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Out loud.
What women are actually talking about on Monday, the twenty third of September. I'm Holly Wainwright, I'm.
Mea Friedman, and I'm Jesse Stevens.
And on the show today, the former First Lady of America is defending her right to express herself through nudity, which is ace, but defending herself from whom. Also, there's a surge in breast surgery among young women, but it's breast reductions, not enlargements that are on the rise.
Why is that also?
Take it down? One of the biggest celebrity media brands just bowed to pressure to remove a video interview with a very famous actress, but first Jesse.
Last week, thousands of pages and other wireless devices simultaneously exploded across Lebanon and part of Steria. It began on Tuesday as thousands of handheld electronic pages, which had been distributed by Hesbela, exploded on busy streets. To back up for a moment, Hesbela is a designated terrorist organization, and they control the most powerful armed force in Lebanon. The assault continued Wednesday, with more devices detonating, including two way radios.
As the Washington Post put it, the attack was unlike any other in size and scope, turning everyday devices into weapons of war. At least thirty two people, including two children. Reports vary between two and four children were killed and thousands more were injured. Many of the explosions happened in the vicinity of large crowds. Hesbelah has said this was an attack by Israel, but so far Israeli officials have
declined to comment. Hesbelah has vowed retaliation. And I found something deeply unsettling in the reporting of the so over the weekend, I felt as though headlines and even the tone that was existing in a lot of the coverage was as though this was some sort of action movie, as if children didn't make up some of the casualties. And it felt like and it has felt like this for months that were becoming increasingly desensitized to the loss of human life. There's been comparisons to the James Bond
element of it. I was reading one very highly respected publication that referred to it as an achievement, and I thought of the parents of the kids who lost their lives, and if I was in Lebanon or in any part of the Middle East right now, I'd be terrified, more
terrified than I was a week ago. So it just served as a reminder to me that regardless of where you are in the world, the innocent human life matters, and we've got to be careful not to get excited or gleeful because there's new technology, because this isn't a video game.
These are real people.
It reminded me a little bit that sort of all or is the wrong word, but it's all a new technology. In nineteen ninety, when the Iraq War started, there was again another big leap in technology, with drones and cameras been used to drop bombs on targets, which you could then also see. We watched that on CNN and pilots were watching it on these screens, and there were interviews with the pilots after they finished their missions and bombings, and they came off and these were like pretty young
guys and they were like, it was so cool. It was like playing a video game. And even then there was a little bit of discomfort in the same way that you say, where it can be really easy to forget that there are human lives, and in the case of what happened with Hesbola, the targets of this attack were terrorists whose sole aim is to kill other people.
So I guess you would say very clearly they were the bad guys, but also civilians were injured and killed, and they weren't bad guys, they were civilians.
I think also it's worth remembering that as we're watching this and everybody's talk talking about how did it happen, and pages and walkie talkies and getting explosives into systems inside people's homes, what it actually signals is an escalation of something that I think a lot well obviously a lot of the world is very invested in de escalation of the Middle East, in the Middle East, and so it's not good news for anyone who was hoping that peace was closer, because it's only further away.
If anyone was wondering where Milania Trump has been during the past few years, she's been writing her autobiography and also signing a deal to make her own range of Christmas decorations Thank God, which is unexpected because when she and Donald Trump were in the White House, you might remember, hopefully you don't. You know, every first lady's in charge of decorating the White House for Christmas and their choice
of Christmas decorations. Her choice was very dystopian. It was a lot of black trees and it was like melefelsince House. Maybe there was a leaked phone call where she said, I fucking hate Christmas. Anyway, Times Change now are launching Christmas decorations. But the promotional strategy for her book is what has been rolling out in the most surreal way the last few days with a series of again pretty
dystopian videos, short in black and white. She really does like that quite severe, very stark lighting heavy.
Usually yeah, she thinks it's sophisticated because dramatic music. What I've seen of the cover of a book is it's literally just a white Do you think that's really.
The No, I don't think that is a way I cover well. In these videos she talks about all manner of things and looks and sounds well, kind of disconcertingly like dystopian AI. The book isn't actually out from a couple of weeks, so nobody's seen the actual cover already yet, but here's a little bit of a taste of the videos.
Writing this memoir has been a deeply personal and reflective journey for me, as a private person who has often been the subject of public scrutiny and misrepresentation. I feel a responsibility to clarify the facts. I believe it is important to share my perspective the truth.
But the title of one of these videos, in particular that I didn't play just then, stands out, and it is, why do I stand proudly behind my new modeling work? So you know it's going to be really excellent before you even here? Ply on this one, here's a little bit of what she says in that video.
Why do I stand proudly behind my nude modeling work? The more pressing question is why has the media chosen to scrutinize my celebration of the human forum in a fashion photoshoot? Are we no longer able to appreciate the beauty of the human body? Throughout history, master artists have revered the human shape, evoking profound emotions and admiration. We should honor our bodies and embrace the timeless tradition of using art as a powerful means of self expression.
While she was talking that voiceover on the video, there were all pictures of like famous works of art by famous artists like Angel and Sassan, And she didn't actually show her pictures, but she post naked for a French adult magazine in nineteen ninety five and for British GQ in two thousand and The modeling photos were highlighted a little bit in the twenty sixteen campaign when The New
York Post published several of the nude photos. Because of course, there is going to be some media discussion about your nudes when you're the first lady or the want to be first lady, especially when your husband is all about slut shaming female enemies and imposing traditional roles for women. So we're certainly not endorsing any shaming of anyone for being nude. But what's interesting is that she's answering a question that nobody was asking, and it's puzzling, Holly, what's going on.
So apparently Milania has asked for the rights for those images to include in her memoir. So she wants you, she wants to republish that she wants you to know that those nudes are going to be in her book.
So she going for and Rada.
I think she's going full and Rada. But also I am obsessed with Milania Trump. Why because say what you like about Donald Trump, and we have said many things
about Donald Trump. His era of political assent in the US has ripped up so many conventions, all the sort of things that we used to insist on from politicians, like that they at least pretend to be a nice sort of human being and can go around saying things like grabbing by the posse and insisting the elections that you lost that you actually won, and all those things that we used to think, oh, that's not very presidential, things like fidelity and all that's gone, lack of nudity
in Paul being a felon. But you could argue that all that through some lenses, you could say it's quite refreshing, because American presidents have got away with a whole lot of shit a lot of time, but they always had to pretend that they had this lovely wife by their side who adored them, happy family, blah blah blah. Milania barely even pretends to live with him, like him sleep with him, certainly, not hang around him, hold his hand.
I think she obviously has. I mean, I know this speculation, but a lot of people say a certain amount of agreed appearances are in their.
Contracts quite well.
So she's like, you know, I know you do kind of need a wife by your side as you're running for president. We're not going to do this in a conventional way. I'll just turn up on these particular dates. The book is great. It's released on October the eighth, which is less than a month before the presidential election.
Now again, have you seen it?
No? I mean it sounds great from this, like such a good idea. You're like, I'm going to published a memoir a month before MyD It's just hilarious. It's just hilarious because the thing that the Trump's are great out is grifting. So on her site, you can buy images of her, you can buy NFTs that she's made of, like pretty flowers, you can buy Christmas ornaments, you can buy jewelry. It's like working every angle right srifters, which
is not again not generally what first ladies do. And I have to say that what I admire in all this, I mean I don't really admire in any way, but I admire their complete disregard for convention. Like for years and decades and forever, first ladies have had to pretend. She's not pretending, She's just going all out.
You say that, But what Milania has done here, which is surprising, is that she's agreed to be a cog in Trump's election campaign.
But only if it benefits her and her Christmas ornament business.
Do you think she really wanted to write this book. I feel as though they sat down and they looked at Trump's campaign and they went, what we need here is Milania to say something, or to stand for something, or to contribute to the momentum. Obviously, one of the clips that went quite viral was the one where she is suggesting that there was more to the assassination attempt, and she shares the family perspective that he's someone who
you know, he's a father and he's a husband. And how much at her what she's doing, at least in this promotion is humanizing him.
I don't think so, though, do you know what I mean? Like, maybe that might be a strategy if it was a completely different strategy.
So she's talking more from the videos that have been released so far, it's more talking politically because she's like, in twenty twenty, the election happened and it changed everything gasoline prices, cost of living, and it's like, that's not the perspective that I would be most interested in from you. And look, there's also a long history of first ladies and former first ladies writing their story, and they absolutely should because their perspective is interesting.
Hillary Clinton just released a book this week.
Yeah, but also Michelle Obama, her extraordinary book, Becoming, which is one of the top selling nonfiction books of all time. I know what you're saying, Holly, that she's disregarding all of those conventions, which is ironic her saying, you know, the nude body's fine when her husband is so sexist and well at all women.
I'm not sure that all his far right bodies would agree that.
Yeah, but if you've read Michelle Obama's book, The First First Lady of Color, what she had to do and what she had to not do, like the tiny, tiny, tiny little space that she had, she couldn't say this, she couldn't be that, she couldn't do this, she couldn't show her arm. She had to wear a hair like this, couldn't raise her voice, all of these things, and I guess the same qulb we said for Barack Obama compared
to Donald Trump as the first black couple. Compared to them, it's just not fair, like the double standards are just yeah.
But again, it's strange because you know the thing that is interesting about if this is a strategy to use Milania to remind everybody that Trump has a wife and a family, I don't know that that's really what this does. Like these very stark black and white talking to the camera about things like that relatable the videos I've watched.
It's everything from that time I renovated the rose garden in a white house to how the election was stolen, to the very important role I've played in this thing, that thing to nude photos like they're.
They're not saying I love Donald and I love sitting next to him on the couch.
It's interesting because I don't know that necessarily, given Trump's position on race that he's been stoking hard lately, that it is that great for his base to be reminded, Because you know, you very rarely see Millennia's speak, right, so when you do like like other women who you don't see talk very often, like Kate Moss. You were saying on Friday, Mia that when you do see her talk, it's a bit of a jolt because you're like, oh, that's right. And she's from Slovenia, so she has an accent.
And I wonder if the Trump's base that's probably not a good thing.
But it's not like Trump and his team are going to be surprised that millani are. Oh, no, of How's And I think it's worth noting as well that Donald Trump has said he hasn't had time to read it. He hasn't had time to read it, but he says you should read it unless they are bad things about me in it, And then don't I see it as positioning Millennia because there's got a big strategy behind this. I'm sorry, but you're not getting a book written by Milania.
It's an always.
Strategy, but you don't sell published. Do you remember when she wore that jacket and it said frankly, I don't care or yeah, whatever it was when she was going to the border to see the kids in the cages.
But she said, and I'm trying to take this from like a perspective of a Republican or someone who supports his family, because let's not forget half of Americans do. She said that message was for all the media criticizing her, and she took the jacket off before she saw the children, and that was a way to signal to the media.
And she also the most human I've ever heard Millania sound. And I don't mean in any way the way she speaks, but in terms of what she's saying. Is in the leaked phone call that we referenced earlier where she said, who gives a fuck about Christmas? She was complaining about the criticism that she gets in the media, and she did sound like an actual human being, and she was saying, they don't care what I think about those children, They don't care about this, or that they want me to
give it into you Fox. I don't want to give an interview to Fox like she. I think that Millennia is much harder to manage and handle and put in a neat little box for Trump than a lot of other first ladies.
See. I think that when they came up with a plan, and they came up with what Trump's campaign would look like, this was part of the strategy. This was very much part of the strategy, and there were things that are intentionally like for example, the framing of Millennia as a mother and her talking about loving motherhood, Like I think that's important for a first lady.
Is the selling of ornaments and jewelry fit into that?
Oh well, I guess it's Is it grift or is it like think, well, it's not raising money for anyone, like if it's not a lot.
Of people release books, so they're not raising money.
I mean the Christmas ornaments, like the Christmas ornaments is pure grift. But what I love about Milania the only thing is that she's been quite quitting since before that was even a thing. Yes, she's been quite quitting her role as a wife. She hates all this stuff, quite quit as a first lady, like pretty much the only achievement she had was redesigning the Rose Garden and her be Best campaign, which actually no one could understand what
it was for and what it meant. So I think by all objective measures, she was pretty ineffective first lady, And yet everyone expected her to split with him after they left the White House. That's why I find she didn't so she obviously signed on for a.
New isn't very quiet quitting of her. This is a nice Again.
I don't think it's good strategy to have the first Lady release a book one month before the election. I think you wait for that because it could be depending what was in that book. And there isn't going to be anything silatious in the book, apart from the nude photos, which will be fun. If there was anything slacious in it. It pulls focus. It's distracting. Da da da da da, like in a conventional campaign, that would all come later,
Like you don't want that to happen. This is what I mean about them, is that they just do these crazy things. And I think that Milania my read on her as always reading and watching things about supermodels and all that, and that era of time when she started dating Trump and married Trump. I don't think this is what she ever signed up for. Right she thought, I'm
marrying a rich dude. I'm going to get to live in my fancy house in New York and have my child and just basically be a rich lady in New York. She didn't sign up for any of this, and you can tell how much she hates it all the time, and I don't know, I find that kind of appealing out louders.
If you want to stay up to date with what's happening in the US, there's two types of people, the ones who are living for election coverage and the ones who do not want to hear a word of it. Now it's a great time to become a subscriber because every week we've been inviting friend of the poet to the incredibly knowledgeable Amelia lest onto the show to unpack everything in US politics. I could listen to her for days.
You can listen to all of those episodes. There'll be another one coming this week via the link in our show notes.
The challenges and rewards of motherhood, from sleepless nights to joyful milestones, bring immense fulfillment which only a mother understands.
Hell yoga boobs, fashion boobs, the desire for a bra la summer. According to The New York Times, small breaths have newfound power and they are all the rage in the clinics of cosmetics surgents in the US, the biggest increase in people who are getting breast reductions is in women under thirty, but this rise isn't just happening overseas.
Last year, it was reported that breast reductions in Australia had tripled over the three years before, and there has been a push to make the surgery more accessible through Medicare. I believe it covers some of the surgery, that's if it's causing other health issues, but there's still a considerable gap. The New York Times reports that patients used to ask for sea cups. With reduction, it was like, I want my sea cup, and now they're more likely to request
a B cup. Many of the patients are young, postpartum mothers. The writer Lisa Miller concludes to decide to reduce them, to make them lighter, smaller, easier to carry and cover, more discreet, can be seen as an act of self love and empowerment, a woman's prioritization finally, of her own comfort and independence over what others have traditionally found sexy.
She writes that on the other hand, it can be interpreted as self loathing, an agreement with a sexist culture that can also regard larger breasts that aren't youthfully round and upright as repulsive, droopy, flabby, jiggly, hard, to contain, Holly, why do you think that small breasts everywhere?
Don't you just love it when it's arbitrarily decided that parts of our bodies are.
Out of fashion. Yeah, it just happens all the time.
Just deal with that. Those boobs are not on trend. Sort them out, won't you. But if we are accepting the fact that there are body trends and that women are adhering to them, I reckon this fits with two trends at the moment. The fact that younger women in particular want smaller boobs, a move away from the Kardashian body and all the things that come along with that,
the curves. You know, we've seen it a lot on red carpets, and we've seen it in that we're kind of moving back culturally towards the skinny size zero aesthetic aesthetic, and that's much cooler and then possibly a little more positively, I'd say, the other trend is women giving fewer f's about them. We've talked a lot about how all the cool artists are young females at the minute, and Chapel Rohane has this song where she talks about her type and she's like, no long hair, no bra, and you.
Know exactly what she means.
There is a cool girl vibe that is very no bra that only works if your boobs are little. Anybody listening to this who has big boobs, and there will be many many women go, yeah, it would be nice to have little boobies that can just hop around with No, that's not how it works the most of us.
The other trend there, though, I reckon is youth, so like it's about smaller breasts are code for younger because often if you've had babies, or if your menopausal or whatever, the shape of your body changes. So there is something I imagine like small breath and the braless thing. And fashion is now the youth have such a hold on all things fashion, which is like you know, no bras underneath, or like the tops with all the cutouts and stuff you need to.
Have you do. And also but I also think that if there was anything positive in it, right, is that if women have the financial power increasingly all the time to be able to go this is the surgery I want it could be seen as somehow positive, that it's not this male fantasy of like bigger, bigger, bigger. It's more like I know that having big boobs is I
don't mean I I mean one. I know that big boobs can come with a lot of pain, discomfort, hiking them around, having men's start, and all the time, you know what, I'd like, smaller boobs. It's interesting when you ask women what they want and they've got the power to have it, they'll often say something different.
I would love smaller boobs for esthetic reasons only exactly, and models have always had no boobs, right, And for me it's different. It's not well, of course, I'm partly influenced by the culture, but also I just don't feel like their mind. Because I always had pretty small boobs until perimenopause, when my boobs grew and they're now probably a double D. I feel like they're not connected to me.
I don't feel like myself. And your body changes in lots of ways as you get older, whether you've had kids or not, and one of them is for many women, your boobs get bigger. And I often think that that must be difficult if you've had an augmentation when you were younger. But they don't grow in like a perky way.
Even this morning, I didn't have that feeling of my boobs touching my stomach when I bent over or something, and I think there might have even been a little slapping sound, and it's just I like it.
I was watching scenes from Friends because we're doing Friends for canceled next week. I was going very deep on fat Monica. Do you remember the fat Monica carrack.
When she'd wear a fats she'd wear a fat seed in.
The flashback, something that we don't do now.
We do not do that now. It was very of the moment.
But if you look at photos of fat Monica, the first thing you'll notice is it she's not fat. The second thing you'll notice is she just has breasts. She has breasts and hips. And I look at Courtney Cox and who she was, and there's a whole thing to be read there about how she was basically a clown and mocked in those flashbacks. But I went, oh, that body in the nineties was coded, even the way that you'd skin dressed, the curvy body was coded as fat.
And then the Kardashians came along and kind of changed change that. But now they're getting everything reversed. I think the other element at play is exercise. So with women prioritizing exercise more than we ever have, whether it's running or going to the gym or or whatever. The size of your boobs has an enormous impact on your mobility and.
Literally can do.
Fact, I have to wear something called a shock absorber bra under my sports bra. I have to wear two and it cost are more than one hundred dollars. So it's like there's a tax on having big boobs.
There definitely is. One of my oldest best friends has really, really big boobs. We were used to joke when we were at high school that she was saving up for a breast reduction. Right, she never actually got one. She's spent all of her life figuring out how to dress that dress around her boobs, what swimwear to wear around her boobs, what broad to wear around her boobs. Like any conversation like this would drive her nuts because she'd be like, you don't understand, Like, boobs aren't just these
fun things. If you've got really big boobs, it impacts all kinds of things and is very expensive. But it's interesting to me that it's always been a bit of a status symbol. Well, certainly back to the friend Zierra that you're talking about Jesse. That was the last time it was really cool to be really skinny. If you watch TV from that time, late nineties, early noughties, it was size zero, it was tiny, skinny, it was no bra, it was visible nipples. It was cool to be skinny.
And we're back there. Apparently, when you lose weight, your boobs shrink quite dramatically, and that immediately gives you a very different look in your clothes. But equally, as you say, if you've got really big boobs, it doesn't matter how much weight you lose, you're always gonna look bigger. And so, because we live in a fat phobic society that thinks all women should take up as little space as possible, those boobs are really unfashioned. I guess it's really interesting.
Out louders tell us what do you think is the size or the age where you go from having boobs to having a bosom? Because I think I'm int the bosom age and I don't like it.
Every Tuesday and Thursday we drop new segments of MUMMYA out Loud just from MUMMYA. Subscribers follow the link in the show notes to get your daily dose of out Loud and a big thank you to all our current subscribers.
Take it down. Unfair, uncomfortable and sad to watch. People magazine posted a clip of an exclusive interview with Hayden Panettier last week, and plenty of people said that they shouldn't have for a bit of context. Panetier is an actress who blew up in the naughties on a show called Heroes, and almost as soon as her star rows, she became a tabloid fixture. Everyone was looking at her body. She had on off relationship, there were rumors of substance abuse,
a well publicized episode of postnatal depression. After the birth of her daughter, she searched back in the public censure when she appeared on Nashville. We were all obsessed with that. She was the singer Juliette Barnes in a role that echoed a lot of what happened in her real life.
Right, good point.
I hadn't yeh addiction and that was a bit part of why everybody was obsessed with her in that part. In twenty twenty two, she said in People magazine actually that she had received treatment for alcohol and opiate addiction. She also said that this dated back to her being a child star. She said that she was only fifteen when people on her team started offering her what they called happy pills when she was doing publicity. They were
to make me peppy during interviews. She said, I had no idea that this was not an appropriate thing or what door that would open for me when it came to my addiction. Fast forward to last week, after quite some time out of the media, she gave an interview to People, and in it she talked about the loss of her brother, who died last year from complications caused by an enlarged heart. Here's a little bit of that interview.
Losing my little brother's there's nothing like I mean, he was my only sibling, and he was my younger sibling, and it was my job to protect him and my lost him. They felt like I lost half of my soul. I remember saying to somebody, and it hadn't even been a year, and I was like, don't ever ever expect me to get over the loss of him.
It immediately attracted a lot of criticism from people saying, Paul Hayden, obviously not so, but do better. People, I'm shocked that this is posted. It's uncomfortable and sad. To watch.
Can you describe how it looked whole, because you could listen to that and you could go, oh, that doesn't sound so bad.
Maybe she just sounds did look well.
It's a relatively close cut of her face. The way I would describe it, she looks quite blank. Also, her eyes are half closed, closing glassy. The noise got so loud that she's had to release a statement. She said, I'd like to take a moment to address the controversy. It's unfathomable, but that I have to. Then she talks about the fact that she was exhausted. She said she hadn't slept for two days due to one of her dogs,
who was recovering from a surgical procedure. She said her rep stopped the interview early as it became obvious that I was fading, especially on this as the subject matter became heavier. We asked the interviewer if we could redo it another day or do a follow up interview on zoom. She assured us it wasn't necessary and that she felt it was an emotional and heartfelt interview. We were also told that they would edit it and it would be a beautiful piece. She's worked with people lots of times.
As we've said. She also said grief looks different on everyone. Whether or not I'm on medication is none of anyone's business and is between me and my doctor. I'm doing interviews to promote my new film because I'm proud of it. The real issue here is the toxicity of social media and a news cycle driven by clickbait. As we record the show, the interview is still up on People. So despite growing calls for its removal, Jesse should it stay.
On the cover of People magazine. It's a picture of her looking really great in this picture, and it comes with the text I'm starting to feel like myself again. So people probably knew that there was going to be a stark contrast between what she was saying and how she was coming across. I do think that speculating about what she was potentially on isn't very helpful, because I also know that there are a lot of medications for mental health issues that can have those same side effects.
Because she was slurring, she appeared a bit foggy, and I mean, I've had that experience if you're trying to get your dosage right or whatever. The people I look at in this story and go what were you thinking? I just had people. It's like, there should be people in the room looking out for you, and within five minutes, if it's not going how you want it, to go, pull the plug. If she wasn't feeling great days up to it, paul the plug. But they clearly didn't do that until it was too late.
Yeah, I'm really torn about this because you know what I think about it's not the media's role to protect people, people who are wealthy and famous, and that's not the media's job. It's not to be their publicist, it's not to be their mother.
Especially when they want to speak. And this is a mass of difference with Andrew O'Keefe, which we were talking about last week, is that he's not saying, hey, listen to me, give me a microphone. He's being stalked by paparazzi. This was she was fully consenting, fully, I'm ready to sit down and talk.
She's on the publicity trail for this new comeback that she's done where she plays a character who tries to save a child who's been abducted. But where the tension is for me is I watched the whole interview and not all of it was about. Her point was that it was a heavy subject matter. That's why I was seemed upset. I watched the whole interview, which was more than ten minutes, and it covered a whole lot of
different things. She talked about her child, very sad story because when her daughter was three, Kaya Hayden went into rehab and she'd already split from the child's father at that time. He was a hockey player, professional athlete, and he took custody and then she ended up losing custody, and she said she did a red table talk with Jada Pinkett Smith and said, I thought it was just going to be temporary, that she was going to go and live with her dad, and then it ended up
being permanent. And so now Kaya lives not in the Ukraine but in Europe and has done I think she's about nine or ten now. And Hayden talks about her also in this interview in a lovely way as a mother, but clearly a mother who doesn't live with her child and isn't intimately familiar with her child's life and what's going on. So that's all just a bit of context, and it's true. I went back and looked at some other interviews that she'd done in the last few years,
and she does speak slowly, but this was different. Again, the tension in it for me is they did some cutaways to vision and photos that they'd done in this shoot before the interview. She said in her statement it was an eight hour shoot, and then I did the interview, right, which tells you a lot. Right, Let's talk to someone for an hour at the end of the day, but we're going to spend eight hours photographing them. And I feel hadn't have listened to what she was saying, and
you hadn't seen that video. She looked immaculate, she looked glamorous, she looked beautiful skin, she had glamorous hair. Like again, what is the media's role to help make this artifice that she's completely fine? To me, this interview is just filled in some of the nuance that recovery in grief
is not linear. It's not you know, as we saw with Matthew Perry, right, Like the trouble is when you're famous and you have addiction issues, you need to have the redemption arc of I was addicted and now I'm not. And that's what Matthew Perry had with his memoir, and he's how come back and it's often not. Sometimes it is, but often not. And yet that is the only narrative that we will accept. And so it turns out that Matthew Perry was not sober when he was promoting that memoir.
He was already back, you know, addicted to ketamine and taking drugs and spiraling back into addiction. But he was out there talking about it, kind of being behind him, because that's what we insist on. People Magazine is not a gossipy title. They always work very much on the side of the star, on the side of publicists.
She would have had approven so I think not on that video she said you didn't, but she might have had approval on the cover, no.
Question, probably in some ways. I mean, People Magazine is also when Britney spears memoir came out, they did the whole photo shoot with Britney, no interview, no video. So it's like, are they enablers to help rehabilitate the image of these stars or are they It's a fine line.
It's interesting when I used to work, I don't know the answer and gossip mags if you wanted the interview with the Red Ark of I used to have post lital depression, or my marriage broke down or whatever, you absolutely agreed to picture approval. They would have one hundred percent agreed to picture approval. That's why the image on
the cover looks so perfect. Video and audio and releasing the video and audio has changed that game, right, because it's very unlikely that her people had approval of that. If they had, then massive miss to let it go out, because this was probably inevitable the way that we pick apart.
They would have been in the room when the interviews happened.
They would That's what I can't understand. Why you wouldn't jump up and say.
Yeah, says once the cameras are rolling, that then becomes yeah.
But she says that her people did stop it, but that they were assured by people that they would handle little sensitively. As Mia says, it's not in People Magazine's interest to gotcha celebrities because they are the mouthpiece. They're the mouthpiece for Harry and Meghan, because they're generally friendly, they offer approval, They work very tightly with Hollywood.
Agents, so kind of like the Women's Weekly use.
Yes, it's interesting that this was allowed to go out, would you have published it?
You do a no filter with someone and this is how no I mean, this is complicated. But they come and they're slurring or they're not, they're best selves, which props really.
Tricky because occasionally I have not published a no filter. They've been about two times when I've done that to protect the person because I didn't think they were in the state to do the interview. But they were not big Hollywood stars with publicists and teams who had conspireds makes it sounds interstuff, but who had participated in an eight hour shoot and was publicizing a movie and contractually obliged to publicize a movie. It's interesting to know also,
who wants her to come back. She probably wants to come back. She's got to earn money. She's got to earn money. She hasn't no money in a long time. It's just one of those heartbreaking stories that I don't think there is a bad guy in this. I think it's you know, it's a story about addiction. It's like Britney Spears. If you go and look at Hayden's Instagram again, I don't know if she's publishing it. She doesn't publish video, she only publishes stills, but the captions are eerily reminiscent
of Britney Spears. It's like that very childlike way of talking doesn't sound like a grown woman who's in control of what's going on in a lite.
I think the fact that there was such a pushback on people shows increased media literacy, shows increased understanding of mental health and addiction, and shows that the narrative from a different generation about the fact that st Britney spears, for example, as a victim.
So what are we saying? We just want the fake?
I think people think it's exploitative if somebody is not in the right frame of mind to be able to do that. To show that to everybody is exploitative. Whether or not it is, I'm with you, I'm kind of on the fence.
Showing reality is exploited in well.
It also shows the massive gap between as you've brilliantly expressed, the massive gap between the image that's being presented. But then don't we all want to put forward our best image a lot of the time. I don't mean necessarily literally, but do we all want everybody rummaging around?
How much does how much agency does a thirty five year old woman with a team of managers, agents, publicists, wardrobe, hair and makeer, you know, personal trainers, or how much agency and responsibility does she have to take for you know what, guys, let's do the interview at the beginning of the day, or I'm just not going to do this and you know I've been on shoots. It can I'm not like that, but it can be hard. But
you do have some agency. It's not the publications job or the media organization's job to take care of you or to make you look away. That's not true. It's tricky.
Look, that was going to be all we had time for. But there's an urgent question I have for me in case you missed it. Barrel jeans are a big thing at the moment, which are well mia explained to us in your fashion language. What barrel jeans are disgusting. They are hyper wide leg but not just wide leg jeans in like a normal wide leg way. They kind of almost balloon out.
Don't imagine we've.
Been riding a horse for one hundred years.
You know, when you stand on like an air gust and like you've got jeans on and it makes you go puff out at the knees and you look really silly.
Yes, So if you're standing straight with your ankles together, imagine an oval shape from your hips to your ankles.
Yeah, like you're standing in a circle. So kind of And the thing that I want to know because apparently so in case you missed everybody, they're a big thing. You'll look around and you will see them. But Mia has not yet embraced this trend. Now we know that Mia jumps on most trends. Last week we did post those ridiculous see through sockey jewelry things she's wearing. Pretty a lot of people just said to me in my DMS and Instagram like WTF.
One person said, please Holly stop referring to mea as the fashion person because her style is appalling. But why have you not yet worn these jeans because I think they're repulsive?
How long do you think you're going to think that?
For Well, I've been looking at them, never once been tempted. Because you're right, I offer and will think, oh that's a look that I will never wear, like socks, for example, And now look at me go. My eye is very suggestible and I will usually adapt to whatever trend is out there, because you know, you see it enough times and it looks good. But I think it looks terrible.
And I was thinking that maybe it's because we work with a lot of sort of cool younger people here at Mamma Mea, and none of them are wearing them. So I think maybe if they were all wearing them, I'll just find myself dressing by osmosis. Right, whoever's around me, I'll start dressing like them, except for you.
And maybe for us, just a us thing, right, because they're going out to fall.
They've been a barrel jeans have been around for more than a year, and they seem to be getting bigger. But some people, they look like wearing balloons on your legs. I think they're incredibly unflattering. But having said that, I don't think wearing flattering things because what does flattering mean anyway? Flattering is just a subjective idea. Although to some people flattering mean skinny doesn't to me. But I just don't like the way they look.
I think, out louders, what we're going to put a picture of barrel jeans on our Instagram feed, and I want you to tell us whether or not you think Mia should do this. I think all it would take actually is for Dolf, our very cool social media producer. You can come in a couple of days wearing barrel jeans and Maya will be in them. She'll probably have them in every different shade.
I'm really scared that they're going to start looking attractive to me. I need to hold this line because I don't have many lines.
That I hold out louders. That's all we've got time for on this Monday. Thank you for being here with us. We will be back in your ears tomorrow of course. And a massive thank you too to our fabulous team for helping us put this show together. We'll see it. Bye bye.
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