I'm Shonda Rhymes and we're bringing you Dominant Stories, created by Shawn Land Audio in partnership with the Self Steam Project. When I got my reduction, I went back down to what I was and now I'm where I was, which was like a double d. I was like, Oh, I'll get a breast reduction and then be like a TikTok fluencer. And then I was like, I don't like the narrative around this, and I don't like the way people are putting this narrative on pre pregnancy me. I want to be in control of my own story, so like, I'm only going to talk about it in a nuanced way like with you. Hey. I'm Jess Wiener and this is Dominant Stories, the podcast that helps us reclaim and rewrite the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, about our bodies, our beauty, our creativity, and our identities. I remember when I was twelve, the biggest gossip going around our seventh grade class at the time was when this very popular girl named Ivy came back from her summer vacation with a new nose. And honestly, I had never really noticed her nose before even thought about Ivy's nose, but I did notice something changed with her when she came back to school. She was already popular and really well liked, but I saw something different in Ivy. Her confidence definitely grew more that year, and even though kids were like whispering about her when she walked by, I think most people were just trying to figure out, like what happened, because that was new for us to see. And then I remember she confided in a bunch of us girls that she had really always hated her nose and her parents finally allowed her to get it fixed, and she said she had plastic surgery. And that was the first time that I had ever really heard the phrase plastic surgery. And then as I was growing up, I kept hearing that phrase more and more, but it was always in a really secretive way. So if like somebody, like maybe a friend of my parents had plastic surgery, it was always like hush, hush, it was just secretive. Nobody really talked about it. And I remember noticing all of these celebrities that I would follow from TV or in magazines would all of a sudden like show up and they'd look like ten years younger, and people would ask them what their secret was, and they would kind of say like, oh, they just change their diet or they tried a new face cream and enter all of the magic in lies of Hollywood. But when I think about this now, I think about I can see a change generationally. Whereas for me, it was very secretive to talk about plastic surgery. But today's Gen Z generation, which are twelve to twenty five year olds roughly, they're online talking very openly about cosmetic tweakments which are like botox or fillers or things like that, as well as plastic surgery. And they're doing it without the shame and the secrecy. But it brings up this really interesting nuanced dynamic, which is can you love your body and have high self esteem and confidence and still desire to change it? And that's what I wanted to wrestle with in the show today, and to do that, I have invite it on two incredible guests. I'm first going to be joined by Rachel Bloom. You probably know Rachel as the co creator and the star of the musical dramay Crazy Ex Girlfriend, which she won the Golden Globe and the m E four. It was an awesome show and she wrote a book last year called I Want to be where the normal people are. We're gonna talk about that, but Rachel's also sharing very candidly about her decision to have breast reduction surgery following the birth of her daughter. So we're going to talk about the role that Hollywood plays in our beauty double standards and why for Rachel it was so important to share this news publicly. And then later I'm gonna be joined by Dr Nadiocratic. She's an applied body image researcher at the Center for Appearance Research in the UK. She's also a member of the Dove Self Esteem Project research team, and Nadia and I are going to help unravel the messy and quite often nuanced relationship that we have between having body love and having the desire to want to change or enhance our looks. Does getting plastic surgery or a cosmetic tweakment mean that we're conforming to a societal beauty standard or can it also be a display of our body autonomy, knowing what decisions feel right for our body. There is so much to unpack here, That's why I've got two incredible guests, so much good stuff to cover. As always, if you enjoy the podcast. Let me know what you think by subscribing and writing a review wherever you're listening. All right, let's dig in, Rachel Bloom. I'm so excited to have you here. This is a conversation I'm dying to dig into. But I want to like dial us back a little bit. I always like to start with like our origin stories and our childhood stories. So I listen to your book, and by the way I sing it, when I say it like I want to be where the normal people are, it feels like it feels like I want to be where the normal people are. That's the goal. So I want to talk about the idea of normal because, as somebody who's worked on confidence and self esteem issues both personally and professionally, that is probably the number one piece of language that I hear young girls in particular say, right, And it's code for a lot of things. Right. I don't feel normal also is like I don't feel okay, I don't feel accepted, I don't feel seen. But like I want to get to the heart of like what that meant for you as a kid, Like what was normal for you? Normal was the popular happy kids. For whatever reason, we picked this group of ten people to be popular, So that was that was the normal say to aspire to. And then there was like a kind of tear below that of like the kids who were just like generally well liked, maybe a tear below hyper popular, and that was also like normal. Do you remember when you were a kid what you thought if you were normal, like what you thought your life would feel like or be like? Yeah, Because I wrote and I talked about this in my book a little bit. I there was a some software that I found on my computer where you could write newspaper articles. So I wrote a fake newspaper article about myself in high school. When I was in middle school, what I hoped really and it was that I was going to a private school because I wanted to go to this private school. I didn't end up going to this private school. I was in private school and I was popular, and I was a cheerleader, and I was the leading all the plays, and I was dating the boy I had a crush on. That fantasy element when we're kids not feeling like you're in whatever the dominant culture is. All that kind of stuff creates exactly what we're talking about. Were these dominant stories right about for me, it was also about my loveability, my worthiness. Like you make up a lot of stories when you feel like you're not being seen, heard, or understood. Do you remember what was a dominant story for you, kind of a repetitive, negative thought that you had as a kid. It's hard to separate that from when I was in fourth grade, I developed what I now think some form of O c D related to my generalized anxiety disorder that I still have. You know, the two are very similar. Um. I started to have these compulsive thoughts that I then had to like purge myself of. So the narrative I had about myself was kind of taken over by just trying to like deal with these looping thoughts, because the narrative I otherwise had about myself was like, I'm a theater kid, and then the looping thoughts was this other dark thing that I didn't want to acknowledge was a part of me, but was slowly more and more taking over my life. Were you aware of the general anxiety to sort of like did you have language? I guess for what was happening inside of you know. All I really know is that around the time fourth grade started, I started to have these like overwhelmingly guilty thoughts that just consumed me, and the only way I could momentarily feel better is to tell my mom or my parents about the guilty thought. Literally an obsession and then a compulsion. But what I knew of O. C D Was like, you got to make sure the stove is, you know, turned off. Like it was all like washing your hands and are not touching a door knob or all that, which I like later kind of had because I'd run out of guilty thoughts to have um. But it just it felt like this, this darkness came over my my life and it didn't really let up until seventh grade. What was that change about in seventh grade? Honestly, I was in this musical theater class and I started, I think, coming more into my own and kids started to be nicer to me. I don't know, but I just remember one day it it kind of went away, and then it came. It came back in my early twenties, these intrusive thoughts in a major, major way. It's hard to like describe to someone who's never had this, but like an intrusive thought, it's not just like being anxious about something. The intrusive thought is a level further where it's a darkness that prevents you from really thinking about her, focusing on anything else. It feels like there's primally there's a lion in the bushes about to eat you, so why would you think of anything else. It's the worst feeling in the world. I still deal with it occasionally. I truly don't wish intrusive thinking on like my worst enemy, because it it's all consuming. It's all consuming and it and it takes away like my personality and who I am. And the way that I deal with them is to not engage the thought, which is the hardest fucking thing when you have an intrusive Absolutely. So you talk about fourth grade as this kind of pivotal space, and I know a lot in in your book you talk a lot about the bullying that you experienced. Can you talk a little bit more about that and specifically, I think the role that those formative relationships, because they are even though these are terrible moments, like how that sets you up in the way that you think about who you are. So I was very bad. Bullying, especially six six six, seventh grade was really bad. It culminated in the popular kids literally paying a kid to ask me out as like a school wide prank, which is like a bad teen movie. I am still insecure about that I'm annoying. I'm worried that I don't fit in. I'm worried that um people don't like me. Still for a lot of reasons, I feel like my relationship, my friendships with people were a little bit at a distance, especially with other women. I had some female friends, but like I definitely really remember connecting with like guys, um like nerdy guys, because there also weren't other nerdy girls. That wasn't like a really a thing. There wasn't a pride in being a nerdy girl like the nerdy guys had like a pride in being nerdy guys. And there wasn't like the nerdy girl pride quite quite yet. I think there is now. Um So I still and I still worry about about keeping up friendships and am I close my close with people, my close enough with people, and on navigating that. I so relate. So sixth grade for me, first, I'm a girl with the last name of Wiener, So that was a very character building last name growing up. But I had a lot of significant betrayals of friendships with female friendships. I wrote about this in my first book. I had a very significant at a sixth grade birthday party where the whole class was pretty much there because that's what used to do, you know. And so everybody came to that party, and this group of older girls from the middle school showed up uninvited and started to play spin the bottle, so like against the will of like, and I was like, not that girl. At We're like, you know, I don't know, eating derritos and listening to whatever we're listening to. And so they started to really kind of push this like agenda of spin the bottle, and like then they started a cake fight in on my patio and so like cakes getting stayed everywhere, And I had the kind of parents who were cool at the time. They're like, we're gonna go in the bedroom. You guys have your party, you know, don't come and get us unless something's going crazy. And I remember I had to go and get my parents because I had lost control of the room. I didn't know how to stop these girls from terrorizing like everybody. And my mom then confronts them and says, like, look, you've got to respect this space, like if you can't do this to the house, like those who can't do that, you can go, but those who can do that, you can stay. So the three people who stayed were like a set of twins of boy and a girl and another guy friend. But I watched this whole class leaven So the rest of my sixth grade year and through middle school, this same group of kids who kind of like cauld terrorize the house showed up every year and egged my house on my birthday as punishment, like the whole all of my middle school life, like you know, for a long time. Then I think you assigned blame, like what's wrong with me? That's why did this happen to me? But also who do I trust? How do I trust? Again? So I very much related to how you've talked about the lasting effect of that bullying. And by the way, I mean, I grew up in a time pre internet, Like thank god that wasn't like on YouTube afterwards or people were like sharing that that humiliation lasted me until I could kind of shed that in high school. There's a also in us, a me versus them nous that happens, you know, you're rather with with me or against me, and you start to categorize people into that which is not accurate to the world, is not middle school, and and and then later in life learning that everyone in middle school is miserable by the way, which uh. I had had this conversation with one of my main middle school bullies and found out she was incredibly depressed then as well, which you never would have known. How did that convo come about? She came to a live show that I did. She had apologized in high school, and then she came to the show I didn't. She brought me flowers and a card, and she was like, can we get coffee after? And she like apologized and said like I was unenlightened. Then I was miserable. My family was going through X y Z like she was miserable too. I had the same experience. I put this story in my first book. I did Oprah for my first book, and the woman who terrorized me at that birthday party also reached out to me and shared that she had been being abused at home and of that kind of terrible behavior would be coming from a really unhappy place. If someone's a true fucking asshole to you, chances are stuff is not great at home. Middle school is really a bunch of miserable people who are too insecure to admit that they're miserable to each other. And if they would only just admit their miserable, you wouldn't have bullying, right, or you would get rid of the bullying. Yeah, for me, I attached all of those experiences at some point, maybe between middle school and high school, to my appearance, Like somehow it became this like indictment against what I looked like. Or if I could control better my weight or my hair on my appearance, or if I could dress a certain way, then I would somehow be inoculated. Yeah, I mean, in my case, it kind of did help. I got I went and got these Roxy shirts. Roxy was the big brand at the time. I went and spent my allowance money on three Roxy shirts, and like, it did fucking help? Why because you think it it feels like we get to assimilate in those moments people Just I wasn't a target in the moment. I wore those cool shirts right for whatever, And I've been dressing terribly even though these were shirts that I like, Like I had this fucking Ryan Stone dragon shirt that was like awesome that people made fun of me for and I'm like, but the store sold it, right, So like, what am I supposed to do? I bet you that, sure it would be very in Right now, I think it would be sad I gave it away as if I could fit into it. So, in all of this experience, like knowing that you come through bullying experiences, do you have overt conversations with your partners as you're getting into the industry about appearance, talking about things in a way that isn't stereotypical. Oh, the culture of comedy when I really came up and it was to be as envelope pushing as possible. Stuff has completely flipped. The whole thing was to be like mean, dirty, shocking, like that was the cool thing to do because it was the mail way of doing. Yes. Yeah. I read a book actually very early into taking improv classes called called Whose Improv Is It Anyway? And it was written by a bunch of black comedians who would come up in the improv syn in Chicago, and they were talking about the predominantly straight, white male culture of comedy and how they perpetually felt on the outs about it. So it was something that was on my mind from very early on of the patriarchy, which is set by straight white guys. And even though knowing this, I still tried to kind of please the straight white guys and their version of what they thought was funny and their version of comedy. And so I think that like there was a simultaneous understanding of the patriarchy, but also very secretly trying to please the patriarchy. And I think that like fear that my work wouldn't please the patriarchy, especially doing musical stuff, which was fundamentally seen in a couple of tiers below, you know, true comedy. I think I'm still actually parsing out my own internalized like make that dude laugh, with my own sense of humor because I learned sketch comedy from dudes. All Right, it's that time when we come back, we're gonna be digging in to Rachel Bloom's recent announcement about her breast production surgery and how the media, when they found out about it, decided to spin that narrative shucker, And for the first time since talking about it publicly, Rachel's going to share just how wrong the media got it spoiler alert. They totally made ship up. All right, let's get back to this incredible convo with Rachel. You were very public about earlier this summer getting plastic surgery, having a breast reduction, and I want to talk about that. Let's talk about boobs. Yeah. Great. Well it's interesting because I'm aware of the when I was getting this breast reduction. When I was I was planning on getting it, I was like, oh, I'll write a thing for a thing after I get it done, like I want to use this to inspire people. And then I announced it, and the news kind of got disseminated in a lot of places, and the overwhelming narrative that I read it wasn't bad, but the narrative was like, Rachel Bloom has always had a complicated relationship with her boobs, and finally she did something about it, which was not true to the situation that I was in. Yes, I've talked a lot about having big boobs, had a song on Crazy X called heavy Boobs. But the reduction was not in a reaction to how I always felt about my body. It was actually very much a reaction to what happened to my body during pregnancy that I realized a lot of people didn't see because it happened during the pandemic. So I was going to do actually talk a lot more about the reduction, and I don't do a TikTok video or something like. I took some TikTok videos of like before and after, and then I was like, oh, no, I don't like this prevailing story that people have being like years and years have led up to this decision. No, that's actually not what it was at all, And I feel weird about people thinking that's what it was because I actually really loved my I did a song called heavy Boobs because yeah, like that song actually was less to me about inconvenience of having heavy boobs and more about the de sexualization of breasts, heavy boots, maybe a catch at Fisherman's War. Goddamn heavy boobs, heavy boobs. Don't ever forget that these heavy boots and heavy bones their sacks of yellow fat um. And I'd had big breasts for a while, so I was used to being a double D, even like a triple D. And now what happened during pregnancy was I went very rapidly from a double triple D to a G. Something they don't tell you about pregnancy and breastfeeding is that the tissue in your breast changes, at least minded from being kind of m and almost like jellyy, too soft, like literally water. There was no firmness, and so I had talking about like sacks of yellow fat. I had these giant sacks that felt like filled with water and there was nothing firm about it, and it didn't feel like my body, and they didn't go back down after I stopped breastfeeding, and I was uncomfortable. I had to at night sleep with this specific pillow called my breast Friend in between my breasts in order to be comfortable. I just didn't feel like I was in my own body anymore. When I got my reduction, I went back down to what I was and now I'm where I was, which was I'm like a double D. What surprised me is I was like, Oh, I'll get a breast reduction and then be like a TikTok fluencer. And then I was like, I don't like the narrative around this, and I don't like the way people are putting this narrative on pre pregnancy me. I want to be in control of my own story, so like, I'm only going to talk about it in a nuanced way, like with you. So here's okay, can we unpack this a little bit because I'm I want to get to the narrative because I have some thoughts and questions on that. But what made you share the announcement in the first place. A lot of my fans because I did the song heavy Boobs, a lot of people came out and they were like, I have heavy boobs and I love this song, which was a part of why you do that song for people with heavy boobs to relate. So I knew a lot of people who followed me on social media had big breasts, and I had spoken to a lot of people who had back paint and underboob brushes and sweat and we're saying, well, this is my lot in life. And now that I actually was very physically uncomfortable with my breast, which I hadn't really been before. But I talked to a lot of women who had been physically inconvenienced by their breasts, and I was like, Oh, I'm going to share that I'm getting this reduction because I feel like I've talked to so many women who should get this. So you make that announcement with that intention, you know, I made the announcement and then it was after I really posted the surgery pictures that I was like, oh, I don't like this thing being like a reprimand of like, oh, she's always had big boobs and then she decided to do something about it. That's that's just literally not what happened. That's the narrative that culture creates for women who do any kind of physical change. Yeah, like this has been a long a long history, and it's like, no, it just like fucking depends. And I think that I'm three months out of the surgery. I got the surgery August second. I think I got August twond, We're three and a half months out. I honestly, it seems like I didn't have surgery. I'm healing really well. I'm basically all healed. It just at the end of the day, wasn't that big a deal, But it becomes a really big deal in the narrative around plastic surgery and women. I felt when I announced it was like this whole thing and it's like, it's not that big a deal. Do whatever you want to make yourself happy. Is a narrative that I like more to focus on and it's why it made me actually a lot more casual about plastic surgery and and fixing your personal appearance. I used to be really judge about it, but now I'm like, you know what, if it's gonna make you happy, if you're doing it for someone else, or there's a really fine line between doing it to make yourself happy and fitting into what the patriarchy says is beautiful. For myself, it was a physical discomfort thing, and and also feeling like this is not this is not how my body feels then, And do you think, even if it is somebody's cosmetic decision, if it makes you happy, who who cares? Just who cares? And I was also raised I grew up here but like no one talked about getting botox or a facelift. It just kind of was this understood thing. And I also specifically was raised in my house to believe that people who did that were like phony and consequential people. And now I I have a much more nuanced take on that. And I haven't done anything to my face. I've honestly thought about doing under eye fillers because I have an eye that naturally on film gets dark circles and it just is kind of a pain in the asked to get the dark circles touched up every a lot um. But it's I just care a lot less about what other people are doing to their bodies. You just don't really care. But this point that you're making too about like the way the narrative gets twisted in a way that feels familiar, especially for media and celebrity and people who are in the public eye. I feel like there has to be this story of like body hatred then redemption, and usually usually lands around weight loss or plastic surgery, and then all of a sudden, wila, like they found all this self love and whatnot. You've been very vocal about the paradox of plastic surgery in Hollywood too, and about kind of the double edged sword of women who like, we want you to look effortless and young and happy, then you get something done, we find out you get something done, and then you're a traitor to the cause. Well that's the reason to be open about this is what I think is really damaging is when we see an image of how people look and we think, oh, that's how I should be looking, and know, what you don't know is they've had work done on their face, or they have a trainer who comes to their house, or they're on this mold a million dollar nutrition plan. And also, by the way, wait is really based on genetics. I think the unfair comparisons that lead to the self flagellation without understanding the context that comes from celebrity and red carpet culture is is the worst part of this. So that's why I believe in just total transparency, Like, yeah, do a red carpet, but like, let's let's admit that it's playing dress up, that no one looks like this. It's just a fun dress update. I've lived in Los Angeles and worked in and around Hollywood for twenty one years. It still blew my mind when I found out for the first time that most people have hair extensions, that most people are wearing wigs. Oh my god. This gorgeous hair that are in hair commercials, it's not real hair on somebody. I mean it's hair, it's not their hair. Yeah. The amount that like your face and hair are getting done for a red carpet, it's just nothing that you could achieve on your own. You just you can't. These are experts. They they take out suit cases of products for you, literal suit cases of products, and then you know the fashion everything's tailored and anyone can get their stuff tailored, but not a lot of people do. It hadn't really occurred to me to get stuff to tailor. Of course, not. You buy it off the rack. It fits or it doesn't. That's why characters in TV shows like look Good is because you have a costume designer on the TV show who if it doesn't fit, they're gonna get it tailored. So I just I believe transparency is important for better and for worse because it allows us to then set realistic expectations for ourselves. And that goes along with like changing your body the plastic surgery narrative. Not everyone needs to be a fucking Shiro. You don't need to turn everything you do into like a big influencer event. Sometimes you do a thing and it makes you happy and you move on with your life and it and it, and it goes into my overall crusade to just be a nuanced thinker and see life in a nuanced, not black and white way. And that's when I realized, like, I don't want to turn my breast reduction into a whole like I'm affecting here thing because like, no, it's a thing that I did in a reaction to a specific thing that happened to me, which is how my body reacted to pregnancy, and I recovered, And it doesn't feel like a big deal. Yeah, I mean, you're still so fresh from this procedure and feeling the blowback of that narrative and kind of wrestling with wanting to talk about it in a more nuanced way. I think in general, for me being a cultural expert and focusing on body image and confidence and self esteem, I've often had a very bifurcated relationship with my own my own beauty rituals or processes. Right I've lived in a much larger body than I'm in right now. I have this sized body them in right now, Like I got botox for the first time I turned forty eight, and I decided I, you know, I had. We're in this world of zoom right now where all I do is look at myself all they lost the last two years, and I'm noticing more of the wrinkles that are popping up. But I'm noticing that. But I used to hesitate around surgical procedures or any kind of enhancement because I thought, if I loved my body, I wouldn't do that. And I think that is faulty thinking. Maybe it's not faulty thinking. For me, it's not nuance thinking. Yes, yes, I just think it's case by case that's really at the end of the day, like there's no one size fits all right for any of this stuff. But the Shira piece, I do think it's subconsciously wired into us a bit about like we're more valiant or more natural if we're not enhancing or we're not tweaking. Like it goes to that expectation piece, like you're supposed to age but not look like you're supposed to age naturally. Right, But a lot of the women in Hollywood that we say they've aged great, they absolutely have worked. Then they just have had very good work done, very good and very subtle work done. I always contrapt Jane fondest face when I think about that, because that is like a stunning work of art. It just had very very good at work. So I think for me it's it's a maturation process too, where you realize, like I can love my body still want to change it those two things are not mutually exclusive. UM. With that in mind, if you're listening to this to hear about tips of getting a breast reduction, just a couple of things. So I went with an out of network plastic surgeon, partially because I have the financial ability to. But there still is a part of my surgery that was covered. Had I gone to someone in network, I believe all of it would have been covered. Yeah. So when you get evaluated for getting a breast production, they take a bunch of measurements and you're evaluated. It's something called the I think it's called the Schnur scale. It's something to do with like b M I ratio to your breast size. Some of it might be bullshit, but but anyway doesn't determine like your eligibility. It does. So what you do is when you get your preliminary exam, you then submit it to your insurance company and you wait to hear back, Okay, how much of this will be covered? Um. And the way that I found my doctor was I looked at photo galleries on their websites and I chose an all female plastic surgery practice because I like their work the best, and I would say, the nipple sizes were not they look great, They look really good. I think a lot of the what I found the male doctors. The nipples were really small and very dare I say, porny, which felt very old gazy. Look if you're a woman who wants tiny, tiny nipples, great, but it just felt very male gazy. I also had an experience where I saw a very fancy male you know, Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, and it was my first consultation and he walks in and he goes, so, let me guess your your boobs are big and heavy and you want them a little little and perky. Right. He literally didn't even say hello, and I went, um, yeah, well you know I'm on my journey. I was trying to get him to mirror back like kindness. And then he says to me later, he goes, so, what what size are you now? And I was like g and he goes, those are big? Why are you so big? Oh my god? Gross. So I didn't get any of that with the female plastic surgery practice. Again was out of network for my insurance. So I just I want to like be full like full disclosure there. But there there were I think other options for me in network. I just I was being very very choosy. I'm just I'm grateful for the ability for you to shop are the nuance of like your decision around plastic surgery, but more so more so for people to be aware of how these stories get created and twisted, and to be asking those really good questions, to not always be taking things that we see in media to at face value. I think it is a part of the process of connecting back to your body. I think that's the other thing that I'm learning in some of this, like tweatment space and thinking about plastic surgery, is it's just it's not binary. It is super customized to the individual, and it doesn't have to carry the stigma that it's normally carried. The dominant stories tend to be so binary in nature that we have about ourselves. The nuance is actually a really beautiful place to live. I feel like that's what I can see when somebody like yourself is being honest and real and open and vulnerable, it gives us permission, I think, as listeners, to kind of look within and to say, right, what's right for me? Yeah, what makes sense for me? Thank you. Thank you for having me. Hey, don't go anywhere, because up next I'm going to dive in with body image researcher naughti Acratic, and we're going to talk about the nuances in considering getting tweatments or plastic surgery, and we're gonna wrestle with the question can you love your body and still want to change it? All right, we're back with nauti Acratic. Let's dig in. So, Natia, I'm so happy that you're here to have this conversation with me. You know, on this show we talk a lot about dominant stories, which are the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves. But of course we know those stories get created from all different kinds of places. And I'm curious, in your role as a body image researcher and academic, can you talk a little bit about from your point of view, where you think our stories about beauty and body image most originate from. Yeah, great question, and first of all, yet I have to say thank you so much for inviting me. I was super flattered. So to answer your question about the where are we getting these ideas and stories around our bodies about appearance from? I think it comes from a number of different sources, right, So we have media's and that media can be like media advertising. Social media is incorporated in that. And then we look at our friends, family partners, the people that we have in our lives who in their own way can reinforce or buffer those messages that we have around how we quote should look. From a very early age, we are taught how we should show up in the world, how we should present, how we should look, and it's very interesting to see how these trends, these appearance ideals, appearance standards change over time. So it's like it's always it's like everyone being like Chase, but it's coming from all of these different sources, and I think they can resonate for different people at different times in their life in terms of what's the most potent fourth for you at that particular time I talked about it. Sometimes it's like wallpaper. It feels like it's all around us all the time, and sometimes it feels so natural and subtle because we've absorbed, let's say, our famili's dominant stories about their body image, or were absorbing, to your point, media's stories about what I'm supposed to look like. When I was talking to Rachel Bloom. You know, we were talking about really formidable moments in our childhood life. Rachel and I shared similar childhood experience around bullying and having such a lasting impact on our body image and our self esteem by the way we were bullied, and so I wanted to to kind of pivot and talk to you a little bit about the correlation between bullying and body image and where sometimes some of that verb all abuse and trauma land. It's a great question, and I think the two certainty are related, and it's interesting to think then if that bullying appearance related or not. I would argue that probably both can be at least related or associated with people feeling less so because it's tapping into vulnerability. And I think what we see oftentimes is that when people like having a bad day and it's like, oh, it's my body's fault, it's because I don't look a certain way. And actually the solution in air quotes, a solution is like address something in my body, not actually addressing with the problem in hand. I think that's certainly an element. But I think when we're thinking about bullying, particularly at school growing up, it's such a low blow, but such an easy blow to to attack appearance. We see that in the school playground, but we also see that when we're talking about political leaders who we don't like. That's right, and the first thing that we're like, oh, but he is, and we'll make a comment about that weight. It's so common, and especially if it's a female leader, we often talk about their appearance first and foremost absolutely what they look like, what they're wearing, what their body side is like, how they're presenting. It really reinforces the value that we place on appearance, particularly so for women. Yeah, and I think you're right. I think there's something that sticks with us in appearance related bullying. You know, of course, like I was teased from my hair, I was teased even from my skin tone at the time, anything that didn't fit into dominant culture at that time. I had, you know, feedback on and I internalized a lot of it. So many of us can remember something that was said to us as a teenager or the young person of a child, and we have held onto that for so long, and a lot of times they are flippant comments, they're not meant with any really bad intention, but you know, I remember my mom saying the moment on the lips, the lifetime on the hips, like that's just a little flip thing. Yeah, and she must have said it. I want It's not the kind of thing my mom would normally say, but she said it, and I still remember that that sticks. Yeah, yeah, this will age me for sure. But I remember there was a commercial when I was growing up and it was like something about you can't pinch an inch, and it always like a commercial of a woman pinching, like if you pinched more than an inch of fat on your stomach, you know it wasn't good. And I remember being a little girl and pinching my stomach to check that out. So you're right, like things, whether they're jingles or their comments or their images, they land on us. But I've been thinking a lot about You started the conversation talking about the transient trends that come up and and go and they flow. Let's talk about what we've all been doing for the last almost two years now, which is staring at ourselves in a zoom or a WebEx or whatever. Face time. They call it the zoom boom, but you know, we've been looking at ourselves more than ever before. And what I've been tracking, both in myself and then in my role as a cultural expert, is the uptick in body dissatisfaction or body critical nous right around looking at ourselves because it's like we're looking in the mirror the entire time while we're talking to somebody else, which isn't normal. So can you talk about that relationship? Are you seeing that we're having some more increase in body dissatisfaction because of the medium of communication we're in right now. So there have been studies that have started to show that we're like looking at ourselves, we're thinking how others are perceieving us, and a hyper conscious of it. So it's like that hyper state of being like both conscious and then that can then bills over into feeling like more self critical because you're like, oh, wait, I didn't realize that I don't know this hair or whatever it is. And then you keep seeing it, Yeah, you zoom in, You're like, oh, I didn't realize that, but actually now I've seen it, I'm not happy. And I think when we're talking about body image, a lot of the time you will people to zoom out, right, So you want to see your whole self by zooming in, by looking yourself constantly, you're thinking how you're being perceived. I think because we're in such a judgmental appearance culture. I don't think people should feel ashamed for feeling like that. But that process of constantly self monitoring, really looking at ourselves, I think it's not youthful because it just thoughts what we are thinking about our whole selves. So you have to zoom out a bit from not just looking at your face or just looking at the lines on your forehead or whatever it might be. Room out see your whole appearance number one, and then seeing yourself with more than just your body. I agree, And I have a confession to make. I'm at this interesting confluence in my life right now where I'm in the middle passage of my life, age y. So my my face is changing, and I'm in this public medium, and we've been zooming and and I had my first cosmetic enhancement procedure done. I had botox done for the first time, and you know, a lot of that did come from like an over analysis of of noticing things on my features that I wanted to shift, and so it sent me down this really interesting rabbit hole that I want to go down. With you, especially in the in the fields that we're in, because I can look at this both personally and professionally. Right, So here I am like an adult human making a decision to do a cosmetic tweakment. Right, So they call these tweakments, whether that's like you know, botox fillers, that sort of thing. And then there's plastic surgery, which is, you know a little bit more of a severe kind of reconstruction. Right. How would you describe the difference between cosmetic surgery and plastic surgery in lay person's terms? Oh, I think you can have a couple of different layers because we can think about it in terms of aesthetic cosmetic procedures though really focusing on changing your appearance. We can have reconstructive plastic surgery, which is if someone's had an injury, you know, car incidental or something, or maybe have been unwell, there's reconstructive surgery that's that's gone on there. So that's still plus surgery, but it's really constructive that it had a slightly different focus. And then we've got those non invasive pathges that you're talking about with the tweatments, which are still cosmetic proceges. They're still invasive, they're just less so, and I think it's it's really important to highlight that were involved with all of them. Absolutely, And that's actually what kept me away from doing a tweakment for so long, was being torn about like, oh my gosh, why am I doing this and am I succumbing to beauty pressures or is this a part of my expression of body autonomy and the decision to make what choices I want to make for my own appearance. And I've been rummaging through this both as you know, a person and a professional in this space. And when I started to look more broadly at cultural trends, I noticed some really interesting subcultures happening on TikTok with younger generations, with gen Z in particular. So I'm a gen xer, but gen Z in particular growing up with a very different viewpoint on tweakments. You know, when I was a kid and I'm forty eight, for people listening, so you know what world I'm fitting into. If you've got something done, nobody talked about it, So it was like secretive in a way. And when I'm watching all these young people now on TikTok really reclaiming the idea that they can enhance their body or do what they want with their body in any way that they choose, and that's part of their autonomy and their relationship to it, and it seems to be less shame producing. I would say for a certain sector. I wanted to wrestle with that with you a little bit. Where do we draw the line on encouraging self expression with your body and whatever makes you feel good? Like, where do you come down on an idea like this. I have so many thoughts, That's why we can let's walk see if we can walk through them. And I think also did like contrast to what we were talking about, Jen said, gen Z, you being gen X, I'm in the middle of a millennium, and I think one that there is a lot of pressure to meet the the parents standards which we have alluded to you spoken to a little bit. And I think particularly as people are aging, there is that pressure there, and it's like pressure not only to like look good, but then to be still taken seriously. In the world. We see how like women just kind of disappear off a cliff. We talked about that a lot, especially in public facing roles. So I completely understand the pressure and why someone may go down that road. And it was very interesting to me when you first introduce this topic, is that it was a confession. Yeah, I understand it. I understand how it may give people an immediate boost in their body confidence. I would always invite people to ask why is that and how long might that last? And is that going to really quote fix the problem? For many people? It may not actually address that underlying issue of dissatisfaction and low self esteem, low self worth. And then you get something done, you might feel good for a while, and then you're like, oh, but actually I'm even dissatisfied about the same thing or about something else. It might be like the weight is a problem, or the lines in your face of the problem, or something else is the problem. So I think there's an element where these treatments are and I don't want to use the word empowering, but I feel like I understand why people have them. And then it's like, oh, it does make you feel better, so then you feel like, oh, this is like something that I've done for me. It's good for me. But at a bigger picture level, I do not think that these procedures are empowering. I do not think that this is something that is beneficial to everyone apart from the business that it is serving. So I think if we look at cosmetic procedures, it is a big business. There's a lot of money that's being made, and this industry is growing. And it's not just growing in terms of like the number of procedures that are being done. It's growing in terms of the number of procedures that are on offer. They are also following trends, and I think we can see how, oh they're a trend, have big rest of them that is like being pushed and advertised and sold. Now we're seeing a trend at the moment about the bbls or the Brazilian butt lifts, and it's like that is now a trend, and it's like, who's starting that trend? Where is that coming from? I think that brings us back to social media and and but there's there's also a role that industry is playing to perpetuate these ideals and the idea that you can obtain those ideals if only you buy it. It's really to interrograte how much is that an investment on yourself? How much is it trying to fit in with all these societal appearance pressures. And I think then when we look at the industry and we look at the industry stats and we see that women worldwide year on year disproportionately undergo these procedures between eighty five and ninety maybe even higher having these procedures. And then there's that racialized component of some of these procedures, with like the lip fullers, they're changing your nose. When we look in some of like Asian countries, the most popular procedures are to do with your I shaped to have a maybe more European yep I. And then so then I think when it's like you're looking at it from that lens and that point of view, like, how can this be empowering? And I think this is where white supremoucy comes in. I think this is where the patriarchy comes in. I think this is where capitalism comes in. And I think when we're looking at it from that point of view, I think this absolutely couldnt be something that we want to promote in any way, is something that's empowering to people. And in the same breath as we are talking about at the beginning, I understand why people go through them because of the pressure that we are in. So it's not about judgment on anyone for doing that, because I don't think that serves anyone either. This is why I wanted to wrestle around with this with you, because I think ultimately the question in this conversation today is can I love my body and still want to change it? Can I love myself and still desire to alter my appearance? And I know from a weight perspective, from cosmetic aesthetic perspective, this is a real third rail conversation for women to have, and especially women who are to use your word, interrogating the systems and looking within. And I will say this just to add to the conversation. I think at thirty five or at twenty five, for me, I never would have thought I would have done a cosmetic enhancement in my late forties, like never ever. Ever, that wasn't wasn't what I was interested in. And the one thing I have learned in this process of making this decision, and by the way, I love the decision I made, it felt incredible. How long it's gonna last, I don't know. I just did it a little while ago, so I'm still fresh to it. But what I will say that I was able to do the interrogation and still do and I did wrestle and consider the industry element of this and where am I contributing my time and money and effort, and then still made that decision. And so I think I think there's a nuance to all of this. Yeah, And I think this is why they with aations are so important. And I don't think speaking in absolutes is helpful because otherwise it's always going to alienate someone. And I think there's always a gray area, and if we can start on understanding and unpacking that gray I think it's really useful. And I think absolutely to make a decision when you feel like, oh, you know, I'm informed, I've thought about this all the way through. I'm a body image researcher. I think it's also worth saying I'm a researcher. It's not my job to tell people what to do with their life, right, but as a body image researcher, I want to think about, Okay, what are all these pressures that people are facing, and how do we invite that critical thought? How do we invite the self compassion towards ourselves so we're not just shrouded and shawn the whole time. And there are so many things that we have to navigate at all times, and especially the more marginalized the identity you need to pursue all of these things to pass in the world to be accepted. And that's a huge conversation. And if there is gray in here, if not an absolute of like, no one should ever have a cosmetic procedure, because I understand for some people it can be life changing when it is about affirming your gender. I don't know, it's the questioning for me. I think the being conscious, the questioning, the compassion, the lack of judgment. And actually I was going to ask you. I know you're not in the business of telling people what to do in their lives, but I think from a framework of inquiry, what are the kinds of questions to interrogate or to ask yourself if you're considering plastic surgery or cosmetic enhancement, Like, what are some of the gentle but inquisitive ways that you can test to see you know what your motivation is. That's great. So I think it's about being really honest with yourself. Because we know people who have clinical level like body di more fit to though that do not respond well two problemetic treatments in general, because there is such distress that it just ping pongs from one thing to another. So you kind of think, oh, you know, if I just get this done, I'm going to feel better, and then but you're like, I don't feel better because it's still not perfect. It's still not perfect, it's still not how I want to look. So I think it's about being honest with yourself about the degree to which you're dissatisfied and why that is and what's causing that. And I would really want people to weigh up the risks. I don't know that how it's set up in the US, I can't really speak to that. But in the UK it's still really unregulated and that's terrifying. Where we have these high, high end procedures and then they're made more accessible, but then is that safe. You want to be fully fully informed about what all these risks are that are involved before you make any decision and before you hand over your money, and actually are the other things that you might do that will enhance your quality of life, enhance your how you think and feel about the way you look. I really feel like cosmetic procedures is something that should be a very much a lost of all your things. What I want to do here is take a step back and think what body image is and think, Okay, our body image is our relationship to ourselves. So it's how we think and feel about the way we look. And so a lot of that work is internal work, that's right. So I think it's like, how much of that internal work can we do before we think about changing our body because actually, our bodies are not the problem the southietal messaging that we are loaded with constantly. It's the issue the stories that we've been told. Just to bring us full circle, you know, the stories we've been told about ourselves that we tell to ourselves around our worth, our value or beauty. That is the ultimate place for us to start to question so that we can get to this better understanding. I mean, I think the whole point of our wife here on earth is to learn to know ourselves absolutely. So it's inviting those questions and actually, how can we yes enjoy our bodies but then also go out and live rich, full life, our body being that vehicle to experience that life. Yeah, it's a lot about reframing and and just how do we pull away? And that's what's really hard with social media, particularly during the last two years or so that we've had. It's like, how do we pull away from social media when it's actually been a bit of a lifeline in terms of connection and things. And then we know that spending too much time on there, especially if you're editing your own appearance, especially if you're looking for validation through the number of life you're getting, it's making your sense of self very fragile. It's a very fragile way to validate yourself because you're letting other people do in that validation for you, where it's like, how do you dig within and do that validation for yourself right that you are worthy regardless of how you look. You are worthy regardless of and I have heard you think about this on the podcast before, what you're doing work wise, and that's really challenging for people to that's right to get out. So it's like, how do you really stay grounded in that core sense of worth without needing that external validation? Really really hard, much easier said than done, And how do you support the people around you in that you don't have to have a million followers and have power and influence in the world. How much power and influence do you have on those like five people that you're closest with. Probably quite a lot, right, So I think it's thinking about that in terms of how we navigate through some of these trickier conversations. Not yet. I thank you so much for the time, the courage, the conversation and the wrestling that we got to do together on issues that are big and important and nuanced. And I appreciate the time and space to have that with you, And I appreciate you for having me on side. Mults and the what that you do. Oh wow, there's so much good stuff to unpack here. I think, above all checking in with yourself on any decision that you're making around your body and tweakments and plastic surgery and beyond, I think checking in going within asking yourself what's going to make you happy really important. I think Nadia added a different dimention to it when she talked about trying to unpack more the relationship between beauty ideals and capitalism and staying curious about your motivations for wanting to change your appearance. You want to do that without shame and blame and judgment, because as you heard in both conversations, this is really nuanced and personal, and we don't need to be so binary and or thinking or to have harsh judgment or shame. It doesn't have to be a stigma to have this conversation. That's why I wanted to bring it forward today. And there's something else that Nadia mentioned that I'm really still thinking about, which is the idea of zooming out in order to create better body confidence and self esteem. Just the idea that you will pull away from hyper focusing on our looks and societal beauty standards, and by zooming out, you're really getting a bigger perspective, You're maybe finding some more gratitude in the big picture of things. And I actually think those are incredible tools to build self esteem and self confidence. And at the end of the day, what I got from both these incredible convos is a focus on mindfulness and an individual connection to self, so that as you know yourself better and you ask yourself these questions, you are tuning in to your body and less on the outside world. So if you're interested in learning more about dominant stories and how you can change them, I teach workshops and courses, and you can sign up for those at just weiner dot com where you can follow me and I'm just Weiner on Instagram. And as always, I love hearing from you. I love hearing about how you're rewriting and challenging and changing your dominant story. So if you want to tell me about it, you can email me at podcast at Dominant Stories dot com or leave a voicemail at two one three two nine three oh three three. I don't worry if you didn't catch any of that, I'll put it all into the show notes. Hey, next week, join us for a special holiday edition of Dominant Stories where I'm going to be joined by model and new parent and entrepreneur Escar Lawrence, and we're gonna be answering all of your holiday related Dominant Story questions. You've been sending these into me over the past couple of weeks, and let me tell you, y'all send in some really good stuff, so I can't wait to dig in with Iscra. And again, thank you so much for listening to the podcast. If you're feeling generous this holiday season, go ahead and review and since bribed the show wherever you're listening right now it's super duper helps us out and remember we're always learning and we're always growing. Dominant Stories with Jess Winer is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.