April 21, 2025 • 49 mins
Welcome back to MID Season Five...We have a very special guest.
Mia Freedman has been in countless conversations with Holly Wainwright—on mics, off mics, in meetings, in texts. But she’s never been on MID. Until now.
In this episode, Holly kicks off Season Five with someone who knows her well, and who’s read something very personal—her brand new book, He Would Never.
It’s a story about the limits and power of female friendships, narcissistic love, and the tricky transitions from girlhood to teenagehood. And Mia had thoughts. Lots of them. For one - the teenage girls we were in the 90s are very different than the teenage girls of today.
This episode is about writing and ambition. Confidence and self-doubt. Teenage daughters and their teenage selves. It’s a conversation between two women the same age, but at different parenting stages.
At the end of this episode, Holly has a very special gift for you - so stick around, you don't want to miss it.
You can pre order Holly's book He Would Never here. And it's available in all good book stores from April 29th
THE END BITS:
Share your feedback! Send us a voice message or email us at podcast@mamamia.com.au
Follow us on Instagram @MidbyMamamia or sign up to the MID newsletter, dropping weekly here.
Mamamia's new podcast BIZ is rewriting the rules of work with no generic advice - just real strategies from women who've actually been there. Listen here.
CREDITS:
Host: Holly Wainwright
Guest: Mia Freedman
Executive Producer: Naima Brown
Senior Producer: Grace Rouvray
Producer: Tahli Blackman
Audio Producer: Jacob Round
Mamamia acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to a mother mea podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Mama Mayre acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
It's that disconnect period in your daughter's life or your
own life. I'm sure we can all probably remember it
where you cross this rubicon from being a child in
the eyes of others to being you know, sexually available
(00:38):
or a source of sexual gratification for men, there's always
a disconnectcause it always happens earlier than you can see.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
You can see it.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
Hello, I'm Holly Wainwright and I am Mid, Midlife, mid Family,
mid Mayhem. Welcome back to our show Mid Conversations for
gen X women who are anything But this is our
first episode of a news season, and as you'll know
if you're a regular listener, it's starting a little differently,
(01:08):
and that's been I've got something special for you later
at the end this season on Mid we have got
gurus and health experts. I have nineties icons and household names.
I have Melinda French Gates. Yes, we have carefully planned
every episode to bring you something that makes life a
little bit better, a great story, a very useful idea,
(01:31):
something to try.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Someone who reminds you of you.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
And today, for the first episode of this new season
of MID, I have a friend.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
I think you know her. It's Mia Friedman.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
If you listen to Mamma Mia out loud, you know
that I spend a lot of time talking to Mia,
along with our beloved co host Jesse Stevens, disagreeing with
Mia quite a lot, laughing till I snort with her,
gossiping with her, sending the world to rights with her.
But I'd never asked her to be on MID before,
and the reason that I wanted to for the first
(02:04):
of season five was twofold. I wanted to talk to
her about my new book. It's called He Would Never
and it's out in a hot minute.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
I nervously slipped.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
Mia an early copy of it over the summer holidays,
and she immediately messaged me to say she wanted to
talk to me about it on MID and not before,
so I have been waiting nervously to hear what she
wants to tell.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Me about it.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
But also it's because of the themes of the book
I think they're going to resonate with you as listeners
to MID. It's about the power and limitations of female friendships,
it's about narcissistic relationships, it's centered around a knoddy little mystery,
and it's about the sometimes confusing shift of little girls
into teenage ones. This is something that Mia and I
(02:50):
talk about off Mike a lot. She's the first person
I ask for parenting advice about teenagers, because although she
and I are exactly the same age, she had her
kids a lot younger than I did. She's a grandmother now,
for God's sake, so she's always a few big paces
ahead in lots of ways. Of course, So we talk
about guy teenage daughters, and we also reflect on our
(03:11):
teenage selves, who appear to have existed in an entirely
different universe. What we got right, what we got wrong.
We talk about all of that, and we talk about
writing and ambition and confidence and friendship. But we start,
of course with me asking Mia a very bald question
about he would never and getting the kind of honest
answer I would only expect from the extraordinarily honest, funny, brilliant,
(03:35):
generous MEA Friedman. And don't forget to stay listening at
the end of this conversation for your surprise, MEA Friedman,
Holly wayIn right, there's nothing like getting you in a
studio and putting in front of a mic and asking you.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Did you like my book?
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Not really, I've read better. No, she's fucking loved it.
So what happened was you gave it to me, and
then I was away with Jesse, our third co host
and kind of like our little sister and friend on
out loud, and she read it first.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
And you and.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
I often get given books by friends and in some
ways they land and you just go, okay, this is
a job because you know that your friend will be
very anxious and that you've got to read it, and
then you've got to obviously say nice things about it,
even if you don't really like it. And so then
(04:34):
Jesse started reading it first, and she was just like
she spent the whole weekend just like I just want
to I just want to go and finish hollybook. I
just all it's all I want to read. It's all
I want to think about. So I was like, okay,
this is a good sign. So when she was finished,
I started reading. And as soon as I started I
(04:55):
realized why you had been such a nutcase for before,
because I said to Jesse, what's so good? About it,
because she's like, I'm just desperate to read it. I
just want to get back to it. I just want
to get back to it. Can you hold the baby out?
Want to get back to Holly's book? And I'm like,
what's so good about it? And she said she's gone
to like she's gone up three levels.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
What's she said?
Speaker 3 (05:18):
I understand why she's so stressed, because what she's tried
to do is extraordinary. She's thrown a lot of balls
in the air, and she's bitten off a lot and
she's pulling it off.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
It must be tiresome for you to have to watch
me having a breakdown every time I write a book.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
That was a long answer to your off short question.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
And thank you for all those lovely things say, because
Mia does have to watch listen watch me have a
breakdown every time I write.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Yeah, it's so funny because I don't write books anymore,
but all my friends do, including you and Jesse, who
two my closest friends, and also Jesse's sister Claire recently
wrote her first book. And you will have breakdowns in
very different ways. You will have complete breakdowns, but differently,
and you have different breakdowns from book to book, this one.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
I've never seen you go so sort of the.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
One that you did before, which is a Couple Upstairs
that was quite dark, and when I read that, you
went quite dark and I understood You're like you were
really insecure when you were writing that, which is interesting
because it was like going back to a time about
an emotionally abusive relationship and there were some dark themes
in it. With this one, it felt different. I felt
(06:33):
like you were like wrestling an alligator.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Yeah, for a really long period of time.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
And I've never been one of your readers. You've never
given it to me early, which I appreciate.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Thank you, but it really would be a job.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
I know you have other readers, and I also know
that you didn't give it to them this time either,
and I yeah, it was just once I read the book,
I understood everything.
Speaker 4 (06:57):
It's funny because I told you this at the time
because obviously we record together, you know, three five times
a week, so we see each other.
Speaker 5 (07:04):
All the time.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
And for years I when I haven't really spoken by this,
but when I handed the first draft of this book in,
it got handed.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Back to me like they were like, you need.
Speaker 4 (07:15):
It needs some more work, and you didn't tell me
that at the time because I was really devastated. Yeah,
and tell me why, Like, is that because every author,
I mean, I know what it's like to hand in
a book and all you want is no notes.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
It isn't that Actually, well it's never happened to me.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
But like then when you get it back and it's like,
here's all the things you need to do, that's always
the point at which I want to give back my advance, yes,
and say I don't want to do it anymore, don't
want to do it.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
I think part of what it was is and you know,
we talk about this a lot, but I always overestimate
how what I can do and how much I can do.
Speaker 5 (07:49):
You know what I mean. I'm always like it'll be fine.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
I mean the time it takes you to write, the
time it takes to write it, and the amount of
focus and energy that it takes to Because the thing
is that most people write books, and that's their job, right,
But you write books as well as having a full
time job, yes, and doing a hundred other things. And
you know, lots of authors have kids, but most authors
don't also have another full time job.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
Yeah, So I think that one of the if I
learned something through this book, and I'm sure I learned
lots of things, it was about that about trying to focus,
because I think what happened is when I handed it
in and I've been writing this book for like two years.
It is a big and complicated plot. We're not going
to go into the plot massively here. I want to
talk about some of the themes from it. But it's
a big and complicated plot that has lots of characters,
(08:33):
and it goes over a long period of time, so
there's a lot of moving parts, right, And I think
that I literally bid off more than I could chew.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
In the way that I normally work. Right.
Speaker 4 (08:44):
So when I handed it in my very fabulous publisher,
she pretty much said to me, the last third feels
rushed and not like you have you know, you haven't landed.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
It yet and did you secretly know that to share?
Speaker 4 (08:58):
But I think that this is one of the things
that you really struggle with when you're writing, is you
lose sight of your instinct anymore?
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Like is this good?
Speaker 5 (09:06):
Or do I just not think it's good because I'm insecure?
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Blah blah bah.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Because also, no one else it was just had been
in your head for so long, Like I remember when
you wrote some of your first books. I think you
talked about this book or this, the themes around this book,
this idea of a camping holiday with a group of friends,
like years ago, eight years ago.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
I had been thinking about this plot and what to
do with this idea for a really long time, and
then it sort of came together when I sort of
tied it together with this thing about teenagers and teenage girls,
which I want us to talk about in a minute. Anyway,
I think I was really ambitious, so you know how
you said, And it's lovely to hear that.
Speaker 5 (09:47):
Jesse was like, she's leveled up.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
I think I was ambitious and maybe a bit off
more than I could chew.
Speaker 5 (09:53):
How unlike us to do that.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
So when, anyway, when my publisher confirmed that to me,
and she said, you need some more time, you need
some more focus. This book is going to be good.
It's going to be good, but it's not quite good yet.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
And he probably unfronting, but you also probably hadn't mapped
out time in you diary to do that, Like how
did you write this book? I forget because you've written
them in lots of different ways. You've taken stretches off
to focus completely and try to write them. In the
three month stretch, you've done like a day a week
for a year.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Tell me the way that.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
I'm trying I try to work now is, as you know,
I stack my Mama mea work at the front of
the week, generally speaking, where I'm here in one hundred
percent Mamma mea world Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then in
theory Thursday, Friday and the weekend. Let's be honest, is
like more creative projects, writing books at other creative projects
(10:44):
rather that. And that's good in theory, but have you
ever known our lives to go exactly like in the
neat little blocks that we try and put them in,
do you know what I mean? So it's kind of
more everything kind of bleeds.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Do you think in a perfect world you need to
just go I'm going to take four months or I'm
going to take three months, and I'm like almost like
Matt leave and I'm just going to focus on it.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
I think.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
I think yes, in a way. But then what I've
also come to about myself, you know, the whole introvert
extrovert thing. Yeah, I think I love writing for its solitude,
because I do quite like being alone. But I'm not
a pure introvert, like if I didn't have the you know,
also breaking it up with coming in here and being
(11:26):
with you guys and talking about it.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
So you like the switching game, I actually like that.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
I don't know if it is brilliant for creative process,
but it's good for my mental space. I think if
I was just locked away with the manuscript for and
nothing else, I don't think that would suit me in
the way that I know some writers are very suited
to being purely alone.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
The part where your publisher said the last third feels
rushed is that because you underestimated how long it would
take you to write, or because you just were a
bit sick of it and you just wanted to end it,
Like why do you think that?
Speaker 4 (11:56):
I also think that what I've learned is I used
to say, you know how that fiction writers always say,
are you're a plotter or a panther?
Speaker 1 (12:03):
That's the thing that.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
So plotters are. You will have heard like Jane Harper
talks about this. Not that I'm comparing myself to her,
but you plot out exactly what's going to happen in
minuscule detail before you write the book, so you know
you've got everything, the.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Whole plot down, saying, with all the stuff on there.
Speaker 5 (12:22):
Every chapter is Matt, I feel like you used to
do that.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Didn't you do that with postal?
Speaker 4 (12:25):
Well, I've always done it with I do it in theory,
but not in detail.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Right.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
So then, because I'm also quite like, ideas come to
you while you do it, you know, like creative people,
you're you'll be writing and you'll be like this would
be funny, or that would be good or so I
resist that kind of structure.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
To a point.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
You resist all kinds of stuff. I know it's it's
one of my favorites. And I think that what I
learned on this book is I needed that. I really
needed that structure because this was like trying to wrestle
an alligator, and because it was so big and broad
and sprawling, and I was trying to apply my usual
kind of she'll be right techniques to that last half
(13:04):
that wasn't wasn't going to work.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
How many characters are in it, and it because it
jumps jump.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
Are five families and they and really the main characters
are Danny and Liss and Locke Well and Sadie. So
there are there are like me, there are characters who
are more major than minor. But they've all got kids.
And that's the other thing is that so they've all
got kids. And and the marriage various configurations of marriage.
There are like there's single parents, and there's a gay couple,
(13:31):
and there's you know, two conventionally married couples.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
And they all met at Mother's Group.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
Which is something that did happen to me in real
life is I made good friends at Mother's Group and
we do actually go camping together every year.
Speaker 5 (13:42):
They are very nervous about.
Speaker 4 (13:43):
This book, I'm but obviously the rest of it isn't
and the thing that then, so that is a lot
to juggle and I did learn that I do have
to basically be much more structured. So when I rewrote
the last third, and obviously I ended up rewriting quite
a lot of it, then I did really plan it
out in meticulous detail like I gave. I listened to
(14:03):
the feedback about the structure. Editors are always right, like
we talk about this a lot mere that you often
as you climb a tree in a creative field, people
give you fewer and fewer notes.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Yeah, which is terrible.
Speaker 5 (14:15):
Yeah, you need more notes.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
Whether you're like Mike White making the White loadus for
like he's got four hours of deleted scenes on the floor.
Not that I'm again comparing myself to him, or whether
you're writing a book or whether you're conducting an interview,
like you need other people to be able to say
to you.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Oh yeah, keep doing.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
That saying I'm not comparing myself to don't happen. I'm
not comparing myself to Mike White.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
You're a best.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
Selling author, this is what your fifth book, sixth book, Like.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
You're a big fucking deal. Hallywayne right, Like.
Speaker 5 (14:43):
Stop and I don't feel like a big deal.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
When we come back, Mea and I discuss our own
coming of age stories and that tricky, sticky time between
being a little kid and being a woman.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Do you still wear the title author a little?
Speaker 4 (15:04):
I think I'm getting more comfortable in it. But it's
really funny how intimidating that feels, that that word. And
I think it's because the literary scene, as it were,
is a very compartmentalized thing. The other thing I wanted
to say is, as you know very well, I didn't
(15:25):
start writing books till I was in my forties, right,
And it was literally the thing I most wanted to
do when I was a little girl. We're about to
talk about being teenagers, but if there was a teenage
Holly who had a dream of what she wanted, I
was like, I'm going to be a writer. But I
wasn't a writer, you know. I mean I was lots
of other things.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
But you said.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
You you always like when you were a kid, you
would write stories.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
I used to keep I used to write in these notebooks,
these really convoluted stories about me and all my friends,
and we were all dating different members of Juran Juran Oh.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Fanfic before there was Away exactly, I.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
Was dating Simon or the Bond loved it and your
main character, because that was the main character. And I
used to go into school in the mornings and literally
get my friends to sit down and we'd read, and
I'd read to them about what happened, and then they'd
be like.
Speaker 5 (16:12):
Well why would then then there was drama, and then
when there was going to.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
Be a sex scene, because obviously I couldn't really write
sex scenes then because I was kissing. Though kissing, I'd
be like and then dot dot pause.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
And saying to Black, oh, well I was doing that.
Then how old were you when you were doing that?
Speaker 5 (16:32):
Like twelve eleven and twelve like young?
Speaker 1 (16:34):
And I was writing bad poetry.
Speaker 5 (16:35):
Yeah, it's I think it's today age, isn't it?
Speaker 4 (16:37):
Like? And the thing that's mortifying is that we were
filling notebooks with that stuff. But now people are feeling, well,
if people are doing it, well, they're making teaktoks. Yeah
they are, That's exactly what they're doing, and they'll and
then ten minutes later they're mortified by them. Anyway, the
thing that tied this idea for me together about the
camping is that then I wanted to write about teenage girls,
and I wanted to write about being parents teenage girls.
(17:00):
And this is something that you and I talk about
a lot all the time, and partly because one of
the things, and obviously we're going to talk in broad
time because we're not going to mortify our teenage daughters
anymore than we already do all the time. One of
the things that I noticed the most about my daughter
moving from that phase of being a little kid into
being a teenager, apart from the changes in her in
(17:22):
terms of you know how, there's a moment in which
they're running around completely un self conscious, nothing like just
being crazy, cartwheeling, dancing, whatever they're doing, expressing their opinions,
and then like a switch flicks, they're suddenly mortified by themselves,
you know, like yourselves away and certainly by you. But
the other thing that happens is when your daughter begins
(17:47):
to become a young woman, everyone around you changes too.
And the thing that I would notice when we would
go away on our not necessarily with these camping friends,
but we live in a beachy kind of culture, is
that suddenly the conversations you're having all the time, and
often from men actually would be like, oh, you're going
to be in trouble, aren't you. Oh she's going to
(18:07):
be in she's going to be trouble. Oh I don't
envy you. And they're making all these comments, usually to
the dad, usually to the dad, yep, about this girl
who's just moving through the world and changing. And it's
a lot, It is a lot.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
I remember the first time my daughter got sexually her assed.
She was walking, she would have been twelve, and she
was walking to a friend's house and a guy walked
past her and sort of licked his lips and said something,
can I remember, you know, it's one of those times.
(18:43):
And not long after that, we were out in Bonday,
just for dinner and we were just walking to the
car and a car load of guys cat called and
she thought they were cat calling me, but I knew
they were cat calling her. And it's that disconnect period
in your daughter's life or your own life. I'm sure
(19:04):
we can all probably remember it, where you cross this
rubicon from being a child in the eyes of others
to being you know, sexually available or a source of
sexual gratification for men. And it always happens way before.
(19:25):
There's always a disconnect because it always happens earlier than it.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
You can see it, you can see it.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
All I can think about is that brilliant scene in
the Barbie movie when Mago Robbie comes to the real
world for the first time and she's walking down the
street and she for the first time becomes aware of
being perceived in the male gaze, and she says, I've
got this weird feeling. It's like I'm aware, but like
aware of myself, And to me, that is an absolute
fantastic portrayal but in faster time of what.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
It's like to be a teenage.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
That's exactly what I thought, and it made me a
bit emotional for that reason. Do you remember that happening
to you yourself? Can you put yourself back in the
first time you remember being a lot like that on
the street?
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Yeah, I can.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Well, I can remember the first time I noticed it
in myself, which was when I was at the beach
and I was walking and the sun was coming down
and I could see my shadow and I could see
my shadow went in at the waist, and I really
noticed that, and I was really quite chuffed about it.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
And then I remember trying on.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
Like tight clothes and looking at myself in the mirror
and trying on the persona of looking sexy, but not
really understanding what that was. And then of course I
remember being you know, sexual, I guess now you'd call
it sexual assault. When I was at the Easter Show
and with my friends, and I would have been twelve
(20:50):
or thirteen, and it was a sort of a crowd
and a guy walked towards me, grabbed me in the
by the vagina and or grabbed me in the volvo
the crotch area and kept walking.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
And I remember feeling.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
So just shocked, horrified, dirty because that and I couldn't
even process that. I didn't even I didn't even tell
anyone because I didn't even know what it was.
Speaker 4 (21:18):
It's such a profound thing when you suddenly realize it's
like you shift into being your sudden like, oh, I'm pray,
yeah right, yes, but I didn't really think I was.
And probably especially for our generation and maybe even more
so for our daughters, you can do anything, you can
go anywhere, you can be whatever you want to be.
You're just like the boys. And then suddenly, oh, I'm not,
(21:39):
like that's.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
The message because I'm pray so much. Yeah, was it
gen X women growing up? We did, but it was.
Speaker 5 (21:48):
A different stage of feminism.
Speaker 4 (21:50):
But but you suddenly if you ever thought that you
were just like the boys, if you were one of that,
then you're suddenly like, oh, I'm not. And then there's
this really interesting period I think as you go and
grapple with that whole idea, and then often what a
lot of young women will do is they'll figure out
a way to make it work for them in a way,
(22:10):
you know, like in how do I harness it. Which
bits of this new world do I like? And which
bits of it do I really not? And in the
book Lyra, who is fourteen and who her best friend's
dad may or may not do something inappropriate to her,
but certainly hasn't in appropriate relationship with her, and that
he calls her and they talk and he's kind of
(22:32):
she hasn't got a father who's around, and he tries
to step into that role, but in a creepy way.
She remembers the very first time she sees the way
he looks at her, and you just know, you just
have a sense that the way he's looking at you
is different to the way he looked at you last
summer when you were also in a swim suit in
the pool.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
And and the irony is not the irony, but the
biological reality is that for many of us, the gaze
of lights and our daughters when it is removed from
us at that same time, and both things are kind
of imperceptible, Like you know, you can think, oh, people
(23:09):
don't cat call anymore, but it's like, oh, and then
you're walking down the street with a younger woman and
you go, oh, they just don't cat call me anymore,
and you're like, right, I can walk past a building
site and not have to clench. And it's not because
men are more evolved. I like to believe that, but
it's actually just because I'm not in their sights anymore.
I'm no longer pray. And of course that feels I mean,
(23:31):
different women have different reactions to it. It feels like
a lovely relief. Some women feel, of course, a great
sense of loss.
Speaker 4 (23:39):
Do you ever feel, you know, how there's a trope
that it makes us jealous?
Speaker 5 (23:43):
Do you ever feel that? No, I don't feel that.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
No.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
And you watch some women on TikTok or you know, celebrities,
and you see the ones that are struggling with it,
and it's usually the ones, I guess who've really defined
themselves by how they look and have defined themselves through
the male gaze and through the validation of that. And
(24:07):
like you look at them with their daughters and like
they're trying to.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Look like their sisters. And then and then you know,
a man.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Or you must be as if I want to be
told that, like, that's not My aim is to look
like my daughter's sister. Like I'm very happy to sort
of back off that stage that I never was particularly
inamate of being on. But I'm very like, this is
their time now.
Speaker 5 (24:34):
It's no time to be object to.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
Find and say, yeah, exactly that what am I even saying?
Speaker 1 (24:38):
I know exactly what you mean to me?
Speaker 4 (24:40):
I also but and it's also interesting that when it
started to happen to my daughter, that when I saw
that shift, it brought out the protective mother and me
in a way that few things do. Is that when
I see an old particularly an older older man, look
at her in a certain way, I want to kill them.
I really do, even though I understand it because and
(25:01):
this is what the complicated thing that's kind of I
was trying to explore a bit in this book is that,
you know, there's a there's a point in the book
where Lockie says to one of the other guys, you know,
mothers want to keep treat their teenage girls like their babies,
but we know that they're basically the monsters who tortured
us at high school, like that they are God, yes,
and that they know exactly what they're doing.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
And that's awful.
Speaker 5 (25:24):
I know, that's awful.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
It's like these these adult men and of course not
all adult men, at course not. But there is a
certain type of adult man who is trying to correct
the experience that he had in high school where he
didn't have any power, and now he's got power by
the virtual of the fact that he's an adult and
she's not.
Speaker 5 (25:44):
Ooh, I know.
Speaker 4 (25:45):
And there's a there's a to very much the point
of not all adult men. I talk quite a bit
with the men in my life about how they handle
that shift of suddenly all the girls in the pool
or at the beach or whatever, who are your your
daughter's little friends do all look different.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
And they're all wearing their up their bamborkini.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
And I asked Brent.
Speaker 4 (26:05):
And you know, I'm not suggesting that men are going
to be completely honest with any woman about this, But
I asked Brent once like, because I noticed the way
that some men were looking at the girls, and I said,
is it hard?
Speaker 5 (26:16):
Is it hard? And he said no, he said, eyes down.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Eyes down, eyes down.
Speaker 4 (26:23):
It's just like you're you're an adult, and you just
have to keep that like eyes down, Like it's not
hard not to stare. It's not hard not to be lascivious.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
I don't know, but don't you remember that time when
you become aware of the male gaze. But then you
and you you're also you know, your horny, you've got
your hormones going.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
It's not you know.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
Puberty has an effect on girls as they become young women,
but you think you can control it. So you want
the male gaze, but you only want the people who
you like to look at you.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
You don't want that old guy on the bus to
look at you.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
But you want to wear the booty shorts even if
you can't articulate this.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
You want to wear the.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
Booty shorts because you want that guy that you have
a crush on to like you, or that good looking
older guy that you think it's cute. And that's what's
a really tough thing is the mother of a young
teenager to try and explain that nuance where they can
get very old. But you know that's his problem. He
shouldn't be looking at me. It's like, well, you're right,
(27:26):
he shouldn't. But you can't control who looks at you
when you're in the booty shorts.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
You can't.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
So and are you are you mature enough to be
able to understand that? And that you know I remember
settling you know, there's a sometimes joke that there's a
moment in the for every teenage girl where their mother
will slut shame them. She won't mean to, but you're like,
you can't go out like that. And for us, that's
(27:55):
because we're fearful of of that. But then the feminist
in us is also like, well, she should be able
to wear whatever she wants. We can't stop men from
looking at her. But so I say to my I
started saying to my daughter, I know this isn't fair.
(28:16):
I know this isn't right, and I will not stop
fighting for you to be able to wear whatever you want,
whenever you want, and be completely secure and free from
unwanted male attention.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
But at the moment, it's not that way.
Speaker 4 (28:34):
It's really complicated because we've discussed this before, but there
was one of the things that's really tricky, I think
for in this teenage time when you're figuring out all
of this stuff, is you are proud of your changing
body in a way because you realize that this is
going to be a part of being Yeah, but you
also feel a lot of shame about it. And what
(28:55):
I want to do in talking to my daughter about
it is not to add to that shame, but it's hard.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
And I remember a while.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
Ago we were at a thing with lots of kids
and my child was younger than she is now, and
the little boys were teasing her about her boom or whatever,
and she was really upset and I said to her,
put a jumper on.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
I know.
Speaker 4 (29:19):
It wasn't that I didn't say put a jumper on
because I thought it was okay. And obviously that like
the whole when I found out later what those little
boys have been saying, like, it was a whole thing.
But but my first is also because I wanted to
stay at the place and do whatever. You know, what
I mean was to do that. But that was kind
of saying to my daughter, were you're asking for it
that these eleven year old boys are teasing you.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
I remember my daughter came back from a camp or
something and like, oh, this guy hit me in the
playground or grabbed me or something. I'm like, Oh, that's
just what boys sometimes do when they like you.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
And then I was like, oh my.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
God, it's craze things that we've internalized. And it is
just such a head scramble for us as gen x
feminist women because what we want to be true is
not necessarily what we know is true. And also that
connect between we see danger and threat where they don't
(30:14):
yet because they haven't caught up with how they're viewed
in society, because they're still probably sleeping with a teddy bear,
but they've got boobs.
Speaker 4 (30:22):
And when you think about it, it's a lot to
get your head around.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
Everything is changing.
Speaker 4 (30:27):
But you know, I'm reading because I'm interviewing Ioni Sky
for this show It soon, and I'm reading her memoir
and one of the things she's really good on she's
in Generation x Icon, is her she talks about herself
as a teenager and to your point earlier, how horny
she was and that she was inappropriately young in an
appropriate situation. So she's on movie sets and she's like
(30:51):
fourteen and fifteen and modeling like those days, or they
were all getting emancipated from their parents because they allowed
you to work adult hours. So Hollywood, the studios would say,
you can have this part, but you have to get
emancipated so that you can work adult hours. Otherwise we're
going to have to have a teacher on set and
you're gonna have to work or and She talks with
(31:11):
really refreshing, non judgmental honesty about her first movie. Keanu
Reeves was her co star, and she just wants to
have sex with him, yeah, because he's Keanu Reeves and
he's unbelievably hot, And she goes, she tries, and she
turns up at his seat. She was fifteen and he
(31:32):
was only a bit older, and he's like no, And
then she goes on to have relationships with Anthony Keith
is from the Red Hot.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Chili Peppers, and he's eight years older, and.
Speaker 5 (31:41):
She moves in with it.
Speaker 4 (31:43):
But the thing that's really interesting reading it through our
lens now is we've I mean, and I'm not suggesting
that that's all fine, and there's plenty of room for
exploitation and abuse in that paradigm, but we have extended
childhood to a point I think of as gen X parents,
we've extended It feels shocking to think about fifteen, sixteen
(32:04):
seventeen year old girl behaving that.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Way but moving out of home.
Speaker 4 (32:07):
When I was fifteen, sixteen seventeen, I thought I was
twenty one.
Speaker 5 (32:12):
Oh god, yes, and I was gorgeous going.
Speaker 4 (32:15):
For what I wanted, and I didn't understand why it
was inappropriate whether it's inappropriate, of course, and so it's
kind of like, should you be ashamed of that?
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Yeah, I think we do a lot of It's really
hard because at a time when we want to be
telling young girls to explore their sexuality and lean into
how they're feeling and there's nothing wrong with that. I
often have really weird conversations with parents of teenage girls,
(32:48):
particularly fathers. I remember when I used to look after
Dolly magazine, and the dads were really against the sealed
sections and the Dolly doctor and stuff. But the moms
knew that girls want access to that information way before
they're going to act on it. You know, they want
to understand sex, they want to read, you know, they
want to try on what it's like to be older.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
And so even though you know you know that, I
don't know.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
It's just really challenging being the mother of a teenage girl,
it really is. And I always say, like, you know,
the best place for a young girl to explore her
sexuality is within a committed relationship, whether it's with another
girl or with another guy. But what you should want
as a parent is for your daughter when she's old
(33:38):
enough to be fooling around with someone who really cares
about her. And I think that this idea that you
have to put off sex or you know, lock your
sexuality in a box for as long as possible, and
that's the goal. It's like, whoever's daughter lasts the longest
without doing any of that stuff wins.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
I don't know, maybe because.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
I learned, you know, had a great I guess sexual
awakening with a committed boyfriend when I was around fifteen,
and that was amazing because a lot of women our
age have really awful stories about, you know, their first
sexual encounter or when they were teenage girls, and I didn't.
And I think that has paved the way for a
(34:20):
really good relationship with my sex life and with myself
and with sexual pleasure and all of those things because
it was in a committed relationship.
Speaker 4 (34:31):
That's that's so interesting, because it's true everybody kind of
marks you as a teenage parent of a daughter of
as whether or not she.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Is the gila.
Speaker 4 (34:42):
They're not saying that out loud. The questions people always
ask me about my teenage daughter. Sometimes I'm just like,
come on, like really, you know, it's.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
Really probably I'm the one that ill you.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
But that's okay, but yeah, but I know what you mean.
It's like as if a father's job is to the
shotgun on the porch. Yeah, and to hold that off
for as long as possible, And it's like.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Is it?
Speaker 4 (35:04):
I mean, I know anyway, I always ask you for
parental advice, and you are one of my village of
oracles because you're always a bit ahead. You've always been
ahead of me. And often the thing, the pattern that
plays out is you go, you tell me this, and
I got that will never happen, all right, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I don't think so, and then of course I can't
(35:24):
imagine it until it happens, right. And my mum did
the same with me, like I would talk to her
about because I've got an eldest son who my son's
twenty seven, my daughter's nineteen, and i've got a younger
son who's sixteen. And I remember saying to her about
my eldest son, Oh, I don't think he's drinking yet,
and she's like, darling, if you think he's not drinking,
he's drinking, And I'm like, do you think so? Of
(35:44):
course he was drinking, but I think you can be
a little bit blind to what's going on with your
own children. And even where I thought my daughter was
up to when she was younger, you know, now she's
at the age we have a great, very open and
honest relationship.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
And I thought we did then.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
But now she tells me there are a whole bunch
of things that I had no idea about.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
Oh my mother has not still has no idea.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
Yeah, and exactly my it doesn't either. So I think that,
you know, teenagers are rat bags in all the in
good ways, like because that's their job in some ways
as the rat bags. Their job is to push the envelope.
Speaker 4 (36:23):
When we come back, me and I are talking about
parenting and friendship. I wanted to ask you though, because
obviously I know you, and I know your family, and
you seem to have really good relationships with your kids.
I've always thought that, like I see them around you
when they don't think anybody's looking, and they're affectionate and
they take the piss out of you, which I think
(36:43):
is very healthy in parental relationships. But you know, you're
obviously very close. Do you have any words of advice
for how you get through that period of well like
this because we've often talked about how your kids are
little and they think you're amazing, and then they go
through adolescents and they think you're an idiot. Yeah, and
they want and the door closes. Whether they're boys or
(37:04):
girls in different ways at different times, the door closes,
and you're just then the desperate. I sometimes feel like
a desperate girlfriend who's like going.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
Do you want to go to the shops with me?
Speaker 5 (37:14):
Do you want to come out with me? I'll buy
you a thing. Yeah, I'll buy you a thing if
it means we can hang out.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
And I am always kind of I'm in a conflict
with myself about how much to just respect the closed
door and let the space, or how much to stay close.
And I think what I probably want more than anything
from my parental relationship as the kids get older is
I just want them to be close to me.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Yeah, like I want.
Speaker 4 (37:41):
I want that relationship. I don't expect to tell me everything,
but I want that relationship to be a positive one.
What's your best advice for getting through the closed door?
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Look, I'm no guru.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
I think that the worst thing is to try and
knock it down, or even to knock on it all
the time. You've just got to sort of sit outside
and wait till the door opens again. And when it
opens a crack, you have to try and be disciplined
and not like rush through it. And I only know
this through trial and error. And what's interesting to me
(38:12):
is the difference in sons and daughters. So in my experience,
boys pull away around puberty time and that can be
devastating from mother like that's been a massive source of
grief for me. But they do come back, but they
can be gone a couple of years, like a good
(38:33):
few years. And with girls though, that's when you clash
like it. Sometimes you wish they'd pull away, you know,
but they don't. They are all up in your grill,
giving you a character assessment. Yeah, and it can feel
(38:55):
like a bit of an abusive relationship sometimes because you know,
my mother always said to me, if your kids not
that you want to encourage them treating you like shit,
But if they can tell you things that are uncomfortable,
it means they feel secure that you're going to be
there on the other side of that.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
You know.
Speaker 3 (39:18):
And the biggest challenge is to just stay strong and
stay solid so that they can act out they can
do this, they can do that, but they know that
they can depend on you and rely on you.
Speaker 4 (39:34):
It's hard not to get offended sometimes. By the the
end the book, Ginger, one of the characters, says that
she feels with her teenage daughter like she's given birth
to her own ana critic, Like the yes, ther own
voice in your head.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
That's always telling you all the things are wrong with you.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
Yeah, your shadow firmed by your childhood telling you all
the things that's wrong with you.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
It's like you're worst in a monologue like that follows
you around and gives you a character assessment. And I
noticed that even with my own mother, Like I remember
once I was in my twenties or in my thirties
and I was just I was at her house and
I was like bitching about this and why have you
done this and this thing? And I was just being
really critical and she's like, can you just stop being
(40:14):
mean to me? And it was like, oh, yeah, right.
Like daughters are tough on their mothers.
Speaker 5 (40:21):
Like really tough.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
And I think that you've got to hold that line
between not letting them treat you like shit but also
not getting too wounded by it.
Speaker 4 (40:30):
Yeah, last thing I want to ask you, is there's
a lot of talk as we're recording. There's lots to
talk about this around the White Lotus, which is so
centers on these three women who are friends when they
were teenagers. But there's a lot of discussion about are
you stuck, like are you who you were as a teenager,
and whether or not that person still exists or not.
Do you think you are still the same Maya, the
(40:52):
same fifteen year old?
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Maya?
Speaker 5 (40:54):
Yeah, do you what's the same and what's different?
Speaker 3 (40:58):
I mean, your clothes are still I think my clothes
is still silly.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
I mean very still, very intense. I'm still very.
Speaker 5 (41:08):
People used to tell you that when you're a teenager
that you were intense.
Speaker 3 (41:12):
No, because that's not how teenagers talk. That's probably how
they talk now.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
No, you're so right.
Speaker 5 (41:16):
No one spoke like that.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
No teenager, they didn't, you know.
Speaker 3 (41:20):
But I I am certainly very focused. Like my female
friends are still everything to me. There's such an important
part of me. I was close to my family then,
even though I had did the same thing to my mum,
and my kids are close to me now and I'm
still close to my parents. You know, I wanted I
(41:42):
needed attention and I needed validation. I was pretty extroverted
but also needed time on my own.
Speaker 5 (41:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
I think essentially I'm the same.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
And when I think about my school friends, my girlfriends
from school, it's funny.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
After watching White Lotus, I.
Speaker 3 (41:58):
Felt the need to reach out to them again, which
we also did when COVID started. A lot of people
reached out to their school friends. There was like this
primal thing. I don't know what it was about, but
I'm the same as I am. When I think about
who I am around them, it's the same, Like it's
the same as who I am. Yeah, yeah, yeah it's
(42:18):
but it's the same as also who I am now, Like,
it's not like I would be a completely different person
around my school girlfriends.
Speaker 4 (42:26):
What do you think teenage mea would have been like
in the age of Oh my god, you would have
loved me?
Speaker 1 (42:31):
No, I would have, but it.
Speaker 3 (42:32):
Would have destroyed me like I would have I mean,
thank god, because so much no impulse control, no sense
of consequence, loving attention, always wanting to do more things.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
I think it could have been a really really bad
bad thing for me.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
I mean I would have loved it, but it would
have I just don't think it would have served me well.
Speaker 4 (42:53):
You always say that we're parenting in a time where we,
for the first time, we didn't face any of the.
Speaker 2 (42:59):
Things that are they're dealing with.
Speaker 4 (43:01):
And I think that being a teenage girl, one of
the problems now is that there are all these traps
there for you, that all the worst things you think
about yourself can be reaffirmed by strangers. Correct, friend groups.
Speaker 3 (43:12):
Correct, because all that, you know, we had ideas about popularity,
and you kind of every girl teenage girl knows who
are the popular girls and who aren't. And yet we
didn't have empirical evidence in terms of likes and followers
and things going viral and comments on our posts. You know,
(43:33):
all that stuff lived in our head. I can't imagine
you know me neither.
Speaker 4 (43:37):
Maya Friedman, thank you for coming on and talking to
me about my book.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
Congratulations. He would never.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
Five families, fourteen years of friendship, one long weekend.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
It's your best work, but by so far.
Speaker 4 (43:50):
Thank you so much, friends. He would never is in
shops on April twenty nine. If it sounds like something
you'd love reading, please follow the link in our show
notes of this episode to buy or pre order it.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
It would mean the world.
Speaker 4 (44:09):
And while you're sitting down doing that, please also hit
follow all like on this podcast wherever you're.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
Listening to it.
Speaker 4 (44:14):
It genuinely helps other people find this show if you
feel like leaving a review even better. An enormous thank
you from me to Mia Friedman for changing my life
in many ways, but also for coming and sitting down
with me for mid I know sitting down is her
least favorite thing, but I told you there was a
surprise at the end of this episode, and there is.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
I wanted to read you an.
Speaker 4 (44:36):
Exclusive passage from he would Never one that very much
reflects what MEA and I discussed in the show. What
You're about to hear is part of a chapter told
from the perspective of Lyra, a fourteen year old girl.
The book is about her mother and her mother's friends,
who all met at mother's group when their kids were babies.
They're not babies anymore, and when we meet Lyra, she's
(44:57):
thinking back to the time she felt her world tilt
in the way Mia and I.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
Were discussing today.
Speaker 4 (45:02):
The moment was in a swimming pool at her mum's
best friend's house and Lockie Short who she's been encouraged
to consider as some kind of uncle, is talking to
her in a way she hasn't heard before. The executive
producer of mid his name of Brown. The senior producer
is Grace Ruvray, a producer is Charlie Blackman, and we've
had audio and sound designed by Jacob Brown. Enjoy this
(45:24):
little bit of he would never Tia was Lyra's best friend,
but they were pretty different. They went to different schools now.
Tia went to a really posh school with no rules,
and Lyrah went to Saint Deirdre's, which was medium posh
but had lots of rules, mostly to do with God.
Tia did dance and drama and Lyra did netball and soccer,
(45:47):
so they didn't see each other as much as they
used to when they both went to Bronte Public and
didn't have so much to do. But Tia was still
the one who Lyah felt most comfortable with of all
her friend group. The others you always had to watch
what you said, or sometimes you might get to school
and find out through a feeling in your stomach or
in the way one of the girls was talking to you,
(46:08):
or in how they didn't answer, or even open your
messages that there had been a shift. That's how you'd
find out you'd done something. You were out, and you'd
have to work your way back in.
Speaker 1 (46:19):
It was tiring.
Speaker 2 (46:21):
She was never out with Tia.
Speaker 4 (46:23):
They could be silly together like babies, or they could
be teenagers together trying on who they might like to
be next.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
It didn't matter. It was always easy.
Speaker 4 (46:32):
Lyra thought about the first time Tears Dad Lockie had
spoken to her in a way that was different from
how the other grown ups did the first time, she
was confused. She had been at Tears and they had
all been in the pool. One of the first swims
of last summer. Auntie Liz had a swimming pool with
an infinity edge like you saw in fancy hotels on TikTok.
(46:53):
Auntie Liz said it made you feel like you were
drifting out to sea, as if that were a good thing.
Everyone was getting out except Lyra, because there was nothing
Lira liked more than floating on her back looking up
at the sky.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
Tia and Lis and the little kids had all piled
towards the.
Speaker 4 (47:08):
Kitchen to get food, but Lockie had stayed behind, and
he was looking at her. You look a lot like
your mother, he'd said, which wasn't what she'd wanted to hear,
but okay. Then he said, you know she is extremely
dear to us, don't you. And there have been something
about the way he said it words that people don't
usually use, a question that didn't need an answer. Adults
(47:30):
were always asking questions that weren't questions, but they usually
used normal words. Liz would do anything for your mom,
me too, Auntie. Lis is very good to us. Lya
knew to be grateful to the Shorts the number of
times over the years that she'd heard her mother say
she didn't know where she'd be without Lis. Lira wanted
to get out, to go and find tea, but there
(47:51):
was something about the way Lockie kept looking at her
that made her want to stay covered by the water.
It was the year that eyes had started moving differently
over her. At the beach on the street, Lyra was
wearing what she and her friends were always wearing, but
suddenly it all meant something different. It was like a
spotlight was suddenly pointed right at her, and sometimes it
(48:11):
felt good to be picked out seen, but sometimes it
felt scary, and she hadn't ever thought about it feeling
scary with people. You'd always known that maybe all men
had that light with them, and they could shine it
at you whenever they wanted. I should find teas she'd
said from the water, but she didn't move to pull
herself up and out onto the deck. Go away, she remembered,
(48:32):
feeling turn away. Someone needs to look out for you girls,
he'd said, now you're growing up. Your mum's so busy.
We're fine, she'd said quickly, and then remembered, thank you.
Lockie had picked up a towel Auntie Lissa's house had
the best, thick soft towels, big enough to wrap around
your whole body, and took two steps towards the edge
of the pool, where Lyra's arms were resting. She'd put
(48:54):
her chin on them and looked down at where the
water was licking in and out of the shiny little
square tiles, anywhere but up at him. Come on, then,
he said, squatting down holding the towel out, Let's go
and get some food. How many times had Lira jumped
out of this pool and run into the kitchen in
a little sun suit, in a swimming lesson one piece
in a bikini without thinking without even being aware of herself,
(49:18):
of her arms and legs and Tommy and chest. Why
did she feel in that moment when she glanced up
and saw the crease around Lockey Short's eyes and the
particular curve of his closed mouth smile, like everything was different.
She remembered the rough grout scratching her stomach as she
pushed her whole self flat against the pool wall, hiding
her bum, her thighs, her flicking feet. Lockie hadn't moved,
(49:42):
he'd stayed close, towel and hands. You girls should get
bigger cozies, he'd said, and she could hear something like
a tease in his voice, friendly, maybe a tone that
suggested everything she was feeling was ridiculous. But then if
you don't want to be looked at, and she remembered
feeling sick in her mouth,
You're listening to a mother mea podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Mama Mayre acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
It's that disconnect period in your daughter's life or your
own life. I'm sure we can all probably remember it
where you cross this rubicon from being a child in
the eyes of others to being you know, sexually available
(00:38):
or a source of sexual gratification for men, there's always
a disconnectcause it always happens earlier than you can see.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
You can see it.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
Hello, I'm Holly Wainwright and I am Mid, Midlife, mid Family,
mid Mayhem. Welcome back to our show Mid Conversations for
gen X women who are anything But this is our
first episode of a news season, and as you'll know
if you're a regular listener, it's starting a little differently,
(01:08):
and that's been I've got something special for you later
at the end this season on Mid we have got
gurus and health experts. I have nineties icons and household names.
I have Melinda French Gates. Yes, we have carefully planned
every episode to bring you something that makes life a
little bit better, a great story, a very useful idea,
(01:31):
something to try.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Someone who reminds you of you.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
And today, for the first episode of this new season
of MID, I have a friend.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
I think you know her. It's Mia Friedman.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
If you listen to Mamma Mia out loud, you know
that I spend a lot of time talking to Mia,
along with our beloved co host Jesse Stevens, disagreeing with
Mia quite a lot, laughing till I snort with her,
gossiping with her, sending the world to rights with her.
But I'd never asked her to be on MID before,
and the reason that I wanted to for the first
(02:04):
of season five was twofold. I wanted to talk to
her about my new book. It's called He Would Never
and it's out in a hot minute.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
I nervously slipped.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
Mia an early copy of it over the summer holidays,
and she immediately messaged me to say she wanted to
talk to me about it on MID and not before,
so I have been waiting nervously to hear what she
wants to tell.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Me about it.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
But also it's because of the themes of the book
I think they're going to resonate with you as listeners
to MID. It's about the power and limitations of female friendships,
it's about narcissistic relationships, it's centered around a knoddy little mystery,
and it's about the sometimes confusing shift of little girls
into teenage ones. This is something that Mia and I
(02:50):
talk about off Mike a lot. She's the first person
I ask for parenting advice about teenagers, because although she
and I are exactly the same age, she had her
kids a lot younger than I did. She's a grandmother now,
for God's sake, so she's always a few big paces
ahead in lots of ways. Of course, So we talk
about guy teenage daughters, and we also reflect on our
(03:11):
teenage selves, who appear to have existed in an entirely
different universe. What we got right, what we got wrong.
We talk about all of that, and we talk about
writing and ambition and confidence and friendship. But we start,
of course with me asking Mia a very bald question
about he would never and getting the kind of honest
answer I would only expect from the extraordinarily honest, funny, brilliant,
(03:35):
generous MEA Friedman. And don't forget to stay listening at
the end of this conversation for your surprise, MEA Friedman,
Holly wayIn right, there's nothing like getting you in a
studio and putting in front of a mic and asking you.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Did you like my book?
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Not really, I've read better. No, she's fucking loved it.
So what happened was you gave it to me, and
then I was away with Jesse, our third co host
and kind of like our little sister and friend on
out loud, and she read it first.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
And you and.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
I often get given books by friends and in some
ways they land and you just go, okay, this is
a job because you know that your friend will be
very anxious and that you've got to read it, and
then you've got to obviously say nice things about it,
even if you don't really like it. And so then
(04:34):
Jesse started reading it first, and she was just like
she spent the whole weekend just like I just want
to I just want to go and finish hollybook. I
just all it's all I want to read. It's all
I want to think about. So I was like, okay,
this is a good sign. So when she was finished,
I started reading. And as soon as I started I
(04:55):
realized why you had been such a nutcase for before,
because I said to Jesse, what's so good? About it,
because she's like, I'm just desperate to read it. I
just want to get back to it. I just want
to get back to it. Can you hold the baby out?
Want to get back to Holly's book? And I'm like,
what's so good about it? And she said she's gone
to like she's gone up three levels.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
What's she said?
Speaker 3 (05:18):
I understand why she's so stressed, because what she's tried
to do is extraordinary. She's thrown a lot of balls
in the air, and she's bitten off a lot and
she's pulling it off.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
It must be tiresome for you to have to watch
me having a breakdown every time I write a book.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
That was a long answer to your off short question.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
And thank you for all those lovely things say, because
Mia does have to watch listen watch me have a
breakdown every time I write.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Yeah, it's so funny because I don't write books anymore,
but all my friends do, including you and Jesse, who
two my closest friends, and also Jesse's sister Claire recently
wrote her first book. And you will have breakdowns in
very different ways. You will have complete breakdowns, but differently,
and you have different breakdowns from book to book, this one.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
I've never seen you go so sort of the.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
One that you did before, which is a Couple Upstairs
that was quite dark, and when I read that, you
went quite dark and I understood You're like you were
really insecure when you were writing that, which is interesting
because it was like going back to a time about
an emotionally abusive relationship and there were some dark themes
in it. With this one, it felt different. I felt
(06:33):
like you were like wrestling an alligator.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Yeah, for a really long period of time.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
And I've never been one of your readers. You've never
given it to me early, which I appreciate.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Thank you, but it really would be a job.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
I know you have other readers, and I also know
that you didn't give it to them this time either,
and I yeah, it was just once I read the book,
I understood everything.
Speaker 4 (06:57):
It's funny because I told you this at the time
because obviously we record together, you know, three five times
a week, so we see each other.
Speaker 5 (07:04):
All the time.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
And for years I when I haven't really spoken by this,
but when I handed the first draft of this book in,
it got handed.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Back to me like they were like, you need.
Speaker 4 (07:15):
It needs some more work, and you didn't tell me
that at the time because I was really devastated. Yeah,
and tell me why, Like, is that because every author,
I mean, I know what it's like to hand in
a book and all you want is no notes.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
It isn't that Actually, well it's never happened to me.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
But like then when you get it back and it's like,
here's all the things you need to do, that's always
the point at which I want to give back my advance, yes,
and say I don't want to do it anymore, don't
want to do it.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
I think part of what it was is and you know,
we talk about this a lot, but I always overestimate
how what I can do and how much I can do.
Speaker 5 (07:49):
You know what I mean. I'm always like it'll be fine.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
I mean the time it takes you to write, the
time it takes to write it, and the amount of
focus and energy that it takes to Because the thing
is that most people write books, and that's their job, right,
But you write books as well as having a full
time job, yes, and doing a hundred other things. And
you know, lots of authors have kids, but most authors
don't also have another full time job.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
Yeah, So I think that one of the if I
learned something through this book, and I'm sure I learned
lots of things, it was about that about trying to focus,
because I think what happened is when I handed it
in and I've been writing this book for like two years.
It is a big and complicated plot. We're not going
to go into the plot massively here. I want to
talk about some of the themes from it. But it's
a big and complicated plot that has lots of characters,
(08:33):
and it goes over a long period of time, so
there's a lot of moving parts, right, And I think
that I literally bid off more than I could chew.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
In the way that I normally work. Right.
Speaker 4 (08:44):
So when I handed it in my very fabulous publisher,
she pretty much said to me, the last third feels
rushed and not like you have you know, you haven't landed.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
It yet and did you secretly know that to share?
Speaker 4 (08:58):
But I think that this is one of the things
that you really struggle with when you're writing, is you
lose sight of your instinct anymore?
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Like is this good?
Speaker 5 (09:06):
Or do I just not think it's good because I'm insecure?
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Blah blah bah.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Because also, no one else it was just had been
in your head for so long, Like I remember when
you wrote some of your first books. I think you
talked about this book or this, the themes around this book,
this idea of a camping holiday with a group of friends,
like years ago, eight years ago.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
I had been thinking about this plot and what to
do with this idea for a really long time, and
then it sort of came together when I sort of
tied it together with this thing about teenagers and teenage girls,
which I want us to talk about in a minute. Anyway,
I think I was really ambitious, so you know how
you said, And it's lovely to hear that.
Speaker 5 (09:47):
Jesse was like, she's leveled up.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
I think I was ambitious and maybe a bit off
more than I could chew.
Speaker 5 (09:53):
How unlike us to do that.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
So when, anyway, when my publisher confirmed that to me,
and she said, you need some more time, you need
some more focus. This book is going to be good.
It's going to be good, but it's not quite good yet.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
And he probably unfronting, but you also probably hadn't mapped
out time in you diary to do that, Like how
did you write this book? I forget because you've written
them in lots of different ways. You've taken stretches off
to focus completely and try to write them. In the
three month stretch, you've done like a day a week
for a year.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Tell me the way that.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
I'm trying I try to work now is, as you know,
I stack my Mama mea work at the front of
the week, generally speaking, where I'm here in one hundred
percent Mamma mea world Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then in
theory Thursday, Friday and the weekend. Let's be honest, is
like more creative projects, writing books at other creative projects
(10:44):
rather that. And that's good in theory, but have you
ever known our lives to go exactly like in the
neat little blocks that we try and put them in,
do you know what I mean? So it's kind of
more everything kind of bleeds.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Do you think in a perfect world you need to
just go I'm going to take four months or I'm
going to take three months, and I'm like almost like
Matt leave and I'm just going to focus on it.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
I think.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
I think yes, in a way. But then what I've
also come to about myself, you know, the whole introvert
extrovert thing. Yeah, I think I love writing for its solitude,
because I do quite like being alone. But I'm not
a pure introvert, like if I didn't have the you know,
also breaking it up with coming in here and being
(11:26):
with you guys and talking about it.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
So you like the switching game, I actually like that.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
I don't know if it is brilliant for creative process,
but it's good for my mental space. I think if
I was just locked away with the manuscript for and
nothing else, I don't think that would suit me in
the way that I know some writers are very suited
to being purely alone.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
The part where your publisher said the last third feels
rushed is that because you underestimated how long it would
take you to write, or because you just were a
bit sick of it and you just wanted to end it,
Like why do you think that?
Speaker 4 (11:56):
I also think that what I've learned is I used
to say, you know how that fiction writers always say,
are you're a plotter or a panther?
Speaker 1 (12:03):
That's the thing that.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
So plotters are. You will have heard like Jane Harper
talks about this. Not that I'm comparing myself to her,
but you plot out exactly what's going to happen in
minuscule detail before you write the book, so you know
you've got everything, the.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Whole plot down, saying, with all the stuff on there.
Speaker 5 (12:22):
Every chapter is Matt, I feel like you used to
do that.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Didn't you do that with postal?
Speaker 4 (12:25):
Well, I've always done it with I do it in theory,
but not in detail.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Right.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
So then, because I'm also quite like, ideas come to
you while you do it, you know, like creative people,
you're you'll be writing and you'll be like this would
be funny, or that would be good or so I
resist that kind of structure.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
To a point.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
You resist all kinds of stuff. I know it's it's
one of my favorites. And I think that what I
learned on this book is I needed that. I really
needed that structure because this was like trying to wrestle
an alligator, and because it was so big and broad
and sprawling, and I was trying to apply my usual
kind of she'll be right techniques to that last half
(13:04):
that wasn't wasn't going to work.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
How many characters are in it, and it because it
jumps jump.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
Are five families and they and really the main characters
are Danny and Liss and Locke Well and Sadie. So
there are there are like me, there are characters who
are more major than minor. But they've all got kids.
And that's the other thing is that so they've all
got kids. And and the marriage various configurations of marriage.
There are like there's single parents, and there's a gay couple,
(13:31):
and there's you know, two conventionally married couples.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
And they all met at Mother's Group.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
Which is something that did happen to me in real
life is I made good friends at Mother's Group and
we do actually go camping together every year.
Speaker 5 (13:42):
They are very nervous about.
Speaker 4 (13:43):
This book, I'm but obviously the rest of it isn't
and the thing that then, so that is a lot
to juggle and I did learn that I do have
to basically be much more structured. So when I rewrote
the last third, and obviously I ended up rewriting quite
a lot of it, then I did really plan it
out in meticulous detail like I gave. I listened to
(14:03):
the feedback about the structure. Editors are always right, like
we talk about this a lot mere that you often
as you climb a tree in a creative field, people
give you fewer and fewer notes.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Yeah, which is terrible.
Speaker 5 (14:15):
Yeah, you need more notes.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
Whether you're like Mike White making the White loadus for
like he's got four hours of deleted scenes on the floor.
Not that I'm again comparing myself to him, or whether
you're writing a book or whether you're conducting an interview,
like you need other people to be able to say
to you.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Oh yeah, keep doing.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
That saying I'm not comparing myself to don't happen. I'm
not comparing myself to Mike White.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
You're a best.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
Selling author, this is what your fifth book, sixth book, Like.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
You're a big fucking deal. Hallywayne right, Like.
Speaker 5 (14:43):
Stop and I don't feel like a big deal.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
When we come back, Mea and I discuss our own
coming of age stories and that tricky, sticky time between
being a little kid and being a woman.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Do you still wear the title author a little?
Speaker 4 (15:04):
I think I'm getting more comfortable in it. But it's
really funny how intimidating that feels, that that word. And
I think it's because the literary scene, as it were,
is a very compartmentalized thing. The other thing I wanted
to say is, as you know very well, I didn't
(15:25):
start writing books till I was in my forties, right,
And it was literally the thing I most wanted to
do when I was a little girl. We're about to
talk about being teenagers, but if there was a teenage
Holly who had a dream of what she wanted, I
was like, I'm going to be a writer. But I
wasn't a writer, you know. I mean I was lots
of other things.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
But you said.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
You you always like when you were a kid, you
would write stories.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
I used to keep I used to write in these notebooks,
these really convoluted stories about me and all my friends,
and we were all dating different members of Juran Juran Oh.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Fanfic before there was Away exactly, I.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
Was dating Simon or the Bond loved it and your
main character, because that was the main character. And I
used to go into school in the mornings and literally
get my friends to sit down and we'd read, and
I'd read to them about what happened, and then they'd
be like.
Speaker 5 (16:12):
Well why would then then there was drama, and then
when there was going to.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
Be a sex scene, because obviously I couldn't really write
sex scenes then because I was kissing. Though kissing, I'd
be like and then dot dot pause.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
And saying to Black, oh, well I was doing that.
Then how old were you when you were doing that?
Speaker 5 (16:32):
Like twelve eleven and twelve like young?
Speaker 1 (16:34):
And I was writing bad poetry.
Speaker 5 (16:35):
Yeah, it's I think it's today age, isn't it?
Speaker 4 (16:37):
Like? And the thing that's mortifying is that we were
filling notebooks with that stuff. But now people are feeling, well,
if people are doing it, well, they're making teaktoks. Yeah
they are, That's exactly what they're doing, and they'll and
then ten minutes later they're mortified by them. Anyway, the
thing that tied this idea for me together about the
camping is that then I wanted to write about teenage girls,
and I wanted to write about being parents teenage girls.
(17:00):
And this is something that you and I talk about
a lot all the time, and partly because one of
the things, and obviously we're going to talk in broad
time because we're not going to mortify our teenage daughters
anymore than we already do all the time. One of
the things that I noticed the most about my daughter
moving from that phase of being a little kid into
being a teenager, apart from the changes in her in
(17:22):
terms of you know how, there's a moment in which
they're running around completely un self conscious, nothing like just
being crazy, cartwheeling, dancing, whatever they're doing, expressing their opinions,
and then like a switch flicks, they're suddenly mortified by themselves,
you know, like yourselves away and certainly by you. But
the other thing that happens is when your daughter begins
(17:47):
to become a young woman, everyone around you changes too.
And the thing that I would notice when we would
go away on our not necessarily with these camping friends,
but we live in a beachy kind of culture, is
that suddenly the conversations you're having all the time, and
often from men actually would be like, oh, you're going
to be in trouble, aren't you. Oh she's going to
(18:07):
be in she's going to be trouble. Oh I don't
envy you. And they're making all these comments, usually to
the dad, usually to the dad, yep, about this girl
who's just moving through the world and changing. And it's
a lot, It is a lot.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
I remember the first time my daughter got sexually her assed.
She was walking, she would have been twelve, and she
was walking to a friend's house and a guy walked
past her and sort of licked his lips and said something,
can I remember, you know, it's one of those times.
(18:43):
And not long after that, we were out in Bonday,
just for dinner and we were just walking to the
car and a car load of guys cat called and
she thought they were cat calling me, but I knew
they were cat calling her. And it's that disconnect period
in your daughter's life or your own life. I'm sure
(19:04):
we can all probably remember it, where you cross this
rubicon from being a child in the eyes of others
to being you know, sexually available or a source of
sexual gratification for men. And it always happens way before.
(19:25):
There's always a disconnect because it always happens earlier than it.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
You can see it, you can see it.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
All I can think about is that brilliant scene in
the Barbie movie when Mago Robbie comes to the real
world for the first time and she's walking down the
street and she for the first time becomes aware of
being perceived in the male gaze, and she says, I've
got this weird feeling. It's like I'm aware, but like
aware of myself, And to me, that is an absolute
fantastic portrayal but in faster time of what.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
It's like to be a teenage.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
That's exactly what I thought, and it made me a
bit emotional for that reason. Do you remember that happening
to you yourself? Can you put yourself back in the
first time you remember being a lot like that on
the street?
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Yeah, I can.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Well, I can remember the first time I noticed it
in myself, which was when I was at the beach
and I was walking and the sun was coming down
and I could see my shadow and I could see
my shadow went in at the waist, and I really
noticed that, and I was really quite chuffed about it.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
And then I remember trying on.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
Like tight clothes and looking at myself in the mirror
and trying on the persona of looking sexy, but not
really understanding what that was. And then of course I
remember being you know, sexual, I guess now you'd call
it sexual assault. When I was at the Easter Show
and with my friends, and I would have been twelve
(20:50):
or thirteen, and it was a sort of a crowd
and a guy walked towards me, grabbed me in the
by the vagina and or grabbed me in the volvo
the crotch area and kept walking.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
And I remember feeling.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
So just shocked, horrified, dirty because that and I couldn't
even process that. I didn't even I didn't even tell
anyone because I didn't even know what it was.
Speaker 4 (21:18):
It's such a profound thing when you suddenly realize it's
like you shift into being your sudden like, oh, I'm pray,
yeah right, yes, but I didn't really think I was.
And probably especially for our generation and maybe even more
so for our daughters, you can do anything, you can
go anywhere, you can be whatever you want to be.
You're just like the boys. And then suddenly, oh, I'm not,
(21:39):
like that's.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
The message because I'm pray so much. Yeah, was it
gen X women growing up? We did, but it was.
Speaker 5 (21:48):
A different stage of feminism.
Speaker 4 (21:50):
But but you suddenly if you ever thought that you
were just like the boys, if you were one of that,
then you're suddenly like, oh, I'm not. And then there's
this really interesting period I think as you go and
grapple with that whole idea, and then often what a
lot of young women will do is they'll figure out
a way to make it work for them in a way,
(22:10):
you know, like in how do I harness it. Which
bits of this new world do I like? And which
bits of it do I really not? And in the
book Lyra, who is fourteen and who her best friend's
dad may or may not do something inappropriate to her,
but certainly hasn't in appropriate relationship with her, and that
he calls her and they talk and he's kind of
(22:32):
she hasn't got a father who's around, and he tries
to step into that role, but in a creepy way.
She remembers the very first time she sees the way
he looks at her, and you just know, you just
have a sense that the way he's looking at you
is different to the way he looked at you last
summer when you were also in a swim suit in
the pool.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
And and the irony is not the irony, but the
biological reality is that for many of us, the gaze
of lights and our daughters when it is removed from
us at that same time, and both things are kind
of imperceptible, Like you know, you can think, oh, people
(23:09):
don't cat call anymore, but it's like, oh, and then
you're walking down the street with a younger woman and
you go, oh, they just don't cat call me anymore,
and you're like, right, I can walk past a building
site and not have to clench. And it's not because
men are more evolved. I like to believe that, but
it's actually just because I'm not in their sights anymore.
I'm no longer pray. And of course that feels I mean,
(23:31):
different women have different reactions to it. It feels like
a lovely relief. Some women feel, of course, a great
sense of loss.
Speaker 4 (23:39):
Do you ever feel, you know, how there's a trope
that it makes us jealous?
Speaker 5 (23:43):
Do you ever feel that? No, I don't feel that.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
No.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
And you watch some women on TikTok or you know, celebrities,
and you see the ones that are struggling with it,
and it's usually the ones, I guess who've really defined
themselves by how they look and have defined themselves through
the male gaze and through the validation of that. And
(24:07):
like you look at them with their daughters and like
they're trying to.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Look like their sisters. And then and then you know,
a man.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Or you must be as if I want to be
told that, like, that's not My aim is to look
like my daughter's sister. Like I'm very happy to sort
of back off that stage that I never was particularly
inamate of being on. But I'm very like, this is
their time now.
Speaker 5 (24:34):
It's no time to be object to.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
Find and say, yeah, exactly that what am I even saying?
Speaker 1 (24:38):
I know exactly what you mean to me?
Speaker 4 (24:40):
I also but and it's also interesting that when it
started to happen to my daughter, that when I saw
that shift, it brought out the protective mother and me
in a way that few things do. Is that when
I see an old particularly an older older man, look
at her in a certain way, I want to kill them.
I really do, even though I understand it because and
(25:01):
this is what the complicated thing that's kind of I
was trying to explore a bit in this book is that,
you know, there's a there's a point in the book
where Lockie says to one of the other guys, you know,
mothers want to keep treat their teenage girls like their babies,
but we know that they're basically the monsters who tortured
us at high school, like that they are God, yes,
and that they know exactly what they're doing.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
And that's awful.
Speaker 5 (25:24):
I know, that's awful.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
It's like these these adult men and of course not
all adult men, at course not. But there is a
certain type of adult man who is trying to correct
the experience that he had in high school where he
didn't have any power, and now he's got power by
the virtual of the fact that he's an adult and
she's not.
Speaker 5 (25:44):
Ooh, I know.
Speaker 4 (25:45):
And there's a there's a to very much the point
of not all adult men. I talk quite a bit
with the men in my life about how they handle
that shift of suddenly all the girls in the pool
or at the beach or whatever, who are your your
daughter's little friends do all look different.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
And they're all wearing their up their bamborkini.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
And I asked Brent.
Speaker 4 (26:05):
And you know, I'm not suggesting that men are going
to be completely honest with any woman about this, But
I asked Brent once like, because I noticed the way
that some men were looking at the girls, and I said,
is it hard?
Speaker 5 (26:16):
Is it hard? And he said no, he said, eyes down.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Eyes down, eyes down.
Speaker 4 (26:23):
It's just like you're you're an adult, and you just
have to keep that like eyes down, Like it's not
hard not to stare. It's not hard not to be lascivious.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
I don't know, but don't you remember that time when
you become aware of the male gaze. But then you
and you you're also you know, your horny, you've got
your hormones going.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
It's not you know.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
Puberty has an effect on girls as they become young women,
but you think you can control it. So you want
the male gaze, but you only want the people who
you like to look at you.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
You don't want that old guy on the bus to
look at you.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
But you want to wear the booty shorts even if
you can't articulate this.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
You want to wear the.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
Booty shorts because you want that guy that you have
a crush on to like you, or that good looking
older guy that you think it's cute. And that's what's
a really tough thing is the mother of a young
teenager to try and explain that nuance where they can
get very old. But you know that's his problem. He
shouldn't be looking at me. It's like, well, you're right,
(27:26):
he shouldn't. But you can't control who looks at you
when you're in the booty shorts.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
You can't.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
So and are you are you mature enough to be
able to understand that? And that you know I remember
settling you know, there's a sometimes joke that there's a
moment in the for every teenage girl where their mother
will slut shame them. She won't mean to, but you're like,
you can't go out like that. And for us, that's
(27:55):
because we're fearful of of that. But then the feminist
in us is also like, well, she should be able
to wear whatever she wants. We can't stop men from
looking at her. But so I say to my I
started saying to my daughter, I know this isn't fair.
(28:16):
I know this isn't right, and I will not stop
fighting for you to be able to wear whatever you want,
whenever you want, and be completely secure and free from
unwanted male attention.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
But at the moment, it's not that way.
Speaker 4 (28:34):
It's really complicated because we've discussed this before, but there
was one of the things that's really tricky, I think
for in this teenage time when you're figuring out all
of this stuff, is you are proud of your changing
body in a way because you realize that this is
going to be a part of being Yeah, but you
also feel a lot of shame about it. And what
(28:55):
I want to do in talking to my daughter about
it is not to add to that shame, but it's hard.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
And I remember a while.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
Ago we were at a thing with lots of kids
and my child was younger than she is now, and
the little boys were teasing her about her boom or whatever,
and she was really upset and I said to her,
put a jumper on.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
I know.
Speaker 4 (29:19):
It wasn't that I didn't say put a jumper on
because I thought it was okay. And obviously that like
the whole when I found out later what those little
boys have been saying, like, it was a whole thing.
But but my first is also because I wanted to
stay at the place and do whatever. You know, what
I mean was to do that. But that was kind
of saying to my daughter, were you're asking for it
that these eleven year old boys are teasing you.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
I remember my daughter came back from a camp or
something and like, oh, this guy hit me in the
playground or grabbed me or something. I'm like, Oh, that's
just what boys sometimes do when they like you.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
And then I was like, oh my.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
God, it's craze things that we've internalized. And it is
just such a head scramble for us as gen x
feminist women because what we want to be true is
not necessarily what we know is true. And also that
connect between we see danger and threat where they don't
(30:14):
yet because they haven't caught up with how they're viewed
in society, because they're still probably sleeping with a teddy bear,
but they've got boobs.
Speaker 4 (30:22):
And when you think about it, it's a lot to
get your head around.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
Everything is changing.
Speaker 4 (30:27):
But you know, I'm reading because I'm interviewing Ioni Sky
for this show It soon, and I'm reading her memoir
and one of the things she's really good on she's
in Generation x Icon, is her she talks about herself
as a teenager and to your point earlier, how horny
she was and that she was inappropriately young in an
appropriate situation. So she's on movie sets and she's like
(30:51):
fourteen and fifteen and modeling like those days, or they
were all getting emancipated from their parents because they allowed
you to work adult hours. So Hollywood, the studios would say,
you can have this part, but you have to get
emancipated so that you can work adult hours. Otherwise we're
going to have to have a teacher on set and
you're gonna have to work or and She talks with
(31:11):
really refreshing, non judgmental honesty about her first movie. Keanu
Reeves was her co star, and she just wants to
have sex with him, yeah, because he's Keanu Reeves and
he's unbelievably hot, And she goes, she tries, and she
turns up at his seat. She was fifteen and he
(31:32):
was only a bit older, and he's like no, And
then she goes on to have relationships with Anthony Keith
is from the Red Hot.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Chili Peppers, and he's eight years older, and.
Speaker 5 (31:41):
She moves in with it.
Speaker 4 (31:43):
But the thing that's really interesting reading it through our
lens now is we've I mean, and I'm not suggesting
that that's all fine, and there's plenty of room for
exploitation and abuse in that paradigm, but we have extended
childhood to a point I think of as gen X parents,
we've extended It feels shocking to think about fifteen, sixteen
(32:04):
seventeen year old girl behaving that.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Way but moving out of home.
Speaker 4 (32:07):
When I was fifteen, sixteen seventeen, I thought I was
twenty one.
Speaker 5 (32:12):
Oh god, yes, and I was gorgeous going.
Speaker 4 (32:15):
For what I wanted, and I didn't understand why it
was inappropriate whether it's inappropriate, of course, and so it's
kind of like, should you be ashamed of that?
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Yeah, I think we do a lot of It's really
hard because at a time when we want to be
telling young girls to explore their sexuality and lean into
how they're feeling and there's nothing wrong with that. I
often have really weird conversations with parents of teenage girls,
(32:48):
particularly fathers. I remember when I used to look after
Dolly magazine, and the dads were really against the sealed
sections and the Dolly doctor and stuff. But the moms
knew that girls want access to that information way before
they're going to act on it. You know, they want
to understand sex, they want to read, you know, they
want to try on what it's like to be older.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
And so even though you know you know that, I
don't know.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
It's just really challenging being the mother of a teenage girl,
it really is. And I always say, like, you know,
the best place for a young girl to explore her
sexuality is within a committed relationship, whether it's with another
girl or with another guy. But what you should want
as a parent is for your daughter when she's old
(33:38):
enough to be fooling around with someone who really cares
about her. And I think that this idea that you
have to put off sex or you know, lock your
sexuality in a box for as long as possible, and
that's the goal. It's like, whoever's daughter lasts the longest
without doing any of that stuff wins.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
I don't know, maybe because.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
I learned, you know, had a great I guess sexual
awakening with a committed boyfriend when I was around fifteen,
and that was amazing because a lot of women our
age have really awful stories about, you know, their first
sexual encounter or when they were teenage girls, and I didn't.
And I think that has paved the way for a
(34:20):
really good relationship with my sex life and with myself
and with sexual pleasure and all of those things because
it was in a committed relationship.
Speaker 4 (34:31):
That's that's so interesting, because it's true everybody kind of
marks you as a teenage parent of a daughter of
as whether or not she.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Is the gila.
Speaker 4 (34:42):
They're not saying that out loud. The questions people always
ask me about my teenage daughter. Sometimes I'm just like,
come on, like really, you know, it's.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
Really probably I'm the one that ill you.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
But that's okay, but yeah, but I know what you mean.
It's like as if a father's job is to the
shotgun on the porch. Yeah, and to hold that off
for as long as possible, And it's like.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Is it?
Speaker 4 (35:04):
I mean, I know anyway, I always ask you for
parental advice, and you are one of my village of
oracles because you're always a bit ahead. You've always been
ahead of me. And often the thing, the pattern that
plays out is you go, you tell me this, and
I got that will never happen, all right, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I don't think so, and then of course I can't
(35:24):
imagine it until it happens, right. And my mum did
the same with me, like I would talk to her
about because I've got an eldest son who my son's
twenty seven, my daughter's nineteen, and i've got a younger
son who's sixteen. And I remember saying to her about
my eldest son, Oh, I don't think he's drinking yet,
and she's like, darling, if you think he's not drinking,
he's drinking, And I'm like, do you think so? Of
(35:44):
course he was drinking, but I think you can be
a little bit blind to what's going on with your
own children. And even where I thought my daughter was
up to when she was younger, you know, now she's
at the age we have a great, very open and
honest relationship.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
And I thought we did then.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
But now she tells me there are a whole bunch
of things that I had no idea about.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
Oh my mother has not still has no idea.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
Yeah, and exactly my it doesn't either. So I think that,
you know, teenagers are rat bags in all the in
good ways, like because that's their job in some ways
as the rat bags. Their job is to push the envelope.
Speaker 4 (36:23):
When we come back, me and I are talking about
parenting and friendship. I wanted to ask you though, because
obviously I know you, and I know your family, and
you seem to have really good relationships with your kids.
I've always thought that, like I see them around you
when they don't think anybody's looking, and they're affectionate and
they take the piss out of you, which I think
(36:43):
is very healthy in parental relationships. But you know, you're
obviously very close. Do you have any words of advice
for how you get through that period of well like
this because we've often talked about how your kids are
little and they think you're amazing, and then they go
through adolescents and they think you're an idiot. Yeah, and
they want and the door closes. Whether they're boys or
(37:04):
girls in different ways at different times, the door closes,
and you're just then the desperate. I sometimes feel like
a desperate girlfriend who's like going.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
Do you want to go to the shops with me?
Speaker 5 (37:14):
Do you want to come out with me? I'll buy
you a thing. Yeah, I'll buy you a thing if
it means we can hang out.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
And I am always kind of I'm in a conflict
with myself about how much to just respect the closed
door and let the space, or how much to stay close.
And I think what I probably want more than anything
from my parental relationship as the kids get older is
I just want them to be close to me.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Yeah, like I want.
Speaker 4 (37:41):
I want that relationship. I don't expect to tell me everything,
but I want that relationship to be a positive one.
What's your best advice for getting through the closed door?
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Look, I'm no guru.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
I think that the worst thing is to try and
knock it down, or even to knock on it all
the time. You've just got to sort of sit outside
and wait till the door opens again. And when it
opens a crack, you have to try and be disciplined
and not like rush through it. And I only know
this through trial and error. And what's interesting to me
(38:12):
is the difference in sons and daughters. So in my experience,
boys pull away around puberty time and that can be
devastating from mother like that's been a massive source of
grief for me. But they do come back, but they
can be gone a couple of years, like a good
(38:33):
few years. And with girls though, that's when you clash
like it. Sometimes you wish they'd pull away, you know,
but they don't. They are all up in your grill,
giving you a character assessment. Yeah, and it can feel
(38:55):
like a bit of an abusive relationship sometimes because you know,
my mother always said to me, if your kids not
that you want to encourage them treating you like shit,
But if they can tell you things that are uncomfortable,
it means they feel secure that you're going to be
there on the other side of that.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
You know.
Speaker 3 (39:18):
And the biggest challenge is to just stay strong and
stay solid so that they can act out they can
do this, they can do that, but they know that
they can depend on you and rely on you.
Speaker 4 (39:34):
It's hard not to get offended sometimes. By the the
end the book, Ginger, one of the characters, says that
she feels with her teenage daughter like she's given birth
to her own ana critic, Like the yes, ther own
voice in your head.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
That's always telling you all the things are wrong with you.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
Yeah, your shadow firmed by your childhood telling you all
the things that's wrong with you.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
It's like you're worst in a monologue like that follows
you around and gives you a character assessment. And I
noticed that even with my own mother, Like I remember
once I was in my twenties or in my thirties
and I was just I was at her house and
I was like bitching about this and why have you
done this and this thing? And I was just being
really critical and she's like, can you just stop being
(40:14):
mean to me? And it was like, oh, yeah, right.
Like daughters are tough on their mothers.
Speaker 5 (40:21):
Like really tough.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
And I think that you've got to hold that line
between not letting them treat you like shit but also
not getting too wounded by it.
Speaker 4 (40:30):
Yeah, last thing I want to ask you, is there's
a lot of talk as we're recording. There's lots to
talk about this around the White Lotus, which is so
centers on these three women who are friends when they
were teenagers. But there's a lot of discussion about are
you stuck, like are you who you were as a teenager,
and whether or not that person still exists or not.
Do you think you are still the same Maya, the
(40:52):
same fifteen year old?
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Maya?
Speaker 5 (40:54):
Yeah, do you what's the same and what's different?
Speaker 3 (40:58):
I mean, your clothes are still I think my clothes
is still silly.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
I mean very still, very intense. I'm still very.
Speaker 5 (41:08):
People used to tell you that when you're a teenager
that you were intense.
Speaker 3 (41:12):
No, because that's not how teenagers talk. That's probably how
they talk now.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
No, you're so right.
Speaker 5 (41:16):
No one spoke like that.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
No teenager, they didn't, you know.
Speaker 3 (41:20):
But I I am certainly very focused. Like my female
friends are still everything to me. There's such an important
part of me. I was close to my family then,
even though I had did the same thing to my mum,
and my kids are close to me now and I'm
still close to my parents. You know, I wanted I
(41:42):
needed attention and I needed validation. I was pretty extroverted
but also needed time on my own.
Speaker 5 (41:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
I think essentially I'm the same.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
And when I think about my school friends, my girlfriends
from school, it's funny.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
After watching White Lotus, I.
Speaker 3 (41:58):
Felt the need to reach out to them again, which
we also did when COVID started. A lot of people
reached out to their school friends. There was like this
primal thing. I don't know what it was about, but
I'm the same as I am. When I think about
who I am around them, it's the same, Like it's
the same as who I am. Yeah, yeah, yeah it's
(42:18):
but it's the same as also who I am now, Like,
it's not like I would be a completely different person
around my school girlfriends.
Speaker 4 (42:26):
What do you think teenage mea would have been like
in the age of Oh my god, you would have
loved me?
Speaker 1 (42:31):
No, I would have, but it.
Speaker 3 (42:32):
Would have destroyed me like I would have I mean,
thank god, because so much no impulse control, no sense
of consequence, loving attention, always wanting to do more things.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
I think it could have been a really really bad
bad thing for me.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
I mean I would have loved it, but it would
have I just don't think it would have served me well.
Speaker 4 (42:53):
You always say that we're parenting in a time where we,
for the first time, we didn't face any of the.
Speaker 2 (42:59):
Things that are they're dealing with.
Speaker 4 (43:01):
And I think that being a teenage girl, one of
the problems now is that there are all these traps
there for you, that all the worst things you think
about yourself can be reaffirmed by strangers. Correct, friend groups.
Speaker 3 (43:12):
Correct, because all that, you know, we had ideas about popularity,
and you kind of every girl teenage girl knows who
are the popular girls and who aren't. And yet we
didn't have empirical evidence in terms of likes and followers
and things going viral and comments on our posts. You know,
(43:33):
all that stuff lived in our head. I can't imagine
you know me neither.
Speaker 4 (43:37):
Maya Friedman, thank you for coming on and talking to
me about my book.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
Congratulations. He would never.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
Five families, fourteen years of friendship, one long weekend.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
It's your best work, but by so far.
Speaker 4 (43:50):
Thank you so much, friends. He would never is in
shops on April twenty nine. If it sounds like something
you'd love reading, please follow the link in our show
notes of this episode to buy or pre order it.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
It would mean the world.
Speaker 4 (44:09):
And while you're sitting down doing that, please also hit
follow all like on this podcast wherever you're.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
Listening to it.
Speaker 4 (44:14):
It genuinely helps other people find this show if you
feel like leaving a review even better. An enormous thank
you from me to Mia Friedman for changing my life
in many ways, but also for coming and sitting down
with me for mid I know sitting down is her
least favorite thing, but I told you there was a
surprise at the end of this episode, and there is.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
I wanted to read you an.
Speaker 4 (44:36):
Exclusive passage from he would Never one that very much
reflects what MEA and I discussed in the show. What
You're about to hear is part of a chapter told
from the perspective of Lyra, a fourteen year old girl.
The book is about her mother and her mother's friends,
who all met at mother's group when their kids were babies.
They're not babies anymore, and when we meet Lyra, she's
(44:57):
thinking back to the time she felt her world tilt
in the way Mia and I.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
Were discussing today.
Speaker 4 (45:02):
The moment was in a swimming pool at her mum's
best friend's house and Lockie Short who she's been encouraged
to consider as some kind of uncle, is talking to
her in a way she hasn't heard before. The executive
producer of mid his name of Brown. The senior producer
is Grace Ruvray, a producer is Charlie Blackman, and we've
had audio and sound designed by Jacob Brown. Enjoy this
(45:24):
little bit of he would never Tia was Lyra's best friend,
but they were pretty different. They went to different schools now.
Tia went to a really posh school with no rules,
and Lyrah went to Saint Deirdre's, which was medium posh
but had lots of rules, mostly to do with God.
Tia did dance and drama and Lyra did netball and soccer,
(45:47):
so they didn't see each other as much as they
used to when they both went to Bronte Public and
didn't have so much to do. But Tia was still
the one who Lyah felt most comfortable with of all
her friend group. The others you always had to watch
what you said, or sometimes you might get to school
and find out through a feeling in your stomach or
in the way one of the girls was talking to you,
(46:08):
or in how they didn't answer, or even open your
messages that there had been a shift. That's how you'd
find out you'd done something. You were out, and you'd
have to work your way back in.
Speaker 1 (46:19):
It was tiring.
Speaker 2 (46:21):
She was never out with Tia.
Speaker 4 (46:23):
They could be silly together like babies, or they could
be teenagers together trying on who they might like to
be next.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
It didn't matter. It was always easy.
Speaker 4 (46:32):
Lyra thought about the first time Tears Dad Lockie had
spoken to her in a way that was different from
how the other grown ups did the first time, she
was confused. She had been at Tears and they had
all been in the pool. One of the first swims
of last summer. Auntie Liz had a swimming pool with
an infinity edge like you saw in fancy hotels on TikTok.
(46:53):
Auntie Liz said it made you feel like you were
drifting out to sea, as if that were a good thing.
Everyone was getting out except Lyra, because there was nothing
Lira liked more than floating on her back looking up
at the sky.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
Tia and Lis and the little kids had all piled
towards the.
Speaker 4 (47:08):
Kitchen to get food, but Lockie had stayed behind, and
he was looking at her. You look a lot like
your mother, he'd said, which wasn't what she'd wanted to hear,
but okay. Then he said, you know she is extremely
dear to us, don't you. And there have been something
about the way he said it words that people don't
usually use, a question that didn't need an answer. Adults
(47:30):
were always asking questions that weren't questions, but they usually
used normal words. Liz would do anything for your mom,
me too, Auntie. Lis is very good to us. Lya
knew to be grateful to the Shorts the number of
times over the years that she'd heard her mother say
she didn't know where she'd be without Lis. Lira wanted
to get out, to go and find tea, but there
(47:51):
was something about the way Lockie kept looking at her
that made her want to stay covered by the water.
It was the year that eyes had started moving differently
over her. At the beach on the street, Lyra was
wearing what she and her friends were always wearing, but
suddenly it all meant something different. It was like a
spotlight was suddenly pointed right at her, and sometimes it
(48:11):
felt good to be picked out seen, but sometimes it
felt scary, and she hadn't ever thought about it feeling
scary with people. You'd always known that maybe all men
had that light with them, and they could shine it
at you whenever they wanted. I should find teas she'd
said from the water, but she didn't move to pull
herself up and out onto the deck. Go away, she remembered,
(48:32):
feeling turn away. Someone needs to look out for you girls,
he'd said, now you're growing up. Your mum's so busy.
We're fine, she'd said quickly, and then remembered, thank you.
Lockie had picked up a towel Auntie Lissa's house had
the best, thick soft towels, big enough to wrap around
your whole body, and took two steps towards the edge
of the pool, where Lyra's arms were resting. She'd put
(48:54):
her chin on them and looked down at where the
water was licking in and out of the shiny little
square tiles, anywhere but up at him. Come on, then,
he said, squatting down holding the towel out, Let's go
and get some food. How many times had Lira jumped
out of this pool and run into the kitchen in
a little sun suit, in a swimming lesson one piece
in a bikini without thinking without even being aware of herself,
(49:18):
of her arms and legs and Tommy and chest. Why
did she feel in that moment when she glanced up
and saw the crease around Lockey Short's eyes and the
particular curve of his closed mouth smile, like everything was different.
She remembered the rough grout scratching her stomach as she
pushed her whole self flat against the pool wall, hiding
her bum, her thighs, her flicking feet. Lockie hadn't moved,
(49:42):
he'd stayed close, towel and hands. You girls should get
bigger cozies, he'd said, and she could hear something like
a tease in his voice, friendly, maybe a tone that
suggested everything she was feeling was ridiculous. But then if
you don't want to be looked at, and she remembered
feeling sick in her mouth,
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