You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Mama Mea acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on three two one. Hell, Jesus Christ, what happens?
What happens very quick? I've missed you.
We've got to get counted down from three and.
She counted down fast.
I went too fast. I'm sorry. I'm raring to go the Joe Biden. Let's go again right now. This is for me count three two one, Hello, and welcome to Mama Mia out Loud. It's what women are actually talking about on Monday, the first of July. I'm Holly wayIn right, and before we get into it, I want to welcome all our new subscribers because we've had lots of them in the past week, and I think it might have something to do with our birthday deal, which is still
on right now. If you become a Mamma mea subscriber at the moment, you get twenty dollars off a yearly subscription just by using the code out loud Birthday. Thank you and welcome.
I'm me Friedman, I'm Jesse Stevens. Out Louders love a deal. I love a deal. It's Cosey. I just great time to become a subscriber and reminder that we have hundreds. I'd take thousands, but I think that's incorrect. Hundreds of backlog episodes that you can listen to that will last you for the rest of your life. You want to go on subscriber episode. There is so much fun.
When too much out Loud is never enough. On today's show, decoding the binfire fever dream that is the American presidential race after Friday's debate and why it might all be a woman's fault of course, also the bride rioting over her wedding photos and Australian politicians Wayward Sons have a group chap and it's in a major newspaper. There you but first me a freedman in case you missed it.
It's a very big time for France at the moment, particularly Paris. They've got the Olympics coming up in a few weeks. They're having an election that is not looking good for Emmanuel Macron. But the story that we're most interested in here and out Loud is the poop protest. Here's what's happened. We're four weeks out from the Paris Olympics and so excited about Parisians are planning to celebrate
or protest by pooping in the Seine. The Sin is the big river that goes through the center of Paris, and it's been illegal to swim there since nineteen twenty three due to pollution. It's not a very clean river.
It's very brown.
No, it's very brown. But while bidding for the Olympics, the French government said they'd clean it up. I think the triathlon and para triathlons are going to involve swimming in the Seine, right, So the Prime Minister, Emmanuel mccau he confirmed that it would cost around two point twenty five billion dollars Australian to clean the river. Parisians weren't
happy about that. They said that's too expensive, and they also say we're not happy about the strain that the Games is going to put on our public transport system. People always say that they're all leaving, all organized after it such trolls. After it was cleaned for two billion dollars, they all organized to protest that by poohing in it.
Oh my god, I'm mad about that.
And so now they think because they're still e coal I detected at unacceptable levels. So what my court said he was going to do is go for a swim in the scent to prove how clean it was. That was called off on the weekend because of the pooh, And now they're thinking that maybe the triathlon will not have a swimming part.
This is why we can't things. It would benefit all Parisians if it was cleaned up. That is a lot of money, but it's an investment. It's been one hundred years since you could swim in it. Yeah, it was going to cost a lot of money. But the idea of swimming near the Eiffel Tower, like, it gets very hot in Paris and there is nowhere to swim, so
that could be a lovely thing for everyone. So what's the thinking behind my tax paid dollars have already gone towards cleaning this very dirty river that is still dirty. I'm going to go and shit in it. This is everything wrong with humanity.
People always get like this before an Olympics. I am old enough to remember, as you would be meya. Just before the Sydney.
Olympics, no one was pooing in Sydney High No, but.
Sydney people were pissed off. Right after the Olympics, they loved it. In the lead up to the Olympics in Sydney, there was like, it's costing us too much money. There's all this money going into this that should be going into this, this, and this Sydney side is saying I'm leaving. I'm gonna rent my house so I don't want to be here. And then it happened and everyone went, oh my god, that was amazing. Everybody loved it.
Best Olympics ever.
Yeah, it's like in the lead up to the Olympics, everyone hates it. And I heard that Paris have been trying to do it differently and like use existing infrastructure and all that kind of stuff, because that's the only way to do it.
This sin would be considered infrastructure.
So you know, I reckon that in a few weeks time, on the other side of the Olympics, all the Parisians who pooped in the sein will be feeling a bit dirty about it, a shamed as I should.
The forty sixth President of the United States, Joe Biden for Caloria, and please welcome the forty fifth President of the United States, Donald Trump.
And if I'm elected I'm going to restore Roe v.
Wade.
He's willing to, as we say, rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month and kill the baby. Nobody wants that to happen. Democrat or Republican, nobody wants.
It to happen.
And I'm in very good health. I just won two club championships, not even senior, two regular club championships. To do that, you have to be quite smart, and you have to be able to hit the ball a long way. And I do it. He doesn't do it. He can't hit a ball fifty yards. He challenged me to a golf match. He can't hit a ball fifty yards.
We're able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I've been able to do with the with the COVID, I excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with Look if we finally beat Medicare, and I'm going to continue to move until we get the total ban on the total initiative relative to what we're going to do with more border patrol and more asylum off.
President Trump, I really don't know what he said at the end of this. I don't think he knows what he said either.
Most Americans, most overwhelming majority, do not want to see these two running against each other, and America's political system could not come up with a better choice than a rerun of what happened four years ago.
On Friday, Australian time, US President Joe Biden and former US President Donald Trump engaged in their first political debate of the twenty twenty four election campaign, with four months to go before Americans head to the polls. I'm spiraling.
Very much.
The presidential debate is meant to showcase policy ideas and each candidate's vision for their presidency. I don't know how to describe what happened last week. Eighty one year old Biden was barely coherent. He lost his train of thought. His voice was quiet and hoarse, and he looked completely out of his depth. He looked terrified, and he looked quite pale. He didn't look well and.
In the split screen because they had quite strict conditions, the Democrats established all the conditions for this debate, including that the other person's microphone would be switched off when each person was speaking, right, because Trump just interrupts and takes over and won't shut up. So they did that
there was also no audience because two elections go. When he was debating Hillary Clinton, he would do all sorts of shenanigans, like he brought into the audience to sit in the front row the women who had accused Bill Clinton of sexually assaulting them. The Democrats also decided they wanted it to be much earlier. There's never been a presidential debate this early, usually within the November election. The US elections always at the same time. The debates are usually in September.
I thought you met earlier in the day because Joe Biden, Yeah, hired.
Also that but in the split screen, so they showed the face of the person who wasn't talking, and in every split screen when he wasn't speaking, Biden had his mouth sort of a little bit open, and he was sort of squinting and just looking really confused.
She looked like shocked or yeah.
Yeah. He'd completely disoriented.
He didn't have energy. He looked completely out of his depth, so much so that a White House official told outlets that Biden had a cold, seemingly as a way of explaining his performance. Then there was seventy eight year old Trump, a convicted felon on thirty four counts only weeks ago found guilty of a scheme to illegally influence the twenty sixteen election through a hush money payment to a porn
actor who says the two had sex. Trump was more restrained than we've seen him in the past, but he predictably routinely lied, including stating that Biden is, as you heard, willing to rip the baby out of the womb in the nine month and kill the baby. As you heard there too. There are parts of this debate that sounded more like a bad reality TV show or a skit on Saturday Night Live than a real high stakes political exercise.
There's heaps to unpack. The general consensus, In fact, I have heard no other take other than this is that Biden needs to step aside. Part of being the president is instilling confidence in the nation that you are fit and competent as a leader. And we know the US economy is struggling horrific international conflicts. No one would trust Biden with that job at the moment. Maya, how do you think this left people feeling? What was the general mood?
I don't think that people are shocked, but this was worst case scenario.
People are shocked.
People were shocked. So Biden had one job, and that is to disprove what people have been saying for several years now that he's too old to run and that he's not up to it. That was his only job. So all the terms of the debate, which was set by the Democrats, were designed to help him. Essentially, all Trump had to do is to really kind of not throw his own feces at the wall, and true, that's all he had to do.
Will appear a little bit restrained. That's his achilles heel, and then you've got Biden's achilles heel. And they both had two different jobs.
So the bar for both candidates, this is what's so deeply depressing, was so low, Like it was so low, and neither of them cleared it. But the fact that Biden stumbled so badly and it was so much worse than anyone could have possibly ever imagined. As you say, Jesse, there was no one in the Democratic Party really, I mean, you know, Obama and a few people have come out and sort of tried to say he had a bad night,
he had a bad debate. What it takes to win an election is a very different set of skills to what it takes to actually be the president. A lot of people say that that's why Hillary Clinton lost because she's terrible at campaigning, but she would have been an amazing president. Trump is very good at campaigning, and if you say very good, means by getting a lot of
attention in aging people. Because remember, the whole thing about the American political system is because voting isn't compulsory, you have to make people so interested and so passionately for you that they will go and vote and take time out of their day, their job, their family, whatever it is, and standing a long line and vote. They've got to vote for something or really against something.
And everyone who's vaguely progressive or left leaning was very much ready to vote against Trump, and let's face it, they probably still will be. But all of those people were swallowing what had been being fed to them for a long time, which is like, it's nonsense, all these fears about Joe, Like you know, because this dialogue has been going on for a long time, and you say me,
here but a few years. But Biden's camp and Biden's spin doctors and Biden's surrogates and everyone who is hoping that Donald Trump loses the election, has been saying no, no, he's great, it's okay, you know, like he's still sharp. I just find it hard to watch, Like I couldn't even watch clips because I actually feel just desperately sorry for him, even though I know it's all his fault.
We'll get to scond career.
Biden's fault, yes, but you've got to remember too that that was a version of Biden who had spent a week locked away and prepped for that debate right whereas Trump had campaigned up until the last minute. He knows exactly that this is the criticism aimed at him, and a lot of the things I've read have said the worst performance you can give in a public debate is one that confirms everybody's fears. So, as you said me, he had one job, which was to allay everybody's fears,
and he did exactly the opposite. And it was so sad to watch because this is a very serious time, Like it is always a very serious time, but this is a very serious time. These are not serious people, Like if we're supposed to believe what we've been being told by the democratic side of politics for a very long time, which is that Donald Trump is an existential threat to everything. And I tend to believe in that.
I think he's one of the most dangerous about him because he stands for nothing except himself, and he will make deals with and align himself with the most dangerous people in the world if they will pump up his tires. So it is an existential threat, and yet it's just being allowed to devolve into a banter about golf.
The absolute shock and horror which quickly curdled in me to fury about a country that I don't even live in, is how could it come to this? How could in a country the size of America. These are the two choices. It's twenty twenty four, that's what America is putting up.
It says a lot about power structures. I think that it's a seventy eight year old white man and an eighty one year old white man.
Do you know what? It also says a lot about the utter, utter hubris of And I'm just going to talk about Joe Biden here, someone who won't be told, who has no self awareness. I believe that he is a patriot. He cares about his country, he cares about America, and the fact that he can't see that he is going to lose this election in the most massive way. The fact that his ego will not allow him to step aside. Even though when he ran the first time
he said I'm going to be a bridging president. He essentially said I'm not going to run for a second term. So somewhere along the way around chose you.
So you've got to understand though, To understand that is that in the normal order of things, he would definitely run for a second term. That's how it works, right. You are allowed to serve two terms and no more so most people who go and sit in that presidential chair of thinking I'm going to do two terms. Of course Donald Trump, but his age, his health or those things, as you say, I have indicated that he was not going to do that, and yet he chose to do that.
The nature of aging is also an erosion of self awareness. So part of me does have a lot of empathy for Joe Biden, who has been a working politician. I don't for more than fifty years. Do you know anyone who is aging? If you know people who are aging, I am thinking of someone in my life who wanted to drive and he could no longer drive, and we would hide the keys and we would say, you can no longer drive. This is like widely experience.
Those people driving.
Very rarely do they go, You're right, I can't drive anymore.
So I agree with you, Jesse. So what do you do the people around you?
That love people around you?
Hence Jill Biden.
We will get to Jill Biden.
I'm so sorry, we will get to Jill Biden.
To Jill Biden.
There's the Democratic Party that I think that they have a lot to answer for. But a slight defense of Joe Biden is that I think as a president he can probably do the job because there are people around him who help them. Probably he has thember in relations.
Literally just so what you're saying, the machine of government keeps going and that there are people around.
And I'm also worried that in this incredibly in depth fair criticism of Joe Biden, we're letting Trump off scott free. And he cried and he's well, it's also Donald Trump's right. And this also says something about the culture that we find ourselves in, which is style over substance. And we had someone who at least has some substance, has some chops, has made some good.
Decisions for the job. You step aside for the good of your party, for the good of your country, for the good of democracy.
Just a very complicated moment.
Now, Jill Biden, go okay out loud as We had a big fight about this, because the first thing I said when we were in the planning meeting this morning was I'm sorry angry at Jill Biden. Holly said, I.
Said, why do you always find a woman to blame for a man's problems?
Is not Jill Biden's fast.
This has got nothing to freaking do with Jill Biden. There isn't a woman in the world who's been married to a man for forty five years who would not publicly defend them in that situation. What they're saying to each other right now locked away in Camp David, and this might all change in the next twenty four hours. Everybody thinks it's very unlikely, despite the unprecedented push for Biden to decide that he should step down what she
says to him in private. We have no idea as if there is a wife in the world who would come out of that and tell the world media he was shit.
I'm not asking Jill to tell the world's media. I'm really not, and I'm going to just take down all your arguments one by one. No, My point is this conversation is not new. It's at boiling point now and at crisis point, panic point, but it's not new. People have been talking about this for several years, and in all the coverage about whether he would step aside or not, everybody has been unanimous in the fact that the only person who could convince him to do that is Jill Biden.
That's what everybody said, right. So back to what happened on the debate. The reason I'm agree with Jill Biden is that I think Joe Biden is a good man. I honestly do. How could you let someone that you love go into that situation and humiliate themselves like that and whole you say, well, he's got advisors, he's.
Got this man.
Also, although you don't control the people that you love, I see this playing out in much smaller ways, like Jesse's example with the car Keys all the time. Joe Biden, despite appearances, it's not like he is literally a baby.
Well after the debate, there were these watch parties, and everyone knew, like everyone was panicking through the debate for un minutes, so everyone knew it had been a disaster, so they went into crisis mode. He appeared at some watch parties. Here's a little clip of Jill Biden introducing the crowd to Joe and welcoming Joe to this watch party. I can't thank you all enough for staying and for being here and for all your support. Joe, you did
such a great job. You answered every question you knew all the Let me ask the crowd, what did Trump do back to you saying he's not a child? That is literally how I talk to Luna when she can clap, And my.
Point is literally again this is back to a public moment. What else is she going to do?
Okay, So, first of all, she should have had this conversation with him a long time ago, because to.
Her, she probably is you have no idea what she's saying to him.
So all the coverage in the reporting I've read about it is that if she decides that he shouldn't do it, he won't do it, which is also alarming, and she very much believes, well it's reported across the I mean it could be.
Here's a much bigger picture here, which is that the Democrats have a big problem on their hands because if not Joe, then who right And the problem with that is that there is a woman standing right next to Joe Biden, who he chose to be his vice president at the last election, who is the literal choice if it's not him, and nobody wants her now that.
Other issue, So they're like, what do we do with It's not the issue. The issue is nobody wants to because I mean, he did save America from another Trump presidency, right and a second term, So everyone in his party feels very indebted to him. He is a good man, They are loyal. Nobody wants to humiliate him. So everyone is basically not wanting to topple him because the indignity of that. It's not like in Australia where it's just
like you knife your leader every few weeks. It would be a terrible, terrible Also, it's no one, So it's this man's hubris and that people around him. I don't believe for a second if Jill Biden and the people around him were telling him step down, that he wouldn't step down.
I don't think that. I just think that responsibility doesn't sit on Jill Biden's shoulders.
She's the only one that doesn't work for him, So yes it does.
Oh my god, that's not true. Like, think about a CEO. I keep thinking about this as a business, right, and you have a CEO who is going out and representing your company. And let's remember that the man that we saw, Joe Biden is like he's sitting down with Benjamin Nette Yahoo about an international conflict the stakes. Well, that's mortifying Vladimir Putin, like these are really really important diplomatic conversations that need to happen, and he's not capable of it.
We all agree, Trump, I don't necessarily agree that he's not capable of it.
And sometimes you have to have hard conversations with people you love. And to be clear, I blame Biden. But as you say, when you get to a certain age and you have cognitive decline, which he clearly does, the people around you sometimes have to help you.
See sometimes you won't listen to them.
Yes, but if this were a CEO, the business, the structure, the welfare of that business means that people inside it need to have honest conversations with the CEO about their capacity. I wouldn't put it on the CEO's of course, to say to them, oh, you're not really being completely coherent.
Everyone absolutely is not because everybody else works for you. But but you can stay to your partner.
Since that debate finished on Friday, this is all anybody's been talking about. If you really believe that there isn't a single person in the Democratic Party who isn't putting pressure on Joe Biden to resign as of now. But it's a very complicated situation. The idea that he just needs his wife to tell him off, pat him on the head, and send him off to his armchair watch daytime TV is nonsense.
I'm saying it's intervention. That intervention needs to be led by Jill.
B No, because there are options, so it might well be being led by her, right.
There are options that aren't Joe Biden having come to Jesus moment where he steps down. Like, there's also a situation in which the Democratic Party, who is.
No, they can't, they won't do it.
They could, So let's get onto that, right if they did do what everybody is urging them to do right now, which is whether it's because Jill has a quiet word, or whether it's because his loyal advisors go and say, which is a terrifying thing to do, because if you're one of the people who says to him after that, mate, you have to go. You're not going to keep working for him, correct because he will always remember that. The whole thing is if they do, they are thrown into unprecedented chaos.
Right.
What everyone's saying is the path that could happen now is that the convention, which is in August, they could choose to throw the nomination open again and reallocate it now. Harris is obviously, as I said before, for Kamala Harris is the vice president. She is the obvious choice, and if Biden agreed to step down and endorsed her, she would be the choice. But what I'm interested in is why nobody wants that to happen. Why all the good
will that went towards Kamala Harris. Will remember the day of the inauguration, when the world was so energized and excited to see a woman, relatively young, woman of color being given one of the highest offices in the land. That good will seems to have entirely dried up. So now when even these very knowledgeable Democrats, of whom there are many, are talking about options, they're not saying Harris, They're saying all these other names that are out there.
And in order to get any of those people, they're people like Gavin Newsome, people like Gretchen Whim, they would have such a long way to get to to anything like the brand recognition. Plus all the money that's already been raised has been raised for Biden Harris. The system isn't set up for this level of chaos, so it
would be an intensely bold move. And now the Democrats are sitting there wrestling with do we throw ourselves into that level of chaos and maybe lose, or do we stick with the plan that we've got and lose.
Exactly The reason I think that's a good idea is if you look at what elections, particularly in America, have become, which is essentially reality shows thanks to John Trump. It's exciting. So suddenly people are going to be galvanized. There's going to be someone new because remember going back to the part where people have to be excited. So even if Joe Biden had got up and been okay, or even good.
How excited are you about going to the polls? Like, it's not like voting for the first female president or the first African American president or someone who is younger and seems like they've got a vision.
Seen how that a new generation. Also, it hands Trump an argument, which is this party is completely unstable, and we've seen that play out in Australian politics. So I think that the keeping Joe Yes, there's an element of why won't he step down, but it's also a political strategy, which is he was the president that toppled Trump. Giving it to someone else that party look chaotic, which isn't something.
But at this point I agree with me. I think it would actually be really energizing. But I am still obsessed with why not Harrish?
Yeah, I'll get to that one second. But all Trump wants is for them to keep Biden. Right. He knows he can pretty much just go on holidays between now
and November and he will romp it in. You know, I've been talking to people who say they're not you know, Democratic voters who are so angry that the fact that the system has brought us to this point and that the Democratic Party have been so lax in providing regeneration, a fresh start and thinking this through that they're saying they're not going to vote as a protest now, Kamala Harris, I don't know why her approval is so low, and I don't know why she has such poor polling, because
she's been widely criticized for sort of not carving out her own role. So she's widely understood and recognized and acknowledged to have done a poor job at being vice president. Now I can't tell you that I know what she should have done and what Joe Biden did so well apparently as vice president, or Mike Pence did so well as vice president, or Al Gore did so well as Bill Clinton's vice president. I don't know.
I think it's a very difficult job because what you have to do is you have to attract just enough attention, but not too much attention. You have to be interesting enough that you'll get press, but not overwhelm or override the press that the president wants, although you might imagine at the moment that the president probably wants less price and so it's a very difficult dance. And I have heard some commentary that she hasn't managed to nail that dance in quite the way that say that Biden and
Obama bromance did. But it is also very hard to not think that it can't have anything to do with the fact that she is a woman.
But that one commentary I've been reading too is that she's a woman of color, and the Democrats are at a point now where they're like, will people not vote for her because she's a woman of color? Maybe either way, if they won't vote for her, they won't vote for her, and if the future of democracy is hinging on this moment, which is incredibly depressed, And.
Then they're saying that that presents the Democrats with a very difficult problem because they have to go around Harris to get a new nominee, and that's going to tear the party.
Apart as well. So Biden has two choices. Really, he can just keep going and double down, which is what a lot of people think he's going to do, which is shocking. He actually has three choices because he can endorse Kamala Harris, which means it won't be contested, she'll just become the new leader and she will run for president, or he has a hard conversation with Kamala Harris and says, I'm for the good of the country, I'm stepping down
and I'm not endorsing you. I'm throwing it open, and she then has to throw her hat in the ring with some of these other contenders. Over the next seven weeks, they go on CNN and make their case and sort of act presidential, and then at the convention in seven weeks in August, they vote for who they which should go to the election.
Historically, actually happened to Joe Biden because he was the vice president of Barack Obama and it was assumed that he would be the candidate, and then of course it was actually Hillary Clinton after him, So there is precedent for that happening. I have two quick questions. Are they going to be more presidential debates?
Well, there's meant to be another one in September, but everyone thinks it won't happen unless, of course, there is a new candidate.
And my second question is, Maya, what do you think they should do.
I think they should throw it open for the good of the country. I was so disheartened to hear that. Oh, but you know, no one wants to have the hard conversation with Joe, which is just awful. If you love him and you care about him, either as someone who works for him or someone in his family, how can you want that? Humil's true.
I've heard very senior Democrats openly saying that they think he should step down for the first time ever. Yeah, so it's not like this is not getting to him.
Well, I hope not. I hope it's getting to him. I think that they should definitely throw it open because I think people are going, you know, wetting their parts about it being unprecedented and chaos if he was sick and he had to step down for health reasons, which could not like they just go, oh, well, Trump's going to be president. We can't think of what to do next.
The part in the system would all work, and they should be sending the best possible candidate, one who can make the case for generational change and not have people choosing between two people who are unfit for the job.
And I'm in very good health. I just won two club championships, not even senior, two regular club championships. To do that, you have to be quite smart.
We're able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I've been able to do with the COVID I excuse me with.
What Here's a life lesson for free brides are a lot. There's a bride who's gone vile. I'm going to tell you a story and try to follow it. I've read up on this, so you don't have to. She's an American woman called Alexandra J. Conda, and she is at the center of what has become known as the Cpia bride saga. It all started when she got married on an overcast day and she didn't like the way her photos looked. She said, her skin looked pale and it
didn't look like her. So she asked the photographer for the original images and wanted to re edit them herself. And she said that the way they had been retouched and filtered by the photographer was not acceptable and she was going to do a better job. Now, all of these could have happened behind the scenes, but why would it. It of course played out on TikTok. So she made a long series of tiktoks. Here's a little bit of them.
Imagine being almost eight thousand dollars for a wedding photographer, and when you raised your concerns.
They threatened to sue you for slander if you.
Spoke your truth.
So I found my wedding photographer on Instagram.
Like majority of people in this day of age do, her feed looked so bright, airy, but also had this goldenness to it, and I loved that. But the goldenness that it had still captured the beauty of like colors, blue, your skin tone, etc. So she delivered the photos, and of course right away I'm like, oh my god, I love them.
I love versing one of them.
I'm like beaming of excitement. And then for about thirty days, I'm staring at the photos and I'm like, why is there something bothering me? Like, well, I couldn't put my finger on it until I realized I'm a meetup artist. Okay, I was a meetup artist in the wedding industry for years, and I do may all make up for my wedding.
So is that so interesting listening? I'm glad you spent thirty days because you wouldn't want to make a snap, you know, judgment on what it was that was bothering her. So it took her thirty days. The photographer after she started making these Tiktoks threatened to sue her for slander, which is fair enough because that's like business ruining. And I assume she named the photographer or people worked out who the photographer was. Some people reacted with horror, others
with sympathy. Some people said, do people get married for the photos? This is insane to me. I don't understand. Others cheered her on for demanding her money back and feeling so aggrieved. Jesse, you got married last year and you're deep in wedding mode. You were at a wedding just a few weeks ago. Do you and your friends like your wedding photos? Is it too late for you to complain if you don't.
This speaks to something so much bigger than the CPR bride and an overcast day. That is one thing. But I almost don't want to get into. As much as I love the weeds because the weeds are fun, I want to leave those women alone because it's like, it's not their fault.
It's not it's not the bride, not the bride's fault. This is an instance in which I'm very happy to blame a woman.
It's a team bride, not team photographer.
No, no, no, I'm also team photographer. I'm probably more team photographer than I am team bride. But she is just a product of this culture that tells us that on our wedding day we have to look like a supermodel.
And I spoke about this a bit at the time, but when I was getting married, the things that I learned about what people do in the lead up to a wedding from a twelve month I don't even know what you'd call it, like facial program where you go and get special facial things to look pretty on your wedding day, to ridiculous diets, to teeth whitening, to you've got to get your hair trial, you got to get your makeup trial, like absolutely absurd, And then you go
and spend an inordinate amount of money on a wedding dress and choos and the pressure pretty master. When then the photos land in your inbox, you better look hot, you better look the best you have ever looked in your own.
But I'm already filtered.
Well, I think that they get edited or whatever, but the problem is it's still you, right. And I was sitting there with a bunch of girlfriends literally a few weeks ago, and someone said you know. I didn't want to say this out loud, but I hate my wedding photos. I hate them. And she was saying, I got them back and I thought that I was going to look the best I've ever looked, and I would be blown away by my own beauty. And I wasn't. I just
looked like myself. And then everyone at the table who was married just started whealing and was like, I'm so glad you've said it. Some were saying I felt pressured to put pictures on Instagram, but I actually hated how I looked because of my chin and my hair, and why did I choose to do that? And no, no, no, no no. And I looked through the three hundred, five hundred, eight hundred photos of myself and could barely choose one I liked.
Thirty Days, Holly's, Holly's shuddering and just Holly is an existential deep sigh.
Can I just please take the floor. Why wedding photos? What are they for?
You know?
Okay, this is a thing. Wedding photos have come to represent, these photos that have landed in my in box. I'm not saying this is how I felt, but this is
what the culture is telling us. You have to look the best you have ever looked in your life and the best you will ever look for her, because there is something about that moment that we have been told as women, that you better be your thinnest, that you better be your most beautiful, that you're young, that everyone's going to see these photos, that they're gonna be up on your wall, that you your future children might look at this, and my mom looks part.
Have you ever gone into someone's house for a house inspection, like if you're buying a house or renting a house, and people have no wedding photos.
After all, lots of my friends have their wedding photos up. But I still don't understand, right, because.
It's a big beauty standard to judge yourself with for the rest.
Of it and beat yourself with for the rest of your life. Because you did, as you said, Jesse, spend a whole year preparing for Thotels. Clear I did not, but you sorry you didn't, and you were heavily pregnant, pregnant, and I was there and you looked fucking gorgeous, so we just have to put that on the table. But still you weren't really in a position where you were like, you weren't shredding for the wedding.
You weren't doing all that.
That was not your vibe.
Why don't we do what we do at every other major milestone event that we have these days, which is you say, the your mates have at it, take a million pictures and put them all in a group chat, and I'll just pick the ones I like, and those will be the ones that we'll put out there. And we could all save ourselves a lot of money and angst and time. And you could still put whatever filter on a you want, print one out at one of those like office works things and stick it on the wall or put it.
On the bake.
You can trust your friends in all the photos, you're gonna be blinking. Your friends gonna look hard. And it was your wedding.
There's some picture of you at an event that you.
Like, isn't there?
Okay, I don't understand I'm not married, right, so maybe that's it. But also when I was home recently in Britain, I found my mom and dad's wedding photos because I was going through all their pictures to make my dad's eighties photo slide. They got married in the sixties there are two photos of them black and white.
Jeez, they must have had color backs. Know what's going on.
They're standing outside a church smiling. Snap. They're standing next to a wedding cake, smiling snap to me because I love them. I love those photos. They are important to me. That's the you know, a big moment for them. It didn't take four hours. There weren't twenty five different framings settings. Can we all leave everyone else to get drunk in the barn?
Stand over there?
She certainly did not have a hair rehearsal. You don't even I asked her what color was this thing you're wearing, because you can't really tell me black Mike's I can't really remember anyway. But the photos will be special to you because the day was special to you. This kind of shit, Ceep, your bride is everything that is wrong
with this situation. We have missed the point of weddings and relationships and just given ourselves more things to spend money on, beat ourselves up about, and decide that we're not good enough for and.
It's in our power to change it. We need a moment's silence for wedding photographers. Absolutely makeup artist. I know the horror stories. I've spoken to makeup artists who have said, you go to do the makeup on the day and then they're looking in the mirror. I guess what, You're still Jesse on your wedding day, and you're not happy because you're like, I'm not j Loo and I was promised Jaylo. And then you've got screaming and tantrums and
all that kind of stuff. And we complain the women, and you know, I don't endorse that kind of behavior, but this.
What's obviously Joe Biden's fault.
His pressure is ridiculous. Maya, do you love your wedding photos? Don't have any I've seen a photo of your wedding.
I didn't have a photographer, we didn't have you.
You were doing what I was saying.
Yeah, it is so interesting when you think about it, right, it's very on brand with how much I sort of was not involved with my wedding. It occurred to me at one point that we don't have like a photo of us with our parents or anything on the date. So like, as we were leaving our place to go to the reception, I quickly sort of handed someone a camera and we sort of gathered on the front steps for one second, but it's like, we don't have any formal photos, and when I was thinking about, what's the
point of them. For a lot of women, it is the only time they will get their hair and makeup done. It is the most expensive dress they'll ever wear. In fact, pretty much for everyone, it is the only time in their life that they will be the complete center of attention before or since. And it might also be the only time that everyone in your family of various generations is photographed together in a photo that it's not like
someone's head chopped off and someone's blinking in whatever. So they are sort of historical documents in many ways.
Wedding photos so we know that your value as a woman is totally indexed on how you look. That's how we're socialized. And on a wedding day you are given permission to try to try very hard. Other times, like when you come to work or whatever, he's still trying, but like you have permission to go one hundred percent, but.
Not even permission. You're a current pressure. Yes, yes, you have the expectation that you will look the best you've ever looked. So I get why you want to capture the results of that. Yeah, it just seems to be a good use of resource to get that on record.
And it's ridiculous.
It's not like you can use it for your LinkedIn shot, although some people don't be sure.
They would just prop it really close. But I agree that the purpose of wedding photos and we had a brilliant photographer, and I love the photos, and she just did such a beautiful job because you can see all these people in one room who, unless I die tomorrow, likely won't be in the same room again, and that's really special. And even getting those photos framed and giving them to parents and grandparents and everything like it means
a lot to me. It's almost like a it's like capturing a like a historical moment.
When you just said, unless I die tomorrow, so you mean it at a future. Yeah, But we don't take photos at funerals, do we No?
But I mean, I agree with.
That, and we don't. That's the other time that everyone is together, and we don't take photos at funerals, not that I'm suggesting we start, So I get that, But I do think that photos have become this stand in for so much more than just the photos. It's like, it's got to capture the feeling. It's got to capture the love. It's got to capture you know, you've got to look the best you've ever looked. It's got to capture every joy. That's a big ask for a photographer.
Yeah.
I reckon though, that we don't need permission to go, because once you've spent all of that money, you want to have the feeling of going. These are great photos. If you are bright to your photo, what do you.
Do with that?
No one wants to see your wedding photos.
Oh well, we can sit there. But if you look at them and you go, I don't love them, you have permission not to love them. That's okay, you can move on.
It's probably not the photographer's fault. Yeah, it's probably just that it was an impossible breath and it's something that that's just too fast. Face Style.
One unlimited out loud access. We drop episodes every Tuesday and Thursday exclusively from Mum and Maya. Subscribers follow the link in the show notes to get us in your ears five days a week, and a huge thank you to all our current subscribers.
I was sick last week, but something that pierced my migraine headache from hell was a news story of questionable merit, something we're not sure we should talk about at all, or anyone should talk about it at all.
So we're going to talk about it.
We should decide during talking about it whether we should talk about it.
Last week, you didn't you two and took the high ground and did not discuss the brief pearl clutching mayhem that kicked off around the photograph of the federal opposition leader son Tom Dutton holding up a little clear baggie of white powder on social media with the caption little birthday tree on his eighteenth birthday. Now, as every news outlet, Julie noted, and so are we, we are not suggesting
that the contents of that bag are drugs. But this morning I suggested that we should talk about this because I'm really interested in a column that was written by another politician's son who was once a teenager getting his own blasting from the media over his bad behavior.
Now I think, actually.
This conversation might even be relevant if your parent isn't necessarily famous or powerful, but maybe just has any kind of job in your community that comes with a bit of an expectation of a certain standard of behavior, like a local doctor or a cop, or the football coach or a school teacher. Right, if everybody knows who your parents and you get in trouble for something, it will
inevitably reflect on them. And Nick Brax is the son of Steve Bras who was the labor premier of Victoria from like nineteen ninety nine till two thousand and seven, so quite a long time. He was quite famous and high profile. And in two thousand and seven, Nick Bras had a car accident. He was driving his parents car.
It was four am. He had been drinking, and he was a pea player and he was twenty and no one was seriously hurt in the accident, but he crashed the car into a tree and he was charged and it was a big news story. And it was also the third public incident at the time involving him, Nick and drink in a short space of time. So the media all went nuts for it and they were like, what Steve Brack's gonna do. And actually, not that long after that, Steve Bras did step down as premiere. Nick
wrote in the Nine Newspapers Today about Tom Dutton. He wrote, I know exactly what it's like to go through what he's going through. It would be so confusing and difficult for him in the position that he's in, the family that he's in, and the age that he is. It's a lonely exclusive club. So few people you can talk to who understand the experience, and there's no guidebook on how to deal with it. And it made me reflect
on my reaction to the story. I have to admit that when I first saw this thing about Dutton, I felt a little like dopamine hit of satisfaction, maybe because I guess my personal opinion of Peter Dutton, and this is my personal opinion, is that he's not a man known for his empathy.
Right.
He's famously hardline law and order, including when it comes to drugs. He does not support harmonimization policies like pill testing. He has voted in favor of drug testing welfare recipients. He has criticized softening drug laws in places like the Act.
So when this story first broke, I think there are a certain amount of people like me, perhaps who got a petty satisfaction to see that powerful people with very binary views about things also have to deal with the complexity of the people that they love behaving in ways that they publicly is. But my wiser mind knows that shaming a young man who has no say whatsoever in his father's job or his profile means that I know that really it's morally reprehensible for his picture to be
splashed all over everywhere. And as Nick Brax wrote, pile and guilt and shame onto young boys for decisions a lot of kids will make in their lifetimes doesn't work. When that happens, it can stick around for a long time, it bleeds into everything else in your life, and you become paralyzed worrying about being judged for anything you do
and what people will think. It plays on your sense of feeling autonomous and reinforces the mindset of when I make a decision, bad things happen, and it's not how we should be conditioned. Mia are the actions of a politician's child or the child of any prominent person any of our business.
I don't know. If there's a blanket answer on this, I would say no, actually, And it's interesting because some people in defending the way, and let's just go back to who is at fault here? The person who leaked that photo, which is on Snapchat, it's Jill Biden. No, what an asshole of a mate. I mean, this is a problem with social media. So many people are following you, but someone knew exactly what they were doing when they
snapped that and shared it. In terms of whether the media reports on it or not is more tricky because I've heard some people say, well, when you're a politician and you use your children in campaigning, you're the one that's making them part of the conversation. And we've seen different leaders do that in the past, particularly when they're doing sixty minutes interviews around an election campaign. Scott Morrison
did it with his daughter's Tony Abbott. He would always take his three young daughters to campaign events and they did that thing of when they're in the swimming pool. So if it's used as a tool to make you more parlatable to the media, it could be argued that what they then do becomes a question of public interest. I went back on Peter Dutton's Instagram account because some people flashed a photo of him with his family. He has not published any photos of his family apart from
his wife, since May twenty six. Twenty twenty two, which is when he did a media interview and they took a photo declaring himself a candidate for the leader of the Liberal Party. In the post that he did, he didn't even mention his children or how old they were, and they didn't speak, they didn't do any media. It was just a picture of him sort of walking down the street looking at the camera with his three children. He's got two sons and a daughter and his wife.
His wife is sporadically but in very few I couldn't even remember what she looked like. I don't remember ever seeing her or hearing from her.
I don't think he puts his family, and he does he doesn't.
Albo does with his fiancee Jodi, but I can't remember much about his children. Because what's different now even compared to two thousand and seven is social media and what can happen and the Internet. Tanya Plibisek, who was in a media interview either on her own or with Peter Dutton the next day, was asked about this and she very firmly said, I'm not going to speak about it.
I'm not commenting on it because every single politician knows there but for the grace of God goes my family or my brother, or my kid, or my uncle or my partner. You know, I think that we understand that
there are certain boundaries. I really felt for everybody in that situation, but I particularly felt for Peter Dutton because I think that the guilt that he would feel about the scrutiny and the attention and the spotlight on his kids and on his family because of as you say, Holy a decision that he made would be absolutely intense. I know that I feel it with my own kids.
And the question is I mean you brought up and I've seen this argument a lot. He has shared photos of his family before, but you know, I've shared a photo of my daughter before. Does that mean that everyone's entitled to see her report card one day? No, I don't think that that's a logical argument.
Or if she's having a tantrum in the street, should they take a photo of that?
Yeah, exactly right. And it's funny that you bring that up because Aberze's son. There's this weird story. I went down this rabbit hole. I had missed it, but a radio announcer was in the Quantess chairman's lounge and he saw Anthony Aberneze's son, and he just went he's twenty three years old.
How is?
And he went on this sort of spray about it, that it's ridiculous that someone so young would be in that lounge. I think that we need to afford these people some level of privacy. Whether or not you think you should be in that lounge feels kind of irrelevant. Like these people, as you say, are not responsible. They didn't decide to be politicians. They're just young men or women trying to live their lives. And I felt really sad for Tom Dutton. I saw the story pop up
and I didn't click, and I thought this irrelevant. But I know what you're trying to do, and what the coverage was trying to do was it had nothing to do with Tom Dutton. It was an attempt to shame Peter Dutton.
To weaponize it again, to weaponize it due to their credit. The story die because nobody gave it oxygen. Now the AOP could have given it oxygen, they chose not to. Pretty much, no one gave it oxygen, so no one came out and went blah blah blah blah. Everyone just left.
Do you sort of tabloid me about twenty four hours.
For about twenty four hours, it was almost like, let's see if we can whip this up into a thing. And then I agree. I think it did die down
really quickly, which is good. I understand the instinct to go ha hipocrisy at work, or if you feel very strongly that someone is a political enemy of yours and I don't necessarily mean mine, but you know that you will wedge your knife into any gap, any crack, and go okay, mister law and Order doesn't show much empathy or sympathy for families living in difficult situations on indigenous communities or in refuge eue detention centers, but now we're
suddenly supposed to be empathetic to you. I understand that impulse, because there's a bit of it in me, right, But I think it's one of those things that you have to like hold and look at and go, you know what I mean, that's not where we're going here. And I think that the Brax column was really interesting because, as I say, I reckon that the pressure you'd feel not to shame and make life more complicated for your parents would be intense. Even as I said, if it's
something that's much more low key in your community. I know that as a parent of a teenager, there is a fine line and it's complex to and pick it sometimes whether you're the behavior of your kid you're worried about for them or for you. And I don't mean that as a public person. I mean full stop, you know, like it's kind of like when you're at a barbecue
and your child is being naughty and annoying. Is the bit of you that's going and telling them shut up, shut down, shut up, shut down because of them or because of you, because you feel judged, and you know they're all like, well, Holly clearly can't control her child, you know what I mean? This is something that comes to parenting, and I think that it's when it gets to more higher stakes things and the way that we all think teenagers should behave, like definitely not dab and drugs,
being really excellent at school. They should be ducks, they should be off to university, they should be doing this, they should be doing that. And if they're not doing those things, it can be hard to unpick whether you're worried about that for them or you. And I reckon that that must be magnetized by a million when you're in this field.
In case you missed it, out louders, scrollback, can you feed because there was a little treat on Saturday that you may have missed because we don't usually drop an episode, but we did a special episode because we have been obsessed ever since Jesse introduced us to the idea of getting our colors done and what season we are, we
completely have hyper fixated on it. We got the most amazing woman called Kim who has a business called Style Sense, to come in do our colors and talk not just about us, but more generally about what colors suit certain seasons. How you can work it out. It's such a cracker of an episode. We'll put a link in the show notes and will also put a link to a quiz that you can do to find out what color you are, what is your season? Share it? Tell us what season
you are. I'm Autumn, not that you asked, Hollywood, are.
You true spring light?
Spring light?
Sprea?
I remember, and I'm a light Summer. I think light.
So none of us are the same.
Which is great because we can swap clothes.
Now that's one thing that I really have.
You you gave me. I got, Holly, I don't even know if you know this. I got like a bag for.
Yeah, yeah, longer your color.
Because she was impulsive. I think she would want them back, but it was just like, this isn't my color, this isn't my color, and so now I have them and I look great in them.
She does a big thank you out loud as to all of you for listening to today's show. I'm very happy to be back with you, and a big thank you to all of our team who've been putting today's show together and all our shows this week. We will be back in your ears tomorrow.
Bye bye.
Do you want daily out loud access? Why wouldn't you? We drop episodes every Tuesday and Thursday exclusively from mum of me. Are Subscribers follow the link in the show notes to get us in your ears five days a week and a huge thing. Thank you if you are already a subscriber.