Hello, and welcome to Mom and Mia out Loud. It's what women are talking about on Monday, the twenty fifth of May. I'm Holly Wainwright.
I'm Claire Stevens.
I'm Amelia Lester.
Big weekend, didn't we, Holly?
Please? Did we? We're keeping some pretty pretty incredible company.
You had lunch on Friday with Jacinder a day.
Can you tell me everything?
Yeah, So, so we'll go chronologically because Holly's is more exciting, but mine did happen earlier in the day. So on Friday, I was at a lunch for my wonderful publisher Alan and Unwin because the author Lily King, who wrote Heart the Lover, which a lot of out louders have read because I think Jess and I both recommended it to death. So she was in Australia for Sydney Ryders Festival and it was a lunch for her and Ja Cindra Adurn is a fan of Lily King, so she just happened
to be at this lunch. I said to her, like, I'm pregnant and I'm in my floppyre.
You probably didn't need to tell.
She's like, honey, I can see, but I was like, I can't believe you ran a country when you were this. What did she say? She said, she was like, well, you wouldn't do it if you didn't have to.
Well, I know how Holly met her because I went to see Holly everything.
I interviewed Justina on Friday night at the town Hall at Sydney town Hall. It was it was great. I was really nervous, really nervous, because this is the thing, right, we're just cinda fangirls. I'm on the record as being disinde fangirls. Not everybody is. In fact, I posted about my disinder experience on Friday, and I knew what would happen would happen, which is that you get a lot of people going yeah, yeah, amazing, and then the people come who are like, did you tell her that she's
ruined everything? And so you know, like this is a politician. So I was very nervous about doing the interview. I was very nervous about the preparation. I was very nervous about all the things. But it actually went fine.
With more than fine, Holly. There was laughter, there was tears, and you had the most amazing sparkly socks and Shinysue.
She was great.
It was good.
But you know what, I only have one regret, and it's a good regret to have about any big event because it isn't about anything I said or did. It's about one thing about the way I looked. I didn't get my hair done, and so every time I look at the videos, I just see this massive, really frizzy hair and it's not important. That's not the important part. The important part is what you say. But then you look at the videos and you're like, why didn't I get my hair done?
Jacinda got her hair done well on Friday. I relate Holly because I got a photo with Lily King and jacindra I durn and Luke Bateman, who's the book was so very important, very very exciting, and you know, when you're just not having the day to get the photos, I was like, these photos are all terrible, but I have to post them because when else is this gonna happen. But I did say to Jacinda, I said, you're meeting
my lovely friend Holly tonight because she's interviewing you. And Jacinda said her questions are brilliant.
Oh.
So me and Jacinda were talking about your friend, Holly is what happens?
Oh?
All right, here's what's made our agenda for today. Is there such a thing as a good reason for your dad to miss your wedding? What about trying to broker a peace deal? Yes, we are talking about the Trumps.
Plus the childwive conversation is everywhere from publishing to sixty minutes. We can't look away. But what does it really say about us?
And I'm bringing something new. We can blame celebrities for.
Hurrah, But first, Klaus Stevens.
Taylor Swift, and Travis Kelcey were in the front row of an NBA game in Ohio on Saturday night, and I just want to play you a moment of commentary and ask if you notice anything interesting about it.
Well, Travis Kelcey and his fiance here of the game.
Travis kelce that's good to have him here, at Ohio native, a Cleveland native, taker heights.
He's an Ohio boy.
Needless to say, the ovation was pretty good. In any I didn't say the name of Travis Kelce's fiance.
They could mention that Travis Kelcey was from Ohio, but they couldn't mention that her name is Taylor Swift and you may know her as one of the best selling artists of all time or the highest grossing live music artists on the.
Thing may have been proving a point.
So there are all these theories going around about why they wouldn't name her, and no one has actually offered an official explanation from ESPN or the announcers or anything like that, so it's just speculation. But there's a bit of a theory that they were making a point that they didn't want it to become a big celebrity.
Like distract what has happened with the NFL with football, which is that because of course Travis is a footballer, Taylor attends his games sometimes and in the NFL there was there were complaints from the fan base that they were turning the games into these Taylor Swift spectacles. So maybe the basketball people are trying not.
To do that, which I say, any Taylor Swift spectacle amazing.
Well, you can tell that the hype is ramping up. Those two are going out a lot in New York this because it's leading into the northern summer, of course, and so I'm seeing them everywhere, and the hype is building because we all know the wedding is any minute.
It's very it looks.
Like Sleeping Beauty now, like you know the Sleeping Beauty Disney movie. She's got the very, very thick fringe. She just looks like a beautiful startled sawn.
I have never related to her before, but I related hard at this game, because what did Travis douclaire.
Travis chugged a beer.
He chugged a beer, he stood a fourth quarter, he encouraged applause and chugged a beer in one and Taylor Swift just had to sit there like, yeah, this is my dude, And I was like hard.
Related was buried hands and she was visibly cringing, and I was like, that's love, that's true love.
Also, how wild is it that three years ago, I think three years ago, at this very time, she was dating a man who is sort of the exact opposite of Travis Kelcey. I refer, of course, to frontman of the.
Yes, who famously is so pretentious that he only writes on a typewriter. Although I'm sure he's a Northern Englishman. I'm sure he does like his football to a point. He doesn't chug beers at games like this is in fact speaking of the Other thing that I saw that was very like hard relate on the weekend was also Prince William was at a football game for his team aston Villa. It is not clear why he supports them.
They're from Birmingham. That's a long story. Normally Royal people, posh people support Chelsea or like some posh Anyway, they won a really important European game and there is video footage of William filming it and declining a call from Cape. Oh my god, and I was like, that is everybody when they are in the middle of being embodied in their joy and they're like, no, not.
Now, dull, not now, dull. We'll call you when I have a chance. I also loved they got footage of Taylor and Travis sitting there. Travis says, do you have any gum? She passes gum from her bag and says last one, And it was very like maternal but also like there was a slight annoyance that's like, it's the last fricking one taking my gum. Now you're so annoyed, but also have the gum because you just chugged a bet. Yeah exactly.
So last Wednesday's show, we solved a dilemma about a woman who didn't want to go to her friend's wedding because it was going to make her feel bad. Right, well, we have listeners in high places, because immediately afterwards, one Donald Trump decided there was a wedding that he didn't have to att and his sons. Look, we know that when it comes to news with the word Trump in it, there are many things we could talk about, many important things.
But in the interest of not making everyone want to throw their phones out of the window right now, how about we settle on this one. Donald Junior, lovely guy, Lovely guy, got married on Saturday May twenty four. His lucky bride is Bettina Anderson, often most described as a model and socialite. Now, Don Junior lost his mum, Evana, four years ago, so it might have been nice for his dad to go to the wedding, but he didn't didn't want to go. And look, he did have an excuse.
Here's what he said, wedding.
He'd like, middy, go, I'm just going to be just a small, little private affair, and I'm going to try and make it. I'm in the midst, I said, you know, this is not good timing for me. I have a thing called the red and other things. That's when I can't went on. If I do attend, I get killed. If I don't intend, I get you by the fake years. Of course I'm talking about No. But he's a very person who I've known for a long time, and hopefully they're gonna have a great marriage.
Do he just describe his son as a person I've known for a long time or.
Was he describing them He describes his son as a person I've known for a long time.
Look, I know it's really hard to put the trump of all this to the side, and maybe we can't, in fact, but if we try, if we really really try, aren't there some things more important than turning up to your son's wedding?
Amelia, No, I think you just deranged in this take college?
Like really?
Yeah?
Like what, well, here's what I wonder. Will you had an ear aware? So when Joe Biden was president, there was this this memo circulated that was actually from when he was vice president. This memo predated his presidency, that he'd sent out to all his staff that said this, he said, I would like to take a moment and make something clear to everyone. I do not expect, nor do I want any of you to miss or sacrifice
important family obligations for work. Family obligations include, but are not limited to, family birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, any religious ceremonies such as first communions and bar mitsva's graduations, and times of needs such as illness or a loss in the family. This is very important to me, Biden said. In fact, I will go so far as to say that if I find out that you are working with me while
missing important family responsibilities, it will disappoint me greatly. This has been an unwritten rule since my days in the Senate. Thank you for all your hard work, Joe.
Okay, in retrospect, maybe some people should have missed some family.
And then contrast this with a tweet from Don Junior himself back in the day, who once tweeted in twenty twelve, I'm at dinner with our greenskeeper who missed his sister's wedding to work. No big deal. Hopefully she'll have another someday celebrating the idea of working over family. So I don't know. I just wonder if we've got this cultural clash.
No, see, I think if it was anybody else. Ironically, maybe if it had been Biden years before he was president, if it had been another politician who is known for how hard they work and their absolute dedication to their job, might be different. The funny thing about Trump is that since when does he need to miss things in order to be president? Like there's he has done the most ridiculous. He plays golf so often. Even the weekend of Don Junior's wedding this past weekend he was scheduled to go.
To That's not fair. He was scheduled to go and play golf. It's a long weekend in the US, and that is his traditional long weekend was scheduled, which hugely on long weekend, you probably watched maths because that so much more important than Trump's golf.
Not when I've got a long standing wedding invitation. That's the thing.
He was scheduled till very recently to play golf, but then he canceled the golf because he had a thing called a run. What part of that do you not understand?
But I think what happened is that somebody got in his ear and said, hey, mate, if you are missing your son's wedding, you can't.
Somebody got in his ear? Is that an ear joke that you're making me clar he was shot in the ear.
That's too soon, so insensitive.
Look, I do have to say, I know you wanted to take the Trump out of it, but can I just provide a tiny bit of context on John Junior, because I think there's a case to be made that he might be Trump's least favorite son.
Which is unfortunate because of the name, which is yeah, and for other reasons. And look, he's not He's not got a great track record sort of character wise. Just quickly, he did compare Syrian refugees to skittles, and he has hunted, among other animals, endangered Mongolian sheep, leopards, elephants, and a protected in a Venice lagoon.
I didn't even know you could hunt in Venice lagoon.
Like I said, lovely guy, lovely guy, No, I think, but none of those things would bother dom you Non Senior.
No, that's true.
But look, I can't believe I'm doing this. But it does look like Don Senior had a busy weekend because the iarandi that he references, it does look like it's about to happen and look, he did start the war that he is now negotiating the peace deal for so one might suggest that if he hadn't started the war, he could have attended the wedding. But retrospects is easy, isn't it. It's always easy to say in retrospect what
you'd rather do. So we just heard him speak in a press conference and then he followed it up with a truth social post.
Yea, which is like, in the amount of the amount of time you've spent releasing statements about this wedding, you should have just gone. But he's like, he would really like me to go, like my son really like me to go. And it's like yeah, because, which is weird.
There's a power play right between the Donaldso is that Donald can be like, I don't have to come to your wedding.
No.
But the funny thing is that Donald Trump literally two weeks ago had an event to promote a future UFC about at the White House, Like he commits to things that are so ridiculous and unimportant cler and then I act like he couldn't possibly go to his son's wedding.
Fly it's a really expensive right now. Have you noticed that he has a plane, and it was all quite quick. They got engaged in December. It's may look you got to get cheap airf as you have to book way ahead. So I'm just thinking that maybe he dropped the ball on the organizational part of it.
My favorite part is that Mary Trump, donald Trump's niece, has come out and just stirred some shit, which is always really nice. She said, give me a break. He doesn't want to go because he can't stand his kid. And then she is a clinical psychologist.
She is.
She said he's incapable of loving, and but she also she basically said, and I think this is the point you're making as well, Amelia, which is, take one look at Donald Trump Junior. I don't particularly feel sorry for him in this situation. I'm not thinking that poor that poor man waiting for his dad.
The projected ducks exactly after the break What celebrities have taken from us? Our obsession with celebrities has had a bad side effect, says celebrity Pempadgeley. It is robbed us of stories. Allow Penn to explain on his podcast pod Crushed.
No, I definitely I've been thinking about this more and more, Like I when I watched things now. I'm sorry, I call it what it is. I feel like, I'm just all I can think of is like, oh, there's that famous person doing it, delivering a performance. I celebrity culture is actually like robbing us of stories because there's because you know, in some ways agreed, the craft of cinema is becoming more and more elevated. You know, people are getting more and more specialized, We're capable of.
More and more.
But the stories are full of the same celebrities. And I'm sorry, it's just like, let's be real, that's what we all think. We're like, Wow, yeah, Timmy Schallamay is killing this right now.
What this Gossip Girl star just said really clicked something in my brain. It's why people loved Heated Rivalry. It's because we've never seen these actors before, so you could get fully immersed into the roles. It's why people are now loving the show off Campus, which I hear that you think is fantastic, and it's it's.
You're not distracted by knowing these people, knowing anything about their lives. You just you just believe that it is the story exactly.
Meanwhile, there is this huge debate right now over the forthcoming movie of the Odyssey. Much of that debate is deeply ridiculous, but nonetheless there is a debate that threatens to overshadow the movie. And that's got the most insane cast of all time. It's got mad Damon, it's got Anne Hathaway, it's got Charlie's throat, It's got Zendea. Now, speaking of Zendeia, this is I think he's onto something.
If you look at the three biggest young actresses in Hollywood right now, arguably I think you would say they are Zendaya, they are Emma Stone, and they are Margo Robbie. We don't know a lot about these three women. I would say we barely know if Zendeia as married. We only recently learned Emma Stone's actual name is Emily and Margot Robbie has literally mentioned her baby in public once and it was in passing.
And none of them I don't think have like active behind the scenes social media. Like they're very much like you know them from interviews where they don't give much away in terms of their personal life, right.
Right, Who was Emmastone married to I barely know? And then compare say and Naomi Watson and Nicole Kidman Naomi Watts. I don't know a lot about what's going on in her life, but she just rather convincingly played Jackie Oh in one thing and then someone completely different than something else. And I would argue that Nicole Kidman is kind of playing the one role, which is rich lady in Ashore, and I wonder if she's capable or if we're capable
of believing her in anything else. To be clear, she's got the acting chops, but it's about how we're receiving those roles.
I don't understand why this is new, Like as in movie stars are as old as movies, Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart, Greta Garbo. Right, We've always been fascinated by famous people, and then the people get famous and we want to go see them in things. So that's like literally they'll say, can that person open a movie? And the more we know about them, the more likely they are to open a movie. So is this conversation about it's not about fame,
it's about social media? Is that what we're saying? Because Margot Robbie, for example, in both her campaigns for Barbie and Wuthering Heights, was everywhere I looked for a year. Yeah, like everywhere I looked. So it's not like she's hiding and some kind of recluse. Is it about personal brand versus actor brand?
Yeah, because I was thinking we used to what Penn Badgeley's saying, it used to be the complete opposite in that remember when there was an era of like the Love Actually movie and it's like you just had movies that that had so many big names in it you couldn't even count.
And that's why we went to the movie that reached its nadea when there was the He's Just Not That into You movie, and then we thought we've gone too far as a culture.
I don't think it's true. Look look at the Odyssey that's you just called out. Like every single famous actor in Hollywood wants to be in a Christopher Nolan movie. Everyone wants to be in White Lotus, everybody wants to be in whatever, and they're all campaigning for it. I think the difference is whether or not they do brand
work as well as acting work, right. So one of the things that's interesting about the modern world is like all the celebrities have to be what we call diversified so as well as being an actor, it used to be a bit shameful to also have a tequila brand, a makeup line, be the face of this, the face of that. We've kind of done away with that judgment,
and now I mean Margot Robert. He has a massive contract with Chanelle for example, you know, and we have Chalameaie was a really interesting example that badgely used there because he's trying to walk this line.
He used to be.
Until relatively recently, i'd say, very respected as an actor, and then his choice of girlfriend and his visibility around that. We've talked about that before has kind of confused everybody, and now we think, oh, are you a reality star or are you a serious actor? But I think they've been told that they can make more money and they can therefore have more clout, more power to make the
movies they want to make all those things. If they do lots of brand deals, have a hot sauce, you know, have all of that stuff, does it damage their ability to make people turn out for them. I don't know that it does. I don't know that I would argue that it does.
I don't know if it does, but I wonder if it affects storytelling like I do think. For example, I saw the the Ryan Gosling movie The Space One Project Projectail, and that is obviously like literally just him in a frigging spaceship the whole time.
That he's a really interesting example because he's walking this line.
Yes, and he but at the same time, you're very aware that it's Ryan Gosling. I'm watching it because I find him charismatic and funny and interesting in all of that. Was I like as immersed in the story or was I distracted by Ryan Gosling? You know what I mean?
Yes, because that's what Penna's saying. He's not saying that it necessarily necessarily affects bankability or how much money you make. He's saying that it's taking us out of stories. We talked about tell us with before. When her double album, The Tortured Poets Department came out, everyone wanted to listen to that to understand what had happened between her and her ex Joe Alwin. Now it turned out to not be about Joe at all, But that's a different conversation.
Were people able to immerse themselves fully in the music or were they listening in part because they wanted the gossip.
Yeah.
Yeah, but that's different because she literally is making a project that is her words, her work, like, whereas Gosling is playing a partner movie. Right, so he's an actor. It's a different job, right, I would say that's what a movie star is. Like the reason that movie is huge is because Ryan Gosling is in it. Yes, and he does a great job. And is the fact that he is really likable and charismatic and handsome is what got us to the movies in the first pl.
Yes, but I don't know, Like, for example, even thinking about something like Guardians of the Galaxy, which again is like star studded, I couldn't really tell you what that story is about. I'm not in a story. I'm watching famous people. Whereas I think the biggest like storytelling phenomenons of our time, you look at adolescents, for example. I think a huge part of that was that several of those actors, one they seem like real people, and two they were relative unknown.
We can't compare adolescents with Guardians.
Of the Galaxy, but okay, or these are.
Two very different like projects with very different goals.
Okay, but let's get back to the Margot Robbie example, because I think she's really interesting on this point. So, yeah, she has been everywhere for two sort of essentially consecutive projects that she did, but she was everywhere in service of promoting.
The movie and the story of the movie.
So a lot has been made of her kind of thematic dressing on red carpets ahead of these movies coming out. In Wuthering Heights, she had a very distinctive sort of Victorian romantic, corseted vibe. And then for Barbie, she very famously worked with the stylist Andrew Murakama on a kind of dole like bubblegum pink aesthetic, and that was to serve the movie, to get us intrigued and our curiosity
peaked about the movie. I still don't know anything about her family life, and I'm delighted not to know.
No, I agree with you about that, but she has definitely reached a level of fame where the people who didn't like Wuthering Heights, that was part of the critique, they said, I can't look past Margot Robbie in this film.
She is not. That was me because I said that she has never been as cold as the characters on the Moors were in their lives.
Yes, indeed, so you couldn't look past Margot Robbie like she has become too big a star to disappear into any part that she plays. And I think that that is a problem that actors have always grappled with. I'm not saying that I don't think it's true that our obsession with celebrity, which has always been there, but is morphed from being just looking at paparazzi pinches of them to insisting that they share everything from what they had to breakfast to their baby and all those things. I
think that it's I think it's kind of intensified. The sleuthing culture you're talking about with Taylor Swift is definitely intensified. But I think that this has always been a problem for actors is when they get bigger than the parts, they have to do a lot more to make you believe that they're that pass.
And there's also a certain strategy in their public persona Like I would say that Emma Stone, you've pointed out on this show before, she makes really interesting, somewhat weird decisions about what movies she's in. She does a lot of art house movies, which she doesn't have to do at her level of fame, and maybe that's why. Maybe what we're talking about here, another word for it is
exposure and the issue of overexposure. Emma Stone, despite having two Academy Awards and being the most decorated actress of her generation, somehow does not feel over exposed. And maybe that's because she's made very conscious decisions to keep herself out of the public eye in these ways.
And she's unique in that. I reckon there's a bit of a cyclical nature to this, and listening to I've been listening to Famesick, the Lena Dunham memoir, and I think she talks about this that one of the reasons for the believability of Girls, and one of the reasons it probably did so well, is because it was a relatively unknown cast and you believed that that was Adam and that was Hannah, and because you didn't know who
they were. As her brand increased, I think probably as a writer she became a writer and a performer, she probably became a bit more self aware about what she was representing and what she wanted to represent. And you're overthinking and I'm watching euphoria at the moment, and that's what's happened to that right and watching Jacob, I'm like, I guarantee that Jacob A. Laudie has sat down with Sam Levinson and said, I can't have my character be
a dick. I can't have my character be who he was in previous seasons because that won't work for my personal brand. And now the story is bizarre and makes absolutely no sense.
I think that's also just the story of any time a TV show or a project get gets enormous, then the fame becomes a distraction. Well, have data friends, you know, like, but I feel that euphoria. The criticism about this season is a lot about that is that this was they were all respected actors in their different fields, but now they're the biggest stars in the world. You can't look past them.
And there is something about Zendea where in her roles she's very kind of stripped back, like she doesn't even look like her Really.
Do you think she sat down and said I want this and I don't want this or no.
I don't think her characters a train wreck. I don't think she wants to be there. I don't think, but I do think I look at the story and I'm like they a one hundred percent. Rewrote this for Jacob Alardi's personal brand and Jacob ELORDI like.
Timo's ay Shallamey has his love life has been a subject of conversation, in part because he has made choices in his love life that have attracted attention. Yeah.
Yeah, Whereas and.
Daya is, we think, married to another very famous actor, and yet for some reason that doesn't overshadow our appreciation of her roles.
But I do think it has always been a thing that when you want launch a new show, you want unknowns who are going to become stars. That's what Friends was, you know, That's what lots of things were, and then they become stars and they can no longer be those people. It's just the way of the world. Suddenly there are a lot of opinions everywhere about beds. I didn't see this coming. I have to say, I didn't see this coming.
It started for me, Amelia when you shared a piece in the New York Times that was an interview with some very fancy designers who said they posited the radical concept that pillow cases should not match. And I was like, well, Brent will be happy with that news, since the man has never made a bed that matches ever. But they were saying, we want color, we want texture, we want personality.
We don't want the pillow cases to match ever, And then I think, think, probably my phone listened to me talking to you about that, because it led me to the world of influencer Louis Burke, and I know a lot of other women too. He's a creative director and a designer who has eight hundred thousand followers and has very strict rules about beds. Here he is talking about what's chic and what's cheap when it comes to making your.
Bed chic or cheap. Let's talk beds. You understand, and you're not afraid of all beige chic. You think beije is boring cheap. You wash and change your bed midden weekly chic, You have perfect hospital corners chic, You use a top sheet chic, and you know to cuffet over your dovet sheep.
Yeah, so the things he likes. Sorry, did you say washing your sheets once week is she or cheap chic?
If he wants you to have fresh beds, he wants you to have fresh beds. That's fine.
I was hoping you'd say that was cheap. I thought he said cheap, and I was like, thank.
God, things he says it out a cheap pillow chopping. You know, when you get your pillow and you chop it with your hand to make it go like that. Everybody's been doing that on the internet for a long time.
Out cheap propped up pillows, cheap out top sheets. In as he said, he says, you've got to fold your douve back further than you think you do with the top sheet, coffing the top all the way down, and then you have to put your pillows in a pile, so not propped up against the bed like this, but stacked in a pile like a pile of books.
Right.
That apparently is chic. This man has got a lot of women, I know, very upset. How do we feel about our beds being judged bed shaming?
I always look at my bed, and this has been since I was sixteen and went to i KA for the first time to get my own set of bed sheets. Every time I look at my bed, I'm like, it's wrong, and I don't know why I still look.
At it, Because you've been chopping your pillows.
Definitely not it's definitely because everything matches. But everything matches because I can't afford to take a risk. I have no taste. I have absolutely no taste. So what am I gonna do? Throw clashing colors together?
So there?
Do you think there are ways to make so you know how I said, Brent never makes a bed that matches. It's true. When he makes a bed, he just pulls things out like the like the doner doesn't match the sheet, the pillow case, and he does not do that to be chiced.
It does not look cheap. The question is does it ever look good by accident?
Oh? Very occasionally. But do you think that the thing is here is there's intentional clashing and then there's just like Brent level message clashing.
In that video, he said texture. You don't want texture in your bed. I'm like, I can't add this to my list to texture in my bed. I just want sheets and a blanket.
He says. It can't be a throw blanket, though, he says throw blankets always end up looking like a wet towel, and they're not.
Called actually because wet towels just to be clear on the bed.
Not.
But everybody like you describing that, I'm like, that's Jesse's bed, she always has.
It's just a bed stylist.
Okay, Jesse's weirdly quite good at interior design. It's odd and I don't understand how she got that skill, and I didn't get that skill. But her douna is really thick, and then she always folds it down halfway. I don't know who told her how.
To do that, this guy.
And then and then the pillows are stacked like books, not up against the headboard like they are though, like if you wanted to sit on your bed.
Although I'm mad that she people don't do anything except sleep, and you know.
They probably have not two bedroom apartments, they probably have probably.
Have because I work on my bed a lot, right on my bed.
I eat my bed if I can get away with it.
I do lots of things in my bed, and I need my pillows like that so I can lie on the same that's cheap.
Yeah, I think that's really cheap. But no, my bed looks really wrong. Did he say that beige sheep?
Yes, beige is good.
The problem with beige is is if you're cheap like me, stains and then you never really get them out.
Depends on the color.
I don't think Staines is she Yeah, I don't think so.
And if you just go on a limb there your pillowcases match Melia Leicester.
You know, I'm a bit ashamed.
I haven't thought a lot about my bed, and like Claire, I feel that my taste level is low, you know when you had that. I was recently featured in the in the Muma mea out loud newsletter, and had a few pickies of me in that and one of the comments said, she looks different in every picture. And I realize that's because I have no point of view in my fashion. And if I don't have a point of view on my fashion, as sure as heck, don't have a point of view on my bed.
That's me. When when we moved into our current place, my sister in law, who's very good at this stuff.
Was like.
One word, one word, like what's your oh yeah, what's your aesthetic for the place? And I was like what Campton's chateau like plane? Like I just couldn't. I was like farmhouse kitchen and because you have absolutely no point of view, but my bed is just beige and it's got beage.
It is good.
No, it's not you.
You can't have a bed with a toddler.
No, after the break the trade wife conversation we've been wanting to have for weeks sixteen minutes. Typical blue and pink jobs, boyd jobs and girl jobs, generation old fashion that means submitting to my husband.
The rise and rise of the traad.
Do you see the tradewife movement as a warning? Absolutely?
I don't think this movement is just led by women.
A novel about tradwives Yesteryear has been dominating our social media for quite a while now, so it's we've all heard about the novel and how Anne Hathaway bought the riots and she's going to be in the movie, and so many out louders are reading it.
We talked about it on a subset last week with mea yes.
And then what I find interesting about that is that the trad wife phenomenon idea is a few years old, but it's really resonating right now, and it also keeps popping up in other aspects of culture. So last night there was a sixty minutes called The Truth about Tradwives and the Men who want Them. It followed two couples, Amber and Kreshi, who have two daughters and embrace pink
jobs and blue jobs in their home. That's an idea that came up on Married at First Sight last season, and Janey and Austin an American couple who don't have kids yet, which makes Janey a stay at home girlfriend. Then there's a new Australian novel called The Marriage Trap by Victoria Perman, and it explores the of the historical tradwife era and what women have to lose if they return there. A recent episode of The Rest Is Entertainment also delved into where the tradwives have killed feminism and
where the cultural phenomenon really came from. It's just a conversation that keeps coming up. What do we think is behind it? Why are we so obsessed with this idea right now? Look, get out your redstring?
Do you know that meme of I think it's Charlie Day with like looking manic and crazy as he's pointing out as like elaborate theory he has about something. Here's my elaborate theory. I don't think it's a coincidence that this is all happening right now and in fact. One of the experts interviewed last night on the sixty minute segment, who was a professor at King's College, London, made this
point as well. So I feel a little vindicated. I think there are a lot of men who have a lot of power who they might not be overtly sexist. They might not get up every day motivated by the idea that they want women out of the workforce. But I think they think things would be a little tidier and a little nicer and a little simpler if women just stopped trying to go into paid employment. And this occurred to me last week because Jeff Bezos was interviewed
on CNBC. He said a lot of insane things. He said that fifty percent of the population doesn't need to pay tax. He dodged questions about why he himself doesn't pay tax, And he told us that he's definitely going to give away most of his wealth, which is cool.
Right, I would like him to do this.
He's definitely going to do it. He hasn't told us where, nor where or how, but he's definitely going to do it. But one remark he made did not get enough attention in my view, and it's about the effects of AI on the workforce. I personally found it chilling.
Let's listen, what's really going to happen is we're going to have so much productivity in our economy that for exams, this is one effect a lot of people who have two earner income households, Right, what are the people who is going to drop out of the workforce? That's why we're going to have a labor shortage.
I'm really confused. What does he mean by that?
He means that one person in a two parent household is just going to drop out of the workforce because the robots are going to be doing everything and this is apparently a good thing. This is part of his conversation about why we should be so happy about AI.
But is aren't robots devaluing the work of human beings economically, and so no one's going to be earning enough money to be a single app income household.
All I know is that Jeff says be happy because there's going to be fewer jobs and that we don't need to have dual income households anymore. But again, do I think Jeff is pushing for AI because he wants women out of the workplace? No, he was raised by a single mother. He's never said anything overtly sexist. But I do think again that he's not necessarily thinking through what that means for women, who would be the vast majority of people in these two parent households who would
be dropping out of paid work. Bob Catter last week also said he said the quiet part out loud. He did an interview with journalist Victoria Divine. Divine thought they were going to talk about how he wants to expand mining in Queensland, but he had other ideas and I'm just going to read to you what he said to her.
Before I could ask him about his economic interest in that proposal, Kata cut me off to say, it's to get you enough money so that you can stay home and have some kids like every other Australian mother has done for the last two hundred years, which you can't do now. It's not an option that's available to you, whether people want to do it or not. I just want to give them that option.
Thanks Bob, Thanks Bob.
I think I think that Amelia is right about the fact that there are there are a lot of big forces of pushing the tradwifi business right but I worry that the kind of debate that we end up having about it. When I say we, I don't necessarily mean the three of us, but I mean, you know, online the rgibarji about it. We've been led by the nose into a culture war about it, which is it's always then framed as and the sixty minute piece was a
bit like this yesterday. Anyone who isn't broadly supportive of the women who choose to stay home in these ways and do homemaker things and make bread from scratching, all those cliches that tradwives do, if they're troubled by it, it's some kind of twisted feminist nonsense, and that really this is a war between women who work outside the
home women who don't work outside the home. And I think it needs any discussion about tradwifism has to be really clear that tradwives need one very specific ingredient to make them tradwives and not just women who stay home. And that is the submission part. The whole point about tradwives is that it is a declaration that their husband, their partner, is the head of the household, and that it's embracing a traditional role. It isn't about whether or not you can afford or want to stay at home
and be with your children for longer. It isn't about whether or not you want to make food or buy it in. It isn't about any of those things. It's about the idea of submission that is critical in trad wife culture. And I think that when we all start discussing whether or not we think it's anti feminist that a woman likes making dinner, we've lost it, you know what I mean, Because that's not what this is about at all. And I think it's really there are lots
of really good reasons. I know we're going to talk about why this tradwife ism is a very appealing aesthetic because it seems it's often non urban, not in a city. You've got space, you've got time, you seem to have more choices about how you spend that time. You're in a beautiful setting, you're wearing something gorgeous, your children are all well behaved, the food looks delicious. It doesn't feel like you're wishing to drop the kids at childcare and then get on the bus to sit on a train
in the rain to get to your meeting. It's the opposite of that, right, and so many of us are so exhausted and burnt out by the need to constantly keep puzzling just to have a lifestyle that seems vaguely appealing that, of course this looks much more appealing, But I think we have to be savvy to what it's really selling us, which is submission.
Right, Yes, and I think you're right that that bit gets ignored in favor of all the other aesthetic distracting parts of what tradwife life looks like. What I found really interesting about the Rest Is Entertainment episode where they looked at a bunch of research into this and there was all sorts of polling. They kind of attributed it to a sense of false nostalgia that basically depicting depicting
a lifestyle that never actually existed. Even what Bob Katta said about women have for two hundred years haven't worked outside the home, they were able to just have children.
I don't think he's necessarily correct.
Yeah, I thinking about as history, I know I thought he'd be I thought he'd be right. But there's there's this idea of we like to look back at this bygone era of a simpler life, less technology, less less of a rush, less comparison, less of that, and that's what we find really really appealing. So they call it
this idea of returnism versus futurism. So there are some people who, in terms of how they see the future of society, they actually want it to go back in time, and there are others who are very excited about technological advances. And apparently forty seven percent of gen Z's want to live in the past, which I'm like, Oh, when I was growing up, I had no desire to go back decades.
I was excited about the present and the future. And this whole kind of I get it served to me all the time, and I do find it really appealing, this whole cottage core thing of like being at home and it's cozy and there's a textured bed with a textured bed and you're just kind of sitting around reading and you're not getting notifications on your phone and the pace of life is slow, and I think that is
what a lot of the tradwife stuff is appealing to. Interestingly, the research in the UK has shown there was an interesting question about like who out of like public figures, who do you think reflects like tradwife values, and one of them was Princess Kate. And when you think about it, there is something about the stuff that she she's very like in nature. It's been very much like by grounding herself in nature and being with her family that has
been really helpful. And there's a bit of like a CPO tone to her images where it's this cozy, warm vibe and that is aspirational for a lot of people.
It's very aspirational. I moved to the country because I specifically wanted that I grow vegetables. I like cooking food. Like but this is my point, we're getting it all mixed up. So it's like Kate is not a trad well, actually, maybe she actually is a tradwine.
The royals are.
Quite because she is married to the man who will be king, so I guess by definition he probably is head of the household.
Yeah, like she'll have to admit the rest of the king.
That's not really what her vibe is. But the I think the yearning that's so interesting that point Claire about yearning for a simpler time. It's defined by that whole I hate it here statement, right, which is basically living life online I hate it heres are coming to do everything. I hate it here, Like I don't know whether it's it is a very anxiety inducing time.
Just said to be happy, Holly. That was the whole point of that interview.
Yes, I don't. That does not give me any reassurance. But the thing is, and this is the hypocrisy that also needs to be pointed out by the tradwive culture, and this was also borne out by one of the couples who were interviewed on sixty minutes last night. Is that a lot of the tradwives who are selling this on social media. Of course they are working, That's exactly
what they're doing. And the stay at home wife who was on sixty minutes last night, the American couple, she's a content creator and that's a job, like it is definitely a job. She gets paid to make content. That
is not an easy thing to do. And so I think the thing that is worrying about it is not that women might choose to stay home and might choose to want to do things in a domestic realm that has been devalued, and you can definitely argue that it's been devalued, but that now they're saying that a quarter up to forty percent gen Z men when polled, say that they believe that their wives should obey them. Well, it's that is the scary bit to me. It's nothing
to do with the sour though. It's got nothing to do with being driven out of the city because it can't afford to live a decent life of being sick of talking about house prices all the time. That's not scary.
What's scary is the obey It's not just that domestic labor has been devalued. It's not valued at all. It's unpaid. And that is why this chad wife lifestyle probably needs to come with a bit of a health warning because the appeal of it, I think, as you pointed out, Claire,
is obvious and apparent. But women aged over fifty five are among the fastest growing cohort of people experiencing homelessness in Australia, and this can be linked in large part to the fact that a majority of those women who are at risk performed unpaid domestic labor for most of their lives. Now, this is not to say that everyone who has prayorized or has ultimately ended up performing unpaid domestically,
but for most of their lives will experience homelessness. Of course not nor nor is it right to say that everyone who looks after the home and performs that very important work is submitting to their husband. But it's to say that it's a risk that if you put your financial future in the hands of your partner, you are at a greater risk of ending up with nothing.
There's two aspects here, and one is the men who are promoting this chadwife ideal. The other is the women who are buying into it as well, and a lot of the chidwife content. It's not men who are watching the tradwife content, it's women. I love it, yeah, And although many of us a kind of hate watching it, there are some people who are finding it very aspirational.
And I do think there's something to be said about how for a lot of us we feel like we were given a binary choice between being a girl boss or a trad wife. Like you kind of had to. There was a girl boss era of the twenty tens where it was like work, work, work, work, work, don't listen to your body.
Well, go back with them, agreed too. I mean, girl boss is making a return too. Interestingly that binary choice.
Exactly that it's like you feel like you have to choose one, like you're either em agreed or your ballerina farm. And the reality is no, most human beings sit somewhere in between, and if we have more equality in our households, then we can have more equality when it comes to work. Like we're just as the expert said on sixty Minutes last night, We're not at a point of equality where this is just about choice.
No, absolutely, And it's interesting because when you say that you can pick a girl boss or a trad wife, it really I think it's it's true when you look around. I'm always interested in the versions of womanhood that are being sold to, particularly young women. But it's nonsense because nearly everyone listening to this will be somewhere in the middle of all those things and we don't have to
pick anything, you know. But I also think that I personally I love watching tradwife content because I find it fascinating and I find it really I'm always interested by things that are really different from my life. In terms of why you would choose to say, my husband is the head of the house, I do what he says, like I'm like, what and I like seeing it, But also I do love the aesthetic like I love it. I love country life and fresh veggies and let's make
butter from scratch. But you've just got to be aware that a lot of this stuff is being served to you with almost a subliminal message about something much darker, which is about women giving up the right to their own autonomy over their bodies, their lives, their jobs, their money. So like, enjoy the sour dough, but don't quit your job.
One thing that's really promising about the data that they talked about on the rest of His Entertainment is that when they were researching about people's men and women's views about trade, wife culture and feminism and all of that, men who are in relationships with women are far more likely to identify as feminists, and men who aren't far less likely. And I think that that's the thing, and that's a little bit of the comfort that I'm like
a lot of these like you've got. On sixty minutes, you had Tyson from Married at First Sight, who is a single man in his big Gold Coast home talking about how he just wants to put his wife in the kitchen and I'm like that you will find that that is totally incompatible when you actually have to live with a real human woman, Like, it is very unlikely that that binary masculine and feminine life is going to happen.
Well, there are plenty of women who would want to move into that house, like. I think that This is one of the reasons why I say I think sometimes are being led into a cultural argument, because there are plenty of women who are like I would love that. I don't want to work outside the home. I want to live in that nice house and cook dinner and whatever like this. It's not wrong to want those things. No, Well, the pit of it that's scary is that Tyson from math is telling you what to do everything.
Yeah.
Yeah, but that's what I mean is that you would hope that even if you know jen Z men for example, are having these ideas that as they end up in long term relationships and as they tackle all the problems of our time, such as cost of living and raising children. I mean, it's hilarious them talking about being the providers when I'm like, yeah, you try and do that, you
try and provide for a household on one income. I do think that they're going to find that it just isn't possible, unlike what our friends Jeff says and the.
King's College professor we've been mentioning. He Jung Chung is her name, and she said something that really stuck with me on this Just as you know, Jeff is selling us a particular vision of the future which may or may not come to pass, and she points out that what the tadwives are depicting never really existed either.
No, Out Louders, thank you so much for having us in your ears. Listen, we have got a treat for subscribers tomorrow. We are doing a proper unpack of the Kylie Minogue documentary that I know a lot about Loud has watched over the weekend. You can obviously save that unpack for whenever you have watched it. But we're going to go deep. Claire is joining me and the Spills Laura Brodnick, who is the expert in all things entertainment, to go deep on the Kyle Venoge Show.
And I can't wait.
It was so good. Anyway, until then, we'll see you goodbye bye.
Mum. Mayer acknowledges the traditional owners of the land on which we've recorded this podcast