Woman's Hour - Hadestown creator Anaïs Mitchell, Perfume’s Darkest Secrets, the return of Loaded magazine

Episode Date: May 29, 2024

Top perfume brands may have the “worst form of child labour” in their jasmine supply chains, a BBC Eye investigation reveals. Jasmine is considered to be one of the most valuable ingredients in some of the world's most iconic perfumes. Nuala McGovern is joined by BBC Eye correspondent Heba Bitar and producer/director of the documentary: Perfume’s Darkest Secrets, Natasha Cox.Grammy and Tony award-winning songwriter Anaïs Mitchell is the creator of the musical Hadestown – a genre-defying retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth blending folk music and New Orleans jazz. With productions on Broadway and now at the Lyric Theatre in London, Anaïs performs live in the Woman’s Hour studio and talks to Nuala about the origins and impact of Hadestown. The 'lad’s mag' Loaded is back - with Liz Hurley once again on the cover. Sarah Ditum, journalist and author of ‘Toxic: Women, Fame and The Noughties’, joins Nuala to give her reaction.In our series of hobbies you've restarted after decades, we hear from Rosie, who rediscovered her childhood roller skates whilst clearing out her parents' house. Now, she does regular roller skating lessons, and absolutely loves it. She tells our reporter Sarah Swadling all about it. What do you know about Nan Shepherd? The Scottish author, poet and naturalist has helped shape Scotland’s recent literary history with her work. A new play, Nan Shepherd: Naked and Unashamed, explores her life and legacy at the Pitlochry Festival Theatre. The play’s writer, Ellie Zeegan joins Nuala to discuss Nan’s legacy. Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Lottie Garton

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, this is Nuala McGovern and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. It is indeed time for Woman's Hour. Welcome. Well, live music this morning with Ineos Mitchell, the creator of the musical Hadestown. So get ready for a performance inspired by American folk and blues traditions. I've been listening to her play this morning. She's been walking the corridors around Woman's Hour and you are in for a treat. So stay with us for that.

Now, Inés worked on her music for years and years. It was a packed theatre of adoring fans last night. So it definitely paid off in the end. But what about you? Has there been a project, a goal, an ambition that you persevered with for years? Now, you don't have to have succeeded, but I want to know about the trying. How long did you try and make it happen? It could be a journey of any kind. So maybe career, you know, it could be your driving test. It could be any other sort of test or exam.

It could be fertility related. It could be relationship related. I'm just throwing some ideas out here. I'm sure you have lots more. I want your experiences of your dogged persistence and your timelines with or without the desired result. To get in touch, text the programme 84844

on social media or at BBC Women's Hour or you can email us through our website for a WhatsApp message or a voice note, that number is 03700 100 444. Plus, the return of Loaded. Now, some of our younger listeners may not remember the lad's mag, as it was called, but the new editor, Danny Levy,

says the magazine's goal is to bring back ogling for the 35 to 55 year old men who are being cheated out of society. Danny is a woman, just to let you know, that editor. We're going to have a conversation about the culture now and then, all around loaded. And Nan Shepard, the woman on the Scottish £5 note that maybe you've never heard of. It's all coming up on Woman's Hour. But let me begin. How much do you think about what goes into the perfume that you buy? It is an industry that is worth billions, with luxury brands often selling for hundreds of pounds a bottle. A key ingredient in some of the world's most iconic perfumes

is Egyptian jasmine. A BBC World Service investigation has gone to the heart of the jasmine trade in Egypt to reveal a dark secret behind the industry. During the summer of 2023, the BBC visited four different locations across the main jasmine-growing area

of Algarbia. There, they found children picking jasmine, working in dangerous conditions at night, often for less than a dollar a day. Global brands owned by Estée Lauder and L'Oreal, such as Erin Beauty and Lancome, which use Egyptian jasmine in some of their perfumes and whose supply chains the BBC investigated last summer claim to have zero tolerance on child labour. But the UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery has said that the BBC uncovered what may constitute the worst form of child labour. The story of this investigation is told in a new BBC iTV documentary,

Perfume's Darkest Secrets. And joining me now are the BBC Eye Investigations correspondent, Heba Bhattir, and producer and director of the documentary, Natasha Cox. Welcome to you both. Thank you. Well, Heba, let me start with you and with the BBC Eye investigation. What were you looking into? We were looking into the supply chains for some of the

biggest perfume brands in the world and we investigated in the jasmine picking season in 2023 as you mentioned in Al-Gharbiya region which is the center of the jasmine trade in Egypt we went to four different locations where we saw a lot of children under the age of 15 working throughout the night with pesticides around and mosquitoes and in very dangerous conditions for their health, working throughout the night in these fields to pick jasmine supply chains, because this jasmine goes through via collection points to factories, to local factories, and then these local factories produce the jasmine oil and send it to fragrance houses, which then is bought by big perfume brands. So there's a lot of links in that chain. And I should say with Jasmine, one of your contributors called it a lady of the night. This is a flower that is in full bloom in darkness. Yes. And that's why they have to pick it in the night. And that's why Hiba, who is one of the characters in our film, has to wake up her children at three in the morning to take them to the field. And one of her children is only five years old. So they have to go at 3 a.m. to the field

in very dangerous conditions, as I mentioned, to pick these jasmines before the sun rises. How difficult was it to do the investigation? It was very difficult on so many levels, and especially working with these people and investigating a very complex and opaque supply chain. And Natasha can tell you more about filming with these people on the ground and going with them to the field during the night. Why don't we play a little clip from your documentary? This is Christophe Laudemier, who used to work at one of the fragrance houses. In the perfume industry, there is this hidden layer, very little known from the public, which we can call the masters of the perfume industry.

These companies, they decide how or what is going to go in the bottles. They decide about the packaging and they impose a very strict budget to create the fragrance. That budget, it trickles down, that really that shackle, if you wish, trickles down all the way down to the harvesters. I mentioned there some of the links in the supply chain, Natasha, but it is a difficult web to unravel. It absolutely is, yeah. It's a very complicated and opaque supply chain and an industry that prides itself on that sort of secrecy. It was hard to sort of piece together the supply chain,

but in your clip with Christophe, we were able to establish that, you know, the masters are sort of the people that sit at the top of the supply chain. So the ones that we have named in our investigation, Estee Lauder and L'Oreal. They are the masters. They are the masters, exactly. And they're responsible for giving a budget and a brief to the fragrance houses to create perfume. Which are kind of in the middle, below that. So exactly, they're in the middle. And then below that, you have the factories. So that's the kind of local factories and then the pickers. Why don't I bring in one of the pickers. This is another woman

called Heba. She's the mother of the four children that feature in the film that my guest Heba alluded to. And they pick jasmine as she mentioned throughout the night. In the past, the price of jasmine was good. The price of jasmine was in line with the price of education, food and drink.

When we compare what it was like then to today, now I have to work non-stop for a month just to be able to afford a kilo of meat. What was it like meeting this family? Well, firstly, they were very brave and generous with their time that they gave us when we filmed last summer during the peak harvest season. And, you know, Heba is a mother of four. Her youngest at the time was five and they range from five to 15. And she would have to wake them up from sort of two o'clock in the morning.

So wrestling them out of bed to pick Jasmine. You know, and as Heather said, you know, they're exposed to pesticides and mosquitoes, having to work long hours. So it was very hard to witness. And you could see that this was having a detrimental impact to both their physical and mental well-being. And they were, you know, a family that was collaborating with you for this documentary.

But you did quite a bit of undercover secret filming as well. We did. And we were able to access farms that were directly owned by the local factories in order to establish that it wasn't just independent pickers that were bringing their children to the fields. It was the factories were also aware that this was happening too. What reaction have you got when you put your findings to people in the fragrance industry?

They were not really surprised or shocked because people who work in the industry know how things are going. And that's maybe the reason why a lot of the people and experts we spoke to did not want to go on record, because this is something that everyone is aware of. And even when we put our findings to the masters, they did not deny that there is supply, there is child labour in the supply chain. They just said that they are aware that in certain parts of the world their commitments might not be upheld. But I could read a little actually

what came in from L'Oreal. They say they never request fragrance houses to go lower than the market price for ingredients at the expense of farmers. They say, I suppose, in connection with what you are saying there, despite very strong commitments, we know that in certain regions of the world

where L'Oreal suppliers operate, certain practices don't meet our commitments. However, we don't shirk our responsibilities and we're fully committed to making things evolve in the right way. And they talk about whenever an issue arises that they go to identify the underlying causes and that they are committed to respecting

the most protective, internationally recognised human rights standards. Estée Lauder also, they say we believe the rights of all children should be protected. We've contacted our suppliers to investigate this very serious matter. And we're taking action to gain better transparency and to work towards improving the livelihoods of sourcing communities. Yeah, but it's the local factories that denied child labour. But these local factories, they know that there are children on the farms, either the farms that they own or the smallholder farms

where independent pickers pick jasmine and sell to them. So the people in the industry are aware of what is happening. But when we looked, and it's in your documentary as well, there are laws in Egypt that children cannot work between 7pm and 7am. So what's happening? It's the price that is paid for these families, that it forces them to take their children with them to work, even if the law says that you cannot let children work between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m.

But when a family is gaining $1 a day for picking, they need to take their children with them. You just played the clip for Hiba where she says that in the past, the price of the jasmine was okay and they were doing well with it. She did not have to take her children with her. But with the inflation, with the cost of living, they are forced to take it and they're left with no choice but to take their children with them.

I think there's one very moving part of the documentary, Natasha, when the mother, Heba, is asked to guess how much a bottle of perfume with Egyptian jasmine in it costs. Yeah, so we presented a bottle of jasmine that's sold by a world-famous brand to the family and they immediately could smell the jasmine that they pick. But, you know, they guessed how much this bottle would cost, sort of guessing around $6, maybe $10,

but it actually cost $300. So, yeah, when you think about a family like Heber's with four children waking up in the middle of the night to pick Jasmine and making roughly a dollar a day, you know, they'd be picking every day for a year in order to afford that bottle of perfume without buying anything else. So they were very shocked. And this was the surprising part for the audience when we published the film yesterday. There's a part in the film where experts give us an estimate of how much the actual liquid cost. And let's say a bottle of perfume that costs you

$100, you're only paying $1 for the actual liquid. And this was surprising for people, everyone, the conversations were around how come we're only paying $1 for liquid while the other 99 are going for the masters, for distribution, for VAT, for other things. It's a really interesting

documentary. Heba Bhattir, thank you so much. And Natasha Cox coming into our Women's Hour studio here. If you want to catch it, it is on the BBC iPlayer it's also on the World Service YouTube page and it is BBC Eye's Perfume's Darkest Secret. Thanks so much. Thank you.

Thank you. Now, my next guest has made her way into our studio she is the Grammy Award winning also Tony Award winning, BBC Radio 2 Folk Award winning songwriter, Inez Mitchell.

And she's been releasing music since 2002. But more recently, you might know her for being the creator behind Hadestown. Yes, a genre defying musical retelling of Orpheus

and Eurydice's myth, blending folk music and New Orleans jazz. Currently, it's on Broadway. It's also in London's West End. Got to see it last night. And Anais, welcome so much. I'm going to speak to you in a moment, but you're already with your guitar. And I want you to give us a flavour of Hadestown with a song from the musical. I just want people to listen out for the words, which is Why We Build the Wall. This was written a long

time ago. Let's listen. Thanks, Nuala. Why do we build the wall? My children, my children Why do we build a wall? My children, my children, why do we build a wall? Why do we build a wall? We build a wall to keep us free. That's why we build a wall. We build a wall to keep us free. How does a wall keep us free? My children, my children

How does the wall keep us free? How does the wall keep us free? The wall keeps out the enemy And we build a wall to keep us free That's why we build the wall We build a wall to keep us free. That's why we build the wall. We build a wall to keep us free. Who do we call the enemy? My children, my children, who do we call the enemy? Who do we call the enemy? The enemy is poverty and the wall keeps out the enemy. The enemy is poverty. And a wall keeps out the enemy. And we build a wall to keep

us free. That's why we build the wall. We build a wall to keep us free. Because we have and they have not. My children, my children. Because they want what we've got. Cause we have and they have not, because they want what we have got. The enemy is poverty and the wall keeps out the enemy. And we build a wall to keep us free. That's why we build a wall. We build a wall to keep us free. That's why we build the wall. We build a wall to keep us free. What do we have that they should want? My children, my children, what do we have that they should want my children my children what do we have that they should want

what do we have that they should want we have a wall to work upon we have work and they have none and our work is never done my children my, and the war is never won. The enemy is poverty, and the wall keeps out the enemy. And we build a wall to keep us free. That's why we build a wall. We build a wall to keep us free. We build a wall to keep us free. Well done.

Come on over, Anais Mitchell. She has her guitar with her as well, making her way over to the Woman's Hour desk. So I went last night and that was Hades, who is king of the underworld,

who sang it. And some people have talked about that song and whether, of course, we always heard about a wall when it came to Donald Trump's presidential campaign in 2016. But you had this song before that. Yeah, this is kind of one of the first songs I wrote for the show back in 2006. And yeah, it was wild because 10 years later, we were heading for our off-Broadway production of Hadestown. And it just coincided with, you know, the campaign and then the winning of the election by Trump. And I never expected to hear that kind of language coming out of, you know, our leader's mouth. Yeah, and perhaps also because Donald Trump is a great communicator, but there's also sometimes when I speak to people who very much support him, he is a mythical figure.

Right, he was tapping into something, I guess. Yeah. Something resonating for some people. When you started working on Hadestown almost 20 years ago. I was asking some of my listeners for stuff that they persevered with, and they're coming in in droves. But where did the idea first come from? It was kind of one of those mystical things, you know, when you're writing a song and, like, something drops out of the sky. I got some lines that seemed to be about this myth. And I

think I was hungry to try to tell a longer form story with songs. I also was like, I was in my early 20s. I was right out of school. I was kind of like an idealist and a dreamer and an artist and coming up against the real world, you know. And there's something inherent, I think, in the Orpheus story. It's like this coming-of-age story about this young man who hopes that he can make something beautiful enough that he can change the rules of the world. And take us to Hadestown. How would you describe it?

Hadestown, the underworld, like what, or the show? A little of both, perhaps. Yeah. Well, so it's,'s obviously it's based on Greek mythology. It's sort of a tale of two couples. There's Orpheus and Eurydice, these young lovers. And then there's this kind of ruined marriage between the gods Hades and Persephone, the king of industry and the queen of nature. And so Hadestown represents sort of a place of relative wealth and security. And Eurydice, rather than being bitten by a snake and dying, which is what happens in the

original myth, she makes a conscious choice to go to this place of security and she leaves her lover behind. And I'm not going to give away the ending of your particular musical, but do you feel there's a message or a morality tale in it? If there's anything like a moral, I think it's, well, yeah, you know, Orpheus, he's not to give it away, but he's a hero to us all, but not because he succeeds in the end. It's really the fact that he tries. He tries to do an impossible thing to change the world. And I think if there's a moral to Hadestown, it has something to do with the importance of continuing to try, because he's still a hero for us. And you sort of get the feeling that like, someone else is going to try next,

like there's a baton pass that's going on. And back to you, though. Did you ever think the show would be so big? I mean, I was there last night. These are adoring fans. I'd love to know what would happen if you just walk through that theatre. I don't know that I'd be recognised, you know. I mean, that's, yeah, it's a wild thing. I lived with it for so long and I worked on it for, you know, 13 years of my life. And I know how much effort went

into it. And it also doesn't feel like mine at all, you know, when I go and I see fans of the show and people that are sort of dressed up as the characters. I'm like, I have no idea what this show means to those people. Your style to me, I just met you a few minutes ago in the bathroom, if I'm being completely transparent. But your style looking at you reminds me of a mythical creature. I love that. You know, it's very much in line with what I felt I saw on stage last night. I think you could blend right in there. Oh, thank you. That means something. Thank you. There were a lot of women involved in developing Hadestown. Talk me through a little of what that process was like. phase where I was working in New York and doing workshops and sort of readying the piece for off-Broadway and then for Broadway and then for West End is, of course, Rachel Chavkin, the director. And yeah, I didn't set out to find a female director. I just, I was in Ars Nova, this tiny

theater in New York, and I saw a Dave Malloy piece called The Great Comet of 1812 and was just so blown away by the visual storytelling in that show. And I said, whoever this director is, you know, this is what I want. This is the person. And it turned out it was Rachel. And we also had our two lead producers, Mara Isaacs and Dale Franzen, are women who had never taken a show to Broadway. So there was a lot of kind of just all of us putting our faith in each other. But it is still such a male dominated arena. It is. Yeah, it remains that way, especially New York musical theater. But it's changing all the time.

And I have a dear friend, Shana Taub, who has a new musical called Suffs, which she wrote and stars in. It's just changing all the time. But what about, you know, your lights, your naming lights on Broadway? You had that. I understand that you brought your daughter to take a look. Yes, I did. I brought my, my daughter was five then and she had just learned how to read. And I took her when the marquee went up. It's very exciting. The marquee goes up before the show does.

And I took Ramona there and she read my name and Rachel's name on the marquee. And she's a little obsessed with Rachel, as a lot of kids are. And I loved that she, for her, it was not unusual that there were two women's names up on a Broadway marquee. And so for her, maybe that will actually be the norm when it comes to musical theatre. Also, what about the female characters in the show? You know, we mentioned them there briefly, Riddisi and Persephone. How would you describe them to our audience? Yeah, certainly, like we made an effort to give these women more agency than they would have had in the classical myths. Eurydice in the original myth, kind of all you really know about her is that she's beautiful and Orpheus is madly in love with her and then she dies. And of course, as I said, in this telling of the tale, she makes a conscious decision to go to Hadestown. And Persephone is also kind of a victim in the is sort of in equal stature to Hades. And she also

is kind of a ruined character. Like she, the idea is that the trouble in their marriage is creating the troubles in the world. And Hades is sort of the engine of the problem. He's this compulsive industrialist and he's the engine of the problem, but she's not blameless. She's sort of a flawed character and she kind of numbs herself with the fruit of the vine. Fruit of the vine, alcohol, aka. It was helpful for her to be flawed, basically. It made her more full as a character. how does it feel to watch the show i saw it in london a few a few nights ago and um i really was blown away and moved like all over again which is hard to do because i've seen it so many times but the um the company is just pretty extraordinary in london and it's just new every time i see it from different actors. We have a very like, beautiful, diverse kind of

unicorn cast here. And they're bringing a lot of themselves to the characters. And I felt I felt their hearts. It is a kind of a chaotic beauty on stage might be what I would call it although also all in sync at the same time um after the success though of Hadestown um is there another musical in the works you know I've been enjoying this thing took so much of my life and I thought oh maybe I'm never going to make records again um never going to tour again uh with music and gratefully like I've been able to get back to that I have a new record coming out with my band, Bonnie Light Horseman. Bonnie Light Horseman. Love that name. Yeah, but I am working on a play with music.

So one day, 13 years from now, I'll talk again. You'll be right back here. I'll still be here. Do you think Hadestown, though, has changed you as a musician? Yeah, I can't put my finger on how it has done that. I certainly, it was incredible to work in the theater world where there really is a, there's an established ecosystem of how work gets made. You know, there are deadlines and there's collaborators and there's feedback. And the kind of community of that has felt really important to me versus when you're just a songwriter kind of at home, like maybe inspiration strikes, maybe not. There's something about having to be accountable to other people, which I'd say actually I'm finding in my band.

So that that's something different for me as a writer. So that kind of smaller collective, because you did have a solo album after lockdown. So that must have been a massive contrast between being by yourself in a room compared to the extravaganza that I was talking about that was on stage last night. Yeah, and it was also incredible to just to not have to worry about any characters arc

or, you know, missing plot point, but just write a song for the sake of what a song can be. Well, I want to thank you so much for coming in and also for performing, forgive me. Anais Mitchell has been releasing music, as we mentioned, for the past 22 years. But Hadestown, I have to say, loved so much by so many, as I saw last night.

Thank you so much for coming in. I'm going to read some of the comments coming in about perseverance that we were talking about. It took me eight attempts to pass my driving test. What kept me going was that I had a baby.

When she was two, I finally passed. I got to go shopping and take her out and not have to rely on my husband. Another one says, Tricia, this is, I searched for my birth family for 30 years as I didn't have a name. I eventually

found them living within 20 miles of me. Another, Laurie from Glasgow says, I remember vividly training for a marathon a few years ago after having never done so much as a run for the bus. The week of the marathon, I bumped into an old friend who asked me what I'd been up to.

When I told her I'm actually running a marathon this week, her response without missing a beat was, oh, I didn't know you'd turned 30. I felt so seen. Not in a good way. 8-4-8-4-4. One more. Charlotte in East London says, I applied for a master's degree in London for seven years. I knew it was the only way to get to London for me. Eventually, I got into the Royal College of Art.

I still live in London and I work as an artist. It was a long slog, but never give up. That is 84844. If you'd like to add your story of trying as we speak about it this morning on Woman's Hour. Right, let's speak about something else. The magazine Loaded is back. So this was one of the leading titles in the booming lads mag sector of the 90s

and also the noughties, I guess. Its peak sales reached 350,000. That was in the year 2000. But rival magazines and, of course, the rise of the internet saw sales dwindle before it eventually folded in 2015. But now, after a nine-year hiatus, it is back. Liz Hurley, once again, is on the cover.

Dani Levy is the female executive editor of Loaded World, as the new version will be known. And she has said that the magazine is seeking to occupy the middle ground and say it's OK to appreciate beautiful women. Men need a safe place to read stuff like that and secretly relate to it. Well, the journalist and the author of Toxic, Women, Fame and the Noughties, Sarah Dighton, joined me just a little earlier before we came on air. She was once a loaded reader herself, I should say, and I began by getting her reaction to the relaunch. It's surprising in several ways to see it come back, partly because the market for magazines is notoriously not great. So I like it as a vote of confidence in magazines. But also culturally, it feels like quite a big deal loaded was the exemplar of lad culture in the 1990s it really came through in the same kind of wave of um as brit pop as you know the

new gangster films it was this real kind of swaggering a bit ironic laddishness and in some ways like very very fun ambitious funny, ambitious, funny, clever. And over time, kind of became not only Loaded, but the entire Ladmags market kind of became curdled into this very depressing, grimy, basically misogynistic position that had really both fallen out of favour and fallen out of use with readers. Hence the initial closure of Loaded. But, you know, a lot has been spoken about, the executive editor's choice of words, Danny Levy, about it coming back, Loaded coming back.

And here's a quote. Men need to be men, and there should be no shame in them being able to ogle beautiful women like Liz Hurley, Melinda Messenger, or Pamela Anderson? Number one, it's kind of amazing that they are all women of a certain generation. You can really tell that they are not aiming to scoop up new young readers. They are looking to pick up the former Loaded readers, I think, with that array of cover girls.

But also, I think this kind of, you know, this is basically the kind of reasoning that was put forward for Loaded readers, I think, with that array of cover girls. But also, I think this kind of, you know, this is basically the kind of reasoning that was put forward for Loaded in the first place, right? Loaded, as it initially came out, was partly a reaction to the quote unquote new man moment. This idea that men were being sensitive, reformed, very PC. And it was a kind of safe space for male mischief I think I think they would have liked to pitch it as more behind more benign than you know the sort of toxic masculinity model that it might be associated with now um and in a similar way we're at this point in our culture where we have had me too lots of men have had to think quite sharply about where their own behavior sits. But at the same time, online pornography exposes men to this incredibly rancid, awful culture around sexuality and gender.

And I do kind of think as much as I, you know, the feminist side of me is inclined to be a bit sarcastic about that comment. Actually, there does need to be a space for men where, you know, sexuality and desire is not, you know, this kind of horrifying thing in one direction or the other. Maybe there is a space for that. It's, yes, she talks also, the editor, about, you know, not having fear or shame for those men that are probably midlife, let's say. And it is interesting. You talk about cover girls. I suppose we should really call them cover women. But the fact that they are older women that they are featuring, some might see that as empowerment yes it's a funny one isn't it i mean i guess if your job is being attractive the fact that you can have ongoing earning power these days versus you know there was a time when your earning status as a model or a cover girl really ended sometime before

your 30th birthday so for these women, I think it is a good thing that they aren't just ushered off on an ice floe on that birthday. But also, I do think it kind of speaks to a relentless demand for lifelong sexiness for women, which I do find slightly exhausting. Is there not a point in your life where you're allowed to, you know, give up doing your eyebrows and just put some slippers on? Well, on that point, if I flip it back to the men, this was the former Loaded editor, this is James Brown. He wrote in The Independent that he doesn't want it to come back,

saying, and I quote, if the new version really wants to attract midlife blokes, it might be better off featuring blankets and useful flasks. That is what men like. I have met men and they really do enjoy helpful life-improving gadgets. Yeah, it is a funny one. And it obviously is looking to pick up former loaded readers who might feel nostalgic for the magazine. Is that at the heart of it, though, the nostalgia element, Sarah?

I think magazines do not have the same space culturally that they did in the 1990s. I think, you know, when I was a teenager, choosing a magazine was a real statement of identity. It was a point of access to, you know know all kinds of culture that you might not encounter otherwise and people don't need magazines to do that in the same way anymore the emotional appeal of a magazine is much more likely to be nostalgic for someone who read it when they were growing up but there was also la dette culture uh and also for our younger listeners. So that was like the women that well, how would you describe it? I was about to say who behaved in a

bloke-ish way or it was kind of a pushback against a femininity perhaps, a traditional conservative femininity. Yeah, it was a kind of celebration of girls who went as hard as the boys right girls who went

out partying drank pints went clubbing did all the things that the boys always did and enjoyed it just as much as the boys in theory in practice i think a lot of women who lived through laudac culture will say that it was you know not as much fun as it sometimes looked on the outside and partly because it came with this really heavy expectation of objectification and this idea that every woman was going to try and play up to being the sexiest the most fun the most available for whatever you know set of fantasies was being pitched is the ideal at that particular moment. And I think a lot of our listeners will remember that time. And of course, there's many who were kind of stars of the La Dec culture that we have in our culture now

that have spoken out about it as well. What a time the 90s was though, when you kind of take a moment. Yes, it was a time um and really hard i think to try and explain now having been through the whole cycle of what lad mags ultimately became to try and get back to that point at the beginning when loaded first came out was an incredibly exciting and original magazine that did very funny, very interesting journalism and pitched to a market that hadn't really been served in that way before. And it was a great thing. It would be amazing if it was able to be that thing again, but I wonder

if the space for it exists. But also, times move on, what would that iteration be of something brand new now, if that makes sense? Its return has been branded by one journalist this morning, I saw, as inspiring midlife crises across the country. Maybe less inspiring them or more salving them. Maybe loaded itself is the blanket that will sustain these men through their midlife crisis.

That was Sarah Dighton, thanks to her, journalist and author of Toxic Women, Fame and the Noughties. Thanks for your messages coming in on your trying, your perseverance, your doggedness,

whether or not you got to the goal. I want to hear about it. 8-4, 8-4-4. I waited 30 years to get a PhD in 2023. I applied several times during the three decades since I got my first degree and I was rejected on each occasion.

While studying, I moved to university three times, had six different supervisors. Before I presented my PhD thesis, I was even advised to aim for a lower degree instead. I ignored this advice and I got my PhD. Congratulations and thank you for sharing your story. Well, not long ago on Woman's Hour, we spoke to Steph Daniels, a woman in her 70s who decided to take up hockey again after originally giving it up in her 30s. And we wanted to hear from more of you who did something similar.

We've heard from Jo, Fiona and Joanne. They rediscovered their love of art and of drumming. This time, our reporter, Sarah Swadling, spoke to Rosie, who lives in London and has recently taken up roller skating again. About two months ago, I started roller skating again. And it would have been something I did as a child when I was about eight, nine years old.

It's giving me so much joy, to be honest, and such a relief from life. And it's something that is just pure joy. How did it come back into your life? About three years ago, I was in the process of with my brothers sorting out my late our late parents house and in the process of sorting all the belongings out I found my old roller skates from when I was a child that was very exciting and they were sort of navy blue with the rainbow stripes down the sides they're very 80s and of course

they didn't fit me which was really frustrating they fit my daughter and she started mucking around with them I was like oh it's not fair I remember that feeling of it just brought those feelings back and seeing her mucking around in them and then didn't think much of it and then a birthday rolled around and my husband and my daughters gave me a set of roller skates for my birthday which was a complete surprise I hadn't asked for them I was a bit shocked but at the same time really excited and then really nervous and thought oh god I don't want to injure myself with these but I really want to try them I really want to have a go and but I was really really nervous and so I thought when I look online see if there's any classes to go to and turns out there's quite a few options out there so I signed up with

one of them it's near me called Roll Happy and yeah it was just a really welcome environment with you know really eclectic mix of people and I wasn't the oldest I'm 47 it felt really safe environment just have a go and I suppose when I was a child learning I never knew no one ever taught me any skills I just sort of mucked around really and so I never really knew how to stop I'd stop at a door or a table or an object it would stop me and in the first lesson I went to I learned how to stop in three different ways and it was like oh wow you know someone teaches you something it works when someone tells you how to do something it's a revelation there's just so much to learn there's so many different um either dance moves or it's amazing I mean as in this whole skating community is is huge online on TikTok

on Instagram there's loads of amazing spaces to so you know my algorithms have shifted a little bit since I got into it and I see um watch lots of amazing people. can you describe what the feeling was when you got your new skates on and you started to be able to skate again it was a real sense of freedom and fun that i perhaps haven't experienced in that way for a while because there's no there's no agenda there's no expectation it's just it's quite playful um as a sport to do and so in that way it's quite freeing and quite I would say yes joyful I thought it's such a cliche but it that's how it how it really felt um and there's something about when someone's teaching you technique and something and you focus on it for that hour or however long

the lesson is and you're just working away at trying to get something right you don't think about the rest of your life at all everything sort of falls away and suddenly an hour's gone by and you just feel so much better because you've been achieving something new and you're learning something new and so it's really satisfying as well as just a really lovely escape from everyday life and all of the family and all the logistics and all the the everyday stuff that just never goes away and it's all part of life but this this is just something just for me. And I really appreciate that time. And there's weeks where I think, oh, I feel really tired or it's raining outside. And I face venturing to Brixton tonight.

I think, no, no, this is for me. I'm going to do it. And I go and I feel so much better afterwards. Do you ever sort of connect with the younger you who had the the navy blue roller skates when you're when you're skating don't know if I think back to that but I certainly have that feeling certainly when I was I started doing it it brought back memories of my childhood that perhaps I really hadn't thought about for a while for a long long time it's a long while ago, or 30 years ago, 40 years ago even, sorry. It did make me think of my family home

and how lucky I was. And very often when I'm out and about to the supermarket or something, I see the floor and I think, this would be nice to stay on. And I remember having that when I was a child. I always used to think the same. That's the way my brain works now, is I think a nice, smooth surface, a lovely, wide open space.

I think, wow, this could be fun. That was Rosie there speaking to our reporter, Sarah Swadling, about taking up roller skating again after all those years. Thanks very much to her. Now, what do you know about Nan Shepard? She was an author, a poet, a naturalist, whose work and experiences have helped shape Scotland's recent literary history. There's a new play, Nan Shepard, Naked and Unashamed, and it explores her legacy. It has recently opened at the Pitlochry Festival Theatre in Scotland. The play's writer is Ellie Zegan. She joins me now. Welcome to Woman's Hour. Thank you very much. So Nan

Shepard, also known as Anna Shepard, tell us a little bit more about her. Well, so first of all, a little bit more about Nan Shepard. So a lot of people haven't heard of her still. We want to make that difference and bring her out of the shadows and into the light even further. She's an extraordinary woman. You will see her on the Scottish five pound note, dressed in a headband and looking like a Nordic princess. But she was a woman of contrast. She spent all her life in Aberdeen, had an amazing international outlook. She had Mein Kampf and Das Kapital on her bookshelves, but she wrote novels all set in the Cairngorms and her cottage, Dungvagan Cottage,

backed onto the Cairngorms. And she walked there mostly on her own, sometimes with her students, because she was also a teacher, which was extraordinary in itself. Robert McFarlane recently has compared the Cairngorms to the British Arctic in terms of the fact that it has 170 mile an hour winds, snow every month of the year. But this was a woman who was interested in walking into rather than up mountains.

So she was interested in being at one with nature and educating as many people as possible about the joy that nature can bring. Well, why don't I play a clip from the play? This is Nan Shepard, played by Irene Allen, taking her students for a lesson in the Cairngorm Mountains. Keeping your eyes closed, I want you to experience the infinite pleasure of texture, the cragginess of cones and bark, the soft plume of a feather,

the smoothness of a pebble tumbled over and over by water. We do not have to look at what we are touching for it to have its own relationship with the hand as much as the eye. This applies to the whole of our bodies. The sensation of walking barefoot through heather, of bathing naked in a loch and feeling the shock of cold water tingling against our skin. We cannot, must not forget this bodily experience of being fully alive in the world. For if we do, we are in danger, quite literally, of losing touch. How beautiful. And of course, the play Naked and Unashamed, which I think speaks to that clip there as well, Ellie. But she was ahead of her time.

Tell us about when she was born exactly and when she died. So in, well, she was, our play basically takes her from eight years old to 80. And so she was writing The Living Mountain, which has become possibly

her most well-known piece of writing. She was writing that during the Second World War. But despite that, it was extraordinary. And she was writing in a way that was not considered. They didn't know where to put her at the time. So the London Mail publishers, because she was writing in Doric, that was banned in schools at the time, she was writing about communities, small communities in North East Scotland. And without heroes and heroines, or at least obvious heroes and heroines, she was talking about the possibilities of freedom for her female characters. So she was writing at a time where she was really breaking a lot of rules.

And as her contemporary Neil Gunn felt about The Living Mountain, which was written in 1944, I believe. And then basically he said to her, the world isn't ready for the well water. And the manuscript was rejected and she locked it in a drawer for over 30 years. So when we're talking about the journey of perseverance with your listeners today, and what more, what better a story of Nan Shepard, who had this beautiful manuscript, which has been deemed the finest book ever written on nature and landscape in Britain, in a locked drawer for 30 years.

She only brought it out shortly before her death and self-published it. So all of her popularity has been post-Jewish. So modern in a way. And just direct that you were mentioning there, so referring to the Scots language as spoken in the northeast of Scotland, but which, as you mentioned, was a character of some of Nan's writing. I want to read one that came into us, Ellie, from Claire. She says, I'm a sculptor and a silversmith. Nan Shepard is one of my greatest inspirations. Her writing

is ever more relevant, here we go, now as we're facing the consequences of our abuse of our planet and resulting climate and ecological breakdown. So wonderful to know she's becoming better known. I urge everyone to read her. But, you know, she died, I suppose it would be 40 years ago now.

Why do you think she hasn't been, I mean, celebrated? We talk about her being on a currency, which is, you know, a phenomenal feat in some ways for a British female writer to be on one of the notes in Scotland. But in another way, it's not a household, she's not a household name. It's extraordinary, isn't it? She's been deemed as the Scottish Virginia Woolf. She's so prominent. Richard Barron, my co-writer, and Susan Taylor of Firebrand, when we realised that we didn't know who the woman was on the Scottish £5 note,

we were determined to find out more. And that led us on a journey of discovery on its own. And we feel like we have made that discovery with Nan, with amazing people like Kerry Andrews, who has collated and published all her correspondence, Nan Sh that there's a fear, actually. There is a fear. I was reading just this morning about Gaelic female poets were apparently, I hope I'm right in saying this, but I don't want to be right, were buried face down. There's a number of theories about that, but one of which is that they can't cause any more trouble because it was a very male dominated, to be a bard was a male job. So over the years, over the centuries, we're so aware of all these female writers, creatives who have been kept silent and to be coined as the Scottish Virginia Wolf and somebody who wrote, of course,

a room of one's own, which is all about having the courage to write exactly what you think. That is dangerous and it is powerful. And I'm just so honoured. And we are so honoured as Firebrand and so thankful to Elizabeth Newman at Pitlochry Festival Theatre that we can actually bring this now to our audiences and many more, we hope, beyond Scotland as well. Do we know why Nan eventually decided to self-publish The Living Mountain? You mentioned there that it was in a very good question. They're all good questions. So in our play, we have come up with one possibility. So, but I think that it may have been, so I'll save that. Okay, no problem unashamed. She wrote a small short story called Naked and Ashamed about nude hikers, believe it or not, in the Cairngorms, like a PG Woodhouse.

But she was, I think that she was on a journey herself and she thought there's nothing to lose here now. And it makes it even more profoundly beautiful that it was kept in the shadows for so long, but it's a crime at the same time. I've been asking for stories, you just reminded me of a

comment that came in, one person who got in touch says, my long project is writing a sequence of four books about three generations of my family whose letters and other manuscript material I've found in libraries, archives and private collections. I've been working on it since 2006, so around 17 years. Two books in the series have been published so far and I'm working currently on book three. So, you know, sometimes it's the long road,

perhaps, which actually then gives birth to various publications like it did with Nan. Just in our last 30 seconds or so though, Ellie, I think The Living Mountain came back to life really in part because of the pandemic. Yes, yes, absolutely. I mean, I started reading The Living Mountain and listening to Tilda Swinton actually narrating it on Audible when I was walking during the pandemic.

So as soon as we discovered her, that's what I was doing. I was walking during the pandemic. So as soon as we discovered her, that's what I was doing. I was taking daily walks. And I think for wellbeing, Nan Shepard changes and the Living Mountain changes people's lives. So we hope as many people can come and see it. Ellie Zegan, new play is Nan Shepard,

Naked and Unashamed at the Pitlochry Festival Theatre in Scotland. Thank you so much for speaking to us. Well, that is all from Women's in Scotland. Thank you so much for speaking to us. Well, that is all from Woman's Hour today. Thank you so much for all of your contributions. You have Anita with you tomorrow, and she will be looking into the weight loss drug, a Zempic.

I will talk to you again next Monday. Thanks so much for your company on Woman's Hour. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. From BBC Radio 4, Britain's biggest paranormal podcast is going on a road trip. I thought in that moment, oh my God, we've summoned something from this board. This is Uncanny USA. He says, somebody's in the house, and I screamed.

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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.