The Dark Side of Motherhood

0:00This episode is brought to you by Facebook. So you were scrolling on Marketplace and there it was, the bike you'd been searching for. You sent a message and it turned out the seller was super chatty, kind of funny, and an avid cyclist. The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew. Well, a community cycling group. The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for. From a browse to a bike ride, this summer, find more on Facebook. I love her look. I love she dresses like Mao Zedong. Laurie has some bizotti going on. The kitten heels. I like the kitten heel and I love her big hair.

0:38I think she's doing the best she can, honestly. Yeah. You want her pencil skirt? Yeah. No, she hasn't shown her legs since like 1992. Are you kidding? Oh, yeah. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Second Thought. I'm Suzy Weiss. And today I am joined by Amy Chosik, the preeminent chronicler, the bard of women we love to hate. I'm talking about the Lauren Sanchez Bezos's, the Elizabeth Holmes's, the women who run for president, and of course, Hillary Clinton, who Amy covered on the campaign trail for over 10 years. We're here to talk about all of those women, what they're really like, what's going on behind the scenes, and Amy's new novel.

1:16It's out. It's called With Friends Like You. It's twisted up and intense and high octane and sexy and also gets into sort of the banalities of becoming a new mom. It's a really interesting novel. I hope you'll pick it up. Amy, you are an interesting woman. And in part, that's because you sit down with very interesting women. We're going to cover a lot today, including, of course, your new book, your debut novel with friends like you. It's so good. But I want to start by asking this question that sort of feels like it's like almost freighted through your reporting. And that's what, what did you think of Lauren Sanchez Bezos' Met Galatress?

1:52Oh, I thought it was muted. I thought it was tasteful. I just thought like I thought she was going to be giving us a little bit more. Yeah. I mean, I know there was a backstory with the painting, but like to me, it was too subtle. It was too subtle. I know. I really wanted her. I don't know what I wanted her to wear. I thought it was a lame theme. Yeah. But I think she looks so amazing and like what she wears to Fashion Week. I just think she's so I think she should go full fur. She's one of these like women who just like loves clothes. Like she said when she was 12 in New Mexico, she'd like tape pictures of Vogel.

2:27Like she just loves fashion. And I think she's more of like a I love fashion versus like a Chloe Sevigny, like a woman who has like her own style. She's more like she loves fashion. Yeah. And she's having a lot of fun with it. Well, fun is the operative word for LSB. Yes. She's always having fun. She's very happy. She's very grateful. Why does that make people so upset? It really triggers people. I mean, like the headline of that story, like somebody has to be happy. Why not Lauren Sanchez Bezos? Was I can't take credit for that. That my editor came up with that. But I thought it was like it was so triggering.

3:03And I'm just kind of like, if you're going to be that wealthy, why? I think her perspective is like, why should I pretend to be miserable? Right. But that's just not who she is. Like, I have to say, like, for me, the fascination with that couple is less Lauren and more like how he's changed since he's been around her. Not just him, but like the whole culture. seems much more like unabashedly rich. Like she's almost pulled, you see Mark Zuckerberg Prada now. Like he used to be wearing a hoodie, driving a Camry. So I feel like she's almost pulled the whole culture into this like rich people should stop apologizing because Lauren, to her credit, has always just been Lauren.

3:38Like you couldn't, she said she was like sleeping in a garage and she was a few pounds overweight to get her dream job as a flight attendant. And she was like, I was this happy. Like she's just, when she was married to Patrick Whitesell, she was also wearing this stuff. Like she was also, you know, she's always been the same, really. Right. Now it's just like we know who she is. And she has this amazing joke, like I was one bad decision away from the stripper pole or something. Yes. She's just very. She's very self-effacing. Yes. Yeah. I think like, you know, you mentioned all these women. It's like everyone says like these controversial women.

4:10I'm like, what woman reaches that level of fame and is not controversial? Right. Like there's just no, I don't know who that is. Not even Mother Teresa. No, not even Mother Teresa. I was thinking like, okay, maybe a saint. But even in that case, you're just Christopher Hitchens being like, she's a bitch. It's so true. And I mean, to your point about it's like Mackenzie Bezos is like the wife of the 2010s and Lauren Sanchez Bezos is the wife of the 2020s. Yeah. I understand who each of them is. Yeah. I don't totally get how the same man could be wanting to marry both of them. Yeah. Right? I feel like it's like you made this incredible company.

4:46You changed the world. You're a billionaire. You're living in dreary Seattle. I don't pretend to like know what's happening inside a marriage ever. But like from the outside, I think he like she makes him like really happy. She's also a pilot. But people forget that Lauren is like she's flying around in a helicopter. Like that's kind of hot. Like I think they have fun. Kind of hot. It's extremely hot. They have so much fun. I also wonder if part of him was like there be the way of Bill Gates. Like you enter despair. Criticism of Bezos. I'm like he was not in the Epstein files. She's 56, I think.

5:20She's in her mid-50s. She's definitely age-appropriate. She's like a post-menopausal woman who's showing how to, like, have fun and, like, have the second act. And I don't really get the, you know, I mean, in the scale of criticism, it shouldn't be like you're not in the Epstein files. But, like, there's worse things than, like, finding, you know, love. Love with, like, a similarly aged woman who brings you happiness. I think also, like, people have, and this was something I found when I did a big story on the Kardashians. It was kind of the first story that took them seriously as businesswomen.

5:48people have a really hard time understanding how such a sexualized woman could also like be smart like people can't kind of process that that you could be like you can have like giant boobs and also be like really smart and I think Lauren is in that I would put her in that category but she also has a brilliance about her that's just being able to read a room being able to make someone feel comfortable like you see her in the old news um reels or like when she was a newscaster and she'll make a mistake and keep going and she's laughing with people. And that's a real skill, especially if you're the richest man in the world's wife.

6:26Totally. I think it's more important to have that skill than like a PhD in Africana studies from Brown or whatever. I think she like, and that was the great thing about shadowing her. She went to visit like kids. She read to a lot of school kids from her children's book and then I shattered her. She flew a bunch of like kids who want to get into aviation around in a helicopter. And she has this, like I said, it was almost like Kate Middleton is a Kardashian, you know? She is like very good in these retail, almost retail politics, sort of almost like a first lady role. I think it's just like very popular to hate women, especially women who look a certain way.

6:59And also like there's so much vitriol towards billionaires that's driven by inequality. I think a lot of these women I cover, the perception of them has so little to do with like who they actually are. They become a prism for like all of our feelings about powerful sexualized women and wealth. And like they become that. And Lauren's like, fair enough. Like I have this privilege. Yeah, does that penetrate her, do you think? She does. Like she's a human. Like her son had to put an app on her phone to block social media. Like she's still a human, but she also understands like with this privilege comes like I become a receptacle for how everyone feels about like wealth and women and all the things.

7:38And that's something like that's such a privilege of doing these stories because I'm like, who is the person detached from like the, you know, the cultural commentary? Like one of the stories that you didn't mention that was like kind of encapsulated this was Lorena Bobbitt. I feel like you're too young. But like when I was growing up, I was like she was the crazy feminist who cut off her husband's penis. And that's like all she was a joke. That's all we knew. Right. So I don't know, maybe 18 years ago, I spent a lot of time with her. No, he did not die. He I spent a lot of time with Lorena, who's like a mom in rural and suburban Virginia.

8:13He had been raping her their whole marriage. She would call the police and marital rape was not a crime in Virginia in the 90s. They were like, sorry, you're married. She was from Ecuador and she threatened to leave him. He was going to have her deported. She was being absolutely tortured, tortured, tortured. And then he went on to brutally assault two other women like after after the whole ordeal. He became like a celebrity and got the penis sewn back on and like did porn. And then he like held a woman, allegedly held a woman captive in a hotel room. Like he did. He went on to like and to add insult to injury.

8:48She's a laughingstock. And she is the joke. So she I spent all this time with this poor woman. And it's like, yes, you did the thing. But there were all of these circumstances that like I didn't know. We didn't know. She just became like. Yeah, you don't wake up in one morning and decide to do that. No, she became such a caricature. And so I think like the Lorena Bobbitt story really like, for instance, when I approach the Liz with home story, there was sexual assault in her past. She did get raped at Stanford. I saw the police report. She did have a 39-year-old boyfriend who said, you know, she was 19 at the time.

9:20Sweetie, move in with me. I'm going to keep you safe. Like, I'm not excusing any of the fraud or the things she was found guilty of. But, like, there were layers to that story. No question. That were not, you know, widely known. Every summer, I rediscovered that my body's preferred sleeping temperature is that of an industrial freezer. Anyone else? I was sick of flipping my pillow every five minutes, so I finally switched out my whole sleep situation for Cozy Earth, and I really don't know what I was waiting for. The rib-knit pajama set is incredible. It's best worn after a full day of sweating in muggy New York City to feel instantly refreshed.

9:52These PJs are made from viscose and bamboo and are genuinely breathable. Cozy Earth stands by everything they make. There's a lifetime warranty and 30 days of hassle-free returns if something's not right. Head to CozyEarth.com and use my code SUZY, that's S-U-Z-Y, for an exclusive 20 % off. That's code SUZY for an exclusive 20 % off. And if you see a post-purchase survey, mention that you heard about CozyEarth right here. I've like gone on the record being like, she did nothing wrong, pretty much. No one died. Well, people, okay, people are very confused about the facts with Holmes because people think she like misdiagnosed, like, she was not - No, she only gave people false positives.

10:30Yes, but she was never convicted of any of the medical misdiagnosis. She was never convicted of any of those things. So take what you will with that. But I think people aren't realizing that she's doing time for mail fraud. This is like they get you on a technicality. The thing about Holmes is she really is like she's a zealot. She really, really believes this. And sometimes you're with her and you're like, you know, you're barred from working in a lab. She really believes in her innovation in the medical space. She believes in her innovation. She believes that the medical space was like, needs to be revolutionized and that she's the person to do it.

11:06Like she really still believes this. And so she's a very interesting figure to be around because it's much less, like you said, girl boss before. She was very built up as like the Silicon Valley girl boss. But there is this kind of like, she has that messianic language of tech, but also like she is a real believer. Yeah, she's not in it for a quick buck. She's really not. have easily made in a million different ways. And when you met her, it was such an interesting time. She was about to report to jail, and she had just had her second baby. And a lot of people were speculating that she had the second baby to garner sympathy and to avoid going to jail.

11:45Where did you come down in the end on that question? I honestly just felt like it was very sad. Like, I can't speak to, like, why someone decided to have a baby or not. she was 39 and she met the love of her life and she was going to prison for seven years. So I don't know. But I can say it's just like very sad to see a woman and many mothers with less privilege than her are pulled away from there. She was still breastfeeding and having to go to prison for a very lengthy sentence. And her little one was a toddler. Like it was just like and I had a son about the same age. Like I just felt for her and all women in that situation.

12:21I don't know why she did it, but I also think, like, it does make sense when you're, like, TikTok, you're about to go away forever, and you're, you finally met, like, the guy, and you want to have a kid with him. And there's a window, like. You're gonna do it. Yeah. And there is a part of me that sort of feels like Elizabeth Holmes, Adam Neumann, like, these people were gonna do what they were gonna do, and wasn't it up to everyone else to be like, whoa there, Horsey? Like, isn't their job to, like, dream big and be over the top? Yeah. In a way? And they're like, slow down. Yeah. I mean, like, I know a producer who, like, had a meal next to Elizabeth Holmes and left and was like, is she the messiah?

12:58Like, people got very, very swept up. And yes, I mean, I don't, I, yeah, you would think that somebody would be reining it in. Like, they're almost villainized because everyone else got egg on their face. Yes. And got rolled by this person. Well, yes. And Elizabeth Holmes, in particular, embarrassed, like, very wealthy, powerful men. Yes. You know, I didn't see anyone going to prison during the financial crisis when, like, millions of people Americans lost their homes. But it was like you very specifically ripped off and embarrassed very powerful old men. It's so true. Which really, I've always wondered like, why has she not appealed to Trump?

13:29Like she has this magic trick with like the boom, the older boomer, older men like, or we're like putty in her hands. I'm like, she, he would have parted you. In a second. In a second. Like 20 minutes in the Oval Office and you've got a pardon. I don't know. What do you think her next move is out of? I mean. I really hope she like doesn't become a crypto bro or do NFTs? No, I don't think so. I think Billie is, I mean, I'd have to check it, but I think Billie is already, like, fundraising for some kind of healthcare startup thing. Like, I don't think they're gonna, I don't think she will stop in her cause.

13:59You really cannot keep a good woman down. I mean. That's really what I'm getting from this. I think she's so complicated too, because I do think, like, she rode the being an attractive woman to, like, getting the fame and the fundraising and all the attention, and now she's suffering the backside, which is that, like, we love to take down a woman, particularly if she's attractive and successful. Okay, well, it's good you bring this up. So it's like the flip side. Well, I often see in the people that you're talking to, they're an angel or a demon. And the people who consider them angels or demons are kind of swapping.

14:34It kind of depends on the week. And, okay, you hate her, so I love her. Mostly demons in the case of, I didn't have a lot of defenders for some of the. Yeah, I guess you're right. But this archetype of like almost a double person is not more true for anyone than it is for one Hillary Clinton. Yeah. Are you in touch with Hill Dog? No. No, I cleansed. I did a Hillary cleanse. You know, my first book was about my years covering her. And then I just really like, I think moving to L.A., writing fiction. I really like put all things Hillary behind you. Yeah. Well, just to cue the listener in, the story is about covering Hillary, but it's also about how you were sort of yoked to her.

15:18And all of these big grown up decisions that you made, one to get married, one to have a baby, one to buy a house, was all kind of dependent on Hillary Clinton. So it was like you, young reporter who is ambitious, like kind of reading the winds of the ultimate ambitious woman. I feel like it's a little, that was a very good pitch. Thank you. I feel like it's a little like Julia and Julia, but politics instead of cooking, it's like your whole life revolves around this like looming figure. And I always felt like covering a candidate was a little bit like being in love, except there's no love. Like you think about them always and they think about you never.

15:55You guys know I've been going on and on about cozy earth sheets for a while now, and I love them. They're luxurious, they're soft, they're comfortable, and they basically ruin normal sheets for me, which is honestly pretty inconvenient. yet. Well, now Cozy Earth is making beach towels. It's summertime and I don't know about you, but I am going swimming any chance I get. And we all know that air drying is for psychopaths. That's why I love my Cozy Earth beach towels. These towels are so plush. They're oversized. I got mine in a green stripe and they will change how you view the category of beach towels forever.

16:30The cherry on top, Cozy Earth stands behind everything they make with a 10-year warranty and 30 days of hassle-free returns if something's not right. So all of you second-thoughters need to head over to CozyEarth.com and use my code SUSIE for an exclusive 20 % off offer. That's SUSIE for an exclusive 20 % off. And if you see a post-purchase survey, mention that you heard about CozyEarth right here on Second Thought. Looking back, you can, you know, diagnose all the missteps and even the memes of it. Pokemon go to the polls. In the moment, was that the craziest thing to say? No, but now you think of it as emblematic of just how out of touch this woman was.

17:11When you're sitting there on the plane, are you just like, you were thinking she was going to win like everyone else, right? Or were you seeing the cracks a little more clearly? No, I mean, the thing is that a lot, I would say I was seeing the lack of enthusiasm on the ground. Like, I saw a million Trump signs. I saw no Hillary signs. I saw her crowds were pretty lackluster. I saw like all of these things. And then you come and report back and it's like, but all the data shows that he's going to like. So I did like I'm not going to say I predicted he would win because I was also like relying on the data.

17:42But I did definitely come back with like the added vantage point of traveling the whole country. And like she's supposed to be the first woman president. There's supposed to be all this enthusiasm. And like that was not the feeling on that side of the aisle. But I feel like Hillary also had a unique set of circumstances in that she had been in the public eye for so long. And she had developed like such a protective armor that it made the real Hillary an enigma. And so like, you know, all of these, like we were talking about all of the projections you put onto Powerful Woman. It was kind of impossible for her to combat any of that because we all had these ideas about her that had been forged through like years.

18:19I mean, whether it was white water. Decades. Decades. so I think she's she is a unique woman I do think um I always felt like if there is a first woman president she would probably be republican oh interesting yeah oh that's a really like a very hawkish republican oh yeah um because I don't know that's just kind of my feeling yeah I think there's I mean I saw that I was at the like I covered Sarah Palin a little you know when we were coming to it and I feel like there was I mean of course that imploded in dramatically but I did see something of like this like attractive conservative there was something like she got people very excited and like fired up it's like fire and I'm gonna shoot a shoot something and make it for dinner we're gonna drill baby drill every man every man at that convention was shouting drill baby drill and I'd really you know well there was like a school marmy HR aspect to Hillary even if that wasn't actually her politics and she could have been just as much And it's crazy, too, because, like, I think of Hillary in chapter.

19:18She was, like, always the, like, that was the 2016 version. Like, she was the, like, Wellesley feminist, like, broad-burning, keeping my husband's name Hillary for, like, maybe keeping her name for many, many years. Like, all through Arkansas and the White House. Yeah, Miss Rodham, baby. The White House, Rodham. I mean, it's also, like, the whole Clinton unit of it all. Yeah. Which is its own. It came with its own. Force. It's now kind of a stand-in for like kind of globalist NGO world. But that's not always what it was. Like they were their own weird thing from Arkansas for a while. They really were.

19:55So I wonder if that, if like she could never escape his past. That was also complicated because I feel like she very much like rode his record and also wanted to never be associated. It's like I can stand on my own. She'd get very defensive, especially after being secretary of state. If she was asked like, what does your husband think? She'd be like, why are you asking about my husband? Like, I have a record. But in the 2008 campaign, she used to have this line. Of course, I memorized all these lines because you hear them a million times. But it's like, people always say I talk about the 90s too much.

20:26Well, what part of the 90s didn't you like? Was it the peace or the prosperity? You know, so she'd like talk about it all the time. But then also not want to be like associated with a particularly like NAFTA and Glass-Siegel and like things that had become unpopular in the party. She was like, I was just first lady. But then if it's something that was popular, she'd say, look what my husband, look what we did under the first. Well, she seemed very involved in his decision making. And then there's that maybe apocryphal story about after the Lewinsky scandal broke where she didn't speak to him for three weeks.

21:00And then she calls him and it's like, you got to bomb Syria. And then he's just dropping bombs on Syria the next day. Oh, wow. So romantic if you think about it. It's just so beautiful. One more question about Hillary, and then we'll move on. But when you were observing Kamala's campaign, and maybe you were just like, I'm in Hollywood. No, no, no. But were you like, I've seen this playbook before, and it, like, the VP named Tim. The obsession with celebrities. The, like, you know, being a woman matters until it doesn't at all. And, like, not having a cohesive message around it or something. Did you see a lot of echoes of Hillary's campaign and Kamala's?

21:34Or did it feel like its own separate garbage fire? It's interesting. I felt like not that many similarities aside from gender between Kamala and Hillary in terms of like, I mean, all the things. I think there were very, very different candidates. The party mechanics were the same. And that like you don't really know what your stance is, especially against the progressive wing of the party. It's like we want tougher immigration too, but in a less racist way. There just like wasn't a cohesive, like big tent message. and I thought that they would have like regrouped. But then I think it was still, it was still like vote against Trump, right?

22:13Like Trump is so bad. Like it was, and I think, you know, you always have to give voters something to vote for, not just against. And so I saw that pattern repeating in Kamala more than, but I do think there was like a moment, she gave a great speech at the convention and there was a moment when people were really excited. Well, and people always talk about likability, which is such an insane, hilarious idea word. But Kamala, I think, had a lot higher likability quotient. Yeah, and she didn't have the baggage. And I think she wore her converse. And she had a whole. She had her cool husband. But also, I think Hillary is a true policy wonk.

22:49You could ask her any policy. And she would extemporaneously speak for hours about it. I didn't see Kamala answering those policy questions in the same way that Hillary did. And Hillary's level of experience. And expertise. And expertise, yeah. I mean, she's a true wonk. I don't even know. Is it all psychosexual? Like at the end of the day, are people just wanting to have sex with them or not? You somehow want to have a drinking butt. You want to get a beer with them. But you also want them to project like strength. But you also want them like to be attractive. But you also want them to be. I feel like we have this like idea of all these boxes that a prototypical perfect female president.

23:30And there's just like we've never had one before. So it's impossible to say this works or that works. I just think it's impossible to be all of the things. You know, so true. It used to be like she was wearing expensive designer clothes. Right. And she's like, what am I going to do? Who was the candidate on the Republican side who had a moment? It was like shopping at Marshall's and pulling out the one dollar sweater. It was a governor. I'm blanking. That's amazing. Anyway, she was like, what am I going to do? Pull a I'm going to look from like I'm going to look frumpy and people. It's going to be like for days making fun of me, you know, so it's like you're kind of.