May 1, 2025 • 51 mins
There’s a four-letter word taking over the internet — it rhymes with munt — and let’s just say it’s dividing the group chat. We’re diving in, side-eyes and all.
Then, has personal style officially left the building? Mia and Jessie are joined by Em Vernem to break down the four forces that have turned fashion into chaos.
Plus, our recommendations: the show you’ll binge in a day, the book every Outlouder needs to read, and the one thing guaranteed to scare the crap out of you.
And in Best & Worst: gut problems, coping with grief, and a weekend that took 'tradwife' to a whole new level.
What To Listen To Next:
- Listen to our latest episode: The Question We're Finally Ready To Answer
- Listen: Meghan's Bedtime Routine Is A Lot
- Listen: Caroline Bessette-Kennedy: The Original Influencer
- Listen: We're Fighting About Being Ugly
- Listen: What Supercommunicators Know That We Don't
- Listen: Sex Toys, Borrowing Money & A Dad's Group Chat Faux Pas
Sign up to the Mamamia Out Loud Newsletter for all our recommendations and behind-the-scenes content in one place.
Recommendations:
Jessie wants you to watch Black Mirror season 7.
Em Vernem wants you to watch Sinners by Ryan Coogler.
Mia wants you to read He Would Never by Holly Wainwright.
What to read:
- You might not want to ask your stylist for the latest hair trend.
- Oxford shirts are your new wardrobe essential. We found options from $25.
- 'The 3 pieces I'm buying to upgrade my style this year as a fashion editor.'
- 'I'm a fashion editor, and these are the 7 things I wore on repeat all year.'
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to a Muma Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Is personal style dead well, according to some people, it is,
and fast fashion killed it.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
There's such choice that I think that a lot of
us are paralyzed because it's like, I don't know if
I'm going kind of formal. I don't know who I
want to be today. What I'm seeing on TikTok is
not actually what I'm seeing in the office. Hello, and
welcome to MoMA maa out loud and to our Friday show.
I think I meant to say the date here. It
(00:49):
is the second of May, where we take a break
from the news cycle and we all escape for a
few hours. I don't think this episode is going to
go for a few hours.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
That's too long for me.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
I think a little less than that. Oh, today is Friday,
the second.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Of me still, thank god.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
It's so long. It's now the third.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
I am Jesse Stephen, I'm me.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Friedman and I amm Vernham filling in for Holly today
because we left her in Perth. Yes we did.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
It was our first live show this week. It was
so much fun and Perfey. We haven't seen Perth in years,
so we were rearing.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
They were roaring and rearing and rearing.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
Why not.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Look, the out Louders group is a buzz with people
trying to get tickets. We do have a few tickets
left for our Brisbane and Melbourne shows. Get them while
you can. It's such a great night. Just ask the
Perth out Louders. We will pup a link in the
show notes to get those tickets.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
And on the show today, the death of personal Style
and why you're about to see a significant shift in
the way people are dressing.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Plus our recommendations including a binge worthy show, something to
frighten the pants off you, and a book that every
out Louder needs to read we already have You're going
to want.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
To and Tummy Travels Coping with grief and a very
tread wife Weekend. It is best and worst.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
But for in case you missed it, there's a word
that's having a moment and it starts with sea and
rhymes with monty. You might have heard someone describe an
item of clothing as monty, but as a compliment. Leslie
Bibb remember of White Lotus fame, She had the iconic hairstyle,
and it was referred to as a monty little.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Bob yes by her hairdresser. Now, to be clear in case,
how about is go out and start using the word mounty.
Monty is not actually the word. No, it's not sea word.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
I'm allowed to say it.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
I think we've got a b pe if we use it. Why,
because I think we'll be punished by the overlords of
the podcasting is no bigger than me those.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
It's one of my favorite words. It's one of my
favorite words. In fact, I've got group chats with this
word as their name. That's because the use of it
that I really like is serving sea word.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
This is new. You do like a new word, you
like a trend. So in terms of what it means.
A man named Adam Alexic, the author of al Go
Speak How Social Media is Transforming the future of language,
says that munt is sort of a synonym for camp.
It's sort of ironically cool. He also says that the
way Australians use the word as more of a popular
(03:24):
slang term is starting to seep into mainstream American culture.
MAYA have you noticed that this word like it was
once very divisive, very offensive. You wouldn't it is an
impolite company.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Some people are still like really offended by it. For
some people, it's the third rail. It's like the only
swear word that they will completely not say. My mother
always said to me from when I was quite young,
it shouldn't be used as a term of abuse. So
as long as you use it in a positive or
affectionate way. She was so ahead of her time. This
is decades ago. As long as you use it in
a good way, like hey, you old s word, then
(04:00):
that's fine. And so what's interesting is that it has
become that so like a lot of words that have
been reclaimed, like queer, flat flat or bitch. If it's
used by the group that it sort of refers to
I asked with female Jennet Taylor, because that's what it
used to be a derogatory slang term for, you can
(04:22):
reclaim it. So now the highest compliment you can give
is that someone's serving seaword.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
I have a question about it.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Serving seaword today, I'd say, you think, ye oh wow,
you've never said that to me before, so really happen.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
I think that this is also happening because of the
boundarylessness of the Internet and the loss of any classification
system right, because when I was a teenager, I was
sitting there watching a movie that my parents had put
on and this word came up. The sea word came up,
and I remember my parents gasping, whispering, and me hearing,
that's the worst word you can say. And I kept
(04:56):
rewinding and I was like, you can't, Like I couldn't
word what the actual word was. But now, because of algorithms,
I feel as though there are no gatekeepers, and therefore
I wonder if it's a flattening of language, that there
will be no rude words anymore, because we all use
all the words. The thing I wonder about this is,
m would you use this word to the world in
(05:18):
the workplace or in the company of your parents?
Speaker 4 (05:19):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Oh, I would use it in the workplace. I have
used it in the workplace, probably this year only. I
remember twenty nineteen specifically, we still hated that word because
we were writing about The Bachelor. I think it was
like Matt's season, Yeah, and one of the contestants called
him a dog, and I think we wrote like five
articles about that. It took such shock. We were like,
(05:42):
what is going on. Got so many page years just
from that little bit. But I think it's more now.
It's like the deification of a lifestyle. It's like one
of those lifestyles is a little bit out of reach
that we all want to achieve, and it's something to
kind of work to work.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Oh, it's becoming aspirational.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Yeah, it's an aspirational word.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Is it the next iteration of bratt because Brat's done.
I think that that's how I would describe a lot
of those really powerful, interesting, transgressive women. I would probably
say they're serving. I can't say it, but you have
to get bored.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
I'd always just move on without.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
You what I noticed, Because you've got to be a
little bit careful because if someone doesn't understand the reference
to the little bob. Lee Campbell had a haircut last
week and I said, oh, it's a little bob and
she was like, oh what. She was quite offended, because
not offended, but because she didn't understand the reference. She
didn't understand that Chris McMillan, who was Jennifer Anderson's hairdresser,
(06:40):
is the one that coined that term. And this clip
of him giving this particular haircut to Leslie Bibb for
her character in White Lotus then went global, and so
the little bob is an actual hairstyle. And I'm finding
myself thinking. I was watching Hacks last night and Ava,
the character played by Hannah Einbinder, has a little bob,
and I was like, maybe I need a little bob?
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Is a too little bob when it goes a bit
shorter at the back.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
I've had a little bob. It's just a really short bob.
I used to have a little bob for a really
long time. That's when it was just just to be
called a bob. But anyway, I like the idea of
reclaiming words and changing the vibe of them, changing their intention.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Making them nicer.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Is personal style dead? Well, according to some people it is,
and Fast Fashion killed it. There was a story in
UK Vogue a couple of weeks ago by Olivia Allen,
who works there. I think she's a fashion assistant or something,
and she was talking about how everyone in their office
is wearing the same specific outfit. And that outfit, in
(07:43):
case you're wondering, is a blue men's work shirt, like
an oversized man's shirt. Office work, not like high building.
No jeans and sort of scuffed ballet flats and like
wide legged loose jeans or straight jeans. Certainly not skinny
jeans and not barrel jeans. A writer whose name you
(08:03):
might remember, Maggie Oldison. She has been the editor in
chief of l and of Cleo, and she's written a
lot of books and columns. She wrote on her substack
that she was horrified by this article, and she said,
why work at Vogue if you don't have any personal style?
And she said this heralds the end of personal style,
because she said Vogue, being a fashion magazine, should represent
(08:26):
the dream of fashion and aspiration and to say that
there's no personal style is very sloppy, she says, and
against what personal style and what Vogue stands for. So
this idea has been kicking around for a little while
and we wanted to sort of talk about it today. Interestingly,
I've noticed, in preparation for this, you've both lifted your
(08:47):
style game, because I would say, as I've been thinking
about it, you both really do have a sense of style.
Like I could pick what each of you would wear,
or like I could look at something and say that's
very Jesse or that's not Jesse a little harder with you,
m but mostly I could, whereas I have no personal
(09:09):
style because I don't think you could ever look at
something and say, Maya would wear that or Mia wouldn't
wear that, because I wear everything from suits to like
cargo shorts and tutus. So when we were looking at
this the reasons for the death of personal style, there
are four main reasons. The first is fast fashion, which
is capitalism.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
Jesse, You not a fan, got a farm.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
So that's this idea that we're always being told, you
got to wear this new trend, this new trend, this
new trend, buy something new, buy something new.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
And we've talked on the show before about how those
trends are getting shorter and shorter because of how quickly
a certain look becomes totally saturated. So it used to
take a Vogue magazine coming out once a month, and
then the established trend might last for a season or
even years. But now, because of the instantaneous level of TikTok,
(10:00):
you'll see a look like barrel jeans, and then suddenly
it reaches kind of mass consumption and then you're like, oh,
I'm sick of that, and then everyone throws out their
barrels exactly.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
So it used to be that the fashion trends were
dictated by the designers, and that worked on a slower
scale because it was connected to retail, and it was
connected to magazines, and this whole ecosystem, like everything else
in the olden days, was slow. So magazines and fashion
trends in fashion shows would come out twice a year.
There would be spring, summer and autumn winter. There would
be two sort of main trend drops, and magazines would
(10:34):
then follow them. Now it's still dictated by retail, so
it's still capitalism, but it's fast fashion, so it's the
fast fashion brands, the czaras, the machines, all of those,
and then of course social media. So the good part
about that is that we've had the collapse of gatekeepers.
It's no longer about what Chanell wants to put on
(10:54):
the runway or Prita or what Vogue says is in
or out. It's now gone to social media and influences
and fast fashion retailers, so it's become style on speed.
And then the fourth reason is fashion is entertainment. Because
of social talk Instagram, we watch fashion almost as a
spectator sport and it's become what's new, what's new? What's new?
(11:16):
And do you relate?
Speaker 2 (11:17):
I don't really relate. It's interesting that you said you
could pick my personal style, because I don't think I've
ever had any style. Like I don't get any joy
from clothes. When I have to dress in the morning,
it's my worst chore because I don't actually see what
I'm wearing. All I see is my body underneath it,
Like that is exactly what I'm dressing for. And I've
even noticed, after thinking about this topic, that even if
(11:40):
I don't actually like what I'm wearing, if I think
I look good in it, I will wear it. Like
if I think I could make myself look as skinny
as possible in it, I will still wear it. And
it was only this year, for the first time ever,
I didn't think about my body. I only thought about
my clothes. And I was at my cousin's wedding and
she had a Hindu Punjabi wedding and it was the
(12:04):
first time I wore traditional Indian dress. I wore a lenger,
which is like a really long to the kind of
like bridgetin skirt, Like it has plastic in it. It's
really big.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
They're stunning.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
And I wore like a little choli which it was
like red blue gold. It had like diamond tes on it.
It was insane. It weighed five kilos. Essentially, do you
have a photo? I have a photo?
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Can you put it on the mameys on Instagram?
Speaker 2 (12:26):
And you wear like a little choli which is like
a crop top and you see a bit of skin.
And I was so scared of that. And it was
the first time when I got the LNGA made where
the stitcher was like, make sure you don't lose any weight,
like this dress will only work if you have a
bit of your timmy hanging out. And it was true.
It was the first time ever I was wearing an
outfit and I didn't think about my body once and
(12:47):
I was showing so much skins.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
I wonder if too, because there was almost like such
a dress code, there was something that you had to wear.
This is my advocacy for a uniform. This is like
there were boundaries of what to wear. And now even
if it's at work, you've got people who wear suits
and you've got people who wear twotus. There's such choice
(13:10):
that I think that a lot of us are paralyzed
because it's like, I don't know if I'm going kind
of formal. I don't know who I want to be today.
What I'm seeing on TikTok is not actually what I'm
seeing in the office. And I found the Vogue point
interesting about how they're all dressing kind of homogeneous, like
they're dressing in a type of uniform. And I was
(13:30):
interviewing someone about AI recently and you know the explosion
of it in the last few years, and he was
saying that in all sci fi movies and in all
predictions about the future, everything starts to look exactly the same,
from ads to brands, to billboards to what people are wearing.
So if you think of any sci fi movie, everyone's
(13:52):
in a uniform, everyone starts to look that exactly right,
that we're all just wearing like the same boiler suits.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Which is my nightmare. Why does that appeal to you
because it means, I guess, because the two of you
don't get joy from clothes.
Speaker 5 (14:08):
Do you get some joy?
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Not enormously? And I think that it's decision fatigue. I
think that to take that decision out of the equation
would be good. There's just the enormous pressure, and I'm
feeling this with every season where I go, I am
not buying something, And this year I've endeavored to buy
only secondhand from op shops and Deepop and all that
(14:30):
kind of thing. I've gone, if I cannot see myself
wearing this item at least three years, I am not
buying it. And I see things all the time that
I go. I think we can all relate to having
made enough mistakes where we go, Okay, I'm gonna buy
those shoes or buy that shirt, and you just go.
It works for literally two weeks, and then what do
I do with it? It's landfill, it's waste, and it
(14:52):
makes me feel sick. It makes me feel like eating
too much, and then you get a tummy ache.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
That was a really great thread on Reddit, on an
Australian fashion subreddit that was by someone who works in
one of these shops, like one of the Mini's shops,
and she just said the amount of stuff they can't
keep up with it, the amount of donations because people
are just recycling their clothes so much faster. And she
also said, you can really see a massive difference between
(15:18):
anything that was made before twenty twenty two and anything after.
She said, the quality even though the cost hasn't changed,
the quality has just gone down so dramatically. People don't
really talk about investment dressing anymore. It used to be
big when we were in magazines, where it's like, buy
one black blazer and buy one really good pair of shoes,
(15:38):
and this is what you need for a capsule wardrobe,
like Staples Staples, and this idea of it's better to
buy one expensive jacket than four cheap jackets. And I
am really torn about this because fashion, to me is
probably the biggest creative joy of my life and the
biggest form of self expression that I have. And my
(15:59):
favorite part of every day is choosing what to wear.
And I'll often try and find ways of getting changed
during the day, either in work or I'll go home
if I'm going with friends after work. Even if I've
just got a dash home to get changed, I'll do
that because that makes me enjoy the experience more. I've
always been like this since I was a little tiny kid.
I used to get in trouble for smuggling different outfits
(16:21):
to preschool, and the preschool rang my parents and said
it's winter and me has brought these things in her
school bag. I was four or three, and she's gone
into the bathrooms and she's gotten changed, and now she's
wearing a summer dress and it's very cold. So I
used to have to have bag inspections before I would
go to preschool, so it's always been in me. But
I also can really see. And I don't mind about
(16:42):
the making mistakes. I don't mind about I love something
today and I won't love it tomorrow. I do feel
the weight of what it does to the environment. It's
good for the economy, but it's not good for my
personal economy.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
The rules about what to donate I thought were really
interesting in that Reddit threat. So she said that one
big thing is that she'll look at an item of
clothing that is otherwise perfect, and often it might be
a vintage like statement piece, and she looks at it
and goes, why would I even donate this? And then
she sees a stain. And she was saying that a
(17:14):
lot of people don't know how to wash their clothes
properly anymore, and maybe it is because a lot of
what we have is cheap and disposable, and also we
know I can just get another one. I can get
one just like that for fifteen dollars. Why wouldn't I
do that? But she said, if you donate something with
the tiniest stain on it, we cannot put it on
the rath because it's not giving dignity to the people
that we're dressing. Like, the whole point is that they
(17:36):
pick up something and they feel good in it at
an affordable price point. And so it did make me
think about how we can be a bit lazy with
some of our and just kind of throw it out again.
She also said, you are never to put shoes in
the same bag as clothes. That's like a big rule
because it can ruin. Yeah, yeah, it can just ruin
the whole bag.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Oh that's interesting. In terms of microtrends, which is pretty
much how I dress, I dress in microtrends. I don't
think that's anything to be proud of. I think it
probably qualifies me as what we used to call a
fashion victim, but now it's seen as this aspirational thing.
And as I was sort of researching this topic, I
was looking at just some of the fashion micro trends
(18:16):
from twenty twenty four and twenty twenty five. They have
included Now, I haven't worn all of these trends, but
I've worn some of them off A Siren, which is
like animal print, pencil skirts and wrap coats, Mafia Wife,
Clean Girl, Ballet Core, Dolecre Fishermen aesthetic, which has been
like nautical stripes and oversized nitwear, Moto Boho, which is
(18:39):
fringed leather jackets and flowy skirts. Everyday sequence big on that.
Hot pants like ultra short shorts with blazers or oversized shirts. No,
not bike shorts. That's a different thing. Like hot pants
is more like you know how I've been wearing those
added ass running shorts. Yeah, they're quite short, and then
I'll wear like a big shirt or a jacket over
(19:02):
the top. Wrong shoe trend. I love that Copenhagen style,
of course I love. And that's not even including specific
items that have come and gone with an absolute intensity,
all of these things going viral, barrel jeens, sambas, the
whole debate around socks, bag charms, shoe jewelry, rugby jumpers,
graphic teas, tracksuit jeans, soccer jerseys, bermuda shorts. That's literally
(19:24):
a description of my wardrobe. But there's a brand strategist
that I follow on TikTok called Eugene Heally, and he
posted this week about how micro trends have actually become
very low status. Here's what he had to say.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
Looking back in the past few years, we can see
that algorithms completely cooked our personal style. It's not just
how exhausting it became to keep up with micro trends,
always feeling like you're behind your clothes, never feeling relevant.
It's that algorithms have a tendency to reward the most
extreme opinions in fashion. What this meant was that micro
trens got further and further away from what people wore
or even wanted to wear. Who exactly looked good in
(19:58):
a bubble skirt. Fashion became a pure simulacrum that only
really existed online. Dressing in micro trends has effectively become
a low status activity because it's basically telling everyone you're
chronically online, not fashion. It's cosplay. And if you or
someone you know personally fell for micro trends, call one
an't undred fashion victim, because you may be entitled to compensation.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
That's me. What do you guys think of? Ever?
Speaker 3 (20:19):
I reckon that it's a really pertinent point that a
lot of us are dressing for the Internet, and we're
not dressing for the context that we're finding ourselves in.
We're dressing for a photo or we're buying things for
a TikTok try on hole. I think the death of
personal style is about an erasure of our instincts. So
(20:41):
if I have a certain sense of what looks good
on me and what makes me feel like me, I
now live in a world where I am served videos
about rules and about like never do that, and this
makes you look old, and this makes you look that.
And there's been a lot written recently on how that
is undermining people's instincts. So they feel like they can't
(21:03):
go to their wardrobe and choose what to wear based
on a feeling. They feel as though they've got to
consult with GPT, that they've got to consult with I
even see people doing it with try on videos where
they go should I wear these shoes, and they go
these these these like try them all on, rather than
just going, well, what do I feel like? It's not
kind of a democracy.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
IE hundred percent agreed, because that's the exact feeling I
had after my cousin's crazy weddings. It was like a
feeling of deep sadness because it's such traditional outfits and
it's not just outfits that I felt looked good. I
also felt like they were specifically made for me and
my body type, and I feel like with micro trends
that's not necessarily the case. And what made me really
(21:43):
sad was that I feel like, now I have to
dress that conforms to what Western society things is acceptable
for me to dress. And it's not just the outfits.
It's like the big jewelry and the dark makeup and
like the coal with your eyes. And I never want
to be perceived in a certain way depending on how
I dress, So that's why I never choose to dress
that way.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Yeah, what do you mean by that?
Speaker 2 (22:06):
I feel like if I were to dress the exact
way I wanted to dressy people would connect a type
of personality to me.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
What personality would that be?
Speaker 4 (22:15):
Like?
Speaker 2 (22:15):
I would say a very like traditional quote unquote Indian personality,
like and I've had this happen to me before, like
timid and quiet, and if I say something, they're like, oh,
I didn't expect that from you. Those kind of things
and I feel like that's just the way people perceive
people who dress outside the norm.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
I wish that women could just do a steep jobs
and go, all right, this is my uniform.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
The women who want to, you know, the women can
do that who want to. There are other women who
really enjoy it. But I do recognize that I'm probably
in the minority. I think for most women, when you
say you've got nothing to wear, it's not about the
clothes that you have, it's that you don't know who
you meant to be on that particular day. Like Jesse,
(23:01):
you this week had to go and do a talk
in front of a group of teenage girls. Yeah, and
that is a head scramble in terms.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Of you look at your wardrobe very oh what did
you wear? I ended up wearing a dress and like
a shirt over the top. But I was going through
my wardrobe and I go, no, no, no, I would
look old in this. I would look old in like
I wanted to look current. And it was just it
took me a really long time to decide what to wear,
like in terms of who I was going to be
that day. I think that that is expended energy that
(23:31):
I just I don't want to use.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Out louders in a moment we share something to binge
watch and read.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
We've had so much fun answering your dilemmas out Louders
with thanks to our good friends at Yui, but we
want more. Send us your moment that makes you question
what do you do next? Don't worry if it's super embarrassing,
we are happy to keep you anonymous. Whether it's a
crisis at work, you've found yourself in some dire group
chat drama, or maybe something especially cringe worthy. We promise
(24:05):
we don't judge here. Email us at out loud at
mamameat dot com you or jump in the out Louders
Facebook group and share your dilemma.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Vibes, ideas, atmosphere, something casual, something fun.
Speaker 6 (24:19):
This is my best recommendation.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
It's Friday, and we wanted to help set up your
weekend with our very best recommendations. Mia kick us off.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
She's not here so we can talk about her book
this week. I really I didn't hate it. Imagine if
I'd hate it would be so awkward. Hollywayne Wright has
a new book out. It's called He Would Never, and
it is by far her best book. It's a whole
other level, as Jesse said to me. We both read
(24:50):
it actually over Christmas. Jesse read it first, and you know,
it can be always awkward when your friends write a book.
Might not like it. But Jesse was like, it's amazing.
She's gone to a whole other level. There's so many characters,
but I just want to spend time with all of them.
It tells broadly about a group of people who go
on a regular and your camping trip together. They all
(25:11):
met in mother's group when their first children were just
newly born and at ladas will recognize this as something
that Holly Wainwright does. In fact, it's drawn from her
own life. But what happens on this camping trip in
this particular year, and it jumps through time. Some of
the daughters, they're at that age going from girls to
(25:31):
young women, so that teenage girl stage, and one of
the fathers does or doesn't do something very inappropriate and
it blows up everything. Jesse, what did you think?
Speaker 3 (25:43):
Yeah, And it's about working out the truth of it,
but also navigating that very different relationship between men or
fathers and girls that begin to look like women. And
it's so so well done. I reckon I was five
pages in when I totally forgot. I was reading Holly's work,
(26:04):
which imed into I was transfixed by the story. I
don't think i'd ever read a book about this topic
before that kind of grappled with these issues because I
think that a lot of women will know the feeling
of when they turned up to people that they saw
every year and suddenly the looks were different and the
(26:25):
comments were different, or in fact, maybe there were some
men who took a big step back and suddenly it
was like you couldn't engage because there was this new
found screen up between you.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Because it's interesting because among the parents, the children of
your friends, the friend group, or you also think you
stay the same age even though you get older, but
the children changed dramatically. Yeah, And you know, knowing someone
at five or six or three and then knowing them
at sixteen is very different, and it can be a
(26:57):
difficult thing to navigate with your own children, but also
with other people's children. So if you're coming to the
Outloud live shows, there will be signed copies. Otherwise you
can order wherever you get your books.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
And it's just so plotty.
Speaker 4 (27:09):
You are.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
I have so many friends saying to me, I'm in
a reading rite. Just tell me what to read. Yeah,
this is not something that you're going to start reading
it and you can't keep reading it. I promise you.
This is just it is so engrassing. He would never
by Hollyway run.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
And at the very end of this episode, actually we've
got a little treat from Holly for out louders. She's
going to read the first chapter of the book. So
don't turn off your ears.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
M what is your recommendation?
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Okay, I've been talking about this movie for the past
two weeks. I've watched it twice already. It's the biggest
movie out right now. It's called Sinners.
Speaker 6 (27:46):
I'm in all over this world. I've seen me in
loz ain't even always password. Leave you brother, be careful,
are we what all the things that I've seen, I
(28:15):
ain't never seen no demons, long ghosts.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
Teel now at the movies.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
At the movies, Adam, watch this because I think I
never will. But everyone's talking about it.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Who's in it?
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Okay? So it's directed by Ryan Kugler. He is a
fresh director, but he's done Creed, Black Panthers, pretty much
every movie that Michael b Jordan's done. Michael Jordan's in it,
but it's better than Michael Jordan because he plays two characters.
He plays twins.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
Okay, so is it horror?
Speaker 2 (28:53):
It's horror adventure some music. It's very original. It made
sixty million in an opening weekend, which is amazing for
an original film that hasn't borrowed another IP. It was
also the Easter weekend and the Pope died next day,
so a lot of people didn't want to watch a
movie called Sinners. So the fact that in May that
(29:14):
much money was insane.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
I also read that he has upended the whole studio
system because in this deal that he did for this movie,
he essentially owns the IP. It reverts to him I
think twenty twenty five years. Yeah, and the only other
person in Hollywood he manages to get a deal like
that is Quentin tarrantor Yes.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
And there was a lot of controversy around that, with
a lot of headlines like Variety read a headline saying
this movie made so much money in the first weekend,
but can it keep up to the point where Ben
Stiller tweeted that and saying, how is this headline warranted?
And now we have like Kevin Bacon, Pedro Pascal all
tweeting and posting on Instagram.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
About Cruise Puss Thru. So why is it so good?
Speaker 2 (29:52):
It is so original, Like I haven't seen anything like this.
It's about so Michael B. Jordan plays two twins, Smoke
and Stack. It's set in the nineteen thirties in America,
and both of these twins are these big Chicago mafia
guys and they come back to their hometown to start
up a new part rub and then something woo woo happens.
It goes a bit scary. Harley steinfeels in it, and
(30:15):
it's just like classic horror. And I'm not a horror
person because I get quite scared in horror. There's no
cheap jump scares. It's very like creepy, like old school horror,
where you just kind of everything that happens you kind
of expect. But it is so.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Well dune like it does thic violence.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
It does get a bit graphic towards the end, but
not like over the top.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
I also heard there's a lot of women receiving oral sex,
is that correct? Correct?
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Which I think there should be more of. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
Oh, I like seeing scary things, and I think you
have to see them at the movies. I think that's
the rule. You get the full experience in the cinema.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
It is really and I want to watch it again
third time.
Speaker 3 (30:51):
My recommendation is season seven of Black Mirror on Netflix.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Is anyone else watching it?
Speaker 5 (30:57):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (30:57):
I've watched one episode, Yeah, which one? And I don't
love Black Mirror. I get a bit creeped by.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
It, so I was off it after maybe the last
few seasons. There were a few duds where I just went, no,
but your best when it is like an essay on
technology and ethics and you take me in a really
unexpected direction. And I feel like this season has really
gone back to its roots.
Speaker 6 (31:25):
We'd like to welcome you back. Ready, Yeah, three two
and action.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
They call it mind expanding, the alter your neural structure.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
The mind is a computer. Suddenly, they're not just more receptive,
you become a receiver. They're like little mini movies.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
They are they are. So I would say if you're
sort of like, oh, I don't know about watching this,
just watch the first episode and see what you think.
That gives you tonally a vibe of what it's like.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
It has I watched one with Emma Corn in it,
which was an that was really beautiful about this are
you kind of even explain what it's about. But it
has the most amazing stars in it. It's like very
prestio just to be in it. And it's not a
lot of work for them to do. It's only a
couple of weeks shooting.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
Well. This first episode has Rashida Jones and Chris O'Dowd
in it, and it is about a woman. She plays
a teacher who has a brain humor that would claim
her life right, but there is a new technology they
can basically put something in her head save her life.
(32:42):
But it's a subscription model. It is so clever. It
provides commentary on sort of the intersection between capitalism and
healthcare and how much that especially in the US, and
the never ending treadmill of tech subscriptions because every time
you feel like you've got the right subscription, you upgrade,
and then you have to upgrade, then you have to upgrade.
It's just so so clever. So that is on Netflix,
(33:03):
Black Mirror. Watch the first episode and if you like that,
watch all the rest. It's brilliant. After the break, one
of Us is trialing the trad wife life and we've
got some thoughts out loud as.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
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 (33:38):
It is time for best and Worst. This is the
part of the show where we share a little bit
more from our personal lives. M what was your worst.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Of this week?
Speaker 2 (33:46):
My worst this week? So, my grandfather passed away a
few weeks ago. I have talked about it on a
subs episode before, but I haven't been dealing with it well.
And I thought I'd be able to deal with it
better being a grandchild, because every time one of my
friends loses a grandparent, it feels so separate and it
feels like, oh, I have to travel to this place
(34:07):
because it's my grandparents funeral, and I'm.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
Like, who I didn't know very well?
Speaker 4 (34:11):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (34:11):
And I was and I still am to my nana.
I was so close to my grandfather. He like raised
me for about eighty years. Because both my parents, and
my nana was working and he retired when he moved
to Australia, so it was just me and him.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
And he dropped me to school and picked me up
from school till I was seventeen years old, like every
single day. We lived with them for a really long
time in my childhood. He was just like a person
who felt like as close to my parents as I
like another parent. And it's something that I feel like
after two weeks, I should be in a better spot
(34:45):
after two weeks, but I'm not.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Why would you.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
I'm just so sad all the time. Of course you're sad.
I really miss him. Oh I'm so sorry, and I
wish he was here so you could like see me
do these live shows because he was so excited, but
he's just not And I'm like, there's so many things
that are happening in my life and I'm still very
much like, Oh, I can't I to tell Papa about this,
(35:10):
And then I remember it feels like it's been so
long but also not enough time. And I think it's
the first experience death experience I've experienced as an adult,
and I think there's something so bittersweet about losing a
grandparent because you're in this part like I've been with
him for twenty nine years, but he lived for ninety
(35:31):
four years and I was such a small part of
his huge life, but he was my entire life. And
I think there's something in it's so sad that I'm
an adult so I get to experience all these feelings
that I didn't experience as a kid when I lost
my paternal grandparents. But at the same time, it feels heavier,
like it feels like there's this whole part that I'm
(35:52):
going to live the rest of my life, like I
could have children or get married that he will have experience,
and it's just really sad, Like it's so sad.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
It's yeah, I'm so sorry. And I think that the
idea that grief is something that you move through and
you're going to see the other side of I don't think.
I think that's a myth. I think that you just
live with it. And I lost my nana when I
was about fifteen, and she lived with us and was
like another mother figure, and I still think it all
the time. I think I look at Luna and I go, oh,
(36:24):
Nan would have loved Luna, And I think that it
gets replaced with a type of joy. And I think
that there is something where you go, what a remarkable life.
If any of us could live that long and have
that richer life and have, you know, that strong relationship
with our grandchildren, then we did something right. But that
doesn't mean that it's not horrible waking up and just
(36:45):
knowing that they're not they're not there.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
There's a grandfather's shaped hole in your heart that will
be there, and that's I guess a tribute to the
strength of the relationship, because you know, if you have
a grandparent that you're not close to and they pass away,
it doesn't affect you as much. But the amount of
love is equal to the amount of grief. Honey, sending
(37:11):
you love.
Speaker 3 (37:12):
Are there any silver linings?
Speaker 2 (37:15):
I've got some best I've got you. So after he
passed away, like I think it was a week after,
my parents had a holiday in Europe and my sister,
so they're in Europe right now, like living their best lives.
And I think I'm very close to my extended family
because my parents, their generation and their parents all move
together in like this big community. So I'm really close
(37:37):
with like my extended cousins and stuff like that, and
they all know that I'm like the only kid, quote
unquote kid in my generation who lives alone in a
single I have something on every single day with a
different family member. Like in aunt like hey, I'm getting
lunch today, can you please join me? I'm like yeah, sure.
And another family's like, hey, we do pizza every Friday night,
(37:58):
can you come? And they're like, hey, we know your
parents are here, so if you want to move in
just for like this little bit, like I'm a child,
and it's so fun and so good. And they knew
I was close to Papa, so they're probably like, oh,
she's probably not great not And it's just been so
nice to know that there's so many people there, and
I am so privileged to have my entire family in
(38:21):
this country.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
I have a lot of cousins.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
I think that's like forty of us.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
There's something so special about cousins.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
And we're all the same age as well. It's just fun.
It's a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
Maya, what's your worst?
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Well, my worst sounds really shallow because I just got
food poisoning. That's it didn't last very long, but I
felt sick. I'm very careful particularly when we're traveling, because
I remember one live show, Jesse, you had food poisoning
for in Melbourne. I had a soldier through that and
it was bad. And you are very loosey goosey with
what you eat on the road.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
A little bit of cooked chicken that looks she's particularly
cheap to play with firelight to take those.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
Whereas I'm a vegetarian anyway, and I'm extra careful. I
usually eat seafood, but I don't ever when i'm traveling anyway.
I was just at home, it was just before we
left for Perth, and I have these spinach fetter fillow pastries.
I have them for dinner. I reckon four nights a week.
I have them for dinner with peas and corn. It's
might just fall back. When I bought them, the woman said, oh,
(39:20):
make sure you eat them in the next twenty four
to forty eight hours the expiry date. I'm not sure
if it was that or I made a cake on
Friday and there was quite a lot of butter in
the icing, and then I didn't put it in the
fridge because I didn't like fridge cake. And then it
was three days later, and I wonder if the butter
from the icing might have done.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
I made that cake and I ate that icing, and
I didn't get sick.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
And it hasn't been in the fridge either.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
Nah, nah, don't put it the fridge. Don't like fridge cake.
Speaker 4 (39:45):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
It was just bad. It was bad anyway. It was
not the worst. It wasn't as bad as jesse In
when we were.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
Away, but it was just are you cleared out now?
Speaker 4 (39:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (39:52):
I'm good, Okay, cool, good to go. My best was
being on the road, being back traveling, being touring. We've
got a much bigger touring party than we did last year.
We've got em, We've got our whole crew, a lot
of them are new to the show. We've got some
special guests which you may or may not have heard of,
and it's just these are all people who are my friends,
(40:13):
and getting to be on tour with your mates is
just the funnest thing. And I've just loved it because
it's not just the actual being on stage, which is
so fun, but it's the.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
It's a school camp of it all.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
It's the flights, it's the airports, it's the wandering off
and getting lost and having someone you know how.
Speaker 3 (40:29):
School camp is fun for the kids, but it's not
fun for the teachers. I think that's a bit like us,
and I think were the can for us, and it's
not fun for the eleven teachers we've hired to get us.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
It's true, it's actually worked for them, and when we
keep wandering off.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
We're doing them wine. They're fine, but it's been great.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
I've just I've loved it, and we've got three more
shows to go. It's just fun.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
I am going to start with my best because it
kind of proceeds my worst. So my best was Sunday,
Rainy Sunday, and I'm like, I'm gonna cook a bunch
for lunacause I was going to be away a few
nights this week. So then the gelt kicks in. I go,
I'm just going to be a chef and then I
won't feel any gelt and I can't cook. But now
I've got my staples for her, So I make her
these peanut butter like oat, very very healthy, very good money.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
It brings them in.
Speaker 3 (41:12):
Yeah, they're actually great. And then I make her a
spinach pancakes which she eats right, so just like health creeen,
And I was like I was making this. She's reading
a book on her own. I was playing Bob Dylan
because I watched a complete Unknown the movie. And so
I'm at Bop Dealer now and it's raining, and I'm
just like, I'm a trad wife. I just I'm leaving
the trad wife life like this is fabulous. I thought,
(41:35):
you know, we should be introducing new foods, and now
that I'm a trid wife, I might do some experimenting.
So I've got my Femi mix out and I do
some gurgling and I decide to make chive and sweet
corn pikeleots.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
Right, Wow, sounds complicated.
Speaker 3 (41:48):
Yeah, and you know the recipe is always just like
even a fuzzy toddler bel eat this one.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
Well, funny enough, I had introduced her to pikelots on
the weekend as well, except they had neither chibe nor
sweet corn in them. They were just highly processed from
the supermarket, and she liked them a lot.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
Pikelets are good because you don't want to overcommit with
the pancakes.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
No, no, no, it's just a little little pike and the
color looks like a normal pikelot. Yeah, it looks like
it's got anything so you can trick her. Yeah, So
I do the big mix. Takes a long time to
do a whole anyway, and then I do the whole
thing and she's just like mummy, and I'm like, Luna,
how great is life? How great is anyway? My worst?
So I make all of my pikeelots and they're just
sitting there and she's like, Mummy, I'm hungry, and I'm like, well,
(42:29):
here's something I preparred earlier. Here are my tibe and
sweet corn piplot served with cottage cheese.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
What every toddler love?
Speaker 3 (42:36):
Yes, gibes? And I give them to her cottage cheese.
Speaker 1 (42:39):
Do you know there's a global shortage of cottage? Everybody
is Google. Everyone's chugging the protein, yes, all the teenage
boys and the middle aged ladies.
Speaker 3 (42:48):
I give her her pipot with my smuggled all look ballerina. Yeah, yeah,
yeah exactly, and I'm like, come on, you're like this,
and she takes a bite, thinking it's your piplot and
I'm like I've won, and I turn my back and
then I just hear yeah, and I turn around and
someone at this table maya taught her when I had
(43:09):
food poisoning may have taught her to make a vomiting
sound because she was going mummy.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
And I'm mummy Blair. So now often whenever she's with me,
she'll remember Jesse and she would just go mummy blah.
Mummy's not always vomiting. When she's not, she's just dagging
all over.
Speaker 3 (43:24):
So she goes yucky, mum, h sick, blurt blur, and
she's doing a vomiting sound. She then throws the piplet
on the floor and goes in the bin in the bin,
and I was like, oh, my goodness, this sounds. This
does not happen on Ballerina, for no, they eat all
of the food. This is the reality of treadwife life.
(43:45):
Is your chive and your sweet corn ends up on
the floor. If she had vomited, I'd be like, oh,
that's awful. It was the fake of it.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
It was like, this is so bad.
Speaker 3 (43:54):
I don't think you're understanding. Mum, yuck, don't want it
in the bin, blah blah blah. Anyway, so I gave
them to cousin Matilda, and no more chive pancakes for Lena.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
Oh dear out loud, as promised. We've got a little
treat for you to end today's show and get you
into the weekend. Holly is going to read you exclusively
a small excerpt from the start of her brand new book,
He Would.
Speaker 5 (44:17):
Never, He Would Never, by Holly Wainwright, Prologue, Sunday Night,
eleven fifty five pm, Green River Beach. This would be
a fitting place for Lockey Short to die on the
edge of a splendid beach he hated with a passion.
If you believed in the afterlife, which Liz definitely did,
(44:39):
or ghosts, which Danny most definitely did not, then Lachlan
Short's troubled soul would be bound to walk this stretch
of river for eternity, bitching about the absence of decent
surf or a proper coffee, and picking tiny shards of
crushed lilac river shells out of the souls of his
calloused feet. Some would think it was entirely appropriate for
(45:00):
him to end his days in the place that most
made him doubt his marriage, his masculinity, his very life choices.
A campground, a hell for man who liked the finer things,
Beds that weren't in close proximity to the ground, food
that couldn't be cooked on a wandering stover in the
coals of a bandifying fire. Drinks not served with an
(45:20):
ice scooped from a sandy eski by a sunscreen smeared hand. No,
if Locky Short was to be doomed to camp for eternity,
he would find all way back to the light, because
actually he wasn't dead yet. He was lying on the
rainforest floor, somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness, somewhere between the
(45:40):
campground and the sand. And someone would find him soon, surely,
Liss or Danny or Aidan or Tea. They must all
be frantic beside themselves. The strip of wilderness wasn't wide,
but it was dense and tricky, as all the Green
River camp regulars knew. At night, you could step away
to pee between the trees, and a thick, dark green
(46:02):
curtain would close in, leaving you banging into branches and
tripping over roots, embarrassed at your rising panic. The forest
vibrated with the low thrum of life, always hungry, inching forward,
maneuvering to reclaim its stolen space, marching insects and scuttling rodents,
advancing spiders and snakes and slugs and snails nibbling, sucking, sliming, gnawing,
(46:26):
the strangler vines always reaching. They'd have a thick, nobbled
tendril around Lockie's ankle. By morning. It was strange that
no one was calling his name. He was still breathing,
but not so you'd notice shallow Now. His loud Hawaiian
print shirt might just save him from this terrible misunderstanding.
Its hibiscus, bright yellow and pink, was still faintly glowing
(46:47):
even as the campground's lanterns and fairy lights flicked off
for the night, stealing the last glimmers of light. The
shirt had been ironic, which was now, of course, extremely ironic.
At the beach, only a few steps away, the river
was rising, lapping closer to the tree line. With every
sweep in, every pull out, the crabs, sandball scrawled masterpieces
(47:08):
were being washed away. The fish heading in from deeper
water to swirl around the anchors of the dormant boats.
Try to breathe with the waves. It won't be long,
can't be long. A crunch, finally, a footfall getting closer.
No talking, no chatter, no urgency. A phone light held low,
sweeping left to right, right to left, below the eye
(47:29):
line of campers on the other side of the tree curtain,
invisible to anyone hurrying to the toilet block in their
pajamas and thongs. Who was coming? His wife, his children.
They'd been on the makeshift dance floor with him only
hours before, bumping, jumping, shrugging to the beat, pounding through
the trees out to the sandy flats of the beach,
and tipping into the river. The girls had jiggled through
(47:51):
clouds of embarrassment, eyes averted, aware of the phones pointed
their way by the cooler kids. But his daughters would
still dance with him if he asked. They weren't too
old for that. Nor was Lyrah Martin that little idiot.
It was because of her, surely that Lockie was lying
in the roots of this giant fig on the forest
floor and not sinking into the double flocked inflatable mattress
(48:11):
inside his giant tent, beer snoring into Liss's tolerant ear
Lyra could have said something changed all of this. The
crunching closer, stopping lucky, there you are. Someone was bending
to him, feet in thongs by his flickering eyes, toenails
pink and shimmery in the phone's blonde light. Thank god,
(48:32):
we wondered how far you'd got a voice as familiar
as his own. Such a terrible mess. Yes, this would
be a fitting place for Lockey Short to die. If
you didn't like him, if you didn't trust him, if
you thought he'd spent a life tainting beautiful things with
his touch, if you thought he'd taken something from you,
knocked you off course, tormented a person you loved, if
(48:54):
you believed the lies spread about him tonight, last night,
all weekend.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
Do you need help?
Speaker 5 (48:59):
Such a question to a body in the woods, asked
in such a sweet tone, there could be no answer
from swollen, numb lips.
Speaker 3 (49:08):
So yes.
Speaker 5 (49:08):
There might be people who wished to damn Lucky to
eternal rest below this fig but they would be wrong.
That wasn't who he was, not what he deserved. And
there were people here, people only steps away from this
mossy fernie dump who knew that knew that he loved
his wife, loved his children, knew that every decision he
made was in the service of protecting them, even the
(49:29):
wrong ones. Hot breath mingled with the hot breeze so
close it would ruffle the hair above his ringing ear.
Good night, Lucky, the crunching retreating, this time an impossible
act from a person so beloved. A roar was building
inside him, a rush of furious indignation at having been
so misunderstood, a heart fluttering terror at the idea his
(49:52):
children might grow up thinking he was someone he was not.
All of it charging at him now, the ritual of
the camping trip. A friendship grown too close, a teenage
girl too sure of herself, a marriage almost done, a
secret unwrapped and scattered around the campsite like bait. And
now the worst of it, humiliation, betrayal, abandonment. Liz, Danny
(50:17):
Lucky Short would never stand for this. If Onny he
could stand.
Speaker 3 (50:22):
That's all we have time for today. A big thank
you for all of you, the out louders for listening
to today's show. We will be back in your ears
next week. Em and Maya do you want to read
the credits?
Speaker 1 (50:33):
I do. Thank you to our team of school teachers
who need big sticks when we're on the road on
our Girls Trip Group Executive producer Roof de Vine, executive
producer Emmeline Gazillis.
Speaker 2 (50:44):
And our audio producer Leah Porgees, our video producer Josh Green,
and our junior content producers Coco and Tessa.
Speaker 1 (50:52):
Bye bye bye.
Speaker 3 (50:54):
Shout out to any Mum and MEA subscribers listening. If
you love the show and you want to support us,
subscribing to mom and Mia is the very best way
to do so. There's a link in the episode description.
Speaker 4 (51:09):
The ten cook buck Bank took back book
You're listening to a Muma Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Is personal style dead well, according to some people, it is,
and fast fashion killed it.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
There's such choice that I think that a lot of
us are paralyzed because it's like, I don't know if
I'm going kind of formal. I don't know who I
want to be today. What I'm seeing on TikTok is
not actually what I'm seeing in the office. Hello, and
welcome to MoMA maa out loud and to our Friday show.
I think I meant to say the date here. It
(00:49):
is the second of May, where we take a break
from the news cycle and we all escape for a
few hours. I don't think this episode is going to
go for a few hours.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
That's too long for me.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
I think a little less than that. Oh, today is Friday,
the second.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Of me still, thank god.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
It's so long. It's now the third.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
I am Jesse Stephen, I'm me.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Friedman and I amm Vernham filling in for Holly today
because we left her in Perth. Yes we did.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
It was our first live show this week. It was
so much fun and Perfey. We haven't seen Perth in years,
so we were rearing.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
They were roaring and rearing and rearing.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
Why not.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Look, the out Louders group is a buzz with people
trying to get tickets. We do have a few tickets
left for our Brisbane and Melbourne shows. Get them while
you can. It's such a great night. Just ask the
Perth out Louders. We will pup a link in the
show notes to get those tickets.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
And on the show today, the death of personal Style
and why you're about to see a significant shift in
the way people are dressing.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Plus our recommendations including a binge worthy show, something to
frighten the pants off you, and a book that every
out Louder needs to read we already have You're going
to want.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
To and Tummy Travels Coping with grief and a very
tread wife Weekend. It is best and worst.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
But for in case you missed it, there's a word
that's having a moment and it starts with sea and
rhymes with monty. You might have heard someone describe an
item of clothing as monty, but as a compliment. Leslie
Bibb remember of White Lotus fame, She had the iconic hairstyle,
and it was referred to as a monty little.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Bob yes by her hairdresser. Now, to be clear in case,
how about is go out and start using the word mounty.
Monty is not actually the word. No, it's not sea word.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
I'm allowed to say it.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
I think we've got a b pe if we use it. Why,
because I think we'll be punished by the overlords of
the podcasting is no bigger than me those.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
It's one of my favorite words. It's one of my
favorite words. In fact, I've got group chats with this
word as their name. That's because the use of it
that I really like is serving sea word.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
This is new. You do like a new word, you
like a trend. So in terms of what it means.
A man named Adam Alexic, the author of al Go
Speak How Social Media is Transforming the future of language,
says that munt is sort of a synonym for camp.
It's sort of ironically cool. He also says that the
way Australians use the word as more of a popular
(03:24):
slang term is starting to seep into mainstream American culture.
MAYA have you noticed that this word like it was
once very divisive, very offensive. You wouldn't it is an
impolite company.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Some people are still like really offended by it. For
some people, it's the third rail. It's like the only
swear word that they will completely not say. My mother
always said to me from when I was quite young,
it shouldn't be used as a term of abuse. So
as long as you use it in a positive or
affectionate way. She was so ahead of her time. This
is decades ago. As long as you use it in
a good way, like hey, you old s word, then
(04:00):
that's fine. And so what's interesting is that it has
become that so like a lot of words that have
been reclaimed, like queer, flat flat or bitch. If it's
used by the group that it sort of refers to
I asked with female Jennet Taylor, because that's what it
used to be a derogatory slang term for, you can
(04:22):
reclaim it. So now the highest compliment you can give
is that someone's serving seaword.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
I have a question about it.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Serving seaword today, I'd say, you think, ye oh wow,
you've never said that to me before, so really happen.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
I think that this is also happening because of the
boundarylessness of the Internet and the loss of any classification
system right, because when I was a teenager, I was
sitting there watching a movie that my parents had put
on and this word came up. The sea word came up,
and I remember my parents gasping, whispering, and me hearing,
that's the worst word you can say. And I kept
(04:56):
rewinding and I was like, you can't, Like I couldn't
word what the actual word was. But now, because of algorithms,
I feel as though there are no gatekeepers, and therefore
I wonder if it's a flattening of language, that there
will be no rude words anymore, because we all use
all the words. The thing I wonder about this is,
m would you use this word to the world in
(05:18):
the workplace or in the company of your parents?
Speaker 4 (05:19):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Oh, I would use it in the workplace. I have
used it in the workplace, probably this year only. I
remember twenty nineteen specifically, we still hated that word because
we were writing about The Bachelor. I think it was
like Matt's season, Yeah, and one of the contestants called
him a dog, and I think we wrote like five
articles about that. It took such shock. We were like,
(05:42):
what is going on. Got so many page years just
from that little bit. But I think it's more now.
It's like the deification of a lifestyle. It's like one
of those lifestyles is a little bit out of reach
that we all want to achieve, and it's something to
kind of work to work.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Oh, it's becoming aspirational.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Yeah, it's an aspirational word.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Is it the next iteration of bratt because Brat's done.
I think that that's how I would describe a lot
of those really powerful, interesting, transgressive women. I would probably
say they're serving. I can't say it, but you have
to get bored.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
I'd always just move on without.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
You what I noticed, Because you've got to be a
little bit careful because if someone doesn't understand the reference
to the little bob. Lee Campbell had a haircut last
week and I said, oh, it's a little bob and
she was like, oh what. She was quite offended, because
not offended, but because she didn't understand the reference. She
didn't understand that Chris McMillan, who was Jennifer Anderson's hairdresser,
(06:40):
is the one that coined that term. And this clip
of him giving this particular haircut to Leslie Bibb for
her character in White Lotus then went global, and so
the little bob is an actual hairstyle. And I'm finding
myself thinking. I was watching Hacks last night and Ava,
the character played by Hannah Einbinder, has a little bob,
and I was like, maybe I need a little bob?
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Is a too little bob when it goes a bit
shorter at the back.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
I've had a little bob. It's just a really short bob.
I used to have a little bob for a really
long time. That's when it was just just to be
called a bob. But anyway, I like the idea of
reclaiming words and changing the vibe of them, changing their intention.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Making them nicer.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Is personal style dead? Well, according to some people it is,
and Fast Fashion killed it. There was a story in
UK Vogue a couple of weeks ago by Olivia Allen,
who works there. I think she's a fashion assistant or something,
and she was talking about how everyone in their office
is wearing the same specific outfit. And that outfit, in
(07:43):
case you're wondering, is a blue men's work shirt, like
an oversized man's shirt. Office work, not like high building.
No jeans and sort of scuffed ballet flats and like
wide legged loose jeans or straight jeans. Certainly not skinny
jeans and not barrel jeans. A writer whose name you
(08:03):
might remember, Maggie Oldison. She has been the editor in
chief of l and of Cleo, and she's written a
lot of books and columns. She wrote on her substack
that she was horrified by this article, and she said,
why work at Vogue if you don't have any personal style?
And she said this heralds the end of personal style,
because she said Vogue, being a fashion magazine, should represent
(08:26):
the dream of fashion and aspiration and to say that
there's no personal style is very sloppy, she says, and
against what personal style and what Vogue stands for. So
this idea has been kicking around for a little while
and we wanted to sort of talk about it today. Interestingly,
I've noticed, in preparation for this, you've both lifted your
(08:47):
style game, because I would say, as I've been thinking
about it, you both really do have a sense of style.
Like I could pick what each of you would wear,
or like I could look at something and say that's
very Jesse or that's not Jesse a little harder with you,
m but mostly I could, whereas I have no personal
(09:09):
style because I don't think you could ever look at
something and say, Maya would wear that or Mia wouldn't
wear that, because I wear everything from suits to like
cargo shorts and tutus. So when we were looking at
this the reasons for the death of personal style, there
are four main reasons. The first is fast fashion, which
is capitalism.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
Jesse, You not a fan, got a farm.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
So that's this idea that we're always being told, you
got to wear this new trend, this new trend, this
new trend, buy something new, buy something new.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
And we've talked on the show before about how those
trends are getting shorter and shorter because of how quickly
a certain look becomes totally saturated. So it used to
take a Vogue magazine coming out once a month, and
then the established trend might last for a season or
even years. But now, because of the instantaneous level of TikTok,
(10:00):
you'll see a look like barrel jeans, and then suddenly
it reaches kind of mass consumption and then you're like, oh,
I'm sick of that, and then everyone throws out their
barrels exactly.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
So it used to be that the fashion trends were
dictated by the designers, and that worked on a slower
scale because it was connected to retail, and it was
connected to magazines, and this whole ecosystem, like everything else
in the olden days, was slow. So magazines and fashion
trends in fashion shows would come out twice a year.
There would be spring, summer and autumn winter. There would
be two sort of main trend drops, and magazines would
(10:34):
then follow them. Now it's still dictated by retail, so
it's still capitalism, but it's fast fashion, so it's the
fast fashion brands, the czaras, the machines, all of those,
and then of course social media. So the good part
about that is that we've had the collapse of gatekeepers.
It's no longer about what Chanell wants to put on
(10:54):
the runway or Prita or what Vogue says is in
or out. It's now gone to social media and influences
and fast fashion retailers, so it's become style on speed.
And then the fourth reason is fashion is entertainment. Because
of social talk Instagram, we watch fashion almost as a
spectator sport and it's become what's new, what's new? What's new?
(11:16):
And do you relate?
Speaker 2 (11:17):
I don't really relate. It's interesting that you said you
could pick my personal style, because I don't think I've
ever had any style. Like I don't get any joy
from clothes. When I have to dress in the morning,
it's my worst chore because I don't actually see what
I'm wearing. All I see is my body underneath it,
Like that is exactly what I'm dressing for. And I've
even noticed, after thinking about this topic, that even if
(11:40):
I don't actually like what I'm wearing, if I think
I look good in it, I will wear it. Like
if I think I could make myself look as skinny
as possible in it, I will still wear it. And
it was only this year, for the first time ever,
I didn't think about my body. I only thought about
my clothes. And I was at my cousin's wedding and
she had a Hindu Punjabi wedding and it was the
(12:04):
first time I wore traditional Indian dress. I wore a lenger,
which is like a really long to the kind of
like bridgetin skirt, Like it has plastic in it. It's
really big.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
They're stunning.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
And I wore like a little choli which it was
like red blue gold. It had like diamond tes on it.
It was insane. It weighed five kilos. Essentially, do you
have a photo? I have a photo?
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Can you put it on the mameys on Instagram?
Speaker 2 (12:26):
And you wear like a little choli which is like
a crop top and you see a bit of skin.
And I was so scared of that. And it was
the first time when I got the LNGA made where
the stitcher was like, make sure you don't lose any weight,
like this dress will only work if you have a
bit of your timmy hanging out. And it was true.
It was the first time ever I was wearing an
outfit and I didn't think about my body once and
(12:47):
I was showing so much skins.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
I wonder if too, because there was almost like such
a dress code, there was something that you had to wear.
This is my advocacy for a uniform. This is like
there were boundaries of what to wear. And now even
if it's at work, you've got people who wear suits
and you've got people who wear twotus. There's such choice
(13:10):
that I think that a lot of us are paralyzed
because it's like, I don't know if I'm going kind
of formal. I don't know who I want to be today.
What I'm seeing on TikTok is not actually what I'm
seeing in the office. And I found the Vogue point
interesting about how they're all dressing kind of homogeneous, like
they're dressing in a type of uniform. And I was
(13:30):
interviewing someone about AI recently and you know the explosion
of it in the last few years, and he was
saying that in all sci fi movies and in all
predictions about the future, everything starts to look exactly the same,
from ads to brands, to billboards to what people are wearing.
So if you think of any sci fi movie, everyone's
(13:52):
in a uniform, everyone starts to look that exactly right,
that we're all just wearing like the same boiler suits.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Which is my nightmare. Why does that appeal to you
because it means, I guess, because the two of you
don't get joy from clothes.
Speaker 5 (14:08):
Do you get some joy?
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Not enormously? And I think that it's decision fatigue. I
think that to take that decision out of the equation
would be good. There's just the enormous pressure, and I'm
feeling this with every season where I go, I am
not buying something, And this year I've endeavored to buy
only secondhand from op shops and Deepop and all that
(14:30):
kind of thing. I've gone, if I cannot see myself
wearing this item at least three years, I am not
buying it. And I see things all the time that
I go. I think we can all relate to having
made enough mistakes where we go, Okay, I'm gonna buy
those shoes or buy that shirt, and you just go.
It works for literally two weeks, and then what do
I do with it? It's landfill, it's waste, and it
(14:52):
makes me feel sick. It makes me feel like eating
too much, and then you get a tummy ache.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
That was a really great thread on Reddit, on an
Australian fashion subreddit that was by someone who works in
one of these shops, like one of the Mini's shops,
and she just said the amount of stuff they can't
keep up with it, the amount of donations because people
are just recycling their clothes so much faster. And she
also said, you can really see a massive difference between
(15:18):
anything that was made before twenty twenty two and anything after.
She said, the quality even though the cost hasn't changed,
the quality has just gone down so dramatically. People don't
really talk about investment dressing anymore. It used to be
big when we were in magazines, where it's like, buy
one black blazer and buy one really good pair of shoes,
(15:38):
and this is what you need for a capsule wardrobe,
like Staples Staples, and this idea of it's better to
buy one expensive jacket than four cheap jackets. And I
am really torn about this because fashion, to me is
probably the biggest creative joy of my life and the
biggest form of self expression that I have. And my
(15:59):
favorite part of every day is choosing what to wear.
And I'll often try and find ways of getting changed
during the day, either in work or I'll go home
if I'm going with friends after work. Even if I've
just got a dash home to get changed, I'll do
that because that makes me enjoy the experience more. I've
always been like this since I was a little tiny kid.
I used to get in trouble for smuggling different outfits
(16:21):
to preschool, and the preschool rang my parents and said
it's winter and me has brought these things in her
school bag. I was four or three, and she's gone
into the bathrooms and she's gotten changed, and now she's
wearing a summer dress and it's very cold. So I
used to have to have bag inspections before I would
go to preschool, so it's always been in me. But
I also can really see. And I don't mind about
(16:42):
the making mistakes. I don't mind about I love something
today and I won't love it tomorrow. I do feel
the weight of what it does to the environment. It's
good for the economy, but it's not good for my
personal economy.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
The rules about what to donate I thought were really
interesting in that Reddit threat. So she said that one
big thing is that she'll look at an item of
clothing that is otherwise perfect, and often it might be
a vintage like statement piece, and she looks at it
and goes, why would I even donate this? And then
she sees a stain. And she was saying that a
(17:14):
lot of people don't know how to wash their clothes
properly anymore, and maybe it is because a lot of
what we have is cheap and disposable, and also we
know I can just get another one. I can get
one just like that for fifteen dollars. Why wouldn't I
do that? But she said, if you donate something with
the tiniest stain on it, we cannot put it on
the rath because it's not giving dignity to the people
that we're dressing. Like, the whole point is that they
(17:36):
pick up something and they feel good in it at
an affordable price point. And so it did make me
think about how we can be a bit lazy with
some of our and just kind of throw it out again.
She also said, you are never to put shoes in
the same bag as clothes. That's like a big rule
because it can ruin. Yeah, yeah, it can just ruin
the whole bag.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Oh that's interesting. In terms of microtrends, which is pretty
much how I dress, I dress in microtrends. I don't
think that's anything to be proud of. I think it
probably qualifies me as what we used to call a
fashion victim, but now it's seen as this aspirational thing.
And as I was sort of researching this topic, I
was looking at just some of the fashion micro trends
(18:16):
from twenty twenty four and twenty twenty five. They have
included Now, I haven't worn all of these trends, but
I've worn some of them off A Siren, which is
like animal print, pencil skirts and wrap coats, Mafia Wife,
Clean Girl, Ballet Core, Dolecre Fishermen aesthetic, which has been
like nautical stripes and oversized nitwear, Moto Boho, which is
(18:39):
fringed leather jackets and flowy skirts. Everyday sequence big on that.
Hot pants like ultra short shorts with blazers or oversized shirts. No,
not bike shorts. That's a different thing. Like hot pants
is more like you know how I've been wearing those
added ass running shorts. Yeah, they're quite short, and then
I'll wear like a big shirt or a jacket over
(19:02):
the top. Wrong shoe trend. I love that Copenhagen style,
of course I love. And that's not even including specific
items that have come and gone with an absolute intensity,
all of these things going viral, barrel jeens, sambas, the
whole debate around socks, bag charms, shoe jewelry, rugby jumpers,
graphic teas, tracksuit jeans, soccer jerseys, bermuda shorts. That's literally
(19:24):
a description of my wardrobe. But there's a brand strategist
that I follow on TikTok called Eugene Heally, and he
posted this week about how micro trends have actually become
very low status. Here's what he had to say.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
Looking back in the past few years, we can see
that algorithms completely cooked our personal style. It's not just
how exhausting it became to keep up with micro trends,
always feeling like you're behind your clothes, never feeling relevant.
It's that algorithms have a tendency to reward the most
extreme opinions in fashion. What this meant was that micro
trens got further and further away from what people wore
or even wanted to wear. Who exactly looked good in
(19:58):
a bubble skirt. Fashion became a pure simulacrum that only
really existed online. Dressing in micro trends has effectively become
a low status activity because it's basically telling everyone you're
chronically online, not fashion. It's cosplay. And if you or
someone you know personally fell for micro trends, call one
an't undred fashion victim, because you may be entitled to compensation.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
That's me. What do you guys think of? Ever?
Speaker 3 (20:19):
I reckon that it's a really pertinent point that a
lot of us are dressing for the Internet, and we're
not dressing for the context that we're finding ourselves in.
We're dressing for a photo or we're buying things for
a TikTok try on hole. I think the death of
personal style is about an erasure of our instincts. So
(20:41):
if I have a certain sense of what looks good
on me and what makes me feel like me, I
now live in a world where I am served videos
about rules and about like never do that, and this
makes you look old, and this makes you look that.
And there's been a lot written recently on how that
is undermining people's instincts. So they feel like they can't
(21:03):
go to their wardrobe and choose what to wear based
on a feeling. They feel as though they've got to
consult with GPT, that they've got to consult with I
even see people doing it with try on videos where
they go should I wear these shoes, and they go
these these these like try them all on, rather than
just going, well, what do I feel like? It's not
kind of a democracy.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
IE hundred percent agreed, because that's the exact feeling I
had after my cousin's crazy weddings. It was like a
feeling of deep sadness because it's such traditional outfits and
it's not just outfits that I felt looked good. I
also felt like they were specifically made for me and
my body type, and I feel like with micro trends
that's not necessarily the case. And what made me really
(21:43):
sad was that I feel like, now I have to
dress that conforms to what Western society things is acceptable
for me to dress. And it's not just the outfits.
It's like the big jewelry and the dark makeup and
like the coal with your eyes. And I never want
to be perceived in a certain way depending on how
I dress, So that's why I never choose to dress
that way.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Yeah, what do you mean by that?
Speaker 2 (22:06):
I feel like if I were to dress the exact
way I wanted to dressy people would connect a type
of personality to me.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
What personality would that be?
Speaker 4 (22:15):
Like?
Speaker 2 (22:15):
I would say a very like traditional quote unquote Indian personality,
like and I've had this happen to me before, like
timid and quiet, and if I say something, they're like, oh,
I didn't expect that from you. Those kind of things
and I feel like that's just the way people perceive
people who dress outside the norm.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
I wish that women could just do a steep jobs
and go, all right, this is my uniform.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
The women who want to, you know, the women can
do that who want to. There are other women who
really enjoy it. But I do recognize that I'm probably
in the minority. I think for most women, when you
say you've got nothing to wear, it's not about the
clothes that you have, it's that you don't know who
you meant to be on that particular day. Like Jesse,
(23:01):
you this week had to go and do a talk
in front of a group of teenage girls. Yeah, and
that is a head scramble in terms.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Of you look at your wardrobe very oh what did
you wear? I ended up wearing a dress and like
a shirt over the top. But I was going through
my wardrobe and I go, no, no, no, I would
look old in this. I would look old in like
I wanted to look current. And it was just it
took me a really long time to decide what to wear,
like in terms of who I was going to be
that day. I think that that is expended energy that
(23:31):
I just I don't want to use.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Out louders in a moment we share something to binge
watch and read.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
We've had so much fun answering your dilemmas out Louders
with thanks to our good friends at Yui, but we
want more. Send us your moment that makes you question
what do you do next? Don't worry if it's super embarrassing,
we are happy to keep you anonymous. Whether it's a
crisis at work, you've found yourself in some dire group
chat drama, or maybe something especially cringe worthy. We promise
(24:05):
we don't judge here. Email us at out loud at
mamameat dot com you or jump in the out Louders
Facebook group and share your dilemma.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Vibes, ideas, atmosphere, something casual, something fun.
Speaker 6 (24:19):
This is my best recommendation.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
It's Friday, and we wanted to help set up your
weekend with our very best recommendations. Mia kick us off.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
She's not here so we can talk about her book
this week. I really I didn't hate it. Imagine if
I'd hate it would be so awkward. Hollywayne Wright has
a new book out. It's called He Would Never, and
it is by far her best book. It's a whole
other level, as Jesse said to me. We both read
(24:50):
it actually over Christmas. Jesse read it first, and you know,
it can be always awkward when your friends write a book.
Might not like it. But Jesse was like, it's amazing.
She's gone to a whole other level. There's so many characters,
but I just want to spend time with all of them.
It tells broadly about a group of people who go
on a regular and your camping trip together. They all
(25:11):
met in mother's group when their first children were just
newly born and at ladas will recognize this as something
that Holly Wainwright does. In fact, it's drawn from her
own life. But what happens on this camping trip in
this particular year, and it jumps through time. Some of
the daughters, they're at that age going from girls to
(25:31):
young women, so that teenage girl stage, and one of
the fathers does or doesn't do something very inappropriate and
it blows up everything. Jesse, what did you think?
Speaker 3 (25:43):
Yeah, And it's about working out the truth of it,
but also navigating that very different relationship between men or
fathers and girls that begin to look like women. And
it's so so well done. I reckon I was five
pages in when I totally forgot. I was reading Holly's work,
(26:04):
which imed into I was transfixed by the story. I
don't think i'd ever read a book about this topic
before that kind of grappled with these issues because I
think that a lot of women will know the feeling
of when they turned up to people that they saw
every year and suddenly the looks were different and the
(26:25):
comments were different, or in fact, maybe there were some
men who took a big step back and suddenly it
was like you couldn't engage because there was this new
found screen up between you.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Because it's interesting because among the parents, the children of
your friends, the friend group, or you also think you
stay the same age even though you get older, but
the children changed dramatically. Yeah, And you know, knowing someone
at five or six or three and then knowing them
at sixteen is very different, and it can be a
(26:57):
difficult thing to navigate with your own children, but also
with other people's children. So if you're coming to the
Outloud live shows, there will be signed copies. Otherwise you
can order wherever you get your books.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
And it's just so plotty.
Speaker 4 (27:09):
You are.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
I have so many friends saying to me, I'm in
a reading rite. Just tell me what to read. Yeah,
this is not something that you're going to start reading
it and you can't keep reading it. I promise you.
This is just it is so engrassing. He would never
by Hollyway run.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
And at the very end of this episode, actually we've
got a little treat from Holly for out louders. She's
going to read the first chapter of the book. So
don't turn off your ears.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
M what is your recommendation?
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Okay, I've been talking about this movie for the past
two weeks. I've watched it twice already. It's the biggest
movie out right now. It's called Sinners.
Speaker 6 (27:46):
I'm in all over this world. I've seen me in
loz ain't even always password. Leave you brother, be careful,
are we what all the things that I've seen, I
(28:15):
ain't never seen no demons, long ghosts.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
Teel now at the movies.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
At the movies, Adam, watch this because I think I
never will. But everyone's talking about it.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Who's in it?
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Okay? So it's directed by Ryan Kugler. He is a
fresh director, but he's done Creed, Black Panthers, pretty much
every movie that Michael b Jordan's done. Michael Jordan's in it,
but it's better than Michael Jordan because he plays two characters.
He plays twins.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
Okay, so is it horror?
Speaker 2 (28:53):
It's horror adventure some music. It's very original. It made
sixty million in an opening weekend, which is amazing for
an original film that hasn't borrowed another IP. It was
also the Easter weekend and the Pope died next day,
so a lot of people didn't want to watch a
movie called Sinners. So the fact that in May that
(29:14):
much money was insane.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
I also read that he has upended the whole studio
system because in this deal that he did for this movie,
he essentially owns the IP. It reverts to him I
think twenty twenty five years. Yeah, and the only other
person in Hollywood he manages to get a deal like
that is Quentin tarrantor Yes.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
And there was a lot of controversy around that, with
a lot of headlines like Variety read a headline saying
this movie made so much money in the first weekend,
but can it keep up to the point where Ben
Stiller tweeted that and saying, how is this headline warranted?
And now we have like Kevin Bacon, Pedro Pascal all
tweeting and posting on Instagram.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
About Cruise Puss Thru. So why is it so good?
Speaker 2 (29:52):
It is so original, Like I haven't seen anything like this.
It's about so Michael B. Jordan plays two twins, Smoke
and Stack. It's set in the nineteen thirties in America,
and both of these twins are these big Chicago mafia
guys and they come back to their hometown to start
up a new part rub and then something woo woo happens.
It goes a bit scary. Harley steinfeels in it, and
(30:15):
it's just like classic horror. And I'm not a horror
person because I get quite scared in horror. There's no
cheap jump scares. It's very like creepy, like old school horror,
where you just kind of everything that happens you kind
of expect. But it is so.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Well dune like it does thic violence.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
It does get a bit graphic towards the end, but
not like over the top.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
I also heard there's a lot of women receiving oral sex,
is that correct? Correct?
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Which I think there should be more of. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
Oh, I like seeing scary things, and I think you
have to see them at the movies. I think that's
the rule. You get the full experience in the cinema.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
It is really and I want to watch it again
third time.
Speaker 3 (30:51):
My recommendation is season seven of Black Mirror on Netflix.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Is anyone else watching it?
Speaker 5 (30:57):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (30:57):
I've watched one episode, Yeah, which one? And I don't
love Black Mirror. I get a bit creeped by.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
It, so I was off it after maybe the last
few seasons. There were a few duds where I just went, no,
but your best when it is like an essay on
technology and ethics and you take me in a really
unexpected direction. And I feel like this season has really
gone back to its roots.
Speaker 6 (31:25):
We'd like to welcome you back. Ready, Yeah, three two
and action.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
They call it mind expanding, the alter your neural structure.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
The mind is a computer. Suddenly, they're not just more receptive,
you become a receiver. They're like little mini movies.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
They are they are. So I would say if you're
sort of like, oh, I don't know about watching this,
just watch the first episode and see what you think.
That gives you tonally a vibe of what it's like.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
It has I watched one with Emma Corn in it,
which was an that was really beautiful about this are
you kind of even explain what it's about. But it
has the most amazing stars in it. It's like very
prestio just to be in it. And it's not a
lot of work for them to do. It's only a
couple of weeks shooting.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
Well. This first episode has Rashida Jones and Chris O'Dowd
in it, and it is about a woman. She plays
a teacher who has a brain humor that would claim
her life right, but there is a new technology they
can basically put something in her head save her life.
(32:42):
But it's a subscription model. It is so clever. It
provides commentary on sort of the intersection between capitalism and
healthcare and how much that especially in the US, and
the never ending treadmill of tech subscriptions because every time
you feel like you've got the right subscription, you upgrade,
and then you have to upgrade, then you have to upgrade.
It's just so so clever. So that is on Netflix,
(33:03):
Black Mirror. Watch the first episode and if you like that,
watch all the rest. It's brilliant. After the break, one
of Us is trialing the trad wife life and we've
got some thoughts out loud as.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
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 (33:38):
It is time for best and Worst. This is the
part of the show where we share a little bit
more from our personal lives. M what was your worst.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Of this week?
Speaker 2 (33:46):
My worst this week? So, my grandfather passed away a
few weeks ago. I have talked about it on a
subs episode before, but I haven't been dealing with it well.
And I thought I'd be able to deal with it
better being a grandchild, because every time one of my
friends loses a grandparent, it feels so separate and it
feels like, oh, I have to travel to this place
(34:07):
because it's my grandparents funeral, and I'm.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
Like, who I didn't know very well?
Speaker 4 (34:11):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (34:11):
And I was and I still am to my nana.
I was so close to my grandfather. He like raised
me for about eighty years. Because both my parents, and
my nana was working and he retired when he moved
to Australia, so it was just me and him.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
And he dropped me to school and picked me up
from school till I was seventeen years old, like every
single day. We lived with them for a really long
time in my childhood. He was just like a person
who felt like as close to my parents as I
like another parent. And it's something that I feel like
after two weeks, I should be in a better spot
(34:45):
after two weeks, but I'm not.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Why would you.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
I'm just so sad all the time. Of course you're sad.
I really miss him. Oh I'm so sorry, and I
wish he was here so you could like see me
do these live shows because he was so excited, but
he's just not And I'm like, there's so many things
that are happening in my life and I'm still very
much like, Oh, I can't I to tell Papa about this,
(35:10):
And then I remember it feels like it's been so
long but also not enough time. And I think it's
the first experience death experience I've experienced as an adult,
and I think there's something so bittersweet about losing a
grandparent because you're in this part like I've been with
him for twenty nine years, but he lived for ninety
(35:31):
four years and I was such a small part of
his huge life, but he was my entire life. And
I think there's something in it's so sad that I'm
an adult so I get to experience all these feelings
that I didn't experience as a kid when I lost
my paternal grandparents. But at the same time, it feels heavier,
like it feels like there's this whole part that I'm
(35:52):
going to live the rest of my life, like I
could have children or get married that he will have experience,
and it's just really sad, Like it's so sad.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
It's yeah, I'm so sorry. And I think that the
idea that grief is something that you move through and
you're going to see the other side of I don't think.
I think that's a myth. I think that you just
live with it. And I lost my nana when I
was about fifteen, and she lived with us and was
like another mother figure, and I still think it all
the time. I think I look at Luna and I go, oh,
(36:24):
Nan would have loved Luna, And I think that it
gets replaced with a type of joy. And I think
that there is something where you go, what a remarkable life.
If any of us could live that long and have
that richer life and have, you know, that strong relationship
with our grandchildren, then we did something right. But that
doesn't mean that it's not horrible waking up and just
(36:45):
knowing that they're not they're not there.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
There's a grandfather's shaped hole in your heart that will
be there, and that's I guess a tribute to the
strength of the relationship, because you know, if you have
a grandparent that you're not close to and they pass away,
it doesn't affect you as much. But the amount of
love is equal to the amount of grief. Honey, sending
(37:11):
you love.
Speaker 3 (37:12):
Are there any silver linings?
Speaker 2 (37:15):
I've got some best I've got you. So after he
passed away, like I think it was a week after,
my parents had a holiday in Europe and my sister,
so they're in Europe right now, like living their best lives.
And I think I'm very close to my extended family
because my parents, their generation and their parents all move
together in like this big community. So I'm really close
(37:37):
with like my extended cousins and stuff like that, and
they all know that I'm like the only kid, quote
unquote kid in my generation who lives alone in a
single I have something on every single day with a
different family member. Like in aunt like hey, I'm getting
lunch today, can you please join me? I'm like yeah, sure.
And another family's like, hey, we do pizza every Friday night,
(37:58):
can you come? And they're like, hey, we know your
parents are here, so if you want to move in
just for like this little bit, like I'm a child,
and it's so fun and so good. And they knew
I was close to Papa, so they're probably like, oh,
she's probably not great not And it's just been so
nice to know that there's so many people there, and
I am so privileged to have my entire family in
(38:21):
this country.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
I have a lot of cousins.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
I think that's like forty of us.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
There's something so special about cousins.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
And we're all the same age as well. It's just fun.
It's a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
Maya, what's your worst?
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Well, my worst sounds really shallow because I just got
food poisoning. That's it didn't last very long, but I
felt sick. I'm very careful particularly when we're traveling, because
I remember one live show, Jesse, you had food poisoning
for in Melbourne. I had a soldier through that and
it was bad. And you are very loosey goosey with
what you eat on the road.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
A little bit of cooked chicken that looks she's particularly
cheap to play with firelight to take those.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
Whereas I'm a vegetarian anyway, and I'm extra careful. I
usually eat seafood, but I don't ever when i'm traveling anyway.
I was just at home, it was just before we
left for Perth, and I have these spinach fetter fillow pastries.
I have them for dinner. I reckon four nights a week.
I have them for dinner with peas and corn. It's
might just fall back. When I bought them, the woman said, oh,
(39:20):
make sure you eat them in the next twenty four
to forty eight hours the expiry date. I'm not sure
if it was that or I made a cake on
Friday and there was quite a lot of butter in
the icing, and then I didn't put it in the
fridge because I didn't like fridge cake. And then it
was three days later, and I wonder if the butter
from the icing might have done.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
I made that cake and I ate that icing, and
I didn't get sick.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
And it hasn't been in the fridge either.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
Nah, nah, don't put it the fridge. Don't like fridge cake.
Speaker 4 (39:45):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
It was just bad. It was bad anyway. It was
not the worst. It wasn't as bad as jesse In
when we were.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
Away, but it was just are you cleared out now?
Speaker 4 (39:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (39:52):
I'm good, Okay, cool, good to go. My best was
being on the road, being back traveling, being touring. We've
got a much bigger touring party than we did last year.
We've got em, We've got our whole crew, a lot
of them are new to the show. We've got some
special guests which you may or may not have heard of,
and it's just these are all people who are my friends,
(40:13):
and getting to be on tour with your mates is
just the funnest thing. And I've just loved it because
it's not just the actual being on stage, which is
so fun, but it's the.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
It's a school camp of it all.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
It's the flights, it's the airports, it's the wandering off
and getting lost and having someone you know how.
Speaker 3 (40:29):
School camp is fun for the kids, but it's not
fun for the teachers. I think that's a bit like us,
and I think were the can for us, and it's
not fun for the eleven teachers we've hired to get us.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
It's true, it's actually worked for them, and when we
keep wandering off.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
We're doing them wine. They're fine, but it's been great.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
I've just I've loved it, and we've got three more
shows to go. It's just fun.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
I am going to start with my best because it
kind of proceeds my worst. So my best was Sunday,
Rainy Sunday, and I'm like, I'm gonna cook a bunch
for lunacause I was going to be away a few
nights this week. So then the gelt kicks in. I go,
I'm just going to be a chef and then I
won't feel any gelt and I can't cook. But now
I've got my staples for her, So I make her
these peanut butter like oat, very very healthy, very good money.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
It brings them in.
Speaker 3 (41:12):
Yeah, they're actually great. And then I make her a
spinach pancakes which she eats right, so just like health creeen,
And I was like I was making this. She's reading
a book on her own. I was playing Bob Dylan
because I watched a complete Unknown the movie. And so
I'm at Bop Dealer now and it's raining, and I'm
just like, I'm a trad wife. I just I'm leaving
the trad wife life like this is fabulous. I thought,
(41:35):
you know, we should be introducing new foods, and now
that I'm a trid wife, I might do some experimenting.
So I've got my Femi mix out and I do
some gurgling and I decide to make chive and sweet
corn pikeleots.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
Right, Wow, sounds complicated.
Speaker 3 (41:48):
Yeah, and you know the recipe is always just like
even a fuzzy toddler bel eat this one.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
Well, funny enough, I had introduced her to pikelots on
the weekend as well, except they had neither chibe nor
sweet corn in them. They were just highly processed from
the supermarket, and she liked them a lot.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
Pikelets are good because you don't want to overcommit with
the pancakes.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
No, no, no, it's just a little little pike and the
color looks like a normal pikelot. Yeah, it looks like
it's got anything so you can trick her. Yeah, So
I do the big mix. Takes a long time to
do a whole anyway, and then I do the whole
thing and she's just like mummy, and I'm like, Luna,
how great is life? How great is anyway? My worst?
So I make all of my pikeelots and they're just
sitting there and she's like, Mummy, I'm hungry, and I'm like, well,
(42:29):
here's something I preparred earlier. Here are my tibe and
sweet corn piplot served with cottage cheese.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
What every toddler love?
Speaker 3 (42:36):
Yes, gibes? And I give them to her cottage cheese.
Speaker 1 (42:39):
Do you know there's a global shortage of cottage? Everybody
is Google. Everyone's chugging the protein, yes, all the teenage
boys and the middle aged ladies.
Speaker 3 (42:48):
I give her her pipot with my smuggled all look ballerina. Yeah, yeah,
yeah exactly, and I'm like, come on, you're like this,
and she takes a bite, thinking it's your piplot and
I'm like I've won, and I turn my back and
then I just hear yeah, and I turn around and
someone at this table maya taught her when I had
(43:09):
food poisoning may have taught her to make a vomiting
sound because she was going mummy.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
And I'm mummy Blair. So now often whenever she's with me,
she'll remember Jesse and she would just go mummy blah.
Mummy's not always vomiting. When she's not, she's just dagging
all over.
Speaker 3 (43:24):
So she goes yucky, mum, h sick, blurt blur, and
she's doing a vomiting sound. She then throws the piplet
on the floor and goes in the bin in the bin,
and I was like, oh, my goodness, this sounds. This
does not happen on Ballerina, for no, they eat all
of the food. This is the reality of treadwife life.
(43:45):
Is your chive and your sweet corn ends up on
the floor. If she had vomited, I'd be like, oh,
that's awful. It was the fake of it.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
It was like, this is so bad.
Speaker 3 (43:54):
I don't think you're understanding. Mum, yuck, don't want it
in the bin, blah blah blah. Anyway, so I gave
them to cousin Matilda, and no more chive pancakes for Lena.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
Oh dear out loud, as promised. We've got a little
treat for you to end today's show and get you
into the weekend. Holly is going to read you exclusively
a small excerpt from the start of her brand new book,
He Would.
Speaker 5 (44:17):
Never, He Would Never, by Holly Wainwright, Prologue, Sunday Night,
eleven fifty five pm, Green River Beach. This would be
a fitting place for Lockey Short to die on the
edge of a splendid beach he hated with a passion.
If you believed in the afterlife, which Liz definitely did,
(44:39):
or ghosts, which Danny most definitely did not, then Lachlan
Short's troubled soul would be bound to walk this stretch
of river for eternity, bitching about the absence of decent
surf or a proper coffee, and picking tiny shards of
crushed lilac river shells out of the souls of his
calloused feet. Some would think it was entirely appropriate for
(45:00):
him to end his days in the place that most
made him doubt his marriage, his masculinity, his very life choices.
A campground, a hell for man who liked the finer things,
Beds that weren't in close proximity to the ground, food
that couldn't be cooked on a wandering stover in the
coals of a bandifying fire. Drinks not served with an
(45:20):
ice scooped from a sandy eski by a sunscreen smeared hand. No,
if Locky Short was to be doomed to camp for eternity,
he would find all way back to the light, because
actually he wasn't dead yet. He was lying on the
rainforest floor, somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness, somewhere between the
(45:40):
campground and the sand. And someone would find him soon, surely,
Liss or Danny or Aidan or Tea. They must all
be frantic beside themselves. The strip of wilderness wasn't wide,
but it was dense and tricky, as all the Green
River camp regulars knew. At night, you could step away
to pee between the trees, and a thick, dark green
(46:02):
curtain would close in, leaving you banging into branches and
tripping over roots, embarrassed at your rising panic. The forest
vibrated with the low thrum of life, always hungry, inching forward,
maneuvering to reclaim its stolen space, marching insects and scuttling rodents,
advancing spiders and snakes and slugs and snails nibbling, sucking, sliming, gnawing,
(46:26):
the strangler vines always reaching. They'd have a thick, nobbled
tendril around Lockie's ankle. By morning. It was strange that
no one was calling his name. He was still breathing,
but not so you'd notice shallow Now. His loud Hawaiian
print shirt might just save him from this terrible misunderstanding.
Its hibiscus, bright yellow and pink, was still faintly glowing
(46:47):
even as the campground's lanterns and fairy lights flicked off
for the night, stealing the last glimmers of light. The
shirt had been ironic, which was now, of course, extremely ironic.
At the beach, only a few steps away, the river
was rising, lapping closer to the tree line. With every
sweep in, every pull out, the crabs, sandball scrawled masterpieces
(47:08):
were being washed away. The fish heading in from deeper
water to swirl around the anchors of the dormant boats.
Try to breathe with the waves. It won't be long,
can't be long. A crunch, finally, a footfall getting closer.
No talking, no chatter, no urgency. A phone light held low,
sweeping left to right, right to left, below the eye
(47:29):
line of campers on the other side of the tree curtain,
invisible to anyone hurrying to the toilet block in their
pajamas and thongs. Who was coming? His wife, his children.
They'd been on the makeshift dance floor with him only
hours before, bumping, jumping, shrugging to the beat, pounding through
the trees out to the sandy flats of the beach,
and tipping into the river. The girls had jiggled through
(47:51):
clouds of embarrassment, eyes averted, aware of the phones pointed
their way by the cooler kids. But his daughters would
still dance with him if he asked. They weren't too
old for that. Nor was Lyrah Martin that little idiot.
It was because of her, surely that Lockie was lying
in the roots of this giant fig on the forest
floor and not sinking into the double flocked inflatable mattress
(48:11):
inside his giant tent, beer snoring into Liss's tolerant ear
Lyra could have said something changed all of this. The
crunching closer, stopping lucky, there you are. Someone was bending
to him, feet in thongs by his flickering eyes, toenails
pink and shimmery in the phone's blonde light. Thank god,
(48:32):
we wondered how far you'd got a voice as familiar
as his own. Such a terrible mess. Yes, this would
be a fitting place for Lockey Short to die. If
you didn't like him, if you didn't trust him, if
you thought he'd spent a life tainting beautiful things with
his touch, if you thought he'd taken something from you,
knocked you off course, tormented a person you loved, if
(48:54):
you believed the lies spread about him tonight, last night,
all weekend.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
Do you need help?
Speaker 5 (48:59):
Such a question to a body in the woods, asked
in such a sweet tone, there could be no answer
from swollen, numb lips.
Speaker 3 (49:08):
So yes.
Speaker 5 (49:08):
There might be people who wished to damn Lucky to
eternal rest below this fig but they would be wrong.
That wasn't who he was, not what he deserved. And
there were people here, people only steps away from this
mossy fernie dump who knew that knew that he loved
his wife, loved his children, knew that every decision he
made was in the service of protecting them, even the
(49:29):
wrong ones. Hot breath mingled with the hot breeze so
close it would ruffle the hair above his ringing ear.
Good night, Lucky, the crunching retreating, this time an impossible
act from a person so beloved. A roar was building
inside him, a rush of furious indignation at having been
so misunderstood, a heart fluttering terror at the idea his
(49:52):
children might grow up thinking he was someone he was not.
All of it charging at him now, the ritual of
the camping trip. A friendship grown too close, a teenage
girl too sure of herself, a marriage almost done, a
secret unwrapped and scattered around the campsite like bait. And
now the worst of it, humiliation, betrayal, abandonment. Liz, Danny
(50:17):
Lucky Short would never stand for this. If Onny he
could stand.
Speaker 3 (50:22):
That's all we have time for today. A big thank
you for all of you, the out louders for listening
to today's show. We will be back in your ears
next week. Em and Maya do you want to read
the credits?
Speaker 1 (50:33):
I do. Thank you to our team of school teachers
who need big sticks when we're on the road on
our Girls Trip Group Executive producer Roof de Vine, executive
producer Emmeline Gazillis.
Speaker 2 (50:44):
And our audio producer Leah Porgees, our video producer Josh Green,
and our junior content producers Coco and Tessa.
Speaker 1 (50:52):
Bye bye bye.
Speaker 3 (50:54):
Shout out to any Mum and MEA subscribers listening. If
you love the show and you want to support us,
subscribing to mom and Mia is the very best way
to do so. There's a link in the episode description.
Speaker 4 (51:09):
The ten cook buck Bank took back book
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