You're listening to Amma 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. It's what women are actually talking about on Monday, the twenty first of October. I'm Holly Wainwright.
I'm Jesse Stevens.
Oh louders, see, I'm really on it. It's a very Monday Monday for me today, how loud as, maybe you're having the same kind of Monday. Welcome to my world. Anyway, we are joined today by the wonderful Amelia Lester. I'm not going to say no.
She is the deputy editor of Foreign Policy magazine, and we know how many outlouders love her because Amelia is the only one getting fan mail.
So I get fan mail.
Please. It doesn't work if you have to ask for it.
Oh yeah, okay, say hello, Amlia please hello.
So nice to be here.
You will know Amelia, of course from our subscriber episodes on the US election.
We'll put a link to those in the show notes in case you haven't. Anyway, welcome back to the show and welcome to our mondayish Monday on today's show, a millennial pop icon is dead, and amongst the lurid coverage of Liam Payne, a slow grumble is growing about whether it can ever be okay for a teenager to become world famous. Also, the King is here. Have you noticed
Australia's so called lazy Republicanism? Welcomes Charles and Camilla And does the return of the victorious Secret Fashion Show foretell the American election result?
Stay with us.
Amelia is going to explain why undies and politics are linked.
But first, I am so glad to be here today because there's a news story that I think when a little bit under the radar, which I think needs more attention, and that is that Andrew Garfield dated a witch.
Yes, that is the important headline, and.
I understand he's now maybe dating a very popular internet journalist. But first we're going to talk about the witch bit. March twenty twenty four, Universally Love, two time Oscar nominee and Spider Man Andrew Garfield is seen at a restaurant in Malibu with his new girlfriend Kate Tomas. He was on a double dinner date with Phoebe Bridges and Bo Burnham. You might remember him from the COVID musical Inside Oh We Remember him?
Yes, And I like.
That they're hanging out. I like that datail.
When you go on a double date with other celebrities in Malibu, you want people to see you. And then they later went to Chiltern Firehouse in London, which is I think where all celebrities go when they really want to do the hard launch of the new relationship. At the time, and Insider told US Weekly that Garfield appreciates the fact that Kate is very different from other women he's dated. Would you like to know why?
Yes?
So Garfield has previously dated reader Aura and Emma Stone. Kate Tomas is a professional witch and spiritual mentor.
Okay, can you unpack?
Yes?
What mean by witch?
Yes? She has a PhD in theology from Oxford, but that's not really her witch bit. Her witch bit is that The Times of London recently called her Hollywood's favorite witch. She says she's worked with Oscar nominated actors, Pulitzer Prize winners Fortune five hundred CEOs Lena Dunham gives an endorsement on her website and says Kate has kept me out of catastrophe time and time again, I die without her.
So she's kind of like you know how celebrities all used to have psychics or astrologers, like Princess Anna had an astrologer who she would refer to anytime she had a decision to make. So now a witch is a cool thing to have on the payroll.
Speaking of payroll, yes, so she does say that magic takes time. It can't happen overnight. And here's the big money ask clients need to sign up for a six month minimum commitment and it's around eight thousand Ausie dollars a month. Eight thousand. She says, I could charge one million dollars a session, and that would be completely ethical because I'm not exploiting anybody.
What's she do for you, though? What do you think? Do you think she gives you potions and stuff?
She doesn't really talk about it very much. But here's the good news. For around one hundred and thirty dollars, you can attend her seduction mass class, which is online.
So that you too can date Andrew Garfield.
Well. In July, she shut down rumors that she'd use magic to seduce him, and she was forced to temporarily shut down the seduction masterclass because of what she called horrific accusations that she had one Andrew Garfield's affections through magic spells.
Why wouldn't you if you could?
No, Absolutely, she did get a lot of online hate. I have to say people did not like him dating a witch. That's because witches are not traditionally very popular. If you look back to the Salem witch trials on they're not popular witches.
It's been a problem for some time.
We used to burn them. So she told The Times that to deal with this online hate, she has some various techniques. These are some of her magic techniques. Screaming into a pillow, doing a cord cutting spell, or putting a dome of energy like a belja over somebody that's actively harmful. I don't know she means a literal beljar, because you a really big one. You'd have to order one on or something.
Make a little doll that is apparently, and then you put the bell jar over. Yes, let's do that for me. I scream into a pillow all the time.
That was magic or that I need to debate eight thousand dollars a month. No, that's you being a witch. Next time you do it just say master, do some witchcraft. Okay, she might be screaming into a pillow right now because the Internet loves Garfield's new love interest. Who is the host of Chicken Shop Date Amelia de Moldenburg.
Surely not, not because I don't think they would date, but like, doesn't she professionally date people? Yes, dates in inverted commas.
But in terms of Internet law, what has happened is that they have had a few meat cutes on, like red carpets and stuff. There is palpable chemistry that people are just so invested in, and now they've sat down and done a proper Chicken Shop date. Now Amelia has been doing this ten years. She goes and speaks to celebrities. It started in a real kind of date way where she would sit down with a guy and the chicken shop stick in the UK, as you would know, Holly is like.
Can you explain that? Well?
The chicken was like, well, what would be the equivalent? It's almost like fish and chip a kebab shop. Yeah, it's an unglamorous but very popular place where you would go and have chicken and chips, and many different kinds of chicken would be available. Anyway, I guess the idea is the stick was take a glamorous person, put them in an unglamorous setting, talk to her an ordinary person.
And the thing that's always been her great stick is that even before now she's a big deal, she's a celebrity, but when she started out, I guess the stick was ordinary girl with a lot of confidence. I reckon I could date any of these people, and that.
They're here because they genuinely want a date mates. And that's why it works, I think is that it's so transgressive in a way because often you see with think late night shows or whatever, there's this pandering, there's this like submissiveness to the celebrity. But this is like, she's a powerful one for absolutely.
No reason exactly.
So she sits there and then you've got Paul mescal or you've got I mean, she's interviewed everyone, but Andrew Garfield sits down and she's like, impress me.
But are you not seeing the Venn diagram here between professional seduction technique teacher and Amelia who is a professional flirt. That's kind of interesting, is interesting and can we hear?
I thought the.
Way that this interview started was very interesting. Can we agree, there's a bit of a curse on this. What do you mean like a bad cast in the sense of, like, you know, we've had a couple of lovely interactions. What's going on.
Well, he knows a lot about curses. He knows a lot about maybe Kate, his ex, has put a curse on Amelia. You never know screaming poisoned her chicken. Don't touch the burger, don't touch it.
But stepping back, I can't help but feel a bit cynical about this him starting with the curse. He knows what he's doing here. He's got a film to promote with Florence Pwitt's, a romance called We Live in Time. He's become a little bit of a kind of professional boyfriend figure on the internet.
I think he is so charismatic. Did you see what he did on Sethame Street? Tell me he did this thing with Elmo where he sat down and spoke to Elmo about grief.
It was beautiful.
He is so rogue, I think because he's British, he gets away with a lot very clever. He's very, very clever, he's very very sexy.
British people can get away with anything in America, Fordney Exactly.
Broo cuteh.
On Wednesday.
Last week, Liam Payne, former member of One Direction, died at thirty one years old after falling from the balcony in Buenos Aires.
The shock over the death of One Direction star Liam Payne has continued across the weekend as his father Jeff traveled to Argentina to arrange for the return of his son's body to England. Mister Paine was taken to the Morgue not long after arriving in the country to identify his son's body before he headed to the prosecutor's office to organize a repatriation of his remains.
That was Claire Murphy from today's episode of The Quickie where they covered what has unfolded since Wednesday. I just want to go back a few steps for anyone who wasn't a One Direction superfan. So Payne was fourteen when he first tried out for The X Factor, but it was the second time he auditioned in twenty ten that his life changed.
Overnight.
He entered as a solo act along with Niall Horn, Zaye Mallick, Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles, but Judge and Record executive Simon Cowell decided to try them as a band, and they placed third in the competition, but One Direction would go on to become one of the best selling bands of all time. By twenty fifteen, Zaye Mallick decided to leave with an a fisih statement that read, I am leaving because I want to be a normal twenty two year old who is able to relax and have
some private time out of the spotlight. They went on an indefinite hiatus in twenty sixteen and never performed together again. Speaking over the weekend, Guy Chambers, one of the leading songwriters in the UK, said under eighteen's should not be allowed to join pop bands. Chambers worked with Robbie Williams
and said there were no protections set up. Documentary maker Louis Thrue has a new series set to be released next month which is actually all about the dramatic highs and depths of despair young stardom can bring, and he explores this with the likes of Robbie Williams and Brian McFadden. A contestant who was on the same season of The X Factor as Pain has just said in the last week that the exploitation of young stars leaves many of
them living with PTSD. Pain had spoken about struggling with alcoholism and the experience of being locked in hotel rooms with a mini bar between gigs. Also spoken about the loneliness of hotel rooms.
My dad said it from day one, lonely hotel rooms, ma'am. Getting locked in that room is not fun. I was worried how far my rock button was going to be? Where's rock button for me? And you would never have seen it. I'm very good at hiding it. No one would ever have seen it. But rock button, I mean, I don't even know if I hit it yet.
Holly.
Fans of One Direction knew that Payne had struggled basically since the band rose to fame. Should we be rethinking kids working in the entertainment industry? And is that even realistic?
It's really interesting, isn't it? Because the fact that fame and fortune is terrible for mental health, full stop, but it's terrible, terrible for mental health of young people is not news, right. The curse of the child star is a thing, so much of a thing, it's a cliche. And think about Britney Spears, and think about Miley Cyrus, and think about Michael Jackson, and think about Justin Bieber, and you could go on and on and on and on and on, right, but it doesn't stop everybody from
wanting it. So I watched The Voice and stuff with my kids, and obviously the Voice isn't what it was but in its heyday where these kind of bands started, just like The X Factor, just like Idol. This year they had a thirteen year old on last year they had a twelve year old on a fifteen year old one.
It wants the Australian version, I mean, and every time you watch that happen, the parents and the people around those kids will say, I couldn't stop this kid from doing this if I wanted to, Like, they are so driven, they want it so much.
Do you think that's true?
It's their dream? Well? I think it probably is true, because as I say about how it's the attraction of fame, of fortune, despite all we know about it is intractable. It's kind of like the Princess curse. Right, we all know that that's terrible for you too, but it doesn't stop everybody from swooning. When Harry and Meghan got married. I think that young people want to be famous, you know now they want to be YouTubers, they want to be all over TikTok and Instagram. They want to be
It looks great. And if you also love music and you also love all those things and the fact that the consumers of so much pop music are young, then it seems to make absolute sense. The thing that is so sad about this is that it was so predictable in a way because Robbie Williams, who you mentioned in the intro, who joined Take That who was the one direction of the nineties, and in those days it wasn't
a reality show. It was literally an ad in a newspaper looking for hot young boys who can sing and dance. And he was sixteen when he joined that band, and he has been so open about what that did to him, and he left when he was nineteen twenty, I think, and went on to be like, we've seen it over and over again, and yet still when somebody dies in
this circumstance, we're so shocked. Personally. I think, yes, we should really be looking at more protectionism for these young kids, because it just very rarely seems to end well.
It's harder to think of the young pop stars who've thrived. I mean, the only one that I could really come up with was Taylor Swift. Even Demi Lovato, who's still very much a successful artist, just released this documentary this year, Child's Star, which shows that she's struggled with addiction and many other problems as a result of her child's stardom. Miley Virus, I suppose you could argue has done very well.
And there's often a lot of very complicated family dynamics at play too, which I think is what you were sort of getting at before, Jesse, the question of how much of this is a push from parents to attain financial security and glamorous lifestyle, and how much is that kids really wanting to do this.
I think the other example is Harry Styles.
Well, yeah, but I wouldn't say that because I think one of the things that Harry Styles has done very successfully is he's very private. Considering how famous Harry Styles is, I have never publicly seen him in any circumstance with a partner, you know what I mean, like pat pictures only.
He is intensely private. None of us would have any idea about the state of Harry Styles's mental health, and he you know, even In some of his most famous pop songs, he references pills and loneliness and family problems like he seems to be doing well now, like great, you know, but.
Yeah, I read a reference to a study recently. There was a study done in sort of second half the twentieth century on people who who had chart topping singles, and if you had a chart topping single, you were three times more likely to die than someone who didn't. These were adults, right, and more likely to die from alcoholism, accidents and chronic illness that's often caused by drug use or something like that.
The effects of that on the teenage brain.
I mean, I don't think you need to do a research study to show that it's even bigger. And the second thing that that study couldn't take.
Into account was the Internet because the Internet wasn't around yet.
So imagine that too. Liam Payne, he had a really complicated relationship with fame and even you know, in the weeks before his death, he had a former girlfriend who
had filed for a season desist. Alcoholism was something that we heard him talk about, and he did this interview with Logan Paul like a podcast interview where he appeared to be under the influence of alcohol, and in some respects corners of the internet that treated him like a laughing stock, really because he had had these dizzying highs like Harry Styles, and then he was sort of thrown out. Well, felt like he was a bit thrown out after one direction.
And I found what he said about hotel rooms really telling and insightful, because there is something about the hotel room that you see in a lot of these stories. And I often think about if you are on stage. There's a famous story about Liam Payne a fan sort of trying to rip his ear off. Is how much this fan wants a piece of him. Imagine what that
does to your nervous system and your adrenaline. And you're on stage and you're feeling these highs that the average person will never ever experience, and then you go back to a silent, dark, empty hotel room. And I've heard famous people talk about this, the only way to chase that high is through substance. To sit there with your own thoughts would be such a confronting experience.
And also the reason why fame is so at this particular level. We've been hearing people telling us these stories. For you know almost one hundred years, but we don't want to hear them because to our lives, our ordinary lives, how could it possibly not be amazing to get everything you want, doing something you love, all the money in the world, all the adelation in the world, traveling everywhere.
But the reality of it is is you're taking a young person, taking them away from everything that connects them to reality because you're constantly traveling, I mean constantly. As Robbie Williams said famously, you can't trust anybody once you're at that level of fame because everybody wants something from you. You're paying everybody's bills, or they want you to, you know, listen to my tape, take me this, this, or I want to get a secret about you that I can
sell to somebody. You are a commodity. Once you've lost your band of brothers, that's even more difficult because at least, if you're all in it together, you're all in it together. But once that falls apart, which inevitably it always seems to do. You never really get five massive stars out of a band once they break up. History tells us there will be one or two big breakout stars and then everybody else will always be for the rest of
their life. That guy who used to be in one direction are Isn't it sad that he's not Harry Styles? Or you know, in Robbie Williams's case, and again he spoke about this lots in his amazing documentary. He had times when he was, as he described it, the center of the pop culture universe, and then he had times already is mocked, has been sad, not what you were. So you've got intense scrutiny, criticism, separation from everybody who loves you in real life, constant traveling, access to everything.
If you're rich enough and famous enough, you can get whatever you want whenever you want it. And a lot of what we want is not what we should have. How could it end any other way?
You're making me think about a story that's going to be slightly annoying because I can't name the person involved in it. But in my twenties, I was living in New York and I became friends through a friend of mine with a young actress who was also in her early twenties and moved to Hollywood around twenty five. And there was in a show that we would have all seen and I used to see her whenever I went to Los Angeles, sort of once a year or so, and over the years she became stranger and stranger as
her star wars in Hollywood. For a start, her nose became narrower and narrower, because every time I saw her she'd undergone some kind of alteration. The last time I saw her, we went out for lunch and she ordered a salad of a arugula of rocket salad with a side of boiled spinach, and that was her lunch and I didn't see her after that, in part because she kind of retreated. I think the more famous you get,
the more closed off your life has to become. And that makes me think that if that's someone in their twenties, can you imagine for a teenager how oppressive that is. And it's part of that overall reevaluation we're doing about what it is to be a child and how we want to wall off childhood a little more than we have in the past. I was looking into when we came up with this idea of the prefrontal cortex not being heed until twenty six, and that's a relatively recent idea.
MRI imaging developed in the nineties, and then we started looking at brains and we realized they literally look different when you're a teenager. And so I think we're probably overdue for Just as we're looking at social media and whether we want to protect children from social media, we probably need to look at whether we want to protect children from vame.
It's interesting because there's a knock on there probably, right, is that when I think about my daughter who's fourteen and how she lives on social media, no wonder the influences, whether they are actual artists or whether they're literally just influencers, are the same age, right, The people that she wants
to see selling her things at the same age. If you kick kids off social media, then that market has now dried up, right, And that almost protects a group of people, not in this instance with the pop stars, but as long as we want to sell things to young people and we know that they are most susceptible to peer to peer marketing, as many of us are, then you're always going to turn the people who are doing the selling into commodities.
Right.
I think what as Well is so telling about the treatment of lie and pain in his life is also how he was treated in death because there have been reports. The first is leaked photographs from inside the hotel, which is almost inevitable that a worker or someone showed images of damage that have been done to the hotel. And we have heard numerous reports about his final hours which
are quite confronting. But the other is TMZ publishing images of his lifeless body and to not even have privacy or dignity in death is so confronting, and in fact it was fans I think, as well as kind of an ethical framework of journalists going no, you don't publish that, but fans coming out going we're disgusted by this, Like there's been this enormous backlash. I wonder if that's part of it too, that we're looking at this and.
It's another lesson that we refuse to learn though, right every time there's a celebrity death, and even saying celebrity death is so awful because to everybody who actually new Liam Payne, this is not a celebrity death. This is the death of a loved one and a human being. But every time we go, it's terrible how their privacy
is being so invaded. It's terrible how we want to know all the details of exactly what they did in the last twenty four hours and exactly where his girlfriend was and exactly what he ate and exactly what he ordered from room service. And then it happens again and we all just do it again. You know it's Groundhog Day, Lady.
I want to know what do you think when you're alone? Rising me?
I think you're me.
Hell tell you how.
It's time for Holly's Royal roundup. As we're recording today, the King and Queen of England are in Canberra, where they've been both the subject of a warm welcome from the Prime Minister and other dignitaries, and protested by Senator Lydia Thorpe, who has shouted fuck the colony and you'll never be our King at Charles during a fancy lone time reception. But if you'd almost missed the fact that King Charles and Queen Camilla have arrived in Australia, you
couldn't really be blamed. They arrived on Saturday and it was raining. That never helps royal tours. If it's raining, it's not good. That's why they have sea through umbrellas so you can still see them getting off the plane.
But still they'd be used to.
Well, yes, they're very used to the rain. They arrived on Saturday. They're in Sydney yesterday, they're in Canberra today. Then they're in Sydney tomorrow and that's it.
Right.
It's a flying visit for a few reasons.
Oddly worth coming, I know. Right.
So this tour was one of the first ones announced after King Charles got coronated over a year ago, and after his cancer diagnosis became public. Of course all professional activities were suspended. But rather than cancel this tour, it's just been really scaled back. And all the Royal insiders and the reporters say that he is a workaholic and he was absolutely determined he wanted to come.
Because any Royal insiders are there.
There are a lot big gossips. He didn't want to cancel it all together. But they've lopped off New Zealand. They were supposed to do some other things and they go to other places. They are literally here for three days, right, and while he's here, he's traveling with doctors who would probably have rather that he'd stayed home. Also, they've got rest days built in and it's all being handled very sensitively, but The other reason is I would imagine that the
reception for Charles and Camilla is so lied on. For example, if you go to say the Daily Mail homepage when I was coming in here today, it's not even really there. It was yesterday when they arrived, but today it's been replaced by whatever reality star blah blah like. Normally. Royal's wall to wall for this kind of thing is surely something about the sort of fading appeal of the monarchy
full stop. Because while hundreds of people turned out to see Charles and Camilla in Sydney yesterday, let's remember that in June thousands and thousands of people tested opera house security to see YouTube star Mister Beast, and last year KSI and Logan Paul actually sent Sydney into a lockdown frenzy because so many people came out to see them. This isn't how it used to be Back when Queen
Elizabeth first came to Australia in nineteen fifty four. Obviously there weren't so many people here then, but it was estimated that three quarters of the population were in her physical presence at least once. That's how many people wanted to come and see it Now in Australia, only about roughly a third of the population cared deeply enough about the monarchy to want to get rid of them. Right, so about thirty two percent of Australians call themselves Republicans.
The other two thirds are either love them to bits or just don't really care. Is that don't really care people who were probably just shrugging and going Is it possible that the Royal family, not only here in Australia but all over the world might just kind of fade
away due to lack of interest? Because the truth about how we feel about the Royals in twenty twenty four, for a lot of people, not all As I learned when I wrote something a bit snarky about the Royals on the eve of the King's coronation and I got absolutely smashed on the Internet for being disrespectful, is that
for many of the Royals are now just celebrities. And whether or not we're interested in particular celebrities depends on what they're wearing, how much surgery they've had, how much gossip there is in their private life at the moment, how much controversy they caught. And Charles and Camilla are just a bit.
I don't know about this. You could be right about Australia. I don't know if it's true globally, because look at William and Kate's last tour, that was to the Caribbean in twenty twenty two. They went to Jamaica and the Bahamas to celebrate the Queen's Platinum Jubilee. That was not a lukewarm reception, that was an antagonistic reception. It was
widely seen as a disaster of a tour. There was this tone death moment where they paraded around in a jeep and waved at people in a way that felt really way too colonial, and.
They were and the crowds were photographed being behind fences and yeah, it was very on the nose. And also there were several nations they visited in that time who had recently opted to come out of the Commonwealth.
Yes, which is awkward. Their royal insider has spoken out and suggested that there's not going to be any more tours like that for William and Kate, and that was sort of the last royal tour of that kind with that kind of pomp and ceremony. So I don't know if it's a lack of interest. It could be that there's something about Charles. I mean, his story is so tragic and Shakespearean in so many ways, coming onto the throne in his seventies, having waited his whole life for it.
I wonder if it's something more about Charles and Camilla.
I also think that Australia broadly is it a crossroads. We're at a really awkward moment as a nation with the Voice referendum being unsuccessful last year. I don't think we know where we're at. If that had been successful, I think this would be very different. But I don't think any of us know what the future.
How would it have been different.
I think it would be more antagonistic. I think that if Charles and Camilla were here and it had been a yes.
Because we would have defined the parameters of the nation to push back on them.
Yeah, exactly.
And even there's a new five dollar bill because of course Queen Elizabeth after her passing, they went to change the bill and it was decided I think by the RBA that they wouldn't put Charles on it. And it's me they're doing like an indigenous design. And they had this thing where you could submit ideas, and so I had never considered that we might just fall out with a monarchy and it might just fizzle out, rather than it being this massive explosion referendum or something.
It's interesting because what often comes up and in the polling about republicanism when the Queen was alive, a lot of Australians said when the Queen dies, we'll be more into that. And then the Queen died and Charles took the throne, and now almost a third of the people polt says when Charles dies, will be more into them. And I wonder if there's a Australians are smart and they're like, I don't like the idea of the monarchy,
but it's not really these people's fault. When I was talking about I got an enormous backlash when I wrote on the eve of the King's coronation, I wrote a piece called the Last King of Australia.
I believe I was only just forgiven you for it.
I believe Australia should be a republic. But I am nothing against Charles himself, like he was born into that system, just like William, just like all of them. It's not about him. But I think that it would feel almost cruel to be very negative about his appearance here.
You're on just something here. I think Charles has been waiting his whole life for this. He hasn't expressed a lot of ambivalence about that waiting or about taking on that role. William, by contrast, I think it's safe to say, has telegraphed to us a profound ambivalence about continuing this. His message that he's worried about its effects on his children. He's spoken about his desire to try and raise his children as normally as possible, in contrast to how he
was raised as a king in waiting. I wonder if William's ambivalence is going to be the permission slip that Australia needs to finally servertize.
Yeah, so that we don't hurt anyone's feelings exactly why is Charles here?
Like?
Why is here?
The point of royal tours broadly, and I learned something about this in Harry's book. You know, that's one of
my most studied texts. Spare so obviously the traditional royal tour you go to either commonwealth or formerly Commonwealth nations, and basically it is a hey, we're still here and we remember you or more interested in you, and we know what's going on right and it's literally just to be seen, because that's the royals job, and you know, come and shake hands with the people who are doing their good work over here and the people who are
involved in their various schemes and charities and all those things. Obviously today there are for example, at the National War Memorial in Canberra, they'll meet with various dignitaries. Usually if it was a more expanded tour, they'd meet with lots of charity organizations, they'd go and see community groups perform, but largely you're there to just go, we see you,
we remember you now. Harry and Meghan, who are obviously starting their sort of version of royal tours over here, would also say it's to shine a light on issues of importance in parts of the world. So there's also they do love that they think that they can direct their literary spotlight there, and they're right to a point.
But also the why is he here is interesting, Jesse, because as we said at the beginning, it was going to be this big tour of the Pacific, and it's been scaled right back to three days and Charles Health is obviously not in the best place, but he determined to do it, and everybody says he's got this big soft spot for Australia. He came to boarding school here
for a while. He always does lots of embarrassing like Australian slang to show how much he gets us and all that stuff, because he has said if you want to be a republic, yes, it's up to Australia. He doesn't seem to be trying to convince us to stay. That's the official line, and William is the same. Is very much like we're not trying to hold anybody hostage here.
But I think that the Royal family realizes that every time they lose a nation, they lose relevance and importance, and they will be whittled down to being like Princess Mary and riding a bike around Denmark.
And William. I've read some analysis by roylandsiders that suggests that William wants to act more like a CEO of Great Britain rather than that kind of traditional figurehead type role. He wants to get involved with causes. Whether that's correct or not remains to be seen, But I wonder if he inherits that CEO idea. He might not even care about having a broader jurisdiction beyond the UK. My only remaining question is did Charles bring the man who makes
the martini for him? Remember that how he always has someone trailing behind him to shake up or stir a martini.
Now and somebody to squeezes toothpaste onto his toothbrush. Of course he did.
I hope it's a Martini card on that seven four seven.
I hope that his treatment hasn't gotten in the way of his martinis.
Well, I hope not.
One.
Unlimited out loud access, we drop episodes every Tuesday and Thursday exclusively for Mama Maya subscribers. Follow the link in the show notes to get us in your ears five days a week. And a huge thank you to all our current subscribers.
Victorious.
Six years ago, the Victorious Secret Fashion Show was canceled. It had been running since two thousand and one. It had launched models like Miranda Kerr and Gigi had Died into the stratosphere, and at its height it was primetime viewing. It reached almost ten million people in twenty thirteen when Taylor Swift performed, but in twenty nineteen. It was the me too era. It was the first Trump presidency. We
were wearing pussy hats. The show was literally canceled. Sales had already plunged about ten percent year of a year. But more to the point, it felt completely out of step with the culture. Rihanna had put on her first lingerie show at New York Fashion Week the year before. Savage X twenty celebrated how diverse in body shape and ethnicity and race. That show was the same year Victoria's Secrets marketing chief said that transgender models had no place
in his brand's fantasy. That's his quote, fantasy, not mine, and CEO Les Wexner was revealed to have been basically bankrolling sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's lifestyle over a decade or more so. The show came back this year and they made a big show of how enlightened and woke it was now. The show featured K pop star Lisa shr lots of supermodels. Of course, the voiceover that began the show announced that on the runway, it's all about the women. But it's safe to say that the reception was a
little mixed. The New York Times Fashion critic Vanessa Friedman said, it's only about the women if you still buy into the idea that every woman shares a similar fantasy of wanting to be a play act in a present in a giant bow, waiting to be literally unwrapped. So what I wanted to talk about today, though, is not necessarily is Victoria's Secret back, because as far as I'm concerned, I don't think it really is, and I think the
show was not seen as an enormous success. But there is a theory during the rounds that I wanted to bring to you, and I read about it in Puck News in a column by their fashion writer Laurence Sherman. She said, does the return of the Victoria's Secret Fashion
Show portend the reelection of Donald Trump? She writes that the revival of Victoria's Secret officially marks in some ways an official reversal of the broad enlightenment that dawned on the culture during the pandemic era, and now that we're having it back in our lives again, maybe we're done with all that enlightenment and we just want to go back to seeing skinny women in fancy bras. And then she writes a Trump election might only cement this trend in history.
That's just the most depressing thing.
Well, I'm your US politics correspondence, so that's what I bring to the table.
Even in terms of Trump, right, there's something hy took nostalgia about Trump. The warmth al lot of people feel for him is that he's in this figure in America that represents this simpler time. It's funny because I'm not sure it actually was simpler, but in our minds.
He was in home alone.
Yeah, exactly, that there's a.
Warm sex in the city once.
There's a warmth to it.
And in particular, I think that the comeback of Victoria's Secret in this way, which just felt sort of come out of nowhere.
Nobody asked for it, did they. I was all of a sudden, it was all over my feet and I was like, oh, I thought we were done with this.
And millennials in particular didn't quite know what to make of it because the last time they watched it, they were in like a toxic, abusive relationship with the show, and then it kind of came back and they were like, I am feeling complicated feelings because it's almost and this word is overused, but like It's quite triggering for millennials because for a lot of them, it was this appointment viewing where you would like run home from school. My
friends were talking about it. You would go home from school, sit down, everyone would watch it. You would then hear all their diet like Adriana Lima. I remember, like I can tell you that she didn't drink water for twelve hours before that.
She also famously said she prepared for this like an athlete, and she did not eat for four days before.
Yes, yes, and remember she had a baby and then she came back like weeks afterwards, and her body was this big discussion point that's similar to you and me, right, yes, exactly, And we decided to do it from my feather bra yeah, not bleeding from every.
One of my room for a maxi path. In some of those there is.
Not a lot of mesh underwear that you got free from the hospital.
Not good.
One of my friends was telling me that she worked in a gym and she remembers that the day after they had to like put on extra staff because the day after the Victoria's Secret Show was their busiest day of the year. It was just full of women being like I need to go and do my crunches.
And sometimes I'm disappointed in us. All No, where is this nonsense.
It's brain where brainwashed?
Holley.
We're broken.
And when you think about the fact that what really did that show in it wasn't really the unrealistic bodies that would have continued. It was the worst story of all. It was that Jeffrey Epstein, this convicted pedophile, had been living this high lifestyle because the CEO of Victoria's Secret decided that he was going to paying fifty million dollars a year to quote unquote manage his money. It had to take that for the Victoria's Secret Show to be dismantled.
I disagree. It was that.
I think the thing that made the Victoria's Secret Show dismantled. There wasn't appointment viewing anymore. You couldn't get people to watch television, so television rates went right down, which is the big question, Well, then why is it back?
The answer always comes back to capitalism. Prime video.
They were able to show this on Prime Video alongside shop the Looks, So this was an exercise in getting people to do.
Did you shop any looks?
I didn't.
I didn't shop any looks.
I did not, although one of my dirty little secrets is that many years ago I was in Las Vegas and I went into a Victoria's Secret shop and bought myself a bra that I would say to this day has been my favorite bra. Anyway, that I digress, I.
Have a confession, Holly, and that is the Victorious Secret bikinis were great. They offered really good support, and they've stopped uring the bikinis I used to order them from the US with all the mark up.
We need to stop talking about this because we're giving them too much credit. Anyway, I'm worried about Amelia's theory about trump Ism because I think it's right, because I think, obviously Jesse your correct capitalism, et cetera. Also, I think that the marketing model of Victorias Secret because I watched that documentary, the one that was revealed all the awfulness, and it was saying at the beginning, you know men by the underwear for women, and so let's sell to
the men. I'm like, come on, no, modern men are buying that. Also, the Victoria's Secret show men never watched that. No, they did.
They did offer me did and maybe they had the posters up, but it was the women who like lusted over the bodies rather than that.
But it was well, no, men definitely over the bodies. They were like culturally, I remember watching some Australian like not The Secret Life of Us, but one of those kind of shows, and one of the sticks was all the guys getting together pizza ber let's watch Victoria's sek Like, yeah, for sure. Men anyway, all those things contributed to its demise. Old fashioned business model, blah blah blah blah, appointment viewing.
But also it was just exceptionally uncool, right, exceptionally uncool over the past five years at least, maybe more to admit even that that was seductive to you as a woman. But now we are in the era of traadwives, and we are in the era of going we are tired of having to fix everything and represent everything and r and I think you're right, there's a retro appeal. The whole idea that it could foretell the American election is
so depressing that it makes my head hurt. But again, the thing is is that you're right, Jesse, that there's a sort of among a lot of people, there's a level of almost affection for Trump as this kind of I'm going to use the awful term politically incorrect, but you know, non serious figure. But at least he's entertaining, And it's the same thing. It's like, we might know that it's wrong to elevate these impossible beauty standards, but it's entertaining and it's fun, and who doesn't want to
look at beautiful women wearing diamond bikinis? And like, we're in a moment of trying to shrug off the heaviness of the world, ironically by possibly ushering in an exceptionally heavy and sinister era if Trump does get reelected. But I do think there's something to this.
Well, it's often been said that politics is a pendulum swing, and we had a pendulum swing from the first black president to Donald Trump and then Joe Biden. He wasn't really a pendulum swing. He's just sort of hovering in the middle. But then, I mean, the show was playing off that idea of nostalgia very explicitly. Kate Moss walks to the catwalk, which I know that you would have loved Holly, and then her daughter, Lyla Moss also made her catwalk debut, So there was this idea of very
explicitly tapping into nostalgia. I do think that there's a sense that people are tired of the often seen as the virtue signaling of the last few years, and this return to the campusesthetics of Victoria's Secret. Well, at least they're fun.
At least it's fun, and who doesn't like it? And do I have to pretend that I don't like it? And all of those kind of they.
Did have to parcel it, and I think that this actually speaks to an undermining of feminism more broadly. But they know they have to parsele it as feminine.
There was some diversity on the catalk. I saw thighs, and I saw people over the age of thirty yep, and tyrol.
That's interesting that the so called plast sized models were the most covered up of all.
Oh always and Tyra Banks was almost head to toe covered up with a cape, with a cape exactly right. But there was a line that one of the commentators said about how Victoria's Secret is so committed to female confidence and so they know that I have to parcel it as empowerment and like sell it to us as that rather than mutilating.
That's the thing That's what.
We've all got to work on. And now we have the Maraboo feather brad to do it.
With, which you can't even wear under a nice T shirt, can't you, because those feathers stick out pop in the nose. Come on, now, while I've got you here, Amelia, there's something I have to ask you about about the reelection of Donald Trump. Elon Musk is giving away a million dollars a day between now and the election to people who sign up to vote Republican? Is that? Did I get that right? I saw this head of a label I thought I was going to ask.
The New York Times had a long article today where they were asking experts about it because it is potentially in violation of federal election laws. But yes, it's true. He is giving away one million dollars a day randomly to a registered Pennsylvania voter who signs a conservative petition put together by his super pack, which basically means his like dark money organization that can collect money for Trump and funnel it to him without anyone knowing. So, yes,
it may or may not contravene federal law. But I find the mask going all in on Trump thing. It's sort of like the worst timeline is the phrase that comes to mind when I see the world's richest man pushing Donald Trump on everyone.
But I feel like Elon Musks sat down to watch that Victoria's Secret show.
I can see committed a female confidence. It does beg the question of what Mask wants from Trump, because it looks sinister to me. It looks sinister.
Yeah.
The bottom line is he wants government money. He wants the dialing back of regulations. He wants to put a fully autonomous vehicle on the market. Now those have been shown to be not very safe, and he wants to push aside all the regulations and the safety laws and get that on the market. So it's just as sinister as you thought.
Quite a lot of the I mean, I know that Musk transcends Silicon Valley, but quite a lot of the Silicon Valley tech bros. Trump is these days, aren't they And surely it's all about the regulations, right, the looming regulation and they're just like no, and he's gonna reward innovation.
Yeah, which is how AI ends up taking over the world.
And there's no But again, back to this idea of the way that we consume news. Now, even my kids, they know who Trump is, they know who Musk is. They're like colorful cartoon characters who they find entertaining and they want to watch.
They're the celebrities that people want to watch. And the royals have somehow missed the boat on that.
Have you ever seen a good TikTok of Charles?
He needs to give mar Tini maker needs to have a TikTok account.
Oh my god, that's genius. Embrace it. Embrace the ridiculousness of the fact that whatever Charles goes stay anywhere someone comes before to hang pictures on the walls and make the bed.
It's the Susan Sarandon's son strategy. He's become a TikTok celebrity, embracing the NEPO baby label. Yeah, now Charles can embrace the out of touch label. Seth done out Louder.
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That's all we've got time for today. Thank you Amelia Lester for filling in for me. A freedman, my pleasure. It has been great to have you back in the studio. Of course, you'll be back later in the week to tell us about the latest with the US election, maybe with some Victoria's secret underwear not on prony that approriate no shit. A massive thank you to all of the out louders for listening to today's show and to our
fabulous team for putting this show together. We're going to be back in your ears tomorrow.
Bye bye.
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