Mamamia Out Loud: The Boomer-Millennial Fight That Makes Great TV

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Mamma Mia Out Loud!

Hello and welcome to Mamma Mia Out Loud.

It's what women are talking about on Wednesday, April 12th.

I'm Holly Wainwright and today I am joined by two excellent hosts who are not our usual

hosts because our usual hosts are away and there will be more of that about why they're

away next week when they come back.

Something to do with the honeymoon, something to do with the family holiday, we'll fill

you in later.

In the meantime, host of the nation's most popular podcast right now, but are you happy?

Claire Stevens!

That's me!

Thanks, Holly.

I'm not competitive at all, so it doesn't, you know, that stuff doesn't matter to me,

but no, I'm kidding.

I've been sending screenshots of the charts all weekend to you guys, but yes, very exciting.

And are you happy?

Today?

Quite happy.

I'm on my second coffee and that's giving me a lot of joy and happy to be in the studio

with you guys.

Good, and also joining us, Elfie Scott.

I'm Elfie Scott.

Editor at Mamma Mia, fresh editor, and we've been dying to get you on the show, Elfie.

So tell the Out Louders a little bit about yourself.

So you've just come to work at Mamma Mia.

How long have you been here?

I'm actually like a month now, I think.

And where did you come from?

I came from my house.

I was freelancing for a couple of years, and yeah, now I'm over here.

I knew you have written a book, which you can hear all about on a filter, isn't it?

Yes.

The one thing we've never spoken about, about mental health.

Yes, it's about complex mental health conditions and just broad systemic problems in the mental

health system.

Light reading.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Just a chill little book, whatever.

Thank you for joining us, Elfie and Claire, and on the show today, what is an A-list celebrity

in 2023?

Two of Australia's from two very different generations just clashed over that very question,

plus self-care, boundary setting, and toxicity.

Toxicity.

Toxicity.

Toxicity.

Is therapy speak making a selfish plus?

Should influencers have to declare if they've used filters on their bodies and faces, there's

a proposed law on the table that says yes.

But first, Claire Stevens.

A celebrity romance update, because I know that's what you've all been waiting for.

It might have been a long weekend for us, but the celebrities, they were very busy.

They were working hard.

They were working overtime.

Entertainment Tonight reported on Saturday that Taylor Swift and her long-term partner,

Joe Alwyn.

Alwyn?

Alwyn.

Alwyn?

He's not important enough to me.

No.

To worry about that.

Yeah.

So they quietly split up a few weeks ago after six years together.

None of them have given a statement yet.

Of course, there's all sorts of unverified reports about why they broke up, but all of

them are pretty anticlimactic.

It sounds like personality differences, nothing controversial happened.

Now I consulted our Taylor Swift reporter here at my mayor, Chelsea McLaughlin, to understand

the significance of this news, because I said, I don't get it.

Can you explain?

And she said Taylor's relationship with Joe has essentially shaped who she is publicly

for the past six years, because she's very low-key and selective of events, and she's

kind of not out and amongst it because she's got Joe.

And this six-year period of her life has been the basis of half of her albums at this point,

like she has created half of her life's work in the last six years.

So people are very alarmed about what this means.

Interestingly, Joe collaborated with Taylor on two of her recent albums, Folklore and

Evermore, her best work.

In my opinion.

Very controversial.

I do not agree.

I do not agree.

In my opinion, her best work.

I knew you were trouble when you walked in.

Oh, that's a terrible song.

Her most moving work.

Now that she's touring, she's probably going to be singing a lot of the songs that they

wrote together and songs that were about him after they've broken up.

So that's very sad.

Is it sad?

Are you sad, Elfie?

Oh, I'm devastated.

No, I'm not.

Actually, I don't care.

I mean, look, I do think that, yeah, there is something interesting in it in the sense

that like Taylor's celebrity did change.

She went from being like an out-and-out party girl, A-list celebrity to being like chill

Bonnevere cardigan wearing person.

That's about it.

That's all I really care about, the branding.

That might have been like a natural progression anyway.

The thing I'm a bit irritated about is everyone saying, oh, poor Taylor, because people always

assume it's the woman who got dumped always.

And I do not necessarily agree with that.

Taylor may well have gone, this is not serving me anymore.

I have everything in the world.

Why do I need a boring boyfriend?

The unverified reports do suggest that she broke up with him.

Go Taylor.

There you go.

There you go.

In other slob news, Millie Bobby Brown of Stranger Things fame is engaged to a guy who looks

exactly like Joe Alwyn, but he is in fact John Bon Jovi's son.

It's my life, it's now or never, but I ain't gonna live forever.

Isn't that fun?

Does he actually look exactly like him or is he just like a young white man?

Is there a difference?

Honestly, they're interchangeable.

But in most important news, it's my darling Timothy Chalamet.

The actor known for call me by your name, ladybird, little women, et cetera.

He is rumored to be dating Kylie Jenner, according to gossip Instagram account, Dumois.

People think they usually get it right.

They do.

They do.

I'm so hurtful to learn this news because he was meant to love someone messy and weird

like me.

That was never going to happen.

No offense.

That was never going to happen.

No, he was.

He just didn't know it yet.

And there was a great tweet that read, Kylie Jenner and Timothy Chalamet dating feels the

same as when two people from your high school who never interacted start dating like six

years after graduation.

And that's what it is.

It's just you're different.

You come from different worlds.

I imagine you're very different ages, even though they are not, Elfie, how do you feel

about Timothy dating Kylie?

I feel equally heartbroken.

I do feel as though Timothy Chalamet exudes this kind of energy of being like the high

school heartthrob and to learn that he's dating like the cool hot girl rather than the sad

chick in the library.

It's very upsetting to me.

It's upsetting for sad chicks in libraries everywhere.

I know.

Exactly.

But don't you think this is a classic case again of the way we've projected onto poor

Taylor about her poor, you know, unlucky in love, whatever, that we've projected onto

Timothy that he's like this deeply sensitive soul, when actually he just is out clubbing

all the time and wants to sleep with hot women.

No, he has to be haunted.

It's important for him to be haunted.

Is it literally just because of his cheekbones structure though, is that all we're basing

this on?

He has to be.

I can't remember having ever been spoken to like that.

Oh, that's right.

In my entire life.

Do you think that a bit too much was made about the fact that you were allowed to wear

makeup?

I don't think anybody else cared except for Dom, who had a bit of a meltdown.

I don't think it bothered anybody else.

I don't know.

I didn't ask them.

It was what it was.

I got to take it in because I could because I asked.

Welcome to a world in which I'm opening a segment by saying if Dom had only finished

those testicles, yes, it's reality TV time.

And I'm always on the record on the show of going, reality TV makes the world a worth

place.

It's trash.

Luckily, I have a Steven's sister at the table and they know how to speak intelligently

about reality TV things.

So you're going to help me.

But I wanted to talk about I'm a celebrity, get me out of here, not specifically the show,

but the fact that it's fascinating to watch celebrities of two very different generations

and very different kind of eras of what a celebrity was clashing.

And in this case, literally.

So Carrie Ann Kennelly, who is most often referred to simply as Australian television

royalty, had a big Barney on I'm a Celebrity last week with, is it last year's Maths Breakout

star, Dom?

It was only last year.

It was.

It seems so long ago.

So much has changed.

Dom, aka Domenica Calaco, who has also been clashing with another old school celebrity

Ian Dicko Dixon in the jungle.

But to understand the context of the clip, we're about to play you of Dom and Kat having

a bit of a Barney.

You need to understand that as much as I know about the show, right?

The original celebrities and inverted commas were in the show and then they bring some

people in, you know, like imposters sort of thing.

And Kat was one of them.

And they all got back to their camp one night and there was like a bed laid out with a red

rope around it and it was like reserved for TV royalty.

And there were two big bags of toiletries and makeup and stuff, which is stuff you're

not allowed to have in the jungle.

And Kat walks in and she has negotiated in her contract and it's part of the whole spiel

for the show that she's allowed her makeup, that she's allowed her skincare, and that

she's clearly getting paid a shitload more than everybody else there.

Anyway, something, something testicles.

This is what happens between Kat and Dom.

Carrie Ann, we now have three celebrities making their way through the Coudou ball.

How are you feeling about making it stop there?

No, it's not going to happen.

Come on, Carrie Ann, come on.

It's not going to make any difference.

What can I do?

What can I offer you?

It's not going to make any difference.

You don't even try and come back to camp.

I'll tell you what, we're going to be like a big, Carrie Ann, legit.

Trust me, I'm a big yourself.

Don't you tell me what I need to do.

Oh, miss big contract lady.

Can't tell me what to do.

Ooh.

Wow.

I can, I can leave you.

No, I don't want it.

I don't want your Revlon 1989 lipstick doll.

Legit.

No.

I'll tell you what, it's not fair to everyone off there that actually tries.

Why are you here, bro?

Legit, actually, why are you here?

I probably don't have the answer.

Yeah.

Of course you don't, because the little contract states it.

Shortly after this, Kat leaves and she said that she had never been spoken to like that

in her life.

Now, reality TV will do what reality TV does, but I'm interested because when you've got

so-called royalty like Dico and Kak, and let's remember that in Kak's time, she has been

accused of explicit racism on national television.

She has suggested that a climate change protest to be used as a speed bump.

And she also suggested that a fellow female panelist on talk show should put on some pants.

These are just a few of the things that Kak has done that have been a bit on the nose over the years.

When her generation of celebrity comes face to face with celebrities from an entirely

other generation who are extremely online, it's kind of genius TV, isn't it, Claire?

Isn't that kind of what we're here for?

It's absolutely genius.

And this is the one show on television that puts all these generations of celebrities together.

So you have Peter Helia next to Deborah Lawrence, next to Aisha from Below Deck, next to Nathan

from Geordie Shaw.

These are some words that some people listening to this won't understand.

It just sounds like word solid to me.

I have no idea what's happening.

And no one knows.

People arrive and everyone's like, I don't know who that is.

But what I love about it is that, A, they clash in its great television, or we see people developing

really nuanced interpersonal relationships.

So what has happened before is that unlikely people bond and it gives you a better understanding

of how people aren't just their public perception.

So even with Dico, for example, Domenica challenged him initially about the time in 2003, where

he body shamed Paulini.

It lives in my mind rent-free.

I think about it all the time.

20 years ago.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And he said...

This is really hard for me to say, but it's the real world.

You should choose more appropriate clothes or shed some pounds.

I'm sorry.

And Domenica challenged him on that.

He didn't have a particularly inspiring response.

He kind of said, that's what I thought, but I'm better now at not saying what I think.

Would I say today?

No, I wouldn't.

But I'm a different person today and the world's different.

They now have quite a nice relationship.

They have clearly bonded and he has said, the way that you challenge me reminds me of my

daughter.

And she clearly respects him and can look at him and think, we disagree on a lot of things.

Yet, as a human, I quite get along with you.

And that's something I really enjoy seeing like Chrissy Swan and Joel Creasy became besties

in the jungle.

And it was the greatest thing to watch because it's two people who might not cross paths because

their ages are a little bit different.

They were kind of in different circles.

And let's not forget that AFL star Barry Hall and Lauren Brandt, who got her start on high

five, were in the jungle together a few years ago and now they have two kids.

Oh my God.

I think about that so often because they are, again, two people.

They didn't even particularly have much to do with each other in the jungle.

It was afterwards that their relationship started.

Yes, it's reality TV, but I do think it challenges the fact that people aren't just their media

personality, especially when everything is stripped back.

People are more complex than that and some really interesting bonds get formed.

But Elfie, did we not just kind of hear in that clip context aside about the testicle eating

contest, etc.

Cack kind of being outraged at being spoken to by this little upstart.

Is that the vibe that we got there?

Do you think?

Yeah.

I mean, has Carrie Anne Kennelly ever been called bro before in her entire life?

Bro.

Yeah, it's really interesting.

And I think like there is something about I'm a celebrity that kind of rings down the

facade of celebrity in Australia in general, right?

When you have these kind of a list for want to be better term celebrities rubbing shoulders

with people who came out of reality TV.

I think that that's really fascinating dynamic.

But in terms of like Carrie Anne Kennelly's actual response to that, I don't know,

eat the ball.

How much money are you getting paid?

Just do it.

Allegedly.

Allegedly half a million dollars for going in and then another 50,000 for every week she

paid and obviously she only stayed for a couple of days so we obviously couldn't pay her enough.

We talked on the show quite a few times about how famous means something different now because

there would be people who Claire, for example, would like fall over if she saw in the street

because they're on TikTok and they're huge who I would have no idea about.

One of the things that must be interesting about casting a reality show that depends on

celebrity now is they've obviously been offering the big names in inverted commas like Cack

to come on for years and years and years like he will pay you lots of money.

Mia's been asked to go on.

She has to be such good content.

I know but like anyone with a public profile gets asked and it feels like every time the

cast is announced, lots of eye rolling on the internet and like who even are these people

but that's kind of missing the point, right?

There's some real genius in casting different levels of celebrity and then just setting them

all loose together but obviously Cack didn't get that memo.

Dom is as famous as she is, if not more so.

Yeah, she is her equal.

She is a person who can push her around a little bit and force her to eat gross stuff.

Like I think that she didn't really understand that.

I think what we're seeing as well is that perhaps in previous generations or even, you know,

ten years ago, you'd see somebody like Carrie Ann who is Australian television royalty and

you wouldn't challenge them necessarily because you have this respect.

She's been on television for 50 years.

She has had a long, complicated career where she has done a lot of impressive things and

there's something quite refreshing about the fact that our idea of celebrity has changed so much

that Dom hasn't even been in media for a year can just say, no, you're a little bit fucked.

She can say that and there's no, I love that.

I also think there is nothing more boomer than refusing to go in the jungle without your makeup.

That is just massively boomer energy.

You're just like, no, they will not be seeing me without my mask.

Authenticity is not a currency I trade in.

You are not the problem when you set a healthy boundary in your family.

They want you to think you're the problem, though they need to desperately pin the blame on you

because they can't admit to what's going on.

They can't take accountability.

They need to protect the dysfunctional system at all costs, but you're not the asshole, my friend.

You're not actually making things worse when you're like, I'm not going to ignore this toxic bullshit anymore.

I'm not going to stay silent and be complicit.

I read an excellent article this week on Bustle written by Rebecca Fishbeen called Is Therapy Speak Making Us Selfish?

Fishbeen essentially argues boundaries are important, but our relationships require a touch more compassion than some online blueprints offer.

One example in the article that I found fascinating was about a woman named Carrie who says her brother spent months ghosting their parents without any explanation.

Carrie's parents were devastated and when she tried to mediate or at least get some answers from him about why he wasn't speaking to their parents,

he resisted and told her that if she defended their parents, he wouldn't feel safe and basically he wasn't open to this conversation.

She says he created this whole thing about his safety, his boundaries, his rules, and obviously that's important,

but it's like he came into it with the framework that he's the only real person in the world

and everybody else has to do exactly what he says to make him feel safe.

This example is really contentious because we don't know the brother's reasoning for setting that boundary,

whether there was abuse or an equally insidious reason for needing that line between him and his parents.

But I have noticed in my own life that especially with the rise of research and social media allows for the dissemination of this research in popular culture about attachment theory

and the problems with how our parents raised us and how our family dynamic informs who we become,

we can become incredibly selfish and one-sided in how we see things like therapy and psychology.

And when we use therapy speak, we're sometimes not giving other people the grace we're affording ourselves.

So we're saying, I was raised a certain way and that makes me feel like this and I need boundaries,

but we're not accepting or we're not showing compassion for the people around us.

Holly, do you think therapy speak is making us selfish?

I think in some instances, yes.

You've got to remember that my heritage is English from the north of England and we don't do therapy.

Famously emotional people.

Clearly I'm joking, of course we do therapy, but talking about yourself too much, thinking about your problems too much.

The stereotypes are, suck it up princess, get on with it, which has been really healthy for all of us.

You just have to think about Britain's establishment media's reaction to Meghan Markle, how Prince Harry talks these days,

to get a very clear real-world example about how that culture sees what they would deem like self-obsessed American therapy speak.

Basically just meets it with a giant eye roll and a big boo-hoo, right?

Obviously more evolved than that, Claire.

And I also think this is inevitable evolution from a time when therapy was something that only a tiny section of society could access, could afford,

could have any dealings with, and now anyone with a Google search engine can find out what's wrong with them in theory

or what's wrong with their parents more likely straight away.

So it's kind of inevitable.

And in some instances I think it's really helpful because I think that it's given a lot of us language around things that we couldn't articulate.

You know, why is it that when I spend time with my parents or that person at work or whatever, do I come away feeling awful about myself?

Why do I wish I could draw a line, a literal line around people who make me feel shit?

It's really helpful that now it's kind of acceptable to say I've got a boundary about not doing this.

I see it coming down so far that like my daughter, who is just in high school, they talk about this stuff all the time.

They say, you know, why would I be around anyone who makes me feel bad?

And the thing is, is that all of the rest of us are like, because that's what high school is.

But don't we kind of all wish in a way that we'd had that armor when we were kids to be like, well, no, being around people who make you feel terrible about yourself is not a good use of your time.

I don't know, Elfie, what do you think?

I do totally agree with where you're coming from.

I think that having the language and being able to articulate things that maybe made us feel uncomfortable before is really, really helpful.

And especially for setting boundaries that are genuinely damaging and toxic, like that is really important.

But I would also say that there is kind of a dangerous intersection between learning this language and like hefty individualization, right?

So I really think that the problem comes down to like prioritizing your need over that of others.

And very often what people will do with this sort of language is abdicate their own responsibility basically for shitty behavior a lot of the time.

So I think that it is useful up to a point, but we have to think about like sometimes it is necessary to take on a certain amount of discomfort for the sake of other people.

And I think that that's okay as well.

Is that what you worry about, Claire, that you think we've kind of talked about this about boundary setting on the show before,

but that we're creating a culture where any discomfort is something to be avoided and so you can't be there for people?

Is that what you're thinking?

Yes, and I see in day-to-day life stuff happens that isn't about you.

And it can be that something bad happens to somebody else or somebody else in your life is really struggling.

If you're drawing a hard boundary around what you can offer, it is ultimately selfish because it might not be comfortable for you to interact with another person's mental illness

or the fact that they've just had a scary diagnosis.

But that is what being human is about.

And so it scares me a little bit that we really look at every situation through the lens of what does this mean for me personally and what language can I put around it?

The other thing is I was at Esther Perrell a few months ago and a person in the audience asked a question about their toxic ex and then somebody else was talking about a partner who was a narcissist.

And everyone kept using these buzzwords and Esther Perrell got everyone in trouble and it was amazing.

And she yelled at the whole audience and was like, stop it in her amazing accent.

She was like, this language that you are using is totally unhelpful.

I have no idea what you mean and by using it, you're actually not getting into the nuances or complexities of what you're really trying to say.

Like, I don't know what you mean by toxic and it's probably more likely.

And when she did kind of drill down into one girl's experience, she's like, there may have been a toxic dynamic.

Yes.

Instead of just labeling somebody else.

And I think what Elfie said about abdicating responsibility is exactly what the problem is.

I get that, but I also think that we would all have experiences in our lives where there are people who are spending time with them.

It leaves us feeling toxic, right?

I've definitely had that experience.

People in my life who, you know, if I go out for a dinner with them, I will come away from it feeling drained, angry.

And why would I do that to myself if I'm not related to them and it's my obligation to do so?

I think that in some ways, having the words to use, even if you're using it incorrectly because you're not properly trained.

But I'm like, aha, that's what that is.

That is a toxic dynamic or a toxic friendship.

It's not necessarily that she is toxic, but I come away from that interaction feeling like she's poisoned me.

And so why do I do that?

I don't have to do that.

Do you know what I mean?

Is that selfish or is that not just self-preservation?

Yeah, look, I think that it is useful for exactly that reason because there are people in our lives who do exactly that to us.

They make us feel shitty.

They're narcissists.

They play us.

There are people who are like that.

But I do just think that it is that generalization of these kind of terms that is the real issue.

It's using that language and supplanting it outside of those contexts that is the problem, I think.

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

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

To get full access, follow the link in the show notes and a big thank you to all our current subscribers.

We are currently pushing to legislate transparency when it comes to altering people's appearance online.

So under a new bill, which will be voted on in the French Senate in the next month,

people on social media will have to let their followers know if they are using anything to digitally alter their photographs.

And that is in cases when they have been paid to create that content.

So if influencers fail to declare their use of filters, they could be punished with six months in prison and a fine...

Six months in prison?

That's a long time, actually.

More than a lot of crimes.

Or around 430,000 AUD in fines.

The intention, according to the finance minister Bruno Le Maire, who is for some reason associated with this story,

I don't know how finance is attached to this,

he says that it is to try and limit the destructive psychological effects of filters.

What do we think? Should this be a blanket rule everywhere?

So it would kind of be like in the same way that if I'm being paid when I'm posting something on Instagram, I declare it.

I would have to declare like this photo has been altered with this filter.

My first instinct was hell yes.

I love this unconditionally because it has gotten to the point where I look on Instagram and laugh out loud at the filters people are using

and the fact that online, I'm starting to not know what a face looks like.

I look at people and it's like, that's not even a face.

That's not real skin.

That's not real features.

And the normalization of it aggravates me so much.

And I think it's really interesting that in France, they're talking about it also being related to advertising

because there was that story a couple of months ago of the influencer who used fake eyelashes with the mascara.

That was my favorite.

So on TikTok, she was advertising a mascara and then you could clearly see that when she put on the mascara and you zoomed in, she had just attached fake eyelashes.

This literally just changed my life.

This looks like false love. This is how, what?

That's how I feel about the people advertising skincare products, foundation, highlighter, blush, whatever, and they're using a filter that blurs their complexion.

And I don't understand how that is transparent or fair.

However, my weird instinct here, and it may be that I'm being incredibly idealistic, is that sometimes I feel like when we're looking at these little examples like using filters or airbrushing,

we're kind of putting band-aids over a huge gaping wound.

And the gaping wound for me, and I felt it growing up, was why do women in particular value the way we look more than who we are as people?

So you want to fix sexism?

Yes, we're changing the world.

I just think about my feelings towards plastic surgery.

I think about my feelings towards filters and airbrushing.

And the reason it makes me, I have such passionate feelings is because I hate it, but I value how I look.

And if I didn't value how I looked that much and I had a better sense of self-worth, that stuff wouldn't bother me as much.

It's the water we swim in, right?

And it's so funny because, I'll bring up my daughter again, but until she hit adolescence, she didn't give a shit about what she looked like and what she wore and, you know, any of those things I'm fitting in.

And then it's like a switch gets flicked.

And I remember going for a walk with her one day and I was, and I've been, you know, giving her my bullshit feminist lectures since she could listen.

And I was like, you know, it doesn't matter what you look like.

And she was like, mum, you have to stop saying that because it's not true.

And you know what? She was right. It does matter.

It doesn't mean it's right that it matters, but everything else in the world is telling her that it matters all the time.

And so suddenly it's a place where you can get validation or abuse, but it's an arena to play in and they learn that.

And then they're confronted with all this imagery.

Well, when I was a kid, it was airbrushed imagery in advertisements and it still is like you still would open an ad or watch a TV ad or a streaming ad that has someone selling you skincare who is 16 years old and has also been airbrushed to hell.

So it's not changed.

So I agree with it that it's the soup that we're dealing with.

But my other question about this is we all know more and more all the time and it's the subject of inquiries and court cases in the U.S. that tech companies who've invented this stuff are ruining everything.

They're making everything worse.

They're detrimental to the mental health of young people.

It's changing our value system.

It's disconnecting us all.

Why are we yelling at the individual influences and the individual women who have been influenced by the soup that was swimming in rather than the tech companies to go, you're not allowed to have filters on your platform.

Ban the fucking filters.

Yes.

Good point.

I think it's zooming out.

One thing you said there about, I remember being a teenager and we'd learn about airbrushing and I felt like yelling.

It is not airbrushing on the front page of a magazine that's making me feel bad about myself.

It is looking around and the conversations between teenage girls and the way I walk into a classroom and the teacher comments on the girl with the beautiful face.

It's kind of treating the symptom rather than the cause a little bit.

But that is changing culturally, slowly, slowly.

Like in the same way we know we're supposed to eat vegetables for our health.

I mean, for our health, let me be clear.

Parents in particular and teachers know now that they're not supposed to comment on the way that little girls in particular look.

They find it hard to do, but we all know that's what the script was supposed to be following is.

You're so beautiful.

No, you're so kind.

You're so smart.

You're so generous.

I would also say that like that was you when you were growing up and that was me when I was growing up.

But for like kids who grew up in the Instagram generation, who grew up into Snapchat, kids who were like 12, 13 years old,

they are just like suffering through this horrific little universe where they are seeing the payoff instantaneously for people who look better than they do.

So I do think that it's amplified as well.

And for themselves if they use the filters, right?

Yeah.

Like it's fighting against human nature to go, when you put that filter on and you get all those likes and all those little fire emojis

and all your friends going like, so hot.

Like that's bad for you.

Don't do that.

They're like, what?

That makes me feel great.

And I think you're right that banning the filter feels a bit like banning women from wearing makeup.

And it's like, well, hold on, go back to why I wear makeup.

I wear makeup because I've lived in a world that tells me everything about my natural appearance is wrong.

And so I really agree with what you say about banning the individuals for using the filters instead of looking at the big picture.

And it is sickening to look at some of the filters they're creating.

That is literally like, this is how you'd look if you had a nose job and your lips done and Botox.

Totally.

And there was that report that came out like a year or so ago about what Meta knows about its mental health impacts as well.

And they knew all along that pushing these kind of filters would have massive ramifications for body image.

So yeah, I do agree that there needs to be some responsibility with those tech companies.

Before we go, Elphi, you've got a recommendation.

I do.

So my recommendation this week is the TV program Beef on Netflix.

I've been hustling my whole life.

Look where it's got me.

Let's make it stop.

I have a very full life that I'd love to get back to.

I'm going to find you and take what little you have.

You have this serene Zen Buddhist thing going on.

Has anybody seen it?

No.

What is it?

This is a show that's been produced by A24.

I think it's their first television show.

It must be.

But it is on Netflix.

It has Ali Wong and Steven Yun in it.

I love Ali Wong unconditionally.

She's so funny.

Oh my God.

So I've only seen one episode of this, but I'm already 100% in.

What's it about?

What's it about?

Okay.

It's sort of like a white lotus adjacent narrative.

Like there is definitely stuff in there about like disparity between like the have and the have nots.

It's also very centered around rage and like Asian rage, particularly,

which I am extremely into as a rageful Asian.

But yeah, I agree.

Ali Wong is also just like the coolest celebrity to me.

I am all in on anything that she does.

So I would highly recommend this show.

It's a drama, right?

Like it said, it's fiction.

Yeah.

And what's it about?

So I've only seen the first episode,

but they are setting them up as enemies, Steven Yun and Ali Wong.

And they meet in this very unconventional way.

And the end of the first episode kind of brings together their meeting

after like the universes have revolved around each other for a bit.

It's very interesting.

So the beef is a beef.

The beef is a beef.

Yeah.

Because at first I thought cooking show.

I went, not another cooking drama.

I've had a few of these.

We have a controversial adjacent recommendation.

So we talked about succession last week, very top line because I admitted

I'm the only person on the planet who is not watching it.

And it turns out lots about loudest with me,

but we are going to talk about it briefly on Friday because it's class Steven's why.

Because without any spoilers,

there is a theme or a kind of idea that came out of Monday night's episode

that we think lends itself to a much brought out conversation.

So I would say actually,

Get up to speed.

Get up to speed.

Watch Monday's episode.

I would say Monday's episode if I haven't watched all of the other episodes.

I'd honestly say do it.

Yeah.

I would.

It's a brilliant.

I've watched one and a half episodes of this season.

Watch it.

Catch up please.

It's a brilliant hour of television that I genuinely think stands alone

and can be analyzed to the ends of the earth,

but it really lends itself to a bigger conversation about what I won't say until Friday.

Thank you very much to Elfie and Claire for filling in for Mia

and Jesse while they are off doing their own white lotus situation.

We will talk about that more later.

Thank you for listening to Mamma Mia Out Loud.

This episode is produced by Emma Gillespie with audio production by Lea Porges

and assistant production from Susanna Makin and we'll see you tomorrow.

Bye.

Good harmony.

Yeah.

I know.

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.

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