Everything Is Content - Will&Harper, chaos-queen Jemima Kirke and cutting parents off

Episode Date: September 19, 2024

Gorgeous babe Beth is ill this week, so Oenone and Ruchira steer the content ship into port. The pair dive into Netflix's new documentary starring funny-man Will Ferrell and his long-time bestie and collaborator, Harper Steele. The documentary makes for a tearful, moving examination of friendship, allyship, and what it means to be a trans woman in the US. Grab your tissues before watching! Next-up, Vogue dropped a new series starting with a day-in-the-life as actress, artist and it girl Jemima Kirke. At one point she writes that she's bought a kitten and is yet to deliver it to a friend. Why do we love knowing the unusual details of a celeb's life? And finally, a New Yorker piece takes a 360-view of a rising trend of people going 'no-contact' with their parents. Ruchira and Oenone discuss whether we can learn anything about how to navigate difficult family relationships from the piece, and if our views on family estrangement have changed after reading it.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!—In Vogue: The 90sEvery OutfitTHEM: Will & Harper Is a Daringly Honest Look at Trans Belonging in AmericaNPR: In just a few years, half of all states passed bans on trans health care for kidsTHE LANCET: Gender-related self-reported mental health inequalities in primary care in England: a cross-sectional analysis using the GP Patient SurveyNIH: Suicide and Suicidal Behavior among Transgender PersonsVOGUE: Inside Jemima Kirke’s Charmingly Unscripted LifeTHE NEW YORKER: Why So Many People Are Going “No Contact” with Their Parents Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Richira I'm Manoni and this is everything is content every week we analyze the week's biggest and best pop culture stories this week we'll remember down as Beth isn't feeling very well bless her if you're a Beth Stan like we all obviously are then don't worry she's definitely going to be back with us next week so tune in for this and also next week in the meantime we are here me and rachira and we're ready to deliver you a hot slice of content straight out of the oven this week on the podcast we're diving into will and harper i'm not gonna lie it was a doc that left both of us mean and only sobbing in the cinema it was yeah tears falling down our goddamn faces um the rise of people cutting off their parents and

Jemima Kirk's chaotic day in the life. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok at everythingiscontentpod and make sure you subscribe so you never miss an episode. I know there's just two of us so it's going to be a bit of a quicker intro but what have you been loving this week Anoni? Okay what I have been loving is the docu-series on Disney Plus called Vogue in the 90s. Have you been watching it? No I've heard about this. Please tell me everything. I already love the sound of it. Oh my god it's amazing. So I'm three episodes in, I'm watching it with my housemate Grace, and it's Anna Wintour, Edward Annenfeld, and also has all of these cameos from Kate Moss, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kim Kardashian, Naomi Campbell, just everyone you can imagine that ever featured. And it's all about how the 90s was like the biggest definitive change in fashion after

Anna Wintour takes over Vogue. And it's like the rise to the first episode is all about the supermodels, like those first really famous supermodels. And then in episode two, we meet Kate Moss and it talks about grunge. And then episode three was about Alexander McQueen, Lee McQueen, and like bringing grunge to the US. And it's just, it's so nostalgic for a period of time that I was like basically just born in but also it's so amazing to look at it talks about like the convergence of the art scenes in the 90s which didn't used to exist it was like film was separate art was separate fashion was separate these were all these really separate industries and then in the 90s mid to late 90s there comes this convergence where every

single kind of creative industry comes together and you have this amazing mashup of people going to like no studio 54 was before but you have tom ford talking about studio 54 but it's like sela mccartney and kate moss and you know noami campbell and alexander mcqueen and they're all like friends that all out on the scene so it's about the magazine but it's also just about the arts and the culture and that period in time which I do think probably was like one of the last golden eras we've ever had I just wish I lived through it oh that sounds so good I'm obsessed with the 90s like everything like the fashion just the culture so that sounds right up my street I feel like recently I've been trying to figure out what my style is and I think it's a bunch of things but one of them I'm really obsessed with is 90s minimalism so you

know like the Calvin Klein um just like slip dresses and just like block colors and really kind of classic so you know like I think her name was is it Caroline Bassett Kennedy or Carol Bassett Kennedy and just that like classic silhouette I just they don't make clothes like that anymore I feel like the 90s was just perfect I know like the spaghetti strap tops and like really everything looked really well cut and well made yes it's one of the best most interesting things I thought was when they were talking about there was a period where on the and like Gwyneth Paltrow's talking about this Claire Danes Kate Moss everyone's saying how designers didn't used to dress really dress um celebrities and models for

red carpets they would literally just wear like the clothes in their wardrobe so they would turn up to red carpet events just wearing like jeans and a top and it was so much cooler and simpler and more understated but we are getting there's an interesting bit i've just got into the series where they're talking about how uh sarah jackson park is in it as well and they like will ring they were like they'd go in the yellow pages they'd find the pr for like dior and ring them be like can i wear this suit like to go on the catwalk it wasn't i really don't go to wear on the red carpet and it's so interesting but i do really miss everything so orchestrated they were like no one had a stylist it was just all about your own sense of style and

your fashion and like what clothes you had access to and i do think that's something we're really losing now is like it's really interesting to see how celebrities would dress and we all people can be quite rude to people like Blake Lively being like oh my god she needs a stylist but actually maybe there's something to be said for it being so much more interesting when people actually are putting their outfits together of the light of their own accord yeah I see what you mean it's like everything now is so deeply orchestrated and produced and there is a team and everyone's like pulling this that and the other from the archives and it's like so much time and effort goes into it without even I guess the individual who's being dressed necessarily having anything to do with it

yeah exactly um you're absolutely gonna love this you need to watch it Disney plus 100% book in the 90s what have you been loving this week okay so um I feel like a little bit of a fraud because I've consumed no content apart from lost but but I do have I do have a recommendation that isn't lost um I'm sure a lot of our listeners know the Instagram account every outfit on sex in the city I've just started binging their podcast which they've had for years I don't know why I have never done it until this week but it's a understandably solid podcast about Sex and the City they do a bunch of stuff they do pop culture like we do but my favorites that they do are the deep dives into the archives of the episodes so they don't have an order a running order which I think makes it more fun because it pulls from your memory of the episode. And they go into it in such forensic detail from the fashion,

but also just the madness of the characters and the story arcs. It's so good. That's so interesting. They don't have an order. It's not chronological. Because I've listened to Sex and the City podcast. I've listened to Juno Dawson's one, which I think is called So I Got to Thinking, which she does with Dylan Jones, not the GQ Dylan Jones, another Dylan Jones. And then there's Sentimental in the City, which is Carolina Dolly Alderton did. So I almost feel like I've listened to Sex and the City podcasted out, but you think this is a whole different level? Yeah, I think Sentimental in the City, I haven't listened to Juno Dawson's yet. That's next on my list. I've heard really good things,

can't wait. But with Sentimental in the City, I think they go in in a really literary way, which I love. And I think that offers almost like a really deeply emotional take on every single thing. Dolly and Caroline are so good at doing that together where they go deep into like the emotions of everything. Whereas I think this one is more like it's centered around style. There's a lot of like cultural references of, you know, what's happening in New York around the time of any given moment. So I think it's more like it's it's more culture driven I'd say

in that way so it is a different take and I'm picking up loads of tidbits of like clubbing during that time or you know the food scene or like loads of localized I guess insights into it which the other podcasts that I've listened to don't I really want to listen to that I love the Instagram page and also I am on my have many rewatch I'm intermittently re-watching Sex and City I actually watched a couple of episodes last night I think I'm on season four episode four or something and god especially with the clothes there's just so much to see I mean I think it's one of those series you can re-watch and every single time there's something new to notice because it's so rich in not just like the

characters and the women and the plot New York is a whole character of its own the clothes are characters of their own there is just so much richness to it so that sounds perfect thanks we'll be tuning in of course on sunday and only and i had the absolute pleasure of attending Netflix's screening for Will and Harper. Will and Harper is a new documentary starring Will Ferrell of Step Brothers and Anchorman fame and Harper Steele, his longtime collaborator and a former head writer on Saturday Night Live. Will and Harper have been friends for about 30 years and they met when they were working together for SNL. Harper came out as trans in 2021 and wrote Will a letter saying she was planning to transition age 61. The doc is an exploration of their friendship and her journey to finding herself while they're both going on a cross-country road trip through America. Before transitioning Harper would routinely do trips like that and

the running joke of the documentary which is really, is that she'd always pull up on random dirt roads or alleyways, basically like the real shit kind of nothing areas of America. But she would be the one person to really find the beauty in that. So the doc is essentially following her during the first time she does a trip across America since transitioning and feeling increasingly unsafe in conservative areas of the US. In an early interview, she said that she loves America so much, quote, I just don't know if it loves me back right now. Anoni, I know I could see tears coming down your face, much like mine when we're in the cinema, but what did you think of the film? I couldn't believe how moving it was I think I was ever so slightly apprehensive because it almost felt too good to be true to be having such a kind of like national treasure or famous

figure and face doing something that was like showing true allyship to a trans person and in a climate that's really disturbing and upsetting so I was kind of biting my tongue a bit I'd watched the trailer and thought it was going to be amazing I was blown away I mean we both are we were just kind of crying and laughing and crying and laughing the whole way through and the whole we went to a screening and everyone in that room you just knew that everyone behind you was crying and laughing and I think it's really really powerful and really beautiful and I what I kept thinking to myself when I was watching it is I'm lucky enough to have trans friends in my life and also both of us work in an industry which for the most part the people that I come across are very open-minded and very liberal in their views

about sexuality and gender but that's not the same case for everyone else and i was like i think it's this kind of film that actually would work on some people who perhaps have never been exposed to certain gender identities or gender expressions who are getting all their information about gender identity and ideology through propagandist media i think a film like this with someone like will ferrell at the helm could actually be extraordinary in changing people's perceptions that's what i kind of felt coming away was this is something that people need to put on with like their parents when they go home for christmas or as because you could kind of put it on without

feeling like it's much on the agenda and I think by the end you'd find it pretty hard for most people to not hopefully feel endeared to Will and Harper yeah no I completely agree and even before going in to watching it uh one of the thoughts I had was that Will Ferrell's audience to me has always been very very male and bro-y and I'm sure some demographic in that you know would steer towards um conservative and yeah who knows but I I just have the impression that him tapping into his audience is not like you know I, I don't know, say, somebody within our circles writing an article talking about these same issues. I feel like he does have quite a, you know, disparate, gigantic audience that would touch the right people by

releasing a documentary like this. And sharing his platform like that, I think, is really life-changing. And I think it is really important. And I feel so certain that it will touch the people it's meant to because of that. I think, yeah, the breadth of it and the kind of emotion behind it and just the impact that I hope it has is just breathtaking. And it was just so emotional. feel like I feel like I've been really affected by this for days like even yesterday I was thinking about it it really has moved me so much I yeah I think you're so right about Will Ferrell being like bro what who is Ron Burgundy what film is he from as a character anchor man anchor man so i was just thinking about how like so much of will ferrell's canon of his like the characters that he plays a lot of it plays on

quite mild but like kind of misogynistic characters and archetypes so and i don't know i don't actually know i should have researched this before whether or not will ferrell has been outward about what his views are political or not but i definitely agree with outward about what his views are, political or not. But I definitely agree with you that I think he will have a large portion, and America is so vast and he is known pretty much countrywide, although there are loads of really funny bits in the documentary where he's like, I'm Will Ferrell. And the person's like, okay. I think that he definitely reaches an audience that, like you said, some other people who are maybe more politically inclined or more obviously aligned with certain movements just wouldn't be able to reach.

And I think what's so interesting is, and so we were really fortunate when we went to the screening, Will and Harper were there as well as like the director and people from Netflix. And so there was an interview towards the end and there were some questions. And one of the questions was kind of like, did you always know where this story was going to go? And Harper says, well, it's funny because as soon as I told Will that I was, you know, transitioning and that I am a woman, he was like, okay. And so she was then like, we never had to traverse the journey of what was it going to be like for Will to come to an understanding of the fact that I am a woman and that I'm going to be living my life outwardly as a woman. That was never going to have to be part of the story of the documentary, which I think in some cases that could have been it. It could have been that they

went on this long road trip and it was Will asking questions and coming to terms and coming around to the fact that Harper was transgender and a woman but instead that it just became kind of about their friendship and them becoming deeper and them actually facing together Harper coming out into the world as a woman and that quote that Richer read at the beginning finding out if America loved her back and I think that that is what kind of makes it quite an interesting thing because I guess it kind of is educational in some ways, but it's not, it's really not hitting you over the head with talking about being trans. It is really this like singular story of a singular person. And that really specific personal experience is what makes it hopefully quite universal.

Yeah. No, I know exactly what you mean. And they said that the director of the film during the kind of Q&A session said that he didn't want it to feel like you're getting, you know, an after school special. He wanted it to be a human story because ultimately it is a human story. And I think that's the thing that kind of destroyed me was the feeling of Harper finding herself and how difficult that's been. America being put in all of these really scary situations going into what appears to be like you know a bar full of um men drinking and not knowing what the response will be going into various scenarios now as a woman and just him being with her the whole time and them talking about what transitioning was like for her and also just what she hopes for the rest of her life because you know life isn't over there's a whole new there's a whole new world that's now

accessible to her and she that's so exciting I think there was so much beauty and so much pain and that was just explored so I don't know so candidly and so honestly. And I felt as if she was so brave in sharing herself. She put her heart on a platter almost for all of us to look at in what I assume is a hope of people understanding that we're all just fucking human. And that just, I don't know, that just kind of destroyed me that she had to do that in the first place, but also I just had to appreciate the beauty of that in itself. It's, yeah it's so beautiful and there's so many bits well in the after what in the conversation afterwards called it kismet where and when you watch the film you'll see this there's just all these amazing things that kind of happen and they say in the Q&A that it's kind of like

organic and I don't really want to say what happens but there's times when Harper and Will will be talking about something and then randomly like in the next scene something will happen that responds to something they've spoken about that happened to Harper in her past or like and so there was just all these kind of bits of magic and it does feel quite American saying that and quite kind of like but once you'd seen the film, honestly, it's just, it's really, really beautifully done. And there are hard hitting bits. And Harper is really, she makes a point in the film and also in the Q&A to say, this isn't the everyday experience of a trans woman going out into the world. I was not only with a camera crew, I also had Will Ferrell with me.

This is not how how if I was just going out into the world as a general trans woman into these places, perhaps I wouldn't have been received the same way. I wouldn't have felt as safe, et cetera. At the same time, there is a scene where they go to a basketball game. There's something they did pre-transition and Will starts speaking to someone at the game. And then it turns out that that person he was speaking to is actually the governor of the state of where the game was. And Harper says, oh, that's interesting. And she then Googles him and it turns out that he's voted against trans rights on like every single count. And that, in that moment, Will's like, shit, I wish I'd asked him what he thought. I wish I'd challenged that. I wish I hadn't put yourself in that situation so there are also probably few and far between because of the nature of the fact that from this documentary but there are kind of like real life reactions and situations that happen along the course of the documentary as

well which are quite which are a really important to see but be quite interesting because they definitely actively weren't trying to seek out those wills absolutely trying to give harper this like amazing experience and even with all of those things in place that i've just said that means it's so much safer there is like still these clearly unavoidable instances when they come up against transphobia or um hatred yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and i guess on that note it it's probably, no, it is really important to talk about the context of the doc and, you know, the situation, the environment that it's going to be released into. NPR reports that in the US, transgender people under 18 face laws that bar them from accessing gender-affirming healthcare in 25 states, but just

a few years ago, not a single state had such a law. One example includes last year, North Dakota's Republican governor signed a bill banning gender-affirming care for most minors with the possibility of a felony for healthcare professionals who provided it. And, I mean, the Lancet, which is a peer-reviewed medical journal reported that there are several studies that show a high prevalence of mental health conditions among people seeking gender affirming health care and even providing access to this care in adequate time effectively addresses that so studies have shown that there's a high prevalence of suicide among trans people than any other group gender affirming care truly saves lives. It is

essential for people to live a happy life. In her review of The Dark, Samantha Allen, who is the site director for them, argued Will's unvarnished responses really make the film. And although he's endlessly supportive of Harper, he asks her lots of un-PC questions, one of them about her boobs, which was a bit cringe. And in more than one instance, falls short of being a solid ally. And the example you gave of being at the basketball game and not asking the governor of that state about his past on trans rights and trans issues is another example of that. She wrote, quote, Ferrell may be a celebrity, but he models what many Americans have gone through this past decade, figuring out how to accept a trans loved one with no guidebook.

That process, much like the film that was made about it, is beautiful, messy, and perfectly imperfect. And I think, yeah, I couldn't have said it any better. I think he, I think the reason why this documentary works is because the funny man, the character of just like not taking anything seriously, being a bit of a joke, you know, life's not that serious, is putting himself in the firing line of getting things wrong. He gets things wrong and he takes it on the chin and he has an emotional response and the guard comes down. He's, you know, at various points crying when he gets it completely wrong in being an actual ally to Harper

and he admits that he could do better and there's like a genuine there's a genuine kind of I don't know there's a genuine pain of being like I really fucked up I really want to be there for you and I'm just you know I'm learning as I'm on this trip with you what that means and I really want to fucking be there for you and I'm going to do it. And I think that watching the film, any kind of cynicism I had of just being like, oh, this is just going to be a doc that's designed to make me cry, whatever. It's Will Ferrell doing a film. All of that kind of stuff just fell away. It just felt like I was watching two humans figuring out their friendship and Will Ferrell being the person not the comedian I agree I think everyone should watch it again I really do think it's one of those things that

you should stick on with family or like if there's someone in your life who you feel like hasn't quite got there or has some reticence or is you know someone that is maybe susceptible to reading kind of certain things because we are living in a climate and it was interesting they kept talking about the US and I was thinking god but it's so bad here right now like it is awful the amount of things that we're seeing like the transphobia the rise in transphobia and also people wanting to change legislation and blocking people's access to gender farming care over here as well so I think there's a real bravery in doing this and i also think i don't know if this is the weird thing to say i think there's something quite interesting

about it being will farrell as a middle-aged man with all of this status coming for he's not the normal demographic that you see coming forward to fight for trans rights and obviously harper is his best friend and has been his best friend for years. And so the fact, I don't know, it just, it shouldn't be that it takes a rich, famous white man to come forward and speak about rights for people to listen. But I actually do think that it's going to have a really big impact because of who he is. And like you said, then forget all of that. It is just a beautiful story when you watch it. I can't believe how moving it was and yeah I think everyone should watch it yeah I completely agree and that just reminds me of my main thing going into this was just like I'm so sick of the behind the scene celeb tour documentaries the kind of like brazen

money making of getting their fans to buy tickets to another thing to like shill out their money to just like basically fund another celebrity's lifestyle like that's essentially what I think those tour documentaries are at this point and I was I yeah being that kind of cynical about the genre and then seeing something like this has given me hope that if you are a celebrity you have a platform and you care about anything there are ways that you can show that there are ways interesting ways artful ways emotional ways to show that so the celebrity documentary genre doesn't have to be dead and stupid there is a way to revive it and to make it interesting and also important will and harper is out in cinemas now and it's

also coming to netflix from the 27th of September. So definitely watch it. So Vogue have a new series where they look at the hectic, messy, sometimes beautiful, often frustrating enterprise of being a mother and maintaining a life of your own. Consider it a day in the life for the most powerful women we know. Read our first installment from jemima kirk so the first one is inside jemima kirk's charmingly unscripted life jemima joker was obviously most notably thrust into public consciousness with her role of jessa and girls which lena dunham has admitted she basically wrote for jemima and jessa is based on jemima they actually both went to school together and at the time jemima

wasn't really acting she's an artist i think she leonard asked her like one other thing that she'd done little furniture or tiny furniture then she went on to do girls obviously became super famous from that and more recently she's been in sex education but i think the thing she's probably most famous for currently is when she's doing a q a on instagram and someone asked her a question and she just responded with i think you all might be thinking about yourselves too much, but the picture accompanying it is a selfie of her and you can see her camera roll is just like a string of selfies and it's really funny. She seems like such a good candidate and a very well thought out candidate for this first edition of this new Vogue series.

I think you've read it, Ruchira. Yeah, yeah, I read it today. Did you enjoy it? What did you make of it? I just, she's so, she's so her. There's like, no one else who is her. She's just so Jemima Kirk. And I know that sounds so stupid, but like, I feel like anyone familiar with her hopefully knows what I mean, where it's like, you can't make this shit up. you can't write it only she can do it she's just so jessa like she's just a mess but like also such a glam chic mess and also I don't know everything's chaos unnecessarily chaotic it's so funny because I was thinking about I was laughing at how some of the time stamps in the piece are really specific. So it'd be like 8.24, 9.14 or something. And it feels like someone could write it, you know, like it could be a

caricature, but you just, I get the feeling with her that it's not. And I feel like she is the last of a dying breed of a kind of person that is genuinely eccentric, genuinely doesn't give a fuck, is quite happy to suddenly like go back on something she said completely change her mind she's quite an interesting character that i don't think we see as much of in modern day hollywood and celebrity and i i think that's why because everyone's really quite people either love her or hate her she's either quite alluring to you or you find her really annoying i'm definitely allured to her so you think you do think she's either quite alluring to you or you find her really annoying I'm definitely allured to her so you think you do think she's authentic you don't think that that is put on no I think it's

authentic I I think we're so cynical with the media we consume now and I think maybe I'm giving myself too much credit here but I think we're all quite good at spotting when that uh that chaotic frazzled glamorous mess persona isn't real when it's a character or caricature and I think that's why she's so special and so marmite to all of us because you can't be that divisive if it's not if it's not legitimate if you're not that irritating to some people and also she's not legitimate, if you're not that irritating to some people. And also she's not winning favors by being like this with a lot of people. I think a lot of people, as you rightly said, find her frustrating, annoying, and just bizarre. But then the other cult audience thinks she's amazing and thinks she's an icon. The only person I've thought in recent times emulates a

little bit of the Jemima Kirk craziness is there was somebody who wrote a piece for the strategist about trialing this like lip plumping gloss and what essentially happened was her name was Annie Hamilton the whole thing essentially went through her week of getting I think caught up in a polycule at one point having a situationship all of this stuff and it was meant to be a review for a lip gloss it was so my god mad but it went absolutely insanely viral I remember it got like thousands of retweets and she basically became famous because it's so rare for people to be that nuts it's so funny I love that I want to read that so in in I was about to say jess at jessica lol in jemima

kirk's charming unscripted life as it's titled she wakes up she's like missed her alarm her kids have been staying with their dad so they're coming back she like throws on an outfit that it just looks perfectly put together but she's done that within a minute she goes to get coffee then she gets a bagel then she comes back changes out of her clothes she's eventually going some event later so she puts loads of makeup on and there's an amazing line where she's like I don't need all that makeup I just have so much of it that it's fun to use like I love that self-awareness that she's gorgeous and she's really unashamedly backs herself like she thinks she's really sexy and she'll talk about it and it is all really chaotic and her day is just like hilarious again it's like

she's going to some event then her friend comes over for like half an hour then she's like darning some trousers then she's doing art like it's just all sort of so chaotic and what I think is quite an interesting move from Vogue who are famously you know the polished glamour really high-end really expensive this is self-written by Jemima but it's also got her own pictures which are all again like there's just a coffee cup on the floor next to a load of fag butts in one of the pictures and it feels very raw and edited and actually something which I really like to consume like I love this kind of content and I think the Instagram used to be a bit like this but I think it's really changed because of reels and because of really like highly produced content and I think there was a time when people were just posting these pictures that they'd literally just taken and slapped online like I don't think she's taken any of those pictures

twice I think she's genuinely gone like this is my side table this is a selfie that kind of raw throwing it into the air posting it is so gorgeous to me like I want to eat that up and I think it's clever of Vogue to do something like this because it feels so down to earth and something we're all really craving in the media that we're consuming but I'm interested to see where they'll go next like if they had Victoria Beckham do it for instance I'd wonder how that would compare like what her pictures would be like I wonder if this is going to be an amazing feature and it's making me also think of is it GQ that does the daily routine and was it whose daily routine was absolutely nuts they woke up at three in the morning and then like went on a 10k run and

then had breakfast then went play golf so Mark Wahlberg had this absolutely wild routine that went viral because he was like waking up at 2 30 and then he was praying, gyming, swimming, doing golf then there was it went on on and on and on and on and there was like half an hour it was like see my kids so that was hilarious and I would be really intrigued to see how far this goes. I haven't actually, weirdly, I saw this on Jemima's Instagram. I'm kind of obsessed with her. Love it when she posts something about her. I just find absolutely intoxicating.

And there hasn't actually been that much response online, which I'm quite interested about. But I'm going to keep tabs on this new series. Who would you love to to see do it it's for mothers it's a day in the life hilariously she barely speaks about parenting but her children I think are like 14 and 12 maybe so they're a bit more grown up her the most she talks about her kids is that they tell her to go on a date which is quite chic yeah yeah that's hilarious right at the end and then she's in bed with them and she's like promising that nothing will change even though it was a good date oh who would I want on it he's a mum I wish we had Beth here to tell us for mum I actually can't I know that literally everyone

has a baby it's just like me and you and Beth are the only people that don't but I can't actually think of any yeah we are the three people the only three people on earth but we all have a pet each so true that is really important fair babies okay well maybe you can tell us who you would love to do this and have you read it and what do you think and do you love jemima or do you hate her so beth shared an amazing new yorker long read with us this week and she should have been here to talk about it but sadly we're going to have to take the helm. It was titled Why So Many People Are Going No Contact With Their Parents. The piece was written by Anna Russell and was published last month.

The main character of the piece is Amy, a woman who grew up in a very conservative Christian household. She finds herself changing and evolving after going to college in the US she starts to identify as a feminist and essentially that just becomes a gigantic catalyst to arguments with her family over everything from abortion to the COVID vaccine her mum even writes to Amy's university to essentially condemn and lament how much her daughter has changed and essentially I guess ask the university what they've done and and criticize them for I guess the insinuation is um manipulating her daughter into becoming a different person Amy tries to go low contact that's not no contact low with them but they refuse to get vaccinated in order to attend her wedding, so she cuts ties and blocks them. The piece says, family estrangement, the process by which family members become strangers

to one another, like intimacy reversed, is still somewhat taboo. But in some circles, that's changing. In recent years, advocates for the estranged have become a concerted effort to normalise it. Getting rid of the stigma, they argue, will allow more people to get out of unhealthy family relationships without shame. It's such a thorny issue. I know you've read the piece, but what do you think? God, I had so many thoughts and feelings about this piece in a way that I didn't know that I would. I'm very much of the school of thought, which also then a mirror was held up to me this piece I thought god maybe that is kind of wrong I think we're in a generation and this piece explains this where everyone kind of goes look if it's not serving you and if it's really painful and it's really

difficult then like cussing people off is kind of the active move forwards and they were talking about how therapy often will mirror the current culture that it's in. And that's kind of where we're at right now. So it's become really normal for people to want to estrange themselves from family members. I still think that's absolutely fine. But there was another piece, bit in the piece that was really interesting, which was saying how the boundaries around what we constitute trauma have kind of been lowered a lot. Again, this is a good thing. It means that we're creating really amazing codes of conduct when it comes to how we raise our children, how we treat each other, how we as humans interact with each other and how we respect each other. But it does mean that maybe people's parents who are of a different generation

treated their children in a way which they did not understand or perceive to be traumatizing or unkind. And then their child who is existing in a different ideological landscape is kind of retrospectively viewing the way that their parents treat them as traumatizing and abusive so there was this really interesting part bit in the piece when the author goes and speaks to this psychologist who kind of mediates between parents he will kind of speak to parents whose children have gone no contact and sometimes reach out to the children and say that your parents want to speak to them so where this really sat with me as I was like god that is actually really hard because if I think about like I'm really lucky that I'm really close to my mom and like I got

on with my dad much better now that I'm older uh but when I think about how they were parented, how much has changed how my sister then parents her children, I do wonder if maybe we are too quick sometimes in this society to cut people off before we've exhausted every single means of recognizing whether or not there is a path to finding reconciliation. Because when he speaks to one of the mothers, when the author speaks to a mother, the pain I felt when she's saying like, this mom is saying to me, anything will be better. Her daughter's basically dropped off the base of the earth and she cannot contact her. She doesn't know where she lives. She doesn't know where she is. The mom's like, even just one message. And they'd had a fraught relationship and it kind of gone wrong but the mom is like anything would be better than this and in that moment I kind of and they also talk about the piece how it's much easier for children to disentangle from parents because you have so many more things going on in your life as a parent is really reliant on that like parent-child

relationship so I basically to finish this really long-winded thought it's left me quite disquieted because it's made me question actually what I think not in all circumstances I believe that everyone has the right to get to a strange cut off anyone that they want it's definitely given me a different perspective and made me start to wonder if it is always the answer that we should jump to because I've always now I guess I don't know if it's just like culturally I'm like yeah fair like they're estranged this piece made me question if we need to have better routes to an answer to that I feel like the reason why this piece is so interesting is because there is no blanket black or white response to the issue. I think it sounds like we're on the

same page where I think estrangement sometimes is the only necessary outcome or avenue to having a really fraught, difficult, abusive, potentially relationship with your family. And if parents aren't acting as parents to you, that obviously necessitates a disillusionment of that relationship because they've all I guess they've all they've almost begun the process of not behaving in a way that they should be but it is really difficult and I think the reason the reason why this piece slapped so much is because it picked up on those kind of nuances of um where we're going in therapizing everything good thing as you said understanding trauma understanding boundaries and things like that and there have been all of these conversations already about how therapy speak is kind of

essentially being used and weaponized to act in a very clinical way and not give people the benefit of the doubt not um go down a route of reconciliation or uh i guess even communication it's it's a buffer for actually communicating sometimes when used in the wrong ways so i think this is kind of exposing a similar thing where when used in the right way estrangement is a way to free yourself of you know the painful shackles of a relationship that is hurting you and that is a good thing but like everything at the moment there seems to be all of this gray area um with the directions we're going in and I guess estrangement is an example also of something that can be used in the wrong way and also maybe be a buffer for not having difficult conversations, not exploring all

those other options. But I imagine a lot of people who are estranged from their parents, I don't know, I guess you don't go into that lightly. So we don't have any statistics on this. It's really difficult, but I imagine it's not a lot of people would rather do that than not have their parents in their life it's I don't know it's just really difficult I think in the piece it said it was 27 percent of people were estranged from a family member so they were like if it's not you it'll be someone that you know it's quite a high number the other thing that I found so interesting reading it was, so Amy, the central person that the piece focuses on,

she went to university initially being brought up in a very evangelical Christian household to find a husband. She then gets a boyfriend, decides she doesn't really like him and becomes completely obsessed with her studies. She's completely like kind of transformed into this feminist. She is super liberal and very active and when she eventually does find a partner they're very very um sort of liberal and active in their beliefs like there's one point when they talk about how her partner has been a spam donor for his sibling i think they are always kind of doing like activism that she's just very active in her belief she's really become someone that stands up for

what she believes in. And I completely understand taking issue with people that are anti-vax and putting people at risk, especially during COVID. Her parents clearly have some quite backward views and I can completely imagine having that being a really difficult thing to live through. There's a really jarring bit in the piece though, when one of her lecturers from university is asked about it by the writer of the piece and they say well amy's parents just really loved her like i don't think they did anything necessarily really wrong to like hurt her or traumatize her she was brought up in a household where she was truly loved and wanted and like they've like tried to make amends but they just aren't seeing eye to eye on these like things now i do not want to discount Amy's

experience or in any way invalidate it or say that she's wrong but what I was thinking was so interesting about that and that was actually really painful is when you think about that like parents that just love you so much that the like having differing political views is absolutely something that can drive like a huge wedge between you and cause friction it is really sad to think that that can divide be so divisive that you actually never speak to your parents again and the end of the piece does come to it where she's talking about having a family maybe she does that it's left to a point where you're thinking maybe she's going to try and reach out to her family but thinking from the parents point of view it's just it's a bit like i don't really

know how to explain this it's like we've lost the ability to learn how to communicate across certain parameters whether it's like differing political views differing views on certain things it's like we have instead of working about how to reach over that border cross over and pull each other closer if we imagine we're like separate continents and we're like closing the gap it feels like we have completely we don't know how to do that anymore it's just like you're either going to jump over to my side or we just have to not um talk so i'm not saying that either that i'm not saying like she should forgive her parents or that they she should be accepting of them just because they're her parents but it is it feels in the piece quite like

it happens over a long period of time i don't know what i'm trying to parents but it is it feels in the piece quite like it happens over a long period of time I don't know what I'm trying to explain to say but it does make me really sad to think imagine if your parent that loves the child so much does any of that make sense I don't know if I'm really explaining what I'm trying to say yeah so when she changes um at university that letter that her mum writes to the university lamenting how much her daughter has changed and what has the university done to her that is a clear sign of she is desperate to hold on to the daughter she knew and she loves her so much that it scares her that her daughter has changed that is like the example the prime example of that story of what you're saying that she just loves her too much but I think the problem is and it comes back to Dolly's you know rules for life from last week struggling when people change

and you can't fix people in one version of themselves you have to allow them to grow and change so that's already an issue and parents a lot of parents really struggle with that so that is a problem and I bet that's a giant problem for a lot of people who are estranged from their parents that their parents just can't deal with the adult that they've grown into saying that I completely see what you're saying about the polarization because the primary issue that divided Amy from her parents was the fact that they refused to get vaccinated for her wedding and rather than that being a political debate, maybe that was a political thing for her parents. I don't really know. But during COVID, her wedding was in 2021. That feels like an issue of being like,

you don't care about me. You don't care for my life because that's how high the stakes were because we were in a pandemic and everything was so scary that I can see how that one issue would feel like life on death and almost just grow into these like giant proportions because it felt like that at the time vaccines felt like a route to life right and it felt just so giant I don't know the whole thing is the whole thing is really sad I completely agree with you I don't know what I think in terms of right or wrong I felt pulled in different directions reading her story and I couldn't land on anything but it just is the thing I agree is is just it's it's fucking heartbreaking yeah so I guess what

I'm trying to say is I think like this is why I also sometimes struggle with like do I want to have children because I think another thing that happens is children aren't asked to be born so when you have a baby you have to bring it in with all the love and kindness and patience to raise them and often I think not always but sometimes people are religious that's like a really important tenant like part of how they raise their children it's like part of the constitution of what builds a religion and like those core beliefs of like what it means to be a good person so then I guess it must make it so much harder when you believe that you've done all of these things and then your child changes because it's like I have raised you to be this so then like like you said you also

then have to realize once that child has grown you then have no ownership over who they are what they're going to be and I was trying to think I was like I can't think of any instance when I wouldn't allow a child of mine to be anything and then I was like well obviously actually if they my child grew up to be like an anti-vaxxer or an extremist or something, then I would also really struggle. I know it's not the same, but you, with ideological beliefs, when you believe just as much, we believe that whatever the political things we believe, the people on the opposite side, believe them with the same level of belief. So I was trying to do this thought experiment.

And I was like, what would I do? Would I be able to carry on supporting my child if they were doing things that I thought to be really dangerous, which is probably how those parents are feeling. It's just, it's really hard if you actually try and like flip reverse it. Yeah. Yeah. I completely, completely, completely understand what you mean because in the piece she has this conversation with her mom and she says, so are you saying that you think I'll go to hell? And her mom looks at her and says, yes. So those are the stakes for her parents too, I guess, in fighting to control her, they're fighting to protect her in their minds. But for her, they're fighting to control her. And it's just these same intense responses and same

level of love but going in completely opposite directions and harming each other and it's so it's just yeah it's so distressing to read honestly I guess what I'm again I'm still like trying to figure out by thought processing it through my mouth but it's like fundamentally what human relationships are built on is love trust trust, kindness, and intimacy and connection and whatever else. And all of those things exist, but it feels like as society is evolving and as culture and identity and interconnectedness, and we have all these interwoven different ideas and you have so much more agency and choice, I wonder how much that

clouds. And I wonder if this is intensifying the amount of people that are becoming estranged from their families because we no longer value the safety of a family in its traditional sense in the same way as we, and maybe that's a good thing.

That's, I think, because that's where I think I was coming into the piece thinking, then reading it, it kind of made me a bit confused because I was like, oh, I just felt so bad for these parents. don't know I think there's obviously something that's really specific to this current moment in time when maybe there are so many concurrent ideologies

maybe we have never been further away from you know like a couple of generations back because of the advancement of technology and I guess ideas and movements, maybe everything is progressing so much farther that we, there is such a big gap between like us and our grandparents compared to what there would have been. And maybe that is what's causing this huge chasm, especially when it comes to things like religious and ideological beliefs around sexuality and things like that. But it's, but then there is some part of me, maybe that's a really traditional old-fashioned part of me that's like god this feels like there should be a better way around this where because in nature we know like stripping a baby away from its mother when when the mother wants to be there it's like one of the most like cruel harmful things you can ever do and so it just is even though i completely understand family estrangement

and it and prior to this article if anyone said to me I'd be like yeah 100% I suddenly felt in the mindset of these mothers that are losing their child I don't know have no it's basically just such a thought-provoking piece I don't know if you had anything in response to what I just said I'm sorry all of this is word salad no I I had the exact same thing which is why I've not like I don't have a take on this because the piece was so good in exploring all the different threads and I think I think I feel the exact same way you do where I still land on the same opinion that people should people should enter into estrangement if there is no other option slash if they are being harmed by their parents and that is the right option for them I still agree with that I think what this piece dug up was like what that must feel like when you're on

the other side and you don't understand so that mum who said that she would do anything to get her daughter back and she just didn't understand it just really like it just like really oh my heart just was in pain just that feeling of she just is lost and then she is in pain and she has no idea what's going on. That really made me feel quite, yeah, devastated for her. But I don't know. It's just, it's what I said at the beginning. It's such a thorny issue, which is why it's such a good piece. It just such an interesting case of i think we read about this all the time about polarization but it's i think when you read about it with parents and there was a really interesting thing which i thought was fascinating completely understand

as well this one woman was saying she's emancipated my parents she just says they've moved to australia she doesn't actually know where they live because it was too awkward to actually admit that she was estranged because we see so much shame in families you know kind of any familial drama even though we all know like especially once you become an adult you realize that most people's families are pretty dysfunctional to be honest and and you know everyone's got some kind of weird family drama and yet it kind of really is still the last taboo to say I don't talk to my sibling or I don't talk to my dad yeah um and i wonder if like not talking about it and not that probably also exacerbates our ability to to resolve it i don't

get what you mean by the last bit sorry like so because we don't talk about it as a society it also it means that when you're going through it like then how are you ever going to be it's just like when you are at your wits end when you're like I physically do not understand how to communicate with this person I do not know how we're related blah blah because it's so not spoken about it's like it probably and because everyone's doing like individualized therapy and everything is so individual and self-serving is positive like looking after yourself is really good if you look after yourself you can look after others but if we're always like trying to fix our own individual thing going to therapy talking about things privately giving our own biased opinions on what's happened because that's the other thing

you're only ever hearing like one side the mom that says she doesn't really know we have no idea about her daughter she could have done the most awful things like yeah yeah yeah yeah I think one of the things that one of the best things about growing up is just kind of subtly, I've had more conversations with friends about the realities of their relationships with their parents. And I don't know why that is. I think it probably actually is exactly the fact that all of us are in therapy. So we've broken the ice with communicating with an external person. So it feels that much easier to confide in a friend and some of that shame hopefully is lifting but yeah I I think there

is so much there is so much secrecy around not having not having um the setup that is like the perfect family relationship and the perfect family dynamics all the time. And it's just, it is super taboo because I feel like personally, I would find it so much easier to talk about a relationship that's not going well rather than maybe something that's like an argument with, I don't know, me, my parents, or I don't know, my sibling or something. I don't know why that is I just find it so much harder to talk about it almost feels like people won't understand they might judge me they wouldn't get it there's just all of this surrounding shame I guess that keeps it under wraps and I think that is a giant part of estrangement for sure we just we don't really have conversations around negotiating all this stuff or the

difficulties in communicating cross-generationally and when it goes wrong and not feeling like your parents are your parents I guess I also think there's that slight thing of like as much as we might go through things with our family and we might hate them at moments we also want to protect them and so yeah there is that level of secrecy around even if you do have an argument with your mom or your sister or your dad you don't necessarily want to badmouth them to other people because there's still certainly my family it's definitely like a catholic thing there's this thing of like must not let people know you know about like the private don't air your dirty laundry it's like a really old-fashioned like idea isn't it about your family totally same totally same indian families operate in the same

way where it's like you're the unit and nobody nobody should know the shit that goes down in the house i'm not so unhealthy because it's like everyone's i mean it's just interesting i think we're gonna grow up as a generation who'll be very different parents from our parents. And it'll be interesting to see what the fallout is from that and how we, you know, everyone is a product of their environment. And our parents are very much a product of that, a product of their own parents. To quote Charlie XCX, I think the apple's rotten right to the core from all the apples in it. Which is, yeah, you know what I'm saying? You exist. You think you fell out of a coconut tree aka Kamala Harris oh a beautiful a beautiful laundry list of references just in

quick succession yes well anyway I mean we really recommend you to read this piece we will link it in the show notes as with everything else let us know your thoughts as always we'd love to hear from you thanks so much for listening to us this week if you've enjoyed the podcast please tell a friend and leave us a rating on your podcast five stars would mean the world to us and remember to follow us on instagram and tiktok at everything is content pod see you next week bye