254. The TRUTH Behind Reality Show "Millionaires" with Survivor All-Star Parvati Shallow

24:34Tiffany Aliche:It's a game. We got to do what we got to do to win. It's a game. We got to do what we got to do. And there's this such an entitlement with the men where they're like, oh wait, she shouldn't be, especially because it's survivor. It's already he's so inherently masculine, the container. So the men are like, this is my arena and I am going to take care of you, pretty little lady. And then if the woman comes back around and like viper snaps him and kills him when he least expects it, he's like, wait a minute, I was providing for you. How could you do this to me? Oh, she was so pretty. And it turns out she's smart too crazy oh no you can't be both you can't be hot you can't be pretty smart right but of course like i know the tropes like i use that to my advantage in the game like i know the guys think i'm a dumb dumb so i definitely played that up and man were they upset about it like really vary her egos from my seasons.

25:42Tiffany Aliche:And we still see this. We do. We do see it a lot. No, we see it a lot. We see, I think they're more likely to maybe disparage women quietly or like in a confessional. They're less likely to do it in like with other people around. And I think, yeah, misogyny has gotten, well, in some ways quieter. It's less obvious, I think. And in that way, it almost makes it worse because I can't see it in the same way. Well, they're hiding it more. So it's sort of lurking in the shadows, but you can feel it. Oh, absolutely. Oh, I can feel it. I'm out there. I'm like, oh, it's the same shit. It's just like glossier.

26:25Tiffany Aliche:Well, when I met you for the first time, finally in person, I had a friend who is English who hasn't seen American Survivor. And I was literally just talking you up and I was your hype woman. And I was like, she's one of the best to ever do it. She was, you know, super hot and sexy and all these things. And then she'd stab you in the back later. It was so good. And I think that a lot, especially for a really long time, we just thought of good survivor players as the ones that we could quote unquote root for. And of course, the second time they brought you back, you were in the villain camp. And that is just kind of misogynistic on its own, right?

27:02Tiffany Aliche:of like, we're going to make this woman who is very good at this game. Okay, we'll acknowledge she's good, but we're going to label her as a villain in order for it to be socially okay. If a man would have done it, it would have been the plot. It does the best strategy in the entire world. Exactly. And I, I mean, I looked at that. I saw the way that they split up the tribes for heroes versus villains and the men winners were on the heroes tribe and the women winners were on the Villains Tribe. There were two women winners, me and Sandra, and we were both cast on the Villains Tribe. While my friends who were in the Black Widow Brigade with me on season 16 were put on the Heroes Tribe.

27:46So I was like, this doesn't compute. And when I said something about it at the start of the game, Jeff really doubled down and he was like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. He justified why I was cast on the Villains Tribe. And then he asked James Clement, who was one of the guys that we blindsided if I was a hero or a villain. So he gets back up from one of the guys who we took out. I'm like, ask Courtney Yates, ask Jerry Manthe if I'm a villain or a hero.

28:13Tiffany Aliche:Was that the Eric Idle season? Right? That was that? Oh, God. That was so good. We could cut this. I'm just so proud. I see clips of it on TikTok now, dude. And I just, every time I sit and watch it, every time. Okay, Kristen, I have to tell you, because you haven't seen the show, they convince a guy to give him their idol or his idol away and then they vote his ass out so good every time i watch it it's so good i mean especially because that final challenge the puzzle said guaranteed final four and he won it so he was guaranteed a spot in the final four but then he gave up his necklace and never made it i literally am like a little teary it's so good It's just all of these women who have convinced him utterly.

28:57Tiffany Aliche:And even you can see in Cerise's face, especially it's like shocked. She's like, did we actually pull this off? Well, and Tori, it completely changed the landscape for reality television from that move, especially with Survivor, because people are so terrified of a women's alliance taking them out. Like everyone. Really, that's the only time it's ever happened. that's the at least that I can remember you've had like voting blocks or you've had but like the amount of times I think it gets vote you know every single season women go okay we're gonna do all girls and it never happens and I think that's the only time that at least I can remember in survivor history that it actually worked out and happened it was such a magical group of women and the stars aligned and I was just like oh fuck yeah like

29:51Tiffany Aliche:oh it's so good no it was so it was so good and again the look on his face i was like oh sweetie pie that's okay go ahead go get your torch snuffed um but then every man is oh so scared so scared so scared terrified yeah and as they should be quite frankly oh the way i've been dying to talk about the black riddle brigade when you know you know When we return, Poverty and I dig more into the financial and other compensation from the game, and some of it is truly shocking, and what it means to be powerful, why women are punished for playing the game well, and how those lessons of Survivor mirror the real world.

30:27Tiffany Aliche:Thank you for listening to our sponsors. They allow us to do this show for free for you. We'll see you back here in a second.

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31:45Tiffany Aliche:Okay, so you get a million dollars after all of the scarcity mindset stuff. In addition to the million dollars, is there any other financial support that is offered to contestants? I think we've all heard the rumor that you get a little bit of money depending on how you place. I believe that's true. Is there anything else that you're getting outside of that million directly from CBS or from Survivor? No, you're really, we're cut loose. Like the show's over. We've given what we promised to give. They give what they promised to give, which is the million dollar check or whatever little prize money you get if you don't win.

32:23And we have a contract to go to the finale and that's it. That's where we see everyone. And then it's over. Like if a contestant needs psychological support, um, it's on them to reach out, to ask for it. Like, and they, and they get, they'll give you like a fact sheet. And then I think there's maybe a call with a, like a one site call to see like, are you good or whatever, but it's definitely not enough for what we go through. It's, it's such a pressure cooker of paranoia and survival, like starvation. Like it's the, our bodies are in complete fight, flight, freeze, survival mode for 39 days. And that's enough time to rewire the body and the brain to a mode of like, you're in a trauma response now.

33:16So to not have a way of even contextualizing that for myself, when I came back, I was like, I'm whack. I don't know what's wrong with me, but I would go to a friend's birthday party and I would be talking to someone and I would be in the back of my mind while I'm smiling and having a conversation with them thinking, what does this person want from me? Are they trying to get something?

33:39Tiffany Aliche:Yeah. Like, can I trust them? Are they using me for something? It was like this game that I could not break my brain out of. And I didn't understand. I was split into kind of two different parts because of that situation. And so when I got the money, I like didn't know what to do with it. And it felt like blood money because Ozzy was so mad at me. He was like, you're greedy. And I was shamed. And I was told I was a mean girl. And I'd done all these horrible things. and I'd chosen greed and selfishness over friendship and lied. And I was a bad person. And I was like, fuck, oh my God. Like, I don't even want this money.

34:19I was like, I earned this by being a bad person. So I just, I just like, didn't even acknowledge it. I shoved it under my bathroom sink. I had a gig. I was, I'd gotten like this bit part in a movie. And so I'd flown straight from New York to LA and I only had one day turnaround before I flew to Hawaii for this movie. So I shoved the million dollar check under my bathroom sink.

34:41Tiffany Aliche:Oh my God. And flew off and I still had no money because I didn't deposit anything. You know, I couldn't even buy a sandwich. So when I got to Hawaii, they gave me an envelope of cash for a per diem. And I was like, well, I got 60 bucks. I'm good. I had a million dollars under my bathroom sink. I think that's, if you've never seen survivor i think that is one of the hallmark differences as you continue to play and as the game evolved is again the earlier seasons typically the person who was winning was the person who deserved it more or betrayed people the least and i think now there's more of a respect if you play the game really strategically even if you fuck people over Would you say that's accurate?

35:31Yeah, I think now the way that the show is being cast is the people that are getting cast on the show are super fans of the show. So they've watched every season and they know how shitty it is to have a bad winner at the end, like a winner that was just like kind of nice, but not didn't do anything. So people feel like a sense of responsibility now, I think, to choose the right winner, the person who played the most strategic game, whether they have hurt feelings by that person or not.

36:01Tiffany Aliche:As I'm thinking about any game show, reality show, where there's money involved, one of the things that honestly makes me really emotional is the amount of people who go on these shows, who put themselves through, and the way you're describing Survivor, I mean, that's torture. You're not eating, you're not sleeping. There's natural disasters. You have challenges, physical challenges you have to do. You don't know who you can trust. there's nobody around you who you know or love until the loved ones visit for like four minutes. It's like literal torture. But the way the American healthcare system works, and the way minimum wages have stagnated, a lot of people, I think, feel like game shows are the only way to financially provide for their families.

36:51Tiffany Aliche:It's like winning the lottery. It's like, okay, I'm going to put myself, it's like a squid game, right? It's like, the only reason I'm doing this is because I need the money. And that's always felt like deeply unsettling to me that we live in a society that can't just like provide its citizens with like its basic needs. And you have to go do this crazy thing in order to just get enough money to like buy and pay for your mother's cancer treatment. Is that something that's always sat weird with you too? Well, I think it's sort of the American dream. It's the like, we can strike it rich. And God, David on Dealer No Deal Island that I just played won$5.8 million in a month playing a game show.

37:39It's insane. And the thing is, it's way better odds than playing the lottery. Because on Survivor, you have a one out of 20 shot of winning this game. Like, yeah, you have to sacrifice your mind, body, spirit for it. But also it's not all good or bad. Like, I think that's, that's why I wrote my book. The way I wrote it is I wanted to break down the survival modes because they're not, it's not bad that we have these modes of operating and we live in fight, flight free. Sometimes it's actually a very helpful thing that our bodies do to keep us safe when we're under duress or under threat that we have these modes.

38:23So it's like, okay, I'm going to put myself out into the world and try some, especially Survivor. I think it's one of the more compelling reality shows to do because it's such a grand adventure and it does test a person on every single level. So I think that's something for me when I'm saying yes to go play, it's never only just about the money yeah the money's amazing but like i just played australian survivor and you know that money's like not even real so i'm like okay if i win this game i'm winning like 30 dollars but with the exchange rate it's 30 dollars but i'm gonna play because i love testing myself on that level yeah and i think that's one thing like when it's when i think back to how i used to create money from a place of scarcity.

39:17There is something to it that's like, if we're reaching for, no, I don't think that we should be in a society where we can't take care of our kids. I think this system is so fucked, especially with mothers, single mothers, parents with kids, like we need childcare, we need healthcare, we need, we need support because it's the single family unit is just not working in the way that we've set it up. And it keeps people stuck in scarcity, which is really, it's really hard to get out of it. It's like a hamster wheel that you're just like trying to make ends meet from one day to the next is not an easy place to like make a big quantum leap to abundance and thriving.

40:06But if someone can go play Survivor and win a million, maybe they can. Like Kenzie, who won Survivor more recently, she's now a mother. She credits the show with giving her that chance because she was a hairdresser before. And now she's like, I'm in a place of security and I can take care of my baby. And I feel really complete with my Survivor journey. She's not trying to keep going and going and going, but she's really very vocal about how helpful playing the game and winning it was for her. And I think she was also just a beloved character. So it helps a lot if you're not destroyed in social media.

40:48Yep. But look, we all have our path in life, you know?

40:53Tiffany Aliche:Well, and it's also the edit. And I will move on because I have other questions for you beyond Survivor. But I think that that is the thing that terrifies me most about reality TV and why I don't know if I want to say it on mic so it's set in stone. I don't think I'll ever be on reality TV because I think one of the biggest scary thing is like, you're not in control of your own narrative. They can cut and splice things that you're saying or like position it in a certain way or they can make you out to be the villain. And you don't have any control over that. It's just the edit. yeah um that's yeah that's a challenge you just have to completely release control and surrender and you have to know why you're saying yes to go play the game knowing that it is going to be a tv show i was talking to my friend ethan about it who won survivor africa and i love the process i love the game going out and playing the game regardless of what the game is if it's trader deal or no deal, survivor, something else.

41:52I just really enjoy that aspect of it. But then the watching of the show part of it is, oh, I have like so much anxiety about that because I have no control. I don't know how they're going to edit the story. I don't know how people are going to respond to it. And like the, the intensity of the like physicality of playing is over. And now it's just very cerebral and mental. So that is the hardest part for me. And that was the hardest part of writing my book. Writing my book was an incredible, very therapeutic, very cathartic process that took three years for me to do from start to finish. And then publishing the book, I was like, ah, like going out of my book tour.

42:34I'm like, oh, well, because it's no longer yours.

42:39Tiffany Aliche:It's like you're, you can't do anything different and people are going to say or do what they're going to say or do. And yeah, it's no longer yours. You have to give up that ego to say, okay, this is everybody else's now. Right. And so I make peace with the process as I'm doing something. If the process is fulfilling and feels good and right and aligned, I will say yes and do it. If I'm inside of a process of something and I'm like, this feels really bad, I will stop. And I think that's the gift of sufficiency, like having enough money gives me the privilege of being able to say no to projects that are not aligned.

43:23Tiffany Aliche:Speaking my language, girl, that's what we say all the time is money gives you options and you get to say no and say no and yes when you want to say yes. And it's just so true. You wrote about a moment in your book when you found out you were pregnant and how something shifted pretty much instantly. You said you had spent decades being quote hard and rough with yourself always pushing your body surviving but now you physically literally had to soften like your survival depended on surrender and I think that line is just so powerful do you remember what it felt like in your body to make that shift from force to softness and what did it teach you about safety and trust and love it was a really massive transformation in every way like I, I, cause I remember if I would sit down on the couch, I felt lazy.

44:16I felt like someone who was going to catch me. Like I always felt like that. Like I need to be doing something. I need to be productive. And it was this constant busyness inside of me that sort of felt like there was some like overlord that was going to like reprimand me if I stopped and rested or took a nap or something. And when I got pregnant, I was fucking zonked. I was so tired. I could not go to a spin class. And I was like, oh my God, what? I went to Flywheel. I remember because I was living in New York at the time. And there was a studio called Flywheel, kind of like Peloton. And I went in and I was like, I sat on the bike and I was like, I can't even push this.

44:58Tiffany Aliche:This is not happening today. This is the case. Which my body, like I've always been able to command my body to do, perform, like move for me. I've always been very like, I can push myself. But when I got pregnant, it was like, I got run over by a truck. So I just had to go home and sit on the couch. And it was because I physically could not do more than that. And I was so nauseous. So I was like, well, I'm not in charge. And it was like a flip, like a light, like a flip, a switch flipped. And I was like, Oh my God, I'm going to just, I'm just going to give myself permission. I'm just going to let this happen.

45:38I'm just going to let my body be in charge of me. And I talked to some people who were like mentors at the time. I've always been really into like therapists, coaches, teachers, people who've gone before, who have a little more wisdom, they've been down the path a little further than me. And they're like, girl, you are doing, and friends of mine who have a different kind of mindset, because I'm just so intense. I'm so intense. I'm like, just chill. Okay. I can't. So, um, and my friends who've been down this path, who had babies were like, yeah, you're doing the most productive thing that any person can do, but it's just not treated like that by society.

46:26If a man was pregnant, having a baby, do you know how the world would stop? Yes. And it would be like, oh, you're doing the thing. Like this is the most important thing you could be doing. Like rest. Let me rub your feet. But because it's women's work and women are expected to do literally everything. It's devalued. We're not allowed to stop. And even if we're pregnant, it's like, oh, she's still working, nine months pregnant. My friend, I can't say who this person is because of whatever. But she was, she's a PR person and she works for a successful like TV person. and she was nine months pregnant.

47:10We were at Magic Mike, the movie. So this is a while ago. And the music comes on and they're doing the dance and her belly starts moving. She goes into labor at Magic Mike. We go home. Really titillating that movie. Oh my God. That baby was like... Like pony. The baby's like genuine. anyone. She drives herself home. She won't even let us drive her. And then she gets there. She's bouncing. She's bouncing on a ball, fielding calls from her boss. And I said, girl, tell him, tell him you're in labor. She's like, I can't do that. Oh my God. He'll be so upset. Like I have to help him. I was like, yeah.

47:59So for me, I was just like, it was a complete shift and it was like, Oh, I can take, it changed my whole life. I can now I realize napping is so productive. Rest is so helpful. I had a whole day where I did absolutely nothing yesterday because I've been on this tour for so I'm exhausted. And I let myself draw the shades, stay in the house all day long, I never would have allowed. I thought in my brain multiple times, I was like, I need to take a walk around the neighborhood. And then I was like, yeah, I'm going to lie down and take a nap. It's a complete shift. And now I realize the nervous system is so much more capable of handling a bigger life when you're well-rested, when you're well-resourced, when you're really taking care of yourself in kind of an exorbitant way, like a very extravagant, over-the-top way of taking care of yourself, like then your nervous system loves that.

49:08And then it can handle like big, massive upgrades in your life. But if you're stretched too thin and you're too exhausted, you're not going to be able to succeed, I think, at the bigger opportunities that will come your way, that would actually be a life-changing thing. Yeah.

49:27Tiffany Aliche:You described this moment, and my jaw dropped when I read this, where your ex-husband casually said he imagined your life as him being a CEO and you standing beside him. You're beautiful and supportive and basically making him look good. And it hit you like a ton of bricks that you, quote, married the patriarchy. Can you talk about what it felt like to realize that? And were there any red flags? Was there anything that you missed going into that? I think I'd always known in the back of my mind that that was what was happening in our relationship. And that was sort of his vision, but he'd never explicitly said it like that.

50:15And when he did, I, it was like this watershed moment where I was like, God damn it. Like I walked into this trap and I write about it in earlier parts of the book where I met his family and his family is very like gender norm conforming, like very traditional. The mom is sort of the caretaker of the family, cooks the dinners. The dad was the businessman. and quote unquote, whatever. And, um, and she was like the social butterfly and it kind of was like appealing to me only because I had no sense of what I was doing with my life at the time. I had no career path for myself. I had no sense of like consistency in how I was going to take care of myself or make money.

51:08Direction was helpful. Yeah.

51:10Tiffany Aliche:Yeah. Even if it was the wrong direction. It was like, okay, cool. I know what to do now. I know how to play this game. Yeah. Yeah. It was like someone else would take care of me. And I think it's a trap that women are sold is like, I'm just going to find a man to take care of me. And that was sort of like, I thought of myself as this very empowered woman, very feminist, very strong, very like girl power. But I walked right into that trap because I wanted a baby and because I had no direction for my own career or life at the time. So I just wanted to be taken care of. And this man kind of looked the part.

51:49He looked the perfect part. So I walked into the trap. There were 100 million red flags. And I was talked out of them by friends or by therapists or by myself. I justified everything at every corner because I wanted a baby and I wanted to be taken care of. And then I got the baby and then I was like, ah, I'm in a really bad situation where not only am I not being taken care of, I'm being actively sabotaged consistently all the time by this person who he like didn't have direction for himself or he lost it, you know? So it was just, it was really a recipe for disaster.

52:31Tiffany Aliche:Well, and you got pregnant, gave birth to your daughter, and then had to go back on Survivor partially due to money. Like you had learned all of this softness and this rest and had been forced basically to do this. And then, oh, we got to thrust ourselves back into the most chaotic environment possible. So what was that switch like having to then go back to scarcity. Marrying the patriarchy. Enough said. When we come back, she's sharing how her pregnancy, divorce, and discovering her queerness all push poverty toward living authentically and why power now means something totally different than it did on the island.

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54:29You know, it was so intense, but it was like the softness and the rest only existed in pregnancy. Once I had the baby, it was full on out of control. You were back. Postpartum anxiety.

54:41Tiffany Aliche:Oh man. In sane anxiety, sleeplessness, like my body was crazy, hormone sweet. I didn't know what was happening. And I didn't know that I had postpartum anxiety until much later because I didn't have the language for it. I'd only heard of postpartum depression, but I was not okay when my baby was born. I was, I was a wreck. And, um, so the softness went like up in flames as soon as my baby was born, it was gone. And then, yeah, we needed the money. And I was like, well, this is the fastest track to get a little bit of cushion so I can get out of survival mode and just like feel safe with this baby for six months.

55:31Like I just needed, I just needed to know my rent was paid for a few months because my husband at the time had lost his job.

55:38Tiffany Aliche:There's something crazy ironic, by the way, of being like, I'm going to go out of survival mode by going on survivor. Like there's something crazy to that. Yeah. No, it's really the whole thing is like full of paradoxes. And that's why I think that's where I got to in the book where it's non-binary. Like the way that I think about life now is it all, it's all shades of gray. Nothing is good or bad. I learned so much through my relationship and through my marriage and through my divorce that I am a different person through, from having had that experience. I'm grateful for it because it really matured me and grew me up in a way that I don't know how else I would have become so fully realized.

56:28So there's like good that came out of it too. And I mean, this is, this is how I live life too. I'm always kind of mining shitty experiences for the gems. Because I have to. I have to do that to survive. But you're right. Like playing Survivor was my mode of getting out of, my means to getting out of survival mode.

56:50Tiffany Aliche:Which is crazy. Crazy of a sentence. It was because it really did. It took everything out of me. There was a challenge where we had to, I'd already been voted out of the game. I was on Edge of Extinction. and they just like did random torture experiments with us. And they like hit a bunch of very heavy coconuts across a ravine. And we had to like run across this like slippery rocks and through soft sand. And I was like, oh my God, I'm 10 months postpartum and I'm running a marathon and carrying heavy coconuts. It was like a three hour endurance race. This is the winter season, right? This is the, yeah.

57:29Tiffany Aliche:Yeah. Oh, I remember that challenge. It was hard to watch, yet alone, I can't imagine what it was like to actually do it. It was, yeah. And again, it's like these challenges, this game is hard enough if you're well-slept, well-fed, you're around people you trust. Like, it's just insane. It's insane. I came in and I won the challenge with, like, it was like the top three won the challenge. So Tyson and I came in together. And Tyson is an endurance athlete. He's like a former pro cyclist. So I was like, oh my God, I'm 10 months postpartum, just like had a baby and I'm coming in with this guy. So there is this sense of like, whoa, I'm so strong and so capable.

58:15And it gave me a lot of my confidence back going out and playing survivor, knowing that my body could still do those kind of things that it could do before I got pregnant. Because I hadn't been working out. I was on the Stairmaster trying to train to go play survivor. And I was like, oh, the Stairmaster is the worst. It's so hard.

58:40Tiffany Aliche:I am not pregnant. And I also agree it's the worst. It's the absolute worst. okay so i also loved watching you on traders i haven't seen the the new deal island but i've seen traders um are reality stars smarter at playing reality games because they've done it before like was traders harder traders was harder because of the format because traders is 20 something people all together and survivors 20 people but you're split into two tribes of 10 so you only have to negotiate relationships with half the people. And then survivor, you're not given like a lie that you have to cover up and pretend like you don't have the lie.

59:21Everyone's on the same, even playing field of like lying and making alliances and stuff. But traders is like, it comes with so much suspicion right off the bat and paranoia. And it's in a really like confined space that really stresses me out.

59:37Tiffany Aliche:But you look fabulous. So there, that's gotta mean something. Thank you. You get to look hot the entire time. I heard you don't stay in the castle. Is that true? That they bust you out of the castle and you stay somewhere else? I could never. I could never reveal that production secret. Okay. That means yes. Okay. But how is it harder? Because I think, yeah, everybody's immediately suspicious. There's no trust being built. And I didn't even think you're so right. You're battling against 20 people all at once as opposed to, like even now, typically with Survivor, we have three tribes, so it's even less people.

1:00:12Tiffany Aliche:Is there any other things that are crazy that the average person wouldn't think, oh, this is way harder? Well, I think also gamers have an understanding that the game is the game and we will play the game. Regardless, if we don't like someone, we'll still work with that person because you'll do whatever you have to do to get farther in the game. Housewives don't care. they're not going to work with someone they don't like they're going to kill that person or banish them just because it drives me crazy i screamed at my tv during your season honestly during every season of housewives on i'm like play the fucking game you can't just not like this person or like oh it drove me crazy i was like it's a game voting blocks you can't just vote for who you don't like it's a voting block but that's why i think that's what makes traders so fun to watch because the game is still played like that.

1:01:08Like no one has gotten it together to create a voting block to like figure it, figure it the fuck out. But I think also the thing with traders that makes it so fun is the cash prize at the end isn't that big. It's like, people are not really going to sell their newborn baby down the river to win 40 grand, like probably, but, but they do want to make good TV. So there is kind of that sense of performance and campiness and high drama. And you're in a castle with Alan Cumming and nothing beats Alan Cumming. I love him so much.

1:01:45Tiffany Aliche:It's so good. Okay. So my last question about the shows you've been on now, you've been on Australia survivor. I know it's harder. I know it's more intense, but what like from a sociological perspective, what's different about Australia survivor versus US survivor? Like how are the people or the way they go about it different? Australian survivor is more like old school survivor where the contestants are game players. Like we're characters. We're playing a game as a character. We ham it up for the cameras. And it's more like there's the arc of the character inside of the game that has nothing to do with our lives outside of the game.

1:02:32So I think now with what's happening with these new era Survivor US is they're showing the B-roll of what this person's going through outside of the game. You're hearing about their childhood and stuff. You're not going to hear about any of that on Australian Survivor. Australian Survivor is, we are here to play this game. We're here to win this game. I will do the hijinks and shenanigans and whatever it takes to win and make a really fun show that's super like kind of Marvel action movie style survivor.

1:03:04Tiffany Aliche:Did you watch seasons? Did you study before you went out there? Yeah. They sent me the links because you can't watch it here. No, you have to go to like a third part. Yeah. To go to a third party sketchy website to watch it. Yeah. Yeah. It's like weirdly controlled. I wish it was available in the U S I think fans will love this season. it's me, Sari and Tony from the U.S. playing and it's so fun but yeah I watched Lynx the producer sent me a few seasons so that's how I knew who David was from Australian Survivor when we played Deal or No Deal because I'd watched some of his season to prep for their playing game Speaking of Alan Cumming and fabulousness and gay in general you discovered I think a part of your journey in the last few years has been discovering your own sexuality and your own queerness.

1:03:55Tiffany Aliche:When did that come about for you? Was that during a lot of this emotional unpacking? And what did you learn about yourself, especially related to maybe how you grew up or that trauma of the cult, not cult? How did that take shape for you? Everything happened for me in the side of the process of grieving the death of my brother and going through my divorce and writing my book. I did all of that at the same time. It was like melded into each other. So I'm writing my way into a whole new story as I'm grieving, as I'm doing all the stuff you have to do to get through a high conflict divorce. And it was so gnarly and so intense.

1:04:42And then I was like, I want to have some fun. And so I started dating and I was like going out with some guys and I just, I was only finding that I could have either a physical connection with a man without, with no emotional connection and the chemistry was good physically, or I could have an emotional connection, but the physical connection was torture. So I was like, I am not, I did not just battle my way out of this marriage and divorce to now settle for like a mediocre man. so I um opened my app up to date women because I was like well I've never done this before I've always kind of been curious I've never really explored it because I always had so much success with men so I feel like it's not broke don't fix it yeah yeah the formula worked for me until it was like oh it's no longer working this is laughing yeah this is like I don't I don't want That's a mediocre stitch.

1:05:42So I opened my app up. It was wild how it all happened because I, my divorce finalized in March. And then like a week later or something, I met May and started dating May and May Martin, the comedian who I write about in the book and who's non-binary. And it was like, uh, the clouds parted and the gates of heaven opened up. And I was like, God, this is so cool and fun. And I was just, I, it really fit and worked for me. It was just like the emotional connection was there, the intellectual compatibility, the physical connection. It was like everything worked. And yeah, I was like, all right, I'm fully headed headfirst.

1:06:29Yeah.

1:06:31Tiffany Aliche:When you think about this journey from being likable, from using charm to survive, to being slut-shamed publicly, to then reclaiming your sexuality, what does powerful look like and mean to you now? Being powerful is aligning with authenticity. It's knowing who I am and what I want that is truly coming from inside me. And that's not looking for external validation to be okay. I think that's really the message of the book that I wanted to drive home. That's like, I burned it all down to claim my power. It's like, I burned down all the structures. I mean, I'm still a work in progress, right? I'm still burning stuff down, but burning consistently, continuously burning down structures that I didn't build, that someone else built maybe like thousands of years ago in like the Roman Catholic empire that I'm like, oh, this does not fit my life.

1:07:45I don't want to play that game that these old men created thousands of years ago. I want to play my game. What does that look like? And then that's really hard to decipher what we want, I think, individually and authentically, because it requires like introspection on so many levels and kind of like a curiosity to like explore some of these very difficult feelings and some of the pain that we may have experienced in the past. So for me, it's like power comes from not being afraid of the past, not being afraid of pain, not being afraid of difficult conversations, being curious about life and moving towards creating life on my own terms.

1:08:37Tiffany Aliche:Well, and the deconstruction of all of it too. I think that is unfortunately the biggest job we as women have. The biggest task of our lives is deconstructing everything we've been told it is to be a good girl or a nice girl or the, you know, prized daughter or wife and determine what we actually really want. Because it feels good getting praised. Yeah, it feels good. It's like I want to be told I'm a good girl. It also feels safe. It feels well safer. It feels safe to not rock the boat because if you draw attention to yourself, you might literally get murdered. Like you might literally not be safe anymore.

1:09:24Tiffany Aliche:So no wonder all of us are in survival mode. No wonder all of us are just trying to not piss anybody off so that we can maintain some semblance of safety and control. Yeah. Yeah. I'm really getting into these like kind of forgotten scriptures, like Mary Magdalene. And there's this book called The Girl Who Baptized Herself. It's about Thekla. Megan Watterson writes about these women whose voices have been erased. But really their gospels, what they were talking about was having how to have a direct experience of God ourselves, which is just essentially like God is the way that I think about God is like God is this sort of generative, organizing, directing force.

1:10:14that we can create our life. If we can attune to that force inside of us, we can create a life that is our highest potential to live. And it's like, you got to remember the way that this world is set up. It was set up by a bunch of men who were in power, who wanted to stay in power. So there's a lot of perspectives, especially women's that were erased or not included. So that's one of the reasons why I wanted to write the book that I wrote that included a lot of sort of more of the darker kind of shameful aspects of being a human woman on this earth, like an emotional affair, like having a queer relationship, going through a divorce, like rage.

1:10:59I wrote about all that stuff, money, because I want women to hear that, those stories. I think we heal when we hear stories that are real.

1:11:10Tiffany Aliche:I'm blown away by you. I'm so thankful you're here. Plug away, my friend. Where can people find the book? Follow you. Plug away. You can buy the book anywhere. It's called Nice Girls Don't Win, How I Burnt It All Down to Claim My Power. And you can find me on Instagram at P Shallow. And I usually give updates there. I do book tours and drag shows around the country. So you can find me somewhere. Thank you. Thanks for coming on. Thanks, Tori. Thank you so much to my friend Parvati for joining us. You can grab a copy of her brand new book, Nice Girls Don't Win. How I Burned It All Down to Claim My Power, wherever books are sold.

1:11:51Tiffany Aliche:And if you loved this episode, you want to share it with a fellow Survivor or Traders fan, we really appreciate it. It allows us to continue bringing on great guests and supporting feminist media, which is really hard to do right now. So we really appreciate it. Thank you, as always, for being here, Financial Feminist, and we'll talk to you soon. Bye. Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, a Her First 100K podcast. For more information about Financial Feminist, Her First 100K, our guests, and episode show notes, visit FinancialFeministPodcast.com. If you're confused about your personal finances and you're wondering where to start, go to herfirst100k.com slash quiz for a free personalized money plan.

1:12:28Tiffany Aliche:Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap. Produced by Kristen Fields and Tamisha Grant. Research by Sarah Shortino. Audio and video engineering by Alyssa Midcalf. Marketing and operations by Karina Patel and Amanda Lefew. Special thanks to our team at Her First 100k.

1:12:59Tiffany Aliche:A huge thanks to the entire Her First 100K community for supporting our show.