Mamamia Out Loud: ‘Our Generation Did It. So Maybe You Could Just Shut Up?’

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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 25th of October.

I'm Holly Wainwright.

I'm Mia Friedman.

And I'm Claire Stevens.

And on the show today, Britney Spears' body has not belonged to her for almost 25 years.

In her new memoir, she explains why now she's free to do what she wants with it.

She's choosing dancing in her underwear.

Also, new parents are about to get more money to settle into life with a baby and who cares?

Plus, there are just too many dogs.

Discuss.

But first, in case you missed it, the women of Iceland have gone on strike.

And that includes Prime Minister Katrin Jakobstiter.

They all refused to go to work yesterday.

The strike was called the Women's Day Off.

It's not the first time it's happened.

It happened in 1975.

And it's described as a day when women protest the gender pay gap and gender-based violence.

So the strike wasn't just for paid work.

Women were urged to refuse unpaid work, including household chores.

I think I might go on strike for the rest of my life.

So fathers and male partners were forced to take on the sole responsibility of domestic

duties and childcare.

The strike action caused widespread disruption across the country as it was designed to with

schools and kindergartens closed across Iceland and just one bank staying open.

The Iceland Prime Minister wants to achieve full gender equality in her country by 2030.

I love this.

I want to know if you're in your house on the National Women's Day Off and you pick

up a dirty cup.

If there are like women outside the window going like, scab, scab, scab.

Oh, yeah.

And if it's your dirty cup, is it okay?

I love thinking about the absolute societal consequences of this.

And if you did it for longer than a day, just all the problems that would emerge and how

a society would not function.

And it makes a great point because that's why we need equality.

It's Britney, bitch.

For the first time in detail, we're hearing the story of Britney Spears from her.

The 41-year-old's memoir, The Woman in Me, was released yesterday, and one part that

is stuck out from the never-ending headlines is the reality of how Spears' conservatorship

also controlled her body.

So much so that when it ended, she says, freedom to her meant having authority about how she

used her body and her image.

When Britney Spears was 16, the media decided she'd had breast implants.

Here's a grab of how talk show hosts asked her about her changing body.

Well, I think if that's what you want to do and that would make you happy, then I see

nothing wrong with it.

But I haven't done that.

I think it's sad that people think I've done that because that makes them want to go out.

And some of the fans that look up to me, they either think bad of me or they may want to

go out and do that.

But that's not my fault because the press started that.

She handled that with such grace and how disgusting.

16.

You get furious when people ask you this question, how furious does she sound, guys?

She sounds like a really, really angry person.

But she was also asked about her virginity while her boyfriend at the time, Justin Timberlake,

was being asked about his music.

She writes in her memoir, I'd smile politely while TV hosts leered at my breast while American

parents said I was destroying their children by wearing a crop top.

After she shaved her head, which she said was an FU to the impossible beauty standards

she felt she'd never live up to.

She was ambushed into a conservatorship, which also exercised jurisdiction over her body.

She says no matter how much I dieted and exercised, my father was always telling me I was fat.

She says punishing gym routines left her feeling out of her mind and her diet was monitored

along with every other detail of her life, while she went through the motions of her

Las Vegas residency.

She also writes my body was strong enough to carry two children and agile enough to execute

every choreographed move perfectly on stage.

And now here I was having every calorie recorded so people could continue to get rich off my

body.

Now, if you follow Britney Spears on Instagram, you might notice she posts some pretty bizarre

videos of her dancing.

Often she'll be dancing in swimwear or very revealing clothes.

In a recent video, she danced with two knives and it looked very dangerous.

In the book, she seems to explain this.

She writes it's posting selfies either nude or clothed on Instagram.

Some people don't understand the latter, but I think if they'd been photographed by other

people thousands of times, prodded and posed for other people's approval, they'd understand

that I get a lot of joy from posing the way I feel sexy and taking my own picture doing

whatever I want with it.

Mia, does that background make you feel differently about the kind of content Britney Spears chooses

to post on her social media?

It does a little bit.

It's not quite my Roman Empire, but it almost is thinking about what Britney's thinking

when she's posting those videos because there's a certain way that she wants to present herself

in the last sort of year or two since she has had control of her own social media.

It is completely sexualized always, not just sometimes, but it's always very, very sexualized.

From a fashion point of view, it's very stuck in when she became famous, so it's that very

low rise.

She's always pulling things down so that they're really, really low and they expose an acre

of stomach.

She does pole stuff.

She posts nude photos.

Clearly she's going through a thing and she wants to come across in a certain way.

But to me, when she says that stuff, which is horrible about having her body controlled

and how she was forced to present herself in a certain way, it's interesting to me that

the way she wants to present it is still a version of that.

It's still a version of very male gaze-y.

I know we always have arguments about male gaze-y, but I really struggle with it and

I don't understand what she clearly wants something.

She wants a reaction.

She wants people to think she's hot.

I find that uncomfortable to sit with.

I think without wanting to pathologize somebody who clearly none of us actually know, there

is no question, the more you read about this book, that it's almost an exercise in how

to drive a woman mad.

I know driving someone mad is a flippant term, but in this instance, Britney Spears has always

been about her body, always.

Yes, sure, she was a talented performer, no question.

She had charisma, she had hard work ethic and all those things.

When she was at the absolute peak of her power, it was all about her body and the way the

media discussed her, and I don't mean that like she was all about her body.

I mean, the way she was presented, the way she was manipulated, the way she was dressed

on magazine covers, the way she was styled for every video shoot.

And this was a time when young women didn't really have any power about that.

The hottest version of her, if you like, was around the time that she was 20 and she was

dancing with the snake on the video awards, whatever.

And then for the rest of her life, she has been beaten with that stick of why aren't

you that?

When she was going through what was clearly a very difficult time for her, I was working

in gossip magazines, I've spoken about this before, and we would use the state of her

body as if it was a literal description of how Britney was doing.

If she's skinny and hot, she must be okay.

If she's like a bit soft and looks a bit messy, then clearly she's sad and bad.

And we just looked at her through that lens always.

When she was pregnant, she was mocked relentlessly for like dressing in something that seemed

like a low rent way, you know, showing too much skin or not enough or whatever, and then

how she bounced back after that, just enormously objectifying in every way.

I don't know how you could possibly expect a 41-year-old woman whose entire life has

been that to have anything like a healthy relationship with their body and their self-image.

Because the Vegas residencies that you're talking about, Claire, like 10 years ago,

they started and they went for four years.

So it's not that long ago.

And that was entirely during this portion of her conservatorship, where she was under

complete control from her dad, who, as she says, from her version of it, that he was

counting her calories, sending her off to institutions if she wasn't entirely compliant

in every way, including dancing, how he wanted her to dance and performing how she wanted

to perform.

That show made more than $140 million for someone, probably not Britney Spears, let's

be honest, again, just off her body and what she was doing with her body.

So because one of the things I think about the way she presents herself now, Mia, is

it just opens her up to mockery all over again.

I mean, she has been meme-ified with an inch of her life about how she looks in those videos.

It's very uncomfortable to watch them.

It is.

But it's also been used against her.

So the idea that she might be trying in inverted commas to be sexy in inverted commas, but

it's just such an awful dynamic.

Because then we just beat her with that, too, because you've probably seen those memes

that have the picture of her in that era I'm talking about, 20-year-old Britney in her

low-cut bikini bottoms.

And then 41-year-old clearly not doing so well, Britney, in her cut-off bikini bottoms.

And they put all kinds of things under there, like America before Trump, America after Trump

and all these things.

Her body, again, is being used as a message about what's sad, what's damaged, what's

tragic.

She says, and I didn't realize this, that once she had her first child, she became pregnant

three months later with her second child.

And she talks about the paparazzi hounding her and taking all sorts of unflattering photos,

taking photos of her body as though her not looking like her 17-year-old self was an assault

to them, was offensive to people.

And I look at her and I see those videos and she says it in the book that she has an arrested

development, like she is stuck in childhood.

She hasn't matured past that.

I agree, Holly, when you read about all those experiences that she went through, it's hard

to see how it doesn't drive somebody absolutely mad.

And to this point of still aspiring to be the 17-year-old that was absolutely adored worldwide

for how they looked.

Why do you think it is uncomfortable watching those videos?

Because she's clearly not well.

I mean, I hate concern trolling.

I hate projecting things onto people that you don't know.

It's actually impossible to look at all those posts and read the captions and come to a

conclusion that this is somebody living their best life.

And it just is.

And again, after the knife video that you talked about, Claire, concerned fans in Inverted

Commerce called the police and they turned up at her house and then she posted about

that saying like, I can't even dance with knives in my own home.

And the thing is, I get that she is just so fighting against everybody telling her what

to do all the time.

I just don't think it's a controversial thing to say she's clearly not well.

I've been trying to work out what it is about those videos that makes me uncomfortable.

And after reading this and then I went and rewatched them, I went, this is 41-year-old

Britney Spears doing an impersonation of 17-year-old Britney Spears.

And that's what makes me uncomfortable because you're actually impersonating another person.

It's not you anymore.

And even the dancing, it's like a lot of that person.

But then the other side to that is, and this is what she says, and I don't believe that

whatever's going on with Britney Spears, it means you should discount everything she says.

She says she loves dancing and it makes her happy, right?

So none of us should ever be saying to Britney Spears, stop doing that.

Like if she wants to do that, then of course do that.

But I think what's really uncomfortable is seeing somebody who you know is clearly struggling

and we're watching it not as entertainment, but like a slow car crash.

It's the dichotomy, isn't it?

Because she says in her book when she's talking about this sense of injustice she feels regarding

this perceived contract that she never signed with the public or the media.

And she says about the paparazzi after she had her kids, she said, they just kept acting

like I owed it to them to let the men who kept trying to catch me looking fat take photos

of my infant sons.

And she said her postpartum body and shots of her without makeup were treated as some

kind of a sin.

As if gaining weight was something unkind, I'd done to them personally a betrayal.

At what point did I promise to stay 17 for the rest of my life?

And yet in the way she portrays herself now, is she trying to seem like she's 17?

Is she doing what you said, Claire, which is impersonating her 17-year-old self?

And this to me echoes in a way the conversation we had about Madonna in what I want is for

there to be other options instead of women getting stuck at the time of their so-called

sexual peak and fame and when the world found them most sexually attractive, i.e. when they

were 17 or 25 or 30.

But I don't think it's sort of capitulating to that.

I don't think that's fair when it comes to Britney Spears.

I just don't.

I think that that is really unfair with all of the things that Britney Spears is telling

us about her life and what happened to her for us to just be obsessing about,

why don't you just put some clothes on?

It's just so unfair.

No, I'm not suggesting she change.

But we need to change our perspective.

That's what I'm saying.

I'm saying, I'm interrogating why does it make me feel uncomfortable?

Because you're right, we're reading all of this into her.

She's saying this makes me happy.

But yet then she also has written in captions and stuff about here's why I use filters,

here's why I airbrush, here's why I do all of those things.

So she might be using filters and airbrushing, but it's not like the product she's putting

out to the world is what the world wants.

It's not.

She doesn't look 17.

I don't think that applies to her in the way that you could apply it to like a Christy Brinkley.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

I think she's in a category of her own.

And again, I'm not judging her and I agree with you.

She's clearly unwell and we're going to talk about that more in a dedicated episode where

we talk about the book and our feelings about it.

But it's more, I'm interrogating how I feel about it.

Because yes, she can do whatever she wants.

That's the whole point of her being free.

And it was interesting before she was free, the images that were on social media were of

her in like white prairie dresses and holding flowers and all of those kinds of things.

So the difference is really stark.

And if this is what she wants to put out there, we have to respect that.

Outladders, we are doing a dedicated episode.

There will be a link in the show notes.

It comes out on Thursday where we will talk about all the different aspects of the book.

This week, I read two stories online that I once would have been leaping around a room

about, but now I had to force myself to care.

One was by Mama Mia's Gemma Bath.

It was about the shortage of childcare in her area of Sydney and how she's been on

waiting lists for spots for her son since she was three months pregnant.

And now she's heading for her son being a year old.

She's coming back to work and she cannot find them a place.

This was exactly my experience with my first child and she's now nearly 14.

So progress, no, no progress there.

The other was about paid parental leave.

The government has announced that it's about to be slowly increased up to a point

where it can be claimed for up to six months.

It's currently under a scheme that was introduced between my two babies,

if this is all about me, in 2011.

What is it currently?

How much can you get?

20 weeks.

So you get 20 weeks paid on the national minimum wage

and it's going to slowly slide up to 26 weeks by 2026.

Now, in my books, this is really good news,

although it's being rightly examined and critiqued for holes,

like why doesn't it include super and exactly how the leave can be split between parents.

And it's still miles behind countries like the UK,

where your mat pay for the first six weeks is paid at 90% of your full-time salary,

or famously in a country like Sweden, where it's paid for almost 18 months.

But what struck me when I was listening to this news story and reading Gem's story

is that now that I'm out of that phase of my life,

with one kid at high school and another towards the end of primary school,

I have to really force myself to give a shit about these issues and go,

isn't that good?

They're ascending parental leave.

Oh, they should do more.

Oh, they should include super.

Once those things were burning for me and how important they were,

but now because, to put it broadly, they don't affect me

and they don't affect my immediate peers anymore because I'm past it.

And I know this should be an obvious statement

and it is.

But it was a reminder for me about how it's always worked to push yourself

into other people's shoes.

And when it comes to big issues that we need to be better at,

we're really still only invested in the things that affect us.

And if you are, then nothing changes.

Claire, you are smack bang in the mat leave, child care, costs, shortages, issues,

right in that bull's eye.

And these policies do really affect you.

Did you care about them 10 years ago?

10 years ago, I think they all felt too hypothetical

and I didn't understand what it was like to even be in the workforce

and getting a salary and paying rent and all that sort of thing.

But I do think this is another example,

which is just fascinating in the current context,

about how you need people to have a voice in the policies that affect them.

Otherwise, you're going to get policies that aren't correct.

The thing about all of these changes,

because what you say, Holly, about being out of the phase yourself

and therefore thinking it's not a priority for me,

how do I get myself to care?

But to be clear, I do care.

Yeah.

But I noticed myself, like my interest is like, oh, whatever.

And then I'm like, oh, God, like progress is good.

Progress is good.

We've got to keep hustling.

I'm noticing even just from being pregnant that the attitude

from people who have done it before and have done it a little while ago

is very shut up and get through it.

And if there's anything different that we do today,

which of course there's a million things we do differently today,

it's very cynical and very like, I went to a birth class

and the comments I got about going to a birth class were like, why would you do that?

Who doesn't go to a birth class?

Well, I guess maybe 20, 30 years ago you didn't go to a birth class

or maybe you went and you've forgotten.

And so there were comments about the baby's going to come out.

Oh, right.

So not that you're going, but that you can learn as much as you want,

but it's still going to hurt and it's still going to get out

whether you go to the class or not.

Even though you feel like saying, hey,

do you have any idea about the birth trauma inquiry that's going on

and the role that education plays in helping women?

Like you want to kind of argue back.

It's like my attitude to birth plans.

Just don't waste the paper.

Exactly like that.

In this economy, in a lot of cases you need two parents out there earning

and earning close to their potential.

So this model for paid parental leave, even for a generation above us, above me,

might not understand why the nuances of it are so important.

For example, the idea is there's a certain amount of leave.

Some of it has to be taken by the secondary parent.

They're saying dads need to take some of that leave.

It's not all for the mums.

And people might be like, well, now I wanted to take the leave.

When I had a child that's like, no,

this is actually to help women with the pay gap.

Like this is actually something to really, really help them support them.

I know what it's actually meant to do is encourage more men to take it.

Yeah, exactly.

And actually change men's perceived role in the family.

And society and mental load ongoing, not just for that time.

Yes.

And so I think these changes, like the idea is that if we can have conversations

about this, where we remind ourselves of the nuances of today's reality,

that mean that these changes are so important.

It was important when I was having kids.

I don't want you to live in some universe where you think that 14 years ago,

it was easy for me to not get paid for six months.

No, because it was really, really hard to not get paid for six months.

And I missed the government maternity pay on my first child,

but I got it with my second, made a world of difference.

I'm a massive supporter of government parental leave, not maternity leave.

That's not what I'm saying that like, I have to get my head around

what it's like for a new generation.

I think it's more basic than that.

I have to pull myself out of a selfish space

where my priorities are now different.

And I think we all have to do that often with all kinds of things, right?

But some people might be coming from the perspective of I didn't get that much.

Why are we proposing that parents now get longer?

And I'm just saying that the economic reality of raising a family now

is actually different.

If you look at things like buying a house, paying for childcare,

all of that, the costs have gone up so much

that we need policies and approaches to parental leave

that reflect that raising a child right now financially

is actually harder than it was.

It's funny the emotions when we were talking about this,

someone in the office who's got young children, she said,

I'm jealous. I don't want my younger sister to get it.

I didn't get it.

That's terrible.

Which I thought that was at least, very honest.

But in Australia, you also not just have to look at the people,

like it doesn't really matter what Holly and I think,

but you have to look at legislators and the people who are in political parties.

Now in Australia, the average age of an MP is 40s.

In the US, they're the only, I think the only Western country

in the world that does not have any form of parental leave at all.

The average age of a sitting Senator, parliamentarian,

is I think 80 and I'm not even kidding.

If it's not 80, it's like 75.

And yet the average age of an American citizen is 38.

So when you have people making the laws and the policies that don't reflect

the life stage, I mean, imagine trying to explain

to a 78-year-old man or an 87-year-old man what even paid parental leave is when

his mother would never have worked outside the home,

his wife would never have worked outside the home,

maybe even his daughter didn't work outside the home,

because she's probably 65 now.

It's never going to be a priority.

It is never going to be an economic or legislative priority.

This is true and it's why it matters so much that our leaders are more diverse.

In Australia now, we're making small headways with that.

We've got the most diverse parliament we've ever had bringing lots of different voices in.

But also, age and experience matters.

This is not a comment on the... What do they call it?

They call it a geriatry or something.

A geriatocracy.

Like what's going on in America at the minute,

which is literally it's being run by geriatrics, like literal geriatrics.

Again, no shade to older people.

Age and experience matters.

But what really matters is that you don't sink into a comfort zone

and you don't try and push yourself to understand other people's issues.

The best politicians, they themselves,

are never going to have all the experiences of all their constituents,

because it's actually impossible to do that.

But they go and they talk to people and they engage and they listen.

That's the whole point. You've got to push yourself out of that zone.

I was listening to a show where they're talking about and saying,

also, because we've got an aging population and they do in America too,

the voter base skews older too.

And they're not that interested in making policies that make things better for younger people.

But the only way you're going to solve any issues like housing affordability

is to make decisions that are difficult for that group who are trying to hold on to their wealth,

rather than make things better for the people coming through.

I think we shouldn't necessarily go,

oh, well, you're old, so you don't understand.

And we should be more challenging and be like,

so you're old and that is out of your life stage.

So go and fucking listen to some people who are in it.

If you want to make Mum Mia Out Loud part of your routine five days a week,

we release segments on Tuesdays and Thursdays just for Mum Mia subscribers.

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

and a big thank you to all our current subscribers.

Too many people own dogs.

Including the three of us.

And too many people own too many dogs.

There's one less dog in the world though,

because the world's oldest dog has died this week at the age of 31.

Now, I think this is a lie.

Oh, I listened to a full report about it.

I read a lot about it.

Because I know why you think it's a lie.

I think maybe someone just forgot and it was a puppy.

No, no.

It was like it was the descendant of the original dog.

Bobby's mum and sibling also lived to be very old.

But what is interesting is that Bobby lived to 31.

The second oldest dog was a dog named Bluey.

In Australia, Bluey only lived till like 23.

So Bobby is just holding the record by a lot.

Well, he died at a Portugal veterinary hospital over the weekend.

Goodness, did he have a good run?

Anyway, there was an article this week in The Atlantic

that talked about how dogs have basically lost the plot.

More dogs than ever are on medication for anxiety.

And this piece was actually called,

it was written by Rose Horowitz and it was called

Too Many People Own Dogs.

If you love dogs, maybe don't get one.

And she writes that the rise in anxiety among American humans

has been very well documented.

But with much less fanfare, we also seem to have entered

the age of the anxious canine.

A few years ago, a study showed that 83% of vets

had reported prescribing dogs anti-anxiety medication.

And Google searches for dog anxiety have roughly tripled

over the past decade.

Pet stores have whole aisles dedicated to products promising

to help calm your dog like you can get sprays,

you can get drops to put in their food,

you can buy tranquil treats.

And there are even special anxiety vests

for when there is a thunderstorm.

I may or may not have purchased all of those things.

I think of course, yeah.

And my dogs may be on a lot of medication, both of them.

So why is this?

The theories though, for why they're more anxious today,

the main one is that we've altered the way pets live.

So dogs and cats used to live outside,

but now they're mostly indoor creatures.

And that's meant that they're living longer

because when they do go outside,

they're kept on leashes or under supervision.

When I was younger, our dogs just roamed the neighborhood.

No one picked up who, no one had fences or kept their dogs,

leashes, optional.

But also because people are having fewer kids,

they've begun to think of their pets as children

and to actually be helicopter fur parents.

And so dogs like Bobby living longer,

but is it good for them?

It means they miss out on mental stimulation

and interaction with their own species.

And so they're more likely to be anxious or aggressive.

Claire, what's your dog's vibe?

I mean, he's just old and he's kind of,

he might be giving these, these long on dogs

a run for their money Caesar.

I know, I know.

He has terminal cancer and was given months to live

over a year ago.

So he is just, he won't quit.

This article really resonated with me

because as I was reading it, I was looking at my dog

and he was kind of sitting under my feet

and we had just taken him for a walk

and he can't walk back up the stairs anymore.

You've got to lift his back legs for him,

which has become increasingly hard,

the more pregnant I get.

I'm like, mate, you're 40 kilos.

I can't lift your back legs.

And I was sort of thinking, I was like,

oh, is this for us or is this for him?

And pretty much the whole time we've had him,

we've lived in apartments and we've been,

obviously you consider what kind of apartment you have,

you consider outdoor spaces, there a park nearby,

can we get him to a park?

We've lived near some of the best bloody parks in Sydney.

But there is a guilt that comes when you think

this is an animal that I am sure would love

to just be running 24 seven.

And if not running, then sniffing.

And we are keeping him inside because we love him.

But I also think that there are certain behaviors

of dogs that we perceive as anxiety or distress.

That are just normal dog behavior,

but because we want to treat dogs as humans,

like barking.

People are like, my dog barks all day,

so I'm medicating them.

And it's like, they're a dog.

They want to bark.

This article says digging, barking, chewing.

Chewing, like that's what dogs do.

And dogs are puppies for so much longer than you realize.

When you've got an old dog, you realize

they were puppies like five years.

Like that bad behavior of chewing and all of that

goes for longer than you think.

There's a little dog in my family who, when you visit,

he's everywhere because he's so excited.

And it's like, oh no, no, no, anxiety.

And I think he's on some anxiety medication now.

And he has stopped peeing.

But I'm like, usually if he was outside,

if he was outside, the wing wouldn't be a big problem.

The problem is that he's indoors and he's peeing on people.

This article challenged me because I read the headline, right?

And I got right on my high horse.

And I went, yes, there are too many dogs.

You know what annoys me?

And I know I'm about to alienate a large portion of our audience.

So I'm sorry.

I'm like, one of my annoyances is people spending $4,000 on an oodle,

looking at you, Mia Friedman, when there are so many rescue dogs.

It's a trigger for me.

I always get upset.

Lots of my friends have those dogs, by the way.

And I'm always very nice to them.

And I love them.

But there's a little judgmental kernel in my heart.

So judgy.

But I am so judgy of those people.

Reading this article challenged my moral superiority

because it also said that part of the problem

is we've got too many rescue dogs.

And that now that rescue dogs have become very hip, which they have.

Like it's cool and virtue signally to get rescue dogs.

It says that it means that a lot of inexperienced dog people

are dealing with dogs that do actually have trauma and anxiety

and they don't really know how to deal with it.

So they're like, cute little rescue dog, come live in my house.

And then that dog doesn't behave like the companion you're describing,

Claire.

And so they're like, oh, there's something wrong with my dog.

But do you know that since this whole what you say is trendy,

but it's also just an awareness of how many dogs are destroyed,

two-thirds less dogs are being destroyed every year.

And it devastates me.

I follow the organization.

We got Tuna Through Fetching Dogs.

It devastates me to see all these little puppies there.

And then my mates are like, we're getting from a breeder.

It's going to cost five grand.

In defense of rescue dogs.

Look, I'm an ambassador for the Sydney Dogs and Cats Home.

I'm the most judgy person about people,

particularly people with oodles, right?

And in my area, there's like a million frigging oodles.

Every dog looks the same.

And I've always been like, I will never get an oodle.

I will always be rescued.

Then lockdown happened.

And I'm just going to say it.

I am ashamed of myself, but we needed a dog urgently.

There was no joy in our household.

Things were bad.

And so I found a breeder.

The dog arrived.

She cost thousands of dollars.

And she is more damaged, much more damaged than the rescue dog.

And the dog before, we had beautiful Harry.

Best dog ever had also a rescue dog.

So I actually think it's not necessarily just a rescueser

more anxious than other dogs like this dog.

And my parents dog the same.

My parents got a gone retriever, purebred.

Never known trauma.

Generations of just happy, lovely, milky life.

And messed up.

Yeah.

Idiot.

I think it's because they don't know their dogs.

They're allowed on beds.

I mean, I have bought so many different beds for my dogs.

They get special food.

You cook food for your dog's Halloween, right?

I do cook food for my dog.

And also the way I feel about my dog and my previous dog

is that about them or is that about me?

I know.

It's like I love that, especially as my kids have gotten older,

I love this creature in my house that I can just lavish all the love on.

And it loves it.

And it never talks back.

And she, you know, in my mind, she thinks I hung the moon.

She probably doesn't.

No, no, she does.

She thinks I hung the moon.

When you want to rumble and play and you want to be fun,

you can be fun with them when you just want to cuddle on the cat.

Like they are, but that's all about me, right?

And we know that dogs are good for us.

Dogs are good for our mental and physical health.

And I look at Caesar and I think in times where I've really struggled,

simply having a dog that you know that you have to walk a few times a day

and you have to feed like that is enough.

Like that gives such a sense of meaning to your life.

But then I do wonder, I'm like, I wonder if he,

if that gives him a sense of me.

No, no.

When you pat a dog, it releases serotonin in your brain and in the dog's brain.

What you say about the guilt and who do we get dogs for?

I was talking to another friend of mine.

She's got two quite big dogs.

They had two, one died, so they wanted to get another one.

And now she says we just have so much guilt because we all work.

No one's in the house.

The kids are older, so they've all got their own lives in a belly at home

or they've moved out to university or whatever.

And we just look at them and every time we see them,

we feel guilty because all they do is just sit around.

Guys, I have a recommendation.

You know, when something's coming out,

you actually think about the fact that it's coming out.

That is so rare for me.

But I have been aware that hot potato, the story of the Wiggles,

was dropping yesterday.

Is this a documentary?

It's a documentary.

For adults or children?

More adults.

Hi, where are the Wiggles?

They're like the Beatles for toddlers.

These tickets were harder than the Stones and Springsteen.

There's a reason for the colors.

There needs to be a psychology of why this fits.

I actually have been excited about this too.

Yeah, I keep seeing media about it and I'm just,

I was so excited.

So it's on Prime Video.

And it follows the original Wiggles, Anthony Field,

Murray Cook, Greg Page and Jeff Fatt in the iconic skivvies

from their humble beginnings as early childhood educators

to the global successes they have become today.

And also pop stars.

They were two of them, Paul and Anthony Field.

They were in the cockroaches.

Yep, yep.

And I think Jeff was too.

But there is just so much that you had no idea about.

So many emotional layers to the story.

Did you go out watching the Wiggles?

Yes.

And it's weird.

You watch it and it's got all this archival footage

and you're almost looking for yourself in the footage.

You're like, was I at that concert?

Was I dressed as Dorothy Stone as me?

I said to Matilda the other day,

I said, your first concert was the Hilltop Woods.

How cool are you?

And she's like, no, mum.

My first concert was the Wiggles.

Obviously.

See, I remember my kids were little

and there was literally nothing else to watch.

So I became like, I think,

oh, you said this too a few years later,

obsessed with the guys, not in a sexual way.

Although, of course, you're always like,

who's the hottest?

And it was always Anthony.

But are they friends?

Do they hang out?

Or are they married?

What's their lives?

Do they have their own children?

And I became obsessed.

And I hope you can tell me the answers to these questions.

I became obsessed with how much money they made.

I became obsessed at the point

at which Anthony suddenly starts going to the gym

and gets his teeth done.

I just became obsessed.

In terms of who's the hottest,

actually what was really interesting watching it for me

was that actually Greg is a front runner for me.

He comes as he's aged.

As he's aged.

One of my favorite details about it was that apparently Jeff

is not good at public speaking,

doesn't really like being on stage that much.

If he was allowed to talk,

would constantly say inappropriate things.

So that's where the idea of him being asleep came from.

Oh, that's what I need to be.

I need to be the sleeping member of our lab.

Did they talk about the part where

when they do that finger gesture,

like a train with their two pointy fingers,

I once read or heard them say that that's so that

they could never be any accusations of impropriety.

So their hands were always visible

when they were being photographed with children.

I didn't hear that in the documentary.

So tell me, the doco is good.

The doco is so good.

And charts the entire journey from beginning to end,

because now you've got all the new wiggles

and how they've kind of introduced diversity.

And for any parents watching,

the psychology of what they do is so considered.

And you would just never think that everything from

the characters to the songs to things like parallel play,

the way they have thought about it

so that it is actually enriching for children.

You need to watch it.

I just I want to hear what everyone thinks.

If you're on the lookout or the listen out

for something else to listen to,

in yesterday's subscriber episode,

Holly Claire and I had a debate about an dilemma,

which we sort of talk about as being the am I the asshole?

Dilemmas.

It's about a photo of a newborn.

There's drama.

There are in-laws involved.

And we were divided.

A link to that episode will be in the show notes.

Thank you for listening to Australia's number one

news and pop culture show.

This episode was produced by Emily and Gazillas,

the assistant producer is Tali Blackman

with audio production by Leah Porges.

Bye.

Shout out to any Mamma Mia subscribers listening.

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

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

There's a link in the episode description.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.