Dr. Dolly Alderton

I find very hard to watch, actually.

Don't you?

And also they're the kind of kids who, I mean, the routine, the dance routine that Malika and Ross have, you only have that kind of relationship with your brother where you're creating these insane dancing dances if your parents love the pants off you.

Do you know what I mean?

If they're just like applauding, if you're coming out from behind the curtain every night with a big routine and they're clapping and like, you don't have that unless you were parented really well, you know?

I had a real come to Jesus moment about this with the Diane Keaton episode that we did when me and Fiona Zublin read Diane Keaton's memoirs.

And one of them is called Let's Just Say It Wasn't Pretty, where it's just Diane Keaton doing essays about

essentially how she feels about her looks essentially is quite i would not recommend it is not a depressing read because it makes you realize that the diane keaton that you thought you knew which is that like oh she like wears amazing hats and like great suits and she can give a fuck what everybody thought it's like oh she wore scarves every day of her life because she was insecure about her neck yeah she wore hats every day of her life because she was insecure about her thinning hair and like basically oh all the debilitating eating disorder

Yeah, exactly.

And all of it came from absolute brain-eating sort of insecurity.

And how much you just don't want to hear that.

Especially as you're going into your late 30s and you're thinking about ageing in a way that you never thought about it before.

It is such a massive bummer.

But the thing that Fiona said to me, she was like, this book helped me understand my mum so much better because of all the critical things that her mum might have said to her over the years.

It made her far more appreciative of the things that she's thinking and not saying anymore.

that are all about herself and like how it is hard to break those women out of this routine of thinking of like a woman sort of her value is dependent on how well she decorates a room and she wants her daughter to be as valuable as possible so she wants to be this kind of boot camp

this kind of shrunken down version of the cruelest male eye that you look at with your own self.

You know that Margaret Atwood line about the man who lives in your head who watches you?

Yeah.

That's how this woman looks at her daughter with the man inside her head.