August 25, 2025 • 44 mins
Breaking: Your next newsreader could be… a TikToker? One expert swears it’s the future. Jessie and Holly are here to find out if we should be terrified — or just scrolling.
Also today: Serena Williams has picked up a new gig as the global face of weight-loss drugs. But there’s one big detail everyone’s missing.
Plus, Amelia has a theory about 'friends-in-law' — the people you only know because they're a friend of a friend. Why do we sometimes love them… and sometimes want to fake a scheduling conflict?
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to Amma Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on Hello and welcome to
Momma Mia Out Loud and what women are actually talking
about on Monday, the twenty fifth of August. My name
is Holly Wayne Wright.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
I'm Jesse Stevens.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
I'm Amelia Lester.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Before we begin, we wanted to wish Braun a happy birthday.
Out louder bron Out louder Braun. If you want to
know why that is significant, keep listening. That's a little
bit of a clickbait for your Monday.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
But other things that have made our agenda today include.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Weight loss drugs have their first global ambassador, Serena Williams,
and unsurprisingly the move has spawned thousands of takes.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Plus why there is nothing more perilous than trying to
be friends with your friend's friend, and.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Why posting a picture of your very ordinary shoes has
become an act of protest against a pair of high
profile female bosses.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
But for Serena Williams, widely considered the best female tennis
player of all time, is the new ambassador of a
telehealth company which as part of its services, prescribes weight
loss medication otherwise known as GLP ones. The forty three
year old, who retired about three years ago, was a
subject of a feature in People magazine at the end
(01:30):
of last week which was all about her weight loss.
Then came an interview on The Today Show, then an
interview in Vogue magazine and in l This was all
ultimately part of a commercial. Her partnership will span multiple
years across billboards, TV spots and digital platforms.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
The thing about these ads that I've seen Jesse is
shocking is the wrong word, because it's not shocking, but
it's just their very intentional and lots of very clear
product placement, which is kind of different to some advertising
we've seen.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Before, which is also very confronting, i think to Australian audiences,
given that this would never fly in Australia. It is
not allowed. There are strict rules around medica advertising. It's unlawful.
It's banned by the Therapeutic Goods Administration in the US.
Of course, you spend five minutes there, you turn on
the TV and you're being sold sleeping pills, weight loss everything.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
And they always have this thing at the end where
they say side effects and risks may include death. Yeah,
and that's always very stressful. I looks this up and
it turns out that there are two countries in the
world that allow pretty much unrestricted pharmaceutical drug advertising. We
all know about the US, as you just mentioned, but
also in New Zealand. It turns out really it's a
real standalone when it comes to advertising these things. But
(02:41):
I just wanted to mention a fact that I think
we need to include in this discussion, which is that
Serena's husband Alexis o'hanyan, who was a co founder of Reddit,
Certified wife Guy, who talks a lot about his marriage
and has a podcast about being a dad. He is
a board member of the Telehealth company, which, as you mentioned,
(03:02):
as part of its services, prescribes his weight loss drugs.
And what's interesting is that Serena Williams is not advertising
a particular brand of weight lots drug here, and so
it's more of a business model shift.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
And so many tech bros for lack of a better term,
are going into this kind of thing, which is a
specially built facility where you go and everything from fitness
to diet to prescribing these things I think this is
where the future is going, right, rather than being managed
just by you GP.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
But presumably this all happens online, right that this.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
I believe it's a telehelp Ye.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Serena Williams is such an interesting choice and I think
this is why it has spawned a thousand opinions, because
some are saying that this undermines her athletic legacy, which
was all about defiance and being the ultimate outsider.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
It doesn't. It does so many Grand Slam titles exactly.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
I think something so patronizing and sexist about that. But
they're saying that she's sort of bowing to Thinness culture.
And also, if a literal athlete needs help with her health,
then what hope do any of us have? But maybe
that's also the point, right well.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
I think rather than undermining her athletic legacy, what these
kinds of ads are doing is undermining a relationship that
Australians have decided is sacrisanct, which is the relationship between
your GP and the patient, which is why, incidentally Australia,
along with most other countries in the world, does not
allow these ads.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
The thing that's interesting about this is that so as
we've said, Australia has these very strict rules. This would
not be allowed here at the moment, but because of
the global nature of the Internet, this is everywhere, so
it's on Instagram. A mockery of any country's regulations. Really,
when the fact that Serena Williams is advertising GLP ones
is within five minutes everywhere all over the world and
(04:52):
it isn't specific, but it's broad and we've all got
that messaging immediately.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Remember a lost in translation. That movie was all about
the fact that Hollywood celebrities used to go to Japan
and other countries in East Asia make advertisements there that
wouldn't be seen in the West, and now, of course
that's not happening anymore, or because we can see them all.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Tiny violin for them. I want to talk about celebrities
and weight loss endorsement because I don't want to talk
about Serena Williams's body. It's her business. She's been very
explicit in what she thinks about this and why she's
chosen to do it, etcetera, etcetera. I did think, God,
they must be paying her a lot of money, so
finding out that her husband's on the board makes a
lot of sense.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
And it's multiple years and all of the public like
sitting on the Today Show. It's not just that she's
the face of an ad. It is multi prott.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
But there's nothing new about celebrities taking weight loss endorsements right.
That has happened for a long time. But one of
the things that's interesting about this is the sort of
shift that we're seeing because any celebrity who does not
fit into a very specific conventional size, which for television
is tiny, tiny, tiny, has always been offered weight loss endorsements,
(05:58):
you know, and we've seen here in Australia people who
for example, did endorsements is Jenny Craig, Magda Zubanski, Rebel Wilson, Melby,
Samantha Armitage, Casey Donovan, like lots and lots and lots
of very well known people have done it and for
a while there, although the establishment used to be a
bit sniffy about it, like, oh, it's a bit cheesy,
isn't it, people generally speaking have always felt really fondly
(06:21):
towards the celebrities who do that, because it's like they
are admitting I'm struggling with exactly the same things you are.
We talked last week when we're talking about the biggest loser,
that sixty five percent of ossis is trying to lose
weight at any one time. So it's incredibly democratizing to
have nab Ye who's very high status, say I'm just
like you. I struggle too. And that was an accepted
(06:41):
sort of contract for a long time. But then in
the past few years, when we've seen a much more
broad backlash against diet culture and diet companies, it seemed
to be on the nose. If you think about celebrities
who've talked about doing that, Magda Zubanski is an example
who will say, I kind of regret doing that now
and think about all the shit that Oprah got over
(07:02):
the years for the way that she talked about weight
loss in the eighties and nineties compared to now, and
this new frontier feels like a bit the shift. It
feels like it's back to be able to talk about
that in a broad way.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Because what was really difficult with the weight watchers of
the Jenny Craig moment was how difficult it was to
then keep the weight off. The success of a diet
every research study shows is very very limited.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Well, Magda back to her as an example, for a
while there, she famously was a Jenny Craig ambassador, and
then she said she was fired because she didn't live
up to the contract, and then she re signed to
help her lose the weight that she gained after she
did Jenny Craig. So that's how complicated that all of that.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Is right, And of course Oprah's history with this, and
I think that it's also worth tabling that for black women,
this is a very particular conversation because Oprah's body, or
Serena Williams's body, is also subject to something that they
call like missognoir, which is sexism, but also sexism that's
thrown at black bodies. Serena Williams didn't look like other
(08:03):
tennis players. She never did. She was curvier, she was stronger,
all of those things which made her the most brilliant
tennis player ever. But I suppose that's why people feel
betrayed too. But I'm feeling particularly and maybe surprisingly defensive
of Serena Williams in all of this, because she's come
out and said that transparency has always mattered to her.
(08:24):
She's almost come out and said another quiet part out loud,
which is these drugs are not for lazy people, and
there is an enormous stigma all over the world, especially
among people who have never had issues with weight, that
a sort of lack. We're talking about with the Biggest
Loser conversation. You know, it should be tough, and if
you just had enough willpower and discipline, then you too
(08:45):
could lose weight. And to have someone with the most
willpower and the most discipline, who is so healthy and
so fit say I couldn't do it, I think gives
other people permission.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Yeah. I think that's a great point. That she is
a kind of the embodiment of discipline and of working
hard to achieve goals physical and otherwise. And there is
something interesting about her selling a service that prescribes weight
loss drugs. On that point, we should mention, of course,
that these drugs do have many side effects as well.
(09:19):
They're not by any means of magic bullet.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
And that's the thing, right, is that with you, Jenny
Craig or your weight watchers. Of course, a diet has
side effects, but generally speaking, it's relatively straightforward. This I
think the other maybe sources of discomfort that you're seeing
comments and that you're seeing commentary is we don't know
enough about these drugs. What are we going to find
out in five or ten years and what responsibility does
Serena Williams have to talk about side effects?
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Well, Jamila Jamil has said, of course she often comments
on this space, so she was always going to be
asked what she thought about this, and she's posted about it,
and her point is, broadly, the problem with celebrity endorsement
of pharmaceutical products and other weight loss means is that
they have resources that other people don't have. So she
basically says, if everything goes pair shaped for Serena Williams
or for anyone else of significant means, they've got doctors
(10:06):
on Speeddale, They've got a whole lot of support that
your average person doesn't have.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Well, she can do her weight training every day, which
we know is really.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Important, but she also has access to health professionals. And
what these kind of companies are broadly encouraging for the
rest of us is get on the phone or get online.
That seems to be the messaging of a lot of
these companies. Whereas you know, the small print of any
of these products has always been always consult your GP
before use, it feels a little bit recklessly.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
It's kind of treating it like a consumer gleat.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Which has nothing to do with Serena Williams. It just
has everything to do with the way that we are
marketing it. And I think it's a valid point that,
and this has always been a point of celebrity endorsement
of any kind, is that although we can buy in
quite happily to the oh they're just like me, you
know idea, they're not really yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
In a moment, are there some areas of life influencers
just shouldn't be influencing influencers tell us what moisturizer to use,
which leggings are best, how we should do our hair,
what we should.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Paint our nails.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
With the question, now, should they also be conveying life
or death information about natural disaster? This is yes, this
is real. At least one expert says yes. In a
report which looked at how safety information was being communicated
during two recent tropical cyclones in Queensland. They were Jasper
in twenty twenty three and Curely last year. A Griffith
(11:31):
University researcher, doctor Susan Grantham, has advocated for meeting young
people where they are in terms of telling them what's
going on, telling them what to do during tropical cyclones
and other natural disasters, and she says that we need
to get on TikTok for that information. She made a
really interesting point. She said that we typically rely on
politicians to tell us the information that we need to
(11:52):
know in natural disasters. But the problem is that politicians,
because they're in politics, we end up getting distracted by
lots of stuff that don't have to do with important
natural disaster evacuation plans. We end up thinking, has that
politician been visible enough? Where's that politician? How are they performing?
Are they doing a good job of being a politician
(12:13):
in this moment, Because.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
In Australia, it's like get your hard hat on, get
your life jacket on, get yourself in front of a
TV camera. That seems to be a kind of standard
politician strategy. And it's like we're busy having the dialogue
of it is that helpful? Should they be doing that?
Rather than actually, should I evacuate right exactly exactly?
Speaker 1 (12:34):
And then of course there's this other dynamic happening, which
is I think we all grew up understanding that when
something bad was happening, you needed to learn about it.
In the first instance, we probably turned on the radio
or TV. And then, at least for me, when I've
been involved in natural disasters, there was one natural disaster
that I had to deal with, I went to Twitter.
But the young people are not necessarily going to Twitter well,
(12:58):
or to X or to the radio. They are going
to TikTok. And if you don't have reliable, up to
date information on there, you're simply not going to get
that information. So I do see Grantham's point, but I
feel worried about it because she says that we need
to reach out to trusted influencers. Governments need to reach
out to trusted influencers, and in these times of natural disaster,
(13:20):
get the trusted influencers to convey information. But my question
is is there such a thing as a trusted influencer.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
And trusted with what?
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Like who I affiliates?
Speaker 3 (13:32):
Yeah, exactly, I trust this person to give me a
really good house tour. But do I trust this person
to tell me how severe this cyclone is? No, it
feels like a cop out. I don't want to sound hyperbolic,
but this is apocalyptic. But like I was thinking. My
takeaway from reading this was politicians need to step up. Like,
(13:55):
if you're a politician who is using this moment to
get political, to blame, blah, to whatever, do better. And
I think that we saw politicians do better during COVID.
I think that they had to put politics aside because
it was a national urgency.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Sorry to talk over you, because I've been told that
I do that too much, but I have to talk
over you. Look at how Dan andrews press conferences became
the debate topic in themselves rather than COVID.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
But they had facts I had. This is how many
people were diagnosed, this is how many people are in hospital.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
This is like wasn't.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Heard the facts because they were too busy debating whether
Dan Andrews was a good politician. Holly, I know you
must agree.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
With well, look, I see Jesse's point, but I think
that part of that I actually agree with the argument
that politicians aren't the best people to put these messages across.
The best people to put these messages across are the
people from the emergency services.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Shane Fitzsimmons remind me it was twenty nineteen, twenty twenty
bush Fire season. My mate Shane, who was the head
of the New South Wales Rural Fire Service. He would
stand up, he would give us no bullshit information. I
trusted that guy with my life.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
My family got trapped in bushfires and it was horrific
and scary. And that man was he given Australian a view.
He was given him some.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
He got a lot of awards, and so he should have.
Because the thing about politicians, and this is increasingly so.
I think we're so busy looking at absolutely everything through
a political lens and thinking our own thoughts. So it's
like we might be thinking, well, if your government had
done more about climate change, maybe we wouldn't be in
this position in the first place, you know what I mean.
And if your government hadn't cut funds to such and
(15:33):
such and such and such, maybe we would have had
a better response. And all those things are valid, but
they're not helpful in the moment. I think it's really
interesting what we expect from leaders in moments of crisis.
Every Australian could absolutely repeat to you the fact that
Scott Morrison's response is to the terrible bushfires of that season,
of that black Summer of twenty nineteen into twenty twenty
(15:55):
was part of his undoing. It's just now part of
the law that that is exactly what happened. That he
wasn't around enough, and once he was, it seemed like
he was using it much more as a photo opportunity
than as any kind of meaningful help and assistance. That
there was so much critics of his response that it
was a large part of ruining his career. We want
our leaders to be visible and calm, and we want
(16:18):
them to express to us what we need to hear.
But are they the best people to do it in
this hyper politicized climate. I think possibly not.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
I reckon that experts. On one hand, I think that
they are really important the idea that like Blue Eyed
Kayla Jade would be giving me any sort of information
on what I meant to do in a natural disaster.
And these conversations are more pressing because we know that
climate catastrophe and natural disasters are increasing, and especially in Queensland.
I mean every year there is just something horrific. I
(16:49):
went and looked at Cyclone Alfred, which was a few
months ago in Queensland, and looked at what the top
tiktoks were because I was really interested in how it
was sorted, and it was news clips, which are actually
that's what the news is for. For all the shit
that journalists and media companies get, it was local news
reporters who were standing there giving you the information that
(17:11):
was being shared, that was being engaged with the issue
was misinformation because the second there's a natural disaster, for
some reason, the Internet does this thing where they put
a shark, they photoshop a shark in a really weird place.
It's every natural disaster, there's like a flooded sharknado, sharknado.
They do like a It'll be like town Hall flooded
(17:34):
and there's just a shark, and it's just they do
the same thing every time. That stuff really unhelpful, really
really annoying. But mostly I think that if you can
surface more and more news clips, and what TikTok needs
to do is flag AI generated and flag misinformation like
that's your responsibility.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
I'd like to believe that's true. But there is a trope,
and I don't know if it's only an Australian trope.
Maybe you can tell me in Amelia that anytime there's
a whiff that a cyclone or any kind of disaster
might be coming. All the journals from you know, Breakfast
TV and everywhere in the world get their high veers out,
they get their rank code of the rank, and they
are there and they are standing if they are finding
(18:12):
any rain they can find, and they're standing in front
of it and they've got a wind machine gun to
their hairs, all blown around like this, and they're like,
I'm here. And I always think, is the nation's commercial
media descending on this disastersode in this moment? Is this helpful?
Speaker 3 (18:26):
Is this helpful to anybody?
Speaker 2 (18:28):
I think we're getting more literate and understanding how to
go to the source on it. I know that we're
in the fires in that terrible fire season. I know
with the flooding, I have the Bureau of Meteorology app.
I had the fires near me. I know that in
America during the terrible recent fires in California, everybody had
you get directed. Yes, and it's not perfect, but it's
got to be better than Look, sometimes I'm an influencer
(18:51):
and you do not want to be counting on me
at a crisis.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Amelia, can I ask you, are there some things where
maybe TikTok isn't the place, like should we really be
encouraging young people. It's like, well, they're already on TikTok.
Maybe they get off TikTok during the cyclone. Yeah, is
that a fair enough thing to do?
Speaker 1 (19:07):
I mean, speaking of someone who used to be a
diict to Twitter during natural disasters, I suppose I can't speak,
but I'm glad that you mentioned this, because I do
think this gets back to a conversation we've had on
the show before, which is about gatekeepers and about how
information is now free to circulate like a sharknado through
the roads and avenues of our great nation, whereas before
(19:29):
we used to have people like journalists say Okay, this
is correct, this is not correct. And what I worry
about is that yet you've both said how important it
is to go to the source and rely on local news,
but we don't really have any local news anymore. The
ABC has seen huge funding cuts. It's a little bit
chicken and egg. So it's all very well to say,
let's go in the time of crisis, go to the
(19:49):
local news, but the local news needs to survive year round,
not just during the natural disaster.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
After the break, look down, what message are your shoes sending?
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Right?
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Now that choice if you're a female boss apparently matters
a lot. One unlimited out loud access. We drop episodes
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Speaker 1 (20:24):
I want to talk about something that's very fraught and
a little bit raw for me. So the topic is
friends of friends. Yep. This came up for me recently
because I met a friend's friend and we did not
like each other.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
Oh we your friend's friend, I thinks, occurred to me.
I think I'm actually a friend's friend.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Let's call each other colleagues from now. But fine, I
want to call each other colleagues for the purposes of
this conversation because I want to be able to discuss
in a no holds barred way the concept of a
friend's friend, and it's going to get uncomfortable. Friends friends
is really complicated. And a few years ago, my best
friend at the time met my other best friend and
(21:09):
at the time, and they were over at my flat
and one of them was taking her daily multi vitamin
and she's a very generous, effusive person. And she turns
to my other friend and says, oh, would you like
a multi vitamin? It's nice and very nice. Yeah. I
mean it's a little odd, just like she is, but
that's okay. And then the other friends said, no, I
choose to get my vitamins and minerals from my daily
(21:30):
diet than appeal.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Oh dear, no, no, no too honest and just say
no thanks. Shut up.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
So back to what happened to me. So, when I
met my friend's friend recently, we were chalk and cheese,
as they say. I think I was the cheese and
she was the chalk. But that's my own view. And
I want to figure out why it is that friend's
friends never work, because they should write logically, it should work.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
So you mean that time when you know your mate
maybe has a birthday dinner or some kind of and
you meet this person that you might have been hearing
about for a long time. Oh, you've got to meet Betty.
You got to meet Betty. You gotta love Betty and
meet Betty and you and Betty immediately hated. Yes. Is
that basically yeah?
Speaker 1 (22:12):
And I want to talk about where that is because
it shouldn't be like that. There was an article on
Mum and mea that got me thinking about this, about this,
and I love the term friends in law. This article
was by Muma me as Jessica Clark. She had a
quick quiz on how to tell if you have a
friend in law. I want to share three of them,
and I want to see if either of you can
think of someone in your life who meets this criteria.
Number one, you've never texted each other outside your WhatsApp
(22:34):
group chats, unless you count tagging her in a story
on Instagram with the tag qt. I mean, we've all
done that. I love that. Maybe not exactly the word cut,
but I've definitely done things.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
I send like a love heart or like hottie, the stories,
the fire emoji.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
It's probably hopelessly millennial of this. Number two, you once
told her your biggest fear in a bathroom stall at
a mutual friend's birthday dinner. But you've never had a
coffee together.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Oh correct, Yeah, that.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Would be very weird if we should get together, you say,
and then it's literally never going to happen.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
With bear betrayal.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
My favorite. Number three is when you hear about her
exclusively via your mutual friend. So, for instance, your friend
might be like, she's seeing someone new. He's really hot,
but she's being cool about it, and you act as
though it's your business, but it's really not.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
Yes, it's my favorite conversation.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
It's my favorite. And so Jessica calls his friend in
law a social glitch, and she implores you not to
try and escalate the relationship to an actual friendship. So
here's the topic that I want to put to you both.
Thirty five years ago, the movie When Harry Met Sally
famously asked if men and women could be friends. But
the question I want to ask you to is, can
(23:41):
you ever really be friends with your friend's friends? Oh?
Speaker 3 (23:44):
My god, isn't it funny? I've tried, but it's still
like Holly's friend. Like before, I'd call them my friend.
And I only see these people in the context of
a mutual friend. I feel like I can't claim ownership.
But I find that I have a few what I
would term crushes.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Yes, tell us about.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
So I have people who like a really close friend
of mine has this friend who I'm obsessed with, Like,
I love hearing about her life, yep, I love following
her on Instagram. I love it when there's a dinner
and I know you're her everything. I think she's fantastic,
But I would never be able to see her without
(24:26):
the other friend.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
That there is the breach.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
Yes, yes, exactly right?
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Is it a breach? Would you be offended a breach? So?
Speaker 2 (24:34):
I don't know why I feel like that. There are
different ways in which this dynamic can go wrong. One
of them is the way that you're talking about, Amilia,
and we need t more about this in a moment,
which is you meet your friend's friend and you don't
get along, and that's a problem in.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
And it's not uncommon.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
It's not uncommon, and we can unpack the reasons why.
But then the other scenario is you meet your friend's
friend and you really get along and you would like
to be proper friends with them, and that brings its
own problems because if you try and leap frog your
original friend there to make a connection, unless, of course,
there's a circumstance in which the other friends out of
(25:09):
town or maybe they don't live near you, or they're
busy that night or whatever, then maybe, but it's always
going to be fraught because then it feels like you're
stepping over.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
Them, which then brings me to the point. Okay, so
let's say Holly. Holly has a friend who I love, right,
I think she just sounds like a really good time
everything Holly tells me. I'm like, I'm just obsessed with that.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Right.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
Maybe what I really love is her as a character.
Maybe I don't need to have a coffee with her,
but I like the plot. I like staying.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Across her as the character in the holy plot exactly.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
So when I sit down with Holly, I won't say
how the kids me and man, no one cares. What
I will say is, how is Bla going? Tell me
how that date? But tell me? And I find that
that's so interesting, that's so true.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
It's like a scriptured drama that you don't have to script, so.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
You don't need to meet those characters necessarily.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
It's fun to meet them every now and then, like
a celebrity.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
When you do meet them, you're like, I've heard so
much about it.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
It is a celebrity. Because you're also like, there is
not a single thing I don't know about it, Like
I know everything and you you don't really know me.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
So when you meet the friend's friend, and you don't
get along as per your situation, Amelia, Do you think
it's often because you think, how could you like both
of us when we're so different?
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Okay, No, I have a theory. I'm so glad you
mentioned it, and I'm glad that you broke it down
to those two categories. It's important that we be rigorous
in this analysis of friends friends. So back to the
friend's friend who you can't stand. Here's my theory. Your
friend's friend is the fun house mirror version of you.
You think that the friend's friend is gonna be like
(26:40):
a spin off of your friend, and that's why you think,
rationally speaking, you should get along with them. They're kind
of like your friend, but just with a twist. No,
they're like you with a twist, and that's very confronted.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
So this is like the idea that the people who
annoy you the most, the people you clash with the most,
are the ones most like.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
You because they remind you of yourself and all the
things you can't stand about yourself.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
Maybe I'm a narcissist, So I fall in love with
my friend's friends because I'm.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Like, you're interesting.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
You're so interesting and fun and I'm just looking in
my fun house.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Well, no, I think I think Holly's right. There are
the two categories, and we've all had that crush on
a friend's friend. But I don't feel that I'm protective
of my friends. I want to just sort of push
back a little bit. So I do have two friends
sept from the others that I mentioned, who have become
better friends with each other than with me, And I
probably should find this confronting, but I actually find it
(27:31):
kind of like cozy in a way.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Yeah, I quite like it. I like the idea of
bringing people together. It's like a setup, yeah, And I
feel responsibility for their joy.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
I guess it depends a little bit about how you
feel about your friend, whether you're secure in that friendship.
Maybe because when you feel less secure in the friendship
and they become really good friends with your friend, I
think that that is more a problem. But if you
are quite happy to have this friend and you feel
you're on solid ground with each other, I'm fine with
them becoming friends with my friends. Holly, what do you think.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
I like to have groups. I don't like to really
mix the groups up too much. I'm not possessive of
my friends. I don't think. I think I'm quite fun
like I like it if people like the people I like,
you know, it makes your life easier, Let's be honest.
But there are times when you meet your friend's friend
and you think, oh, it would be great for us
to hang out, and do you ever you just know
you can't.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
Are you ever in the situation where friend A meets
friend B and you go, oh shit, friend B is
going to hate friendly and then friend AY says something
and you're like, you fucked it, And then you've just
got to sit there in the middle, going, this is
so offensive, this is so and you can see that
they're going, you know.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
They're so well comfortable. I get sick even thinking about that,
because I hate uncomfortable situations. And when you know, you're like,
don't say it, don't bring that up, don't bring that up,
don't bring that Oh, here we go.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
But I had a real churning point on that recently
because I had a birthday dinner for my partner and
we invited a bunch of people who are in his
social circle, and I knew that one of the people
in this circle would hate another person in this circle.
And I always used to be really nervous about that, because,
after all, it was me throwing this party. I'd invited
(29:08):
them both, worried about the responsibility that I had for
them to get along. But then I realized that as
both of them started behaving in exactly the predictable ways
that I expected, and of course hated each other, that's
not my problem. It's no longer my problem.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Let them strap in, friends. I'm about to top line
a shoe scandal for you that goes right to the
top of one of the country's most powerful institutions, and
explain how one pair of distressed designer trainers has become
a symbol for all that is wrong with the management
of Australia's educational institutions. Are you ready?
Speaker 3 (29:45):
May I get so mad when we pretend to be
experts to be listening to this guying.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
I know, No, don't worry. I think Amelia is bringing
some specialist knowledge that upseter will now quickly, I need
to explain that this segment is not going to explore
the complexities of a higher education No, no, of an
important and controversial overhaul of Camberra's Australia National University. We're
(30:12):
not doing that. I'll put my notes aside. The segment
is going to explore how shoes have become a symbol
of struggle for the employees of ANU who have made
allegations of mismanagement that have been denied. Tiny bit of
context before we get to the important business of shoes.
The vice chancellor of A and U and look, I
famously did not go to university, so I had to
find out what a vice chancellor does. But they're the boss, right.
(30:35):
It says vice, but really they're the CEO. They're running things.
It's a big, important job, right. The vice Chancellor of
A and U is a woman called Genevieve Bell, and
her shoe choice is about to matter a lot. But
her boss the chancellor, which is like a chairman's role.
So she is the boss boss, but she's not as
hands on. The vice chancellor is the one who's doing
(30:55):
all the business. But is a woman who you will
be familiar with. Her name is Julie Bishop, and of
course she used to be our foreign minister before she
strode out of politics in a pair of sparkly red heels.
Who could forget she was a major player in that
whole era of like Abbot Turnbull, and famously, when she
left politics after saying she'd been broadly ignored and sidelined
(31:16):
and bitched about by her male colleagues, there was a
famous iconic photograph of all the black shoes of her
male colleagues and her ruby red Roger Vivier heels that
are now in a museum.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
Is Roger Vivier?
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Is that an expensive brand, fancy French shoes? And Malia
is dying? Okay, let's get back to this. So A
and U is currently in a severe cost cutting phase.
So are lots of other universities right crisis. We're not
getting into that, but there are many people who work there,
former employees and students, who are pissed off about what
they see as miss management and misplaced parodies in both
(31:49):
the spending that got A and YOU to this point
and the way the cuts are being managed now. A
story in the Nine Newspapers this weekend by Jordan Baker
said it was particularly the choice of Bell's footwear at
a university cultural event earlier this year that gave all
the pissed off employees a symbol for their struggle. You see,
Genevieve Bell wore a pair of Golden Goose sneakers, Amelia,
(32:14):
what are golden Goose sneakers?
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Golden Goose sneakers are my Roman Empire. I don't understand
why anyone wants to wear them. Let me explain. They
are sneakers that are deliberately scuffed up and distressed, and
they cost eight hundred dollars.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
I'm quite into them. Why I never noticed shoes I
don't often notice like markers of class slash status. But
when I had, like you know, situations where I've met
up with with other mother's room at the park and
I spot those shoes, I go, oh, it must be nice.
Someone is doing well.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
You remember when all fancy people wearing those guccy sneakers
with the stripes and the gold bumble bee.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
Yeah, it's like that, like that.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Except with all dirt marks.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
It's got a star, like a metallic star on it,
and it does it looks all worn and scuffy look.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
And celebrities do love them. Beyonce Gnomi, what's Millie, Bobby Brown?
Lots of people have worn these nig because they've been
around for a long time. They made the milan. They
looked to me like someone left them out in the mud.
For a couple of days, but I guess that's part
of the appeal.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
Well, Bell wore them to the opening of this important
cultural center, right, and the choice of her very expensive
footwear became such a big deal in the context of
the fact that the university was cutting jobs and everything
that she actually had to come out and say no, no, no,
I bought them secondhand on eBay. They were much cheaper
than you think now considering her salary as a reported
one point four to seven million, Oh, she probably didn't
(33:43):
need to find them on eBay, but she had to
say that she did. Anyway. Between Bell shoes and Bishop shoes,
this is now political and a website has been started
called the Shoes of A and U where current and
former staff post pictures of their shoes, their shitty shoes,
not their designer scuffed up shoes, but their actual shitty shoes,
along with a scuffing yeah exactly, along with a complaint
(34:06):
about what's going on at A ANDU. So on this
site there are like bare feet from people who are like, look,
I haven't even got shoes to the walking shoes that
I walked away with to crocs to trainers, to dms with.
Then their little story of what's going wrong for them
at their work, and it's become a big thing. This
whole shoes as a form of protest jesse, is it
(34:28):
surprising that shoes are so political? And is there something
gender coded about this as a choice of protest symbol?
Speaker 3 (34:36):
I reckon there is interestingly a bunch of academics from
the UNI of written a piece going basically, don't say
this is about gender. We're really pissed off, justifiably so,
and so we'll put that to the side. But I
think the subject of shoes, I wonder if status markers
for women are more conspicuous than some status markers for men.
(34:56):
So men can have Hugo Boss shoes on do they
make shoes?
Speaker 1 (35:01):
I imagine so?
Speaker 3 (35:02):
Or like a really fancy suit, right well.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
Like Paul Keating famously loved an Italian suit, like a
tailored suit, whereas a different kind of labor leader would
choose to almost deliberately wear a schlubby suit.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Yes, but it doesn't have like Hugo Boss written on it, right,
Like it's a little bit more other than a watch.
I imagine that a watch is a real marker of
I've got my rolelex or whatever. Men, I know that's
what they notice. But for women, there is something about
having a designer handbag or a shoe that everyone notices.
(35:36):
And I think that the dynamics of particularly education, there
is a cliche among academics, and actually a cliche among
teachers that academics and teachers don't care about how they dress.
They are there because they are led by their values
and they are underpaid, right, and so turning up I
remember lots of lecturers talking about it. Turning up in
(35:56):
the same genes and the same T shirt every day
is like part of what they do. So the spectacle
of someone wearing a really expensive shoe, I understand how
that's taken on meaning and I don't think that would
happen to a man. What do you think of mil.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
No, But I think that there are ways in which
I take that point. But there are ways in which
women can choose generic outfits or generic clothing that does
not make the clothing a topic of conversation. Julie Bishop
knew when she wore sparkly red shoes they were going
to be a topic of conversation. And I would say,
golden goose sneakers are pretty ostentatious. When it comes down
(36:33):
to it, they're very recognizable. So I'm thinking, for instance,
of Penny Wong, Hillary Clinton. I don't know what shoes
they wear, do you No?
Speaker 2 (36:42):
I remember when Julia Gillard, I think she was on
the record as saying that every day when she got dressed.
The question she was trying to answer is like, what
can I wear that no one will talk about that
answer that question is not golden.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
Goose, even like your Mark Zuckerberg's or whatever often wear
like a New Balance, or Obama would wear Stan Smiths,
which aren't cheap, They're not fifty bucks, but they are
widely accessible, Like you'd often walk into a workplace and
see Stan Smith. Could he have afforded the most expensive
trainers in the world. Yes, but that was clearly a
conscious choice to be like I'm the every Now.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
It's also about values, right because to your point before, Jesse,
about in academic circles, it's kind of not cool to
appear to care about what you look like. I feel
that deeply because I grew up although I didn't go
to university. I'm a deep disappointment to my parents, who
both worked in education forever, and my dad was a
university lecturer. So these people I understand them like a
(37:34):
roup around them, and they would never have spent money
on designer shoes now quite distaste. Obviously there's a question
there of whether or not they could have afforded them,
and that is a different question in a way, because
there were other things they would spend money on. They
would go on holiday to France, which obviously from England
is cheaper than to hear. But you know what I mean,
Like an overseas holiday, fine, particularly if it's to somewhere
(37:56):
like you know, culturally rich and historic. That's a fine
state of symbol. But shoes like, oh, that's a little
bit you know, I don't know, there's a reverse snobbery
there about what it says about you. That's sort of
cultural and so.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
I feel like saying, oh, but we wouldn't say this
about men. It's a little bit of a cop out
because in choosing the golden goose sneakers or the red
Sparkley heel, you are asking people to pay attention to
the shoe choice that is not a generic shoe choice.
Think like, for instance, justinto Ardurn wore all bird sneakers
when she first became premnicable company Sustainable, a company that
(38:32):
started in New Zealand. She knew that the shoes are
going to send a message. So you got to choose
what message you want to send. And when you're wearing
golden Goose sneakers that are deliberately scuffed up for eight
hundred dollars, you are sending a message. Or think about
for instance, Kamala Harris, when she was first elected vice president,
she was on the cover of Vogue wearing some black
Converse all Stars. Now, some people thought that that was
(38:53):
really inappropriate to be the vice president on the cover
of Vogue wearing sneakers, but she saw it as the
message she wanted to illustrate was I'm getting to work,
I'm getting going I'm not worried about these frivolous things.
So I think we had to accept that, particularly for women,
your clothing is going to send a mesa. What's that message?
It's fair game for us to talk about.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Well, what this has done is it's given a galvanizing
symbol to a group of disaffected people. Right, So the
people who are pissed off with this management, and they
insist that it has nothing to do with gender, and
I have no reason to disbelieve them have now got
a thing to galvanize around. So and there are posters
popping up all over the campus that say resist Sneaker Capitalism.
(39:33):
And it's kind of given a symbol and something to
post and something to talk about, which is what you
need for a movement, right, Very clever these universities, that
isn't it. But so it's almost like the shoes are
by the bye, except its juicy that we would be
talking about it. That story in the Nine Papers was
wrong with it with the headline and the photographs, because
you've given people something to hang your attention on.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
Do we think or do we want our rich people
to behave like poor people? Because the real story here
is a disparity between how much the vice chancellor rounds,
which is a source of tension in just about every
university in the country, how much they earn as opposed
to the academics were either casualized or have literally lost
their jobs, or.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
Like the courses they're choosing to cut. Yeah, like the
decisions that are being made inside the university about what
matters and what the values are and which courses we're sustaining,
which ones are investing in which ones we're doing away with?
Speaker 1 (40:24):
It is the yearly?
Speaker 3 (40:26):
Is the salary not the shoes?
Speaker 2 (40:28):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (40:28):
So, but is it kind of like.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
It's ingenuous to go, we know how much you're making,
but I expect you to wear Doc Martins.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
Or yeah, exactly right, if it Doc Martin's. I mean,
they're not too cheap, But like, yeah, is that do
we want to pretend like she's the every woman when
she's not.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
But these sneakers are eight hundred dollars. There are plenty
of sneakers that are not eight hundred dollars. I think
that's a choice. I wanted to interrogate my own viewpoint
on this, and I thought, have we ever talked about
a man's shoes in public life? And I came up
with two examples. One is the American politician Ronda Santis,
who wears cowboy boots that people believe have a bit
(41:03):
of a lift in them because cabobits are already slightly healed,
but people think that his were made be more healed.
And the other one is Jeff Bezos, pretty famously wears
lifts in his sneakers.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
A lift something that makes you taller.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
Yeah, exactly, because for men height, there's a big deal.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
Interesting. So you can look at men's sneakers, when men
wear sneakers in public, and if it seems like the
soul is a little bit taller than it normally is,
it may well be a lift.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
So when we interrogate men's shoes, we're doing it as
a way to interrogate something they apparently lack. And obviously
I'm not saying that short men lack anything, but in
their minds that they apparently lack. Whereas when we're interrogating
women's shoes, we're reading it as a bit of a
read on their character in a different way. What they have, Yeah,
you have, and how frivolous you are, and how much
(41:53):
it matters to you that your shoes are fancy and etc. Etc.
I've got another one. Rishi sunak So, the former British
Prime minister who was deeply unpopular and lost the election
in an absolute landslide. But he was once photographed wearing
Adidas sambas.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
I think I've got them on today, yes.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
And it got so picked up that he was wearing
these in a profile piece or whatever that he had
to apologize because he'd given added us Samber's a bad name,
and no one wanted to wear them anymore because they
were like, we don't want to wear Rishi's shoes, so
you know, maybe it does sometimes hit the man.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
And Rishie was famously wealthy, right.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
Yeah, Rishi soon a very wealthy man married to a
very wealthy woman. And it was one of the things
that was frequently used to criticize them was how could
they possibly understand what the average brick is going through
in this cost of living crisis and his choice to
wear Sambers, which, to your point, Jesse, are a bit expensive. Yeah, yeah,
they're not cheap cheap, but they're not eight hundred dollars expensive,
(42:49):
was seen as a bit of a deliberate play to
be in every Man as slightly cool every man out
louders Happy Monday. I hope you've enjoyed our show today.
We're obviously going to be back in your ears tomorrow.
A massive thanks as always to our talented team for
helping us put this together, and.
Speaker 3 (43:05):
Back to bron I actually want to send as well
the biggest shout out to woman named Lee who basically
this is a story right a year ago, Broun puts.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Her message in and she goes I'm in the Outluders.
Speaker 3 (43:17):
In the out Louders Facebook group, bron says it was
my birthday. No one wished me a happy birthday. No
one made a fuss. I'm the person who always makes
a fuss, and I'm feeling I feel petulant, but I
also just feel sad about this right And Lee was like,
you know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna put a
note my calendar to remind myself in a year to
wish this woman a happy birthday in the out Louders
(43:38):
And now, along with hundreds of others, they've all gone
happy Birthday.
Speaker 1 (43:42):
And I just think it's.
Speaker 3 (43:43):
A reminder that when the people in your life don't
hold you, the out Louders do, they are the head
to make a fuss. So look, the out Louders is
just the best place on the internet. We love it there.
Thank you so much, Lee.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Happy birthday, Braun.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
We want to make a fuss about the out Louders
who take it upon themselves to just because there have
been outrageous acts of kindness in that group, and I
would love a name for it so that we can
just acknowledge there is no one more generous, helpful, than
the outlouders in that group, So jump in and tell
us what we should call it, and whatever it is,
whatever the award is Lee want it for this week.
(44:19):
Bye bye. Shout out to any Mum and me A
subscribers listening. If you love the show and you want
to support us, subscribing to MoMA Mia is the very
best way to do so. There's a link in the
episode description.
You're listening to Amma Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on Hello and welcome to
Momma Mia Out Loud and what women are actually talking
about on Monday, the twenty fifth of August. My name
is Holly Wayne Wright.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
I'm Jesse Stevens.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
I'm Amelia Lester.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Before we begin, we wanted to wish Braun a happy birthday.
Out louder bron Out louder Braun. If you want to
know why that is significant, keep listening. That's a little
bit of a clickbait for your Monday.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
But other things that have made our agenda today include.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Weight loss drugs have their first global ambassador, Serena Williams,
and unsurprisingly the move has spawned thousands of takes.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Plus why there is nothing more perilous than trying to
be friends with your friend's friend, and.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Why posting a picture of your very ordinary shoes has
become an act of protest against a pair of high
profile female bosses.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
But for Serena Williams, widely considered the best female tennis
player of all time, is the new ambassador of a
telehealth company which as part of its services, prescribes weight
loss medication otherwise known as GLP ones. The forty three
year old, who retired about three years ago, was a
subject of a feature in People magazine at the end
(01:30):
of last week which was all about her weight loss.
Then came an interview on The Today Show, then an
interview in Vogue magazine and in l This was all
ultimately part of a commercial. Her partnership will span multiple
years across billboards, TV spots and digital platforms.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
The thing about these ads that I've seen Jesse is
shocking is the wrong word, because it's not shocking, but
it's just their very intentional and lots of very clear
product placement, which is kind of different to some advertising
we've seen.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Before, which is also very confronting, i think to Australian audiences,
given that this would never fly in Australia. It is
not allowed. There are strict rules around medica advertising. It's unlawful.
It's banned by the Therapeutic Goods Administration in the US.
Of course, you spend five minutes there, you turn on
the TV and you're being sold sleeping pills, weight loss everything.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
And they always have this thing at the end where
they say side effects and risks may include death. Yeah,
and that's always very stressful. I looks this up and
it turns out that there are two countries in the
world that allow pretty much unrestricted pharmaceutical drug advertising. We
all know about the US, as you just mentioned, but
also in New Zealand. It turns out really it's a
real standalone when it comes to advertising these things. But
(02:41):
I just wanted to mention a fact that I think
we need to include in this discussion, which is that
Serena's husband Alexis o'hanyan, who was a co founder of Reddit,
Certified wife Guy, who talks a lot about his marriage
and has a podcast about being a dad. He is
a board member of the Telehealth company, which, as you mentioned,
(03:02):
as part of its services, prescribes his weight loss drugs.
And what's interesting is that Serena Williams is not advertising
a particular brand of weight lots drug here, and so
it's more of a business model shift.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
And so many tech bros for lack of a better term,
are going into this kind of thing, which is a
specially built facility where you go and everything from fitness
to diet to prescribing these things I think this is
where the future is going, right, rather than being managed
just by you GP.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
But presumably this all happens online, right that this.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
I believe it's a telehelp Ye.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Serena Williams is such an interesting choice and I think
this is why it has spawned a thousand opinions, because
some are saying that this undermines her athletic legacy, which
was all about defiance and being the ultimate outsider.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
It doesn't. It does so many Grand Slam titles exactly.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
I think something so patronizing and sexist about that. But
they're saying that she's sort of bowing to Thinness culture.
And also, if a literal athlete needs help with her health,
then what hope do any of us have? But maybe
that's also the point, right well.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
I think rather than undermining her athletic legacy, what these
kinds of ads are doing is undermining a relationship that
Australians have decided is sacrisanct, which is the relationship between
your GP and the patient, which is why, incidentally Australia,
along with most other countries in the world, does not
allow these ads.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
The thing that's interesting about this is that so as
we've said, Australia has these very strict rules. This would
not be allowed here at the moment, but because of
the global nature of the Internet, this is everywhere, so
it's on Instagram. A mockery of any country's regulations. Really,
when the fact that Serena Williams is advertising GLP ones
is within five minutes everywhere all over the world and
(04:52):
it isn't specific, but it's broad and we've all got
that messaging immediately.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Remember a lost in translation. That movie was all about
the fact that Hollywood celebrities used to go to Japan
and other countries in East Asia make advertisements there that
wouldn't be seen in the West, and now, of course
that's not happening anymore, or because we can see them all.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Tiny violin for them. I want to talk about celebrities
and weight loss endorsement because I don't want to talk
about Serena Williams's body. It's her business. She's been very
explicit in what she thinks about this and why she's
chosen to do it, etcetera, etcetera. I did think, God,
they must be paying her a lot of money, so
finding out that her husband's on the board makes a
lot of sense.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
And it's multiple years and all of the public like
sitting on the Today Show. It's not just that she's
the face of an ad. It is multi prott.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
But there's nothing new about celebrities taking weight loss endorsements right.
That has happened for a long time. But one of
the things that's interesting about this is the sort of
shift that we're seeing because any celebrity who does not
fit into a very specific conventional size, which for television
is tiny, tiny, tiny, has always been offered weight loss endorsements,
(05:58):
you know, and we've seen here in Australia people who
for example, did endorsements is Jenny Craig, Magda Zubanski, Rebel Wilson, Melby,
Samantha Armitage, Casey Donovan, like lots and lots and lots
of very well known people have done it and for
a while there, although the establishment used to be a
bit sniffy about it, like, oh, it's a bit cheesy,
isn't it, people generally speaking have always felt really fondly
(06:21):
towards the celebrities who do that, because it's like they
are admitting I'm struggling with exactly the same things you are.
We talked last week when we're talking about the biggest loser,
that sixty five percent of ossis is trying to lose
weight at any one time. So it's incredibly democratizing to
have nab Ye who's very high status, say I'm just
like you. I struggle too. And that was an accepted
(06:41):
sort of contract for a long time. But then in
the past few years, when we've seen a much more
broad backlash against diet culture and diet companies, it seemed
to be on the nose. If you think about celebrities
who've talked about doing that, Magda Zubanski is an example
who will say, I kind of regret doing that now
and think about all the shit that Oprah got over
(07:02):
the years for the way that she talked about weight
loss in the eighties and nineties compared to now, and
this new frontier feels like a bit the shift. It
feels like it's back to be able to talk about
that in a broad way.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Because what was really difficult with the weight watchers of
the Jenny Craig moment was how difficult it was to
then keep the weight off. The success of a diet
every research study shows is very very limited.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Well, Magda back to her as an example, for a
while there, she famously was a Jenny Craig ambassador, and
then she said she was fired because she didn't live
up to the contract, and then she re signed to
help her lose the weight that she gained after she
did Jenny Craig. So that's how complicated that all of that.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Is right, And of course Oprah's history with this, and
I think that it's also worth tabling that for black women,
this is a very particular conversation because Oprah's body, or
Serena Williams's body, is also subject to something that they
call like missognoir, which is sexism, but also sexism that's
thrown at black bodies. Serena Williams didn't look like other
(08:03):
tennis players. She never did. She was curvier, she was stronger,
all of those things which made her the most brilliant
tennis player ever. But I suppose that's why people feel
betrayed too. But I'm feeling particularly and maybe surprisingly defensive
of Serena Williams in all of this, because she's come
out and said that transparency has always mattered to her.
(08:24):
She's almost come out and said another quiet part out loud,
which is these drugs are not for lazy people, and
there is an enormous stigma all over the world, especially
among people who have never had issues with weight, that
a sort of lack. We're talking about with the Biggest
Loser conversation. You know, it should be tough, and if
you just had enough willpower and discipline, then you too
(08:45):
could lose weight. And to have someone with the most
willpower and the most discipline, who is so healthy and
so fit say I couldn't do it, I think gives
other people permission.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Yeah. I think that's a great point. That she is
a kind of the embodiment of discipline and of working
hard to achieve goals physical and otherwise. And there is
something interesting about her selling a service that prescribes weight
loss drugs. On that point, we should mention, of course,
that these drugs do have many side effects as well.
(09:19):
They're not by any means of magic bullet.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
And that's the thing, right, is that with you, Jenny
Craig or your weight watchers. Of course, a diet has
side effects, but generally speaking, it's relatively straightforward. This I
think the other maybe sources of discomfort that you're seeing
comments and that you're seeing commentary is we don't know
enough about these drugs. What are we going to find
out in five or ten years and what responsibility does
Serena Williams have to talk about side effects?
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Well, Jamila Jamil has said, of course she often comments
on this space, so she was always going to be
asked what she thought about this, and she's posted about it,
and her point is, broadly, the problem with celebrity endorsement
of pharmaceutical products and other weight loss means is that
they have resources that other people don't have. So she
basically says, if everything goes pair shaped for Serena Williams
or for anyone else of significant means, they've got doctors
(10:06):
on Speeddale, They've got a whole lot of support that
your average person doesn't have.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Well, she can do her weight training every day, which
we know is really.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Important, but she also has access to health professionals. And
what these kind of companies are broadly encouraging for the
rest of us is get on the phone or get online.
That seems to be the messaging of a lot of
these companies. Whereas you know, the small print of any
of these products has always been always consult your GP
before use, it feels a little bit recklessly.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
It's kind of treating it like a consumer gleat.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Which has nothing to do with Serena Williams. It just
has everything to do with the way that we are
marketing it. And I think it's a valid point that,
and this has always been a point of celebrity endorsement
of any kind, is that although we can buy in
quite happily to the oh they're just like me, you
know idea, they're not really yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
In a moment, are there some areas of life influencers
just shouldn't be influencing influencers tell us what moisturizer to use,
which leggings are best, how we should do our hair,
what we should.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Paint our nails.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
With the question, now, should they also be conveying life
or death information about natural disaster? This is yes, this
is real. At least one expert says yes. In a
report which looked at how safety information was being communicated
during two recent tropical cyclones in Queensland. They were Jasper
in twenty twenty three and Curely last year. A Griffith
(11:31):
University researcher, doctor Susan Grantham, has advocated for meeting young
people where they are in terms of telling them what's
going on, telling them what to do during tropical cyclones
and other natural disasters, and she says that we need
to get on TikTok for that information. She made a
really interesting point. She said that we typically rely on
politicians to tell us the information that we need to
(11:52):
know in natural disasters. But the problem is that politicians,
because they're in politics, we end up getting distracted by
lots of stuff that don't have to do with important
natural disaster evacuation plans. We end up thinking, has that
politician been visible enough? Where's that politician? How are they performing?
Are they doing a good job of being a politician
(12:13):
in this moment, Because.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
In Australia, it's like get your hard hat on, get
your life jacket on, get yourself in front of a
TV camera. That seems to be a kind of standard
politician strategy. And it's like we're busy having the dialogue
of it is that helpful? Should they be doing that?
Rather than actually, should I evacuate right exactly exactly?
Speaker 1 (12:34):
And then of course there's this other dynamic happening, which
is I think we all grew up understanding that when
something bad was happening, you needed to learn about it.
In the first instance, we probably turned on the radio
or TV. And then, at least for me, when I've
been involved in natural disasters, there was one natural disaster
that I had to deal with, I went to Twitter.
But the young people are not necessarily going to Twitter well,
(12:58):
or to X or to the radio. They are going
to TikTok. And if you don't have reliable, up to
date information on there, you're simply not going to get
that information. So I do see Grantham's point, but I
feel worried about it because she says that we need
to reach out to trusted influencers. Governments need to reach
out to trusted influencers, and in these times of natural disaster,
(13:20):
get the trusted influencers to convey information. But my question
is is there such a thing as a trusted influencer.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
And trusted with what?
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Like who I affiliates?
Speaker 3 (13:32):
Yeah, exactly, I trust this person to give me a
really good house tour. But do I trust this person
to tell me how severe this cyclone is? No, it
feels like a cop out. I don't want to sound hyperbolic,
but this is apocalyptic. But like I was thinking. My
takeaway from reading this was politicians need to step up. Like,
(13:55):
if you're a politician who is using this moment to
get political, to blame, blah, to whatever, do better. And
I think that we saw politicians do better during COVID.
I think that they had to put politics aside because
it was a national urgency.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Sorry to talk over you, because I've been told that
I do that too much, but I have to talk
over you. Look at how Dan andrews press conferences became
the debate topic in themselves rather than COVID.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
But they had facts I had. This is how many
people were diagnosed, this is how many people are in hospital.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
This is like wasn't.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Heard the facts because they were too busy debating whether
Dan Andrews was a good politician. Holly, I know you
must agree.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
With well, look, I see Jesse's point, but I think
that part of that I actually agree with the argument
that politicians aren't the best people to put these messages across.
The best people to put these messages across are the
people from the emergency services.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Shane Fitzsimmons remind me it was twenty nineteen, twenty twenty
bush Fire season. My mate Shane, who was the head
of the New South Wales Rural Fire Service. He would
stand up, he would give us no bullshit information. I
trusted that guy with my life.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
My family got trapped in bushfires and it was horrific
and scary. And that man was he given Australian a view.
He was given him some.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
He got a lot of awards, and so he should have.
Because the thing about politicians, and this is increasingly so.
I think we're so busy looking at absolutely everything through
a political lens and thinking our own thoughts. So it's
like we might be thinking, well, if your government had
done more about climate change, maybe we wouldn't be in
this position in the first place, you know what I mean.
And if your government hadn't cut funds to such and
(15:33):
such and such and such, maybe we would have had
a better response. And all those things are valid, but
they're not helpful in the moment. I think it's really
interesting what we expect from leaders in moments of crisis.
Every Australian could absolutely repeat to you the fact that
Scott Morrison's response is to the terrible bushfires of that season,
of that black Summer of twenty nineteen into twenty twenty
(15:55):
was part of his undoing. It's just now part of
the law that that is exactly what happened. That he
wasn't around enough, and once he was, it seemed like
he was using it much more as a photo opportunity
than as any kind of meaningful help and assistance. That
there was so much critics of his response that it
was a large part of ruining his career. We want
our leaders to be visible and calm, and we want
(16:18):
them to express to us what we need to hear.
But are they the best people to do it in
this hyper politicized climate. I think possibly not.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
I reckon that experts. On one hand, I think that
they are really important the idea that like Blue Eyed
Kayla Jade would be giving me any sort of information
on what I meant to do in a natural disaster.
And these conversations are more pressing because we know that
climate catastrophe and natural disasters are increasing, and especially in Queensland.
I mean every year there is just something horrific. I
(16:49):
went and looked at Cyclone Alfred, which was a few
months ago in Queensland, and looked at what the top
tiktoks were because I was really interested in how it
was sorted, and it was news clips, which are actually
that's what the news is for. For all the shit
that journalists and media companies get, it was local news
reporters who were standing there giving you the information that
(17:11):
was being shared, that was being engaged with the issue
was misinformation because the second there's a natural disaster, for
some reason, the Internet does this thing where they put
a shark, they photoshop a shark in a really weird place.
It's every natural disaster, there's like a flooded sharknado, sharknado.
They do like a It'll be like town Hall flooded
(17:34):
and there's just a shark, and it's just they do
the same thing every time. That stuff really unhelpful, really
really annoying. But mostly I think that if you can
surface more and more news clips, and what TikTok needs
to do is flag AI generated and flag misinformation like
that's your responsibility.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
I'd like to believe that's true. But there is a trope,
and I don't know if it's only an Australian trope.
Maybe you can tell me in Amelia that anytime there's
a whiff that a cyclone or any kind of disaster
might be coming. All the journals from you know, Breakfast
TV and everywhere in the world get their high veers out,
they get their rank code of the rank, and they
are there and they are standing if they are finding
(18:12):
any rain they can find, and they're standing in front
of it and they've got a wind machine gun to
their hairs, all blown around like this, and they're like,
I'm here. And I always think, is the nation's commercial
media descending on this disastersode in this moment? Is this helpful?
Speaker 3 (18:26):
Is this helpful to anybody?
Speaker 2 (18:28):
I think we're getting more literate and understanding how to
go to the source on it. I know that we're
in the fires in that terrible fire season. I know
with the flooding, I have the Bureau of Meteorology app.
I had the fires near me. I know that in
America during the terrible recent fires in California, everybody had
you get directed. Yes, and it's not perfect, but it's
got to be better than Look, sometimes I'm an influencer
(18:51):
and you do not want to be counting on me
at a crisis.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Amelia, can I ask you, are there some things where
maybe TikTok isn't the place, like should we really be
encouraging young people. It's like, well, they're already on TikTok.
Maybe they get off TikTok during the cyclone. Yeah, is
that a fair enough thing to do?
Speaker 1 (19:07):
I mean, speaking of someone who used to be a
diict to Twitter during natural disasters, I suppose I can't speak,
but I'm glad that you mentioned this, because I do
think this gets back to a conversation we've had on
the show before, which is about gatekeepers and about how
information is now free to circulate like a sharknado through
the roads and avenues of our great nation, whereas before
(19:29):
we used to have people like journalists say Okay, this
is correct, this is not correct. And what I worry
about is that yet you've both said how important it
is to go to the source and rely on local news,
but we don't really have any local news anymore. The
ABC has seen huge funding cuts. It's a little bit
chicken and egg. So it's all very well to say,
let's go in the time of crisis, go to the
(19:49):
local news, but the local news needs to survive year round,
not just during the natural disaster.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
After the break, look down, what message are your shoes sending?
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Right?
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Now that choice if you're a female boss apparently matters
a lot. One unlimited out loud access. We drop episodes
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Speaker 1 (20:24):
I want to talk about something that's very fraught and
a little bit raw for me. So the topic is
friends of friends. Yep. This came up for me recently
because I met a friend's friend and we did not
like each other.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
Oh we your friend's friend, I thinks, occurred to me.
I think I'm actually a friend's friend.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Let's call each other colleagues from now. But fine, I
want to call each other colleagues for the purposes of
this conversation because I want to be able to discuss
in a no holds barred way the concept of a
friend's friend, and it's going to get uncomfortable. Friends friends
is really complicated. And a few years ago, my best
friend at the time met my other best friend and
(21:09):
at the time, and they were over at my flat
and one of them was taking her daily multi vitamin
and she's a very generous, effusive person. And she turns
to my other friend and says, oh, would you like
a multi vitamin? It's nice and very nice. Yeah. I
mean it's a little odd, just like she is, but
that's okay. And then the other friends said, no, I
choose to get my vitamins and minerals from my daily
(21:30):
diet than appeal.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Oh dear, no, no, no too honest and just say
no thanks. Shut up.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
So back to what happened to me. So, when I
met my friend's friend recently, we were chalk and cheese,
as they say. I think I was the cheese and
she was the chalk. But that's my own view. And
I want to figure out why it is that friend's
friends never work, because they should write logically, it should work.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
So you mean that time when you know your mate
maybe has a birthday dinner or some kind of and
you meet this person that you might have been hearing
about for a long time. Oh, you've got to meet Betty.
You got to meet Betty. You gotta love Betty and
meet Betty and you and Betty immediately hated. Yes. Is
that basically yeah?
Speaker 1 (22:12):
And I want to talk about where that is because
it shouldn't be like that. There was an article on
Mum and mea that got me thinking about this, about this,
and I love the term friends in law. This article
was by Muma me as Jessica Clark. She had a
quick quiz on how to tell if you have a
friend in law. I want to share three of them,
and I want to see if either of you can
think of someone in your life who meets this criteria.
Number one, you've never texted each other outside your WhatsApp
(22:34):
group chats, unless you count tagging her in a story
on Instagram with the tag qt. I mean, we've all
done that. I love that. Maybe not exactly the word cut,
but I've definitely done things.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
I send like a love heart or like hottie, the stories,
the fire emoji.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
It's probably hopelessly millennial of this. Number two, you once
told her your biggest fear in a bathroom stall at
a mutual friend's birthday dinner. But you've never had a
coffee together.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Oh correct, Yeah, that.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Would be very weird if we should get together, you say,
and then it's literally never going to happen.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
With bear betrayal.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
My favorite. Number three is when you hear about her
exclusively via your mutual friend. So, for instance, your friend
might be like, she's seeing someone new. He's really hot,
but she's being cool about it, and you act as
though it's your business, but it's really not.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
Yes, it's my favorite conversation.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
It's my favorite. And so Jessica calls his friend in
law a social glitch, and she implores you not to
try and escalate the relationship to an actual friendship. So
here's the topic that I want to put to you both.
Thirty five years ago, the movie When Harry Met Sally
famously asked if men and women could be friends. But
the question I want to ask you to is, can
(23:41):
you ever really be friends with your friend's friends? Oh?
Speaker 3 (23:44):
My god, isn't it funny? I've tried, but it's still
like Holly's friend. Like before, I'd call them my friend.
And I only see these people in the context of
a mutual friend. I feel like I can't claim ownership.
But I find that I have a few what I
would term crushes.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Yes, tell us about.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
So I have people who like a really close friend
of mine has this friend who I'm obsessed with, Like,
I love hearing about her life, yep, I love following
her on Instagram. I love it when there's a dinner
and I know you're her everything. I think she's fantastic,
But I would never be able to see her without
(24:26):
the other friend.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
That there is the breach.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
Yes, yes, exactly right?
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Is it a breach? Would you be offended a breach? So?
Speaker 2 (24:34):
I don't know why I feel like that. There are
different ways in which this dynamic can go wrong. One
of them is the way that you're talking about, Amilia,
and we need t more about this in a moment,
which is you meet your friend's friend and you don't
get along, and that's a problem in.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
And it's not uncommon.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
It's not uncommon, and we can unpack the reasons why.
But then the other scenario is you meet your friend's
friend and you really get along and you would like
to be proper friends with them, and that brings its
own problems because if you try and leap frog your
original friend there to make a connection, unless, of course,
there's a circumstance in which the other friends out of
(25:09):
town or maybe they don't live near you, or they're
busy that night or whatever, then maybe, but it's always
going to be fraught because then it feels like you're
stepping over.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
Them, which then brings me to the point. Okay, so
let's say Holly. Holly has a friend who I love, right,
I think she just sounds like a really good time
everything Holly tells me. I'm like, I'm just obsessed with that.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Right.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
Maybe what I really love is her as a character.
Maybe I don't need to have a coffee with her,
but I like the plot. I like staying.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Across her as the character in the holy plot exactly.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
So when I sit down with Holly, I won't say
how the kids me and man, no one cares. What
I will say is, how is Bla going? Tell me
how that date? But tell me? And I find that
that's so interesting, that's so true.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
It's like a scriptured drama that you don't have to script, so.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
You don't need to meet those characters necessarily.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
It's fun to meet them every now and then, like
a celebrity.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
When you do meet them, you're like, I've heard so
much about it.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
It is a celebrity. Because you're also like, there is
not a single thing I don't know about it, Like
I know everything and you you don't really know me.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
So when you meet the friend's friend, and you don't
get along as per your situation, Amelia, Do you think
it's often because you think, how could you like both
of us when we're so different?
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Okay, No, I have a theory. I'm so glad you
mentioned it, and I'm glad that you broke it down
to those two categories. It's important that we be rigorous
in this analysis of friends friends. So back to the
friend's friend who you can't stand. Here's my theory. Your
friend's friend is the fun house mirror version of you.
You think that the friend's friend is gonna be like
(26:40):
a spin off of your friend, and that's why you think,
rationally speaking, you should get along with them. They're kind
of like your friend, but just with a twist. No,
they're like you with a twist, and that's very confronted.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
So this is like the idea that the people who
annoy you the most, the people you clash with the most,
are the ones most like.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
You because they remind you of yourself and all the
things you can't stand about yourself.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
Maybe I'm a narcissist, So I fall in love with
my friend's friends because I'm.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Like, you're interesting.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
You're so interesting and fun and I'm just looking in
my fun house.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Well, no, I think I think Holly's right. There are
the two categories, and we've all had that crush on
a friend's friend. But I don't feel that I'm protective
of my friends. I want to just sort of push
back a little bit. So I do have two friends
sept from the others that I mentioned, who have become
better friends with each other than with me, And I
probably should find this confronting, but I actually find it
(27:31):
kind of like cozy in a way.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Yeah, I quite like it. I like the idea of
bringing people together. It's like a setup, yeah, And I
feel responsibility for their joy.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
I guess it depends a little bit about how you
feel about your friend, whether you're secure in that friendship.
Maybe because when you feel less secure in the friendship
and they become really good friends with your friend, I
think that that is more a problem. But if you
are quite happy to have this friend and you feel
you're on solid ground with each other, I'm fine with
them becoming friends with my friends. Holly, what do you think.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
I like to have groups. I don't like to really
mix the groups up too much. I'm not possessive of
my friends. I don't think. I think I'm quite fun
like I like it if people like the people I like,
you know, it makes your life easier, Let's be honest.
But there are times when you meet your friend's friend
and you think, oh, it would be great for us
to hang out, and do you ever you just know
you can't.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
Are you ever in the situation where friend A meets
friend B and you go, oh shit, friend B is
going to hate friendly and then friend AY says something
and you're like, you fucked it, And then you've just
got to sit there in the middle, going, this is
so offensive, this is so and you can see that
they're going, you know.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
They're so well comfortable. I get sick even thinking about that,
because I hate uncomfortable situations. And when you know, you're like,
don't say it, don't bring that up, don't bring that up,
don't bring that Oh, here we go.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
But I had a real churning point on that recently
because I had a birthday dinner for my partner and
we invited a bunch of people who are in his
social circle, and I knew that one of the people
in this circle would hate another person in this circle.
And I always used to be really nervous about that, because,
after all, it was me throwing this party. I'd invited
(29:08):
them both, worried about the responsibility that I had for
them to get along. But then I realized that as
both of them started behaving in exactly the predictable ways
that I expected, and of course hated each other, that's
not my problem. It's no longer my problem.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Let them strap in, friends. I'm about to top line
a shoe scandal for you that goes right to the
top of one of the country's most powerful institutions, and
explain how one pair of distressed designer trainers has become
a symbol for all that is wrong with the management
of Australia's educational institutions. Are you ready?
Speaker 3 (29:45):
May I get so mad when we pretend to be
experts to be listening to this guying.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
I know, No, don't worry. I think Amelia is bringing
some specialist knowledge that upseter will now quickly, I need
to explain that this segment is not going to explore
the complexities of a higher education No, no, of an
important and controversial overhaul of Camberra's Australia National University. We're
(30:12):
not doing that. I'll put my notes aside. The segment
is going to explore how shoes have become a symbol
of struggle for the employees of ANU who have made
allegations of mismanagement that have been denied. Tiny bit of
context before we get to the important business of shoes.
The vice chancellor of A and U and look, I
famously did not go to university, so I had to
find out what a vice chancellor does. But they're the boss, right.
(30:35):
It says vice, but really they're the CEO. They're running things.
It's a big, important job, right. The vice Chancellor of
A and U is a woman called Genevieve Bell, and
her shoe choice is about to matter a lot. But
her boss the chancellor, which is like a chairman's role.
So she is the boss boss, but she's not as
hands on. The vice chancellor is the one who's doing
(30:55):
all the business. But is a woman who you will
be familiar with. Her name is Julie Bishop, and of
course she used to be our foreign minister before she
strode out of politics in a pair of sparkly red heels.
Who could forget she was a major player in that
whole era of like Abbot Turnbull, and famously, when she
left politics after saying she'd been broadly ignored and sidelined
(31:16):
and bitched about by her male colleagues, there was a
famous iconic photograph of all the black shoes of her
male colleagues and her ruby red Roger Vivier heels that
are now in a museum.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
Is Roger Vivier?
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Is that an expensive brand, fancy French shoes? And Malia
is dying? Okay, let's get back to this. So A
and U is currently in a severe cost cutting phase.
So are lots of other universities right crisis. We're not
getting into that, but there are many people who work there,
former employees and students, who are pissed off about what
they see as miss management and misplaced parodies in both
(31:49):
the spending that got A and YOU to this point
and the way the cuts are being managed now. A
story in the Nine Newspapers this weekend by Jordan Baker
said it was particularly the choice of Bell's footwear at
a university cultural event earlier this year that gave all
the pissed off employees a symbol for their struggle. You see,
Genevieve Bell wore a pair of Golden Goose sneakers, Amelia,
(32:14):
what are golden Goose sneakers?
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Golden Goose sneakers are my Roman Empire. I don't understand
why anyone wants to wear them. Let me explain. They
are sneakers that are deliberately scuffed up and distressed, and
they cost eight hundred dollars.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
I'm quite into them. Why I never noticed shoes I
don't often notice like markers of class slash status. But
when I had, like you know, situations where I've met
up with with other mother's room at the park and
I spot those shoes, I go, oh, it must be nice.
Someone is doing well.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
You remember when all fancy people wearing those guccy sneakers
with the stripes and the gold bumble bee.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
Yeah, it's like that, like that.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Except with all dirt marks.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
It's got a star, like a metallic star on it,
and it does it looks all worn and scuffy look.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
And celebrities do love them. Beyonce Gnomi, what's Millie, Bobby Brown?
Lots of people have worn these nig because they've been
around for a long time. They made the milan. They
looked to me like someone left them out in the mud.
For a couple of days, but I guess that's part
of the appeal.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
Well, Bell wore them to the opening of this important
cultural center, right, and the choice of her very expensive
footwear became such a big deal in the context of
the fact that the university was cutting jobs and everything
that she actually had to come out and say no, no, no,
I bought them secondhand on eBay. They were much cheaper
than you think now considering her salary as a reported
one point four to seven million, Oh, she probably didn't
(33:43):
need to find them on eBay, but she had to
say that she did. Anyway. Between Bell shoes and Bishop shoes,
this is now political and a website has been started
called the Shoes of A and U where current and
former staff post pictures of their shoes, their shitty shoes,
not their designer scuffed up shoes, but their actual shitty shoes,
along with a scuffing yeah exactly, along with a complaint
(34:06):
about what's going on at A ANDU. So on this
site there are like bare feet from people who are like, look,
I haven't even got shoes to the walking shoes that
I walked away with to crocs to trainers, to dms with.
Then their little story of what's going wrong for them
at their work, and it's become a big thing. This
whole shoes as a form of protest jesse, is it
(34:28):
surprising that shoes are so political? And is there something
gender coded about this as a choice of protest symbol?
Speaker 3 (34:36):
I reckon there is interestingly a bunch of academics from
the UNI of written a piece going basically, don't say
this is about gender. We're really pissed off, justifiably so,
and so we'll put that to the side. But I
think the subject of shoes, I wonder if status markers
for women are more conspicuous than some status markers for men.
(34:56):
So men can have Hugo Boss shoes on do they
make shoes?
Speaker 1 (35:01):
I imagine so?
Speaker 3 (35:02):
Or like a really fancy suit, right well.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
Like Paul Keating famously loved an Italian suit, like a
tailored suit, whereas a different kind of labor leader would
choose to almost deliberately wear a schlubby suit.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Yes, but it doesn't have like Hugo Boss written on it, right,
Like it's a little bit more other than a watch.
I imagine that a watch is a real marker of
I've got my rolelex or whatever. Men, I know that's
what they notice. But for women, there is something about
having a designer handbag or a shoe that everyone notices.
(35:36):
And I think that the dynamics of particularly education, there
is a cliche among academics, and actually a cliche among
teachers that academics and teachers don't care about how they dress.
They are there because they are led by their values
and they are underpaid, right, and so turning up I
remember lots of lecturers talking about it. Turning up in
(35:56):
the same genes and the same T shirt every day
is like part of what they do. So the spectacle
of someone wearing a really expensive shoe, I understand how
that's taken on meaning and I don't think that would
happen to a man. What do you think of mil.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
No, But I think that there are ways in which
I take that point. But there are ways in which
women can choose generic outfits or generic clothing that does
not make the clothing a topic of conversation. Julie Bishop
knew when she wore sparkly red shoes they were going
to be a topic of conversation. And I would say,
golden goose sneakers are pretty ostentatious. When it comes down
(36:33):
to it, they're very recognizable. So I'm thinking, for instance,
of Penny Wong, Hillary Clinton. I don't know what shoes
they wear, do you No?
Speaker 2 (36:42):
I remember when Julia Gillard, I think she was on
the record as saying that every day when she got dressed.
The question she was trying to answer is like, what
can I wear that no one will talk about that
answer that question is not golden.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
Goose, even like your Mark Zuckerberg's or whatever often wear
like a New Balance, or Obama would wear Stan Smiths,
which aren't cheap, They're not fifty bucks, but they are
widely accessible, Like you'd often walk into a workplace and
see Stan Smith. Could he have afforded the most expensive
trainers in the world. Yes, but that was clearly a
conscious choice to be like I'm the every Now.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
It's also about values, right because to your point before, Jesse,
about in academic circles, it's kind of not cool to
appear to care about what you look like. I feel
that deeply because I grew up although I didn't go
to university. I'm a deep disappointment to my parents, who
both worked in education forever, and my dad was a
university lecturer. So these people I understand them like a
(37:34):
roup around them, and they would never have spent money
on designer shoes now quite distaste. Obviously there's a question
there of whether or not they could have afforded them,
and that is a different question in a way, because
there were other things they would spend money on. They
would go on holiday to France, which obviously from England
is cheaper than to hear. But you know what I mean,
Like an overseas holiday, fine, particularly if it's to somewhere
(37:56):
like you know, culturally rich and historic. That's a fine
state of symbol. But shoes like, oh, that's a little
bit you know, I don't know, there's a reverse snobbery
there about what it says about you. That's sort of
cultural and so.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
I feel like saying, oh, but we wouldn't say this
about men. It's a little bit of a cop out
because in choosing the golden goose sneakers or the red
Sparkley heel, you are asking people to pay attention to
the shoe choice that is not a generic shoe choice.
Think like, for instance, justinto Ardurn wore all bird sneakers
when she first became premnicable company Sustainable, a company that
(38:32):
started in New Zealand. She knew that the shoes are
going to send a message. So you got to choose
what message you want to send. And when you're wearing
golden Goose sneakers that are deliberately scuffed up for eight
hundred dollars, you are sending a message. Or think about
for instance, Kamala Harris, when she was first elected vice president,
she was on the cover of Vogue wearing some black
Converse all Stars. Now, some people thought that that was
(38:53):
really inappropriate to be the vice president on the cover
of Vogue wearing sneakers, but she saw it as the
message she wanted to illustrate was I'm getting to work,
I'm getting going I'm not worried about these frivolous things.
So I think we had to accept that, particularly for women,
your clothing is going to send a mesa. What's that message?
It's fair game for us to talk about.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Well, what this has done is it's given a galvanizing
symbol to a group of disaffected people. Right, So the
people who are pissed off with this management, and they
insist that it has nothing to do with gender, and
I have no reason to disbelieve them have now got
a thing to galvanize around. So and there are posters
popping up all over the campus that say resist Sneaker Capitalism.
(39:33):
And it's kind of given a symbol and something to
post and something to talk about, which is what you
need for a movement, right, Very clever these universities, that
isn't it. But so it's almost like the shoes are
by the bye, except its juicy that we would be
talking about it. That story in the Nine Papers was
wrong with it with the headline and the photographs, because
you've given people something to hang your attention on.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
Do we think or do we want our rich people
to behave like poor people? Because the real story here
is a disparity between how much the vice chancellor rounds,
which is a source of tension in just about every
university in the country, how much they earn as opposed
to the academics were either casualized or have literally lost
their jobs, or.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
Like the courses they're choosing to cut. Yeah, like the
decisions that are being made inside the university about what
matters and what the values are and which courses we're sustaining,
which ones are investing in which ones we're doing away with?
Speaker 1 (40:24):
It is the yearly?
Speaker 3 (40:26):
Is the salary not the shoes?
Speaker 2 (40:28):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (40:28):
So, but is it kind of like.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
It's ingenuous to go, we know how much you're making,
but I expect you to wear Doc Martins.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
Or yeah, exactly right, if it Doc Martin's. I mean,
they're not too cheap, But like, yeah, is that do
we want to pretend like she's the every woman when
she's not.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
But these sneakers are eight hundred dollars. There are plenty
of sneakers that are not eight hundred dollars. I think
that's a choice. I wanted to interrogate my own viewpoint
on this, and I thought, have we ever talked about
a man's shoes in public life? And I came up
with two examples. One is the American politician Ronda Santis,
who wears cowboy boots that people believe have a bit
(41:03):
of a lift in them because cabobits are already slightly healed,
but people think that his were made be more healed.
And the other one is Jeff Bezos, pretty famously wears
lifts in his sneakers.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
A lift something that makes you taller.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
Yeah, exactly, because for men height, there's a big deal.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
Interesting. So you can look at men's sneakers, when men
wear sneakers in public, and if it seems like the
soul is a little bit taller than it normally is,
it may well be a lift.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
So when we interrogate men's shoes, we're doing it as
a way to interrogate something they apparently lack. And obviously
I'm not saying that short men lack anything, but in
their minds that they apparently lack. Whereas when we're interrogating
women's shoes, we're reading it as a bit of a
read on their character in a different way. What they have, Yeah,
you have, and how frivolous you are, and how much
(41:53):
it matters to you that your shoes are fancy and etc. Etc.
I've got another one. Rishi sunak So, the former British
Prime minister who was deeply unpopular and lost the election
in an absolute landslide. But he was once photographed wearing
Adidas sambas.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
I think I've got them on today, yes.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
And it got so picked up that he was wearing
these in a profile piece or whatever that he had
to apologize because he'd given added us Samber's a bad name,
and no one wanted to wear them anymore because they
were like, we don't want to wear Rishi's shoes, so
you know, maybe it does sometimes hit the man.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
And Rishie was famously wealthy, right.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
Yeah, Rishi soon a very wealthy man married to a
very wealthy woman. And it was one of the things
that was frequently used to criticize them was how could
they possibly understand what the average brick is going through
in this cost of living crisis and his choice to
wear Sambers, which, to your point, Jesse, are a bit expensive. Yeah, yeah,
they're not cheap cheap, but they're not eight hundred dollars expensive,
(42:49):
was seen as a bit of a deliberate play to
be in every Man as slightly cool every man out
louders Happy Monday. I hope you've enjoyed our show today.
We're obviously going to be back in your ears tomorrow.
A massive thanks as always to our talented team for
helping us put this together, and.
Speaker 3 (43:05):
Back to bron I actually want to send as well
the biggest shout out to woman named Lee who basically
this is a story right a year ago, Broun puts.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Her message in and she goes I'm in the Outluders.
Speaker 3 (43:17):
In the out Louders Facebook group, bron says it was
my birthday. No one wished me a happy birthday. No
one made a fuss. I'm the person who always makes
a fuss, and I'm feeling I feel petulant, but I
also just feel sad about this right And Lee was like,
you know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna put a
note my calendar to remind myself in a year to
wish this woman a happy birthday in the out Louders
(43:38):
And now, along with hundreds of others, they've all gone
happy Birthday.
Speaker 1 (43:42):
And I just think it's.
Speaker 3 (43:43):
A reminder that when the people in your life don't
hold you, the out Louders do, they are the head
to make a fuss. So look, the out Louders is
just the best place on the internet. We love it there.
Thank you so much, Lee.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Happy birthday, Braun.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
We want to make a fuss about the out Louders
who take it upon themselves to just because there have
been outrageous acts of kindness in that group, and I
would love a name for it so that we can
just acknowledge there is no one more generous, helpful, than
the outlouders in that group, So jump in and tell
us what we should call it, and whatever it is,
whatever the award is Lee want it for this week.
(44:19):
Bye bye. Shout out to any Mum and me A
subscribers listening. If you love the show and you want
to support us, subscribing to MoMA Mia is the very
best way to do so. There's a link in the
episode description.
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