Mamamia Out Loud: Did Body Positivity Kill Jenny Craig?

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Mamma Mia Out Loud!

Hello and welcome to Mamma Mia Out Loud.

It's what women are talking about on Wednesday, the 10th of May.

I'm Holly Wainwright.

I'm Mia Friedman.

And I'm Claire Stevens, filling in for Jesse Stevens.

And I'm the host of Mamma Mia's podcast.

But are you happy?

Bloody love it. It's a smash on the charts.

It is.

It's very exciting.

Who have you got on this week?

Steph Klassmith.

And I had Alex Dyson last week.

Who's he?

He was a Triple J radio host.

Done about a million different things since then.

And he's fascinating about ambition and heartbreak.

And he started the interview by being like,

I'm miserable.

Things are not good.

And that's what we love.

Great.

It's the day today when everybody is talking about the budget.

Except for us.

We are not talking about the budget.

If you do want to know more about the budget,

go and listen to the quickie.

We're putting a link in the show notes.

It's got a guide about what's in it for you.

But what we are talking about on the show today,

a giant of the weight loss industry has fallen.

So did body positivity kill Jenny Craig?

And one of the most successful women in TV

says she can't get a date to save her life.

Whose fault is it?

And Confessions of a Ghost Rider,

what it's like writing one of the best selling books

of all time and getting none of the credit.

But first.

Breaking news.

A verdict has been reached now in the case of Eugene Carroll

versus former President Trump.

Did you speak to Mr. Trump and what did he tell you?

You know, he's affirming his belief,

as many people are that he cannot get a fair trial in New York City.

In case you missed it,

a jury has found that Donald Trump has sexually abused

and defamed a woman called Eugene Carroll.

She's a New York author.

And you might have seen these headlines,

but you want to know what it means.

I do, I want to know.

So what?

Is he going to jail?

No, because it was a civil trial.

He was being sued.

It was not a criminal trial

and it can't now lead to criminal charges

because I believe the statute of limitations

has ended for this particular crime.

What has he been accused of?

Can he still run for reelection?

Let's just quickly unpack it.

Eugene Carroll is a well-known writer

and she used to have an advice column in Elle Magazine.

She alleges that the abuse took place

and it's not an allegation anymore.

It's been agreed by jury that it did.

And she said it was back in 1996.

She bumped into Donald Trump at Bergdorf Goodman,

which is like a fancy department store in New York.

He asked her to help him pick out a present for another woman,

even though he was married to Marla Maples at the time.

She was his second wife.

And then he assaulted Eugene in a dressing room

in the lingerie department,

where he knocked her head against a wall,

pulled down her tights and briefly penetrated her

before she pushed him off and ran out.

The charges that were brought against him

were part of a civil court action.

He will be forced to pay her US $5 million in damages.

And this is the first time that it legally brands

former US president as a sexual abuser.

Will this dent the possibility of him becoming president again?

It won't.

It will not prevent him from becoming the nominee

for the Republican Party.

Now, if they choose to nominate someone

who is guilty of a sexual offence against a woman,

then that's a bit of an indictment on them.

And there are other legal problems that he's got coming too.

And doesn't he have, like, actually,

a dozen women who have got sexual assault

and harassment claims against him?

All sorts of things.

He's facing criminal charges.

If he is convicted of a criminal offence,

there is nothing in the US Constitution

that prevents someone who's been charged

or convicted from seeking or taking office.

And there's nothing barring someone found liable

in a civil suit like this one from entering the White House.

So that's the bad news.

You'd have to tell yourself that Americans would care

if their president was guilty of sexual assault.

And at the very least, you'd have to think

that the Republicans deciding whether or not to nominate him

would be worried that, logistically,

he's just going to have to be spending a lot of his time

over the next few years in court.

That's not a lot of time to do politicianing.

A big, big name in the weight loss industry has crashed.

Jenny Craig, whose ambassadors in Australia

over the years have included Chrissy Swan,

Rebel Wilson, Mel B, and Magda Sabansky,

has officially gone out of business worldwide after 40 years.

The Australian arm of the business

called an administrator's this week.

Side note, I did not know that Jenny Craig

was originally an Australian business.

Jenny Craig is from Melbourne, the person.

And she and her husband founded the business in 1983,

and then they set up in America,

and it's had lots of other owners since.

But I didn't know that.

Anyway, there you go.

Reactions to the demise of Jenny Craig include things like,

well, no one needs Jenny now Ozenpic,

the wildly successful anti-diabetic drug is here,

to, oh, I thought it had gone out of business ages ago,

to Ding Dong, another dinosaur of diet culture gone.

So I want to know, what do we think?

Did body positivity have a role to play

in killing Jenny Craig?

Is it so deeply uncool to talk about wanting to lose weight

now that their audience was aging out?

Claire, what do you think?

I think Jenny Craig failed to rebrand

in the way that a lot of weight loss companies

have rebranded in the last few years.

I did see some commentary that was really interesting about,

we need to be aware that this does not signify

the downfall of diet culture.

It's just a shift from overt to covert diet culture

that we need to be aware that...

What do you mean?

What does that mean?

So it's no longer that we have these companies saying,

go on this diet, calories, lose weight, lose weight, lose weight.

Here's a really big pair of pants

that used to fit me, now they're too big.

It's not that, but instead we're being sold

lifestyles and wellness and well-being plans.

And in different ways, right?

You know, it's less likely that you might go to a meeting

or necessarily buy a meal plan,

but there are lots of apps that are purported to be

for your wellness that also involve weight loss.

And the apps are significantly cheaper.

That's also the reality of it,

that you can download my fitness pal

and do the same toxic things

that something like Jenny Craig was doing,

but it's cheaper and more accessible.

But I have to say, the deeper I went into the Jenny Craig story,

it actually became quite emotional,

because I read this great article in The Guardian

that was about a woman named Alayna Demopolis

talking about how Jenny Craig was the first company

that made her worry about her weight.

I thought about it and I reckon I was early teens

when Kirsty Allen was the ambassador.

Toto, we're not in Hollywood anymore, but that's okay.

Jenny Craig fits any lifestyle.

My sister's a teacher, my friend's in business,

I'm an actress, yet we've each lost over 25 kilos.

She was an American actress who was made famous on Cheers

and then she did the Look Who's Talking movies with John Travolta.

And the ads were her looking straight down the barrel of the camera,

basically saying, I need to lose weight and you need to lose weight too.

And this writer has written about how she was 10

when Jenny Craig first entered her orbit

and she stepped on the scale for the first time

and there has not been a day since that she hasn't stepped on the scale.

It reminded me that when it comes to weight

and I think a lot of teenage girls or a lot of women

will remember the moment it happened,

it is as though a switch comes on,

you cannot turn the switch off.

So to be honest, even if, you know,

when Jenny Craig's collapsed, this is a good thing, body positivity,

I still feel really sad looking at those images

because I think the damage is done.

Was Jenny Craig the one that did the pre-prepared meals?

Yeah.

You got the Jenny meals delivered to your house.

Yeah.

So I think a lot of damage was done to that brand

with ambassadors who either signed up and lost weight

but then regained it, like Magda Zabansky.

She signed up again and they actually made a feature out of that

and it was like lots of people have to go back, you know,

and weights go up and down

and she now doesn't even really want to talk about that.

She was the host of a show about obesity on the ABC recently

and then you've got people like Rebel Wilson and Chrissy Swan

who've lost a large amount of weight

but not when they were with Jenny Craig.

They've done it afterwards and they've both been quite private

about how they've done it

but certainly they haven't been attached to a weight loss program.

Weight Watchers did a big rebranding

where they tried to be called...

WW.

WW.

WW.

And I don't think that worked.

I think their stocks are also really down

and what I was thinking is this is interesting,

this idea that did body positivity kill weight loss companies.

I think we've seen two things.

We've seen a rise of weight loss surgery

which is becoming more and more popular

and now we're seeing weight loss drugs

and I would say my question is

will weight loss surgery and weight loss drugs kill body positivity?

Because for example, I was looking at the red carpet at the Met Gala

and some of the recent red carpet events around award season.

There are a couple of Hollywood stars, a few,

who have always been a certain size

and now they're not, now they're suddenly a lot thinner.

Who knows how they did it?

They haven't said that it was weight loss drugs

but it would seem that that's a likely possibility.

So if that's now accessible to everybody

because there was only a tiny bit of diversity before

in Hollywood for example

and now it's like there's pretty much none.

I don't know if it's going to be such a straight line

because it still isn't accessible to everybody

and I don't think we should ever like throw weight loss surgery around

as if it's a simple, accessible, easy thing to do.

It's a big decision, it costs a lot of money,

it changes your life and so do these weight loss drugs.

We need to be so careful about the way we're talking about it

as if it's, oh, you just pop a pill and ooh.

We've talked about Ozenpik before, which is the most famous

and how the jury's still out on the long-term effects.

You also have to be on it forever.

Interestingly, Weight Watchers are widely reported

to be developing their own version of Ozenpik to market,

which makes perfect sense.

I think we've driven diet culture underground

and I don't necessarily think that's a good thing always

because there's a generational thing here that I really notice

which is that the young women I work with

do not overtly speak about weight, bodies, shape, diets

but all of my middle-aged friends do.

That has not shifted, right?

And when we did the Very Perry Summit a while ago,

we did a very responsible segment on it about weight

and how your body changes in middle-age

and it was the most popular segment.

Now, I don't think that's necessarily a sad thing,

like a terrible bad thing.

I think that companies, maybe like Jenny Craig,

maybe like Weight Watchers who have actually helped a lot of women

do something that either they wanted to do,

were advised by their doctors to do

and certainly were beaten over the head by the entire culture

to do.

I think that for some people,

they still will feel fondly about those brands.

Body positivity is making inroads to a certain point

but we still live in a sin-obsessed culture,

entirely sin-obsessed culture.

So we might not talk about it in the same way

but it's still all there.

And Instagram has just stepped in and taken over

where the before and after TV ads used to be

about the great big pants that you were talking about.

That's just Instagram now.

When I worked in weekly magazines,

some of our most popular covers were always half our size.

You know, that was so popular

and you could get away with that with real people

in inverted commas as well as celebrities.

And I think it's so good and so positive

that that's not acceptable anymore

but I think we're kidding ourselves if we think it's gone away.

Yeah, but it's just in a different style now.

Now it's the Daily Mail publishing photos

of this particular famous woman flaunting her curves

and we know what that means.

And while those headlines are still there,

then can we blame people for,

well, for anything that they choose to do to their bodies really

but also this idea that you're talking about Mia

that suddenly we'll be able to say to people,

well, why don't you just take the pills?

Yeah, I don't think body positivity killed weight loss giants

because I don't think there's a single woman out there

that's feeling better about herself

that wanted to lose weight before.

Is there? I mean, I hope there is.

I have to say, I do think that if I compare

the messages I was getting as a teenager

and how they were laced in a certain type of shame

that I do think has evolved.

So you saying, Holly, when it's your friends talking about it

or even in the context of perimenopause,

there isn't the same shame.

It's more a black and white conversation about reality with no...

But it still comes with a lot of kind of,

how many times do you hear your friends or yourself?

I mean, I've certainly guilty this myself

that it's a moral failing on my part.

This is the problem with this,

is it's not just about numbers on a scale,

which is what it should be about if your doctor's suggesting

it's a moral failing on your part

that there's, oh, I just can't do it.

It's like me.

But we're being shamed twice now

because we're ashamed if our weight doesn't conform

and then we're ashamed that we're not loving our body

and that we don't have body positivity.

So we're still living in this culture

that tells us that we've got to be a certain size.

Just look at the Met Gala, look at any red carpet,

look at any ad, really.

I think they're still a bit more diverse than they used to be.

They're a little bit more diverse, yes.

Baby steps, which is great.

We're still living in a world where a slim body for a woman

is seen as the most aspirational one.

And then if you express a desire to lose weight,

you're shamed for not having body positivity.

But I do think it's changed.

When I think back to Jenny Craig and I think back to,

like as a teenage girl, I was looking at it thinking,

okay, so there's no way you become a woman without hating your body.

There's no way.

I don't have a blueprint for that.

Everybody thinks they're fat.

Everyone needs to lose weight.

It comes with the job description.

Yes.

And another part of the Jenny Craig advertising

was around milestones.

So one big one, and of course this is everywhere

in weight loss stuff, is losing weight for your wedding.

Everyone's got to lose their shredding for the wedding.

And I found it interesting that in the lead-up to my wedding,

I don't know if it's like the fact that

the way we consume media is differently.

I have a certain algorithm for me.

No messages about that.

And within my friends, absolutely nothing.

But let's be honest, you're a very, very small woman.

But still, the idea that there was in the Jenny Craig days

and in the early 2000s was,

and this is what became so dangerous about this weight loss culture,

was everyone needs to lose weight.

It was almost a blanket thing.

And that's where it became incredibly,

I did research about this with my masters

about the interaction between weight loss messaging

and our messaging about eating disorders

and the fact that you had people watching weight loss messaging,

how we all need to lose weight, Kirstie Alley,

you can lose weight with me

and you've got a person with anorexia watching that.

And yet obesity's never been more of a problem.

And I think that's all part of the same beast.

I think it's all the same beast.

I think once your idea about weight and size

and eating is disrupted,

it's really hard to get it back.

And I think a lot of women do

and they work really, really hard to do that.

What do you mean?

Lena Dunham has written about this really well.

As I said, once that switch comes on,

it's really hard to then regulate.

I eat things that I feel like.

I eat intuitively.

I exercise because that's a nice thing to do for my body.

You've broken those systems.

So that's why I think Jenny Craig did so much damage then.

And even though it's crumbled now,

we've got generations of women

who will never get over the impact.

It's interesting that actually statistically in Australia,

there are way more men than women who are classified

as medically overweight or obese.

We know that there are issues with the classification

of medically overweight or obese,

but that's the facts.

Like it's something like 75% of males in Australia.

And yet they are not targeted

with anything like the same amount of culture and advertising.

And I also think it's such a good point, Claire,

that's worth repeating is that we've never had this business,

whether it's via old fashioned and inverted commas,

weight loss companies like Jenny Craig,

or whether it's the apps,

or whether it's the wellness movement,

or whether it's all the different ways we can eat now.

We've never had it more monetized and more sold to us,

and yet it's made absolutely zero difference actually

to the nation and the Western world.

And I think that's the biggest irony that we don't acknowledge,

that it's like we had this huge boom in weight loss companies

in weight loss messaging.

It did nothing.

If it was a problem, it didn't solve it.

Hi, Lynn for Out Loud.

Regarding the favourites,

I'm very happy that the Tara Milk is replacing the dream.

And I'm very happy also that the flake is being replaced by the 12

because it's the same experience without the mess.

The two that I would get rid of are the cherry ripe

and the turkey to light because who likes those, certainly not me.

So I read an interview with Sarah Wilson

in the newspaper on the weekend.

Sarah is a prominent ex-journalist.

She's an author, a speaker, and she's now an activist.

She wrote I Quit Sugar.

And unfortunately, she says she can't get a date.

She can have sex.

She says that she often will have sex with people that she meets on the apps

and that some of her friends are quite surprised

at how quickly she sleeps with guys.

They'll be like, but wait, you just went out to dinner with him

and you went, you know, now you had sex.

And she made a really interesting point to that,

which subverted the whole idea of slut shaming and everything

in that she said Australian men have a real problem with vulnerability.

And often when you have sex with someone,

it's a way to cut to the chase of getting to know them faster

and getting more access to their vulnerability.

And she said some people find it strange

because I'm more like a guy in that way.

I can do it without feeling bad afterwards

or overthinking it, I suppose.

But she would like a relationship.

And she says she's prominent.

She's influential.

She doesn't usually... She's rich.

She's rich. She's famous.

She doesn't give much thought to the fact that when she goes on a date

and she's on all the apps,

that the person she's dating will probably know who she is.

She says, I've been single for 15 years.

Men get alarmed by the fact that I'm quite like a man.

I'm pretty bold. I don't get courtship.

I've never wanted gifts.

How are you listening to someone who is equally well-known,

successful and single as well?

And she expressed a similar sentiment.

Yeah, echoed for me this Sarah Wilson quote

because she basically said men say they want women like a certain thing

but they don't really.

I was listening to Shonda Rhimes,

who's an incredible...

What are the most successful humans in television?

She created Grey's Anatomy.

She created Scandal.

She created Bridgerton.

She is a legend.

And she has built the most extraordinary career

and she's incredibly famous, incredibly wealthy.

Her deal to leave network television

to go to Netflix and do Bridgerton was...

Mine.

Hundreds of millions of dollars.

Boggling.

And she's got two kids who she had by herself.

She said, I can't get a date to save my life.

Maybe I'm a troll but I can't get a date to save my life.

And Dax Shepard says this is what every successful woman

that they have in the studio says.

Men will date parallel to themselves,

status-wise and below.

Predominantly women date at their status line or above.

Here's the thing.

I would happily date like an amazing carpenter.

I don't care as long as they're passionate

about what they do.

Be a broke painter.

Come home when he's got paintings he's happy with.

I'd be fine.

It's fine.

Yes, yes.

It's just what he'd be fine.

Right, that's the problem.

Yeah, exactly.

That was happening early in my career too.

I had a little house and it was like, oof.

I just decided I know the family I want

and I'm holding it back for reasons that don't make any sense.

I literally don't have time to be out there looking for a husband

and I'm not a husband shopper anyway.

And Derek Shepherd says there's an almost impossibly small number

of men in the dating pool who will date a woman

who is that successful, that financially secure,

needs them that little,

and that that is one of the things that every successful woman struggles with.

Men, he said, will date across status and monetary demographics.

If you're a successful man,

you're dating pool expands rather than women's,

which anecdotally contracts,

you're dating pool expands and they might date women

who are younger than them, older than them,

well, older than them, don't know,

poorer than them, same status as them, richer than them a little bit.

But women will only date men of the same status or above.

This is his theory.

And I want to know if we think this is true.

I did some research and there is some social research that shows

women are socialized to date up,

whether it's conscious, whether it's not,

I'm sure it's changing, I'm sure that it's something

not according to Shonda Rhimes.

in the next few years that maybe with our idea of gender being more fluid

than we thought before, that hopefully that will change.

But it's a thing that women look up as status

and when you're already so high status,

there are very few people at that higher status.

I think this is true, but I think it is devastating that it is true

because I think it is patriarchy.

And I think it's the fact that men consciously or unconsciously

feel threatened by women who are so successful, so independent.

And the thing about men dating across status lines,

a little bit bullshit, right?

What do you mean a little bit bullshit?

Because if they're not dating women more successful than them,

are they dating across and down and women are dating across and up?

Yeah, I think that's exactly what's happening.

The fact is that it is far more common for a 50-year-old man

to date a 25-year-old woman than the reverse is.

It's significantly rarer for it to be a woman who is older.

Although interestingly Sarah Wilson said, she likes the young men.

She said young men don't have those same hang-ups.

That's what I've heard.

So she says that she has more success dating younger men

because they're not so intimidated by powerful women.

Whether that's because they are imagining that in their future

they will be that or maybe because we're actually moving the dial

on that patriarchal model that they have to be the breadwinners

and all that stuff.

I don't know.

Can I share a theory that is horribly patriarchal

but might have some truth to it?

Please do.

Is it that men are a little bit confused at the moment

about what their role is meant to be?

Because for hundreds, if not thousands of years,

men were meant to be the breadwinners.

In a relatively short period of time, literally a few decades,

men are not necessarily meant to be the breadwinners anymore

and that is confusing.

And I guess if they're in a relationship with somebody

who's making a whole lot of money, is very independent,

who can have kids by themselves, who can own a house by themselves,

I think they don't necessarily know what their role is

and I've heard men in my life say this.

I agree with that because I think that we've seen

what options are available for a woman

change so much in just a couple of generations, right?

Our lives look so different from our mothers, our grandmothers

and certainly our great-grandmothers,

whereas men's don't generally, you know?

And so what it means to be a man has not changed,

the first bloke and being a handbag

and these men are outliers when they're not an alpha guy.

And yet every woman I know almost who is successful

is either single and not all of them don't want to be single.

Oh my God, friends who are single are thrilled to be single

but they've all been married and divorced

so maybe that's different.

Sarah and Shonda have never been married

and Sarah actually says it's never anything that I've wanted

and I think that's probably confusing to people as well.

There's lots of different scales

but my friends who are dating still are often dating younger men

or men who are not, you would say they're equals on paper.

If it's true that women are stuck in the patriarchal model

as in the idea that a successful partner for a powerful person

and we touched on this a little bit

and I'll tell us with conversation

that they should be either equally successful or more so

then it's a tragedy.

The opportunity here is enormous and brilliant.

It could change all of our lives, right?

Because there are lots and lots of men

who would love to have a lower key career

and be more involved with their families

and be that support person and all those things

and for a lot of years that wasn't seen as a viable option for them.

I mean I've said this lots of times, I'll say it again

when my partner stepped back in his job to look after our kids

when we first had Matilda, people were like a gog

and that was 13 years ago and not much has changed.

We work with a woman who has just come back to work

and her husband's taken three months off to look after their baby

and everywhere she goes people just go,

oh no, what, no way.

So that's not changing fast enough and it needs to

because it's the path to happiness and equality for all of us

and also I believe that it's less about gender

once you start pulling away all the patriarchal bullshit

and more about personality types

and there are going to be the people like Yashondas

who are chasing their dream for one of less wanky language,

the big life, the big dollars, the big everything

and there are males like that and there are females like that

and that's fantastic but it shouldn't be about the gender.

You've got to find the right partnership to help you build that life

and I think that if we could strip back some of that

and we can free men and give them more options

for what that looks like then everybody will be happier.

We've blown up gender for women in a really exciting way

but we just haven't done it at the same pace for men

and in the episode of But Are You Happy That Drops Tomorrow

actually I speak to Steph Claismith, incredibly successful

and she talks about the fact that her husband is staying at home with their baby

and she says that she thinks all partnerships,

heterosexual or not, should approach the relationship

like a same-sex couple in that it's just a logistical conversation about

I'm actually earning more money at the moment

so it makes sense for me to go back to work and for you to stay there

it's not about gender roles, it's not about de-masculating you

it's about what's best for our family.

But it also has to be about desire.

Again, take the gender out of it.

If the person who is putting things on the back burner is resenting that

then happiness is elusive, right?

So it's got to be about desire

and I think that that is 100% right

as we need to unpick the...

and all of us do in our language and our judgment

and when we read stories like that and we go,

ooh, all we express all this surprise when men turn out to be perfectly capable

of looking after a baby or whatever

we all need to check ourselves

about how we're reinforcing that all the time.

If you want to make out loud part of your routine five days a week

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To get full access, follow the link in the show notes

and a big thank you to all our current subscribers.

This week, the New Yorker published

a long form article by JR Mo Ringer

called Notes from Prince Harry's Ghost Rider.

It begins with an anecdote about a tense conversation.

JR Mo Ringer was having with Harry

over a particular scene in spare

and how he was giving him some advice

about leaving a detail out at the end of the scene

and Harry wanted to include it because it made him look good.

It was quite flattering to him

and Mo Ringer was giving him this advice about memoir

and how it's more about what you leave out than what you put in.

And by the end, Harry completely agreed with his advice

and they had a laugh about it.

What's interesting is that the media has taken that anecdote

and a lot of headlines are about the confrontation

between Prince Harry's Ghost Rider and Prince Harry.

And that is ironic

because that's exactly what the article's about.

I'm fascinated by Ghost Riders.

I found this essay to be so interesting

because how much is their voice?

How much is the person?

And I thought it was very interesting

that he called the person the author

even though he was the one that wrote the book.

He's a really successful Ghost Rider, right?

I remember that when we first heard about spare

everyone was a bit like, hmm, well,

and then we found out who was writing it

and everyone was like, oh, why?

Why were we so impressed with him?

Because he did Andre Agassi.

That's one of the best bloody memoirs of all time.

And he did Film Night, who's the Nike guy.

He's making the point that throughout the process of spare

all sorts of lies were published about the book

and it actually made him more understanding

of why Harry wanted to write it in the first place.

That's why it's so ironic that that anecdote

from the beginning of this essay was taken out of context.

Because when it was released I heard

that he had distanced himself from it,

that they'd had a falling out and he was no longer involved.

Total lies.

Fascinating.

But the article is also about the reality

of being a Ghost Rider.

And how bizarre it is that they work on something

often for years and then completely disappear.

And this guy goes into how he wrote Andre Agassi's memoir

and when Agassi was interviewed in the media

he wanted to yell at the television, credit me.

He was shouting, say my name at the TV

and the next day all the guests in the breakfast were like...

Had heard him.

Okay.

Crazy person.

But basically I want to talk about the central problem

for Prince Harry and now it appears...

Which one?

...for Mo Ringer is how do you move on with your life

when you feel profoundly misunderstood?

And I feel that this article is a bit of an allegory

for being the spare and the tension of being the person

in the background who doesn't have a voice.

And I think for this Ghost Rider,

writing this article was him writing himself

back into the narrative.

What's amazing to me is when people wrote in reviews

and said about how well it was written,

now he didn't write it.

So when he was saying,

about Andre Agassi,

that was in response to Andre Agassi being asked a question

on a talk show about the writing

and being praised for the writing.

And Andre Agassi was just like, thanks so much.

And what was interesting to me,

because when I read it, it was clearly not Harry.

You know, the literary references, the...

It's beautiful.

...the phrasing, the quality of the writing.

You know, we've all been writing and editing

our whole careers.

And you can't just do that when you're a prince.

It's hard.

It's really, really hard.

Even if you are a professional writer,

you can't necessarily write that well

in that kind of lyrical way.

What fascinated me about this is that he said

that he never records.

He never records his authors or his subjects

when he's doing a memoir,

because he says then it feels like they're being deposed

in a court case.

Yeah.

And I got that from Spare,

that there was parts of sort of Harry's vibe,

but the writing was not him.

It's interesting because I think that Mo Ringer

is really famous in writing circles, right?

Do you remember, we had a conversation years ago

after the biopic about Elton John came out

about whether you would be Elton or a Bernie

in reference to Bernie Torpen.

I think you said Bernie.

I did say Bernie, which is bullshit.

I couldn't understand that.

You're like obviously Elton.

But this is a similar kind of thing, right?

Because context on that,

Bernie Torpen wrote with Elton John,

but very much involved in heaps

of Elton John's most famous songs.

He got lots and lots of money,

lots of money because he's co-writing,

so you can have all the money

and a lot of respect within your industry,

but what you don't get is the fame.

Now, with everything we know about fame

and how damaging it is

and how awful it's made lives like Prince Harry's,

and everything that we are told all the time now

in all of the tell-all documentaries

about what it was like to be famous in the 90s

or chased by paparazzi if you're Britney Spears.

We all just stick our fingers in our ears

and go, la la la, we'd rather have the fame thanks

because what this piece explores

is how Mo Ringer has wrestled

with the ghost element of this

and so had all his other ghost writer friends

who he talked about.

And he has at times written things under his own name.

He wrote a novel that it was beautiful

but not very well received.

It got a bad review and it nearly killed him,

he said, and he went into seclusion.

It's interesting that this job that he has

would come with a lot of money.

Like, he would be very rich, right?

So rich.

You don't get to write Prince Harry's biography,

which allegedly Harry got $24 million or whatever for,

and not be getting a very fat paycheck.

The whole of the industry knows it was you.

Everyone who read that book,

who knows anything about anything, knows that was you.

And yet still, there's this kind of head tilt

at him and like, oh, a bit of a ghost writer, are we?

A bit like in the band, are we?

I think what's fascinating is he feels that.

But I think he wrestles with that

because I think that he feels it sometimes

and then other times he doesn't

because he doesn't want to be famous.

He talked about getting a taste of Harry's life

on the day the book came out

and the Daily Mail turned up at his house

and a woman just appeared at his window

and he was making breakfast

and all that kind of stuff.

And he was like, I got a taste of it and it was awful.

I wonder if though there's a difference

between pursuing fame and pursuing credit.

Validation.

And he does want that.

And interestingly, it's the same pursuit that Harry wanted.

And the fact is that when you don't pursue credit,

when you don't pursue putting your name on something

and people knowing it was you, there is misunderstanding

because he says there were things about the book

that people said certain facts were wrong, whatever.

And he couldn't stand up and argue

because he was just the ghost.

No, I've realized.

Well, he wasn't just the ghost though.

He was a very famous ghost.

And when the book deal was announced,

it was announced that he'd be writing it with Harry

because everyone knew that Harry could write it.

It wasn't meant to be.

Yes, but also he would have had, what is it now,

about six months, there would have been a gag period

where he wouldn't have been able to give any interviews.

He wouldn't have been able to speak.

So this New Yorker essay would be him setting the record straight.

So that idea of, like, when you read a book by a celebrity,

99% of the time they have not written that book.

In Australia as well.

There are a handful of ghost writers in Australia

who write the majority of celebrity memoirs, biographies,

autobiographies.

But isn't it interesting that we, like,

that changes things in our perception?

Because what Mo Ringer says too is,

Agassi actually said that his name could be on the cover

and he said he didn't want it.

I think that the publishers probably wouldn't have wanted his name

on the cover of this because it's much better

if it just says Prince Harry.

But he's probably in a position where he could pursue that credit

if he wanted to.

But also it's funny how we kind of are a bit sniffy

that celebrities didn't write their own memoirs

when we all know that writing is a very specific skill.

So how could they?

Do you know who did? Pamela Anderson.

Yes.

And that's why hers, I think she took a much smaller advance

than she would have from other publishing companies

who said, we really want you to write,

but we don't want you to actually write.

We want someone to write it.

And arguably it could have been a better book.

I didn't read her book, although I did watch the documentary.

There was a lot of, she wanted to write a lot of it

in the form of poetry.

Okay.

I'd like to write my memoir in haiku or limerick form.

It's a very personal choice and it's a very difficult art,

the relationship must be so intense and then over.

He says that, you know, they were talking for literally years

and that towards the end he was in Harry and Meghan's guest house

and Meghan was bringing him tea and biscuits

and all those things.

And he was very embedded in the family.

But he also said, which anyone who's read the book would know for sure.

And I can't even imagine if it ended up the way it did

and Mo Ringer says he pushed back on it a lot.

The book reads like Harry wants to rebut every rumour

and every headline, every story that ever has been told about him.

Harry is like, this is my chance to set the record straight.

And if so much of that made it into the book,

can you imagine how much of it Mo Ringer must have been like enough already?

Nobody cares that they said that you've got hairy toes.

There's a very famous piece in the London review of books

a few years ago by Julian Assange's ghost writer

that was like 25,000 words.

It was practically longer than the book.

And it was like reading, wow, some full-on drug trip.

I mean, the extent which he got involved in Julian Assange's life

and then Julian Assange ended up, they would have fights

and then I think he said, I'm not doing it with you.

I'm going to do it myself.

And it went on for years and it never happened.

And Jay Mo Ringer said the same thing.

There were two, before he did Harry, before he agreed to Harry,

he would did two other ghost writing jobs

with famous people who pulled the pin after he had done years of work.

Oh my God.

Can you imagine?

You've got a recommendation for us, Claire, before we go.

I do.

It's on this theme of writing, I believe.

It is on the theme of writing and it's a little bit on the theme of being a ghost writer

because this book is called The War of Art.

It is a play on The Art of War, very famous book.

And it's by Steven Pressfield.

And I've got a bit of a funny story about how I came to find it.

I went to the GP and I was getting a skin cancer check, so I was mostly naked.

And the GP was a beautiful man and I was feeling uncomfortable because he was so beautiful.

Oh, you mean like a physically beautiful man?

He was a beautiful man.

He was a beautiful man.

I thought he was a lovely person.

Well, both, but he was beautiful and I was naked showing him my moles.

And so I was trying to make small talk and he said,

what do you do?

And I couldn't shut up because I was like, just don't look at my weird body.

And I said, oh, I'm trying to write a book.

I'm trying to write a book.

And he stopped me and he was like, you know what?

I have just read this great book about writing that I think will change your life.

And I was like, thank you for telling me that.

Were you still standing there, dude?

I'm just in my weird just standing there so strangely.

And I was like, thank you.

So I went and downloaded it straight away and it's really short.

I mean, I need both of you to read it because it will change your life.

But it is also for out louders who are living their life and they know there's something

they should be doing that they're not doing.

And I think that's almost everyone.

Do you mean they should be writing a book?

Whether it's they feel called to write a book, to start a business, to paint, to whatever.

I think most of us have something we're called to do that we're not doing.

Something creative, do you mean?

It doesn't have to be creative, but something bigger that scares us.

And we're not doing it.

Like getting a pixie cut.

Yeah, that can be it.

Getting a fringe.

Moving to the country.

Sorry, I'm now in a role.

I can't stop thinking of things.

I think it is a very common experience.

Yes.

And Steven Pressfield calls it resistance, that we instinctively resist the thing we want the most

because we know it has the potential to change our life and that's quite scary.

And it has been the most revolutionary thing in me trying to write a book

because he goes into all the forms of resistance and how their procrastination, perfectionism, fear, self-doubt

and all the excuses you give yourself to not do the thing you should be doing.

And he was in his fifties before he wrote his first book

and he was older than that when he had a book that actually sold.

Basically, it's really woo-woo.

It's like Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic, before Big Magic and even more woo-woo.

And he's basically saying all you have to do if you have something that you want to achieve

is sit quietly for a period of time every day and the muse will come.

That is you beating your resistance every day.

Come and live in my house and see how quiet things get.

I'm transposing that onto Holly's thing about getting a fringe.

Like you've just got to sit there.

And the fringe will come.

I'm sure this book is fantastic, but there's nothing that will annoy a lot of particularly female writers

more than being told they need to sit and wait for the muse to come

because they're like, there is no space in my life to sit around waiting for the muse to come.

It's also very passive.

It is, but he's basically saying, and this is what I found.

I'm sure you find this too, Holly, that if you set a timer and go, I'm in a right for an hour,

you can't sit and do nothing.

Something comes.

And the reason we resist it is because we go, it's going to be hard.

It's going to be painful.

I mean, I hate it.

I don't hate writing.

I hate starting.

And that's what he says.

He says, creative people do not hate writing.

They hate sitting down to write.

Correct.

And that's exactly what it is.

Why?

Because of the resistance.

Because of the resistance.

And he has, Mia, I told you this slightly awkward line.

Holocaust reference.

Holocaust reference.

I swear it's really profound.

He says, Adolf Hitler went to art school.

His parents gave him money, I think, to go to Berlin and study art.

And he ended up starting World War II instead.

Oh my God.

He says, it was easier for Adolf Hitler to start World War II than it was to stare at

a blank canvas.

All right.

I don't think I'm reading this book anymore.

No.

It's beautiful.

And it's woo-woo.

And it's creativity.

And I want everyone to read it and send me their favorite quotes.

Okay.

I mean, I'm going to do that.

And I love that you read that instead of writing your book.

No, that's exactly it.

It's a way to procrastinate, but feel good about procrastinating.

That is all we have time for today.

Do not forget, friends, that we recorded an emergency coronation debrief just for

subscribers straight after the coronation.

You were very shouty at me in that episode.

You were shouty at me.

She was like, I know how the royal family worked, Holly.

You were both upset because you got trolled.

That's what happened.

I think we were coming off feeling a bit tense.

We were.

We'd been both trolled.

And so we came out swinging at each other.

But I was just trying to say something about Princess Anne.

Anyway, have a listen.

I know it's that thing of like everybody shouting at us.

So we're going to shout at each other.

Anyway, if you want to listen to that, the link is in the show notes.

Thank you so much for listening.

Thank you, Claire, for filling in for Jesse.

This episode is produced by Emma Gillespie with audio production

by Leah Porges and assistant production from Susanna Makin.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Shout out to any Mamma Mia subscribers listening.

If you love the show and you want to support us,

subscribing to Mamma Mia is the very best way to do it.

There's a link in the episode description.

Thank you.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.