Flex and Frooms Flex and Fromes. This is the Flex and Froomes catch up podcast. My name is Frumy.
I am a one half of the Flexing Frooms duo and in very exciting news, I'm writing a book a bo okay. This has been a lifelong dream. I will say it's a lifelong dream of most human beings, particularly those who have main character syndrome. No way, really, I think everybody thinks that they could write a book.
I feel like everyone thinks a movie could be made about their life. Do people want to sit down like Ernest Hemingway and write a book Ernest?
As in Ernest Ernest, This isn't.
About Ernest, It's about fruit. Tell us about your book. When Fruny says it's a long time coming, you might not be across her law, but most people know her for being a comedian, the face of a Australian youth website that will not be named for legal reasons at such reason, and just being an all around legend on social media. She's phasing out of that phase of her life. She's just a regular cat. But now she's back on the app with a book. Tell us about it.
My book is called Perfect candidate. We've done one of those things where I've come up with the title like before it's finished, right fantastic, which it's kind of giving me a little bit of direction.
It is about We're definitely still in the drafting phase of book right in and process. The book isn't due to come out anytime soon, so I'm not excited anyway.
Perfect Candidate is trigger warning. It's about my experience with an eating disorder. That's kind of like the kernel of the book. However, I would say it is an interrogation of pop culture, early two thousands culture. I've always been a bit of a sucker for nostalgia, so I'm diving back into the archives of the early two thousands to look at what people who are our age twenty four grew up with the images that we had.
The general why are you laughing?
Pushing thirty at this time? I don't even know the age anymore, but she's definitely not twenty four. Can't pass for twenty four. This is audio based, but just rooms with three I's on Instagram you'll see for yourself.
And fine lines are fine learning guys. I'm out of juvenile is going to fix that?
I want to ask you a lot about your book and start with the obvious question, Yes, how did you pick the subject matter? Because I'm not sure when people would hear that you're writing a book, that this subject matter would be the one to jump out at them.
Absolutely fantastic question you, Lillian. This reminds me of the first time that we met, when I was injewing you.
Yeah, fuscle full circle. We were so professional. We still are sitting in the little stools. Yeah, we are with So.
I came up with this book topic. First, I wrote about I. So how do I just explain it?
You wrote about the first of your newsletter? Right, Yes, I read about the first my newsletter. So not knowing the law, how I'm going to have such a fan It.
All comes out when you're dating someone that you really so.
Let me tell you. Let me tell you about that book, book Candy.
So, I had been approached to write a book in twenty twenty, I'm pretty sure, and they were like, oh, do you want to write like something about how to be a good CEO? Like a jokebok. And I was like, yes, let's do a joke book, like a coffee table book. But then at the time I was recovering from an eating disorder, and like, I'd always write notes in Google docs about my experience, never thinking I would ever publish it because it was just kind of like a therapeutic,
cathartic thing. I actually had the thought, one day, I will write about this experience when I'm forty, when I'm rich, when I've established myself as like an inherently funny person.
And unfortunately that time's not coming. So she said, let's cash in now.
The price high, the prices, hie, you must strike when nine is hot. But no, I ended up on like not really a win, but it was during COVID, And I write about this in the book. During COVID I had COVID, I was in lockdown early twenty twenty one in my parents' house.
Okay, early adopter absolutely.
Always at New Year's after kissing a few too many friends.
And friends, friends and family. So that kind of book.
And I wrote about my experience with anorexia. And I think about this with people who have eating disorders. It's easier for me to talk about the anorexia as opposed to like binge eating, because there's still so much shame around that. So I want to explore it in the book. But yeah, essentially I wrote about in the newsletter. These newsletters did wildly well. Hates people share them. I'd never had so much good feedback on something that I'd done
that was not funny. Yeah, and that was actually like a very freeing moment for me as a human being.
Do you have any reservations about writing about this topic? I only ask because it reminds me of when I first started DJ Just bet with me. But I did this one one DJ set for Nike, right, it was a Nike run club, and then after that the only job office I would get were athletic affiliated DJ gigs. Right, you do one panel talking about race, and everyone's like,
this is the race girl. Are you prepared for the reality that's going to come when you become the poster child for speaking about because I think people will frame in like a body positivity way. Sure they frame in an anarexia bing cheating way.
Does that worry you? Well?
Yeah, And that's why I hesitated to write this kind of book for a long time. I hesitated to write about it in the newsletter like that was the biggest concern for me, and I actually when I announced a book I wrote about this in the announcement newsletter saying how like for a long time I have shied away from talking about women's issues because I just think that is catching it.
You set it out, you set it out, and I just took it. When I take it back, dam you got me so good about perhaps the best. That was incredible timing Lilian and Preey's apprentice comedian by Proximity Unleash to Beast.
You should be worried about that. Absolutely.
That's why I had so many reservations for so long talking about it because I want to be funny. I feel like, like you said with the DJ thing, things are expected of you to talk about which just aren't fun. And that's how actually not our personality. Like we are silly, both of us. But I think the way that I'm going to write the book is going to be in such a way that like, this isn't a body positivity book.
It's not put in the prologue.
This is about the contradictions of being part of this culture, being in the juveiterim community, girls and boy bosses. And also like we had a conversation with this podcast that I find really interesting and I want to introgate this in the book, the idea that everyone is beautiful rhetoric but not giving. That's why I kind of really want to focus on looking at beauty standards across time as well as kind of interrogating is us being all really like cognizant of our bodies?
Is that a new thing?
Like you know, people like plastic urdiers on the rise data, Like I actually want to look at the facts. I want this to be. I want to have really water tight research in this book to kind of paint a picture of both my experience as well as kind of the experience of others.
Because I'm also really.
Aware of the fact that like, and this comes into the title, if you're going to ask me about the title.
Why do you interview?
I mean.
Anyway, so perfect candidate means a few things. It's what I would be told when I would go. For example, I had braces and I went to the dentist and he said, I think we should break your jaw to pull it forward because you're very cute, but it would look better. You're the perfect candidate for this. And I'm fourteen years old, so I've had a lot of these experiences in my life. You know, I look back now at this age and I'm like, Damn, I was fourteen.
I was just a client.
Literally, I was a client. And then also perfect candidate refers to the idea that I've always felt like a lot of what I've done has been for this job. The weight stuff, the body dysmorphia, was all like I need to be this perfect getaway presenter girl because I'm so driven and I want to get everything, and the one way to like shield myself from getting rejected is by being as thin as possible, by being this so that when I'm being a woman and I'm being loud,
no one can say, oh, she's fat. Do you know what I'm saying? And then also the final thing is being you know, like a middle class white woman. I'm the perfect candidate for an eating disorder. Everyone expects I'm the perfect candidate. I'm exactly what you look at.
So can I say I really ate? So this is good for me, you know what I mean?
Because I think me writing this book, a million other girlies in my position have spoken about this topic. I want to be really aware of that, and not in a self flagellation like I know what I am by but in a way that's actually like when you look at the eating disorder statistics, it is more common for people in my experience to have it. But this is across countries, socio economic levels. It happens in places where
people are starving. It happens everywhere. For me, Like, the point of the book is for people to understand, for example, with eating disorders, that it is a mental illness. People don't think of eating disorders as mental illness. I know from my own experience. I have friends who've gone through it, and I've been like, oh, they're being so annoying, and then I've got to be like, wait, why is it different? The cost of mental illness is people being annoying and
being rude. We look at someone with an eating disorder as we think of it as a choice. When I really want to reiterate that this is a mental illness that you can It's a one thing that I'm very sure you can cure.
When is the book coming out? The book TBC?
Yeah, I was going to it's a little bit of a big one. Yeah, everyone don't get excited. It's definitely not a twenty twenty three in deavor. It might be early twenty twenty five only because and I know this from experience, if you miss the writers' festivals I think are either March or October, like start or enter they and then you got to be there for the next ones.
So the publisher said late twenty twenty four. Yeah, but I'm going to really try and push my pussy to get this done. Any other questions did you think?
I explained that well from your perspective, perfect, like perfect.
I really think it's going to be fantastic again, because I think the way that you'll write it will be really really accessible and interesting, and you have a really great way of connecting ideas, you know, like when for me speaks it's SYNTHESI or when for me right, it's like, oh my god, wait, I'm laughing, but I'm learning, but
it's information. But what's happening here. And I think what'll be really awesome too, is that your reference points will be so accessible Simpson's call, No, I was just thinking early two thousands broadly. And also, I would say, because this is not a topic you've rinsed virtually before diving into with the book, I think people be intrigued to know what your thoughts are on this broadly as opposed to them being like, oh yeah, I know, I know her experience.
We've heard this a thousand times. Yeah yeah, yea yea yeah, yeah yeah.
Can you see any plot holes of what I've said or anything that you're like, how are you going to do that?
From your perspective, When I think about you writing this book, I only care about your opinion. I really don't ever care about stats, facts or whatever. Well, I care in the sense, but it doesn't make me think something is
more believable or worth listening to. The further, someone dives deep into just their natural curiosities, platforms, tradictions, pulls out, pulls out what the audience might perceive this as being that feels way more interesting, Like I would love to write about you said that the newsletter you wrote on this eating disorder was one of the most popular things that had come to be, And you said this was the first thing that I had written that wasn't funny
that you know that got people's attention. I'd be like, but why and for what reason were they connecting with the concept, connecting with you, humanizing you. This is a weird way where people kind of like, oh, well, she's not just a public figure. She has issues and therefore she's more accessible to me. And I would love to know if there was like a before this and an after this. But I definitely feel like, don't ever feel as you're writing that the facts and stats are more important.
Then you almost taking us through that journey of like plugging in and plugging out of this and recognizing what you said before, Like I could talk about the eating disorder broadly way more than I could talk about BINGI as a concept even that, I want to know why, Like what's the difference, why is there a different and what is the shame as well?
And I also give it away. Oh anyway, thanks for the questions. We're gonna have fun with this.
Oh yeah, anyway, everyone save your questions until at least early twenty twenty and.
Save your coins please. Yeah. I'm gonna get some pre orders.
Yeah yeah, the pre order campaign is the one that matters. Everybody will tell you that true. After launch, it's dead to the world.
It up.
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