Mad, Sad and Bad with Paloma Faith - Jameela Jamil: I Love Being Invisible To Men

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

Whether it’s calling out ridiculous (and frankly dangerous) beauty standards or holding people to account on social media, Jameela Jamil is a force to be reckoned with. She’s also an old friend who I could chat to forever, so of course she had to come join me on the pod!From the lessons she’s learnt from one of the saddest years of her life, to the madness of what we’re sold as acceptable social constructs - this conversation was everything I hoped it would be. Jameela even shares some regrets around some of the more bad things she’s said online...I always come away from spending time with Jameela feeling energised and enlightened - a real treat to have her over!Find Jameela on Substack —Find us on: Instagram / TikTok / YouTube—Credits:Producer: Jemima RathboneAssistant Producer: Magda CassidyEdit Producer: Pippa BrownEditor: Shane O'ByrneVideo: Jake Ji & Grisha NikolskyVideo Editor: Joel SommazziOriginal music: BUTCH PIXYSocial Media: Laura CoughlanMarketing: Eleanore BamberExec Producer: Jemima RathboneExec Producers for Idle Industries: Dave Granger & Will MacdonaldSenior Exec Producer: Holly Newson Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, I'm Paloma Faith and this is my show. Each week I welcome someone fantastic into my home to talk about what makes them mad, sad and bad. Roll recording! Hello, I'm squeaking today. Oh, you look very good. Nice to see you. Nice to see you.

You look gorgeous. Thanks. I'm just squeaking everywhere. You haven't been to this house. I know, it's very farty. It's amazing. It's so you from the second you walk in. It's so huge.

To you, she's the villain Titania in She-Hulk or iconic Tahani in the Good Place. Or perhaps to you, she's an activist hosting the I-Way podcast and calling out companies for promoting ridiculous and dangerous beauty standards. To glamour, she's a game-changing voice. But to me, she's a fellow East London party animal

from back in the day that I've known for a long time. And when we get together, it's almost impossible to get a word in edgeways. So, strap in. Yes, we're both neurodivergent. That's why I will never be bored in her company. It's Jamila Jamil. Hello.

How are you? Good. How are you? I'm so obsessed with how noisy your trousers are. This is insane. I just thought it would be for all the A-M-D-R. Oh, it's great. A-M-S-R.

A-M- Whatever. Whoever they are. Why are you late? Huh? I'm late because my dog was sick. And it's, you know, I was saying earlier to your crew, I'm very bros before hoes when it comes to my dogs. I'll be late for anyone and anything if they need me. I get it. I'm sorry to hear that. I was going to get you some dog emotium, but does it exist? I know. It's just, yeah, it was just a bit of a fucking nightmare. But I'm not going to be a parent, and they are as close to I'll ever get to having kids. So they do stir up that maternal vibe.

Have you washed your hands? I have washed my hands. Good. Yes. I only care about me in this situation. Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah. I have noticed, Jamila, that on your social media recently, to segue into the word mad,

you've been doing all the same incredible, like, absolutely wonderful activism and speaking out and calling people out and companies out like you usually do. And now suddenly you're getting your boobs out. And unfortunately, We live in a world where I consider it to be absolutely mad that you have to get your boobs out to get any attention. And I want to know what your beef is with the algorithm.

Well, I mean, I don't know if you're allowed to keep this in, but I'm very vocal about Palestine. Because I've been vocal about Palestine, I have had, I've been buried coincidentally since October, 23, by the social media apps. And I'm sure it's a total coincidence. I'm sure it's got nothing to do. with it, but I'm not. Only 22,000 of the 3.8 million people who follow me can even see my content

since October. And so that has been consistent. And I test it out by not talking about it for a few weeks and I talk about it again and then I plummet again. And so the only way I can override what I now refer to as algorithm daddy is by getting my tits out and shaking them at the camera and then hiding an important message somewhere in the image of my tits. And so, what whatever that image is about what's happening in the world. That's the only way I can normally get through. And it's quite depressing. It's really depressing.

And as somebody who's very vocal about Palestine also. Yeah. I'm not getting that many hits either. But they're my Trojan horse. You've got way bit to boobs than me, so I don't have that option. I beg to differ. But yeah, Trojan Tits is the new thing. I know.

Maybe I need to get my bum out. My bum's quite good. Yeah. Just jiggle that towards the living. I've had to start writing on the platform substack, which is like an essay platform to be able to talk about what I want because I'm worried that I'm going to have to get my actual arsehole out on Instagram to be able to get a message across.

So, yeah. It'll be back second crack for you. Oh, absolutely not. Never. Never. Have you bleached your arsehole? No. No.

My ass, I have had a haemorrhoidectomy though. That's different. So now I have a virgin anus. Oh, that's... Yeah, because it wasn't after two children. It was everywhere. Very meaty. I find bleaching...

I find bleaching unacceptable as one of the many things that I find unacceptable that women are pressured to do. I can imagine how mental it would look on me as well. Like my brown body and like a UV... A really blonde. Like, you know, a UV party. Like this like a bright white asshole.

Like she's actually got the anus of a cat. It is mad. It's absolutely mad that we live in a world where our bodies are our only concurrency. Totally. I think one of the things that really makes me angry is just generally the way that women are pushed into these corners in order to be allowed to have a voice. And it's something that really frustrates me. So, like, we'll listen to you if you show us your boobs. Yeah, well, I mean, it's just the algorithm. What's even more fucked about the algorithm is that if a woman my size gets my boobs out on the algorithm and a bikini top, it's fine. But if a woman bigger than me gets her boobs out on the algorithm, the algorithm is trained to make sure that there's not too much nudity in an image.

And so a woman who's bigger than me, her flesh ratio is going to be bigger. Her flesh to clothing ratio is going to be bigger. So she's going to get flagged as pornographic for the same outfit that I'm in that everyone can see it because my boobs are smaller because my body's smaller. So the bikini takes up more space on my body. Isn't that just mad? It is. So we're not just gatekeeping sexuality.

We're also gatekeeping who's allowed to be what size, what image people are able to see. And I think algorithms in general are very disturbing, given that someone else has the ability to control what it is that we see. So we have this sense of agency, this sense of autonomy, like we are able to govern what it is that we're exposed to. That's what social media was supposed to be. It's what the internet was supposed to feel like.

Like we can opt in and we're not being fed what the television gives us. It was supposed to feel like freedom. And it's not, it's a false sense of freedom because we are being fed whatever it is that someone wants us to look at. I think a big part of why discourse has become so fucked in our society is because everyone is looking at two, because everyone thinks that we're all arguing of the same issue, whereas actually we're arguing on different versions of the same event that our algorithm has chosen to show us

and so I think that's really terrifying. It is because you might think you're on the same level and then you're like, well, I've seen all this stuff and they're like, well, I've seen all this stuff and you're arguing thinking you've seen the same stuff. Yeah, and on TikTok we found out that, you know, according to the other social media platforms, it's just whatever's the most popular

is what rises to the top, allegedly. But on TikTok, I think it was we found out that actually some of the people who work there can control what rises to the top. So if you've pissed off someone on TikTok or they just don't like you or they really do like you, they'll promote your content, it just, like I said,

I think there's just not enough transparency around how it works, there's not enough media literacy, not enough social media literacy, and I'm trying to break through that with my breasts. Going back to the kind of subject of the kind of double standard of the word mad in general,

like being enraged, being insane, whatever we've been branded with both of us quite a lot of times during our careers. I also need to make the disclaimer that I was actually, like, literally mad for a while. So even though I've been mischaracterised as mad at the wrong times, sometimes I actually was legit mad. Well, I've had postpartum psychosis. Oh, there you go. But when I was actually mad, I was quiet, so no one thought I was mad.

It's just any time I open my mouth when I'm completely sane and sober that people call me But the point that I was making was like, how do you think people perceive women who are angry? Do you think it's allowed? Do you think it's a gendered word? Yeah, we're not allowed. We're not allowed to be angry. But we're allowed to be the other mad. Men's anger is characterised as passion. It's not characterized as being emotional.

Have you been called mad as in nuts? Constantly. For being outspoken. Yeah, because I think that's reserved for women predominantly and anger's reserved for men predominantly, predominantly societally, I mean. Yeah, I've been, I've been my anger that I have has been exaggerated.

Like, the way I put things across, it's always presented as if I'm ranting or I'm slamming or I'm smashing. In the media, yeah. Yeah, and I'm not. I'm just saying, You've just casually passed a statement, then it said slams.

Yeah. I'm simply questioning, like, are we sure about this? this. I have had some stronger language than I have now, which I do ultimately know that I have had to work on. I think I've used language in the past that kind of fed into that, but I've never been on a soapbox screaming at anyone. No. I've just been trying to say like, hey, danger, danger. I feel like I'm watching a horror movie and I'm watching the woman in her underwear hear a weird, creepy sound in the basement and go down it unarmed to investigate by her. herself. And so I feel like I'm screaming at the TV, just being like, don't go down there.

Because I know what's down there. I just, I fucking hate that an older woman is not something that we consider valuable when all of the older women I've ever met are so valuable. And they're so wise and they're funny and they're interesting and they're irreverent and they're so, so deeply knowledgeable. I agree. I can't believe the way that we make people feel as though you expire as soon as your fertility's up, as soon as you're no longer deemed fuckable by people who only really think young women are safe for them to be around because those young women are too naive. I actually was in a situation last night where I thought about this because I was in a situation where some men invited some women to an event that I was attending, knowing that they were

obviously very, very young and I immediately clicked into maternal because I was like, these girls are vulnerable. They've been invited by these old guys, well, old like my age, but they're like obviously young. And I said in front of the men, like, how old are you to them? They hadn't asked.

They were like, 19. And I just immediately clicked into this thing of like, why are we not protecting these girls? And I felt really passionate about protecting them. And I was asking them about themselves and I involved them in the evening because I wanted them close to me

because I was just worried about them wandering off and then being targets. But also, what I came away when I got home and had made sure that they were going to be safe, I just got into bed and I just thought, I'm so happy I'm not that young anymore. Yes. Because I saw myself in them back then,

and I just thought, I'm so glad I'm finished with that. And now a stage where I think we're in this kind of moment I feel, or maybe it's who I'm surrounding myself, with where I think this generation like sort of late 30s to kind of late 50s early 60s females that I meet and speak to I'm so in awe of and I'm glad to be in that group. But I also think there is an element of feeling like well there's a safer bet there because I'm not going to have to live up to a higher standard because she doesn't have standards yet because when you're in your 20s you're still figuring everything out.

Well, she does have standards, but she's not confident enough to articulate them. Totally. She's bearing them and putting her needs beneath everybody else's. I feel also very sad that people dread getting older. I hate the way that women dread ageing. And, you know, I remember talking to, you know, I remember hearing my whole life about the fact that, you know, enjoy being cat-called on the street now because one day you'll be invisible.

That has been said to me so many times I can't actually count. and the less I get cackled in the street and the more I become invisible to younger men and to all men, the happier I am becoming, the safer I feel, the more I can enjoy a fucking walk down the street, the less I have to worry about what it is that I'm going to wear. Like the amount of mental maths a woman has to do before she just leaves the house.

I call it death maths. So you have to figure out like all the different ways that you can avoid dying. Like every minute you're outside of the house feels like a fucking game of grand theft auto. You're just like, where's the danger? How am I going to survive? How am I going to get back home alive?

I'm not walking down that street that I have to take to get to my own actual house because it feels dangerous. So I have to get in a cab just for three minutes. Look, how much more money we have to spend on the cab, by the way. On getting home safely, all these different things. It is all just absolutely bonkers to me. And I love becoming increasingly invisible. And I feel immensely lucky to still be here now.

and I will feel immensely lucky to be here at 60 and 70 and 80, and I hope that I am a wild, old, filthy, fabulous woman with you who looks like a wild, old, filthy, fabulous woman. I want life to show on my face. I want to feel my age. I want to look my age. I hope that by the time I get there, we have redeveloped some sort of a reverence

for people who've lived that long. When Maggie Smith died, I realised that shit, like, we're probably about to lose that entire generation of the last of the fabulous crones. Because everyone else is working so hard to just smooth themselves out and try to look like a little girl, act like a little girl, be very coquettish, even in your 30s and 40s. Why is it not sexy for a woman to, like, know what she's doing and know where she's going? What is that? Why is everyone in their side? I find it really sexy. I find it so fucking sexy.

I'm actually at this point in my life, like, more. geared towards fancying women than I've ever been because I just look at them and I'm like, I'm so in awe of, 100% of women who are embracing that. And I just think as well, like, actually, there is such a thing as healthy anger. And this is like the healthy anger that you, in my opinion, you come across as a very healthy person when you speak about these things. I think they're good reasons to be angry. And I feel like you feel healthy to me.

And so sometimes we shy away from the term angry or mad, but in reality, a pinch and a sprinkle of both of those things are probably quite brilliant. There would be no progress without anger. Anger is how you register that something's actually wrong. It is a pivotal emotion. We just have to learn how to channel it in the way that's most effective. How to channel it and also how to receive it productively.

And we don't know how to receive a woman's anger. You are one of the few women who I never felt any negativity from in this industry. But you and I have always met each other with open hearts and open arms. And respect. I'm in all of you. And I say, oh my God, you're amazing. But likewise, but also you and I, it never occurred to us to compare ourselves to one another. Like I've always just, and I feel that way about all women that I mean.

As much as I'd love to grow, I just know I can't. As much as I would love to shrink down and be cute like you, I can't. But, you know, I've had concussion from actually hitting my head on an actual mind your head sign. Can you believe how embarrassing that is? Imagine if I died? Yeah, but for me, for someone like me, that's aspirational. Yeah, the grass is always greener. But anyway, but I think it's a really important point to make,

which is that, you know, in this, industry, you are one of the few women who I've been able to have just such a functional relationship with because neither of us have ever looked at other women as competition. We both see it as arbitrary the idea that women are supposed to compare ourselves to each other. We see there to be loads of space because there is loads of space. It is a trick of the mind to teach women that there's only space for one. I think we're coming out of it a bit better, but the propensity to compare women to each other, Beyonce versus Rihanna, etc., is so ingrained in women just as much as men.

and it's something that we, at the very least, cannot be complicit in as women. When have you felt sad? I lost a friend in a really devastating and sudden way, and she was only 39, and she's got two, three-year-old twins, and they'll never get to know how amazing she was. And I think that kind of adds into the madness about how we don't respect time that women are not taught, that time is important and she's gone too soon and I'm so lucky to still be here. We're all so

lucky to have our lives. And I didn't really realize how sad I was because I tend to not register emotions in my brain. I just push them down into my body. So I, you know, I rarely know I'm depressed when I'm depressed. I don't know I'm sad and I'm sad. I don't even know I'm angry when I'm angry. All the stress just goes in and then I'll get like a sort of, I don't know, like a kidney stone or something. And so I disassociate emotionally. And I don't know why that is, but it means that this whole year

I've just kind of had like an arrested development, like a failure to launch. And it wasn't until like maybe a month ago when my boyfriend was like, you've really checked out of life that I even realized because I just, it manifested in me just detaching completely from everything. So not wanting to work,

not wanting to go anywhere, I'm not wanting to do anything. And I realize now that I've just been incredibly sad. And I think that I have a bit of survivors guilt, you know, that why should I be here going to these things, doing these things, chasing my dreams when she's not here to be able to do the same? And so, again, like I said, I think that has been a big part of why this year in particular I've been so vocal about us making the most of the time we have

and not looking at it as something to fear, but looking at it as something to celebrate because it's a privilege. It is not a right. And it can be gone before you can even fucking blink. And so that's been something that I've really struggled with this year. And I've been really sad. And I've had like incessant panic attacks. And now I've become someone who cries at Fix You by Coldplay,

which is I think one of the biggest tragedies of all of my life. I was uncontrollable at Glastonbury. And I was like ruining it for Benedict Cumberbad, who was next to me. I don't know. So he's just trying to listen to the song and I'm just going, but in a way that sounds like you're more in touch

of your sadness than you give yourself credit for. But I do think this is... It has to come out in a panic attack. Like my body has to create like an earthquake for me to go, oh, God, I think I'm still a bit upset about that.

So, yeah, so that sadness, I think, and now I'm trying to channel that sadness into inspiring women to make the most of their time here. I think that's amazing, but also the idea of disassociating from feelings is usually, I don't know if you know, but it's quite a common thing amongst people who've developed that coping mechanism when they were children.

So like when you're faced with extreme things and you're a child and it's overwhelming, you learn to disassociate and then you take it as a moment. you take it as a coping mechanism into adulthood and it's not as functional for you in an adult context. It's a great thing when you're a child because it gets you through. And then you get to adulthood

and you're still doing it and you're like how do I kind of rewire so that I'm healthy to express my feelings and it doesn't go into my body but people like Gabel Matto and stuff speak a lot about that thing of like how it's very, very high

commonly common for women to have autoimmune disorders because of that exact thing, because women are sort of more notoriously able, used to kind of shutting away feelings or not being allowed to have feelings in a way. Because they'll be called mad, they'll be called crazy if we show any emotion other than gratitude. So I get alopecia when I'm really stressed.

And it's only, and alopecia is a very, specific type of stress. For me, it's emotional stress, so I get, like, lumps fall out. But I won't get that if I'm stressed at work. It's just an emotional thing. So when you say, like, I relate to hard,

I'm hard relating to the fact that you're, you know, speaking about how your emotions come out physically, that's quite common for women, I think. Definitely. Also, I heard that there was this sort of palliative care home where people there were very sick, a lot of whom had autoimmune disorders, and they noticed that the people who were very, very good-natured,

never complained, never disrupted anyone, were more likely to stay there and then eventually die. And the ones who were coming in, just kicking off, going fucking nuts, and saying, no, I don't want this, I need this, and just verbalising their needs, they ended up getting better

and being able to go back home and live with care there. And so there is a direct connection. I think obviously you shouldn't just be a total fucking prick. But I do think that babies have it right. I think we're perfect when we're babies. Yeah, you just assert your basic needs. Whereas now we don't feel safe to say I'm sad all the time.

Men especially don't feel safe to say that. We don't feel safe to say I'm angry. We don't feel safe to say that we're lonely. And that's one of the biggest fucking killers is that we don't just say, I'm in trouble. Like, I need you. Whereas when we're babies, that's not stigmatized. You cry when you're fucking lonely.

you're like, give me a fucking cuddle. I love the fact that my dog will scratch my face if I'm on my phone. To give you a head. Because he's like, fucking give me attention. Give me a cuddle. Scratch my chest. Pick up my shit. I totally agree.

I'm on that. Why do you think that sadness is difficult for men to access particularly? Because I think sadness is something that we have prescribed towards women because we see it as weak. We see so many emotions as, weakness and I think that we I sometimes I wonder if we consider sadness to be something that women deal with and because we spend so much of the time that boys are growing telling them to be anything but like a woman just just moving them away from someone I think said online recently

that we don't teach men about masculinity we just teach them how to run away from femininity and I thought that that was really profound because it's so true, so much of the conditioning that I saw the boys around me receiving was just don't be like a girl, don't cry like a girl, make sure that you do anything to move away from femininity. So we're not actually giving them inherent lessons

of what's masculine. And I think masculinity is beautiful, and I think everyone possesses femininity and masculinity just on different kind of spectrums, regardless of their gender. But I worry about the way that society brutalises boys, and I think that we see sadness as something that's reserved for women

because it means you've been hurt and so to even admit you've been hurt means for a moment you may have been vulnerable or powerless. It's not a fully formed thought, but it's just my instinct in this moment that that's where that comes from and I think it's devastating and I think we can see the statistics

that show that not only are men killing themselves at higher numbers than we've ever seen before, I was astonished to learn that 60% of the gun deaths in America are men turning the gun on themselves. I did not know that that was 60% of the outcome of death. But it also is impacted in the rise of men's violence against women. Like they are bursting at the fucking seams. And so I think that our whole society could be healthier

if we could look at the health of the way that we raise boys and allow them to just have the emotions that they have and not teach them that it is repulsive to, any way resembles something that is vulnerable or soft or gentle because we've decided that's for women only. All of these, like, no wonder so many people are rejecting the binary of gender, given that it's also arbitrarily prescribed what you're supposed to be if you're one or the other. I totally get it. And so I personally have just never understood it and therefore never really felt the need to perform gender. I'm just sort of do what I do and I am who I am and I don't

give a shit if it's what the label is. Yeah, I just, I am a multitude of everything I've experienced in my life and that has been most massive. It's called a both mass. Yeah, exactly. And so is everyone. And it's so much of depression is repression. And I think that all of us are walking around with different forms of repression. And for women, I think we're taught that we're not allowed to be masculine. So we repress the masculine in us. And I think it's a brilliant, beautiful side of us. And I'm really lucky that for the last 10 years, I have had a partner who is not afraid of my power and I'm not afraid of his.

And we've created space for both of us to exist fully as who we are, as powerful people in different ways at different times who are able to lean on each other when we need to. And so I know that those men exist and I know that those relationships exist. I'm so glad that's what we should be pushing for. I've had it my whole life where people have met me when I've been in relationships

and they've been like, we can see who wears the trousers. And it's just like, well, hopefully in a healthy relationship, you both get a turn on the trousers. Exactly. Can we both have a few terms eat? Exactly. And sometimes you will want, I like the idea as well that, like, the idea of the parental role and the non-parental role

of actually in a healthy relationship, sometimes you're the parent and sometimes you're the child and you switch the whole time. Like where I've had issues with that, always been when I've felt stuck in parental because I'm a natural leader. Yeah. And I don't want to be stuck in parental. I also want to be the child also.

And I think that goes for both genders. I think we all need to be both at all times, like, all the fluidity. Totally. Neither one of us leads, like, wears the trousers in my relationship. We're both just wearing a sort of a big animal onesie. Everyone's dressed the same and everyone's needed at a different. times. Gone.

What I mean here is negative. Like, have you ever been bad? Have you done bad things? Have I done bad things? I don't think I've, I think I'm inherently. Or badass. Because I think you're quite badass. Oh, right.

No, I definitely wouldn't classify myself as that, but I'm also British, so I think it's like against my genetic code to do that. I've done bad things before. Of course I have, but I think I'm inherently a good egg. I think I'm a good person. I think a way in which I feel as though I've been naughty, I've been bad,

is the way that I've chosen to communicate some of the things that I'm passionate about over the years. I think largely I've gotten it right, and I think I had the right intentions and the right tone and the right amount of outrage, but I think sometimes I have slipped into being, allowing myself to be perceived as a bit of a prick or unskilled in combat or combative discourse.

And I think, you know, a good example of that was publicly calling Lawrence Fox saying that he looked like a freshly wanked cock. I can see why it's poetic. and I conjured up a vivid image, a visceral image, but I do regret moments like that or calling some pundit on TV a shit-stained smeared across our country. I didn't need to use language like that and it mostly just reflected poorly on me

and when people used to say that when we were at school that like it just makes you look like you're not very educated, I thought that was just a way of controlling us. But now I look back and I realise that actually I probably alienated a lot of the people that I most needed to talk to and have just pushed myself into an echo chamber that I don't really want to be in. I don't need to fucking talk to people already agree with me. The people I want to reason with and not even change, I'm not even arrogant enough to assume I'm going to change

their mind, but I would love to be able to open their mind. No, just open their mind to the fact that perhaps we're all acting off of the influence of our environment. What if we realize that we actually have more in common than we have differences and what if we tried to come together in a way that was a bit more peaceful and worked together because ultimately the people in power are the fucking enemies and they've turned us against each other but by insulting these men

these like public figures in the way that I did in such a sort of a gutter rat way I've kind of just made all the people that follow them who look up to them also feel offended and feel as though that's how I also view them and I think we have a huge problem you know amongst liberals on the left of moral superiority of thinking that we're somewhat

smarter than other people, of not taking into account the nuances or the things that we get wrong, the mistakes that we have made. And we don't look at people as a product of their environment. We can't separate ignorance from evil. And so we conflate everything as someone just being hateful and awful and terminally stupid. Whereas actually, we're all making mistakes. We all have blind spots. And we all need to, I think, check our own information. And none of us are better than each other. We're all just incredibly different and shouting at each other, diminishing each other and humiliating one another, which is such a big part of our culture now, of like who's going to win with the smackdown, I think has pushed people really far apart,

and I think that that's why we're the loneliest we've ever been. And I see people cutting off friends, people cutting off family members, and sometimes that's the right thing to do in life. I've done it. Me too. But over massive, massive structural issues, where I can tell that someone fundamentally is deeply, deeply unsafe for me to be around. If someone had an opinion about something that I didn't like, that there was an opportunity to shift or that we could come closer together on that, I would not throw someone up who was important to me out of my life. And I worry about how disposable we're becoming. And I think the reason I consider myself naughty for it is that unexpectedly, I gained a lot of success from being

loud and quite rude sometimes. You know, I was very provocative. And so I was rewarded publicly by being on the cover of Vogue or being in Time Magazine's 25 Most Influential List. Like all these different ways I was put on campaigns. It was very much so signal to other people that behave like her and you'll get all of these rewards. And I'm sad about that because now I can see that I've been part

of the footprint, of the asshole footprint, of teaching people that that's how you should communicate to get your point across or to make a difference. And I think I wish I'd struck the balance that I think I found now of still being a bit provocative, but ultimately seeing the best in other people and giving people the benefit of the doubt. And from an informed, intelligent place.

But my next question is, Yeah, go on. Do you find it difficult when you do bad things? So I'm listening to you and I'm thinking, that's forgivable. We all have off days. Also, you know, like, sometimes you're just like,

oh, just fuck off. Like, you just argue in an unintelligent way. Even at home, like people listening at home have arguments and they're like, I did have a good point, but it's completely diminished by the fact that I slammed the door or whatever. And then it all became about me being aggressive

with the door and not about the point I was making, which was good, etc. But it's like, how do you find forgiving yourself. Do you do that easily? Do you forgive yourself easily for like when you've made mistakes or done things you've considered bad, quote unquote? Because I just think I'm not sure if it even exists. I feel like I give myself a fucking break as long as I know that I've changed. I'm not quick to forgive anyone, including myself. Can I just say quickly because it's stuck on my head like obviously murder, rape, child abuse. Like there are some bad things. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I just don't want you to think we should forgive ourselves for that. Harvey Weinstein, you've got to forgive yourself. I'm talking about somebody I know is inherently good, forgiving themselves for sort of minor things. Do I forgive myself for speaking in a clumsy and sometimes rude way? Of course I do, especially because women were never encouraged to speak our mind about social, massive social infrastructures. I was only ever asked, as I'm sure we do,

about my lipstick routine or my head. air care routine or how I stay slim. I was never asked about feminism or patriarchy or any of these things. So when suddenly everyone was shoving a microphone in all of our faces to speak about this and speak about it as if we are academics, when we're all fucking

artists who didn't go to school or didn't pay attention in school, I think that it was only natural that a mess was going to be made at first. You have to waddle and crawl before you learn how to walk and run. So of course I give myself grace, but I'm just encouraging us to give ourselves

grace and give it to other people. Give each other the grace that you hope to receive yourself when you inevitably cock up. I've said it before that we reserve the, you know, we don't have, we don't have the benefit of the doubt left for women because we've spent it all on men. And I think that it's really important that we recognise that and give ourselves the benefit of the doubt and just carry on. And each other as women. I feel like actually looking, you know, my own life, in this part of my life, I'm enjoying being bad. Like, all those things that were programmed, what we spoke about earlier, that represents a good girl, like, be a good girl, you know, silence to say, oh, go on, be a good girl.

Even just, even just like the concept, I mean, this is a huge subject, but the concept that when I was a kid, it'd be like, kiss everyone good night. And I'd go, if you go, no, it's like, be a good girl. and it's like, okay, but what about owning your own body? Well, about saying I don't want to kiss these strangers. I don't know these strangers. And now I'm a mother myself and I've got kids who are both young girls and they say, oh, can I get a hug?

People and they just go, no. And I say, she doesn't want to. And it's like awkward for everyone because they expect young little girls to hug them and that I should then say, no, you must do this. which then, like, translated into situations as a young girl. I just know that you get such a boner when that happens. I know that in the awkwardness of that moment, you are rock hard.

Like, I know that you love it. You live for those moments. I do because I just think I want to raise bad girls. I don't, not as in, like, terrible, but I just think, like, societally perceived girls. Like, I want, if bad is stand up for what you want and your boundaries, then I think it's a great thing. And every human being, we go back to the person issue. We're all fallible and we make mistakes and we fumble on sentences and whatever.

But in reality, like, you know, someone said to me yesterday, actually, there's no such thing as bad luck. I know it's a different thing. But it's quite amazing to think, oh, it's so great. There's no such thing as like this terrible thing. It's like that will make you better. So when you make mistakes as in do a bad thing, hopefully you then learn and go,

that didn't feel quite good in my body. I don't like that. There's a term for that. There are two terms of that. One of them is pro-noia, which is sort of ominous positivity, where it's the opposite of paranoia. You believe the universe is conspiring in your favour.

But also there's something called the burnt toast theory, which is an alternate way of looking at something that goes fucking wrong. So let's say you're in, you know, you're late for work in the morning, your toast burns, and now you're even later. And it sort of throws off your entire day, but maybe you would have been hit by a car. maybe you would have had some other kind of accident maybe you would have bumped into an ex

while you look like shit anything could have happened that could have been negatively formative for your life but the burnt toast that inconvenient actually sent you onto a different trajectory and saved you from something worse and I enjoy looking at life like that what brings you to the point where you want to call someone out for badness

as in other people's badness I think I only ever really want to Like normally I prefer to call out systems rather than individuals. I only ever call out an individual if they are so powerful that they almost are a system in and of itself, where they are representing the system. I think I only ever really want to call people out when I'm like, you could so easily do better. You could so easily not sell that laxative drink to teenagers.

You've got loads of money. You're not trying to feed a starving village. Like you're not doing this for any kind of noble reason. You don't have to. You don't have to misinform. people. You don't have to be a massive cunt on television. There's all kinds of different reasons where it's like you don't have to abuse

the power that you have. That's when I'm normally likely to speak up. When I know that there's no greater good this is coming from and it's that they know better and they're choosing to just do this thing that is harmful for society. So that's when I've spoken up against an individual but generally I try to go after systems, not

people. Well, you're an amazing woman. Thank you. Oh, thank you. Do you want to tell me... In your farty little trousers? Yeah. Are they too little? No, I love them. I think they're good.

They're not too little. You immediately got worried. Has she been bad? My last bit I like to end on because it feels like it's really... Is the rhyme, glad. What makes you glad? And I feel like you touched on it a little bit today, but...

Does it have to be something that rhymes with the word glad? No? Okay, fine. It's just that I got mad, bad, sad, and sad. Yeah. What makes you feel glad? I've got silly answers and I've got serious answers and I'm trying to think about which one I'd rather say.

Because the word like reverse cowgirls going around my brain again and again and again, so I'm trying to not let that one in. I think to kind of summarise what I've sort of said on this podcast anyway, I'm fucking glad I'm getting older. I'm so lucky. So lucky to be getting older. and I'm fucking glad that I'm enjoying it. I'm glad that society has not been able to rob me of that feeling.

I'm so glad that I am loving every second of it. I'm so glad that I love every birthday. I'm so glad that I cherish the part of me that is growing smarter and wiser. And I'm so glad that 85-year-old me is going to know that 38-year-old me was looking out for her, thought she was valuable and was trying to protect her. unlike 38-year-old me, how I feel about 25-year-old me where I would kick her in the cunt for everything that she did to me,

for everything she's left me with, with this mess that she's left me with, how angry I am at her, I am glad that 85-year-old me will not feel the same way. What will she be wearing 85-year-old you? Oh, God, pleather, snake skin, leopard print, anything. Anything sweaty. Anything obscene.

I live to terrorise. the social contract. And I live to terrorise social constructs. It's a beautiful thing watching you do it. She'll be wearing whatever the fuck she feels like on that day. Crockless knickers. 100%. And just a bomber jacket. Oh, 100%. Let the wrinkled labia be free. I can't wait to see it. Honestly, may I be lucky enough to get there? But I'm so, so excited. And may I please God resist the urge to erase time on my face. I really hope I'm sure. strong enough to do it. I'd rather leave this industry than allow someone to take that from me. So. Thank you so much. It's been really inspiring. Next time I come back, I'll have a full

facelift. Thank you so much. Oh, thank you for having me. Please let's meet soon. I adore you. No. No, I think we're done here. Okay. Goodbye. I won't tell her that she's got lipstick on her teeth. Well, wasn't that great? All of the links of everything we mentioned in the show can be found in the episode description. Oh, and while you're there, why not subscribe and follow the show too? See you all next time.

Later's potatoes.