March 18, 2020 • 58 mins
Chelsea Ursin of the podcast Dear Young Rocker opens up about her experiences with being a female musician, anxiety, body image issues, anger, and having compassion for our younger selves.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Adding and Samantha and welcome to stuff.
I've never told you a protection of I heart radio
and today we're thrilled to be joined by Chelsea of
the podcast Dear Young Rocker to talk about a lot
(00:26):
of things, but like the impact moms have on our
self esteem and women and girls in the music industry,
because podcaster is just one of many hats you have
worn and currently do wear. So hey, Chelsea, thank you
so much for joining us. Hey, thanks so much for
having me. Of course, could you introduce yourself to our listeners?
(00:48):
Certainly so. I am Chelsea Arson. I'm from Boston, and
I'm an independent podcast producer and my show is called
called Dear Young Rocker, and Dear Young Rocker is an
audio memoir of myself ages like eleven through eventually early twenties,
(01:11):
about struggling with the things that many adolescents struggle with,
body image, anxiety, social anxiety, you know, depression, a lot
of things we all go through, and then how I
found the outlet of music to help me through all
of those struggles and how I discovered that on my
(01:32):
own and then sort of processed a lot of feelings
through playing music, and then playing in bands. I was
a bass player, and so I kind of recreate how
I found the base and started playing it, and I
recreate the sounds of my first high school bands. Um.
And then I also give advice to younger people who
might be going through the same things I went through
(01:55):
at that age, and I try to really level with
teenagers as opposed to sort of talk down to them
and say, oh, you know, stop being so sensitive. You
know you're going to outgrow this phase, etcetera, etcetera that
I was told when I was young. So I kind
of say, your feelings are valid, and let's talk about
what's going on with you and it's okay to be
(02:15):
you when you're not alone and what you feel. Yeah.
I when I listened to it, I immediately connected with
a lot of it, and I could, oh, yeah, I
remember being I remember I also started to abandoned high school.
But it didn't do anywhere like yeah, I was very cool, great, um.
(02:39):
But yeah, I really appreciated how when you're writing these
notes or letters to your younger self, it's from a
place of understanding this is why you were feeling this way.
And people with anxiety in particular, like no one was
telling you that, And so I think that's a great
approach because is we do often talk down to younger
(03:04):
folks and we dismissed. I feel like we forget that
when we were that too, and it wouldn't have helped
for someone to be like, oh yeah, get over it.
Yeah right. And I was thinking the same thing when
I was listening. I was like, man, this is so familiar.
I remember having those thoughts in my head about this
is if I could just do this, or if this
would change, and why won't this happened? And this is
the worst or this is the best, all of those situations.
(03:26):
I'm like, oh my god. It was like yesterday I
had those anxieties trying to be a teenager, and when
you feel very different from the crowd around you, you're
like what what right? What do what? Do? Tell? Right?
It was very nostalgic. Also, you were a part of
controversial conversation last night because we were talking about the
(03:46):
music that you were referencing and about whether or not
we were like that's cool, that's not cool? What did
had a whole moment of about you know, whether it
was about Green Day, Lincoln Park came in, like so
that was a whole conversation of like, oh my god,
I forgot about all these things, loving these things and
feeling so a part of the lyrics or the music,
(04:09):
and feeling that angst and how genuine that felt in
the moment, and how oftentimes we do ignore that. And
I know I've worked with teenagers who at risk teenagers
and often times how dismissed they are, but also how
connected they were to they are to music, into words
and writing, and how it feels so personal for them.
So it's a beautiful, beautiful podcast, Thank you very much. Yeah,
(04:33):
the words of teenage girls in particular are usually seen
as silly. You know, It's like, oh, right in your
diary and then burn it when you're twenty because it's
too embarrassing, which is what I did unfortunately. So I
tend to go back and like kind of recreate memories
through conversations with friends and whoever. But at this point,
(04:54):
as more of a grown up, I guess, um, I
feel like those those feelings were valid important because that
was the beginning of who I am. Like I've leveled out,
but those feelings still happen sometimes. I just know how
to deal with them, and I don't want to pretend
that I'm a completely different person than that that teenage me,
(05:14):
even though it feels like I am you know, yeah, yeah,
you can see the inklings, but you would become I
think it's just more accepting that this is okay, more
so than changing, Like right, Like I've accepted this is
where I am, and these are the coping skills and
learned growing up. Right, I'm like, okay, panic attack, here
you are again. Let's hang out for a minute in
the bathroom and then like instead of like, oh no,
(05:35):
my life's going to end because I'm panicking right right,
and kind of going off of that. Something we've talked
a lot about on this podcast and even recently in
talks that we've given UM and its recurring theme in
your podcast is anger, and particularly anger when it comes
to women and girls. UM and I, for one, have
(05:57):
been real honest with people on this show. I never
learned to express it. I struggle being angry. I go
from zero to oh my god, terrifying angry. And because
of that, like I've often joked, even though I think
it's true, instead of expressing anger, I would allow like
something hurtful to happen. UM, so can you talk about
(06:17):
your experience with anger and finding this acceptable outlet to
spress it. So, yeah, from a very young age, I
have very early memories of feeling like I guess rage,
just uncontrollable feelings like I just wanted to punch all
the boys on the playground or whatever it was, or
(06:38):
yell at the teacher who corrected me, or and I
no one told me this, but I had absorbed the
message that it's not okay for a girl to feel
that way. That if I were a boy, I could
go punch someone and they'd be like boys being boys,
just playing on the playground. But I knew that if
I did that, I would be what I'd hold myself was.
(07:00):
I would be crazy, and so I couldn't let anyone
see that side of me, and so I kept it in,
which I think a lot of nonsense. Males do we
keep our anger in because we don't want to hurt
other people, and so we hurt ourselves, And so I
hurt myself over and over keeping that in, and I
was never presented. I remember I asked my parents if
(07:21):
I could play football because I felt like I needed
to get this out. I intuitively knew that I didn't
like sports. I just felt like I had to release this,
and they were like, no, you're gonna get hurt. You
can't play football. We don't want you to have a
head injury and whatever else, or as my dad said,
we don't want you to hurt your little boobies. And
so yeah, I kept it in for years, and then
(07:43):
of my own volition, I started playing music and listening
to heavier, like alternative rock bands, and when I was
listening to those songs, that angry feeling was channeled into something,
into those heavy chords and those that headbang I do
along to it, and during that time, that uncomfortable anger,
(08:04):
like while I was listening to a song or playing along,
it didn't bother me anymore. Like physically, I mean, anger
and anxiety is so physical and can like just make you,
you know, nauseous and headache, have a migraine, whatever, And
I didn't know that's what was happening. I had terrible
heartburn and I didn't even know that's what it was,
and it was from anxiety. But when I was listening
(08:25):
to music, I didn't feel that anger and I didn't
feel that anxiety, and I couldn't express that to anyone.
I just knew how I felt. And I think still
now it's any girl or woman that feels angry, it's
always going to check themselves and want to put it
on themselves first. So then when it does finally surface
because you just can't fit anymore in that bottle and
(08:46):
the cat pops off, it's like where did that come from?
And you just want to say, I've been there building forever,
but you might not even be able to verbalize that
even to yourself. So and at this point, like I said,
I um, I see those feelings. I still have those
angry feelings, but I'm like, okay, here we are. I'm
going to make sure I go to a kickboxing class later,
(09:08):
or I'm gonna play with my band or something, scream
at a pillow, whatever it is. And yeah, and I
just wish it was. I still don't think it's something
that's talked about. It's like, again, normal for boys to
have hormones and be testy um, but everyone has hormones.
Everyone goes through adolescents and their bodies change and they
(09:28):
can't keep up with it and their brains can't keep
up with those changes. So why do we act like
there's just one specific gender that that happens to. Yeah,
speaking of bodies changing, you dig into your body issues
a lot as well as do we um, and you
talk about how and puberty hit for you. It kind
of hit your bottom half and your top and you
(09:50):
felt like two different people. Um. And then this push
from your mom to wear nineties jeans and your preference
for boys close jenkos, which I also totally was like, yep,
I remember that. I remember this and wishing strongly that
you weren't a girl, um, and really despising girliness. And
(10:12):
you later came to understand what you really despised was
like these expectations, right, yes, but can you talk a
little bit about that? Sure? Yeah, I um, I mean
I was a shy, anxious kid. I didn't want to
be looked at period, and so anything about me that
made me stand out I hated. And so yeah, puberty
(10:34):
hit and I guess I'm estrogen dominant or whatever. So
I got hips at a young age and this was
the early two thousand's. No, butts weren't cool. They were
like the on that was like your old aunt or something.
You know. That kind of body shape was not hot
at least not where I grew up. Um, it was like,
(10:54):
you go to limited two and you get pants that
are like one inch above not even like half an
inch above your butt crack. And I couldn't fit into
those things, and I'd wear them to school and get
made fun of. And I didn't want anyone to see
my body, so I just wore the baggiest clothes I
could find and justified it to myself, being like, oh,
(11:15):
I'm just not feminine, um, even though I didn't really
know what any of that meant yet. Um, And now
I know, I just don't like the baggage that being
perceived as female comes with. And I also can separate
that out from my own internal qualities and physical qualities,
(11:37):
and you know, they're not necessarily related to gender in
any way. They're just different qualities about me, and it's
a big mixed bag. But at the time, I just
thought I'd do anything to not be a girl because
I just hate how it feels. And that seems like
that's an ongoing conversation about how limiting it can be
when you have these defined, biased and buying airy gender roles,
(12:01):
and what kind of problems it creates for young girls,
shoot for adults, even as we're trying to figure out
what we're supposed to be, how we're supposed to be perceived,
even when we're talking about anger and talking about political candice,
and if they not necessarily speak in a tone or loudly,
but just being actually making the statement, being assured in
themselves and having an appropriate argument is angry. And it's
(12:23):
kind of this negative tone of oh, these are not
likable women, and to be likable you have to be
agreeable in all things and meet these expectations, you know,
And I think, like, I love where you're looking at.
I love the fact that you do talk about how
you just wanted to cover up everything, because we know
that that's one of the big conversations with Billie Eilish
(12:44):
and and her whole point of not necessarily being a
fashion statement, but but just I don't need you to
know what I look like. I don't need to show
that off. And then also I know recently she just
at a show actually took everything off of was like,
you can't define me to be one way or the other.
I want to have the auction to be however, I
want to define myself. So did you think when you
(13:05):
see things like that? Happening. Do you think that is
they step forward rather than like he finally we're actually
on the same page. And yes, these are the same
issues that kids are going through today that I went
through twenty years ago. Yo, I think myself at this point, Yeah,
I mean, I feel like there is this you know,
feminist message out there. You can dress however you want.
(13:28):
You're in control of how much or how little you
reveal based on how comfortable you are and what you
want to say, and no one should criticize you for,
you know, dressing in a bikini or dressing in a big,
baggy sweatsuit. But if you dressed in bikini, you're still
going to get the same criticism you've got twenty years ago.
You're still going to be on the tabloids with whatever
(13:50):
yucky words. And being in the public eye that much
at such a young age. I cannot imagine. I mean,
I was just in my little middle school of fifty
kids or whatever and was terrified of, like wearing anything
slightly form fitting. So I can't imagine what it's like
for Billie eilish Um. And I respect that she's like, okay, yeah,
(14:10):
I think it was. She was waiting to turn eighteen
to do that. I think I remember according to the media,
which who knows, she might have offhand just said something,
but I remember some quote was circulating like when I
turned eighteen, I'm gonna, you know, express the right to
show off my body if I feel like it. And
I think that's a good message. But it's like I said,
(14:33):
even if kids feel empowered from that, they're still going
to get that feedback in their social circles or whatever.
Oh look how Sally's dressing today. She must be trying
to do or be whatever, you know, be part of
the popular girls or something, you know, like she's trying
(14:54):
to impress someone or so especially now with social media,
which is a megaphone too look at me, criticize me,
look at me. It's so scary. Yeah. Absolutely, um, And
it's hard to you can't take out so many other threads,
(15:14):
like it's great to say, yeah, sure, where what you
want to exercise? You're right, but there's yeah, there's just
so much other things and messages we've already internalized that
maybe we don't realize we did, but we did. Um.
And perhaps one of the for a lot of girls,
(15:35):
those messages come from our mom's yeah. And so when
we were talking about what what should we discuss in
this episode, you suggested that the role of moms and
self esteem for girls and women. Yes, um and I
I thought that was a great topic because we've all
we've gone from it the other way, how we always
(15:57):
shame moms. But yeah, there's this other side. Um and
I found some surveys about this of women who said, yes,
I think about my body and my body image every day.
Forty six of those of those women said and it's
because I see my mom doing it. So this is
(16:19):
a we're seeing what are the women in our lives
are in this case moms are doing, and we're internalizing that.
And for me, um, my mom's really really great. But
she was a super thin woman who was always telling
me like, oh, I've got to lose weight or I
can only eat this because of this. And I definitely
took that in and I that became a thing of oh,
(16:41):
I need to be skinny. So how about for I
know you talked about a little bit in the show,
but if you could expand upon it here, certainly. Yeah.
So another thing I do is I volunteer at the
girls Rock camps. UM usually every summer, I do a
week and it's it's a camp where a group of
(17:04):
girls ages eight to sixteen. They get formed into little bands,
they write a song together, and they perform on stage.
But it's more about self esteem than anything. It doesn't
matter if they get up there and just go doo
doo doo, as long as they feel like like they're
owning it and they're happy with taking up space and
they're like ready to be up there. And so we
(17:25):
do a lot of workshops, self esteem kind of stuff,
and there's always a media workshop, and even these eight
year old girls start realizing, Oh, the reason like I
think this kind of outfit is cool or this thing
is more girly or boyish is because of what I
see on TV. And it's like very early feminist training
and it's great, but I never hear the role of
(17:49):
moms get talked about. And then my personal life, I
think my mom was way more influential and how I
think about my body and how I dress and everything
more than any media. And maybe the media influenced my
mom to feel that way about herself and she passed
it on to me. But even more so I think
her mom, you know, probably did that kind of thing
(18:10):
where her mom stood in the mirror and said I
need to lose weight, and maybe not said that directly
to her daughter, like you need to lose weight, but
you internalize that. And you know, I have a memory
of like maybe nine or ten years old, my mom
sitting on the couch with my mom and her looking
over at my face and saying like, oh, you have
two blackheads on your nose. Let me just squeeze those out.
(18:33):
And for all of middle school I looked like I
had horrible acne because I would just pick at my
face every spot I like, sometimes a freckle, it wasn't
even anything, and I would just dig and dig. And
it took like years of therapy to like try and
reverse that, and it's still a thing that happens. But
I don't think I would have thought about doing that
if I hadn't gotten that feedback. Um, I don't know
(18:56):
what else she could have done, maybe gone for a
facial with me or something, and it probably wasn't anything
anyone would notice. But she also, yeah, she criticize herself,
and you know, when she's eating, she'll say, oh, I
only want two bites of this, and I just want
to say like, oh, do you want an award for that?
But and it's it's sad now that I'm older to
(19:17):
see how like important that stuff is in her life.
And I've, you know, through my own sort of feminist community,
I've let go of a lot of that. But every
time I'm with her, it's just so blatant. And I
remember her saying stuff like, oh, ten more pounds and
you'll be perfect. And that word perfect, that idea that
you can be perfect is so toxic. And it's no
(19:42):
matter what company I'm in, no matter how much therapy
I do, I just want to like delete that that
idea of perfection. And that's one thing that it's really
hard to get rid of. And I don't know if
I ever will, and if I have kids someday, I'll
probably do the opposite. I'll be like, you can wear
a trash bag, just cool, like putting dirt all over
(20:03):
your face. It's great, whatever you want, you know. But yeah,
I hear a lot of Oh, it's the media, it's
the tabloids, it's the pictures of the skinny models. But
we don't talk about personal influences for body image very much. Yeah,
and um, it's a visious cycle because I was thinking
(20:25):
about this, and if you are in a society where
your value is your looks and your thinness and your youth,
it's really hard not to like to shake that off
for one and even if you do like that, that
doesn't mean everything around you is change. But then you
don't want to pass these messages on two young children.
(20:50):
But I just I understand. I can see how difficult
that is, and especially for some older generations where that
was just the thing, like they don't they aren't seeing
it the way that we're seeing it now that we've
had a lot of these conversations, and it's also just generational,
like each year things change, or each decade, each century,
(21:11):
things changed and expectations change. You know, from my parents
good thinking that the perfect life was having the kids
and having this and this is the structure, owning a
house and being this perfect unit to come a long
way and that's no longer necessarily the standard. But that
level of that was the guilt that I was getting
when I was growing up. Like my mother definitely would
talk about weight and such, but it wasn't such a
(21:32):
big deal in her head because she had kids like
multiple to concentrate on at all times and trying to
be frazzled. But her message to us was being the
perfect family, being the perfect mom, being the perfect provider
and what that looks like if you who don't have that,
what is your life about? What is the meaning of life?
And being a nanny when I was stopping and the
(21:55):
many jobs that I've done because of all um one
of the things that I would see. She loved her kids,
genuinely loved, loved and doated on her kids and was
a great mom. But what she would never say to
her kids, she would say to herself, which would be
I have to buy these pills. I can't eat today.
This is the only thing I could have today, Even
like posting pictures of herself and the way she poses
(22:16):
and what she thinks is important. The girl and the
kids all replicated what she did, but specifically, her daughter
was literally the spitting image at twelve, posing in however
you want to look at it, the way her mom did,
which was very sexy. And as an adult, you do
you you'd be sexy. That makes you feel good about yourself,
Go ahead, you know. But because she as a ten
(22:38):
year old, saw that as the goal she tried to
grow up very quickly to become her mom, and that
standard was, oh no, what is it? And it's nothing
that the mom did because mom, like I said, let
her the kids be kids. It was just watching. And
it's this whole kind of standard of what have we
built on our own selves that we don't realize as
a toxic influence as you were saying on others, doesn't
(22:59):
even have to be. Although I did have the grandparents
tell me, oh are you thick? Are you eating? Like thanks,
I had a aunt Tommy, I should shop in the
maternity ard. Yeah, Like stuff like that were definitely the
backhanded ouch and you start really like I said, I
will never forget those either. Like I went as in prom,
I was wearing this fairly form fitting dress. I'm always
(23:21):
I've always been thick. It's not anything that's ever going
to change. And I'm I've accepted it and I love
that now. But the fact is I remember the woman,
older woman with me. You guys, you don't skip mills.
You got good, you got good, you got good birthing
hips though, yes, that's really old school. Yeah that's thanks.
(23:42):
I'm gonna go, I know, drive yourself into him looking
at yourself too funnily but yeah, like you don't realize
how generational that is. But again, away from that, just
yours individual actions like you probably are could be the
most loving parents, but the you treat yourself as a
reflection on how they will treat themselves, that's your children. Yeah, definitely,
(24:05):
Like can we talk about breaking these things down? How
do we do this? And that's one more thing of
we got look at our own selves and talk about
the things that we are taking for granted in our
own lives and or putting ourselves in a place that's
on You can't meet those standards, you will never be,
as you said, perfect And why is it specifically to
(24:27):
women they need to be perfect? And of course the
definition changes from person to person, whether it's my family saying,
you know, having a family that's perfection to a woman
saying the body of this is perfection when it could win.
Is it that we can actually let go of that's
the thing that we have to do, which, yeah, you
do talk about that, and I love it. You break
(24:49):
it down and you bring in good old music with
it on top of it. The classic pictures from youth,
they were so good. Oh I remember that stuff. I
would definitely show all my embarrassing pictures. I'm all for it.
Um and yeah, just to kind of put a note
on that, Another survey I found showed that young girls
(25:10):
don't feel like they can confide in their mothers about
the body image issues that they are having because they
see their mothers having it. So it's it's a self
perpetuating circle. It's very scary because social media does make
this worse. And eating disorders. The rates of eating disorders
have gone up in all age groups, and one clinic
(25:32):
I found reported an increase of four of patients with
eating disorders in their thirties. So it doesn't go away,
it carries with you. Yeah. Yeah, So this is definitely
something we should I'll be mindful of when we're interacting
with children, um, the messages that we're sending, and we
might not even realize that they're absorbing, right right, right, Yeah,
(25:55):
that's one thing we're really focused on at Girls Rock Camp. There,
we say like there are no rules, but you always
say nice things to yourself in front of kids, and
you always say nice things two kids that aren't image based,
like wow, you're such a loving friend, or you're sharing
your guitar really nicely, or you seem really confident on stage.
(26:18):
Not your outfits so cute and you look so pretty today,
you know kind of stuff. We have a girl's rock
camp in Atlanta as well, and my friend, she was Haley,
she was up a big part of it. She was
fronted I think the directors though there's directors, okay, she was,
she was heading it up. I'm at that um and
(26:39):
I went to see the final show and man, those
shows get packed out and those kids get really into it.
They're actually really good. I'm like, yeah, I could have
never done developing and writing their own songs and coming
as a band and harmonizing together. I was like, yes, ladies,
do your thing. Do your thing. And I love that
(27:01):
organization because it does fosters so much a self esteem
but also teaches them, hey, cruel can rock, they can
play instruments that they can hold their own, and they
could be a band without a man or boy what
you can do whatever way you want to do. It
is wacky and weird as it sounds, that's great, you know, yeah,
(27:21):
you know, mentioning that they play on a stage in
front of like two hundred or three hundred people, at
these concerts and it's just like radical, amazing support for them.
Um just everyone's cheering them on the whole time. That's
so awesome. But it's this one little moment. And think
about you know, all these kids have Instagrams, they have TikTok's,
(27:42):
how many thousands and thousands of people are seeing them
a day and potentially commenting on them on their selfies
or whatever. And even if they're not writing negative comments,
just the kid knowing that their body is being seen
by this many people. So like just having a space
where they know they're going to get support and and
(28:03):
love and you're doing great. I don't know if it
can overcome all of that stuff that's on the internet,
but it helps a little bit. Also, they get that
moment of being a star like they are on stage,
whether like that would make me probably pee my pants,
to be honest, but they get to actually be in
the spotlight and and showcase their talent. That's a beautiful moment.
And how how much are you gonna remember that? Hopefully fondly,
(28:26):
but you'll remember that forever And what a great experience
for that. Yeah, just that feeling. It's so rare in
our lives. Where we have a feeling that like, no
matter what I do or say or how I dress
right now, it's going to be okay with everyone around me,
unless you're around very close friends. And even sometimes then
you can say one thing in front of one friend
and something else in front of another friend and you
(28:47):
don't know if the whole group is going to support you.
So it's just that, yeah, beautiful support. We love it.
We have a lot more in our discussion with Chelsea,
but first we have a quick break for a word
from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you sponsor. Now
(29:14):
back into the interview. I was researching into female musicians
and this kind of surprised me, even though I guess
it shouldn't have. But they said it's like more of
a masculine because it is sometimes physical, like the hinting
of the drums or so it's so important for for
your young girls to see people women and girls doing this,
(29:35):
So that's super valuable. And I also wanted to pick
up on something because earlier you said you really wanted
no one to notice, You really want to be invisible,
but you also had this desire to be famous and
be in the spolight bands. So can you talk about
(29:57):
that and sort of the role music play. So I
think I did want to be on stage and I
wanted to perform, and I felt like at the time,
I thought, I'm just not cool enough, skinny enough, pretty
enough whatever to be in the public eye. Like once
I fixed all those things about myself and then I'll
do it. So I don't think I really desired to
(30:20):
be invisible. It's just that I thought I had all
these things wrong with myself because of my mom and
whoever else. Um, So I think what I actually really
desired was to just be comfortable with myself. But I
didn't know that at the time. And now that I
am comfortable with myself, whether I'm performing for like three
friends or a hundred people, it feels awesome. But I
(30:43):
think if I had gotten up up on stage when
I was young and there were only like two people clapping,
I probably would have been like, I'm never going to
do this again. But yeah, I yeah, I just felt
like nothing about myself was was ready to be in public.
But I thought, once I you know, amazing at the base,
and I write these great songs and I'm better than
every boy in my whole school at playing so that
(31:05):
they can't say anything about me being good enough for
a girl or whatever. That's when I'll make my public debut.
But I just craved performing and playing. And I think
also part of me thought that that was a narcissistic
thing or a selfish thing, when it's just a human thing.
(31:28):
You know, it's a normal thing. You want to be
part of a crowd, You want to be part of
other people caring about the same thing. All it's about,
you know, even though you're the person on the stage,
it's about all sharing music together with the audience and
the other band members. So that's that's what I wanted.
I just didn't think I was ready. Right. Was just
such a conversation we've had about misogyny playing into our
(31:52):
females lives, thinking you have to be again exactly perfect
and have to go exceed the not only you to
be good, but you've got to be the best in
order to compete in order to be seen. And again,
it's such a thing that females and women we think
that's how it's done, this is how it should be,
this is what we're gonna We're not gonna qualify for
(32:12):
these things unless again, like you said, I have to
be so amazing they can't find one fault with me,
which is such a bs obviously looking back on you
like what, Yeah, and even today, I think we all
still struggle. I'm guessing with that idea of We've still
got to be perfect before we can do these things,
(32:33):
which is such an absurd conversation. But yeah, breaking down
with hey, a little girl, that's not true. How do
we We're going to talk about how that is not
true and you can push forward and practice in front
of people and not be perfect and it's going to
be beautiful whether now you believe it or not, even
though everything is always worse in our head. Oh yeah.
And part of that too is not having role models.
(32:53):
Like I didn't see any women in like I don't
know local bands or are women that looked not perfectly
put together. You know. All I saw was like Gwen Stefani.
That was it. That was the only current female rock
star I knew of. And she looks perfect. She is
like ripped and gorgeous and writes these amazing songs and
(33:17):
whatever else and is a mom and blah blah blah blah,
and that's it. I was like, Okay, so I have
to be like Gwen Stefani or that's that's the only
in the story. Do you have to be Gwin Stefani,
But you have to be surrounded by all the men's
to be taken legitimately because individually, if she had, I'm
(33:37):
guessing you don't see too many all girl bands, or
you didn't see too many. I mean, there was definitely
some out there, we know, but their novelty of being
all girl band was such a bigger part sometimes than
their music. But that which is unfortunate because they were amazing,
the Bengals. I still love them, right, I just hated
myself a little more, but they hear a phenomenal group
(33:58):
and I still love listening to what some of them
do individually. You know. It's just unfortunately, that's the level
that we have to get to, Like, all right, when
do we take women seriously in this industry? And is
it when they look like the perfect pixie manic girl
who can be both okay for the men to except
as well as women to accept. Right, you have to
(34:20):
be this special shooting star. And you know, I think
the early two thousand's is also the perfectly wrong time
for me to come of age because I missed the
Riot Girls stuff in the nineties. I mean you had
bikini killing Riot Girl going on, but also just the
regular like Billboard rock charts. The stuff that was playing
(34:40):
on the radio was Atlantis Morris Set, and it was
you know, a bunch of other women with guitars, whole whatever,
you know, all different shades of women playing rock music.
And it was like probably half or more of the
Billboard chart. I looked us up at one point, but
it was like the Billboard Rock Chart, like at least
half of it were songs written by women. Um. And
(35:04):
in the early two thousands, it was like there's Britney Spears,
there's Christina Aguilera. Rock bands there wasn't much going on period.
I mean, there was kind of this nineties revival thing
and that turned into emo, like the Hives and the
Vines and stuff. So there were some rock bands, but
pop was way bigger. And it's it's as if that
(35:27):
whole idea that like rock was going to be really
equal after the nineties, it just disappeared and I didn't
hear about it. All I knew about Courtney Love was
that she was the crazy, evil person that somehow killed
Kurt Kobe, and I didn't even know. I assumed her
band was terrible, like never listened to a whole song.
(35:47):
None of the guys in my band. They were like,
oh yeah, holes, like cheesy and stupid, and we'd like
kind of make fun of their songs sometimes. And I
fell in love with those albums later. But I loved
Nirvana and it was like, yeah, I bet Cortney loves
like And I mean, oh, she's done a lot of
problematic stuff, not saying she's saying, but at least she
was a woman playing a guitar in the public eye,
(36:09):
and there wasn't much of that when I was growing up,
and she was definitely demoniced. You're right, absolutely beyond that time, probably,
which is right. Her only role had to do with
her husband's band, you know, never mind all this stuff
she produced herself. And her songs are good. I'm thinking
(36:31):
of singing them in my head. We're talking. I'm like,
oh yeah, agot about that band. And then her songwriting
was attributed to Cobaine too. They said, oh, he wrote
all her good songs she didn't, you know, which is hilarious.
You gotta love the conspiracy theories about there's no way
a woman did this if it's yeah, she definitely one right. Yeah,
(36:55):
that's a lot of hard work. I mean getting away
with murder on that scale. Like even if she did that,
she would be pretty smart. We really don't dress the
women we don't know. No, cool, cool, cool. I've been
thinking about that a lot lately. Um, well, so you
(37:16):
in the podcast you detail your band was you were
the only girl in in your first several bands. Oh yeah,
I was the only girl like in my school district.
But I knew of that played anything right, And because
this is a coming of age story, we might say
there there was all this kind of like drama dating
(37:38):
and yeah, can you can you talk a little bit
about that? And how do you think that sort of
impacted Oh yeah, it ruined things. And I think a
lot of women who started playing music young win through
this two in their first bands. You're just you're them
(38:00):
anich Pixie dream girl, because I mean I had really
bad social anxiety and as a nerdy, socially anxious person,
like I had my things I was nerdy about, and
I could talk to people about those things and that
was it. Like I didn't have social skills, but I
could be like this guitar has those kind of pickups,
and I know this album was recorded in Electric Lady
(38:20):
Land studios. Like I could nerd about music and there
weren't other girls that could do that. So I was
seen as like this amazing whatever by the boys in
my band, and they just immediately fell in love with me.
And when I started, when I joined my first band,
the leader of the band said absolutely no band dating,
but he quit, and as soon as he quit, the
(38:42):
other two boys in the band were like ready, and
they both kind of tricked me into dating them, the
first one. And I hate how common this is and
I hate it. Um. You know, my mom taught me
a little bit of about consent. You know, say no
if you're not comfortable, but it's a lot more complicated
(39:04):
in real life. She was just kind of like saying no.
I always say no, but you're trying to be cool
as a teenager, you know, you don't want to just
be like no, go away. And I had my first
band and this was my whole entire social life, so
I didn't want to mess it up. So we went
to me and my band went to the little like
town fair together and I wanted to ride the Ferris Wheel,
and I didn't have enough tickets, and some of my
(39:26):
other friends had tickets, and they were like, oh, if
you kiss the drummer, we'll give you a ticket. And
I was really self conscious because I had never kissed anyone,
and I didn't want anyone to know that because like
a prude at fifteen and so embarrassing. So I was like, sure,
i'll kiss him, but yeah, I can be cool. So
I did, and I hated it, and I got the ticket.
(39:48):
And then after that, everywhere I went he was holding
my hand and kissing me in the halls, and I
was like, oh, I have a boyfriend now, but if
I dumped him, my entire social life, work on my
band will be broken up. Like I could sense the
tension between the two boys because they both liked me,
and no one explicitly said any of this because we're teenagers,
(40:12):
but I knew if I messed it up but by band,
and I didn't think i'd ever have the confidence to
find another band. So and then once I finally dumped
the first one, the second one said go out with me,
or I'll break up the band and never talk to
you again. So I had two boyfriends and I wasn't
(40:34):
that excited about but I tried to make it work
and I was like, Okay, now I'm a little bit
cool because I have a boyfriend, but did I want one?
Not really? So yeah, it is unfortunate because like on
a grander scheme, we still see things like that with
adult women right where you're like, oh, yeah, I'm dating
(40:56):
this guy, are the band or I'm out all right,
like my chances are gone? That's really unfortunate. What's your story?
Where do I begin it? Is? I had a very
similar experience where one day I was just dating some
guy and I never said we were dating, right, And
you're like, when did I say yes? Or was I
(41:19):
really not given a chance? Yeah? Yeah, and we're just
together now and I had no idea what this was happening.
But then everyone's like, you've got to go stay with
your boyfriend. What I actually through this podcast, I've had
a really interesting experience of learning that I am a
sexual and my bands. Oh my my hit song that
(41:44):
I wrote was called I Don't Believe in Love and
I only now just put together like maybe I was
onto something and I wasn't just being super Maybe I
was sensing it, but unfortunately my band, even though it
was not very good, it and whatever, it broke apart
because I knew there was this expectation with one of
(42:06):
the other members that we would date, and I was like,
I don't even want to be around this, right, So
it's yeah, it's upsetting to think of lost opportunities or
what non consensual things have happened. Well, I mean, again,
this is kind of as you're talking about reflecting. This
is again another conversation about how we are taught at
a very young age that we can't say no, and
(42:28):
it's impolite to say no, and it's impolite to not
you know, just go with the flow, and that it's
okay for people to force their wills on people and
as long as they don't actually cry out no, then
they're in the right. You know. It is one more
conversation of like why we gotta we gotta break these
things down because again you're yeah, you're talking about the
(42:48):
fact that you were in a position where you were
the unicorn essentially and being the girl that knows music,
which there are a lot of those out there comics
like oh she's in a comic r. Now this is
your criterion yes, yes, in the story, but yeah, but
that's that conversation of why is this these expectations so
(43:13):
pigeonholing people into you have to be if you're like this,
this means this is what it means for you, and
this is the future you have, whether you want it
or not. And you should not be able to say
no because you've got to be polite. We've accepted you
in two hour and sometimes, like we were just talking about,
they figure out ways where there's no opportunity to say no,
(43:34):
and you feel like you'll be once again the crazy
girl if you force your opinion, your natural right to
say no. But if if it's not in there, and
you're trying to be a cool teenager, be like I'm
not a prude, then that social influence goes so far.
No matter what our parents or teachers, you know, best
(43:57):
intentions trying to explain consent to us. It doesn't happen
like that the first few times when you're really young,
you don't see things as black and white. But looking
back on that now and like I should have just
punched him in the nose. At the time, nothing absolutely
nothing mattered more than like social currency. That was it,
(44:17):
and so I would have. Yeah. I mean, luckily they
were nice enough. I just had some like goofy trips
to the movies and the diner and whatever. It wasn't
like a huge No one was trying to like marry
me whatever, you know. But I didn't want to spend
my time doing that, and I wanted to be in
my room just playing bass or you know, meet a
(44:39):
girl who also played music. That would have been amazing.
And I know there's so many others there were and
still are so many others alone in their rooms feeling
the same way. And that's kind of the goal of
my podcast is to get people to feel like, oh,
this thing that I thought only I went through or
I went through worse than an anyone else. So many
(45:01):
of us went through it. We were just at different
high schools or whatever. You know. Yeah, and I love
how you break that down of it's confusing when someone said, oh, yes,
if you make out this dude, which is a cool
thing to do, uh, we will get the ticket. And
it's just like so many factors coming in of I
(45:23):
don't want people to know that I have never kissed somewhere,
and then I don't want them to think I'm not cool,
and then it's just a lot more complex than oh yeah,
don't do that, kid, um And I think that's really
important for kids to know to hear these stories, these
really honest takes of what was going through your head
(45:43):
at that time and why it happened at all, and
like because that you don't necessarily understand all those things
until you look back, but you do know there's this confusing,
weird all this weirdness around it. Um. So I think
that's super important as a kid. I wish I had
had something like right, and I think, yeah, I love
the fact that you are having these conversations and putting
(46:04):
this out there because it's teaching goods. Is teaching young people, shoot,
probably teaching adults you can say no? And what does
that look like to be able to say no even
though you feel like you don't get that choice, because again,
we are oftentimes pushed to a corner and being not
given that choice and feeling like, oh, well, I gotta
do this if I want to be a B or C,
a D. And to actually have them being like, hey, no,
(46:26):
you actually can't say no and it's okay. And by
the way, you're probably not the only one that wishes
or wants to say no or just get off me,
get away from me, right and it still happens. I
mentioned this in a in an episode. I got tricked
into being on a date not that long ago, less
than a year ago. You do so sorry to hear that.
(46:51):
It's always like, oh, I feel you. I'm so sorry
that you've also been through that. But it's once again,
so good to not be alone and yucky, yucky things happen.
But yeah, I went to uh see a band play
and I was friends with the bass player. Um, and
so he, you know, put me on the guest list,
like at a really big club. But I had no
(47:13):
friends to go with me, went by myself. Whatever. I
was watching the show and there are two dudes next
to me and they're like, oh, you like this band.
I'm like, oh yeah, I know the bass player. And
we just talked about music. That's it. We talked about
nerdy guitar stuff, recording equipment like editing software, the most
(47:33):
you know, not flirtatious conversation. Ever, no one asked me
if I had a boyfriend. There was no talk of
like dating. No one even tried to figure out if
I was straight whatever. And then they, you know, this
group of guys was like, let's get a beer afterwards,
and I was like, sure, I have nothing to do,
(47:55):
and they seem nerdy and maybe it would be a
good like networking connection, like their audio people too. And
we get to the bar and suddenly, I don't know what,
like spaceship. The other people took off in but I'm
alone with this one guy and I just looked at him,
and he looked at me because he was totally taken
aback to he I don't think he was in on
(48:16):
this planet. He seemed like kind of pissed, and he
was like, we don't have to get a drink if
you don't want to. But it was just weird in
the you know, the people at the bar are like, oh,
you can sit here together or whatever. I'm like, no,
I'm not on a date. And I was like, I
live with someone, I can't be on a date with you.
What just and it was just confusing. I probably said
(48:37):
really confusing things to him too, And again I felt
like that fifteen year old where my brain just couldn't
compute what happened. I didn't know what to say I
did and I didn't want to just shout no, no, no,
but I like mumbled a bunch of stuff and then
went home and I was like, I'm an adult. These
other people were adults too. How is this still a
(48:58):
thing that happened? Yeah, I because of this show and
recently in therapy, so I've only been in therapy from
like one year, and thank you. One thing that I've
realized has really severely impacted me is that kind of
thing where what I immediately do is I'm like, what
(49:18):
did I What kind of signal did I? Where did
I go wrong? And then I feel horribly guilty about Okay, well,
now I've got to hurt this person's feeling and I
didn't know this was a whole thing, And then it
makes me not trust anyone else because they couldn't possibly
just want to talk to me. It's like, well, we're
gonna have sex or we're gonna date, like and it's
(49:39):
just completely eroded my sense of trust. And it's it's
really I didn't understand how deeply that that has impacted
me to this day. So yeah, that's another It's it
sounds so like seemingly innocent enough because I think you
(50:03):
said in that episode, surely the friends were just they
thought they were doing their friends of solid or whatever. Yeah,
but we need to think about the implications and repercussions
of those kinds of things. Yeah, and who knows, They
don't know what my experience could have been. Maybe I
had been through something similar that turned out really badly
and dangerously before, Like just leaving a woman alone with
(50:25):
a strange man is never good, like that could lead
to even if they were somehow magically knew they were
all wonderful people, like, yeah, that's not cool. That's not
for you to decide the friends to decide whether or
not they should be together or whatever whatnot. And I
think this is also again, it's a similar conversation of
(50:46):
all of these things that are built up in society
and the things that you could experience and continue to
experience today. I mean, I'm with you. I haven't been
on accidental days, so I don't understand that person. I
think I'm a very very very awkward person that I
have the resting bitch face. So that does really well
for me. Um. But the fact that you know all
(51:09):
of these conversations is just the whole again, freedom to
be your own person and what that looks like and
trying to establish as a child, because that's what we're doing,
is growing up, trying to figure out what are my values,
what are my abilities to control what's in my life?
And and as we know, for the longest time, children
(51:30):
were not allowed to be in control and and oftentimes
told these are the things you're gonna be do you
gotta listen, don't talk back, just go with it, um
And I know this makes a lot of sense. And
there's the thing about respect. We can talk about that
and you know, be raising a child to be appropriate
and all of these things. But for the longest time,
for our generation, your generation and my generation, because we're
(51:52):
a little different off, we're having to unlearn some of
these toxic ideas of our autonomy. And we see that again.
I love that you're talking about it now because that's
still a problem. That still can be a problem for sure.
And again there's a difference between teaching them respect and
teaching them you know, kindness and empathy versus teaching them
(52:13):
you know, being controlled and being allowed to be controlled.
And I think that's a huge conversation that especially women,
especially in women who are interested in music in the
in the field that is dominated by men were interested
in like the comedy comedy scene, but like cosplay and all.
(52:34):
What does that look like when it's been you know,
manned by men literally, And so what does that look
like when we're teaching ourselves and teaching the generations younger
than us, younger generations of this is what it looks
like to be able to again have an autonomous opinion
and being able to care for yourself and being able
(52:55):
to control the environment around you to keep yourself safe.
And that's a big versation and I love that that's
what you are teaching as well. Yeah, it has been.
I will say one of the most rewarding things for me,
beyond connecting with all of the women and girls that listen,
is some male friends in my life have said, I've
(53:18):
never considered what it like when I asked you to
go do something with me. I just don't have the
same level of it. Was somebody um who was saying
when we first met, he invited me to go see
a movie with him and he said, oh, I've never
considered that for you. That wasn't a simple oh yes
I want to go, like there was all of this
(53:38):
other stuff. Yes, and if it is like, am I safe? Like?
Am I safe? Right? Um? So that has been really
rewarding as well. And I think as we have these
conversations with the younger generation, hopefully we're all I think
it's a lot of unlearning, unlearning for both and all
(54:02):
all of the genders, all of you know, all the conversations,
all the generations talking about we have to unlearn a
lot of toxic Yeah. True, true. We do have some
more for you listeners, but first we have one more
quick break for word from our sponsor and we're back.
(54:31):
Thank you sponsor. Let's get back into it. I would
love to hear your thoughts on maybe that's part of
that power of music four girls and women and what
ways it can interact with feminism and activism. Yeah, power
of music, it's so powerful. I mean, well, there's the
(54:51):
public political version of that, and there's the personal version
of that, which is what I mostly focus on in
my own work, because I think playing music or any
creative outlet, especially any creative outlet where you can combine
like a physical action, you know, writing too, I guess
(55:12):
that's not as physical, but any creative outlet I think
is um one of just the best things you can
do for any mental health issues. UM. And I I
think medicine and therapy have gone a long way for me,
But if those things disappeared, I think music is and
(55:37):
before I had those things, music was was everything for
me in that regard. UM, because you can express yourself
or you can just play along with a song and
feel like because when we're going through mental health things,
it sometimes it feels like it's never gonna end, and
everything is just so confusing up and down. You don't
(55:58):
know which of your thoughts you would believe, etcetera. You
have no structure. It kind of feels like the floor
crumbles out from under you and you don't know where
you're you're going to drift off into outer space. But
when you're playing a song, you have a rhythm, you
have a tempo, you have chord changes to follow, you
have a structure, You know what you're supposed to be doing,
(56:18):
and you can add your own creative experimentation to that.
Or you can just play a G E. Whatever and
play along. And so just feeling secure in a three
minute song or listening to an album and knowing what
songs are going to come next, UH can do so
much and for other people, you know, they have different things,
(56:40):
whether it's um comedy, whether it's playing dungeons and dragons
or LARPing, whatever it is, whenever you can create this
own little world for yourself and feel powerful and secure
and in control, like, that's what that's what will eventually
change the world is people finding their own security and
(57:03):
power in whatever it is they do. And for me,
that's absolutely music. And then it takes the personal into
the political and the global. So it's beautiful. It is
that I love that I do too, So thank you
so much again for being here, and thank you for
what you and being open and being so personal because
(57:25):
it takes a lot, so that vulnerability is beautiful, So
thank you for doing that. Yeah, thank you both for
doing what you do too. Thank you, thank you, thank you,
thank you. Where can the listeners find you? Yeah, So,
Dear Young Rocker is available wherever you get your podcasts,
and my band Banana is also on band camp. Um
(57:48):
it's a grunge kind of band if you're into that,
and we play around Boston all the time. And there's
more info about me and what I do at der
Young Rocker dot com, so go check that out. Um, anyone.
When we're in Boston, we'll meet up, we'll meet done.
We would have to catch a show too, for sure,
exactly exactly. Well, thank you again for being here. Um
(58:11):
if you would like to email us, oh my gosh,
you can. Our email is Stuff Media mom Stuff at
iHeart media dot com. You can also find us on
Twitter at mom Stuff podcast or on Instagram at Stuff
I've Never Told You. Thanks as always to your superproducer
Andrew Howard, who also rocks. He does rock, and thanks
to you for listening Stuff I've Never Told You. The
production of I Heart Radio. For more podcast from my
(58:33):
Heart Radio is the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows
Hey, this is Adding and Samantha and welcome to stuff.
I've never told you a protection of I heart radio
and today we're thrilled to be joined by Chelsea of
the podcast Dear Young Rocker to talk about a lot
(00:26):
of things, but like the impact moms have on our
self esteem and women and girls in the music industry,
because podcaster is just one of many hats you have
worn and currently do wear. So hey, Chelsea, thank you
so much for joining us. Hey, thanks so much for
having me. Of course, could you introduce yourself to our listeners?
(00:48):
Certainly so. I am Chelsea Arson. I'm from Boston, and
I'm an independent podcast producer and my show is called
called Dear Young Rocker, and Dear Young Rocker is an
audio memoir of myself ages like eleven through eventually early twenties,
(01:11):
about struggling with the things that many adolescents struggle with,
body image, anxiety, social anxiety, you know, depression, a lot
of things we all go through, and then how I
found the outlet of music to help me through all
of those struggles and how I discovered that on my
(01:32):
own and then sort of processed a lot of feelings
through playing music, and then playing in bands. I was
a bass player, and so I kind of recreate how
I found the base and started playing it, and I
recreate the sounds of my first high school bands. Um.
And then I also give advice to younger people who
might be going through the same things I went through
(01:55):
at that age, and I try to really level with
teenagers as opposed to sort of talk down to them
and say, oh, you know, stop being so sensitive. You
know you're going to outgrow this phase, etcetera, etcetera that
I was told when I was young. So I kind
of say, your feelings are valid, and let's talk about
what's going on with you and it's okay to be
(02:15):
you when you're not alone and what you feel. Yeah.
I when I listened to it, I immediately connected with
a lot of it, and I could, oh, yeah, I
remember being I remember I also started to abandoned high school.
But it didn't do anywhere like yeah, I was very cool, great, um.
(02:39):
But yeah, I really appreciated how when you're writing these
notes or letters to your younger self, it's from a
place of understanding this is why you were feeling this way.
And people with anxiety in particular, like no one was
telling you that, And so I think that's a great
approach because is we do often talk down to younger
(03:04):
folks and we dismissed. I feel like we forget that
when we were that too, and it wouldn't have helped
for someone to be like, oh yeah, get over it.
Yeah right. And I was thinking the same thing when
I was listening. I was like, man, this is so familiar.
I remember having those thoughts in my head about this
is if I could just do this, or if this
would change, and why won't this happened? And this is
the worst or this is the best, all of those situations.
(03:26):
I'm like, oh my god. It was like yesterday I
had those anxieties trying to be a teenager, and when
you feel very different from the crowd around you, you're
like what what right? What do what? Do? Tell? Right?
It was very nostalgic. Also, you were a part of
controversial conversation last night because we were talking about the
(03:46):
music that you were referencing and about whether or not
we were like that's cool, that's not cool? What did
had a whole moment of about you know, whether it
was about Green Day, Lincoln Park came in, like so
that was a whole conversation of like, oh my god,
I forgot about all these things, loving these things and
feeling so a part of the lyrics or the music,
(04:09):
and feeling that angst and how genuine that felt in
the moment, and how oftentimes we do ignore that. And
I know I've worked with teenagers who at risk teenagers
and often times how dismissed they are, but also how
connected they were to they are to music, into words
and writing, and how it feels so personal for them.
So it's a beautiful, beautiful podcast, Thank you very much. Yeah,
(04:33):
the words of teenage girls in particular are usually seen
as silly. You know, It's like, oh, right in your
diary and then burn it when you're twenty because it's
too embarrassing, which is what I did unfortunately. So I
tend to go back and like kind of recreate memories
through conversations with friends and whoever. But at this point,
(04:54):
as more of a grown up, I guess, um, I
feel like those those feelings were valid important because that
was the beginning of who I am. Like I've leveled out,
but those feelings still happen sometimes. I just know how
to deal with them, and I don't want to pretend
that I'm a completely different person than that that teenage me,
(05:14):
even though it feels like I am you know, yeah, yeah,
you can see the inklings, but you would become I
think it's just more accepting that this is okay, more
so than changing, Like right, Like I've accepted this is
where I am, and these are the coping skills and
learned growing up. Right, I'm like, okay, panic attack, here
you are again. Let's hang out for a minute in
the bathroom and then like instead of like, oh no,
(05:35):
my life's going to end because I'm panicking right right,
and kind of going off of that. Something we've talked
a lot about on this podcast and even recently in
talks that we've given UM and its recurring theme in
your podcast is anger, and particularly anger when it comes
to women and girls. UM and I, for one, have
(05:57):
been real honest with people on this show. I never
learned to express it. I struggle being angry. I go
from zero to oh my god, terrifying angry. And because
of that, like I've often joked, even though I think
it's true, instead of expressing anger, I would allow like
something hurtful to happen. UM, so can you talk about
(06:17):
your experience with anger and finding this acceptable outlet to
spress it. So, yeah, from a very young age, I
have very early memories of feeling like I guess rage,
just uncontrollable feelings like I just wanted to punch all
the boys on the playground or whatever it was, or
(06:38):
yell at the teacher who corrected me, or and I
no one told me this, but I had absorbed the
message that it's not okay for a girl to feel
that way. That if I were a boy, I could
go punch someone and they'd be like boys being boys,
just playing on the playground. But I knew that if
I did that, I would be what I'd hold myself was.
(07:00):
I would be crazy, and so I couldn't let anyone
see that side of me, and so I kept it in,
which I think a lot of nonsense. Males do we
keep our anger in because we don't want to hurt
other people, and so we hurt ourselves, And so I
hurt myself over and over keeping that in, and I
was never presented. I remember I asked my parents if
(07:21):
I could play football because I felt like I needed
to get this out. I intuitively knew that I didn't
like sports. I just felt like I had to release this,
and they were like, no, you're gonna get hurt. You
can't play football. We don't want you to have a
head injury and whatever else, or as my dad said,
we don't want you to hurt your little boobies. And
so yeah, I kept it in for years, and then
(07:43):
of my own volition, I started playing music and listening
to heavier, like alternative rock bands, and when I was
listening to those songs, that angry feeling was channeled into something,
into those heavy chords and those that headbang I do
along to it, and during that time, that uncomfortable anger,
(08:04):
like while I was listening to a song or playing along,
it didn't bother me anymore. Like physically, I mean, anger
and anxiety is so physical and can like just make you,
you know, nauseous and headache, have a migraine, whatever, And
I didn't know that's what was happening. I had terrible
heartburn and I didn't even know that's what it was,
and it was from anxiety. But when I was listening
(08:25):
to music, I didn't feel that anger and I didn't
feel that anxiety, and I couldn't express that to anyone.
I just knew how I felt. And I think still
now it's any girl or woman that feels angry, it's
always going to check themselves and want to put it
on themselves first. So then when it does finally surface
because you just can't fit anymore in that bottle and
(08:46):
the cat pops off, it's like where did that come from?
And you just want to say, I've been there building forever,
but you might not even be able to verbalize that
even to yourself. So and at this point, like I said,
I um, I see those feelings. I still have those
angry feelings, but I'm like, okay, here we are. I'm
going to make sure I go to a kickboxing class later,
(09:08):
or I'm gonna play with my band or something, scream
at a pillow, whatever it is. And yeah, and I
just wish it was. I still don't think it's something
that's talked about. It's like, again, normal for boys to
have hormones and be testy um, but everyone has hormones.
Everyone goes through adolescents and their bodies change and they
(09:28):
can't keep up with it and their brains can't keep
up with those changes. So why do we act like
there's just one specific gender that that happens to. Yeah,
speaking of bodies changing, you dig into your body issues
a lot as well as do we um, and you
talk about how and puberty hit for you. It kind
of hit your bottom half and your top and you
(09:50):
felt like two different people. Um. And then this push
from your mom to wear nineties jeans and your preference
for boys close jenkos, which I also totally was like, yep,
I remember that. I remember this and wishing strongly that
you weren't a girl, um, and really despising girliness. And
(10:12):
you later came to understand what you really despised was
like these expectations, right, yes, but can you talk a
little bit about that? Sure? Yeah, I um, I mean
I was a shy, anxious kid. I didn't want to
be looked at period, and so anything about me that
made me stand out I hated. And so yeah, puberty
(10:34):
hit and I guess I'm estrogen dominant or whatever. So
I got hips at a young age and this was
the early two thousand's. No, butts weren't cool. They were
like the on that was like your old aunt or something.
You know. That kind of body shape was not hot
at least not where I grew up. Um, it was like,
(10:54):
you go to limited two and you get pants that
are like one inch above not even like half an
inch above your butt crack. And I couldn't fit into
those things, and I'd wear them to school and get
made fun of. And I didn't want anyone to see
my body, so I just wore the baggiest clothes I
could find and justified it to myself, being like, oh,
(11:15):
I'm just not feminine, um, even though I didn't really
know what any of that meant yet. Um, And now
I know, I just don't like the baggage that being
perceived as female comes with. And I also can separate
that out from my own internal qualities and physical qualities,
(11:37):
and you know, they're not necessarily related to gender in
any way. They're just different qualities about me, and it's
a big mixed bag. But at the time, I just
thought I'd do anything to not be a girl because
I just hate how it feels. And that seems like
that's an ongoing conversation about how limiting it can be
when you have these defined, biased and buying airy gender roles,
(12:01):
and what kind of problems it creates for young girls,
shoot for adults, even as we're trying to figure out
what we're supposed to be, how we're supposed to be perceived,
even when we're talking about anger and talking about political candice,
and if they not necessarily speak in a tone or loudly,
but just being actually making the statement, being assured in
themselves and having an appropriate argument is angry. And it's
(12:23):
kind of this negative tone of oh, these are not
likable women, and to be likable you have to be
agreeable in all things and meet these expectations, you know,
And I think, like, I love where you're looking at.
I love the fact that you do talk about how
you just wanted to cover up everything, because we know
that that's one of the big conversations with Billie Eilish
(12:44):
and and her whole point of not necessarily being a
fashion statement, but but just I don't need you to
know what I look like. I don't need to show
that off. And then also I know recently she just
at a show actually took everything off of was like,
you can't define me to be one way or the other.
I want to have the auction to be however, I
want to define myself. So did you think when you
(13:05):
see things like that? Happening. Do you think that is
they step forward rather than like he finally we're actually
on the same page. And yes, these are the same
issues that kids are going through today that I went
through twenty years ago. Yo, I think myself at this point, Yeah,
I mean, I feel like there is this you know,
feminist message out there. You can dress however you want.
(13:28):
You're in control of how much or how little you
reveal based on how comfortable you are and what you
want to say, and no one should criticize you for,
you know, dressing in a bikini or dressing in a big,
baggy sweatsuit. But if you dressed in bikini, you're still
going to get the same criticism you've got twenty years ago.
You're still going to be on the tabloids with whatever
(13:50):
yucky words. And being in the public eye that much
at such a young age. I cannot imagine. I mean,
I was just in my little middle school of fifty
kids or whatever and was terrified of, like wearing anything
slightly form fitting. So I can't imagine what it's like
for Billie eilish Um. And I respect that she's like, okay, yeah,
(14:10):
I think it was. She was waiting to turn eighteen
to do that. I think I remember according to the media,
which who knows, she might have offhand just said something,
but I remember some quote was circulating like when I
turned eighteen, I'm gonna, you know, express the right to
show off my body if I feel like it. And
I think that's a good message. But it's like I said,
(14:33):
even if kids feel empowered from that, they're still going
to get that feedback in their social circles or whatever.
Oh look how Sally's dressing today. She must be trying
to do or be whatever, you know, be part of
the popular girls or something, you know, like she's trying
(14:54):
to impress someone or so especially now with social media,
which is a megaphone too look at me, criticize me,
look at me. It's so scary. Yeah. Absolutely, um, And
it's hard to you can't take out so many other threads,
(15:14):
like it's great to say, yeah, sure, where what you
want to exercise? You're right, but there's yeah, there's just
so much other things and messages we've already internalized that
maybe we don't realize we did, but we did. Um.
And perhaps one of the for a lot of girls,
(15:35):
those messages come from our mom's yeah. And so when
we were talking about what what should we discuss in
this episode, you suggested that the role of moms and
self esteem for girls and women. Yes, um and I
I thought that was a great topic because we've all
we've gone from it the other way, how we always
(15:57):
shame moms. But yeah, there's this other side. Um and
I found some surveys about this of women who said, yes,
I think about my body and my body image every day.
Forty six of those of those women said and it's
because I see my mom doing it. So this is
(16:19):
a we're seeing what are the women in our lives
are in this case moms are doing, and we're internalizing that.
And for me, um, my mom's really really great. But
she was a super thin woman who was always telling
me like, oh, I've got to lose weight or I
can only eat this because of this. And I definitely
took that in and I that became a thing of oh,
(16:41):
I need to be skinny. So how about for I
know you talked about a little bit in the show,
but if you could expand upon it here, certainly. Yeah.
So another thing I do is I volunteer at the
girls Rock camps. UM usually every summer, I do a
week and it's it's a camp where a group of
(17:04):
girls ages eight to sixteen. They get formed into little bands,
they write a song together, and they perform on stage.
But it's more about self esteem than anything. It doesn't
matter if they get up there and just go doo
doo doo, as long as they feel like like they're
owning it and they're happy with taking up space and
they're like ready to be up there. And so we
(17:25):
do a lot of workshops, self esteem kind of stuff,
and there's always a media workshop, and even these eight
year old girls start realizing, Oh, the reason like I
think this kind of outfit is cool or this thing
is more girly or boyish is because of what I
see on TV. And it's like very early feminist training
and it's great, but I never hear the role of
(17:49):
moms get talked about. And then my personal life, I
think my mom was way more influential and how I
think about my body and how I dress and everything
more than any media. And maybe the media influenced my
mom to feel that way about herself and she passed
it on to me. But even more so I think
her mom, you know, probably did that kind of thing
(18:10):
where her mom stood in the mirror and said I
need to lose weight, and maybe not said that directly
to her daughter, like you need to lose weight, but
you internalize that. And you know, I have a memory
of like maybe nine or ten years old, my mom
sitting on the couch with my mom and her looking
over at my face and saying like, oh, you have
two blackheads on your nose. Let me just squeeze those out.
(18:33):
And for all of middle school I looked like I
had horrible acne because I would just pick at my
face every spot I like, sometimes a freckle, it wasn't
even anything, and I would just dig and dig. And
it took like years of therapy to like try and
reverse that, and it's still a thing that happens. But
I don't think I would have thought about doing that
if I hadn't gotten that feedback. Um, I don't know
(18:56):
what else she could have done, maybe gone for a
facial with me or something, and it probably wasn't anything
anyone would notice. But she also, yeah, she criticize herself,
and you know, when she's eating, she'll say, oh, I
only want two bites of this, and I just want
to say like, oh, do you want an award for that?
But and it's it's sad now that I'm older to
(19:17):
see how like important that stuff is in her life.
And I've, you know, through my own sort of feminist community,
I've let go of a lot of that. But every
time I'm with her, it's just so blatant. And I
remember her saying stuff like, oh, ten more pounds and
you'll be perfect. And that word perfect, that idea that
you can be perfect is so toxic. And it's no
(19:42):
matter what company I'm in, no matter how much therapy
I do, I just want to like delete that that
idea of perfection. And that's one thing that it's really
hard to get rid of. And I don't know if
I ever will, and if I have kids someday, I'll
probably do the opposite. I'll be like, you can wear
a trash bag, just cool, like putting dirt all over
(20:03):
your face. It's great, whatever you want, you know. But yeah,
I hear a lot of Oh, it's the media, it's
the tabloids, it's the pictures of the skinny models. But
we don't talk about personal influences for body image very much. Yeah,
and um, it's a visious cycle because I was thinking
(20:25):
about this, and if you are in a society where
your value is your looks and your thinness and your youth,
it's really hard not to like to shake that off
for one and even if you do like that, that
doesn't mean everything around you is change. But then you
don't want to pass these messages on two young children.
(20:50):
But I just I understand. I can see how difficult
that is, and especially for some older generations where that
was just the thing, like they don't they aren't seeing
it the way that we're seeing it now that we've
had a lot of these conversations, and it's also just generational,
like each year things change, or each decade, each century,
(21:11):
things changed and expectations change. You know, from my parents
good thinking that the perfect life was having the kids
and having this and this is the structure, owning a
house and being this perfect unit to come a long
way and that's no longer necessarily the standard. But that
level of that was the guilt that I was getting
when I was growing up. Like my mother definitely would
talk about weight and such, but it wasn't such a
(21:32):
big deal in her head because she had kids like
multiple to concentrate on at all times and trying to
be frazzled. But her message to us was being the
perfect family, being the perfect mom, being the perfect provider
and what that looks like if you who don't have that,
what is your life about? What is the meaning of life?
And being a nanny when I was stopping and the
(21:55):
many jobs that I've done because of all um one
of the things that I would see. She loved her kids,
genuinely loved, loved and doated on her kids and was
a great mom. But what she would never say to
her kids, she would say to herself, which would be
I have to buy these pills. I can't eat today.
This is the only thing I could have today, Even
like posting pictures of herself and the way she poses
(22:16):
and what she thinks is important. The girl and the
kids all replicated what she did, but specifically, her daughter
was literally the spitting image at twelve, posing in however
you want to look at it, the way her mom did,
which was very sexy. And as an adult, you do
you you'd be sexy. That makes you feel good about yourself,
Go ahead, you know. But because she as a ten
(22:38):
year old, saw that as the goal she tried to
grow up very quickly to become her mom, and that
standard was, oh no, what is it? And it's nothing
that the mom did because mom, like I said, let
her the kids be kids. It was just watching. And
it's this whole kind of standard of what have we
built on our own selves that we don't realize as
a toxic influence as you were saying on others, doesn't
(22:59):
even have to be. Although I did have the grandparents
tell me, oh are you thick? Are you eating? Like thanks,
I had a aunt Tommy, I should shop in the
maternity ard. Yeah, Like stuff like that were definitely the
backhanded ouch and you start really like I said, I
will never forget those either. Like I went as in prom,
I was wearing this fairly form fitting dress. I'm always
(23:21):
I've always been thick. It's not anything that's ever going
to change. And I'm I've accepted it and I love
that now. But the fact is I remember the woman,
older woman with me. You guys, you don't skip mills.
You got good, you got good, you got good birthing
hips though, yes, that's really old school. Yeah that's thanks.
(23:42):
I'm gonna go, I know, drive yourself into him looking
at yourself too funnily but yeah, like you don't realize
how generational that is. But again, away from that, just
yours individual actions like you probably are could be the
most loving parents, but the you treat yourself as a
reflection on how they will treat themselves, that's your children. Yeah, definitely,
(24:05):
Like can we talk about breaking these things down? How
do we do this? And that's one more thing of
we got look at our own selves and talk about
the things that we are taking for granted in our
own lives and or putting ourselves in a place that's
on You can't meet those standards, you will never be,
as you said, perfect And why is it specifically to
(24:27):
women they need to be perfect? And of course the
definition changes from person to person, whether it's my family saying,
you know, having a family that's perfection to a woman
saying the body of this is perfection when it could win.
Is it that we can actually let go of that's
the thing that we have to do, which, yeah, you
do talk about that, and I love it. You break
(24:49):
it down and you bring in good old music with
it on top of it. The classic pictures from youth,
they were so good. Oh I remember that stuff. I
would definitely show all my embarrassing pictures. I'm all for it.
Um and yeah, just to kind of put a note
on that, Another survey I found showed that young girls
(25:10):
don't feel like they can confide in their mothers about
the body image issues that they are having because they
see their mothers having it. So it's it's a self
perpetuating circle. It's very scary because social media does make
this worse. And eating disorders. The rates of eating disorders
have gone up in all age groups, and one clinic
(25:32):
I found reported an increase of four of patients with
eating disorders in their thirties. So it doesn't go away,
it carries with you. Yeah. Yeah, So this is definitely
something we should I'll be mindful of when we're interacting
with children, um, the messages that we're sending, and we
might not even realize that they're absorbing, right right, right, Yeah,
(25:55):
that's one thing we're really focused on at Girls Rock Camp. There,
we say like there are no rules, but you always
say nice things to yourself in front of kids, and
you always say nice things two kids that aren't image based,
like wow, you're such a loving friend, or you're sharing
your guitar really nicely, or you seem really confident on stage.
(26:18):
Not your outfits so cute and you look so pretty today,
you know kind of stuff. We have a girl's rock
camp in Atlanta as well, and my friend, she was Haley,
she was up a big part of it. She was
fronted I think the directors though there's directors, okay, she was,
she was heading it up. I'm at that um and
(26:39):
I went to see the final show and man, those
shows get packed out and those kids get really into it.
They're actually really good. I'm like, yeah, I could have
never done developing and writing their own songs and coming
as a band and harmonizing together. I was like, yes, ladies,
do your thing. Do your thing. And I love that
(27:01):
organization because it does fosters so much a self esteem
but also teaches them, hey, cruel can rock, they can
play instruments that they can hold their own, and they
could be a band without a man or boy what
you can do whatever way you want to do. It
is wacky and weird as it sounds, that's great, you know, yeah,
(27:21):
you know, mentioning that they play on a stage in
front of like two hundred or three hundred people, at
these concerts and it's just like radical, amazing support for them.
Um just everyone's cheering them on the whole time. That's
so awesome. But it's this one little moment. And think
about you know, all these kids have Instagrams, they have TikTok's,
(27:42):
how many thousands and thousands of people are seeing them
a day and potentially commenting on them on their selfies
or whatever. And even if they're not writing negative comments,
just the kid knowing that their body is being seen
by this many people. So like just having a space
where they know they're going to get support and and
(28:03):
love and you're doing great. I don't know if it
can overcome all of that stuff that's on the internet,
but it helps a little bit. Also, they get that
moment of being a star like they are on stage,
whether like that would make me probably pee my pants,
to be honest, but they get to actually be in
the spotlight and and showcase their talent. That's a beautiful moment.
And how how much are you gonna remember that? Hopefully fondly,
(28:26):
but you'll remember that forever And what a great experience
for that. Yeah, just that feeling. It's so rare in
our lives. Where we have a feeling that like, no
matter what I do or say or how I dress
right now, it's going to be okay with everyone around me,
unless you're around very close friends. And even sometimes then
you can say one thing in front of one friend
and something else in front of another friend and you
(28:47):
don't know if the whole group is going to support you.
So it's just that, yeah, beautiful support. We love it.
We have a lot more in our discussion with Chelsea,
but first we have a quick break for a word
from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you sponsor. Now
(29:14):
back into the interview. I was researching into female musicians
and this kind of surprised me, even though I guess
it shouldn't have. But they said it's like more of
a masculine because it is sometimes physical, like the hinting
of the drums or so it's so important for for
your young girls to see people women and girls doing this,
(29:35):
So that's super valuable. And I also wanted to pick
up on something because earlier you said you really wanted
no one to notice, You really want to be invisible,
but you also had this desire to be famous and
be in the spolight bands. So can you talk about
(29:57):
that and sort of the role music play. So I
think I did want to be on stage and I
wanted to perform, and I felt like at the time,
I thought, I'm just not cool enough, skinny enough, pretty
enough whatever to be in the public eye. Like once
I fixed all those things about myself and then I'll
do it. So I don't think I really desired to
(30:20):
be invisible. It's just that I thought I had all
these things wrong with myself because of my mom and
whoever else. Um, So I think what I actually really
desired was to just be comfortable with myself. But I
didn't know that at the time. And now that I
am comfortable with myself, whether I'm performing for like three
friends or a hundred people, it feels awesome. But I
(30:43):
think if I had gotten up up on stage when
I was young and there were only like two people clapping,
I probably would have been like, I'm never going to
do this again. But yeah, I yeah, I just felt
like nothing about myself was was ready to be in public.
But I thought, once I you know, amazing at the base,
and I write these great songs and I'm better than
every boy in my whole school at playing so that
(31:05):
they can't say anything about me being good enough for
a girl or whatever. That's when I'll make my public debut.
But I just craved performing and playing. And I think
also part of me thought that that was a narcissistic
thing or a selfish thing, when it's just a human thing.
(31:28):
You know, it's a normal thing. You want to be
part of a crowd, You want to be part of
other people caring about the same thing. All it's about,
you know, even though you're the person on the stage,
it's about all sharing music together with the audience and
the other band members. So that's that's what I wanted.
I just didn't think I was ready. Right. Was just
such a conversation we've had about misogyny playing into our
(31:52):
females lives, thinking you have to be again exactly perfect
and have to go exceed the not only you to
be good, but you've got to be the best in
order to compete in order to be seen. And again,
it's such a thing that females and women we think
that's how it's done, this is how it should be,
this is what we're gonna We're not gonna qualify for
(32:12):
these things unless again, like you said, I have to
be so amazing they can't find one fault with me,
which is such a bs obviously looking back on you
like what, Yeah, and even today, I think we all
still struggle. I'm guessing with that idea of We've still
got to be perfect before we can do these things,
(32:33):
which is such an absurd conversation. But yeah, breaking down
with hey, a little girl, that's not true. How do
we We're going to talk about how that is not
true and you can push forward and practice in front
of people and not be perfect and it's going to
be beautiful whether now you believe it or not, even
though everything is always worse in our head. Oh yeah.
And part of that too is not having role models.
(32:53):
Like I didn't see any women in like I don't
know local bands or are women that looked not perfectly
put together. You know. All I saw was like Gwen Stefani.
That was it. That was the only current female rock
star I knew of. And she looks perfect. She is
like ripped and gorgeous and writes these amazing songs and
(33:17):
whatever else and is a mom and blah blah blah blah,
and that's it. I was like, Okay, so I have
to be like Gwen Stefani or that's that's the only
in the story. Do you have to be Gwin Stefani,
But you have to be surrounded by all the men's
to be taken legitimately because individually, if she had, I'm
(33:37):
guessing you don't see too many all girl bands, or
you didn't see too many. I mean, there was definitely
some out there, we know, but their novelty of being
all girl band was such a bigger part sometimes than
their music. But that which is unfortunate because they were amazing,
the Bengals. I still love them, right, I just hated
myself a little more, but they hear a phenomenal group
(33:58):
and I still love listening to what some of them
do individually. You know. It's just unfortunately, that's the level
that we have to get to, Like, all right, when
do we take women seriously in this industry? And is
it when they look like the perfect pixie manic girl
who can be both okay for the men to except
as well as women to accept. Right, you have to
(34:20):
be this special shooting star. And you know, I think
the early two thousand's is also the perfectly wrong time
for me to come of age because I missed the
Riot Girls stuff in the nineties. I mean you had
bikini killing Riot Girl going on, but also just the
regular like Billboard rock charts. The stuff that was playing
(34:40):
on the radio was Atlantis Morris Set, and it was
you know, a bunch of other women with guitars, whole whatever,
you know, all different shades of women playing rock music.
And it was like probably half or more of the
Billboard chart. I looked us up at one point, but
it was like the Billboard Rock Chart, like at least
half of it were songs written by women. Um. And
(35:04):
in the early two thousands, it was like there's Britney Spears,
there's Christina Aguilera. Rock bands there wasn't much going on period.
I mean, there was kind of this nineties revival thing
and that turned into emo, like the Hives and the
Vines and stuff. So there were some rock bands, but
pop was way bigger. And it's it's as if that
(35:27):
whole idea that like rock was going to be really
equal after the nineties, it just disappeared and I didn't
hear about it. All I knew about Courtney Love was
that she was the crazy, evil person that somehow killed
Kurt Kobe, and I didn't even know. I assumed her
band was terrible, like never listened to a whole song.
(35:47):
None of the guys in my band. They were like,
oh yeah, holes, like cheesy and stupid, and we'd like
kind of make fun of their songs sometimes. And I
fell in love with those albums later. But I loved
Nirvana and it was like, yeah, I bet Cortney loves
like And I mean, oh, she's done a lot of
problematic stuff, not saying she's saying, but at least she
was a woman playing a guitar in the public eye,
(36:09):
and there wasn't much of that when I was growing up,
and she was definitely demoniced. You're right, absolutely beyond that time, probably,
which is right. Her only role had to do with
her husband's band, you know, never mind all this stuff
she produced herself. And her songs are good. I'm thinking
(36:31):
of singing them in my head. We're talking. I'm like,
oh yeah, agot about that band. And then her songwriting
was attributed to Cobaine too. They said, oh, he wrote
all her good songs she didn't, you know, which is hilarious.
You gotta love the conspiracy theories about there's no way
a woman did this if it's yeah, she definitely one right. Yeah,
(36:55):
that's a lot of hard work. I mean getting away
with murder on that scale. Like even if she did that,
she would be pretty smart. We really don't dress the
women we don't know. No, cool, cool, cool. I've been
thinking about that a lot lately. Um, well, so you
(37:16):
in the podcast you detail your band was you were
the only girl in in your first several bands. Oh yeah,
I was the only girl like in my school district.
But I knew of that played anything right, And because
this is a coming of age story, we might say
there there was all this kind of like drama dating
(37:38):
and yeah, can you can you talk a little bit
about that? And how do you think that sort of
impacted Oh yeah, it ruined things. And I think a
lot of women who started playing music young win through
this two in their first bands. You're just you're them
(38:00):
anich Pixie dream girl, because I mean I had really
bad social anxiety and as a nerdy, socially anxious person,
like I had my things I was nerdy about, and
I could talk to people about those things and that
was it. Like I didn't have social skills, but I
could be like this guitar has those kind of pickups,
and I know this album was recorded in Electric Lady
(38:20):
Land studios. Like I could nerd about music and there
weren't other girls that could do that. So I was
seen as like this amazing whatever by the boys in
my band, and they just immediately fell in love with me.
And when I started, when I joined my first band,
the leader of the band said absolutely no band dating,
but he quit, and as soon as he quit, the
(38:42):
other two boys in the band were like ready, and
they both kind of tricked me into dating them, the
first one. And I hate how common this is and
I hate it. Um. You know, my mom taught me
a little bit of about consent. You know, say no
if you're not comfortable, but it's a lot more complicated
(39:04):
in real life. She was just kind of like saying no.
I always say no, but you're trying to be cool
as a teenager, you know, you don't want to just
be like no, go away. And I had my first
band and this was my whole entire social life, so
I didn't want to mess it up. So we went
to me and my band went to the little like
town fair together and I wanted to ride the Ferris Wheel,
and I didn't have enough tickets, and some of my
(39:26):
other friends had tickets, and they were like, oh, if
you kiss the drummer, we'll give you a ticket. And
I was really self conscious because I had never kissed anyone,
and I didn't want anyone to know that because like
a prude at fifteen and so embarrassing. So I was like, sure,
i'll kiss him, but yeah, I can be cool. So
I did, and I hated it, and I got the ticket.
(39:48):
And then after that, everywhere I went he was holding
my hand and kissing me in the halls, and I
was like, oh, I have a boyfriend now, but if
I dumped him, my entire social life, work on my
band will be broken up. Like I could sense the
tension between the two boys because they both liked me,
and no one explicitly said any of this because we're teenagers,
(40:12):
but I knew if I messed it up but by band,
and I didn't think i'd ever have the confidence to
find another band. So and then once I finally dumped
the first one, the second one said go out with me,
or I'll break up the band and never talk to
you again. So I had two boyfriends and I wasn't
(40:34):
that excited about but I tried to make it work
and I was like, Okay, now I'm a little bit
cool because I have a boyfriend, but did I want one?
Not really? So yeah, it is unfortunate because like on
a grander scheme, we still see things like that with
adult women right where you're like, oh, yeah, I'm dating
(40:56):
this guy, are the band or I'm out all right,
like my chances are gone? That's really unfortunate. What's your story?
Where do I begin it? Is? I had a very
similar experience where one day I was just dating some
guy and I never said we were dating, right, And
you're like, when did I say yes? Or was I
(41:19):
really not given a chance? Yeah? Yeah, and we're just
together now and I had no idea what this was happening.
But then everyone's like, you've got to go stay with
your boyfriend. What I actually through this podcast, I've had
a really interesting experience of learning that I am a
sexual and my bands. Oh my my hit song that
(41:44):
I wrote was called I Don't Believe in Love and
I only now just put together like maybe I was
onto something and I wasn't just being super Maybe I
was sensing it, but unfortunately my band, even though it
was not very good, it and whatever, it broke apart
because I knew there was this expectation with one of
(42:06):
the other members that we would date, and I was like,
I don't even want to be around this, right, So
it's yeah, it's upsetting to think of lost opportunities or
what non consensual things have happened. Well, I mean, again,
this is kind of as you're talking about reflecting. This
is again another conversation about how we are taught at
a very young age that we can't say no, and
(42:28):
it's impolite to say no, and it's impolite to not
you know, just go with the flow, and that it's
okay for people to force their wills on people and
as long as they don't actually cry out no, then
they're in the right. You know. It is one more
conversation of like why we gotta we gotta break these
things down because again you're yeah, you're talking about the
(42:48):
fact that you were in a position where you were
the unicorn essentially and being the girl that knows music,
which there are a lot of those out there comics
like oh she's in a comic r. Now this is
your criterion yes, yes, in the story, but yeah, but
that's that conversation of why is this these expectations so
(43:13):
pigeonholing people into you have to be if you're like this,
this means this is what it means for you, and
this is the future you have, whether you want it
or not. And you should not be able to say
no because you've got to be polite. We've accepted you
in two hour and sometimes, like we were just talking about,
they figure out ways where there's no opportunity to say no,
(43:34):
and you feel like you'll be once again the crazy
girl if you force your opinion, your natural right to
say no. But if if it's not in there, and
you're trying to be a cool teenager, be like I'm
not a prude, then that social influence goes so far.
No matter what our parents or teachers, you know, best
(43:57):
intentions trying to explain consent to us. It doesn't happen
like that the first few times when you're really young,
you don't see things as black and white. But looking
back on that now and like I should have just
punched him in the nose. At the time, nothing absolutely
nothing mattered more than like social currency. That was it,
(44:17):
and so I would have. Yeah. I mean, luckily they
were nice enough. I just had some like goofy trips
to the movies and the diner and whatever. It wasn't
like a huge No one was trying to like marry
me whatever, you know. But I didn't want to spend
my time doing that, and I wanted to be in
my room just playing bass or you know, meet a
(44:39):
girl who also played music. That would have been amazing.
And I know there's so many others there were and
still are so many others alone in their rooms feeling
the same way. And that's kind of the goal of
my podcast is to get people to feel like, oh,
this thing that I thought only I went through or
I went through worse than an anyone else. So many
(45:01):
of us went through it. We were just at different
high schools or whatever. You know. Yeah, and I love
how you break that down of it's confusing when someone said, oh, yes,
if you make out this dude, which is a cool
thing to do, uh, we will get the ticket. And
it's just like so many factors coming in of I
(45:23):
don't want people to know that I have never kissed somewhere,
and then I don't want them to think I'm not cool,
and then it's just a lot more complex than oh yeah,
don't do that, kid, um And I think that's really
important for kids to know to hear these stories, these
really honest takes of what was going through your head
(45:43):
at that time and why it happened at all, and
like because that you don't necessarily understand all those things
until you look back, but you do know there's this confusing,
weird all this weirdness around it. Um. So I think
that's super important as a kid. I wish I had
had something like right, and I think, yeah, I love
the fact that you are having these conversations and putting
(46:04):
this out there because it's teaching goods. Is teaching young people, shoot,
probably teaching adults you can say no? And what does
that look like to be able to say no even
though you feel like you don't get that choice, because again,
we are oftentimes pushed to a corner and being not
given that choice and feeling like, oh, well, I gotta
do this if I want to be a B or C,
a D. And to actually have them being like, hey, no,
(46:26):
you actually can't say no and it's okay. And by
the way, you're probably not the only one that wishes
or wants to say no or just get off me,
get away from me, right and it still happens. I
mentioned this in a in an episode. I got tricked
into being on a date not that long ago, less
than a year ago. You do so sorry to hear that.
(46:51):
It's always like, oh, I feel you. I'm so sorry
that you've also been through that. But it's once again,
so good to not be alone and yucky, yucky things happen.
But yeah, I went to uh see a band play
and I was friends with the bass player. Um, and
so he, you know, put me on the guest list,
like at a really big club. But I had no
(47:13):
friends to go with me, went by myself. Whatever. I
was watching the show and there are two dudes next
to me and they're like, oh, you like this band.
I'm like, oh yeah, I know the bass player. And
we just talked about music. That's it. We talked about
nerdy guitar stuff, recording equipment like editing software, the most
(47:33):
you know, not flirtatious conversation. Ever, no one asked me
if I had a boyfriend. There was no talk of
like dating. No one even tried to figure out if
I was straight whatever. And then they, you know, this
group of guys was like, let's get a beer afterwards,
and I was like, sure, I have nothing to do,
(47:55):
and they seem nerdy and maybe it would be a
good like networking connection, like their audio people too. And
we get to the bar and suddenly, I don't know what,
like spaceship. The other people took off in but I'm
alone with this one guy and I just looked at him,
and he looked at me because he was totally taken
aback to he I don't think he was in on
(48:16):
this planet. He seemed like kind of pissed, and he
was like, we don't have to get a drink if
you don't want to. But it was just weird in
the you know, the people at the bar are like, oh,
you can sit here together or whatever. I'm like, no,
I'm not on a date. And I was like, I
live with someone, I can't be on a date with you.
What just and it was just confusing. I probably said
(48:37):
really confusing things to him too, And again I felt
like that fifteen year old where my brain just couldn't
compute what happened. I didn't know what to say I
did and I didn't want to just shout no, no, no,
but I like mumbled a bunch of stuff and then
went home and I was like, I'm an adult. These
other people were adults too. How is this still a
(48:58):
thing that happened? Yeah, I because of this show and
recently in therapy, so I've only been in therapy from
like one year, and thank you. One thing that I've
realized has really severely impacted me is that kind of
thing where what I immediately do is I'm like, what
(49:18):
did I What kind of signal did I? Where did
I go wrong? And then I feel horribly guilty about Okay, well,
now I've got to hurt this person's feeling and I
didn't know this was a whole thing, And then it
makes me not trust anyone else because they couldn't possibly
just want to talk to me. It's like, well, we're
gonna have sex or we're gonna date, like and it's
(49:39):
just completely eroded my sense of trust. And it's it's
really I didn't understand how deeply that that has impacted
me to this day. So yeah, that's another It's it
sounds so like seemingly innocent enough because I think you
(50:03):
said in that episode, surely the friends were just they
thought they were doing their friends of solid or whatever. Yeah,
but we need to think about the implications and repercussions
of those kinds of things. Yeah, and who knows, They
don't know what my experience could have been. Maybe I
had been through something similar that turned out really badly
and dangerously before, Like just leaving a woman alone with
(50:25):
a strange man is never good, like that could lead
to even if they were somehow magically knew they were
all wonderful people, like, yeah, that's not cool. That's not
for you to decide the friends to decide whether or
not they should be together or whatever whatnot. And I
think this is also again, it's a similar conversation of
(50:46):
all of these things that are built up in society
and the things that you could experience and continue to
experience today. I mean, I'm with you. I haven't been
on accidental days, so I don't understand that person. I
think I'm a very very very awkward person that I
have the resting bitch face. So that does really well
for me. Um. But the fact that you know all
(51:09):
of these conversations is just the whole again, freedom to
be your own person and what that looks like and
trying to establish as a child, because that's what we're doing,
is growing up, trying to figure out what are my values,
what are my abilities to control what's in my life?
And and as we know, for the longest time, children
(51:30):
were not allowed to be in control and and oftentimes
told these are the things you're gonna be do you
gotta listen, don't talk back, just go with it, um
And I know this makes a lot of sense. And
there's the thing about respect. We can talk about that
and you know, be raising a child to be appropriate
and all of these things. But for the longest time,
for our generation, your generation and my generation, because we're
(51:52):
a little different off, we're having to unlearn some of
these toxic ideas of our autonomy. And we see that again.
I love that you're talking about it now because that's
still a problem. That still can be a problem for sure.
And again there's a difference between teaching them respect and
teaching them you know, kindness and empathy versus teaching them
(52:13):
you know, being controlled and being allowed to be controlled.
And I think that's a huge conversation that especially women,
especially in women who are interested in music in the
in the field that is dominated by men were interested
in like the comedy comedy scene, but like cosplay and all.
(52:34):
What does that look like when it's been you know,
manned by men literally, And so what does that look
like when we're teaching ourselves and teaching the generations younger
than us, younger generations of this is what it looks
like to be able to again have an autonomous opinion
and being able to care for yourself and being able
(52:55):
to control the environment around you to keep yourself safe.
And that's a big versation and I love that that's
what you are teaching as well. Yeah, it has been.
I will say one of the most rewarding things for me,
beyond connecting with all of the women and girls that listen,
is some male friends in my life have said, I've
(53:18):
never considered what it like when I asked you to
go do something with me. I just don't have the
same level of it. Was somebody um who was saying
when we first met, he invited me to go see
a movie with him and he said, oh, I've never
considered that for you. That wasn't a simple oh yes
I want to go, like there was all of this
(53:38):
other stuff. Yes, and if it is like, am I safe? Like?
Am I safe? Right? Um? So that has been really
rewarding as well. And I think as we have these
conversations with the younger generation, hopefully we're all I think
it's a lot of unlearning, unlearning for both and all
(54:02):
all of the genders, all of you know, all the conversations,
all the generations talking about we have to unlearn a
lot of toxic Yeah. True, true. We do have some
more for you listeners, but first we have one more
quick break for word from our sponsor and we're back.
(54:31):
Thank you sponsor. Let's get back into it. I would
love to hear your thoughts on maybe that's part of
that power of music four girls and women and what
ways it can interact with feminism and activism. Yeah, power
of music, it's so powerful. I mean, well, there's the
(54:51):
public political version of that, and there's the personal version
of that, which is what I mostly focus on in
my own work, because I think playing music or any
creative outlet, especially any creative outlet where you can combine
like a physical action, you know, writing too, I guess
(55:12):
that's not as physical, but any creative outlet I think
is um one of just the best things you can
do for any mental health issues. UM. And I I
think medicine and therapy have gone a long way for me,
But if those things disappeared, I think music is and
(55:37):
before I had those things, music was was everything for
me in that regard. UM, because you can express yourself
or you can just play along with a song and
feel like because when we're going through mental health things,
it sometimes it feels like it's never gonna end, and
everything is just so confusing up and down. You don't
(55:58):
know which of your thoughts you would believe, etcetera. You
have no structure. It kind of feels like the floor
crumbles out from under you and you don't know where
you're you're going to drift off into outer space. But
when you're playing a song, you have a rhythm, you
have a tempo, you have chord changes to follow, you
have a structure, You know what you're supposed to be doing,
(56:18):
and you can add your own creative experimentation to that.
Or you can just play a G E. Whatever and
play along. And so just feeling secure in a three
minute song or listening to an album and knowing what
songs are going to come next, UH can do so
much and for other people, you know, they have different things,
(56:40):
whether it's um comedy, whether it's playing dungeons and dragons
or LARPing, whatever it is, whenever you can create this
own little world for yourself and feel powerful and secure
and in control, like, that's what that's what will eventually
change the world is people finding their own security and
(57:03):
power in whatever it is they do. And for me,
that's absolutely music. And then it takes the personal into
the political and the global. So it's beautiful. It is
that I love that I do too, So thank you
so much again for being here, and thank you for
what you and being open and being so personal because
(57:25):
it takes a lot, so that vulnerability is beautiful, So
thank you for doing that. Yeah, thank you both for
doing what you do too. Thank you, thank you, thank you,
thank you. Where can the listeners find you? Yeah, So,
Dear Young Rocker is available wherever you get your podcasts,
and my band Banana is also on band camp. Um
(57:48):
it's a grunge kind of band if you're into that,
and we play around Boston all the time. And there's
more info about me and what I do at der
Young Rocker dot com, so go check that out. Um, anyone.
When we're in Boston, we'll meet up, we'll meet done.
We would have to catch a show too, for sure,
exactly exactly. Well, thank you again for being here. Um
(58:11):
if you would like to email us, oh my gosh,
you can. Our email is Stuff Media mom Stuff at
iHeart media dot com. You can also find us on
Twitter at mom Stuff podcast or on Instagram at Stuff
I've Never Told You. Thanks as always to your superproducer
Andrew Howard, who also rocks. He does rock, and thanks
to you for listening Stuff I've Never Told You. The
production of I Heart Radio. For more podcast from my
(58:33):
Heart Radio is the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Samantha McVey
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