Goes Without Saying - why you hate your body: teenage dysmorphia has entered the chat

Episode Date: September 21, 2020

*trigger warning: body image* diet culture is over party!! this episode of Goes Without Saying, we're cancelling patriarchal images of beauty and unlearning all the bullsh*t we were taught about our bodies as teenagers. join us (sephy & wing) as we discuss the fact that whilst women get smaller, men get richer. we hate it here (no but really, we hate it here). prepare yourself for feminist anger and more niche harry potter references as we battle it out with draco vs cedric. speak your mind on the sephy & wing instagram! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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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 Hey guys and welcome back. It is Sefi. I'm with my girl Wing. So we're back. We're talking about body image today, which we've spoken about before and it's going to get personal and it's going to get raw because it is just a fucking triggering subject so trigger warning on this episode yeah i mean every app comes with a trigger warning this one

is like get out of here if you're not ready to receive information that could potentially harm you because honestly neither was i and i didn't have a choice and I've been crying for the past hour so strap in hold on tight because I mean I was gonna say a Harry Potter reference is gonna be a bummer right yeah because we go massively into our dream Harry Potter fantasies so you can vote which one's better mine or Aaron's who who are you team Draco or team Cedric tell us tell us right enjoy the app enjoy the episode please cut that so this is one of our most requested and most exciting episodes is body image we're chatting about body image which is fucking scary yeah are you ready i think i'm ready we've done one before if you listen to our pilot season,

we did an episode on body image before, which was very sort of, we're both like, when I was five, like it was very, it's very autobiographical and it was unnecessarily personal. Yeah. I would say. So this one here is going to be, I mean, we are obviously going to talk about our own lives because we do in every single episode, but I think this one hopefully will help you a bit more god knows who fuck knows might help you much less who knows what this is gonna be let's go let's just do it yeah you lot are the ones that are getting personal in this app and boy did you boy oh boy did you yeah i mean i think both of us shed a tear looking through your messages absolutely many many many tears. I feel like I say this every time,

but like anytime we discuss anything where you lot come through with your personal, like stories and experiences, I can't help but say you're all dealing with the same thing or like you've all lived the same life. Like we really are out here living the same childhood, the same experiences, the same trauma. All of our parents have the same childhood the same experiences the same trauma all of our parents

have the same motives all of our like all the boys in year nine said the same things to us fuck it it's so crazy i mean my main message in this is that the world is fucked yeah yeah as usual and we need need need to not let that impact our daily lives and make us skip meals and sort of oh yeah i'm just like i'm gonna cut out sugar i'm gonna cut carbs what because the you've been born into an unfortunate place yeah i'm sorry that happened to you it happened to us all we're all here against our will non-consensual life yeah but we cannot not have food and overly exercise because of this because it's fucked because there are men trying to make money from you hating yourself. And they do.

And they are rolling. Yeah. Laughing all the way to the bank. Well, whilst we're crying, what, all the way to the toilet to throw up our lunch? Nah. So I started listening to the audiobook of The Beauty Myth. It's stunning. As much as we promote Hunger by Roxane gay and all of these books that we talk

about constantly i think if body image is your thing and you struggle with it which hard hard hard relate i think you need to listen to the beauty myth because it will give you the anger and the fuel that you need to like think fuck this i'm not living like that anymore completely i completely agree that book is stunning and also the biggest thing or one of the biggest things at least for me like kind of recalibrating my own self and and i'm trying to situate myself in where i would want to be who would i want to be if i apparently have this one life and i can either die or try and make it pretty fucking good i've been trying to make it good i don't know if you noticed that's the that's the decision i made we're trying our hardest to make it work make make

the best of a bad situation truly no child asked to be born classic catchphrase my nan the biggest thing for me and i know sephie for you as well one of the main things that's changed us is centering ourselves or aligning ourselves with a within a circle that's very safe and very progressive at the same time. Like we say in every episode, we are sheltered by a lot of ignorance because we're in this kind of echo chamber of body neutrality and like all this progressive, you know, discourse, which obviously is dangerous because any echo chamber i would say is dangerous but it is so helpful to i think mainly on social media and also i guess with the people that you're surrounding yourself with i mean i'm very picky about who i'm spending time with on social media

i think it's actually a really really easy way to get loads of positive influences in your fucking business up in your energy like you can't escape i can't scroll for 10 seconds without seeing something that's going to make me feel better about myself and that's exactly as it should be and i think by listening to this podcast you must be engaging within similar sorts of circles and i honestly think that's the first step it really is the first step to just make sure that you are not consuming any more than you can like it's inescapable that you are going to be seeing adverts um basically if you go to the fucking cinema once you're going to be seeing fucking size zero as the standard body i mean

we were talking about this film the other day um once upon a time in hollywood is that what it's called quentin tarantino yeah i used to i had a cat called quentin i was obsessed but now no longer my king no longer my king because you're gonna see brad pitt sort of almost having sex with a 17 year old girl sorry yeah not for lack of trying yeah literally i mean it's insane you're gonna see men are allowed to have wrinkles women if you're over 16 you're pushing it really you look old you look fat absolutely no no i mean forget it if you're not white forget it if we think that the standard is a size zero white able-bodied cis woman sorry who fits that who fucking fits that one percent and it really has you forgetting that it's exactly a very small minority of the world you know what i hate everything issue with

you know what i hate men um but you know what i hate recently i was thinking i've got a personal gripe with this and i mean it's not the biggest kind of offender on my list of things to hate and it's not really the most important thing in the world but i really hate that we say like ethnic minorities and minority groups just in a when it comes to language when you think of the way that we try to minimize real life human beings people's experiences it really centers the white experience as the majority and it others yeah everyone else it's insane language and it really is the standard language used and it i i get it it's not like ultimately people are dying and that is ultimately my biggest issue but i do think that language is a symptom of something that we haven't fucking got to the bottom of yet

it just really bothers me because i understand as well yes i get it it's the west the way within the west quote unquote within the western world white people statistically do take up the majority in the UK, but I just find it honestly triggering to be called a minority. And I'm white passing. That language is so disturbing. And it's such a symptom of white supremacy. There's nothing else to it that it's literally othering anyone that is not white. How is that not white supremacist um ideology how is that not white supremacist discourse yeah completely when you're using the word minority to often it's within context to say like all of the injustice that they've been facing and so you're saying yeah this really horrific thing happened to this minority and so even though that's i think is the problem is because it kind of soothes it kind of puts a balm over the actual issue

where even though you're being like, this is really horrific, this is happening and the conversation is happening, within that same conversation, you're literally minimising the quote unquote victim. I just have a personal gripe. But I do think if I wasn't engaging with who I'm engaging with on social media, at least,

especially now when I haven't been outside for like fucking six months or whatever it is. I haven't seen the day. I haven't seen the light of day. I haven't seen the sun. I think I would feel very radical. Absolutely. I think I, throughout my life, definitely felt quite radical because. Because you give a shit and because you're not dumb. Or just even like when the idea of dieting was very much in my head of like, go on these diets

and starve yourself, it will make you happy, it will make you pretty, all of this stuff. I still had a huge awareness that this is wrong and that this is all targeted towards the women. And I don't know if I'd seen that written down, but I definitely had an awareness of if I, for example, felt awful about myself when I was younger and then would starve myself, I would definitely then pile on the guilt for starving myself which i think is really common well which i know is really common because we saw it a lot in our stories a lot of you were saying it a lot of you were dm'ing saying that you know that it's bad but then you're like told to do it so you don't really know what to do and then you're lizzo tells you not to diet and then everyone's dancing

to it but then everyone's calling lizzo a fat fuck and then you're like ah like yeah i believe it's insane how can i survive here how can i literally have a decent life here yeah what's the easiest path for me yeah if everyone else hates me how can i not hate myself so trying to pick one of these things to speak about that you sent in is so impossible because i'm not joking maybe this is the most we've got i don't know can't can't count as we say in every single one now i think this is just our new famous life like we're just gonna have to stop saying it and just accept the fact we can't read them all it's like every episode we can't believe that we're not on our own anymore it's like quite embarrassing yeah we're like we love you i think we just need to accept the fact.

I mean, after our raw chat last week, I think we just need to accept that we're fucking celebrities now and then move on with our lives. Yeah. So one of you said, this one I really loved because, I mean, I'm just going to read it. Countless people have given me the solution

to clear up my acne without ever asking. And I love this because acne is replaceable for your teeth your weight anything about you literally your nose your anything anything it's just like skin is just one of the things that everyone feels that they can fucking comment on on anyone and especially on a woman and i think the idea of the solution the way that people feel entitled or even like invited to comment on a woman's body is so insane and offer all their own things which are just trying to validate themselves. Like, oh my god, well if you try this cream that I use, it will be perfect for you. It's like, mmm. And then the next

person's, no, no, you just need to cut out dairy. You just need to cut out dairy. And the next person's like, well, no, it's just hormones. Like, you you'll be fine and it's just a constant ongoing people trying to validate what they did or what they use on their skin or what they use in their diet and force it on you to make you feel shit about yourself and they think they're helping yeah the common theme with everyone's message is i didn't ask i didn't fucking ask i never fucking asked you're answering a question nobody asked you i didn't ask you i do think the thing with skin as well is that it's easy to really simplify it it's your body's largest organ it's all you fucking see when you look at someone it takes up literally their head to toe and so in that way it is essentially the easiest thing for the white man to capitalize

and you can see the pictures now the kind of love the skin you're in adverts it's like but you've been telling me to hate it and also i'm seeing a picture of fucking vanessa hudgens on the fucking neutrogena adverts well she's using an acne sort of scrub on her face but it's vanessa hudgens it's gabriella montez yeah so love your skin if you look like gabriella montez yeah and your skin the condition of your skin is obviously um in part a reflection of your environment but largely what your skin looks like aesthetically is your genetics and your hormones and your biological condition and that cannot be changed with um like topical treatment and yet you're being sold it you want really another personal fucking gripe yeah all of this is it's like now this gets personal yeah i think every episode is just us kind of looking through our long list of things that we've always

wanted to fucking bitch about and now you lot are here echoing it too yeah it's like i've just got a long long list of things i hate in the world and we're just going to talk about each one of them basically in the way that acne and like the discourse around acne is so pervasive something else that i think we can't ignore with skin is skin lightening products which i mean at least within the uk and i mean both of sephi and i objectively are pale and so it wouldn't be as much on our radar radar but it is still evident in the united kingdom recently i saw a youtuber that i really like her name's antsy antsy twinkle god she's gorgeous first of all and she's hilarious so she is not white she is a brown girl with skin that isn't pale or pale enough for what society would want um or what society is telling her please go and go and find her she's

honestly you'll love her and she has i think more than one video and she talks about it all the time just on her social media in general satirically commenting on like skin lightening skin bleaching products specifically fair and lovely i think is one of them dove all of that and these are products that are very much not just readily available for her when she goes to the shop but they're like sold to her in mass advertising that promoted her everyone in the media exactly so she made a video with one of the she was essentially saying this is me gonna i'm gonna lighten my skin i'm gonna look great blah blah blah she's taking the piss great vid and she puts all the products on her hand and she's like painting on this like white cream over her skin

on her face with like a paint roller like it's very obviously a joke and it's also i mean it's funny it's comedic but it's also essentially heart-wrenching because it's just like a really sick and sad reminder that this is the reality um to make it worse so that video probably came out i don't know last year i haven't i haven't refreshed my memory to do this podcast i probably should have sorry the other day she put up a video showing that a skin bleaching company had used footage of her putting the cream on her skin to advertise fair and lovely they've used footage of her with her brown skin putting on a white cream and they're selling it as if it's the video of her with her fucking paint roller out taking the piss and that her face now is selling to young brown girls

everywhere lighten your skin i mean get the fucking lawyers in just in the sense that i mean overall before getting into even skin lightning just the sense that i hate to see young social media flourishes because of the work and creativity and talent of young women largely and so how can this woman's face not be her own intellectual property a massive company targeted at telling women to hate themselves is going to come and capitalize and profit and exploit her telling exactly her to hate herself in this 2020 i'm disgusted but like not surprised in any way it's absolutely disgusting it's the fact that she was doing a satirical act to mock something mock her own appropriate yeah appropriate your own oppression and they just threw it back

and thought well we'll just make some money off that truly doesn't get more disgusting so i just wanted to rile you all up a message we got that came through quite a bit uh in different kind of ways different but he has many faces they said my height is their insecurity i have had guys say that it's peak for me that most guys don't go for tall girls and i just wanted to discuss how we tell women to make themselves smaller in so many different forms i have so many thoughts on this because i am small i'm a short girl i'm five two i think i don't really know and i've always been told throughout my life i remember my grandma being because my sister's very tall there's also lots about i have a sister and she looks like this and i look completely different everyone seems to have a

sister that's like the opposite of them aesthetically me and my sister have never really been compared other than people trying to you know go in trying to ruin a great dynamic you were above it we're just like we're not even playing this game. He rose above it. You did it to mother and aunt Lysa and you tried to do it to us. Oh, I fucked it. I fucked it up. That's so good. And then he's like, Sansa, please. But we're very different aesthetically in that she's very tall and I'm very small, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I remember my grandma being like, you're very lucky that because boys like men love small women, like you're so like, blah, blah, blah. And grandma being like you're very lucky that because boys like men love small women like you're so like blah blah and it's like what are you told what are

you telling her then like it's kind of like well she's overhearing that thinking more internalizing more men don't like tall women and it's an insane thing it's like well look like fucking kendall jenner but also be very small and dainty and you kind of want men to pick you up and things like that's like wait you what what did you just tell me yeah what did you just say to my face yeah the a million and one things that you are told to be cannot coexist yeah you can't be kendall jenner and also be a be five foot three you can't do that sorry but you can be kendall jenner and be super skinny so you do still fit in with the teensy tiny small lady vibe it's ariana grande it's you must be act like a baby yeah and kind of the whore yeah the madonna whore thing exactly and yet you're

not you're none of that you're just a human being you're just a woman the the levels of pressure that are put on women to be perfect i mean this is our main thing that we say that it feeds into our whole scrappy dappy do thing men are allowed to be mediocre there are levels of body oppression on men i dad bod comes in the idea of make yourself bigger stronger all of these things they do play in but it's not comparable it's absolutely not comparable to the way that women are sold back to themselves objectified objectified mark their self-hatred is marketed back to them on every turn literally at every turn the music that you listen to the media that you consume the things that men are told are different to the things that women are told and yet they both uphold the patriarchy that's the bottom line is that ultimately men are

still held to be superior they uphold the patriarchy and the patriarchy harms everyone it harms men and women but i mean would you rather be on would you rather be the big guy or the small guy yeah the big guy is the men being told to be because i was bigger the women are being told to make yourself smaller smaller smaller who's winning there i was pretty obvious yeah in the game of thrones you win or you die i'm on fire god you really are she's on fire it's like harry potter comes in fire you're on fire maybe we should talk a little bit about our Harry Potter obsession. Yeah, I actually haven't even said this to you, Sefi. Even though we just had like an hour combo before we went on air, live on air.

I've got, I think I've got the most perfect daydream. Oh my God. If you're a Cedric Diggory stan like I am now. I'm a newly. Well, maybe we should say how this started. We found these tiktoks okay yeah well how did this start well the thing is this has been a long ongoing thing i mean if you listen to this podcast you know i'm a big time fantasizer i'm specifically a big time

fantasizer about fred and george i love to daydream about love so we found these tiktoks and they they run through sort of romantic scenarios from harry potter and they use like footage from the films and blah blah blah send them to erin i'm at the moment obsessed with draco obsessed with him sephie came to me with the problem and instead of solving it i just jumped right in with her yeah you did you fully did yeah so i sent her this video of draco and cedric and it was like a big romance fit tiktok i guess and i mean erin has fallen down the hole with me big time but it's quite good because you're you're into Draco and I'm into Cedric so there's one for each of us yeah

we're fine we're not fighting we're not fighting over the same man but go on what's your new thing your perfect daydream because I think I have the perfect daydream as well also what's quite interesting about us I mean I do want to I do want to do an episode on kind of types and like i know we've done an episode on types but we've done an episode on everything and yet not covered anything oh my god we literally scratched the surface on every single thing i'm nowhere near even going deep yet no nowhere near finished barely started barely touched sides well yeah you and i have different kind of ideas of a dream fantasy because you we have different different relationships to power in the sense that whilst you we've said this on the podcast before i think you are the

master humiliator like you want to degrade your love so inaccurate no but it is kind of true right well whenever i do personality tests that's what i get i get it every time but i don't i don't see it within my dynamics but obviously there's a part of me that desires the power but you do remember because we would often say that you're quite the I'm doing a gesture that you can't hear but I'm kind of she's kind of doing it I'm kind of thrusting she's jumping and yet you still want a guy who's very downtrodden underdog kind of vibe am i correct oh for sure you i mean if you're familiar with game of thrones if you're not you should be if you're familiar seffy is a fan of john snow at the wall orphan boy kind of he's not an orphan but kind of sad

little life jane but he kind of has nothing in his life that's good yeah at that moment until seph he comes in yeah until i come in acas 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.

Yeah. everywhere aks.com yeah whereas i think john snow is at his prime when he's king in the north sword in the air battle of the bastards i get it but i prefer him when he's learning i prefer him when he's insecure i love that i mean i love the sound but i think i'm a bit like this is why i want to do an episode on types this is a real tangent now but yeah i think i'm just very i've internalized so much of the patriarchy that i need someone very manly and like tough he's gonna beat everyone up yeah i get it and and so the kind of weakling vibe isn't very isn't very sexual to me it makes me a bit cringe for them do you know what i mean no no no no no I do not know what you mean. I disagree. I completely agree. Weakling vibe is not doing anything.

That's bad. That's a bad, bad vibe. I need a real kind of meathead. I don't. I absolutely don't. I do not see John Snow at the Wall as a weakling vibe. And in the same way that I don't see Fred and George as weakling vibes, I see them as fun. They're a bit scrawny. No no no

but you're not getting it right. Imagine you walk into that joke shop. How much is it for your brother? Five galleys but I'm your brother whatever ten galleys. That's funny. I think what gets me is the fact that it feels like everyone else thinks they're a loser. Yeah yeah I like that. Like I think I'm quite drawn to people who for example cedric diggory i like mr big i am like a big deal not some little kind of scrawny gobshite do you know what i mean scrawny gobshite you're really making them sound bad it's like oh yeah you have the king of the north or a scrawny gobshite well obviously obviously I'm choosing King of the North. Yeah, Cedric Diggory, a vibe.

Such a vibe because that's like, oh my God. Everyone's wearing badges saying go, go Cedric or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Potter stinks. Potter stinks. That's really bad. But you go in with all the power and power there and they feel so like. Well, I do also like that. Right.

So here's where my fantasy comes in. In my dream worlds basically with body image guys just love your body that's all we're doing love your body it's so easy just love your body eat all your meals you'll love your life move on harry potter yeah with with any any dream that i could ever have i obviously have to be pretty important and i've definitely i mean within my personal life been fed a dream since I've obviously been kind of tainted and spoiled as a child by being told that I'm kind of the most beautiful the most stunt the most um intelligent the most kind of everything as a

child and you just internalize it and think like oh I'm the star of the show then and so my fantasies follow suit I never actually was that into Cedric Diggory, but TikTok did change everything for me. So I dare you to get involved in my fantasy. It doesn't really work. It's not canon, but Dumbledore is alive. Now this is the most embarrassing podcast.

Now we are fully mortifying. It's so mortifying now if you're from our schools please please i'm begging i'm begging you to leave fucking hell when it starts off so dumbledore is like now it's embarrassing is alive is embarrassing it's also like every i mean we've been um sending voice notes to each other all week about this and every time i press play on savvy's voice notes i each other all week about this. And every time I press play on Seve's voice notes, I think this is the most embarrassing thing that could ever get leaked.

And yet here we are doing it. We're leaking it ourselves. On our own fucking podcast. Let's leak them. Let's have a battle of the fantasies. So this is Erin's Harry Potter fantasy. And then you'll have my one. Yeah.

And then you vote saying whose fantasy is hotter. You going second is going to make you win. No, no, no. It won't. It won't. Also, you do have a real advantage in the fact that you've got so much material for draco even on tiktok draco talk is a massive thing do you think there's a cedric talk oh no no no believe me i've tried there isn't one he's a small part it's a small part six minutes of screen time he gets six minutes in that whole

film yeah six minutes jesus and i cried when he died i barely knew the guy honestly i was there sobbing when he died body image jesus okay my fantasy is dumbledore's alive and you are kind of his grandchild i'm into it which i know leaves a lot in the dark but it makes you quite a big deal in hogwarts you know what did it for me was because i saw a tiktok probably that you sent me sephie and at the beginning the girl walks in and they've written over like cedric as if cedric's friends are saying this they're like oh the hovel puff princess is on her like coming blah blah because they're dating cedric and this hovel princess and so i think it's quite a cool thing or like kind of you're the grandchild of like one of the founders like you're

kind of godric gryffindor's great, great, great granddaughter. You're quite sought after. You're quite wanted. So that's you. Cedric is Cedric. You don't really need to change much about him. He's perfect. And the fan...

Well, that's kind of basically it. But the fantasy is essentially that, yeah, I guess it's set in Goblet of Fire times. He's doing all these challenges. But you've been living with kind of muggles like dumbledore left you with like an amazing muggle couple and they're quite great and they're all they're quite pally with kind of important people yeah you're just quite big deal it's good isn't it yeah it's good i love it i quite like the idea of being in their kind of country home and cedric turns up and he's in his you're kind of you're dating and he's in his kind of robes his hogwarts gear but it's summer but because he's been playing the

quidditch tournament that goes on in the summertime what do you get what i mean because also you don't want him in normal clothes the thing that i don't like about this fantasy is that the power dynamics you're equal aren't intense enough yeah it's not an intense power dynamic that's the thing you're kind of you're the power couple yeah yeah you together make a powerful alliance because i don't like the dynamic where the guy has too much over me no no they never do they never do in a fantasy that's the rule that's the thing but then i don't want to have too much over him either oh then then we that's where we do yeah but that's why you're the humiliator because you want the power over them let me do my fantasy because then you'll see the see how the dynamic plays out so this is my dynamic this is my fantasy that i'm currently working on usually it's fred and george recently it's been a bit of harry um because you're quite important if you're dating

harry potter so important oh also in mine harry kind of fancies you you stole that from mine no no no no because you gave me you gave me this because i own the the like knitted harry's jumper that he gets for christmas from molly weasley in no this by the way this isn't in a fancy erin actually has that jumper this is what i actually own in real life and i said to sephie i'm so obsessed with this right now but and i was like but i wish i had cedric's clothes and seffy said what if you kind of have um harry's jumper because you've stayed at his and he just gave you it because you had nothing to wear and then i'm wearing it and cedric's quite jealous that's this that's the setup that's the scenario yeah i love that i'm big time into that and almost you've got kind of powers

like i don't know if you're like an elf or something but you're quite mystical mine are always mine is an elf mine's always like you have something above you have an extra power other than being a witch yeah it's the power dynamics but here's my one with draco you are in harry's group so it's harry ron hermione and you are kind of Hermione's best friend. Obviously you hate Malfoy. You despise his guts, but you're in kind of potions together. You smell that love potion and it smells like Malfoy

and you're like, oh my God. So there's a kind of power dynamic where Malfoy's like, we can't be together. Like he loves you, but it's like, we can't be together because it's too dangerous. Like he's going to have to become a death eater. He's having pressure from his family.

And Harry also fancies you. So there's this weird dynamic where maybe like Harry like kisses you after like a quidditch match he like wins he catches the snitch and he like oh that's stunning he kisses you and malfoy kind of sees it and he's the other seeker but it's like very like passionate intense kind of we can't be together but you want to be like there's not unrequited but forbidden yeah it's a forbidden love situation that you should be with harry he's the safe one you're both in gryffindor you're both in the same gang but there's this malfoy guy yeah it's like also it's like kind of a life or death thing like he's got to choose his family or you and he's like battling with it it's like literally essentially

voldemort is after you if you go out with malfoy are you in slytherin in this fantasy no i'm in gryffindor because then there's the power dynamic of like you're opposed you're supposed to be enemies but you're in love stunning i also think going out with harry is quite a good fantasy because almost like the order of the phoenix is like the order's protecting you and it's again it's like we can't be together like it's too dead i'm gonna break up with you because it's too dangerous but why are my fantasies about being broken up with? We're getting personal in these episodes these days,

just in different ways. Everyone feeling good about their bodies. Everyone loving their bodies. Everyone thinking that their skin is good now. I do think that links though, because in the way that we're both like, oh, maybe you're like an elf or something. It's kind of like in your fantasy,

you're kind of a mystical being. It just secures that you're beautiful. Yeah, I definitely think in fantasies, I'm definitely not thinking about what I look like. It's almost just assumed. I look like me though. Do you look different in your fantasies? I'm definitely me. I'm really trying to think. Yeah, I'm definitely me. I think I have all of the basic features of myself. I'm girl with a fringe and dark features. And that's as far as that goes. But all the attention is on fred and george or whatever whoever whoever is my guy at the moment yeah even this ties in quite perfectly i didn't plan this i hope you didn't because it's fucking weird it's bizarre but i didn't know how perfectly this would link back in obviously knew

that we were doing this episode on body image and i am always on twitter lurking because listen i'm here for the narratives i'm here for the discourse it's it's research because i'm always very aware of the um kind of consensus for situation and that does come from twitter like you can read your news but twitter will tell you what the fucking loud minority if you will are saying so i was reading this is actually really fucking bizarre of me i was reading this conversation between jane moran and amanda benny i don't know who these people are they they're no one knows who these people are i imagine i think they've got kind of a couple hundred followers it's very normal civilian twitter accounts and i stumbled

upon their conversation i can't remember how they got onto it i i'm not i don't know these people i wasn't stalking them i must i just kind of look through topics and then click on different people's conversations so the conversation starts out with amanda saying so the conversation starts out with jane saying i often retire to my fantasy world especially when i'm running my fantasy world is ace right you can tell that they're just people from kind of yeah these people are old yeah yeah amanda replies oh jane so is mine i'm super skinny wealthy and living in the sun i actually prefer that amanda she is awesome oh this is sad and jane replies in mine i'm just me but

with better hair working less hard or not at all and have someone making dinner for me on occasion and taking me out is this what normal people fantasize about they just fantasize about their normal lives we're like so draco malfoy he's in love with dumbledore exactly yeah but i thought how insane i mean it doesn't that time perfectly episode about body image and we're talking about fantasies and i well i screenshotted it because i thought how insane that these grown women are talking about their fantasies fantasies talking about their kind of fantasy world and then the double the extra layer is in my fantasy I'm super skinny I prefer that Amanda she is awesome even in your dream dream world you're still being oppressed by the fucking patriarchy couldn't be me although

it could be me because it is because I'm kind of an elf or something it is me yeah it's like in my dream world i'm kind of i'm essentially a manic pixie dream girl i'm an ethereal being honestly tag yourself i'm amanda you're jane yeah literally i'm me with better hair is interesting because it's like yeah same also quite funny i've just realized looking at the bottom of their conversation i know how i've got to it is because sometimes i type in keywords into twitter just to pick up what's going on but sometimes i type in cedric diggory for example and just see like the pics like anything important in a couple of episodes ago i told you all that we were going to talk about the fall because i was so obsessed with jamie dawn and i still kind of am but i typed in jamie dawn because then the

conversation says jane says sometimes i bump into hen Cavill on my run. And then Amanda replies, oh, I like Henry Cavill. Jamie Dornan is my husband and mine, and I have a chef and a yacht. So that's how we got here. The thing that I find weird about that, and that I kind of want to relate to something that keeps coming up in, that came up constantly in the DMs, is the discourse around stomachs that seem to come up a lot. Everyone has issues with their fucking stomach. And I also think the thing that was interesting with everyone wanting to be smaller, smaller, smaller, even in your fantasies and even just everything, it must be tiny about yourself, is almost the ways that we have used language to

talk about our stomachs in like my pouch, my chub, like everyone has a little like funny little nickname for their fat on their tummy. And I find that so interesting, like the way the words that we're using around our bodies to try and make ourselves okay by like giving it a cute name, when actually it's literally just our tummies. Yeah, and it feeds into the same problem that means I've used the word bellend more times than i can count and i've probably said the word clit less than 20 and i'm constantly talking about vaginas and clits and yeah i haven't said it that much considering where i am on the spectrum yeah literally and the fact that that still feels like a kind of crazy all of the word like labia seems like a crazy word to use like you wouldn't be like oh my god my labia that sounds mental yeah and so giving your

own body a name not only disconnects you from your own kind of vessel makes you feel like you're not a part of who you are it fragments you even further yeah it's also weaponizing your own body against you people do that a lot going back to their skin as well people essentially pick a part of themselves that they don't like and feel very detached from it like for example if someone had something going on with their skin at the moment they would almost feel like their skin wasn't theirs they're like i just want to get back to my normal skin yeah kind of back when you know they were romanticizing their teenage body and they're like oh i just want to get back to my to my actual stomach which is your teenage stomach for example when you were still growing people absolutely remove themselves remove their um

kind of they like try and emancipate themselves from their own body this is something that came up so much in the idea of like almost dissociating yourself from your own literal self the literal cells that make up you that allow you to function in this universe i think this language is specifically used around boobs a lot in the idea that it's like my boobs are not perky enough my my nipples are not the perfect size in the perfect position someone wrote in about being called pet pet about their nipples because they said because the people at school this is one of the ones that i picked out me and aaron are doing the thing when we pick out do you want to talk about it yeah let's read it because i thought this was it really sums up

the way that we have bullied young girls into feeling bad about themselves for having perfectly normal and to be honest stunning boobs fuck this let me find this this one really felt very visceral i can feel it i can really feel it really brought us to tears yeah the nicknames that young boys give girls stay with you and young girls give girls so many of you were talking about experiences you've had with your friends quote unquote friends just a comment yeah it's it stays in your body well you know it stays in your body because bloody amanda and um jane are talking about it still they're talking about how they want to see jamie dawnham but they must have perfect hair and stick thin bodies also and they prefer that version of themselves that's not real she's

not real guys spoiler i'm not actually fucking cedric diggory is it not real just because it's happening in your head harry doesn't mean it doesn't it doesn't exist or whatever yeah i i do think it's like well animal crossing isn't real but it's pretty much as real as some of the relationships i see around me yeah someone said this is the one so in seventh grade i sexted a pic to a stupid boy topless but my hands were covering my nipples and because boys are the literal worst he shared it with his friends first of all fuck off not to the girl to the boys that's child pornography being shared around that's child pornography by the way because my whole hands were covering my nipples this group of boys figured i had large nipples which i do but i had never seen this as an issue because it's not

that was my input from that from then on i was well into high school, I was called Pep Pep in reference to pepperoni nipples to all the boys that had in fact never seen my actual nipples. I was so insecure about it that I eventually got my nipples pierced in order to have a way to feel good about them. And jokes on me because one of my nipples rejected the bar. So now I have since taken them both out.

Still to this day, I'm a little insecure. And I'm throwing my phone on the ground. I am rolling my eyes and the tears are flowing and they don't stop coming and they don't stop coming. Honestly. Gotta hit the ground running. Honestly, I actually don't know if I can speak. I've literally got tears in my eyes.

Because I've seen it happen time and time again. And I can feel it. Like I can actually feel that emotion. Oh, I love them all so much I actually can't oh Erin's gone like I'm actually gone I'm gone I mean we've all been there and we've had a nickname sort of begin or fear a nickname I remember writing in my diary in year six when I was moved making the move into year seven that my biggest fear was getting a nickname wow I remember saying that I really don't want to get a nickname kind of because you watch like sweet life of zach and cody or i don't know something where they're

at they're definitely not in secondary school but you know and people have nicknames he's kind of like brains if he's the clever one saved by the bell kind of you don't want to be screech you do not want to be like you just don't want to have a nickname you just want to be floating through and you're fine so i think nicknames especially when it's about your body is something that so goes into your psyche and it just makes you feel like a piece of shit to this girl just know that your boobs are completely normal i can't bear the language in another world pep pep would be a compliment and truly in another world not so far away like i guarantee there are communities of human beings where large nipples are sought after and praised and god knows what else and yeah it is ultimately all meaningless because you are so

much more than your nipples believe it or not yeah believe like literally if the patriarchy would have you believe you were nothing more but believe us you are a lot more it's the least interesting thing about you the size of your nipples but also the fact that girls with i mean it's pretty obvious people with big boobs have large nipples people with small boobs have smaller nipples it's typically typically yeah that's pretty normal that the size of the things on your boob would correlate to the size of your boob that would make sense and yet we infantilize women so much that their nipples have to be teensy tiny no body hair but it's like your boobs have to be big but your nipples have to be small it's like well you actually want us to be cartoon fucking anime characters yeah jessica rabbit with gigantic boobs but with tiny tiny nipples it's like that doesn't

really exist or it does but it's so rare that that exists must have really big boobs but they must position themselves on the body as if they are small boobs. Yeah. And be very perky. Well, what do you want then? You want a fucking anime character. Go and watch your hentai porn or something. Yeah. So much of what you were saying as well was like fighting against your own biology. Going back to talking about where your fucking womb sits against your stomach. And so now you're calling it a pouch or whatever, etc, etc.

Body hair. your stomach and so now you're calling it a pouch or whatever etc etc body hair so much of it feeds into race in all of the parts that don't look or conform to whiteness enough for what's decided right now i just think it comes down to there are two options you either do everything you can to reject your own biology or do everything you can to try and forget the importance that's been placed on your vessel of life and try and be happy with who you are the pressure to be happy with your body is so terrifying i find it absolutely overwhelming to now be told i mean with a switch within the last five years has gone from despise despise despise yourself to love yourself i tear my hair yeah because we can profit off of that too lizzo's marketable and believe me i'm the

biggest lizzo stan like i love her it's a worrying transaction when you see it must go from self hatred to like an unquestioning self-love when how on earth do you make that switch imagine you've hated someone for your entire life and now you're married to them and you love them yeah that's a big transition to make that's gonna take some time and some unlearning and figuring out who that person is and all of this stuff and if you've had also i guarantee you're more critical of yourself and your own body than you are of anyone else and you've had 14 year old boys giving you shit nicknames and you've internalized all of that and this person has essentially been bullied you've you've bullied yourself and you've been bullied for your entire life about the way you look which is totally normal and also all

your all those boys that laughed at that show me your fucking nipples right now oh look fucking pep pep show me your little dick show me a little dick all. All these little pet, pet boys. Also, I know all of you want to fuck her. All of you are dying to literally be in her presence. I fucking know it. Get your filthy paws on her silky drawers. Get out of her sight. I know it. Because also, you know how I know it

because I've seen her fucking profile picture and she's a fucking stunner. Yeah, they're stunning, all of them. We do place too much meaning on the body because ultimately it does all mean nothing but it's very hard to get to that place when everything in the world has been set up to make you question how valuable the way you look is it's so so disgusting i i'm really hooked on the fantasy thing probably because i'm in such a fantasy mood at the moment i'm in such a when am i not fantasizing but i'm really fantasizing at the moment specifically about draco we know

but the idea that even in our fantasies we cannot escape like in our wildest dreams we cannot escape the pressure that has been put on us like we actually cannot separate ourselves from diet culture we cannot separate ourselves that in our wildest dreams we would still be conforming to an idea of beauty that was basically placed on us by white supremacist capitalist patriarchal society where can we go from here like actually where can we go and it's true even when you love your body because yeah i place a lot of meaning on my body because i know for a fact if i woke up in a different body i would think fuck i'm fucked i'm fucked like my body gives me a lot of value and that's i mean i'm 20 i'm 24 this month guys so send gifts i'll send you my invoice attached to the description of this maybe buy some ebooks as a gift to erin and me yeah that

would be nice yeah your body it's just bizarre isn't it like i mean i'm not in my fantasy thinking i prefer this erin because she's super skinny or whatever amanda's saying and thank god but that doesn't mean that i've avoided placing immense value on the way my body looks because it allows certain privileges absolutely yeah we're not thinking that right now because we are 23 years old but when we're 20 when we're for example 54 hopefully we're not fantasizing about cedric diggory and malfoy at that age hopefully we've moved on to kind of severus you know i actually didn't mean him you don't mean serious we're i mean hopefully we've moved on to some good

people we might be we might be envisioning ourselves as our 23 year old selves our idealized selves the selves that we still conformed to an idea of beauty we had no wrinkles on our skin on our skin we haven't had any children um our vaginas aren't torn to shreds by literal life coming out of them we're still very privileged at the moment with our youth but i think you and i will escape that i'm not so sure i think you and i will say that if i think just in the sense that i'm 23 now fucking hell by the time i'm even 30 i'm gonna be like another level of fucking empowered i know this is what i'm excited for but we haven't really experienced any of the marketing i've got gray hair i'm aging

no no but that's true i've got great that's quite a thing let's talk about no just came out of nowhere if i've got gray hairs coming through i'm losing my um youthful beauty but i don't care i would love i mean i can't remember what episode it was sephia i don't know if it still exists if we've got rid of it with with the woman yeah there was a certain woman that sephia and i fell in love with one day this poor woman was just trying to kind of drink her tea and eat her lunch and sephi and i were honestly fully like gawking at her we couldn't believe so beautiful this long gray hair um and that would be my dream look by the time i'm kind of 50 but i know that i'm empowered in the sense that yes i love my body because it fits in with the patriarchy but i also am happy to sit here with my well it's not that gray but with my gray hairs coming through and i'm not phased no

absolutely not it comes back to being within a circle where we're constantly we're seeing messages from all of you lot talking about the ways that you've gotten over being called pep pep for example like when you put yourself in a circle that is confirming your own validation from yourself you are you're being empowered in kind of the most perfect way and that's why i think it's really important to be very selective with who you're spending time with, you're being empowered in kind of the most perfect way. And that's why I think it's really important to be very selective with who you're spending time with, what you're being fed, because otherwise, I would feel like a real crazy, lunatic, weird feminist girl. Do you know what I mean? I would feel really out of place. And I wouldn't have my beliefs validated. It's like, well, if you're a Christian, go to church, like, you need that kind of support.

Yeah, totally. A lot of how you cope with your own body image does revolve around who you surround it's like well if you're a Christian go to church like you need that kind of support yeah totally a lot of how you cope with your own body image does revolve around who you surround yourself with because a lot of the stuff was coming out of um my mum worked for Weight Watchers and things like that so I had always internalized this my friend group are obsessed with sort of keto and things like that and blah blah blah blah and I do think it does have a huge impact but as you said at the very beginning curating your own online space that will allow you, and if you found this podcast, you have already done that. You are in the process of doing that. And even if you can't unfollow people, just mute people that make you feel shit and all of this stuff.

Or dilute them. Yeah. It's undeniably a helpful thing to do to get yourself out of the immediate environment that is triggering. You know what I recently realised? What I recently came across and I've had the luxury, I've been afforded a massive luxury by not having this world be all that present in my own life. God, I mean, the circles,

as we say, the circles that you surround yourself in are very, very important, especially online. There have been a few moments in my life where I've stumbled upon eating disorder culture online beyond the kind of the general sense of like

being sold victoria's secret models for example like that's like pro anna quote unquote pages exactly yes and and pages that their sole purpose is to teach you how to sustain your eating disorder and all of these really really horrific things one post recently that stuck in my mind particularly was talking about it wasn't pro anna but it was it was a like recovery page on instagram and they'd done a post talking about how competitive eating disorders are and how competitive eating disorder recovery is or quasi recovery in the sense that people, often girls, will be competing against how bad their eating disorder was, how skinny they were, what their lowest weight was,

what their, you know, the most horrific horror stories were, and they will judge, oh, well, yours couldn't have been that bad then because mine was blah, blah, blah. And so it's like, even when we've come out of the kind of the darkness of having, kind of struggling in the present with an eating disorder even in our recovery the misogyny is so internalized and the self-hatred is so extreme

that we can't escape judging other women for how close they got to death basically i was listening to the beauty myth on the audiobook of it this morning um on my walk and i i literally i'm literally on like chapter three like started it yesterday sort of thing but i'm already recommending it because it was so it's really good something that she wrote it was the anorexia is the number one cause of death in teenage girls i think that was it could be wrong yeah i mean why is it always quoted to us that suicide is the number one killer of men and that is always used as the example of men suffer too because suicide is the number one cause of death for men between the ages of 18 and 40 or something like that absolutely horrific horrific problem in society and it is a patriarchal problem

that that is happening but i've never heard that stat before that anorexia is the number one killer of teenage girls i've never heard that stat before absolutely and if you think that so much of eating disorders goes undiagnosed my personal theory is that most young women in today's society have some degree of disordered eating if you're not eating intuitively which i would argue is eating normally quote unquote yeah and i literally put my hand up and say i'm in that group i 100 have experienced yeah completely disordered eating i 100 have done that and it was never diagnosed never a thing that was to be honest ever anything but celebrated it was always like a necessary means to an end almost it's like if i just quickly starve myself now then i'll fit in with what will make me you know praised and happy and i mean

there definitely was in my family an idea of you have an unhealthy attitude to food like you need to eat your food things like that but there was never oh my god no way like it was just like everyone was starving themselves or i perceived it to be everyone no one was eating when did that change what what got you out of that or how was that changing i had no scope as a 14 year old 15 year old girl how can you have any scope of one what normal like normal eating is when you're surrounded by a load of other young girls and young people and for example you're in a school where there are definitely boys standing around nudes and calling people fat and things like that horrific stuff and you're just thinking not me also when you i spoke about this in my in the

original body image episode when you have an obsession with fashion and vogue passion for fashion i was obsessed or absolutely obsessed with vogue and models and making my own clothes and all of this stuff and it was very toxic that environment i mean now i mean if i'd fucking read the beauty myth back then i would it would have changed everything to know that i was being sold this this wasn't it's not your idea it's not an idea of how you should exist it's a marketing ploy it's nothing other than capitalism at work targeting women and exploiting them to try and make more more more more more money off them it's make women smaller and make men money yeah absolutely we were just thinking about how we can wrap this up and how we can we're trying to find like one more but we were

just looking through like all of your profile pictures as we scroll through we see the little circles in the corner of all the boxes that you filled up and all the dms and we just want to say you're all fucking stunning like you're all so beautiful and it's so sad not that that means anything but you are it doesn't mean anything it literally means fuck all but it's so unfair that people that are so so incredible are being told that they're fucking ugly and their ex-boyfriend told them their boobs are shit and their ex-boyfriend said fucking your arms are too big and their grandma's like you're too tall think of all the time we're wasting all those tears wasted it's so fucking sad because it's the same thing that we were saying last week so when we're talking about like the idea of comparisons and all of this stuff as if pewdiepie or fucking i don't know

alfie days whoever is like a fucking male podcaster i don't know who is a male podcast joe rogan is doing question boxes to all their male followers saying yeah what do you hate about themselves and they're saying my ex-girlfriend said my um i have a dad bod whatever this isn't happening that is not happening yeah what's happening is we're saying we're all dear all the girls are saying my boobs are too shit and things like that fuck this like this is a problem this is a sexist problem this is an issue with gender and race this is not happening in the white men's dms they're not talking about that yeah and it's not personal to you there's not a problem with the way that you

look because there is no way that you could ever look that would be enough for this bizarre world if you're kendall jenner you should be ariana grande and if you're ariana ariana grande you're still blackfishing but then if you're an actual black person you should be a white person blackfishing and it's just there's there's no yeah there's no way you can win this world as a woman so just forget the game to be honest there's no way you can win this world as a woman. So just forget the game. To be honest, there's no way you can win this world if you're anything other than Donald Trump. And even then, who knows what's going to happen? Yeah, Erin's, I mean, she's got the head's gone.

Now I'm crying. Now I'm crying. I was trying to explain Donald Trump and Boris Johnson to my little sister who's five years old. She's six in a few weeks. And she's saying libra as well i was in social libra yeah she is libra gang yeah libra crew and i was trying to explain i was like well they just want to take the money from the poor people and give it to

their rich friends and it's like actually when you spell it out to a five-year-old it really stinks it really it really sucks it really fucking stinks in this place yeah honestly potter stinks i used to think that back in the day with i used to always say imagine like if an alien came down to england and you had to england specifically and you had to explain to them what page three is lands right on big ben right in kind of stonehenge that's in england isn't it yeah yeah geography's not my thing also there's probably lots of you that don't know what page three is so if you don't know rupert murdoch's empire of the mass media every newspaper basically is owned by this guy yeah and kind of the main like tabloid newspapers for example the sun the

daily mail you've absolutely heard of on page three i don't know if it isn't the daily mail but it's definitely in the sun if you turn to page three it's a picture of a naked lady with with her boobs out and her bum hole out big big big boobs with kind of very little stars over her nipples it always is and she's got kind of um little blue eyeshadow on and like french tip nails and And she's like going to cry tonight. She's going to cry tonight. I just always used to think what a bizarre concept that that's happening. Yeah.

And that you can buy that on the next page. It's EU strikes trade deal. The next page, literally Pamela Anderson with her boobs. Literally. No one said that name in years, but it's someone with that look. Also an icon icon vegan queen i think yeah icon it's got that look that is very dated look that it's kind of i don't know it's like targeted at who it's like women aren't oppressed in these times are they a question

mark it's like this looks a bit anachronistic for a newspaper that i should be reading in 2020 it's it's one of the most disturbing things does page three still exist they got rid of it didn't they i believe when we were back in sixth form so when we were about 18 this is like five years ago that I should be reading in 2020. It's one of the most disturbing things. Does page three still exist? They got rid of it, didn't they? I believe when we were back in sixth form, so when we were about 18, this is like five years ago, six years ago, they did a PR stunt, which was that they were going to get rid of page three.

And it was a big thing. We're getting rid of page three, we're getting rid of page three. And then the next week it was back and it was all a big joke just to anger the feminists. I think I only saw that. As much as the media and all of these things like mainstream media controls this actually what the idea of the having these perfect boobs and all of these things feeds into which i'm actually i'm taking this from the beauty myth it is all or

the majority of how we think our body should look has been informed by porn and so that the fact that it's impossible to tell what is from porn what is from media what is from ourselves and that is why you should listen to our episode on porn as well because it all of this shit is wrapped up in the male gaze and female performance we're gonna have to do another episode on it because all of you were talking about it as well in your messages yeah we're literally performing we're just fucking monkeys in cages right now so and we're putting on fucking mascara because we think what we're empowered by makeup we're here to put on a show yeah you're having sex with a guy putting on a show you haven't been enjoying the past 10 minutes at all you're faking every orgasm you've ever had i can't bear this get me out of here i'm getting

themed i'm getting fucking themed right thank you so so much genuinely thank you so so much for listening sorry what were you saying i know it's just funny that we take a quick shift every time i'm getting themed i'm going to thank you so much truly thank you i mean it really it's just like yeah this is it this is what life's about just the girls bitching about how about the wrongs of the world it's fucking stunning i can't i have nothing else to say join us for another app join us again i actually have no thoughts left in my brain i've kind of filled all of my brain with just like draco malfoy mush that now i can't think about it's too yeah it's too much to handle we're not tough enough for this hell yes we're not tough enough it's like take me to hogwarts right love you guys speak soon speak soon bye