November 3, 2025 • 47 mins
At an innovation awards night — the kind where billionaires clap themselves wearing sustainably sourced tuxedos — one pop superstar cut through the self-congratulation with a single line: “If you’re a billionaire, why are you a billionaire? No hate, but, yeah, give your money away, shorties.” The crowd laughed, sort of. The notable billionaire in the room? Not so much. We discuss.
Meanwhile, the politics of a pair of untethered breasts: why Sydney Sweeney's new take on the naked dress has everyone confused, divided, and debating what empowerment looks like in 2025. Gotta say: We were MESMERISED.
And, is it just plain embarrassing to admit to having a boyfriend now? The most viral essay of the week says YES — but why?
Plus, the royal formerly known as “Prince” Andrew is only Andrew now. In what’s being called 'the greatest crisis the royal family has faced in 100 years', the King has banished his brother after the noise around Andrew's behaviour finally became too loud for even the insulated royals to ignore. So what now? Will it silence critics and accusers, or just open the floodgates? Fortunately, Royal Correspondent Holly Wainwright is here to explain.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Jesse, have you seen it? Have you seen it? Have
you seen it?
Speaker 1 (00:16):
There's so much I've seen, but I'm not sure if
I've seen what you're yelling about today.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Jennifer Adiston has hard launched her hypnotist boyfriend.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
How did she do it? I have not seen this.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Jenn Aniston has hard launched her hypnotist boyfriend that we
talked about on the show.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Because before we'd only seen Harfy's face, which is actually
relevant for a story that we will speak about later.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Yes, because they've been papped together. But she's very private,
as we know. But she posted a picture of her
and him and her arms around his waist, and it's
black and white. It's very tasteful, and it just says
happy birthday, my love, and then it says cherished love
heart emoji. I'm going to make you talk more about
this at a later date. Hello, and welcome to Mamma
(01:01):
Mia out Loud. It's what women are actually talking about
on Monday, the third of November. I'm Holly Wayne, right.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
I'm Amelia Lester, and I'm Jesse Stevens.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
And who's what's on our agenda for today, how leaving
your bra off and putting a chain mail dress on
has become a cultural riddle on the back of one
Sydney Sweeney.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Plus, we have to unpack the worst royal crisis in
one hundred.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Years, and a viral article in Vogue has declared the
boyfriends are embarrassing. Am I reading into it too much?
Or is there a sinister subtext?
Speaker 1 (01:36):
But first, in case you missed it, I am more crunchy,
fun sized bar than host today. It was Halloween on
Friday night and a lot of chocolate was consumed. But
I just wanted to do a very quick celebrity roundup
of some very notable costumes. Okay, that happened. First up,
Mamma Mia out Loud's official couple, Justin Trudeau and Katie Perry.
(01:59):
We called it first. They are official. They went on
a date in Paris. Justin Trudeau and his son Hadrian
dressed as a shark and surfer, respectively. But justin shark
costume was almost identical to left Shark Katie Perry's twenty
fifteen Super Bowl performance meme.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Which that year that was the biggest Halloween costume was
that left shark That was an iconic costume because left
Shark maybe wasn't trying very hard?
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Was that the vibe? I think that's a good joke. Yes,
And I love this for Justin because if you recall,
in the first stages of their relationship, Justin was doing
that thing that men often do in the first stages
of a relationship where they're sort of dithering. They're saying
I'm not ready. That wasn't a date. That was just
us going out to dinner. This was all reportedly, of course,
sources said. But now it seems like he's now moved
(02:51):
into that stage where he cannot shut up about his
new girlfriend. And I love that. It's a home There
has never been a harder hard launch. Lily Allen next up.
She dressed as children's book character Madeline, which referenced her
new track, which Holly told us all about. Holly very
quick primer, what is that track about?
Speaker 2 (03:10):
So she has a song called Madeline, which is about
the other woman in David Harbour's Phone and Life, And
she famously has a song that's just like, who the
fuck is Madeline? And here's whose Madeline is. By the way,
I'm addicted to the album. I'm actually worried. I've listened
to it all weekend on repeat. I'm waking up thinking
about it, and then watching her in her Madeline costume,
(03:32):
and then watching her partying at the Shadow mom on
to that song. I'm like, this is Lily Allan's Talloween.
Speaker 4 (03:37):
It really is.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
She's owning it. Julia Fox defended her tasteless Jackie Kennedy costume,
which involved her wearing a pink tweed suit very similar
to the one that the First Lady wore when her
husband JFK was assassinated in Dallas in nineteen sixty three.
The dress came complete with the blood splatters that Jackie
herself kept on the dress when the next president was
(03:59):
sworn in. Don't love it, don't love it for her,
But then what I did love is you know who?
I told you that everyone in Hollywood wants to be
Dakota Johnson right now. Call it the Dakota Johnsonization of Hollywood. Well,
let's hear from Dakota herself about what she went as.
I'm Dakota Johnson dressed as Dakota Johnson, and I think
(04:21):
that Dakota Johnson is going to get the most drunk tonight.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
She's so cool.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
She's a parody of herself. I don't know if she's
ever being serious. I don't think she knows, and that's
what I love about her.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Prince Andrew war hero favorite son, the Duke of York.
Speaker 5 (04:42):
Let's bring you some breaking news that has come to
us in the last minute or so from Buckingham Palace.
His Majesty the King has today initiated a formal process
to remove the style, titles and honors of Prince Andrew.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
King Charles taking action against his younger brother in the
wake of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
People are calling this the worst royal crisis in one
hundred years. We were told it was impossible, but King
Charles has really gone ahead and done it. Prince Andrew
is no longer a Prince, the man who signed his
emails to his close friend Jeffrey Epstein hr h, the
Duke of York is now just plain old Andrew Mountbatten Windsor.
(05:22):
I love this for him. I love him filling in
forms when he goes to get his license renewed, where
he just now just has to write a regular person's name,
and very long one, a very long one. That's true.
He'll probably have to use extra boxes on the forms,
and in another stunning move, and you will have to
take the seventy two sailor costumed teddy bears that he
reportedly insists or arranged by his servants on his bed
(05:46):
in a particular order, and move them all out of
the Royal Lodge, which is where he currently lives rent
free to a cottage on the Sandringham Estate, which I
am reliably told is in a very wind swept area
of England called Norfolk. Holy, I believe this news was
(06:06):
such a big deal to you this weekend that you
spontaneously fractured your ankle, and that is why you're joining
us remotely. Tell me, is Norfolk really that bad?
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Norfolk? Okay, so two things. You're correct. I've seemed to
have fractured my foot and I have no idea how
so this theory checks out that it was just.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
So exciting that you're jumping up and down celebrate.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Just like exploded excitement. That's a possibility. So yes, if
I sound a bit different today, it's because I'm recording
from home. Norfolk is actually a beautiful place, but Sandringham
is a private estate. Look, there are many serious parts
to this story. But one of the things that's kind
of funny about it has become the obsession with royal
real estate and how the term cottage means something very
(06:56):
different to royal people. Then it seems due to the
average population, because when I think cottage, I think cute
little maybe two bedrooms, ivy around the door, but no,
in royal parlance, a cottage can indeed me in a
nine bedroom mansion. Anyway, I think this was is the
biggest royal scandal in one hundred years, and I am
(07:17):
here to take questions, Jesse, do you have any.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
My first question as someone who has been like I've
seen headlines and I understand that Virginia Giuffre's memoir has
come out recently. I understand that there are explosive allegations
in there. But why now did King Charles have to
wait till his mother had died to do this?
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Do you think, well, that is a big question, right.
The thing is is I think that why now of
it all, there's a few different things. The hits just
kept coming for Andrew, right, So anyone who maybe had
hoped that this was going to go away, it was
not going away. In fact, with the memoir out with
also an explosive biography of Andrew and Sarah that we
(07:59):
talked about on the show a while ago, exposing them
as kind of feckless, money grabbing royals. That was part
of it. Then journalism has to take a lot of
credit for this, because the digging and digging that's found
these emails between Andrew and Epstein, long after Andrew had
insisted he'd cut off Ties, just kept exposing the lies
(08:19):
that were mounting up and not going away. The other
why now of it all, though, is the pressure? Now
I know you don't watch the Crown, Jesse Mamelie is
surely you watch the Crown.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Of course, the whole of.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
The Crown, all of the seasons put together, basically follows
the same path. Crisis happens. Royals underestimate it, everybody gets
upset about it. True royals are told you really should
do something about this. The people are angry. The royals
say no. They don't want us to be real. They
want us to keep a stiff upper lip and not comment.
(08:51):
And what always happens is that at some point the
pressure becomes so great that royals have to climb down.
The Queen has to go and walk about and look
at Diana's flowers or whatever, and they are proved wrong.
This is another chapter in exactly that right. Pressure and
chatter around this Andrew's story has not gone anywhere. It's
only gotten louder. And although it's very unlikely that this
(09:15):
decision by the King was made quickly, in fact it
definitely wasn't. It was a very complicated thing to do.
It would have been a long time in the making.
Last week he was heckled in public, which was a
very the Crown moment when he was touring a cathedral
in Lichfield. The yelling of this man over all of
the walkabouts and normally just about getting teddy bears and
things that are like how long did you know? How
(09:36):
did you know about Andrew? What's been done to cover
it up? Was like a very visceral illustration of the
distraction that this has become. No one in the royal
family could do anything until the Andrew factor was dealt with,
and I just think that pressure just got too much. Holly.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Obviously, we should mention that Virginia Giffrey's family have welcomed
to this move, and they've described the events transpiring as
an ordinary American girl taking down a prince. Andrew has
denied all the allegations against him, but others survivors of
Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking have also said that they are
glad that accountability is coming for the Royal family. Does
(10:15):
it actually surprise you that it happened at all? Because
Charles until recently was telling us that he could not
do this. That was the line we were getting that
it was just literally impossible to take away the title
of prince. So are you surprised that he did it?
And do you think William basically pushed him into doing this?
Speaker 2 (10:34):
No, I don't think William pushed him into doing it.
I don't know that Charles was directly saying this can't
be done. But the truth of it is it is unprecedented, Well,
it's almost unprecedented. Without getting way too weedy, the last
time something like this kind of happened was after acts
of literal tradership, when members of the royal family. There's
a connection of the Royal family through Queen Victoria that's
(10:55):
connected to Germany. There was a prince that actually fought
for the Germans during World War One and then became
entangled with the Nazis in World War Two, he lost
his title. So it does happen. But remember even when
the king stepped down and famously King Edward the Eighth
abdicated in nineteen thirty six. He stepped down to go
and marry Wallace Simpson. Everybody knows that story. He obviously
gave up his king title, but he kept his duke title.
(11:17):
He was the Duke of Windsor until he died, So
it isn't something that happens very often. And everybody was saying,
and I think I said this on this show and
certainly on the Quickie, that birthright titles directly given to
you because of your line of succession for the monarch
couldn't be taken away. But the loophole is is that
every title that a royal has is at the pleasure
(11:38):
of the monarch. So if the monarch really really wants
to he she can do it. And it has been
a big shot.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
So was he pushed by William?
Speaker 2 (11:47):
So I've heard some really interesting reporting that says that's
not true, that William actually is concerned for the state
of Andrew's mental health. There is no question this really
interesting reporting I was hearing from Emily Matelis, who is
the reporter who did that really famous Andrew interview for
Newsnight in twenty nineteen. She's amazing. I was saying that
(12:07):
you've got to remember that King Charles knows that he
is an interim king because his mother lived so long,
reigned for so long. Even though Charles has been warming
up for this moment his entire life, he knows that
he's got this very short window. Ultimately, when it became
clear that this distraction wasn't going away, he wants to
clear the way for William to not have to deal
(12:28):
with all this kind of shit. William has been very
public about saying that he wants to change the monarchy,
that he has a different view of it, that he
wants it to be smaller. I wants it to focus
more on things that count in his mind than the
pomp and ceremony. So I think this was the King,
and I think he did it belatedly. I don't think
he don't necessarily deserves a whole lot of glory for it.
He could have done it a long time ago, but
(12:49):
I think it was him.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
I was reminded that Queen Camilla has been a fierce
advocate against domestic violence, but also sexual assault, like that's
been where her charity worker advocacy has been focused. So
I also wondered about her role in all of this,
given that's clearly so close to her heart.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Yeah, I think that what has happened is when he
was first stripped of some of his honors by the
Queen after the News Night interview, he was kind of
told go away, you don't have an official role anymore,
but you can still come to family events. So he
wasn't allowed to come out on the balcony, but he
was allowed to come to Easter and Christmas and.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
The funerals, where William looked horrified.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yeah, what that meant is that so he was at
that funeral. Now I've read a lot of reporting that
saying that appearance was so tone deaf, so titid of him,
because he looked to be like Josh. He's looked like
a man who's excited to be out right. Queen Camilla
as you say, Jesse and also Edward's wife, the Duchess
of Edinburgh. Sophie is also really involved in work about
(13:49):
sexual violence and protecting victims of it. She's actually just
recently been in the Democratic Republic of Congo doing some
work around this. So this is stuff that is seriously
close to some of the very senior female royals his heart,
and I think that the us among all the noise
that was coming along for them, the jus position of
them going out and doing this work and then having
(14:10):
to stand next to Prince Andrew as he was then
at funerals Easter, Christmas. You know, all of those events
just had become too untenable. Yet another illustration of the
hypocrisy that the British people are really getting sick of
in the royal family.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Yeah, so how damaging do you think this is? If
this is the worst royal crisis in one hundred years?
I'm thinking back to when Diana died and Queen Elizabeth
misread the room on that, and then there was the
whole scandal about the flags at Buckingham Palace not being
flown at half mast. People back then talked about whether
or not the Royal family could survive this. Do you
think that this is going to assuage the public the
(14:48):
fact that he's no longer a prince and a duke
or do you think that this scandal is going to
keep on going for Charles and potentially William.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
The problem is is that now that Andrew isn't a prince,
there's a lot of speculation that, you know, there are
going to be more allegations, and maybe not legal allegations,
but just more and more claims of his like despicable behavior. Really,
as you said, Amelia, he has always denied that he
even met Virginia Giffrey, despite the photographic evidence that he
(15:15):
says was fake, and despite her claims that they not
only met, but had sex three times in three different
situations in three different countries. He's always denied it. But
still he paid her a lot of money, of his
mum's money, to stop saying that about him. But also
coming out of that biography and lots of other reports
that are bubbling around, there are lots of other things.
(15:36):
Did he pay for sex workers in Thailand? Has he
done all kinds of unsavory things at the behest of
his rich friends, as it were? And the thing is
is that when you're in the royal family, there's a
certain level of protection afforded to you when it comes
to the media digging around in that. So there are
lots of reports that did not reflect well on the
royal family that when this stuff started coming out about
(15:59):
Andrew and Epstein, some publications were told by the royal family,
if you keep going on this, you will be denied
access to the Royals, So you know, that kind of
clothes shop, that kind of we know he's on the nose,
but he's one of our own. We're closing ranks around him.
That's all gone. There is also the possibility that there
could be legal action against him in the Jiffray case.
(16:19):
There's possibility that he could be quizzed over the Epstein
files in a broader sense by America. So all those
things might happen. And the problem with that is that
if the stories keep coming, is casting him out of
the family at the last possible moment enough for the
king to be able to survive it. I actually do
(16:41):
think it's really serious for them, because I think that
Britain is in a mess at the moment politically and culturally,
and I think there is very little tolerance for hypocrisy
of the super rich. You know, It's not dissimilar to
what's kind of blowing up in the States. And I
think that there are going to be a lot of
questions about this, and I do think and I think
we're going to do a subject where we talk a
(17:02):
bit more about William and Kate and Harry and all
of that. But I do think that they're has never
been more pressure for the royal family to modernize, to
become much more like their Nordic friends, and like cut
the list right down, you know, start riding bikes, out
riding bikes, having to get jobs, all of those things.
And also the other pressure that isn't going to go
(17:23):
away for Charles is that, yes, Andrew's been banished, but
he's been banished to a really nice house in a
really nice part of Britain. And some of that's unfair
because that's the only way for him to get protection,
you know, security protection, which seems quite reasonable really, but
the King's saying, I'm paying for it all, so he's
still bankrolling his degenerate brother. So those questions aren't going
(17:45):
to go away. And I think this is an ongoing
crisis for them. But the spin from the palace seems
to be the King had a backbone, the King did
what his mother wasn't prepared to do. The King has
dealt with it.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
In a moment.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
One of the most viral articles of the year has
rubbed me the wrong way, But is a vogue theory
about embarrassing boyfriends actually just a sign of progress. Look
as the person in this room with a framed photo
of Bernie Sanders on my desk, I feel best equipped
(18:21):
to bring the story you might have seen over the
weekend about Billie Eilish and billionaires. Here is what the
singer songwriter said at the Innovator Awards last Wednesday night.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
I would just say, like, we're going to time right
now where the world is really really bad and really
dark and people need empathy and help more than kind
of ever, especially in our country. And I'd say, if
you have money, it would be great to use it
for good things and maybe give it to some.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
People that need it.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
And love you all, but there's a few people in
here that have a lot more money than me. If
you're a billionaire, why are you a billionaire? No hate,
but yeah, give your money away. Shorty's love you guys,
thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
No hate, but give your money away, Shorties, I love
I love her so much.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Now some context. Shortly before walking on stage, she was
introduced by Stephen Colbert and he spoke about how Eilish
is donating eleven point five million dollars from her most
recent tour. So that's the context in which she's talking
about billionaires and donations.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
What she's donating it too.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
Everything climate crisis. I think there are a few kind
of social causes in there as well. They're about four
or five. The second piece of context I needed to
know was who was in attendance, right, And here's what
we know. A man named Mark Zuckerberg, who is worth
two hundred and twenty five billion dollars, was in the room.
(19:58):
According to People magazine, he did not clap when everyone
else clapped, not Mark. He went, no, no, no, you
don't punch down to billionaires. I really enjoy that detail. Now,
there was another billionaire in the room, which is Star
Wars creator George Lucas, but I've decided to leave him
alone because what I will say is it last year
(20:19):
he donated four billion dollars. He was given some Disney
contract and he took his four bill and he something
to do with education, and that is more money than
the three of us combined have ever donated. So I'm
not wagging my finger at him. Amelia. Do you think
that she was talking to anyone else because it was
a bold statement.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
A few people said that she seemed a bit nervous
and she was saying it.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
I didn't think so.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
I think that that's kind of just her demeanor. Do
you think she was speaking to anyone else?
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Look, I'm not familiar with the Innovator Awards. Are they
multiple awards given to music innovators? I guess I think
there are.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
And it was at the Museum of Modern Art in
New York, so it seems pretty legit.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
I don't actually know how Mark Zuckerberg goten invited, but
what I will say is that online the consensus seemed
to be that she said something great, but also that
people inevitably took this as an opportunity to pit two
women against each other rather than focus on old Mark
with his two hundred and fifty billion. People thought or
(21:17):
chose to believe that Billy was speaking specifically to one
Taylor Swift, who is famously a billionaire through her music.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Doesn't she give a lot of money away?
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Though she does, I think what she does a lot
of is kind of like under the radar philanthropy. For instance,
she gave all the truck drivers on her tour one
hundred thousand dollar bonuses to thank them for doing such
a good job. There are countless stories of her giving
away one hundred dollar bills to people who have served
her in restaurants or at sports games. I don't think
(21:50):
of her as someone known for her philanthropy, large scale
giving to institutions, charities, that sort of thing. I do
think that that's probably why people immediately went to Taylor
when they heard.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
That, because I think that Eilish's point is that you
should never get to billionaire status because you should be
giving it away before then. So she thinks that there
is something inherently corrupt about even the status of billionaire.
A few people pointed to Hailey Bieber, who was in
the audience, because she recently sold road her per skincare
line for one billion dollars. But then I looked, I
(22:25):
don't understand any of this, but she's only worth four
hundred millions, So I was like, guys, she didn't even
pocket all of that, and she's dealing.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
With justin exactly a full time job. I think the
other thing about why people seized on Taylor is that
this particular album cycle, she's garnered a lot of criticism
for the many limited edition Life of a Showgirl LPs,
which are all different colors, and she sort of sold
them as limited opportunities to buy them, put countdown clocks
(22:51):
on her website to sort of encourage her fans to buy,
and there was some criticism that her fans kind of
feel beholden to do this to buy these things. Now
no one is compelled to buy anything, and other people
make the point in her defense that unlike other musicians
who are billionaires, for instance, Lena Gomez is a billionaire
not through her music but through rare beauty her cosmetics empire.
(23:12):
So people said, this is how musicians in the streaming
age have to make money, which is through these edition LPs.
But I think to Billy's point, she says, Taylor's probably
got enough money. Taylor probably doesn't need to make thirty
limited edition LPs.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
I think this is about the billionaire class. I think
it's a political statement. Rich people used to give away
money quietly, but now I think, if you're not one
of the billionaire bros, you know, sitting next to Trump
and all of those things, you give it away loudly
to try and shame them. That's what I thought. Billy
was doing. Yeah, she was very much sort of because
(23:48):
that has become a big part of the political discourse there,
that billionaire is becoming a word synonymous with the oligarchy
and all those things. So I wonder if she was
having a dig at that more than she was her
fellow musicians. But either way, it's bold because you're going
to piss off all the people with a billion dollars
to tell them that they don't deserve those billion dollars
because the billion has liked that billion dollars.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
One of the most viral stories of the year was
published last week in Vogue, and it put its finger
on a cultural phenomenon you may have noticed, and in fact,
I think we've talked about it on this show before.
Chante Joseph wrote, is having a boyfriend embarrassing?
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Now?
Speaker 3 (24:27):
And her response, along with the majority of the Internet
who picked this up and ran with it, was yes,
it is mortifying, which is particularly sad for Holly. She
has quite liked having the boyfriend's status for like twenty
years now, and so by the end of this segment,
I think you should probab drop it. But I'm going
to lay out Joseph's theory and then I'm going to
(24:48):
tell you why it makes me kind of bristle. For
so long, she says, it felt like we were living
in boyfriend land, especially online. Right, So women's online identities
centered around the lives of their partners in a way
that it never does the other way around. Men don't
do that in the same way. The article opens. If
someone so much as says my boyfriend on social media,
(25:11):
they're muted now, she says, posting about a boyfriend is
low key embarrassing or cringe. So you see a hand,
you might see a half face. If you see wedding photos,
you can barely see the husband's face at all.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
She says.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Women want the social benefits of a partner without appearing
These are her words, culturally loserish. It is fundamentally uncool
to be a boyfriend girl. Actually, before I tell you
why this rubs me the wrong way, I want to
get a sense check. What did you guys think? Do
you reckon that there is truth to this theory?
Speaker 2 (25:46):
I can't say I've noticed that. I still see plenty
of boyfriend business up there. But isn't it kind of
maybe a natural reaction to generation who have also been
shouting about their boyfriends online and then they break up,
and then they have to walk through the yea of
like the boyfriending someone online. And so now, because I
(26:10):
feel like my social media feeds are absolutely full of
engagement rings, weddings, the lock em down kind of vibe,
never mind the tradwives and everything. So I don't know
that I'm convinced that that's out of fashion. But maybe
it's out of fashion to shout about boyfriends rather than husband's.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
I also wondered if this was a function of the
fact that influencers can sell more if they present as single.
The article quotes from some influencers who lost hundreds of
followers the minute they came out as having a boyfriend.
So I wondered if there was just sort of a
business imperative to wanting to appear a little bit mysterious, enigmatic, footloose,
fancy free.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
That's true, and I suppose if the people following you
were identifying with your life stage and you move into
another one, then they can feel a bit betrayed. That
happens with lots of different transitions. But I wondered if
the subtext of this was our men a bit embarrassing
now and The reason I say that is because there
are a few quotes in there that I felt were
(27:14):
slightly problematic.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Do you think that Katy Perry was so mortified this
weekend when she saw that Justin dressed up as the shark?
She was a creak?
Speaker 3 (27:23):
Again, this is as bad.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
As uncool at the moment.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
Yeah, this is as bad as when I went to
space Justin. I'm trying to get some cool points. So
this writer named Zoe Sammouzi said that women want the
prize and celebration of partnership, but understand the norminess of it.
And the one thing that didn't seem acknowledged in any
of this was that some women also like their partners.
That's the other reason why women have boyfriends is not
(27:48):
just because of cultural cachet or Instagram followers or.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
Anything like that.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
It's because it might be a foundational relationship in their lives.
And there was a comment that they referred to which
was basically relationships and now republican coded it's now very republican.
It's be a common sexual relationship. And I thought, if
you start to ostracize or mock a certain choice, if
(28:17):
you want to call it that, then do you alienate
a group of people who then feel radicalized. Right, So
we're seeing this happen with men anyway, during adolescents, where
it's just like casually denigrating, casually mocking men is part
of I'm actually not going to say culture. I'm going
to say internet culture and progressive internet circles. I just
(28:41):
worry that the result of that is going to be dangerous.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Jesse there's also a very large part of Internet culture
that's about denigrating women. Yes, an enormous amount of it.
And I don't say that in any way of making
it seem like so it's okay, then what about is them?
I just mean I don't think that all the tidy
violins need to be directed in that direction.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
No, But I think it's a great point, Jessie, because
think about the fact that on the right, particularly in
the US, we are seeing this embrace of heterosexual relationships
and the idea of family as the bedrock of everything.
And we hear these reports of young women attending conferences
where they're learning how to find a husband and have
(29:25):
kids early and make sure that they prioritize family over Korea.
And so I think you're right to be concerned that
if you are a young straight woman and you see
these two very distinct paths of either having a boyfriend
is embarrassing or by all means have a boyfriend, why
don't you have children with him? Why don't you have
(29:46):
more children with him? It might push you in a
bit of an extreme direction.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
Yeah, or feel mocked or shamed by certain portions of
a political group. I say that because, Holly, you are
absolutely spot on. We live in a culture that rewards heterosexuality.
It just does, even online, absolutely does. But there was
something in the tone of this article that made me think,
(30:14):
if you start to mock what some people want, or
you start to make them feel shame about that, then
that can be a dangerous road to go down. And
I was also thinking. I read this alongside listening to
an episode of This Is Why We Fight over the weekend,
and in the first few seconds of that episode, they
(30:34):
have a clip of one of the it's a heterosexual
couple and they're, you know, dealing with their issues. The
man in the couple says, I still make silly decisions.
I'm still a male, And I thought, firstly, you couldn't
say I still make silly decisions.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
I'm still a woman.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
I think that if someone did that, you'd go, hang on,
don't talk about yourself like.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
That, because you can't say girl math. You can't say
girl math.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Yeah you can. That's true, that's true.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
But this wasn't a punchline.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
I just thought that the comfort with which we denigrate maleness,
we roll our eyes at men and we accept that
they useless and embarrassing. To date, does it not all
become a bit self fulfilling? Like, does it not become
just men going?
Speaker 2 (31:15):
All right?
Speaker 1 (31:15):
So we're kind of the cultural joke.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Obviously there's some truth to that, but I still feel
like the dominant culture is overwhelmingly pushing women to settle
down early panic about the biological clocks plenty, you know,
put a ring on it. I think that the dominant
culture is very much doing that. And I mean he
has already said this, but you know, the rise of
the traadwives and the soft girls and all that stuff.
(31:39):
I mean, I don't want to politicize everything because it's so,
as you say, Jesse, like, people's actual personal lives and
whether they like someone or not has nothing to do
with the political temperature. I still feel like the overarching
culture gives the hardest time to single people, and I
think that the reason that maybe you know, there was
a line in there that you read out that was
(31:59):
kind of like, young women want the cachet of singleness
even when they've moved out of that stage. I think
the only reason there's cachet there is because it's still
seen as a bit outsider ish, you know, it's still
seen as a bit radical. It's still seen as you know, well,
society thinks I should find someone because I won't be
happy without them, But maybe I'm doing fine on my own.
(32:21):
So I think that if there's some cachet to that,
I think that's why. It's because you're bucking a trend.
I think it's interesting also what you say about how
we've come comfortable with mocking men, because I think there's
always been a certain part of female power that's about that.
When I used to edit Women's Day, there was like
a whole column in there in the actual magazine called
mea Male, and it was just women sharing stories of
(32:43):
embarrassing shit that domb husbands had done that were like, yeah,
just completely accepted that your mm, your mea male would
definitely put the kettle on without putting enough water in it,
or you know, just whatever silly thing like. I think
that's always been a part of female discourse.
Speaker 4 (32:59):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
I mean, I think your point is interesting, but I
don't buy that we are living in a culture that
has let go of the idea of coupledom. I think,
if anything, the opposite.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
I mean, I think I'm uncomfortable with a few things.
The first is that sexuality is at all political. I
think that whether you are attracted to men or women
or both or whatever, I don't think that that says
anything about you politically. And I kind of thought that
we'd moved away from that a little bit maybe.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
And I also think that.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
The language of loser, dorm or embarrassing or cringe just
feels very high school to me, And I get my backup.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
I agree. But also we talked about this with em
a little bit, Like, you know, there's been a big
move in these kind of pieces that are also like
a heterosexual relationships okay and all that kind of stuff.
That really what they are is giving a voice to
a group of women who are dealing with men in
an online dating age ye feeling like they are being
treated very often in a very dismissive, commodified way, and
(33:57):
to tell them to shush because we can't make the
men feel bad is also not good, you know what
I mean. So I think they're allowed to say it's
tough out there, like it's tough out there and dating
guys is hard when they've got all the options in
the world in their pockets. I think they're allowed to
say that. I'm with you on that.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
And I must say I've actually found the trend on
TikTok funny of single women being like, apparently it's embarrassing
to be in a relationship and they're just doing funny
things or whatever, And I'm like, yeah, I totally get that.
I think that that's transgressive in a lot of ways.
But this accepting that every man is a lost cause
and spending time with one is embarrassing.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
I just I don't like it. I was wondering why
this article really struck a chord, Because it did. I
had a number of brute chats which pined with it,
and I was wondering why people found something resonant in it.
It's not a long article, it's not saying anything particularly revolutionary,
but it did seem to tap into something in the zeitgeist,
and I was wondering if it's because it feels like
(34:54):
a welcome corrective. Yea. And by that I mean when
I was in my twenties, which was not that long ago.
But to give you a sense, I am going to
my high school twenty fifth reunion this week. And when
I was growing up walking seven miles to school through
the snow with I lived in Sydney, Sydney, this was
(35:19):
not a thought that was even out there. A. The
default was heterosexuality, and B there was very much a
pressure that was pervasive from an early age that you
needed male attention to validate your existence. You just did.
And if you didn't have a boyfriend in high school
(35:39):
hypothetically of course I had many, I did not. If
you didn't have a boyfriend in high school, if you
didn't have a boyfriend in your twenties, there was something
wrong with you. Yeah. And I'm embarrassed to say that
out loud because it's ridiculous. But that's what the elder
millennials grew up with. And so I think that's why
it hit a chord with us because we were sharing
(36:01):
it because we were like, we wish that we had
this article when we were twenty two to tell us
that we'd don't need it.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
There's the antithesis to the plot of sex and the City,
all the culture we consumed.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
I hate to report from the front lines of high schoolness,
but I think it's quite like that's still Amelia. I
think there is still a lot of discussion about who's
got a boyfriend, who's taking someone to prom like I
don't know. I don't think it shifted as much as
some of this online discourse suggests that it has. I
wish that it had, but I'm not convinced.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Are you going to keep calling Brent your boyfriend?
Speaker 2 (36:36):
I think I'm going to have to write a think
peace to try and go viral in defensive elderly boyfriend.
I thought I was cool because I had a boyfriend.
Now this article has turned that on its head. It
could be married by the end of the week after
the break. The celebrity breasts said to confuse us, and
(36:59):
they're working.
Speaker 3 (37:01):
Every Tuesday and Thursday, we drop new segments of Mummy
out Loud just for Mummy A subscribers follow the link
in the show notes to get your daily Joseph out
Loud and a big thank you to all our current subscribers.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
They are the breasts that stopped a nation's news cycle
last Thursday. Right up until that prince got shoved, all
anyone was talking about, it seemed, was Sydney Sweeney's breasts.
This obviously is an audio medium unless you're watching us
on YouTube and if you are high, but we will
put a picture of the dress we're about to talk
to you on Instagram so you can play along at
home if you haven't seen them for any reason. At
(37:41):
an event for Variety Magazine called and this is just
glorious the Power of Women, one Sydney Sweeney hijacked us
all with her breasts, which is one bold way of
interpreting the theme. She was being honored at this event
alongside Kate Hudson, Wonder Sykes, Nicole Scherzinger, Jamie Lee Kurtz.
(38:01):
That is a diverse group. Anyway, we thought we'd seen
every version of the naked dress, right, but they've evolved again.
She was wearing a textured chain mail dress by a
designer called Christian. That's interesting to Cowan. It was completely
see through and I don't want to object to fire
woman who sells her own bath water, but I have
(38:22):
not stopped looking at them since, just so that Amelia
gets her fashion note here it was a crystal mesh
which was manipulated onto a steel boned corset to create
a sculptural form of a classic hourglass waste. But what
it actually gave you was Sydney Swedey's magnificent breasts on
a platter, don't you think?
Speaker 3 (38:43):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (38:43):
First of all, what did you to think of it?
Speaker 1 (38:45):
I've been on a journey. I've been on a journey
with the breasts.
Speaker 3 (38:49):
I thought that big breasted women, we've always been taught
that your job is to have them in harnesses, to
have them locked down, strapped the belts, strapped everything, as
many straps as possible, pin them down, tamed. You can
have them out, but you've got to have them constrained.
Speaker 5 (39:13):
Right.
Speaker 3 (39:13):
The only people who are allowed to do the naked
dress look are women who are in a cup, right,
and they get to have their beautiful backs out and
their boobies look incredible. But I thought it was against
the rules for big arrested women to do this, and
so I became low key obsessed. And what I as
soon as I saw the image, I said, no, I don't.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
Need to look at the image. I need to look
at the video because.
Speaker 3 (39:36):
I need to see if they move, because that's what
I thought, is that Sydney Sweeney's breasts are as far
as I know, real, and I want to see how
they move.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
And so what's the answer. They moved.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
They moved, and she moved very very comfortably, which I liked.
There were accusations that she was shaking her chest and
I was like, no, no, no, that's just how boobs
move along with a woman's body. She was like moving
her hands and they were just moving as they would
and they were sitting as they would when you were
in your twin and you've never had children or breastfed
(40:09):
all the rest of it.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
I kinda loved it.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
I mean, light a candle for Sydney Sweeney and how
difficult it is to have a body like that. But
I thought it was really cool, and I was mesmerized watching.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
The video and the naked dress.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
It does seem like that was the line it drew,
is that we're not looking at nipples and we're not
looking at boobs at shape. But I quite liked that
she transformed that. Amelia, what did you think I think.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
Every now and then you see someone wearing something that
transfixes you because it looks so different from everyone and
everything else, and it's a sign that the culture is
shifting and that fashion is shifting. I remember feeling that
way the first time I saw a skinny leg jean
out in the wild, and I remember it when again
(40:56):
the jeans got wide again, I was like, wait, but
that jean's wide, and you just have to stare at
it until it starts to make sense for you visually.
And that's how I felt about this. I wondered, maybe
this means that we're moving towards a braless future, because
she looked great. I think that's pretty much indisputable. But
(41:16):
b bras have such an interesting charged political history in
the sense that they used to be coded as something
that feminists wanted to burn, and there was this idea
of feminists burning bras as a sign of women's liberation.
They were a sign of oppression. But then I felt
like over the ensuing years since the sixties when that happened,
(41:39):
women came to accept that bras were a thing that
made your life more comfortable, particularly if you are well endowed,
shall we say, bras making you feel more comfortable. It's
actually kind of uncomfortable sometimes when you have large breasts
to not wear a bra. But it got me thinking
about maybe that's a tool of the patriarchy. What are
we wearing bras for? Who are we wearing bras for?
(42:01):
And the interesting thing is that Sidney Sweeney was in
the news earlier this year for her controversial American Eagle ads,
which were embraced by the right. But the interesting thing
is the right hates this look on her, and Megan Kelly,
the x Fox News host, made a u turn on
her support for Sidney Sweeney. She was all about her
when she was in the American Eagle ads, but then
(42:23):
over the weekend she said she disapproved of the dress
because it was see through and that it took away
the thing that is sexiest, which is mystery in a woman.
So now I'm very confused. What should I be doing
bras wise politically? Holly tell me, I think.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
Sidney Sweeney is speaking with her breasts. I think that's
what she's doing, right, because we just we're talking about
how everything's political. You can't really escape it. Having a
boyfriend is political, you know, And Sidney Sweeney, as you've
expressed has been definitely pigeonholed as being maga, and then
she's come out nearly naked and really pissed off a
(42:59):
large part of Maga, which is the Christian right by
being too sexy, and you know she's not a married
woman and what business so she got being sexy. And
I kind of feel like we live in a world
where celebrities can't say anything interesting anymore because we live
in such a divided culture where if you want people
to go and see your movies, you need to appeal
(43:20):
to everybody, otherwise you cut off half the people. They're like,
I'm not going to see Sydney Sweeney and anything. She's
a trumpist, and that would mean I was supporting them.
She never says that, but she can speak with her boobs,
particularly when you've got boobs as skilled as highly skilled.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
They're great communicators, as are that.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
I feel like she's sort of saying, don't fence me in,
don't fence my boobs in with a bra, and don't
fence me in as the conservative pin up that you've
got me pegged as is their legs in that theory?
Is there boobs in that theory? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (43:54):
I think You're right, because she would have known that
this would piss off the Christian right, the transparency.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
But they liked the big breasts before.
Speaker 4 (44:02):
Yeah, but you.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
Can't show your nips.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
That's the most basic problem here.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
The nipples is the problem problem, the lack of bra.
It's the nipples. Because let's just take a step back.
It is largely an audio medium. What I want to
describe briefly is why this looks very revolutionary for people
who haven't seen it. The breasts are pointing in different
directions as natural breasts are wont to do. They are
(44:27):
not up at her neck. They are at a juncture
that looks unusual to our eyes now because we are
so used to seeing celebrities with surgically enhanced breasts that
it looks lower than you're expecting to see breasts. Exactly.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
It's a flex, right, It's a flex to be like,
look at my glorious natural breasts defying your rigid.
Speaker 3 (44:50):
Rules, and this is how they'd sit if you saw
me naked, which is very very sexy.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
I agree with you.
Speaker 3 (44:57):
I think that she knew it would piss them off.
Do I think that we're going to move into a
post bra?
Speaker 1 (45:02):
Yeah? Are you tempted cure I carrying twins, I moment
to discard the bra.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
I you know what?
Speaker 3 (45:09):
I wonder if I will discard the bra while they
are full, and maybe they are sitting at a nighter, well,
what I would consider maybe a more acceptable position. But
once I can tuck them into my underpants, I don't
know if the culture is ready for that.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
What would Megan Kelly say?
Speaker 2 (45:29):
You would not be happy, but like, do you remember
it's going to escape me who it is. But I
bet Amelia will remember a celebrity of an older vintage,
a gen X celebrity was not wearing a bra on
a red carpet a while ago with a dress, and
everybody was like, eh, gross, disgusting because it was lower
than supposed to be. So, while we're busy objectifying Sidney Sweeny,
(45:49):
which obviously we are, like, I feel like, although she's
being rebellious in this look, you can be rebellious in
this look if you are young and conforming to all
those stereotypes.
Speaker 4 (46:00):
Right.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
Whereas if somebody who is a little less perfect in
every way according to a very ideal were to throw
the bra away, they would probably still get called unkempt
and slovely in a way that is never going to
happen to Sweeney.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Yes, I think that's right. I think I want to
ultimately say, though I'm happy that she did this, I'm
happy that she didn't wear the bra. I went for
my annual mammogram last week and I was thinking about
all of the anxiety and neuroses and concerns that we
put on our breasts, and it's sometimes just nice to
(46:38):
see them hanging out and being free. Yeah, yeah, I agree, Sydney.
Speaker 2 (46:42):
Out louders a massive thank you for while listening to
today's show. This is one you're going to want to
watch on YouTube because many of us while we're talking
about breast have been grabbing.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
I'm a still wearing my breast cancer awareness T shirt today.
Oh oh, I love it.
Speaker 2 (46:58):
It's like you knew. A massive thank you, of course
to our fabulous team for putting the show together, and
we're going to be back in your ears tomorrow. Bye hie, Mamma.
Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land on which
(47:18):
we've recorded this podcast, the Gadigal people of the Eora
Nation and on the Gerringer land of the wonder Wondian people.
We pay our respects to their elders past and present,
and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander cultures.
You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Jesse, have you seen it? Have you seen it? Have
you seen it?
Speaker 1 (00:16):
There's so much I've seen, but I'm not sure if
I've seen what you're yelling about today.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Jennifer Adiston has hard launched her hypnotist boyfriend.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
How did she do it? I have not seen this.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Jenn Aniston has hard launched her hypnotist boyfriend that we
talked about on the show.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Because before we'd only seen Harfy's face, which is actually
relevant for a story that we will speak about later.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Yes, because they've been papped together. But she's very private,
as we know. But she posted a picture of her
and him and her arms around his waist, and it's
black and white. It's very tasteful, and it just says
happy birthday, my love, and then it says cherished love
heart emoji. I'm going to make you talk more about
this at a later date. Hello, and welcome to Mamma
(01:01):
Mia out Loud. It's what women are actually talking about
on Monday, the third of November. I'm Holly Wayne, right.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
I'm Amelia Lester, and I'm Jesse Stevens.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
And who's what's on our agenda for today, how leaving
your bra off and putting a chain mail dress on
has become a cultural riddle on the back of one
Sydney Sweeney.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Plus, we have to unpack the worst royal crisis in
one hundred.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Years, and a viral article in Vogue has declared the
boyfriends are embarrassing. Am I reading into it too much?
Or is there a sinister subtext?
Speaker 1 (01:36):
But first, in case you missed it, I am more crunchy,
fun sized bar than host today. It was Halloween on
Friday night and a lot of chocolate was consumed. But
I just wanted to do a very quick celebrity roundup
of some very notable costumes. Okay, that happened. First up,
Mamma Mia out Loud's official couple, Justin Trudeau and Katie Perry.
(01:59):
We called it first. They are official. They went on
a date in Paris. Justin Trudeau and his son Hadrian
dressed as a shark and surfer, respectively. But justin shark
costume was almost identical to left Shark Katie Perry's twenty
fifteen Super Bowl performance meme.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Which that year that was the biggest Halloween costume was
that left shark That was an iconic costume because left
Shark maybe wasn't trying very hard?
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Was that the vibe? I think that's a good joke. Yes,
And I love this for Justin because if you recall,
in the first stages of their relationship, Justin was doing
that thing that men often do in the first stages
of a relationship where they're sort of dithering. They're saying
I'm not ready. That wasn't a date. That was just
us going out to dinner. This was all reportedly, of course,
sources said. But now it seems like he's now moved
(02:51):
into that stage where he cannot shut up about his
new girlfriend. And I love that. It's a home There
has never been a harder hard launch. Lily Allen next up.
She dressed as children's book character Madeline, which referenced her
new track, which Holly told us all about. Holly very
quick primer, what is that track about?
Speaker 2 (03:10):
So she has a song called Madeline, which is about
the other woman in David Harbour's Phone and Life, And
she famously has a song that's just like, who the
fuck is Madeline? And here's whose Madeline is. By the way,
I'm addicted to the album. I'm actually worried. I've listened
to it all weekend on repeat. I'm waking up thinking
about it, and then watching her in her Madeline costume,
(03:32):
and then watching her partying at the Shadow mom on
to that song. I'm like, this is Lily Allan's Talloween.
Speaker 4 (03:37):
It really is.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
She's owning it. Julia Fox defended her tasteless Jackie Kennedy costume,
which involved her wearing a pink tweed suit very similar
to the one that the First Lady wore when her
husband JFK was assassinated in Dallas in nineteen sixty three.
The dress came complete with the blood splatters that Jackie
herself kept on the dress when the next president was
(03:59):
sworn in. Don't love it, don't love it for her,
But then what I did love is you know who?
I told you that everyone in Hollywood wants to be
Dakota Johnson right now. Call it the Dakota Johnsonization of Hollywood. Well,
let's hear from Dakota herself about what she went as.
I'm Dakota Johnson dressed as Dakota Johnson, and I think
(04:21):
that Dakota Johnson is going to get the most drunk tonight.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
She's so cool.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
She's a parody of herself. I don't know if she's
ever being serious. I don't think she knows, and that's
what I love about her.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Prince Andrew war hero favorite son, the Duke of York.
Speaker 5 (04:42):
Let's bring you some breaking news that has come to
us in the last minute or so from Buckingham Palace.
His Majesty the King has today initiated a formal process
to remove the style, titles and honors of Prince Andrew.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
King Charles taking action against his younger brother in the
wake of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
People are calling this the worst royal crisis in one
hundred years. We were told it was impossible, but King
Charles has really gone ahead and done it. Prince Andrew
is no longer a Prince, the man who signed his
emails to his close friend Jeffrey Epstein hr h, the
Duke of York is now just plain old Andrew Mountbatten Windsor.
(05:22):
I love this for him. I love him filling in
forms when he goes to get his license renewed, where
he just now just has to write a regular person's name,
and very long one, a very long one. That's true.
He'll probably have to use extra boxes on the forms,
and in another stunning move, and you will have to
take the seventy two sailor costumed teddy bears that he
reportedly insists or arranged by his servants on his bed
(05:46):
in a particular order, and move them all out of
the Royal Lodge, which is where he currently lives rent
free to a cottage on the Sandringham Estate, which I
am reliably told is in a very wind swept area
of England called Norfolk. Holy, I believe this news was
(06:06):
such a big deal to you this weekend that you
spontaneously fractured your ankle, and that is why you're joining
us remotely. Tell me, is Norfolk really that bad?
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Norfolk? Okay, so two things. You're correct. I've seemed to
have fractured my foot and I have no idea how
so this theory checks out that it was just.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
So exciting that you're jumping up and down celebrate.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Just like exploded excitement. That's a possibility. So yes, if
I sound a bit different today, it's because I'm recording
from home. Norfolk is actually a beautiful place, but Sandringham
is a private estate. Look, there are many serious parts
to this story. But one of the things that's kind
of funny about it has become the obsession with royal
real estate and how the term cottage means something very
(06:56):
different to royal people. Then it seems due to the
average population, because when I think cottage, I think cute
little maybe two bedrooms, ivy around the door, but no,
in royal parlance, a cottage can indeed me in a
nine bedroom mansion. Anyway, I think this was is the
biggest royal scandal in one hundred years, and I am
(07:17):
here to take questions, Jesse, do you have any.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
My first question as someone who has been like I've
seen headlines and I understand that Virginia Giuffre's memoir has
come out recently. I understand that there are explosive allegations
in there. But why now did King Charles have to
wait till his mother had died to do this?
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Do you think, well, that is a big question, right.
The thing is is I think that why now of
it all, there's a few different things. The hits just
kept coming for Andrew, right, So anyone who maybe had
hoped that this was going to go away, it was
not going away. In fact, with the memoir out with
also an explosive biography of Andrew and Sarah that we
(07:59):
talked about on the show a while ago, exposing them
as kind of feckless, money grabbing royals. That was part
of it. Then journalism has to take a lot of
credit for this, because the digging and digging that's found
these emails between Andrew and Epstein, long after Andrew had
insisted he'd cut off Ties, just kept exposing the lies
(08:19):
that were mounting up and not going away. The other
why now of it all, though, is the pressure? Now
I know you don't watch the Crown, Jesse Mamelie is
surely you watch the Crown.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Of course, the whole of.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
The Crown, all of the seasons put together, basically follows
the same path. Crisis happens. Royals underestimate it, everybody gets
upset about it. True royals are told you really should
do something about this. The people are angry. The royals
say no. They don't want us to be real. They
want us to keep a stiff upper lip and not comment.
(08:51):
And what always happens is that at some point the
pressure becomes so great that royals have to climb down.
The Queen has to go and walk about and look
at Diana's flowers or whatever, and they are proved wrong.
This is another chapter in exactly that right. Pressure and
chatter around this Andrew's story has not gone anywhere. It's
only gotten louder. And although it's very unlikely that this
(09:15):
decision by the King was made quickly, in fact it
definitely wasn't. It was a very complicated thing to do.
It would have been a long time in the making.
Last week he was heckled in public, which was a
very the Crown moment when he was touring a cathedral
in Lichfield. The yelling of this man over all of
the walkabouts and normally just about getting teddy bears and
things that are like how long did you know? How
(09:36):
did you know about Andrew? What's been done to cover
it up? Was like a very visceral illustration of the
distraction that this has become. No one in the royal
family could do anything until the Andrew factor was dealt with,
and I just think that pressure just got too much. Holly.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Obviously, we should mention that Virginia Giffrey's family have welcomed
to this move, and they've described the events transpiring as
an ordinary American girl taking down a prince. Andrew has
denied all the allegations against him, but others survivors of
Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking have also said that they are
glad that accountability is coming for the Royal family. Does
(10:15):
it actually surprise you that it happened at all? Because
Charles until recently was telling us that he could not
do this. That was the line we were getting that
it was just literally impossible to take away the title
of prince. So are you surprised that he did it?
And do you think William basically pushed him into doing this?
Speaker 2 (10:34):
No, I don't think William pushed him into doing it.
I don't know that Charles was directly saying this can't
be done. But the truth of it is it is unprecedented, Well,
it's almost unprecedented. Without getting way too weedy, the last
time something like this kind of happened was after acts
of literal tradership, when members of the royal family. There's
a connection of the Royal family through Queen Victoria that's
(10:55):
connected to Germany. There was a prince that actually fought
for the Germans during World War One and then became
entangled with the Nazis in World War Two, he lost
his title. So it does happen. But remember even when
the king stepped down and famously King Edward the Eighth
abdicated in nineteen thirty six. He stepped down to go
and marry Wallace Simpson. Everybody knows that story. He obviously
gave up his king title, but he kept his duke title.
(11:17):
He was the Duke of Windsor until he died, So
it isn't something that happens very often. And everybody was saying,
and I think I said this on this show and
certainly on the Quickie, that birthright titles directly given to
you because of your line of succession for the monarch
couldn't be taken away. But the loophole is is that
every title that a royal has is at the pleasure
(11:38):
of the monarch. So if the monarch really really wants
to he she can do it. And it has been
a big shot.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
So was he pushed by William?
Speaker 2 (11:47):
So I've heard some really interesting reporting that says that's
not true, that William actually is concerned for the state
of Andrew's mental health. There is no question this really
interesting reporting I was hearing from Emily Matelis, who is
the reporter who did that really famous Andrew interview for
Newsnight in twenty nineteen. She's amazing. I was saying that
(12:07):
you've got to remember that King Charles knows that he
is an interim king because his mother lived so long,
reigned for so long. Even though Charles has been warming
up for this moment his entire life, he knows that
he's got this very short window. Ultimately, when it became
clear that this distraction wasn't going away, he wants to
clear the way for William to not have to deal
(12:28):
with all this kind of shit. William has been very
public about saying that he wants to change the monarchy,
that he has a different view of it, that he
wants it to be smaller. I wants it to focus
more on things that count in his mind than the
pomp and ceremony. So I think this was the King,
and I think he did it belatedly. I don't think
he don't necessarily deserves a whole lot of glory for it.
He could have done it a long time ago, but
(12:49):
I think it was him.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
I was reminded that Queen Camilla has been a fierce
advocate against domestic violence, but also sexual assault, like that's
been where her charity worker advocacy has been focused. So
I also wondered about her role in all of this,
given that's clearly so close to her heart.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Yeah, I think that what has happened is when he
was first stripped of some of his honors by the
Queen after the News Night interview, he was kind of
told go away, you don't have an official role anymore,
but you can still come to family events. So he
wasn't allowed to come out on the balcony, but he
was allowed to come to Easter and Christmas and.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
The funerals, where William looked horrified.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yeah, what that meant is that so he was at
that funeral. Now I've read a lot of reporting that
saying that appearance was so tone deaf, so titid of him,
because he looked to be like Josh. He's looked like
a man who's excited to be out right. Queen Camilla
as you say, Jesse and also Edward's wife, the Duchess
of Edinburgh. Sophie is also really involved in work about
(13:49):
sexual violence and protecting victims of it. She's actually just
recently been in the Democratic Republic of Congo doing some
work around this. So this is stuff that is seriously
close to some of the very senior female royals his heart,
and I think that the us among all the noise
that was coming along for them, the jus position of
them going out and doing this work and then having
(14:10):
to stand next to Prince Andrew as he was then
at funerals Easter, Christmas. You know, all of those events
just had become too untenable. Yet another illustration of the
hypocrisy that the British people are really getting sick of
in the royal family.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Yeah, so how damaging do you think this is? If
this is the worst royal crisis in one hundred years?
I'm thinking back to when Diana died and Queen Elizabeth
misread the room on that, and then there was the
whole scandal about the flags at Buckingham Palace not being
flown at half mast. People back then talked about whether
or not the Royal family could survive this. Do you
think that this is going to assuage the public the
(14:48):
fact that he's no longer a prince and a duke
or do you think that this scandal is going to
keep on going for Charles and potentially William.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
The problem is is that now that Andrew isn't a prince,
there's a lot of speculation that, you know, there are
going to be more allegations, and maybe not legal allegations,
but just more and more claims of his like despicable behavior. Really,
as you said, Amelia, he has always denied that he
even met Virginia Giffrey, despite the photographic evidence that he
(15:15):
says was fake, and despite her claims that they not
only met, but had sex three times in three different
situations in three different countries. He's always denied it. But
still he paid her a lot of money, of his
mum's money, to stop saying that about him. But also
coming out of that biography and lots of other reports
that are bubbling around, there are lots of other things.
(15:36):
Did he pay for sex workers in Thailand? Has he
done all kinds of unsavory things at the behest of
his rich friends, as it were? And the thing is
is that when you're in the royal family, there's a
certain level of protection afforded to you when it comes
to the media digging around in that. So there are
lots of reports that did not reflect well on the
royal family that when this stuff started coming out about
(15:59):
Andrew and Epstein, some publications were told by the royal family,
if you keep going on this, you will be denied
access to the Royals, So you know, that kind of
clothes shop, that kind of we know he's on the nose,
but he's one of our own. We're closing ranks around him.
That's all gone. There is also the possibility that there
could be legal action against him in the Jiffray case.
(16:19):
There's possibility that he could be quizzed over the Epstein
files in a broader sense by America. So all those
things might happen. And the problem with that is that
if the stories keep coming, is casting him out of
the family at the last possible moment enough for the
king to be able to survive it. I actually do
(16:41):
think it's really serious for them, because I think that
Britain is in a mess at the moment politically and culturally,
and I think there is very little tolerance for hypocrisy
of the super rich. You know, It's not dissimilar to
what's kind of blowing up in the States. And I
think that there are going to be a lot of
questions about this, and I do think and I think
we're going to do a subject where we talk a
(17:02):
bit more about William and Kate and Harry and all
of that. But I do think that they're has never
been more pressure for the royal family to modernize, to
become much more like their Nordic friends, and like cut
the list right down, you know, start riding bikes, out
riding bikes, having to get jobs, all of those things.
And also the other pressure that isn't going to go
(17:23):
away for Charles is that, yes, Andrew's been banished, but
he's been banished to a really nice house in a
really nice part of Britain. And some of that's unfair
because that's the only way for him to get protection,
you know, security protection, which seems quite reasonable really, but
the King's saying, I'm paying for it all, so he's
still bankrolling his degenerate brother. So those questions aren't going
(17:45):
to go away. And I think this is an ongoing
crisis for them. But the spin from the palace seems
to be the King had a backbone, the King did
what his mother wasn't prepared to do. The King has
dealt with it.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
In a moment.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
One of the most viral articles of the year has
rubbed me the wrong way, But is a vogue theory
about embarrassing boyfriends actually just a sign of progress. Look
as the person in this room with a framed photo
of Bernie Sanders on my desk, I feel best equipped
(18:21):
to bring the story you might have seen over the
weekend about Billie Eilish and billionaires. Here is what the
singer songwriter said at the Innovator Awards last Wednesday night.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
I would just say, like, we're going to time right
now where the world is really really bad and really
dark and people need empathy and help more than kind
of ever, especially in our country. And I'd say, if
you have money, it would be great to use it
for good things and maybe give it to some.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
People that need it.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
And love you all, but there's a few people in
here that have a lot more money than me. If
you're a billionaire, why are you a billionaire? No hate,
but yeah, give your money away. Shorty's love you guys,
thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
No hate, but give your money away, Shorties, I love
I love her so much.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Now some context. Shortly before walking on stage, she was
introduced by Stephen Colbert and he spoke about how Eilish
is donating eleven point five million dollars from her most
recent tour. So that's the context in which she's talking
about billionaires and donations.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
What she's donating it too.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
Everything climate crisis. I think there are a few kind
of social causes in there as well. They're about four
or five. The second piece of context I needed to
know was who was in attendance, right, And here's what
we know. A man named Mark Zuckerberg, who is worth
two hundred and twenty five billion dollars, was in the room.
(19:58):
According to People magazine, he did not clap when everyone
else clapped, not Mark. He went, no, no, no, you
don't punch down to billionaires. I really enjoy that detail. Now,
there was another billionaire in the room, which is Star
Wars creator George Lucas, but I've decided to leave him
alone because what I will say is it last year
(20:19):
he donated four billion dollars. He was given some Disney
contract and he took his four bill and he something
to do with education, and that is more money than
the three of us combined have ever donated. So I'm
not wagging my finger at him. Amelia. Do you think
that she was talking to anyone else because it was
a bold statement.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
A few people said that she seemed a bit nervous
and she was saying it.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
I didn't think so.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
I think that that's kind of just her demeanor. Do
you think she was speaking to anyone else?
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Look, I'm not familiar with the Innovator Awards. Are they
multiple awards given to music innovators? I guess I think
there are.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
And it was at the Museum of Modern Art in
New York, so it seems pretty legit.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
I don't actually know how Mark Zuckerberg goten invited, but
what I will say is that online the consensus seemed
to be that she said something great, but also that
people inevitably took this as an opportunity to pit two
women against each other rather than focus on old Mark
with his two hundred and fifty billion. People thought or
(21:17):
chose to believe that Billy was speaking specifically to one
Taylor Swift, who is famously a billionaire through her music.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Doesn't she give a lot of money away?
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Though she does, I think what she does a lot
of is kind of like under the radar philanthropy. For instance,
she gave all the truck drivers on her tour one
hundred thousand dollar bonuses to thank them for doing such
a good job. There are countless stories of her giving
away one hundred dollar bills to people who have served
her in restaurants or at sports games. I don't think
(21:50):
of her as someone known for her philanthropy, large scale
giving to institutions, charities, that sort of thing. I do
think that that's probably why people immediately went to Taylor
when they heard.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
That, because I think that Eilish's point is that you
should never get to billionaire status because you should be
giving it away before then. So she thinks that there
is something inherently corrupt about even the status of billionaire.
A few people pointed to Hailey Bieber, who was in
the audience, because she recently sold road her per skincare
line for one billion dollars. But then I looked, I
(22:25):
don't understand any of this, but she's only worth four
hundred millions, So I was like, guys, she didn't even
pocket all of that, and she's dealing.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
With justin exactly a full time job. I think the
other thing about why people seized on Taylor is that
this particular album cycle, she's garnered a lot of criticism
for the many limited edition Life of a Showgirl LPs,
which are all different colors, and she sort of sold
them as limited opportunities to buy them, put countdown clocks
(22:51):
on her website to sort of encourage her fans to buy,
and there was some criticism that her fans kind of
feel beholden to do this to buy these things. Now
no one is compelled to buy anything, and other people
make the point in her defense that unlike other musicians
who are billionaires, for instance, Lena Gomez is a billionaire
not through her music but through rare beauty her cosmetics empire.
(23:12):
So people said, this is how musicians in the streaming
age have to make money, which is through these edition LPs.
But I think to Billy's point, she says, Taylor's probably
got enough money. Taylor probably doesn't need to make thirty
limited edition LPs.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
I think this is about the billionaire class. I think
it's a political statement. Rich people used to give away
money quietly, but now I think, if you're not one
of the billionaire bros, you know, sitting next to Trump
and all of those things, you give it away loudly
to try and shame them. That's what I thought. Billy
was doing. Yeah, she was very much sort of because
(23:48):
that has become a big part of the political discourse there,
that billionaire is becoming a word synonymous with the oligarchy
and all those things. So I wonder if she was
having a dig at that more than she was her
fellow musicians. But either way, it's bold because you're going
to piss off all the people with a billion dollars
to tell them that they don't deserve those billion dollars
because the billion has liked that billion dollars.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
One of the most viral stories of the year was
published last week in Vogue, and it put its finger
on a cultural phenomenon you may have noticed, and in fact,
I think we've talked about it on this show before.
Chante Joseph wrote, is having a boyfriend embarrassing?
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Now?
Speaker 3 (24:27):
And her response, along with the majority of the Internet
who picked this up and ran with it, was yes,
it is mortifying, which is particularly sad for Holly. She
has quite liked having the boyfriend's status for like twenty
years now, and so by the end of this segment,
I think you should probab drop it. But I'm going
to lay out Joseph's theory and then I'm going to
(24:48):
tell you why it makes me kind of bristle. For
so long, she says, it felt like we were living
in boyfriend land, especially online. Right, So women's online identities
centered around the lives of their partners in a way
that it never does the other way around. Men don't
do that in the same way. The article opens. If
someone so much as says my boyfriend on social media,
(25:11):
they're muted now, she says, posting about a boyfriend is
low key embarrassing or cringe. So you see a hand,
you might see a half face. If you see wedding photos,
you can barely see the husband's face at all.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
She says.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Women want the social benefits of a partner without appearing
These are her words, culturally loserish. It is fundamentally uncool
to be a boyfriend girl. Actually, before I tell you
why this rubs me the wrong way, I want to
get a sense check. What did you guys think? Do
you reckon that there is truth to this theory?
Speaker 2 (25:46):
I can't say I've noticed that. I still see plenty
of boyfriend business up there. But isn't it kind of
maybe a natural reaction to generation who have also been
shouting about their boyfriends online and then they break up,
and then they have to walk through the yea of
like the boyfriending someone online. And so now, because I
(26:10):
feel like my social media feeds are absolutely full of
engagement rings, weddings, the lock em down kind of vibe,
never mind the tradwives and everything. So I don't know
that I'm convinced that that's out of fashion. But maybe
it's out of fashion to shout about boyfriends rather than husband's.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
I also wondered if this was a function of the
fact that influencers can sell more if they present as single.
The article quotes from some influencers who lost hundreds of
followers the minute they came out as having a boyfriend.
So I wondered if there was just sort of a
business imperative to wanting to appear a little bit mysterious, enigmatic, footloose,
fancy free.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
That's true, and I suppose if the people following you
were identifying with your life stage and you move into
another one, then they can feel a bit betrayed. That
happens with lots of different transitions. But I wondered if
the subtext of this was our men a bit embarrassing
now and The reason I say that is because there
are a few quotes in there that I felt were
(27:14):
slightly problematic.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Do you think that Katy Perry was so mortified this
weekend when she saw that Justin dressed up as the shark?
She was a creak?
Speaker 3 (27:23):
Again, this is as bad.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
As uncool at the moment.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
Yeah, this is as bad as when I went to
space Justin. I'm trying to get some cool points. So
this writer named Zoe Sammouzi said that women want the
prize and celebration of partnership, but understand the norminess of it.
And the one thing that didn't seem acknowledged in any
of this was that some women also like their partners.
That's the other reason why women have boyfriends is not
(27:48):
just because of cultural cachet or Instagram followers or.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
Anything like that.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
It's because it might be a foundational relationship in their lives.
And there was a comment that they referred to which
was basically relationships and now republican coded it's now very republican.
It's be a common sexual relationship. And I thought, if
you start to ostracize or mock a certain choice, if
(28:17):
you want to call it that, then do you alienate
a group of people who then feel radicalized. Right, So
we're seeing this happen with men anyway, during adolescents, where
it's just like casually denigrating, casually mocking men is part
of I'm actually not going to say culture. I'm going
to say internet culture and progressive internet circles. I just
(28:41):
worry that the result of that is going to be dangerous.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Jesse there's also a very large part of Internet culture
that's about denigrating women. Yes, an enormous amount of it.
And I don't say that in any way of making
it seem like so it's okay, then what about is them?
I just mean I don't think that all the tidy
violins need to be directed in that direction.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
No, But I think it's a great point, Jessie, because
think about the fact that on the right, particularly in
the US, we are seeing this embrace of heterosexual relationships
and the idea of family as the bedrock of everything.
And we hear these reports of young women attending conferences
where they're learning how to find a husband and have
(29:25):
kids early and make sure that they prioritize family over Korea.
And so I think you're right to be concerned that
if you are a young straight woman and you see
these two very distinct paths of either having a boyfriend
is embarrassing or by all means have a boyfriend, why
don't you have children with him? Why don't you have
(29:46):
more children with him? It might push you in a
bit of an extreme direction.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
Yeah, or feel mocked or shamed by certain portions of
a political group. I say that because, Holly, you are
absolutely spot on. We live in a culture that rewards heterosexuality.
It just does, even online, absolutely does. But there was
something in the tone of this article that made me think,
(30:14):
if you start to mock what some people want, or
you start to make them feel shame about that, then
that can be a dangerous road to go down. And
I was also thinking. I read this alongside listening to
an episode of This Is Why We Fight over the weekend,
and in the first few seconds of that episode, they
(30:34):
have a clip of one of the it's a heterosexual
couple and they're, you know, dealing with their issues. The
man in the couple says, I still make silly decisions.
I'm still a male, And I thought, firstly, you couldn't
say I still make silly decisions.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
I'm still a woman.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
I think that if someone did that, you'd go, hang on,
don't talk about yourself like.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
That, because you can't say girl math. You can't say
girl math.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Yeah you can. That's true, that's true.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
But this wasn't a punchline.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
I just thought that the comfort with which we denigrate maleness,
we roll our eyes at men and we accept that
they useless and embarrassing. To date, does it not all
become a bit self fulfilling? Like, does it not become
just men going?
Speaker 2 (31:15):
All right?
Speaker 1 (31:15):
So we're kind of the cultural joke.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Obviously there's some truth to that, but I still feel
like the dominant culture is overwhelmingly pushing women to settle
down early panic about the biological clocks plenty, you know,
put a ring on it. I think that the dominant
culture is very much doing that. And I mean he
has already said this, but you know, the rise of
the traadwives and the soft girls and all that stuff.
(31:39):
I mean, I don't want to politicize everything because it's so,
as you say, Jesse, like, people's actual personal lives and
whether they like someone or not has nothing to do
with the political temperature. I still feel like the overarching
culture gives the hardest time to single people, and I
think that the reason that maybe you know, there was
a line in there that you read out that was
(31:59):
kind of like, young women want the cachet of singleness
even when they've moved out of that stage. I think
the only reason there's cachet there is because it's still
seen as a bit outsider ish, you know, it's still
seen as a bit radical. It's still seen as you know, well,
society thinks I should find someone because I won't be
happy without them, But maybe I'm doing fine on my own.
(32:21):
So I think that if there's some cachet to that,
I think that's why. It's because you're bucking a trend.
I think it's interesting also what you say about how
we've come comfortable with mocking men, because I think there's
always been a certain part of female power that's about that.
When I used to edit Women's Day, there was like
a whole column in there in the actual magazine called
mea Male, and it was just women sharing stories of
(32:43):
embarrassing shit that domb husbands had done that were like, yeah,
just completely accepted that your mm, your mea male would
definitely put the kettle on without putting enough water in it,
or you know, just whatever silly thing like. I think
that's always been a part of female discourse.
Speaker 4 (32:59):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
I mean, I think your point is interesting, but I
don't buy that we are living in a culture that
has let go of the idea of coupledom. I think,
if anything, the opposite.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
I mean, I think I'm uncomfortable with a few things.
The first is that sexuality is at all political. I
think that whether you are attracted to men or women
or both or whatever, I don't think that that says
anything about you politically. And I kind of thought that
we'd moved away from that a little bit maybe.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
And I also think that.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
The language of loser, dorm or embarrassing or cringe just
feels very high school to me, And I get my backup.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
I agree. But also we talked about this with em
a little bit, Like, you know, there's been a big
move in these kind of pieces that are also like
a heterosexual relationships okay and all that kind of stuff.
That really what they are is giving a voice to
a group of women who are dealing with men in
an online dating age ye feeling like they are being
treated very often in a very dismissive, commodified way, and
(33:57):
to tell them to shush because we can't make the
men feel bad is also not good, you know what
I mean. So I think they're allowed to say it's
tough out there, like it's tough out there and dating
guys is hard when they've got all the options in
the world in their pockets. I think they're allowed to
say that. I'm with you on that.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
And I must say I've actually found the trend on
TikTok funny of single women being like, apparently it's embarrassing
to be in a relationship and they're just doing funny
things or whatever, And I'm like, yeah, I totally get that.
I think that that's transgressive in a lot of ways.
But this accepting that every man is a lost cause
and spending time with one is embarrassing.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
I just I don't like it. I was wondering why
this article really struck a chord, Because it did. I
had a number of brute chats which pined with it,
and I was wondering why people found something resonant in it.
It's not a long article, it's not saying anything particularly revolutionary,
but it did seem to tap into something in the zeitgeist,
and I was wondering if it's because it feels like
(34:54):
a welcome corrective. Yea. And by that I mean when
I was in my twenties, which was not that long ago.
But to give you a sense, I am going to
my high school twenty fifth reunion this week. And when
I was growing up walking seven miles to school through
the snow with I lived in Sydney, Sydney, this was
(35:19):
not a thought that was even out there. A. The
default was heterosexuality, and B there was very much a
pressure that was pervasive from an early age that you
needed male attention to validate your existence. You just did.
And if you didn't have a boyfriend in high school
(35:39):
hypothetically of course I had many, I did not. If
you didn't have a boyfriend in high school, if you
didn't have a boyfriend in your twenties, there was something
wrong with you. Yeah. And I'm embarrassed to say that
out loud because it's ridiculous. But that's what the elder
millennials grew up with. And so I think that's why
it hit a chord with us because we were sharing
(36:01):
it because we were like, we wish that we had
this article when we were twenty two to tell us
that we'd don't need it.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
There's the antithesis to the plot of sex and the City,
all the culture we consumed.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
I hate to report from the front lines of high schoolness,
but I think it's quite like that's still Amelia. I
think there is still a lot of discussion about who's
got a boyfriend, who's taking someone to prom like I
don't know. I don't think it shifted as much as
some of this online discourse suggests that it has. I
wish that it had, but I'm not convinced.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Are you going to keep calling Brent your boyfriend?
Speaker 2 (36:36):
I think I'm going to have to write a think
peace to try and go viral in defensive elderly boyfriend.
I thought I was cool because I had a boyfriend.
Now this article has turned that on its head. It
could be married by the end of the week after
the break. The celebrity breasts said to confuse us, and
(36:59):
they're working.
Speaker 3 (37:01):
Every Tuesday and Thursday, we drop new segments of Mummy
out Loud just for Mummy A subscribers follow the link
in the show notes to get your daily Joseph out
Loud and a big thank you to all our current subscribers.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
They are the breasts that stopped a nation's news cycle
last Thursday. Right up until that prince got shoved, all
anyone was talking about, it seemed, was Sydney Sweeney's breasts.
This obviously is an audio medium unless you're watching us
on YouTube and if you are high, but we will
put a picture of the dress we're about to talk
to you on Instagram so you can play along at
home if you haven't seen them for any reason. At
(37:41):
an event for Variety Magazine called and this is just
glorious the Power of Women, one Sydney Sweeney hijacked us
all with her breasts, which is one bold way of
interpreting the theme. She was being honored at this event
alongside Kate Hudson, Wonder Sykes, Nicole Scherzinger, Jamie Lee Kurtz.
(38:01):
That is a diverse group. Anyway, we thought we'd seen
every version of the naked dress, right, but they've evolved again.
She was wearing a textured chain mail dress by a
designer called Christian. That's interesting to Cowan. It was completely
see through and I don't want to object to fire
woman who sells her own bath water, but I have
(38:22):
not stopped looking at them since, just so that Amelia
gets her fashion note here it was a crystal mesh
which was manipulated onto a steel boned corset to create
a sculptural form of a classic hourglass waste. But what
it actually gave you was Sydney Swedey's magnificent breasts on
a platter, don't you think?
Speaker 3 (38:43):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (38:43):
First of all, what did you to think of it?
Speaker 1 (38:45):
I've been on a journey. I've been on a journey
with the breasts.
Speaker 3 (38:49):
I thought that big breasted women, we've always been taught
that your job is to have them in harnesses, to
have them locked down, strapped the belts, strapped everything, as
many straps as possible, pin them down, tamed. You can
have them out, but you've got to have them constrained.
Speaker 5 (39:13):
Right.
Speaker 3 (39:13):
The only people who are allowed to do the naked
dress look are women who are in a cup, right,
and they get to have their beautiful backs out and
their boobies look incredible. But I thought it was against
the rules for big arrested women to do this, and
so I became low key obsessed. And what I as
soon as I saw the image, I said, no, I don't.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
Need to look at the image. I need to look
at the video because.
Speaker 3 (39:36):
I need to see if they move, because that's what
I thought, is that Sydney Sweeney's breasts are as far
as I know, real, and I want to see how
they move.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
And so what's the answer. They moved.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
They moved, and she moved very very comfortably, which I liked.
There were accusations that she was shaking her chest and
I was like, no, no, no, that's just how boobs
move along with a woman's body. She was like moving
her hands and they were just moving as they would
and they were sitting as they would when you were
in your twin and you've never had children or breastfed
(40:09):
all the rest of it.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
I kinda loved it.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
I mean, light a candle for Sydney Sweeney and how
difficult it is to have a body like that. But
I thought it was really cool, and I was mesmerized watching.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
The video and the naked dress.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
It does seem like that was the line it drew,
is that we're not looking at nipples and we're not
looking at boobs at shape. But I quite liked that
she transformed that. Amelia, what did you think I think.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
Every now and then you see someone wearing something that
transfixes you because it looks so different from everyone and
everything else, and it's a sign that the culture is
shifting and that fashion is shifting. I remember feeling that
way the first time I saw a skinny leg jean
out in the wild, and I remember it when again
(40:56):
the jeans got wide again, I was like, wait, but
that jean's wide, and you just have to stare at
it until it starts to make sense for you visually.
And that's how I felt about this. I wondered, maybe
this means that we're moving towards a braless future, because
she looked great. I think that's pretty much indisputable. But
(41:16):
b bras have such an interesting charged political history in
the sense that they used to be coded as something
that feminists wanted to burn, and there was this idea
of feminists burning bras as a sign of women's liberation.
They were a sign of oppression. But then I felt
like over the ensuing years since the sixties when that happened,
(41:39):
women came to accept that bras were a thing that
made your life more comfortable, particularly if you are well endowed,
shall we say, bras making you feel more comfortable. It's
actually kind of uncomfortable sometimes when you have large breasts
to not wear a bra. But it got me thinking
about maybe that's a tool of the patriarchy. What are
we wearing bras for? Who are we wearing bras for?
(42:01):
And the interesting thing is that Sidney Sweeney was in
the news earlier this year for her controversial American Eagle ads,
which were embraced by the right. But the interesting thing
is the right hates this look on her, and Megan Kelly,
the x Fox News host, made a u turn on
her support for Sidney Sweeney. She was all about her
when she was in the American Eagle ads, but then
(42:23):
over the weekend she said she disapproved of the dress
because it was see through and that it took away
the thing that is sexiest, which is mystery in a woman.
So now I'm very confused. What should I be doing
bras wise politically? Holly tell me, I think.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
Sidney Sweeney is speaking with her breasts. I think that's
what she's doing, right, because we just we're talking about
how everything's political. You can't really escape it. Having a
boyfriend is political, you know, And Sidney Sweeney, as you've
expressed has been definitely pigeonholed as being maga, and then
she's come out nearly naked and really pissed off a
(42:59):
large part of Maga, which is the Christian right by
being too sexy, and you know she's not a married
woman and what business so she got being sexy. And
I kind of feel like we live in a world
where celebrities can't say anything interesting anymore because we live
in such a divided culture where if you want people
to go and see your movies, you need to appeal
(43:20):
to everybody, otherwise you cut off half the people. They're like,
I'm not going to see Sydney Sweeney and anything. She's
a trumpist, and that would mean I was supporting them.
She never says that, but she can speak with her boobs,
particularly when you've got boobs as skilled as highly skilled.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
They're great communicators, as are that.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
I feel like she's sort of saying, don't fence me in,
don't fence my boobs in with a bra, and don't
fence me in as the conservative pin up that you've
got me pegged as is their legs in that theory?
Is there boobs in that theory? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (43:54):
I think You're right, because she would have known that
this would piss off the Christian right, the transparency.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
But they liked the big breasts before.
Speaker 4 (44:02):
Yeah, but you.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
Can't show your nips.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
That's the most basic problem here.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
The nipples is the problem problem, the lack of bra.
It's the nipples. Because let's just take a step back.
It is largely an audio medium. What I want to
describe briefly is why this looks very revolutionary for people
who haven't seen it. The breasts are pointing in different
directions as natural breasts are wont to do. They are
(44:27):
not up at her neck. They are at a juncture
that looks unusual to our eyes now because we are
so used to seeing celebrities with surgically enhanced breasts that
it looks lower than you're expecting to see breasts. Exactly.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
It's a flex, right, It's a flex to be like,
look at my glorious natural breasts defying your rigid.
Speaker 3 (44:50):
Rules, and this is how they'd sit if you saw
me naked, which is very very sexy.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
I agree with you.
Speaker 3 (44:57):
I think that she knew it would piss them off.
Do I think that we're going to move into a
post bra?
Speaker 1 (45:02):
Yeah? Are you tempted cure I carrying twins, I moment
to discard the bra.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
I you know what?
Speaker 3 (45:09):
I wonder if I will discard the bra while they
are full, and maybe they are sitting at a nighter, well,
what I would consider maybe a more acceptable position. But
once I can tuck them into my underpants, I don't
know if the culture is ready for that.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
What would Megan Kelly say?
Speaker 2 (45:29):
You would not be happy, but like, do you remember
it's going to escape me who it is. But I
bet Amelia will remember a celebrity of an older vintage,
a gen X celebrity was not wearing a bra on
a red carpet a while ago with a dress, and
everybody was like, eh, gross, disgusting because it was lower
than supposed to be. So, while we're busy objectifying Sidney Sweeny,
(45:49):
which obviously we are, like, I feel like, although she's
being rebellious in this look, you can be rebellious in
this look if you are young and conforming to all
those stereotypes.
Speaker 4 (46:00):
Right.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
Whereas if somebody who is a little less perfect in
every way according to a very ideal were to throw
the bra away, they would probably still get called unkempt
and slovely in a way that is never going to
happen to Sweeney.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Yes, I think that's right. I think I want to
ultimately say, though I'm happy that she did this, I'm
happy that she didn't wear the bra. I went for
my annual mammogram last week and I was thinking about
all of the anxiety and neuroses and concerns that we
put on our breasts, and it's sometimes just nice to
(46:38):
see them hanging out and being free. Yeah, yeah, I agree, Sydney.
Speaker 2 (46:42):
Out louders a massive thank you for while listening to
today's show. This is one you're going to want to
watch on YouTube because many of us while we're talking
about breast have been grabbing.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
I'm a still wearing my breast cancer awareness T shirt today.
Oh oh, I love it.
Speaker 2 (46:58):
It's like you knew. A massive thank you, of course
to our fabulous team for putting the show together, and
we're going to be back in your ears tomorrow. Bye hie, Mamma.
Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land on which
(47:18):
we've recorded this podcast, the Gadigal people of the Eora
Nation and on the Gerringer land of the wonder Wondian people.
We pay our respects to their elders past and present,
and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander cultures.
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