Mamamia Out Loud: The Moral Minefield Of Britney Spears’ Memoir

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Hello and welcome to Mamma Mia Out Loud.

It's what women are actually talking about on Wednesday the 18th of October.

I'm Holly Wainwright and I'm back from forest bathing in the wilds of Tasmania.

I'm Mia Friedman and thank God you are back because driving this bus is a lot harder than

it looks.

I think we could all tell Mia.

I did a great job.

I'm kidding.

I'm clueless.

And I loved listening.

You handled a difficult week beautifully.

But on today's show, Britney Spears said she had an abortion, but it was all just in Timberlake's

idea.

Is that a fair thing to share?

Plus, is the mainstreaming of talk about menopause, baby brain and pelvic pain harming women's

chances at work?

And is wine cancelled?

The much needed correction in alcohol culture is coming for drink o'clock.

But first, Claire Stevens.

In case you missed it, there is a restaurant in Tokyo staffed by people with dementia and

it's all I've ever cared about.

The restaurant is called Restaurant of Mistaken Orders and is owned by television producer

Shiro Oguni who says he wanted to take a kinder and more inclusive approach.

He says our restaurant is stylish and serves great food.

If your order was mistaken, you can shrug it off and enjoy what comes your way anyway.

It's a place to foster this kind of open-minded, caring freedom and communication.

The naming allowed our customers to enter with an open mind.

They expected mistakes and so were okay with it.

This is beautiful.

So when you say it's owned by a TV producer, it's not like a reality show or anything.

He just happens to work in television, but he owns it.

He was inspired when he went to a nursing home and he ordered a burger and dumplings

came and he went to complain and then he thought, no, I'm not going to complain.

And they found that while 37% of the orders taken at the first pop-up of this restaurant

were mistaken, 99% of the customers said they were happy with their meal.

And it's just the most beautiful story because researchers from the World Health Organization

say that meaningful work and connection can help with symptoms of dementia.

And it made me think of my pop who I saw over the weekend.

He is constantly shocked and surprised by family news because he forgets because it's

the short-term memory that goes.

So every time he sees me, I remind him that I'm pregnant and he's like, what?

That's amazing.

And when he sees baby Luna, he's like, who's this?

Oh, so he gets to experience that joy again and again.

That's positive.

And it makes me think that sometimes it's about us being more inclusive and not questioning

that or criticizing that rather than expecting them to adapt because sometimes they're perfectly

fine.

Britney Spears has written a memoir and the first headlines of many hit your news feed

this morning.

The Woman in Me is out next week and it's Britney's version of her life, as told through

a ghost writer whose journalist called Sam Lansky who's written novels before and who's

written lots of celebrity profiles for time.

It was planned as soon as Britney's conservatorship ended and its publisher, Simon & Shuster, is

hoping for a Prince Harry-esque blockbuster.

Certainly, the first headlines are exactly the kind of details people were hoping for.

People magazine who've got the first extracts from it today shout across their website.

Britney Spears reveals she had an abortion because Justin Timberlake didn't want to

be a father.

The excerpt says, this is Britney's voice.

It was a surprise, but for me, it wasn't a tragedy.

I loved Justin so much.

I always expected us to have a family together one day.

This would just be much earlier than I'd anticipated.

But Justin definitely wasn't happy about the pregnancy.

He said we weren't ready to have a baby in our lives and that we were way too young.

She doesn't specify exactly how young, but Spears dated Timberlake from 99 to 2002.

So that's like between the ages of 17 and 21.

Now I have questions.

Telling the world you've ended an unwanted pregnancy shouldn't be controversial in 2023,

but in America, where 21 of the 50 states have banned or restricted abortion access

for women, it still is.

And it's also a very specific choice to say that you didn't want to have an abortion,

but your partner did.

What are the politics of this mirror?

Who owns your abortion story?

Oh, who's your abortion story belong to?

I don't know.

I mean, I've had two abortions and I've spoken about them, but they weren't to people that

I've named.

I very much owned that decision.

I also think that it's really fair enough, if indeed that's what Justin Timberlake said,

that he said that and that he felt that.

I think that's completely understandable.

That's what I've found really interesting today, looking at the reaction.

A lot of people have just jumped on the, see Justin Timberlake as a terrible person, bandwagon.

But why?

And it's like another reason to hate him.

And I find that really strange because I don't think this is black and white.

He is only a year older than her, so she could have been anywhere between 17 and 21.

He's only, you know, 18, 19, 20 when this happens.

I think a young man saying, I'm not ready for a baby is okay.

And we have about four sentences of context for this.

So we don't know how, for example, her religious upbringing played into this or how her family

played into this.

And I think it's a really big thing for people to just jump on and pile on Justin Timberlake.

Well, it's interesting because her sister, Jamie Lynn, had a baby at 16, right?

And she was roundly shamed for doing that.

She was called a terrible example to the youth of America.

She lost her jobs at Disney and she's on the record of saying, if I'd have had an abortion,

no one would have known about it and I wouldn't have been a bad example.

And the thing is, is this is such a controversial issue in America, as we know, you know, elections

have fought and lost over it and it's a massive moral absolutism there that, as you very rightly

point out, Claire, there's like four sentences.

It's the first extract, the first thing they've decided to promote from the book.

So it's a specific decision.

This will reflect badly on Justin Timberlake in America because it will be seen as a morally

murky, dodgy decision.

And it also kind of is a deflection from Brittany because she can say I had an abortion, but I didn't want to.

Can I ask a little bit and push down on that a bit?

Because I haven't read any of the coverage of this.

I did read the story, but I didn't know what the hot takes of the internet are going to be because I

couldn't see a villain in this story.

But clearly, it seems that she's painting him as he forced me to get an abortion.

That's the cheap, easy sensationalist headline, right?

And so I imagine people are like, well, no woman should be forced, etc.

So when you say this is very murky, understandably, no, no woman should be forced into having an abortion.

But forced like is in quote marks.

Like she was a financially independent, successful woman in her own right, who was an adult.

Interestingly, around this time, she was also being asked intrusive questions about her virginity.

And she was saying, and we now know, lying that she was still a virgin.

And I don't say lying to be, I mean, they were very inappropriate questions to have asked her.

But the whole brand around Britney Spears was pure.

And she was like, I'm only going to have sex after I get married.

I think, honestly, if you can wait till you're married, I think you should definitely do that

because it's so much more sacred.

And there is a reason for saying to do that.

There is a rule in the book, the Bible, that says that.

I think that is a really important thing to do.

So there was also that, right?

There was brand Britney.

When you look at history and you say, OK, well, she did get pregnant a few years later to Kevin Federline.

She had two babies in quick succession and lost custody of both those children very quickly

and is completely estranged from them now.

Now, I'm not saying that she wouldn't have been necessarily a good mother or her life might have taken a different trajectory.

She'd have had that baby.

We'll never know.

But I don't see the black and white.

The way this is being reexamined, and I think it's worth thinking about,

is that this could have been a trauma for Britney Spears that contributed to what happened next.

Yeah, because the only other line that's out of this is she says that the abortion

was the most agonising experience of her life.

Yeah. And so, for example, a few years later, she released that song every time.

And in the film clip, people have now started taking parts of that film clip

where she's singing and in the background, there's somebody who's just given birth.

And they're thinking with some of these lyrics, with some of this film clip

about grieving the fact that she didn't get to have that child.

So I guess the question is, and this is the question that comes up for a lot of women

who have mental health issues, that we go, is their story reliable?

Was that actually the right decision when actually what we're talking about

could have been a trauma that led to what happened next?

And also, if you take the Britney Spears of it all away, this is a relatable story.

Many, many women choose to terminate pregnancies

when they discover that their partner will not support the pregnancy.

Now, that is not a goody bady dynamic.

This is a complex issue.

I put this plot line in, I give my marriage a year.

And lots of women reached out to me and said that that was a very specific

form of grief for them was choosing to terminate a pregnancy

that they would not have otherwise done.

The problem with politicizing every choice a woman makes

is that then that scene is like a terrible traumatic thing when actually

it's kind of the mess of life and relationships and compromise

and whether or not you need a partner to support you if you're going to become a parent

and all of those things that are actually very difficult.

So it's interesting to me that this is the first story released from the book

because it's a rewriting of the narrative that was originally out there

that Britney Spears cheated on Justin Timberlake, broke his heart.

Poor old Justin Timberlake.

I forgot about that.

So it's a flipping of that.

It is. Not a flipping, but it's a context.

But it's also chosen pretty much the hottest hot button issue in America.

And I'm not saying that it should be, but it is.

The hottest hot button issue in America is to throw a Britney Spears,

JT complication into the abortion debate.

I think that also contextually, this book is clearly going to be about

a young girl who became famous when she was a child

and who has had decisions made for her by a lot of powerful men in her life,

whether they were managers, her father, her record company, partners that she's had.

And I can't imagine that there would have been anyone in Britney Spears's life

then that would have supported her in having that baby, not her parents.

I mean, I shouldn't speak for them, but they were looking at the money

that Britney Spears was going to bring in and pregnant Britney Spears

at that time, at that age, was not going to be good news for anybody.

So I think that's interesting.

I imagine that's going to be the narrative of this book, which drops next week.

I have exciting news for you, whole.

We are getting a special delivery in the office.

So we, out louders, will be speed reading and having an emergency

meeting to discuss it because not everyone's going to want to read this book.

But we will do it for you because that's who we are and we love you.

This week, I came across an article in Women's Agenda

about some recent research around menopause.

A new women's health survey from Jean Hales has shown that

catastrophizing menopausal symptoms in public discussion can be harmful.

The CEO of Jean Hales, Sarah White, told Women's Agenda,

first, we risk frightening women into thinking that menopause is a debilitating

time for everyone and that menopause symptoms cannot be managed.

And secondly, it increases the risk of stigmatizing women over 40.

And we really don't need to give employers a reason to further

discriminate against older women in the workforce.

They found that one quarter of Australian women who were in that midlife stage

reported that menopausal symptoms they experienced in the last five years

made it hard to do daily activity.

So one quarter at the same time, that same percentage, one quarter said

these symptoms had no substantial impact on their daily lives.

The authors have urged caution against over exaggerating symptoms

to avoid unintended consequences of stigmatizing women or eroding

their resilience in approaching this last stage.

I was so fascinated by this piece of research.

I have not been able to stop thinking about it because it also made me think

of other moments in women's lives from getting your period to becoming

pregnant to the postpartum period and so on and how we're meant to be framing them.

Because is honesty, no matter how ugly and brutal, a gift to other women

or can it be stigmatizing and dangerous?

Mia, what do you think?

I think both.

I was on a panel yesterday and today's International Menopause Day.

I was on a panel yesterday.

Congratulations to all of us.

Thank you so much.

Where's my gift?

So I was on a panel yesterday with Naomi Watts, who's launched a brand

for menopausal women of products and Alison Datto and Dr.

Ginni Mansberg, who've both written books about menopause.

And we were talking about this and we talked about the Gene Hale's study.

Now, this is not news in terms of, you know, I've learned a lot

about perimenopause and menopause over the last few years,

experiencing it myself and then doing the very peri-summit.

But we know that a quarter of women will experience no symptoms.

A quarter of women will experience severe symptoms and 50 percent of women

will be somewhere in the middle, right?

And I would say I'm somewhere in the middle.

Well, would you also say, oh, yeah, so that you notice things,

but they're not so debilitating that you can't function.

Now, we often say when we're talking about the need for women to be honest

and people to be honest about difficult things and stigmatising things,

we say somewhere out there, someone has a wound in the shape of your words.

And one of the things that we spoke about most on the panel yesterday,

starting with Naomi, who went into menopause really early at like 36.

She was actually trying to fall pregnant at the time.

And so she was way ahead of all of her peers.

And she said the shame of it was so intense.

And she said that over the next few years, even into her forties,

she would kind of just throw out there amongst her friends

things about estrogen drops and just to test the waters to see, is it, you know,

is anyone else sending up a flare?

Can anyone else see me?

And she said no one ever responded.

So she was like, oh, OK, so it's just me.

And all of us on the panel talked about that shame.

But at the same time, I was watching someone being interviewed

this morning on ABC News Breakfast, and she said, you know,

we just need to normalise it in the workplace when a woman's having a hot

flash or a woman's got fogginess in the brain.

And it came back to the host who said, yeah, normalising is great,

but I know that there are a lot of women who probably wouldn't feel very

comfortable announcing at work that she's foggy in the brain.

And that's something that you always talk about,

whole not the fogginess, but the stigma.

Yes, absolutely.

Because I always really wrestle with this.

I remember and I remember it more in pregnancy, actually.

I used to really hate the baby brain stereotype.

The idea that once you were pregnant, basically the workplace started

just working around you and plotting for your absence, you know what I mean?

Which, obviously, in practical terms, they have to do.

This might be entirely generational, but it buys into this idea

that we all internalise at some point that women's issues,

women's private things are things that make them unreliable, overemotional,

not suited for leadership positions.

I mean, imagine if your prime minister is a woman and then she starts

having hot flushes and perimenopausal rage fits or foggy brain or, you know,

and so there's a large part of me that is allergic to overstating these things

because I'm like most women are incredibly capable of handling and masking

the shit that's going on with them on the inside.

Women work through miscarriages.

They work through endometriosis.

They work through all kinds of things and they're very good at it.

So this kind of movement or push for like, but they shouldn't.

We should be able to put our hands up and say,

I need a day off for painful periods.

I'm pregnant and it's difficult, so I need special consideration.

I know it's progress.

I know things like menopause leave a progress, but there's a bit of me

that just really rankles about it because I worry that it feels like

it infantilizes us somehow.

And I'm very lucky because I work here in an office full of women.

And if I say to you, oh, I've got a bit of a foggy brain today,

you're not going to throw me out the door.

However, if I became incapable of doing my job and speaking

articulately on a podcast and writing stories, that's a different matter.

Oh, you were crying at your desk every day.

Yes, I was crying at my desk every day.

That's a different matter.

But not everybody is as fortunate to work in such an understanding environment.

So I understand this thing of like wanting to sort of pretend

that we can soldier on.

I am so torn about it because in my current life stage, I can be a bit

frustrated by certain women around you who are sort of like,

shut up, be pregnant.

Don't say anything about it.

Work until there is a head coming out of your vat.

Yes. Just shut the hell up.

I once literally had a boss like that, right?

In magazines who would tell the office full of women,

my waters broke while I was writing a story.

I still met my deadline and that was held up as I like.

I've often said this.

I wish there was a female equivalent of macho.

It was like a real mark of status and her work ethic that not even labor

was going to interrupt it.

And most of us went, shit, that sounds bad.

Exactly.

And you wouldn't get away with that now.

Well, I still remember a few years ago, a story where Roxy

Jacenco was answering emails during labor.

Like, I remember that.

She's allowed.

It's her business.

I know, that's what you have to do.

But I'm saying that I think when we don't allow women to tell their truth,

I think that's a slippery slope.

So I think Roxy Jacenco should be able to say that.

I think that boss, as annoying as that is, should be able to.

I know, but she was actually saying it in a way to tell her

the pregnant stuff, so don't think you're getting away with anything.

That was literally why she was doing it.

And I feel like I have women in my life who are telling me that.

Like, don't let anybody know if you're not sleeping, don't tell anyone.

Like, just pretend you're not growing a human because people will think

of you as less reliable and that kind of thing.

And at the same time, I feel frustrated because I have felt so

much shame during pregnancy, like so much shame about why can't I function

like some women can function during pregnancy?

Why can some women just keep going like they're not growing a human?

And I feel like I can't.

Which is the same as this menopause conversation, right?

And I feel like I have had to learn to be gentle with myself and change

my standards for myself and accept that this is a life season, that I am not

going to be the best version of myself.

And that is incredibly hard when you're also being told to shut up.

That's my frustration with this menopause research that basically I think

the blueprint for all of this should be let women share their experiences.

And the problem is when the stigma starts to come the other way.

So you should be able to say, I'm a bit foggy today, probably

has something to do with menopause.

The problem is when somebody then looks at you and goes, are you a little

bit foggy today?

Yeah, like that's the issue.

And I don't know what we do with that.

Yeah, it's like someone going, got your period.

And when you're a bit emotional or people assuming certain things

because I'm pregnant and I'm like, actually, that's not the pregnancy.

That's just my personality.

I mean, it used to be I once interviewed a female pilot and she wasn't

allowed to be a pilot at the beginning of her career because it was thought

that, you know, women get emotional, they've got hormones, they get their period.

What if they might accidentally fly into a mountain or on purpose?

And so the question and I understand, and I suppose the alarm that is

being raised by this study is, well, hang on.

When does this wonderful truth become weaponized against older women?

And we already feel the disdain of, oh, he's such a Karen and we're such a

Snead at group that when does it become from a career point of view weaponised

against us?

I also think that the difference slightly between this and pregnancy is

that one of the things with menopause and perimenopause is that there are

things that can help.

There's HRT and there are other treatments that can help.

If women don't talk about it and don't learn, because a lot of women don't

think they can take HRT.

I don't need to take HRT.

So there's actually a very practical reason in the same way that talking

about mental health, there's a very practical application of that, which is

that I'm not feeling odd.

Did you know you should see a doctor?

Did you know that you can potentially go on medication or therapy or?

So I think that that's the practicality.

That's so true.

Because again, my kind of fear, I think is, as I say, generational, because I

hate the idea that in the corporate world, a man's fifties are often his most

successful decade.

If you look at the stats of, you know, the age of CEOs and all those things,

it's often because they've banked up these decades of experience in the

workplace.

They're seen as wise and all of those things.

Women are very often seen as over the hill.

We talk often about like how much you have to fight to look as if you're young

because ageism for women is brutal.

So you throw this in the mix, too.

And it's like, well, we don't want to employ women in their twenties because

they might want to get pregnant.

And we don't want to employ women in their thirties because they've probably

got children at home and they're going to have a picture of the kids on the desk

and that's going to be their priority.

And then we don't really want to employ women in their forties and fifties

because they're going to start going all psycho on us and you couldn't put them

in front of a crowd because they might have a hot flush and start crying.

It's like, at what point are the women?

Just allowed to do their jobs and live their lives.

Without those creams and vitamins, I will go ricocheting back into menopause.

Relax. It's one week.

Tell that to the beard.

I'll be growing.

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.

Sobriety is your choice.

Stop preaching that it should be mine.

That was the headline of an opinion piece written for the Sydney Morning Herald

this week that talks about how we are living in a very health conscious world.

And many people are making choices for their own health.

And for some people, choosing sobriety and stopping drinking is the best decision for them.

So once upon a time and still to a degree,

there are lots of jokes about wine o'clock and hashtags about that.

But the conversation today, if you scroll through social media,

seems to be moving much more towards mocktails and celebrating sobriety.

There's a lot of people very earnestly and genuinely and sometimes movingly

talking about how their life is better since they stopped drinking

and how many days it's been or how many years it's been and celebrating those milestones.

So the author wrote, let's be clear, I'm not anti sobriety.

Alcoholism is a formidable beast.

And for those in recovery, sobriety is life saving stuff.

Things that work a treat for some such as cutting out

gluten or using all natural deodorants just render others hungry and stinky.

It doesn't mean these things don't work.

It means they're not a universal fit.

I readily celebrate the choices my friends make to enhance their well being,

whatever they may be, training for a marathon, get it girl,

taking up pole dancing, send me videos ending a toxic relationship with booze.

I love this for you.

Their joy is mine too.

And I am here for all of it.

What I don't want is to be prescribed their version of wellness.

So she talks more broadly about healthism,

which she says is defined by American academic Robert Crawford way back in the 80s,

actually, as this belief that everybody has a moral imperative

and responsibility to be healthy and furthermore,

that good health is, in fact, morally virtuous.

So, if you're out to dinner at a restaurant with friends,

should people's own prescribed versions of health be kept to themselves?

Is wine officially canceled?

I'm going to state a controversial position here.

I need some disclaimers first.

I know Australia has an unhealthy relationship with alcohol.

I know that my specific demographic of midlife white women

have toxic relationships with alcohol.

On Mama Mia, whenever we run stories about people being so be curious,

people giving up alcohol, they go gangbusters

because we have been sold mummy wine time and all those things for a lot of years.

And often we look at that relationship and go,

it's probably not making my life better.

So I need all those disclaimers on the table.

But I want to make a controversial pitch

for the importance of being allowed to have a few crutches in life.

Like life is hard, the world is tough, shit happens every day.

And sometimes we all need a little bit of a treat to get through it.

Now, maybe that is cake, but that's sugar.

So that's bad and gluten and that's bad too.

Maybe that's chocolate, definitely sugar, not allowed to have that.

You know what I mean? Or maybe it is a glass of wine.

I definitely have had times in my life when I've drunk too much, no question.

I think that culturally, originally English people are big drinkers.

It's a big part of our socialising.

It would be very rare to be at a social occasion

throughout most of my adult life that isn't centred around booze.

And as I've gotten older, I've gotten smarter at recognising that

and definitely recognising that sort of toxic messaging of like five o'clock,

pop a bottle. But I do think we risk going too far

in saying that now all of our crutches,

all of our coping mechanisms have to be healthy ones.

Because I've got healthy coping mechanisms too.

Like, you know, I bore you all with my talk about gardening

and walking outside and all that stuff.

But also sometimes it just is a gin and tonic.

I don't know that that has to be a negative thing

if I don't have issues with alcohol.

And I think it's a dangerous path to go down this idea of

health being morally virtuous and health being one size fits all.

Because I'm the same, Holly.

There's definitely been periods of my life where I've drank too much.

But generally speaking, alcohol is not my issue.

I have many issues.

Alcohol is not one of them.

I have not had a drink in seven and a half months.

Oh, yeah. I ain't glowing.

I ain't feeling any of this.

There may be other reasons for that.

But I haven't necessarily been like, oh, my life is improved by having not had a drink.

And I still think once a week, I'm like, God,

I wish I could have a glass of wine.

But I do think that there is this slippery slope we go down

when we become overly virtuous about our own health choices,

where we then look at other people, want to impose them

and that we start judging people's health from the outside.

And that becomes really toxic and really problematic.

So I just think the preaching around alcohol, sugar, gluten, dairy, whatever,

in social situations, I hate conversations around that stuff.

I find it boring and I find it just unfair.

And you also don't know what people's specific issues are

and they may not be to do with those things.

I've had conversations with people who gave up alcohol,

who had problems with keeping things moderate.

And it's often the other way.

Instead of them proselytising to their friends,

they've all said that often people in their circle

will find it very threatening and I do hate that.

You see it all the time.

So it's like, oh, but you can just have one or you don't have a problem.

So I understand the desire to maybe make it a bit more part of your identity

and to proselytise back the other way and say,

this has improved my life and this is what it looks like,

because you can't be what you can't see.

And we were just talking about that idea of someone having a wound

in the shape of your words.

And I think that the people who are giving up alcohol

are role models for those who would like to

or perhaps those who really do need to.

And we're not talking about your gin and tonic.

We're talking about people who do have a problem,

who alcohol is too much of a crutch or their life is unlivable

because of their reliance on it.

It's interesting because arguing against myself on the health is in front, right?

Because many experts would say there is no such thing as a safe level of drinking,

right, that all alcohol is bad for you to a point.

If I, one minute, am arguing if my relationship with alcohol isn't unhealthy,

why should I have to give it up?

But all the statistics show many different studies

that young people now are drinking less than their parents,

less than generations previous to them.

And a large part of that is actually healthism.

It's a couple of things.

And one of them is that because in the 90s for Generation X,

when I was a young person, being healthy was not an aspiration.

The aspiration was Kate Moss falling out of a nightclub.

With a ciggy in her hand and, you know, clearly worse for wear of several substances,

perhaps, whereas now the aspiration is yoga at dawn, green smoothie, looking amazing.

Gwyneth, right?

And so that level of healthism has spread.

The other is because we are so documented all the time now, it's not cool to be messy,

to be the person who's messy and falling around and saying the wrong thing

because someone can film it.

So healthism has affected the drinking levels in young people.

And that can only be a good thing, right?

Especially in a country like Australia, where we do have a really problematic

relationship with alcohol.

So it's like it works.

So that's good.

But there's a bit of me, my rebellious side that's also like, but surely we don't

all have to be perfect and pure all the time.

Are we not allowed a few bad habits?

But I don't think we're talking about bad habits.

You know, I think this is someone who's deliberately trying to be a bit provocative

by saying is wine cancelled.

I don't think anyone's shaming you for having a gin and tonic as long as it's

not for breakfast or at work.

But it's if you have four or five or six, yeah, maybe you need a wake up call.

But I think there has always been tension around whether other people's health

is your problem, slash you get an opinion on other people's health.

So you know what people are going to say, I'm a taxpayer.

It costs me money.

Exactly. And there are certain health issues, for example, smoking, where

we've done a huge population level intervention on that.

And I do think smoking is different because of secondhand smoke and passive

smoke. But I do notice that in conversations, it gets really tense around

when do you intervene on somebody else's health?

When is that your role?

When isn't that your role?

I think that's a little bit what the healthism goes into, that if you're at

dinner, can you comment on what somebody's eating or the decisions that they're

making? Because there's a line of thinking that that's perfectly fine.

And there's a line of thinking, my line of thinking, which is leave people alone.

Let them live their own lives.

This week, we're talking about recommendations for things that we're

using to distract ourselves during a very difficult time in the news cycle

for so many people.

Today, I'm not going to give you something to read or watch or listen to.

I'm going to give you something to cook and then eat.

It is my no-fail banana cake recipe.

It is from taste.com.

It is just so good.

It is so easy.

I tend to make it because, you know, bananas are something that I always have

going off. The other day, I ordered what I thought was five bananas when I did

my online grocery shop. Turns out I got five bunches of bananas.

Wasn't paying attention.

That's a lot.

And so I had a lot of banana cake to make.

So I made six times this recipe and I did it in big baking trays.

And I made my own version of icing.

I brought it into the office and I froze some and it was really popular.

It's very nurturing banana cake.

It feels like it's healthy because it's a fruit.

There's a fruit. The icing is my favourite part.

Oh, I make a good icing.

So the icing is not in this recipe, but I'm going to tell you what it is, right?

And you don't have to measure things.

You just do a whole lot of icing sugar, some butter, some cream cheese

and some lemon zest.

So healthism people are not happy.

And some like hot water to melt the butter a bit and you mush it all around.

And that's just so it's got a bit of a zing.

It's got a bit of a cream cheese, but it's just yum.

So banana cake, we will put a link in the show notes.

And of course, out loud as in our newsletter each week,

we have links to everything we've recommended on the show this week,

plus lots of other special things.

There will be a link for that in the show notes as well.

If you're looking for something else to listen to on yesterday's subscriber

episode, Elphi, Mia and I helped a listener unpack a very awkward friendship dilemma.

And for once, the Kardashians provided a scenario that was quite relatable.

I think we were very helpful.

Yeah.

So basically we had a listener who said she discovered that her friends

have a group chat without her, just like Courtney Kardashian

discovered that courtesy of her sister Kim.

And the not Courtney group chat and we gave our advice

on whether she should bring it up or just let it slide.

And I think we had some bloody great insights, to be honest.

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

And out loud as if you have a dilemma, God, we're good with the advice.

Send it to us.

We won't say your name.

You can be completely anonymous.

It is out loud at MammaMia.com.au.

Thank you for listening to us.

It's so good to be back on Australia's number one news and pop culture show,

Mamma Mia Out Loud.

This episode was produced by Emily and Gazillas,

the assistant producer is Tali Blackman,

and we've had audio production from Leah Porges.

And we'll see you tomorrow.

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.