Afua Hirsch: “Nobody gets to police our bodies!” How to reject beauty trends

Do you get rid of your body hair? Do you hate your periods? Are you debating a nose job? Why? Writer and broadcaster Afua Hirsch has been tracing how we’ve become so loathing of our bodies. In this chat with Fearne, Afua explains where our modern, Western notions of beauty come from, and why she’s advocating for us to celebrate how powerful our bodies are. She’s rediscovering and reclaiming rituals her ancestors will have done before Western ideals became the norm, and points out that wanting to change your facial features to conform to beauty trends will erase your ancestry. Fearne and Afua chat about a desire for more fluidity around sexuality and identity, as well as why we should respect the wisdom that comes with age rather than fearing it. Plus, how to dig deep and ask yourself: “Do I think this, or have I been taught this?” Afua’s book, Decolonising My Body, is out now. If you liked this episode of Happy Place, you might also like: Emma Dabiri https://pod.fo/e/2154cb Adele Roberts https://pod.fo/e/22e78e Rebel Wilson https://pod.fo/e/238d13 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 market, 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 with me, Fern Cotton. This is the show that helps you question if you're really living the life you want. Today, I'm chatting to Afua Hirsch.

• 0:41Speaker 02

  My professional life, I analyse social structures, it's social injustice, systems of race, narratives about history, all these big ideas that kind of exist outside of me. And then I realised when I turned 40 that I hadn't been doing that same work on my ideas about myself. I was applying those very same colonial and racist ideas to my body, to things as intimate as my figure and my sexuality and my relationship to my body hair and my skin.

• 1:13Fearne Cotton?

  Do you know what? This chat is one that I was really, really keen to have, especially because it revolves around body image. And look, I know that many of you listeners, not exclusively, but many of you will be women suffering with body image issues. And that's of course not to exclude the lovely men that listen to this podcast and who I would heartily encourage to listen to it more. Tell your friends, chaps, who also suffer with body image. I know that it can feel a really female-centric topic, but of course, there are so many men who are going through absolute hell with this one as well. So do stick around, men. If you think this chat isn't for you, bloody well is. It's so fascinating. And you know, I've obviously been there. I've had eating disorders in my twenties and I can still sometimes dip into having

• 1:57Fearne Cotton?

  a sort of slightly warped view of what I look like. I think most people, most humans do on this planet because we are constantly bombarded, you know, in the most obvious way, with imagery and what is acceptable and what is not. And what this chat is really about is not just sitting there ranting and raving about it, it's dissecting the history of these narratives, how we've even got them in our subconscious. It is incredible. And also, may I add? I'm slightly obsessed with Afua, want to be her best friend and might have been a bit try hard about it at the end of the chat. Anyway, we'll get to that. Now, if you follow me on Instagram, you might have also seen that I did a roundup of books recently.

• 2:41Fearne Cotton?

  One of them was Afua's. It's called Decolonizing My Body. Afua is an award-winning storyteller, and by the way, a former barrister, as if she couldn't be any more impressive. Her work focuses on culture, identity and social justice. This book is mesmerizing. It examines beauty and rituals and ancestry as an approach to radical justice. It's full of storytelling. It's full of Afua's own thoughts and history, but also, as I nodded to earlier, it really unpicks things that I had no idea about, that I actually feel slightly ashamed to have not known about, with conclusions that end up being very liberating, and I think you'll feel exactly the same. And it's got some beautiful photography in there, too. You will

• 3:25Fearne Cotton?

  love this book. We talk about so much, body hair being one of them. We haven't even talked about body hair on Happy Place, and we've been going, guys, for nearly seven years. We also discuss and dissect why many of us have got to a point where we're all loathing things about our bodies, including periods. Why do we hate being on our periods so much? Why do we only talk about it negatively? I was just literally on my period at the weekend, and I caught myself out, moaning about it, going, oh bloody hell, it's so inconvenient. This chat changed all of that, and that's why I caught myself with that one and stopped in my tracks. And I think you're going to feel the same. I hope you feel the same. And by the way, we talk about so much more, so stick around.

• 4:08Speaker 03

  This message is brought to you by the Capital One Venture X Card. Venture X offers the premium benefits you expect, like a $300 annual Capital One travel credit for less than you expect. Elevate your earn with unlimited double miles on every purchase, bringing you one step closer to your next dream destination. Plus, enjoy access to over 1,000 airport lounges worldwide. The Capital One Venture X Card. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. Lounge access is subject to Change. See CapitalOne.com for details.

• 4:39Speaker 04

  Network freedom and flexibility. That's what you want in a healthcare plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals, no kidding. Learn more at GetHumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to build Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organisation with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.

• 5:10Speaker 05

  Hello, I'm Joanna Fletcher.

• 5:12Speaker 06

  And I'm Marco Burchella.

• 5:14Speaker 05

  And this is Boots Off.

• 5:17Speaker 06

  We are friends who have spent a decade together, walking up mountains, across deserts and along coastlines with some seriously awesome groups of humans.

• 5:25Speaker 05

  And something happens when you're out there, feet on the ground, surrounded by nature. The conversations just spill out of you.

• 5:32Speaker 06

  This series is about the adversities that lead to adventure.

• 5:35Speaker 05

  The adventures that lead to adversity.

• 5:37Speaker 06

  And how life can be one big adventure in itself.

• 5:40Speaker 05

  Listen every Thursday. Just search for Boots Off.

• 5:47Speaker 05

  Right, let's crack on with the show. And you join me and Afua in the middle of one of my favourite topics, the joy of writing on paper with a gorgeous little pen.

• 6:18Speaker 02

  I make like handwritten notes on the book. That's literally like how I... Is that what you do?

• 6:23Fearne Cotton?

  So look, we've officially started the podcast, guys. We're in because we've just started talking. But, I mean, you will see here, I actually... That's eyeliner because I couldn't find a pen and I was in bed. So I've underlined some of it in eyeliner.

• 6:36Speaker 02

  My books all look like that pencil pen eyeliner, whatever I could get my hair.

• 6:39Fearne Cotton?

  I love it, but I love, I love making notes. And Afua, this book, Decolonising My Body, I mean, I loved it so much. And I believe that a true compliment only really lands if you give reason to the compliment. So I'll tell you some of the reasons.

• 6:56Speaker 02

  Please.

• 6:57Fearne Cotton?

  One of the reasons I love this book is because you so effortlessly switch between...

• 7:04Fearne Cotton?

  Your incredibly thorough, invescative writing to describing a London winter's day like you're writing a poem.

• 7:13Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you.

• 7:14Fearne Cotton?

  And it's a real skill, I think, to do that, to write something that is heavily steeped in wisdom and fact, but is so beautiful to read and also entertaining to read. It's not like going, oh, Christ, more facts that I need to retain. It's just beautiful. I love it.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  I really appreciate that.

• 7:33Fearne Cotton?

  Well, it was, you know, just a joy, a joy. And I keep thinking about it. I keep telling people about it, sort of referencing in conversation. It's, um...

• 7:42Speaker 02

  That's the highest form of praise for me. If you feel like, you know, it comes up or it's something you think could reach other people, you know, because that's really why I write, is to make it easier for us to navigate this society that we live in. And I really feel more and more with age, we have not been equipped to understand the systems around us, to understand our relationships with ourself, our ideas about something as intimate as our own bodies. Like, we still, you know, I'm in my 40s and I'm still having to work it out. And I just think each generation shouldn't have to find it this hard. So everything I do is designed to try and make that a bit easier for us.

• 8:18Fearne Cotton?

  Well, you call it an offering, which it very much is. And that's the start of the book. And I was like, oh, yeah, this is an offering. Like, this is something that I would gift somebody this. I felt like it was a gift just reading it. And I know for you, this didn't start out necessarily as, oh, I'm going to write a book and it's going to be about this. This was a journey that you wanted to go on.

• 8:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:36Fearne Cotton?

  You reached 40. I mean, I had a really similar thing when I got to 40.

• 8:40Speaker 02

  Because we're the same age, aren't we?

• 8:41Fearne Cotton?

  We're the same age, exactly.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  Exactly, yeah.

• 8:43Fearne Cotton?

  I wrote a book called Bigger Than Us, which was sort of just looking at like, what is bigger than just this experience that I'm having as a human being? And I think it is a cliche turning point, where you start to sort of unpick everything you think you know and what you think you know about yourself and the people around you, and like you say, the systems around you. At what point did this become a book? When did you think, oh, actually, there's something in this that I can offer other people or at least start to write down?

• 9:11Speaker 02

  I got a tattoo when I turned forty and there's a whole story behind the tattoo, but it was the conversations that my tattoo prompted. I found myself having conversations on the same theme with so many people and those conversations alerted me to the fact that everyone was thinking along the same lines, asking themselves the same questions but didn't have the knowledge to really answer those questions. And that's when I started to think, because when I got my tattoo done, I wrote an article in Vogue, a feature. And as far as I was concerned, I was done. I'd had this experience, I was on this journey, I wrote this article. And then those conversations made me think, maybe there's more to this. It opened my mind to a whole space.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  And the idea behind the tattoo as well really made me realise, basically, I've been living this kind of like double life. Because my professional life, I analyse social structures. It's social injustice, systems of race, narratives about history, all these big ideas that kind of exist outside of me, that affect us in the world. And then I realised when I turned forty that I hadn't been doing that same work on my ideas about myself.

• 10:26Fearne Cotton?

  How interesting.

• 10:28Speaker 02

  I am the first person to identify and critique a colonial or racist idea when I see it outside. But I was applying those very same colonial and racist ideas to my body, to things as intimate as my figure and my sexuality and my relationship to my body hair and my skin. And that's when I thought, if I have these massive blind spots, and this is basically what I do, then we all must need to think about this a bit more. So that was the thinking. And then once I started thinking that way, you couldn't stop me. And it's always like that with my books. Once I really get into it, like even if I couldn't get a publisher and I didn't think anyone would read it, I will write that book.

• 11:08Fearne Cotton?

  And it will write itself because it's in you, it's already there. And I mean, I want to talk about everything that you've just mentioned. We can maybe start with the tattoo because it is absolutely gorgeous. I love that you chose to have it on your hand because you're a writer.

• 11:21Speaker 02

  I love that.

• 11:22Fearne Cotton?

  Thank you. And it's so beautiful. So tell us the story behind it because obviously the actual design and pattern has got deep meaning, connection to your lineage and something that you were really keen to explore and learn more about.

• 11:33Speaker 02

  It really was. So it really started with a friend who...

• 11:39Speaker 02

  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, 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 get a nip and a tark and a procedure or some liposuction.

• 12:21Speaker 02

  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, 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 towards skin, bodies, tattoos. And I, my family, my mum's family comes from Ghana. And Ghana was colonized by the British.

• 13:07Speaker 02

  I would say my family were quite early and enthusiastic adopters of colonialism. They were converted to Christianity in the seventeen hundreds, which is really early. And as a result, I, 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, and saw how beautiful her tattoo was, it made me question that and think. Why do I associate tattoos with something so negative?

• 13:47Speaker 02

  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 in actually all Indigenous societies share this in common. It's incredible how much continuity there is if you go to the Arctic or the Amazon, Middle East, Africa, Asia, all of these societies have quite similar traditions, especially where women would adorn themselves with scars or tattoos as a way of really celebrating their body.

• 14:31Speaker 02

  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 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,

• 15:16Speaker 02

  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 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

• 15:58Speaker 02

  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.

• 16:16Fearne Cotton?

  Yep.

• 16:16Speaker 02

  Because we're all going to age.

• 16:18Fearne Cotton?

  Yes, and this is the-

• 16:19Speaker 02

  Such a setup.

• 16:20Fearne Cotton?

  I mean, this is the thing that I just loved, I mean, so many things from this book, but when we look at age specifically, and you look at so many different cultures around the world that still put on a pedestal their elders. They are called elders for a reason. They are there and they are entrenched with wisdom and storytelling and information they can pass down.

• 16:40Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 16:41Fearne Cotton?

  And in Western society now, it's just like, oh, she's looking a bit old. And it's like, oh my god, we're missing so much. I mean, I'm a big believer in intergenerational friendship. I've got really good female friends in their 70s. I had a friend in her 80s who sadly died a couple of years ago. And the storytelling and the stuff they would pass down, I'm not going to get that from someone in their 40s, same age as me. Someone in their 20s who's younger. We've, we've, we're just losing so much. And I think what I was obviously aware of, but have learned so much more about from, you know, loving your work, but certainly reading this book, is how colonisation has so directly impacted women specifically, globally, in every sense.

• 17:23Fearne Cotton?

  Whether it's looking at beauty standards, you know, the, the, the missing facts about periods and hormones and, and menopause and, and puberty, all of this, all of these beautiful sort of rituals and wisdom and tradition that has been completely wiped out, has left all of us slightly free falling and going, I don't know what I'm meant to do at this stage of my life because nobody's told me.

• 17:47Speaker 02

  Do you know what's sinister about it though, is how much it's been by design. So it's interesting actually, like, we're sitting here in London. I mean, Europe was actually one of the oldest cultures of these tattooing and scarification practices. The oldest female mummies with these kind of tattoos have been found in the Alps, in Eastern Europe. There are examples in the British Isles as well, and- All these indigenous cultures, it's not just elsewhere, also here, had similar ideas because this is foundational to humanity, the need for rituals and rites of passage, the need to venerate elders, to, it's a matter of survival, keeping wisdom and valuing it, and the people who have the knowledge to keep your society alive and thriving have

• 18:29Speaker 02

  been elevated throughout the ages. And it was only really in the last 1,500 years with the advent of a very European relationship with Christianity. It's not even Christianity because actually, if you look at Christianity in the Middle East, Coptic traditions or Ethiopian traditions, completely different. But the way Christianity evolved in Europe felt very threatened by the power that women had in these indigenous societies. And we all know about the burning of witches and lots of these practices that basically demonized the very women who should have been being venerated, older women who were repositories of indigenous knowledge and connection to the elements and to herbs. These were the people who were persecuted. And these practices of women celebrating their body, owning their

• 19:11Speaker 02

  sexuality, understanding their power, was very threatening to a patriarchal order and it had to be stamped out. And I think those practices then got spread throughout the world because Europeans colonized the world. But actually, women in Europe have suffered maybe more than anyone from those ideas because they've been victims of them for longer. So, you know, I, growing up in the like late 20th century, there was this idea of progress, you know, you just kind of move forward, new technology, space exploration, globalization, capitalism. I think now we're in a, at a different moment where we're recognizing the catastrophe those ideas have wrought, the climate destruction, all of this, these ideas of industrialization have completely put out the future of our race at peril. We are at, facing the possibility

• 19:55Speaker 02

  of extinction because of those ideas. And, and one of the things that's been lost in this race to just follow European ideas about progress and industrialization is all of these knowledge systems that existed for millennia that allowed people to live in harmony with the planet, in harmony in communities, these ideas about never accumulating excess, about respecting the cycles of nature, literally sustainable living, you know, it's been rebranded Basic stuff. As some like new American idea. It is how people lived for almost the entirety of history. And in a way, one, the, one of the silver linings of this really difficult time is that it opens a space for us to say, In a bigger way, what else have we lost?

• 20:39Speaker 02

  What has been swept aside in this thing we were told was progress? And it's been bad for so many of us. It's definitely been bad for black people. You look at, you know, the way colonialism has rested on racist ideas. It's been so bad for women. It's been so bad for people who don't fit intergender binaries. Like, all of these indigenous cultures had much more fluid and intuitive understandings of how life and sexuality and age and seasons and cycles work in our bodies as well as outside. And I've really started to feel, the more I got into this, how much had been lost. Our ancestors knew this and they practiced it. And now we're having to struggle to work out the things that were worked out for ages.

• 21:26Speaker 03

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• 21:55Speaker 04

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• 22:25Speaker 07

  This week on Help, I sexted my boss.

• 22:28Speaker 08

  And after taking a shower, I used some spray deodorant that belonged to his mother from the cupboard. He took a big sniff of me and says, "Mmm, smells like sex."

• 22:36Speaker 09

  Cast your personal question.

• 22:38Speaker 08

  Yes.

• 22:39Speaker 09

  Do your balls ever just float back up?

• 22:41Speaker 08

  What?

• 22:42Speaker 09

  What? Burnley playing Millwall the way I got home, my brother's coming down. I'm out of Millwall.

• 22:46Speaker 08

  I'm gone.

• 22:47Speaker 09

  Yeah, I can't go. I'm going to matinee of Pride of the Musical.

• 22:54Speaker 08

  Listen and watch wherever you get your podcasts.

• 23:01Fearne Cotton?

  Storytelling stopped and that is a huge shame. You know, I'd love to be able to go back several generations and say, you know, tell me what you know about how the female body works or how you are honouring it. And I think one of the most obvious ways and something you explore greatly in the book is looking at the female menstrual cycle and how, I mean, it's still shrouded in shame and it feels so bizarre to think in this day and age, we're still shoving tampons up our sleeve and shuffling to the toilet in an embarrassed fashion and completely mortified and often shocked and surprised when we come on our period because we don't know when the fuck it's going to happen. It seems absurd that we're still, or actually it's getting worse and, and you know, you dive into a plethora of reasons as to why we're in this situation.

• 23:45Fearne Cotton?

  One obviously is this lost wisdom and the rituals and the empowerment that we've completely forgotten that comes along with periods. And also just looking at the basics of advertising and that we see these, you know, women ice skating on their period and then you go, oh Mia, I've got to crack on, I've just got to...

• 24:03Speaker 02

  That was the marketing, I mean, that we grew up with. It was like, on your period, don't worry, put this up, you jump on the horse.

• 24:09Fearne Cotton?

  Crack on, exactly.

• 24:10Speaker 02

  That was presented as a massive success. If you can hide it, mask it, nobody knows it's happening. It's like all discretion, discreet this, discreet that. It's all coloured pink and telling you that you can be a boss, you can be in the C-suite as long as you wear like an ultra tampon and...

• 24:26Fearne Cotton?

  No you can't.

• 24:27Speaker 02

  And take some specially pink packaged period painkillers.

• 24:31Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 24:31Speaker 02

  And actually, when you are in pain, your body is telling you something. When you have no energy, your body is telling you to rest. And I was the worst. I was that person who was actually proud of the fact that I cracked on.

• 24:43Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 24:43Speaker 02

  Never took a day off, never slept late in bed, no matter how bad my period was, I'll be in the gym and I'll be at work. And I thought that was some kind of achievement. And it's taken me till this big age to realise, actually what I was doing was learning to ignore my body. And that doesn't just apply to your period, you know, that might be how it starts, but in general, it's cutting yourself off from a source of intelligence that's uniquely designed for you about what is happening to your own body. And it's understandable because we live in a society that doesn't give you menstrual leave. So what choice do you have? If you have a job and you have to be there... You have to put in a tampon, take a painkiller and keep it moving. And it's, it's just another reminder that none of this has been designed for us.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  None of this has been built around our needs or facilitating our thriving or our genius. It's all built for a model that we've been shoehorned into at whatever cost. And so in a way, this is also a book about the cost, like realising after a lifetime of living that way, yes, we can do it, but I now see the cost and actually I'm going to choose a different path.

• 25:46Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, I mean, you talk about, you know, having friends who, you know, much like myself, have been through the menopause and, and there's an element of grief, you're losing something, it's the, the acknowledgement of your fertility is over and you're not having that cycle every month. And actually getting to that point and thinking, I didn't realise that they were a really powerful, important part of who I was as a female for, from the age of whatever, you know, for me, it was probably 12, 13, to when you finish your periods. How do you suppose we start really honouring them, rather than, because we've been conditioned, it's not an inherent feeling that periods are awful, we've been conditioned to go, God, they're embarrassing, God, they're awful, they're so inconvenient.

• 26:31Fearne Cotton?

  And, you know, yes, there can be pain and there can be discomfort and they can be inconvenient. But I think a lot of it has been, it's conditional that we've been told all of these things. Whereas actually, if we can slightly shift and see them as this miraculous, beautiful thing that we get to experience as women, then I think we can change our mindset, how we move through the world, we probably can choose rest at times over just pushing through. But I wonder how we start that shift, how we can start to think of our menstrual cycle as something beautiful and powerful, rather than just like, fuck it, I want to come on my period.

• 27:06Speaker 02

  Do you know how it started for me? And it's, it's interesting, isn't it, how life is sometimes like this, when you do something for someone else, it ends up helping you. So when my daughter started her period, I wanted her to have A puberty initiation, because again, this is something that almost all cultures did for young women.

• 27:22Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  And we've lost. I mean, I don't know about you, when I started my period, my mum was like, here's a sanitary towel, kind of.

• 27:26Fearne Cotton?

  Correct.

• 27:27Speaker 02

  Keep it moving.

• 27:28Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  And that's what her mother did for her. And at some point, this practice of really initiating girls and teaching them that this is now they're stepping into a new phase of power and also responsibility is something that was totally lost. So I wanted to restore that for my daughter. So I worked with some amazing women who I write about in the book called Laurence. She's incredible. If you look her up.

• 27:50Fearne Cotton?

  I'm so glad you said Laurence, because I was going to call her Lawrence at some point.

• 27:52Speaker 02

  And actually, she's changed her name to Sackley.

• 27:55Fearne Cotton?

  Sackley.

• 27:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, Sackley. Yeah, she's incredible. And I'll put her link on my Instagram if anyone wants to follow her. But she is initiated into the highest order of priestesses in Benin, which is one of the ancient centres of this kind of knowledge. And she did a puberty initiation for my daughter. And, you know, it's so funny, because you invite other women to be part of this circle surrounding your daughter as she goes into this phase. And, you know, I'm thinking, this is for the young girls, you know, this is for my daughter and her friends and cousins to really understand this phase they're entering. And, you know, we'll just be there for support. The girls were completely, like, chilled. We were the ones in pieces.

• 28:37Speaker 02

  It was the women my age who were, like, on the floor, because the initiation ceremony is telling these girls, you are entering a phase of incredible power, and here's how to hold it, here's how to use it, here's how to harness it. And we're at the other end, you know, coming towards menopause, realising that after basically a lifetime of having that power, we didn't use it.

• 28:59Fearne Cotton?

  No.

• 28:59Speaker 02

  We didn't know we had it. We didn't appreciate it, we didn't use it, we just saw it as like a mess that needed to be cleaned up discreetly. And one of the things that Laurence explained was that if you don't use that power when you have it, you will find yourself grieving for it at the menopause. And that really resonated with me. I was, you know, I mean, I think it's a different story if you haven't had children, there's a different kind of grief that you can face when you lose the chance of fertility. But for me... Me, you know, having had my child and being really happy about that, I still felt this this loss, this loss of a power that I hadn't harnessed. And it's never too late. It's honestly never too late. And you know, entering menopause is not a loss. It's also a rebirth into a new phase where you have new powers.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  So just having someone who can guide you through that and and not, we're not inventing it from scratch. We don't need to make it up or work out for ourselves. Like, there is such a body of knowledge and wisdom to tap into. But I'm still a work in progress. I mean, one of the things you're meant to do is to like perform a ritual with your menstrual blood. And I'm still like, still super squeamish about it. Like, I've had a lifetime of just trying to make it go away. So for me to like, collect it and then want to kind of like pour it into the earth and do something with it is still quite hard.

• 30:12Fearne Cotton?

  I heard of someone on one of their last periods before menopause, took the blood and quite literally smeared it over their whole body in a really confronting way, you know. As you say, we've been taught that this is icky, this is gross, I don't want it near me. And that was an act of absolute rebellion. They were going to smear this blood, one of their last bleeds, all over their body. And when I heard them talking about it, I was like, bloody hell. And then, you know, you have to check yourself. Like, why am I so freaked out by this?

• 30:40Speaker 02

  Attitudes are crazy. I mean, I don't know if you've seen, but there have recently been quite a few examples of women running marathons who either decided to free bleed or started their period while they were running. And like, are they gonna throw away months of training just because they know they keep going? And basically, a woman who is menstrual has a period, like, breaking news. It shouldn't be a big story.

• 31:01Fearne Cotton?

  It's like half the planet.

• 31:02Speaker 02

  The reason I know about it is because it was a big story. It was all over the news. It's like this radical act of your actual blood coming out of you and being visible. And it made me think, like, on the one hand, it was so empowering to see these women unapologetically just being in their actual bodies and doing the thing they're trying to do. But at the same time, I thought, how is this radical? Like, why is this some big story? This is, it shows how far we've come.

• 31:25Fearne Cotton?

  We're so far from the most.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  But the most human thing, we're so far from it. And I think the notion of having a ritual to mark whatever it is, whether it's menopause, puberty, whatever, there's

• 31:37Fearne Cotton?

  Something so brilliant about it, and again, you know, due to colonisation and a whole myriad of reasons, we've just lost ritual. The world is so fast. We're like, next thing, what am I doing after this? And you just race through your day, your week, your month, your year, without these really important markers for you to stop and take heed of what's going on and really honour it. And I had this really amazing experience where I had this practitioner come to my house, I think it was after my second child. And this was not my idea, it was presented to me and I was all for it. And I did a Mexican bringing the bones back together ceremony after birth. That just gave me a shiver.

• 32:18Fearne Cotton?

  And I was bound, it was so great. I was bound in swathes of cloth, my whole body, to the point of absolute claustrophobia. You know, I just had mouth and nose holes. I couldn't see anything, my eyes were bound, and I was left in the room. This is really giving me feelings. Honestly, it was unbelievable. I was left in the room for maybe half an hour. They came and checked on me every now and again. And I just lay there and they asked me to really think about the bones coming back together and my ribs closing in and everything coming back to me from that big moment of, you know, giving and giving birth and giving life and everything. And, you know, with my first child, I just sort of went back to work. And I didn't, you know, as we do, we've been programmed again, you know, get back to work as quick as you can, or get back to cleaning the house, or whatever the thing

• 33:02Fearne Cotton?

  is that you're meant to be doing every day. And that really stopped me in my tracks. And I just think it's so worthwhile for any of us to go and do our own bit of research as to what have we in our lineage lost, what culturally have we lost that people would have done hundreds of years ago to mark these moments. It's simple stuff, like you say, but it gives us time to stop and really think about these huge things that are happening to us, that we're just, we're just racing through it all. Exactly. In Ghanaian culture, when you have a baby...

• 33:35Speaker 02

  You're not allowed to see anyone for seven days.

• 33:38Fearne Cotton?

  Like heaven.

• 33:39Speaker 02

  You're supposed to just stay. And, and you know, they believe that the, the soul doesn't fully come into the baby until seven days after birth, and then you give the child a name. On the seventh day, you have a naming ceremony, but you can't call the child by a name until then. It's still kind of like inhabiting its place on earth and you are still recovering. And in Chinese culture, it's a month, I think, that mothers stay home. Their mother comes, your mother is supposed to come and look after you for the first month. You don't go anywhere, you don't see anyone. The baby stays inside, like you just recover this understanding that there's, there's like a physical element of exhaustion and rest that's needed, but there's also a spiritual element of, you know, the precious nature of that time, the kind of intimacy of bonding with this new person and bringing them to earth and, and protecting them from the craziness of our world.

• 34:24Speaker 02

  And like all of these different traditions are so, they're so practical. They serve a really practical purpose, like protecting a woman who's just been through a massive physical and emotional deal and giving a baby time to just settle and, and, and have some peace and stability. And I think about, you know, I was like on day two, like with the bugaboo, trying to like get out and see people and show off the baby and then trying to make sure that the house was immaculate. And it's complete madness.

• 34:51Fearne Cotton?

  Madness. What are we doing? Like it's absolutely insane. I mean, the other part of the book that I, I sort of, I loved and I, and I was laughing at myself throughout parts of it was the body hair section in the beauty section. Because again, we've been so conditioned and I think my naive assumption was that we had been conditioned through advertising in the fifties for razors, but this goes back, back, back, back, back.

• 35:15Speaker 02

  I was actually thinking about that just now because actually I don't even think it's in the book. It just came back to me. Like one of the stupidest, craziest things I ever did was about, and my daughter was overdue, like two weeks overdue. And about a week overdue, I went and had a bikini wax.

• 35:31Fearne Cotton?

  Brilliant.

• 35:31Speaker 02

  Like full Hollywood, everything off.

• 35:34Fearne Cotton?

  Our generation were like, we were the Hollywoods.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  We were the Hollywoods.

• 35:37Fearne Cotton?

  I mean, I've got like not much going on down there.

• 35:39Speaker 02

  No landing strip, nothing.

• 35:40Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 35:40Speaker 02

  And I was like, I don't want someone looking down there and it being hairy.

• 35:44Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 35:44Speaker 02

  That was literally my mind. And do you know, I nearly passed out because when you're that pregnant, it's really bad for you to lie on your back.

• 35:50Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, of course.

• 35:50Speaker 02

  You've cut, like there's, it cuts off the blood supply. You can't like, so I was, I was lying on my back with this like overdue. Baby and like in so much discomfort.

• 36:02Fearne Cotton?

  I mean, what are we doing?

• 36:04Speaker 02

  Thinking, why do I think that whoever's going to be looking down there and delivering my child cares about whether I have pubic hair?

• 36:10Fearne Cotton?

  Because we've been told that we shouldn't have any hair anywhere. I mean, that's our generation especially were really that I think when you're sort of a young person in the 90s, it was like, just get rid of all the hair, have none.

• 36:23Speaker 02

  It was like body hair and cellulite were the two evils.

• 36:26Fearne Cotton?

  The two evils.

• 36:27Speaker 02

  And if you had them, you were finished.

• 36:28Fearne Cotton?

  And I'm so glad now I've got, you know, younger cousins and they've got fully hairy armpits and they're and I'm like, oh, this feels exciting. This is cool. This is really great. But let's go back to Charles Darwin, quite frankly, which I was ignorant to. And I'm so glad that I know about this. So, so tell us about this vital bit of info.

• 36:46Speaker 02

  I assume that the body hair thing, again, was like this kind of 20th century.

• 36:50Fearne Cotton?

  The 50s ads or something, yeah.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  I mean, that is part of the story, but the origins are much more sinister. So in the late 19th century, when Darwin came up with the origin of the species and also the descent of man, and it's actually that book, The Descent of Man, which is a bit less well known, but really critical on this point, there was this idea, well, first of all, it was obviously really shocking to people in Victorian society, this idea that humans were descended from primates. It was very controversial. It was like anti biblical. It was a source of kind of like moral panic. And so people, especially from European societies and North America and Europe, wanted to distance themselves from any connection to the animal kingdom. And they were at the time, developing these pseudo scientific theories about the hierarchy of races.

• 37:36Speaker 02

  And basically, this descent of man theory fed into that, that basically hairier humans are the missing link between primates and Homo sapiens. So depending on how hairy you are shows how your proximity to animals versus the less hair you have, the closer you are to whiteness, civilization, sophistication.

• 38:00Speaker 02

  And that's where these ideas about the undesirability of body hair really arose. And before that, you know, it was actually considered desirable to have body hair. I mean, first of all, women were so covered up, you couldn't see their bodies anyway. And for men, it was actually a sign of health. If you had like full facial hair, it showed that you weren't suffering from, you know, any of the diseases that were so prevalent at the time. So it was a real shift change. And then what happened, particularly in America, was industrialization. So there was this idea that you wanted to get rid of body hair suddenly. But as they started industrializing meat production to meet the needs of urban populations, especially in America, all of these workers now flocking to these huge cities, wanting to eat meat, earning more money where they could afford meat. They invented the modern abattoir where you are killing animals on an industrial scale.

• 38:45Speaker 02

  And especially to slaughter pigs, they started to develop chemicals that could strip the hair off pigs, making it easier to to to skin them. So all of these ideas were happening at the same time, that were creating a demand to remove body hair and then creating the technology to make it easier to remove body hair. And then, of course, some clever marketing, some clever capitalists and entrepreneurs realized that there were opportunities here to create new lines of hair removal products. So that led directly to the modern hair removal industry. And this idea that if you have body hair, it's somehow barbaric, it's somehow primitive. And that if you want to be, especially as a woman, ladylike and sophisticated, you need to get rid of all traces.

• 39:30Speaker 02

  And it was just so interesting for me because I, you know, I've studied a lot about Darwin and pseudoscientific racism and these theories that categorized humans hierarchically and always put black Africans at the bottom. And I obviously like utterly reject them and spend a lot of time critiquing them. But the idea that my own body hair removal practices Comes from that. A direct descendant of that ideology was so shocking to me. And it really was another moment where I realized how colonial my own mindset was. There were so many things that I couldn't question because I didn't know where they came from. Yeah. I kind of thought it was a fact. And again, I had a narrative, oh, I just like skin, I just like clear skin. Oh, it's more hygienic, you know, if you don't have any body hair. To put deodorant on, it feels nicer to wash.

• 40:13Speaker 02

  And, you know, actually, what I was doing was retrospectively justifying something I'd been brainwashed to believe in, and so have a generation before.

• 40:21Fearne Cotton?

  We've all been so brainwashed. I mean, you talk about going to Ghana and going to a wedding where the bride has a hairy chest and it's seen as this magnificent.

• 40:28Speaker 02

  She actually had her wedding dress was actually fitted specifically to show off the chest hair. It was like a feature.

• 40:38Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 40:38Speaker 02

  And that was another moment where I really realised that my views were culturally subjective.

• 40:44Fearne Cotton?

  Yep.

• 40:45Speaker 02

  Because I thought all women everywhere don't want body hair.

• 40:47Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 40:47Speaker 02

  But when I went to that wedding in Ghana and I realised that it was the centrepiece of her bridal look, and this woman was a lawyer, I mean, she was highly educated, it was a beautiful wedding, they had money, it was, you know, we weren't like in a village somewhere. This was like a really sophisticated wedding in the capital city. And everybody agreed that the chest hair was just so beautiful. And it was one of those moments where I really started to see my cultural programming. I thought it was a universal idea. And then in that moment, I realised, no, this is a European idea that I have been programmed with from birth because I grew up in the UK. And in Ghana, leg hair, chest hair, chin hair on women is considered really attractive.

• 41:25Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah. And I find it so liberating to hear these stories because we can start to unpick everything and actually go, do I think this or have I been told this?

• 41:35Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 41:36Fearne Cotton?

  And I think the scary thing about today is, and probably also because we're in our 40s, we can see the different iterations over the years of these, they're trends essentially, what we're told. And now, you know, you talk about the sort of cyborgian face that we're sort of seeing where, you know, because of Instagram and TikTok, we've got all of these new visuals that 20 years ago, we wouldn't have been privy to, but now we're bombarded with this imagery and it's giving women more hangups, more things to worry about. And it's, but it's changing. So then you follow one trend and then in 10 years' time, we're on to a new populist look at beauty.

• 42:09Speaker 02

  Women who like had all of these butt implants that are now trying to have them removed, or who have these fillers and are now trying to get them dissolved. Because the thing is, trends change. These are marketing trends that are driven by capital. You know, it's not based on who you are or what works for you, what's good for your health or your self-confidence, but we are at the mercy of these ideas. And you know, with this book, it was, it was a kind of delicate thing because the absolute last thing I'm doing is judging women. I believe powerfully in, nobody gets to police our bodies. We get to make our own choices about our bodies. So I'm not trying to shame people who've done any of these things. And as I said, like, I've been doing loads of them myself for most of my life. It was more me realizing that I couldn't make an informed

• 42:51Speaker 02

  choice about what I want for my body. What is my aesthetic? What is my preference and taste? Because I was programmed, I was brainwashed. So until you start to have information about where these ideas come from, you can't make informed choices about which ones suit you, serve you, appeal to your taste, and which ones don't. So really, my message is understand where the ideas come from, and then you can choose them for yourself. But a lot of these things, like body hair, the ideas now about like the ways our faces should look, about masking any signs of aging, about having a certain body shape, whether that's a big butt, being thin, everyone's on a Zen pick now, so like butts have got out the window again. They are not necessarily designed to serve us. They are in service of an idea

• 43:35Speaker 02

  that none of us would have invented if we were given a blank slate. So that, that's really my thing. And then with these like cosmetic procedures, there's another layer because, you know, and I wrote this quite casually because it was really obvious to me, but so many people reacted to this part of the book that I just want to mention it. You know, if you get a nose job or change something about your face, in a way, you're erasing part of your ancestry, right? You got your face from somewhere. Like, that's someone's nose that you've inherited. That's someone's chin, that's someone's eyebrows and forehead. And if you change it, you are kind of removing part of that identity. And like, that's quite obvious because you know you got it from somewhere and you're changing it to conform to what is seen as desirable right now. But when the response I got to

• 44:18Speaker 02

  that, the number of people really tearful and emotional who said, you know, I got a nose job and now I really regret it because that was my grandfather's nose. Or, you know, this is the nose from the region that I come from. It never occurred to me, I was so busy trying to fit this beauty standard, then it never occurred to me that I was losing something.

• 44:38Fearne Cotton?

  Yes.

• 44:39Speaker 02

  I think that's really sad because the people who are dictating that beauty standard don't know or care about your grandfather or your heritage or what people look like in the region that your ancestors came from.

• 44:47Fearne Cotton?

  No, I mean, I used to hate my nose. I've got a characterful nose. I'm now in a place where I'm pretty happy with my nose. And it's because it's my dad's nose. Like, you look at Mick Cotton, I've got his nose. It's the same nose. But I spent all of my teens and twenties just going, oh, I wish I had a cute little Disney button nose that was just all perfect and sweet. And it's not. I've got, you know, from the side, this is a pretty big nose. But I like my nose now. And I think maybe that's come with age, experience, and I love looking into these subjects. So, yes, I can look at what I've been told and where that data comes from. But I think the bigger sort of, is it a question or is it a, um, is, what I'm trying to say

• 45:29Fearne Cotton?

  is how do we get to that place of understanding the data, where that information comes from, what we've been told versus what we feel, and define what beauty is to us? Because I think it's almost impossible in this day and age. We are bombarded with who looks good, who doesn't, what looks right, quote unquote, what doesn't. I think you've got to be a pretty secure and strong individual to go, I reject, or not even reject, but I see all of this, but I'm still going to say that my, my version of beauty is this. How do we even start to walk down that path?

• 46:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is hard. And one of the things that's difficult is that I think you get closer to being able to do that with age.

• 46:10Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 46:10Speaker 02

  When you're at the most pressure to start changing stuff about your appearance is when you're young. And, you know, some of the people who responded to my point about erasing your ancestry were people who at a really young age had had stuff done before they were even thinking that way. I think there is no substitute for knowledge for understanding and making really informed decisions. And the reality is, you're not going to have that knowledge unless you seek it. It's not on your school curriculum. It's not in the media. You have to go and find books or films and documentaries that explore these ideas. And there are so many books that have been written about it over time, but I hadn't actually read them, you know, it just wasn't something that I really thought about. So I would say, seek out the information

• 46:52Speaker 02

  because there's no substitute for knowledge. And you might have a false sense of being informed because you're constantly being programmed with ideas, but like seeing stuff on TikTok and Instagram and what your friends are doing, or even what your mum might be encouraging you to do, because we get some of our most misguided ideas from our mothers. Like, you know, I love my mum, she's amazing, but like, also had been programmed by the same thing. In fact, when I was writing this book, my mum told me how in the 60s, she went to a doctor saying she wanted to lose a bit of weight, and he prescribed her amphetamines. I mean, it's, and she was like a size 10. God. I mean, imagine, like, they grew up in an equally toxic era when it came to board show. Everyone wanted to look like Twiggy, who is a specific person with a specific

• 47:34Speaker 02

  set of genes. Not everyone is not meant to look like that. So I think there is no substitute for doing your own research and understanding where these ideas come from.

• 47:44Speaker 03

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• 48:46Speaker 05

  Hello, I'm Joanna Fletcher.

• 48:48Speaker 06

  And I'm Marco Burchella.

• 48:50Speaker 05

  And this is Boots Off.

• 48:53Speaker 06

  We are friends who have spent a decade together, walking up mountains, across deserts, and along coastlines with some seriously awesome groups of humans.

• 49:01Speaker 05

  And something happens when you're out there, feet on the ground, surrounded by nature. The conversations just spill out of you.

• 49:08Speaker 06

  This series is about the adversities that lead to adventure.

• 49:11Speaker 05

  The adventures that lead to adversity.

• 49:13Speaker 06

  And how life can be one big adventure in itself.

• 49:16Speaker 05

  Listen every Thursday. Just search for Boots Off.

• 49:24Fearne Cotton?

  I loved your conversation with your mum about waist beads, because, again, that was so interesting, that waist beads were something that was very much in your lineage and your heritage, but something that your mum had really rejected through, you know, her own conditioning, because that was the era she grew up in. But waist beads are something that you now wear every day, have become such a... Well, you tell me, what do they mean for you to wear?

• 49:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, they're so simple. It's just a string of beads you wear around your waist, or multiple strings of beads. And they serve, like most of these traditions, are very practical, as well as a spiritual purpose. The practical purpose is, in the past, they were used to suspend underwear, sanitary products, and they also help you monitor your weight gain, early detection of pregnancy, just understanding what's going on with your body. And again, these are cultures in which there's no taboo about weight gain. You're not trying to stay thin. So monitoring your weight gain isn't like feeling bad about yourself, it's just knowing what's happening. It might be something you really welcome, but the point is, you know what's happening, because you can feel it. And the more spiritual

• 50:30Speaker 02

  role they serve is really a celebration of your shape and your femininity and your curves. And these are cultures that really prize femininity, fertility, the female form. And they're not for other people as well. It's not to show off, like when you wear a midriff or a bikini. It's for you. It's something that is you honouring your gender, your sexuality, your body. And that's the really transformative thing. When I first started wearing waist beads, I was actually filming in Nigeria, and there was an amazing waist bead maker. So I ordered some, and the producer I was working with is this young, black, British woman, and she'd had an operation. And so she'd like a while ago, but she'd not been able to go to the gym and she felt really out of shape. And I said to her, I'm gonna get you some waist beads. And she was

• 51:13Speaker 02

  like, oh, I would love that. Like, maybe in six months when I've been able to get back in the gym. And, you know, and I was like, that is completely not the point. The point is whatever body you have now, that is the body to celebrate. Like, that's the body you have. It's not about conforming. It's about honoring what you have. So, and it's also part of the puberty initiation that's given to girls. Like, as you're coming into womanhood, you can wear this and feel your sexuality and your femininity is for you. It's not for other people. You wield the power over what to do with it. It's really interesting because it is such a simple thing, how different it feels to wear them. Like, it's just an investment in yourself, something you do, a conversation with yourself about

• 51:54Speaker 02

  your own body. And I found it really profound. And it's funny because I did, as you said, mention it to my mum. And she said, oh, no, nobody wears those anymore. And I was like, I'd just been back from my year at this amazing, like, kind of catwalk show waist be maker had made me some. And she said, oh, no, no. I mean, when I was a little girl, maybe in the villages, you know, and where they were still a bit backward, they might have worn them. But, you know, nobody educated would wear them. And then I told her, like, actually, they're enjoying a resurgence because people are now starting to seek a way of getting back to all these things that have been lost. And it really made my mum reflect. And she said, you know, actually, when I think about it, like, we were so quick to abandon that in favor of like Marks and Spencer's knickers, which we thought were the most

• 52:38Speaker 02

  sophisticated thing. Because Ghana was colonized by Britain. One of the points of the colonies was to pump British goods and British ideas, create new markets for British manufacturing. They weren't thinking about what indigenous knowledge systems they were destroying. They were just trying to make money. So, you know, that mental colonization of assuming anything made in Britain is more sophisticated than your Millennial old ideas that serve all these different purposes is a real example of colonialism. And my mum was born in a colony. This is such recent history. Many of us have been raised by people who were deliberately programmed by colonial ideas. So even wearing waistbands, in a way, is an act of resistance for me and reclamation.

• 53:18Fearne Cotton?

  And also this beautiful, tangible connection to your ancestors, people you will have never met, but are in your blood, in your fibres.

• 53:27Speaker 02

  Whose names I don't necessarily know.

• 53:28Fearne Cotton?

  I love that. I'm also fascinated by that. I think we get so concerned with just like, here's me and my brother, and there's my mum and my dad, and I knew my grandparents, but not anyone past that. But there's this whole backstory of incredible people that did things that we'll never know about. And it's in us in some way.

• 53:44Speaker 02

  And you know, I think we are all fascinated by that. I mean, like, the rise of programmes like Who Do You Think You Are? And in America, Henry Louis Gates has a similar show. People are so hungry to know.

• 53:54Fearne Cotton?

  Fascinating.

• 53:55Speaker 02

  And I actually coined a phrase in the book. I called it ancestral deficiency syndrome.

• 53:58Fearne Cotton?

  Written it down because I just thought it was fucking great.

• 54:01Speaker 02

  Thank you. I just was like, I think we're all suffering from some kind of deficit, like where that kind of inheritance should be, that sense of continuity. Because of colonialism or just migration and globalisation, so many of us have been displaced from the site of those stories and that inheritance. And I think we're all searching. That's why people do all these DNA tests. And as I wrote in the book, actually, Airbnb had partnered with 23andMe, so that now, when you find out where your DNA comes from, you can book a holiday to the destination and connect with your ancestors. I mean, it's becoming big business.

• 54:35Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 54:36Speaker 02

  But underneath that, I think, is something really much deeper, which is this sense, again, of like, all the things that have been lost. And you know, this isn't like nostalgia. I'm not saying if we could just undo the last 2000 years, everything would be rosy. I'm not trying to live in some prehistoric time. There's lots of developments and innovations since then that have been great. But the point is that we threw away everything. We didn't just say which are the things that are useful and which are the ones to discard. We got rid of everything because of prejudice, because we thought that it was savage or backward. And We can look back now and find the things that serve us, find the things that we do need, that we yearn for, find the connection with our ancestors that speaks to something

• 55:17Speaker 02

  about our modern life. We get to choose. So I just want to take control of that and say, actually, I don't reject it because it's old. On the contrary, I think that our ancestors had a lot of wisdom that we could do with now.

• 55:29Fearne Cotton?

  So much. And it's just so interesting. Like, what a brilliant thing to do, to look into your family's backstory and to try and, as you say, sort of recover and reclaim some of that storytelling and some of that wisdom and tradition. It's such a beautiful thing. Another phrase that I wrote down that I absolutely loved, as well as ancestral deficiency syndrome, is spiritually ripped, which I've never heard before.

• 55:52Speaker 02

  I hadn't either.

• 55:53Fearne Cotton?

  No, directly came from the wise mouth of Oprah Wimperie, which I know is a story you've told before, but it's a brilliant story and actually seems to have been a big impetus for you to

• 56:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:03Fearne Cotton?

  Not necessarily write this, but this new tone of your work.

• 56:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:07Fearne Cotton?

  Because, you know, anyone that's followed your work, we know that you've been out there researching and doing this investigative work so that we can all learn and discover, you know, things that we've lost or things that we desperately need to know about in today's culture. But actually, Oprah saying that to you, spiritually ripped, changed, I sort of see it as the tone of what you were doing.

• 56:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:29Fearne Cotton?

  That it was perhaps more sort of calming for you, a bit of self-preservation in the work that you were doing, because it's tiring doing the work that you're doing. So tell us about how Oprah's words landed for you.

• 56:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was a real turning point and it was the message I needed at the exact moment. I needed it. So I went to this film premiere, it was for A Wrinkle in Time, and I, at that time, was really struggling with being a news reporter, because I just felt that the news was becoming really toxic for me. It was really negative, I was immersed in it. I was constantly just like having to go deep into things that made me feel very depleted. And then I was also in an atmosphere in newsrooms where I was like also having to justify my existence, you know, and having to kind of take on racism. There's like really dangerous false equivalents, like, ooh, here's a racist, let's wheel you out to debate with them so that it's balanced, you know. And I'm like, this is not balanced.

• 57:26Fearne Cotton?

  It's not up for discussion.

• 57:28Speaker 02

  It's not a debate. I'm not going to try and persuade you of my humanity. Like, if those are your views, I don't see why you have a platform in. Like in a society that claims to value equality and human rights. So I was like all very draining. It was tiring work just objectively, but on an emotional level, I felt like I was having to dig really deep just to do my job. And I also felt ambivalent about modeling that behavior because I, you know, I've always had younger journalists I mentor or young people who I know look up to my work. And I was thinking, what message am I sending them? If I do this, I'm kind of legitimizing it as something they might have to do. And I actually don't believe it's right. So I was grappling with all that and I was feeling quite depleted and also had this like instinct that I had so much more to give. You know, the news is is something that's

• 58:13Speaker 02

  reacting. It's like something's happened, you cover it. It's very responsive. Sometimes I felt like if you gave me a blank slate, I could create something new, something that could be enriching, instead of just like responding to the crazy stuff over which we have no control. So that was where I was at in my headspace. And I went to this film premiere, you know, just quite innocently with a friend. And there was a Q and A with the cast and crew afterwards and Oprah produced that film. And I just found myself like found my hand going up, found myself asking questions. She picked me first question. And I just said, I just basically asked her her advice. I basically explained that I said, I believe the work I'm doing is useful and important. Like, I think it's important that a voice like mine is part of the conversation, but I'm feeling

• 58:56Speaker 02

  really depleted by it. What should I do? And her answer just really got to me. She said, forget about what you think they need. Forget about what you think your duty is. Your only job is to build yourself. She said, you need to build yourself spiritually. You need to become spiritually ripped. Yes. And everything else will be effortless. And it would just like landed. I mean, I like you had never heard the phrase spiritually ripped. It's great. It was such an amazing metaphor for the kind of work. And, you know, all my work was external. Again, I was like going out and fighting these poisonous narratives and these dangerous ideas and this fake news and racist policies. And I wasn't working on myself, like

• 59:39Speaker 02

  my resilience, filling myself up, understanding my purpose and my values and what I want, what I could create. So it really got to me. And it was funny because after that Q and A, there was this like after party and I went there. And yeah, I was just minding my business at the after party, like this tap on my shoulder and I turned around and it's Oprah and she was like, you need to become spiritually ripped. She'd like tracked me down.

• 1:00:03Fearne Cotton?

  She tracked you, hunted you down.

• 1:00:05Speaker 02

  She wasn't finished.

• 1:00:06Fearne Cotton?

  There's a picture in the book that is so...

• 1:00:07Speaker 02

  And you're sort of beaming.

• 1:00:09Fearne Cotton?

  It's the best picture.

• 1:00:10Speaker 02

  Oprah tracked me down.

• 1:00:12Fearne Cotton?

  So good.

• 1:00:13Speaker 02

  It was so good. She was like, I'm not done. Like I have more to say. And I felt so seen in that moment.

• 1:00:17Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:18Speaker 02

  Like she realised that I wasn't just like trying to hear the sound of my own voice in a Q and A. I wasn't just like, I've got a question. I was like, I actually need help right now. I think she saw that in the way I asked her that question and the way I received her answer. And so she just came to me and I just will never forgot that.

• 1:00:35Fearne Cotton?

  Never.

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  I'll be like, obviously you wouldn't forget that, but it really, it really resonated on a deep level. And when I kind of then went on this journey, I saw that in a way as an origin story. The moment that I stopped thinking that that external deserved all my attention. And I started to think like, what, when I look within, what, what do I see? And one of the things I saw was like these really colonial ideas.

• 1:00:57Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:58Speaker 02

  And that was really why I wrote this book.

• 1:01:00Fearne Cotton?

  I mean, so after, after a phrase, a very beautiful concise phrase like that lands with you. And I'm sure it will with other people listening to this, like, oh yeah, you know, people that, you know, have got a passion in life or a message, or it could be anything they're doing. And but they realise that they are depleted, they are drained because of this work. What is the first step in becoming not even spiritually ripped, but just taking care of yourself? Cause I think it feels so overwhelming. You've got all these ideas and things you want to do, messages you want to spread or people that you want, you want to create a community, but you are absolutely on your knees. Where do you even start?

• 1:01:36Speaker 02

  I think you have to take a step back because if you'd met me then during that period where I was depleted, I still would have told you like, I believe in what I'm doing. It's really important. There's all this racism. There's all these like far right wing ideas, like somebody has to counter it. And you know, we need voices like mine. We need diversity in the news. We need people who investigate. And I'm, you know, I still believe that, but the point is I, that, and that was true, but there was also something else at work. And the other thing at work was this idea that your value to the world and humanity is directly correlated to how much you are grinding away. How much you're exerting and pouring yourself out. And I was raised like that, like you.

• 1:02:15Speaker 02

  Work hard and succeed and get acknowledged and recognition and advance up some kind of career ladder and then you're being a useful, hardworking, respectable person. And again, there is a very-

• 1:02:28Fearne Cotton?

  I feel that deeply in my bones when you say that.

• 1:02:31Speaker 02

  I think many of us have been raised with that idea. And on the surface, it sounds good, like you're working hard, you're doing something that you believe in and that people value. But are you doing it because you discovered that that's who you are and that's how you're meant to live? Or are you doing it because you were programmed to believe that to be useful is to grind? And you know, when you think about the way that narrative applies to women, women become exhausted. They have children, they're often the main carers of children or elderly parents, they have the majority of duties, domestic work in the home. Now we're also going out and trying to grind in the outside world and climb and produce and exert. And guess what? Get to a certain age, you've got nothing left. You're burned out.

• 1:03:15Speaker 02

  And crucially, you've not had time to really connect with yourself. You haven't had time on your period to rest and listen to your body. You haven't had time when you have an idea to really sit with your imagination. You haven't slept enough. There's an incredible book that I write about, Rest is Resistance, by Tricia Hirssey, which talks about rest as a portal. It is a portal through which your imagination takes you to another world, new ideas, a different future, possibility. And this whole culture of grinding prevents you from ever really tapping into your real potential. And when I started to think about that and understand it, I realised I was like a bot. I'd been programmed to just go, go, go, go, go. I wasn't necessarily doing it because it was what was right for me.

• 1:03:59Speaker 02

  I was doing it because it was, again, what I'd been brainwashed to do.

• 1:04:02Fearne Cotton?

  Yes, I had this exact epiphany. It felt like an epiphany because you're so used to just, like you say, you go, go, go. I was brought up in a working class family where there was no choice. You just work your tits off until you can't anymore. And I realised at the end of last year, and I had a bit of a health thing going on anyway, but I was like, all I'm doing is working, parenting, working, parenting. There's no room for anything, let alone rest, but socialising, nothing. And then this year, I'm like, I'm gonna have fun. I'm gonna like let go a bit and it might be a bit of a mess, but that's okay.

• 1:04:33Speaker 02

  It is.

• 1:04:34Fearne Cotton?

  And just trying to rebel against that grinding culture that we're all so used to. Everything's now, you know, who can achieve the most, do the most, who's the most successful. And I think, like you say, specifically for women, there's some stat that I don't know, so I'm not going to give a specific. But disproportionate amount of autoimmune diseases are.

• 1:04:54Speaker 02

  I saw that as well.

• 1:04:55Fearne Cotton?

  From women, because we're all so completely burnt out and trying to do so. And it is a disproportionate percentage that I can't remember, but like, let's say it's like 80% or something wild. And we, we know these stats, we're not doing anything about it.

• 1:05:08Speaker 02

  When you think of it on a system level, our economy requires our labour. They measure economic performance by productivity. Productivity is a way of saying you are like a unit whose output can be measured. And, and to the extent that we are extracting the maximum output from each member of society, the more successful an economy we are. And like, that's not designed for your wellbeing, or your health, or your spiritual balance. That is designed to enrich someone who owns the means of production, which by the way is never us. So when you understand these are systems, and you know, Trisha Hershey's book is so powerful because she's from a lineage of women who were enslaved in America, whose bodies were literally like ground until they dropped dead.

• 1:05:48Speaker 02

  Like working, you know, they would give birth in the fields on a plantation and then be expected to get straight back to work. They would literally work to death, like farm animals. And when you understand this is the same, nothing's changed in our economic system. It's the same model that was capable of doing that to a human being. You realise that it's not here for us, it's doing what it does. The point is, only we can look out for ourselves and ask ourselves, is that how I want to be? Is that how I want to be measured as like a unit of production? Or do I have something deeper to offer? Do I value my success, not just in like my output, but also my wellness? My balance, my sense of purpose, my connection to my community, my ability to contribute?

• 1:06:31Speaker 02

  My ability to be there for people who I love, who might need me? Like, whatever it is for you, I guarantee nobody is just a machine to grind. And, and. You have to take control of that because every message around you is encouraging it. And our financial system will reward it, right?

• 1:06:47Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:48Speaker 02

  You have to grind to stay alive in many cities where it's so expensive to live. So it's not an easy solution. And Tricia Hershey writes about this because she's not coming from privilege. She's like working class black communities in America where the thought of rest was considered a luxury for rich people. How can they create radical communities of rest within the community? Not just like disappearing to some unaffordable retreat, like in communities, in family? How can we build a culture that respects and more than respects, like demands rest? But if you're not even asking that question, there's no hope that we'll get there.

• 1:07:22Fearne Cotton?

  No, none at all. I mean, crikey, it's just, it's all, it's so much, there's so much to unpick. It's just, it's insane. But I think the thing that this book has given me is so many launchpads for like more questions that I've got now. More things that I want to dive into, more research that I want to do into just my own family lineage and also just, and my friends' cultures and their lineage and like what can we all gather, collate and, and look at and, and learn about? It's all so exciting and liberating as well as, you know, the bleakness that we know exists because of these systems and colonization and the amount of suffering and loss that there's been. I think it just feels like there's just so many questions that I now have from reading

• 1:08:05Fearne Cotton?

  this book that I, I feel excited about. And as I said at the very start of this conversation, it's just brilliant. And also if you, if you haven't read it, you, you must read it because it's not only beautifully written, but there's all these gorgeous pictures and quotes and, and little snippets of poetry you've used. It's just, it's a joy.

• 1:08:22Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:08:23Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, beautiful photography and it's, it's a joy to read. And I'm going to finish on, where is your happy place?

• 1:08:29Speaker 02

  Heat.

• 1:08:30Fearne Cotton?

  Yes.

• 1:08:31Speaker 02

  I'm saying this in December.

• 1:08:32Fearne Cotton?

  The opposite of what we're experiencing.

• 1:08:34Speaker 02

  I'm really, you know, I used to think that weather was like a superficial thing. People were like, oh, I like sunshine. It's like, how shallow. Really getting a sense of what kind of person I used to be.

• 1:08:43Fearne Cotton?

  Very annoying.

• 1:08:45Speaker 02

  Ah, it's not shallow. It's not shallow.

• 1:08:47Fearne Cotton?

  It's an necessity, quite frankly.

• 1:08:49Speaker 02

  I feel like a different person in the heat. My body just loves it. I come alive. I have more energy. It's easier to create. I sleep more deeply. My skin glows. My hair grows.

• 1:09:03Fearne Cotton?

  Nails are great. Everything.

• 1:09:05Speaker 02

  Everything works. And over time, just come to accept that he is really important to me. So when I am hot, I feel so happy. Like when I'm hot, in a, in a, like, I feel nurtured by the elements. There's a way in which that makes me so happy.

• 1:09:24Fearne Cotton?

  I'm with you on that. And I've just loved talking to you. Thank you, Afua. You are the best.

• 1:09:30Speaker 02

  Wonderful conversation. I've loved every minute.

• 1:09:32Fearne Cotton?

  Thank you so much.

• 1:09:33Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:09:35Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, Afua. Oh, Afua. If you're listening to this, can we be friends? Like genuinely? We've got a mutual friend, Reggie Yates. I could go via him. That feels creepy. Um, let's hang out. I just love Afua. That was, as I've said before, a chat that I keep referencing again and again. I keep going back to the book and telling people to buy it. I keep thinking about it. I keep thinking about all the time I've wasted eating my own body and hating my periods. And all of that is changing for me. Much of it, thanks to Afua. What things that you've always taken as truth are you starting to unpick and relearn? Because I'd love to carry on this chat on Instagram during the week. We're at Happy Place Official. We're also on Instagram with our book club, at Happy Place Book Club.

• 1:10:20Fearne Cotton?

  Come on over and read with us. That's where we read a different book together each month and have some really great chats about its themes. We're about to start a new book. March's pick is Broken Country by Claire Leslie Hall. Oh, this book. Let me tell you about it. Beth was 17 when she first met Gabriel, and over an intense summer, he made her think and feel differently. Understandably, she thought it was the start of her great love story. But then Gabriel left, and it was Frank who picked up the pieces. So what's going to happen when Gabriel comes back? Oh, my God. I love this book. I really loved it. Everything Beth thinks she knows about who she is is about to crumble. Is this a possibility for a second chance at first love?

• 1:11:04Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, this book has got some big plot twists, guys, as well. Come and read with us. All right, back here next week for a podcast, and I can't wait. In the meantime, a massive thank you again to Afua, to the producer, Anushka Tate, at Happy Place Studios, and to you, I adore you.

• 1:11:47Speaker 03

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• 1:12:46Speaker 07

  This week on Help, I sexed my boss.

• 1:12:49Speaker 08

  And after taking a shower, I used some spray deodorant that belonged to his mother from the cupboard. He took a big sniff of me and says, "Mmm, smells like sex."

• 1:12:57Speaker 10

  Cast your personal question.

• 1:12:59Speaker 08

  Yes?

• 1:13:00Speaker 10

  Do your balls ever just float back up?

• 1:13:02Speaker 08

  What?

• 1:13:03Speaker 10

  What?

• 1:13:04Speaker 09

  Burnley playing Millwall the way, and got all my brothers coming down like a Millwall. Yeah, I can't go. I'm going to a matinee of Pride of the Musical.

• 1:13:14Speaker 08

  Listen and watch wherever you get your podcasts.