‘Call Her Daddy,’ ‘Euphoria,’ and the New Template for Girlhood

13:24Suzy Weiss:Yeah.

13:24Freya India:Who sort of pioneered this. What was your interaction with the Kardashian family? Were they big for you?

13:30Suzy Weiss:So I never watched the show, but you just could not escape them. Of course. So they kind of peaked right as Instagram first peaked. And so I remember actually the Instagram algorithm changed. So when I first got on, it would be chronological. So you see posts from your friends and family in the order that they're posted. And then they changed it to your preferences. So basically, anything you linger over or save or look at twice, basically any insecurity or vulnerability you have, essentially, any emotional reaction you have to something, you'll then get suggested more similar content. And so the Kardashians would just appear on my feed, even though I didn't follow them.

14:14Suzy Weiss:suddenly I couldn't escape especially that face the sort of Kardashian face.

14:19Freya India:Describe it.

14:20Suzy Weiss:It's like it's like a face-tuned face. It's every feature is perfect so perfect lips perfect contoured cheekbones tan skin white teeth everything is just like an avatar kind of inanimate but when I was growing up that was sort of the only beauty ideal and so you look at the home page of like a 13 year girl's Instagram. And it's just that face, copy and pasted onto so many different women. And when you're 13, you're then comparing yourself to this impossible ideal and body. I think it's changed now. I think there are all different types of ideals that girls are striving for.

14:58Freya India:This is an amazing line in your book. You wrote, the very thing hurting me became my lifeline. So this thing that you're describing warped your sense of reality, warped what you yourself felt you should look like became your lifeline. And I think a lot of people can relate to that. So talk to me about what that looked like at the time.

15:18Suzy Weiss:Yeah, I think it's looking back, it's a vicious cycle because the more time you spend on social media, if you grow up on social media, you get accustomed to that and comfortable with it. And so I was quite shy as a young girl. And so social media was so tempting for me because you could simulate and replace friendships and going out with people. If all your friends are at sleepover without you, you can just watch influencers on YouTube. And have a sleepover with them. Yeah, kind of numb that loneliness and that pain. And so I think for me as a shy, anxious girl, I would then be drawn to social media to fill that void.

15:55Suzy Weiss:But then it's a vicious cycle. Then the more time you spend on social media, the more terrifying live in-person interactions are. And I think that explains a lot of the social anxiety for my generation is that we actually grew up socializing more on the internet than we did in real life. And it sort of sated that thing.

16:16Freya India:It sated interacting with someone or hearing a naughty story at a sleepover. So you didn't actually have to go do the thing and experience all of the uncomfortable, awkward, potentially scary parts of being out in the world or going to a sleepover for the first time.

16:31Suzy Weiss:Yeah. And in the book, I actually talk about the simulations that we had. And it's not just subtle, it was explicit. So I talk about influencers who they create videos where they're basically simulating friendship with you.

16:45Freya India:And so

16:45Suzy Weiss:I used to watch loads of Get Ready With Me videos. And they are essentially girls parasocially acting out, getting ready to go out together.

16:54Freya India:I feel embarrassed. I watch them too. Yeah.

16:56Suzy Weiss:But it's now even they'll have titles where they say stuff like, oh, get ready with me. Like we're in the same room, like we're best friends. And that's what they're using as a selling point. And I think because they know girls are lonely and anxious, and this is what they want. They essentially want a simulation. And I think some older generations think that all of these apps can be a supplement to sort of thriving social life. But I think if you haven't known the real thing, they're not a supplement, they become a substitute. It's like you're on methadone,

17:27Freya India:but you were never on heroin a little bit.

17:29Suzy Weiss:Yeah, you don't know what you're simulating in the first place. The funny thing is, is I was not actually drawn to social media. My personality just doesn't suit it. I'm too shy and insecure, definitely, at the time. But that's what really struck me, is that I was addicted to it, even though it's not really suited to my personality. Right. I didn't really use it that much. And yet every event I went to, I'd have this feeling in my head, need to get a picture, need to get a picture the whole time, to the point where the purpose of going was to get the Instagram picture. And so I think if I was feeling it that strongly, despite - And you're not even that good at it.

18:07Suzy Weiss:I'm not. And I didn't enjoy it. Whereas I have friends who enjoy it so much, but I think the pressure for them must be so intense if it was intense for me and I wasn't really posting that often.

18:19Freya India:And you weren't trying to make a career out of it. No.

18:21Suzy Weiss:Yeah.

18:22Freya India:There's a shift that I just is so endlessly interesting to me. And it's what happens or an example of it, I think, is when makeup and filters and even face tuning becomes framed as self-care. And you cite one influencer who said, and this is absolutely hilarious, face tuning is like therapy for me. And it's sort of this, it's like a permission structure that's held up with therapy speak. And, you know, I could list the phrases, protecting your peace, honoring your boundaries, that sort of reframe, I would put a lot of them as either indulgences or antisocial behavior as taking care of ourselves.

19:00Suzy Weiss:Yeah.

19:00Freya India:How did that happen? Yeah.

19:02Suzy Weiss:So I've become so skeptical of all of this therapy speak, mostly because it was used, as you say, to describe behaviors that seem so harmful and so obviously detrimental to your mental health. So influencers would say, yeah, it's therapeutic to edit yourself. Even it's good for your emotional well-being to get cosmetic surgery. I mean, some of the quotes in the book are crazy. And I think what it was, was just a marketing strategy. And I say this over and over in different chapters, that all of this messaging that seemed like it was for our benefit, actually was just trying to sell us something.

19:40Suzy Weiss:So self-love was selling us editing apps or beauty products, or like I say, boob jobs and cosmetic surgery. And the same with a lot of the mental health awareness. I look back now and I think that was the pressure to open up and post about your feelings was really just pressure to share your data with these companies and keep using the apps. And then also more explicitly to sell you online therapy companies or even medication.

20:06Freya India:It's so dark and it's so real. The idea that a cosmetic procedure might be empowering.

20:16Suzy Weiss:Yeah.

20:17Freya India:Or, you know, you see a lot of videos of influencers where at the end they just go, I just feel so beautiful and confident. And it's like, that's really interesting. It's like, there can't just be, you know, I spend an hour getting ready because, you know, this is my job. What's the, where do you see the risk in people framing their own lives in terms of these journeys of self-discovery through therapy?

20:43Suzy Weiss:Well, I think it goes back to turning your life into episodes because you need a new storyline all the time. I always say to people, you know, if you're going to share something private online, you're going to have to update people at some point. So if you share your relationship, that might seem like a great thing to do. But if you break up, people are going to ask. what happened yeah and i think it's the same with opening up about your mental health so one aspect of it is you might regret doing that because you might change so if you tell everybody at 15 that you're socially anxious and you post it all over the internet um you might not want that there when you're 25 you might not be socially anxious anymore and so i just think there's very bad incentives with these social media platforms where you you almost have to stick with the identity that you've already performed and marketed.

21:36Suzy Weiss:And it's very hard to then move on.

21:39Freya India:Do you think that women say

21:42Suzy Weiss:that they are doing a cosmetic surgery and really they'll just say whatever they need to,

21:50Freya India:this is going to boost my confidence. I've always been so self-conscious of this in order to get the shortcut to beauty and never do the thing of, you know, accepting yourself.

21:58Suzy Weiss:Yes. I think this is why we have a generation who they're so loud about self-love and body positivity.

22:06Freya India:Yeah.

22:06Suzy Weiss:And yet all the data shows that we're very insecure. Right. Gen Z women are driving the rise in cosmetic surgeries. And you go on anti-aging TikTok, and it's all young women. It's like women in their sometimes late teens who are obsessing over aging. And so that's why I just never believe, you know, this has made me feel confident. This is self-love. Because I think really it's just an endless cycle. You'll never be pleased with yourself if you keep buying fixes to things. And I think sometimes the beauty influencers themselves, as you said, they sort of know that it's detrimental to promote, say, getting a boob job.

22:43Suzy Weiss:And so this language is very useful for them to sell it to their audience as, you know, this was part of my mental health journey.

22:50Freya India:Right. It's not, don't you want to look like me? It's, I was really anxious about that thing you're also anxious about, and I made something to fix it, and you should buy it. And that's where I think we get to the Kylie Jenner lip challenge. Can you explain what that is?

23:04Suzy Weiss:So this was, it was a long time ago now, I think 2015 or around then, and young girls would put shot glasses on their lips and suck in to make their lips look bigger. But you had girls, like getting serious bruising, having to go to the doctor. I think they had to issue like a media statement saying do not do this and Kylie had to step in and say I'm not encouraging this right um but it was so it's hard to get across how intense that feeling was that we all needed this same face um and that Kylie had the perfect face and so yeah girls would look at her and also the problem was she kept denying she didn't have she had lip filler and so girls would try and copy this thinking she had the perfect natural face which she didn't but i do think it's changed now but now we have all of these other beauty ideals that are just as extreme so now i would say the main thing is aging anti-aging yeah you see girls who are as young as 13 14 online on these reddit forums where they are obsessing over getting older and zooming in on potential wrinkles and talking about applying sun cream like every hour yeah there's a lot of

24:19Freya India:like skin serums and stuff for children. Yeah. Like skincare lines for kids.

24:25Suzy Weiss:Yeah. And so I think it's not really died down. It's just changed into a new extreme now.

24:32Freya India:And we're talking a lot about faces, but there's also the body. What is the Freya India House view on Ozempic?

24:39Suzy Weiss:Well, I mean, I look at some of the celebrities now and they're so skinny.

24:44Freya India:Yeah.

24:45Suzy Weiss:and people almost the media won't comment on how skinny they are they'll just pretend that I don't who was that person the other day and they said she was toned Demi Moore yeah she looked terrified so so thin yeah and so I do worry it will be a similar thing where we'll lurch to another extreme so I think that this is just what social media does so if you have a trend that goes all the way one way, the backlash will tend to go all the way the other way and will never really settle.

25:16Freya India:So is the ozempic the backlash or the initial thing?

25:19Suzy Weiss:I think it's the backlash. So we had backlash to body positivity. Yeah. Okay. So that went so far extreme, where we had to say that being morbidly obese was healthy and empowering. Healthy of any size. Yeah. Never forget. And maybe now we're going to swing the other way where we do the same with very skinny unhealthy bodies I just think it's really hard on social media to stay in the middle because of algorithms because algorithms need to drag you toward ever escalating content and so you might start thinking you want to be slightly slimmer and then you start getting recommended celebrities who are extremely thin and then you get ads for ozambic and it just goes on and on and so I just think these beauty trends just morph into the next thing but it's always just is extreme.

26:07Freya India:And do the algorithms want to drag you to something extreme because they want eventually to sell you something and that's sort of the avenue to get you there is to... I think it's more that if you, whatever you linger over, you'll see more of.

26:21Suzy Weiss:And unfortunately now there's just so much competition that basically these influencers and companies have to compete with one another. So the amount of beauty influences now, the way to get someone's attention is to be more extreme so if you have you watch a video about anti-aging and it just says apply two products it's not that interesting whereas if you see a 50-step anti-aging routine and the sign says 50 step and she's got like a sheet mask on and a laser therapy and all of these things you're going to click that because it's interesting and so unfortunately i think the algorithms reward what's entertaining right and what immediately grabs your attention makes you feel curious or insecure.

27:04Suzy Weiss:And so I don't even think it's that intentional. I just think it's the way the nature of the platforms are that you'll be dragged toward the inevitable extreme of whatever you're interested in.

27:15Freya India:There's also like a really horrible porn sort of parallel, which is that people need more and more extreme things to get off on because they get sort of bored by it. And you even see on YouTube, you know, the Mr. Beastification of YouTube, a$5 ,000 plane ticket and a million dollar plane ticket. I know which one I'm clicking on.

27:34Suzy Weiss:Yeah.

27:35Freya India:And it kind of drags you into like this death spiral of sensationalism, really.

27:41Suzy Weiss:Yeah. And that's what I wanted to say in the book is I think sometimes a parent will say to me, you know, my daughter would never look at porn or she would never worry about aging. But I try to say that whatever vulnerability she has, there is a rabbit hole she can go down. So she might get really worried about aging, or she might get really worried, say, about her mental health, go down the rabbit hole of thinking she's autistic or thinking she's ADHD, and then ending up thinking she needs medication. And so there's all these different rabbit holes you can fall into based on your personality and your insecurities.

28:16Freya India:You wrote a piece for us called Nobody Has a Personality Anymore, which was such a banger. It talked about how quarks have been kind of transfigured into symptoms. Yeah. And you watch a TikTok about a girl who posted that she realized having a song stuck in her head isn't normal. It's actually a sign of autism or perhaps ADHD. And there's trends like being hotistic, neuro-spicy, neuro-sparkly. There's a doctor who started a trend called post your pill. Talk to me about the right. Talk to me about why does no one have a personality anymore? Let's start there.

28:49Suzy Weiss:Okay. I actually think it mirrors the beauty trends. All of these trends where basically everything expands until nothing is normal. And so when I talk about the 2010s, a lot of the mental health content online was pretty useful and helpful. You know, I'd never heard of a panic attack or anxiety and I learned about it on YouTube basically and from influencers. But then now influencers who are opening up about their mental health, they have so much competition. So they need to be more extreme. And they also need you to relate to what they say. And so a lot of the mental health content online now, its main goal is to get girls to relate and to click and to share.

29:32Suzy Weiss:And so it's not, you know, five signs you have ADHD and they're very specific, serious symptoms. They're getting vaguer and vaguer. Right. So it will be you have ADHD because you talk a lot and because you get bored doing your homework.

29:45Freya India:Can't focus at work.

29:46Suzy Weiss:Yeah. But unfortunately, because of the amount of competition, you now have this for every disorder, which now means you have it for every different personality type. And so if you don't talk very much, you will be autistic, according to these influencers. If you talk too much, you might be ADHD. If you're worried about your relationship, you might have an attachment disorder. And I just think it has expanded because of that escalating algorithm. And because of the amount of competition and the bad incentives of these influencers to get you to click and essentially for these companies to expand their customer base.

30:25Suzy Weiss:So we have online therapy companies, we have medication companies in the US who can deliver medication to your door after you do this online, you know, quick five minute diagnosis. And so it's in their interest to convince as many girls as possible that they're They're not only struggling with something, but they're seriously sick. And then, you know, talk about some of the trends in the book. I'm just like, there's no wonder they feel anxious. We put them through all of this and then we diagnose them when they can't cope.

30:55Freya India:There's also something about outsourcing your problems. And a lot of people post online, I was so relieved when I got my diagnosis. And you have to wonder if part of the relief is that, so maybe there's a pill that can fix this thing that I've been struggling with.

31:09Suzy Weiss:Yeah. And I think that would have been really compelling to me when I was younger. When I was very shy in my teenage years, if someone had said to me, actually, I don't think you're shy. I think you have social anxiety disorder. That would have been in a weird way comforting because I would have been able to say to people, no, it's really serious. It's a step beyond shyness. This is a disorder. And that's what I worry about is I think girls, I really think girls are genuinely suffering. Yeah. So the feelings they're describing are very intense, which is why it pains me that they're then diagnosing themselves because I think they think they need a medical label to be taken seriously.

31:48Suzy Weiss:And I hope with the book that older generations can see, oh, of course, they're really struggling because this is a really difficult time to grow up. And they're having a human reaction to some of these things. And so I find it quite painful to see young girls saying, oh, I am disordered.

32:04Freya India:Will you take me seriously now?

32:05Suzy Weiss:Yeah.

32:05Freya India:That I'm very depressed or whatever it is. It's not enough to just be sad and need help.

32:09Suzy Weiss:Yeah. I think it's a desperate need to be heard and taken seriously.

32:13Freya India:Maybe not the counter argument, but an argument is that, you know, you maybe weren't invited to the sleepover and that's really sad. Isn't it better if you can connect with someone on a Reddit forum who lives halfway across the world, who's also really sad and not invited to the sleepover? Isn't there something sweet and good about connecting these sort of odd, you know, round hole in a square peg type of people?

32:37Suzy Weiss:I think there is. And this is why it's difficult to talk about these things. But the trouble is the incentives online are such a way that you do have thoughtful influences. You do have people who genuinely connect online. But I think broadly speaking, the nature of these platforms, they just don't reward that. So even Reddit forums, Reddit forums reward becoming more pessimistic, neurotic, ruminating together because it's gathering together people who have the same problems very often, worries, insecurities, and bringing them into a community. And while that sounds amazing, I talk about all these Reddit forums in the book where girls are, again, going down rabbit holes, looking inwards, being too introspective.

33:25Suzy Weiss:And so with some of these mental health communities, they talk on Reddit. And you think, oh, this is great. This is somewhere where girls who feel a bit different can join together and talk about their problems. But what ends up happening is they just convince each other that their problem is worse and worse and worse. There's no way out. You see this with transgender Reddit. communities where then if you you know want to move away if you de-transition you're isolated from the group or if you join a mental health community and you get better the incentives are to stay within that group and to keep bonding with the people there by analyzing your problems over and over and so I just think broadly speaking they're not a great place for young people to get advice and to come together, especially because as we said at the beginning, they don't know the real thing.

34:15Suzy Weiss:They don't know real community. And so it becomes a substitute.

34:19Freya India:And it could be that you seek out a place where you feel less alone and you end up getting Tourette's. And here I'm thinking of the social contagion that spread a few years back where Tourette's like symptoms. It's like sort of you shouldn't, it's hard. This is something I come up against a lot in my own reporting. I did this big story on Spoonies, people who are sort of a community of chronically ill, mostly women sufferers. And it's like this badge of honor. And what is more cruel than saying to someone who is ill, you're faking it. There's just nothing worse. And I do think they're ill. I just don't think they're ill with the thing they think they are ill with.

35:03Freya India:And then, of course, there was the case of the TikTok tics a few years back where women were claiming to get Tourette's. And it just so happened that they were picking up these tics from other influencers who had Tourette's on TikTok. Did you look into something like this stuff in the book, Social Contagion?

35:21Suzy Weiss:So I basically think that everything in the book is somewhat of a social contagion, whether it's the beauty trends, the mental health trends. any influencer that you're watching regularly just like friends you start to pick up their mannerisms yeah and something I talk about is you know everyone is worried about Instagram face that all the girls are starting to look the same because they want to replicate the Kardashians or whatever it is but I also think we have Instagram personality or TikTok personality where the influencers who have certain type of mannerisms certain way of speaking rise to the top and those are the ones that most young women are watching and seeing and then they start to develop the same personality traits they start to converge together one of the really interesting things about the book is I've spoken to young women who grew up in Australia or they grew up in America and they have the same childhood memories as me so we will talk about facetune we'll talk about influences that we watched and we really should not have the same childhood you know we grew up in such different places.

36:30Suzy Weiss:But that's because the algorithms are probably suggesting similar stuff to similar girls. And so I think that one tragedy of social media is girls not seeing their unique beauty and all starting to look the same. But I also think not seeing their unique personality and being dragged by that algorithm toward an eventual end product. And we all become much more similar and yeah, less unique and less distinctive.

36:57Freya India:The girls, you have a little trademark here because we've been productized, as you sort of posit. But part of being productized, we're being sold to other people. And then we're also, I think you called us shopping machines. So are girls really buying more than they used to?

37:16Suzy Weiss:Yeah, it's interesting because we are consumers, but we're also the thing that is being consumed at the same time. And so I talk about girls shopping more in the book, but they're shopping for things to display online. So it's part of their personal brand. So you need outfits to display on Instagram. You need makeup to look better on TikTok. It's all things to then add to your personal brand. I even talk in the book about the shift when I was younger from girls doing their makeup for a real life event to then doing their makeup for Instagram. And so sometimes people will say, oh, girls makeup looks crazy now.

37:55Suzy Weiss:It looks so exaggerated. So in the 2010s. But it looks great on camera. It looks great on camera. It's for camera. Same with cosmetic surgeries. Some of these cosmetic surgeries, these facelifts or like Botox can look a bit uncanny in real life, but they look great on camera. And I think there was a real shift when I was growing up to actually prioritizing how you look for Instagram rather than in real life. Did you go into eating disorders in this book at all? I did briefly. In the mental health chapter, it was another example of getting dragged to extremes. Right. And so I wanted to show how you could just start with a what I eat in a day TikTok.

38:37Suzy Weiss:Start watching those. And then the algorithm notices that you linger a little bit longer over videos with fewer calories. And then you start to get calorie restriction videos. And then I talk about an influencer in the book. Do you know Eugenia?

38:51Freya India:Yes, Eugenia Cooney, of course. She is. Tell the listener who Eugenia Cooney is.

38:56Suzy Weiss:So she's a Twitch influencer. So she live streams, but she looks, I don't even know how she's still alive. Yeah, she's skeletal. Yeah. And I think she's had treatment before, she's had help, but then she's come back and gotten even skinnier again. And I say in the book that fans have actually called the police because they're so worried about her well-being. She has some bad incentives now because she's known as the anorexic influencer and she has a following based around that. that just shows the it's like a very good embodiment an example of the end point of where you can get with these algorithms you know you can go from watching thinner influences to suddenly be serving served up eugenia cooney and thinking that that's inspiring and normal and healthy um and so yeah it's just another rabbit hole that girls can go down right so you're saying

39:50Freya India:there is and there will always be anorexics. But you're saying something like social media, the incentives reward them because their appearance is so extreme. And then, oh, wait, it also might encourage other women to seek out pro-ED sites or being incredibly restrictive with their diets and developing eating disorders on their own.

40:13Suzy Weiss:Yeah. There's no stopping some of these things so for previous generations of women let's say you started to want to restrict your diet and you started to develop an eating disorder you know hopefully friends and family will jump in and try and stop that and reassure you but unfortunately what happens now is girls these platforms know everything about girls and so if that starts to develop in you the algorithms will pick up on it and it can be unconscious you know it's not girls typing in eating disorder content like I said it could just be hovering over something for slightly longer and so I just wanted to show with all of these trends that it's really hard to escape them now because these apps know more about you than even you know sometimes and they can pick up on what you're you're watching slightly longer and just serve you more of it and then it's very hard for you to break out of that because your apps are basically a reflection of your inner world because it's everything you're looking at.

41:13Suzy Weiss:And so all of your insecurities and vulnerabilities are just there for you to scroll through.

41:17Freya India:Right. And then there is like sort of the social media natives eating disorder, which is orthorexia, I think it's called, which is an obsession with healthy eating. And I'm sure that can be extended to posting the acai bowl or the gorgeous salad or, you know, logging every meal for social media. And then, you know, maybe restricting yourself so you could eat a slice of pizza going out on a Friday night and post a picture of it.

41:43Suzy Weiss:I actually think that's happening with young men a lot more now. Oh yeah, bigorexia. Yeah. And the sort of hypochondria among young men where they really want to have perfect diets and optimize themselves fully. And I feel like that is the nature of the platforms is not only do they make teenage girls feel bad, but they also kind of turn us all into teenage girls because they encourage us to be so insecure and worried about how we look and to ruminate as well. And so you see these young men obsessing over how they look and how they come across. And I think that's very new for this generation and a result of the platforms themselves.

42:21Freya India:Looks maxing is?

42:22Suzy Weiss:Yeah.

42:23Freya India:It's funny that you say we all became teenage girls. And I think it's funny that Taylor Swift is sort of the patron saint of this moment. She's sort of like a perma teenage girl in a lot of ways and that she relates to a lot of girls who are feeling anxious or heartbroken or whatever it is. You brought up men, and I'd love to talk a little bit about romantic relationships between men and women. How did social media change dating etiquette and how we see each other romantically? Yeah, I think it's very different that we can learn

42:53Suzy Weiss:about relationships online before having one. And so I think for a lot of girls, the first place we learn about boys and men is online. And that could be, you know, reading some of the crazy gender discourse online before you've had a relationship where, again, the most extreme takes on the opposite sex.

43:14Freya India:You know, weigh in, I'm M54 and my wife, like those kind of Reddit posts,

43:20Suzy Weiss:like relationship advice. Yeah, there's that. And then there's also just people tweeting about men and women publishing like their hot takes. And I think the people who are the most hurt and wounded will get rewarded because they'll say the most extreme negative polarizing thing about the opposite sex and so I worry about that I worry about young women and young men learning about the men and women from algorithms basically but then also I think growing up watching porn online porn before you've even had a relationship and I think some older generations underestimate how pervasive that is i mean i underestimated it when i was writing the book i had i stumbled across this reddit forum where gen z adults were talking about where they first encountered porn and when and some of them were like six or eight and a lot of it was accidental so it wasn't them searching up porn hub it was porn coming up on their twitter or their instagram you know accidentally um and then you look at the statistics on dating and gen z adults dating far later than previous generations so you can have years and years of watching porn and reading about men and women online before you've even tried to love someone and trust someone and i think we really are intimate

44:37Freya India:with them yeah and then you have i assume a warped understanding of what sex and intimacy looks like

44:43Suzy Weiss:Yes, I think so. I think it creates, it fueled a lot of risk aversion among my generation that. Because they saw such extreme things.

44:51Freya India:Yeah.

44:52Suzy Weiss:The opposite sex is such a threat and they're so dangerous. And you see that with both men's opinion of young women and women's opinion of young men. It's so negative and it's full of contempt and fear. And I think that's from growing up online.

45:06Freya India:It's funny because I think probably like 15 years ago, there was a lot of talk about like hookup culture. And dating apps have given rise to this sort of treat people, like use them and, you know, be ultra promiscuous. And you could go on Tinder and, you know, hook up with five people in a weekend. And that narrative kind of like, like ground to a halt. And then it became all about the sex session.

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46:37Suzy Weiss:so when i first started writing the book i said oh there's this huge paradox that we had this de-stigmatization and glamorization of hookup culture and the apps made it easier and more convenient and i thought oh it's so interesting that there's this weird paradox at play where we're having less sex and less relationships but now i don't think it's a paradox at all i mean i I had to go back through some of the glamorization of hookup culture that we were growing up with. So I talk about teen vogue, teaching girls how to have anal sex, how to take nude selfies. I talk about that podcast, Call Her Daddy.

47:12Suzy Weiss:The way that the hosts would describe sex would describe men, where they would literally say to girls, I hope you know how little men think of you and that even if you're in a relationship, you're not safe. If you show any neediness or vulnerability, he's going to be terrified of you. And they would encourage girls to basically use those tactics against men. Or almost act like men. Yeah. But the worst of men, to have no remorse, be ruthless with people, and to constantly be playing this game and this strategy. And I think if you're a teenage girl and that's where you learn about sex and hooking up, that does not sound appealing.

47:53it sounds terrifying and so I think the de-stigmatization and the the glamorization

48:00Suzy Weiss:of it actually led girls to not want it and now we're seeing not only a sex recession but people just not wanting to date will be in relationships and pushing that far later than previous generations

48:12Freya India:did and you mentioned a scene in euphoria in your book about you know um describe the scene actually

48:17Suzy Weiss:Is this the one where they're having sex? Yeah. She says, what does he say? He says, he calls her a slut or something. I think he chokes her. Oh, yeah, he chokes her, yeah. And she says, please stop and, you know, only do that if I tell you, you can do that. But in between that, they sort of flash scenes of porn and they say, you know, it's so normal for all guys to be watching porn and this is where they get their expectations from. and I actually really struggled to watch Euphoria because I found it so depressing and I feel like they really wanted to capture they wanted to have a more realistic representation of Gen Z but if you're a teenager watching that and there's so many teenage girls who watch this show again it's terrifying it's the worst example of men and sex and relationships and I think the quote they use is something like you know unless you're amish you know nudes are the currency of love now and that's the messaging i grew up with that basically you have to turn yourself into a better object and that's the way to be loved is to be very promiscuous and very sexual and if you weren't you were sort of frigid or insecure um and i think that's what a lot of young women internalized and why so many of them think there's something wrong with them that maybe they have an anxiety disorder or an attachment issue because they just don't feel that way.

49:42Suzy Weiss:They don't see themselves represented by these women.

49:44Freya India:Right. It's like the sex became empowerment. So if you weren't having the promiscuous sex, did you hate yourself? Like, yeah, sort of hurts the brain. I don't know if you've seen this season of Euphoria, but there's a big OnlyFans storyline. And I'm curious what role you think OnlyFans plays in this story. I see OnlyFans as sort of end point of this commodification.

50:07Suzy Weiss:So sometimes older generations will not believe that OnlyFans is a real thing and how it's happened. But if you go back to the 2010s, it kind of makes perfect sense. If you have girls on Instagram at 13, 14, posting themselves, getting rewarded if they're slightly more sexual, you know, showing a bit more skin, you know, turning around and like having their body be the main part of the picture. And they get rewarded for that. They feel visible when they do that. And they're doing that during puberty, during really formative time and learning that that's what gets attention. and also seeing at the same time maybe crushes boys that they like, liking, following pictures of these influencers who have very sexualized bodies, who are pornified in a lot of ways.

50:59Suzy Weiss:And I think that encouraged a lot of women to, it just normalized commodifying yourself, turning yourself into a product, objectifying yourself.

51:08Freya India:It's funny, the technology provided an on-ramp, I think, where it would have been kind of hard to get into prostitution or porn or you really have to seek it out. Now it can be as easy as

51:20Suzy Weiss:starting an OnlyFans page. So I talk in the book about prostitution was not only framed as empowering and feminist and progressive, it was also framed as good for your mental health. So it was another thing that was good for your well-being. And so I talk about these you know only fan stars online who say that they have autism or adhd and that the profession has actually helped them because it's um predictable routine and they will kind of phrase it in a way that this is good for my confidence and my self-esteem and you have actual prostitutes on tiktok who will count out the cash that they've got and describe the experiences they've had and again talk about how it's relieved a lot of their anxiety and it's been good for them and so you add that messaging together and I think if you're an insecure teenage girl you can see how it would be appealing you know there's no stigma people are telling you that it's actually progressive and it's empowering and they're also saying it's again a sort of easy fix for insecurity and confidence issues to as you say to be adored by someone and to feel that you are this perfect object.

52:34Suzy Weiss:And so I really think we were just sold some terrible ideas. And we thought it was about our well-being, but really it was about the interests of a lot of companies.

52:46Freya India:Do you think porn should be banned?

52:48Suzy Weiss:I do, but I don't know how it would be done. So I love the idea of what we have in the UK, where we've introduced age verification. So you have to upload ID. But then that leads to a lot of other consequences. I think there was an article in the Free Press about this where substacks would get blocked because every adult had to upload ID. And so if there was a harmful substack - Upload ID to use the internet. Yeah. To read something, to look at harmful content. And so I love the idea of porn being banned, but I'm skeptical of how it would be done.

53:20Freya India:Do you feel like there should be, and I like shudder to say this because I don't think anyone should be stigmatized, but a re-stigmatization of sex work.

53:31Suzy Weiss:Yes, I do. And I think actually a re-stigmatization of porn because I don't think it's that stigmatized in the sense of when I was growing up, the main feeling I felt about it was almost being gaslit where it was, again, you are the problem if you struggle with it. If you don't like the idea of a partner watching porn, you are insecure, you're controlling, it's an issue with you. And I feel like that messaging was so drilled into young women where they feel like they don't even have the language to object to it and say why it hurts them. And so I think we need to have, to encourage girls to be able to use their words and actually say, no, this does affect me.

54:11Suzy Weiss:And it doesn't make you a weaker person for saying that. I think it's quite strong and brave.

54:16Freya India:Should women tell their boyfriends, you're not allowed to watch porn?

54:19Suzy Weiss:I think so. I think, you know, we should all have higher standards for ourselves. So I think there's so many things that girls and young women should do in terms of social media addiction. You know, I talk in the book about girls getting their boyfriends to take pictures of them constantly and having them follow them around, get on the floor and take better angles of them. So there's plenty of behaviors that girls and young women are doing that I think are detrimental and we should have higher standards for ourselves. And I think the same with young men. I think there's so many things that seem normal because everyone's doing them now.

54:52But we can actually do better and expect better of ourselves.

54:56Suzy Weiss:But I'm actually so optimistic about social media. I think since writing the book, the reaction I've had from not just young women, but from young men who really, really want to change and not want to raise their children like this. I almost think we won't need as much legislative action as people think. I think there's going to be like a revolution of individual choice definitely I think we'll parent differently I think there'll be yeah a stigmatization of some of the things that were so normal for my generation I think it will seem crazy that a girl could be on Instagram at 13 right um some of the things I talk about from my childhood already seem crazy and and so what are you thinking of well I'm thinking of things like Omegle oh yeah of course I still go on I do didn't it get taken down well chat roulette still exists all right yeah well but But there were girls on that at like 12 sleepovers.

55:47Suzy Weiss:We would go on it. And you could basically connect with naked strangers sometimes on video. To be clear, I go on it because I'm interested.

55:55Freya India:It's anthropological.

55:56Suzy Weiss:There's not so many naked people anymore. Well, you can just talk.

55:59Freya India:Yeah, you could just talk to people. I just find it so fascinating.

56:01Suzy Weiss:Yeah, yeah. But you would have girls doing this upstairs in their bedrooms and their parents having no clue and not even having heard of the website. And I think there's so many things like that where my generation will be slightly more on the lookout for these things just because we grew up with them. And I don't think that's to blame, you know, our parents because they just didn't know. But I feel like we are much more aware of how much can be hidden and how dangerous it actually is. And so I hope that there's a shift in parenting.

56:31Freya India:Do you think that our generation, which many of our generation's parents were divorced, will be less likely to get divorced? following this logic?

56:40Suzy Weiss:I do. I think that basically we felt so bad in so many ways that we're going to now look for the opposite of what we were told and what we were sold. And so I see even more than that, even more than children of divorced parents really wanting to get married. I see children who grew up atheist really wanting to, really being curious about religion and actually this phenomenon which I think is really unique where you have girls who grew up in secular liberal households wishing they grew up in stricter religious households which I think is is very different to previous generations and I think there's going to be a backlash against not only the technology technological changes I talk about but the cultural changes I think that young people just feel so rootless and lost that they will look for what they've been simulating the whole time.

57:33Suzy Weiss:They'll look for the real thing again. Who are the villains? Who are the super villains

57:37Freya India:of the book girls? Is it Mark Zuckerberg? Is it Alex Cooper of Call Her Daddy? Who are the villains in this story?

57:45Suzy Weiss:I suppose the villains really are companies and industries. And so I think the villain we're used to is men, is this sort of vague idea of patriarchy. And I really felt growing up that was not the villain in my life it was these companies that were trying to sell me these solutions to ordinary feelings and anxieties and also magnifying them to such an extent that they were unmanageable and so companies like BetterHelp that might seem very well-intentioned but are convincing so many girls they need professional intervention and help for very basic worries and feelings. So you have those therapy companies, you have medication companies.

58:30Suzy Weiss:So I talk about companies like Cerebral, who literally sponsor influencers to make these TikToks like five signs you have ADHD, and then can put them on a path to buying medication from their website. And then companies like Pornhub, companies like Facetune, companies that are encouraging these behaviors that are very detrimental to young women, and pretty much all of them selling it as some form of empowerment and self-love and feminism. And so for me, it really is this network of industries that profit from exploiting the age-old insecurities that girls have, but driving them to such an extent that I think it's entered us in this mental health crisis.

59:17Freya India:And do you put any of the blame at the feet of the platforms themselves themselves, the Instagrams, the YouTubes.

59:23Suzy Weiss:Yeah, definitely. I think that's a huge part of it. I think that a lot of their features looking back were just designed to create anxiety and paranoia. And so a lot of them, I just think, I talk about Snapchat, for example, Snapchat had things like a Snapchat score where you get a number that goes up if you're messaging someone. And so these poor girls on Snapchat can see when a guy is messaging someone else and ignoring them. They can see where they are on the snap map. They can see when a message has been opened and read when someone's typing. They can even see where they rank among their best friends.

1:00:01Suzy Weiss:So you get this public ranking of who's the most popular. And so some of these features, I just look back and think, I can't think of any other reason for them other than creating anxiety and getting users to come back and keep checking and analyzing where they stand. Right. They were so addicting because they were needling insecurity we had. Even things as sort of innocuous as an activity status. What is the use of seeing that someone's active and they've ignored your message or they're typing? A lot of these things, I just really think they're deliberately going after those horrible feelings when you're a teenager of you don't fit in, you're being ignored.

1:00:42Suzy Weiss:Something about you is wrong. And And so I look back and think that that seems to me very deliberate. And I think that's where our anger should be. It shouldn't be toward individual people. It shouldn't be toward men. It should be toward companies that are pulling us all apart.

1:00:56Freya India:Are you a feminist?

1:00:58Suzy Weiss:I would have to have a clearer definition of it because I think for my generation, it really has become like the therapy speak words, where it just means nothing. And maybe that's really unfortunate. but I think for me growing up, it was always used to sell me something that seemed so superficial.

1:01:16Freya India:Feminism was.

1:01:17Suzy Weiss:Yeah. So it was not only that these editing apps and these cosmetic surgeries were self-love, but they were feminist. They were progressive. This was good for women. And I think it's really hollowed out the word to mean nothing. And I say in the book, I'm not an academic. I don't go into of their theories of feminism. But I try and get across, I think this is the version of feminism that my generation knows best, which is selling you something. It's consumer culture. And I wonder why the two were so compatible.

1:01:50Freya India:I wonder if you could see yourself offering a different path forward to live in a feminist way. Yeah.

1:01:57Suzy Weiss:I wonder if we can have a feminism that, if we're talking about feminism as in caring for girls and young women, because I often get described as a feminist writer. And I think that's what people mean. It's that that's my focus, how young women are feeling. And I think if there's a way to do that, that acknowledges the vulnerabilities of women, but also doesn't force them to become strong and independent to the point where they can never be human, they can never express insecurities or difficulties.

1:02:26Freya India:To become the corporation.

1:02:28Suzy Weiss:Yeah, I think we need that. And also a feminism that doesn't hate men. I mean, throughout the book I talk about, again, the two sexes being pitted against each other. And I think that's another part of the feminism I grew up with, was that you almost bonded through feminism, you bonded over how much you hated men and they were the enemy. And I think that's tainted the word as well. And so if there's a way we can reclaim it and change that messaging, I'd be all for it. It's funny.

1:02:55Freya India:I think about it more of like, it's what allows us to sit here and,

1:02:59Suzy Weiss:have a credit card and wear pants.

1:03:01Freya India:But I guess that's a much earlier incarnation.

1:03:05Suzy Weiss:I think that just shows how the book captures 2010 to now. And I think it just shows how different these terms are to my generation. So even something like therapy, therapy to my generation means a totally different thing to therapy of my mom's generation. It means online therapy. It means better help. It means texting a therapist. I think a lot of these terms, we have so much confusion over and conflict between generations because we literally mean completely different things.

1:03:35Freya India:You said you started this project because you wanted an explanation for your own feelings that you were having, your big feelings, your sense that maybe girls hadn't changed that much, but the world around them had.

1:03:47Suzy Weiss:Yeah.

1:03:48Freya India:And I'm wondering if you had been changed by the research, if it's caused you to lead your life in a different way or maybe given you the answer you were seeking.

1:03:57Suzy Weiss:Definitely. I feel like I go so much easier on myself now and I think it's sometimes people think oh you know if you lay out all the problems facing girls and young women you're encouraging them to be victims and there's no accountability and it's very negative but I actually found it really a relief because I mapped it all out and then I had all of this context to explain the parts of me growing up that I really punished myself for so I looked back and thought well obviously I was socially anxious growing up on screens, growing up, you know, having my teenage years in COVID, all of these things makes total sense.

1:04:34Suzy Weiss:And obviously I feel insecure when I'm comparing myself to these influences. And I actually think hopefully by the end of the book, it's an empowering feeling because there's nothing wrong with you. And that really is the message of it is that you are probably just human. You know, if you feel insecure, if you feel lonely, if you're struggling with this world, I think that's just a human reaction to a world that's trying to turn you into a product. And so I hope that other girls feel that relief and sort of let it go, this feeling that they are disordered or broken somehow.

1:05:08Freya India:Freya and Dia, thank you for joining me.

1:05:10Suzy Weiss:Thank you so much.

1:05:13Freya India:Thanks for listening to this episode of Second Thought. If you're listening on Apple or Spotify, please give the show a follow. And if you have a second, consider leaving us a five-star rating or write us a nice review. It really helps us out. You can also get my weekly culture column by subscribing to the free press at thefp.com.