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What women are actually talking about on Wednesday, the second of October. I'm Holly wayIn Wright and Mea and I have already been talking all morning today. We have because we watched the vice presidential debate together. For those of you who are obsessed with US politics as we are, It's going to drop tomorrow. It's with Amelia Lester, of course, telling.
Us what's what?
Do JD bancewin? Tim waltzwind? Will it make any difference? It drops tomorrow for our subscribers.
I'm Mea Friedman and I'm Jesse Stevens.
And on the show today, the biggest pop star in the world right now needs a mental health day and her fans are really not happy about it.
Kids get off screens.
And out into the world. But no, not like that. The who ha around a TV anchor, her son and a very long train ride. So do you want to know what all the fuss is about? The movie Substance? But you don't want to watch body parts exploding? We have got your covet.
But first Israel's invasion of Lebanon. Iran's ballistic missiles shot at Israel, more innocent lives lost in what is being called the most dangerous moment in the history of the modern Middle East. Israel has launched a ground invasion in southern Lebanon, and the Israeli military has described this invasion
as limited, localized and targeted raids against Hesbela. Hesbla, however, claimed that there are no troops in Lebanon, while Israeli air strikes continue in Lebanon, officials say that more than a thousand people have been killed in the past two weeks. Iran has now launched a missile strike on Israel. Hesbelah, recognized as a terrorist group, has been trained and armed by Iran for four decades, and now Iran's direct involvement is seen as a major escalation of a war now
being fought on multiple fronts. On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Ettnyahu told his security cabinet Iran made a big mistake this evening and it will pay for it. Whoever attacks us, we will attack them. Look, what we know is that this war has escalated, and every moment this conflict goes on, we see more loss of innocent civilian life. For more on this fast moving crisis, listen to The Quickie, our daily news podcast. There's a link in our show notes.
Twenty six year old pop star Chapel Rone is having the best and worst few months of her life, and things seem to be picking up speed in both directions. We spoke about her pushback video that went viral about how her fans were too much and she was telling them to back off when she's in public, and now she has canceled three festival appearances. She shared a statement on social media saying, I apologize to people who've been waiting to see me in New York and DC this weekend.
At all things go, but I am unable to perform. Things have gotten overwhelming over the past few weeks and I'm really feeling it. I feel pressure to prioritize a lot of things right now, and I need a few days to prioritize my health. I want to be present when I perform and give the best show possible. Thank you for understanding, be back soon. In the last two years, chapel Ron that's her stage name, her actual name is Kaylie Rose Amstaltz. She's done one hundred and eighty seven concerts,
with one hundred and four this year alone. I went back and looked, because you know how Taylor Swift is doing a big eras tour, Chapel Rone is doing a different thing where she performs at lots of different festivals. She performs like her three songs. Sometimes she headlines, sometimes she's just one of many acts, and so it's kind of a way of reaching lots and lots of people, and you know, often the video, the social from it will go on YouTube and it'll go viral on social.
She's really blown up in these past few months. Her album Midwestern Princess's top charts and singles like Hot to Go, Good Luck Babe, and Pink Pony Club have come anthems and won all these awards. She performed at the Grammys
a few weeks ago and won Best New Artist. And also they've been in the last few weeks a bunch of big cover stories that have dropped in interviews, like a cub story of Rolling Stone where she's sort of spoken in depth about how she's finding fame and even though she's been a performer for a really long time. This level of vile fame and how sudden it is has been a bit of a shock to her system.
So what's changed over the last few weeks is that she's also found herself because of these interviews in a controversy when it comes to the US election, because in one of the interviews, she made some remarks about refusing
to publicly endorse a candidate in the US election. Taylor Swift recently came out and endorsed Kamala Harris, but she said, I have so many issues with our government in every way, and those remarks really blew up overnight, and a lot of people were furious with her and accused her of supporting Donald Trump because she said she wouldn't endorse Kamala And so then she had to clarify, which she did in a series of videos in her stories on Instagram that she would be voting for Kamala, but that an
endorsement like Taylor made was different and she wasn't comfortable with that level of alignment because there were democratic policies that she didn't agree with. Here's a little bit of one of those videos where she was sort of becoming increasingly angry and upset with commenters who were criticizing her.
I just woke up and to like people just skewing it even more. Doorsing and voting are completely different. I don't agree with a lot of what is going on with policies, like obviously fucked the policies of the right, but also fuck some of the policies on the left.
That's why I can't endorse, That's why I can't like put my entire name, in my entire project behind one. So in these videos, she sort of would finish making her point and then she'd come back to try and clarify it again. And we've seen this before in the past, maybe some of us have even tried it in video form, where you start brawling with your commenters and you start, you know, trying to explain yourself and explain yourself, and then they come back and back and it's hiding to nowhere, really.
And it was a day or so after these videos were posted that she canceled these concerts. But Jesse, the response to the cancelation itself has been really interesting because she's clearly someone who is struggling with fame. She wears her heart on her sleeve. She is bipolar according to her, and has struggles with mental health, so you would think that people would be understanding when she canceled these concerts, but that's not what.
Happened, especially a generation who is more literate and compassionate about mental health than I would think any other generation, until they lose their tickets, until the festival that they wanted to go to on the weekend doesn't have chapel ron.
So people were then shouting at her, not just about who she supported or didn't support her endorsement, but they were shouting at her about canceling the concept.
So there are viral tiktoks that have millions and millions of views that have been popping up on my feed all week that say things like, ma'am, you canceled your set at a festival because you are stressed. You have been famous for maybe four months. Justin Bieber endured that stress you're encountering for his whole life. I mean footnote that Justin Bieber doesn't appear to really perform anymore, also
great himself. The other sentiments were sort of like, wish I had the privilege to cancel on my job commitments when I'm not feeling one hundred percent. Unfortunately, i'd be homeless. No one else in the world can cancel work because they're stressed.
That's not true.
That's absolutely not true.
And another comment that was getting a lot of traction was therapy has just given everyone permission to prioritize their mental health, to just be selfish and mean to everyone else.
So we think that we've made a lot of progress when it comes to understanding the whole that fame takes on people, and also that you might need a mental health day, Like in everyday life, there are situations where we would like to think that if someone put the hand up and said, I actually can't come to work more, I need a mental health day, then we'd be way
more understanding than we were a generation ago. But this is symptomatic of how we see Roan as a product and not a person, like I paid for you, and now you're not going to be there, and how about
my hotel and how about my outfit? And in fact, I think that frustration is probably valid, like I would be really upset, but to direct it, I keep thinking how she must be feeling right now, what it must take for an artist with her team and with her fame, to not turn up to a show is enormous And in fact, this one, the festival that she's pulled out of, was just a day before and a lot of people
are going, you should have given us more notice. To me, that says she really wanted to do it, and she realized that she couldn't, and that I feel an enormous amount of compassion for that.
She's such an interesting study in overnight fame because it is like literal overnight fame, as you say, She's been doing it a long time, but her fame has accelerated like a rocket, and probably a lot of these bookings were in the diary before she was who she is right now. Right because Chapel Rone could fill a stadium on her own now, she doesn't really need to be
doing festival shows. But I'm sure that a lot of these commitments were a long time ago, and she is in literally a cyclone of attention and she's trying to figure out how to deal with it. One of the things that I think is really interesting is rock stars, pop stars, musicians, whatever you want to call them, have always flaked out of shows, right and usually they would just tell you, oh, they've got a cold, they're dealing
with the chest infection at the moment, or whatever. When it could have been mental health, it could have been addiction, it could have been whatever. The thing with the Chapel Roane is she is trying to be still the person that she probably has always been, who is somebody very honest,
very authentic, very wearing my heart on my sleeve. So the way, even the way she talks about politics in that whole fuck the left, fuck the right, I'm trying to explain to you, this nuanced critical thinking piece is something that any really professional, high level artist with a
team around them would be told. Do not do that, you know, either say nothing or say something definitive, but don't start trying to actually talk like a real person and start a real conversation with your nuance because that's not gonna go anywhere good. And so it's almost like you've given too much of yourself, You've handed over this pound of flesh. So she's telling the truth about why she's not turning up to these festivals, which is I am so overwhelmed. I can't handle it. I don't think
I can do it. I feel so vulnerable out there I've got to be happy, I've got to perform. I'm an arms reach away from everybody, and she can't do it. In the old world, her team would have just said, Chapel's got flu.
You know what I mean.
She posted a story as well, not a post, which means that people can't really respond, and she's close common and she's close comments, which I think tells us something. And I was also thinking to the people who were like, turn up, you had a job to do, the rest of us are doing our jobs. I mean, that is just such an unempathetic way to live your life. But
I keep thinking about Avicy. So his real name was Tim Bergling, and if you have seen the documentary of Eachy True Stories, you'll see that he had a meteorite rise to fame and he started doing maybe fifty shows a year, and I think in the final year he did about two hundred and fifty shows. And he has infections and like his body is falling apart. And it's not just the performing, it's the whole, like it's what.
Goes with it, it's what travel. And also festivals, you know, there's an enormous amount of output there. You're backstage with a whole lot of other people credibly and like it's not Taylor Swift and a very well organized machine world.
Burgling in the end died by suicide and was such an incredible artist. But we get these lessons. You watch that and you see how me you started by saying, it's the best time of Rome's life and the worst. I don't think there is any best for Rone right now. Maybe in the future she'll see it, but I think she's living in hell. I think she is hating it.
I think it's it's objectively the best time in her life because as a performer or an artist, this is what you dream of. You dream of Elton John calling you up, and every pop star shouting you.
Out and your songs mean to them.
And winning awards and going on stage to all these people and everyone warning you and the cover of Rolling Stone, like all of these things are these objective milestones in what it means to be a successful artist in the music industry. And I think that's probably what makes it harder, because it's funny. Claire's got this podcast called but Are
You Happy? When often the objective measures of success don't bring you the happiness, and they actually bring with them a whole lot of shit that you never thought about. And what's so clear to us sitting back, not saying that we're famous, but we over a long period of time, as our public profiles have grown, we have learned what you can and can't do and what is a highway
to poor mental health. And it's really unfortunate because sometimes you want to try and have a conversation and your humanity is being questioned, or your decisions have been questioned, or people are saying lies about you, and you want to push back or explain yourself better, and you think it's going to end well, and you have to do it a lot of times before you realize it's actually
not going to end well. It's not going to end well for you, and you're not going to change the mind like she wasn't changing the mind of anyone who was slagging her off.
So you think that those videos have contributed to the point.
One hundred percent and to play Devil's advocate, and this sounds like I'm victim blaming and I'm not at all. But the people who are like, here's our contract. I pay for my ticket and I expect you to show up and I expect you to do what's required so that you can and show up, whether it's not staying up all night and partying and that's clearly not what she's doing, or not doing things that are going to make you mentally unwell so that you have to then
take time off. So I guess I can understand because we all look at it and go, oh, Chapa, what are you doing? Like just stop, just stop, just step away, just step away. And this idea of her team should protect her when you become that famous that fast. Not everybody has a tree pain. That's Taylor Swift's famous publicist and the right people around them. I mean, interestingly, Travis Kelcey even this week just sacked his whole publicity team.
So sometimes the people you have around you aren't equipped.
Well and they're probably scrambling like this has been so fast, and she's no one's fault. The people that she has around her are probably people she really trusts and knows. Right.
But the thing is is that the sad thing that has to happen is that really for her to protect her mental health, and not that we necessarily know this, but is a wall needs to go up between her and her fans, and she probably hates that idea everybody does, you know, Like she wants to be able to jump on live and say this is what I think about this, and you guys know the real me and all those things.
I'm sure that's very important to her because she's an artist, and she's a brilliant artist, and she's clearly sensitive, and she's clearly got you know, she's been very open about her mental health, and unfortunately, one of the things she's going to need to do to protect herself if she wants to keep on doing this is put walls up right, like between her and her audience, her and her fans, her and what events she will do, won't do, where she can travel to, what the schedule's got to be, like,
what time she needs. Like anytime you talk to anyone that level famous, whether you listen to interviews with them or you hear them talking on but are You Happy or shows like that, they'll say I had to learn what I needed to do to protect my mental health to be able to keep doing the thing I love.
And it's that unpopular word boundaries. Yes, and Roan, And I'm not saying this in any way to blame her but I think that what we're literally seeing in real time with how she's grappling with fame and this believable attention being the person she is, she's working that out in real time, and it's really hard.
I agree with everything that you say, but I would add that maybe what we're seeing with trying to convince her fans and going back and whatever, which is a strategy that we know doesn't necessarily work. But I can see and feel her desperation and I have felt it to just be understood. I think that's why people are artists, to try and be understood. I wonder if this is
all symptomatic rather than a cause. If she is, and she's said before that she suffers from severe depression and bipolar two these preceded her face all of these stresses, would you be really difficult?
But I worry.
About us saying, and not just about Rome, but about people in our own lives when we go, you know, they're really struggling. And I've seen it, and I've been at the receiving end of it too, Like you know, she's really depressed, but she's not exercising every day, and she just ate a little bit better, and you know, I don't think that she's seeing her psychologist enough, which yes, But the nature of mental health is that, like the spiral is part of it, If that makes sense.
I don't want mental health.
We talk about it as an illness, but there's also an element of it being your responsibility, which we don't do with other illness.
Had a broken leg? Yeah, So the thing is is the people who are disappointed that she's not going to be at the festival that they are going to, although they're going to see lots of other people, they'll get over it. And if she had broken a leg and it was like Chapel Rone isn't performing today because she'd broken her leg, they would also be disappointed, but they'd get over it.
Yeah.
But what if she'd have broken a leg because she was skydiving or skateboarding or skiing.
Is that what we're saying that she's doing no life?
I no, I'm just driving.
For example, I was at a rider's festival a little while ago in quite a remote location. Took a really long time to get there, and I went to do this panel and before we started the panel, someone came over and said, there was meant to be four of you and now there's three of you. One of the people on the panel can't do it. And I was like, yeah, yeah,
no worries. And in fact, to be completely honest, i'd had food poisoning that night and I had a little I just went, oh, they can't, like I've been throwing up da da da, And they said this person had a panic attack and hasn't had that before. And I thought about it, and I went, imagine traveling all the way to this remote location to speak on a panel. Imagine the distress, how much pain you must be in. And anyone who's experienced of your depression or panic attacks knows that.
There is nothing more debilitating.
It's your head. And when your head's not working, you feel like you can't do anything right. I think that there's a lack of compassion in this story.
You know how we keep being told that kids need to get off their phones and touch some grass. Well, good luck with that, because depending on how far away from your watchful eye that grass is, you might just find yourself in a pile of pooh. That is the experience of British TV presenter Allsop, who's at the center of a big ding dong in the UK because she thought that her fifteen year old son could do with
a bit more independence. Now you probably don't know who Kirsty is, and for the purposes of this story, you don't need to. She presents a lot of UK TV shows, notably the ones about houses like Location, Location, Location, and Love.
It or List It.
She lives in a fancy bit of London and she sent her son Oscar Hercules off traveling with a friend on a train. Over the course of a few weeks in the northern summer, he traveled to Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin, Munich, Marseille, Toulouse, Barcelona and Madrid with a sixteen year old friend. We call this in Europe interrailing. You get a ticket, you can jump on and off trains and you go around Europe.
Did you do that?
No?
Okay, I did not do that.
Is that because it was expensive?
Isn't it because it was expensive?
Is it a common thing that fifteen year old to do?
It's a common thing. It's like in English education you have these two gaps. So when you're at the end of what would be here year ten, so that could be fifteen turning sixteen, is you do your GCSEs and that's where he was right, So she said he was just a bit young for his year. The friend he went with was sixteen and then if you carry on with school, then you do your A levels at eighteen, so year twelve ish and then you may or may
not continue to UNI. Anyway, she spoke about this trip on social media and shortly afterwards she got contacted by the local social services saying that the matter had been reported to them and they'd opened a child protection file. Alsop, who's a pretty famous person in the UK, insisted that she had decided to allow Oscar to go because society has become increasingly risk averse and children need to develop the confidence that only comes from trusting them, and we
do hear that a lot. She also said, of course, because everybody says this, that she'd read all those Jonathan Height reports from that book about the anxious generation, that we protect too much offline and not enough online, and decided to walk her walk. Confidence, she says, comes from trust and independence from doing things by yourself. My son is capable. It was his idea, his plan, his savings. He came to me and said can I do this?
And I saw no reason for saying no. And when I mentioned that he'd done it, I wanted it to be inspiring. As you can imagine. Her critics have jumped on it, went crazy. They were like, you're irresponsible, how terrible. And she has written a lot about how she really believed that it was a very important rite of passage for him, and she makes the point she says, the child services thing is just absurd and made me very angry. If anything, it's a distillation of where we've got to.
But it isn't the main issue. The main issue is that so many people seem to think the world is a more dangerous place to travel in. Yet modern communications, safer transport, and better emergency health means it's actually a safer place to travel in than it's ever been. What do we think, friends.
May or would you let fifteen year old travel to another country? Well, actually interstate is probably a better Yeah.
She wants to make the point that in England and Europe, she said, the actual distance covered it probably wouldn't have got you out of New South Wales. Do you know what I mean in terms of actual distance? She said, if we're in Australia, probably I mean you probably wouldn't be out of New South Wells. But you know what I mean.
But it's going to different that's a lot of countries. My no trip, massive envy, and he's fifteen year old. I want his life. It's tricky, isn't it. I'm really in agreement. I've read a lot and thought a lot about the fact that if you don't let children take risks, then they get to eighteen and it's suddenly like, Okay, you can have alcohol, you can drive a car, all bets are off, You're free. You can do whatever you
want now. And they've had no practice in navigating risk and assessing risk because we've never given them a chance to build that muscle through their life. And that's the argument behind free range parenting, isn't it that? You know, we mean well, but we think that it's our job to protect our children from all the risks and walk them around the fire and not hold their hand while they walk through it. And so yeah, I mean, I've
got a sixteen year old. You know, we were overseas a couple of years ago when my daughter was sixteen, maybe seventeen. She really wanted to come home. She was not feeling great and not enjoying this trip. So we allowed her to fly home from Greece alone and then just be at home for a week or so until we got back. I mean, look, we could track her phone, we could do all of those things, and when she was eighteen, every night I was checking where she was
when she was just recently traveling for six weeks. It's scary as a parent, but what a gift you give your child?
Yeah, And what the criticism can never take into account, which I think has just should be the mantra of the internet, is that the mum or the dad or the caregiver knows the kid better than you do. So your fifteen year old might just in terms of maturity, not be there. We don't know her fifteen year old. I think she knows her kid, she knows what her
kid is capable of. But what this story speaks to is the rub between the messaging we're getting in all the books and I'm getting it very very low, which is about independence, parents that are overfunctioning, and how there is this link between less freedom and trust and more mental health concerns. So we go, Okay, we've got to give them freedom and independence and play and don't get
too involved in all of those things. But then the second you enact any of that, child service is a called or whatever.
And even if not child service is a called, the judgment upon you from other people is enormous.
Is enormous.
Yeah, And that's one of the tricky things, exactly.
And the other thing I thought about this story was this is why you should never say a parenting decision.
You make out loud of meaned so true.
It's like anything that I choose, whether it's like feeding or what. And I know that sometimes it can be really helpful, but I'm like, I personally can't handle nor do I give a shit what anyone else thinks about it, don't you think.
You often don't realize until you do say it, and then there's pushback and you go, oh, I didn't. I didn't realize this was a problem. Sometimes the Internet is what tells you. I remember getting my son a smash cake for his birthday when he was I don't know eight.
I posted a funny video about it, and it ended up in the Daily Mail about people were upset about the violence, and I was teaching my child violence because all the kids like smashed it and then all ran over the top of each other trying to get it, and they.
Wonder why the well being of parents is really really low.
And other people were being critical that I bought the cake in it we were also hundred dollars. Why didn't I just make the cake.
It's interesting to me that the title of Heights book about the kids is the anxious generation, But actually the gen X parents who are making these decisions, we're fucking anxious because like we live to our south of Sydney. My daughters started making that train trip on her own a bit in school holidays, come see her friend or whatever. And when I put her on that train, of course I say to her, like if a creepy guy sits next to you, or if something happens or the train
breaks down, or da da da da da. But every time she does it, she might face a situation where she's going to like most likely and what's generally happened. She gets on the train, she gets the other end, she has a great time. But every time she does get on the train, there is a chance that something might happen. And I was thinking that. Actually, when I was about the age of Oscar Hercules, I didn't go
off interrailing. But me and a friend did catch a train from France to Italy where my parents were on holiday, and it was an overnight train.
There was a.
Carriage down the train of football hooligans. This was an era of football hooligans, the late eighties, and they were scary guys and they were drunk and they gave us loads of shit and we were scared. Right. Whatever we survived, it wasn't particularly pleasant and we had a story to tell everybody. But that could have gone bad, you know, it definitely could have gone bad, and it could go bad every time I put my daughter on a train, and the fear of judgment is one of the things
that paralyzes parents. Is one of my mate says this
to me all the time. She's like, if something happens, imagine what everyone will say, not because they're a public figure, but just like people in your world is they'll say, well, what did you think putting a fourteen year old girl on a train when there might be drunk guys getting on at that station and there might be boys doing this, and her phone might run out of battery and the train might break down and she won't know where to go, and then she'd be wandering the streets and then someone
could come and like they're piling the anxiety and the judgment onto you. So you have to actually be a very confident, centered parent in this day and age to go. And I'm not necessarily defending Kirsty Alsop because I think she's probably a bit out there, but it's like, you have to be a very.
What do you mean do you think she shouldn't have done it?
It was too well, I don't think she shouldn't have done it, but the way she defends it, of like, oh, it's a rite of passage and all those things, I just think that's not really true, you know. But I think you have to be such a confident, grounded I can handle it parent to go. No, I believe in my choices and I believe in my kid, and that's very hard to do, whether they're little and you're talking about feeding, or whether they're fourteen and you're putting them on a train.
Also did speak to something that's very true, though, which is that the world is actually safer than it's ever been. But because of our exposure, and I've found this with babies. Everything that's gone wrong with a baby, I now read because it's served me an algorithm, So you will see every story about that fourteen year old girl, whether it is near your house or whether it's on the other side of the world, and so our sense of scale or our sense of likelihood or probability is totally thrown out.
There was a great article though in The Atlantic about lighthouse parents. I really liked that terminology, which was the idea that similar to a lighthouse, you provide a bit of light, a bit of stability, so that the ships can see their way. This parent kept saying, and I think she worked in education or something, and she said, when her child comes home and says I'm being bullied or whatever, rather than go here's what you should do and I'm going to call the teacher, she'll say like,
how did you deal with that? And work through it a little bit, which is idealistic, but I think it's probably a good place to start. And she's all about missteps before mastery. So there's got to be the.
Let them mobble, let them mobile.
Yeah, it can be hard though, be like when is it irresponsible to let them wobble? And well, when is it potentially dangerous?
And one of the stakes of the stakes.
Yeah, wobbling. What's interesting though, it's funny we're talking all about this in parents and being judged, and none of this is about the kid, because every kid time has always taken risks like the shit I did when I was fifteen, but my parents weren't judged for it because they didn't know.
Exactly, So that's not new.
What's new is actually about the parents learning to let go more than the kids taking the risk. And also our definition of what a good parent is because it's contextual too, isn't it Because if that mother had gone off to Abetha and was taking drugs and partying and left the fifteen year old kid at home, would child services have been involved? It's interesting to know about how much of this is a How very dare you? You know? The privilege and all of those.
Things out loud us tell us what are the risks you took as a teenager and do you regret them? And what kind of risks would you like your kid take at what age? Do you want daily outloud access?
Why wouldn't you? We drop episodes every Tuesday and Thursday exclusively for Muma Mea subscribers. Follow the link in the show notes to get us in your ears five days a week, and a huge thank you if you're already a subscriber.
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For women, Aging is like a horror film. They are the words of a reviewer named Paula Frolick, who, just like the three of us, recently saw the award winning film The Substance. We went out for a little date night on Monday, which was lovely.
Just developed a Monday night movie date night.
And we're not going to give away spoilers here or analyze a film in great details, so if you haven't seen it, that doesn't matter. We just want to unpack its premise and what it tells us about aging.
I think it was a masterpiece.
I bloody loved it.
It was quick summary of what the movie is about for everybody, though Jesse, No, not for everybody. It stars I say, Demi, Demi, what's this about Demi?
That's just how she says it.
Okay, I say okay.
Starring Demi Moore and Margaret Quayley, a fading celebrity on her fiftieth birthday, decides to use a black market drug that promises to temporarily create a younger, better version of herself. It's about the deal one makes with the devil when they attempt to turn the clock backwards, chasing youth and beauty at all costs. Quayley, who plays Sue, is the
younger version of Elizabeth Sparkle played by Moore. Written and directed by Coralie Fargit, The Substance is a satiric called body horror film which explores themes of agism, beauty, obsession with self image, capitalism, plastic surgery, and misogyny. Satirical body horror is not a genre it's familiar with, but then you watch it and you're like, yes, it is a satirical horror body what's.
The satirical part? Because there's parts of it are funny.
Yeah, it's not realistic, like it's not meant to be right.
Are their body horror and horror film? Like I've never been to a horror.
Body horror film. When they talk about body horror, they mean like there will be blood and guts, it will be gory.
You know.
There are lots of different horror films. There are serial killer movies, and there are spooky things with ghosts and whatever. Body horror is like, it's about the gore.
So, Jesse, this is your jam.
I've watched every minute of it.
And I know this because there were lots of times where I had was trying to bury my face in your shoulder, and Holly also was looking at you, and you were just looking straight at the screen, not flinching, smiling or laughing.
Don't mind a little bit because it was quite funny. It was just a greater purpose.
Well, it's funny.
It's funny movie, Holly.
If your host a podcast called mid and it's about midlife women and something we often hear is that they feel invisible. And this is about, in many ways the opposite of invisible. How the harder you try to chase youth, the more monstrous you become. My question is can women win?
Well, the answer to that is no. End of segment. No, of course, the answer to that is no. But that is exactly what this movie is about.
Jesse.
You are so right. And it's interesting that as gen x women are moving into this age fifties and in Demi Moore's case, sixties and.
Is she a gen X or would she be a boom.
Gen X.
She's elder gen X. She's a gen x icon though because of her you know, brat pack years. This is a topic that's being explored more and more, right, and this movie is an example of that that I think is brilliant because it's not meant to be realistic.
Right.
The characters have no backstory, we know nothing about them. We're just dropped into this world and it's highly stylized, and the that it's shot is very ardy and it's sort of broad strokes the way they set it up. And what is incredibly true is the depiction of the fact that this woman is suddenly being pushed out right, So she is a TV person, she was an actress.
Then she's obviously had a second act as like a Jane Fonder esque aerobics instructor on TV and on the morning show every morning she leads then ext sise thing. And she's too old in the eyes of the TV execs. And that's despite the fact that she clearly has done everything she was supposed to do to stay young. So she has had work, she is thin, she has got
the long hair, augmented boom. She's got all that stuff, but still she is objectively too old now to be attractive and convincing to this audience who the male TV execs think she should be. And I think that what is brilliant about this movie because it is very over the top and ridiculous, but it absolutely drills home the horror and the very physical violence of the interventions we are prepared to make with ourselves to try and hold onto this bargain, this idea that we can be that.
And I think it's interesting because one of the reasons why I'm very scared of surgeries of all kinds in fact, but obviously cosmetic surgery, is because I've watched too many of those shows that show you it happening, and when they give you a face lift and they literally lift your face up. When you see that, that is a very confronting, violent image that makes you really understand what you're doing to your physical self. And that's what this movie explores.
And it's complicated because it's a violence perpetrated upon the self, yes, which is what this is looking at, I think and what I've realized watching it. There's a remarkable scene which is not a horror scene, although perhaps it is the most horror scene. It's when Demi Moore looks in the mirror.
She's got makeup on it, and she's meant to be going to a day and she's kind of being haunted by the image of her younger version of herself, and every time she looks in the mirror, she looks great, but to her she can only see the lines and how the makeup isn't right, and it's almost like she tries to scratch her face off, like she tries to pull it off because she's so horrified.
First she tries putting on more makeup and then less makeup, and then she changes the top, and then she kind of tries to do something with her hair. And I think we all know what that feels like when it's like, what's looking back at me? It's not how I feel, and it's not what I want to portray to the world. And what can I do to change what I see, which is my face and my body to conform to what society wants me to look like or seizes desirable
and valuable and this beauty standard that I've internalized. So it's not that any I mean, yes, She literally has people saying you're too old, get off television. But she's internalized it as well. So even when there's nobody around and there's no stakes, she applies those same beauty standards to herself. And I think that's what some people don't understand when we talk about the male gaze. We've all internalized the male gaze. It's not actually men saying go
get botox or be skinnier or whatever. We've internalized that, and some people have internalized it more than others. And that's why I always find it very trite just to say, oh, you know, getting older is a luxury, and love yourself and love your body. It's not as simple as that.
What that scene spoke to was how much one must have to hate themselves in order to undergo some of these surgeries.
So there's a real or house skin maybe hate, but also fear fear.
But there's a mocking and there's a derision, and there's almost like a point in laugh quite literally in parts of this movie when it comes to women who try. And there's a story just in the news today about a woman in the UK who has died after a liquid Brisillian butt lift. She was thirty three with five kids. The tone of it all, it's it's more blaming, yeah, and also like victim blaming to a degree, but it's.
Like serves you right for being so vain, yes, and so superficial, and it's.
About so much more than it's like vanity in a way is the symptom. But that surgery as well as a facelift, as well as a breast augmentation, whatever your choice is. I'm not judging them, but they are full on like that takes a lot.
It's not like a bit of hair dyets and makeup. Yeah.
And then when you come out that way and you inevitably do get older the way that you are then mocked and you're conspicuous in a new way where everyone.
Goes, look at you.
You have stuff.
She's had work, which in that way I thought that more like even her casting was.
Very brilliant, was very brilliant. I think it was brilliant casting. And I've seen a lot of that oh she's so brave commentary and rolled my eyes. But actually having seen the movie, I think she is really brave. But there are things in this movie that will push your buttons if you go and see it.
Right.
Some of the criticism I've seen is that the movie itself seems to fetishize the young body. But then I understand what they're trying to do. What the director was trying to do was to talk about how much we've all been conditioned to desire that, as you say here, but there are a lot of very lingering our shots, for example. And then also the other part that pushed
my button. I started muttering to Jesse about it is that when Elizabeth Sparkle is her normal old self, because she can alternate between being the young self and the old self, she is a sad old lady in Verticoma's in her bathrobe who just sits in front of the
TV watching infomercials and feeling terrible about herself. And I was like, oh my godness, that what we're supposed to be like is that, well how everybody sees us like, there are a lot of It pushes a lot of buttons, which to me is the sign of a.
Really good, yeah movie. I can't stop thinking about it. And my daughter Coco came with us as well, and she didn't know anything about it, and I'm like, come to the movie through us, so it'll be fun. She's like, fun could be watching. I watched it the day before I turned fifty three this week, and I woke up on my fifty third birthday just really quite anxious. I'm thinking about it a lot because it's all about at what cost? At what cost? What price will you pay
to look a little bit younger? What financial prices, what physical price? How much pain will you undergo, how much humiliation? How much risk will you take? And is it worth it?
And sort of like, be honest, do you give a shit what's in the substance because that's never really explored, like what it is?
Well, that's the risk. She takes it without even knowing it's an amazing film, Like I know what you're saying, it's funny. Hole those things didn't push my buttons because I mean, this movie's been described as a primal scream of rage against beauty standards and society and a feminist masterpiece, which I really really think it is, and I can't stop thinking about it, And all I want to do is talk about.
It when we know what the cost is. I think it's industry specific as well. Lots of people listening were like the industry that they work in doesn't necessarily punish them for aging, and the Hollywood context is a very specific.
But I think everybody lives in the world, and I just think some people are better at shrugging off those beauty standards and saying I'm not internalizing them. I'm not or else I'm going to look in the mirror and just go, oh, well, aging my neck a bit wrinkly. Age people are just better than others.
I think it's so much deeper.
The one thing is I have lines on my goodness, irrelevance, invisibility. I'm doing an equation in my head that guess what part of it is correct that my value to maybe the opposite sex or whatever this is. Things that we've internalized might go down. I might feel like people don't listen to me in the same way. The other thing I kept thinking was about how much of our lives we've spent feeling old when we're not because we're aging.
Like I've felt I'm turning thirty four in December, and I've noticed signs of aging because capitalism points them out.
I've started having that feeling now. I think that was the point in the movie, was that when she felt, oh, you're not old.
It was a literal manifestation of her being pushed out because she's old. Yeah, and that is how old. And it's true to a point. It's probably less true now than it has been. Ironically, it's also how young people feel about how they can't get in because they are like women are always made to feel, there are only so many spaces for us, and we can only have these ones for the old ladies and these ones for the young ladies, and these are.
But don't you reckon that?
The aging even more so, like whether it's lines or sunspots or gray hair, the reason that shocks us, and I've seen it shock men, like gray hair, for example, is that we go time is passing. Yes, I am getting older, I am closer to death. Aging is a horror movie because it's like the big truth that we all spend our entire lives trying not to think about is imprinted on our faces, and one.
Hundred percent that's what that's my midlife crisis often look different for men and women. Men might have affairs with younger women or go and start bi or training for a marathon, and women will look at surgery, you know, And it's because it's like, well, what does it mean to us to present as younger in the world. For men, it's about virality and physical strength, and for women it's about aesthetics.
We have to fight it, though maybe it can't be in your place of like, well, that's how it is. It's like the only answer is to care less. The only answer.
I don't know how you can.
You have to teach yourself like you do about anything like yes.
Like the smartphones does all the parents decide that they don't give the smartphones anymore and we all have to hold hands and so let's.
Just do it.
I don't mean to hold hands in allgo. We're not doing anything to our faces, but you change it in a monologue. You should listen to my episode about this on mid because my manifesto with Ali Dado is all about this.
Will you put a link in the show notes place because.
We we will A big thank you. I think that was a marathon show out louder, so thank you for being with us if you're still here, and thank you to our fabulous team for putting this show together. We are going to be back in your ears tomorrow.
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There's a link in the episode description