Welcome to Mummy, are out loud? What women are actually talking about on Friday, the twelfth of June. I'm Clare Stevens, I'm Amelia Leicester and I'm m ven M Holly Is.
Guys.
You may notice I'm driving and I'm pretending. I am pretending to be Hollywayne right right now. But there will be errors. I can assure you that I quite miss Holly today.
Ye else, I'm missing her presence. I mean, so far, so good. You didn't stop up the day, you know.
Honestly, I'm really happy she's away because this is my chance to like break into the Friday Show.
We get to talk about fun things I've had recom recommend. Here's what's on our agenda for today.
There's a new type of influencer that's making money by simply having no friends.
In Friday Rex, there's a word of mouth hit TV show which is unlike anything else you have ever seen.
Plus is you look good for your age? Actually the ultimate backhanded compliment.
But first, did you have to battle for space this morning to brush your teeth and to do your morning ablutions with other people?
It's so you were like me? You did Claire?
Well, I live alone, So that would have been quite traumatizing.
If you like, hello, someone in here.
Well, Claire, you and I are just like celebrities, or at least some celebrities. Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, who have been married for thirty eight years.
They look like a very happy couple.
People are always asking them the secret to why they've been married for so long, and Rita recently gave a very unexpected answer, and that is a shared bathroom. Sounds kind of counterintuitive, but she explains that it's where you laugh about what you're doing in the mornings, you're thinking about what you're doing that day, maybe you make some plans to meet up later. It kind of makes sense when she explains it. Now, this is a controversial perspective
because other celebrities disagree. Take Michelle Obama. She and Ack Obama have been married for thirty three years, and here she is on the Today Show talking about the secret to their long marriage.
Now, one of the keys to a successful marriage is separate bathroom.
So it's a lot when he enters my bathroom. Sometimes I'm like, why.
Are you in here? What are you doing?
And he's like, I live here, Can I enjoy my bathroom too. One celebrity who I guess kind of splits the difference on this very important topic that I've been dying to talk about on a Friday show for a long time is Megan Trainer. All about that base. She and her husband, Darryl Sabara have been married for eight years. I learned today that he is the little kid in the express.
Oh he does buy kids as well.
Oh, okay, there you go. I knew it was someone I just never bothered to look it up.
And she, of course is in the infamous mothers group that yeah yeah, created a lot of headlines earlier this year for being mean girls. Anyway, they got two toilets installed side by side after their first child. In the same interview with Kiss La Fa, she mentioned that her husband sits when he urinates, which I did not know men did that, and that they often pee at the same time. But Megan assures us, and this is a direct quote, we don't poop together. I am so glad
she clarified that. And also do men often sit to pee?
No, I thought that was the weird ones. I did want to say that I'm confused by that. It's like he's not paying honey, he scrolling on his But how is it going for you? And Rory?
Do you think you'll get a second toilet installed after this baby comes, like next year the first one?
That's a great question.
The layout of our bathroom is such that there is not room to move, let alone put another toilet, as much as I would love one. So we share our one bathroom between the two of us and a toddler, and there's going to be so we're going to be a fan family of four with one bathroom.
And it hadn't always been that way.
So when I first moved out of home, I lived with me Jesse and Rory. And Jesse and I shared a bathroom and Rory had one to hear because I liked stealing her beauty products and she had nice things from the shower.
And so on.
And sometimes she would yell at me and be like, can you share with your like very long term partner, like that would.
Be the more conventional a region.
Yeah, but I'm go, I guess beard hair everywhere and he's like and he's soap caked on to the side. But I do think that there is such a luxury in not sharing. However, the more I read about this, the more I thought, there's something quite beautiful about what happens when you share a bathroom with someone, and that is that you really see who they are.
You see the essence of who they are.
I think that there's something that brings you closer in a way. You may not want to be that close, but I think it pays off.
I really do.
No one needs to see me in a bathroom. I promise you you don't need. What really annoyed me is that Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson can afford at least two bathrooms.
Why it's adorable.
It's not adorable.
I was like, what too?
Like?
I know they could have a bathroom each and then an extra bathroom just in case. I like living with someone, my biggest fears having to share a bathroom with them, And because of Sydney prices, I know that the rest of my life I will probably be sharing a bathroom with someone else. And I love my own like solutude time in a bathroom. I like doing my toilet stuff in there by myself. I also live in a studio, so my bathroom door is the only door I have in my whole place. I love being at my sink
by myself. I love showering, I love doing my skincare, and then when I come I'm a different person when I leave the bathroom, and I don't need someone else to witness that.
I've got bad news for you.
And because Catherine Jesus Morton, who writes the fabulous Brooding column in The Cut, she just this week wrote a defense of the shared bathroom, and in it she argues that in order to have healthy adult relationships, you have to eventually learn how to deal with each other's gross physical body stuff in bathrooms.
No, she says, even.
Those of us who are most committed to the bit that our partners don't shit eventually have to accept the truth. This is basically what it means to acquire maturity, to accept that we can't control everything and that everyone has a private body made of the same materials.
Okay, what happens if you both get gastro.
It's actually really bonding.
It's actually really profound how close you become. I honestly reckon Rory and I still talk about it. One of the most like we've been together for so long and yet one of the most bonding experiences that we have had was after I gave birth to Matilda and Amelia, you would know a lot happen. You see a lot, you're just there's a lot of smell. It's a lot,
and there's one bathroom. And because I was scared of going to the toilet, I said, I'm gonna keep this, but I'm gonna keep this open because I'm scared and I need to talk to you while I go to the toilet. And we came out.
Of that being like this we unlocked a new level.
We unlocked a new level of love, and I reckon Otherwise you get to what illness, you get to old age and you're like, ooh, I don't want to smell your incontinence, and it's like, well, you're gonna.
Have to, because we're all headed that way.
It's broadly understood as a compliment that everyone over a certain age wants to hear you look so good for your age, or you don't look your age, or if you're a psychopath, you play a game with someone where you say how old do I look? And I say twenty five and you say what, I'm actually seventy, And it's like happens all the time, And in a culture obsessed with aging, it's no surprise that so many of us like to hear that we look younger than we
actually are. Like, if you're looking at beauty products so often you're looking at anti aging stuff. So it's like, why wouldn't I want to hear that. I guess it's working. I always think with the amount of anti aging products there are, you know how every anti aging product you buy, it's like, this makes you look like X years younger in a week. I'm like, I should be a newborn at the point from how much I've spent on this stuff.
Anyway.
A recent article in Vogue by Poona Bell titled stop telling Me I look good for my age shared a very different perspective on this. She said that she was at a bar with a group of friends that were all in their thirties and forties, and she was actively trying to flirt, and then she clocked that everyone around
them was fifteen to twenty years younger than her. She acknowledged that everyone was too young for her own interests, and another woman at the table, who was younger than Belle said, you don't look your age, though, and the others chimed in to agree, and it became a whole group conversation and respect to our friend Porner, she was like,
why am I pissed off? I'm going to prosecute why I'm pissed off by that comment, which is my favorite when somebody when somebody you're out to drinks and someone's like, I'm annoyed, I'm annoyed.
Let me explain, let me break it down.
So she was like, I wasn't being self deprecating. I'm genuinely not interested in dating or hooking up with younger people. And the reassurance that I don't look my age is seeped in ageism and the fact that why on earth would I want to even though I'm very happy with where I am in life, And she said, I don't want to cosplay as a younger person.
I'm more confident I like myself.
And I thought it was a really fascinating insight into the fact that not everybody is walking around wanting to be told they look twenty five when they're not. Amelia, I have absolutely no idea how old you are, but you look beautiful for your age.
First of all, being told you have absolutely no idea how old I am. I'm just going to take that as a great compliment, Like, for some reason, it just really makes me feel good to be enigmatic and the serious.
So you are as serious.
Second of all, I am also glad that she unpacked. Why this made her feel weird because a colleague said to me just recently, I got a haircut and this colleague said to me, oh, it's taken ten years off you, and that.
Made me feel weird. Yeah, why why did that make me feel weird?
It could because you're like, take ten years off me, that would make me fine.
Yeah, that was part of that's for sure.
And then I got thinking about how when when I remember that when I was in my teens and twenties, I didn't want to be told I looked young.
But then at what point.
Do you switch over to actually seeking out the comments about looking young? And you you famously just turned thirty.
I famously just turned thirty, And I.
Feel like, where are you on that divide now?
It was probably the last few years where I've been so aware of my age and getting older, and I can pinpoint the exact instance. It was last year I was twenty nine and I was hosting a trivia night for some people, kind of my side gig.
I expected that an don't just start.
It's not a side gig. I think someone just thought I was fine and was like, you might hosting the trivia night, and I was like, yeah, you know what,
I'll do it. So we did the trivia night. It was with a lot of the people playing were like younger men, and it got to a point where there were two teams who both had like the same amount of points, and the person who was organizing the trivia night didn't really have a plan for what to do, so they were like, okay, breaking point, guess Emily's age, and whichever team is the closest.
W oh god. You were doing this as a.
And that was the first time. I feel like if this had happened even three years earlier, I would have been like, yeah, that's a fun, fun thing they've not heard of.
Asking how many people survived the Titanic.
And I was just sitting there and I was watching. I was watching these guys kind of like look at me, and I'm sitting there in the host chair like analyzing my face. And I walked past the table of these group of boys and they were like, oh, she's got to be somewhere in her thirties a lah, and then no one guessed my age. Everyone gets older, and I had got a full complex about it.
I never host trivia again.
Never hosting again. I've lost that friendship. Not but it fully gave me a complex. And I think it was also because it was men, mostly men, getting my age. The ones that were closer to twenty nine were the ones who had girls on their team, and it fully made me smile. But that was the first time where I was like, oh my god, I'm so aware of how old I am.
I have read, No, I don't know if this is true, but I have read that you can with a lot of accuracy tell what age someone is if they are younger than you, but if it's someone who is older than you, you got no idea, Like you lack the sort of coordinates to tell.
Do you think that's true?
Yeah, yeah, Like I can always like vibe wise, I always know when someone's younger than me, although I don't know if they're twenty one or twenty two.
Here's the other thing about it, Like whatever age is older than yours, it's really just a big mass. So right now I'm around forty and everyone who's like say, fifty on, I'm just like, I have no idea, yeah yeah, but whereas below forty, I feel each one of those ages acutely.
Yeah, because you went through it, you know, and I feel the same. I feel like similar to you, Claire. Right now, anyone in their twenties are just in their twenties, like I can't actually see the difference between twenty one, twenty five, twenty seven. But when I was in my twenties, I was so aware of the early twenties, mid twenties, late twenties because I felt like complete different eras of my time. And now it's that age where when I'm thirty and I tell people I'm thirty, the first thing
they go is, you're so young. You're so young. It's more of like a dim worry.
I said that to you.
I'm so sorry to They also tell you look for your age.
I think, but it's coming back to your haircut thing. Yes, I have a feeling that you felt when someone told you you look what you look so much younger.
She said, it's taken ten years and by the way she meant, well, it just.
Did not hit right with me.
But I think it comes to when someone makes an alteration to their appearance is done so because you want to look younger, and sometimes you just want a haircut.
Yes, yes, it is that. That's exactly what Belle said in her article. But basically, when when her friends were saying you don't look your age, she felt like her she felt very observed, which is I think how you felt that people are looking at you and analyzing like does her face move?
Does like I'm using some objective yardstick of what that age should look.
Like exactly, and that the arbitrary standard of beauty is youth, and I don't fully subscribe to that. Like I have a lot of conversations with friends where we sit around and we will we'll sometimes look at photos of ourselves in like you know, when we were twenty and in Europe and that kind of thing and be like lol, but we all are like no, no, no, no, we are. The thing about being young is that you haven't figured
out how to style yourself or anything like that. So we all say to each other like, we actually look our best now because we figured out like not to take risks with the hair, and to like how to dress and just how to be less weird and figured out a lot of our neuroses, and so it is when somebody implies that basically you don't look your age, that they think you look younger.
I'm like, I don't want to be any younger.
I don't want to be any younger because I wasn't I wasn't me, and I wasn't confident, and I don't consider myself.
That said, I want to gauge whether you guys think it's okay to ask someone how old they are, because yes, I agree Claire that it's not like everything that you do after a certain age is about trying to look young. But I think that the problem with asking someone how old they are is that there is no right way to respond, because if you want to avoid this, you look with your age. What are you meant to do? Like it's an age? What are you meant to say?
And that's why I don't think you should ask that question.
I don't think you should ask the question. But I really want to know. Yes, I want to know how everyone is. And I think that's a fully like self indulgent wanting to know because I just want to compare my life to your life and see what you've achieved up until that age. Compared to what I'm achieving up until that age. I do this all the time during the Olympics. The last Olympics of the twenty twenty four Paris Olympics was the first Olympics where most of the athletes were youngnger than me.
And I think that's a turning point.
It's a turning point because you grow up as a kid and you're like, I could be that, I could do that, and then you're suddenly thirty and you're like, oh, I guess I'm not going to be an Olympian. That ship set, it's not going to happen. I also remember, so specifically the first celebrity I knew that was younger than me, and it was Lord Oh and we were born in the same year, but she was I think six months younger than me. And I was sixteen and she was fifteen, and I just saw this girl going.
And up until then, all my favorite celebrities, all the pop stars, were all older than me. And I was like, oh, I have time. I have time to be a pop star. And then Lord was out with Taylor Swift, she was making Royals, she was doing these big stadium tours. Looked up her age fifteen years old, and I my whole world had crashed down.
Good barometer. I remember the celebrity for me was Nicki Webster.
Oh wow, yeah, Strawberry Kiss is famous and younger than me.
How is this possibly?
Say?
Mine? Mine is is Emma Watson. Oh so her being hermione? I was like, how she got her Hollywood career already and I'm just here. And then every time she does something really impressive, like gives a speech at the un I'm like, you're still still going strong vibe.
I still go on strong.
It's like I feel like that's when you as a kid, You're just like, oh no, I have to lock in, like it's no more a dream, like people are actually doing this.
But the one thing I will say about this article, and I am finding it more and more. And it's because I spend too much time on the internet. I get a bit uncomfortable with policing little offhanded comments and like headlines slash articles that are about don't say this because I find myself in social situation. I think it
contributes to social anxiety massively. And you could simply say something like that, it comes out and then you're left questioning it for days and days and days when most people you ask about their age or say oh you look really good or whatever, aren't going to think about it.
But I don't think that there is anything objectively rude about asking people how old they are.
It's just a fun Really, do you mind when someone asks you.
No, no, I'm like, oh, yes, this will contextually place me in the world as a.
Person, And how do you expect them to reply?
Yeah, it's not that it's rude.
It's more that response like what do you What do you say when someone says I'm thirty eight?
Oh cool, that's great for you, Like, there's no response. Yeah, I know.
It is a bit of a conversation dead end. That's very, very true. I often ask it in the context of like maybe we're in similar circles or no similar people, and so I'm like, how old are you?
Oh?
Okay, you might know my cousin like that kind of thing, but I I know what you mean. Otherwise it is a bit of a dead end. And I have every now and then had like a young person asks you how old you are, and you're like, don't patronize.
Me older than you out louders in a moment the new type of influencer that has no friends, live alone, is single, and I'm a little bit jealous of.
Hey, out louders, it's mea here. On our Thursday subscriber episode, we got a little bit racy.
It was Claire, it was m it was me.
We were talking about Off Campus, the show that is a bit sexy, quite talkie and that everybody's talking about. We covered everything there is to know about this show. No spoilers, but god, you're gonna love it if you want to listen right now. If you love Off Campus, and even if you don't, you just will know what all the fuss is about. There's a link in the show notes you can listen right now.
So social media influencers, I want to speak historically about them. Their job before they became very very big post COVID was to basically influence us into buying things. So whether it's hand cars, make our products. They had a very very simple job and we understood it as a consumer. Now influencers have changed into something completely different and they're much much bigger. We have trad wives who are influencing a way of life. We have people who live on
farms who are influencing farm life. We have people who are working in finance who are influencing the nine to five corporate job, and we also now have loneliness influences. So the loneliness influences are people usually a young woman who lives alone and vlogs her nighttime routine, and her routine will include a title card that says, POV, you have no friends and live alone and this is how you spend your evenings.
And we would just like to signposts. That is the wrong use of I'm sorry, it's not point of view.
Well, as I was watching these videos, I was just thinking of you, Immelia.
This is you Also, didn't think they look really esthetic.
It's not technically their POV. It's our POV watching.
Them, Yes, that's the one.
And they're basically vlogging their evenings, which all include them coming home, doing their dishes, cleaning up their apartment, making themselves a dinner, watching TV, doing their skin carotene. Stuff that we do but like not including the going out to drinks with friends, not returning a book to the library,
not saying hi to your mum and dad. Just kind of them by themselves, and they've kind of marketed this as something that you should be really looking forward to as someone who has no friends, no partner and lives alone. Have you guys seen these videos and what are your thoughts?
I get these pop up in my feed so much, and it's like.
You want this class?
Yeah. I think part of it is rage baby, like a part of it is like pov, I'm someone with no friends. Like it's there's no nuance to it. It's like I haven't no friends and you're like, I'm sure you have one friends. I'm sure you have literally, which is actually kind of impressed. You tried really hard to have no friends. So I feel like there is a rage baby element where it is asking you to be
annoyed at gen Z for not having social relationships. But the reason I cannot look away is because there is also something deeply, deeply aspirational about it. The idea of coming home from work, your space is your, no one else has been there, You're not cleaning up after anybody else. You're walking in, You're eating exactly what you want to eat, when you want to eat it. For me, it's the wine glass, it's the goblet, It's the goblet with ice
and diet coke. Yeah, I'm like that's all I ever want is diet coke with ice, and I don't have time to pour it in a wine glass, and that seems lovely. And then they sit in front of their television and their lighting is how they and everything's.
So slow and quiet and quiet, and they're not rushed.
And I think it really is probably a lot of people, and probably women who are in a very different life stage, who are looking at that thinking, oh, that would be heaven. But I think most of us have also lived through that life stage like a time that felt it was and I don't even associate it with loneliness. It just was somewhat indulgent and you could and quiet, and you could live life how you wanted to, and God, I miss it.
I think there were elements of loneliness to it. I mean, your twenties can be a weird time because for most people it's their first time living outside of their family unit, and it's a point in time when friendships start to get a bit more fraught in various ways. Money enters the pictures. Some people have a lot of money, some
people have very little money. Some people are working all the time, some people are struggling to find their footing, and there are times, I think where when you were in that life stage, you do feel lonely, and yet you feel like you're not allowed to admit it, or at least I felt I wasn't allowed to admit it because it's meant to be. Everyone says to you, it's the prime of your life. You're meant to be always
doing exciting things. I remember one time. It was in my late twenties, I guess, and I lived alone, and weekends were in particular quite challenging for me. I guess in part because I'm an extrovert and I felt like I needed to always line up plans. And one Sunday, the only plan I had was dinner with a friend, and that was actually not very many plans for me. And then the friend canceled on me that afternoon. She
lived with her boyfriend. I remember that little detail. So I was like, so, you've been with your boyfriend on weekend and then she canceled on me, And of course she's allowed to cancel, But like, I just saw this expanse of time stretching out ahead of me, and it was really kind of confronting. So when I watched these videos, it took me back to that time. And it's interesting.
Some of the criticism around this is that they're romanticizing loneliness and normalizing normalizing that. And I'm on the one hand, as you say, a lot of people have just lived that because that's just a phase of life for some people. It also might not be a choice, like you might just have to live in a different city for work or whatever, work remotely and you don't have that kind
of day to day interaction with the community. But I saw some commentary that I thought was really interesting that it's like, so this content is romanticizing loneliness apparently, and it's like, is it not sadder to be the person who's sitting alone watching it?
Which is it's like I'm alone in my or I'm not alone.
I have I have a child in front of me and a partner in the next room, and I'm watching loneliness content.
You're on the toilet and your shared bathroom.
And I'm just staring at it.
It's yeah. I Well. I want to say that I was actually the og Lonely influencer because I had a newsletter when I was twenty four to twenty five called The Lonely Girl's Guide, such a good name, Oh my god, and I just like wrote whatever I wanted.
I think.
I think I pitched it to Mama Mia and they were like, yeah, that sounds great, and then I just did whatever I wanted with it. But I remember wanting to do something like this because it was a time
where my friendships were kind of splintering. Like we were in that era where a lot of my friends were finding their long term partners and were living outside of home and they had roommates or they had a partner they were living with, and I just felt like I was in a completely different phase of life, and I
wanted that phase of life to be my brand. And I think what was so different, what was so different about then versus now, is that with the younger women that I'm seeing on TikTok being lonely influences, but a lot of them, it's not really a phase. It kind
of is just their life. And it's very similar to to my sister, who's also in an early twenties, where a lot of them went through COVID during their early twenties when they went to college or university, so they had all their friends in high school and then they all had to do university online and not really make any friendships or any connections during that time, and then a lot of them then went straight into the workforce, working fully remotely. So for them, that's kind of all
they've known. They haven't actually known that this could be a face because they actually haven't learned those skills on how to make friends outside of high school where they're not just forced to be with each other every single day. And I think that's what's so different about young people in their early twenties versus people in the later twenties and above. It's because they actually haven't had the chance or the opportunity to find friendships and.
Don't necessarily know.
That it requires a level of risk taking, a level of discomfort. The other thing is looking at these and you see how you can basically organ your day exactly how you want to because it's just on your terms and you don't have any friends and don't speak to your family or whatever. And it sort of reminds me of a theme that's come up a bit in the last few years about how inconvenience is the cost of community.
That we have to be prepared.
That people can be annoying, and they can change our plans and they can barge in and if you have people over, they're going to make your house messy and they're going to be loud, and that is kind of that's that's the price that you pay. And I think the more we get used to that kind of isolation, the more jarring we then find what people are actually.
Lying, which is why I like M's point that this is I think that's so interesting what you point out about how for many young people of a particular age group, this is actually comforting to them because it's all they've really ever known. So it's one thing for you, Claire, or for another millennial to say you've got to go and make the effort to make friends. But it seems like they maybe didn't have those experiences at the most
formative time. The only thing I worry about for them is that they may be creating a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy because Lana's solo life, who I think is broadly credited as starting the lonely influencer trend.
Excluding M of course, she has close to her two.
Hundred thousand followers.
Wow, she got big here.
She lives in Toronto, and she really has mastered the genre. She kind of just makes heating up a frozen pizza look really serene and tranquil. But she says, if you are on this journey of being alone, I'm so excited to be a part of it with you and to show how amazing it can be and how fulfilling it can be to make yourself happy and not rely on other people. She did this during a Christmas video of all things. Lena is twenty four. Her journey is just beginning.
And what I worry about this is, yeah, she's making off this. She's obviously very successful to your point, and but I don't want her to decide that this is the way it has to be forever, even when there's a financial incentive for her to continue doing it.
And once you make it your brand and you are earning an income, how do you then shift to like, oh, by the way, I actually really want to make some friends and join a social netball team.
The other thing is.
That obviously, by creating the content in the first place, it is clearly a bid for connection, but a different kind of connection, Like I don't think you'd feel like the impulse to share that and have other people say me to me, to me too. That is the antidote to loneliness, but it's not it's obviously not as rich as real life social experiences. The other thing I thought,
and I've thought about this a lot. A few years ago I interviewed the comedian Josh Thomas and he and he's neurodivergent, and he told me that he thinks the fact that he is famous and people know him from his stand up comedy and his television and they might know him from social media, that it makes it easier for him in the real world because people have a shortcut, so he doesn't have to explain his weird sense of
like people straight away know what they're getting. You know, he's got this quirky sense of humor, very very dry. He's got what he refers to as kind of a changing accent.
And I wonder if social media does that.
For people that it's like so with you know, Lana, that she would go out into the real world and people would say, oh, you're the girl he does the loneliness stuff, and then it's kind of this quick way to form a connection and you've done some of the groundwork already, just.
Lana want to make that connection.
I'm not sure you're the.
Girl who has not even one, not.
Even There's another just fascinating little quirk here which I'd love your take on. In particular, EM, is that Paulina C who is one of the other very famous Loneliness influencers. She lives in New York City. She's mentioned Lana, who we talked about previously, as her inspiration. There's some speculation that she is not real or maybe a very elaborate marketing campaign for infrared yoga mats. Oh my god, there's something a bit uncanny about her. On every video, she
comes home and sanitizes the soles of her shoes. Yeah, and just seems to never have anything to do outside of coming home and sanitizing her shoes and hitting up a frozen pizza and pouring diet coke into a wineglass.
Do you think there's some some.
Credibility to that idea that maybe she's not real or maybe she's a marketing campaign.
It was really interesting when I was seeing those comments about her being like a marketing campaign, and I hope she's not, because what I think is happened is she is materialistically speaking, so beautiful like she looks like l from legally Blonde, she dresses like an all pins, she's always an actor ware and I think us as a society go she can't be living alone and single with no friends like that doesn't make sense in my heart,
There's no reason for it. And I think we always treat, especially young women who are single, we always treat as them as it is a very temporary part of their life, and I think we forget that being single, you can be single and still live a full life, and they're
just choosing kind of not to. And what worries me about the loneliness influencer stuff is that they are pushing away connections because they become that they made this their brand, and they're influencing other young people to also make it their brand and show that Whereas if I was twenty four twenty five and I had these influences in my life,
I would feel really reassured and safe in that. And there is a possible there is a world where I just would have avoided connection because I'm seeing these men who are making money, who have so many followers, so many people who are living the same life style as them, be okay because that's what I'm seeing. I'm not seeing them being sad, I'm not seeing them looking alone. I'm seeing them being really content and happy. And now we know, we're old enough to know that whatever we see on
cameras not necessarily what we see off camera. I would just probably be in the same boat where I would push connection away because I'd be like, oh, I'm fine right now on my own, and maybe.
You'd start sanitizing the sols of issues.
I can promise you I'd never do that.
There's also a theory that it's kind of being pushed by certain industries and by tech and things like meal delivery services, like all of these. Basically there's a lot of industries that benefit from us valuing things rather than people and by living further and further a great isolation, and so there are some theories about whether that's that's also what's happening.
Because yeah, I.
Don't need an infrared yoga mat oh god, I want one after the break, two TV shows and a very unlikely beauty record to set you up for the weekend.
Vibes ideas atmosphere, something casual, something fun. This is my best recommendation.
It's Friday, so we want to help just make your weekend a little bit better with our best recommendations.
Amelia, you have the floor this fear.
I've been dying to tell you about this. So I have a show called Widow's Bay. It is on Apple TV. It actually premiered in April, but I would say that the word of mouth around this show has been gathering steam, and in the last week, I've just had so many people seize me by the shoulders and say, you have to watch this show. So I have, and I love it. It's again, It's called Widow's Bay. The genre is comedy horror, which makes no sense.
I love that genre.
But I read this amazing inter you with a horror director, or rather my friend did, and he sent me the best bit of it, which I'm about to recount for you now, which said that horror and comedy for a director are basically the same thing because basically both require this kind of buildup of tension, and it's often a kind of physical tension that you're holding in your body, and then you release the tension either through a laugh or through a jump skit like something that makes you jump,
something that makes you jump or laugh.
Sinners was horror comedy Sinners.
Exactly, and so this is the first show I've seen that really blends the two of them on the small screen. And what I love about it is that you're laughing out loud in an episode and then you're afraid to turn the lights off afterwards. Like it's a really interesting mix. It's set in this fictional New England town. It's very gothic. It has a lot of supernatural goings on in the town. It stars Matthew Reese, who you would know from the Americans.
He specializes in like looking sort of like paranoid and like nothing's quite going right for him. And then this made it clip for this is why it's such a good show. It is actually made by Kate Dippold, who created Pucks and Wrack.
Oh wow.
So that for me, yeah, because it's it's comedy, but it's not slapstick. No, it's it's really really clever and it's got that because I've seen the trailer the trailer for this and it is next on my list, but almost like establishing a very real, authentic world.
It's world bleoding exactly. That is part I love about it.
It's like every episode a different character in this community. We're kind of spending time with them and exactly that's what I love about it.
And you guys TV show too, I've got a TV show as well. It's also kind of an ensemble cast. It's a comedy, the kind of sitcom level comedy created by Mindy Kayling. So I knew it is my birthright to watch it because I watch everything that she creates and reads everything she creates. She's been working on like her trilogy for a really long time, and this is our last iteration of it because she's been work doing
shows that I were big in her formative years. So she started with Never Have I Ever about like high school, and then she did sex Lives of College Girls about college, and now she's got this new show called Not Suitable for Work, and it's those years straight out to college. I think this is a big thing for Americans, especially
or straight out of college or UNI. You kind of don't know what to do and you think you want a career, but you also just have to make money, so you're working these odd jobs while working on your career. Maybe you're doing an internship. But it's similar to what we said before where it kind of those splinter years where everyone in your friendship group is kind of doing something different. So it's about these five friends who live in the same building in Manhattan, and they all have
different careers. One is a med student wanting to be an actor, one's in fashion, to our in finance, and
it's about not only their friendship. So it has that kind of like Girls kind of edit where it's so fun the girls edit where they're all like intertwined and their friendships are really really big, but their individual store lines are about them at work, kind of like the movie Horrible Bosses, such a good movie, so you also are seeing them as individuals interact with their bosses and how they're they're kind of change themselves when in the workplace.
It is so bloody funny that Mindy Kaling humor just cuts through so perfectly. It's just one of those shows that you can go through really really fast. The pacing is really fast in it. It launched with the first three episodes last week and now I think it's a weekly drop and I've just been binging it. It's really fun. Not suitable for work on Disney, plus love it.
I have a beauty recommendation.
You kind of play.
It may be the first time I've ever had a beauty recommendation. As Amelia pointed out this morning, I am supporting a small business to startup by shouting out, Hailey Beans, she needs it, she needs it, Yeah, yeah, she just she doesn't have enough people who know about it. So with moisturizes, I've been through a journey because for me, it's very much about like I feel like my skin feels tight when I don't use the right moisture. It's
not even so much about how it. I don't even know if it looks any different, but it's just how it feels that I'm like.
That's dehydrated skin.
Yeah, that one.
That one, and that is different to dry skin. So I can never find the right product. And I was I was cursed a few years ago because Mecha sent me a big box of amazing products and there was a Thatcher mush and I was like, this product's great, I'll just go buy it. And then the issue was it was one hundred and twenty two dollars for fifty meals.
Which is like over two dollars a meal. Meal that doesn't do very much.
It's just so t I was like, would you put it that way, Clark, I just I shan't never out.
Of my one bathroom for four people.
So then I have been on a big jet, like, tried cheap o stuff, tried more expensive stuff like, and I just cannot find something that just makes my skin feel juicy and nice. So I had heard a lot about Haley Beeber's glazing milk, and I'd seen it on TikTok and I'd seen a beauty tutorial of her using it. Because what it does is it makes your skin look really dewy before you put your foundation on, which I can never achieve. I just look wet. And so I went in and I was like, shall I do it?
And it was only.
Thirty five dollars for sixty five meals, so that's the smaller size.
But I was like, we got it, we'll try, We'll give it a try. And is it a moisturizer? Okay, it's unclear, it's an essence.
I don't know.
I don't know that.
I think it's kind of like an in between a ton of Sarah meting. So you can do moisturizer.
Are you putting a moisturizer on after it?
Yes?
Okay, So it comes out like the texture of meal milk, and you like rub it together and then you like press it in and then I've been putting a moisturizer on top, which is I recommended it in the newsletter where Holly asked for our beauty record.
What was it?
It is the Drunk Elephant Electrolyte water facial hydration mask, which I thought was a daily moisturizer.
It's not. It's a mask. It's in the name. You're only But then when I went to.
Rebuy it, the lady was like, you're allowed to put it on in the morning, and I'm like, thank you for your.
Specific am I allowed to put this on in the morning.
Like I'd like to use this as just a normal moisturizer, and just that you can do that, And I'm like, okay.
I love the validation from her, and you needed it.
Which is only a little bit cheaper than the thatcher. It's like ninety something dollars for fifty mili. But anyway, so I do my glazing milk and then I do that and I feel lovely. I feel really thank you. That's for your age. I forced you into that compliment. But no, the glazing milk apparently makeup artist day. It's really nice to put on before you make up.
Are you using it twice a day, like morning and night or just as a makeup base.
A morning and night? Okay, just because I like how it feels nice. I love that.
That's all we have time for on today's Friday episode. A big thank you to the out louders and to our team who make this show possible every week.
Thank you Amelia for stepping in.
Oh my pleasure. I hope I can come back. I told Holy to extend her vacation.
You've got more recos where that came from.
Also, before we go, because Holly's away, I am taking over her newsletter this week. My credentials are good vibes.
Yes, Lonely Girl.
Thenly Girl returns. Oh my god, it's like it's meant to be Holly.
For you to be away, I feel like you have to go really rogue and do something really weird. Yeah I don't.
I don't. I didn't want to like ruin her house that she's so lovely built. But I think I might.
No, No, I think I might to the ground to be hilarious. That's what she gets taken leave exactly If.
You haven't signed up for it already, please do. Holly is amazing. She writes every week and she also gives us a little treat sometimes. We'll put a link to that in our show notes.
Bye Sea Mummy acknowledges the traditional owners of the land on which we have recorded this podcast.