You're listening to Amma mea podcast.
Hello, and welcome to MO.
When we are out loud is what women are talking about on Friday, the sixth of March.
I'm Hollywayne Wright, I'm Claire Stephen and I'm oh my god, I'm a bit nervous.
She's back from your holiday.
We became number one holiday.
Yeah.
Yeah, but you know what you were on those shows that we became number one for, So I think you can claim that crown.
Thank you so much. Claire. Were you on those show?
I was here? You were you were? I was like in the atmosphere, I remember that. I remember that. Yeah, says a lot about me. I'm like, I feel like I'm off and around success.
Oh my god.
There is one thing that the out louders need to know from you, Emily Vernham. You've just been on holiday for pretty.
Much a month.
Yeah, pretty much.
How many pairs of nickers did you take?
Oh?
Okay, great, great question. I overseas for twenty two days, so I took thirty two pairs?
Did you use all of them?
No?
Because I didn't know I had access to a washing machine.
Yeah, I was gonna say, I bet you had access.
Yeah, I like, I think I would own thirty two pairs.
I didn't. I think the day before I ran to kmart in a panic, and yeah, having stock anymore, so you have.
To grab, like you know, when you get to the real bottom of the barrel with your undies and you're like, these have holes. I had a documents appointment recently in a very old pair of undies.
You had to take an extra bag just for your underwear. How loud as If you're wondering why the hell were talking about this. One of our most famous debates of recent times is how many pairs of underpants you pack when you're going away?
Yeah, thirty two is a bit too much, I will say that, will I probably could have won away with twenty.
There's two week strains here because Holly would have packed three.
Yeah, yeah, I would have done.
I would have taken like maybe seven and then you just rotate and wash.
Like anyway, we don't need to go back into that.
Did you have a great time?
I had the best, best time. I'm happy to be back. But oh my god, I love a holiday. We should all be on holiday all the time.
I want a photo dump of your holiday on the out Louders Instagram.
That's a good idea.
I need it to everyone can see, Yeah, like obviously on yours.
Yeah, but also for the apes I loud us want to see what em did in India.
Ye, and so do I.
Anyway, welcome back to our Friday show Mate. There's a lot of news going on. You won't hear any of it here today, so that's good. But here is what is on our agenda. I want to tell you about the Internet's new favorite literal girl Boss. She is a thirteen year old skincare ce plus.
We used to be terrified of public speaking, but jen Z are terrified of something much smaller and a weekly recos.
They consist of two podcasts and one very wild book.
But first, Emily Vernon.
In case you missed it, no one is wearing mascara anymore.
I won't hear it.
I won't have this, Okay, I need to rephrase. The cool kids aren't wearing muscara anymore. Seen the headlines, there's been a trend. It is called ghost lashes, which means slashes without mascara. So this started off in We saw it first in the Megala last year where Sophia, Richie and Lord weren't wearing mascara, and it was a bit scandalous.
But then recently on the runways that are happening in the last fashion season, none of the models are wearing muscara either, And you know what, I'm for it.
No, No, it's discriminatory against blondes. And it's also discriminatory against people with no lips, because you can only wear no muscara if you've got a statement lip, otherwise you look Onwell.
I wear a statement lip and no mascara.
Yeah, but I can't because I look like a clown because the lips are too things.
You have to be cool.
This is the thing about the no mescara kids. Now you're on this train right.
I haven't won mascara at all this year.
That's amazing.
The main reason is because I star infection.
You had it, and so you've had to swear off it.
I'm scared of it, like I'm deeply scared of it. And mascara is messy, it goes everywhere.
Like I am so wedded to my mascara. It is my It's a white tail's nightmare. It's the only thing I would take with me, Like I couldn't ever go one survivor because I couldn't live with that mascara. It's the only thing i'd take on alone in Australia if I was on that, I like, mascara is my thing. And you're right, Claire, that there is like you know, obviously you've got beautiful dark lashes.
And blessed with very thick dark hair all over my body guards. I have to win some of those humehs.
But and I've got basically white eyelashes. But I've seen lots of very fair people with this no mascara trend.
You're supposed to look like that, right, like that, very then.
But I also think it's ageist because it makes you look younger, no question not wearing mascara.
They look baby face, these people.
But when the rest of your face can no longer play that game, you just look like an elderly baby.
So I can't do it.
Just like the side parts, like the skinny jeans, you can take them, take the skinny jeans, but by mascari, you will prize it from my cold deadhand them.
Okay, when was the last time you initiated small talk with a stranger in public? I'm finding that there are certain things that are massive social lubricants that make it easier. I found it a lot easier with a dog when I was at the dog park, because you could just start conversation about your dog, what breed, et cetera, and.
Conversation with the owner of the dog with the dog. See, that's the thing.
I find it easier to talk to animals and babies for people, so because.
What are you going to say?
Yeah, exactly. But sometimes I'd essentially start talking to the dog and it evolves into a conversation with the dog's person. And I do the same thing at the park. So there's a kid, My daughter has run up to the kid to yell at them about something or embrace them aggressively, and then you kind of have to talk. And I find that quite nice social lubricant. But for a long time we've acknowledged that one of our biggest fears as
human beings is public speaking. But now, according to an article in The Guardian by viv grosskop jen Z in particular, are terrified of speaking to anyone in public.
Wow.
In her column The Stranger Secret, How to talk to Anyone and why you should, she recalls being at a restaurant and chatting to the waitress about her hometown of Soul and what life is like there, and when she left, her fifteen year old said to her, how do you know if you're allowed to have that conversation like that, you're allowed to ask about that and that that person is happy to talk about it, And Grosskop said, you don't always know. It's okay. It's a risk and you
have to find out. But that risk taking is disappearing. When we're on the train, or we're waiting in line at the shops, or we're in a waiting room at the doctors. We don't want to talk to anyone and we don't want them to talk to us. And I do.
I want to talk to them.
Really, I love talking to people. I don't know.
I'm not scared.
There's lots of reasons why we've kind of evolved into this way. One is noise canceling, headphones, social media phones, rise of working from home, touch screens in restaurants and self checkouts, death of their spaces, and the pandemic. And psychologist Esther Perell calls it a global relational recession, and she says the point is not depth, the point is practiced. Yes,
the gentle strengthening of our social muscles. So Grosscott basically says, small talk might not profoundly all to your life, but its absence will profoundly alter human life as we know.
It's crucial. Small talk is absolutely crucial.
Tell me how you do it, Give me a script.
All right.
I'm terrible at small talk in some situations, but good in others. So I will always talk to people in shops and stuff, always.
Like the person who runs the shit, yeh.
The person making your coffee.
But do you say, though I talk about the weather, you start with the boring shit, and before you know it, you'll be in there going So, how was that party on the weekend?
Oh?
Did you go to that gear?
And you've built a tiny little bridge between you that isn't meaningful really, but it just makes the world better there a bit nicer.
Right.
So in the town that I live in, in the morning you go the baker for the coffee. Everybody's talking. No one knows anyone, but they're all just go blah blah blah. I'd had a long conversation with a woman the other day about teaching my daughter to drive. I've never seen herm before I'll never see her again, Like they're just all little bridges out.
Into the world.
Although she's so right that it's not important and that's not the point of it. You shouldn't go around talking to people because like, hey, it's important. You should do it just to be a human, But it is one of the quickest ways to get you out of a bubble. Like if you only ever talk to people who you know really well, you're much less likely to ever kind of understand anyone else's point of view, even in a tiny thing. I'm not suggesting you go in and you
start going so I ran. Yeah, not that, but just you know, all those tiny conversations you have with people you bump into, like are more likely to show you that other people's experiences aren't yours, you know what I mean.
Yeah, I feel like exactly what you said, Claire. It is a generation thing, Like I've noticed my parents are really good at small talk and I just kind of sit there and like listen in. But I also think it's a culture thing. I notice also Americans are really good up and I think that's because all of them do it. Like if you're sitting on a subway in New York, in America, everyone's talking to everyone and they're
all strangers. However, if you were just sitting a train in Australia, a stranger would start to ask you questions. You know everyone else is listening in on that conversations because it's so rare for it to happen.
I think it depends.
I'm not sure that everyone on the subway in New York is talking to each other like more Americans.
But it's not weird if they do.
Americans have fewer boundaries. What I remember, it was a young person traveling in the States and I was an English person very much then before I live in Australia. It's like they would just ask really personal questions. Now I'm not advocating for that. They had no boundary about jumping straight in with the whole, like so your situation, are you married?
Do you have children?
Like they're like Americans are really good at that. I'm not advocating for that necessarily. It's just politeness, right, English people talking about cultural stereotypes. We're very good at small talk, but only in a very like oh how about that rain, Like.
We're really good at that stuff. You know what I mean.
I think you're right about generational. I think it's one hundred percent true, because do you remember Claire. Even when I first started working with you guys, I remember, like Claire and Jesse, when they came to work at Mama Mia, they would freak out when you ask them how they're weekend was in the kitchen.
What do you want from me?
I don't want anything. I'm just being polite.
And I wouldn't do it either, because I was just and I think generally I do this in life, and I'm only becoming aware of how it comes across. I'm just in my own head. So when I turned up to work, I'd be thinking, Oh, what am I going to pitch? We've got to stand up? What am I going to write today? And so I wasn't thinking of asking anybody else how they were, And when somebody asked me,
I was shocked. But I think one thing I thought when I read this article was I wonder if one of the things contributing to this is our kind of cultural conversation about what is offensive and what is not right to say to people, and therefore we feel like there's less room for mistakes. And I think this in terms of small talk, but also just in conversation with people you might not know that well where we've got
really strict boundaries. I know that I've absorbed so much about what not to say to someone who's pregnant, what not to say to somebody who might be grieving, what not to say to somebody at work, and then you go to say something, you're so paralyzed by the thought you might offend them that you don't say anything. And that's a million times worse when the fact is, sometimes somebody can come up to you and in Poplar when you're bloody pregnant, people say all sorts of things and
you don't really care. Like sometimes they'll say something quite like oh you're big, and then five seconds later the conversation has changed. Like an inappropriate comment can lead to quite a meaningful interaction. You kind of have to be a bit more forgiving.
I think, what do you think about that? And I think it's true. But I also think that there's a difference between doing small talk with people you know versus doing small talk with strangers. And I think I'm quite good at small talk with people I know, because I feel safe in that. What's annoying is that if I'm with people I know who know me as the talker of the group, and then we're in a different environment.
They expect me to do the work of being the small talker with strangers, and I hate that people who are talkers know that as well. They know they're the talker of the group and they have to take that on. That's what I don't like. I also know that there are certain situations where I definitely don't want small talk.
If I'm getting massage, yeah yeah, talk to me. I once had a missus who was massaging me, and you know when they go to that like where it's like your lower back, but it's kind of your bum and you kind of have to be like okay because it's like you get tents over there too. And she was massaging my bum and she was like, whoa, your skin's so much lighter on this part of that. Oh no, She's like, what is your ethnicity? And I'm like, no time.
So that strays into like inappropriate things, right, because being a fan of small talk doesn't mean that there's like an open door for you to just say inappropriate shit. Like I think you should pay attention to what's inappropriate. But I think a lot of people can tell that, right. I was thinking about my kids. I encourage my kids to talk to strangers, you know what I mean, not in a dangerous way, but it is literally something you have to teach them how to do. So go and
ask the guy where the water is. You know what I mean, you're in the sushi place, whatever, Go and ask the guy where.
The water is.
No, absolutely, not no, absolute. I don't do that as a twenty nine.
Yeah, go and ask the guy where the water is.
No.
But what I notice is that my kids have quite a good radar. So my teenage daughter has quite a good radar for if a stranger starts talking to her on the train or whatever, if they're.
Creepy exactly because they.
Can tell that.
And she's not bad at small talk because she works in a shop, right, like you have to. Hospitality and retail is very good for teaching you how to just be like and be polite and be nice, but have boundaries. And I think that that's really interesting. Even though she's kind of been trained in small talk to a wait a point, it's certainly not to a point where she has to be polite to someone who's being creepy to her.
There's a line there.
But you know that, right, Like, if a guy starts talking to you in the lift or in the coffee queue, you can tell if he's talking to you in a creepy way or if he's just trying to be a decent person, don't you think.
Eventually, not always from the get go, Like sometimes you can be deep into a conversation and then just swings and you're like, oh, you're a bad person.
Well, this article is quite forgiving of the fact that, but there are going to be times when you're not in the mood. There are going to be times when you open a conversation with somebody else who is not in the mood, and the stakes are not that high, Like it's okay if you go to talk to someone and they don't respond, not the end of the world. And if somebody goes short to you, you are not expected to always be open to speaking to them. I think it is very valid, but a lot of women
who have had scary experiences with men. I remember being in my twenties and I had had a very scary experience with a man, and then a week later a guy started talking to me on the train, and I was so terrified, and he got off at my stop, and I was paranoid that he was gonna because he was still chatting to me, and I was like, what if you know where I live and that's not about him, that's about me. But it's also valid, like that is a valid boundary. So I think there's so much there.
But it is a really important skill because I notice sometimes with young people, and I'm very empathetic because I was the same the young people who don't know how to make malfunction.
Myself won't do it, but that's that's for different reasons, and he gets very upset when we try and make him do it. But I think even the massage example, sometimes if you're.
In the mood and you like them, you.
Come out of that kind of interaction with like an amazing story, not necessarily a story to tell people, but like, wow, I learned all about their life and where their kids, what their kids are doing, and how many jobs are Like I think it's a window into other people's worlds. And maybe I like collecting those, maybe because I'm a writer, maybe because I'm nosy. I like collecting stories from people I don't know, because otherwise you just in this everybody
knows everyone. The place I'm terrible at small talk, which is ironic, is work functions.
I hate them.
Like if I'm at A, I mean obviously, if I'm with my friends, it's good and I do it all that. I've been doing it for decades, so I can do it. But I find that much harder, Like.
Holly, here's Benny. Benny works at BLA. You work at blah.
Oh really, I get really, I get really nervous. The people I think are the best at small talk who I always have the best conversations with a makeup artists, oh so good when before I always think before you go, if you ever do television and the makeup artist does your makeup beforehand, I'm always like, this is a better conversation than what we're gonna have because you're a vibe and they always just have and I feel very comfortable being like, what celebrities have you done makeup for? And
what were they like? And the last makeup artist I talked to did the makeup for a bride on Mauth and it was just a really lovely Let's keep this small going forever.
I'd love to know if any out louders have like a go to small talk question because we've talked about that before sometimes on the show, whether or.
Not you should say, so, what are you passionate about?
Right watching?
Like, I think those kind of fake small talk questions are really hard. I'd love to know if anyone's got an absolutely I actually saw.
In an out loudist thread for icebreaker questions, one of them was what's the tiniest hill you'll die on?
Oh?
I love it. I love it that oh, because it allows the person the opportunity to be funny, yeah and mean.
Sometimes in a moment, I'm going to introduce you to a thirteen year old ce.
Out loud as it's MEA and it's Friday. How good are we feeling? I am not often summoned by name by an out louder in a dilemma, but Vanessa, who is wondering whether she should give up her job to support her family, asked our advice and name checked me as someone who she had in her head. And so I listened to everything that you had to say in the group. I listened to Amelia, Holly and Jesse's conversation on the.
Show, and I have some thoughts.
I have some new thoughts I have some possibly controversial thoughts.
So Amelia and I did a whole.
Subscriber episode where I have entered the Working Mother Chat. It's called Mia Enters the Working Mother Chat. And if you want to listen to it right now and you're not already a subscriber, follow the link in the show notes to hear it immediately and get us in your ears five days a week.
So there's a new, super cool skincare brand sucking up a lot of attention online and I'm telling you about it because it's CEO is thirteen years old. It's not news that the target market for skincare has been getting younger and younger and younger. We've talked about it a few times, and there are many opinions about that, about whether we should be encouraging children to smear the late stage capitalism all over their.
Faces, etc. But it was probably the.
Next logical conclusion that there would be companies making skincare for kids fronted by kits and so meet Coco Grandison. Here is a little snippet of Coco.
Ended up damaging of pugs that were way too harsh on my skin. That's when it hit me. I couldn't be the only one kids, I guess want skincare actual roots wasn't harsh, something gentle, fun and actually made for us. So I thought, we're not creating it myself. But start's chest as dreaming turning to a real brand. I well, at school, I've taken meetings, mom's car keeping classes, friends, followball and started building yesterday with my family.
Right, So a quick explain. Grandison comes from a fancy la family. Her dad's a Hollywood entertainment lawyer who represents people like Asap Rocky Right. Her mum was a clinical researcher before she had her three daughters. According to a profile in the Coco was on a plane. I think we can just leave. What kind of plane?
It just sounds like she was having more than small daughter.
Coco was on a plane with a big businessman friend of her parents and talking about how someone should make a kid's skin care line that kids actually want to use, And apparently the big businessman friends said, I want you to have some ideas by the time we land right next minute. Somehow, Coco and the Grandisons are working with Ron Robinson, who's the cosmetic chemist who helped build road
for Hailey Beaver so he's a very big deal. He's the guy you want if you're starting a skincare line next weekend.
You want to get Ron on the phone.
If she can, Coco can give me those details.
Sally a brand was born and now thirteen year old Coco is a boss lady. Did you two read this profile of the latest beauty girl boss and what did you think about Ceo teenagers?
I'm completely obsessed. She is her mother's boss and their sea Sweet is the car. Just her vibe is hilarious. I mean, I do want it said that it is a genius business move to have a thirteen year old as the face of this and all over the instagram is her and she's beautiful. That's no coincidence that she looks the way she does. But this is very much a puppeteer situation. Ron's the big dog.
I reckon, I reckon, Mom's the big dog.
Yeah, mom, mom.
I believed everything. I read this and I immediately felt like a huge failure. No, no, I did, and it made me think beause not being born to those parents in LA, not being on my private jet making up business plans. I'm in that generation where, like gen Z younger millennial where half my friends are working for companies and the other half are doing their own thing. And what's really annoying is that the half that are doing their own thing are really successful and are really good
at it. And it's gotten to the stage where if I talk to someone under the age of twenty five, they're either working on their own brand and are like trying to move into that full time, or in their head they're basically saying And I had this conversation with a younger cousin of mine and he said, I'll work at this company for a year, but then I have to do my own thing, Like you don't want to be staying in a company.
Yeah, So being an entrepreneur is now exceptionally aspiration, right, whereas I think it used to be a little bit like, oh, not very secure, not very safe.
Da da da da dah. But they don't actually know what they want to do. They just want to do their own thing and they'll eventually figure it out. And I do feel a bit sad that I feel like we're going to get a whole generation of young people in the workforce not really experiencing the workforce. And I talk about MoMA Mia all the time and talk about how I made my best friends here. And I know with my friends who have moved to work on their own brands and have moved to freelance, the one thing
they miss is like friendships. They benefited from making friendships when they started in the workforce, but now they don't make any friends anymore.
Because I have a lot of common with Coco because she said she was talking to beauty influencers at an event and they didn't go to school anymore. They're being homeschool, which we'll get to in a minute, and she was like, oh, no, I don't want to do that because of my friends. She's on Flapo, so I still want to go to school.
She's a girl.
She does want to retire at nineteen though she's eighteen is too old to be selling skincare.
At kids, which is like wow.
And then she wants to go to college, and then after college she's going to retire.
Yeah. I made a list of things that Coco is going to be missing out on for doing her own and.
That's a great way to reframe. It's like gratitude for your life instead of Coco.
Some of them are nice, some of them not so nice. So also including friendships, having to travel to the office when it's done. The storming, that's an adventure. Yeah, it's an adventure. Forgetting your lunch at home and buying an eighteen dollars sandwich. You've got to experience that at least once.
Absolutely.
The fear of realizing you've forgotten to put your leave in and you're already playing. Oh I like where are you?
Yeah, and Coco is like, wait, I am my boss, I am.
My boss, and this is my own plan. The fear of having to call in sick two days in a row.
Oh yeah, I know, and sound sick enough.
Yes, Oh yeah.
Pizza parties. You don't get pizza parties in by yourself getting drunk with the account's team.
Pizza is not good for the skin babes.
Yeah, I'm sure, sure, I know.
Coco is going to develop some sort of like chili oil but for the skin, and it's plumping, but your whole skin plumps up.
Oh my god. Stop.
And she's so smart and rehearsing on how to ask for a pay rise, like I don't know what these kids are going to do when it comes to pay rise.
Well, you know, it's not just Coco. I do want to talk a bit about the corporatization of kids, right, because one of the things about this is obviously Coco's from a very specific family, and so is the example I'm about to give you two. But one thing I noticed a lot when I listen or read interviews with kind of let's call them the billionaire people, like the properly fancy tech people, Hollywood people, you know, is they
are not and they probably never have. But they're certainly not just sending their kids to the local high school anymore, where they're sitting there learning about Second Mold War.
Like you.
There used to be Hollywood High where literally celebrities did
send their kids. But I was listening to Kim Kardashian talking to her sister about homeschooling their kids and about how they tailor their education to their passions, right, And I think that although obviously Kim Kardashian is the relatable celebrity, ever, I think there is something here about a lot of parents in the age of AI and as you say, that drive everyone wants to be their own boss, Like, well, why would I send them to learn facts at school
when the robots know all the facts? Google knows all the facts. Here's just a little bit of what Kim Kardashian said.
She has a brand building class. You know, it's like an actual course and a curriculum of learning, fully interactive learning. And so she wanted she had an idea of making hats and making jewelry and all the things she wanted
to make. So we made it a course and she has to do the web design, and she has to do the budgeting, and she has to go to the stores and get materials and sewing, and we do like full fashion courses, and she goes to in the summers, like to Fit in New York and goes to fashion Camp.
To be clear, Kim Kardashian was talking about North, who is twelve.
North is my idol.
Klass thoughts, Okay, thoughts on teaching kids to be brands, whether that's smart.
Two thoughts. One, this isn't actually as revolutionary as it sounds, because there has been a movement in education over the last i want to say decade towards project based learning and project based learning is they do it at my dad's school. If anyone ever wants to talk about it, he can cheat ear off about it. But it's basically, there's like four kids, we're going to build a robot. And it's not that you're in science or maths or
history or whatever. But the idea is you have this project to complete and you need to bring in all the skills from all these different disciplines in order to do it. And Dad's school performs very very well academically.
And that's what Naught's doing.
Yes, so it's not actually as absurd as that is the idea of learning through a project. And I guess the thing I really like about it as well when Dad talks about it, is you can find your little bit of passion to get you motivated to do the thing, like there will be something about building a robot that
you find particularly fascinating. But the thing about the brand building and the thing about Coco, I think you had such a good point, m that there's something very individualistic and that's a little bit scary going forward that because I guess I'll bring in my personal experience here. I'm the CEO of Clere Stevens Creative you are, I'm a freelancer who sometimes refers to myself as an entrepreneur, and sometimes I like to say Cleare Stevens. Creative doesn't open December.
It's We're closed in December, and it's like, clear, did you work this month? And I'm like no. But it is lonely and there are parts like for me, that you absolutely love about it, but it is very It sometimes feels really egotistical, like you're not doing things.
A lot of it.
You have to reframe your mind to think what am I doing that benefits me? Whereas when you're in the workplace, my default and maybe it is good that I'm doing this because it's challenging my default, which was I'll do everything for everyone else and like kind of leave myself just flailing in the background because I've wanted to people please.
But that's what I worry about with Coco and with North that you know, brand building great skill, but how about relating to other people and how about contributing to society in a way that doesn't directly benefit you.
Yeah, it's interesting because in this profile they were talking about how because I think the brand has just launched, which is why there's all these think pieces about it and interviews, but they were talking about the pop up that they had at that trendy shopping center in La the Growth, and Coco had this hard lesson of like, it's kind of embarrassing to be standing at a pop up and like saying to people, back to small talk, saying to people, hey, do you want to try my
you know, my face wash? And the friends who don't really get it, like why aren't you in Sepphort, Why aren't these products in Sephora already? And then some people didn't turn up for their shift on the pop up thing, and she's like, it's so annoying.
So she's like learning all those things.
Possibly the most relatable part of thirteen year old CEO. Coco is like another thing that a lot of billionaires families do. She's not allowed on social media, even though her whole business exists there. And actually this business couldn't quite exist in Australia because she's a thirteen year old selling to other thirteen year olds on social media and you can't do that here anymore.
But she's not allowed on social media.
So her mom writes the captions and stuff, and then Coco gives her feedback.
And this is the best bit.
They said.
They're sitting in their cargoing through them and Coco's like, this is great, this is terrible, this is good because I posted it.
Why did you write slay girl?
You cannot use the laughing emoji mom or the crying emoji, or the party had emoji on somebody's birthday or the red heart emoji.
Oh my god, I cried.
Journalist is like, I asked why.
And then I realized this was a stupid question. The reason is adults don't know.
And I was like, imagine your thirteen year old kid being your boss. I mean, I know, I know a lot of teenage parents feel like they're thirteen your kids are their boss, or that they're toddlers or their preschoolers are their boss.
But this literally is. And she's just like, Mom, you're ruining the brand. You're so embarrassing.
We're all familiar with the term adolescence. It's what makes thirteen year old girls become skincare. But that's not the only profound stage of human development where we experience biological, psychological, and emotional growth. When you become a mother, your brain rewires, your body changes, your identity transforms, and the word for that process, that neurological reorganization, is matrescence. So I've been familiar with this term for a while because we've covered
it at Mummeya. And actually I became really interested in it in about the week before I gave birth because I had this weird feeling of being between two stay and I kept trying to google, like, wor is happening to me emotionally? And I found the most beautiful writing from other women that described exactly what's happening to your brain.
But a new campaign by Peanut, which is an app for connecting mums, in collaboration with Tommy Tippy, who make products for expressing and feeding, is lobbying for the inclusion of matrescence in the dictionary. So the president of Peanut is Michelle Battersby, who people might have heard of the Friend of the Pog.
You hosted our first season of Biz.
She did, and she's an Aussie and lots of business experience, and she has two little boys.
And this is a very good marketinga oh gosh, I'm like, this just goes to show that like brain fog in, like postpartum is not a thing for all people.
Also that thirteen year could not own she could never.
She could never. So they took out a full page ad in the New York Times that read, I don't give a fuck IDGAF is in the dictionary. Matrescence isn't It's time to give a fuck about mothers. Below that was a QR code and when you scanned it, it took you to a change dot org petition, which currently has over seven thousand signatures, and the petition says sixty seven percent of mothers have never heard the term attrescence.
They go through one of the most destabilizing experiences of their lives, thinking they're broken, thinking they're alone, thinking there is something wrong with them. M had you heard this term before you saw this campaign?
I had not heard this term, which I was surprised at because I work among men. I thought I knew everything there is to know about being a month the term. It's wild to me that it doesn't exist in the dictionary, because whenever I talk to my friends who have been through pregnancy, who are mothers, that's the first thing they tell me is like, how when they have their kids, how it felt like everything changed, like mentally, physically, emotionally.
I wanted to know from the two of you, because this isn't in the dictionary, what would be your own personal definition.
That's.
What would yours say.
The way I would describe it is, and I do think I think mothers go through something unique. I think fathers definitely have a version of this because I remember Rory and I leaving hospital with Matilda and saying, it's like in the Matrix when I always forget which way round with the red pill and the blue pill. But
it's like you're seeing things through totally different eyes. You're seeing there's like and it's weird talking about this because I also understand that I don't actually think that Matressn's or motherhood is the only time where this happens. I think grief probably rewires your brain in a really similar way. But what it did to me, I felt like I unlocked a whole new level of empathy where I would look at everyone and think of them as a child,
and I find it really hard to have. I think I had a lot more staunch opinions before I had a child, and now I'm like, but that person was just once an innocent baby, and it's not their fault, and what is any of our fault? Like I have a lot more kind of maybe compassion in that way, but also I reckon. Neurologically, it streamlines your brain where a lot of the things I used to care about I just simply don't care about anymore, and I couldn't if I tried. And it makes you a better decision
maker for me, like a lot more efficient. I think you see it in the workplace. You can see some, but again, I think there are other experiences that do a similar rewiring. But sometimes you see a mother who works three days a week and you think she's doing five days of work because she is so bloody efficient.
I think it's complicated, right, because how does parenthood change you is a big question. What matrescence is. It feels like a process, isn't that.
The idea of it? Like it's a process that happens to you.
That's partly physiological because of the hormones are changing in your body, and partly environmental because everything about your life has changed, as you just said. And I think one of the reasons why I struggle to verbalize it is because, just like adolescents or puberty, when you've been through it, it's just absorbed into who you are. I mean, when was the last time you really considered puberty and who you were?
Before and after, you know what I mean.
Whereas now I've been a parent for a long time, it's just so much a part of who I am that it's very hard to unpick what was that and
what wasn't. I think this campaign's really interesting because I think that obviously it's a marketingployee for brands, which is, you know, so's lots of great content these days and lots of great ideas, but it is crazy that it isn't recognized and at the moment we sort of feel like we've been living through a moment where no one will shut up about menopause and perimenopause, for example, and that we're all getting a little bit tired of that
in a way. But that's because for so long it wasn't recognized at all as also being something very similar to adolescence and puberty, which is this whole period where everything shifts for you again physiologically, environmentally, and of course it has an impact on you. But because these are experiences that affect women, I totally take your point clear that, of course becoming a parent affects men, but matressence in itself is a female experience that it's not important or
interesting or why would you document it? Oh it's a little bit made up, you know. So I think it's really interesting to try and get it put in the dictionary because culturally we're not desperately interested in the experiences of mothers.
I mean, other mothers are.
That's a whole world.
But as if you think about, say the dialogue around or what would Taylor Swift write songs about now that she's settling down, it's like, oh my god, I don't know, maybe one of the most profound shifts you could ever go through as a human being.
That sounds like good.
I know that there's an out louder and a musician called Claire Tonti who wrote an album called Matrescence that was all about this, and I think it's very much Again, people can get a bit eyerolly about it because they're like, oh, mum's banging on about mum stuff. But it's like a really profound shift, and the profundity of it is is difficult to look back on when you're where I am, because you're like, but that's just who I've become, you know what I mean.
I think that term and I think putting it in the dictionary, recognizing it more would mean, And I know that for me it allowed me to give myself a bit more grace about having changed and a bit more grace about like when you think about adolescence, you weirdly don't come out of adolescence thinking, oh, it was so good to not have my period.
And also to be honest, But apart from the very clear Marcus like periods, the years and years that you're going through those shifts, you don't recognize that all of your moods and you're not all of your moods, but many of your moods, opinions, environmental factors are to do with that.
You're just in it.
It's just your water, exactly. And so that's why I always find it fascinating the question when people ask should I have children? Is it better or worse? You hear people have conversations about regretting becoming and I'm like, it's just such a transformational experience that I don't think you can ever answer that. And for me, it's been this thing where I think you can have an experience that's really, really hard, and I genuinely do not believe I'd been
through any adversity before I gave birth. And had a child, not that it's like birth with an adversity, but raising a child and sleep deprivation and not knowing what you're doing and learning how to breastfeed, and fear and all of that, being more vulnerable than you've ever felt in your whole life. That adversity, I think it brings like a depth and a connection, like a connection to your mother and a connection to other women who have been through it. That is really quite found. You can go
through something really hard and there's value in it. You're not wishing you didn't go through it. It's strange. I think the comparison to adolescence is actually quite helpful.
After the break, we have two podcasts you need to listen to and one book that I cannot stop thinking about. Vibes ideas, atmosphere, something casual, something fun. This is my best recommendation. It is Friday, and we want to help set up your weekend with our very best recommendation.
I'm going to go first. So my recommendation is a podcast called Hometown Boys, and it's by ABC's Background Briefing, so it's in the background briefing feed. So my interest in this started because I read an incredible digital storytelling piece on ABC called The Town That Turned its Back on a rape Victim, and I was just hooked on every word. And it was about a young woman named Elise. They've changed her name for privacy, but she was twenty.
She grew up in this town called Balmoral, which is in Country Victoria, and then she went to UNI, came back for twenty first and at this twenty first she's it's just all people she's grown up with, went to school with. All the families are so in mesh because it's a small town. She ends up in a caravan with two young men that she had been to school with, knew them very well, and she was raped by both of them. And I can say raped because they were
found guilty in a court of law twice. And the story is all about how when she pursues legal action, the town turns against her and her family because these young men are footy stars and they are beloved in the community. So I didn't realize until the out Louders put it in that this is also a six part investigative podcast, and I was sort of like, I read the article, like should I listen? And within five minutes you realize that there is so much more depth to this.
Two reporters named Charlotte King and Andy Burns go to balmorl and speak to so many of the people involved. They read out court transcripts. There is so much more nuance to the story that can even be conveyed in the long form article. But what I just cannot stop thinking about is the fact that it really gets to the crux of cases like these and how we struggle to believe these kinds of allegations no matter the evidence.
Like you can have all the evidence, you can have people found guilty, and we know how hard that is when it comes to sexual assault cases. You can have people found guilty twice and still people point the finger at the woman and you find yourself this is so horrible. But you find yourself thinking, and I think it is human nature. You hear these stories and you think was she telling the truth? And then you think, why on
earth is my default to question the woman? And it also made me question the narrative that always gets brought up in these cases, which is she was embarrassed, she regretted it, so she called Rayah. And you think, putting yourself in those shoes, if I had sex with somebody and I've regretted it and I felt embarrassed. Yeah, I wouldn't stand in court twice and free.
Tell through the hostile law environment to go through this, I mean.
In front of your family and your friends and everyone you've ever known, and said, he put his finger here, and then he did this, and then he did this. It just makes no sense. But it's just such an interesting story about footy culture, about small towns, about what happens in mesh community when somebody is accused of for crime. Cannot commended.
It sounds amazing.
Hol, I've got a podcast series to recommend, Claire. You recommended a podcast series the other week, and it made me remember how much I missed them, actually, those kind of episodic shows. But I've just listened to one that I'm recommending because it's so interesting. But I also need people to listen to it so we can discuss it because I'm conflicted about it.
Right.
Do you remember last year?
Was it last year when the big stink about the Saltpath blew up?
Yes?
I know exactly what we're going to recommend them. Yeah, here for it.
So the Saltpath is this book that I recommended on the show once written by a woman called Raina Winn. I stand by the fact it is a brilliant, beautiful book. Anyway, last year a British broadsheet called The Observer newspaper did this big investigative piece that have been ages in the making. Rather this incredible investigative reporter that basically said that a
lot of claims in that book weren't true. And now the same reporter, who is called Chloe had jim Asa, has made a podcast about it, a seven part podcast about it. Now she is the narrative editor and at the Obbos, which is a very well respected newspaper in Britain, and she's also one loads of awards for investigative journalism,
so she's got the chops right. And basically after that she published that written piece about how the Salt Path was nonsense, all these people came out of the woodwork and said, I know them, I'll tell you more stories. Dead family members came out and said, oh, let me tell you about that time that she did this, and blah blah. And that's what's turned into this podcast that's
called The Walkers. It's a very clever name because the Walkers is their real name that she's not really called Rayna Winn, she's.
Called Sally Walker. But they also walked, and they also walked, so it's a very clever name. So it's called The Walkers.
It's by Tortoise Media, and it is seven parts of kind of on picking Salt Path. And I'm recommending it because it's great and interesting, particularly if you've read the book.
But the other thing about it that's really interesting that I need to talk about is like some of the things that Hadjimathau uncovers and debunks are really important, big things, right, Like there's these big questions about whether or not Sally's husband, Tim, who's called in the book, really has this terrible degenerative, incurable disease. That is a big part in that that's an unanswered question. Certainly she and he deny that that's
nonsense and say that's deeply offensive. And also the fact that there are allegations that she also denies that she stole money from lots of different family members, which is it's fascinating personality study. But then a lot of the other things in here are really petty. They're like that cafe they went to on page six isn't really called that, they don't serve. Pannini's the guy who's a boss isn't there. But and I think maybe because I'm a writer, that kind of stuff really irritates me.
I'm like, why are you?
Like she's kind of obviously consolidated many cafes that she went to on that walk to tell you this story, and like, who gives a shit? And it's like, maybe it was March. She said it was May, she said it was raining, they said it was blah. Like some
of them are really petty. But it's also a fascinating uncovering of how much people hate being misrepresented in other people's stories, because there are also in Rainer's book, in Sally Walker's book, to disguise family members and real people, she's given them pseudonyms and said, so there's a cousin who in the book is a friend called Vicki or whatever, and the real Vicky who's the cousin, hates the way she protect like, she made me sound rude, she made
me sound this, She said this about me that isn't true, And it's like it's really fascinating because the ethics of it are dubious, but also there are bits of it, and I'm like, let the woman write a book, you know what I mean, Like, it's really so anyway, I'm obsessed.
I've listened to the whole thing.
I need people who are particularly people who care about the Salt Bath to listen to it too, so that we can discuss the petty versus serious nature of this.
It's called The Walkers and you'll find it wherever you find your podcast.
Oh my gosh, I need to listen to that.
So excited. I've done a lot of reading watching when I was on holiday. I was also on holiday, in case you missed it, I read a book by Jeanette McCurdy.
She wrote I'm glad my mom died.
Yes, which I think is getting made for the screen now. She's been a child actor. She was famously in I Carlie. A lot of people know her. She wrote her first novel. It's called Half His Age, and it's about a teenage girl named Waldo, which I didn't know was a real name.
Yeah maybe it isn't.
It sounds like a dog, Yeah, yeah, Waldo.
She's seventeen and she has a huge crush on her teacher named mister Corgy, and it goes into these extremely problematic age gap relationships and the relationship between the two of them. But it's one of those like I feel like we're getting a lot of age gap relationship novels recently, and I love them all. It's one of my favorite tropes. Weirdly, this one just went in a way that I did
not expect, and it's so well written. She also I listened to some of it on audiobook and Janette narrates it herself, and I love her voice because she also did I'm Glad my Mom died. And it's so well done. It's such a quick read. I think it's around two hundred pages. I think I went through the whole thing in one day on a plane on a plane ride. It's so juicy. It starts off with Kindlinger's hole you would love that. I like, I was, please, I need to correct the record.
We'll never let you live It in as.
A scene in my about coloring my coworkers, never let me forget. These are the things no one tells you about being an authort it and then I was just about to say then when you were like it starts, I was about.
Saying I love a journey opening and then I was.
Like, that's why I will never write a sex scene, because my family would never let me live it down, and neither would my friends.
Continue out, there's a lot and a lot of sex in this. But what's also she does really well, and I wonder if this is from her personal experience, was the mother daughter dynamic. She writes that really well, her mum is a sex addict, and you see the interactions between the older character and the mum, and it's done
so well. And I also remember in her memoir she also had was in an age gap relationship, and I think she brings a lot of experience to the story, which if you've read her memo you'll be able to see. But her writing is so beautiful, and I always feel a bit weird reading like celebrity fiction because I'm like, how good can you be? And this is really good. I really like it's.
Smart of her because that's such a conversation in the zeitgeist at the moment with the Epstein Files, which obviously deals with horrific allegations of Peter philia, but there's also a lot of conversation going on about, well, what about the girls who are over eighteen? And there's a lot of defenders and naysayers who are like, he just likes them young, and who cares that all the guys were sixty and they were all eighteen, Like you know what
I mean? Like that cultural conversation about what's okay what's not okay is like very in the air.
Yeah, oh my god, you got the biggest egg from this teacher.
Oh but it's so good. That is literally next on my list. I have a spreadsheet where I cook books that I want to read, have to keep track.
That is all we have time for today. Out louders, Thank you so much for being with us all week. Thank you Klaus Stephens, who is the new Jesse Stevens, thank you. And to my wonderful m who's back from her holiday.
Not that you're mine, but you know who.
Would like to thank our incredible team.
Oh can I because I haven't done it? Yes, thanks to our group executive producer Ruth Devine, executive producer Sasha Tannic, our senior audio producer is Leah Porge's, our video producer is Josh Green, and our junior content producer is Tessa Kodovich.
Bye bye, Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land on which we have recorded this podcast.