Everything Is Content - Everything in Conversation: How Does Her Divorce Make Us Feel?

Episode Date: January 15, 2025

Happy Wednesday! You know what that means – a brand new Everything in Conversation.This week on the podcast we're diving into the viral essay that incinerated the timelines just before Christmas. Yes, we're talking about The Cut's Lilly Jay essay.For anyone who doesn't know, last year stories of an alleged affair circulated around Ariana Grande and her Wicked co-star Ethan Slater. The pair soon went official, and his ex-wife Lilly Jay gained attention as a result.The chat went all sorts of places, including why the media needs a villain in a possible cheating story, the scorned woman narrative, therapy, and our views on monogamy. Let us know what you thought of the essay and our conversation, and please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts. It really helps us out <3-------The Cut: How Did My Divorce Make You FeelVanity Fair: Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande on Love, Defying Rumors, and Flying HighBonnier Books: Men Have Called Her Crazy Apple podcasts: Las CulturistasApple podcasts: Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh, you're on mute. When did I do that? I'm Beth. I'm Richera. And I'm Anoni. And this is Everything in Conversation. This is an extra episode we release every Wednesday where we go a little bit deeper on a bit of pop culture with you.

Last year, we covered everything from female fertility to the demise of X. Remember, if you want to take part in these extra episodes, just follow us on Instagram at everythingiscontentpod. That's where we vote on topics and ask for your thoughts. This week, we're talking about the insanely viral Lily J cut essay from last year. You know what we're talking about. It is the wicked Ethan Slater, Ariana Grande hot mess. We're going to get into that with you in a minute. But first, the headlines from the EIC newsroom. In another blow for the fight against misinformation, Meta is abandoning the use of

independent fact checkers on Facebook and Instagram, replacing them with X style community notes where commenting on the accuracy of posts is left to users. Mark Zuckerberg said third party moderators were quote, too politically biased and that it was time to get back to our roots around free expression. Elon Musk has called for far right ringleader Tommy Robinson to be released from prison. The ex-owner and key ally of Donald Trump tweeted that authorities should, quote, free Tommy Robinson. Robinson was in prison last year after he admitted to breaching a court order relating to false claims about a Syrian schoolboy he made in a documentary. Mask on Thursday approvingly shared the documentary to his hundreds of millions of followers on X.

Lily Allen has announced she's taking a break from her podcast Miss Me for a few weeks for her mental health. She said she's been unable to concentrate on anything except the pain she's going through, as well as experiencing panic attacks. During her time off, she's going to stay off her phone as she says, quote, they're not doing us any good. I really don't like my phone. It comes amid allegations she caught husband David Harbour on Brea cheating on her. In an interview with Variety, Hugh Grant reveals he was joking when he said he hated filming Wonka. He explained, that's what the internet does. It scrubs humour and it scrubs context. It's one of the reasons I loathe it with such violence, really. This year's BAFTA Rising Star nominees are in. Those up for the award are Mikey Madison, Marissa Abella, Gerald Jerome,

David Johnson and Nabhan Rizwan. A fast-moving wildfire erupted in LA last Tuesday, quickly consuming nearly 3,000 acres and destroying homes along the Pacific Ocean. It's been described as the most destructive in US history. While celebs like Paris Hilton and Adam Brody's homes have been burnt down, The Guardian reports as of Monday the death toll stands at 24, and more than 12,300 homes and businesses have been destroyed and more than 200,000 people have been displaced. Some have shared what they've packed in their evacuation bags on TikTok. The fate of TikTok is in the hands of the US Supreme Court as it's announced it will shut down in the US on January 19th, this Sunday,

unless it divests from its China-based parent company ByteDance or sells to a US-owned company. Everyone's favourite couple, times two, are engaged. The hottest couples of recent history, in my honest opinion, Dua Lipa and Callum Turner, and Zendaya and Tom Holland, have come out of 2024 sporting giant rocks on their left hands. I couldn't be happier for them, or more jealous. Curtis Pritchard is among the ex-Islanders getting hauled back for Love Island All Stars 2025. He's hoping he finds a young lady or man

to make a coffee in the morning for. Paris Jackson, daughter of the late Michael Jackson, celebrated five years of sobriety from heroin and alcohol this week, saying it's because of being sober that she can smile again. So it's time to dive into the viral cut essay. I know you've all been gagging for us to talk about it. On the 9th of December, Lily J's essay, How Does My Divorce Make You Feel? As a therapist, I tried to keep my personal life private. After my public split, that was no longer in my control. Dropped on the cut, and it's fair to say it shooketh the pop culture community and was absolute catnip for all of us, aka the unhinged and pop culture obsessives. A quick update for anyone who doesn't know,

Lily J is a clinical psychologist who specialises in pregnancy and postpartum health. She was married to the actor Ethan Slater for five years and they were both childhood sweethearts before his relationship with Ariana Grande. The SpongeBob SquarePants, the Broadway musical actor, first began dating Jay in 2012 and they welcomed their first child, a son, 10 years later in 2022. However, in the summer of 2023, rumours started going absolutely wild and Slater filed for divorce from her as he began dating his Wicked co-star Ariana. The timelines have been really disputed over this and there's been various sources, who knows who they are, anonymous sources, one telling people that the pair developed a connection on set early on and suggesting that it was an affair. and then there was another source saying nothing happened between the pair until they were both separated from their partners. I think the thing about the cut essay that is so incredible is just

that Lily J has the first real chance to speak on all of it for herself and it's not a he said she said it's not random quotes on page six she gets the time and the space to go into all of it and rather go into the scorned narrative or the scorned woman narrative she takes a chance to talk about what the scandal has done for her career specifically the importance of anonymity as her job as a therapist and the importance for her clients and also her and Ethan's really different approaches to social media she says that while she really relished deactivating Facebook on her 18th birthday, she said that Ethan was going in the direction of being super exposed for his job and really having to put his life on social media and embracing all of that. She also dives into her total disbelief and shock at being left as a new mother. She says, during my pregnancy, I had never

felt happier nor more aware of how precarious happiness can be. When my baby was first placed on my chest, still tethered to me by his umbilical cord, I sobbed with relief. We've done it. He had arrived. I had survived preeclampsia, a life-threatening birth complication, and finally our family was whole. Mine is a story of worrying in the wrong direction. As a perinatal psychologist, I knew all the statistics. How vulnerable a marriage is in the postpartum period, how vital community connection is in preventing depression and anxiety, how new parenthood impacts a whole family, but I confidently moved to another country with my two-month-old baby and my husband to support his career. Consumed by the magic and mundanity of new motherhood, I didn't understand the growing distance between us. While the tabloids have often focused on Lily

as this kind of scorned woman, I remember there was this really viral quote in page six from July 2023 where she was quoted as saying that Ariana is not a girl's girl. I think this piece is nothing short of classy and graceful. She never takes a chance to disparage Ethan or Ariana. If anything, it's just like a really interesting look at her career and how she's personally been affected by this and how she's moving forward what did you both think I firstly just thought what a breathtakingly beautifully written piece I was absolutely like bowled over by her and I thought what was so interesting and like you said so graceful was the angle with which she chose to speak it was so professional it was actually so generous in her talking and it just showed how

qualified and how exceptional she probably is as a therapist and it brought so much humanity to a story which so often as you said in tabloids and in public minds can become this kind of fodder and we talk about these things on the podcast you know affairs and scandals and she really just cleverly pulled it back into reality. And I just thought what an insightful and interesting insight into her work. And also this thing where so many people don't want to be and we're suffering with this so much in a hyper surveillance society, but so many people don't want to be in the limelight. And I love I love that that's how she focused. And I also just wish her every single success of the back of it,

to be honest. I think that's it, isn't it? It's a piece.. And I also just wish her every single success of the back of it, to be honest. I think that's it, isn't it? It's a piece. I didn't know anything about her apart from this imprint she had in the media, which was few photos. And that's all I knew. I just knew ex-wife of the kind of scorned woman. And so it was nice to correct that narrative in my head. All the adjectives you used were exactly what I was thinking generous insightful interesting it's you know managed to focus on all of these different things relationship to marriage and motherhood and the kind of interesting tether between psychologist and patient like I had no idea about that I've always just been on the patient side in a few thousand words she does that I think it was so good and also was a great spotlight on the media circus and how actually from an outside from a

quote-unquote civilian perspective it is a circus And it probably is one of the most strange modern phenomena or experiences to be thrust from one real periphery. Like your husband is a SpongeBob actor. He's doing his own thing. Suddenly your face is next to the face. One of the most famous women in the world. How many people on earth have ever experienced that? It's so baffling. and I think she does a great job of just grounding and being like that is not real this is what's real my life my son loved it I just have to talk about the kind of final note she leaves on because it is just so powerful I thought she says and while I still firmly believe in following my patients leads and not presuming to know what parts of my personhood resonate with them the publicity I did not consent to increasingly feels like both a challenge and an opportunity. If I'm discovered as what? Being vulnerable? Perhaps it could be a

point of connection rather than a clinical liability. My entire adult life I feared that loss of control and postpartum depression would destroy me. One day in London I looked up and found that they had both arrived and I'm okay. If I can't be invisible anymore I may as well introduce myself. You know how a sponge is most effective at absorbing liquid when it's already a bit wet? Maybe we can think about my messy, not so personal life in that way. A dose of my own loss, rage, powerlessness, sadness that helps me hold yours. And what's so clever I thought about the piece is it's extremely vulnerable, but she's also so clever and boundaried in what she says, because she is opening herself up,

but there's still that distance. And what an intelligent woman. I was absolutely fascinated by her, to be honest. I could read her writing for hours. I thought so many of the turns of phrase were just incredible. And as someone who sat on the other end of a therapist, it was making me think because I was constantly when I was in therapy, I don't know about you guys, just trying to find out information about my therapist.

I really wanted to know, like, especially I was talking about my own family. I wanted to know what her family was like and it was really frustrating that I couldn't know but very useful because it did give me that freedom to talk freely without then worrying about the judgment but I think luckily for her because her her line of work and her therapy because she's experienced something which is in line with her patient's experience I can only imagine that it's gonna benefit her in some ways I still think what's clever is it it's a long piece it feels very vulnerable but actually she's still not told us too much it's only in the kind of margins that she does that I mean one obviously that line you just

read with the sponge people went okay you're a genius that kind of like not even a veiled dig like she could get away with going oh that's just a turn of phrase but people were reading it like yep sponge sponge bob you know people are kind of mining through it to look for those salacious details, which reminds me of John Mulaney's ex-wife, and I shouldn't call her that, Anna Marie Tendler, who wrote the book that I recommended about six months ago, Men Have Called Her Crazy. After their big public breakup, everyone wanted her to have this salacious, her side of the story. And what she came out with was this beautiful book about art and about harm and about patriarchy that was not dealing in the

facts of her relationship breakdown with John Blaney who has since remarried and had children with actress Libby Munn so again a really similar situation although I guess Anna Marie was sort of more in the public eye with her art but still wasn't world famous and it is a unique situation and both of them have been dealt this hand which I would just crumble I'm sure of it it sounds absolutely horrific to be the wife of a very famous man or a man who becomes very famous and then have people look at you like and now what and then to tell your story but not to be a story of vitriol but to be like okay but here's everything about me and I thought there was an alignment there that I found really empowering

yeah definitely and I think I think about all the women who get branded as like the scorned woman or like almost like the pitiful woman who got left behind even though I do not think this all the women who get branded as like the scorned woman or like almost like the pitiful woman who got left behind. Even though I do not think this is the case, Jennifer Aniston has had that branding for like years of her life by tabloids. And it is just like inescapable once you become that kind of figure in society. So I don't, A, I think this essay was really beautifully written. B, I think she probably had to do something for her job because once you become recognizable, as she says in this essay, she cannot, you know, continue her practice in the same way. As we have all said, therapy relies on the person that you're talking to

being this shadowy figure. You have to project all of your stuff onto them so you can work through it in the therapy room. You can't know much about them. It just would not work that way. And C, also, i get just like seeing yourself painted in the tabloids like fractured into all these different pieces feeling like you're in a funhouse mirror because none of them reflect what you actually feel or look like and also you don't want to have that branding because you will never escape it i love the way she thinks about things in the piece and the way she talks and there were so many lines that actually like when i was reading it started being about the a about the Ariana and Ethan thing and then I was just interested in her and

there's a line where she says motherhood I've learned fills your time but not your mind and I was like god that's so smart I feel like she's there's so many nuggets in there where she just obviously through her work and through this level of introspection and also not having that external thing of constantly viewing yourself through the prism of being watched it's clearly aided her ability to look at life in a better way so I think it's interesting the other thing I wonder what she doesn't talk about in the piece because she does talk about how she's lost work the other thing I think is going to end up being problematic for her she's going to get so many patients wanting to see her because of this scandal and I feel really sorry for her having

to manage that because there's going to be people that are just nosy that are thinking oh I want to go and see this woman now and I feel really sorry for her for that too because she's never asked to be a person of interest but again I think the tone of this piece she's done something really clever with it it's exceptional really I think. I wonder if she's going to have to rebrand and she kind of says that a little bit towards the end but I wonder to what degree she'll have to rebrand as a media personality to take control of this beast. She's almost saying, I will give, you know, I know my boundaries, I will not give more than I want to. So it's kind of like advertising that she is a very boundary therapist in that way. But also is advertising, hey, look, I'm a clinical psychologist. This is how insightful I am.

Like it does serve as a great she might not need it but it serves as a great advert for her as a person you would trust so hopefully the sort of bad actors would fall away they wouldn't be able to get an appointment it will all be okay but again it's the card she's been dealt where weirdos know her name know what she does for a living that may well come up I hope in the grand scheme of things it really profits her she can really specialize she can really kind of find nothing but flourishment after this i wanted to head to some listener responses because amina said the media is the villain the general public don't know the insane ins and outs and shouldn't and then lauren said the villain is him but these things happen sadly especially on intense

projects like wicked and i thought it was interesting that they both pointed out the villain and it was just making me think about our need as a society to know who the villain is it's like that insanely trite quote now about the real villain in the Devon Wells Prada is the boyfriend it's like we always have to have a villain and what's so interesting about this piece is she actually kind of tries to evade that she doesn't point any fingers there's some nods she's like my relationship ends in the shadow of my ex being with someone very famous so there's there's blurred lines around whether or not she's alluding to it being an affair or not. But I just found it so interesting because what she thinks she's really trying to do

with this piece is say, stop focusing on trying to put blame on something. Let's look at the real world impacts of the fallout from this relationship breakup and subsequent new relationship. And I just wonder, where does that come from? Do you guys find that, that you want to find a villain and a hero in every story?

Are you able to sit with the ambiguity of perhaps life is just a bit messy and grey sometimes? In terms of cheating, I have come, I mean, I entered my 20s thinking that's the worst thing you do to a person. There's no excuse. Anyone who does it is a bad person forever. And then of course I read Esther Perel and aged and met people who've been through marriages that ended with infidelity and just got a bit more perspective on it. Whereas now I don't assign the same level of villainy to anyone, really. I think everything has its causes and its impacts. And I think it doesn't serve anyone to make every unfaithful person, and even that's probably the wrong way of saying it, every person who is unfaithful in a relationship, in a marriage, into a villain and the other spouse into a victim, I think that's infantilizing to the person that it happens to. And it's just really flattening to the whole relationship.

So I try not to do that. In this case, though, it is really difficult because we're getting the media spin, which we talked about on last week's main episode. We're getting cherry picked quotes and we're getting Ariana Grande's got money for great PR and Lily Lily J has her own voice, and that's pretty much it. So I do try and take all of that into account. One thing I would say about this is, I think we would, as a society, have not cared as much if he wasn't what a lot of people think of as unattractive. I think maybe this is a conversation for another time,

but I think the fact that he's not one of Hollywood's leading hot guys has made people a lot more vitriolic towards Ariana and towards perhaps Lily I do think it's a really interesting part of it that we do forgive cheating if it's really conventionally sexy people and I just think it's been a real shit storm because people like huh he looks like a regular guy it's just been a really strange part of the whole thing for me yeah there are so many elements to it and I think you are right I think the optics of it because they were both in these partnerships you always look at who's the person who could sway them away from a relationship so there are these

like ridiculous kind of eyes on oh who could be saucy enough or who could be attractive enough to like pull you away from a marriage on both sides so I do think that is a part of it to answer your question Anoni I definitely feel like I have dived really deep into the gray area as I've gotten older and I think even watching something like season two of the white lotus where cheating and transactional relationships and all these kind of things are like the DNA of that series I don't know I just I don't think I judge cheating or people who cheat in the same way as I used to I think I just feel sad if somebody you know has been cheated on and I think it is just like the difficulties of maintaining relationships the difficulties of making things work the realities are that it's just so tough and I think that's probably more where I come from with this and it's more I try

to be compassionate and I try to not go in with vitriol as you said Beth. I agree with both of you I used to have such black and white views on cheating and I think it is undeniable that being cheated on is one of the biggest portrayals biggest heartbreaks and can completely ruin and destroy a person but also I understand the complexities around monogamous relationships and the reasons why people cheat and actually the statistics on cheating are crazy it's something like 60 to 70 percent of people in in long-term monogamous relationships are cheating at any one point in time and that cheating spans from emotional flirtations at work to full-blown affairs. Because I think cheating is a symptom of a flawed institution, which is monogamy. Not that monogamy doesn't

work, but I think the way that we expect monogamy to exist in such boundary lines, that jealousy is so encouraged in society through romantic literature and films and possessiveness, it comes a lot down to patriarchal conformity around women's sexuality there's so many parameters around why monogamy doesn't I think monogamy can work but I think the reason it doesn't work is because of all of these boundaries and that's why people cheat and so we make people villains for cheating when actually the system's kind of a bit messy so as much as I would hate to be cheated on and the idea of cheating on someone especially in a marriage brings me out in hives I don't see it as villainous and it's funny because we spoke in last week's episode at the top about all fours and one of the themes in that is an affair and my friend

who rung me who hated it hated it so much because she simply couldn't get past the fact that the character was having an affair and I've come so far away from that it's been a long road but I really don't look at affairs in the same way yeah I have oh my god I have so many things to say about this one somebody might call me a mug but I don't really care I think because of being in the grey area and I think also listening to Esther Perel religiously I think I just even if I was the victim of being cheated on it would really not be a black or white issue for me anymore it'd be more a case of looking at like what happened to make this happen and it wouldn't be a strict we're over it would be a discussion and it would be like diving into what has led to this like cataclysmic event also in

this situation i think the thing that makes it so distressing and so heartbreaking and which is why like i would want to run to lily j if i was a friend is because the fact she was a new mother and you are so vulnerable when you've just given birth and that in and of itself alongside the cheating is what makes this so so awful and so heartbreaking not that being cheated on without being a parent is any less it's just like these added layers and you know the media scrutiny just makes this story so distressing I guess and also the third thing this is super toxic but there's a reason why affairs are so sexy on screen it's because I don't know the way they are presented in pop culture it is really sexy like in baby girl i can't wait for you guys to see it like i just found myself when

when it's portrayed on screen this like office romance you're just so sucked into it and it is just like although we judge it harshly societally pop culture has for countless years presented it as this undeniably overwhelmingly sexy part of life and it happens but it's also judged at the same time it's very strangely treated we can acknowledge that affairs happen they happen constantly ashley madison was an app that was created because it is such a part of society but also at the same time we can't talk about it we can't think about it properly we can't hold it as part of life in a way that's part of the gray area we are so black and white in thinking about it, but also we are kind of attracted to it. At the risk of going like wildly off piste and following that direction, I think one, I would judge the success of Baby

Girl, any film that has cheating or an affair in it, one, by how sexy they make it, because there's a reason people do it. It is because the sex is sexy and it's all very sexy and compelling. But two, by how they portray the aftermath, which is often one of the most bleak situations. It's emotionally bleak. Everyone feels awful. So I think it's getting that balance very right. I think you're right. We can't hold space in the full spectrum of love, sex relationships for infidelity, even though it's obviously very human nature to stray from monogamy. And as long as we're so nasty and so sneering about other modes, other models, polyamory, et cetera, I just think we're so nasty and so sneering about other modes other models polyamory etc i just think we're constantly shooting ourselves in the groin by doing this i think we

just need to maybe have a slightly broader mind and i remember bowen yang who's a friend of our own agrandes and he has a podcast called las culturistas and reviewing her album and they sort of touch on all of the rumors in really cagey ways and he says this is the only thing i'm going to acknowledge about this situation which is that like there is an unquit puritanical christian way we are approaching marriage in the discourse very like trad wife everyone's being like the sanctity of marriage people have then since tried to recontextualize that and be like i mean it's a woman who's like postpartum after a very dangerous pregnancy like is that not sacred so i just think we are not we're going to very extreme ends one which is sanctity of marriage one which is you must never cheat this makes you an evil person

who's evil forever and the other side is like hey don't be so uptight don't be so puritanical and there must be a place in the blurred lines where it's right to say you shouldn't do this but if you do do this you're not going to hell and i've not found it but i must be there i agree i think that's what's what's so heinous about this whole situation and why it's so even more cruel is the fact of what she just gone through. The fact that a woman is so vulnerable. There's an awful statistic to say that most men cheat either when their wife is postpartum or, and don't quote me on this, but I did see it and it was a real statistic. It was something like 70% of men cheat on their partners when they're going through cancer treatment so whenever a woman is in a really dire situation where they basically can no longer be the caregiver for their husband the husband goes and seeks out another sexual partner in order to like replace the fact that their primary

caregiver basically which a wife often is has become incapacitated whereas women will always stick through often statistically with their partners when they're sick and become their primary caregiver and never and not do that thing so that's one side of it which is just very dark and I think that the fact that she's been thrust into the limelight the whole thing of this is awful but to go back to what we were saying a minute ago about in general I think the problem with affairs is if people admitted their base desires admitted that they do have these instincts admitted that actually long-term monogamy over 40 years is really difficult for a lot of people and actually I think life is kind of too short to commit to that if it really is

going to be a struggle maybe there's a middle ground where you say, hey, we've been married for 20 years. You know, look, if you want to sleep with someone when you're on a work trip in Sweden, go for it. Just don't talk to me about it. And that loses the portrayal. But people like can't face that. And I find that so interesting because I've had conversations with friends who have said something like that. They're like, I couldn't bear that. I'm like, but the other thing is that then likely someone will cheat on you, which is so much worse. So I think I agree. That's where I'm coming to. I'm like, life is really long. And actually, there's the idea of compulsion, which exists within polyamorous relationships, which is feeling love and joy if your partner finding love and joy within the sexual sanctimony or emotional relationship with

someone else. And that's so hard to do because of all the things we've spoken about because of evangelical puritanical Christian values and jealousy and monogamy and everything we've been socialized to believe but there is a world where you go do you know what if this is going to make my marriage better and my partner happier then go and sleep with that person that isn't what's happening here very different from this situation but we've come on to it and it's such a fascinating thing but i mean really the person that's really lost here so much is lily j and i think that your point about his attractiveness is really interesting because it's almost like he's undeserving of Ariana that's kind of like another argument we had another message as well from Curly Sweeney saying again about the villain the villain's Ariana who's taken a long long history of going for taken men which is another

thread in this story where I think people feel like not only some people are saying you know she's broken up a marriage but she's also not going to stay with him is what some people are saying like she's going to have another quote-unquote ugly boyfriend in six months and people are saying, you know, she's broken up a marriage, but she's also not going to stay with him is what some people are saying. Like she's going to have another quote unquote ugly boyfriend in six months. And people are hoping for that, though. People are hoping for the Chardon Freud of, ha, you're going to get left, you're going to have nothing. Which, again, is just a really, I don't want to say toxic, but I think it does speak to an inner darkness of going, I can't wait to watch that happen. Like, really, you can't wait to watch someone in the public eye be miserable you know I kind of just wish healing for everyone involved and reading this piece which I think is a cautionary tale on marriage on at least being certain in a marriage and if she didn't have this kind of well of self-esteem if she didn't have this emotional knowledge if she didn't have this willingness to

be like my life is valuable my work is valuable I've got so much joy in my son etc she'd be sunk and I think it is just a cautionary tale don't even however certain you are do not build your whole life around one single love feed your sense of self with other things not just the person that you're with and you're married to but yeah there's just so much going on yeah that is such a good point and I really love that you said that god I just feel like every bit of this conversation I keep having to like remember all the different threads because every bit of it is so interesting what you said An, about your idea of long-term monogamy involves those conversations around being able to have experiences further down the line, because it like keeps you closer together. I've always had that impression of monogamy. I've always felt that. And I'm always endlessly surprised when I speak to people and they're

really resistant. You know, I don't disrespect it. I just, I think I feel like a freak for feeling that way. And I find that quite interesting because we have so many grey areas with many elements of modern life, but it does feel like monogamy is this like really set in stone principle still for a lot of people, which is interesting. The steal your man narrative around Ariana Grande has been endlessly fascinating as well. Obviously, she literally had a song that said, break up with your boyfriend, I'm bored. Great song. And she's always had this kind of vixen image and i think the minute that there was this public case where she appeared to be doing something that she's always sung about it really divided people people were either like a she's been singing about this for like a decade were you surprised and then

there was b people being like but we're meant to like her how do we support her how do we say that we're like a stan when we disagree with her actions and it comes back to fan behavior as well that feeling like you have to endorse everything a celebrity does to be a fan of them and you have to moralize them too and then another interesting element is her image at the moment you know looking very demure very sweet blonde very gentle as she's being painted to be this vixen woman she's never looked more like a genteel woman whilst also being painted out to be like the Angelina Jolie of a situation looking even less like she used to where she was in latex and dominatrix stuff it's quite visually interesting I guess her being in the

midst of the most scandalous moment of her career whilst also looking like the first lady of America she's also talking like the first lady I don't know if you read the Vanity Fair piece that was about both her and Cynthia, and they do touch on this, and she kind of gives kind of caged answers, but she says, and this is about her relationship with Ethan Slater, she says,

it definitely doesn't get any easier seeing some of the negativity that was birthed by disreputable tabloids. And she says that again about disreputable tabloids, and it's just the verbiage of it. The tone of it is very kind of hoity-toity. It's very like old Hollywood. And I think she's, I don't know whether she's gunning for the audrey hepburn role or whatever she's doing but

it's a totally different image than when she was doing this sort of um purported black scent when she was she spoke very differently her voice was deeper it was less in the tonal range that it is now but i'll send this to you it's really interesting she talks in these quite grandiose ways it's and i think it is part of exactly the same image rebrand we talked about PR last week it must be a full behind the scenes pitch deck that has gone into all of this I imagine she's followed the kind of Kardashian pipeline from blackfishing copying certain tropes to becoming supremely skinny very pale very blonde hair very angelic and childlike what's interesting as we're talking I've just realized about Ariana is she has been called a homewrecker she has had accusations of

blackfishing and black scent but she's always universally kind of loved she's never actually been cancelled she hasn't faced the same kind of vitriol she does get it but it's certainly never really tarnished her to the same extent as other famous women in the public eye which is quite interesting I wonder if that is to do with her smallness the fact that she looks so young perhaps like plays an element into it because she's certainly not been short of wrongdoing inverted commas and and she's actually come out of it pretty much unscathed just bring it back to the piece for one second so one more message from an anonymous user for obvious reasons who said I thought the piece was so beautiful as a psychologist myself I struggle with how much I share online and I can really relate to the difficulty of extremely online personal information ending up online.

And I just want to say, I actually think just judging by this conversation that actually Lily J has nailed this because we spoke about the piece and then actually we've kind of not spoken about her. So as much as she feels overexposed, she's done a work of art with this piece because there was enough to get your teeth into she said it all but there was there was nothing really to go on apart from she seems really clever got her stuff together and it sounds like she probably helps so many people you're so right it's like non-stick and it's like a mirror we've just ended up in a completely different place and all we've spoken about now is just ariana for the last like 10 minutes such good def. I think the takeaway for me was being vulnerable can be so valuable. She gives the reader so much in the end.

She says the line about, and this is, I'm going to butcher it, but a lot of your partner's goodness is actually your own goodness reflected back. So she just ends it on so many good notes, like takeaway points. I was like, I'm going to actually try and remember that. Yeah, vulnerability is valuable.

And if you can, if you can go through that and then come through with some degree of integrity and hope for the future and joy I think that's quite encouraging that line was like Giselle Pellicott's the shame is not ours to carry it's theirs level of like how much it hit me because I was like god there's so many times when you've walked away from a relationship and you're craving it back when you actually think about the person or you see them again you're like I don't actually know what it was I was attracted to you and actually often it is that thing it's the love that they make you want to give to them that you're craving not them and that I forgot about that line but it was so

goddamn good thank you so much for listening and for all of your opinions and takes on this topic we love being in conversation with you remember that we'll be discussing baby girl on Friday so please go see it before then if you can and haven't yet and do follow us on Instagram and TikTok at everything is content pod we'll see you as always on Friday bye