You're listening to a MoMA Mea podcast.
Mama Mer acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on Hello, Hello, and welcome to Mama Mina out Loud. It's what women are actually talking about on Monday, the twenty fourth of June.
I'm Holly Wainwright, I'm Mea Friedman.
And I'm Jesse Stevens. I'm back from my European holidays.
I'm making an applause.
Crowdgo wild, thank you.
Look.
I've had a few out louders message saying how the flight go.
I've been quiet. There's a reason why I've been quiet, because.
We were thoughts and prayers, thoughts like, well, your thoughts and prayers.
Didn't help my thoughts and my prayers.
It's going to come up on the best and worst segment on Friday's episode. Everyone can take a little guess as to which category will fall into.
I was really bummed that you didn't have Wi Fi on the flight because I want to constant update.
I had a little bit of Wi Fi. Luca was getting updates. I'll tell you that he was getting up all day, all fourteen hours of that second leg. On tomorrow's subscriber episode, I'm going to do a big kind.
Of catch up about the we want to hear about.
True A real highlight was when I was so jet lagged when we landed that I found myself at two am holding Luner upside down.
So there'll be nice tidbits. There was a hospital visit. There's so much I need to tell you guys about.
Wait, yeah, yeah, wouldn't be Jesse Stevens holiday at a hospital visit.
I was actually relieved when we ended up in the French hospital. Oh thank god. All right, we have done the hospital. Now we can get on with our holiday.
On the show today, two out loud obsessions collided in a rainbow explosion of sparkly corsets and daggy dad dancing on the weekend. Yes, we're talking about that time Taylor Swift granted an audience to the future King of England, also one of Australia's most famous feminists, our first female Prime Minister, thinks we have failed to bring young men along with us on our mind towards equality.
Is she right?
And do you need a live coach, sweetie or do you want to be one? The great live coach pyramid scheme, but first Jesse Stevens.
In case he missed it.
A Kiwi woman is suing her ex for not giving her a ride to the airport and she is my idol. A New Zealand woman has taken her boyfriend to small Claims court over a broken promise to drive her to the airport and watch her dogs during her trip, arguing that the agreement represented an oral contract. She was going to a concert with friends and he agreed to take her to the airport between ten and ten fifteen am, but then he did not and she missed her flight.
Ooh, was he just late or he like ghosted her?
I think he ghosted her.
They met together six years. I thought that was interesting. This wasn't someone she just met on the weekend.
He really didn't want to take her to the airport.
The Disputes Tribunal where this woman took her case looks at smaller claims and she basically wanted financial damages for her missed flight, but also shuttle.
She had to catch to the airport.
Actually no longer had a.
Lift and she had to put a dogs in boarding. I think was.
Looking it is expensive, especially last minute. What was she to do she had to go to her concert.
I hope she didn't miss it. Sy're going to drive you.
No one wants to get the bus, not to the airport.
The tribunal basically said that sometimes friends or romantic partners break promises, but that's none of their business, and she will not be reimbursed by anyone for the inconvenience caused. I feel inspired to sue a lot of people, but most of all, I just love that not dropping someone off at the airport is in the realm of criminal charges where it belongs.
Do you drop people at the airport?
I do?
You know I do, because I've dropped you at the airport, But no one else in my family does. No, they don't. I love an airport drop off, but not as much as I love an airport pick up. In fact, when you were you home on Sunday, I.
Was going, look, I love yer, but if she is at that gate, I'm just.
It's going to know that.
I knew that, and I'm self censored.
So I was saying that I was I said to Luca, I was just thinking about and I was going to say, but I decided no, that you need some time as a family and I just said I was thinking about when Jesse and he just goes.
Nope, you know this is like this story is one of the texts in the canon of my life is when Harry met Sally. The greatest movie ever made and the wisdom in there that Harry tells Sally about. He bumps into her an airport and he goes, oh, that relationship must be new, because she's like kissing her guy at the gate and.
She's about to get on a plane.
And she goes, how did you know that? We've been since the other three months? How did you know that? And he goes, because you only ever take people to the airport at the beginning of a relationship. And he said, that's why I never take people to the airport at the beginning of a relationship, so they can never turn around to me and say, you used to take me to the airport, do you?
Because your partner travels are bitch?
No, never ever pick like I like a pickup, but I don't drop now.
Oh, there's something so sad about making your own way to and from an airport.
That I've got.
But I know people who feel that way.
I don't.
I don't. I do like to be met at long distance. Oh my god. When I arrived at Manchester and if my family weren't there, I would be a mess right long distance for sure, But like if you're flying to Melbourne or whatever, like I wouldn't expect anyone to pick me up or drop me off.
Oh no, but I'm a slut for an airport reunion. I love it. Yeah, for like a long haul, not short haul.
She was promised, she was promised, she was promised that he would drive her. And I think that this could possibly be a new podcast idea for us, which is petty crimes. Yes. Can you imagine if out Louders just were like, I have a petty crime and we were the tribunal like Judge Dude liked except.
Its us and people just say whether they're guilty or not. I declare him very guilty.
I agree fully guilty.
Out Louders, do you think we want to hear from you about your petty crime?
We could turn it into a song like I'm looking at.
The intersection of Holly in my Hyperfixations. Happened over the weekend with members of the royal family attending the Taylor Swift concert in London and having a sing and a dance and a backstage selfie with Taylor herself afterwards the ultimate collab, which was excellent for both brands. May it
be said it was very mutually beneficial. I thought it was very well received by the Internet, who really frothed over Prince William dancing along with two of his small royal children, Prince George and Princess Charlotte in a posh box overlooking the masses at Wimbley Stadium. Fun fact, this is not the first time the pair have met backstage. They did a duet Prince William and Taylor Swift in a Kensington Palace charity event with bon John Bovy Try again Bon Jovi. They sang Living on a Prayer in
twenty thirteen. Here's a little piece of that.
You go here, Taylor.
Did we need to hear that? Carry out? It was like when mea wants to sing to us.
I thought that was good. Holly, were you wearing your pants? Were excitement?
So excited? It was really funny because my Instagram feed at the weekend was just famous people in London seeing Taylor Swift. And I mean no one in Australia needs to be told this because we've been through it ourselves, but it's that moment where everybody's there and there's a sort of real zeitgeistee moment of who's hot. Because all the celebrities I saw wanted their picture taken with Nicola
Cocklan from Bridgeton, so because she was there. So there's hern Karra Delavin and her and j VN and her and all these people, and I was just like, she's obviously the person you want to sit next to your box because no is invited into the Royal Box where William was dad dancing, and I thought.
I thought he was quite good at his dancing was terrible.
One of my friends just message and said it makes me crawl up inside my bumhole a little bit, and I know what she meant. I thought he was.
Quite I liked imagining that he did that because it was to shake it off. And I was thinking when Spare came out and when he had a rough trot, I imagine him in his palation doing his little jig. And you'll notice in that video Charlotte and George and know where to be saying it's just William.
He's there on his own.
Sometimes, like when you're at the concert I know neither review went, but it just it comes out of you.
You can't only help it, you can't help it. I think this is brilliant. We talked last week about Kate's sort of semi return to public life. She came out and did the trooping of the color to let everybody know that she's you know, she's halfway through her cancer treatment, and we were saying how we thought that was brilliantly handled. I think this is poignant pr brilliance because there's something about the dad taking his kids to see he's swifty.
I'm sure that she Kate would have been there if she was able to be there, so it was beautiful that he took them. And then I think that the daggy dad dancing with such abandon in such a public spot is very endearing.
It was so human.
And to see him the smile on his face in that selfie with Taylor Swift, I've never seen him smile.
And she posted it, and she doesn't usually post all her celebrity selfies.
Does she?
No, she doesn't usually take a lot of selfies. Probably, but also someone took a photo of her taking the selfie that was probably what you saw, which is interesting, which I think it was probably her publicist Tree Paint, or maybe Travis.
Because he was in one of the pictures too. Right, So this worked so well on me that we always talk on the show about how I'm obsessed with the royals, but I'm not a royalist, right, I'm a Republican. I generally think off with the heads, et cetera. But when I was watching this on Saturday, the magic it was working on me. I was going, Oh, I think he'll be a good king. Oh, I don't know, Maybe we don't need to rush that republican business because look, he's so human.
It's like on my mad it'd be great on my money.
Look, I definitely worked so no notes on the Wills and Kate pr team that since the stuff up of March and the photo shop incident, Oh I forgot that really got their shit together. Because also it was Wills's birthday when he went to Taylor Swift and Kate posted some beautiful pictures of him and the kids jumping off sand dunes and stuff and just looking which is very different, Yeah, very different.
I loved seeing Charlotte and George with their big smiles too, because I thought they've had a really rough time as well, and the idea that their mum has been seeking. I know that we can look at this as a story and unpack it in terms of the media scrutiny, but there's a family who's in pain, and so to see that as a joyful moment and Charlotte has her sparkles on and you just know that she was like it. My first reaction to that, because we were texting about it, was Megan.
Megan's gonna be pissed because Meghan.
We know, asked Taylor to be on a podcast in Taylor's archetypes.
Yes, Taylor couldn't. And then I.
Remember Taylor wouldn't.
Taylor doesn't do a lot of interviews. That does not even for Megan.
No.
So I saw that and I'm like, if I was the Princess of La and I had moved to La, I would think that Taylor was on my team and Taylor's on their team. And then I remembered that Megan Mirkael went to the Taylor Swift concept in La. I have no guess who wasn't in a VIP box. Guess who was with the common man?
No, but that just to be clear, he wasn't in Taylor's box.
Taylor's box is different. Okay, he was just enough.
Posh Wembley box. So anyone go in, like if you've got enough money or you're invited.
By well, let's be on this. He probably has a box at Wembley, like it's where all the football games are.
But yeah, I'll say be a royal boxes. That Meghan didn't get.
Herself Tail Swift, she did not.
I think that what happened in the celebrity division of celebrities during the great Estrangement of Harry and Wills is that Megan maybe got Beyonce and Oprah she did, and that Will's got Taylor Swift and right now he's the winner. Who knows in the years time.
No, Taylor did not. Meghan did not get Beyonce.
She was at the Beyonce.
She's a very good scene whose movie premiere? Did Beyonce come to Taylor and walk the red carpet Taylor and then Taylor to Beyonce?
No, No, I mean Meghan got got Beyonce, and William and Kate got Taylor. Oh, I don't mean Taylor and Beyonce are beefing. They're amazing, But like in the celebrity division, Beyonce's team Meghan.
Anyone who's kind of thinking what's going to be for my career would probably go with the the incumbents, don't.
You think, because the Royals are on the nose, like this is what I mean. Like when I was watching William dancing and I was like, this is good for their brand, because really the Royals are a really naff brand. Yeah, and colonies privilege.
In speaking of the dancing, because I was looking at William and then I was looking at the box right with all the celebrities. And I've watched that video one hundred times because every time you look at it, you spott a new one. You go, that's Amelia Clark, that is a Hemsworth, that is Greta Gowick. And I'm watching it and I realized that there is such a distinct
difference between how British people dance and Americans dance. And Travis Kelcey has a very like every time I've seen him dance, he's got his arms up, he's doing a point.
He's very frat party, very American. Yeah, very I'm in.
A club usually like a beer in the other hand y, yes, And he just loves it. And it's just this confidence is olfa male thing? And then and Ashton Kutsch is doing the same dance right because he's with like one with one arm. He's there with Miller and Tom Cruise looks he was there on his own trading bracelets.
But anyway, I love that. I love that Tom Crat.
None of his children are talking to him, I know, no, he's cut them off.
Sorry, Suri. I think he's fine with the others. But Suri, she was at prom. Where was he trading bracelets with young teenage girls who aren't his daughter?
Why?
Tom?
Why?
Look what?
I Noticedn't ask him about that.
I don't know, I know, but he was quite likable in this ten second video.
But greta girl, well.
The other the Brits, that Amelie Clark, they're doing this jig where they have their arms down because they're there and they do kind of a shimmy.
It's a bit of a shimmy.
It's very Hugh gran in love actually walking down the stairs.
It's understated, quite committing to a fool.
No no, no, because you're embarrassed by yourself.
I thought William was really throwing it out.
He was making some shapes.
If you want to hear more about Taylor Swift's concept, then Mummy's entertainment podcast The Spill has unpacked the wave of celebrities that attended Taylor swift London show. Because now there's not only been one, there's been three and more celebrities are coming every night and I adjust the rotation. I care enormously so about so we will pop a link to their episode in our show notes.
This month, Mumma Mia turned seventeen. We know birthdays aren't all that exciting when they're not well. Your birthday, there aren't enough presents, So we want to take this as a chance to give you a treat and say thank you for being on the ride with us.
Right now, you can get twenty dollars off a yearly Mumma me a subscription.
With the code out Loud Birthday.
The offer is valid till the end of June and you will find all the details of how to do that in the show notes. Enjoy, my friends. Look, if you felt your brain shriveling up a little bit during that segment, it's okay. We've got you. You've got you with bringing it back with some smart chat about one
of the smartest women Australia has ever produced. So I want to talk about a narrative that I'm seeing around a lot at the moment, the one that says that young men are feeling a bit jipped by feminism and the fear that it's all gone a bit too far. And the latest smart human talking about this is Julia Gillard. I just noticed that when I wrote the note in my script, I called it Julian Gillard, which I don't think she would appreciate the problem.
I know you're half watching the William video.
Julia is a great ex Prime minister. Let's be clear. She doesn't meddle. She's not in there like going.
Out gold charge.
Yeah, if I was in charge, blah blah. She's off having a very exciting third act doing good things for women all over the world. And look, she's also feeling a bit sorry for young men at the moment. In this interview that she gave to The Australian recently, they did like a cover story on her. They shot her in London. She's half the year in London, half the year in Australia. She's on the board of directors for
this big sort of science y Medical Board there. She's also in charge of an organization called the Global Institute for Women's Leadership, which she founded, and it's based at a university in London and ANU in Canberra. Right, And when she was talking to The Australian, she was saying that that organization did some research lately and what it found was that the young men are pissed off with us and Julia and all of our kind. In this interview, Gilard was talking about gen Z and she was saying,
how you know her famous misogyny speech. I think you'll all remember it. Here's a little bit.
I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny.
By this man. I will not be.
Lectured about and mithsogyny by this man, not now, not ever. The Leader of the Opposition says that people who hold sexist views and who are misogynists are not appropriate for high office. Well, I hope the Leader of the Opposition it's got a piece of paper and he is writing out.
His resignation because if he wants to know.
What misogyny looks like in modern Australia, he doesn't need a motion in the House of Representatives.
He needs a Miro that's what he needs. Has become so iconic to that generation that it's on t shirts and tea towels, and she's in people have often come up and show her their tattoos of it and stuff, and she's like, it's amazing. But she says there's also a portion of that generation who feels that either gender equality has been reached or it's gone so far that
it's now discriminating against men. She said, there's certainly a hardening of attitudes amongst young men that it's all gone too far, and for people like myself who've been an active feminist and campaigning in various ways on gender equality for literally a lifetime, we've got to be self critical and analytical about our obvious inability to take young men
in particular on this journey with her. What the research found was that it was done across thirty one countries, and it showed that fifty one percent of respondents asked believe that men are being asked to do too much to support gender equality, and that sixty percent of Gen Z men, so that's men aged eighteen to twenty seven, say that they believe women's equality has gone too far, which is a much larger proportion than any other generation.
It's clearly landed in a way that is felt as exclusionary or diminishing for particularly young men, she said, and it's essential that men and women have this conversation. How do we reshape the way we are campaigning for gender equality so that we're explaining what I deeply believe to be true, which is that a gender equal world will be better for everyone? Jesse, How do we reshape the way we are campaigning so that we are explaining that a gender equal world will be better for everyone?
I think this is really smart, and I agree with everything that she says. I don't think it is actually about feminism going too far, or feminism having failed, or any criticism of female empowerment. I think that would be to misread what she's saying. It's about looking at what's happened.
I mean, most of the twentieth century was so focused on reimagining what it is to be a woman and broadening that and remolding it and unpacking it imperfectly but in exciting and revolutionary ways, and we just didn't do the same to what it means to be a man like that still has remained fairly fairly stuck. And I think what she's looking at is the language of feminism, what's existing in the zeitgeist, and whether or not it's working, and the message that.
Is intended and how it's landing. Right.
So it's basic psychology that if you keep yelling at a three year old that they're naughty, then they will become naughty. That if you corner someone for long enough and tell them how bad they are, then they've only got one way to go and they can sort of lash out. And that sounds like I'm blaming feminism for men's actions, and it's absolutely not what I'm doing.
In that analogy. Who's doing the yelling and saying that they're bad?
You know what I mean?
Because I don't think that feminism is necessarily the dominant discourse either, Like I think that there's a lot of messaging happening, but I think it is a discourse that pervades like education young men. What I think is missing from that is any vision of what it is to be a man or like a good man. If there are messages, and I suppose this has a lot to do with the news more so than I would say feminism,
But like the front page of the paper. It's it's all like domestic violence, and that's a story that needs to be told all the time. We've got domestic violence, we've got sexual assault. These things are really important stories. But if you tell men that they as a cohort, are rapists and that they are.
Violent or rapists in waiting.
In waiting exactly, and that they are violent, and if we provide no alternative image of what it is to be a man, then of course Andrew Tate is going to look appealing because he's the first man who has a difference, who was potentially said to them, here's what it is to be strong, to be alpha, to be not.
A shame but a man.
But his version of masculinity is in opposition to femininity, right, and so are a lot of.
These guys who are in feminism.
Well well, women full stop yea. And she she says this in the thing She's I mean, Julia Gillard says this in the interview. She says that, you know, the Andrew Tates have stepped into the space. They set up everything about masculinity as basically or position to women, so that a powerful man subjugates women, they are in charge of them.
So that it's like a zero sum game.
So any power or equality that women get comes at the expense of men.
Yes, and they're weaponizing that message it's not true. My question about this is right, is that you're in the analogy where it's like feminism has gone too far. We're yelling at men, telling them about all the time. So what do we think they're going to do? Is how
do you solve issues without airing what the issues are? Right? So, when women who now have more microphones both literally and figuratively than they've ever had before and are so are speaking in open ways for the first time they ever have before about all the issues both little and really big, that affect their lives, that have to do with the fact that as women, they often aren't afforded the same amount of safety, opportunity, whatever it is we like, as
I say, from micro to macro issues, how do we allow women to say all that if we have to keep telling them to not upset the men?
I don't think it's I don't think it's about that.
I think it's just about balancing it with some sort of with role models.
And whose job is that?
But hang on, you've got to bring people along with you. When you want to make cultural or social change in a democracy and in a culture, you have to instead of just imposing it upon people against their will without them understanding the benefits, you have to bring them along. Any social movement.
Does that, which is what she's suggesting we've failed at right, Yeah.
And I think that I under well.
She says that we've been so focused on getting our voices out there and rebalancing some of the things that have been really terrible for women that it's not and it's not even that the pendulums come to fights that we haven't explained the better it's of gender equality to men. Because this is a generation Generation Z and the generation behind them have grown up marinating in the Me Too
movement conversations about violence against women, words like misogyny. A generation ago, the word misogyny wasn't understood or thrown around the idea of believe women, the idea of even women having a voice. So it's been a time of massive social change, and for us, it's great that people are now talking about these things. And sometimes when everyone gets very down on oh it's terrible and things have never
been worse for women, that's not true. Things have never been better for women, but we've got a long way to go and we're not finished.
But I think that while we can.
See the benefits of feminism and equality, what's in it for men?
Now?
What Glorious dynam has always said is that gender roles are prisons for men as well. Yes, they have will to walk up and someone brings you coffee, but there's
still prisons. And and our Crab's written about this a lot in The Wife Drought, where a woman's life can look very very different now to generations go, but a man's life and the expectations of what a man is is still pretty much the same as their grandfathers or their great grandfathers in terms of you should be a breadwinner, you shouldn't be looking after the kids, you should go
out to work, all of those things. So while our worlds have opened up, and some would say we now have the burden of having to have their career and do everything at home and raise the children like we always have.
Men's kind of haven't.
And our lives aren't going to get better until their lives get better too.
But surely they're saying that there's have like surely the issue with this narrative that I hear everywhere at the minute, and some of it's backed up by some very compelling statistics about young men feeling lost. Yeah, they think their lives have changed. They think that we've taken stuff from them. When I say we, I mean women broadly. They're not so saying, oh, I still get to do all the things that my dad got to do, and that In fact,
they're saying the opposite. They're saying, I don't know what my role is now because I thought I was meant to be the breadwinner, the protector, the keeper, the worker, and yet apparently that's not needed anymore. Right, this is the narrative that's out there, So I don't know if that's true, because they.
Don't have the role models for how that can look in a positive way. Right, So it's like, you might not have to be the breadwinner and whatever, but what else can you be? It doesn't help when you've got so called feminists. And I don't hate even calling them that, because I just think they do such a disservice to
what feminism is. Who are out there talking about hating men and men being rapists and male tears and being disparaging about men and laughing about the idea of not all men and insisting that it actually is all men that are the problem. That doesn't help either because it's very polarizing and very ostracizing, but it's also it's not see.
One of the reason why I get defensive in this argument, which is like feminism has gone too far. Women have asked for too much. Now the men are lost. Is I'm like, Okay, then the men can step in and sort this out, right, because I feel like otherwise this narrative is it just keeps landing back on us, right, and which bits of equality and the advances that we've made over the past fifty years are we giving back to make the men feel better? Right?
I don't thinking of that.
But then that's you you agreeing that it's a zero some game. I'm just saying that.
No, no, I'm not agreeing it's a zero some game. But I've said that's how it's being presented in this discussion. And so we're saying we need more good role models for men, which we one hundred percent do. So men off, you go sort that shit out. That's that's my position on this. Is there and there are lots There's an amazing organization that's here and in other parts of the all called man Cave. It's run by this amazing young man called Hunter Johnson. I've heard him on in this
whole period of discussion about male violence. I've heard him on the radio, and se him on TV, and see him on social media everywhere. Brilliant role models doing incredible things. Let's hear them and lift them up instead of, you know, leaving the vacuum for the andrew Tates. But what I won't cop is that this is somehow feminism's problem. I won't cop that because I think that any group of people who have to share power get defensive and upset about it.
Don't you think any social movement needs to win hearts and minds though well to succeed.
I think that they have. I mean you're saying, I don't think that men's roles have changed. There are lots of men who now have the opportunity to live really different lives and if that works for them, it does. But if they're still struggling with this idea of well, what does masculinity mean? If it's not all about me?
And what we've been talking about a lot lately, is this kind of quiet resurgence of women who are saying, well, actually, I don't want to do it all, you know, I think, isn't the whole point of it is that now we have more options?
Jesse, do you think that, in quite rightly pushing back against what we call toxic masculinity, which is like sexism and you know, being disrespectful to women, that we've actually pushed back against all masculine Yeah, and demonized some just male behaviors and not necessarily toxic any sense.
And I know this with friends who you know, are raising adolescent boys or work with adolescent boys. Any discussion around what it means to be a man is very fraught.
It sounds toxic.
You know, if you picked up a book that was like masculinity different types, or like, you know, how to be a man, you'd be like, oh my god, this is not good. So it's like we've dropped the toxic
and masculinity is seen as inherently bad. And if you're told that part of you that is intrinsic to your sense of identity is bad, then I know what you're saying, Holly, but I also think we've got to look objectively at what's happening, at the Andrew tape phenomenon, at the fact that men do feel ostracized from this conversation, and try
and work out how to make this work. The civil rights movement, which is just such an incredible example of and not that that's finished or you know, achieved everything it set out to, but there was incredible strides taken and that was because of a mutual discourse of respect. There wasn't this idea of like you are inherently bad because of how you were born, and that's how achievement was developed. So yeah, I think that's that's got to be the beginning. Is what is it to be a man?
What are those images?
No one answer to that, Like one of the things I think all the time, you know, as a mother of a sod like my little boy doesn't tick a lot of boxes of what's traditionally what being a man is. You know, he doesn't love playing football, he's not a rough and tumbled dude, he doesn't take charge. Like I think, there's no one answer. Surely, if the progress that is being made here isn't isn't unpicking all of those things, you know, like the whole idea that there's just one
lane for everybody. I feel like.
That's lane matter how many times have we said on this show, you can't be what you can't say. You know, you think about a girl who goes to her teenage bedroom and all the images of famous inspiring women up on her walls, and all the different paths. I just hope that there are as many varied and inspiring paths for little boys.
Do you know what's really challenging as a parent of a son and a daughter is all the messages that we're giving our daughter to pump up their tires are also being heard by our sons. And remember we had this conversation quite a few years ago home where your son said to you, when I grow up, I want to be a girl. And you were like, oh, billy, that's interesting. Why And he said to you because girls can do anything. And that's when you realized, oh shit.
I've been working as of course, to correcting, you know, bringing up our daughters to be strong, powerful women and not take shit from men. But then our sons have been listening, and is the implication that they're shit?
Yeah? But since then it didn't take long to correct that view. For Billy, because he does still live in a world where boys are very much treasured, right, and he has has his own issues with dealing with the alpha males in his school or wherever, And he's always saying to me how surprised he is about the way that a lot of boys talk about girls right in
a very disparaging way. I get all of the things we're talking about, but I also think it's a big and complicated picture that the andrew Tates and everything of the world who are now being held up as like, well, there's either this, or there's you know, there are footy players, or there are men in finance or whatever it is, these views of masculinity, and we've got to remember that the extreme ends of that, just like everything in our culture, are being promoted and elevated to us all the time
by the content we're consuming, the algorithms we swim, we swim in all that stuff. In little boys actual lives, they're still struggling with toxic masculinity in inverted commerce, and they still need to hear all the time the messaging about women respect. I don't think that job is done.
I don't think we can dust off our hands. I think any young woman out in the world, like the dilemma that we spoke about about sexy dress dilemma on the subs episode the other week, any young woman out in the world will tell you that it's not like, yeah, those all those issues have gone away, And I just feel like we're kind of running a risk of telling women to stop complaining because it's making the men feel bad.
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We drop episodes every Tuesday and Thursday exclusively for Mum and MEA 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. Have you noticed more life coaches popping up.
In your Instagram feede lately?
So just me?
You guys got them?
Yep, yeah, and they all sound the same. I actually haven't noticed it lately.
I noticed it a couple of years ago, and some people I knew who really shouldn't be were touting their services as life coaches.
Yes, so when you say they all look the same, there are lots of emojis in the captions. They want to empower you to manifest your best life by leaving fear behind, and often they use words like neuroscience and psychology and then encourage you to comment webinar below, and then they'll send you something they all.
Read that's called a lead magnet. That's to get your email address.
Okay, because they do that, and they market lots of capital letters and then lots of stuff.
They all kind of feel the same. And there's a reason for that, isn't there.
Well.
An article published in the Sydney Morning Herald over the weekend, and it was republished from the New York Times, references a growing cohort of people speaking out about the ugly underbelly of life coaching. And basically the reason why all of these things are the same is because they're all.
Being taught by the same people.
So it's an unregulated industry that means anyone can call themselves a life coach that grew out of the late twentieth century, pulled towards self improvement when talk therapy was popular. It's really hard to get stats about this because of how unregulated it is, but there are suggestions that between twenty nineteen and twenty twenty two, the number of life coaches increased by fifty four percent, So it's skyrocketing, and
the question is is the uptick harmful? And if it is, then who are the victims?
What's interesting is that this person that I know who left a job went and became a life coach. I got a bit obsessed with, like what is going on? And then there was this one person who kept commenting, so I went and looked up her name and she was a life coach for life coaches, So she taught
people how to become life coaches. And then soon enough this other woman who I knew, she was then trying to attract people to teach them how to be life coaches, when she didn't seem to be coaching anyone herself.
So it's very pyramids game, very MLM, very very marketing.
Can I ask a really basic question, what's a life coach? As in, like how are they different from like a therapist or a mentor, or like as someone at work?
What's a life Okay, So in Australia actually something like a counselor. Anyone can legally call themselves a counselor. But if you're going to see a counselor, then chances are they've studied for minimum three years A psychologist we're talking minimum six years. You need to have some sort of tertiary education. There are bodies where you can go and look up your psychologists or a therapist or whatever and
see if they, you know, actually fit the criteria. A life coach can do a week long course, a life coach can do no study.
But I would go to one because.
You have a problem that you're trying to solve, You want help with your career, you want things to get better, like very broad.
Therapy light and so one of the reasons that people do see life coaches often is because it can be very hard and very expensive to get in to see a therapist. Life coaches do tend to be cheaper because they're unregulated and unqualified, and that brings risks.
Of course, because you don't know.
You could be going with some very complex issue and a mental health issue or an issue around abuse or who knows, and they might have done an hour long online course.
And the people who seek out life coaches of generally vulnerable people right like, they probably have a significant, absolutely problem that they're trying to sort out in their lives. And look, that's one thing. But an expert in this article was saying that This other element is that there's a problem in the industry, as you say, Mayor, of
coaches who coach coaches to become coaches. Yes, and you see a lot of people who then are promised, in your first year, you'll make one hundred thousand dollars, and then they do this thing, They've forked out tens of thousands of dollars in order to get this qualification that isn't real, and then they have no clients because of
course they don't. And then they're told, well, you need to do more courses, so they do more and more, and then it's the sunt cost fallacy, which is, well, I've invested seventy thousand dollars, I can't give up now, and before you know it, you're in debt and you're trying to sell to your same two hundred Instagram followers.
Right.
And I've personally seen.
Heaps of this, especially since COVID and my instinct, I've been trying to do this topic for ages because I find it intensely irritating. I like expertise, I know what it takes to be a psychologist, and I think.
Honestly, I'm like, how dare you?
What makes you think that you can help anyone with their problems.
But reading this, it changed my perspective a bit.
Because I thought, these are vulnerable people who often have a family.
Do you mean the people who are becoming life creag Yeah, yeah, because it like all of these MLMs, it prays usually on women and usually on mothers.
Yeah.
So because you can work from home, it's flexible, you can be your own boss.
And that's what women are craving.
They want to do something, they want to bring earn an income, but maybe they can't do it around and every woman I know who's fallen victim to these things and paid money to do these courses and then of course found and years ago, ten years ago, it was all about becoming a diet coach or a nutrition coach.
Is the other one.
I've got all those people on my feed who were doing things where I.
Go, how is this legal? How are you dishing out?
You have like an online course? And then they become health coaches. And again it's the same type of woman who it tends to be a woman who really needs money or who really can't work in a regular job or doesn't want to. It's also a get rich quick a lot of promises are made and it looks too good to be true.
Because it is.
I know lots of people though love their coaches, Like I know lots of successful people who have a coach. Yeah, I was on a call with I don't know, some writer person who was like, I just got off the call with my coach in LA and I've never felt more fighted up and this is going to be amazing, And I'm like, yeah, I want a bit of that. I entirely understand the appeal because the thing is as a therapist a as you've said me, or there's barriers, it's expensive, but also I might not want to just
unpack all my inner everything. I might just want someone to tell me how to be more effective, how to be more efficient, how do I repay rise, how do whatever? It is? Like, I can entirely understand the appeal of a coach, so I don't really care about their certificates and their qualifications.
If it works, yes, And that's a really good point because life coaches aren't all made equal, which is the same obviously with a therapist. And there are some who have who are actually incredibly qualified, and they're even like Ben Crow, who's not really a life coach, but he's.
A similar worldness, innovational person. Like who doesn't want someone like that in their corner? Who's going to go Well, the way that you should have this conversation is like this, and the way that you should do that is like and maybe, if you think of it, if you'd structure your day a bit. I mean, we're all obsessed with
that stuff, right, So I understand the need. So what we're talking about here is the fact that if you're looking for that, you have to be wary that you're not just getting poor old Betty who was sold this pyramid scheme idea that she was going to make herself rich when really she's just yeah.
Because then suddenly Betty's trying to convince you that what you need to do is also become a coach. Yes, that's the answer. So that's different because when someone is actually coaching you. And I've seen coaches before. Although someone recommended a new therapist to me recently, I went and saw her, and before I went, I looked her up and I was like, Oh, she's actually not qualified as a therapist. She's more of a coach, and I actually
found her great. Would I go back to her. Yes I would, but it's more about she didn't suggest that I then.
Become a coach and.
Do pay her money apart from the sessions that I was seeing her with. So as you say, you can be vulnerable when someone sees a coach. If they work and if they've got expertise, that's great. But I guess what we're also wanting to flag is this idea of women who think or maybe I'll become a coach.
So it's the two it's the two risks.
We also feel unqualified to live and by that, yes we do. Like That's the thing, right, is that the majority of these clients are also women.
I must say.
One of the richest people I know is a life coach and it's a family friend.
Who makes unbelievable money.
She has siblings who are in who's a finance bro and a blar and really really high up, and they laughed at her when she said she was going to be a life coach, and now she is living in some.
Because now everybody's gurgling.
Life coach can also be a business coach.
You can be there are coaches, But I think you've hit the nail on the head there jesse A, but we don't feel qualified to live because I think that surely this enthusiasm for coaches is also part of our isolation.
Right.
We spend a lot of time looking at our phones, and everybody's more successful than we are. That's the impression you're getting from your algorithm. And so you're like, I don't understand. And it's part of the whole push for self improvement and productivity.
Right.
We all think if I just changed this and this and this, I could be that and that and that. And your family friend apparently hears that, but for most of us, we're probably doing okay.
Yes, there's no like golden ticket.
And I've seen as well this thing of some people I know who have really big followings and maybe they've had other careers in entertainment or whatever, and they've got one hundred thousand followers and they don't know what to do with it.
They've all become life coaches.
Because it's like, that's how I can monetize it. There must be money in course.
But well that's the point.
That's why the whole idea of an MLM is that there are no customers.
There's just other people that you bring in to sell.
Yeah, So it's actually that's why the line between a period scheme and EMMA is very fine, and regulators often have a little bit of trouble because it can be hard to prove that there aren't any potential customers for the service that you're asking, you know, whether it's buy all of these leggings, and then no one wants to buy the leggings from you, so you've just got to find other people who are in your what's called a downline, who then also sell the leggings and give you a
little bit of a cut.
But they can't.
Find anyone either, so they've then got to find more people. And so that's how that's how the MLM works, and that's.
What this is.
So thinking that there's this huge hunger and need and market for a regular person who's just done a course and he's going to become a life coach, it's just not true. It's just not like there are some people who are good and who who have clients and who do it well. But it's really unlikely that you're going to be one of those people just from doing a course on the internet.
Now in the show notes are the two registered like the way that you can tell if the person that you're saying, whether it's a therapist or a counselor or a psychologist, they hit the criteria. And you know that's not to say there aren't great life coaches, but if you want to triple check links in the show notes.
Jesse, what's the way in which you reckon motherhood has changed you most?
Ooh, I something has happened to my I feel like, to my biology, to my brain, to something that has given me patience that I didn't have. I was an incredibly impatient person before and quite prone to panic, and I have been surprised at how that has changed. Like if you'd told me that I could spend four or five hours in a room trying to put a baby to sleep, I would have gone, I'm not capable of that.
So something has changed.
Yeah, I think I've lost that again. I think you've got it and then you lose it as your kids get older.
We spoke while you're away with Gemma, who is a relatively new mother as well, about mattrescence and how becoming a mother changes your identity.
So it's not just about how it.
Changes your lifestyle, which of course it does, but how it can really change your identity.
I was heavily pregnant and terrified and I went and had brunch with Gemma before I had learner.
And oh my god, speaking of life coaches.
Through that period, she's very, very wise, and like she just she told me the good bits and was like, you're prepared for the sleep. All of that and her birth she didn't have a great she didn't have a great one, but I have found her insights about motherhood very very h.
We spoke about how it will often affect a woman's identity but not a man's identity in that same way, and how nothing.
Really prepares you for that, and out loud as if.
That sounds like the most boring thing you could ever even imagine listening to because you don't have kids, you don't want kids, or you just are not interested. We have also got a No Filter episode this week about an interview with a woman who has got kids and has decided not to have kids, and she talks about what her life is like at forty five, having made that decision about eight or nine.
I love that.
So we've got you covered no matter what you want to listen to. Next will link to those both of those episodes.
In the show notes, a big thank you friends for listening to today's show, and a big thank you to you Jesse Stevens for coming back from your holiday. We missed you. I'm glad you decided to return. I thought we're looking at that flight you might have gone and I'm just going to stay, which.
Is exactly I'm never coming back. I consider that it's been amazing.
A big thank you to our team, of course for putting today's show together.
We'll be back in your ears tomorrow.
Bye.
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