Mia Freedman

And I agree with that in principle.

When you're a public figure and you're a woman, your face and your body is part of the discourse.

Yeah.

But the truth is when I think about my response to the people who say we shouldn't talk about it because if we talked about it, like the emperor's new clothes, we might go –

hey, is this a bit fucked up?

That all women are starting to look the same, that all women are becoming excruciating thin, that all the sort of heroin chic and thin spo of the 90s in that grunge era that we recognised was so damaging is back with a vengeance and no one's even...

mentioning it anymore because the piece that we've learned in that time is that in theory if you're a good feminist you shouldn't criticize or even comment on another woman's bodies because then you're part of the problem in the 90s people in the public eye talked about it a lot you had politicians talking about it kate moss said nothing tastes as good as skinny feels

Back to the faces and it's sort of all merged into one and it feels like it's just been coming to a head this last 12 months.

The sort of sex doll aesthetic as well with the big lips and the hair extensions and the bum implants in some cases, but the very skinny arms.

And you're starting to see it in the street as well.

Like it started on red carpets and with influencers and now it's trickled down and you actually see it in the wild more and more.

It's not just the injectables and the plumped up lips.

It's the pumped up butt and the pumped up boobs and the cheeks and the shiny skin and

everyone's starting to look almost like AI.

My point is that everything, what it looks like to be a woman, has been recalibrated because the women that we see, the influential women, and you don't even realise what you're being influenced by because this is the soup that we swim in, red carpets, open your phone, ad campaigns, catwalks are less influential than they used to be, but...

going to the movies, putting on TV.

Everybody is so, so skinny.

You're listening to a Mamma Mia podcast.

The photos were taken.

Then they mysteriously disappeared.