39 - Lunch Dates, Lipstick, and the Lolita Effect

Welcome back to the podcast that’s basically just two spiraling women refusing to work on their enormous flaws while loudly calling out societal rot. 🧃💅

This week, Sarah and Erika dive deep into The Lolita Effect, the movie Thirteen, and the literal hellscape that is being a teenage girl under the male gaze. We discuss oversexualization, creepy casting choices, dress code double standards, and why 14-year-olds contour better than we ever will. 🫠👄✨

🔎 Topics we manage to tackle without screaming:

• The myth of the “mature” teenage girl
• How the media sexualizes young women and then blames them for it
• 14-year-olds being paired with 28-year-old actors (and why that's NOT okay)
• Brooke Shields, Britney Spears, and Hollywood’s gross history of “art”
• Foster care statistics that will make you want to throw your phone
• What we wish someone had told us before our own awkward teen years

Also featuring:

🧠 Unmedicated spirals

📚 Accidental trauma dumps

😤 Rants about high school dress codes

🐕 Daisy demanding attention mid-rage

& special author shoutouts to Anya Keeler and Zachariah Chamberlain!

Basically, it's one part feminist reckoning, one part sad girl summer preview, and 100% chaos we can’t clock out of. 🙃

👉 Rate, review, hydrate, and maybe ask your kids how they’re doing today.

Because pretending it’s fine only works until someone brings up 2004.

LINKTREE - https://linktr.ee/understaffedpod

Shoutout to KC-based indie author Anya Keeler, whose debut novel The Sound of Storms is queer, chaotic, plot-rich fantasy featuring double enemies-to-lovers, disability rep, and a generous splash of smut.

 anyakeeler.com

 Goodreads: The Sound of Storms

Fantasy should be inclusive, emotional, and a little bit unhinged. Just like this book.

Shoutout to author Zachariah Chamberlin, whose debut We Come Bearing Curses blends cosmic horror, addiction recovery, found family, and cult-driven apocalypse in a haunted Kansas City.

 zachariahchamberlain.com

Haunted men. Eldritch cults. And a Cane Corso named Lizzie Borden.

What more could you ask for?? 

#LivingUnderstaffed #TheLolitaEffect #PodcastTherapy #OversexualizedAndOverIt #DressCodesAndDoubleStandards