The Life Of Bryony - From Body Shame to Self-Love: Megan Crabbe on Her Journey to Self-Acceptance

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

How do you stop making yourself small in a world that keeps telling you to shrink? If you’ve ever wished for the confidence to just show up in the world as your fullest self, then you need to meet Megan Jayne Crabbe. You might know her as Body Posi Panda, the Instagram force of nature whose honest posts on body acceptance, eating disorder recovery and radical joy have helped millions find a bit of peace in their own skin. On the journey to self acceptance, Megan has been to some very dark places; including hospitalisation at 14 for an eating disorder before finding her way back—and she’s painfully honest about just how tough that journey remains. We’re talking the insidious grip of diet culture, untangling ourselves from the “pretty tax,” sex, wanking, dating and what it really means to stop apologising for who you are. Expect candour, wisdom, a few laughs and the realisation that being “your biggest self” is not about fixing yourself, but questioning what (and who) made you play small in the first place. Megan’s new book, We Don’t Make Ourselves Smaller Here, is out now. WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU Got a question or a story to share? Text or send a voice note on 07796657512—just start your message with LOB Use the WhatsApp shortcut: https://wa.me/447796657512?text=LOB Prefer email? Drop us a line at [e-mail] If this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who might need it—it really helps! Bryony xx CREDITS Presenter: Bryony Gordon Guest: Megan Jayne Crabbe Content Producer: Henry Williams Audio & Video Editor: Luke Shelley Executive Producer: Mike Wooller A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode of The Life of Brian E is sponsored by Asda, celebrating 60 years of great family value. That's Asda Price. Welcome to The Life of Brian E, the show where we talk honestly about the chaos of life and the strength it takes to keep on going through it. Today we live in a world that has taught us to shrink, to stay quiet, to take up less space. But my guest today is Meghan Jane Crabb and she's going to teach you to do the opposite. She's a bestselling author and body acceptance advocate. You might know her from Instagram

where her posts about embracing recovery and radical joy have helped millions. Her new book, We Don't Make Ourselves Smaller Here, is going to teach you to stop apologizing for who you are. Our bodies are not trends. It doesn't matter what is in. We actually all deserve to just exist in whatever natural variation and diversity we exist in.

My chat with Meghan Jane Crabbe right after this. Meghan Jane Crabbe, welcome to the life of Brianne. I'm so happy to have you here. I'm so happy to be here. This episode, I think, I'm gonna, I just need to start with this for anyone tuning in. Like, be prepared to get out of your motherfucking comfort zone. Okay, yes. In this episode.

We can go there. Because talk about how to be, not your best self, but your biggest self. Mm hmm. And that that is something that does not come easily to women or to people that identify as women. Tell me about it. And you have and so much so that you have written an entire book about it. I have. Yes. We don't make ourselves smaller here. The book is about, and you say,

becoming a little bigger, a little less apologetic, a little more fully ourselves. Now, Megan, some people may have started following you on Instagram originally as BodyPosyPanda. Yes. And so you have a huge following for your for your body positivity, activism and work. And I imagine and I love following you. And I imagine that like me, because I've got like a teeth of your followers, you must get a lot of people saying to you, I wish

I had your confidence. I wish I had your confidence. I wish I could be that carefree in my body. 100%. You do so much brilliant, just like dancing freely. Right back at you, babe. As do you. We'll see you out here on these beaches. I know, but I'm just, I'm just, I am but a mere peasant dancing in your shadow. Right. So talk to me about this book and why you wanted to do it. Yes. Okay. So my first book, it was called Body Positive Power. It was all about reclaiming the body, unlearning diet, culture and fat phobia and healing our body image. After I wrote that book, you know, you know, after you write one book,

everyone says, what's the next? When's the next one come? What's it going to be about? And for a long while, I didn't have anything else to say or give or offer. And then I lived a little bit. And I realized that accepting and reclaiming my body was just the beginning. And that there were so many other areas of my life where I had lost parts of myself, where I had been convinced to shrink myself, been made to feel less than that I needed to reclaim. And I literally drew this map, just this little doodle when I started with body. And then I went, okay, where else have I lost parts of myself? Relationships, heart, also in my sex life, sexuality, also in things like my

identity and what I've been convinced my life should look like and, you know, all these little places that I jotted down. And I thought, I want wanna write about all of this. I wanna explore all these ways that we as women are convinced to make ourselves small and just question, can we take something back of ourselves? Does this have to be the way that we see ourselves and the way that we operate in the world?

And it's not a one, two, three, you're fixed. You are your biggest self congratulations. It genuinely is more of an invitation to just come with me. And I've written very honestly about my personal experience. Let's just come and have an explore and question these things. Because that, I think, is the start of so much unlearning. Just questioning, why do we think this way? Why do we feel this way? Who's actually taught us this? And just noticing how small we make our lives. And also I think that, like a lot of people probably, I remember someone describing Instagram social media

as like a lie factory, you know, because we don't see all of it. We just see the kind of highlight reel and the good bits. So even when you're trying to be unfiltered and refusing to conform to all those beauty standards, even then, one can look like someone really happy who's got their shit together, who never has a moment of self doubt. And I don't know about you, but that's not true for me. Oh, never. Absolutely never. No, it's that's not real life. Because we because the way we feel about ourselves, you know, we're not just in a vacuum. that's not real life because the way we feel about ourselves, we're

not just in a vacuum. It is not just all about our own heads. We exist within the culture around us and every single day for our entire lives, we've been told in one way or another that we're not enough or that we're too much or that we need to change this or that. So obviously it's a constant work in progress. But also what I really felt reading this book is that, you know, like so many people, you've had to go through some very dark experiences of having absolutely no confidence, no self esteem, no sense of self really, at all in order to come full circle to this place of imperfection, you know, of acceptance, you know, I suppose.

And the bit that really, you know, sometimes at some points I was reading the book and going, fuck, I forgot that that was the way life was in the 90s, in the noughties, you know, so many things we normalised about diet culture. I mean, we didn't call it diet culture. It was just culture. Right. You know, but like you wrote, you write about how even if there was to be a fat character in a movie, it had to be played by a thin actor or actress in a fat suit. Yes. Like Gwyneth Paltrow in Shallow Hell or was it Eddie? Monica, Fat Monica, Fat Monica.

Yeah. Eddie Murphy. Yes. It was like all kind of quite jokey. Fat Monica, Home Friends, Eddie Murphy, yes. It was like all kind of quite jokey. And the worst thing to be when I was young was fat. 100%, 100%. And I think one thing that we are speaking about more online at the moment is just how bad

and how normalized the kind of 90s, noughties diet culture was. And I think that was a time when online gossip sites and magazines were really at their peak. And what those places did was hyper-focus on the bodies and the food diaries, the weights of famous women. And we all got so incredibly obsessed. I know that I did.

And everything that I did. And everything that I was consuming, everything that I was watching showed me this one incredibly narrow version of beauty, which was thin, white, able-bodied, cisgender, straight, young. That was the beauty standard. And I genuinely believed for the majority of my young life that I had to become that. It wasn't even an option, right? And let's not forget, you know, I'm mixed race. I was chubby as a child. I was never going to turn into Rachel Green.

But in my head, there was no other option for me. I had to, because those were the bodies that things happened to. You know, life happened to those thin and beautiful people who were the main characters, who were fashionable, who were loved and desired. So I really internalised that lack of representation as I must change myself because I am the problem. You say in the book that you had you felt uncomfortable in your body, you started loathing your body from the age of five. Yeah. And I thought, Whoa, and then

I thought, Hmm, actually, it's probably quite similar for most of us. It's the actual statistics are shocking. I think 80% of 10-year-olds have been on a diet, and there are studies showing that even the three to four-year-old girls are starting to express preferences for thinness. This was shown really clearly when curvy Barbie came out. So a few years ago, obviously, Mattel unveiled these new body types for Barbie. And one of them was curvy. And the studies that have been done since then have showed that young girls already have negative attitudes towards the curvy Barbie. They don't want to play with her.

They will make fun of her when the adults leave the room. And these are, you know, four, five, six year old girls. So our cultural fatphobia and obsession with thinness has gotten into their heads by that age. So much so that even you know, a bit of diversity in a doll, it's not enough. It's not going to fix it. We need to overhaul the whole thing. But also, you know, I was thinking about this. The problem is, is that it's so internalised and it's so deep within us that it can never change because companies such as Mattel will put out the curvy Barbie and they'll say, well, no one's buying it.

It's not my fault. It's not our fault. We tried. We tried to take that box, but no one likes it. And without looking at, well, why don't they like it? Because Rome was not built in a day and it won't be unbuilt in a day. And it takes a long time and a lot of inward work as you say, and that's why I'm saying, be prepared to get out of your comfort zone. Do you know what I mean? Because it's dismantling so many things that we've learned.

But for you, Megan, and I think this is really poignant and important to talk about if you don't mind, that you were hospitalized for an eating disorder at the age of 14. Could you talk a bit about that? Yeah, of course. So as you said, my body image issues started really young, four or five years old, first day of primary school,

thinking there's something wrong with me because I look different. I latched onto dieting as a way to try and solve the problem I saw as my body. And I was consistently dieting by the time I was 10. That spiraled over the next few years and puberty and feeling like I didn't know what was going on in life, in the world, what was I meant to do and be? And it developed into anorexia nervosa.

Now, obviously anorexia is more than just an extreme diet and there are lots of factors that go into to eating disorders, but that's how mine went. I am very lucky to be sat here. lucky to be sat here. I'm hugely lucky and I was hospitalized, I spent time in a psychiatric institution for young people and without a doubt recovery is the hardest thing I have ever done and probably will ever do. And the thing is, when you recover from a restrictive eating disorder where you've lost a lot of weight, the general consensus is, well, she's gained the weight back, so she's fine. She's a okay, let's send her off. And back then, that's

definitely how little support I received at the time. It was like, okay, your weight restored, you're fine. And then you go back into the world where disordered eating is everywhere and is so normalized and everyone's talking about calories, everyone's body shaming themselves, everyone's obsessed with how much they weigh in the morning, you know, it's, it's, I'm going to, it's a mind fuck. It's a real mindfuck to try and recover within such a diet culture obsessed society. Well, also a society that doesn't want you to recover. I mean, I just, I feel quite emotional just listening to you because,

it's really clear to me how, girls, young girls, we make them ill, like society makes them ill. And, you know, there is no, it's just, it's just tragic. And, and I, it makes me really angry, makes me really angry. Always, I think quite a lot of like, the, the, the, the body acceptance work that I try and do is in like direct response to seeing how my mother and her friends grow up talking about their bodies and how much they just hated themselves and how much it was like self loathing was the starting point. It was it wasn't even you know it was just

like accepted and if you if you were nice to yourself it was like all a bit big for their boots. Right. A bit full of themselves. Yeah. Or it's a joke. Yeah. You know, the kind of confident, sassy character, maybe plus size character is always just comedic. Like ha ha, how could she really like herself? Yeah. And I, and I feel also for me, like, and this is a really interesting thing that I've, I've only recently really kind of got to grips with that for me, in a way, putting on weight in my 30s was almost like it was like protection after decades of being actually what I realized. And that comes through in

your book so much of like, the way I sexualize myself, and I kind of colluded in the way that society you know, you write with such candidness about experiences you had with boys and men in your youth where it was like the lines of consent were really blurred. But it was also that kind of thing of you had to kind of, well, I need to go along with this because if I don't, you know, my reputation is on the line, you know, and, and then, and I think that almost for me, and I don't know if this this chimes with you at all, but like, letting go of that, when I got, I was like, I need, I can't, I cannot be just, I cannot be defined by my body, even though technically, you know, when you're running around, letting your stuff

like wobble around, you're being defined by your body, but it's kind of saying I'm more than my body. Yes. You know, like I am a body, but I'm also I'm a human and all humans are equal. Yeah, I mean, I hear you because I have, I guess, had similar criticisms leveled at me in that argument of, well, if you want us to be seen as more than bodies, why are you showing your body? Why are you, you know, out here prancing around in your bikini? And I think inescapably, we still exist in bodies and we still exist in a society

that puts all the emphasis on bodies. So removing focus entirely from, from bodies, that's down the line, right? Right now we have to work on shifting the narrative around bodies. That's like step one. You're talking about step 1000. We don't, unfortunately, we don't exist as like floating vapor. Yes, where we can just like not focus at all on how we look. So we're, you know, we're getting there. And for now, we're gonna, we're still gonna have to show up in our bodies. And we can make points in them. And we can change the narrative by doing things in our bodies that maybe aren't expected of us like running marathons in our pants. Yeah, I wrote this down because I thought it was a really it's a it's a really brilliant phrase and it's what I try to strive for every day when I wake up, you know, just listening to you talk about how recovery from an eating disorder is the hardest thing you've ever done, you know, and that you continue to have to do on a daily basis, you know, because that is recovery, right? But for me, it's like you talk about this, a weight neutral approach to health. Yes. And when people say, I wish I had your confidence,

I think that's what they're going at neutrality. I wish that when I woke up, that when I woke up, my whole day was not based on like my mood for the day or my approach to life wasn't hooked to some numbers on a scale or on a label in my dress. Don't you think? Absolutely. Or on how many likes a post gets, or on how attractive a man finds you when you step outside. You know, it's all of these external measurements of our worth, a lot of which come from our body, we've been taught to see, you know, in our bodies. None of them do us justice. And all of them undermine our ability to see ourselves fully and in our full worth, because we have always been infinitely more than any one measure, that any one, you know, number, measure of our worth. And I think we've been tricked. We have massively been tricked into putting all of our value into

these things that have never mattered that much. How do we start dismantling all of these things? I want to start with dismantling the pretty tax. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can we do that? Can we do that in like, I don't know, 20 minutes? Can we just talk to me about the pretty tax? Okay.

So I wrote a chapter in this book called The Pretty Tax and I explored how for like my early teenage years, I would not leave the house, would not even open the front door, even for the postman would not open the front door unless I was fully done and, you know, completely made up, et cetera. And it was a ridiculous expectation for me to put on myself every day of school, every time I went anywhere, because I genuinely believed this, because I genuinely believed

that if I was gonna be seen out in the world, I had to be as close to the beauty standard as I possibly physically could. Otherwise, I'm not worth being seen. I tried to start dismantling that when I found body positivity. So I chopped off my hair, you know, I had this long like long hair that I would always spend ages styling. I chopped off my hair. I stopped wearing makeup completely. And I challenged myself to go out into the world. And rather than having that constant loop in my brain of how does everyone see me?

Like when you look at me, how attractive do you think I am? Am I aesthetically pleasing enough for you? I challenged myself to look out of the world and think, well, how do I feel? What am I seeing? And I think as women, we are so trained to self-objectify that we don't get to be present in the world. We are just things for other people's viewing pleasure.

And we spend our whole lives like, oh, how do I look to them? Shall I angle myself? Shall I suck in? Like constantly, and it's exhausting we spend our whole lives like, oh, how do I look to them? Shall I angle myself? Shall I suck in? Constantly. And it's exhausting and it steals our ability to even be here in our lives, which is ridiculous because, hello, we exist. We are here. Therefore, we deserve to be here and to be taking things in and to actually, you know, be engaging in what's going on around us. actually, you know, be engaging in what's going on around us. So I challenged myself during that time to really, really unlearn

that by exposure therapy, really, that's what it was. Okay, so like, so this is, I mean, and actually, you know, what, this, sorry, this is, you know, in a way, it is, it is, we are, it is all sorts of like, it's a mental health issue. So it requires mental health tactics. Yes, yes. And also I think it's important to point out that I kind of went that extreme way.

For me, it felt extreme at the time. Let's not get it twisted. I was still, you know, a young woman with a relative amount of pretty privilege. So to other people, it wouldn't have been like, shocking, there's a woman going outside without makeup. To me, at the time, it was massive. And my relationship with things like style and makeup

has evolved since then. And I'm at a place with it now where truly I do not feel that I need it. Some days, it still feels like a bit of armor. Like coming here today, we're recording something, we're being on camera, I'm getting into my mindset of being on. And sharp little flick of eyeliner. Some days feels like it kind of helps. Don't get me wrong, I would absolutely rock up here with

nothing in my PJs as well. And that would be absolutely fine because I don't attach my worth to any of this. It's sometimes an outlet, it's sometimes a bit meditative and sometimes it's just a bit of armor that we still need. And I think it's worth saying that for a lot of us, for a lot of women, we want to reject these things. We want to stop dieting, stop wearing makeup, not care about what we're wearing or what we're looking like.

And we have to also recognise that we are still existing in this culture that hyperfocus on our, in this culture that hyperfocuses on our appearance, that teaches us to care so much about these things every day, and we have to offer ourselves a little bit of grace. It does not have to be this absolutely all or nothing, you know, if you're not doing it completely, yeah, you're a failure. And you know, the same can be said for all or nothing. You know, if you're not doing it completely, yeah, you're a failure. And you know, the same can be said for feminism in general. Well, we do. I mean, like this is another you talk about good personhood, which I was

such a brilliant chapter about that thing of the standards we we hold ourselves to get social media has absolutely made that, you know, it's a huge thing and we can fall into it. But yes, and that's what I wanted. I actually wanted to talk to you about that bit of the pretty tax, how you've dismantled it and kind of put it back together as it suits you. Yes. And that's the thing that I've, I've also had to go through where it's like, where I can find myself swinging from one extreme to the other, which is like, I'm not gonna die. You know, it's like, it's like there's, but there are times when it might be useful for my health

to, I don't know, to adopt some healthy practices for my heart or something, do you know what I mean? And it's not, these are not absolutes and it's really important. And it's like, I think for me, the thing that I question about it is like, is this coming from a place of nourishment or punishment? Yes, it's intentions.

It's intentions and it's recognizing where the urge stems from. I think with so many conversations about makeup or body hair or what we eat, there's this immediate comeback of, well, I'm this immediate comeback of well I'm doing it for me I'm doing it for myself you know it's not about anything else and I think we probably need to be a bit more honest with ourselves because realistically if we had never been taught to wear makeup to shave to pursue thinness none of us would be out here like this right and that's okay that doesn't

make you a bad human it doesn't even necessarily doesn't make you a bad human. It doesn't even necessarily make you a bad feminist if you still feel those pressures and are still participating in those things. But is there a little bit of room for just questioning? Is there a little bit of room for just being aware of that? Why does this work for you? Exactly. Why are you more comfortable doing these things?

Would you really be doing them if you lived on a desert island and there was no one around, then there was no social media, you didn't even have a mirror, you know, if we were genuinely out here seeing ourselves as more than bodies all the time completely. And I don't want anyone to feel bad about that.

I mean, like I said, I'm still, you know, dipping my toe here and there in ways that I find less restrictive or okay for me. But I think, yeah, we could be a bit more honest about what's really going on. This is a paid advertisement from Asda. Confession time. I've never been what you'd call a natural in the kitchen. Cooking has always felt a bit overwhelming, especially on those busy, slightly chaotic weeknights. But thanks to Joe Wicks and Asda, I've gone from what's for dinner panic to serving up

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That's Asda Price. No Frills delivers. Get groceries delivered to your door from No Frills with PC Express. Shop online and get $15 in PC optimum points on your first five orders. Shop now at nofrills.ca. Now let's talk about body hair. Yeah, because I love I love the body. I love the conversation about body hair is so fascinating because it is like I've always had this saying Megan which is love me love my bush. I'm this really appalled if a man said please can you remove all your hair down there I'd be like please can you remove yourself from my life.

Absolutely. Like I don't I just went on holiday I didn't do my bikini line before and I was there was a bit where I was like oh it's a it's a bit's a bit, it's a bit, it's a, it's a bush, you know, it's like, it's, it's a forest. It's a, it's a rain, it's the Amazon love. Do you know what I mean? And maybe it requires, but why does it require a bit of deforesting? Like, why are you looking down there anyway? Do you know what I mean?

But you talk a lot about, and your relationship with body hair is, it's sort of emblematic of your, the whole relationship you've gone on with your body itself, if that makes sense. I would say so. So, I mean, I, like all women and girls in our culture, was taught that, have you noticed there's a bottle of Pepto Bismol there? Yeah, everyone notices that. Very random.

Okay. Like all women and girls, I was taught that, you know, body hair is disgusting and unhygienic and feminine and unacceptable and you must shave it. And I was ready. You know, I have these memories of being in primary school and looking down at my legs in the summer and being like, is it time? Is the hair going to come? And, you know, going and stealing my dad's razor, as we all do that first time and all

that skin and blood. I had a friend who shaved her arms. She was 10. Yeah. Why are you shaving your arms? Yeah, I used to shave my like mustache area. I still kind of do sometimes. Well, this was because a boy told me to when I was 10.

I was like, internalize that. And yeah, I just I carried this through my life. And even once I had gone into body positivity and rejected diet culture and accepted my kind of natural size, I still could not accept my body hair. It felt like this line that I didn't dare cross. And a lot of that was about desirability. You know, I was, I was dating men at the time and the strongest opinions that I have ever heard about body hair have come from men and from patriarchal beauty standards. So I didn't want

to cross that line of becoming that fat, hairy, undesirable woman. That to me was a horrifying concept. And it got to a certain point where I think it was over, it was over lockdown actually, where, you know, I hadn't been as vigilant with my shaving because we weren't fucking going anywhere. And I realized that I myself did not want to reach for that razor and take off all my body hair. This was before I was about to kind of be reunited with my male partner of the time. And I was like, who am I still doing this for genuinely?

And if you look into the genuine reasons why women feel the way they do about their body hair, it's very similar to why we feel the way we do about thinness because there are huge amounts of money and massive industries that have successfully brainwashed us into thinking that we must be hairless in order to be beautiful and worthy and good enough. That is the reason why we

get rid of our body hair. Gillette. I love that quote that you that you've put I haven't written down who the quote is from, but I think I'm just going to credit it to you. If women woke up and decided to like their bodies, think of how many businesses would go out. How many companies would go out of business? Dr. Gail Dines, not me, not me, a woman far more experienced than me. I'm glad that you were able to attribute that quote correctly. Because, but it's true.

And, you know, again, but again, it's coming to that thing of like, what are the bits that I like? Because I like, because they make me feel nice. But I've definitely come to that place where like, I fucking love skincare. I love it because I love it. And I shouldn't, you know, and again, actually, I'm thinking about this, like, I don't need to justify it. But, but I'm talking, you know, like, I love that sense that I am going to bed at night. And I am, you know, I'm looking after myself, because let me tell you, Megan, there were times when I did not look myself did not look after myself when I was going to bed at night. I didn't even know where I was going to bed.

And so for me, it's that kind of thing. And I like a bit of makeup. Do you know what I mean? And I like a bright lip and all of the stuff. So it's not going, oh, the whole of the beauty industry is evil and wants to suck us dry. It's sort of like, you know, it's accepting that there are bits that I, you know, like, you know, taking the bits that work for you and leaving the rest. Yes. What do you feel able to challenge slightly? I think if we if we all did just a bit of that, we would massively shift the conversation. And it's that idea of, you know, within activism, people often say, it doesn't take one perfect person, it takes hundreds of imperfect people.

And I think these conversations, you know, about dismantling patriarchal standards of all kinds is the same. It takes all of us doing it imperfectly, but doing it. Doing it. Yeah. So the other bits, kind of move on a bit, because I've got so many things I need to talk to you about. Oh, it's started to, sorry. It's, it was recording.

It was dictating what I was saying. Right, okay. So let's get on to relationships. Okay. Relationships with men specifically. There's a bit where you landed so deeply, so fucking deeply for me, where you talk about, I can't remember what it was in relation to, but you talk about a man like going cold on you, someone you've been dating, like not replying to your

messages and going cold and disappearing. And you talk about how you began excavating yourself, checking for flaws and what you could do to make yourself better. Like what have I done wrong? What have I done wrong to make this person disappear? And that I was like, oh my God, that is so, I find that so deeply relatable most of my 20s. But also not just in terms of relationships, but you know, in terms of, you know, any kind of relationship, what be it working or friendship, do you mean like as you alluded to this earlier, I didn't allude to it, you said it. That thing of going in like how we are as women taught to go inwards and excavate our own inward life because that's where the problem lies.

Yes, yeah, absolutely. And I think when it comes to dating and relationships for women, we have been taught to see dating as an exercise in securing another person's validation and affection and locking it down, making them like us. Therefore, we mold ourselves, we make ourselves changeable to whatever they might want to do whatever we can to be appealing enough to them, forgetting what we think about them or how we actually feel or if we're showing up as ourselves. And then when things happen, like we get rejected, or we get ghosted, which is what I referenced in the book, we are left trying to figure out what we didn't get right. What did we not perform well enough? Where were we imperfect? Because it didn't go how it was

meant to go. And especially for something like ghosting where you don't get the explanation. It's horrible. And it's so natural and easy to turn inwards and make yourself the problem. And that, you know, that goes for anything in life that goes wrong. For a lot of us, our natural instinct is to gain a sense of control actually, by thinking, well, if I'm the problem, then I can fix it. You know, if it's out of your control, then, you know, there's nothing you can do. And that's, that's quite a scary thing for some people. But if you're the problem, you can get right in there, figure out all the ways that you're not good enough and you're unlovable and you're ugly and unattractive. And, and that's the reason.

You know, it's an evolutionary, it's actually an evolutionary process? So I interviewed Gabor Mate, he's amazing, like casual. Yeah. And he was saying how that thing to turn inwards, I mean, it's specifically, it's much more hardwired in women than it is in men, but it's actually in kind of all of us in that, when we're babies, when we're a newborn, and if we cry and our carers don't come to us, and there could be a million reasons they don't come to us.

They could be on the loo, they could be, they could be talking to another member of the tribe or whatever, like this is from, be talking to another member of the tribe or whatever, you know, like this is, this is from, you know, um, they, if they thought that, that, that, that human was, uh, it was not coming. They would, they, they would be terrified. They would be utterly terrified. They'd think, so they, so babies turn in on themselves to go, well, it must be my fault. It can't be my carers fault. My carer can't be, they can't have disappeared. Do you know what I mean?

They will be somewhere around here. And the reason they're not coming is because I've done something wrong. So it's a sort of evolutionary, it's a weird protective thing that works when you're five days old, but not when you're 45. Interestingly, it's also quite a prevalent risk factor for developing an eating

disorder. So young people who have gone through some kind of mental health issue or a problem in their life, if they are not then supported by the people around them, and they've had to turn inwards, figure it out themselves, that can then lead to the coping mechanism, behaviours of the eating disorder. It's amazing isn't it? How so many mental illnesses are actually evolutionary responses to just not being cared for in the way that you're supposed to be? Lack of community, yeah. It's absolutely mind blowing.

I want to go back to relationships and because the other thing, so excavating yourself, but also, so all of this kind of, I suppose it's what we'd call like heteronormative kind of conditioning that, you know, the Prince will come and save me, you know, and I will live happily ever after. And that notion of needing to be saved by a man. And then you talk about how when you were younger, going out socializing was a chance to be chosen. Like some of your friends were like, oh, this is a nice time.

We can go out and have fun. And you were like, nope, this is a chance to find my prints. I was like, yes. You know, and you know, that, I mean, it's always embarrassing now to think about the amount of time, you know, that I spent obsessing about this and my life genuinely, genuinely. I mean, I'm older than you, Megan. You're what? 30? 32. I'm, I'm going to be 45 soon. So, you know, like it was, it was, it was, it was even what? I mean, it wasn't, you know what I mean? But it was like the conditioning, like the Bridget Jonesification of being single. I was like, oh, I'm an old washed up woman at like 21

because I didn't have a boyfriend. Oh bless. Do you know what I mean? And it's like, what the fuck? I need to be chosen. Save me, save me. Ooh, what a surprise it was when I got married, had a baby, got a bugaboo, got a flat and clap them. And I was still an alcoholic.

Oh, yes. It didn't make me better. And that's the shocking thing, isn't it? What's that about, Megan? What is that about? I mean, I feel like you've kind of, you've unpacked it already yourself. I'm really fascinated in it because I, you know, I mean, I feel like you've unpacked it already yourself. I'm really fascinated in it because I, you know, because obviously, to just like tell everyone your story for you. So you're now in a relationship with a woman.

Correct. And you were, you know, and you were, what I loved is how careful you were about quote unquote, coming out. It wasn't because you were like, well, I'm still me. Like I haven't changed as a person. Yeah. It was a kind of a slow, quiet coming out, which is absolutely valid. You know, I think there can often feel like there's a bit of an expectation to make this big rainbow splash. And you don't have to if that suits you then great.

But for me, you know, I spent the majority of my life believing that I was straight and very much invested in the Prince Charming, in the heteronormative narrative of life and you know, everything will be great and I'll be saved once I find a man and get married and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So for me, the prospect of being queer, it just was not an option. I was- A bit like not looking like Rachel Green. Yes, absolutely that.

You had to look like Rachel Green and there had to be a cross. And be straight, 100%. Even though, you know, as a teenager, I kissed women on nights out. I had sex with women and I was still like, I'm 100% straight, completely straight, not at all queer. And I think I had to do a whole lot of divesting from all the patriarchal narratives in order to even entertain the

possibility that I could be with a woman and that could be my version of a successful life. And I didn't have to have a man in order to be saved or valid, you know, to have that relationship. And yeah, it was a slow dawning within myself and a lot of I'm learning and then just giving myself permission to explore a little bit because as someone with a kind of public platform, you know, I've been sharing my life online for 10 years and I share a lot. And this, I realized, was something that I needed to give myself permission to gently explore myself before I kind of stepped up and said, this is what I am, this is who I am with or want to be with.

You know, because there is that pressure sometimes to kind of... Define yourself. Define yourself and be the voice of anything that you are part of, you know what I mean? Certainly now in social media, you have to become then the spokeswoman for women who have decided later on in life, not even that later on, but you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And don't get me wrong, I am happy and glad that I get to share and it's absolutely a privilege to be able to share these things and not, you know, fear for my safety. Like queer people in so many parts of the world have to. But I will do it on my own terms. And I will do it in a way that doesn't necessarily have to be, you know, click bait or sensationalized because ultimately at the end of the day, I'm still me and I just happen to fall in love with a woman and it's actually not that interesting or that big of a deal. It shouldn't be that big of a deal. Well, no, it isn't, is it? But it's interesting, isn't it? Because again, it's all those internalised the internalised misogyny, internalised homophobia. People don't talk about that.

And actually most people, as we know, are on a spectrum, journey, and the notion of straight and gay is all a bit it's all a bit bonkers really. Agreed. Because everyone I mean, Jonathan producer Jonathan over there might, might play he might be like, there's nowhere I'm going near a member of the opposite sex. Things have happened. But you know, like, and it is, and those labels we put on ourselves are, you talk about this in identity, you know, in one way they can be very powerful, but in other ways they can be incredibly restrictive. Yeah, massively limiting sometimes. It's wild because, you know, we have more labels for ourselves and

for people than we've ever had before. And on the one hand, great, you maybe could find community there or clarity about who you are. But then also, there's this thing called label fatigue. I love it. Yes. So hinge every year, I'm working with them at the moment, and every year they do like a study on their queer daters and how they feel about certain things. And this year loads of people came back and said that they have label fatigue. They are sick and tired of having to fit themselves

into these very limited boxes or saying, my type is only this, I wanna date just this. And actually what people are really wanting is a bit more freedom of exploration, a bit more openness, and the acceptance that it's all quite fluid, and it can all be quite changing. And there's nothing wrong with that. And we don't have to fight so hard to keep everyone in these little boxes. And what works for you at one stage of life might not work for you at another. Absolutely. But it's again, it's things like the idea of one relationship for life is nuts, isn't it?

I mean, that sounds like my husband's listening. I can tell you he's not listening. I'm obviously, except for our, he's probably like, no, it is nuts, the idea of one relationship. But no, but is that, you know, it's again, marriage is all tied down to the times when a woman, you know, there'd be alimony and the arms or I don't know what I'm not. A dowry. Thank you. Let's marriage was a dowry. You know, it was about it was a it was a business transaction. Yeah, wild. Okay, so now we're onto the subject of sexuality. I want to talk about sex. Yes.

Okay. And specifically, I want to talk about the importance of wanking. My favourite. Let's get into it. Because... You should have a sex toy or like a little dildo or something on the shelf, you know. We should, shouldn't we? Definitely. I... we're gonna get... why not? I mean, maybe one of these are sex toys. They're just very well... it's just very well. Yes, true. As Jamila Jamil says, anything's a dildo if you try hard enough.

But the importance of wanking, we don't talk about this enough. It's it's so I mean, you talk about it a lot in your book. No, but sexual shame keeps us small as women. 100 percent. Like it really does. And it's quite exhausting. And like, I talk, I'm always like, I just, I remember, I remember I wrote a book for teenage girls, right? And it was about all the things I wish someone had told me about at 12, which I only really learned when I went to rehab, right? And one of them was that I shouldn't be ashamed of wanking. I remember discovering wanking when I was like, you know, that young, a young teenager, just being like, Oh my God,

I cannot believe that I can produce this feeling in myself, you know, but it being like very embarrassing, very shameful secretive and you talk about not really knowing you could do it. Yes. You know, yes. Until later. Yes. I just yes, I was a little bit later to the wanking game. And I guess you're so well, well, I think I think having grown up with such body image issues and then going through an eating disorder, you know, in a lot of ways, a restrictive eating disorder like anorexia is like an attempted separation from your body.

It's like, let me feel nothing. Let me get so far away from my body. So reclaiming my sexuality as I came kind of back to life was a gradual process. And there were a hell of a lot of barriers there. You know, I've had so much shame throughout my life towards my body in how it looks, how it functions, what it feels, how I feel emotionally. And that sexual shame was no different.

And you know, I adopted that and I absorbed that from the same way we all do. From growing up in all these double standards, you know, we grow up and the same way we all do from growing up in all these double standards, you know, we grow up and teenage boys are quite comfortable talking about wanking, there's entire films about it. And, but for girls, it's, we don't do that. We don't talk about that. We don't explore that that's not okay.

That's taboo. Even now, there's huge percentages of women who still feel like masturbation is a taboo topic, which is wild because babe, it's your body. You are in ownership of absolutely all of this and the fact that we have been convinced to separate ourselves from something as innate as the pleasure that our bodies can produce for us, that's brainwashing. That is very, very clever brainwashing. Well, so for good, you know, I've been thinking about this a lot recently, for like a long time,

the pleasure I derived from sex was not my pleasure. It was the pleasure I could give someone else. Yes. And that's his brainwashing. Yes, I felt exactly the same way. For me, you know, for a long time, sex was a performance and it was about the gratification of the other person. It did not matter whether I was having a good time,

whether I was comfortable, whether I felt like I could be vocal, none of it mattered as long as essentially he has an orgasm and I looked pretty and that was that. And again, it's that disembodiment and that self-objectification where you're not allowing yourself to be a full human being who has needs and wants and desires.

And I think masturbation is an accessible first step for a lot of people to reclaiming their sexual cells. Yeah, that's it. But I think actually I would go further than that and saying it's an accessible first step to reclaiming themselves. Because you say, you say in the book, and I was thinking about this, about like, if you want to be confident in your body in public, you want to spend time with it in private, right? You can't, you can't jump from one, you can't, you can't frog jump over one of them. Do you know what I mean? Like, um, and, and I think that, you know, and so that doesn't have to be masturbating. It could be a new set, you know, say this is like just being naked, just being naked in your bedroom

and not like covering up or holding your boobs or, do you know what I mean? Like, I think that's a really important thing. Like, know your body. Yeah. Because it's like, it's really useful. Yeah, 100%. And it is yours. And, you know, all these little ways that we've been taught that our bodies don't really belong to us,

can start with something like you said, as simple as being naked with yourself and also challenging yourself. So, you know, if you're walking around naked at home and you pass by a mirror, challenge yourself to not zoom in on all the things that we've been conditioned to see as flaws. Do not make a mental list of, got to fix this, got to fix it. You know, notice when that conditioned negative self-talk pops up and just try to redirect it,

try to build some new pathways in your brain because it is practice. You know, I did not flip a switch and become body posi-p panda, the most, you know, body confident person on the internet. I challenged myself to wear shorts in my home and not be disgusted with myself. And it kind of grew from there. Yeah. Do you remember? I just remember it.

Do you remember? I was just, I was just suddenly as you're talking about that, I was remembering, do you remember that Little Mix video we did? Yes, that was a great day. Was it? It was fantastic. Do you remember that Little Mix video we did? Yes, that was a great day. It was a strip. It was fantastic. I completely forgot that. We were literally in a music video together. I know and a Little Mix music video at that. Wild. What? Like yeah. And that was such a good time. I feel like to me that was like the peak moment, not that video, but you know culturally we were at like a peak body positive moment, but everything felt so hopeful. It totally did. And it was like, oh wow, the biggest girl band. I was like, what the fuck?

I'm like 39. Why do you want me in your music video? And it felt really hopeful. And I feel really sad that it feels a bit like it's gone, not a bit, it feels like it's gone backwards. And I think people are really tempted. They want to go, oh, it's a Zembeck like it's gone backwards. Massively. You know, and it's, and I think people are really tempted. They want to go, Oh, it's a Zempig. It's that. And it's like, no, all it is, is it's diet culture and how entrenched it is. I mean, Zempig is just, is just another I mean, I think it's partly a Zempig. Yeah. You know, I think the GLP one mania definitely plays a part in the, where we're at right now and the thin is back in. But yeah, like carry on what you're saying.

But it's only a symptom of diet culture, isn't it? It's like the ultimate diet. Right, because the want to be thin never went away. Yeah, so that's what it all is work. It's just a dip. It's no different from like the cabbage soup diet, the Atkins. It's just a much more effective version. Yeah, it's the latest iteration. It's the first diet that works without having to like, I guess, you know, like just, you know, yeah, it's the latest iteration. So it is, it's just an incredibly effective way

of people having, being able to do it without, I guess, the suffering of, you know of the kind of the want because they're not hungry. Yeah, and we've seen this over the last nearly 150 years that the diet industry has existed. It will always adapt and it will always morph and it will go away, it will rebrand itself and it will come back.

10 years ago, it was, we're not dieting, we're doing a lifestyle change. Yeah. And that was the narrative. And then we had, you know, wellness culture and it's always shifting. And unfortunately, I think the only way to resist it is to tap out completely and decide once and for all, our bodies are not trends. It doesn't matter what is in or what we're being sold. We actually

all deserve to just exist in whatever natural variation and diversity we exist in and we're not buying into it. Here is the thing I really, and I think it's a really important thing for us to end on because I think this is in the conditioning of a lot of women, right? And it's what stops us from going to a place of love for ourselves. You write about the need to stop punishing yourself and how so many of us think if we start being nice to ourselves, then we'll never reach our goals or get better as a person. I've certainly fell for that trap and still have to fight it every day. You know, be tough on yourself. Come on, Bryony.

You need to get better. You need to get better. There's another thing that you need to achieve. You know, you need to improve. Let's talk about that because that is, it's a kind of, it's a, it's, it's almost like a patriarch, it's, it's, it's the voice of the patriarchy keeping us. From living our lives. Yeah. Yes. Sometimes of the patriarchy keeping us. From living our lives. Yeah, yes, sometimes it's patriarchy.

I mean, sometimes it's it can come from so many places. And, you know, I have done 10 years of therapy to try and unpack where my self punishing voice comes from. And I've noticed that, you know, in all of these things that I've put myself through, whether it's hating my body and restricting food or being overproductive to the point of burnout or, you know, just being cruel to myself every day. It's the idea that I am deserving of punishment just because I exist and because I don't, you know, I don't match up to some idea of perfection as a human

that isn't real, that doesn't exist. And in recent years, I've done it around my moral goodness, how good of a person I am, or am I being enough of an activist? Am I changing the world enough? And it's always these, I guess, impossible expectations that obviously are impossible. You know, I was never gonna look

like a Photoshopped magazine cover. I'm never gonna be the greatest activist in the world. I am just a regular imperfect human. And I think for a lot of us, holding these expectations over our head, that ultimately we know deep down are not achievable, we will never achieve. It's a really convenient way to constantly be horrible to

ourselves. And to keep ourselves small. Absolutely. And do you know what, Megan? We don't make ourselves smaller here. We don going to let you go. Oh, oh, oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.

Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.

Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. smaller here is out this week. What I took from this is that boundaries are an act of love and showing up as your whole self is never something to apologise for. If this conversation helped you or made you feel seen, please share it with someone who

might need it. Be kind to yourself and I'll see you next time.