November 22, 2023 • 73 mins
She was one of the highest-paid supermodels of the 80s, gracing the covers of countless magazines around the globe, used to being seen but never heard . . . until now.
Paulina Porizkova joins Sophia to share her journey from child refugee to international supermodel, how working in the fashion industry took a toll on her mental health, dealing with societal pressures put on women, and getting better with age!
Plus, Paulina reveals how social media has played a big role in her life . . . finally giving her a platform to get her voice heard.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, everyone, It's Sophia. Welcome to work in Progress. Hello Whipsmarties.
Today we have an incredible trailblazer, a woman who's work
(00:21):
in the space of making us all more vulnerable about
our humanity, our.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Aging our love lives.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
And how we see ourselves. I'm just so incredibly inspired
by her. Today we're joined by none other than Paulina Porzakova.
Paulina was born in Czechoslovakia in the Cold War, relocated
as a political refugee to Sweden, and then began modeling
in Paris at the age of fifteen. In nineteen eighty four,
(00:49):
she was the first Central European woman to ever appear
on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue. By
nineteen eighty nine, she was the face of S D. Lauder.
The same year that she made read her former husband
the frontman of the cars ric Ocassick. He was forty
at the time and Paulina was just nineteen, and in
the decades to come. During their marriage, motherhood, abudding writing
(01:13):
career for her, there was also sadness, loneliness, isolation, eventually
a divorce, and the revelation of a deep betrayal after
her ex passed away, and Paulina really stunned her fans
by being fiercely vulnerable and open. She came to the
Internet expressing her sadness and grief with such a disarming
(01:35):
honesty that she really called in the world to share
in her experience of being a woman who had to
start over. She wrote an incredibly beautiful book called Unfiltered
about her exploration of everything heartbreak, grief, beauty, aging, relationships, reinventing,
and finding your purpose. And you've got to read the
(01:58):
book if you haven't, you've got to follow her on Instagram.
If you don't, her community is certainly one of my
favorites in the digital space, and I feel like every
time I peruse her page, I learned something. Let's jump in, Paulina.
(02:21):
I'm so happy to have you here today. You are
one of my favorite Instagram friends, one of the women
who inspires me so much, and I can't wait to
ask you all of the questions and just get to hang.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Oh, that's so cool to you here, and I love
following you too, like we're Instagram friends. How amazing is that? Right?
I know, sometimes a social media thing can be so awful,
and sometimes it's so wonderful. I mean, so, I guess
you can take your pick, but it's so love to
meet you. Okay, so it's kind of face to face
sort of ish.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Yeah yeah, yeah, pretty close.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Yeah yeah yeah. So it's it's really nice to get
to talk to you too.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
It is. I love it.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Well, I gosh, there's so many things that I'm curious
about about your life, and you set such a beautiful
example for people who follow you and for people who
get to, you know, check in in that digital space
and also just out in the world in general. But
before we get into you know, this phase of life
(03:25):
that you're in and the way you use your voice,
I actually want to rewind and find out from this perspective,
if you know, you look back at Paulina as a
little girl, whether you were like eight or nine years old,
do you see through lines to your personality now in
(03:46):
who you were as a little girl. Can you kind
of set the scene for us about how you grew up?
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Well? I I think that Well, those who follow me
and who I've read my book already know this, but
I'm py for those who don't. Yeah, I I mean
I do believe that all of our I mean our
childhoods are what forms us into the people that we are, right,
I always think I was actually in that. I think
(04:15):
it's called the Huntington Gardens the other d Yeah, my
boyfriend took me there and it's a beautiful place. And
we walk past this little place that had just bonside trees,
and I was looking at them and my thought and
it sort of reminded me how I think we are
like bondside trees. We we're trimmed by our parents and
(04:37):
shaped by circumstances to become people we are, and and
it's almost impossible to escape that initial shape. And also
like obviously, you know, if you are you know, if
you're an oak, or if you're a weeping willow, or
if you are you know, whatever, whatever tree you actually are,
that's who you will always be. But the ccumstances and
(05:00):
parenting is what makes you shaped one way or the other.
And so to return back to my own shaping, I mean,
I feel like I'm exactly the same person that I,
you know, was as a as a little Girl's cool.
The ingredients are the same, but it's been baked a
lot longer. Kind, I'm like full of metaphors. I'm sorry,
(05:23):
metaphors are fun, and like this this one always sort
of brings me back to the metaphoricals. I apologize, but
I was, you know, I was when I was three
years old. My parents left me because they were escaping
the then Communist invasion of Russia. Actually it was the
(05:48):
Soviet Union back then, and they left me because they
were young and they thought they didn't realize the consequences
of their actions. They were, you know, in their early twenties,
and they thought, I guess they thought that they would
get out of the country and then sort of you know,
have me sent for like wherever they were going to
end up there, they were going to send for me.
(06:08):
And that, of course didn't work out because once the
Soviet Union invaded the Czech Republic, all the borders were
closed and then we were stuck behind the Iron Curtain
until night. So that separated me from my parents for
a really long time. And so I sort of unwittingly
(06:31):
like I feel like sometimes life has propelled me in
these ways that I'm not responsible for, you know, like
I'm not responsible for being a child left by our parents.
And also I became the sort of symbol of the
Iron Curtain, the deprivations of the Iron Curtain, because my parents,
(06:52):
in order to get me out of the country, used
a lot of the Swedish press. Sweden is where they
ended up after this, and so I became so I
became like this famous political refugee. I had no idea.
I was just a little chubby girl with with grandma.
But I was also the symbol of the wrongs of communism,
(07:15):
and I got this whole other persona that had nothing
to really do with me. It only had to do
with how people viewed me, right, And I didn't really
even put those two together until I was Then later
on my mother came back for me, got me out
(07:36):
of the country, we moved to Sweden permanently, and then
I sort of got to encounter this other persona that
had grown up around me, which was calling other political refugee. Yeah,
that wasn't at all the little girl that I was.
That was very curious, very peculiar. I think kind of
(07:57):
really formative in also how I then which my modeling career,
because in a lot of ways that's the same sort
of thing. You know, people see you on paper, view
about you, and they form their own conclusions about who
you are. As a person, yes, and that person might
not actually have a whole lot in common with the
(08:18):
actual person.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
One of the things I find fascinating about it is
people who believe they know you as a three dimensional
human from two dimensional snapshots, because what it really does,
and you know, you mentioned it that there's wonderful things
connection possible, education possible because of social media, but there's
(08:43):
also this reality that people believe that two dimensional you
is all you are, right, and there is so much
more inside of you, and so many more dynamics happening,
and so much more about your life. You know, life
happens in three D. And it's really fascinating to think
about your journey as someone whose circumstance in the in
(09:08):
print became an identity of sorts that you had to
grapple with, and then your profession in print became another identity.
And yet you are, you know, this person who exists
in three hundred and sixty degrees in your life going.
Those are just pieces of me. That's part of my
(09:29):
story or that's what I do for work, and there
is me under all of this. I would imagine that
you know, in every phase you think about that, I
know it's something you talk about in terms of what
your life is now. Were you aware of it in
this sort of deep way as a teenager, you know,
(09:53):
living in Sweden, or is it something you've had to
sort of go back and unearth and understand as an
adult maybe both?
Speaker 3 (10:03):
Both? Both? Yeah, And of course I'm thinking about you too,
being an actress and how people assume they know you
from watching you playing a part, which is even more
confusing because you're actually playing somebody who you are not
in three D. So that's like, I think that's really
confusing to people is when you entered that room. But okay,
(10:26):
that is side and I'm curious about so, like also
to reverse the question after I answer it. For me,
when I was a teenager, and actually until I think
until fairly recently, I had this sort of uncomfortable relationship
(10:47):
with what was said about me and other people's assumptions.
I always had this feeling that I was somehow overlooked,
like the actual need was overlooked, which was accurate, but
I didn't Yeah, I couldn't exactly, I couldn't put it
into words. I didn't spend a whole lot of time
pondering it. Because when you're young you have a lot
(11:08):
of other things to do that, you know, that are
a lot more pressing. Yeah, going out. So yeah, I
didn't spend a whole lot of time analyzing it like
I have now. But there were elements things that I
did that were sort of direct responses to do this,
and some of them were very rebellious, you know, where
(11:32):
I I had this real desire to tell people the
truth when whether I was asked or not asked, And
so I got myself into hot water quite often because
once I became a model, and I was you know,
I was fifteen, so I was I was still a
(11:52):
little girl. And I remember the first interview I ever
did was OSA magazine and I was asked what you know?
The guy just sort of so, so, you know, what
do you know, how do you like modeling? And I
said it sucks. That became the headline of the piece,
you know, model whites that feeds her, you know, as
(12:14):
modeling sucks. Yeah, there was a there was an element
of that, of course, but there was also this desire
to sort of stop people for a moment and and
and and sort of be like, hang on a second,
just like before you put your assumptions on me, let
(12:34):
me stand up and speak for myself, and that was
sort of an attention grabber. I just wasn't wise enough
at that time to actually be able to really unroll
it and make myself heard the way that I wanted
to be. And that's all come with age and with
social media, because on social media we actually have a voice,
(12:58):
even though, as you say, we're two dimensional on social media,
but we're not being translated through somebody else. It's not
a journalist taking your words and fitting them into the
character they want you to be. It's you getting to
speak your mind from the well of you, and so
(13:18):
it in some ways, the you know, social media for
me has been kind of like one of the best
things that has happened to me.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
We'll be back in just a minute, but here's a
word from our sponsors.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
What about you? Did you when when did you start acting?
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Gosh, when I was eighteen.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
I was doing you know, theater in school before that,
but I didn't really venture into a professional world of
it until I was in college. And I love being
a storyteller. But it is, you know, to your point,
there's there's conflict there. It's really wonderful and it sucks
(14:02):
you know, getting up and having to move away from
your family, having it be completely impossible to have any
version of you know, a routine or schedule a doctor's
appointment or you know travel when you know someone gets
married or god forbid, someone passes away. Like, it's weird
to sort of be beholden to an industry so intensely.
(14:24):
I love it, and it's hard, it's it's all of
the things. And I think what made it all the
more strange for me was, you know, junior high. In
high school, I went to an all girls' school that
was very academic, which I loved, you know, super nerdy
for me. And then within three years of graduating high school,
I was on this massive hit TV show kind of
(14:46):
at the whim of an industry that, despite having grown
up in La, I knew nothing about. I didn't know
about its machinations. I didn't know about its propensity to
use young women to create you know, fodder that would
make money for other people, but not those young women
like I. Just I got thrust into it so fast
(15:10):
and I had no idea what I was doing, and
I really got chewed up and spit out. But I
think experiencing that and realizing how young women are so
often treated as ponds, as commodities, often objects in the
jobs you and I do made me a very feisty
(15:31):
little activist because I went, oh, no, no, I don't
I'm not going to agree with this.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
This is some bullshit.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
And so, you know, the advent of social media, similarly
to what you're saying, you know, enabled me to speak more.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
And I think one of the.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Things that in this stage of life where I feel
freer than I've ever felt before and more myself than
I've ever felt before, is I've realized that sometimes I'm
ready to talk about something right away, and sometimes I
need to sit right And that's new too, because it
is such an immediate platform. So it's ever changing. To
(16:11):
your point, you know, I think the relationships with all
of it shift, but I can't imagine, you know, for
you sort of hitting the ground running in the way
that you did it at just fifteen, it was hard
for me.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
At twenty one. Fifteen is so young. I mean, how
did that happens?
Speaker 3 (16:31):
You know, you.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Escaped finally or you were able to be brought out
as this political refugee with your family, you moved to
Sweden and then this modeling career happens. Were you in
the midst of a culture shock or did you feel
like you settled in Sweden and then this happened. What
was that time like for you?
Speaker 3 (16:54):
It was actually, I for a long time I thought
that that was the hardest part of my life life wow,
because it was so incredibly hard and and such a
dark part of my life that I sort of had
the cart blanche now and that I wasn't going to
go through any more severe hardships and nay to that
(17:19):
turns out that's not how life works.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
No, it turns out they keep coming.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
Yeah, yeah, but yeah, that was a that was a
very difficult time for me as a child, because yes,
I did come. We hit Sweden when I was like ten,
and I had to relearn a culture. Of course, I
had to, you know, learn a language. I had to,
but not it's not like when you move from country
(17:43):
to country that you only learn a language. There's also
like things that are not so obvious to you, like
children's programs, you know, stories, folk songs, traditions of Oh
you have to take all of this in and make
that your own in order to fit, in order to
(18:03):
fit like you are part of this new country and
that you fit. I so wanted to We all want
to fit in. I so wanted to fit in, and
I never did. I was never allowed to fit in,
not in those years. And I think it was mostly
because I was famous. I was famous as a political refugee.
So all these kids in school looked at me and
(18:25):
they were like, well, you smell because you're communist. So
it's like I had this cloak of otherness that I
couldn't no matter how hard I tried to be like
everybody else. I have an essay about it in my book,
and we're talking about like the just the money part
(18:47):
of it, where I thought, oh, maybe the reason in
your child so you simplified that, maybe the reason that
I'm not fitting in while I'm assimilating so well, I'm
speaking the language, I'm you know, I'm I was better
at Swedish than most of my classmates because I love language.
(19:08):
And so I thought, also, maybe it's money. It's because
we don't have very much money, and so I don't
get to buy the cool clothes that everybody else is wearing.
And I kind of look like, you know, I look
like there's like a refugee because my mom kept insisting
in dressing me in all these fashions she got in
secondhand stores that you know, set me back about ten
years free, you know, free whatever the time was the sepanties,
(19:34):
and so I thought money would buy me a way
out of that. And I went to work over the
summer and worked really hard all summer, so I couldn't
get enough money to buy that one pair of jeans
and that one T shirt and that one pair of kids,
you know, and the military belt that would make me
look like everybody else. And I was really excited. It
(19:57):
was like, you know, it was that, you know, like
after the summer, I'm going to come back and I'm
gonna I'm just gonna be one of like I'm going
to be one one of you. Yeah, And I managed
to get the outfit and I and I walked in
first day of school. It was ninth grade, so I
(20:17):
was like fourteen, and it seemed to and it made
no difference at all. It's like nobody saw. The same
people that didn't see me before didn't see me now,
and the same people that picked on me then picked
on me now just for different how they started picking
on me because I was trying to actively fit in,
(20:39):
and so I got my head dumped in the toilet.
And that's what I got for my you know, for
my trying to fit in. And this is also where
I discovered that money was not the answer. It wasn't
that which made me different from everybody else. And so,
with a child's easy logic, I assumed it was the
(21:00):
same thing that made my parents leave me, which was
that there was something inherently wrong with me with the inside.
So there was something just terribly wrong with the person
that I was made people dislike me, and I couldn't
figure out why. And that was going to be a
lot my lot in life. Was that nobody was going
to ever love me, was the conclusion I drew.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Of course, Well, it's it's such a thing when you
when you're othered or bullied or you know, you experience
those sorts of traumas as a kid, you know, the
trauma of what you went through with your family leaving
and being separated, like.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
It's it's so it's such a big.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Thing that gets into your developing brain and then of
course you you rationalize, I must have done something, It
must be me. I mean, I god, I spent forty
years on the Not Enough Too Much Seesaw and then
eventually went like, I'm just going to get off. I'm
going to get off the ride. But it takes so
long I think to as an adult go back and
(22:08):
unpack these strange connections that your brain makes when you're young.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
Did you actually manage did you manage to get off
that seesaw? Because I'm still kind of occasionally hanging out.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
I mean, I don't think anybody ever gets off it permanently.
I don't think that that's really possible, but I do.
I do realize that I am finally at a point,
and I think in a way sometimes you know, you
have to grind yourself down or like whatever people talk
(22:45):
about it with addiction. It's hitting rock bottom right for me.
I think what it took was going to the end
of every road that everybody said, if you just do
the work, and if you just do the therapy, and
if you just do the couple's counseling, and you just
do that, And I went to the end of every
single one and went, I just don't think this is
for me. I've done all the work. There's no more
(23:08):
work to do. I have to figure out how to say, Oh,
perhaps what I'm doing is I'm just stripping off all
of these things that I've been told I'm supposed to
be that aren't me. And I'm not going to downplay
heartache or betrayal or unhappiness or seismic shifts that tell
(23:31):
me this is not for me. You know, I'm not
going to do that anymore. Who am I serving by
doing that? And it's been more of that sort of
a journey for me where I've realized I deserve to
be happy and not everything needs to feel like a
slog every day and doing the work, I think sometimes
(23:53):
is mismanaged therapy speak for making women do emotional labor
that is not theirs to do. And in a way,
just like trying to take off everything that isn't mine,
has allowed me to be less held hostage on that seesaw.
(24:15):
I realized some of that intense swinging that's dizzied me
my whole life as other people, and I'm like, you
take it, you do it, I'm good, I'm tired.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
Yeah. I think of that as I mean, it might
not be exactly, but shame. I think of that as shame,
as other shaming you for this or not being that
or being too much of one thing and too little
of another. And I think that's such just some scietal
ill that makes me so much shame women, mostly women,
(24:51):
Like I always keep thinking, men only get shamed for
one thing. I mean, there's a lot of things that
go under the umbrella of the one thing. But men
are shamed for not being men enough. That's it. We're
shamed for like literally everything from them. Everything we were born,
the way we look, the way we talk, the way
we actually we dress, the way we do this.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
The way I like too tall, too short, too fat,
too thin, too successful, not successful enough, too ambitious, you
have no ambition, you're lazy, too pretty, you're not pretty
at all. It just is like, no matter what you are,
you can't do it right. If you're if you're a
gall it's wild.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
Yeah, and then and then you get into my category,
which is too old, too old even be relevant. And
then and then uh, and then you get shamed for
not not accepting your fate and rolling into a corner
and yeah, and knitting socks for your future grandchildren. It's
(25:53):
so wild, never ending, never ending for women.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Well, and it's so interesting too, because one of the
things I really appreciate about what you talk about is
there is this there's this sort of supposition in the
world that there's a boundless privilege that comes with being pretty,
and it's to.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
A certain extent, right, there is an absolute privilege. I
call it pretty privilege, and it absolutely exists, yes, But
it also.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
I think it exists in a very nefarious way because
there's an illusion of a lot of privilege, but there's
also a lot of using that happens to women who
exist in these sort of industries and professions. And I
think again, for when I think about your story, there's
something about the fact that you were fifteen. You know,
(26:46):
when you started modeling, you were a little girl, and
you know you had to pick up and move to
Paris in the midst of having finally been moved to Sweden. Like,
all of this is a lot for a teenager. You know,
I got on TV at twenty one, I was old
enough to vote and had a driver's license and could
(27:06):
drink in the US and all the things.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
I don't know that I.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Could have handled it at fifteen. And I'm so curious,
from this vantage point that you sit at now, how
do you look back at that, and how do you
sort of make sense of it all the gift of
the career, the toughness of it, the sort of jumble
(27:32):
the both, and if you will.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
Sure if I I'm not sure if it makes sense.
I think a lot of things that happens to people
does not make sense, and you just kind of have
to accept that it never will and it's just what
it is. That is the progress, that is the lot
that you were given. Yeah, I mean, for me, on
(27:57):
one hand, in Sweden, I was in a in a
school where where children where other girls were mercilessly bullying me,
and I couldn't fit in no matter what I did,
and I was suicidal. At twelve, I tried to slip
my wrists in the baptob and fortunately I got a
very dull knife and nothing really happened. And I still
(28:21):
have a little like a little star on my wrist
from from the attent. And so you know, I missed
my grandmother desperately because she was she was my mother.
I missed my I missed I missed my childhood, my
home where I felt, which was you know, Czechoslovakia, and
I felt so desperately alone and like I was just
(28:44):
never going to fit in, and so Paris. Moving to
Paris was sort of afforded me a new door, like
I have no idea what behind what's behind this door
marked number three, but there'll be something else but the
misery behind door number two. And so I was terrified,
(29:05):
but I felt like, well, it couldn't get any worse.
I mean, I suppose you could, but at that at
that at that point, I didn't think so. And what
was waiting awaiting me at the other end of behind
door number three was and I was freedom was complete
(29:26):
and utter freedom, which a fifteen year old to not have.
Mind you, I don't highly recommend that to most people
or to myself. The cost of that freedom is this
pretty devastating anxiety that I have with me ever since.
(29:47):
Because again we was talking about our jobs, not providing
a routine. You're never you were never in the same
place twice you like for me, every day you're working
with a different set of people in a different location.
And that sounds like a lot of fun unless you
think of it as a you know, you're a fifteen
year old kid and you're in a country where you
don't speak the language, and you don't know the people
(30:09):
and you are treated as an object, yes, but a
pretty object. So again confusing, Like, was it unpleasant to
suddenly go from being called you know, communists or to
you know, beautiful young woman. Yeah, that was so bad.
(30:33):
It was like that felt pretty good and getting attention
for being pretty as opposed to just different and you know, ugly. Definitely,
it was definitely it was a better feeling. But then
then when that comes this whole other thing of like
fulfilling other people's expectations of you. Now when your job
(30:57):
is literally just be pretty. It's amazing how hard it
is to wake up in the mornings and believe that
you are pretty, because you will look at yourself in
the mirror every day and you'll go, oh, no, there's
like a you know, a little vein in my eye
(31:18):
that's going to lose me my job. There's a pimple
on my chin. Back in nineteen eighty when I started,
there was no such thing as all that you know,
like I me. Now you can you know, use any
filter or any you know app and make yourself look flawless.
Back then, we actually had to look the way we
(31:38):
looked on the page, because you know, painting over something
costs a lot of money, so expected to show up flawless,
and nobody is flawless. So it did to this whole
cycle of anxiety about waking up the next day and
(32:01):
something being out of place, something having moved, so that
you will lose your job, so that people will be
unhappy with you. I mean it's like you are is
just object and you cannot crack, you cannot get dusty.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
And would that happen?
Speaker 1 (32:19):
I mean as a kid, you know, bopping around Paris
and going from shoot to shoot. You know, you said
it yourself. It sounds glamorous, but when you really get
into the reality of it, it's hard and scary and
anxiety inducing. Were there days where you would show up
to things and be dismissed or watch other girls just
(32:42):
get dismissed from jobs?
Speaker 3 (32:44):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, so actually very early on that
would see that that wouldn't happen to you. When you
are established as a model and somebody's being a large
amount of money for work that you expect to do,
then it doesn't happen anymore. But when you're starting up, Yeah,
I got fired on my like I think third day
(33:08):
of work, which completely you know, I thought that was
the end of my life. That's it. They're sending me
back to Sweden, like nobody's going to want me because
I well, actually that day I got fired because the
photographer didn't like that I couldn't move right. He kept
wanting me to. Yeah, I'm a fifteen year old kid.
(33:31):
And they put these like ball gowns on me with
like big brown bows and in a park and they go, okay,
do something, you know, and I'm like, do what? Put
a hand on the hip and you smile awkwardly and
they're like no, not that you look stupid. Do something else.
(33:54):
You have no idea what to do, and nobody's giving
you any any nobody's helping you. They're just sort of
expect thing for you to figure this out. And I didn't,
and so I got sent home. And I got sent
home because of the pemple. I got sent home because
one actually once I lost like two weeks of work
of really important money because I had been working with
(34:15):
a photographer that used tungsten lights. See these very very
bright lights and he sort of lined them all up
in a row, and then you had to look straight
into the lights and you could only do it in
short like short bursts. You could only do it for
like a minute or so, and then you have to
close your eyes because it, you know, it was blinding you.
(34:36):
But after working with him all day, my retinas were
completely burnt. And so I woke up the next day
and my eyes were just glowing red. I had no
that had no whites in my eyes at all, wornt.
And so besides the pain of that, and also me
going like, oh my god, like what's going on permanent?
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Yeah, I'm sixteen years old.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
I don't know any doctors in France. I don't know
what to do. Unfortunately, the agency did send me a doctor,
but it's like, yeah, well you know, your eyeballs are,
your retinas are burnt, and it's going to take about
two weeks too. Yeah eel itself. So you know, stuff
like that will happen. And I think a lot of
(35:21):
people feel like that's a small price to pay for
all of the benefits that you get from this, right,
And maybe that's true. I'm maybe that's true. I think
in the I think, in the whole, the in the
(35:46):
span of of of of a life lived or selling beauty,
I suppose it is is that you become an object
to people and you see yourself as an object, you
(36:09):
get used to the idea that you are in fact
an object. And that's that hasn't really hit me until
now I'm fifty eight. You know, I'm finally finding out
how much of my life I spent being okay with
just being an object, Like nothing really expected of me,
(36:31):
desired of me but to be pretty. And how long?
How that sort of you know that obviously comes at
a cost of of everything else.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
And now a word from our sponsors who make this
show possible.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Think about it. Something you know, in this sort of
removing what isn't me from myself that I've been really
hard at work on for the last year. One of
the things that's fascinating to me and something that you know,
when I was in this sort of point of crisis
in November of last year and I started working with
(37:22):
my now therapist, he said to me, you have a
very high threshold for suffering.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
Interesting, and it really took my breath.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Away, and I realized that one of the things that
makes me good at my job is that I can
perform under any circumstance because that's my job to take
care of my crew. Whether I've just been hit by
a co star, or I have just lost my grandfather,
or you know, a war has broken out somewhere. My
(37:54):
job is to show up and be a leader and
smile and say hello to everyone, and make sure the
prop department has what they need, and get my wire
on so the sound guys can wire somebody else because
we're two minutes behind, and we don't have four minutes
to be behind. And what I realized is that I
like that I show up. I like that I'm a
good teammate. I don't like that I turn my back
(38:15):
on myself and my experience and what's hard for me.
And I've done it for so long that I've recalibrated
normal and bad. You know, violent is bad. Bad that
isn't violent is pretty normal to me, you know. And
(38:36):
as the sort of lines go on and on, it's
been really interesting to realize that I need to move
where my threshold is much closer to safer and more
gentle experiences interactions and relationships with people. But what happens,
I think, when you do that work is you don't
have such tolerance for being treated like a product rather
(38:59):
than a person, And that becomes a whole confusing thing
in your work. And I would imagine for you. You know,
you're moving up in your career. You're becoming this, you know,
really successful model. You become a supermodel. You you do
sports Illustrated cover, You're the face of Este Lotter. You know,
(39:20):
you're you are doing all of these enormous things. And
in a way, the more you can be this beautiful product,
the more rewarded you are. But I wonder you know,
from this point of incredible self awareness that you are
(39:41):
in that you help teach other people to do. You know,
do you look back and go, oh, I can see
the I can see the pain and the purpose in
that stage in my career. I can see how you know,
at nineteen, I fell in love with a man who
was forty and didn't think that that was weird and
maybe you know, so much of your love story was beautiful.
(40:05):
And at this stage we look back and we go like,
who's talking to teenagers? You know we have we have
we can hold the both and of these things. And
I guess I just I'm so curious about that sort
of meteoric rise. You know, what happened to you in
the course of four years? Does it feel wild. To
look back on it.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
Now, it only seems wild to me. And if I'm
comparing it to I suppose you know that the life
of my friends or my family these like extremes. But no,
it's it's my life. It's like it's like your face.
(40:45):
You wake up and look at it every day and
you just think it's what it is. It's it's what
you were given.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
Well, it's all relative to you.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
It's all relative to me, So no, I don't look
at it and think wow. I remember when I when
I first started becoming popular as a model, and there
would be interviews done, and how people would always react
with like I got you have this incredible story, like
(41:18):
you you know, like if this was a movie, I'm
not even sure we believe it, you know, drags to
Richard like you know, talk about it's like I'm like
the quintessential American success story, right yes, or communist girl
and she's up top of the world, you know, high
highly overpaid model. It's I never really thought that there
(41:45):
was anything that I think as a child, you don't
think that there's you you sort of believe that, well
I did, actually, like this is going way back or
for or comparison's sake. When I was little, I thought,
because my parents lived in Sweden, I thought everybody's parents
(42:08):
lived in Sweden. I thought that that's what parents did. Like,
you know, I didn't question it. This is what happens
when you're a child. You don't question it. You grow
up within a certain set of circumstances and you go, oh, well,
you know, I'm sure everybody else grew up like this.
And then when you start seeing little indications that maybe
that's not true. No, actually other people's parents live in
(42:30):
the same house. Oh, very puzzling. And then you have
to start making these connections where you're like, oh, okay,
so that that that that makes me somehow other. And
I guess I felt to be other for such a
large part of my life. Yeah, I don't really know
(42:53):
what it's like to feel included or to feel connected
to people that feeling like I'm somehow an outlier, always
on the on the sidelines. Yeah, until now, like now,
having written a book and doing these events with women
that are my age that come to me and that
(43:15):
have read my book and will say how much we
have in common. Yeah, thank you for this, because it
really resonated with me and like, this is the most
connected that I've ever gotten to be.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
Yes, So what do you feel like led you to this?
Speaker 1 (43:33):
Because you do write from this really profoundly connected place,
and you do have these beautifully frank conversations with all
of us who follow you. What what do you think
made that shift for you to live unfiltered?
Speaker 3 (43:53):
It was never a shift. It's just that nobody listened.
Nobody cared because I will and objects, so nobody cared
to hear from the vase, even cared to hear from
you know, the luxury car or whatever the hell I was,
whatever I represented for it was not you know, I
(44:16):
was incredibly fortunate to be in this exalted position and
having a voice was not a part of the deal. Right,
This is what always been Yeah, never been filtered. I've
always told the truth when I asked. It's just literally
that was not interesting to anybody. And I'm still reeling
(44:39):
that it's interesting to anybody now.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
Yeah, And isn't that what's so interesting about social media?
How much of it changed that for us because we
didn't have to rely on people to ask the questions
and then print the article. We could just print the thoughts,
and you know, there's this great moment in the book
where you talk about the girl in the bar who
recognized you.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
You know, you're the crying lady on Instagram. I loved
that post.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
Oh my gosh, and you said that that was really
kind of the first time you felt heard.
Speaker 3 (45:11):
I took it as such a compliment. It's funny when
I was retelling the story after right after to my tablemates,
they were sort of slightly horrified. They were like, oh, no,
are you okay, Like, are you you know, do you
feel terrible about being called? And I was like, no, no, no,
not you guys, you're not getting it. This is a
huge compliment. Yeah, oh she the I don't care what
(45:34):
she calls me. But the fact that she, you know,
that she took it as your vulnerability, is allowing me
to show mine like it makes me like it's okay
not to have to be perfect all the time. I
was the greatest compliment I've ever gotten. I mean I
(45:54):
still live off of that.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
Actually yeah.
Speaker 4 (45:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
Well, And and do you think that that helped to
motivate you to continue to keep going and have the
conversations you have online with people in the way you do.
Speaker 3 (46:09):
I think that initial connection that. Yeah, And I think
I've mentioned this on Instagram too enough times now, but
my initial connection to social media, to Instagram specifically, was
just being at the end of my rope again. It
was a moment of like sitting in the bat of
(46:30):
with the knife, but this time, you know, I'm grown up.
I have two children who are grieving. I can't do
these like little pity parties. Not that I think in
my case it was a little bit of a pain party.
And I don't think it was I don't think that
I seriously considered feeling myself because I sort of knew
(46:54):
that well that it would be a selfish move and
that and there was kind of like this is going
to sound really strange. It was almost like an idea
that I toyed with to really need some pressure to think, like, well,
you know, I could always kill myself like later, you know,
(47:16):
like I have to do. You know, I'm like, I
don't really want to wake up tomorrow, but I have to.
I can always call it wits when everything is settled.
Not fair, not not thinking straight obviously. So this is
why I plugged into Instagram, because I was literally I
was so desperately alone, and so yeah, full of pain
(47:40):
and there was nowhere to go. There were no friends,
it was middle of COVID. There was nothing I could do,
and so I tossed that it was like writing little
help me, not sticking them into a bottle and casting
it out into sea. Yeah, maybe somebody will get it.
Maybe maybe there'll be one person that will hear me
(48:02):
and go, oh, I hear you, or one person that'll go,
you know what. I kind of feel like you we
can have through this experience. And of course it turns
out because it was COVID and there was a lot
of other really unhappy peoples not unique to me, it
sort of builds a little community. Yeah, and that's kind
of where it started, where I felt like there was support.
(48:25):
Of course, there's also you'll always get the haters, you know,
the people uh you know, uh you need to get
stronger meds and get off of here, like who cares?
And well, then don't be on my page. It's really
simple that the algorithm is really simple. If I bother
(48:46):
you don't be here.
Speaker 2 (48:47):
Just don't be here.
Speaker 3 (48:49):
Hello, who's the smart one now? Yeah? But I think
getting that kind of support and feeling that little sense
of this community of women that were mine, women my age,
or just people who learn a lot of pain made
(49:12):
it really something like a community. Like so it's a
community that I keeps returning to because now this community
has done in incredible things for me. I mean, it's
gotten people, you know, I use my voice and people listen.
Speaker 4 (49:29):
And now a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
And I think there's something so beautiful about that kind
of vulnerability, because we do fear as humans that you know,
will tell the truth and people will go oh too
much and lean out. And what really tends to happen
is when you get vulnerable, other people lean in and say,
oh wow, I feel that too.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
And I have loved watching.
Speaker 1 (50:03):
The way that you opened up to talk about navigating grief,
and the way that you open up to talk about,
you know, navigating finding love, navigating aging and menopause and
sexuality and.
Speaker 2 (50:16):
All of these things that so many people seem.
Speaker 1 (50:18):
To be so scared to talk about, but they're so
central to our lives and our identity. And it's a
joy to watch the lean in when these conversations move.
Speaker 2 (50:31):
Out in the world.
Speaker 1 (50:32):
And I guess I'm really curious, you know, from this
vantage point, having been as open as you've been over
these years and cultivating this community of women. You know,
what do you love about it? What do you love
about being vulnerable? What do you love about aging? What
advice are you giving to women in this in this
community that you've built.
Speaker 3 (50:55):
Well, I mean you kind of just answered that question
by asking it. What I love is this community aspect
is that I can put out a question out there
and I will get I'm connected to people now, yes,
it's virtually yes, it's not, you know, because it can't
(51:16):
always be face to face. Sometimes it is, and again
through the Internet, I get to them connect to them
in person, which is fantastic. But it's these connections, these
that if I bear myself, it prompts you to bear yourself,
and there we establish a real, true, authentic connection that's
(51:39):
not superficial. I've had nothing but superficial my whole life.
And so this sort of heart to heart that happens
because I decided to undress by mistake, but seeing the
repercussions of that, of what happened when I let it
truly spill out out, unaltered and and and and raw,
(52:06):
and the reaction, most of the reaction being thank you,
And here's my heart in return? Is that is just
that is a place that I've never been in. I've
never gotten to bear my heart and I've never gotten
(52:26):
to hold yours in return. And it's to me, it's
like it's like slut life has suddenly taken on a meaning, like, Oh,
this is what it's all about. It's about patients, It's
about connecting to people. This is also why I will
sometimes ask, you know, like the other day, I just
(52:48):
posted a very simple post about what does free Palestine
mean to you? You don't need a lesson on the
history of the conflict. I can read the same information
as everybody else, but I wanted to find out what
it meant to people. What does this mean to you?
What do you mean when you say this? I'm interested
(53:08):
to hearing, to hearing from you because it allows me
to get sort of a feel for the room that
I'm moving in. And it can be assuring, or it
can be the opposite, it can be owarming. But being
(53:29):
able to sort of communicate how we feel, not shouting
political facts at each other. That's not a connection. And yes,
when you know, some people are really good at it,
and people that are educated on a specific subject and
know enough about it at please put it out there
(53:49):
for me. I'm not for me, I'm interested in the
emotional human ass How do you react to this? Does
just makes you feel? Do you feel this way?
Speaker 5 (54:00):
Like?
Speaker 3 (54:00):
Let me know, because I'm sort of incorporating it into
this big bucket that then I like to let sit
and ferment to get you know, to get the usable
stuff out of it. It does need to sometimes sit
and mature. It's like, this is not stuff that It's
(54:24):
not like you said before, it's not about an immediate feedback.
Sometimes you have to take things in and just let
them sit and let them pause. Yeah, and this is
how I This is how I get new ideas, This
is how I learned. This is how I throw this
why listening to other people's opinions that don't necessarily agree
(54:44):
with me, that I don't necessarily agree with and find
the humanity in all of our perspectives. Sometimes there there
are there's occasions where this is impossible. Yeah, we know,
we know, But in most cases we all just want
to be heard. Everybody just wants to somehow register as
(55:08):
existing and having and being heard. Sometimes it's just enough
to be heard by one person. And this is sometimes
my trolls need to troll just because they want to
be heard by somebody, even if it's you know, it's
like that child that's being you know, getting negative attention
is better than no attention, right, So sometimes I feel
(55:28):
for them too. I think, oh my god, you're you.
You need to you need to be offensive in order
to be hurt heard. How what a what a sad
pattern you're in?
Speaker 1 (55:40):
Yeah, yeah, what a hard position. I'm curious because I
I feel very similarly to you, and that the you know,
the bigger the topic, the more I want to glean
and digest and really sit with it and and find thoughts,
the more patience I'm giving myself to do so now
than ever before. Or some of these topics that you're
(56:03):
talking about are so big, you know, concepts like aging
and sexuality and our voice and how women are allowed
to use their voices in the world and what doors
we have to kick down to use them in the
ways we want to. What do you think, having gleaned
so much from your community, there is there advice that
(56:24):
you feel like has fermented for you that you'd give
to women about navigating their aging and embracing their sexuality
at any stage, you know, really feeling at home in
their bodies and beings.
Speaker 3 (56:40):
Well, I guess the first thing that I would say
is the most important thing that I've learned with age
is not to give anybody advice unless they ask. So, no,
I'm not going to be I think anything on anybody,
on anything that is not my right to do. So
I can share my experiences, which.
Speaker 2 (56:59):
Is that's really cool.
Speaker 3 (57:02):
I think that's the other beautiful thing of aging is
that you sort of come to these realizations, like the
advice that I would give or I to give advice,
you know, which is about you know, self acceptance and
sinking into who you are, and and and and celebrating
(57:25):
the parts of celebrating yourself because you're unique. All of
that stuff actually comes with age. You will all do
that if you pay attention. Not you specifically, but if
if if people pay attention, they will sink into the
same spot where I am with age. That is the
benefit of age. That is the beauty of sort of
(57:48):
turning the corner and understanding that that yes, you have
unique traits. You have like the thing that constitutes you
is unique and therefore of value. It might not be
of value to the entire world. It might be a
(58:09):
value only to a few select people, but it is
a back and I think that is the thing that
we all feel like we need, is like to be
of war, to be again, coming back to wanting to
be hurt and and the blowback to this is when
you talk about, well, actually, the biggest blowback I get,
(58:32):
I'm sorry, I'm jumping around a little bit. The biggest
blowback I get is daring to be a sexual female
at my age because you are sort of allowed to age,
you know, with grace by I guess, starting to dress
in sort of male looking suits and wearing your hair short,
(58:55):
and you know, all of those things that are sort
of typically the male domain. You are now now as
an older woman, you're supposed somehow supposed to move into that,
Like you're supposed to a handsome older woman. That's allowed,
Like you can have a certain element of power about you,
but you have to move into the male domain if
(59:18):
you if you represent yourself as still a sexual creature,
that's when you get a really big all that this
is what people don't want from you. Post menopausal woman
is not supposed to, I guess, want sex, and she's
not supposed to be sexy, especially if she looks her age. Again,
(59:41):
you can buy a little bit if you look younger.
If you look younger, then it's okay to you know,
to post some bikini shots of yourself. But if you
actually if you look your age, then that's an absolutely.
Now it has to be sexless. You have to be sexless.
(01:00:02):
I'm not sure what exactly the cutoff point is there.
Do you remember that skit that Julia Louis Dreyfus did
the last double Day, Yes, it's true, she it wasn't
It's not a joke. There is such a thing. There
is such a thing, certainly for actresses. It's your last day.
Now you're just going to get to play grandma or
(01:00:24):
the not or you know, healthcare worker or something. Right,
But being the love interest past a certain age, Yeah, no, no,
that's we don't want that. We don't want to see that.
And yet women my age, my girlfriends, a lot of
(01:00:45):
them that are single, recently single, being single for a while,
are the most ferociously sensual and sexual women I know.
Now you don't have kids, you don't have to worry
about you know what your children need, and always putting
other people first. You know, you actually get to you
(01:01:08):
have time to have sex, to be sexy, to feel sexy,
in whatever variation that you you know, obviously it's different
for different people. But finally you have the time for it,
and you're not supposed to You're not supposed to you're
not supposed to desire it anymore. Like that time is
(01:01:31):
better spent making cookies.
Speaker 4 (01:01:33):
And now a word from our wonderful sponsors.
Speaker 2 (01:01:43):
It feels so crazy.
Speaker 1 (01:01:44):
To me, though, because to your point, we get to
know ourselves better and better as we age. And everyone
I know who's aging, you know, in my friend group
and in the in the intergenerational friend groups we have
where you know, we've got friends who similarly to you.
My internet friend are you know, hovering around sixty friends
(01:02:07):
who are you know. My parents are in their mid seventies.
I talk less to them about this, but you know,
more to my community who I want to have these
conversations with and everybody I know. It's like having better
sex than they did in their twenties. Yeah, and even
watching people find, you know, rather than the relationships they
(01:02:29):
thought they should be in, the relationships they want to
be in. You know, you've been sharing about falling in
love and what it is to really be in a
relationship that fills your life with such joy and where
you feel so.
Speaker 3 (01:02:44):
Seen that you choose rather than the relationship that chooses you.
Speaker 6 (01:02:50):
Yes, And I think this is a big, big difference,
because yes, you are a team when you're in your twenties.
If you're in your thirties, Yeah, what what the relationship
is based on is that that spark, write, that gymasilapa,
that chemistry thing, which generally is really just unhealed childhood scars.
(01:03:13):
Let me marry mommy or daddy and try to fix them.
Speaker 3 (01:03:17):
And we all do this the well, not hopefully not
all of this, but I certainly did do this. And
it took me until fifty eighth to get to a
spot where I'm no longer attracted to my parents. I'm
no longer attracted to that same situation that I was.
To try to heal it, you try to heel myself
(01:03:38):
to try to fix them. It's like worked all of
that stuff out, and it has allowed me to look
for something else. Like I keep saying, it's readjusting my picker.
Speaker 2 (01:03:50):
Oh, I love that I've done the same.
Speaker 3 (01:03:53):
Yea.
Speaker 1 (01:03:54):
And I think when you finally stop seeking the claws
that fit your wounds.
Speaker 3 (01:04:00):
Mm hm.
Speaker 1 (01:04:01):
And you go out in the world and you say,
what will bring me joy? Not not what will feel
familiar to my pain, but what will bring me joy,
what's on the other side of healing, what's on the
other side of picking at the scar?
Speaker 3 (01:04:20):
Yeah? I think joy we some yea. In my case,
I think I confuse the feeling of joy with the
feeling of excitement, which is not necessarily a good thing.
It's an excitement of the unknown because you obviously get
you get excited. Excited and nervous feels the same anxious,
(01:04:43):
but it feels the same. And it's that thing where
you get thrown into a situation that you can't entirely
navigate the control and you're uncertain, and that uncertainty makes
you feel high. Yes, and joy has that seemed sort
of lifting. But mine is the pain. Yes. Yes, often
(01:05:05):
equate falling in love with that painful part that it
doesn't have to be attached to any pain is breaking
revelation to me.
Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
Of course, it's life altering because even the idea that
you're meant to fall in love, why not rise in
love or grow in love?
Speaker 3 (01:05:26):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (01:05:27):
And when and when the switch flips, your whole life
changes for the better.
Speaker 2 (01:05:34):
So in this, in this stage.
Speaker 1 (01:05:37):
That you're in, I want to I'm watching the clock
and I want to be respectful all time. I know
we've gone over a bit in this beautiful stage that
you're in. You know, you have this unbelievable book which
I know everyone listening at home who hasn't read it
yet is going to run out and get it. And
everyone who has is nodding along because they know. How
do you look at the landscape of your life when
(01:05:59):
when growth and that sort of rising and that joy
is so central to where you find yourself? What what
feels like the work in progress of your life now?
Speaker 3 (01:06:16):
Stimulating all of all of that input. Frankly, because there's
so much of it, it seems like you're doing a
terrific job of it. By the way, congratulations, I'm trying.
I love hearing this from from other women too. And
you're you're you're considerably younger, and to be so at
(01:06:40):
home in your skin and processing what you are processing
now is like, Wow, you have such a I get
a tiny bit envious that you have. You know that
that you have a You're much further ahead than I was,
So congratulations to you on that. For me, sort of
(01:07:01):
just understanding that there is there's so much that I
don't yet know, and leaving myself open to hurt, to failure,
to the violence that in ed of it inevitably comes
with learning. I know it sounds kind of obvious, like
(01:07:24):
like we should all be in this space, but I
haven't gotten into this space until now, until I'm sort
of finally comfortable with the assemblage of the chemical assembly
of who I am and who I was as a child.
I mean, my boyfriend just said this the other day,
(01:07:44):
and it's kind of really stopped me. He said something
about how incredibly smart I was, and and I go, oh,
you know, gee thinks that means a lot coming from
like the smartest person. But I've heard this a lot, right,
Like you always heard hear how smart you are? And
I thought, no, actually never heard how smart I was
(01:08:11):
from somebody that I loved, from somebody I was never
ever been told that I was smart. And when I'm
told I was, when I was told I was smart,
it was always in uh, it was always in comparison.
It was always in Like now now I'm talking about
(01:08:32):
how smart I am, and I can't find the words.
It was always in relation to me being a model.
I was smart, a model, which is really not that smart.
So UH realized that when he me smart, I believed
(01:08:52):
him that to me was almost a shocking revelation. Was
to kind of go, oh, so it's fifty eight. Finally
something my love tells me. He thinks I'm the smartest woman.
He said, No, I actually believe that. To me is
like having traveled from.
Speaker 2 (01:09:13):
The moon that's beautiful.
Speaker 3 (01:09:16):
To this little space in La and so sitting with that,
it allows me now to really look around. Yeah, and
that's scary. It's really great to look around. It's so
much easier to not look, so much easier to put
(01:09:38):
blinders on right, walk into your lazy chair, turn on
the TV, to to some to something you've already watched
ten times because it's comfort food, and just take that.
That's so much more comforting and so much easier than
(01:10:00):
in a new space and looking around and taking things
you don't know. Yeah, yeah, I think that's that's also
the pleasure of life is to be able to do that,
not to be so scared into my corner, to feel
like I'm strong enough to rave outside.
Speaker 2 (01:10:21):
Yeah, to continue to grow.
Speaker 5 (01:10:23):
To continue to grow, and well, I wonder how long
I wonder how I wonder how long it takes people
too before they kind of decide to shut down.
Speaker 3 (01:10:36):
I think that's when you do get old, when you
keep muscle all. But I mean, I look at my
I look at my mom, well, having an easy relationship
with for most of our lives, and we're finally can
figuring things out again. It's never too late, never, And
she's seventy eight and she is she has grown more
(01:10:57):
in the last five years than most of the time
that I've known her. So like, wow, wow, that really
inspires me.
Speaker 2 (01:11:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:11:07):
Well, and they talk about that, right that when you
begin to heal, it reverberates out in both directions. You know,
you're setting an example for those of us coming after you,
and you're healing up the line for the ones you
came from. And it's it's such an amazing thing to
be reminded that we can do that for each other.
And I think especially communities of women can do that
(01:11:30):
for each other. We have these tethers to each other
and when we lean in it, it really does change everything.
Speaker 3 (01:11:40):
When we lean in vulnerability, and with honesty, we really
can help each other. And I think mostly we don't
seem to actually be entirely capable of that until we
get a little I agree too many things in a
way when there's too much competition imposed.
Speaker 1 (01:11:59):
By sociod Yes, but I think as we get older,
we unlearn all the bullshit that society told us we
were supposed to feel about each other and about our surroundings,
and we find each other in a new way. I mean,
you talk about it with your mom, you talk about
it with your digital community, and I just keep coming
back to this idea that really what you do over
(01:12:23):
and over and over again is you encourage the rest
of us to live an unfiltered life, to keep digging.
And it's beautiful and I just want to say thank you.
Speaker 3 (01:12:34):
My gosh, thank you.
Speaker 2 (01:12:39):
You are a treasure. I feel like I could talk
to you forever.
Speaker 1 (01:12:42):
I know we've gone so far over, but I hope
this will just be the first of many conversations I
get to have with you.
Speaker 3 (01:12:50):
Oh well, you were much too kind and this was
delightful and you're are just such a right brilliant light
in your corner. Appreciate you so much. To know that.
Thank you, thank you so much,
Hi, everyone, It's Sophia. Welcome to work in Progress. Hello Whipsmarties.
Today we have an incredible trailblazer, a woman who's work
(00:21):
in the space of making us all more vulnerable about
our humanity, our.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Aging our love lives.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
And how we see ourselves. I'm just so incredibly inspired
by her. Today we're joined by none other than Paulina Porzakova.
Paulina was born in Czechoslovakia in the Cold War, relocated
as a political refugee to Sweden, and then began modeling
in Paris at the age of fifteen. In nineteen eighty four,
(00:49):
she was the first Central European woman to ever appear
on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue. By
nineteen eighty nine, she was the face of S D. Lauder.
The same year that she made read her former husband
the frontman of the cars ric Ocassick. He was forty
at the time and Paulina was just nineteen, and in
the decades to come. During their marriage, motherhood, abudding writing
(01:13):
career for her, there was also sadness, loneliness, isolation, eventually
a divorce, and the revelation of a deep betrayal after
her ex passed away, and Paulina really stunned her fans
by being fiercely vulnerable and open. She came to the
Internet expressing her sadness and grief with such a disarming
(01:35):
honesty that she really called in the world to share
in her experience of being a woman who had to
start over. She wrote an incredibly beautiful book called Unfiltered
about her exploration of everything heartbreak, grief, beauty, aging, relationships, reinventing,
and finding your purpose. And you've got to read the
(01:58):
book if you haven't, you've got to follow her on Instagram.
If you don't, her community is certainly one of my
favorites in the digital space, and I feel like every
time I peruse her page, I learned something. Let's jump in, Paulina.
(02:21):
I'm so happy to have you here today. You are
one of my favorite Instagram friends, one of the women
who inspires me so much, and I can't wait to
ask you all of the questions and just get to hang.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Oh, that's so cool to you here, and I love
following you too, like we're Instagram friends. How amazing is that? Right?
I know, sometimes a social media thing can be so awful,
and sometimes it's so wonderful. I mean, so, I guess
you can take your pick, but it's so love to
meet you. Okay, so it's kind of face to face
sort of ish.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Yeah yeah, yeah, pretty close.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Yeah yeah yeah. So it's it's really nice to get
to talk to you too.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
It is. I love it.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Well, I gosh, there's so many things that I'm curious
about about your life, and you set such a beautiful
example for people who follow you and for people who
get to, you know, check in in that digital space
and also just out in the world in general. But
before we get into you know, this phase of life
(03:25):
that you're in and the way you use your voice,
I actually want to rewind and find out from this perspective,
if you know, you look back at Paulina as a
little girl, whether you were like eight or nine years old,
do you see through lines to your personality now in
(03:46):
who you were as a little girl. Can you kind
of set the scene for us about how you grew up?
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Well? I I think that Well, those who follow me
and who I've read my book already know this, but
I'm py for those who don't. Yeah, I I mean
I do believe that all of our I mean our
childhoods are what forms us into the people that we are, right,
I always think I was actually in that. I think
(04:15):
it's called the Huntington Gardens the other d Yeah, my
boyfriend took me there and it's a beautiful place. And
we walk past this little place that had just bonside trees,
and I was looking at them and my thought and
it sort of reminded me how I think we are
like bondside trees. We we're trimmed by our parents and
(04:37):
shaped by circumstances to become people we are, and and
it's almost impossible to escape that initial shape. And also
like obviously, you know, if you are you know, if
you're an oak, or if you're a weeping willow, or
if you are you know, whatever, whatever tree you actually are,
that's who you will always be. But the ccumstances and
(05:00):
parenting is what makes you shaped one way or the other.
And so to return back to my own shaping, I mean,
I feel like I'm exactly the same person that I,
you know, was as a as a little Girl's cool.
The ingredients are the same, but it's been baked a
lot longer. Kind, I'm like full of metaphors. I'm sorry,
(05:23):
metaphors are fun, and like this this one always sort
of brings me back to the metaphoricals. I apologize, but
I was, you know, I was when I was three
years old. My parents left me because they were escaping
the then Communist invasion of Russia. Actually it was the
(05:48):
Soviet Union back then, and they left me because they
were young and they thought they didn't realize the consequences
of their actions. They were, you know, in their early twenties,
and they thought, I guess they thought that they would
get out of the country and then sort of you know,
have me sent for like wherever they were going to
end up there, they were going to send for me.
(06:08):
And that, of course didn't work out because once the
Soviet Union invaded the Czech Republic, all the borders were
closed and then we were stuck behind the Iron Curtain
until night. So that separated me from my parents for
a really long time. And so I sort of unwittingly
(06:31):
like I feel like sometimes life has propelled me in
these ways that I'm not responsible for, you know, like
I'm not responsible for being a child left by our parents.
And also I became the sort of symbol of the
Iron Curtain, the deprivations of the Iron Curtain, because my parents,
(06:52):
in order to get me out of the country, used
a lot of the Swedish press. Sweden is where they
ended up after this, and so I became so I
became like this famous political refugee. I had no idea.
I was just a little chubby girl with with grandma.
But I was also the symbol of the wrongs of communism,
(07:15):
and I got this whole other persona that had nothing
to really do with me. It only had to do
with how people viewed me, right, And I didn't really
even put those two together until I was Then later
on my mother came back for me, got me out
(07:36):
of the country, we moved to Sweden permanently, and then
I sort of got to encounter this other persona that
had grown up around me, which was calling other political refugee. Yeah,
that wasn't at all the little girl that I was.
That was very curious, very peculiar. I think kind of
(07:57):
really formative in also how I then which my modeling career,
because in a lot of ways that's the same sort
of thing. You know, people see you on paper, view
about you, and they form their own conclusions about who
you are. As a person, yes, and that person might
not actually have a whole lot in common with the
(08:18):
actual person.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
One of the things I find fascinating about it is
people who believe they know you as a three dimensional
human from two dimensional snapshots, because what it really does,
and you know, you mentioned it that there's wonderful things
connection possible, education possible because of social media, but there's
(08:43):
also this reality that people believe that two dimensional you
is all you are, right, and there is so much
more inside of you, and so many more dynamics happening,
and so much more about your life. You know, life
happens in three D. And it's really fascinating to think
about your journey as someone whose circumstance in the in
(09:08):
print became an identity of sorts that you had to
grapple with, and then your profession in print became another identity.
And yet you are, you know, this person who exists
in three hundred and sixty degrees in your life going.
Those are just pieces of me. That's part of my
(09:29):
story or that's what I do for work, and there
is me under all of this. I would imagine that
you know, in every phase you think about that, I
know it's something you talk about in terms of what
your life is now. Were you aware of it in
this sort of deep way as a teenager, you know,
(09:53):
living in Sweden, or is it something you've had to
sort of go back and unearth and understand as an
adult maybe both?
Speaker 3 (10:03):
Both? Both? Yeah, And of course I'm thinking about you too,
being an actress and how people assume they know you
from watching you playing a part, which is even more
confusing because you're actually playing somebody who you are not
in three D. So that's like, I think that's really
confusing to people is when you entered that room. But okay,
(10:26):
that is side and I'm curious about so, like also
to reverse the question after I answer it. For me,
when I was a teenager, and actually until I think
until fairly recently, I had this sort of uncomfortable relationship
(10:47):
with what was said about me and other people's assumptions.
I always had this feeling that I was somehow overlooked,
like the actual need was overlooked, which was accurate, but
I didn't Yeah, I couldn't exactly, I couldn't put it
into words. I didn't spend a whole lot of time
pondering it. Because when you're young you have a lot
(11:08):
of other things to do that, you know, that are
a lot more pressing. Yeah, going out. So yeah, I
didn't spend a whole lot of time analyzing it like
I have now. But there were elements things that I
did that were sort of direct responses to do this,
and some of them were very rebellious, you know, where
(11:32):
I I had this real desire to tell people the
truth when whether I was asked or not asked, And
so I got myself into hot water quite often because
once I became a model, and I was you know,
I was fifteen, so I was I was still a
(11:52):
little girl. And I remember the first interview I ever
did was OSA magazine and I was asked what you know?
The guy just sort of so, so, you know, what
do you know, how do you like modeling? And I
said it sucks. That became the headline of the piece,
you know, model whites that feeds her, you know, as
(12:14):
modeling sucks. Yeah, there was a there was an element
of that, of course, but there was also this desire
to sort of stop people for a moment and and
and and sort of be like, hang on a second,
just like before you put your assumptions on me, let
(12:34):
me stand up and speak for myself, and that was
sort of an attention grabber. I just wasn't wise enough
at that time to actually be able to really unroll
it and make myself heard the way that I wanted
to be. And that's all come with age and with
social media, because on social media we actually have a voice,
(12:58):
even though, as you say, we're two dimensional on social media,
but we're not being translated through somebody else. It's not
a journalist taking your words and fitting them into the
character they want you to be. It's you getting to
speak your mind from the well of you, and so
(13:18):
it in some ways, the you know, social media for
me has been kind of like one of the best
things that has happened to me.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
We'll be back in just a minute, but here's a
word from our sponsors.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
What about you? Did you when when did you start acting?
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Gosh, when I was eighteen.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
I was doing you know, theater in school before that,
but I didn't really venture into a professional world of
it until I was in college. And I love being
a storyteller. But it is, you know, to your point,
there's there's conflict there. It's really wonderful and it sucks
(14:02):
you know, getting up and having to move away from
your family, having it be completely impossible to have any
version of you know, a routine or schedule a doctor's
appointment or you know travel when you know someone gets
married or god forbid, someone passes away. Like, it's weird
to sort of be beholden to an industry so intensely.
(14:24):
I love it, and it's hard, it's it's all of
the things. And I think what made it all the
more strange for me was, you know, junior high. In
high school, I went to an all girls' school that
was very academic, which I loved, you know, super nerdy
for me. And then within three years of graduating high school,
I was on this massive hit TV show kind of
(14:46):
at the whim of an industry that, despite having grown
up in La, I knew nothing about. I didn't know
about its machinations. I didn't know about its propensity to
use young women to create you know, fodder that would
make money for other people, but not those young women
like I. Just I got thrust into it so fast
(15:10):
and I had no idea what I was doing, and
I really got chewed up and spit out. But I
think experiencing that and realizing how young women are so
often treated as ponds, as commodities, often objects in the
jobs you and I do made me a very feisty
(15:31):
little activist because I went, oh, no, no, I don't
I'm not going to agree with this.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
This is some bullshit.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
And so, you know, the advent of social media, similarly
to what you're saying, you know, enabled me to speak more.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
And I think one of the.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Things that in this stage of life where I feel
freer than I've ever felt before and more myself than
I've ever felt before, is I've realized that sometimes I'm
ready to talk about something right away, and sometimes I
need to sit right And that's new too, because it
is such an immediate platform. So it's ever changing. To
(16:11):
your point, you know, I think the relationships with all
of it shift, but I can't imagine, you know, for
you sort of hitting the ground running in the way
that you did it at just fifteen, it was hard
for me.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
At twenty one. Fifteen is so young. I mean, how
did that happens?
Speaker 3 (16:31):
You know, you.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Escaped finally or you were able to be brought out
as this political refugee with your family, you moved to
Sweden and then this modeling career happens. Were you in
the midst of a culture shock or did you feel
like you settled in Sweden and then this happened. What
was that time like for you?
Speaker 3 (16:54):
It was actually, I for a long time I thought
that that was the hardest part of my life life wow,
because it was so incredibly hard and and such a
dark part of my life that I sort of had
the cart blanche now and that I wasn't going to
go through any more severe hardships and nay to that
(17:19):
turns out that's not how life works.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
No, it turns out they keep coming.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
Yeah, yeah, but yeah, that was a that was a
very difficult time for me as a child, because yes,
I did come. We hit Sweden when I was like ten,
and I had to relearn a culture. Of course, I
had to, you know, learn a language. I had to,
but not it's not like when you move from country
(17:43):
to country that you only learn a language. There's also
like things that are not so obvious to you, like
children's programs, you know, stories, folk songs, traditions of Oh
you have to take all of this in and make
that your own in order to fit, in order to
(18:03):
fit like you are part of this new country and
that you fit. I so wanted to We all want
to fit in. I so wanted to fit in, and
I never did. I was never allowed to fit in,
not in those years. And I think it was mostly
because I was famous. I was famous as a political refugee.
So all these kids in school looked at me and
(18:25):
they were like, well, you smell because you're communist. So
it's like I had this cloak of otherness that I
couldn't no matter how hard I tried to be like
everybody else. I have an essay about it in my book,
and we're talking about like the just the money part
(18:47):
of it, where I thought, oh, maybe the reason in
your child so you simplified that, maybe the reason that
I'm not fitting in while I'm assimilating so well, I'm
speaking the language, I'm you know, I'm I was better
at Swedish than most of my classmates because I love language.
(19:08):
And so I thought, also, maybe it's money. It's because
we don't have very much money, and so I don't
get to buy the cool clothes that everybody else is wearing.
And I kind of look like, you know, I look
like there's like a refugee because my mom kept insisting
in dressing me in all these fashions she got in
secondhand stores that you know, set me back about ten
years free, you know, free whatever the time was the sepanties,
(19:34):
and so I thought money would buy me a way
out of that. And I went to work over the
summer and worked really hard all summer, so I couldn't
get enough money to buy that one pair of jeans
and that one T shirt and that one pair of kids,
you know, and the military belt that would make me
look like everybody else. And I was really excited. It
(19:57):
was like, you know, it was that, you know, like
after the summer, I'm going to come back and I'm
gonna I'm just gonna be one of like I'm going
to be one one of you. Yeah, And I managed
to get the outfit and I and I walked in
first day of school. It was ninth grade, so I
(20:17):
was like fourteen, and it seemed to and it made
no difference at all. It's like nobody saw. The same
people that didn't see me before didn't see me now,
and the same people that picked on me then picked
on me now just for different how they started picking
on me because I was trying to actively fit in,
(20:39):
and so I got my head dumped in the toilet.
And that's what I got for my you know, for
my trying to fit in. And this is also where
I discovered that money was not the answer. It wasn't
that which made me different from everybody else. And so,
with a child's easy logic, I assumed it was the
(21:00):
same thing that made my parents leave me, which was
that there was something inherently wrong with me with the inside.
So there was something just terribly wrong with the person
that I was made people dislike me, and I couldn't
figure out why. And that was going to be a
lot my lot in life. Was that nobody was going
to ever love me, was the conclusion I drew.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Of course, Well, it's it's such a thing when you
when you're othered or bullied or you know, you experience
those sorts of traumas as a kid, you know, the
trauma of what you went through with your family leaving
and being separated, like.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
It's it's so it's such a big.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Thing that gets into your developing brain and then of
course you you rationalize, I must have done something, It
must be me. I mean, I god, I spent forty
years on the Not Enough Too Much Seesaw and then
eventually went like, I'm just going to get off. I'm
going to get off the ride. But it takes so
long I think to as an adult go back and
(22:08):
unpack these strange connections that your brain makes when you're young.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
Did you actually manage did you manage to get off
that seesaw? Because I'm still kind of occasionally hanging out.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
I mean, I don't think anybody ever gets off it permanently.
I don't think that that's really possible, but I do.
I do realize that I am finally at a point,
and I think in a way sometimes you know, you
have to grind yourself down or like whatever people talk
(22:45):
about it with addiction. It's hitting rock bottom right for me.
I think what it took was going to the end
of every road that everybody said, if you just do
the work, and if you just do the therapy, and
if you just do the couple's counseling, and you just
do that, And I went to the end of every
single one and went, I just don't think this is
for me. I've done all the work. There's no more
(23:08):
work to do. I have to figure out how to say, Oh,
perhaps what I'm doing is I'm just stripping off all
of these things that I've been told I'm supposed to
be that aren't me. And I'm not going to downplay
heartache or betrayal or unhappiness or seismic shifts that tell
(23:31):
me this is not for me. You know, I'm not
going to do that anymore. Who am I serving by
doing that? And it's been more of that sort of
a journey for me where I've realized I deserve to
be happy and not everything needs to feel like a
slog every day and doing the work, I think sometimes
(23:53):
is mismanaged therapy speak for making women do emotional labor
that is not theirs to do. And in a way,
just like trying to take off everything that isn't mine,
has allowed me to be less held hostage on that seesaw.
(24:15):
I realized some of that intense swinging that's dizzied me
my whole life as other people, and I'm like, you
take it, you do it, I'm good, I'm tired.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
Yeah. I think of that as I mean, it might
not be exactly, but shame. I think of that as shame,
as other shaming you for this or not being that
or being too much of one thing and too little
of another. And I think that's such just some scietal
ill that makes me so much shame women, mostly women,
(24:51):
Like I always keep thinking, men only get shamed for
one thing. I mean, there's a lot of things that
go under the umbrella of the one thing. But men
are shamed for not being men enough. That's it. We're
shamed for like literally everything from them. Everything we were born,
the way we look, the way we talk, the way
we actually we dress, the way we do this.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
The way I like too tall, too short, too fat,
too thin, too successful, not successful enough, too ambitious, you
have no ambition, you're lazy, too pretty, you're not pretty
at all. It just is like, no matter what you are,
you can't do it right. If you're if you're a
gall it's wild.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
Yeah, and then and then you get into my category,
which is too old, too old even be relevant. And
then and then uh, and then you get shamed for
not not accepting your fate and rolling into a corner
and yeah, and knitting socks for your future grandchildren. It's
(25:53):
so wild, never ending, never ending for women.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Well, and it's so interesting too, because one of the
things I really appreciate about what you talk about is
there is this there's this sort of supposition in the
world that there's a boundless privilege that comes with being pretty,
and it's to.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
A certain extent, right, there is an absolute privilege. I
call it pretty privilege, and it absolutely exists, yes, But
it also.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
I think it exists in a very nefarious way because
there's an illusion of a lot of privilege, but there's
also a lot of using that happens to women who
exist in these sort of industries and professions. And I
think again, for when I think about your story, there's
something about the fact that you were fifteen. You know,
(26:46):
when you started modeling, you were a little girl, and
you know you had to pick up and move to
Paris in the midst of having finally been moved to Sweden. Like,
all of this is a lot for a teenager. You know,
I got on TV at twenty one, I was old
enough to vote and had a driver's license and could
(27:06):
drink in the US and all the things.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
I don't know that I.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Could have handled it at fifteen. And I'm so curious,
from this vantage point that you sit at now, how
do you look back at that, and how do you
sort of make sense of it all the gift of
the career, the toughness of it, the sort of jumble
(27:32):
the both, and if you will.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
Sure if I I'm not sure if it makes sense.
I think a lot of things that happens to people
does not make sense, and you just kind of have
to accept that it never will and it's just what
it is. That is the progress, that is the lot
that you were given. Yeah, I mean, for me, on
(27:57):
one hand, in Sweden, I was in a in a
school where where children where other girls were mercilessly bullying me,
and I couldn't fit in no matter what I did,
and I was suicidal. At twelve, I tried to slip
my wrists in the baptob and fortunately I got a
very dull knife and nothing really happened. And I still
(28:21):
have a little like a little star on my wrist
from from the attent. And so you know, I missed
my grandmother desperately because she was she was my mother.
I missed my I missed I missed my childhood, my
home where I felt, which was you know, Czechoslovakia, and
I felt so desperately alone and like I was just
(28:44):
never going to fit in, and so Paris. Moving to
Paris was sort of afforded me a new door, like
I have no idea what behind what's behind this door
marked number three, but there'll be something else but the
misery behind door number two. And so I was terrified,
(29:05):
but I felt like, well, it couldn't get any worse.
I mean, I suppose you could, but at that at
that at that point, I didn't think so. And what
was waiting awaiting me at the other end of behind
door number three was and I was freedom was complete
(29:26):
and utter freedom, which a fifteen year old to not have.
Mind you, I don't highly recommend that to most people
or to myself. The cost of that freedom is this
pretty devastating anxiety that I have with me ever since.
(29:47):
Because again we was talking about our jobs, not providing
a routine. You're never you were never in the same
place twice you like for me, every day you're working
with a different set of people in a different location.
And that sounds like a lot of fun unless you
think of it as a you know, you're a fifteen
year old kid and you're in a country where you
don't speak the language, and you don't know the people
(30:09):
and you are treated as an object, yes, but a
pretty object. So again confusing, Like, was it unpleasant to
suddenly go from being called you know, communists or to
you know, beautiful young woman. Yeah, that was so bad.
(30:33):
It was like that felt pretty good and getting attention
for being pretty as opposed to just different and you know, ugly. Definitely,
it was definitely it was a better feeling. But then
then when that comes this whole other thing of like
fulfilling other people's expectations of you. Now when your job
(30:57):
is literally just be pretty. It's amazing how hard it
is to wake up in the mornings and believe that
you are pretty, because you will look at yourself in
the mirror every day and you'll go, oh, no, there's
like a you know, a little vein in my eye
(31:18):
that's going to lose me my job. There's a pimple
on my chin. Back in nineteen eighty when I started,
there was no such thing as all that you know,
like I me. Now you can you know, use any
filter or any you know app and make yourself look flawless.
Back then, we actually had to look the way we
(31:38):
looked on the page, because you know, painting over something
costs a lot of money, so expected to show up flawless,
and nobody is flawless. So it did to this whole
cycle of anxiety about waking up the next day and
(32:01):
something being out of place, something having moved, so that
you will lose your job, so that people will be
unhappy with you. I mean it's like you are is
just object and you cannot crack, you cannot get dusty.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
And would that happen?
Speaker 1 (32:19):
I mean as a kid, you know, bopping around Paris
and going from shoot to shoot. You know, you said
it yourself. It sounds glamorous, but when you really get
into the reality of it, it's hard and scary and
anxiety inducing. Were there days where you would show up
to things and be dismissed or watch other girls just
(32:42):
get dismissed from jobs?
Speaker 3 (32:44):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, so actually very early on that
would see that that wouldn't happen to you. When you
are established as a model and somebody's being a large
amount of money for work that you expect to do,
then it doesn't happen anymore. But when you're starting up, Yeah,
I got fired on my like I think third day
(33:08):
of work, which completely you know, I thought that was
the end of my life. That's it. They're sending me
back to Sweden, like nobody's going to want me because
I well, actually that day I got fired because the
photographer didn't like that I couldn't move right. He kept
wanting me to. Yeah, I'm a fifteen year old kid.
(33:31):
And they put these like ball gowns on me with
like big brown bows and in a park and they go, okay,
do something, you know, and I'm like, do what? Put
a hand on the hip and you smile awkwardly and
they're like no, not that you look stupid. Do something else.
(33:54):
You have no idea what to do, and nobody's giving
you any any nobody's helping you. They're just sort of
expect thing for you to figure this out. And I didn't,
and so I got sent home. And I got sent
home because of the pemple. I got sent home because
one actually once I lost like two weeks of work
of really important money because I had been working with
(34:15):
a photographer that used tungsten lights. See these very very
bright lights and he sort of lined them all up
in a row, and then you had to look straight
into the lights and you could only do it in
short like short bursts. You could only do it for
like a minute or so, and then you have to
close your eyes because it, you know, it was blinding you.
(34:36):
But after working with him all day, my retinas were
completely burnt. And so I woke up the next day
and my eyes were just glowing red. I had no
that had no whites in my eyes at all, wornt.
And so besides the pain of that, and also me
going like, oh my god, like what's going on permanent?
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Yeah, I'm sixteen years old.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
I don't know any doctors in France. I don't know
what to do. Unfortunately, the agency did send me a doctor,
but it's like, yeah, well you know, your eyeballs are,
your retinas are burnt, and it's going to take about
two weeks too. Yeah eel itself. So you know, stuff
like that will happen. And I think a lot of
(35:21):
people feel like that's a small price to pay for
all of the benefits that you get from this, right,
And maybe that's true. I'm maybe that's true. I think
in the I think, in the whole, the in the
(35:46):
span of of of of a life lived or selling beauty,
I suppose it is is that you become an object
to people and you see yourself as an object, you
(36:09):
get used to the idea that you are in fact
an object. And that's that hasn't really hit me until
now I'm fifty eight. You know, I'm finally finding out
how much of my life I spent being okay with
just being an object, Like nothing really expected of me,
(36:31):
desired of me but to be pretty. And how long?
How that sort of you know that obviously comes at
a cost of of everything else.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
And now a word from our sponsors who make this
show possible.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Think about it. Something you know, in this sort of
removing what isn't me from myself that I've been really
hard at work on for the last year. One of
the things that's fascinating to me and something that you know,
when I was in this sort of point of crisis
in November of last year and I started working with
(37:22):
my now therapist, he said to me, you have a
very high threshold for suffering.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
Interesting, and it really took my breath.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Away, and I realized that one of the things that
makes me good at my job is that I can
perform under any circumstance because that's my job to take
care of my crew. Whether I've just been hit by
a co star, or I have just lost my grandfather,
or you know, a war has broken out somewhere. My
(37:54):
job is to show up and be a leader and
smile and say hello to everyone, and make sure the
prop department has what they need, and get my wire
on so the sound guys can wire somebody else because
we're two minutes behind, and we don't have four minutes
to be behind. And what I realized is that I
like that I show up. I like that I'm a
good teammate. I don't like that I turn my back
(38:15):
on myself and my experience and what's hard for me.
And I've done it for so long that I've recalibrated
normal and bad. You know, violent is bad. Bad that
isn't violent is pretty normal to me, you know. And
(38:36):
as the sort of lines go on and on, it's
been really interesting to realize that I need to move
where my threshold is much closer to safer and more
gentle experiences interactions and relationships with people. But what happens,
I think, when you do that work is you don't
have such tolerance for being treated like a product rather
(38:59):
than a person, And that becomes a whole confusing thing
in your work. And I would imagine for you. You know,
you're moving up in your career. You're becoming this, you know,
really successful model. You become a supermodel. You you do
sports Illustrated cover, You're the face of Este Lotter. You know,
(39:20):
you're you are doing all of these enormous things. And
in a way, the more you can be this beautiful product,
the more rewarded you are. But I wonder you know,
from this point of incredible self awareness that you are
(39:41):
in that you help teach other people to do. You know,
do you look back and go, oh, I can see
the I can see the pain and the purpose in
that stage in my career. I can see how you know,
at nineteen, I fell in love with a man who
was forty and didn't think that that was weird and
maybe you know, so much of your love story was beautiful.
(40:05):
And at this stage we look back and we go like,
who's talking to teenagers? You know we have we have
we can hold the both and of these things. And
I guess I just I'm so curious about that sort
of meteoric rise. You know, what happened to you in
the course of four years? Does it feel wild. To
look back on it.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
Now, it only seems wild to me. And if I'm
comparing it to I suppose you know that the life
of my friends or my family these like extremes. But no,
it's it's my life. It's like it's like your face.
(40:45):
You wake up and look at it every day and
you just think it's what it is. It's it's what
you were given.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
Well, it's all relative to you.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
It's all relative to me, So no, I don't look
at it and think wow. I remember when I when
I first started becoming popular as a model, and there
would be interviews done, and how people would always react
with like I got you have this incredible story, like
(41:18):
you you know, like if this was a movie, I'm
not even sure we believe it, you know, drags to
Richard like you know, talk about it's like I'm like
the quintessential American success story, right yes, or communist girl
and she's up top of the world, you know, high
highly overpaid model. It's I never really thought that there
(41:45):
was anything that I think as a child, you don't
think that there's you you sort of believe that, well
I did, actually, like this is going way back or
for or comparison's sake. When I was little, I thought,
because my parents lived in Sweden, I thought everybody's parents
(42:08):
lived in Sweden. I thought that that's what parents did. Like,
you know, I didn't question it. This is what happens
when you're a child. You don't question it. You grow
up within a certain set of circumstances and you go, oh, well,
you know, I'm sure everybody else grew up like this.
And then when you start seeing little indications that maybe
that's not true. No, actually other people's parents live in
(42:30):
the same house. Oh, very puzzling. And then you have
to start making these connections where you're like, oh, okay,
so that that that that makes me somehow other. And
I guess I felt to be other for such a
large part of my life. Yeah, I don't really know
(42:53):
what it's like to feel included or to feel connected
to people that feeling like I'm somehow an outlier, always
on the on the sidelines. Yeah, until now, like now,
having written a book and doing these events with women
that are my age that come to me and that
(43:15):
have read my book and will say how much we
have in common. Yeah, thank you for this, because it
really resonated with me and like, this is the most
connected that I've ever gotten to be.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
Yes, So what do you feel like led you to this?
Speaker 1 (43:33):
Because you do write from this really profoundly connected place,
and you do have these beautifully frank conversations with all
of us who follow you. What what do you think
made that shift for you to live unfiltered?
Speaker 3 (43:53):
It was never a shift. It's just that nobody listened.
Nobody cared because I will and objects, so nobody cared
to hear from the vase, even cared to hear from
you know, the luxury car or whatever the hell I was,
whatever I represented for it was not you know, I
(44:16):
was incredibly fortunate to be in this exalted position and
having a voice was not a part of the deal. Right,
This is what always been Yeah, never been filtered. I've
always told the truth when I asked. It's just literally
that was not interesting to anybody. And I'm still reeling
(44:39):
that it's interesting to anybody now.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
Yeah, And isn't that what's so interesting about social media?
How much of it changed that for us because we
didn't have to rely on people to ask the questions
and then print the article. We could just print the thoughts,
and you know, there's this great moment in the book
where you talk about the girl in the bar who
recognized you.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
You know, you're the crying lady on Instagram. I loved
that post.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
Oh my gosh, and you said that that was really
kind of the first time you felt heard.
Speaker 3 (45:11):
I took it as such a compliment. It's funny when
I was retelling the story after right after to my tablemates,
they were sort of slightly horrified. They were like, oh, no,
are you okay, Like, are you you know, do you
feel terrible about being called? And I was like, no, no, no,
not you guys, you're not getting it. This is a
huge compliment. Yeah, oh she the I don't care what
(45:34):
she calls me. But the fact that she, you know,
that she took it as your vulnerability, is allowing me
to show mine like it makes me like it's okay
not to have to be perfect all the time. I
was the greatest compliment I've ever gotten. I mean I
(45:54):
still live off of that.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
Actually yeah.
Speaker 4 (45:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
Well, And and do you think that that helped to
motivate you to continue to keep going and have the
conversations you have online with people in the way you do.
Speaker 3 (46:09):
I think that initial connection that. Yeah, And I think
I've mentioned this on Instagram too enough times now, but
my initial connection to social media, to Instagram specifically, was
just being at the end of my rope again. It
was a moment of like sitting in the bat of
(46:30):
with the knife, but this time, you know, I'm grown up.
I have two children who are grieving. I can't do
these like little pity parties. Not that I think in
my case it was a little bit of a pain party.
And I don't think it was I don't think that
I seriously considered feeling myself because I sort of knew
(46:54):
that well that it would be a selfish move and
that and there was kind of like this is going
to sound really strange. It was almost like an idea
that I toyed with to really need some pressure to think, like, well,
you know, I could always kill myself like later, you know,
(47:16):
like I have to do. You know, I'm like, I
don't really want to wake up tomorrow, but I have to.
I can always call it wits when everything is settled.
Not fair, not not thinking straight obviously. So this is
why I plugged into Instagram, because I was literally I
was so desperately alone, and so yeah, full of pain
(47:40):
and there was nowhere to go. There were no friends,
it was middle of COVID. There was nothing I could do,
and so I tossed that it was like writing little
help me, not sticking them into a bottle and casting
it out into sea. Yeah, maybe somebody will get it.
Maybe maybe there'll be one person that will hear me
(48:02):
and go, oh, I hear you, or one person that'll go,
you know what. I kind of feel like you we
can have through this experience. And of course it turns
out because it was COVID and there was a lot
of other really unhappy peoples not unique to me, it
sort of builds a little community. Yeah, and that's kind
of where it started, where I felt like there was support.
(48:25):
Of course, there's also you'll always get the haters, you know,
the people uh you know, uh you need to get
stronger meds and get off of here, like who cares?
And well, then don't be on my page. It's really
simple that the algorithm is really simple. If I bother
(48:46):
you don't be here.
Speaker 2 (48:47):
Just don't be here.
Speaker 3 (48:49):
Hello, who's the smart one now? Yeah? But I think
getting that kind of support and feeling that little sense
of this community of women that were mine, women my age,
or just people who learn a lot of pain made
(49:12):
it really something like a community. Like so it's a
community that I keeps returning to because now this community
has done in incredible things for me. I mean, it's
gotten people, you know, I use my voice and people listen.
Speaker 4 (49:29):
And now a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
And I think there's something so beautiful about that kind
of vulnerability, because we do fear as humans that you know,
will tell the truth and people will go oh too
much and lean out. And what really tends to happen
is when you get vulnerable, other people lean in and say,
oh wow, I feel that too.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
And I have loved watching.
Speaker 1 (50:03):
The way that you opened up to talk about navigating grief,
and the way that you open up to talk about,
you know, navigating finding love, navigating aging and menopause and
sexuality and.
Speaker 2 (50:16):
All of these things that so many people seem.
Speaker 1 (50:18):
To be so scared to talk about, but they're so
central to our lives and our identity. And it's a
joy to watch the lean in when these conversations move.
Speaker 2 (50:31):
Out in the world.
Speaker 1 (50:32):
And I guess I'm really curious, you know, from this
vantage point, having been as open as you've been over
these years and cultivating this community of women. You know,
what do you love about it? What do you love
about being vulnerable? What do you love about aging? What
advice are you giving to women in this in this
community that you've built.
Speaker 3 (50:55):
Well, I mean you kind of just answered that question
by asking it. What I love is this community aspect
is that I can put out a question out there
and I will get I'm connected to people now, yes,
it's virtually yes, it's not, you know, because it can't
(51:16):
always be face to face. Sometimes it is, and again
through the Internet, I get to them connect to them
in person, which is fantastic. But it's these connections, these
that if I bear myself, it prompts you to bear yourself,
and there we establish a real, true, authentic connection that's
(51:39):
not superficial. I've had nothing but superficial my whole life.
And so this sort of heart to heart that happens
because I decided to undress by mistake, but seeing the
repercussions of that, of what happened when I let it
truly spill out out, unaltered and and and and raw,
(52:06):
and the reaction, most of the reaction being thank you,
And here's my heart in return? Is that is just
that is a place that I've never been in. I've
never gotten to bear my heart and I've never gotten
(52:26):
to hold yours in return. And it's to me, it's
like it's like slut life has suddenly taken on a meaning, like, Oh,
this is what it's all about. It's about patients, It's
about connecting to people. This is also why I will
sometimes ask, you know, like the other day, I just
(52:48):
posted a very simple post about what does free Palestine
mean to you? You don't need a lesson on the
history of the conflict. I can read the same information
as everybody else, but I wanted to find out what
it meant to people. What does this mean to you?
What do you mean when you say this? I'm interested
(53:08):
to hearing, to hearing from you because it allows me
to get sort of a feel for the room that
I'm moving in. And it can be assuring, or it
can be the opposite, it can be owarming. But being
(53:29):
able to sort of communicate how we feel, not shouting
political facts at each other. That's not a connection. And yes,
when you know, some people are really good at it,
and people that are educated on a specific subject and
know enough about it at please put it out there
(53:49):
for me. I'm not for me, I'm interested in the
emotional human ass How do you react to this? Does
just makes you feel? Do you feel this way?
Speaker 5 (54:00):
Like?
Speaker 3 (54:00):
Let me know, because I'm sort of incorporating it into
this big bucket that then I like to let sit
and ferment to get you know, to get the usable
stuff out of it. It does need to sometimes sit
and mature. It's like, this is not stuff that It's
(54:24):
not like you said before, it's not about an immediate feedback.
Sometimes you have to take things in and just let
them sit and let them pause. Yeah, and this is
how I This is how I get new ideas, This
is how I learned. This is how I throw this
why listening to other people's opinions that don't necessarily agree
(54:44):
with me, that I don't necessarily agree with and find
the humanity in all of our perspectives. Sometimes there there
are there's occasions where this is impossible. Yeah, we know,
we know, But in most cases we all just want
to be heard. Everybody just wants to somehow register as
(55:08):
existing and having and being heard. Sometimes it's just enough
to be heard by one person. And this is sometimes
my trolls need to troll just because they want to
be heard by somebody, even if it's you know, it's
like that child that's being you know, getting negative attention
is better than no attention, right, So sometimes I feel
(55:28):
for them too. I think, oh my god, you're you.
You need to you need to be offensive in order
to be hurt heard. How what a what a sad
pattern you're in?
Speaker 1 (55:40):
Yeah, yeah, what a hard position. I'm curious because I
I feel very similarly to you, and that the you know,
the bigger the topic, the more I want to glean
and digest and really sit with it and and find thoughts,
the more patience I'm giving myself to do so now
than ever before. Or some of these topics that you're
(56:03):
talking about are so big, you know, concepts like aging
and sexuality and our voice and how women are allowed
to use their voices in the world and what doors
we have to kick down to use them in the
ways we want to. What do you think, having gleaned
so much from your community, there is there advice that
(56:24):
you feel like has fermented for you that you'd give
to women about navigating their aging and embracing their sexuality
at any stage, you know, really feeling at home in
their bodies and beings.
Speaker 3 (56:40):
Well, I guess the first thing that I would say
is the most important thing that I've learned with age
is not to give anybody advice unless they ask. So, no,
I'm not going to be I think anything on anybody,
on anything that is not my right to do. So
I can share my experiences, which.
Speaker 2 (56:59):
Is that's really cool.
Speaker 3 (57:02):
I think that's the other beautiful thing of aging is
that you sort of come to these realizations, like the
advice that I would give or I to give advice,
you know, which is about you know, self acceptance and
sinking into who you are, and and and and celebrating
(57:25):
the parts of celebrating yourself because you're unique. All of
that stuff actually comes with age. You will all do
that if you pay attention. Not you specifically, but if
if if people pay attention, they will sink into the
same spot where I am with age. That is the
benefit of age. That is the beauty of sort of
(57:48):
turning the corner and understanding that that yes, you have
unique traits. You have like the thing that constitutes you
is unique and therefore of value. It might not be
of value to the entire world. It might be a
(58:09):
value only to a few select people, but it is
a back and I think that is the thing that
we all feel like we need, is like to be
of war, to be again, coming back to wanting to
be hurt and and the blowback to this is when
you talk about, well, actually, the biggest blowback I get,
(58:32):
I'm sorry, I'm jumping around a little bit. The biggest
blowback I get is daring to be a sexual female
at my age because you are sort of allowed to age,
you know, with grace by I guess, starting to dress
in sort of male looking suits and wearing your hair short,
(58:55):
and you know, all of those things that are sort
of typically the male domain. You are now now as
an older woman, you're supposed somehow supposed to move into that,
Like you're supposed to a handsome older woman. That's allowed,
Like you can have a certain element of power about you,
but you have to move into the male domain if
(59:18):
you if you represent yourself as still a sexual creature,
that's when you get a really big all that this
is what people don't want from you. Post menopausal woman
is not supposed to, I guess, want sex, and she's
not supposed to be sexy, especially if she looks her age. Again,
(59:41):
you can buy a little bit if you look younger.
If you look younger, then it's okay to you know,
to post some bikini shots of yourself. But if you
actually if you look your age, then that's an absolutely.
Now it has to be sexless. You have to be sexless.
(01:00:02):
I'm not sure what exactly the cutoff point is there.
Do you remember that skit that Julia Louis Dreyfus did
the last double Day, Yes, it's true, she it wasn't
It's not a joke. There is such a thing. There
is such a thing, certainly for actresses. It's your last day.
Now you're just going to get to play grandma or
(01:00:24):
the not or you know, healthcare worker or something. Right,
But being the love interest past a certain age, Yeah, no, no,
that's we don't want that. We don't want to see that.
And yet women my age, my girlfriends, a lot of
(01:00:45):
them that are single, recently single, being single for a while,
are the most ferociously sensual and sexual women I know.
Now you don't have kids, you don't have to worry
about you know what your children need, and always putting
other people first. You know, you actually get to you
(01:01:08):
have time to have sex, to be sexy, to feel sexy,
in whatever variation that you you know, obviously it's different
for different people. But finally you have the time for it,
and you're not supposed to You're not supposed to you're
not supposed to desire it anymore. Like that time is
(01:01:31):
better spent making cookies.
Speaker 4 (01:01:33):
And now a word from our wonderful sponsors.
Speaker 2 (01:01:43):
It feels so crazy.
Speaker 1 (01:01:44):
To me, though, because to your point, we get to
know ourselves better and better as we age. And everyone
I know who's aging, you know, in my friend group
and in the in the intergenerational friend groups we have
where you know, we've got friends who similarly to you.
My internet friend are you know, hovering around sixty friends
(01:02:07):
who are you know. My parents are in their mid seventies.
I talk less to them about this, but you know,
more to my community who I want to have these
conversations with and everybody I know. It's like having better
sex than they did in their twenties. Yeah, and even
watching people find, you know, rather than the relationships they
(01:02:29):
thought they should be in, the relationships they want to
be in. You know, you've been sharing about falling in
love and what it is to really be in a
relationship that fills your life with such joy and where
you feel so.
Speaker 3 (01:02:44):
Seen that you choose rather than the relationship that chooses you.
Speaker 6 (01:02:50):
Yes, And I think this is a big, big difference,
because yes, you are a team when you're in your twenties.
If you're in your thirties, Yeah, what what the relationship
is based on is that that spark, write, that gymasilapa,
that chemistry thing, which generally is really just unhealed childhood scars.
(01:03:13):
Let me marry mommy or daddy and try to fix them.
Speaker 3 (01:03:17):
And we all do this the well, not hopefully not
all of this, but I certainly did do this. And
it took me until fifty eighth to get to a
spot where I'm no longer attracted to my parents. I'm
no longer attracted to that same situation that I was.
To try to heal it, you try to heel myself
(01:03:38):
to try to fix them. It's like worked all of
that stuff out, and it has allowed me to look
for something else. Like I keep saying, it's readjusting my picker.
Speaker 2 (01:03:50):
Oh, I love that I've done the same.
Speaker 3 (01:03:53):
Yea.
Speaker 1 (01:03:54):
And I think when you finally stop seeking the claws
that fit your wounds.
Speaker 3 (01:04:00):
Mm hm.
Speaker 1 (01:04:01):
And you go out in the world and you say,
what will bring me joy? Not not what will feel
familiar to my pain, but what will bring me joy,
what's on the other side of healing, what's on the
other side of picking at the scar?
Speaker 3 (01:04:20):
Yeah? I think joy we some yea. In my case,
I think I confuse the feeling of joy with the
feeling of excitement, which is not necessarily a good thing.
It's an excitement of the unknown because you obviously get
you get excited. Excited and nervous feels the same anxious,
(01:04:43):
but it feels the same. And it's that thing where
you get thrown into a situation that you can't entirely
navigate the control and you're uncertain, and that uncertainty makes
you feel high. Yes, and joy has that seemed sort
of lifting. But mine is the pain. Yes. Yes, often
(01:05:05):
equate falling in love with that painful part that it
doesn't have to be attached to any pain is breaking
revelation to me.
Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
Of course, it's life altering because even the idea that
you're meant to fall in love, why not rise in
love or grow in love?
Speaker 3 (01:05:26):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (01:05:27):
And when and when the switch flips, your whole life
changes for the better.
Speaker 2 (01:05:34):
So in this, in this stage.
Speaker 1 (01:05:37):
That you're in, I want to I'm watching the clock
and I want to be respectful all time. I know
we've gone over a bit in this beautiful stage that
you're in. You know, you have this unbelievable book which
I know everyone listening at home who hasn't read it
yet is going to run out and get it. And
everyone who has is nodding along because they know. How
do you look at the landscape of your life when
(01:05:59):
when growth and that sort of rising and that joy
is so central to where you find yourself? What what
feels like the work in progress of your life now?
Speaker 3 (01:06:16):
Stimulating all of all of that input. Frankly, because there's
so much of it, it seems like you're doing a
terrific job of it. By the way, congratulations, I'm trying.
I love hearing this from from other women too. And
you're you're you're considerably younger, and to be so at
(01:06:40):
home in your skin and processing what you are processing
now is like, Wow, you have such a I get
a tiny bit envious that you have. You know that
that you have a You're much further ahead than I was,
So congratulations to you on that. For me, sort of
(01:07:01):
just understanding that there is there's so much that I
don't yet know, and leaving myself open to hurt, to failure,
to the violence that in ed of it inevitably comes
with learning. I know it sounds kind of obvious, like
(01:07:24):
like we should all be in this space, but I
haven't gotten into this space until now, until I'm sort
of finally comfortable with the assemblage of the chemical assembly
of who I am and who I was as a child.
I mean, my boyfriend just said this the other day,
(01:07:44):
and it's kind of really stopped me. He said something
about how incredibly smart I was, and and I go, oh,
you know, gee thinks that means a lot coming from
like the smartest person. But I've heard this a lot, right,
Like you always heard hear how smart you are? And
I thought, no, actually never heard how smart I was
(01:08:11):
from somebody that I loved, from somebody I was never
ever been told that I was smart. And when I'm
told I was, when I was told I was smart,
it was always in uh, it was always in comparison.
It was always in Like now now I'm talking about
(01:08:32):
how smart I am, and I can't find the words.
It was always in relation to me being a model.
I was smart, a model, which is really not that smart.
So UH realized that when he me smart, I believed
(01:08:52):
him that to me was almost a shocking revelation. Was
to kind of go, oh, so it's fifty eight. Finally
something my love tells me. He thinks I'm the smartest woman.
He said, No, I actually believe that. To me is
like having traveled from.
Speaker 2 (01:09:13):
The moon that's beautiful.
Speaker 3 (01:09:16):
To this little space in La and so sitting with that,
it allows me now to really look around. Yeah, and
that's scary. It's really great to look around. It's so
much easier to not look, so much easier to put
(01:09:38):
blinders on right, walk into your lazy chair, turn on
the TV, to to some to something you've already watched
ten times because it's comfort food, and just take that.
That's so much more comforting and so much easier than
(01:10:00):
in a new space and looking around and taking things
you don't know. Yeah, yeah, I think that's that's also
the pleasure of life is to be able to do that,
not to be so scared into my corner, to feel
like I'm strong enough to rave outside.
Speaker 2 (01:10:21):
Yeah, to continue to grow.
Speaker 5 (01:10:23):
To continue to grow, and well, I wonder how long
I wonder how I wonder how long it takes people
too before they kind of decide to shut down.
Speaker 3 (01:10:36):
I think that's when you do get old, when you
keep muscle all. But I mean, I look at my
I look at my mom, well, having an easy relationship
with for most of our lives, and we're finally can
figuring things out again. It's never too late, never, And
she's seventy eight and she is she has grown more
(01:10:57):
in the last five years than most of the time
that I've known her. So like, wow, wow, that really
inspires me.
Speaker 2 (01:11:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:11:07):
Well, and they talk about that, right that when you
begin to heal, it reverberates out in both directions. You know,
you're setting an example for those of us coming after you,
and you're healing up the line for the ones you
came from. And it's it's such an amazing thing to
be reminded that we can do that for each other.
And I think especially communities of women can do that
(01:11:30):
for each other. We have these tethers to each other
and when we lean in it, it really does change everything.
Speaker 3 (01:11:40):
When we lean in vulnerability, and with honesty, we really
can help each other. And I think mostly we don't
seem to actually be entirely capable of that until we
get a little I agree too many things in a
way when there's too much competition imposed.
Speaker 1 (01:11:59):
By sociod Yes, but I think as we get older,
we unlearn all the bullshit that society told us we
were supposed to feel about each other and about our surroundings,
and we find each other in a new way. I mean,
you talk about it with your mom, you talk about
it with your digital community, and I just keep coming
back to this idea that really what you do over
(01:12:23):
and over and over again is you encourage the rest
of us to live an unfiltered life, to keep digging.
And it's beautiful and I just want to say thank you.
Speaker 3 (01:12:34):
My gosh, thank you.
Speaker 2 (01:12:39):
You are a treasure. I feel like I could talk
to you forever.
Speaker 1 (01:12:42):
I know we've gone so far over, but I hope
this will just be the first of many conversations I
get to have with you.
Speaker 3 (01:12:50):
Oh well, you were much too kind and this was
delightful and you're are just such a right brilliant light
in your corner. Appreciate you so much. To know that.
Thank you, thank you so much,
Host
Sophia Bush
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