You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on Hello and welcome to MoMA Mia out Loud. It's what women are actually talking about on Wednesday, the twenty fourth of September. And my name is Hollywayen.
Right, I'm Jesse Stevens, and my name is Amelia Lester, and I have something to tease before we get into today's show. Remember our Taro card reader friend Evelyn. She said during the episode. I can't remember if it was a subscriber, if it was on the main episode, but she said there will be a big.
Announcement coming on out Loud.
She did two weeks.
Yeah, she said this, and I was like, I'd shore, I'm not. There is a big announcement coming on out Loud on Friday. That is my teas. Be the first to listen. It drops a bit earlier on a Friday, make.
Sure you're on that show, and make sure.
Because there's some exciting news. So there's my little teas for Friday.
That is as much as we're giving you, we are mean. But on today's show, here is what made our agenda.
An announcement from President Trump this week about pregnancy autism and paracetamol upset me even more than I expected. We discussed the new directive for pregnant women, which is to tough it out.
I've got a phone charging theory, which is not just about phones.
I'm going to tell you about it.
And tremble in your soft pants. Friends. Your office attire is not appropriate and you need to get ready to be shamed about it because dressing for work is back. But first, Amelia Lester.
Yeah, in case you missed it, I got some good news and some bad news. I guess I'll tell you the good news first.
The bears. The bears are getting fatter than ever. Do you know what I'm talking about it?
Are you talking about fat Bear Week?
It is fat bear Week? Can we have a vovo zailor sound just there? Is that?
The word I don't know is that the.
Word Voting has opened for the eleventh year of this contest that's run by the Alaska National Park to German, who the fattest bear is?
Is that? Because it's so it's seasonal right, they're about to go into hibernation and they've got to carblow it? Is that great protein fish load.
They're up your alley, Holly.
They're all about the protein. They need nothing but salmon. Think of their skin so radiant goodness. So you go and watch a webcam of bears feeding at Brooks Falls, which is a very beautiful looking place in Alaska, and they're all eating their salmon, and then you vote on which bear you think has fattened up the most over the summer for the coming winter hibernation. And the voting has just opened for this year. The contest is open to all the bears in the park. There's about two
thy three hundred of them. As long as they are sufficiently chunky.
They must be trying the big bears, only to think that they're stoked when they find that the camera's following them.
Yes, there are some there definitely are more into it than others. Bears double their weight over the summer in preparation for hibernation, which I just love as.
A fat fighting each other for the Yes.
They're fighting each other.
And I want to give a special shout out to the adult females because I learned that basically they have to get fat because they give birth to cubs midwinter and then they're in the cave with them nursing them until they come out in the spring.
But they're not eating anything.
For that whole time, so they give birth and nurse and there's no food until they exit.
Apparently they've got particularly fat this season because there's been a lot of food in the past, has been fighting when it's been limited. But the ranger has said the bears are extremely fat this year, and I'm looking forward to seeing how people react to how fat they are.
Okay, how people react with shock and awe and a tape measure in hand. I saw my bucket list to go and see those beads. Me too, I would love too. But maybe it's not as good as it sounds. Maybe there's just like a horde of people.
Look, there's a webcam. I would say, you don't need to get on a plane. The webcam will give it all to you. There's a guy named Mike Fitz who's a ranger who won the first year of the contest, and he said that the reason why people love this, Yes, it's because the news is full of doom and gloom and it's respite from that. But also, and I want to get this quote right, because it's delightful. Beyond that, people just like looking at photos of round animals.
Round animal that's why we like. Look.
Okay, be thinking about the round animals. Because now I've got the bad news. Okay, the bad news is the rapture is coming today.
I've heard about their Somlia.
Get your affairs in order.
People are apparently selling their houses, which confuses me because if the rapture's coming, why do you need to sell your house. But anyway, that's what they're doing. They're quitting their jobs, they're packing up their pets. And it all started because a South African evangelical pastor whose name is Joshua Malacala insisted that the world is going to be ending on September twenty three, twenty four. We're not quite sure.
Which apparently with Australian time difference twenty four twenty fifth, which is today or tomorrow. Yes, so, Ameilia, the rapture is correct me if I'm wrong. The idea is that what happens is holy, but it's like Jesus comes back and takes all the good people. Is that the shortcut?
It's not good for you and it's goods fine.
Imagine if we came into work tomorrow, and Jesse was just gone, like her chair was empty, her cup was undrunk from like, you know, her sandwich wrapper was just there.
I'm gonna leave my clothes behind, so it looks like I've just descended.
And we were like, we were laughing about this. Imagine.
Yeah, I really liked the TikTok of the woman. There's a lot of people explaining to people in their lives how to survive without them after.
The wrapper because they're going up.
Yeah, a wife.
Being like, I know, I'm going like absolutely, I've lived a moral, good life. But she's explaining to her husband how to do things when she's off. You've got to be outside, I think, to ascend. But her husband she's going this.
Are you sorry, You've got to be outside?
Gonna hit the roof?
Familiar?
Oh my goodness, Jesus sorted that out.
No, you have to wait outside on your doors.
Really worried about all these people sitting outside waiting for this to happen, and then if it doesn't happen, how they're going to get on with their lives on Thursday's.
An embarrassing next day.
There are some TikTok trends where it's going like they go through celebrities and who would ascend and who would not? So I would obviously ascend the Irwins, they say absolutely, But then the theory is Chris Hemsworth would ascend, but Liam Hemsworth wouldn't, which feels mean that me.
And what about all the celebrities named Chris, I wonder which is.
I know, I think it would be very very selective. You couldn't have them.
All Chris Pine for sure.
Yeah.
And what they've done as well is that people are saying, yeah, look, if you're going to ascend, just leave all your designer items on your front port because they can be for the scavengers who are left like you, Holly.
Ah. Is it too late for me to make it onto the vulture escalator because I feel like things are hard down here at the minute. I want to be up there singing to me Pedro Pascale's whispering, scoreless gossip in my ear.
I'll give you my carcays, Holly, I'm not gonna need my car anymore.
That's true.
You can jump onto hashtag rapture talk if you want to learn more.
I was shocked yesterday at how much an announcement from the White House ruined my day because this actually isn't a story about Trump or RFK Junior. It's a story about women who have been, are currently or will one day be pregnant. It's a story about people with an autism diagnosis. It's a story about the blame that we always apportioned to mothers. And it's also a story about misinformation, scientific rigor, and expertise.
Deep breath, you might remember that.
My whole thing is like, I'm not going to be troubled anymore by the craziness that's coming out of my So I'm going to be ferries en by this. But it's hard on this one. It's hard.
You might remember President Donald Trump at Charlie Kirk's memorial service took that opportunity to say, I think we found an answer to autism.
He teased us, just like.
You did at the beginning of this leaf out of Trump's book, and he ta used us, and he said, I've got a big announcement coming well on Monday, US time, Trump staged a press conference, and here's a little bit of what he said.
First, effective immediately, the FDA will be notifying physicians at the use of I said, well, let's see how we say that. A said menefin acetamnefin I said, okay, which is basically commonly known as thailand all during pregnancy can be associated with a very increased risk of autism. For this reason, they are strongly recommending that women limit us
during pregnancy unless medically necessary. That's, for instance, in cases of extremely high fever that you feel you can't tough it out, you can't do it.
I guess there's that.
It's a small number of cases, I think, But if you can't tough it out, if you can't do it.
What a coherent and clear announcement about something so important.
He sounds so well prepared now.
I'm glad he was so well prepared.
Now in Australia, the generic name for the medication he's talking about is paracetamol. Right, and Trump's announcement prompted a
swift response from experts all over the world. In the United States, it was the American Academy of Obstetricians and Gynecologists who said, in more than two decades of research, not a single reputable study has successfully concluded that the use of this drug in any trimester of pregnancy causes neurodevelopmental disorders in children in Australia, the Therapeutic Goods Administration, the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists,
including every other reputable source of medical information, release statements assuring women that there is no link between paracetamol use in pregnancy and autism or ADHD. I could go into the studies, I'm not going to do that. We have an incredibly comprehensive episode of The Quickie Drop this morning. Highly recommend you listen to that. But Holly, what I want to know is why this has struck such a chord and why it feels particularly sinister, Like health misinformation
is not new, there's nothing new about this. There's nothing unprecedented. There's not even anything particularly surprising, but it feels sinister.
Well, I think it partly feels sinister because of the delivery mechanism. I mean, when we just played that clip, you know, this is the President of the United States, and whatever you think about him, that is a seat of enormous power, getting the entire world's media pretty much to turn their cameras on him for him to make a confusing incoherent, fearmongering announcement that is then immediately refuted by all these reputable organizations, as you've said, Jesse, but
the damage is done. That announcement just sets off an explosion of shame and self loathing and panic and worry lots of different groups of people, as you've already you said, obviously women of childbearing age and pregnant women, but people with autism, because what Trump was essentially saying was autism
is terrible and it should be eradicated. That's a whole thing that upsets an enormous number of people to say that women are somehow weak and selfish if they are addressing pain, wanting even to address pain and pregnancy, not toughing it out, and that whatever stage of all that you're at, And obviously I have lived experience here. I don't want to go into it in detail, but I've sat in those rooms and heard those diagnoses that this
is your fault. Any difficult things that are coming your way, for either yourself or your child, it's.
Your fault and your own selfishness.
It's your selfish. And so no one would suggest that we should suppress any scientific evidence or findings to spare people's feelings, So I don't mean to sit here and go that makes me feel bad. So we shouldn't learn about autism and the causes of autism. That is not what I'm saying, or I think what anybody is saying. But it's just so enormously irresponsible, Am I right, Amelia? Is it enormously irresponsible? Yeah?
Other presidents have dispensed health advice. So President Eisenhower recommended the polio vaccine. Barack Obama suggested people should quit smoking. But I think what's different about this is that he has departed from the entire medical establishment. And the reason that it catches on with people is because there's a vacuum of information right now about a perception that autism
rates a rising in the population. And because there's that perception and the medical establishment hasn't yet figured out the no doubt complex causes for why this is or even if this is the case, people seese on a definite answer from someone, even if he doesn't know what he's talking about.
I mean, and you can fact check so much of what he says.
But I posted something on Instagram about it yesterday, and the messages I got back from women who broke d during pregnancy. That's what pregnancy did to them, the worst migraines of your life. I got COVID and the flu at like thirty five weeks pregnant, had a terrible fever. And what I didn't know before that pregnancy was the list of medicines I couldn't take, not just medicines, things
you can't do, things you can't eat. Like to suggest that women are ever flippant about anything they put in their bodies, on their bodies during pregnancy is so infuriating, and that the experience of pregnancy in and of itself is an exercise in toughing it out, Like you get the flu, like there's virtually nothing you can take, and all these experts have come out and said fever can be dangerous for babies, and that's why we recommend getting the fever down.
I'm not a doctor.
Speak to your doctor if that's an experience you're having, but that's putting a lot of pregnant women in danger to basically say don't take this medicine when your doctor's, your obstetricians, your midwives are saying the opposite.
And the reason why people are going.
To be really confused by this in particular is because we don't know a lot about pregnancy, and one reason for that is that you can't conduct to studies on pregnant women for obvious reasons, and then you layer on the misinformation and it starts to be a really dangerous stew.
Yeah, because there are drugs, a doctor will often say to you, we just don't know, so we're not going
to let you have that. To suggest that the medical institution is an erring on the side of caution at all times is just so irresponsible, And it's the endangering I think that made me so angry, and also the suggestion that there is this selfishness within pregnant women, or this haphazard response to putting things in your body that is causing long term damage, which is the wrong word anyway, when we all know people who live with autism who were incredible like as though it's some kind of disease
rather than a disorder that millions of people around the world are diagnosed with and have always had as well.
One of the things that's saddling my brain about this is that I'm old enough to remember Jenny McCarthy going on the Oprah Wimfrey show, yep, a couple of decades ago. Now probably that interview. Really see it in my mind, I must have watched it in real time where she told a story about my child. At the time, she'd been an actress and MTV presenter, like she was a cool girl, and then she became like a real crunchymum pin up for a while and she went on the
opera Woinfroy Show. And I see it in my memory, this story I took my kid to get their vaccine and then immediately, like the next day, that kid was completely different and it changed everything. Now that was seen as a moment of enormous irresponsibility on the side of the media to be immediately bandying about all this misinformation.
But in the period of time since, we have learned so much, and that message has been discredited so many times, and we've seen this always this sort of underground hum of skepticism around that, but every credible medical organization has
pushed back. And it feels like here we are a couple of decades later and the President of the United States standing up there and apart from his directive, he spoke broadly and coherently about the kind of vaccines, babies get how there's just too much liquid in those syringes for them. He just went on and on about all of these really dangerous, disproven things. You know, there are people in my life who are very across this kind of stuff, and I've already heard about these rumors and
already seen that it was disproven all these things. But most of us are just busy and getting on with things. And pregnancy is one of those moments in your life where suddenly you have to learn about health and science and if you're not a person who knows about that, so we just have these little drops of buzzes and information and oh, I remember hearing something on Oprah once about vaccines. I remember hearing something about blah blah blah.
And if that's most of us, what's just happened with this high profile misinformation dump is so many people will just go, oh, well, that's true. There are a lot of pregnant women or women who've been pregnant, and I'd put myself in this bucket. Who are going, wait, did I take paracenamol when I was pregnant or did I not? Oh my god? And then thinking about whatever difficulties or hurdles their kids might have and thinking it's all on me.
You already think it's all on you regardless.
I just I find it befuddling, as you can probably tell by my incoherent response. But I just want to send love and solidarity, I really do, to autistic people who are copying it over this, to the people who support them, to the pregnant women who are wondering what the hell they're supposed to do now. I just think this is an incredibly difficult time, And of course, if you are worried and confused, talk to an actual doctor. As Jesse said, the health professionals know what they're talking about.
In a moment, your phone, your life, and.
A controversial theory about how they're connected. I saw a headline this week which made me stop in my tracks. Now that happens a lot these days, but this one was about my phone. It was on the wire cutter and it read stop charging your phone to one hundred percent.
What fed especially when you first get it. I thought that was the point. It was like you have to have it to one hundred percent.
I thought that was like phone hygiene, Yeah, like flossing, Like you gotta charge your phone overnight to one hundred percent. No, the wire cutter said that over time, charging your phone all the way can weaken your battery and cause it to lose its charge much faster. Instead, charge it somewhere in the range of twenty to eighty percent.
Twenty percent, you'd be living on the edge. What kind of risk taking adrenaline junkie is running around with their phone only for charge to twenty.
The kind who's also running around looking for a charger at work.
So apparently on your phone, if it's a your model, you can just like make it do this automatically stop at eighty percent. I haven't done this because it feels wrong to me and I'm not ready to do it. I'm just simply not ready to do it.
You're not following the sciences points on other things important medical information. Yes, the viber off on this anent.
The vibe off it? Do you get me thinking?
Though?
Because there was something about that idea of don't charge your phone to one hundred percent?
I wondered whether we could apply it more broadly, like not just to phones. Should we be avoiding one hundred percent charge in life?
I feel as though it's better if my body never knows what one hundred percent feels like, so I try and keep it in seventy to eighty.
I've got some examples.
Think about when you go to bed early and then you wake up the next week kind of groggy because you slept too much.
Yeah, yep, yep.
Or think about how a forty minute now you wake up and you feel really discombobulated. A twenty minute nap, you're ready to go.
Ten to fifteen is the sweet spot for a nap in my experience.
Oh no, micronapp, I have two hour naps.
Really, yeah, that's charging your fine to one hundred, But.
I don't feel good after. To be clear, I feel this when I eat broccoli. I've been talking about how I've been eating vegetables lately, and I think you don't want to eat too healthy because you don't want your body to expect it. You don't want your body to grow accustomed to only eating vegetables. So then you get some hot chips because you're like, this way, my body's just ready for what's going to come, Like, I don't want to give it a shock when my real life starts up again.
You know what I mean? Do you think it applies to effort Amelia.
Yeah, so I think that sometimes I go to work and I've had too much coffee, and I give one hundred percent and then people yourself, yeah, and they say that I'm quote unquote overwhelming, and I try not to do it anymore because people just start to back away. So now at work, I aim for about seventy five.
Yeah, And you also you don't want to raise people's expectations firstly, and also you don't want to burn out, no exactly, And if you're aiming for one hundred percent all day, I feel as though what I have in my life is one hundred percent moments where I can give one hundred percent for forty five minutes, or like if I go to the gym, I'll try and give one hundred percent for literally one minute, and I'll just like see that because I.
Do a high intensity interval tree.
Every now and then, I try to get my heart right out really hard for a minute.
I do.
I'm going to give it a little bit.
But the thing is, if you wanted to give one hundred percent every time you went to the gym, you'd never go to the gym because that's just daunting. So you've got to understand that when you go, you only really.
Need to be giving it seventy percent.
I'd set on my exercise bike and I am giving it thirty eight. And I'm saying to myself, well, at least i'm here, it's better than not being here at all. But someone on TikTok is nearly always telling me that's not true. They are always telling me, if you're not killing yourself and sweating your guts out, what are you even do it here? And I'm like, no, no, no. Now that Amelia has told me this, I'm going to.
Say you.
And I need to get into your settings and sort you out. Pushing back down to a thirty eight.
Can make out a battery at two pm.
I'm going to take it to the next level this theory about battery and say, Mia has this concept that I think about a lot called intimacy leaking. Yes, yep, this idea that if you're in a romantic relationship with someone a monogamous from romantic relationship, I guess is the way to describe it here. And then you start telling people in your life who are not your partner sort of details of how you're truly feeling or really difficult
things you're struggling with. You're leaking intimacy from your relationship. And I'm thinking of this as kind of like a battery leak. You can't be giving too much of your battery to other people. That's my extension of the wire cutter theory.
Oh, like it's leaking out, it's leaking battery.
So I think you just got to be mindful of where your battery's going as well, in addition to being mindful of what level the batteries are.
Is like, let's have another analogy. Remember how Taylor Swift, the Overlord of the Women of the World, made that statement about how treat your energy like it's expressive. This is kind of like that. So if I'm cleaning my kitchen, look, forty two is plenty, Like forty two percent is plenty as long as someone's getting yes, But I have to scrub every little gap.
Child used all your battery on cleaning the kitchen, and then your kids came home and you had nothing.
To yes exactly, but my energy is expensive. So when the kid walks in the door, this theory is at least i'd be and I say, so happy to see you, darling. Did you have a wonderful day. I'm going to put one hundred percent. Make sure you feel.
Now I'm going to couch that because I don't think we should ever be giving one hundred percent to parenting, because again, it's about expectations. You can't have them expect that you're going to be cooking and clin.
No.
But I've got a theory about children in general. This is not about parents. Tony Morrison once told Michelle Obama, you get that, So this is a third hand I didn't hear it from Why Live in Directly. She said that whenever a child walks in the room, you must beam and act extremely excited because all children expect that when they enter a room. Adults like act like they're a joy in a miracle, which they are.
Yeah, I support that scene.
And that's like at least five percent of your daily battery on a child.
So if you're a teacher, I'm sorry, I don't know how you're handling it.
Also, it depends on what base you're coming from, Like if you're hungover or sick or exhausted, or your bosses and then the child, then you're coming from five percent to one hundred and that takes a lot like that.
Okay, I have another application, and it's to do with appearance.
Right.
Do you ever like you doing your makeup?
And you go, I.
Could, I could contour, I could give it one, but my nose.
Is just going to be as wide as it actually.
Is today exactly. And you go, you know what, I want to be relatable. I want them to like it.
If I look too good, then I'm going to walk into work. I'm going to make everyone feel like she's Yeah.
See, this is a problem that clearly you are.
I have to live with it.
I have a friend who's too attractive, right, And we were saying recently she wasn't there. There were just men flocking to her, which is interesting because they didn't see us, but they flocked to her, and we all said it would be hard being.
That beautiful because it's distracting.
When you speak to the men flocking, it sounds like seagulls.
Yeah, we go out to dinner, she gets harassed.
Can she turn it down from herd I don't know.
And maybe she can turn it down to ninety, but I can easily turn it to like an eighteen, and I think that that is a superpower.
Final question low battery mode. What is the human equivalent of low battery mode, which, by the way, feels like magic. Every time I put on low battery mode, I'm like, I just conducted a magic trick.
I know, closing all your tabs. It's closing all your tabs. Low battery mode is what I've been operating in while I've been poorly lately, and out Loud has been very sick of I'm sure hearing about me being poorly. Actually, this is true. People like to blame you for your illnesses, don't they. So when I said to anyone lately, I've had the flu, they've blamed it on one hundred percent theory. They've said, no, I think about it. Oh, it's because
you worked too hard. I just caught the flu. Like, I don't think it has anything to do with anything other than that I caught a sickness.
You went to low power mode.
I went to low power mode for two weeks, very little movement. Yes, if I was a fat bear, I would have been eating a lot of salmon, but not moving much, storing myself up, just barely raising the head from the bed to smile winningly at the children when they came royally. That was great. Low power mode was good.
You're doing everything to not just die.
Literally, I think that low power mode can get the job done if needed. Jesse, why didn't you tell me that Luca was running in the Berlin Marathon last weekend? I saw him in the office on Monday and I was like, how you in Berlin? Like? The reason I ask is that my boyfriend, Harry Stoyles's and don't worry out loud, it would be very inappropriate. Harry Styles was my boyfriend, very inappropriate. But we all know I love him. He ran the bill in marathon on the weekend, in Marathon full marin.
It was a good time, right, six fifty.
Under three hours, which is a goal for many people. This whole other thing about how much I love gap here Harry Styles. But quite a lot of people when Mom and Maya posted about this said they thought it was Luca. That's the picture of Harry Styles is annoying. The people generally thinking that Lucas.
Hast so annoying.
Look, someone said it before and then we've never brought it up again. But it is so annoying to make that comparison, like it gives someone such a big hit Jersey.
Sorry, let's recap here. You've been told in recent weeks you look like Sidney Sweeney. Luke has been Tory looks like Harry Styles.
Yeah.
Look, did Luca love this Harry Styles thing?
And is he kind of bringing it up at like inappropriate at moments?
Yeah?
And look I can kind of see it.
He's got a headband and some sunglasses on in a little bit of facial hair.
But there's no way that Luke's running a marathon. It's just not him.
I just love that Harry Styles. And I've been on this podcast winging about how much I want a new Harry Styles album. Harry Styles is just like I am living my life. I want to know what it's like to run a marathon. I'm dating Zoe Kravitz. Were in Rome or in New York. We're in London where wherever he is spending his money, he is having a great time. Here is my new role model.
So with Zoe Kravitz, she is dating him, she is dating him. There was some confusion that was.
The bait and switched the Austin what's his name, hot man, very.
Hot Austin Butler Australian.
No, he's not and he looks Australian, but he's not. Everyone thought she was dating Austin Butler, but they were just doing very good chemistry. For she is dating Harry Styles, or at least she has been. And some people say he had a fake name and everything in the marathon, not that I've done a deep dive and she was there and maybe also in cognito cheering him on. But he is living his best life. And everyone's like, look
at Taylor Swift. She's released like twenty five albums since you did Harry's House, Harry, get your shit together, And I'm like, nah, I'm full respectful. I was going to say them fat bear mode.
Well, I was going to say, he's definitely not taking it to one hundred percent, but then I realize he just ran a marathon, so you might shit.
Can you run a marathon in low power? After the break, soft Pants be damned? Dressing for Work is.
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We drop episodes every Tuesday and Thursday exclusively for Mum and Me are 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, What.
Are you wearing right now? Out louders you want to find out liking to imagine that. I don't think very many of our louders are this, but you know how there are all those bros who pretend they're working while listening to their favorite podcasts. Yeah, or watching it on YouTube. Maybe there are some outlouders doing that. If so, what is your current worker tire? Because apparently the mass return to office work in Australia we're judged to be at about seventy seven percent from pre COVID levels.
Of as in back to the office full time.
Yeah, and I know how much the back to the office conversation anoys, teachers, nurses, doctors, you know, retail workers. I know this not everybody, but this is about people who pre COVID were in office were apparently about seventy seven percent return, So lots of back to the office and apparently what's come with this is a bit of pearl clutching about the fact that a lot of people don't know how to dress for the office anymore and we are in a full return to corporate ware. Listen
to this. It's a collection of mostly female managers having a winge about their mostly younger colleagues what they're wearing to the office. They had an assistant show up tour in joggers, no makeup.
She sat down at the table to begin working.
I instantly had this gut reaction of no, this doesn't represent.
Our client who we are becoming.
It didn't work for me, and from that day forward, I have enforced this dress code, not only for my team but for myself.
When I get dressed for my top client every day, even though I'm.
Seeing no one potentially but my team, it improves productivity.
There is it's neuroscience fact.
You're going to have a more successful day. You're telling your body in your mind you are here to work.
It occurs to me that some of you have not or do not have a grown up telling you how to dress in the workplace.
I just wanted to talk about your outfit today.
Okay, what about it.
We have a huge client meeting today, a customer worth a lot of money who's expecting like the utmost professionalism, and some people on your team really not comfortable with what you're wearing today.
So that's a collection of tiktoks and reels from Australia and America of basically bosses bitching about the fact that nobody knows how to dress anymore. Now that's why you're seeing. I'm certainly seeing on my social's lots of what I watered the office reels right, lots of people putting together their fashion and Vogue Australia declares that business casual is dead and we're now into corporate core and there are all these different trends with it that go office siren,
corp core, corporate fetish. Dressing for work is back. But don't tell Emily Vernon because I checked in with her today about this. I said, Duhl, did you dress for work today? And you know what she said? She said, I'm literally wearing see through linen pants that I may or may not have slept it. I think that illustrates the problem here, friends, are we dressing for work?
It is so funny because you put this in yesterday like a story about this, and at almost exactly the same time, I got a message in one of my biggest group chats from someone saying apparently I have to dress corporate.
Where is everyone shopping?
And I was like, I have not seen that question in such a long time, and it made me think about a few things. The first is that if you've been working a few days in the office, the difference between two or three and five is an entire wardrobe you need five, or you feel like you need five different outfits or at least different things to put together. The other is a change of season, is that it might be the first warm season that you've looked around and gone, how do you dress for warm?
In the corporate vibe?
But then I tried to find evidence of this, and I was looking at data about the term relaxed dress, and apparently in Australian job postings it's up. So a lot of sectors are saying that they're encouraging relaxed dress, especially in the Act and Queensland.
The theory is that it's influenced from the tech sector.
So because the tech sector has always been about pushing against office norms. Think about your friends who work for kind of really hip, techy places and they just wear jeans and sneakers or whatever. Apparently that has leaked into accounting, legal, banking and finance it and there's been an increasing casualization of how people.
But that's why there's a pushback on it now.
Right, well, I smell a rap.
I think the reason why this discussion is kind of seemingly surfacing organically on TikTok and elsewhere is because employers are unhappy with hybrid work and they want to change the game, and they think that if they get people to buy enough.
Clothes, they'll become more happy about going into.
Lim somewhere to wear them to exactly.
So I think it's also especially a story about the corporate sector, because yeah, the point about tech is well taken. They've always dressed a bit differently. But look at the fact that the staff at the big four banks in Australia have all been called back to work full time. Also tab Corp and then Mineral Resources, that company in Perth where the CEO said he wanted to hold the staff captive. The staff are captive. They're back at work.
So I think smart casual that in the corporate sector there's this real sense of we're paying you enough, why aren't you here five days a week? And they think that clothing is kind of the incentive to get people back.
Because as that piece in Vogue was saying that like they're make trying to make corporate wear sexy. So it's all about trying to appear like that. This is great. This is a whole vibe to be coming out of the office, getting dressed up, being sharp, and that what I'm seeing. And you know, I don't speak fashion, I'm not mere, but what I'm seeing in a lot of these videos is lots of tailored pants, maybe a waistcoat if you're like a hot thing who can have your arms.
Lots of draped blazer yet lots of blazers, heels seem to be back, a bit of a pointed toe seems to be.
Back officially pointed toes, back.
Slicked back hair. I think about and we've talked about her on the show before, but you know, some of the iconic girl bosses of the moment, like Emma Greed, we've talked about her before. She's the woman behind skims and all of those. She posts every week things I want to the office every week, and it's her coming out of the office lift in ever more elegant clothes.
Are they corporate or are they kind of more straddling like.
What modern corporate means, because she's not in a suit, but she's definitely I think the word we would be looking for is polished.
She and jeans.
She lives in jeans on a non meeting day, but they're very elegant jeens. What I was asking em when I asked her about her in pas, I promise it wasn't passac. It's basically I wonder if there's a generational piece to this. But I definitely think that I have work clothes and non work clothes. Even though I wear jeans and things to work. I definitely dress differently on a day when I'm coming into the office here at Mamma Mia than I do when I'm at home in Hip.
But I don't know if that's true for a lot of the younger people who came of work age during COVID. I definitely have spoken to colleagues where I say, oh, these are work clothes, and they look at me a bit blankly, like what do you mean working? Yeah.
So apparently self expression has become increasingly for GenZ and millennial They've never really understood fashion without self expression, like I'm going to show who I am, whether it's with like a baseball hat or sneakers or something. They want to look like themselves. Whereas when I first started in the workplace. I worked in a school ADMINI thing like I just copied exactly what everyone else was wearing, and it was a pencil skirt, like that's the kind of
thing you did, which I felt incredibly uncomfortable in. But I found this article in the Washington Post and it's Lizzy Post, who works for the Emily Post Institute. Emily Post was her great great grandmother, and she does all the etiquette guides. Oh good, And she has business etiquette and rules for what you have to wear to the office.
Do you want to hear some of them this year twenty twenty five?
But I will say, if soft pants is on there, I'm walking out. And there's been enough aggression towards soft pants today.
Well, she says, and this is important for summer. We're going into a summer in Australia and there's a big question regardings.
Assuming the rapture doesn't happen exactly true, that would be one of the reliefs of the rapture. We don't have to think about what to wear to the office tomorrow.
The shoe to foot ratio, right, okay, shoes to foot ratio, So we wear a sandal, how much sand or can we get away with right?
This is the big question.
So she says that the shoe to foot visibility ratio remains tipped in the balance of the shoe, so anything that starts to have the majority of the foot exposed starts to become questionable. So if I can say too much foot, apparently that's a no no. Right, you've got to have most of your foot covered. Rule iron your clothes, which, by the way, did you really have to be told that, jo I do iron my clothes, and every comment is.
A shower and a coat hanger.
I try, I try, but I actually iron them.
And every time we post videos to the outloud as they say, Jesse ironing, I do.
But I'm the same as you. There are some people who are really good at ironing, and I'm doing it right, I'm terrible.
I think iron your clothes.
Probably if you gathered up all the comments on the internet since it began when our Dore started at back in two thousand, I think iron your clothes.
And then mostly about me. Jeans are allowed.
According to her, a particular type of gene loves a straight leg, and she says the higher the waist, the better.
The Princess Die the twee blazer exactly.
You cannot wear the same socks you wear to the gym.
No, but socks.
I'm sorry with respect to the Post family, who I know have been dispensing and I could advise for generations.
Socks is a whole other thing right now.
So you can have like a statement.
So it's too many rules.
I just I'm paralyzed by indecision on the sock front. I don't understand what socks are appropriate anymore.
You know, I found myself buying some statement socks on the internet when I was statements, and then I thought, this is yet another one of these examples in my life where Mia was buying statements socks literally and we were laughing at her one year ago. We were pointing at her stupid socks and going ha ha ha. And then I just bought some sparkly mesh mid cuff, strangely bronze socks for too much money on the Internet, and I'm like, OK, this is another example of how she's always right ahead.
Of the curt So backpacks are the new briefcase.
You happy you always have. I mean, I have a backpack too, but you've had piss taken out of you about your Josh Live.
And backpack for a while, for a very long time. And this is the last one. T shirt rule, big question about T shirts. All T shirts are not made equally. You have to have a slightly thicker or softer fabric. You need to tread carefully with logos, words and non abstract images for example, a T shirt with them a tease painting.
Fine. A T shirt with a cartoon character. No, so that's the rule. Would you wear a T shirt?
I've never seen you wear a T shirt shirt. Yeah, I don't mind. I make a T shirt look very cheap.
My uniform is shirts. As you know, I've got a lot of shirts, which means I do have to iron them, which is annoying. I wear a lot of shirts. I would not wear a T shirt with the cartoon encouragement. But if we instilled that, if we instilled that rule at MoMA Mere, there would be no one out there and they're all wearing T shirts.
Another fun one is that you can wear a hat, but you must take it off for your meeting. Hat then a fascinator like what from morning meeting?
By sorry, guys, just take my hat off out loud as, what are.
You wearing to work? Like? Tell us and people started talking to you about your clothes. Those tiktoks that we played a bit of before, there's just these women walking up to their coworkers and assistance and being like this.
No, not working.
Really, out Louders, tell.
Us how you're doing it?
I think that's it.
I think we've exhausted Wednesday.
Yep, solved the problem in the world today.
Massive thank you to all of you out louders for being here with us. As always, we're going to be back in your ears of course tomorrow, and don't forget if you want to look at what we're wearing to work today, at least the top half of it. Can't check our socks. You'll find us on YouTube.
And out Louders if you missed Monday's episode. We talked about the latest development in what I am terming the Internet's biggest cheating scandal. We also talk about what is going on with Jimmy Kimmel and all the stuff you might have missed, and why are you ugly cry on your birthday every year?
You're not alone?
We unpack why it's a super common thing to do, and my Mum got so offended by what I said, she commented in the out.
Special group, Anne Stevens continues to be dry Connie. She was just like Jesse had a winge about her birthday. You have to go listen, and Anne was just like not having it.
Not having any of it. We will pop a link in the show notes. Bye bye.
Shout out to any Mamma Mia subscribers listening. If you love the show and you want to support us, subscribing to Mamma Mia is the very best way to do it. There's a link in the episode description.