Mamamia Out Loud: A Viral Cancellation & The Compliment No Woman Wants

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Mamma Mia Out Loud!

Hello and welcome to Mamma Mia Out Loud.

It's what women are actually talking about on Friday, June the 9th.

I'm Holly Wainwright.

I'm Jessie Stevens.

And I'm Elfie Scott, filling in for Mia.

And on the show today, is the art world trying to cancel our very own Hannah Gadsby?

And if so, why?

Plus, is looking good for her age actually a compliment?

Jennifer Aniston doesn't think so, but is she just having a whinge?

And our best and worst of the week, which include a smug gardening update

and a harsh welcome to motherhood.

But first, Jessie.

In case you missed it, the CEO of Lululemon,

which of course is the athletic apparel company with fancy leggings,

has divided the internet this week after announcing he fired two employees.

And it was because they confronted thieves in one of the Lululemon stores.

So it's understood that two workers called the police when three masked men robbed a store in Georgia.

They then followed the men out of the shop.

So the two workers are seen calling the police while the theft was occurring.

That sounds brave, Jessie.

Doesn't it?

Doesn't it?

They're vigilant.

Wait, what's the word for it?

What does it mean when you stop a crime?

That is a vigilante.

Is it a vigilante?

Or a good Samaritan?

It could also be a good Samaritan.

Well, CEO Calvin McDonald stands by his decision and says

that the company actually has a zero tolerance policy for intervening with any robbery.

And that's the reason that they fired the workers.

In this particular case, we have a zero tolerance policy that we train our educators on

around engaging during a theft.

Why?

Because we put the safety of our team, of our gas front and center.

It's only merchandise.

At the end, they're trained to step back, let the theft occur,

know that there's technology and there's cameras and we're working with law enforcement.

Ooh.

This sounds like tough love.

Doesn't it?

I mean, these people seem to be particularly loyal to D's brand and his merchandise.

It's very passionate.

Yeah.

Elfie, do you think they deserved to be fired?

Look, I don't think they deserve to be fired, but I will say that when I worked in retail,

that was made very, very clear to us that you never, ever tried to intervene with a robbery

just because it could escalate into physical violence.

So, like, I don't think that they should have necessarily lost their jobs,

but maybe they could have gotten, like, a bit of a talking to.

So, what was the idea?

If someone comes into your shop and you see them picking up things and stealing or whatever,

was the idea, like, it's on the cameras, it is not up to me to go and confront them?

Yeah.

God, no.

And also, like, how much are you getting paid as a casual worker at a retail job?

Not enough.

I'm not enough to intervene in a crime, my friend.

But also, if we do want to get a little bit grim, and I totally understand if we don't want to

and everybody wants to cut this, but Lulu Lemon had, like, a vicious murder happen

at one of their stores back in 2011.

Oh.

And that actually occurred because one employee tried to intervene with another employee

stealing a pair of leggings.

Oh, wow.

And so, the person who was caught stealing viciously murdered the other employee.

So, maybe that's why they have such a black and white policy on it.

Yeah.

And they don't want to set the precedent that it is heroic or good because the worst thing

as a business owner is that the violence escalates and you actually have something awful happen

to your employee.

I worked in hospitality and the thought was always, if you get held up or something,

you give them everything.

Give them the money.

Oh, yeah.

Throw the money at the head.

You never fight.

You go, please, here's the safe.

Like, you just give it all to them because it is not worth your safety.

So, I get that.

I just didn't think that it would end in firing.

What's this?

That's an art project.

Okay.

I like it.

Picasso.

So, on the back of their latest Netflix stand-up show, Something Special, Hannah Gadsby has

launched an exhibition with the Brooklyn Museum titled, It's Pablo Matic.

Picasso according to Hannah Gadsby.

This controversial exhibition looks at the life and life work of Pablo Picasso under a

contemporary and feminist lens.

For the exhibition, Hannah provided the narration for the Pablo Matic audio tour, which features

over 100 works by Picasso, as well as a bunch of female artists.

The critical exhibition comes in stark contrast to a whole host of exhibitions that are being

planned around the world this year to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Picasso's death in

1973.

Now, if you are trying to remember where you know the name Hannah Gadsby from, it would

be because of their hugely successful stand-up show, Nanette, which came out in 2017.

It was a special that explored misogyny, trauma, and art, or more specifically, Gadsby's not

so enthusiastic views on Pablo Picasso.

Now you probably know Picasso from his work like The Weeping Woman, his use of color for

adding the cubism art movement, and he also, as a side note, was not a great man, which

is largely what Gadsby is trying to explore in this exhibition.

Oh, hello.

I'm Hannah Gadsby, the Australian, the comedian, the screechy feminist Ted Talking Ruiner of

Man Fun, and I'm here at the Brooklyn Museum, procreating an exhibition about Pablo Picasso.

That's right, the famous misogynist Picasso, I've changed.

And we thought it's about time we take a good look at him from another angle, a feminist

angle, a comedic angle.

It's problematic, is it?

According to Picasso's own granddaughter, he autographed each of his paintings by using

the blood of his loved ones as ink, and she said in her memoir, he bewitched them, ingested

them, and crushed them onto his canvas.

Once they were blood-dry, he would dispose of them, speaking of Picasso's relationship

with women.

Now, Jesse, Holly, who has thoughts about this?

Because there have been a lot of opinion columns published this week, and I would love to know

where you stand.

The opinion columns have been scathing.

Pretty much every publication with art critics have, you know, rolled their eyes and said

they hate it.

That's almost quite predictable, and I think mission accomplished.

I've listened to some of the art historians who have worked with Gadsby on that, and they

sort of predicted that this was going to happen.

I think that when you get an artist who's been labeled as a genius and you put a feminist

lens on it and you complicate his legacy and his narrative, you're going to get blowback.

That's inevitable.

How do Gadsby has some really interesting and important things to say about the art world

and about Pablo Picasso?

They say you cannot ever separate the art and the artist, and basically the world designs

itself around these geniuses with a capital G without ever asking, you know, what legacy

and impact they've had on the world.

However, this has been sold and branded as not a cancellation, but a conversation, which

I really liked.

The closer I looked, I'm struggling to find the conversation.

By that, I mean, there is a really apt criticism of this exhibition that says it is Picasso's

works with tweets, with essentially a bunch of Hanna Gadsby tweets, bathroom graffiti,

Instagram captions, little clever, smart sentences.

I don't like that as a form of criticism.

I don't think that it's especially sophisticated or nuanced or helpful a lot of the time.

And when I look at some of the words that are actually being said about Picasso, it feels

like a full stop.

And I think that there are some similarities to draw here between Stan Grant and the Coronation

and Hanna Gadsby and Picasso.

People don't like to have what they love dismissed or ridiculed or made fun of.

It makes them feel really uncomfortable and part of me gets that.

And so I wonder if tonally, it's just not in the best interest of Hanna Gadsby's point,

which is really accurate and fair.

I don't know if they've totally landed their point with the style of this exhibition.

Holly, am I ridiculous?

Yeah, well, no, you're not ridiculous.

But surely that is the point.

This is the kind of exhibition that hip, and I know that's even using the word hip,

marks me out as unhip, that hip art galleries put on to attract people who do not normally go

to art galleries, right?

So, of course, the art critic at the New York Times does not think that Gadsby's criticism

of Picasso is sophisticated enough, even though Gadsby has done an art history degree

and has researched a lot and knows as much as somebody who's going to speak about him

publicly probably does.

The level of critique in punny show titles and the kind of captions you're putting alongside this

and indeed that you're exploring in a stand-up show is not really going to hold up probably

to the New York Times art critic's standards of artistic critique.

But to me, that's a bloody good thing because I don't necessarily agree that we should gatekeep

art of any kind and say that the only people who are allowed to have opinions about it

or thoughts about it are a very tiny, very, very privileged and educated minority, right?

So, when I watched those Hannah Gadsby, because Douglas also, her second one after the net,

also talked a lot about art, I found it really interesting because I am not an expert,

but I always lean into perspectives I hadn't considered before and maybe that says something

very basic about me that I had no idea that Picasso was a problematic person until those things

were pointed out.

But the reason why it enters into my world more, and this isn't just a conversation about art

critics, which can be very sort of elusive and far away, is I talked about last year,

I think, I took my daughter and her best friend to see the Matisse exhibition in Sydney when it was on

because I was trying to be a smug parent, right?

Like, let's be honest.

And also my son really likes art, so he's interested in that kind of stuff.

So we go along and we're like, oh, what a genius.

Wow, look at all this amazing stuff.

And there's, you know, just all these pictures that you've seen your entire life

and a kind of whether you're an art person or not, you know them.

You know, you've seen them and you know them.

They're just part of the cultural conversation.

All my daughter and her friend said was, why are all these women naked?

Who are they?

Did they give him permission?

Why is he painting them?

And again, why are they naked?

Right.

And I think that these become more difficult things to explain when you start peeling back

the layers of, well, you know, life drawing is an artistic stage and training

and institution that has been around forever.

The naked human body is beautiful and it's fascinating and it's difficult to draw, right?

But to them, because they live in an age where we listen to women all the time now

about how they feel about their bodies and who's looking at it and how they're looking at it.

They can't get their heads around these kind of frequently decapitated just naked women.

They want to know why.

And it's really interesting because I think in the same way that my son,

who again is not massively sophisticated about this, but will often ask me,

why are all the famous artists men, right?

And I know we can reel off some famous female artists,

but the kind that we know about because they're part of the culture like Van Gogh

and Picasso and Matisse, Whiteley and Warhol and whatever,

they are part of our culture and I'm really glad that we're examining it.

So I love that Gadsby is doing this.

I think that the title is punny and awful, but I think that it's really interesting

because it's just basically trying to appeal to a different group of people

and the New York Times art critic isn't it.

So I feel like they are trying to cancel her opinion as being valid

rather than she's trying to cancel Picasso because Picasso has at least eight paintings

in this exhibition and it's just part of an enormous celebration of that person's work

that will go on and on and on and on.

What do you reckon, Alfie?

I think it's fine.

I don't know.

Look, I came into this thinking that I would really be frustrated

and are on the side of trying to protect Gadsby,

who I really like as a person and as an icon.

But then the more that I read it,

the more that I felt like maybe the greatest sin of this particular exhibition is just mediocrity.

I don't know.

Is that unfair to say?

I think I agree because there are a lot of people that are very sympathetic to their point

and agree.

I mean, a feminist lens being applied to art is not something Hanna Gadsby invented.

That is something that is completely valid and feminist artists have been doing it for, you know, 50 years.

They didn't invent it,

but they're the kind of most high profile and accessible cultural mouthpieces of it of the moment.

I found some of it hypocritical in that what I hate about the criticism toward Hanna Gadsby

that I think is specific to the criticism towards Hanna Gadsby

is always that they're not who they say they are.

So it's, you're not a comedian because you're not funny

and you don't deserve an opinion on this because you don't have a PhD in art or whatever.

And I hate that because whether you like Hanna Gadsby or not, they are a comedian.

And like, I hate the kind of shutting down of their validity as an artist at all.

But then when I looked at the Picasso exhibition and I was trying to get specific examples and see what the strengths were,

they would point to something Picasso did and say,

well, Picasso wasn't even trained as a sculptor and therefore this is a piece of shit.

Oh, they're trying to gatekeep as somebody who is always being accused of not being what they're supposed to be.

Exactly. I kind of looked at it.

But that's different because Picasso is held up as an absolute legend and master.

Absolutely. But isn't the whole idea of art and the whole idea of this

that we want to democratise and that we don't want to gatekeep and go, you know, this is a god

and this is a really valid point that Hanna Gadsby was interviewed by Today Explained

and the interview is great. I really recommend.

And Hanna said, I just don't want these people to be held up as gods and to be seen as fully human.

Absolutely valid. Great point.

Great point. Very legitimate criticism.

Yeah, but I just felt like the humanity and the point that could be made about Picasso and his shortcomings.

I don't think that the point was made as clearly as it could.

And I agree with Elphi that the greatest crime might be that this is sort of a mediocre exhibition.

But the thing is, I don't think we can say that without having seen it.

But also what rankles me always is snobbery.

And I hate that the New York Times critic, even though we agree with them probably,

they said they wrote the title, which is it's problematic Picasso according to Hanna Gadsby.

And they put in brackets, it is a title so silly that I cannot even type it.

I am cutting and pasting.

That was over yourself.

That was painful.

But you have to agree.

I mean, even you said it, it's a bad pun.

Like it's an unavoidably terrible title for an exhibition.

Says what it is.

It says what it is.

And I don't think anyone who shows up and gets a criticism of Pablo is going to be surprised.

At least there's some transparency.

The only thing that rankles with me is there's an idea that because Picasso is a deeply problematic person,

problematic person, that their art is shit.

And that is not really a line you can draw.

And apparently in my mind, I think that we can all acknowledge that a lot of deeply problematic people

make and have made great art.

But the problem worth exploring is who are all the people who didn't get to make great art

because they were being silenced by these gods.

Does Jennifer want to take vitamins?

I mean, is the Pope Catholic?

There's a regiment, guys.

This doesn't happen just by accident.

She's pumped full of supplements.

I'm filled with B12s and Cs and all sorts of like D.

Jennifer Aniston keeps getting the same compliment and she hates it.

This week, Vogue published an...

Oh, I feel her.

So many compliments.

Jennifer, stop.

Exactly.

I have an issue with the nature of the compliments I constantly receive.

Vogue published an interview with 54-year-old Aniston and the piece is all about her fitness evolution

and changing her workout habits after a back injury.

I've always been weirdly interested in Jennifer Aniston's workout routine,

so I'll leave that to the side.

But there's one bit that grabbed everyone's attention

and it's how she hates the compliment,

you look great for your age.

She says,

it drives me bananas, I can't stand it.

That's a habit of society that we have these markers like,

well, you're at that stage, so for your age,

I don't even understand what it means.

I'm in better shape than I was in my 20s.

I feel better in mind, body and spirit.

It's all 100% better.

She also says,

we should be saying you look great full stop without the backhanded compliment at the end.

Holly, is you look great for your age?

Really a backhanded compliment?

Yes.

Yes, it is.

It definitely, definitely is because it's not just you look great.

It's like considering you're an old crone,

way past your prime, no longer fertile,

and certainly beyond the realms of anybody we would choose to look at.

If we have a choice that we're looking at,

you look all right.

That's basically what it means, right?

And I think I get why Jennifer is mad,

but Elfie, you think she should stop whinging.

Why do you think she should stop whinging?

Because she's receiving compliments from people,

like calm down.

How often do people give you a compliment that says you look great?

Just, yeah.

I mean, don't we do this to people all the time, right?

It's like, let's say you've been sick,

or you are heavily pregnant,

or you've just got off a plane and you're really jet lagged,

and people will go,

you look great given you just got back yesterday.

You look great given that you've got the flu.

Like, don't we do?

We're having the flu and getting off a plane

are like very specific things that might leave people to believe

that otherwise you might look shit.

Just having lived a few decades is not necessarily the same thing.

I see your point.

How many 54-year-olds look like Jennifer Aniston?

Like, be realistic.

This is the interesting thing here, right?

Because the reason that we're all interested in what Aniston looks like at 54

is because particularly for Gen X,

but not only because, you know, that culture's trickled down, trickled down.

She was the most marketable star of a particular generation, right?

So she was the cover girl for more than a decade

for like, you know, white pretty ladies called Jennifer.

There were a lot of them at the time.

She was the queen of the Jennifer's.

And so what she looks like at 54 is intensely interesting

to the rest of us who are of a similar age, right?

Because there's a bit of a benchmark there.

But as you point out, Elfie,

Jennifer Aniston's benchmark is not the same as mine

because she has every resource at her fingertips.

She has clearly done many, many things

to make sure she looks good for her age in inverted commas.

And also, she's been in the headlines twice this week for comments.

Well, not even for comments, for just existing and being in her 50s.

One of which was for an appearance she made on her Instagram

where she was trying to sell us her hair mask

and some of her hair appeared gray and everybody lost their minds

that a 54-year-old woman would have gray hair.

And then the second time was in this Vogue interview

where she said what she said about good for your age.

And in that, she's trying to sell us a highfalutin pilates exercise mat

that she's invested in.

So Aniston only speaks to us when she's trying to sell something

and she's not very sophisticated as an influencer.

You know, she's very Gen X-y in her influencing.

She just holds things up and says, buy this, please.

I love the transparency.

But that totally undermines her point, right?

Like, A, I don't give a shit about what you have to say about feminism

if you're just trying to sell fitness equipment to women.

Like, I don't particularly think that that's like a very good pedestal to stand on.

But then also, I think that if she wants this to be an ideological battle

about compliments, then it's not the right battle to fight.

Like, why isn't she saying, like, you know, women feel so much pressure

to look good into their, you know, 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s

based on Martha Stewart's recent cover of Sports Illustrated.

Like, she's, yes, exactly.

She's not saying the right things.

She's not standing up for women with this.

She's not standing up for older women.

She's just saying that this particular comment bothers her.

And again, I can't stress enough, calm down.

People are just giving you compliments

because you look quite hot.

Like, what are you going to do?

Is this part of her brand looking good for her age?

We all know how old Jennifer Aniston is

and she's been around for my whole life.

And so isn't her talking about aging, talking about nutrition

and exercise and all of that about defying aging?

So can we only talk about aging when it's entirely on her terms?

Yeah.

And also she's saying that when she says, I feel better,

I've been better shaped than I've ever been.

You'll often hear women in their 50s and men, actually,

saying that kind of thing because they're probably

literally taking better care of themselves, right?

They're probably not drinking all night

and not getting enough sleep.

And they're very invested in longevity and looking all right.

Therein lies the problem because the idea that I look good

for my age, it's like, I don't walk around all the time

thinking in my head, I'm 51, I'm 51, I'm 51, right?

My brain still feels like I'm 30, like I'm 40, like I'm whatever.

But my face tells people that I'm 51

and they react to me accordingly, right?

So they put me in a file that goes, she's clearly not young.

She's clearly an older person.

How does she look for being that age?

And I can't help that, right?

That's what society does.

So the desire to try and trick that and just be judged

as do I look good full stop, not look good for my age

is a kind of trying to fight the categorization

of being an older woman.

So do you think that you look good

is almost a compliment reserved for young people

because good and hot and beautiful has to be young?

And so it has to have that caveat on the end

that's like, for your age.

Because we know what good looks like

and it doesn't look 54.

Unless the 54-year-old looks 34.

Unless you're Jennifer Aniston

and pouring millions and millions of dollars

into personal training and on-the-go Pilates equipment.

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It's time for best and worst of the week.

I'm going to go first today, Mia's not here, I'm jumping in.

My worst is a bit of a heavy one

but I'm not going to go into lots of detail about this

but there are some people in my life, really good friends of mine

who, like me, their family lives on the other side of the world

and this week they got the call that everybody

whose family lives far away absolutely dreads getting

which is like, shit has gone very bad,

you need to get on a plane now.

Because a family member is very unwell

and possibly not going to be around for days, weeks, months

for you to, you would normally be like,

oh, I'll come, you know, I'll see you get online

and see if I can get a fare and I'll come next, you know,

or a planned trip.

It's this emergency dash that everybody I know

who is an immigrant who lives far from their family

even if it's interstate, all of those things

just absolutely dreads.

And I found it this week obviously feeling very sympathetic

for my friends who are going through this

but also the inevitability of knowing that's coming.

When you live far away from your family

and there'll be lots of out louders who recognise this,

it's very often from choices you made.

So you look back at your life and you're like,

I made this decision, I made that decision,

it's led me to here, there are wonderful things about it,

there are some sad things about it,

we talked about it a lot during the pandemic

when we were unable to visit people that we loved

and be around loved ones when they were unwell

or even dying.

And you have to make peace with those decisions that you've made

but sometimes the hard truth of that

really shoves itself in your face

and the ability to not feel too guilty about it

which is not necessarily,

I mean maybe you should feel guilty about it.

I wrestle with this all the time,

these are the choices you made, right?

The chance you might miss something so important

and profound, the notion of being on that

interminable journey when you're just trying to get somewhere

you need to be, it's just, it's a difficult, difficult thing.

And I just know that for everybody listening

who is in that situation,

who knows that they're not necessarily a couple of hours away

from crisis, I just feel for you this week,

it's been pretty shit.

I've always thought about that flight,

like I think about what that flight must be like,

whether it's coming home or going,

yeah, that would just be actual health.

The longest flight of your life.

My best is a very quick and smug gardening update,

people, my worms have returned a couple of weeks ago.

A couple of weeks ago, I said my worms,

in my new worm farm, my new sub pod had moved out,

they've moved back in.

I am validated.

What did you feed them?

A worm mother.

Well, I started feeding them scraps from the kitchen

and putting in, you've also got to put in,

this is very boring,

but you also have to put in carbon,

so like newspaper, brown paper, dried leaves,

you have to like do all that.

And somebody clever messaged me and said,

they love an avocado, just throw in an open avocado

and they'll come back and they love a banana,

throw in a banana and they'll come back.

And they did.

And then today I got a new delivery of worms

and my worm farm is going off and I couldn't be happier

and that's my best.

I love that.

In this cost of living crisis,

I am surprised you had a whole avocado to give your worms.

Yeah.

What is that?

$50 straight in the ground.

Where I live,

I just bought at the markets yesterday

from a man called Yuri,

who always sells his produce at the market.

I bought a massive bag of avocados for $4.

Oh, shout out Yuri.

Oh my God.

Shout out regional living friends.

Shout out regional living.

Over to you Jesse Stevens.

My worst was a harsh welcome to motherhood,

potentially a baptism by fire.

I'm going to skip over some of the details

because they really don't matter,

but I interviewed an expert on a different podcast.

This was actually a while ago,

but it came out this week

and it was an interview

about a really debilitating pregnancy condition.

And in this hour long podcast we made,

a lot of it was devoted to this condition

and we interviewed someone

and I was really proud of what we did.

But I asked this expert who had 50 years experience

about what you might do in this situation and for advice.

And the advice was, as often is the case with medical advice,

very general and we went from there.

Anyway, it's always the things that blow up on the internet.

Always the things you least expect.

So true.

And all of a sudden I was in lots of trouble.

You open it and you've got someone saying,

you've taken women's health back 10 years,

this was irresponsible, how dare you do this?

What was the expectation though?

I don't understand.

The expectation was that more resources would be given

to people who were struggling with this condition.

But what was hard, which is what the expert said,

was you need specialist help.

You need to go to the hospital, right?

Jessie, I feel like I need to just warn you.

You are a woman of experience and integrity

when it comes to online pylons

and you have been through your skirmishes.

You wrote about the queen within hours of the classic.

You have expressed some unpopular opinions about many things.

You have never experienced the fury of mothers.

Oh my God.

Oh my God.

And it's like, and then you've got this thing of like,

so we're protecting pregnant women

by harassing pregnant women on the internet.

How darling.

Which is exactly what I think some of the,

you know, mum wars are about.

And I think it just goes to show the intensity

of any conversations around pregnancy birth parenting,

which I know I'm about to enter this

and everyone's talked about it.

It's because the stakes are impossibly high, right?

Yes.

Like when we talk about how we go,

well, it's just an opinion when it's about anything, right?

But when it's about how women either grow babies

or raise babies or whatever or parent children

or when they give them a phone,

it goes on and on and on for decades.

The stakes feel so high

and everybody is so hypersensitive that they're doing it wrong

that you can't win.

You can't win.

No, so don't worry, Jessie.

You're going to be getting routinely canceled

for many years to come.

Is that everything?

It was very confronting.

And look, my best is,

and my best is actually born from a worst,

which was, of course, Emma Gillespie leaving us.

Yes.

Very, very sad.

But you know when you're about to go away,

and I'm, you know, on the brink of going on maternity leave

pretty soon, and you start to look at things

through a bit of a different lens.

And I was just thinking this week, like looking at M

and, you know, I know we talked about it the other day,

but the work that producers do in this,

not just in this business and any, you know,

any work that I've done is so mammoth

and they do not get enough credit.

And one of the absolute joys of my job

and coming to work and making the shows that I make

is working with producers.

And so it was such an important reminder for me this week

to look around at Tulissa Bazaz, who we do canceled with,

Cassie Merritt, who I do Hello Bump with.

Susanna.

Susanna Maykin.

Susanna is on listening to us bang on right now.

Emma Gillespie lies, Ratliff.

Like, they are the unsung heroes of podcasting

and I just feel such gratitude that I get to work

with people like that all the time

and they never get enough fucking credit.

So that is my best.

We're just rat face talent, rely on them really.

Exactly, exactly.

We get all the acclaim and they're doing all the work

behind the scenes.

Very small percentage of the work.

Exactly.

Elfie, what was your worst?

Okay, my worst.

So I laid an extremely mediocre existence,

as I was explaining earlier, which is why I don't have

particularly interesting things to say for my best and worst.

I need to give that as a caveat at these answers.

But basically my worst at the moment is just that I am

feeling quite shit in my body and I don't know what it is.

I appreciate that I'm saying this to somebody who hasn't

been sleeping because they're in their final weeks of pregnancy

and you looked at me like you wanted to kill me.

Is it physically you just feel like?

I just feel tired.

I just feel fatigued and I don't know what's going on

and every morning I wake up and I feel like I need

nine more hours of sleep.

I feel like I'm fighting something off that I haven't

been able to fully kick yet.

So I've had a few friends go to the doctor and be told

by that doctor that they are having lots of people come in

and saying I've just been sick for weeks, months, whatever,

like they're fighting something off.

I think that it can be, I don't know if it's an immunity

post-COVID thing, but there's so much going around

that everyone seems a little bit sick.

Yeah.

I think that can be it.

Wow, oh my God, you're my doctor.

This is why we do best and worst.

Because we diagnose each other with illnesses, okay?

Sleepy, green, healthy.

All right, cool.

I will eat more greens.

You're absolutely right.

I should do that.

And my best is that even though I've been feeling like shit,

I have forced myself to go back to the gym regularly,

which I am very into.

I'm very proud of myself and it's not because I care

about how my body looks necessarily,

but it is mostly because I feel my best when I feel strong

and I've started doing weights at the gym

and I've started going back to boxing, which I love.

Oh, I love boxing.

I love boxing.

Do you have to do training with boxing?

Can you just go to the gym and just punch a bag?

Yeah, of course you can.

Okay, so you don't need to have someone show you what to do?

No, you probably do, to be honest.

Otherwise, you'll do yourself a little bit of an injury.

But you're welcome to try.

Do you want me to show you?

It's very therapeutic.

Wacking pads as well, even though it's not a person.

When I used to be a bit more Jimmy, boxing is one of my favourites

because I'm a passive-aggressive person, I guess.

I love whacking things.

It makes me feel good.

Holly, you have a recommendation before we go.

I do and I'm so excited about it,

even though it's the most basic recommendation of all time.

I've been watching after a loan finished

because I loved a loan and I watched it with my kids

and we all loved it.

We loved Gina, et cetera.

We watched the summit on Channel 9.

14 backpacks.

All they have to do

is hold on.

Now, if you are lucky enough to not be aware

of all of the reality TV shows that Channel 9 is putting out these days,

you might not know about the summit,

but the summit is a show where 14 Australians,

ordinary Australians, as they like to call them,

had to climb a massive, massive mountain in New Zealand

with a million dollars in cash in their backpacks

and the ones who got to the top got to keep the money, right?

And along the way, they had to like do challenges

like climb across tiny little rickety bridges

and scale mountain faces

and then they could like vote each other off

and steal their money and it was like this, right?

It's a pretty basic reality show

in that, you know, every episode could be 10 minutes,

but lasts an hour because they have to repeat every...

You know how the reality shows always do that?

We have to repeat it 25 times.

I don't like that guy, that guy slowing us down

and then you go to break and then you come back and you go,

I don't like that guy, that guy slowing us down.

Anyway, it is like that,

but me and my family have loved watching that show so much

and it finished this week in a really satisfying,

really satisfying finale

and now you can watch the whole thing

on 9's catch-up thing

and I just bloody loved it

and I particularly think if you're looking for something to watch with kids and stuff,

me and my kids would argue about it endlessly

because my daughter loved it

because there's kind of these fit like,

influencer types who are personal trainers

and can like sprint up a mountain

and then there's some people who are a bit,

like maybe a bit slower and older and chubbier

than that who are struggling

and so a bit of like a war breaks out between the two

and my daughter would be like,

those old chubby people shouldn't even be on this mountain.

I'd be like, where's your empathy Matilda?

We'd find about it, it was so much fun.

I just loved it.

It's my recommendation for something kind of basic.

It's the Summit Channel 9, it's just finished.

Doesn't really matter if the ending's been spoiled for you

but you can just watch the whole thing.

It sounds like a good long weekend binge, Sesh.

I love it.

Definitely is.

I just literally can't remember the last time

that somebody recommended a free-to-air television show to me.

What is happening?

That's me, friend.

That's me, I like free-to-air.

Jesse, what did we talk about on subs yesterday?

The subs yesterday was actually about a check-in

for our word of the year

because according to our calculations,

it was roughly halfway through the year.

We tried to force Elfie to choose a word.

You can hear how that ended up, not so successful.

Holly and I did some reflecting.

We reflected on Mia's word

and look, there was a lot of self-loathing,

just absolutely dripping from that episode.

So if you're feeling bad about yourself, so are we.

Go and listen and then tell us how you're doing

with your word of the year.

Please.

We would feel very validated if it's not that great.

Exactly.

And I give permission for anyone at this point

to go it's halfway.

I change it.

And maybe you can change your word.

Are you going to change your word, Jesse?

I can't really.

I'm stuck now because my word is family.

So it's like, has really changed.

Holly definitely had a real crisis breakdown in that.

But we'd love to hear your word of the year

and if you're pivoting, please let us know.

Thank you for listening to Australia's number one

news and pop culture show.

This episode of Mom and Mia Out Loud was produced

by Tulissa Bazaas and Susanna Makin.

And audio production is by Maddie Duannu.

Thank you for listening.

Bye.

Bye.

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There's a link in the episode description.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.