November 5, 2025 • 44 mins
So there's a young, handsome man who's suddenly all over our feeds. Some people say he's going to save America. Others say he's just a very good example of how charisma is the only thing that matters in a politician for the digital age. All we want to know about Zohran Mamdani is: What does he want from us?
Also, Reese Witherspoon says the reason we're so bad at dating these days is because we're not watching rom-coms any more. Jessie, Amelia and Holly unpack some of the helpful dating tips they've got from rom-coms and ask: Were we really better at talking to each other in the Sweet Home Alabama era?
And, 'smellmaxxing' and its unknowable limits. Now that your average 14-year-old boy has his own 'fragrance wardrobe' and we've all very much accepted that we stink, it was only a matter of time until there was a deodorant for everywhere, including 'down there'. But... do any of us remember what a human smells like any more?
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Watch Mamamia Out Loud:
What to read:
- A heist at the Louvre. Missing jewels. And a getaway straight out of a film.
- There's a formula for charisma. With two things you can own any room.
- 'Nobody wants to have fun anymore.' The decline of the mid-budget rom-com.
- Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston have taken the old-school movie star approach to launching new boyfriends.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Hello and welcome to Mama Mia out Loud. It's what
women are talking about on Wednesday, the fifth of November.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
I am hollywayn Might, I'm Amelia Lester, and.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
I'm Jesse Stevens.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
And what's made our agenda for today? Well, there's an
American man that I had never heard of, but who
is in the last couple of days, absolutely everywhere I look,
So who is he? And what does he want from us?
Amelia knows?
Speaker 1 (00:41):
And what happened to all the rom coms? Is that
why we're bad at dating now? Because there are no
rom comms anymore. Bruce Witherspoon has a theory.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
And the deodorant ad that made me feel very weird?
Why is everyone so obsessed with smell? Right?
Speaker 1 (00:56):
But first, in case you missed it, four suspects have
been arrested in the Louver heist which transfixed the world recently.
Did you see the photo?
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Did I see marg Shotz? I was gonna ask I
saw them circular.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
They were very handsome.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
They are not the felons in question. They are previous
hot felons. Sorry to burst the bubble. It was nice
to imagine, no word on the jewels and where they are.
But police are definitely playing bad cop with these suspects.
They are making clear that they were not exactly criminal masterminds,
and they are dismissing them as petty thieves, which I
know is a phrase that sounds so much more amazing
(01:30):
when said in French. Unfortunately, for the Louver, the people
in charge of the security systems, they were also not
exactly operating at an elite level. A report in the
French newspaper Liberacion do you like that accent? Thank you,
reports that the password on the Louver's video surveillance system,
(01:51):
the video surveillance system which went down briefly during the heist,
that password was Louver. And all I can say is,
at least it wasn't password you know.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Me My first guess I think that you just know
that whoever was made the password got to the you know,
come on, what's password? They looked up, they saw the
Louver and they went, that'll do it. Now. They did
use the capital, which I think was probably part of
the rules, but I would bet any money that it
has now been changed to love one exam just as
(02:26):
a little special character need to make it a bit harder.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
They need to employ some teenage boys. My son's really
good at changing passwords to things I can't guess, like,
really good at it. He would never make such a
rookie mistake.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Politely, though, Billy, I don't want access to any of
your You have no money, you have nothing interesting though.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
He just wants to hide.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Do you feel like the computers are getting more bossy
with us about passwords? Like lately, I've been having this
situation where it will just very rudely reject the password
that I have been using for everything for the last
six years of my life, and it says, oh, it
has to have special characters, it has to have more
letters in it. I mean, they're so bossy.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Does anyone use a special character that isn't an exclamation?
Speaker 4 (03:07):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Such a good question.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
I tell you that you might happen to like the
place I'm keeping all my Crown jewels.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Recently, I was tapped on the shoulder and told Jesse
there's been a data breach and you are the only
one in the whole company, And they said, you've got
to change your password, and probably if you know, if
you've used that password for another account, I would change it.
Four hours later, I was like, going through every account,
how do I change it slightly so that I am
(03:33):
not in a situation like this?
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Love, There's a man who is suddenly all over my
Instagram and not only mine. To give you a little
behind the scenes glimpse into the way out loud works,
our friend Emily Vernham jumped into our slack channel, which
is where we like put all our links for things
we want to discuss, and then we whittled them down,
and she had written basic bitch news pitch. This sexy
(03:59):
politician is all over my social feeds. What does he
want from me? She was talking about Zoran Ma Danni,
the man who is suddenly all over my feeds too,
along with his unofficial theme song which I'm about to
play you.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
The name is mom Dannie M.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
The name is.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Mom Dannie M.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
You should learn how to say it M.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
He should learn how to say it.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Is that his voice so he's actually singing that.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
What he did is he said it at a debate
where his opponent kept like mispronouncing his name and mispronouncing
his name. So he said it, and he said, and
you should learn how to say it. Because he was
about to say, because I'm going to be your mayor,
and he pulled himself back from the edge, and then
they've taken it and put it on honestly the ICONICYI Anyway,
the reason I know all this when I literally had
(04:57):
never seen this man before the last forty eight hours,
it's because of the invasion of my internet. Emilia Lester,
you know who he is. Tell us about Zorah mum
Dani and why we all need to know.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
So by the time you're listening to this out lauders,
and unless something very unexpected has happened, Zauren mum Danny
will be the new mayor of New York City, and
there's a lot of notable things about him. He is
going to be the youngest mayor in over a century.
He's thirty four. He will be New York's first Muslim mayor.
And he's also excited young people, not just in New
(05:33):
York but also across the United States and also the
world in a way that we haven't seen since maybe
Barack Obama. That's how big it is.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Some of the commentary that I saw probably a few
months ago actually when he appeared on the scene.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Are you cooling, Yeah? I am.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
I don't know where you've been. But I was saying
his I'm going to say a beautiful face, and that
caught my attention, and some commentary said, this is the
sort of Democrats answer to Trump. This is how you
beat Trump. This man, what do they mean by that?
Speaker 1 (06:04):
I think that we just haven't seen this level of
enthusias him in a really long time. I'm going to
put a dampener on this and say that New York
City is not America. It is very liberal. It's got
a very different voting population to the rest of America.
And Zoran is a Democratic socialist. He's very left wing,
so it's kind of unlikely he's going to take the
(06:26):
whole country by storm. But what I've taken away from
this is that charisma is still really important, arguably more
important than it's ever been for politicians. This man is
good looking, he has kind eyes, He is great on
social media. Here, just as an example, listen to this
ad that he made to play during The Golden Bachelor,
(06:48):
and keep in mind that as he's speaking here, he
is walking towards the camera holding a rose.
Speaker 4 (06:56):
You deserve better, You deserve to be able to raise
your family. Here, to be safe to travel where you
need to free of costs and worry. You deserve someone
who as hard as you do, who thinks about you
every second of the day. That's the kind of mayor
I promised to be New York.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
Will you accept this Russ paid for by Zoron for NYC.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
He that completely gets me.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Exceptionally good at social media because in the last twenty
four hours, when I've done this deep dive, I've seen
him do that. I've also seen him do a million
kind of questionnaires with influences on the streets of New York.
I've seen him at night, I've seen him in the morning.
I've seen him like he totally gets the twenty four
to seven, always on, jump on a trend's social media stuff, right?
Is that a large part of why people are saying
(07:45):
this is what you need to be now? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (07:47):
I think so. But there are lots of politicians you
post a lot on social media and people are not
sending like the emoji with the love hearts about them,
Like JD Vanntce, the Vice President. He's big on social media.
I don't think anyone's like wanting to hear him play
The Golden Bachelor anytime soon. I've got a question for
the group, because obviously his agenda has really excited a
(08:09):
lot of young progressives. We're not going to talk about
his policy positions here. The question I want to ask
is is charisma just being good looking?
Speaker 3 (08:18):
No, there's something else. There's this confidence that he has.
He's obviously incredibly articulate, but I think that the charisma
in this context also comes from being what feels like
anti establishment, whether it is or it isn't. He feels
like a rebel, which is what probably, you know, the
(08:38):
climate in the US wants right now. It's funny though,
because it's like, do you need that to be a leader,
Because when we look at politicians in Australia charisma. We
actually had a conversation about this recently and Jackie Lamby
came up where people go, she's got charisma.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
And I got in a lot of trouble for saying,
and I stand by it that Barnaby Joyce has charisma.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Well he's a character, isn't he. Yah, And there are
a lot of successful politicians in Australia who I wouldn't
say have charisma. So I wonder if we are because
of the social media age, do politicians need to be
creators now, like first and foremost almost influences.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
They either do or they need some people on their
team who they work very closely with and trust very
much who do know how to do that. But back
to the charisma point, because we had this discussion is
charisma just good looking a while ago when we were
unpacking that and saying no, because Donald Trump has charisma.
And the thing is is if you hate the people
whose names I'm saying, then you're saying to your phone
(09:39):
right now, no he doesn't, No, he doesn't. But if
you ask yourself the question of why in an attention
economy we are always looking at these people and listening
to these people and talking about these people, it is
in part because they have a lot of charisma. And
I was thinking about it and thinking that I think
maybe what charisma is, and it's a very hard thing
to harness, is that you want to watch them and
(10:01):
listen to them whatever they're saying, even if you don't agree.
You know what I mean. Age you hear people say
I'd watch that person read the phone book or whatever
they say, those kind of things like there are some
people who have a watchability and a listenability that it
didn't used to matter so much when we didn't filter
everything through our phones and basically through video, but now
(10:23):
we do. You have got to get attention, and if
you are really astley, it's not fair to say dull,
because I don't think the opposite of charismatic is dull.
I think there are lots of very smart, articulate people
who aren't charismatic. But it's like it has to be
the thing now to get attention, don't you think, Well.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
But does it? Because does Anthony Albanesi have charisma? He's
very successful as a politician.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Very good question, because Jesse, do you think Albanesi has charisma?
Speaker 3 (10:52):
You know, I saw a glimpse of it recently when
he was at a round table with Trump and there
was the comment about who made the mean tweet about
him and he kind of had this funny look at
Kevin Rudd and I saw him deal with that in
quite a natural or thing then tick away and I
have found some of his appearances there to be charismatic.
Maybe maybe his personality is part of it.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
I think that that moment with Trump was so telling
because that could have been one of the worst moments
of Anthony Albanese's life So high Stakes. A Sky News
reporter from Australia wants to stir up some shit and
he says to Donald Trump, do you know that the
guy that Anthony albanezeis sent to Washington to be your
ambassador said terrible things about you? And instead of freaking out,
(11:38):
instead of starting to sort of give excuses and sort
of hesitate and make explanations up, he just sat there
and he grinned, and he seemed to be having a
good time. He seemed comfortable in his own skin, and
he seemed to be enjoying himself. And I'm starting to
wonder if, in this day and age, when the news
is so bleak and dark and serious, whether we kind
(12:01):
of want politicians who seem to be not hating every moment.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
That's so interesting you say that, Amili, because when I
was doing my mum Dani deep dive today, there are
a million pieces on the internet, as I discovered in
the last twelve hours, and I'm like, you are quite
like today Holly, about the lessons he can teach us
all about leadership all across this man, Yes, very much,
(12:26):
but this is very interesting. One of the pieces said
he has a happy warrior spirit, serious about the fight,
light on bitterness, confident that persuasion is still possible. And
that is what you were just describing. Then, is this
he leans into beef, which I think is something that
an older generation. I'm going to generalize enormously, but gen
(12:46):
xes don't like that. I don't like that. Right, But
he leans into beef, but not in a mean way,
in a kind of I'll go to Fox News, I'll
talk to my opponents. But he's got a lightness about
him as he's dealing with very heavy things. Do we
like that?
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Yes? And let's listen to a clip of when he
got asked about something Donald Trump had said about him
just recently in the last couple of days.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
Assemblymen, any response to President Trump saying he's better looking
than you?
Speaker 1 (13:13):
I think we have not.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
My focus is on the cost of living crass.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
He just grins, he laughs, and he keeps walking.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
And he stays on message. This brings us to the
thorny issue of whether or not women are allowed to
have this kind of charisma and leadership right because Kamala
Harris has been everywhere in the last couple of weeks
promoting her memoir you know, I played that jaunty tune
at the beginning. Remember how hard we all tried to
make that happen with Kamala, the dancing videos, bratt and
(13:41):
all that stuff, and it just didn't quite work. On
the list of most charismatic leaders in the world, there
are only two women that I have seen, and to
be fair, we have to make it clear that there
are far fewer women in leadership roles. We haven't got
as many versions of leadership to dissect when it comes
to women. But one of them is just Cindra Adun Yeah,
no question. Angela Merkle was also on that list, right,
(14:03):
two very different kinds of women with very different leadership stuff.
Have we figured out what kind of charisma we like
in women and why Kamala was deemed to not have it,
even though on paper she was very cool, young, you know,
like engaged.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Some of the analysis I read was that something about
this campaign has been incredibly organic, and I think especially
gen Z and millennial audiences can see straight through strategy,
so they can really see Harris. When you look back
at her campaign, there were parts of it that felt
(14:39):
so forced because they knew they had to harness the
you know, young people vote, and they went ran really
hard at TikTok and they wanted, you know, lots of
people to come out and endorse her, and some of
that felt a bit contrived, I think, whereas this just
has seemed and maybe it's because he's had a longer
(15:00):
run up. I think that probably has a lot to
answer for. But every YouTube channel, to something on Twitch,
to something on blah, like he's not just doing call
her daddy, He's not even doing that, he's there, does
seem to be something more organic about his identity on
sorche So, if you've.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Got a charismatic candidate, was we discussed you go your
charismatic people like to watch you. Let's put you everywhere
we can where people can watch you do stuff.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
The thing that concerns me is that we're sort of
coalescing around a twenty twenty five definition of charisma, which
says that you have to be a happy warrior. You
have to look like you're having fun, you have to
be natural, you have to be quote unquote authentic and hot.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Ideally not necessarily, but it helps.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Yeah, And what concerns me is that women are not
granted permission to be jocular happy warriors, casual whatever, like
go with the flow. In fact, Camera and Hillary Clinton
both were criticized for guess what, they're laugh They're not
even allowed to laugh for a Zoran is always laughing. Yeah,
(16:07):
And what does that mean for women in the public eye?
Speaker 3 (16:10):
And the way that he is also afforded grace when
it comes to conflict, which women are. I mean, if
you learnt into conflict as a woman, then you would
be called a bitch. So the difficulty with charisma is
that in defining it, it's all about a vibe, it's
all about a feeling, but it is incredibly gendered. I mean,
what's exciting is that this is a man from a
diverse background, which.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Is in terms of he's an immigrant.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
He's an immigrant and a Muslim man who looks different
to any man that New York has ever seen. So
the fact that he has been able to kind of,
I don't know, create this cult of personality is really refreshing.
But I don't think we can pretend like charisma hasn't
historically always been reserved.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
He has charisma. Ac has bags of charisma.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
And she's got the happy warrior thing, which is true.
Kamala was people said she was a lunatic because she
laughed so much.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
It came up.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Again and again, this idea that she almost seemed unhinged.
Is there anyone in Australia who's happy warrior? Who's warrior?
Speaker 3 (17:08):
I think Jackie Lamby. You know, you don't have to
agree with all her politics, but she definitely courts attention
and I think that that is due to some charisma.
But I wonder if you know, maybe the misstep of
Harris was that there were a lot of influencers who
went and endorsed her. And there's all this controversy about
whether we won our celebrities, or our lifestyle influences or
(17:30):
our pop culture podcast to tell us who to vote for. Like,
that's a question that I still don't think has been answered.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
I think it's been answered and the answer.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
No, Okay, So if we don't, I think that this
is the next logical step, which is that the politician
must become the influence.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Yes, that's so true in a moment. If we just
watched more rom coms, then apparently we'd be better at dating,
says the Queen of the rom com Reese Witherspoon. Knows
why we're all so bad at dating now it's because
of the decline of the romantic common Let's hear her theory.
(18:08):
She's talking to my mate Dax Shepherd on Armchair Expert.
Speaker 5 (18:11):
Do you know how there's been like the past ten years,
even I would even say past fifteen years, is decline
in like the making of rom coms or like legitimate
big movie stars being in rom coms in Blockbuster. Yeah, yeah,
I think it's not just rom com movies. But I
also think the rom com television show, the television show
that you watched when you were eleven, twelve, and thirteen
(18:34):
that made you practice, like imagine and visualized dating skills. Okay,
I like that girl. I'm gonna ask her out. Oh
what she says?
Speaker 4 (18:44):
No?
Speaker 5 (18:44):
Okay, Well, my favorite character in the television show did that.
Everybody hates Chris and he Chris asked out the hot
girl and she said no, But the other girl she
really likes him, and he can't tell. Social media started
and then we stopped. We started kind of going rom
coms are cringey, But it was actually where we learned
social dynamics from Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
I'm talking on the phone, can talk on the phone.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Now, No, I don't think any witty.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Banter, Yeah, oh, witty banter before we decide if we
agree with this or not. She's definitely giving Reese's giving
peak gen X nostalgia with this. I am that fuck
with who's always throwing in when Harry met Sally references
references to my friends when they want dailing advice, and
(19:28):
Reese ages us.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
To start to move on.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Jesse, do you agree with this rom com dating theory?
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Look on the surface. I listened to this clip and went,
do I agree with your premise? Because yes, while there
has been a decline in Blockbuster, go to the movies,
watch when Harry met Sally that experience the summer, I
turned pretty nobody wants this biggest show to the year, right,
And the movie I went to see at the movies
this year I think was Bridget Jones. I think I
(19:58):
was alone in that.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
But it's not really a rom com.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
I know, but and also, having had to suffer through
some summer out an pretty no offense to everyone who
loves it.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
There's no common there's a lot of rocks, but nobody
wants it.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
I take your point, but that is almost a reaction
to the decline of the rom comms, right, because the
rom coms declined and now people are trying to bring
them back.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
Yes, and apparently this is a studied phenomenon that in
two thousand and three or whatever, the top ten movies
were just all you couldn't name, and we would have
seen all of them, all of them that were at
the box office. Everyone was watching rom coms. And then
something Happened was.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
The plot of all of them. Sandra Bullock decides that
her career is in everything and falls into Ye was
a handsome man almost always.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
And then there was a Julia Roberts, and there was
a Hugh Grant, and there was a Kate Hudson, and
of course Catherine Heigel was in all of them. She
was and I enjoyed them. That's what I was going
to watch. I don't think we should over romanticize some
of the tropes in those films that were often fat phobic,
you know, exclusively hetero, that were about a man pursuing
(21:10):
a woman who said no, but he just kept pursuing.
Harry Mett Sally was about how manyamen can't be friends.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
The things I learned from rom coms, I learned that
the man I hate on site is the one.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Yes, you need drama, chaos and emotional pain.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
I learned there has to be an obstacle, and it
might be that that man is an absolute asshole, and
that maybe our marriage was miserable and that he didn't
support my career and we drank and Ford all the time.
But we should definitely get back together, because that's what
happens in sweetheime al Obama.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
And there might have been a few back and forth
witty lines, maybe you got three or four, but they
fell in love after looking at each other and having
twelve seconds under the set of sheets, Like it wasn't
really showing us how to fall in love. But I
think over the last twenty years a few things happened right.
The first thing is an economic story, is about blockbusters
(22:02):
and middle of the road films that are marvel. It's
not Marvel, we don't make it. The second is feminism
slash me Too, slash the bestial test. So there was
this thing of reappraising every movie about whether or not
it was feminist enough and gender ideals and all of that.
(22:24):
And then the third thing, and this is where Reese
is very right, is phones I don't know how you
tell a dating story in twenty twenty five without phones,
And I don't want to watch a movie that's just
about texting and calling and blood. The tension is very
and the stakes are very hard to play with when
(22:46):
everyone can be contacted at every month.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Let's not forget how many works of art we all
worshiped where basically the premise was I can't get this
person on the phone. There's a phone ringing in this house.
I might not have fring it, so they can't solve
this misunderstanding that might bring us all Londone. Now I
can get him. I can get him at any time, Amelia.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Interesting that Reyese mentioned social media. So I agree with
all those explanations you gave, Jesse, but Reese sort of
pins it on social media, and I wonder why that is.
I wonder what makes rom coms antithetical to social media,
because this is something that I think millennials feel really
acutely too. Holly, you mentioned jen X, but I'm going
to point out that Disney films have gone through a
(23:29):
huge metamorphosis since we were growing up, Jesse. So in
the nineties and in the early two thousands, the big
Disney animated movies were always a romance like think of Aladdin,
think of Beauty and the Beast, think of The Little
Mermaidtails Milan. They were always a man and a woman, sadly,
always a heterosexual love story, fall in love and other
(23:52):
things happened in those movies, true, but they were fundamentally romances.
And then something happened to Disney Films.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
That noise, that was a ghost. That was Sally Sally,
missus Disney Films.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Where's.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Sorry out louders the ghost just a doubt to that conversation.
I agree, but she hasn't lost your train of thought.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
She sounded her plaintive. And then something happened in the
twenty tens and they became more about family trauma and drama.
Think of Encanto, think of wish and.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
And ste.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Film that is a film about family trauma. So this
is not my point. This is actually a point made
by the New York Times columnist Rosstout that he thinks
that's a bad thing. He thinks that in moving away
from the glorification of the love story is the ultimate story,
we have lost an ability to build more meaningful relationships
with each other. He points to the fact that surveys
(24:54):
show now that parents think that what is most important
for their kids is career satisfaction and financial security, not
finding someone to love. And in the nineteen nineties, those
survey results were flipped. We have seen the results of
the deprioritization of love and it is kind of sad.
I gotta admit it is.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
And it's chicken her egg, right. It's like, were we
deprioritizing it and therefore we wanted it less from our
films because we found it was just out of step
with our culture, or did our films and movies in
pop culture kind of shape that because the idea that
that's all you needed to be complete was never true.
There were a lot of things that told us that
(25:32):
weren't true. But there's something awfully nihilistic when you look
at the most watched Netflix shows of the year. I
was like, surely I'm going to find some rom comms
and nobody wants this was on it, But the rest
was incredibly dark.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
I know why Reese brought up social media, right, it's
to do with the cringe, because you know how the
example that she used was ask the girl out right.
Every high school romance movie, most rom comms especially if
they're set in a younger environment, are like, you've got
to ask somebody out, walk up to them, get all
your nerve together, ask the man. That is not a thing.
(26:10):
It is not a thing. Like in young people's world,
what do you mean? I mean that between dating apps
and social media and snapchat and messaging and all those things,
no one is walking up to the hot girl at
school and saying you want to go to prom with me.
That is not happening. So I think that what Reese
means when she was saying, like using that as an example,
(26:30):
it's like you were all just talking about the tropes
we grew up with that may or may not have
been helpful, and how we've all got to you know,
politically correct or whatever. I would point though we talked
about this on the show the other day, that there's
this deep satisfaction for romance that's coming from books, like
those romance books are going off. But back to what
(26:51):
the kids are doing when we were watching rom comy
kind of shows. They're watching everything on social and there
is no way they would subject themselves to the cringe
of walking up to someone and asking them out. So
Reese is saying, how are they learning how to deal
with rejection? How are they learning? And that yes, that
one that you know, I want to ask Amelia out.
Amelia doesn't want to go out with me, but guess what,
(27:12):
Jesse is just looking at me with these big puppy
dog guys going but Holly, ask me, ask me, you know,
that's what she said. That's all lost and how and
how people.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Know that the way to be your hottest self is
to simply take your glasses off and pull down your hair.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
I'm concerned and that always the hot one is mean
and always the plain one is nice, Like, how are
they not learning these tropes?
Speaker 3 (27:35):
There was another point about social media that made me
think that it's raised the monoculture.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
Right.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
So the idea is that when people went and saw
the traditional nineties rom com, that actually men and women
were going together, and that they were sitting in a cinema,
and that it was a defining moment date movies. It
was a date movie. Now there's this idea that men
are over here watching forty thousand hours of porn and
women are over here maybe watching the summer I turn.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Pretty, or reading their fairy books.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
And then they turn up on a date and there's an.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Issue that is so sad.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Although I don't know, there were lots of men going
to see maybe when Harry met Sally and those ones. Yes,
although the stories were heterosexual, they were kind of often
told from both perspectives. Yes, Sleepless in Seattle, when Harry
met Sally, those really classically even like you've got male
or whatever, they were told from the male and female perspective.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Then what happened I was reading this analysis that said,
then what happened was the story became about men dating
over here. So even if you think about like a
knocked up or like.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Oh remember that, and when it was always something possibly
hot girl doing like a cheerleading dance thing in her
undies and this schlubby guy was like.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
She likes me like that.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
And then there was sex in the city. So women
were talking to women, men were talking to men, And
now there's not a place that we talk about both.
And so there's this like we're speaking different languages on dates,
which I think is an interesting theory.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
And I hate to bring this up, but the other
story that made me think about this this week was
did you hear about the story about gooning? No, I'm
sorry but I need to tell you about this trend.
Apparently there is a trend amongst some young men online
to masturbate for hours on end to the point where
they enter a hallucinatory state. Now that's not very wrong,
(29:20):
calm friendly.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
That wasn't in any of the movie was.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
Talking in the analysis I read, it said when Harry
met Sally was about coming together, and now a lot
of what we consume is about coming alone. And I
was like, Oh, saddest ship I've ever read.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Come come back to us in a rom com. I
will gladly go and see you give up your high
powered legal career for a man with a truck in
Alabama once.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
Again, legally blonde, Sweet Home, Alabama eleven. We're ready for it.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Speaking of romance, I need to talk to you about
some of the weirdest shit I've seen them the internet lately,
and I cannot stop thinking about it.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
It's not about groooning.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
It's definitely not about that. I wish I didn't know that.
In the file of things I wish I didn't know
I saw on substack this week, and look this story
I'm about to tell you. It's a quick one, but
it illustrates how hard. People are trying to get attention
on substack and other social media and I get it again.
(30:25):
I've got a substack out loud as sign ups, so
I don't have to go on these leaks, please my God.
And anyway, I saw a performance artist called Harriet Richardson
had just got a new tattoo, a list of names
on her torso like a nice cursive font, very attractive tour.
So the list of names are of the mothers of
(30:45):
the men that she has slept with in her life.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
This is why we don't have rom coms.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
There are fourteen of them. They look very artistic. The
name of Vicky, Dawn, Linda, Diane, Maureen, like I just
there also such great can you explain why? So she
said that she thinks that sex is a very important thing.
So some of the men who's other's names are tattooed
on her body were one night stands, and some of
them were really serious relationships that lasted years. And she
(31:12):
says this is all of similar importance because this is
penetrative sex that she's being very specific about. It is
such an intimate act that she wanted this act of intimacy.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
I'm glad she's drawing boundaries like that it's important.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
I found myself getting really indignant about this, my fictionalized
adult son who has decided to sleep with an attractive
performance artist on the New York or London where Harriot's from.
And then suddenly, my name is her body and it's
got nothing to do. He chose to put his penis.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Have you ever seen Holly this worked up about anything.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
She doesn't understand art. I read this and went, I actually, reckon,
this is really clever. I think it's about the Madonna
ware dichotomy. Of course it is, And it's about how
the name of a mum for a man is sacred.
It's like she is permanent. She is the most important
person in their lives, but they don't see the woman
(32:11):
that they're having this transactional sex with where they walk
away and she's forgettable and blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Different species.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
Yeah, but it's like a different species. And so she,
I think, is trying to make a statement by having
their names there. That's like, I am of the same stuff.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
To find out the names of these men, some of
them she knew, like the ones she'd been related with.
She actually had a private investigator in London to go
and find two of them out, which she said she
found very satisfying because she didn't know them and she
wanted to be accurate because it was so important accurate.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
I've been trying to figure out ever since you told
me about the story why it makes you so upset,
because you don't often get upset about things. You're very
sexually liberated, you are unmarried, So I'm like, what is
going on? Why is Holly so upset? And I think
it's because it's sort of a perfect parental storm because
it involves tattoos, which you're just worried about for your kids,
(33:06):
like are they going to go out and get a
tattoo one night? And it involves sleeping with people, and
it involves thinking about your children sleeping with people.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
So it's just me, yes, yes, exactly.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Have anything to do with this, I reckon me. I
would love this. She would love it because she would
like to be involved. I don't mean that's actually that's weird, rabbit.
She likes to be involved.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
Generally, she's got main character energy and she's like, I
would just like to be acknowledged. After the break the
deodorant you're meant to put literally everywhere smell maxing frag
heads perfumesta. Why is the culture so invested in us
smelling really really good frag heads smell maxing? Why is
(33:54):
smell the sense of the moment? First, I want to
tell you about a weird experience I had yesterday because
I got off the train and I was going up
the escalator and everyone around me was pointing and like
kind of commenting it this ad on the walls. It
was like we were entombed in an ad. It was
just everywhere, right, and it was a deodorant ad, but
there were pictures of bottoms and feet and the word
(34:18):
balls was written in really big light, just stamped there,
and it was about this neur Ez owner deodorant which
is meant to be used everywhere. It says stay fresh everywhere,
spray or is it both? There are both. So this
has been accompanied by a Martha Stewart ad where she
(34:39):
talks you through deodorizing your thighs. That's where she starts
matha feet, breasts, and then she clarifies that yes, you
can use it down under right, and the product might
be amazing. It's important to flag here that on our podcast,
well you will have heard as well as many doctors
say pH levels vagina, self cleaning before we go spraying,
(35:03):
putting things, maybe chucking.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
It's like a self cleaning ovem.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
Yeah, exactly right, it's a self cleaning up.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
We're all oven self cleaning, by the way, because I've
never cleaned out, I've.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Never had a self cleaning of it, but I just
pretend that I do. This is similar or.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
I'm interested in It's not how often you clean your ovens,
but the cultural obsession with smell so body lotions. The
global fragrance market is the biggest it has ever been
and still growing. Deodorant market skyrocketing. What is going on here, Amelia,
what do you reckon?
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Well, as usual, it's gen Z's fault. Yeah, they are
obsessed with fragrance, and not in the way that Look
when I was growing up, which sprayed, our impulse body
spray and we got along with our days.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
Did you have Britney Spears?
Speaker 1 (35:47):
No, I had Spice Skills Limited Edition.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
The difference with gen Z is that they're into high
end fragrance. They're not just into the impulse And apparently
eighty three percent of gen Z wears fragrance as often
as three times a week. Fragrance, not impulse, body spray, fragrance.
They're taking that obsession with fragrance to a whole other level.
And this applies to both teenage boys, teenage girls, young men,
(36:10):
young women. And apparently TikTok is really key to what
happened here during the lockdown period of the pandemic. People
turn to TikTok for fragrance content. Now, Holly, you said
something interesting, which is, when you used to work in
women's magazines, this was a real dilemma for you.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
So it's really interesting that fragrance has become so enormous
on social media because this might be news to the
gooners amongst us. But you can't smell social media. You
can't smell your phone. And the thing is is that
when I worked in women's mags, you were always having
to write fragrance stories because there are a lot of
fragrance advertisers and it is so hard to make them
(36:51):
a interesting or be described the smell.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
It's like describing the taste of wine.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
It is, and I still I don't get it, Like
I don't think I've ever seen I love perfume. I
love it. I've never seen an ad for it and thought, hmm,
because I'm like, I need to smell it, I need
an IRL experience. But that is not what this generation
is experiencing. Because you've already mentioned this, but boys have
been really leading this. A lot of parents of teenage
(37:16):
boys will say that they have a fragrance wardrobe, which
is not a thing that was happening. And they came
for our serums, these pesky children. They came for our serums,
and they came for our face masks, and they're coming
for our expensive sense.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
And the experts do have a theory for this as
to why this started happening during COVID and also on TikTok,
and they say that it's about punctuating your day with
points of difference, because it's really hard these days to
tell what time of day it is because we're always
just looking at our phone screen. And so this theory
goes that people use fragrance to kind of tell themselves, Oh,
(37:52):
I'm going out to a party now, Oh I'm going
to work now, and they use the fragrance to sort
of delineate their day.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
COVID. I remember one of the first things I did
was by really expensive fragrance candle, and it was about
into that a moment of jaw. And we've talked about
a lipstick effect before, which is that when cost of
living is high, you get little things that bring you joy.
What's interesting here is that this is a two hundred
and fifty dollars perfume. It is not unusual. And what
(38:20):
they're finding is that it's not parents just handing over money.
It is a lot of teenagers with their first job,
saving for months and months for presents.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
So why do you think they love fragrance? Do you
think that theory of like defining times of day makes
sense or is it something else?
Speaker 3 (38:36):
Yes, I think it's also about self expression and a
marker of identity. And I wonder if the other part
of the story is something to do with hygiene. So
we know that deodorant didn't even exist until like the
early twentieth century, and they say that body odor was
invented when they had a solution to it, right, so
(38:57):
our nose has actually changed what we could smell. Then
it was popularized kind of mid twentieth century. Then fragrances
have come in and now literally every lotion I care
so much what my washing powder smells like all that
kind of stuff, haircare. All of that is about our
our noses, like almost evolving to be more sensitive that
(39:18):
our standard for smell is skyrocketing. Because that's what I
thought when I looked at these ads, I went, Oh,
you're creating new problems, Like I didn't know that I
needed to deodorize my back. I didn't know there was
an issue there.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
The unisex nature of this is interesting in that way too,
because famously it used to be that teenage boys were smelly, right,
that is the stereotype. Think about every stereotype of teenage
boys being smelly. Teenage boys bedrooms are smelly, their clothes
are smelly, their shoes are smelly. And I think that
maybe the marketing, in the same way that they've been
making women feel kind of disgusted by themselves and their
(39:53):
own natural bodily secretions for a long time now, we've
managed to also convince the boys of that. We've democratized
and spread out the disgust involved there, which is not
a bad thing necessarily, because there was some truth to
the fact that boys were smelly. But what's also interesting
is that as the fragrance of everything has climbed. There's
(40:14):
also like a status involved in rejecting it. I've had
before people arranging to come into a podcast interview request
that I wear no perfume and that the producer wears
no perfume, and that no one they'll have anything to
do with has any artificial sense on them, because it's
become kind of well, for a start, we know that
as your hormone shift, your reactions to smells can and
(40:37):
some people have migraines that are triggered by artificial sense,
they have certain allergies. They could say that they can
cause some kind of hormonal imbalances. The sort of people
who are very into clean beauty and clean everything are
obsessed with no fragrance. So it's almost like there's a
status in rejecting the fact that now everybody smells of
artificial fragrance.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
But also another interesting fact on that is that one
of our producers told us that in menopause, your senses
smell high, and you are interviewing people for me sometimes
and maybe these are literally women who are finding sense
increasingly unbearable.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
I think also it's people who might have autoimmunitions. Is
like there's a lot of people for whom scent is
very triggering, and also I think there's a way that
it also exerts a bit of control. I'm not saying
that about my own personal experience with people who've made
those requests, but it's almost exerting a bit of control
around your environment to control how it smells. Because smells
(41:37):
are triggering in some ways hormonally and health wise, but
they're also emotionally very triggering.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
Right.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
We all know how intensely we feel about smelling a perfume.
Speaker 3 (41:46):
That associates with a memory.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
He associates with a memory someone you loved, someone you dated,
someone you've lost, and how it can transport you. So
if we're living in this highly fragranced world that you're describing, Jesse,
it's like we're being assaulted all the time by things
we can't control. So I think there's a measure of
like almost status around being able to reject that everything's
fragrance free. And I don't want any of.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
That in my world, yes, but I also think that
the market is onto that. So the market is very
much I have had this when I was in my
early twenties, and I wondered if it was a life
stage thing, especially when you're going out, you're going on dates.
There's something very fun about the fragrance experience and working
out who you are. And I loved. That's what I
(42:29):
would spend. I would never buy design or anything except perfume.
Like I was obsessed, what was your favorite. I really
liked misty Or, which was quite a like a Florally one.
I had a Chanel one. Yes, Natalie Popmanway.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
I used to Wemyaki and oh there's a whole era
of my life. Yeah, I lived the little Animac and
smell it. I can put myself exactly in that.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
Space, exactly and now they sit there and I can't
pregnancy change that for me. I cannot. It actually changed
how every single thing smells. And so I went to
Esop the other day because I have been told that
they're not hormonally disruptive.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (43:04):
I'm not a doctor status, I don't know any of this.
But the details of the descriptions of that perfume and
the way it's sold is it won't assault people as
you walk past. It's your natural smell amplify.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
The best smelling person I ever met was the Melbourne
based founder of Esop He was a man I met
through work who I was interviewing, and I will always
remember that his breath smelled like Lily's.
Speaker 3 (43:32):
Do they sell that product? I want that product.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
Gosh, a massive thank you. Out Loud is that's all
we've got time for. On today's show. Remember you can
watch us on YouTube if you want to see a crininess.
We discuss some of the things we discussed today if
you're looking for something else to listen to. On yesterday's
subscriber episode, we discussed the fallout from Prince Andrew's banishment
and what it could mean for Prince Harry if Prince
(43:55):
William decides to follow suit.
Speaker 1 (43:58):
Okay, if you love out Loud, we also have a
sister show that I would love for you to come
and have a listen to. It's called Parenting out Loud.
It's where we bring you the week in parenting pop culture.
This week, Kiera Knightley bought one of our hosts to
tears talking about something that hit way too close to home.
And if your school group chats are heating up at
(44:18):
the end of the year, I have some controversial ground
rules for you. It's the same smart, interesting chat you
get here, just parenting, coded search, parenting out Loud, and
hip follow.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
You'll love it massive. Thank you also to our fabulous
team fail being has put this show together. We're going
to be back in your ears tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (44:36):
Bye, Momma.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land on which
we've recorded this podcast.
You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Hello and welcome to Mama Mia out Loud. It's what
women are talking about on Wednesday, the fifth of November.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
I am hollywayn Might, I'm Amelia Lester, and.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
I'm Jesse Stevens.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
And what's made our agenda for today? Well, there's an
American man that I had never heard of, but who
is in the last couple of days, absolutely everywhere I look,
So who is he? And what does he want from us?
Amelia knows?
Speaker 1 (00:41):
And what happened to all the rom coms? Is that
why we're bad at dating now? Because there are no
rom comms anymore. Bruce Witherspoon has a theory.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
And the deodorant ad that made me feel very weird?
Why is everyone so obsessed with smell? Right?
Speaker 1 (00:56):
But first, in case you missed it, four suspects have
been arrested in the Louver heist which transfixed the world recently.
Did you see the photo?
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Did I see marg Shotz? I was gonna ask I
saw them circular.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
They were very handsome.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
They are not the felons in question. They are previous
hot felons. Sorry to burst the bubble. It was nice
to imagine, no word on the jewels and where they are.
But police are definitely playing bad cop with these suspects.
They are making clear that they were not exactly criminal masterminds,
and they are dismissing them as petty thieves, which I
know is a phrase that sounds so much more amazing
(01:30):
when said in French. Unfortunately, for the Louver, the people
in charge of the security systems, they were also not
exactly operating at an elite level. A report in the
French newspaper Liberacion do you like that accent? Thank you,
reports that the password on the Louver's video surveillance system,
(01:51):
the video surveillance system which went down briefly during the heist,
that password was Louver. And all I can say is,
at least it wasn't password you know.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Me My first guess I think that you just know
that whoever was made the password got to the you know,
come on, what's password? They looked up, they saw the
Louver and they went, that'll do it. Now. They did
use the capital, which I think was probably part of
the rules, but I would bet any money that it
has now been changed to love one exam just as
(02:26):
a little special character need to make it a bit harder.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
They need to employ some teenage boys. My son's really
good at changing passwords to things I can't guess, like,
really good at it. He would never make such a
rookie mistake.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Politely, though, Billy, I don't want access to any of
your You have no money, you have nothing interesting though.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
He just wants to hide.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Do you feel like the computers are getting more bossy
with us about passwords? Like lately, I've been having this
situation where it will just very rudely reject the password
that I have been using for everything for the last
six years of my life, and it says, oh, it
has to have special characters, it has to have more
letters in it. I mean, they're so bossy.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Does anyone use a special character that isn't an exclamation?
Speaker 4 (03:07):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Such a good question.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
I tell you that you might happen to like the
place I'm keeping all my Crown jewels.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Recently, I was tapped on the shoulder and told Jesse
there's been a data breach and you are the only
one in the whole company, And they said, you've got
to change your password, and probably if you know, if
you've used that password for another account, I would change it.
Four hours later, I was like, going through every account,
how do I change it slightly so that I am
(03:33):
not in a situation like this?
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Love, There's a man who is suddenly all over my
Instagram and not only mine. To give you a little
behind the scenes glimpse into the way out loud works,
our friend Emily Vernham jumped into our slack channel, which
is where we like put all our links for things
we want to discuss, and then we whittled them down,
and she had written basic bitch news pitch. This sexy
(03:59):
politician is all over my social feeds. What does he
want from me? She was talking about Zoran Ma Danni,
the man who is suddenly all over my feeds too,
along with his unofficial theme song which I'm about to
play you.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
The name is mom Dannie M.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
The name is.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Mom Dannie M.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
You should learn how to say it M.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
He should learn how to say it.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Is that his voice so he's actually singing that.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
What he did is he said it at a debate
where his opponent kept like mispronouncing his name and mispronouncing
his name. So he said it, and he said, and
you should learn how to say it. Because he was
about to say, because I'm going to be your mayor,
and he pulled himself back from the edge, and then
they've taken it and put it on honestly the ICONICYI Anyway,
the reason I know all this when I literally had
(04:57):
never seen this man before the last forty eight hours,
it's because of the invasion of my internet. Emilia Lester,
you know who he is. Tell us about Zorah mum
Dani and why we all need to know.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
So by the time you're listening to this out lauders,
and unless something very unexpected has happened, Zauren mum Danny
will be the new mayor of New York City, and
there's a lot of notable things about him. He is
going to be the youngest mayor in over a century.
He's thirty four. He will be New York's first Muslim mayor.
And he's also excited young people, not just in New
(05:33):
York but also across the United States and also the
world in a way that we haven't seen since maybe
Barack Obama. That's how big it is.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Some of the commentary that I saw probably a few
months ago actually when he appeared on the scene.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Are you cooling, Yeah? I am.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
I don't know where you've been. But I was saying
his I'm going to say a beautiful face, and that
caught my attention, and some commentary said, this is the
sort of Democrats answer to Trump. This is how you
beat Trump. This man, what do they mean by that?
Speaker 1 (06:04):
I think that we just haven't seen this level of
enthusias him in a really long time. I'm going to
put a dampener on this and say that New York
City is not America. It is very liberal. It's got
a very different voting population to the rest of America.
And Zoran is a Democratic socialist. He's very left wing,
so it's kind of unlikely he's going to take the
(06:26):
whole country by storm. But what I've taken away from
this is that charisma is still really important, arguably more
important than it's ever been for politicians. This man is
good looking, he has kind eyes, He is great on
social media. Here, just as an example, listen to this
ad that he made to play during The Golden Bachelor,
(06:48):
and keep in mind that as he's speaking here, he
is walking towards the camera holding a rose.
Speaker 4 (06:56):
You deserve better, You deserve to be able to raise
your family. Here, to be safe to travel where you
need to free of costs and worry. You deserve someone
who as hard as you do, who thinks about you
every second of the day. That's the kind of mayor
I promised to be New York.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
Will you accept this Russ paid for by Zoron for NYC.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
He that completely gets me.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Exceptionally good at social media because in the last twenty
four hours, when I've done this deep dive, I've seen
him do that. I've also seen him do a million
kind of questionnaires with influences on the streets of New York.
I've seen him at night, I've seen him in the morning.
I've seen him like he totally gets the twenty four
to seven, always on, jump on a trend's social media stuff, right?
Is that a large part of why people are saying
(07:45):
this is what you need to be now? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (07:47):
I think so. But there are lots of politicians you
post a lot on social media and people are not
sending like the emoji with the love hearts about them,
Like JD Vanntce, the Vice President. He's big on social media.
I don't think anyone's like wanting to hear him play
The Golden Bachelor anytime soon. I've got a question for
the group, because obviously his agenda has really excited a
(08:09):
lot of young progressives. We're not going to talk about
his policy positions here. The question I want to ask
is is charisma just being good looking?
Speaker 3 (08:18):
No, there's something else. There's this confidence that he has.
He's obviously incredibly articulate, but I think that the charisma
in this context also comes from being what feels like
anti establishment, whether it is or it isn't. He feels
like a rebel, which is what probably, you know, the
(08:38):
climate in the US wants right now. It's funny though,
because it's like, do you need that to be a leader,
Because when we look at politicians in Australia charisma. We
actually had a conversation about this recently and Jackie Lamby
came up where people go, she's got charisma.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
And I got in a lot of trouble for saying,
and I stand by it that Barnaby Joyce has charisma.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Well he's a character, isn't he. Yah, And there are
a lot of successful politicians in Australia who I wouldn't
say have charisma. So I wonder if we are because
of the social media age, do politicians need to be
creators now, like first and foremost almost influences.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
They either do or they need some people on their
team who they work very closely with and trust very
much who do know how to do that. But back
to the charisma point, because we had this discussion is
charisma just good looking a while ago when we were
unpacking that and saying no, because Donald Trump has charisma.
And the thing is is if you hate the people
whose names I'm saying, then you're saying to your phone
(09:39):
right now, no he doesn't, No, he doesn't. But if
you ask yourself the question of why in an attention
economy we are always looking at these people and listening
to these people and talking about these people, it is
in part because they have a lot of charisma. And
I was thinking about it and thinking that I think
maybe what charisma is, and it's a very hard thing
to harness, is that you want to watch them and
(10:01):
listen to them whatever they're saying, even if you don't agree.
You know what I mean. Age you hear people say
I'd watch that person read the phone book or whatever
they say, those kind of things like there are some
people who have a watchability and a listenability that it
didn't used to matter so much when we didn't filter
everything through our phones and basically through video, but now
(10:23):
we do. You have got to get attention, and if
you are really astley, it's not fair to say dull,
because I don't think the opposite of charismatic is dull.
I think there are lots of very smart, articulate people
who aren't charismatic. But it's like it has to be
the thing now to get attention, don't you think, Well.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
But does it? Because does Anthony Albanesi have charisma? He's
very successful as a politician.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Very good question, because Jesse, do you think Albanesi has charisma?
Speaker 3 (10:52):
You know, I saw a glimpse of it recently when
he was at a round table with Trump and there
was the comment about who made the mean tweet about
him and he kind of had this funny look at
Kevin Rudd and I saw him deal with that in
quite a natural or thing then tick away and I
have found some of his appearances there to be charismatic.
Maybe maybe his personality is part of it.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
I think that that moment with Trump was so telling
because that could have been one of the worst moments
of Anthony Albanese's life So high Stakes. A Sky News
reporter from Australia wants to stir up some shit and
he says to Donald Trump, do you know that the
guy that Anthony albanezeis sent to Washington to be your
ambassador said terrible things about you? And instead of freaking out,
(11:38):
instead of starting to sort of give excuses and sort
of hesitate and make explanations up, he just sat there
and he grinned, and he seemed to be having a
good time. He seemed comfortable in his own skin, and
he seemed to be enjoying himself. And I'm starting to
wonder if, in this day and age, when the news
is so bleak and dark and serious, whether we kind
(12:01):
of want politicians who seem to be not hating every moment.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
That's so interesting you say that, Amili, because when I
was doing my mum Dani deep dive today, there are
a million pieces on the internet, as I discovered in
the last twelve hours, and I'm like, you are quite
like today Holly, about the lessons he can teach us
all about leadership all across this man, Yes, very much,
(12:26):
but this is very interesting. One of the pieces said
he has a happy warrior spirit, serious about the fight,
light on bitterness, confident that persuasion is still possible. And
that is what you were just describing. Then, is this
he leans into beef, which I think is something that
an older generation. I'm going to generalize enormously, but gen
(12:46):
xes don't like that. I don't like that. Right, But
he leans into beef, but not in a mean way,
in a kind of I'll go to Fox News, I'll
talk to my opponents. But he's got a lightness about
him as he's dealing with very heavy things. Do we
like that?
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Yes? And let's listen to a clip of when he
got asked about something Donald Trump had said about him
just recently in the last couple of days.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
Assemblymen, any response to President Trump saying he's better looking
than you?
Speaker 1 (13:13):
I think we have not.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
My focus is on the cost of living crass.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
He just grins, he laughs, and he keeps walking.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
And he stays on message. This brings us to the
thorny issue of whether or not women are allowed to
have this kind of charisma and leadership right because Kamala
Harris has been everywhere in the last couple of weeks
promoting her memoir you know, I played that jaunty tune
at the beginning. Remember how hard we all tried to
make that happen with Kamala, the dancing videos, bratt and
(13:41):
all that stuff, and it just didn't quite work. On
the list of most charismatic leaders in the world, there
are only two women that I have seen, and to
be fair, we have to make it clear that there
are far fewer women in leadership roles. We haven't got
as many versions of leadership to dissect when it comes
to women. But one of them is just Cindra Adun Yeah,
no question. Angela Merkle was also on that list, right,
(14:03):
two very different kinds of women with very different leadership stuff.
Have we figured out what kind of charisma we like
in women and why Kamala was deemed to not have it,
even though on paper she was very cool, young, you know,
like engaged.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Some of the analysis I read was that something about
this campaign has been incredibly organic, and I think especially
gen Z and millennial audiences can see straight through strategy,
so they can really see Harris. When you look back
at her campaign, there were parts of it that felt
(14:39):
so forced because they knew they had to harness the
you know, young people vote, and they went ran really
hard at TikTok and they wanted, you know, lots of
people to come out and endorse her, and some of
that felt a bit contrived, I think, whereas this just
has seemed and maybe it's because he's had a longer
(15:00):
run up. I think that probably has a lot to
answer for. But every YouTube channel, to something on Twitch,
to something on blah, like he's not just doing call
her daddy, He's not even doing that, he's there, does
seem to be something more organic about his identity on
sorche So, if you've.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Got a charismatic candidate, was we discussed you go your
charismatic people like to watch you. Let's put you everywhere
we can where people can watch you do stuff.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
The thing that concerns me is that we're sort of
coalescing around a twenty twenty five definition of charisma, which
says that you have to be a happy warrior. You
have to look like you're having fun, you have to
be natural, you have to be quote unquote authentic and hot.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Ideally not necessarily, but it helps.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Yeah, And what concerns me is that women are not
granted permission to be jocular happy warriors, casual whatever, like
go with the flow. In fact, Camera and Hillary Clinton
both were criticized for guess what, they're laugh They're not
even allowed to laugh for a Zoran is always laughing. Yeah,
(16:07):
And what does that mean for women in the public eye?
Speaker 3 (16:10):
And the way that he is also afforded grace when
it comes to conflict, which women are. I mean, if
you learnt into conflict as a woman, then you would
be called a bitch. So the difficulty with charisma is
that in defining it, it's all about a vibe, it's
all about a feeling, but it is incredibly gendered. I mean,
what's exciting is that this is a man from a
diverse background, which.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Is in terms of he's an immigrant.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
He's an immigrant and a Muslim man who looks different
to any man that New York has ever seen. So
the fact that he has been able to kind of,
I don't know, create this cult of personality is really refreshing.
But I don't think we can pretend like charisma hasn't
historically always been reserved.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
He has charisma. Ac has bags of charisma.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
And she's got the happy warrior thing, which is true.
Kamala was people said she was a lunatic because she
laughed so much.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
It came up.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Again and again, this idea that she almost seemed unhinged.
Is there anyone in Australia who's happy warrior? Who's warrior?
Speaker 3 (17:08):
I think Jackie Lamby. You know, you don't have to
agree with all her politics, but she definitely courts attention
and I think that that is due to some charisma.
But I wonder if you know, maybe the misstep of
Harris was that there were a lot of influencers who
went and endorsed her. And there's all this controversy about
whether we won our celebrities, or our lifestyle influences or
(17:30):
our pop culture podcast to tell us who to vote for. Like,
that's a question that I still don't think has been answered.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
I think it's been answered and the answer.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
No, Okay, So if we don't, I think that this
is the next logical step, which is that the politician
must become the influence.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Yes, that's so true in a moment. If we just
watched more rom coms, then apparently we'd be better at dating,
says the Queen of the rom com Reese Witherspoon. Knows
why we're all so bad at dating now it's because
of the decline of the romantic common Let's hear her theory.
(18:08):
She's talking to my mate Dax Shepherd on Armchair Expert.
Speaker 5 (18:11):
Do you know how there's been like the past ten years,
even I would even say past fifteen years, is decline
in like the making of rom coms or like legitimate
big movie stars being in rom coms in Blockbuster. Yeah, yeah,
I think it's not just rom com movies. But I
also think the rom com television show, the television show
that you watched when you were eleven, twelve, and thirteen
(18:34):
that made you practice, like imagine and visualized dating skills. Okay,
I like that girl. I'm gonna ask her out. Oh
what she says?
Speaker 4 (18:44):
No?
Speaker 5 (18:44):
Okay, Well, my favorite character in the television show did that.
Everybody hates Chris and he Chris asked out the hot
girl and she said no, But the other girl she
really likes him, and he can't tell. Social media started
and then we stopped. We started kind of going rom
coms are cringey, But it was actually where we learned
social dynamics from Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
I'm talking on the phone, can talk on the phone.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Now, No, I don't think any witty.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Banter, Yeah, oh, witty banter before we decide if we
agree with this or not. She's definitely giving Reese's giving
peak gen X nostalgia with this. I am that fuck
with who's always throwing in when Harry met Sally references
references to my friends when they want dailing advice, and
(19:28):
Reese ages us.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
To start to move on.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Jesse, do you agree with this rom com dating theory?
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Look on the surface. I listened to this clip and went,
do I agree with your premise? Because yes, while there
has been a decline in Blockbuster, go to the movies,
watch when Harry met Sally that experience the summer, I
turned pretty nobody wants this biggest show to the year, right,
And the movie I went to see at the movies
this year I think was Bridget Jones. I think I
(19:58):
was alone in that.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
But it's not really a rom com.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
I know, but and also, having had to suffer through
some summer out an pretty no offense to everyone who
loves it.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
There's no common there's a lot of rocks, but nobody
wants it.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
I take your point, but that is almost a reaction
to the decline of the rom comms, right, because the
rom coms declined and now people are trying to bring
them back.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
Yes, and apparently this is a studied phenomenon that in
two thousand and three or whatever, the top ten movies
were just all you couldn't name, and we would have
seen all of them, all of them that were at
the box office. Everyone was watching rom coms. And then
something Happened was.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
The plot of all of them. Sandra Bullock decides that
her career is in everything and falls into Ye was
a handsome man almost always.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
And then there was a Julia Roberts, and there was
a Hugh Grant, and there was a Kate Hudson, and
of course Catherine Heigel was in all of them. She
was and I enjoyed them. That's what I was going
to watch. I don't think we should over romanticize some
of the tropes in those films that were often fat phobic,
you know, exclusively hetero, that were about a man pursuing
(21:10):
a woman who said no, but he just kept pursuing.
Harry Mett Sally was about how manyamen can't be friends.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
The things I learned from rom coms, I learned that
the man I hate on site is the one.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Yes, you need drama, chaos and emotional pain.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
I learned there has to be an obstacle, and it
might be that that man is an absolute asshole, and
that maybe our marriage was miserable and that he didn't
support my career and we drank and Ford all the time.
But we should definitely get back together, because that's what
happens in sweetheime al Obama.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
And there might have been a few back and forth
witty lines, maybe you got three or four, but they
fell in love after looking at each other and having
twelve seconds under the set of sheets, Like it wasn't
really showing us how to fall in love. But I
think over the last twenty years a few things happened right.
The first thing is an economic story, is about blockbusters
(22:02):
and middle of the road films that are marvel. It's
not Marvel, we don't make it. The second is feminism
slash me Too, slash the bestial test. So there was
this thing of reappraising every movie about whether or not
it was feminist enough and gender ideals and all of that.
(22:24):
And then the third thing, and this is where Reese
is very right, is phones I don't know how you
tell a dating story in twenty twenty five without phones,
And I don't want to watch a movie that's just
about texting and calling and blood. The tension is very
and the stakes are very hard to play with when
(22:46):
everyone can be contacted at every month.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Let's not forget how many works of art we all
worshiped where basically the premise was I can't get this
person on the phone. There's a phone ringing in this house.
I might not have fring it, so they can't solve
this misunderstanding that might bring us all Londone. Now I
can get him. I can get him at any time, Amelia.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Interesting that Reyese mentioned social media. So I agree with
all those explanations you gave, Jesse, but Reese sort of
pins it on social media, and I wonder why that is.
I wonder what makes rom coms antithetical to social media,
because this is something that I think millennials feel really
acutely too. Holly, you mentioned jen X, but I'm going
to point out that Disney films have gone through a
(23:29):
huge metamorphosis since we were growing up, Jesse. So in
the nineties and in the early two thousands, the big
Disney animated movies were always a romance like think of Aladdin,
think of Beauty and the Beast, think of The Little
Mermaidtails Milan. They were always a man and a woman, sadly,
always a heterosexual love story, fall in love and other
(23:52):
things happened in those movies, true, but they were fundamentally romances.
And then something happened to Disney Films.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
That noise, that was a ghost. That was Sally Sally,
missus Disney Films.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Where's.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Sorry out louders the ghost just a doubt to that conversation.
I agree, but she hasn't lost your train of thought.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
She sounded her plaintive. And then something happened in the
twenty tens and they became more about family trauma and drama.
Think of Encanto, think of wish and.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
And ste.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Film that is a film about family trauma. So this
is not my point. This is actually a point made
by the New York Times columnist Rosstout that he thinks
that's a bad thing. He thinks that in moving away
from the glorification of the love story is the ultimate story,
we have lost an ability to build more meaningful relationships
with each other. He points to the fact that surveys
(24:54):
show now that parents think that what is most important
for their kids is career satisfaction and financial security, not
finding someone to love. And in the nineteen nineties, those
survey results were flipped. We have seen the results of
the deprioritization of love and it is kind of sad.
I gotta admit it is.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
And it's chicken her egg, right. It's like, were we
deprioritizing it and therefore we wanted it less from our
films because we found it was just out of step
with our culture, or did our films and movies in
pop culture kind of shape that because the idea that
that's all you needed to be complete was never true.
There were a lot of things that told us that
(25:32):
weren't true. But there's something awfully nihilistic when you look
at the most watched Netflix shows of the year. I
was like, surely I'm going to find some rom comms
and nobody wants this was on it, But the rest
was incredibly dark.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
I know why Reese brought up social media, right, it's
to do with the cringe, because you know how the
example that she used was ask the girl out right.
Every high school romance movie, most rom comms especially if
they're set in a younger environment, are like, you've got
to ask somebody out, walk up to them, get all
your nerve together, ask the man. That is not a thing.
(26:10):
It is not a thing. Like in young people's world,
what do you mean? I mean that between dating apps
and social media and snapchat and messaging and all those things,
no one is walking up to the hot girl at
school and saying you want to go to prom with me.
That is not happening. So I think that what Reese
means when she was saying, like using that as an example,
(26:30):
it's like you were all just talking about the tropes
we grew up with that may or may not have
been helpful, and how we've all got to you know,
politically correct or whatever. I would point though we talked
about this on the show the other day, that there's
this deep satisfaction for romance that's coming from books, like
those romance books are going off. But back to what
(26:51):
the kids are doing when we were watching rom comy
kind of shows. They're watching everything on social and there
is no way they would subject themselves to the cringe
of walking up to someone and asking them out. So
Reese is saying, how are they learning how to deal
with rejection? How are they learning? And that yes, that
one that you know, I want to ask Amelia out.
Amelia doesn't want to go out with me, but guess what,
(27:12):
Jesse is just looking at me with these big puppy
dog guys going but Holly, ask me, ask me, you know,
that's what she said. That's all lost and how and
how people.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Know that the way to be your hottest self is
to simply take your glasses off and pull down your hair.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
I'm concerned and that always the hot one is mean
and always the plain one is nice, Like, how are
they not learning these tropes?
Speaker 3 (27:35):
There was another point about social media that made me
think that it's raised the monoculture.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
Right.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
So the idea is that when people went and saw
the traditional nineties rom com, that actually men and women
were going together, and that they were sitting in a cinema,
and that it was a defining moment date movies. It
was a date movie. Now there's this idea that men
are over here watching forty thousand hours of porn and
women are over here maybe watching the summer I turn.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Pretty, or reading their fairy books.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
And then they turn up on a date and there's an.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Issue that is so sad.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Although I don't know, there were lots of men going
to see maybe when Harry met Sally and those ones. Yes,
although the stories were heterosexual, they were kind of often
told from both perspectives. Yes, Sleepless in Seattle, when Harry
met Sally, those really classically even like you've got male
or whatever, they were told from the male and female perspective.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Then what happened I was reading this analysis that said,
then what happened was the story became about men dating
over here. So even if you think about like a
knocked up or like.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Oh remember that, and when it was always something possibly
hot girl doing like a cheerleading dance thing in her
undies and this schlubby guy was like.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
She likes me like that.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
And then there was sex in the city. So women
were talking to women, men were talking to men, And
now there's not a place that we talk about both.
And so there's this like we're speaking different languages on dates,
which I think is an interesting theory.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
And I hate to bring this up, but the other
story that made me think about this this week was
did you hear about the story about gooning? No, I'm
sorry but I need to tell you about this trend.
Apparently there is a trend amongst some young men online
to masturbate for hours on end to the point where
they enter a hallucinatory state. Now that's not very wrong,
(29:20):
calm friendly.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
That wasn't in any of the movie was.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
Talking in the analysis I read, it said when Harry
met Sally was about coming together, and now a lot
of what we consume is about coming alone. And I
was like, Oh, saddest ship I've ever read.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Come come back to us in a rom com. I
will gladly go and see you give up your high
powered legal career for a man with a truck in
Alabama once.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
Again, legally blonde, Sweet Home, Alabama eleven. We're ready for it.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Speaking of romance, I need to talk to you about
some of the weirdest shit I've seen them the internet lately,
and I cannot stop thinking about it.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
It's not about groooning.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
It's definitely not about that. I wish I didn't know that.
In the file of things I wish I didn't know
I saw on substack this week, and look this story
I'm about to tell you. It's a quick one, but
it illustrates how hard. People are trying to get attention
on substack and other social media and I get it again.
(30:25):
I've got a substack out loud as sign ups, so
I don't have to go on these leaks, please my God.
And anyway, I saw a performance artist called Harriet Richardson
had just got a new tattoo, a list of names
on her torso like a nice cursive font, very attractive tour.
So the list of names are of the mothers of
(30:45):
the men that she has slept with in her life.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
This is why we don't have rom coms.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
There are fourteen of them. They look very artistic. The
name of Vicky, Dawn, Linda, Diane, Maureen, like I just
there also such great can you explain why? So she
said that she thinks that sex is a very important thing.
So some of the men who's other's names are tattooed
on her body were one night stands, and some of
them were really serious relationships that lasted years. And she
(31:12):
says this is all of similar importance because this is
penetrative sex that she's being very specific about. It is
such an intimate act that she wanted this act of intimacy.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
I'm glad she's drawing boundaries like that it's important.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
I found myself getting really indignant about this, my fictionalized
adult son who has decided to sleep with an attractive
performance artist on the New York or London where Harriot's from.
And then suddenly, my name is her body and it's
got nothing to do. He chose to put his penis.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Have you ever seen Holly this worked up about anything.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
She doesn't understand art. I read this and went, I actually, reckon,
this is really clever. I think it's about the Madonna
ware dichotomy. Of course it is, And it's about how
the name of a mum for a man is sacred.
It's like she is permanent. She is the most important
person in their lives, but they don't see the woman
(32:11):
that they're having this transactional sex with where they walk
away and she's forgettable and blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Different species.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
Yeah, but it's like a different species. And so she,
I think, is trying to make a statement by having
their names there. That's like, I am of the same stuff.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
To find out the names of these men, some of
them she knew, like the ones she'd been related with.
She actually had a private investigator in London to go
and find two of them out, which she said she
found very satisfying because she didn't know them and she
wanted to be accurate because it was so important accurate.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
I've been trying to figure out ever since you told
me about the story why it makes you so upset,
because you don't often get upset about things. You're very
sexually liberated, you are unmarried, So I'm like, what is
going on? Why is Holly so upset? And I think
it's because it's sort of a perfect parental storm because
it involves tattoos, which you're just worried about for your kids,
(33:06):
like are they going to go out and get a
tattoo one night? And it involves sleeping with people, and
it involves thinking about your children sleeping with people.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
So it's just me, yes, yes, exactly.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Have anything to do with this, I reckon me. I
would love this. She would love it because she would
like to be involved. I don't mean that's actually that's weird, rabbit.
She likes to be involved.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
Generally, she's got main character energy and she's like, I
would just like to be acknowledged. After the break the
deodorant you're meant to put literally everywhere smell maxing frag
heads perfumesta. Why is the culture so invested in us
smelling really really good frag heads smell maxing? Why is
(33:54):
smell the sense of the moment? First, I want to
tell you about a weird experience I had yesterday because
I got off the train and I was going up
the escalator and everyone around me was pointing and like
kind of commenting it this ad on the walls. It
was like we were entombed in an ad. It was
just everywhere, right, and it was a deodorant ad, but
there were pictures of bottoms and feet and the word
(34:18):
balls was written in really big light, just stamped there,
and it was about this neur Ez owner deodorant which
is meant to be used everywhere. It says stay fresh everywhere,
spray or is it both? There are both. So this
has been accompanied by a Martha Stewart ad where she
(34:39):
talks you through deodorizing your thighs. That's where she starts
matha feet, breasts, and then she clarifies that yes, you
can use it down under right, and the product might
be amazing. It's important to flag here that on our podcast,
well you will have heard as well as many doctors
say pH levels vagina, self cleaning before we go spraying,
(35:03):
putting things, maybe chucking.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
It's like a self cleaning ovem.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
Yeah, exactly right, it's a self cleaning up.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
We're all oven self cleaning, by the way, because I've
never cleaned out, I've.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Never had a self cleaning of it, but I just
pretend that I do. This is similar or.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
I'm interested in It's not how often you clean your ovens,
but the cultural obsession with smell so body lotions. The
global fragrance market is the biggest it has ever been
and still growing. Deodorant market skyrocketing. What is going on here, Amelia,
what do you reckon?
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Well, as usual, it's gen Z's fault. Yeah, they are
obsessed with fragrance, and not in the way that Look
when I was growing up, which sprayed, our impulse body
spray and we got along with our days.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
Did you have Britney Spears?
Speaker 1 (35:47):
No, I had Spice Skills Limited Edition.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
The difference with gen Z is that they're into high
end fragrance. They're not just into the impulse And apparently
eighty three percent of gen Z wears fragrance as often
as three times a week. Fragrance, not impulse, body spray, fragrance.
They're taking that obsession with fragrance to a whole other level.
And this applies to both teenage boys, teenage girls, young men,
(36:10):
young women. And apparently TikTok is really key to what
happened here during the lockdown period of the pandemic. People
turn to TikTok for fragrance content. Now, Holly, you said
something interesting, which is, when you used to work in
women's magazines, this was a real dilemma for you.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
So it's really interesting that fragrance has become so enormous
on social media because this might be news to the
gooners amongst us. But you can't smell social media. You
can't smell your phone. And the thing is is that
when I worked in women's mags, you were always having
to write fragrance stories because there are a lot of
fragrance advertisers and it is so hard to make them
(36:51):
a interesting or be described the smell.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
It's like describing the taste of wine.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
It is, and I still I don't get it, Like
I don't think I've ever seen I love perfume. I
love it. I've never seen an ad for it and thought, hmm,
because I'm like, I need to smell it, I need
an IRL experience. But that is not what this generation
is experiencing. Because you've already mentioned this, but boys have
been really leading this. A lot of parents of teenage
(37:16):
boys will say that they have a fragrance wardrobe, which
is not a thing that was happening. And they came
for our serums, these pesky children. They came for our serums,
and they came for our face masks, and they're coming
for our expensive sense.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
And the experts do have a theory for this as
to why this started happening during COVID and also on TikTok,
and they say that it's about punctuating your day with
points of difference, because it's really hard these days to
tell what time of day it is because we're always
just looking at our phone screen. And so this theory
goes that people use fragrance to kind of tell themselves, Oh,
(37:52):
I'm going out to a party now, Oh I'm going
to work now, and they use the fragrance to sort
of delineate their day.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
COVID. I remember one of the first things I did
was by really expensive fragrance candle, and it was about
into that a moment of jaw. And we've talked about
a lipstick effect before, which is that when cost of
living is high, you get little things that bring you joy.
What's interesting here is that this is a two hundred
and fifty dollars perfume. It is not unusual. And what
(38:20):
they're finding is that it's not parents just handing over money.
It is a lot of teenagers with their first job,
saving for months and months for presents.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
So why do you think they love fragrance? Do you
think that theory of like defining times of day makes
sense or is it something else?
Speaker 3 (38:36):
Yes, I think it's also about self expression and a
marker of identity. And I wonder if the other part
of the story is something to do with hygiene. So
we know that deodorant didn't even exist until like the
early twentieth century, and they say that body odor was
invented when they had a solution to it, right, so
(38:57):
our nose has actually changed what we could smell. Then
it was popularized kind of mid twentieth century. Then fragrances
have come in and now literally every lotion I care
so much what my washing powder smells like all that
kind of stuff, haircare. All of that is about our
our noses, like almost evolving to be more sensitive that
(39:18):
our standard for smell is skyrocketing. Because that's what I
thought when I looked at these ads, I went, Oh,
you're creating new problems, Like I didn't know that I
needed to deodorize my back. I didn't know there was
an issue there.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
The unisex nature of this is interesting in that way too,
because famously it used to be that teenage boys were smelly, right,
that is the stereotype. Think about every stereotype of teenage
boys being smelly. Teenage boys bedrooms are smelly, their clothes
are smelly, their shoes are smelly. And I think that
maybe the marketing, in the same way that they've been
making women feel kind of disgusted by themselves and their
(39:53):
own natural bodily secretions for a long time now, we've
managed to also convince the boys of that. We've democratized
and spread out the disgust involved there, which is not
a bad thing necessarily, because there was some truth to
the fact that boys were smelly. But what's also interesting
is that as the fragrance of everything has climbed. There's
(40:14):
also like a status involved in rejecting it. I've had
before people arranging to come into a podcast interview request
that I wear no perfume and that the producer wears
no perfume, and that no one they'll have anything to
do with has any artificial sense on them, because it's
become kind of well, for a start, we know that
as your hormone shift, your reactions to smells can and
(40:37):
some people have migraines that are triggered by artificial sense,
they have certain allergies. They could say that they can
cause some kind of hormonal imbalances. The sort of people
who are very into clean beauty and clean everything are
obsessed with no fragrance. So it's almost like there's a
status in rejecting the fact that now everybody smells of
artificial fragrance.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
But also another interesting fact on that is that one
of our producers told us that in menopause, your senses
smell high, and you are interviewing people for me sometimes
and maybe these are literally women who are finding sense
increasingly unbearable.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
I think also it's people who might have autoimmunitions. Is
like there's a lot of people for whom scent is
very triggering, and also I think there's a way that
it also exerts a bit of control. I'm not saying
that about my own personal experience with people who've made
those requests, but it's almost exerting a bit of control
around your environment to control how it smells. Because smells
(41:37):
are triggering in some ways hormonally and health wise, but
they're also emotionally very triggering.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
Right.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
We all know how intensely we feel about smelling a perfume.
Speaker 3 (41:46):
That associates with a memory.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
He associates with a memory someone you loved, someone you dated,
someone you've lost, and how it can transport you. So
if we're living in this highly fragranced world that you're describing, Jesse,
it's like we're being assaulted all the time by things
we can't control. So I think there's a measure of
like almost status around being able to reject that everything's
fragrance free. And I don't want any of.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
That in my world, yes, but I also think that
the market is onto that. So the market is very
much I have had this when I was in my
early twenties, and I wondered if it was a life
stage thing, especially when you're going out, you're going on dates.
There's something very fun about the fragrance experience and working
out who you are. And I loved. That's what I
(42:29):
would spend. I would never buy design or anything except perfume.
Like I was obsessed, what was your favorite. I really
liked misty Or, which was quite a like a Florally one.
I had a Chanel one. Yes, Natalie Popmanway.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
I used to Wemyaki and oh there's a whole era
of my life. Yeah, I lived the little Animac and
smell it. I can put myself exactly in that.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
Space, exactly and now they sit there and I can't
pregnancy change that for me. I cannot. It actually changed
how every single thing smells. And so I went to
Esop the other day because I have been told that
they're not hormonally disruptive.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (43:04):
I'm not a doctor status, I don't know any of this.
But the details of the descriptions of that perfume and
the way it's sold is it won't assault people as
you walk past. It's your natural smell amplify.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
The best smelling person I ever met was the Melbourne
based founder of Esop He was a man I met
through work who I was interviewing, and I will always
remember that his breath smelled like Lily's.
Speaker 3 (43:32):
Do they sell that product? I want that product.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
Gosh, a massive thank you. Out Loud is that's all
we've got time for. On today's show. Remember you can
watch us on YouTube if you want to see a crininess.
We discuss some of the things we discussed today if
you're looking for something else to listen to. On yesterday's
subscriber episode, we discussed the fallout from Prince Andrew's banishment
and what it could mean for Prince Harry if Prince
(43:55):
William decides to follow suit.
Speaker 1 (43:58):
Okay, if you love out Loud, we also have a
sister show that I would love for you to come
and have a listen to. It's called Parenting out Loud.
It's where we bring you the week in parenting pop culture.
This week, Kiera Knightley bought one of our hosts to
tears talking about something that hit way too close to home.
And if your school group chats are heating up at
(44:18):
the end of the year, I have some controversial ground
rules for you. It's the same smart, interesting chat you
get here, just parenting, coded search, parenting out Loud, and
hip follow.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
You'll love it massive. Thank you also to our fabulous
team fail being has put this show together. We're going
to be back in your ears tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (44:36):
Bye, Momma.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land on which
we've recorded this podcast.
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