Life Uncut - A New Face! Do We Really Want Celebrities To Be Transparent About Plastic Surgery?

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

Hey Lifers, Laura is joining us from Bali today (for work) and Keeshia is filling in for Britt but is in a bit of a funk after moving house over the weekend. They say that if you want to test your relationship, build an ikea flat pack together. Moving house seems to be the level up from that when it comes to testing your relationship. Have you faced the test and realised things about your partner that you’ve never thought before? Laura’s ‘for you’ page is the stuff of nightmares. We might be back tracking on saying that the algorithm only shows you what you spend time on after this 😂. But she’s found a solution for you if yours needs a refresh and an overhaul!  There are some changes coming to NSW with how ADHD may be diagnosed and medicated. Most of the commentary online was encouraging of these changes but we speak about why we think it’s a little bit more complex than what it might appear on the surface and how it may add to the stigma that ADHD already has.You can listen to Cloud here  Do you want to know if a celebrity has had plastic surgery… or does that just make things worse? Do we want transparency or does it normalise unrealistic beauty standards? Kris Jenner’s new face has infiltrated many group chats and we unpack whether being out and proud about surgery demystifies what it takes to obtain a particular aesthetic or whether it promotes and encourages unnecessary cosmetic procedures. We ask if it’s more damaging to pretend you haven’t had surgery—or to be transparent but promote it like it’s no big deal (when it might be expensive, painful, and risky). You can watch us on Youtube Find us on Instagram Join us on tiktok Or join the Facebook Discussion Group Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because WE LOVE LOVE! XxSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode was recorded on Camaragal land. Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura. And I'm Keisha and Laura's in Bali and I don't want to be here. Can you show up to work with a good attitude? God damn it. No, look, Britt's away. She is currently in Italy posting photos and videos from all over the place. I have come to Bali. Mind you, this is for work.

So I want that to be very clear, Keisha. I am working hard in the sunshine, goddammit. What's that cocktail in the background doing? It's pregnancy. Did you bring food to you? Can I just say thank god for Keisha who actually shows up to work and holds down the fort in this place because if it wasn't for you, all the fucking wheels would be falling off this bandwagon real quick a special shout out to

producer grace who produces your radio show as well she helped me because we really are down some team members today but i do apologize i am in a little bit of a i'm in a bit of a funk at the moment you know when you just get in those moods where you're just like it is not happening right now i moved house over the weekend i severely underestimated how much mental energy it took to move an entire house. It didn't help that my boyfriend was called into work for a 13 and a half hour shift. And so all of the unpacking ended up falling on my shoulders, but I'm just in that weird funk. I think that moving house is equivalent. Actually, no, it's like the Ikea challenge for your relationship, but on steroids, you know how everyone says, if you want to test

your relationship, make some flat pack furniture together, go and spend some time in Ikea. That's child's play in comparison to moving house I remember when we moved so like we moved from our old place to where we currently live pretty much every box I packed and I did it over a few weeks and I did it the normal human way which is you pack one room and you write on the top of the box what room it is and what's inside it the contents that is so organized I'm really surprised sorry Laura I'm really surprised that that's coming from you I mean I'm offended but I'm also not surprised I'm really impressed this comes off the back because like I went through a period in my 20s where I moved so many times so this was a lesson well learned and then my husband decided

to pack one or two rooms when he had some free time one of those rooms was the kitchen he packed all of our plates and our bowls and everything from the kitchen drawers and when they arrived every single thing in those boxes were smashed because he didn't use any paper in between anything. He just laid all of the breakables on top of each other. And I've never had a bigger ick for Matt in my entire life than the day I unpacked our plate drawer. I'm so glad you said it because I got the ick for my boyfriend over the weekend. The reason was because he had told me, oh, there's just like one car load left at the old house because it's only like a 20 minute drive. So we've been doing a lot of car loads and we got the professional movers. And I went back

to look at it and I was like can you math like what is wrong with you how how do you have such a lack of spatial awareness that you think this is one carload this is four this is so much work but I also had a moment over the weekend where I realized that I am becoming my mom like my mom is such a get in and get shit done type of person and so the pace that the movers and my boyfriend was operating at over the weekend, not acceptable. At one point, I caught the removalist paying them $180 an hour, mind you, carrying one piece of a bed frame into my bedroom. And I was like, I am five foot two and I carry two of those.

Like, what is happening? You are on the clock and I am paying for it. This is giving everyone a real insight into the true drill master, that Keisha is. Also, can I just flag one thing that you said? Please never say to your significant other, what is wrong with you? I feel like there's nothing more damaging in a relationship than actually there are, there are more things that are damaging, but like that really sums up some psychological damage that you could do to your partner by saying, what is wrong with you? Rhetorical and dangerous. That's the territory you're heading into.

Yeah, you're right. I probably need to go and self-reflect a little, but it has tested our relationship. We're in the house now. I'm getting through it. It is going to be a process, but there is a really nice side of it as well. And I think it's the fact that we went back to the old house last night to do a bit of cleaning and to kind of finish off packing some boxes. And it was really weird when we left and shut the front door of the old house. This is the first house that we've lived in together, right? He turned to me and he looked at me and he was like, isn't it weird that this place doesn't feel like home anymore? Like the other place already feels like home it feels like it's ours and this kind of just feels like a house

and it was one of those moments where I was like oh you're right like it doesn't represent that anymore even though this was like our first home that we lived in together we're kind of moving into this next chapter and that did feel really lovely and I forgot that he had such a lack of spatial awareness. I had a similar a similar feeling although actually maybe it was more laced with a bit of sadness when Matt and I moved out of the apartment that Britt lives in that was the apartment that we brought both of our kids into the world in that was the first real apartment that we lived in together without housemates and so we kind of went from me being pregnant and us living with housemates to us moving into this apartment and we went from one kid to two kids

really quickly and then moving out of that place kind of felt it felt weird to know that we were never going to go back to the place that Marley, well, actually we go back there quite frequently. Britt's been living there for three years, but it was weird to think that that was the house that Marley took her first steps in and that both of my kids crawled down the hallway. And this really beautiful full circle moment happened the other day when we were at Britt's hen's party. So Britt's sister, Sherry, who also works with us across admin, she was showing me a video of baby Meyer crawling for the first time and it was down the same hallway where my kids had crawled for the first time and it just brought back so many memories but I think that there is this sort

of sentimental attachment when really big milestones have happened in a place and it was really special to see it again something that I have been questioning my life choices on I want to know does anyone else have a completely fucked up for you page on Instagram and what I mean by that is is like you know how Instagram gives you like it's recommended choices and you kind of flick through there and it might be an amalgamation of, I don't know, whatever it is that you're into. It's meant to optimize to the things that you enjoy, the content that you enjoy watching. Now, recently I have seen my for you page get progressively worse and worse and worse over the last few weeks to the point now where it is so beyond criminal. It is so grotesque,

my for you page. I have not done anything to train this algorithm. I absolutely swear on my life, but it's anything from like weird pimple popping videos to like botched surgeries to some sort of like horrific skin infections and then diagrams of people doing poos but from the internal like imagine if you could have like an x-ray of someone doing a poo that's the stuff that's showing up on my for you page what have you been searching laura this is the problem we have always we've even answered ask uncut questions around like how instagram optimizes to things that you engage with I swear on my life apart from some of the weird shit we talk about on this podcast and I'm pretty sure that our phones are listening I do not look for anal fishes on the internet I am

not there in my life yet okay and it went through this weird phase where it was all about body builders at one stage and I was just getting like half-naked men and women going through like bodybuilding contests and then now we've come out like a real medical I don't even know how to describe its side laura you posted a photo of it it's cooked okay i don't know what the hell you've been i don't know where they've got these cookies from i don't know what you've been searching on safari but somehow they have connected dots and that's what you've been left with i have never received so many validating messages from people i received hundreds of dms yesterday hundreds and hundreds from people being like oh my god my for you page is exactly the same it is frightening it

is harrowing. No, I just want back the baby goats. I want back the hobby horsing. I want to be back at the time when Instagram used to feed me pigeon nests. That's when I think I was at my peak Instagram era. That was a good time. I enjoyed the pigeon content. It was a great time. I also hate that your armpits featured so much in that video that went really viral of you talking about pigeons laying eggs and you were just laying on the chair, like literally like this the whole time. People are not going to know what we're talking about, but this video did go particularly viral. I was talking about content that I came across, which was pigeon deaths. Okay.

Don't ask me why. And that reel went so well for us. We'll just repost it. So in case you missed it, you can see it again. And also if you're really into armpits, if that's your kind of content, let me tell you, it'll be right here for you all. I'm going to say, do you think it was the pigeon deaths or do you reckon it was the armpits?

Like maybe we kind of tapped into a kink that we didn't know the internet had. I also don't want to know about it if that's the case. But one thing I did want to share with you guys, if you have found that your Instagram feed, like your For You page has gotten particularly messed up, but also it doesn't just have to be gross stuff like I was experiencing. Maybe you are of an age demographic where you're just being fed nothing but engagement rings and you are single, or maybe you are wanting to have a baby or you're going through infertility issues and all you're getting is baby content and other people's pregnancy announcements. Like sometimes I think, yes, Instagram can get it right, but also

they can get it very very very wrong and sometimes you might engage with content not because you like the content not because you're inspired by the content but it's almost like watching a car accident and then you continue watching it and instagram's like oh you spent time on the platform here let's give you some more so there is a way and some amazing life has sent this to me and it has literally transformed my instagram account you can go into your settings you go into a tab which is towards the bottom and it says content preferences or preferred content, something like that, click into that. And then there is a, at the very bottom of that, it says reset suggested content. And by doing that, it completely resets, not only the accounts that are being shown to you

in the most frequently. So for example, I get a lot of media content on my scrolling page. So I get a lot of like your mama Mia's, your pedestrians, they're kind of the main content that comes up for me and so when I went into this reset suggestion it shows me here are the accounts that we show you the most of so you can go through and actually unfollow not unfollow them but you can decide and curate a little bit better but you can also completely reset your Instagram for you page so the algorithm will start again and you can train it properly to start looking for the things that you actually enjoy so if you feel like you've gone down a rabbit hole of hell this is a way to start again and I have had so many messages from people who have experienced this and they are now

living the good life just like me back to hobby horsing here we come I don't know if you've seen this going around recently I'm assuming that you probably would have there's a lot of content coming out from a I can't remember her name now but she's a British speaker and she's talking about the things that if you start a TikTok account or you start an Instagram account and you put in the details that you're like a 14 year old boy and they will measure how long it takes for you to be served a certain type of content. And she's talking about the problematic side of it. But now that you've reset it, what has it kind of like fed to you as the assumptions that it might already have? Obviously it still knows the type of views you are. It knows that I'm a

woman. It knows that I'm pregnant because I've been looking at a lot of content that surrounds like things that I need for pregnancy. And so I think it already still has a bit of a gauge on curating what is appropriate for what it thinks is appropriate for who you are but it doesn't go deep in specific topics so now it's like a mix it's a real sort of generic mix between fashion and health and lifestyle and then a couple of rogue random ones in there which you can opt to engage with or not whereas before it was like extremely specific if you just want to get back to a good basis give it a crack go do your content preferences your reset suggested content and report back because I feel like it's going to help a lot of people's psychiatric wellness.

Lois, I think that I need to refresh my algorithm. I need to go through and reset. The only thing that I get served at the moment are hair tutorials, which I'm not against. But the other thing that I get so much of is ADHD content. And I spoke about this when we created Cloud actually, the podcast, the 10 part mini series that we did about late age diagnosis of ADHD and my experiences of that diagnosis and how it kind of shifted my perception of the way that I think and the way that I am. I think that initially when I was diagnosed, I must have like searched one thing to do with ADHD and now my entire algorithm, I reckon every second post that I get suggested has to do with ADHD. And funnily enough, yesterday when I opened up my Instagram account, the first thing that came

to the top was a post by the Daily Oz and it had to do with ADHD. And I was then sent this by about 50 lifers saying, oh, I'm interested to get your take on this. And the reason I wanted to talk about it on the podcast is because I think initially the reaction to this, you know, I saw a pedestrian post about it. I saw a couple of other like, you know, young media outlets posting about it. And it seemed to be heralded as like a really good thing. And my perspective is that it's a little bit more complex than that. And I don't necessarily think i agree with it so this is what's happening what the daily oz posted says new south wales gps will soon be able to diagnose adhd and prescribe medication from next year gps across new south

wales will be able to diagnose attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and prescribe medication both children and adults will be affected by the changes which the government will start phasing in from 2026 gps will need to complete extra training to be eligible the changes make new South Wales the third state to simplify the ADHD treatment process following Queensland and Western Australia. Now they then posted what ADHD is and they said that in the next few months GPs will be able to file expressions of interest to undertake specialist training. The government will fund 1,000 spots in the training program. It said that GPs will start prescribing, treating and diagnosing ADHD in local clinics from early 2026, initially prioritizing children over adults.

Laura, what are your thoughts? Well, I feel like it's a tricky one for me to comment on because I've never been through the process of being diagnosed with ADHD, despite all the jokes that is made on this podcast about me potentially having it. I've never gone through the process. And I know, obviously, through you, Keish, and from being very invested in the cloud series, that the only people who can prescribe medication for ADHD are psychiatrists. There are other ways that you can get diagnosed, but if you want to go down the route of being medicated and being put on a prescription, you have to go to a psychiatrist. I think the problem here is that we have a very overwhelmed psychiatric load. The system doesn't work and unfortunately the wait

times are huge. People are paying enormous amounts of money that are not rebated in order to get the help that they need. Accessibility for people who live in rural areas is really poor. And there is a problem that needs to be fixed. One good thing is that the government is recognizing that whether they're going about it in the right or the wrong way. I mean, I'm not sure, but I do think that potentially there is a little bit of fear mongering that goes on when you see these types of changes. It is reassuring to know that it's already happened in Queensland and also in Western Australia I would think that for a GP to become proficient able to diagnose and also medicate for ADHD they would have to go through a similar process in terms of very in-depth training and

also you can't just as a patient rock up for a 15 minute general assessment appointment and then walk out the door with amphetamines like I can't imagine that that's going to be something that's going to shift however without knowing what those changes are on one hand you're like oh yes it is lessening the burden for psychiatrists, but it's certainly not solving a problem. Yeah. And just to give a bit of context, like about the costs and the wait times that you're referring to, I know that my appointments, like I do live in Sydney, so it's probably a little bit more expensive than other parts of the country. But I also know that of the options in Sydney, mine was a relatively reasonable fee. So my initial appointment was about $800

and I think I got about 200 bucks back. And then my follow-up appointments, I can't remember, but I think that they must be about $500 to begin with, and I usually get like $100 and something back, like $160, maybe $180 back from that. So you're out of pocket a lot. How much do you think you spent on this process in total? For my friends that are maybe going down an ADHD diagnosis now, I often say you need $3,000 in the bank.

You'll get some of it back, but you will need to have that amount just to make sure that you'll have all of your appointments covered. And there is a particular issue in a lot of states. I know that New South Wales is especially bad in terms of a lack of accessibility to public funded psychiatric care. So a lot of an ADHD diagnosis, oh sorry, specifically when it comes to ADHD. So a lot of the care has to go private. And obviously for a lot of people, that's just not something that they have money in

the bank for. They might have other priorities that are a lot greater than their psychiatric health. But there's two reasons that are kind of, I don't know, I really feel hesitant about these changes. and one is from like a medical perspective one is that I think psychiatrists go through five to six years of specialty training in New South Wales there has been quite a bit of media exposure recently about the burden that psychiatrists in the public sector are being put under they're basically having people quit at accelerated rates which adds to the workload of the people who are

existing and they've been asking to kind of be paid what they're worth and those have been rejected by the government it seems very strange to me that instead of saying okay well we're going to increase funding for psychiatric care or we're going to increase the rebate that a patient might receive from that private psychiatric care which makes it more affordable they've just said oh we're just going to defer it to a different specialty like it seems very strange to me that that's the direction that they've taken and the other reason that I feel and this is a lot more personal this is a lot more like internal and it has to do with a lot of the stigma that I think people with ADHD already face. Like the amount of times I've heard the phrase, oh, everybody has

ADHD now. Like, you know, there's this over-diagnosis, over-medication problem. Everybody's got ADHD. It's the world we live in. It's the algorithms, you know. That was even one of your fear when we were talking about creating cloud in the first place, your very initial reaction was like, do you think anyone cares? Because people are talking about it so much now that the oversimplified conversation is that everyone thinks they have it and everyone wants to get diagnosed. And there's two reasons that I think that's the case. One is that the symptoms of ADHD are common symptoms that occur in other psychiatric conditions. They also occur in extreme burnout. They also occur in stress. There's already so much stigma about medication

for ADHD and the fact that everybody wants it. And so it's just so easy to go to your doctor and just get a prescription. And I'm sure that that's not going to be the case, but I think we already face enough stigma as it is and I think that the necessary checks and balances that you have to go through to get a diagnosis especially if you want to be medicated it almost legitimizes the condition in a way like it almost made me feel as though I was like no I've had someone who really knows their shit who really knows what's going on examine me thoroughly and their professional opinion is that I have ADHD and so in a way I felt like it legitimized the condition and that might be my own internal bias. Like that might just be because I'm fearful of the fact that people

judge me for having ADHD or judge me for taking medication. But I do think that increasing the accessibility through GPs might actually add to that stigma. Yeah. And I guess the other part of this and the thing that we don't have the information on is how much of the GP process will be rebated to patients because ultimately getting a diagnosis for adhd is an incredibly privileged position to be in not many people who have or who are struggling financially have three thousand dollars in the bank where they can go through that process so there are a lot of people that remain undiagnosed who probably could and would find a lot of benefit through being able to seek out that but it's the same for anything it's the same for people who have depression or

severe anxiety or a multitude of other very significant and potentially even worse mental health disorders. That's why so many people fall through the cracks in our systems is simply because seeking out that care is so expensive. I guess like I come back to this one idea that and I know like Keisha you've got way more skin in the game than I do. I do appreciate that they're trying to make something more accessible but I guess it does feel like it's a band-aid solution to a far greater problem that's happening within our mental health care system. Yeah that was kind of my overarching response and so I understand why a lot of people are celebrating this particularly if you're someone who doesn't have access to psychiatric care like whether that be physical

limitations that you live somewhere where it's not accessible for you or whether it is a financial cost or whether the wait times for getting in to see a psychiatrist are just so long that it deters you from actually doing it because I will put my hand up and say my initial referral from my GP expired before I even got in to see a psychiatrist. It was, I went and saw him about six months later for a completely separate thing. And he was like, Hey, how did you go with that? Like the last time you were here, you know, I gave you that referral. Like, how did you go getting in? And I was like, Oh yeah, I made a couple of calls and their wait times were like eight months. So I just, I called a couple and I said, I'd call back if I didn't find that one

that was any shorter, but I just forgot about it. Like I was just like, it was just too long. I'm just kind of waiting until the wait times go down and he was like you have ADHD you need to get in the queue like you need to get in the queue so like in terms of that I can see it being a positive thing but yeah I don't know I just I felt a bit uncomfortable reading it and initially a lot of the comments were in full support of it and I think that's why I was like oh this is not the solution I would have thought would improve the challenges that we are already facing in terms of like adhd diagnosis well i'd love to know if you're a gp who's a lifer slide into our dms in terms of like what your opinions are on this and we'll post that on our socials but also if you

haven't listened to cloud yet and you have thought about or maybe all your friends tell you you have adhd and you've been considering going through the diagnosis process go and have a listen to that 10 part mini series because there's so much information there for what is happening in our current age in terms of women being in their 30s or their 20s or their 40s or even later and thinking maybe this is something that they've struggled with lifelong and seeking out a solution for it. So we'll put the link in the show notes as well. One thing the world and the internet seems to be talking about at the moment is Kris Jenner's new face. I am fascinated by, and now I know it's not a new trend. I know that this is something that is like the tale as old

as plastic surgery. This idea that we're seeing coming across in media at the moment where women are unveiling. Celebrities are unveiling their new face. We saw it with Lindsay Lohan. We saw it with Anne Hathaway. And now I think Kris Jenner is peak unveiling. If you guys haven't seen it, I'm sure you have. Kris Jenner was in Paris recently, and she's been attending Kim Kardashian's trial. And there's been a lot of photos that have come out of her where she looks literally 40. She's gone from looking like a very good 69-year-old woman to having some very extensive surgery, some very extensive procedures that have resulted in her face looking essentially like she's 40 years old, even younger potentially. She looks like she could be Kim Kardashian's sister,

not Kim Kardashian's mother, put it that way. And I guess this has become like the latest talking point in this ongoing debate that there is around aesthetic culture, around aging, and also around the beauty standards of the influencer age that we are in. We often have the internal debate here at Life Uncut around whether transparency when it comes to plastic surgery is a good thing. Like, do we demand that of celebrities that we look up to or that we aspire to be? Do we appreciate it when celebrities are honest about the surgeries or at least honest about the fact that they've had surgery? Does it actually make a difference or is it something that's really validating and being like, okay, well, we know that that wasn't a natural achievement or that it's come from

enhancements. I also would say that this isn't just to celebrities. For some reason, I just feel as though whenever this comes up, I'm always the main one to talk about it when we talk about cosmetic injectables. We've received really, really mixed feedback. One hand, people will write into us and they will say, hey, I really appreciate that you're honest about it. It makes me feel better hearing your experiences, particularly because I've kind of spoken about both sides. I've talked about needing to get my lip filler dissolved because it migrated and it wasn't, you know, it just didn't look good. I had a bit of lip filler blindness at one point and they were too big. It's not a good time. Also really expensive. So I've spoken about the negative

sides of it. And then we've also got feedback from people saying, Hey, you need to stop talking about this. Like the way that you speak about it, you talk about it like it is so normal and it's not normal. And we've kind of unpacked that within ourselves and, and I can absolutely see where those people are coming from. And so I kind of sit in this area where I can see where everyone gets their perspective. And I've thought about this and thought, okay, but what do I want from either my friends, the people around me that I work with? What do I want from celebrities? Do I want them to outright tell me when they've had some type of enhancement, whether that be cosmetic injectables, whether that be surgery, whether that be, I don't know what other options there

are on the market, but you get my point. Do I want them to only be honest about it if they're asked? or do I want them to keep it completely private? Because that might impact me in a way where I think, oh, well, maybe that's what I need to get done as well. And I kind of, yeah, I'm actually not completely in one category. I think I personally skew more towards the transparency side, but I wanted to go into maybe why that is the case. So when it comes to Kris Jenner, she was asked so much about her surgery that one of her reps actually had to come out and confirm to Page Six and to People magazine that she had in fact had a particular doctor do her surgery. There were apparently all these other surgeons around Hollywood that were taking credit for

Kris Jenner's new face. And so they came out and they said, we can confirm that Dr. Stephen Levine did Kris Jenner's recent work, but they did not actually disclose what she had had done. Can you imagine how much the business of that doctor, Dr. Stephen Levine, how much he would be blowing up on social media now because I think that that's like the biggest question people want to know well people want to know what they've had done but they also want to know who did the work that's the thing right because not all plastic surgery is built the same and I agree with you completely Keisha when you talk about this seesaw between transparency and promotion and that's where I kind of feel uncomfortable with it because I'm like yes I want to know from a transparency

perspective but do I actually want to know because then I'm like oh maybe that's something I could do Like, does it encourage me to also seek out this age-defying aspect of it? And I don't know where I sit. And Britt and I have had so many debates about this because she, I think Britt, has a slightly different take to me and doesn't think of it as the promotion as being necessarily negative. But I kind of worry about the way in which society is shifting. I mean, think about the Kardashians 10 years ago or 15 years ago. They would deny every single thing that they'd ever had done.

Kylie Jenner denied every procedure she had done around her lips until one day she talked about having her lips dissolved they have always said no no no no no no we never got a butt lift we never got this we never got that it's simply this product I'm using or my waist training whatever it was like corset that she was hocking at one stage but I think that the tides around plastic surgery have shifted and I do think that we're seeing a lot more transparency from people who are having it done from celebrities, from influencers. I'm just not sure whether it's had the desired result. I don't know whether the transparency has made me feel any better or whether it was just this bias that we kind of held onto for a really long time around wanting it.

When it comes to the transparency, the thing that I also question is like how transparent is helpful. Chris has admitted that she's had surgical procedures by this doctor, but they haven't actually broken down what she has had. So now there's all this speculation on the internet about what she may or may not have had done. There was a doctor on YouTube with 5.42 million followers called Dr. Young, and he said that he thinks her results are because of weight loss, likely from a weight loss medication. He thinks that she's had a lower facelift.

He said that that treats jowls, lifts the lower face and neck to give the sharper jawline. He also said that she may have not overdone it with filler. So whether she's had that dissolved or whether it's kind of naturally degraded over time. He thinks she may have had a possible rhinoplasty. So that's a nose job. Her nose is a little bit of a different structure to what it was before. A possible eyebrow lift and possible eyelid removal. I find it interesting because in the past she has actually come out and said, you know, I've had breast surgery. I've had breast augmentation. I've had that done a couple of

times. She said that she's had Botox and filler. On an episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians in 2018, they actually documented her getting earlobe surgery, which is particularly random. but I think it's interesting that she has been transparent about some things and she's been transparent about having surgery, but not exactly what was done. I guess the problem that I have with it, and maybe this is where I kind of come back to the whole debate around promotion versus transparency. And that is because the lack of information actually negates how serious these procedures are. And also the fact that for someone like the Kardashians or for people who work in Hollywood or celebrities, their face is also their moneymaker. It's a commodity. They need

this as well. And I think that there was a really great Marie Claire article that summed this up perfectly. It said, for women whose entire brand revolves around maintaining image, not just their own, but also her family's, this is specifically about Kris Jenner, this glow up is business strategy as much as beauty philosophy, which raises a bigger question. Why are we still surprised when older women in the public eye refuse to age on anyone else's terms with this though and this conversation and the fact that you can talk about oh I had a facelift but actually not showcase the enormous load that having a facelift has on a human it is a major surgery I think that we don't have that level of transparency yet and yes of course you can go

into plastic surgeon accounts on Instagram and you can see before and after photos I'm sure we've all seen recovery photos from what a full facelift looks like and it is fucking harrowing like it is such a frightening thing to look at but the more that we see the glorified before and afters I think the less we think about the process that it takes to get there we also forget about the real severe complications that can arise from a very elective non-necessary surgery that we're having done because we're told that these beauty standards need to be upheld and I would be lying if I didn't say that it in some ways affects me and that I don't mean like I'm not traumatized by it by any means but I mean like I see these things I see someone like Kris Jenner looking

fucking amazing post-surgery and I go maybe I'm gonna have that when I'm 50 or 45 or 55 like I entertain the thoughts of it I say it as jokes with my friends when we're all talking about it we're out for dinner but there's a part of me that also thinks well then this can become achievable and it can become attainable. One thing though, that I do think puts celebrities in a real rock and hard place is that we expect them to answer the questions that are asked of them. And if a celebrity has had plastic surgery, like for example, and I shouldn't say that she has for certain, we don't know, but a really good example of someone who denies ever doing anything is Paris Hilton. Recently, she was quoted in an interview saying, I am completely natural. I've never even

had Botox I just have a fantastic 10 skin step routine which seems unfathomable it really does yeah because her eyebrows don't move when she says it in the interview if you watch the video her face is paralyzed like absolutely paralyzed it's giving when JLo was like I just have a lot of olive oil and my skincare routine I'm like babe we're not blind we're also not stupid come on but also I kind of feel for them in some way because I'm like well you've been asked a question you don't owe anyone the autonomy over knowing whatever it is that you want to do to your body but because you are a celebrity and you're in the media then there is an expectation for that we wanted to get your take on this and so we put up some polls on instagram and these have

as at the time of recording there are nearly 10 000 votes on these polls one of the questions we asked was do you think celebrities should be honest about getting plastic surgery and 74 of people said, yes, I prefer the truth. We then asked, is it more harmful to deny cosmetic work or promote it like it's no big deal? 36% of people said denial is worse. Only 4% of people said promoting it casually is worse, but 60% of people said both can be equally damaging. And this last question that we asked is where I think my perspective changes. I think privacy is acceptable. If people don't want to talk about it, I do find it a little bit harmful if they are in the denial space, but I particularly have an issue with it if they are monetizing or they are

profiting off of the claim that that is something that is natural. And like, for example, what I mean is that if someone has had liposuction or if they've had a BBL, but they're selling fitness programs or nutrition programs to look the way that they look, that's where I really draw the line. Like if you've had a facelift and you're selling to a customer that you got that look by using a serum, I find it particularly misleading. I find it like you're really taking advantage of a customer in that way. If you have had a BBL and you're selling a squat program to do at the gym, like that's bullshit. To me, I'm just like, stop taking advantage of people with the fact that they don't know what you have done to attain it. I don't care that

you've had surgery. I personally don't have a problem with it. And I don't have a problem with you talking about it. I do have a problem with you manipulating people's perception of what you had to do to get that. Yeah. There's a great quote from Jamila Jamil that I came across, which says, and she obviously has very staunch beliefs in this space. And she wrote 95% of celebrities and influencers are complicit in the assault on women by not saying anything about it, by not calling out the use of Photoshop and actually by perpetuating the narrative that looks are the most important thing by only ever talking about looks and having surgeries without admitting it, you are committing a crime against your gender. Is that a little bit extreme?

Potentially, but I do think it plays into this idea that without having the knowledge, especially when so many of these celebrities have commercial brands that are based around the way they look, you know, we made the reference of Kim Kardashian having weight trainers. She also had appetite suppressing lollipops there for one point in time and it's like it's quite contradictory to have someone selling a product that is supposed to improve or enhance your looks when we know that so many of these celebrities looks are enhanced by cosmetic surgery but I guess the thing with Kris Jenner and I know that she's a bit of an outlying case because the transformation was so dramatic normally we see subtle enhancements like for example JLo or Anne Hathaway and we're

trying to speculate as to where the surgery has taken place and there's a lot of back and forth around media there's like you said TikTok doctors who are all over it trying to figure out exactly what it has been done is it non-surgical or is it surgical is it lasers is it filler like there's so much speculation that surrounds these things whereas in Kris Jenner's case the transformation was so unbelievably fucking dramatic even if she wanted to there's no way that she can chop that up to coconut water I don't think that she was in a place or would have ever had the opportunity to deny having the surgery that she's had but like I said you know and I think going back to this idea of transparency I think it's caveated by the fact that it's not

actually transparent we know surgery has taken place but we don't know how much also we know that the post that she's posting on her social media on Instagram are highly photoshopped so you only see this beautification of the surgery you don't actually see the implications of it which is the thing that I kind of have an issue with I wish we saw more of the process I'm like if you're going to be transparent show me the recovery show me the drainage like I want to see I don't want my Instagram feed to get fucked up again but like I want to see I want to see that side of it because I think that that would deter me and maybe it would deter a greater population of people who feel this pressure to continue to look a certain way especially as we start to

slowly age and I guess the thing is celebrities are damned if they do and they're damned if they don't I mean I think of people like Sarah Jessica Parker who was criticized and the media could not stop talking about her aging face when they did the reboot of Sex and the City so on one side it doesn't matter whether you age gracefully or seemingly not gracefully you're going to be spoken about if you're a woman who works in this industry so if you're making your money from the way that you look. I understand why there is this pressure to go down the route of surgery, but it is becoming more commonplace for people who are not working in media and who are not celebrities to start opting into surgeries as well. We've often spoken about that. I think you can be the victim of

something whilst also contributing to the issues that that thing causes. And this is particularly relevant for women in media and beauty standards. And what I mean by it is that all of us are kind of we're all under this pressure to not age we're all victims of the beauty standards that are reinforced on us but by getting things like cosmetic injectables by getting things like surgeries are we not then further perpetuating the beauty standards that other women have to look up to and I think that it's quite hard to actually separate those like are the Kardashians adding to the beauty pressure that we all feel to look a certain way or are they just victims of what the world has expected from them. And, you know, like you just said in the reboot of Sex and

the City and just like that, these women were on our screens when they were younger. And so when they came back, I think they were under a lot of pressure to look how they did before, but then the world criticized them because they looked like they had made effort to look like they did before. However, I am curious about where the line between transparency and over-promotion actually lies, because I think within myself, I have found it. And you guys might remember on the 7th of March, Meghan Trainor posted on Instagram that she had done a collaboration with a breast implant company. Now she tagged them. It was paid promotion in the top of it. And she spoke about, you know, wanting a new change for her and that she wanted to go with a natural look. And so she

used this particular brand of implant and she ended up performing a song, you know, her song all about that bass where the lyrics are, yeah, it's pretty clear. I ain't no size two. Well, two weeks ago she was performing it in Huntington beach and she changed the lyrics of the song to, yeah, it's pretty clear. I got some new boobs. So on one hand, I think we have transparency of saying, yes, I actually have had surgery. And I myself find that quite helpful because I think it demystifies that this has been a natural thing that they just happened to look like that. And maybe if I did the same things that they do, I could look like her too. But I do wonder whether an outright promotion of it in something like a paid collaboration really raises issues with the

fact that if you're a brand partner with something like a breast augmentation company, you're not able to speak about any negative side effects. You know, we've done a whole episode with Dr. Kirstie Seawood on breast implant illness. And like you just said, Laura, you want to see more of like the after effects of what these surgeries can actually create. What actually goes into the recovery? What are some of the bad side effects of having surgery like this to achieve a certain look? Well, I think it's particularly problematic when we get into paid collaboration world where you're not actually allowed to talk about those negative side effects because you might get sued from the company that have paid you to put an implant inside of your body. Well, when you're

getting paid for something, a bias is instantly created. And I know there's been a lot of discussion around this specific example with Megan Traynor. And I think it's because, well, it's twofold. One, because it is a very specific type of promotion. So it is for a company called Motiva USA, which is like their breast implant. It's the actual silicone implant. It's not a surgical institute. It's not a specific surgeon. It is the specific product, which then means that patients walk into a clinic and say, I want this product, which is something that should be prescribed by the healthcare professional. So I think that's one great area. But the second part of this is that I think so many people originally loved Meghan Trainor because of everything that

she stood for in this whole body inclusivity space. It just shows that there is this incredible pressure on women who are celebrities to continuously reinvent themselves. I think for anyone who watched the Taylor Swift documentary a bazillion years ago, she talked about how there is this constant need to reinvent the person that you are to stay interesting in media to stay forward-facing to be able to continue to commercialize yourself and that's exactly what she's done yes she took it a step further because she really commercialized herself but also she's gone through this kind of like reinvention Megan Trainor has like she's spoken openly about being on Ozempic she's obviously spoken openly now about having her breasts done

and so the person that she was that we all know her for from 15 years ago is a reinvented version now and there is a part of that that I like really think is admirable that she's so open about it but I also agree I think that there are a lot of problems when we go down the path of normalizing plastic surgery so much that it's not normalized it is absolutely fundamentally promoted by a paid promotion I guess for me and I really don't know what the antidote to all of this is because it's evident that plastic surgery is here to stay. It's evident that it has become so accessible and so normal. But I think it's really important to also know that not all plastic surgery is built the same. Not all surgeons have the same expertise, experience, qualifications, and skills.

The level of accessibility of people flying to Turkey or flying to Thailand and getting things done overseas because they simply want the procedure, they want the outcome, but they're not necessarily fully cognizant of what is going to happen to them in the recovery process. And I think for a lot of the TikToks that I've seen or people that I've spoken to who have been through major plastic surgery, a lot of them have spoken about how the recovery was way harder than they ever expected it to be. Kanye's mum died in elective plastic surgery. So I think it's particularly interesting that the Kardashians are quite transparent about it. Well, there's also been like some very full-on lawsuits class action lawsuits across Australia to show that there are

some negligences that can occur in the plastic industry I think that the pendulum has swung so far now in the opposite direction that we have become too desensitized to plastic surgery I'm not saying it should be stigmatized I'm not saying that we should shame people who get it done but I definitely don't think it should be an expectation and it's I think liberating the more that we see women who are, quote unquote, aging gracefully in media because it gives people the ability to choose, you know, choose your own ending, I guess, in terms of this really immense beauty culture and beauty standards that we all seem to have to live by. Yeah, I don't even know where I land on this myself. I think I can see everyone's perspective here. I can see people's

perspective where they're like, we should not be talking about this at all because the more we talk about it, the more it normalizes it, the more it impacts young impressionable minds to thinking that they need certain things they need certain procedures to be beautiful and that's a criticism that we have even received and I understand where people are coming from like there was a time on this podcast where I quite naively and yes this is something I probably regret saying I kind of likened you know Botox or like any cosmetic injectable to being not that different from getting your hair dyed and boy oh boy did I get some feedback about lash you know where I was oversimplifying it was the fact that there are complications that can arise from injectables.

There's not that many complications that can arise from coloring your hair. Like maybe you'll get a bad hair color. Maybe it will burn. Maybe it will split. But I think the interesting thing in that Keisha is your own bias in terms of how you had become desensitized to something that you did. This is the thing, right? We are able to make validations or excuses for the choices that we make. And I don't want to say this in terms of shaming anyone who chooses to get any injectables or surgery or whatever like we've been very open I have spoken about every single thing I've ever had done to my face some things I regretted some things I fucking love and continue to do and as soon as I push this baby out I will go and get my profilo but I do take issue with and I think it's

a very common statement that a lot of people make and we've probably made it on this podcast before as well is that when people say I don't have any issue when people go and get surgeries or plastic surgeries to change something that they don't like about themselves to make themselves more confident on one hand I don't have an issue with that but on the other hand I do have an issue with that and the reason for that is is because I ask the question why do you not feel confident in yourself why are you not happy with that thing that you want to get changed that is completely subjective that is completely aesthetic looking and if the answer to that is is because it doesn't match up to society's expectations of beauty then I say that's a really fucked thing because you

have an insecurity that's being created in you because you don't look the way that you have been told from all the sources and all the input that is the way that you should look. So ultimately I'm like, fix the source, don't fix yourself. And I don't think that that fixes the problem. And so I challenge that statement now when it's like, well, I don't care if people go and get something done if it makes them feel better about themselves. Do you think they were able to fix the source though? Like, and I'm truly asking this because I don't know whether the pressure that we're all slander to conform to beauty standards. I don't know if I have it in me to psychologically fight that. I don't know if I have it in me to fix the body image issues that have been conditioned into

me for 30 years. I completely see where you're coming from and I wholeheartedly agree with it. I don't know if I'm going to be able to escape it and get to a point where I kind of accept myself. And so it raises a question in me where I'm like, yes, I do want transparency because I don't want people lying about what they've done to achieve certain things. But does that then just further perpetuate what I feel I need to do? And did the goalposts keep on shifting? You know, I've had filler, I've had Botox. Now that I'm seeing people get these facelifts that make them look 40 years younger, what's going to be next? Like, what am I going to want next? When am I actually going to reach a point where I look at my face in the mirror and I go, yeah, I'm happy with this.

this is good. I guess that that's kind of like takes us full circle in terms of what we wanted to talk about, because the reality is, is we are receiving more transparency now, but is it enough transparency or is it the kind of transparency that is actually helpful? I even think of people on a smaller scale, like Skye Wheatley documenting that she had the cat eye surgery recently. We also have people like Indy Clinton who had a rhinoplasty recently document that as well. and I think for so long we've been demanding transparency but now that we're receiving transparency we're realizing that actually it isn't the antidote that we've all wanted for so long and you can see that from the backlash that both of these Australian women received

Indy Clinton has received so much backlash around her having this rhinoplasty and talking about it openly people commenting on the fact that they like the way she looked better before rather than now it's been a really negative spiral across her social media also on the flip side of that the same thing happened with Sky Wheatley when she was documenting it. So I do think it's like you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. I don't think that there is a solution to here, but it's interesting to try and unpack the two realities that surround plastic surgery. All right, it is time for Suck and Sweet. Keisha, I know what your suck is. You're stuck in the studio. No, I was in a real foul mood at the start of this episode. I feel like I've kind of come

good now. Thank you, Laura. You've woken me up. My suck for the week is that for some reason, my anxiety has been absolutely fucked for the past couple of weeks and every now and then I feel like I'm really on top of it and I think that anyone who has disordered anxiety may relate to this you can feel as though you're doing all of the things that you've got to do and that you know you're just kind of cruising along normally in life and even for myself I've been like maybe I don't have anxiety anymore and then it just hits you like a ton of bricks and recently I don't know if this is maybe getting a bit too specific but for some reason I've just had these flashes of really really terrifying and horrible situations sometimes they've happened when I'm asleep so

that like in a nightmare style but they can also happen when I'm just like walking around and they have been so bad lately that I feel as though I've kind of built up some strategies to try and manage my anxiety I'm also medicated for it but then sometimes it will just hit me in a sense where I'm like where the fuck did that come from and why and I can't really alleviate myself of that because it just came so randomly like things like you know I had Delilah next to me the other day and we were unpacking things into the car and I just had this vision of her getting hit by a car or I would be walking to work and I will have a vision of like the wall collapsing and like really traumatic horrendous things and for some reason they are just infiltrating my mind at

the moment and it's been really awful to kind of manage and I'm not sleeping very well and I think that that makes it even worse because I'm feeling tired and exhausted and it makes the anxiety worse what do you do when you have these sorts of like I don't even know what to describe them as because there is a word that describes these sort of like doomsday type thoughts and I think it's something and not to like relate it to motherhood at all but it is something that a lot of mums talk about after they've had kids like thinking about all the awful things that could happen or like near misses that could have happened every so often I will have like this and it's definitely not something that I have to struggle with day to day with the intensity that it sounds like you are at

the moment but I will think about a near experience that could have ended very differently with something horrible happening to the children and then you get into this awful like oh my god like and I wonder whether it's a self-protection mechanism so that you're hyper vigilant or whether it is just I don't know your brain doing things that you can't control whether it comes from anxiety like I don't know what the premise is or why it kind of unfolds for some people yeah and I feel the same I think for me it like obviously happens a bit more when I'm in periods of stress and like moving house and we've had a lot going on lately so maybe that's the cause of it but yeah I don't know I just wanted to speak about it today because I think that every

now and then I have these realizations that I'm like oh that's right I live with disordered anxiety like this is something that unfortunately I'm going to have to manage time and time and time again. And maybe the management strategies that I have in place right now are actually not working to their full capacity. So that's been a bit of a downer. But my high for the week is that we've moved into a new house and I'm just, yeah, I'm actually just so excited for this next chapter. Another kind of part of this is that I spoke quite a while ago, it would be about eight months ago, about my boyfriend sitting the biggest exams of his career. And we got some really, really, really good news on the day that we moved into the house and that he passed that exam and so

I just feel like we're moving into this completely separate you know the energy of this home is just different it is a no study zone for a while and it feels so good to kind of be in this more positive space I think living in the other house there was always like there was always the thought of like we just need to get through this like we just need to get through this study period and this period of like intense stress and anxiety and and then we'll get to enjoy our lives and I feel like now we're kind of at that point and we're about to go into this fun enjoyment phase so yeah that's a massive high for me what's your suck and sweet my suck for the week is I mean and it sounds silly because I know I kind of spoke about it quickly at the beginning of the episode but being away

from the girls as much as I love being here and I really wanted to come and spend this time with my sister and getting work done I just miss them and Matt like sends me little updates and he sent me a photo of them this morning on their way to daycare and school and they both had their backpacks on their front and he was like look they're both pregnant their front packs they had they were wearing their backpacks as bellies and they were pretending to be pregnant because they're obsessed now with pregnancy and having a baby in the house I think sometimes especially for me I have these real moments of gratitude when I'm away from my family and then I just can't wait to get back to them so that for me is my suck is being away from the girls but they are arriving

they're coming in like five days and then we have a week here together with the fam so that's going to be great and then my sweet for the week is being here and having a week of dedicated time to designing to having business meetings with my sister all of the stuff that we just don't get to do and there is a big juggle that happens in life at the moment between parenting trying to maintain a great relationship sometimes drink eight glasses of water a day see my friends and also run two or actually two and a half very independent businesses and often I find that life on cut requires so much of me and so much time and input and then Tony May is always there with its hand up yeah sorry we're the needy child aren't we well there's so much to do and I it's a really like hard balance

and I think for anyone who has multiple projects on the go it's kind of like the squeaky wheel gets the oil you know the the project that is requiring the attention is the one that you put your attention in and then all of a sudden the other one's like hey remember me like I'm now need attention or I'm struggling or whatever so these weeks that we get to come and do this together my sister usually have like a work planning period over Christmas and then we also have these like a couple of overseas holidays that we do together working holidays and for me they are so enriching and I get so much work done and I get so excited about the business and after 16 years of doing Tony May it's so nice to still have these like really really sort of inspiration filled periods

where I get so excited about what work looks like and designing new collections and we're doing a shoot over here and so yeah my sweet for the week is absolutely just being able to have a job that I fucking love every day and show up to work out so that is my sweet and then soon my kids will be here and all balance will be restored and I probably will be thinking that I should have enjoy the time that there are way more and while we're speaking about it uh i'm sorry for saying that i didn't want to be here i also love my job i have a great job and i'm so glad that you get to be over there with alicia because she's so much fun yeah she's the best well guys that is it from us and if you love the episode or you want to find out any more you can go and follow us at our

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