Goes Without Saying - looks are everything: if you see me looking scrappy, no you didn't

Episode Date: October 26, 2020

bet you thought you'd seen the last of us? we're back with a ~stunning~ new look, but it's the same sephy and wing that you know and love (hopefully)! we're kicking off this brand new season with an episode all about appearances! are looks everything? why are we so obsessed with performing on social media? from 'imagined audiences' to managing perceptions, we're digging deep into why we're all such fake b*tches.warning: embarrassingly niche references from the outset.join the conversation every monday. speak your mind at instagram.com/sephyandwing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Nature. I've got a gay rooster named Francois. Is so gay. These rams are gay. I'm studying gay animals. Does that mean I'm gay?

So why don't more people know this? I'm Owen Ever. I'm Lane Kaplan-Levinson. And this is a field guide to gay animals. A podcast about queerness in the natural world. The animal kingdom is queer and we are a part. Find a field guide to gay animals on Spotify, Apple. Or wherever you get your podcasts.

Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com Can you motherfucking believe we are motherfucking back? Oh my god, hi guys, and welcome to the first ever episode of goes without saying with sephie and win yay if you've been here before then this very much may not feel like the first episode of anything you'll be welcoming us back with open arms hopefully but if you're new here congratulations you have somehow stumbled upon goes without motherfucking saying. With your pals, Sefi and your pals Wing. The one and only, the two and only, iconic duo. How are you feeling to be back recording? I am so terrified. How are you feeling? I'm feeling all right. Can I tell you guys a

secret? We've done this about five times. And we're using the same joke in each take. But it's going well. I think it's going well. We're just so, I think once you've had a break from something and you come back, that feels like there's like an immense amount of pressure. But there's actually no pressure. It's just me and you. It's just us. We're just rebranding a podcast.

It's just a casual thing to do. Everyone's done this before. It's fine. It feels like there's a lot to pack in to this episode. I feel like we've got some splaining to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a lot to pack in to this episode. I feel like we've got some explaining to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And also it all kind of links to the social media,

managing perceptions, imagined audience, kind of buzzwords that have cemented our friendship in this podcast up until this point. First of all, should we address the rebrand? Should we address the fact that we were once called higher priestess? You know and love higher priestess. We vomit the word priestess. People in the back are vomiting.

They're really confused. They're putting their Bibles away. They're like, what? Priest. This is a priest pod. It was all about the Lord Almighty God. You had guests that were priests. Basically, we despise the word priestess so much.

And now we are your God. We killed the old God and we made a new one we made it it is sephian wing you worship to now you answer to us and us only we do have 10 commandments in our literal book god we do god we really took a brand and ran with it we were like i like that thing that that guy jesus did i like that moses vibe let's run with it he seems to have a large following so let's try and like replicate his business model. His audience are pretty devoted. Heard he only had 12, but it seemed like there might be a few more than that. Yes, we're copying Jesus's business model here. Should we say the final nail in the coffin? Oh, yeah. What's the

final nail in the coffin? The nail in the coffin, really? Oh, my mail. Well, so we get a few packages. Yeah, we get packages because we're hashtag influencers um slash people just send us random stuff and we love it because everyday christmas day everyday christmas day is purely the fucking god we live and breathe christianity all of a sudden the birth of christ fucking hell i got a parcel that was addressed to the high priests and i thought no no look i've heard enough i've seen enough take these fucking glasses off take my contacts out i've seen enough i'm signing off it has to end at that point logging off i'm going quiet when people are confusing us for high priests priests i think it's time to rebrand that's a

sign from the lord almighty goodness me and everyone's kind of wandering around the house going is this whose is this whose parcel is this who's ordered something under the name of high priest so bad so so bad mortifying so what brought us to sephian wing the self-indulgence of using our own kind of friendship nicknames why are we running with this because we're managing perceptions we're managing perceptions here big time the imagined audience slash actual non-imagined audience actual real audience of real eyes that stare at us and i go get away from me somehow the real audience is more terrifying than the imagined audience yeah it is and i think this is something we're going to come to

with i mean i really felt this over our um quote unquote break it was actually the hardest i've ever worked in my life it really was not a break it was kind of the busiest time for us but a stunning time for you guys to go away and distance makes the heart grow fonder you know give you a chance to miss us or they're like who are these people oh god it was those people i used to listen to a few months ago oh cringe oh i remember when i was into those weird girls oh they're those girls in lockdown yeah fuck's sake first of all if you are hating the new rebrand get fucked i think people hate rebrand this is free content i want you opening your wallets by the end of this fucking episode you can venmo us some stuff if you're in america i don't know what venmo is but i also think people hate a rebrand in that i am threatened by a rebrand i don't like a rebrand if something if an app updates i'm scared

the capricorn in you hates change i don't like it i like things to stay as they are where i can see them neatly laid out and if some if my favorite podcast i'm assuming your favorite podcast if a podcast we listen to i'll be generous to you to your other podcasts if we're not your favorite podcast yet i'm so sorry to hear that and i hope that changes sincerely basically i think people hate a rebrand but this is a good rebrand trust me you don't know what you want yet if this is making you uncomfortable here is a message for you take it away now harry i speak directly to you if the rebrand is making you uncomfortable same i was scared for the change but we've got to grow we've got to move on we can't be hanging on to a word like priest in a title no no no no and if you're one of the people that's gonna be like

it's narcissistic to give your own name in a podcast it's like we literally speak for an hour a week to you guys that is the height of narcissism i don't know how you didn't think this was narcissistic to begin with frankly i don't know how you didn't think this was centered around us also everyone begging for merch of a brand called higher priestess you want to walk around town wearing a thing that says something about priests please god what's going on here please god no don't wear that do not wear that around town if we sold you that merch we would be scamming you by accident do not wear anything with that branding on it's over it's to be honest she's cancelled yeah we cancelled the High Priestess. I'm sorry,

we had to do it. We had to do it. She's out of here. We've murdered God. Oh, fucking hell. And we've replaced it with Sefi and Wynne. I love it. And that really goes without saying. I love it, love it, love it. Honestly goes without saying. Yeah, I mean, the name of the pod kind of does go without saying. Like, listen, there's not much explaining to do there, right? Well, we got it. Well, I'm going to explain it anyway. We got some messages and someone's like oh my god i love that you always say goes without saying it's like well that would be a great name for a podcast and i had to beg sephie to like it yeah and i was like absolutely not there's absolutely no way and then i thought oh look come on let's change it it is great it's because i kept having conversations

with you and i'd be like oh it just goes just goes without saying. And I kind of give you a little wink, a wink, wink. Stop doing that. Stop doing that. It makes me uncomfortable when you wink at me. How are you feeling now? Are you feeling more like the perception is more accurate? As long as it's well received, which I fucking better be, it's all good from here, right? If it's badly received, I'm not surprised because if a podcast I listen to changes their name, I'd be like, what the fuck are they doing? Really though? I think I would. I think I'd be a little bitch about it.

I think I'd be like, ew. Get this stick out of your bum hole. Who put that there? The priests. The priests put it up there. Actually, that's a bit bad. We'll cut that. So in this episode, we're talking about appearances, managing appearances,

managing perceptions, imagined audiences. Kind of, why do we have this big old act on on social media on dates why do we just perform why is our whole life performance basically everything's for show it's all we're big fat fakers guys big fat fucking fakers and i think most of us have like the immediate reaction to be like no no i'm very authentic very authentic myself i don't care what other people think but when you're faced with the reality of like an instance where somebody doesn't like you or when you're pulled up on why you did something you suddenly realize that your thoughts were not your own and you were putting on a show yeah and i think i'm still calling myself out on this all the time all the fucking time so much there was one so i sneakily put on the story because i didn't

want to be like we're coming back send us your thoughts on x y and z so i put out a question box and this was one of my favorite responses that we got about social media etc etc i love the phrasing so they said talking about social media it's an important way i tell a story about myself and my life and then put in brackets which this is my favorite bit the brackets just kind of putting on an exhibition oh my god i love it suddenly you're a curator yeah social media online and offline yeah are you curating an exhibition of kind of the shell of yourself i also love that they said i mean i fucking would love this but it's like tell a story about yourself because that is that just strips the idea of identity from it it removes you from it you're not trying to represent

your whole self you're just controlling a narrative about yourself it gives you the power rather than having to be like okay how do i show this element of myself blah blah like is this reflective of me it's like no no this is just like a little avatar that i've created to tell a certain curated story about myself it's not wholly representative and like why do you think i was doing that yeah and i just think we all completely live for the narrative in the way that i know in a couple of episodes back in back in the days of she who shall not be named we spoke about you tell yourself you're not a morning person once and then all of a sudden it's like you never see an hour before 10 30 every day it's like you don't know what 7 a.m looks like anymore yeah you tell yourself oh i'm just not really a creative person and before you know you're an accountant and it's

like actually like you don't really know yeah creatives are big fucking space okay like you're allowed to fit in many spaces yeah you don't have to box yourself in so if you are new here if you are new to this podcast i think a lot of our conversations is about taking back your life and stretching your limbs as far and wide as possible wow elastigirl and see kind of who you can be yeah fully don't you think yeah i love that so much we were trying to like describe like what we think this is and i remember i was saying like not this phrase like living your best life because that makes me sick that makes me so sick but it's like how do you say like challenging your thought

processes without being boring and how do you say like living your best life without being like a millennial like how do you like what is the thing i do think stretching your limbs becoming elastigirl is stunning yeah because it's just kind of pushing yourself out of your comfort zone and and questioning yourself while you do it i just think a lot of us tell these stories about ourselves that actually don't allow us to move past kind of what we were subscribed to and kind of indoctrinated as a child because i think as well something that i was thinking a lot about and i want to ask you is being told to introduce yourself oh wow i love that to me i i find it really really challenging and i i actually reckon a lot of you listening will be like oh no it's fine whatever if you are in an institution like you're at university or like you've kind of been in your

job for a few years it might be quite easy but if you move beyond the scope of what security and institution gives you and think about what's important to you what are the pillars of your life and what do you prioritize when introducing yourself to a new person, what are you trying to present? And how much of that is a performance? And how much of that is your own kind of self hatred of minimising yourself? Like what do you amplify? And what do you minimise? And what's the kind of dichotomy between those? It's interesting that we would always prioritise like a capitalist view, though, because you would always go for your work. Absolutely. I'm the accountant from earlier that told myself I wasn't creative. But you would never go yeah i'm a daughter even though my role as a daughter

is much more important than my role as whatever fucking job i would do yeah my role at gladstone brooks like i don't i don't think that's an account but i don't know what that is but yeah yeah it sounds horrible whatever it is i don't want to go don't take me to gladstone brooks please i think it's like fucking oh i don't know i don't know so please anywhere but glasden brooks whatever that is yeah honestly but it's like my role as kind of um a sister my role as a friend my role as whatever is way more important your role as sethi yeah is more important at my work but then why does that shape my identity in such a solid way that other people would be interested in like you're at a party oh yeah what do you do oh i'm a this it's like no you're fucking not get out your ass yeah but is anyone actually interested or is it just the social norm

that those are the things that we ask and those are the things that we tell because it's just what's expected of you i think it depends i've been in a group quite recently not recently because i've been in the literal middle of nowhere in portugal for about a month and a half now so not recently yeah we're lucky we can communicate with her via this transmission today because the broadcast has not been secure and trust me it's hard yeah i was in a group and there were a group of people and they were all like really into their jobs and like asking what jobs everyone did i remember being like oh yeah i'm a podcaster which doesn't really sum up what we do anyway but it's just like okay it's a neat box to put that in and they were like okay and they just suddenly became very interested whereas if i had said i'm the accountant from gladstone brooks i don't know

how you could be an accountant at gladstone brooks it's definitely not an accounting firm it sounds like it's like an estate agent i think it is something like that it's kind of mcdonald's i'm like i'm the accountant at mcdonald's it's like not compatible i'm the one accountant it's like i'm the painter at the library it's like i've got the wrong end of the stick and it's like you're definitely lying it makes no sense but you can you can definitely see people's interest flip or how much they decide in their head how much they should invest in you based on where you fit within capitalism on that chain which is rank where it's actually like oh yeah i'm actually a really good person oh wow brilliant like let me speak to you yeah and how useful are you and social media i think takes that moment where you're at a party talking to someone or a social event talking to someone

you can see them scouring the room to see if there's someone more useful to them and you put it in your bio yeah and suddenly that's happening just on a digital scale. Constantly. And you're so aware of how your little avatar is like performing, that how that is being perceived by everyone. And it's fucking horrendous.

And you're constantly trying to curate a post that will align with your avatar's kind of goals. And as we've discussed so many times before your goals are not your own, your goals were prescribed to you before your birth. Yeah. Like they were designed for you by society yeah how often as a child when you were saying you wanted to be a vet did you step away and think about where your love and appreciation of animals came from or what that means for a young girl to desire to be uh nurturing and a caretaker for other vulnerable beings etc etc and and and well it's where you see people when they kind of

said age seven when you kind of knew them as a seven-year-old yeah i want to be a nurse and then they become a nurse and they fucking ran with it yeah and you and it's sold to them as like oh my god you always knew what you wanted like that's so brilliant that you've pursued your childhood dreams but to me that kind of suggests a lack of growth a lack of kind of insight into like the scope of the world and i mean sure you could have wanted to be a nurse at seven and it just so happens you want to be a nurse at 25 round of applause to all our nurses listening by the way and also that's fucking cool miss those thursday nights and i think that's fucking cool like it is cool but there is an element of when you applied did you question that or was it just assumed that you would apply to be

a nurse or whatever and i definitely have an element of that within myself as well, like for sure. Absolutely, we all do it in our own way. Just subscribe to the narrative that we were sold and have been continued to sell. And that feeds into like a larger scale of you are a woman, so you should be this. Yeah. Or even down to that smaller scale of you're not creative being an accountant.

It's so true. Also, the thing I love about exhibition, it's very visceral. It's very like tangible. I can kind of see myself walking through your exhibition kind of picking through your clothes it kind of reminds me of there's this bit in the office where like pam tells them all to have new year's resolutions and ryan who's like a bit of an arsehole if you know the office i know the one yeah i know you i'm just explaining for the reader listener he puts up like live my life like it's an art project and it's like seen as so wanky but it's like there

is an element of that coming back on tiktok of like you're the main character and all of that say live your life like it's an art show and i love it absolutely romanticize your life obviously you don't want to be ryan from the office but there is an element of like god i want to live my life like it's an art project that's stunning yeah there's a fine line somebody say harry star's fine line to it yeah but what is the line who knows to be honest no one seems to fucking know no because you can either think your life is shit or you can romanticize your life and which one do you choose and of course you want to be somewhere on the sliding scale but i would rather be closer to romanticizing my life personally absolutely on

the exhibition note what do you think is like most common to make an exhibition out of like in dating in dating i think it's different for men and women in that i think with men as in not dating men i think it's just a gendered debate not from my own personal experience well from my personal experience as well but i think for men there's definitely an element of like a money performance being the macho man that can afford to pay and that can afford to in 2020 yeah like we were speaking in the last episode about how sometimes men can have like a bit of like a james bond act on and i think that is something that's fucking sickening to say the least but yeah but i think with girls it's obviously a performative

femininity like an idea that you will be most beautiful most kind of passive and also very cool and laid back and kind of up for anything and just ever so beautiful and flawlessly effortless are we going to speak about it again the gone girl cool girl the best monologue of all time i don't even think we have to go into it in that much detail but if you aren't familiar with the cool girl reference go youtube it so stunning stunning it so reminds me of actually this message that we got from someone they said i hate myself for trying to act different yes i love to other females so performative and gross it's kind of the girl who smashed her face in a

pizza i'm not like other girls on the first date or whatever it's kind of you can't help but lean into that rejection of your your own gender your family yeah literally well there's an element of like well we've watched movies throughout our whole life we've read books where the man who picks the dream girl is held on this pedestal of like the most amazing girl the most attractive woman to men is the woman that is unlike other women and rejects mainstream femininity but also complies like it's very you've got to be walking that tightrope very carefully the fine line and that you've got to be very very beautiful but you might have like a blue streak in your hair you eat a load of food but you're very thin i also think this in the you know in greece we love the film greece yeah we're about 85 years old we're 85 we reference greece a hell of a lot i don't think we've actually done that on the podcast thank god because it's embarrassing but i'm about

to reference greece but it will make sense warning outdated reference coming warning reference that your grandma will understand so maybe just play hit this clip hey um nana i'm sorry about the things we said about god the scene where danny zuko and sandy whatever her surname is are in the diner couple goals he orders a burger and he orders a milkshake and some fries which i mean he orders a lot and sandy goes oh that sounds good i'll have that too she like gets she matches the order fucking hell yeah she does and he loves it he loves he eats it up harder than he eats his burger he goes really he can't believe his luck his dick points up and bashes the table up all the food falls everywhere and he loves it he literally eats that up he's

like oh my god she's not like other girls she can eat all this but very crucially she still looks like a girl that does not eat she still looks like olivia newton john she looks like she just walked straight out of the bible frankly in the most stunning way obviously is this the new testament is that is sephion wing our new era it's our new testament i don't know what's going on but there's an element of women can only be cool if they both reject and comply with femininity in like a whiteness a thinness and like a beauty but also again with a blue streak a blue streak in your hair yeah very porny yeah totally and i kind of hate the uh like smugness that comes with it where it's kind of um oh it's kind of a foucault thing it's kind of what king i'm giving yeah queer king queer icon i'm

giving somebody else that isn't um i'm not giving the most conventionally attractive girl the limelight i'm giving it to somebody else you know we're doing the most we're being so equal where it's you know it's all about it's all pc these days it's like actually she's got a black best friend it's like what is this it's getting worse yeah it's just as harmful yeah but i think there definitely is i mean i've definitely felt that a kind of um a desire to be not like other girls or definitely present and not like other girls energy of like a manic pixie dream girl of like that will be that's what boys want of like a girl that's slightly kooky like a zoe de chanel figure yeah that's brilliant i'll just perform that for you shall i so i don't think you should blame yourself no never oh that's that's kind of the biggest

message i think i hope from this pod is just please don't blame yourself blame anyone but yourself that's what we do blame us if you want genuinely this is not your fault but it's just the classic thing of pick me it's just the pick me vibes but they'll be declaring the whole time i don't care what boys think of me but it's like okay but i'm sure you don't i'm sure that's what you think but if you took a step back and stretched your limbs you could see for a second if you looked outside yourself for just a sec you could see that this whole narrative was again sold to you as a mere child and you ate her up like olivia newton john with her milkshake yeah and before you were

even born before you literally came out of the womb it was predestined that you would desire the things that you desire that you would want to be a size six that you would kind of put this weird shit all over your face like kind of some weird fucking mascara like that was already designed for you to buy before you were born like of course you want that it's nothing to do with you the fact you do it you're literally complying and it's rank what are we doing yeah why am i sitting here with shit all over my face yeah because everyone else is capitalizing off of your own insecurities or your own desire to be like everyone else but also do it slightly differently oh it is bleak it's so bleak do everything the same as everyone else but just

put your own spin on it and feel like a bit unique so the boys love you this is something that i think is fascinating be yourself yeah be yourself there's only one you everyone else has taken you're unique you're special no you're not it's like but everyone hates you when you're unique no wonder we don't want to be ourselves there's no reward i also just think with that the idea that we're all individuals and we all have our own goals and our own autonomy and all of this stuff and we're all our individual selves if you zoom out okay i'm gonna get a bit natural history museum like when i said that dinosaurs don't have salt makes nothing's changed here it all has we're back in the pilot season if you zoom zoom zoom out of planet earth and all of these people that are like okay so i put a blue streak in my hair which makes me unique like that makes me a manic pixie

dream girl like all the boys love me i'm zoe de chanel you zoom out zoom out zoom out planet earth and the human race and all the animals and all the plants on planet earth is a bit of like sand on on something it's like nothing it's like the idea that you genuinely think you're an individual that's unique you've got the fucking like you've got some star quality or whatever it's like you're mad you're mad 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. Here's a show that we recommend.

Nature. I've got a gay rooster named Francois. Is so gay. These rams are gay. I'm studying gay animals. Does that mean I'm gay? So why don't more people know this? I'm Owen Ever. I'm Lane Kaplan-Levinson, and this is a field guide to gay animals. A podcast about queerness in the natural world. The animal kingdom is queer, and we are a part. Find a field guide to gay animals on spotify apple or wherever you get your podcasts

a cast helps creators launch grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere a cast.com we're nothing yeah literally because it's like you and who's army it's you and um all of the other kind of millions of white girls all of the other millions of cis girls all of the other millions of people with brown hair all of the other millions of people who went to a certain type of school and etc etc and had this upbringing from this class and this race and this gender there are lots of things that if you were going to introduce yourself you could lay it out and you would be very much a statistic don't feel bad about having things predestined for you you could be a self-fulfilling prophecy but you're not because you're engaging with us it's incredible content but it's true that's the pressure to be an individual with your own

autonomy and all of this stuff and stand out from the crowd or how could you be an individual well there's like 10 billion individuals is there but it's unnecessary yeah that's a bit nuts what a coincidence that's kind of what's it called statistical conjunction or something it's like that how is that possible i don't think that's right but it sounds good though yeah well my philosophy statistical conjunction let's go with it yeah my philosophy days are over i'm pretty sure that means that's not it that's like when you keep going back and back and back and back and back it kind of brings us back to the god talk which i think i'm trying to get away from so one of the polls that i wanted to speak about was we did this kind of sneakily a few days before because we really again didn't

want you to know that we were coming back even though everyone fucking knew we were coming back because i couldn't resist being like are you missing us do you love us do you want us to come back yeah i wanted to know every two seconds i'm like we're kind of following you around pulling on your jeans like come back to us tell me you like me it's like do you miss us everyone's like not really no doing quite all right without you thanks didn't really notice you were gone actually so the question was are looks important to find somebody attractive and 74 of you said yes and that was literally hundreds of you said yes. And to be honest, hundreds of you said no.

But 74% of you said yes. And I'm fucking glad you were all honest because I would have had some bones to pick if you'd all said, no, looks are nothing. Like I just go for personality. No, you don't. No, you do not. Yeah.

And I used to be one of the bitches that said, oh yeah, I go, I think I just like personality more. It's like, no, no. Do you like them because they're funny or are they funny because you like them stunning they're funny because you find them hot they align with that look in the same way that seth rogan your crush your old crush i'm being torn apart he's not hot he's not an objectively hot person am i kidding he's not objectively hot but his personality aligns with the way so you could be like oh yeah i only go for personality like i like seth rogan i only go for personality it's like no no he aligns with that look but it's like i kind of actually i go for kind of scraggly white boys like big stoner

vibe hilarious vibe it's not all that dissimilar to my general type yeah his look aligns with yeah an element that is socially socially acceptable it's kind of if my boyfriend was famous he would be seth roger so what do you think do you like do you agree with the people in the poll you think that looks are important i think looks at everything in the way that i agree beauty is in the eye of the beholder but also there are societal constructs that inform you what beauty you should be beholding in that very eye. But I kind of think we just we are so visual. I mean, I don't even like listening to podcasts because I need something. I want something to look at.

I'm visual. I'm a visual being. And I just think we consume so much. That's why our podcast art is so amazing. Yeah. That's why our podcast art is so amazing. Yeah. We consume so much in that way that I just think,

how could romance and sex not be informed by that too? Totally. Kind of, you don't wear clothes that you think are ugly, or maybe you do, but you don't wear clothes that you think don't go with your vibe. You don't kind of partake visually. You wouldn't buy something if you didn't like the way it looked. So you wouldn't your time romantically with someone you wouldn't be able to have sex with someone and enjoy it at least if you weren't finding them attractive in some way a lot of that comes down to the visual it's kind of the whole the classic classic don't judge a

book by its cover argument where people are oh no i go for personality don't judge a book by its cover it's like no but the cover is important that's why you pick it up yeah sure the contents of the book are the main meat of the person or the meat of the sort of story or whatever and yeah you do want your person to not just be like a beautiful person that you look within I mean online dating is the perfect example because it is so visual based or like based in kind of aesthetics but even at a party or something when you're looking around the room everyone there may have a great inside of their book a great internal reality that you could find out about oh my god i love their personality or whatever but the only reason you actually start speaking to these people and actually give them

the shot to find out is if they to some extent match what you are looking for aesthetically absolutely yeah it's sad it's a sad reality yeah but is it is it kind of just common sense well it probably comes back down to like... It's biological. Yeah. Yeah, your genetics are that you are looking for the best mate so your children have the best shot in life. You also don't pick a dumb person. You wouldn't pick up a kind of rotten apple

because you can tell visually there are visual triggers. God, I'm going back to the Bible. But there are visual cues that let you know that that is going to be bad for your health i mean we still gravitate to people that are bad for our kind of health but in a different way i think visually we rely on that and like don't judge a book by its cover but we all spend so much time making sure that our cover art is perfect and we've got no substance there how many times have you seen someone and been like oh my god they're so so so so so beautiful like their online presence is so great or whatever you think they look so pretty

and they're on their fucking instagram whatever and you speak to them and think you're a fucking bore well it's like looks aren't everything of course looks aren't everything the classic quote like don't go for look well it's not you have to look a certain way well i think for women it is i think the most important thing about looks is being happy with a look that works for you. I think that men can lean into being a certain type. With men, it's like, okay, you can kind of lean into the more like ratty look. Classic, I'm just going for my type.

Or you can lean into, for example, your type, the more Seth Rogen-y look. Or you can lean into kind of like a preppy look or a jock look or a nerdy look or whatever. Like you can even be like a thing a woman would never get away with. A Fred and George look. A Jack Black look.

Sort of like that's fucking hot. But if a woman is overweight get away with a fred and george look a jack black look sort of like that's fucking hot but if a woman is overweight then she's a kooky crazy look yeah exactly men can lean into different things a noel fielding look god noel fielding my original crush men can fit into little pools of attractiveness and women just have a blanket thing of like you need to be thin white feminine and then you're hot. Or then you're attractive and sort of I'd bring you home to the parents sort of thing. Agreed. But I also think it's about power too. And it's about societal structures.

Because if I see Jack Black walking down the street and I don't hear him tell me a joke and I don't know that he's a Hollywood movie star. Like you've never heard of Jack Black? I am not. I was watching him walk down the street thinking, fucking hell, get yourself over here you are so stunning like i'm not thinking that's an attractive guy i'm thinking that's an overweight piece of shit because we've been indoctrinated into fat phobia and not to jack black the star of school of rock no you get what i mean like do we

finn we have internalized all of these things that whilst beauty is in the eye of the beholder if i sit with jack black for a drink and he makes me laugh and i get to know all of his kind of accolades society has told me that if you look a certain way you have more worth and if you look a certain way you are worthless and that leans into all of those constructs whiteness and white supremacy um the kind of diet industry and fat phobia all of these things work together to create an image yeah to give us kind of the tools to to judge and be judged also to fit yourself to fit other people into like okay so they fit into there but they've got that redeeming quality and society standards okay but they fit there and

blah blah and you weigh them up with all these kind of statistics you just kind of give yourself points and takeaway points and give yourself some kind of rating of where you fit and therefore the people say you come up with a number oh yeah okay i'm a seven seven and a half i should be therefore looking at parallel seven and a half and that will be where i fit in society but then you meet a seven and a half and they think you're a two because it all comes back to being in the eye of the beholder which is just the bit that makes no sense it's like we've got all of these things working together to kind of categorize people hot or not but ultimately you could what is it you could be the juiciest peach in the world and someone could hate and be allergic to peaches like you could be so perfect but you won't be right for someone this doesn't mean you're not

the most worthy peach it's fucking true and you are the most worthy peach you're the forbidden fruit everyone just wants to pick you off and eat you up so do you think this has got worse since like social media the idea of you are very aware of how you represent in our reality yes i think i think performativity and like the awareness of performance within kind of um just like civilians rather than kind of um hollywood or like super western kind of ideals i think now you have like eight-year-olds on tiktok being so much more conscious about about their worth about their kind of rating all through social media someone wrote in a message let me find it and i thought it was quite fascinating they said I have a private Instagram on which I post nothing

so I look cool yeah I saw this about someone saying that they have like an art Instagram as well and like the different layers of curation that we have yeah kind of um in trick mirror which is by I'm everyone's thinking of the cover and you're probably screaming at me I said it totally wrong but joey tribiani i probably said it wrong too she talks about in that book they talk a lot about to be to participate online you have to show up within the kind of physical tangible world you just walk about and you are perceived online you have to do something you have to make yourself known yeah it's active it's active and so whilst you and i sephie have been having these conversations since we met and have always had

all of the personality traits that people would attribute to us through the artist formerly known as hypercess and this podcast and everything we do online we've always been these people in some way and whilst we evolve we've always been this way now some way. And whilst we evolve, we've always been this way. Now we are understood and perceived in that way because we made a big fucking show of it. We made a song and dance about it, which is why I always say don't ask, don't get. Because you could be kind of in your own time

looking at Seth Rogen movies. Oh my God, I'm obsessed with Seth Rogen. Amazing writer, blah, blah, blah. This is your life story. This is me. Just pre-anecdotal here. No, I'm joking. You could be looking at, amazing writer, blah, blah, blah. This is your life story. This is me. Just pretty anecdotal here. No, I'm joking. You could be looking at, I don't know,

Ellen interviews with Seth Rogen. You could be Googling like Seth Rogen topless, for example. No, I'm joking. You could be like a massive like comedy writer fan. You could be big into that world in your own head, internally and privately. But publicly, you kind of maybe mentioned it to a friend once. And that's all we know. So when kind of the big movie star director comes along and is looking for a comedy writer, nobody asks you because we had no idea,

which is why things always come back to appearance. Because if you present something, you allow yourself to be chosen. And then you get you get now oh now you're writing comedy great you got what you wanted because you asked for it because you um put on a show because that was your performance i think it's about giving yourself that voice we have been feminists for our entire lives or i don't know we've been feminists since we were cognitive of there is a power imbalance in society yeah absolutely um whether we had a word for feminism or not but now we kind of get asked to do interviews about feminism and things like that because we are publicly feminist but i am no more or less educated or no more or less passionate about this than you guys are or than what i was when i was 11 years old then people you went to school with absolutely yeah but now i didn't when

i was 11 years old thinking this isn't fucking fair why was i just told to take my makeup off at school why was i why was some teacher looking at my the length of my skirt i had no one knocking on my door saying hey do you want to come and do this or like oh we're like what do you think about this yeah no one because i had no audience obviously but now we have people and it's like no i am no more or less other than the fact that i'm actually just speaking about it. Yeah, you make yourself an authority figure. I feel like this was the harshest reality I had to learn in life, is no one picks you up and puts you in your dream spot. You have to, like, scream it and scream it and scream it and wait until somebody notices. And even then, the dream spot isn't what you thought it was. Yeah. I think that's part of the big lesson, is that when you land there... On your way to the dream spot,

you realise it was your nightmare spot. Yeah, you land there in the dream spot and you're like, oh, like, no, no, no, like, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, I've got to make this. I've got to actually put some fucking, I've got to wallpaper the walls and I've got to put my plants out, got to get my crystals out and then I'm happy with my dream spot. I have to change the vibe, yeah. It's like sometimes the dream spot doesn't look like

what you thought the dream spot would look like. We're being very meta. And people are knocking on the door of your dream spot being like how did you get here even when you're in your dream spot you're not done but i thought that person's point was really interesting of saying that they don't post on their private instagram to look cool like the absence of posting it's kind of um sweet life of zach and cody i'm familiar cast your mind back here i am in your life here we go cast your minds back hopefully you're old enough to do that i'm sure all of us here know of at least the sweet life colin dylan sprouts this particular scene i'll forgive you

if you don't know was i think an instance where Maddie played by the one and only my queen I once wrote a biography about her in primary school in year six we had to write a biography about someone and I chose Ashley Tisdale I would have honestly loved you because I went around saying have you heard the song suddenly by Ashley I haven't even heard of that obsessed with her I just loved Maddie I loved her like tie that was like a loose tie. Oh my God. I was obsessed. A preppy vibe.

You're quite loving the preppy vibes these days. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's because Erin's wearing like a sweater vest and I said Emma Chamberlain would wear that. Yeah, Emma Chamberlain would wear that. There was a particular scene where I think Maddie liked a boy and there was some sort of event going on on Friday night, for example, in the hotel.

Classic Tipton. Where else? else nowhere else i'd rather be honestly mr mosby's there mentally i am here the tipton hotel yeah london says to her london tipton says to her don't go on friday i'm probably ever got this wrong but she's like don't go if you don't go it's fine because and maddie was like i have to go because i have to fucking be there fine because and maddie was like i have to go because i have to fucking be there and like make my move or like get him to like me and london tipton says if you don't go he'll leave you wondering where is she yeah i love that and that kind of seems like this person's philosophy of playing hard to get kind of katie katie berry again is quite warning old reference incoming but kind of it's someone going absence

before and kind of us disappearing before the drop of a new era it was our rebrand strategy it's kind of you leave people hanging it's like oh where have they gone I wonder what they're up to but I don't think it always works no and I think it does the opposite most of the time I think you need to have a balance between presence and absence because you need to build up such a presence. So Maddie needed to be very present in his life, then drop. Because I feel like London may have been sabotaging that. I think she was too.

Yeah, yeah. May have been the saboteur. Classic London. I would say that would be probably classic of the show. Yeah, classic. That she would be the saboteur and then London appears at the event and like flirts with him i can see it now or just kind of dumb girl london because women can't be kind of rich and glamorous and intelligent at the same time i remember once seeing a thing about

sweet life being like sweet life was the only show where the asian was the dumb one and the blonde one was the smart one and it's like oh god sorry the fact that there are two women and one of them has to be fucking thick is the problem it's not a progressive idea that an asian woman is stupid fucking hell yeah i know and they were like oh my god it's the only show where the blonde girl was dumb it's like oh yeah because blonde women they're so oppressed oh my god everyone's like clapping the writers seth rogan's like working his arm off to write his sweet life if you're if you have no um audience if it's an imagined audience vibe and you disappear no one's saying wherever you gone if it's a real audience vibe people are fully aware of yeah of you dropping out and maybe they want to know why well it's like if um kim kardashian logged off

the internet or archived all her posts it would be whoa big news that would break the internet rather than putting kind of a champagne glass on her bum that's why that would be so impactful because there's a huge balance between presence and absence and that she was so big and then there's something in absence rather than Maddie who has never really spoken to this guy before around the Tipton she served him once our little sweet shop and then I don't know if it's really a sweet shop a little kiosk shop and then I don't know if it's really a sweet shop a little kiosk yeah and then it doesn't show up to the event it's like okay so you can have your little Instagram you can have your Instagram that has what 500 followers and then

you can have your one that you never post on there's no balance between presence and absence so actually the only you've got an imagined audience you're only doing this for yourself like no one is watching so you're just torturing yourself yeah no one's waiting for your comeback you're playing hard to get like yeah I don't post on my instagram but it's like no one's watching we're not speaking directly to you by the way this poor person we're like roasting their social media usage oh not at all i'm talking to us as well like yeah i'm talking directly to you i'm speaking directly to sephie and wig to you and you only yeah it's like this idea that people are like waiting for your next move they're ever so anticipating your next move on social media.

Also quite funny that we're saying this. We haven't yet done the, this is obviously pre-recorded. We have no idea how the relaunch quote unquote is going to go. Maybe there is no audience after all. Yeah. It was all an imagined audience. I wouldn't put it past us that we imagined the whole thing. So I think maybe

our last question not question but last thing that someone wrote us i wanted to pick this one because i just think we can't be thinking like this and we're gonna make you feel good and we've all thought like this well it's just bad so so they said sometimes i think about how short life is and how i can't spend my life being ugly in capital letters and with loads of exclamation marks. And we just want to say, this is bullshit. I just want to say, go back and listen to our old season. Listen to the glow up episode.

Yeah, totally. But it's just so sad that that would be one of your internalised beliefs that you are ugly. Enough to write that in on like, so what are your thoughts about appearances? You are not ugly. I looked at your profile you're not ugly for starters imagine sorry imagine you went i looked at your profile you are ugly it's kind of you do have to say that i do get where you're coming from actually so maybe you have got quite a lot to worry about

i'm speaking to everyone else but you maybe there are some things you could do we can work on it we can work on it absolutely not the thing that strikes me whenever we record these and whenever we get the answers through of just the differences and i've said this before with what is being discussed on podcasts that are run by men and the topics that are being discussed by podcasts that's run by women and i always use fucking pewdiepie i literally don't know if he has a podcast i literally have never seen a pewdiepie bit of content i don't think he's been making content for like two years he's just been sat rolling rolling around with his money. Oh it's old news is it? No no he's definitely making content but he's just the target of today yeah. Just the pinnacle of like male podcast I don't know if he has a podcast. The pinnacle of male podcast is someone without a podcast just a

male really that was kind of the criteria. Okay we're gonna go instead we're gonna go for Joe Rogan we're gonna go for Joe Rogan because we know he has a podcast. Yeah he's kind of the criteria okay we're gonna go instead we're gonna go for joe rogan we're gonna go for joe rogan because we know he has a podcast yeah he's kind of the pinnacle right he's the pinnacle of to be honest he's the pinnacle of podcasts he's kind of the pinnacle of males yeah of the patriarchal male everywhere i look this man's stinking penis in my face get away yeah his listeners are no way writing and going joe i just sometimes think about how short life is because i think i'm ugly there's no fucking way and the fact that they have not been programmed to think that and it's like it's not the fact that she wrote this it's the fact that every woman is there sitting like how can i improve myself how can i be better how can we more more more more more and at the same

time less less less and like fit in with the male gaze it makes me sick to my very stomach yeah to my stum stum yeah honestly the stum stums are turning nationwide sick to my stum i like to think this person was joking of course they were yeah or being a little bit tongue-in-cheek but yeah it wasn't a cry for help and we're like blasting them on the first episode back we're like did you miss us we fucking hate you blah blah you need us because i think you're pretty and i'll tell you it and everyone else tell you ugly no yeah no so fucking true so fucking true it just it stands out like a sore thumb in that all of the messages are from girls are very open and vulnerable and like aware of how they exist within the patriarchy and we just know the messages that are going on a male podcast are not

they're just like oh my girlfriend's fucking fat should i dump her yeah we know it just women are aware of how they're managing perceptions and their imagined audience to an insane degree to a debilitating degree as well that it's like it is crippling it stops being productive one of my new things that i'm starting to ask myself whenever i have like a thought is like is that thought helpful like is that thought gonna help me be like happy and like a better person or whatever enjoy my life more yeah it's like oh well there's a difference between oh yeah that thought is actually productive because then it can allow me to like adapt and change all of this stuff and learn or is that thought just something i'm it's like a stick to beat myself with and i think there's such a difference and actually they can get quite blurred especially if you're a fucking

like capricorn bitch like me that's like work harder do better yeah yeah and also kind of I feel like we have that passing thought but we forget that it's a passing thought and take it on as our whole identity kind of your passing thought was all my friends hate me and suddenly that's your identity you're going about your day as if you're the most hated person on earth yeah you're having a bleak bleak old day take your life back is that what we're doing is that the mission of the new of our new brand is take your fucking life back i think that's the mission of my life so we can use it for the brand i'm like shall we monetize that thought that you just i think it is right yeah i think it is just take your fucking life

back yeah we're not living for this bullshit anymore because has it been working? No, it has not been working. No. Are we tough enough? Hell yes, we're tough enough. Yeah. That's the motto. To say I agree would be an understatement.

It goes without saying, frankly. It goes without saying, oh, isn't that cute? Ah, what a great name for a podcast, I'm most saying. The smirk on my face. Get me out of here. I've honestly got a full-on Harry Styles fan fiction side smirk going on. Well, I hope everyone's loved it. I i'm excited to be back i really am same really really really

happy to be back although i am nervous i'm like i'm like i'm really excited to be back but there's like a sense of fear in my behind my eyes of like i hope it went well i kind of think we never really left after all this time, always. No. Get me out of here, right? That honestly should have gone without saying. See you next time, guys. See you next time.

Bye. Unless you hated it, then we'll never see you again and I'm sorry to hear that. Bye. Unless you were like, they really killed it. That was bad.