Goes Without Saying - how to survive your 20s: (to be a woman is to perform)

Episode Date: February 29, 2024

podmothers sephy & wing enter the chat: spiralling on feeling lost and left behind, growing up, aging, identity, sex, dating, growth, change, and the future. ✷shop ✷ www.sephyandwing.co.ukhear more ✷ www.instagram.com/sephyandwingwatch more ✷ www.tiktok.com/@sephyandwing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com I'm Wing. And I'm Sefi. This is such a nice episode. I really feel like it was very... Oh, I'd be clicking straight away. Very much like, I'm a woman. I'm in my 20s. What the fuck is going on? Who the fuck am I? Where am I going? I'm so lost.

I'm so alone. Everything is so shit. And also, I've never been better. Let's get into it. Enjoy. Thank you for being here, by the way. Nice. Nice. Nice.

Cozy by Bozy. Oh, as always. I've got the heated blanket on a two today. Nice. That's where we're at. That's where we're at. Two out of four. That's where we're at.

That's where I'm at emotionally, for sure. Oh, 100%. Two out of four today. That's not bad. Halfway there. Yeah, halfway there yeah halfway there yeah yeah it's half full half empty yeah depends which way you look at it famously anything we'd like to get off our chests no not at all anything you like to get off your chest yeah i would say today this is irrelevant now but today's the last day to get your valentine's february merch it is now

gone there are always new things happening at sephianwing.co.uk thank you so much it's so embarrassing i don't know why button for steven mars really like it's funny that we we did have dot com but we had she's lost in the ether somewhere she's in the void i don't i don't we do own it but we just did the merch store as a bit of a dot co.uk just to be like britannia rules the way how do we access dot com then we did have it i don't know why we we did have it i remember buying dot co.uk though and being like... But it's because we had.com, but we couldn't pass it over for the new thing. Yeah.

But I don't know then what that means for.com. And we couldn't connect it to our Instagram somehow. That's what I'm saying. Not that we connected this one either. No, that's... Yeah, that's the shop. Fuck knows. Anyway.

Do you know what's going on with websites? No, they don't. And don't even try and help us. No, please do. It's not worth it. It's not worth it websites? No, they don't. And don't even try and help us. No, please do. It's not worth it. It's not worth it. I'm excited for this topic. We're talking about being in your 20s, which...

I mean... I think we're experts. Oh, we are. As 27-year-old women, we're definitely experts. We've been doing 20s for seven years now. Seven years, which is a decent amount of time. It's substantial, for sure. It is. But I feel like we haven't... As much as this topic is in everything we talk about years now seven years which is a decent amount of time it's substantial for sure it is but i feel

like we haven't as much as this topic is in everything we talk about because we are in our 20s yeah mid to late 20s i may add i mean we didn't need the clarification thanks anyway but it feels like something that we haven't really addressed as a topic in a while there's always more to say there's always i'll never turn down coming to the microphone and being like i'm lost are you lost it's the lost together yeah it's like i could do that from now until the end of time honestly i don't think i'll ever have enough of this conversation yeah anything jump i know the thing that's jumping to me is at the moment i think i previously mentioned this i am watching sex in the city at the moment for the first time fully through i have seen bits of it before i did i knew i thought

i knew everything about it but now i'm watching i'm like god great so much left to learn yeah this is a show about people i mean they're varying ages but they're kind of in their 30s that's what the show is set around in new york i don't know if you've seen it because we've got this really cool like show to recommend to you sex in the city and i'm thinking 30s god it doesn't look too shabby it looks like they all kind of 30 flirty and thriving yeah i think there's an idea that is like you have like found out who you are and you're kind of maybe more stable and you like have some room to like explore things you like more and i just think god that looks great but then yeah i also hate i was watching and i absolutely i have many thoughts on the kardashians but i was yeah not very fond thoughts to be honest

um okay yeah we're going to yeah go on um but i was watching it was one of their birthdays and chloe who potentially is my favorite of a sad bunch um she was talking about um how she was like oh well i'm nearly in my 40s i'm so jealous of someone else that's turning 40 and i thought i really just don't like this whole like grouping of ages in this weird way of like to be like i'm so annoyed like i wish i was turning 40 it's like oh nothing's gonna be different really on that day like i just think it's such a silly activate some sort of change definitely you're waiting around for nothing yeah i just thought that's a real myth in our society well however oh go on there is like and i'm sure you'll agree there is some sort of like abstract kind of there's a sort of there's a there's a spirit there's an identity in each decade for

sure totally but there's definitely been a shift and obviously that there are real like tangible and measurable um markers of this that we could explore but just in the just just hang on to the energy for a sec just pick up the energy thing that i'm doing yeah just go with the energy angle i feel like this side of 25 there is a shift of energy there is a shift of gear and there is so much in that that it's like yeah it's for this and this reason like there's so much tangible fact i'm just gonna ignore those facts for a sec and just emphasize the idea that like there's something in that kind of like shift of of gear of like knowing yourself and something is different%. I feel completely different to how I did when I was 23, for example. Right.

And I think that's down to, yeah, potentially an energy thing. But also I think it's mostly down to just growing older. And also like the labels and like the place that you feel you should be. And all of that stuff. The things that come with an age but i didn't have to try kind of in the way that i was like yeah she's waiting around for 40 her problems won't be solved when she's 41 for example if she doesn't do anything about it however just the past it kind of is like time really does heal things time is a chapter. I'll never turn down a chapter.

Absolutely not. In your 30s, in your 40s. And also I get, specifically with Chloe. Chloe Kardashian. I mean, there would be a dire need to like end a chapter and like have a fresh start for sure. She must be craving that beyond words, to be honest. So I completely actually get that for her i also think that like there's no reason why as 20 year olds 20 in our 20s year olds

we can't be tapping into like some of the freedom like empowerment all the stuff that you're supposed to get when you're in your what's chloe seeing for in her 40s it's like there's no reason why you can't get that at 37 really and 40s is pretty much an arbitrary new start date of course yeah it's like um when the new year kicks in yeah yeah it's like on monday none of this will matter yeah i'll be over it yeah 100 i do love the mindset though say why not every week every week come monday this will all be different come fucking monday i'll be a whole new bitch always am every monday yeah biggest change then for you between like now at 27 and for example at 23 um because everything changes i'm struggling to even remember myself at 23 okay so it's covid it's covid which immediately yeah it's covid yeah yeah how was that that long ago yeah uh-huh you can say that again you're wrong i'm not wait it's been like five years then

four years what the hell yeah i know so that's the beginning of covid that's like we're going into lockdown no yeah even yeah yeah okay i mean well i'm a whole different person i've lived for a pandemic god you have yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah got you that's absolutely crazy yeah i can't believe it's that long ago this is what i'm saying to people this is what i'm saying it was like last tuesday wasn't it right well it went on for ages but like that i i'm not here to talk about the pandemic skip every day but i do think it's important just to validate like i mean if you're 20 it's like you were 16 when that started potentially what the fuck this is what i'm saying like i know we've covered this at length but what i know but it's never enough like sorry a pandemic i could go

on need i say more yes i do need say more it doesn't go without saying that we lived through a pandemic it's fucking wild and there is of course like if you want to call it a pandemic skip and be all cute but it's like i was in my early 20s and then i was in a pandemic and then i was 27 it's like what is that as like in a pandemic what does that mean like i was in my living room it was i was 23 then i sat in my living room playing animal crossing and i was in the garden at best and i was 27 i was looking through like my old instagram posts i was looking back i actually saw one from when i was like i must have been 23 24 yeah and i was thinking like god i would i would have put that it was it was a carousel post and i was like oh that one definitely should have been the first photo like why did i

tuck that away in the back yeah um but i was looking it was just a picture of me in the garden it was really it's really iconic i'm in a yellow bikini and i've got a jumper on with yellow smiley faces on it over the top and the back post the end photo in the carousel is me holding up the jumper like almost i'm flashing you and i don't know why i put that at the back it should why is she back in the kitchen she needs to be front of house i don't know what i was thinking it really is the cover shot so yeah you can go and find that it's from yonks ago but it's funny looking at that photo i was really like first of all that's fucking iconic sort of intriguing photo why am i i'm like the camera is underneath what is this is she hot

is she cold she i mean i think she's hot but looking back now i'm like wow yeah i love it but it just feels like it's just funny to the level of appreciation that you have literally for yourself but just like with the space like almost the way that hindsight just grants you like having that distance just allows you to like shift all the hatred and be a lot kinder and just be really appreciative of like who that person was but i do feel really far from that from that girl yeah it was like like literally a million years ago yeah and and another life that we can never access it's like i can never go back to that like i yeah that that especially like in the niche experience of living in a pandemic it's like we can never access what that was i was actually thinking this again

the other day yesterday when i was walking through the station i was at the train station in london and i was just walking through and it was quite quiet because I was there a weird time because I don't have a normal life was this the other day yesterday yeah yesterday like morning or like midday-ish so it's like every other normal motherfucker is at work and I'm for some reasons coming about in the train station like meandering along yeah and it was really quiet and i was like oh i'm kind of getting that like 2020 vibe it's like giving me a kind of covid energy of the kind of like it's really quiet and it's there's so much like room to to breathe in all the infested air and like yeah it's just a weird thing but it's i can't oh i i just i don't know if it's like the history angle but i just find it weird

like like for example watching sex in the city you're really looking at a world that very much doesn't exist anymore it's like really a piece of history and i actually thought it today i had a appointment this morning and i was in the waiting room and i was kind of going on and off my phone and there was like a mom and her son in front of me going on and off their phones and then there were kind of some older couples also in the waiting room who weren't on their phones and i was thinking about nature is healing here we are on our phones but i was thinking like when i was a kid obviously i'd be in the waiting room my mum wouldn't be on her phone because that wasn't a thing or like yeah not in the same way so she's not scrolling on tiktok yeah well no she yeah maybe she would but she would just we would be talking or we would honestly just be in the silence and i was watching like this kind of 50 year old man just like sat

there just like waiting to be called up for his appointment and thinking about how i was kind of going on and off my phone it's like the simplicity of like the 90s and the early 2000s obviously like it's so easy now with hindsight to if it's so foreign that you almost it can be like oversimplified but it is just interesting to think about in that 20 minutes that we both had in the waiting room i was confronted with like 50 000 things from like all over the world and like all these people i've never met and all these ideas and all of this music and like people and like outfits and like all these ideas like so much yeah and he has kind of thought about like what he might have for dinner um what he did yesterday it's the pace is totally different and i know we go on and on about it but it's like yeah

obviously you feel numb as fuck when you're taking in so much all the time i'm taking in everything and also nothing everything everywhere all at once he had a far richer experience because he actually engaged with those thoughts rather than yeah i was gonna wake him up social media and i just think what did i think like i only form my opinions on the things after i turn off my phone and i'm kind of thinking about oh yeah that thing there hooked me and it's like but you're not even engaging with it at the time even just the pace even just what is required for your mind to like get through the day is so intense versus what it has been for previous generations that i feel like there should be

more of an emphasis on like lifting and easing the pressure that like young people are under just because there's so much being forced down their throats all the fucking time that other people have never had to deal with before and it's like covid unprecedented look at you being a fucking you're you're groundbreaking you're a whole new breed you're like there's nothing like you we've never never been done before you're unique there you go you've done it again like it's crazy yeah raising the bar wendy's small frosty is the ultimate summer refreshment and not because it's cool and creamy and made with fresh canadian dairy it's also refreshingly cheap, just 99 cents until July 14th. It's a treat for you and your wallet. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts.

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Like the story of a cabaret singer and a sex worker who invented safe sex and saved millions and millions and millions of lives. Go check out Resurrection wherever you listen to podcasts. ACAST helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. ACAST.com I also think sometimes when I see

like if you think about so 23 I'm shocked to find out how long ago that was almost like if you say the start of the pandemic it's like okay that's crazy because I feel like 23 is like a year before 27 sort of thing like I don't really know I don't feel that much of a difference

it really is blink and you'll miss it the birthdays just skip skip skip before you know it really is blink and you'll miss it the birthday is just skip skip skip you just before you know you've had three and you're like ah but i think this sometimes when i see like i'll sometimes say things like oh yeah i feel i feel 18 and then i'll see an 18 year old and i'm like i don't feel 18 you don't i don't feel 18 or like oh my god i'm pretty i just i feel like i still i haven't changed since i was 14 it's like look at a 14 year old it's like now i've changed quite a lot i feel quite confident actually that i've changed a fair bit the the growth actually just in my or like do you know a big one when i'm like oh i i would always say like i feel like the best

things i ever learned were in english at like in like sixth form i loved doing the poetry that we did then i loved doing fucking like great gatsby and i feel like those were the best things i ever learned we did 1984 and i remember writing an amazing essay about 9-11 and i was like this yeah that's my peak. Like, God, I don't think I ever, uni didn't teach me anything compared to that. Like, I love doing that so much. Yeah.

I've read those essays back like a year ago or something. And I thought, fucking hell, moron, moron, moron. They don't hold up. Every sentence doesn't need to start with, furthermore. Like, you don't, moreover. Like, you don't need to start with furthermore. You don't, moreover, like you don't need to do that. And actually there is a huge amount of growth. And I think it's so easy to be like, look back and almost see yourself as closer

and just closer to that than you are. Like I think I feel close to 23, but when I meet a 23 year old, I do feel like or when I look back at the things I said when I was 23 or I mean the beginning of this podcast I guess we're 23 yeah I feel like it's a very different person uh-huh I really do something to think about yeah yeah yeah no I agree with you I also think it's kind of the thing of like when you go through something as a kid it's only then it's like it's really easy to like undermine it and kind of look back and be like i could have done this or like maybe i didn't deal

with that right etc etc if you see somebody for example something happened to you when you were 15 and you're not 15 anymore you look at a 15 year old and you tell me what you would expect of them tell me what you expect for them to how they should get through something how they didn't do it enough it's like i dare you i dare you to look at a child and expect to be honest anything other than just like cute fun and games from them like yeah i feel like that's a really i think probably just an intriguing thing for people as we get older to start to be able to identify how um almost like to give yourself some credit of like when you see people who are young and you can see how um kind of not naive in like a patronizing sense but almost like how just you know they're so deserving of good things and you don't expect them to be able to go through any shit or like

handle themselves like adults because they're not adults and i think when you become an adult it's so much easier to be able to look back and be like no no that wasn't okay that that happened to me when i was 13 how i as a 27 year old would have wanted them to act yeah that's a good reason they're 17 and you kind of look back i think as well with memory it you kind of insert yourself your current day self in your past experiences so i'll think back and be like oh when x y and z happened and like oh my god i just like sat there and oh what i should have done this i should have done that but it's like no no that wasn't what you're supposed to do it's like no that isn't current day me that's like an eight year old for example it's like well that changes things i don't expect that eight year old to be

able to do what i would do now as a woman in her 20s you can't really do much let me tell you yeah it's weird but then i think we should give the same grace to ourselves in that we are still pretty young really incredibly and i actually had a weird experience at so my writing class i'm doing at the moment um so we all have to like workshop a thing every week i had my week last week where i had to bring in a thing and everyone spoke about it the thing i shared was a thing i also put it it's on my newsletter so you can find it somewhere on there um and it's a thing about like a birthday party and the girl is turning 25 in the story so i was talking about it and it was like it's like she feel she's talking about like oh yeah it's like and there's a line that's like, she feel, she's talking about like.

Oh yeah. It's like, and there's a line that's like, obviously I can't remember it word for word, but it's like, as the, the like sparkling, like 25 numbers, like 25 comes like closer. Like it struck, it struck me that like, there's no limit to a woman's, woman's insecurities as she turns older sort of thing. Uh huh. Makes it sound terrible. But you know, it's like about a woman discovering that like, shit there's more uh-huh there's more got it all to play for yeah where that came from like you thought you were insecure it's like no now there's a whole lot of them

and yeah in the writing course there are quite a lot of um like older they're like a lot there's mixed ages but there's like middle-aged women i'm definitely the youngest and there's like middle-aged to old like i don't know yeah mostly women there are two men in there as well and i'm joking love them love them everyone yeah um and one of the women like one woman that i'm kind of mates with she was saying like god before like it was being workshop she was like god i was laughing there was like you were like it was about turning 25 and I was like I am 27 I'm just gonna say like this character is not me um and then it came up later this other woman was like god well she is gonna be all right though this like character isn't she because like she's only 25 like and then all the women sort of started laughing. I realised like, God, I've written this from the perspective. You're getting laughed out of town.

Honestly. I was like, yeah, actually, we're so embedded in these conversations of like, we're the older sisters or whatever, like all of this stuff. And it's like, God, we're actually so absurdly young. So much so that like, it's the idea of even talking about age or like having to have things sorted out yeah is like a joke to older people totally totally but also totally a symptom of all of the shit and all of the issues and kind of like going back to what i was saying about like the amount of shit that like an 18 year old girl on tiktok is consuming every day

these conversations i can imagine are just going to keep happening for girls that are younger and younger and younger for example like i know we haven't touched on it and i don't really care to but like the 10 year old drunk elephant kids or like all of that sort of vibe like these kind of conversations there's it's kind of what you said in your in your beautiful piece there's only there's like there's literally no limit to women's insecurities like you don't age out of it and if anything we've seen like i know what it's like to be's like, there's literally no limit to women's insecurities. Like you don't age out of it. And if anything, we've seen, like, I know what it's like to be eight. Like I was there, like, I know that there was messaging coming my way. For sure. From the moment I was kind of like cognizant of the idea that I was a girl in this world. Like there's all, and just as a human on

earth, you're constantly being fed ideas of like who you should and shouldn't be. And I hope that we can just kind of come together hold hands find a little cheat code of like i'm gonna just try and access that like whatever happens in your 40s for chloe kardashian that sort of freedom that you like unlock somehow let's try and hack our way there as soon as possible definitely because i think it is being i don't know but i think when i hear women talk of freedom most of it comes from a dissociation with the male gaze like that is why old women say like oh i never felt better since i hit well not old i went through menopause or like there are sort of women that's like i don't care what their husbands have died

and they are fucking thriving and all of this stuff and i think actually so much of it comes from how women view themselves as young sexual objects that are just there to be kind of fucking silent and looked at and i think the closer we can get to just like basically feeling autonomous and like powerful and that's not to say to cut that out because i think it's like you are a you can be a sexual person in this world and enjoy men but so much of the stuff that like makes women feel shit yeah does directly come from the women's understanding of themselves through men's eyes goes without saying i think the closer you can get to that um yeah the sooner the better really it's funny because i've really been thinking at the moment about we kind of touched on this the other day i'm sure in a conversation

behind the pods back i hate to say um we do sometimes have some of our best thoughts off yeah totally there's not the pressure of a microphone in our faces yeah i think we're actually we're at our best yeah yeah um but i've been thinking so much recently about almost like my most comfortable state is or like not my most but if not my most one of my most comfortable states that i can identify is as a woman being sexualized and anything else is jarring or confusing or like weird like i feel like a lot of young women are so we're so we know that role so well like it's like that is so embedded in who you are to just and there's so much of it is like yeah there's an enjoyment in that and there's like a fun whatever in that of course goes without saying but like just the idea of like feeling so comfortable as something that is being sexualized

or like i'm comfortable when i'm an object yeah i wouldn't call it comfortable that's not i that's such an interesting word to use because i would say like it feels like recognizable and like familiar but i don't think i feel comfortable in like being sexualized i i definitely do really i think that's one of my most comfortable do you mean like being sexual or being sexualized i mean being sexualized god like i know what that is i know how to do that i know how to play that i know this wow that's like up on on top 10 things of me that's up on the list i would say definitely as well like as a teenager i think that was my most like my role here one of my currencies is to understand that i'm being sexualized and i can play that and like that's a card and like that's my um there's power and that's there's power but there's also like that's my role we were kind

of saying this the other day because there was a tiktok that i saw in the floods of tiktoks that i see i can't help myself yeah this girl was saying and i want to have a proper conversation on this at some point this girl had said in a much better way than I'm going to say it. She was talking about the idea of like, if you sexualize me, I think you don't love me. And if you don't sexualize me, I think you don't love me. And just that kind of like paradox of, I don't know how to accept love if I'm not sexualized and what is it to be sexualized and how do i view myself if i'm not being sexualized and who am i by the way like and lastly what the fuck is going on like on a long list of confusion it's just really interesting but it really is i

think we're talking a lot off the pod about like we really are women's sexuality and it is definitely a conversation for another day i think also this brand that we really want to work with just ties into the reason why we're talking about it guys hold on to your honestly hold on to your knickers like hold on please we've got a big conversation we really want to like it just makes no sense to talk about it without naming this brand because they're the reason we're talking about it but it would be great if they paid us but also if they don't want to then we will talk about it just if we could be related to them in any way it would be intriguing it would be amazing

yeah but we're definitely talking a lot about yeah understanding sexuality and to be honest like the minefield and like fucked upness yeah of it really like it is just so so strange and kind of as well like ties into the conversation that we have all the time about like the bias the biases the bias that we've grown up with and like our ideas about men and our dads and relationships and our parents and the things that we learn as kids and our understanding of like what we would want in a relationship what is desirable to us how we view ourselves it's all very entrenched in it's it's a mess actually it really is it really is so fucking interesting and it's kind of the other day one of the intros we said we're saying x y and z and we're like we're spilling all of

our shit but it's all for a good cause it really is all for a good cause it's like look i'll throw whatever i have to out there about my my sex my parents whatever i'm doing you guys can have it whatever it's all for a good cause i don't care um we'll see we'll see what happens but yeah i've liked this conversation me too me too good good cool if you don't if you don't hear from us assume the worst you