April 26, 2025 • 51 mins
Today's Sunday Special is one we think you're going to love.
Mia Freedman has been in countless conversations with Holly Wainwright—on mics, off mics, in meetings, in texts. But she’s never been on MID. Until now.
In this episode, Holly kicks off Season Five with someone who knows her well, and who’s read something very personal—her brand new book, He Would Never.
It’s a story about the limits and power of female friendships, narcissistic love, and the tricky transitions from girlhood to teenagehood. And Mia had thoughts. Lots of them. For one - the teenage girls we were in the 90s are very different than the teenage girls of today.
This episode is about writing and ambition. Confidence and self-doubt. Teenage daughters and their teenage selves. It’s a conversation between two women the same age, but at different parenting stages.
At the end of this episode, Holly has a very special gift for you - so stick around, you don't want to miss it.
You can pre order Holly's book He Would Never here. And it's available in all good book stores from April 29th
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Share your feedback! Send us a voice message or email us at podcast@mamamia.com.au
Follow us on Instagram @MidbyMamamia or sign up to the MID newsletter, dropping weekly here.
Mamamia's new podcast BIZ is rewriting the rules of work with no generic advice - just real strategies from women who've actually been there. Listen here.
CREDITS:
Host: Holly Wainwright
Guest: Mia Freedman
Executive Producer: Naima Brown
Senior Producer: Grace Rouvray
Producer: Tahli Blackman
Audio Producer: Jacob Round
Mamamia acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on Hey out louders, I
am here with your Sunday special feed drop for Momma
Mia out Loud, and today we are dropping an episode
of mid Now. If you have never listened to mid
it is the other podcast that I host, and mid
(00:34):
is conversations for gen x women who are anything. But
We've had some kick ass guests on mid but this
week I've got one that I think you know very well,
one Mia Friedman. I've been trying to get her to
come on mid forages and she kept blanking me until
over the summer holidays I slipped her a copy of
my new book He Would Never, which is out on
Truestone all good bookshops, and she read it really quickly
(00:55):
and said, we need to talk about this on MID.
So I finally convinced her to come on, and we
talk about the book, but mostly we talk about teenagers
because there's a big theme and He Would Never about
that moment when girls slip from little girls into teenagers
and the gay of the world changes on them. Mia
and I talk about what we were like as teenagers,
the mistakes we made, the things we got up to,
(01:16):
and about being parents to teenage girls. And if you
hang around at the end of the interview, I read
an exclusive extract of he Would Never just for you.
So grab yourself a cup of sit down and enjoy
this Sunday special episode of Mid with Mia and I.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
It's that disconnect period in your daughter's life or your
own life. I'm sure we can all probably remember it
where you cross this rubicon from being a child in
the eyes of others to being you know, sexually available
(01:54):
or a source of sexual gratification for men. There's always
a disconnect because it always happens.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Earlier than you can see. You can see it. Hello,
I'm Holly Wainwright and I am Mid, Midlife, Mid Family,
Mid Mayhem. Welcome back to our show Mid Conversations for
gen X women who are anything. But This is our
first episode of a new season, and as you'll know
(02:20):
if you're a regular listener, it's starting a little differently
and that's because I've got something special for you later
at the end this season on Mid, we have got
gurus and health experts. I have nineties icons and household
names I have Melinda French Gates. Yes, we have carefully
planned every episode to bring you something that makes life
(02:42):
a little bit better, a great story, a very useful idea,
something to try, someone who reminds you of you. And today,
for the first episode of this new season of MID,
I have a friend. I think you know her. It's
Mia Friedman. If you listen to Mama Mia out loud,
you know that I spend a lot of time talking
(03:03):
to Mia, along with our beloved co host Jesse Stevens,
disagreeing with Mia quite a lot, laugh till I snort
with her, gossiping with her, setting the world to rights
with her. But I'd never asked her to be on
MID before, and the reason that I wanted to for
the first ep of season five was twofold. I wanted
to talk to her about my new book. It's called
(03:26):
He Would Never and it's out in a hot minute.
I nervously slipped Mia an early copy of it over
the summer holidays, and she immediately messaged me to say
she wanted to talk to me about it on MID
and not before. So I have been waiting nervously to
hear what she wants to tell me about it. But
also it's because of the themes of the book I
think they're going to resonate with you as listeners to
(03:48):
mid It's about the power and limitations of female friendships.
It's about narcissistic relationships. It's centered around a knoddy little mystery,
and it's about the sometimes confusing shift of little girls
into teenage ones. This is something that Mia and I
talk about off Mike a lot. She's the first person
(04:09):
I asked for parenting advice about teenagers, because although she
and I are exactly the same age, she had her
kids a lot younger than I did. She's a grandmother now,
for God's sake, so she's always a few big paces
ahead in lots of ways. Of course, So we talk
about guiding teenage daughters, and we also reflect on our
teenage selves, who appear to have existed in an entirely
(04:30):
different universe. What we got right, what we got wrong.
We talk about all of that, and we talk about
writing and ambition and confidence and friendship. But we start,
of course with me asking Mia a very bald question
about he would never and getting the kind of honest
answer I would only expect from the extraordinarily honest, funny, brilliant, generous,
(04:51):
mea Freedman, and don't forget to stay listening at the
end of this conversation for your surprise, Me and Friedman.
There's nothing like getting you in a studio and putting
in front of a mic and asking you, did you
like my book?
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Not really, I've read better. No, she's fucking loved it.
So what happened was you gave it to me, and
then I was away with Jesse, our third co host
and kind of like our little sister and friend on
out loud, and she read it first.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
And you and.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
I often get given books by friends and in some
ways they land and you just go, Okay, this is
a job because you know that your friend will be
very anxious and that you've got to read it, and
then you've got to obviously say nice things about it,
even if you don't really like it. And so then
(05:49):
Jesse started reading it first, and she was just like
she spent the whole weekend just like I just want
to I just want to go and finish hollybook. I
just all it's all I want to read, It's all
I want to think about. So I was like, okay,
this is a good sign. So when she was finished,
I started reading. And as soon as I started, I
(06:10):
realized why you had been such a nutcase for before,
because I said to Jesse, what's so good about it?
Because she's like, I'm just desperate to read it. I
just want to get back to it. I just want
to get back to it. Can you hold the baby?
I just want to get back to Holly's book? And
I'm like, what's so good about it? And she said,
she's gone to like she's gone up three levels. What's
(06:33):
she said? I understand why she's so stressed, because what
she's tried to do is extraordinary. She's thrown a lot
of balls in the air, and she's bitten off a lot,
and she's pulling it off.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
It must be tiresome for you to have to watch
me having a breakdown every time I write a book.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
That was a long answer to your off shot question.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
And thank you for all those lovely things say, because
Mia does have to watch listen watch me have a
breakdown every time I write it. Yeah, I have.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
It's just so funny because I don't write books anymore,
but all my friends do, including you and Jesse, who
took my closest friends and also Jesse's sister Claire Rece
wrote her first book. And you will have breakdowns in
very different ways. You will have complete breakdowns, but differently,
and you have different breakdowns from book to book. This one,
(07:23):
i've never seen you go so sort of the one
that you did before, which is a Couple Upstairs that
was quite dark, and when I read that, you went
quite dark and I understood You're like, you were really
insecure when you were writing that, which is interesting because
it was like going back to a time about an
emotionally abusive relationship and there were some dark themes in it.
(07:46):
With this one, it felt different. I felt like you
were like wrestling an alligator. Yeah, for a really long
period of time. And I've never been one of your readers.
You've never given it to me early, which I appreciate,
thank you.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
But it really would be a job.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
I know you have other readers, and I also know
that you didn't give it to them this time either,
and I yeah, it was just once I read the book,
I understood everything.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
It's funny because I told you this at the time,
because obviously we record together, you know, three five times
a week, so we see each other all the time.
And for years, I when I haven't really spoken about this,
but when I handed the first draft of this book in,
it got handed back to me like they were like,
you need it needs some more work.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
And you didn't tell me that at the time, because
I was really devastated. Yeah, and tell me why, Like
is that because every author, I mean, I know what
it's like to hand in a book and all you
want is no notes. It isn't that actually, well it's never.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Happened to me.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
But like then when you get it back and it's like,
here's all the things you need to do, that's always
the point at which I want to give back my
advance yes, and say I don't want to do it anymore.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
I want to do it. I think part of what
it was is and you know, we talk about this
a lot, but I always overestimate how what I can
do and how much I can do, you know what
I mean. I'm always like, it'll be fine.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
I mean the time it takes you to write, the
time it takes to write it, and the amount of
focus and energy that it takes to because the thing
is that most people write books and that's their job. Right,
But you write books as well as having a full
time job, yes, and doing one hundred other things. And
you know, lots of authors have kids, but most authors
don't also have another full time job.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
So I think that one of the if I learned
something through this book, and I'm sure I learned lots
of things, it was about that about trying to focus,
because I think what happened is when I handed it
in and I've been writing this book for like two years,
it is a big and complicated plot. We're not going
to go into the plot massively here. I want to
talk about some of the themes from it. But it's
a big and complicated plot that has lots of characters,
(09:48):
and it goes over a long period of time, so
there's a lot of moving parts, right, And I think
that I literally bid off more than I could chew
in the way that I normally work. Right. So when
I handed it in my very fabulous publisher, she pretty
much said to me, the last third feels rushed and
not like you have you know, you have and landed it.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Yeah, and did you secretly know that to share?
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Yeah, But I think that this is one of the
things that you really struggle with when you're writing. Is
you lose sight of your instinct anymore? Like is this good?
Or do I just not think it's good because I'm insecure,
blah blah blah.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Because also no one else it was just had been
in your head for so long, Like I remember when
you wrote some of your first books. I think you
talked about this book or this, the themes around this book,
this idea of a camping holiday with a group of friends.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Like years ago, eight years ago.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
I had been thinking about this plot and what to
do with this idea for a really long time, and
then it sort of came together when I sort of
tied it together with this thing about teenagers and teenage girls,
which I want us to talk about in a minute. Anyway,
I think I was really ambitious, So you know how
you said, And it's lovely to hear that. Jesse was like,
she's leveled up. I think I was ambitious and maybe
(11:06):
a bit off more than I could chew. How unlike
us to do that. So when anyway, when my publisher
confirmed that to me and she said, you need some
more time, you need some more focus. This book is
going to be good. It's going to be good, but
it's not quite good yet.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
And you probably had fronting, but you also probably hadn't
mapped out time in your diary to do that.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Like how did you write this book?
Speaker 3 (11:26):
I forget because you've written them in lots of different ways.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
You've taken stretchers off.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
To focus completely and try to write them in the
three month stretch. You've done like a day a week
for a year.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Tell me that.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
The way that I'm trying I try to work now is,
as you know, I stack my mam and mea work
at the front of the week generally speaking, where I'm
here and one hundred percent mama, mea world Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,
and then in theory Thursday, Friday and the weekend. Let's
be honest, is like more creative projects writing books at
(11:58):
other creative projects? Are that? And that's good in theory,
but have you ever known our lives to go exactly
like in the neat little blocks that we try and
put them in, do you know what I mean? So
it's kind of more everything kind of bleeds.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
Do you think in a perfect world you need to
just go I'm going to take four months or I'm
going to take three months and I'm like, almost like
Matt Leave, and I'm just going to focus on it.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
I think, yes, in a way. But then what I've
also come to know about myself, you know, the whole
introvert extrovert thing. Yeah, I think I love writing for
its solitude because I do quite like being alone. But
I'm not a pure introvert, like if I didn't have
the you know, also breaking it up with coming in
(12:40):
here and being with you guys and talking about it.
So you like the switching gear, I actually like that.
I don't know if it is brilliant for creative process,
but it's good for my mental space. I think if
I was just locked away with the manuscript for and
nothing else, I don't think that would suit me in
the way that I know some writers are very suited
to being purely alone.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
The part where your publisher said the last third feels
rushed is that because you underestimated how long it would
take you to write, or because you just were a
bit sick of it and you.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Just want to end it, Like why do you think that?
Speaker 2 (13:11):
I also think that what I've learned is I used
to say, you know how that fiction writers always say,
are you're a plotter or a panther. That's the thing
that so plotters are. You will have heard, like Jane
Harper talks about this, not that I'm comparing myself to her,
but you plot out exactly what's going to happen in
minuscule detail before you write the book, so you know
(13:32):
you've got everything, the.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Whole plot down, like saying, with all the stuff on the.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Every chapter is Matt, I feel like you used to
do that. Didn't you do that with postal? Well, I've
always done it with I do it in theory but
not in detail. Right, So then, because I'm also quite
like ideas come to you while you do it, you know,
like creative people, you're you'll be writing and you'll be
like this would be funny, or that'd be good or
so I resist that kind of structure to a point.
(13:58):
Your resist all kinds of struf I know, it's it's
one of my favorite. And I think that what I
learned on this book is I needed that. I really
needed that structure because this was trying to wrestle an alligator,
and because it was so big and broad and sprawling,
and I was trying to apply my usual kind of
She'll be right techniques to that last half that wasn't
(14:20):
wasn't going to work.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
How many characters are in it, and because it jumps,
it jumps.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Are five families and they and really the main characters
are Danny and liss unlockeye Well and Sadie. So there
are there are there are characters who are more major
than minor. But they've all got kids. And that's the
other thing is that, so they've all got kids. And
and the marriage various configurations of marriage. There are like
there's single parents, and there's a gay couple, and there's
(14:47):
you know, two conventionally married couples. And they all met
at Mother's Group. Which is something that did happen to
me in real life is I made good friends at
Mother's Group and we do actually go camping together every year.
They are very nervous about this book, I'm but obviously
the rest of it isn't and the thing that then,
so that is a lot to juggle and I did
learn that I do have to basically be much more structured.
(15:09):
So when I rewrote the last third, and obviously I
ended up rewriting quite a lot of it, then I
did really plan it out in meticulous detail like I gave.
I listened to the feedback about the structure. Editors are
always right, like we talk about this a lot. Mea
that you often, as you climb a tree in a
creative field, people give you fewer and fewer notes.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Yeah, which is terrible.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Yeah, you need more notes. Whether you're like Mike White
making the White load us for like he's got four
hours of deleted scenes on the floor. Not that I'm
again comparing myself to him, or whether you're writing a book,
or whether you're conducting an interview, like you need other
people to be able to say to you.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Oh yeah, I keep doing that saying I'm not comparing
myself to don't happen. I'm not comparing myself to Mike White.
You're a best selling author, this is what your fifth book,
sixth book. Like, you're a big fucking deal, Hollywayne, right, Like.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Stop and I don't feel like a big deal. When
we come back, Mea and I discuss our own coming
of age stories and that tricky, sticky timeween being a
little kid and being a woman.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Do you still wear the title author a little?
Speaker 2 (16:20):
I think I'm getting more comfortable in it, but it's
really funny how intimidating that feels, that word, And I
think it's because the literary scene, as it were, is
a very compartmentalized thing. The other thing I wanted to
say is, as you know very well, I didn't start
(16:41):
writing books till I was in my forties, right, And
it was literally the thing I most wanted to do
when I was a little girl. We're about to talk
about being teenagers, but if there was a teenage Holly
who had a dream of what she wanted, I was like,
I'm going to be a writer. But I wasn't a writer,
you know. I mean, I was lots of other things.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
But you said you always like when you were a kid,
you would write stories, and way I.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Used to keep I used to write in these notebooks,
these really convoluted stories about me and all my friends,
and we were all dating different members Juran Juran oh.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Fanfic before there was Away.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
Exactly, I was dating Simon or the BOTMB loved it
because you're a main character.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Because that was the main character. And I used to
go into school in the mornings and literally get my
friends to sit down and we'd all read and I'd
read to them about what happened, and then they'd be like,
well why would Then then it was there was drama,
and then when there was going to be a sex
scene because obviously I couldn't really write sex scenes then
because I.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Was kissing though kissing.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
I'd be like, and then dot dot dot pause and
fade to black.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Oh well I was doing that. Then how old were
you when you were doing that?
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Like twelve eleven and twelve like young?
Speaker 1 (17:49):
And I was writing bad poetry.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Yeah, it's I think it's an age, isn't it Like?
And the thing that's mortifying is that we were filling
notebooks with that stuff. But now people are feeling, well,
if people are doing it, well they're making tiktoks. Yeah
they are, That's exactly what they're doing, and they'll and
then ten minutes later they're mortified by them. Anyway, the
thing that tied this idea for me together about the
camping is but then I wanted to write about teenage girls,
(18:12):
and I wanted to write about being parents teenage girls.
And this is something that you and I talk about
a lot all the time, and partly because one of
the things and obviously we're going to talk in broad
terms here because we're not going to mortify our teenage
daughters anymore than we already do all the time. One
of the things that I noticed the most about my
daughter moving from that phase of being a little kid
(18:35):
into being a teenager, apart from the changes in her
in terms of you know how, there's a moment in
which they're running around completely un self conscious, nothing like
just being crazy, cartwheeling, dancing, whatever they're doing, expressing their opinions,
and then like a switch flicks, they're suddenly mortified by themselves,
you know, like yourselves away and certainly by you. But
(18:57):
the other thing that happens is when your daughter begins
to become a young woman, everyone around you changes too.
And the thing that I would notice when we would
go away on our not necessarily with these comping friends,
but we live in a beachy kind of culture, is
that suddenly the conversations you're having all the time, and
often from man actually would be like, Oh, you're going
(19:20):
to be in trouble, aren't you. Oh, she's gonna be
in she's gonna be in trouble. Oh, I don't envy you.
And they're making all these comments, usually to the dad,
Usually to the dad yep, about this girl who's just
moving through the world and changing, and it's a lot.
It is a lot.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
I remember the first time my daughter got sexually harrassed.
She was walking she would have been twelve, and she
was walking to a friend's house and a guy walked
past her and sort of licked his lips and said something.
Can I remember, you know, it's one of those times.
(19:58):
And not long after that, we were out in Bonday,
just for dinner, and we were just walking to the
car and a car load of guys cat called and
she thought they were cat calling me, but I knew
they were cat calling her. And it's that disconnect period
in your daughter's life or your own life. I'm sure
(20:19):
we can all probably remember it, where you cross this
rubicon from being a child in the eyes of others
to being a sexually available or a source of sexual
gratification for men. And it always happens way before. There's
(20:40):
always a disconnect, because it always happens earlier than you
see this can see it. All I can think about
is that brilliant scene in the Barbie movie when Mago
Robbie comes to the real world for the first time
and she's walking down the street, and she, for the
first time, becomes aware of being perceived in the male gaze,
and she says, I've got this weird feeling. It's like
I'm aware, but like aware of myself, And to me,
(21:01):
that is an absolute fantastic portrayal but in faster time
of what it's like to be a teenage girl.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Actly what I thought, and it made me a bit
emotional for that reason. Do you remember that happening to
you yourself? Can you put yourself back in the first
time you remember being a lot like that on the street?
Speaker 3 (21:20):
Yeah, I can, well, I can remember the first time
I noticed it in myself, which was when I was
at the beach and I was walking and the sun
was coming down and I could see my shadow and
I could see my shadow went in at the waist
and I really noticed that, and I was really quite
chuffed about it. And then I remember trying on like
(21:43):
tight clothes and looking at myself in the mirror and
trying on the persona of looking sexy but not really
understanding what that was. And then of course I remember
being you know, sexual, I guess now you'd call it
sexual assault. When I was at the Easter Show and
with my friends and I would have been twelve or thirteen,
(22:06):
and it was a sort of a crowd and a
guy walked away towards me, grabbed me in the by
the vagina and or grabbed me in the volvo the
crotch area, and kept walking.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
And I remember feeling so just shocked, horrified.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
Dirty because it that and I couldn't even process that.
I didn't even I didn't even tell anyone because I
didn't even know what it was.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
It's such a profound thing when you suddenly realize it's
like you shift into being. You're sort of like, oh,
I'm pray. Yeah right, yes, but I didn't really think
I was. And probably especially for our generation, maybe even
more so for our daughters. You can do anything, you
can go anywhere, you can be whatever you want to be.
You're just like the boys. And then suddenly, oh, I'm
(22:54):
not like that, because the.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Message we because I'm prayed so much. Yeah, was it
gen X women growing up?
Speaker 2 (23:02):
We did, but it was a different stage of feminism.
But but you suddenly if you ever thought that you
were just like the boys, if you were one of
then you're suddenly like, oh, I'm not. And then there's
this really interesting period, I think as you gor and
grapple with that whole idea, and then often what a
lot of young women will do is they'll figure out
(23:23):
a way to make it work for them in a way,
you know, like in how do I harness? Which bits
of this new world do I like? And which bits
of it do I really not? And in the book
Lyra who is fourteen and who her best friend's dad
may or may not do something inappropriate to her but
certainly hasn't inappropriate relationship with her, and that he calls
(23:45):
her and they talk and he's kind of she hasn't
got a father who's around, and he tries to step
into that role, but in a creepy way. She remembers
the very first time she sees the way he looks
at her, and you just know, you just have a
sense that the way he's looking at you is different
to the way he looked at you last summer when
you were also in a swimsuit in the pool, and
everything's and.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
The irony is not the irony, but the biological reality
is that for me, any of us, the gaze of
lights on our daughters, when it is removed from us
at that same time, and both things are kind of imperceptible.
Like you know, you can think, oh, people don't cat
(24:25):
call anymore, but it's like oh, and then you're walking
down the street with a younger woman and you go, oh,
they just don't cat call me anymore, and you're like, right,
I can walk past a building site and not have
to clench.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
And it's not because manner more evolved.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
I'd like to believe that, but it's actually just because
I'm not in their sights anymore. I'm no longer pray.
And of course that feels I mean, different women have
different reactions to it. It feels like a lovely relief.
Some women feel, of course, a great sense of loss.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Do you ever feel you know how, there's a trope
that it makes us jealous? Do you ever feel that? No,
I don't feel that.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
And you watch some women on TikTok or you know, celebrities,
and you see the ones that are struggling with it,
and it's usually the ones, I guess who've really defined
themselves by how they look and have defined themselves through
the male gaze and through through the validation of that.
(25:21):
And like you look at them with their daughters and
like they're trying to look like their sisters.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
And then and then, you know, a man or you
must be said as.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
If I want to be told that, like, that's not
my aim is to look like my daughter's sister. Like
I'm very happy to sort of back off that stage
that I never was particularly inamate of being on.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
But I'm very like, this is their time.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
Now, It's no time to be objectified and say, rastically,
what am I even saying? I know exactly what you
mean to me. I also but and it's also interesting
that when it started to happen to my daughter, when
I saw that shift, it brought out the protective mother
and me in a way that few things do. Is
that when I see an old particularly an older older man,
(26:10):
look at her in a certain way, I want to
kill them. I really do, even though I understand it.
Because and this is what the complicated thing that's kind
of I was trying to explore a bit in this
book is that you know, there's a there's a point
in the book where Lockie says to one of the
other guys, you know, mothers want to keep treat their
teenage girls like their babies, but we know that they're
(26:31):
basically the monsters who tortured us at high school, like
that they are God, yes, and that they know exactly
what they're doing.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
And that's awful.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
I know that that's awful.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
It's like these these adult men, and of course not
all adult men, of course not. But there is a
certain type of adult man who is trying to correct
the experience that he had in high school where he
didn't have any power, and now he's got power by
the virtual of the fact that he's an adult and
she's not.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Ooh, I know. And there's a there's a to very
much the point of not all adult men. I talk
quite a bit with the men in my life about
how they handle that ship of suddenly, all the girls
in the pool or at the beach or whatever, who
are your daughter's little friends?
Speaker 1 (27:15):
I do all look different and they're all wearing their
up the Bamborkini.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
And I asked Brent, and you know, I'm not suggesting
that men are going to be completely honest with any
woman about this, but I asked Brent once like, because
I noticed the way that some men were looking at
the girls, and I said, is it hard? Is it hard?
And he said no, he said, eyes down.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Eyes down, eyes down.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
It's just like you're you're an adult and you just
have to keep that like eyes down, like it's not
hard not to stare. It's not hard not to be lacivious.
I don't know, but.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
Don't you remember that time when you become aware of
the male gaze? But then you and you you're also
you know, your horny, you've got your hormones going. It's
not you know, puberty has an effect on girls as
they become young women, but you think you can control it.
So you want the male gaze, but you only want
(28:10):
the people who you like to look at you. You
don't want that old guy on the bus to look
at you. But you want to wear the booty shorts.
Even if you can't articulate this, you want to wear
the booty shorts because you want that guy that you
have a crush on to like you, or that good
looking older guy that you think's cute. And that's what's
a really tough thing is the mother of a young
teenager to try and explain that nuance where they can
(28:36):
get very old. But you know that's his problem. He
shouldn't be looking at me. It's like, well, you're right,
he shouldn't. But you can't control who looks at you
when you're in the booty shorts.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
You can't so and are you Are you mature enough
to be able to understand that? And that you know?
Speaker 3 (28:54):
I remember settling. You know, there's a sometimes joke that
there's a moment in the for every teenage girl where
their mother will slut shame them.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
She won't mean to, but you're like.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
You can't go out like that, And for us that's
because we're fearful of.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
That.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
But then the feminist in us is also like, well,
she should be able to wear whatever she wants. We
can't stop men from looking at her. But so I
say to my I started saying to my daughter, I
know this isn't fair. I know this isn't right, and
I will not stop fighting for you to be able
(29:36):
to wear whatever you want, whenever you want, and be
completely secure and free from unwanted male attention. But at
the moment, it's not that way.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
It's really complicated because we've discussed this before, but there
was one of the things that's really tricky I think
for in this teenage time when you're figuring out all
this stuff, is you are proud of your changing body
in a way because you realize that this is going
to be a part of being yeah. Yeah, but you
also feel a lot of shame about it. And I
(30:10):
what I want to do in talking to my daughter
about it is not to add to that shame. But
it's hard. And I remember a while ago we were
at a thing with lots of kids and my child
was younger than she is now, and the little boys
were teasing her about her boobs or whatever, and she
was really upset and I said to her, put a
jumper on. I know it wasn't that I didn't say
(30:36):
put a jumper on because I thought it was okay.
And obviously that like the whole when I found out
later what those little boys have been saying, like, it
was a whole thing. But but my first things also
because I wanted to stay at the place and do whatever.
You know, what I mean was to do that. But
that was kind of saying to my daughter, were you're
asking for it that these eleven year old boys are
teasing you.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
I remember my daughter came back from a camp or
something and like, oh, this guy hit me in the
playground or grabbed me or something. I'm like, Oh, that's
just what boys sometimes do when they like you. And
then I was like, oh my god, it's craze things
that we internalized, and it is just such a head
scramble for us as gen X feminist women because what
(31:18):
we want to be true is not necessarily what we
know is true. And also that disconnect between we see
danger and threat where they don't yet because they haven't
caught up with how they're viewed in society, because they're
still probably sleeping with a teddy bear, but they've got boobs, And.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
When you think about it, it's a lot to get
your head around. Everything is changing. But you know, I'm
reading because I'm interviewing Ioni Sky for the show It Soon,
and I'm reading her memoir and one of the things
she's really good on she's in Generation ex Icon, is
her she talks about herself as a teenager, and to
your point earlier, how horny she was and that she
(32:00):
was inappropriately young in an appropriate situation. So she's on
movie sets and she's like fourteen and fifteen and modeling
like those days, or they were all getting emancipated from
their parents because they allowed you to work adult hours.
So Hollywood. The studios would say, you can have this part,
but you have to get emancipated so that you can
(32:20):
work adult hours. Otherwise we're going to have to have
a teacher on set and you're gonna have to work
or lhah. And she talks with really refreshing, non judgmental
honesty about her first movie. Keanu Reeves was her co star,
and she just wants to have sex with him, yeah,
because he's Keanu Reeves and he is unbelievably hot, and
(32:41):
she goes, she tries, and she turns up in his seat.
She was fifteen and he was only a bit older,
and he's like no. And then she goes on to
have relationships with Anthony Keith is from the Red Hot
Chili Peppers, and he's eight years older, and she moves
in with it. But the thing that's really interesting reading
it through our lens now is we've I mean, and
(33:05):
I'm not suggesting that that's all fine, and there's plenty
of room for exploitation abuse in that paradigm, but we
have extended childhood to a point I think of as
gen X parents, we've extended it feels shocking to think
about fifteen sixteen seventeen year old girl behaving that way.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Yeah, but moving out of home.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
When I was fifteen, sixteen seventeen, I thought I was
twenty one. Oh god, yess, and I was gorgeous going
for what I wanted, and I didn't understand why it
was inappropriate whether it was inappropriate, of course, and so
it's kind of like, should you be ashamed of that?
Do you know what I mean? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (33:43):
I think we do a lot of It's really hard
because at a time when we want to be telling
young girls to explore their sexuality and lean into how
they're feeling, and there's nothing wrong with that. I often
have really weird conversations with parents of teenage girls, particularly fathers.
(34:05):
I remember when I used to look after Dolly magazine
and the ads were really against the sealed sections and
the Dolly doctor and stuff. But the moms knew that
girls want access to that information way.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Before they're going to act on it.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
You know, they want to understand sex, they want to read,
you know, they want to try on what it's like
to be older.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
And so even though you know you know that, I
don't know.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
It's just really challenging being the mother of a teenage girl,
it really is. And I always say, like, you know,
the best place for a young girl to explore her
sexuality is within a committed relationship, whether it's with another
girl or with another guy. But what you should want
as a parent is for your daughter when she's old
(34:54):
enough to be fooling around with someone who really cares
about her. And I think that this idea that you
have to put off sex or you know, lock your
sexuality in a box for as long as possible, and
that's the goal. It's like, whoever's daughter lasts the longest
without doing any of that stuff wins.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
I don't know, maybe because.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
I learned, you know, had a great I guess sexual
awakening with a committed boyfriend when I was around fifteen,
and that was amazing because a lot of women our
age have really awful stories about, you know, their first
sexual encounter or when they were teenage girls, and I didn't.
And I think that has paved the way for a
(35:36):
really good relationship with my sex life and with myself
and with sexual pleasure and all of those things because
it was in a committed relationships.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
That's so interesting because it's true everybody kind of marks
you as a teenage parent of a daughter of as
whether or not she is the gil exactly. They're not
saying that out loud. The questions people always ask me
about my teenage daughter. Sometimes I'm just like, come on,
but really, you know, it's really.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Probably I'm the one that ill you.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
But that's okay, But.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
But I know what you mean.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
It's like as if a father's job.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Is to the shotgun on the porch.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
Yeah, and to hold that off for as long as possible,
And it's like, is it?
Speaker 2 (36:19):
I mean, I know anyway, I always ask you for
parental advice, and you are one of my village of
oracles because you're always a bit ahead. You've always been
ahead of me. And often the thing, the pattern that
plays out is you go, you tell me this, and
I got that will never happen, all right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I don't think so.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
And then of course I can't imagine it until it happens, right.
And my mum did the same with me, like I
would talk to her about because I've got an eldest
son who my son's twenty seven, my daughter's nineteen, and
i've got a younger son who's sixteen. And I remember
saying to her about my eldest son. Oh, I don't
think he's drinking yet, and she's like, Darling, if you
think he's not drinking, he's drinking. And I'm like, do
(36:59):
you think so? Of course he was drinking. But I
think you can be a little bit blind to what's
going on with your own children. And even where I
thought my daughter was up to when she was younger,
you know, now she's at the age we have a great,
very open and honest relationship.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
And I thought we did then, but.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
Now she tells me there are a whole bunch of
things that I had no idea about. Oh, my mother
has not still has no idea. Yeah, and exactly my
mother doesn't either. So I think that, you know, teenagers
are rat bags in all the in good ways, like
because that's their job. In some ways, the rat bags,
their job is to push the envelope.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
When we come back, MEA and I are talking about
parenting and friendship. I wanted to ask you though, because
obviously I know you and I know your family, and
you seem to have really good relationships with your kids.
I've always thought that, like I see them around you
when they don't think anybody's looking, and they're affectionate and
they take the piss out of you, which I think
(37:58):
is very healthy in parental relationships. But you know you're
obviously very close. Do you have any words of advice
for how you get through that period of well like this,
because we've often talked about how your kids are little
and they think you're amazing, and then they go through
adolescents and they think you're an idiot and they want
and the door closes. Whether they're boys or girls in
(38:19):
different ways at different times, the door closes, and you're
just then the desperate I sometimes feel like a desperate
girlfriend who's like going, do you want to go to
the shops with me? Do you want to come out
with me? I'll buy you a thing. I'll buy you
a thing if it means we can hang out. And
I am always kind of I'm in a conflict with
(38:39):
myself about how much to just respect the closed door
and let the space, or how much to stay close.
And I think what I probably want more than anything
from my parental relationship as the kids get older, is
I just want them to be close to me. Yeah,
like I want I want that relationship. I don't expect
to tell me everything, but I want that relationship to
(39:01):
be a positive one. What's your best advice for getting
through the closed door?
Speaker 1 (39:05):
Look, I'm no guru.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
I think that the worst thing is to try and
knock it down, or even to knock on it all
the time. You've just got to sort of sit outside
and wait till the door opens again. And when it
opens a crack, you have to try and be disciplined
and not like rush through it. And I only know
this through trial and error. And what's interesting to me
(39:28):
is the difference in sons and daughters. So in my experience,
boys pull away around puberty time, and that can be
devastating from mother, like that's been a massive source of
grief for me. But they do come back, but they
can be gone a couple of years, like a good
(39:48):
few years. And with girls though, that's when you clash
like it. Sometimes you wish they'd pull away, you know,
but they don't. They are all up in your grill,
giving you a character assissment. Yeah, can feel like a
(40:11):
bit of an abusive relationship sometimes, because you know, my
mother always said to me, if your kids not that
you want to encourage them treating you like shit, but
if they can tell you things that are uncomfortable. It
means they feel secure that you're going to be there
(40:32):
on the other side of that, you know, And the
biggest challenge is to just stay strong and stay solid
so that they can act out. They can do this,
they can do that, but they know that they can
depend on you and rely on you.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
It's hard not to get offended sometimes. By the end
the book, Ginger, one of the characters, says that she
feels with her teenage daughter that she's given birth to
her own anacritic like the yes ther own voice in
your head that's always telling you all the things are
wrong with you. Show by your childhood telling you all
the things that's wrong with you.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
It's like your worst in a monologue like that follows
you around and gives you a character assessment.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
And I noticed that.
Speaker 3 (41:13):
Even with my own mother, Like I remember once I
was in my twenties or in my thirties and I
was just I was at a house and I was
like bitching about this and why have you done this
and this thing? And I was just being really critical
and she's like, can you just stop being mean to me?
And it was like, oh yeah, right, Like daughters are
(41:35):
tough on their mothers, like really tough, and I think
that you've got to hold that line between not letting
them treat you like shit but also not getting too
wounded by it.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Yeah. Last thing I want to ask you is there's
a lot of talk as we're recording. There's lots to
talk about this around the White Lotus, which is so
centers on these three women who are friends when they
were teenagers. But there's a lot of discussion about are
you stuck, like are you who you were as a teenager,
and whether or not that person still exists or not.
Do you think you are still the same Maya? The
(42:08):
same fifteen year old Maya?
Speaker 1 (42:09):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Do you what's the same and what's different? I mean,
your clothes are still I.
Speaker 3 (42:15):
Think my clothes is still silly. I mean very still,
very intense. I'm still very.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
People used to tell you that when you're a teenager
that you were intense.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
No, because that's not how teenagers are. That's probably how
they talk now.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
No, you're so right. No one spoke like that.
Speaker 3 (42:33):
No they didn't, you know, but I'm certainly very focused.
Like my female friends are still everything to me. There's
such an important part of me. I was close to
my family then, even though I had did the same
thing to my mum and my kids are close to
me now and I'm still close to my parents.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
You know, I wanted I needed attention and I needed validation.
Speaker 3 (43:00):
I was pretty extroverted, but also needed time on my own.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
I think essentially I'm the same.
Speaker 3 (43:06):
And when I think about my school friends, my girlfriends
from school, it's funny. After watching White Lotus, I felt
the need to reach out to them again, which we
also did when COVID started. A lot of people reached
out to their school friends. It was like this primal thing.
I don't know what it was about, but I'm the
same as I am. When I think about who I
(43:28):
am around them, it's the same, like the same as
who I am. Yeah yeah, yeah, but it's the same
as also who I am now. Like, It's not like
I would be a completely different person around my school girlfriends.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
What do you think teenage mea would have been like
in the age of Oh my god, you would have
loved me.
Speaker 3 (43:47):
I would have, but it would have destroyed me like
I would have. I mean, thank God, because so much
no impulse control, no sense of consequence, loving attention, always
wanting to do more things. I think it could have
been a really, really bad, bad thing for me. I mean,
I would have loved it, but it would have I
just don't think it would have served me well.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
You always that we're parenting in a time where we,
for the first time, we didn't face any of the
things that are they're dealing with. And I think that
being a teenage girl, one of the problems now is
that there are all these traps there for you, that
all the worst things you think about yourself can now
be reaffirmed by strangers, correct, friend groups.
Speaker 3 (44:27):
Correct, because all that, you know, we had ideas about popularity,
and you kind of every girl teenage girl knows who
are the popular girls.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
And who aren't.
Speaker 3 (44:38):
And yet we didn't have empirical evidence in terms of
likes and followers and things going viral and comments on
our posts. You know, all that stuff lived in our head.
I can't imagine you know me neither.
Speaker 2 (44:52):
Maya Friedman, thank you for coming on and talking to
me about my book.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
Congratulations.
Speaker 3 (44:57):
He would never five families, fourteen years of friendship, one
long weekend. It's your best work, but by so far.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
Thank you so much, friends. He Would Never is in
shops on April twenty nine. If it sounds like something
you'd love reading, please follow the link in our show
notes of this episode to buy or pre order it.
It would mean the world. And while you're sitting down
doing that, please also hit follow all like on this
(45:28):
podcast wherever you're listening to it. It genuinely helps other
people find this show. If you feel like leaving a
review even better. An enormous thank you from me to
Mia Friedman for changing my life in many ways, but
also for coming and sitting down with me for mid
I know sitting down is her least favorite thing, but
I told you there was a surprise at the end
(45:48):
of this episode, and there is. I wanted to read
you an exclusive passage from he Would Never one that
very much reflects what MEA and I discussed in the show.
What You're about to Hear is part of a chapter
told from the perspective of Lyra, a fourteen year old girl.
The book is about her mother and her mother's friends,
who all met at mother's group when their kids were
babies babies anymore, and when we meet Lyra, she's thinking
(46:12):
back to the time she felt her world tilt in
the way Mia and I were discussing today. The moment
was in a swimming pool at her mum's best friend's house,
and Lockie Short, who she's been encouraged to consider as
some kind of uncle, is talking to her in a
way she hasn't heard before. The executive producer of me
and his name of Brown. The senior producer is Grace Rufray.
(46:34):
Our producer is Charlie Blackman, and we've had audio and
sound designed by Jacob Brown. Enjoy this little bit of
he would never Tia was Lyra's best friend, but they
were pretty different. They went to different schools now. Tia
went to a really posh school with no rules, and
Lyra went to Saint Deirdre's, which was medium posh but
(46:56):
had lots of rules, mostly to do with God. Tia
did dance and drama and Lyra did netball and soccer,
so they didn't see each other as much as they
used to when they both went to Bronte Public and
didn't have so much to do. But Tia wasill the
one who Lyrah felt most comfortable with of all her
friend group. The others you always had to watch what
you said, or sometimes you might get to school and
(47:18):
find out through a feeling in your stomach, or in
the way one of the girls was talking to you,
or in how they didn't answer or even open your messages,
that there had been a shift. That's how you'd find
out you'd done something. You were out, and you'd have
to work your way back in. It was tiring. She
was never out with Tea. They could be silly together
(47:40):
like babies, or they could be teenagers together trying on
who they might like to be next. It didn't matter.
It was always easy. Lyra thought about the first time
Tears Dad Lockie had spoken to her in a way
that was different from how the other grown ups did.
The first time, she was confused. She had been at
Tears and they had all been in the pool. One
(48:01):
of the first swims of last summer. Auntie Liz had
a swimming pool with an infinity edge like you saw
in fancy hotels. On TikTok Auntie Lisa, it made you
feel like you were drifting out to sea, as if
that were a good thing. Everyone was getting out except Lira,
because there was nothing Lira liked more than floating on
her back looking up at the sky. Tia and Lis
(48:22):
and the little kids had all piled towards the kitchen
to get food, but Lockie had stayed behind, and he
was looking at her. You look a lot like your mother,
he'd said, which wasn't what she'd wanted to hear, but okay,
Then he said, you know she is extremely dear to us,
don't you. And there have been something about the way
he said it words that people don't usually use, a
(48:42):
question that didn't need an answer. Adults were always asking
questions that weren't questions, but they usually used normal words.
Liz would do anything for your mom, me too, Auntie.
Lis is very good to us. Lyra knew to be
grateful to the Shorts the number of times over the
years that she'd heard her mother say she didn't know
where she'd be without Lis. Lira wanted to get out
(49:04):
to go and find Tia, but there was something about
the way Lockie kept looking at her that made her
want to see covered by the water. It was the
year that eyes had started moving differently over her. At
the beach on the street, Lyra was wearing what she
and her friends were always wearing, but suddenly it all
meant something different. It was like a spotlight was suddenly
(49:25):
pointed right at her, And sometimes it felt good to
be picked out scene, but sometimes it felt scary, and
she hadn't ever thought about it feeling scary with people.
You'd always known that maybe all men had that light
with them, and they could shine it at you whenever
they wanted. I should find tea, she'd said from the water,
but she didn't move to pull herself up and out
(49:45):
onto the deck. Go away, she remembered, feeling turn away.
Someone needs to look out for you girls, he'd said,
Now you're growing up. Your mum's so busy. We're fine,
she'd said, quickly, and then remembered, thank you. Lockie had
picked up a towel Auntie Lissa's house had the best,
thick soft towels, big enough to wrap around your whole body,
and took two steps towards the edge of the pool,
(50:07):
where Lyra's arms were resting. She'd put her chin on
them and looked down at where the water was licking
in and out of the shiny little square tiles, anywhere
but up at him. Come on, then, he said, squatting
down holding the towel out, Let's go and get some food.
How many times had lyra jumped out of this pool
and run into the kitchen in a little sunsuit, in
(50:28):
a swimming lesson one piece in a bikini, without thinking,
without even being aware of herself, of her arms and
legs and tommy and chest. Why did she feel in
that moment when she glanced up and saw the crease
around Lockey Short's eyes and the particular curve of his
closed mouth smile, like everything was different. She remembered the
(50:48):
rough grout scratching her stomach as she'd pushed her whole
self flat against the pool wall, hiding her bum, her thighs,
her flicking feet. Lockie hadn't moved, He'd stayed close, towel
and hands. You girls should get bigger cozies, he'd said,
and she could hear something like a tease in his voice, friendly,
maybe a tone that suggested everything she was feeling was
(51:09):
ridiculed less. But then if you don't want to be
looked at, and she remembered feeling sick in her mouth,
You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on Hey out louders, I
am here with your Sunday special feed drop for Momma
Mia out Loud, and today we are dropping an episode
of mid Now. If you have never listened to mid
it is the other podcast that I host, and mid
(00:34):
is conversations for gen x women who are anything. But
We've had some kick ass guests on mid but this
week I've got one that I think you know very well,
one Mia Friedman. I've been trying to get her to
come on mid forages and she kept blanking me until
over the summer holidays I slipped her a copy of
my new book He Would Never, which is out on
Truestone all good bookshops, and she read it really quickly
(00:55):
and said, we need to talk about this on MID.
So I finally convinced her to come on, and we
talk about the book, but mostly we talk about teenagers
because there's a big theme and He Would Never about
that moment when girls slip from little girls into teenagers
and the gay of the world changes on them. Mia
and I talk about what we were like as teenagers,
the mistakes we made, the things we got up to,
(01:16):
and about being parents to teenage girls. And if you
hang around at the end of the interview, I read
an exclusive extract of he Would Never just for you.
So grab yourself a cup of sit down and enjoy
this Sunday special episode of Mid with Mia and I.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
It's that disconnect period in your daughter's life or your
own life. I'm sure we can all probably remember it
where you cross this rubicon from being a child in
the eyes of others to being you know, sexually available
(01:54):
or a source of sexual gratification for men. There's always
a disconnect because it always happens.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Earlier than you can see. You can see it. Hello,
I'm Holly Wainwright and I am Mid, Midlife, Mid Family,
Mid Mayhem. Welcome back to our show Mid Conversations for
gen X women who are anything. But This is our
first episode of a new season, and as you'll know
(02:20):
if you're a regular listener, it's starting a little differently
and that's because I've got something special for you later
at the end this season on Mid, we have got
gurus and health experts. I have nineties icons and household
names I have Melinda French Gates. Yes, we have carefully
planned every episode to bring you something that makes life
(02:42):
a little bit better, a great story, a very useful idea,
something to try, someone who reminds you of you. And today,
for the first episode of this new season of MID,
I have a friend. I think you know her. It's
Mia Friedman. If you listen to Mama Mia out loud,
you know that I spend a lot of time talking
(03:03):
to Mia, along with our beloved co host Jesse Stevens,
disagreeing with Mia quite a lot, laugh till I snort
with her, gossiping with her, setting the world to rights
with her. But I'd never asked her to be on
MID before, and the reason that I wanted to for
the first ep of season five was twofold. I wanted
to talk to her about my new book. It's called
(03:26):
He Would Never and it's out in a hot minute.
I nervously slipped Mia an early copy of it over
the summer holidays, and she immediately messaged me to say
she wanted to talk to me about it on MID
and not before. So I have been waiting nervously to
hear what she wants to tell me about it. But
also it's because of the themes of the book I
think they're going to resonate with you as listeners to
(03:48):
mid It's about the power and limitations of female friendships.
It's about narcissistic relationships. It's centered around a knoddy little mystery,
and it's about the sometimes confusing shift of little girls
into teenage ones. This is something that Mia and I
talk about off Mike a lot. She's the first person
(04:09):
I asked for parenting advice about teenagers, because although she
and I are exactly the same age, she had her
kids a lot younger than I did. She's a grandmother now,
for God's sake, so she's always a few big paces
ahead in lots of ways. Of course, So we talk
about guiding teenage daughters, and we also reflect on our
teenage selves, who appear to have existed in an entirely
(04:30):
different universe. What we got right, what we got wrong.
We talk about all of that, and we talk about
writing and ambition and confidence and friendship. But we start,
of course with me asking Mia a very bald question
about he would never and getting the kind of honest
answer I would only expect from the extraordinarily honest, funny, brilliant, generous,
(04:51):
mea Freedman, and don't forget to stay listening at the
end of this conversation for your surprise, Me and Friedman.
There's nothing like getting you in a studio and putting
in front of a mic and asking you, did you
like my book?
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Not really, I've read better. No, she's fucking loved it.
So what happened was you gave it to me, and
then I was away with Jesse, our third co host
and kind of like our little sister and friend on
out loud, and she read it first.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
And you and.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
I often get given books by friends and in some
ways they land and you just go, Okay, this is
a job because you know that your friend will be
very anxious and that you've got to read it, and
then you've got to obviously say nice things about it,
even if you don't really like it. And so then
(05:49):
Jesse started reading it first, and she was just like
she spent the whole weekend just like I just want
to I just want to go and finish hollybook. I
just all it's all I want to read, It's all
I want to think about. So I was like, okay,
this is a good sign. So when she was finished,
I started reading. And as soon as I started, I
(06:10):
realized why you had been such a nutcase for before,
because I said to Jesse, what's so good about it?
Because she's like, I'm just desperate to read it. I
just want to get back to it. I just want
to get back to it. Can you hold the baby?
I just want to get back to Holly's book? And
I'm like, what's so good about it? And she said,
she's gone to like she's gone up three levels. What's
(06:33):
she said? I understand why she's so stressed, because what
she's tried to do is extraordinary. She's thrown a lot
of balls in the air, and she's bitten off a lot,
and she's pulling it off.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
It must be tiresome for you to have to watch
me having a breakdown every time I write a book.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
That was a long answer to your off shot question.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
And thank you for all those lovely things say, because
Mia does have to watch listen watch me have a
breakdown every time I write it. Yeah, I have.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
It's just so funny because I don't write books anymore,
but all my friends do, including you and Jesse, who
took my closest friends and also Jesse's sister Claire Rece
wrote her first book. And you will have breakdowns in
very different ways. You will have complete breakdowns, but differently,
and you have different breakdowns from book to book. This one,
(07:23):
i've never seen you go so sort of the one
that you did before, which is a Couple Upstairs that
was quite dark, and when I read that, you went
quite dark and I understood You're like, you were really
insecure when you were writing that, which is interesting because
it was like going back to a time about an
emotionally abusive relationship and there were some dark themes in it.
(07:46):
With this one, it felt different. I felt like you
were like wrestling an alligator. Yeah, for a really long
period of time. And I've never been one of your readers.
You've never given it to me early, which I appreciate,
thank you.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
But it really would be a job.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
I know you have other readers, and I also know
that you didn't give it to them this time either,
and I yeah, it was just once I read the book,
I understood everything.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
It's funny because I told you this at the time,
because obviously we record together, you know, three five times
a week, so we see each other all the time.
And for years, I when I haven't really spoken about this,
but when I handed the first draft of this book in,
it got handed back to me like they were like,
you need it needs some more work.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
And you didn't tell me that at the time, because
I was really devastated. Yeah, and tell me why, Like
is that because every author, I mean, I know what
it's like to hand in a book and all you
want is no notes. It isn't that actually, well it's never.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Happened to me.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
But like then when you get it back and it's like,
here's all the things you need to do, that's always
the point at which I want to give back my
advance yes, and say I don't want to do it anymore.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
I want to do it. I think part of what
it was is and you know, we talk about this
a lot, but I always overestimate how what I can
do and how much I can do, you know what
I mean. I'm always like, it'll be fine.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
I mean the time it takes you to write, the
time it takes to write it, and the amount of
focus and energy that it takes to because the thing
is that most people write books and that's their job. Right,
But you write books as well as having a full
time job, yes, and doing one hundred other things. And
you know, lots of authors have kids, but most authors
don't also have another full time job.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
So I think that one of the if I learned
something through this book, and I'm sure I learned lots
of things, it was about that about trying to focus,
because I think what happened is when I handed it
in and I've been writing this book for like two years,
it is a big and complicated plot. We're not going
to go into the plot massively here. I want to
talk about some of the themes from it. But it's
a big and complicated plot that has lots of characters,
(09:48):
and it goes over a long period of time, so
there's a lot of moving parts, right, And I think
that I literally bid off more than I could chew
in the way that I normally work. Right. So when
I handed it in my very fabulous publisher, she pretty
much said to me, the last third feels rushed and
not like you have you know, you have and landed it.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Yeah, and did you secretly know that to share?
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Yeah, But I think that this is one of the
things that you really struggle with when you're writing. Is
you lose sight of your instinct anymore? Like is this good?
Or do I just not think it's good because I'm insecure,
blah blah blah.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Because also no one else it was just had been
in your head for so long, Like I remember when
you wrote some of your first books. I think you
talked about this book or this, the themes around this book,
this idea of a camping holiday with a group of friends.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Like years ago, eight years ago.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
I had been thinking about this plot and what to
do with this idea for a really long time, and
then it sort of came together when I sort of
tied it together with this thing about teenagers and teenage girls,
which I want us to talk about in a minute. Anyway,
I think I was really ambitious, So you know how
you said, And it's lovely to hear that. Jesse was like,
she's leveled up. I think I was ambitious and maybe
(11:06):
a bit off more than I could chew. How unlike
us to do that. So when anyway, when my publisher
confirmed that to me and she said, you need some
more time, you need some more focus. This book is
going to be good. It's going to be good, but
it's not quite good yet.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
And you probably had fronting, but you also probably hadn't
mapped out time in your diary to do that.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Like how did you write this book?
Speaker 3 (11:26):
I forget because you've written them in lots of different ways.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
You've taken stretchers off.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
To focus completely and try to write them in the
three month stretch. You've done like a day a week
for a year.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Tell me that.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
The way that I'm trying I try to work now is,
as you know, I stack my mam and mea work
at the front of the week generally speaking, where I'm
here and one hundred percent mama, mea world Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,
and then in theory Thursday, Friday and the weekend. Let's
be honest, is like more creative projects writing books at
(11:58):
other creative projects? Are that? And that's good in theory,
but have you ever known our lives to go exactly
like in the neat little blocks that we try and
put them in, do you know what I mean? So
it's kind of more everything kind of bleeds.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
Do you think in a perfect world you need to
just go I'm going to take four months or I'm
going to take three months and I'm like, almost like
Matt Leave, and I'm just going to focus on it.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
I think, yes, in a way. But then what I've
also come to know about myself, you know, the whole
introvert extrovert thing. Yeah, I think I love writing for
its solitude because I do quite like being alone. But
I'm not a pure introvert, like if I didn't have
the you know, also breaking it up with coming in
(12:40):
here and being with you guys and talking about it.
So you like the switching gear, I actually like that.
I don't know if it is brilliant for creative process,
but it's good for my mental space. I think if
I was just locked away with the manuscript for and
nothing else, I don't think that would suit me in
the way that I know some writers are very suited
to being purely alone.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
The part where your publisher said the last third feels
rushed is that because you underestimated how long it would
take you to write, or because you just were a
bit sick of it and you.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Just want to end it, Like why do you think that?
Speaker 2 (13:11):
I also think that what I've learned is I used
to say, you know how that fiction writers always say,
are you're a plotter or a panther. That's the thing
that so plotters are. You will have heard, like Jane
Harper talks about this, not that I'm comparing myself to her,
but you plot out exactly what's going to happen in
minuscule detail before you write the book, so you know
(13:32):
you've got everything, the.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Whole plot down, like saying, with all the stuff on the.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Every chapter is Matt, I feel like you used to
do that. Didn't you do that with postal? Well, I've
always done it with I do it in theory but
not in detail. Right, So then, because I'm also quite
like ideas come to you while you do it, you know,
like creative people, you're you'll be writing and you'll be
like this would be funny, or that'd be good or
so I resist that kind of structure to a point.
(13:58):
Your resist all kinds of struf I know, it's it's
one of my favorite. And I think that what I
learned on this book is I needed that. I really
needed that structure because this was trying to wrestle an alligator,
and because it was so big and broad and sprawling,
and I was trying to apply my usual kind of
She'll be right techniques to that last half that wasn't
(14:20):
wasn't going to work.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
How many characters are in it, and because it jumps,
it jumps.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Are five families and they and really the main characters
are Danny and liss unlockeye Well and Sadie. So there
are there are there are characters who are more major
than minor. But they've all got kids. And that's the
other thing is that, so they've all got kids. And
and the marriage various configurations of marriage. There are like
there's single parents, and there's a gay couple, and there's
(14:47):
you know, two conventionally married couples. And they all met
at Mother's Group. Which is something that did happen to
me in real life is I made good friends at
Mother's Group and we do actually go camping together every year.
They are very nervous about this book, I'm but obviously
the rest of it isn't and the thing that then,
so that is a lot to juggle and I did
learn that I do have to basically be much more structured.
(15:09):
So when I rewrote the last third, and obviously I
ended up rewriting quite a lot of it, then I
did really plan it out in meticulous detail like I gave.
I listened to the feedback about the structure. Editors are
always right, like we talk about this a lot. Mea
that you often, as you climb a tree in a
creative field, people give you fewer and fewer notes.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Yeah, which is terrible.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Yeah, you need more notes. Whether you're like Mike White
making the White load us for like he's got four
hours of deleted scenes on the floor. Not that I'm
again comparing myself to him, or whether you're writing a book,
or whether you're conducting an interview, like you need other
people to be able to say to you.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Oh yeah, I keep doing that saying I'm not comparing
myself to don't happen. I'm not comparing myself to Mike White.
You're a best selling author, this is what your fifth book,
sixth book. Like, you're a big fucking deal, Hollywayne, right, Like.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Stop and I don't feel like a big deal. When
we come back, Mea and I discuss our own coming
of age stories and that tricky, sticky timeween being a
little kid and being a woman.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Do you still wear the title author a little?
Speaker 2 (16:20):
I think I'm getting more comfortable in it, but it's
really funny how intimidating that feels, that word, And I
think it's because the literary scene, as it were, is
a very compartmentalized thing. The other thing I wanted to
say is, as you know very well, I didn't start
(16:41):
writing books till I was in my forties, right, And
it was literally the thing I most wanted to do
when I was a little girl. We're about to talk
about being teenagers, but if there was a teenage Holly
who had a dream of what she wanted, I was like,
I'm going to be a writer. But I wasn't a writer,
you know. I mean, I was lots of other things.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
But you said you always like when you were a kid,
you would write stories, and way I.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Used to keep I used to write in these notebooks,
these really convoluted stories about me and all my friends,
and we were all dating different members Juran Juran oh.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Fanfic before there was Away.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
Exactly, I was dating Simon or the BOTMB loved it
because you're a main character.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Because that was the main character. And I used to
go into school in the mornings and literally get my
friends to sit down and we'd all read and I'd
read to them about what happened, and then they'd be like,
well why would Then then it was there was drama,
and then when there was going to be a sex
scene because obviously I couldn't really write sex scenes then
because I.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Was kissing though kissing.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
I'd be like, and then dot dot dot pause and
fade to black.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Oh well I was doing that. Then how old were
you when you were doing that?
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Like twelve eleven and twelve like young?
Speaker 1 (17:49):
And I was writing bad poetry.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Yeah, it's I think it's an age, isn't it Like?
And the thing that's mortifying is that we were filling
notebooks with that stuff. But now people are feeling, well,
if people are doing it, well they're making tiktoks. Yeah
they are, That's exactly what they're doing, and they'll and
then ten minutes later they're mortified by them. Anyway, the
thing that tied this idea for me together about the
camping is but then I wanted to write about teenage girls,
(18:12):
and I wanted to write about being parents teenage girls.
And this is something that you and I talk about
a lot all the time, and partly because one of
the things and obviously we're going to talk in broad
terms here because we're not going to mortify our teenage
daughters anymore than we already do all the time. One
of the things that I noticed the most about my
daughter moving from that phase of being a little kid
(18:35):
into being a teenager, apart from the changes in her
in terms of you know how, there's a moment in
which they're running around completely un self conscious, nothing like
just being crazy, cartwheeling, dancing, whatever they're doing, expressing their opinions,
and then like a switch flicks, they're suddenly mortified by themselves,
you know, like yourselves away and certainly by you. But
(18:57):
the other thing that happens is when your daughter begins
to become a young woman, everyone around you changes too.
And the thing that I would notice when we would
go away on our not necessarily with these comping friends,
but we live in a beachy kind of culture, is
that suddenly the conversations you're having all the time, and
often from man actually would be like, Oh, you're going
(19:20):
to be in trouble, aren't you. Oh, she's gonna be
in she's gonna be in trouble. Oh, I don't envy you.
And they're making all these comments, usually to the dad,
Usually to the dad yep, about this girl who's just
moving through the world and changing, and it's a lot.
It is a lot.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
I remember the first time my daughter got sexually harrassed.
She was walking she would have been twelve, and she
was walking to a friend's house and a guy walked
past her and sort of licked his lips and said something.
Can I remember, you know, it's one of those times.
(19:58):
And not long after that, we were out in Bonday,
just for dinner, and we were just walking to the
car and a car load of guys cat called and
she thought they were cat calling me, but I knew
they were cat calling her. And it's that disconnect period
in your daughter's life or your own life. I'm sure
(20:19):
we can all probably remember it, where you cross this
rubicon from being a child in the eyes of others
to being a sexually available or a source of sexual
gratification for men. And it always happens way before. There's
(20:40):
always a disconnect, because it always happens earlier than you
see this can see it. All I can think about
is that brilliant scene in the Barbie movie when Mago
Robbie comes to the real world for the first time
and she's walking down the street, and she, for the
first time, becomes aware of being perceived in the male gaze,
and she says, I've got this weird feeling. It's like
I'm aware, but like aware of myself, And to me,
(21:01):
that is an absolute fantastic portrayal but in faster time
of what it's like to be a teenage girl.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Actly what I thought, and it made me a bit
emotional for that reason. Do you remember that happening to
you yourself? Can you put yourself back in the first
time you remember being a lot like that on the street?
Speaker 3 (21:20):
Yeah, I can, well, I can remember the first time
I noticed it in myself, which was when I was
at the beach and I was walking and the sun
was coming down and I could see my shadow and
I could see my shadow went in at the waist
and I really noticed that, and I was really quite
chuffed about it. And then I remember trying on like
(21:43):
tight clothes and looking at myself in the mirror and
trying on the persona of looking sexy but not really
understanding what that was. And then of course I remember
being you know, sexual, I guess now you'd call it
sexual assault. When I was at the Easter Show and
with my friends and I would have been twelve or thirteen,
(22:06):
and it was a sort of a crowd and a
guy walked away towards me, grabbed me in the by
the vagina and or grabbed me in the volvo the
crotch area, and kept walking.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
And I remember feeling so just shocked, horrified.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
Dirty because it that and I couldn't even process that.
I didn't even I didn't even tell anyone because I
didn't even know what it was.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
It's such a profound thing when you suddenly realize it's
like you shift into being. You're sort of like, oh,
I'm pray. Yeah right, yes, but I didn't really think
I was. And probably especially for our generation, maybe even
more so for our daughters. You can do anything, you
can go anywhere, you can be whatever you want to be.
You're just like the boys. And then suddenly, oh, I'm
(22:54):
not like that, because the.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Message we because I'm prayed so much. Yeah, was it
gen X women growing up?
Speaker 2 (23:02):
We did, but it was a different stage of feminism.
But but you suddenly if you ever thought that you
were just like the boys, if you were one of
then you're suddenly like, oh, I'm not. And then there's
this really interesting period, I think as you gor and
grapple with that whole idea, and then often what a
lot of young women will do is they'll figure out
(23:23):
a way to make it work for them in a way,
you know, like in how do I harness? Which bits
of this new world do I like? And which bits
of it do I really not? And in the book
Lyra who is fourteen and who her best friend's dad
may or may not do something inappropriate to her but
certainly hasn't inappropriate relationship with her, and that he calls
(23:45):
her and they talk and he's kind of she hasn't
got a father who's around, and he tries to step
into that role, but in a creepy way. She remembers
the very first time she sees the way he looks
at her, and you just know, you just have a
sense that the way he's looking at you is different
to the way he looked at you last summer when
you were also in a swimsuit in the pool, and
everything's and.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
The irony is not the irony, but the biological reality
is that for me, any of us, the gaze of
lights on our daughters, when it is removed from us
at that same time, and both things are kind of imperceptible.
Like you know, you can think, oh, people don't cat
(24:25):
call anymore, but it's like oh, and then you're walking
down the street with a younger woman and you go, oh,
they just don't cat call me anymore, and you're like, right,
I can walk past a building site and not have
to clench.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
And it's not because manner more evolved.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
I'd like to believe that, but it's actually just because
I'm not in their sights anymore. I'm no longer pray.
And of course that feels I mean, different women have
different reactions to it. It feels like a lovely relief.
Some women feel, of course, a great sense of loss.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Do you ever feel you know how, there's a trope
that it makes us jealous? Do you ever feel that? No,
I don't feel that.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
And you watch some women on TikTok or you know, celebrities,
and you see the ones that are struggling with it,
and it's usually the ones, I guess who've really defined
themselves by how they look and have defined themselves through
the male gaze and through through the validation of that.
(25:21):
And like you look at them with their daughters and
like they're trying to look like their sisters.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
And then and then, you know, a man or you
must be said as.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
If I want to be told that, like, that's not
my aim is to look like my daughter's sister. Like
I'm very happy to sort of back off that stage
that I never was particularly inamate of being on.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
But I'm very like, this is their time.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
Now, It's no time to be objectified and say, rastically,
what am I even saying? I know exactly what you
mean to me. I also but and it's also interesting
that when it started to happen to my daughter, when
I saw that shift, it brought out the protective mother
and me in a way that few things do. Is
that when I see an old particularly an older older man,
(26:10):
look at her in a certain way, I want to
kill them. I really do, even though I understand it.
Because and this is what the complicated thing that's kind
of I was trying to explore a bit in this
book is that you know, there's a there's a point
in the book where Lockie says to one of the
other guys, you know, mothers want to keep treat their
teenage girls like their babies, but we know that they're
(26:31):
basically the monsters who tortured us at high school, like
that they are God, yes, and that they know exactly
what they're doing.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
And that's awful.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
I know that that's awful.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
It's like these these adult men, and of course not
all adult men, of course not. But there is a
certain type of adult man who is trying to correct
the experience that he had in high school where he
didn't have any power, and now he's got power by
the virtual of the fact that he's an adult and
she's not.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Ooh, I know. And there's a there's a to very
much the point of not all adult men. I talk
quite a bit with the men in my life about
how they handle that ship of suddenly, all the girls
in the pool or at the beach or whatever, who
are your daughter's little friends?
Speaker 1 (27:15):
I do all look different and they're all wearing their
up the Bamborkini.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
And I asked Brent, and you know, I'm not suggesting
that men are going to be completely honest with any
woman about this, but I asked Brent once like, because
I noticed the way that some men were looking at
the girls, and I said, is it hard? Is it hard?
And he said no, he said, eyes down.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Eyes down, eyes down.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
It's just like you're you're an adult and you just
have to keep that like eyes down, like it's not
hard not to stare. It's not hard not to be lacivious.
I don't know, but.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
Don't you remember that time when you become aware of
the male gaze? But then you and you you're also
you know, your horny, you've got your hormones going. It's
not you know, puberty has an effect on girls as
they become young women, but you think you can control it.
So you want the male gaze, but you only want
(28:10):
the people who you like to look at you. You
don't want that old guy on the bus to look
at you. But you want to wear the booty shorts.
Even if you can't articulate this, you want to wear
the booty shorts because you want that guy that you
have a crush on to like you, or that good
looking older guy that you think's cute. And that's what's
a really tough thing is the mother of a young
teenager to try and explain that nuance where they can
(28:36):
get very old. But you know that's his problem. He
shouldn't be looking at me. It's like, well, you're right,
he shouldn't. But you can't control who looks at you
when you're in the booty shorts.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
You can't so and are you Are you mature enough
to be able to understand that? And that you know?
Speaker 3 (28:54):
I remember settling. You know, there's a sometimes joke that
there's a moment in the for every teenage girl where
their mother will slut shame them.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
She won't mean to, but you're like.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
You can't go out like that, And for us that's
because we're fearful of.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
That.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
But then the feminist in us is also like, well,
she should be able to wear whatever she wants. We
can't stop men from looking at her. But so I
say to my I started saying to my daughter, I
know this isn't fair. I know this isn't right, and
I will not stop fighting for you to be able
(29:36):
to wear whatever you want, whenever you want, and be
completely secure and free from unwanted male attention. But at
the moment, it's not that way.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
It's really complicated because we've discussed this before, but there
was one of the things that's really tricky I think
for in this teenage time when you're figuring out all
this stuff, is you are proud of your changing body
in a way because you realize that this is going
to be a part of being yeah. Yeah, but you
also feel a lot of shame about it. And I
(30:10):
what I want to do in talking to my daughter
about it is not to add to that shame. But
it's hard. And I remember a while ago we were
at a thing with lots of kids and my child
was younger than she is now, and the little boys
were teasing her about her boobs or whatever, and she
was really upset and I said to her, put a
jumper on. I know it wasn't that I didn't say
(30:36):
put a jumper on because I thought it was okay.
And obviously that like the whole when I found out
later what those little boys have been saying, like, it
was a whole thing. But but my first things also
because I wanted to stay at the place and do whatever.
You know, what I mean was to do that. But
that was kind of saying to my daughter, were you're
asking for it that these eleven year old boys are
teasing you.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
I remember my daughter came back from a camp or
something and like, oh, this guy hit me in the
playground or grabbed me or something. I'm like, Oh, that's
just what boys sometimes do when they like you. And
then I was like, oh my god, it's craze things
that we internalized, and it is just such a head
scramble for us as gen X feminist women because what
(31:18):
we want to be true is not necessarily what we
know is true. And also that disconnect between we see
danger and threat where they don't yet because they haven't
caught up with how they're viewed in society, because they're
still probably sleeping with a teddy bear, but they've got boobs, And.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
When you think about it, it's a lot to get
your head around. Everything is changing. But you know, I'm
reading because I'm interviewing Ioni Sky for the show It Soon,
and I'm reading her memoir and one of the things
she's really good on she's in Generation ex Icon, is
her she talks about herself as a teenager, and to
your point earlier, how horny she was and that she
(32:00):
was inappropriately young in an appropriate situation. So she's on
movie sets and she's like fourteen and fifteen and modeling
like those days, or they were all getting emancipated from
their parents because they allowed you to work adult hours.
So Hollywood. The studios would say, you can have this part,
but you have to get emancipated so that you can
(32:20):
work adult hours. Otherwise we're going to have to have
a teacher on set and you're gonna have to work
or lhah. And she talks with really refreshing, non judgmental
honesty about her first movie. Keanu Reeves was her co star,
and she just wants to have sex with him, yeah,
because he's Keanu Reeves and he is unbelievably hot, and
(32:41):
she goes, she tries, and she turns up in his seat.
She was fifteen and he was only a bit older,
and he's like no. And then she goes on to
have relationships with Anthony Keith is from the Red Hot
Chili Peppers, and he's eight years older, and she moves
in with it. But the thing that's really interesting reading
it through our lens now is we've I mean, and
(33:05):
I'm not suggesting that that's all fine, and there's plenty
of room for exploitation abuse in that paradigm, but we
have extended childhood to a point I think of as
gen X parents, we've extended it feels shocking to think
about fifteen sixteen seventeen year old girl behaving that way.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Yeah, but moving out of home.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
When I was fifteen, sixteen seventeen, I thought I was
twenty one. Oh god, yess, and I was gorgeous going
for what I wanted, and I didn't understand why it
was inappropriate whether it was inappropriate, of course, and so
it's kind of like, should you be ashamed of that?
Do you know what I mean? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (33:43):
I think we do a lot of It's really hard
because at a time when we want to be telling
young girls to explore their sexuality and lean into how
they're feeling, and there's nothing wrong with that. I often
have really weird conversations with parents of teenage girls, particularly fathers.
(34:05):
I remember when I used to look after Dolly magazine
and the ads were really against the sealed sections and
the Dolly doctor and stuff. But the moms knew that
girls want access to that information way.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Before they're going to act on it.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
You know, they want to understand sex, they want to read,
you know, they want to try on what it's like
to be older.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
And so even though you know you know that, I
don't know.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
It's just really challenging being the mother of a teenage girl,
it really is. And I always say, like, you know,
the best place for a young girl to explore her
sexuality is within a committed relationship, whether it's with another
girl or with another guy. But what you should want
as a parent is for your daughter when she's old
(34:54):
enough to be fooling around with someone who really cares
about her. And I think that this idea that you
have to put off sex or you know, lock your
sexuality in a box for as long as possible, and
that's the goal. It's like, whoever's daughter lasts the longest
without doing any of that stuff wins.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
I don't know, maybe because.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
I learned, you know, had a great I guess sexual
awakening with a committed boyfriend when I was around fifteen,
and that was amazing because a lot of women our
age have really awful stories about, you know, their first
sexual encounter or when they were teenage girls, and I didn't.
And I think that has paved the way for a
(35:36):
really good relationship with my sex life and with myself
and with sexual pleasure and all of those things because
it was in a committed relationships.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
That's so interesting because it's true everybody kind of marks
you as a teenage parent of a daughter of as
whether or not she is the gil exactly. They're not
saying that out loud. The questions people always ask me
about my teenage daughter. Sometimes I'm just like, come on,
but really, you know, it's really.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Probably I'm the one that ill you.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
But that's okay, But.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
But I know what you mean.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
It's like as if a father's job.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Is to the shotgun on the porch.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
Yeah, and to hold that off for as long as possible,
And it's like, is it?
Speaker 2 (36:19):
I mean, I know anyway, I always ask you for
parental advice, and you are one of my village of
oracles because you're always a bit ahead. You've always been
ahead of me. And often the thing, the pattern that
plays out is you go, you tell me this, and
I got that will never happen, all right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I don't think so.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
And then of course I can't imagine it until it happens, right.
And my mum did the same with me, like I
would talk to her about because I've got an eldest
son who my son's twenty seven, my daughter's nineteen, and
i've got a younger son who's sixteen. And I remember
saying to her about my eldest son. Oh, I don't
think he's drinking yet, and she's like, Darling, if you
think he's not drinking, he's drinking. And I'm like, do
(36:59):
you think so? Of course he was drinking. But I
think you can be a little bit blind to what's
going on with your own children. And even where I
thought my daughter was up to when she was younger,
you know, now she's at the age we have a great,
very open and honest relationship.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
And I thought we did then, but.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
Now she tells me there are a whole bunch of
things that I had no idea about. Oh, my mother
has not still has no idea. Yeah, and exactly my
mother doesn't either. So I think that, you know, teenagers
are rat bags in all the in good ways, like
because that's their job. In some ways, the rat bags,
their job is to push the envelope.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
When we come back, MEA and I are talking about
parenting and friendship. I wanted to ask you though, because
obviously I know you and I know your family, and
you seem to have really good relationships with your kids.
I've always thought that, like I see them around you
when they don't think anybody's looking, and they're affectionate and
they take the piss out of you, which I think
(37:58):
is very healthy in parental relationships. But you know you're
obviously very close. Do you have any words of advice
for how you get through that period of well like this,
because we've often talked about how your kids are little
and they think you're amazing, and then they go through
adolescents and they think you're an idiot and they want
and the door closes. Whether they're boys or girls in
(38:19):
different ways at different times, the door closes, and you're
just then the desperate I sometimes feel like a desperate
girlfriend who's like going, do you want to go to
the shops with me? Do you want to come out
with me? I'll buy you a thing. I'll buy you
a thing if it means we can hang out. And
I am always kind of I'm in a conflict with
(38:39):
myself about how much to just respect the closed door
and let the space, or how much to stay close.
And I think what I probably want more than anything
from my parental relationship as the kids get older, is
I just want them to be close to me. Yeah,
like I want I want that relationship. I don't expect
to tell me everything, but I want that relationship to
(39:01):
be a positive one. What's your best advice for getting
through the closed door?
Speaker 1 (39:05):
Look, I'm no guru.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
I think that the worst thing is to try and
knock it down, or even to knock on it all
the time. You've just got to sort of sit outside
and wait till the door opens again. And when it
opens a crack, you have to try and be disciplined
and not like rush through it. And I only know
this through trial and error. And what's interesting to me
(39:28):
is the difference in sons and daughters. So in my experience,
boys pull away around puberty time, and that can be
devastating from mother, like that's been a massive source of
grief for me. But they do come back, but they
can be gone a couple of years, like a good
(39:48):
few years. And with girls though, that's when you clash
like it. Sometimes you wish they'd pull away, you know,
but they don't. They are all up in your grill,
giving you a character assissment. Yeah, can feel like a
(40:11):
bit of an abusive relationship sometimes, because you know, my
mother always said to me, if your kids not that
you want to encourage them treating you like shit, but
if they can tell you things that are uncomfortable. It
means they feel secure that you're going to be there
(40:32):
on the other side of that, you know, And the
biggest challenge is to just stay strong and stay solid
so that they can act out. They can do this,
they can do that, but they know that they can
depend on you and rely on you.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
It's hard not to get offended sometimes. By the end
the book, Ginger, one of the characters, says that she
feels with her teenage daughter that she's given birth to
her own anacritic like the yes ther own voice in
your head that's always telling you all the things are
wrong with you. Show by your childhood telling you all
the things that's wrong with you.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
It's like your worst in a monologue like that follows
you around and gives you a character assessment.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
And I noticed that.
Speaker 3 (41:13):
Even with my own mother, Like I remember once I
was in my twenties or in my thirties and I
was just I was at a house and I was
like bitching about this and why have you done this
and this thing? And I was just being really critical
and she's like, can you just stop being mean to me?
And it was like, oh yeah, right, Like daughters are
(41:35):
tough on their mothers, like really tough, and I think
that you've got to hold that line between not letting
them treat you like shit but also not getting too
wounded by it.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Yeah. Last thing I want to ask you is there's
a lot of talk as we're recording. There's lots to
talk about this around the White Lotus, which is so
centers on these three women who are friends when they
were teenagers. But there's a lot of discussion about are
you stuck, like are you who you were as a teenager,
and whether or not that person still exists or not.
Do you think you are still the same Maya? The
(42:08):
same fifteen year old Maya?
Speaker 1 (42:09):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Do you what's the same and what's different? I mean,
your clothes are still I.
Speaker 3 (42:15):
Think my clothes is still silly. I mean very still,
very intense. I'm still very.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
People used to tell you that when you're a teenager
that you were intense.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
No, because that's not how teenagers are. That's probably how
they talk now.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
No, you're so right. No one spoke like that.
Speaker 3 (42:33):
No they didn't, you know, but I'm certainly very focused.
Like my female friends are still everything to me. There's
such an important part of me. I was close to
my family then, even though I had did the same
thing to my mum and my kids are close to
me now and I'm still close to my parents.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
You know, I wanted I needed attention and I needed validation.
Speaker 3 (43:00):
I was pretty extroverted, but also needed time on my own.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
I think essentially I'm the same.
Speaker 3 (43:06):
And when I think about my school friends, my girlfriends
from school, it's funny. After watching White Lotus, I felt
the need to reach out to them again, which we
also did when COVID started. A lot of people reached
out to their school friends. It was like this primal thing.
I don't know what it was about, but I'm the
same as I am. When I think about who I
(43:28):
am around them, it's the same, like the same as
who I am. Yeah yeah, yeah, but it's the same
as also who I am now. Like, It's not like
I would be a completely different person around my school girlfriends.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
What do you think teenage mea would have been like
in the age of Oh my god, you would have
loved me.
Speaker 3 (43:47):
I would have, but it would have destroyed me like
I would have. I mean, thank God, because so much
no impulse control, no sense of consequence, loving attention, always
wanting to do more things. I think it could have
been a really, really bad, bad thing for me. I mean,
I would have loved it, but it would have I
just don't think it would have served me well.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
You always that we're parenting in a time where we,
for the first time, we didn't face any of the
things that are they're dealing with. And I think that
being a teenage girl, one of the problems now is
that there are all these traps there for you, that
all the worst things you think about yourself can now
be reaffirmed by strangers, correct, friend groups.
Speaker 3 (44:27):
Correct, because all that, you know, we had ideas about popularity,
and you kind of every girl teenage girl knows who
are the popular girls.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
And who aren't.
Speaker 3 (44:38):
And yet we didn't have empirical evidence in terms of
likes and followers and things going viral and comments on
our posts. You know, all that stuff lived in our head.
I can't imagine you know me neither.
Speaker 2 (44:52):
Maya Friedman, thank you for coming on and talking to
me about my book.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
Congratulations.
Speaker 3 (44:57):
He would never five families, fourteen years of friendship, one
long weekend. It's your best work, but by so far.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
Thank you so much, friends. He Would Never is in
shops on April twenty nine. If it sounds like something
you'd love reading, please follow the link in our show
notes of this episode to buy or pre order it.
It would mean the world. And while you're sitting down
doing that, please also hit follow all like on this
(45:28):
podcast wherever you're listening to it. It genuinely helps other
people find this show. If you feel like leaving a
review even better. An enormous thank you from me to
Mia Friedman for changing my life in many ways, but
also for coming and sitting down with me for mid
I know sitting down is her least favorite thing, but
I told you there was a surprise at the end
(45:48):
of this episode, and there is. I wanted to read
you an exclusive passage from he Would Never one that
very much reflects what MEA and I discussed in the show.
What You're about to Hear is part of a chapter
told from the perspective of Lyra, a fourteen year old girl.
The book is about her mother and her mother's friends,
who all met at mother's group when their kids were
babies babies anymore, and when we meet Lyra, she's thinking
(46:12):
back to the time she felt her world tilt in
the way Mia and I were discussing today. The moment
was in a swimming pool at her mum's best friend's house,
and Lockie Short, who she's been encouraged to consider as
some kind of uncle, is talking to her in a
way she hasn't heard before. The executive producer of me
and his name of Brown. The senior producer is Grace Rufray.
(46:34):
Our producer is Charlie Blackman, and we've had audio and
sound designed by Jacob Brown. Enjoy this little bit of
he would never Tia was Lyra's best friend, but they
were pretty different. They went to different schools now. Tia
went to a really posh school with no rules, and
Lyra went to Saint Deirdre's, which was medium posh but
(46:56):
had lots of rules, mostly to do with God. Tia
did dance and drama and Lyra did netball and soccer,
so they didn't see each other as much as they
used to when they both went to Bronte Public and
didn't have so much to do. But Tia wasill the
one who Lyrah felt most comfortable with of all her
friend group. The others you always had to watch what
you said, or sometimes you might get to school and
(47:18):
find out through a feeling in your stomach, or in
the way one of the girls was talking to you,
or in how they didn't answer or even open your messages,
that there had been a shift. That's how you'd find
out you'd done something. You were out, and you'd have
to work your way back in. It was tiring. She
was never out with Tea. They could be silly together
(47:40):
like babies, or they could be teenagers together trying on
who they might like to be next. It didn't matter.
It was always easy. Lyra thought about the first time
Tears Dad Lockie had spoken to her in a way
that was different from how the other grown ups did.
The first time, she was confused. She had been at
Tears and they had all been in the pool. One
(48:01):
of the first swims of last summer. Auntie Liz had
a swimming pool with an infinity edge like you saw
in fancy hotels. On TikTok Auntie Lisa, it made you
feel like you were drifting out to sea, as if
that were a good thing. Everyone was getting out except Lira,
because there was nothing Lira liked more than floating on
her back looking up at the sky. Tia and Lis
(48:22):
and the little kids had all piled towards the kitchen
to get food, but Lockie had stayed behind, and he
was looking at her. You look a lot like your mother,
he'd said, which wasn't what she'd wanted to hear, but okay,
Then he said, you know she is extremely dear to us,
don't you. And there have been something about the way
he said it words that people don't usually use, a
(48:42):
question that didn't need an answer. Adults were always asking
questions that weren't questions, but they usually used normal words.
Liz would do anything for your mom, me too, Auntie.
Lis is very good to us. Lyra knew to be
grateful to the Shorts the number of times over the
years that she'd heard her mother say she didn't know
where she'd be without Lis. Lira wanted to get out
(49:04):
to go and find Tia, but there was something about
the way Lockie kept looking at her that made her
want to see covered by the water. It was the
year that eyes had started moving differently over her. At
the beach on the street, Lyra was wearing what she
and her friends were always wearing, but suddenly it all
meant something different. It was like a spotlight was suddenly
(49:25):
pointed right at her, And sometimes it felt good to
be picked out scene, but sometimes it felt scary, and
she hadn't ever thought about it feeling scary with people.
You'd always known that maybe all men had that light
with them, and they could shine it at you whenever
they wanted. I should find tea, she'd said from the water,
but she didn't move to pull herself up and out
(49:45):
onto the deck. Go away, she remembered, feeling turn away.
Someone needs to look out for you girls, he'd said,
Now you're growing up. Your mum's so busy. We're fine,
she'd said, quickly, and then remembered, thank you. Lockie had
picked up a towel Auntie Lissa's house had the best,
thick soft towels, big enough to wrap around your whole body,
and took two steps towards the edge of the pool,
(50:07):
where Lyra's arms were resting. She'd put her chin on
them and looked down at where the water was licking
in and out of the shiny little square tiles, anywhere
but up at him. Come on, then, he said, squatting
down holding the towel out, Let's go and get some food.
How many times had lyra jumped out of this pool
and run into the kitchen in a little sunsuit, in
(50:28):
a swimming lesson one piece in a bikini, without thinking,
without even being aware of herself, of her arms and
legs and tommy and chest. Why did she feel in
that moment when she glanced up and saw the crease
around Lockey Short's eyes and the particular curve of his
closed mouth smile, like everything was different. She remembered the
(50:48):
rough grout scratching her stomach as she'd pushed her whole
self flat against the pool wall, hiding her bum, her thighs,
her flicking feet. Lockie hadn't moved, He'd stayed close, towel
and hands. You girls should get bigger cozies, he'd said,
and she could hear something like a tease in his voice, friendly,
maybe a tone that suggested everything she was feeling was
(51:09):
ridiculed less. But then if you don't want to be
looked at, and she remembered feeling sick in her mouth,
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Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.