← Wrong Turns with Jameela Jamil
Wrong Turns with Jameela Jamil
I Weigh - Living Deliciously with Florence Given
01:18:12
This week, Jameela is joined by author & illustrator Florence Given (Women Living Deliciously) to talk finding joy in your life, being a playful activist, and opening your own doors of self-expression. Florence shares ways to let go of other people’s perceptions of you, and how to intentionally take up (too much) space by showing up courageously and being unapologetically yourself. This is a joyful conversation on the art of being childlike, not childish, and focuses on romancing yourself while finding awe in the everyday. You can find Florence on IG @florencegiven and TT @florencegiven and her new book 'Women Living Deliciously' is out now.
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- [00:00]
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- [00:59]
Jameela Jamil
To another episode of Iowa with Jameela Jamil, a podcast against shame. Wow. What a fucking week. What a week. How has it even been a week? I feel like I haven't slept in six days and I've just been doom scrolling 24 hours of every single weekday that there has been. And I know that you've probably been doing the same because it's harrowing. How can you look away when you realize that not only have so many men voted against the health safety rights and well being of women, but also so many women have have they been voting against their own healthcare safety and rights. How do you not slam your head against every single fucking wall and table wondering where we all went wrong? Listen, I considered using today's episode as just a very long rant about the election, but then I thought that's all you guys have probably fucking been thinking about hearing about and losing Sleepover all this time. Not only in the last week, but also just all year. And maybe we need a break and maybe we need something uplifting. So if you do want to see the darker things that I think and feel, you can find it on my substack. That's the essay writing platform called Substack where I write very candid essays where I can say things that I'm not allowed to say other places because of algorithms and rules and social media wanting you to make seven second dancing videos with your tits out selling a product. And so I've chosen to use Substack as somewhere that I can say things of more substance without a word limit. Anyway, you can find me there if you want my more cynical thoughts. But today's episode is an uplifting one because fucking hell do we need it. What a year. What a four years. What a life. What a history women have had. And today's episode is all about truly empowering women. But not through the fight, but through joy, finding the rebellion, in daring to actually live your life to its fullest capacity, to actually learn how to love your life, even if you can't fully love yourself. Learning how to respect the time and life you have. We are in a cris where women have been so heavily targeted to spend so much time focusing on the way that they look and appear to other people and therefore in order to achieve that, and in order to achieve those things, taking huge risks with their long term health. It's something I've been speaking about for ages and in the process they're spending so much time thinking about things like calories or aging or retinol or wrinkles or acne or this, that and the fucking other, rather than thinking about the world that's around them and how they can make the absolute most of it and how they can enjoy the things that are amazing about them rather than worrying about these fucking magazines and media and social media and Hollywood all trying to sell you the cures to fix what was never broken, what they gaslit and manipulated you into thinking was broken. None of you is broken. It is all as it should be. And there is a whole world out there. And I'm so sad to have gotten to my late 30s before realizing that navel gazing will get me nowhere in life life and that actually happiness is always looking away from myself at the world I'm in and figuring out how I can seek out pleasure everywhere. Pleasure is not supposed to be an indulgence. Pleasure is a gift. It is a right. It is not a privilege. And my guest today has written an entire book around this. She's turned her entire social media towards this. She is determined to help everyone seek and find true joy. Her book is called Women Living Deliciously. It's her second book. Her name is Florence Given. She's an author, an illustrator, podcaster, public speaker, and just generally a massive ray of fucking sunshine who is determined not to gatekeep her secrets of how she's found sunshine. Because this girl's been through some dark times, both privately and even publicly, as she's been dragged by her fucking pubes across the Internet, back and forth by people online and I have watched her go from being a very sunny, positive person, to then going through absolute fucking hell online, to now coming out the other side of that, giving no fucks about anyone else's opinion, and now just living her life actually for her, which is truly radical because women are programmed never to feel as though they have the right to live just for themselves, to do whatever the fuck they like. And so in this book, we get into the weeds of how you actually go about doing that, about how society wants to stop you from doing that, about how they go out of their way to distract you. It is infuriating when you actually lay it all out, the ways in which we are manipulated to look away from our beautiful lives and just at this kind of patriarchal standard of how we're supposed to exist in this fucking world. We talk all about joy, we talk about the active daily choice to be yourself, to back yourself, to be your own best friend. And we talk about loving yourself so much that disrespectful feels foreign. That's one of my favorite parts of this entire chat, where she breaks down how we can no longer normalize people talking to us like shit, people treating us like shit, and even our own inner bullies talking to us and treating us like shit. It's just a very lovely, empowering and emboldening episode because Florence Given is a lovely, empowering and emboldening young human. And so I hope this is what you need to hear today. I have watched the videos of her book tour and you can see how many people are so moved by work. You can also see it in the comments of her social media videos. I think that she's a force for good. I think she really, truly loves, loves women and loves life and is determined to make the absolute most of her time here. And I wish that I'd been lucky enough to realize that at her age. It's only now in my late 30s that I'm realizing how much time I've taken for granted and how much I've hurt my body and wasted so much of my precious life. And I'm lucky that I'm only in my mid-30s. May I be lucky enough to live a really long time so I can make it up to myself. But you know, if you've been listening to my podcast for a while, if you've been following me on social media, you'll know I'm obsessed with my 85 year old self and with making sure that she knows that I protected her and looked out for her while I still could. Which is now. And so I implore you to do the same. I implore you to listen to this episode and then go and follow Florence Gibbon, because I think she's just a lovely, sunny person to follow. She's an excellent communicator. She's incredibly bright, and I think, as I said earlier, she is just an ultimate force for good. So this is the excellent Florence Given.
- [07:59]
Florence Given
Florence Given. Hello, and welcome to I Weigh.
- [08:03]
Thank you so much for having me. I was so happy when you messaged me. I have more questions for you than I think you have for me. Because of your message. It was so urgent. You were like, you need to come on my podcast immediately.
- [08:14]
Yes. Yeah, that's because I've been watching your videos. There's been a turn in your content of late that I have found very infectious, specifically the ones where you just sit down and deliver these just incredibly wonderful philosophical musings about the way we should live our lives. And I was like, oh, I wonder if she's got a fucking book coming out. I was like, this can't just be something she's spewing for free. I was like, something's coming. I hope there's something coming. I hope there's a body of work. And then when I realized your book was out and you're now doing signings, I was like, fucking, come on the podcast and tell us all about it, because I am very intrigued by your new. A new direction, and I've also been really enjoying it. And this is, I guess, a perfect way to introduce the title of your book, which is Women Living Deliciously. And I want to know, what was it that drove you to write this book?
- [09:14]
I. After publishing my first two books, I was extremely burnt out. My morning routine was screaming in my fucking pillows every single morning. I was so filled to the brim with things to do, things in my calendar, following every single job opportunity that came my way. Because I was in the scarcity mindset of, if I don't do it now, it'll never come back again. And I was so exhausted. My life was becoming very excessive, and not in a way of excessive amounts of joy, excessive amounts of love and beauty. It was excessive responsibility, excessive exhaustion, excessive expectations that I felt people had of me. And it was when I burnt out that I realized I was the architect of all of that exhaustion. Because I'd never said no. I had the power the whole time to say, no, I don't want to do this right now. No, this doesn't feel like a good fit. No, that's your urgency, that's not mine. I had that power the whole time, but I didn't know. And it took physically burning out and ignoring the signs from my body for so long to actually decide to take a big fucking rest. And it's when I took that rest that I could see from an observable distance that the life I was creating because of the brand that you create, it's almost like this sticky, expired identity that you feel like you're kind of dragging around because it's what other people expect of you. And I was just performing it all the time. And I felt like I was on this conveyor belt of who Florence Gibbon was and that I had sort of abandoned this very silly, playful, self expressive part of myself in all of the activism. It's literally in the word activist is active. You're doing, doing, doing. And I thought, God, why am I so afraid of this joyful part of myself? That's who I am. That's in fact, that's what my audience used to love about me. It's what my friends love about me is my silliness. And I'd abandoned it almost out of guilt and shame that it was that my joy and my ability to be delighted in the small pleasures in life was this silly, frivolous thing, especially in the face of all the shit going on in the world. And I knew that actually that was my medicine and that I needed to allow myself the space to experience more joy. So, long story short, come back to the beginning. What inspired me to write the book was my burnout and every single thing I did afterwards to kind of claw my way out for sure.
- [11:47]
You talk about the perfect feminist myth. Can you unpack that for me? Because I think a lot of us feel very confused. Feminism right now feels like it's swinging in this pendulum back and forth between the two extremes of die hard feminism. And then kind of, I guess it's being repackaged as bimbo feminism and the tradwife feminism, where you're kind of almost rejecting all of the quote, unquote. I don't know, some people will call it progress, other people call it oppression, but there seems to be this infighting and this general misunderstanding as to what feminism is nowadays. So what do you mean by the perfect feminist myth?
- [12:27]
It was something that I was judging myself so harshly against that I didn't even realize in my life. So I would say I'm a recovering perfectionist in my ambition and my work and what I put out there and who I am and the Standards that I judge myself by. But I didn't realize that I also held myself to the standard of being a perfect feminist. And for me, that was the hardest one to break because it involves morals within feminism. You. You could make yourself feel bad for anything. You could say that what you're doing isn't feminist enough. I'm not doing enough activism. I'm not sharing enough stuff online. I haven't donated enough. I haven't done this. I haven't done that. When you allow your moral compass to be dictated, almost like religion, like someone else telling you, have you done enough of this today? You should be punished if you haven't done enough of this and people actually tell you, speak up. Shut up. Speak up now. Stop talking. It's all this language that does feel very. It was. It was very almost religious. And I would look to it.
- [13:31]
It's very controlling.
- [13:33]
Yeah. To almost tell me whether I was good enough that day. And, yeah, the perfect feminist myth. That was the name of the chapter that I wrote about where I essentially spoke about my toxic relationship with feminism. And again, feminism's not toxic. It was my relationship to feminism that was toxic. It was my attachment to it. And I think even if you look at, like, your attachment style within relationships or trauma, you kind of apply that to everything. It kind of bleeds into everything. And I. My perfectionism bled into my feminism in a way that I didn't allow myself to be a full human being, Even though I would say that. I would say, we're all human beings. We all make mistakes. I wasn't allowed them. And it's so weird, because when you get too almost drunk on moral superiority and you're in that world of feminism and social justice, and you're very deep in it, you're a doormat to some people, and then you're a dictator to others, depending on where you are in the intersectional hierarchy. And it was this constant. I was either a doormat or I'm better than you, because I know more than you. And then to some people, I would be a doormat, and they could tell me what to do, because that's the right thing to do. And, yeah, it was very strange. And I know that my audience largely consists of very feminist women, or women who are feminist but don't know it and don't use that word. And so I felt I had a duty to write in this book about joy, one of the strange, almost phantom structures that will be caging you from experiencing joy in your head, and that is feeling guilt because wanting Pleasure is not feminist enough, or wanting to have a happy life is not feminist enough. And that chapter was about me locating my own values instead of outsourcing it again to feminism. And it just. It just went the other way for me. So, like, in the beginning of my life, I'm sure most women experience this where you're very unconscious. You're just living your life, and you. You don't know that you're being ruled by patriarchal beauty standards. You have eating disorders, you have shit relationships, and you judge yourself by what men think of you, and you have all the. Whatever toxic female friendships. I don't know, the whole lot. And then you awaken to patriarchy. And so you've been living your whole life on this side of the pendulum, where you're living your life by this unconscious set of rules that society has soaked you in. And then you go the other way. And then I start to judge myself by feminist standards. And it's only. Both of them burnt me out. Both of them left me exhausted. And so now I've come back to this middle where I've asked myself, what does Floss think is a good person? And is that enough? And can I know that I'm a good person with or without judging myself by that feminist metric, which, as you pointed out, is changing all the time. What even is it exactly?
- [16:13]
I think it's ultimately based in choice. And I think what you're choosing to do is find out who you actually are without constant external restrictions. You were originally considering calling this book no. And what I found so interesting about the philosophies that emerge from the book and the way that I have watched you blossom in the last year online is that it feels as though. I'm curious to know if the reason you didn't call the book no is partially because so much of what you invited in was yes, was yes to other things that you had not previously given yourself permission for.
- [16:50]
I just think it's so you know the title. No, it was. It. That's. That was the era of my life that I was in. I was in my no era because I had said yes, but to all of the wrong things. There was energy leaking out of me everywhere. I was, like I said, screaming in my pillows, feeling resentful towards all of the people in my life, to my team, to my family, to my friends, because I felt that they were all making me do and agree to all of these things. But I could have said no. The whole time. I was just afraid of other people feeling unhappy with me. And what I've learned is that you can let people down and they're allowed to deal with their own feelings and still be in your life. And if they're still in your life, they're great people. So no was almost, I imagine it like a band aid patching up the holes of energy leakage. And a no could just be something as like an energetic no. I am not going to worry about this right now. Even today. You know, I haven't done many podcasts. I've been very selective about podcasts for the book. And even before today, normally before a podcast interview, I could get really nervous. I could start thinking about what I'm going to say. And an energetic no for me was don't think about it until you plug the mic in and you're talking to Jameela. And I saved myself hours of not worrying and I just did other stuff. And another no could be turning my phone off because I would doom scroll before bed. Otherwise all of these little energy leaks in my life, I just started patching them up. And so while no was so important for me in reclaiming my delicious, vibrant, potent, self expressive version of floss that I had lost to the counselor, voices in my head of criticism, of shame, that self, even though that was recovered by saying no, it didn't feel like a very empowering message. It doesn't make you feel good. It doesn't sound. It just doesn't sound empowering. No. And also I just, I think it was, it was a great chapter title. But yeah, I think you're right there about. I did say yes to a lot of other parts of me and parts.
- [18:52]
Of the world and parts of life. And, you know, you talk about boundaries in the book. And I think boundaries are so pivotal for women. I've spoken about them a lot. But also I think that from what I see online, and this could just be my algorithm. But so much of us, you know, being encouraged to have boundaries appears to be making people online, or even people in my life, more and more insular. And I think a little bit of insular is very, very important. But it's almost to the point of, of bubbling yourself up so much that you no longer interact with the world. And if you're not really interacting with the world, then you're not really taking the tools you're learning of self preservation, using them in real time. It's like staying in rehab forever. And allowing yourself intermittent bursts outside of those boundaries is imperative because that's where you learn who you really are, who you can really trust and what you actually want and what you actually enjoy. And so I, you know, I think that that's part of. You talk about the toxic of wellness culture, and I think that's one of them, is that we're somewhat encouraging people to just bugger off, you know, into their own protective padded rooms and just hide there from the world. And I think that that's great in tiny bursts, but we need. We need life and we need people, right?
- [20:11]
I love people. And for so long, I didn't. I did. I wasn't even. I almost thought I was. I don't want to say too cool to love people. I've always loved people. But it almost felt like embarrassing to admit out loud. Like, I love people. I need my human. We all need human interactions. We all need it to live. It's like one of the biggest contributors to longevity is tiny human interactions. Like, even with your postman or the barista, if you're like an old person that lives alone. Like, those things contribute towards your longevity more than exercise. It's the. But you can't touch it. It's intangible, so you can't measure it. And the lowest parts of my life were when I became so insular, as you said, in my own little bubble, because I didn't need to technically. I love my life. I like where I live. I like my friends. I like my routine. But those casual human interactions are so important. And I do think, though, that I needed to experience that extreme of isolation because I was very codependent. My first relationship. Relationship was abusive. It's very toxic. And so my pattern was codependent. So again, pendulum swings. I went the other way, like, I think a lot of people do. It's like a trauma response or whatever, where you. You hold yourself away. And I did that with, you know, after experiencing a lot of online criticism, kind of no one would have even noticed this online, but maybe the people in my life would have noticed that I stopped expressing myself. I even stopped wearing color. I kind of cocooned myself in a way, because I thought safety exists in not being seen. And that's true. It's true. If you hide yourself, you don't piss any women off with your success. If you hide yourself from men on the street, you reduce your risk of street harassment. Like, you can hide yourself and cocoon yourself, but no life gets in. No joy gets in. No beauty gets in. No new, healthy female friendships make their way into your life. No awe, no joy, no wonder can visit you when you are in that cocoon. Space. And even with like sharing myself online, it did feel like a butterfly emerging. Because even like the fact I dye my hair pink signaled to me that I was okay with being seen and I was okay with expressing myself and letting people see me again. Because yeah, I would cocoon myself for a while.
- [22:42]
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- [23:05]
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- [23:35]
Florence Given
Yeah, I also, I don't trust it. I don't trust just the wellness world encouraging us to completely cocoon for too long because it feels as though they know that the side effects of loneliness are going to be a dopamine withdrawal. That means we end up spending more time online, more time with advertising being targeted at us. We're more likely to consume when we don't feel fulfilled in our lives. I think it's something we should be very, very wary of is the amount of messaging around boundaries. I don't, I don't think that there's a lot of healthy modeling of boundaries that isn't an extreme. And I think this is the problem with social media being these kind of, you know, sound bites and flashes of information is there is no room for nuance. And then we don't actually have proper discussions of what a healthy boundary actually looks like. And you know, I think it also speaks to in my own periods of complete isolation, like prolonged isolation, it's because I didn't know myself, that I didn't trust myself to handle myself. Out there in the real world where things are unpredictable and things can, people can hurt your feelings and people can go out of their way to fuck up your day. I didn't feel like I had permission to fight back and I didn't feel like I actually had the tools to know how to handle myself. And it's only by reintroducing myself and little bits back into society that I was able to engage that training to know, oh no, I've got this. I can fucking stand up for myself. I can protect myself. I can know who's bad vibes immediately and not even allow them to ruin my day. So I think that's really important. And I noticed you've been doing loads of solo traveling. You've got all these wonderful travel vlogs. Your trip to Japan made me so fucking jealous that I actually had to meet you for a while because I was on a job where I couldn't get away. And I was like, she's having so much fucking fun. And you were picking up all the. These cool products and I was like, this fucking girl is triggering me with how much she's enjoying her life. But you're back, you're back on my time.
- [25:40]
Yes, I'm back. I'm back in London, so you can unmute me now.
- [25:45]
Good. You're miserable.
- [25:47]
No, I'm in Japan. I actually slipped a disc in my back, which was. Did that make you feel a little bit better?
- [25:55]
Yeah, made me really happy when I saw you just in agony. On props, it really made my day. I saved. I liked. I watched it again and again and repeat.
- [26:05]
We love to see a woman's downpour.
- [26:07]
Oh my God, it's my favorite thing, don't you know? Oh, you poor sweetheart. That looks so fucking awful.
- [26:16]
Yeah, it actually happened before. That was the. When I burnt out a few years ago, I slipped a disc in my spine and it was stress induced. So there's a little bit of a weakness there that can flare up if I'm like sat down at a long haul flight for too long, doing too much walking, being off my sleep cycle, all that stuff. But yeah, I, I really have burst out of my shell and like you said, coming out of, coming out of your shell in those little bits. You said little bits. And that's, that's how I feel about it as well. Even if it's like I said I dyed my hair pink. Or even sharing a video. I think there's something that it takes a lot of audacity to share a video online where you are sharing advice. No one's asking you to do it. You just do it and you're like, you're taking up space. And that was the other thing is even on my own Instagram, I used to be afraid of taking up space because that was a big narrative within feminism was don't take up too much space. And I applied it everywhere. And I used it to keep me small and safe and not share and express myself. And I think for a while I did cap my self expression and my flossiness and my loudness and my wisdom and my whatever I wanted to share. I capped that at a level that I thought other women would be comfortable with. And I no longer use that as the metric. Yeah, I no longer take a thermometer to the room and go, how should I be in here? I let myself be as big as I want to be. And that doesn't mean I don't still feel that urge to shrink. It literally ties knots in my stomachs. I can feel when a woman doesn't like me. I can feel when it would be very convenient for me not to be myself. And that doesn't mean I do it. You know.
- [28:01]
I mean, yeah, that's the story of my entire life. I really resonate with that. And it is, it's an active daily choice to give yourself permission.
- [28:11]
You asked me a lot with that and you know that. Anyway, we've had lots of conversations about it, but I remember it was maybe four years ago, you posted an infographic about the, you called it like the mechanism, the, the machine of what the industry does to women. And seeing you've given me so much permission as well, because even seeing you, you're not someone who just experiences it, goes through the thing and then fucking carries on begrudgingly. Like you talk about it and seeing you talk about it on your Instagram four or five years ago, whatever, you were just talking about the mechanism of building women up. And it's like whack a mole, isn't it?
- [28:46]
I was talking about the well oiled machine of the fact that we take a woman, the social media or the media at large, pick someone goes, she's interesting, let's elevate her above everyone else. She hasn't necessarily asked to be elevated or hasn't done anything to, you know, to elevate her above anyone else in particular. We're all just out here. Why the fuck are any of us posting online if we don't want attention on our work? But someone gets selected, we pick her up, we hyperbolize how amazing she is. We pop her on the highest possible pedestal so that the fall will be more dramatic. The higher the pedestal, the worse the injury as she crashes and burns in front of all of us. And there is a hunger, there is such an appetite even amongst women to watch another woman fall. You do these very joyous good fucking morning videos online where you're dancing to, like, 70s music, you're picking out your outfits, you are bursting with audacity and joy and enthusiasm, twerking in the camera. And the first few times I saw those videos, I had, like, a discomfort in me that I couldn't first identify. I was like, why am I uncomfortable watching that? And I unpack that. I had to unpack that in myself. I was like. It took. It took me a minute to then start to understand that. That what you're doing is. Is not. It's not actually for you. And. And I think I understood that more. So even in the book where you talk about the fact that Joy, like, outward joy, is a selfless act, in those videos, you are not just announcing your own right to be silly or to be sexy, to be unapologetically confident about the way that you look, to talk about how fucking great you think you look, all of those things. Are you affording permission to your audience to dare to even take baby steps towards the level of confidence that you're displaying? And I think that's really cool. Can you talk about the contagion of joy?
- [30:47]
That's so funny. I have had so many messages and it's. It's mostly women older than me, even a little bit older than me, who have messaged because they always preface their message with that. They'll say, I followed you for a while. I. I know you must get this all the time as well. All the time, yeah, all the time. Used to hate you all. I liked you when you were a bit less. And then that's when I followed you. And then you started doing this thing, right, good fucking morning. Dancing, expressing myself first thing in the morning. Having the audacity to be so. So, like, childlike and enthusiastic about getting.
- [31:23]
Dressed and loving what you're wearing and loving what.
- [31:26]
You look amazing. And it's so funny as well because, like, that just becomes. I think me and my mum, like, growing up, she would always ask me for styling advice and I was always. I would always be so honest with it. And I've always had this language about getting dressed, but I would be like, you look amazing. We look amazing. I've always said it as just a fact. And so I didn't even think that that would be something that people would go, oh, God, she said she looks good. But then, yeah, people message me and they say, I liked you. Then I hated you. And your videos annoyed me. Literally sent them into my group, my friends, group chats, to be like, who? What is she doing? This is so embarrassing. And Then I realized I have not let myself feel like that since I was a kid. I have not let myself do that. The idea of doing that makes me feel so uncomfortable. And I wrote a chapter in the about sometimes we don't envy women. We envy the permission that other women give themselves to cross the lines of cringe or self expression. We envy that they say not me. We envy that they say that line doesn't apply to me. Or we don't even know they might have that line and courageously cross it within themselves anyway. And it's, oh my God, it was so hard for me. Especially again from the, the, the Stamper. I'm an author. I want to be taken seriously. So the idea of me shaking my ass to Lou Reed and saying good fucking morning and posting a little getting ready video, that is such a big part of me. It's what my friends love about me. And at the heart of it, I do think that that is what resonates with my audience as well, is that I'm not so serious. But I was hiding it from people. And yet it is my most joyful, contagious self. And it's almost like this little muse that I have inside of me that I actually, I can't switch it on if people start asking for that from me.
- [33:18]
I think it's so healthy. You're shaking off self hatred before it has a chance to penetrate you in the day. And just to be clear, I never felt any kind of hatred of you watching this video. No, I know it's not. I just thought, I just didn't know what I was looking at because I hadn't seen it before. And also, this is a tricky thing to say, not to you, but to the public. But I think we have become accustomed to women who don't fit societal norms of beauty saying I look fucking amazing. I'm a queen. I'm this, that and the other. But when you have a slim, very traditionally beautiful white woman with gorgeous clothes in her gorgeous apartment saying I look amazing, you're like, oh, I haven't, I don't, I don't actually, I literally don't know. I don't know what this is. And I thought that that was incredibly interesting and I thought that that was very bold. And anyone who's hearing about this, don't just take our account of it, go and watch the videos. Because it is an explosion of self love and defiant self esteem. And I think that it's very, I think we should all be, whether we put it on camera or not, which I don't think you're necessarily trying to tell people to do like getting ready in the morning used to be the saddest experience of my day. Oh.
- [34:33]
And it is sometimes 100.
- [34:35]
100. But it, but it really was because it's like, you know, I would wake up in the morning, I would weigh myself. That would be my first level of am I. Do I have permission to enjoy my day based on whether I'm up or down a pound? This is my entire 20s, by the way. I'm so jealous of you that you've arrived at all these include conclusions so young and I. And then after doing that, I would try and put on outfits. Everything based on like, what makes me look. Look the thinnest, what makes me look the chicest. Am I in fashion today? Do my legs look big in this? Do I look this, that and the other. Does this go with that? And everything was always from a position of what will make me least picked apart rather than what am I going to enjoy wearing the most. And, and in a society that nitpicks us half to death, where other people do jump in group chats about us, it's really, it's, you know, it's important not to gaslight women that. That's unreasonable to do. But it is our responsibility to fight back against that pressure and to learn how to enjoy. I think, you know, something that you and I both talk about separately is the responsibility we have to protect our older selves to, to, to cherish our lives, to make the most of this one experience and not waste it on the insecurities and projections of other people. Right. Right.
- [35:56]
Yes, absolutely. It's, it's, it's both, it's, it's, it's the protecting the older self. And you know, on the note of silliness, that little girl inside of you that does need to come out and play. And I always think about how older women actually like their fashion. Like, stereotypically, that's when you see like, like the Western jewelry and color and it's like, it's almost that they come full circle back to the childish dressing up with a sense of play. And, you know, there's been that whole incredible trend of dopamine dressing. I didn't even realize that's actually what I was doing with those videos.
- [36:32]
I don't think I've heard of that. I don't know what dopamine dress.
- [36:34]
So it's called dopamine dressing. It's literally does what it says on the tin you dress for. Dopamine So I actually, I haven't made a good fucking morning Get Ready With Me video for a few months because I actually couldn't wear anything other than Birkenstocks and wide leg trousers when I slipped my disc in my spine because I couldn't bend over to tie up shoes. I couldn't wear heels. So we had a man down for a little bit and I didn't wear anything that excited me for a very long time. And a very long time for me is like a few weeks. And I was just kind of living in my comfy clothes, a big fluffy coat and my hocker trainers, which are orthopedic approved for my back, right? And then yesterday I went for coffee with a friend in central London and I thought, right, well, I'm gonna put on my nice leopard PR coat. I'll put on the floral dress. And I looked at myself in the mirror at the restaurant we went to, and I hadn't really looked at myself all day. And I got into this and I looked at myself in the mirror and I almost just burst with joy. And I thought, there she is. I felt like I'd come alive. And I just. I felt like it just brought me so much joy. There was. There was my favorite prints on my body. There was floral leopard print. I felt like a visual representation of my artistic visions in my head. And there is something so powerful and dopamine inducing about that. So that's what I would say dopamine dressing is. It's dressing to evoke joy and to delight yourself. And I hadn't done that for a few weeks recently that I almost completely forgot the power of it. But it is so. And I think, again, it's something quite embarrassing, especially if you come from, like, the feminist school of thought where you're like, isn't that frivolous, though? Isn't it frivolous to care about beauty and visual beauty and to want to be surrounded by beautiful things and adorn yourself and beautiful things. But I just. I think it's so beautiful.
- [38:25]
I just don't think it can be that political if birds are doing it. The amount of. The amount of David Attenborough documentaries I've seen of, you know, this peacocking that goes on amongst the male birds, you know, you want to show off their beautiful colors.
- [38:42]
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- [39:13]
Florence Given
I think it's really important that we are just less extreme. I'm so bored of a life without the gray area. I'm so bored of a life without nuance. Just because it's the most extreme. Take one way or another that's going to gather people's outrage or attention. You know, because we're bombarded with too much information nowadays, it feels as though we can only handle headlines and sound bites and we don't have space for the gray. And the reason I've stepped back online massively is because I to need, need space for the gray. I am becoming infinitely stupider for the fact that my brain has not got the capacity to take in more than a headline. And it means that I don't really learn anything about anything. I just learned someone's quick opinion on something without really digging deeper. Our brains have only got so much capacity per day. I think we have something like 124 executive functions a day. That's every single micro decision that we make. So that's expired by like 10am oh my God. If you're spending too much time online or listening to the nonsense chatter of other people, you've got to make sure you reserve that executive function more so for yourself or for at least in depth investigation.
- [40:25]
Yeah. And you said, you know, you said that you're, you know, you can hardly consume more than a headline anymore. You are also, as, not just you, me, everyone, we are also then kind of forced to create in that way too. Right. So shorter Instagram reels. I, I'm a woman that loves to yap for England. I want to go on forever. I could go on forever. And I'm also gonna make the move to Substack as well. Not, not, not, not like a, like.
- [40:51]
A Substack is the essay writing platform that I've moved onto because I don't feel like I can express anything intelligently on social media. And that's what Florence is talking about. About.
- [41:00]
Yeah, sorry. Yeah. So Substack is the blogging platform, newsletter platform, where you can post them online and people can get access to your, your articles and your essays and your musings or whatever. And I also need that space because I then have to force myself to even get my work seen. I have to condense everything into A short little thing. I want to do a good fucking morning get ready video where it's. It's long and it's slow and you feel like you're doing it with almost like a YouTube video or something. You know, I also. I just crave that.
- [41:28]
That.
- [41:29]
That slower, deeper, more thoughtful, intentional stuff. And, yeah, I feel like most people are getting sick of it, though. But no one really knows what to do. And so I'm with you. I feel like Substack is a middle ground between doing a book every few years and then being a flash on someone's feed. It's the middle.
- [41:46]
A man sent me the most annoying message on Substack yesterday.
- [41:50]
Oh, no.
- [41:51]
I know, I know, I know. And I get messages like this all the time on social media. It always baffles me where people are like, someone's looking for attention. So I just wrote back. I was like, oh, no. Is this not just a private, secret journaling app? Of course. Of course I'm looking for attention. I'm a fucking activist. And I'm also an entertainer, and I'm a human being who's online. Why would I without a private account if I don't want attention? What is it about society that is so hateful about a woman daring to seek attention?
- [42:21]
It could go back to the permission again. So, like, envying other people that are courageous enough to express themselves and perform and be seen and be that kind of that jester, like caricature. Because I think everyone wants attention. Everyone wants attention. Everyone wants love. And I think people with the anonymous accounts, they like to hide behind it and pretend that they don't also want that thing. And they hate that you go out there and do it and get it.
- [42:48]
Yeah, I think so. But it's just specifically levied at women.
- [42:51]
Oh, yes.
- [42:51]
When Cristiano Ronaldo's exercising shirtless on his social media, you don't have men being, like, trying to get attention, bro.
- [42:58]
Embarrassing.
- [42:59]
Yeah, yeah. Do you know what I mean? They either don't say anything at all or they just show like, a, you know, a muscle emoji. What. What do you think it is that specifically that we. That we are so enraged about when it comes to women? Do we feel like she's, quote, unquote, asking for it? Is it because of the competitive hellscape for the male gaze? I genuinely don't actually, like, I've got lots of theories of what it could be, but I don't really understand it because I don't really. I don't have that same instinct I don't see scarcity. I don't. I never have. I've never seen competition. I've never. I've never understood competition my entire life. I'm the worst person to play Monopoly with or like, have on any kind of a sports day team. I was always picked last because I was just so happy to be there. And so I've never, you know, I've just never had a competitive spirit. I've experienced competition from other women in my life, and I've never understood why. Because.
- [43:53]
And it hurts.
- [43:54]
I don't see there being one lane or even multiple lanes. I don't see lanes. I just see an expansive universe. And I'm. And, And. And I. I find it very sad. Sorry, am I being silly?
- [44:06]
No. Oh, my God. I'm like, I'm so there with you. Stephen Bartlett referred to it as people who see the world as bendable. So you're like, I see the entire universe of opportunities. And I do think that there are people who, like you and I. I have always been that way. And it kills me when a woman puts herself in competition with me because it's just like, you can't control that. And she will hate you for no fucking reason. And it's so out of your control, and there's nothing you can do about it. It. But she views the world through. There's one spot, and it's me or you, or there's. There's only a handful of spots, and it's me or you, and it's not her fault. Again, it's cultural programming. It's cultural training. But I. I don't think it's enough to just say it's patriarchy. Which is why I think you've asked me this question. Because otherwise we just say it's patriarchy, right? Yeah, I do think there is one or two. Perhaps you have, like, a fixed mindset and a growth mindset, however that develops. I don't know. But to people who do see the world out as bendable to creating your own opportunities in terms of. Not like a pull your bootstraps up, create your own opportunities way, but in an empowering way of. Almost at this entrepreneurial spirit of, well, no, you can create your own thing. We can. I'm doing what I love. Why. Why would we compete in this? There'll be something else if this one doesn't work out for me. You got it. That's great.
- [45:24]
But also, if. If you get attention, Florence, I can also get attention. And we can get attention. Attention from different people or people have the capacity to give attention to multiple people. We can get it together. Do you know what I mean? It doesn't. It doesn't occur to me to spend any time or energy fighting or trying to dampen that in someone else. Someone else is just doing. Doing their own thing. I see. I see. I look up into the sky and I see a billion highways of opportunity for everyone. I don't understand what this. What this mindset is. And mindset can be changed. One of the things you talk about in the book is, you know, whose voice is it anyway? That we have 70,000 thoughts a day, which is more than I think a lot of people imagine, and maybe less than some people imagine, given how much of an overthinker you are. But you say in the book that this voice is a real location in our brains in a region known as the Default mode network, dmn. And the voice in your head is making suggestions, not demands. You have the power to ignore it. That means you have the power to ignore people trying to cage you. And also, if you are someone who has the instinct to cage others, you can ignore that instinct. Do you mind expanding upon that?
- [46:37]
Oh, my God. So the chapter on the voice, it's so funny. Cause I did kind of segue from feminism into mindfulness. And I did it in a way that was very. It was on theme because I was talking about the cage of smallness that we impose on ourselves. And if we're not careful, like, we're talking about imposing it on other women. And then I wanted to touch on where this cage comes from. And. And why is it that you can almost have this. I can't remember who said it. Something. There's. Maybe it's Rumi. It's a quote by Rumi that says something like, freedom is realizing that the door was always open in the cage.
- [47:11]
You were living in.
- [47:12]
Like, it was always open, but it was just this limiting belief. Right. A lot of people talk about limiting beliefs.
- [47:16]
Have you seen. Have you seen the donkey Meme of a donkey that's tied to an empty, tiny plastic chair and is just standing still obediently? So sometimes the thing holding you back is all in your head. That singular donkey image literally changed my life 12 years ago.
- [47:34]
Profound. Sorry. As you were saying. No, no. It's such a good. It's such a good visual as well. Right. It's believing that you are trapped when you're not. And when you actually boil it down, there's no one in your bedroom making your life hell. It's all going on in here, right? In the case of anxiety or, or fearing something happening in the future or, or fearing asking for that promotion or posting your content online, it's. No one is actually stopping you. And you can bring up all this, this entire host of reasons, but what will this person think? What about this person from school? They're going to say I'm a hypocrite or that I've changed. What about this, this ex boss, this ex partner, whatever it is. They are actually just voices in your head, these people. They may not even be in your life anymore. And so that chapter, Whose voice is it anyway? I really wanted to get the reader to examine who is still holding the reins on your self expression that isn't even in your life. It could be an old parent. The person may not even be alive anymore. And their words can still repeat themselves in your head as these tethers holding you down. And as you quoted, these are suggestions, not demands. And until you have that kind of, that mindful separation of yourself from this voice where you view it and observe it instead of believing that it is who you are. It's not who you are. It's this almost like a lens that you have on life. Until you have that separation, you will act as though it is all true. You will live your life as though so that is the way things are. But it's not. It's this little lens in your head and these voices that have accumulated through your life that actually serve to keep you very, very, very safe. Because our brain is wired for survival, not joy. Your brain, it was not meant to make you happy. That I feel like everyone should just know that you know, like your brain is not wired to make you happy. It's wired to keep you safe.
- [49:36]
It's 80 negative thought. Our brains are built to predict and protect and look for all the negativity. And also we have unconscious bias and cognitive bias, you know, where anything that we believe, we constantly seek to confirm that because we feel safe in certainty. And so if someone's made you believe that you aren't worthy of this, or you weren't worthy of that, or you're not attractive enough to do this thing or date that person, or you can't have love, then your brain will constantly seek out confirmation like a fucking cokehead. Your brain is, is scrambling and looking and burrowing and looking anywhere it can for confirmation that your belief system is correct. So what was your process? I know it's a huge question, but what is at least a beginning process? Because a lot of us I think, you know, that voice is unconscious for the longest time. We don't know. We don't even recognize it as a voice because it sounds like us. I have tried giving that voice a name. So one of my best friends, he struggles with this, and we've named his inner bully Dwayne. And so I have to identify whether it is that I'm communicating with him or if Dwayne is now in the room.
- [50:45]
It's raining the room.
- [50:46]
Yes. But so what.
- [50:48]
What.
- [50:49]
What did you find? What would my listeners possibly find helpful as a start?
- [50:54]
So I was gonna say, so when I was in Japan, someone wrote my name in Japanese. Okay. And instead of floss in Japanese, it's fironsu. And I was like, that is the name of my inner demon. That is the name of my inner voice for Furonsu. So I also have that same thing where it's like. Is Furonsu speaking right now? Is this, like, wounded, hurt part of me that is bringing up old pain? It is almost like being possessed by something, isn't it? Especially when you're triggered. You are possessed by this little inner demon that is hurt and crying and wants to be seen and is defending some old pain, some old situations, and projecting it onto whatever it is. So, yeah, I also have a name for mine. And to anyone I feel like naming it is the best thing, because you are, quite literally, you're giving it a tangible reality that you can separate it with. I actually don't think anything is more important than that, because otherwise, it is just this voice reverberating through your head. The best book for this. I wouldn't even try and emulate the wisdom of this man. Eckhart Tolle. Read the Power of Now. It's an incredible book. Book. It's basically everything about splitting yourself from your thoughts and observing them in complete and utter depth. And he basically just goes through the process of watching your thoughts and realizing that you are not your thoughts. You are the one that watches them. And living deliciously actually started when I was in Japan and I was observing all of these small, beautiful things around me because it completely turned off my phone. And this is a few years ago when I went there, there, and I completely turned off my phone, and I just went for these long walks observing the architecture, and I was noticing so much depth and smell and color and texture. And I don't think it was just because I was in Japan. I think it's because it wasn't on my phone and because it was the first time where I'd opted out of that urgency of the content cycle and needing to be relevant. And I just, I said, I can't do this anymore because of what happened with my burnout on my body. And. And I was discovering all of these little things that I like to do in my daily life and how I make my life very beautiful. So I put it online and I said, how do you like to live deliciously to my audience, I didn't give any context what that even meant. And loads of people got back and they were like, oh, well, in the mornings I like to stare at a little puddle that collects outside my house when it's been raining and it glistens in the sun and sometimes there's a rainbow. And then other women were talking about these really beautiful moments in their life. And actually it's just mindfulness. Like, it's mindfulness in these small glimpses of awe that kind of pull you out of your thoughts and into the present moment. And I didn't even realise that this was a legitimate form of mindfulness until I was doing the research for the book. And there's a guy who, I quote multiple times in there in that chapter as well. He's called Daca Keltner. He is the biggest researcher on awe, the emotion of awe. And if you microdose small moments of awe and bringing your attention into the present moment, you. You actually relax your nervous system just through observing beauty. And so I would say that is an excellent way also for you to kind of say fuck off to your thoughts in your head is to just focus on something beautiful in front of you. And it's not frivolous, it's science backed. It relaxes your nervous system and it's a beautiful way to like, you know, when I was burnt out, if someone dared tell me to go and meditate in a fucking field for half an hour, I would have told them to fuck off. Like, that would have just pissed me off so much. And I think this, this especially because everyone has so much going on in their lives these days or we just all feel so overstimulated also.
- [54:33]
So fucking navel gazing, you know, it's so wonderful to be able to look outside away from oneself. And I think it is this kind of Western, like demonic Western mentality that has now kind of spread out across social media, across the world. There was this really interesting experiment where they put a bunch of, they put some fish in a tank and there were all these fish kind of more towards the back of the tank, all congregating together and just Kind of living their lives. And then they had this different fish of a different species that was sort of peacocking, wanted to be away from the others and wanted to, you know, swim around. Very, very colorful, much bigger, much bolder, and very much so doing its own thing. Now they invited Western and eastern audiences to watch this tank of fish. And when they came away, they found that the Eastern audiences traditionally talked about the whole picture. All of the fish that were there, all the different things they were doing. But the Western audiences for the only on the forward facing fish, that was the most colorful and the one doing its own thing. And there was a kind of, I guess the way they summarize that is just that individualism has got the west in a chokehold. And it is statistically so clearly really, really bad for us in a way that I think so interesting. So that makes also perfect sense when it comes to awe because when you are observing something else, you are released from self judgment. Judgment because you're not thinking about yourself. And nowadays it is so hard to think about yourself without judgment. So just try not to. This is why I stopped looking in full length mirrors. It's why I rarely, rarely post pictures of myself or like take selfies unless I'm working because I, you know, I don't take people through my. All day, every day. I keep that to myself because I don't want to think about me. I want to think about literally anything fucking else.
- [56:24]
Yes. Rather than myself, you know, you said that's so interesting. You said the thing about the full length mirror. I don't have one in my home. Which is why the only time I saw my outfit was when I went to that cafe, the coffee shop yesterday. And that's helped me so much as well. I've not heard anyone else talk about that. So that's just given me a lot of, I don't know, like an affirmative. Like it's affirmed my choice to do that, I guess. Anyway, yeah, I think the tapping into the, to tapping into the outside world. This Dakar Keltner guy, he's incredible. He also did a little research where he got a group of people to stare at a tree mindfully for two minutes and then someone else to just walk around some city buildings. And the people who'd stared mindfully at the trees, all of them offered to pick up a pen that some actor or whatever was dropping. All of them went to pick it up because they felt, felt this feeling of responsibility and compassion. But the people who had been walking around the city, none of them stopped to pick up the pen when it was dropped. And it's that feeling of them staring at the trees, tapping into something bigger. That's basically what has completely transformed my life over the last few years, is tapping into something bigger. Whether that is nature, whether that is spirituality, or even just being in. Walking through the city and observing other people. It pulls you out of your fucking head. Head. And like you said, that the navel gazing thing.
- [57:50]
And out of your ass.
- [57:52]
Yeah, out your head, at your ass, out of all of it. And I love being in nature because it. It makes me feel so small and just even like imagining myself. I just had this thing in Japan where I was imagining myself from the perspective of a bird. And that bird, it just sees a little pink doll. It doesn't even think I am just another little perspective on this planet. And everyone else has their own, own perspective. And I think you're right. Some of the. It might be a controversial thing to say, but I hope that this lands generously. Is that a lot of anxiety is because of the self obsession? Yes, it is because of it. It's not, of course, mental health is real. Anxiety and depression, it's all fucking real and it's horrendous. And like you said, we need to get our heads out our ass and we need to go. Touch the grass. Out your ass. Touch the grass.
- [58:41]
Yeah. So listen, in this book you offer all these kind of baby steps to getting back to who you were supposed to be. Like who you were as a child before life interrupted. Your capacity to really be authentic. And there are so many fantastic chapters about how to become fucking electric. Like understanding how to not be the victim in your life, et cetera. Because we don't have time to go through all of those things. There are two things I just want to make sure that we get to just to give people a sample. But one of them is the necessary art of romancing ourselves. That really caught my eye. And I think it's really lovely and something that I see as like a niche growing movement amongst women. And I would love for you to expand upon that.
- [59:29]
Yeah, well, I think. I feel like that actually just segues perfectly from what we were talking about with awe. So I would make these small, beautiful moments in my life. I would buy myself flowers. I would pack one of my pink scarves to take with me to my hotel room and throw over a lamp so that the room was pink when I was spending my time in there. I would do all of these crossing the side of the road when it's sunny. Always I would do all of these small little things in my life and I wasn't sure if anyone else did them. They were just these little things I did. I started sharing them online, like, how does everyone else live that? Do other people do this? And then other people were sharing their little things for how they make tweaks to their life that bring them visual fucking delight. And that's actually why I started dressing more to delight myself instead of trying to delight others, using my body as this vehicle to please and delight other people. It was, how do I want to delight myself? And so on. The necessary art of romancing ourselves. Part of it is this. This like this old part of me that used to talk about relationships and not settling for less than you deserve all the time. I think that there are some. Some. There is something in that about if you are a woman who. Who makes her life so beautiful and makes everything the way that she likes it, and that doesn't mean exhausting yourself making everything in your life pretty and wearing pretty clothes all the time and performing this other romantic, exhausting performance of womanhood. Like it's not about another thing on the to do list. Oh, great, now everything. My life has to be pretty and romantic and. And pink and beautiful. It's not about that. It's about catering your life in a way where everything is done with intention. And I think that's what romance is. It's about creating a life that lights you up from the inside out. And. Yeah, creating these small moments of romance in your life which don't require resources. Romance could be taking the walk from work home that you get to see the sunset on and letting yourself have. Have that awe and expansion and wonder and letting that happen inside of you, that's romantic. And I think the more that people kind of create this and self generate these experiences of beauty, whether that is doing that on the walk home or dressing in a way that you like, the more you do that, the less you rely on other people to sweep you off your feet. I think women are typically taught to seek romance. Well, everyone's taught to seek romance outside of themselves. But it's this idea of, you know, you mentioned the not a victim chapter, right? This idea of us waiting for someone to change our lives and forgetting that we are also the agent in our lives that can create change in it. We are also the person that can create romance in our lives, create joy, create wonder, and create the life of our dreams. And we don't have to wait in the passenger seat for someone else to.
- [62:16]
Do that for us, hundred percent. I think it's so important, but it's also not deep. Exactly. It's deep, but it's not hard. And I think that it would make our lives so much more fulfilling. I feel as though I watch so many people wait for someone else to bring romance and pleasure into their lives, as if pleasure is a privilege, not a right. And it's very rare that someone else will, or someone else will even have the taste in what is romantic that you have or will know how to, or have the instinct or the training to actually provide pleasure towards you. And so it's imperative that you, you also learn how to set your own standard of what you enjoy. I've got this one, one friend who's got this very binary idea of what romance is and, and what showing love is. And it's always in the kind of like form of a, you know, 5,000 pound Chanel bag and this kind of restaurant and that kind of car and this, that and the other. And I was like, God, I can see where you've been conditioned for this. In the same way that boys are being conditioned to have the Bugatti and you know, have, wear this kind of thing and that kind of cologne. We've been dominated by advertising and dictated to us to where we find romance and pleasure. And actually it's in so many different, smaller, more actually pleasurable things that actually light up your, your sensory rather than just validate you in some way. That's what an expensive bag does, it validates you. It says, this is what you're worth. This Birkin bag, this blub, this Bugatti, this whatever is, it's external validation, whereas you don't. Validation does not need to come into pleasure because you never have to do anything to deserve pleasure. Pleasure is innate. Pleasure is an innate part of our experience. Just like. And the appetite for pleasure is the same for me, it's as important as meeting the need of the appetite for hunger or thirst or touch. It's an imperative part of being. And I love that you focus on that. You also said that people should love them. And I love this so much. Florence, you say that we should love ourselves so much so that disrespect feels foreign. And I thought that was so simple but so profound and so moving as a sentiment. Can you explain what you mean by that?
- [64:36]
Yeah, so I. Cause it's just, I feel like I was born to do it. It's just inspire women, empower women. I know that women in my audience, I've been trying to do that for so long is get women, women to love their lives, love themselves, make better choices that actually feel good for them, and get out of pleasing, right? But for years I spoke about what's wrong outside, what's wrong out there. Men, the systems of oppression, patriarchy, whatever happened to you when you were younger, all of this stuff that happens and. Or has happened and we actually can't control, you know, I can't control the way men behave, but. But you can control the way you treat yourself and dial that love up so much and create a life that is so abundant, overspilling and potent with your. With your love, with your love for everything, with your love for your coffee in the morning, with your love for your friends, with the handwritten notes that you leave people. Whatever kind of love it is that you want to give out in the world, if you create a life that you love so much and you treat yourself in a way, way that you don't dare disrespect yourself, disrespect from other people will feel foreign. It won't find a home in you. You won't. There won't be part of you that recognizes it. You just won't even be able to fathom letting it in. And that, for me, is a much more empowering place to be in because that is within your control. You can't choose. Of course, you can say yes and no to people who enter your life. But like, you know, it's like you cast the net and you meet lots of people out and about. You can't control other people, but you can control how much love you feel for yourself. And that's also at the heart of the solo romance thing, whether that is taking yourself out for dinner or picking yourself. Like the other day, I just picked up a sprig of rosemary from the thing and rubbed it between my fingers and smelt it in my hand on the way home. That's romance in a way, because it's just. It's giving me something nice to smell on the way.
- [66:36]
You're elevating the moment. That's what romance can be, just elevating the moment, elevating the ride home, doing anything. For me, that's a donut and a coffee in the morning with my boyfriend, in bed with the dogs and with our phones off and not pretending that nothing outside of our little bubble exists. But what I loved so much about that sentence is that love yourself so much that disrespect feels foreign, feels so imperative to me because we are so accustomed to disrespect because it's most of what we receive on a daily basis from when we're too young to even register it as disrespect. So after a while, that's how we then take on that same narrative as our own inner monologue. And when you learn how to love yourself the way that you have learned to love yourself, when you respect yourself, when you fight back for yourself, when you advocate for yourself and for your needs and for your pleasure, then it actually feels incredibly jarring when someone treats you badly. And then you actually have the appropriately timed response. My response always used to be later that night in bed when I'm on my own imagining all the scathing cool things I could have said back, but in the moment, I just ate shit. And now I'm much quicker to respond either by fighting or, or in flight. I just go like, oh, this space is not appropriate for me. I'm not going to go. I didn't know how to protect myself because I didn't know how to identify disrespect quickly enough because my brain was just marinated in so much disrespect that, you know, it just, it all felt like. I guess it's the kind of. Maybe this is the wrong analogy. But, you know, they say that you, you have to slowly boil a frog to death because it doesn't register the temperature change. Whereas if you were to put, put a frog in boiling hot water, it would just jump out. I have turned disrespect into the boiling hot water. Now whenever anyone's even slightly rude or off with me, I can detect it instantly. I don't gaslight myself about it. And I like the frog. Jump the fuck out. Women have been at a slow boil of constant disrespect our whole lives. I think you just worded it in a way that summarize that problem. And I really appreciate you for it.
- [68:51]
Thank you. Thank you so much. That was one of my favorite chapters to write. And the note that you were just saying then on. Women have been simmering in this disrespect until eventually it just gets hotter and hotter. That's how an abusive relationship works, right? But it could even work on the small level of someone making a little remark that your gut clenches at. And this little. For anyone listening who's like, God, I can't even. I. I'm in so much shit. I can't even imagine being able to walk away from something like that because I always get sucked in or whatever. Something fun that I started Doing over the last year is when I'm with a friend or someone and I feel something, I will call out to them and I'll say, did you see that? Did you feel that? And you're not saying anything bad about the person you just interacted with. You go, did you feel that as well? Did you feel that jab? And almost all the time the person is like, I felt that too, but I wasn't going to say anything. And it's like. It's almost. I'm doing this, like, litmus test for my intuition now, and slowly I've been able to wean off that and just trust it inherently. Even with, like, men walking on the street, if I feel he started to slow down, immediately turn around. I don't care if I look crazy. I don't care if it looks overdramatic. It's better to be crazy than dead and be followed home. And that's another chapter that I wrote in the book, is all about intuition and listening to that when it comes to other people and registering disrespect. There's an incredible book also called the Gift of Fear. Have you read it?
- [70:21]
No.
- [70:22]
It's like, if I ever have a daughter, it's the first fucking book she's going to read if she can never read at the appropriate age. It's called the Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker. He interviews women, women who were the victims of violent attacks by men. And he interviews them to figure out if there was a moment. And he's not blaming them, he's massive feminist, but he wants to figure out if they knew, like, if they knew when they saw him was. He's trying to understand the female intuition, right, to help women avoid these attacks in the future if at all possible. And all of the victims of. You know, there was a man who followed a woman into her apartment with grocery store bags, offered to give her a hand with them into her apartment. She was like, no, no, no, no, it's okay. I don't need help carrying these grocery bags up the step. And then he said, oh, you're one of those, are you? And she said, oh, well. And he was like, nah, I get it. Feminists these days. Blah, blah, blah. She then overrided her bodily instinct of fear with not letting him in because she felt so guilty. She said, okay, no, of course you can help me. You can help me carry out the grocery bags. So he brought the grocery bags into her apartment, and she experienced some absolutely horrendous sexual assault, but managed to escape in a very Clever way. It's. It's nuts. The story, anyway. Gavin de Becker, the author of the Gift of Fear, interviewed her afterwards when he asked her if she had a gut feeling about this man even before he picked up the grocery store bags. She said, no, there was nothing wrong with him. He was nice. He asked to pick up my grocery bags. There was nothing wrong. And then after a few moments later, like as. As though sifting through all the feelings, she went, you know what? Something was off about him. And that's why I declined. But I couldn't put my finger on it, and I felt bad for judging him. So her body gave her the signal of danger, but her mind and the pleasing and the niceness and the placating, the mind overtook that bodily sign. And later they discovered together. She came back to him and said, I figured it out. What it was when she walked into the apartment building with her grocery bags and he offered to help her up the stairs with them. The door to her apartment building didn't make a noise when he came in, which meant that he was already waiting for her in the apartment building. That tiny little noise of the latch of the door, the absence of that noise, her body picked up on that as like, he's been waiting for you. But the conscious mind couldn't comprehend it. And she felt this pang of danger in her body that told her to get out and that it wasn't safe, but she ignored it. And your gut feeling will pick up on all of these little environmental cues that tell you when you're in danger, but we override them because we want to be seen as nice. And this entire book basically teaches you that you can be the most safest version of yourself in this world if you always honour that gut feeling and. And allow yourself to be seen as crazy.
- [73:25]
I'm very strange. I'm openly very strange whenever a man is walking too close to me or after the benefit of the doubt of kind of one opportunity to see if he's being strange or not. If I sense he's being strange, I turn around and tell him that he's making me uncomfortable and that I'm sure that there's nothing wrong with him and that he's a perfectly nice man, but he's freaking me out and it would be really great if he could just walk on the other side of the road. And so normally calling that out is quite startling. And I have no idea whether or not that's ever kept me safe or not, but it's definitely made me feel more safe and I Know that it's not those men's responsibility to make up for the actions of other men. But it's also not my responsibility to have to live a life in perpetual terror because of the actions of other men either. So I just feel very comfortable advocating for myself. And you know what you were saying earlier, earlier about the fact that when someone gives you a little jagged comment, I never let that comment go. Whenever that comment happens, I never attack it. I just go, oh wait, you just said this like that. What did you mean by that? I'm so sorry, I didn't understand. Like I'm a bit, you know, sometimes I'm a bit slow to understand things and I interrogate it just gently where I'm like why did you say that? Why did you want to say that to me right now? And I sort of almost behaved like a five year old. It's like break it down to me like I'm five. What do you mean? Like why would you say that? And every time they end up shriveled, like absolutely shriveled. And about four times I've received an apology whether like I'm sorry I think I'm having a bad day or I'm sorry I've been on to you. Yeah.
- [74:57]
Or that's good though also because.
- [74:58]
Or I'm sorry I think I had an idea of you from who you are online and I didn't give my. Give you a chance to present yourself to me in person and that's fine. And I'm so cool about it as soon as you say because I think a lot of our like little nasty moments can be unconscious, can be knee jerk. It doesn't mean it's okay. But I have forgiveness for anyone who's just being a bit of a cunt because I'm a bit of a cunt. We all are. We all are. But what I just won't let happen and I don't think it serves them or me for that moment to be passed by because they might be unconsciously presenting themselves in quite a horrible way. And so I'm just inviting, inviting someone to question was that totally necessary?
- [75:41]
Sometimes someone self and listen some people.
- [75:45]
There's one woman I worked with who literally went out of her way every day to make my life a living hell. I was kind of fine with that because she wore that shit on her chest. It wasn't insidious. She didn't try and cover it up so that I would be gaslit like she was full on a fucking beast. And than a monster, a demon, truly And I was like, you just don't like me and that's fine. And if I stay away from you, you'll fucking leave me alone. So that's okay. You know, they say I like my racist racist. I like my cunt to just be a cunt cunt. I just hate passive aggression and insidious nastiness. I like Blunt Bot. Some people just don't fucking like me. I don't fucking like them. It's fine. I don't think you should be horrible to each other. But I would way rather you just make that plain and make me make it clear it's your problem with me rather than the fact that I have a problem. It's not my problem, it's your problem.
- [76:37]
The. Absolutely. The passive aggression, it causes a stink in your brain if you're not careful. Where you could become self conscious, which is most of the time. That's what passive aggression is designed to make you do. It's designed to get you to question yourself. Oh, they don't like me. Did I do something wrong? And then you. And then you chase the affection. And that's kind of what I used to do, like years ago ago. And I've noticed that in me now and I can't do it anymore. And I'm with you on the. I much prefer when people are kind of directly indifferent even or whatever to me.
- [77:08]
Yeah, I think it's so much more refreshing. I also feel as though there is enough problem solving that we have to do in this life, especially as women. We're constantly doing death maths. We're doing like, how am I going to get home alive today or tonight? The amount of hoops that we have to jump through all of the time. Don't give me another problem to solve. If you don't fucking like me, just say you don't like me or leave me the alone. Don't like give me riddles that I now have to try and deconstruct in my brain and wonder, but you mean crazy why they do it. I know, but I think it is so rude to impose problem solving on me. Like just like my life is fucking hard enough, just fuck off and leave me alone.
- [77:49]
Yes. Yeah. The mystery of whether someone likes you. You don't need that swirling around up there. Not with the death maths.
- [77:56]
Honestly, I wish everyone just had the like Britain's Got Talent, you know, like the X Factor buzzer. That's just like, I don't like you. Boom. I move on.
- [78:05]
That would be very perfect. Yeah, I think a lot of the self consciousness that I had as a young girl and then as a teenager in kind of my early 20s, was based around that very thing was figuring out and doing. Doing the problem solving in my head.
- [78:19]
And again, athletic hoop jumping. Yes.
- [78:21]
And becoming whatever, you know, that was my unconscious habit, was becoming what I thought people needed me to be in that moment to be comfortable with themselves. And a lot of the time, because I'm a very bright, enthusiastic woman, it was dimming myself and even being ashamed of everything that I was. But yeah, I'm not willing to pay that cost anymore. It's too. It made me really depressed.
- [78:43]
And I'm very happy to see, like, where you've gotten to. And I'm excited to see, like, if this is you now in your 20s, I can't even fucking imagine what you're gonna be like in your 80s, so.
- [78:53]
Oh, I can't wait.
- [78:54]
I'd like to periodically keep coming back every 10 years and asking you, you know, how deliciously you're living now. I think it's quite clear what you hope for people to get from this book and it's really just a bit of self love and self exploration.
- [79:11]
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And just I think I would like to see the book itself as a permission slip for other people to be more authentic and to express themselves and to take up more space in their own lives. Taking up space in your own life is not selfish. It's your life.
- [79:29]
Florence Given, thank you very much.
- [79:31]
Thank you so much for having me.
- [79:32]
This was so fun.
- [79:34]
Yay.
- [79:37]
Foreign thank you so much for listening.
- [79:42]
Jameela Jamil
To this week's episode.
- [79:43]
Florence Given
I Weigh with Jameela Jamil is produced and researched by myself, Jameela Jamil, Erin Finnegan, Kimmy Gregory and Amelia Chapolo.
- [79:50]
Jameela Jamil
And the beautiful music that you are hearing now is made by my boyfriend, James Blake.
- [79:54]
Florence Given
And if you haven't already, please rate.
- [79:56]
Jameela Jamil
Review and subscribe to the show. It's such a great way to show your support and helps me out massively.
- [80:01]
Florence Given
And lastly at I Weigh one, we.
- [80:02]
Jameela Jamil
Would love to hear from you and.
- [80:04]
Florence Given
Share what you weigh at the end of this podcast.
- [80:06]
Jameela Jamil
Please email us a voice recording sharing what you weigh ati weigh podcastmail.com.