Mamamia Out Loud: Is #GirlDinner Just The Way Women Eat?

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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 Wednesday, the 12th of July.

I'm Holly Wainwright.

I'm Mia Friedman.

And I'm Claire Steedon.

And on the show today, should you get paid less if you want to work from home?

That seems like an incendiary suggestion, but it is a real one that we will be discussing.

Plus, is viral hashtag girl dinner just a dressed up toddler meal?

And the day in the life of a baby.

The TikTok videos new mothers are making from their baby's perspectives.

But first...

In case you missed it, all I've been thinking about for weeks is the orca uprising.

You may have heard news stories about orcas attacking yachts.

I've forgotten what an orca is.

Is it a killer whale?

Okay.

But they changed the name because they thought killer whale was stigmatising.

Free Willy.

Free Willy.

Blackfish.

Tillicum.

I have my conjecture that they thought that killer whale was stigmatising.

Yes.

So that's why we call them orcas.

Yeah.

Since 2020, a small pod of orcas in the straight of Gibraltar have been ramming vessels, pressing

their bodies and heads into the hulls and biting, even snapping off the rudders.

Over three years, more than 500 interactions have been recorded and three boats sunk and

dozens of others damaged.

They're just like, get out of our house.

No, they are.

Then last month for the first time, this behaviour was recorded in another place when an orca

rammed a boat near Shetland.

Now, this whole orca story has gone completely viral online with memes and tweets about orcas

taking back the ocean and eating the rich by destroying their boat.

I've seen them being like directed towards like Jeff Bees or Sushiot and stuff like that.

They're like, go for him.

Apparently, all of this can be traced back to one orca, a matriarch named White Gladys.

White Gladys?

Some people are calling her a communist orca.

We don't know why they're doing this, but we do know orcas communicate with each other

and experience social learning and culture.

Orcas in particular areas develop certain behaviours like those wildlife documentaries

you've seen where they do the wave to get the seal off the ice.

I wanted to talk about orcas and I was like, I've watched Frozen Planet 2 with my children

and orcas are evil and I no longer have any sympathy for them and I'm not rooting for them

while they're mowing down the millionaire yachts because they are very clever and they get

together to like do things like swim under icebergs to create a wake that will then shake

the iceberg and shake the baby seals off so they can snap them all up.

They're very clever.

So you're a team boat.

Sometimes they communicate and do these behaviours that are adaptive.

What's Gladys got to do with it?

Sometimes they do things just fun.

And so I think Gladys is just trolling.

But there are theories this boat ramming behaviour is motivated by revenge

because orcas can live up to 100 and are really good memories.

So they may remember a time the ocean wasn't so dominated by humans.

And now they can hear all the noises and all the weird things we're doing in the ocean

and they're like, get out.

Also someone of the other orcas has told them about those camps they get kept in

where they're taught to jump through hoops and stuff and they're like, see what?

Exactly.

So the vibe is that orcas are very smart and if they wanted to hurt humans

there are easier ways for them to do so because there has never been a instance

of an orca attacking a human in the wild.

It just doesn't happen.

They're quite gentle holly.

But they've killed a lot of people in captivity, right?

A few.

A few.

Like there have been those instances and the argument is they only do that

when they are under horrible conditions.

But they can probably sense how their environment has changed over the last several decades.

And as Grimes tweeted, we deserve to have our boats rammed, frankly.

This week a whole lot of Australians won the right to work from home five days a week forever.

Under a deal agreed with unions, the Australian Public Service will not be able to impose

limits on the number of days its 176,000 employees can work from home.

In the past couple of years there's been a lot of debate about working from home.

Is it good?

Is it bad?

But what about is it fair?

Former Victorian Premier Geoff Kennett has spoken out today that we are seeing a divide

in our community between those who are able to work from home and those who can't.

There is social dangers taking place and divides that are occurring in our community.

Part of it has been generated by COVID.

In other words, we learnt from and through COVID we could work from home.

But more recently it is the massive increase in the cost of living that is making many people

who can stay at home and do their work as opposed to those like our nurses and teachers

and emergency services who have to go to work.

And I suspect the cost of living is now a very major factor when I speak to young people

in particular about a decision to work from home, which is quite understandable.

It's no one's fault, it's just a natural reaction which is in itself creating a divide

between those people who have to go to work to deliver their service

and those who can now stay at home and do so much cheaply and obviously save money.

I think this is an interesting point because when this has come up before

it's very much been employers want people to get back to the office

and the CBD areas in cities are dwindling and a lot of small businesses are suffering

because nobody is coming into work in offices, everybody's working from home.

But this idea that it's cheaper to work from home, there's no transport costs,

you've got less spending on a work wardrobe, you can eat stuff out of the fridge

so you don't have to buy an expensive sandwich.

This is a new argument in the whole working from home versus going into the office debate.

Holy look, the idea of people trading their flexibility for a lower salary

so saying, I do want to work from home, therefore I will accept less money

so I don't have an advantage over the people who have no choice.

It's an interesting one, you work from home a couple of days a week,

are you happy to earn less to pay for that freedom?

I'm asking for a friend.

Jeff Kennett isn't wrong about the divide, right?

Like he's not wrong about that, but there have always been

and there will always be a lot of divides in workforces

and there's divides between people who work shift works and people who work nine to five

and there are all kinds of divides.

I think that this is a little bit of a convenient argument,

this idea that it's so entitled to work from home, these people should get paid less

because he didn't explicitly say that in the grab that we played you

but that is kind of the point that's being drawn out here

is that maybe people who have to come into the office

should get paid more than people who can stay at home.

It's a very shaky argument that because working from home is not necessarily cheaper.

You have to pay for your heating, your power.

I mean, I know that I've spent a lot of money on sorting out all my internet,

both in my old house and my new house, making sure you've got everything set up.

If you want to get nitty gritty about it, you could go,

well, who's supplementing my power bills and who's paying for my internet connection?

And obviously I'm not doing that.

I feel like there is a group of people who are very resistant to the fact

that shit has changed and that a lot of people are saying,

give me good reasons why I should come to work.

All of the people that you just listed and who Jeff Kennett just listed,

nurses, teachers, retail workers, anyone in the hospitality industry who can't,

putting that aside, people who can do their jobs from home are saying,

why should I come to work?

And this argument isn't going anywhere and this is the latest sort of frontier of it.

If this happened, if it actually happened that people who were going to work from home

had to take a pay cut or a lower salary to do so,

it would disproportionately affect women without question.

Because given the options of flexibility or not, women will often choose flexibility

for the reasons that are quite obvious.

They often bear the load of caring.

It allows them to be more available, to do pickup, drop off, all that stuff.

It makes life a lot easier in many ways for families.

And unfortunately, that's nearly always women who take that option.

So they're going to now be adversely affected and get paid less,

as well as all the other disadvantages that we already put on a female workforce because of that.

What Jeff, what his argument is also not acknowledging is that companies

that allow employees to work from home have lower overheads.

So they need less office space, less power, less cleaning.

And they make more profit.

Well, that's what I thought, right?

Unless you're working completely from home five days a week and you never come into the office,

rent costs are fixed.

So you can't just have desks, I suppose you could hot desk,

but rent costs, internet costs, lighting power, those kinds of things,

having a computer at someone's desk, those things are all fixed.

So an employer doesn't actually save money.

But over, I think at the moment and also in the next few years,

there will be a lot of businesses where they don't actually have a desk for every employee.

Yeah, right.

And so then they can afford to have a smaller office and pay less rent.

Exactly.

So less rent, less power, all of that stuff.

And as Holly said, there's all sorts of things you do in order to have an office at home.

The only measure of the value of an employee should be how much work they're doing or the quality of that work.

It should not be whether or not they commute, whether or not they work from home.

And the other thing is, if he's concerned about people going into work not being valued,

then let's talk about how nurses and teachers should be paid more,

but not lower the wages of mostly women who would be coming in.

Because what Jeff Kennett is talking about is the conflict between this whole remote working thing

and cost of living pressures.

That's what's happening.

It's all coming to a head because people are saying,

wait a second, I can't actually afford to live within 10 kilometers of my office.

I can't afford to do that.

And that's one of the divides that, you know, I mean, I know it's a stereotype,

but the stereotype has a reason.

This is why managers are much more likely to want people to come to the office.

Managers are much more likely to live close to the office and have a car spot.

They're more likely to have a short commute and a car spot.

They're also more likely to spend a lot of their day in things like meetings,

which are better and easier if you are in the same room.

But the people who are doing the do are not spending that time in meetings.

They can do a lot.

And this is obviously very dependent on the kind of job you do,

but their ability to do their job is not affected in the same way.

If they're not in meetings all day and it doesn't require a whole lot of open communication,

it's a different ball game.

But I've been saying that if you, I think in the next few years,

and I think it's true now as well,

if you are recruiting and you are only looking at talent

within 10 kilometres of your physical office,

you're not going to get the best talent.

And I think that is a loss for the workforce.

Well, there's also a big labour shortage at the moment.

So the balance of power very much rests with employees.

I mean, Seek, the big job site has said that one of the top search terms

is work from home or flexibility

and that a very high percentage of people who are looking for new jobs

are saying that it would be a deal breaker for them

if they had to be full-time in an office.

I understand all that.

It's interesting because also this week it was announced that Canva,

who is the extraordinary global success story.

Canva is a tech company.

They make an app that you can do design on.

We use it a lot here at Mamma Mia.

It was started by a young woman called Melanie Perkins

from Perth.

It's now one of the biggest companies in the world.

It's worth billions and billions of dollars.

And they've just been named the best employer in the world.

And I was watching an interview on Sunrise this morning

with their chief vibe officer, Rich, you got to love.

Can we have a chief vibe officer?

I would like that to be me.

I wouldn't be it, but I like one.

Certainly wouldn't be you, Claes Stevens.

Probably it wouldn't be me either.

Given my views on certain things, I would be killing vibes.

But he was talking about at Canva, they have a degree of flexibility,

but in the office they have an in-house chocolate chip cookie chef.

You can bring dogs.

They have free yoga classes.

They have a gym.

They provide farm grown, organic, hot breakfasts and lunches for free.

Like there's all of these things.

And this has long been the case with tech companies in the US, right?

Because it's like, you know, there'll be a dry cleaner

and there'll be all these things on site.

And the idea is that it seems very attractive,

but you know, as people have pointed out,

it's also to keep people there.

Like people don't do that for free.

It's so that you get the best people in a competitive market

and also so that they are encouraged.

And as employers, we are constantly told in the last couple of years,

you've got to make it worth people's while to come into the office.

But that also comes at a cost.

Like if every small business is having to say,

here's all this extra free stuff.

Like the cost of living doesn't just impact on employees.

It also impacts on employers.

And this idea that all employers are these, you know,

Jeff Bezos type characters on yachts, they're not.

A lot of small businesses are lady startups

that might employ one or two or six people.

A hundred percent agree, but I don't think it has to be that extreme.

I think that actually most employees don't give a shit

about fresh chocolate chip cookies.

They care about being respected and trusted to do their work.

And they're saying, if you're going to make me,

make me, and I know it's a very sounds like a very petulant turn,

if you're going to make me come in, commute, like rearrange

my childcare arrangements, like have this effect on my family

that to be honest, over the last few years,

a lot of employees have readjusted their whole lives to this,

to this idea that no, they don't have to rush out the door at seven

and get the kid in before school care and da, da, da, da, da.

But if you're going to ask me to do that,

you have to give me a reason to do it,

and it doesn't have to be chocolate chip cookies.

It just has to be when I'm there,

what is important about me being here?

What couldn't I be doing in my living room?

And I think that that's actually what people care about

is they're questioning the purpose more than just like,

well, this is the way it used to be.

Why can't it be like that again?

It's like, well, the reason it can't be like that again

is because my life, my mental health,

I don't mean me personally.

No, no, no, I understand.

My life, my mental health, all of those things

are better in this new world.

So why would I go back to the way you want it

just because you want it?

I get it.

So just because you want it, you know,

we're very familiar with this certain type of middle manager

or senior manager who needs to see the people at their desks

to, you know, feel important

and to feel that everybody's working.

That is certainly not where I'm coming from

and I think we've moved way past that.

However, it's very hard to measure some of this stuff.

Like you talk about output or outcome clear

and it should only be measured on that.

There are some things that are hard to measure.

So for example, in the last few weeks,

I spent the whole day yesterday dealing with issues

that were nobody's fault but that came about

because nobody was in the same place over a period of time.

People had been doing a whole lot of work in Slack

which is like instant messaging or email

and it just has led to miscommunication and misunderstandings

and all of these things.

And so I spend as a business owner and as a manager,

often entire days, weeks,

undoing and rectifying problems that have been caused

by people all being remote.

So you understand it's not black and white either.

It's not workers against employers.

Like there is nothing as a leadership team

that we spend more time talking about.

Like what is the balance?

Everyone's trying to work it out, right?

Because you don't want people to be miserable

and you want to attract the best people and retain them.

But also there are some things that just work better

when people are there.

I agree with all of that a million percent.

I'm not black and white about this either.

I think it's very hard to manage teams from remotely.

I think it's very hard to build culture remotely.

I think it's very hard to teach people anything remotely.

I agree with all of that.

But I think the tension is we're not going back

to the old way a hundred percent.

And so instead of it being the thing that you're saying

of like I spend all my time on picking these problems,

we need better systems for making it work.

That's a good point.

You know what I mean?

It's like it's not just it would all be better

if we were sitting in the office.

Because to be really honest in our work environment

we all communicate on Slack all the time

when we did all sit in the same office.

That's true too.

So it's like you change that culture,

you work out how that works better.

I think that's what employees want.

And the last point I'll make on this is about women.

I think that unofficially women have swapped flexibility

for pay rises and for rates of pay for a very long time.

I know a lot of women in my world who are like,

you know I could get paid more somewhere else,

but my boss lets me leave it three on Thursdays

and Tuesdays or you know lets me work from home

on Mondays and Thursdays or whatever.

Like women have been making those kind of deals

about their career for a very long time.

And I think there are different phases in your career

where your priorities might be money, money, money,

and then your priority might be flexibility, flexibility.

And so I think that that's always been a reality,

but it's a bit worrying to think that it could be legislated

into a reality that's like, well, if you're not going to come in,

we're just going to pay you less,

which will just affect women more.

A pile of cheese and some crackers,

three types of smoked meats and a pickle,

strawberries, prosciutto and a dip,

or a big slice of cake.

What do you eat for dinner when it's just you

and you can eat whatever you want?

That thing, whatever it is,

and especially if it requires zero cooking

is now called hashtag girl dinner.

A girl just came on here and said how like

in medieval times peasants had to eat nothing

but bread and cheese and how awful that was

and she was like, that's my ideal meal.

This is my dinner.

I call this girl dinner.

And it is such a big trend that this week

the New York Times did a serious article about it.

Girl dinner is both chaotic and filling

as one TikTok commenter put it

requiring none of the forethought cooking

or plating demanded by an actual meal.

As another commenter observed,

it's no preparation, just vibes.

I witnessed a very enthusiastic discussion

about girl dinner in the office the other night

when my mostly young, mostly singlish co-workers

were going home and discussing

what they were going to have for their girl dinner

and what the parameters of it were.

Laura Brodnick was very specific

that a girl dinner must bring joy

because one of our co-workers said

I've been busy moving house last night,

I just had a bowl of grapes.

Laura Brodnick said, no, that is not girl dinner.

Do not muddy girl dinner with that.

It must bring joy.

And then Elfie Scott wrote a throw-down article

about it on Mamma Mia yesterday called

you could eat girl dinner or you could grow up.

Elfie argued and said all too often

these kinds of obsessions can just act

as masks for disordered eating.

And as a trend, girl dinner feels similar

to when creators started making

what I eat in a day content.

She goes on to say, but my honest gut feeling

about girl dinner is that we should probably

just grow up a bit.

Grouping the concept of a small snacky dinner

as a girl thing feels belittling

and it feels like a diminutive bird-like meal

where we pick up morsels.

It feels like we are once again defining

femininity by smallness.

Now, okay, Elfie, I get that.

But who said girl dinner has to be small?

First of all, your pile of pickles can be

as big as you want.

And also, and this is a serious question,

I do rankle a bit at the infantilization

of like hashtag girl on this.

But why aren't women just allowed to

eat the food they want to eat without it

being some kind of red flag?

If I love a big pile of pickles and some

smoked salmon and dip for Friday night tea,

which I do, if I don't have to cook for anyone

else, that is what I'm having.

It's not disordered eating.

It's just my lazy, delicious, happy place.

What do you call it?

I call it a bitsy tea.

That sounds adult.

It's a British way.

This is bits and it's my tea because

where I grew up, your dinner is called tea.

Claire, you think hashtag girl dinner is

bullshit? Why are we policing what women

eat and why are we so serious about

something so silly?

I have to admit, I hadn't thought about this

critically until I read Elfie's article

because sometimes, like you, Holly,

I love a dinner that's just crackers

and hummus and strawberries and whatever

else happens to be around.

But I am not eating like seven crackers

and just a little spoonful of hummus.

I'm eating the whole packet of crackers

and the whole tub of hummus and

I'm probably still hungry for dinner later.

I think the argument

that most girl dinners are just

smaller than normal dinners, as Elfie

says, is valid.

And I do hate the idea

that all women eat like birds

and just pick at things.

And I think I read

Elfie's article and was fist pumping

because I've been around women who are

constantly dismissing their own

and other women's hunger and I

find it incredibly frustrating.

So, I will be somewhere

and it's often

women who are a little bit older than me

but they will say,

oh, Clay, you don't want a full meal, do you?

Do you want to share? No.

I'm hungry. I'll be having a full meal.

They've never been out for dinner with us meal free

but we have a very strict no sharing rule.

That's a possible baby boomer

holdover from diet culture because

I've been around baby boomers who

everyone will be serving themselves

from like a buffet and they'll take a

side plate like a bread and butter plate.

And you're like, what do you know?

And I read those bullshit diets and magazines

that were like, just make your plate smaller

and you'll eat less. But I also notice it

around men that it's assumed

that because you're a girl

and maybe because you are

physically smaller than them in some cases

or shorter that you don't

want a full meal or you'll be happy

with something small because you're a lady.

And I'm not a lady. I want

meals. It's one of those

things where if you've

experienced disordered eating

you see almost everything through that lens.

Yeah, that's true. Which I don't think is a bad thing

because a majority of women have

experienced disordered eating to some extent.

That's very true because it's about restriction.

Me and I often

lightly throw down about like

I hate to

use these words, Gwyneth Paltrow

but like sometimes I'll be like, look

there are lots of reasons why people are obsessed

with greens. I can just have green juices

and healthy blah blah blah and you're always like

no, it's only about that. Oh yeah, of course.

Because even if we don't consciously

realise what this content

is doing, I think it's good to point it out

to say, okay, can we acknowledge that

this girl dinner in almost every case

is just a smaller version of actual dinner.

But why? I don't think it's healthy

to pathologise everything

to do with women and food. Like

women are just allowed to enjoy food.

It's very loaded everything with women

because our culture has pathologised.

I think it's worth interrogating when you have

a trend that's taken off like this.

I think it's worth interrogating

why and clearly it's speaking

a truth. But it's a truth that women don't

want to cook every night. Well, I do not want to

cook every night. This is my other argument.

I'm jumping in at this stage to say two points.

First of all, I also have

this in my house. We call it

picnic plates. Yes.

And this has been how I've fed my children

for 25 years. Neither my husband

and I can cook. We just

have other priorities. It's not my thing.

So we have long done

this except for us, it's never been called

a girl dinner. It's how we fed our children, which is

a picnic plate, which is a few blueberries, some

hummus, a couple of carrot sticks,

a piece of toast, you know, a little pile

of tuna, a handful of cereal off you go.

And what the

girl dinner is about to me

is not eating disorders

as much as mental load. That's exactly

what I thought. Because it alleviates

women of having to cook a meal.

So whether we're making it for ourselves

or for other people,

I love what Laura Broadnick said about it has

to bring joy. For most women

who aren't just feeding themselves and don't live

alone, cooking is not

joy. Cooking is mental load. It is

labour that you do for your

partner and your children. And it happens every

day. Literally.

Oh, dinner again. Haven't we already done

that? And then you're meant to feel guilty

that it doesn't bring you joy? And it's like

it doesn't bring me joy. It just doesn't. I'm never

going to enjoy it. So to me,

a girl dinner is, you know,

the kids might be away or whatever

if you have those responsibilities.

Girl dinner

has a very different connotation

to if you live alone, I think.

I'm really into lowering

the standard of what constitutes dinner.

I'm really, really into that.

And just eating what

you feel like even if it's random

and I totally agree

me out. The more I looked at this, I was like,

yes, there's something that

viscerally annoys me about the idea that women

eat like birds because I've never eaten like a bird.

But I think it's

more about overwhelm and feeling like our lives

are chaotic and we do not

have the energy for a meaningful meal.

And the pressure that can be taken

off by not actually having to cook

any of these is lovely. Can I make a confession

because this is a safe space?

I don't provide meals for my children.

Because I've known you a long time, I know this about you,

but I do not understand how that works.

I have to provide meals

for my children every day,

like breakfast, lunch and dinner.

So if you didn't, what would happen?

They would just eat crisps

like chips, you know, from the cupboard.

They'd just eat snacks all day.

Luca did learn to cook very young

and he's quite a good cook. They had to.

So my children have learned

to forage for food out of necessity.

It's like a game of survivor, but through their whole lives.

Don't you sit down and have dinner together in the evenings?

No, I have to say,

without me realising it,

our family dinners

have been completely deconstructed.

The only exception to that was during lockdown.

The first lockdown, we all came together

and Luca would cook

and we would all eat dinner together and that was lovely.

It's not that I don't provide...

Like, they'll be food. They've got access to Uber Eats.

They'll sometimes be food in the house.

They're able to order Uber Eats if they want to.

They'll be leftovers in the fridge

or like I will have gone to the chicken shop

or whatever.

And it's like choose your own adventure.

The kids don't want to sit down with us

and everyone's kind of on their different schedules.

It's so funny.

So I resisted family dinner for years.

I used to talk about it all the time on this glorious mess.

Andrew Dada, my co-host, was very disapproving.

We used to do kids tea,

like just feeding something quick and from the telly, whatever.

And then Brent and I would have dinner when they went to bed

when they were little.

Every single parenting, bloody expert

in the universe

and family expert in the universe

loves to tell you how important family dinner is.

For a lot of families, it's really stressful.

Especially once the kids, if everyone's working

and you're rushing in the door and then you've got to cook.

So we didn't do it for years.

But then the guilt began to get to me.

And also now that they're older and we can't get away

with that like feed them at five o'clock

kind of thing,

we do family dinner like three nights a week.

We'll sit down and have dinner together

three nights a week.

They were right, those people.

Because it is one of the few times

in our family, they never want to do it.

They'll be like this,

are we up to eat at the table today?

Like that always.

And I'll be like, yes, it's Tuesday.

I think that's much better than what we do.

Family dinners with a highlight of my adolescence.

But it's the only time when we might actually talk, right?

Like they resist it.

But then when we're there, there are no devices.

We will actually talk.

And then they can't wait to get up again

and then all that.

But it has been true.

But the other thing is I very much agree

that the mental load of cooking for women,

it's like we have two speeds.

It's women love to buy cookbooks

and look at beautiful books and beautiful pictures of things.

But we don't want to cook those things

because those are really difficult to do.

What we want to actually eat is a pile of snacks

out of the fridge.

But if you have to provide a meal for your family every night,

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My TikTok algorithm

has obviously been taken over

by baby content.

And it would appear I'm not the only one.

Because this week there's an article

in the Washington Post with the headline

it's a day in the life of a baby

on TikTok.

And yes, I know exactly what they're talking about.

There's currently a trend

of filming a day in the life of your baby

and narrating it.

And people use a voice effect

to change the sound of the voice

so it weirdly does seem like

it's the baby sharing what their day is like.

And it's a specific voice. Let's listen to one

because it just makes me laugh.

Hey TikTok aunties, welcome to my

basic bitch morning routine.

My dad's been gone the last five days

so I figured I would make my mum's life

even more difficult by tipping my brother's breakfast

upside down and getting it all over the floors

even though my mum just scrubbed the house

from top to bottom to make my dad happy.

Then I picked up fists full of soggy cereal

and yeeted it across a living room.

My mum had a pissed mouth like she usually does

by doing my hair while I ate my

mediocre ass breakfast.

Claire, this is a very sassy one

which appeals to me because it kind of like

personifies a baby a little bit like

that boss baby movie where the baby's like

this kind of funny, dry, snarky

person.

They're not all like that, are they?

No, some are cutesy and then some are crass

and I love the crass ones.

And some like influencer.

Yes, so Australian influencer Martha Califatitas

and Michael Brinelli do some great ones

with their little boy Lucius who's a few

months old and he has great hair and it's always

about styling him and what they're going to put him in.

My dad tries to dress me. It's the most tragic

thing you've ever seen on earth. I do like that.

Is that the new Bambi Mini? Is that the latest

from Bambi Mini? I like that.

I don't mind it, but I, you know, I want to bring out

the blue eyes. The Washington Post

article argued that while

the TikToks are obviously an attempt

to make light of the heavy demands

of motherhood, memorialise

childhoods that seem to pass all too quickly

and connect with other caregivers,

the issue of privacy still

remains. The reporter speaks

to experts who say children can't

consent to participating in the creation

of the content. I have a lot of thoughts

about this, but firstly

Mayor, would you like me to create some day in

the life videos of my niece Luna?

Well, you've already put her in a TikTok

which was very funny. It showed

Claire walking into Jesse's house

grabbing the baby and yelling that I have

clinical depression, so give me the fucking day.

You can need the baby now!

I mean, two minds about this. I think it's so

fascinating. Part of me thinks, oh

no, this is a lot of pressure, because now

to be considered a good mother

you've got to turn everything into content

and I am someone who loves turning

everything into content, but not everybody

is a content creator, right? And that's just

another piece of mental load. My second

thought is that it can give

women who are on maternity leave

and looking after babies something to do

with their brains, because it can be quite

atrophying the whole

looking after a baby and

really lonely as well, so it can

give you something creative to do.

And the third thing is that

if women can earn a bit of money

is that not a good thing?

What I think is hilarious is the idea that

in like 20 years

time everybody's home movies

are going to have this phase.

Like, you know

how people that used to be

in the olden days

that if you took a new partner home or something

you'd be like, oh god mum's going to get the baby pictures out

and now obviously we have a lot of

social media content of all our children

and then in another few years it'll be like, oh

remember when mum was in that phase, that bloody boss baby

voiceover and here's me, we're like

I think I must be in a post

holiday like, oh why are we being so serious

about all the silly things thing, because I'm like

fine, like it's fine, but

also I couldn't even watch

any of these to the end. And Mia's always

said this and she's right, when you're out of a phase

obviously these babies are objectively cute.

Nice, right? I don't want to look at babies.

No, I'll watch Loona's, but no in essence.

You don't think it's funny?

I am so far beyond that now

that I am like, oh baby

humour, whatever. It doesn't interest

me, it doesn't attract me. Like, puppy dogs

yes. Coco did that with our dog

which I thought was really funny with that voice.

I thought that was hilarious, but I agree with you

I wouldn't watch, I might watch someone

else's dog, but I wouldn't watch someone else's baby

I don't know why. Apparently this Washington

Post article said obviously some of the

people watching are mums who are in the same

phase, but a lot of it is younger

women and they're asking

for updates and they're following the baby

and I think the reason I

Parasocial relationship with other

people's babies. Yes, and I think

I'm really into this and

I genuinely find them enjoyable

and I don't find them problematic

at all. Are they irritating? No,

I find it really

interesting because

if I wasn't a twin

and my twin didn't have a baby right now

how am I going to find out

what a day in the life with a newborn looks like?

This is setting you up

for some very, very

dangerous expectations. I think you've just

identified the problem. If you watch

enough, if you watch enough you get

to see like what a routine looks like

how often you change the nappy, what a toddler does.

You don't because it's all packaged

into a tight little 90 second

funny, witty,

cute, like it might show

literally two seconds, because I've watched a few of these, two seconds

of a baby crying and go and then I just

cried because I couldn't decide what I wanted to do.

That can go on for hours.

But I think this is like a window

into certain truths

that you do not see otherwise.

I reckon the kind of idea of

parenting has become so individualized

and it used to be a community and now

it is so just often

a woman and her

partner looking after a kid and you

don't get to know what that looks like

until you have a kid of your own. Which is what blogging

did for us. We did a lot of soul

searching about whether we've replaced the town

square with parenting blogs

and parenting sites and what we used to call

mummy bloggers and then a whole lot of

judgement because there'll be people watching some of these

videos because nothing

stirs up a divide like parenting stuff.

There will be some people watching this going, she's giving

him a bottle. Do you see that? She's giving him a bottle

and that bottle doesn't look like it's got the right teat for

that age. I think that baby's only six weeks

and that's definitely a 12 week teat and then

there's always a danger

to parenting in public and I don't

mean to take something frivolous and fun

seriously but that's the reality of it.

There will be people over there sniping

about this. So you've got to

be careful that like parenting

making it all look like a fun awesome

adventure all the time. The difference

to me, Claire, also between blogging

and this and I'm not saying one is better

than the other. I get that

you can feel, I'll make one of these videos

and I can feel seen and be part

of this tribe because you're right, it can

be isolating. If you don't have people who've got a baby

in the exact same stage as you, it's

can be really isolating. The reason that

blogs were different is that

there was a lot of nuance. Yes,

I get that but

I often think as somebody

who's kind of in that phase just

before having a baby

hopefully. You're looking at what

it looks like. I'm looking at it and

I like a lot of those blogs

and a lot of my experience

working in women's media is

incredibly negative about that phase

and how awful it is and what you don't

see is the voice

and the fun and the funny

and the fact that just like all of

us, like I didn't realise with my dog

like my dog has his own voice, he has his own personality

I didn't realise you

do that with your baby. All of our babies

had their own voices. Our dog

now has that voice. You just recycle the voice

to be honest. So true.

And you've always done the like, says

Donnie, why did you do that? Like we've always done that

shit, right? But now we put it on the internet.

I need to show you all the videos Brent made

when he was on Paternity Leave. He got very

into it. He made Matilda be like the

Mission Impossible baby like up in

Galloway. So I think that speaks to the

lack of mental stimulation of

spending days with a

person who can't talk. And you also love

them so much that you want to make them into

a little person even though they can't talk yet.

I reckon the stuff about privacy in consent

is hysterical.

As somebody who is viewing all this stuff

I only

kind of start to think about

consent and privacy

when a kid is old enough

maybe they're at school and you think

they're going to go to school and other people have

seen that. But at what point do you turn that tap off?

But a newborn, I'm sorry, but even when you

grow up, whatever, you see a picture of you as a newborn

it's not you. You're not going to do anything

embarrassing. No one's mocking a baby.

I have a recommendation

that I'm very excited about.

There's a documentary on

Netflix very serious topic.

It's called WAM.

Let's introduce the band. George.

Amanda.

We had a number one album.

We had a string of hit singles.

And we were selling out arenas.

How can the country

be in love with these two idiots?

We met when I was 11

and Andrew was 12.

And there was only one thing that I wanted to do.

You get so many.

Being a band with George. And that was it.

WAM.

So WAM, for anyone who doesn't know

we're a band in the 80s and it's where

George Michael came from.

You don't know who George Michael is in WAM.

Just get us out of your ears. Who even are you?

When you watch the WAM documentary

you will A, B reminded

of all their excellent songs. Like

Wake Me Up Before You Go Go.

There are actually some very good songs.

Everything she wants. Great song.

Anyway, the reason this

is a recommendation is it's a documentary

that's not massively long. It's like 50 minutes

or something. And it just deals

with the WAM years. So it doesn't then follow

George Michael and his very successful

solo career. And what is fascinating

about it is if you know anything about WAM

you'll know it was George Michael and Andrew Ridgely

and Andrew Ridgely was really, really handsome.

But his purpose in the

band was very unclear.

Like George Michael was clearly the talent.

He was the singer. He wrote the songs.

Although they did write the songs together at the beginning.

Andrew Ridgely was better looking

and continued my childhood

tradition of

being in love with gay men.

Oh no, apparently not. Not Andrew.

Apparently not. Straight.

No, George gay. Oh, there's one for me.

My god, I was better than I thought.

It's not entirely clear but he definitely presents

in this documentary that he was the straight one.

Really? Anyway.

The thing that's really interesting is it would be

very easy to watch that dynamic

and be like, well, there's the talented one.

There's the silly one. George Michael

had to transcend that. That must have been awful.

But actually the story

is much more complicated. Imagine that.

The story is actually more complicated than that.

Those two became friends at school.

They were 12 years old. They found each other at high school.

They're both sons of immigrants, right?

So George has got the very conservative

Greek Cypriot parents in London

who wanted him to be a doctor, an accountant,

a lawyer, something like that.

Andrew had Egyptian parents or an Egyptian father

and he was a rebel who was just hot

and just wanted to have a good time.

And they became best friends and completely

inseparable through all of their teenage years.

Did they have a relationship?

Not suggested that they have a relationship at any time.

And then Andrew gets a girlfriend, Shirley.

She ends up in the band. If you remember Pepsi and Shirley.

I remember Pepsi and Shirley.

Then it goes into then they get really famous

that it becomes clear that George Michael

is going to be George Michael.

And Andrew just isn't.

He doesn't really want to be.

George Michael is strategic.

He is obsessed with the level of fame he wants.

He wants four number ones a year and he gets really upset

when one of his number ones, last Christmas,

gets stolen by Band-Aid.

Do they know it's Christmas?

Even though that was feeding all the starving people in Africa.

He's like, George Michael interviews

throughout this whole thing.

He's like, I was really happy to be part of Band-Aid

but there was a little bit of me that was like,

I don't know.

Anyway.

It becomes clear as it examines this relationship

and they parted on very good terms.

They decided whams over, George is going to be George.

Let's do a big final show.

They did a tour and all that stuff.

George Michael himself says several times

and of course this is being told

post George Michael's death

and it's Andrew Ridgely's story to a point.

But certainly all the interviews

and everything backs it up.

George Michael would never have been George Michael

to meet Andrew Ridgely.

He needed, he was an insecure

closeted gay man

who kind of had all this self-hatred

and doubt which made him a very good

songwriter.

But made him unable to become

that pop star guy.

If his best mate and his off-sider

and his partner in crime was not this like

Larry, let's do it George.

Confidence man like who pushed him to that point

and then when it became clear that

George Michael's ambitions were much bigger

and I just wanted to be in a band and get laid

and have a good time.

It is so interesting.

It kind of turns all those dynamics

about jealousy and stuff on their head.

Plus the songs are great.

Plus the fashion is ridiculous.

So much fun.

It's called Wham. It's on Netflix.

Do yourself as a favour.

You will immediately make a new Wham playlist.

If you want something else to listen to right now

if you haven't had enough of us

on yesterday's episode

there's a video that came out

just a couple of days ago

with Pixie Curtis showing her haul

while she's in Paris

and all the beauty products that she's bought.

The easy thing would be to say

Pixie Curtis, but we're not going to dump

on a 12 year old or a 9 year old.

What we spoke about is actually

the whole phenomenon of how

girls as young as 12

or even younger from all different socio-economic

backgrounds, not just wealthy ones

lust after

these incredibly prestige products.

It's a really interesting conversation.

We'll put a link in the show notes.

Thank you for listening to us.

Australia's number one news and pop culture show.

This episode was produced by

Emily Gazillis and Susanna Makin

with Audio Production by Leah Porges

and we'll see you tomorrow. Bye.

Shout out to any

Mamma Mia subscribers listening.

If you love the show and want to support us

as well, subscribing to Mamma Mia

is the very best way to do so.

There is a link in the episode description.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.