May 26, 2025 • 43 mins
Kamala Harris has touched down on Australian soil this week for a... real estate convention? Yes, really and we're just as confused as you are.
Plus, it's been a big weekend for the Kardashian family, with a hens party, a graduation, and the unveiling of a new face. We have thoughts.
'Girl Power' is dead, according to one former Spice Girl. The phrase defined a generation and the iconic girl group, but is it time to move on?
And finally, Labubus. The trinket craze is taking social media by storm, but why are so many of us suddenly obsessed with toys designed for toddlers? Answer: it probably has something to do with your childhood.
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What to read:
- The undetectable era of surgery is here. Kris Jenner just proved it.
- Why grown adults are obsessed with toothy little monsters called Labubus.
- Everyone wants a Labubu, but the next viral plush toy has already been predicted.
- 'My friend wants me to pay $250 for her hen's lunch. I want to refuse.'
- In the 1990s, the Spice Girls were the biggest band in the world. Here's what their lives look like now.
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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.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
You know, there's this discussion that's been going on for
thirty years about whether girl power was the savior of
modern feminism or the killer of it, and I think
it was probably neither.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Girl Power was very much about women not being passive,
women being active, that sense of female friendship as opposed
to female competition to get a guy. So all of
that was I won't say transgressive, but it was certainly fresh.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Hello and welcome to Mamma Mia out loud what women
are actually talking about on Monday, the twenty sixth of May.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
I'm Holly Wainwright, I'm Mea.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Friedman, and I'm Jesse Stevens.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
And as you might be able to hear, although we're
back from talk, we're not quite back in our new
studios yet. This week we will be. So if we
sound little bit different, that's why. But on today's show,
a joyful celebration of a mighty milestone or an opportunity
to show off your new face. What celebrity hens parties
tell us about our own also millennial icon Jin Despice
(01:25):
has unilaterally declared the death of girl power. Sad farewell
or good riddance? And why those weird little monsters hanging
off cool people's bags tell us a lot about our
state of mind. Welcome to the Labooboo era of infinite childhood.
But first, Mia Friedman.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
In case you.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Missed it, former Vice president and presidential runner up Kamala
Harris was on the Gold Coast yesterday to speak at
the Australian Real Estate Conference. Maybe you bumped into it.
I don't think she went to what a world, but
maybe she did have a quick swim at the beach.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
She didn't come to our show in Brisbane last week,
did she?
Speaker 1 (02:00):
That was rude and I think she was only there
for a day, like she flew in and she flew out.
So in case you're wondering why she was at the
real estate conference, of all the things that she might
be doing, she does have a little more time on
her hands now that she's not running for president or
being the vice president. Her relevance to this particular conference
(02:20):
was the cross section of politics and real estate. She
recalled her experience when she was California's Attorney general and
she refused a four billion dollar deal from major banks
to settle dodgy mortgage deals. But the thing to take
away from this really is that even former president's, vice
president's prime ministers they need a side hustle because they
(02:42):
got to earn some coin.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
I found this really interesting because I saw on the
weekend I saw some pat pictures of Kamala having a
fancy dinner in Sydney, and I was like, Oh, how exciting.
I wonder why she's here. And then when I saw
that she was doing this thing on the Goldie until
you just explained that bit to me, Mia, I was like,
why Kamala? Why real estate? If you're going to pay
(03:04):
lots and lots of money, they have a big name
come and talk at your real estate conference, wouldn't it
be better togain like someone from selling Sunset or something. Ha.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
That would have been great. Actually, the thing with conferences
is that they're a whole industry unto themselves, and what
they need to do is they need to sell tickets,
and to sell tickets, they've got to have keynote speakers.
So I've been on the keynote speakers circuit. You can
pretty much book anybody from me. I don't do it anymore,
but Jesse's done it before. And all of these conferences,
(03:35):
you know, industry conferences. They're not necessarily open to the public,
but they have to have names that people want to
listen to with some tangible connection to their industry. I mean,
I've spoken it dentist conferences, I've spoken it real estate conferences.
I don't know if it was this one. I used
to do it quite a lot.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
The idea of Kamala trying to tailor her keynote to
real estate agents in the Gold Coast is my favorite
fact of the week. And I also read about who
else was doing it. So when I did a keynote
quite recently, Julie Goodwin and Yelena Dokitch were also talking.
Who are just such professionals with incredible stories who would
(04:14):
have their keynote down pat And I felt totally out
of my depth, And I keep thinking about at this conference.
There was Kamala Harris, there was Steven Bartlett, who is
the one of the biggest podcasts in the world, and
then there was Sydney real estate agent David Walker. And
I'm sure that David Walker is a great real estate agent,
but I like thinking about David Walker calling them up
(04:35):
and going, yee yep, what do you want me to
talk about? Cool?
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Cool?
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Who else is talking? Kamala Harris Okay, all right, I
will work on my speech then.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
So she's rumored to have been paid anywhere between two
hundred and two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for this
kind of fireside chat. Obama's done it. You can you know,
book all sorts of prime ministers, sports stars, celebrities pay
for play.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
For that money, that's too much pressure for me. I
would say no, no, no, pay me less, because my
speech isn't going to be two hundred thousand dollars worthy.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
The good news is that you would be paid less, Jesson.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
The fact that the Gold Coast real estate people have
the kind of money that buys you Stephen Bartlet and
Kamala Harris not good news for those people saving for
a deposit for hours.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
In case you missed it, the Kardashians had a lot
to celebrate this weekend. First, Kim Kardashian graduated from law school. Second,
Chris Jenner debuted her new face. So for six years,
Kardashian has been studying her law program and upon completion,
she decided to hold a private backyard ceremony to mark
(05:42):
the milestone. So to be clear, this wasn't at a university.
Oh sorry, you two have never graduated, so as the
only person here who's graduated.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Well, see, we're easily impressed. We were like, that seems legit.
Can she be my lawyer? Now?
Speaker 3 (05:55):
So when I graduated, it was held at the university,
and you go and hire a gown, you hire a hat,
and you do a ceremony, and someone might speak, and
you go and you shake your hand. Right now, That's
not what happened for Kim. It was in the backyard,
her backyard, and she hired or bought a nude gown
and a nude hat, which is not customary. But we
(06:15):
know that it's in her color palace.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
I doubt she hired it Jesse to be she.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Might've had Skims make it for her. She still needs
to pass the California Bar Exam to become a licensed attorney.
Any questions or comments before I move on too, Chris's face.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Look, I was very impressed by this because I know
people get upset when we talk about the Kardashians, and
people get upset about the Kardashians in general for lots
of reasons. But these women have now been with increasing
cultural relevance, really very prominent in our culture for nearly
twenty years. Right, Everything they do, everything they wear, everything
(06:53):
they say, everything they try and sell us like it
says something about the world we live in. And I'm
very impressed that Kim has become Look, i'm not going
to say a lawyer, let's say lawyer adjacent. I'm very
impressed that Kim has become lawyer adjacent because she has
picked up a cause that is very un sexy, which
is prison reform, Like nobody saw that coming for her,
(07:15):
and apparently, by all accounts, she's very serious about it.
So when I was looking at the Instagram things, I
saw her with a hat on, like celebrating and throwing
it in the air, and I was like, that's great.
And then when you dig a bit and you're like, oh,
that isn't what everybody else was doing. Like she had
a special as you've already outlined, the gowns and the
table setting, and the kids were all dressed in little
(07:36):
business suits with briefcases, and they all walked in like
little lawyers to it, like it's the most Kardashian take
on what being a lawyer looks like. But I'm here
for it.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
It's very cosplay and it's very do it for the gram.
It's interesting because there are two different things here. There's
the fact that she's studied, and whether you Kim Kardashian
or not, you still have to do some study, Like
you can't just phone this in. So it's not like
she hasn't worked hard over a long period of time
to get to this point, like all legal students. But
(08:08):
then it's the play of it all. It's the need
to do live action or laping live action or play
of you know, the performative side of being a lawyer
in a gown and doing all of that. And I
guess it's very smart. This is why the Kardashians have
had such a stranglehold on the culture for so long
and continue to in many ways, is that they know
(08:30):
that for the media to run a story, they need images.
They need pictures for things to go viral, to stay
culturally relevant. It's now about video. You know, holding a
certificate is not going to cut it. Most people didn't
read the fine print and they're like, oh, Kim Kardashian's lawyer.
Now that's been how it's been mostly reported and received.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Okay, So Jenna, the mother of Kardashian, who this year
is turning seventy, was pictured leaving an event in Paris,
and we are going to get into the details of
that event later. But when people saw this video, they
were like, yeah, yeah, look it's Kim Kardashian in Paris,
until they did a double take and they went, no,
that is her mother, who was thirty five years older.
(09:10):
We know that she sees this New York plastic surgeon.
She's talked about him before and some work she's had done,
but she now looks ai generated. Have you guys seen
the pictures?
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Oh, I've looked at a little else. Over the weekend and
over last week, this went through all my group chats
where I sent it to some people and people were like, oh, Kim, wait,
who is that not realizing And there's been a lot
of commentary about how this is the new generation of
plastic surgery. We saw it on Lindsay Lohan Demi Moore
and it's like almost aging or visually aging in reverse.
(09:47):
It's unlike anything that we've seen before because it doesn't
look obviously like she's had a lot of work in
that same way as perhaps facelifts.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
What do you think it is, because you're obviously doctor Maya.
What do you think she's had done?
Speaker 1 (10:03):
I've dived deep. So people are saying it's not one thing,
it's a number of different things. But at the root
of it is a deep plane facelift where they actually
surgically alter every single muscle in your face. And there
are other things as well, And it's an upper eye lift,
and it's a this, and it's that, and it's you know,
there's a ton of different things, and it's also a
neck lift, and it's a lot of work, but it's
(10:26):
made to look like you younger, not you altered, if
that makes sense.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
Yeah. I saw this TikTok over the weekend that said,
I'm so glad that now that we've sorted all the
women's health issues like endometriosis, like peacos, like perimenopause, now
that we've got them under control, we can now move
on to the aesthetic. The superficial elements of women's bodies
have contraception, like we tick, So now we can go,
(10:53):
oh great, now we can do things that are a
little bit more like they're not as necessary, but all
our best doctors can go. How can we make Chris
jenneral look her absolute best at Priority seventy exactly.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
I saw the.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Pictures that I was like, Oh, she's wearing her daughter's faces.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
That's nice.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
It's really unnerving. It's really unnerving, and I guess it
makes sense that surgery is going to get better, as
in better, as in less strange looking. I'd love to
know what she looks like in real life. I would
love to know if it was amazing without all the
filters and out without all the night because she really
does look strange.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
You can tell because there was a lot of photos
that came out around that time. Because of course she
was there for Lauren sand Well. She was there for
two things. First, she was in Paris for Kim's trial,
the trial of robbers that came and tied up Kim
Kadashi and stole all her diamonds. And then moving on
from that a couple of days later was Lauren Sanchez's
(11:52):
hens Do, which I think you've got more details about,
or we're going to talk about more. I do, Yeah,
But there were quite a few paparazzi shots of those
women leaving the hotels, and you know that were not
taken by them, and they're photographers that they brought with
them and that were not filtered, and it is quite different.
And I mean in those pictures she's wearing big sunglasses
(12:12):
in most of those pictures. It's not quite the same,
obviously as with all the filters, but it's not a
million miles away.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
I like to imagine, because you know how there's the
shtick about no one works harder than Chris Jenna, and
I'm just imagining their recovery time and how many shouting
phone calls she would have had to make from under
a pile of bandages. More more, bye, bye, self doubt. Okay,
so while we are here in literal la La land,
I need to talk about the occasion as mere reference
(12:41):
that Jenna unveiled her new face, Lauren Sanchez's recent hendu. Now,
if you don't know that name, Sanchez is the Fianza
is the fiance, let's pronounce it correctly of Jeff Bezos,
one of the world's richest men, their owner of Amazon,
who's worth an estimated two hundred and twenty billion. And
although we don't like to define women by the men
(13:02):
there with. It is literally the reason why this former
TV anchor is now a properly famous person. So anyway,
she and Jeffer getting married in a hot minute in Venice, Italy.
I'm sure it's going to be a very quiet, understated
affair because Lawrence Hendu was an intimate gathering of thirteen.
The thirteen included fellow astronaut Katie Perry, Chris and her
(13:24):
new face, Kim Kardashian, Eva Longoria, Lauren's sister Elena, and
a few other very close, very glamorous friends. Everyone brought
their glam squad. There were choreographed papwalks, poses in front
of the Eiffel Tower, and a lot of BTS content
for socials. Jesse, you're in the era of many weddings
and hen parties back here in the real world. Are
(13:46):
they exactly like Laurence.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
They're not exactly like Laurence, But I just might not
be invited to those ones. What I did relate with
was the content opportunity of it all, the content schedule.
I looked at the images that Lauren posted on Instagram
and went all right, So what we really went to
was a four day photo shoot, because in order to
get those photos and get that content, that's just a
(14:11):
lot of a lot of work. A lot of them
traveled with their own hairstylists, which was a detail I liked.
And now the detail I really liked was that in
attendance was someone named October Gonzalez. Do you guys know
who that is?
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Great name?
Speaker 3 (14:24):
October is the wife of Lauren's ex husband, Ah, and
they're good friends because they're co parent And I was like, okay,
I have some questions. I would be at that hens
after a few drinks, I'd be sitting next to October.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Do you know who wasn't there though, Pea Whitesell, who
is married to Lauren's ex husband.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
So October is married to one of her ex husbands.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Maybe she has multiple, Yeah, she's got a couple, just
got a couple, but the most recent one is married
to Australian actress Pah. I can't remember what her name
was before she married Yea, So she wasn't there.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Do you think if you were invited, not necessarily to
that one, but any friend in your world who you
knew was much more glad than you. And there are
many friends in my world who are more glamorous than me.
Would you just be so nervous about what to wear,
what to look like posing in the pictures next to
these people.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
I have a friend who went to a socialites Hens Dude.
She talks about it all the time. She felt deeply uncomfortable.
She felt as though there was a photo shoot happening
on the boat. But she cannot emphasize this enough. She
was not invited to the photos end of the boat.
Like she found it quite enlightening because she's like, oh,
this is how we get the shot, and I don't
want to put that much into getting the shot. But
(15:40):
what's hard for friends of Lauren is that she was
recently in space. How do you create a Hen's do
for someone who's been to space. It can't just be
at the local pub, it can't be a boat on
Sydney Harbor. You've got to up it. And in terms
of whether you'd go, I read this article I think
it was in The Times that was just like, hopefully
(16:01):
Lauren paid for it all. You're not getting a message
at the end going you owe me seventeen dollars for
the cocktailing on at the end, or guy, it's going
to cost just four hundred and twenty dollars for the accommodation.
Like someone picked up the bill and I feel like
Chris Jenna wasn't being invoiced, which is nice.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Yeah. No, it was definitely in all expenses. And I
think it was also the eulogy for the death of
quiet luxury, because there was nothing quiet about this. It's
interesting this idea of how Hens Nights and bachelorette parties
are being transformed by social media. And I wouldn't say
the same for Bucks weekends.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
They are intentionally not on social media.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Correct, they are very offline. But Hen's things. I was
reading about a bachelorette contestant and she was at her
sister's themed Hen's that was all themed about being air hostesses,
and so everybody was dressed in air hostess uniforms. And
it's sort of when you've got those friends, or if
(17:04):
you've ever experienced that world where at social events happening
on two tracks. One is the actual track of you
guys being together, and the other is someone who, if
they're an influencer, will be wanting to document it as content.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Even if they're not an influencer.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Yeah, true, even if there is. I'm not an influencer.
Everybody wants nice photos and everyone wants stuff to put
on the gram. How that's just changed the whole thing.
Like this, Hen's weekend in Paris seemed very I mean,
it was designed to be completely widy whatever. The opposite
of private is public and performative. In the same way
(17:41):
that the trip to Space was, it's performing female friendship,
performing fun. Now maybe they were having a great time.
I don't know, but I know that when you're very
aware of being perceived and photographing, where even if you're
the one holding the camera or if your friend is
and it's not paparazzi, it does change how you behave
(18:04):
and how you feel.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
I have an opinion about a four day Hens, which
is absolutely fine and it's estimated to have cost about
one million Australian dollars. But I was looking at what
we know about the itinerary and it was like fancy breakfast,
fancy lunch, fancy dinner, and then cocktails under the Eiffel Tower.
I just feel like it was a little jam packed.
(18:25):
And my comment about Hen's things, or in fact any
group holiday is I just think we need to pair
it back by twenty percent, because everyone needs just a
little lie down and a deep breath and just to recalibrate,
because it's a lot of socializing with people that maybe
you don't know that well.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Imagine the group chats, because they would have had a
group chat where in the first place they went like, well,
Kim's going to be in Paris for the trial, so
that's perfect, And then all their assistants would have had
a group chat. Can you imagine what had been going
on in there about the logistics and probably the glam
squads had it to group chats so they could go, well,
I'm going to do up, you're going to do down?
Like yeah, like the industrial complex that must have been
(19:07):
behind this, I think like when you bring that into
real life. The fact that now every milestone occasion, as
you said me, it runs on two tracks, and one
of them is how's it going to look on everybody's
platforms means that it's so much bigger and it involves
so many more people. I like to imagine that they go, Okay,
nine o'clock, we're all putting our phones away and we're
(19:29):
just getting loose. I like to imagine that's what happens.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
I think at nine o'clock they all ran back to
their rooms to filter and post and curate their photos.
When Lauren Sanchez posted, you know, she posted some galleries
and carousels and stuff on Instagram and with captions like
she said, forever starts with friendship, surrounded by the women
who've lifted me up, illuminated my path in dark times,
(19:54):
and shaped my heart along the way. It's kind of
like she flattens everything. And then she and another picture
of a bunch of them sitting in coordinated robes and
towels and sunglasses on the bed while looking at their phones.
She captured it. That's a wrap to my girl, Thank
you for surprising me, lifting me up, and reminding me
how much I needed this moment. I love your hearts
(20:15):
and your beautiful energy more than words can say surprising me.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
That suggests that some poor maid of honor had to
organize Laurence Sanchez's hens do, which is just a job
no one should have to do.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
In a moment. Girl power is dead and we're going
to talk about which if the Spice Girls just killed it.
Girl power is apparently dead. According to Jerry Horner, who
used to be Ginger Spice, but now she is a
children's book author and she's married to Formula one boss
Christian Horner. So she was doing an event where she
(20:49):
was reading her latest children's book to a group of
little kids, and she said of the Spice Girl's slogan
girl power, she said it was irrelevant, and she said,
it's irrelevant what your gender is. But then what she
said was quite interesting. She described girl power as a
sweet word for feminism, but the true meaning of feminism
(21:09):
is the equalization between the sexes. She now says she
advocates for a more inclusive message. I think it's about
inner power. It's about celebrating and empowering everyone, not just women.
What do you think Are we sad to see the
back of girl power or is it a loss for
the culture?
Speaker 3 (21:27):
There is something in what she said that has a
kernel of truth, which is that feminism was intended to
liberate us all like it was intended to liberate men too,
from the shackles of masculinity and patriarchy and all of that.
Was that what she was talking about. I don't know,
but you know, there's this discussion that's been going on
for thirty years about whether girl power was the savior
(21:50):
of modern feminism or the killer of it, and I
think it was probably neither. And this is what we
do when we try to make a band or a
person or a brand everything to all people. Like the
Spice Girl existed in a moment in time, in a
(22:12):
rich context to do a certain thing that had limits.
Of course, it had limits. The message of girl power
was about confidence and being loud and being brash and
having fun with other girls. And maybe that doesn't seem
so revolutionary right now, but at the time to a
five year old, like you know, complex theories of feminism
(22:37):
aren't quite as palatable. And I was reading about the
Spice Girls and kind of the history of them and
how informed they were by Thatcherism by the nineteen eighties
and Margaret Thatcher, and that is an incredibly flawed prism
by which to look at feminism, because female representation isn't
the end or beginning of feminism. But that was a
(22:59):
woman in a place where women weren't thought to belong.
That was revolutionary. That you had Margaret Thatcher for more
than ten years in a position of leadership, no matter
what you thought of her. And so so the Spice
Girls came out of that a few years later and
kind of went all right, we're going to take up
space and a girl band was kind of really cool.
But Holly, do you think that she's diluted the message
(23:21):
now that by trying to appeal to everyone, it's kind
of like there's no bite to what they were trying
to say.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
I just don't think that this version of Jerry Hallewell
would be allowed to call herself a feminist. Really the
sort of image makeover that Jerry Hallewell has had, because
it's really interesting that it's funny. So as gen X,
we just kind of missed the spice skills in a way.
They're very much a millennial phenomena, right, But we watched
it happen, we were very close to it, and I
(23:48):
remember at the time thinking it seemed quite empty because
I guess Gen X feminists were a bit grungier, right,
So it was like, this all seems a bit sellout.
It's a bit sugary. But the way that I hear
millennials talk about girl power, and as you just said, Jesse,
the idea of little girls seeing this, I understand that
it meant something to them, right, But each of those
women because the spice skills only actually happened for about
(24:10):
four years and then they were over, so it's a
very short period of time and then they were gone,
and where they've all gone since then is really interesting.
And Jerry's reinvention is very conservative, very pristine, trad wife,
good girl. She only wears white, literally only wears white,
lives in a massive mansion in the countryside, has married
(24:31):
a very rich, slightly problematic man who's an f one guy.
You know, she, as you say, Mia, writes children's books.
She is wholesome, wholes or wholesome. And I do not
think that in Christian Horner's world you are allowed to
be marching around talking about feminism. Allowed is the wrong word.
Of course, she's allowed, encouraged. Yeah, it's not the vibe.
So I think that her backing away from the term
(24:53):
feminism is more about that than it is about any
kind of gender inclusivity.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
That's so interesting, Yeah, because also he cheats on her,
and quite publicly. What's so fascinating about that is her
claiming it as a type of feminism, which is something
that feminist Catlin Anne was very critical of when she
was writing about feminism about ten years ago, and she
pointed out that the Spice Girls were a real watered down,
(25:18):
commercialized form of feminism, and she said that it replaced
real feminist activism with sort of superficial gestures and consumerism.
And she said it was more about I want to
hang out with my friends and wear cool clothes and
be a bit naughty and have a few drinks. And
did they pinch Prince Charles on.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
The bookom Yes, Ginger did, because one of the reasons
why her transformation is particularly startling, and she and Scary
were the naughty ones, you know, the noise.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Yes, exactly, And I love what you said about girl
power was very much about women not being passive, women
being active, and women that sense of female friendship as
opposed to female competition to get a guy. So all
of that was I won't say transgressive, but it was
certainly fresh and it was very palatable.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
There was something subversive about that, and I don't know
about it replaced it. It's like lots of things can coexist.
And I don't think that the Spice Girls ever said
we are the embodiment of feminism. And this is where no, God, no,
they definitely didn't. In fact, I think that's revigionist history.
I think it's really interesting though, because recently sporedy email
(26:26):
C was on No Filter with Kate Langbrook and it
was a really good interview and she clearly still takes
the girl power side of it very seriously and suggests
that it actually was more about them being in control
of their careers, because again when I talk about gen
X being a bit cynical about the Spice Girls, they
were literally.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
A constructed band. You know, they advertised for these young
girls they needed to be a certain way, look a
certain way, have a certain variety to them. Then they
were trained up and turned into a band, which is
just you know, has happened many times since, like with
one direction. But she talked in that interview about how
they rejected a lot of the songwriters they were given,
that they didn't like the way that they So she
was suggesting that girl power meant that they were more
(27:05):
in control than anybody's thought. How true that is, I
don't really know.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
There are a few clips from a documentary years ago
which was them on set being told to do certain things,
and their brand was that they pushed back a little
bit and that they were kind, They felt a little
bit more powerful because there were five of them rather
than one against a male photographer. But I wonder, I'm
interested in what you say about Jerry Halliwell's kind of
break from feminism. If the Spice Girls existed today, I
(27:33):
wonder if tradwife would be one of them.
Speaker 4 (27:35):
Yes, trad spies, trad spies, because Holly at our live show,
you were talking about ways to be a girl, right,
and that's evolved, Like that was a moment in time
like that you had the baby and the scary and
the sporty and.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Sporty was was subversive too, the idea that a girl
could be sporty but be kind of cool and sexy
in that Like that was fun. But now we've got
like the trad wife in Jerry if we like that,
and maybe like even Victoria Beckham is like there's like
the girl boss hustler.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Yeah, she's very good. And the thing is is, when
you think about it, when we were just describing the
Spice Girls and their energy, that's what Bratt is, right,
that's like kind of the the evolution of that is
your Charlie XCX's and your Chapel Roans and your Billie
Eilishes who really do appear to be in control of
their careers. But they really do. But they are selling
a similar energy, which is don't give a fuck energy,
(28:31):
you know, like boss Lady energy in a different way. Naughty,
a bit subversive, a bit out there sexually, you know, available,
not available, sexually, liber etonomous. Yeah, I guess that's an
evolution of that. But you're so right. I think that
maybe one of the interesting things about Jerry is that
her evolution into a different kind of archetype really is
against who we thought she was. But it's very much
(28:54):
an archetype of Now.
Speaker 5 (28:56):
So I started this club carder we do Not Care club,
and this is for anybody going through perimenopause and menopause.
I posted a video asking who want to join? And
when I tell you, we got so many members in
this club. But what I did was compile a list
of all the stuff that we don't care about no more. Okay,
we don't care about BRA's no more because bras suffocate us.
We don't need that no more. We don't care we
(29:16):
look pregnant and we're really not pregnant. We don't care
about matching clothes and wearing pj's all day clothes is closed.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
That's it.
Speaker 5 (29:23):
That's the standard. We don't care about being on time
for the baby. Be happy that I showed up because
I don't even want to be here.
Speaker 4 (29:30):
We don't have to.
Speaker 5 (29:30):
We don't care about unpainted big toenails and wearing flip
flops with them. Listen, that's a luxury to be able
to paint your tonails. To nails is to nails. Just
I'm gonna win my flip flops.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
And there's that.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
That is a glorious woman who is all over your
phone right now. And she's not a Kardashian or a
billionaire bride. She is Melanie Sanders, a creator called Just
Being Melanie, And as you just heard, she is the
founder of the We Do Not Care Club. Her list
of things that perimenopausal women do not care about are
so funny and so right that they have spawned one
(30:02):
hundred imitations within days. Maya Jesse, were you into that
We Do Not Care Club?
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Are member? I loved it and joined it in my
heart immediately some things, and of course it makes you
start thinking about the things that you don't care about.
I don't care about embarrassing my kids. Yes, in fact,
I relish it. I don't care about vpls or camel tooes.
And I don't care what anyone thinks of my pants
or not pants.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
Yeah, I like that. I don't care if you know
that I'm wearing underpants. I can live with that. I
found this so funny, and I went through and listened
to a bunch and these were my favorites that she shared.
So she had We don't care. If it's an emergency,
don't call me. We do not care. If we forgot
what we were talking about, We'll come back to it
if we remember. We do not care about small talk.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Just shut up.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
We don't care about the back of our hair. That's
not any of our business. And we do not care
if we wear leggings every day. Jeans hurt our stomach.
Oh I like that.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Oh spot on, she's my new here.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
It's the way she delivers it because she just doesn't care,
Like she's just so pathetic.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
She's wearing or we don't care on a Serviette club
sign around her nation love.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
It written with a pen on the back of a nat.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
I love that, she says, separating clothes into darks and
whites and colors. If it can't survive a cold wash
and a dry cycle. Then it wasn't for us anyway. Anyway.
If you want to see more Melanie Sanders, we do
not care club. I have a feeling I'm going to
be seeing absolutely everywhere you can find her just being Melanie.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
After the break the trinket trend you're seeing everywhere and
what it really means out loud as.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
If you want to listen to us every day of
the week, you can get access to exclusive segments on
Tuesdays and Thursdays by becoming a Mum and mea subscriber.
Follow the link in the show notes to subscribe and
support us, and a big thank you to all our
current subscribers.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
I need to talk about La Boo Boo. If you
haven't noticed this trend, you are about to bag. Charms
or trinkets are everywhere, and in particular Le Boo Boo dolls,
which are like little stuffed toys. Rihanna and Jua Lipa
have been spotted with them hanging from their bags, and
in the past few weeks, demand for the collectibles has
(32:22):
gone through the roof. There are lines snaking outside shops.
Online listings are ridiculously expensive, and there have been physical
altercations in side shops. So Lea Boo Boo is a
furry monster character created by Casing Lung, who is a
Hong Kong born artist, and they are sold in something
(32:42):
called blind boxes, which means you don't know which character
you're going to get until you'll open it, and they
retail for between thirty Ozzie dollars and honestly can go
up to thousands if you are scouring eBay for a
particular type holly collectible laboo boos to attach to our handbags.
I'm gonna be honest to me, this just looks like
(33:03):
a new creative way to contribute to landfill. What is
the appeal?
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Look?
Speaker 2 (33:09):
I think we actually need to ask me that question,
because although I have many thoughts about why we're obsessed
with them, the idea of why we would put them
on our bags. We were talking about this in the meeting,
and then Maya held up a bag may tell us
why and where they came from in the fashion world.
I know, and you've been doing this for a while,
(33:29):
dangling crazy things from your bag.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
It's true. I like to buy accessories for my accessories.
I like to buy them for my bags. I like
to buy them for my shoes, shoe jewelry. What can
I tell you? People have always liked to collect things.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
Correction, sorry this is going to sound offensive, but children
have always liked to collect things, Like it's quite a
childish impulse to collect things.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
To me more collect dots. Lots of people collect, lots
of adults collect things.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
But I want to know why this has become fashion?
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Well, because you always follow the money. Fashion relies on
people buying things, and not just things, but new things,
things that they don't yet have. So that's why when
something comes back in fashion, it's always slightly different to
the version of it we all bought five ten, two
years ago, the idea of bag charms. The other thing
(34:20):
you've got to see with fashion is that it's always
reactive and the pendulum swings. So the last few years
we've had this epidemic of quiet luxury, which has now
come up twice on the show, and both la Booboos
and Lauren Sanchez's Hen's Do and actually just Lauren Sanchez
are both reactions to what I feel is the sadness
(34:40):
of quiet luxury. It's like, let's spend a whole lot
of money on something that looks incredibly plain. That doesn't well,
it doesn't spark joy in me. So I think that
now everyone's wanting to get really silly. And this idea
of childhood ties in with a generation who's very ambivalent
(35:00):
about growing up and a generation of parents who have
helicoptered our children and have sort of encouraged them to
stay in this suspended state of kid olt in a way.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
So quiet luxury to the basics, like me, that's like
Gwyneth Paltrow's g label, right, and like the Row, which
is basically about selling a gray cashmere jumper for like
five thousand dollars, and it's like no one would know
there was anything special about that except other people who've
got the eye for the quiet luxury, right exactly. So
(35:34):
this is interesting about the extended childhood idea because, as
you said, people, and Jesse corrected you, kids have always
collected things. Kids have also been obsessed with this blind
bag culture ever since you know, YouTubers became a thing.
Like my daughter went through a big phase of Lol dolls, right,
which were these little plastic dolls. And the whole thing
is you go to you at the shop and you
(35:54):
don't know which one you're going to get when you
get it, and this is also true for like Pokemon cards.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
It's a happy meal.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
Yeah, it is. The idea is that the excitement is
part of it, the gamification of like what am I
going to get? I don't know, and then I've got
to collect them all. So it's very clever, as Mia says,
from a capitalist perspective, because you're probably not going to
get the one you want first time, so then you've
got to get another one, and another one and another one.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Because you buy them in a box, although not all
of them. I'm on the PopMart website now, because there
are some places around the world where you go and
queue and you queue for hours and then you pay
all this money and you're given a box and you
can't choose what you get. So you might get a
box with a LABOOO that you've already got. If you
buy two boxes, it might be the same one in
both boxes. You just don't know, so it's almost like
(36:41):
a bit of a lottery gamification of consumerism. And in
Australia the place you get them is online at PopMart,
and you can get some most of them are out
of stock, but you get a box and I don't
know if you I've just found one for twenty two dollars,
like a Coca cola. Yeah one. I don't know if
this is an actual see this might also be not
(37:03):
a legitimate one because I don't know.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Well, there are lots about kinds of the monsters, and
the booboos are one of the kinds the most desirable.
But this is important is that although you can spend
thousands on them, they're not actually that expensive. As in,
if you go and queue up and buy one, they're
going to cost somewhere between thirty and sixty dollars, which
is a lot of money for a little fluffy toil.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
It's a lot for a time, but for a tiny
little bad it's But the point is it's little treat size.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
It's little treat scale, you know what I mean. So
there's another theory that one of the reasons why this
has become a big thing is that, you know, back
to that thing we often quote the lipstick index, which
is when times are tough economically, but you still want
to bring a bit of joy and treats to yourself,
Like buying a thirty dollar ridiculous bad charm is not
a good use of thirty dollars, but it's not entirely
(37:49):
out of reach hundreds and things.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
It's not a two thousand dollars handbag, So.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
It's giving you a little bit of high fashion Rhianna
or whatever for an affordable ish price.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
I have a few theories. The first is that it's
countercultural in a world in which everything is on demand
and nothing runs out. So with Sheen and Timu, it's
like you can get what she has immediately all of
the time.
Speaker 6 (38:17):
Right.
Speaker 3 (38:18):
I've seen mea go I love that skirt, and she
has the skirt in her cart within ten seconds. The
thing about this is that you can't like you. The
gamification element means that scarcity and the lines run out,
and that's why there's some.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Then there's a new drop, and then excited about the new.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
Drop, which nothing ever runs out anymore, which I think
is why it's exciting to people. I also wonder do
we all need teddy bears now for support the rise
of the teddy bear like the jelly cat, which a
lot of people are very into, which Luna has one,
but I've seen adults collect them. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
To be clear, the market for all of this is
that adults, it's not actually children.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
And is it that we feel so unsafe or unsettled
or anxious or concerned that we literally, like a toddler,
need to leave our house with a teddy bear or
and this might be an unpopular thing to say. I
kept looking at this, and this came to my head,
and I'm sorry if this is offensive. Do you want
a la boo boo? Or do you want a baby?
(39:23):
Because you know how people treat their dogs. I was
this for ten years, right, like in my twenties, my
dog was my baby. And there's this element of like
you have this instinct to look and care for something
and cuddle something really really cute, but you're not in
a position where you can have a baby.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
Or do you want to be the baby? I don't know.
It's like Tamagotchi's it's like playing at being a mummy, yeah,
or being a baby. It's like you get to be
a baby that's pretending to be a mummy.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
Which is also like there's something nostalgic about us all
trying to grasp back onto our childhood at a time, but.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
Also we've extended it. We've extended childhood. Like if you
look if you look at the phenomena all over a
social media of girlhood and I'll often see them and
it'll say the definition of girlhood is and it'll be,
you know, being out with your mates whatever. And these
women are in the early twenties. They are not girls. Yeah,
you know, but we have extended childhood. And that's why
I think the toys coming with us, you know what
(40:19):
I mean, not ready to put away childish things. La
booboos are childish things. Plus these are childish things, then
it brings your joy and security. We are some of
the people because we were all a little bit apart
from me, who has had some knockoff laboobos for a
while now, some of the young women in our office,
we're not going to have it if we said that
the laboo boos were silly. They really liked them. Here's
(40:41):
a few of the things they said.
Speaker 6 (40:43):
As the owner of all labooboos myself, I think there's
a few reasons why people are going so crazy for them.
First is really the scarcity. The fact that they're so
hard to get, so hard to get your hands on,
really adds to the appeal. Secondly, I reckon the blind
box element, not knowing which color you're going to get
when you buy one. There's a real mystery and excitement
around doing a la booboo unboxing.
Speaker 3 (41:05):
And finally, I think they're just cute.
Speaker 6 (41:07):
They're part creepy, part cute, and that makes them so
intriguing for me personally. I started out as a hater.
I'm not gonna lie. I didn't really understand the craze.
But the more Tiktoks I watched, the more drawn I
was to aboo boos. They're just silly and fun and
add a little something to your bag. I paid thirty
two dollars for mine, which is the price that they
(41:28):
are when you buy the first hand from PopMart, but
they are going for crazy amounts of money on the
retail market, double triple the price.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
Sometimes.
Speaker 7 (41:36):
At first, I thought Labooboo's were really weird and kind
of gave me the creeps a little bit, because they
have these evil little smiles and it's kind of like
one of those dolls that would get possessed in a movie,
to be honest, but I think the appeal came from
the fact that over time I just found them really cute.
Speaker 3 (41:50):
They kind of remind me of like where the Wild
things are.
Speaker 7 (41:53):
I love cute stuff, Like I'm very susceptible to a
cute thing like a jelly cat, So a labubu was,
you know, natural to.
Speaker 3 (41:58):
Extep for me. But I just thought they were really fun.
Speaker 7 (42:01):
I have put them on my bag at times, and
I kind of think, like, oh am I too old
for this, Like probably.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
They are creepy if you can't it's some to mind
what a la booo looks like if you've never seen one.
They're a bit like cross between a gremlin and a
mogway if you're old enough to remember the movie.
Speaker 3 (42:17):
Kind of like a Telly Tubby.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
Yeah, weird evil, a little bit evil.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
It's funny because and this ties in with some of
the other things we've been talking about today, like Hen's
parties and whatever is that. One of our wonderful coworkers
there made the point that the unboxing is part of
the whole thing. And what can you do with an unboxing?
You can film it turn it into content. So it's
like you get all the dopamine hits of shopping, surprise
and content.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
And in a world of Chris Jenna's face, do you
want a little snaggle toothed demonic eyed Teddy Bear. Maybe
that's all we've.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Got time for today. Out loud as a massive thank
you for listening to our show and to our fabulous
team for putting it together with all of us from home.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
While we were recording. I think I just bought a
fakaboboo by accident.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
I can't wait to see you and see how many
things you've got dangling off your back. Tomorrow. We're going
to be back in your ears tomorrow and so he's
La Boo booths. We'll see then, Bye bye bye.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
Shout out to any Mum and mea subscribers listening. If
you love the show and you want to support us,
subscribing to MoMA Mia is the very best way to
do so. There's a link in the episode description.
You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
You know, there's this discussion that's been going on for
thirty years about whether girl power was the savior of
modern feminism or the killer of it, and I think
it was probably neither.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Girl Power was very much about women not being passive,
women being active, that sense of female friendship as opposed
to female competition to get a guy. So all of
that was I won't say transgressive, but it was certainly fresh.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Hello and welcome to Mamma Mia out loud what women
are actually talking about on Monday, the twenty sixth of May.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
I'm Holly Wainwright, I'm Mea.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Friedman, and I'm Jesse Stevens.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
And as you might be able to hear, although we're
back from talk, we're not quite back in our new
studios yet. This week we will be. So if we
sound little bit different, that's why. But on today's show,
a joyful celebration of a mighty milestone or an opportunity
to show off your new face. What celebrity hens parties
tell us about our own also millennial icon Jin Despice
(01:25):
has unilaterally declared the death of girl power. Sad farewell
or good riddance? And why those weird little monsters hanging
off cool people's bags tell us a lot about our
state of mind. Welcome to the Labooboo era of infinite childhood.
But first, Mia Friedman.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
In case you.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Missed it, former Vice president and presidential runner up Kamala
Harris was on the Gold Coast yesterday to speak at
the Australian Real Estate Conference. Maybe you bumped into it.
I don't think she went to what a world, but
maybe she did have a quick swim at the beach.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
She didn't come to our show in Brisbane last week,
did she?
Speaker 1 (02:00):
That was rude and I think she was only there
for a day, like she flew in and she flew out.
So in case you're wondering why she was at the
real estate conference, of all the things that she might
be doing, she does have a little more time on
her hands now that she's not running for president or
being the vice president. Her relevance to this particular conference
(02:20):
was the cross section of politics and real estate. She
recalled her experience when she was California's Attorney general and
she refused a four billion dollar deal from major banks
to settle dodgy mortgage deals. But the thing to take
away from this really is that even former president's, vice
president's prime ministers they need a side hustle because they
(02:42):
got to earn some coin.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
I found this really interesting because I saw on the
weekend I saw some pat pictures of Kamala having a
fancy dinner in Sydney, and I was like, Oh, how exciting.
I wonder why she's here. And then when I saw
that she was doing this thing on the Goldie until
you just explained that bit to me, Mia, I was like,
why Kamala? Why real estate? If you're going to pay
(03:04):
lots and lots of money, they have a big name
come and talk at your real estate conference, wouldn't it
be better togain like someone from selling Sunset or something. Ha.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
That would have been great. Actually, the thing with conferences
is that they're a whole industry unto themselves, and what
they need to do is they need to sell tickets,
and to sell tickets, they've got to have keynote speakers.
So I've been on the keynote speakers circuit. You can
pretty much book anybody from me. I don't do it anymore,
but Jesse's done it before. And all of these conferences,
(03:35):
you know, industry conferences. They're not necessarily open to the public,
but they have to have names that people want to
listen to with some tangible connection to their industry. I mean,
I've spoken it dentist conferences, I've spoken it real estate conferences.
I don't know if it was this one. I used
to do it quite a lot.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
The idea of Kamala trying to tailor her keynote to
real estate agents in the Gold Coast is my favorite
fact of the week. And I also read about who
else was doing it. So when I did a keynote
quite recently, Julie Goodwin and Yelena Dokitch were also talking.
Who are just such professionals with incredible stories who would
(04:14):
have their keynote down pat And I felt totally out
of my depth, And I keep thinking about at this conference.
There was Kamala Harris, there was Steven Bartlett, who is
the one of the biggest podcasts in the world, and
then there was Sydney real estate agent David Walker. And
I'm sure that David Walker is a great real estate agent,
but I like thinking about David Walker calling them up
(04:35):
and going, yee yep, what do you want me to
talk about? Cool?
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Cool?
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Who else is talking? Kamala Harris Okay, all right, I
will work on my speech then.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
So she's rumored to have been paid anywhere between two
hundred and two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for this
kind of fireside chat. Obama's done it. You can you know,
book all sorts of prime ministers, sports stars, celebrities pay
for play.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
For that money, that's too much pressure for me. I
would say no, no, no, pay me less, because my
speech isn't going to be two hundred thousand dollars worthy.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
The good news is that you would be paid less, Jesson.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
The fact that the Gold Coast real estate people have
the kind of money that buys you Stephen Bartlet and
Kamala Harris not good news for those people saving for
a deposit for hours.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
In case you missed it, the Kardashians had a lot
to celebrate this weekend. First, Kim Kardashian graduated from law school. Second,
Chris Jenner debuted her new face. So for six years,
Kardashian has been studying her law program and upon completion,
she decided to hold a private backyard ceremony to mark
(05:42):
the milestone. So to be clear, this wasn't at a university.
Oh sorry, you two have never graduated, so as the
only person here who's graduated.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Well, see, we're easily impressed. We were like, that seems legit.
Can she be my lawyer? Now?
Speaker 3 (05:55):
So when I graduated, it was held at the university,
and you go and hire a gown, you hire a hat,
and you do a ceremony, and someone might speak, and
you go and you shake your hand. Right now, That's
not what happened for Kim. It was in the backyard,
her backyard, and she hired or bought a nude gown
and a nude hat, which is not customary. But we
(06:15):
know that it's in her color palace.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
I doubt she hired it Jesse to be she.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Might've had Skims make it for her. She still needs
to pass the California Bar Exam to become a licensed attorney.
Any questions or comments before I move on too, Chris's face.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Look, I was very impressed by this because I know
people get upset when we talk about the Kardashians, and
people get upset about the Kardashians in general for lots
of reasons. But these women have now been with increasing
cultural relevance, really very prominent in our culture for nearly
twenty years. Right, Everything they do, everything they wear, everything
(06:53):
they say, everything they try and sell us like it
says something about the world we live in. And I'm
very impressed that Kim has become Look, i'm not going
to say a lawyer, let's say lawyer adjacent. I'm very
impressed that Kim has become lawyer adjacent because she has
picked up a cause that is very un sexy, which
is prison reform, Like nobody saw that coming for her,
(07:15):
and apparently, by all accounts, she's very serious about it.
So when I was looking at the Instagram things, I
saw her with a hat on, like celebrating and throwing
it in the air, and I was like, that's great.
And then when you dig a bit and you're like, oh,
that isn't what everybody else was doing. Like she had
a special as you've already outlined, the gowns and the
table setting, and the kids were all dressed in little
(07:36):
business suits with briefcases, and they all walked in like
little lawyers to it, like it's the most Kardashian take
on what being a lawyer looks like. But I'm here
for it.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
It's very cosplay and it's very do it for the gram.
It's interesting because there are two different things here. There's
the fact that she's studied, and whether you Kim Kardashian
or not, you still have to do some study, Like
you can't just phone this in. So it's not like
she hasn't worked hard over a long period of time
to get to this point, like all legal students. But
(08:08):
then it's the play of it all. It's the need
to do live action or laping live action or play
of you know, the performative side of being a lawyer
in a gown and doing all of that. And I
guess it's very smart. This is why the Kardashians have
had such a stranglehold on the culture for so long
and continue to in many ways, is that they know
(08:30):
that for the media to run a story, they need images.
They need pictures for things to go viral, to stay
culturally relevant. It's now about video. You know, holding a
certificate is not going to cut it. Most people didn't
read the fine print and they're like, oh, Kim Kardashian's lawyer.
Now that's been how it's been mostly reported and received.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Okay, So Jenna, the mother of Kardashian, who this year
is turning seventy, was pictured leaving an event in Paris,
and we are going to get into the details of
that event later. But when people saw this video, they
were like, yeah, yeah, look it's Kim Kardashian in Paris,
until they did a double take and they went, no,
that is her mother, who was thirty five years older.
(09:10):
We know that she sees this New York plastic surgeon.
She's talked about him before and some work she's had done,
but she now looks ai generated. Have you guys seen
the pictures?
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Oh, I've looked at a little else. Over the weekend and
over last week, this went through all my group chats
where I sent it to some people and people were like, oh, Kim, wait,
who is that not realizing And there's been a lot
of commentary about how this is the new generation of
plastic surgery. We saw it on Lindsay Lohan Demi Moore
and it's like almost aging or visually aging in reverse.
(09:47):
It's unlike anything that we've seen before because it doesn't
look obviously like she's had a lot of work in
that same way as perhaps facelifts.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
What do you think it is, because you're obviously doctor Maya.
What do you think she's had done?
Speaker 1 (10:03):
I've dived deep. So people are saying it's not one thing,
it's a number of different things. But at the root
of it is a deep plane facelift where they actually
surgically alter every single muscle in your face. And there
are other things as well, And it's an upper eye lift,
and it's a this, and it's that, and it's you know,
there's a ton of different things, and it's also a
neck lift, and it's a lot of work, but it's
(10:26):
made to look like you younger, not you altered, if
that makes sense.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
Yeah. I saw this TikTok over the weekend that said,
I'm so glad that now that we've sorted all the
women's health issues like endometriosis, like peacos, like perimenopause, now
that we've got them under control, we can now move
on to the aesthetic. The superficial elements of women's bodies
have contraception, like we tick, So now we can go,
(10:53):
oh great, now we can do things that are a
little bit more like they're not as necessary, but all
our best doctors can go. How can we make Chris
jenneral look her absolute best at Priority seventy exactly.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
I saw the.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Pictures that I was like, Oh, she's wearing her daughter's faces.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
That's nice.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
It's really unnerving. It's really unnerving, and I guess it
makes sense that surgery is going to get better, as
in better, as in less strange looking. I'd love to
know what she looks like in real life. I would
love to know if it was amazing without all the
filters and out without all the night because she really
does look strange.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
You can tell because there was a lot of photos
that came out around that time. Because of course she
was there for Lauren sand Well. She was there for
two things. First, she was in Paris for Kim's trial,
the trial of robbers that came and tied up Kim
Kadashi and stole all her diamonds. And then moving on
from that a couple of days later was Lauren Sanchez's
(11:52):
hens Do, which I think you've got more details about,
or we're going to talk about more. I do, Yeah,
But there were quite a few paparazzi shots of those
women leaving the hotels, and you know that were not
taken by them, and they're photographers that they brought with
them and that were not filtered, and it is quite different.
And I mean in those pictures she's wearing big sunglasses
(12:12):
in most of those pictures. It's not quite the same,
obviously as with all the filters, but it's not a
million miles away.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
I like to imagine, because you know how there's the
shtick about no one works harder than Chris Jenna, and
I'm just imagining their recovery time and how many shouting
phone calls she would have had to make from under
a pile of bandages. More more, bye, bye, self doubt. Okay,
so while we are here in literal la La land,
I need to talk about the occasion as mere reference
(12:41):
that Jenna unveiled her new face, Lauren Sanchez's recent hendu. Now,
if you don't know that name, Sanchez is the Fianza
is the fiance, let's pronounce it correctly of Jeff Bezos,
one of the world's richest men, their owner of Amazon,
who's worth an estimated two hundred and twenty billion. And
although we don't like to define women by the men
(13:02):
there with. It is literally the reason why this former
TV anchor is now a properly famous person. So anyway,
she and Jeffer getting married in a hot minute in Venice, Italy.
I'm sure it's going to be a very quiet, understated
affair because Lawrence Hendu was an intimate gathering of thirteen.
The thirteen included fellow astronaut Katie Perry, Chris and her
(13:24):
new face, Kim Kardashian, Eva Longoria, Lauren's sister Elena, and
a few other very close, very glamorous friends. Everyone brought
their glam squad. There were choreographed papwalks, poses in front
of the Eiffel Tower, and a lot of BTS content
for socials. Jesse, you're in the era of many weddings
and hen parties back here in the real world. Are
(13:46):
they exactly like Laurence.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
They're not exactly like Laurence, But I just might not
be invited to those ones. What I did relate with
was the content opportunity of it all, the content schedule.
I looked at the images that Lauren posted on Instagram
and went all right, So what we really went to
was a four day photo shoot, because in order to
get those photos and get that content, that's just a
(14:11):
lot of a lot of work. A lot of them
traveled with their own hairstylists, which was a detail I liked.
And now the detail I really liked was that in
attendance was someone named October Gonzalez. Do you guys know
who that is?
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Great name?
Speaker 3 (14:24):
October is the wife of Lauren's ex husband, Ah, and
they're good friends because they're co parent And I was like, okay,
I have some questions. I would be at that hens
after a few drinks, I'd be sitting next to October.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Do you know who wasn't there though, Pea Whitesell, who
is married to Lauren's ex husband.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
So October is married to one of her ex husbands.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Maybe she has multiple, Yeah, she's got a couple, just
got a couple, but the most recent one is married
to Australian actress Pah. I can't remember what her name
was before she married Yea, So she wasn't there.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Do you think if you were invited, not necessarily to
that one, but any friend in your world who you
knew was much more glad than you. And there are
many friends in my world who are more glamorous than me.
Would you just be so nervous about what to wear,
what to look like posing in the pictures next to
these people.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
I have a friend who went to a socialites Hens Dude.
She talks about it all the time. She felt deeply uncomfortable.
She felt as though there was a photo shoot happening
on the boat. But she cannot emphasize this enough. She
was not invited to the photos end of the boat.
Like she found it quite enlightening because she's like, oh,
this is how we get the shot, and I don't
want to put that much into getting the shot. But
(15:40):
what's hard for friends of Lauren is that she was
recently in space. How do you create a Hen's do
for someone who's been to space. It can't just be
at the local pub, it can't be a boat on
Sydney Harbor. You've got to up it. And in terms
of whether you'd go, I read this article I think
it was in The Times that was just like, hopefully
(16:01):
Lauren paid for it all. You're not getting a message
at the end going you owe me seventeen dollars for
the cocktailing on at the end, or guy, it's going
to cost just four hundred and twenty dollars for the accommodation.
Like someone picked up the bill and I feel like
Chris Jenna wasn't being invoiced, which is nice.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Yeah. No, it was definitely in all expenses. And I
think it was also the eulogy for the death of
quiet luxury, because there was nothing quiet about this. It's
interesting this idea of how Hens Nights and bachelorette parties
are being transformed by social media. And I wouldn't say
the same for Bucks weekends.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
They are intentionally not on social media.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Correct, they are very offline. But Hen's things. I was
reading about a bachelorette contestant and she was at her
sister's themed Hen's that was all themed about being air hostesses,
and so everybody was dressed in air hostess uniforms. And
it's sort of when you've got those friends, or if
(17:04):
you've ever experienced that world where at social events happening
on two tracks. One is the actual track of you
guys being together, and the other is someone who, if
they're an influencer, will be wanting to document it as content.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Even if they're not an influencer.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Yeah, true, even if there is. I'm not an influencer.
Everybody wants nice photos and everyone wants stuff to put
on the gram. How that's just changed the whole thing.
Like this, Hen's weekend in Paris seemed very I mean,
it was designed to be completely widy whatever. The opposite
of private is public and performative. In the same way
(17:41):
that the trip to Space was, it's performing female friendship,
performing fun. Now maybe they were having a great time.
I don't know, but I know that when you're very
aware of being perceived and photographing, where even if you're
the one holding the camera or if your friend is
and it's not paparazzi, it does change how you behave
(18:04):
and how you feel.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
I have an opinion about a four day Hens, which
is absolutely fine and it's estimated to have cost about
one million Australian dollars. But I was looking at what
we know about the itinerary and it was like fancy breakfast,
fancy lunch, fancy dinner, and then cocktails under the Eiffel Tower.
I just feel like it was a little jam packed.
(18:25):
And my comment about Hen's things, or in fact any
group holiday is I just think we need to pair
it back by twenty percent, because everyone needs just a
little lie down and a deep breath and just to recalibrate,
because it's a lot of socializing with people that maybe
you don't know that well.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Imagine the group chats, because they would have had a
group chat where in the first place they went like, well,
Kim's going to be in Paris for the trial, so
that's perfect, And then all their assistants would have had
a group chat. Can you imagine what had been going
on in there about the logistics and probably the glam
squads had it to group chats so they could go, well,
I'm going to do up, you're going to do down?
Like yeah, like the industrial complex that must have been
(19:07):
behind this, I think like when you bring that into
real life. The fact that now every milestone occasion, as
you said me, it runs on two tracks, and one
of them is how's it going to look on everybody's
platforms means that it's so much bigger and it involves
so many more people. I like to imagine that they go, Okay,
nine o'clock, we're all putting our phones away and we're
(19:29):
just getting loose. I like to imagine that's what happens.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
I think at nine o'clock they all ran back to
their rooms to filter and post and curate their photos.
When Lauren Sanchez posted, you know, she posted some galleries
and carousels and stuff on Instagram and with captions like
she said, forever starts with friendship, surrounded by the women
who've lifted me up, illuminated my path in dark times,
(19:54):
and shaped my heart along the way. It's kind of
like she flattens everything. And then she and another picture
of a bunch of them sitting in coordinated robes and
towels and sunglasses on the bed while looking at their phones.
She captured it. That's a wrap to my girl, Thank
you for surprising me, lifting me up, and reminding me
how much I needed this moment. I love your hearts
(20:15):
and your beautiful energy more than words can say surprising me.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
That suggests that some poor maid of honor had to
organize Laurence Sanchez's hens do, which is just a job
no one should have to do.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
In a moment. Girl power is dead and we're going
to talk about which if the Spice Girls just killed it.
Girl power is apparently dead. According to Jerry Horner, who
used to be Ginger Spice, but now she is a
children's book author and she's married to Formula one boss
Christian Horner. So she was doing an event where she
(20:49):
was reading her latest children's book to a group of
little kids, and she said of the Spice Girl's slogan
girl power, she said it was irrelevant, and she said,
it's irrelevant what your gender is. But then what she
said was quite interesting. She described girl power as a
sweet word for feminism, but the true meaning of feminism
(21:09):
is the equalization between the sexes. She now says she
advocates for a more inclusive message. I think it's about
inner power. It's about celebrating and empowering everyone, not just women.
What do you think Are we sad to see the
back of girl power or is it a loss for
the culture?
Speaker 3 (21:27):
There is something in what she said that has a
kernel of truth, which is that feminism was intended to
liberate us all like it was intended to liberate men too,
from the shackles of masculinity and patriarchy and all of that.
Was that what she was talking about. I don't know,
but you know, there's this discussion that's been going on
for thirty years about whether girl power was the savior
(21:50):
of modern feminism or the killer of it, and I
think it was probably neither. And this is what we
do when we try to make a band or a
person or a brand everything to all people. Like the
Spice Girl existed in a moment in time, in a
(22:12):
rich context to do a certain thing that had limits.
Of course, it had limits. The message of girl power
was about confidence and being loud and being brash and
having fun with other girls. And maybe that doesn't seem
so revolutionary right now, but at the time to a
five year old, like you know, complex theories of feminism
(22:37):
aren't quite as palatable. And I was reading about the
Spice Girls and kind of the history of them and
how informed they were by Thatcherism by the nineteen eighties
and Margaret Thatcher, and that is an incredibly flawed prism
by which to look at feminism, because female representation isn't
the end or beginning of feminism. But that was a
(22:59):
woman in a place where women weren't thought to belong.
That was revolutionary. That you had Margaret Thatcher for more
than ten years in a position of leadership, no matter
what you thought of her. And so so the Spice
Girls came out of that a few years later and
kind of went all right, we're going to take up
space and a girl band was kind of really cool.
But Holly, do you think that she's diluted the message
(23:21):
now that by trying to appeal to everyone, it's kind
of like there's no bite to what they were trying
to say.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
I just don't think that this version of Jerry Hallewell
would be allowed to call herself a feminist. Really the
sort of image makeover that Jerry Hallewell has had, because
it's really interesting that it's funny. So as gen X,
we just kind of missed the spice skills in a way.
They're very much a millennial phenomena, right, But we watched
it happen, we were very close to it, and I
(23:48):
remember at the time thinking it seemed quite empty because
I guess Gen X feminists were a bit grungier, right,
So it was like, this all seems a bit sellout.
It's a bit sugary. But the way that I hear
millennials talk about girl power, and as you just said, Jesse,
the idea of little girls seeing this, I understand that
it meant something to them, right, But each of those
women because the spice skills only actually happened for about
(24:10):
four years and then they were over, so it's a
very short period of time and then they were gone,
and where they've all gone since then is really interesting.
And Jerry's reinvention is very conservative, very pristine, trad wife,
good girl. She only wears white, literally only wears white,
lives in a massive mansion in the countryside, has married
(24:31):
a very rich, slightly problematic man who's an f one guy.
You know, she, as you say, Mia, writes children's books.
She is wholesome, wholes or wholesome. And I do not
think that in Christian Horner's world you are allowed to
be marching around talking about feminism. Allowed is the wrong word.
Of course, she's allowed, encouraged. Yeah, it's not the vibe.
So I think that her backing away from the term
(24:53):
feminism is more about that than it is about any
kind of gender inclusivity.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
That's so interesting, Yeah, because also he cheats on her,
and quite publicly. What's so fascinating about that is her
claiming it as a type of feminism, which is something
that feminist Catlin Anne was very critical of when she
was writing about feminism about ten years ago, and she
pointed out that the Spice Girls were a real watered down,
(25:18):
commercialized form of feminism, and she said that it replaced
real feminist activism with sort of superficial gestures and consumerism.
And she said it was more about I want to
hang out with my friends and wear cool clothes and
be a bit naughty and have a few drinks. And
did they pinch Prince Charles on.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
The bookom Yes, Ginger did, because one of the reasons
why her transformation is particularly startling, and she and Scary
were the naughty ones, you know, the noise.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Yes, exactly, And I love what you said about girl
power was very much about women not being passive, women
being active, and women that sense of female friendship as
opposed to female competition to get a guy. So all
of that was I won't say transgressive, but it was
certainly fresh and it was very palatable.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
There was something subversive about that, and I don't know
about it replaced it. It's like lots of things can coexist.
And I don't think that the Spice Girls ever said
we are the embodiment of feminism. And this is where no, God, no,
they definitely didn't. In fact, I think that's revigionist history.
I think it's really interesting though, because recently sporedy email
(26:26):
C was on No Filter with Kate Langbrook and it
was a really good interview and she clearly still takes
the girl power side of it very seriously and suggests
that it actually was more about them being in control
of their careers, because again when I talk about gen
X being a bit cynical about the Spice Girls, they
were literally.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
A constructed band. You know, they advertised for these young
girls they needed to be a certain way, look a
certain way, have a certain variety to them. Then they
were trained up and turned into a band, which is
just you know, has happened many times since, like with
one direction. But she talked in that interview about how
they rejected a lot of the songwriters they were given,
that they didn't like the way that they So she
was suggesting that girl power meant that they were more
(27:05):
in control than anybody's thought. How true that is, I
don't really know.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
There are a few clips from a documentary years ago
which was them on set being told to do certain things,
and their brand was that they pushed back a little
bit and that they were kind, They felt a little
bit more powerful because there were five of them rather
than one against a male photographer. But I wonder, I'm
interested in what you say about Jerry Halliwell's kind of
break from feminism. If the Spice Girls existed today, I
(27:33):
wonder if tradwife would be one of them.
Speaker 4 (27:35):
Yes, trad spies, trad spies, because Holly at our live show,
you were talking about ways to be a girl, right,
and that's evolved, Like that was a moment in time
like that you had the baby and the scary and
the sporty and.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Sporty was was subversive too, the idea that a girl
could be sporty but be kind of cool and sexy
in that Like that was fun. But now we've got
like the trad wife in Jerry if we like that,
and maybe like even Victoria Beckham is like there's like
the girl boss hustler.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Yeah, she's very good. And the thing is is, when
you think about it, when we were just describing the
Spice Girls and their energy, that's what Bratt is, right,
that's like kind of the the evolution of that is
your Charlie XCX's and your Chapel Roans and your Billie
Eilishes who really do appear to be in control of
their careers. But they really do. But they are selling
a similar energy, which is don't give a fuck energy,
(28:31):
you know, like boss Lady energy in a different way. Naughty,
a bit subversive, a bit out there sexually, you know, available,
not available, sexually, liber etonomous. Yeah, I guess that's an
evolution of that. But you're so right. I think that
maybe one of the interesting things about Jerry is that
her evolution into a different kind of archetype really is
against who we thought she was. But it's very much
(28:54):
an archetype of Now.
Speaker 5 (28:56):
So I started this club carder we do Not Care club,
and this is for anybody going through perimenopause and menopause.
I posted a video asking who want to join? And
when I tell you, we got so many members in
this club. But what I did was compile a list
of all the stuff that we don't care about no more. Okay,
we don't care about BRA's no more because bras suffocate us.
We don't need that no more. We don't care we
(29:16):
look pregnant and we're really not pregnant. We don't care
about matching clothes and wearing pj's all day clothes is closed.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
That's it.
Speaker 5 (29:23):
That's the standard. We don't care about being on time
for the baby. Be happy that I showed up because
I don't even want to be here.
Speaker 4 (29:30):
We don't have to.
Speaker 5 (29:30):
We don't care about unpainted big toenails and wearing flip
flops with them. Listen, that's a luxury to be able
to paint your tonails. To nails is to nails. Just
I'm gonna win my flip flops.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
And there's that.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
That is a glorious woman who is all over your
phone right now. And she's not a Kardashian or a
billionaire bride. She is Melanie Sanders, a creator called Just
Being Melanie, And as you just heard, she is the
founder of the We Do Not Care Club. Her list
of things that perimenopausal women do not care about are
so funny and so right that they have spawned one
(30:02):
hundred imitations within days. Maya Jesse, were you into that
We Do Not Care Club?
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Are member? I loved it and joined it in my
heart immediately some things, and of course it makes you
start thinking about the things that you don't care about.
I don't care about embarrassing my kids. Yes, in fact,
I relish it. I don't care about vpls or camel tooes.
And I don't care what anyone thinks of my pants
or not pants.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
Yeah, I like that. I don't care if you know
that I'm wearing underpants. I can live with that. I
found this so funny, and I went through and listened
to a bunch and these were my favorites that she shared.
So she had We don't care. If it's an emergency,
don't call me. We do not care. If we forgot
what we were talking about, We'll come back to it
if we remember. We do not care about small talk.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Just shut up.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
We don't care about the back of our hair. That's
not any of our business. And we do not care
if we wear leggings every day. Jeans hurt our stomach.
Oh I like that.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Oh spot on, she's my new here.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
It's the way she delivers it because she just doesn't care,
Like she's just so pathetic.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
She's wearing or we don't care on a Serviette club
sign around her nation love.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
It written with a pen on the back of a nat.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
I love that, she says, separating clothes into darks and
whites and colors. If it can't survive a cold wash
and a dry cycle. Then it wasn't for us anyway. Anyway.
If you want to see more Melanie Sanders, we do
not care club. I have a feeling I'm going to
be seeing absolutely everywhere you can find her just being Melanie.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
After the break the trinket trend you're seeing everywhere and
what it really means out loud as.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
If you want to listen to us every day of
the week, you can get access to exclusive segments on
Tuesdays and Thursdays by becoming a Mum and mea subscriber.
Follow the link in the show notes to subscribe and
support us, and a big thank you to all our
current subscribers.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
I need to talk about La Boo Boo. If you
haven't noticed this trend, you are about to bag. Charms
or trinkets are everywhere, and in particular Le Boo Boo dolls,
which are like little stuffed toys. Rihanna and Jua Lipa
have been spotted with them hanging from their bags, and
in the past few weeks, demand for the collectibles has
(32:22):
gone through the roof. There are lines snaking outside shops.
Online listings are ridiculously expensive, and there have been physical
altercations in side shops. So Lea Boo Boo is a
furry monster character created by Casing Lung, who is a
Hong Kong born artist, and they are sold in something
(32:42):
called blind boxes, which means you don't know which character
you're going to get until you'll open it, and they
retail for between thirty Ozzie dollars and honestly can go
up to thousands if you are scouring eBay for a
particular type holly collectible laboo boos to attach to our handbags.
I'm gonna be honest to me, this just looks like
(33:03):
a new creative way to contribute to landfill. What is
the appeal?
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Look?
Speaker 2 (33:09):
I think we actually need to ask me that question,
because although I have many thoughts about why we're obsessed
with them, the idea of why we would put them
on our bags. We were talking about this in the meeting,
and then Maya held up a bag may tell us
why and where they came from in the fashion world.
I know, and you've been doing this for a while,
(33:29):
dangling crazy things from your bag.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
It's true. I like to buy accessories for my accessories.
I like to buy them for my bags. I like
to buy them for my shoes, shoe jewelry. What can
I tell you? People have always liked to collect things.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
Correction, sorry this is going to sound offensive, but children
have always liked to collect things, Like it's quite a
childish impulse to collect things.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
To me more collect dots. Lots of people collect, lots
of adults collect things.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
But I want to know why this has become fashion?
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Well, because you always follow the money. Fashion relies on
people buying things, and not just things, but new things,
things that they don't yet have. So that's why when
something comes back in fashion, it's always slightly different to
the version of it we all bought five ten, two
years ago, the idea of bag charms. The other thing
(34:20):
you've got to see with fashion is that it's always
reactive and the pendulum swings. So the last few years
we've had this epidemic of quiet luxury, which has now
come up twice on the show, and both la Booboos
and Lauren Sanchez's Hen's Do and actually just Lauren Sanchez
are both reactions to what I feel is the sadness
(34:40):
of quiet luxury. It's like, let's spend a whole lot
of money on something that looks incredibly plain. That doesn't well,
it doesn't spark joy in me. So I think that
now everyone's wanting to get really silly. And this idea
of childhood ties in with a generation who's very ambivalent
(35:00):
about growing up and a generation of parents who have
helicoptered our children and have sort of encouraged them to
stay in this suspended state of kid olt in a way.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
So quiet luxury to the basics, like me, that's like
Gwyneth Paltrow's g label, right, and like the Row, which
is basically about selling a gray cashmere jumper for like
five thousand dollars, and it's like no one would know
there was anything special about that except other people who've
got the eye for the quiet luxury, right exactly. So
(35:34):
this is interesting about the extended childhood idea because, as
you said, people, and Jesse corrected you, kids have always
collected things. Kids have also been obsessed with this blind
bag culture ever since you know, YouTubers became a thing.
Like my daughter went through a big phase of Lol dolls, right,
which were these little plastic dolls. And the whole thing
is you go to you at the shop and you
(35:54):
don't know which one you're going to get when you
get it, and this is also true for like Pokemon cards.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
It's a happy meal.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
Yeah, it is. The idea is that the excitement is
part of it, the gamification of like what am I
going to get? I don't know, and then I've got
to collect them all. So it's very clever, as Mia says,
from a capitalist perspective, because you're probably not going to
get the one you want first time, so then you've
got to get another one, and another one and another one.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Because you buy them in a box, although not all
of them. I'm on the PopMart website now, because there
are some places around the world where you go and
queue and you queue for hours and then you pay
all this money and you're given a box and you
can't choose what you get. So you might get a
box with a LABOOO that you've already got. If you
buy two boxes, it might be the same one in
both boxes. You just don't know, so it's almost like
(36:41):
a bit of a lottery gamification of consumerism. And in
Australia the place you get them is online at PopMart,
and you can get some most of them are out
of stock, but you get a box and I don't
know if you I've just found one for twenty two dollars,
like a Coca cola. Yeah one. I don't know if
this is an actual see this might also be not
(37:03):
a legitimate one because I don't know.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Well, there are lots about kinds of the monsters, and
the booboos are one of the kinds the most desirable.
But this is important is that although you can spend
thousands on them, they're not actually that expensive. As in,
if you go and queue up and buy one, they're
going to cost somewhere between thirty and sixty dollars, which
is a lot of money for a little fluffy toil.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
It's a lot for a time, but for a tiny
little bad it's But the point is it's little treat size.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
It's little treat scale, you know what I mean. So
there's another theory that one of the reasons why this
has become a big thing is that, you know, back
to that thing we often quote the lipstick index, which
is when times are tough economically, but you still want
to bring a bit of joy and treats to yourself,
Like buying a thirty dollar ridiculous bad charm is not
a good use of thirty dollars, but it's not entirely
(37:49):
out of reach hundreds and things.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
It's not a two thousand dollars handbag, So.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
It's giving you a little bit of high fashion Rhianna
or whatever for an affordable ish price.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
I have a few theories. The first is that it's
countercultural in a world in which everything is on demand
and nothing runs out. So with Sheen and Timu, it's
like you can get what she has immediately all of
the time.
Speaker 6 (38:17):
Right.
Speaker 3 (38:18):
I've seen mea go I love that skirt, and she
has the skirt in her cart within ten seconds. The
thing about this is that you can't like you. The
gamification element means that scarcity and the lines run out,
and that's why there's some.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Then there's a new drop, and then excited about the new.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
Drop, which nothing ever runs out anymore, which I think
is why it's exciting to people. I also wonder do
we all need teddy bears now for support the rise
of the teddy bear like the jelly cat, which a
lot of people are very into, which Luna has one,
but I've seen adults collect them. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
To be clear, the market for all of this is
that adults, it's not actually children.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
And is it that we feel so unsafe or unsettled
or anxious or concerned that we literally, like a toddler,
need to leave our house with a teddy bear or
and this might be an unpopular thing to say. I
kept looking at this, and this came to my head,
and I'm sorry if this is offensive. Do you want
a la boo boo? Or do you want a baby?
(39:23):
Because you know how people treat their dogs. I was
this for ten years, right, like in my twenties, my
dog was my baby. And there's this element of like
you have this instinct to look and care for something
and cuddle something really really cute, but you're not in
a position where you can have a baby.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
Or do you want to be the baby? I don't know.
It's like Tamagotchi's it's like playing at being a mummy, yeah,
or being a baby. It's like you get to be
a baby that's pretending to be a mummy.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
Which is also like there's something nostalgic about us all
trying to grasp back onto our childhood at a time, but.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
Also we've extended it. We've extended childhood. Like if you
look if you look at the phenomena all over a
social media of girlhood and I'll often see them and
it'll say the definition of girlhood is and it'll be,
you know, being out with your mates whatever. And these
women are in the early twenties. They are not girls. Yeah,
you know, but we have extended childhood. And that's why
I think the toys coming with us, you know what
(40:19):
I mean, not ready to put away childish things. La
booboos are childish things. Plus these are childish things, then
it brings your joy and security. We are some of
the people because we were all a little bit apart
from me, who has had some knockoff laboobos for a
while now, some of the young women in our office,
we're not going to have it if we said that
the laboo boos were silly. They really liked them. Here's
(40:41):
a few of the things they said.
Speaker 6 (40:43):
As the owner of all labooboos myself, I think there's
a few reasons why people are going so crazy for them.
First is really the scarcity. The fact that they're so
hard to get, so hard to get your hands on,
really adds to the appeal. Secondly, I reckon the blind
box element, not knowing which color you're going to get
when you buy one. There's a real mystery and excitement
around doing a la booboo unboxing.
Speaker 3 (41:05):
And finally, I think they're just cute.
Speaker 6 (41:07):
They're part creepy, part cute, and that makes them so
intriguing for me personally. I started out as a hater.
I'm not gonna lie. I didn't really understand the craze.
But the more Tiktoks I watched, the more drawn I
was to aboo boos. They're just silly and fun and
add a little something to your bag. I paid thirty
two dollars for mine, which is the price that they
(41:28):
are when you buy the first hand from PopMart, but
they are going for crazy amounts of money on the
retail market, double triple the price.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
Sometimes.
Speaker 7 (41:36):
At first, I thought Labooboo's were really weird and kind
of gave me the creeps a little bit, because they
have these evil little smiles and it's kind of like
one of those dolls that would get possessed in a movie,
to be honest, but I think the appeal came from
the fact that over time I just found them really cute.
Speaker 3 (41:50):
They kind of remind me of like where the Wild
things are.
Speaker 7 (41:53):
I love cute stuff, Like I'm very susceptible to a
cute thing like a jelly cat, So a labubu was,
you know, natural to.
Speaker 3 (41:58):
Extep for me. But I just thought they were really fun.
Speaker 7 (42:01):
I have put them on my bag at times, and
I kind of think, like, oh am I too old
for this, Like probably.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
They are creepy if you can't it's some to mind
what a la booo looks like if you've never seen one.
They're a bit like cross between a gremlin and a
mogway if you're old enough to remember the movie.
Speaker 3 (42:17):
Kind of like a Telly Tubby.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
Yeah, weird evil, a little bit evil.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
It's funny because and this ties in with some of
the other things we've been talking about today, like Hen's
parties and whatever is that. One of our wonderful coworkers
there made the point that the unboxing is part of
the whole thing. And what can you do with an unboxing?
You can film it turn it into content. So it's
like you get all the dopamine hits of shopping, surprise
and content.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
And in a world of Chris Jenna's face, do you
want a little snaggle toothed demonic eyed Teddy Bear. Maybe
that's all we've.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Got time for today. Out loud as a massive thank
you for listening to our show and to our fabulous
team for putting it together with all of us from home.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
While we were recording. I think I just bought a
fakaboboo by accident.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
I can't wait to see you and see how many
things you've got dangling off your back. Tomorrow. We're going
to be back in your ears tomorrow and so he's
La Boo booths. We'll see then, Bye bye bye.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
Shout out to any Mum and mea subscribers listening. If
you love the show and you want to support us,
subscribing to MoMA Mia is the very best way to
do so. There's a link in the episode description.
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