Mamamia Out Loud: We Are Full Of Female Rage

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Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters

that this podcast is recorded on.

Mamma Mia Out Loud!

Welcome to Mamma Mia Out Loud,

what women are talking about on Monday,

the 24th of April.

I am Jessie Stevens.

I'm Mia Friedman.

And I'm Mamma Mia's editor,

Elfie Scott, filling in for Holly.

And on the show today...

Welcome!

Oh, sorry, that was annoying.

Shut up.

I'm remote today, and that is why are we in sync?

Not entirely, but that's okay.

That's okay.

If you could just shut up, Mia,

and let me keep going, that would be great.

Okay. Noted.

On the show today, Barry Humphries, a cancellation

and how to react when an icon passes away.

Plus, why does posting a selfie feel kind of weird now?

And what we're too afraid to say about female rage.

But first, Mia...

There was a story that I was reading yesterday

that I can't stop thinking about.

In case you missed it,

the editor of a magazine in Germany has been sacked

over an interview that his magazine published

with Michael Schumacher,

that turned out to be generated by AI.

Because seven times world champion,

F1 driver Michael Schumacher, he's 54 now.

He's not been seen in public since he suffered

a serious, very serious brain injury

in a skiing accident when he was on holiday

with his family back in 2013.

In the latest edition of the German magazine Diaktuell,

they ran a front cover shot with a picture

of a smiling Michael Schumacher

and the headline promising Michael Schumacher

the first interview, which obviously,

that's a pretty big exclusive

because he's not been photographed.

He's not been seen.

You know, no journalist has been able

to interview him since the accident.

And his family are very, very private.

They don't speak much about him

or his condition at all.

And the strap line to be transparent said

it sounded deceptively real.

So they weren't completely deceptive about it.

But inside it emerged that the quotes

had been produced by AI.

So the media group that owns the magazine

apologized in a statement on the website.

And they said this tasteless and misleading article

should never have appeared.

In no way does it meet the standard of journalism

that we in our readers expect.

And the editor was sacked.

In the same week, a song was released on TikTok

that was by either Drake or The Weeknd

or it was a duet between Drake and The Weeknd.

But again, it had been made with AI

just by someone random, not Drake and The Weeknd.

It's starting to raise all of these

really difficult ethical questions

about the use of famous people,

anyone really without their permission.

It's obvious to me that it's tasteless

and it's unethical and gross and absolutely agree.

The exercise itself makes a really valid point,

not on the front page of a magazine,

but the idea that you can generate a believable interview

with someone who will not give you an interview

speaks to the future of journalism

and discussions that are going on in all of our circles

about what AI means.

We are on the precipice of changing how we work

and what it says about people who either pass away

or don't give interviews,

that you could still generate some kind of personality

based on what we know is a really new frontier

where working out where the boundaries and where the lines are,

I think the boundary here was quite obvious.

But thank you to this magazine for just reinforcing

that this is not what we do to people

who are experiencing brain injury.

It says something about AI and what we can do with it.

For those of you who may not know,

but I'm sure that most people do by this point

because it has been dominating the headlines in Australia

since it happened,

the Australian entertainer Barry Humphries,

who was the comedian that created Dame Edna Everidge,

died over the weekend aged 89 in Sydney's St. Vincent's Hospital

after a series of health problems.

So in a statement on Saturday night,

the family said he was completely himself until the very end,

never losing his brilliant mind,

his unique wit and generosity of spirit.

With over 70 years on the stage,

he was an entertainer to his core,

touring up until the last year of his life

and planning more shows that will sadly never be.

His audiences were precious to him

and he never took them for granted.

The characters he created,

which brought laughter to millions will live on,

and Barry is survived by his wife Lizzie,

his children Tessa, Emily, Oscar and Rupert

and 10 grandchildren.

So there were tributes flooding in all through the weekend

from comedians to artists, political leaders

and even King Charles.

Anthony Albanese spoke of his ego puncturing wit

and his role in taking the unique

Ozzy Larrickan spirit to the world.

And there were other comments from people like Rove,

Rupert Murdoch, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Boris Johnson.

So the spectrum of influential people

who were talking about how their lives were touched

by Barry Humphries was absolutely huge.

But in the hours after his death,

there came through sort of tweets and a lot of commentary

about him as a controversial figure.

And specifically something that has been reported on

has been tweets by comedian Hannah Gadsby from 2018.

These were resurfaced by a few news outlets.

You may remember them from a few years ago,

but just a quick refresher.

Basically following a number of negative comments

made by Humphries about transgender people,

Hannah Gadsby alongside other prominent queer comedians

like Zoe Krumzmar pushed for the Melbourne International

Comedy Festival to rename its Barry Award.

I remember this.

So there was an idea that somehow it was not respectful

because of some comments that he'd made.

I think he said that being transgender was a fashion.

Yeah, he said it was a phase

and he also referred to gender-affirming surgery

as self-mutilation.

So pretty inflammatory, offensive, controversial comments.

But what the Comedy Festival did was change the name

of that award to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival

Award for most outstanding shows.

So they went with something way more generic.

And that was before he died.

That was like four years ago.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Hannah Gadsby actually hasn't commented publicly

on Barry Humphries' death,

but that hasn't stopped the headlines from places

like News Corp saying that feminist comedians

slams Barry Humphries as a relevant and inhumane

in resurfaced tweet, which I mean,

resurfacing a tweet four years after the fact,

very interesting journalism.

Mia and Jesse, did you see this reaction?

And I guess just on a broader level,

how are you feeling about Barry Humphries' death

and all of the commentary about his controversial comments?

It's such an interesting issue, isn't it?

You know, I think that we're saying so often now

that when someone iconic, and to be iconic,

you usually have to be pretty old.

Barry Humphries, as you said, was 89.

And when we were talking about it in the meeting before,

I said, look, he was a man of his time.

And I think we have to distinguish between the attitudes

that he expressed as Barry Humphries,

the actor and the performer,

and as Dame Edna and his other character,

Célez Patterson, which were his two best known characters,

which were in the guise of comedy and satire.

Not to say that the things that they said were not offensive,

but I think it's important to draw a line between the two

because Célez, for example,

I once saw a Dame Edna and Célez live

at a Barry Humphries show.

Célez Patterson was like an old-school Queensland politician,

like the worst of Australian men of a certain age,

like he would spit, he would be sexist, he would be racist,

he would be crude, he would be like quite disgusting

and, you know, he was called the minister for the arts.

It was a piercetake on Australian culture.

You know, if you ever heard Barry Humphries himself interviewed,

he was a very refined, very intellectual,

super intelligent man.

So that was satire, you know,

in the same way that we've got a long history of satire

among Australian comedians.

And same with Dame Edna, you know,

she was the Mooney Ponds housewife.

But they were characters of a very different time.

So they were probably satirising something that was around

in the 60s and the 70s and the 80s.

And it did become, I mean, Dame Edna was always fabulous.

Célez, he didn't do much in more recent years,

although he did say that he had a particular affection for Célez

because Célez said all the things that he wasn't allowed to say.

So what I really struggle with, and we see this all the time,

back to your original point, is when somebody dies,

they're of a certain age and we use the current lens

of what's okay and what's not okay

to then judge them retrospectively

and make a statement about whether they should have been cancelled

or whether they should in fact even be mourned.

Jesse, what do you think?

The man was born in 1934.

He belonged to a very specific world.

So I do agree with you.

Courtney Act, who's also a drag character

and a comedian and just a brilliant entertainer,

wrote on Instagram,

I've been watching lots of Dame Edna clips on YouTube recently,

admiring them, studying them, remembering them.

And he created a character that was so brilliant,

irreverent, loved and accepted a part of my life

from childhood to today and I'm sure beyond.

And then acknowledged, things get complex when it comes

to separating the art from the artist

and the disappointing views he has expressed about trans people

and other topics in his later years.

But I don't have to agree with everything he said

to acknowledge his impact and influence on me and on society.

And that's pretty much exactly where I sit.

I thought it was really bad taste to dig up something

that Hannah Gadsby said close to five years ago

about Barry Humphries in saying that,

I look at that tweet in context, out of context.

I don't think it's a great tweet.

Who do you think it's unfair to the Jesse,

to Barry Humphries memory or Barry Humphries loved ones

or to Hannah Gadsby?

Both.

My initial thing was going,

when Hannah Gadsby posted that tweet,

they were offering criticisms about a man

who was still very much alive

and had said some controversial things.

I don't necessarily agree with changing the name of the Barry.

I think it's a losing game when you're trying to make a man

in his 80s think and speak like a person in their 20s or 30s.

I think sometimes you've just got to take people

where they're at, anyone with a grandfather

knows what it's like to sit across them

and have an enormous amount of respect,

but know that you don't politically align,

which a lot of comedians have come out and said.

It's all that you align on some things,

but they haven't caught up with changes in language

and changes in attitude and changes in ideas.

I had this discussion with Elfie this morning

and I said,

look, surely we should just have an amnesty

on people of a certain age

and say that their attitudes are probably

not going to pass master at the moment.

What did you say, Elfie?

I thought it was interesting.

I think it's really interesting when people try and say,

we shouldn't look at people's ethics retrospectively.

My idea is I'm sure there are a lot of people

of Barry Humphrey's era

who didn't say bigoted, racist, transphobic things

or don't hold those beliefs.

Just in relation to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival,

what I wanted to say was,

I think that comedy is a very particular art form

and form of expression

and I think what you're allowed to do in comedy

is really interesting in the sense

that it actually pushes back on things.

It revises a lot of broadly held moral beliefs

and things like that.

And I think it's completely fair

for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival

to say like, hey,

this is not the progressive belief system anymore.

And also there are a lot of queer and trans people

in Australian comedy as well.

So I kind of understand it

and I do support them changing the name as well.

My question is,

so Barry Humphrey's has died.

What defined the final years of his life

were whether we want to admit it or not,

this real tension of being canceled

and we have emails, we have quotes,

we know that this did really hurt Barry Humphrey's

and comedians have come out

and said it absolutely broke his heart.

He felt as though his legacy was thrown away.

Because of that, is this relevant?

Is it relevant for us to have it out in the media?

And it's one thing to resurrect that

Hannah Gadsby tweet without context,

but this is something that we're going to have

to think about going forward

if we want everyone to think exactly the same.

We had the same thing when the Queen died, didn't we?

So it's like, the Queen died.

Is it disrespectful?

But then are we silencing people

who were affected by colonialism?

And it's one of these sort of tensions

that I think the internet has brought with us

because once upon a time when someone iconic died,

the women's weekly would release a special issue.

There would be commemorative souvenir newspapers

and it would all be very much eulogising that person.

Not to say that the complexities

of every individual's life was never surfaced,

but now it's more become you have to pick a side

and if you feel sad about Barry Humphrey's

or you post a tribute to Dame Edna,

then you are aligned with a specific transphobic comet.

I find that incredibly flattening and unhelpful.

Well, that's why that Courtney Act message is so good, right?

Because what they're ultimately reflecting on

is the idea that like, yes, there were problems.

Yes, I don't necessarily have those same belief systems,

but I have to acknowledge the impact

that his performance had in my universe.

And I think ultimately that whole separating the art

from the artist thing, it's a really deeply personal question.

And I think that it does just vary from person to person

based on like your own feelings about certain figures,

your own value systems in terms of like output.

It really is just something that you can like hold within yourself.

I think that's why it's such a ridiculous debate

to have on these scales in some ways,

because ultimately I don't think

we're going to land on the same answer here.

It's interesting when the people who loved Barry Humphrey's

saw the pain that certain things caused him.

And what we do see when someone dies

is often that sometimes the only time

the internet comes out and behaves respectfully.

And part of me understands the impulse to go,

this was you two minutes ago.

Like when this person was alive, you hurt them.

And I have seen public figures in the past

post really cruel, bullying messages.

And then when that person has died,

they've been very quick to delete them.

I understand why they do that.

Because they don't age well.

They absolutely don't age well.

And I'm sorry, but we can't all live our lives

thinking if this person died tomorrow, blah, blah, blah.

Will I revise my opinion?

Yes, that's very complicated.

But I also think the comedy community

was justifiably upset, right?

We're talking about the hurt that he experienced.

What about the hurt of trans kids who see

like yet another Australian celebrity perpetuating

shitty belief systems about them?

Like that's hurtful.

I know about talking about his final years

and lashing out at the people who criticized him

because they were justified in doing so.

I like what you said about it's a personal thing.

When I start to bristle is when people try to silence

other people or say, oh, well, if you're sad,

then you must believe this.

Or if you're not sad, then you must believe that.

I think that people's individual opinions

about the passing of someone and the legacy of someone

are always really important and should be defended.

It's the policing around it that I don't like.

If we go back to the definition of narcissism,

it's excessive interest in or admiration of one's self

and one's physical appearance.

Note the word excessive, right?

We all know somebody who is just posting selfies all day

and you're like, how are you still going?

You must not be doing anything else.

Like, are you doing anything else today?

Isn't narcissistic to post a photo of yourself online?

This is the question that a very famous YouTuber

called Emma Chamberlain posed on her podcast this week.

And she spoke about how she has become increasingly comfortable

and suddenly uncomfortable about posting photos of herself,

particularly on Instagram.

She's only 21 years old.

She's been famous since she was in her teens.

She has 12 million subscribers.

So she's very firmly in the Gen Z camp.

And here's a little bit of what she had to say.

Recently, I felt weird posting pictures of myself on Instagram.

And I've never felt this feeling before.

I felt like a narcissist and it scared me a little bit.

I've been finding myself taking a pause

before I post a picture of myself,

feeling almost uncertain of whether or not

it's the right thing to do.

I listened to that and found it so interesting

because I used to have a very tortured relationship with selfies

in terms of, like, many people of my generation, which is Gen X,

I started off when the whole selfie movement started going,

oh, my God, it's so narcissistic.

It's ridiculous. Everyone taking photos of themselves

and posting it, so vain, et cetera.

And then I checked myself and I went, well,

if in my former career as a magazine editor,

I kept banging on about how we needed more diversity

of women's faces and bodies out in the world

in the imagery that we swim in.

Surely everybody posting photos of themselves

is the best possible thing for that.

I realized that I'd internalized also a real thing about vanity

and the worst thing that you can do, particularly as an Australian woman,

is be vain.

You know, that was certainly drummed into me at high school.

You just could never be accused of being vain.

That was the biggest sin you could commit.

But what's interesting is that I've also noticed lately

is a real difference, again, generationally,

in that Gen Z people and millennials

are much more comfortable with just taking a photo of themselves

and going, I look cute and just not justifying it.

That's why I was surprised to hear this from Emma being only 21.

Whereas people who are older millennials or Gen X,

they still want to post a photo of themselves

for reasons we'll get into in a second,

but they always have to justify it with some reason

that's more worthy.

And I'll give you an example that I saw just last week.

Two different women, both very famous,

both very rich, both very beautiful,

one in her late 50s, one in her late 30s,

posted photos of themselves, galleries actually,

like multiple photos of yourself in one post,

on a red carpet, and they both were at the Women in Science Awards.

And I'd not heard of that before,

but Elfie, you're a science journalist.

I have not heard of this before.

OK, we should have entered you.

They both posted just these photos of themselves on the red carpet

and their captions were almost identical.

It was like, so happy to be celebrating Women in Science tonight

at the Women of Science Awards, hashtag STEM.

But there was no mention of the Women in Science.

There were no photos of the Women in Science.

It was basically just a justification to say,

hey, look at me on a red carpet, which I can understand.

A lot of time, money, effort goes into hair, makeup.

One of these women was a model,

so it's actually her job to be out there and do that.

And I think that everybody knows the feeling

of when you post a photo of yourself

and you get nice things, compliments back.

It can feel quite nice.

So my question is, why do we post photos of ourselves?

Is it narcissistic or is this just 2023?

Elfie.

Oh, God, this is so multi-layered.

And I don't even know how you get into this.

Like in that Emma Chamberlain episode,

I noticed that she herself was running herself

into like little mental circles.

Like she was getting caught in these little black holes of thoughts.

Basically, what I would say is that there are definitely

like narcissistic traits associated with posting selfies.

Like if you do it too much, obviously.

But I also wonder like, what are the really bad parts

of posting selfies?

Because at the end of the day,

it's quite a benign activity to post a photo of yourself, right?

Like it doesn't actually have huge implications.

But what it does point to is just like a general self-centeredness

about your own image.

I for one have thought about this quite a lot

because I used to work in the fashion industry.

I used to post a shit ton of selfies

and I don't do it anymore.

And there are certain reasons for that,

but I think the biggest reason that I don't do it anymore

is because I think it's kind of reductive in a weird way.

Like putting your image out there and saying,

oh, I look sexy in this image or I look hot

or like I look funny in this image.

You're inviting commentary, aren't you?

When you post a photo of yourself, you're inviting commentary.

Yeah.

And it's also saying like, this is my identity as it stands right now.

And I don't think that that's like a true reflection of who we are

at the end of the day, just trying to capture yourself in a photo.

I do think that there are like questions to be had around this.

I think that whether or not you engage in taking selfies too much,

that can be a bit of a problem.

But for the most part, I'm kind of just like,

fuck it, take photos of yourself.

Yeah, just do it. Who cares?

Jesse, you like a thirsty selfie?

I just kept thinking about my late Irish grandmother

and how I would have loved to send her this 30-minute Spotify podcast

of a 20-year-old examining whether her selfies are narcissistic

and the definition of narcissism and not seeing at all the irony

of this entire activity.

It was so narcissistic.

Such a good point.

And I just went, I don't know if I'm getting old,

but post the selfie, don't just please stop talking about it.

But then there was something really clever and meta about it

because I think that it is a worry,

especially of probably Gen Z's millennials.

Our own narcissism is a genuine concern we have that it's like,

oh shit, I think it all the time.

I think I might be a narcissist.

We talked about this recently on the show.

What I did find to be a really valid point she made

was that I reckon the thirst trap selfie is out of fashion

and that it's dated now.

Can you explain a thirst trap for those who don't know what one is?

So let's say seven or eight years ago and I was single

and if I'd like done my makeup and stuff,

I'd be like, I want to post a hot picture just to signify

I'm like a peacock that's just got my tail out, right?

Like I'm here, love me.

And you would post a picture where, you know,

like taken from a particular angle or whatever

and the aim was to appeal to the gaze of a potential suitor.

No, but it was also to have everybody then go fire emoji.

Fire emoji.

You look so beautiful.

You look so hot.

Anyone who's in the orbit of a teenage girl will recognize that,

that you post it and then there's the ritual of everybody

then commenting about how beautiful and hot you are.

Yes, but hopefully the suitor is in there posting fire emojis.

That's the point, you know.

So when Emma Chamberlain in her very long podcast

broke down all the different reasons we posed,

one of them she said was, you know,

if you're an influencer and it's your job,

another one is for what you said,

if you are wanting to attract a potential mate

or attract a potential friend or draw people into your orbit.

She said another reason is as a form of creative self expression.

So if you express yourself through your makeup

or you express yourself through your clothes or whatever,

you do that.

But I know that I have not ever felt comfortable

posting static shots of myself unless it's in a context.

But if it's just, here's just me,

I always have to have a reason

and it has to be kind of more than,

here I am celebrating women in science.

And I'm not saying this to make myself sound better

than people who post selfies for other reasons.

But I'm much more comfortable with videos where I'm talking

because to me, back to the reductive thing,

I do find it really reductive to just say,

here is my appearance, so why am I sharing this?

I don't monetize my social media,

so it's not for that.

Why am I just sharing a photo of myself?

Is it pride that I like how I look today?

And why does the thought of that make me feel so uncomfortable?

People now, and this is what I reckon the evolution has brought us to,

you now need a why.

The why of the selfie can be sort of an afterthought.

And I've seen friends, and I've done this too,

the time that is spent, it's like there is a hot photo of me

and I'm like, okay, I need this on the internet

because I look hot.

What I need is a caption that makes it look like

there's a reason other than how hot I look

that justifies the posting of this picture.

I'm hot but I'm smart and I'm thoughtful

and I'll respect that if I capture myself.

Like, International Women's Day,

women power or something.

And it's you and a J-string.

Exactly, exactly.

I wonder if this is also the girls with a relevant captions effect,

which is a viral Instagram account.

People would find girls who clearly were in the predicament I was in,

which is, here's a great photo of me,

I need a caption, and it would be like,

stem women in science,

and they take the piss.

I guess men have it too.

Like, if a man posted a selfie with absolutely no context,

that would also be a little bit cringe.

I know guys who do do that.

I know guys who really love posting a selfie of themselves.

There's one journalist, Ronan Farrow,

who's a brilliant journalist.

He did a lot of the investigative reporting

around Harvey Weinstein and other things.

He does post a powdery photo, doesn't he?

He's the son of me, Farrow, but he loves himself sick

and he posts these, like, hot...

He's very attractive.

He's got these gorgeous lips on him.

He's shameless about it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And somehow, like, I'm always look at it and go,

wow, you are so confident that you can just...

He doesn't have to find a hashtag stem reason

to post a hot selfie.

I think that actually, funnily enough,

draws back to something that I was just thinking about,

which was when you said that, like,

the biggest sin for Australian women is to be vain, right?

I think that maybe that's what we're trying to do, obviously,

with the captions is kind of, like, belay ourselves

from that vanity and say, like,

oh, but I'm not actually being vain in this moment.

Plausible deniability.

Yes, exactly.

I've started watching beef on Netflix

on Elfie's recommendation.

Is your husband home?

No! I'm home!

In the first episode, I was absolutely blown away

by the portrayal of female rage.

Now, you don't have to be watching beef

to understand what we're talking about here,

but basically, the premise of the show

is that it follows the aftermath of a road rage incident

between two strangers who are both Asian-Americans.

Danny is a failing contractor.

He's struggling with money

and having a lot of people depend on him.

And he goes head-to-head with Amy,

who is a self-made...

This is the one word I can't say.

Entrepreneur...

Come on, you can do it.

Amy was a self-made businesswoman

with what looks on the outside like a perfect life.

And the Huffington Post published a review of beef

with the headline,

Finally A Show About Angry Asians.

And the author writes,

Netflix's beef shatters so much of what we,

as Asian-Americans, were taught about holding in our rage.

The nuances of rage within an Asian-American context

are really important,

and we're going to get into that.

But as one reviewer put it,

beef is easily accessible to those of us

who have felt frustration for reasons

we can't quite articulate.

For those of us who have to suppress rage

over something we ourselves acknowledge

is not that big a deal.

And the show is an exploration

of that feeling of screaming on the inside

while smiling and being polite on the outside.

Elfie, rage is not a sexy emotion.

Did you relate to the way in which Amy,

who is Ali Wong's character,

has this sense of rage bubbling beneath the surface

and she feels like she doesn't know

what's going to happen when it boils over?

Is that relatable to you?

Yes, 100%.

I am a very angry woman,

and I totally get this feeling.

Like, you had a good story about this, right?

Because you were watching it with Luca.

Yes.

And I said to him as we were watching it,

this is so relatable.

There was a moment where someone wanted a photo with her

and she had this smile on her face

and she was going, thank you.

I am grateful every single day.

And I went, oh, my God.

The acting, the scripting was perfect.

And I said, this is so relatable.

And Luca was like, what, what about it?

And I thought, oh, maybe this isn't completely normal

that I am full of rage every day.

Yes.

So I think there's a couple of layers to it

from my perspective.

What are you rageful about, Elfie?

You don't seem outwardly rageful.

Well, that's a point thing, isn't it?

I was thinking about this when we were talking

about this story earlier.

And I think basically where my rage comes from

is the fact that like, I think I'm kind of an idealist

and an optimist when that is constantly being

brought down to earth by the fact that the world

is actually quite shitty and hard.

That makes me angry.

So I think that's like the general sort of bubble

of rage I live in.

And I would also say just from the perspective

of a brown woman, I also think that there's something

interesting in this for me because I was thinking

about my experience of having to suppress rage

and something that I noticed I was doing a couple of years ago,

especially when I was living down the South Coast

in a very white, homogenous kind of community

is the idea that like I had to suppress rage

even just that like 10% more

because I had to be like the model ethnic

and I started to feel so angry every single day

because of that it was just this like quiet subconscious

thing where I couldn't express anger

or like be even a little bit like hysterical

or like silly in public because I felt like

I had to just like quiet and everything down.

But I think like...

Is that also the trope of the angry black woman?

Yeah, like I think that probably plays into it as well

to be like angry or like out of control

as like a brown person has like...

Those connotations.

Yeah, darker connotations than it would for other people.

I also think that like female rage in general

is really interesting because I think we're really

fucking terrible at expressing it

and we've never learnt how to express anger.

So true.

So this morning my throat's a little bit hoarse

because I screamed at my children so loudly

with you know that pit of rage that you just...

It's only when it occasionally comes out

and I'm not a shouter or a screamer except when I am.

And I'd been looking after your dog Jesse the whole weekend.

Jason's away.

I hadn't slept because the three...

I went and miced two idiot dogs.

They were like...

I had three dogs that I'd been dealing with.

Blah, blah, blah.

Boring, boring.

Just I'd been like trying to make everyone's life good

all weekend.

And then this morning I was being narcissistic

and recording my Instabattable

which is when I put my makeup on and chat about myself.

No, just about whatever.

While I record it and then put it on Instagram.

And the doorbell rings and it's your brother Jesse

coming to pick up your dog.

And everyone starts barking.

Everyone.

Like incredibly loud barking.

I can't hear myself.

I can't do anything.

Nothing happens.

No one answers the door.

So then the dog's still barking.

The doorbell goes, yeah.

And I stop my camera.

I walk out and I scream.

Can anyone deal with the dog's anyone?

You know that just like...

And it feels so good.

But then afterwards you're a little bit like...

Oh, Jesus.

Where did it come from?

And it's that idea of the rage that also I really tapped

into with Perry because one of the symptoms of

Perry menopause and menopause is rage.

And it's because the estrogen hormone that women

have until Perry menopause hits is the approval

hormone, the nice hormone, the thing that keeps you

agreeable and helps you suppress your rage.

The time that you don't have it is when you've got

PMT before you get period or when you're

Perry menopausal.

Sometimes I think, is that just who we really are?

Like when you strip back the estrogen, is that just

who we actually are?

Yeah.

And I once read it described PMT as the feeling of

when you walk down the street and you want to slap

complete strangers across the face.

Yes.

So that's my lived experience.

And I think that we have no outlet.

And that's the issue.

So I had an experience recently where I was really,

really tired and just not feeling well.

And I'd been interstate for something and I got to the

airport and we're on the plane and we're about to fly

out.

And then the flight was canceled because we weren't going

to make it to Sydney.

We come back out of the plane.

The staff are trying to get us hotel rooms, blah, blah,

blah.

And I kept saying, oh, you know, where's that?

Trying to be really, especially in airports, I'm

trying to be really polite because I don't want to be

that person who loses it and it is not the fault of the

staff.

But I was just spoken to in a certain tone by three or four

people in a row that was, they were being irritable and

just saying, well, where we're going to book your hotel is

50 minutes away and you're going to have to be back here in

five hours or something.

And I was going, oh my God, I actually, am I going to lose

it?

I was like, am I going to just actually lose it?

And they kept saying, try and book your own hotel.

And I had called 50 hotels and all of them were just

hanging up on me because there weren't any.

And this woman was saying, well, someone else did.

Someone else got a hotel.

I was like, what's the name of it?

And I got to the front of this line and I was speaking to

this woman as politely as I could, but there were tears

going all the way to, I just couldn't stop the tears.

The rage cry.

The rage cry?

Women we cry when we've want to be screaming.

Exactly.

And it was like two hours of the tears just falling.

And I wasn't crying.

It was just like, I couldn't stop them.

And what I loved about what beef said about this is that it

isn't these singular moments.

It's this cumulative effect of someone saying something

slightly insensitive.

And this is what people are talking about with microaggressions

in the example of women of color, like a microaggression that

to you might not seem like a big ideal.

There are just these moments and moments.

And then what work demands of us, you find yourself in a

certain power dynamic and you're just smiling and you're

smiling.

And to use therapy speak about it, there's this inner child

in you that's going, hang on, I feel embarrassed or I feel

tired or I feel angry or shy.

And then the adult, the other voice is going smile and shut

up.

And it's like we're lying to ourselves.

It's like a fracturing of spirit.

That's how I feel where I go, I'm not being authentic.

Yes.

And there's a cost to that, isn't there?

When you internalize that instead of expressing it

outwardly.

But then I also have read before, remember when then

Supermodel Naomi Campbell went through a phase of throwing

her phones at people?

I love it.

I love it.

Such a vibe.

There was that idea of better out than in, but then I also

around that time was reading up about anger and it was

saying that you don't want to reinforce those neural

pathways that are about, that it's important that we learn to

suppress our anger because we're in airports because we're

dealing with small children because we're, you know, in

relationships because we're in the supermarket, all of those

reasons.

But the thing with anger, and I remember this so strongly from

the pandemic, at first everyone was quiet and just

whatever scared.

And then everyone was angry.

And it started with BLM, the Black Lives Matter movement.

And then it became anti-vaxxers and it just careened and then it

was one cancellation after another.

And people were just furious about so many things, about

border closures, about this one, about that one.

I've realized that it's because anger is very energizing.

It's very activating.

Whereas sadness and fear and despair are very depleting.

Yeah.

And corrosive, corrosive in a lot of ways because anger is a

secondary emotion.

Beneath that is always sadness or guilt.

And you can see that in the show that she is a woman who is

trying her best and there's this beautiful moment with her child

where she's like, oh, I just want to lay here with you forever.

And anger then bubbles over because we're denying that.

And anger can be fun and energizing.

And like, oh, it can really make you feel alive in a way that

sadness and despair doesn't.

Before we go, I've got a recommendation for an article that

I read on the weekend.

Absolutely loved.

And then put in all of my group chats.

It's from Harper's magazine, not Harper's Bazaar, the fashion

magazine, but there's a magazine called Harper's Magazine in the

US.

And it's a story called I really didn't want to go by a

journalist and an author called Lauren Euler.

And it's about the Goop Cruise.

She went on a cruise, a Goop offering, a bunch of journalists,

including some Australian journalists were given what's

called a famil, which is a freebie, essentially where you go

and experience a trip or an event or something.

And you then write about it for your publication.

Now, you're not forced to write lovely things, but it's kind of expected

that maybe if there are bad things, it's an exchange.

Well, she did call it a hit piece, what she wrote.

It wasn't mean.

What I loved about it, the tone of it is so funny and so clever.

Gwyneth herself comes on board, is chop it in to give a talk at one stage.

She goes into all these tangents about how she's in this

thruple with this gay guy and this other guy.

She's very interesting and engaging, but the power of

observation and the way she's just very funny without being mean.

It's just that observational comedy.

It reminded me of the kind of writing I love to read, the kind of

writing that I used to love to commission and do myself when I

was a journalist.

I once went to a female bodybuilding convention.

It was just like one of those things where you don't have to be mean.

You just have to describe what you see, essentially.

I just loved it.

So we'll put a link in the show notes.

Highly recommend.

I really didn't want to go.

I think that is the name of my future memoir.

Speaking of female rage, getting somewhere and being like,

I don't want to be here and I'm going to bitch about this later.

12 days on the high seas with Goopies.

No, thank you.

Thank you so much for listening.

This episode is produced by Emma Gillespie with audio production

by Leah Porges, an assistant production from Susanna Macon.

We will chat to you tomorrow.

Bye.

Shout out to any Mamma Mia subscribers listening.

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

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

There is a link in the episode description.

Thank you.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.