If I Speak - 20: Skinny is back in fashion. FFS!

Episode Date: July 2, 2024

The return of low rise jeans was a harbinger of something worse: being seriously thin is back in fashion. But why now? Moya and Ash have a Big Theory. Plus: the brown girl moisturising protocol. CW: weight, dieting, eating disorders, cosmetic procedures. Come and see If I Speak live at the London Podcast Festival on […]

Hello! This is If I Speak and I'm feeling a little bratty this week because I'm a 365 party girl. By the time this is out, Brat by Charlie XCX, which we did cite in the last episode, will have been on metaphorical shelves for like three weeks. But it's the record of the summer. Sorry, it's quite obviously the record of the summer.

I love that Charlie's blown up to this degree. But what I've been thinking about is how suddenly like pop a has got interesting again but there's been this rush just before summer actually hit in britain before this like clouds lifted and we started getting the 27 degree heat again this rush of records by pop girls but with these big electronic producers so you've got tovlo who's just started working with sg lewis properly and has done this whole amazing ep and if you like brat you have to listen to this heat ep it is so hot it's so sweaty it just makes me want to be in a field which i will be very soon dancing to this literal ep like drenched in sweat there's also like romney's got a song out with um fred

again which samples donna lewis uh robin's just released a new track with jamie xx uh then there's obviously charlie the lord remixes like she's working with ag cook this whole line of women just releasing these really great pop tracks that have gone back into the club i'm fascinated by that movement like we've gone back to club classics. I want to hear the club classics. What do you think, Ash? Are you an angel? Do you even know what an angel is? I've got a confession to make.

I haven't listened to Brat. And that's just because one, for me, my song of the summer is Million Dollar Baby. And the reason why is because I'm just obsessed with that sample at the start, which I think might be MC Mac, easy come, easy go, but it's really hard to work out. Yeah, it's just such an earworm for me,

not being able to get it out my head. And generally, I've been going through like a real period of musical nostalgia to the point that I've just gone back and I've been listening to a lot of early 2000s, New York hip hop, a lot of Jadakiss Rough Riders and have been watching there's a live performance of Made You Look with Nas and Jadakiss and Ludacris which I've just been like playing on a loop and I think part of it is like

you know whenever you haven't paid attention to a thing for a bit, it like naturally like comes back up through your brain cycle. And I think another bit is that like, you know, thinking about what it was like hearing that music for the first time and having my mind be completely blown. And I also, you know, this is my old lady opinion. I just think that rap is so much less good now. I just think that the craft is less good. I think that like really simple things like diction is just not interesting anymore. And the craft of live performance has really just gone out the window

that it has made me nostalgic. But when I read that you had put brat on the script for the the show I was like should I do my homework really quickly and pretend that I've been really into it but I was like no this is a podcast based on authenticity and I'll be real about how much of an old lady that I've been I've been listening to Jadakiss and I'm not sorry let us move on to our icebreaker questions i've got 73 questions for you but we're only going to uh publish three of them so you can use your imaginations for what the other 70 were moya are you ready for me i'm never ready but i'm always willing people get ready all right in a classic heist situation

what would your role be would it be getaway driver would it be inside man would it be the everybody get down on the ground guy would it be you know the guy with the blueprints would it be the person who cracks the safe fuck i'm a panicker so i don't think i'd be involved at all um uh do you know it'd be it'd be reluctant organizer it would be the person drawn in for one last heist to save my uh friends from fucking up big time they'd be you know they'd come to me they'd say johnny we just need you and i'd be like no guys i'm out of the game i'm out of the game and then they'd outline their plan to me i'd be like i'd be i'd listen to it i'd show no sign of emotion etc and they go on and be like it's gonna work okay forget it like we'll do it and I'd be like you need to go in the back way and

then I'd be these suckers would have me back again because I just couldn't sit there and listen to them come up with a plan that was so obviously doomed to fail um because I'm a control freak so I think that would be my role in the heist that makes a lot of sense to me what's yours um i think you can't drive so it's not driver yeah it's not driver um i think that because i've got a lot of repressed rage i'd be the everybody get down on the ground guy yeah i can really see that you're good at projecting i think i could do that okay question two what's your favorite ice cream flavor are we talking like ice cream ice cream are we talking like branded calippo magnum i am gonna say ice cream ice cream this is hard because obviously we have go-to's but then it's like okay if you got out your comfort zone maybe i'd have a different

flavor um okay so my go-to and so is a lemon sorbet i fucking there's something about lemon sorbet i think i remember what i had in tintagel when i was a kid as well that was just blew my synapses i love citrus flavors but one of the best flavors i've ever had is in florence home of gelato um and it was either there was a ricotta and pear that i had that got recommended to me incredible but those i paired it with i think either it was either passion fruit or some sort of like mango situation and it was so tangy and so and especially with the ricotta and pear and that flavor combination was just so the satisfaction you get when you have the tart and you have the sweet

is like no other oh I love food I'm with you on tart I'm a I'm a tart tart also like I love like you give me the sourest lemon sorbet possible and I'm delighted. But my favorite ice cream flavor is, I went to Bologna and I had a black sesame ice cream. Oh, that sounds good. Which for me is on that tight rope of sweet and savory and I loved it. But I've got a final question for you, Moya. Do you currently have a crush? I plead the fifth

no why would you ask me that why would you ask me that wait let's let's go let's unpack why you would ask me that question because it's summertime and this is the season of crushes, of, you know, low-key yearning across a party and sweet agony. Do I have a crush? Legally, no. But it's all to play for. It's all to fucking play for. If anyone wants to step forward. Legally, no.

Legally, no. Unofficially. I'm not answering that. I'm not answering that. Legally answering that legally no let's have it on record no but if someone wants to step forward and be my summer crush i feel the rush i will take that ash do you have a crush hmm i currently don't have a crush um i'm also not one of those people that thinks you can't have crushes when you're in a committed relationship because you're not dead yeah um but currently there is there is no one fulfilling my crush role at the moment apart from my husband oh my god um but like no no no one has stepped up into um the crush zone do you know

have a crush when i have a crush myself i'm really feeling myself at the moment i'm like everything's coming together I feel I will I feel really good some days but actually our big theory that we're going to talk about probably will just completely contradict everything I'm going to say um so maybe we should get onto that why don't you share with us your big theory okay so I'm going to stick a trigger warning actually right at the very beginning we are going to be talking about weight and eating disorders and bodies and everything in this sphere and i know this gets to people and it gets to me that's what i'm going to talk about i'm going to

talk about it completely sort of like openly and in a really raw fashion so clock out now if that's not what you want to hear um i guess this is really a mishmash of big theories i've been seeing around town and i've not been i'm not sure i wholly agree with any of them but i think there's glimmers of truth there um and what this centers on is that skinny is back right thin is in again and i don't think it ever really left but the bodies that i'm seeing in pop culture now um unanimously venerated like at the top of my social media feeds as well they are back to noughties level thin once more and like the gestures brands made it you know inclusive representation of people not just bigger than like a size 10 but also who have

you can be like a size 10 or like size 12 or whatever and you can have like fat and body rolls and all of that but these bodies are just flat like flat again um and any sort of inclusive representation of bodies that have that are not just flat or are not just like super thin and have inflated bums or inflated boobs but even that's gone down um have disappeared so that and i think that's a weather vane when you know the people who are trying to sell you stuff then the way they're selling it to you is via and i'm talking about mainly like women here because that's what i'm seeing it's like women who are just stick thin um and even as i said the the the bbls have gone out of fashion the boobs have gone out of fashion now you have to be thin again um and when yeah when they're selling it to you like that then you know

that something has changed uh my tiktok fyp is serving me because it recognizes that i'm a young woman um who watches like trend videos or whatever it starts serving me loads of videos of Pilates girls who are talking about how they stop weightlifting because it makes them like quote bulky there's people just constantly talking about calorie deficits and when you see a couple of these videos it keeps serving you that's it's this reinforced message and it got to me like it got to me early on this has been happening for since last year. I actually wrote a quick op-ed last year about a Zen pic

and how it was like sent even the cultural... It's not osmosis. What's it called when it trickles down? How do you describe it? I guess the trickle-down effect. Percolation. Percolation, great. Must get it percolating.

Percolating. Unless I be... Mary J. Blige break um back to eating disorder but yeah it fucking got to me and last summer i was i go backpacking for like a couple of weeks every summer now and usually when i'm backpacking i lose weight because i'm walking all the time and meals tend to be like scattered around and the worst thing about backpacking last year was I actually was hoping that would happen and it didn't happen as much as I wanted it to and like in the last few weeks I noticed the weight dripping off dropping off dropping off because I my meals more scattered because I'd um I was walking to like a beach every day.

And I couldn't be asked to go back from the beach, which was quite remote, to go and get food. So I took a tiny bit of bread and cucumber with me. And I noticed obviously the weight dropped off because I must have been eating massively below my calorie maintenance. And I was like, yes. And then I came home and I put the weight back on. And I need to stress how like conventionally sized I am, how like much this is my brain responding to the stimuli I've seen because I was so fine with my body before. I was like, yes, it's not worth having like a completely flat stomach. It's

not worth having these things because you literally have to starve yourself to get there. It will kill you. And then the cultural messaging I was seeing changed and I realized you know in December I was unhappy with the way I looked and I was like okay well you can't starve yourself because you're just going to put bang on so I started losing weight in a sustainable and what you would call healthy fashion like I've been eating I've done it slowly since January I have lost the weight but it's not healthy brain wise. It might be something that's not damaging my body, but I'm not doing it for good reasons.

I'm not doing it for like any reason other than I have seen cultural messaging. And I've been like, I need to be smaller. I need to be smaller. And the hilarious thing is, as soon as I get smaller, I'm like, where's my ass gone? Where is my ass? It's like, why do I feel I need to be smaller. And the hilarious thing is, as soon as I get smaller, I'm like, where's my ass gone? Where is my ass? It's like, why did I feel I need to? And I've seen lots of competing theories

about why skinny is back, why like the internalized fat phobia voices are getting louder. And it's obviously because what the structural fat phobia is getting louder. But why the popular conception of what bodies are the norm has shrunk again. And one of these theories is that every time

there's like economic decline, we get smaller as a form of control. Okay. Another theory I've seen says that when women make strides in the public sphere, then control of their bodies tightens again. That might be in direct ways like abortion access, or it might be soft messaging, like suddenly it's time to be a tiny little doll once more and i'm not sure either of these are right but i i just want to know why why is skinny back so fervently i knew this was coming as soon as i saw this fucking low-rise jeans as soon as i bought like i have a pair of low-rise jeans low-rise jeans the evil that they have done in this world but the worst thing is i bought low-rise jeans like two years ago and they looked like i was i was like smaller than i guess and my body has aged I'm 29 now like my metabolism changes I'm still

I'm still really conventionally sized I'm still like ripped as well like I some people are like why do you train like an athlete it's not like I'm I'm out of the norm that is pushed on us but even I have such a brain disease I feel I look at myself all the time now I'm like I'm doughy I'm out of the norm that is pushed on us. But even I have such a brain disease. I feel, I look at myself all the time now. I'm like, I'm doughy. I'm this and that. I'm so unkind to myself. And I need to stress what everyone stresses. Like when I look at other women who are like bigger than me

or, you know, don't have flat stomachs, I'm like, they're gorgeous. They're so, and I really do mean that. Like I look around, I think, God, I would love to be that comfortable in myself. But for myself, I'm so fucking hard on myself. It's just got worse. It's got so much worse.

And I'm dreading now getting older and not having a flat stomach because that's the only way I can sell myself. Like I see that as my one good feature and everything else is just like stuck on mishmash Frankenstein's monster compared to like and then if I have but if I have my flat so much okay like I'm still attractive I still got that and it's fucking crazy I'm saying this not so that people are like this like you know oh my god she's I

don't know she's I'm trying to show you the ugliest parts of myself basically the ugliest thoughts in my head because I think other people have them too um but yeah is this is this skinniness back because of a zen pic or is that just a symptom like it's affecting me it's affecting me really badly it's affecting the people i love like i won't go to details of how but the girls are down bad some people are using slim fast not me but some people are um and the cultural imagery i think we're seeing a hundred percent to blame and i've just been thinking about this more and more which is like some days i wake up and i'm like and people tell me all the time i'll just be i'll be frank like people say all the time like oh you're so beautiful you're this and that and i i get it with the face but like i look at the body and i'm just like

fuck it's crazy anyway i mean like what all of what you're saying resonates so much for me and like again this is my own like horrible brain and how it internalizes what i'm picking up from the cultural landscape every time i read an article about a zen pic part of me goes maybe i should start taking a zen pic and you know what the only reason that stops me from taking that leap and like this might sound patriarchal or whatever um it's my husband I just know that he wouldn't want me to do that and I think that it's not just about him not wanting it it's that he would feel disappointed in me he would feel disappointed in me for wanting to starve myself and that's actually become a very good um like handbrake

to like stop me from like making that next step now obviously I should be not wanting to do it for myself whatever but if we're being honest about the um thought patterns in our minds that's the thing that stops me um you know it's also I mean for me personally difficult because people call me fat like literally every day like on the internet people say I look like a you know hairy pig that I'm a monster that I'm a beast they like you know find photos of me that like you know maybe aren't so flattering because they're like from a wide angle or whatever and like make sure to share them or they take photos of me and like edit them in photoshop so that i like balloon up and say like you are fat you are this and i'd be totally lying if i was like oh that doesn't have an impact it has a

massive impact to the point that i look at my body and i don't know what i'm seeing anymore i can only um see it through the lens of people that want me to hate myself to the point where I'll kill myself. Do you know what I mean? It's like that's what kicks in. And that comes from, yeah, both what people are saying to me online and also cultural messaging that I'm picking up. I guess like to take a step back from it for a second, rather than looking at it through the lens of like micro trends. So moving away from like BBLs into like super duper narrow hips again the overall context of it is that the way in which we made clothes changed right um the mass production of

clothing massively altered what was then considered the ideal body. Because you would think that we make clothes for actually existing bodies. No, no, no. On contraire, my prayer. We make bodies for clothes. So right up until the 19th century, you didn't have massproduced clothes you had clothes that were either made for you within your own household or you know custom made for you if you were very rich and you look through history at the range of silhouettes they were so um varied right there were so many kinds of silhouettes that you could have you could have like really massive hips really really narrow again you could have something which made you look like a milkmaid you could have all of these different silhouettes because the idea was that these were all custom

made for you um and as you had the kind of like rise of the middle classes you also had this sort of middle way which is you had mass-produced sewing patterns that would be produced and then you would buy the sewing patterns and then you would buy the sewing patterns and then you would buy the fabric and you take them home and you'd make it yourself or you'd you know take it someone to make it for you so that was a step in the direction of mass production but still the idea was that you'd make it fit for your body that this item that you were wearing was made for you and if you're very very poor of course it would be second hand or rags and so on and so forth but if you're middle class the idea was what you were

making was made for you now that almost everything we wear unless you are incredibly rich is mass produced there are really only two silhouettes, right? Completely fitted to the body or oversized. Those are the only two silhouettes that really exist because for anything else, you need tailoring, right? You need it to be handmade and fitted to you. So what do you end up with? You end up with a ideal body for those clothes, which has to be very, very thin indeed, right? And I see this with, you know, obviously the Kardashian-Jenners, the body alterations that they've made, right? So super, super thin, but then like, you know, an inflated bust and an inflated bum before that kind of shape would be achieved through tailoring and instead what they're showing is that you alter the body to create the shape for

the clothes whereas in decades and centuries past the idea was you would create that through tailoring and custom-made clothes so that is the bigger context about why is it when throughout history, of course, you've always had restrictive beauty standards for women. But for so long now, it's coalesced around being very, very thin or being very, very thin and with like a BBL or like bust enhancements. away from the idea that clothes are to fit the body mass production has made us adopt the model that the body is to fit the clothes now when you spell it out like that that is so completely ass backwards clothes are meant to serve us not the other way around but it's a useful form of social control particularly for women but not only for women um men are reporting increased uh rates of body dysmorphia and disordered eating um but yeah it's a tool of of discipline um and it's also something which is propped up by the cosmetic surgery industry and i know that like it's sort of unfashionable to say i just think this is bad but to be honest i do just think it's bad and unfashionable to say, I just think this is bad. But to be honest, I do just think

it's bad. And I think that we've done all of this fucking contorting to make it really okay and like morally neutral to carve up your body and inject God knows what to make it fit a very narrow standard. Of course, you know, there are some like edge cases here like people who do actually need botox for medical reasons or people who are um transitioning and want you know gender affirming procedures done but one even in those cases there are certain consumer choices which are are being made like someone who i know had like a terrible terrible accident um in in the gym where like a step-up box collapsed and the weight smashed him in the face and you know he needed plastic reconstructive surgery literally to save his life but within that consumer choices were being made because the doctor said hey look we can make you look how you did before or we can go to town and he was like I think you should go to town um consumer choices are also being made within

medical settings but i think we also focus on some of these edge cases because we don't want to admit how fucking corrosive choice feminism has been to us well every choice one makes is equal like the fact is if you are getting your cheek fat carved out of your face if you are starving yourself and having regular liposuction and then getting the fat like re-injected into you if you're paralyzing your face from your early 20s if you're having eye lifts from your early 20s these are not morally neutral yes you are a victim of this system which is creating these beauty standards you didn't choose them for yourself but you are making a choice which will make it more powerful for everyone else. Like I haven't had like cosmetic procedures and I've made a deal with myself.

I've said, I'm never gonna fucking do that. Even though every force on the planet is telling me, change how you look, it's not good enough. I'm not doing it because I'm not gonna do that for other women. Because if I say my nose isn't good enough, if I say my face isn't good enough, if I say my eyebrow isn't good enough if I say my eyebrow isn't good enough

I'm fucking saying that to everyone else as well and so I'm gonna fucking suck up the abuse online and not change my face um so yeah I think like I've gone on a rant here um but I think that you're completely right to observe that we have come back to this point of thinness that the low-rise jeans when they came in I was like no no no this can spell nothing good and I've also seen the impact that that's had on friends of mine who are like very fashion conscious and then hate themselves because um they don't have a body that looks good in these clothes and even though they're incredibly intelligent smart people the idea that clothes are supposed to serve their body rather than the other way around just seems completely, you know, they can't grasp that. And it's not their fault. It's because our whole society is built around

the model that clothes are not to fit the body, that the body is to fit the clothes. And that is a tool of social control and that has come from capitalism and mass production but the other thing that i tack on to that is that as feminists we've become really bad at having like an intellectual framework or a moral framework for working through it because we go well any choice you make as a woman within patriarchy is legitimate because you didn't choose the patriarchy and i think that's made us so much weaker and less resilient to toxic messages around beauty standards yeah i agree i'm still thinking i think everything you said there obviously is so pertinent and really useful fodder for like the foundation of this discussion the the basis of understanding where this even

comes from in the first place um the thing is as well i have friends who don't have completely flat stomachs and will literally you know say that and they're like really proud of them and they're well low rise jeans and they look fucking amazing in them because i hate she's a cliche but it is about the confidence you have when you wear an outfit and I see people who have what you would call mid-size or fat bodies because fat is not a dirty word and I think that's a that's a huge thing we should be thinking about is there's been so much stigma attached to it but if we just use it as what it is which is the adjective fat then it's it's not a dirty word it's just a way to describe a body um who wear clothes like you know the, the crop tops and they look amazing because they are carrying themselves with this confidence

and they're aware that like they're proud of their body even. And that doesn't mean they're not subject to the same insecurities, but it's like they have decided to do this anyway and they look really good. I'm just thinking about the insecurities that riddle me all the time and why they've become so much louder and and why like you know the tiniest roll above my jeans is driving me crazy even though it's like no you you look great but i think the other thing is as well there's there's several things i wanted to touch on one is that the worst thing is when i've lost this weight i've the compliments have upped um about my face as

particularly because i when i lose weight you can really see it on my face like because my cheekbones pop out more because that's the look etc so i really people come up to me and they'll be like wow like wow and that positive reinforcement is terrible to hear it's amazing but it's really terrible because it really does reinforce that when i look my most snatched as it were that is where i am going to get the most sort of like external validation for the way i look from the people that i actually care about which is not uh straight men's i'd say it is the girls and the gays um those these are the people i'm doing the girls and the gays can be toxic as fuck like i'm sorry like the whole like the whole idea of being

snatched or like like oh skinny queen like someone called me like oh skinny queen like and you know it's obviously like you know a gay guy and it's like and i was just like toxic toxic as fuck don't call me that one i'm not skinny and two i don't want that to be a synonymous with beautiful gays and girls can be toxic as hell but they are also the ones who are more likely to appreciate like an aesthetic or a look in a way that straight men's approval just doesn't mean shit to me in the same way like literally a straight man recently was just talking about how much he loves ass to me like he's like oh I love I love asses so much I'm such an ass guy and I was like you fucking boring bargain basement man like I've put together a

whole look I have all this like you can't even see all the stuff that's going on here and all you see is like ass that's it like just this one muscle that's so boring um so toxic as it is always the male gaze with a y over the male gaze with a z which i came up with first of all that celebrity tweeted it by the way I did that meme way before, just so everyone knows. But yeah, what I've been thinking about as well, when you were talking about, you know, clothes being made to fit, how the clothes wear you rather than the other way around, is I guess our visual culture has got so much more prevalent. Like we've, I say this all the time, but we've never been able to see ourselves and see each other as much as we do now. And it's all done through the prism of these little things

i'm holding up my smartphone for those who can't see a clip um it's done through the camera it's done through video and photos and obviously there's filters and stuff and you can edit but the main thing is as well what you see on camera is not real. The way you see yourself reflected on a camera, the camera does add 10 pounds. Like I've seen this in real time. That's why someone like, and I won't say the name of it, maybe Chow can actually bleep the name out.

The name of bleep, but it rhymes, it's a Starbucks drink, a very famous pop star. That's a Starbucks drink who very, very obviously has an eating disorder, like a debilitating one i've been a fan for years i've seen their body change on camera they can look kind of not not not like normative size but like more normal and in real life like it's just terrifying to see the size of these i don't know who you're talking about i'm sorry i have no i can't even hold a vision in my head dated a very famous comedian oh yeah yeah yeah you got it you got it yeah i got it very very very very clearly i'm well

um and if you were to there's two bits to that as well which is like so clearly i'm well but on the camera these and i've met like influencers in real life as well who like on camera look if not a normal size like they don't look so ill and then in real life you meet them and they're like oh my god you are tiny but now I'm actually seeing people on camera who look unwell so I can only imagine what they look like in real life and it's crazy that we've now accepted this like unwell look as the look but the other thing is with with you know stars and influencers as you said about choice feminism because they're usually women if you say this person is obviously unwell then people like how dare you comment on her body like the whole sort of the rhetoric of what was

body positivity has been flipped around the same way that you know political rhetoric of the left is flipped on by the far right and it's like how dare you comment on your body oh my body that's not feminism like you're being unkind like it's really disrespectful let people experience things in private it's like i don't think it's morally wrong to point out when someone is ill and is clearly ill and then they themselves are sort of like weaponizing this rhetoric like they don't owe us anything but there's there's a weird there's a perversity to them being like i've never been as happy and healthy as i've which is what this pop started i've never been as happy as healthy as i am now like i was so unhealthy before when they're so clearly very physically unwell and then everyone like all their fans go in the comments being like defending them being like you know if you comment

on her body then you are uh you know you're not a feminist you're a bully and it's crazy because it's like i actually think the moral failing is not saying anything and not saying that not saying like this isn't normal this is or this isn't healthy this is actually unhealthy and like that doesn't mean they have to recover for the sake of the public but just saying this is unhealthy and we should not aspire to this sort of aesthetic because it is literally like they're sick is is not a good thing i don't think i don't think that is like some moral failing to say that well i think so john updike the american novelist once said that celebrity is the mask which corrodes the face and i think that that's something that you have to bear in

mind whenever you see somebody who is a celebrity or is an influencer, is that if celebrity is the mask that corrodes the face, and he's sort of talking in a psychological, spiritual sense, I think that there is also something which is profoundly physical and to do with the body as well, right? To create this image of beauty or perfection, there is a lot of sickness which goes into it. And then because now all of us, or most of us have some element of online personal branding going on in our lives, right? If you've got a TikTok, if you've got an Instagram, or if you just share photos of yourself, or, you know, if you're on a dating app, right? All of us have an element of that mask, which is corroding the face, right? Like we are creating an image of ourselves to project and there is something which is, you know, damaging that is happening to us through

that process. And I think that that's just an important thing to bear in mind and it's not you know it's so gaslighting right that like the entirety of celebrity and influencer culture is dominated by people who've got some pretty serious eating disorders and also have had a ton of cosmetic work done, eyeless, buckle fat removal, Botox, fillers. And you're telling me this is what it means to be happy and healthy. Bullshit. Absolute fucking bullshit.

Even if you are happy and even if you as an individual are healthy, that is not a model of health and happiness for society. And you say well i'm not telling you to do it well you are because you are a uh vehicle for advertising right so you are like let's just cut the bullshit you know um i i maybe am like in a bit of like more of a Radfair mirror with some of this stuff. Because I saw a video of like Kylie Jenner crying where, because she's like, oh, you know, people still talk about my lips, but I got my fillers dissolved. Like, you know, you're picking on a 17 year old girl who had lip fillers because she hated herself. And I was like, yes. And that was incredibly sad. You were in a cage.

You were in a prison. You should never been put in this position by your family. That was a form of child abuse but also you became a stick with which to beat other people right what did you do when you had those lip fillers you released a lip kit because it was this idea that people could buy your lips if they bought this item so yes i'm sure that it was corroding your face this mask but also part of corroding everyone else's face as well and i think that we all get sucked into that in little ways and you know there are some people would say well the very fact that you you know I wear makeup or the very fact that I like get my eyebrows threaded

or whatever that like you know I'm participating in these things as well yes I absolutely am but you've got to draw a line somewhere right you have to draw a line somewhere um and and i guess when it comes to um cosmetic procedures and a zen pic that's where i'm drawing my moral line and saying like i i have to say no more not just because of what it means for me but because of what it means for other people and i think the last thing that i'd say about you know so what do you do about it you know i think political consciousness is a big part of it and I think that me learning about how clothes production changed and then what that meant for how we thought about people's bodies that for me was so eye-opening I was like shit there really are only two silhouettes right there might be different styles but there are only two silhouettes

um body con or oversized I was like oh shit that's had a profound impact on on how how we think about the ideal body that's one part of it and then i think that the other is finding things to do with your body which are nothing to do with how big or small or muscular or whatever it is for me that thing is yoga because it's such a stupid activity like sure there's all of this like you know okay like we are working with the manipura chakra and stuff and you know to some extent that is meaningful for me but if you were an alien coming down from planet zog and you just saw all these women who are like trying to do a headstand you're like well this is a completely pointless activity what does it fucking matter whether or not you can stand on your head and I think for me that was really

important because I was like well I'm finding these like kind of goal-based activities which have got nothing to do with how I look like and it's essentially can I do something that I wanted to do when I was a kid which is stand on my head um and it's not just about like going to yoga classes the thing that I do and it genuinely makes me feel really good about my body is when i'm alone and in my bedroom and i'm getting dressed so this may be news for some of the white people listening um but there is a pretty robust moisturizing procedure that goes into being brown and you are taught this from the very moment you are born that you have to moisturize your whole body every day not just your face right everything from your hairline down is getting moisturized and so that means that I've got to spend a fair bit of time naked in my room

and when I'm feeling bad about my body it's actually kind of a horrible time and even though I'm by myself I'm like rolling my shoulders in and I'm acting ashamed so the thing I try and do when I'm moisturizing and naked is stand in front of my full length mirror I kick one of my feet back I catch it in my hand I kick back into the hand and I lift the other arm and I try and do a it's called a dancer's pose and it's one to improve my balance because my ankles are really weak and two it's just to be like you're naked and you're doing this thing which is opening your body up in all these ways makes you feel quite like vulnerable and on show even though nobody can see but if you're thinking about how you look when you're doing it you are going to fall over on your face literally like if you you have to think much more about like how you are sending your weight downwards into your foot and upwards through your arm.

And it's been good for my brain. So, yeah, political consciousness and doing some stupid naked stuff by yourself in your room. Good for you. That is really good. I just want to add to that the moisturizing. Totally on a tangent here. But I'm very proud of my moisturizing routine and i think even though it wasn't instilled to me by a brown parent because my brown parent was awol my mother

instilled my moisturizing machine because i have eczema and i've developed a moisturizing routine and it boggles my mind that people do not moisturize to like the degree we do you not want beautiful supple skin do you not want like the smooth it's so nice people touch my skin they're like you're so soft and it's it's one of the best coppers all time and my moisturizing routine is top of the body i have body butter first layer uh bottom i do body vitamin e just body cream i don't know why it sinks in a little better than the body butter especially on the soles of the feet then if it's sunshine we do the sun cream then i do the oil but if it's not sunshine we just go straight to the body oil and then it's body oil also if you shave your bikini line um and you're not a waxer because i cba sorry i don't do enough to be in

waxing and if you don't shave at all well done you um but if you shave yeah i do nothing well done if you shave your bikini line even a little bit here's a tip use scrub first scrub scrub the bikini line you're gonna shave then use some sort of like sicilic acid face wash after you've shaved to get rid of any bumps then you put a sort of like spot cream or i love roche posay f cloud duo which i use i have a very i have a very fancy puss, sorry to say. So bougie. To stop any sort of like rash and then use the body oil. Don't put cream because it will clog the pores, but then use body oil on top.

And that is the get rid of shaving rash routine. That was, this is nice. We've ended talking about our bodies in a nice way. We actually have a dilemma that I feel like you kind of answered, but I still want you to read it out just in just so we can add a little bit more so this is our regular segment i'm in big trouble which is when we address our audience dilemmas now if you have a problem that couldn't possibly be made worse by either of us two dingbats please email if i speak at novara media.com that's if i speak at novara media.com so let's get cracking dear if i speak

i'm going on holiday this summer for a friend's birthday with a big group of girls my friend has hired a villa with a pool and booked a catamaran for one of the days catamaran sorry i really love the word catamaran um we're doing beach trips etc i'm very excited not as excited as i am about having read the word catamaran however i struggle a lot with body image issues and have for as long as i can remember i can remember hating my body as early as primary school despite having always been a relatively healthy weight, and I struggled with food and dieting off and on for years. As an adult and a feminist and a socialist, I know it's capitalism and patriarchy making us hate our bodies like this. I believe in fat liberation, and I truly find people beautiful of all shapes and sizes.

These days, I have good days and bad days with how I feel about my body but most of the time it's manageable. However my issues around my body ramp up so much in summer especially if I go on holiday and I pretty much revert to my insecure self-loathing teenage self. I'm really excited about the holiday but so nervous about being in a swimming costume and even dressing up in the evening or nice outfits in the day and ruining it for myself by being preoccupied with how my body looks. On top of that, I feel so silly and shallow for being so preoccupied with this when there are a million more important things going on in the world. I was wondering if you guys have any advice on feeling better about our bodies in this world, as well as any advice on bridging what we know to be true on a political societal level versus how we actually feel.

As much as I'm genuinely grateful my body is generally healthy and i'm aware of the power structures that profit off me hating it it's one thing to know this and another to feel it any help at all much appreciated love the pod you're sincerely a fellow yapper kiss kiss kiss maya why don't you kick off uh well i feel like this is you know as we've just discussed at length you'll know that i don't have the answers to this because I'm in exactly the same boat. However, there are a couple of things I do. Is the boat a catamaran? No.

Sadly, my friends and I are not that bougie. I love that you're going on a catamaran, listener. Have the best fucking time. And to have the best fucking time. Did you know that catamaran, I think it might come from a Tamil word, it's definitely originally a south asian word and it means two sticks tied together wow and now it's like one of the fancy signs of like leisure and wealth that's great from two from two sticks to chartering a catamaran as a sign of booge holidays um the capitalism story um back to the listener so there are a couple of things i think you can do despite my long extended rant about how bad i can feel about myself i'm just thinking

through the things that i actually do find helpful one is remembering i know it's cliche but like we believe in these things for other people so what is stopping us applying to ourselves like what is the block there why do other people deserve fat liberation why do other people deserve you know us looking at them with the same soft loving eyes because my friends literally say to me they're like you find people too beautiful like you think everyone's so beautiful and so that's a bad thing because i'm like look at that how gorgeous that person is but it's not about just how they look it's about like the energy that you bring and the light that you bring and when you can see that light in other people i think you

have a choice of whether to ignite it in yourself or whether to sink back into self-loathing and no one else is going to make that choice for you no one else is going to say i'm going to light you up like your friends can give you confidence your friends can boost you but at the end of the day and like they can be like your light is amazing we want to help you but the end of the day you have to make the choice to turn that light on um and i think i do try and make that choice quite a lot uh which is probably where people come up to me that your energy is really good all of that kind of stuff it's it's not just the moneymaker face i have to say it's because i'm it's my i smile all the time i'm always grinning like that is what draws people to me when they're like wow you know you're radiating energy energy is a huge fucking thing i look at people's energy

all the time and i can't just be like be happy and it'll all be fine but i do think there's sadly a thing in positive mindset and thinking and like no i am choosing to move away from this intrusive thought about myself and i'm going to focus instead on something around me like when you're feeling bad about your body you think no okay let's just i'm in this amazing place i'm gonna focus instead on like this fucking tree outside that i'm really enjoying and think how great it is to be in this moment and looking at this tree that kind of shit really does change the way that you i'm swearing so much today i'm really in a really in a zone for some reason um it really does change like what you remember and also i center this again getting in the woo-woo like this thing that i do which is taking 10 deep breaths and like

i check in with all my senses so i like feel the air on my skin it's like and then you think we can smell and what you can hear obviously I have my eyes closed usually so I open at the last minute and then I look and see but everything else you check in first and that helps I guess ground you in a place and it embodies you rather than just makes you sort of like external looking at this like warped version of your body through your own eyes that's that's several things the other thing is um again cliche but follow follow people who look like you that you admire their style that you like the way that clothes look on them even though the body is like yours do that it will change your perception of how you look um because

if we're getting bombarded all the time by these 21 year olds with sadly like quite obvious eating disorders who are not old who have not yet been able to understand what's going on with themselves and it's still like there's this weird stage i see with influencers where they have an eating disorder that makes them really thin or then they get really into fitness and they say oh no i'm healed now but they're actually just for using another form of control to control their bodies and then finally like three years later they will put on some weight and they'll be like i'm free guess what all the stuff i told you these several years ago it was all bollocks i was really unhappy i was really unhealthy

i was really unwell and i can't begrudge them because i feel like we all go through that path it's just that they get blown up on instagram at a stupid age at university so they become like these gurus even though they are just like again 21 years of an eating disorder what separates one 21 year old with an eating disorder from another um like if one of them is really skinny that's the one who gets blown up but that doesn't mean if you are not uh a bigger size you don't have this exact same fucking problem society just doesn't reward you in the same way um so follow people the creators that look like you and that you can see the beauty within and this is also a thing that i struggle with because this idea that we have to see beauty

and that beauty has to be like the thing that is morally good and like is a great trait to have is also bad so when i say beauty i think i'm just talking about energy and vibe and feeling but yeah beauty as well is something maybe we can talk about a future episode because even that concept of like you're beautiful telling everyone they're beautiful you're beautiful you're beautiful it's like what are we saying there like why do we have to say you're beautiful to to legitimize people it's it's odd um and also don't follow trends don't follow trends like pick and choose some bits and pieces but if you follow the trends every five minutes again like ash was saying those things are not made for specific bodies those things and those clothes those looks and they're over in a

second and the more you get swept up in trends the more you will get swept up in certain like algorithms and certain uh cultural messaging that will make you feel worse if you carve out your own space about what you like and what you feel comfortable in and what looks what you think makes you feel really good when you wear it that's not necessarily on trend and is instead a timeless style the difference between trend and style you will feel a whole lot better about yourself than trying to fit into like one of those strapless bikinis that make me feel terrible when i wear them because it's just like gravity's done its thing guys like i'm not wearing strapless anytime soon because it'll just fall off and have to keep hitching it up instead i like a nice

structured little you know a nice structured full- on swimsuit sometimes. It was good for the fifties. It's good now. So all of those things, all of those things I would advise doing, because they do actively help me feel better about myself. Take yourself out of your body, but into your, feeling your body. Stop looking at it, start feeling it. Follow people who, you know, look like you and that you like and also stop following trends if you do that because take yourself out the rat race find your own lane i think just in terms of like how you manage this holiday the advice i would give is share how you're feeling with your friends because one the likelihood is that they probably feel the

same way about themselves too and so then rather than creating again an unrealistic ideal that you have to be women bombarded with negative messaging about your bodies and then also magically feel really fine about it all the time and then have a sense of shame when you're unable to feel fine about it just break yourself out of that by being like hey you know I've been really worrying about this because it will also I think allow other people to express that and then you can be supportive to each other you don't just have to be this self-sustaining isolated unit of like confidence right you exist in a network of other people and that is important um I think when it comes to feeling your body like cultivate some kind of

movement practice which could be yoga it could be something like that or it could just be as dumb as dancing around the kitchen to music when you're making your group breakfast which will make you feel good and silly like I you know I'm not sitting here going I've got a really good relationship with my body I actually have a terrible relationship with my body and that's why I'm giving you this advice one of the ways I've found to like navigate through that relationship and how stuck and paralyzed by self-loathing I can feel is by embracing being daft in various ways like one being daft with my husband is like that's my love language I'm like say something stupid say something stupid I'm gonna love you for it say something stupid um but also it's a way in which I come to love and enjoy my

own body so a lot of that time it's music in the kitchen and dancing not because I want to look sexy or dance well but dancing because I just want to like I'm like I want to see how high I can kick now why not like the way you'd be when you're a kid and you're just like what can this body do you're not you're not worrying about how it looks in those moments you're like let's just see how far this thing can go um coming back to the point of it's finding things to do with your body that put you in your body where how you look is just very much not the point of it um and i think remembering that that freedom that we felt as children before those moments where we realized that we had to hate our own bodies um and finding ways to replicate that

so so important so some kind of movement practice could just be dancing around could be something like yoga um talk to your friends about it and i think that if there are things to do with food specifically because i'm not sure if kate moss did really say nothing tastes as good as skinny feels or if that's been attributed to her or if she did really say that did she really say that you evil bitch right that is she says she regrets it you know she says she regrets good she should regret it she should regret it because you know what else is a fucking lie there's loads of stuff which tastes way better than skinny feels pistachio ice cream very high up amongst it because i know that not everyone can get the black sesame stuff um a ricotta stuffed courgette flour which is then deep fried squaccarone mortadella and

crescentini uh burrata with peaches oh burrata with peaches like um sugar sugar grilled peaches and burrata oh my god strawberries with black pepper balsamic vinegar and a little bit of olive oil oh all these things taste better than skinny feels um taste is why i think there might be a benevolent god because there's no reason for food to taste that good we'd still eat it because we need it to survive as a sensory experience it is enveloping and it is gorgeous and i guarantee that when all of us are old and on our deathbeds we're not going to be remembering the times we were skinny we're going to remember the times that we had a good meal with our friends and there was laughter and sensory enjoyment so put yourself in that moment

of well lucky you i'm not remembering i'm just thinking about i'm thinking about pleasure i'm thinking about taste i'm thinking about indulgence of like those things you'll be thinking about pleasure and indulgence yeah but food is is such a big part of that and like we're a social species and the sharing of food and the sharing of delicious food it's when we are at our most human i think because it's what brings us into contact with other people and you need to really immerse yourselves you really immerse yourself in those moments because nothing tastes as good as skinny feels i'm sorry for calling kate moss an evil bitch and i know she was ill but it was so evil it was such an evil thing to say it had a really bad impact on me it had a really bad impact but i think i actually am not grateful for her for

saying it but i'm i'm glad that exists because it sums up so much of the way that society's disease particularly women when it comes to their bodies and how we've individualized it to like one or two people. And so like, that's her there. That's her there. She's the one who just made me feel ill. And it's like, no, she's just literally a cultural vehicle for getting that messaging out, both in her body and what she's literally saying. Should we wrap it up here?

Let's wrap it up. Let's wrap it up. And what are you going to eat for lunch, Ash? I'm trying to think if we've got any leftovers in the fridge oh there's some leftover rice i'm gonna make a um kimchi fried rice oh that's i think what are you gonna eat for lunch unfortunately because at the time of recording i'm about to leave tomorrow i'm gonna have something really depressing but i'm gonna try and make it nice i'm gonna try and do some like tahini scrambled eggs but i can't go out and buy

remember paste makes taste in the words of my mother maybe some miso as well there's going to be onions in there that kind of vibe but I can't go out and buy do you have any chilli crisp oil yeah we always have chilli oil in this house we've got all the oils

we've got every single condiment this is a condiment house. That the end. Okay. Okay. Chili crisper. Okay. Perfect.

Who've you been? I've been Moya Lothian-McLean and you've been... I've been Ash Sark. I'm sorry, Kate Moss, for calling you an evil bitch. I was just responding passionately to the sentiment you conveyed. I don't really think... It's all right. I defended her. I defended her.

I... As a feminist... Anything that women do is fine anything that women do is fine and this has been women doing things this has been if I speak see you next week lean in