Adulting - #83 Choice Feminism with Haley Nahman

Episode Date: November 8, 2020

Hey Podulters, I hope you’re having an ok lockdown so far! This week's episode is with writer and editor based in New York, Haley Nahman. She was the features director and deputy editor of Man Repeller, and now she runs her own blog ‘maybe baby’ with 30 thousand subscribers. I found her when I read her blog ‘the Emily Ratajkowski effect’, that she wrote in response to Emily’s essay on reclaiming her own image. Here is the piece if you haven't read it yet; https://haleynahman.substack.com/p/24-the-cult-of-emily-ratajkowski. We discuss lots of the themes in Haley's blog but mostly consider 'choice feminism'. I hope you enjoy, and as always please do rate review and subscribe. Haley's Books -No Time To Spare, Ursula Le GuinNever Let Me Go, Kazuo IshiguroOn Writing Well, William Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fandu Casino Daily Jackpots. Guaranteed to hit by 11 p.m. with your chance at the number one feeling, winning. Which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do. Who wants this last parachute? I do. Daily Jackpots. A chance to win with every spin and a guaranteed winner by 11 p.m. every day. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario.

Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Or visit connectsontario.ca. Select games only. Guarantee void if platform or game outages occur. Guarantee requires play by at least one customer until jackpot is awarded. Or 11 p.m. Eastern. Restrictions apply. See full terms at canada.casino.fandu.com. Please play responsibly. Hey, podators. I hope you're having an okay lockdown so far, wherever you are in the world. I'm excited to share with you this week's episode, which is with Hayley Nauman. She is a writer and editor based in New York.

So obviously, as usual, this is done via Zoom, but also not Zoom, Zencastr, but also across different time zones. Pretty exciting. And she used to be the features director and deputy editor of Man Repeller. And now she runs her own blog, Maybe Baby, which is how I found her when I read her blog post, The Emily Ratajkowski Effect, which was in response to Emily's essay on reclaiming her own image. And in Hayley's piece, she explores choice feminism, which is a concept I personally kind of battle with. You know, is it right or wrong? Is that even the right question to ask when it comes to things like this? And I really wanted to discuss it with her because I loved Emily's essay when I first read it. But I found that Hayley's was so interesting and impactful and it really made me think so if you haven't actually read the piece yet I would suggest reading it

before listening to the episode and I've linked it in the show notes this episode was recorded a few weeks ago so prior to lockdown and also prior to Emily's announcement of her pregnancy which is obviously very exciting um just in case you thought that's random they didn't mention that it is from a few weeks ago as always I do hope that you enjoy and please do rate review and subscribe bye hello and welcome to adulting today I'm joined by Hayley Nauman hello how are you doing I'm good just looking out my window in Brooklyn the trees are changing etc what is the weather like with you it's really dropped here and it's quite cold but I've never been to New York so I have to live through well yeah it's getting I feel like fall came really

aggressively it just was like hot one day and then suddenly it was sweater weather so it's a combination of like good and bad because good because it's like nice to have novelty to change and feel like the world is moving forward and bad because now we can't socialize outside so yeah what's your what's your regulations like because we've had this thing now changing where you can't meet up inside but you can meet up outside but as you said like when no one's gonna go to the park this is pretty cold I know exactly I feel like people are really pushing it like there's space heaters outside of restaurants and stuff and people are having dinner in like full winter regalia it's like a whole new culture is cropping up oh I love that but any excuse for dinner to be fair

I would definitely you know wear my fattest coat just to get some pasta. Yeah, it's a new experience. Yeah, definitely. So before we get into the conversation, I wonder if you could give an introduction to who you are and what you do. Sure. I am a writer and editor based in New York. I moved here about four and a half years ago to work at Man Repeller. I started at Man Repeller as a junior editor, and by the time I left was a features director right as the pandemic hit New York. I just to go freelance.

That timing was not on purpose. But so over the last six months, I've been developing, like, or maybe developing is too generous of a term. I've been figuring out how to carve out a space for myself in this industry that's not reliant on kind of the mainstream media outlets. And so I started a newsletter called Maybe Baby in March. And it's really grown over the last six months. And I have about like 30,000 subscribers. And it's been really nice to just like, write more freely freely because it's not ad run. So I don't, I'm not really beholden to any outside forces. And I feel like a sense of freedom to kind of talk about whatever I want in whatever way I want in a way that feels like really liberating compared to my previous work.

Not that my work at Manipillar wasn't fun in other ways, but I just have found this kind of progression to be really satisfying. So that's what I've been up to. Well, congratulations. That's incredible. I mean, especially in the climate that we're in, to have turned that around and really built such a big, 30,000 subscribers to a newsletter is massive.

So really big congratulations on that. Thank you so much. That's also how i discovered you so i i came across you from your piece that you wrote in response to emily ratajkowski's essay and i thought it was incredible and as i just said to you before i read it like three times um it was really relevant to conversations that i have in my work both on this podcast and a book club that i run um and i just thought it was it was such an incredible piece. Is that one of the ones that you think has been shared most widely or what was the response in, in coming back to you from

after that piece? Cause I, I can imagine that that would have been a difficult thing to write under a publication that, that probably definitely needed the freedom of your own blog in order to get that out. Yeah, totally. Well, thank you so much for the nice words I feel like that one is definitely the most popular it um it was the kind of my only newsletter that I think kind of had a moment on Twitter because a lot of my writing is it's actually shared a lot on Instagram I don't know I don't know where if that's like something had to do with the tone I'm not sure but um maybe because I have a larger following on Instagram but um this one uh I think it kind of makes sense that

this one had its moment on Twitter because it's a little bit uh spicier which I'm I I feel like I have a lot more spicy takes in uh private than I do in public because I am, I'm, I'm very concerned with like mutual understanding and maybe like softness. And, and so I, sometimes I shy away or I want to make things as like digestible as possible for everyone and like not incendiary. So this was a little bit of a a gamble um but and it did get some pushback for sure but it also got a lot of um a lot of attention I think for maybe saying something that a lot of people were thinking I had a lot of people reach out and say like I hadn't seen um I or I've been feeling like this way or I felt a little off about Emily's piece and it was really nice to see you articulate uh kind of my private thoughts so you know one benefit to kind of putting myself on the line in that sense yeah and I completely relate to keeping the spicy thoughts inside I

agree I don't I also don't take pleasure in reading scathing articles I don't feel like that's what this was I think that's maybe maybe why so many people did resonate with it because it didn't feel, I certainly didn't read it like it felt like a personal attack or like you mentioned some critiques that have had a lot of press for being, you know, quite cruel and that it's hard sometimes to draw the line between when is something a review and when is it just kind of like a personal vendetta against the author that you're reviewing. And I don't think that that this was on that level which is why I think I found it so impactful because I think that's a really difficult line to tread actually especially as you say like with tone you don't know how someone's going to read it or take that

delivery and it's sometimes easier just to stay on the safe side and just not get involved with what can end up being quite like a messy scenario I imagine. Yeah absolutely and I feel like I wanted I kind of want to be able to critique people without necessarily like attacking their character it's something it's a kind of like middle ground that I feel like is sometimes lost in like modern online discourse which is this idea that you can respect someone and like some of their choices or some of their ideas and kind of critique other ones and they can do it back to you and that's kind of like what a productive discourse can be but now I feel like

we're so I mean call it like tribalism or whatever but I think we're really committed to like one side and supporting somebody completely or or not supporting them completely and um and yeah I think sometimes we fall into a trap of like really homogenous ideas that like aren't don't have enough nuance well I think that's a really neat segue into what I want to talk to you about when it comes to choice feminism because I think that as feminists there's a real idea of tribalism where as you talk about in the piece, there's an inability to critique within the movement in case that in of itself is seen as being anti-feminist. And I think that you articulated something that I myself think about with myself all the time,

and you also kind of make yourself complicit in it, and you kind of considered that side of it as well but I think it's so well done because right now when it comes to modern feminism it's kind of it feels very safe that you're allowed to do anything and then say oh it was a feminist choice and then I realized that for too long I felt so comforted by this idea that I wasn't actually doing anything worthy of calling it feminist but I was kind of positioning myself as a feminist person online. But actually, what was I really doing? When did you, have you always had that stance? Have you always felt like you were able to watch this happening within this new wave of feminism? Or did you feel like you also had to have a moment of reckoning where you

realized that I guess it's become so commercialized and so mainstream that some of us got can get caught up and forget the real point of why we even ascribe to this form of activism as it were yeah I definitely went definitely the latter I went through my own process of realizing that I was focused on maybe the feminism that like most affected white women and like women of a particular life station. Like maybe you could call that like this kind of self-esteem side of feminism or maybe just like the individual impacts versus the kind of broader sort of intersectional economic issues, I definitely had that awakening at some point in my 20s.

And I think as I further learned about capitalism and understood how marketing and all those things are intertwined with feminism, I think I've gleaned like a deeper and deeper understanding like I think that one of the problems with the like choice feminism is just the idea that that it's it's very individually focused so like some people call it like white feminism or girl boss feminism neoliberal or like meanin or choice like they're I think I think of these all kind of part of the same type of feminism which is really concerned with, like, individual action and individual empowerment.

And where I always get stuck is these not being scalable. So, like, you can be, you can go through, like, a hellish journey of, of like being oppressed as a teen like let's let's just take like let's even take the experience of like a white woman who who's

who's financially comfortable let's just take her if we take her problems which might be like focused more on like body image or self-esteem or feeling like um you know she has to please the male gaze or something like that. Obviously talking about like maybe a cis straight woman. If she seeks out liberation through like, you know, taking control of her image and wearing makeup to make herself feel better and, you know, buying the right clothes and like all these things that we might say are like empowering because she's choosing to kind of reclaim the narrative. It's not really like a scalable solution for other women or even for the next generation who are in her same position. It's like, it's, do you understand what I say,

what I mean when I say like not scalable? Oh yeah, completely. No. And I think it's, it's such a big Pandora's box to open up because I also fell into this idea that, you know,

if I could position myself and I, and I agree that all of the cashiers, you just had the lean in and the garbals and et cetera, that they are all the same concept where you feel like you're doing something good by like managing to traverse this like patriarchal capitalism that inherently doesn't have your best interests at heart but actually all you're doing is feeding into a system and making sure that you win you're not bringing up anyone else with you and you're not challenging the values of that system um so yeah totally yeah

yeah it makes complete sense but it's such a pandora's box to open because um it really throws into relief then what are all these decisions that i'm making and if i can no longer kind of make myself feel better at night by saying that oh well it's feminist of me to do this then does it mean that i almost can't do those things and you actually one thing i thought was really incredibly valuable that you spoke about and also quite a big thing to do is I do paid influencing work on my Instagram because that's kind of where I started off and you talk about how you actually it became too uncomfortable ethically for you to carry on doing that um and I think that's a really a big move because you actually are starting to make decisions based on this ideology that you've realized is is flawed how much of a big

decision was that for you? Because you could have easily carried on and I'm sure that actually wouldn't have been critiqued that greatly. So you must be really challenging yourself and your beliefs enough to make such a big move. If it was a big move to you, I don't know. To me, it felt like it would be exciting to my own life. Yeah, I mean, I think that there were definitely times where I was turning down maybe, like, more financial comfort. But I will say that, like, obviously, you have to be, you have to have a certain amount of privilege to, like, turn down money. So I think that, like, yes, I think that, you know, there's, I don't think it really comes down to individual choice at all. So I don't think that, I think that to, to say that, like, for me to like not wear makeup or to not do spawn con is like, is the solution is just kind of the same flawed argument as the opposing

idea, which is that like choice is the ultimate liberation. So I think like for me, the issue isn't really so much in what individual actions are and aren't feminist. Like I think that you can believe in like female liberation or like broader liberation and do things that are just kind of you getting through the day. Like it is a, it is a, it's a flawed system. So many people have to participate in it just to exist and, and to feel okay. And that's like, I don't think that you need to to justify these actions and rework them to fit into a feminist framework that feels flawed to me.

And I think the reason that happens is I is a big plays a big role. Like if we think about the way that people are now brands, if you what do you think, like, if you think about the primary mode of a brand, like an actual brand, it's to like be consistent, you know. And so I think when we make ourselves into brands, we feel like we also have to be completely consistent. But that's not really how people are. In my in my view, i think that people are a lot more complicated than that and i think the part of the there's like two forces at work that make us um that are sort of skewing feminism this way and one of them is that we feel that because we identify with feminist ideas therefore everything we do must be feminist which is kind of a flattening and the second one would be like the marketing of feminism which is

like this huge capitalist beast that is telling us over and over that it's empowering to spend money on cosmetics or skincare so there's like these two ideas that are forcing us towards like this horizon of like feminism is actually just not doing anything to change the system and it I feel like it just becomes like a self-defeating line of thought totally when when I did my book club I think which is maybe when I around when I messaged you we were reading Gia Tonantino's trick mirror and I brought up and I said I get I set everyone extra reading and I made them read your piece I'm like a bad school teacher so I was like you have to read this as well and we all got into this bit of like an existential crisis because we realized the

problem actually was just that we're calling all the shit feminist that isn't feminist like it's fine if you do it like what you're saying we shouldn't just have to be surviving as well it's such a sad state and sorry state of the world that there is such a huge chasm between the rich and the poor those who have and those who don't have but but at the same time like we shouldn't be expecting we want we want to be able to bring people up but just because you have a certain level of privilege like you making yourself suffer in thinking that's the name of feminism like you're saying that also doesn't help anyone so just kind of do what you need to do to make your you feel happy but just stop framing that as a feminist act because that that's what makes us lazy I think this is what I

was trying to say before because I felt like I was doing all these little feminist acts like oh I'm wearing makeup because actually it empowers me it's like then what what actual action have I done and obviously there are things outside of that that I was doing but as you said I was getting so caught up in the social media and also there is a lovely um and maybe this is the it's not just the white feminine size that there is a huge sense of community with um women literally supporting each other to do whatever the fuck they want which is lovely but again it's still a set of women that can do that have the access to the choice in the first place so yeah and yeah exactly that's i think that's really well put there's such a there's

there is a community around it i think the problem is the like the ties with economic viability right with like makeup being like a billion dollar it's like a hundred billion dollar industry in the U.S. I'm not sure what it is in the U.K. but I'm sure huge yeah and it's funny yeah I think sorry you go oh you go ahead oh I think I was just gonna say um look I do think that I've gained a lot by trying to, like, the idea of sort of acting according to my values, I do get something out of that. But it is, like, personally, it is personally empowering at times, like, whatever empowering even means. I do think, I think it's helped me. I wouldn't say again, like, I don't think that it's the ultimate goals for everybody to like challenge themselves to drop these, you know, fines. Um, but I think like on a personal level, I have, I do think I understand the mechanisms that are at work a little better having, having removed myself in some places which by the way I'm not completely out like you know

I'm just as much as I I participate as well just there are sort of marked places where I've tried to challenge my desires and I think it's interesting to realize at least like with makeup when I stopped wearing it I realized um like I realized the impact that the impact of like waking up every day and thinking that like I couldn't leave the house like just what that message sends to you about like your worth it's like this weird invisible force and I I don't really I don't even know if it's worth getting into like the whole makeup thing because obviously it's really complicated but I do think that there's something to be gained um just by sometimes examining the ideas that are kind of fueling our behaviors I think it's really I think the makeup one's actually such an interesting place to start

because what I was actually going to say secondly was when I first got into feminism or started learning about it it was kind of not pre-choice feminism but that wasn't so much of the moment it really was like you've got a challenge like why you're wearing this, why are you doing this? And the whole concept of me learning about feminism was like, is this me or is this my conditioning? Every single action that I took, I kept trying to figure out why I was doing things and then make the decision based on what I wanted to do, but outside of the conditioning. So it sounds like choice, but it's not. It's more like, I was just, it made it made me I did the same as you kind of stopped wearing as much makeup I try not to I was actually I hate bodycon dresses they're the most ugly do you remember those ones that were

like ripped like striped oh yeah and I used to like always buy them I was like I don't like them this isn't how I like to dress and that was like a liberation even though it's like doesn't it's not really and someone else might love bodycon dresses but what's interesting is then over the years it's like reversed and all these things which I kind of made peace with thinking I'm better off without them actually and they're just part of my conditioning it suddenly became like in vogue to be like no this thing which is very much in line with the things that women are supposed to do is now feminist if you choose to do it and I kind of feel like I've gone back in time in my decision making because the

rhetoric around it has become I guess not less radical but it's it's obviously if you can stick with the status quo and feel the same amount of um like as if you're doing the same then it's much easier to just kind of float through life making decisions you would have made anyway and feeling like you've done the right thing and and the makeup thing was interesting because I remember Zadie Smith did a piece about how um she couldn't believe that her daughter wanted to spend so long in front of the mirror do you remember this piece um or she spoke to the guardians literary festival and it got so much backlash and and the thing that I learned about makeup then was about how especially for trans communities it can be a massive thing of safety or like it's a privilege like Zadie Smith's absolutely beautiful and has

perfect skin and everyone's talking about how much of a privilege it is to not be able to wear makeup and I think that was the first introduction to me of the complexities of these arguments on those kind of superficial layers of choice if that makes sense yeah it does I think like I think maybe the the problem is that like the enemy is not people wearing makeup or people not wearing makeup the enemy is like you know patriarchal capitalism to just like throw out a really general vague term but I think like the you know it's hard to for for me, it was hard to give up makeup. Like I felt sometimes like feeling like I wasn't like knowing that I could be like more attractive with makeup, you know, people will say, I am also really lucky in that, um,

you know, I don't have, uh, like a lot of acne and things like things that make me, that would make me feel really othered. And so that's like definitely a privilege that can't go unstated but um even even for me I think it was challenging to feel that way and so I don't think that the solution is like everyone should be challenged because ultimately like we don't we aren't choosing to feel lesser than because of our faces we're like that's that's an illusion that's not um I feel like a lot of companies want us to think that it's just in our head yes you know like do you remember I Feel Pretty that movie by Amy Schumer oh my god yes yeah like I actually recently re-watched it for some reason but I remember reading a really great critique of that movie by Amanda Hess in the New York Times that was talking

about how um kind of the underlying moral of that movie was that like your self-consciousness is like all in your head and like if you just were confident then everyone would be attracted to you and you would be like just getting just as much as like a conventionally hot person do you remember that yeah it puts the onus on women or anybody who feels uh marginalized to like just have to just like love themselves exactly and this is that's what I was going to say to you it's kind of like this punch down thing where you know it's always down to it it goes across the board and actually when you're saying like giving up makeup it keeps saying I've basically made a vow to give up fast fashion and I've been doing really well but again I found it really hard to break up with just ordering stuff from Zara like I find myself putting stuff in my basket

and be like no you can't buy it and um yeah that's more of like an environmentalist thing but it was so interesting because sometimes I go through these moments where I'm like why can't I just I'm like to my boyfriend like why can't I just buy a top I just want to buy a top why is it my fault that the planet is burning and I think sometimes we feel like this about it's not no I know but you know it's just real local bullshit it's not your fault this is like it's the fucking billionaires who are profiting off of these industries like it's it's systemic i think that it's like a huge marketing campaign like it's if you look back at like the biggest marketing campaigns around like recycling and like other um sort of

uh campaigns to get people to take personal responsibility for the environment it's they're all like funded by like oil companies like it's it's not i think there is a huge marketing effort to make people think that it's their fault when there's not actually choice for that many people what we need to fight for is better choices you know what I mean yes and I remember I remember someone saying to me that um the best ad campaign for that feeling was when I think it was Cheryl did an ad talking about the they basically invented like the carbon footprint and they were like ways that you can reduce your carbon footprint and it was like a really clever way of making people feel

responsible for you know what we put out into the world but it's it's so funny because you you've made me recognize you're right that the choice it doesn't really matter what the choice is whether it's the the so-called feminist one or if it's the more conventional choice the choice in of itself is kind of irrelevant because you're still only choosing from a really small pool of choices anyway um and they're all going to end up in the same place yeah i think that's like what i find so inspiring about like um kind of the more collective action approach, which is the idea that instead of everybody getting a moral lesson and us like having to reach every individual and get them to change their actions in a broken system that is going, it's going to be very hard for them to change

their actions because everything is set up to do the opposite. Instead of doing that, what if we like came together, what if we all acknowledged that these things were not liberating and came together and demanded basically like different choices, different options, like, you know, better policies that are more like economic, obviously like feminism is mostly about like the economic wellbeing of like poor women and black women and the people who are like who like this subordination of a certain gender is like trickling down all the way to like huge systemic problems you know that's what needs to be fixed not to like not to make it too huge

but no and I think it was really good because I'm trying to find it now but there's a piece in in the essay where you talk about this as well. And you're like, instead of, you know, making all women, no matter your body shape on Instagram, feel like they're sexy, why don't we demand that, you know, we have a better value system than everyone deserves to feel hot? Because actually when you really think about like that, it's because it's so ingrained in us that you were saying,

like I could look more attractive with makeup. You don't realize how much of that, how much of a pull we have towards this I find it sometimes when I really know it's so valued yeah it's it's so insidious that I don't it's only when I'm trying to think of something like it was like the other day I was thinking about what to wear to my boyfriend's birthday and I love wearing like suits and trousers I never really wear dresses and all of a sudden I decided that I was going to wear like a silky slinky mini dress I was going depop for hours and hours like searching for this dress and I realized it's because I'd been looking

on Instagram all day and just seen all these girls looking at me and it was just I know that sounds so stupid but it was like somewhere deep down inside me I wanted this validation of looking like this woman that I'm supposed to look like or whatever it is so much so that I wasted like two hours of my life when depop trying to find a dress it's like what a waste of my life totally and I think that's like that something that this reminds me of is like body neutrality have you heard of this as opposed to like body positivity yes yes it's like because I think you know and that's not to say that there's not like personal empowerment. Again, it always comes back to like personal versus like systemic.

But and I even think that there's some systemic value, of course, like seeing different bodies, like huge, huge and important. But I think that like there's always going to be this like hierarchy on instagram so like maybe now it's not just thin women that are held up but it's like it's like rich women who can like afford to have like incredible skin and like really cool clothes like they have time to like develop a style maybe they have time to like take great photos and like there's just there's different there's like there's still this hierarchy that it's just like the details are changing and not that that's not positive in some ways like I think that there's it's broadening but it's still making people feel left out yeah and I think that this is the other thing that's so interesting and layered I guess about

this and I think what I'm starting to peel away from when your article really cemented this for me is talking about things through the lens of it being feminism and rather looking at it as something else. I feel like we need like a different word. But in terms of Emily Ratajkowski talking about feminism, I think in some ways, actually, that might be helpful for a young woman who's never even heard of it. And there's ideas about like visibility just even on the concept. And that could, I guess, in some small way have an impact in that sense and you know as you say like it is really important to see different bodies like I think even I personally found it so even though I'm in like a straight sized slim white able-bodied body for me to see a diversity

of bodies on my feed is also I just think better for everyone all around but I also agree that the focus is still then on women's bodies rather than like a more useful conversation about systemic change whether that comes to you know economic change or racism or or culture whatever it might be um and I think that this is where I got so tied up in knots because even as we're talking I feel like we're not holding up part of the net that we're supposed to be supporting when we're having this conversation. Do you feel, do you know what I mean by that? Yeah, I think I do. Yeah, I think like the problem is like, I think maybe our goals are too small like and this is kind of what you mentioned but like is our goal for like all different types of people to be influencers it just feels like I mean I don't find that super

inspiring like I think it's maybe inspiring within the system but if we're trying to think outside of it I would I would probably like rather that we like coalesce around like a different set of values. I think about like, you know what I think about all the time is, I'm trying to think of what the book was. It was like a, I'm going to forget what it was called. But I was reading about kind of like what happened to feminism between like the so-called first wave and second wave so like if we think about the first wave being like suffrage women's right to vote which is like you know late 19th early 20th century and then second wave which was like in the 60s and 70s and it was like you know bra burning and stuff like that um there was actually i think we we tend to think of like feminism as always

progressing on like a steady incline like women are always getting more power but that's not actually true like and by the way i'm not like a feminist scholar i'm just like your average like interested writer and maybe like cultural commentator but um in the like 50s after the war when a lot of women had gone into the workforce because men had vacated their jobs um there was this sort of shift in power and women were gaining a lot more power and financial and otherwise and there was like basically a huge marketing effort to like put women back in the home and this was like the birth of modern marketing as well like you know we always think of marketing as always having been around but like this is when like shaving your legs became like more universally done or maybe

maybe nationally um i'm mostly thinking of like the u.s but there was like this effort to bring women back into the home there's a valorization of like the housewife and like a huge culture was created around this idea and like the whole like women's the progress that had been gained was like completely like unraveled and this is what ended up leading to like the kind of bra burning era which was like no we're not going to ascribe to these like really um limiting like ideas about what womanhood is um and so I think like now what we're doing I think is embracing these ideas of what womanhood is um as a form of feminism. And I think it feels in some ways to me like a regression. FanDuel Casino's exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling, winning,

which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do. Who wants this last parachute? I do. Enjoy the number one feeling, winning, in an exciting live dealer studio, exclusively on FanDuel Casino, where winning is undefeated. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly.

Yeah. And I know what you're talking about. It's the 1950s. It's literally when they do like the ads about what makes a good housewife and like do those little pamphlets about like how to look after your husband and all of that. I know exactly what you're talking about. And it's interesting to think about. You're right. Because it's almost like we have like a real reverence for what it is to be a woman in like very stereotypical ways and suddenly I mean there's a lot of divergence of that that's that's

generalizing so much but that's what I feel that and I do think the rise of social media and I know that we've always been obsessed with beauty but I feel like beauty as you say like it's been commodified so much more it's worth so much more and that this fascination with even the conversations we have around feminism like I try not to I try to have most of my conversations not centered around white privileged women like me because for the most part I have every privilege that my white male counterparts do and so it'd be redundant for me to talk about you know fighting for equality when I also work in an industry that favors women anyway so I try not to have these conversations but around the table or like when I'm having a general discussion it always comes back down to beauty and the inequality of the way that women

are treated on again things which we've been debating for years whether that's like cat calling or it's not that they're not important but it just shows what you're saying that like stuff hasn't changed that much because the conversation when it comes to the separation of of not necessarily even gender because obviously we know all those different intersections are really unevenly weighted in lots of ways but I just feel like every time it just comes back to discussing and dissecting how women and their sexuality is either lauded or disemployed in certain scenarios and I wonder if that's why we find it like so people like some people replied to me about your piece with Emily

Ratajkowski and they found it hard to get their head around how you could separate Emily talking from about her experiences which were abhor, that probably the majority of women could either relate to on some level or know someone who's been through a similar experience. And her upholding the same things which kind of allow some of those things to happen. I feel like I'm being so inarticulate. Does any of what I've just said make sense? No, I think I get what you're saying. it's like victim blaming yeah yeah kind of like yeah yeah yeah and I definitely heard some of those critiques as well I think my response and I thought that was I think most the most useful version of that feedback I got was like well on what grounds are we critiquing the piece like is it is it a personal

essay that's kind of just adding to the me like is it is it a personal essay that's kind of just adding to the me too chorus or is it meant to be like politically expedient and I think that that's a fair question to ask I think I like I went towards the latter because of the the framework that she's been pushing for like her whole career um Like, I think maybe what might've been more compelling is for her to say like, hey, I've been arguing for a decade that it's empowering to commodify yourself, like do it first.

And there is power in controlling your own image. And then, but now I've realized looking back on my whole career that I haven't had that much power like there are big limits to that framework and like what does that say about the system and it's not so much about her deserving anything as much as it's it was hard for me to read this piece and have it be lauded without it, without that like broader conversation being had. It just felt like a further like cementing of this idea that just speaking out about something is,

is kind of the end goal when really it should just be like the first step. Does that make sense? Totally. And, and there's a few things. It's such a good point that you said that so well. And it's almost like we're in denial of the fact that, so I feel like sometimes when you make it in a system, because you've made it, you then have to defend it. So you'll hear women who are really high up,

like CEOs or whatever, like Sheryl Sandberg, for example, then giving all these anecdotes of all the things that happened to them on the way up. But because they're so insistent on i guess protecting their own success they don't have a question like what it would have been like as you say like if that glass ceiling hadn't been been there or if they hadn't had to traverse through perhaps like it's not screwing other people over but you really have to like shimmy your way into getting to the top in these structures so that's a really clever way of putting it and I wonder if that is because

that there is a level of wanting to protect the system that you're in which is completely antithetical to the idea that then what you're talking about is feminist because the system is the problem yeah saying yeah I mean I think I have a lot of empathy for that like wanting to justify your journey like the internet is a really scary place like I find it very hard to be complicated on the internet because it's once it's not transmitted very well like the idea that you could have one ideal and have um and have done things that are sort of to use your word, antithetical to it, is to invite a lot of shaming and a lot of betrayal. And that's not to say that I'm defending Sheryl Sandberg. I think that she's a great example of a blatant capitalist who's done horrible things more broadly because of her connection with facebook which is like a very just dark force but like i think that in general i understand

i understand like emily's defensive posture um because that's i think that's kind of the like i said it's like that two-part beast of like a the internet wanting like us to flatten ourselves into like an icon or a brand of like one idea and everything must follow suit and also this idea that like corporations like and the billionaires who run them have like twisted the conversation so that uh like things that are not liberatory like are so it's like this two-pronged approach yeah I think like it's I'm like I think I've been thinking about um like if we think about that marketing push in the mid-century to like bring women back into the home

it sort of reminds me of like what we've done with girl boss feminism, which is like, no, no, no. Like don't push against these dark forces, like embrace them. They're not the exact same, but it's almost like a second. It's like, maybe it's like a one step forward, two steps back thing, or maybe two and one back, whatever. There's the one that's like, not that's like less depressing. And maybe like, I don't know if you think about i was just reading this article um about ursula or i guess it's ursula laguine's birthday today do you know who ursula laguine is no i don't know who that is

sorry okay no no not at all she's like a she's a prominent um science fiction writer but also just like a thinker um she died i think a couple years ago but um she somebody tweeted a quote of hers which is um we live in capitalism its power seems inescapable but then so did the divine right of kings and i was thinking about how like what if uh in kind of in feudalism the people who were being oppressed had like rebranded their oppression to like be empowering wouldn't that be like obviously that would be counter to like their liberation but i feel like in some ways that's what we've done and part of the coping mechanism but yeah when we're talking I feel like we're in a Russian doll every time you like lift the layer off another one just like pops up so it's like I just want to like go back and be like no I didn't mean that or like because it's so true you can't it's really

hard to dissect what an individual does because as you say like i am the most flawed person and i actually wrote this down because i wanted to say this because i loved it in the piece where you're you quote someone else and then you say um you said a friend of mine now casually refers to as informed insexualism the effort to write oneself out of corrupted alignments by conscientiously demonstrating an ability to comprehend them and I was about to say oh my god that's what I do and that is like meta because I'm basically saying I do the thing where you say you do the thing in order to get out of being responsible for doing the thing and I'd like to tell you that I do that and I was like oh my god that's like

inception because um it's so funny whenever I become self-conscious and what I'm saying about someone else I think god because I am this broad person who for instance I talk about sustainable fashion all the time but I still eat meat because I've decided that my battle is close and I don't like I don't think I'm ready to give up a steak every now and then and that's so flawed and as you say like the internet has no room for that but those are all like that that's fine you can have those like I know that's a funny example but it is hard when we try and like hold up or use someone else's life or journey or whatever you want to use as a vehicle to explain these things because if you then like put it in comparison to yourself it feels too difficult if that makes sense yeah I mean I think like for me the solution is like it's for whatever I mean this is all like me just exploring it because I'm just as

like in it as everyone else like do not proclaim to have all the answers at all um but for me what like it feels more inspiring than like then kind than kind of fixing every, all my actions to be, like, perfectly aligned with my morals. and like those in power to use our collective power to like fight for better policies that like actually help people and that actually address um climate change and like hold the billionaires and the corporations to account who are like responsible for you know 90 percent of the problem and who are the ones who are giving us such shitty choices in the first place? Yeah. And it's interesting because, and I think maybe COVID's like a good way

of exploring this, but I for a time would very much subscribe. And I still kind of do what you're saying is like, depending on your level of privilege, you kind of have a level of responsibility to change certain actions, whether that's about like consumerism or how you speak about things online

in order to make sure that you're not being exclusive or whatever it might be. But obviously it's a sliding scale of like how much you even have access to, how much choice you have. But then I was saying to you, I'd suddenly get that up and be like throwing my toys out the park.

Like, why is everything I do have to be so challenging? And it's interesting watching how people have reacted to COVID because especially in the UK, there's like really specific laws about what you can do but obviously they're not very good and our government is a bit shit and the regulations they're doing don't seem to make any sense but some people are following these rules and other people are kind of following their own rules where they're maybe being a bit more careful and there's a lot of kind of prejudice and

um anger between people i sit on twitter all the time well, I feel like I've been isolating for ages and other people are just going out and doing this and other people are saying, well, but this is what the government said we could do. And it's so fascinating to watch people kind of really take so much onus on themselves when, like, as you say, there's no lobbying to make changes from the government.

Like, why do we all feel such a heavy weight of personal responsibility that it ends up in angst and anxiety and people feeling like it that I guess that's how it that's what's happening kind of across the board there is just not enough punching up to use like a really tired phrase no I think that's a really good way of putting it I agree I think I get really frustrated with I don't know I keep using the word neoliberal but i feel like it's the best way to to describe the the focus on individual and i think that it's part of it's part of an effort by those in power like if you think about like the at least in the u.s

like the what they call like the birth of neoliberalism was in the like 70s and 80s when the first the republicans and then the democratic party started taking um like huge lobbying like a lot of money from corporations to fund their campaigns and like there was this shift away from it being more democratic about like you know pleasing your constituents towards pleasing your donors. And like this, this, and suddenly, the power wasn't with us anymore. But they, but like corporations and people in power, like want us to think it's, it's with us, because it takes the heat off of them. I mean, I'm oversimplifying, but I feel like the, the the push towards like it's all it's all about our actions is it's just an idea that serves the most powerful and and then I guess there's always

layers to this but I think Gia Tolentino says it in her book and she talks about how to tweet something or to like be part of a conversation around feminism or whatever it is also becomes just as valuable in the eyes of certain groups as it would be to take the action so that's another weird layer that happens where you're right everyone thinks that they have to take individual action but even if that individual action makes no difference systemically it still holds some weight societally because you are seen to be doing the right thing in vertical commerce even if that one small action wouldn't be as impactful as say i don't know campaigning for change or lobbying for change or whatever it might be it's weird how we've also and

i assume that will have come from some kind of capitalist drive as well in order to make that worthwhile but it does it also does mean something on like to people on a personal and cultural level as well so that's where it's like got mixed up like where activism used to be not used to be I guess as you said it's always been messy but where there might have been like an end goal and a drive to change one legislation or to do something activism in of itself is fashionable now it's like a brand it's like part of your brand yeah yeah and it becomes really divorced from like I always come back to like it being divorced from like economic problems like a lot of times like if i think about policing language online for instance

you know and that's what this i don't think that i would never argue like language isn't important as a writer i obviously think it is but sometimes i think that we get caught up in policing like increasingly minute little behaviors online and forgetting that actually it has nothing to do with the liberation of the like supposedly wronged class like what the economic liberation like i think all of the the issues i mean i think it always comes down to class and that class is like really undervalued in this whole conversation like i mean at least in the u.s it's really really bad like the the economic disparity is like emergency proportions like billionaires have made like almost a trillion dollars in the pandemic while like people have slipped most of america's looked

further into poverty like obviously there's it's like such a huge issue and like classes continually cast aside for like like i guess you could call it like id politics this idea that it's like such a huge issue and like classes continually cast aside for like like i guess you could call it like id politics this idea that it's about like um being like respectful online like using the like the perfect language when i'm like does does that help the people who are poor and like not online they're like not on the part of this discourse they're just like they're in a cycle of poverty and marginalization it's like they feel really separate you know what i mean the internet has this whole digital landscape that feels like not it's more about like a kind of a hypothetical fight about like your brand being like as virtuous as possible and doesn't actually

have to do with like the betterment of the people it's supposedly aiming to protect yeah and we definitely have the exact same issue over here especially like it's one of the first episodes i did this season um is with like kind of a political commentator that she she's basically a communist that's like her thing she said once on a show and everyone's like wow um but she's really clever and she talks about exactly this and she's writing a book about these kind of culture wars where it sees people getting really focused on identity politics and like going over them so much so that it kind of alienates both sides to what's fundamentally important which is kind of getting policies in place to protect people from poverty like you're saying or you know making sure women have places to go if they're in domestic violence situations or making sure that children

get food which is like a massive thing that's going on in the UK at the minute about school meals I don't know if you've seen it but yes I agree with you and it's interesting how when I'm on Twitter everything feels so heightened and I start to believe that's real life and I don't the same as you because you're a writer and you're online and you blog and you work online. If you sometimes can get, start to believe that that's kind of how these conversations happen in real life. And then I'll go into like a real life situation. I'm like, wow, that is really just happening online. But that's also what gets picked up by the mainstream media as well. Oh my God.

Yes. The internet is so scary. I feel like I'm so, I'm so afraid of the internet to be honest like and I was talking about this a lot actually like since we're talking about the Emily Ratajkowski piece which is like I was getting some feedback some critical feedback on that piece um and I wasn't afraid of it like I felt like oh this is thoughtful and I thought a lot of people who liked my piece that they also liked Emily's and they were kind of like holding two ideas in their head at once there was like there felt like a kind of nuance and an embracing of kind of really examining ideas that felt really different from

the other pushback I sometimes get like on really benign things that I feel like I'm just being like kind of like misunderstood in bad faith that is way more stressful to me than like than kind of like misunderstood and bad faith, that is way more stressful to me than like, than kind of good faith criticism. Because like, I don't think it's bad to, like, I think the critique of ideas is good and important, but I think sometimes it gets conflated with just like policing someone's behavior, like for the sake of it, when you know that like, they didn't mean that.

You know what I mean? Yeah. And no, and I love what you said. I did the same thing. Like I read Emily's piece and I thought it was great. And I read yours and I thought they were both great. And I think that that's, that's, that's that vision of someone like holding those two pieces in their hands is the exact opposite of what the internet normally allows you to do. That's a really nice image.

But what's interesting is with the funny thing is that the people doing the policing normally are the people who as well I would align and maybe I've been like that before where we and this is kind of like a existential another existential crisis I'm having about how I um operate in the way that I talk about things because my podcast is quite liberal and I'm quite like left-leaning and it's funny because it's normally the people that are on my side of the argument that are also shutting down these conversations almost imminently without even really questioning what it is so for example say someone who is in my audience um online who saw that your piece was a critique

on emily and without even reading it they've taken that to mean a bit like with choice feminism that you are like kind of slandering another woman and so you can't even read it and i wonder if sometimes i'm worried that i now start doing that because I'm so um worried to keep my posture in terms of being on the right side of history with issues that like if it's come from the wrong person or if it's come from the other side of the argument maybe I don't even engage and I then I got worried like what am I doing I'm just putting myself into an even deeper of an echo chamber and I don't know if I'll ever escape no I mean yeah I think you're right I think that there's like a fear from a certain type um of like like liberal that doesn't want that is so and I think it comes from a place of fear fear like so much fear of maybe like fascism or, um, police shootings in America,

there is, um, a discourse around how we present, um, black men and women and trans people in the, in kind of in the news as being good people or bad people. And there's this, like, there's this like there's this um there's this idea that like we need to hold up someone as a good guy who gets murdered by the police um when really like you shouldn't have to be a good person to not get murdered yes by the police and so i think like sometimes people are scared to say like hey this person was flawed like maybe this person even broke laws maybe they weren't um maybe they weren't like quote unquote an angel as like that famous setting like saying he was no angel um but that doesn't mean that they deserve to get shot and i think like we're so afraid sometimes of those arguments that we only take

in the data that supports a more simple view and then the other side takes in the data that's also true that supports the kind of opposite supposedly opposite view and it like further divides people yeah that's such a good way of putting it and you're right i do exactly that like i will only because i think also right now it's so it's terrifying for people who are from those marginalized communities that are constantly getting attacked and oppressed and killed literally so you do feel like well if I can do anything to protect or you know make sure that that isn't something that's going to continue then I want to put forward this image as you say that people will maybe get behind more but't have to, like, it shouldn't be that only white people are allowed to be flawed and everyone, like white, straight, cis, het, men and women can be flawed and everyone else has to

be, as you said, an angel in order to get that level of respect. I wonder if that may be right, maybe that's kind of where we're going a bit wrong. It's like, we shouldn't have to not lie but um you know like kind of falsify things in order to get our point across maybe that's where it's kind of going wrong that's an interesting yeah I mean yeah I guess maybe it leaves it just leaves us more uh vulnerable to like counterpoints because it's it's not really exactly the full truth. I don't know, I think about that with feminism too, which is don't critique women. Like, well, what if I want to critique like Margaret Thatcher? Or like, you know, Sheryl Sandberg or, you know, Sarah Palin, or whatever.

Insert woman who has kind of oppressed others. It's just like, it's a self-defeating ideology. Well, it just doesn't scale, to return to that expression. The bit that I did actually really love in trick mirrors when she talked about how um this can also like be weaponized against you know when she was talking about melania trump's coat um did you read trick mirror or did you i did i'm trying to remember that part she's talking about how um it's really funny it's not funny but basically people can use this idea that women can't critique women as in their own favor because it's

anti-feminist so when melania trump wore that coat and people were like oh my god this is um i can't believe she's worn that it's obviously something like she's sending a message or whatever trump's party and everyone could be like i can't believe that you would critique melania because that's so anti-feminist of you because she's a woman and it was it can be used against us in that like women can then almost be used as a bit like someone like um candace owens or someone that's kind of really used by a political party or a figure to be like we have a woman on the team so you can't say she's wrong because that would be anti-feminist right it's like the limits of like we're getting into the territory like the limits of

um like representation just for the sake of it you know where it's like well we didn't change this like this story is still about like well have you watched emily in paris oh my god yeah of course i just so didn't know about it i'm gonna i'm gonna listen i want to listen oh i'm so okay this is something that we talked about actually which is like you know this show it's about like American workism

and the idea that like you know her arc is not about her changing or evolving it's about her like stubbornly insisting on the idea that like salvation is found in like increasingly creative marketing campaigns and like continually to just live and breathe your work like obviously there's like huge capitalistic it's just it's not it's a

complete embracing of a lot of these forces that a lot of people are trying to resist so imagine if they had just like ran an extra algorithm and decided to like cast a black lead for instance but like nothing else about the show changed it would be a pretty hollow gesture right like it would be like okay well this show is still and that's not to say it doesn't have merit for like the candy it is like I think it's a very it's a very like American type of art but um like that would be an example of like representation of being sort of like not understanding like why it's needed and just sort of trying to check a box to like liberals happy to be tokenistic and I think I kind of that's one of the things I kind

of love it was just at least it did what it said on the tip like it was so Darren Star it they hadn't I just it didn't feel like it had tried in any way to be apart from like the sex toy or whatever it wasn't trying to be I mean it was the opposite of woke it was just we could talk about this for hours I didn't want to get into it but but do you think it was like what about all the like me too stuff like it's like kind of trying to make her out to be this like light social justice warrior but I just thought it was so insulting to the French because it's like you know so it's and also what she was saying I almost feel like you're kind of past that like any advertising

agency even no not even definitely from a very cynical point of view would it now know not to do campaigns like that so I just feel like it didn't even land because it was I don't know when they made it but it just felt like it was either a bit too old or I don't know it just didn't feel like it, it made sense. But I love, I mean, I love the show.

I watched, I watched it really quickly. It's just, it's funny. I like how much conversation it started though. It's so hilarious that it's become, and I'm like, I'm really intrigued.

They'll have to do a season two, I imagine. And I wonder where they'll go with it. If it will, you know, Oh my God. Well, before we start talking about ours because I feel like I could literally talk to you all day um I ask everyone their three favorite books is that a really stressful thing to spring on you at this point in the interview oh my god it could be any

it doesn't have to be like top three it could be like your three fave that you're reading right now well I can think of like I was just recently thinking about books that had like impacted It doesn't have to be like top three. It could be like your three faves that you're reading right now. Well, I can think of like, I was just recently thinking about books that have like impacted my writing, which might be like kind of a boring way into the topic, but I do have those kind of like in my mind recently. Oh my God, not boring at all. I'd love to hear them. Okay.

Okay, cool. So three that I can think of, these are just like ones I've read in the last couple years but um one time one would be No Time to Spare by Ursula Le Guin who I mentioned earlier um this is like a it's not really a memoir I guess it's more of an essay collection but it's actually just uh publishing of her blog post that she wrote in her 80s and it's it's written in this completely smart and specific but irreverent way that made me think like I want to write like that she's writing about really simple things that um but in a way that takes you by surprise and it's just it's delightful it's the kind of it's like

very inspiring to me as a writer um another one that comes to mind is never let me go by kazuo ishiguro uh this is the kind of sci-fi book have you heard of it yeah i've definitely i'm just trying to think of when how old is it i'm trying to remember if i've read i really maybe i haven't i've definitely heard of it, but I don't know. I'm just Googling when it was published. Oh no, 2005. 2005. So it's quite a while ago.

Yeah. Although my head. It was made into a movie in like 2010. Maybe that's why. Maybe. Anyway, he writes in a really, it's kind of, it's like a dystopian sci-fi novel, which isn't typically my type of book I gravitate towards, but it's not written at all like a sci-fi novel, which I, it's a little bit more the, he's called like the poet of the unspoken. Some people call him that. And it's like, he writes about kind of these small dynamics that are happening between people,

just like two everyday friends that are such powerful forces in our relationships, but we don't really think to like spell them out in the way he does. I'm not sure if I'm explaining that very well, but I just remember feeling like I wanted to write just about simple little things in a way that was as complex and interesting as he does. Oh wow. I'm definitely going to read that. You should. It's also just like a genuinely entertaining and like gripping book.

I highly recommend um and the last one is On Writing Well by William Zinsser this is like purely a book about writing but I found it to be I'm finally I know I'm saying this there's definitely a thread between these three books um but what Zinsser does is sort of verbalizes something that you might intrinsically understand about what makes good writing, but he really explains it. And so he's pulling apart something like that we might assume or that we have never thought to put words to. And it helped me better understand what made a really good sentence or like a powerful story. And I just like, there are certain things I learned from the book that I have still think about every time I'm writing I love that I really want to read all

of those I have really good recommendations and funnily enough the thing that you're like searching for that you're holding on to those in those three books was honestly what I took away from your piece that's why I was like so desperate to talk to you because I think you really wrote something down you know when you read something like oh my god yes that's exactly what I was thinking and then I was like oh I get it now this makes sense and I couldn't stop talking about it I honestly spoke about it for five days like anyone I was talking to my boyfriend about it because it was just it was just the way you put it was so simple and it wasn't like I hadn't thought about it before I just didn't even know necessarily that that's what I was thinking um so I'm so grateful that you came on to talk to me

if people want to like follow your work or find more of what you're doing where can people come and find you because I know you can you can pay a subscription to your newsletter and let us know where to do all of that kind of stuff um yes um so my newsletter is called maybe baby you can find it at hayleynalman.substack.com you might just be able to like google maybe baby newsletter i hope that that works i've never done that before um but that's where you can see my newsletter is mostly free every sunday i do a free one but i have a weekly tuesday podcast and a monthly advice column that is only for paying subscribers so that's um five dollars a month but i also like if people want to check me out on Instagram I

think that's where I'm sharing or updating a lot about the newsletter and just other general things um so that is at Hayley Murr I'm losing now that none of my like handles are easy to transmit verbally but H-A-L-E-N-U-R don't worry I could put all of that in the show notes and the link to your oh well thank you so much for joining me it's been such a treat um and yeah thank you so much for having me it was so nice to talk to you and um yeah I'm always like learning and finding new ways to think about these things so I always invite conversation and I don't I don't feel like I am done thinking about these things so definitely invite people to weigh in yeah amazing well thank you everyone for listening as well and I will see you next week bye We'll be right back. Which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do. Who wants this last parachute? I do.

Enjoy the number one feeling, winning, in an exciting live dealer studio, exclusively on FanDuel Casino, where winning is undefeated. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly.