Woman's Hour - Listener Week: Generative AI, Female thatchers, Big noses, Communal living

Episode Date: August 25, 2023

For Listener Week, you, our listeners, decide what we cover on the programme.Listener Liane has tasked the programme with a deep dive into the impact of generative Artificial Intelligence on the workforce. She’s concerned that AI risks making humans “obsolete” and “has the capacity to replace millions of people's creative ideas, artwork, writing, music, their skills in language, invention and interpretation in seconds.” We speak to Dame Diane Coyle, the Bennett Professor of Public Policy at Cambridge University, and Christina Colclough, founder of the Why Not Lab specialising in the futures of work.Listener Deb emailed in to shine a light on the work of her daughter Daisy and her partner Anna, thatchers who have worked on rooves all over Devon. Our reporter Sarah Swadling caught up with them at work on a cottage near Okehampton.How do you feel about your nose? Once considered a symbol of beauty and power in ancient Rome, having a slightly larger facial feature nowadays can have a different meaning for some. Do you embrace it in its natural form or have you ever thought about changing it? We speak to Radhika Sanghani, who started the #sideprofileselfie campaign; and Karolina who decided to have a rhinoplasty.Listener Annette has often thought about living with her female friends in old age but she doesn’t know how to go about it. To answer her questions, we speak to architect Anne Thorne, who has recently built Cannock Mill CoHousing with 25 other households. And Mim Skinner, author of Living Together, a book about intentional communities in the UK and beyond. Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Lucy Wai Studio Manager: Gayl Gordan00:00 OPENER 02:17 AI AND AUTOMATION 17.45 TRAIL 18:57 FEMALE THATCHERS 32:00 BIG NOSES 45:51 COMMUNAL LIVING

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 and welcome to the final day of Listener Week. Huge heartfelt thank you to every one of you who sent in your suggestions. It's been such an interesting week of hearing your stories. Please keep sending them in to us. We'd love to have more of your ideas. But it's not over yet.

Today, we're going to be talking about a subject that I'm very interested in, actually. Women with large noses. Thanks to a listener called Amy, we're going to be talking about having a strong profile. But Amy, we are taking it one step further and throwing your suggestion out there to the entire Woman's Hour audience. As the nose discussion will be about insecurity and society's beauty standards, which most of us have fallen victim to, I would love to hear about what part of you makes you feel insecure and what you've done about it, if anything. I want to hear your anecdotes across the spectrum. If you're so embarrassed by your feet, you've done about it, if anything. I want to hear your anecdotes across

the spectrum. If you're so embarrassed by your feet, you've never worn sandals. If you're always obsessing about how big your bum looks. If you've never removed your neck scarf, lest someone sees your neck. How does your insecurity impact your life? Did you do something drastic and change your physical appearance? Or have you gone the other way and managed to conquer that once crippling obsession? How did you do it? Getting to an age where you couldn't care less? Maybe you had therapy? Maybe you've been inspired by Generation Z who really seem to have embraced body confidence? Or maybe you realised there was just so much more important stuff you should be thinking about. Whatever it

is, I would love to hear from you this morning. Get in touch in the usual way. Text me 84844. You can email me by going to our website. You can WhatsApp me or send me a voice note 03700 100444. And if you would like to contact us via social media, it's at BBC Woman's Hour. Also on the programme, have you ever wondered about communal living? Getting together with a few mates to buy a big old place or a plot of land where you could share the chores, the child rearing, the bills for that matter? Well, keep listening. You never know, you might have decided to change your lifestyle by the end of the hour. That text number once again, if you'd like to get in touch with us about anything you hear on the programme, and of course, your insecurities, 84844. But first, after a recent

discussion on generative artificial intelligence heard on this very programme, one listener got in touch to say our guests only highlighted the positive aspects of this technology. And Leanne emailed to say her concern was, does AI risk humans, making humans obsolete? And does it have the capacity to replace millions of people's creative ideas, artwork, writing, music, their skills in language, invention and interpretation in seconds? Well, Leanne, we're going to take another look now at this issue, dig a little bit deeper and discuss what we can expect in the future with Dr. Christina Colclough. She's the founder of the Why Not Lab, specialising in the futures of work and the politics of technology, and also by Dame Diane Coyle, Bennett Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. Christina and Diane, welcome both of you to the programme. Christina, I'm going to come to you first. I think we need to answer the very basic

question first of all, because I'm not sure everybody fully understands it. What is AI and generative AI? They're great questions and thank you very much for having me. So AI stands for artificial intelligence and it really, there's all sorts of ways that we can describe this. But what we should think about is it's lots and lots of data that gets churned through algorithmic systems, that are systems that are all the mathematics that we didn't like when we were children, statistics, probability, algebra, and so on. And all of this is done by computers. And they're given a certain task and out of that comes then a recommendation to hire somebody or to show you an ad or whatever it may be. So artificial intelligence is something that's done on computers. It relies on data and

very complex forms of mathematics. Generative AI is what we might have heard of is ChatGPT, Google's BARD. And these are quite complex systems that almost predict, in a sense, based on all of the scraping from the internet that they've done, what word is likely to follow another word. So if I say good, the likelihood of you then saying or it writing morning is maybe 98% if we're talking in the morning, for example. So it's based on probability, not on sense, not on truth, but really on what is the average of words that have followed another word in a certain context. And do you agree with the concerns of our listener? Absolutely. Absolutely, I do. But also, I want to caution about something. Because right now,

we are either grouped into a camp of tech optimists or tech pessimists. And the two camps are throwing stones at one another, and we're not getting anywhere. And I really, really think this is not what we should be doing. We should be calling on our governments to have a critical but responsible attitude towards technologies where we understand it's not AI that's going to take away jobs. lose the jobs, we will let get lost on the creativity and so on. But we must really unite here, employers, unions, our governments, to really fight to control this technology and to implement it to serve the purposes that we want it to serve and not the other way around. Before we get into all of that, I'm going to bring Diane in here. Diane, how do you feel about what our listeners' concerns? Gosh, I have to say I was one of the girls who really loved mathematics. And this is a very interesting and powerful technology that has a lot of good potential. I think the concerns raised in the letter are actually the main concern.

It's about people who are individual creators having their work scraped by these technological systems and regurgitated. Because as Christina said, what they're doing is they're taking what they find online and they're repackaging it and turning out a kind of mix or average of what they found. And so there are some legal cases already being brought on grounds of copyright theft against the tech companies, but that's not much use for all of the individual creators who are already experiencing this theft of their, if you like, intellectual property,

their creations being used for somebody else's profit. And I think that's actually a big concern that requires some immediate action by the government. And then there's a broader debate about what's it going to do to the labour market, where we're in the very early days and a lot of people are making predictions that are probably quite speculative. It's not clear yet. We can have some guesses about what kinds of jobs will be affected, what it might do to our work, but it's all a bit uncertain at the moment. And that's why I guess our listener got in touch because everyone's very concerned about the future. So what measures are governments trying to introduce and is it enough at the moment? There's a lot of discussion. The government in the

UK is having a big summit in the autumn to talk about these kinds of issues. I would look back to past experiences because it's not the first time that a lot of jobs have been automated. I grew up in Lancashire. The cotton industry got automated out of existence. And in one sense, that was good because they're pretty horrible jobs. And the kinds of jobs that replace them were more skilled and better quality. But because it happened so quickly and because it happened all in certain places, it really damaged those communities over the long term and they still haven't recovered. And so one of the things that I'd like governments to think about is we can see some kinds of jobs that are likely to be automated by this technology. Let's try to avoid the mistakes we've made in the past, give people a hand to reskill and, you know, take advantage of the opportunities

that the technology does offer. Yeah, Christine, there's been many reports in how many jobs could be lost to AI. The latest I saw was a tweet about earlier today from IBM, which estimated that 40% of their workforce will need to reskill as a result of it, the AI and automation over the next three years. Is enough being done to reskill workers, Christina? No, no, no, no, no. And I totally agree with what Diane just said. We have to talk about disruptions obligations, i.e. any company or employer who's introducing these technologies should really have obligations to continuously re and upskill their workers to make sure that this happens in working time. So we don't have bias towards people who have to go home, take care of children or the elderly or their family in the evenings and so on. And this must be an obligation. Right now, it's almost free for all to introduce disruptive technologies and then not really care about the workforce. So I totally agree with what

Diane said. Not enough is being done. We need far more responsibility on behalf of the employers here. And we need our governments to implement this. Can we talk about jobs specifically? What kinds of jobs? Because I'm sure people are leaning in, wanting to know, is it going to affect me? What kinds of jobs will be affected by AI? Well, a new report that's just been published by the International Labour Organization, which is part of the United Nations, has really looked into this. And again, I want to caution like Diane said, that all of these statistics, all of these figures are really still speculative. Yeah, we don't want to terrify

everybody. No, but what we can see is that mainly many of the jobs that will be lost are within middle and high income jobs. Many of them are female jobs, so clerical workers, for example. But also, and I've just come back from the United States where I was working with some of the unions on strike there, SAG-AFTRA for the Hollywood actors. And there, of course, they are really concerned about them being replaced because now you only need three seconds of a person's voice

and you can replicate their whole voice in a new film you can have a manuscript of a film written by these systems in very little time so we have to ask really I mean across the board all jobs will be affected some more than others but what we can see is that almost double as many jobs that are typically female jobs will be affected negatively. Yes, Diane, please. The same report does say that it expects the impact to be kind of positive overall, but the sorts of jobs that will be affected are routine things. So we're seeing it already affecting legal clerks, basic accounting, data processing,

entry-level coding, those kinds of jobs. But I would suggest people don't be afraid of it. And you can go and play with these systems. And actually, if you are doing a job, it might make what you do easier and help you get on at work. Well, in the UK, the boss of the energy company Octopus has said his customers prefer letters written by AI than people. Does that surprise you, Diane? Well, you get a kind of consistency from the AI. But what I say to students who, of course, have been thinking about using it for writing essays is it's going to take all the other essays on the Internet and produce an average of them.

So if you want to do a mediocre essay, it's a really good way to do it but what you might do is have it write you a mediocre essay and try and improve on that because it's never going to be as good as as good humans so what we need to do is think about using this as a way to improve um the quality of our jobs and the quality of our lives um in fact there's just something that charlie charlie brooker the writer of um black mirror actually um tested it out this is a few weeks ago uh he said he typed in go on then give me an idea for a black mirror episode and he said i wanted to see what the competition is from the machine i've certainly been pitched worse things or not worse but things that are similar and then he goes on to say that the software generated what they generated was fairly generic. So, I mean, I guess Leanne, who got in touch, is concerned that this is going to be it has the capacity to replace millions of people's creative ideas, artwork, writing, music, their skills in language, invention and interpretation in seconds.

But it's going to be generic, Christina. Yes, absolutely. And again, it's also down to the frames that we put on this technology, right? I think we have to be very careful that we don't talk about AI or Gen AI as almost the third world force that's coming and is going to take over all of us and just get rid of all of our free will. So here, of course, we have to, through our unions, through our policy, through our governments, put the frames on. What will we accept? What won't we? And I think the copyright cases that Diane mentioned are going to be very interesting and going to set precedents here. But one thing I do want to add, and this is sort of the automation of routine tasks that Diane mentioned. I was at a G7 meeting some years ago and there an Italian professor raised a very interesting point.

And he said many of the routine tasks that we all have, no matter what really our job is, also give us a little bit of a brain pause. Gives us, yes, we might not like to do them, but on the other hand, we don't have to continuously be very effective and thinking and all these things. And he was afraid the moment that we got rid of those tasks, the more complex our jobs will become. And therefore, the risk of burnout and stress levels skyrocketing through the roof will be very high. And I think he has a point there, right, that we shouldn't just continuously strive for effectiveness and complexity, where we also, as Deepusi said, that music is what is made between the notes. We also need our pause.

Diane, why are the founders of AI particularly scared? They wrote a letter calling for a six-month moratorium on AI research because they're worried. Why is that? Well, if they want a six-month moratorium on AI research, they're the people who can introduce it because they're the people developing it. So they should just go ahead. I'm among those who see that as a kind of diversion from thinking about the much more immediate policy needs, which are making these markets work well for people, making sure that it doesn't disrupt the labour market, making sure that it doesn't steal people's copyrighted creative works. And so I think I'm less worried about these existential threats

and much more worried about the immediate challenges. Real life impact. Christina, you and others talk about the need to put in guardrails and that it needs to be done quickly. Tell us more about that. So one of the things I'm working on is sort of distinguishing between the effects of these technologies. You have automation, which we're talking about now, or augmentation, so semi-loss of jobs or tasks. But we also have the more opaque quantification, so the commodification of workers but also citizens. So the guardrails that I'm working with unions across the world

in learning and trying to negotiate through their collective agreements is how do we both put safeguards in place around the immediate loss of jobs, the here and now, but also that we start addressing how these inferences, that's all the profiles that are made on our data, how to ensure that they don't lead to a narrowing of our labour market. So again, that we have clear, transparent agreements with the employers that they are liable and responsible for these technologies, and that we really ensure that the future consequences or potential future consequences

of these technologies do not harm the diversity of our labour markets, but also societies. And Diane, I think we should end on something positive. What are the potential opportunities for women with the advancement of generative AI? Oh, well, the opportunities for all kinds of people are about making your working life less routine, less dull. So just in the way that those factory jobs that my aunties and uncles used to do were pretty grim in a way.

Some of the very routine cognitive tasks that people like Liga Clarks are doing are also pretty dull. So the potential for this transition to be one that makes your jobs actually more creative, more satisfying, is quite large. And the companies that are adopting AI are actually expanding their workforces and not contracting them. So it's not, as Christina said right at the start, it's not that you're either an optimist or a pessimist about it. You've got to, we all together have to act as a society to make sure this turns out well

for everybody i think that is a good night to end this discussion thank you both so much dr christina colclough and dame diane coyle and thank you to leanne who emailed us with her concerns i hope that answered some of your questions so many of you getting in touch um with your insecurities we're going to be having a conversation a little bit later in the program about um uh larger noses just had a breast op says someone here having breastfed two children one at the age of three i've spent the last 20 years feeling very unhappy with my breasts which i felt were too small for my body this affected my self-esteem and confidence always comparing myself unfavorably with other women i'm now 53 and I've just five days ago had a bilateral breast augmentation surgery. It was a question of if I don't do it now, I will always regret not doing

it. I only told my partner beforehand and my daughters afterwards. I'm finding recovery painful, but don't regret it. And someone else has been in touch to say, like many teenagers, I didn't like the way I looked when I was 16, specifically my nose. When the opportunity came to get a rhinoplasty whilst undergoing a routine septoplasty to fix a deviated septum, I jumped at it. Now 26 years old and a lot more self-assured, I regret getting my nose fixed. I look back at my old nose and I realise it was special in its own way. Slight bump on the bridge, a bit hooked down, but it looks like my dad's nose. And my current nose is cookie cutter nose that could be anyone's. 84844, keep your thoughts coming in. Now on Listener Week, we

always love hearing from proud parents. You may have heard Bebe, who was nominated by her dad on Wednesday for discovering a historical poem. Well, today's proud parent is Deb, who emailed in to shine a light on the work of her daughter Daisy and her partner Anna. Daisy and Anna are Thatchers who've worked on roofs all over Devon. Our reporter Sarah Swalding caught up with them at work on a cottage near Oakhampton. I'm Daisy and I'm a Thatcher in Devon. I'm her wife Anna, a Thatcher in Devon and we do it together. We've basically just finished stripping off all of the back and we've put half of the coatwork on. This is Lithuanian water reed and we've taken off water reed it's about 30 year old roof

in Devon 30 years is a good time up north they'll last a lot longer because the roofs are steeper but in Devon they're a lot flatter they sit a lot flatter and the water can't run off as quick simple tools it's a drift which is a metal plate and you only buy these with the metal plate you have to put your own handle on because every thatcher likes the handle either long or short and then it's a mallet that's pretty much as long as you've got these you can thatch the roof when you lay a reed put put a bundle of water reed on or wheat reed. Be sticking out.

Fluff it up with your hands. Get it all so there's no join. And then you use your drift to drift it back. Get it in line. Everything on a thatch roof should be straight, really. The straighter it is, the evenly it'll wear out how did you get into it and how did you train well i was lucky enough it was an old family friend that he just texted me one morning and said hey bird you want to come and have a go on the roof and i thought why not um and yeah and the rest is history we were very lucky because he let us on the

roof and have a go at thatching straight away whether as I think a lot of people would be labouring for a good couple of years or so before so we were very lucky to actually be able to have a go at it you can do a master thatches of course and there's certain master thatches that will allow you to come on board but as it is it's one of the only construction jobs you don't need to go to college you don't need to have any qualifications to do it you can just come up find a Thatcher that will teach you and it's always good to go with a couple different Thatcher's because every Thatcher will do it differently and they have their own special

way of doing it that they've kept for years and years so do you two have a particular individual style then that you you call your own that someone would say oh yeah i can see that's a that's a daisy and anna roof i mean technically no but what i've started to do is when i ridge the ends i can't do it on this roof because there's two chimneys but on a lot of roofs i will put the ends up like cat ears like cat ears of like cat ears yeah unintentionally i started doing it and now i it's sort of become that's your signature yeah the signature move yeah i can see that to the left of me there's old slightly gray slightly green moldy thatch in the process of being taken off and then to the right is beautiful pristine golden reed golden reed that has just been put on and um what are these bent twigs hazel spars

these are made in poland and they are sawn off at the piff quite in quarters and then they're hand twisted um they used to make them locally The Thatchers would make them on rainy days in their sheds. As it is, they're far too hard to bend for me, so I buy them in. The hazel spar is a U-shaped piece of wood, slightly twisted with two quite scary looking points at each end that presumably just drive oh yeah drive into the thatch and they just hold on the reed keep the reed in place after we've laid it on the roof mallet them in and that is essentially what holds all the reed on we're at the eaves of this roof, so we're at the bottom, nowhere near the ridge, right up high above us. How did you both find working at the height when you started? Did you have a head for heights?

I didn't really know before I started, but luckily, no, it was absolutely fine. I don't really notice half the time, if I'm honest. I mean, this is fine. We're on scaffold. We're safe. It's sturdy. And this roof particularly isn't very high. We do work off biddles, which is a 2x4 piece of wood with two spikes that spike into the roof and holds the biddle on.

And you stand on that and you don't often always have a scaffold for that and your legs can be like jelly in those occasions. I've been using Chinese water reed which I find really good I was using Polish the time before you know it's quite hard to get the reed at the minute

the water reed is all imported and it's a bit of a struggle you can get locally grown wheat reed the traditional devon reed as well the wheat reed's good the trouble is um water reed lasts let's say it can last up to 30 years wheat reed you're kind of looking at half of that the water reed is really long it must be some of it kind of six foot long with a gorgeous sort of little plumy top. Those seeds at the top just tuck into the roof do they or do they have to be chopped

off? Yes they can stay on, like you said they get covered up so you won't see any of this. When it gets to the very top I will chop it. Daisy's reappeared with another couple of frightening looking bundles of hazel spars. They do look a bit like you might be going off killing vampires. Yes, they are a bit steak-like aren't they? Yes, and very sharp, extremely sharp on the end there. Do you enjoy the outdoors life? I imagine you see some amazing views up on the roofs as well.

Yes, the amount of beautiful houses we get to see, I feel very lucky and yeah, the view now we've got is of Dartmoor which is beautiful, though it's gone a little bit grey now. And a lot of nature we see, the amount of bugs and butterflies and birds we get to see from up here is, yeah, lovely. I'm not a massive fan of it when it's raining, if I'm honest. But yeah, when it's sunny, it's absolutely beautiful. I've lived in a cottage with that, and one of the things that I remember about it is the spiders

yes, very large spiders I try not to think about the spiders too much because there are going to be hundreds of them but yeah, there is a lot of very large spiders when we're stripping the roof off they live in this new reed as well but yeah, I try not to think about it too much because it would scare me i think as you go up you do it in lanes now this roof's about

nine lanes up and you can see the simple stages you lay a reed on drift it back spar it in and you say a lane what exactly is a lane if you're a lane thatching you put all the reed on one two three four in a row and then you somebody would come along and dress them all back somebody would come behind you and spar them all in that's your one lane done like i said there's nine lanes up so you've got nine rows to go and then you put the ridge on a thatcher will do their own ridge. They can have a block ridge, a flush ridge, a patterned ridge. I do flush butt ridges, or you can do fold-over ridges.

That's the different kinds of ridges. Up north, they'll be all patterned. Down here, traditionally, it's simple block or flush ridges. And where did you learn all this what's your kind of journey into thatching Anna as it is I'm a bit of a sponge when it comes to things like this if I'm a bit nerdy into it so um my boss taught me and him and his wife did it as well so he would talk a lot about it he was very nerdy he's been doing it for 30 years. His wife would then show me.

And they both did it two different ways, which is annoying when he asks me to do something and then she wants me to do it her way. But it's very good because then I learn two different ways to do things. Are there many women in the thatching game? I wouldn't say there's many. But there's a couple round here. But there's not many as what there could be.

I mean, give it another 10, 15 years and there'll definitely be more. People will be more inclined to hire women. I mean, we are just as good and we can work just as hard. Do you get the comments? Yes. Quite regularly, actually, don't we?

There's been a number of things that have happened with men not thinking we can carry ladders or just being shocked about being on the roof. So, yes. I find it a little bit more entertaining, but it touches a bit of a nerve with you, doesn't it? Anna is smiling at the moment. Through gritted teeth, I suspect. I'm saying nothing.

Do you get all this business of people questioning your work because you're a woman? Yeah, I think it's about half and half, really. A lot of the older generation males, yes. I just don't think they understand it when they see us up here, do they? You can see their brain ticking and they don't really understand. But then it can go the other way, can't it? And a lot of single females would probably rather have us on the roof for whatever reason. So, yeah, it's a bit of both really but we do definitely get a lot of stick i think from a lot of other male thatchers mainly yeah that's something

that changes with more women doing it and familiarity and and just becoming the norm i guess it's like any trade these days i mean a lot of women are taking up trade work in college there's a lot more females on courses now um as long as they we keep doing it it'll just become the norm it will is it physically tough though yes it's definitely physically tough but there's ways around it i mean the guys will throw the water read up you know what we could be you say free couple kilo free kilos per waffling and you've got to throw them up quite height sometimes but I mean we just pull up three at a time the dad is a too heavy just split them and carry one at a time use your head yeah use your head work smarter yes would it be a trade that you

would encourage other young women to get into 100 yeah definitely i think especially as a lot of the buildings down here are listed now so if it's that john you've got to put that job so there's always going to be work in the industry always and it will be nice for us to eventually get a young woman on board as well and and yeah teach them and then go off on their own eventually oh how brilliant thatcher's anna and daisy Daisy with our reporter Sarah swaddling there. Not to be replaced by AI anytime soon. Thanks, girls. Good on you. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies.

I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World

Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now. now back to another item listener amy wrote into the program to request a discussion on women with larger noses she said it taken her a while to reach a level of self-acceptance but thought that there was a clear disparity between men and women when it comes to this topic and also a lack of nose diversity in female characters on screen and in books. So just how much of our noses impact our confidence?

Well, I'm joined to discuss this by journalist and author Radhika Sangani who launched this hashtag side profile selfie campaign back in 2018 which celebrated people's noses in their different shapes and sizes and medical esthetician i can't even say the word thank you very much carolina ahmed who decided to have a rhinoplasty last year welcome to you both loads of people who are listening are getting in touch with us about this as well and i will come to some of your messages in a moment radhika first to you though tell us your story when would you say you first became aware of your magnificent nose may i say thank you um so i think i it's probably around secondary school um i started yeah i realized i

had a big nose and people my friends and they were my friends it wasn't bullying they'd say things to me like oh you'd be so pretty if you had a smaller nose um and they genuinely meant well by it because that's what beauty standards in our society say um and even the fact that people often are quite nervous to even tell me I have if I say I have a big nose people are like oh no no you have a lovely nose and I'm like yes but it's also big big doesn't have to be equated to unattractive um and so yeah my whole life as a teenager I knew I had a big nose and I was really self-conscious about it because I really agree with the listener who said we don't see this enough you know in movies and tv shows and magazines and adverts all attractive women have small noses. And so I just

deduced, you know, okay, then that means if I've got a big nose, I'm not attractive. And that is a belief I carried with me for most of my life until my late 20s when I set up this campaign and was kind of on a mission, I guess, to see big noses as beautiful. Yeah. So you started the hashtag side profile selfie campaign. How did that come about? And how was it posting that first picture of yourself in 2018? It was terrifying because the reason I set up this is because there were body positivity movements everywhere. And I was waiting for someone to do one about big noses.

I was just ready to have someone help me love my nose, but nobody did it. So I was like, oh God, I'm going to have someone help me love my nose but nobody did it so I was like oh god I'm gonna have to do it myself and um yeah I I decided to post a photo of myself in side profile which was my biggest fear like I've avoided side profile photos my whole life and I decided to post one and I went to bed terrified I had like one like and I was like oh god everyone thinks my nose is disgusting and then somehow it just went viral and um I've now had, you know, it's been seen by millions. Thousands of people have done it. They've shared their own side profile selfies.

And this campaign has helped me see that big noses can be beautiful because I can see in all these other people. And then slowly that's allowed me to change my own beauty standards, my definition of what beauty is. And now when I look in the mirror, I can see my own nose, which is, you know, it's big, it's bent, it's crooked, it's wide, all of those things. I can see it as attractive. Yeah, it's you and it's beautiful. Carolina, social media did the opposite for you though, didn't it? Absolutely.

Quite opposite to Radhika, I grew up in a very small town of northern Lithuania. So social media or smartphones were not around then. And you live in this community bubble. I was actually a very popular girl at school. And I always knew I had a long nose. All of the family has long noses. But it was never an an issue I never thought of it as unbeautiful it was I think I was about 27 when I started to realize that exactly what Radhika said I just look different to everyone else I think I created I was trying to look last night I created my Facebook profile when I was 19 and my Instagram profile when I was 26. And that idea of me having imperfect nose came around the age of 27. And you think I can understand why Radhika felt self-conscious

being a child and having these comments, whereas I haven't had any of those. And you'd think at the age of 27, you would have the maturity and the life experience to know better, especially, you know, I was already married married I was a homeowner there was certain achievements in life that we strive for and those were accomplished in my case yet I just didn't feel good enough and you know victim I guess is a very strong word because I was never bullied for it or never had any comments but exactly what Radhika said I would take a side profile picture and I would just know that I look different from all the other images on on social media. So when was the moment you decided that you were going to get an operation the rhinoplasty? A day after my 30th birthday

you know there was one idea thinking about it I I'd like a change. You know, my nose was actually pretty good. So I didn't have a hump. It was it was always straight, but it was just very long. And you I tried to live with it and tell myself that this is okay, almost felt embarrassed the fact that I fell into the social media trap. But after turning 30, I said to my husband, look, I've been thinking about this for the last three years. And I just don't think that any amount of counselling is going to make me feel okay about myself. And I had to make the decision very quickly, because I knew if I contemplated, I would pull out. So from making a decision that I want to go ahead with this to having a surgery was six weeks.

And I'm really glad I've done it. And did you know what kind of nose you wanted? Do you go in and choose or does the surgeon tell you? How does it work? I'm very lucky that I had the means to go to one of the best plastic surgeons, Mr. Corridis, in the country. So I trusted in his expertise and his skill. I went with an idea that I will allow him to do the best that he can and do the nose that fits my face, which I feel is very important because I do know a lot of, especially younger ladies,

they would look on Instagram and be like, this is the nose I want. But it doesn't mean that this is the nose you can achieve or this is the nose that's going to fit your face. What did your family say about it? When did you tell your parents? I told my parents four days before the surgery. I was really nervous. I felt my parents would be really disappointed. My mum made a couple of comments which really hit hard because she said, I hoped I raised a daughter who is confident enough to prove self-worth through other means like personal life achievements

rather than through her physical looks. But, you know, I feel as a parent, you have a responsibility over your children, no matter how old they are. And going ahead with plastic surgery, it is a surgery, but it's done without medical need, and you're willing to take on those risks associated with it. So I think for any parent, it's always really hard to accept that, you know, your child is going through that, you know, self-esteem issue. Radhika, did you ever consider getting a nose job? So it's so interesting, because I had almost the opposite experience of Carolina in that my mum, when I was 17, said, do you want a nose job? job and it's because have you got an Indian mum by any chance I do have an Indian mum

shout out to all the Indian mums there by the way who are great all great go on sorry and um it's I think it's because a couple of girls at school had had nose jobs and my mum is just always like panicking of you know is my daughter gonna fit in blah blah blah all that stuff and but I was really offended when she asked me because I hadn't ever had you know sat down and told her about my insecurities um and so I said no to her almost out of teenage rebellion because she'd suggested it to me um and I'm so grateful now that I did that because for me it would have been the wrong decision I know that I would have been doing it um out of just like I guess wanting to fit in and and just out

of fear I guess um and now I'm so I'm so glad that personally I didn't do it because I my relationship with my nose has changed and I now I'm really grateful that I look like me and I think that's been really important for me and I also think you know ethnicity does play a part like this is my nose is yeah no it comes from my ancestors and generations and just because of where we live in you know in this in in the west it's we have a white beauty standard and so I've been trained to not see my big nose as attractive and it's taken me a long time. I'm now in my early 30s. Like it's only now that I'm really confident with my nose.

And I actually got a nose piercing a couple of years ago, which draws more attention to my nose. And I always thought I could never do that. And actually, I feel kind of proud of myself that I'm owning my face, I'm owning my culture. And yeah, it's been the right decision for me, but I totally accept that everyone's got different journeys and different paths with this. Yeah the ethnicity question thing is really interesting

I'm going to share a personal story which I don't often do but I will very quickly I interviewed a very successful plastic surgeon in LA once upon a time and said to him as part of the it was a TV show I was doing so what would you change about me then if you if I went under the if I came to you and he said I would change your Indian nose. Wow. Yes. And exactly that reaction. And I thought, that's right.

It is my Indian nose. And I should wear this with pride because it is the nose of my family and my ancestors. Didn't make me not consider it, though, but I am glad to. However, how do you feel now that you've had yours done carolina i feel really well obviously self confidence um comes by removing something that i've been so conscious of for such a long time um but i feel um comfortable on social media posting my side profile images and i feel like social media now is a much better place than what it used to be. You know, many years ago, we have lots of inspirational accounts, or, you know,

exactly what Radhika did. And public figures taking responsibility to the way they portray themselves to younger generation, whereas I feel like when I started my social media journey that wasn't about and as I mentioned before I think it was so deep within me that I just don't believe any form of counselling could have changed my mind having said that if my daughter was to come forward and tell me that she wants to go for plastic surgery I would be mortified. Really? Absolutely. Even though you've done it yourself? 100%. Why? Again, I'm a parent. You know, you just, your bias, your child is just the most beautiful. You want them to be confident in the way they are

and not feel that need to self-prove through, you know, physical appearance. But it is what it is. The world is changing and we're changing with it. Radhika, are standards when it comes to noses different for women and men? Oh, I think 100% yes. I think in our society, women are still expected to have small, delicate, soft noses,

I guess features that aren't so strong and powerful. And with men, I think it's completely allowed. I mean, when I think about Hollywood, right, which kind of sets the beauty standard, I think about movies and actors. And I think about men with big noses, like Owen Wilson. I think Matthew McConaughey has a big nose, they're kind of seen as attractive and sexy. And it's not questioned I genuinely cannot think of the female equivalent like on the internet people say somebody like Anne Hathaway has a big nose to me I cannot see that you know it's just there's no there's no comparison we don't have like the female equivalence like I think a lot of actresses you know who do have

big noses feel that pressure to go under the knife like Jennifer Grey in Dirty Dancing um she you know famously changed her nose and I just think we don't see them enough like it's crazy just if if you just live your life looking at the media and magazines you would think people don't have big noses you would think they don't exist um we and yeah I think for men and women I know that also as a woman um I receive comments that men just don't. I've also had it the other way where I've been fetishized for my big nose and I've got creepy messages on social media, men in bars. And it's a whole thing that I really don't believe men receive. We could continue talking about this and so many messages coming in, but we've run out of time, sadly. But it's nice to know that both of you, both of you beautiful and empowered in the way you look confident in your

noses thank you so much for talking to me both carolina and radhika thank you and so many of your comments jackie says i have a large roman nose but also wear quite thick glasses i would love a smaller nose but then i couldn't wear my specs i guess my nose is the size is this size for a reason um gary emailed to say the great great Barbara Streisand was asked to consider a nose job early in her career and told the powers to be where to get off. And someone else has said the first time I saw my nose in profile, I was shocked. I have a large nose with a bump on it. I was told by a surgeon who I was at work with that my nose was beautiful and don't ever have a rhinoplasty. I love my nose and I love my face.

I think after this, we should all just look in the mirror and say, I love my face. On to the next subject. Listener Annette contacted us to ask about communal living after hearing our loneliness series earlier this month. She's in her 60s and has thought about it for years, but doesn't know how to go about it. Welcome to Woman's Hour, Annette. Hello. Hi. Thank you for't know how to go about it. Welcome to Woman's Hour, Annette. Hello, hi. Thank you for getting in touch with us about this. Tell me why you're interested in communal living. What are the thoughts going around in your mind?

Well, my particular interest is not so much in intergenerational co-housing that involves big building projects, of which there are many in the country um i'm more interested in um living with friends into my old age really um having seen my mother live on her own for 14 years and be very lonely and it's not good for the housing problem we've got it's not good for older people's mental health and i just think it has to be different other alternatives how have you spoken to friends and family about this what have they said um only briefly but immediately obstacles come up like um the friends that would consider it was scattered all over the country. So where do we choose? I mean, it needs to be somewhere that's near amenities.

It can't be somewhere rural. But whose family do we choose to move away from? So that's one of the problems. Go on, sorry. Yep, the other problem. Well, the other issue is what sort of property do we look for? I've thought about old hotels or pubs or things like that. But I don't particularly want to get involved in a big housing project.

Right. I think you've really touched on something that there's lots of us because you the discussion you created in women's rhq this morning was fascinating and um so i think just to help to get to the bottom of this and to answer your questions i've recruited architects anthorn who has recently built canuck mill co-housing with 25 other households and the author and social campaigner Mim Skinner who's written Living Together which is a book about intentional communities in the UK and beyond so let's see if we can answer some of your questions Annette. Mim you've described these sorts of groups as intentional communities which is what Annette wants in your research what

what range did you find what are the options? yeah so intentional communities is just housing that recognizes that we have social as well as material needs that looks like such a broad spectrum so it could be like Annette suggesting friends moving in together and it ranges from commercial to collaborative so do you want to do a DIY version like Annette get your friends and move in together or do you want to do a DIY version like Annette, get your friends and move in together? Or do you want to move into a purpose built luxury developer led project where you might have an in-house therapist and yoga instructor? My favourite thing about community housing is that it gives you the critical mass and the organisational structures to say, OK, with the way we live, let's shift away from something and do something differently so I visited communities who lived completely without personal finances, naturist villages where they decided to go without clothes or communities like Cannock Hill where they're just saying do you know what let's live in a way that's fun that's rich let's live closer together

so there are so many different versions. One of the things I think you're thinking about, Anne, is how closely connected do you want to be? So do you need your individual space? Or are you thinking that you would like to live as a single household? And how much work do you want to put in? I think to be practical, one would need one's own personal space, as well as communal areas, because we've, although we live together as students, which was something that our parents' generation possibly didn't have, going from the parental home to the marital home. I think we're a little bit more set in our ways now and so yes I think personal space would be important. Yeah that's the first thing that came up in my mind as well, personal space

let's bring Anne in here because Anne tell us about the community where you live Well basically we all have our own homes but we also have a common house and in fact we started by designing the common house because that was the most important thing, that people would share things.

And so by having, for example, guest rooms, you can have a smaller house that you live in. So who's in your community? So there's a group of 33 people who live in the housing at the moment. And we came together originally because we were a women's walking group who were talking about exactly the things that Annette was saying. What do we do now our children have left? How do we live more ecologically? How do we create a place where, you know, we'd been talking about our parents being lonely in their own homes. And how do we make a space where that doesn't go on happening? We didn't want it to be exclusively for older people.

But we did want people to be clearly intending to, you know, be friendly with each other. So how did you decide? Well, let's take Annette's point to where to live for starters we started off with looking at 90 minutes from the centre of London because the original group were based in London and we spent nearly 10 years looking for a site developers got any site that we found that was flat and easy to develop so the site that we ended up with was difficult to develop, but actually is a beautiful site because it has a grade two listed mill on it and a mill pond. So this was future projection. This was sort of with retirement on in sight. Yes. So what about finances? Did you

all pull your money together? Did everyone put the same amount in? Yes, we all pulled our money together. In the first instance, there were eight households that bought the site. And that was a huge leap of faith. We'd looked at lots of different things from convents to bear sites. And then we found this site. And by that time, I'd done so many feasibility studies, I said, it's this this site or elsewhere I've had enough of doing this and so Phil McGevo who's still part of the co-housing said right let's all hold hands and jump and we did so people had by that time got pensions had put mortgaged their houses. There was a huge leap of faith to actually achieve this. I mean, my mind is going all over the place, just the thought of having to rally that many people to get involved in something like this. But Mim, I want to bring you back in. I mean, people listening

to this might think, great, if you've got the money, but what if you don't, but you really want to live like this? Are there other ways of financing an intentional community? Yeah, that's a really interesting question. So the area that is really growing within the sector is the very commercial one. And it is about developer led rental properties. And those can be amazing. I've seen some really good practice ones where people are able to live in cities really connected, really healthy lives. But of course, those can be really shoddy and poor quality to those can be people put into micro spaces in cities, really connected, really healthy lives. But of course, those can be really shoddy and poor quality too. Those can be people put into micro spaces in cities, a few pizzas on a Friday and a marketing slogan around community living. So yeah, it's really tough looking at living

communally in a younger phase where you haven't maybe got the capital. In other countries, it's much easier. It may not surprise you to know I visited some amazing spaces in Germany, in Amsterdam, where the local government was financing that and was kind of helping the financing of that. It's much more difficult in the UK. You need buy-in from everybody, don't you? Not just financially, but it's just the sort of mentality around it as well how do you make sure that everyone stays on track doing i don't know how you balance out the chores and the gardening maybe you don't maybe we do balance well we don't how do you make sure everyone just keeps up keeps up their part of the bargain um well if you move into co-housing you do pay

more for it at some level because you have have a shared common house where we make meals together and a living room where all sorts of things can happen. But what we do is we have every eighth day we have a work day where anything from changing the light bulbs in the common house to mowing the lawn or taking the reeds out of the pond is um done together and uh there's just a list that's put up on whatsapp every every day and every eighth day and people do those things maybe i'm giving too much of myself away on the program today but what happens when someone gets on your nerves if you're living with your family they're your family okay you've got no choice but these are people you've chosen to live with. And what happens when, you know, tensions come up? Tensions do come up inevitably.

And that was one reason why we were determined that we should be around about 26,000 households, which we are. And that makes a big difference. You don't have to be best friends with everybody, but you would need to get on with everybody. But actually, when I lived in my street in London, there were tensions in the street. Very true. Whenever I sort of think,

oh dear, I wonder if this is the right thing, I remember that and think, well, actually, you have to be tolerant. And what advice would you give Anne? Start as soon as you can and be very determined to get a decent sized common house and think very carefully about the ecology of what you're doing. I think one of the really important things is that we've designed our houses to Passive House standards, which means they're incredibly environmentally friendly. Hopefully, Annette, that's given you lots to think about.

Thank you to Anne, thank you to Mim, and thank you, Annette, for sending in your brilliant suggestion for Listener Week. Thanks to all of you who sent in your suggestions for Listener Week. It's been absolutely fantastic. Everything from kleptomania, heavy metal, to poetry and peripheral friendships,

you've taken Woman's Hour to the most unexpected places. If you want to hear more, join me tomorrow for Weekend Woman's Hour. Thank you. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. From BBC Radio 4, a new fiction podcast. I want you to hold something for me. Hold something. A holiday in Dubai.

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