Motherhood in the Spotlight
In this episode of With Both Hands, we examine the stories we tell about women in the public eye. From the unveiling of the first statue in London depicting a postpartum woman, to the backlash around Taylor Swift’s new album, we dismantle the narratives constructed around women and question what it takes for our true voices and lived experiences to be seen and heard.
Expect to hear thoughts on what maternal strength means and why we project a masculine lens onto women, why marriage and motherhood have somehow become lost in modern feminist narratives, the extremes of the expectations we place on women, why we find it so hard to allow motherhood to co-exist with ambition, and how doing the work and showing up with tenacity writes its own story.
Transcript
Hi, welcome to both hands.
Speaker A:I'm Claire.
Speaker B:And I'm Laura.
Speaker A:And we are two mums that met on the Internet today.
Speaker A:We are going to be talking about a few things that are cropping up that are topical recently.
Speaker A:Stuff that we've been looking at in the news, stuff that we've been chatting at, Chatting, chatting about and stuff that we thought would be interesting to share with you guys.
Speaker A:Where should we start, Laur?
Speaker B:I think we need to start with that statue because I have lots of feelings and I feel like I need to verbally process those feelings with you this morning.
Speaker A:Okay, so what we're talking about is the Mother Verity statue that's been unveiled in London outside the Lindo Wing.
Speaker A:And this is being put forward as a revolutionary piece of art depicting a woman in the raw moments after giving birth.
Speaker A:Tender, strong and unapologetically real.
Speaker A:Thoughts.
Speaker B:I have so many thoughts.
Speaker A:So many thoughts.
Speaker B:We've been in WhatsApp talking about this since it dropped last week.
Speaker B:Because I have so many thoughts and a lot of conflicting, conflicting thoughts and conflicting feelings about it, if I'm honest.
Speaker B:I want to celebrate it.
Speaker B:So there's this yearning in my body that wants to celebrate the fact that we finally have a statue of a woman that's just given birth.
Speaker B:I want to be able to do that.
Speaker A:I think we could celebrate the fact that Statistically fewer than 4% of London statues represent women.
Speaker A:That's women blanket less than 4%.
Speaker A:So the fact that there is a woman statue, you know, is a net gain.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker A:And it is apparently the first postpartum female statue in London at least.
Speaker A:So I think that that can be celebrated, you know, on its own merit.
Speaker A:But the statue itself, I think is problematic.
Speaker A:We.
Speaker A:Yeah, in terms of sort of our initial responses, I think, like you say, quite conflicted because, yeah, you want to get behind it and you want to really support it.
Speaker A:But unfortunately I just feel when I look at it, I don't feel empowered and I don't feel recognized and I don't feel represented.
Speaker A:I don't feel any of those things which this is apparently supposed to convey.
Speaker A:I think that the problem is, is that unfortunately what we've got is something which is over sexualized, as most depictions of female bodies are.
Speaker A:I don't necessarily have a problem with the fact that she has her breasts out.
Speaker A:I don't mind.
Speaker A:That I think is probably quite realistic.
Speaker A:I think I spent the first, at least the first eight weeks of both my baby's lives pretty much topless.
Speaker A:And that's the reality for A lot of particularly breastfeeding mums.
Speaker A:However, her body, I just feel like the representation of it is so far removed from what I think the majority of women experience postpartum.
Speaker A:The majority of women postpartum, I don't think look like that.
Speaker A:They've sort of said that they've tried to capture the rawness of it by including stretch marks.
Speaker A:And, you know, yes, her stomach is.
Speaker A:Is a little bit distended still.
Speaker A:Yes, she's wearing the big pants, but that is still, I think, a sexualized and very slim representation of a woman's body.
Speaker A:It doesn't feel truthful to me at all.
Speaker B:And I have the same feelings.
Speaker B:And I put this to Claire and she came back with some really arty words at me and what's up?
Speaker B:And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Speaker B:I'm not an art person and I just want that to come across like I'm an account accountant by trade and a mother and a business owner.
Speaker B:I've never studied art history, I've never studied art as a concept.
Speaker B:I just know that art is really helpful for us to get creative.
Speaker B:I look at that statue and I wanted to celebrate it and people come into like, look at this, it's amazing.
Speaker B:It's amazing.
Speaker B:Every time I looked it, I was like, I'm not feeling amazing.
Speaker B:Yes, it is great that we've got a statue of a woman.
Speaker B:Yes, let's celebrate that.
Speaker B:But actually, what that, that image for me is doing, and then when I've read up on it, on what it's meant, meant to be doing, it doesn't quite fit for me.
Speaker B:That doesn't mean that it isn't for the people, but for me, it's not quite hidden.
Speaker B:And I think some of that is the rawness of a stretch mark.
Speaker B:Like our stretch marks raw.
Speaker B:I wouldn't say so.
Speaker B:That's just still saying that our bodies are something to be owned.
Speaker B:And, oh, there's a.
Speaker B:There's a stretch mark, therefore that means that's a raw thing and we should all feel bad about our stretch marks.
Speaker B:I don't feel bad about my stretch marks at all.
Speaker B:But when I just given birth and I've had four children and it happened every single time, I was not standing in a power pose, I was curled up in a cave protecting my baby.
Speaker B:It's the most vulnerable time I think of a woman's life is those few days, months after giving birth.
Speaker B:The last thing you're doing is standing in a power pause with your boobs out, with a baby half arsedly in Your arm, like, I don't know, like, it just doesn't.
Speaker B:Doesn't feel like a mother to me.
Speaker B:That feels like a mother who's pretending to be something she's not.
Speaker B:And we want this place here to be for mothers to be as they are and to really go.
Speaker B:It's okay to feel like your world's just fucking changed because your world has just fucking changed.
Speaker B:And it's okay to feel like you're not strong because you're strong in other ways.
Speaker B:You've created life.
Speaker B:And actually it's okay to be vulnerable in those few days and actually with, like, postnatal mental health, like, to have these images of these strong women who take it in the stride and it's all fine.
Speaker B:But, oh, look, there's a rawness because there's a stretch mark now when actually that's the least of our worries.
Speaker B:Is the least of our worries.
Speaker B:In those moments, I did not give a.
Speaker B:What I look like.
Speaker B:I remember.
Speaker B:I think it was after my third.
Speaker B:I think it was my third baby.
Speaker B:It was in hospital, so it definitely wasn't my fourth because I had him at home.
Speaker B:I think it was my third baby.
Speaker B:I'd had him, and I just needed a shower.
Speaker B:I just needed to get, like, the birth off me.
Speaker B:Like, I just.
Speaker B:I needed to fish it.
Speaker B:And I passed my baby to my husband and I went for a shower.
Speaker B:I just got out of bed, and the middle, I was like, oh.
Speaker B:And obviously I was naked.
Speaker B:I just had a baby.
Speaker B:And she's like, oh, do you want me to get out?
Speaker B:I was like, no, it's fine.
Speaker B:Like, you literally just.
Speaker B:You've just witnessed me push a child.
Speaker B:Like, I.
Speaker B:It's just a body.
Speaker B:Like, I don't understand why you think I'd be so.
Speaker B:Like, I'd want to be covered up.
Speaker B:I'd literally just had a baby.
Speaker B:You've just witnessed me have a baby.
Speaker B:You've been with me.
Speaker B:Midwife in my most vulnerable ever position.
Speaker B:Why would I now not feel comfortable having a shower with you in the room?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Like, we've passed that point.
Speaker B:I'm past it.
Speaker B:I'm completely past it.
Speaker B:And I think that, to me, that statue doesn't represent any of that.
Speaker B:It doesn't show the vulnerability.
Speaker B:It doesn't show the turmoil that is going on in your body.
Speaker B:Hormonely, heart, brain.
Speaker B:Like, literally your whole internal universe and external universe has just completely tilted to a different.
Speaker B:A different timeline.
Speaker B:And I just don't think that statues captured it.
Speaker A:No.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker A:And that's so important because the Function of statues like this, what they can do when they're placed in community settings, is that they are viewable art that helps to place visuals in front of people that they might not ordinarily.
Speaker A:Ordinarily see.
Speaker A:So they do.
Speaker A:They can be a really good vehicle for aiding things like, you know, representation and understanding and different viewpoints.
Speaker A:And this just doesn't do that.
Speaker A:And I think you're so right.
Speaker A:It's like.
Speaker A:It's almost like they've overshot on the, like, empowerment angle so far that they've lost all of the nurture and all of the.
Speaker A:Because it's not a power pose strength, it's a soft strength.
Speaker A:She's not even looking at that baby.
Speaker A:Like, she's holding the baby like a.
Speaker A:Like a rugby ball in one arm, and she's not even looking at it.
Speaker A:And it.
Speaker A:And I couldn't take my eyes off my babies when they were born.
Speaker A:I didn't look at anything else for days.
Speaker A:Do you know what I mean?
Speaker A:And you hold them so close.
Speaker A:You hold them to you, you snuggle them, you nurture them.
Speaker A:And there's none of that there.
Speaker A:Which, to me just.
Speaker A:It feels like.
Speaker A:You said it feels like a woman putting on a brave face is what it feels like, because the stretch marks are the least of the worries.
Speaker A:What about, you know, women who've had sections and can't stand up straight for days, weeks sometimes because they're literally healing a huge abdominal wound?
Speaker A:Or, you know, the fact that, like, where's the blood soaking through the giant pants?
Speaker A:You know, where's.
Speaker B:Where's milk coming out of the boobs?
Speaker A:Where's the leaking boobs?
Speaker A:Yeah, I.
Speaker A:There's just nothing about that.
Speaker B:And boobs, like, my boobs never were the same.
Speaker B:I always had one huge boob and one teeny tiny.
Speaker B:And then this was like.
Speaker B:I never just had a nice, equal amount of.
Speaker B:I never had that, and I never saw it.
Speaker B:I remember speaking to one of my friends.
Speaker B:I was like, my boobs are lopsided.
Speaker B:What do I do to fix it?
Speaker B:And she was like, no, no, it's fine.
Speaker B:I was like, what do you mean it's fine?
Speaker B:Because I'd never seen or heard any.
Speaker B:Anyone talk about having lopsided boobs.
Speaker B:Because you build.
Speaker B:Comes in differently for different boobs depending on how much your baby takes from each boob.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And they'll level out.
Speaker B:Yeah, eventually they do level out.
Speaker B:But you don't worry about the beginning.
Speaker B:You think, like, particularly if it's your first.
Speaker B:And I didn't like I only breastfed my first three children for a really short amount of time and through lots of different reasons.
Speaker B:One being did not have the support and you need.
Speaker B:I feel like you get given this, what is the word?
Speaker B:This narrative that breastfeeding is natural.
Speaker B:And therefore you then think natural equals easy.
Speaker B:We should all get it.
Speaker B:And actually I really struggled with all the first three of our children.
Speaker B:My fourth child, I breastfed for much longer.
Speaker A:1.
Speaker B:I think the fact that we're in lockdown meant that I had no societal pressure to get out and about which I did feel for my other three.
Speaker B:And yeah, we could just sit.
Speaker B:And also I was older and more.
Speaker B:More secure in myself and my decisions where I could be like, no, this is my decision, this is what I'm doing and I'm gonna ask for help.
Speaker B:I was, I'd got better at asking for help by my phone.
Speaker B:But the amount of people that I just assume that because he was my fourth child, I understood how to breastfeed.
Speaker B:And like, I'd be like, no, I need help, because this is actually the first time I'm properly doing this.
Speaker B:And then they looked at me like I had 10 heads.
Speaker B:Like, just because someone's done this part before doesn't mean they've done all these other parts.
Speaker B:I think that is something that people don't realize.
Speaker B:And even this mom, like, we don't know this in front of us, whether this is her first time, maybe a second time, third, fourth, fifth, tenth.
Speaker B:And I just think none of that is.
Speaker B:I can't see it.
Speaker B:I don't know her story.
Speaker B:I don't, I don't feel like I can read the story from her face, from the way she is.
Speaker B:She definitely doesn't look like a first time mum to me because you would never feel that confident as a first time mum.
Speaker B:But then I feel like I didn't feel that confident with my fourth.
Speaker B:So how many has she had?
Speaker A:But then again, like I say, that doesn't read confidence to me.
Speaker A:That's not, that's not confidence.
Speaker A:True confidence is much quieter than that.
Speaker A:True confidence is having the confidence to sit in the house with your boobs out, feeding your baby and not really giving a what anybody else has to say about it.
Speaker A:That is true confidence.
Speaker A:That is integral confidence.
Speaker A:That to me reads as oppose a pose.
Speaker A:And I understand the idea it's to honor postpartum women as superheroes, but even that in itself, I have a problem with that inherent messaging because this whole thing of women are superheroes and mothers are superheroes just reinforces the narrative that we should just be taking it all on and doing it all, and we are everything to everyone.
Speaker A:And we can.
Speaker A:We can get it all done.
Speaker A:Because we're superheroes.
Speaker A:No, we're not women, just women.
Speaker A:Human beings who have given birth to another human being.
Speaker A:And I understand that that's, you know, we're super mums and we're superheroes.
Speaker A:And it sounds great, it sounds very empowering.
Speaker A:But I do question that message because, again, it reinforces the idea that if you're struggling, you're doing something wrong because you're supposed to have it all together.
Speaker A:You're a superhero.
Speaker A:So there isn't a lot of space in that narrative for struggling with your mental health or admitting you need help or outsourcing to the village when you can't handle it all.
Speaker A:Because that's not what superheroes do.
Speaker A:Superheroes save everybody else.
Speaker B:And also, how can something so natural that we would not be here if someone else hadn't done it before us, and they wouldn't be there if someone else hadn't done it before them, be classed as superhero?
Speaker B:It is the most natural thing in the world.
Speaker A:It's literally what our bodies were designed to do.
Speaker B:And yet now we're being paraded around.
Speaker B:And like I said, I don't want it to become like a full We Hate the World podcast or like, I don't want it to be that, because there is a part of me that really wants to celebrate this, but there's a bigger part of me that wishes that it was more representative of the culture that we live in and what women actually feel when we're not got this masculine armor on.
Speaker B:And that.
Speaker B:That.
Speaker B:That mother in front of me looks like that.
Speaker B:That statue for me, I see someone who has had to hold it together, who's climbed to the top of her career, who's lived in a masculine world and has forgotten what it is to be a woman.
Speaker B:And that's why it hurts me a little bit, because it's like, why are we put in this masculine lens on everything?
Speaker B:And now we've got it on a postpartum mother.
Speaker B:Where is a femininity?
Speaker B:And why are we so scared to be in our femininity?
Speaker B:Strength.
Speaker B:Because it is strong like that.
Speaker B:Vulnerability, the way we lead, the quietness of a female.
Speaker B:But the pure, guttural strength of her, for me, just isn't.
Speaker B:Isn't there.
Speaker B:And that isn't empowering to me.
Speaker B:I want to see the.
Speaker B:I want to see the woman that is leading from her femininity.
Speaker A:That's empowering to me, 100%.
Speaker A:The strength in that story, which this statue doesn't tell, is the woman who is completely, like, physically in recovery mode, mentally, you know, sleep deprived, struggling with huge hormone surges and dips, and like the enormous transformational shift that you encounter when you give birth, that shows up for that baby every minute of every single day.
Speaker A:That is the quiet strength to me of early postpartum motherhood.
Speaker A:It's that tenaciousness, that constant.
Speaker A:You are that baby's entire world and you show up for that baby no matter what, even though you might be, you know, struggling a lot.
Speaker A:That's the strength.
Speaker A:That's the quiet strength, that's the feminine, it's the nurturing strength.
Speaker A:And that story, for me, is just completely missing with this statue.
Speaker A:I think that we can celebrate the fact that it exists as one of apparently less than 4% of statues in London that are of actual women, which blows my mind in itself.
Speaker A:But, yeah, I think that in terms of the actual truth telling, which is apparently what this is supposed to be about, I think they've missed the mark by a considerable margin.
Speaker B:Me, too.
Speaker B:And I don't think they have anything else to say on the matter.
Speaker A:No, I think we've covered that.
Speaker A:Nice try, Mother Verity, but we're not.
Speaker B:We tried really hard not to rip it apart, and I think we failed.
Speaker A:I think.
Speaker A:I mean, in terms of artistry, it's beautiful.
Speaker A:The artist has done a beautiful job.
Speaker A:It's nothing to do with the artistry of it.
Speaker A:It's the fact that, like we say, in terms of the representation and the truth telling, it's another, to me, a surface level representation of what people perceive women should look like and should be and the story that should be told about women.
Speaker B:And we're here to give space to the real fucking stories.
Speaker B:And that isn't it.
Speaker B:But on that note, we're going to move on because we could just rip that apart.
Speaker A:Should we do Taylor next?
Speaker B:Yeah, let's do Taylor Calvi.
Speaker A:I don't think this needs a lot of introduction.
Speaker A:I'm sure everybody has.
Speaker A:Is aware of the current news about Taylor Swift, the album launch, the engagement, all the stuff.
Speaker B:All the stuff.
Speaker B:We want to spend a bit of time, don't we, discussing it from a motherhood lens, because some of the backlash she's had has been epic, as always when it comes to Taylor.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So, yeah, we wanted to have a look at that today as well and see what we think and process on air with you guys.
Speaker A:So Laura and I have been talking about the fact.
Speaker A:So some of the feedback for the most recent album has been based around the fact that.
Speaker A:So Taylor is somebody who, she's an artist who writes her life, doesn't she?
Speaker A:Her songs reflect her life.
Speaker A:She writes about her experiences, she writes about where she is.
Speaker A:And each album you can kind of see the progression of that.
Speaker A:You can see her moving through her life and this is no different.
Speaker A:And there are some songs on the new album which kind of lean more towards a desire to get married and have children, which makes perfect sense because she's just got engaged to her long term boyfriend and people are outraged by this.
Speaker A:Apparently the desire to get married and have children makes her now a far right wing supporter and a traditionalist and a conservative.
Speaker A:And she's basically throwing all of her values in the bin and she's lied to everyone and she's a complete fraud.
Speaker A:I can't say it without laughing.
Speaker A:I find it so mad that, that wanting to get married to your boyfriend and, and have, have a baby makes you somehow a far, far right wing.
Speaker B:Isn't it wild?
Speaker A:People are saying like, oh, she's gone full maga.
Speaker A:It's like, what are you talking about?
Speaker B:I don't know what that means.
Speaker B:What does MAGA mean?
Speaker A:I think it basically equates her as like full, like right wing Trump supporter.
Speaker A:Like basically.
Speaker A:Yeah, publicly gone against Trump, but they don't care about that.
Speaker A:Yeah, I just, it's, it's just really highlighted, I think, well, a, the polarity of people's opinions at the moment.
Speaker A:Like I say, the fact that marriage and motherhood has become a signifier for somehow being, you know, an extreme politically leaning right wing person who you don't have anything to do with, I just think is insane.
Speaker A:And also I think the thing that I found really interesting was this, this idea.
Speaker A:And I think this is placed a lot on women and it's particularly highlighted with famous women because we get to view their narrative playing out in real time is this idea that women are one thing.
Speaker A:We know the story about you and you're not allowed to change, you're not allowed to grow, you're not allowed to evolve.
Speaker A:You know, you have sung songs in the past about, you know, being a single girl or like songs where you're talking about your past boyfriends and how you're proud to be single and all the rest of it.
Speaker A:And so now that you are in a different stage of life, we reject the fact that you now have changed your mind on certain things or you might be more Leaning towards a different lifestyle.
Speaker A:Like, why is that so revolutionary?
Speaker B:It is to me mind boggling for numerous strands as well.
Speaker B: world of Taylor swift in like: Speaker B:So just before Tortured Poets, I wanna say it was folklore probably that pulled me in and then Tortured Poets landed and that just, that album spoke to me on a whole different level.
Speaker B:And she helped me through a really tricky career part of my life.
Speaker B:And it was whilst I was doing my mba and I actually studied her from a business perspective throughout my MBA by accident.
Speaker B:But also she kind of threaded into a lot of my essays and I did graduate with a distinction.
Speaker B:So she is good at business and I think this is the issue.
Speaker B:So I think people are seeing a capitalist who's getting all the money and goes on private jets and does this and the other.
Speaker B:And now she's talking about this softer life of motherhood and having a couple of kids and like the wish list that she has sung out loud.
Speaker B:And people can't marry that up because there is this narrative that to be ambitious is not to be a mother and to be a mother is not to be ambitious.
Speaker B: And still in: Speaker B:So I think it's that, I think that undercurrent tone is that as well as when a woman does well, the world struggles to, to accept that.
Speaker B:So no matter what she does, there will always be a lot of haters.
Speaker B:Even if she was a saint and did no wrong and was perfect.
Speaker B:And she has told us before, she's tried to be that perfect human.
Speaker B:She's tried to say the right things and do the right things and be the, the perfect version of her.
Speaker B:And it made her unwell and we've.
Speaker B:I like, that's something I really resonate with because I've tried to be that perfect person too.
Speaker B:I am so aware of my privilege as a white female that was born in the uk that I feel like I should do no wrong because there's people that have to work 10 times harder to get the opportunities I get.
Speaker B:And I hold on to that.
Speaker B:Like I'm always trying to, like, how do I level this playing field?
Speaker B:How do I make that better for them?
Speaker B:Other people that don't have the privilege I was born with.
Speaker B:And that lays heavy like I'M not saying that it's not.
Speaker B:It's hard to be a white British female because there's people much, much worse off than us, but to just pretend like it doesn't affect us and we don't think about it and we're not constantly thinking, how do we make this better?
Speaker B:How do we equalize?
Speaker B:And I think she has been doing that, but she doesn't ever get recognition.
Speaker B:It's always the things that.
Speaker B:It's the other things that she could have been doing or should be doing or.
Speaker B:And now she's talking about being a mother and everyone is laying into her like she's led them down this false path of millennial strength.
Speaker B:Yeah, I find it fascinating.
Speaker B:And also that whole thing of, like, us as, as mere mortals on, on the planet, looking at these big multimillionaire.
Speaker A:Billionaires.
Speaker B:Like artists, looking at them and going, she's still being told, who the fuck do you think you are?
Speaker B:So what, what are we saying, like, when we're trying to say our truth?
Speaker B:If we see those big people who actually do have a lot of weight and they're still being torn down, there is no wonder that as a collective, we're feeling that we can't say what we want to say and we can't do what we want to do, because who are we to do what we want to do?
Speaker B:Who do we think we are?
Speaker A:It's a very minimizing narrative, and I think that it's one particularly in terms of the kind of the family values.
Speaker A:This is not.
Speaker A:This is not something that's applied to men.
Speaker A:You know, nobody is tearing down George Clooney for his desire to be a good family man in addition to a very famous and well paid actor.
Speaker A:No, no.
Speaker A:That makes him, you know, peak as aspirational husband material.
Speaker A:But for some reason, when it's a woman who is very successful, who then wants to have a family, she's questioned and she's torn down and she's a sellout.
Speaker A:I wonder if it's.
Speaker A:I mean, this is not applicable to everyone, isn't it?
Speaker A:Because I don't feel like Beyonce, for example, gets the same backlash.
Speaker A:And she is very sort of high profile, obviously extremely successful, wealthy woman billionaire, and she's very sort of high profile in her motherhood, I think, as well, maybe on a slightly performative level, but still, you know, she doesn't minimize the fact that motherhood is important to her.
Speaker A:And I don't feel like she gets the same backlash.
Speaker A:Taylor has always been a controversial person.
Speaker A:I.
Speaker A:What I find so interesting about this debate, particularly with Taylor, is that I think it really encapsulates a very strange strand of modern feminism which has emerged, which is completely anti maternal.
Speaker A:And I am really interested in at what point being a feminist and feeling empowered as a woman translated into not wanting to get married and have children.
Speaker A:Because to me, like my feminism, and I've always identified as a feminist, you know, back in my early 20s, I would have been on the kind of empowerment bandwagon and a very kind of different version of a feminist that I am now.
Speaker A:I've grown a lot in it and I understand a lot more now.
Speaker A:And I heard Louise Perry on a podcast the other week describe it as maternal feminism.
Speaker A:And I was like, yeah, that's.
Speaker A:I can't get on board with a version of this narrative, really, that doesn't include mothers because it's such an inherent part of womanhood for so many people, not everyone.
Speaker A:It's not necessary, it's not essential, and it's not for everyone.
Speaker A:I would never say it was.
Speaker A:But for a lot of women, it's really integral to their womanhood.
Speaker A:So any version of feminine that excludes that seems very counterintuitive to the message to me.
Speaker A:So the idea that we're not celebrating that side of this incredibly successful, high profile woman, I just don't.
Speaker A:I can't marry it up in my head.
Speaker A:Obviously, some people feel that she's betrayed some kind of empowerment message by wanting to get married and have children.
Speaker A:And I just wonder how fragile is that message to begin with?
Speaker A:If something like that can invalidate it, does that make sense?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I also think this comes.
Speaker B:There's two things actually that came to my head as you were talking then.
Speaker B:One is how many people are just blindly following a person.
Speaker B:Like, if you are outraged at the fact that she now can't show you your path because she's gonna choose to be a mother and you don't want to be a mother and you're absolutely furious that she's led you this far and now is abandoning you.
Speaker B:Who are you as person?
Speaker B:What do you not know who you are?
Speaker B:Why haven't you worked out yourself why you?
Speaker B:Do you know what I mean?
Speaker B:Like, why do you put yourself in another person's hands?
Speaker B:And why is this society, are we allowing that to happen?
Speaker B:Like, we should be creating human beings that know themselves and then can get inspired by others, but not put their whole fate in another person's hands?
Speaker B:Particularly someone they don't know, who is just going to sell them stuff because that is her job because she is a businesswoman.
Speaker B:And then you're going to get angry at it.
Speaker B:You're going to get angry that she sold those, and you're going to get angry that she has produced so many revenue streams for this album that she's just launched.
Speaker B:And I'm sat here going, wow, that brain of hers.
Speaker B:Like, I am in awe at how many revenue streams she has managed to pull from one piece of art.
Speaker B:Art, art that we're meant to starve.
Speaker B:Like, we create art.
Speaker B:We're not meant to make money.
Speaker B:She has managed to pull so many revenue streams from that one piece of art.
Speaker B:And that, for me, is awe inspiring.
Speaker B:I literally look at it.
Speaker B:I'm like, if we could all work out how to do that would solve so many problems.
Speaker B:And the second thing is the way in which, like, the whole Beyonce thing, I don't have the answers.
Speaker B:I really don't.
Speaker B:I don't understand.
Speaker B:I do think race comes into it.
Speaker B:And this is obviously me just being in my lived experience because white women have so much privilege.
Speaker B:I do think sometimes there is more expected of us.
Speaker B:And I can only bring this back to school, really.
Speaker B:I was in set one for a lot of things.
Speaker B:I've always been quite clever.
Speaker B:And I remember a lot of the teachers, like, we had kids in our set, one that got bored and then would, like, be disruptive.
Speaker B:There were so many teachers that were like, you're set one, you should know how to behave.
Speaker B:And I could never understand this because I was like, we're set one because we're clever, not because we know how to behave.
Speaker B:Like, it's not a behavioral set.
Speaker B:And I think sometimes why women are put on this pedestal where we should be doing more than we can actually do.
Speaker B:Like, there's only so much we can do, and then anything we do do is ripped down because you need bringing down a peg or two.
Speaker B:You need to feel our pain.
Speaker B:You need to.
Speaker B:You need to feel the pain of other races or other.
Speaker B:And I just think I want to get to a point where everyone is seen as a human being and we're all just doing our best.
Speaker B:Again, that is me probably talking from a place of privilege, because I've never had to deal with race.
Speaker B:I have had to deal with social, economic differences.
Speaker B:And this is where I think, like, everyone's trying to put labels on things and it becomes a bit like a.
Speaker B:Like a mark on the board.
Speaker B:Like, but I had this and you had that, and.
Speaker B:And like, we're all trying to compare and contrast and actually we're all just human beings trying to do our best.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Past a certain point, it becomes about the argument rather than the actual issue.
Speaker A:It becomes about point scoring and it becomes about who's.
Speaker A:It becomes about guilt and retribution is too strong a word, but do you know what I mean?
Speaker A:Responsibility taking rather than the actual, you know, issue that needs to be discussed and a solution found.
Speaker A:Sometimes it feels like people are more interested in the argument than the solution.
Speaker B:Always.
Speaker B:I found that especially in the online world where it's all binary, it's this or that.
Speaker B:If you support this, then you are against that.
Speaker B:And it's like, that is not true.
Speaker B:We live in a world where it's.
Speaker A:Live in a world of nuance and the online space at the moment.
Speaker B:I was listening to one of my friends podcasts the weekend and Joanna, I will link it because it is really, it's about having conversations in the discourse.
Speaker B:It's having conversations in the messy middle.
Speaker B:Not necessarily to try and come up with a solution, but just to get comfortable in having the conversation that might not have a tidy bow at the end, the way we all agree.
Speaker B:And she has chosen to be motherless, so she's chosen not to have children.
Speaker B:And on the podcast she explains that she wants to be.
Speaker B:She wants to give to her village by being having the capacity to care for cousins, for her nephews and her nieces.
Speaker B:So she's still very much in that feminine energy and chosen to be child free.
Speaker B:And I just think that is stunning.
Speaker B:Like this whole thing of we can't have children because we want to be ambitious and we want to do this, that and the other.
Speaker B:There is a way that to be ambitious is to give to your village.
Speaker B:Like it's not just to be on a pedestal and ultra independent.
Speaker B:I think like when I heard her say that on the podcast, I had tears in my eyes.
Speaker B:But I was just like, if the world could think like this, we'd all be so much happier because we'd all be supported.
Speaker B:We'd all feel super safe.
Speaker B:We'd all get so much shit done because we'd have people to call upon.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:Idealistic, yes.
Speaker B:But I've always been a dreamer.
Speaker A:There's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker A:And that's a really good example of the village stuff that we've talked about before.
Speaker A:You know, there is more than one way to step into mothering energy and that feminine strength, you know, and that's a really good example of that.
Speaker A:Like the aunties, the godmothers that always show up and are always there to help and to babysit and to bring food and to hold your hand and to talk you through your tears and.
Speaker A:And those women are embodying that same energy just in a different way.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I think the women that I've had in my life throughout my motherhood, they come and go as well.
Speaker B:Like, I think that's something that people think, that your village sticks and then that's it for life.
Speaker B:And actually, I find that people come and go on your path and the end to when you need.
Speaker B:Like, I met Claire 12 months ago.
Speaker B:She's now very firmly one of my people in my village, where I'm like, I'm having a really shit day.
Speaker B:Please just be there and let me voice note to you.
Speaker B:There's a few more women that I've entered my life in the last two years that have become my core village.
Speaker B:And then these people have been in my life for 20 years that every now and again I'll drop a message and we'll have a brew.
Speaker B:And it's like, we've never, never not spoken.
Speaker B:But it could have been literally six months since we last had a text conversation.
Speaker B:I think that's something that people miss now.
Speaker B:I think people think that we should all be in each other's pockets talking.
Speaker B:And actually, when you enter motherhood in particular, you do not have time for that anymore.
Speaker B:So you need the friends in the village that you can pick up and drop and.
Speaker B:No, there'll be no drama about that.
Speaker A:100%.
Speaker A:One of my best friends ever.
Speaker A:She lives in Switzerland now with her husband and her little girl.
Speaker A:And I've known her since we were 10 years old and we obviously don't see each other very often.
Speaker A:She lives in Switzerland and I'm here and she's a mum, too.
Speaker A:And we just have a running joke, like whenever one of us drops a voice note or a text, literally just respond and be like, I'll get back to you within three to five business days.
Speaker A:Because that's the realistic time frame.
Speaker A:And we just send each other memes on Instagram.
Speaker A:And it's like.
Speaker A:It's that, you know, it's like that.
Speaker A:It doesn't matter how long it's been.
Speaker A:I'm seeing her at the end of this month and I haven't seen her probably for a year, over a year.
Speaker A:But every time you see them, it's just.
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker A:It's like, you saw them last week.
Speaker A:Those people are great.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:One of my best friends came out and she was applying for a director job and she's like, lord, please can you help me with this?
Speaker B:And I was like, yeah, I can do X time.
Speaker B:She's like, I'm going to have my kids.
Speaker B:I was like, it's okay, bring them around.
Speaker B:And we literally wrote this job application for her with so many children, they were climbing on us.
Speaker A:They were.
Speaker B:It was in my kitchen table.
Speaker B:We were in my kitchen.
Speaker B:There was kids everywhere.
Speaker B:Kevin kept like trying to pull some of them off and like play with them so we could actually concentrate.
Speaker B:It was absolute carnage.
Speaker B:But we got it done.
Speaker B:And I was like.
Speaker B:And there's part of it, like, like we kept apologizing to each other.
Speaker B:I'm so sorry.
Speaker B:I'm so sorry.
Speaker B:Like, we'd be in mid conversation, someone needed a drink or whatever was going on.
Speaker B:It.
Speaker B:Honestly, I can't even paint the picture of how chaotic this couple of hours was.
Speaker B:But when she left my heart, I was like, this is it.
Speaker B:Like, this is what life is about.
Speaker B:It's this.
Speaker B:Kids everywhere, playing, asking for things, wanting things.
Speaker B:Two mums, two ambitious mums helping each other climb that ladder that we want, whilst also mopping up spilled juice and splitting up a fight.
Speaker B:And honestly never felt more alive.
Speaker B:And then she text me later, say like, thanks so much.
Speaker B:I owe you.
Speaker B:I was like, you owe me nothing.
Speaker B: s what it is to be a woman in: Speaker B:This is it.
Speaker B:This, this, this is everything to me.
Speaker A:Yes, I love that.
Speaker A:I had one of those last year, one of my friends who I actually hired her to do my brand photographs and she became a friend.
Speaker A:She ended up doing my wedding pictures and she messaged me and she was like, I need to do like, I'm trying to pitch to more like product based brands.
Speaker A:I need to do a shoot.
Speaker A:Will you come and like model?
Speaker A:And I was like, yeah, of course I will.
Speaker A:And my daughter was, what would she have been maybe five months, six months old?
Speaker A:And I was like, I'm gonna have to bring her.
Speaker A:She can't be away from me for a whole shoot day.
Speaker A:And she was like, that's fine.
Speaker A:So she wanted to do it.
Speaker A:She was like pitching for outdoor brand.
Speaker A:So we were up in the middle of the peaks, up above like Halifax, Todmorden area.
Speaker A:And we had my little girl in the pram and we were there like in our big coats and wellies, like carrying this pram over styles and like trying to get it up onto the beats.
Speaker A:And I was like, when they talk about doing anything to get the shot, like this is it.
Speaker A:This Is this.
Speaker A:And it's like you say, this is how we do it.
Speaker A: This is what it looks like in: Speaker A:We get the shot.
Speaker A:That's the.
Speaker B:We get the shot.
Speaker B:How stunning.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Talking about getting the shot.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:The last part of this podcast.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:We are taking it back to the 90s, aren't we?
Speaker A:Oh, we so are, because we both binged the VB documentary this weekend.
Speaker B:Let me.
Speaker B:I need to preface this, because the Spice Girls as a collective, are my jam.
Speaker B:They're my original idols.
Speaker A:They.
Speaker B:They were my first gig.
Speaker B:I was eight years old.
Speaker B:It was my birth present.
Speaker B:And I got to see the five Spice Girls on stage.
Speaker B:I still remember it particularly.
Speaker B:There was one scene where they all sat on a chair, like, the chairs backwards, and they all look naked.
Speaker B:And I remember thinking, wow, like, what is going on?
Speaker B:I was eight.
Speaker B:It was amazing.
Speaker B:Like, just the pure girl power.
Speaker A:They were everything to us.
Speaker B:They were everything.
Speaker B:And not gonna lie, Victoria Beckham still is.
Speaker B:Like, he has secured that for me this weekend, watching that documentary.
Speaker B:I adore, honestly.
Speaker A:J'.
Speaker A:Adore.
Speaker B:So, yeah, we watched the documentary this weekend.
Speaker B:I like.
Speaker B:It's not.
Speaker B:It's not a secret that I absolutely adore business.
Speaker B:And I can't watch anything without seeing the business decisions and all that thing.
Speaker B:So as I'm watching Victoria Beckham, I am seeing her as a business owner, an entrepreneur, a startup.
Speaker B:Yeah, I absolutely loved it.
Speaker B:And I saw her as a mother.
Speaker B:And I loved the way that was.
Speaker B:That was created and documentary documentarized.
Speaker B:I can't say that word, but how it was, like, perceived on the.
Speaker B:On the tv.
Speaker B:I loved how they told that story.
Speaker B:And I also would love to have your thoughts, Claire, on the whole villainization of Bibi and maybe how that feeds into what we feel when we're trying to be ambitious and a mother, when we've grown up in this era of Victoria Beckham and all the headlines that have surrounded her.
Speaker A:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker A:So I think that.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So what this.
Speaker A:This.
Speaker A:What this falls down to is what we've really.
Speaker A:The thread that we've been kind of talking about for the last hour is, is the stories that are told about women, isn't it?
Speaker A:And the story that's been told about Victoria Beckham is.
Speaker A:Has been extremely high profile her entire life.
Speaker A:She is a personification of the media practice that went on in the 90s and naughties, which doesn't happen anymore.
Speaker A:It's not allowed to happen anymore because the way that women were talked about in the press during those times and what we saw in the media as we were growing up was just.
Speaker A:I mean, slanderous, basically.
Speaker A:Like legalized slander.
Speaker A:It was crazy.
Speaker A:It was literally women like Victoria talked about in the documentary.
Speaker A:She was weighed on live TV at six months postpartum to see if she'd snapped back things like that.
Speaker A:You know, I remember the COVID of Heat magazine with women's with their thighs circled and their bikini pictures with big red circles, round cellulite or stretch marks or wobbly bits or anything.
Speaker A:And just this absolute, absolute rejection of any kind of standard that fell less than some imagined concept of perfection.
Speaker A:This kind of Barbie, like, idea of what a women woman should be and look like.
Speaker A:And women's voices were not heard in this.
Speaker A:And I think that's why the Spice Girls were so powerful for us, because they were.
Speaker A:They.
Speaker A:They had loud voices.
Speaker A:Manufactured, yes, to an extent.
Speaker A:Stereotyped and personified.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:But in the landscape of that time, it felt true and it felt real.
Speaker A:And it was something that we could latch onto outside of this sort of perfectionized ideal that no one can ever reach.
Speaker A:And so when she left the Spice Girls and when she kind of went into her WAG era, I found the way that the documentary took you through these different eras so interesting.
Speaker A:And she became essentially what they said about her.
Speaker A:She was like, you want me to be a Barbie?
Speaker A:Cool.
Speaker A:I'll be a Barbie.
Speaker A:So she did the big boobs and the tan and the hair and all the stuff, and all of it was a front.
Speaker A:She says herself.
Speaker A:She wasn't being herself.
Speaker A:She describes herself as this shy girl, as this awkward teenager, this girl who went to dance school and couldn't really what she can dance.
Speaker A:She wasn't the best dancer, the girl that was told she was overweight and put at the back of the class.
Speaker A:And I found the journey that she's been on and the way that she has found a way to step into herself really inspiring.
Speaker A:And the thing I found most inspiring about her was the tenaciousness.
Speaker A:And when we talk about feminine strength, when we talk about that strength and that empowerment, that doesn't look like men's strength.
Speaker A:That looks like being in your feminine power.
Speaker A:And women's strength, she just embodies that so completely.
Speaker A:She has ignored what everybody said about her.
Speaker A:She has been torn down.
Speaker A:She's been completely vilified.
Speaker A:She's been through an eating disorder.
Speaker A:She's been through so much because of the stories that are told about her.
Speaker A:And she's quietly gone away and gone.
Speaker A:No, I'm gonna tell my own story here.
Speaker A:This is what I want to do, and I'm gonna make it happen.
Speaker A:And she fucking has.
Speaker A:And it's taken her 20 years, 20 years to raise her kids and build this business.
Speaker A:And the business almost failing and finding a way to pull it back and just never, ever giving up to the point where she's rewritten her own narrative to a level that nobody can argue with.
Speaker A:Even Anna Wintour has to take her seriously as a fashion designer.
Speaker A:And that is purely because she just has not given up at any point.
Speaker A:And I just find her so inspirational as a role model.
Speaker B:Me, too.
Speaker B:Honestly, I was so happy for her on that documentary.
Speaker B:Like, I felt like I'd witnessed one of my friends build her business empire.
Speaker B:And I know we shouldn't feel like that about celebrities, but that is how I felt because I do feel like we've grown up alongside her.
Speaker B:I know she's older than us because she was a Spice Girl when I was 8 years old, but I see her as a bigger sister and what she.
Speaker B:I mean, she has four children.
Speaker B:There's a lot of synchronicities that I have with Victoria Beckham, just not quite as big.
Speaker B:So I'm not married to David Beckham and I don't have the resource that she has.
Speaker B:But the vilification, like, that, I have definitely fell in, like, my past, for sure.
Speaker B:And still now, like, some of the battles I'm still fighting silently, that are still happening, and I can, like, I just find that strength.
Speaker B:And it's the same with Taylor.
Speaker B:Like, I see.
Speaker B:I see what they're doing and I'm like, yes, that means I can do it too, because I. I'm not on stage and I don't have tabloids right about me.
Speaker B:I just have petty people talking about me.
Speaker B:And yes, in my body, it'll feel the same as what they feel.
Speaker B:They'll feel identical, more or less.
Speaker B:But I know that I don't have millions of people watching what I'm doing him.
Speaker B:So it gives you that strength.
Speaker B:And I think that is part of it.
Speaker B:Like, when you see people doing these things quietly, I mean, Taylor's not doing it as quietly.
Speaker B:Like, she's quite out there with it.
Speaker B:But Victoria Beckham has done it very quietly.
Speaker B:She has just been chugging away in the background until the tabloids throw her into the limelight, but it's never her.
Speaker B:Yeah, I found.
Speaker B:I found it fascinating.
Speaker B:It was a couple of quotes that I really resonated with, which I'm just going to pull up on my notes app.
Speaker B:One of Them was that Victoria Beckham said, the creative outlet that can do the talking.
Speaker B:And I loved that.
Speaker B:I was like, yes, because that is what we're trying to do here as well, is we're not trying to create noise and loudness.
Speaker B:We're trying to create a space that can do the talking for us, that quietly gives more and more women the empowerment, the pure, proper female empowerment to go out there and do it.
Speaker B:And we can do it quietly and we can keep on keeping on until we get that strong that people look at us and go, we couldn't stop them because we didn't know they were doing it.
Speaker B:Like, yes, because then we become unstoppable.
Speaker B:And that is how we bring down the patriarchy.
Speaker B:Or we start.
Speaker B:We start seeing the shifts in the world that we want to see is we start doing it tiny step after tiny step.
Speaker B:But overall, those tiny steps and tight and lots of people doing those tiny steps create huge shifts.
Speaker B:And yeah, Victoria Beckham watching that documentary this weekend made me think, yes, we are doing it, like, reaffirmed all the things I already had in my head about building quietly, about doing the thing, about having many, many conversations, and also just doing your truth.
Speaker B:There was another quote in there I didn't write down, but it was something along the lines of following your dreams is a path to yourself.
Speaker B:And I love that.
Speaker B:Isn't it, like, stunning?
Speaker B:Yes, that is it.
Speaker B:And that is what Victoria Beckham's done.
Speaker B:She has followed her dreams and she's now a fully embodied version of herself.
Speaker B:And I see that the same with Taylor Swift.
Speaker B:She is following her dreams.
Speaker B:Your dream might not be to have two children, but it's hers and she's going to follow it.
Speaker B:And eventually she will become a fully embodied version of herself.
Speaker B:And I think the fact that society as a whole is expecting women to know exactly who they are from being 20 years old is just utterly ridiculous.
Speaker B:Because we're human beings.
Speaker B:We're constantly evolving as all the celebrities that we're watching.
Speaker B:And yeah, seeing that evolvement of Victoria beckham All that 20 year span, yeah, I was so proud.
Speaker B:I was like, I want.
Speaker B:I want to feel that proud about myself as well.
Speaker B:So I.
Speaker B:It gave me the courage to keep on keeping on.
Speaker B:And actually, that's what the Spice Girls have been doing for me since I was 8 years old.
Speaker B:They are my original idols and I think they always will have that space in my life to be.
Speaker B:What are they doing?
Speaker B:Oh, yeah, they're still building that business.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Okay, I can keep going too.
Speaker B:And that ripple Effect is it still blows my mind when we think about it, like how many people they touched and then how many people that's now gonna touch.
Speaker A:Absolutely, yeah.
Speaker A:Because they introduced the idea to all of these young girls that, okay, it was packaged as girl power, however you wanna, but that as a concept to feed to 8 year old girls, like, wow.
Speaker A:So powerful as a narrative, like this idea that you can go after your dreams, just, just you can start.
Speaker A:Do you know what I mean?
Speaker A:That it's a thing that you can choose to do with your life is an incredibly important message.
Speaker A:And she has lived and embodied that all the way through.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And the other thing as well with Victoria is the fact that she had three sons and a girl.
Speaker B:And again, I have three sons and a girl.
Speaker B:And how she's brought those boys up.
Speaker B:Like we saw them get dressed in her.
Speaker B:Like they are very creative in how they look.
Speaker B:Like she hasn't brought them up as ultra masculine.
Speaker B:You need to be a hard man she's brought them up with and you can see that, you can see that femininity.
Speaker B:But because of that, they are really strong masculine men.
Speaker B:Even David Beckham, like the way he looks after her because they laugh about the fact she can't make a cheese sandwich, which means he's the cook.
Speaker B:Like he's looking after her in that masculine energy.
Speaker B:Like the whole lot of it was just like, yes, this is what the world needs to see and hear.
Speaker B:And it's not just about females.
Speaker B:It is much about the men that support the females and the females that support the men and how they need to be like, at the same level that we need to.
Speaker B:We need to.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:Same medal.
Speaker B:To support each other.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:Do you know what their relationship or what you get to see of their relationship in these documentaries?
Speaker A:Because I watched the David Beckham one as well.
Speaker A:What you get to see of their relationship is the antithesis of the kind of the modern narrative which is pitting men and women against each other, which is what we've talked about in the past, this idea that if you feel unsupported, it's because your husband's not stepping up, or vice versa.
Speaker A:You know, I think that their relationship is the antithesis of that.
Speaker A:And again, quietly setting that example through just living it in integrity rather than shouting about it, rather than, you know, making it a big talking point or, you know, having to, having to scream into the void on social media about it.
Speaker A:It's just living it by example.
Speaker A:And I just think it's beautiful.
Speaker B:Long live the Spice Girls in Particular Victoria Beckham.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:Absolute queen, iconic.
Speaker A:Good.
Speaker A:I feel like I have really, you know, spread my thoughts on these things.
Speaker A:We've been, like, whatsapping and voice noting on all weekend.
Speaker A:I feel like we've really, like, dug in today.
Speaker B:I've enjoyed this because this is the things that I really wanted to say, and it's coming back to that as well.
Speaker B:Like, I really want to have these conversations and up until now I felt like there wasn't a space to have them because I do not have the bandwidth to put this out on social media and then deal with all the backlash and all the binary, like, nonsense.
Speaker B:So to actually have, like an open dialogue conversation to get our thoughts out.
Speaker B:I found this really useful today and I hope our listeners have as well.
Speaker B:Please do let us know what you think.
Speaker B:Join the conversation.
Speaker A:Whether you agree or disagree with us, I think that's really important.
Speaker A:Going back to the point with the with your friends podcast that you're going to link, like, this is a safe space for disagreement as long as everyone's respectful.
Speaker A:We love having constructive, critical debates.
Speaker A:So, yeah, we want this to be a safe space for people to join in with their opinions whether you agree with us or not.
Speaker B:Be respectful, please.
Speaker A:Yeah, if you're not respectful, you'll get kicked out of the chat.
Speaker A:But, you know, I'm not tolerating that shit.
Speaker A:But if you want to come and be a nice, respectful human being and join in the discussion, yes, we would love to have you.
Speaker B:We will hold space for that messy middle while we all try and work out what it is that we think and feel about these topics.
Speaker A:Okay, I think we're done for today.
Speaker A:This was with both hands.
Speaker B:I'm Laura.
Speaker A:And I'm Claire.
