You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Mamma mea acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on Hello and welcome to Mamma Mia Out Loud. What women are actually talking about on Monday, the seventeenth of June. I am Holly Wainwright, I'm.
Mea Friedman and I'm Jemma Bath filling in for Jesse Stevens. I host another podcast from Mamma.
Mia called True Crab Conversations. It's less murders on this show. Yes, good, that's a good thing.
And on the show today a Princess's brave face, the very planned optics of Kate's return to work. And it's a fact it's never been harder to be the thirty something in Australia. But also millennials are about to get really, really rich. And what's different about the sex scenes you spent the weekend watching? But first, Jemma Bath.
In case you missed it, a name that might be familiar to you, Bruce Werman. He's expected to appear in a Toomber court today for a committal hearing over rape charges. He's been charged with two counts of rape dating back to October twenty twenty one. Now we don't know the identity of his accuser, but we know that she is twenty nine and she allegedly met Lehman at a strip club in his hometown of Toowoomba.
She says he gave her a.
False name, Bryce, pretty close to Bruce, and she alleges that they left the club and went to a friend's house and got into bed together. She told him they wouldn't be having sex without a condom. They kissed and she fell asleep. She claims when she woke up, he was having sex with her, and says the next day he took her to get a morning after pill. Originally, when this story broke, Lehman was only referred to as
a high profile man in media reports. That Queensland laws changed in October last year which allowed.
Us to name him.
This is the first time he's appeared in court in person for this matter, and basically this hearing will decide whether the chargers will be taken to trial.
That sounds you can hear is me Mia and Jebba biding our tongues just a little bit. And if you're wondering if there should have been any more details in that segment. There are legal reasons why there aren't in last week's chaotic Royal rundown. I told you, gentle listeners, as out Loud's Fancy Society correspondent as I am, that
Kate watch was back. It had been three months since those edited pictures of the Princess of Wales had made photo experts of the entire world, and we were getting restless. How is she going as she goes through her cancer treatment. Kate listened clearly to MEA's gentle urging for an update on her health, and on Friday night, Our Time, the Prince and Princess of Wales's official Instagram account released an image of Kate forest bathing, which is walking in the.
Woods with some news.
She said, I am making good progress, but as anyone going through chemotherapy will know, there are good days and bad days. On those bad days, you feel weak, tired and you have to give into your body resting. But on the good days, when you feel stronger, you want to make the most of feeling well. My treatment is
ongoing and will be for a few more months. On the days I feel well enough, it's a joy to engage with school life spend personal time on the things that give me energy and positivity, as well as starting to do a little work from home. I'm looking forward to attending the King's Birthday parade this weekend with my family, and I hope to join a few public engagements over the summer, but equally knowing I'm not out of the
woods yet. Catherine was coming back to work, and she did less than twenty four hours later in her first official appearance, that is an appearance not in a paparazzi photo taken with a long lens since Christmas. The next day, you would have had to be entirely out of Wi Fi range to have missed the photos of her attending the Trooping of the Color, which is the King's birthday, big deal in England.
It's like a big.
Military parade, and Prince William was in the parade. He was on a horse in one of those big furry hats. Don't ask me what all that means. Kate looked immaculate, healthy and happy, riding in a carriage with her kids and doing the traditional balcony appearance where she was given prime position next to the King. It would have been knackering, no question, but Kate's appearance was roundly received as a reassuring and joyous display that one of the most famous
women in the world is okay. The thing is, of course, she's not quite okay, as she says so herself, some days she's shit, although she didn't put it quite like that. Mia, did you love Kate's brave face.
I'm so overjoyed, first of all, to see her face. And I know that it sounded silly when I was saying last week, I'm just on an update. The parasocial relationship we have with people in the public eye who we feel we know is a real thing. I mean, the relationships not real, but the fact that we care for them and we want them to be okay. I
mean not everybody does, but some of us do. I scrutinized her more than I've ever scrutinized anyone in a public appearance, and I was very observant of myself doing that. I thought the fact that she wore a very fitted white dress or white suit was very interesting, and what I realized is HARKing back to something that I read
a few months ago. When she disappeared. That first photo came out and turned out to be airbrushed, and there's this sense of when the only access you have to someone is looking at them, which is the case pretty much for the royal family. Right, we don't know really anything about them. We just know essentially what they look like and what they choose to tell us. So we have to draw a lot of conclusions from what they wear, what their body looks like, what their facial expressions are,
and now of course lip readers. And there's something about being a princess more than anything else, that their value is in their physicality. It's in literally showing up bodily for events, for official things, bringing attention to charities, And so the burden of that, even when you don't have cancer, in the whole world is not particularly looking at you must be unimaginable. And all I could think about was
the pressure that she must have been under. And maybe she was like, this is her job, So maybe she was genuinely over joyed to be out of the house. We've all been locked down with illness and we know what that feels like. But I felt for all the cancer sufferers, survivors, people who were battling it, who looked at it and went ah.
Right, I felt Similarly, I have quite a few people in my family and in my close circle that are have just gotten through cancer treatment or are currently going through it. And when I saw her, of course I was happy for her the individual, but I felt a bit sad for my family members at home, thinking I don't look anything like that in fact, my body, my face,
my hair. I compare it to the beauty standards conversation where we look at super skinny, beautiful women and we compare ourselves to that and the expectations we put on that. In the same sense, here cancer patients looking at her, going yeah, well, if I don't look like that, am I doing something wrong?
Letting the side down?
Yeah, I hear that, and I have read it. There was a comment in out loud as from somebody who clearly felt similarly and not very understandably, who said, did she get a special type of no hair loss, no grayskin, no mouth soors chemo. Honestly, I wish her well, of course she's a mom and a human being. But for the cancer patients who lose every hair on their body and think they'll never look human again, it seems demoralizing, not inspiring, And I thought that was really interesting and
of course entirely valid. But what a lot of people have pointed out is that chemotherapy is not one experience for everybody, and there are plenty of ordinary in inverted commas have to work through chemo. A lot of women do, un men, obviously, but we're talking about women who have to put on a brave face, as it were, not to the Kate level, but to keep going, keep moving,
keep putting their foot forward. And I don't know, I think I agree that in some ways it's like, oh, but she looks fine, but I think she had no choice. You've got to remember that to get her out of the house that day. Whatever Kate looks like on an ordinary Tuesday morning when she's finding it hard to get out of bed, to get her out of that house
that day, she has a team. She has literally a team, and their number one job would have been make Kate look like Kate always looks, to reassure everybody that she is fine. That shit holds.
That's what drives me crazy is this insistence that women, no matter what we're going through, we've just had a baby, we're pregnant, we're old, we're getting a hip replacement we're undergoing chemo. We must look perfect, we must look the same, We must be unchanged physically by any experience that happens to you.
I don't think that's necessarily true of this, because I think we really applaud people who publicly come out and show their shaved heads or their masectomy scars.
Like we do.
We really applaud that because it reflects reality. But we're not looking at the Royal family for reality. What this whole very very stage managed return to work. I actually think they've handled it brilliantly. I think that their team has worked out all the messes that they made earlier in the year when they were with the airbrush pictures, and to give them benefit of the doubt, they're in
uncharted waters there. But this has been handled brilliantly, with the announcement from Kate very quickly before it happened, so there's not too much speculation to be able to build up. But literally, her team would have been their brief would have been, she needs to look perfect, and with that amount of effort around you and all the hair pieces in the world and all the makeup teams and the cat anybody can look like.
That for a day. Can I clarify.
Also, none of what I'm saying is a criticism, it's observation, and I think those two things it's really important to make that distinction because it's like, she owes us nothing in terms of could she have come out in a headscarf and would she have done that, would she have appeared in public if in fact she never had hair. That is completely up to her to decide, and every person has to make their own decisions. But I was interested in this collective relief that you could feel that
Kate looks exactly the same and is completely unchanged. And that was like reassuring for the masses, I guess on some level, but frustrating from a beauty standards point of view that we just never get a fucking break. But that's why two truths can live in the same world. We can be happy for Kate, but we can be sad for the people that looked at her on the weekend and struggled.
I don't think that's about beauty standards though. I don't think it's about beauty standards. I think this is very much about royals and about that very like at all times, appearance is what matter. When you're royals, as you already said me, or it's literally their job and they don't
want everybody to freak out. As we know, Royal family are on sort of rocky ground at the moment on all kinds of fronts, from the fact that they've lost two very prominent members to the fact that the King is unwell to the fact that the whole institution is on the nose. I don't think that we should be looking at this as a straight up beauty standard story. This is very much about the image that they had
to project. It's not beyond the realms of possibility that down the line we might get a photo release of a very different version of Kate that's also very stage managed. But the idea that she would go out on the King's birthday looking anything other than how she looked is kind of unimaginable in royal world.
It is, but that's what's depressing to me that if she doesn't meet that beauty standard, and imagine how this must feel for her, right she doesn't meet this beauty standard. Best we stay indoors.
We're millennials.
We work hard and have nothing to show for it.
We're millennials, are dogs, have more.
Followers than you on Instagram from millennials.
We google it sixty times a day.
There's good and bad news for millennials this week. The good news is we're potentially about to be really, really rich over the next twenty years. Millennials are poised to inherit ninety trillion dollars worth of assets and become the richest generation in history according to the Wealth Report.
But it's by a few houses with that amount of money.
Holy but but but this will only be the case for those who already come from affluent families, which could potentially deepen wealth inequality further. The thing is, this is quite about the bad news because that don't sound great. It's coming, it's coming. There's more bad news because the thing is this is quite a few years off for most millennials.
People are living longer and longer, which is great.
I as a millennial myself, don't even want to think about my parents not being here. But the bad news. Here's the bad news is that there's never been a worse time in Australian history to be thirty year old.
Well, you don't want to hurry your parents along because that's a bit rude, but you would like their money.
Yes, could I have a question about the thirty year olds because I have also heard this and I have changed my opinion about it since I fought with Jesse about it because I just didn't want to give us something to feel sorry for a self about. So I recognize that this is a real thing. But when we say the worst time ever, do we mean financially?
I want to play a little grab to start off. It's from the ABC show gruin last week.
Russell Holcroft.
He's a panelist on the show. He's also a marketing guru.
He said this, It's a fact that when I was thirty, the house cost me three times my salary. Now eight times plus for a thirty year old is what it's going to cost you to get into the housing market. It's true that hex has doubled in the last fifteen years, right, doubled from a fifteen thousand dollar bill to a thirty thousand dollar bill. It's true that a baby boomer paid half the tax that a thirty year old pays now when they were thirty years of age.
So for context, Russell Holcroft is genexa. He would be like us. I remember my parents bought their first house together for I think forty six thousand dollars. That is mind blowing, Sydney.
I'm thirty three, and honestly, hearing Holcroft say that made me feel quite relieved because I thought I was going a bit crazy. It feels like right now everyone in my generation is talking about the cost of living and how hard it is to make those big purchases in our life, like houses and weddings and big life moments.
Because really it's really really.
Tricky, and it made me feel quite validated hearing him spell it all out like that, because it feels like we're pushing against a brick wall.
Away the brick wall.
We're not the brick wall people. One of the things we have to think about when we have these generational fights, right, is that the reason people get defensive about it, and I get a bit defensive about it as gen Xa, Like when Jesse brought this up before, I'm like, oh, you make it so like I heard it easy. I didn't have it easy. And the thing is is, because there isn't anything you can do about the generation you're born into, right, it's not the boomer's fault that they
were the baby boomers. They've just played the hand that they got. The thing you can change is the thing that made the boomers so successful, which is much better social policies around access to things like education and keeping it cheap, and like inflation and keeping it down the problem with this conversation is it too often becomes a generational bond fight, as if we're like the gen Y and Z are really mad with the boomers, as if they've done something wrong.
I'm not mad at you. I'm really not. No, no, no, I know you're not a millennial. I'm not boomers.
Just to be clear, people have come on this podcast as guest hosts. I've really learned a lesson the hard way when they have referred to holly and ized boomers. So you have been warned that is your first strike strike.
I know that you, personally, GENMA are not mad and as Mia says, we're not boomers, we're gen XI is a very the forgotten generation. But generally it does get like that. You look at the dialogue on social media and it's kind of like give us your house, Boomer, right, that's kind of the vibe, and I understand it. But that's not the solution, is it.
But the solutions aren't.
They're going to give you their houses in the end.
They are, but it's Gen X and the boomers that are currently in positions of power to be able to change said social policies, to be able to make it easier for us. So we're not annoyed at everyday boomers and Gen X. I'm annoyed that our governments are ignoring our pleas for help. That's what I'm annoyed at. I'm running my own race. There's a little millennial in my little millennial pool. I just want to be able to do things. And you know the way, we need more
millennials in our fers. Like seriously, you always need a real cross section of generations. I was hearing over the weekend that they're trying to put an age cap in Congress in the US because it's full of eighty and ninety year olds. I think that the average age of a senator or a congressman in Washington is.
Like eighty What a thirty year old needs and want, So they're trying to cap it at like eighty one, and they don't things like childcare and things like legislation around the internet and social media. You need a real cross section in every parliament, of ages, of genders, of socioeconomic groups.
It's crucial.
In Australia, it's not too bad, but I hear you you one hundred percent do me or you're right. But also one of the reasons why this is difficult to
grapple with is it hasn't happened for generations, right. The reason why this is such a tragedy really, and what Horcroft is trying to explain there, and he does it very well, is that for millennials and gen Z is this is the first time in three generations that the children are going to be worse off than their parents, which is where this inheritance thing comes in, Right, Baby Boom is inherited next to nothing from their parents because
the Great Depression, all of those things. Gen X, we're not going to get much, right, Millennials are going to get a lot of money one day. They're calling it the Great Wealth Transfer. This isn't only in Australia, it's in America. It's in all kinds of countries, and it's going to be so seismic. You're right, gem that on an in visual level, this is only going to benefit
you if your parents are doing well. But the reason why it's a bigger picture thing is it literally is the first time that your standard of living is going to be lower than your parents by the time you reach a significant point in your career, and so they're figuring out how to handle that. And the argument about whether or not you should be hurrying your parents along
is kind of humorous, except it's not. Because one of the big conversations is about whether or not boomers and older gen xers should be disincentivized to keep hold of their family homes, for example, to force them back onto the market for young people. But then the young people aren't going to be able to afford to buy them anyway. And they just did this survey in Australia about whether or not boomers were willing to drop their lifestyle expectations
to help their kids out. And while lots of people are doing that, another lot of boomers are also like, well, no, because I worked really hard for this and why should I be on two minute noodles in my retirement. And that's where all the emotions and the argument stuff.
But this is why the bank of Mum and Dad people scoff at that and at those headlines but it's actually such an important part of our current society. I know that I probably wouldn't have had a wedding if I hadn't have had help from my parents. I also wouldn't be in the relatively comfortable apartment i'm in if my parents and in laws hadn't helped me, because even though my husband and I are on relatively good incomes, we couldn't afford what is currently out there in the world.
We do live.
One of the most expensive cities in Australia in the world. It shouldn't be this tough, and that is why my generation is looking to their parents to help them now, not once they die, because now is when we need it. I'm currently trying to build a family.
That if giving with a warm hand rather than a cold exactly. I learned recently that something like more than fifty percent of kids at private schools have their fees paid by their grandparents, not their parents.
Wow.
So it's interesting seeing that privilege entrenched as well across generations.
I think it's a lot to ask a generation to hand over their money. As I say, every generation thinks they did it tough to a point. The boomers will say, we worked really hard. But actually what helped them is a lack of debt. And I didn't own a home until I was in my late thirties. It's not like we were all walking around snapping up properties at twenty two.
You know, I think there's like, you've got to have a bigger picture on what is affecting this, And I think you're right, gem is this it's more about putting the pressure on the people in power rather than kicking the boomers out of their houses.
But it's not handing over wealth to another generation. It is giving your children and your grandchildren an opportunity to live a comfortable life now money within the family. That's what it is.
I hope your parents are listening. I had a funny conversation with my mum yesterday. I haven't seen her for sureis because my parents have had COVID, so they've been kind of isolating themselves, and.
Before that they're away.
So we were talking about it and they were on these antivirals, and you know, if anyone's been on antivirals for COVID, which they recommend, if you're in a high risk group or over a certain age, you can often think you're recovering, and then it comes back and you test positive again. Anyway, so it's been a long process. And I said, yesterday I was asking about my dad and she said, yeah, well you know, the end is near.
And I was like, you're not that old. Things have got a bit dark.
My grandma, And she goes, she laughed, and she goes, Oh, no, darling, I just meant the end of.
Like our COVID isolation. Oh, I went to the same place as you.
Yeah.
I just have to say something for the gen xs though, right, because one of the things that I struggle with about the bank of Mom and dad idea is like, I live in the same economy that you live in, right, jem If the expectation now is that not only do I have to work from now until whenever I may or may not retire to pay off my mortgage and live in this economy and feed everybody and drive a car and all those things, but I also have to somehow magically save enough money to give my kids a
deposit for a house in the most expensive corner of the most expensive city in the world. It's like, no, babes, You'll be making your own way and you'll be dealing with what you're dealing with.
I don't know.
I find that it feels like extra pressure.
It is and it shouldn't be happening. It shouldn't be happening. But I feel like my generation is screaming at that wall. Let's bring the wall back. The wall is the politicians, the people in charge, and until they change it, this is what we've been doing to do.
What do you want them to do?
Change the policies, like with the housing market, make it easier for us to break in. We used to have first home buyers grants. That's no longer really a thing. I didn't get a baby bonus.
I got a baby bonus, and then they worked out everyone was using it to buy plasma TVs, so they took it away.
How much was it? I think my first one was three second. Do you know what I could do with three thousand dollars?
People like some people were buying like fancy prans because everybody.
Got it right to share people let them buy the fancy prean. No I got buying orf fucking dumb tree.
Although you know, again I didn't spend my baby bonus on a plasma TV. It went to trying to have some time off work. It's not true that it all got fritted away.
It was like part of it.
At that time they didn't have paid maternity leave, so the baby bonus stood. So again it's this resentment of like, you guys had it easy. Everyone was giving you money to buy TVs. It's like, no, it isn't like that.
It wasn't like that.
You know. It's also true that in places like Germany, where there's much less of an expectation that everyone will own their own home, like renting is more part of the culture, they make renting more secure because that's another thing, right, is that if you're facing that, you're definitely going to be renting till you're in your forties. One of the reasons why that's a problem, apart from wealth building up, is the insecurity of it. So you can change policies
around that. You can change policies around HEXTEP, which this government is doing a little bit but not enough. You can relieve some of the burden of pressure on this generation to be under a pile of debt from the minute they step out of UNI.
Trust me, I don't want to take money from my parents. I don't want to I want to do it all by myself. But it's like, until they change stuff, I am having to take some handouts here and there to.
Be able to pursue what I want in life.
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We dropped episodes every Tuesday and Thursday exclusively for Mum and Me A 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. There's a sex scene everyone's talking about this week, which is kind of interesting in itself because sex scenes are
rarely controversial anymore. The last controversial sex scene I can think of was that time a few years ago when Miranda got finger banged in the kitchen by her new non binary partner Chay while Carrie recovered from surgery in the next room and had to wean a bottle.
Remember that was a vibe.
That was a good time.
They were good times.
The sex scene in question is from the third season of Bridgeton, and there's a lot of sex in the TV show bridget And we've seen all kinds of sex, including in this season. Why is this particular scene causing such a buzz. And it's not just because it was a six minute sex scene. If you thought it went on for a long time, it did. It's kind of was the whole sex in real time, which I really appreciated, because sometimes sex can either be really fast on camera or it can seem like it goes sort of for
hours in time lapse. Is it a same sex scene? No?
Is it a threesome? No moral anal? No?
No, it's actually a very vanilla, sweet, loving, losing my virginity scene between a man and a woman who are engaged to be married. Penelope and Colin or Pollen as their portmanteau.
Has become cute.
The reason this scene is and I don't want to use the word controversial, but maybe surprising is a better word, because I certainly felt surprised when I saw it, is because the actress in this scene, Nicola Coughlin, whose body is not the same size or shape as every other female body that we're used to seeing in sex scenes
on TV shows and in movies. Nicola, who stars as Penelope Featherington, has been asked by a lot of media who have referred to her bravery for being semi naked in that scene because her body is curvier than the type of body that you usually see in a Hollywood sex scene. Here's how Nicola responded when she was asked about her bravery when filming that scene.
You know it is because I think women with body tied, women with perfect rests.
I love that. That's so good.
It was such a great clapback. But I think that the question is kind of valid because there is a surprise in c that scene. The other thing that was interesting about it is how consent was handled. There were two sex scenes. Actually, there's another finger banging scene in a carriage with Colin and Penelope, and that consent is done so well and then made to look really sexy. I haven't seen that before where he just looks at her and raises his eyebrows to say can I do this?
And she nods and same when they have the actual losing her virginity scene, he checks in with.
Her, must stop. We do not watch for that? Do you thot watch for you to stop? I really loved it. I thought it was amazing.
Hole.
You were a bit on the fence about this season of Bridgeton. Did you find that scene as horny is everyone else?
I loved it. I've had to issue a formal apology to me because when the first half of this season dropped because they're dropping Bridgeton in two sections on a Friday night, I watched the first two or three and I was like, Man, I'm over this the whole, Like, who's the diamond of the season, Who's going to marry her?
Whatever?
I'm done. It seems so silly. And then I just inhaled this second half over the weekend and loved every bit of it, which leads me to believe I must have been in a very bad mood when I started watching it, or maybe I was just waiting for the sex scenes. And they have not disappointed.
I love this.
And the thing is is that we had a conversation the other week that went on and on and many out louders joined in about beauty standards and about whether or not we should call everybody beautiful, like the idea everybody's beautiful is a good idea or not? The thing I love about Bridgeton and they've done it in this season with different body types, but they did it last season with different ethnicities. Because the sexy female lead last
year was South Asian descent. Kate Schwama, she's called in the show Simon Ashley in real life, and that was a mixed race couple. Like the first season was where this woman was just so beautiful, and I know that m Vernon wrote a piece about how happy she was to see that reflected in this one. They've taken a woman who in the first couple of seasons was generally perceived to be a bit of a wallflower and the butt of the joke and her being a wallflower is
a big thing, and they have shot her. She is beautiful. She is so beautiful, her skin, her perfect breasts as she describes them, and they really are. I absolutely loved it. The thing I think is good about this is, even though it's silly and maybe a bit embarrassing that everybody's questioning Nicola Cochlan about how she feels about her body, we're watching beauty standards expanding in real time because women
love this. Why do women love it seeing this conventionally hot, sexy dude mad with lust for this woman who is not tall, skinny, straight sized. It's because it makes us feel seen. And she is beautiful.
She's also hot.
She's so hot, but she's also as amazing off screen as she is on screen, which.
Is what I love about her.
So the script actually called for her to be more covered up than she is in the show. She's the one that actually was like, no, I want to be more naked.
Paint me like your French girls.
Yeah, it's like, let me be as naked as the other straight sized women who get sex scenes.
She kind of said she wanted to do it as a bit of a fuck you, which I just think is amazing. And that's not the first time she's been asked.
That grab that we heard about her.
Body, and it's always journalists that bring up those, you know, words like bravery, But when you actually watch Bridgeton, there's no mention of weight. There's no mention of the fact that that is an issue for Colin or for her. It's just a non issue. It's just a thing.
It's just what I think is so amazing.
Shonda Rhimes, who is responsible for this show and Gray's Anatomy and so many other shows, I think she's done more for expanding beauty standards in our culture, in our pop culture, and our broader culture than anybody I can think of, because she has consistently done this from the beginning of her career when she didn't have much power casting. Sandra was one of the leads on Grades Anatomy and having mixed race couples and people different body shapes and
ages and sizes in all of her shows. She's extraordinary and I think this is yet another example of that. And I love the fact that appearance is never mentioned in this show.
It just isn't.
I could see another director, though, taking that story and doing what the books did, which was make nicholas character Penelope lose weight.
In the books, she loses weight.
She she has a different kind of makeover.
Yeah, yeah, whereas she made an actual decision, Well that's not happening.
Yes, Shonda wouldn't have been into that.
Well, the only thing is is that they might not mention weight directly. But the whole point of this storyline is that she's an unexpected choice for the Heartthrop right like her walla Flower status is mentioned constantly. The other fancy people on the circuit are all like, oh, as if you know so, it is reference. The only thing is I'm just going to argue against myself for a minute because I was celebrating this so much. But then Mia when you said, paint me like your French girls.
Obviously I got excited. Who doesn't love that? But it made me remember that, actually, do these kind of big pop culture moments really expand beauty standards Because all the way back then in the nineties, when Kate Winslet was Rose in Titanic, the headlines were all about her body.
Kate Wincelet got very much pigeonholed as a larger woman, someone who is exceptional to the beauty standards of the day, and she was constantly asked about that being curvy, being larger, which now seems almost ridiculous, but that was the obsession. Then we kind of went back to skinny ladies for a long time, and I know that sounds disparaging, but you know what I mean, that the beautiful heartthrom had
to look a certain way. Then remember when Girls came out and Lena Dunham was in sex scenes with this body that we weren't used to seeing naked, and headlines and headlines about her bravery. How remarkable it was that she would consent to be semi naked on screen when she didn't look like a supermodel. And then we go back to the beauty standards for a while, and then Nicola breaks through. I wonder like, do we expand and stay or do we just expand and contract.
I think that it takes a long time of tapping on that glass ceiling of beauty standards until you break through. And I think that you have to have a creator. I can't speak for Titanic, but you look at Lena Dunnan was the creator of Girls. Shonda Rhimes is the creator of Bridgeton. Who spend the capital that they've earned from their success and push that through because it's not easy. Studios don't like it, marketing team don't like it. It's
not a selling point as such. You've got to have someone who really fights for it.
Why don't studios and marketing teams like it anymore? When what this shows again and again by the way that these that when we see it, women are so unbelievably embracing and love it that it's good for business.
Because there's plenty of people out there that are still of the opinion that it's not good, even Nikola.
Because men make decisions whole Like the argument when I used to try to put women of different shapes and sizes on the cover of Cosmo. I had to fight and fight and fight and fight for that, and I kept saying it's good business, like forget about what your personal preferences are. It's good business. But when you're trying to do something different and move away from the norm and put forward a beauty standard that isn't the preferred beauty standard of our culture, of course that's a risk.
And no one wants to take risks.
And Nicholas being trolled, so she rode on Instagram if you have an opinion about my body, please don't share it. I'm just one real life human being and it's really hard to take the weight of thousands of opinions on how you look being sent to you every day. So even though there is one half of society that is celebrating her, and I saw so many women on my own social media kind of putting up Instagram stories being like,
oh my gosh, I saw my body on screen. I saw a woman's body with folds and moving in a way that mine moves when I have sex.
So there's that side, but there's still these people that.
Are dropping into Nicholas dms being like you're not worthy.
It's also just not the shape of her body. It's the idea of someone being sexual, like being portrayed in a sexual way, because if you look at Rebel Wilson's career, it's all just about comedy and the butt of the joke. It's never about her actual desire and someone desiring her without a gag. And even someone like Melissa McCarthy. You know, you look at the women who are not straight sized who are in Hollywood, and they are played for laughs generally.
And that's not a criticism of those women in particular, because my god, there's so little work and it's so hard. Whatever they can do to get roles and work is great. But I think that's the difference here portraying her as a sexual creature, the same as Lena Dunham.
The massive success of Bridgeton has been that it's saucy scenes, as I described them to my daughter when she's like, why are you watching that show? And I'm like, it's saucy. That's what anyway, the saucy scenes from the female gaze,
and that's what people love about them. Right, It's the same with outline of female gaze is good for business, but you know who else is being trolled, which is interesting is Colin the man who plays Colin, because he was pictured last week with his actual, real life new girlfriend and she doesn't look like Nicola cochlan. She looks much more like a very stereotypically hot young thing, and the internet's lost its mind in fury at him. So now it's like, it's like, how very dare you actually
not be that? So, you know, our expectations are enormous.
Do you think there will ever be a time when this is not a conversation where we don't even have to do a segment like this because it's a non event.
I mean, I'd like to think that. I just think it's important without wanting to make things any harder. For Nikola Coglin, it's important to applaud and recognize when something is subversive and pushes the boundaries and support it so that then the next time someone has to make that decision, they also will push those boundaries and push those boundaries. It's always hard being the first. So she's brave.
She's also unquestionably great, you know, like she creates shows, she's a brilliant performer. She's great than this, Like, I'm very glad she's having her moment.
Our entertainment podcast The Spill, had an interesting conversation about this on Friday.
Here's a taste.
Obviously, the character of Colin is a lot more experienced and a very experience and they talk about that in the sex scene, which I thought was interesting. Obviously is set hundreds of years ago, but it felt like a conversation you'd almost be having now in modern times, about like there's a lot of consent in and of him saying like I'm about to do this? Is this okay?
A link to that episode will be in the show notes out Louder.
Sometimes we need each other to help solve dilemmas. We have a segment called group therapy where we help solve a dilemma, and this week we solved the dilemma of an out louder whose twenty three year old daughter was out for her birthday. Her boss was there, and it ended in some really inappropriate behavior from her boss and a whole lot of other men there. And we had a really interesting conversation.
Didn't we hold Yes, I'm not sure we did solve it, to be honest, but like I've been replaying that conversation in my head all weekend, and I.
Know out louders have here's a little stening peak of how it went down.
I can't believe that you said that she should change her job?
What do you mean?
Of course she shouldn't change her fucking job? Like that's outrageous. Why should he get to keep his job and as sleazy coworkers get to keep his job and she has to go through all the drama and change in trauma of changing a job because I know he will end.
Up a job, keeping his job, and the only person that will get really sad and about this and get really hurt about this will be her.
My first line would be complain about him.
It's not always that simple.
If you want to hear what Holly m Vernam and I thought and make up your own mind, we'll put a link in the show notes you can listen to that.
Right now.
That is all we have time for on this Monday, my friends. A big thank you to all of the out louders for listening to our show and supporting it. Tell your friends, share it all that we're having the best conversations here on out loud, and thank you for our team for helping us put together today's show. We'll be back in your ears tomorrow.
Good Bye, bye bye.
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