Woman's Hour - Fasting and women, Conscription, Cuteness exhibition

Episode Date: January 29, 2024

Following the speech last week by the head of the British Armed Forces calling for a new ‘citizen army’, we look at what this could look like and what role women would play. Emma Barnett speaks to former RAF Group Captain Kathleen Sherit the author of Women on the Front Line, and to Diane Allen, a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel. It's been reported that the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak fasts for 36 hours at the start of each week. He is said to stop eating by 5pm on a Sunday and doesn't permit himself to touch food again until 5am on a Tuesday, and allows himself to drink only black coffee and water. It is said that he has followed this practice for years. Emma is joined by Dr Saira Hameed to discuss fasting and how men and women should approach it differently. Amy and Anu are identical twins, but just after they were born, they were taken from their mother and sold to separate families. Years later they connected online and realised they were among thousands of babies in Georgia stolen from hospitals and sold, some as recently as 2005. Emma speaks to one of the twins, Amy Khvitia, and also Fay Nurse, a BBC journalist behind a new documentary, Georgia’s Stolen Children. From cute cat memes to plush toys, a new exhibition at Somerset House explores the power of cuteness in contemporary culture. But is buying into a cute aesthetic regressive or even sexist, or can cute be reclaimed as a form of protest? And how would you feel, as a grown woman, about being labelled 'cute' or 'adorable'? To discuss, Emma is joined by Dr Isabel Galleymore, a consultant on the Cute exhibition; and the journalist Vicky Spratt.Presenter: Emma Barnett Producer: Emma Pearce

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme, peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Emma Barnett and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Well, it might be a good morning for you, but what if you haven't eaten because you're fasting? We now know, courtesy of the Sunday Times, I believe, that the Prime Minister is 17 hours into his weekly 36-hour fast, something he does apparently to boost his performance, health and well-being. But he's not alone, far from it. And weirdly for me, when reading the papers yesterday, I found myself in a slightly strange position of knowing I'm now living a similar life to the Prime Minister in this one small way, I hasten to add, as I too have recently

started experimenting with fasting, not for weight loss or even mental clarity, in an attempt to reduce inflammation and improve how my hormones function as I try to think about how I'm next going to tackle endometriosis. I'm still early days and I do want to be clear that this is not me in any way endorsing this for somebody or as a strategy, particularly in relation to any diseases. But what is fascinating in my reading of books like Mindy Peltz's Fast Like a Girl, which has sold millions around the world, is that as women, we can't do it the same way as men. Like many things, equal but different. Hormonally, we're very different indeed.

And today we're going to explore with a doctor, with an expert, why intermittent fasting can work and how women have brought it into their lives and why, away from weight loss, although that is a big part of it for some that do, why they are doing it and what it's giving to them, if anything. I personally never thought I could do it because I suffer from hunger, where, you know, hunger meets anger. But like many things, I am learning it is a state of mind and shock horror. Regardless of your take on this, we are meant to be able to go for decent stretches without food or snacking.

And then when you do eat, what you put in your body also counts. But we're going to look at what you're able to do and why as a woman. Now we learn that the prime minister fasts from Sunday evening to Tuesday morning each week. Why and what could it mean in your life? And do you have any experience of this? And so some people come to this, of course, through religion. Perhaps you've also got a different take on that because of that experience. Do let us know in that viewpoint.

84844, that's the number you need to text me here at the standard message rate on social media at BBC Woman's Hour or email me this Monday morning through the Woman's Hour website ready to hear from you or WhatsApp on 03700 100 444. A lot to discuss in today's programme from your perspective, I hope. I also want to ask you about the word cute. Ever been called cute? Probably won't surprise you to learn I've not. Nor have I caught it yet. But I'm extremely surprised, for instance,

when people who are adults without children, I don't know, watch Disney films because it's sweet, or they have to send each other cute memes, or they make themselves feel better in that way. I have to say I went on a very eye-opening, wonderful trip to Japan a few years ago, and I went to something, I don't know if you've ever done this, something called a maid cafe. I watched grown men on their lunch breaks play buckaroo and drink chocolate milks with grown women. Nothing else going on there, but the culture of cuteness on another scale and how it works. Is it returning to childhood? Is it retreating from adulthood? Or can it be, as a new exhibition is pointing out, perhaps a way of disrupting what's expected of you? Can it be used in a more interesting way?

The ups and downs of cute and cuteness when it comes to women and girls' lives. And today we'll also be able to share the amazing story of twins who did not know the other existed until one of them appeared on a TV talent show. What happened to them and their birth mother was part of a much, much bigger story, as you will hear. But first, leading the bulletins this morning is the news that three American troops have died in a drone attack on a US base in Jordan. Iran has denied involvement. The US president has said, quote, we shall respond, leading to reports that the prospect of direct conflict between the US and Iran has drawn closer and heightened concerns about a

much bigger war across the Middle East. It comes a few days after the head of the British armed forces said the UK needed to train and equip a new citizen army that could be ready to fight a land war against Russia. The Defence Secretary Grant Shapps said the country was moving from a post-war to a pre-war world. It's been dismissed by some as a pitch for more money in the March budget, but it's caught the imagination of many, with people you may have even had this discussion, talking about whether conscription could be introduced

and how they would fare in that situation. How would you? How would you be if that was the call? What would you do? Known as National Service here in the UK, it did end in 1960 when society and our armed forces looked very different indeed. Then only men were called up, but now women serve in all areas of the armed forces, including frontline combat roles. I'm joined on the line by two women with extensive military backgrounds to discuss this, and I'm sure some strong views.

Kathleen Sherritt, a former RAF group captain and the author of Women on the Front Line, and Diane Allen, a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel, joining the force as a teenager and one of the first women to train at Sandhurst in the 1980s. Diane, good morning to you, first of all. Good morning. What did you make of this idea of being prepared and drawing the rest of the country in in some way? Well, I have to say, for the first time listening to the head of the armed forces, I was really delighted. I thought this was way past time and that we needed to have this conversation with the wider population of what readiness looks like and is UK ready for what potentially could be coming our way. So personally, I was absolutely delighted to see him have

that conversation with the wider population. Kathleen, are you of a similar view? Well, I think that conscription is terribly inefficient, and I'm not sure that the population would be ready to commit to that sort of level of activity. And so I have my doubts about the scope of it, whether it would work. I think one needs to think that it is wider than just the armed forces, you know, it draws in the whole area of civil defence and wider volunteering activities. I mean, conscription wasn't said as such, but it's that idea of a broader readiness, Diane, is that what you're talking to? Yes. So the military runs a series of cycle of exercises

every year. So it's looking at the UK's readiness to fight everything from a small war to a global war. And when it starts to look at these things, it will be talking about readiness and whether it's got enough troops and equipment, et cetera, to fight. But also, has it got enough mass? Has it got enough people to fight? And I think that's what General Sir Patrick was talking about. But you sound like you welcome this generally, because of what? Are you thinking that more people need to be able to be a part of this, not just in terms of numbers and full time in the armed forces, but how our country is working at the moment? Yes, exactly. So I have some of

Kathleen's scepticism. I shared that of whether we need to conscript more into uniform. But I do think we're not being fair to our current generation if we're not teaching them basic resilience skills. So how to defend themselves. So a lot of countries prepare for them by giving them a couple of years conscription to teach them things like self-defense, how to deal with disasters and how to cope in very difficult and trying circumstances, which certainly global war would be. Kathleen, what do you want to add at that point? Well, I think Diane has a very good and valid point that it does need to be wider than simply the armed forces. And so one would need to draw in all sorts of emergency services, which I think the Swedish model does, and draw it all more widely than just the uniformed services. What about the role of women in this? Even if we're talking more about who would find themselves signing up and

what roles they would do, as the role of women in the armed forces, Diane, has changed, do you think that would be different when you go to the wider population? I mean, some early snap polls in response to this news last week showed this wasn't popular at all, shock horror. But what do you think about what women think they can do and how they would respond to this. Yeah, I think generally as well. I doubt in 1939 or before any pre-war situation, anyone was thought particularly popular that they were going to have to be conscripted. I think that's one point worth considering. It's never going to be popular to ask our citizens to take on a role like this. As to women, I think often if you haven't served, you think of every role in the military as being an infant here carrying a rifle and right at the front with your weapon brandishing, facing the hordes coming across the line. But and I forget the exact numbers, but for every one infant here that you put forward, I think it's around 18 support roles.

So it's a much broader range of roles. And that's why in a modern society you need both men and women so you might be talking about being a linguist you might be talking about being a logistic expert you could be talking about being some um you know some other engineer or some other skill or if kathleen was air force i'm sure she'll mention some of the air force roles as well general sir patrick is focusing on the army his his role is currently head of the army. Yes. And do you think, Cathy, we sort of have an understanding of that? I mean, even just laying out those different roles, do you think when women think about the armed forces and how it works, they can see themselves in it still? I think there's a lot of ignorance about women's contribution

to the armed forces across the whole population. And they certainly don't understand the range of work. But everything that goes on in society is replicated to some extent in the armed forces. So women have served, well, since 1917, the gap between the wars, in all the sort of standard stuff you would expect in terms of driving skills, keyboard skills, things that are useful in signalling, engineering skills, the whole gamut of work that you find in society, you also find in the armed forces. And the vast majority of people in the armed forces never actually fire a weapon.

It was interesting to see how some of the newspapers responded to this, Diane. And I was intrigued to see one of the first sort of commissions seemed to be a mother of three boys saying she would never want her sons to go. And it felt like something from a different era in some ways, Diane. Yes, and I agree. And there's always going to be exemptions anyway, say if you were a new mum or that you were physically unfit. You know, we're not, I don't think General Patrick's talking about everybody being conscripted in all situations. You'd be potentially looking at more of a Norway model where it's selective and it's actually seen as a great honour to pass that selection and be selected for military service. But only relatively recently pulling on women, though, in the same way, we should say.

I was surprised to see how recent, where the countries do some form of conscription, countries closer to us, certainly than the Middle East, that women have only recently been included. Yes, I agree. And without doubt, I think it's a culture thing as much as anything. As Kathleen said, if you actually go and look inside the service it's very different and a lot of the roles fit very well for women and actually I think a lot of women who are perhaps a little bit unsure about what General Patrick's talking about might be surprised if they went to visit and saw some of the roles on offer and how well some women would fit for those roles. Diane though I've got to put this to you again if I'm if I may before bringing Kathleen back in

Gemma has texted and she says, join the army. Don't make me laugh. This government has inflicted 13 years of austerity on this country. She sees it and describes it as a woman. This government has refused to make misogyny a hate crime. We've also heard the appalling accounts of ways women are treated in the army via women's hour features. This government are currently trying to derail buffer zone legislation to stop women being harassed outside abortion clinics. We women owe this government nothing.

Now, we've spoken before about harassment and sexual abuse within the armed forces. It's a strong view there, but she's putting together and sounds, Gemma, like a regular listener to this programme. We talked about the abortion, the proposed legislation, the changes to the legislation only last week on the programme. Do you understand where Gemma's coming from? I more than understand. You know, I'm one still campaigning for the, in some areas, very toxic culture in some areas of the army and broader armed forces. I'm not in any way

moving from that point. There are significant issues for the current military in how it treats women, but also its men. So that point has not gone away. But I'd like to argue that this is a bigger problem. This is global war we're talking about. This is where we need to move away from party politics. And that's difficult in times of an election year. But global war doesn't care whether we are Labour or Conservative. It doesn't care whether we're women or men. It's going to come at some stage. If we don't have that conversation with our citizens. You think that, sorry, you think that at this point, I mean, I'm stressing at the point,

we're not at that point, you're just joining us listening live, and you think you've missed something. But the point is, you do feel that keenly? Yeah, I do. And that's why it sounded a bit serious there. I do want to make that point. You know, global war is cyclical. History teaches us that it's going to come at some stage. If we don't prepare our citizens and have that conversation, then we have a bigger problem than whether it's conservatives or Labour who win the next election. And, you know, others would point out it's not about the government, it's about the country and the government changes. Kathleen, what would you say about the threat of global war and where we stand now?

Well, of course, it's the reason why we have women in the regular forces today, because in the post-World War II discussion, it was the threat of future total and global war again, a third world war, that encouraged both the Air Force and the army to keep women in uniform after the Second World War. And that is why women have served ever since. Was that because of the numbers or the preparedness or the investment of everybody to be ready? What was the rationale? It was because of the chaos in 1939 when they recreated

women's services, having done away with them after the First World War. And they decided that the only way to be ready in future was to have a nucleus of women already serving. So things like uniforms and training and regulations were all in place instead of having to be reinvented again at a moment of crisis. So the women services that were established on a regular basis in 1949 were there as a call for expansion in the event of another major global conflict. Well, there you go, Kathleen Sherritt, thank you very much. Former RAF Group Captain, author of Women on the Front Line.

Diane Allen, retired Army Lieutenant Colonel. You have heard her on this programme before, talking about the culture within the armed forces and some very serious allegations and crimes as well. We will speak again, I'm sure, Diane. Thank you for your contribution today. Return of national service would help, reads this message,

reduce the growing violent behaviour we're witnessing on the streets. Discipline among careless society would contribute to the wellbeing of the UK and our capability of defence. We need to refund or perhaps restore Britain's spine. And I'm sure there'll be more thoughts on that

and perhaps how you come to this as a woman to our female listeners, of which there are many, but we also have many men listening. So do get in touch. You've been getting in touch in your droves, I have to say, about intermittent fasting since we've learned that the Prime Minister fasts for 36 hours at the start of each

week. And I say I found myself in the odd position yesterday thinking, well, I've got something which is similar about my life than the person currently running the country as I only recently started this myself. But one of the key things when a new friend of mine was telling me about this as I'm attempting to address hormones and some of the issues I personally have around that, as opposed to weight loss, which I think we should distinguish for this conversation, was that as a woman, you have to look at things like your cycle and the way things work. So when we're looking at what Rishi Sunak's doing, we thought it'd be interesting this morning on Women's Hour to talk about fasting like women,

fasting as girls, if that's been appropriate or something that you've come across. Dr. Saira Hameed from Imperial University's Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction joins me now. Good morning. Morning, Emma. Thanks for being here. I have to say, many messages of people doing this for a variety of reasons, many women getting in touch. What do we know and what do you say to women about this? You're right. It's really popular. So I work in the Imperial Weight Centre, and I know we don't want to focus the conversation around weight,

but many of the patients coming to clinic, 75% are women, are saying, I'm doing this, I'm trying this, I'm having a go. So it's really, really popular. What do we know about it? Well, we know that in a certain group of people, it seems really effective, yes, for weight loss, but also to address other conditions. So some women are not embarking on fasting for weight loss per se, but they are using fasting to address health problems. It could be polycystic ovarian syndrome, it could be prediabetes, it could be inflammatory conditions like rosacea or arthritis. And people are having a go and we're working out what sort of seems to chime with them. And I think it's so important that women are sort of increasingly given that agency rather than being given a didactic list of things to do by the health service. Although I suppose, again, you may not know where to start.

So it may feel you have to follow something. And I think what I've found interesting, and it'd be good to ask your view on this, is doing it as a woman is different because of your hormones, because of your cycle. What do we know about that? Yeah, that's right. So the menstrual cycle involves the sort of waxing and waning of hormones, oestrogen, progesterone, and they both impact on appetite. We do know that. So oestrogen levels can have a suppressive effect on appetite. Conversely, progesterone, which rises towards the end of the cycle, can have the opposite effect. So women will be approaching fasting in a slightly different way because of the cyclical impact of their hormones.

Men's testosterone levels don't have that same sort of cyclical rise and fall. Yes. So some have said when they've looked at, for instance, Mindy Peltz's book, which I mentioned, and there's other writing on this, you know, you can fast harder at the beginning of your cycle. You don't fast towards the end because as you talked about those fluctuations. But from your perspective, have you seen benefits for women? I definitely have. So as I said, what women particularly, what I noticed, and Emma, this is clinical anecdotes, this is what I'm telling you, my observation from my clinic,

is women really, as I said, like to have the agency to say, what works for me? Let me work out my hours here. What works with my schedule? What works with my hunger levels? What am I trying to achieve here? So that's particularly important because a lot of women come to see me and they've been trying different regimens for decades. And a lot of those regimens can be very, very tough, very rules based, very about sort of this is good and this is bad and so on. And this gives you the ability to listen into your body and really

work out when am I hungry when am I full what do I want to do with this and that can vary on different days so that's really important I think the other thing I sometimes see in women is this real sort of worry around food you know food has become something really complicated really difficult something that rather than just being a sort of pleasure and something that fuels us has all sorts of sort of layers and, and overtones, usually because of sort of years of dieting and following different things. And, and I think this is, you know, this can be a revelation for some women that actually, if I compartmentalize my hours, so if I have this period when I'm eating and this period when I'm not eating, that just gives a structure to the way I approach food that just suddenly makes everything a bit

clearer. And on, I mean, again, I know it's nascent in some of this, but some of the science is there to show some boost greater energy levels, mental clarity. This is the reason, you know, perhaps people have been confused as they see a slim man as the prime minister doing this it's not this is why it's having it that we're having the conversation not about weight loss but more the other reasons people do this yeah absolutely right so people come to see me at the imperial weight center for weight and then they try the intermittent fasting and they come back and they say look i came to see you to lose weight and i've lost weight and that's great but actually my periods have become regular or my rosacea is better or my eczema has cleared up so there can be a wealth of benefits and we don't have mechanisms

yet a lot of the work has been done in pre-clinical studies so that means kind of rat and mice models so we can look at you know the genes that, and then we can make quite blanket statements like reduced inflammation, for example, or increased autophagy, which is the way that the body repairs and resets itself. As you said, this is really nascent, but it is emerging. And when we look at just real life people doing it, people are reporting benefits. I think the other thing to say is in the vast majority of people, it's not going to do any harm. So if people are curious, and they think, well, I've got this thing that I'm not happy with, it might be I get headaches, or I get acid reflux, or I don't have great energy, give it a go. Because for the vast majority of people, it's not

going to cause a problem. And some people may experience really important health benefits. Just to say, we had a message, seriously, please can you mention, and I'm doing it now and I was going to do it anyway, this is not appropriate for those with eating disorders. And I'll say that very, very clearly. And I've also said it in the sense of the lens that we're having this discussion is not about weight loss, although that is a big part of why some people may first come to this. But as you say, they then move to perhaps noticing other things. And when you talk about your schedule, each person's schedule is different. Probably much earlier than lots of people, not just because of two young children in the house,

but it works. You know, you can do it from if you finish eating at seven the night before you'll be able to have breakfast, maybe eight or nine o''clock the next morning if you can fit that in with your schedule. Just to give an example, what about the length of fasts? Because there are different things written about that. Rishi Sunak every week doing a 36-hour one. There will be a reason he will have had, as some others are posting here, he doesn't have a limit on his own personal resources. He probably has had access to some of the best experts in the world. You will imagine 36 hours has been attuned for a reason. Yeah, so I'll come back to the length

in a moment, if I may, Emma, but I just want to respond to the messages you're getting about eating disorders. And I absolutely agree with that. So as a consultant, I'm seeing every single patient before they embark on intermittent fasting, and I'm screening for anyone with an eating disorder. And if people have an eating disorder, this could be detrimental to them. And your listeners are absolutely right to pull that out. Why is that? Well, let's come back now to Rishi Sunak's duration, 36 hours. One of the concerns is if you take this out too far, so you really, you have really, you know, increased length of time when you're not eating, there is the concern of compensatory overeating when you do start eating again. That's one issue. The other issue is not, is making sure that the people don't use fasting

as another compensatory behavior. So sort of, well, I shouldn't have eaten that cake, or, you know, I shouldn't have, I shouldn't have eaten that cake or you know i shouldn't have uh i shouldn't have had the chips at dinner so now i'm going to fast for 24 hours to sort of make up for it to compensate for it so in those sorts of scenarios fasting is something to it's not a never but it's definitely a case of discuss it with a clinician go through your own bespoke situation before uh it. I think that's a really important point. Now, you asked about the duration of fasting and Rishi Sunak doing 36 hours. There isn't really enough published to know the optimal duration. But what we do know is you can

get benefits in a far shorter time span than that. You don't have to go for 36 hours. So as you said, Emma, finish your dinner at seven, eat again the next morning, maybe push out your first meal till 11am or 12pm and you will get the benefits or at least the early studies will suggest that. Okay, so I mean, because 36 hours is hardcore in many ways to think about doing with only, as has been reported, black coffee, water, very little in there. I think on all levels, that is a big ask. And it's definitely not something I'm asking people in my NHS clinic to see, particularly women. As you said, Emma, we can get hangry and we've got a lot on, right?

I'm not saying Rishi Sunak doesn't have a lot on, but as you said... Well, I'm hoping he does. You know, that kind of goes with the job. But yeah,, go on. But what I'm saying is, you know, that's a long time to go without incoming fuel. Now, you said in the introduction right at the start of the show that, yes, there should be a period of time that we're not eating. And we can sort of then sort of tap into other metabolic pathways to fuel ourselves. And that's what humans have done since forever until sort of relatively recently, when you can just sort of tap a nap and food

as it were in 10 minutes, like that is a new development. So, you know, we don't have to go for these very, very prolonged periods, I think, to get the benefits. And we have a lot of messages coming in from women who are post-menopause who also do this, like you said, to help with other conditions. And a question, you know, if you don't have a cycle per se, do you still recommend this? Absolutely. I look after lots of women who are post-menopause and a couple of things they report

back. And again, I stress this is clinical anecdote. Is it published? No, not yet. But I hope the work will be done. The first thing is some of my women who are going through perimenopause or they've been through the menopause, they do say that their thinking might not feel as sharp or their anxiety is higher and so on. There's no harm in trying this. You see, when you do intermittent fasting, your level of ketones in the blood rise. And there's some work to suggest that the brain runs nicely off ketones, makes you feel quite sharp, this idea of keto clarity and so on. And some women in the menopause can benefit from that. It's not a magic bullet, but it can be worth trying out. Again, it can be helpful for mood. Some women report actually, I like the stability of the blood sugar effect when I'm fasting. And actually, that does help with my mood and how I feel about things.

Lastly, menopause and postmenopause can be associated with insulin resistance. And again, some women gain weight in that period of their lives. And again, intermittent fasting can be helpful to reduce insulin resistance if that is an issue for you. I mean, just speaking on a personal note, again, if I can, because

a lot of this is nascent and it just so happens that I've now got some very recent experience. I had this very strange feeling about it because of being around those when I was growing up, certainly younger girls with disordered eating, that I loved the fact that I

never really changed what I ate. It almost felt a feminist statement not to care. I mean, I don't mean eat badly, but just sort of be free with it compared to how we are made to feel sometimes in society, a lot of the time as women. So I had a bit of a grief about, look at me trying to do this at this time. It was a kind of, and I think that speaks to what you were talking about which is our relationship with food um you know i describe myself as a foodie i like being uh experimental and trying new things if i can um and yet at the same time i had to face the reality that i'm dragging my body around in a huge person in a huge amount of pain that's not freedom either um and

and trying to approach it from a range of ways, which is what I'm doing, is important. And we don't maybe think that we can disrupt something that's been so regimented. I totally hear you. Like so many women just really are so fed up with the diet bandwagon. And as you say, just don't want to be part of that. And so in some ways you say, you know, if I I'm intermittent fasting am I sort of buying into all that but then you're right at the same time this this what it does is it sort of imposes some restriction on your life and it's that restriction that can sort of set you free in some ways whatever it is that you're trying to improve about your health or your situation

and I think you make such an important point Emma about you said I'm a foodie and I enjoy food and I like food and that's brilliant we should all feel that way if it's a real pleasure the nice thing about intermittent fasting is it doesn't then give you a ton of rules and regulations for the times that you are eating in fact you can just eat the foods that you enjoy um and and and you and you can sort of time your eating to enjoy that food with friends and family rather than sort of meeting up for dinner and saying sorry I've run out of points or treats or whatever and join in yes i mean also you then start to look i suppose at what you do eat especially if you're looking around inflammation there are other considerations but your your point is is made by those who who work in this area and

have done some of the the research and advise people i should say uh do talk to as we were just hearing there from dr syra hamid thank you for your, do talk to, as we were just hearing there from Dr. Saira Hameed, thank you for your time. Do talk to your clinician or a GP. I know it's hard to get appointments there for some of you at the moment, but for some extra support. And there is a lot of stuff

you can read about this. Just to give you a flavour of what I've been reading from your messages here. Hi Emma, I started fasting last year. I really enjoy it. Once you get past your rumbly tummy, you realise you don't need to fuel

your body three times a day always. I found I had more energy and felt less hungry, says Felicity. Lucy in Wiltshire, good morning to you. I've been fasting for 16 months. Moving to the hormone-focused approach has been really helpful. The fasting has really helped shift

the stubborn middle section weight I've struggled with as I moved into my 40s. My body fat percentage has moved down from 33% to 26% in 16 months. It's fairly consistent. I think it makes sense. And while it took a little adjusting at the start, I think it's probably a lifestyle change that I will keep with for the foreseeable. Another one, I've done it for about seven years on and off. I function better at work and at home and in the gym. And when I give my body a bigger gap before breakfast. And another one here from Jill with a very wry tone saying most people have to fast every day because they can't afford to eat.

Probably not the case with Rishi Sunak. I have to say a point coming in a few times across the messages here with people's concern about the rising costs of everything, including food. And of course, the price for some people. Well, certainly with the price, I mean, of knowing necessarily how to cook well and then to get to those good ingredients when we see how supermarkets are laid out, when we see the education or lack of education around food. Major, major issues which we've discussed on the programme before and I'm sure we'll come to again. Please, can you define fasting? Is it a complete absence of food? I think we've done that. Liquid only. Some cookbooks talk about fasting. It simply refers to an absence of meat.

Confused. I hope we cleared that up. It's about the time and then you eat in those hours that you're deciding to. And I'm all about people having agency to restrict food, but we mustn't demonise food. We must celebrate eating with families. Amen to that. And passing on healthy habits as a major source of mental health for women and children. Do keep those messages coming in and some responses also to the idea of war, conscription and being military ready in this country, rather defence ready.

I'll come back to those. I'm Sarah Treleaven and for over a year I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth.

How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now. If I can. I did promise you a remarkable story of twins who never knew the other existed.

That was until a TV talent show and a TikTok video. Amy and Anno are identical twins, but just after they were born, they were taken from their mother and sold to separate families. Years later, they connected online and realised they were among thousands of babies from the country of Georgia, stolen from hospitals and sold,

some as recently as 2005. In a moment, I'll be able to talk to one of the twins, Amy Kvita, about discovering not only twin sister, but also the extraordinary circumstances of her birth. Her and Anno's story is the subject of a new BBC documentary and the journalist behind it, just join me, Faye Nurse. Faye, how did you discover this story? Good morning. Hello, good morning, Emma. So I watched a documentary on the Tuam scandal in Ireland and I started looking at adoption and illegal adoption around the world. And I found Tamuna, who is a central character in our film, a journalist, an adoptee who started a Facebook group that blew this whole scandal open in Georgia.

I found it was really underreported and it was all coming out now. And it just seemed really important to cover. So she put me in touch with Amy, one of the twins who's on the line. And we just had this research interview that was just jaw dropping. Like everything she said was just crazy. And it was just such an amazing story. Amy, let me bring you in at this point good morning. Good morning. Thank you for being here um could you start by telling us uh you know how you grew up and and uh you know what you what your early life was like? Um my early life my childhood was pretty good I had a family and I was raised with love. And, you know, I've always had that feeling that I've missed someone who wasn't near me, but I was feeling her presence.

But my childhood was pretty good. And how did you first spot what you then later learned was your your twin uh first I saw her in Georgia's Got Talent she was dancing and I was also a dancer but I wasn't in Georgia's Got Talent so that was the first time I met her like virtually so you saw someone who looked very much like you? Yeah, yes. But you still didn't connect at that point? No, no, because I had feelings, I had thoughts that I was adopted,

but not for sure, so I didn't question it at all. So it was just my thoughts that she was someone who was, you know, like me. And it was a video that went up online and then you both connected on social media. It was my piercing video. I got a piercing on my eyebrow and the piercer posted it on TikTok, I guess. And she saw that video and then we, yeah, connected. When did you realize you were actually related? After two days when we started talking.

Okay. And I mean, that must have been an extraordinary feeling. You know, when you're thinking about this for years, it's not new, but yeah, kind of crazy. So you say thinking about it for years, you grew up thinking that something was missing? Was it right? Yes, yes. But you didn't know you were adopted? I had thoughts. I had, yeah. I didn't know you were adopted? I had thoughts. I didn't know for sure, but I was thinking that I was adopted. What was it like when you met? We met after talking for three days, I guess.

That's what I remember. And I was shaking because I didn't know who she was. But when I saw her, I kind of felt like I was looking in a mirror because she was so me. I was her and she was me. So that was crazy. When I go back to my home, I started crying because I knew something was wrong. So then I talked to my mother and my mother, my mother's friend, and she told me that, yeah, you were adopted and you might have a twin sister if you find one. And how did you deal with that information?

And what was the conversation like at home for you? It wasn't easy for me, not for Anu. But when you're thinking about this for years, you're thinking about the fake scenarios that might happen. So it wasn't new. It wasn't something that I wasn't ready for. But it was shock. I was in shock.

And I didn't know how to react. I was crying. I was, you know, shaking. I didn't want to talk to anybody. But then because I thought that this is all my fault because I was raised in lies but after like three or four days I began to you know talk about it and talk about it with my family. And how were your family when you when you spoke to them about it they were you know free for chat you know they were open for chat because they were thinking when I was 18 years

old that I was too old to know the truth so they were asking my mother to tell me the truth, but for some reasons, she didn't tell me. So they were talking to me and saying that they wanted me to know, but for some reasons they didn't tell me. Then their story that I didn't know that, you know, years ago, I didn't, I wasn't told by my family. And you and your twin, you did go to meet your birth mother. Yes. How did that come about and how was that meeting? meeting with our biological mother was, I don't know what words I can use to express that feeling because when we were standing behind the door

and I knew that she was inside the room, I thought that, okay, I don't want to be here. I want to go home in Georgia. But, you know, I started something, so I preferred to end it. However, the meeting we had was pretty, I don't know how to say that, pretty crazy, pretty, okay, I can't express that with words, but I was crying, I didn't know what to do, I didn't know how to comfort her because she was crying and I don't want to, I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to comfort her because she was crying and I my intention to her not to feel, you know, bad.

So it's an extraordinary set of meetings and discussions that you have gone through and been kind enough to give us a flavour of and an insight. There is this new documentary, the BBC journalist behind it Faye Nurse still with me um this story just to just keep with this for a moment you know listeners may be wondering how were babies sold how was this allowed um because this is a much bigger story isn't it yeah it's very big it's um so Amy found and connected with her mother through a Facebook group which is run by a lady called Tamuna who's also in our documentary an adoptee she starts this Facebook group to look for her family and then ends up exposing a massive scandal it's this group now has 230,000 members in a country of just under four million it's huge and there's all these people who are sharing their stories about lost families and being told their babies had died and now having doubts.

She one day receives a message from someone who says, My mother works as a maternity nurse in hospital in Tbilisi and she confessed to me that she stole me herself and that this was commonplace it was going on everywhere and it was organized and that lots of people were involved and that corrupt doctors were working with criminal criminal gangs to facilitate it because she has this massive access to all these cases we worked with her to map at least 20 hospitals that were involved in baby trafficking. And that's widespread across the whole of Georgia and left us estimating that tens of thousands of babies were taken. In Georgia, they say up to 100,000. And when I was in Georgia, I mean, when I was with Tamuna, people, she gets stopped on the street all the time.

People say, oh, I'm adopted too. It happened to the twins when we were with them. It's sort of, it's almost like folklore in Georgia. And is it not allowed now? Has it been outlawed? What's the situation with the government? So until a law came in in 2006, adoption wasn't regulated. So although there were adoption agencies, it was

common that it would be a private arrangement, no courts and just a civil office. And in sort of the turbulent years of early independence and downturn in economics, there was real poverty and criminality thrived. So the government have, they've

done at least four investigations. There's been some arrests and some suspended sentences. Some of those people from the previous investigations who had suspended sentences are still working in hospitals today. So people are angry in Georgia. There's a current investigation that came off the back of Tamuna's pressure, from the pressure from Tamuna's Facebook group. And we approached the Georgian government for on camera interviews, which they didn't respond to.

They said that they've spoken to 40 witnesses, but that no criminal wrongdoing has been identified, that they were old cases and there was a lack of evidence. Well, the people say we are the evidence and they're really frustrated. So now they're taking their cases to the Georgian courts and they're suing the government to try and get access to their birth documents so that they can find clues

about their biological families. The documentary Georgia's Stolen Children is available on the BBC iPlayer. And just a final thought in brief, if I can to you, Faye. For those women who had just given birth, what were they told had happened to their children?

I mean, I know there'll be different things, but some people may be thinking, how does that even happen? So many of the cases, their babies were born and then sort of three days later or something, we spoke to a family who'd given birth to twins. Three days later, they were told their twins had died suddenly sort of citing respiratory problems um and they they just they just believed it they trusted the doctors and they didn't question authority and so those babies were taken away yeah so they those take they were in an organized system they were taken away and sold on

to different families and often the new families had no idea that they weren't that they were wanted children amy just a final word to you thank you for coming on um it must be rather overwhelming to have all this attention to talk like this how are you doing today um you know i'm used to it kind, because all my life I've been on TV. So that's not so much pressure, but I know I'll be doing great. Well, happy to hear that. You mentioned you're a dancer, so it's different, I'm sure, to be doing this versus that.

But perhaps some good experience to prepare for certainly a bit of spotlight about an extraordinary story, your story, a reality, and many other stories that we've just been hearing. Amy Kavita, thank you very much indeed. I did ask you right at the beginning about how you feel about the word cute and things deemed sweet from cat memes to adorable toys to sweet dogs. A new exhibition at Somerset House in London is exploring the power of cuteness in contemporary culture. But is buying into cute, dressing sweetly, watching children's films or sending sweet animal photos to friends, is it regressive or a retreat from adulthood? Or can cute be reclaimed in some ways as a form of self-expression or even protest?

How would you feel as a grown woman if you were called cute? Perhaps it's happened. I can't say I have that experience. But Dr. Isabel Gallimore from the University of Birmingham is a consultant who worked on this cute exhibition. And I'm also joined by the journalist Vicky Spratt. Vicky, I'll come to you in just a moment. But Isabel, first to you. Good morning. How will you and how can we define cuteness? Hi. Well, I mean, I think there are many different ways of thinking about cuteness. We might go right back to the baby's face. We often think about the baby's face as a blueprint for cuteness. So those big eyes and chubby cheeks triggering a kind of vulnerability that we might then respond to with care. And Conrad Lorenz, an anthropologist, described this as baby schema. But of course, we see this within all sorts of things, far away from the realm of babies. We see it in tree frogs, we might see it in a hot dog stand

that's trying to attract our attention with a cute hot dog. And we see, of course, some really strange kind of subversions and embraces of cuteness when it comes to gender, which I'm sure we'll have time to talk about this morning. We definitely will. And it's also been used commercially, hasn't it? You know, if you think about different brands that are cute, look like they're for children, but hugely appeal to adults.

Yes, absolutely. I mean, I think this comes really from the 1950s, where women were becoming a new consumer market to target in terms of consumerism. So lots of commodities with cuteness on that are supposed to kind of be targeted towards women in terms of their maternal instincts, in terms of their caregiving nature, their empathy, so that we buy that cute thing in order to look after it. But of course, we're also purchasing the commodity in that process. Is that a problem when you've looked at this? Is it an issue that women are thought of as the ones who are susceptible to cute and then we find ourselves perhaps being susceptible and it kind of follows trend, follows suit? We see children obviously taken in by cuteness. I think men are taken in by it too. There are some really interesting subcultures where men are really attracted and, well, get a lot out of My Little Pony, for example. So we have this whole subculture called bronies, which are men who find life advice through the commodities of My Little Pony and, of course, through the animated series as well. So I don't think it's just women that this is targeting. Is that a retreat from adulthood, though, that should be examined? Is

there a concern about it? I mentioned my own experience is also going to Japan and seeing some of the culture around this. And I'm trying to draw a line between the sinister side of that, of course, and what some would be concerned about. I'm not ignoring that, but you are looking at this in a very specific way. Yeah, I mean, we can certainly understand cuteness as a kind of aesthetic of childhood. And I think nowadays, you know, there's a lot of talk about adulting and a very kind of self-conscious attitude towards what we might be as adults versus, you know, kind of a desire to go back to childhood. In terms of Japan and its culture of kawaii, which is often described as a culture of cuteness, certainly there are ideas, at least for the Western world,

that that sense of cuteness is a retreat from adulthood. It's a desire to get back to the childhood that people have left behind. But I think it's actually more complex than that. So we see lots of talk of kawaii fashion. So we often talk about lolita fashions that Japanese women might be wearing. And of course, to us, lolita immediately speaks of Nabokov's novel and of really uneasy relationships between men and much younger girls. But for Japan, I think lolita means many different things. It means elegance, it means comfort. And women are dressing in these kind of quite beautiful costumes,

often involving lace and Victorian-style dress, but also repurposing toys into handbags. And sometimes these fashions have quite a grotesque side to them as well, where kawaii is mixed with other aesthetics, so the monstrous as well as one which comes into the exhibition at Somerset House so cuteness isn't just about this kind of saccharine sweet infantile aesthetic it's also about something quite subversive I think so subversive but also it depends the audience as ever who it's for is it for you know in japan is it for the women or is it for the male gaze exactly so yeah i mean i think there's always a little bit of a kind of difficulty around what

an individual might think that they're doing with cuteness versus how society sees them and again as you say with the male gaze this can be a real problem i think with kawaii cultures of fashion i think there's a sense of empowerment of creative expression and women who dress and make their own costumes, imagine themselves and speak of themselves as creative practitioners. So really leaning into, you know, strength, self-expression, individuality. And I think this links into Western ideas around dressing for serotonin levels, you know, increasing serotonin through bright colours, making ourselves happier, and maybe, hopefully, making people around us happier

too through a cute aesthetic. Vicky Spratt, the journalist on the line I mentioned in our introduction, have you been called cute? I have actually many times, and I often think it might be because I'm five foot one um so there is this sort of link that's often made with things being small or young and sweet uh and and cute and I have to say depending on the setting I have a very very different reaction to it I'll bet tell us a bit because we got quite strong messages on this when it when I first raised this at the start of the program well I think everything we've been discussing in it you know in an academic context of dissecting this is actually very very important but I think I think there's a difference between choosing to

do something and having it being being applied to you so if I deliberately have done something that I might consider to be sweet for someone and they're like oh that was really sweet of you um I wouldn't mind it so much particularly not in my intimate relationships but I was recently referred to as sweet um by a sort of more senior male colleague and I did it it wasn't in intention at all but it but it did make me think wait a second how do you see me I'm I'm 36 years old and we're having a very, very serious conversation. I don't think it was, it wasn't intended

with any malice at all, but it definitely made me bolt slightly. So I think it's still such a loaded term and I think cuteness is incredibly gendered and it's often used to describe women, not necessarily when they're opting into it like oh you're being so cute or it was really cute when you did that and I think that can actually be quite undermining and a bit demeaning but then there's a flip side to this right

so I might send a pair of shoes that I'm thinking of buying to a friend and they might reply cute and what they mean is yeah buy them they They're great. And in that context, I don't think the word means what it means when somebody who potentially is more powerful than you in a personal or a professional relationship uses the word. So I think it's really about context. Yes.

I mean, Anne has written in a message here saying, some years ago, after I'd shown an American visitor around the cathedral, the porcelain works, the Queen Anne Guildhall, I asked her what she thought of the city. It's real cute, she said. I had no idea how to respond. Some of this can be lost in translation,

but to come back to you, Isabel, where we hear from Vicky, it's got huge problems and it's highly gendered, the word cute. What do you say to that? I can't disagree. I mean, I think there's got huge problems and it's highly gendered, the word cute. What do you say to that? I can't disagree. I mean, I think there's definitely that side to it. We have a real problem with cuteness, I think, especially in the Western world. I mean, when we talk about the kind of scholarly side of cuteness,

we have scholars like Sia Nye who talk about cuteness as the aestheticisation of powerlessness. It's the epitome of what is vulnerable and without agency. And, you know, this appears in lots of different ways when we look at Hello Kitty, who, you know, is a Sanrio cartoon character who's turning 50 this year. We notice often that she doesn't have a mouth. And there's something quite disturbing when we realize that, that we've got this female animal character that can't speak for herself. So there's certainly some anxieties around cuteness that, you know, I agree with Vicky, but I think there are also, you know, flip sides in which we might embrace cuteness, find reinvention through it, find some subversion. That's possible too.

Have you seen subversion in this country that's worked or closest home away from perhaps Japan and that very specific setting that you talked about? I think we can think about Pussy Riot, for example, that activist movement. So, you know, some years ago, in response to a comment made by Donald Trump, we saw lots of women marching in New York wearing these little pink hats with cat ears. And in fact, apparently pink wool was almost impossible to get in the US because everyone was making these cute pink cat hats and marching on the kind of pussy riot type of march, you know, thinking about feminism, thinking about reclaiming certain words

in our vocabulary. And that cuteness, I think, is pretty subversive. It's doing something which is maybe tacking in more to the idea of wildness and animality than the kind of cute kitten that we might associate with cuteness. It's a very interesting example. I think it also feeds into the idea of women not being comfortable and certainly not being socialised to be comfortable with the fact that you have to be disliked quite regularly in perhaps day-to-day life. Not that you seek to be unlikable, but that you can have that response, even whether it's unfairly or not. So seeming cute can be a defence mechanism. It can seem, even the way women use their voices, if they're, you know, not talking with the full range, and they're sort of speaking quite sweetly

in a less offensive, gentler way, which, you know, I don't find as a natural, but I think it's an interesting thing to notice and how cute plays with that. Yeah, I mean, it's a pretense. It can absolutely be a kind of form of faux innocence or faux naivety. And we see this with certain trends like bimboism, which has become something of a kind of subculture or a trend on TikTok with women suggesting that they are themselves bimbos, self-identifying as bimbos, in a kind of cute way where we see them resisting knowledge, resisting having the answer for things, and therefore kind of resisting certain societal expectations of them. I suppose, as Vicky said, context is all. We're going to have to leave it there, but fascinating. There's some interesting messages just coming in. Dr. Isabel Gallimore and Vicky Spratt, thank you to you. Many messages about fasting. I do want to stress, see a doctor before it.

Make sure that you have your specific health conditions talked about before starting any new regime. But fascinating to think about how it applies to women today. Thank you for your company. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Thank you so much for your time. Join us again for the next one. 30 years ago, Britain's farms were hit by an epidemic

of an infectious brain disorder. They called it mad cow disease. I'm Lucy Proctor, and in The Cows Are Mad from BBC Radio 4, I tell the story of a very weird time in our history. The media started calling me the mad cow professor. Mad cow disease rampaged through Britain, first killing cows and then humans. And the thing is, after all this time, nobody knows for sure where mad cow disease originally came from. The general feeling is that we will never know the answer.

Subscribe to The Cows Are Mad on BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered there was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies I started like warning everybody every doula that I know it was fake no pregnancy and the deeper I dig the more questions I unearth how long has she been doing this what does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.