years because it would accumulate on these walls. Is that the guy thought, oh, this is kind of beautiful. I'm going to take it, and he brought it into his garage and then just started playing with it.
And polishing it up and the layers of the.
Color, the colors mine has like yellows and blues and reds, and.
Like yours, it's sort of blues and greens and purples. We'll take photos of our jewelry and put this to a company story, but they're just gorgeous and it's so interesting. I was throw a sight saying how rare this is Fordite, particularly in that context, it sounded like it was going to be some rare stone and instead it's this stuff from the walls. It's great of the ford factory. Yeah,
we were both very taken, very what's your glimmer? My glimmer is that I recently got back from a trip to Ireland and I'd never been there before, and went for a conference, but also took the opportunity to do a little hiking and a little and we got to go and visit with some friends.
That introduced us initially. That introduced us initially Jackie, who you know, and I haven't seen her in years, and it was so lovely both to catch up but also to see the place that she talked about a lot when we knew her when we were all in Australia together, and this place called derry Nown where it's just beautiful. It is like you would not imagine such a place. It was wild and crazy and it yeah, just absolutely glorious. So it was so nice to go and get away.
But also to see that side of her life. She spoke so much about darien Anne, but always hilariously. The families shared a couple of caravans and the other families were all there around the same time. They'd all go to the local pub. Everyone wud be singing in the pub. She said that if the temperatures got to twenty degrees at darien Anne in summer, they say, oh, what a scorcher. I should say that when she's living here in Australia. But the funny stories and here here, here is you, Anita,
here is me saying just how beautiful it was. Because I didn't quite picture the beauty.
It was great to kind of put all these places with a visual and it was beautiful, and to catch up with her family and all that. But it was really really lovely to be there. Two.
I like how you say you're into a conference and you don't do the inverted commerce conference. Sure it was sure it was a Greek con of course, it was that half a you and signed your name in Rackdoff.
Sure, it was absolutely.
I know you're more diligent than that.
It was actually pretty diligent.
In case your place of work is listening, you are very diligent.
Very diligent, And it was.
It was.
It was in Trinity College, which was o. It was just what a glorious place it was in Dublin, in Dublin to go and see the Book of Kels and oh did you conference?
Good luck to you. Well that's us for this episode. Please if we've said anything that has touched a nerve, good or bad. You know, do you wear you're staying close to the shops letters. Absolutely will see you soon.