The Good Girl rebellion: How to stop caring if you’re likeable

0:28Hello and a massive welcome to Happy Place. The word for myself was long suffering no longer because it's actually not good to just suffer through those things. I can honestly say for the first time in my life, I'm doing everything for me. I've been thinking a lot recently about how much of my life has been dictated by feeling a desperate need to be likable, to be the good girl I think others expect me to be. oh my god I mean I know so many of you'll be nodding along but this one has been on my mind a hell of a lot recently I grew up in an industry from a very young age understanding that my likability was a currency of its own and if I wasn't liked I simply wouldn't have a job so at times without sounding too melodramatic it felt like survival to me but then I let that sort of seep into loads of different other areas of my life.

1:22Ones where it didn't need to be a currency but it still felt like it and I think in my 40s a lot of it has been about unpicking all of this, unlearning it and looking at how much I've been conditioned. I think it affects us much more than we care to believe. Not only does it impact how we act, how we express ourselves, how we move through the world but also I believe our health, mental, emotional and physical health. I think we see it manifest in society in so many ways. One of the ways is this sort of toxic message that women can do it all, that we can be the perfect mothers, the most amazing friends with packed social lives, that we can be CEOs and have these huge careers.

2:05I mean if you want to be insane go for it but for me I don't believe we can have it all and I think trying to do everything because we want to be liked and we want to be popular and we want to be shiny so people look to us and think we're great I think that isn't the healthiest way for us to be living at the moment and I think it can be scary slash extremely liberating to start breaking three from these binds that we all know exist. I really want to learn from other women who are putting their foot down and refusing to make themselves smaller to keep other people happy. So today, this is a juicy one, we're going to hear from Louise Redknapp, Paloma Faith, Sophie Ellis-Bexter, Natasha Bedingfield, Afiwa Hirsch, Florence Given, Dawn French and Emily Atak about everything from voicing your needs to navigating mum guilt and being okay with looking like a bit of a twat.

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5:50me and some of my teammates were just talking before you turned up about this notion of being the good girl yeah and the pressure that we put on ourselves that we have to make all of these decisions so that people view us as being good and actually what does that boil down to when you reduce it down to its bare bones it's good i think we equate to being compliant and just going this this is what everybody else needs or wants me to do and therefore I'm not going to rock the boat. And I mean, in the book, you do touch on this because you say people have historically described you as nice. I mean, I can clarify, I've met you a million times and you are the loveliest person.

6:27But actually, is that enough? Like, do you feel represented by simply being called nice? I don't look at that as something that makes me happy. I look at that and I think, actually, if you know me, yeah, I'm not an arsehole. like in our industry I'm always polite to people I don't believe you can be doing it for as long as we've done it if you're not a good person if you're not easy to work with there's always someone chomping at the bit to take your place so am I a nice person to work with or to am I good mate am I there for you 100 % but the bits I feel have always gone unnoticed is my ambition my drive to keep on bettering myself and doing well to get up every time the chips have been down and believe you me over the last few years I have taken a full whack of abuse but you know what I could have just carried on sort of been in the corner and I was like I'm just not going to stand for this I am going to carry on doing what I love and that might hit me in the face I don't know but I am going to keep on going you know and be unapologetic for actually this is what I love to do and this is what I've spent 30 years doing and I just want to carry on growing yeah whether that be as an artist a mom a woman a partner you know whatever that that may be I just want to keep on learning from everything being a better person and yeah just enjoying it to the max as much as I can yeah I mean you're so right because it's no one human is one thing and I think using the word nice is so reductive in terms of like look at all the complexities that make up this human and who they are rather than oh she's nice and that just being the passing comment and not looking beneath at everything that's not only gotten you to where you're at but also is driving you forward and I think again reading I didn't know so much about your earlier years but that sort of resilience that seems completely embedded in who you are and I'm sure a lot of that comes from your mum who I didn't know this until I read your book she had you at 23 you were living in a mum and baby home for the first year of your life.

8:33That's not easy stuff. And I'm sure you can look back at your mum and your relationship as mum and daughter at that time and think, fucking hell, how did she get through all that? I mean, first of all, I think the nice comment, I think I've played a part in that because I think I always remember an interviewer saying to me once that when they interview me, I say so much but say nothing. So I think just so guarded, so kind of... But that's protection, isn't it? You're protecting yourself. I think I just give them what I feel they need to have. And I don't actually really let people in. I think I'm like that actually in life with people as well with getting to know new people.

9:08It just takes me a while. But yeah, seeing my mum, my mum fought for everything, like single parent, really young, mother and baby home. I didn't know my dad. So those early years were purely about fighting for everything. Like, we had nothing. And I saw her always managed to do her best for me. you know whether it be my singing and dancing class I mean she took me to elocution lessons like I mean what was yeah I mean I lived in Lewisham and she's taken me to the town hall to do elocution lessons because she just said I want you to grow up being able to converse and be confident in who you're talking to so I owe her a great deal actually like I really do because I think she could have so easily have just let me just ponder into anything but it was really her selflessness of financially putting whatever she could have into me and kind of just giving me opportunities and it's so interesting how almost by osmosis you're you're picking up all of that stuff as a kid like my mum doesn't give up my mum always tries to look for a new path or my mum will never take no for an answer and she's not imagining even saying this stuff to you but it's just you're seeing it and then that becomes you know that informs who you are as a person your book starts with a text from your mum which I really loved I've been thinking about it a lot this text says the world is not ready for free women horribly true what does freedom mean to you or what does it mean to your mum what did you take from that text I think what I took from it was that I am very as you know authentically myself I say when I feel something I say when something's not good enough I think that we've got into a real habitual and sort of groomed as girls and women to make ourselves smaller and our needs less significant and I don't do that and I think that quite a lot of men find that difficult to handle and quite a lot of people find that difficult to handle also women because a lot of women will resent me for being so like brazen about it because maybe they feel they can't why does she talk about her piles on national television there's a bit about that I like that like it's just so vulgar and it's like it's because you're I interpret that as like you're kind of upset that I'm sort of owning my truth and I also feel that maybe at times men have this sort of fragile egos that we're all kind of groomed and taught to kind of tiptoe around on eggshells like no it's okay that you lasted two minutes in the bedroom That's okay.

12:09And didn't offer to like make me climax. It's not okay. And I will say it. And then people are like, this is the freedom. This is the freedom that my mum's talking about. The world's not ready for it. Everyone's like scared. I meet people and they either want to conquer me, tame the beast, or they run away because it's difficult to look in the mirror and like it talk back to you. But I think it's so brilliant that you... So I'm lonely. No, you're not at all. I'm here with you, babe. I love it because you're able to mitigate judgment, I'm sure not entirely, but to a degree because you can see that anyone who's trying to say anything to you or counter a point you're making or to quiet you, it's nothing to do with you it's very much the other person's projection of what they're not saying what they're not doing and it's how the whole world operates as we know I mean you you end the chapter which is named running with something that made me feel quite sad and I don't know if it's because maybe I'm misinterpreting it but you put at the end don't make the mistakes I did do you genuinely think that you like are you taking a responsibility for that or that you made them mistakes or do you not just see it as in everyone's life there are circumstances and things come and things go and it's just the way it is it felt like you put a lot of blame on yourself I feel like uh that's like part of being like of the personality type that's like high achiever I think high achievers are always trying to strive to be the best they care so much about whatever and thinks about them they're like preoccupied with being seen as being everything like kind funny successful you know independent all of this stuff is like about taking all the responsibility and so it manifests in different areas of your life so when I talk about you know feeling hyper responsible for my own success it's the same as feeling hyper responsible for my relationships but I also think that like one way that I'm starting to consider recently that I need to be hyper responsible for is actually hyper responsible for myself in the sense of like caring for myself because I'm not very good at it and I don't really know like a friend said it to me the other day I'm gonna she said she said I'm busy at the moment but I want a monologue to you about self-love and I was like I don't even know what that means because it's like this idea that you're so sacrificial and this kind of like feminine martyrdom there's a chapter in there about martyrdom um it's just very difficult to sort of navigate but when but I also am very aware that like in the sort of psychological realm you can't sit and talk to your therapist about what other people have done and analyze them you can only really talk about yourself and how you've acted so I've got that kind of inbuilt in me I can only work on me and my mistakes aren't necessarily that I failed they're also my mistakes I acknowledge that maybe my choices weren't right that maybe I was like completely and utterly preoccupied with this idea of like romance and love and went for that and didn't think about the person being able to like have a successful long-term relationship with me that was able to kind of ebb and flow with time and our different changes I think when you first meet anyone you're always right for each other in that moment but I think what happened to me and mine without going into excessive detail is that the moment I became a mother I changed and I needed someone to change with me and they wouldn't because they wanted to have the same dynamic with me which was always from me a very nurturing parental role and then I had kids and I didn't want to and I and I didn't just have that within my relationship I had that with other relatives and I had it with friends as well that had always been sort of reliant on me to be a maternal role in their life.

16:50And I had a lot of people have some outbursts about it. How are you with guilt? Because I think this is still, it's a very obvious subject, but I think it is still something that most, maybe parents, but certainly mums feel when they, especially weirdly when they really like the thing they're doing whether it's work or something that is recreational going out with mates having a nice time the guilt of choosing that over being with your kid is still this kind of maybe ancestral hangover that we feel so torn apart by it that we then stop enjoying the job or the thing that we're doing because we feel so wracked with guilt how do you manage that yeah I think I think subconsciously when I started my podcast which you very kindly were my first guest for which I loved so so patient with me um I think I subconsciously did start you know when you do something and you don't know exactly what you're getting out of a project part of the podcast conversation is about was about helping me have permission because I think I was finding the guilt just too much sometimes and I realized that I had been speaking about my work in a way that minimized it in front of everybody in the house I was quite dismissive I didn't give it much status I'd say I've got to run off and do this thing and I don't really want to be gone and of course I'll be missing you and oh I just have to go and I'll be quick back as quick as possible and I just was giving I was making it very small and nobody was it was not helping with the conversation in the house because I'd made work a thing that was a bit small so the kids could say to me why are you doing that or and it would get it would be huge because I think yes you're right why why am I I've got a choice to make I could be here and then after empowering it a bit more I gave it a bit more it got a bit more respect and then they stopped asking me as much how interesting yeah because I'd say yes I've got to go away but I've it's important to me I do these things and I'm really fortunate that I've been booked to do these things because there's so many people out there that do my job and they've asked me to do it and I really want to do it and I want to do it well so I'm going to go and do it and I'll be back before you know it.

18:55I keep myself available. I think that's the thing. As they get older, it's easier. So especially for the older kids, they've got phones if they're at secondary school. So my 12-year-old, I don't think I've missed a school run no matter where I am in the world. I'll FaceTime him when he goes in, even if it's like 3 a.m. for me wherever I am, just because I know he needs that from me and that's okay. It makes me feel better if I know he's feeling good. But other part is I think I've just prioritized it better because I've stopped talking it down, actually. Yeah, but how interesting that your tone then informs how they're reacting to it.

19:30Because I think we assume it's this inherent thing that as soon as we're gone, everything falls to shit. Whereas actually, a lot of the time, they're fine. They're so fine. They don't even know you're not there. And if they need you, like you say, you're available, you're around. I felt quite excited that there's communities like that who are just using music in a way that it's not about selling something, you know. yeah and it's healing i think it's really therapeutic we like me and the team were just in the kitchen talking about that exact thing that don't have to be a brilliant singer but singing with other people if it's in a choir it might have been church back in the day or now at a gig singing as a collective it does something to you like on a cellular level so i can't imagine like for someone like you who has this gift and this voice that is next level that must feel incredible to do that.

20:18It really does. I mean, using the vibrations of your voice, I'm sure something's happening. And there's studies now about the vagus nerve that we're all learning about that show that that releases stress. And I know you've been doing a lot of things like that. Yeah. My throat is something I think about a lot. It's about, God, what year are we in now? Four or five years ago, I had a massive cyst on my vocal cords. Really? Yeah. It was, I had no clue, but I literally couldn't speak, which which is obviously quite a nightmare because that's literally all I do. And so I went to the doctor and I had this sort of pee on my vocal cords and I was meant to have an operation and I kind of got really stuck into looking at, right, well, what does this actually mean though?

20:59You know, what am I not saying? Why am I not using this part of my body properly? You know, like I was really became obsessed by that. So I know I think like a lot of people, it does, the body keeps the score. I think I was not saying a lot of stuff. And anyway, cut long story short, I went to go and have the operation, went for a pre-op checkup and it's gone. It just dispersed naturally. So I have to watch this. And I'm sure you do. Obviously, it's what you do. You're using that part of your body all the time, but you've got to use it wisely. Yeah, I have an amazing vocal coach and he really, he's always been like that as well.

21:37That thing of like, what are you not saying? and a lot of trauma is stored in your voice. And it's kind of amazing when you start doing, even like doing vocal runs and stuff, it kind of releases a lot of that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's all that tension where words get stuck. So how did you release it? Did you do body work? No, I literally started saying stuff. It was that simple. And it was really tiny things. I would be in the back of a cab and say it was too cold. I would be too worried about saying, oh, do you mind turning the AC off? I'd feel so mortified. So I'd just sit there shivering. It was silly stuff like that.

22:12So I started testing myself to go, oh, do you mind if you turn the AC off and just feeling it and going with it? And then slightly bigger examples. Yeah. And then trying to do it in my personal life a bit more. And it's been a slow, long road. But it's definitely done something. I had like a word for myself. You know, like sometimes at the beginning of the year you have a word. And the word for myself for this year was really interesting that kind of came to me. But it was, you know, like how we put this thing of long suffering. it's like almost like a that person's so long suffering have you ever heard that term like it's kind of like this put on a pedestal thing that they're very patient and I actually um the word for myself was long suffering no longer yes you know because it's actually not good to just suffer through those things no yeah it affects you in other ways oh my god hugely yeah like you say the body keeps score it's all in there yeah it's all in there relate to that how do you feel about this new I'm imagining liberating autonomy that artists like yourself have where you know back in the day we're the same age and I remember you and your brother both starting out and I was on probably top of the pops at the time radio one so I clearly remember you both exploding onto the scene but then in the early noughties the power was purely in the hands of the label yeah also the radio stations you know unless you had a radio station committed to playing you and a label that were going to back you you weren't going anywhere whereas now with tiktok and social media and how artists have a bit more freedom i feel like the power has shifted back into the audience's hands they're choosing what they like have you noticed that shift i think that's a really exciting thing about where we're at right now because um you can get that direct feedback and people are much more more involved and you can connect with people more like we used to have to approve photos like we couldn't post photos of ourselves like you'd have to have like 20 people go oh is this a good photo i remember like there was one photo we're going to use as a single cover and all that everyone was like all the people who worked in the office were girls except one man and they were like oh i think she looks really great and there's one man in the room and they were like come and see this um they were like doesn't she look great he's like the boobs are a bit small wow yeah and they're all we all looked at him and were like excuse me yeah you know um But that was so commonplace.

24:27Yeah, I was like, I'm in the room. I like my boobs. I'm sort of shocked, but not shocked. Because like, A, it's gross. But B, I've so been there. And that was so commonplace back in the early noughties. It was. People would talk about it. And also people... And talk about when you're in the room. When you're in the room. Like you're not there. Like her, look at her, look at that. Horrendous. Yeah, it's weird. Do you think that's impacted who you are today and how you are today? I had to get over that a little bit. That's why it took me a while to kind of get into the social media thing. Because it was almost like a hurdle I had to get past.

24:54because you kind of get told something enough times and you kind of go and, you know, you stay, you're like, no, that's their job and this is mine. It's definitely become more like we all have to be photographers now. Like we all have to kind of, you know, the hard part of that, you don't have like the same kind of, you can't blame anyone when it goes wrong, you know? Yeah, that was me. Yeah, like if everyone's telling you what to do, then you can say, well, that was the label's fault, you know, but you kind of have to figure it out. And I think if you see it as a game, but it's just like, I think kids do social media so much better not kids because we don't want them on there but like young people do it so much better because they're not afraid of mistakes um and because it's a game it's like oh it's kind of like a video game yeah the market's uncertain revenues tied and hiring on hold that's why results driven companies are using upwork to keep work moving go to upwork.com today and start hiring proven freelance talent fast.

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27:44It really started with a friend who had her abdomen tattooed. It was the most beautiful tattoo. And she was saying that she's one of these women that basically always had an effortless six pack. Just for the record, I'm not that person. She is. it was and she to the point that she used to think what are all these other chicks complaining about like what's the deal you know you just do a couple of sit-ups every now and then and she had a child and bounced straight back but then she had twins and then for the first time in her life the way she described it she wasn't that happy about the way her stomach looked and then she started thinking as I think we all do about well maybe I could get a nip and a tuck and a procedure or some liposuction.

28:32And it really surprised me because she I see her as quite a radical, self-loving feminist. And it really surprised me that she would even think about doing something like that. But instead, she decided to have her stomach tattooed with a pattern that channeled her heritage, her African ancestry, and turn it into a kind of place of worship and joy, instead of trying to change it, like really embrace what it is and adorn it in a way that that made her fall in love with it again. And I just thought that was such a beautiful idea. And it made me think more deeply about my attitudes towards skin, bodies, tattoos.

29:10And my family, my mum's family comes from Ghana. And Ghana was colonized by the British. I would say my family were quite early and enthusiastic adopters of colonialism. They were converted to Christianity in the 1700s, which is really early. and as a result I think I have been conditioned with some of these quite Victorian Christian ideas about purity and virginity and holiness and I always disliked tattoos and I thought it was quite an original thing I just like clear skin I just like really pure skin and when I had this conversation with my friend and saw how beautiful her tattoo was it made me question that and think why do I associate tattoos with something so negative?

29:57When I started to research tattoos I realised that millennia of women in my family tattooed and used scarification to adorn their bodies. It was a way of celebrating ageing, marking rites of passage, just adorning yourself with the reality of being on this earth, surviving, serving your community, finding your purpose, delivering children, healing other people, whatever it is your skill was. There were ways that in actually all indigenous societies share this in common. It's incredible how much continuity there is. If you go to the Arctic or the Amazon, Middle East, Africa, Asia, all of these societies have quite similar traditions, especially where women would adorn themselves with scars or tattoos as a way of really celebrating their body.

30:41And I just had this epiphany, right, where I realized I thought it was completely normal for a woman my age to go and have a surgical procedure done, go under a general anesthetic have some man probably cut her open with a knife but I thought it was kind of barbaric to have these kind of adornments scars tattoos things that generations of my ancestors did and it really landed that I had this very colonized mindset the thing that's very natural and celebrates your existence and your belonging I thought was taboo and the thing that is representing yourself loathing and adhering to beauty standards you didn't create I thought was completely normal and that was when it landed I was like this isn't who I am and that's when I decided that I was going to get a tattoo and I was going to try to in a way circle back to 300 years to my female ancestors before they were converted to Christianity because it was really missionaries who persuaded people in countries like Ghana that their traditional practices were bad that they were backward they were savage they were pagan that progress and civilization was behaving more like Victorian English women.

31:49And so they abandoned huge swathes of their culture, so many traditions, so much knowledge and power that has actually kept them alive and innovating for so many millennia, literally. And I just started to think about so much that had been lost. And I, in a way, this was going to be my act of reclaiming some of the lost heritage to try and find what were the practices my female ancestors did before they succumbed to these Eurocentric ideas that have actually been quite bad for us because if you have a society that worships youth the one thing that's guaranteed is that all women especially will feel bad about themselves yep because we're all gonna age so when i don't express myself when i don't set those boundaries that feeling of wanting to set that boundary that discomfort doesn't go anywhere it goes inside my body and i start to not have much respect for myself anymore.

32:45So I've started to respect more my ability to express myself, say no, wear the outfit that I want, express my opinions online more than having people like me. That doesn't mean it's not painful. That doesn't mean I don't feel that, what do they call it? Lizard brain, like your ancient brain response that doesn't want to be isolated that doesn't mean that I don't feel that but I I don't allow it anymore to dictate my behavior as much I can view it as a separate voice in my head so when you're in that moment say I know someone's left a shitty comment on your Instagram or someone in your actual life says to you something that makes you feel really awful defensive whatever yeah moment and I know that feeling so well what do you do when you're sitting with it because what we normally want to do is write that straight away like oh I'm going to take back what I said I'm going to lift that boundary I've just said or delete that Instagram video because it's all too uncomfortable how do you just sit in it so I will always I'm leaving the post up first of all in that example would be just taking a deep breath and also allowing that voice in your head to go absolutely nuts defending itself and just not acting on it I think I've just created a gap now between when I respond and when I react.

34:07I call it my inner good girl that just wants everyone to understand her, especially on social media. I'm sure you experience this. When you, like, I love people. All I want to do is help people connect to themselves. I want to help people live a more joyful life and a more authentic life. That's all I want to do. And I feel like that's also your mission as well. So when your words are misconstrued, it is the most, it's like a knife to the chest. And I just want to type back, no, please, I didn't mean that. Please see me in this way. and I just want to correct everyone's thoughts about me in their heads but that's of course that's impossible I can't even control what goes on in my own fucking head sometimes so why would I even try and go around fine-tuning and and trying to correct the reputation that everyone has of me in their head it's it's just it's like the the biggest form of psychological suffering that I've ever experienced and I think I've been through so much in my career that I actually there's almost this respect that I've gained for myself now in surviving so much of that bullshit so once you've you've experienced those those negative comments and you keep the post up or you you maybe text your mate and you vent to your mate but you don't go online you gain respect for yourself because it takes so much inner strength to stick to what you're saying and I just think also there's you have to sacrifice something so I can either go around correcting what everyone thinks about me um or i can keep my peace i can keep my peace and i was just rereading the power of now by eckhart tolle love such good book and i was rereading it last week and he said you have to admit that there is a part of you that would rather be right than be at peace and just hearing those words again it was like it's just so good because you can't you can't have cake and eat it you can either be right yeah or you can be at peace and I think the image also of letting it go part of my ego feels like I've given up part of my ego feels like I'm letting them win and you do have to just let them win you just you do just have to let people say what they want about you um because there's nothing you can do to control it the only thing that you could do is to shrink and I'm not paying that cost anymore it's it literally was eating away at my body I became physically ill I just I spent years I wasn't even going to write this book um I actually told my publishers I was so burnt out I was screaming in my pillows every single morning and just the woman who loved her life was just gone and it was really depressing I just didn't even know how I'd got there and it was a series of small steps turning away from self-expression even something as like letting people decide things for me and just being like yeah okay that's fine and over time my life hadn't taken the shape of what floss loves it had taken the shape of what everyone else around me would have me live and I lost respect for myself I lost the confidence to even express myself and the journey back from that place for me was saying a big fat no to everything I told my publishers this is this is going to sound ridiculous to anyone who's not in the book world and like loves writing books but I said to my publishers I'm not going to write a book for another two years that was a big deal for me it was like no book for two years and I stopped doing my podcast that was exhausting me as well um and I don't even know if it was the podcast to be honest I think it was an inauthenticity issue it's not that I was being fake it's that I didn't have the courage to say what I actually wanted to say I wanted to talk about cancer culture I wanted to talk even about the way I felt feminism has evolved into something I don't like anymore I don't like that it's become this moral purity Olympics where everyone just cares about being like the most woke and saying the most yeah saying the most woke thing and the way that we hurt women now with their morals and like we don't call each other horrible names about our appearance anymore because you can't get away with that we'll just say a woman's problematic and no one's going to talk to her again and I wanted to say this stuff Fern but I didn't have the courage and I didn't respect myself for not having the courage to say that stuff and that's when I was doing the podcast and all I wanted to do was say the stuff and so I had to retreat I had to come away I had to cancel everything I said to my team don't expect anything from me for two years and then I took a month off in that two years and I did nothing and in that that was just so radical for me it was it felt like giving up but replenishing something inside of me that needed to be awakened which was like this little girl that just wants to have fun I hadn't let her have fun for so long and then when I took that break off I was in Japan and I came up with the idea of living deliciously because I was observing the buildings in Japan and all of the balconies in this building were facing north so they didn't get any sun and I was like why have they just my curiosity again just I was because I wasn't doing anything I was just walking around wondering and I was like why don't these buildings why aren't they facing the sun these balconies everyone would be so much happier if they could feel the sun in the morning and then I just started journaling about it and then I wrote down all of the things that I do to turn towards joy in my life and then that became ways I like to live deliciously and then I turned that into my last podcast episode I said to my podcast team I just want to do one where it's just me and I'm going to talk and then that's going to be it and then that was my biggest episode and and then I went on this whole journey the idea for the book came and it was something that that book idea would never have come to me if I'd have just kept slogging along performing the idea of Florence Given like a fucking caricature that I thought everyone wanted from me this good girl feminist that didn't dare say anything bad about the movement because that's not what good girls do and I didn't even know that was something I had of my head it was a massive fear block we know because we've got kids they're going to make mistakes of course they are they're supposed to but that's when it's worrying if if your kid makes a mistake and repeats it and repeats it and repeats it especially if it's if it hurts them or gives them shame or embarrassment or humiliation or any of those awful things then then you have to worry it's if if you make the mistake and even if you make it again but then you move on or then you learn from it.

40:29Hooray for those mistakes. I'm not sure what you learn from success. Not very much at all. What I would say is I have seen increasingly in the last few years, people with a lot of whatever successes, you know, wealth, I don't know what it looks like, I don't ever really entirely buy it. But people who have a lot of that feeling spiritually and emotionally bereft because somehow that part of their life which looks all marvellous and seems to be all tied up means this part has been neglected so what is success and what is the point of it all i'd much rather live in a in the place i am which is lucky which is a bit awkward bit wrong bit ugly bit didn't feel right got the wrong thing got wore the wrong clothes said the wrong thing, regret that.

41:25You know, constant, fussy, difficult, awkward stuff. It is exhausting, but it's truthful. It's being a human. It's being a human. We're expecting humans to not be humans. We're expecting them to be shiny, perfect robos and walk around, everything is perfect. Life is so messy. Especially when you present it yourself. I mean, I know it's an old chestnut to blame social media, but I wish social media was full of lots of ugly, difficult, funny stuff. And there is some of that. That's what I certainly cleave towards, all that stuff. But there's also far too much of aren't I perfect in this? I went to this clever thing and I'm marvellous.

42:06You know, there's that. And I don't begrudge anybody any of that. But it's not real. But please put your other stuff on. But it's not real at all. I don't think it's even 1 % of the reality of what they're experiencing in that moment. If it's a picture of them looking perfect in an outfit or whatever it might be. and we all could go and I think many of us do oh god they've got all their shits together and their life is so perfect and I'm you know my cat's just done a massive shit and the kid's doing this and you're just sort of stressing it means nothing but we're sort of buying into it and I think that's one of the reasons the margin for error has got so small and why I was so relieved it's like reading this book is a liberation and like a relief like oh god yeah we're all doing it actually it helped me turn some moments that I would have gone oh I'm not looking at that into funny cringe because I think we also it's very important that we work out who we are you know you work out what your politics are and you do that you make mistakes doing that you know that that's kind of what college or university or those years of your life that's what I think further education is about actually essentially about that is about being a total twat, you know, sleeping with all the wrong people, getting the wrong politics, taking up the wrong hobby, voicing yourself in a certain way, wearing the wrong clothes, doing everything wrong so that you can work out who your mates are, who you are attached to, who you think is wise, who you think is clever, what you think is right or wrong.

43:37That's really what all of that timing is about. So then we have a picture of who we are. and what you've got to be careful of is that you don't get entrenched in that so that you'd never change yeah and that is a difficult thing to do because you have principles and you know my parents had principles and I know that I lived by their principles their moral compass if you like for quite a long time until I realized that some of them weren't quite what I really felt or maybe were in setting another time and we might need to adjust. We're not meant to have it all sorted and have it all together. It's just, it's a complete fallacy and we just need to try our best every day to be accepting of all the flaws and crap going on in our heads, et cetera.

44:26Oh, and it is the one thing I say constantly to anyone. I am so flawed. God, I'm flawed. But that, I'm okay with that. That is one thing that I am actually okay with. There are so many things about me that I wish I could get better at. I drink too much, this, that. You know, I party too much. But I'm very flawed and I'm okay with that. That's not even... I can try and work on certain things, but I think I'll always be flawed. No one's perfect. No, same. If I gave you a list, it would fill this book in front of me if I wrote down all the things that I know aren't great about me. But equally, at the age I'm at now, I could probably write a book with all the things that I think I can offer and that I do think are positive.

45:09And we're complex people with loads of shit going on. But I think it's really brilliant and valiant to have this conversation and to also put it into the context of, you know, these are the reasons that you have self-doubt and these are the reasons that you sometimes lack self-worth. and it's accentuated greatly by this really ungoverned world of social media where you're receiving all of these unsolicited pictures and videos and dialogue and we need to look at the systems in place and what better protection can be there for women all over the world, in the public eye and not. This is happening to young school kids.

45:49As you said, this is for everyone. And to really ensure that women can walk around feeling safer at the end of the day. Definitely. And the fact that it gets put to the back of the pile at Parliament and things like that, you just go, hang on, our safety is not up for debate. It's not something that you can be intransigent about. It's like our safety is paramount, is it not? And it's still something that we have to fight for every day. And it will continue to be a fight. But where we start with it and where I'm starting personally with it is just not being afraid to be me and going, I'm still going to have blonde hair.

46:24I'm still going to put bikini pictures up in summer. Oh, you wait in the summer. I can't wait. I am going to put up the most... You know, I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to get myself in shape. You don't need to do any of that. Oh, thanks. Just put your bikini pics up. I quite like my wobbly bits nowadays. I'm all right with those. But yeah, and it's for me. I can honestly say for the first time in my life, I'm doing everything for me. Good. I'm on my own. Got my dog. I've got my work. I've got my family, my friends. Yeah, I'm dating here and there. My life is brilliant. And I really am trying to refuse to let this behaviour affect my life anymore and make me change who I am as a person.

47:07I can't do that anymore. I'm only going to be who I'm going to be. I can dye my hair brown for a bit. I could get a boob reduction, whatever. But I can't really stop being me. It's also brought a lot of amazing things to my life, being me. My mates like me. My mum thinks I'm great. my dog loves me yeah i i'm very lucky to be me i sometimes feel just keep being you yeah bloody love emily i love emily so much just keep being you that's the act of rebellion in a world that's constantly trying to prod and poke you into a different mold isn't it i love it i think this stuff's scary look as i said at the start of this i was people pleasing and trying to be liked for years and years i mean part of me still desperately is but what i want you to know is it doesn't feel comfortable or necessarily easy to just start changing your ways and saying no and setting boundaries.

48:02It's not about feeling comfortable. It's about doing it and standing the discomfort, I believe. And I think with time and practice, you then start to feel a bit less uncomfortable. That is what I'm going through at the moment. Do you recognise yourself in any of the women in today's show? I'd love to know. Let's chat about it. Let's chat about these little acts of disruption on Instagram during the week. We're at Happy Place Official. I'm going to be back here really soon. In the meantime, a massive thanks again to all the women whose voices you heard today. There'll be links to their full episodes in the show notes.

48:37Also, a big thanks to the producer Anushka Tate at Happy Place Studios and to you. Keep ruffling feathers, gang.

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