Everything Is Content - Ballerina Farm, Mamma Mia overcrowding & banned boyfriends

Episode Date: August 2, 2024

Happy Olympics everyone! Despite knowing basically nothing about *actual* sport, we dive into some of our fave moments from the games so far. We also delve head first into the article that EVERYONE has been talking about this week - The Times piece about the influencer Ballerina Farm. Has this rightfully reignited the tradwife debate - or should we just leave her alone to raise her kids and milk her cows? We also want to know if you were at the open air screening of Mamma Mia that got cancelled in London last week - is recommendation culture ruining our experiences or is it just an effect of the economic crisis? Head over to our Instagram and TikTok pages @everythingiscontentpod for memes, discussions and chats - we’d love to know what you think! Have you subscribed? We personally love every single person who has! —THE GUARDIAN: 'Main character energy': Kim Yeji, the pistol shooter taking over the internetTHE GUARDIAN: How ‘girl dad’ Flavor Flav became hype man for the US women’s water polo teamNEW YORK TIMES: The Hottest Item at the Olympics Is a Chocolate MuffinTIKTOK: Mamma Mia cancelled due to overcrowdingTHE GUARDIAN: London’s Columbia Road carol services cancelled over safety fearsVULTURE: The Decomposition of Rotten TomatoesTHE TIMES: Meet the queen of the ‘trad wives’ (and her eight children)THE CUT: Ballerina Farm Says She Couldn’t Love Her Life MoreTHE I: Women who bring their husbands to lunch with the girls should be arrested (immediately)—Follow us on Instagram:@everythingiscontentpod @beth_mccoll @ruchira_sharma@oenone ---Everything Is Content is produced by Faye Lawrence for We Are GrapeMusic: James RichardsonPhotography: Rebecca Need-Meenar Artwork: Joe Gardner  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

um sorry just letting you know my laptop's on six percent which is quite rude of it it's just i can't be able to get up it's really far away oh for god's sake let's do it quick let's speed run it okay i'm beth i'm richara i'm manoni and this is our podcast everything is content every week we dissect the content that everyone is talking about online and get down and dirty in the discourse we are the slice of lime is talking about online and get down and dirty in the discourse. We are the slice of lime in the frozen margarita of content. Follow us on Instagram and on TikTok at everythingiscontentpod and make sure you're subscribed wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode. Today on the podcast we will be delving into the topic of

the moment, tradwives. Should we just let them get on with raising their children and milking cows? We'll also be discussing social media recommendation culture and whether boyfriends should be allowed to come to brunch. So usually at the start of the podcast we tell you something that we've been loving this week but as there's currently a huge global event going on we thought we would talk about that instead no it is not a brat summer although that still is ongoing it is the olympics have you both been watching this is this something on your radar and if so what are your highlights so far so it is on my radar i've only watched snippets of it but one thing that i need to talk about is the cunty pistol shooter from korea

have you guys seen it yes it's all i've seen oh she's a dream she's like the main character of the olympics so kim yeji is her name and everyone's obsessed with her online she just looks so bored and like somebody who just like made her do it but she inevitably got silver so it just made it even cuntier to watch she's chic as hell i don't really understand i didn't watch the videos can i ask a question actually about the shooting because i've only seen the country pictures the like looks like something out of vogue what are they shooting at and like what like what's going on is it safe it's a target isn't it i mean obviously they're very good at shooting but like it just looked a little bit more exciting than i thought obviously they're very good at shooting but like it just looked a

little bit more exciting than i thought the olympics were i might have got it but my sister used to do national pentathlon at school which is oh running riding horses swimming fencing and shooting no what and she shot with one of those little guns and it was almost like a bb gun but way stronger and she used to shoot targets and you stood in the garden and i used to try and play with the gun i wasn't allowed so I think it's that I think they shoot targets okay your sister sounds like she should be an mi5 that's insane I know she's now a doctor she's so annoying and she's really hot oh ick I'm so sorry you actually are such an impressive person and only but like when you say things like that I'm like Jesus Christ do you know what's so funny

because she's the middle child as well no one really pays attention. And she was like such an overachiever. She literally got like 11 A stars at GCSE and like 100% in all of her A levels. But they didn't have A stars then. Every medical exam she does, she'll be like, I failed. I failed 99% every time. Did friend of the podcast, Sarah Manavis, write a very interesting piece this week or last week about, and I've not read it yet, about the psychology of like older children, middle children and how we like apply stuff to this. Because I want to read it yeah and I feel like it's it's relevant

okay I'm gonna go and read this then yeah yeah so she wrote about how we over pathologize eldest sister syndrome like baby sister syndrome like all of this stuff and just like give give it a meaning and a kind of like trauma it just doesn't need to have like it can just be an experience of being a sister a sibling I agree but I do think there is something to like I'm so a youngest child and my sister's so do you know what I mean there is but maybe the pathologizing of it like there is so much stuff about like the weight that big sisters bear and like the cross that they that's it that's it but I do think there is something to be said for like the way you're social like if I get in the back of the car I'm

getting in the middle seat even if there's like two people in the car because i'm just like i guess that's where i have to sit oh my god stick up for yourself all of these olympic medalists are they middle children trying to prove something or are they like overachieving oh i want to see both the psychology no the not psychology that sounds serious i want to see the star signs of all of the athletes who are like winning gold and also i want to see whether they're the middle children youngest or oldest can I just confirm that um country shooter is a Virgo I have seen just FYI interesting um who are the highlights for you guys I've actually got two one of them is Flavor Flav if you haven't seen this he is basically sponsoring the women's water polo team so the US team captain Maggie Steffens,

put out a call on Instagram saying the team needed financial help. Flavor Flav replied going, as a girl dad and supporter of all women's sports, I'm a personally sponsor to you, my girl, whatever you need. And I'm a sponsor of the whole team. And then there's so many pictures of him like screaming, being so supportive and they're doing really well. And it's just really sweet.

And I've really enjoyed seeing that and then my other one is there's this Norwegian swimmer who is called Henrik Kristiansen and he's like really obsessed with the chocolate muffins in the Olympic camp and he's just made loads of TikToks about the muffins and they get like more and more insane and he's just like eating them there's just like muffin all over his face I haven't actually watched really any of the actual sport and only that is the only thing I know about it I was like at least she's not said the muffins the muffins is all I know oh no but you know what it's so worth it because it's really cute it's really wholesome so it's fine I want to try one I mean they do look quite gooey I saw a picture of one I think he'd commented under the video someone else was like point of view you're a muffin or like you're checking out if there's

any muffins left and he's like i've got them all and they do look quite nice they do look really good how can you be eating muffins when you're it's it's dispelled some notions that you as a swimmer in my mind swimmers are just eating fish i would i was about to say like i thought they'd be i thought they'd be on like just protein diets for this well swimmers especially again to refer back to my sister who is the um perfect athlete of the pod when she did swimming she used to eat just raw jelly before she went into the pool because you need so much energy and they burn so many calories swimming so you know like jelly before you cook it just for like an energy burst my mom would just like tear her off i would also

then be eating it too pool so i love it i wasn't doing any workout i think in some of the training to be certain things you have to be light but i think swimmers can eat like i think if you're maybe like a high jump or something or something where you need to be springy you don't eat the jelly i just assume they could eat whatever they want i hate the myth that you're not allowed to swim before you eat before you go in the swimming pool my mom used to say that all the time and i'm watching the olympics and i'm like oh if you've just had a muffin and some jelly surely I can have a bag of lays and a bottle of wine and go in the swimming pool absolutely this is not medical advice no but I still kind of believe that it's so entrenched to me if I'm at the beach and I have like a load

of chips I'm like I guess I have to wait half an hour now otherwise I'll sink also I have a question so obviously there are a variety of sports at the Olympics one of the new ones is skateboarding do people have to like be on like a really strict training schedule for skateboarding and do they have to eat really healthy surely like that's not the same as like swimming or like you know sprinters and like the amount of I don't know regimented food that they probably have to put into their bodies and all that kind of shit i think i still think they'll train like athletes i think there'll be like a proper training program that just like won't even be like their training won't necessarily be skating it'll be something to keep them really live

and like on the board and like spring there'll be all these like technical ways that they'll need to prepare to skate i love that i'm pretending i know so much yeah i'm actually a qualified personal trainer to be fair i always forgot that oh'm pretending i know so much yeah i'm actually a qualified personal trainer to be fair i always forgot that oh my god i didn't know that i was looking at the origins of the olympic games just out of interest and i was just wondering like how much further are we going to try and push the human body and like is are we ever going to get to the point where maybe like we can't break that record like will we ever just be like let's all just start back to the beginning and do like um this egg and spoon race and stuff.

And the wrap. Things you can't train for. Pie eating contest. Yeah, just like a bit of fun. so on friday evening last week a canal side screening of mamma mia in london's cold drops yard was cancelled i think long after it was due to begin due to safety concerns around the sheer number of people who were turned up to watch so videos we saw on tiktok showed huge swarms of people trying to get into the viewing area queuing for what looked like miles along the canal with some people saying they queued up from 3 p.m for the show which was due

to begin at 7 30 p.m it's opened up a conversation around how social media can funnel wider audiences towards niche or smaller events which may not have the capacity to safely hold that number of people one example that we saw last year was when thousands of people turned up to the Columbia Road carol services which is usually just a local event which led to the remainder of the carol services being cancelled due to fears around safety. So as usual I'm going to ask what you guys saw of this and initial thoughts about the event and similar events? So I actually, I know that a lot of the conversation around this, and I do think that was maybe true of the Carol singing event, has been about how social media can make things oversubscribed and overhyped. And you'll see it with like, if you're ever walking around any part of London, they'll randomly be a bagel shop with a queue that's really long.

And you're like, why are so many people there? And it'll be because someone on TikTok has been like I just had the best bagel and then the next you know everyone's queuing up with this event I actually think of it's something more simple which is that it was a free to event attend event it's social that's quite a cool thing to do I love going to see old films in in the movie like in a cinema I just wonder if there's like a dearth of events on and something like that which you can just turn up to it's outside you can bring your friends I think that even if it had been on Eventbrite and I know that definitely TikTok would have exacerbated it but I remember being at uni in Cardiff and there would be something on Eventbrite

and it would you would be really aware of those kind of events and everyone would want to go I definitely think it's going to made it unmanage large. But I feel like if there were more things on, more community spaces, more free events, more screenings, it wouldn't feel like such a big thing. I think it's the fact that that's quite unusual. I love open-air cinemas and there used to be one on Clapham Common that was like a pop-up, but it's really hard to book. I think it shows that there's a real yearning from people to have things that they can go to which are free and fun and outside. Yeah, I think that's a really good take. I hadn't, I hadn't really thought about it from that point of view. I wasn't familiar with this story until you just shared it, Beth. And I guess my main take was just, I feel like you can

feel that things are just really busy and oversubscribed and everything just feels so intense when it comes to events and you know even when it comes to like traveling I feel like there's been so many examples of how for example you know Japan at the moment has had a lot of over tourism because in part um the yen's really low and economically it's like a really good time to go but the main average person knows that because it's all over TikTok and everyone's telling you you have to go to Japan this year and yeah the country's just like really really struggling with the the massive influx of people going so it's just like I don't know you can just feel that everything feels like really difficult and just like oversubscribed and I think you're probably right that you know part of it is social media but part of it is just like not with the tourism but with this specific example just

those kind of third spaces have gone to such decline that everyone's really just desperate for knowing what to do and where to go and like if you get a recommendation that is just like the way we operate these days we like look for insight and what the best thing is to do online now especially if it's free and yeah that's a whole economic question of what are people doing with their friday nights in the summer that doesn't involve spending a minimum in the last week i was in london so i'm not living in london at the moment in the last week i was living in london that tax of leaving your house it cost 30 pounds minimum to leave your house in london And it really was like starkly apparent. So having a free event on, especially when it's Mamma Mia, one of the

finest films ever made, snubbed the Oscars every year since, of course, people are going to show up. And it's quite easy out, I think, to blame social media. It's more just how interesting the phenomena is. And I've seen it with a few other things, not just the Columbia Road, but like little old pubs in London especially get a bit of attention on social media and people and not just social media but on the timeout lists and people will go to them every time the lists come out again it happened to me when I lived in Nunhead because the pub Skiens which is often right at the top of these timeout lists and it's way out in kind of nunhead which is like near peckham but it's it's a faff to get to and where i just moved from in lewisham there's a pub

which is often named on these lists but has nothing around it and you would see whenever the list came out you would get like dozens of hackney transplants just coming to try it because they want something we're all hungering for like unique experiences and lovely local spots so it's not a blame game but it is a really interesting way we're all following this exactly the same kind of guidebook yeah it's so funny this come up because I was having this kind of realization the other day which I haven't fully articulated in my mind which was kind of about recommendation culture and tripAdvisor and reviews. And I started to realize how stifling it was

that you wouldn't just go to a restaurant and be like, I'm going to make up my own mind if a restaurant has a 3.8 on OpenTable or whatever. I probably wouldn't go. All my friends were like, no. And it's like, as much as reviews are useful, I kind of feel like there's way too much reliance. I remember like five years ago you'd

have some friends who would be like the trip advisor friends who would check everything and like really look at the ratings and be like no we can't go to this place and now it's like every single person it's like we're paralyzed we have to make sure that everything's good and I kind of I want to try and stop doing that as much like I I want to just I was thinking about when I used to go on holiday with my parents in Spain and we went to Spain as a family every year and we would just walk past a restaurant like that that's nice we're going there maybe it wouldn't be nice it was like there was no whereas now I go on holiday and it's like you spend half the day trying to figure out where you're going to go for dinner based on all these reviews and trying to get a booking and I do think there's something weird

happening there and I also think it's like to go back to the algorithms the conversation we had in last week's episode is sort of like bleeding out into reality where we are losing sudden like independent cuisine places and maybe we're getting more pop-ups of the same chains or very well funded restaurants or things because they're getting really great reviews no I think that is really interesting and it's so true we're all kind of led by what the next person is saying online somebody we have no idea who they are and there's been countless pieces about how review systems are just entirely fucked, like Rotten Tomatoes, for example, it aggregates reviews from, you know, sites that are potentially getting paid by film companies to review the film. So it's all just a giant mess that we're basing all of our

opinions on. Also, like, as we've spoken about, people doing TikToks on the best places to travel, they're creating content. It's not like, I don't know, they're not like recommending to a friend and being like, oh, I went to this place and I think it's really good. They're like constantly needing to create content, especially if they're like, I don't know, that is their bread and butter.

And they're like, I don't know, doing a whole channel of tourism and stuff like that. So it's, I don't know, there's, I don't really think that it probably is the right way to base all of your decisions when somebody has an incentive to be making I don't know a giant TikTok following of their recommendations not to give you necessarily the best idea of where to go and one thing I would say as someone who's done quite a bit of travel writing in the last few years and now I'm trying to move away from it because I do see it is tourist boards and PR companies that are trying to funnel people to the same spots it's not that influencers and

travel guides have just stumbled upon these and they are the best it's a whole orchestrated event to get people to similar spots which does overcrowd them which does also mean that a lot of great local businesses that don't have the same ad spend aren't getting featured so i think take everything with a pinch of salt there's a thing in london it's not a pop-up it might be a permanent event they're like van gogh event which i have seen only advertised well by influencers and everyone i know who has been there has said this is so shit this is terrible but because they have whatever the ad spend people keep going um I've actually been to that Van Gogh thing and yeah I can confirm it was like so overpriced and so shit and I was definitely caught in by like all the targeted ads on Instagram I'm such an idiot

the thing is coming back to this Mamma Mia thing for a second is that is actually because it's a one-off event it's not going to kind of pull focus I think with the TripAdvisor stuff I think what sometimes worries me and reviews and things and influences is it can pull business from like amazing small little places that might have got a bad review because people have some unconscious biases or like had a bad experience that wasn't actually you know sometimes you see a one-star review and it's like they wouldn't give us a table because they were shutting in five minutes and you're like if you're looking at the average reviews sometimes you actually read the negative reviews it's just some Karen or some person that's had a bad time so I think that does worry me because

as I said you got this kind of like homogenization of the high street and these same kind of shops and bakeries and whatever but the Mamma Mia thing I think just does show that it'd be amazing to have more like community-led events and I'm sure there's ways that they can be put on by big companies if they have sponsorship and it can be free to the public and I'm sure they could have you know like food vans or something I don't know I would love London in the summer to be filled with sort of like amazing events like this every weekend because people would be out and I think we are seeing because of this economic crisis people aren't going out or people can't afford to do anything so I think this was a perfect storm of everything we've spoken about but I also think

they should put it on again because I want to go yeah me too I really want to go and I feel like there is a tie also with the the review system and why people trust them so much I think because everything is so much more expensive now going out for dinner is such a luxury and it's such a like cherished thing to do so I think the idea that you would go out and then be disappointed by something I think that holds so much more weight than it ever did before I think people really want to know if I'm going to spend the money I want it to be good which is why this funnels back into this system of like trusting a messed up system that you know can be altered and you know manipulated by various forces.

So I think, I don't know, I think it all does come back to the cost of living crisis a bit. I also have a really romantic idea of stumbling upon really lovely hidden gems. And I guess in this economic climate, that just doesn't exist because if somewhere is a hidden gem, you kind of need to unearth it

so that it can continue surviving. And the minute you share on social media, it's there forever. I don't know. I think I'm a little bit starry-eyed for a time when stuff actually was, you could find it with your friends and then it wasn't like, it's been ruined. But at the same time, I think it's quite churlish. Actually, I don't know what churlish means, but I'm going to use it. It's quite churlish to say, this place is my place. This is spot it's like actually this is a business that needs to make money i think there's probably a middle ground but i do think influencers

should be a bit more careful maybe not in the mama mia incident but in terms of where they share because people will flock so we do totally understand if you are swimming through the events we are all subject to the tiktok. But if you were there, or if someone you know was there, can you please message us? Tell us what it was like on the ground. Do you gatekeep Girlboss Gaslight? If so, why or why not? Tell us, we want to tap into your mindset. And you can message us at everythingiscontentpod on Instagram with all of your inside scoops. So I've been dying to talk about this ever since it was published. And it is a piece in the Times. It's an interview with a woman called Hannah Nealman,

who you might know on Instagram as Ballerina Farm. She has 9.4 million followers. And the interview is titled, Meet the Queen of the Tradwives and Her Eight Children. I didn't know that I was going to find this as fascinating and interesting because I have got a bit of trad wife fatigue and also have kind of actively never really looked at ballerina farm just from having absorbed that she has a trad wife then I read this piece and it talks about how she'd studied at Juilliard and how she met her husband and there's quite a few like standout

pieces in the piece that kind of sparked discourse one of them being that she set out to the interview like I thought that me and my husband would date for a year whilst I finished school but he said no I just want to get married now and start straight away bear in mind that the dance school at Juilliard accepts 12 women every year so she was one of 12 people accepted into Juilliard and she left in order to go and marry this but he is a millionaire to be fair and um there was another stand-up bit in the piece as well where she's talking to the interviewer and the interviewer asks her if she's ever taken any pain relief when she gives birth to eight children and she's like no I love giving birth at home she did have two

births in hospital and then she does confess she's like actually there was this one home birth where my husband wasn't there and actually did have an epidural and the interview was like and was it like amazing and she's like yeah it was really kind of amazing so that has sparked loads of loads of discourse and since then Hannah appears to be like unbothered by the discourse and at the weekend while the debate was in full swing she posted a video promoting her farm's dairy products and she said it's the world we created and I couldn't love it more what did you guys think of the piece and why do you think it's gone so far and so wide I had the same thing as you I have quite a lot of trad wife fatigue so I was resisting reading this

and even though it had kicked up like quite a big response online, I just was like, I don't know if I'll read it. When I did, I completely understood why everyone was so fascinated and kind of, I guess, reactive about it. There was like quite a lot of disturbing content in it. And I think so. Yeah, the writer Megan Agnew had really kind of built up this picture of every time she tried to speak to Hannah, the husband would just be loitering and speak for her, interrupt her, kind of take over the question and move it in felt quite menacing, quite controlling. And I'm not putting words on to what kind of relationship they have. I'm just saying that the piece she wrote made him seem like quite a controlling figure. And I think people would have taken that and, you know, it would have fit into quite a lot of our assumptions about what trad wife relationships are like, aka quite old-fashioned where men can often speak for women and you know there's these gender roles so I think that was a big part of

this for sure obviously the writer she says she's getting frustrated with him that she is actually like I don't want to talk to you so she puts a lot of herself in it and I think that is very clear gives so many examples where she's like I was hoping to speak to her alone but that hadn't happened yet and she's out with him and he's explaining in detail the point of this barn and this barn. And she's like, just not bothered. And I think that does come across as sinister because it's obvious to us, Ballerina Farm,

even though it's a joint enterprise, people are interested in her. She is the face of this. So why is her partner doing more of the talking? It reads very patriarchal. I have so many feelings about this. I have been dragged in both directions with the discourse. I think on the one hand, everything is very alarming. The epidural story is quite alarming. It's very heartbreaking when she talks about how the dance studio barn never became that. It became the children's schooling

house. Things like that. There are many, many examples of this in the writing. And again, like the writer has a bias, whatever. But then I think this is an adult woman who I, am I sitting here at home feeling sorry for the wife of a billionaire who has chosen no life just because I don't understand it. So I really, I'm hoping to come to some kind of peace at the end of this because I don't know how I feel do you know what I found so interesting I'd never really gone on her page and since this I kind of have and I kind of love her there are other trad wives that I feel come up kind of come out in highs with the ones that are like you've got to keep looking young and skinny because you've got to please your man and it's more important to

you like she doesn't actually necessarily and they say this in the in the piece they don't necessarily espouse their very strongly held Mormon views on her Instagram. And I just, when I watch it, I'm like, God, you're a great mother. I love how she's like talking to the camera. She's clearly like so attentive, but she lets the kids kind of run around screaming in the background.

There's something, I can understand why people are so endeared to her. So I think that's what was weird reading the piece is her husband doesn't really feature much on her Instagram. And then so going back and watching it, she does seem ostensibly happy, but then she participated in a beauty pageant

12 days after giving birth and she did loads of things kind of like cold water therapy and taking loads of iron and just like an unimaginable feat, which if someone's doing that off their own back is a gargantuan I guess really impressive task but when you read the whole piece all together and Megan Agnew asked them if they use birth control and they talk about no because of their strongly held beliefs they

don't they believe it's like a decision by God if God says that I'm due to have another baby I will and the husband chimes in and it always happens to be like nine months after the last and then there's a bit where he says the husband says sometimes Hannah is so exhausted that she can't get out of bed for a whole week so you'll be reading this whole thing and it's kind of like there's just these little pockets where the stress and the the weight of their relationship is obviously playing out but then like you said Beth there's nothing that we can say that doesn't mean that she finds that all very worthwhile their life does look exhausting but I mean it does also look very beautiful very wholesome it's certainly a better way to live than

a lot of people that are really struggling the way the piece is introduced is exactly what you said about she talks about 12 days after giving birth she is back on the beauty pageant competition whatever but she says that at one point she was bleeding and they couldn't control the bleeding and she just yeah was like well thankfully you know it stopped you know right on time and I could like compete and I think that is really dark and I think I think there's a lot to say about you you know, an adult woman has chosen the life that she wants, and we can't project anything onto it. I don't think that we can read a story like that and not think that like something is really, really messed up for somebody to do that. I don't think that that is, I don't think anyone should put their body through that kind of turmoil or you know excruciating pressure I think something is quite messed up for somebody to feel like they have to do that or they should do that I don't know I don't think that's right you're right and I think that's it it's it's

trying to get to wrap my head around a mindset which is so different to me we don't have one she is from a family a Mormon family so she was from a family from the LDS church who she I think she's one of maybe 10 children there is a culture culture of, we will have lots of children. We will work very hard in our faith. We will do all of those things. And it's perhaps a level of achievement and a level of pushing your body that one I don't have. Thankfully, I don't have in my immediate family. I didn't watch, my mum had four kids, but I didn't watch my mum, my sisters, my aunts have double digit children and didn't expect that for myself. But I, you know, it's, it's trying to sensitively understand a different way of life while saying, actually, it is a mark of the

patriarchy that we think it is a woman's lot to do all of those things. And that we, we wouldn't ask questions. We wouldn't go, but why why would pain in in birth be something you would willingly choose as part of like a traditional life it's it's asking the right questions but like i think it's really i think people are really struggling especially in the uk to like wrap their heads around it i also think there's a level of like schadenfreude i don't know if that's how you say the word i've never been able to say it schadenfreude i think schadenfreude um reading a piece like this, because we've all kind of consumed the tradwife content.

And I think the question is, how are these women presenting like they've got it all and they're happy? Because we're like, that doesn't compute in our modern understanding of feminism and a woman's choice and happiness, essentially. So reading that she had these like aspirations

to go to Juilliard, and it sounds like from the piece, she's in a relationship where she's had to make huge sacrifices happiness essentially so reading that she had these like aspirations to go to Juilliard and it sounds like from the piece she's in a relationship where she's had to make huge sacrifices to make it work it equals everything we want to understand about trad wives and from her that she's had to give up a lot to make it work and everything's not perfect such a good point I think that's a really good point yeah also the other thing I was just thinking when you were talking Beth was about that that idea of like not seeing children with double digits. And it just made me think like a few generations back, my mum's family are from a really small rural part of Ireland where they ran a farm.

And a couple of generations back, they would have had loads of kids because they were Catholic. It does feel estranged. But actually, in our very recent histories, we probably would have had families that lived under that. I guess the difference that's so weird to absorb is that it's suddenly this glamorous like I think my maternal grandmothers and great-grandmothers would have really felt like they were workhorses and they were like running this farm I think that's what is such like jarring about it is she's so beautiful and so gorgeous and she wakes I mean I do think she is just beautiful because this video is where she puts makeup on and she literally puts like a bit of blush on her cheek and then a lick of mascara and she's like

I'm done it's that stripping away of the fact that she's doing hard physical manual labor she's looking after eight children I think they have a cleaner but they have like no helpers like in terms of like with the kids there's no nannies it's just her raising them and so you're right it's just that lifting the curtain of what we know to be true but then what social media does which is like we kind of want to believe and buy into the facade that it's all perfect I've I do wonder now you said that as well because I felt really endeared to her now you've used the word schadenfreude am I endeared to her or do I just feel like I can engage with her content now because I I see it for what it is I think there's subjugation there is many many modern women do live under a kind of complete modern subjugation where there is no other options

but this woman was eyeing up one life where she was a world famous ballerina and she there were divergent paths and yes love took her down a path and perhaps but she was college educated she was privileged in that way and she did decide to do another kind of mastery i think there's so many levels of misogyny here whereas where one people are like that's where she belongs and other people are going no she doesn't belong there even though she is when you look at the videos unless it's all stage she is incredible at domestic arts she is she knows how to like tend the land she knows how to raise animals she understands like how to take things from ground to table in a way which i think we do do these things down out of like probably classism and misogyny and all other

things we go yeah but that's just like domestic domestic labor is is so impressive and i do wonder if we can ever arrive at like a perfect point where we take all of this into account where is there is some level of misogyny where there is some level of traditional roles being like subjugation but where we also like give her her dues for choosing another kind of excellence and another she could have been a master at dance she could have done this but she is actually doing she's an incredible businesswoman and she's doing she's amazing at what she does which is grow food raise a farm raise a family also creating content precisely this is the other conundrum that i was thinking i was coming up against like she talks about having

grown up in this big mormon family where she's learned how to do all this incredible cooking like there is an element as well as like i don't really understand the Mormon religion and I'm not someone that believes in religion but I also do and I do believe that it's obviously got such strong patriarchal and misogynistic tendencies but I also do wonder how much of it is for us to say to someone that lives within and under certain systems that they've got it wrong and they can't be happy because we don't know that in the way that she subscribes or the way that she's been brought up on the way that her culture that culture operates that she doesn't actually think she is living a perfect life and are we just being

really judgmental by saying we know better because we operate in an agnostic like free in our own sense way does that make sense i think we are as brits coming to mormonism via social media via even things like um the real housewives of salt lake city which are all reality tv stars who are living in like utah is like home of the mormons it's a restorationist religion that we don't really have over here. What we have in terms of restorationism is Jehovah's Witnesses, which it just doesn't have the same glamour, shall I say. So I think when we discuss it, we're already at a point of like, it's alien in a way. And we see things like Nara Smith, who we've talked about in our very early episodes. We've got Ballerina Farm. We've got a lot of social media content coming to us. It's very difficult to make an informed view on it i'm really really worried about just getting it

wrong and you know because mormons are like they can use social media they're kind of very like tech savvy really um living in the modern world alongside us what's the word like am i am i just patronizing to a group of people that actually have got a better idea of what they want than I do that's exactly what I was trying to say but I also then you're saying that and I'm going back to one of our really original conversations around trad wives and we were talking about that amazing think piece that was kind of saying about how dark and scary the undertones of a lot of trad wife content is because it is very much fueling sort of like quite far right very conservative agendas I think what's quite interesting about Ballerina Farm is from what I've gleaned from her content

there isn't too much of that side of stuff correct me if I'm wrong so that's I'm almost finding it more interesting the piece definitely certainly highlighted they have these views but they don't seem to be as forthcoming as some of the other accounts which say things that really shock me and I can imagine could end up someone you know falling down a rabbit hole I think she probably can make people feel quite inadequate because she's gorgeous lives in this beautiful home she's seemingly got eight kids and and is managing that fine yeah I agree it's the rich it's the wealth behind this and I think I said this exact sentence when we did our trad wife episode unless you have this wealth unless you have great great money you can't have this life and I don't think they're

even saying in plain terms we're advertising a lifestyle come and join us they're selling elements of the life like look at their website look at their content like they are saying we're having a good time with this this is what God's purpose is for us we love it here are ways to buy our cast iron skillet but actually you cannot and i think viewers of that have to be cognizant the fact you cannot buy this life you cannot have this life their her protection is great wealth and actually like it's not even particularly her wealth there's a whole other conversation about how to leave a marriage like this and how impossible it is but for the moment if she's happy she is protected by her marital

income that is not the case young women it's just like it's what anoni you said last time we spoke about trad wives where it's like it's what you see versus what is actually happening behind the scenes so you know she's presenting an idea of like an old lifestyle she has like an agar oven in her fucking house she's like it's all salt of the earth but she's creating a lot of the income from the content creation and it's the same as with this farm like a lot of this farm will probably be upkept from the fact that like she has like nine million followers on instagram that is going to generate i'm imagine quite a lot of the money that could keep some of that going as well so it's all like this like relationship with the online modern world whilst presenting a very

old-fashioned naturalist world that has nothing to do with the internet it's all like it's all very like enmeshed but it isn't presented as such it's presented as very distinct lifestyles that has nothing to do with the internet people are very concerned i think women are very concerned because there are the markers of and a lot of people have relationships with which are governed by coercive control which do rely on like old traditions to keep them keep women locked in and this is just a very large-scale case where people are maybe projecting whether there are not i think the messaging is meant very well when people are saying if you are in a situation like this or either don't get into a situation like this where

you're the mother of this many children where you don't have like you don't follow your dreams i think people mean very well it's just any public figure will deal with this you are made to be the spokesperson and the figure head for something which might not apply to you at all because you're the most visible part so i don't know i'm i'm hoping that this never comes to anything, that like this is a story that just bubbles on, they continue making money and we are all proved worrying for nothing. The one thing I will say, if you haven't read this, this is a brilliant example

of a brilliant piece of journalism. It was such a good interview. I was absolutely hurt and I would love to read more long read interviews. Yes, if you haven't read it, you can check it out on The Times right now. It's by Megan Agnew. As always, we'll leave a link in the show notes below.

So listener Sophie messaged us this week and sent us an article about something I feel is pretty pertinent for Everything Is Content. It's about bringing partners to social plans. The article was written by Kate Lister for The Eye and it's titled, Women who bring their husbands to lunch with the girls should be arrested immediately. She recounts the story of a friend bringing her husband unannounced to what was supposed to be a girl's lunch and how it completely changed the tone and vibe of the event. She says, it's shocking but there are people walking amongst us who think it's socially acceptable to bring their significant other with them when they hang out with their friends.

Like they're a gift that comes free with purchase well your free gift sucks i don't want him leave him at home what did you think of the piece did you read it do you agree i want to get some spicy discourse on this so let's go it's so true i actually i looked in my heart to fully argue with this and i just thought i don't i i arrive at this piece and can be a complete agreement i also completely agree and the tricky thing is there'll always be one boyfriend that everyone just kind of doesn't like. And so by that metric, it means no boyfriends can just rock up because then it means that you're opening the floodgates to the really annoying boyfriend that none of you want to hang out with. I think that it really, if you're having like a chill hang and someone said, you know, bring the lads or like someone's coming but if you're having a specific friend's meetup and a boyfriend comes I'm in my head I'm like he's controlling

I'm like why are you here isn't it alarm bells yeah it makes me stressed yeah people being invited somewhere and they're assuming they've got a plus one I'm often invited somewhere and I think oh I'm not even invited like my anxiety goes they didn't mean you the confidence it takes to be invited somewhere and just automatically assume that like Andrew can come I just think I don't have that I don't relate to it I think it's a little bit presumptuous I've I've actually been told by friends that I like never bring my boyfriend to anything and that's like been a mark of honor for me like a badge of honor because like I I really feel this so much like I never want to be the person who's like bringing someone and it's just like ruffled feathers or like just change the tone I'm like I don't know I've I'm such a I know girls girls got like a really bad rep recently but I really

feel like that like I want to spend time with women that's like the space that we cultivate and create I don't I don't want to like change that up if it is you spend time with women that's like the space that we cultivate and create I don't I don't want to like change that up if it is you know time with my girlfriends if it's like a mixed thing and we've like set into it and been like oh yeah it'd be so good to like catch up with you guys like bring x y and z that's different but I never want to be the person who just like brings somebody along and everyone's pissed off but also I think that when you meet up for a girl's lunch a girl's lunch is such a sacred and intimate thing that you might be turning up with a really serious piece of news something really upsetting something really personal you might just want to talk

about farts or like something that happened with period that month that was really interesting or like there's there's some I think there's such a level of intimacy that was reserved to like the girl's lunch that like like the last time I had a girl's dinner one of my friends had gone through something like really traumatic we were all talking like I do believe that then you do feel sort of like oh you've got to first of all kind of control what you're saying because you might not feel like you can be that vulnerable in front of someone's partner and then also I do feel there's several sort of like babysitting them yeah as well like why don't you have a five-a-side or something not to be like yes but like why don't you have a little play day i think like you say about the farts if a friend's

boyfriend's there i will hold my tongue and i won't talk about like whatever's going on with my vagina or like just something like my thrush or whatever it is or like a sex dream i had about a cartoon character but if it's a repeat offender i'm like well i've got to i've got to share so like he will just have to absorb this. I want to know about the cartoon character. Sorry, can you say which one? Well, I don't want to because I'll get... It's a human one. I'll say that much.

Oh my God, it's Homer Simpson. It's the genie from Aladdin. Oh. Well, yeah, of course. No, that's a shag, marry, kill situation. But anyway, Homer would make love. The amount of time that me and my friends spend talking about our bowel movements, but in a really kind of quite serious way.

Like, how's your stool? We won't use that word. But someone will be like, oh my God, I've got diarrhea. Not stool. Someone else will be like, oh my God, I'm constipated. Someone else will be like, I think I have IBS. I think I'm allergic to gluten. Like, there'll be a good half an hour of just talking about poo.

And in a really, like, actually quite a healthy way. I think that's why women are so much better at dealing with like health issues because we actually do run by I agree any sort of like I feel like I've got a lump there's a random hair here is it normal to have a beard I hope so no I agree and I feel like the thing for me is I like to gossip and it's a different space when a partner's there. And I'm not like, this is not a male thing. Even if my friend brought her girlfriend along, I don't want to gossip with them. I don't know them as well as you. I trust you.

I want to tell you everything. I think it's different if it's like, yeah, like a dinner with like multiple people bringing their partners. But the girl's lunch is sacred. I agree. It is. I saw a video actually that was slightly related to this that said, and I don't know if I agree with this one, but it said, if you become any kind of friends with your friend's partner, if you follow them back on social media, if you follow them, if you would talk to them, you're a weirdo. And I don't know if I agree with that. But I, and I've said this before and I'll say it again.

I'm going to say it right now. My friends' boyfriends and partners, they're like uncles to me. I have a bond with them. I will talk to them. Like we will have our own thing. But you aren't like a man in the traditional biological, like you are smooth. You are, you don't have a willy. You are my uncle.

And I think that is the perfect, because you can have a bond. You can care for them. But at the end of the day, that's your uncle. I do think you should be able to follow this at the end of the day that's your uncle I do think you should be able to follow them like some of my I agree it's like a very it's a very platonic friendship thing some of my friends boyfriends though are like they've either been together so long or they're just so kind that I adore them but it is like in a way that's like their relatives at the same time if my friend broke up with them they're dead to me of course never speak to them

again but there have been girls in our friendship group where our guy friend friend broke up with them they're dead to me of course never speak to them again but there have been girls in our friendship group where our guy friend has broken up with the girl and the girl still friends with the girls that's different i can't explain why it is different and we don't actually really see the guy anymore but like someone went to school with his girlfriend from like six years ago we still speak to her we don't really know what he's up to anymore it is awkward though when they there's a breakup and then they go back together and you've already done you flag them off you've done i think it's very like my best friend i don't think they'll mind me saying this she had a little break with her boyfriend they're back together stronger than

ever but while they're broken up he thought or we thought that he'd logged us out spitefully of his disney plus and she was like i can't believe he's done this we'll be blocking him so we all blocked him and then she got a message from him being like hey just had a security issue hope you're doing well here's the password so generous and now they're back together we were like he like brings up so we can but it was it was awkward so i do think just too much enmeshment it's problems i agree like i completely agree with that and i had the reverse of that where an ex of mine was like super good friends with like all of my friends was like really present in our friendship group we broke up and then they still wanted to be friends with all of my friends from like school and stuff and it was very fucking weird and inappropriate

but because the boundaries had been so blurred it just made it so messy and sticky and like I just never want to be in that situation ever again I want it to be like my core friends are my core friends and they love my boyfriend but they'll always ride or dive for just me thing is I do think this starts to get more complicated as you get older and you do hear that people like especially when it comes to like getting a divorce for example yeah I think a lot of the time those people unless obviously something really heinous or awful happened I think you do maybe that defensiveness comes down a bit and you do you are able to keep people in your lives I am trying to move as much as I said I would stop being friends with the guy that my friend dumped I absolutely would but I also don't want to have that sense of like I don't know like

I would still speak to my ex's friends actually and they do still text me and I do reply I think it's okay I think it's okay when you have mixed friends but I think there's some friendship groups in your life that have to just be yours and sacred and just have to be your ride or dies i think that is just healthy for any person to not feel like after a breakup everything is cut and cut and cut down the middle it's cruel isn't it yeah it's hard if someone is listening like what would our advice be if your friend keeps bringing the boyfriend like i would say talk i would say you have to bring it up in a vulnerable way be like i want to talk about my pussy at brunch I would say you've got to bring it up though with them not the boyfriend I think also this can be a thing of like when someone's newly with

someone and they're really in love they think everyone else is in their love bubbles they're like gotta bring them I think you could just say that I really want to be vulnerable I really want to be in like a safe space I absolutely love your partner I was gonna say neo i don't know why neo okay hi neo came to my head hello neo my brain is really not working today um i really love them really respect them would love to hang out with them you know at a mixed invite barbecue stress the barbecue yeah the barbecue but at lunch would you mind and there is the there is every chance that if they are one of those people that wants to bring their partner that they are going to feel really wounded because maybe they are really like lovesick or like think that you really want that yeah I think I think bring it up but I think be careful because I do think those kind of people that expect

their partner to be much everything might also be one of those people that be really shocked to find out that they're not yeah I think you girls are completely right I think lead with vulnerability is the only way to have those kind of conversations and just like you know put a bit of your heart on a platter for them to just say that I really miss spending time with you and I really want to like tell you about some stuff going on with me oh what's that line in bridesmaids where she's in the jeweler and she's talking to a really in love couple and she's like that will not last I think just say that just reminds them they will be alone again soon and you're the only one they've got then again sorry just to change everything up though if i ever did get married i would want my friends to be best friends with my husband and i would want them to be like really best friends in a way that they

could like hang out without me is that wrong am i getting this wrong it's not wrong that's nice that's outsourcing the labor also of on both sides you can just go off shopping and everyone's happy that's what i mean i'd quite like to know say if i was like working late it would never be me working late if i was doing so if i was busy and my friend was coming around i'd like them to be able to hang out with my husband do you know what i mean and not want everyone to get on and just like that i could leave them be together and they would actually get on really well

and not them be like sitting in a room being like so got any pets also it justifies that my partner is a good person if like

the women in my life are who I actually they're the barometers of good taste they are my forevers if they approve then I actually feel way more secure

in my relationship so I think there's there's a lot of elements going on it's not like sinister I like my friends to be I don't need a lot of elements going on. It's not like sinister. I like my friends to be, I don't need my boyfriend to sign off my friends,

but I do need the reverse to happen. So maybe they're just setting. Yes, I agree. But also don't bring Andrew to brunch. Or Neo. Or Neo or Homer. Thank you for listening to us this week. Gold medals to all of you.

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