LadyGang - Whitney Cummings

Episode Date: August 17, 2021

Comedian, actress and animal lover, Whitney Cummings shares what it takes to make it in Hollywood as a self made star and how she’s dealt with people pleasing throughout her life. And while this may manifest in her relationships, she’s here to shed some light on codependency. Plus, how many times can the ladies say vagina.  Check out our amazing sponsors!!! Omnilux: Use code LADYGANG50 to enjoy $50 off your first purchase here: https://bit.ly/3kWir9R  PayPal: Get $10 cashback on your first transaction of $20 or more at your local CVS and pay using your PayPal or Venmo app! Learn more paypal.com/lady  Arrae: Use code LADYGANG for 10% off your first order at Arrae.com  Better Help: Get 10% off your first month of online therapy at betterhelp.com/ladygang  Brooklinen: Go to Brooklinen.com and use promo code "ladies" to get $20 off, with a minimum purchase of $10 Huzzah: Put an exclamation point in your summer with HUZZAH! Stock up with 20% off when you use code LADY at DrinkHuzzah.com  Rent the Runway: Use code LADY for 30% off at RentTheRunway.com See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to The Lady Gang. You're about to listen to our podcast, but there is so much more our community has to offer. Follow us at The Lady Gang, join our secret Facebook group, shop our clothing line, books, and find out when we're going to be in your city at theladygang.com. We're so excited you're here. Enjoy the show. Well, what is this? Welcome to The Lady Gang. That's amazing. Say that again. The Lady Gang.

Things are about to change around here. Each week, we catch up with Hollywood's hottest girl posse, Kelty Knight, Becca Tobin, and jack vanik hello hello hello welcome to the lady gang i am becca tobin here with jack vanik and kelty knight happy to report that i have on the same creepy glasses that kelty was sporting over the quarantine and the verdict's out who works better the verdict's out it's pretty shocking how much a face can change a glass you know so like kelty looks like jeffrey a little more masculine yeah no the problem with hers is yours is like they haven't been updated mine's a nod to that era well yours are more of like an aviator shape where kelty's are like the

square 70s serial killer glass yes yes and they're a little bit tinted which is like it's the it's well these are blue light glasses so they block the blue light so they it's not tinted it's the blue light glass anyway but from an observer okay they have a nice sepia tone well i can't win them all this is a great episode so i would like to get to it it's time for good week yes it is bad week oh no um i'll start my good week is that the audiobook that i voiced that i talked about she's gonna win a grammy i don't think can you win grammys for audio yeah remember kelsey tried to submit. Oh my God. This is terrifying because so I obviously didn't, let me just say it was a really challenging job. It was very fucking tedious and I have attention deficit disorder

and also not a great reader, also not a great actor. So it was like all of these things that were really against you for me and I and I thought to myself okay it's done I love the author this girl Andrea Bartz and she has incredible books that I've read all of them and it was an honor to be asked and then I'm on Instagram and Reese Witherspoon is posting that the book We Were Never Here by Andrea Bartz is her pick for the book club this was also a day after she announced that she just made a billion dollars selling Hello Sunshine, her production company. So all eyes are on Reese Witherspoon right now. And then the book then explodes and becomes an instant bestseller. It would have anyway, but, and I have gotten 400 people messaging me a screenshot of the audio

book saying, Oh my God, I went to read, listen to this audio book and it's your voice. So the amount of people i thought were gonna hear my terrible job is so much higher than what i had anticipated is this book like uh it's like a story right with like multiple characters like do you have to like voice other people for the character like now i'm gonna be jake yeah uh no it's the only really the only dialogue heavy dialogue is between two girls that are in their late 20s so it was not, you know, character work, if you will. I'm like, did you have to work on like your voice, like your voice actor? No, but it's hard. It's hard as an actor who's used to playing one character and really being able to finesse how I'm going to say something, the intonation,

blah, blah, blah. But with this, it's, you're doing that, but like at a 3%, because you can't invest all that time into all the words that are coming out of your mouth. You would never, I mean, you could never invest that amount of time unless there are people who do, wouldn't be surprised because I do the bare minimum, but it's hard. I'm very critical of my read because I'm like, if this were on TV, I'm going to listen to it. I'm going to listen to it. I'm going to listen to it, but I'm going to listen to it. So my good week was that I'm very, very, very excited for this author. Um, and my bad week is I'm very, very bummed out with the amount of people listening to my awful voice it's always the thing that like you don't think is

gonna be the thing that ends up being the thing and you're like god damn it like i would have done that a lot differently if i thought that more than zero people were gonna listen to it or watch it it actually pisses me the off because the amount of energy i've put into things that haven't gone anywhere it's just exhausting yes yes it's unfair um well i'll go so uh i have a i have a good week um i did a scientific uh scientific i did a scientific investigation excavation uh this past weekend for everyone who listens to the podcast if this is your first time listening this podcast, you'll know that we have had a decades long conversation about when you have to poop in fluorescent lighting. So you go to Target, you go to HomeGoods, you go to wherever

and like instantly the bookstore. And for some reason, there's something we've gone into the science of it. So I recently went to HomeGoods and I timed myself and it was 12 minutes, 12 minutes and like five aisles of home goods until the urge hit me. I had no laxatives in my system. I had no coffees in my system. It was just the lights. So you're welcome. Scientist Kelty gives you 12 minutes of home goods before you have to poop. Did you poop in home goods? Yeah. Yeah. I need to remember that. Can they just leave the bathrooms open? It's like they have the code on the bathroom, which I understand people are shoplifters and shifty, but it's like, then you got to go find the person be like can i get the code to the bathroom and like every

employee at home goods is like you gotta boop right like they know oh yeah for sure they probably just don't they want to like limit the amount of people that actually go in there so they're like weeding some people out yeah take it yeah yeah do you think you're gonna get hired like whitney got hired for this um birth control because it's all about the vagina are you gonna get hired by home goods and the whole campaign is like feeling the natural God, I hope so. I'll do anything for money. Okay. So my bad week is that, you know, I'm very behind on fixer upper LA too. Like this is just a disaster. Like nothing's getting done. I'm too busy. I don't have the energy, but we recently put solar panels on the top of the house. Cause

I want the whole thing to live off the grid. Great, great, great. And then the guys that were in installing the solar panels all got completely mangled with the poison Oak in my yard, which I didn't know i had so they like came on day one and they're like oh yeah we all got a rash i think this might be poison oak by the like box or whatever it's like by places that i haven't been yet in the yard so i was like well i better get the poison oak taken care of so we finally found this guy i was like googling and i'm like how do you you can't wear he's a regular gardener you need a guy with like a hazmat suit blah blah blah so this guy's like we'll take care of your poison ivy.com or whatever so i call like we'll take care of poison ivy.com and i was like hey i got

this poison ivy in the front yard but when he goes no i don't with poison ivy oh shit and i was like wait what he's like no i ended up in the hospital we actually don't do poison ivy removal and i was like okay but i called remove poison ivy.com no no my poison ivy guy doesn't remove poison ivy and that is my latest in my homeowner why are you even fixing it that's what i said to chris i was like do you not want poison ivy in the front yard don't you want people to get like well would because they're anyway callie could end up getting a rash from it in the front yeah i think it's just bad in general and also you know what's going to happen is that my dad now that the borders are open i'm sure my dad's going to come down here and he's going to get like into the power it's

we're all the power and the gas meters and everything like what if ken goes down there and then he gets poison oak we have to take him to hospital and i go bankrupt because we don't have american health insurance yeah also and it's like you don't know maybe people could sue you for getting poison ivy at your house like the guys doing your solar panels exactly so here you are putting it on record we didn't have to get it from your house wait do you know i'm like this This is exhibit a one of Chris's clients was on, um, Dak Shepard's podcast. And he said something about his lifestyle. And then the insurance company heard it and called him. We're like, we're taking away your life insurance. No way. Oh my God. That's hilarious. I mean,

that's terrible, but also amazing. Yeah. Yikes. Okay. So my good week is a by proxy good week for Jared because he has, he came up with this idea in his head that he thought it was really funny to tell people that Venice, like the city Venice that we live right next to is short for very nice. And he has now convinced dozens of people that Venice is short for very nice. I think that's funny. It's great. People, people seriously believe this and like started Googling it and i'm like this is the best this is the best thing ever you're gonna end up like it'll be changed on wikipedia it'll be like a whole thing and i love that it's a perfect jerry lie too like jerry with his like little smile and his freckles and his hair like if he told me that i would be

like like it's an innocent crime that jerry would lie to you yeah no you would never he's so believable and i'm like i love this for you so that's my good week my bad week is well good week the main finally is playing concerts again, which is what I've been waiting for, for 18 months. Um, I was at one of their shows. They did a radio show for 98 seven, which was like a huge deal. They've never done a show like that before they're performing. And during the performance, it was outside. And one of those like fig beetle things was huge, like June bug type things lands on John's hand, their singer. And he was like freaking out and he didn't know what to do with it was like staying on his hand so people are telling him to eat it like all this shit and

he's like not gonna eat it and this guy in the front row is like here give it to me like i know what to do with it and he puts his hand out this guy grabs the beetle off of his hand and eats it shoves it in his mouth chews it up and swallows the beetle live live there's dozens of videos of it and then he became a viral hit hashtag beetle boy this reminded me of that woodstock documentary i just watched with uh let's get the fires yes that's the main is they're inciting animal eating i mean insects he did not know he their singer is also like the most green person in the entire world like would never hurt a fly like literally won't hurt a fly so he was they zoomed into his face after it happened and he was horrified jared's in the back going like what the

everybody's like no this is not what we wanted but beetle boy is like now he's his own viral sensation like people are trying to interview him and shit wow that is gross that is so rock and roll and like we're back baby we're back people are eating beetles at concerts yeah and like to go back to like you don't know what's going to be your thing i'm like if this is what catapults them into fame is this this psychopath kid that ate a beetle you know so be it like they've been just touring hustling for 14 years like a kid ate a beetle at the front row of the concert and we got on gma yep there you go amazing well coming up a wonderful lady a wonderful lady's here to talk about vaginas. I need to tell you about a brand called Array that I am absolutely obsessed with.

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all of the self-made non-hollywood spawn dreamers and is so famous the glamour magazine wrote an entire article about how she sleeps including a night vagina oil more on that later we fell in love with her as a panelist on chelsea lately but since then she's gone on to create a ton of shows including two broke girls a handful of comedy specials a book i'm fine and other lies us to us too she also has a podcast good for you and you can see her this fall on tour all of her info is at whitneycummings.com but most importantly she is hot as and most most importantly she's actually here on lady gang please welcome to lady gang whitney cummings gosh thank you kelty welcome made my day it made my nipples hard to hear you read that i mean i just we love a woman

who goes and gets success in hollywood without having a famous family member or having a family that invented ketchup like bravo to you the level of fame that you have achieved just coming from normies is pretty respectable my dad didn't write like two donna summer songs like a jink like the fig newton jingle in order to get an audition in hollywood didn't know that I love that you said that. What did you say? Non-Hollywood offspring spawn? Yes, exactly.

It's like you're actually self-made. Like you're really self-made because no one can help you except yourself. And I love that. And I also love for the past, you know, as many years as you've been around, we've been following your career and I love how authentic you are

and how real you are about, you know, I remember specifically this moment of your life when it was like everywhere I turned, your head was on every billboard, your name was in every article in the Hollywood Reporter. No, it was amazing. And you were like, oh my God. But like you opening up about the struggles of that was so real. Um, and has, has been a point that we've come back to in Lady Gang many times of like, Hey, are we taking on too much? Like, is this the right thing? Are we just saying yes, because people are offering it,

you know? And it's an interesting thing. So let's begin. You're making me think, okay. You, if you know me at all you know that i go on tangents and stuff but i i appreciate that so hearing that so much because so much of i've when i'm you know podcasting or other podcasts i'm like why am i blathering on about this nobody cares like you you know these days you just go on hot ones or you know love is blind and you're famous like no one wants to know how to you know that's what self-made is everyone's like whitney why are you wasting all this time writing scripts just go on only fancy moron and um so but i appreciate that there are still people that want to do it The hard way, the long way, and my thing is always, like, it's never, no job is easy.

Whether you're a waitress, whether you're a nurse, whether you're a comedian, whether you're, you know, running TV shows, whether you're running an empire, it's always going to be hard, and I never promise anyone this is going to be the hardest thing you'll ever do, but here's a couple things that, mistakes I made, just to make it, like, a little easier. Like, this will save you, like, an hour a day. I'm not going to say it's going to make working in Hollywood an orgasmic dream. uh it's not narnia it's it's any job is hard so this so i just want to make sure i'm not like hollywood's hard like it's emotionally the kind of people that come here we're already emotionally

yeah up against a lot anyway so we're also more predisposed to be like i didn't like the tone of that email he used all caps well and i also think it's interesting that when you come from nothing um and are like climbing the ladder and like, Hey, I came from a lot of emotional abuse and neglect. Thank you. How dare you imply I didn't get tools, but like when, when no one's handing you anything, I think the, the thing you do is you like grab at whatever comes your way. And we see so many of our late again, community do the same thing. They're scared to ask for raises. They're scared to ask for a promotion. They're scared to ask for what they need in a relationship because you just

like, oh, I'm worth nothing and I have nothing. So I'll just like take the bare minimum. And so you want to say yes to everything without really thinking if it's the right thing for you. I don't know, Becca, you feel like that in acting too, right? Yeah. I mean, all the time. And I was actually, that just sparked a thought that I had and I might be like stepping in shit because I might be remembering this wrong, but I feel like I listened to an interview with you where you talked a lot about codependency. And I think you were the first person that actually stated it correctly what it what exactly it is um i would love it if you could do that for our girls because i think it's so misused and i think a lot of people from trauma which i think we've we've

all experienced a little bit uh fall into that and being female codependent type trauma as you say it like trauma doesn't have to mean you were in a dog crate being trafficked like that's you know i always like to sort of delineate trauma so you know being in 12 step rooms for the longest times sometimes i would go into rooms and i'd hear stories and i'm like is that your biggest problem like i had this and this and this happened and then i go into other rooms i'd be like oh i thought my life was hard you know so it's different for everyone and it doesn't mean anyone's are bigger or smaller some people you know they were left at school to let the dad forgot to pick them up too late and they learned i am on my own forever i'm in that for whatever reason the

adrenaline they were being made fun of there's ways that that smaller quote-unquote you know traumas i i'm happy to validate everyone's because they're all real to them you know what is your mom dying when you were 10 could be someone else's they peed their pants at the talent show you know everyone's right the way that and that's why neuroscience has helped me so much to understand that when cortisone cortisol and adrenaline are released that's going to lock in as a trauma so it can be you know you i remember when i was a kid i this is like the least um ostensibly traumatic thing that ever happened to me but to me it was like embarrassment is fear of embarrassment is such a big one for me and i you know we had like brought animals to school like cricket like we

had crickets in a thing none of the when i look back at the stuff we did as kids it's really disturbing um but we had crickets i guess we all have our own crickets and i put chex mix in for my crickets to eat i was already like an animal psycho at the time and it didn't eat it because that's not what crickets eat and we put them all up on like the shelves and mine started getting like moldy like and everyone was like who's this and i was like i don't know and i just lied about it because i was so embarrassed that my crickets were getting moldy checks mix or whatever it's such a dumb silly thing but then i was like oh my god i lied they're gonna find me out and i spent like three days like and i i remember i went back i asked my dad to drive

me back to like break into the school to steal it so that i could like like it's such a dumb thing but it it was like i had to do emdr on it because i realized like how much i needed the approval of eight-year-old kids like who gives a you know so um trauma is just for people listening don't think if you haven't seen someone get hit by a car or fall off a building it doesn't mean you're not traumatized you know everyone is everyone's just kind of different but yeah for me codependence you know i grew up in an alcoholic home and for code for alcoholism to exist alcohol does not have to be present right where we say for alcoholism to be present alcohol doesn't have to be present because if you grew up around alcoholism which we all did literally in the

20s in the united states they had to make it illegal it was a problem cars came out people were drinking and driving it was a disaster you know what we came from you know i don't know what y'all's ancestry is looking into my ancestry has also been like a game changer for me because i'm like oh every one of my grandfathers died of cirrhosis like addictive behavior like that's what was available back then. That's also what they use for anesthesia. Give them a look. Yeah, crazy.

We inherited dopamine receptors that don't hold dopamine the same way. So whether it's that guy you're texting, whether it's you're scrolling on Instagram, which that is the same thing as a gambling addiction. You're always trying to get that hit, right? Every time you go to see a photo and it's like 50,000 likes, yes,

but then you got to keep checking back. Like it's very hard to walk away. So codependence, there's a couple of ways to define it. And maybe you, Jack, have your favorite way. But I like to say the couple of ways that it clicked in my brain. Sometimes you just need the right person to say the right thing at the right time for you to have some kind of self-awareness. And it was the inability to tolerate the discomfort of others or perceived discomfort. So that's where it gets really

tricky. So, you know, it's funny because I would go to these double winners meetings, which is AA and codependence. And I would hear all of their stories were like, yeah, I was like on the freeway drunk and I was texting and I was got in an accident. And, you know, my ex-girlfriend, I thought she was cheating, so I crawled over her fence and, like, broke into her house. I'm like, we do all that sober. Like, codependents do that sober, okay? So we're addicted to the internal drug cabinet, right? The dopamine, the oxytocin, the adrenaline, which turns into dopamine,

which means, like, toxic relationships become very attractive to us because it recreates that neurological cocktail we had as a kid, the stress of I'm always trying to get this person's approval. It becomes an addiction, right? Even if you don't like the person, you know, that's an addiction because an addiction is defined as doing this. Well, insanity, doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. An addiction, which is when you're the behavior that gives you the most dopamine stops being fun and it becomes an obligation. You know, when you're in those relationships with the guy for three months, it's just the it's just like you're in a dopamine cocoon together.

And then it's like and then it starts to become it stops being fun. That's what we say. There's some people who can go to a bar and they're drinking and they're fun. There's other people that are just alone in their car. My eating disorder was really fun in the beginning because I was getting all this attention. But then when I was eating sheet cakes in the car, that's when it's like, this isn't fun anymore. The addiction is dragging me around and forcing me to isolate. So codependence manifests itself.

And then I'll shut up. And people pleasing, the inability to tolerate the discomfort of others, thinking that your value is has a linear relationship with your productivity, a tremendous around like fear of authority figures, the inability to be friends with equals. You kind of always want to be friends with someone that's kind of above you status and authority wise or beneath you, because an equal is just harder to manipulate. Damn, this is like, no, this is insane. check i mean i can read you the laundry list it's kind of a game but yeah so um perfectionism i mean

you know for me i recently went on prozac because i spent 14 years in a program trying to get a hold of this but i would leave a conversation and be like that was stupid why'd you say that that was so dumb this person hates you and it's i'm a piece of shit in the center of the universe right like you're still saying if you hate yourself you're still saying myself myself myself that's you're thinking about you know and so also uh uh people pleasing manifesting in um shape-shifting right i'm this person with you because i know you need me to be funny and entertain you and i have to be small with you and did my light because you're a narcissist now if i steal your thunder you're gonna get mad at me you know it's like we're just able to i'm able to go around a party

and just be this person for this person this person but i know i need to do this for this person and i'm just gonna be 12 different people if i'm not in the kitchen trying to help the host clean up and she doesn't even want help she's like can you please go enjoy the party i'm the person it's like can i help you can i help you here's nine presents do you need me to cook that and she's like i got it please like that's why we say people pleasing is a form of assholery right so and we got to look at our motives are you offering to clean because you want them to think you're a good person good people don't have to prove it they're just good people you know i'm saying and it's our way of going like it's a lot of like me like me and then we try to stay away

from the three m's mothering martyring micromanaging so when we get in relationships with men that we if we conflate love and pity if we ever in a relationship because we want to rescue them we want to fix them i'd love to rescue a man but they can't be rescued they're adults they're not they're not at sea they're not in a boat it's a hard thing to learn they're not at sea they're not at sea is fucking epic they're not at a dog shelter what do you mean rescuing a man like it's the same thing of like how adults when we say like i feel abandoned my therapist like adults can't be abandoned they have cars you're not your premise isn't even valid we can't rescue a person we're just drowning ourselves with them we're just jumping into the car that's

about to crash we're not rescuing them we're just abandoning ourselves basically so it took me so long you know i mean i was with a guy who he was successful in hollywood he had two assistants and i'm like running around getting groceries and like if he didn't see that i got them i'd be like yeah I got groceries today. It was not about doing the nice thing. It was about credit for doing the nice thing. And, you know, a lot of self-deception, a lot of looking at your motives, a lot of over gifting, you know, stuff like that and spending a lot of money on your on things that so people

can perceive you a certain way instead of just allowing yourself to be authentic, which I think people struggle with codependent or not. But it's a lot of, you know, those people that are like, are you OK? Are you OK? and you're like if i'm not i'll let you know right you know so it's taken me a long time and uh codependents also feel um uh uh do a lot of things out of obligation whether it's that birthday party that you know the people are like i have to go i have to go to get drinks then i have to have this birthday party i have to get up and drive my friend you're not a good person

you're murdering yourself and you're in and you know we always say in program that self-care the way we put others first is to put ourselves first so so codependency we're the ones that always get out of the relationship and you go uh what's wrong what happened i just i loved him too much no you were probably annoying and codependent do 90 so dark the church is really dark like we do 90 and the other person can do 10 and then codependence breeds resentment so we start to go like, he's such an asshole. He didn't call me back. Well, you caught him four times. He called you back when he was done with work. Like you made an impossible standard, right? So we, we over, we give too much so that we can recreate our childhood circumstance of being victimized

because that's a, that's comfortable for us and how we get superiority. It's pretty cool. Wow. It did also take me a while to go, you know what? I'm not as sick as I thought either. So it took me 14 years in therapy and I did go like, oh, I was also a perfectionist in how sick I was like once I went into a 12 step program and I was like yeah I have that I have that like I wanted to be the best sick person because that's the perfectionist mentality if I'm going to be an al-anon and a codependent I'm going to be the worst possible one you know and so it's also the way we put over pathologize ourselves right now just as you say like maybe I need more therapy maybe you don't need any at all who know who knows I'm not you know um or a different kind or whatever

but I think a lot I'm having a lot of conversations with women right now and people that are talking I'm at mental health and I see we're all doing awesome. Yeah. Do you know what I'm saying? I think sometimes it's like important that we say that even though we're the ones on the front lines being like, I have depression, I have this, I'm codependent, I'm in a toxic relationship, I'm an addict, like that's all great, but we're also nailing it. Yeah. No, that's true. Actually, I listened to you in Casey Wilson's episode recently where you guys were like, I'm also the person who loves like the hottest new psychic or the healer or the blah, blah, blah. And you're like maybe we're actually okay like it's like stop trying we're addicted to healers maybe we're

addicted to our own shit so that's why i love 12-step programs instead of just straight up therapy because it's also about service you know a lot of these the shit the the sort of sick patterns that crystallize in our brains it's just we're thinking about ourselves too much right so that's why it's like service like go volunteer at a shelter and walk the dogs like go take out your neighbors you know what have you done for someone else today besides just me me me and i'm reading my self-help book and I'm listening to this podcast because I'm sick and I'm crazy and I'm this it's like sometimes you know it's just the disease of self-obsession that sometimes we have to just stop over analyzing ourselves because and then learn to perceive ourselves the way other

people perceive us so my my biggest thing and and I think this is like women in general whether they're categorizing themselves as codependent but the the discomfort yeah natural caretakers but the discomfort I feel when I'm letting somebody else down or I'm giving them an answer or that they don't want like i have not in 35 years been able to stand in it and be uncomfortable i will always bend so like what are some are you doing this in person am i a psychopath because i don't feel that i think actually kelty you're the furthest thing from feeling this like you actually what is your birth order where i'm second i'm the youngest i'm the oldest i don't feel bad about uncomfortable moments okay do i feel bad about them i don't know you don't clock them

it's it's a it's a it's yeah it's sort of a team effort to make it uncomfortable there's certain people you know i i always try to find that like where's the red flag and where's the gift right so it's like if you're uncomfortable uh that person also might be a malignant narcissist that person also might be have borderline personality disorder so you might not be codependent that person might legitimately be emotionally dangerous and if you're dealing with people that are you know at the top of their field they say that um uh it's one one percent of people are psychopaths and then but when you get into the highest level of any business ranking it goes up to 30 because those are the type of people that you don't care who they're knocking

down on the way up yeah well they just don't have empathy it just doesn't bother them like jeff bezos is thinking about his delivery people that are shitting in bags he doesn't care he's like they got their thing on time like so you know i found you know and i get i don't get in trouble for this why am i saying that to try to be likable um i am really big on okay you think you have social anxiety totally get it like you need a thing um but and i know that's real i know people with anxiety disorders they can't get out of bed it's a confluence of things but before you diagnose yourself with an anxiety disorder first make sure the people you're around aren't don't suck because anxiety is an amazing tool and it's information that you need if we all cured our

anxiety nothing would get done and we'd all be in dangerous situations all the time so i was like i'm socially anxious i'm socially anxious and then one day i was like yeah but i also don't like any of these people and they're all using me and they're all like like trying to angle and i feel it and i feel anxiety because i feel like i'm being exploited and i am i'm not socially anxious these people are vampires so before you're like i bend i break like i i can't tolerate discomfort that person might actually be you know manipulative and whatever in which case i always say i don't i don't accept any invitations or put anything on my calendar in person ever ever ever ever because i'll go like it becomes a game of chicken like in footloose where it's just like

okay fine i'll do it and then i have my go-to things which is if i don't want to do something i never if someone asks me to do something i say i'll let you know in three days yeah i will never make a decision because i need to think and i need to look at my calendar and i just don't say yeah it's if it's not a hell yes it's a no that's the other thing is that if i'm like um that means know but I also am the first person to to all the the the young uh people listening you know take every job you can that's the other thing it's like like when you're getting those whether it's that like on set for this little thing or to go shadow a hairstylist like I would say yes to everything unless it's a toxic thing or there's you know it's dangerous or whatever like get as

many opportunities as you can right now so that you can get information and you can get more experience and uh have more stories so a lot of people that I know that are literally unemployed they're like, I don't just say yes to anything. I can say no. I'm like, I, you actually can't wrong boundary. Hello. Hello. Hello. You sexy ladies. If you've been living under a rock, we are collecting all of our favorite lady secrets stories for a brand new project that we are working on. And this week we are collecting your stories, your deepest, darkest, secretive stories about dating. Now, this is something that I can relate to because I pretty much almost exclusively have really terrible, cringy dating stories. So if you have like a dating app disaster

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right now for me, a little bit of makeup, a little bit of body wash, and you scan the QR code and you can use it at CVS stores nationwide. It's so easy to make it touch free payments, which we love with your phone. Plus you get $10 cash back on your first purchase of $20 or more. That's like free money, you guys. It actually is free money. So we love PayPal. It's an app that we love and we trust how secure it is to making purchases in general, wherever you are. We love it so much. Again, get $10 cash back on your first transaction of $20 or more. Head to your local CVS and pay using your PayPal or Venmo app. That's $10 cash back on your first purchase of $20 or more with the PayPal or Venmo app. To see terms and learn more about how to earn $10 cash back, go to

paypal.com slash lady. We're really excited that we have BetterHelp as a sponsor here on Lady Gang. If you're feeling depressed or struggling in your relationship or you're having difficult sleeping or meeting your goals, BetterHelp offers online professional counselors who can listen and help. You can start communicating in under 48 hours. This is not a crisis line and it's not self-help. This is basically the kind of millennial version of therapy. I do my therapy online as well. There's a broad range of expertise available. The service is available for clients all around the world. So wherever you're listening from, you can log into your account and send a message to

your counselor. It's definitely more affordable than traditional offline counseling and financial aid is available. So our podcast is sponsored today by BetterHelp and our listeners get 10% off their first month of online therapy at betterhelp.com slash lady gang. Visit betterhelp.com slash Lady Gang and join the over 1 million people who have taken charge of their mental health with the help of an experienced BetterHelp professional. You're listening to the Lady Gang. I wanted to say something about Jack because this is what you were. I just want to go back to what you said about the anxiety because we've been doing Lady Gang for six years now and we were with Jack.

she was in a troublesome relationship and we actually have seen these two very uh like the actual human version of what you were just talking about because i feel like when you're in your past relationship well you can talk about it jack like you're in your past relationship you have so much anxiety you were like and then now that you're with someone who is wonderful yeah i know when i i went through a relationship with somebody that was absolutely a narcissist maybe borderline bordering on a psychopathic behavior um personality type but I was it was that constant like it was like a drug for me like getting in these fights and making up and then he was like withholding sex and it was this whole it was like a cat and mouse game the entire time but I don't operate

under that type of stress level at all like I'm a very cool calm collected person usually but I turned into this like manic nervous like completely like crumbling type of a person when I was in that relationship so it is that like getting that rush of whatever it is even if it is this like toxic horrible like screaming match with somebody yeah and that is um uh without i'm going to talk about my personal experience so you don't think that i'm like judging you in any way i was diagnosed as a love addict i wrote about this in my book and love addiction doesn't mean you're always a love addict like for me you're oh or you're always like you know it's just when you get the hit so it's like people that do heroin and they get sober for they cannot think about

harem for two years and they can think they can be right next to and go nope i'm sober i mean you know the stinking thinking they're in their contrary action like they're but then once they're on it gone because your dopamine receptors have like totally switched gears and you are gone right the beast has taken hold so for me before i was in my first like very uh well i've been in a lot of addictive relationships but toxic that's why i always like to say addiction uh addictive instead of toxic or um addictive instead of like psycho and all these words that just don't mean a lot i think um but we'll talk about love addiction in a second but i think the most important important thing to and this is not a blame thing because it's always blameless which is like

yes he's this this this but take the focus off him what's going on with us that we keep getting in the car driving over we take the left we take we do the part like we have so many opportunities to go like this is not good for me this is bad like we're at a point where a lot of us are like we're not drinking soy milk because it has hormones in it and then we're in a relationship with someone that treats us like shit it's like what like you can't eat that it has chemicals in it it has gluten like you can't you have to make your own almond butter are you insane and then you're dating these like people and i'm like it's just the the internal pollution like nobody everyone's so obsessed with their bodies that they forget about taking care of their brain

so true and a big and i'm like and then i walk around i see friends i'm like why you got a birkin bag and you have you've never been to therapy what's what's going on why are we investing in our priorities but the love addiction steps really helped me because once you're in it to give you all the like love and credit in the world when you're in it name the last person that you saw that had a drug problem where you're like hey what's going on with you and the cocaine they're like you're right i gotta stop they're like what do you mean okay what are you talking about like our brain is designed to defend what dopamine and what paras so all your dna and all your brain wants is for you and that guy to procreate especially because biologically we

talk about sexism a lot and like hollywood and businesses our biology is the most sexist of all we don't roast we haven't canceled biology yet but that's what we needed to cancel because your brain the more alpha are you were you on birth control at the time uh well i was and then i wasn't and then i was and i thought that i was going crazy because of the birth control but like which we need to talk about we need to get to the vagina but when you oh that's right but when you are on certain birth controls it does make you smell olfactory glands uh differently and we seek men that are more like alpha like you're looking for a guy that's going to um you over beat no beat up anyone that's gonna so like the motorcycle guy the ax body spray guy you know like just

no ax body spray when did it get that rap i know and we all know exactly the smell when you said it we knew the smell it's the new jacquard noir isn't it but uh but also just forgive yourself because we are wired to want to be be turned on by assholes because our sort of reptilian brain goes yes this is can protect my child we're not designed to pair forever really right so we stop producing dopamine i made a whole movie about this and i can't remember any of it no brain yes so just forgive yourself i thought you were looking for the title sorry obviously you know the title i'm so worried i'm not allowed to say the word female anymore um but uh but you just forgive yourself and i talk to myself i'm like this is just okay i'm attracted that guy that

he's got a motorcycle he's got 50 women's names tattooed on his abdomen this he's spray tan this is a bad idea but i just have to go you're fine it's 2021 it's not we're not in the living in the jungle 5 000 years ago i don't need protection from the man anymore i don't i have an alarm system i've got maids i don't i have dogs i don't need that so i have to kind of just talk to my sort of reptile programming and go like my amygdala go i know what you're doing i know why you think this is a good idea this would have been a good idea a thousand years ago but not today baby not today can we please get you a fucking show where you go and you help women like through these situations it's just like thinking about you giving a woman a pep talk

their amygdala is amazing. I feel amazing right now. I'm like, this is why this is a great segue. This is why this is incredible because, um, uh, you have a new campaign, just say vagina.com. Um, it's called say yes vagina. And it's like, when, when they were like, do you want Whitney? We're like, yeah, of course. You're like, she's going to talk about say yes vagina. We're like, we say vagina all the time. And my mom's embarrassed when she listens to podcasts, but like, I love this whole campaign. So please, you're here to tell us about it. And I think this is really important because this is a very interesting product. So give us the spiel. Yes. Yes. It's look, I, I'm really a brat with anyone that I'm going to like partner with. And

this wasn't even something that I anticipated because I wrote about this in my book. I don't want to be boring about it, but I've just struggled my whole life with birth controls, making me feel crazy killing my sex drive like this is just my personal experience uh making me lose my mind making me um just cry more than i normally do which is a shocking amount um and i just always struggle i also like i'm on the road all the time the idea of like for a birth control you having to go to your service provider or your doctor like once a month in the pharmacy once a month i found myself on the road like trying to get the little the pills and i'm like okay i have one pill left i'm like two in the morning i'm driving around like tampa florida

looking for uh they're not big on birth control being stocked by the way so i just like could not find a situation and then that would trigger migraines because i didn't take the pill in time and i'm spending all my vacations and all my time on tour like trying to get on the phone with my doctor which is you might have noticed they're not like great uh with texting and so finally i get this email and the and the subject line is just say vagina and i'm like is this a lawsuit like am i in a loss of someone who because this is with someone that is saying i'm plagiarizing them because this is my brand um and uh and it was just this super fearless campaign about this new birth control called anna vera which is it's you only have to go to your provider once a year and that

is it like there's no you're not sitting in the way i'm like how do i even have time to have sex i'm spending all my time in the waiting room to try to get the pill that's gonna make it so that i don't get pregnant in my hbo special i did a lot of jokes about all my qualms with birth control like the like um the morning after pill was like i think it's 50 and i and i was like i've never had sex with a guy and woke up and been like that was worth 50 bucks like never happened but yeah for me it's like i i i refuse i was promised that i could have it all and that i see so many women not being able to have it all the way we were promised and i just anytime i discover something that saves women even if it's four hours a month or extra money of going to that appointment to

have to i mean it happened today i was getting a different prescription we had to call they didn't have it we had to call the other one they didn't have it within their stock then they're out it's just like i've worked too hard for this like i've worked too hard to spend all my time fighting with pharmacists and service providers to get my birth control like this isn't i do a lot of and i need y'all to just level up so for me i'm like i could take matters into my own hands you can take it out put it in whenever you want i'm 38 years old so who knows i might meet a guy on farmers only and want to like get pregnant right away whereas the other ones because i froze my eggs a couple years ago and going off of birth control for that it took like a while for my uterus to start back up

or something like it was some weird this you can take out anytime and put in whenever you want so I just was like, for me and their campaign is just say vagina. And as I would get all these offers for birth control partnerships before this, and it was always like, you're riding in a canoe and you are going hiking. I'm like, what does that have to do with birth? Like, and then it's like, I would get like, talk to them. I'm like, I just want to make sure I'm able to say, you know, and then I look at the script for every TV show I've ever done.

I would put vagina in at the two broke girls pilot. They let us do. But then it was like, it would, they were like, can you say Fifi? Can you say? tulip and i'm just like no i'm gonna call it what it is if that's okay it's like this is why women have trouble advocating for themselves because i would go to my own gyno when i was a teenager in my 20s and be like i have something it's like a bump on never mind never mind yeah like i'm just saying the word vagina just makes everybody clamp up it's so weird it does okay so you we are almost

out of time with whitney and i have to um first of all if you want to check that out you can go to www.justsayvagina.com and see beautiful photos of a blue haired Whitney. There's, there's a very important topic that I cannot let you live without talking about. Recently, you were at the Paris Hilton cooking party, and I'm very jealous that we didn't get invited to this. Paris is lovely. She's been on the podcast. We're so happy for her. Love the show. But Paula Abdul was there. And I saw that you posted Paula, please come on good for you, your podcast. And I wanted you to know that i've been campaigning for paula for six years and if you want to fight for number one paula fan like we can was it your first concert what's the music video with uh keanu

reeves in it oh what was the name of the animated cat and the opposites attract video scat cat do you know the tap solo from the scat cat video that i that i i know of it can you perform it maybe we get you involved because me and hannah's talking so paul abdul i met her on the masked dancer yeah and i have a picture of myself meeting her and i when i tell you i am sobbing i mean i am sobbing and i knew she was a wee lady but she is tiny she is a tiny she is a button this one so i'm like hovering over i'm like she goes to give me a hug and she's like around my waist i'm like oh my she's in your belly button and you're just like i totally i was like i was like i'm like cradling her like i'm like you i mean i was so obsessed with her as a kid and

she was so nice and i was like you know she they reached out to me to be like you want to do like some social media stuff together and i was like i want to recreate the rush video i will get keanu reeves that was his first appearance on any she discovered keanu reeves in one of her music videos and then i was also like hannah stocking you and i were talking about recreating scat cat because i feel like i know oh we're already we're already going through it like frame by frame trying to see like if it's possible because we could do it with scat cat in the background green screen her out and we could also do the tap yeah we're trying to be the tap teacher can you tap i was a former rocket yeah i can really tap i had shut up and dance was my first

compact disc ever we need you to do the tap part i could do the tap part this is kelty's dream right now i'm telling you like i have interviewed over the course of 10 years like every person uh from oprah to whoever when i get to interview paul abdul i'm exactly like you what is it about her like I walk in and I just start weeping because it's like my childhood dream I'm like I have made it I'm in the same room as Paula Abdul anyway wait hold on can we go really quick and say everybody's like the person that they are like I'd kind of freak out if I met that person because it also happened with Whoopi Goldberg I the first time I did the view this was like nine years ago and I was like that's Whoopi like yes I grew up on Whoopi I love it and then as soon as

i saw her in person i was like i just i realized in that moment like i'm i guess i must have made it like i had disassociated everything before then and i never felt like i was successful and then i was looking at her and i was like i must have made it like and then i just started crying in her arms side note have you seen the video of her farting on the view when claire danes was on no and i need to see this immediately to y'all today so anyone who needs a quick pick me up uh watch that if you're feeling down at work and i love this is there anyone else that is jack do you have one mine is i so i am not like a big hollywood person i barely know who any celebrities are but i have always had the biggest obsession over larry david i watch him to go to bed every

single night like he's my number one so i would like shit my pants if that happened yeah i saw him in public uh once and um it was like a basketball game and he's walking toward me and i was just like and i just beeline like he saw me look at him because i was like like yes and i was just like i can't do like i can't like i'm not gonna be funny enough i'm not gonna i was like i'm gonna say something dumb i'm gonna try to be funny i'm gonna try to make a joke with larry david no you just can't because i was having to do my i carried a watermelon dirty dancing thing i can't i'm gonna say something that dumb and i was like i just need to the best thing i can do is him just think i'm rude or blind becca do you have one

well mine was really recent so i grew up i was like a broadway fanatic like such a tool i belted songs out in my car um and i recently did an episode of zoe's extraordinary playlist and we had the zoom table read and bernadette peters was on this last season oh no i she comes on i didn't know I didn't know she was on because it hadn't aired yet and she pops on my zoom screen and then she started talking and my whole body was like convulsing and she was the most amazing like did not disappoint lovely hundred percent of the time I just like she was a hero that I absolutely was was happy to see so cool well listen Whitney you're a hero um you can follow Whitney at whitney cummings head on over to her website and find out where you can find her on tour right now

whitneycummings.com she's very busy not looking for birth control in tampa on this tour because birth control ready to go and our podcast is available every wednesday good for you which is perfect i have a couple of those morning after pills ready so that i can bring them back for jack she seems to be struggling i don't know i'm on anna vera but let me just bring some you want on that Tampa morning after. Oh yeah, I'm sure it works. Good stuff in Tampa. Anyway, Whitney,

thank you for gracing us with your brilliance and we will see you next Tuesday. Thanks for listening. The Lady Gang is produced by Alex Ingber, Steve Delameter, and Jared Monaco.

Make sure you subscribe, rate, and review our podcast. And if you love it, share it with your friends on social media like, oh my God, I just listened to Lady Gang. This episode's so great.

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See you next Tuesday. I'm Lola Blanc. And I'm Megan Elizabeth. And we're the hosts of Trust Me, the podcast about cults, extreme belief, and the abuse of power. Now on podcast one. We want to debunk the myth

that people who join cults are uneducated because anyone can be manipulated by a narcissist. and we should know we both have been join us every week as we explore the world of extreme belief talk to survivors and experts and share our own experiences with cults and the abuse of power get new episodes of trust me every wednesday on podcast one and anywhere you get your podcasts