June 11, 2025 • 42 mins
Blake Lively has broken her silence on the It Ends With Us chaos, calling it “manufactured shame". With Justin Baldoni’s $614 million countersuit just dismissed, it’s validation for Lively — but the real drama’s not over till 2026. Mia, Jessie and Em Vernem discuss.
Plus, Wife Guys. You’ve seen them online — gushing about their spouses like it’s their full-time job. Mia, Jessie and Em ask: is it wholesome... or a red flag?
And finally, are we OK? Sydney Sweeney is selling 'vintage' soap made from her actual bath water, and Bonnie Blue was all set to launch a human petting zoo with herself as the star attraction — until Only Fans banned her. We unpack the trend of women turning themselves into brands and whether it’s empowerment to be proud of or something else that's far more troubling.
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What To Listen To Next:
- Listen to our latest episode: Jessie & The Inside Scoop On The Project's Cancellation
- Listen: LITTLE TREAT: The Money Pushover & A Woman Named Karen
- Listen: A Famous Mother & A Treacherous Daughter
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- Listen: Khloe Kardashian And A Cheating Scandal
- Listen: The Lick Ick & The Patron Saint of Betrayed Women
- Listen: We Need To Debrief On 'And Just Like That' Season Three, Ep One
- Listen to Parenting Out Loud: Grandparents — It's Time for Your Performance Review
- Connect your subscription to Apple Podcasts
Watch Mamamia Out Loud:
What to read:
- Justin Baldoni just responded to his lawsuit being dismissed. He’s not taking it lying down.
- Justin Baldoni claimed Blake Lively extorted Taylor Swift. A judge has just thrown out his letter.
- Blake Lively isn't the first person to sue Justin Baldoni.
- Thousands of armed troops, an Aussie reporter shot and exactly what's going on in LA right now.
- A woman, a glass box, and 2,000 men. We’ve been here before, and it never ends well.
- Bonnie Blue, Lily Philips and the grim truth behind their recording breaking sex 'feats'.
- Why you should never trust a Hollywood Wife Guy.
- The Project is ending soon and Network 10 explained exactly what happened.
THE END BITS:
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Mama Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
So many new things are happening. We're in a new studio.
We thought we could have our laptops, but we now
have got iPads.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
I feel like a boomer. It took me so long
to set this iPad up.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
I brought my own iPad to be shocked to hear.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
I feel like we're three and on a plane. Don't
put Pepper Peka.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
When I was off for a while, I was catching
up with you guys by watching the show on YouTube,
and I was looking at everybody's laptops and it looked
like you're in a meeting. There's something about it, really.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
It's like when you're sitting and having dinner with someone
and someone picks up their phone strap the connection and.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
It's very when you're actually behind the mic, I find
that my eye is always drawn, even though I don't.
It's like a safety I'm like some other hosts. I
don't have a lot of notes. It's a safety thing,
isn't it. And it's like I even find that when
I've got my phone, I have to turn it upside down,
so my eye doesn't doesn't get trained.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
So now what you can do is you can watch
your bluey on your iPad.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
We watch a super fight and then I can take
a photo with my iPad out.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
At a wedding.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Yeah, yeah, welcome to MoMA. Me are out loud? What
women are actually talking about? On Wednesday, the eleventh of June,
I am Jesse Stevens, I'm Mere Friedman.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
And I'm Vana filling in for Holly.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Today and on the show Today, the Project First and
now Q and A. Should we be mourning the loss
of the panel show and what will replace it? Plus
how did wife guys get such a bad rap? I'm
ready to fight you both on that and Sydney Sweeney's
bathwater and Bonnie Blue locking herself in a glass cage
empowerment or oppression with a price tag.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
But first, and in case you missed it, Channel nine
journalist Lauren Tomasi was shot by a rubber bullet by
authorities while reporting on the protest happening in Los Angeles
against the immigration raids. This is what she said on
the event.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
We were reporting on the Today Show all morning. The
situation on the ground in downtown LA. My cameraman, Jimmy
and I had started by that detention center in downtown
LA and there was you know, a few skirmishes here
and there, and a little bit of chaos moments as
we went throughout the morning. But it was about five
o'clock local time there were suddenly just thousands of protesters
(02:28):
on the streets of downtown LA, and we felt that
presence of the LAPD and law enforcement really ramp up.
Jimmy and I went live. We were doing a cross
into the program, and police started pushing their way up
the street. They'd begun firing tear gas canisters and those
rubber bullets, and we moved onto the sidewalk and really
(02:49):
tried to stay out of the way. What you saw
that report was at the end of that live cross
we'd moved off to the side of the road. We're
at the side of police. I had my back to
those LAPD offices. I was really focused on the camera
and you know, finishing that report telling what was happening. Yeah,
and I got hit. Jimmy scooped me up and we
made our way as quickly as possible. Yeah, a bit
(03:12):
of a shock.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Since then, three more journalists have been reported being injured
by authorities. An ABC cameraman was injured while filming a
group of protesters when police opened fire with less than
lethal rounds. He was hit in the chest, but not
seriously injured as he was wearing a bulletproof vest. Another
ABC journalist, Lauren Day, was injured via tear gas, and
a British journalist, Nick Stern, needed an emergency surgery after
(03:33):
being hit with a plastic bullet. So this video has
gone absolutely viral. I saw it all over my TikTok
and I think I watched it about ten times. Jesse,
why are these protests actually happening?
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Yeah, I think that for a lot of people that
got the protests on their radar right because LA at
the moment, there are a number of protests because of
this bill that Trump has pushed and we talked about
it on the show last week. But basically Trump wants
three thousand arrests nationally a day for immigrants like he
(04:07):
sees them as illegal immigrants. So it's actually said three thousand,
so it's like immigration raids in LA. The people that
have gone to protest are basically saying we don't agree
with this.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
So you may have been hearing about ICE raids, which
stands for Immigration Customs Enforcement. So that's the body like
border security here and the Australian Federal Police that looks
after border security and immigration, and so anyone that is
seen to be breaching the immigration laws in the US.
And there are many, many thousands of people there on
(04:39):
that basis, they're basically rounding them up and deporting them.
And there were protests in LA. There are protests that
have now spread all over the US. And the bigger
picture there is that LA is probably the most democratic state,
the most left leaning state in America. Its governor is
a guy called Gavin Newsom. That's the equivalent of the
premiere of a state in Australia. And Trump hates him.
(05:02):
He's a potential future Democratic candidate for president. And so
it's now just become this thing where Trump is sending
in the National Guards, sending in the Marines, making this
big show of force because he loves a spectacle. As
we're recording this news is breaking that curfew has been
imposed on downtown LA and President Trump has defended deploying
(05:26):
the military and called the protesters animals and a foreign enemy.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Which is the first time in sixty years that a
president because there's particular powers that a president has that
they very rarely use, like similar to Australia. Actually there
are state laws and things within the remit of a
governor and then there are things that a president can
do but often don't because they're kind of just trusting.
It happened during COVID. It was really complicated in the
US that a governor had the rules and it was
(05:52):
like there was fifty different countries and same in Australia's.
And so Trump has gone, I am sending in the
National Guard. Why is that such a big deal? Because
it escalates and a lot of people are saying they
are trained. Like the reason you would send in a
national guard is if there was life a war, or
if there was some kind of unrest, civil unrest or
(06:14):
serious uprising, which Newsom says, this doesn't warrant that at
all is going to escalate. And that's why this video
in that context is so critical because it does look
like it's escalating and that's something we saw on camera.
Even if she wasn't the Australian reporter wasn't a reporter,
if she was a civilian who was there and demonstrating
(06:36):
peacefully on the sidewalk. On the sidewalk, they still shouldn't
be shot with a rubber bullet like that. I think
is just a taste.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Of She's clearly media exactly right.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
That's a taste of what's happening and not what's meant
to happen in a civil democracy.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
In case you missed it, two big TV panel shows
were acts this week. Iconic ones The Project and also
Q and A. Both were acted because their audiences had
shrunk to the point of being unsustainable to keep making them.
Channel ten officially announced the cancelation of The Project after
a sixteen year run. One episode is going to air
(07:11):
in a couple of weeks. June twenty seven, and the
ABC this morning announced that it was acting Q and A,
which was its flagship panel debate program that has been
around for nearly seventeen years now. Sarah Harris and or
laid Ali will be leaving Network ten, and there are
dozens of people behind the scenes on both shows who
will be either made redundant or be redeployed. It's never
(07:31):
a good day when people lose their jobs in any industry.
But before we get to why we think people stop
watching these shows. Jesse, it's close to home. You're a
regular panelist on the project. You were there the day
before it was acted. Yeah, coincidence.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
I know, it's exactly right. They saw me and they
went this, good.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
God, how are you doing. It's not it's awful.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
It's really sad. It's sad for a few reasons. I'm
sad for my friends who are losing their jobs. I'm
sad for myself because I really.
Speaker 5 (07:59):
Liked that job.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
And I'm sad because it was a staple of Australian television.
Another feeling I'm having. I just need a very quick rant.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Please.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
For months, if not years, certain publications and certain commentators
and individuals have gleefully reported on the ratings of the project.
They have been it's been like every time there's a
dip or they're kind of like there are rumors of acting.
They have just reported and reported and had this strange
hatred of the show that seems totally unfounded. You don't
(08:32):
have to love it, But I don't know why they
were cheering so much for it to be axed.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
It's weird when the media cheers for shows to be.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Axed, especially Australian made shows that employ Australians who are
like creating a show for view, Like it's just a
very very strange vibe, which I know the media does sometimes.
But what's really irked me is that since it's been axed,
those same people and those same publications are writing like
these eulogies of just like, guys, this is a really
(09:01):
sad day for Australian media.
Speaker 5 (09:03):
And in fact, you know.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
A lot of people got their start on the project
and for writers' rooms it's really important and the producers
going to lose it and I'm like, you weren't helping
with your fist in the air, going acts some acts,
some acts them.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Like that's kind of what the media does though, Like
I remember that it used to happen a lot when
the leaders of political parties were changing all the time.
It was like they were gunning for it because it's
a story, it's something to write about, it's something to
talk about. But then it actually happens and you're like, oh,
that's when everyone has their nostalgia, so they're just meeting
the audience need and not that not that it was
(09:35):
canceled because the media was writing about it, but I've
been thinking a lot about it, and you know, you
and I, Jesse, you have both done the project, you
a lot more than me. I did it a long
time ago, and before that, I did the panel and
then I did Q and A a few times, and
you've done Q and A. I used to love watching
those shows, but I don't watch either of them anymore,
and I think that's because for me, podcasts have replaced
(09:57):
panel shows. Podcasts and social media have completely disrupted the
panel show format.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
For me, it's more social media. There is a sense
now I hear a lot of people say this that
if the news is important, not urgent enough, it will
find me. That didn't used to be possible. You would
have to opt in, whether it was opening a newspaper
or appointment viewing, whereas now you know. We did a
subscriber episode yesterday with Clare Murphy and Holly talking about
the project being axed, and Claire was saying she does
(10:25):
consume the project, but it's all through social media, and
of course that's not monetized. There aren't ad dollars in
watching a small clip on social media, and that's kind
of meant that we don't feel any urgency or fomo.
Speaker 5 (10:38):
It's like the opposite. Now there is no phomo for did.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
You ever watch those shows?
Speaker 6 (10:43):
No?
Speaker 2 (10:43):
But like exactly what cler Murphy're saying. So what I
would do is like I would see clips on TikTok
and Q and A. If I saw a clip on
TikTok and make me feel really, really smart, So I
tell people that, yeah, I watched Q and A, when
really I did it.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
I feel like, that's but you did watch it, but
you watched it on a clip of it on social media.
Speaker 4 (10:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
So that's why I was so surprising because I always
thought that young people did watch Q and A because
we all wanted to be smart and with the project
because it had that like underlining sense of humor with
new it was easy to understand and digest. But I
think we were all just watching clips and just telling
people that we were actually watching the full show.
Speaker 5 (11:16):
So am I have a question for you?
Speaker 3 (11:18):
Because the project, in particular, you were who they were
trying to get right. They were always news done differently.
They were trying to appeal to a younger audience, which
worked sixteen seventeen years ago, but then their younger audiences
moved to a different medium and they failed to capture them.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
But it's not just the younger audiences that moved to
a different medium. We all did because back then it
was revolutionary to have unscripted conversation about current events and
pop culture and politics and.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
To merge light and shade. Yeah, the project I think
pioneered and now has infiltrated podcasting. But is there any
format that's getting you back to free to air television?
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Sampang Tonight really yes, I love Sampang Tonight. I just
find it's so much fun and so funny, and he's
really really funny. So I think I'm driven by the
actual personalities of the shows, right, and I find that
really interesting. But I think with free to air TV,
it's the timing, like you have to watch it at
that time and that's not my scrolling time, Like that's
(12:16):
not my downtime. My downtime is like nine thirty PM
in bed, And.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
The change of viewing exactly appointment viewing. You can only
have around sort of big events like I don't know,
awards shows or the finale of Master Chef or Maths,
you feel.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Like you've got so if you miss it, Whereas like
with shows that happen every week. You don't really get
that Fomo.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
We touched on this in yesterday's subscriber episode, but I
think it's worth pausing on what's lost, because what is
lost is rigor a certain code of ethics that these
programs adhere to, whether it's fact checkers, whether it's lawyers,
like what goes to air on the project went through
a lot of hands, and now if news is being
shared through the opinion of us individuals, well, I'm thinking
(13:02):
about social media even more so. I mean, we have
a team and you know, and we are bound by
certain ethics and we'll get in trouble if we breach them.
Whereas if you're on social media and you're kind of
just yelling into your.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Phone and you're spitting a pinion like it's fat.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Yes exactly. I mean that's what's replacing it.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
That's I also have to say, as someone who's been
running a media company for almost the same amount of
time as those two shows, you got to evolve, Like
if Mum and mea was still a website, we would
have been probably disrupted and canceled a long time ago.
We became podcasts, and now we're becoming vodcasts and We're
doing new and different things all the time, and I
(13:40):
think that the one thing that's certain in media is
that you're going to be disrupted, and that's why you
do always have to evolve. And if you wait until
you start losing audience, it's too late to evolve. You've
actually got to evolve when things are going really well.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
So was it surprising to you.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
No, because I thought, and I don't want to sound
like a dick going h like, I'm a basic bitch,
and I stopped watching those shows because they felt so
of their time and even ahead of their time when
they launched, but then they stayed the same. You know,
when you think of the world sixteen seventeen years ago,
literally pre podcasts and pre social media, you can't then
(14:17):
be doing the same format. And so I'm sad that
they've been canceled. There's some great people working on those shows,
but I think that you got to keep changing. It's exhausting,
but I mean that's the reality of working in media today.
Unfortunately or fortunately.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
I talked about how I felt about this in more
depth on yesterday's subscriber episode, and again shout out to
everyone who lost their jobs.
Speaker 5 (14:41):
That's just a shitty day.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
But you can find that subscriber episode via the link
in our show notes in case you missed it. A
judge has thrown out Justin Baldonie's four hundred million that's
US dollars defamation suit against Blake Lively.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
This good day for Blake Lively.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
A good day for Blake Lively. Indeed, this pertains to
Baldoni accusing Blake Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds, as
well as their publicist and also The New York Times
of basically orchestrating a the smear campaign against him and
trying to destroy his career. Let's take a few steps backwards,
because this all started with Blake Lively's lawsuit against Baldoni
(15:19):
and his production company, and this is yet to be
tried in a court of law. That case is still
going ahead, and this surprised everyone at the time. Baldonian
his team then launched this countersuit and I remember us
talking about how bizarre the figure was. It just seemed
plucked out of thin air to have more than it's
more than six hundred million Australian dollars of him talking
(15:43):
about sort of damage to his reputation and career, and
a judge found that there wasn't enough proof of extortion
or defamation. In fact, the judge said these alleged wrongful
threats sounded more like legal negotiations. So when Blake Lively's
team pushed back, that was actually just how a court
(16:03):
case goes. Because remember we talked a little while ago
about the Taylor Swift texts, and there was an allegation
it never got admitted into court that Blake Lively's team
said to Taylor Swift, show your support or we're going
to release all that text messages. He was basically talking
about that kind of stuff which has been dismissed. Lively's
team has called this a total victory and they await
(16:26):
their day in court, which is going to be in
March twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
So her suit against him is still going ahead stands,
but what's been dismissed is his countersuit against her.
Speaker 5 (16:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Yeah, if you were Blake Lively, I think you'd be
feeling pretty vindicated today.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Out Loud is in a moment what is a wife
guy and how has this seemingly lovely term become an insult.
I want to talk about the term wife guy and
how it's become a bit of an insult. Firstly, in
case you're not familiar with the term, a wife guy
is essentially someone whose personality is formed by his role
(17:05):
as a husband.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
His identity is like, yeah, about he's married to.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Exactly, and about being married, and about his wife, and
just about the fact that she is his wife. That's
kind of his personality. So it first came to prominence
around the time that Me Too was happening, when there
was this all this talk about shitty men, and there
were these men who were like, I'm not shitty. I
love my wife. And there was a guy in particularly
(17:33):
guy called Robbie Tripp who had a wife who was
sort of curvy, and he's like, I love my curvy wife,
and he started posting this content about his curvy wife
as if he was some kind of a hero. It's
actually a woman who was a woman. And when I
went back and looked at this, she was not even curvy.
She's probably a size ten anyway. Some of the more
(17:56):
high profile examples of wife guys would be Prince Harry
Asap Rocky, who is the partner of Real Sap.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
I was going to let no, we're leaving that in editors,
we are not not editing that out Sorry a sap rocky.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Well, it's one of those things that I don't say
out loud a lot a dollars, sorry a p rocky
sat Nick Jonas is pronounced phonetically, try and move on.
Ryan Reynolds, John Legend, husband of Christy Tek and Ryan Reynolds,
of course, husband of like lovely Barack Obama, husband of
(18:35):
Michelle Travis Kelcey, partner of Taylor Swift. And David Beckham,
husband of Posh. So all of those men are not
only not emasculated by their successful partners. Often their partners
are more successful in high profile than they are, but
they actually rejoice in it, right, So they seem to
(18:56):
be delighted by the fact that they are married to
these exceptional women. And this is bad, Well, it can
become bad, And this I'm going to give you an
example of how it's become bad. The patron saint of
ye guys in its pejorative form would probably be Brooklyn Beckham,
who has dozens of tattoos of his wife, Nicola Peltz
(19:18):
Beckham all over his body, and his whole personality is
like eighty percent being married and twenty percent hot sauce. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (19:26):
No, that's very true.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
So once U put a time, these guys would have
been called pussy whipped. Now sometimes they're called cucks. But
it has become a bit of a If you look
at the Brooklyn Beckham example, he's such a wife guy,
it means that their whole personality is really just about
being married. And there was a piece that you shared
with us from The Atlantic this week written by a
(19:50):
wife guy who was protesting that he's meant to feel
embarrassed about being a wife guy and how he gets
teased about it. Mate.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
I thought it was a really nice piece because I'm like, oh,
this man really likes his wife. That's so nice. And
I didn't realize that it could be the opposite. And
I feel like the latest example I heard of what
I would assume as a wife guy is Walton Goggins
because of all the rumors that he had allegedly cheated
on his wife with his co star, and everyone thought
(20:20):
that happened because all of his comments on his wife's
Instagram was so full of I love you so much.
You're the best thing that ever happened to me. You're
my ocean, my river, my lake.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
So it's like a red flat.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
So I thought wife guy now is like if a
man shows too much love towards his wife publicly, he's
secretly cheating.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
We are being so insincere if we think that a
wife guy is just a man who loves his wife.
Speaker 5 (20:43):
That is not what a wife guy means.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
When I hear that, it conjures up an image of
someone I follow on Instagram. Right, this is not a
famous person. This is an acquaintance. And he is a
wife guy. And what he does is he shares so
many beautiful pictures of his wife and she is maybe
she's walking around in like a jumper but like no
pants on, like a little underpants, and she looks really sexy.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
So what did he do?
Speaker 5 (21:05):
Exactly exactly right?
Speaker 1 (21:06):
How did they do wrong?
Speaker 5 (21:06):
That's what I'm like, what have you done?
Speaker 3 (21:08):
And she's walking around like on the beach and just
he just loves taking photos and talking about how beautiful
she is, right, And I'm just like, oh, Madams mcmapy,
men like you before, and you're cheating on it. I
have no EVI you think he's cheating it, and I
do think he's cheating on it.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
I was gonna say, just it seems like he's sort
of objectifying her as a way to make himself look better.
Like the subtext is, look what I.
Speaker 5 (21:30):
Got, Look what I got? Who's it for?
Speaker 3 (21:33):
Right? There is something about and I found this with
the Atlantic piece. I'm like, it's so lovely that you
love your wife. I don't care that much and I don't.
It's like when someone wants to thrust onto you their
relationship and it's like, I don't feel it because I'm
not in it. So it's more like a thing for
you to discuss and tell each other how much you
love each other. But if someone is performing it on Instagram,
(21:54):
the reason it smells in authentic is because we have
data points that support that, Like there are so many
examples of people who go full I love my wife,
the post that I love my baby. Remember, like Adam
Levine was a mad wife guy and then boom cheating
on her with like text messages. There are so many
examples of men like that. We're using evidence to don't
(22:15):
you just.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Mean that men who love their wife also sometimes cheat
on their wife?
Speaker 3 (22:18):
No, no, no, it's a particular kind of performance. It's
a particular kind of performance that the men that I
know in my own relationships, the men who put me
on Instagram the quickest were the ones who also ghosted
me the fastest. Well do you feel that to be true?
And as our professional data.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
I think all men should be wife guys because as
a single woman, the amount of time I've spent scrolling
on men's instagrams before I find out they've been married
for nine years is ridiculous. Because there's also no such
thing as husband girls, right.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Because everyone I know, I know them.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Everyone is a husband girl though, and it's not even
a term, because that's just every woman in a relationship
who posts about her life because a husband or a
partner will automatically be in there. Everyone is a husband.
But then you go on a woman's Instagram and you
can pinpost on Instagram. I guarantee you the first three
posts will be a pin of her wedding day, her engagement,
(23:14):
the last trip they took to Buslona.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
That's about her. That's here's me in my wedding dress,
and also here's me on my trip to Barcelona in
a bikini and he just happens to be there. So
what's the term for a woman I've never thought about
it before in terms of giving it a name. But
I can think of two people I know who do
exactly this, their husband girls, and they post hot shots
(23:39):
of their husbands all the time and talk about their
husbands in a way that's I don't want to say objectifying, but.
Speaker 5 (23:48):
That subversive, doesn't it It feels.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Like, oh no to me, just feels like a flex,
the same kind of flex as a husband guy.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
So are they both hot husbands?
Speaker 4 (23:57):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Because I think that's different to being a husband girl.
I think if you're posting your hot husband, everyone should
be doing that because you're doing that for the girls.
You're not doing that to show that you're doing something.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Well, you mean, like as a public service.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
I think what a husband's girl is more like all
the photos on the Instagram stories will be like the
husband with the kids and the husband doing that. And
if you notice, like even when women go on holidays
with families, all the photos are husbands and kids because
she's the one taking the photos.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
What's implicit in this, like especially the wife guy terminology,
what's implicit is that in a heterosexual relationship, men should
have the upper hand. Like that's how culturally we understand
it is that men should have the power. So then
when it looks like a man is worshiping a woman,
we're like, what.
Speaker 5 (24:39):
Is going on here?
Speaker 3 (24:40):
And like we get a magnifying glass out and try
and understand it. We see them as a cock or emasculated,
or as somehow betraying the social order. Like that's why
these terms in and of themselves are pretty sexist. But
I do think that there's something to a type of
man who is performing his hetero relationship in order to
(25:00):
just get attention and applause from other people, from everyone
except his wife.
Speaker 6 (25:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
I mean, we're all performing our personalities on social media, right,
whether you got a profile or not. Everybody's deciding what
they put out there. And for some people it's their
kids that are their identity. For some people it's their
work that's their identity. For some people it's their face
or their body, that their ass that's their identity. But
for some women it's their husbands, and for some men
(25:26):
it's their wives. And I think that the term wife
guy is interesting because, as you say, it is kind
of subversive, because we can think of a million examples
of men who are really emasculated by their partners, who
are beautiful, successful, or just you know, don't want to
talk about how much they love their partners because they'll
be seen as soft. So I think it stands out.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
What I also want to talk about is the different
levels of embarrassments between the wife guy and the husband girl.
Because in the Atlantic piece, the wife guy he's embarrassed
because his friends take the piss out of him for
loving his wife so much. Whereas with my friends who
are like posting about their partners all the time, the
embarrassment comes when they break up and they realize they
have to archive a shitload more of Pope then their partner.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
So true, and actually I'm thinking about it. A wife
guy posts and as this guy said, like his friends
are kind of rolling their eyes. I've seen it with
male friends and they kind of go, I'll look at you,
old ball and chain or like all of those revolting
like ridiculous terms. Whereas if I were to post a
picture of Lucra and I and do some kind of
Academy Award acceptance speech for how much I love him,
(26:31):
the fire.
Speaker 5 (26:32):
Emojis I would give from my gap, yeah, they.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
Would be there, outbeat goals, love hearts, love you guys.
They have you would comment, Mum and Dad would comment
it would reshare and be like couple goals and the
encouragement would be beautiful.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
After the break, one of Hollywood's rising stars is selling
her bathwater, and one of the most famous only fan
stars has said that she wants to do a repulsive
sex stunt. What the hell is going on?
Speaker 3 (26:59):
Every Tuesday and Thursday, we drop new segments of MUMMYA
out Loud just for MUMMYA subscribers. Follow the link in
the show notes to get your daily dose of out
Loud and a big thank you to all our current subscribers.
I'm uncomfortable about a few stories this week that I
think exists on the same continuum, and I want both
(27:21):
of your help in working out what to think. Right.
We're going to start with Sydney Sweeney. She's twenty seven
years old. You might know her from Euphoria the White Lotus.
She was in that any One but You movie with
the handsome man, Big Star Big.
Speaker 5 (27:36):
I have a soft spot for her.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
She was great in The Handmaid's Tale. Remember that that
was like she remembered that. Yeah, she was in one
of the early seasons. She was great anyway, over the weekend,
Sweeney's limited edition bath soap went live online Go bust
e commerce sounds good exactly, which was created with her
very own bathwater. Now it was created in collaboration with
(27:58):
men's hygiene brand Doctor Squatch, which is designed to encourage
men to wash, which.
Speaker 5 (28:04):
Is a noble pursuit.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
I think it is.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
We need Doctor Squash.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
So here's just a little taste of the ad.
Speaker 7 (28:12):
Hello, you dirty little boys, are you interested in my
body watch? Well you can't have it because this isn't
from boys, it's from men.
Speaker 4 (28:22):
All right.
Speaker 5 (28:22):
Any questions about.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Can you For those who are just listening, can you
explain what the ad looked like?
Speaker 5 (28:27):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (28:27):
So the ad is beautiful Sidney Sweeney laying in a bathtub,
And as the story goes, she says she was laying
in the bathtub doing the ad, and then she pitched
the idea, I think we should put a drop of
my bath water in the soap and make that a
promotional tool.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Right, So a bit salt, burn a bit salt when
he drinks the bath water, exactly of his love interest.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
So the bar of soap retails for eight US dollars,
which is about twelve Australian dollars.
Speaker 5 (28:53):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
If I was going to put myself in some bath water,
I'd be charging at least fifteen.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
It doesn't matter at salt Out now right.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
The resale value on eBay now is like close to
three thousand Australian dollars.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
It's interesting because when I was first reading about this,
and the Internet is obviously buzzing about it, I was like, ooh, yuck,
why would she do this? She doesn't need to do this.
Having heard the ad and the tone and thinking about
it a little bit more, there is a kind of
a rogue humor about it.
Speaker 5 (29:23):
Yeah, yeah, there is.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
On the cover of the Bar of Soap, it says
smells like morning wood.
Speaker 7 (29:28):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
Some of the commentary since, like The New York posted
a review and they were like joking about like I
took a bite of it and it doesn't taste as
good as I expected it to, like that kind of stuff,
Like it gets pretty icky pretty fast.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Right when I first saw the ad, I thought it
was like an snl skit, Like, I thought it was
a full joke. And then when I found out it
was real, that's when I got a bit weird about it.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Yeah, yeah, why did you get weird about it because.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
I felt like everything about Sidney Sweeney and she's talked
about her looks for a while now, and it's always
in the sense of I'm a really good actor. I
just want to get roles from my acting. And then
the funny part about her talking about her looks would
always be done in a way where she's in on
the joke, like when she was on SNL and things like.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
That, he talks about a booth yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
And then now that she's making money off this, it
feels like that the joke has escaped her in a way. Yeah,
and I'm going back to talking about her looks and
she's like infiltrated that.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Well, not even her looks, more like rubbing her, yeah,
her sexuality, rubbing her on your body. But couldn't you say, well,
good for her, she's making the money.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
If she was just making money and it was just
a bar soap that you're selling to everyone. But because
the soap is marketed towards men, that's where I felt
really weird about it. It's like she's trying.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Because it touched her naked body.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
Yeah, and it's like a company owned by men. It's
not like a women own Sydney Sweeney owned brand entirely.
It feels like I felt icky.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
And even all the comments from men who weren't able
to buy the soap were really weird, like they missed
out on Beyonce tickets or something like. I saw her
comments of men going I tried from minute one, no chance,
what a joke.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Like ause if they have owner sp it's like they're
so upset that they didn't get away soap. It also
is in a month where we've had a stalker crash
into Jennifer Andiston's house and be arrested. Taylor Swift has
just been you know, her stalk has been in court
as well. We know that famous women are sexualized and
stalked a lot.
Speaker 5 (31:24):
And people want a piece of them.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Yeah, and it's just I mean, I guess you could
say it's incredibly subversive, but it Yeah, it does make
me uncomfortable.
Speaker 5 (31:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
So I am now about to take you into a
whole other stratosphere right and explained to a story that
has dominated TikTok over the last few days. Then I'm
going to explain how these things I think are related.
Speaker 5 (31:44):
Do we remember.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
Bonnie Blue sex troll Sextroll.
Speaker 5 (31:46):
Interesting title. She'd love that.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
She's a twenty six year old OnlyFans creator. She's British six.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
She's twenty six. Sorry I'm putting it out there. I
don't think she's twenty six anyway.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
She's twenty six according to the Google, but Mea said
she's not. So you know, who would you listen to?
She is British, which she's been living in Australia and
a little while ago, remember she got deported from Fiji
and then Australia. So like working visa.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Ish shoes and school is school is.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
She wants barely llegal men to be part of her
Only Fans channel and she films them.
Speaker 5 (32:16):
Blah blah blah. Highly controversial.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
So this was the latest stunt that she was promoting.
Speaker 6 (32:22):
What challenges do you have next, Bonnie Blues petting Zoo.
I am going to be in a glass box tied
up and it's going to be open for the public.
Speaker 5 (32:31):
Oh my god, meet in the barks.
Speaker 6 (32:34):
But people can join me to may touch me, just
look at me. Where I'm going to be in the
center of London in a house.
Speaker 5 (32:41):
Oh oh okay, right, okay. So I was seeing like
David Blaine. I mean, I'd love to be on the
back of a lorry in a glass.
Speaker 6 (32:47):
Box my way through the London, right, that would probably
be illegal.
Speaker 5 (32:52):
Probably I want to do two thousand.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
People were horrified. They said that this promotes rape culture,
and videos have been circulating on TikTok contrasting her statements
with like historical images from the Suffragettes or the way
in which women would be punished in the town square
and how that would turn sexual.
Speaker 5 (33:12):
And it might seem unusual.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
What's it good to do with the suffragettes?
Speaker 5 (33:15):
Well, I think it's like.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
This is what our grandmothers, our grandmothers fork for us
to have sexual freedom and empowerment, but also the like.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
To be molested by two thousand men in a glass box.
Speaker 5 (33:25):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 6 (33:26):
Money.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Now, it might seem strange to put these two stories together,
and of course we should say as well. Bonnie Blue
has since canceled her glass box stunt.
Speaker 5 (33:36):
But hear me out.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
These are two women in very different ways for filling
male fantasies for money. So they are profiting off the
sexualization of women or themselves the consumers of both of
these products.
Speaker 5 (33:48):
Men.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
I wouldn't want to be stuck in a lift with
But in a way, both of these decisions are positioned
as empowering to some. These women would describe what they're
doing as empowering, right, And they cash.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
Why would they describe it as empowering because they're making money.
They're making money off their bodies instead of men making
money off their sexual.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
Yeah, and they would say, agency I'm making a choice.
This has nothing to do with anyone else.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
We would have been making money off their bodies and
from sex and sexuality since the beginning of time. But
just because you're making money out of something, does that
mean that it's empowering? Well, I guess, And what is
empowering even means?
Speaker 3 (34:25):
And it's been rebranded as empowerment. It didn't used to
one hundred, two hundred years ago be branded as empowerment, right,
And so I want to know, is this hurting the cause?
Is this hurting the feminist cause? Or can it kind
of be defended with the language of like girl boss feminism?
Speaker 5 (34:43):
And what do you think?
Speaker 2 (34:45):
I actually, I don't think it's hurting the feminine cause,
but I do think what you did the comparison with Playboy,
it is similar, but not to this extent, like I
think for me, it's the men who are so upset
about not buying the soap bars, similar to the men
standing in lines to go have sex with women. It's
(35:06):
the fact that when now realizing that the demand and
for these acts are still so so high with men
that we probably might know through a friend of a
friend of a friend, and that kind of terrifies.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
Me, Like I'm thinking of the Bonnie Blue example and
basically putting her body on the line to fulfill a
male rape fantasy in a public place with a big
smile on her face, as though that isn't something that
women have been subjected to that is the most traumatic
(35:37):
incident of their lives. And then to make money off
it or to platform it, like it just feels so
sickening to me.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Can we take feminism completely out of it because it
drives me crazy when a woman does a thing and
we use it as a way to debate whether feminism
works or not. Because feminism is just about men and
women having equal rights. That's literally all it is. Now,
just because a woman does a thing, it doesn't mean
that thing is a feminist thing because a woman did it.
(36:06):
This is just about capitalism. It's just about money. It's
about Sidney Sweeney making money off her body, which she
has every right to do, and it is about Bonnie
Blue making money off her body, which she has every
right to do, and to try and dress it up
or dress it down or turn it into something that
it's not in terms of feminism and being empowering or
(36:28):
not empowering.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
I mean, but what happens when Sidney Sweeney then, and
she's talked about this in the context of Hollywood, when
she says I want to be taken seriously, which is
something that she said, I want to be taken seriously
as a producer.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
Although she's getting very bad advice, and I shouldn't patron
I say she's making very bad decisions because I think
that making money is not the same as being empowered. Well,
I guess it is for some people, but you know,
the word empowered makes it seem like something much bigger
than it is. I mean, yes, power in our society
comes from having money and having attention, and Sidney Sweeney
(37:04):
and Bonnie Blue both know how to do those things
really really, really well. But it's very cheating. I mean,
I've got different problems with obviously, it's hard to compare
both of them, but the whole Bonnie Blue and Annie
Knight does it as well. The good news is that
Bonnie Blue's now been removed from Only Fans because this
extreme challenge content Only Fans has happily decided that that's
(37:27):
not good for the world, and so they've removed her.
But you know, last week, Annie Knight did a stunt
where she wanted to sleep with one thousand men in
a day, and she ended up in hospital and that
was everywhere, and it's like, I just find it grotesque
this thing that they have to do these stunts because
everything in the world has to be more and more
(37:48):
extreme to get attention, right, It's not enough to just
have sex with one person on camera. You have to
have sex with one hundred people. And then when I
interviewed Annie a year or two ago, she was having
sex with like five hundred people in a year. Now
it's one thousand people in a day, and now Bonnie
Blue wants to top that by being two thousand people. Firstly,
(38:09):
I don't believe it's actually happening, and it's just like
I don't believe Body Blues twenty six. And secondly, I
think it's debasing, dehumanizing, extremism.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
Yeah, I actually change my answer. I do think it
is harming feminism because I think exactly what you said, Jesse, like,
it is perpetuating this male rape fantasy, and by them
doing this, we actually see how many men have this
fantasis and are now really open with that fantasy because
it's framed in a way where they're saying, no, I'm
empowering her because she feels empowered when this happens, and
(38:42):
I think that is what's impacting everything.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Yeah, and I also think remember that that's also not feminism.
To be clear, that is a bad thing for women
and a bad thing for and men understanding consent. But
that's not what feminism is.
Speaker 5 (38:55):
I suppose it's like put women aside.
Speaker 3 (38:56):
And I actually want to talk about the men for
a minute, because the cultural conversations that happened after adolescence, right,
we're about young boys who are lonely, who are being
radicalized online, toxic masculine, all of those things that have
been discussed, and we go, how do we fix this?
It's one of the biggest Every time Mum Maya writes
an article about the crisis of young boys, it goes
(39:19):
off because people are really invested in this question. Now,
capitalism has its clause in it, and it's going you're
telling me there's a demographic of like disenfranchised young men
who have these revolting fantasies. I've got an idea sell
to them, Like, let's not try and change them, and
not only let's sell to them, let's get women to
sell to them.
Speaker 5 (39:39):
Like that to me is.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Yeah, and gas lighting us further by going under the
guise of female empower.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
Yeah, exactly, exactly, as if Sidney Sweeney is the winner here.
Speaker 5 (39:49):
No, I don't think Sidney Sweeney is the winner.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
I think it's the dirty guy who's like, I've got
some of Sydney Sweeney's bath and licking it. It's like,
you're disgusting. If I went to Luca's search history and
I saw Sidney Sweeney's bathwater and he spent two thousand
dollars amount money on that woman's bathwater, I would.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Go, now, how much the soap is?
Speaker 4 (40:08):
Now?
Speaker 3 (40:08):
Well, with the resale value value, I would go, Look,
we need to have a serious dinner table conversation because
I'm not impressed.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
Before we go, have you two heard about the haunted
house trends, So you start by saying a haunted house,
but and then you fill in the blank with something
that haunts you but isn't typically scary. So, for example,
a haunted house, but it's a room full of people
asking you to tell them a fun fact about yourself,
and this.
Speaker 5 (40:34):
Lie two triths in a line, So good.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
A haunted house, but it's just you and another person
in adjoining bathroom stalls, and both of you need to
poop but are waiting for the other person to leave.
Speaker 5 (40:45):
Okay, I've got one. I've got one.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
My haunted house is walking in and seeing all the
text messages that I sent to someone who dumped me
after dark, especially after midnight, like all the text messages
that I sent maybe after a drink or two. That
to me is something I never need to confront. That's
scarier than any ghost.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
So mine would be a haunted house full of people
who canceled me. That's such a good one. And I've
got another one, A haunted house full of people scrolling
through their phones looking for something that they really need
to show me, and I just have to stand there
while they all scroll and they can't find it.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
Then they all find the YouTube video, which actually is
three and a half minutes long, but you'll like it.
Speaker 5 (41:30):
Just just keep keep, just wait till the end. Just wait.
Speaker 3 (41:33):
Mine is also seeing my legs poke through my jeans
in the middle of winter when I've not looked at
them for a while, and the like texture of my
skin and also just like a little bit of shocking
ankle hair Like that's pretty terrifying.
Speaker 5 (41:45):
How about you, em.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
Okay, mine would be a haunted house full of the
men who rejected me by saying they found someone else
with the someone else.
Speaker 5 (41:54):
That's so true.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Out Louders, we want to hear what your haunted house
would be. Tell us on Instagram or in the out
Louders Facebook group.
Speaker 3 (42:02):
A big thank you to all of you the out
Louders for listening to today's show and our fabulous team
for putting this show together. Studios are styled with furniture
from Fenton and Fenton. Visit Fenton and Fenton dot com
dot au. We will be back in your ears tomorrow.
Speaker 5 (42:17):
Bye bye.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
Shout out to any Muma Miya subscribers listening. If you
love the show and want to support us as well,
subscribing to Mama Miya is the very best way to
do so. There is a link in the episode description.
You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Mama Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
So many new things are happening. We're in a new studio.
We thought we could have our laptops, but we now
have got iPads.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
I feel like a boomer. It took me so long
to set this iPad up.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
I brought my own iPad to be shocked to hear.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
I feel like we're three and on a plane. Don't
put Pepper Peka.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
When I was off for a while, I was catching
up with you guys by watching the show on YouTube,
and I was looking at everybody's laptops and it looked
like you're in a meeting. There's something about it, really.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
It's like when you're sitting and having dinner with someone
and someone picks up their phone strap the connection and.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
It's very when you're actually behind the mic, I find
that my eye is always drawn, even though I don't.
It's like a safety I'm like some other hosts. I
don't have a lot of notes. It's a safety thing,
isn't it. And it's like I even find that when
I've got my phone, I have to turn it upside down,
so my eye doesn't doesn't get trained.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
So now what you can do is you can watch
your bluey on your iPad.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
We watch a super fight and then I can take
a photo with my iPad out.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
At a wedding.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Yeah, yeah, welcome to MoMA. Me are out loud? What
women are actually talking about? On Wednesday, the eleventh of June,
I am Jesse Stevens, I'm Mere Friedman.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
And I'm Vana filling in for Holly.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Today and on the show Today, the Project First and
now Q and A. Should we be mourning the loss
of the panel show and what will replace it? Plus
how did wife guys get such a bad rap? I'm
ready to fight you both on that and Sydney Sweeney's
bathwater and Bonnie Blue locking herself in a glass cage
empowerment or oppression with a price tag.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
But first, and in case you missed it, Channel nine
journalist Lauren Tomasi was shot by a rubber bullet by
authorities while reporting on the protest happening in Los Angeles
against the immigration raids. This is what she said on
the event.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
We were reporting on the Today Show all morning. The
situation on the ground in downtown LA. My cameraman, Jimmy
and I had started by that detention center in downtown
LA and there was you know, a few skirmishes here
and there, and a little bit of chaos moments as
we went throughout the morning. But it was about five
o'clock local time there were suddenly just thousands of protesters
(02:28):
on the streets of downtown LA, and we felt that
presence of the LAPD and law enforcement really ramp up.
Jimmy and I went live. We were doing a cross
into the program, and police started pushing their way up
the street. They'd begun firing tear gas canisters and those
rubber bullets, and we moved onto the sidewalk and really
(02:49):
tried to stay out of the way. What you saw
that report was at the end of that live cross
we'd moved off to the side of the road. We're
at the side of police. I had my back to
those LAPD offices. I was really focused on the camera
and you know, finishing that report telling what was happening. Yeah,
and I got hit. Jimmy scooped me up and we
made our way as quickly as possible. Yeah, a bit
(03:12):
of a shock.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Since then, three more journalists have been reported being injured
by authorities. An ABC cameraman was injured while filming a
group of protesters when police opened fire with less than
lethal rounds. He was hit in the chest, but not
seriously injured as he was wearing a bulletproof vest. Another
ABC journalist, Lauren Day, was injured via tear gas, and
a British journalist, Nick Stern, needed an emergency surgery after
(03:33):
being hit with a plastic bullet. So this video has
gone absolutely viral. I saw it all over my TikTok
and I think I watched it about ten times. Jesse,
why are these protests actually happening?
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Yeah, I think that for a lot of people that
got the protests on their radar right because LA at
the moment, there are a number of protests because of
this bill that Trump has pushed and we talked about
it on the show last week. But basically Trump wants
three thousand arrests nationally a day for immigrants like he
(04:07):
sees them as illegal immigrants. So it's actually said three thousand,
so it's like immigration raids in LA. The people that
have gone to protest are basically saying we don't agree
with this.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
So you may have been hearing about ICE raids, which
stands for Immigration Customs Enforcement. So that's the body like
border security here and the Australian Federal Police that looks
after border security and immigration, and so anyone that is
seen to be breaching the immigration laws in the US.
And there are many, many thousands of people there on
(04:39):
that basis, they're basically rounding them up and deporting them.
And there were protests in LA. There are protests that
have now spread all over the US. And the bigger
picture there is that LA is probably the most democratic state,
the most left leaning state in America. Its governor is
a guy called Gavin Newsom. That's the equivalent of the
premiere of a state in Australia. And Trump hates him.
(05:02):
He's a potential future Democratic candidate for president. And so
it's now just become this thing where Trump is sending
in the National Guards, sending in the Marines, making this
big show of force because he loves a spectacle. As
we're recording this news is breaking that curfew has been
imposed on downtown LA and President Trump has defended deploying
(05:26):
the military and called the protesters animals and a foreign enemy.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Which is the first time in sixty years that a
president because there's particular powers that a president has that
they very rarely use, like similar to Australia. Actually there
are state laws and things within the remit of a
governor and then there are things that a president can
do but often don't because they're kind of just trusting.
It happened during COVID. It was really complicated in the
US that a governor had the rules and it was
(05:52):
like there was fifty different countries and same in Australia's.
And so Trump has gone, I am sending in the
National Guard. Why is that such a big deal? Because
it escalates and a lot of people are saying they
are trained. Like the reason you would send in a
national guard is if there was life a war, or
if there was some kind of unrest, civil unrest or
(06:14):
serious uprising, which Newsom says, this doesn't warrant that at
all is going to escalate. And that's why this video
in that context is so critical because it does look
like it's escalating and that's something we saw on camera.
Even if she wasn't the Australian reporter wasn't a reporter,
if she was a civilian who was there and demonstrating
(06:36):
peacefully on the sidewalk. On the sidewalk, they still shouldn't
be shot with a rubber bullet like that. I think
is just a taste.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Of She's clearly media exactly right.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
That's a taste of what's happening and not what's meant
to happen in a civil democracy.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
In case you missed it, two big TV panel shows
were acts this week. Iconic ones The Project and also
Q and A. Both were acted because their audiences had
shrunk to the point of being unsustainable to keep making them.
Channel ten officially announced the cancelation of The Project after
a sixteen year run. One episode is going to air
(07:11):
in a couple of weeks. June twenty seven, and the
ABC this morning announced that it was acting Q and A,
which was its flagship panel debate program that has been
around for nearly seventeen years now. Sarah Harris and or
laid Ali will be leaving Network ten, and there are
dozens of people behind the scenes on both shows who
will be either made redundant or be redeployed. It's never
(07:31):
a good day when people lose their jobs in any industry.
But before we get to why we think people stop
watching these shows. Jesse, it's close to home. You're a
regular panelist on the project. You were there the day
before it was acted. Yeah, coincidence.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
I know, it's exactly right. They saw me and they
went this, good.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
God, how are you doing. It's not it's awful.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
It's really sad. It's sad for a few reasons. I'm
sad for my friends who are losing their jobs. I'm
sad for myself because I really.
Speaker 5 (07:59):
Liked that job.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
And I'm sad because it was a staple of Australian television.
Another feeling I'm having. I just need a very quick rant.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Please.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
For months, if not years, certain publications and certain commentators
and individuals have gleefully reported on the ratings of the project.
They have been it's been like every time there's a
dip or they're kind of like there are rumors of acting.
They have just reported and reported and had this strange
hatred of the show that seems totally unfounded. You don't
(08:32):
have to love it, But I don't know why they
were cheering so much for it to be axed.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
It's weird when the media cheers for shows to be.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Axed, especially Australian made shows that employ Australians who are
like creating a show for view, Like it's just a
very very strange vibe, which I know the media does sometimes.
But what's really irked me is that since it's been axed,
those same people and those same publications are writing like
these eulogies of just like, guys, this is a really
(09:01):
sad day for Australian media.
Speaker 5 (09:03):
And in fact, you know.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
A lot of people got their start on the project
and for writers' rooms it's really important and the producers
going to lose it and I'm like, you weren't helping
with your fist in the air, going acts some acts,
some acts them.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Like that's kind of what the media does though, Like
I remember that it used to happen a lot when
the leaders of political parties were changing all the time.
It was like they were gunning for it because it's
a story, it's something to write about, it's something to
talk about. But then it actually happens and you're like, oh,
that's when everyone has their nostalgia, so they're just meeting
the audience need and not that not that it was
(09:35):
canceled because the media was writing about it, but I've
been thinking a lot about it, and you know, you
and I, Jesse, you have both done the project, you
a lot more than me. I did it a long
time ago, and before that, I did the panel and
then I did Q and A a few times, and
you've done Q and A. I used to love watching
those shows, but I don't watch either of them anymore,
and I think that's because for me, podcasts have replaced
(09:57):
panel shows. Podcasts and social media have completely disrupted the
panel show format.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
For me, it's more social media. There is a sense
now I hear a lot of people say this that
if the news is important, not urgent enough, it will
find me. That didn't used to be possible. You would
have to opt in, whether it was opening a newspaper
or appointment viewing, whereas now you know. We did a
subscriber episode yesterday with Clare Murphy and Holly talking about
the project being axed, and Claire was saying she does
(10:25):
consume the project, but it's all through social media, and
of course that's not monetized. There aren't ad dollars in
watching a small clip on social media, and that's kind
of meant that we don't feel any urgency or fomo.
Speaker 5 (10:38):
It's like the opposite. Now there is no phomo for did.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
You ever watch those shows?
Speaker 6 (10:43):
No?
Speaker 2 (10:43):
But like exactly what cler Murphy're saying. So what I
would do is like I would see clips on TikTok
and Q and A. If I saw a clip on
TikTok and make me feel really, really smart, So I
tell people that, yeah, I watched Q and A, when
really I did it.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
I feel like, that's but you did watch it, but
you watched it on a clip of it on social media.
Speaker 4 (10:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
So that's why I was so surprising because I always
thought that young people did watch Q and A because
we all wanted to be smart and with the project
because it had that like underlining sense of humor with
new it was easy to understand and digest. But I
think we were all just watching clips and just telling
people that we were actually watching the full show.
Speaker 5 (11:16):
So am I have a question for you?
Speaker 3 (11:18):
Because the project, in particular, you were who they were
trying to get right. They were always news done differently.
They were trying to appeal to a younger audience, which
worked sixteen seventeen years ago, but then their younger audiences
moved to a different medium and they failed to capture them.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
But it's not just the younger audiences that moved to
a different medium. We all did because back then it
was revolutionary to have unscripted conversation about current events and
pop culture and politics and.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
To merge light and shade. Yeah, the project I think
pioneered and now has infiltrated podcasting. But is there any
format that's getting you back to free to air television?
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Sampang Tonight really yes, I love Sampang Tonight. I just
find it's so much fun and so funny, and he's
really really funny. So I think I'm driven by the
actual personalities of the shows, right, and I find that
really interesting. But I think with free to air TV,
it's the timing, like you have to watch it at
that time and that's not my scrolling time, Like that's
(12:16):
not my downtime. My downtime is like nine thirty PM
in bed, And.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
The change of viewing exactly appointment viewing. You can only
have around sort of big events like I don't know,
awards shows or the finale of Master Chef or Maths,
you feel.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Like you've got so if you miss it, Whereas like
with shows that happen every week. You don't really get
that Fomo.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
We touched on this in yesterday's subscriber episode, but I
think it's worth pausing on what's lost, because what is
lost is rigor a certain code of ethics that these
programs adhere to, whether it's fact checkers, whether it's lawyers,
like what goes to air on the project went through
a lot of hands, and now if news is being
shared through the opinion of us individuals, well, I'm thinking
(13:02):
about social media even more so. I mean, we have
a team and you know, and we are bound by
certain ethics and we'll get in trouble if we breach them.
Whereas if you're on social media and you're kind of
just yelling into your.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Phone and you're spitting a pinion like it's fat.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Yes exactly. I mean that's what's replacing it.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
That's I also have to say, as someone who's been
running a media company for almost the same amount of
time as those two shows, you got to evolve, Like
if Mum and mea was still a website, we would
have been probably disrupted and canceled a long time ago.
We became podcasts, and now we're becoming vodcasts and We're
doing new and different things all the time, and I
(13:40):
think that the one thing that's certain in media is
that you're going to be disrupted, and that's why you
do always have to evolve. And if you wait until
you start losing audience, it's too late to evolve. You've
actually got to evolve when things are going really well.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
So was it surprising to you.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
No, because I thought, and I don't want to sound
like a dick going h like, I'm a basic bitch,
and I stopped watching those shows because they felt so
of their time and even ahead of their time when
they launched, but then they stayed the same. You know,
when you think of the world sixteen seventeen years ago,
literally pre podcasts and pre social media, you can't then
(14:17):
be doing the same format. And so I'm sad that
they've been canceled. There's some great people working on those shows,
but I think that you got to keep changing. It's exhausting,
but I mean that's the reality of working in media today.
Unfortunately or fortunately.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
I talked about how I felt about this in more
depth on yesterday's subscriber episode, and again shout out to
everyone who lost their jobs.
Speaker 5 (14:41):
That's just a shitty day.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
But you can find that subscriber episode via the link
in our show notes in case you missed it. A
judge has thrown out Justin Baldonie's four hundred million that's
US dollars defamation suit against Blake Lively.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
This good day for Blake Lively.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
A good day for Blake Lively. Indeed, this pertains to
Baldoni accusing Blake Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds, as
well as their publicist and also The New York Times
of basically orchestrating a the smear campaign against him and
trying to destroy his career. Let's take a few steps backwards,
because this all started with Blake Lively's lawsuit against Baldoni
(15:19):
and his production company, and this is yet to be
tried in a court of law. That case is still
going ahead, and this surprised everyone at the time. Baldonian
his team then launched this countersuit and I remember us
talking about how bizarre the figure was. It just seemed
plucked out of thin air to have more than it's
more than six hundred million Australian dollars of him talking
(15:43):
about sort of damage to his reputation and career, and
a judge found that there wasn't enough proof of extortion
or defamation. In fact, the judge said these alleged wrongful
threats sounded more like legal negotiations. So when Blake Lively's
team pushed back, that was actually just how a court
(16:03):
case goes. Because remember we talked a little while ago
about the Taylor Swift texts, and there was an allegation
it never got admitted into court that Blake Lively's team
said to Taylor Swift, show your support or we're going
to release all that text messages. He was basically talking
about that kind of stuff which has been dismissed. Lively's
team has called this a total victory and they await
(16:26):
their day in court, which is going to be in
March twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
So her suit against him is still going ahead stands,
but what's been dismissed is his countersuit against her.
Speaker 5 (16:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Yeah, if you were Blake Lively, I think you'd be
feeling pretty vindicated today.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Out Loud is in a moment what is a wife
guy and how has this seemingly lovely term become an insult.
I want to talk about the term wife guy and
how it's become a bit of an insult. Firstly, in
case you're not familiar with the term, a wife guy
is essentially someone whose personality is formed by his role
(17:05):
as a husband.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
His identity is like, yeah, about he's married to.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Exactly, and about being married, and about his wife, and
just about the fact that she is his wife. That's
kind of his personality. So it first came to prominence
around the time that Me Too was happening, when there
was this all this talk about shitty men, and there
were these men who were like, I'm not shitty. I
love my wife. And there was a guy in particularly
(17:33):
guy called Robbie Tripp who had a wife who was
sort of curvy, and he's like, I love my curvy wife,
and he started posting this content about his curvy wife
as if he was some kind of a hero. It's
actually a woman who was a woman. And when I
went back and looked at this, she was not even curvy.
She's probably a size ten anyway. Some of the more
(17:56):
high profile examples of wife guys would be Prince Harry
Asap Rocky, who is the partner of Real Sap.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
I was going to let no, we're leaving that in editors,
we are not not editing that out Sorry a sap rocky.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Well, it's one of those things that I don't say
out loud a lot a dollars, sorry a p rocky
sat Nick Jonas is pronounced phonetically, try and move on.
Ryan Reynolds, John Legend, husband of Christy Tek and Ryan Reynolds,
of course, husband of like lovely Barack Obama, husband of
(18:35):
Michelle Travis Kelcey, partner of Taylor Swift. And David Beckham,
husband of Posh. So all of those men are not
only not emasculated by their successful partners. Often their partners
are more successful in high profile than they are, but
they actually rejoice in it, right, So they seem to
(18:56):
be delighted by the fact that they are married to
these exceptional women. And this is bad, Well, it can
become bad, And this I'm going to give you an
example of how it's become bad. The patron saint of
ye guys in its pejorative form would probably be Brooklyn Beckham,
who has dozens of tattoos of his wife, Nicola Peltz
(19:18):
Beckham all over his body, and his whole personality is
like eighty percent being married and twenty percent hot sauce. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (19:26):
No, that's very true.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
So once U put a time, these guys would have
been called pussy whipped. Now sometimes they're called cucks. But
it has become a bit of a If you look
at the Brooklyn Beckham example, he's such a wife guy,
it means that their whole personality is really just about
being married. And there was a piece that you shared
with us from The Atlantic this week written by a
(19:50):
wife guy who was protesting that he's meant to feel
embarrassed about being a wife guy and how he gets
teased about it. Mate.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
I thought it was a really nice piece because I'm like, oh,
this man really likes his wife. That's so nice. And
I didn't realize that it could be the opposite. And
I feel like the latest example I heard of what
I would assume as a wife guy is Walton Goggins
because of all the rumors that he had allegedly cheated
on his wife with his co star, and everyone thought
(20:20):
that happened because all of his comments on his wife's
Instagram was so full of I love you so much.
You're the best thing that ever happened to me. You're
my ocean, my river, my lake.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
So it's like a red flat.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
So I thought wife guy now is like if a
man shows too much love towards his wife publicly, he's
secretly cheating.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
We are being so insincere if we think that a
wife guy is just a man who loves his wife.
Speaker 5 (20:43):
That is not what a wife guy means.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
When I hear that, it conjures up an image of
someone I follow on Instagram. Right, this is not a
famous person. This is an acquaintance. And he is a
wife guy. And what he does is he shares so
many beautiful pictures of his wife and she is maybe
she's walking around in like a jumper but like no
pants on, like a little underpants, and she looks really sexy.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
So what did he do?
Speaker 5 (21:05):
Exactly exactly right?
Speaker 1 (21:06):
How did they do wrong?
Speaker 5 (21:06):
That's what I'm like, what have you done?
Speaker 3 (21:08):
And she's walking around like on the beach and just
he just loves taking photos and talking about how beautiful
she is, right, And I'm just like, oh, Madams mcmapy,
men like you before, and you're cheating on it. I
have no EVI you think he's cheating it, and I
do think he's cheating on it.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
I was gonna say, just it seems like he's sort
of objectifying her as a way to make himself look better.
Like the subtext is, look what I.
Speaker 5 (21:30):
Got, Look what I got? Who's it for?
Speaker 3 (21:33):
Right? There is something about and I found this with
the Atlantic piece. I'm like, it's so lovely that you
love your wife. I don't care that much and I don't.
It's like when someone wants to thrust onto you their
relationship and it's like, I don't feel it because I'm
not in it. So it's more like a thing for
you to discuss and tell each other how much you
love each other. But if someone is performing it on Instagram,
(21:54):
the reason it smells in authentic is because we have
data points that support that, Like there are so many
examples of people who go full I love my wife,
the post that I love my baby. Remember, like Adam
Levine was a mad wife guy and then boom cheating
on her with like text messages. There are so many
examples of men like that. We're using evidence to don't
(22:15):
you just.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Mean that men who love their wife also sometimes cheat
on their wife?
Speaker 3 (22:18):
No, no, no, it's a particular kind of performance. It's
a particular kind of performance that the men that I
know in my own relationships, the men who put me
on Instagram the quickest were the ones who also ghosted
me the fastest. Well do you feel that to be true?
And as our professional data.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
I think all men should be wife guys because as
a single woman, the amount of time I've spent scrolling
on men's instagrams before I find out they've been married
for nine years is ridiculous. Because there's also no such
thing as husband girls, right.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Because everyone I know, I know them.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Everyone is a husband girl though, and it's not even
a term, because that's just every woman in a relationship
who posts about her life because a husband or a
partner will automatically be in there. Everyone is a husband.
But then you go on a woman's Instagram and you
can pinpost on Instagram. I guarantee you the first three
posts will be a pin of her wedding day, her engagement,
(23:14):
the last trip they took to Buslona.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
That's about her. That's here's me in my wedding dress,
and also here's me on my trip to Barcelona in
a bikini and he just happens to be there. So
what's the term for a woman I've never thought about
it before in terms of giving it a name. But
I can think of two people I know who do
exactly this, their husband girls, and they post hot shots
(23:39):
of their husbands all the time and talk about their
husbands in a way that's I don't want to say objectifying, but.
Speaker 5 (23:48):
That subversive, doesn't it It feels.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Like, oh no to me, just feels like a flex,
the same kind of flex as a husband guy.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
So are they both hot husbands?
Speaker 4 (23:57):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Because I think that's different to being a husband girl.
I think if you're posting your hot husband, everyone should
be doing that because you're doing that for the girls.
You're not doing that to show that you're doing something.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Well, you mean, like as a public service.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
I think what a husband's girl is more like all
the photos on the Instagram stories will be like the
husband with the kids and the husband doing that. And
if you notice, like even when women go on holidays
with families, all the photos are husbands and kids because
she's the one taking the photos.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
What's implicit in this, like especially the wife guy terminology,
what's implicit is that in a heterosexual relationship, men should
have the upper hand. Like that's how culturally we understand
it is that men should have the power. So then
when it looks like a man is worshiping a woman,
we're like, what.
Speaker 5 (24:39):
Is going on here?
Speaker 3 (24:40):
And like we get a magnifying glass out and try
and understand it. We see them as a cock or emasculated,
or as somehow betraying the social order. Like that's why
these terms in and of themselves are pretty sexist. But
I do think that there's something to a type of
man who is performing his hetero relationship in order to
(25:00):
just get attention and applause from other people, from everyone
except his wife.
Speaker 6 (25:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
I mean, we're all performing our personalities on social media, right,
whether you got a profile or not. Everybody's deciding what
they put out there. And for some people it's their
kids that are their identity. For some people it's their
work that's their identity. For some people it's their face
or their body, that their ass that's their identity. But
for some women it's their husbands, and for some men
(25:26):
it's their wives. And I think that the term wife
guy is interesting because, as you say, it is kind
of subversive, because we can think of a million examples
of men who are really emasculated by their partners, who
are beautiful, successful, or just you know, don't want to
talk about how much they love their partners because they'll
be seen as soft. So I think it stands out.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
What I also want to talk about is the different
levels of embarrassments between the wife guy and the husband girl.
Because in the Atlantic piece, the wife guy he's embarrassed
because his friends take the piss out of him for
loving his wife so much. Whereas with my friends who
are like posting about their partners all the time, the
embarrassment comes when they break up and they realize they
have to archive a shitload more of Pope then their partner.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
So true, and actually I'm thinking about it. A wife
guy posts and as this guy said, like his friends
are kind of rolling their eyes. I've seen it with
male friends and they kind of go, I'll look at you,
old ball and chain or like all of those revolting
like ridiculous terms. Whereas if I were to post a
picture of Lucra and I and do some kind of
Academy Award acceptance speech for how much I love him,
(26:31):
the fire.
Speaker 5 (26:32):
Emojis I would give from my gap, yeah, they.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
Would be there, outbeat goals, love hearts, love you guys.
They have you would comment, Mum and Dad would comment
it would reshare and be like couple goals and the
encouragement would be beautiful.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
After the break, one of Hollywood's rising stars is selling
her bathwater, and one of the most famous only fan
stars has said that she wants to do a repulsive
sex stunt. What the hell is going on?
Speaker 3 (26:59):
Every Tuesday and Thursday, we drop new segments of MUMMYA
out Loud just for MUMMYA subscribers. Follow the link in
the show notes to get your daily dose of out
Loud and a big thank you to all our current subscribers.
I'm uncomfortable about a few stories this week that I
think exists on the same continuum, and I want both
(27:21):
of your help in working out what to think. Right.
We're going to start with Sydney Sweeney. She's twenty seven
years old. You might know her from Euphoria the White Lotus.
She was in that any One but You movie with
the handsome man, Big Star Big.
Speaker 5 (27:36):
I have a soft spot for her.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
She was great in The Handmaid's Tale. Remember that that
was like she remembered that. Yeah, she was in one
of the early seasons. She was great anyway, over the weekend,
Sweeney's limited edition bath soap went live online Go bust
e commerce sounds good exactly, which was created with her
very own bathwater. Now it was created in collaboration with
(27:58):
men's hygiene brand Doctor Squatch, which is designed to encourage
men to wash, which.
Speaker 5 (28:04):
Is a noble pursuit.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
I think it is.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
We need Doctor Squash.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
So here's just a little taste of the ad.
Speaker 7 (28:12):
Hello, you dirty little boys, are you interested in my
body watch? Well you can't have it because this isn't
from boys, it's from men.
Speaker 4 (28:22):
All right.
Speaker 5 (28:22):
Any questions about.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Can you For those who are just listening, can you
explain what the ad looked like?
Speaker 5 (28:27):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (28:27):
So the ad is beautiful Sidney Sweeney laying in a bathtub,
And as the story goes, she says she was laying
in the bathtub doing the ad, and then she pitched
the idea, I think we should put a drop of
my bath water in the soap and make that a
promotional tool.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Right, So a bit salt, burn a bit salt when
he drinks the bath water, exactly of his love interest.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
So the bar of soap retails for eight US dollars,
which is about twelve Australian dollars.
Speaker 5 (28:53):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
If I was going to put myself in some bath water,
I'd be charging at least fifteen.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
It doesn't matter at salt Out now right.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
The resale value on eBay now is like close to
three thousand Australian dollars.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
It's interesting because when I was first reading about this,
and the Internet is obviously buzzing about it, I was like, ooh, yuck,
why would she do this? She doesn't need to do this.
Having heard the ad and the tone and thinking about
it a little bit more, there is a kind of
a rogue humor about it.
Speaker 5 (29:23):
Yeah, yeah, there is.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
On the cover of the Bar of Soap, it says
smells like morning wood.
Speaker 7 (29:28):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
Some of the commentary since, like The New York posted
a review and they were like joking about like I
took a bite of it and it doesn't taste as
good as I expected it to, like that kind of stuff,
Like it gets pretty icky pretty fast.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Right when I first saw the ad, I thought it
was like an snl skit, Like, I thought it was
a full joke. And then when I found out it
was real, that's when I got a bit weird about it.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Yeah, yeah, why did you get weird about it because.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
I felt like everything about Sidney Sweeney and she's talked
about her looks for a while now, and it's always
in the sense of I'm a really good actor. I
just want to get roles from my acting. And then
the funny part about her talking about her looks would
always be done in a way where she's in on
the joke, like when she was on SNL and things like.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
That, he talks about a booth yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
And then now that she's making money off this, it
feels like that the joke has escaped her in a way. Yeah,
and I'm going back to talking about her looks and
she's like infiltrated that.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Well, not even her looks, more like rubbing her, yeah,
her sexuality, rubbing her on your body. But couldn't you say, well,
good for her, she's making the money.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
If she was just making money and it was just
a bar soap that you're selling to everyone. But because
the soap is marketed towards men, that's where I felt
really weird about it. It's like she's trying.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Because it touched her naked body.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
Yeah, and it's like a company owned by men. It's
not like a women own Sydney Sweeney owned brand entirely.
It feels like I felt icky.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
And even all the comments from men who weren't able
to buy the soap were really weird, like they missed
out on Beyonce tickets or something like. I saw her
comments of men going I tried from minute one, no chance,
what a joke.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Like ause if they have owner sp it's like they're
so upset that they didn't get away soap. It also
is in a month where we've had a stalker crash
into Jennifer Andiston's house and be arrested. Taylor Swift has
just been you know, her stalk has been in court
as well. We know that famous women are sexualized and
stalked a lot.
Speaker 5 (31:24):
And people want a piece of them.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Yeah, and it's just I mean, I guess you could
say it's incredibly subversive, but it Yeah, it does make
me uncomfortable.
Speaker 5 (31:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
So I am now about to take you into a
whole other stratosphere right and explained to a story that
has dominated TikTok over the last few days. Then I'm
going to explain how these things I think are related.
Speaker 5 (31:44):
Do we remember.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
Bonnie Blue sex troll Sextroll.
Speaker 5 (31:46):
Interesting title. She'd love that.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
She's a twenty six year old OnlyFans creator. She's British six.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
She's twenty six. Sorry I'm putting it out there. I
don't think she's twenty six anyway.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
She's twenty six according to the Google, but Mea said
she's not. So you know, who would you listen to?
She is British, which she's been living in Australia and
a little while ago, remember she got deported from Fiji
and then Australia. So like working visa.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Ish shoes and school is school is.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
She wants barely llegal men to be part of her
Only Fans channel and she films them.
Speaker 5 (32:16):
Blah blah blah. Highly controversial.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
So this was the latest stunt that she was promoting.
Speaker 6 (32:22):
What challenges do you have next, Bonnie Blues petting Zoo.
I am going to be in a glass box tied
up and it's going to be open for the public.
Speaker 5 (32:31):
Oh my god, meet in the barks.
Speaker 6 (32:34):
But people can join me to may touch me, just
look at me. Where I'm going to be in the
center of London in a house.
Speaker 5 (32:41):
Oh oh okay, right, okay. So I was seeing like
David Blaine. I mean, I'd love to be on the
back of a lorry in a glass.
Speaker 6 (32:47):
Box my way through the London, right, that would probably
be illegal.
Speaker 5 (32:52):
Probably I want to do two thousand.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
People were horrified. They said that this promotes rape culture,
and videos have been circulating on TikTok contrasting her statements
with like historical images from the Suffragettes or the way
in which women would be punished in the town square
and how that would turn sexual.
Speaker 5 (33:12):
And it might seem unusual.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
What's it good to do with the suffragettes?
Speaker 5 (33:15):
Well, I think it's like.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
This is what our grandmothers, our grandmothers fork for us
to have sexual freedom and empowerment, but also the like.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
To be molested by two thousand men in a glass box.
Speaker 5 (33:25):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 6 (33:26):
Money.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Now, it might seem strange to put these two stories together,
and of course we should say as well. Bonnie Blue
has since canceled her glass box stunt.
Speaker 5 (33:36):
But hear me out.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
These are two women in very different ways for filling
male fantasies for money. So they are profiting off the
sexualization of women or themselves the consumers of both of
these products.
Speaker 5 (33:48):
Men.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
I wouldn't want to be stuck in a lift with
But in a way, both of these decisions are positioned
as empowering to some. These women would describe what they're
doing as empowering, right, And they cash.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
Why would they describe it as empowering because they're making money.
They're making money off their bodies instead of men making
money off their sexual.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
Yeah, and they would say, agency I'm making a choice.
This has nothing to do with anyone else.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
We would have been making money off their bodies and
from sex and sexuality since the beginning of time. But
just because you're making money out of something, does that
mean that it's empowering? Well, I guess, And what is
empowering even means?
Speaker 3 (34:25):
And it's been rebranded as empowerment. It didn't used to
one hundred, two hundred years ago be branded as empowerment, right,
And so I want to know, is this hurting the cause?
Is this hurting the feminist cause? Or can it kind
of be defended with the language of like girl boss feminism?
Speaker 5 (34:43):
And what do you think?
Speaker 2 (34:45):
I actually, I don't think it's hurting the feminine cause,
but I do think what you did the comparison with Playboy,
it is similar, but not to this extent, like I
think for me, it's the men who are so upset
about not buying the soap bars, similar to the men
standing in lines to go have sex with women. It's
(35:06):
the fact that when now realizing that the demand and
for these acts are still so so high with men
that we probably might know through a friend of a
friend of a friend, and that kind of terrifies.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
Me, Like I'm thinking of the Bonnie Blue example and
basically putting her body on the line to fulfill a
male rape fantasy in a public place with a big
smile on her face, as though that isn't something that
women have been subjected to that is the most traumatic
(35:37):
incident of their lives. And then to make money off
it or to platform it, like it just feels so
sickening to me.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Can we take feminism completely out of it because it
drives me crazy when a woman does a thing and
we use it as a way to debate whether feminism
works or not. Because feminism is just about men and
women having equal rights. That's literally all it is. Now,
just because a woman does a thing, it doesn't mean
that thing is a feminist thing because a woman did it.
(36:06):
This is just about capitalism. It's just about money. It's
about Sidney Sweeney making money off her body, which she
has every right to do, and it is about Bonnie
Blue making money off her body, which she has every
right to do, and to try and dress it up
or dress it down or turn it into something that
it's not in terms of feminism and being empowering or
(36:28):
not empowering.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
I mean, but what happens when Sidney Sweeney then, and
she's talked about this in the context of Hollywood, when
she says I want to be taken seriously, which is
something that she said, I want to be taken seriously
as a producer.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
Although she's getting very bad advice, and I shouldn't patron
I say she's making very bad decisions because I think
that making money is not the same as being empowered. Well,
I guess it is for some people, but you know,
the word empowered makes it seem like something much bigger
than it is. I mean, yes, power in our society
comes from having money and having attention, and Sidney Sweeney
(37:04):
and Bonnie Blue both know how to do those things
really really, really well. But it's very cheating. I mean,
I've got different problems with obviously, it's hard to compare
both of them, but the whole Bonnie Blue and Annie
Knight does it as well. The good news is that
Bonnie Blue's now been removed from Only Fans because this
extreme challenge content Only Fans has happily decided that that's
(37:27):
not good for the world, and so they've removed her.
But you know, last week, Annie Knight did a stunt
where she wanted to sleep with one thousand men in
a day, and she ended up in hospital and that
was everywhere, and it's like, I just find it grotesque
this thing that they have to do these stunts because
everything in the world has to be more and more
(37:48):
extreme to get attention, right, It's not enough to just
have sex with one person on camera. You have to
have sex with one hundred people. And then when I
interviewed Annie a year or two ago, she was having
sex with like five hundred people in a year. Now
it's one thousand people in a day, and now Bonnie
Blue wants to top that by being two thousand people. Firstly,
(38:09):
I don't believe it's actually happening, and it's just like
I don't believe Body Blues twenty six. And secondly, I
think it's debasing, dehumanizing, extremism.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
Yeah, I actually change my answer. I do think it
is harming feminism because I think exactly what you said, Jesse, like,
it is perpetuating this male rape fantasy, and by them
doing this, we actually see how many men have this
fantasis and are now really open with that fantasy because
it's framed in a way where they're saying, no, I'm
empowering her because she feels empowered when this happens, and
(38:42):
I think that is what's impacting everything.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Yeah, and I also think remember that that's also not feminism.
To be clear, that is a bad thing for women
and a bad thing for and men understanding consent. But
that's not what feminism is.
Speaker 5 (38:55):
I suppose it's like put women aside.
Speaker 3 (38:56):
And I actually want to talk about the men for
a minute, because the cultural conversations that happened after adolescence, right,
we're about young boys who are lonely, who are being
radicalized online, toxic masculine, all of those things that have
been discussed, and we go, how do we fix this?
It's one of the biggest Every time Mum Maya writes
an article about the crisis of young boys, it goes
(39:19):
off because people are really invested in this question. Now,
capitalism has its clause in it, and it's going you're
telling me there's a demographic of like disenfranchised young men
who have these revolting fantasies. I've got an idea sell
to them, Like, let's not try and change them, and
not only let's sell to them, let's get women to
sell to them.
Speaker 5 (39:39):
Like that to me is.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Yeah, and gas lighting us further by going under the
guise of female empower.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
Yeah, exactly, exactly, as if Sidney Sweeney is the winner here.
Speaker 5 (39:49):
No, I don't think Sidney Sweeney is the winner.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
I think it's the dirty guy who's like, I've got
some of Sydney Sweeney's bath and licking it. It's like,
you're disgusting. If I went to Luca's search history and
I saw Sidney Sweeney's bathwater and he spent two thousand
dollars amount money on that woman's bathwater, I would.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Go, now, how much the soap is?
Speaker 4 (40:08):
Now?
Speaker 3 (40:08):
Well, with the resale value value, I would go, Look,
we need to have a serious dinner table conversation because
I'm not impressed.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
Before we go, have you two heard about the haunted
house trends, So you start by saying a haunted house,
but and then you fill in the blank with something
that haunts you but isn't typically scary. So, for example,
a haunted house, but it's a room full of people
asking you to tell them a fun fact about yourself,
and this.
Speaker 5 (40:34):
Lie two triths in a line, So good.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
A haunted house, but it's just you and another person
in adjoining bathroom stalls, and both of you need to
poop but are waiting for the other person to leave.
Speaker 5 (40:45):
Okay, I've got one. I've got one.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
My haunted house is walking in and seeing all the
text messages that I sent to someone who dumped me
after dark, especially after midnight, like all the text messages
that I sent maybe after a drink or two. That
to me is something I never need to confront. That's
scarier than any ghost.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
So mine would be a haunted house full of people
who canceled me. That's such a good one. And I've
got another one, A haunted house full of people scrolling
through their phones looking for something that they really need
to show me, and I just have to stand there
while they all scroll and they can't find it.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
Then they all find the YouTube video, which actually is
three and a half minutes long, but you'll like it.
Speaker 5 (41:30):
Just just keep keep, just wait till the end. Just wait.
Speaker 3 (41:33):
Mine is also seeing my legs poke through my jeans
in the middle of winter when I've not looked at
them for a while, and the like texture of my
skin and also just like a little bit of shocking
ankle hair Like that's pretty terrifying.
Speaker 5 (41:45):
How about you, em.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
Okay, mine would be a haunted house full of the
men who rejected me by saying they found someone else
with the someone else.
Speaker 5 (41:54):
That's so true.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Out Louders, we want to hear what your haunted house
would be. Tell us on Instagram or in the out
Louders Facebook group.
Speaker 3 (42:02):
A big thank you to all of you the out
Louders for listening to today's show and our fabulous team
for putting this show together. Studios are styled with furniture
from Fenton and Fenton. Visit Fenton and Fenton dot com
dot au. We will be back in your ears tomorrow.
Speaker 5 (42:17):
Bye bye.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
Shout out to any Muma Miya subscribers listening. If you
love the show and want to support us as well,
subscribing to Mama Miya is the very best way to
do so. There is a link in the episode description.
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