Goes Without Saying - romanticising your life: cut the cameras

Episode Date: April 26, 2021

feeling like the main character? in this episode of Goes Without Saying, sephy & wing are discussing the ~romanticise your life~ discourse and exploring how we can stop performing the aesthetic of happiness. from toxic ideas about romance, to giving ourselves permission to live fully, we're cutting the cameras and learning to accept the reality of our scrappy lives. join our discord group chat: https://discord.gg/M6htGJcR speak your mind on the @sephyandwing instagram! 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 Goes without saying, we're back again. Sefi and Wing are in the building, two separate buildings, recording another podcast episode just for you. I'm Wing, joined by the beautiful and amazing and incredible, spectacular, ladies and gentlemen, her. Safi, hello. Kind of, it's an assembly.

And today we, I think this is a great episode. We talk about romanticising your life and living like the main character and find lots of problems in that kind of narrative that we're being sold at the moment. I think it's pretty interesting and I think it's definitely got me questioning how much of my life is performance and how much of my life is authentically what I want. And who really are we living for? Good question, hey? Let's get into it. Okay, if in this episode we sound like, I kind of sound like I'm only showing the left side of my face for some reason. And I sound like I'm absolutely terrified of getting sort of dark circles under my eyes. That is because we are filming this, there's cameras on us, loud and proud, big old lights, kind of full camera crew keeping up the kardashians is happening

literally quentin tarantino came in um so that's why the vibes are gonna be here there and everywhere in this episode as usual to be honest goes without saying um you had a good message to give us right i did and i texted it to myself and it's quite a risky thing to text a screenshot of this to yourself because it what if it didn't go to me but it did thank fucking god for that when you hear it you'll know they said that they wrote so it's about we're talking about romanticizing our lives i don't know if we've said that yet so they said they feel most romantic when the flirting that goes on just before sex with tinder guys defo not the act of sex lol that's always tragic which i loved yeah that's kind of yeah you're not sending

hi dad message the act of flirting not the sex itself that is always tragic sex is tragic dad my dad was like are you okay like did somebody hurt you okay yeah so before sex is the most romantic time i don't necessarily think with tinder guys although you are powerful in that moment well romantic in a romantic life but yeah yeah it's not you're in a romantic situation it's when do you feel that that kind of sense of romance within yourself i guess powerful moment and that's when you're most desired maybe you're a hot commodity and you know a tinder boy is i mean in those moments before sex he's kind of got a boner and your wish is his command. Like he would do anything for you. It's kind of he's the fairy godmother.

Yeah. He's got a pretty print dress. Chauffeur named Kyle. And a teddy doll tush. I love that it quickly, the demise kicks in as soon as the sex begins. It's like, oh no, yeah, I remember this. in as soon as the sex begins it's like oh no yeah i remember this it's not as good as i thought i think the idea of romanticizing your life though is often about those moments where you feel desired or you feel wanted or you feel powerful and that's you go on

a tinder date and the guy is obsessed with you and you know it that is a romantic moment in your life is like yeah fuck it it's not even about the guy it's about how you feel within yourself it's kind of that moment you know when someone's looking at you and you you know they're kind of like the expression is like oh shit and you just know they're in love they're desperado every man that's ever served me in a coffee shop every man that's ever walked past me on the street any man that has ever ever ever seen me sitting alone in a cafe but it's that look of like oh god oh fuck shit she's done it she's won me over it's my favorite that's the problem oh that mug has lipstick on i don't i do not want that in the frame this is the problem of having quentin tarantino in the studio but that's the thing is that it's those moments

where you just you're seeing how stunning you are through somebody else's eyes and it's like oh okay i see i see what people were talking about the whole time yeah that also has the same ring to it like someone said they feel most romantic when they're like walking through a field naming the cows and it's like yeah they have the same energy a tinder guy being obsessed with you and walking through the field looking at the cows have nothing to do with each other but they give they have the potential to give you that feeling of i'm alive i am like um like a being in this world yeah so true well i love that this i feel like i was coming with a negative nancy angle because i mean i love the vibe of main character romanticize you i love it in theory but i think it's one of those things that in practice it's like romanticize your life okay but who is your life romantic to

and actually is it bringing you more pain is it actually i'm making my life really romantic or is it just you're performing something and trying to fit into a mold of what you think is a desirable life or what you think makes you look good yeah and actually it's not a romantic life at all it's more painful life it's more fake life it's more forced life and it's completely performance yeah because you're performing for the invisible cameras your imagined audience and you're also therefore performing for the patriarchy the male gaze because you've just grown up believing that that that's who who the audience is or even if you're performing for other women you're still performing of who will be the prettiest girl for the men yeah really like

how much is it for you you're performing kind of for for an algorithm it's like your coffee has to be the prettiest coffee we've seen your walk has to be the best walk you've ever gone on and i think actually sometimes romanticize your life isn't really about making your life more enjoyable it's about putting so much pressure on your life to look a certain way life isn't like that life's hard and it has those ugly moments and it doesn't fit into a nice instagrammable moment all the time yeah a tricky concept romanticize your life because i think it's really nice in theory but i actually think it's adding to this insane like comparison comparison, like rhetoric, like social media moment. Everything has to be perfect for my Dudley special day.

Yeah, it does. And Dudley special day turns out it's every day. He's like getting last year, last year, every day. Last year I had 37. Every day, but last year, last year I had 37 likes and now I have 20 likes or whatever whatever everything is just um it's it's constant it's not just like um oh i can just i can romanticize my life every tuesday and thursday and all the scrappy days i just won't do it it's like you then because the illusion of social media and especially instagram is that

everyone's lives are perfect all the time if you drop even for 20 minutes and have kind of a scrappy moment in your day we've got out the shower and you just feel like gross it's like oh well i've failed i've failed at the whole thing anyway that's the thing i think it actually just becomes yeah just more of a performance it's more romantic to live an authentic life it's going to be more romantic to live a life that you get to enjoy yeah it's going to be more romantic to like be intentional and accept who you are and what you have and accept your moment and kind of just live in that moment fully rather than coming at your life like viewing your life yeah through the angle of someone who's going to judge it out of 10 on kind of how nice the lighting was that day or in that moment who doesn't exist as well that's the whole thing

that we always say who doesn't exist who doesn't exist i kind of had this realization with i had this moment like where i was just thinking about this and kind of the idea of um what other people think of you doesn't matter like people just say what other people it doesn't matter other people's opinions don't really matter and i was thinking about it it's like not only do they not matter like if you were getting feedback of people saying oh i just think you're really stupid i think you're really ugly whatever it wouldn't really matter but also you never really know like you'll never know what 99.9 of people were thinking about you so it really doesn't matter then like you are literally writing short stories as we were saying in the last episode it's like you are creating opinions of you that don't exist so whether they people are actually thinking negative thoughts

about you which they probably are yeah and they also probably aren't realistically you're never going to hear any of it like you're not you don't have a review section of your life unfortunately we do have a slight review section on our lives but leave us a review by the way leave us a review five stars on apple thank you very much but you don't have a review button you don't have a critique at the end like oh you actually scored a b on that no you don't have a review button you don't have a critique at the end like oh you actually scored a b on that no you don't get that you will never know what people think if you're making the right decisions or wrong decisions you shouldn't really warn your hair like that on tuesday you'll never know so you really really people's opinions don't matter like in a very

real way they don't matter 100 like i feel like that is it's the perfect point it's our it's our biggest point of life I feel like life we often mask our own in a monologue and our inner critic and we're just like oh society or like oh my friend would think or blah blah it's like no you think that yeah the only one who's saying these horrible things about life is you yeah you're the bitch here you're awful you're being horrible to yourself you're a bully yeah no one said that you said that it was in your head and look what you allowed it to do look what you allowed it to turn into it's kind of shaped your whole life now is shaped by this fear of your own creation literally a phantom it's like it's not even it's a ghost of like weird um sort of ideologies that you heard when you're a kid and it's like still getting you when you're 35 it's like don't pretend even it's a ghost of like weird um sort of ideologies that you heard

when you're a kid and it's like still getting you when you're 35 it's like don't pretend that it's oh i'm doing this for to appease the male gaze no you're doing it to appease your own internalized idea of what men want yeah like it's not about there are this group of men folded arms it's a panel it's simon cowell going not for me you're not going to boot camp it's not that there's no one there it's giving me a cabaret vibe yeah he never said that to you it's a bit of a karaoke singer no one's saying that to you louis walsh isn't there fucking sharon osborne's not sharon osborne really steven mohan he certainly isn't there so don't worry about it like there's no panel judging your life it's literally just you and the people

that are thinking about you you will never know simon cowell's there but he didn't get a tv show he's like got no money he never invented the x factor simon cowell will never know who you are because you never believed in yourself enough to go on x factor because you were too embarrassed because you already hated yourself too much to give yourself a chance literally literally i guess that's how we're kicking this off we're saying guys we're one of those weird people that tell um shit singers to go on the x-factor honestly go on guys you've got an amazing voice okay i so i've got two messages here from like what different people have said they came at a similar time and they're not similar but i just thought they were good to kind of epitomize what we're going on about here so one person said life feels most romantic when i indulge in the instagram of all self-care and

when it's most aesthetic and the other person said life was most romantic when i'm looking out of the train window i think you're thinking that i'm gonna say see that one of the train windows just so much more like that's so pure that's so authentic but no i think but i mean love them both and completely relate to them both not um coming for these people you're both fucking wrong but i think both of them have that the vibe of life feels most romantic when life is a performance when you're mimicking what the romantic scene is in the film that you saw yeah exactly you're a music video you feel like the main character when you look like the main characters that you've seen in films and don't we know that the main

characters that we see in films they're either men or they're pretty pretty women who are white who are skinny yeah and who have nothing about them it's bella swan you do not want to be the main character in a film you want to be your own main character that's maybe directed by yourself right oh i was gonna say gretta gerwig you want to be your own main character that's maybe directed by yourself right oh i was gonna say gretta gerwig you want to be the director the casting director the writer i was like i kind of want gretta gerwig to direct but they're gonna throw in like kind of a crazy like i'm not looking for like a crazy like coming of it i'm looking for just a beautiful peaceful life yeah of my own creation i would love some crazy like something that i want someone that

knows what they're doing to have some control well you had a plane crash oh god absolutely not but i do want like timothy chalamet to come and confess his love to me on a hill that sounds pretty good yeah wouldn't complain yeah that sounds great in all of those moments where you're performing self-love essentially you're performing romance you're performing drama in your own life you're mimicking something that was made under the lens of this awful society that we have covered all the reasons why it is awful i'm sure but also somehow not even scratched the surface of why it's awful yeah you're mimicking that and you're not in touch with what you're actually thinking and feeling and who you actually are because i love it hand on a car window it's raining outside and i'm pretending

i'm duffy for some reason you're really duffy oh wow i think there was a moment in the warwick avenue music video that i used to love but i don't remember that music video but maybe that was a moment where she had her hand on a window when you get to warwick avenue she's kind of it's kind of head on the window for me kind of head on the window on the bus but your head's going bang bang and somehow that's so romantic because we're like but i do i look good right now like it's raining right if you could get a single tear to fall carefully down your cheek that would be honestly the cherry on top with the right song in your little earphones it's you're in a music video but yeah unfortunately you'll never be in a music video if that's what you want you'll never get

there because you're putting too much pressure on yourself for everything to be perfect i love this message actually that leads me on to this great old point so on the story we asked for what stops people what gets in the way of people living like i think it was who who are you performing for who or what are you performing for but this person said that they have a perfectionist sense of self because they feel like things can't happen unless they're a specific way and I know that me and Sefi relate to that a lot well we just have we literally have just had to put that to the test with putting getting on video kind of well I'll be on video once I look like this sort of person or once I just have like maybe done this like then I'll be on video it's like yeah no it's facing up to who you are in in this moment right now harry i speak directly to

you in this moment right now who are you and give yourself permission to have everything that you want when you think oh when i'm that person it will be fine it won't be fine you're still gonna feel like shit you're never gonna be that person no and that person is still miserable well this person doesn't that person doesn't exist this is kind of what i was saying to sephie before we started recording why can only a certain version of you get a nice have nice experiences yeah because you deserve a full life because it's bollocks it's absolutely bollocks it's a lie and it's the same kind of behaviors i mean those behaviors will be the death of you like you will get to your deathbed age 90 your deathbed i kind of hate that phrase it's like deathbed yeah it's kind of

is this my deathbed is this the bed that i die in it's like looking at my bed like is it you if you don't say it's you in benson's beds or whatever it's called like is it one of these it's like i'll never buy a bed again kind of in ikea like oh god i can't go my deathbed's in there but in your deathbed that you just bought from Ikea have I told you about minty beds no I love the sound though minty beds it was kind of a van that was in Oxford that they had beds they sold beds and it was called minty beds and me and my sister it was like a weird van I don't really know they must have sold like mattresses or something really sounds really dodgy and me and my sister used to go past it and we go i can stamp my feet

la la la la la la minty bear minty bears all together now i can cut my hands that was the next verse why stamp my feet in my hands what's that i don't know but is that the tune to i'm a barbie girl yeah undress me everywhere everywhere yeah stunning but we used to go um minty beds and i don't know what the obsession how old were you i i think too old to be doing that to be honest minty bed i would say maybe it continued from me age 10 to me age maybe 14 15 i thought minty beds in itself was going to be much more exciting than it is. But actually Minty Beds kind of has nothing to do with that story. Minty Beds.

It's kind of a celebration of the song. Minty Beds was just a van in Oxford. Just a random van. Well, I hope they're doing well. I don't think they can, baby. I don't think they are. Post-pandemic Minty Beds. How are you doing?

They didn't make it through. I don't think the guy, Mr. Minty. Does Mint minty bed survive a post-covid world who knows um but yeah on your deathbed sorry mr minty beds i have just associated your entire bread brand with death beds um but on your deathbed i don't know what i was gonna say now oh my god something about death and something about a bed i don't really know okay i wanted to ask you can you talk to us about can you share with us do us the honor of sharing with us a moment where your life felt most romantic to you oh let me like really tune in yeah that's what i was gonna say you need to really think the pressure's on we want a good answer yeah i know mine i know mine as well but you go first no you go first i asked you imagine i asked you a question i go i know mine

is this no but i'd love that um mine is when i was in japan nice i went to japan i worked worked worked at this weird wedding magazine you may have heard of it from me you would not have heard of it you've only heard of it through sephi worked worked worked worked saved up enough money this before i went to uni wing was nowhere to be seen not really in my life not a character in my life yet and i went to japan um with like a group of people and it was the best it was so good i've had an obsession with japan since i was a kid kind of like watching like studio ghibli films like oh my god i have to be with kiki like kind of niche but it's kind of i need to be i don't think it's okay well i need to be kind of with

totara i'll go in i need to be of gg i need to be of all the fucking characters and i felt like it was one of those things where i was on the plane thinking lower your expectations your expectations this will never live up to your expectations like this isn't as magical a place as you think like you've got this from kind of anime stuff like this is not real and i remember just walking around when i had landed and i'd been there for a few days thinking fuck it is as good as I thought like it is as magical as I thought like I'm shocked that something I've been obsessed with for years has lived up to it kind of you met your idol and they were great my idol was Japan the nation and it was truly um amazing I remember just walking around like just being like fuck i'm in tokyo

that was insane what do you think about it apart from i guess the fact that you've been looking forward to it for so long but what do you think specifically about it was so like nice for you like pure i think it gives me the romanticize your life main character feeling not even in the performance way but in the way of i'm walking down a street in Tokyo on my own or with people I met kind of two days ago I couldn't really be further from my family or anything I know in my life I'm truly just like alive and alone yeah and I was like god anything can happen and it was so stunning I think it was just that feeling of like everything's alive and buzzing that's stunning oh god take me back let me go tomorrow yeah well i was gonna say how

do you bring that feeling to your life every day i literally don't in any way yeah it's kind of i haven't felt happiness since 2015 i eat the itsu gyozas they're in my freezer i literally don't and i wish i could but i don't know how to like cultivate that sense of kind of elect electricity maybe i don't know how to cultivate that in my daily like scrappy life and i wish i fucking could hmm you i mean you you were only like 19 right yeah i was young yeah i think when you are like 18 19 even if you're fucking going through it there is something about the narrative in the world that is like even just being alive and being have being here for like 18 19 years or whatever

there is something in that that is electric because because you're kind of being sold the potential of your life you've got youth to work with yeah you because you're you still fit into that youthful bubble that society praises us all for yeah you've got everything everything's up for grabs and also it was in my quote-unquote gap year and i had just been kind of shattered by the uni that i wanted to go to and didn't get to go to and i'd been working in this like quite weird place really hard actually like i'd been there like nine till five every day which is normal but also i like from going from school you're like jesus it's enough for us to want to kill

ourselves we say all the time like i don't know if we just missed the fucking memo there's some sort of there's something that like people seem to have it's happening i just don't have it like some sort of i don't know if it's a trait or like a something some sort of strain in our dna it literally makes us want to kill ourselves and i'm not trivializing it i'm being dead fucking serious i would drive in and think i could quickly swerve this car over because i would rather die than than do this all day like there were many many many times when i would just be there and just think i fucking could die like i literally could die yeah and i probably wouldn't care like you're just sitting there it almost feels like you're you're selling your hours because you literally are selling your hours but it's like

i've i've accomplished nothing but i'm getting paid because it's nothing to do with skill it's if my bum is in this seat i'm paid so lucky if i if my feet are on this floor and i have to stand up and walk around all day oh yeah same people every day but that's what i think my problem is with the romanticize your life main character stuff how are you supposed to feel like the main character when the reality is for the majority of people you're hating a large if if you're spending over 40 hours of your week in in a building that you fucking hate and you're being forced to say things you don't believe in and you're being forced to be around people that you don't fucking like with a boss that talks to you about how brexit's amazing and how fox hunting is like the best sport on earth for example exactly and then you and then you get home and you're fucking knackered

and you sit and you scroll for a bit and everyone's talking about romanticizing their life while they look out the window and it's beautiful sunset and they're kind of twirling their iced coffee in their hands and they're going on a walk with all of these amazing people it's like but my life's shit acas powers the world's best podcasts here's a show that we recommend in the early 1980s gay men started to get sick from AIDS. Years before ACT UP, before HIV was discovered, before the history you know, there were people on the front lines of the fight against AIDS. Joe Sonnabin.

Michael Callen. Bobby Campbell. I'm Dane Stewart, and in the new season of my podcast, Resurrection, I tell the stories of heroes of the early AIDS movement. 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 This doesn't make me feel better. How am I supposed to romanticize this thing that I hate? everywhere. AKS.com. This doesn't make me feel better. How am I supposed to romanticize this thing that I hate? That is my life. And even when it does seem amazing, like I remember when I was in Portugal visiting my family, I remember I was on a hammock and you were saying to me, just romanticize it. Like you're on a hammock in the hot, hot sun. Yeah. There's a dog next to you. You've got like

probably some kind of like ice fucking coffee with you. And it's like, just you were like, you're on a hammock in the hot hot sun yeah there's a dog next to you you've got like probably some kind of like ice fucking coffee with you and it's like just you were like just why don't you just romanticize it and it's like yeah even when you look around and it looks pretty romantic i'm on a hammock i don't know where you buy a hammock yeah thank you i don't fucking know i was on a hammock because i would look out the window and it would be so grey. It was honestly 50 shades of grey. But I think it's hard to romanticise it even when the visuals are romantic. The visuals can look like Instagram at the best of times and you're still like,

well, I feel like absolute fucking dog shit. That's the thing. That's the thing I don't like about this narrative is it's completely, it's so reductive that it takes no mental health issue into account. It's so classist. It takes no like reality of what it is no mental health issue into account it's so classist it takes no like reality of what it is to be working class into account most people's lives do not fit into what movies tell us a main character life looks like literally yeah but yet the kids on tiktok 16

years are saying romanticize your life and and it looks great for a one minute 30 second reel yeah it looks stunning but it's not reality no for the majority of people and i think that's also the problem with social media is you forget because all you see is people from the minority is essentially you're seeing a lot of the one percent you're seeing a lot of people who live a very similar beautiful aesthetic life you forget that actually the majority of people don't have access to any of that and you kind of convince yourself that you're the only one who doesn't get to experience

all of these great things. Like, no, everyone else is fucking living in dog shit too. What was your... I was going to say Brighton. Oh, well, same. That summer when that was very like pure. That was like a recent time.

Because I feel like after that, then it was just kind of... Back to dog shit. Well, it was kind of had a few months of like freedom and exploring and then it was covid times yeah and i feel like that brightened summer that was that also had that certain like electricity to it yeah it's like everything's happening like weird shit is happening like synchronicities are happening and i kind of feel like i had it at the i kind of feel like i've had it a bit this year which is funny because i literally haven't left my house this year but i had a moment at the end of 2020 and like the beginning of 2021 where i just kind of it was like my my my pokey self evolved yeah you leveled up i

went through a phase of playing pokemon but i really evolved like i just turned into a new person and i just decided to like do what i can I'm kind of done with like not putting in all of my effort to make this as enjoyable as possible because I'm seeing the years fly by I'm still so young but I'm not getting any younger and like I'm just seeing I'm I just very I think I'm innately or just inherently one of those people that I just allow life to wash over me and I think I'm kind of done with that oh god I love it so I feel like at the end of last year in the beginning of this year I just was like I'm I'm it felt electric and yeah everything kind of fell into place like January and it was

so it kind of yeah it's electric it's alive the momentum is building and you're you're kind of in that state where it's like I have energy when it's not like that and when you're living in a very passive way you're very like i've got no energy in me like i need to lie down all of this stuff i've got no will to live i've literally lost the will will to live yeah but it's in those moments where you're like fuck i have energy like i'm exhausted because i'm so i'm doing so much i'm like so present in each moment, but it's like, I actually, I have energy for this. Like I can see the worth in this. Yeah, 100%.

I think it's a really interesting split between living intentionally and trying to live really authentically. And then the main character thing fits into that perfectly and I love it. But a part of it, I was gonna say, I feel like a part of it i was gonna say i feel like a part of it leans into this kind of like the kind of twitter rhetoric of like set boundaries and like be

horrible to people basically and normalize right yeah normalize um kind of being a cunt and like you're you're never the toxic one everyone is toxic toxic though is that even what even is that um and i kind of feel like the main character thing is kind toxic though is that even what even is that um and i kind of feel like the main character thing is kind of bad for i would say a lot of people's egos because it gives you this bizarre or it kind of emphasizes your god complex and i think there's an arrogance to it that isn't pure it's it's kind of you're living in bad faith it's kind of this isn't a good way to live with this you're living like actually coming from a place of like hate and anger and jealousy but it's being masked as like oh i'm living in a

beautiful no no no no not at all you're living like with desperation it's like an obsession with being an individual which is such a capitalist thing and yeah we are we're all individuals in so many ways but it's this idea that you must brand your individuality and make it oh my god it's a performance it's got to make sense like oh well if i'm an ice skater then i can't also be a boxer because it doesn't make sense as a brand and it's like no you're obsessed with the idea of how you appear how you look yeah how you look to the quote-unquote imagined audience and it's like you're fucking this up like you're actually gonna fuck this up sure you'll get your deathbed and kind of thing yeah um there's no big score but

it's also like yeah you will also get your deathbed and think oh i did kind of fuck that up slightly like i did was obsessed with i didn't do anything that i wanted to do i was obsessed with how i how it looked to be living rather than actually living how it felt to live yeah which is a sad place to be and i kind of think the problem is we're raised with no there's no real emphasis at least for i would say like our generation of people like roughly our age i mean maybe i can only speak from my own experience i feel like there really isn't that much societal direction or emphasis on emotional intelligence or developing good self-awareness or um critical thinking or being analytical or i feel like the emphasis growing up is to just mold you into what

is going to work so that you fit in quite nicely rather than actually having any ability to examine yourself and really reflect on what you actually might want from life because it might not reflect what society wants for you at all and if it does what why the fuck are you so compatible with something that is absolutely out to get you yeah you don't want to be compatible with this but i think that's why people then here romanticize your life we take a lot of face value because we haven't been raised with like the skills to unpack what that might mean so we just kind of take on um i'm the main character and then it's kind of like yeah well fuck you guys like i knew i was the best blah blah but you're not living you're not happy i just think the whole thing is fucked when you start using film analogies to reflect on your own life i don't see how that can ever work because it takes away all fluidity and um presence completely well you're

curating something that is real and sort of putting it into the formula of something that you've seen and it's the same thing i say it all the time or i think it all the time anyway if like you're looking for your identity in external things which is like you're never gonna fucking find it literally that you're never gonna find your true self your true essence of who you are and what you want to do it makes you happy in something that's external you're you're looking at um the montage of bridget jones getting fit she's throwing her cigarettes in the bin people really the smoking thing is um she's she's getting texts from fucking uh what's his name fucking hugh not jackman hugh grant i was

gonna say hugh jackman too wolverine is texting bridget jones for some reason bridget jones it's a crossover you're performing the montage of what it's like to get your life together when actually what does it look like to get your life together does it mean stopping drinking or does it mean actually you need to get out of your bed and go to a party and maybe drink something yeah you don't actually know what sorting your life out or getting your best life quote unquote living your best life yeah you don't know what that's gonna look like but the tv the film the stuff that you want that tells you what it should look like they're telling you it should be you should probably just like slim down stop drinking be a bore and maybe just get like a nice little job and maybe just get one

singular boyfriend it's like well maybe i don't want that maybe i want to go to mcdonald's yeah and have a drink and kind of sleep with a few people or sleep with no one like it doesn't it looks so different for everyone which should go without saying but it really doesn't yeah completely it's just too prescriptive and it's bleak the whole time to be screaming, I'm living like I'm the main character. I'm romanticising my life. I'm living like the main character.

But actually, you're not the main character at all. It's kind of, you just turned up to the cinema to press play and watch your own life. You're not even a character. You're the observer. You're the critic. You're running kind of rotten tomatoes. Yeah, yeah.

Kind of going, hmm. 75%. A bit rotten to me 20 yeah yeah literally it's awful something i wanted to i kind of feel like this pulls us back maybe to your point at the beginning but can you how do we romanticize our lives if our whole idea of romance is wrong it's fucked to be honest and rooted in violence can you talk to us about that in misogyny in white supremacy yeah in to be honest everything fat phobia it's rooted in take all of the grim shit in life then tell us that that's romantic and there we go we're fucking idiots yeah because that's the thing if you strip things back to kind of twilight which we love to strip things back to twilight if that's like the epitome of film which we love to do it kind of

is the epitome of what we were taught that romance was and it's literally a jealous violent killer that's a pedophile let's add that in there he's also a pedophile 108 or something i believe he's graduated 12 times or something how long have you been 17 yeah how long has that fucker been 17 i will love you for a thousand years whatever it is a thousand years he's a pd file yeah and then also put into that a woman with no personality her her only personality is that she's not like the other girls and the other girls are so cool yeah the other girls so fun take me to that dress shop yeah she's like my tits look great in this like honestly anna kendrick they do they

do they do anna kendrick sing me that cup song babe bring it around whilst bella's there boring eating her gray little mushroom ravioli anna kendrick is there yeah and anna kendrick is there with amazing boobs who would you rather be kind of are we putting the patriarchy back on it by saying who would you rather be one's got amazing boobs and one is just kind of quiet and intellectual would you rather be boring or have good boobs which one but which one though it's like um i would rather be at dinner with edward than with that girl with the glasses that anna kendrick hangs out with well i'd rather be at dinner with edward just because she was about to get kind of gang raped and he thankfully turns up in the nick of time.

So if the alternative is he doesn't turn up and you're in kind of grave danger, then yeah, I'd rather be at dinner too than on my deathbed. In minty beds, singing that you can clap your hands. Literally in the back of a van. Literally.

If you strip it back to twilight or disney or any of the ways that we learn what was romantic it is that you are not good enough on your own you have to basically be the most boring kind of little lovely singing voice girl who then gets saved gets married and that's the end of her story she goes from kind of miss to mrs takes on his name and her life is happily ever after it's done her life is over she's had her chance to explore and now it's done hopefully not too much exploring hope you do not want a loose wife otherwise you will not be chosen do not fuck anyone yeah in that time you may explore by singing to some birds but you may never ever ever fuck a man yeah that is the

truth to be honest who would want to honestly what did the girl say at the beginning sex is a tragedy she said the act of self sex itself is always tragic yeah so true so fucking true but yes it's no wonder that our idea of what is romantic is fucked. Yeah. And what is successful is wrapped up in that too. Literally, because success is losing your identity to a man. Yeah. And becoming his wife, his little accessory. Yeah, yeah, yeah, completely. Success under the patriarch is you giving up your identity.

And don't you dare get a wrinkle. Yeah, and success under kind of white supremacy and capitalism is you have nothing. Yeah. And you're just another number first of all i'm not a number i'm a human being keep the simon cowell stuff coming iconic god a lot of x factor references in here yeah who knew mariel rip she dead yeah god she died she died loads of them died because it's just like you would killed by simon cowell on their death honestly you're genuinely murdered by simon

it's a no from me that's for sure it's so cruel do you remember that thing that zoe alexander thing that i got obsessed with you were obsessed for about kind of 24 hours yeah two days it was my mission to save zoe alexander you and demma o'leary have that in common no one gave a shit about her for more than kind of the first 10 minutes of reading her email so awful so awful just the x factor it's like you you have all these promises of you will be on tv your friends and family will see you well the fact that if you're over the age of 25 you're suddenly an old person by the standards of the x factors you're joking that is absolutely insane like thinking about

that now should we next year when we're 25 should we go on and we'll go on and be and we'll do the whole performance get to the semi-final should we go on the x-factor oh no we'd be in band we'd be in a group we wouldn't be in groups we'll go on separately i don't want to go on separately it's embarrassing and announce at the very end we actually know each other whilst it's just us we're both of us in the finals cheryl's got us arm in arm oh my god and we do a hunger games oh god that took a dark turn no but we say like we can't not one of us is gonna win we're both gonna do it like we both eat the berries is that what they do at hunger games yeah we threatened to kill ourselves on national tv itv god this took a turn simon's like oh god what have i done we kill ourselves live on tv anton decker like stop steven

mohern is running through on the x factor on the x factor final there's a big christmas tree in the back we're gonna get christmas number one leona lewis has just sung a little guest song honestly anton decker crying talisa's there like female boss with her arm so good oh my god so one of the questions we asked on the story was do you think you perform and like conform more for society and like culture and people like strangers essentially um or people you know in your real life like friends and family so what do you think i wanted to ask you what you thought well i kind of think the majority of

people said strangers right i think it was quite split it was like the majority but it was like 53 oh i think it was a bit more than that really i thought it was quite a brexit situation i thought it was about like 60 70 even well we should just check but we can't be asked we could just check but our phones are in ring lights right now yeah um and the other one's my microphone let's not get into that you'll see on the video that the best microphone we found is an iPhone 6. It's my old iPhone. Anyway, if you want to start a podcast, just do it. This is a shambles and it's great. Yeah. I think a lot of people said that they perform and conform more for society

because it's what we were saying at the beginning of, you convince yourself that it's society's voice telling you one thing and telling you another, but it's actually just your inner kind of arsehole. It's literally just you.'s you yeah and i think is it about society or other people friends family or is it your own fear it comes from your own fear and kind of what i was saying in the other episode about you turn up to life already feeling undeserving yeah you get here and you immediately feel like you shouldn't be here you need to apologize for your existence don't make a you know be quiet be small don't

make a scene don't do anything with your life and just try and disappear because you haven't really given yourself the right to be here you need to give yourself permission to exist in this life because spoiler you already are existing you're just going to have a sad existence because you're not living fully it's kind of you need to learn i guess slowly and surely that you're the authority in your own life which is the whole mantra of the sapphian wing moment she is the mode and she is the moment you are the authority no one's coming harry yeah it really is you are the authority but why is that so hard to grasp i guess it's because everyone all the signals in life are that you are not the authority you don't have a say and there are certain things

you just have to do that in the real world like you just have to do that yeah and i kind of feel it in a sense of i because i think that's where the imposter syndrome kicks in too when you have done these things you have kind of given yourself enough permission to get to maybe where you wanted to go like i still could be do it like i often like especially in like a career situation or in just like i have to give myself permission to be that person because it's almost like you convince yourself that anything good and exciting or fulfilling can't be yours. That can't be right. This can't, it's going to be ripped from under me or everyone's going to find out that I don't deserve it.

Because you're meeting life with the sense of being undeserving. But the sooner you can kind of get over that and kind of catch the negative self-talk. But then also it's one thing to hear your inner voice and be like, okay, I'm being a bitch to myself. But then don't be a bitch to yourself by being like, look, you i'm being a bitch to myself but then don't be a bitch to yourself by being like look you're just being a bitch to yourself blah blah blah then you're going to continue it it's like you're you've got this inner workings going on you've got an inner monologue that's going a bit kind of um god able it's going off at you right now it's running riot and and to be honest and that's okay it's just accepting it's like allowing yourself

i saw someone put in a really good message about their life feels romantic when they're treating themselves as if they are their best friend. And that is another, she is the mood, she is the moment, the Sefi and Wing moment. You need to treat yourself as if you are your own best friend

and try and talk to yourself as if you are your own best friend. Because really that's kind of all you have. It really is all you have. It's the only thing you have any control over is how you act and really is all you have is the only thing you have any control over yeah is how you act and how you think it's the only thing you don't have control over shit in this life other than what you are gonna say to yourself yeah not everything will be positive not every feeling will be positive sometime like no matter how kind of on it you're

being with like watching if you're being like nice to yourself being decent to yourself you're still gonna have bad moments because that's a part of life and i think living with this sense of i have to romanticize every moment and everything you know positive vibes only it's like no real vibes only like honest vibes only just take the vibes as they come yeah you're setting yourself up for failure and not every vibe is going to be um immaculate and not every vibe is gonna be acceptable for the internet or tiktok or whatever you're wanting to post your amazing clip on an instagram reel perhaps not everything is gonna be um visually good like it's gonna be visually quite shit

the vast vast vast majority yeah do you know how long it takes the main character in a film to get ready she's in hair and makeup for fucking hours no wonder you in your scrappy life she's had every word scripted by professional writer she's doing lots of things off camera you never see the main character kind of going for a shit do you no but she's doing it if she's human if we're talking about humans she's shitting but she is shitting bridget jones is shitting yeah she is but but the image of the image of what's undesirable in bridget jones is kind of this gorgeous woman sat on her sofa looking beautiful with some ice cream but actually what's undesirable

is she's kind of got diarrhea but you don't see that so your whole perception of what is undesirable like what is real or what is a bit gross is completely warped because even the authenticity is performed it's a famous actress renny zellweger who has been told put on four pounds no more not five not six four pounds please put those on so that we can call you overweight she's stunning that we can call you overweight she's stunning then we would like you to wrap yourself in a duvet hair and makeup must be immaculate though maybe we'll pull one hair astray and we'll give you an ice cream with a spoon in but please don't eat a bite that is what's going on and it's like no wonder you think

that your low moments are fucking low because her low moments look pretty high yeah and even on instagram it's kind of a skinny white girl is contorting her body in half so she's showing one role and that's being shown as look i'm being so brave and undesirable but it's and so authentic no no no no that was a performance it's like i would rather i'd rather you project that you look good and kind do you know what i mean like don't fake looking bad that's worse than just going on looking good yeah performer performance do not perform authenticity to me or no wonder we're confused no wonder we're thinking wait but when they're being really authentic and then when they're posting themselves looking shit it really

looks a lot better than my best moments so much more sinister because it becomes oh their stretch marks are better than mine yeah it's like jesus this is dangerous kind of they've got their natural leg hair out but it's like but their natural leg hair is um lighter than mine they're not like i don't look like that when i don't shave it's like yeah yeah because they just shaved kind of her toe hair is worse than yours if we're gonna do that like we we can pick and choose the quote-unquote bad parts of ourselves to share all we want it's like if i had done 10 essays and nine of them were a stars and one of them was just an a and i showed you my a and said look i'm not perfect it's like that's still an immaculate piece of work that you worked hours

and hours on literally that's why instagram is the fucking devil but it also is our god that we worship all day every day but it is the place to be it is the place to be and you will be seeing this on instagram real but it can't be healthy like it i know it's such a basic point but like this literally this place literally cannot be healthy as much as like yeah but i get to connect with like lizzo i get to see lizzo's life like that can't be unhealthy i get to see amazing comedians like whoever that um fucking justin firstman whatever that you love that you mentioned like once you get to see people oh yeah jordan love that you like and that are funny you connect with on the internet but it cannot outweigh like you get to listen to stephanie wing blah blah but it does that outweigh seeing the um

performed authenticity the performed scrappy lives when actually their lives are perfect well it's kind of i i love jordan firstman but now he's in my bed with me now he's literally on my device in my hand and never leaves whilst you're shitting you're watching justin firstman his name is literally not justin jordan so sorry jords but it's like whilst you are literally living your scraps or kind of you've um you and your friend have not seen each other in six months you go and you meet up and you have an amazing dinner but in the moments between the laughter and the realness you're staring down at your phone just because it's something to do it's like no why don't you just sit in that moment be present be a bit bored because i'm i'm pretty sure you're not going to be bored you're actually going to be

feeling alive you're going to notice the little things in life yeah but instead we feel all our like little moments the transition moments between all my friends picking me up in a minute it's hard to be present yeah you just fill it with bullshit that makes you end up feeling worse a lot worse you saying that just reminded me of something the other day on the phone do you remember you were like i'm just watching too much tv at the moment outed i cannot stop watching tv the other day you were on the phone and you said i just had crazy diarrhea you said that you you cannot stop remember we were on the phone you said you killed someone do you remember yeah i was gonna say when you murdered that man um but the other day you were talking about it was just a passing comment but it just reminded me because i'm watching so much tv

so embarrassing i said what what even is that as a concept because when in phases where i'm reading a lot it's not like oh my god i'm reading so many books no one's looking at me going she reads so many books because one is apparently um like societally so superior the premium it's been romanticized yeah out of classism and white supremacy and what you know to be kind of slobby or like quote unquote unworthy. It's thick. It's like, oh, it's a bit thick to watch TV. It's like, no, but what if I do want to watch First Dates Hotel?

There we go. What if I do like ITV2? It's fine. Exactly, yeah. Because I can tell you, I put a lot of hours into books that I fucking hated. Literally, and that's the problem. And a lot of books that are shit.

Just had to get to the end of. Didn't make me a better person well this is the thing with romanticizing your life i feel like i've just got i i don't i feel like i don't even enjoy the the vast majority of books that i read i don't enjoy them because society tells you that books are supposed to change your life and they don't they're like really bought like and you're reading thinking i'm reading oh i'm reading a book do i look good maybe i should get an instagram photo of this that's what i don't like is that it's like you can't like people don't i don't know i think people just put too much pressure on themselves

to do it's like if you look if you don't want to read you don't want to read like i agree completely i also agree because i love someone telling me honestly just lie down there's an amazing film you can watch just sit and watch that no but i think it's true and i think that's my problem with books is that everyone praises and praises books i think mostly that's because they like to um be seen they like to do the performance of praising books yeah you want to be seen as somebody that reads but a show a tv show or a film could have been much more impactful on your life but you didn't speak a word of it that's what pisses me off so keep watching too much TV watch Woody Allen the Woody Allen documentary watch the Demi Lovato documentary I need to finish that you still haven't finished the Demi one no I haven't had the waiting for the proper moment you've kept him alive

I know I completely agree with that it's like I'm not reading for the show of reading. I'm reading because you have to find those things that actually are making your life more enjoyable. And now I do feel like with our attention spans that have been so shriveled down to now even a TikTok, if it's a minute long, feels a bit long and Instagram reels were like, fuck, we'll make it 30 seconds

because clearly people are only watching 30 seconds of most tiktoks it's habits yeah a tv show feels long and then a film on top of that feels like a commitment it's like where i'm gonna be over two hours i don't know how you lot listen to this podcast that's mental well you must i well i listen to podcasts but i often listen to them in segments almost like i'll go on a walk yeah and my walk turn it off then i'll be like cooking my dinner listen to it then not ours i can't listen to ours jesus that's the thing yeah yeah i get that i think that now our attention spans are so fucked and even when i watch my like younger siblings like my younger brother when i watch him when i watch him watching tiktok very weird i look over his shoulder he must be watching like honestly like three seconds of each one and it's like god

the generation below their their attention span is fucked yeah actually fucked their brains aren't developed yet so this is literally how you're learning to live yeah so no wonder for us sitting down to read a book it's like oh this is a bit fucking slow one word at a time where's the music where's kind of um ice on my neck i'm standing behind it is why i hate editing the podcast because i can't listen to music yeah yeah that's so interesting i do get that like mind numbing i honestly get that the worst thing about editing a podcast is that you literally can't have a podcast on it's like oh this podcast for four hours in in slow motion yeah jesus not this one with all the ums and all the bad things we say just like fucking hell not again these idiots kind of and the worst

people on the planet the plastics the sephian wing okay should we find a way to be doing the work this week kind of just take the pressure off and not be the observer in your own life might be a good place to start we were just discussing it and i was like like do a shitty thing and then feel good doing it like do a gross thing and feel really like good about yourself and wing just raised a really good point of like yeah but don't perform doing a shitty thing like don't perform and now i make my super noodles because i'm just doing a shitty thing and i'm enjoying it yeah can you just stop no how about just don't do anything literally cut the crap stop the act that's the new motto don't do that that's our

merch and don't do a thing for the sake of doing a thing i'm gonna watch um fucking first dates hotel whatever and i'm gonna do it and i'm gonna you're kind of doing it ironically you're stirring your instant noodles thinking how hot do i look in my in my sweatshirt right now can i accept myself in this moment it's like yeah but no not can you accept yourself from a the observer's point of view can you accept yourself within yourself when you do nothing it's not bridget jones eating the ice cream can i look good whilst i have a duvet wrap around me no because you've still got hugh jackman texting you you've still got wolverine blowing up your phone so So can you feel good doing fuck all?

Or just do whatever comes naturally to you and take the pressure off. Love it. There's no pressure. No pressure from us. Never. Never any pressure from us. There's pressure on us from us. There's no pressure on you from us.

Don't get me started on the pressure on us from us. That's another question entirely. Okay, well, I think that leaves us just about all is said and done, I think. Yeah, that's fun. Okay, well, I hope you've enjoyed this episode. They're like, I haven't listened to a word of that. I'm doing everything through the lens of the observer this week.

I am romanticizing the fuck out of my life. And rightly so, you should romanticize it. But just who are you living for? It's kind of, you're trying to be, you're viewing your life through the lens of kind of a Polaroid camera. You're of james franco you've got a disposable camera you're at the festival you're not actually experiencing the festival but you're experiencing it through the lens of your shitty disposable camera that you got from boots earlier that day

i watched the jonas brothers concert movie stunning on disney plus i obviously saw it the first time around multiple times went to the cine absolutely went to the cine went to the premiere even um um haven't since like i'd never revisited it in my adult life fucking cried seeing beautiful demi lovato and cried harder seeing beautiful taylor swift you know how i feel jesus goes out saying taylor's version you've got me at demi honestly so stunning you've got me at kevin then you've really got me a demi i was really kind of taken aback to see there was no phones in the crowd at all it was literally a few people had their digital cameras oh my god there was no filming on iphones you know it really was kind of honestly bringing a tear to my eye

what doesn't i'm constantly crying but just fascinating isn't it yeah I mean I can't part with this bad boy my whole life is on this phone but it's something to think about anyway see you next week see you next week guys put down your phone maybe but don't romanticize that and don't stop this podcast make sure you have your phone on you at all times to leave us a review leave us nice messages on instagram and come to the discord and chat