You're listening to Amma mea podcast.
Mamma Mere acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on wrinkles and blotches and bits that sag, shadows and creases and crape. My face is changing, and I'm faking being fine with it. Maybe you are too. I'm sure that wasn't there yesterday, I say, peering into the mirror without my bifocal contact lenses with their comforting blur, poking at a crevice, holding up an eyelid,
reaching for a tweezer, a potion, a coverall. Sometimes it takes all the will in the world not.
To want to scrape it off.
Stop the change, stop the slide, stop the fold, stop the inevitable. Freeze it in time, sand it, smooth it, lift it, fill it. Maybe I will. Maybe if I did that, I wouldn't notice anymore that I'm aging. Maybe fewer lines would distract me from my undulating hormones.
That little grunt as I stand up, the.
Advancing migrain, the birthday numbers counting up to nowhere, the days I get to spend with my people counting down. But also if I do that to try to trick the mirror, then another trap yawns open.
Don't you dare look.
Like you're trying too hard, so sad, so desperate. What have you done to your face? So many opinions, so much criticism, so much wasted energy on this little patch of fleshy real estate. Maybe if my face just bloody stopped changing, I could pretend time wasn't passing. The change is accelerating. Today, I'm despairing over an image that I
know in a year I will consider impossibly youthful. Well, despairing is a strong word, one I should save for things worthy of dis stress, illness, and loss and stubbed toes in the dark. But then again, maybe despairing is the right word, because our faces apparently mean so much. They signal to the world where we're up to, near the beginning, near the end, somewhere in the messy mid They signal to the world, apparently, how much we care,
how together we are, how well we nurture ourselves. Does an errant eyebrow mean we're messy, an unfilled line that we've given up? Beauty is a beast when you're mid because aging is a privilege, but looking young is everything. The entire world says, So why, my mirror asks me, as I peered too close? Do you care about this? You're not a supermodel or a celebrity. Your worth isn't
tied to your foreheadlines. You know you're always saying it that getting to bitch about wrinkles is a lottery winning luck. So many others would give anything for. You know that, deep in your bones that these are stripes of pride, blotch of wisdom, folds of experience. Those words are so true it hurts. We all feel it. We didn't get this wise without knowing about insides versus outsides, and the futility of relentless comparison, or the subtle manipulation of shifting
beauty standards. But still, even with all that wisdom, some days, the mirror is a fucking bitch.
I said it.
My face is changing, and I'm busy faking being fine with it. Maybe one day I won't have to fake it at all. The hard fought wisdom that drew those fine lines will settle into every cell of my body, and I'll be comfortable and confident in my serum lathered skin.
I can't wait. I'll see you there.
Hello, Hello, I am Holly Wainwright and I am Mid, mid Life, mid Family, mid Wrinkle, Panic, and today we're bringing you the last conversation of mid season two. It has been a ridiculous treat to bring you the conversations we've brought you about sex, money, time, sisters, invisibility, rage, and that big family shift. If you missed any of them, now's your moment. Go back and listen, share them with
anyone who needs to hear them. And please, if you love mid, throw us a follow and leave us a review. I know that every podcast you listen to asks you.
To do that, but there's a good reason.
That's because it helps more people find us, and the more mids, I think you'll agree, the better. But today a treat. You might have gathered from my introduction that we are talking about faces and bodies, and at the beginning of this season, I promised you a supermodel. I don't know who you thought was going to walk in here with me, but I know you're going to be delighted to meet her if you haven't already. Alison Bray was the Australian model of the late eighties and early nineties.
On every magazine cover and on every teenage girl's wall. She had a huge career here and overseas, and then she married the equally famous and attractive Cameron Daddo and backed right away from the industry, settled in la and raised a family. Now, as Alison Bray Daddo, or Ali, as very many of us know her, she's also become just the most honest, interesting voice about midlife and menopause and all the messy challenges it brings us. But today
we're not actually talking about that. We're getting deep about surface stuff, beauty, whatever it means to us. And let's be honest, there's a sliding scale of how much any of us can ever claim to have felt beautiful at any age. It's a beast in midlife because how we wear our age on our face and our bodies can feel so important and so crucial to how the outside world sees us, even as we know that it's really the silliest of all of our concerns. It often doesn't
feel that way. So come and talk to me and Ali about how we're feeling about that, what we're doing about that, and where we all stand on the mistakes we've made in thinking and talking about our faces and our bodies as we've.
Moved on through.
Welcome to Mid Season two, Episode eight, Beauty with Ali Daddo. Alie, I could talk to you about a million things on mid that our audience would love to hear. You talk about menopause obviously, yes, since you've literally written the book Long Marriages and Relationships, because you've literally made a podcasts, correct, starting a new business in mid like you've recently done that.
You're doing all kinds of things. But I asked you here primarily to talk about something that should be beneath us all I think, but actually really gets in our way when we're in this phase of life. What we look like, beauty, body, are faces, all those things. First of all, you're very beautiful. That's very kind.
Don't you look amazing?
Thank you?
And I know, of course, because I've heard you talk about it lots of times that even when you were a very famous model, that wasn't currency you were particularly interested in and it was quite difficult for you to handle. But do you feel beautiful?
I actually feel much more beautiful now than I did when I was modeling. Really yeah, and it's only been a new experience. I still struggle with, like looking at my legs or my cellulide or the belly that overhangs the pants, and wish that I could wear the clothes that I had, though there's just a feeling now that I have in myself that is so much more at peace than I was when I was younger and modeling,
and I didn't ever expect that that would happen. I was sitting with a group of women and it was a meditation and we were talking about it was sort of like the things that are noise about our bodies or the things we'd want to change. And I sat there and I kind of was like, what do I want to change? Like what am I unhappy with? And I was like, there's things I want to change about how I approach things and how I do some things
and how I react to some things. But I did not come up with anything I wanted to change physically.
I've heard you talk over the process of this when you released Queen Menopause, and you in that book very honest diary entries of journal entries rather about various stages of this. And so it's been a journey to use it overase word to get to that place.
And I'm not there all the time. I'm certainly not there all the time, but I was in that moment and I felt really the joy I felt in that moment was like, oh, have I actually let it all go? Am I actually okay with finally in my physical body. But yeah, it wasn't like the glaring list of I wish I had longer legs and you know, smooth skin, and I didn't have that come up with first. So it was interesting.
That's so good.
When you were a young model, did you ever think about what it would be like to be the sage were afraid of aging?
I was so naive at that age.
I didn't really.
Think about sure as hell, didn't think about menopause and even cross my mind. But I looked at my mom and I knew I didn't want her body shape. I remember thinking that I have her exact body shape.
You know, It's true. I was thinking about this the other day and this is probably way tmi. But when I was a kid, I was used to talk to my mom when she was in the bath. We were in a naked house, but that was often a place where because she used to have a Bathnili every day English.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course she'd.
Have a bath Neil every day, and that would sometimes be I would go and sit on the toilet seat and talk to her, not you know what I mean. Yeah, we'd sometimes talk, and so I would look at her body, and I'm ashamed to say, but I did used to think too, yeah, not terrible. And I also used to think that will never be me. There was nothing wrong with my mum's body, let's be clear. Yeah, but I thought that will never be me.
Yeah, of course, it's exactly me. I'm identical to my mother and my mom. I used to pat my mum's tummy in say you get a baby in there, you're pregnant mom. The amount of times I've been asked how far along I am at the age of fifty four is embarrassing. This is truly childhood karma coming back at me very much.
Look, I'm going to be honest and say that right now if I was going to ask myself that question at the moment, I'm not feeling that great about it. Like I think I was feeling better about it. Actually when I turn fifty and now I feel like it all changes really quickly, and my skin tone and your skin texture and all that boring stuff. The things I was doing to keep a handle on my weight seemed to not be working now, so I'm looking for a new fix for that shit.
Yeah.
But the thing is that sort of compounds feeling bad about that stuff is that I also feel like I shouldn't care, Like, Yes, how stupid to care about that. I am old and wise and I shouldn't care, yes, But feeling guilty about that makes it worse.
And I think that's where the idea of body positivity, which of course if it's naturally there for you, it's this very fine line where it can actually flip so much into shame and guilt for women if you don't have it, and then it's another thing to feel shitty about yourself that you're not I should feel better, I should love my body. You know when am I going
to love my body? And I think that's a real catch for women, because we're sold, you know, this bill of goods since day dot what the perfect body should look like in the skin, and you know what is deemed is the number one look, and then if you don't fit that, then you're wrong. But then we're also told love your curves, love you cellulate, love who you are, and then if you don't feel that either, you're like,
oh crap, you know, I'm failing and everything. So I think it's a really challenging position for women to find themselves in if we're not like, I just love my muffin top, This is amazing, you know, And I don't feel that about my muffin top. You know, I don't feel that I wish it would go away. I do, but I'm not going to get upset about it. Yeah, I think that's the change for me where I used to but now it's like I know how to dress it up now, to learn those things what works and
what doesn't work. Now.
You know, we're supposed to be very wise at this stage of life, and we are, but you still have good days and bad days in terms of how much you care about that. And one of the reasons why it can really get in your head, I think, is that we worry that what we look like and us looking older or middle aged or whatever words we want
to put around that is not how we feel inside. Yes, yes, So it's like the push to hold on to some kind of youth in terms of what we look like is about how we want to be seen by others, isn't it?
Yeah?
Absolutely, And I mean I think every woman feels that invisibility factor when we hit a certain age where you just sort of pushed in a certain direction for clothing, for skincare, for you can't dress like that at your age. You know, you have to change that, you have to you know, there's a push in that direction, which I think is challenging. And I think you know, I've been asked that before. You know, as a model, have you found it more confronting to hit menopause and age? And
I just think it's confronting for most women. I don't think whether you're a model or not. I think it can be very confronting. You know, as we see, you know, my mother's body reflecting back in me at the mirror, I'm like, Okay, yeah, this is not how I feel. As you say, I still feel like I'm kind of twenty one in a lot of ways, and I still sometimes think I can shop like a twenty one year old.
Well, you and I both were in cool trainers to that, Ali, that's right.
From my ankles down, we are twenty one.
Ankles down, we are exceptionally cool.
Yeah, But then it's so funny, I go, I can't wear those tight, tight dresses now, and then goes, of course you can, of course you can. Who cares if you've got a belly? Now, Like, who's the only person caring?
Really? And it would be me. Yeah, it's true, you know.
So it's like, yeah, you can, you can if you want to, if you want to. So it's like all of those machinations.
The thing about this is that we might make peace with I'm getting older, my face looks older, my body looks older. Then it feels like we have an array of choices about how much to care, how much we're going to do about it, right, depending on our resources and our priorities. We have options available to us that were not available to our mothers, everything from laser to UV to micro needling to more invasive things, everything from
surgery to weight loss injections to keto. Right, we've got a never ending barrage of stuff coming at us that will You don't have to You don't have to look middle aged if you don't want to. Are you comfortable talking about what you do and don't do and what your lines are?
Absolutely?
What do you do?
I've never had botox or fellows, I've never done anything like.
Have you ever been tempted to do that?
Do you know? Just recently, I was looking at my friend who she's fifty, so she's a wee bit younger than me. She only does her frown lines between the eyebrows and minor.
Quite does that.
Yeah, I have quite deep ish ones for me, like I certainly see it in photos and you know, selfies and all that crap. I'm like, ah, it's only those lines. And I think it's because they're frown lines. I love my laugh lines, love them. Anything to do with smiling, enjoy those lines I love. But those ones are my angry lines. And so sometimes I'm like, I don't think I want those very much.
So that would exactly sorry when I said, before MEA does that, I should clarify A. She would be so cool with me saying that. But also that's what she said when she was wrestling with herself about botox and God. She wrestled with herself about bow tyes for a very long time publicly, of course, she said she just didn't want to look pissed off all the time when she actually wasn't pissed off. Rest in bitch face and people like to think that older women are grumpy anyway, So
that's a similar thing. It's about that making your outsides much insides.
There, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Do you have a barrier in your mind about doing it? Or is it just whether or not you could be bothered?
It's a bit of a weather or not I could be bothered, and I'm slightly terrified. I just think, am I going to be that one person that has a hideous reaction to it? My husband is delightfully proud of the fact that I've never done anything, is he? He talks about it all the time. He goes, you know, look at your face, honey, you're aging so beautifully.
There.
So many women have done stuff and you haven't done anything. And it's really lovely to have someone that sees the beauty of my aging. Who is my partner?
You know? But isn't it funny that it's a compliment. I think that my partner would be the same, and that he would be a bit judge is probably the wrong word, but probably is also the right word. He probably would be a bit judgy if I stuff, if you do something, yes, yeah, But it's funny that it's kind of a compliment when really, how much of it is to do with us, do you know what I mean?
Yeah, I know. I mean I am absolutely pro whatever you want to do to your face, basically because I think as long as it brings you to a place of feeling better.
You know.
I worry about people that, you know, go on those massive plastic face journeys and still feel like crap because it hasn't helped what's inside. But if a little tuck and injectible really makes you feel better, then go for it.
Go you know.
And I've said this before. What I don't like is but this is more like from celebrities, is when celebrities have had so much work and then they go, oh, it's just it's just because I wash my face with lemon juice and eat cabbage. No it's not. And that makes the rest of us feel like we can't keep up, you know. But it's so vicious circle, isn't it. Like the whole plastic surgery and everything, It's sort of the more women have it, the more we feel we should
be having it the rest of us. And you know, sometimes I think that I've been kind of left behind in the plastic surgery injectable thing. It's like, oh, I'm fifty four, it's too late to do anything now.
Maybe I should have done it earlier. I don't know. Sometimes I think now, if I went into and I was like, right, I'm going to get this. I'm going to get these rinkles sort out here, it would be a bit like painting the skirting boards but leaving all the walls.
Yeah, where do you stop? I know, I mean I kind of course I know how it works, but I'm like, the crevice is already there, So how does botox stop? Does it stop me from frowning so the crevices disappear naturally? I don't know, you know, it would be highly unlikely that I will do it. Yeah, I've thought it would be nice to not have that. I've thought about doing the that freezing off of my stomach. I have definitely
thought about that. Again, I just I think I have a fear of all that sort of stuff, like what if something goes wrong? Yeah, So they're the two things I've definitely do.
You are you a because your skin does look amazing, But that's not what we're here to say. We're just here to go. But you look great. Serum's potions, like, do you put a lot of stock in that stuff? Not really.
I do a little bit for my skin. The simpler the better. I'm a very simple, simple, simple person. For the longest time, I just washed my face with water and then I did a Jjoba oil and something called Egyptian magic. What's Egyptian magic? I found when we lived in La. It's just it's a super super super old recipe, like just an oil almost so I did oil on oil. I have quite dry skin. I don't know. Sometimes the serums don't feel like they I don't like them on
my skin. I don't like a cream moisturizer loving their retreatment. Botanicals, you know that one. I'm living in John's brand, loving that at the moment. But sometimes I'll just go back to Joba oil and water.
So you've worked out what works for you and you're not tempted to do all the fancy procedures.
No.
I feel like a lot of the soul searching and worrying about that is a bit passe now, right, Like my young friends don't worry about.
It if they want to go and get absolutely not.
And I feel like that whatever we do to ourselves. It has to be so political, like such a big because women's bodies always are right. It's like if whatever size they are and whatever you decide to do with it, it has to mean something, and that.
Can be really exhausting.
Yeah, can't it just mean I don't like my friend line?
Yeah, that's right. I know this is so true because my I have a twenty eight to twenty four an eighteen year old, and they were sitting there the other day at lunch figuring out what procedure they would have if they were going to have a procedure, Like it was like what would we order for lunch? And including my son, who's already figured out I would do this, and I would do that, and I do that, the twenty eight say, oh what I would do this to
my lips? And I would do I mean that was something I never would have considered at that age.
And also as a parent, we're like.
But you're perfect.
Of course, they don't mess with your face.
I know you dare start on that train. Yeah, but that's so true. It's just an option. It's a health care option or a self care option. It's whereas Yeah, for me, I feel like it's a dramatic thing to go and do, And yeah, am I betraying my womanhood for like changing my face somehow? Like and all those women that didn't do it. You know, we've got to be strong. It's like, no, you don't. You just said you just do what you do and if it makes you feel good.
My main deterrent actually is just time. Is I think I can barely get my haircut, you know what I mean? Yeah, I can barely get my haircut. Am I going to start a complicated dermatological procedures where I have to be there every six weeks for I don't know.
And your face peels off for a bit? Again? I have friends that do a lot of those face peels, and stuff in their skin is actually fantastic, So I know a lot of the stuff does work.
There's a gap in our minds between what we think we look like and what we look like that sometimes we catch now. And maybe this is generational because maybe young people don't have that gap so much because they've grown up with the front facing phone, so they've looked at their faces a lot, and so sometimes when that catches you and you get that glimpse a bit like
your mom's body in the bath. Yeah yeah, you're like, oh, and that's back to that or my outside much my insides bit and that's why it gets complex.
And do you think that, like the face filters are to blame for a rise in plastic surgery. I mean, I know people have said that before the those face filters, it's a smoothie skin out that trim.
You knows that well.
It used to be very difficult for us to imagine what we look like in different ways. Yeah right, I've probably got quite a deep and it sounds like maybe you do a little bit a deep seed that I shouldn't care so much. I mean, obviously don't care that much or I would look better, but you know, I shouldn't care so much. But I won't put a picture of myself up on my Instagram feed if I think I look awful, I won't filter it, but I'll choose
a flattering angle. I'll take three or four pictures to choose the one that I this is how I want to present myself. So we're all on a scale of that representation, aren't we. And then if I see myself and I have been filtered, and I go, oh wow, I can understand how seductive it is. Yeah, absolutely, and I see that my daughter who when she does it,
I mean, she's a bit beyond this now. But those snapchat filters that are really cool, that just make your eyes that little bit bigger, and your skin a little bit whiter, which is problematic in its own way, and your lip's a little bit fuller, and she suddenly just looks kind of like the models used to sell us bags or your fault.
I know it's true.
I'm part of the problem, Holly, But I have a friend. We digress, well, we'll come back to the main point. But I have a friend. She's a performer and she does quite a lot of TV in Asia, and they live filter faces now, so when she is on the TV there, she has had a filter put over her, and she says, it's amazing. You sit backstage and artists come off stage and they look so different to what you've just seen on the screen.
While they've do they still do a full face of makeup or do they make as well, and then they rely somewhat on the filter. That wow.
So if you think about when you were modeling, I'm sure sometimes you were airbrushed.
I'm sure you.
Didn't need it, of course, definitelysh you were airbrushed, and you know, we all did whatever way you needed to be whittled. And now that can happen in real time, it does make you wonder what it's going to do to our perception of beauty. Yes, if you never have to even gaze upon a less than perfect face.
Yeah, that's exactly right, and it's a bit scary.
Yeah.
After the break, Ali shares more about her own struggle with body image as a young model and how she feels about her body. Now we talk about body image and how we're teaching young women to see beauty in queen menopause and on no Filter with me, you wrote really honestly and beautifully about grappling with changing shape. We've touched on this a little bit already, and you wrote, I know I'm feeling older than ever, my body shaping itself into an actual potato. I really related to that.
What if this potato shape is permanent? What if this is my final resting body shape? Can I love this shape just as it is? How do I love my body when I hold the comparison to my twenty one year old self? Now, wait, is a tricky thing to talk about it's taboo. Younger women tell me all the time that we shouldn't talk about it at all, But most older women I know have some kind of complex relationship with their weight, and they do want to talk
about it. Yeah, and I know that you have and do where do you stand on that idea of that we should just try and make it less important by not focusing on it.
I would love women to not focus on their weight. I would just love women to feel strong and healthy. They would be my two things that women focused on out of anything, that they are healthy and strong, because I think I know that, certainly knowing it enough now and speaking to doctors and understanding about how important strength is after menopause and what menopause does to your bones and once the estrogen drops, and the most important thing
you can do for yourself is to be strong. So I would love for women to feel that that was their goal and healthy.
From the days when you wrote those words, for example, to where you are now and you said at the beginning of the show that you feel now like I wouldn't change it, is that because you've gone through this understanding this edge about what happens to your body, and so now you've found the ways to make yourself feel stronger, Like, do you relate to this person who's worried about being potato shan oh?
God, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, she's still definitely with me. I just don't feel as attached to wanting to be the shape I was when I was twenty one. I feel like I've now lived in this shaped body long enough to go. I don't think this we're going back. I think this might be it.
So it's more maybe about grappling with the chain.
Yeah, And if this is it, are you going to talk crap to yourself for the rest of your life or are you just going to be okay with what you've got now? And that's something that I constantly sort of work with, like just going, everything's working, Alli, you don't have cancer, you don't have some other disease. You've got all your limbs and fingers, your body is working. Let's just work on that. I'd tell you something that's really actually changed my mind is I don't know where.
I saw it.
It was some ad and it was a gentleman, Yeah, I guess my age sort of thing, and he said, I really want to be strong and healthy for my grandkids, And I've got that in my mind now, and I don't want to be a size seven. I mean to size eight or six for my grandkids. I want to be strong, I want to be healthy. I want to be able to lift them up. And I want to be running on the beach with them. I want to be hiking with them. That's kind of where I've shifted myself now, like what do I want my future self
to be? And it's not like bikini ready for the summer. It's fit and feeling good and that's helpful.
Do you think, as my young colleagues tell me all the time that our generation has particularly fucked up relationship with our bodies. They think that we were very doused in toxic diet culture.
Do the younger colleagues feel like that they're not doused in it?
Jesse, my co host on out Loud, who's in her thirties early thirties, she always says that Gen X we are very hard on ourselves about our bodies, and she thinks it is because we grew up in toxic diet culture, which I think we did. Yeah, And it was also so normal when we were young that there would be ads on the TV telling you how to lose weight fast. That every magazine and I worked in magazines, and I mean, so did you in a different way, was like lose five kilos fast. It was all out there, It was
all explicit. It was you need to lose weight. Was kind of our constant track in our heads. And what I wonder, and this is what I argue with Jesse about a bit now, is I wonder if that track's still there because on Instagram, certainly everybody is thin. TikTok, everybody is thin. That we're still presenting all that. But now that you're not allowed to say it out loud, does that make it better or worse? Do you know what I mean?
Yeah, I don't see anything's changed. I mean, I maybe I'm wrong. I'm not, you know, twenty one or thirty or whatever. But you know, now we've got talk of just taking a a zepic and losing weight, and isn't this great? It's the fast way to lose weight. Like, we've still got that talk. That's I hear a lot. You know, my twenty eight year old still is concerned if she puts on weight. My eighteen year old is concerned if she loses too much weight.
So I don't know.
I haven't seen a change. I think there's still maybe there's a slight better look in we're a little bit more diverse in who we see on TV now, but it's still described as isn't it amazing we've put like a size twenty woman on a screen, Like it's still like a thing that's like exciting and aren't we incredibly amazing that we've decided to cast this person where I don't know, it's still not like it's just average sizes doing average things, seeing normal people on TV that are
bigger and smaller and different colors. And it's getting there, though I don't think the diet culture has changed. I would love it too, but I don't think it has. I don't think it has really.
I just think maybe it's pushed underground a bit, like it would be very uncool in my office where I work, that anyone would ever say that anybody, you've lost weight, you look great, you know, like whereas we used to say that to each other all the time, and my girlfriends who are a similar age to me still do say that absolutely, and that wouldn't be okay to say. It wouldn't be okay to sit down at brunch and go, I'm not eating carps, even though you might not be
eating cars do you know what I mean? Right?
But are they still talking behind other women's backs and going, oh my god, she's put on a lot of weight.
Probably are, I don't know. It's interesting talking about daughters is interesting here because my daughter's fourteen. I had my kids much later than you were a similar age, so you're at a different phase. But she is very you can see, you can almost watch their brains switch on about it matters a great deal about what I look like and what size my body is and my messaging to her, and I sometimes worry that I fucked it,
so you have to tell me if that's true. When she was little, I was always like, it doesn't matter at all, doesn't matter at all what you look like. Bodies are for being strong and doing things. Everybody's beautiful, like all of that's yeah, right, And then I have a very clear memory of her. Maybe it was just when she went to high school, just before high school, going for a walk with her and me saying to her, doesn't matter what you look like, and her saying like almost sheepishly.
Mom, it really matters.
Everybody talks about it all the time. You know that person, she could see the split, she could see my lie in a way. How have you dealt with your daughters and talking about beauty and body?
You know, it was something that I was hyper aware of, hyper aware of, and I think I fucked it, and I know I fucked it, actually, And the way I fucked it was I would say outwardly unkind things about my appearance in front of my children. All mess that up big time. How can I turn to them and say, everybody's beautiful, you're perfect, and look in the mirror and go, oh god, this doesn't fit. I've put on so much weight.
I can't wear this dress anymore. I remember my youngest at one point saying, I hate it when you talk to yourself like that.
That's so good.
I mean, it's awful that you did, but it's good that she said that. That was the first.
Thing that I remember going, that's got to be the last time. If you're going to say it, say internally, like, do not speak it out loud. Actually, it was, honestly one of the first things that started changing my judgment of myself. Just stop saying it out loud, like one step, don't say it out loud, because I think it has more power if you say it out loud, and especially
in a room full of people or in front of people. Plus, I also had that thing, and I talk a little bit about that in the book too, is that I always felt nervous around women. It was so weird. I know it sounds crazy, but I felt nervous around women being a model, that they would think I was up myself for being a model. So the first thing I
always did was start to put myself down. It was the first thing I would say, whether it was I'm not very smart, or yeah, I'm so flat chested, or I've got this, I've got that, because I thought that was the way I'm going to get liked. I'm not going to be liked for being pretty amongst other women, but if I put myself below you, then we might be able to have a connection. Eh, that doesn't really work.
I was going to say, did that work?
No, No, not at all. And that's one of the things that modeling is a negative. For modeling, that was one of the things I had to really undo and it was really you know, hearing my daughter's going I can't stand it when you say how mean you are to yourself.
That's amazing because one of the things that's very relatable about that I tried to never talk about body or weight in front of my ca kids, but the number of times that they would have seen me glance in a mirror and go ough yeah. And the idea of us looking at ourselves and going and then catching myself
and going, oh throats. When you actually take that out of context and look at it from a helicopter, you're like, how awful that we do that to ourselves, no matter what we look like, whether we are models, whether we're not. You've felt instinctively, I've got to pull myself back, and then you probably began to believe the script. You were telling yourself that you are smart and you weren't this, and you weren't that.
Yeah, And I mean being a model, you're not booked for your brains. You're not booked for how you can understand this topic, or you're eloquent. It's like smile and look pretty, and that was it. So and that's what I became famous for. So it's taken me years to get to a point where I felt like I had something to say and someone might find it helpful or interesting, you know. So, yeah, that was a long piece to undo as well.
I always though that, even though, as you say, you're not booked for being pretty, models probably have a different relationship with criticism because you also get a lot more of that, probably than your average person. I was thinking about recently. I could probably tell you specifically some times that people have commented on my appearance and it would have really hurt my Yeah right, I remember a time
when my mom years ago commented on my weight. I could still remember like what I was looking at out of the window and what the days smelt like and all those things, because it really hurt me. But being a teenage model, you probably going to castings where people were like too short, too tall, too blond, to this, to that too, Like so what does that do? Do you become better at handling it or do you just hate yourself?
I think it's a little bit of both actually, But yeah, that's a very very good point, because that's the thing. You can be standing there and you can have six people who are looking at you like a painting, going yeah, look, she's got too many moles on that side of her back. Can we like cover those up? Cover those up? Like that doesn't look good? Yeah, like boobs are really small, Like give us something more. Oh, Ali, you just need to stand up a bit because when you slouch, like
your belly pokes out, you know. I mean, it's just like, okay, what do I do? How do I eat? And you know, suck in, suck in now, And of course you get the oh you look gorgeous and blah blah blah blah blah. But of course it's almost like you're waiting for the criticism to go. Okay, is there a butt in there? Is there a butt your hair? Or but this or but that? Or striving to change this or striving to get better? And I couldn't change my skin. My skin's
got a lot of freckles and moles. It was like, okay, well I lost that job because I couldn't make that disappear. So there's an enormous amount of criticism leveled. I think it models and people say, well, that's your job, you know, you put yourself in that position and that's your job. And it's like, yeah, but I didn't sign up for the criticism.
Wow. I was like, can't you just keep it quiet. Do I have to hear it like you say it? What I've left the.
Room the first time, because when I grew up in an era of you know, you'd do a polaroid, wait for the polaroid to dry, and you'd look at it and you'd go, okay, let's change the lighting. Then you'd shoot and it was film. You had no idea what those photographs were going to look like until they turned up in a magazine. But here I remember coming back, having not modeled for years and years, I came back. I don't know what I was shooting. I was shooting something.
And now you stand there and everyone's looking at the computer monitor because every photograph's popping up on the computer monitor. And I remember this job that they were airbrushing as they went. They were like, yeah, just get rid of the lines under the dark circles. We'll just smooth those out. So I remember just standing behind the photographer and you know, computer operator as they fixed me in real time, this going.
This is a zum watching yourself change is into this very.
Yes, just get rid of that. And whenever I do a photo shoot for anything, and they said, you want to come see the photos on the computer. I said, absolutely not, that's good. I never want to see it. And apparently a lot of old school models, which I consider myself one, don't like to see it. It's too off putting.
No, I don't want to know.
No, just take a nice photo and print it.
That's fine. This is interesting about retraining ourselves. You know how you were saying that after hearing your daughter say to you, I hate hearing you talk like that, and you were like, right, I'm going to stop saying that out loud. I do that a bit with you know, we were talking before about whether or not our generation was particularly brutal on ourselves and each other about our bodies. I do that in terms of retraining myself not to
constantly comment on women's appearances. Yes, when they're on TV, for example, Yes, you know, so the news readers on TV. And if my mom was there, my mom would say what hair?
Oh you know, oh.
That color does nothing for her. That would be my mom for sure.
My mom would go look at the size of her, how did she get to be that big? Yeah, I'm like, oh my god.
So I've trained myself to not comment. Yes, and it does change your behavior, ye, Like it really does. So do you think that that comment from your daughter, as well as a lot of the things you've been through in the last few years with menopause and other things, have helped you get to this place of not being so critical of your body as you literally trained yourself out of it.
Yeah. Absolutely, I had to really work at it. It wasn't just a natural progression. It was just a big awakening around a whole lot of things. And part of that was, you know, going through menopause and having a perimenopause, having a really rough shot with it, and just thinking about how much women go through, Just thinking about how much pain we go through physically every month, you know,
women with endometriosis, women going through labor. It's so much that we deal with day in and day out with our physical bodies that we put aside, we work through, we show up for work still, we show up to school. We push through the pain. And then it was like and then menopause, I was like, are you kidding me?
Are you serious?
This is not right?
So it was like, Okay, I am not going to push through anything anymore. I am not gonna go Okay, I'm fine, I'll keep going, I'll keep doing it. I'm going to actually really take care of myself for the first time. And I've been so mean to my body for so long as I think the culture has and it's hard not to see yourself the way culture does. And I'm like, no, fuck it, Yes, I'm going to be really nice to myself now, and I'm going to give myself the self care that it's my body's always
wanted and all the nice words it's always wanted. And I'm actually going to start to do it now. And that's been, you know, a work in progress, but it's actually made a huge, huge difference.
After the break, Ali and I talk about the falling midlife libido and how women can feel sexy and sensual when we're always in such a critical conversation with ourselves. You also wrote in Queen Menopause a lot about libido plunge and not feeling sexual.
Yep.
That is something that is so common for us at this time in our life, and that comes, just like all the other stuff, with a lot of shame. Yeah. Sure, and sometimes it can be to do with hate how my body looks. This isn't what sexy is, Yep. This is not what anybody has ever ever told me that sexy is as well as hormonal plunges that are just meaning. I would rather eat a box of hair. After being so honest about that, writing so beautifully about it in your book, how have you wrangled that?
I actually think that's probably the last vestige of the place that's the most challenging for me. I can do it with myself in partnership with Cam and feeling myself that sensual, sexy self in this body. Now, that is my last challenge to really overcome. He's great. I've actually given him dialogue to say I must say. I had to do that because he will say things that are like, okay, can we just back up on that comment, honey, because that does not help me at all. I remember this.
The one comment was like I was looking in the mirror, going I just hate my legs. They look like they've melted. I have cankles and like everything's just melted downwards. And he was like, oh, honey, he goes, I don't know why they look like that. Why do they look like that? You know, I mean, do you need I mean, we could exercise more. It was like the wrong thing to say. He was like, I know you were trying to be caring. I'm like, no, no, here's the dialogue. I love your legs,
I love you, I love everything about you. I love the changes. You're amazing. I'll always love you. So now I've given him that script. That's what he says everything.
Yes, sometimes they need a script, and sometimes we need a script too, because I think we talked about this when we had a conversation for the Very Perry Summit. But talking to your partner about how you feel about your changing body, especially if you've been together a long time, can be really hard because you don't want them to stop seeing you. Yes, as an attractive sexual person, but at the same time, you don't feel like an attractive
sexual person. I did an interview with you and Joe Elvin about this, and I actually went home after it and spoke to my partner because it was like I needed a script too of what to say. And I wonder if you've got any youthful tips about that, for like, the women who were in a place closer to the way you were when you were really like, what the fuck is happening? Yeah, and you've got to express it to the people around you. What was good? What was useful.
I think sometimes it helps to blow off steam more with your girlfriends about how you're feeling. I think there is something in that where Cam didn't notice the beard I was growing on my gym, He did not notice that I was the most observant. They're still seen.
They don't give a shit.
They don't give a shit. They just want to know that you love them. They want to know that you care about them because they're going through changes as well, you know. And I've seen my husband go through dealing with you know, gray hair and a bit of a paunch or whatever he's got going on. You know, the whole sex libido thing is that's a whole challenge in itself because, as you say, there's a simply got chemicals happening.
It's a chemical thing that's going on in your body with your hormones, where the libido is just nowhere to be found in the building. But you've got everything else that's happening, the stress of menopause, the stress of parents, you've got the stress of young kids, sometimes the sandwich generation as you know it's called, and so much happening, and then the need of your partner to connect with you on a physical level where it's like the last
thing you want to be doing, you know. I say that in the sense of talk to your girlfriends about it. I feel lucky that I've got a husband that really really wants to know what's going on. And when he knows what's going on with me, he feels better because he's always trying to fix something and try to figure out why I feel sad or why I don't want to get undressed in front of him, because he thinks it's about him. He thinks that it's about that I
don't like him anymore. And when I say I'm just having a real shameful moment about the changes in my body and I'm feeling slightly embarrassed about who i am now and that you won't find me attractive anymore, I mean that was shocking to Cam. It's like, what do you mean? You know? So, I think being honest like
that really really helps. And honest, you know, I always say, if it is menopause or whatever that's changed your body and just growing older and your partner knowing that a lot of those changes just could not be helped because it's due to estrogen deficiency or whatever is happening. I think taking a partner along to like doctor visits with you and filling them in on what you understand about menopause and the changes in your body. I think that
really helps them as well. And then of course finding ways to connect. That's if you're not feeling sexual, you know, a massage, massaging their feed or doing holding hands and words of love. Like that's why we work on a lot of the time. Oh, sometimes can goes. I just want you to tell me that you're still into me.
Yeah, just what you to say?
You're still into me and you still find me attractive. Like that's just what he needs because if I was having sex with him, that would be the stamp that that was what I was feeling. But if that's not happening, then you're I need you to tell me now. So I'm like, okay, I get that.
It's interesting, isn't it, Because in straight relationships, I think the stereotype is that men don't care. Do you know what I mean? But that's not true. Yeah, it's not true at all. No, No, the self esteem is also fragile at this time and all the rest of it. How are you going with and I know you don't have an empty nest quite, but it's emptying out or how very like, how's the transition?
I found it really difficult at first, really really difficult. When our first child left the nest. I mourned that for quite some time. It's one of those funny things too, where you know, you speak to some parents and they're like, yes, but you let them go, you let them fly. You know you can't keep hold of them for ever, And I'm like, I know that, but it doesn't mean I'm not going to be really sad that that family of
five is now no longer. There's no more sitting around the dinner table at night and being privy to the ins and outs of her life every day and having conversations whenever we want.
Like the loss of that, Oh I'm going to cry.
Yeah, I really really struggled, really struggled with it. And then when my son left, that was a whole other
morning as well. Yet I can say, now we're about two three years on from that, the change in our relationships or my relationships with the two older kids is something I really treasure now, and it's become a different kind of level of conversation and interest in you're where it does become more two adults loving each other and having shared interests and being able to still talk about your childhood but still talking about other more adult worldly things, and it's quite lovely.
And I guess it becomes well, ideally, it's now a relationship of choice, right, Yeah, is that they will hang out with you because they want to. Well, and maybe they need something, but they want to. It's something that they choose to do now rather than while you live here, so you have to see me every day. That's so true. And do you allow yourself to feel like a sense of accomplishment that they want to be around you and that the adult relationship is good?
Yes and no. Like there's also been conversations, particularly with my son, where which I'm grateful to have, where he's shared things from his childhood that were especially painful, of things that we thought we were doing the best thing for him and in fact it was really hurtful. So there are moments like that where you go, oh, my god, if only I could go back and change that aspect. So there's those moments where sometimes I don't feel so accomplished, where I go I mess that up for him, But
at least I go. He still wants to spend time with us. He's still wanting to come over, and he's still willing to share things about his childhood, and I'm just grateful that I have that with him. Yeah, so I go back and forth with that, but look, if I took a step back, I think we've done a pretty bloody good job with the kids. They are good people that I know. They are good people with good morals, and they're kind and loving, and I'm like, okay, yeah, that's good.
I'll take that. They sound really good. Before we go, we're not here to talk about menopause, even though we have a little bit. But you are Queen menopause? Where are you up to? Like I kind of I feel like, you know, when I was preparing for our conversation, I was revisiting a lot of the things you were talking about around the book and you have really gone through it, Like, yeah, we know all of our experiences are different. What's it like where you are now?
I am most definitely postmenopause, which I was not when I was writing that book. And I think that having spoken to a bunch of women about postmenopause for the book and then of course, since touring the book and starting Aviana, the wellness platform for menopause or women that we've started, and just hearing further stories of women postmenopause,
I got really really excited about postmenopause. I did feel the light at the end of the tunnel, and that's something that I'm really passionate about that women should know about because it can be a shit show. And to know that you will not always feel like that, you will not always feel as bad as you do right now, and there is help out there. Maybe for some women it comes automatically, naturally that the birds start singing again
and you start sleeping and everything's magically delicious. I do know that I had to work at feeling better, and I have done a lot around that, you know, with exercise and diet and mindset and stuff. But I do feel happier within myself than I can ever remember.
That is something to look forward to.
It.
Yeah, what's the one thing you would tell somebody who's where you were.
Definitely, definitely continue to seek assistance and help. Don't just go I'll just put up with it till this is over. There is a lot of great help out there, and yeah, to know that there is definitely a world, a life experience is ahead of you that are really joyful and fun and wonderful, and now is the time, more than your entire life experience, you deserve to be well taken care of and do it. Spend the money on yourself if you can do it.
Don't think that.
Oh I can't. You know, oh I don't have the time. Make the time for you. It's so important.
A bloody love Ali Dado.
I've spoken to her a few times over the years because of some of you all know. I've worked with her brother in law for the longest time. We hosted a show together called This Glorious Mess. And every time I've interviewed her about family, about menopause, about this issue, I find her just very real and very honest and very thoughtful. I know you want to know, so I'm also going to tell you, yes, she looks bloody great. Not great for her age, but great for any age.
You can see the pictures for yourself. But she came into the studio in a very cool dead and boiler suit, all hair and glowing skin and big grin. She looks like she's settled into that place. I said, I wanted to get to in my intro a place of comfort and confidence, but knowing midlife, it might just be a visit.
Because Holly knows what'll come next. It just keeps throwing curveballs, which is why, of course, we're going to be back very soon with season three of your show, and we'll be talking about divorce and change and food and sexuality
and you know, more of the good stuff. I can't thank you all enough for being here with us through season two of Mid Please if this body image conversation resonated, go and listen to our conversation from season one with Helen Thorn about bodies because she was hilarious and honest about her midlife body transformation. And you're going to laugh so much again a week. But anyway, thank you, thank you,
and thank you to our mid team. That's our EP name A Brown, our producers to Elisabezazz and Charlie Blackman. Sound design and audio production from Leah Porge's and Tom Lyon, and social media video production by Josh Green. And I'm Holly Wainwright. And we'll see you back here in just a few weeks.
On October the fifteenth, not long ago, goodbye.
Then