You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on Hello and welcome to Mamma Mia out Loud. It's a brand new week. This is what women are actually talking about on Monday, the thirteenth of October. My name is Holly.
Wayne right, I am Amelia Luster and I am Jesse Stevens. I have a fun fact before we start the show today. Did you know so I've been seeing a pelvic floor physio again to try and sort out.
The This is earlier in the piece than earlier in time. She's pregnant. If anyone's wondering, if any out Loud is you're like, why, so interact with whether or not Jesse's seeing someone about her pelvic floor.
We've discussed with twins, right, and so I'm going, I don't want to head hanging out at twenty weeks. Let's sort this out. So I went and she was telling me that when you sneeze as a woman, you're meant to pull up. Did you know that from your pelvic floor? So when you know you're going to sneeze, you're meant to almost like a straw, get your floor and suck it up through a straw so that you don't let a little bit of way out. So now it's very
poliny in the like in Sydney. At the moment, everyone's sneezing, So I keep sneezing, and I keep trying to do.
That as I'm interesting that every sneeze is a little opportunity for self optimization exactly.
That reminds me, though, that I had a Floti Sitchu once who said every woman is always clenching her buttocks, So just think of that every time you think of it unclenched.
It's very true. And your buttocks is not your public floor. This is what my public floor phy say. She'd say, let go of your.
Bum and of your bar matladers, hold on to your barm.
Two things.
Is making me all funny, you won't, sir. Anyway, None of that actually made our agenda for today. What made our agenda for today immediate Elesta.
Victoria Beckham has a new docu series on Netflix, and she's made some big revelations in there about her complicated relationship with food.
Plus Julia Morris says planes should have a women's only section and hundreds of women have come forward sharing their own horror stories. Does she have a point?
And Princess Kate has written an essay guaranteed to make you squirm in guilty recognition.
But first, Amelia, but first, all eyes are on the Middle East. Today it's Monday here in Australia and her Mass has until eight o'clock Australian Eastern time tonight to release all twenty remaining living hostages that are being held in Gaza back to Israel. Israel has said this could happen anytime today, starting it around midday Australian Eastern time, and then after that process is done, Israel is going to release about two thousand Palestinian detainees that it has.
Donald Trump is on his way there. Before he got on the plane, he declared war is over. But of course there is still a lot to be worked out, and there is some last minute negotiating happening as we entered this record between Hamas and Israel about which Palestinian detainees are going to be released. But Trump is going to go to eat next after this, assuming everything goes well, and it's there that there's going to be a peace plan for Gars assigned after some seven hundred and thirty
six days of war. So look, obviously things are unfolding as we are recording here now, and they will continue to do so over the coming couple of days. But the Quickie is here to keep us updated this afternoon, this evening, and then going forward on how everything unfolds.
Please don't tell anyone that I've been looking at paparazzi images, because mom and mea, we do not support paparazzi economy.
But Holly, sometimes we see headlines without our own permission. They just pop up out of nowhere, and you can't see a headline.
Can we agree that every time we look at a paparazzi image unwishingly or not necessarily by choice, that we work on lifting our pelvic floor? Maybe?
Yes?
So true? A ten second hands?
Yeah, ten seconds holds? So I did at least a thirty minute hold because I promise I didn't click through. But anyway, I don't want you to know that I've been looking at paparazi images, but I have, and I'm sorry, but I have schoreless gossip from these images that Katie Perry is definitely on with that just intrude.
Oh I love this story. I actually love there.
We talked about this schroreless gossip a while ago on out Loud, and then it was kind of denied by their camps.
I went on a date, yes, oh yeah, and he was like, listen, we're just seeing each other as friends. Yeah, I'm not romantically interested. Mate.
If you have glimpsed these images, there is nothing platonic about them. They are I'll tell you so you don't have to look out louder, so you can keep your integrity intact. They are on Katie's yacht off the coast of Santa Barbara. Apparently she's in a swimsuit and he's in jeans, which I have a lot of questions about that, but they are embracing and although you could argue, well, friends hug each other when they see each other, his hands are in places that friends do not go. Friends
do not put their hands there. So I just want to tell you this is very exciting. I don't think this is just about justin trying to get Canada on Katie's next space mission. I don't think it's that. I think they're on I'm excited scoreless gossip. I'm here for it.
Things are looking out for Katie. I think Katie's had her rough twelve months. She copped a bit and I think that she's due for a bit of good luck. And I'm just all for it.
Is here, good dude, Amelia. You know things about politics out side of the world, and he used to be the prime minister Rink Canada.
He's a good issue.
It seems to hate him now for some reason.
I think that's just what happens when you used to be the pan Wasn't his.
Dad like a notorious sort of celebrity hanger out.
Holy They are definitely a celebrity family, right those guys. Yeah, Yeah, definitely.
What I'm wondering about off the coast of Santa Barbara. You know where that is, right, Montesito, anyone. I'm wondering because Megan need I unpack this all for you. Megan is good friends with Justin's ex wife. Yes, that's right, and they have spent summer days together Paul side at Megan and Harry's. I'm wondering, was there an awkward run in at the Montecito shops.
Maybe they were looking out over the water and they had their monoculars.
Well, because Katie and Orlando lived next door to Megan and Harry, so it's all very messy.
Harry once said that Orlander would tip him off about paps in the neighborhood. See I've seen the pap down at IgA.
You better watch out.
And then you're right, because Megan has often talked about having the Canadian first family round. That's when they were together. So hot scandal it down.
The good that Oprah also lives there has sorted out for them. So there's a new documentary series out, a three part documentary on Netflix telling the life story of Victoria Beckham. So you remember last year was the David Beckham Netflix documentary. This year it's Victoria's turn. And Holly, you asked me last week if I was enjoying watching it because I just started watching it.
You watched the first app before I had seen it.
Yeah, I was like it good like And I said, you know, Holly, I'm finding it really hard to watch. And I recounted a scene in the first episode that has really stayed with me. David and Victoria are swanning around their really marvelously charming looking country house kitchen and they're about to.
Go out to an event.
And one detail I love in this is that they both really like expensive wine, and David had poured them both big you know, those big rich person goblets of wine to drink before they went to an event, and I guess they didn't have time to drink them, so David pours them into flasks, essentially to drink in the back of their limousine sippy cups. But then he also
says to her, do you want a whisper? There's a little draw full of chocolate in their kitchen and it's one of those fun size I guess is whisper a British chocolate.
Yeah, it's gorgeous. It's kind of like a flake covered in chocolate, but more air. Aw we it's They're delicious. Whispers are delish.
So he says to her, do you want a whisper? And then she makes a joke something along the lines of not having touched chocolate since the nineties, I'm not going to start eating it now. And I just thought, this person clearly has a disordered relationship with food. And that's what I said to you, And then that became a theme of the whole show, didn't it?
It did? I was going to say, because that on its own was kind of like, oh, yeah, we know, we know. And also there was a lot of footage in that first episode of them at the gym. Do you notice that lots of less Victoria doing weights, lots of midlife weightlifting, you know how that's what the ladies are into. And I don't know what the protein count and a whisper is so like she wouldn't be Yeah, I don't think. I don't think she'd be guzzling those anyway.
But in the second episode we will have a few spoilers in this but for people who really want to dive into what we thought of the whole show, we're going to do a special subject about it for tomorrow for Tuesday. But in episode two they talk about the food and the diet culture and eating disorders in a more head on fashion right, And I actually found it
really moving and insightful. And I know there's a lot of criticism about how surface level this show is, and it is I think certainly compared to the David Beckham documentary. It doesn't feel anywhere near as deep. But Victoria Beckham POSH or Lady Beckham, as the BBC always calls her, which I just love. Go and read some reporting on the BBC website about this show, and even when talking about the most mundane thing like wine sippy cups, they referred to as Lady Beckham.
She'd love that, she would love that.
Lady Beckham is one of those celebrities who she has been famous for thirty years. She is an absolute icon of gen X culture in all her different guys is and her skinniness. And I'm just going to say it because I know, and this is part of what we're going to discuss. I know the world we live in now,
you're not really meant to talk about that. So we're not meant to say that we don't eat chocolate, and we're not meant to talk about weight or bodies or comment on the fact that Victoria Beckham has been unbelievably thin for thirty years, but she has right Watching her talk about that, even in that, you could see how much it aimed her to discuss it. I found really insightful because it just spoke to me of a very specific moment in culture and what that does to you
over decades. Obviously an example of that and that level of attention, we're about to play you a grab of Posh as she was universally known in those days, appearing on a very high profile television show hosted by a very high profile host called Chris Evans in nineteen ninety nine, not long after she has had her baby, Brooklyn. Who will get to in the subject, I'm sure, And she goes on the show and he asks her about her body and her baby weight.
A lot of girls want to know, because you look fantastic again, how did you get back to your shape after your birth? I haven't done it.
I mean, I'm really lazy.
Let's go down.
May be one of the Sickney women who didn't have.
To do anything.
I don't. I don't.
Actually a lot of people say, does David help, you know, so work out?
What way is that?
I don't?
No idea spot for USh?
You know?
Yeah, circuit training is your way back to normal?
Yeah it is?
Can I check?
Oh no, you didn't, Jerry, didn't you?
But Jerry was that really small? It's horrible.
Oh my god, I cannot believe that happens.
And he weighs her in on TV, which is something that people used to do, and you know what, not that long ago, I heard people weighing each other on the radio, like this is celebrity culture that is in the past that we can touch. And then she talks about the impact of the spotlight from being a young dancer all the way through to now on her body and body image, and it's probably the most honest she's ever been about it.
This is what she says, when you have an eating disorder, you become very good at lying. And I was never honest about it with my parents. I never talked about it publicly. It really affects you when you're being told constantly you're not good enough.
So it's a bit ambiguous about whether or not she is still struggling with that, but she certainly refers to this feeling of inadequacy that has fueled her her whole life.
And yet when she says I was controlling it in an incredibly unhealthy way, it sounds like it's past tense. And I understand why she puts it into past tense. I think it's a much more palatable way to talk about any sort of mental illness, to have it as an arc which you have overcome.
I actually she did do that.
I felt as though it was implicit that the only reason she felt at all comfortable with it because this documentary was about triumph. It was about all the assumptions that had been made about her and her reinventions and basically, look at where I am now. And so it wouldn't have really fit for her to sit there and say, and I still have an aiding, Didace?
You know what?
I think that's so interesting because I saw it so differently, because the narrative we would all be really comfortable with would be an explicit one of and this is we've seen it a million times. I was struggling. I'm not struggling now. I now have learned to have a healthy relationship with my body, my image, my food. She didn't say any of that, and in fact, it is incredibly clear from how much she talked about control, how much she talked about hating literally hating what she looks like.
And this is a woman who's had to look at pictures of herself for thirty years, bestorked by the paparazzi, all those things. It's incredibly clear, really when you watch this that she is still incredibly self conscious. Anytime a camera has pointed at her, she is intensely buttoned up and controlled, even when it's doing a TikTok dance with her daughter. You know, there's a scene where she and Harper do a TikTok dance in there what looks like
skyscraper in londartment. Yeah, and she's like, oh yeah, the angle's flattering, Like she is so steeped in that controlling diet culture of the time. I don't think she's pretending she's free.
Flattering is in fact her highest compliment. She says that's why she started a clothing line is because she wanted to make flattering clothing. But I think why this felt like such a big deal is because, as you say, Holly, we've known Victoria Beckham for thirty years and there should be actually nothing surprising necessarily about her admitting this. Shocking
as it is, it shouldn't be surprising. And yet Hadley Freeman, who's a writer in the UK Times, who herself has written about extensively her own struggles with an eating disorder as a teenager, she points out that we've been looking at Victoria looking this way for years, for decades, and yet somehow we didn't want to see what was obvious. We didn't even want to acknowledge it until she herself said it on this show.
And we've got to ask why that is, because we do this all.
The time, when celebrities become half the size that they once were. Ariana Grande, we saw this recently. It was almost like we weren't allowed to talk about it.
It seems like there is something so different about our treatment of any sort of eating disorders, no matter how it manifests in how your body looks. But it seems to be the only mental illness to which we afford barely any empathy. It's a mental illness that we approach with contempt and often anger. Just like, why does she look like that impossible beauty standard?
Is that?
Blah blah blah?
Is that why you're saying that we don't talk about it because we just don't.
Regard it as real.
Maybe, yeah, we don't regard it as an illness, and.
I think also as something that is like endemic to Hollywood, to celebrity.
Cost costs to join business. Yeah.
So in that essay, Freeman said as well, why would any celebrity recover from anorexia given how high the rewards now are for extreme thinness? Like that's it's the game and she's playing it, which sounds like a really callous way to describe it. But it is an illness. But because it's an illness that almost conforms to a standard that society rewards, we just don't want to treat it with any empathy.
Yeah, because for exactly that reason, because it is a standard that society rewards. But this is the thing, is that my complex feelings about watching Posh talk about that. And I may have been over empathizing because I feel like I know Victoria Beckham when obviously I don't. But she has been so front and center in pop culture for so long, but it's very complicated to think of the fact that someone who is part of the problem.
So she was in those naughty size zero years, the pictures of her in tiny little hotpants when she had the big fake boobs, which she also talks about in the show and says I buried those in Baden Baden, which was a European championships where all the wags looked like that, and she was the queen right, tiny, like
really tiny, tinier than a seven year old child. Tiny, but with the big boobs, tiny hotpants, all those things that was held up and put everywhere as almost like a warning but also something you want right, So it's like ooh, yum, yum, ooh, that's the vibe. And the thing is is that the complicated relationship you have with Posh is that she was part of that problem because she was the pinup, one of the primary pinups. She still is in a way, and that this is what
I mean about. I don't think she was trying to suggest that all her issues with food and body are in the past. She has not changed even an iota, as in still clearly something she works very hard at and considers the height of beauty. So she is part of the problem, but she's also a victim of the problem.
And I think that's really confusing to try and hold in your head, because for me, there was a really telling bit because she has literally been followed by paparazzi, as I say, for three decades through lots of phases
of her life. And there's a telling bit where her and Eva Longot because she becomes friends with the Hollywoods when she goes to live in la when David goes to place for Galaxy, and she and Eva Longoria a being papped when they're out on Mulholland drive or whatever, and she said I couldn't believe her relaxed in front
of the cameras Eva Longoria was. And this is a time too when she was very thin and the Desperate Housewives size zero era, but she was like, she didn't seem to care whether she smiled in a way that gave her a double chin or whether she like looked,
whereas Posh was clearly has been. So I'm going to use the word that might make some people roll their eyes, but like traumatized by that glare and that criticism and that relentless comparison from a very formative young that she can't just be in the world, so she's in awe of people who can. And she clearly is still that way because one of the things about this doco, it's
quite a shallow doco. As we said, I enjoyed it for lots of reasons we'll get into in the subset, but it was meant to be, as you say, a victorious thing but also a plucky Vicky you know, go buy an eyeliner because she's been through some tough times kind of vibe. She is clearly still unbelievably self conscious about her appearance, every angle, every shot, every and I don't know, I felt a lot of empathy for it because I think it's complicated.
Yeah, and there were some specifics, like she referred to an article that was written eleven days after she gave birth that was basically saying she was still carrying the baby weight. And it also made me think of a few years ago when David Beckham flippantly said in an interview that Victoria had only eaten grilled fish and steamed vegetables since he met her, and it started this big discussion about whether or not that was healthy and whether that was a sign of disordered eating. And we as
a society enabling this by like what allowing Victoria to exist? Like, I don't know what I understand why we police our own language in public, because I think that the way that we talk about women's bodies publicly should be different to how we might talk about them privately, because there's more of a responsibility and you don't know who's listening, and you don't know what they're going through, and everyone's
relationship is really complicated with it. But the idea that that Victoria Beckham is being enabled by being allowed to be on television have a job. When she's that thin, we are enabling her.
I just look, I think we can all agree that anyone who is struggling with the mental illness deserves empathy. Yeah, of course includes people with eating disorders, which are among the deadliest mental illnesses.
But stepping back a.
Little bit, like when David said that flippantly, or when Victoria flippantly said I haven't eaten chocolate sinster nineties, that's regarded as charming, Like whenever she talks about food, it's in that same way as she does in the documentary, Or when David said that about her eating the steamfish and vegetables, and it kicked off a discourse about whether we should enable that.
But it's not normal. It's not healthy to only eat steam fish and vegetables for your whole life.
So my question is do we expect all the all the famous people in the world to only present a very well adjusted front to us at all times? Because I agree with you, Amelia, like I agree with you one hundred percent.
Like it's it made me feel bad, it's X.
This is the way that gen X women have always talked about food, right, It's never just food, and it's unfortunate and it's terrible, and I think we're prosecuting that. But my question is is it better to edit all that stuff out of it and pretend that Victoria Beckham is healthier than she is when it comes to this stuff. That's my genuine question.
I don't know.
I think my problem is not so much with how Victoria Beckham talks about it as so much as what message are we sending when we do reward these women who are clearly have been starving themselves for decades and say that's the height of fashion. That's literally fashion means howeveryone wants to look and what is regarded as she can trendy. We reward them with our money and with our attention, and then we expect our children to not listen to us.
But we reward them, and we also relentlessly criticize them.
Do you know what I mean?
We reward the culture while at the same time punishing the individual. Yes, which is so cruel.
That's what I was kind of wrestling with when I'm saying, she's like part of the problem with the whole I haven't eaten chocolate since the nineties and also a victim of it in that like, of course she's like that, And I just wonder because I agree with you, but I feel like there's freedom to me, or there's some
honesty to me. I think when women who are that impossibly sin which is always held up as desirable, when actually, if we're all being honest, I don't know that it is that desirable to have such an you know, it's hard to say the words without sounding critical, but such a very very tiny body shape that clearly you have to restrict yourself so heavily to have. But I guess my point is, is it better if she pretends that she eats burgers?
Do you know what I mean?
No, I completely see that question. I guess it just comes back to look, Obviously, she's entitled to eat whatever she wants, and if that's steamfish and vegetables are never any chocolate, that's fine. But it makes me a bit sad. And I also think it's a bit disingenuous to say that she has only been a victim in this. She has been rewarded with immense fame and fortune as a result of starving herself. Now that's not her problem, that's our problem.
I think she's both I think that's what's complicated about it. I think she's both. I think personally I felt sad, Like after episode term particular, I felt really sad, and I was glad about that. I don't want to just watch something that just makes me go perfect, happy, shiny life, no problems there, Like I liked it.
Before we move on, can I please have everyone's topline thoughts, because there are gonna be people who did their homework. We told them this weekend, your homework is to watch Victoria Beckham. I'll be the first put my hand out and go. I didn't complete the homework. I didn't. I didn't get through episode three yet I will complain it.
Well, you'll never find out what happens with the fashion show. I just love how the stakes of fashion and sports documentaries they're both the same. It's like I get so invested in things that actually don't matter very much, and that's wonderful.
See I disagree that they're the same. A sports docko I will get right into because I feel like the stakes are simple as winning or losing. I felt like I was watching an episode of Project Runway where it was kind of like about Tim guhnn yes or like will it rain, won't it rain? And I was like, I'm not invested in that like that much in the rain.
And it was, as we predicted, such an explicit, prolonged Victoria Beckham ad that at the end, I went, am I more likely to go to Victoriabeckham dot com and look at a nice frock? Perhaps?
I'm sure I wouldn't never aye you with a question like do you think that it's going to drive people to buy things with your name on them?
Because when you have created a brand, you want to get your brand story out there. It's really cool to kind of being front and center of people's purchasing decisions. And this was just a brand story.
Except a brand's story was kind of and nobody bought my clothes and I nearly went bust.
Oh, I think it was people bought them, but I just spilled the money mentally the money on my plants. I found it profoundly disappointing and it was full of platitudes and cliches. And there was a point at which she said this sentence that was like, I'm a control freak, so when things aren't in my control, it's hard. And I was like, I'm out I'm out, this is just so boring.
I know that I'm the lone Vicky b defender in this in this room. Because you're right, it wasn't great. Particularly wasn't great in comparison to the Mecan documentary, which was great in every way. It wasn't as deep. It didn't interview that like he had every teammate he's ever had, and we didn't even get the Spice girls like it.
It was very shallow in lots of ways. But in a way, I think that's almost like appropriate for the different ways we treat male and female celebrities, because this was so buttoned up and so like, what will people say, Oh my god, I've got it, Like, I know, I've got to be authentic, but I don't want to be authentic. I don't want to say anything that might be controversial, so I'll just drop them like a tiny thing. Whereas David was kind of like, well, you know, let it
all hang out. I think it's very gendered.
If this discussion has brought up any issues for you, we will have some resources in the show notes.
In a moment, would you choose a female only section on a flight if you could, we discuss Julia Morris, who's a comedian and a TV host, best known for hosting I'm a Celebrity, Get Me out of Here National Treasure. Yes, she has a proposal. Over the weekend she posted this idea, which is she thinks planes should have a women's only section with women's only bathrooms. So here is exactly what she posted. She wrote, calling all airlines please consider a
women only section on your planes. We don't feel safe with men telling us to crawl over them on flight while they ignore women's personal space. And I won't even mention the state of the toilets. Not all men, but why so many give us the back section or at least a few rows of female only seats stand up to creeps on flights. Women are over it and the post attracted lots of likes, but more than sixteen hundred comments.
You think this was like a serious request to the airlights.
I actually do.
And it appears that maybe she had recently been on a flight and had a particularly bad experience. But all of these comments came floating in. I was really interested to see what the consensus was, and generally it was women sharing stories of being assaulted on flights, particularly by men who were inebriated, men making women crawl over them and then kind of making them feel like they didn't
have their own personal space. And also women being in a position where they had to breastfeed and they were sandwiched between two men and they felt uncomfortable. I remember last year talked about an Indian low cost carrier named Indigo who had just offered a service where female passengers could select a seat where they could sit next to another female passenger, so you could see it when you checked in and you chose your seat, you could go, I want to sit next to a woman, And that
was about comfort and safety of women on flights. I am so interested to hear what you think. I've gone back and forth on it, Amelia, what do you reckon?
Yeah? I think it's a really interesting proposal.
And I think that women's only spaces kind of go in and out of fashion, depending on maybe the political climate at the times. Because back in the nineties, when I was about to go to university, my mom told me that when she was at Sydney University in the sixties, they had a women's only room and she would spend a lot of time there. And my reaction in the nineties, growing up amidst lad culture, amidst Victoria Beckham being weighed
on national television. Was immediately like, that's uncle, Why would I strike out on my own and go where only the women are? Because back then it was seen as you had to be able to hang with men, and you had to be able to be comfortable in the company of men and not talk too loudly about being a feminist or wanting to be with other women. And also the nineties, I remember that I watched a travel show about Tokyo. It was a Clive James travel show, and he talked about how on the Tokyo subway there
are women only cars on the subway. And this blew my nineties mind because back then again there just wasn't this acceptance of the need for women only spaces for all these sort of big cultural reasons.
Are are there still women's only cars on the subway? And there are? Yes.
Another harbinger of the times was you know the Kuldjie Ladies bards there in Sydney, and they're very beautiful and they've been a sanctuary for women for over a century. In nineteen ninety five, a man launched proceedings of the New South Wales Anti Discrimination Board, saying that he wanted to be able to go to the ladies' bards. Now he lost the case, but it's a sign of how there really was this backlash then against this same fear of women being able to have their own space.
And now I think.
We've come one to eighty and now I think we're really wanting to create spaces for women. Women are two thirds of global travelers. There's been a rise in women's only trips and holidays and things like that, and I think we're more aware now of like the psychological safety that can be brought about by being around other women.
Yes, cosign all that, but is there also a point here at which and I want to preface this that obviously the story's there about being groped or you know, made to feel unsafe in a physical way because some creepy guy basically is sitting next to you. Is there also a place here where we've just become completely intolerant of being around the people who may behave in ways that we don't like. Like, you know, we've often talked about when we're traveling lots for Mom and mere out
loud and we're flying all the time. We often complain or laugh about like that guy who felt entitled enough to snore or spread his legs too wide or talk to loudly or whatever. And there is a point at which we do just have to all rub along, right.
We do. But it's funny.
You should imagine the tour because one of the people who works with us on the tour mentioned that she was on a plane going to one of the shows and a man was looking at hardcore pornography next to her.
See, that is not exactly okay.
But you know, I'm not normally the hashtag not all men. But I just think I'm generally in favor of a co ed world. I think we're all better if we learn to figure out how to hang around with each other. So I don't really like the idea of gender segregating all public spaces. I think that any kind of criminal or creepy behavior should be punished. But like if I could sit in a woman's only section on a plane, I would not. There's no way I would, because you'll
tell you why. It's where the babies would be. If they put a women's only section on a plane, that is where all the children would go. And although I am very because that's just the way the world works and it shouldn't be, but it is. And I am very tolerant of babies and toddlers on planes because I've been, but I'm not there anymore and I do not want to see and so the men would be loving it. And also the way that Julia suggested it is that
the women are at the back. I'm like, no, thanks, I want to be at the front as close to the front as humanly possible.
No, but that's for all the businessmen.
I don't think so, so I you know, I have a lot of sympathy for any woman who's experienced that creepy behavior. And I did once to do fourteen hours on a long haul to England with the first leg sitting next to two enormous bodybuilders like they were so enormously's bodybuilder guys with these really big muscly thighs, and they sat with their leg light and it was not comfy. But I don't think I would choose a women's only section.
Growing up in the nineties. I wonder if that is part of why I bristle a little bit at gender segregation, and maybe I feel as though it's also why do we need a women's space to allow for men's criminal behavior? Behavior Like if I have sat on a long haul flight next to a man who did very intimate things to himself on that fly, and I was stuck by the window, so my only option was to have crawled over him to what And it's the same with our member of our team who saw what was on his phone.
You often sit there and you go.
Well, I don't know if this is a crime.
I just don't like it. Maybe it was I was a young girl at the time. What am I going to do? I'm quite literally trapped.
And also you were also thinking if a man is prepared to either watch hardcore porn in a public space or be with him, yeah, in a public space, then this is not necessarily a man I'm going to confront, yes, and.
A lot of I found a Reddit thread discussing this, and it was someone asking cabin crew, and a lot of the cabin crew said, for the amount of flights we do, we do not get a lot of reports. And I thought that means very little because I didn't say anything, our team member didn't say anything. Of course, they didn't like what you just often don't you just put up with it. And there's stories in this of women falling asleep and they've woken up and the person
next to them is being creepy and it's awful. With all of that said, I think that if that occurs, I would prefer to live in a world where those men are punished and banned from airlines than a world in which we exist in different parts of the plane because we do not trust men to sit beside a woman for a long period of time.
You know where my hypocrisy comes here. Actually, you know I'm saying, Oh, I wouldn't. If I was booking a flight for my fifteen year old daughter and I had that option, I probably would take the option of having her sit next to a woman. So there is hypocrisy in what I'm saying.
I don't think it's about crime, because Jesse, I take your point like, if someone is doing a criminal activity, they should be arrested for it. I think it's about comfort, and I think it's okay to want a more comforting experience in the very dehumanizing experience which is modern airline travel. Let me give you an example from my own life, which is one time I was on the New York Subway, which most definitely does not have women only cars, and I was very comfortable on the subway and it was
sort of my happy place. Actually, I love public transport because I feel like it's very anonymous and you can zone out and think about your life, and people an opportunity to read. People watch, well, people watch, interesting choice of phrase. So I was sitting there, probably reading my phone or a magazine because it's a few years ago.
And just as I got up to get off the.
Train, a man came up to me and he said, you should know that that man over there has been drawing your legs. Oh no, but it wasn't in a good way.
No, No, I didn't mean they are in a good ways an artists like like more like.
I was flaunching my pins, I was wearying like my office attire. It wasn't anything risky and see the drawing. I didn't see the drawing, but I was really unsettled. Now, it is definitely not illegal to draw someone's legs. But would I have preferred that that was not happening while I was in my happy place? Yes, yes they would have.
And that's the thing is that it might be one incident in a thousand, but it changes the way you travel. It changes the way and the.
Next time I got on the subway and I was wearing a dress, I was just a little bit conscious of picking a seat that was maybe slightly less visible to the rest of the train car.
Yeah, and I suppose it's a good point, right, because there's criminal activity, But then there is just the general degradation of airline travel. So for example, the crawling over someone and having them not move. I was trying to be really honest with myself and I went, I've had as many women not get up from their seat and have me crawl over them to get to the aisle as I have men. Do I think men leave dirtier bathrooms. No, I think that women leave real dirty bathrooms as well.
It is a bit of a stereotype that if the plane was full of women, it would be so neat and tidy.
I think it's one thing, and I always think that we should extend a particular like a sensitivity to anyone who's had seriously traumatizing experience. It's where you go. I don't like the idea that then you sit next to two men and you feel threatened or unsafe for fourteen hours. I don't like that, but generally speaking, I just go oh.
I was looking around a cafe today and I was like, well, I like the mixed I like the co ed of it all, and I think that having a standard for how we all behave like human beings should just be widely accepted.
I want to hear from out louders. I don't necessarily want to hear all the plane horror stories because it might definitely maybe change my mind, but I want to know what you think. Do you think we should have women's only areas on aeroplanes? I have excellent news for type bees and lazy girls. Oh hello, that's me. No, you do not have to make your bed first thing
in the morning to have a clear, productive day. In fact, you shouldn't, Jesse, isn't this one of the Jordan Peterson's twelve for all belove you men to get out of bed and immediately make it.
Yeah, so read any self help. I'm pretty sure it's also Atomic habits. James Clear, it's any person who's told you how to live your life. Chapter one is make your bed?
Holy?
Do you have a Google news for this? Topic, do not make bed.
Because I read so excited about you know why? Well, I'll tell you what the truth what I'm talking about, and then I'll tell you why make you excited?
Right is?
I read a piece in the UK Telegraph this week that was kind of like it was one of those twelve domestic myths that we must dispel right and London based GP dr amos Ockencoa says that you shouldn't because when you sleep, you build up moisture and sweat. And this is even in London, right stop form there. This warm, humid environment is the perfect breeding ground for microscopic dust mite.
I've always said this, yea. And so Lindsey Crombie, who's a home expert and author of the Fifteen Minute Clean, says, your best bet is to leave the bed unmade for an hour or two or ten or ten so that it can air out naturally. You can obviously open a window or whatever fresh air. But the point that what I seized onto with delight was the idea of leaving your bed all mussied up and open like an open bed.
The germs need to fly away.
Everyone knows that need to.
Fly away as they clean. Air needs to come in and do. It's wishy washy, wishy washy.
Clear, They're not flying away, they're dehydrating and dying.
WoT someone think about the dust.
And I don't have to fight.
You don't even have to clean your sheets, is what I hear.
Let's just be clear that by not making your bed, you are leaving these dust whites to die.
I can live with that. I can't extend empathy to dust. I mean, what even faces the dust mites have do they make little sad flash leave them to shrivel in it? Anyway, Although I do make my bed because I kind of have to, because I've read all these things, I never ever did. Obviously wasn't brought up to right, I've just been brought up with with a douna as we call them in Australia, a douvet as we call them in England.
I just used to get out of bed and whatever state it was in, I just walk away from it. And then I had a boyfriend, right. I had a boyfriend in my late twenties who was what we may call a clean freak, but maybe he was just ornmic and he was obsessed with it. He was also obsessed with when he took off his clothes when he got home, no matter what state of excitement you were in, he had to fold them up and put them. But he was a lovely guy, but he was obsessed with making
the bed. And he said to me, you know, your mind is messy if your bed is messy. All that stuff that you read, and I took it in so I do make my bed. But when I read this, little twenty eight.
Year old me was like, yeah, that do you think making the bed is the patriarchy? Because I also never made my bed. It's an instinct. It's in my DNA. I just don't.
And is that out of concern for reducing the humidity in the room and leaving the dust work?
Yes, letting them fly away. It's always been critical to my understanding of my own I don't have we do.
We need to dispel this myth, very concerned about the fact basically.
You were thinking of my little butterflies leaving your bed.
That's not what's happening.
I like that imagery. And then I met an absolute make your bed guy. And the oppression of making your bed is that the last person out of bed must make it. And I happen to be about every single day, so the bed has to get made. I have to do it. I resent it, and when he's away or something, I don't make the bed, and guess what, my life's exactly the same copaganda, but it actually doesn't make my life better. Don't make the bed. Do you enjoy making your bed, Amelia?
I do. I love making my bed.
Are you a many cushions person?
Yes, but you know, if you're in a heterosexual relationship with a man, sometimes the pillows you have to minimize them.
I find the anger men not all they do.
Yes, women, but it's also like you have to explain the pillows, and it just gets to the point where it's like.
The women's area of the play.
Oh my god, that's actually a big problem.
After the break, Princess Kate has just told us all off about using our phones around the kids, and we're unpacking where the mobile phones are soon going.
To be the new smoking one unlimited out loud access. We drop episodes every Tuesday and Thursday exclusively for Mum and 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, Friends, I was seduced by a headline today on the Internet. Earlier on I was seduced by some bad preparatives. Then I was seduced by a headline Kate Middleton explains a house rule, no phones for the kids. Now, you know me, any excuse to peer through the palace windows? I am in, I am there binoculars on.
Can I also just flag her eldest child is twelve? And I just think every parent with a child older than twelve is going, yeah, yeah, yeah, you got to twelve. You wait, just you wait, Kate.
What happen when you click on that headline as you go to an essay like a whole essay right called the Power of Human Connection in a Distracted World, which sounds very high for Luton. It is written by Her Royal Highness, the Princess of Wells, in collaboration with Professor
Robert Waldinger. And it's all about, and this is not news to anyone who lives in the world, the fact that phones are screwing our attention and that when it comes to parents and kids and building a connection between little kids and their caregivers, phones are breaking that connection and making sick unhappy, anxious children. We have been being
told this everywhere we look for a while. Now, she writes in this article, our undivided attention is the most precious gift we can give another person, Yet increasingly it's the most difficult gift to offer when we check our phones during conversations, scroll through social media during family dinners. I was like, I don't do that, and I got to feel really smug for two minutes. But then or respond to emails while playing with our children. Damn it.
We're not just being distracted. We are withdrawing ding the basic form of love that human connection requires. Now that bit with drawing the basic form of love that human connection requires really hit me in the guts. Do you want me to explain why Kate's writing this or or do we just want to go straight into how we feel about this?
I think our feelings are more important.
Okay, feelings first, okay, and I'll explain what the strategy is here.
Fundamentally, is she absolutely correct in every assumption? She is one hundred She's totally correct, and she's got the Happiness guy explaining why she's correct, and she has all the research, and la la la, like we know la la la, facts, facts,
But how does it feel? Well, I had to examine my response because I've got my back up about this, and this is something that I care about a lot in parenting, Like I think that attention is really I've heard Hugh van Kylenberg talk about this anecdote about being at the park and his mother turning to him and saying, you're missing it, and he realized that he hadn't looked
up right. And like, what I struggle with a bit with these conversations is that it is easier to place boundaries around your own screen time and your children's screen time when you have nanny's money and energy and things that are finite resources that certain privileges allow you. And I don't want to go the whole privilege, the whole blot. I just don't want this to turn into a thing where rich parents finger wag at working parents or at parents with less time.
I just I agree with you one hundred percent. But in terms of the whole well, of course it's easy for you. Kate is as we've already said, she's not exactly Robinson Crusoe in saying this right exactly like she thought. So I know what you mean, but this is a message we're getting from all directions.
It is.
And I'm also a little bit worried about the standard of intense engagement and connection and attention that we're expected to have with that children twenty four to seven right, the parenting verb. I've heard Ezra Klein say the reason so many people have two kids is because we cannot parent the way that we are being taught to parent. With more than two kids, it would be impossible. Like there's an intensity which we expect of ourselves that no
other generation has done. The idea that you would be somewhat distracted while looking after your children is something that has always happened. I do think that there's something about looking at a phone that really zapps connection and all of that. However, if I have a day at home with Luna and that can be twelve hours of Jesse Luna, the idea that I would be staring into her eyes and intensely playing with her actually isn't.
Good for either of us. Like her, I'm not possible.
No, it's not possible. It's like the independent play. The idea that she would toddle off and go and do something, and I might pay a bill, or I might check if the library is open, or I might text Lucer and say, hey, can you pick up some milk? Like Unfortunately, that is just the way that the world is, and I don't need the narrative in my head. You are part of an epidemic of disconnection every time I.
Do that, Amelia, do you think that if you're worrying about this, like as Jesse is and many parents are reading Jonathan Haight and listening to Princess Kate, that you're probably not doing a shit job. Do you know what I mean?
I do know what you mean.
And in fact, there have been studies on how much time millennial parents are spending with their kids versus parents of other generations, not ex don't worry. It's more millennials versus boomers, and they've found that millennials are spending way more time with their kids per week than boomers ever did. So there is evidence that the style of parenting that we are being told to embrace is much more intensive than what previous generations.
Have had to do. They were probably off for a smoke some of the time the generation.
And also, you know, just the tropes you think about mothers at home with kids forever, so way before phones is that she's on the phone to her mom, she's talking to the neighbor over the back fence's doing a million things like I don't think that it used to be. Oh, before phones, parents just paid full attention to their children at all times if they were around them, and that
distracted parents are a new thing. I mean, of course, this all goes to say, as you've already pointed out, Jesse, we all know the truth and the facts of what phones have done to our attention. But I think it's like a binary notion that once parents used to pay attention and now they don't.
Yes, do you think, Oh? In fact, I think it's a fallacy.
I think like there were all sorts of ways that parents were distracted in previous generations that had nothing to do with phones. Look, here's an example from my own life that takes us out of parenting into what phones
are doing to our brains in general. I recently subscribed to a print newspaper and I'm getting it every day of the week, and on my way into work here this morning, I read the print newspaper as opposed to droom scrolling on my phone, and I can tell you that the experience that you have, I'm not telling you anything you don't know, but the experiences you've finished reading the newspaper, you fold it up, you put it in the recycling, you feel like, A you know what the
news is today, and B you feel considerably calmer. Then if you've been jumping around the internet trying to read the entire Internet in a forty minute commute.
And also you've kind of served a broader plate of things, aren't you in a way, because on a homepage you'll click the most salacious headlines and so on, whereas in a newspaper it's kind of everything is there and you've only got that. But back to Kate for a second. So a lot of people obviously have come with the criticism of like, what do you know when your princess in your palace? Which fair, but also this is very much Kate's wheelhouse. So as we all know, royals have
to pick some causes and it's tricky. It's kind of like a first lady. Kate's role is very similar to this, right, An American first lady would have to be like, I need some causes so that I look busy. But they can't be controversial. Yeah, so they can't be anything that upsets anyone too much. It needs to look like I'm trying to do good in the world. And when I say that, I don't mean it entirely snick. I'm sure, of course they want to. I'm sure Kate of course
wants to, and early childhood is her thing. This article was published on the Royal Foundation Center for Early Childhood site, which is Kate's thing, right, So the Royal Foundation at her and Wills and they picked their stuff. What you will notice if you've been looking at the Royal headlines lately is that Kate and Williams seemed to be on
a humanization mission. And again I don't mean that cynically, but the narrative put across by Prince Harry in particular lately has kind of painted Kate and Wills as like those stuffy, emotionless like old guard royals. And you know, over here me and Meg's are like the real people who are like, we're just letting it all hang out. And you'll notice that William lately has made a couple of really strategic decisions. One was to be interviewed by Eugene Levy on a quite random travel show in which
he came across very human, very relaxed. And then he also did an interview this weekend because one of his passion projects, of course is mental health, as is Harry's, and he did a interview this weekend with a woman who had lost her husband to suicide. And it's a very touching, affecting, genuine piece of content when you see it. And I think that both he and Kate are kind of coming up in that as we know, you know,
it's not going to be that long. Probably no one wants to say that out loud, but it's not going to be that long before he's king, and he's setting the table for this is who I really am. And I think he's pushing back on the narrative that they're cold, and the best way for Kate to do that because her public persona, not unlike Posh, is perfection control thinness,
no question, but like you know, always be perfect. But she is clearly a very warm and engaged mother, and she clearly cares a lot about kids, So this is her cause and she's really into it. I think it's tricky though, because anything you say about parenting is inevitably controversial because it pushes all our judgment buttons.
It's just so loaded, no matter how much research goes into it. And I think that that's because parents have never taken the job more seriously, and there's never been more advice and bombardment of like you must do this, you mustn't do that. I think parents are completely overwhelmed. We do, of course know this to be true, but any sense that we're having a finger wagged at us,
I think generates this emotional response. Whereas I compared that to Kate Winslet, who's actually been banging on with the same message for a really long time and has been part of campaigns, and something about her messaging felt like it was more empowering to parents than it was shamey. And she basically says, you don't have to give your kid a phone, like you can hold off. And she's got kids who are now in the early twenties, but she's like, I never gave them a phone, they never
got on social media. I just very kind of no bullshit about it. And for some reason I had more tolerance for that approach than this one.
Maybe so since we're talking about the messaging, I want to ask you both about the difference between Kate and William's approach to this subject and Harry and Maggan's, because both of them are talking a lot about the impact of the digital world on young minds.
But there's a key difference.
Kate is talking here about phones in general and digital devices in general, whereas Megan and Harry have been very explicitly focused on the dangers of social media. Do you get annoyed about the social media message as well, or is it more just the blanket phone message.
I wonder if it's the more specific the message the better. I found this really vague. Yes, And I also thought, and this is where I guess the privileged discussion goes up, like it's easier if you have a kid who's getting picked up from school. Right there are people with twelve year olds who their kid has to get two buses in a train to and from school, and whether or not they need a phone is sort of dependent on that.
So I'm sorry, but I mean, my kids are teenagers and they have phones. I'm looking forward to the social media ban. I've been on the record of saying that I think it's a great idea, and it's definitely allowed me to make a decision about my son, who's the younger one that I feel like I've got ammunition ammunition from the government on that stoked about it, but it
is very unrealistic. It's great, like, and I know there will be lots of parents will hear this and then message and go, I never gave my kids a phone or a screen, but like, what are they doing these kids who don't have that? Because it's the equivalent now of when I came home from school, I'd watch TV for a bit, you know, I'd watch TV. And I know that phones are different from TV because the short form videos are boiling their minds and everything. But mindless
pleasures that involve screens are not new. This is new, and I think it's really great that we're pushing back on the tech bros and all of those things. But it really does, as you point out, Jesse, become a division of like who is supervising their kids at all times and giving them really wholesome, active, improving tasks and activities and classes. Because we're also told don't overschedule them, don't be a tiger parent. Da da da dah. Let them get bored. Yeah, let them get bored, let them
like who is super? And that does come back to the privilege. I think it's interesting because I think that as we're knowing more and more and more about this impact, in five years, we will look at phones around kids a bit like we look at smoking around kids. I
do think that. I also think, though, that there will be a massive class gap in that situation, because I hear middle class parents around me say, oh, I'm not going to be strict about lots of things, but sugar and screens, no, you know, And that is a very sort of classist division that suggests I've got time and resources to do all these things with my children that you lazy people who have other things to do and want to just hand your kid a phone or a
screen don't have. It's interesting because I think it's one of those times when where we started with this is we know it's right, but it's going to take a while for us to really figure out what parenting looks like without screens. That is all we've got time for. On this Monday out Loud is a massive thank you to all of you who are here with us to start off the week and hopefully stick with us as we go through it, and to our fabulous team for
putting the show together. Friends, don't forget you can watch us on YouTube. Why wouldn't you want to do that? And we'll be back in your ears tomorrow with that deep dive about the Victoria Beckham docker where we'll go to all the juicy places, We'll go to all the where was Brooklyn? Was that skirt too short?
How is that woman's name?
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