Mamamia Out Loud: The Question Everyone Is Asking About Barbie

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Mamma Mia Out Loud!

Hello and welcome to Mamma Mia Out Loud.

It's what women are actually talking about on Monday, the 24th of July.

Hi Barbie, I'm Holly Wainwright.

Hi Barbie, I'm Mia Friedman.

Hi Barbie, I'm Claire Stevens.

As you might be able to guess on the show today, it's Barbie's World and we're just

living in it.

We can answer the one big question about the one big movie everyone tried to see on the

weekend.

Also, teenagers are emotional garbage dumpers and their parents are just there to pick up

the trash.

The viral interview nailing the most volatile life stage of all.

And one Australian man's problematic life goals are everywhere after he lost his phone,

which has us asking, is our lock screen a new vision board?

But first, Claire Stevens.

If sharks aren't terrifying enough to some of you, there's a new threat in the waters

off of Florida.

In case you missed it, everyone has their special interest area and mine is Marine

Life Going Rogue.

We spoke a few weeks ago about the orca uprising and now I have a new threat, cocaine sharks.

Now if there's a single living creature I personally do not want affected by illicit

drugs, particularly a stimulant like cocaine, it's sharks.

Oh God.

But scientists in Florida think that a slew of crazed and hungry sharks could actually

be feasting on drugs that have been tossed overboard in failed trafficking attempts.

Recent research in Florida observed sharks exhibiting very strange behavior.

Hammerheads who usually swim away from humans.

Having intense conversations in bathroom toilets and nightclubs.

People said they're demanding a better table at a restaurant.

That's what the sharks are doing.

But hammerheads who usually swim away from humans have been moving very erratically and

swimming towards divers.

Isn't that just what sharks do?

Not hammerheads.

They're being more like crazy.

I see.

A sandbar shark also swam in circles, focusing on an imaginary object.

Oh, Blake.

Oh, darling.

Surely this is just the sequel to Cocaine Bay.

Yes, exactly.

But there's lots more research to be done and the next step is drug testing the sharks

to see how much cocaine is actually in their sister.

They need to unionise so they can argue about that.

But in all seriousness, it's a reminder that everything we use,

manufacture, put into our bodies, ends up in our wastewater streams and natural

water bodies and aquatic life are then exposed to that.

Hi, Barbie.

Hi, Ken.

Hi, Barbie.

Hi, Barbie.

Hi, Barbie.

Hi, Ken.

Hi, Barbie.

There's really only one story in the entire universe today and it's about a pink plastic

doll.

The Barbie movie opened across the world last week and was rewarded for its all-encompassing

marketing strategy with a global weekend take of over $500 million Australian dollars.

And in case you're wondering, it cost $216 to make, so we're already in gravy, gravy

territory.

Maybe you've seen it, maybe you haven't, but there's one big question everyone has

about Barbie and it's this, did I just watch a feminist masterpiece or a two-hour ad for

a problematic doll?

The answer is both.

Now, we are unpacking the Barbie box and all our feelings about it in a special spoiler

crammed subscriber episode that will drop tomorrow, so you can be assured that the conversation

we're about to have now does not have spoilers for the movie.

You can listen if you've watched it and you can listen if you've not watched it.

But first of all, Claire, are we really allowed to feel this good about Barbie?

I think we are.

And I walked out of the cinema thinking exactly that.

I thought, I enjoyed this, I laughed the whole time, thought it came to a really profound

point.

Also, was it an ad?

Maybe.

But I don't mind.

Maybe.

Maybe.

I literally, on the way into the cinema, stood inside a Mattel box and had my photo taken.

So did I.

Yep.

So if I don't mind, all my family get inside the Mattel box with me.

So like, and then I looked around because there were some girls in the screening, I went

to wearing Barbie t-shirts and I'm like, where can I buy one?

I want the merch.

I want the merch.

And I was like, why don't they sell it next to the popcorn?

And they're like, we got it from, I don't know, Kmart or whatever.

And I'm like, I would like to buy more merch.

Great, great tip.

Something I really thought when I saw Barbie, I saw it on Thursday last week.

Was it packed?

And absolutely packed men, women, there were cocktails.

It was all such a vibe.

I went with a group of girlfriends and I was ready to be cynical as I always am.

I walk into every situation and I can apply the cynicism.

However, I realized and the movie has a bit of a nod to this, that every time I have been

to the movies in the last, honestly, five years, it has been to see some version of

Avengers, Transformers.

Yes.

Are they the same thing?

No.

Superheroes.

Spider-Man.

Tom Cruise.

That Tom Cruise movie that Holly liked.

Oh my God, the best movie ever.

And finally, we have something for women and it's breaking all the records.

Oh, I don't like that narrative.

Do you know the last time...

Spider-Man was for me.

Do you know the last time I got excited about going to a girly movie was Sex and the City

2?

Me too.

And how long ago was that?

I'm scarred because it was so terrible.

But before that, the first Sex and the City movie was like this, where everyone got really

excited to go to it.

I am just so fascinated by the machine around this film, right?

So if anyone gets an Oscar, it should be the marketing department of this film because

if you've seen the trailers, they sold it in such a clever way.

They'd said the quiet part out loud, which is if you love Barbie, this movie's for you.

If you hate Barbie, this movie's for you.

And then I even heard Margot Robbie on the press tour going, you know, even people who

feel indifferent about Barbie and haven't thought about Barbie for a really long time.

It's also for you.

It's also for you in the entire world to see this film.

And that's a very difficult needle to thread, making a film that is appealing to both people

who love and hate Barbie and people who don't care about Barbie, who just want to get dressed

up in pink and go to the movies.

But I think that what they've done, the way that they've pitched it, and I've been loving

reading all behind the scenes stuff, apparently the Mattel department or the marketers have

said, you are explicitly not allowed to say that it's feminist to the like the cast and

the producers and stuff like so please don't use because that's really worried that that's

going to put people off.

Yeah.

No, it would put some people off for sure.

I loved it.

But it is feminist.

Like there's no question that it is.

And it's not feminist enough for some.

Like it's really interesting watching the commentary, the people who are saying it's way too woke.

And then the people are going, it's not woke enough.

And you're like, well, welcome to 2023 and the internet.

It is.

Someone could be saying that Barbie is too woke.

I know it's hilarious and interesting because yesterday I was in a shop because everywhere

I've gone this weekend, it's all anyone's talking about and the two women behind the

counter were talking about whether or not they should take their eight year old daughter

to see it.

I said, oh, I went to see yesterday and I said, I think you could take an eight year old.

I think it works on different levels, which I think it definitely does.

Lots of eight year olds when I went.

But it is quite explicit in its purpose, you know, like the movie is explicit in its purpose.

No, no, no, no, it's not explicit rude.

But what I mean is they're not like the feminism and the patriarchy and the clearly spelt out

life lessons and stuff.

They're not hiding that stuff in the movie, which makes its marketing strategy well very

complicated because you don't want to entirely misrepresent it.

I might be a bit pissed off if I thought I was just going for sparkles.

And then I'm like, oh, now I'm being lectured to about the patriarchy.

Clearly I didn't mind that bit because I love being lectured to about patriarchy.

But I said to them, yes, you should take your eight year old girl.

I think it works on different levels, but it is pretty feminist.

And one of the women said, oh, I'm out.

Definitely not going then.

They don't want to make it sound hard work, right?

It's interesting when you look at the reason that the movie came about.

I mean, obviously capitalism, but the new head of Mattel, which is a toy making company.

They barbies their like star, but they make lots of other things, including Polly Pocket

and Hot Wheels and lots and lots of other toys.

He started this job that had like four CEOs in four years or something.

And he came aboard and he said, I want to change us from being a toy company to an IP company.

So he obviously was looking at the Avengers and explain what that means a bit.

Mia, what does it mean by IP means intellectual property?

So instead of just selling things, which you have to pay to make the things

and then you sell them and you have to ship them.

And it's quite complicated, but it's not necessarily scalable

because to sell more things, you have to pay to make more things

and all the infrastructure that goes through that.

Whereas when you sell your IP, you literally just cash in checks

because you don't have to make anything to sell it to McDonald's or to a movie studio.

And that's what they've done here.

So what was interesting is you'll see it when you see the film and when we talk about it more.

Mattel had to like make a big leap of faith in how was their intellectual property

and how was the Barbie franchise essentially and brand going to be treated and that explored it.

So there have obviously been lots of animated Barbie movies, which was just basically Barbie.

But then I think it was Sony Pictures had the licensing and Amy Schumer was going to write it.

Diablo Cody had a go at writing it even before that, who'd written Juno.

And these are sort of very feminist, transgressive stars and writers.

But the scripts apparently that they turned in were much more taking the piss out of Barbie

like Barbie was the butt of the joke and obviously Mattel's not going to want that.

So then what was interesting is that Margot Robbie had had her eye on this project,

which surprised me because I would have thought that she would have wanted to go against type

because she's so beautiful, right?

And usually actors that are so beautiful, like Charlize Theron, for example,

win their awards for when they're not playing beautiful characters like Charlize Theron,

when she played a serial killer, Nicole Kimmon, when she played she won an Oscar.

No, but why creatively do it, right?

But obviously Margot Robbie is not just a star.

She's also a producer and she got to produce it and star in it.

And she was smart enough to understand that if done right,

it was going to be one of the biggest movies in the world.

And she was the one that brought Greta Gerwig on board.

And Greta Gerwig was the writer and director of Lady Bird and then Little Women.

So she's kind of known in Hollywood as like a cool feminist director, but also quite like

art house, not mainstream, but also humor, like has a lot of humor and a lot of heart.

She's funny.

But it was still a massive risk for Mattel, right?

I mean, on a much different scale, we work with brands all the time in content, right?

All the time, making podcasts with brands, writing stories with brands,

making videos with brands.

And it is a bold and clever brand, obviously, who will give you the leeway

to have some fun with their brand.

And without wanting to spoil this movie, yes, it's massive product placement

for Mattel all the way through it, of course.

But also they literally represent the Mattel board and HQ and offices

as being full of tone, death, stupid, middle-aged white men.

Like they allow themselves to be the punching bag in a million ways.

And so it is very unusual for a piece of basically branded content to do that.

However, in this particular example, it is paying off in half a billion

dollar sales already.

And so it was a very smart risk, but it could have gone horribly wrong.

Because I walked out and had that conversation with the group of friends

I was with where I said, oh, my God, I cannot see a client being OK with any of that.

Like you're presenting them a script and they'd be saying, you can't call us out

for only ever having like two female CEOs and that kind of thing.

But it's so genius because we're having such a moment of self-awareness.

And if you are self-aware, it makes you instantly, instantly likeable.

And even Margot Robbie allows herself to have a bat swung her head in this one.

There's a fourth wall moment where she is referenced.

Like everybody is kind of like, we're all in on the joke, guys.

And when I heard, because I was aware of all the backstory of how many people

had tried to write it and how they'd failed, that Diablo Cody actually

didn't even turn in a script.

And she was like, I failed so hard, I just couldn't do it.

It's a tightrope, right? I didn't get it.

I think there's a few things.

One, we're in the moment where this could exist, because I think we've gotten

to a point where we're allowed to play around with the tension between femininity

and feminism. But I think also it took somebody like Greta Gerwig,

seeing it as a creative project and a creative problem.

It was such a tough one to solve.

And she solved it in a really profound, clever way.

And I said to you guys, when all the Barbie marketing was happening

and you were talking about Margot Robbie and her outfits, and I said,

you just wait, Eric, and we'll see the movie and we'll have a very different

response to what we've seen.

But that was always signposted from the moment that Greta Gerwig was announced.

And to be really clear, she co-wrote it with a man, her partner,

she's who she co-writes with.

But from the very minute, early last year, when we were laughing

about how our Christmas party theme was going to be Barbie call, right?

And all the cool young people in the office had got this memo ages ago

that if Greta Gerwig's directing Barbie, we are not looking at Barbie,

but it took, you know, those not quite so literate in that space a long time to get with it.

You could still poke as many reviewers have done plenty of holes

in the feminism represented in this movie.

But in general, I sat in that movie on Saturday

and felt so amazed that the biggest movie in the world

is basically a feminist text.

Yeah, yeah, a pretty basic one, but a really fun, funny one.

Like how very marvelous Gerwig and Robbie,

I saw an interview over the weekend where they said

that what they did with the script was so outrageous and so wild

that they knew when they gave it to Mattel, it wasn't the sort of thing

where Mattel could be like, here are five changes you need to make.

It was sort of take it all away.

You're in all your out. Yeah.

It's sort of the big concept of it is so clever

and ultimately is talking about the difference between being a human and being a doll.

So you either take the huge concept and run with that win

or you tear it to shreds and you lose the essence of it.

Yeah, I mean, they had to make Barbie relevant, stay relevant.

And they did the first stage of that around 2016

when they released a whole lot of different shaped Barbies,

Barbies with different skin colours.

There was, I think, a Barbie with Down syndrome, a Barbie who used a wheelchair.

And so that was when their sales went up again.

The generation of women who are now tasked with buying Barbies or not

for their little girls or boys

needed to find a way to still feel that that brand was current.

And then this was the masterstroke, really, because it was owning all the criticism.

We'll be talking more in detail in our review episode.

And we've got a lot to say about Ken, got a lot to say about the other cast.

Of course, this is a women's movie, of course, it is in lots of ways.

But I took my partner, I took my son and I'm glad I did.

It's not a movie that is only for women.

There is a lot about men in this movie.

It's bad, it's girls, and we ain't playing tennis.

The parent of a teenager is an emotional garbage collector.

That headline got my attention.

It's the title of an article from The New Yorker that went viral last week.

And it's being madly shared in my group texts.

And if you've ever been or parented a teenager,

the idea of an emotional garbage collector is one that maybe you might relate to.

The story itself is actually an interview with the clinical psychologist

called Lisa D'Amour.

She's published a number of books about adolescents and teenagers.

And her latest one is called The Emotional Lives of Teenagers.

It came out this year in February, just a week after the Centers

for Disease Control and Prevention in the US issued an alarming report

on the mental health of adolescents, which showed that three in five teenage girls

reported having felt persistently sad and hopeless in the past year.

And it's not much better for boys, as we talked about on the show last week.

In Emotional Lives, she writes about how teenagers, particularly girls,

need to hand off their emotional trash.

And in this metaphor, the parents, let's be honest, the mothers,

serve as the emotional garbage collectors for these girls, but also for boys.

And she says, by and large, our teenagers are incredibly well behaved

for the duration of the school day.

They spend all day nearly every day with a whole bunch of peers

and adults whom they did not choose shuttling from room to room,

doing things that they may or may not have chosen for themselves

and actually being quite gracious, patient and polite through the whole thing.

Usually the way they make that bargain work is in the course of the day,

they catalog all of the injustices and indignities to which they feel

have been subjected and save them up to tell us all about them.

She says that she hears from teenagers that that's actually in part

what helps them to be their better selves because upon telling

all that stuff or dumping it on usually their mother,

the teenager feels this big sense of relief because the trash is gone

and they've disposed of it and then they're ready and willing to go back

to school the next day and see what comes.

And she said, when it works, it's quite an elegant system.

So long as the parent doesn't feel like it's their job to prevent the child

from coming home with the emotional garbage in the first place,

which I think a lot of parents do, like because we got that memo

that our child must never have a bad thing happen to them or a bad feeling

about it, they're trying to take out the trash and we're immediately like,

we must interfere so that that doesn't happen ever again to you at school

and we must call the school and we must do all of those things.

And I just thought it was really, really interesting story.

Claire, did you throw a lot of trash at your mum as a teenager?

Definitely. However, I don't think it's just teenagers.

I think it's early adulthood.

My mum has said that the hardest phase of parenting she found was when

we were in our early 20s because it was that emotional dumping,

but the stakes were higher because you're kind of making serious life choices

and you're at uni or you're at work and she can't necessarily provide

advice, doesn't have insight into that world, whereas she is a high school

teacher, so at least with school, she had a bit more context.

So do you think that's part of helicopter parenting?

That in the normal phase of things, perhaps Holly and I would have done

that to our mothers and then you kind of grow out of it and you start

to meet your friends or whatever.

But because of the intense relationship between parents and children now,

we sort of don't grow out of it and we keep, you know, hey, this happened

to me at work and we just ring in.

I mean, I feel like I sometimes do that to my mum.

The time I want to most speak to her is when something really shit's happened to me.

Yeah, yeah. And that's me even now.

Like I save up problems and I'm like, OK, what things can I winch

to mum about? She'll help, she'll care.

And I do think that there's something she'll take my side.

She will. There's something healthy and validating about it

because you're essentially asking the person you love the most in the world

is my worldview valid? Am I crazy?

And she says, no, that must be really hard.

But it does require mothers to have the restraint and the patience

and the emotional intelligence of clinical psychologists.

Like that they don't say the wrong thing, that they don't escalate situations,

that they just respond with things like that sounds really difficult.

But I think you can cope with that relentless expectations on parents now

because this is just another area of helicoptering.

Do better, make sure that you're the perfect parent of teenagers.

Teenagers, I don't want to shock anybody because I'm sure this is news,

can be arseholes, enormous arseholes.

And they come home and they're like slamming.

I'm not saying this is necessarily what's happening in my house.

It's not occasionally slamming doors, taking stuff out on you,

dumping all your shit. Oh, I was terrible.

And what parents are supposed to do, particularly mothers is now.

Apparently, we've read this information.

Please give me all your trash to hold and treasure.

No, no, no, I know that's what she's saying, but that's what it sounds like.

Right. Because I've listened to quite a lot of interviews

with this amazing woman, Lisa D'Amour.

And she says the important thing for parents, too, is to not hold on to it.

But that's very, very hard to do.

I think it's very hard to do from when your kids are little.

Like Brent and I talk about this all the time,

that there'll be a meltdown and issue a problem.

You're left feeling like shit.

The kids are like goldfish.

Five minutes later, they're like, bang, I'm great.

And what do you do with all this?

What do you do with all the garbage you've collected?

Like, it's very difficult.

They're demanding a lot of us.

How do you take your trash out?

Yeah. And she says that, you're right.

Because she said, sometimes the emotional garbage isn't like,

I had such a silly fight with my friend today,

or this teacher's getting on my nerves or that person's pain in the neck.

She says, sometimes the emotional garbage is all of the feelings

roiling inside that she can't take out on her friend or her teacher.

And instead, they translate into hurtful words, yelling, arguing,

these really awful fights which kids have with their parents.

That's the stinky, runny garbage that breaks the bag.

Exactly, right?

And the thing is, we're meant to take it because we're the grown-ups

and we do and we will, but we're also humans.

So sometimes we will not be able to take any more shit being poured on us.

And we'll be like, I'm throwing some of that shit back your way, babe.

And that's hard.

But I'd also say when I read this and consider it,

I'm very happy if my teenager is talking to me full stop.

As in, like, tell me about your day.

What I find hard is the wall.

And I certainly was not telling my parents almost anything

that was going on in my life by the time I got to about 14,

because I knew they'd have too many opinions about it

and they would give me shit about it.

So I think it's probably a really good sign.

If you're a really emotional garbage collector,

then it means that you are trusted enough to be let into the world

because as you were suggesting before me,

my daughter has already learned not to tell me all the things that happen at school

because I might be like, what?

I've learned this great trick, drive my daughter and her friends

somewhere, listen to them.

Old parents say that, drive them somewhere, listen to them.

But one of her friends is a really good gas bagger.

And I'm always like, hey, tell me the gossip.

And she'll tell me, like, this fight happened, this drama occurred.

And I'm like, oh, my God, Matilda, you didn't tell me that.

And that's like, because I knew you'd make a big fuss.

And I knew you did.

Like, again, you're supposed to just hold all the information and not act.

It's hard.

The big mistake I make, it's so funny because there was that great video

that went around, it's not about the nail and it's about communication

between men and women and how often women just want to talk,

but men will try to fix the problem.

But women just want to be heard.

You often go home and take out the garbage to your partner or whoever you live with.

And so when my kids will tell me stuff,

I'll often either try and give them some perspective from the other side,

whether it's the teacher or the friend or there's no one you want to hear.

And that makes them shut down.

And I keep having to remind myself they just need to let it out.

And they need to be able to let it out to me without me going,

I'm going to call the school or you can't say that and whatever.

So I now just am like, you've got to just go, yeah, that must be really hard.

And whatever you do, don't tell them a story about when something similar happened

to you as a kid, because they are not interested.

I agree, Holly, that if they're talking to you, that's a good sign,

even though it's probably really bloody exhausting.

But I remember going home every day after school and I would tell my mum

all the things that were going on with my friends and all the things that were

going on in my classes.

And I think in a weird way, I noticed that every other girl was going

through that phase where they hated their mother and it was cool to hate their mum.

And I didn't have a day in my teenage years where I hated my mum.

Well, then your mother did an amazing job and Stevens.

Because she she just wanted to chat.

She was like, what is the gossip?

Tell me all the things.

I do think that there's something important about that relationship

and that safe space to be honest about your day.

And the fact is that good things come out as well.

It's not just the garbage dump.

You get the hard things, but you also get some brightness, too.

I've got a new parenting mantra thanks to this woman, by the way.

We're talking in a minute about the things we make notes about on our phone.

But when I listen to an interview with her, because it gets so confusing with teenagers,

the stakes always seem so high.

There's so much information.

It's like it's a lot.

And she said, really, at home, they need two things.

They need structure and warmth.

And if they've got those two things, so emotional warmth from you and structure,

which I guess you could call boundaries, accountability, whatever,

that's what they need.

And I'm like, good, that's easy, that's simple.

That's two words.

I can write it on my hand.

I can put it on the fridge.

I can go, OK, that's good, because I need some days to get a report card

that isn't just like, you're the worst person in the world.

I feel like that's such a good mantra, not just for raising kids,

but working in an office and managing a team.

Like, I feel like that is actually applicable everywhere.

It's great, for example, training dogs.

Like, I think it's a structure and warmth is a lovely little mantra for all of us.

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.

For a while now, all the self-help gurus have been telling us about the power of manifestation.

And one man has taken that advice and applied it to his phone screen.

Over the weekend, a visitor at Parishar ski resort lost his phone on a ski run.

His phone was handed in to the booking office, but not before the person who found it

took a photo of his lock screen and shared it on Facebook where it went viral.

Little bit mean, little bit mean.

Little bit mean.

Now, I'm assuming the phone owner is a he and I think you'll understand why in a second.

His lock screen contained a list of eight life goals.

I'm going to read them out.

One, get jacked and be 87 kilos.

Jacked means like shredded, right?

Like, has it fit?

Yeah.

All right.

Okay.

Two, quit all nicotine.

Great goal.

We're supporting that goal.

Three, have $25,000 in bank account.

Ambitious.

Also good goal.

Four, have motorbike.

Okay.

Those are all okay goals.

Five, getting better at fighting.

I wonder if that's like emotional fighting.

Yeah.

I don't think so.

Let's hope it's like MMA or boxing.

This is lovely so far.

Six, get good marks at uni.

Seven, have three girls on roster.

No.

And why do I think that's not like a work roster?

I think that's something else.

A work roster.

Maybe that's another kind of roster.

Maybe he has a small business.

He just wants three lovely ladies.

And he needs some help.

I don't.

I don't think that's what he needs.

And he's hiring women because he thinks that's important.

But anyway.

Number eight, don't get haircut for three months.

I don't understand that.

But Billy would, my son would also have that goal.

But anyway.

Now I feel a little bit sorry for this guy because no one expects to have their phone

screen go viral on the internet.

And these are his private goals.

And they're not hurting anyone.

But they're not that private if they're on the lock screen.

And that begs the question.

Is saving your goals as your lock screen the new way to keep yourself accountable

and manifest your dreams?

Holly, what's your lock screen?

So my lock screen is a picture of my family.

Like lock screens get political when you've got a family, as Mia will say,

because I have to find a photo that has everyone in it.

Can't just be one of the children.

I can't not have Brent.

And it's also got our former dog, Elsie.

Oh, that's controversial.

What about your current dog?

I don't know.

Well, it's funny.

My friend Penny saw it and she was like, what about tuna?

How do you think she feels about that?

And I was like, I don't think she's thinking that hard about it.

But every time I think I should change it, I should update it.

I feel a bit emotional about it.

So I don't.

What I realized when I read this story this morning,

because first of all, I was like poor dude.

And when I realized it was his lock screen, it tweets something in me.

And I was like, oh, that's genius.

And I started asking some of the girls around the office and everything.

And they're saying, oh yeah, lots of people have affirmations on their lock screen,

a motivational quote or something like that.

Because actually you look at it more than almost anything else.

And it reminded me as a quite chaotic young person,

my first encounter with a proper goal setter was a boyfriend I had who was

the opposite of me in a million ways.

And he was like, Mr. Discipline.

This could have been his lock screen except for the whole three girls and a rough thing.

Like as in he had his goals on his mirror.

This is a common motivational tactic from the olden days.

You put your goals on the mirror so that every day when you look in the mirror,

you're like, yes, I want to get this promotion.

I want to achieve this thing.

I want to live five kilos, you know, toxic diet culture, but still very common.

People used to put pictures on their fridge.

Yeah.

And that's the idea you see it every day.

And I remember staying over at this guy's house for the first time,

seeing his goals on his mirror and being like, oh, why am I out of my depth?

This guy is very, I don't know if I like this.

But this is the new version of this because we look at our phones.

I can't remember what the stat is.

But on average, several hundred times a day,

the average person picks up their phone to look at it.

So what you're putting in your head when you look at it makes sense.

And so then I started digging and there are people who put, you know,

like, I am the luckiest girl in the world and everything always works out for me.

I embody love.

If I want to, it's already mine on their phone screens.

So they see it all the time.

Mia, is it the new vision board?

It is.

I was very into vision boards in the mid 2000s.

I feel like you're still a vision board girlie.

Well, I do like to cut things out and put things up with BlueTac.

So yeah, I often will need a physical manifestation of whatever I'm focused on at that time.

Like a scene for your life, right?

Yeah.

Vision boards, they're very sort of that liminal space between public and private

because by the nature of making a physical board, they would be public.

But unless you lived alone, other people would see them.

So I remember having a vision board for a while.

Every time someone came over, I'd have to cover it up

because it's meant to be somewhere that you see it as much as possible.

The idea was the more you see it, the better it works.

I think that that's now translated to the idea of your lock screen on your phone.

Is it a private space or is it a public space?

Yeah, because that's what I was wondering.

If you're putting it on your lock screen, I see your phone all the time, for example.

So I know, I mean, I'm not paying that much attention,

but I know broadly what's on your lock screen.

What's on it now?

Oh, good question.

A better photo of Luna.

Luna?

Yeah, for sure.

Of course you do.

But if you had like, be my best self or whatever, like all your word of the year.

If you had your word of the year on there,

then I would also think that was a bit of a statement of identity

because everybody is seeing it.

Yes.

Often people have like a wedding photo or something

that would almost be like your profile picture in kind of older social media days.

But I'm so torn about this because you do hear all about the benefits of manifestation

and it feels very woo-woo to me, but there is an element of truth to it.

And the other day I revisited a productivity app I had downloaded and forgotten about

and then I was like, oh, I've still got it.

I should find a new way to use that.

And when I opened it, I hadn't looked at it for two years

and I'd written a bunch of goals there and I had achieved them all.

Like I showed Rory.

Was that a good day?

I showed Rory.

I was like, how spooky is this that I wrote them down

and didn't even look at them, didn't even remember I had written them and they happened.

There are people who are really, really big on this about how it's so important to write them down.

But I've always been torn about whether it's a private or a public thing

because I kind of get the idea of making it public

because then you're accountable for something to something greater than yourself.

Like that guy putting them on his lock screen, he's essentially asking to be held accountable.

I don't think he would have ever thought that anyone would say it.

On a truly serious level, I feel terrible for this guy.

Like I'm really worried.

I hope he is not identified.

I hope no one discovers who he is because, you know, he's being widely mocked.

Like the thing about the roster and the girls, it's not ideal,

but everything else on that list is so fine and there's an earnestness and a sincerity about it

that I find quite vulnerable and endearing.

And the idea of mocking someone for making a list of their goals,

I just think that that buys into everything that we say about gender roles and what it means to be a man.

But don't you think that the fact that it was outward facing,

like I don't want to mock at me.

My first instinct when I saw that was like, oh, poor dude,

but I did feel differently when I realized it was his lock screen

than I did when I thought, you know, someone's found his phone and somehow hacked his phone or whatever.

I'm so old. I thought it was a note that they'd found in a pocket of a lost ski jacket.

Because I'm like, because I do think that there's something in identity there.

Like again, we don't want to particularly imagine this dude,

but like, let's imagine he's a young guy. Let's imagine.

Let's imagine that his mates around him probably are into similar things,

fighting, being shredded, all that kind of stuff.

Like it's probably like a little bit of a belonging statement as well.

I agree with you, Mia. There's a vulnerability.

And I think this is what you're getting at Claire too.

There's a vulnerability in stating your goals because I've always really hated stating goals

because I'm mortified by the idea of when I don't achieve them,

which is perfectly possible and often the case,

then other people will be like, oh, but that's what you really wanted.

Don't you feel sad about that? And then that's like modifying.

And it's become such a thing. You see people do it on social media all the time.

They'll be doing a fitness challenge or I think last year everybody was doing that 75 hard

and they'd be documenting all the things they did every day.

Like all the exercise. It was like all these little goals for the day,

but it was essentially about exercise.

And people would be documenting it and you would see the moment that they dropped off

and you'd think, yeah, that's why we do these things in private.

My goals this week are to wear pink every day.

You've told everybody that.

I've told everybody that to hold myself accountable.

My goals are very small and sad.

Claire, you've got a recommendation for us.

I do. And it's a bit of a cyclical recommendation because it's come from the out louders.

And we all know the out louders.

They're always so aware of what's in the zeitgeist and what we should all be looking at.

So I kept noticing in the out louders Facebook group that people were saying they had just watched

Don't Worry Darling.

Oh yes, all the out louders are talking about that.

And I kept noticing it and I thought weird.

I don't feel that interested in it.

I feel like all the publicity around it just totally turned me off.

I'm not interested.

And then my partner and I were looking for something to watch and I was like, let's just watch it.

It's so good.

Frank has built something truly special.

What he's created out here, it's a different way, a better way.

Once unfamiliar faces, strangers, one and all, now one brave family.

All of you watch.

We men, we ask a lot.

We ask for strength, a shoulder to cry on, food at home, a house clean and discretion above all else.

And that, that's very difficult.

I'm really, really enjoying it.

Is Harry Styles any good?

Well, that's my only note.

So for anyone who had forgotten, Don't Worry Darling was released last year and directed by Olivia Wilde.

It's a psychological thriller starring Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Olivia Wilde, Gemma Chan and Chris Pine.

And the basic plot is that Alice, played by Pugh and Jack, played by Styles,

live in a town called Victory in California in what appears to be the 1950s.

The men leave for work in the morning and the women are discouraged from asking them about it

or knowing anything about the project their husbands are working on.

But Alice starts noticing strange things from other wives in the neighborhood.

It's a bit stepford-wise.

Yes, yes.

But there's some freaky elements of her own reality and she begins to discover that everything is not as it seems.

And basically, I reckon for anyone who has never got the fuss about Florence Pugh,

like you might have just missed the things that she's in, like little women and that kind of thing.

But my partner was like, she is incredible.

Oh yeah, sweetie, like you've missed the bars.

And the movie itself got so overshadowed by all the drama around it because Olivia Wilde was dating Harry Styles

and then there were those leaks and Florence Pugh seemed to be having a fight with Olivia Wilde

and then something happened with Chris Pine and didn't someone spit in his lap?

It was an absolutely disastrous PR campaign.

The absolute opposite of the Barbie one.

I know, I know.

I'm still not sold on Harry Styles as a casting choice.

I'd love to know what the out loud is, what the out louders think of that.

But overall, it's really good and I think it's a real shame that a very well-made, interesting film

was torn apart and overshadowed by a female director's personal life.

I watched it on Netflix.

If you want something else in your ears now, because you're not ready for this show to be over,

because why would you be?

On the last subscriber episode that we did, we recapped episode six of In Just Like That

and it's the episode where Charlotte is on a mission to buy condoms.

I have a lot of thoughts and opinions about buying condoms for your children, speaking of teenagers.

Carrie also attends Widowcon and Miranda gets dumped twice.

Also interestingly, Cynthia Nixon, who plays Miranda, directs this episode.

I'm really interested in that because I've always wondered how you direct yourself,

because it's a big episode for Miranda.

Really big episode and she directs herself.

Anyway, there is a link in the show notes and you'll also get to hear Claire's theory of Carrie being a lazy girl.

She's a lazy girl.

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

This episode was produced by Emily and Gazillas and Susanna Makin with audio production by Leah Porges.

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.

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