Mamamia Out Loud: Is The Act Of Ageing Offensive?

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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 Monday, the 26th of June.

I'm Mia Friedman, I'm the co-founder of Mamma Mia, and I sound a little bit croaky, but I'm actually fine.

Oh, that's good to hear.

Just in case anyone was wondering.

Good, I didn't think you sounded croaky at all.

Okay, glad.

I mentioned it.

Cool, who are you?

Perfect.

I'm Alfie Scott, I'm executive editor at Mamma Mia.

And I'm Claire Murphy, host of Mamma Mia's Daily News podcast, The Quickie.

Holly and Claire Stevens are away.

I can't remember where they are, but here we are.

Claire is with Wales.

I'll Claire's with Wales and Holly's with the Rangitans.

Okay, that's true.

And I'm just with you two.

They're all, well, arguably it's a very similar experience.

Correct.

On the show today, one very famous woman has confessed that she had bad fillers.

And she was also quite sad about everybody noticing that she had bad fillers.

She talks about why she did it and what the reaction was and what she's done about it.

And we ask, can women ever win against society's aging dilemma?

Plus, did we work or actually do anything before the internet?

The question Millennials and Gen Z are asking in a conversation that's gone viral.

And the weight loss drug that continues to make headlines.

Is it time to drop the stigma?

But first, there's still plenty of unanswered questions surrounding the weekend's

aborted mutiny in Russia after Wagner-Mersenry's retreated from the southern city of Rostov-on-Don.

Now, there are a lot of plays in this and a lot of layers.

So we're going to try and keep this brief and simple.

But if you didn't catch it, all of a sudden the man behind the Wagner-Mersenry group.

And these are the guys who've been fighting on the front line in Ukraine on behalf of Russia.

They're not the military, they're a whole other entity.

So they're like, a mercenary army is like an army that are paid.

Correct.

Who are they paid by, the Russian government?

They are.

And they are also a private entity.

They've been fighting in other countries for other governments.

And they are world-renowned as being very brutal.

They've done apparently some terrible war crimes, not just during this Ukrainian conflict.

So they're like an army for hire.

Absolutely.

The head of this is Yevgeniy Przhekoven and he is one of Putin's BFFs, right?

So they've known each other for a long time, since about the year 2000.

And Przhekoven was in jail for a long time for robbery.

He got let out, had a hot dog stand.

And then eventually ended up with these high-end restaurants in St. Petersburg,

which is where Putin is from.

And Putin started going to his restaurants and apparently he's a very paranoid man about being poisoned.

Who would've thunk it?

Russians are very good at poisoning each other.

Putin's paranoid.

And also a bit of a poisonary himself.

He is probably a projection.

Yeah, I would say if you poisoned some people,

you probably would expect someone might one day want to poison you too.

But for whatever reason, he trusts Yevgeniy Przhekoven

and he would eat his food from his kitchen.

They became very good friends.

He connected him with the right people.

There is a very big blank spot in between him owning a restaurant

to him running a mercenary army.

Yeah, that's a bit of a leap, isn't it?

It's a big leap, but he has Putin connections.

So anything could have happened in that time, right?

Sure.

So he has now come out as being the head of this,

even though he denied it for a very long time.

And what he did is he went round to prisons with Putin's blessing

and conscripted men from prison who wanted to fight in return for their freedom.

So of the 50,000 troops that they used to have at some stage during this conflict,

80% of those came out of prison.

And they have been accused of some horrific war crimes

whilst occupying parts of Ukraine.

So in order to kind of compress this story,

there had been some rumblings about the military wanting to contractually sign up

all the mercenaries to be in the military proper.

So they wanted them to fall under government rule rather than this private entity.

There was some very unhappy people, including Evgeny Pushkoven,

who's the head of this.

And so they started to push back.

There'd already been some discussions beforehand about the military not arming them well enough.

And so Telegram, where all the crazies apparently go and rant.

That's a social media platform.

He's been on it and just ranting about the military leaders.

So the Defense Department and the leader of the Russian military,

not Putin, never says Putin's name.

So he then on Saturday says, we're going to march on Moscow.

You aren't contracting any of my men for anything.

So like a coup.

Like a coup.

And it's not like an insignificant amount of people, right?

Like this is tens of thousands of people.

Tens of thousands of people.

And I don't know if you saw any pictures, but streets were closed leading into Moscow.

Russians were told to stay inside and not travel.

So they were marching on Moscow and they got within 200 kilometers and everyone's like, oh my God, is this it?

Is Putin going to be overthrown?

Is Putin going to be overthrown?

And this is late Saturday night.

Australian time we're like, what are we going to wake up to tomorrow?

We wake up tomorrow and they just turned around and gone back again.

And apparently there'd been some chat between Pushkoven and the leader of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko.

They're obviously very well aligned with Russia.

And all of a sudden the agreement has been made and he's called off the troops.

Does anybody know what the agreement is at this point?

He's very unclear.

Apparently Pushkoven is going to live in Belarus.

There's some security agreement for the troops that still exist in Wagner.

So now everyone's asking the question, where does this leave Putin?

Has his might now been questioned or is it actually has it been orchestrated by Putin in order for him to withdraw his troops from Ukraine and safe place?

Oh, interesting.

Because he can blame the leader of the military for disinformation.

He can blame the defence minister for misleading him and telling him these were the reasons why we were invading Ukraine and it was wrong all the time.

Because this war has not been won in the several days that he presumed it would back in the beginning.

So he can pull those troops out.

I kind of wanted to know, is it good news or not good news?

If you are wanting the invasion of Ukraine to end, if you're wanting Putin to be overthrown, I've heard that it's the beginning of the end of Putin.

The answer to that question is nobody knows.

Logically, it's not a good thing if Wagner actually end up overthrowing Putin.

In charge.

Yes, because they are responsible for terrible, horrible things that happen in battle.

Yeah, they're not the good guys here.

No.

So it's like we're sort of team no one on this.

100%.

You don't want any of them to really be in charge.

But whether this is actually weakened Putin, we don't really know because we don't know how much of a hand he's had in it at this stage.

He could be behind the whole thing or it might be a challenge to his leadership and he might be very vulnerable right now.

We just don't know.

And because in Russia, the media is controlled very heavily by the government.

We don't know what the Russian people have been told.

We don't know what they understand of what's just happened other than they were told to stay inside because the Wagner force were coming.

That is a very good summary.

Thank you.

It's a very interesting situation.

Now shifting gears quite considerably, there were some very familiar but also incredibly different faces that returned to our screen this past week.

The women of sex in the city are back, of course, in the second season of In Just Like That.

And for the first time, one of those women, Kristen Davis, who plays Charlotte, has addressed the commentary about the fillers and botox that she got before season one.

In an interview, she's been kind of heartbreakingly candid about the pressure that she felt to get these fillers.

You may remember that when those first promo shots were released of the women walking down the street, the three women, Miranda, Charlotte and Carrie, and some of the clips that came out.

And then, of course, when the first episode came out, it was 20 years after the end of Sex in the City, so you would expect them to look different.

And in fact, Charlotte looked the most different of them all.

And she said that she founded a challenge to accept herself when society encourages women to appear youthful.

And she says it's a challenge to remember that you don't have to look like that.

She said the internet wants you to, but they also don't want you to.

They're very conflicted.

And I thought that was really interesting.

It's like we want her to look, all of the women, to look the same.

But then if they try to look the same, of course, you can't.

You have to have a lot of work to try and look the same.

And you will ultimately look unnatural.

And so I got mocked for that.

She talked about getting the fillers and she said, I've had to get them dissolved and I've been ridiculed relentlessly.

And I have shed tears about it.

It's very stressful.

She also said that her friends didn't tell her that it looked really, really bad.

And it wasn't until she read the internet's verdict that she then realized that perhaps she didn't look good.

And she said, she's come to accept that you can't not age.

I have to have these talks with myself and try to relax.

And sometimes I just have to get out of my own head and take a walk.

Here's a little bit of what she said to another interviewer when asked about it.

It is something where I feel like we're all going through it.

The more we can talk about it, we can take the onus away and hopefully stop shaming each other,

find mine part of the biggest problem because we're already under this really huge societal pressure about not aging, which is impossible.

So you're already in a kind of a jam.

How do I do this?

How do I please everybody?

How do I look like how I used to look, which is impossible?

It's like stressful.

Add on to that the fact that you potentially are getting shamed online at all times for whatever you did or didn't do or they think you did or whatever.

It's insane.

So from that perspective, I think, you know, maybe if we all talked about it more, it would help.

I'm all for helping and I'm all for supporting people in their choices.

There's a lot of different ways to go about it.

I mean, you know, I have to talk to myself about this at all times.

I'm in it.

You know, everybody else, we're all in it.

We are all in it.

And remember Charlotte saying in Sex in the City,

I really need you to get behind my choice.

You get behind your choice.

I am behind my choice.

I choose my choice.

She also points out you're trusting doctors,

but people personally blame us when it goes wrong as if I jabbed a needle in my face.

Elfie, what's more shameful?

A woman who ages or a woman whose attempts to stay looking like she's 30 are too obvious.

You don't win either way.

It's a lose, lose.

It's just another one of those situations where there is so much societal pressure to look a certain way.

And if you actually end up leaning into that and trying like she has,

then people criticize you for it and they make fun of you for being underconfident and not aging gracefully.

You know what?

I actually don't know if I'm saying this because I really like Charlotte as a character,

so I'm just kind of assuming that Kristen Davis is that person.

But I think that it's so sweet and nice that she is talking about these vulnerabilities in such an honest way.

And something that I thought was really interesting in that original interview

was the idea that she had this catalog basically to look back on in Sex and the City,

where she was ostensibly the hottest that she will ever be in her entire life, you know?

And it's that pressure because everybody still sees her as that character.

And now she has that to immediately and directly compare herself to.

And I so relate to that as somebody who used to work in the fashion industry.

You know, I used to model for years and I have all of this documentation of me looking pretty

with professional help all the time and I completely understand why she would just be struggling

all the time because of that kind of direct comparison.

Yeah.

I think I feel very conflicted by this.

On one hand, I don't want to judge women for aging and I don't want to judge them for getting work

or getting fillers in order to hold it at bay.

But when I see someone like Kristin Davis come out looking like she did,

I was shocked on the first sight and then to see her try and act with her new face too.

She's not as expressive.

You can't really connect with her character as much because she's so frozen and so full.

It was just a constant distraction whilst watching the show.

And so I understand completely why she's done it.

I hate that I've judged her for it because I want her to look the way she used to.

I want them all to look the way that they used to.

I want them to be those people that I fell in love with when I was a young woman.

But they're women in their 50s now, not women in their 30s.

I know.

So what is realistic for us to expect?

Or is it confronting that we go, oh, they look older, therefore we must be older?

Yes.

Is that what it is?

Because when I look at myself and when I look at my very close friends, I don't see them aging.

It's only when I see someone that I haven't seen for a while,

like maybe someone I went to high school with and I'm like, oh, you're an old person.

And I'm like, oh, they would be thinking the same.

They would be thinking the same thing about me.

So I guess I'm uncomfortable with aging in certain venues.

I think maybe especially when it comes to TV shows.

What do you mean venues?

Like if I'm introduced to a woman who is older and is an actress.

Yeah.

Say with Helen Mirren.

People always say Judy Dench Helen Mirren.

Like you don't think those women have had work?

Of course they have.

No, of course they have.

But also more subtle work.

With the age that I am, I've not known them to be young women.

Their careers as young women were before I was really invested in their careers, right?

I've only known them as older women.

So I've seen them kind of age and they've always just been that.

But when I've had these younger women in my life growing up on my TV screens

and then I see them return as these older women, it is confronting

and it is partly confronting my own stuff.

But it's also me not being comfortable with an aging woman's face.

It's really hard to look at someone who used to be beautiful

and who now is considered not so beautiful anymore.

So interesting that you say that because the real sin then is not somebody being older.

It's the act of aging that is the offensive part.

Absolutely.

That's so wild to think about.

And I think it's interesting, especially with Kristen Davis

because I don't think that she has a huge social media presence.

And I think that Cynthia Nixon and Sarah Jessica Parker,

they've been on Instagram for a while.

And I think maybe there was the chance to be accustomed to their face.

Had they not had that, then maybe we would be just as shocked by their aging too.

It's interesting if you follow any supermodels on social media

because their accounts tend to just be throwback photos,

which as you say, Alfie, must be really weird and confronting.

Yeah.

Because as someone who follows them, it's like, well, I actually don't want to see that.

I mean, I suppose there's the nostalgia of how they looked in the 90s

in the George Michael Freedom film clip and on the cover of Oak.

But I actually am desperately ravenous to see different types of faces

of women who are my age,

to see some different examples of what you can look like as a woman in your 50s.

And I think that in the show, actually, we get that a little bit in and just like that.

I mean, you know, let's be honest, everybody no doubt has had work.

But Sarah Jessica Parker doesn't look like she's in her 30s.

No.

She really doesn't.

And there are some scenes when I'll be honest, I go, oh, oh,

but it's just because I'm so unfamiliar.

Totally.

So whilst the show might be getting shitty reviews, let's be honest.

I've turned around.

I actually love it now.

I've always loved it.

I'm back to loving it.

Yeah.

I've always loved it.

And it's for more than just, I mean, I was never really watching for the storylines.

Let's be honest.

There's so many reasons to watch it.

And the fashion obviously being most part of it.

But it is an opportunity for us to start getting used to seeing older women on our TV screens

who haven't just been introduced to us as the grandmother or the mother.

They have grown and their characters have evolved and they've become something else

that we just have to get used to.

That's so true.

I'm trying to think of another example.

Intensive commentary though.

I'm really torn about this and we've talked about it many times on the show

and there's the argument that goes we just shouldn't talk about women's faces.

But then as a woman who is trying to work out how to grow older in a society that fetishizes youth,

when someone gets work that's really obvious or that makes them look really unnatural to not comment on it,

feels like it, not a form of gaslighting, but I don't want to be cruel to that person

and I don't want to mock them.

But how do we talk about it?

That is a really good question and I don't know if we have the right answer

because someone is always going to feel upset if we talk about it or not.

And if we don't talk about it, are we then telling people that this is the way to be?

We all should just inject whatever and look whatever and not say anything

but that's just not how society is.

We are judgmental of each other and we do look at each other

and we use each other as yardsticks for our own thoughts and feelings

and how we want to look or how we want to act.

So these women are in a way role models to a whole generation of women

and to see how they act now and feel like they have to reverse their own aging,

it does make some of us think, should I be getting an injectable?

Should I be getting some Botox?

Like it does make you think that if they can't be accepted

and they're amongst some of the most beautiful, famous, talented women in the world,

what the hell chance do I have to look good in my fifties, you know?

You get behind your choice.

I am behind my choice. I choose Mother Mia Out Loud.

Welcome to the Internet. Have a look around.

Anything that brain of yours can think of can be found.

There is this amazing article, guys,

which made me start thinking about things that I have not thought about in decades.

It is on slate and it's basically looking at how people lived their lives before the Internet

and I don't mean like before the Internet Internet, like when we were little kids.

I'm talking about when we were young adults

and we were already out in the world working and maybe going to university

and doing all the things that everybody still does now without the Internet.

No smartphone to check in on.

I've got a big gap in my life that's barely recorded.

There's not a photo of me, which in some ways is a glorious relief,

but in other ways is like what happened to the time where I was the best looking in my life

that's barely a record of it.

But my entire career as a magazine editor, there's almost no photos or videos of that.

In fact, there's no videos of that and there's three or four photos of it.

And that was a period of like 15 years.

And you did some amazing things in that time.

Yeah, but there's nothing.

Did you keep the magazines themselves?

Yeah, but what are we going to do with those?

That doesn't reflect the behind the scenes of it all,

which is what our social media and our phones reflect now.

The person who's written this article has written the very idea that once work hours were over,

no one could get a hold of you.

And this does include your own friends, I might add,

because you would go out and there's no way to communicate with them.

But your boss can't email you, can't slack you because there's no Internet.

They can call your house phone if you happen to be there.

It can help, I guess.

But like we just went out into the world completely.

How did we survive, Elphie?

When connected, can you believe that there was a time where that existed?

No, not really.

I cannot even comprehend this a little bit.

It feels alien to me.

And I think for a lot of people in my generation,

like it feels nostalgic for a time that didn't actually exist in your life.

Like it's completely untouchable, this idea that you weren't connected to each other with the Internet all of the time.

So for context, I am 30, which means that I started on Instant Messenger

when I was like year seven, year eight.

I had Facebook by the time I was in year nine, so I was always connected.

And I constantly think about this universe where you couldn't text each other.

How did you communicate?

How did you make plans is the weirdest thing.

And then also, even if you turned up to plans, did people actually meet you there?

All of these questions are beyond me.

So let's workshop it.

Let's start with how we maintained a social life.

I remember it was a big deal when answering machines were invented

because then you could leave the house and come back.

There'd be a record of people who might call you.

Otherwise, you literally had to stand by the phone,

particularly if you're waiting for a guy to call you.

Do you remember when Telstra bought in that thing where you could do like star, something, something, hash,

and it would tell you the phone numbers that had called you most recently?

That was groundbreaking.

That was groundbreaking technology.

You're like, did that boy ring me?

Well, I know his number.

Star, blah, blah, blah, hash, whatever it was.

And it would go the most recent numbers and it would like read it out to you.

And your little heart would be all aflutter.

What it meant, though, was that our social lives were constructed

in a very different way because you made plans on the phone

and then you had to stick to those plans because there was no way to cancel them

within a window of time.

I mean, you could cancel them in advance if you could get hold of someone,

but you couldn't cancel them within a few hours.

If you're running late, no chance.

No.

And we had such a weird thought.

And this is something that's also kind of been lost a bit is the meeting place in Adelaide

for anyone who's from South Australia.

The Moles Balls was where everybody, and that is not a euphemism for anything.

There is genuinely two balls in the middle of Rundlemore and you would meet there.

So you'd go at 10 a.m., we meet there and then we'd go to the movies together.

So now you don't do that because you just like take someone, I'm here, where are you?

And then you go and find someone, right?

Yeah.

You had to have a very specific time and place to be.

And then if you were running late, that person just had to wait in hope that you were eventually turning up.

You couldn't be a flake.

You could not be.

I mean, you could, but that person would hate you for like ages because they'd be left standing there forever.

Can I ask, do you remember what you did with the three hours that you now dedicate to scrolling on your phone?

God, that's a good question.

It's such a good question.

I think that we saw our friends more or that we did more social things because to stay connected and to communicate,

you had to see people in person unless you were on the phone with them.

You had to actually go places and do things because it wasn't very exciting to be at home.

Like you could read a magazine or read a book, you could watch television, commercial television,

of which there was rarely anything on, or listen to the radio, I guess, or listen to a record.

Or a tape.

You know, we would make mixtapes.

Oh, we made mixtapes.

But that was when we were younger.

When we were adults, I don't know what we did.

We were in our books.

Did you?

Did you actually, though?

I don't think I did.

I know I devoured magazines.

This was like the height of the paparazzi boom.

So like it was Princess Diana on the front of everything.

So I devoured magazines.

I know that I read newspapers like legitimate paper newspapers.

I know I watched TV because Good News Week was big then.

So I used to watch that on a Friday.

But I was trying to think about what I did on my university breaks because, you know, at uni,

you might have two classes in the morning and then like a class mid-Avo and like you got all these gaps in between.

And I think I went and like laid on some grass.

Uni bar was definitely a place.

And when I entered the workplace, directly after work, we all went to the same bar that was closest to our office.

That's where everybody went first.

You knew everyone would be there and then you would disperse from there.

It's like frickin' friends.

I think the most challenging thing when I think back was finding information about anything.

You know how sometimes you'll be in a conversation with someone and someone will go,

what was that and someone else will say,

if only we had a small computer in our hand that could tell us the answer to that.

I'll give you an example, a more serious example.

My partner got chronic fatigue syndrome in the late 90s.

And imagine trying to find a cure or information for something that wasn't very well understood

or even if it was understood, maybe you got diagnosed with cancer,

maybe you had whatever it happened to be.

I had a miscarriage a few years later.

Imagine not being able to find information about that thing.

Like I remember going after I had my miscarriage going to a bookstore because what else was I going to do?

And looking for a book and there was no book, so I had no way to find information about that thing.

We had to try to find a treatment for chronic fatigue syndrome without the internet.

It was just very hard to find out little unimportant things like what's on at the movies today to big things.

And then there were other things that were weird, like the fact that we all had to wear watches.

If you want to know what the time was, you had to wear a watch

because, you know, we weren't all carrying around the time on our phones.

You would like pop into a shop and be like, excuse me, if you've got the time.

Yes, there would be a phone number.

Could you imagine asking that today?

You could call the time.

You could ring to find out what the time is.

Oh my God.

And also if you wanted to speak to someone, you know, in terms of how you had relationships,

it's funny, I don't know if in contact it still has this, but it'll have someone's work number.

So you'd have their home number and their work number.

And you would have to sometimes call them at work if you wanted to speak to someone.

This conversation feels like that meme of that guy putting his grandma to bed being like, okay, grandma.

You had to ask shops what the time was.

The other question that I had to ask was, I think that in a way social media can make you feel like you are missing out on things, right?

Like that's where FOMO comes from.

Did you feel lonelier then?

Or do you think that you are more prone to feeling lonely now based on what you see online?

That's an interesting question because I couldn't see what my friends are doing in the moment.

But then I would find out later.

So which I think sometimes is kind of worse.

It's not because you would have no proof for it.

So kids these days, maybe they don't get invited somewhere and then they can look on snap naps,

which is a function that you have on Snapchat where you can see where all your friends are.

And they're all at the same address.

So you can see, oh, they're all at Jane's house and I didn't get invited.

Or you can be, you know, looking at TikTok or whatever and everyone or Instagram and people are putting up stories.

They're all at a party that you didn't get invited to.

So you sometimes worried that, oh, maybe there's stuff going on without me, of course, but you had no proof of it.

Yeah, but do you remember you'd find out by accident?

Like someone, a big girl, like, you know, that time we went to blouse and you'd be like, what do you mean?

And then it's like, so to your face, you would be like shocked and kind of a bit ashamed that you weren't invited

because the people who were all there right there in front of you talking about the thing you didn't get invited to.

Oh my God, although at least they had the really good excuse of saying they called you, but you just went home.

It was a really good excuse for a lot of things that you did not answer the phone.

Like if you knew someone was calling you and you did not want to answer, you would just let it go.

That's genius.

You could disappear.

You could be uncontactable, whereas now you can't.

It cannot be.

But also work finished when it finished.

Like if I wanted to take work home, I would always take magazines home at night and I would write post-it notes on them.

And for my team when I was a magazine editor, but you couldn't keep working in the way if you work in the, you know, knowledge economy.

Basically, if you work on a computer, the work day spills and bleeds into the rest of your life, right?

And it's funny to working as a journalist back before the internet was really huge.

Well, someone was asking me like, how did you write a story?

You'd sometimes get sent like in the mail, proper mail, press releases from people telling you that things were happening.

But then you would go to the place and ask the question and hope you were asking the right ones.

I've got many memories of like holding up a little recording device, which used to hang like a handbag off my shoulder.

And I would record whoever was there at the time, politician or sportsperson or whatever.

And then I'd have to drag that all the way back to work and then like, let it record in in real time or transcribe it

and then make the story out of it and hope you had the right angle because you can't compare it to anyone else's

because you have no idea what it is until the paper comes out the next day.

The media company where I worked, we had an analog version of Google so that we would have a library in the building

and it was filled with people who would literally cut articles out from the internet.

So you could go and ask for, can I have Kylie Minogue's file?

And you would get Kylie's file if you had to write a story on Kylie.

And it would have cut and paste pages and pages and pages of articles that had been printed before about Kylie Minogue.

Oh, they were little Google men.

Yeah, they were little Google people.

It all happened to them.

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

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It's the weight loss drug that has dominated headlines for months and continues to capture our attention.

This is a medication that is used for the treatment of type two diabetes

and is prescribed by doctors for patients wanting to maintain long term weight loss management.

Many have speculated that celebrities in Hollywood and around the world are using it as a way to lose weight

in a relatively short period of time.

And we have talked about this a bunch on out loud as well as the website.

There's a lot of speculation about who is on it, who's admitted that they're on it.

Why do they need it?

Who gets to decide who is on it?

And there's a lot of conversation about how people who are using it for weight loss

and who have not been properly prescribed it have been depriving people who actually need the medication.

Is there still a shortage globally?

There is.

There's other weight loss drugs.

Yeah, there is, but apparently it's not a shortage of the actual drug itself.

It's the pens that administer it because there's very specialized technology

and they can't keep up production of the pens.

It's becoming more and more widely available though, isn't it?

It has been ebbing and flowing.

So sometimes there is and sometimes there isn't.

A lot of the conversation is based on criticism of people who are on it

and there's a lot of big feelings around it,

particularly talking about why people feel like they need to lose weight

and all of the pressures that lead to people actually taking a drug

that hasn't necessarily seen, you know, long-term testing

for how it actually affects bodies who aren't prescribed it.

And I'm wondering, Claire, how you are feeling about it at the moment,

particularly with celebrities like Amy Schumer coming out.

Everyone and their mom's going to try it.

And now everybody lying, everyone's like a smaller portion.

Like, shut the f*** up.

You're unosympic.

Are we judging people too freely?

Yes, is the short answer to that.

And I say that with some confidence

because I am currently using a medication for weight loss.

How long have you been on it?

Since, I think, March or April is when I started.

And I mean, people who listen to this show

and have heard me talk about weight issues before

know that I've struggled quite a bit with it.

And I finally found a GP who was willing to help me

to actually lose weight rather than just tell me to lose weight.

When it was first suggested that you take a weight loss drug,

what was your thought process?

Did you feel like, oh, that's cheating

or I'm nervous or yes, please?

I have to admit, my first reaction was kind of relieved

because I knew I needed help.

I had been unsuccessful at losing weight for a really long time

and I'm not losing weight because I want to be skinny,

although that is a wonderful side effect

because people do start to take you a bit more seriously

when you're thinner.

It is because I want to be healthy

and I had been unhealthy in a way that I wasn't sick or ill,

but I have got structural problems,

joint problems which I've had for a very long time

even when I've been thin as opposed to when I've not been.

And I knew that losing weight was going to help that.

I've been told a million times losing weight will help you.

It will decrease your pain.

It will make your knee better.

So I needed to do this.

But I want to ask what you said before about this idea

because I've noticed that there's a lot of stigma

around who should be allowed

and why this idea that you should say that it's for health reasons

or it's because of my knee or whatever

and the idea that if you're on it

because you just want to lose 5 kilos or 10 kilos

because you'll feel better about yourself

in a world that tells women to be smaller,

that that's somehow not a good enough reason.

I've noticed some policing of why people should or shouldn't be on it.

Yeah, there has been and I feel really quite angry about it

because you tell people that being thinner is better or healthier

and then you show them this thing that obviously works

and then tell them you can't have it because you're not worthy of it.

This is so much like the Kristen Davis conversation in a way, right?

It really is.

Because you tell people that they have to be beautiful,

they have to be thin,

but if they're not achieving those things naturally

then they can be criticized and condemned and made fun of for that.

But then there's the added layer here of like,

I'm taking potential medication away from someone

who has type 2 diabetes who actually needs it.

And just to be clear, I do not have type 2 diabetes

but what I do have is a very, very high risk profile for type 2 diabetes.

My mum has it when they measure you and weigh you,

your waist circumference, etc.

It all gets plugged into an algorithm

that tells you just at what risk you are of developing type 2 diabetes.

I was starting to be pre-diabetic.

My doctor said I'll prescribe you this weight loss medication as, you know...

But it sounds like you're apologizing for it.

And I feel like I am apologizing for it

because I'm taking it away from people who have type 2 diabetes.

It's like it's not there's someone next to you that can't have their insurance.

No, but quite honestly, it might be that.

Like if I'm at the chemist right and I put in my prescription

and there are two different types of prescription,

there is the PBS prescription and then there is a private prescription.

For those people who aren't at risk and who just wanted for weight loss,

if that is prescribed privately,

the chemist may not fill that script for you.

It's their choice, dependent on their supply.

Really?

So then I go in with my PBS script, which I'm entitled to.

Don't believe I have to say that out loud, but there you go.

And so I put it down on the desk.

And if I get the last pen in their supply,

the person behind me who has type 2 diabetes,

who uses it to regulate their blood sugar levels, might miss out.

Claire, you've still been prescribed it by like a medical professional.

I know.

I understand why.

But I've got all these other people in Hollywood

who are taking it to be extra, extra thin.

And we can only presume that half these people take it

because a lot of them haven't ever said out loud whether they are or not.

I don't know if there's very few people who've actually admitted that they're on it.

You know, it's like anything, women don't have to,

nobody has to admit to personal medical treatments and what they're doing.

But is there now this thing that no one's allowed to say that they're taking it

because of the stigma associated with,

well, you should have just eaten less and exercised more.

I think there's partly that, but there's also then what follows

when anybody loses weight, and I've done this before when I've lost weight before,

is that all of a sudden you become an expert in weight loss

and people will then ask you, how have you done it?

Holly said that.

Yeah.

How are you achieving these results?

And am I doing the wrong or the right thing by saying I've had some help with a weight loss drug?

Am I then creating more of a problem?

Do I just not say anything?

Do I just say I've been, because I have been eating very well

and I have been exercising and seeing a nutritionist and a physio

and doing all the things I can to help myself.

But it's not the whole story, is it?

But it's not the whole story.

And I'm holding back this bit of information

that could help somebody else exactly like me,

who's in a position who's been struggling, so conflicted.

And I do feel bad and at the same time...

That's a very big burden to carry.

It is, but at the same time I feel great because it is working for me.

How does it feel?

It takes away that obsession with hunger,

because I found often I would put food on my plate and be worried it wasn't enough,

or I would eat and still then be seeking more

because I felt like I hadn't had enough.

So it like switches off that.

It is changing my brain chemistry where it comes to food

and that has been vital for me to start this process

because it's overcoming my own brain,

which has been working against me for so long.

And for some people, these weight loss medications are no goal together.

And then I also have to factor in that potentially

I'm putting myself in harm's way long-term.

There are lots of things that they don't know about this drug's long-term impact.

Do you have to stay on it forever?

No, you don't.

And that's the thing too is like you do have to learn how to eventually come off of it.

For type 2 diabetics, obviously, that's a different story

because they are regulating blood sugar levels.

But for me, it's about achieving a goal

and then seeing how I go afterwards

after I've started to rewire my brain into thinking differently.

And now that I know that I can do it

and that not eating that amount of food isn't a fear that I'm not going to get enough.

Like it's retraining.

You know, it's hard to explain.

You said something earlier that I wanted to pick up on

which is that people take you more seriously now that you've lost weight.

Can you tell us about that?

Sure, and I've experienced this before

as someone who works in the profession that I do

which is, you know, media

and I've seen, you know, lots of women in this business

who started off being bigger

and then were told to become smaller and blonder

and they'll get more opportunities and quite often they have.

So I know for well that other people have had opportunities

that I probably could have done

but I don't look the way that those people who have had those opportunities do.

But then also within the medical profession

you are taken much more seriously when you're thinner.

If you have an issue, they don't look at you as a fat person.

They look at you as a person with a medical issue.

And so that is why I now, as I mentioned on Friday,

am lined up for surgery

because they aren't just looking at me and going

well obviously you're too fat

and that's putting pressure on your knee

and that is a problem.

So in lots of different ways.

Even just conversations with people, you know,

who pay me more attention now.

Like it's a weird phenomena

and I'm not sure how comfortable I am with it.

It's nice to feel that ego boost

but at the same time I don't want to just be taken seriously

because I'm smaller than what I was a few months back.

Like that is gross, right?

Out loud is obviously we are not recommending anything medical.

This is just a conversation about one person's experience

and what our opinions are on the topic.

Please, if you've got any concerns or questions,

talk to your doctor.

That's the first place to check.

Now a recommendation, Elfi, I believe you have one.

Coming in hot with this one.

I have a new TV show that I am obsessed with

and I really recommend it to you.

I especially recommend it to you, Mia,

because it is extremely funny

and I think it's like the only show that I've seen recently

that is as funny as the other two, which we both love.

Oh, I need a funny show, yes?

Yeah, okay, so this is a show called Dave

and it is on binge.

I'm Lil Dicky.

Trying to bring back the old school flow like,

my name's Dave and I'm here to save.

I'm joking.

I'm full of beat up.

Welcome to the tour.

This is your first tour, you post to go hard.

This is the biggest event of the year, man.

I'm so happy that I could see America for what it is.

You're like my favorite rapper.

Is that me?

It's concrete.

This is the heaviest thing.

Wow.

You're with him every day.

How do you resist him?

Are you serious?

Because I'm with him every day.

So you may or may not, probably not, let's be honest,

have heard of a rapper called Lil Dicky.

Have we?

No.

Yes, okay.

I feel a hundred.

To be fair, there's a lot of Lil insert surname rappers around.

I love Lil Mass X.

Is that a person?

That is a person.

There you go.

There you go.

There's a whole bunch of Lils out there.

Well, this is a Lil Dicky and his name is Dave Bird,

but he performs under that rap name.

And this show Dave was co-created by him.

And essentially it's kind of like a fictionalized story of him

coming up as a rapper, like, you know, with his little posse,

like his friendship group.

It's kind of got that sort of Atlanta feel to it almost.

So it's like about the music industry.

Yeah.

But satirical.

Funny.

The tone of it is so gentle and sweet as well as being hilarious.

But the thing that I want to recommend most about it is that

it is one of those comedy shows that can kind of swing really

effortlessly between comedy and topics that are genuinely serious

and heartfelt.

So there's a lot of stuff about relationships in there.

There's a lot of stuff about mental health.

It's a perfect show.

And I just need everybody to start watching it.

It's also got a bunch of celebrity cameos in it

because Lil Dicky is weirdly well connected.

It's got like Justin Bieber and Courtney Kardashian

in the first couple of episodes.

Great.

Get into it.

Now, if you are wanting to hear us talk more about it just like that,

we have so many thoughts and feelings.

We are going to be recapping it every week in a special episode

for subscribers.

We dropped that episode on Friday morning.

We'll link to it in the show notes.

We talked about episodes one and two in that episode.

I've actually had a little bit of a turnaround since then.

I've gone through because we've got special screeners.

I've gone through and watched.

I'm up to episode seven.

And I don't know if I've just become institutionalized,

but I am actually back on board.

This is what Rodnick said would happen.

She was right.

It's once they drop all the Easter eggs and you're like,

oh, remember that?

It's almost like a bit.

Chris and Dave is down if you do down if you don't.

It's like I wanted it to be exactly the same as sex in the city.

But then when it's not, it's also frustrating.

So now I've worked through my complex emotions of which you can hear

in this first subscriber episode,

and we will be recapping it every week afterwards.

Have you spoken to your therapist about it?

I really need to.

Well, this is therapy.

Outladders are my therapist these days.

I'm still driving, aren't I?

Outladders, I've got my script in front of me.

Holly would never lose it.

Can I just mention that I don't feel it's in any of the same order

that they handed that to you?

I think you're right.

Oh, here you go.

It says Outro.

Thanks for listening to Australia's number one news and pop culture show.

This episode was produced by Emmeline Gazillas and Susanna Makin.

The executive producer is Eliza Ratliff with Audio Production.

Hi, Leah Porges.

I'm Mia Friedman.

Thank you to Elvie Scott and Claire Murphy.

Thank you.

I'm subbing in another Claire for you on Wednesday.

Yes.

Because I'm out.

Claire Stevens is back.

Oh, thanks God.

We got a new one on Wednesday.

We're rotating the Claire's.

We'll speak to you tomorrow in your ears.

Bye.

Bye.

Shout out to any mum and me as 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.