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

Fearne’s been thinking a lot lately about how much of her life she’s spent people pleasing as a result of wanting to be liked. So today, how to break free from the ‘good girl’ your family, friends, colleagues, and society expect you to be... In this episode – -Louise Redknapp clarifies why being described as ‘nice’ isn’t a compliment and how she’s gone about making people see her as a multi-faceted human -Paloma Faith pinpoints the ways women make themselves smaller in order to make others feel more comfortable -Sophie Ellis-Bextor explains how she’s learnt to navigate mum guilt while not minimising the importance of her career -Natasha Bedingfield talks about the powerful effects of physically speaking your truth and voicing your needs -Afua Hirsch reflects on how colonisation in her native country Ghana has affected her notions of what it means to be good, pure woman -Florence Given explores not letting outside opinion dictate who you are and how to stop feeling the need to defend or explain yourself -Dawn French waxes lyrical about the joy of getting things wrong and embracing imperfection -Emily Atack explains how online abuse almost broke her, but ultimately strengthened her resolve to be an even bolder version of herself Listen to the full episodes here – Louise Redknapp https://pod.fo/e/2b95f6 Paloma Faith https://pod.fo/e/245babhttps:/pod.fo/e/245bab Sophie Ellis Bextor https://pod.fo/e/2a124c Natasha Bedingfield https://pod.fo/e/21ebf2 Afua Hirsch https://pod.fo/e/2b12ae Florence Given https://pod.fo/e/27d879 Dawn French https://pod.fo/e/23125c Emily Atack https://pod.fo/e/15f453 Child on the line is a three-part documentary podcast series celebrating the Volunteer Counsellors of Childline, and the brave children & young people who contact the helpline service. Listen here: https://www.childonthelinepodcast.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hi, I'm Natalie Dormer and I'm proud to be an ambassador for Childline. This year, Childline turns 40. To mark it, I've made Child on the Line, a three-part documentary podcast. We hear why children needed a helpline in 1986, how it was built against the odds and the challenges children face today, from abuse and mental health to social media and AI. Search Child on the Line and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:29Fearne Cotton?

  Hello and a massive welcome to Happy Place. I'm Fern Cotton and today it's time for the good girls to rebel.

• 0:36Speaker 02

  I call it my inner good girl that just wants everyone to understand her. And I just want to type back, no, please, I didn't mean that. Please see me in this way.

• 0:44Speaker 03

  I meet people and they either want to conquer me or tame the beast.

• 0:51Speaker 04

  And I realised that I had been speaking about my work in a way that minimised it. I didn't give it much status.

• 0:58Speaker 05

  The word for myself is long suffering no longer because it's actually not good to just suffer through those things.

• 1:03Speaker 02

  I can honestly say for the first time in my life, I'm doing everything for me.

• 1:09Fearne Cotton?

  I've been thinking a lot recently about how much of my life has been dictated by feeling a desperate need to be likeable, to be the good girl I think others expect me to be. Oh my God, I mean, I know so many of you will be nodding along, but this one has been on my mind a hell of a lot recently. I grew up in an industry, from a very young age, understanding that my likability was a currency of its own and that if I wasn't liked, I simply wouldn't have a job. So at times, without sounding too melodramatic, it felt like survival to me. But then I let that sort of seep into loads of different other areas of my life, ones where it didn't need to be a currency, but it still felt like it.

• 1:53Fearne Cotton?

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

• 2:36Fearne Cotton?

  But for me, I don't believe we can have it all. And I think trying to do everything because we want to be liked and we want to be popular and we want to be shiny so people look to us and think we're great. I think that isn't the healthiest way for us to be living at the moment. And I think it can be scary slash extremely liberating to start breaking free from these binds that we all know exist. I really want to learn from other women who are putting their foot down and refusing to make themselves smaller to keep other people happy. So today, this is a juicy one. We're going to hear from Louise Redknapp, Paloma Faith, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Natasha

• 3:17Fearne Cotton?

  Bedingfield, Afua Hirsch, Florence Given, Dawn French and Emily Atack about everything from voicing your needs to navigating mum guilt and being okay with looking like a bit of a twat.

• 3:33Speaker 06

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithGemini.

• 4:05Speaker 07

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• 4:36Speaker 06

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• 5:14Fearne Cotton?

  Right, let's do it. Here's the show.

• 5:38Fearne Cotton?

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

• 6:21Speaker 03

  I don't look at that as something that makes me happy. I look at that and I think, actually, if you know me, yeah, I'm not an asshole. Like, in our industry, I'm always polite to people. I don't believe you can be doing it for as long as we've done it. If you're not a good person, if you're not easy to work with, there's always someone chomping at the bit to take your place. So am I a nice person to work with or to, am I a good mate? Am I there for you hundred percent? But the bits that I feel have always gone unnoticed is my ambition, my drive to keep on bettering myself and doing well, to get up every time the chips have been down. And believe you me, over the last few years, I have taken a full whack of abuse.

• 7:03Speaker 03

  But you know what? I could have just carried on, sort of been in the corner and I was like, I'm just not gonna stand for this. I am gonna carry on doing what I love. And that might hit me in the face, I don't know, but I am gonna keep on going, you know, and be unapologetic for, actually, this is what I love to do and this is what I've spent thirty years doing. And I, I just wanna carry on growing, whether that be as an artist, a mum, a woman, a partner. You know, whatever that, that may be, I just wanna keep on learning from everything, being a better person. And yeah, just enjoying it to the max as much as I can.

• 7:41Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah. I mean, you're so right, because it's, no one human is one thing. And I think using the word nice is so reductive in terms of like, look at all the complexities that make up this human and who they are, rather than, oh, she's nice. And that just being the passing comment and not looking beneath at everything that's not only gotten you to where you're at, but also is driving you forward. And I think, again, reading, I didn't know so much about your earlier years, but that sort of resilience that seems completely embedded in who you are. And I'm sure a lot of that comes from your mum, who, I didn't know this until I read your book, she had you at twenty-three. You were living in a mum and baby home for the first year of your life. You know, that's not easy stuff. And I'm sure you can look back at your mum and your

• 8:25Fearne Cotton?

  Relationship as mum and daughter at that time, I think, fucking hell, how did she get through all that?

• 8:30Speaker 03

  I mean, first of all, I think the nice comment, I think I've played a part in that because I think I always remember an interviewer saying to me once that when they interview me, I say so much but say nothing. So I think just so guarded, so kind of.

• 8:45Fearne Cotton?

  But that's protection, isn't it? You're protecting yourself.

• 8:47Speaker 03

  I think I just give them what I feel they need to have and I don't actually really let people in. I think I'm like that actually in life with people as well with getting to know new people. It just takes me a while. But yeah, seeing my mum, um, my mum fought for everything, like single parent, really young, mother and baby home. I didn't know my dad. So those early years were purely about fighting for everything. Like, we had nothing and I saw her always manage to do her best for me. You know, whether it be my singing and dancing class. I mean, she took me to elocution lessons.

• 9:22Fearne Cotton?

  What a legend.

• 9:23Speaker 03

  What was, yeah, I mean, I lived in Lewisham and she's taken me to the town hall to do elocution lessons because she just said, I want you to grow up being able to converse and be confident in who you're talking to. So I owe her a great deal, actually, like I really do, because I think she could have so easily have just let me just ponder into anything. But it was really her

• 9:47Speaker 03

  selflessness of financially putting whatever she could have into me and kind of just giving me opportunities.

• 9:55Fearne Cotton?

  And it's so interesting how almost by osmosis, you're, you're picking up all of that stuff as a kid. Like, my mum doesn't give up. My mum always tries to look for a new path or my mum will never take no for an answer. And she's not imagining even saying this stuff to you, but it's just, you're seeing it and then that becomes, you know, that informs who you are as a person. Your book starts with a text from your mum, which I really loved. I've been thinking about it a lot. This text says, the world is not ready for free women. Horribly true. What does freedom mean to you? Or what does it mean to your mum? What did you take from that text?

• 10:35Speaker 03

  I think what I took from it was that I am very. As you know, authentically myself, I say when I feel something, I say when something's not good enough. I think that we've got into a real habitual and sort of groomed as girls and women to make ourselves smaller and our needs less significant. And I don't do that. And I think that quite a lot of men find that difficult to handle and quite a lot of people find that difficult to handle. Also, women, because a lot of women will resent me for being so like brazen about it because maybe they feel they can't. Why does she

• 11:20Speaker 03

  talk about her piles on national television? There's a bit about that.

• 11:25Fearne Cotton?

  I like that story.

• 11:27Speaker 03

  Like, it's just so vulgar and it's like, it's because you're, I interpret that as like, you're kind of upset that I'm sort of owning my truth. And I also feel that maybe at times men have this sort of fragile egos that we're all kind of groomed and taught to kind of tiptoe around on eggshells, like, no, it's okay that you lasted two minutes in the bedroom. That's okay. And didn't offer to like, make me climax. It's not okay. And I will say it. And then people are like.

• 12:06Fearne Cotton?

  This is why I love you.

• 12:07Speaker 03

  This is the freedom, this is the freedom that my mum's talking about. The world's not ready for it. Everyone's like scared. I, I meet people and they either want to conquer me, tame the beast, or they run away because it's difficult to look in the mirror and like, it talk back to you.

• 12:30Fearne Cotton?

  But I think it's so brilliant that you.

• 12:33Speaker 03

  So I'm lonely.

• 12:34Fearne Cotton?

  No, you're not at all. I'm here with you, babe. I love it because. You're able to mitigate judgment, I'm sure not entirely, but to a degree, because you can see that anyone who's trying to say anything to you or counter a point you're making or to quieten you, it's nothing to do with you. It's very much the other person's projection of what they're not saying, what they're not doing. And it's how the whole world operates, as we know. I mean, you, you end the chapter, which is named Running, with something that made me feel quite sad. And I don't know if it's because maybe I'm misinterpreting it, but you put at the end, "Don't make the mistakes I did." Do you genuinely think that you, like, are you taking all responsibility for that? Or that you made the mistakes?

• 13:19Fearne Cotton?

  Or do you not just see it as, in everyone's life, there are circumstances and things come and things go, and it's just the way it is? It felt like you put a lot of blame on yourself.

• 13:30Speaker 03

  I feel like that's like part of being like of the personality type that's like a high achiever. I think high achievers are always trying to strive to be the best. They care so much about whatever and thinks about them. They're like preoccupied with being seen as being everything, like kind, funny, successful, you know, independent. All of this stuff is like about taking all the responsibility. And so it manifests in different areas of your life. So when I talk about, you know, feeling hyper responsible for my own success,

• 14:13Speaker 03

  it's the same as feeling hyper responsible for my relationships. But I also think that like, one way that I'm starting to consider recently that I need to be hyper responsible for is actually hyper responsible for myself in the sense of like caring for myself, because I'm not very good at it. And I don't really know, like, a friend said it to me the other day. I'm gonna, she said, she said, "I'm busy at the moment, but I want to monologue to you about self-love." And I was like, "I don't even know what that means."

• 14:49Speaker 03

  Because it's like this idea that you're so sacrificial and this kind of like feminine martyrdom. There's a chapter in there about martyrdom. Um, it's just very difficult to sort of navigate, but when, but I, I also am very aware that like in the sort of psychological realm. You can't sit and talk to your therapist about what other people have done and analyse them. You can only really talk about yourself and how you've acted. So I've got that kind of inbuilt in me. I can only work on me. And my mistakes aren't necessarily that I failed. They're also my mistakes. I acknowledge that maybe my choices weren't right.

• 15:28Speaker 03

  That maybe I was like completely and utterly preoccupied with this idea of like romance and love. And went for that and didn't think about the person being able to like have a successful long-term relationship with me. That was able to kind of ebb and flow with time and our different changes. I think when you first meet anyone, you're always right for each other in that moment. But I think what happened to me and mine, without going into excessive detail, is that the moment I became a mother, I changed and I needed someone to

• 16:10Speaker 03

  change with me and they wouldn't because they wanted to have the same dynamic with me. Which was always for me, a very nurturing parental role. And then I had kids and I didn't want to. And I, and I didn't just have that within my relationship. I had that with other relatives and I had it with friends as well. That had al- always been sort of reliant on me to be a maternal role in their life. And had had, I had a lot of people have some outbursts about it.

• 16:44Fearne Cotton?

  How are you with guilt? Because I think this is still, it's a very obvious subject, but I think it is still something that most, maybe parents, but certainly mums feel when they, especially weirdly, when they really like the thing they're doing, whether it's work or something that is recreational, going out with mates, having a nice time. The guilt of choosing that over being with your kid is still this kind of maybe ancestral hangover that we feel so torn apart by it, that we then stop enjoying the job or the thing that we're doing because we feel so racked with guilt. How do you manage that?

• 17:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think, I think subconsciously when I started my podcast, which you very kindly were my first guest for, and you were so, so patient with me. I think I subconsciously did start, you know, when you do something and you don't know exactly what you're getting out of a project, part of the podcast conversation is about, was about helping me have permission because I think I was finding the guilt just too much sometimes. And I realised that I had been speaking about my work in a way that minimised it in front of everybody in the house. I was quite dismissive. I didn't give it much status. I'd say, I've got to run off and do this thing and I don't really want to be gone and of course I'll be missing you and, oh, I just have to go and I'll be quick, back as quick as possible. And I just

• 17:58Speaker 04

  was giving, I was making it very small and nobody was, it was not helping with the conversation in the house because I'd made work a thing that was a bit small. So the kids could say to me, why are you doing that? Or, and it would get, it would be huge because I'd think, yes, you're right. Why, why am I, I've got a choice to make. I could be here. And then after empowering it a bit more, I, I gave it a bit more, it got a bit more respect and then they stopped asking me as, as much.

• 18:25Fearne Cotton?

  How interesting.

• 18:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, because I'd say, yes, I've got to go away, but I, it's, it's important to me I do these things. And I'm really fortunate that I've been booked to do these things because there's so many people out there that do my job and they've asked me to do it. And I really want to do it and I want to do it well. So I'm going to go and do it and I'll be back before you know it. I keep myself available. I think that's the thing, as they get older, it's easier. So especially for the older kids that, you know, they've got phones if they're at secondary school. So my 12 Twelve year old, I don't think I've missed a school run, no matter where I am in the world, I'll FaceTime him when he goes in, even if it's like three AM. From me wherever I am, just because I know he he needs that from me and that's okay, that makes me feel better if I know he's feeling good. But other part is I just, I think I've just prioritized it better because I've stopped talking it down, actually.

• 19:11Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, but how interesting.

• 19:12Speaker 04

  Which I was doing for so long.

• 19:13Fearne Cotton?

  That your tone then informs how they're reacting to it, because I think we assume it's this inherent thing that as soon as we're gone, everything falls to shit, whereas actually. A lot of the time, they're fine and they they don't even know you're not there or, you know, and if they need you, like you say, you're you're available, you're around.

• 19:31Speaker 05

  I I felt quite excited that there's communities like that who are just using music in a way that it's not about selling something, you know.

• 19:39Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, and it's healing. I think it's really therapeutic. We, like me and the team were just in the kitchen talking about that exact thing that. Don't have to be a brilliant singer, but singing with other people, if it's in a choir, it might have been church back in the day or now at a gig. Singing as a collective, it does something to you like on a cellular level. So I can't imagine like for someone like you who has this gift and this voice. That is next level. That must feel incredible to do that.

• 20:06Speaker 05

  It really does. I mean, using the vibrations of your voice, I'm sure something's happening and there's studies now about the vagus nerve that we're all learning about that. They show that that releases stress and I know you've been doing a lot of things like that.

• 20:18Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, my throat is something I think about a lot because about, God, what year are we in now, twenty four, four or five years ago, I had a massive cyst on my vocal cords.

• 20:27Speaker 05

  Really?

• 20:28Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, it was, I had no clue, but I literally couldn't speak, which is obviously quite a nightmare because that's literally all I do. And so I went to the doctor and I had this sort of pee on my vocal cords and I was meant to have an operation. And I kind of got really stuck into looking at, right, well, what does this actually mean though? You know, what am I not saying? Why am I not using? This part of my body properly, you know, like I was really became obsessed by that because I know. I think like a lot of people.

• 20:58Speaker 05

  It does.

• 20:59Fearne Cotton?

  The body keeps a score. I think I was not saying a lot of stuff. And anyway, cut a long story short, I went to go and have the operation, went for a pre-op checkup and it had gone. It just dispersed naturally. So I have to watch this and I'm sure you do, obviously it's what you do. You're you're using that part of your body all the time, but you've got to go use it wisely.

• 21:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, I have an amazing vocal coach and he really, um, he's always been like that as well. That thing of like, what are you not saying? And a lot of trauma is is stored in your voice and it's kind of amazing when you start doing, even like doing vocal runs and stuff. It kind of releases a lot of that kind of stuff.

• 21:36Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, it's all that tension where words get stuck.

• 21:39Speaker 05

  How did you release it? Did you do body work?

• 21:41Fearne Cotton?

  No, I literally started saying stuff. It was that simple and it was really tiny things like I would be in the back of a cab. And say it was too cold. I would be too worried about saying, oh, do you mind turning the A C off? I'd feel so mortified, so I'd just sit there shivering. It was silly stuff like that. So I started testing myself to go, oh, do you mind if you turn the A C off? And just feeling it and going with it and then slightly bigger examples. Yeah, and then trying to do it in my personal life a bit more. And it's been a slow, long road, but I've definitely done something.

• 22:14Speaker 05

  I had a, um, I had like a word for my, you know, like sometimes at the beginning of the year, you have a word. And the word for myself for this year was really interesting. That kind of came to me, but it was, you know, like how we put this thing of long suffering. She's it's like a, almost like a, that person's so long suffering. Have you ever heard that term? Like, it's kind of like this put on a pedestal thing that they're very patient. And I actually, um, the word for myself was long suffering no longer.

• 22:38Fearne Cotton?

  Yes.

• 22:39Speaker 05

  You know, because it's actually not good to just suffer through those things.

• 22:42Fearne Cotton?

  No.

• 22:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, it affects you in other ways.

• 22:44Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, my God, hugely. Like you say, the body keeps a score. It's all in there.

• 22:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 22:48Fearne Cotton?

  It's all in there. How do you feel about this new? I'm imagining liberating autonomy that artists like yourself have where, you know, back in the day, we're the same age and I remember you and your brother both starting out and I was on probably Top of the Pops at the time, Radio One. So I clearly remember you both exploding onto the scene. But then in the early noughties, the power was purely in the hands of the label, but also the radio stations. You know, unless you had a radio station committed to playing you and a label that were going to back you, you weren't going anywhere. Whereas now with TikTok and social media and how artists have a bit more freedom, I feel like the power has shifted back into the audience's hands.

• 23:31Fearne Cotton?

  They're choosing what they like. Have you noticed that shift?

• 23:34Speaker 05

  I think that's a really exciting thing about where we're at right now because you can get that direct feedback and people are much more involved and you can connect with people more. Like, we used to have to approve photo, like, we couldn't post photos of ourselves. Like, you'd have to have like 20 people go, oh, is this a good photo?

• 23:51Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, horrendous.

• 23:52Speaker 05

  Like, there was one photo we were going to use as a single cover and all, everyone was, all the people who worked in the office were girls except one man. And they were like, oh, I think she looks really great. And there was one man in the room and they were like, come and see this. They were like, doesn't she look great? He's like, the boobs are a bit small.

• 24:07Fearne Cotton?

  Wow.

• 24:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, and they were all, we all looked at him and were like, excuse me, you know.

• 24:13Fearne Cotton?

  But that was so commonplace.

• 24:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, I was like, I'm in the room. I like my boobs.

• 24:17Fearne Cotton?

  I'm sort of shocked, but not shocked because, like, A, it's gross, but B, I've so been there. And that was so commonplace back in the early noughties.

• 24:25Speaker 05

  It was.

• 24:25Fearne Cotton?

  People were talked about. And also people-

• 24:27Speaker 05

  Talk about when you're in the room.

• 24:27Fearne Cotton?

  When you're in the room.

• 24:28Speaker 05

  Like, they're not there. Like, her, look at her, look at that.

• 24:30Fearne Cotton?

  Horrendous. Do you think that's impacted who you are today and how you are today?

• 24:35Speaker 05

  I, I had to get over that a little bit with, like, that's why it took me a while to kind of get into the social media thing because it was almost like a hurdle I had to get past because you kind of get told something enough times and you kind of go and, you know, you stay, you're like, no, that's their job and this is mine. It's definitely become more like we all have to be photographers now. Like, we all have to kind of, you know, the, the hard part of that, you don't have like the same kind of, you can't blame anyone when it goes wrong, you know?

• 24:59Fearne Cotton?

  Like, it's me.

• 25:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, like, if everyone's telling you what to do, then you can say, well, that was the label's fault, you know, but you kind of have to figure it out. And I think if you see it as a game, but it's just like, I think kids do social media so much better. Not kids, because we don't want them on there, but like- Young people. Young people do it so much better because they're not afraid of mistakes. Um, and because it's a game. It's like, oh, it's kind of like a video game. Yeah.

• 25:25Speaker 06

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithGemini.

• 25:58Speaker 07

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• 26:28Speaker 06

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• 27:04Speaker 06

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• 27:47Speaker 06

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• 28:01Fearne Cotton?

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

• 28:44Fearne Cotton?

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

• 29:24Fearne Cotton?

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

• 30:07Fearne Cotton?

  was, it made me question that and think, why do I associate tattoos with something so negative? And when I started to research tattoos, I realised that millennia of women in my family tattooed and used scarification to adorn their bodies. It was a way of celebrating aging, marking rites of passage, just adorning yourself with the reality of being on this earth, surviving, serving your community, finding your purpose, delivering children, healing other people, whatever it is your skill was, there were ways that, and actually all Indigenous societies share this in common. It's incredible how much continuity there is. If you go to the Arctic or the Amazon, Middle East, Africa, Asia, all of these societies

• 30:50Fearne Cotton?

  have quite similar traditions, especially where women would adorn themselves with scars or tattoos as a way of really celebrating their body. And I just had this epiphany, right, where I realised, I thought it was completely normal for a woman my age to go and have a surgical procedure done, go under a general anaesthetic, have some man probably cut her open with a knife. But I thought it was kind of barbaric to have these kind of adornments, scars, tattoos, things that generations of my ancestors did. And it really landed that I had this very colonised mindset. The thing that's very natural and celebrates your existence and your belonging, I thought was taboo. And the thing that is representing yourself, loathing and adhering to beauty standards you didn't create, I thought was

• 31:35Fearne Cotton?

  completely normal. And that was when it landed. I was like, this isn't who I am. And that's when I decided that I was going to get a tattoo. And I was going to try to, in a way, circle back to 300 years, to my female ancestors before they were converted to Christianity. Because it was really missionaries who persuaded people in countries like Ghana that their traditional practices were bad, that they were backward, they were savage, they were pagan, that progress in civilisation was

• 32:03Speaker 07

  Behaving more like Victorian English women. And so they abandoned huge swathes of their culture, so many traditions, so much knowledge and power that has actually kept them alive and innovating for so many millennia, literally. And I just started to think about so much that had been lost. And I, in a way, this was going to be my act of reclaiming some of the lost heritage to try and find what were the practices my female ancestors did before they succumbed to these Eurocentric ideas that have actually been quite bad for us. Because if you have a society that worships youth, the one thing that's guaranteed is that all women especially will feel bad about themselves.

• 32:43Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 32:44Speaker 07

  Because we're all going to age.

• 32:46Speaker 02

  So when I don't express myself, when I don't set those boundaries, that feeling of wanting to set that boundary, that discomfort, doesn't go anywhere. It goes inside my body and I start to not have much respect for myself anymore. So I've started to respect more my ability to express myself, say no, wear the outfit that I want, express my opinions online more than having people like me. That doesn't mean it's not painful. That doesn't mean I don't feel that, what do they call it? Lizard brain, like your ancient brain response that doesn't want to be isolated. That doesn't mean that I don't feel that.

• 33:29Speaker 02

  But I don't allow it anymore to dictate my behaviour as much. I can view it as a separate voice in my head.

• 33:36Fearne Cotton?

  So when you're in that moment, say, I don't know, someone's left a shitty comment on your Instagram.

• 33:40Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 33:41Fearne Cotton?

  Or someone in your actual life says to you, something that makes you feel really awful.

• 33:45Speaker 02

  Defensive, whatever, yeah.

• 33:47Fearne Cotton?

  And you're in that moment and I know that feeling so well. What do you do when you're sitting with it? Because what we normally want to do is write that straight away, like, oh, I'm going to take back what I said, I'm going to lift that boundary I've just set or delete that Instagram video because it's all too uncomfortable. How do you just sit in it?

• 34:05Speaker 02

  So I will always, leaving the post up first of all, in that example would be just taking a deep breath and also allowing that voice in your head to go absolutely nuts, defending itself and just not acting on it. I think I've just created a gap now between when I respond and when I react. That does, I call it my inner good girl that just wants everyone to understand her, especially on social media. I'm sure you experienced this. When you, like, I love people. All I want to do is help people connect to themselves. I want to help people live a more joyful life and a more authentic life. That's all I want to do. And I feel like that's also your mission as well. Oh, yeah. So when your words are misconstrued, it is the most, it's like a knife to the chest.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  And I just want to type back, no, please, I didn't mean that. Please see me in this way. And I just want to correct everyone's thoughts about me in their heads. But that's, of course, that's impossible. I can't even control what goes on in my own fucking head sometimes. So why would I even try and go around fine tuning and, and trying to correct the reputation that everyone has of me in their head? It's, it's just, it's like the biggest form of psychological suffering that I've ever experienced. And I think I've been through so much in my career that I actually, there's almost this respect that I've gained for myself now in surviving so much of that bullshit. So once you've, you've experienced those,

• 35:26Speaker 02

  those negative comments and you keep the post up or you, you maybe text your mate and you vent to your mate, but you don't go online. You gain respect for yourself because it takes so much inner strength to stick to what you're saying. And I just think also there's, you have to sacrifice something. So I can either go around correcting what everyone thinks about me. Or I can keep my peace. I can keep my peace. And I was just rereading The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. Love. Such a good book. And I was rereading it last week and he said, "You have to admit that there is a part of you that would rather be right than be at peace." And just hearing those words again, it was like, it's just so good because

• 36:10Speaker 02

  you can't, you can't have cake and eat it. You can either be right. Yeah. Or you can be at peace. And I think the image also of letting it go. Part of my ego feels like I've given up. Part of my ego feels like I'm letting them win. And you do have to just let them win. You just, you do just have to let people say what they want about you. Um, because there's nothing you can do to control it. The only thing that you could do is to shrink. And I'm, I'm not paying that cost anymore. It's, it literally was eating away at my body. I became physically ill. I just, I spent years, I wasn't even going to write this book. Um, I actually told my publishers, I was so burnt out.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  I was screaming in my pillows every single morning and just the woman who loved her life was just gone. And it was really depressing. I just didn't even know how I'd got there. And it was a series of small steps, turning away from self-expression. Even something as like letting people decide things for me and just being like, yeah, okay, that's fine. And over time, my life hadn't taken the shape of what Floss loves. It had taken the shape of what everyone else around me would have me live. And I lost respect for myself. I lost the confidence to even express myself. And the journey back from that place for me was saying a big fat no to everything I told my publishers. This is, this is going to sound ridiculous to anyone who's not in the book world and like loves writing books, but I said to my publishers,

• 37:35Speaker 02

  I'm not going to write a book for another two years. That was a big deal for me. It was like no book for two years. And I stopped doing my podcast. That was exhausting me as well. Um. And I don't even know if it was the podcast, to be honest. I think it was an inauthenticity issue. It's not that I was being fake. It's that I didn't have the courage to say what I actually wanted to say. I wanted to talk about cancel culture. I wanted to talk even about the way I felt feminism has evolved into something I don't like anymore. I don't like that it's become this moral purity Olympics where everyone just cares about being like the most woke and saying the most. Yeah, saying the most woke thing and the way that we hurt women now.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  With their morals and like, we don't call each other horrible names about our appearance anymore because you can't get away with that. We'll just say a woman's problematic and no one's going to talk to her again. And I wanted to say this stuff, Fern, but I didn't have the courage. And I didn't respect myself for not having the courage to say that stuff. And that's when I was doing the podcast and all I wanted to do was say the stuff. And so I had to retreat, I had to come away, I had to cancel everything. I said to my team, don't expect anything from me for two years. And then I took a month off in that two years and I did nothing. And in that, that was just so radical for me. It was, it felt like giving up, but replenishing something inside of me that needed to be awakened,

• 38:58Speaker 02

  which was like this little girl that just wants to have fun. I hadn't let her have fun for so long. And then when I took that break off, I was in Japan and I came up with the idea of living deliciously because I was observing the buildings in Japan and all of the balconies in this building were facing north, so they didn't get any sun. And I was like, why have they, just my curiosity again, just I was, because I wasn't doing anything. I was just walking around wondering. And I was like, why don't these buildings, why aren't they facing the sun, these balconies? Everyone would be so much happier if they could feel the sun in the morning. And then I just started journaling about it and then I wrote down all of the things that I do to turn towards joy in my life.

• 39:40Speaker 02

  And then that became ways I like to live deliciously. And then I turned that into my last podcast episode. I said to my podcast team, I just want to do one where it's just me and I'm going to talk and then that's going to be it. And then that was my biggest episode. And, and then I went on this whole journey. The idea for the book came. And it was something that, that, that book idea would never have come to me if I'd have just kept slogging along, performing the idea of Florence Given, like a fucking caricature that I thought everyone wanted from me. This good girl feminist that didn't dare say anything bad about the movement because that's not what good girls do. And I didn't even know that was something I had in my head. It was a massive fear block.

• 40:17Speaker 03

  We know because we've got kids, they're going to make mistakes. Of course they are, they're, they're supposed to. But that's when it's worrying. If, if your kid makes a mistake and repeats it and repeats it and repeats it, especially if it's, if it hurts them or gives them shame or embarrassment or humiliation or any of those awful things.

• 40:36Speaker 07

  Then then you have to worry. It's if if you make the mistake. And even if you make it again, but then you move on, or then you learn from it. Hooray for those mistakes. I'm not sure what you learn from success.

• 40:50Fearne Cotton?

  Not very much at all.

• 40:51Speaker 07

  What I would say is I have seen increasingly in the last few years. People with a lot of whatever success is, you know, wealth, I don't know. What it looks like, I don't ever really entirely buy it, but. People who have a lot of that feeling spiritually and emotionally bereft.

• 41:11Fearne Cotton?

  Yep.

• 41:11Speaker 07

  Because somehow that part of their life, which looks all marvelous and seems to be all tied up. Means this part has been neglected. So what is success and what is the point of it all? I'd much rather live in a. In the place I am, which is lucky, which is a bit awkward, bit wrong, bit ugly. But didn't feel right, got the wrong thing, got wore the wrong clothes, uh. Said the wrong thing, regret that, come on, you know, constant fussy, difficult, awkward stuff. Uh it is exhausting.

• 41:48Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 41:48Speaker 07

  But it's truthful.

• 41:49Fearne Cotton?

  It's being a human. It's being a human. We're expecting humans to not be humans. We're expecting them to be shiny, perfect. Robos and walk around, everything is perfect.

• 42:00Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 42:00Fearne Cotton?

  Life is so messy.

• 42:01Speaker 07

  Yourself, uh uh I mean, I know it's an old chestnut to blame social media, but I wish social media was full of lots of. Ugly, difficult, funny stuff. I wish you, and there is some of that. There is, that's what I I certainly cleave towards all that stuff. But but there's also far too much of aren't I perfect in this? I'm don't I, I went to this clever thing and I'm marvelous. You know, there's that, which, and I don't begrudge anybody any of that.

• 42:25Fearne Cotton?

  But it's not real.

• 42:26Speaker 07

  Your other stuff on.

• 42:27Fearne Cotton?

  But it's not real at all. I don't, I don't think it's even one percent of the reality of what they're experiencing in that moment. If it's a picture of them looking perfect in an outfit or whatever it might be.

• 42:35Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 42:35Fearne Cotton?

  And we all could go, and I think ma- many of us do. Oh God, they've got all their shits together and their life is so perfect and I'm, you know, my cat's just done a massive shit. Kids doing this and you're sort of stressing.

• 42:48Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 42:48Fearne Cotton?

  It means nothing, but we're sort of buying into it. And I think that's one of the reasons the margin for error has got so small.

• 42:56Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 42:56Fearne Cotton?

  And why I was so relieved. It's like this, reading this book is a liberation of and like a relief, like, oh, God, yeah, we're all doing it.

• 43:04Speaker 07

  We're all doing it.

• 43:05Fearne Cotton?

  Actually, it helped me turn some moments that I would have gone, oh, I'm not looking at that, into funny cringe.

• 43:12Speaker 07

  Because I think we also, it's very important that we work out who we are. You know, you work out what your politics are and you do that, you make mistakes doing that, you know, that that's kind of what college or university or those years of your life. Uh, that's what I think further education is about, actually, essentially about that, is about being a total twat. Uh, you know, sleeping with all the wrong people.

• 43:35Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 43:35Speaker 07

  Getting the wrong politics, taking up the wrong hobby, uh, voicing yourself in a certain way, wearing the wrong clothes, doing, you know, doing everything wrong.

• 43:43Fearne Cotton?

  Yep.

• 43:44Speaker 07

  So that you can work out who your mates are, who you, who you are attached to, who you think is wise, who think, who you think is clever, what you think is right or wrong. That's really what all of that timing is about. So then we have a picture of who we are. And what you've got to be careful of is that you don't get entrenched in that so that you'd never change.

• 44:05Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 44:05Speaker 07

  And that is a difficult thing to do because you have principles. And, you know, my parents had principles and I know that I lived by their principles. Their moral compass, if you like, for quite a long time, until I realised that some of them weren't quite what I really felt. Or maybe we're in, set in another time, um, and we might need to adjust.

• 44:30Fearne Cotton?

  We're not meant to have it all sorted and have it all together. It's just, it's a complete fallacy and we just need to try our best every day. To be accepting of all the flaws and crap going on our heads, et cetera.

• 44:42Speaker 03

  Oh, and it is the one thing I say constantly to anyone, I am so flawed, God, I'm flawed. But that I, I'm, I'm okay with that. That is one thing that I am actually okay with. There are so many things about me that I, oh, I wish I could get better at. I drink too much, this, that, you know, I, I party too much. But I'm very flawed and I'm okay with that. That's not even, I, I can, I can try and work on certain.

• 45:07Fearne Cotton?

  And things, but I think I'll always be flawed. That was perfect. No, same. If I gave you a list, it would fill this book in front of me if I wrote down all the things that I know. Aren't great about me, but equally. At the age I'm at now, I could probably write a book with all the things that I think I can offer. Yeah. And that I do think are positive and we're complex people with loads of shit going on. But I think it's it's really brilliant and valiant to have this conversation and to also. Put it into the context of, you know, these are the reasons that you have self doubt and these are the reasons that you. Sometimes lack self worth and it's accentuated greatly by this really ungoverned world of social media. Yeah.

• 45:50Fearne Cotton?

  Where you're receiving all of these unsolicited pictures and videos and dialogue and we we need to look at. The systems in place and what better protection can be there for women. All over the world in the public eye and not, this is happening to young school kids, as you said, this is for everyone. Yeah, yeah. And to really ensure that women can walk around feeling safer at the end of the day. Definitely, and the fact that it gets put to the back of the pile at Parliament and things like that, you just go, hang on, our safety is not up for debate. It's not something that you can be intransigent about. It's like our safety is is paramount, is it not? Yep. And it's still something that we have to fight for every day and it's it will continue to be a fight, but where we start with it.

• 46:32Fearne Cotton?

  And where I'm starting personally with it is just not being afraid to be me and going, I'm I'm still gonna. Have blonde hair, I'm still gonna put bikini pictures up in summer, oh, you wait in the summer. I can't wait. I am gonna put up the most, I'm, you know, I'm gonna go to the gym, I'm gonna get myself in shape. You don't, you don't need to do any of that. Just put your bikini pics up. I quite like my wobbly bits nowadays, I'm all right with that with those, but yeah, I it's and it's it's for me, I can honestly say for the first time in my life. I'm doing everything for me. Good. I'm on my own, got my dog, I've got my work, I've got my family, my friends, you know, I'm dating here and there. My life is brilliant and I I really am trying to refuse to let.

• 47:17Fearne Cotton?

  The, this, this, this behaviour affect my life anymore and make me change who I am as a person. I can't do that anymore. I'm only gonna be who I'm gonna be. I can, I can dye my hair brown for a bit. I could get a boob reduction, whatever. But I, I can't really stop being me. It's also brought a lot of amazing things to my life, being me. My mates like me. My mum thinks I'm great. My dog loves me. Yeah, I, I'm very lucky to be me. I sometimes feel. Just keep being you. Yeah. Bloody love Emily. I love Emily so much. Just keep being you. That's the act of rebellion in a world that's constantly trying to prod and poke you into a different mould, isn't

• 47:58Fearne Cotton?

  it? I love it. I think this stuff's scary. Look, as I said at the start of this, I was people pleasing and trying to be liked for years and years. I mean, part of me still desperately is, but what I want you to know is, it doesn't feel comfortable or necessarily easy to just start changing your ways and saying no and setting boundaries. It's not about feeling comfortable, it's about doing it and standing the discomfort, I believe. And I think with time and practice, you then start to feel a bit less uncomfortable. That is what I'm going through at the moment. Do you recognise yourself in any of the women in today's show? I'd love to know. Let's chat about it. Let's chat about these little

• 48:39Fearne Cotton?

  acts of disruption on Instagram during the week. We're at Happy Place Official. I'm gonna be back here really soon. In the meantime, a massive thanks again to all the women whose voices you heard today. There'll be links to their full episodes in the show notes. Also, a big thanks to the producer, Anushka Tate, at Happy Place Studios, and to you. Keep ruffling feathers, gang.

• 49:28Speaker 06

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