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Mamma Mere acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on. Are we Ready?
We are?
Jesse Stevens, Yes, three two one, Hello, and welcome to Mom and Me Are out Loud. It's all women are actually talking about. On Wednesday, the tenth of July.
I'm Holly Wayne.
Right, I'm Me Friedman, and I'm Jesse Stevens and out louders. If you're listening to this episode, I poll you're listening on Spotify. It has come to our attention that a great many of you do not follow us, and that means that the episode does not automatically go.
Into your feature. Who would be one of those people?
Jesse Stevens, Holly and I are that personality type, so probably as Sagittarius.
Okay, this was a very strange conversation for me to have because I don't understand how you listen to a podcast if you're not following it. I go and search it every time you want to listen to a podcast. Look.
Also, my Spotify has on the front page it'll say your show's new episodes. I don't need to do that, but however that you do talking gates myself.
Yes, so what you.
Need to do is you've said and then in the top right hand corner on Apple I know it says follow and you can click the follow button. And on Spotify it's exactly the same. It's the word that says follow. It has six letters wow, and it starts with air.
This is great and then tap it. Where do I put my ear buds my air pods? Which holes do they go?
In podcasting? Okay, okay, so we've started with the ear buds in the vagina On Wednesday show, I Am going to get this train.
Back on the tracks baby.
On today's show, why absolutely everybody is talking about a major Australian fashion brands body count. Also does an adult child get us say? And who their mom dates? Welcome to the new age of endless parenting. And people are posting strangers gossip sessions on TikTok and someone really needs to tell Sarah that her friends hate her. But first mea Friedman in.
Case you missed it, meant are raw dogging on flights?
That sounds I think it's not.
What you think.
Dogging flights. I don't think we're doing on flights is quite accurate.
What do you think real dogging means?
This is I've heard young people use it, and I've wanted to say, I don't think you fully understand what does so? Because doesn't it mean having sex without a condo? Yes, that's what I'm meaning.
Yeah. Also bear backing. But this word, this phrase, this term, this idea has been co opted for a different and yet related meaning. Let me explain, raw dogging flying, raw or bearbacking on a flight refers to sitting there through the whole flight without any form of entertainment or stimulation or distraction to help the time pass. So no podcasts, no reading, no watching a movie, no watching a TV show. All you're allowed to do is watch the flight path map. That's as exciting as it gets.
It's a sign of psychopath Yeah.
So a twenty six year old guy from London called west Re simply went viral for the concept because he was showing himself raw dogging on a flight. There was a twenty one hour trip just prepared to laden and he told GQ magazine, who did a story on it that came out this week, he said he likens raw dogging to meditation. He said I got sick of watching the same movies. Visually, you are kind of impaired. You only get to look at the seat in front of you,
to your right or your left. If you're at the window, all you hear is that drumming sound of the engine. It's just white noise. And he says, that's lovely. Jesse. You recently wrote I'm a Mayor about your experience traveling twenty six hours with Todd Luod. Does raw dogging sound like it could have made things better?
This is why this story has pissed me off. I've seen the headlines and I'm like, oh, you think you werew a dog to fly? You roar dog to flight?
Did you?
Was it hard? Like I roar dog to flight against my will? I would have loved to sit there and watch a movie, or even just sit there quietly. They think that they're doing some tough muttershit by not putting in any stimulation. Throw in a baby throwing who there's your challenge. There's your tough mutter like.
Not a lot of movies when you're looking after a small child exactly.
I'm like people looking after babies have been raw dogging flights forever.
So you did raw dogging.
Plus I did not relaxing hard, which sounds even worse.
I thought this story was nonsense, and then I remembered that I actually sat next to a young man who did this on my recent flight.
He told us about it.
Yeah, So when I went back to Manchester in April for my dad's Adith on the plane back, but sat down next to this young man and he was very fits this demo right, like a young cool kind of jen z Eddy guy. He was coming to Australia for the first time ever for a job. He's got a tech job and he's doing something techie, techie, he's like that tech guy. And he said, I've never done a long haul flight before, have you? And I was like,
I've never done a long half flight. I was like, friends, I've been doing this flight for twenty five years now. And he says, what are your tips? And I was like, have a drink.
Watch a movie, like just wait till it's over, wait till it's ever. It's just a day out of your life.
That's what we always say is And he said, I'm going to use this as a challenge to myself to unplug. And I was like, you are an idiot. This is not the moment.
Very slowly, but he did.
This fits into our idea that men don't understand little treat culture. It's true because women will treat it if they can, if they don't have their hands full. It's just a series of treats.
It's an amazing a rom com, exactly a bad food in.
A mush yes, whereas men are like, how can I make this more painful?
It's like just watch a movie.
Yeah, come shopping with me at Witchery. I've never shopped here before, but I had to check it out because they did a whole new rebrand and were dropping some amazing new pieces this week.
For better or for worse, everyone is talking about Australian fashion brand Witchery. Witchery has been around since the nineteen seventies, but at the end of last month they virtually wiped their Instagram account. They deleted it everything, and they then posted something that read coming soon a fresh design direction and new look for Witchery. On the second of July,
they launched their brand new collection. It's called Bold Awakening and it is led by their new head of design named Kirby Hanrahan and the target is women who want to feel forever thirty and Hanrahan explained that everything has been designed to mix and match together to make a capsule wardrobe. This is a direction we've seen a lot of fashion brands go down, So Dish is an example
seed assembly label. We're seeing less patterns and sequins sorry maya less sort of leopard print and more classic shapes. And the idea behind this is that it's smart merchandising because it addresses cost of living. It takes a lot more to have a woman spend her hard earned cash and she doesn't want something that's going to be out of fashion or look dated in two months. But with
the new range a swift wave of criticism. Some customers noticed that sizing went from four to eighteen, meaning that Witchery had removed a size twenty and customers commented on the new range, saying, it's not a bold awakening. If you cannot do the bare minimum for size inclusivity, read the room, Witchery. It's twenty twenty four. You should be
expanding sizing, not reducing it. Witchery swiftly released a statement that said if you're a twenty in the previous range, we invite you to try a size eighteen because this range is a more relaxed fit, and they added the size twenty that they previously had accounted for a small percentage of our sales, so there was also a business reason for it. We asked some women what they thought of the Witchery rebrand. Here's what they said.
Yes, in terms of the rebrand, I think the actual PR launch was really cool, but I think a fell flat. I actually don't think it's very different than what they've done before.
It still feels like old Witchery.
I think they've completely alien needed like a big cohort of their customers, and also when they're trying to connect with the younger generation who cares about inclusivity, I think they've polarized a lot of people.
Through doing that.
I just think, in this day and age, to be cutting out a size twenty and then.
Expect people to try the eighteen instead, it's pretty wild.
I don't mind the direction they're going in. I think it's quite fresh and new in terms of the different sizing and removing the size twenty. I did hear through the grapevine that they might actually be bringing it back, but the reason that they took it off the market was because it wasn't accurate enough. So I think it's once they understand a more accurate size twenty, they are probably going to bring that back into stores.
So the Witry rebrand looks exactly the same. I can't believe there spend time and energy trying to put out a new range or a new style and they made it so similar to what they were already doing ofense to them. The thing that's upset me the most, though, is the fact that they're bragging about using vanity sizing. Why is there more value in a smaller number on my shirt than a bigger number. My size is my size,
I'm cool with it. Why are you witchery telling me that I should be happier in a smaller size than the number I actually am.
Maya, what is vanity sizing? So?
Vanity sizing is based on this idea that women put a lot of self esteem based on the size on their clothes, and that the smaller the size, the better a woman feels. So even though some people wonder why they might be a size ten in one label and a size fourteen in another and a size six in another, there's no such thing as standardized sizing. Every label size is depending on their customer base. So say you have four or five sizes, except for Brandy Melville, which only
has one five. If your customers tend to be a certain age or they like a certain style of clothes, they might be a different body shape to the brand of another company that might target older women who might be larger, or you know, they might have different body shapes. So what I think we've got to remember, and I'd completely understand why people feel really upset about this. Fashion brands are businesses. They're not community services, and so they
are going to do what's good for business. And I agree with that person who said, why did they capitulate this idea of vanity sizing and that women will feel better and more predisposed to the Witchery brand if they're a size eighteen when they used to be a size twenty. That's a big problem for Witchery to fix in terms of generations of beauty standards and oppression that we've inhaled.
As that vanity sizing still stands because my experience, and I'm not plus sized, but my experience is that I will walk into a shop, I will look at the label. I hate trying things on, and I think that in spects to a lot of women's experience if they don't have the number that I see as the one that fits me, I'm not trying on a size smaller.
I'm just And also, if you're buying online, which most people are these days, most people, but lots of people are. I live regionally, all the shopping is online, right then I have to go by sizes. I'm not trying things on, So they have to mean something.
People used to know though they used to be a joke about. I'm a country Road size eight, which means women who were not a size eight in any other label were a country Road size eight who interestingly also owned Wittery. Country Road has always had generous sizing, whereas, for example, a size eight in Soupre or sports Girl might be a lot smaller because their target market is a lot smaller.
Quite literally, that's what they're saying, though, isn't it right? How does this not become a self fulfilling prophecy? Do you know what I mean?
You mean?
So, the average Australian woman is a size fourteen to sixteen, and the sizing at Whicher is rebrand goes from a size five or to a size eighteen. We understand what average means, right, So why are there five sizes under the average and only one above it?
Well that's alarming too, isn't it.
So that is alarming because the thing is is it's a self fulfilling prophecy because you are marketing who I want to wear my clothes. It doesn't matter whether the eighteen is an eighteen or a twenty or a sixteen or whatever. By taking the twenty off the label, you are signaling to a portion of the population you're not welcome in this shop. We don't make clothes for you. It doesn't really matter whether the clothes fit, it's what it says. Because they're saying five sizes underneath the average,
we want you, can you come in? Please? Can you come in and wear our clothes?
And that's the right.
People are really upset because they feel like a brand that they liked and trusted and thought was a mainstream brand that made relatively accessible clothes was for them and they've just been told that they're not. And that's not great.
So brands do this in lots of different ways. They tell you who their target market is they do it with the music they play in stores, they do it with the people that they hire to work in their stores, they do it with of course they're advertising their social media, and they do it with their sizing. So I think that what Witcher is clearly from a business point of view,
taking all emotions out of it. What has been clear to them It seems like their audience was aging out and perhaps those people who were older were not buying enough clothes, and so they need to go for a younger demographic, and they are trying to reposition themselves as younger and cooler, and by definition that will be exclusionary.
But younger and cooler people care about inclusivity in a way the older clients don't.
You're right about that, because younger people care about inclusivity, even if they themselves will not buy that. So the question is from a business point of view, and I know a lot of small businesses struggle with this as well, this expectation that every business needs to have a really wide inclusive size range. That's not always possible to manufacture because the more sizes you manufacture, the more expensive it is to produce those clothes.
I understand that, but I also see what Holly's saying about self fulfilling. If I know that if I go to Westfield, I am not going to find in any shop something that fits me, I'm not going to go to Westfield, so I'm opting out. So it's this weird chicken and egg, right. It's like if everyone were to start offering those sizes, and you can't just start offering them, You've got to market them. You've got to tell people
you've got them. So there are some places that do have a wide size range, but people have in their heads, oh, that would never fit me, that would never fit me.
And we've all been in that position. If I remember, there was a brand called Patinalaliano, which interestingly enough doesn't exist anymore, but in the nineties it used to be famous that you would go in there and the very skinny sales girls would say, if you're a bigger than a size ten, oh, we don't have anything for you here. And I don't even think they went past a size ten. And that was very clearly they were trying to say, we only want a certain type of people wearing our clothes.
And again I'm not defending this, I'm just explaining it because Brandy Melville is another example of that. There's only one side.
But here's the thing that I don't understand about if this is just smart business, I don't see how it's possibly just smart business because they're still making the same size clothes if you believe their story, they're eighteen is a twenty. They've just changed the numbers, so they're not saving any money, they're not making any efficiencies. They're just making a very clear marketing call that we don't want bigger women in our shops.
No, but they're not because but the women who are size twenty, they're saying, still come, still buy. But guess what, you've just gone down to size Ah.
But going to this idea that they're appealing to a younger, cooler demo, the younger, cooler demo is unpicking this idea of vanity sizing. I'm talking to my like, my teenager is buying clothes and she's buying online as I say, we live recently. Also, it's crazy because they're competing these brands with Timu and Sheen and all these places where the clothes are so much cheaper and come in a much wider range of sizing. So it is really silly,
this elitist approach. But also it's this idea that young people.
I just hang on a second, Hey, let's unpack that for a second, because what are we asking here. If you want to mass produce, yes, you can afford, because you're going to reach millions and millions of people. It's going to be incredibly cheap. What things are happening in that production line to create that jacket that costs eight dollars from Timu. They might have all sorts of sizes, but we know that so these are business decisions.
As I've just said, they haven't changed their business model. They say they're eighteen is a twenty. It's a marketing decision, and I get that that's a business decision. But my question is if we're working hard to unpick. As one of our Voxpop people said there, that a smaller number is a better number always, and I think that we really have been making headway there, particularly with younger people.
So when I talk to my daughter and I'm like, well, you might buy this size, you might buy this size, It's got nothing to do with your body. It's to do with the way the clothes are made. I'm trying really hard not to give her a message that a ten is better than a twelve is better than a fourteen, and so it just seems regressive.
Clothing labels have to have sizes, right. And it's interesting what you say, Jesse about if you go in and you don't see anything in your size, the number you've got in my head. I don't have a number in my head because in my wardrobe I've got everything from a size six to a size fourteen, depending on how I like it to fit, depending on what label it is, depending on when I go.
I think there are different types of consumers, right. And the other thing that's happening here is I wonder, in terms of the economics of the whole thing, people who are straight sized probably buy more clothes. Why do they buy more clothes because there are more clothes available?
Correct?
Yes, So it's like it's self fulfilling because if I'm a size twenty, then it's like I don't feel like I have lots of options. The world has told me that there are only certain styles that suit me.
I'm going to push back on that. I think there are more options now than there ever have been before, with just a diversity of sizes.
But we've just established that the average Australian woman is a fourteen to sixty, So that means that the average is the middle. Think of the amount of people who are above that not being so.
I think what's interesting here, as you said, Wholly and again I'm not divining Witchery, is the fact that it used to be the smaller size, the fact that we are now going down to a four.
What is that saying, Well, it's probably saying something about the teen segment or kind of the you know, fifteen, sixteen seventeen. You used to go and almost shop as a child, or we had I remember I did soup pre right. It was like I never shopped in the same shop as my mother. But now we kind of are. But on the size fourteen to sixteen.
I looked it up.
I looked at Witchery's competitors. I couldn't find one of Witchery's competitors that went above a sixteen. So Witchery is already doing like one more, which isn't you know, to give them too much credit. But if the average is fourteen to sixteen, and that is an extra on, some extra, extra, extra large, well that is why.
Yeah, that's why this has become such in a motive conversation this week, right, because a lot of people are really mad about it. A lot of people are very upset. And that's the reason why, because as you just said, there are enormous amount of Australian women who are just cut out of being able to enjoy fashion and able to enjoy clothes. I have one more question on this though,
from my business expert friend, Meir Friedman. There's a little cynical bit of me that thinks this was a deliberate fuss because, as you said, Jesse, they wiped their instir. They've come back all big. They needed a big splash. They apparently haven't changed anything except the numbers.
No, that's not true. They've really changed the range.
No no, no, sorry, I mean in terms of the sizing, and they haven't changed anything except the numbers. No, no, I know the clothes are different, But what I mean is they haven't actually cut size twenty. They've just rebranded it. That's what they're telling us. So the decision to do it was it just a publicity play because everybody's been talking about Witchery for five days now, negatively positively. Oh maybe I'll go and have a look. I went online
looked at this new range. Was very representative of the clothes I see the young people around the office. It was very expensive. There was a really beautiful blue shirt and I'm like, oh, I might buy that, and then I was like, oh, I don't know if I should because maybe it's bad. But so was this just smart marketing to cause a storm for Witchery.
And did it work well?
It has worked, because sales are up forty one percent, But I don't think anyone would say that you would deliberately try to have a backlash against and criticism of a new launch. I really feel for the young designer Kirby, who's been brought in clearly with an objective, here's what we want you to do for the business. She's done that clearly, and she's personally copped a lot of backlash because we've sort of lays it in on the size thing.
But there's also a bubbleskirt that people were really angry about because it's like, oh, I always depended on Witchery for corporate wear and sort of grown up clothes, and Witchery models were a little bit older, and now it does look cooler in their marketing, in the clothes that they've done. It's also more expensive, as you say. And I think what's been interesting to me is to see it's been a good thing for Witchery in some ways, because you've got a whole cohort of women who've said,
I feel really betrayed. This is not what I thought Witchery was, and I feel that Witchery doesn't want me anymore, and I feel betrayed, and I feel rejected because what I thought Witchery was, Witchery is telling me it no longer wants to be. And so that speaks a lot
to Witchery's position in the psyche for Australian women. But also, you don't do a refresh like that unless you have a problem, unless you are losing audience share, unless sales are down, unless you need to change and get a different and a bigger and a higher spending customer base. Because a lot of the people that are saying I'm really angry at Witchery, I'd be interested to know how long since they've shot there, because I went through a phase where I bought so much Witchery. I loved it.
But I've found myself really going off it over the last few years because I kind of haven't known what it is, Like it isn't country Road, but it isn't Q but it isn't. Yeah, it's like I know what cotton On is, I know what Zara is, I know what country Road is, but I don't really know what Witchery is anymore. And I used to. I even know what Seed is, but I would argue that Seed is
another brand that's gone a little bit that way. So they're sort of in that middle that's a bit of a no man's land where they're not particularly cheap, they're not particularly cool, they're not particularly fancy. Are they for old people? They're not for young people, but they're not really for old people. They're just a bit nothing. They didn't they lost their brand personality, so they have followed
the path of dish. Dish has been around for decades, but people have only started talking about it in the last year.
I wrought it about twenty twenty when they launched the Capsual wardrobe.
So you don't think they deliberately provoked to.
Find No, no, no, no, no no. It's never the conspiracy, it's always the fuck up. So I think they were naive in not perhaps seeing this coming. The other mistake they made is in that first tranch of social media content that they created, there were only straight sized, very young women. And I think that's interesting what you found out, Jesse, about the objective of the new range and the new look for Witchery is forever thirty. So that was just to me. But with my fashion, do I want to
look around thirty? I don't work with my face, but with my fashion, yeah, maybe I don't want to look fifty because the idea to.
Me, if don't I want to look twenty, well no, I definitely don't want to look I don't know. I don't want to look twenty. But if I'm twenty four, don't I want to look twenty or thirty?
So that's what's interesting. So people always want to age down or up. So for example, when I used to do Cosmo, we used to pitch even though our average reader was eighteen to twenty four. That was our sweet spot, but we pitched at a twenty seven year old. And so with fashion, you pitched down to attract an older. So if they're pitching at thirty, I would say that means their demographic is twenty five to forty five.
And look, I don't know much about fashion, but I would think if the average woman is a size fourteen to sixteen and she's looking at clothes, she wants to know what they're gonna look like on her.
Absolutely.
And we had an article on Mama Maya buy a Millia Morris. She is exactly that size and she went into Witchery and tried it on and she went it looked amazing, so good.
And she's a stylist. So I really love that story. Instead of reading all the reaction.
To it, it's just like, he's what it actually looks that we.
Sound like an ad for witchery.
We forget that.
But I know here to defend witchery or spook witchery.
As we've discussed today, there is an enormous section of the female community in Australia who cannot walk into a shop and find things that fit them.
And it hurts.
We're putting the house.
On the market. What about us. You're adults. It's time you started acting like adults. Mom. It's taking children longer to grow up and become adults. You may have noticed, because most people think of parenting being something that you do for little kids. But a piece in the Atlantic this week has flagged that we are living in an age of endless parenting. This hu to be called failure
to launch. There was even a movie by that name about it, like a thirty year old who never moved out of home, and it referred to this idea of someone who didn't leave the nest and transition into that next life phase where you are meant to separate from your family of origin and perhaps go and start a family of your own and certainly become more independent. But it's no longer failure to launch now, it's just normal.
So forty five.
Percent of young adults aged eighteen to twenty nine reported living with their parents in a new Pew survey, making it the most common living arrangement for that age group for the first time since just after the Great Depression. Some people are freaked out by that number. I imagine Holly would be one of them, and they say that it is evidence of a mushrooming over dependence among a generation of hapless grown babies and of caregivers parents who can't,
for God's sake stop giving care. Well, the helicopter generation, right, Yeah, but.
It's also impossible to look at that stat and I also consider how expensive it is to move out of home. Right, So that's true. There are a number of factors coinciding to make that the reality.
Yes, But in terms of whether we should have an existential panic about the fact that more people are in more regular contact with their grown children than used to be the case, there's another angle in this story in The Atlantic that was written by Faith Hill, not the singer. She said, today's average parent child bond does seem to involve near constant communication. Yet it also comes with an intensified emotional closeness of the kind once reserved for friends
and romantic partners. So it's almost like the takeaway of this are our parents the new friends.
So this was very evident in a film that you both made me watch last night, which I'm really pissed off about.
We're going to make you talk about it too in a minute tomorrow.
We're doing a subscriber episode on it, A Family Affair for any out louder who watched it. I know lots of people have been posting in the Facebook grip about it. You don't need to have watched it to kind of understand the dynamic, which is that you've got Nicole Kidman, who's a woman. What do you think she's meant to be fifty early early fifties. She has a daughter who's twenty four, and she is sort of pursuing this romantic interest and her daughter is horrified and disgusted and angry.
And it's this tension between being a good mother and dating someone that you like. Right, what was he like twenty years longer than you?
Sixteen? Oh?
Pardon me, I thought you're wor smarter than this mom?
To fuck with this love bombing bullshit.
I mean, you don't care how I feel about this.
And I was watching it. I know there's a lot of angles out of that movie, but thinking, maye, you're twenty four, like get out of your parents' house. The idea was always have heard women say I'll wait till my kids leave school and then I'll think about dating. But now because their kids never move out, it's like you've got.
Or getting a divorce. That used to be the thing, like we just stay together until the kids have finished school and left home.
So you just put it off and off and off until it's like you've got a twenty four year old daughter who still has emotional needs and you can't have a relationship.
This is what it made me wonder, right because basically there's a bit in this and I wrote it down because I wanted to ask me how what she thought. Basically in the movie, the daughter is asking her mum or telling her mom that please do not date this man for a lot of reasons that you don't need to worry about here, but do not date this man. And the conundrum that is posed here is, as a good mother, do you date this man even though your
adult daughter really doesn't want you to. And what it made me think is does the endless parenting which we've just said caused by all these things mean that once you become a parent, once you have a child, every single choice you make from now on, not for five years, not for ten, not for twenty, but forever, have to center that person as the number one decision making factor forevermore so, whether that's who you date, what job you take, where you choose to live, maybe you choose to move
away from them even though they'd like you to be the nanny for their kid all the time, whether that's spending your money rather than saving it, or giving it to them to buy a house, Like any of the decisions you make about your life, they should be the number one factor what I think. Do you think that's true?
That's not how I read this, and that's being resected. No, that was not my takeaway from this idea that parents are the new friends, because in a friendship, it's not a parent child relationship, right, you become kind of equals. So Jesse and I are really good examples of, you know,
both even before our families became connected. The kinds of relationships we have with our parents, and for me with my growing up and grown up children is much more ameshed than perhaps of different generations and in your experience, and not everyone is like that now. But it's not about you always stay in that parent child dynamic, which is what that movie was, a real parent child dynamic where the child was just not she was being a dick.
But we all know people right who their kids have said, don't do that thing. Yeah, why you're making well call.
As faith Hill wrote, she said, this doesn't mean that adult kids are failing to launch or that their parents are suffering. Rather, the way our society understands child rearing is evolving. The assignment, which was once to raise an independent child and set them off into the world, is now to foster a deep, lasting relationship with them as friends. So it's not like, right, it's a fixed period of time. Then you go off into the world and we not
go our separate ways, but we have a different relationship. Now. It's like, well, once you grow up, we will transition into being friends and we will stay close and talk all the time in the same way that romantic partners or friends would.
I reckon that's Pollyanna, though, because a family affair as well as what zi Anne Hathaway the Idler review I dea review. Right, So there's two films very similar in a very short period of time. So they're trying to tell us something. Both women in this similar ages had adult daughters living at home, and the dynamic at the beginning of the films was that they were just make they were friends, and they were talking about work and life and quite equal equal partnership.
Well, in the idea of you, even though she looked like she was about twenty five, she was meant to be a teenager because remember she went to summer camp, so she was still in high school.
She went to college at the end, so there was something she was kind of getting into adulthood. But then there was a cornerstone moment in both films where the parent relationship was kind of takes takes priority.
The children demanded that of their mother. Well the girls did.
Yes, And so I think that what they were also trying to say, or what these films are trying to interrogate or look at culturally, is whether desire can coexist with motherhood and the idea that it can is revolutionary, but it can only coexist if you are given permission from the child, which is this really kind of sick codependency.
And also I find it really interesting that idea that even once they're adults, you have to prioritize their needs, Like, I find that really interesting.
And in fact, because I was thinking with a family affair, right, I was thinking about the child parent relationship and then I went there were moments in that where in fact the child was parenting the mother. A lot of her concerns were like, oh, but you're going to get hurt, You're going to get and I keep coming across this
word it's sort of therapy speak, but it's parentification. You had a miss and it occurs when parents look to their children for emotional or practical support rather than providing it. And I think there are a lot of people who with their enmeshment with their parents, often experience this either with one or with both, where they're living together and they feel like the roles have been reversed, where suddenly the parent child dynamic exists. But it can invert, but it should.
Invert if you look, but it follow it to its natural conclusion. We will be looking after our aging parents if they're thankfully lived to a ripe old age. It does invert, and in its extreme forms people talk about changing their parents' nappies at the end of life. That's in its extreme form. The way I see this is the onness isn't just on the parent to parent forever, because I agree with you that sounds like a very bad deal, and be selfless and not be an actualized person.
The onus is also on the young adult to stop seeing their parent as mummy and daddy and start seeing them as a woman or a man who has their own wants, needs, flaws, flaws.
I think that's trickier than it's ever been right because of what we've done to parenting over the past couple of generations, which is the model for motherhood. Even as women's lives have become more crowded and more demanding with outside the house work and all those responsibilities, a model of motherhood is still this all consuming, self sacrificing thing.
The kind of ideal mummy on the Instagram is she's only ever thinking of her baby, and she's only ever making amazing food for them from the you know, virgin organic pumpkins from wherever, you know, Like it's that model, and so we've made that the model of parenting that we like, and then we also seem to be extending the amount of time you're supposed to do it for I remember very clearly when I was young that the sort of typical gen X parenting that I got well
as in from the boomers, but I'm gen X, was that sort of they call it benign neglect, which I'm fine with, Like that was fine for me. But I was very aware alway is that my parents were people. They had interests outside the home. They had jobs and friends and lives and interests and things they wanted to do that weren't really about me and my brother and personally, and I know you can't generalize, but that's okay. And
I try and model that to my kids. Right It's like, I love you to bits the center of my world, blah blah. But I'm a human and Dad is a human, and we also have needs too, and we also have
things we want to achieve and all those things. So I think it's become harder than ever for kids who were moving into that early adult phase to start seeing their parents are separate from themselves, because we've pushed that and meshment, and we've also pushed the job of parenting into this all encompassing existence.
I think also what I've always noticed as my children have grown up is that helicopter parenting, of which I am very much a helicopter parent because Gen X's are the first generation to have got that memo in the hospital, Hey make sure nothing bad ever happens to this child. Their self esteem and their lack of having a negative emotion is your performance review. Helicopter parents make helicopter children.
So when you sort of go, right, okay, off you go, and when you throw COVID into that as well, when they couldn't leave the house, then suddenly the cage doors were thrown open, and the kids didn't want to go outside because they'd been inside for so long and they'd almost depending on what age they are, they sort of missed that stage of their development. So it's hard to sort of helicopter, helicopter, helicopter and then just go right, well,
you're eighteen, I'm landing the helicopter. You're on your own bye, because they're like, wait what. I don't know.
When I was growing up, I had a friend whose family you had to move our eighteen the on your eighteenth birthday, you had to move out that with that, we all used to be kind of incredulous at that, but also there was a lot of grudging respect for it. And I was sent to bread the other day.
Can we implement that?
I don't know that we can because times have changed, things are expensive, But twenty one, surely, come on out of the fucking house.
Colie. You'll just move to a different state. I know you.
I definitely will, and I won't tell them where.
No forwarding address. I love you, but it's time for you to go, and if you don't, I will.
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Can someone please tell Sarah that all her friends hate her? People are posting strangers bitch sessions on TikTok, and Sarah is a good example. Stranger gossip is a thing. So let's say that a woman films a group of women she doesn't know bitching about Sarah.
Maybe you're in.
A queue at the coffee shop, or you're in the park eating your sandwich or whatever. There's a group of women nearby and they're bitching about Sarah. You surreptitiously film them. You post that video, and you say, look at these bitches bitching about Sarah. If anyone knows Sarah, they should tell her. Right. The arching assumption about this trend is
a stop the Internet. I want to get off because fu and b all gossiping is a bad thing, right, Having a little vent about someone in your life is bad and dirty and it needs to be exposed immediately, and you need to be called out. Jesse, you love a gossip? I do, please defend the women coming for Sarah.
I'm going to defend gossiping and defend the people bitching about Sarah. Firstly, Sarah might in fact probably deserves it.
I don't know, objectively annoying.
I think's bitch, And in fact I would like to know why Sarah's a bitch, and I could probably get involved. I don't know her, but like I have an opinion.
Sarah tries too hard. Yes, Sarah follows your x on Instagram exactly, Sarah got that job you wanted. Sarah's got terrible tasting shoes.
To me, this is like wiki leaks. There are some things that need to be secret, and you don't need them spread all over the Internet for the society to function and then not to be anarchy in the streets and in our group chats, we need some privacy to talk about people.
And talking about people is so important to social cohesion, Yes, and a thriving democracy. For the person spoken about Holly, and they won't know if this bitch isn't recording it.
It's called TikTok tattle tale. I don't like it, and the Internet's full of it. It's very upsetting. I don't like it because I also am like there's a real person. The people who are doing this and exposing these conversations and sharing them act as though they're these vigilantes that are helping Sarah.
How Sarah gon to feel.
They're ruining Sarah's day. That doesn't make you know.
That my friendship, You're only going to upset Sarah.
And the thing about gossiping is that when you are talking to your friends about something that's occurred, or you're prosecuting a dilemma you've had, what you're really doing is you're talking about morals and ethics and trying to understand the world around you. It's also a bid for connection. We've talked about bids off.
It's a pebble.
It's a pebble exactly as a bid for connection where we're.
Trying to go Sarah, I hate Sarah, let's connect.
Yes, you're also going I trust you enough to tell you I hate Sarah. So this is about trust, it's about venting, it's about taking off a certain amount of baggage. Look, it's not always is good, but it's how a lot of connections.
Question can I ask a question right? And I know I'm playing Pollyanna in this situation, when you have sat down with your friend's sister, workmates, whatever, and had a really good bitch about somebody, like, you've just sledged them. Me, you've just sledged them for twenty minutes.
Yeah.
Do you walk out of that room feeling good? Or do you walk out of that room feeling like you need a shower?
Yes, that's how I feel. I need, whether it's in the room, or it's in a group, or in a shower. Shower, shower, absolutely, shower.
So I was reading this article on The Guardian recently about different types of friendships. Right, You've got the common enemy friend, which means that you bonded over a shared hatred of someone.
Or something that's very often at work.
Yep.
Now, whenever that person annoys you, you go, I'm going to go to them because that's our connection. Right. And there's also another type of friend called the resting bitch friend, and they're harsher than you. I have a friend like this, She's harsher than me. So when you need to get something out that's mean spirited and bitchy, you go to them and they take it one step further and you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, Now the common enemy friend in defense. I have a
friend at the moment that's not very well. She's going through a very very hard time. We have a common enemy, and when she's having a bad day, you chair her up with I'm chair her up with a little.
Bit of a chat about that common enemy. Yes, yeah, distraction.
It's just a bit of distraction. It's a bit of a connection, it is. And again it's going I'm just going to test my reality here, because what this person we're talking about is doing seems bizarre, seems unethical, seems mean, seems whatever. And you and I connecting over that is just giving you a second to not think about existential shit. It seems like I am going to I'm.
Going to say two things about this quickly. Firstly, I do that too, but for a different reason. You know that Reddit thread am I the Asshole? I'll often do it as a reality check where I will go and I will need to see how I feel about something mirrored back by someone else who will meet my intensity of irritation, frustration, loathing.
But am I the asshole? Is always really funny, right, because you would only have asked that question if you don't think you're being the asshole, If you come to me, and God, am I being the asshole? This person is a total.
Bitch and put so you're looking for people to go no validation, So I'm looking for validation. The second thing I'm going to say about this is that I have had a very clarifying experience many years ago where I was having a bitch with a mutual friend about someone else and my phone accidentally rang them.
And they heard it, and that's actually my worst night.
And it also sounded worse than it actually was, Like I am the part of the conversation, well it did. The part of the conversation they heard sounded worse than the whole context of the conversation. Anyway, our friendship managed to survive, and it was touch and go. And what it's done is that it's always been every time I'm bitching about someone I love, because sometimes, I mean, everyone fucks you off, right, I'm always thinking about that.
You're thinking about a check, but I've seen you actually check your phone, and when you realize that, then.
I'll just turn my face silent. Here's my thak the battery.
If we are operating from a position where we're going bitching about people is fine, then we have to be fine with being bitched about I am.
That has to be fine. People don't do it behind you back. They do it literally on your own Instagram page.
But I don't know if that's true, Jesse Stevens, because, as discussed on this podcast more than once, you know how to hold a grudge. And I'm not convinced that if you overheard a couple of people bitching about you in the kitchen, they wouldn't go straight on your.
Ship list the issue that they bitched badly. But I'm also because.
You too must. I just know when you two are like, oh, that fucking she is such like I just know.
Have you ever tried to pitch with Holli?
She's difficult to beat? And you know what, I really value the people in my life have got quite a few of them who just dead bat you when you do it. And it's also quite frustrating in the moment, but ultimately it makes me a better person. I will be drawn then I feel ashamed of myself. It's very hard to draw you in every holiday, it is, Jesse's much Alia.
I was listening to a podcasts recently which elucidated to me why why I need a good gossip every now and then. It was with a psychologist called Dr Emily Musgrove, and she was saying that the people who gospel a lot, who bitch a lot, who complain a lot, are the people who don't know how to set boundaries. So your way of asserting your boundaries, so, for example, MEA, because I can't do it to your face. What I'll do is I'll go and just bitch to Holly about the ways in which you overstacked.
My boundary instead of going MEA, you're always late, can you? Yeah? Yeah, and you always interrupt instead of being able to say that to me, that's hard to say.
That's hard.
Right.
I was going to say, have you noticed how cranky Holly's been lately? And then I thought, I'll just say it to Holly.
This is the thing, though, is that our relationship is different to lots of relationships, right, because actually, don't bitch about you very much, because it's like we can usually address things like if we're attatchy with each other and we feel the tension, we also know how to like, yeah, that's much harder with some other friendships and some other relationships, you're like, oh, there's something wrong here, either we have to, you know, so I think it's a bit dependent.
Like I'm also very aware of how corrosive it is.
Oh, It's incredibly corrosive. And that's why I believe in what I'll call cross circle bitching. So what I'll do, He's.
Going to vend rab bitching in order.
To so you can bitch.
You don't bitch with family to family. You don't bitch with work to work. That's why I particularly like gossip and bitching about people.
I don't know what's the difference between venting and bitching.
To me, I'm thinking it's the same. I mean, I'm never gonna sit down and be like, have you seen her eyebrows?
That's not my thing.
What I'm going to do is interrogate someone's behavior and talk about how that made me feel. And it's probably because in that moment I should have said or done something that I didn't do.
Do you know what I'm going to advocate for is more bitching in private and less fucking leaving horrible comments and yeah, because remember when what social media has done is that it's introduced performativeness into bitching. Yea, So it's like I'm going to bitch about this person so that I can get social status with all the people watching me, bitch. And I think that is fun.
It's quite addictive to watch, and it's also rewarded, and I've seen people do it. Like let's say there, you know a brand or a something even you know we're talking about witchery, not quite that, but let's say something happened on an airline that you didn't like, and they'll get their phone up and go blah blah blah. It's like, you probably should have just told the airline because not
particularly interesting to us. I agree, don't put it on Instagram, have a private chat, make sure the phone's off, make sure you're not recording it, and then leave it. Speaking of a gossip.
Oh this was a good one.
What we wait seguay. We didn't even deliberately plan.
This, but we were too ashamed to have this conversation on the podcast, so we went to do it as a subscribers. Our subscribers will understand. And there is a blind item circulating at the moment about an incident that occurred in Gwyneth Paltrow's house and someone apparently had a bowel movement in one of her guest beds.
Actually we would guess cottages. We're not even certain about the locations.
Well, what we had to do was talk about all the details and then decide. And this is gossip at its best. What would we have done? Right? What do you do? Do you tell Gwyneth? Do you not?
What do we think happened?
What do ea thing happened? We talked about it for too long. We did feel a bit dirty afterwards, but it was fun while it lasted. So if you need a gossip, go and listen to yesterday's Subs episode. Here's a sneak peek me ya.
You are our expert spin doctor here. Yeah, our friend who were not naming, who is paying all the money to the spin doctors because the people keep leaving the fuo emojis on his Instagram account? What is he being advised to do?
Right now? I've read that he'd fled and left that she. I can't believe that anyone would do that, because obviously Gwyneth knew who was sleeping in that bed.
I can oh, you left also, I would imagine that he was probably also thinking, like in that state, in that freaked out state, Gwyneth herself is not stripping the bed, so he's probably thinking the staff are going to have to deal with it. They're probably not going to tell her, or maybe he's not thinking straight. He's just in the pattern. Thank you, thank you out louders for listening to us on this Wednesday episode, and a big thanks to our team.
Of course, we're putting the show together. We are going to be back in your ears tomorrow.
Bye by shout out to any Muma mia subscribers listening. If you love the show and want to support us as well, subscribing to MoMA mia is the very best way to do so. There is a link in the episode description.