You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on Hello, and welcome to Mamma Mia out Loud. What women are actually talking about on Wednesday, the twentieth of August. My name is Hollywayne Wright.
I'm Jesse Stevens and I'm Stacy Higgs.
Welcome to out Loud.
Stacey so much.
It's very exciting to have you here.
I'm come dressed as a taller version of Jesse Stevens. You are in the same shirt.
Tell the people who you are in case they don't know.
So I am MoMA me as deputy editor. And you might have heard me on Parenting out Loud and you will hear more about that next week.
And we should say, yes, Stacey and I are wearing the same shirt.
Okay, isn't this shirt viral or something?
Yes?
Yes, I have it in three colors, and I forget what I wore before. I have it shirt in two.
I really like it. Shit, I need to get it, But then I'm just like then we could all be wearing it.
The thing about this shirt is every time we wear it to work, we run into three other people who have it the Abasa recently for something and they stopped me.
They said, you've got the viral shirt and I was like, that's something no one's ever said to me. This shirt. It has sleeves and stripes.
I cannot express how there is nothing interesting or exceptional about this shirt, but the hold it has on the culture needs to be acknowledged.
Is Lioness Yep, it's sixty bucks.
Yep, it's forty bucks.
At the moment, Geez, I need to call mea Friedman, our friend and find out how many of those she owns.
Because it's just something that she likes. It's a viral item of clothing. It's weird that Jesse and I are early adopters. That never happens in my experience. Don't know how that happened.
But here we are. Okay, back to business. Things that made our agenda today, Stacey.
There's a new Netflix documentary that will make you rethink one of the biggest reality shows that we all watched.
There's also a very important roundtable taking place in Canberra and we are going to elbow our way in and offer some suggestions, very.
Helpful suggestion and how kitchen cabinets brought one of the biggest self help gurus in the world to her knees. Yes, we're talking about Meil Robbins. But first, what if you didn't have to vote? What if you didn't have to bother your pretty little head about complicated issues like human rights, environmental issues, defense, education, and health spending. Well, there's someone pretty high up in the Trump administration who's got some good news for you.
He's pat new on your little head. He's saying, don't you worry, a little lady, don't you worry.
Don't have to think about this stuff.
Something called head of the household voting is being floated as a jolly good idea by the US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. He recently made a far right Christian fringe belief seem pretty mainstream when he shared a video to his ex feed. In this video, right, there's this controversial pastor called Doug Wilson, and he, for a very long time has been founding his own little empire of
very conservative Christian churches in the Midwest of America. And recently they have got more and more popular, and their spreading and spreading and spreading and He's just opened one in Washington, DC, and devotees of this church have the ear of the Trump presidency, as evidenced by the fact that heg Seth retweeted this video in which the pastor expressed that ideally every household should get one vote, and I bet you can't get who in the household gets
the Is it a dog, it is the man? Assuming that, of course there is a man in.
Every Apparently a woman can get the vote if she's widowed.
Would this be a relief to us friends, if the men took care of all that messy having opinions?
Shit, Look, I have some feelings.
Firstly, I just I read this and I went not all Christians. I'm just I'm horrified, and I feel as though it's got to be put in the context of heg Seth. This isn't just an idea he's playing with. He has outstoed multiple senior women from roles in the military since he has been appointed this role. He went through the Pentagon's Women Peace and Security program, took out a whole lot of female roles because he said that they were woke and that they were prioritizing feminism.
So oh, look, it's am I laughing.
It feels pretty horrific. But I actually heard Hannah Rosen speak last week at this conference, and she wrote a book thirteen years ago called The End of Men, and she made a prediction in that that said, and her argument was basically that women college graduates going through the roof women were making more money. Women's roles are plastic and malleable, whereas men are cardboard.
It feels like they're.
Unable to evolve from a very traditional role and there are some issues there. She wasn't celebrating the end of men. She was just saying, we're seeing a cultural shift. She had two predictions. She said, one of two things is going to happen. The first is gender roles become more flexible and we just all evolve and mix and at this great utopia.
I vote for that version.
Let's do it.
The other option was that men can't handle it and all hell breaks loose. That was her second prediction.
And I have a terrible feeling that her second prediction came true.
Definitely sounds more familiar.
Yeah, speaking of not all Christians. So Jesse, did you know there's only one country in the entire world where women are not allowed to vote. Do you know what it is where that in can City?
Is it really?
Yes?
It is. Obviously there's some complexities in that. Not all countries in the world have democratic voting systems. Yes, but universal suffrage everywhere except for the seat of Catholicism. I'll just leave that.
We were not looking for people who were overweight and happy.
I'm a secret leader.
We were looking for people who were overweight and unhappy.
Needi, you would fix my marriage, maybe always fix me, do anything to be on your show.
They were really reinforcing the stereotypes people like making fun of bad people, and producers love that.
I'm not trying to quit. I'm not well.
They do it, Joel, Stop saying all these words. Quit talking.
I'm second, just words words words talk talk talk, Shut the un just do it.
This week, one of the most confronting documentaries I've ever watched tit Netflix, and it wasn't about a brutal crime or a multimillion dollar love scam. It's called Fit for TV, the Reality of Biggest Loser, and it focuses on the phenomenon that was the weight loss reality show The Biggest Loser.
For those who might not remember it. The US version first aired in two thousand and six and the Australian format followed pretty soon after that same year, where overweight and obese people could sign up for what was essentially a televised fat camp. They were made to exercise for hours on end, consumer as little as eight hundred calories a day, and they were screamed at by the trainers
in the name of entertainment. The contestants competed to win up to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in the US, it was almost the same here about two hundred k, with Danny Cahill breaking the US record by losing fifty five percent of his original body weight, so to put that into perspective, he lost one hundred and ninety five kilos in six months during the course of the show.
And in this doco former contestants, even one of the trainers, Bob Harper, and the executive producers of the show talk about the toll the show, talk on the contestants and the subsequent fallout for them, And I think the reason it's so confronting for so many women is thoughts about weight play as a constant monologue in our heads. They definitely do in mind, and many of us know the
calories of everything we consume. We're always kind of feeling like we should be taking up less space and punishing ourselves with exercise. So this show has a lot to answer for in the role that that played in driving
that messaging home. But I think it's easy to lose sight of the fact that as straight sized women, we can't even begin to imagine the toll this show took on overweight or obese people watching and seeing that messaging reinforce, even through the name of the show being so negatively coded. We had a conversation this smaller and producer Ruth shared some deeply personal feelings about this documentary, and we're going to share what she said in her words with you now.
I am fat.
Three little words, that's all they were. But as I said them, I could feel my throat constrict and a wave of tears pushing against the back of my eyeballs. How embarrassing, How bloody embarrassing. This was me, producer Ruth, who's supposed to be in charge of things on out loud, crying in our planning meeting this morning, a meeting we have before every episode of the show out loud, as it wasn't the best start to the day.
Look, there is context to this.
I don't normally blurt out things about myself which frankly, are patently obvious to anyone with eyeballs, because yes, while I'm here, I might as well go the whole hog and tell you that I'm not just fat as in I could lose a few I'm not just a bit curvy or voluptuous or plus size. I'm actually morbidly obese, and yes, it is a fucker. The reason I was saying I am fat was because we were discussing talking about the Biggest Loser doco on the show, and I
had things to say about it. There's no doubt in my mind that you don't have to be a beast to talk about this doco. That goes for any topic in my book. You want to talk about something, go ahead and talk about it. It's just that on this day, on this morning, in this meeting, I was the only fat person at the table and had a perspective that might be different to my straight size colleagues. I'm also really aware that this is my perspective, a mine alone.
I don't pretend, for one minute to speak for every fat person out there. I watched the Biggest Loser documentary like someone rubbernecking at a car crash. You don't want to look, but you can't stop, and when you do look, you're both horrified at what happened and ashamed at the part of you that enjoyed the spectacle in the first place.
That's what the show always was for me. Fat people paraded around for the entertainment of the thin, with a side order of inspiration, so the cruelty could be passed off as kindness. What I liked about the documentary was the honesty. Finally someone said what should have been obvious all along. Those transformations weren't success stories. They were trauma responses. Starve anyone scream at them long enough on national TV. Deprive them of sleep, and they'll shed kilos hell even
I would. It's not discipline, it's desperation. You could see it in their faces, those dead eyed weigh ins, bodies shaking on treadmills. Those contestants were being punished for being fat. The network made money out of it, the audience were entertained. That's how TV works. Hearing that honesty felt good, like a weird kind of justice, too little, too late, but something at least. But then came the other part, the hatred, because the documentary was also a mirror, and mirrors aren't
kind to people like me. I won't look in one. A compact is the largest mirror in which I'll ever allow myself to see my reflection. Watching those old clips spliced with present day regret, I realized I used to sit there inwardly cheering. I wanted to believe in the punishment self loathing fatty that I am. I wanted to believe fatness could be beaten out of us them me like a demon. And if you didn't win, it was
because you lacked the moral fiber. And that's the real rot at the center of The Biggest Loser.
It taught us that.
Fat isn't just a body, it's a character flaw. The doco showed the scars, the ruined metabolisms, destroyed mental health people yeo yoing their way into permanent damage. But here's what they didn't quite say. Those scars aren't just on the contestants. They're on everyone who watched, everyone who learned to hate their own reflection because the culture told us
our worth could be read off a bathroom scale. It's not just that the contestants were abused, it's that the rest of us were trained to see that abuse is deserved. What I hated most was how familiar it all felt. The fake cheering, the brutal cuts to tears and sweat, the public weigh ins where people shamed were served up as family entertainment. I grew up marinating in that message. If you're fat, you're disgusting. If you're thin, you're safe
for now. The show wasn't a diet program. It was a morality play, and we all bought tickets.
So yes, the.
Documentary told the truth. But truth doesn't undo the damage. It doesn't erase the nights I went to bed hungry, convinced that pain was proof of virtue. The days I spend trying to make myself that little bit smaller, that little bit less, so I don't take up quite as much room in the world for fear of someone calling me out as fat, lazy, stupid, smelly. It doesn't quiet the voice in my head that's all measures my worth in Kilo's decades later, watching it was like seeing my
abuser finally unmasked. Satisfying but also sickening because it reminded me of how willingly I played along. I loved it, I hated it. Mostly I mourned it because while the circus has left town, the scars it left are permanent.
The way that you put words around how that felt. I think people should probably know that Ruth is a writer.
And any surprise to anyone who heard that that she's a stunning writer.
I think that really speaks to the heart of this story and actually like the trauma of people who grew up with this, because you can remember what this did to the culture, that it was the time when everyone knew every calorie count and gyms were full of people who understood this to be punishment, and that show just reinforced that.
And this wasn't a quick moment in time like this run for eleven seasons in Australia and I think even longer in the US, so this really did have a lasting impact on generations of people.
After listening to Ruth's unbelievable perspective there, like, I don't have very much to add at all. I watched this documentary and I felt astounded because it's most it's about the American Biggest Loser for clarity, and at that show's peak, eleven million Americans were watching that show, and hundreds and
thousands of people wanted to be on that show. And I think all the complexity of those facts are reflected in what Ruth just said and to what you said in the intro Stacey, where I think for a lot of women in particular, like the stats say that right now about sixty percent of Australians are actively trying to lose weight, not just women, just Australians are actively trying
to lose weight. So a very large percentage of the population can relate on some level to feeling like their body is wrong right, and that women in particular are constantly being told that there is something wrong with our bodies and no matter what size, no matter what the number on the scales, that we have a piece in this shame around being too greedy and wanting too much and eating the wrong things and all of that stuff.
And that's all true. And I think that's why there was almost like a safety that people could watch The Biggest Loser, and whether they admit this to themselves or not, they could go.
But I'm not those people do you know what I mean, and that had mentioned in the documentary.
Yes, And I think that the thing is is that so we can all relate to a piece of it. But I think what Ruth's unbelievable piece of writing that she just delivered says that we can relate to a piece of it, but we can't relate to that entire experience, and we shouldn't try and own any of that.
My twin sister Claire did her post grad studies on the relationship between obesity and eating disorders. There was a movement, and it's interestingly sort of lost a bit of momentum, but it was about health at any size, and how the experience of shame, according to every psychological study ever conducted, does not change behavior. In fact, shame around weight causes
more issues than it prevents. The idea that shaming these people on a national platform would somehow lead to a revolution in people's relationship with their health was so misguided, and I think we can see that now, and it was steeped in all of these assumptions that we did see at the time. But I suppose with a step back,
there's even more clarity. Like I remember Claire and I would write these recaps of the Biggest Loser, and it was through analysis and kind of going, let's just unpack that assumption, the assumption that everyone on that show had to admit that they were sad and that their lives had been a tragedy up until the point, and that the only way that they would be worthy mothers, worthy to their partners would be if they lost this weight. And that was also sending it back, like there was
one where this this man, I'll never forget it. He stood up and he said, I'm not going to tell you I'm sad and depressed.
I'm not.
And one of the trainers looked at him. This was in Australia and said, honestly, and it was like they all stood there until you admit, you admit that.
You are a failure.
I also want to just take a minute to look at the decline of this show in the context of Australia, because I remembered that it ended with a bit of a whimper, and I went what happened? Because I remember there were all these iterations, there were children on it, There.
Was this a town.
Remember it was like Australia's fattest town.
Yep.
And there was all of this ground swell of criticism. So I think we tell ourselves the culture changed, the culture moved on. It's actually not what happened. What happened was the format of the show changed. The last season, they had a psychologist come in and they would have like weekly sessions with a psychologist. They changed the challenges. There was no more temptation where they basically encouraged and rewarded binge eating. They didn't make the people roll around
in mud anymore. What they did was they went, can you cook a healthy meal for a family for twenty five bucks? What's the healthiest way you can cook?
Check?
They made it like that, and it became people went, oh, well.
Now it's well, here's an interesting question. And we talked about this a little bit with the Jerry Springer documentary that came up, because we seem to be in a bit of a moment where we are revising our view of big cultural moments in terms of our current lens. On this documentary, they interview you know, the EPs, the creators of this show, and the argument is very similar to the Jerry Springer producer's argument, which is people love
this shit. You know, everyone in media, there is a saying, really, do you give people more of what they want or less of what they want? And it is framed as a very a question that isn't a question, right, a rhetorical question, And so the defense of this kind of television has always been but people love it, people are like getting inspired, but also they are you really going to tell people what they should watch and what they
shouldn't watch on TV? And that's a really interesting point around because we were talking before about which shows of now we would look back on, And I'm not trying to draw a parallel because I think as roots amazing essay has made it clear there are some very very deep cuts here. But it's will we look back on marrit at First Sight and all these awful dating shows that we're watching with the trauma lens in ten to twenty years.
I think we will.
I think that now we hear of something called duty of care which didn't exist prior, and I think that the power dynamics have changed. But I do think looking back because there was a documentary last year on America's Next Top Model, it wasn't as widely distributed. I actually haven't seen it, but that was also overdue that analyzed it, and part of me goes, we were all swimming in the same culture. Is Tyra Banks any more culpable than I am because I sat down and watch every week?
So there is a flaw in using the standards of the present to look back at a cultural moment and blame all the players.
What I will say about.
Watching this is that I looked at the producers and the trainers and I went, you're lacking some self awareness. You're lacking a little bit of understanding of what you did and how it impacted me.
That was the overriding thing for me that stood out from watching it was they had Bob Harper on there, one of the original trainers. They didn't have Jillian Michaels. And even while we were recording this, Jillian Michaels has actually put the documentary on blast and come through with receipts refuting a lot of the claims. She did decline being there, or she just wanted to separate herself from
what she'd done. They didn't seem to understand the plart they had played in making us all believe this cliche that has been around for so long. And I think the overriding feeling I had watching this was shame, shame that I'd watched it and felt like it was okay. Watched it with my parents was seen as a show.
But also you can feel the shame of those contestants that they were so hopeful that this would work for them, even though they were seeing how contestants were traded on previous seasons, that they were willing to put themselves through being shamed even more in the hope that it would work.
The thing is about is that we have moved on from that, but we are still an intensely fat phobic culture, as anybody knows. And it's interesting because our own Jillian Michaels Michelle bridge Is has never outwardly condemned the Australian Biggest Loser, and she still has a weight loss company and it's noticeable that her messaging now is all strong, not skinny. That's what we're all about these days, right, But it's still the diet culture of it all is
still very sellable. And when I worked in magazines, diets sold every time. You had to have a diet on the cover, bullshit diet that someone had made up, usually, but and celebrity body transformations. And now we see it on Instagram and see it on skinny Talk, and that it's just moved platforms. It's just morphed. And now it's all about weight loss medication and we call it medical weight loss, and it's all still there. It's just like a shape shifter.
And I watched this and I think it's almost impossible to watch this documentary not through the prism of weight loss drugs, which have become quite quite ubiquitous. And I thought, I wonder if the criticism of weight loss drugs is partly to do with our strong belief that you ought to be punished and that weight loss ought to be on the other side of hard, hard work. It's just
colorI colories out exactly and some simplified version. I think that anyone who knows anything about weight knows how deeply deeply psychological it is.
But that show aims to prove it's simple.
All we have to do is this, and it lent into what makes in Vert Coomma's great television, which is it was visual. It was we saw the paint, we saw the vomit, we saw the image of the punishment, and then we saw the transformation at the end, it was all visual, even though that is not what a journey like that looks like for most people. In a moment, We've got some helpful advice for the Productivity Commission.
Ladies.
While we sit at this round table, there is another fancy around table happening in Canberra.
I bet their snacks are better.
I bet there's someone who comes takes their coffee orders.
And the cups are full. Yes, I.
Fall bullshit conditions. I've complaints.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers says the point of the three day Economic Reform round table is to make our economy more productive over time.
And guys, I have a confession.
I came in this morning and I said, friends, I don't know what productivity is.
I don't know.
I keep reading it.
I'm glad you said it because I don't understand.
I'll tell you how it feels.
Right.
It feels like there's a meeting in Canberra right now about how lazy we all are. And I, for one, do not appreciate it. I know somewhere in my brain that that's not what productivity means. But on behalf of me and our listeners, Jim Charmers, we are doing our bes we are, but actually trying really hard.
I think you're right. I think that is what's happening in there. It's just like all just bitching about how lazy we all are. And Gina ryan Hart's in there and she's got a whip brack in and like it's all just like get your asses up and work.
Yeah, it she feels like that, And like I didn't want to say this, but a three day meeting, like you know, who's not having a three day meeting with us?
Who's got time for three day meeting? Have been an email exactly.
I googled productivity to try and save face because I thought you can't go and say you don't know what it means. And it said productivity means how good we are as a nation at producing output, and factors that impact productivity include tech improvements. So they always talk about like AI, how we can make AI make us more
productive without putting in longer hours, economies of scale. I don't really understand that scope, don't understand that workforce skills, competitive pressures, la la, la la la.
This meeting sounds so boring.
I can't down god, and it's.
Three days, three days, Oh my god. So I figured that, given we're also having a meeting, albeit in another state, we'd come up with some ideas. Because we're being productive, we could help. We work very, very very hard. We make a lot of podcasts, which Charmers has not mentioned, not even once, and he's found table.
You know he's productive.
Those bitches they do five episodes a week. We're working right there, exactly exactly right. I'll start free diet coke at three pm. I think as a nation it's great for an afternoon pick me up. We know that not great things sometimes happen after three pm, so I feel as though we could just all kind of just get that pick me up and just go through to the end of the afternoon. Holly, you're wise used to manage people. What did you do other than get out your whip?
I like you, I need a three pm pick Anyone who's ever been in a meeting with me that goes towards three pm? I get very twitchy about coffee. I'm very twitchy about coffee, So I would like it implemented that I need a coffee delivered to me at two or I'm literally fall asleep in my day. But generally I was thinking about this I think Albow maybe needs to go further with his TikTok band because since I've yes, he's banning it for people under sixty. But I can
only speak for myself. But since I've discovered gardening talk, my productivity in my actual garden has decreased significantly. Maybe the TikTok band does not go far enough. Yeah, I think there's that. I think that single tasking should be outlawed, particularly for midlife men who like to watch every iteration of Star Wars on the couch on a Saturday afternoon, Like, that's not my life? Is that your life? Like sitting around not doing anything?
Maybe my dad finds time for on a Saturday afternoon to watch all afternoon, and it's like, do something with your hand.
Washing. I've never watched a single show without my hands doing at least two other.
Times, he's not peak productivity when he's rewatching Rocky four, banning bosses from saying can I have a quick word, and then telling you about their weekends for twelve minutes when you would really rather be talking about your weekend with your work wife in the kitchen. These are just some of my do you hey?
My first one? I think it'll be a crowdpleaser. I think it'll get through straight away. We've got to bring back siestas. Have we ever had them to bring?
How last is a siesta allowed.
For I would ideally like an hour, but I'll take twenty minutes at around three pm or you two are having your cokes here and your coffee. I just want to lay.
Down for twenty minutes. A little bad under the day.
Yes, there is not a single mattress in this office, and that's just absurd. I would love to have a little kip. Yep, that's my first one. Second one maybe a bit more controversial. Less toilets.
Oh no, no, no more toilets. But I have things to tell you about to I have never worked.
Faster than when I need to peek. If I need to peek and can't go and pee, I will get through so much. Don't you feel like you're in a race against time?
Yess, that's such a good you know what. We all need a little bit more urgency, yes, and.
That'll crank it up.
Oh.
I love that. There was suggestions.
I asked some people in the office and they said that maybe a little electric shock from your mouth, And I was like, oh, it's actually a torture method. And then other people said Margarita on tap, and I was like, no, you just want Margarita on tap. That's not going to help with your activity.
Mouth tape. I could do with some mouth tape. I yap a lot.
I also think mouthtape.
I have a lot of male friends that are talking about the three hour podcast interviews.
They watch it work and they're like, oh, I just have it up while I'm doing work.
Nah, No atap on Joe Rogan, Yes.
Exactly, maybe a little bit of a YouTube band there. We go at work, along with your TikTok and your Instagram.
But you wouldn't remember this because you were still at school. But when I first worked in offices, when social media had been invented, and this was in magazines, when we had to actually know about things on the world, our computers were blocked from having Facebook on them between nine and twelve and then one and six or whatever, because you were not allowed because in those days it was like, oh, Facebook,
so tantalizing. What if I'd rather be talking to my high school boyfriend doing my job and they'd be like no, no, no, you would have missed some in this office in particular, if we ban social well actually we couldn't do our jobs. But if we ban social media during the work day.
I know bad things.
Speaking about toilets and office toilets in particular, I have a really important question for the group. Yes, do you have a favorite toilet in a line of six cubicles? Because if you walk into the toilets, whether they're at work or in another public space, and there are like five toilets, six toilets, do you always choose the same one? And which one do you choose?
Yes?
Which one the end? You are on track for your gender? What about you? Jesse Stevens.
It depends on how much I need to wait. Sometimes I really need to wear I don't get to the end because so I go to the first one.
I've been thinking about this a lot, about which one would be the best to use, right, Yeah, because in that old office we had a private toilet.
Yeah, like one.
Toilet that was on its own.
It was really good.
Those are the days.
Yeah, that's real, that's what it was.
We don't have that anymore. We have a cubicle anyway. Statistically, in a line of six toilets, the most popular one is the middle one.
Always, right, Yeah, I'd probably go middle.
They have done studies where they see which ones go through the most toilet paper in time, and it is the middle one always. But there is a gender divide. Women go to the end. But if you are worried about hygiene, you should always pick the first because it is it is the least us.
Oh, that is so interesting.
Do you have an emotional attachment to the cubicle you always see?
I actually will revise my answer out and say that sometimes I'll go from the second from the end, just so you don't look like you're in there doing what you don't want they want to think you're in there.
Doing I'm going to add just another point to it. So I walk in and let's say, Stacy, you're in the last one.
Yes.
And let's say, Holy you're in the first one.
Oh. Yeah.
You always go to the cubicle that is furthest from the other people in it out of respect.
Kind of psychost The next year, when there are three free.
I hear them go in and I'm like, can we just get a little bit of privacy? And then the conversation continues, be like, how's your day been? Much? Can I add another fun toilet fact. I had a friend who went to Glastonbury recently. Did you know that the toilets are glaston Brie They only really cover your private parts and the rest of you is on full display to discourage drug use because a lot.
Of people working.
Yeah, so that people aren't going and snorting and sniffing and whatever. Can you imagine though you're going to the toilet and I'm just looking in the eye.
I would not be peeing for five days as a tall person. That is so much of my body to the world of you.
After the break, the biggest self help grew in the world wants had a complete meltdown about kitchen cabinet and there is a life lesson in this.
Every Tuesday and Thursday we drop new segments of mummy AA out Loud just for Mummy A 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.
Friends. I don't think I need to introduce mel Robins to you at this moment, do I Like she is pretty ubiquitous in the culture. She is the biggest self help guru in the world right now. She is the creator of the Let Them Theory, She has the number one podcast, She's everywhere, and this week she was on No Filter with our very own Kate Langbrook. She said, lots of stuff, It was all very useful, but there's one thing I want to talk about, and it is
kitchen cabinets. Take it away, my Robins jealous.
Oh my god, I literally, like, I literally wanted to die. Like, have you ever had a friend who all of a sudden they moved to like the fancy your town, or they move from renting an apartment to this like brownstone that they buy, and then they invite you over for dinner, and as you're driving up the long driveway, you're thinking.
How the hell do they have this much money?
And then they open up the door and you're happy for your friend because your friend works hard and your friend deserves to be happy, but you're just not happy for yourself because as you're gripping the wine glass and you're grinning your teeth trying to smile Thatt like freak smile, and every single corner of their house looks like a display on Pinterest. And then you turn the corner and
there is your dream kitchen. And she's got the white cab that's and the marble countertops, and you're like, you bitch, I shouldn't have shown you by Pinterest boards.
You stole my kitchen.
And then you're and you literally, you know if you're anything like me at the time, because this happened to me, this particular story, when we're still really struggling financially, you hold it together, and then when you get in the car and you go to drive away, you turn to your poor partner and you're like, why couldn't you have been in finance? Why did you have to be a nice person, Why couldn't you be funny like you just like aim it at them? Oh my god, it was so bad.
So champagne problems. Right, we could say fancy houses and kitchen renovations are not everybody's jealousy trigger. But what Robins went on to say about jealousy, which was that for her at the time, it was a motivator that made her want to own her own damn kitchen. And we can only assume that now she's worth tens of millions
of dollars, her cabinets are pretty specky. But she also went on to say that you only ever envy things you really really want, and that's why sometimes listening to your jealousy is a very good way to measure what matters to you. She said, for example, she's not jealous of the dude with a yellow Lamborghini because she's genuinely not interested in having a yellow Lamborghini, even if you've
got all the money in the world. And then she said, you know, there's no finite number of fancy kitchens, podcasts, et cetera, et cetera, And she did her whole very mele robins go out and get it, you know, go out and work for it, which ignores a lot of very deep seen in structural inequalities that we won't get into today. That's for another time. But what it did make me want to ask is what are you too jealous of? And what does it tell you about what matters to you.
I am jealous of people who counter on the weekends. Yeah, I am jealous of people who don't have bags under their eyes. I am jealous of people who can not tuck their shirt in and look cool because I still have to do the millennial tough. Yeah. Yeah, Like there's lots of things that I would like.
So those first things. Also that you're jealous of people who have more leisure time than you because you're in it. You've got a young child.
Yes, yes, that's right, and in the early motherhood season. And I think that is the thing that mel is failing to realize, is that sometimes you're jealous of things you can't get, and they might be things you already had once upon a time. What about you, Yes, do you feel that?
Do you feel envy for like things that you once had that you don't have any more?
Yes, And I think it doesn't mean that couldn't come back to me, But I definitely do feel jealousy when I look at people on the European holidays or when they're hiking the in Contrail. I don't want to hike the in Contrail, but I'd like the option to go and hike the in Contrail this week if I want to. So, I definitely do feel like I am jealous of the freedom that I knew once that you don't have as
much when you're raising little kids. And I wouldn't change the fact that I don't have that as much now because I love raising my little kid, but it definitely is something that no amount of jealousy and no amount of inspiration is going to get back for me at this moment. I so deeply related to the example that Mel used because I had this exact circumstance with friends. We went to our friend's beautiful new house that they'd built.
They've worked very hard to earn this house. I would have thought that I would be perfectly fine and not at all jealous, and when I got in the car, I completely crushed out after we saw how beautiful their house was, to my husband saying, we're both so stupid for marrying for love Black why did we marry each other. We're both journalists. We're never going to have that house.
And I hated myself for that, to the point where my best friend, who had also been at the house, sent me a text knows me very well and said, I know you're crushing out about that house. Don't spiral. It's okay. You will get to that if that's what you want. And I think that's kind of the floor in Mel's argument is that some of us realistically might not get to that. I'm not going to get that house, and that's okay, but that does clarify Okay, well, that's
something I can be working towards. Maybe I do want the fancy white cabinets like Mel Robbins does.
I have some really specific exams pools of jealousy, and I'm with you about the European Holiday. I think that there's something about that image at the moment that feels like that's not something I'm going to experience in the way I want to experience it for a lot of years. And that's really hard to see. And I do feel jealous because I want that. But there was I think just in the last forty eight hours, I thought, you know, Zara previously worked on Man and she firstly is in Europe.
So I went, oh, Caramel, so she's in Europe. But she posted this carousel of what she wore in Europe. Oh, outfits worse stunning, And I looked at it and I went, oh, I can feel the jealousy rising. And then I went, Jesse Stevens, I thought, you didn't care.
That's what I was gonna say.
I thought I didn't care about and so I then went, why am I feeling jealous right now? And I thought, I'm feeling jealous because of how good it must feel to put an outfit together like that, know how great it looks, and walk out into the world, and I went confidence. There was something about that that I went into.
Maybe maybe you do need to think more about clothes, and maybe you'd feel a bit happier if you look like that.
Maybe we need to stop wearing the shirt every day in some effort.
That is interesting because maybe it's the confidence to know because if.
We're jealous of her skill at putting together those outdoors, but I know I don't have it and I don't know how to get it.
If we're working on the theory that your jealousy tells you something about where you should be or you should be putting your energy, that tays to me, that's about confidence.
I think so.
And I also wondered I actually disagree with a point of mel Robbins's theory because there is a man in my life that I know who is very, very values driven and doesn't care about money. That's been a feature of his personality. Doesn't care about money, and every choice from job to house to whatever, he just goes.
That's not what I value.
These are my values. I don't care about money. He is the first person to notice the fancy car. He's the first person to notice the house that someone's moved into.
But noticing isn't the same as being envious of it.
The way he taught has made me feel like, why are you so obsessed with these things if you don't want them? And I was speaking to another friend recently and we said, I wonder sometimes if we're all just so cognizant of markers of success, and we go, I don't necessarily want that. But if you don't interrogate your jealousy enough, sometimes I think you get confused and you fixate on those things. I reckon if this guy sat down with himself and went, why am I jealous? Why
am I noticing this? Then he'd go, you actually don't want it. You're just noticing it because you know it's what society values. I think I've had the same thing, probably with beauty, with looking at women that are stunning and I go, I wish my face looked like that. I wish it was easier, Like she doesn't even have to wear makeup, and look at her beautiful hair, and then you kind of drill down, you go, it's not what I want, and you're able to kind of leave
it and move forward. I think that happens as your age, Holly, what do you feel jealous?
I think that's true. I think you can learn to deal with I think some of us are more prone to jealousy than others, right, And I am not very jealous person in general. And I've spoken about this on the podcast before, and Jesse knows this story. But a few years ago I was absolutely devastated by jealousy towards you, right, remember why it was when Jesse sold her first book in America.
I think that Holly started liking me again when my second book did not.
That is not true.
It's great, I promised that isn't true. What it was was I go around my life going, I'm not a jealous person. I'm happy for other people's successes, right, like, and generally speaking, that is true, right, I'm not. I don't tie myself up with it. So I was really flawed by this feeling I had at that time. It
was Jesse's first book and it was very successful. And the thing that was funny, and we have told this story before, so bear with me, long time out louders, but the thing that was really funny for me and I is that we were giving Jesse all this advice about our first book, and we were like, keep your
expectations low. Nobody makes any money writing books and you probably won't sell very much and your advance wab me whatever, and like we were being like the wise Aunties, right, and then Jesse's brilliant Heartsick, which is genuinely brilliant and you only had to read it to be like flawed by how clever and smart and beautiful it was. But anyway, was the subject of a bidding war in the US changed in anything. Me and me were like, oh okay.
But the thing that surprised me, and again I've told Jesse this before, so it's not like is that I was like, I literally couldn't sleep, like I was consumed by it. And it really knocked me around because it's not what I'm like right usually at all. And so I had to interrogate it, and we talked about it,
and I owned up to it and everything. And the thing is, I have genuinely moved past that, like I genuinely have like I have no jealous feelings towards Jesse or and I've got I'm friends with lots of very successful authors or I know that makes me sound very like that. I know, I know lots of successful authors. I've not caught up with jealousy about with them, about like Sally Hepworth, who's a friend of ours, who is enormously successful New York Times bestseller and all those things.
I've worked through it. But what that taught me was it was a very deep wake up about the recognition and success that I clearly really wanted. Yeah, where I was very much kind of going at that time in my life, well, I'm just happy to be here. And I've always sort of told myself that I'm just happy to be here. And clearly there was something about that
moment that really rocked me on the inside. Maybe your baby, you're not just happy to be here, you want that, and that's okay, Like it's okay to want that because and mel Robbins, even though, as I said, I think she's very much oversimplifying the idea that anyone can get what they want and all that it's nonsense, it's not true. But it is true that Jesse's success or anyone else's success does not take away from mine. And that is a lesson that sounds like bullshit, but when you actually
really learn it. It's true there is not a finite number of successful books or whatever it might be. So I think I have learned a lot about jealousy. But I think it's true that it points you where two things that really matter at the moment. For example, definitely jealous of people with financial security. It's not about big
houses and cars. It's because I'm at the point in my life where I feel like I can see a finite number of earning years ahead of me, and like everyone else in Australia and the world, you're likeck, how do I do the rest of my life with this mortgage? Still? Like, so when I see people, that brings out that the voice in you that's like must be nice, there must be nice voice comes out for me when I'm like, you don't have to worry about that.
Yeah, I've definitely and that's real.
And I'm also jealous of people whose parents because again it's all about your phase of life the same way, who are are parents who are healthy and available to them?
Like I definitely have that.
So I think it is interesting. I think it tells you a lot about your life stage, but also can be a real like not a motivator in like, I'm going to go out there and crush you know.
I think it's clarifying. It's really clarifying to go, this is what's coming up. I think that at that stage, too, you were suppressing your competitiveness. I've always thought you're competitive, but there's something about your upbringing or something where you don't I don't declare, you don't lean into it, and it's like you're allowed to feel that. And I remember seeing an image of Elizabeth Day, the podcaster, in front of a big billboard of a podcast, and I was like, well, I.
Want a billboard.
You know. You just have these moments where you're like and I think that not suppressing that, probably saying it out loud is really good for you and means that you're not resenting.
I mean. Another example of jealousy actually would be around fertility. I've had that.
Enormously over the last period of my life, where you feel as though you desperately want a baby and someone posts it they're pregnant, and it is like an attack and you know that it's not and you know that that jealousy won't exist in five years or ten years or whatever. But in the moment you feel it, and that's exactly it.
That you go.
I want that to be my announcement, and that's like a deeply human thing.
I think you'll be happy to hear that. Kate pointed out to mel As, I'm sure like lots of people who are hearing us talk about all the things we're talking about will be like, lots of people are jealous of you, right, Kate said that to Mail Robbins, lots of people must be jealous of you. Mail Robins, You're worth tens of millions of dollars. Look at you. I'm sure your kitchen cabinets, as I said, are very nice. And her response, guess what it was?
Let them look the real reason I'm on the show today. I went and locked and Vernon and Amelia Lester in a meeting room so that I could barge in here to talk to you about this, because I needed your thoughts. So, after the huge success of Netflix's doco called Beckham in twenty twenty three, Folk, It's not good David Beckham. It was so good, wasn't it. We ate up every single
minute of it. So now Netflix is going to release a new documentary next month with the very original title Victoria Beckham, which is about Victoria Beckham more focused on her I know, groundbreaking. Obviously the world has been obsessed with this family for decades, so it'll no doubt cover you know, her time and the Spice Girls meeting David, her fashion career. But what I'm really interested in is how they are going to cover their family life when
they are currently estranged from their eldest son, Brooklyn. So to rewind a little bit for people who have lives and don't know every single inch of this story like I do. David and Victoria most notably weren't at their son's vow renewal that he's been married for a whole three years. Guys, he had a vow renewal to Nicola Peltz Beckham last month, and his family, who have always previously been very close with him been in attendance at
all of these things, weren't there. And then Brooklyn and Nikola weren't in attendance at David Beckham's fiftieth birthday, so it's very well documented that they're not on speaking.
It's at this point for while it was scoreless gossip, it is actually now unquestionably true.
Exactly So what I'm interested to know whole is how do you think they are going to cover their family life and their family situation at the moment when it's such a big part of their brand but it is very much not ideal at the moment.
It's very tricky, right because as you said, the thing about the Beckhams is being a type. Family is a massive part of their brand, and they're all expected to support each other all the time and everything they do.
I think there's like a human answer to this, and then there's a Brandham answer to this, right, and that human answer to it, in my opinion, is postpone the doco if your son isn't speaking to you and you are truly a deeply family person, like just this isn't the time for vicki b doco And it'll be okay
next year, mate, because hopefully wounds will heal. Who knows, right, I don't think that's going to happen because I think there's way too much money on the table, and so they've got three choices, and I'd love to know which one you think they'll go with if they're going to
do the doco. They either say something without saying anything much so sort of like a statement at some point that they'll work in, probably when there's like footage again of the ball and a family barbecue and like there was in the first one and Brooklyn is notably absent, and they could have something like, you know, we really miss Brooklyn. We're very sad about what happened. Out of respect for his privacy, we're not going to go into it, but the door is always open, like just a very
bland ye, no mention of it at all. Is the second option? Just pretend it's not happening, which would be weird. And the third option is to spill. They wouldn't do that in a million years, I don't think, because it is too that will send everything nuclear as soon as they start going, well, it was that Nicola. It was that Nicola and the wedding dress and her whole family don't like our whole family, and they make us feel
like povos because O yot's really tiny. Like if they start doing that, then imagine how nuclear the other side's going to go with their billions of dollars. So I think they're all difficult choices. Which do you think.
There's actually a fourth option which has been floated, which is that they have a lot of footage from early in the documentary filming process of them with Brooklyn.
And Nicola No mention y.
Yeah, well it is the norm.
But it's like you kind of use that, you act like everything's fine and yeah, you don't acknowledge it.
What's hard is that.
You can do that, because then they would come out and say they would be legals. They would be like, we don't want to be in the documentary, do you know what I mean?
Yeah, no, No, you're right, And it's hard because authenticity is so vital to their brand as well. And I worry about overexposure because the other Beckham documentary was done so recently. But what you don't want is this to turn into a Megan and Harry style Yeah, back and forth.
It just doesn't.
The UK is too obsessed with these tabloid stories. I think it's dangerous. I go with the option of they semi acknowledge it and give us absolutely no tea.
What do you reckon?
Yes, that's what they did with the infidelity in the day beyond.
Yeah, they touched it.
They showed some headlines, some of which were allegedly altered. They showed some headlines to say that it had happened, but no t Yeah.
I think they will skirt as far as they can skirt around this issue. But I think they're smart enough to know that if they can completely erase them, that that is almost worse. That is sending a message to Brooklyn and Nicola that there's no chance of reconciliation here. So I think it will be, as you say, it will be a little drop, a little crumb for them to pick up enough that we see of Okay, they're acknowledging that they're not speaking right now. We weren't going crazy.
This is true, but they will not comment on it further. I think that would be so silly to do that out louders.
Gosh, I hope you've enjoyed this show. I've enjoyed this show me too. Yeah.
Funner than that other stupid meeting.
I'm glad we're not reductivity around table.
We could have done it an hour. I'm very productive how much we covered anyway, I'm so glad they didn't invite us.
Line Stacy, thank you so much for jumping in from really today. We so appreciate it, and thank you to all of our out louders for being here with us, and to our incredible team very much, including our wonderful executive producer Ruth Yours and we will see you all tomorrow.
And if you're looking for something else to listen to, then we did a special subscriber episode yesterday all about the end of them, just like that at Stacey. If you've finished watching that show.
I bowed out. Okay, season you tried, I really tried.
I tried, and I went Look, I actually do want to know what happened, but I'm going to need you to tell me because I'm not going back there.
So okay, great, that's perfect.
Amelia and Holly got me across it. They had a lot of feelings, a lot of speculation about what happened behind the scenes.
You can go and listen to that. There is a link in the show notes.
Bye by shout out to any Mum and mea subscribers listening. If you love the show and you want to support us, subscribing to Mum and Mia is the very.
Best way to do so. There's a link in the episode description