Life Uncut - B*TCH PLEASE! The psychology behind mean girl behaviour

Episode Date: September 21, 2020

Buckle up Lifers we have a big one today!Firstly, Laura announced she is having baby number 2 and we couldn't be happier! She kept that a bloody good secret did't she! We chat all about her finding out, telling Matt, how and why she kept it a secret for 5 months, how this pregnancy is different and if she knows what she is having.Then we get in to the big stuff. Mean girl behaviour, Internalised mysogyny, Internalised sexism, whatever you want to call it. We seem to be seeing it everywhere at the moment, thanks to the likes of reality tv, articles, social media, within our own friendship groups, So we wanted to take a deep dive and get all disecty with it. Find out exactly what it is, why it is still so prevalent in this day and age and what we can do about it. All in all we found the research so interesting and we think this is a great conversation to take to your family and friends! Let's get in to it shall we!?If you guys love listening please share this with a friend or family. We are an independent podcast and we want to stay in your ears! So please if you're feeling generous, or even if you're not (lols) please his subscribe, 5 stars, and leave a review because this is what helps us to grow!And share the love, because, well, we love love xSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Guys, guess who's back? Welcome to another episode of Life Uncut. Spoiler, it's us. We're back. We had a week off, guys, and we are so sorry, but we had a little mini vacay. We actually did try to record for you. We took our equipment up.

It was a really big mission. We failed miserably. It went to hell in a handbasket, but we are back. We are rejuvenated. Hang on. Hell in a handbasket? Is that even a saying? Yeah, when something goes terribly, it goes to hell in a handbasket.

Not once in my 30, I don't want to say how old I am. You were on The Bachelor with Nick Cummins, who had the most outrageous one-liners, and you're going to pull me up on going to hell in a handbasket. Yeah, but he was just like flat out like a lizard drinking. He didn't say anything about hell in a handbasket. Also, if that's completely incorrect, do not DM me. I don't want to know about it.

I'm going to keep on saying it. Don't at us. So, yeah, like Britt said, we did bring the equipment up to Byron. We had great intentions. It went terribly, terribly wrong. So instead we are well rested and here to bring you the best content that your ears have ever listened to. You know what the worst part of that was actually?

We still put in the effort and the hours. So we still did all the research. we still sat down for half a day and recorded and did everything so for nothing so we wasted this our precious precious precious holiday time trying to and i mean we just have to accept defeat sometimes sometimes things just don't work we did also have someone who we were interviewing and i maybe didn't press record look it's thin ice laura it's a touchy touchy subject and it's too soon so i don't want to talk about that it's the first time it's ever happened but it happened guys it was Zac Efron she didn't hit record and Brittany's chance is gone he's now dating a normie

you realize you are the reason that I'm not dating Zac Efron you can blame me for all your problems in life but anyway guys it's nice to be back thank you to everybody who understood also you know we this isn't our full-time job this is like a really like fun extra thing that we do that we love doing for you guys and we we get so much out of it although we do put the time in like it's a full-time job but it's not our main job totally and so you know there are definitely weeks and from time to time when we find it really difficult to bring you the consistency of content that you guys are used to but we obviously put all our time and energy into trying to bring you two episodes a week and we just want to reassure you that we are back baby and what's on that i hate when you sing

so much well on that note um i guess now we can say it we have actually looked back over the year and almost year and a half we've been doing this and we were like how many episodes have we actually missed or not given on time and there aren't actually many there's been a few in the last month or two that might have been a little bit late as in a couple of hours and we can now tell you that that is because Laura has been insanely unwell with her second baby I'm having a baby I mean it's so weird don't get too excited Laura no I'm really really excited I mean it's it's obviously been something that's been happening for a while now there is a little part of me that feels bad that I've kept it from you guys and you like exactly what Britt said I was really sick

with morning sickness for the first trimester but yeah I've seen the light the light at the end of the tunnel of the second trimester times are good well we will get into some questions I have some questions for you but I just want to say like just so you guys can understand and it's been hard because we haven't been able to tell you there were some times some days where we were recording and this is why some of them didn't get to on time some days would be recording and Laura's looking at me and I was like oh shit you don't look well and she'd be like she'd start like with her mouth and I was like oh my god you're gonna vomit and she'd literally have to run to the bathroom and there were just times she was physically like unable to sit here and hold a

conversation for an hour and a half and I was like babe it's okay like if you can't do it we can't get the episode out there was this one day that we were recording and I had such bad indigestion I just kept spew burping into the microphone and then I had to spend like four hours trying to edit out every single time I stopped started because I couldn't breathe properly so these are the things that we've been going through it was ridiculous um but anyway Laura congratulations I know obviously I've known for a long time but it's really exciting news how do you feel that you can actually now share it get this weight off your shoulders well firstly I just want to say thanks to everybody from our community as well who's been so incredibly supportive especially

because I mean if you've been listening to Life Uncut from the beginning then you know I've been really open with our pregnancy journey and that Matt and I have had a couple of miscarriages now and so that was one of the biggest reasons why I wasn't really comfortable with sharing it and I kind of was just not that I was in denial like I definitely was like I'm pregnant but I was kind of in denial that maybe this baby was going to stick around for a little while so I didn't want to make it public and then have to go through another public conversation about miscarriage. So firstly before I get too excited and too ahead of myself I just want to recognize that I know that if there's anybody listening to this episode, who's currently going through a really

difficult fertility journey, it can be a real slap in the face to hear another happy pregnancy announcement. And I just want to say like, I really recognize that and I know what that feels like. And so I really feel, I really hope that you get your rainbow baby. Like I genuinely mean that in regards to like Matt and I, I guess we're like fully halfway now, but it's really different with your second baby because like with Marley I was so in tune with the pregnancy I was like oh today my baby's a blueberry now my baby's the size of an orange it's growing eyelids now you forget you're pregnant honestly I like get to two o'clock in the afternoon I'm like god I've got bad indigestion oh that's a foot in my lung there we are anyway I'm at the point in the pregnancy now

where I'm not talking about the glowy gorgeous wonderfulness of pregnancy I'm talking about how like your vagina starts getting fat and your nipples go black and why is there a beard growing on my stomach hang on wind it back your vagina gets fat oh my your vagina gets so fat what do you mean like chub like chubby it looks like well mine doesn't look like it yet but like lo and behold at nine months some people get a really swollen vagina and it looks like a chicken breast just think of a really juicy chicken breast and that is let's move along to the hairy beard on your tummy which at the nine month mark when i had marley i was shaving your stomach or the floppy vagina or all of the above my stomach i really hope that there's other like pregnant

women out there or people who have kids who listen to this and relate like pregnancy just does the weirdest shit to your body it's not normal it's well it is normal we just don't talk about it from like growing excess hair to losing your hair to getting a fat vagina to your nipples going black or to your nipples getting really long like all this weird stuff happens and nobody talks about it well see the thing is I didn't know any of that I didn't know any of what you just said I just thought you had a hairy stomach no I was gonna say in a fat vagina but like that's awkward well you see me in a bikini so no but but for real it's actually nice to hear someone talk about the things that no one does talk about because I'm sure there's a lot of women

out there like me right now being like what the vagina puts on weight but I guess the thing as well is is like it's one of the reasons well I mean this is my assumption but I think it's one of the reasons why we struggle so much with the changes that our body goes through when we're pregnant and that's because like there's only very limited aspects of that that we talk about we don't really talk about varicose veins we don't really talk about like fluid retention and I think that there's like this lack of preparation for just how weird shit gets with your body and like a lot of it goes back to normal a lot of it kind of there's this once the baby comes out it kind of like slowly gradually goes back to a new a new normal not the same but very

similar not a streamlined like no let's like i'm no 20 year old but yeah i think it's really important for women to talk about these things and be open about it so that when you are pregnant and shit starts going really weird you're like hey that's okay that girl from the bachelor had a fat vagina too. I feel less alone. No, but absolutely. I can't wait for Daily Mail to write an article about this. I just so you guys know, and heads up to you, Laura, I will be asking a lot of questions over the next couple of months, keeping you guys informed as to the progress of Laura's vagina, Laura's hair situation. But how, let's tell everyone how far actually are you right now? So I'm 21 weeks. All right, let's do the math. Is that five months? Yeah, it's like,

well I guess I don't know 21 weeks is like five months I'm just over halfway yeah okay so congratulations on keeping that a secret god knows how you have done that I feel like watching your progress I don't feel like you popped until like really recently yeah I guess also it's been pretty easy to keep it under wraps I mean one it was isolation so like no one was really leaving the house two it was winter so I was wearing like big baggy clothes and like three no one really cares about me anymore so it's really easy no they did there were some moments that Laura and I we might have taken a cute photo or something she's like you can't post that because I look preggers so we were trying to filter some stuff out and there were actually some people some

people from this community and also people who follow me on Instagram who had started to tweet to it so I was starting to get a lot of messages from people saying hey I have a feeling that you're pregnant which is a kind of a weird thing to text someone but they were correct so um yeah to everybody who tweeted to it congratulations you win the lucky door prize you win all right let's just wind it back to the start because i think the most important thing and i think it really shows like who's the most important person in your life and who you love the most and who's the best who did you tell first okay so brit says this because i told brit so the very first person i told was brit also like when i was pregnant last time brit was the very first person i told

and then brit was also the very first person i told that i was having a miscarriage so like you seem to be really like my point of contact my touch point for these things love that um i told brit first and like i said i was in a bit of denial because this pregnancy happened very very quickly after the miscarriage that i had which i spoke about in one of our episodes if you want to go back and listen to it this happened really really soon after and um much to matt's disappointment he thought he was going to get a little bit more sexy time out of me but he did not the man is very potent I kept it to myself for a really long time I didn't tell anyone apart from Brit I didn't tell Matt for about three or four weeks until I was actually going to have my scan so the day I was

going for my scan is the day that I told Matt and I don't I kind of feel bad for doing that and I don't Matt wasn't annoyed or anything he he understood but my reasoning for not wanting to tell him was because if I had gone through another miscarriage I didn't want to have to disappoint him again I wanted it to be like a hey I'm going for my scan I'm going to find out today if the baby has a heartbeat and if everything's okay so you're going to know by this afternoon if everything's okay um so I kind of pushed it as far out as possible because I just didn't want to go through that again it's been stressful as much as there's been parts of it I've enjoyed there's been parts of this pregnancy so far that's it's really hard to enjoy a pregnancy after having

pregnancy loss yeah and I can I can 100% see both sides of that I can see why Matt would have been like babe like why didn't you tell me straight away but I can see why you after having two miscarriages and you literally just miscarried recently I can see why you were like I can't just disappoint him again and I just want to make sure this feeling of like making sure it's safe and I mean you sort of have to tell me I guess we spend so much time together and it's and also like Matt kind of knew because for us like the most challenging part in our relationship that we've ever had has been during my first trimester of pregnancy because I turn into a psychopathic crazy hormonal witch I can confirm that like angry about everything crying about things

irrationally like I just can't control I have so little patience and normally I would like to think that I'm a relatively chilled person but during the first trimester I just feel so angry and like frustrated and just so quick to temper and Matt had said to me a few times are you sure you're not pregnant like usually when you're a bit angry he's like are you sure you don't have your periods and now he's like bitch you're pregnant like there's something going on here so he well and truly had sniffed it out there were moments when Matt was like hey babe have you seen where I put my hat and Laura was like why don't you just put it away where it belongs and I was like I know I'm close to this couple but I cannot intervene here it's like Matt your hat is hanging on the door

it was a lot but anyway as soon as you get past that I don't know if other people experience it but as soon as I got past that first trimester like things kind of go back to normal and I'm not quite a possessed demon so everything's good now you were for sure emotional and I think there was this time too that you and I were like our emotions were feeding off each other like one of you would start to cry and I'd be like I'm upset too like I was almost like I was the sympathy pregnancy partner but well this was all happening during your bachelor in paradise stuff so it was obviously a really heightened period for you as well and then I was having my own emotional stresses around this and so yeah we were just a bundle of hormones guys I'm really glad we got

through that together though and um big question big question from the people are you gonna find out or have you found out if I'm pregnant if I'm allowed in the delivery suite no if um what you're having we don't know we have no idea for having a boy or a girl um Molly was a surprise I love surprises and I think that having a surprise baby I think that not knowing the gender of your baby is like one of the most beautiful surprises so yeah I don't know but I had this really overwhelming feeling when I first found out I was pregnant that it's a boy like I have really strong boy vibes which I never got any vibes with Marley I was like I hope that this is a human child whereas this time I'm like this is a this is a boy I'm a boy yeah I must admit I think you know

how it just comes out I think when we started talking about it I had said can't wait to meet him or whatever I think I had dropped the he pronoun so maybe subconsciously I think it's a boy too there you go well anyway maybe that's enough baby chat just to like is it oh I mean we're going to talk about after the next four months we're definitely not i mean i might talk about my long black nipples but like that's as far as we're gonna go i know and um i guess yeah i mean we'll talk about it later but i guess we'll have a couple of weeks break when you have the baby laura's in the birthing suite podcasting i'll just give you a minute by minute update don't worry well tell me what's been happening in your world oh god nothing as exciting as that no we

went to byron bay we had a great little week it was it was a funny week because we were still sort of working but was semi on vacay but something really cute did happen actually um i was staying with my girlfriends and i have these two little girls that are like four and five and they watch me on the bachelor and like they obviously at five years old they didn't they don't understand it but they're allowed to watch arnie brittany like dating on tv you're this tv princess they're like wow she's from the tv the magical land yeah they just think i'm the aunt's pants because tv so big to a five-year-old anyway they've obviously understand to some extent that I've been dumped twice like they get that I'm single anyway we're at home they're doing these little arts and crafts

on the table together and they're like honey Brittany we're making you a handbag because I was going out to dinner that night and I was like amazing thank you and they're like you have to take it to dinner tonight and I was like of course I will they're coloring away and then a couple minutes later they put their head up they go they go how do you spell single they're just making you a walking banner for you to take to dinner I'm not kidding my heart just like skipped a beat broke all these feelings at once anyway I spelt it out to them across the room and the girls were like it's spelled d-e-p depressing no I was I spelled it for them and then they they didn't skip a beat they didn't look up they were writing they were coloring

and they were just saying to themselves we just don't want Aunty Brittany to be alone and my heart they're five and my heart just broke anyway were you like for kids you need to listen to our single in your 30s episode it can be a really empowering time in your life okay you You don't need no man. Anyway, it gets worse. Then I had to take her to dinner. Then they coached me through how I should walk into the restaurant. So I had to carry the single bag and I had to walk in and they coached me on my walk.

I had to walk like a model for like 10 meters. And then when I hit the 10 meter mark, I had to start to wave like the queen to people and gently say, hello, hi. That's what they said. So they're like, we think that this is what you need to do. This is five-year-olds. Anyway, didn't work. did you do it though did you take the single bag and did you promote your singledom okay I took

this single bag because they watched me walk out of the house so like take your bag and I was like taking it anyway my bad I left it in the car then I get into the restaurant and I see this really attractive guy he's with his friend and I'm with my two friends and we were like making eyes at each other across the table the whole night and I was like surely like I feel like I am giving them big his big signals you can you can do that with your eyes I felt like he was giving me them back and I thought surely by the end of the night he's gonna come over and say something or whatever anyway like if only I had a sign like a billboard looks like my bumble billboard and my single bag no I thought he didn't come over at the end and I was like you know what if I took this single bag

out I could have waved it around the restaurant and maybe something would have happened so that's my fault really for not taking my new handbag out or maybe he had a girlfriend and that's why he didn't approach you because no matter if you had a single bag or not he was looking from afar and appreciating but could not touch or maybe it's just this thing that asks us that our generation does where we don't approach anyone in real life thanks to the world of online dating yeah anyway I just thought that was a really cute story and I love that I have five-year-olds even on my bandwagon to find me love bless their souls well I feel like with that sort of cheerleader behind you like it's only a matter of time yeah I was like I was like put a sign out at school girls

maybe someone's dad or should we tell the people what the episode's going to be about before we get into accidentally unfiltered yeah you do it because i just spoke for ages okay fucking lazy all right so okay we have thought a lot about this episode and we have been having this conversation for the last couple of weeks it was really spurred on by what has been happening on the bachelor and the whole irena bella cat fight saga the media dramatization of the whole thing. And also like a lot of the conversations that have been happening back and forth on the Facebook group in regards to it as well. But we wanted to talk about mean girls and the psychology of mean girls, like not just from a top level of like, you know, we all know that girls can be

nasty to each other, but really from like a deeper understanding of where it comes from, why we do it. And is it something that, you know, only other people do, or is it something that we ourselves are also guilty of on different varying levels? So we're really going to unpack this whole understanding being girl psychology. Yeah, I do feel like I've been seeing it everywhere lately. So I'm happy to delve into that. And there's some really interesting research. So we will get into that. Before we do, you know what it's time for. There it is again. It's Accidentally Unfiltered. You thought I was going to sing that with you. I really wish I had a singing career. Maybe in a formal life I did. Accidentally Unfiltered, guys, we love this section. You tell us your most

embarrassing stories. We read them out and we froth them. So let's get into it. And we laugh at you. All right, story number one. This one's so funny. I was at work and I'm trying really, really hard to get put on full time so that I'm putting in some extra effort to be the best possible worker I can possibly be. I've only been part-time for a while now and I really want this job. It was 15 minutes before my shift ended and it was just me and the boss in our tiny little office. I was quickly texting my boyfriend what time I was going to be home. He responds by telling me to get home ASAP because he is down for some sex hell yeah it's been ages as I was leaving my boss was talking to me and texted me this big long list on what he needed to be done

for the next week so that we can be prepared for it as I'm walking to my car I am so excited to be heading home to finally get laid and message my boyfriend in a frantic state the message said oh my god yes baby i've worked so damn hard this week and i'm so horny i cannot wait i cannot wait for you to fuck me hard i was so excited and frantically typing that i didn't look who i sent the message to and yes i sent that straight to my boss r.i.p me dead what is wrong with me anyway i'm quitting how would you even go to work the next day and be like look i have been putting in a lot of hard work lately um imagine texting you and i deserve that i've worked really hard so fuck me he would have been like oh my god this is sexual harassment claim waiting to happen

hey hey sarah can you please report to hr in the morning we have to also don't worry about open case don't worry about doing that list like let's just scrap some of those things off you don't have to repay me for that fucking lol what a lol debbie wow okay i really like that one i don't know if mine is as good but I'm gonna give it a crack oh all right I was at my parents house and I was having some technical troubles for my laptop so dad told me to bring it over give it to him and I'll have a look so we put my laptop on the kitchen counter and I opened up the internet as the problem that I was having was to do with google chrome you know how like your top five most used sites come up on your home screen yes well I had the google chrome home page open for

a good five minutes while dad was fiddling around with things and then he said oh uh interesting selection of websites you have here what is it just what the second five different porn sites the second most frequented site was porn hub at least she's got a healthy appetite look it's been isolation that's all anyone's doing just furiously masturbating to themselves obviously the dad's cool with it because he called it out which i love because he didn't make it awkward he was like i like what you're doing there doll what literally is one big virus like that's what it's known for sex and virus you go there for a sex and virus not an std well a laptop std yes you just like i love that now she's like hey dad so uh my computer's being infected with some sort of sex

bot can you please fix this i would have rather had paid a stranger to do it than my dad i have i have one more accidentally unfiltered which actually comes from a from a girlfriend i love that you're putting your hand up to me like I was talking to my girlfriend recently and I and I do this to all my friends now whenever I have to see someone who I haven't seen in a little while I'm like hey I know you listen to the podcast give me your most embarrassing stories and nobody tells me they're embarrassing stories anymore but a girlfriend of mine my girlfriend was telling me about how she wanted to start using something more environmentally friendly than using like tampons or pads or whatever and she'd she'd bought a moon cup online and I'm yet to use a moon cup so

i am yet to either but all my friends do this is all very foreign to me so she had bought a moon cup and she'd been using it she looked at the instructions whatnot and she was like cool we're we're good with this and and she wore it to work this day so she works in an office she wore it i love you say it like it's an outfit she inserted it and used it at work she wore it to work they have a unisex toilet at her office and she works with loads of guys because she works in construction anyway she went into the office and it was on site so that's why it's a communal toilet because it's like you know kind of a makeshift work site toilet she went in and she went to change her moon cup and she pulled it out with such aggressive fall that she flicked period blood the whole

moon cup of period blood all over the all over her pants all over the wall and all up the door i'm actually i want to die for her hang on the walls i can deal with because you can wipe that off like the door like right in front so she like flicked it in front and it just went everywhere okay this is a prime example of why i do not want to use a moon car i just don't i still don't understand the mechanics of how she did it this is also a girlfriend of mine who needed to pee so bad that she peed herself whilst running down the stairs and then slipped in it and like did her elbow so she's got some great not drunk not drunk out of like you know when dogs get really excited they just like pee on the spot she just has probably very very poor pelvic floor muscles

anyway she has some crazy bodily function stories i am here for them hang on i need the end of the story what did she do she didn't really she was like i had to try and clean it up she's like but it just looked like shark week in there and then i had to try and explain to everyone so when you walk out and you're like, do not go in there. That's literally every time Matthew Johnson leaves the bathroom. He's like, we need to renovate the whole house and just buy a new bathroom. Poor Matt, he cops it on this thing. He loves it though. So guys, for today's episode, we want to talk about mean girl behavior in adults because it's something that isn't just prevalent when we go through school. I think that everybody has

experience at some point in their adult life whether it be exclusion from another female or it be bullying at work in the workplace or it be gossiping or rumors or some other very toxic way that women can interact with each other and firstly before we fully get into this episode I just really want to say like bullying is non-exclusive we're not saying that women are bullies and men aren't men can be absolutely shit too however we do seem to express ourselves in very different ways. I think men are far more physical and they're far more verbal when they are angry or aggressive about something or they take issue with something. They don't step away from confrontation in the same way that women do. Women can be far more fearful of confrontation

which means that we use and tend to use more non-verbal cues when we are aggressive or when we are angry about something. Men are more direct, more aggressive, more verbally aggressive, more physically aggressive and their issues are resolved quicker because they just come out with it deal with their behavior and they move on women it's more subtle it's very manipulative it's like a slow burn it's excluding people slowly from a group it's the whispers it's the rumors it's the gossip and that's because we generally don't like the direct confrontation so from everything i've read that they've just said this starts from a young age with boys and girls you can see boys fighting it out and wrestling from like age five and then you can see the girls sitting in their

groups and turning their backs on another girl and so I think it starts from a very young age and it's interesting to watch that progress through all the years to adulthood because it's still very prevalent in adulthood. Yeah and I think like you know a perfect example of this not to bring everything back to The Bachelor but it's something that we've seen very recently is the physical biff that happened between Kieran and Matt and how their intensity and their argument resulted in an actual fight and then how we're seeing this slow simmering cattiness that's happening between Bella and Irina and the conversation and the way that they're being pitted against each other in the media and also the manipulation that kind of happens and the

and the exclusion I think is a really really big one and this this type of behavior is called relational aggression so relational aggression is a predominantly female form of bullying it's non-physical aggression towards another person with the purpose of bringing down their reputation or their social status. One of the big reasons why we actually do this to other women is because by bringing somebody else down, in theory, it's a way of elevating ourselves. Whether that is done consciously or unconsciously, that seems to be the theory behind it and like the competitive nature of how women fight and why we kind of look at somebody else and go, hmm, I don't like that person. But maybe you don't have a good reason for why we don't like that person. When I was

looking at this um and taking a deep dive and just thinking back to how I was brought up and the issues that I faced growing up and I couldn't get past the cult movie Mean Girls isn't that interesting I don't think that there is anyone out there that wouldn't know what Mean Girls is but essentially it's like to teenagers it's glorifying bullying and mean girl behavior because it's making it look like the popular cute hot girls are really nasty and the main quote that that I think that if anyone can quote anything from that movie it's the line where she says you can't sit with us and I think that that is a prime example of female bullying it's like the exclusion and that's that has gone out to every single woman in the last I guess 15 years

I think and I think that that's just really set the tone for teenagers coming through for the way women think it's okay to behave and I just don't think you could ever make a movie like that now I would like to think that that's left in school you know and that women we grow and we mature and we don't have those same behaviors. But the reality is, is like, yes, in a lot of ways we grow and we do mature. But when we were unpacking this conversation, I was like, oh yes, people can be mean on social media. These people over here do this. But then when I actually started to really look at myself, my own language, the things that I say and do about other women, I realized actually this is something that I'm guilty of as well. Maybe a much smaller scale, but it made me really

question where it comes from. For example, I was, um, I was with Matt and we were looking through Instagram, uh, like a few weeks back when, when this conversation first started and Matt saw a photo of like a girl that I follow and she's really beautiful. She's very young. She's like 22 years old, stunning. And he was like, Oh wow, she's really hot. And my instant reaction to him saying, Oh wow, she's really hot was yeah, but she's only 22, which at the time I didn't think anything negative of it. But Matt was kind of like, well, okay. Yep. Like he didn't make a big deal about it, but it made me feel a little bit like, why did I say that? Why did I need to devalue her by instantly giving a caveat on why she's beautiful? And I realized that that actually

played into my insecurities being that I'm 34. I obviously don't look like I'm 22. And as a society, we really do prize beauty. We really do prize youth. It was me dealing with my own insecurities and projecting those insecurities on this other person who is incredibly beautiful, full stop, has done absolutely nothing wrong. But there is this competition that we feel as women from time to time, whether that be on a surface level, as a physical level, whether it be in the workplace

because we're competing for different roles, pitted against each other in a way that means that there is this defensiveness that can sometimes come out in our language in the way that we speak on a day-to-day level with our friends, with our partners about other women. Well, it's a defence mechanism, isn't it? It's just this idea that straight away you feel like you don't want to feel,

in your situation, you don't want to feel like you're old news and you can never compare yourself to a 20-year-old because you're not a 20-year-old, you're a 33-year-old. And it comes from a place where you just don't feel like you're enough or you're worried that you're not going to be enough. And I think that if every time that you make a comment like that, not you, I mean the general public, myself, everyone, every time you make a comment like that, you need to do what you do,

what you did and sit there and say okay why did I why did I just say that so it's I think it's the whole conversation is going to be brought back to really checking yourself and checking why you've made that statement I pride myself on trying to be really a really good supportive human and a supportive friend and not gossip about people but I'd be lying if I said I haven't done that in the past 100% whether that's a generic statement even about a celebrity like someone I don't even know which this is really common as well celebrities come out and do something or say something I think the new song and film clip WAP wet ass pussy well the thing is when that first came out without even giving myself time to dissect it think about it critique it I was just like whoa

that is too much would not want my daughter listening to that would not want my daughter singing that doing that dancing that and then I really sort of sat in that for a second and I thought well hang on they're actually just really embracing their sexuality they are singing lyrics and acting in a way that men have done like male rappers have done for years like the way men talk about women has been derogatory sexualized for as long as we can remember but then the second women speak about themselves in that manner we get our backs up and we get on this bandwagon of like you can't act like that when in fact why not we should be the ones that are allowed to speak and express our sexuality like that,

as opposed to letting men speak about us like that. Abby Chatford actually made a really interesting comparison with that song. And I really, really agree with it. She, I can't remember it word for word, so I don't want to misquote or anything, but she did say like, you know, you listen to the lyrics of a wet ass pussy.

And then you listen to the lyrics of like, from the windows to the walls, to the sweat dripping down my balls, all you bitches crawl. And it's like, why do we sing that? And that's like such a fun and okay song, but yet there's something in us that feels like innately repulsed by a woman taking absolute control of her sexuality. And one of the things that we really started to look at when we unpacked

this is that there's two different reasons why this has kind of come about and how we've been socially conditioned to kind of fall into this. And it is a bit of a broad sweeping stereotype. I'm not going to say that all women behave like this. It's a spectrum. We all have different aspects of this and nobody at all is completely perfect or has zero internalized sexism but one of the one of the theories behind why as women we feel really competitive around other women is because of evolution so and this is like this is a real theory guys darwinism we see other women as a threat whether it be in a career workplace in modern society or whether it be for relationships or to be able to like expand our brood and also because we place so much importance in our society

on beauty and also on youth you know and I look back at myself saying exactly that about someone who's a decade younger than myself and needing to use that as a justification for why it makes me feel makes me feel insecure about myself yeah well with what you just said about um it's evolutionary Darwinism I just wanted to add something to that from if we're looking back to where this started and there are studies on this some psychologists say it's actually just hardwired into us from the beginning and there are these studies of chimpanzees and apes that have shown that the female chimpanzees actually attack and kill other females and their babies and this is literally to ensure that they get the best chance at survival and the best chance at living a great life

um i know but that's what it is they're like okay there's too much competition here there's not enough room for all these females so they kill them and they and their kids their little baby chimps then they even sometimes ally themselves with other males so that no other woman woman no other female no other chimpanzee woman well no other female chimp will then stand a chance and then you throw this into our workplace historically patriarchal society and it's just like no wonder women now try to knock each other down because we have such limited resources and limited chances to become powerful in our workplace to have high powered positions ceo positions it's known that women have smaller chance so it's normal and we've done it from

backing the chimpanzees it's normal to want to start to slowly knock each other off so that you you're more likely to get the position and it's crazy to think about just kick her out of the boardroom no it's brutal they literally just like slaughter each other but i mean i guess like this is a very crude and rudimentary way of looking at it, but there is a method to the madness with this. So evolutionary theory was one of the ways that they unpack why women have this competitive nature towards each other. And then the second reason, which is something that we really delved into is this idea of internalized sexism. And Shameless has done an awesome episode, which we really recommend you guys go listen to. And that's all about internalized misogyny, which is basically

the same thing. They focus very much on like how it presents itself in the media, but internalized feminism is this idea we are products even if we live in a very modern 2020 society there we are still products of the society in which we have been raised and of the constructs from which we are raised and you know as much as things are changing and we are progressing there is still double standards that are uphold from time to time between men and women and we still have this idea around femininity how women are supposed to behave what is acceptable and what isn't acceptable and when someone steps outside of that boundary of what's acceptable there is something about that that's innately threatening to us and a really interesting and I think such an amazing example

of this is if you guys have watched the it's a relatively new series that's come out it's called Mrs America it's all based around the movement of equal rights amendment which was in the 70s where women were lobbying for equal rights to men and the really really and the part about this series, which is really interesting, is the unexpected backlash that the movement received by conservative activists who were actually led by other women. So it was women who at the time were housewives who had very traditional roles, who saw this push for equality as a real threat to their understanding and what they'd been conditioned to believe is acceptable. And I think we would be so hard pressed in modern society to find a movement of women in Australia

or in the States who would say that equality for men and women is not good for women. Like I think we'd be hard-pressed to find people who would think that that's a bad idea. I think in modern society most women would agree that having the right to vote as a woman is empowering and absolutely necessary and it is exactly what we should be entitled to to have equal standing to male gender.

However, to think that in the 70s there was a whole movement of women who are against this really shows that like we can be conditioned and we are products of the society that we're raised in so let's like fast forward and bring that into 2020 it got me thinking and what it got me thinking was like when I see someone who posts something really overtly sexual on Instagram it doesn't affect me I don't really care about the content like it doesn't it doesn't upset me or phase me but there's something in me that goes that's too much like why would you post that and I guess it's this idea in the conversation we wanted to have was like being really aware of the thoughts that you have and where they come from because we're all

guilty of it to some varying degree and if you find yourself slut shaming or questioning why someone's behaving in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable maybe it doesn't really make you feel uncomfortable maybe it makes you feel uncomfortable because that's what you've been socially conditioned to think is appropriate or inappropriate and that person is behaving in a way that falls outside our very rigid ideas around femininity well psychology today does actually say they support this and they say what it is it's women projecting their unwanted parts onto another woman so these are things like jealousy fear envy rage anxiety lack of confidence that's what that's what that is that's your reaction to that it's your lack of confidence

and it's your jealousy and we're all we are all guilty there's not one person out there that can't say they have not been jealous of another woman and I can guarantee you when you look at someone that you're jealous of you instead of saying full stop they are beautiful that's it you'll say they're beautiful but look how much work they've done they're beautiful but they've got a filter on they're beautiful but they're 22 years old why do we feel the need to put the bun in it's because we don't look like that and we're insecure about it yeah and there's this idea that like by by devaluing someone it elevates yourself I mean guys I did it this morning so please don't think that this is at all a rant where we're saying women are shit and like we need to be better like oh

no we're both guilty of it 100% and I think it's just something that we were so we became so aware of and I was like why do I have these thoughts from time to time and obviously I'm not someone who's going to go and write it on social media like that's a whole another ball game but I think that they all stem from the same thing and so being really aware of your thoughts is something that we think is super important and you know questioning why you think something I literally did it this morning Matt and I were laying in bed and the same thing we were looking through Instagram and Chrissy Teigen, who I love, like I absolutely love following her. She's, she's, you know, an awesome momspiration. She's very funny. And I get a lot out of following her

social media. She posted some photos and I was watching her stories and that was like, gosh, Chrissy, Chrissy Teigen's really beautiful. And I was like, yeah, but she's had a lot of work done. Look at how much filler she has. And I, I stopped myself. I said it and I was like, whoa, okay, I'm doing it. I'm so grateful for this podcast topic that we're about to do. I was like, do you know what babe I was like I take that back I have no idea if she's had filler or not this is me projecting my own insecurities just beautiful I was like she's fucking hot and I wish I looked that hot and that that recognition I think is something that we can all sit in a little bit and it feels uncomfortable and there's definitely going to be people who are hell of a lot better

and a hell of a lot mature about it than others and they're a lot more comfortable in their own skin but I guess for me it's really highlighted that I do have insecurities around the way I look and obviously like being in the public world has not helped that like you know feeling like sometimes my appearance is up for public conversation has definitely fed into my own insecurities but I'm now recognizing how it's very unhelpful to project that onto somebody else it doesn't do anything to elevate me or make me seem better it's just a bit bitchy what I found interesting so the reason I really wanted to do this is a it was really highlighted to me in what's happening in the world right now in terms of The Bachelor. It's just like thrown in our

face. There's all this online trolling, bullying. It's physically happening on The Bachelor. I just found it really interesting. But when I started to delve into it, I just found the studies that I was reading really, really interesting. And that's why I really wanted to share them and highlight them. And there's this queen bee syndrome that I stumbled upon from the University of Arizona. There's a professor there called Alison Gabriel. And she says that this queen B syndrome is real. It is a phenomenon and it's about powerful women being disliked more than normal women. And this is because they display non-stereotypical traits. So it's because they're taking men's roles. So it's about women in powerful positions. I think that there is a sense of

jealousy if there's someone in your life that's doing really well, or if there's someone that's telling you what to do, or someone, another woman in your workplace got a promotion. Now, when I was reading this, there's this really interesting study about is there was this female professor and she thought I'm just going to run an experiment she had two completely different like two completely separate classes she was giving the exact same information she was talking to them exactly the same way all via emails this was their communication all the emails were the same but one would go out and she was the female professor and then she would change her name to a male's name and send it out to the other group as a male professor now everything she did

was the same her language was the same the content was the same and the feedback that she got was actually quite negative from all the females and her being a female professor so people even though she was giving the same content people seem to gravitate and like the male professor more even though he was giving the same content and that made me really think there must be some subconscious there some subconscious thought that we just don't want to accept and respect that there's a woman that could possibly be in power and be highly intelligent and be teaching us something it was just so interesting i think it also plays into this idea of of like women are held to a much higher standard than men if we behave in a way that's like emotional or heightened we're labeled

as neurotic or crazy you know you see it in politics all the time where you see men yelling and screaming and you know even recently one of like one of the australian politicians was swearing in parliament if a woman was to behave like that she would be labeled as just batshit ass crazy but men can behave like that whereas women have to like behave in a way that's like that is assertive without being viewed as aggressive or without being viewed as bitchy. I do think that there is a very different standard for which we are held to and so I think that that bias also plays into account here as well. There was another research study that I found that was so interesting this really played into my own internal dialogue around this whole conversation and that was in

2013 there was a study that was brought up at the University of Ottawa. This study has been revisited bazillions of times in media and also when referencing this type of behavior so the professor's name was stracey volain court and she shows that women are programmed to sometimes act aggressively or even bitchily towards women who are perceived as sexier so the way that they actually rolled out this study is that they had 86 different canadian women as a subject group and basically they had this woman walk in who was dressed very understated in car keys in like a jumper, like nothing about her was overtly sexualized or even overtly noticeable. And nobody commented on her. Nobody even realized that she was in the room as one of the participants.

Then they had the exact same woman come back on the second day, but this time she was dressed in a very, very sexualized outfit. You know, short skirt, she had her cleavage out and 97% of the women who were present in that case study wrote and, and like commented something that was negative about that person. They had to write about the different people who are in the room and 97% of them had noticed her and been very negative about what she was wearing and who she was as a person without actually ever speaking to her or knowing anything about her. And in this case study has been held up as an example of sort of this internalized sexism that we have towards other women and how we can see very sexualized women as a threat. And this does then translate into

the media this does then translate into social media as well and i think the really important thing to kind of take away from this as well in this conversation is like we don't want this conversation to turn into a blame shifting thing like we absolutely recognize that like it's something that we can all be guilty of from time to time but this is not like women are shit women are bitches because i don't want to play into that gender stereotype i really because we're women too absolutely oh my god totally and we are all about women supporting women we have the most incredible Facebook community through Life Uncut where we see the empowerment that comes when people support each other I actually really hate this conversation around saying that women can be bitchy to each

other and acknowledging it because I think it plays into the gender stereotype that women are irrational women are bitchier women are highly emotional and I think the more that we give power to that narrative the more that people the more that it sort of oppresses us from being able to have those really high-powered jobs and progress towards equality so I do think that there is like the antithesis of this conversation. However, the really interesting thing I took away from that study of the Canadian study was the professor Tracy Villain Court had said, you know, there are stereotypes and then there are things that are actually true. And there are things that hold women back from progressing. And one of those things that holds

us back is actually our own psyche and the way that we treat other women. Because if we're out there calling women sluts or saying, you know, derogative things on social media or wherever else amongst our friends amongst our workplace then it's also allows men to use that language and it gives them permission to treat women in the same way or to you know have our value based in the way we look so it was more a conversation around being like super conscious of your thoughts and like where that internalized feeling of like I don't like that person but not really knowing why where that actually comes from so that we can monitor ourselves and be more self-censoring and then that you know allows us to take steps towards going oh that lady is beautiful and I

don't need to put the butt in there just going back as well just going back quickly to this idea that like we do hold women to a different standard that we hold men there's something that's happened really recently in the media and I think it's something that's really interesting and that is the conversation around Chris Evans and his dick pic do we all know what I've seen that dick pic of course yeah the whole world has seen that dick it went viral within an hour so if you don't know what we're talking about chris evans who is superman but yes also he accidentally he accidentally posted a photo of his erect penis on his instagram story instagram story i'm gonna i just want to quickly interrupt because it was either an accident or very very very clever

publicity move the way he's come out and spoken about it has been that it was not something that he wanted to share okay continue so he accidentally dick picked us all like you know an unsolicited dick pic on instagram is pretty aggressive but what happened was is he posted a video he posted a picture of his camera roll and one of the pictures in the camera roll was of his erect penis if that's not the best accidentally filtered we've ever had thank you chris evans the thing that's been really interesting about the reaction to this is that all of Chris's followers and fans have really rushed to his support and it's been this incredible um this incredible show of like you know he didn't want to do that we don't want his dick pic being flooding the internet so they

have been flooding the internet with pictures of him to try and suppress the dick pic so it's going further and further down google so making it harder and harder for people to find now this is exactly how we should behave when when somebody's nude photos almost vulnerable pictures get displayed on the internet however looking back when the exact same thing happened to jennifer lawrence however it happened completely against her control her photos were hacked and then super intimate photos of her were released onto the internet there wasn't this outpouring of support where people were trying to flood the internet and stop people from finding the nudes if anything people were looking up the nudes and trying to find them and she copped so much hate and abuse

and like hideous messages calling her a slut calling her all different things under the sun I remember how big a story this was and there's this conversation around is it just changing because this was pre the me too movement and you know maybe things have started to shift and maybe we we are becoming really cognizant of the importance of consent and how we should treat people when their privacy is exposed or is it a reflection that we do hold men and women up to slightly different standards I think it's a bit of a and a bit of b I think we're definitely coming a long way we are recognizing way more our place in society equality how we should treat each other 100 there is definitely that movement which is brilliant but there's no way we're there yet it's

still definitely the second men show any sort of vulnerability we praise them the second women show vulnerability it's usually like oh she's a bit unhinged or you know so there's still it's still a bit of a and a bit of b hopefully we continue to move forward and get to a point where we start to protect the women too when they've been leaked for example but it's such an interesting chat yeah and i think that it is progressed like you said i do think that the times are changing and i think that the more we have these conversations the more that we're aware of our internal thoughts the more that we're taking steps towards that level of like equality across the board and just to bring it back to bachelor for two seconds before we wrap this bad boy up obviously like

this season has been really weird and i would i'm kind of actually a bit off it to be totally honest and transparent because I think that you that by this point in the in the reality tv journey they've stopped focusing on the drama between the girls and they start focusing on the love story but I feel like this season it's just all been this cattiness and the bitchiness between Irina and Bella and that's been like the real conversation that has absolutely masked everything that you know people want to watch The Bachelor for which is like the potential of a really beautiful love story and I just think it's really disappointing I mean I think there's been behavior that's been on the show that's disappointing but I also think that the focus on women tearing each other down

especially off the back of Paradise Brit where like the most amazing thing that we took from that series was women supporting women and how empowering that was I just think it's taken a few step backwards with this season yeah and look one of the things that I'm really I'm actually really proud of and I wish sort of made more of an impact now and I thought it would have is that you only have to look at my season The Bachelor and my finale to look at the fact that it doesn't have to be a competition women can support women and go all the way to the end Sophie and I we obviously were at the end together and before we knew that Nick wasn't going to pick anyone we still were so genuinely happy if it was going to be one of us for the other person um obviously

we would be really upset because we both wanted it to be us but there was never ever ever any mean behavior between us anything negative said to each other about each other to producers to anyone else there was no bitchiness the whole season and then even at the end the whole the whole premise of that finale was like women supporting women we still wanted to go and help each other we still wanted to go make sure each other okay and I think that this is just a prime example of the fact that you don't have to be in competition with someone you it's women go further in life when you're supporting each other and it's actually statistically proven that women that have a smaller supportive group around them go further in life and are more successful this I literally

read this this morning I I'm actually really lucky I do have a really small group of friends like I can probably count them on one hand to be honest but all of them are so supportive of everything I do and I genuinely feel like that's what gives me the balls to keep trying things and to keep pushing myself and there's never been jealousy there's never been anything and I'm like that with my friends like I'll always put them first and I'll always celebrate their wins and I think that when I think of like what we wanted from this conversation I think it's just to A, recognize that we're all guilty of this behavior of this type of jealousy and maybe even just gossiping, innocent gossip that you think is innocent can really perpetuate into

something that's a lot bigger and can really hurt someone's feelings. Words are so, so powerful. So I think what we wanted to get from it was just A, check yourself, check your friends, recognize the conversations you're having and just think about why you're having them. And also just to add one last thing before we fully wrap up, I think also be really, really aware and critical of the shit that you're reading, because I do think that the media plays a huge role in pitting women against each other. You know, they can take a certain line, they can take a photo of a certain point in time. They can really fabricate this pitting women against each other.

And an example like I have from my own personal experience is the constant pitting of Georgia Love and myself against each other. we barely know each other and we have nothing negative to say about each other we don't dislike each other we don't know each other so like why would we but from the very day dot of when I was on The Bachelor the media has constantly compared us they've said you know Laura Burns a two a Georgia Love 2.0 they've said you know like that we have been having tiffs it's just been this absolute fallacy and one of the things that happened most recently um that really really upset me actually because I was like this is just such bullshit and and you know the media can

really make a story out of anything we were at Melbourne Cup races and Georgia was interviewing for channel 10 and so part of the was a photo on the wall and then we went and had an interview and it was such an awesome chat like we talked about how we were both engaged and we were like you know look at your ring you know what's your dress gonna be like and it was just a really like lovely supportive conversation and I walked away from it going like oh that was so nice like I was really nervous about chatting to her because I was like I don't know how this is gonna go because the media always ends up writing something so negative and it was awesome and I had such a nice day and then the next day there was several articles online and it was a photo a quick one

second photo that was taken out of a whole conversation where we both didn't look like we were enjoying ourselves we both looked a little bit disinterested or disgruntled and it was just one second in time and then an entire article had been written about how we hate each other and how we are in competition and how you know we're jealous of each other because you know she dated Matt who fucking cares like it was just so fabricated and it made me really really aware of just how much can be written in the media that's not true and how far they can go to perpetuate this idea that women are always in competition with each other so this is just my personal story on this so and I'm saying this because I think you know we really really need

to be critical of the stuff that we're reading and not take everything on face value yeah for All of you non-batchy people and all of our lovely overseas listeners, just like a quick little recap. Georgia Love, who Laura's talking about, she was Bachelorette. Matt was the runner-up, so he got rejected. And like in inverted commas, heartbroken. I don't know if he was. I think he was.

He was. No, he totally was. He was really sad. Yeah, then the next year Matt became the Bachelor and then that's when Laura won. So this is why the media pit Laura and Georgia against each other because it was like, oh, Matt was heartbroken and he still loves Georgia And that was the thing that they wanted to play on when it just was completely fabricated.

But the issue is we're still at this place. The reason they write these articles is because we're still in this place where no one wants to say, no one wants to see an article that says Laura and Georgia had a great conversation. Like they don't want to read it. They want to be like, oh my God, they're at each other's throats because that's what we still, that's the clickbait. And that's what we're still clicking on. A hundred percent.

And it just fucking sucked because it was such a wholesome chat that I walked away from feeling like so devastated that once again, this idea was just perpetuated. And I was like, we're never going to escape that narrative. We're never going to, because that's what is being pushed by media. So that was like a weird way to wrap this up. But I think that all these things really, like, I think all these things really interrelate like social media, the media, our internalized thoughts, the conversations we have with our friends, they all stem from the same conversation and the same thing. So like we said, I mean, really just to kind of put a bow on this and wrap it all up nicely. It comes down to us as women to

self-censor the things that we're saying and the things that we're doing. And this whole idea of like two wrongs don't make a right and an eye for an eye makes everyone blind. Just being like all the women and men on the Life Uncut podcast group, because if you haven't joined the Life Uncut podcast group, honestly, it is one of the only podcast groups that I've ever been a part of where people are so incredibly supportive, uplifting, and I'm just such a big fan. Get on there you're a fan of your own podcast group I'm also a little bit biased no it is true we're super lucky to have that community and that's what we that's what we're saying we don't want to be on this rant that like women suck because they don't you're all amazing we just wanted to we think it's

an interesting conversation we wanted to highlight it because it's happening in front of our eyes in the media we're seeing it online and we just thought it was an important conversation because literally the only way we're going to progress is to physically mentally make these improvements now ourselves and you can only do that by checking yourself and your friends too like even some of my friends sometimes they'll say something since I've had since I've been researching this they'll say something that's like innocent but like oh my god you see what she wore or something and I'm like well hang on she looks really great like I'm trying to even say what I'm trying to even stop myself from getting into that conversation because I think that's really really important and my

friends are all getting on board with it everyone in my life is starting to be really positive and I think that once we all get on this movement this is how we're going to evolve as a generation boom that's a wrap okay guys you know that we never finish an episode without our suck

and our sweet and that means that this is our highlight and our low light of the week Brittany you can kick it off what was your suck baby I need to say that

because you're thinking of what yours is no I know mine okay oh I have a funny one no it's not funny but my way to really preempt it my suck is that um whilst Laura and I were away we got our Facebook memories that was like Laura's was like happy three-year anniversary to you and

Matt and then mine came up and it was like happy two-year anniversary to you and Nick and it was like disaster because it's like a photo of me walking away from Nick being heartbroken and I just thought that was whilst I'm saying it's my suck it was actually so funny that's like the biggest dickhead facebook memory that there is like i mean most people when you go through a breakup they facebook just deletes everything from your life like you know it's like they don't exist like you know you don't even get a friend notification nothing they're just gone into the nether of the social media world but then like for you each year you get like hey on this day two years ago you got dumped publicly hey on this day three years ago you had your heart smashed into a

fucking pieces it's just cruel I'm glad you can laugh about it but it's cruel oh and this is the great thing like a year ago wouldn't have laughed would have been like ouch now I'm in hysterics also because one of the memes that I keep seeing that pops up is just like me in the dress walking away and there's just someone's written on it and said at least she got to wear a wedding dress and I was like fair call fair like mate you well played I did well in saying that on the exact same day as you had your two-year anniversary Matt and I had our three-year anniversary which Which is really startling because we really didn't take things slow, did we? Well, I know.

Baby two is about to pop out. A hot lap to the finish line. I know. We're going to get married one day, guys. We're just trying to do things in the most unconventional way possible. And you and I just keep being really, really contrasted in our life, don't we? Like, it just really, like, I just couldn't be at a more opposite point in my life. Well, like, what's going to be good for the podcast?

Let's do something really polar opposite. it brit you stay single and i'm just gonna keep procreating at the same time each year i'll have to keep looking after them arnie britney judy um my sweet would literally just be that i did get to go up to byron bay i had a great time with my friends the weather was really great um i didn't surf as much as i wanted to because there was a shark like a really big shark um but i we had like a semi week off it was a working holiday but i felt good so that's my sweet so what's yours oh sorry say it again so what's your suck my suck my suck I don't remember I swear to god you just said you knew it no my suck is um my suck is that today and I know I've been speaking about this for

the last couple of weeks but today is Marley's very first day of daycare we started recording it this morning and as we sat down to record Matt took Marley to daycare and then I got a phone call from him which was that she got really upset and she cried a lot before he left and I had wild wild wild amounts of anxiety and then I cried and um I walked in and Laura's sitting on the lounge and she looks up at me she's got tears in her eyes and I look at her I'm like what's wrong and she goes Marley went to daycare I'm like that's okay hon she's fine yes it was it was a lot like I know I've been talking about this for the last couple of weeks but she's finally started one day a week we're gonna up her to two days next week or we're gonna up it to two days soon but um I

just wanted her to go and like run in there and play with the toys and stuff like she's done the we've done three different orientations because it's taking me that long to be okay with actually taking her to daycare um you know most a lot of parents just go for one orientation but we've done three now but Laura's done 33 weeks yeah I just sat with her there every day and so every time we've gone in for orientation she's just run in and played with the toys and so to hear that today when we were leaving her she was really clingy like she understood what was going on like really breaks my heart. So that is my suck. As much as I know it's a necessity, it's just not something that I want to do. And I am really struggling with it a little bit. My sweet is that you have

a free day. I don't have to suck my stomach in anymore. When I go for walks, I can just let everything hang free. Um, no, my sweet is that I feel like I'm living more authentically, which sounds really wanky, but it's the truth. I've found it really difficult over the last four months to keep that part of my life a secret, not because I want to be banging on about it all the time by any means, but because, you know, it's been such a significant, being pregnant, having miscarriages, having my fertility journey has played a massive role on my mental health and my happiness. And I guess not being able to talk about it at all has made me feel a bit disconnected from myself. And so I'm really happy that now that's out in the open and I can, you know, say,

hey guys the reason why I can't do this is because I'm dying of indigestion over here or the reason I keep burping into the microphone that's why I keep burping I have indigestion but you know just small I know that sounds like pretty I guess like the indigestion thing sounds like a pretty insignificant thing and it is but on a big day-to-day picture being pregnant really consumes a lot of your day and it consumes a lot of your mental space so keeping that private and not being able to speak about it at all has taken a bit of a toll so I'm really happy that that's out in the open and I'm really grateful for our community and everyone who's been super supportive and yeah that's it babies oh yay so guys just before we go I want to do a little bit of housekeeping

thank you to every single person who's joined the life uncut podcast facebook group also to everybody who's joined up on instagram as well um like we said the facebook group is just the most incredible community to everybody who's been organizing meetups in your own states and in your own areas it is phenomenal please like keep sending us photos keep letting us know when your meetups are and we can let you know the wider group know and to everybody who has left a review so far thank you so much to everybody who hasn't left a review this is your naughty corner go sit in the naughty corner or we would just love to know your feedback we'd love to know the parts about the podcast that you love and any recommendations that you have as well please um

hit us up with that because you know you subscribing and you leaving reviews is the only way that we're able to grow and to be able to keep on spreading the good word Share the love because we love love. We'll be right back.