Mamamia Out Loud: Roxy Jacenko And A Weight Loss Drug Warning

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Mamma Mia Out Loud!

Hello and welcome to Mamma Mia Out Loud, what women are actually talking about on Monday,

the 4th of September.

I'm Holly Wainwright, I'm Mia Friedman, and I'm Claire Stevens.

And on the show today, Roxy Jacenco says she OD'd on Ozenpik, and we think it might be

the PSA people need to hear.

Also, the type of friendship that's officially terrible for your health, and does every single

phase of life need to be sexy.

But first, Claire Stevens.

In case you missed it, Australian music legend John Farnham has learnt he's iconic hit You're

the Voice to an advertising campaign supporting the yes vote for the Voice to Parliament,

You're the Voice will soundtrack a new series of ads from the Uluru Dialogue campaign,

which spearheads the Uluru statement and aims to garner support for a successful referendum.

It's the first time John Farnham has ever permitted the song to be used in a commercial.

And you can imagine how many times he would have been asked.

The ad, which was released on Sunday and just seems to be being shared everywhere, shows

other major moments in Australian history, including the 1967 referendum and Cathy Freeman's

gold medal run at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

During the ad launch, leaders of the Uluru Dialogue publicly expressed their gratitude

to Farnham for granting them permission to use this anthem.

Professor Megan Davis, co-chair of the Uluru Dialogue, extended her thanks to John Farnham

and said, You're the Voice is the nation's unofficial anthem.

I was in primary school when it was released, and as a young girl, instantaneously felt

the power of its message about agency and walking together.

History isn't just something we witness and observe, but something we ourselves can influence.

And now we all have a voice in what happens at this critical moment, and we must use it.

This ad made me bloody cry.

It makes me want to get into advertising or marketing.

It's a good ad.

I didn't understand it at first because it shows a white family sort of suburban.

It starts off just a man and a woman, and then they have kids and then the kids grow up

and it just shows them they're always in front of the TV watching these iconic moments in Australian history.

And then more people join the family.

And then the last scene is of them going to vote on referendum day for the voice of parliament.

And it's really well done.

It's really, really well done.

Simply seeing John Farnham age throughout the course of that ad made me really emotional.

I like it so.

I think it's genius.

We've talked a little bit about simplicity of messaging and how it can be hard.

I think this is very targeted ad because some people are saying, Why are the family white?

Why are the people watching TV white?

It's targeted at white Australians, broadly speaking.

And it needs to be because that's the majority of people who are going to be voting in this referendum.

So I think it's genius.

I'm so glad that John Farnham agreed to let the voice be used for this purpose.

And I'm here for it changing minds.

Public assistant businesswoman Roxy Jacenco has come out to warn people about using weight loss injections without proper medical supervision.

After claiming that she overdosed on a Zempik and ended up in hospital, she says that after she was treated for breast cancer quite a few years ago, she put on 15 kilograms and she recently went to her doctor and asked for a Zempik.

She said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph, I thought I'm reading and hearing about a Zempik all the time.

I'm trying it.

I went to my doctor and I begged him and he said, Roxy, go and look in the mirror.

He made me walk into his room and look at myself in the mirror and he said, I'm not giving you a prescription.

You don't need it.

She got a script another way.

She doesn't say how.

But because a Zempik was sold out in all the pharmacies in Sydney where she lives, she ended up paying someone two and a half thousand dollars to drive about a 300 kilometer round trip to a small South Coast town called Noura, where this person was able to fill the script that Roxy had.

And that's where things went pear shaped.

I mean, besides the fact that she just paid someone two and a half thousand dollars to go and pick up her script.

Even though you meant to start on a small dose of these weight loss injections, the only one that she could get was four times the recommended starting dose.

So she just went, well, stuff it.

I'm just going to take that.

And pretty soon she ended up in hospital where doctors decided to admit her to a drug overdose clinic for a few days to monitor her organs.

She says for fear that her vitals would shut down.

She said, I thought I was actually going to die.

I've had cancer, radiation therapy, all of that.

It doesn't even compare to how bad I felt when I took this drug.

She was vomiting.

She was uncontrollably shaking.

She was very, very ill.

Now, a couple of facts to lay down.

The Therapeutic Goods Association, who regulates all of these things, say that a Zempik is currently only subsidized for the treatment of diabetes, which means that you can still get it prescribed for weight loss.

But it has to be done privately, which means that you have to pay.

Well, first, you have to find a doctor who will actually prescribe it for you, and then you have to pay about $130 per month instead of the $42 per month if it's being used for diabetes, right?

Now, the TGA does not have the power to regulate clinical decisions of health professionals.

So they can't stop doctors prescribing it for weight loss.

But pharmacists have been encouraged to prioritize the supply of a Zempik for diabetes patients, not weight loss patients, because there's been lots of social media and stories

written about celebrities using drugs like a Zempik prescription drugs to lose weight.

Now, obviously, out loud as we are not doctors or health experts, please seek out your own medical advice with your doctor.

But Claire, you have very strong feelings about this story.

The more I thought about this story and initially I didn't click on it because I have very strong feelings about the conversations going on about a Zempik.

And I try to stay away from it completely because I don't think it's particularly helpful, the focus that we're placing on it in the media right now.

But I eventually did click on it.

And once I read it, I thought, this is a really important story.

And it's important on a few levels.

I think one is it feels like a parable about capitalism and health because we know that there's an association broadly between obesity

and socioeconomic status.

And on a social level, we have all these people who don't have access to affordable fresh food, people who are living in built environments that aren't conducive to exercise.

And we have a cost of living crisis that means people are having to work longer and longer hours, often sedentary, in order to provide for themselves and their families.

Then there's a pharmaceutical product to attempt to ameliorate that issue for those people, the fact that then you've got type two diabetes, all sorts of health issues.

And the only context we're talking about it, and I mean the media broadly and society broadly, is in relation to wealthy, straight-sized people who want to lose a bit of weight.

This is what can happen when you use a drug that is not for you.

This drug is not...

That's Roxy's point.

Yes, exactly.

Because at first I thought, Roxy just ain't go taking those MPIC.

This is not something that we want to hear about.

And when she did go through all the side effects and how horrible she felt basically said, this was not for me and this is the impact that had on me.

And she said, I'm embarrassed, I'm an idiot, why did I risk my health to just be a bit skinnier?

You know, why don't I just go to the gym and eat less?

That was her quote.

So I actually think it's a story that we need to hear.

With that said, the fact that a straight-sized woman was so consumed by the need to lose weight that she took this drug is also a problem.

I think if you look at obesity and eating disorders as two sides of the same coin, what has happened is that Osempic was meant to service one side of the coin and now it's servicing the other side.

And it's almost being used to perpetuate body image issues and eating disorders when really it was always meant to be for the other side.

Health professionals say you should only ever use it if it's going to prevent adverse health outcomes like impacting your mobility or increasing your risk of heart disease or complications from type 2 diabetes.

It's not about going from a size 14 to a size 12 or in Roxy's case from a size 8 to a size 6 when that has absolutely no discernible positive impact on your health.

Like that's a body image issue.

I genuinely think that this story being shared is actually doing a service, even though that was not my first response.

I agree.

I think it is doing a service because what Roxy has pulled the curtain back on there is something that lots of people are doing, right?

If you're wealthy and you've got access to numerous different health professionals who will write you scripts for things, you can get around the rules.

But ultimately what she did was abuse a drug that is not meant for her, as you've said.

And as you've said, Mia, it's a service that she's come out and said so because she is really just showing you what a lot of people are doing.

There's so much judgment tied up in how people lose weight if they lose weight and I think we should get rid of it because I think it doesn't matter.

Really, as long as you're doing it healthily and you're being observed by a medical professional, if that's what's required, it doesn't matter.

But I just fully agree.

I just don't think this drug is for going from a 12 to a 10 or from a 10 to an 8.

I just don't.

Cosmetic injectables like Botox.

I was thinking about the parallels here because Botox was originally it was used to help people who have cerebral palsy who have muscles that spasm to relax those muscles so that they can get greater mobility.

It was also used to help treat migraines and then someone worked out that you could use it for aesthetic reasons to help treat wrinkles, even though wrinkles is not a condition.

Who gets to be the gatekeeper about who gets to use a drug?

One, it's a different class of drug and well, they're both injectables because not all people that use weight loss injections for weight loss are just using it to look better on Instagram.

No, of course not.

One of the reasons why it's so popular is because it's serviced a need that was gaping, right?

And Claire Murphy's talked about this on this show several times.

Women walk into doctor surgeries all the time and are told to lose weight for their health.

And then that's it.

Then they're just told exercise more and eat well.

And those are very difficult things to do for a lot of people.

You've spelled some of that out in your intro, Claire, when you were talking about socioeconomic circumstances.

But there's also a lot more complexity around that too.

Drugs like Ozenpik provide a solution that is needed.

They've stepped into a gap that is needed for a certain section of the population unquestionably, which is why I was saying before.

I think we should unpick judgment around it.

So who gets to decide who needs it is what you're asking me.

And I think at this point in its evolution in Australia, the TGA, they get to decide.

They actually don't.

The TGA don't because they don't have the power to regulate the clinical decisions of health professionals.

So they can't decide who gets to use it.

And to be clear, Roxy's health professional said, you don't need it.

No, I'm less meaning the health risks and more this moral idea of who's allowed to use a drug and what are they allowed to use it for.

Like when you say, I don't think you should be allowed to use it to go from a 14 to a 12 or a 10 to an eight.

You're like, why not?

Well, I'm playing devil's advocate.

Oh, I know you are not.

But it's like, well, who gets to decide in a society, particularly that tells women size eight as much as the body in positive movement is amazing.

We still live in a world that's getting better, but also it's not getting better.

And we know that social media, for example, is causing catastrophic effects for the body image of particularly young girls and young boys, but particularly young girls and women.

What I've heard said, and I've noticed to be true even in myself, the people who are most keen to morally police the use of a Zempik are straight size women.

I disagree of which we are.

Yes, but I disagree.

There's a lot of conversation going on in all sorts of groups about the problem with a Zempik.

But I would say that it's just like any procedure or drug where the arbiter are health professionals.

And if I went to a health professional and said, hello, I want some ridiculous cosmetic procedure.

You don't need a script for interestingly, I think they're trying to change that, but you don't need a script for Botox.

But they would hopefully advise me, you don't need that.

If it's a good medical professional, and if they have good training, and especially if they are aware of this tension between body image issues, eating disorders, and then on the other side of the coin, obesity.

I think that's really promising what the doctor did to Roxy Desenco.

I think that's amazing that a doctor was able to say, this is not for you.

And I think a vast majority of medical professionals in Australia would say that.

Out louders, let us know what you think in a voice note or send an email to outloud at mamamia.com.au.

There's a conversation brewing in the zeitgeist at the moment about frenemies.

The types of people who treat us with both kindness and cruelty, and why we get hooked on them.

In an article last week in The Guardian, Anita Chowdhury shared an anecdote about how she was coming out of the theatre

when she ran into a friend she knew from her work years ago.

She describes this person as being the kind of person who is really charismatic,

but does random acts of kindness mixed with some cruelty.

At the theatre, this woman greets Anita and says, how are you?

And Anita is like, oh, yes, I've been doing all these things and gives her a big monologue about how she's been going.

The woman interrupted her to say, that's great.

I'm so happy to hear you finally sorted your life out.

Chowdhury writes, I tossed and turned that night, seething and pondering what she had meant.

She didn't know anything about my life, so why had she said that?

Earlier this year, organisational psychologist Adam Grant wrote about this phenomenon in The New York Times,

and he explored the idea of frenemies, which is a person who pretends to be your friend

or acts friendly towards you, but actually harbours negative feelings, jealousy, ulterior motives.

He said, these relationships can have a serious impact on your emotional state,

and there's research to show that these ambivalent relationships or kind of ambiguous relationships

mess with your health even more than purely negative ones.

So there's one study where adults had higher blood pressure after dealing with people

who evoked mixed feelings as opposed to purely negative feelings.

May I in your no filter with Elizabeth Day, the author of the bestselling book, Friendaholic,

she talks about the toxic nature of the frenemy and how that ambiguity takes its toll.

Here's some of what she said.

A lot of people can relate to this, that there are some people and they're often very, very dear to you,

who for whatever reason, and very often it's to do with what's going on in their lives,

can never be uncomplicatedly happy for someone else, but also can never offer a consistent

kind of love.

That was so interesting and it really resonated because it's the inconsistency.

There's a spectrum of human behaviour from negative to positive,

and generally the people who love you fall into positive,

various people fall along the spectrum until then there's like your enemies,

I guess, or your nemesis that would be very negative.

The point is that you're prepared for both of those.

It's when you don't know what you're going to get that it can be quite maddening and that triggers

your fight or flight stress response and increases your blood pressure.

So Elizabeth Day says it's often about what's going on for them.

Do we think frenemies are frenemies to everyone or it's a particular dynamic?

Because I have a theory that there are people who would be frenemies in all their friendships.

I think that's an interesting question Claire, because is anybody prepared to admit that they're

a frenemy? I've googled today, I was like, how do I know if I'm a frenemy?

And there's nothing about that. It's just lots of how to spot a frenemy.

Everybody's a frenemy.

Like we are probably frenemies to people in our lives, right?

Because to be honest, when you're living a life that's got lots of different connections in it,

family, in laws, workplaces, sometimes you've got to fake friendships.

You do, you genuinely do.

And I think we are in a phase at the minute of analysing friendships very heavily.

And so we've got this sort of ranking of the kind of friendships that we want in our lives.

Not every connection in our life can be 100% authentic and positive and meaningful.

So I don't think that frenemies would always be frenemies.

I think they are probably circumstantial frenemies.

So an example, when I say fake friendships, I mean things like someone that you have to

spend time with sometimes. Let's say it is your brother's girlfriend, or your boyfriend's cousin,

or somebody that you work with. And when you see them, you have to be polite, friendly,

and be like, oh, how are you? What's going on with you? Kiss, kiss, all those things.

But probably you're thinking, I find you difficult, hard work.

I think that something different is sort of faking friendship or being inauthentic.

What I liked about Adam Grant's thing about frenemies, he said, it's not just friends,

it's the in-laws who volunteer to watch your kids, but belittle your parenting.

That's what I mean.

The roommate who gets you through a breakup and then starts dating your ex,

the manager who praises your work, but denies you a promotion.

And that made me question, you know, something that we talk about, and I'm sure a lot of people

would think that I'm possibly not a friend of me, but in a work situation, for example,

sometimes someone you work with might be doing really well, and sometimes they might not.

And because humans aren't consistent in their behaviour or their performance,

sometimes you'll have to say, hey, mate, not good enough. And other times you'll say,

that was really great.

And also, sometimes you might want to step in to help your roommate through a breakup.

They're not your best friends.

And their partner's really hot, so you just steal them.

And so what do you then own them? I guess what I'm pushing back on a little bit

is just the piousness with which we're very happy to point everybody else and say,

they're not a good friend, they're not a good friend, I'm a really good friend all the time.

When I reckon if we probably examined our own friendships a little bit and our own behaviour

at certain times, maybe things aren't going so great in our lives, maybe we are a bit triggered

by somebody else's success if things aren't going so well for us.

You know, there could be a million reasons that we're probably all capable

of frenemy behaviour is what I suspect.

We talk a lot at Mamma Mia about feedback in every organisation.

How do you give feedback, right? What's the best way to deliver feedback?

And there's one school of thought that you deliver it a bit like a shit sandwich.

So you do a compliment, then you deliver the tough bit of feedback,

and then you finish by saying something positive about them.

So you might go, Holly, Friday's episode about Loud was so good,

I loved what you said about Hamish Blake.

The audio wasn't great, but God, I loved hearing the three of you together.

That's the shit sandwich I got this morning.

And I think that's a genuine shit sandwich that Mia just wanted to tell you.

No, but I'm using a relaxing example because I can't think of an imaginary one.

But that's fine, but I feel like is that an example because it's like,

oh, you can relax and go, oh, that is good.

Well, apparently.

I can understand that that's actually really unsettling.

Current research slash best practice is that that is not the way to give feedback

because I went deep on this, managing people.

Because it's ambivalent and it's people don't know where that's going.

It's ambivalent and sometimes people miss the message in the middle because they're like,

oh, yay, she thought Friday was a good episode.

So Holly skips out being like, I did good job.

The other thing is that sometimes, and the feedback I get about my feedback,

is that sometimes they feel like the other two things aren't sincere.

They're like, they only hear the criticism.

And most of us are designed to only really listen to the criticism, to be honest.

And the thing is about a shit sandwich.

It usually is absolutely true.

You know, you didn't have to scratch around, hopefully,

to think about the thing that should be positive at the front of that.

There is one because life is, you know, life shape.

I reckon I don't fully see Adam Grant's examples of like in the workplace and even in the family

as how I consider frenemies because I think that there are power.

What's a good frenemy example in your life?

Okay.

One of my best friends in high school was 100% a frenemy.

I have this distinct memory of one day we were all going to the movies.

She was always the person planning everything.

She's like, yeah, yeah, we're meeting at the movies at 12.

And mum dropped us off at the shopping center and we went and met these friends.

And then she had orchestrated that the moment we got there,

the whole group was going to run away.

And so that person isn't a frenemy.

That person is just an asshole.

So then everyone ran away and there were no phones because this is before phones.

So we had no way to find them.

So we had to call mum on a pay phone and she had to come and we were crying.

And anyway, I didn't just go to a movie on your own.

But then the two of you didn't have problem solving skills at that age.

I was like, I have been bullied.

Then the next day at school, it would be like, that's a joke.

That was funny.

That's why it is a frenemy, not an asshole.

And then a few days later, it would be, oh my God, Claire's so funny,

Claire's so great, Claire's the best.

But then there'd be just a little aside that you do something and you get a look

or a snide remark and you think, oh no, no, no.

Teenage girls are the master of it.

I think they're frenemy.

Paul, you call it pass ag.

It's being passive aggressive.

I think that's another way of talking about frenemies.

I would love to know.

In fact, we should do it on the show.

Let's call that person up and be like,

justify this behavior, please.

When I was just trying to point out that I think we're probably all flawed in our

relationships with people because I know I am.

I know that there are times I can be a really good friend.

And there are times when I'm overwhelmed by other things in my life

and my friends probably think I'm not a very good friend.

So I will absolutely own that.

Hopefully they always know that I love them and that bit of me is consistent.

But whether I'm always going to show up,

we really are in a phase of idolizing female friendship at the minute.

And think about what we're asking of people.

We always say that person you can call at 3 a.m., right?

So we want them to be constantly available to us.

We want them to be available to hang out with us when we want to,

but not get offended when we cancel on them because hashtag introvert, hashtag overwhelm.

We have to be overly supportive at all times and you go girl,

but also call them on their shit in a loving way.

This is a very high bar that we're setting for people

who have all kinds of other things going on as we all do.

So sometimes I wonder if we're making the standards so high now,

maybe because we're so disillusioned with romantic love in this age of internet dating

and everything.

The status of friendship has actually got really high.

And if anyone falls down on one of those things,

we're like, you're not there for me.

You're a shit friend when maybe they're just being human.

However, that does not justify the kind of behavior that you're talking about.

About deliberately humiliating somebody, deliberately trying to knock them down a peg

or two.

That's never cool.

When I think about that particular individual,

she was like that to a lot of people and has been like that to a lot of people throughout her life.

I think there are people who just the nature of their relationships with other people

is that they're frenemies and that the charisma element,

people really gravitate towards them, but then there's a funny power dynamic.

I agree with what you say, Holly, that I think friendship is broken a little bit.

And that's why some of these issues arise.

So Elizabeth Day talks about, I think she calls it like the Dunbar number.

And it's this idea that you have like five people in your life,

you're really, really close with, and then 10 people who you love unconditionally,

but you see every now and then, and then another layer.

And she says basically, I broke myself by having too many friends.

And I kind of think that that's where this comes from, that our social networks have expanded

to a point that it's untenable.

And so probably a lot of the people we're following on Instagram are frenemies.

We've met them once and we don't really.

No, no, I think that's different.

A frenemy, it's not just someone who you don't know very well or someone who's a bit fake.

The frenemy thing is about someone who deliberately pokes at you.

Insecurities.

Exactly.

Knows you well enough to know what they are.

Yeah.

And I think it's based on their own insecurity is always my guess.

It's that because you can have someone that, you know,

it's like what you were saying whole about sometimes you're not a very good friend or whatever.

It's not an inconsistency, it's that you might be out of touch for a while,

but it's not like, you know, like people who go, you look really tired.

You look really tired or, oh, you're wearing those jeans again.

You know, like that's a frenemy.

The one, and I've got a friend like this and I love her and I've known her for so long,

but she's always the one that points out that I've got a pimple or that I look tired or that

she'll find my biggest insecurity and just.

Have you ever pulled her up on it?

No, I haven't.

I wonder what would happen if we did.

I don't know why she does it, but it is that.

That's a special episode right there.

I know, I know frenemies hotline and we just solve everyone's frenemy problems.

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

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

and a big thank you to all our current subscribers.

There's something going on with menopause and sex.

As Generation X go through the change, as our mothers called it,

and we as the first oversharing generation are determined to let you know all about it.

Lately, one of the conversations I'm seeing everywhere is about sex.

Remember a while back, how we discussed on this show,

writer Nikki Gemmels' column in The Australian that everybody went nuts about,

where she said that post-menopause, she was ready for a post-sex life.

The reason that was quite revolutionary is because she was saying out loud,

I'm done with it, right?

On the other end of that spectrum, I was reading this morning Naomi Watts,

the glorious Australian actress.

She's been doing quite a lot of advocacy around midlife and menopause lately,

and she's just held an event in the US called Unlocking Intimacy,

Navigating Passion in Midlife.

She's got a product range called Stripes that sells products to help women with menopause.

She's just got married to her newish partner, the very equally gorgeous to Naomi and Charismatic

Billy Cronup, and they're having lots of great sex in midlife.

She says so, and good on her, of course.

She says that there's loads of freedom in not worrying about pregnancy,

and also that the vulnerability involved in talking to him about what was going on for her

hormonally actually makes things better.

She said, if you can talk to your partner, if you can be honest and have a really authentic

conversation and take away the awkwardness, they will be empathetic, and that's hot.

Although I have not personally found discussing things like night sweats and vaginal dryness,

particularly hot, except for in all the wrong ways,

I fully support both these perspectives, of course, right?

So you do you, women don't experience things all the same.

But it is true that a drop in libido is a very common symptom of peri and menopause for lots of

women. For example, the third thing I'm seeing everywhere is women in group chats and on groups

on Facebook saying things like this. This is one that I saw today on Facebook.

I've been married for 14 years. I'm in my mid-40s, peri and menopausal, and on HRT.

I can't be bothered having sex with my husband anymore. He wants it twice a week.

I'd be happy with once every two months. He just doesn't get it.

So I want to discuss two things. Does every stage of life, including menopause, need to be sexy?

And is there permission for a season of reduced sexual activity in a relationship,

like a timeout, card that you can play for hormonal reasons? Mia.

I loved what Naomi said about when she and Billie started dating and the first night that they had

sex, she had HRT patches. And she said, I didn't want him to see it. So I was in the bathroom

trying to scrub it off because everyone who uses patches know that, like, you get the adhesive,

it sticks even if you take the patch off. And she said, I was scratching it away.

And she said, I was taking ages. And when I came out, he's like, is everything okay in there?

And she said, she told him. And he was like, oh, right, cool. And that's what she said.

She found sexy. Now, when you're in a long-term relationship with someone who's maybe

being part of that whole decision to start taking HRT and live through your peri,

that's not a surprise to them. So they learn about it as they go. But I think it's hard and a bit

unfair to compare Nikki Gamble, who's been married for 25 years and has got four kids and still

married and lives with her partner and whatever, children are still at home. The woman that you

read her question, she's been married for 14 years, still the same person. And someone who's

divorced and is newly single. That's a very fair point. Because there's nothing that gives you,

I used to call it single energy. And it also applies to libido, probably single energy and sexual

energy that you get when you're with a new partner.

Actually, Narelda Jacobs talked about this on the four, five, six clubs. So a woman who's

obviously at the same stage of life recently got a new partner.

Saying that vaginal dryness is not a problem for her at all at the moment.

She did. She is in a same-sex relationship as well. So I think that the newness can override

anything. That's a good point.

And I think that this idea of wanting to be sexy, I mean, I could be naive,

but I don't see a lot of agitation or complaints from men like with long-term partners saying,

I wish you were just more sexy. I think it's women putting that pressure on themselves

who are newly single. Like I saw on the weekend that Trini Woodall's done a

magazine cover that's a homage to the Beyonce on the Glass Horse. She's posed nude on this

Glass Horse. And she's 57, I think, around. And she's also newly single. And you see it all the

time. Like on Instagram, you see it with Jackie O and you see it with all of these people when

they're suddenly out there. They do their relaunch and they want to be sexy because

they're back in the market. But if you are in a long-term relationship or if people

are struggling with that drop of libido and they want, like their partner wants to change.

So let's say there's that mismatch thing, right? We know that there are some things you can do

to try and help with loss of libido during this time and other times in your life,

maybe when the hormones are dropping. Do you kind of have a duty to do them? I mean,

HRT and various things. Like do you almost have a duty to do that if loss of libido is a symptom

of what you're going through and suddenly sex is a far from your mind, right? Just sort of drops,

can just drop off the horizon. Like one minute it's on the menu and the next minute you're like,

I haven't even thought about that. I know lots of women who say that. So it's a season in your life

when sex isn't high up that list and it might come back on the other side. Can you have a hiatus?

Yeah. Can you have a hiatus? Or is it almost your duty to take the medication, do the things?

Claire Stevens, what do you think about this? I think in a really long-term relationship,

long-term relationships are based on being best friends first, I think. Like best friends first

and then having this romantic relationship, I think a hiatus should be okay and I think accepting

the ups and downs and the seasons of life. I've got a friend who she was taking some medication,

sex drive completely disappeared and she's like, I would be so fine with my partner sleeping with

somebody else. Sanction cheating for a season. Yeah, I'd be completely fine and I thought about

that a lot and I thought, no, I think there's a loyalty where you should be able to wait that

out together. That is a very naive and young early marriage perspective from me. But as somebody who's

pregnant, for example, I do not feel sexy. Some pregnant women do, but a lot of pregnant women

do not. I'm not in a sexy era. Dropped off the menu again. I'm just not in my sexy era.

But I do think it's actually really important to acknowledge what Naomi Watts is saying,

that women have really different experiences. I know postpartum, there are women who are like,

I never want to do it again, could easily not do it five years and women who are like,

I need to do it and my partner doesn't want to do it as much as I want to do it. Like,

there is so much variety in women's experiences and I do think we should acknowledge that it goes

up and down and just because it's low at a certain point does not mean it's going to be low

forever. I think there's a sense of loyalty that I find really romantic.

You're not up for the sanction cheating for the season. No, no.

You've got to accept that there will be times when, you know, your partner might not bring it.

What do you mean? Well, like, it might be that they don't look the way that they did

when you got together or that they don't spend as much time with you as you would like or that

they don't. I think that there's ups and downs and there's seasons of sex lives and

libido during your life, both within relationships and outside relationships. I've got single girlfriends

who are like, not interested, got my vibrator, so fine. And then I've got other single girlfriends

who are like, oh my God, if I'd have known how little sex I was having at this age,

I would have had a lot more sex when I was younger.

The other thing is, we often focus on women's sex drive. That's everywhere. That's in all the

Facebook groups. It's women worrying about their own sex drives, right? Some research shows. And

if you look at, I remember looking at this on Google Trends, that the most googled term around

this is actually, my husband has no sex drive. Well, testosterone drops the men as they get

older too. And I know anecdotally, lots of men who, they'll say it's the time in their life,

and this isn't a nice thing to think about, but they'll say it's the time in their life that

cured their womanizing almost, because they're like, suddenly I'm just not, like I used to be

insatiable and craving newness and looking all the time. And suddenly I'm just like, oh,

how did I ever have time for that? I think there should be acknowledgement that it happens

both ways. There's such a focus on women and women's sex drive and women going through all these

phases, particularly around pregnancy, postpartum, menopause, perry, all of that.

But men have those ups and downs too. It would be very, very unlikely for you to have a partner

that has a stable sex drive. This is in a heterosexual relationship his entire life. So

I kind of think that part of a long-term relationship is accepting that you won't

always be aligned. There will be ups and downs. I think women should stop being themselves up about it.

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

I do. So a lot of people have probably heard of Julia Baird. She is a journalist and a writer.

She wrote Phosphorescence's bestselling book. So good. Last night, there was an episode of

Compass, which you can watch on ABCI View, that was called Awe Hunters. It was Julia Baird sharing

her discovery of awe, which I think is a little bit like what you two talked about a couple of

weeks ago with Glimmers. I mean, even the fact that her bestselling book is called Phosphorescence,

that gives a little bit of an insight into kind of her pursuit of this.

Jules is a friend of mine and she was diagnosed with cancer. One of the things that got her through,

she is quite obsessed with it. She does things like open water swimming, like in winter.

Before I got sick, I discovered a local swimming group that met the same time,

every day, no matter the temperature, no matter the conditions. The sun was rising and you would

just force yourself in the water and at the end of it, you would feel so happy. It's this strange

kind of thing, like what that can do, both the cold water and the camaraderie. She talks about

that absolute obsession with finding things to be awe-inspired by.

I get it. The way she talks about it is it reminds you of how small you are in the universe and it's

such a powerful mechanism for your mental health and to ground you and be aware of the full scale

of the universe and that you are so small in the scale of the universe. She talks about that open

water swimming, that you are looking towards an ocean that is so big you cannot even conceive of it.

What's interesting about awe is that it's very childlike. That's what makes it magical because

particularly if you're very online and just the world, it's all about being cynical and being

angry and having the hot take. And awe is just like it's wonder. And I think spending time with

little children can reawaken that in you. I think that's why I was so drawn to this episode,

because I look at Luna and you see the world through her eyes. She's seeing a shadow for the

first time and you see a look of awe and then you think, when was the last time I felt that.

I get it from my vegetables, friends. Oh my gosh. I'm not even joking, out of their flowers and

they know to find something to wrap around and the next time you look at them, they will have

doubled, tripled, wrapped around like, it boggles my mind and I think it's good for my mind to be

boggled like that. I get it in the ocean. I get it in the ocean. Yeah, it's nature.

Now, if you're looking for something else to awe you, our last subscriber episode, Holly,

Elfie and Claire unpacked the meanest things anyone has ever said about them. Why did you

crazy people do this? Well, I didn't do it. I refused. It would be proud of me. Good. They talk

about how they handle it personally and what we can all do in our daily lives when we face social

media because it's not just being in the public eye. You might have a frenemy. Exactly. A frenemy

says something mean to you. 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 Casillas, the assistant producer is Tali Blackman with audio production by Leah

Porches. Bye. 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.