Mamamia Out Loud: Yes We’re Talking About Jonah Hill’s Boyfriend Boundaries

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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 10th of July.

I am Holly Wainwright.

I'm Mia Freedman.

And I'm Claire Stevens.

And on today's show, Jonah Hill, Kiki Palmer, and the chat about boundaries that we really

need to have.

Also, is it time to cancel Bridget Jones, spoiler, and what the F are furries and why should

we care?

But first, Mia, in case you missed it, you don't have to pack anything when you go on

holidays anymore.

Wow.

A clothing rental program from Japan Airlines means that you can actually just book clothes

to be delivered to you at the other end, at your hotel.

The program offers clothing in sizes from small to extra large and in styles designated

casual and smart casual.

For example, a set of smart casual women's clothes would include a black pea coat, three

jumpers, two tops, two pairs of wide-legged pants, and a skirt.

I think it's BYU shoes.

A capsule wardrobe for your holiday.

Correct.

And a man looking for a casual winter basic pack might order a package with a puffer coat,

two sweaters, two pairs of pants, and a sweatshirt.

Let's begin at roughly $28.

Now the reason they're doing this is because they're trying to see if it will reduce passengers

checked in baggage and therefore carbon emissions.

Oh.

But do you have to bring the clothes home with you at the other end of the holiday?

No.

No, no, you don't.

You don't get to keep them.

It's like a rental.

Yes.

Oh.

It's rental.

So they're not new.

I mean, they're laundered.

Sumimoto, which is one of Japan's largest trading companies, they're responsible for getting

the clothes and laundering them and delivering the items and then picking them up when you

leave.

It'll all be sourced from overstock and pre-owned clothes and delivered to your hotel.

I absolutely love this.

There's a trend at the moment for people going to Europe to do like mood boards and come

up with like these are the outfits I'm wearing every day in Europe, which is my worst nightmare

would never do.

I'm picking up what's on top of my suitcase.

My hesitation is, will the clothes fit?

Will they look silly on me?

I need a lot of photos of the clothes, but I hope that this concept really develops and

that a whole lot of brands get on board.

Because I would also like it for someone else to just choose what I'm going to wear on holidays.

Because I've been looking at all those European Insta holidays too.

And I know I was just on holiday, but it wasn't really a fashion moment kind of holiday.

And I've seen all these people and was like, I'm at a club in EOS.

And here I am.

In the outfit that I chose.

And it's this little turn, I'm like, what the fuck would I wear to a club in EOS?

Not that I'm going to one.

Obviously I'm 50.

But I like this idea.

It could style me holiday holly.

See, that's my problem.

I shop for the club in EOS, except I'm just at work.

So I have a whole wardrobe of clothes suitable for a life that I don't even have.

Over the weekend, the messages of two high profile men went viral and have started a

debate about boundaries in relationships.

The first was actor Jonah Hill, after his ex-girlfriend Sarah Brady issued a warning

to all girls in a series of social media posts, alleging the actor emotionally abused her

throughout their year long relationship in 2021.

Now it's worth noting she shared what appeared to be screenshots of messages between herself

and Hill.

Not cool.

But at the time of recording this, Hill hasn't responded.

I also am going to say emotionally abusing, that's a very strong word.

I mean, we don't know everything that's gone on, but as Holly said, and we're not saying

we're team Jonah on this, this story is complicated and problematic.

Jonah Hill has also just had a little baby with his new partner.

And so people are kind of questioning the timing of it.

However, Brady shared a list of rules or plain and simple boundaries given to her by

Hill in a screenshot of what she claims were texts sent from him on December 2nd, 2021.

Here's what the screenshot that's gone totally viral says.

Plain and simple.

If you need surfing with men, boundaryless, inappropriate relationships with men, to

model, to post pictures of yourself in a bathing suit, to post sexual pictures, friendships

with women who are in unstable places and from your wild recent past, beyond getting

a lunch or coffee or something respectful, I am not the right partner for you.

If these things bring you to a place of happiness, I support it and there will be no hard feelings.

These are my boundaries for romantic partnership.

In one of the texts, Hill says he's been as vulnerable as possible and needs her to

step up to the plate.

Then says if she wants marriage and a family, she needs to step up and cut the shit.

The second man was boyfriend of hustlers and nope actor Kiki Palmer.

We just talk about Sarah for one second and that conversation before we get to Kiki.

The way the internet is receiving this is emotional abuser, red flags, very bad Jonah

Hill.

Sarah Brady is asking people to boycott his documentary, which has been out for a really

long time.

Stutz.

Stutz, which I think has been recommended on this show, it's sort of an interview between

him and his therapist.

So he's sort of put himself out there and I think this is part of her problem as being

quite an evolved, emotionally intelligent person who's willing to interrogate his psychology

in a world.

One of the first things you got me working on was my life force.

That was such an immediate thing that can change your life and something that I think

anyone can easily latch onto and it was the first step for me in beginning the process

of getting better.

Devil's advocate, if you lay out what your boundaries are, how's that a bad thing?

He is weaponizing the language of therapy and he is not actually talking about boundaries.

Boundaries are a healthy limit you set for yourself to protect your own well-being and

integrity.

But that's what he's saying.

He's saying, I can't be with someone who does these things because it makes me feel

too upset.

The problem is the judgment that comes with this, right?

Yeah, what's the difference between boundaries and rules?

Because what he's really laying down are rules.

If you want to be my girlfriend, these are the rules you have to follow.

And I think one of the reasons why women have almost universally gone, uh, when they read

this is because we all recognize elements of this guy, right?

Yeah.

I think it goes without saying, although we'll say it as Claire already has, it's not cool

that she's released these texts.

The timing is very suspicious, him just having a baby, there are other people on the internet

saying their breakup was messy and difficult and all those things.

And I'm sure that's true.

But lots of women, myself included, recognize the controlling man in these messages.

Very clearly.

The judgment that goes alongside it about sort of like your wild past and your boundary

listing and your chaotic girlfriends and all this stuff is just so icky and difficult

to hear.

Because the subtext is you're a dirty slut.

And there is implied shaming in all of that.

Yeah.

He's shaming her and suggesting that she can't be around these people and control herself

or keep herself nice for him.

The whole thing about no pitches in your swimsuit, she's a surfer.

And the reason they're together at Jonah Hill's a mad surfer, it's one of the things he does

for his mental health.

If you've watched Stutz as I have, I know you have too, Claire.

We know a lot about Jonah Hill.

He's invited us into his brain.

I started watching him founded in Suffrable and turned it off.

He has a lot of issues.

We know that he's very self-aware about what kind of issues does he have?

Lots of self-hating body image stuff.

Lots of I'm not good enough kind of narratives going on.

And the thing is, is that this is weaponizing therapy speak because we're all about boundaries,

boundaries, boundaries.

But when you impose boundaries on someone else, that's rules and it's not cool.

I think this is terrifying.

The fact that he has made that documentary and by sharing his vulnerabilities, he became

incredibly likable.

It forms this narrative that we go, God, I really relate to that guy.

And I see his career differently and I see him differently.

And now to see that he at the time was allegedly using that speak and almost using the power

he had got from understanding these psychological terms to then speak to a woman and basically

say, this isn't saying like, you can't cheat.

You can't murder somebody I love.

This isn't like objective moral.

True.

This is I'm not comfortable with you doing your job.

I'm not comfortable with you not modeling.

You're not modeling.

I am not comfortable with you seeing your friends.

These are all like, I don't think emotional abuse is too strong a word for this.

It's definitely coercive control.

Look, you're probably right.

I've been in a relationship with a guy like that for two years and it was definitely emotionally

abusive.

I just didn't have the words for it at the time and I would, I have to say, even though

I agree, I don't think it's okay to share people's private text messages.

I hate that.

But if I'd have read that, I would have perhaps gone, oh, yeah, right.

And read the response to it.

I might have recognized something I was experiencing and realizing that it wasn't okay.

Had he rephrased it in terms of, I'm just too insecure.

I'm really sorry.

Because he does try to say, if these things give you happiness, which is like shade really,

because it's like, if you want to be a dirty slut, go for it.

I wish you well.

What people, if you haven't been in these relationships might not understand is, well,

why don't you just go get stuffed?

It's hard to explain how you and she showed this in subsequent text messages.

You immediately bend and want to appease that person.

And I think because the implication is that you're a dirty slut and that's exactly what

my partner implied and said outright, I think even use those words to me.

You want to prove that you're not by saying, oh, yeah, of course, I course, I won't do all

that.

It presses all your shame buttons.

It does.

It presses all your shame buttons and it makes you go like, well, of course I can be this

person that you want me to be who doesn't go out for drinks with my friends, doesn't

do things I love like surfing and modeling, maybe that's the way she makes a living.

Even though, as we've said many times, it's not cool that she released them.

She is showing a side of somebody to the world that's very contrary to who we all thought

he was.

The only thing I'd say is context.

It's just the screenshots that she chose to release and who knows what she said and

she had cheated or she like there was some reason for mistrust that we're missing.

Even still, the messages are completely inappropriate and worrying, but you're right.

Without the context, it does miss a little bit.

I just would say it's funny because I was listening to an interview with Robert Downey

Jr. who's famously, you know, a guy who's battled addiction, battled chaotic behavior,

mental health issues and has now been in a long marriage.

He was asked what the secret to that marriage was and why his wife is the right person for

him after years of more chaotic, let's say, living.

He said she has absolutely unassailable boundaries.

If I cross them, I'm out and what I would lose is just too great.

I think that when you gender flip it, it becomes more complicated to dismiss.

I know women who have set boundaries for their romantic partner because of either actual

behavior that was transgressive of what they've agreed like, so flirting with women and cheating

whatever or imagined transgressions and they've said, you can't text women.

I don't know.

Say that's a boundary, for example, be friends with your ex on Facebook.

Now, I'm not a boundary imposer in that way, but often women are like, you go girl, that's

great.

Yeah.

And you can't overlook this.

The reason why you can't gender flip it so easily is that the controlling man is a different

beast.

Am I being unfair?

No, I think that's completely fair.

And if you look at what women are asking, its behavior, again, with boundaries actually

being about protecting you and not about controlling somebody else, you can't cheat

on me.

And that's not what Jonah Hill is saying.

You can't see your friends, you can't post bikini pictures on Instagram as a surfer.

I think I've noticed it in my own life, people using therapy speak to control or kind of

comment on your behavior.

So it's like I have these boundaries for myself and you're actually frustrating me or you're

crossing those boundaries by being yourself and you're like, I'm not part of your mental

health plan.

Someone that didn't use therapy speak was the partner of Kiki Parma, who coincidentally

is also in the news this weekend.

Yeah.

So he was the boyfriend of hustlers and no-backed Kiki Parma, Darius Jackson, also known as

Darius Dalton.

And the pair share a son together.

Kiki went to an Asha concert, she was dancing with Asha, and when pictures and videos of

her surfaced, Darius reposted those with the quote, it's the outfit though, you a mum.

We have to explain the outfit and we have to explain the video because I think the context

here is important and relevant.

I personally don't think it's relevant what she's wearing, but she is wearing kind of

a see-through black dress with what looks like lingerie underneath that you can see.

And she is dancing very close to Asha.

To Asha on a stage in front of lots and lots of people.

Yes.

Yeah.

It's sort of sexy, like dirty dancing with Asha.

So fine.

Which is what Asha's about.

You're not going to do ballroom dancing with Asha, but anyway.

If she was cheating with Asha, she wouldn't be doing it on a stage in front of hundreds

of people.

On a stage.

She posted it on her social accounts.

Yeah.

Clearly like, look at me and Asha.

Look at me and Asha.

Yep.

And so Darius has posted, it's the outfit though, you a mum.

He got a bunch of backlash and he's like, mmm, clearly you've all misunderstood me.

And he said, we live in a generation where a man of the family doesn't want the wife

and mother of his kids to showcase booty cheeks to please others.

And he gets told how much of a hater he is.

This is my family and my representation.

I have standards and morals to what I believe.

I rest my case.

Do you, Darius?

Do you indeed?

Do we live in that generation?

Okay.

Still together.

First question.

Are they together or is she his ex-partner?

No.

No.

They're still together now.

Do you mean after the weekend?

No.

No, they're together.

They were together at the time of the Asha dancing.

Yeah.

But he's deleted some pics from his social media, so we're thinking maybe they're not

together anymore.

I have some empathy with Darius.

Oh my God.

Oh my God.

I know it's an unpopular opinion.

I know that I am the put your pants on member of this podcast and I need to be true to myself.

If I was with someone and they were posting sexualized photos of themselves and thrusting

around with someone, I would find that quite humiliating.

Okay.

Your husband is a CEO, so it would be weird if he did that.

It would.

But Kiki Parma is a performer.

But if you're with someone-

I just remembered this has happened to me very recently.

Every year, Brent's Christmas party at his work is a dress-up, right?

And several years ago, he posted- because Brent just posts whatever on Facebook, he's

not thinking about his brand.

He's rogue.

He's not that guy, right?

It's one of the things we love about Brent.

He posted a picture of himself and one of his co-workers who was in a, shall we call

it, a sexy dress-up outfit.

You know how for women often there are only two choices?

Sexy cat.

Sexy and funny.

Sexy Santa.

She was in the sexy Santa.

It was sexy Santa.

She was in a very sexy Santa.

And the angle on the photo looked quite incriminating.

My friends and everyone in the world had so much fun with this image, right?

I would not have been happy about that.

I was a little bit cranky.

Yeah.

I said to Brent, do you think that you could not- I know, it's not that I thought he was

doing anything.

Maybe Darius did think Kiki was doing something.

But I was like a bit embarrassed because my friends are lulled and lulled and sent me

messages.

It feels disrespectful.

But the difference is, right, and this is both these men need to learn this lesson.

I learned it early, early, early in my relationships.

You can't change people.

You can't control people.

If you spend your life trying to change and control people, you are going to be miserable.

Jonah Hill can think that he wants a girl who's going to follow all his rules and all

his boundaries.

And a girl or woman might think for a while she can fit into that box for him.

It never works.

I've never seen it work.

If someone wants to cheat on you, they're going to cheat on you.

If someone is a scumbag, they will continue to be a scumbag no matter how many times

you give them a list of rules of all the things they must not do to be a scumbag.

At the end of the day, it was a bit embarrassing for me that Brent appeared to be sexy dancing

with Sexy Santa, but really, like, it's not a big enough deal that I would publicly shame

him.

You didn't post you were dad.

Well, the public thing is awful.

Because if he was going to do something with Sexy Santa, he was going to do something

with Sexy Santa.

I don't think this was fear that she was actually cheating.

I think it is you shamed me publicly and now I'm going to shame you publicly.

But that is disgusting sentiment in terms of ownership.

And his entire tone, especially in that second tweet, is basically about if you're a wife

and a mother, you're a representation of me and I have standards and morals and you

have to adhere to that.

Just like Jonah, he has standards and morals, brunch only.

Yeah.

Out loud, as we have a question for you, should you change the way you post when you're in

a relationship?

I can't even factor into the decision about the types of photographs that you post.

I decided to take control of my life and start a diary to tell the truth about Bridget Jones.

Bridget Jones just turned 25.

Gosh.

The novel, that is.

Remember reading?

Is that the same age as Sexy Santa City?

Did they both just turn 25?

They did.

Oh, what a time.

It was a golden age of Generation X.

Transgressive time.

And like most people in their mid-20s, Bridget Jones is currently facing a bit of a reckoning.

Helen Fielding wrote her best-selling series 25 years ago and it's back in the headlines

being observed under a very 2023 lens in a New York Times story that has basically said

we deserved better than what Bridget Jones gave us.

I suddenly realised that unless something changed soon, I was going to live a life where

my major relationship was with a bottle of wine and I'd finally die fat and alone and

be found three weeks later half eaten by wild dogs.

Or I was about to turn into Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction.

Her obsession with weight, her calorie counting, the fact that she was smoking, the fact that

she desperately wanted a boyfriend and then a husband.

I won't say there are calls for her to be cancelled retrospectively, but I know a lot

of women who read this piece in the New York Times and shared it in group chats saying

that they found it really annoying, the scoldy tone of this writer.

Holy, you into cancelling Bridget Jones?

Hell no.

Definitely not.

It's so funny when I read this article, which is such a boo hiss, like it's such a serious

face like, if it had a persona, this article, it would just be somebody just like, it's

like, can't have joy over yourself.

Anyway, the reason that Bridget Jones was a publishing phenomenon and if you didn't live

through that time, it's hard to understand how massive that was.

And this is before the movies, right?

And then that was a whole other thing.

Those books were absolutely massive.

The first one in particular, they got progressively worse, as that often happens, because like

all great art, it spoke the unspoken and it made a group of people who were not being

listened to feel seen.

Now it's weird now, right, 25 years ago to go, what sort of middle class white ladies

who think they're fat, we want them to feel seen.

This was a voice that you weren't hearing in all their kind of flawed, messed up glory

and a whole lot of women did relate.

It was the 90s.

She was single and didn't really want to be, but she also thought that all her married

friends were really annoying and she didn't really want to be them either.

She was in her early 30s, wasn't she?

Yeah, that's the tension that a lot of women could feel.

There were some lines in that book and in that movie that just made me gasp in recognition

because my life was actually very similar.

I was never as posh as Bridget.

I never got to go to so many garden parties dressed as naughty bunny girls and stuff.

But you know, I drank too much with my friends and every day the next day would wake up and

go, oh no, we're doing that again.

Oh my God, I'm so bad.

I drank too much wine and I went home with the wrong guy, whatever.

I smoked ciggies.

You know, my friends were my life and my family and I was seeing all that being reflected.

I remember there's a great bit in Bridget Jones where one of her married friends is

like...

Why is it there are so many unmarried women in their 30s these days, Bridget?

Oh, I don't know.

I suppose it doesn't help that underneath our clothes, our entire bodies are covered

in scales.

Reptilian scales, like there's something wrong with us.

Like, it was a group of women who have been ignored, being heard.

And it's so funny now to look back at that and think that was empowering because it's

easy now to see all the things that were wrong with that.

There's no question that you read that book and the talk about calories and weight and

all those things.

It's shocking.

But hang on a second, it's still what happens.

The fact that she weighs herself every day and writes her weight in her diary, it drives

me crazy, this idea that because we're not meant to feel that way, we're meant to be

body positive.

When you aren't, because society basically tells you that you don't look right constantly,

you then are also meant to feel bad about the fact that you're not body positive.

So you lose twice.

Well, that's the thing that's interesting and I really want to hear what Claire thinks

about this.

But this idea that if I read that New York Times piece and they say, young women reading

this today would not relate to lots of things.

So the body stuff for sure, being sexually harassed at work by your boss who's kind of

fancy but still at the end of the day, she was being treated pretty awfully.

Which was true of the time.

The fact that your friends and your family would walk around going, tick tock, biological

clock and things like that.

And this writer was saying all of that is just stuff that a new generation wouldn't recognize.

And I would say, if that's true, then great.

Job done.

Lots of progress.

Very happy.

But I suspect that in this culture we live in, which is still all about filters and injectables

and weight loss drugs and people are getting married earlier and all those things like,

I suspect people, women still do feel like that.

You're just not allowed to say so.

The tone of this article made me furious.

There's a line the writer says, imagine what a millennial would say to a casual acquaintance

who had the audacity to broach the subject of the biological clock.

They do.

They do.

You're exactly the age of the literature.

I'm sorry.

I'm more aware of it than ever.

Leach, I'm like, oh no, sorry, that's absolutely still happening.

And sorry, do you think we now have the confidence to say something about it?

Because we absolutely do not.

There's another section where the writer just goes on and on about how being neurotic isn't

cute.

And it's like, cute isn't cute.

Neither is flustered, mud-capped, zany, flighty, flaky, harried or hapless.

All adjectives that apply to Bridget.

And it's like the idea of what a woman is allowed to be is just getting narrower and

narrower every time we tear apart some depiction of a woman.

I think there's a difference when you look at movies like this and on my other podcast

canceled, we've done Bridget Jones, we've done Love Actually.

A notebook.

We're about to do the notebook.

I think there's a difference between laughing about something like Bridget Jones, like the

fact that she's 32 and the vibe from her family is that she's geriatric and needs to be putting

on home.

And also it's worth calling out that in the movie, she's Renee Zellweger and she's being

treated as if she's somehow the most unattractive and obese person.

And you know, there's that meme that did the rounds that was absolutely spot on that was

saying, this is the woman we were all very happy to fat shame and she was what, a size

10 or something.

I mean, that's all worth calling out.

I don't think that's like not worth calling out.

And I think doing it in a way that's kind of full of humor and a little bit of affection,

whereas seriously critiquing it for not living up to the standards of today is ridiculous

because of course it didn't because it wasn't written today.

I think sometimes those comparisons can be helpful and interesting though, because what

would have been more interesting is if the writer had done a bit of a comparison instead

of just trashing Bridget.

When you look at some of the characters that are written now and you've just written one,

a woman older than Bridget Jones, but for the TV show Strife and if you look at Phoebe

Waller Bridge in Fleabag, there are lots of those kinds of characters now that are more

multifaceted than Bridget Jones was.

I mean, there were a lot of things, even though it was groundbreaking at the time, which it

should be acknowledged for, there were also a lot of sort of cliches and there wasn't

a lot of nuance to her character and a lot of different facets to her character, which

I think probably people wouldn't accept as much now, but it was a comedy.

Well, so she doesn't represent all women.

No, and she represents a character, like I think, and as I was saying at the beginning,

she made a particular group of women go like, oh yeah, I haven't heard this story.

Now we have heard that story and we've heard it retold lots of times in lots of different

ways and from different perspectives, which is great, but that doesn't discount that

at the time.

It was a voice we wanted to hear.

And we tend to do this so much with women's stories.

Whenever we revisit books or movies, we tend to really look at women and critique how they're

depicted as though the way one woman is depicted needs to make a statement about all women.

And to me, like Mia, I know what you're saying that there's some level of nuance that isn't

in Bridget Jones' character.

And again, that's just anachronism.

It's like, well, it was a different time.

It was in the past.

But you know what's radical about Bridget Jones and is still somewhat radical is the

idea that women are funny and the idea that women are flawed and still lovable and the

idea that we are all on a silent, private, weird self-improvement journey that we never

get to the end of.

But people love us anyway.

And Granny Pants and also a woman in a lead role at the centre of a film who doesn't have

a makeover and isn't like Jennifer Aniston or Cameron Diaz.

We don't look back on Jane Austen and yell that it's sexist because the women didn't

work because we acknowledge that it was.

And that they were basically married off for money.

Exactly, because we go, that was a moment in time.

Why didn't they have jobs?

Yeah.

And so I don't know why we can't do that with the more recent part.

Also, why can't you just like...

The thing that was great about Bridget Jones is that, as you've said, Claire, it was funny,

but also that particular time in the 90s in London that she's describing and living

through.

I lived through it too.

It was fun.

It was fun.

Eating too much.

Smoking ciggies.

Sleeping with your bad boss.

I'm sorry.

It was fun.

And why do we have to be so scoldy about it in retrospect?

And we're scoldy about things women enjoy, such as Chick-Lit.

The Bridget Jones film is one of the greatest films of all time, in my opinion, rewatched

it recently.

Just excellent.

Anything that brings women joy, we have to say that it's lowbrow and stupid and that

we're idiots for enjoying it.

We'll put a link to the cancelled episode of Bridget Jones, which is a cracker in the

show notes.

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.

Mia, I'm greeting you today to explain a much maligned and some would say exploited group

of people.

And by people, I broadly mean young people and by young people, I mean people younger

than me.

And they are called furries.

One of the most misunderstood groups on the internet.

One day my brother and I were hanging out on the trampoline when I was seven and he was

like, you furries are gross.

And I was like, what's a furry?

And then I looked it up and I fell in love.

So now we're going to hang out with some furries.

Now a furry is someone who feels a deep connection with or even assumes the characteristics of

a particular species of animals.

Specifically, what's the word?

I'm going to get it wrong.

Claire Stevens is going to help me with it when you make an animal like a person.

What's that word?

Anthropomorphise.

That's it.

That's what they do.

I'm not going to say.

So that means giving an animal human characteristics.

Walking on two feet, riding a skateboard, perhaps wearing a jaunty hat.

They're not really new.

Let's say they were invented by some more like adult corners of the internet.

Quite a long time ago.

60s, 70s, in relatively recent times, furrydom has seeped out of that specific section of

subculture.

So it used to be a bit of a kink.

I think I did stories on it when I was in magazines.

There's a kink and there still is a kink element to some furries, like to some furry world.

They like to dress up as animals and get on on with other furries.

But not all furries like doing that.

That's not what furries is all about.

OK.

It's an element of furrydom, right?

But now it's kind of seeped out of that more specific place to become quite a big part

of youth culture.

Think kids wearing cat ears, right?

Maybe paws and a tail.

Maybe a whole furry animal head or like one of those outfits that a mascot wears at a

football game.

You know where they're running around pretending to be a bull or whatever.

So kids are wearing these.

Teenagers are wearing them if they can afford the whole furry suit or maybe just a hat or

maybe just some paws.

Kids communicating in meows, barks or purrs.

Kids wanting to eat out of a bowl or be patted or tickles.

Now, I'm trying not to laugh, right?

Because when I was researching this, there is a serious side to furry life and most furries

have something called a fursona, which is the person that they are when they're in their

furriness.

So when I'm wearing my cat hat, I might have a different name.

I might give myself a different name and I might behave in a different way.

And it's kind of like a self-expression, a safe space to be as weird as you want.

Basically, I'd say weird in inverted commas.

But you know what I mean?

You also might have heard about furries in relation to kids asking people to validate

their furry status.

There have been some headlines around the world, but in Australia recently about, for

example, teenage girl demand school recognize her status as a cat.

And then lots of people going, the world's gone mad.

We knew this is where all this self-identification stuff was going to end.

Oh my God, the sky is falling now.

Kids, cats at school.

And in fact, when Mia first mentioned this to me a while ago, I told her she had been

the victim of fake news because it does tie very neatly into a sort of worldview that,

you know, self-identification when it comes to gender and sexuality is a slippery slope.

Some people think that.

So Mia was telling me about it and I was like, whatever, Mia, you've been sucked in.

That's not happening.

Then my daughter told me about the furries at her school.

They're not demanding to be identified as cats.

Let's be really clear.

But there is a group of kids, just like there's like an emo group of kids with the floppy

fringe who are listening to serious music.

And there's like a skater group of kids and there's an Eshe group of kids, whatever.

There's also a furry group of kids who meow and bark and dress furry.

What do they wear?

Tails to school.

Well, if they can get away with it.

They wear paws and you can wear makeup like cat-ish cunt.

There is so much.

If you start looking at furry stuff on TikTok and Instagram and all the places,

you will see acres of furry inspo.

So is it like being a goth or is it saying it's a subculture?

Well, it's either a subculture or it is a really dedicated fandom.

You know how the world is getting more and more sort of dissected into fan groups.

So some people say furries are no more extreme than like Swifties, right?

Or really intense football fans.

You know, who that's a big part of their identity is I love Taylor Swift.

I love the Cowboys, right?

These kids love.

I am a cowboy or I am Taylor Swift.

It's not all furries are saying that.

It's not about that.

And that argument is the one.

That's the important bit.

That's been taken by the right wing to say they're identifying as cats

and they're demanding to be called cats.

There's not a lot of evidence.

There's like maybe a few are.

But in general, furries are just a group of kids.

So I have two questions for Claire Stevens.

Can we pay teachers enough money to put up with being me out at school?

And why might kids want to identify as animals instead of kids?

Well, if you ever needed reminding that teachers are underpaid, and not just

because and I have spoken to some teachers in my life, they might be barked at

by a kid who's acting like a dog, but because they're now on the front lines

of a story that's being politically weaponized.

So firstly, it is misleading to say kids are wanting to identify as animals.

Instead, people who study furries and furry culture say they identify with animal.

Can you do a doctorate?

You can.

You actually can.

Claire and I must have gone to the same site.

There's like a furry science place.

There are experts in this.

Yeah.

And so usually the furry subculture involves being into artwork and cosplaying

and interacting online with like-minded people.

That sort of thing.

You might go to a party like a furry party, a furry convention.

Like how when I was at school, exactly what you said, Holly, there might be emos.

There were people who were really obsessed with horses.

There was the horse group.

Anime.

Yeah.

And it can be a really important source of identity for kids and for kids who

might be neurodiverse and find it hard to get a sense of community elsewhere.

The scary thing is that a lot of right wing voices, particularly right wing

politicians in the US, are using the whole furry story to create a false

equivalency with kids identifying as trans.

They're essentially saying, this is what happens.

Things have gone too far.

In an article in the spectator, one commentator says, after all, if the

correct approach when faced with a child identifying as a member of the opposite

sex is to endorse their self diagnosis, then schools are bound to adopt the same

affirmative attitude when children identify as cats or dogs.

Is it true that they've been demanding kitty litter in the bathroom?

No, no.

Well, that is so far an urban myth.

And Joe Rogan actually said that on his podcast.

Then it must be true.

No.

Well, he actually had to go back after a huge investigation that found nobody

could find any evidence of this, and he actually reneged on what he said.

Look, some teenagers are shit stirrers.

I am not going to suggest that it has never happened that a teenager at a

school would not be like, and why can't we have litter boxes in the bathrooms?

But it's not the same as like they are trying to actively campaign that this

is a right that is as equal as any other.

But this is exactly the hysteria that happened alongside same sex marriage,

where people said, if we let people of the same sex get married, what's next?

People marrying their siblings?

Absolutely not.

In the spectator, this commentator said, doctors were going to not enthusiastically

when a teenage girl insisted she was a grub and then wanted surgery to have

her arms and legs removed.

Like that's just absolutely absurd.

And a UK safeguarding group have issued advice not to overreact or ridicule.

And that's been understood as teachers are being asked to affirm that kids are

cats and dogs.

And that's absolutely not what it is.

In the exact same way a teacher would behave towards emos or swifties,

you don't humiliate a kid.

You don't embarrass them.

You don't say you're a loser.

You simply kind of keep the rules of the school while allowing people to have

their own identity.

Claire, as a spokesperson for Furries, are they trolling us?

Or are they just really into something or is it a bit of both?

And some right wing voices seem to think that these are people like kind of going

for the woke mob and seeing how far it can go.

But it's like they're kids.

This is what no one seems to acknowledge.

Kids are weird and annoying.

And they also like belonging to groups.

When I was looking at this, there's obviously a furry contingent in Sydney,

just as there is everywhere else.

And you'll find videos of them getting together in parks and wearing their

outfits and putting stickers on trains.

And it's a sense of belonging.

It's an obsession, a fandom, a sense of belonging.

And that's what all fandom is about, whether it's about sport or swiftly or fur.

There were odd kids in my primary school, in my high school.

And now some of those quirky kids are barking.

That's kind of just what the quirky kids are doing now.

And it is not the issue that people are turning it into.

It is not the primary schools or high schools cannot function because kids

are turning up being like, I'm a dog, woof, woof, woof.

I need somewhere to do my business.

It isn't the toilet.

Take this as your PSA of like, if you go to the furry site, it tells you

what to do as a parent.

If your kid comes home and says they're a furry.

And this is your PSA to not panic.

Yeah. Yeah.

Don't panic. It's OK.

I have a recommendation over the weekend.

I watched an excellent movie that was released in 2019 and went under the radar,

which I feel like a lot of good movies are because we're so obsessed with TV.

It's a legal thriller starring Mark Raffalo and Anne Hathaway.

Well, I like him.

I was going to say anything with Mark Raffalo.

Where do I start?

Gen X first-trap Mark Raffalo, who has been the Hulk, you know,

just saved the world in spotlight.

I like him a lot.

I really hope no text messages get leaked that shows that he's not a good dude.

I would heartbreak my little heart.

I know. So it's called Dark Waters.

Your grandma tells me her grandson's some fancy and black man lawyer down in Cincinnati.

I am a corporate defense attorney.

So I defend chemical companies.

Well, now you can defend me.

How many did you lose?

A hundred ninety.

A hundred and ninety cows.

You don't mean nothing's wrong here.

That's chemicals, I'm telling you.

I'm seeing documents.

I don't understand.

They're hiding something.

And it's based on a true story that I had no idea about and that now terrifies me.

Basically, it follows a corporate defense lawyer, played by Mark Raffalo,

who's asked to investigate some weird animal deaths in Parksburg, West Virginia.

Basically, these cows just keep dying and they've got all these cancers

and this farmer is really upset about it.

And he's like, oh, I'll look at it.

It turns out they're linked to a chemical manufacturing company, DuPont.

And after all this research and this guy is just so, so, so determined,

he works out that there's this chemical called C8 that's used to manufacture Teflon.

And Teflon is in like frying pans.

This is a true story.

Did you say this is a true story?

So Teflon that's in frying pans and that was on carpet flooring

and that sort of thing, that chemical was causing cancer and birth defects.

And in this particular town, how did the cows get hold of it?

Because it had been dumped in this particular town and therefore infiltrated the water.

And so all these people in this town were having birth defects

and all these different kinds of cancers.

Yes, it's very Aaron Brockovich.

What does that do in this movie?

She's the wife, but she's also very clever.

And she supports him.

The fascinating thing is that, yes, it's kind of this little town that it affects

and he advocates for them and gets them all this money.

But the fact that apparently almost every living being in the world now

has this chemical C8 inside us because it can't be broken down.

And it freaks me out and it builds up over time.

And it's because of this chemical company, DuPont, who was so good at fighting against it

and like, oh, no, it's actually fine.

So does that mean we shouldn't have Teflon frypans?

Do they say that in the movie?

Google it because if it goes up, seriously, Google it because if you fry

something at a certain heat, it's completely unsafe and you should replace them.

So guys, this is why I don't cook.

It's dangerous.

Exactly dangerous.

What's it called?

Dark waters, but it made me really scared, particularly with all the diet coke stuff.

It's like, guys, big companies can hide this information.

We need to give her a recommendation for something to cheer her up.

We also need to give her some boundaries around recommendations.

The way it works, Claire, is that we don't traumatize out louders with our recommendations.

They'll love it because it's Mark Raffalo saving the world.

And you know what?

I'm just going to turn the sound off.

That lawyer, that lawyer still be fighting and he's going to save us all

because it's Mark Raffalo.

If you want a recommendation that isn't going to depress you,

we've got a subs episode, the recaps and just like that,

the best episode so far by a long way.

Oh, my gosh, it was good.

It was when Carrie ran into Enid and Enid started a media company for older ladies.

Oh, we could all relate.

And then she's trying to get Carrie to give us some money for it.

And Carrie's trying to get Enid to blur her book.

Can you tell that Holly really wants to be involved in that?

I wasn't on the recap, but now I'm like auditioning to be allowed in.

Guys, if you want to know what dustballs are.

Yes, we talk about it at length.

There'll be a link in the show notes.

And Holly has shoved her way into the studio for this week's episode.

Recap, which will drop later in the week.

But you can listen to all of our recaps of the episode so far.

I have a link in our show notes.

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

This episode was produced by Susanna Makin and

to listen to us with audio production by Leah Porges.

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.