Ashley James: You’re a bimbo! Mumsy! Bossy! How we shrink confidence out of girls

0:01Hello and a massive welcome to Happy Place. I'm Fern Cotton and this is the show that helps you unlearn shame and societal expectations. Today, I'm chatting to Ashley James. Why is my breast size linked to my morality or my promiscuity? Why can't I just have a body? Because Ada's two and when she looks in the mirror, she's so, like, I love the way she looks at her body with, like, wonder and, like, pats her belly and even, like, sees my belly. Like, she's always, like, saying how squishy it is and she loves it. And I think, like, that was me, that was you. And we're born with like so much confidence for our voices and our bodies.

0:44And so why do we shrink it out of girls? Guys, I'm at my kitchen table yet again, where I'm preferring to record these introductions for the podcast at the moment. So if you hear a rogue cat or a kettle go or a police car wailing past, you can picture me sat in my dimly lit kitchen. I'm really excited about this chat. we're not talking entirely about shame but shame is a theme that we cover and it's something that oh god I mean I've spent years thinking about shame but I don't suppose I've started properly challenging it I'm not sure if that's even the right word looking at how I'm trying to recover from it but facing up to it confronting it looking at it getting stuck into it staring it squarely in the eyes and I've found it so helpful in limiting it you know sometimes you think that talking about the subject matter looking into it is going to accentuate it but it does absolutely the opposite so oh there's a cat there's a cat in a bag fig so in this chat we do we do talk about shame quite a bit and it's a subject that I think I'll probably be obsessed with forever it's something that might be a life's work in Ridding, in fact.

2:02So that is something that we talk about. So I want to get properly stuck into all these big subjects with Ashley because she's written a book called Bimbo, which is a real battle cry of a book, actually, to make sure that we as women aren't shrinking ourselves. You can often find Ashley being the voice of feminists across the country on the ITV This Morning sofa. And she's also a DJ as well. We talk about all sorts of things why we're still forced to choose between motherhood and a career we also talk about postpartum bodies which I'm sure many of you listeners will be eager to hear not all of you but many of you the way that girls are made to feel smaller and for our self-esteem to basically shrink as we grow older we also talk about lots of double standards sort of like names that women are called and standards that are held to women but not men and this is by no means if you're a man listening to this, I'm sure there's not many of you, but if you're a man listening to this, don't think this is going to be a chat where we slag off men.

3:02It is absolutely not. If anything, I urge men to listen to this chat because all of these conversations affect men as much as they affect women. It helps accentuate toxic masculinity for a start, but also I think gives us all a skewed view on how we should all be living in society and what our roles are. So please don't think that this is like an episode where we're just slagging off men. Far from it. A lot of these tropes and names that women are called are also used by women. As you'll hear in this chat, I own up to many that I've used towards myself and other people. And we also talk about reasons for not getting married, which is fascinating.

3:44To this brilliant chat with Ashley in just a moment. But first, I wanted to let you know that my new book, Likeable, is available now to pre-order. And I'm so thrilled that this book is actually a book. It's sat on my laptop for a wee while and now it's in actual book form and I'm really happy to get this book out there because I believe it's the most honest book I've written. It was a book that I definitely needed to write because for too long I have shape-shifted and done things I haven't wanted to and felt deep resentment, all to try and remain likeable which I've since realized is pointless and futile.

4:29So now it's more about just being me and authentically showing up as myself and dealing with the consequences of that. But I loved writing this book and I can only hope that you enjoy reading it as much as I did creating it. It's called Likeable and you can pre-order it now and when it's eventually out and you see it in the shops you can't miss it because it's got a massive middle finger on the front of it. So there you go. Pre-order it now if you want and it will arrive on your doorstep the day it's released, the 12th of March. All right, let's do it. Here's the show.

5:23Hello Ashley. Hello. How are you? I'm very good, how are you? I'm good, so good to see you. I'm so excited to be here. Yeah, we did a little panel together a while back and you were telling me about your book that we're going to deeply dive into in a moment. But it's now in book form, sat here. You must feel very excited about that. Do you know what, I think it's like beautiful. It's such a good cover. I was very overly, thank you, I was overly meticulous about the cover. I feel like I drove Penguin mad. I even went in with a Pantone chart. Yes. Went to Waterstones with like, just to look at the different shades of pinks on the bookshelf.

5:57So I'm glad that you like it. I absolutely love it. But it's a weird and wonderful thing when all of your thoughts are processed in such, and it's a laborious process writing a book, but then you get it, you get the book. It's such an amazing moment. Going to the factory, so I went to Clay's and I saw it get printed. I almost cried because it feels like, that's my baby. And also just so cool to see it being printed alongside like massive well-known authors that I grew up reading. So I was like, what pinch me moment. So good. It's very exciting. And also a brilliant title, Bimbo. I love it. We're reclaiming the word Bimbo along with many others or some we might want to ditch.

6:37I don't know how you feel about all of them, but you mentioned a lot of the words in the book I'm about to say that are exclusively thrown at women. And there isn't a male equivalent. So Bimbo being one, there is no male equivalent to the word Bimbo. We've also got on the list, this is just some of them, Frigid, Drama Queen, Slut, Nag, Tart, Cat Lady. I mean, I will happily reclaim that one. That one's mine. Hag, Bossy, Mumsy. It's so interesting when you start to really dissect this list and see that there is no male equivalent to these words. Unless, as I've hopefully shown in the book, unless it's a man who also doesn't fit inside the very narrow box of what masculinity is.

7:22So some might say like drama queen applies to a man who is effeminate. So, you know, there's a, I try to be, whilst I'm obviously focusing on like the female experience because I am one, I try to also look at how these words also impact men. And it's interesting because like you just said there, they would be used for men that are probably showing some sort of femininity. So it's still a slur towards women anyway. It's insulting for men to be like a girl. So we're teaching men and women that being like a girl, running like a girl, throwing like a girl, it's less than. Mumsy is a really interesting one because I've even I've caught myself saying it loads of times.

8:03I'm probably going to cut a load of my hair off this week because I just feel like it's a dead weight. And I was going to go long bob. And I said to my daughter, will I look a bit mumsy? and I was like oh my god that was in Ashley's book don't say the word mumsy what the fuck and you you catch yourself like these are all things that are just common parlance like we say this stuff all the time but it's so interesting how being mumsy which is basically just like being a mum is a slur yeah and also mums are like the punchline I also use the word mumsy and this is the kind of the point I wanted to make that even though it's in our language it's not me saying you should never say any of these words or do any of those things it's almost like yeah why do we say that that's so weird and I remember when I became pregnant I was like I just don't want to I'm not like I don't want to be like a mom or just a mom or I'm not going to dress mumsy as if every other mom who came before me was like this is it for me now give me my pinny yeah it's so weird isn't it like and the one that really irks me still is people who say oh well I focused on my career I chose not to have kids which by the way that is also in the book people should accept that a lot of women don't want to have children and I think often we put a lot of pressure on women like whether it's we're telling them they're selfish or there'll be no one to look after them when they're old so it's all about respecting people and their choices whatever they are but I find um whenever anyone says oh I didn't have children because I focused on my career I always think do you think that some of us like mums don't want to focus on their career not to say all mums do but we never we never throw that at dads a dad would never be like I'm a career dad no stay at home dad I put off having children because I wanted to focus on my career they can just do what they want nor would dadsy be a slur because I think when people when men really show up as fathers and they do the stuff that more traditionally has been you know taken care of by women it's so overly praised so actually if you were to have so hands So if you were to say someone was dadsy, you'd probably be like, that's so great.

10:08And even looking at bodies, because I suppose bimbo, it's looking at how language and expectations slowly strip away our voice, but also our bodies. And if you think that like a mum bod is like considered disgusting, it's all about getting your body back or ruining your body. But a dad bod's kind of like cute, isn't it? Like I think I saw an article a while ago that Leo DiCaprio had a dad bod. I don't even know if he's a dad, but I was like, sorry. I was I was like I was in my like postpartum recovery phase at that point and there was so much like talk about whether or not I'm going to bounce back even if it was just a journalist being like do you want to bounce back and at the time I was experiencing like piles prolapse vaginismus all of this is which is in the book but I was like hang on a minute so I'm looked at as disgusting and being asked when I'm going to look like I haven't had a baby and Leo DiCaprio, who I don't even think is a dad, is being like praised for his dad bod.

11:04And even if he certainly hasn't grown a child. I mean, it's all absolutely absurd. P.S. Piles are the worst pain ever. Oh my God. When I had my operation about whenever it was, a year and a half ago, I had, it was so painful. People don't talk about this. It's like, oh my God, piles, we can't talk about it. One of the most painful things of all time. Horrendous. Honestly, this is, again, a lot of the things I talk about in the book and I'm so open about my own postpartum recovery whether it was like fecal incontinence incontinence because I feel like there's so much shame and stigma around it and it's really isolating and I think it actually does a disservice to women because we are made to feel like we shouldn't talk about it we also therefore don't push for better care and I had an experience where I was basically having loads of pain after Alfie my first baby who I had vaginally and I went to one of the top gynecologists in the country to see what was going on because I couldn't even insert a tampon without pain and I remember him saying oh I've had a look and the stitches are fine there's no scar tissue so it's all in your head and I was like okay well how can I get it out of my head because it's painful and so I ended up going to an amazing private health physio called Marta and she within like two seconds at this point I'd given birth like 22 months before she diagnosed me with something called vaginismus and within like two minutes she just um basically like released the muscle and then i and then i was fine and so i feel like a we don't really talk about it i think megan trainer might have had it and she did talk about it and then it was like sensationalized in the media in this quite grim way and i try to like push through all of the embarrassment and the taboo because hopefully it helps other people so that they don't have to be in pain or they don't have to put up with piles and prolapse and I always say this talk of bounce back culture all I wanted to do was like bounce back in and I find it's almost like the titanic iceberg where we talk about this bit which is how we look in our appearance but actually there's a whole host of other issues that not everybody gets but a lot of women experience and we we just don't talk about it no we don't talk about any of it because it is and then I think as you say it breeds secrecy but also shame and people then do suffer in silence because they sort of think, well, I can't possibly tell anyone that I've had pals or I can't go to the toilet or I can't insert a tampon.

13:28It's all hush, hush, keep it super secret. And that keeps women suffering unnecessarily. Like you say, there is a massive lack of health care in that department. It's not highlighted as something that is seemingly important. Even if we look at pelvic floor health, I cannot jog without pissing my pants I can't go on trampoline god no laughing sneezing like my pelvic floor is fucked and there's obviously like no um care afterwards that's commonplace that you know how's your pelvic floor doing let's talk about it how can we help you out there if you you've got to really seek out a way to fix that and wait and wait for a really long time if you're going on the NHS and I think that's why I speak really openly in the book about the times that I've used private health care because I feel really lucky that I have been able to do that.

14:16But I also feel like a sense of sadness for people who can't do that and who don't know how to advocate for themselves. And it's like I just find it like the whole, and it's not just about motherhood. There's so many other areas, whether it's endometriosis or even like for teenage girls, periods, like there's so much taboo and stigma that we're kind of making us lose our confidence. And actually, things like incontinence, you can get treatment and you don't have to live with it. I feel like it's kind of that myth, isn't it, that if you're a mum, you avoid trampolines. Yeah, I know. I still haven't sorted it out.

14:49It's so far down my priority list, although it bugs me all the time. But I think it's because it's not talked about. And if these subjects were more commonplace, I think I would probably more readily think about it and assume, yeah, of course I need that to be sorted out, a solution. I love going running. I went boxing with my son for the first time last night and for the whole hour, all I was thinking is just squeeze in, don't piss yourself, just keep everything nice and tight so no wee comes out. If I'm just going to embrace it and get some tenor pads. Oh, I've got the pants, I've got period pants on constantly.

15:25It's ridiculous. But there is, I think a lot of these subjects are kept really quiet and actually also our level of complaint around derogatory slurs that we have all probably had thrown our way over the years. I think bossy is a really interesting one because it seems quite innocuous and something that we hear from when we start school. And it's, again, rarely put upon a boy. It's always a young girl. Or then if you're a boss at work or you're leading a team, if you seem to be what a male might be called assertive, it's actually just she's bossy. And that's deterring, I think, women from having a voice, having their say, saying what their needs are.

16:10And I think when you think that, you know, I remember being called bossy from as young as primary school. I was probably, you know, called bossy even as like a two year old, which is my daughter now. And I think that's why I wanted to shape the book in the way I did. So it's like girlhood, maidenhood, womanhood, singlehood, motherhood, elderhood, because I feel like so many of us experience these words. And at the time, you're right, they feel like completely innocuous or harmless. but actually we are conditioning girls to like because if you're saying oh don't be bossy or you're being very bossy of course most of us want to be the good girl so we're like okay I better learn to be less assertive and I remember at the time I'd be thinking that I'd be being helpful so if it was like pass the parcel at my party I was like right everyone sit down the music's going to come on it but actually stop being bossy and in my head I was like but I'm trying to help I don't get it whereas you're right like I don't think we ever would call a guy bossy no I like taking charge sometimes like I am a bit of a control freak which might be another slur but I am also someone that likes organization and if I think if I sense things are lagging or things could be more motivated I quite like being that person that's like come on we can do this then that get things moving I like motivating and I think it's so often seen as just plain old bossy and also don't you think when we think about the world we're kind of putting our daughters out into um I don't know how old um honey's 10 now yeah so like you know as she enters like her teens and then whether she goes to uni or gets a job we need girls to be assertive and I certainly felt in the book I talk about lots of like very personal experiences that I haven't really discussed before not mainly to look at the way in which we like shrink girls and make make them feel not confident to say no or to be assertive and so I feel like I want Ada to be bossy I mean it'd be much easier if she was bossy to everyone else and maybe not to me do you know what I mean but then you're kind of like no I want her to keep this confidence and the inspiration behind the book was that Ada's too and when she looks in the mirror she's so like I love the way she looks at her body with like wonder and like pats her belly and even like sees my belly like she's always like saying how squishy it is and she loves it and I think like that was me that was you and we're born with like so much confidence for our voices and our bodies and so why do we shrink it out of girls it's beaten out of us socially conditioned out of us and I so agree with you I think the good girl trope holds so many of us grown women back still to this day and I think it's I've mulled over it a lot because I've been writing about that subject a bit and I think a lot of the time we genuinely question whether we're inherently good.

19:06We're not sure. You know I've sat there many times probably even at times last week maybe even today where there's some sort of subconscious pondering like am I a good person? Am I or am I an awful person? And we're not quite Sure. So we assume if other people are there to validate, oh, good girl, you did you did the right thing, which basically means to comply. Then we can tell ourselves, oh, thank God. I'm a good person. I'm a good person. But actually, that's what's that's that begins that whole shrinking process. And also men aren't held to that same standard. Somebody was talking recently to me about Donald Trump and they were saying, you know, he is he might be a bit rogue, but he is the man who can lead us at the moment because it's a cruel world.

19:54And then I compared it to the way we treat Meghan Markle, for example, or even at the moment like Nicola Peltz. They are the difficult women. So I think for us, we see the way other women are treated when they are considered difficult. And difficult feels like it's like when you don't stay in your lane and be compliant and be pleasing. And we're also very quick to always blame the woman and not the man. So like, you know, rather than Prince Harry and Brooklyn taking ownership of how they navigate their family dynamics, it's always she's the homewrecker. It's her. And I'm like, hang on a minute.

20:31I thought men were really powerful and able to control the world. So how come it's like the witchy woman? And it is. It's like a modern day witch hunt, really, how we treat women who don't stay in our lane and behave. Yeah. Jane Goodall said something really brilliant and I'll mess up the quote, but it was something like, it doesn't take much to be a difficult woman that's why there's so many yes love that I love what an icon what an icon what an icon and and also there's the other one that I bought my cousin a little plaque with it on this year and it's something about it's just something along the same lines of women that aren't difficult or like the good girl rarely make history or something the one I can't think what it is but it's good girls rarely make history yeah and it's so true And that's not to imply that we don't want to help people out, be part of something bigger than ourselves and do the right thing when it's needed, but not at the cost of living.

21:33And this sounds fucking cheesy, but living authentically. I think that word gets batted about so willy nilly, but it's the one thing that we lose when we're complying. is just remembering who we are and how we want to move through the world. And also I feel like what happiness for us is. Yeah. Because I always found that or I felt like when I was younger, for me, like the happy ever after was marriage babies because that's where all like the rom-coms we watch or the Disney movies, it ends with the woman and the man galloping off into the sunset. So there's no like, well, what happened after? Did he share the mental load?

22:10Did she get great girlfriends to support her? And so I felt like as I navigated singlehood in my mid 20s to late 30s, it suddenly hit me how much society viewed me as a failure. And I talk about this a lot in Bimbo, that even though lots of my friends were in unhappy relationships, they were assumed to not be lonely and to be fulfilled. And, you know, so many of the tropes that we throw at single women and we still we blame singlehood on women. we don't say like well why aren't men stepping up and being good partners and as you said it's like that crazy cat lady but also spinster and I loved learning about the word spinster because spinsters were the original independent women because they earned a living from doing the it's like just sewing isn't it being a spinster so that to me made sense I was like oh they were like independent and free and it got weaponized against them and I used to always feel really sorry for like older women if their partner died and then they were on their own I was like oh that's so sad and now I'm like oh no I kind of get it they would probably just like oh thank god I don't have to look after anyone anymore it's my time to be free and so I feel like the whole way that I've seen that happy ever after I think I call it in my book happy never after that it's like it the idea of happiness and completion can look completely different to what we've been taught and I want Ada to grow up you know knowing that she can be anything she can have children or not have children she can get married or not get married and I also try to like never assume that she's gonna meet a man and be straight and then she has to like come out of that box to be herself so it's it's just like yeah it's frightening how much already she is having put on her that I obviously can't control no I mean we don't know you know certainly when like my kids are now 10 and 13 and it's you know you know what their friends are saying to them what they're watching sometimes on YouTube although you try and keep a handle on that or what the messaging is in films it'd be absurd to think we can control the whole narrative but I think like if you look back you're so right like when if you look back to when I was a kid I remember going to my nan's and obviously like when we were sort of in the 80s, 90s, your grandparents weren't like, right, let's do an activity.

24:27They were like, put you in front of the TV and then they'd go off and, you know, do the gardening or whatever. And I was put in front of the TV to watch Grease and I was transfixed. I remember being like, I want to go to American high school. This is amazing. I love every bit of it. And now you look back and you go, holy shit, that storyline's problematic. She was bullied for being the person she turned up as. So she then started wearing black tight leggings and everyone loved her and she got the guy. What the fuck? And I feel like there's even one bit where he like kisses her without consent as well.

25:00Yeah, gives her a hickey. The thing that I find the maddest about Grease is even when I watch it now, I'm like, why are they all so old? Why are they 30? They're meant to be in school and I feel like I still look at them as older than me. I know. The whole thing is mad. I still actually would go as far to say as I would enjoy watching it. but with an understanding that the plot is a problem. The plot is a problem. Do you know what? I feel like that's the great thing that we could do. Like if I were to watch it with Alphanader, I feel like you could be like, chat about it afterwards. Like, what do you think about the bit where he kissed her?

25:35And then, so I feel like you still can enjoy problematic, I suppose you'd call them movies, but because they're going to see things and read things. Of course. And like, especially in this online world where apparently like kids as young as eight or seeing violent porn. And I think that's why we have to be able to talk to them about what they're seeing and what they're consuming because we can't wrap them up in cotton wool. We can't. I think you're so right, like having those discussions. But it is, I think films like Grease, I'm not purely blaming Grease for God's sake, but we were just indoctrinated in so many ways when we were children with, you know, fairy tales or pantomimes or movies, whatever it might be.

26:14And how it has a lasting impression in so many interesting ways. One of the things that really got me that you talked about in the book was your inability looking back now as a teenager and young woman to say no to men. And I had exactly the same experience where I think many, many women did of my generation, your generation. growing up we didn't feel that we had the right the place or the confidence to say I don't want to do that or I just want to stay in tonight and not do anything or whatever whatever varying degree of severity we're talking about I think we found it very hard to say no because we wanted to be liked we wanted to be adored by them so we we played ball I remember like changing my music tastes according to who I was with and what the hell is that about like I've was too scared to go I've your music taste is awful I'd pretend I liked it and like go to gigs I hated like ridiculous stuff and obviously then moving into other territory which is tricky I mean you tell one horror story about when you're walking along the street as a young person do you mind telling that now oh yeah so I talk a lot about my experiences of sexual harassment and sexual assault and I really grappled with whether or not to share the stories but I wanted to to look at how we treat shame and victim blaming and also I think you know when we're talking about our experiences at school that's our normal so we didn't question it because that was the way it was and talking about films as well like American Pie I speak a lot about in the book because that kind of shaped the way we viewed like that boys will be boys culture and the kind of slut shaming culture and sexuality which is something else I speak about in the book but with the different experiences I had I think I was 13 and I was walking through Carlisle and a man stopped me to say oh are you a model and you know somebody that was just kind of discovering that the world thought I was pretty and who never felt pretty or validated growing up I was like no and he was like oh you could be I work with loads of agencies in London and I feel like if you grow up especially where I did like London is like oh you can make me a model in London so he said let's go around the corner I'll take some images for you and he kept saying oh just put your top a little bit lower a little bit lower and he was coming in and I did realize pretty quickly that I'd been kind of scammed but I was also like on my own around a corner and I like now I'd be like no this is inappropriate go away but I remember thinking oh no what have I done and I didn't even tell my parents or friends because I felt stupid and I think I call the chapter in the book silly girl because we do question always and not just us as a society but also our court systems why the girl like what was she wearing what was she doing was she drunk why did she go around like in my case why did you go around there with him you should have known better or we tell girls and so many of us do it with good intentions you can't go out like that why are you wearing that and it's teaching us that if anything happens to us it's because we haven't done the job of protecting ourselves saying he was a dirty old pervert walking around the streets with a camera I mean it is absurd I think that is one of the biggest problems that we've still got in society today is that the emphasis is on the woman the man is almost taken out of the equation in this situation and for you as a young person that is a horrendous thing to have to go through yeah and you know there were lots of other experiences and I talk about in the book about you know my experience at university where I was raped and I've never talked about it but I think about it every day and I remember having a discussion with a friend saying I don't know whether to put this in the book or not because I still feel a sense of obviously upset because it's something that I feel like really does take something huge away from you but also I didn't come forward and it actually took me a long time it was only when I told an ex at the time and he was like no you were raped and I was like oh no but you know I was drunk and I and you know I still like blaming myself and I think that's that is what we do as a society and that is the message we tell young girls like the more we tell someone what but also the ironic thing for me is especially back then when I think club culture was so much bigger and that is just what you did like we didn't set the dress codes you know like you had to dress a certain way to get into the club but then we almost blamed the woman for dressing that way and it's not like you know I couldn't afford to get a taxi home or anything like that but um yeah I really I think was inspired by the absolutely horrific case of Giselle Pellico and the way in which she dealt with something so horrific with so much grace and the way she turned up every day with her head held high and she said the shame needs to change sides and I thought how can I write a book about shame and about all the things that make women feel small if I don't talk about that and use it as a kind of tool to look at how we blame women.

31:37And I tell a story about a case in Italy where a woman was raped in a toilet in a bar or nightclub. And because she didn't lock the toilet door, the court, the judge decided that she had given mixed signals. So it's not just that the culture of victim blaming needs to change, but it's like the whole system. And the more we put, make, like the more we internalize it ourselves, the less likely we are to demand that the system changes. And God forbid anything ever happened to my daughter. Would I want her to feel like that was her dirty little secret? Absolutely not. Because she did, I did nothing wrong.

32:16So I think that was my reason for wanting to include something that I still find really difficult to talk about because it's like, enough now. I don't want to feel like it's this secret or that I'm a victim or, you know, I should actually be able to hold my head up high. But also demand better so that other women don't have to feel like they could have controlled it. I mean it's a really tricky thing to start writing about to then have to talk about in this capacity but do you feel like there is a slight weight taken from you now having said those words out loud uh I think I'm really scared because I don't want it to be sensationalized or questioned and I think I try to almost preempt the like I know that often when anyone talks about it you see this backlash in a way of well why didn't she talk why is it taking so long why didn't they report it why didn't so already it feels like the victim is on trial so I think I wouldn't say relief but it's like well I did nothing wrong and and it's more I don't want anyone else to either live with the shame or if it ever does god forbid happen for them to live with that shame and I think I really wanted this book to it is the book that I wish I'd had as a teenager or I wish I'd had in my 20s I wish I'd had when I was navigating singlehood or new motherhood and so I wanted to be as like honest as possible about everything yeah do you think the shame element's gone because I think that I've had like big periods of my life where I've lived like drowning in shame and not that I've talked about you know my whole life publicly I don't want to feel the need to or I'm anywhere near ready but I think when you know you can chat to in my case it's my therapist or if it's a friend about things that you know make you feel full of shame there is something magical about saying it and that shame slightly dissipating.

34:29It might not go entirely, but I think there's great power in it not living secretly because when it's in your head exclusively, that's when I think you can just become so blinded by it. It's so all-consuming. So have you found that even just having that private time to put it down on your laptop and get it out of you, there was a slight shift? yeah I think I've had enough of living with shame and and like another great example is I talk a lot about like the hyper sexualization of the female body and my experience as someone who had really big boobs from the age of 14 and I still actually feel a huge sense of shame now but I can be like enough Ashley like this your body is not the problem the way society judges and sexualizes a woman's body is and I feel like how am I now 38 I've got two kids and I'm still being policed in how I dress and it's that the labels of like frumpy slutty who've you got the girls out for and we don't treat treat men in that way like Tommy sometimes walks around with his top off when it in my partner when it's a hot day or we'll see other men do it and I always say to him asking for it because it highlights the ridiculousness it's insane I I am spark debate or when I was breastfeeding my kids there'd be debate around whether it was appropriate to breastfeed or whether I was attention seeking and I remember thinking who do you think I want attention from in this setting your child yeah and um interestingly I got my account blocked on TikTok for child pornography because I put on a clip it was about motherhood of and there happened to be a clip of me breastfeeding you couldn't see anything but even if you could it's like hang on so we allowed for too long voices like Andrew Tate's telling people it was okay to strangle women but you draw the line at breastfeeding and why is that sexual but why is that sexual and I think that's again like it's such a tool of shame that whether I was a child which was 14 being told like cover up don't you don't distract the boys you don't want to distract men you don't want to get unwanted attention sorry I'm a child teach men not to desexualize and objectify us and I also wanted to look at like the way in which we teach kids about female bodies and sex education because I feel like we only really learn either these days more so through like porn which is often very like catered to male gaze and male pleasure and quite violent or in a very like reproductive way and it's like we're more than sexual beings and sexual organs and I don't want to be policed for my body and I know female politicians also experience the same they're constantly people focus on I remember I think it was Lisa Nandy in parliament about 10 years ago there was an article saying whose boobs are these because she was wearing like a top and it's I'm sorry I'm a woman I do have cleavage a huge debate on this morning ironically I was talking about when the photographer yelled at Hannah Waddy get your legs out and I was saying how that whole moment was so great just giving them shit back and good and and she is someone that's like I refuse to be objectified and we need to see more of that and I was talking about the objectification of the female body and I came off air and people were like going mad and complaining about my cleavage and I was wearing like this three-piece suit I was still breastfeeding to be honest I was so chuffed that I'd found a bra that didn't show with the suit I didn't even think about the fact I had cleavage and I was like but there is that I guess that teenage girl still in me that's like oh no have I been a bad girl but why why is my breast size linked to my morality or my promiscuity why can't I just have a body because you know sometimes I'm like maybe I should just get like a boob job so that I don't have to live with it anymore and every woman I've spoken to who has had a breast reduction is like it it freed my life but then the other side of me like no fuck off why do I have to essentially pay to mutilate myself to almost be not shamed and not sexualized and what if my daughter funny enough Ada woke up this morning I'd not seen her for a while because I've been on a work trip and she was like mommy mommy how did you get here when I'm a big big girl I'll have big boobies like you and right now I've got small boobies and I was thinking yeah if you have the like my body one day am I teaching you that actually to be left alone you should get a breast reduction like no I want and I think a lot of it comes from women because we have been taught so much internalized misogyny and I'm always unpicking things I think I said something in the book and I left it in because I said something about granny pants and then I was oh is that ageism and misogyny kind of tied into one and I I love that I'm always learning and I wanted the book to kind of make people consider like oh yeah I say that I didn't even think about that or I punched down on other women I definitely used to always punch down on other women and I I think there's a chapter called like pick me girl and I was the perfect pick me because I felt like I didn't want to be like a girl because I'd been taught and we're all taught that doing anything like a girl is not as serious or not as respected as rejecting femininity yes that's such an interesting topic and again it's something that I've been thinking about a lot recently especially at my age where the whole sort of aging debate comes into it as well you're not allowed to age but equally if you have Botox then you're judged so again like with your body you you can't win whatever you're doing there is no perfect outcome where everybody's happy and like oh yes you're a woman that I can like and respect and take seriously but also you're attractive it's it's so mad the level of scrutiny and judgment and actually what your book's doing perfectly and what I think many of us are trying to delicately chat about you know and I think for people listening to this now you'll probably hear both of us constantly having to put in little disclaimers or say but also if you want to be that kind of woman it's okay because we know that there is just so much judgment on everything we're saying and doing and none of us we can't speak for every single female experience out there everybody's going through something entirely different you can speak to yours I can speak to mine but I think most women feel trapped in this limbo land of not quite knowing how to be a feminist and the fact that like you just said we might have to reject femininity altogether to be seen as someone that can be taken seriously you know very well the wonderful carol vorderman she's almost like a mentor would you say yeah i actually call her auntie carol auntie carol she is she's an icon and i think she is perfectly demonstrating everything that I'm trying to say now by being one of the smartest highest IQs out there yet she also decides on certain days to wear very figure hugging clothing and she'll wiggle her bum to camera and then she'll do a maths equation and why the fuck not I honestly love her like the support that she's given me personally and actually she's one of the quotes on the book because she was the first to be like yeah love to do it she is a powerhouse of a woman and like you say like she doesn't care like she is like i am i'm beauty and brains and i was always taught you can be one or the other she is like she does not give a fuck and we should all aspire whatever our path looks like to be more like carol basically more carol and like you said a moment ago just looping back to that it's often other women that are judging us you know this is not a conversation where we're going men are all twats and men need to think that you know it's the patriarchy has indoctrinated all of us to have this internal misogyny that then you know ensues in ways where we're looking at other people in our lives or female celebrities and we're judging them this is not you know a rhetoric that's coming from men you know there's problems in all areas but a lot of the time it's other women saying oh well I didn't do that well I did that well I wouldn't act like that and it's it's just so noisy and I think we're like chained to all these like dichotomies it's like Madonna whore Hayley versus Selena and I feel like it's all done deliberately like even like breastfeeding bottle feeding why are we debating that men aren't having to defend how their babies and so it and it's perpetuated by like the media and the language and I noticed that you know the woman is always flaunting her figure showing off her postpartum and it's all these ways to slowly try and make us punch down on each other instead of kind of coming together I think one of the chapters in the book I talk about sisterhood because it was like almost my realization that I'm like we could be so powerful together sometimes I think wow I think there is like 51 % the world is 51 % women or 53 % women think how much we tolerate and the fact we're not equal if we all realize like stopped the infighting that we're kind of taught to do and actually we're like we could stop all of this patriarchal bullshit and I think I always said jokingly that I wanted bimbo to like destroy the patriarchy because I want people to read it and be like oh yeah I've done that whether it's a I know I used to talk about mothers in a really bad way and I tried to be really honest about that that I had such a negative perception of motherhood which obviously hit me like a ton of bricks when suddenly I was on the other side of it and I was like oh no but I'm not I'm actually really nice or whether it's you know I remember like being really ageist I talk really openly about that but I feel like we don't learn we're taught to become that way through everything we consume even like the fat phobia that we're taught that's actually like detrimental to all of us because it makes us all live with this idea that like we have to be the most shrunken physically shrunken version of ourself even if it's not healthy and I want this book to make people stop and think oh yeah I do that or I think that way so that hopefully we just like can ignore the noise and like just be kinder to each other.

45:05Yeah, I think so much of it is it's so ingrained that we don't even know we're saying these things or thinking it sometimes. And again, there needs to be, like you said, room for us all to catch ourselves, to learn, to think, oh, maybe I'm going to use different language or judge that person less than I have been. It's, you know, it's a big learning curve for all of us. I don't think you're certainly not expecting everyone to be completely up to date with everything immediately. Like we're all learning on the job here and I'm picking hundreds of years. And I wanted this book to be the book that isn't like coming from a high place or a pedestal of like, look at me.

45:45I'm so like worldly on feminism. It's a kind of like I don't need none of this and I've done all of these things. And here's what I've learned. and I talk about, you know, like history, whether it's the crazy cat lady or the spinster or whether it's looking at the history of marriage and that whole idea of... Oh, we need to get into that. Let's talk about marriage because you're absolutely vehemently not going to get married. If I get married, I think just check in on me and make sure that was something that I wanted to do because I'd be shocked if I changed my mind on this. But interestingly, every time I get interviewed, or not every time, but often when I get interviewed, they'll say, oh, do you hope he's going to pop the question yet?

46:27And I'm always like, I hope not. And they look horrified. And also, it's one of the things I find the most difficult to talk about. And so I try to be really careful because loads of my friends want to get married. And also, I want them to know that if they choose to get married, I'll be at that wedding. And I don't want anyone to think that I'm judging. but I honestly I've asked so many friends probably to an irritating level like why are you married men and women because I'm like I'm trying to understand what the appeal is and it feels a bit like I'm not in on the excitement that everyone else is and I'm like what am I missing I feel like I've been plucked from a completely different planet and I can't I can't get my head around it well I think you explain very articulately some of the reasons and some of them are tied up in the ceremony itself which I hadn't really taken the time to properly digest one of them being the infamous bouquet throw we we've all been there we've seen it we might have even rugby tackled someone to the floor to try and grab it again has been pressed upon us that we should be the lucky one that catches the bouquet so we're chosen next and again all the emphasis on the girl being the lucky one the woman being the chosen one and the man being the one who's just sat there going oh no hopefully she doesn't get it yeah yeah exactly yeah joking around about that whereas you say in the book why have we not got a row of men stood there they should be rugby tackling each other to the floor to be the lucky chosen one I'd never thought about that research shows the happiest people single women single child free women and married men and when you think of in a traditional gender role so I'm not saying that marriages can't be amazing and equal but when you look at like the traditional role like the woman gives so much of herself I look at like the mental load if you choose to have children like men get so much more from marriage than we do they essentially in a traditional sense get a maid therapist cook child bearer child raiser like all of these things and yet it's like I call it I think it's like patriarchal gaslighting that we're told we are the lucky ones but even though evidence shows that it literally takes years off our life because we give so much and we're left burnt out and obviously lots of people at the moment are trying to blame feminism but feminism means that we have the choice either to get married or not get married without living with the social shame but also to leave if it's ever becomes like dangerous or unhappy and so I just don't understand how we've been told like even like oh she said yes or I said yes and it's like but can't we have more say and why are we still asking for the man's permission like why isn't our yes enough they have to also it's so often after the dad and I know that lots of people see that as a sign of respect so I just try to look at like the history of all of that like the time ball and chain it's my ball and chain yeah yeah yeah that's not good it's fucking mad isn't it the whole thing is so it's so unbelievably bonkers but martin lewis did tell me that actually i'm crazy for not getting married he was like if you're an independently smart woman and i think i also talk about this in the book that um the laws still benefit married women so if I were I did say to Tommy once I have found a reason to get married basically if one of us dies and he was like oh how romantic but yeah it's really interesting so I talk about all of that and even you know if I was someone who quit my job to have children then I would also get married because you're giving yourself protection so that if it ever didn't work out so I try to give like a really fair balanced view where I look at all the history and the patriarchal gaslighting, but also the reality and the protections.

50:28I think the dynamic is so interesting, whether you're married or not, if you have children or maybe even don't have children, you live with your partner and it's a heterosexual relationship, the emotional load that a woman carries is, and this is not my opinion, this is statistically written out, the disparity is huge. And when Gabor Mate came on the podcast yonks ago, I couldn't tell you when it was, but he often brings out those exact statistics. And that is why so many women disproportionately have autoimmune diseases, because we are stressed to the core, trying to juggle a million different things, facilitating so many different people's needs.

51:10And we we're told subliminally, again, that our needs really do not matter, that everybody should be above us. and if we ever exercise any desire to do something for us it's seen as like oh who does she think she is doing something for herself who's looking after the kids who's looking after the kids but also don't let yourself go no so service the children service your husband there's a chapter in my book called lie back and think of england so it's like having to do have make sure the house is tidy making sure the kids are tidy making sure your husband is sexually serviced and looked after and feels loved, but also don't let yourself go.

51:49No, I think so many people, again, don't talk about this. I mean, I've talked about it with my friends for years and years, but when you are a mother and also if you work on top of that, but not even if you're looking after children and you talk about in the book when you're like touched out, when you've been touched so many times by your kids, because they're like pulling at you and their toddlers or even when they're big kids or asking for things and it's so overstimulating. Like last night, my daughter had a friend over and they were watching YouTube dance routine so loudly. And I could feel myself.

52:23I was so overstimulated. I needed to like run out. I didn't run out of the house, but I needed to like get out of there. It was just everything's all so consuming. When you've got little children pilling at you, if you're breastfeeding, then you get them to bed eventually. All you want to do is close your eyes and black out. And then if you've got a partner who wants physical touch or sex, it can feel like the last thing you want to do. And again, women are scared to say that because they're like, oh, people are going to think that you're, you know, I don't know what it is. Like you're not you're not being a good enough wife or that you're not prioritizing sex.

53:00And it's like, oh, my God, we can't win. And I think so much of that is that kind of inner misogyny that we have about motherhood, because I definitely said, I will never put my relationship second. I'll never prioritize the kids before my partner or I'll never let our sex life go. And we almost like put the blame on the woman. You know, like if he leaves, it's because she let herself go or because she slept with her kids or she gave up. And that's the reason I tried to talk about it. Because also imagine how much better relationships would be if we actually knew what we were getting ourselves into.

53:35Whereas I feel like we're almost sold this rose-tinted version of motherhood where we think we will be able to prioritize our partner and and do everything and do everything else and maybe some people can but that wasn't me but then you feel like a failure and like a bad wife or bad partner I wish if we were just more open about it we'd kind of stop blaming the woman or the mother and also for mothers to feel empowered that it's not a them problem it's just like almost like systemic problem that we're putting too much and especially when they'll be like oh he changes nappies so he's really hands-on no I'm hands-on yeah I'm a hands-on mum yeah I know it's I think a big it is systemic because not only do we have these nuclear families where often we're moving away from back in the day it would have been aunties uncles grandparents who all could have mucked in and there are some communities I think you know some countries in Europe are better than we are at doing it I think Sweden's pretty good on the map for that kind of thing but we are notoriously bad in the UK people move away from home not always But often so, childcare is insanely expensive.

54:39So people do have to make the choice, usually the woman, if they want to work or not. So then all of the pressure is on this one person who's having to do everything in the home, be a mum and try and if they can go out and earn money. It's asking so much of people. And I think that's way beyond my intellect or understanding of what the government could do to give them more support. so they're not ending up with autoimmune issues or just feeling like utter shit and desperate. But I think recognising the problem, which hopefully I spell out clearly in the book, like even just recognising the problem, because I think we have moved so far away from the 1950s, but the expectations are still there.

55:23So we are out in the workplace and doing the masculine roles, but we're also expected to do all the female roles and rewarding men and praising men as if they are the 1950s men. Like it shouldn't be remarkable that someone changes a nappy. Or if I, I remember when I'd go out to DJ and people were like, oh, he's looking after the baby, the dad. Oh, is he really hands on? Yeah, yeah, we both are. Yeah, he works and I work and we both look after. But you see it all the time. Like some dads still say they're babysitting. And I'm like, I'm sorry, you can't babysit your own children. No, you're just being a dad.

55:57I remember once putting a video and I feel like I need to do disclaimers every fucking 10 seconds having sex like this. But there will always be someone who's like, you chose to have kids, just be grateful. And it's like, it goes without saying that I love my children. I'll do anything for them. I wouldn't change anything. But the pressure and the expectation on women can still, alongside it, as a dialectic truth, be discussed and warrants the weight of chatting about this pressure. Because so many of us are feeling it. So that we can provide better support. and I hate this idea of like well you chose to have kids okay well I chose to work in a supermarket or I chose to like work in television if you have like a bad boss or your conditions are bad and even if it was your dream job like you're allowed to change that job or you're allowed to go to HR and make a complaint like you can just because you choose motherhood doesn't mean that you have to like put up with the crap and actually every like everyone loves their kids and are grateful for their kids but it doesn't mean that things couldn't be better and you know 74 000 women every year have to leave their jobs because they cannot afford the cost of child care or they cannot get flexible working so not only is that putting women back in homes that aren't choosing to be back in homes but like i'm sure there's research that shows it's economically more beneficial to have affordable child care and then also that takes some of the shame away that when you do have childcare that's you put like oh well I wouldn't have children just to let someone else raise them or oh you've got a nanny as if it's like this real privilege but it shouldn't be a privilege to have support especially not if you're working because you can't do both and it's frustrating when you see in so many other countries like I talk about my sister's experience in the book in Holland of you know having someone that came and lived in a house for two weeks we're made to feel like failures because we don't have that level of support yeah yeah I mean I put that pressure on myself I will kill myself trying to get this get to the kids to school because the kids school isn't so near my house I can't walk there race back stuff food in my face get myself ready for a full day of work race back do the school run again and then if I do say to my mate Ella oh babe could you get the kids off to school I'll come and get them from your house I feel like I've fucked up I mean it's absurd meanwhile meanwhile you'll go on social media and there'll be some like child free guy in his 20s being like make sure you get eight hours sleep make sure you cook all your meals from scratch and so then we're made feeling like oh no yeah I had four seconds sleep last night I'm sleeping so bad at the moment it's the whole thing is so bonkers I mean we certainly don't have long enough today to dissect not only everything in your brilliant book but just this topic because it's so huge and I knew today that we would only be able to grab at these tiny moments to chat about because it's a conversation that needs to keep on happening well outside of your book and this podcast and for men and women to chat about all of this because it benefits everybody.

59:04All of it benefits everybody. And I think that's the takeaways for me from your book are we've all got to judge other women less. First of all, because we don't have a fucking clue about their reality we haven't got a clue I barely know who I am so why am I judging somebody else and their choices and also that that this conversation benefits everybody if we continue to have this fluid chat between all genders yeah and looking at all of these issues that have just been part of our history for hundreds of years yeah I think I for me it's about like turning pain into power and hopefully making people just consider as many of the experiences of womanhood like so while mine will be different to yours we all face the same gendered labels and boxes and pressures and we're all trying to be like the good girl or the good woman or the good wife and so yeah I hope it allows people to and also to believe in themselves most importantly yeah exactly have your own back yeah Ashley where's your happy place my happy place I think isn't a physical place it's when I'm trusting my own gut and my own needs in that moment so one day my happy place is with my kids the next is out of my girlfriends the next is thriving in my career but it's just listening to myself yeah I love that thank you so much for being on Happy Place today.

1:00:32Thank you for having me on. Thanks Ashley. Loved it. Oh Ashley thank you so much for your time. I mean that chat could have gone on and on and on. I really loved it. Just what a topic. You know as if we could cover that topic in an hour or under an hour. It's absolutely impossible. We did our very best to squeeze as much in as we could but of course do go and read the book Bimbo. It's out on the 12th of February so you can get more into this subject matter and ponder further on all of these interesting topics. Hey I hope you're going to be here next week by the way especially if you're currently considering a drastic haircut after a breakup or want to learn to be more confident in the way you physically express yourself.

1:01:18Hairdresser to the megastars Chris Appleton is going to be here and I have to say the chat I had with him was incredibly profound. Until then though a massive thanks again to Ashley, to the producer Anushka Tate at Happy Play Studios and to you, do not even begin to think about shrinking yourself.

1:01:59Thank you.