Woman's Hour - Fridge Girl, Gen Z, bell hooks

Episode Date: December 17, 2021

Ebony Louise Barrett has now become Fridge Girl, after a video she put on TikTok went viral. It was a tall, free-standing fridge falling on top of her as she danced. She's OK, but even Janet Jackson has picked up on it. How has it changed her life? Three young women from Generation Z talk about the big social issues of the year, and why they feel the label 'woke', which is often attached to this age group, is off the mark. We have Maisie Thompson from Manchester, Jessie Stevens from Devon and Mia Manttan from London. Inspirational quotes from an American author and feminist called bell hooks are being shared. She died this week at home in Kentucky. She was considered a trailblazer in feminism and published 40-odd books. We've got two of her admirers: Ash Sarkar and Heidi Safia Mirza. We speak to Elaine Parker who's just set up a new app which she hopes will make online dating safer. She was inspired to create it because of the bad experience she had with a man she met online. She explains to Anita how it works.And we continue our Food Fridays with Julie Lin MacLeod, who's the founder of a Malaysian restaurant in Glasgow’s southside. She's also opened a second restaurant during the pandemic. She talks about bringing people together through food, creating a positive working environment, and how the pandemic has changed the amount we eat for Christmas dinner.

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 Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Good morning. I'm going to start the show today with a quote by Bell Hooks, the American author, activist and educator who sadly died yesterday, aged 69. If any female feels she needs anything beyond herself to legitimate and validate her existence, she's already giving away her power to be self-defining, her agency. And one other, no black woman writer in this culture can write too much. Indeed, no woman writer can write too much. No woman has ever written enough. It's powerful stuff. And my Instagram feed has been full of these incredible quotes

and words of wisdom. And they've been thought-provoking and inspiring. And it's made me want to learn more about the woman behind the words. So we will be talking about the great bell hooks shortly. I also thought maybe we could all share the quotes which inspire us this morning. So what phrase or collection of words or extract makes you pause for thought and really fires you up?

We would love to hear from you. If they work for you, they may well work for us too. You can contact me this morning. It might just be what we all need to hear, a little boost to get us over the finish line towards Christmas. 84844 is the number to text, or you can contact us via social media.

It's at BBC Woman's Hour, or you can email us via social media it's at bbc woman's hour or you can email us through our website then calling all of generation z all of you we want to hear from you this morning or anyone who's ever given birth to someone after 1995 or brought up someone of this generation or has any kind of opinion about them we want to know what you are thinking today what have been the issues on your mind and how do you feel you are treated by the older generation? I'll be talking to three young women who'll be bringing us up to speed on the most important issues as they see them. Now, I want

you to imagine you're dancing away at work, miming to Dojo Cat. There you go. Thought I'd help you by playing a bit of Dojo Cat. Just imagine you're dancing around. Someone's filming you. You're having a great time, feeling fabulous. Just an average day at work. You see a fridge. Naturally, you decide to use it as an accessory for your final move of dropping it low when the entire fridge collapses on top of you. Well, this happened to a woman who worked as a runner in a production company. The video was uploaded. Two weeks later, it went viral.

30 million people have watched it. So what happens when your video goes viral? I'll be talking to Fridge Girl all about it. And of course, throughout the programme, I want to hear from you. So contact me 84844. And it's Friday, so we continue our delicious food journey. And today's stop is Malaysia via Glasgow. But first, 2021 has been a difficult and memorable year. And here on Woman's Hour, we've covered the conversations everyone is talking about, from women's safety to climate change, mental health and lockdown to institutional racism and the global Black Lives

Matter movement. Well, Gen Z, that's anyone born after 1995, has been both widely praised and criticised for being young and politically minded. You might have heard words like woke, snowflake or social justice warrior used to describe this generation. But what do young women really think and how have they found the last 12 months? Well, Maisie Thompson is 23 and lives in Manchester. Jessie Stephens is 17 and lives in Devon. And Mia Manton is also 17 and lives in London. And they are all joining me on Women's Hour this morning to talk about it. Very good morning to all of you.

Hi. Hello. You're all there. Right, well, I'm gonna get straight to it, because you've all got something to say, which is why you're here. And I'm going to talk about something that impacts absolutely every single one of us, which is climate change and come to you, Jesse. First, one of that we're talking about bell hooks later. And I've put a quote up on my own Instagram, which says what we do is more important than what we say or what we believe. And you definitely did something quite remarkable. You decided to cycle 570 miles from Devon to Glasgow for COP26. Why did you decide to do that?

Yeah, it does seem a bit crazy looking back at it now but I first wanted to attend COP26 because a youth climate activist I really wanted to get my voice heard and I really believe that the power of the youth's voice gives a really unique view of the climate crisis and can help with policy making so that was one of my biggest motivations to attend

and then I found that it was really difficult for me to attend. So sort of really expensive to get there by public transport, where flying was a lot cheaper. And that really sort of seemed completely wrong in this world when we're trying to decarbonise our systems. So I thought, well, why not be a stubborn teenager and cycle there just to sort of prove that point, prove that we need to change our transport system and yeah, and hopefully make an impact from it. And did your parents cycle with you? Did you have any solidarity in this epic mission? Let me just repeat 570 miles, I think I'd probably do about 10 and collapse.

Yeah, I had loads of support. We kind of turned it into a movement. Me and an amazing organisation called the Adventure Syndicate, we created a cargo bike relay. We got people to join us along the way, trying to bring diverse voices to COP. And I did have my parents cycle with me. My dad did a few of the days and my mum did a few of the others. So it was a real relay. And you got there. And how was it when you got there? Were you inspired? I think COP was a really interesting place.

So I was in the blue zone for the first week. So I was sort of doing lots of journalism and interviewing people trying to bring the youth voice to the media there. So that was being inside the walls of COP in the blue zone with all the politicians was a very odd experience. It was felt very exclusionary, lots of segregation, lack of youth voice. that was quite um difficult and it ground me down a lot but on the second week I was on the streets working with grassroots organizations and that was a really uplifting experience. It ground you down? Yeah definitely. In what way what happened what did you see around you? I think it was just the lack of action.

It was sort of meant to be dubbed as the COP where there was lots of youth inclusion. And that was, from my experience, very far from the case. And I think that whole sort of contrast from what I suppose believed and what I thought was going to happen to sort of what actually came out of it, from my experience. And then the general what came out of was was really difficult to hear and understand. I'm going to bring Maisie and Mia in on this as well because you know you are the generation that switched on to climate change much more than the older generation are you feeling as frustrated as Jessie as well even though she is an activist cycled all the way up there and then got there and realized that actually maybe your voices aren't being listened to. Let me bring you in on that Mia. Yeah I definitely think that climate change is a problem that needs to be kind of led by young people like Jessie and like Greta Thunberg because older people they aren't going to be on the

earth in 70, 80 years and they I mean they don't have a reason so much to care is what's going to happen. But as we can see, there are, the world is changing in front of our eyes right now. I mean, in the past year, there have been the wildfires and floods, people have actually died. And I definitely think that the urgency to this problem is mainly among young people, which is understandable as we're the ones who are going to be living on the planet in the future. But the fact that we don't have as much control as older generations who are the ones who really need to be, you know, helping us, changing policies for us. I mean, it is very frustrating and I understand Jessie's disappointment.

Maisie? Yeah absolutely I think that when it comes to the younger generation we're very much encouraged to educate ourselves but not have an opinion and not put that education or information into practice and we're criticised as you know this materialistic generation who has nothing between our ears and just wants to dance to Doja Cat songs and not do anything, like, of merit. And when, you know, a young person, especially young women, turn around and decide, like, they're going to use their, like, use their time, use their energy to focus on something important

and have an opinion and get involved in a conversation, we're often pushed to the side and told, like, you're too young to be involved and you're too young to have a seat at this table. But at the end of the day, the table is supposed to be for everyone and the conversations being had at the table affect everyone. So if we are informed enough, as clearly jesse is why isn't she being

invited to pull up a chair sincerely instead of us saying oh we want young people to be a part of the conversation and then as soon as the doors are closed they get told to sit in the corner and shut up like it's just ridiculous but you're not doing that at all are you Maisie? Well I like to think not I think there's a lot of situations where like I'm not the most informed person on climate change I'm not the person who is going to go around shouting the odds but I will shout the odds that Jessie should get to shout the odds because she knows what she's talking about so it's very that but you are definitely informed on wanting to pursue a creative career and talk about your own background as being mixed race and from a working class background oh absolutely I think we should get to have conversations about things that we do know

and that we do understand and I know what it's like to be a person in my situation I know what it's like to be um biracial and to be a woman to grow up in you know the north in a working class area in a predominantly white area and I know what my experience is as a creative person and trying to pursue creative things so I will obviously go die on that hill. Yeah, and how easy is it for you to talk about that? When I was younger, I was very introverted and very shy and I was scared to have an opinion about things. And I've had to work on that a lot as I've got older and gone through uni, college, whatever.

So now I find it very easy to talk about because I am very secure in myself um but it hasn't always been that way especially because it's it's easy to talk about things when you don't don't necessarily get a reaction although things aren't being exposed but a lot of things I've had like for example I did a Instagram documentary called you do you recently with channel four and I was speaking about my experiences and I got trolled by many many people criticizing me for my appearance my background um like my uh any anything and everything and it was typically from men that were twice my age and they were white men

and they were trying to pick apart every single, not even anything that I necessarily said or did, just what I looked like and the fact that I was different from them. So how do you cope with that? How did you deal with that? I just found it quite funny, to be honest. I've spent a lot of time learning how to be comfortable with myself and be proud of myself and know what matters to me and what matters to me isn't my appearance,

it's what I do with my time, it's, you know, who I am. And I've always, I got to a point where I was like, do you know what, I think that if I got exposed to a lot of people and I got trolled, I got exposed to a lot of people um and I got trolled I don't think it would upset me but because I keep very good people in my life I never really got exposed to a large amount of negative feedback and so for it to happen and then it not affect me I was mostly just happy that I was right and that all the work that I had been doing on myself and my point of view and you know my

self-esteem and all that had paid off um especially when a lot of the criticisms were to do with things that I did used to struggle with like my appearance like I um have polycystic ovarian syndrome and so I have hormonal imbalance and facial hair and people were misgendering me calling me transgender saying I was a man and that I shouldn't lie. And, you know, just things that are just unnecessary to the actual topic itself. I'm going to bring both Mia and Jessie in on this. Have you experienced any negativity on social media and how have you dealt with it? Mia? I mean, I think everyone's experienced negativity on social media, whether that's directly to them or you've heard about people judging your social media. And I think social media is a great thing. It can be used for a lot of positive change.

But I also think it can be a very toxic place. I personally don't have social media because I found that it does affect my mental health badly and it does distract me from my schoolwork. And I think that a lot of people of my generation who have grown up with social media, it is very damaging for them. I think it's a very hard thing to actually get rid of that from your life because everyone has it and is kind of normal. You don't use it? No, no. I recently, I just, I decided to delete Instagram, TikTok. I just, yeah, for me, those platforms weren't beneficial for my life.

And I feel like having done that, I feel a lot, I'm less reminded of the things that I don't have, the things that I don't look like. And I feel like my life is generally more positive. But obviously, I think social media can be a very great place as well. I think it just depends on the person. I mean, and you, I mean, I'm just trying to imagine a world without social media, how absolutely liberating and how free and all the time you must have

to do all the things that you're actually passionate about. One of those things that you did as a modern young feminist is as a 17-year-old student at school, you were part of a mass walkout. Tell us about that. Yeah, so I suppose it will seem kind of ironic that this walkout was, I suppose, started by social media and the Everyone's Invited movement

that happened on Instagram, where schools in, I think, around the whole country were being exposed for their rape culture and the kind of people were giving accounts of things that had happened to them, young women. And so I think that, and also the tragedy of Sarah Everard, it kind of triggered a lot of momentum and the rape culture within my school was something that students had known about for a really long

time it wasn't a new thing but I think this momentum caused by social media which is an example of one of the great effects of social media um kind of yeah it triggered a momentum within our um the female students in our school and so we decided to do a walkout in protest of the rape culture it wasn't an attack towards my school specifically it was um a way of getting our voices heard and um demanding change within institutions around the country and the way in which schools tackle rape culture. And so I think it was in March last year, we decided to walk out of our lessons at the same time and everyone wore red and different year groups

went into different locations, obviously because of Corona. And yeah. And were you listened to? there an impact did things change yeah i mean the response from the school was amazing and from other schools as well i think girls had complained to um the school in the past about certain things but i think a problem generally is the kind of the acceptance of boys will be boys and that kind of thing but I think our demand for change really um it really led the teachers to seriously think about what they can do to improve our safety at school and so there was an external review into the rape culture our school

and the ways in which the school dealt with it. There's also been a complete review of the policy, the sexual abuse policy at our school, which is amazing, which has been put on the walls around the school for students to see how the school has changed. There's been changing in the PSHE curriculum. I think that was something that a lot of girls really thought was important, was educating the boys in our school, because I think it was a lack of education, which was so important.

Jessie, I'm going to bring you in. Billie Eilish has been in the press this week. She's been talking about how she was exposed to porn from the age of 11, and just how damaging she thought that was. Is it important for people like Billie Eilish to speak out? And I'm just, I'm intrigued to know from all three of you, if you, who are the people that you're more likely to listen to? Would it be someone like Billie Eilish? Do you listen to what people within

party politics are saying? And Westminster, who are the people when they talk out, are you going to pay attention to? I think in terms of these role models, I think we've all got different role models and different people that inspire us. And I suppose whoever they are, and if they say something that is of interest to you and sort of relates to you, then you're more likely to listen to it.

So that could be a pop singer or that could be someone in party politics. But I do think that having this people of influence speaking out about these problems affecting Generation Z, I think is so important to really help start the conversation around these issues and move things forward. And I started by saying, you know, that often you are described as woke or snowflakes and it seemed as a derogatory term. How do you feel about that Maisie? I mean even Barack Obama said the world is messy and there's ambiguity and he's basically said that he sees this term woke as being young people being as judgmental as possible as possible and I think that as each generation goes by there's always that looking down the nose at the next one that comes

along and judging the way that they do things because oh I wouldn't have done that it's the same way as when you're in year seven you don't understand why everyone hates year sevens and then you get in year 11 and you look down and go oh my god they're so annoying I think it's just that on a like bigger scale and I think that you know as each generation goes by each decade we learn new things we have new conversations and like for example my my sister's pregnant at the moment and it's my family's first grandchild and all this other than the other and she keeps saying well you can't do this like when I have the baby you can't do this the mom said well when i had you's lot we did that but the last time you had a baby was 20 years ago we have a lot more information now and i think it's that same that same concept just applied to everything like you might not have had these

conversations but did you know this when you were my age where you was exposed to the information the social media has literally consumed most people's lives it's a massive part of the way that we interact with each other a way that we gather information so we know a lot more a lot younger than we should do as you said like billy eilish was saying how she was exposed to pornography from the age of 11 when you know decades ago the only way you could get exposed to that was on the top shelf of a corner shop like it's everywhere now it's in music it's in tv and so if we're going to be exposed to sex we need to have conversations like healthy conversations around sex and i think that applies to climate change, politics, class, money, capitalism, anything that is going to affect us in the future if we're going to be exposed to it from a young

age we need to start having healthy conversations around that being educated and if you're leaving us to learn those things by ourselves we're obviously going to cultivate this whole new culture separate to what you know and understand because you're not a part of it. Do you feel you've got people that you can look up to, Jesse, within kind of the power structures who are inspiring you? I mean, somebody's just messaged in actually, Graham says, please stop repeating the myth about young people being more aware of climate change and environmental issues. Who takes flights to Ibiza and Prague? Who buys all the ready-made food and plastic packaging? And who creates massive churn in the electronic goods market? What do you say to him, Jessie? I think that's a really interesting thought,

because I think there are a lot of young people who really do play into capitalism and play into these capitalist ideologies of buy, buy, buy, lots of expensive travel and flying everywhere. But I think there's a huge proportion of young people who are, have created this movement, which is bringing the climate to the forefront of, you know, society. And that's not to say that over the decades, there's been so many other movements around the environment, which have brought so many important things to light and made so much change. But I think the youth movement is now sort of bringing that to the forefront once again. I think it's like a wave that kind of ebbs and flows.

And I think we need a new voice, a new, unique way of looking at the world to really bring this to light again. Brilliant. Mia, Maisie and Jessie, thank you so much for joining me this morning to talk to me about it. 844 is the number to text with your thoughts. We will be passing it on to you anyway. So we hope it sounds like the three of you know what's going on anyway. So I feel quite confident in passing on the baton to the three of you for

sure. Now, inspirational quotes from an American author and feminist called Bell Hooks are being shared today. Here's one about loving ourselves the person who will never leave us whom we will never lose is ourself learning to love our female selves is where our search for love must begin bell hooks died this week she was 69 and she died at home in kentucky she was considered a trailblazer in feminism and published 40 odd books her real name was gloria jean watkins but she adopted her great grandmother's name, Belle Blair Hooks. We've got two of her admirers with us this morning. Ash Sarkar is an academic and contributing editor of Navarra Media and also Heidi Safia Mirza, who went to talks that

Belle Hooks gave and is a Meritus Professor in Race, Gender, Inequalities and Education at the University College of London. Heidi, I'm going to come to you first. Very good morning to you both. Not everyone may know Bell Hooks. Tell us about her and why we should know who she was. Well, Bell Hooks really influenced my work in the early 80s. She was writing in the 70s and 80s. She's one of the titans of Black feminist thinking. And she was, above all, she described herself as a teacher. And she has influenced generations of teachers and scholars around the issues of Black feminism. Her core beliefs were around what we call intersectionality now, but looking at racism, sexism, but within the understanding of white supremacy and capitalism. And this was the power

of her work for me, the way in which she combined, you know, ideological beliefs that were grounded in the exploitation of others. So capitalism could not exist without slavery and racism and sexism. So it is that triangle, if you like, that she made me aware. And also, you know, she's of the generation of Angela Davis and the Komahi Collective, all of this very early black feminist thinking. It was amazing. How was she when you met her? What was she like? So in the 80s, we used to have a very vibrant, actually black radical group.

It was around the black bookshop, New Beacon Books. And it was called we would have annual conferences on on race. And and so they were they, we had conferences in London, they called the radical book shops, you know, so we were, we would be sitting in rooms, we weren't, they weren't big conferences, they were just like almost sitting in a circle and exchanging ideas. She was incredibly powerful speaker. I'm sure that many people will be looking up her on YouTube. And she had, she took no prisoners. I mean, she was vociferous in her positioning. And she was attacked many times in her life verbally. I mean, you know, for her views, for her strong views around sexism and white feminism, the relationship that black women weren't brought into the white feminist.

And yet she's remained stalwart that feminism that embraced all of us was the way forward. Let me bring Ash in on this. Do you think Bell Hooks has got the recognition she deserved here in the UK, Ash? I think it's impossible for Bell Hooks to get the recognition that she deserves because it is difficult to think of a scholar whose work has been more influential across multiple fields. So I encountered Bell Hook's work three times. The first was as a kid on my auntie's bookshelf. And I can bet that she bought that book from New Beacon Books, which Heidi just talked about, was Ain't I a Woman, which is her treatise on race, class,

and gender. And it was the first time as a woman of color that I read anybody talking about what that was like, and that you can't separate race from gender, that you can't separate class from those things as well. And that something specific happens to black women, where they are so dehumanized within white supremacy and capitalism and sexism, that they're excluded from being considered women at all. And it was the first time I heard someone put language to that. The second time was when I was at university and I was studying English literature. And then I discovered Bell Hooks, the scalpel sharp critic. And this is when you get the take no prisoners, Bell Hooks. I was reading her essays where she was tearing apart Harmony Kareem's kids.

You know, she was getting into what we think of as the Western canon and just with utter precision and this really withering turn of phrase, she just laid it all out there. And then the third time was encountering... So she managed to, sorry to interrupt, she managed to stretch across generations then by commenting on things that were very current, very relevant and talking to the young generation.

Absolutely. She maintained an engagement with pop culture throughout her career. She very famously wrote a critique of Beyonce's Lemonade where, you know, she was suspicious of this kind of representation politics. And she said, look, this is capitalist moneymaking at its best. And I think to speak to that issue of crossing generations, that third time which I encountered bell hooks was actually many of my male friends were reading The Will to Change. It's this, you know, generation of millennial and the one below, you know, Zuma men trying to unpick how they've been socialized and

the way in which patriarchy has atrophied their emotional experiences and inhibited their ability to connect with other people. And one of the things that she talks about in The Will to Change is that women uphold patriarchy too. And we also create some of the patriarchal expectations which constrain and restrict men um we are talking about her quotes because as i said i started the program you know it's her quotes are all over social media and lots of people are discovering bell hooks for the first time through her quotes and you're right um heidi they probably will be googling her and watching her speak um do you have a favourite quote by her? I have several favourite quotes, but I just want to come back

on this sudden awakening to bell hooks in the mainstream media. While, of course, we must celebrate our wonderful black feminist icons, but where have we been for the last 40 years, 50 years, 60 years? Where have we been? No one's heard of, I mean, I've written Black British Feminism, you know, and it's not anything that has been celebrated. Suddenly she's on BBC News. I thought, oh my God, since when is this awakening and this appropriation of black women as soundbites, you're asking me to give a soundbite, when her work of 40 books, you know, is so deep and so influential to women that are marginal.

So one of the things that she, if you do ask me for a quote, she does talk about being in the margin. And she says, marginality is a place of power I'm not quoting it exactly but she says marginality is a place of power where we can recover ourselves so we don't always have to belong in the mainstream as black women just being I just thought she would be so amazed that she was on mainstream news because she said we have to stay in our places of marginality and build our strengths build our capacity and that's what really influenced me you know she gave me that understanding that I am good enough and my ideas no matter how radical or

how out of the mainstream and can have power and we can teach. She was a teacher ultimately and she was a Buddhist and she believed in love and the power of what she called teaching to transgress. This is the name of one. You can transgress by positioning yourself in your ideologies and your beliefs. I have to say, Woman's Hour is absolutely the place we need to be talking about her and we need to be raving about her.

Ash, I am going to ask you for a quote. Come on, one from you. You know what, I'm going to pull a quote from my favourite Bell Hooks essay. The essay is called Love as the Practice of Freedom and the quote is, Without love, our efforts to liberate ourselves and our world community from oppression and exploitation are doomed. Because when Bell Hooks, without love, our efforts to liberate ourselves and our world community from oppression and exploitation are doomed. Because when Bell Hooks talks about love, she's not talking about something insipid or hippy-dippy. She's talking about this antidote to nihilism. And that actually,

rather than thinking of the struggle to liberate ourselves as a destructive struggle, one of killing, one of maiming, one of trying to dominate other people. What love challenges us to do is to think about the dignity of every human being and to imagine communities, societies and relationships where we do not dominate one another. Brilliant. Ashlaka and Heidi, Mirza, thank you so much for speaking to me this morning. Thank you. Now, nearly 40% of relationships start online and it's a percentage that is set to rise, but this doesn't mean that meeting someone on a dating app or a website is always safe. Last week, you may have heard our interview with Kirith, a 42-year-old radio presenter who fell victim to a catfishing scandal that lasted 10 years. You can listen again to that on BBC Sounds.

But today I'm joined by Elaine Parker, someone who is on a one-woman mission to make online dating safer and more secure for everyone. Following a traumatic personal experience at the hands of a man she met online, Elaine went on to found her own dating app, Safer Date, and I'm pleased to say that she joins me now. Very good morning. Welcome to the programme. Good morning. If we can, Elaine, can you just talk to me about your own personal experience that led to this happening? What actually happened?

I went on to the dating app Plenty of Fish back in 2016. It was a free dating app, so I thought I had nothing to lose um very naively thought that they actually had to keep you safe there was some legal standard so i just went on there and uh i met somebody it seemed really good at first um but it actually went really really nasty um we did get engaged on the night of the engagement party. He just turned and even in the taxi on the way home, the violent side came out. He put me through months of domestic abuse, rape, sexual assault. When I finally got him out of my house, the stalking and harassment began. And it was only once I had to get the police involved that I realised he had a very long history of domestic abuse.

His ex-wife and children had been in a safe house. I wasn't his first victim and I certainly wasn't his last either. And he was using dating sites to find his victims time and time again. But there was no way of anyone knowing that because anybody can sign up. Exactly. Yes. You know, people go onto these free dating sites thinking naively like I did that there's some sort of legal standard and there is there's no legal standard whatsoever for the dating industry so anybody can go on there they don't do id checks so anybody can go on and

create as many fake profiles as they want to so fraudsters are on there sex offenders are on there pedophiles are on there and people are freely going onto these dating sites and putting in all of their information photographs of their children and not actually realising that all of these criminals are just looking at their pictures and information freely And you felt so strongly about it that you've decided to found your own dating app

I have, yeah Tell me about it Single-handedly trying to revolutionise the dating industry for the better. You know, what I went through was horrific. You know, it was a couple of years it took to get to court and he's now in prison for what he did to me. But it really opened up my eyes to the fact that, you know,

people like him are on these dating sites. So how will yours work? Safer date. How will that work? Well, we're literally the safest one in the world, which I'm very, very proud to say. We do a full real-time identity check first on every single member. So that gets rid of all of the anonymity. So people can't just hide behind the screen or be whoever they want to be. We make sure they are exactly who they say they are and where they say they are as well.

So, you know, that is the first layer of security that we put in place. And then once they pass the ID check, we do a thorough global criminal background check. We work with an intelligence agency and they deal with the FBI, the police, the National Crime Agency. So we can literally look into the criminal history of all of our applicants. And if there's any sort of serious criminal history there,

we just reject the membership and they will not get onto the app. So what's the line? How do you decide who's allowed on and who isn't? We have sort of like a traffic light system. So obviously we have to be able to identify the person first. We need to make sure they are who they say they are. So if we can't, that's a straight no. If they pass the ID checks, we then go through the criminal background checks.

Now, if somebody has, say, a traffic offence, that's not going to stop you from getting on. If somebody is a sex offender or, you know, they've been convicted of serious assault and there's this pattern, well, then they wouldn't get on there at all. But what if you've committed a petty crime in your past and so you have a criminal record, but, you know, you are... Like, where's the line?

You know, who judges who gets on yeah um fundamentally um i do uh you know we have this traffic light system that we go through and it is a judgment call you know if there's anything serious we have a list of offenses that are on the red list and if they are in the background the person just will not get on um there's obviously if there's no history it's green but if there is this gray area see if somebody was caught shoplifting when they were 16 you know then there's no other history there's obviously if there's no history, it's green. But if there is this grey area, see if somebody was caught shoplifting when they were 16, you know, then there's no other history. There's nothing that's theft or fraud or anything like that.

You know, that wouldn't stop me from getting on. And is it working? Is it safer? Absolutely, yes. It's the only one of its kind. It's the only one that we can actually identify everybody. Do you have proof? How long have you been up and running? We actually only launched the app last week. So it is sort of just in its early days, but we're getting absolutely excellent feedback from it all.

And do you think, Elaine, that the industry as a whole needs to change? Absolutely. In the online safety bill, the new one's due to come out soon, and it absolutely should include online dating as a regulated industry to stop people. You know, anyone can go and sign up to a dating app. Anyone can create a dating app. And even the free ones, how they make their money, they sell your data.

And it's even in their small print. So they will sell your data to gambling sites, to other dating sites, even to sex sites, to whoever's buying. So you literally don't know who's getting your data. So it needs to be a legal standard that they have to keep the data safe and they have to keep all of their members safe. As a very bare minimum, they should all do ID checks. Surely that's the police's job. Is it your job to be doing ID checking of people? The police, they do the best they can but they've already

stretched the limit so how can maybe id check in everybody who uses an online platform you know you look at social media uh you know and as the lady said before it can be a very very toxic place but a lot of that is because of the anonymity and the fake profiles so there just needs to be a standard that holds each company accountable for who was allowed on their platforms well the online dating association have given us um a quote they've said the online dating association the dating industry work with regulators across the world to adhere to codes of practice and legislation for online platforms legislating for digital spaces is a complicated task and the uk parliament is considering the challenges through the online safety bill as you mentioned which will likely enter parliament next year we have been involved with the developments and the UK Parliament is considering the challenges through the online safety bill, as you mentioned,

which will likely enter Parliament next year. We have been involved with the development of the online safety bill in the UK and will continue to work with Ofcom as they develop codes of practice for digital platforms in the UK. It feels like we're just at the very beginning of something here, Elaine. We are, absolutely.

And you mentioned the Online Dating Association. You don't have to be a member of the Online Dating Association. It's not mandatory, but you do have to pay. Elaine, thank you very much. It's only been launched for a week, so I'm sure we'll get you on at a later date to discuss this further as and when we can find out

how it's working for you. Lovely, thanks very much. Thank you. And also Tinder are not here to defend themselves. People are getting in touch with quotes. Sue Mayo says, this is a bell hooks quote we are transformed individually collectively as we make radical creative space which affirms and sustains our subjectivity which gives us a new location from which to articulate our sense of the world so i just want to hear if there's an inspiring quote that gets you going in the

morning. Please message me with it. It's 84844. Now you might have seen this. 22-year-old Ebony Louise Barrett has found fame for filming herself dancing at work to Dojo Cat. There you go. Bit of Dojo Cat for you. But in the middle of her confident moves, a freestanding fridge fell on top of her. Ebony posted the video online and not long after, it went viral and was viewed more than 30 million times. Ebony got the name Fridge Girl and Fridge Girl is with me now. Welcome to Woman's Hour, Ebony. Hi.

We just had a message in saying, OMG, I'm dying, my idol is on Woman's Hour, Ebony. Hi. We just had a message in saying, OMG, I'm dying. My idol is on Woman's Hour. Is this your life now? What? Is this what you get everywhere you go? It's actually crazy. I mean, it seems that every shoot I've been on,

people just know. People just have seen it. So let's, for the benefit of people who haven't seen it paint paint a picture for us what happened you'd finished work yeah so me and my friend Georgia who filmed it um we'd finished work and we were getting ready to go um we were just blasting some music because we were excited to finish a long day. And I was dancing, just doing my thing. And then I was like, I'm going to do this cool move and like pull off the fridge, like, you know, kind of, I guess, slut drop next to the fridge. And like I did it. And then all of a sudden I just see the fridge starting to fall.

And I'm like, oh, my God, like that's going to it's going to engulf me. And then it fell on me. It literally basically covered me, like not even like knocked me, actually covered me. Yeah. Did you hurt yourself? I was actually fine, surprisingly. I got a tiny little bruise, but I think if you see the video, lots of drinks fall out because the fridge is full of drinks and like the shelves yeah yeah I mean my first concern uh you know uh was oh is she all right is she all right but it sort of happens in slow motion and it is quite amusing yeah and it is we can laugh because nothing you are fine and you are safe yeah she's perfectly fine. Then two weeks pass, you post the video, and what happened? So two weeks pass, me and Georgia, we've taken the video down,

but then we see that it's researched on this meme page on Instagram called Girls Got a Gram, and it had been up for six hours. We checked it at work, and was on like quarter of a million views and over 10,000 likes. And we were like, oh my God. And we were like, should we take it down? But I was like, no, let's just see where it goes. And then a couple of days after that, so many things happened.

But yeah, so many things happened. But like Janet Jackson saw the video. She posted it on her instagram grid did she did what about dojo cat has she posted it no i'm surprised she hasn't seen it to be honest because so many people have messaged me saying this is all over tiktok this is all over my for you page um and like scissor commented on both my post and Janet Jackson's post. And Dua Lipa posted on her story. So it has been seen by quite like a few, you know. Yeah, 30 million people.

In fact, the reason we're talking about it is because I was on a shoot on Monday and you were working on the shoot as the runner, but you were a celebrity. Everybody was like, it's fridge girl. It's fridge girl. So what does it feel like when your life goes from zero to 100 miles an hour? What's changed? And this is only, what, four weeks ago this happened. So what's changed in your life?

Yeah, I mean, pretty much like so many people just got in touch with me, like so many people within industry. It seemed at first that it was kind of everyone new in the creative industry, which is already a huge thing. And then from there, like obviously it kind of reached mainstream celebrities. So, like, you know, I haven't been back at Big Sky since just because I've been booked on so many jobs. What?

Yeah. And, like, I still work there. I just haven't been needed to book because, yeah. Because people want you on their shoots. In fact, Gail, our studio manager, is Goog googling you right now she's looking up the video I bet there's people listening to Radio 4 trying to google you as well so you work as a runner so you're booked up to to carry on doing your job but yeah everybody wants you yeah so at Big Sky I'm a studio assistant which is basically a runner but yeah I've been booked to do production assisting, photo assisting. Which is what you are a photographer that's what

you're aspiring to be correct? So this has kind of helped you with your career? It's literally propelled it from what I would have expected to maybe do at Big Sky after a year it's happened because of the fridge video which is crazy and a photo shoot tell me about that um yeah so I think it was the day after um Scott Trindle was in one of the studios at Big Sky um and he pulled me aside and he was like we're gonna take some pictures and I was like yeah like some selfies because people like David Abrahams as well another renowned photographer had taken pictures with me so I was just like okay I think everyone just wants selfies and he was like oh no

like we're gonna take some photos like we're gonna put you in hair and makeup style you and do a little mini editorial as a comeback and I was like no and then the day was passing and I was like is this a joke or and then like in the afternoon one of the assistants messaged me and was like, it's time. And I just ran and they put me in hair and makeup. And I came down and they just moved the fridge in their studio onto the cove. And there was just like cans of drink surrounding the fridge. And you look incredible. I have to comment on your look today.

You look amazing. Thank you. Very different to, you know, you in your kind of work clothes, dancing around. Tell me about the look. No, I mean, I absolutely adore anything pastel. I love Japanese fashion, kawaii fashion. And at work, I kind of just have to like tone that down a little bit. I think you kind of saw on Monday I was in pastels, but I wasn't as like flamboyant as usual.

But yeah, I kind of have to like obviously look more professional and more like. Yeah. So this is you. This is you in all your gorgeous glory. Earlier in the year, we interviewed the Jackie Weaver who went viral at a very different situation. She was at the Hanford Parish Council meeting and was brilliantly assertive. She's published a book off the back of that. You've had a photo shoot. You're fully booked until Christmas with work. What about the new year?

How else are you going to make this work for you? What happens when you go viral? What can you do next? Well, this is the thing. It's like there's this pressure of keeping the momentum going. But there's also kind of like, I guess I'm trying to like be active on TikTok and I'm trying to like, you know, keep the momentum going. And like just do like multiple things on social media so that I stay present and people still remember my face as well. Because, you know, I can't like let this

moment just die I've got a you know profit and get as much out of it as I can because at the end of the day a fridge fell on me so I mean it's a serious exactly exactly um it's been brilliant speaking to you I'm gonna play out with your tune I think we should yeah Yeah. Unless it's not too triggering. No, no, no. I can't listen to this without laughing though. Me too. Ebony, thank you so much for joining me. Ebony Barrett, a.k.a. Fridge Girl. Look her up. So what happens when your life goes viral?

Absolutely love it. Now, chef Julie Lynn McLeod is the founder of the Malaysian restaurant Julie's Kopitiam on Glasgow's south side and opened a second restaurant, Go Go, during the pandemic. The former MasterChef quarterfinalist joins me now to talk about bringing people together through food, positive working environments and how the pandemic has changed the amount we eat for Christmas dinner. And very important, the alternative to traditional traditional Christmas turkey, just in case you can't get your hands on one. Julie, welcome to Woman's Hour. Hello, thank you for having me. It's great to have you on. Let's talk about your own food inspiration and where does it come from? Tell us about the food you like to cook. So it's all it's all really come from the kind of classic story of my mum just being such a big influence within my life.

And I actually was a bit of a terrible cook when I was a teenager I was really awful at it it was only when I ended up leaving home that I was like hold on a minute I'm gonna need to learn how to make these dishes because I just can't survive on my own terrible food so it was really through that that I kind of realized how lucky and spoiled I was as a kid with my mum's Malaysian cooking and yeah it's all kind of stemmed from there and I think that's really influenced my style of cooking so I am just not one for tweezers and edible flowers and dainty little bits and bobs it's just it's never going to be me and I've accepted that now so I love I just love like food that's really really soulful

and we cook with a term in Malaysia called agar-agar, which just means to season, like estimate your seasoning and cooking. And my cousin came up with this lovely quote, which was to season the dish up until your ancestors' whispers in your ear to stop. I just love that. And I think that just kind of sums it up for me. There's nothing too fancy. It doesn't have to be rigid.

It's all just about the love of food and sharing it with people what a beautiful way of describing it until your ancestors tell you to stop because when you are cooking the food that you grew up with the food of your heritage you are channeling conjuring the past aren't you exactly and I think for so many of us um cooking is quite like something that's quite heart on sleeve kind of emotions for you. It can be so connected to where you're from, to when you're missing a place, to even discovering your own kind of culture. And I guess that's where I've kind of learned more about Malaysia from delving into the food and out of a sheer respect for my mum. So it's been a really lovely, emotional journey, but it's been lovely.

So describe Malaysian cuisine for us. So Malaysian cuisine is such an amalgamation of different cultures. People often quote it as this melting pot of cultures in Malaysia because there's so many different influences you've got. You've got the kind of Portuguese influence within the cooking within Malacca. You've also got Nanya, which is where that's where I kind of come from. So it's Chinese Malay cooking. And that's where i kind of come from so it's chinese malay cooking and that's like a little bit spicier and i always say when we're talking about malaysian

cooking there's so many different regions with different laxas with different ways to cook certain dishes and it's almost as it has to be as definite as that same kind of thing that italian cooking gets when people are like oh no, no, you cannot put pineapple pizza. You've got that exact same culture within Malaysia. And the food is just such a big part of the culture. Now, before we talk about, you know, you opening not just one, but two restaurants in Glasgow, you were trained by Chef Laurie McMillan. What did it mean to be trained by another woman do you know I don't think I realized quite how important that was until later on in my career

um she was just absolutely wonderful I had no experience and she took me under her wing and just told me everything and she was patient she was just absolutely brilliant at her job and I think that very kind of lucky streak of meeting a female so early into this was such a good kind of part of my career. It was a really good way to kind of lead on from there. And she then opened her first place after we worked together. And I now have my restaurant in her old place. So it's been a really lovely kind of turning wheel of inspiring people. And she's just absolutely incredible.

So I think I managed to luckily avoid quite a lot of the kind of macho culture that you get in kitchens still to this day by luckily falling into the arms of Laurie McMillan. So I'm very lucky for that indeed. And you have lots of women working with you. I do actually. We've actually just opened up a new our new restaurant Gaga and I've got the Côte d'Ivoire as well and actually the majority of people that apply are women or actually people who are non-binary so it's really it's really lovely because I feel like we have created this space where you can work and you don't need to be shouted at and you don't need to have frying pans getting flung around the place it can be a really calm positive atmosphere in a kitchen as long as you

make it a nice place for people to work so I'm very very keen on that going forward. And how was it taking that first step to opening your own restaurant was that quite a brave decision? Oh it was terrifying I remember the first couple of months of just you know reading every single review that comes in and and you just you take I think because the cooking that I do is so it's so connected to my family into Malaysia that it is a bit of an emotional thing and that also makes it a lovely thing as well as a bit of a stressful thing because you then read into reviews and take everything personally but I think now I've come to the stage with it where I just love sharing the kind of the love of food with everyone. And the fact that it does come from being biracial, so I'm Scottish and Malaysian.

And I would never claim to be an authentic Malaysian chef because that's that's not what I am. And I wanted to find this place for food where both cultures can combine and mean something. It doesn't need to be that one is diluted. And that's why we've got so much amazing food on this island, because we have so many cultures coming in and just bringing what they've got and bringing the food of their ancestors and putting a little Scottish slash English slash Welsh twist onto it. So let's talk about food, because my tummy is rumbling and I'm permanently hungry and greedy.

Alternative dishes for Christmas Christmas what can we do so this year I am actually I'm going down a different route with Christmas and I think the pandemic has made everyone realize that we don't need this overindulgence you don't need three different types of roasts on the dinner table I often think of Christmas dinner um it's often cooked by people that don't really like cooking. It's like you're forced to cook for 10 people in a day and it's a bit stressful. Don't stress yourself out with the oven space. That's the main thing here. So I'm actually saying to quite a lot of people, we're doing roasted chicken thighs this year. So I've got one tray for my chicken, I've got one tray for my potatoes, and there's not going to be as much leftovers. And it means that we can

kind of portion things out correctly with having no waste. And yes, of course, it is so lovely to have the traditional Christmas, but there's only about four of us that will have the dinner on Christmas Day. So I'm sure that'll be the case with many, many households. So you don't need to get this massive big roast. Just eat what you want and eat what you can on that day. I think we're going to sati and spice ours and have it with the peanut sauce so it's maybe not quite as traditional as as we normally do but I just love

changing it up a little bit and what time to do it after a pandemic it sounds great you're so right and you know most of us we all had much smaller Christmas lunches last year because we were all kind of on our own we weren't with our families. You actually opened your second restaurant during COVID. I did. I mean, hospitality has taken such a knock. Why did you do that? Do you know, we just opened up, this is our second week of trading and it's just been amazing.

And for me, it was really symbolic of that kind of hope, the hope that like things are going to open up again. And Gaga is just a really fun place where we just want it to be, again and Gaga is just a really fun place where we just want it to be like the food is not pretentious you can come and sit and have a coffee or your dinner or whatever and it's just really to symbolize us coming out of lockdown and sharing food with each other again and I think what I've noticed is that not many people missed fine dining over um over the lockdown period mean, I'm sure some did,

but for me, the kind of white tablecloths and very fancy service, I didn't miss that. I miss going to kind of small places where you can sit for a couple of hours and giggle with friends. So for me, that's why I wanted to open up Gaga. Brilliant. Thank you so much for joining us, Julie Lynn McLeod. Inspired bit of satay chicken thighs Christmas lunch.

Thank you very much. Delicious. It's tough times again for the hospitality industry, and I'm sure we'll be talking about that at some point on Woman's Hour. Belinda messaged in to say about what we were talking about earlier. I love Gen Z. I have two daughters who are politically aware. If not as active as I am,

they seem determined to use their energy and skills to help people. I am so proud of them. Have a lovely weekend. Join me tomorrow for Weekend Woman's Hour. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. Sideways is back for another season with stories of incredible feats of endurance.

Mountain climbers, we plod onward through avalanches and snowstorms and occasional yetis. I'm Matthew Side, and in Sideways, you'll hear stories of bold thinkers and amazing lives, stories of seeing the world differently. Subscribe to Sideways 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 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.