November 7, 2022 • 43 mins
The Witches Anonymous podcast is therapy. It allows women to bond over their bullies to form a stronger alliance. To vanquish the mean girls. In this pilot episode Hilaria and Michelle reveal their beginnings and the origin of their friendship. They discuss the events that have delivered them here, the effect that social vandalization has on young girls and what roles women like Hillary Clinton, Oprah and Kim Kardashian have played in their mission.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Which is anonymous, with the Laria Baldwin and Michelle Campbell
Mason and I Heart radio podcast Hey which is welcome
to which is anonymous, the space where we've talked about
women and our relationships with each other. We all know
that our girlfriends are our true safe space, our soulmates,
and our best supporters women supporting women, But we also
(00:24):
know all too well the painful reality of the mean girl,
or the friend of me, or the sometimes difficult dynamic
that occurs between a mother and daughter, a mother in law,
a co worker, a mom friend, or in some cases,
the other woman. In this podcast, we want to delve
into our relationships, look to history, examine today, and essentially
go to therapy with each other and figure out where
(00:45):
we're getting it right and where we can do better
to be the best sisterhood ever. We are so excited
that you guys are joining our coven. This is which
is anonymous. So about a year ago, I went to
a dark bar with a giant feminist book hanging out
of my bag and I met Michelle. And I was
(01:06):
going through a really hard time where I felt like
I was getting bullied and just excluded, and I really
needed a good girlfriend, and we immediately connected. She kind
of made a few jokes about my bringing my book
to a dark place because you cannot read it there. Um.
And I quickly found out that she's an amazing film producer,
she is a jewelry designer, she does like a million things.
(01:27):
And then also she is one of the descendants of
the Witches of Salem. So not only do you meet
this amazing human with this just like this incredible energy,
but I also find that she has this crazy connection
to other women getting torn down in the worst possible way.
So I feel so lucky the day that I met you, Michelle.
I fully agree with that sentiment and feel so lucky
(01:49):
to have found you in that bar, because I don't
think we usually find beautiful relationships and bars. But look
at us now, um, And when I met you in
that that faithful night, Um, I have I recognized you. Um.
And you know I knew you as a yoga star,
a mother of so many and that you're married to
Alec Baldwin. Well, since that I've already had I've had
(02:11):
even more children, since how many I had just a
year ago. And yes, my my my husband, Alec, who
is both a joy and my and my eighth child. Um,
but yeah, so we started we started meeting. We we
we were like, you know what, we both came to
a place where we needed girlfriends and we were wondering
why some of our girlfriends were not the most supportive
(02:35):
forces for us. And we started delving into this subject.
We would sit down and write things on napkins and
papers and bring our laptops and we have meetings really regularly. Right,
we met all the time. I quickly, it was cool. Yeah,
it was like we were just so passionate about this.
And then over the past year we've created this this
(02:58):
space where hopefully, you know, we can talk about the
thing that a lot of people don't want to talk about,
which is why do we compete with other women so much?
And at the same time understanding that we have are
like really great girl group, and so are we women
supporting other women or are we women only supporting certain women?
(03:19):
And so this is going to be an amazing place
where we can have all of these conversations. We're gonna
you know, in Michelle, she's very focused on the history
and of course her her family connection, and we can
look at what's happening today. We're going to look into
pop culture and talk about, you know, the things that
we are just absorbing through the contents that we are
influenced by. And we're going to you know, be really
(03:42):
open about our own experiences. You know, I'm going to
talk about stuff I've never talked about before because you're
not supposed to. Also for me, Michelle, having a daughter,
you know, if I've three daughters now, but the nine
year old is the closest to the ability to have
these kind of you know, nice group and I'm using
these as terms nice girl, mean girl relationships with her
(04:04):
little friends. And she's nine years old and she's already
part of that three is dynamic. And I don't know
if you remember this when you're growing up, and I
know that, you know, all my mom friends are all
experiencing the same thing I remember growing up that for
some reason, girls typically go in groups of three and
it's always two against one. So I'm seeing this happen
(04:24):
with my daughter, Carmen, who's nine, and she's just you know,
it's always one person is left out, and especially parenting.
While I'm you know, starting to do this podcast with you, Michelle,
it's opened my mind into the conversations and how I
can kind of guide her because you don't want to,
you know, teach her cruelty when you're being left out.
(04:46):
So often when we're being left out, we kind of
which is like, well we didn't like you anyway. You're like,
oh my god, well this person has this problem where
this person is just mean and picking them apart, but
rather talking about the dynamic and inclusion and having her
have the autonomy to be a to use her voice,
encourage her to use her voice to say, this is
how it makes me feel, and I want to be included.
(05:07):
And even if I'm not going to be able to
be included, I'm going to continue to walk in my
life and do my thing and find good core group
of people. And guiding our daughters into this is extremely
important for me right now because I'm just seeing this
this generation repeat what we've repeated for so many generations. Indeed,
(05:30):
you know, it's the exact same problem, just through a
different lens now. The lens that they have now include
social media. And you know, the worst thing's got for
me as a young girl obviously a little a little
older than your daughter, UM was in high school, and
it was a time where people just took to vandalizing
each other's property and my my house got egged pretty regularly,
(05:52):
my um, and it wasn't just eggs. I mean there
was toilet papers sometimes like cotton balls with tooth toothpaste
on them, stuck to the dry voice. So it was
even my roster to clean up. Yeah, that one was
really visceral. And you know, that's very, very harrowing because
it requires so much effort. But you know, at the
same time, you know, either that or a snide comment
(06:12):
in the hallway or some something horrible that someone one
says to you on social media, which is something that
you and I didn't have to go through in our youth.
And frankly, I had such a hard time handling the
experiences I did have. I do not know how these
children today are equipped to deal with it. It's stabilitating,
and we all know the statistics on bullying and suicide
and how they have skyrocketed since the advent of social media.
(06:35):
So that's definitely something that we're going to be going
into here because it's pertinent to every part of this
conversation because so often it is a woman going after
another woman. Yeah, No, I mean, how many times my
daughter comes home and she's, you know, talking about how
you know, this person said this to me. And that
person said that she was left out of a sleepover
the other day and she was so upset about it.
(06:57):
And I, you know, I said to her, you know what,
this is sad. I don't want to be toxic positivity
and be like again the whole you didn't want to
go there anywhere. We're gonna have so much more fun,
I said, you know what, it is really sad. It
really feels really bad to be left out. And let's
have a really fun night. So when your friends are
going and having their sleepover, let's do our own thing here.
(07:19):
And so we had fun. We had special snacks, we
you know, I made her a little bit on the floor.
We had like a whole fun night. And at least
it's teaching her that it's okay to be disappointed by
something and I can feel it and then continue to
move on. Because I think for women as well, you know,
so much of it everything has to be an invitation
for us, and we get stuck in like the fun
(07:40):
and freeze thing. So you know, when we're upset about something,
we freeze and then we're kind of just stuck there
until we feel we're invited out of it, and teaching
our our daughters to be able to just continue on,
move one ft in front of the other and say, Okay,
you know what, that sucked and I'm going to continue on,
not but them going to continue on. Um. But yeah, no,
(08:02):
I mean this is you know, talking about bullying is
is a huge part of this this podcast, and oftentimes
when we talk about bullying, we think about it in
such a like a crazy level, like we're we only
look at said, well, this person was a worse bully.
But even having that Snyder market, we talk about the negative,
the negative Instagram comments or online comments, you know, for kids,
and how can they filter through that. Yes, it's awful,
(08:24):
and you know what, it's also awful for adults, you know,
and it's it's super it's super super um, it's super
super common exactly. And just going back to protecting our
daughters and seeing what these girls are going through. There's
something I really that's been on my mind a lot
and we haven't brought it up. My stepdaughter, she goes
to an all girls school, she has her entire life,
(08:46):
and she's been pushing for a very long time to
go to a co ed school. And you know, she
made a whole power point about it. But like the
resounding theme of her whole pitch, it's like niche. You know,
girls are really mean to each other. It's not a
good environment to be in. It makes girls more caddy.
She's extremely smart, knows everything, and I she couldn't one
(09:09):
couldn't say it better. And I think that, you know,
seeing that at such a young age, those dynamics within
those institutions, they even exacerbate it. So then we have
to look to be inspired somewhere else, you know, because
this podcast has been created through Michelle and I connecting,
and she is someone who inspires me and who has
(09:31):
supported me so much. I also, you know, Michelle, one
of the things that over the years has been so
important for me has been my my online community. So
as much as like the online community can be mean,
my online community is also absolutely amazing. The majority of
people out there are really wonderful. I can open my
(09:51):
mailbox and it is flooded with supportive commons, people making
me laugh, people sending me memes, um women that I've
never met before, and all of you guys who are listening,
you know who I'm talking about. And I've developed like
the most amazing friendships online with people, and it is
this special place of saying, hey, I'm in this part
of the world and you're in that part of the world,
(10:12):
and we know that things can be wonderful, and we
know that things can be hard, and we're going to
just give each other a little bit of a message
of support. And it gives me so much, absolutely, and
I look forward to having that community because I don't
have that online. I just get like a random creepy
message every now and then I'm like, where did that
come from? All Right? You hear that? Guys, you have
(10:34):
to fled Michelle's inbox with just really kind things because
I feel like that's going to make you smile, and
it's it really is the most amazing thing to to
connect with people from all over you know, I mean
other other women. I've been so fortunate to have women. Um,
We're met really incredible women. You know, my my mom,
(10:55):
my grandmother's you know, my best childhood friend. You know,
we live you know, across the ocean from each other,
but we are sisters and we just know when there's
something going on with each other, and she knows how
to reach out and I know how to reach out,
and I feel extremely lucky. And then you know, through Alec,
I've had this amazing privilege of meeting really amazing women,
(11:20):
you know, Hillary Clinton, Jane Fonda, who idolized as a
child and still idolized now. Um, you know, I mean,
I know that you're a huge fan of Oprah and
I am too, and she gives the best hugs ever.
I can't wait to get an Oprah hug. Well, yeah,
to me, Oprah has gotten me through a lot of
dark times. And you know, I think a lot of
us battle with depression, and you know how we overcome
(11:41):
these things. And for me, it was one of my
most kind of basic tools to getting out of a
front was listening to her story and her empowering way
of speaking and how we can control our reactions to
things ergo, We can control. That's what we have in
life that we can control, where we can find a
better outlook and be a more supportive friend or be
or be a better person. You know, there's so many
women that inspire me, from you and your love and
(12:04):
my mother and all the women that I've worked with
in production who have just given me a chance when
so many wouldn't have. As women, we are constantly being
told that we signed up for something or are just
like our mere presence is asking for something. You know.
One of the things I think most of us have
come to terms with is walking down the street and
(12:27):
if a man says something to us, we didn't ask
for it. It doesn't matter what we're wearing, how shorter
skirt is, what kind of heels we're wearing. Um, it's
not okay. I remember the first time that happened to me.
I was thirteen years old, and it made me feel
so awful and to the point where if I see
a certain group of guys, I'm judging them from afar,
(12:48):
but mostly out of self protection, and I'll cross the street.
I'll try to walk around the other way. Now, having
seven kids, it's like my favorite thing actually to tell
them now, Like when they say something to me and
I'm like, I just gave birth to my seventh child,
and they like, first they think that I'm like making
it up because that just sounds like a lot of kids.
It's like one thing to be like, okay, it's a
second child, but it's like seven is like, who has
seven kids at me? And you know, but I then
(13:11):
they usually like run away or they like apologize or something.
But at the same time to feel like, I you
know what people say, Oh, well she was wearing a
short skirt or oh she her top was tight and
we didn't ask for it. Right if we have been
trained when we were younger to think that somehow we
had to dress in a different way to protect ourselves
(13:34):
from from certain men. And now I feel like it's
the first time that I'm starting to hear in our
culture saying like, no, it doesn't matter what you're wearing.
What are we saying to each other in terms of
did we sign up for something? Did we ask for it?
How many times do we rationalize, you know, our mistreatment
of other people? Okay, well I can say this about
(13:56):
her because she's so mean, or I can do this
because she did X y Z. And even like the
very small parts of ourselves, in the quiet parts, maybe
we're not telling too many people, maybe we're just thinking it.
But what are the influences not only on the outside world,
but in our inside environment. I met this one of
this girl the other day, and she knows that I'm
(14:17):
friends with a mom influencer who people are speculating that
she just got her boobs done. But apparently there was
like a big thing of like, why won't she just
admit it? She should just say it. Everybody can tell.
And she was kind of being snarky and laughing about
this girl, and I just looked at her and I said,
it's not any of our business. Why do we think
(14:39):
that she owes us that information? Now? Why do we
think that we opened up magazines before? In the nelsalon,
we're opening up magazines and we're seeing the speculation. We're
seeing the zooming in on people's satellite or zooming in
on people's ribs and be like, Oh, this person is
too thin, this person too fat, this person is to this,
this person is to that, And of course that trickles
(15:01):
down and it goes into our minds and we we
get influenced to also treat each other this way and
have the audacity to think that certain people owe us
a certain amount of information about their personal lives, their bodies,
their love lives, their beauty treatments, their lack of beauty treatments.
You know, I put that in quotes because beauty is
(15:21):
in the eye of the beholder, And we're going to
talk a lot about beauty on this m on this
podcast and what we've sort of feel forced or influenced
into versus what we actually want and is good for
us absolutely, And when it comes down to all of that,
it is nobody's business unless we decide to share it.
And I think that's how we have to reframe all
of it. And if you want to share that you've
(15:42):
got something done, great, that's your choice. But I also
you know, it's a fine line. And there are parts
of our society that have definitely held up a lot
of very mutilated surgeries as natural progressions in someone's aging,
and you know, obviously we can all tell that that's
not the case. But here we will talk about what
we do, what we've experienced. We will have people on
(16:03):
that can speak to it as well and hopefully come
from a place that's not judgmental. Well that when the
question is, you know, when even if people say say, oh,
this is this is natural, you know, and I understand
we want to make sure that we're giving a healthy
idea of what is natural to people. But at the
same time, and I don't have the right answer, what
(16:26):
you know, if this is somebody's personal life, you know,
be itau's one thing if they're selling something, but it's
their personal life, do we have the right to speculate
about that. I don't know. It's very complicated with all
the procedures and all the things, because now we have
all these little girls who are asking to get surgery
as teenagers because everyone they know is filtering their face,
(16:47):
and no one's face looks like that, So there's distorted reality.
There are extreme examples, and I'm not going to say names,
obviously we all know who. There's a lot of people
out there that have done a lot that have really
created a hipping point in society in which everyone thinks
that you have to look a certain way forever or
have a certain body type, and that's just anatomically impossible.
(17:10):
But I won't speak to the fact of how they
got there, and I think that is what's very dangerous.
Michelle and I are not going to have all of
the answers to all of these things, and maybe we're
going to think one thing and our mind is going
to get transformed into something else through hopefully these experiences.
We are not coming at this from a perfect place
and We had a conversation at one point, maybe like
(17:30):
six months ago, where we both looked at each other
and we said, we don't want to come off as
like preachy. And by the way, we've made so many
mistakes ourselves. We've been on both sides. We've been the
witch and we've been the witch hunter, because we all
have that dichotomy inside of us. And so you know,
where what if? What if? We are saying these things,
and we know that we haven't been perfect. And that's
(17:54):
the amazing thing about this space and trying to create
a safe space is this isn't about perfection. This is
coming in realizing that we've been trained to think a
certain way, and we've been trained to compete with each other,
and the only way to untrain ourselves is to get
honest about it and to get open about Like I
know for myself, I would there was things I judged
(18:16):
about other moms, like I've never left my kids to
go on a trip with my husband. My husband really,
really really wants to go away with me, and I
have never left to go on a trip with him.
And you know, my girlfriends, especially when my my first
children were younger, they would go away and they had
kids the same age, and their kids were like six months, one, two, three,
(18:39):
and they go away with their husband for like a
four day weekend, and in my head, I was like,
oh my god, they're like so thinking about themselves, and
they're like what about their kids and what if something happens?
And you know, I would just feel so guilty and
shouldn't they feel guilty? And they're like, nope, living their
best life, posting photos, looking so happy, looking absolutely in
love with their spouse or their partner, and and I'm
(19:02):
sitting there kind of looking at them and with my
fear and my judgment inside of me, And then I
realized they are people too, like I've had to after
having so many kids, Like I had to separate my
identity from just being mom once it became mom, and realized, oh, hey,
I'm human too. I am wife, Yes, I am mother,
(19:23):
I am ilaria, I am yoga teacher, I am somebody
who likes to run. There's a lot of different parts
of my identity that mean that they needs time and
they need space, and you know, focusing on my relationship
with my husband is really important. So I turned being
judgmental into being inspired by them. Still have yet to
go away with my husband without any children. But I
(19:46):
think I'm gonna blame that on the pregnancy because I'm
like always pregnant, so like even if I went away
with him, I would still be carrying child with me,
except right now, So now's the time. This is the
brief window, right except I'm breastfeeding, so that would be
impossible anyway, something to look forward to and be inspired
and be inspired about. Or like the other thing, Rachel,
(20:08):
that I used to judge people about was before I
got together with Alec. I would judge women and men
that had like big age differences, right, and like Alec
and I are on all the list of like the
celebrities with the biggest age difference and stuff like that.
And I would look and I be like, Okay, this
older man wants some like young bimbo with no opinions whatsoever.
(20:28):
And then that younger woman is obviously a gold digger
and she obviously doesn't even care, and it's just like, okay, whatever,
I hope you die and I'm gonna take all your money. Right,
That's what I don't know if I thought it so
thoroughly through, but I can totally see that my mind
was somewhere there. And now that I'm in that relationship
and people will say those things about me regularly, I realized,
(20:52):
I'm like, oh my god, what was this trained into
my head? And why was I so judgmental about other
people who are literally just finding love. And maybe their
love looks different from you and from your love or
from what my thought love would be, But it doesn't
make it not valid. But like we're doing here, we're
saying we're not perfectly. I'm introverted by nature, so I
(21:14):
believe that, you know, and there's this whole like, you know,
different categories of introversion, extroversion, all these things. I'm an
introverted extrovert, so I can pretend, but like in essence
and introvert and so being that way, sometimes some people
that come into a room and take up all the
space and are just so much and so loud, I've
always kind of coiled away from because I'm like, that's
(21:36):
too much. They must have too much to prove. And
so I was really cautious and a bit judgmental in
those situations that I realized, you know what, just because
someone likes to take up space doesn't mean there's anything
bad about them, and I can learn from them. And
that brings me back to one of the women who
inspire me, which is my grandmother. And my mother always
translates this message to me, which is you can always
(21:58):
learn some something from everybody. And I try to remind
myself that every day in every interaction where I dread
being around certain people, or I know I'm going to
go into a group that we may not necessarily be
aligned on all levels. But if you sit back and
you kind of just let go of that judgment and
remind yourself, I'm going to learn something from these people,
(22:20):
you always will. And I think that that's a beautiful
thing to take away from all of this too, because
in as since we're just growing and we're learning. I mean,
I ask you this question, Michelle, and I would love
you guys at home to think about it as well,
(22:41):
Like think about times when you've been the mean girl
to yourself, when you're constantly tearing yourself down, because not
only is that you don't deserve that right, but what
does that due to our insides that therefore we then
start taking it out on other people, you know, I mean,
having and talk about influence as well, you know, I
(23:01):
come from the influencer world and that that that really
silly term but very true at the same time. And
we are influenced by pop culture and people with big
Instagram followings. We want to know what they're wearing, what
they're doing, the diet, the food, that this, that that everything,
ultimately everything that goes into companies making money. But that
(23:23):
will be for a whole another time, and I will
talk to you all about the mom influencer world because
it is wild um. But I hope one of my
contributions here on which is anonymous, can be showing you
guys a window into alex world and what's that's what
that's like. My life has changed so much over the
past twelve years that you guys have seen me grow
(23:46):
up a lot. You know. I was this little yoga
instructor that taught three sixty five days out of the year.
My typical day would start at five o'clock in the
morning and I would work until ten thirty pm. I
got paid thirty five dollars at class, which would be
a two hour period. It was just like, I mean,
I hustled, I had so much fun and I was
exhausted and somehow in that crazy schedule. I met Alec
(24:08):
and then really got I mean, it was a very
romantic thing where I basically swept me off my feet.
And I am not a super romantic person. I am
a die hard Capricorn and we're very, very just stoic
about everything. Um. But you know, it was a world
that I was never prepared for. You know, I was
used to saying I'm a stay and kindness and I
(24:29):
wore yoga clothes every day. I didn't have, you know,
all these fancy clothes, and so you know, if I
had to go to an event, I would literally either
buy a borrow stuff from a friend or I would
go to like Forever twenty one or H and M
or something like that, and then people would ask me
what are you wearing? And I wish, like badass me
now would be like, I'm wearing Forever twenty one, and
I do do that. But then I was just like,
(24:50):
I was like, oh God, I should need to learn
all these like fancy you know, designer names that I
do not know. Um. But you know, having seen that
and getting thrown into that, I realized, not only is
that a weird world for the people who are experiencing it,
but because of this influence that we talked about, it's
trickling down into everything that we consume and the way
(25:12):
that we talk about other women who are, you know,
in the spotlight, are the ways that we start to
talk to ourselves and the ways that we talk to
our friends or our freenemies or our enemies straight out enemies,
and so you know, I've never remember one of the
first times Michelle, I was almost three months pregnant with Karmen.
I was about to announce that I was bringing the
(25:33):
Karmena and I wore this like teal turqoise. I think
it's teal dress um to an event in the South.
I think we were in the South. Thing was like
an NFL event, and Christie Teagan came wearing the exact
same dress and then they put the side by side.
You guys, decide who wears it better, and put the
(25:53):
two of us next to each other, and I guess
who lost me? Not you know, the supermodel. She perfectly fine,
likes absolutely beautiful, And for me, I was like, I'm
trying to hide that I'm three months pregnant and I
am like, come up to like Chrissy Teagan's like shoulder
so she wore it better in that one, and then
afterwards something similar happened with Kim Kardashian and they're like,
(26:14):
who wore it better? When I was pregnant, they would
put like my pregnancy photos next to other pregnant people
and they'd be like, who has a better pregnant belly?
They even compared me in Michelle. They compared me to
Kim Bay singer and to Alex ex girlfriends. And you know,
most of the time, I did not win in any
(26:35):
of these things. And then you even think, what is
this winning that some random person is like pressing something
on a keyboard and like, oh I I picked Kim
Kardashian or I pick Chrissie Teagan And how toxic is that?
Like how toxic is that? And then what are we
also teaching to our kids beyond comparison? Is this of
joy right? And you aren't even an active participant. Just
(26:58):
by existing, you're put into this ring right of competition
And it just doesn't happen to men in the same way.
Like you open a gossip magazine like those that you're referencing,
it's not like you see two very famous men. Generally
this happens every now and then, but it's usually best dressed.
It's not who wore this boring old suit better than
(27:19):
that guy? Right, And it doesn't matter. And that's the
whole thing. And then we put all this weight into
it and think we did something wrong because they did
it better. Why did they do it better? And who
the heck made this decision? I mean, all of it
is ridiculous and hilarious and and it cultivates that in
young women because they see these magazines and they think
that that is how they have to communicate correct And
(27:42):
that's the whole thing. I mean, I've been told so
many times, don't talk about this kind of thing. No
one cares. It's you know, it's just gonna sound stupid
coming out of your mouth. And that's as becoming a
mother and also connecting more and more in building my
girlfriend group makes me want to talk about it because
again going back to that influence, the influence that trickles
(28:05):
down and is making all of us not just be
worse friends with each other. And again for what for
buying address, for buying a makeup product, it's, you know,
we we take out the peoples, the woman's humanity, and
we take out their soul and we just reduced her
down to what she looks like and what she decides
(28:26):
to wear. And you know that's something that I definitely
don't want to be a part of it. I want
to do our very best on this podcast to try
to have those conversations. You know, I've seen I've seen
my niece, my nieces Haley and she her and and Selena.
You know, for years people are having all these like
crazy conversations about like what they're rift is over over
(28:47):
justin it's so silly. And what kind of photo We
all just saw the photo that they posted to try
to send a message to people, and it's like, what
photo do they have to to to post to make
you guys believe that they have continued on with their
lives and the people who are gossiping about them have not.
And I think one of the best examples for our
(29:07):
particular generation was the brand Jelina one because you had
people wearing team Julie Team Anniston shirts when it's just
this one married guy who cheated and it's so and
what that did to millennials I think really messed, really
messed with how we look at relationships. And it's only
manifested even more right. I know in my experience, my
(29:30):
mental health has declined so many times over stuff that
people were just poking and laughing at me about. You know,
I had times where I would, you know, stare at
myself in the mirror and be like, oh, you know what,
you're right, I my eyebrows are very fair by the way, guys,
I got them microblated, so you know what, I guess
I jumped on that that one, and I'm happy with
(29:52):
that choice, but it made me feel so bad because
people would write but like, don't you know how to
pencil in your eyebrows? I don't want to be like, well,
actually I do not. I teach you all the day
and I do not wear makeup, so um, you know.
I mean, I had this whole thing, but it really
made me feel very bad about myself and some of
the stuff I jumped on, like the bandwagon and I did,
and some of the stuff I had to just learn
to be more comfortable with myself and realize that there's
(30:15):
just going to be people that are going to tear
me down. But then at the same time, I was thinking,
I don't I don't want to be a part of
that and I have to when I'm somebody that when
I see something that's unjust or experience something unjust, I
realized that other people are probably seeing and experiencing it too,
So I feel the need to speak up about it.
Who the hell is wasting their time being so petty
(30:37):
and cruel when there's so much more you can do
with your energy, You know, it's impossible not to absorb it.
So I guess that is our exercise here. That's something
we have to work on and try to cultivate for
our community, is how not to absorb that negativity and
how not to perpetuate that negative cycle of women being
so critical, you know. And it's not just what we're
(30:57):
experiencing as adults and looking in these magazines. It's also
the stuff that we grew up with, you know. I
was one of the one of the mind blowing experiences
I've had over the past two years is I was
obsessed with snow White growing up. I named some pets
after snow White. I loved snow White, and then I
started thinking about women and us competing with each other,
(31:19):
and that I used to listen to the Queen say mirror,
mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all,
and the mirror is a man, and the mirror would
always say you. And then one day the mirror said
snow White, who is a younger woman. And the queen's
way of dealing with this, you know, competition maybe is
(31:42):
that she ordered snow White to be killed, brought into
the forest, killed, and have her heart delivered to her
in a box. If you guys remember that correctly. And
the fact that we saw this as children and we
continue to show this to our kids is kind of frightening. Um.
But it was a man said somebody else was more beautiful,
because there can apparently be only one beautiful person, and
then it put this fierce competition where she had to
(32:05):
get somebody else to go and kill her. And you know, Michelle,
I mean, it's it's horrifying because these are the messages
that we grew up with. Yeah, I mean, in going
to the Disney movie that I love that it has
disturbed disturbed me the most as an adult. That's the
Little Mermaid. And you know, Arielle gives up her voice
(32:28):
to have a better shot with this guy that she
doesn't even know. She gives Ursula her voice so she
can have legs like what one is willing to give
up to conform to maybe make it work with what
you think is Prince charming. But I still think at
the end of the day, just what it represented as
a little girl to give your voice away for a man.
And there's so many resounding themes of that in life,
(32:50):
in relationship dynamics, in literature. We will cover this over
and over again because your voice is your power and
your agency, and that's taken way you're nothing but an object.
And I think that's a very important thing for us
to keep coming back to. Michelle, What does it mean
for you? What's your definition of a witch? Mhm. I
(33:12):
see being a witch as a positive, encouraging thing and
I don't want to limit it into the two containers
of being good or being bad, because there's so much
to it and will expand on this every week when
we honor these women. One of the things I've loved
about what you've said since the beginning is that by
using the term which, which was obviously you know, there
(33:33):
are people that we're going to talk to talk about
in history and today that when they hear the word
which and somebody's pointing at them, they know that that
means that they're not going to live, and that they
weren't going to live. You know, I mean this, which
is has been a very cruel term over a very
long piece of human history. And so one of the
(33:54):
things that I loved about, you know, what you've said
to me, Michelle over the past year is that we're
reclaiming that word. We're taking that word that has been
used to shame women and to hurt women and kill
women over and over and over again over so many years,
you know, and we're taking it and we're saying, hey,
you know what being a woman is powerful for me,
(34:15):
being a witch is that it is it is a
powerful nature. There has been times where I felt the negative,
which where I'm I'm feeling that I'm being excluded and
pointed at um or you know, as we talked about before,
where I felt, you know, in the past, I excluded
people and um and I didn't come together, and probably
purely because of all the stuff that we've listened with
(34:36):
that we've talked about about how I'm you know, we
grow up being concerned about the other woman because it's
survival of the fittest. We are repressed group. You know
we are, but we're fifty percent of the population. And
if we get this right, if we bring this coming together,
if we get on the same side, we're going to
really have so many options and rise up to the
(34:58):
place of freedom that we really want to it into.
You know, times where I've been the negative, which I
remember that, you know, pr people would say to me.
They'd say, oh, don't worry. You know, this is just
something that's being done, and if you wait a minute,
they'll move on to the next. They always move on
to the next. And I heard that a bunch of times,
(35:19):
and then one time when somebody said it, I looked
at them and I said, I don't want to have
them move on to the next. I don't want them
to because this is such a bad feeling to be
pointed at and excluded. And if we are just moving
onto the next one and I'm staying silent, I don't
think I can live with myself. You know. I have
(35:40):
to feel the pain and the injustice of you know,
these of these feelings and reach out and realize because
it doesn't just happen to me. I need to do
my very best to make sense out of it, and
then to create a space where we can talk about it,
which is ultimately what we're doing here. I mean that
is that is the goal of this show to come
(36:03):
together and know. By the way, guys, no little trauma
or your feelings hurt is too small. One of the
things that women get shamed with a lot of like,
oh it could have been so much worse or oh
my god, you know those problems it doesn't matter, are
like are you really talking about fashion and beauty? You
know what for people who grew up, I had an
eating sort of for twenty years of my life growing up,
(36:24):
and I'll talk about that when we when we get
into that that you know, part of the episodes. But yes,
it did have a lot to do with what I
felt I looked like and how I felt about myself.
So there is nothing that is either too big or
too small that doesn't filter into our mental health. So
don't ever let anyone shame you that the things that
(36:45):
you feel are not valid for you living your best life.
And if you again allow yourself what is that quote,
Michelle that a woman who allows herself to be free
gives permission to other people to do exactly the same,
And um, you know that is in essence, what going
back to what you said about intuition, right, allowing yourself
(37:07):
to be free and to trust yourself. And so we
are here to keep cultivating that part of the conversation
because we don't live in a society that encourages anyone
to trust their gut to listen to themselves. And that
goes back to which definitions, because by by trusting oneself
and allowing your internal compass to lead you, you make
(37:29):
great decisions. I mean, that is a gift that we
are all given that our society ignores and largely just
called silli or woo woo or whatever. But time and
time again it proves to be one of our most
powerful assets. And so that's something that will keep coming
back to here because you and I talk about it
all the time. But intuition is magical and I guess
(37:50):
that combines with witchery and I'm okay with that because
it's gotten us this far and it's only going to
get better, and we're here to just keep having this
calm rectation really make it safe and inspiring. And again
like no complaints too big or too small, and we
never have to minimize our struggles because they're all real.
We're all going through something and that's why this container
(38:13):
is going to be a safe place where we leave
with love and we help each other find our power
because so often it's taken away. This is a place
where women support women. We're going to take care of
each other. We're going to talk about some of the
uncomfortable things. We're going to talk about a lot of
the really comfortable things where we can get inspired about,
you know, how we can treat each other better and
(38:34):
create a safer environment, not just for the next generation,
but for each other, because hey, we deserve it too,
and how often do we as women are we able
to say we deserve it? Hi, It's Bethany Frankel. My
time on the wheel Housewives of New York is a
few years behind me, and now I'm ready to put
(38:55):
the reel back into the real Housewives. That's where my
new podcast Rewives comes in. It isn't your typical rewatch podcast.
I'm watching only the most iconic episodes from all cities.
I'm sharing never before heard stories of what happened behind
the scenes, and I'm not just pulling in cast members
for postgame analysis. I'm doing something a little more interesting.
(39:15):
If you've ever seen an episode of The wheelhouse Wives,
you know the drill. But beyond throwing drinks and legs,
there are lessons about marriage, divorce, friendship, money, parenting, and fame.
If you have the right minds, analyze and dig deeper.
So I'm bringing on unexpected thought leaders and celebrities to
get their take on the chaos this season. I sit
down with Elizabeth Moss, Kevin Neal and Zusie Orman, Griffin
(39:36):
Johnson and more. You think that there isn't much to
learn from flipping tables and yanking wigs, but that's where
you're wrong. Listen to Rewives with Bethany Frankel on the
I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get
your favorite podcasts. All right, guys, we're introducing something called
(39:58):
what are We Coveting in the Coven, which is we're
gonna do every single time, um, every single episode, we're
going to recommend something, a product, a quote, a book, um,
something some experience that we've tried. And the one rule
about it is Michelle and I cannot be sponsored by
this company or whatever it is, and we really can't
(40:19):
have a connection with it whatever. So it's literally just
something that we absolutely love and we want to share
with you. And today mine is Michelle my phone case.
So you guys all know that really I have like
kind of a really ugly hallway outside of my apartment,
and um, it's why I live in a very old
school New York building and I take these selfies in
(40:40):
this really ugly mirror. And my husband, you know, ten
years ago when I started doing this, like it was
just like, can't you find like a prettier mirror around
the apartment? I was like, no, this is part of
it is that I love just this, like how bad
the lighting is and everything. And so you guys always
see my little selfies and my phone case. So my
phone case is thing called plant because you guys have
(41:01):
asked about a lot, and I love it because it's
modern and I'm all into like modern things right now.
And um, it's so it's a plant case. It's an almond.
I like it from having a million children who would
throw my phone around all the time. It's never broken
knock on wood and um. And then the bear that
I have on it, which you guys have asked about,
is just a pop socket. It doesn't come with the case,
(41:22):
but it is from Etsy and if you just google
pop socket bear um or not at Google, ets at
pop socket pop socket Bear. This one is in rose
gold and I absolutely love it. I've bought so many
that I have a drawer to my right side right now.
We're probably about a dozen different bears in it. She's
(41:42):
always always showing up to dinner with a different bear.
It's just it's very glamorous. So mine this week, Um,
I went with something that I use all the time
because I'm tired a lot, and I shouldn't be saying
that to someone with so many more kids than I have. Um,
but I'm going there and I've travel a lot for work,
(42:04):
and so I have the I got on Amazon and
I buy these like under eyed jelly things that revived
me and so I put them. I put them in
the fridge so they're always cold, and I'm just gonna
put one on, so you know, but it's like this
crazy like little under eye gel gold. Leave these on
for a while, because wait, you travel with them? I travel,
(42:25):
I travel. There's you can get travel packs, you can
get jars of them. I don't know, I mean, like,
are you on the airplane with them on? Oh? I've
definitely done that. Um, I don't love that. Not every time.
There's been some like more international trips when you know,
I was just like, okay, let's like who cares some
in pajamas, but yes, so this is this is them.
He's like, get me through all my hardest time. So
(42:47):
then you just you look a little brighter and you're
faking that maybe you've got some more sleep. So yeah,
under Eye gel patches, any brand, they're like snail under
eye things, get them money Amazon. You're very shiny right now.
All right, Witches, thank you for joining our coven. Make
sure you follow us on Instagram at Witches a non pod,
and subscribe to follow the show on the I Heart
(43:09):
Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts, and remember,
don't be a bitch, be a witch. See you next time. Hi,
Which is anonymous, with the Laria Baldwin and Michelle Campbell
Mason and I Heart radio podcast Hey which is welcome
to which is anonymous, the space where we've talked about
women and our relationships with each other. We all know
that our girlfriends are our true safe space, our soulmates,
and our best supporters women supporting women, But we also
(00:24):
know all too well the painful reality of the mean girl,
or the friend of me, or the sometimes difficult dynamic
that occurs between a mother and daughter, a mother in law,
a co worker, a mom friend, or in some cases,
the other woman. In this podcast, we want to delve
into our relationships, look to history, examine today, and essentially
go to therapy with each other and figure out where
(00:45):
we're getting it right and where we can do better
to be the best sisterhood ever. We are so excited
that you guys are joining our coven. This is which
is anonymous. So about a year ago, I went to
a dark bar with a giant feminist book hanging out
of my bag and I met Michelle. And I was
(01:06):
going through a really hard time where I felt like
I was getting bullied and just excluded, and I really
needed a good girlfriend, and we immediately connected. She kind
of made a few jokes about my bringing my book
to a dark place because you cannot read it there. Um.
And I quickly found out that she's an amazing film producer,
she is a jewelry designer, she does like a million things.
(01:27):
And then also she is one of the descendants of
the Witches of Salem. So not only do you meet
this amazing human with this just like this incredible energy,
but I also find that she has this crazy connection
to other women getting torn down in the worst possible way.
So I feel so lucky the day that I met you, Michelle.
I fully agree with that sentiment and feel so lucky
(01:49):
to have found you in that bar, because I don't
think we usually find beautiful relationships and bars. But look
at us now, um, And when I met you in
that that faithful night, Um, I have I recognized you. Um.
And you know I knew you as a yoga star,
a mother of so many and that you're married to
Alec Baldwin. Well, since that I've already had I've had
(02:11):
even more children, since how many I had just a
year ago. And yes, my my my husband, Alec, who
is both a joy and my and my eighth child. Um,
but yeah, so we started we started meeting. We we
we were like, you know what, we both came to
a place where we needed girlfriends and we were wondering
why some of our girlfriends were not the most supportive
(02:35):
forces for us. And we started delving into this subject.
We would sit down and write things on napkins and
papers and bring our laptops and we have meetings really regularly. Right,
we met all the time. I quickly, it was cool. Yeah,
it was like we were just so passionate about this.
And then over the past year we've created this this
(02:58):
space where hopefully, you know, we can talk about the
thing that a lot of people don't want to talk about,
which is why do we compete with other women so much?
And at the same time understanding that we have are
like really great girl group, and so are we women
supporting other women or are we women only supporting certain women?
(03:19):
And so this is going to be an amazing place
where we can have all of these conversations. We're gonna
you know, in Michelle, she's very focused on the history
and of course her her family connection, and we can
look at what's happening today. We're going to look into
pop culture and talk about, you know, the things that
we are just absorbing through the contents that we are
influenced by. And we're going to you know, be really
(03:42):
open about our own experiences. You know, I'm going to
talk about stuff I've never talked about before because you're
not supposed to. Also for me, Michelle, having a daughter,
you know, if I've three daughters now, but the nine
year old is the closest to the ability to have
these kind of you know, nice group and I'm using
these as terms nice girl, mean girl relationships with her
(04:04):
little friends. And she's nine years old and she's already
part of that three is dynamic. And I don't know
if you remember this when you're growing up, and I
know that, you know, all my mom friends are all
experiencing the same thing I remember growing up that for
some reason, girls typically go in groups of three and
it's always two against one. So I'm seeing this happen
(04:24):
with my daughter, Carmen, who's nine, and she's just you know,
it's always one person is left out, and especially parenting.
While I'm you know, starting to do this podcast with you, Michelle,
it's opened my mind into the conversations and how I
can kind of guide her because you don't want to,
you know, teach her cruelty when you're being left out.
(04:46):
So often when we're being left out, we kind of
which is like, well we didn't like you anyway. You're like,
oh my god, well this person has this problem where
this person is just mean and picking them apart, but
rather talking about the dynamic and inclusion and having her
have the autonomy to be a to use her voice,
encourage her to use her voice to say, this is
how it makes me feel, and I want to be included.
(05:07):
And even if I'm not going to be able to
be included, I'm going to continue to walk in my
life and do my thing and find good core group
of people. And guiding our daughters into this is extremely
important for me right now because I'm just seeing this
this generation repeat what we've repeated for so many generations. Indeed,
(05:30):
you know, it's the exact same problem, just through a
different lens now. The lens that they have now include
social media. And you know, the worst thing's got for
me as a young girl obviously a little a little
older than your daughter, UM was in high school, and
it was a time where people just took to vandalizing
each other's property and my my house got egged pretty regularly,
(05:52):
my um, and it wasn't just eggs. I mean there
was toilet papers sometimes like cotton balls with tooth toothpaste
on them, stuck to the dry voice. So it was
even my roster to clean up. Yeah, that one was
really visceral. And you know, that's very, very harrowing because
it requires so much effort. But you know, at the
same time, you know, either that or a snide comment
(06:12):
in the hallway or some something horrible that someone one
says to you on social media, which is something that
you and I didn't have to go through in our youth.
And frankly, I had such a hard time handling the
experiences I did have. I do not know how these
children today are equipped to deal with it. It's stabilitating,
and we all know the statistics on bullying and suicide
and how they have skyrocketed since the advent of social media.
(06:35):
So that's definitely something that we're going to be going
into here because it's pertinent to every part of this
conversation because so often it is a woman going after
another woman. Yeah, No, I mean, how many times my
daughter comes home and she's, you know, talking about how
you know, this person said this to me. And that
person said that she was left out of a sleepover
the other day and she was so upset about it.
(06:57):
And I, you know, I said to her, you know what,
this is sad. I don't want to be toxic positivity
and be like again the whole you didn't want to
go there anywhere. We're gonna have so much more fun,
I said, you know what, it is really sad. It
really feels really bad to be left out. And let's
have a really fun night. So when your friends are
going and having their sleepover, let's do our own thing here.
(07:19):
And so we had fun. We had special snacks, we
you know, I made her a little bit on the floor.
We had like a whole fun night. And at least
it's teaching her that it's okay to be disappointed by
something and I can feel it and then continue to
move on. Because I think for women as well, you know,
so much of it everything has to be an invitation
for us, and we get stuck in like the fun
(07:40):
and freeze thing. So you know, when we're upset about something,
we freeze and then we're kind of just stuck there
until we feel we're invited out of it, and teaching
our our daughters to be able to just continue on,
move one ft in front of the other and say, Okay,
you know what, that sucked and I'm going to continue on,
not but them going to continue on. Um. But yeah, no,
(08:02):
I mean this is you know, talking about bullying is
is a huge part of this this podcast, and oftentimes
when we talk about bullying, we think about it in
such a like a crazy level, like we're we only
look at said, well, this person was a worse bully.
But even having that Snyder market, we talk about the negative,
the negative Instagram comments or online comments, you know, for kids,
and how can they filter through that. Yes, it's awful,
(08:24):
and you know what, it's also awful for adults, you know,
and it's it's super it's super super um, it's super
super common exactly. And just going back to protecting our
daughters and seeing what these girls are going through. There's
something I really that's been on my mind a lot
and we haven't brought it up. My stepdaughter, she goes
to an all girls school, she has her entire life,
(08:46):
and she's been pushing for a very long time to
go to a co ed school. And you know, she
made a whole power point about it. But like the
resounding theme of her whole pitch, it's like niche. You know,
girls are really mean to each other. It's not a
good environment to be in. It makes girls more caddy.
She's extremely smart, knows everything, and I she couldn't one
(09:09):
couldn't say it better. And I think that, you know,
seeing that at such a young age, those dynamics within
those institutions, they even exacerbate it. So then we have
to look to be inspired somewhere else, you know, because
this podcast has been created through Michelle and I connecting,
and she is someone who inspires me and who has
(09:31):
supported me so much. I also, you know, Michelle, one
of the things that over the years has been so
important for me has been my my online community. So
as much as like the online community can be mean,
my online community is also absolutely amazing. The majority of
people out there are really wonderful. I can open my
(09:51):
mailbox and it is flooded with supportive commons, people making
me laugh, people sending me memes, um women that I've
never met before, and all of you guys who are listening,
you know who I'm talking about. And I've developed like
the most amazing friendships online with people, and it is
this special place of saying, hey, I'm in this part
of the world and you're in that part of the world,
(10:12):
and we know that things can be wonderful, and we
know that things can be hard, and we're going to
just give each other a little bit of a message
of support. And it gives me so much, absolutely, and
I look forward to having that community because I don't
have that online. I just get like a random creepy
message every now and then I'm like, where did that
come from? All Right? You hear that? Guys, you have
(10:34):
to fled Michelle's inbox with just really kind things because
I feel like that's going to make you smile, and
it's it really is the most amazing thing to to
connect with people from all over you know, I mean
other other women. I've been so fortunate to have women. Um,
We're met really incredible women. You know, my my mom,
(10:55):
my grandmother's you know, my best childhood friend. You know,
we live you know, across the ocean from each other,
but we are sisters and we just know when there's
something going on with each other, and she knows how
to reach out and I know how to reach out,
and I feel extremely lucky. And then you know, through Alec,
I've had this amazing privilege of meeting really amazing women,
(11:20):
you know, Hillary Clinton, Jane Fonda, who idolized as a
child and still idolized now. Um, you know, I mean,
I know that you're a huge fan of Oprah and
I am too, and she gives the best hugs ever.
I can't wait to get an Oprah hug. Well, yeah,
to me, Oprah has gotten me through a lot of
dark times. And you know, I think a lot of
us battle with depression, and you know how we overcome
(11:41):
these things. And for me, it was one of my
most kind of basic tools to getting out of a
front was listening to her story and her empowering way
of speaking and how we can control our reactions to
things ergo, We can control. That's what we have in
life that we can control, where we can find a
better outlook and be a more supportive friend or be
or be a better person. You know, there's so many
women that inspire me, from you and your love and
(12:04):
my mother and all the women that I've worked with
in production who have just given me a chance when
so many wouldn't have. As women, we are constantly being
told that we signed up for something or are just
like our mere presence is asking for something. You know.
One of the things I think most of us have
come to terms with is walking down the street and
(12:27):
if a man says something to us, we didn't ask
for it. It doesn't matter what we're wearing, how shorter
skirt is, what kind of heels we're wearing. Um, it's
not okay. I remember the first time that happened to me.
I was thirteen years old, and it made me feel
so awful and to the point where if I see
a certain group of guys, I'm judging them from afar,
(12:48):
but mostly out of self protection, and I'll cross the street.
I'll try to walk around the other way. Now, having
seven kids, it's like my favorite thing actually to tell
them now, Like when they say something to me and
I'm like, I just gave birth to my seventh child,
and they like, first they think that I'm like making
it up because that just sounds like a lot of kids.
It's like one thing to be like, okay, it's a
second child, but it's like seven is like, who has
seven kids at me? And you know, but I then
(13:11):
they usually like run away or they like apologize or something.
But at the same time to feel like, I you
know what people say, Oh, well she was wearing a
short skirt or oh she her top was tight and
we didn't ask for it. Right if we have been
trained when we were younger to think that somehow we
had to dress in a different way to protect ourselves
(13:34):
from from certain men. And now I feel like it's
the first time that I'm starting to hear in our
culture saying like, no, it doesn't matter what you're wearing.
What are we saying to each other in terms of
did we sign up for something? Did we ask for it?
How many times do we rationalize, you know, our mistreatment
of other people? Okay, well I can say this about
(13:56):
her because she's so mean, or I can do this
because she did X y Z. And even like the
very small parts of ourselves, in the quiet parts, maybe
we're not telling too many people, maybe we're just thinking it.
But what are the influences not only on the outside world,
but in our inside environment. I met this one of
this girl the other day, and she knows that I'm
(14:17):
friends with a mom influencer who people are speculating that
she just got her boobs done. But apparently there was
like a big thing of like, why won't she just
admit it? She should just say it. Everybody can tell.
And she was kind of being snarky and laughing about
this girl, and I just looked at her and I said,
it's not any of our business. Why do we think
(14:39):
that she owes us that information? Now? Why do we
think that we opened up magazines before? In the nelsalon,
we're opening up magazines and we're seeing the speculation. We're
seeing the zooming in on people's satellite or zooming in
on people's ribs and be like, Oh, this person is
too thin, this person too fat, this person is to this,
this person is to that, And of course that trickles
(15:01):
down and it goes into our minds and we we
get influenced to also treat each other this way and
have the audacity to think that certain people owe us
a certain amount of information about their personal lives, their bodies,
their love lives, their beauty treatments, their lack of beauty treatments.
You know, I put that in quotes because beauty is
(15:21):
in the eye of the beholder, And we're going to
talk a lot about beauty on this m on this
podcast and what we've sort of feel forced or influenced
into versus what we actually want and is good for
us absolutely, And when it comes down to all of that,
it is nobody's business unless we decide to share it.
And I think that's how we have to reframe all
of it. And if you want to share that you've
(15:42):
got something done, great, that's your choice. But I also
you know, it's a fine line. And there are parts
of our society that have definitely held up a lot
of very mutilated surgeries as natural progressions in someone's aging,
and you know, obviously we can all tell that that's
not the case. But here we will talk about what
we do, what we've experienced. We will have people on
(16:03):
that can speak to it as well and hopefully come
from a place that's not judgmental. Well that when the
question is, you know, when even if people say say, oh,
this is this is natural, you know, and I understand
we want to make sure that we're giving a healthy
idea of what is natural to people. But at the
same time, and I don't have the right answer, what
(16:26):
you know, if this is somebody's personal life, you know,
be itau's one thing if they're selling something, but it's
their personal life, do we have the right to speculate
about that. I don't know. It's very complicated with all
the procedures and all the things, because now we have
all these little girls who are asking to get surgery
as teenagers because everyone they know is filtering their face,
(16:47):
and no one's face looks like that, So there's distorted reality.
There are extreme examples, and I'm not going to say names,
obviously we all know who. There's a lot of people
out there that have done a lot that have really
created a hipping point in society in which everyone thinks
that you have to look a certain way forever or
have a certain body type, and that's just anatomically impossible.
(17:10):
But I won't speak to the fact of how they
got there, and I think that is what's very dangerous.
Michelle and I are not going to have all of
the answers to all of these things, and maybe we're
going to think one thing and our mind is going
to get transformed into something else through hopefully these experiences.
We are not coming at this from a perfect place
and We had a conversation at one point, maybe like
(17:30):
six months ago, where we both looked at each other
and we said, we don't want to come off as
like preachy. And by the way, we've made so many
mistakes ourselves. We've been on both sides. We've been the
witch and we've been the witch hunter, because we all
have that dichotomy inside of us. And so you know,
where what if? What if? We are saying these things,
and we know that we haven't been perfect. And that's
(17:54):
the amazing thing about this space and trying to create
a safe space is this isn't about perfection. This is
coming in realizing that we've been trained to think a
certain way, and we've been trained to compete with each other,
and the only way to untrain ourselves is to get
honest about it and to get open about Like I
know for myself, I would there was things I judged
(18:16):
about other moms, like I've never left my kids to
go on a trip with my husband. My husband really,
really really wants to go away with me, and I
have never left to go on a trip with him.
And you know, my girlfriends, especially when my my first
children were younger, they would go away and they had
kids the same age, and their kids were like six months, one, two, three,
(18:39):
and they go away with their husband for like a
four day weekend, and in my head, I was like,
oh my god, they're like so thinking about themselves, and
they're like what about their kids and what if something happens?
And you know, I would just feel so guilty and
shouldn't they feel guilty? And they're like, nope, living their
best life, posting photos, looking so happy, looking absolutely in
love with their spouse or their partner, and and I'm
(19:02):
sitting there kind of looking at them and with my
fear and my judgment inside of me, And then I
realized they are people too, like I've had to after
having so many kids, Like I had to separate my
identity from just being mom once it became mom, and realized, oh, hey,
I'm human too. I am wife, Yes, I am mother,
(19:23):
I am ilaria, I am yoga teacher, I am somebody
who likes to run. There's a lot of different parts
of my identity that mean that they needs time and
they need space, and you know, focusing on my relationship
with my husband is really important. So I turned being
judgmental into being inspired by them. Still have yet to
go away with my husband without any children. But I
(19:46):
think I'm gonna blame that on the pregnancy because I'm
like always pregnant, so like even if I went away
with him, I would still be carrying child with me,
except right now, So now's the time. This is the
brief window, right except I'm breastfeeding, so that would be
impossible anyway, something to look forward to and be inspired
and be inspired about. Or like the other thing, Rachel,
(20:08):
that I used to judge people about was before I
got together with Alec. I would judge women and men
that had like big age differences, right, and like Alec
and I are on all the list of like the
celebrities with the biggest age difference and stuff like that.
And I would look and I be like, Okay, this
older man wants some like young bimbo with no opinions whatsoever.
(20:28):
And then that younger woman is obviously a gold digger
and she obviously doesn't even care, and it's just like, okay, whatever,
I hope you die and I'm gonna take all your money. Right,
That's what I don't know if I thought it so
thoroughly through, but I can totally see that my mind
was somewhere there. And now that I'm in that relationship
and people will say those things about me regularly, I realized,
(20:52):
I'm like, oh my god, what was this trained into
my head? And why was I so judgmental about other
people who are literally just finding love. And maybe their
love looks different from you and from your love or
from what my thought love would be, But it doesn't
make it not valid. But like we're doing here, we're
saying we're not perfectly. I'm introverted by nature, so I
(21:14):
believe that, you know, and there's this whole like, you know,
different categories of introversion, extroversion, all these things. I'm an
introverted extrovert, so I can pretend, but like in essence
and introvert and so being that way, sometimes some people
that come into a room and take up all the
space and are just so much and so loud, I've
always kind of coiled away from because I'm like, that's
(21:36):
too much. They must have too much to prove. And
so I was really cautious and a bit judgmental in
those situations that I realized, you know what, just because
someone likes to take up space doesn't mean there's anything
bad about them, and I can learn from them. And
that brings me back to one of the women who
inspire me, which is my grandmother. And my mother always
translates this message to me, which is you can always
(21:58):
learn some something from everybody. And I try to remind
myself that every day in every interaction where I dread
being around certain people, or I know I'm going to
go into a group that we may not necessarily be
aligned on all levels. But if you sit back and
you kind of just let go of that judgment and
remind yourself, I'm going to learn something from these people,
(22:20):
you always will. And I think that that's a beautiful
thing to take away from all of this too, because
in as since we're just growing and we're learning. I mean,
I ask you this question, Michelle, and I would love
you guys at home to think about it as well,
(22:41):
Like think about times when you've been the mean girl
to yourself, when you're constantly tearing yourself down, because not
only is that you don't deserve that right, but what
does that due to our insides that therefore we then
start taking it out on other people, you know, I mean,
having and talk about influence as well, you know, I
(23:01):
come from the influencer world and that that that really
silly term but very true at the same time. And
we are influenced by pop culture and people with big
Instagram followings. We want to know what they're wearing, what
they're doing, the diet, the food, that this, that that everything,
ultimately everything that goes into companies making money. But that
(23:23):
will be for a whole another time, and I will
talk to you all about the mom influencer world because
it is wild um. But I hope one of my
contributions here on which is anonymous, can be showing you
guys a window into alex world and what's that's what
that's like. My life has changed so much over the
past twelve years that you guys have seen me grow
(23:46):
up a lot. You know. I was this little yoga
instructor that taught three sixty five days out of the year.
My typical day would start at five o'clock in the
morning and I would work until ten thirty pm. I
got paid thirty five dollars at class, which would be
a two hour period. It was just like, I mean,
I hustled, I had so much fun and I was
exhausted and somehow in that crazy schedule. I met Alec
(24:08):
and then really got I mean, it was a very
romantic thing where I basically swept me off my feet.
And I am not a super romantic person. I am
a die hard Capricorn and we're very, very just stoic
about everything. Um. But you know, it was a world
that I was never prepared for. You know, I was
used to saying I'm a stay and kindness and I
(24:29):
wore yoga clothes every day. I didn't have, you know,
all these fancy clothes, and so you know, if I
had to go to an event, I would literally either
buy a borrow stuff from a friend or I would
go to like Forever twenty one or H and M
or something like that, and then people would ask me
what are you wearing? And I wish, like badass me
now would be like, I'm wearing Forever twenty one, and
I do do that. But then I was just like,
(24:50):
I was like, oh God, I should need to learn
all these like fancy you know, designer names that I
do not know. Um. But you know, having seen that
and getting thrown into that, I realized, not only is
that a weird world for the people who are experiencing it,
but because of this influence that we talked about, it's
trickling down into everything that we consume and the way
(25:12):
that we talk about other women who are, you know,
in the spotlight, are the ways that we start to
talk to ourselves and the ways that we talk to
our friends or our freenemies or our enemies straight out enemies,
and so you know, I've never remember one of the
first times Michelle, I was almost three months pregnant with Karmen.
I was about to announce that I was bringing the
(25:33):
Karmena and I wore this like teal turqoise. I think
it's teal dress um to an event in the South.
I think we were in the South. Thing was like
an NFL event, and Christie Teagan came wearing the exact
same dress and then they put the side by side.
You guys, decide who wears it better, and put the
(25:53):
two of us next to each other, and I guess
who lost me? Not you know, the supermodel. She perfectly fine,
likes absolutely beautiful, And for me, I was like, I'm
trying to hide that I'm three months pregnant and I
am like, come up to like Chrissy Teagan's like shoulder
so she wore it better in that one, and then
afterwards something similar happened with Kim Kardashian and they're like,
(26:14):
who wore it better? When I was pregnant, they would
put like my pregnancy photos next to other pregnant people
and they'd be like, who has a better pregnant belly?
They even compared me in Michelle. They compared me to
Kim Bay singer and to Alex ex girlfriends. And you know,
most of the time, I did not win in any
(26:35):
of these things. And then you even think, what is
this winning that some random person is like pressing something
on a keyboard and like, oh I I picked Kim
Kardashian or I pick Chrissie Teagan And how toxic is that?
Like how toxic is that? And then what are we
also teaching to our kids beyond comparison? Is this of
joy right? And you aren't even an active participant. Just
(26:58):
by existing, you're put into this ring right of competition
And it just doesn't happen to men in the same way.
Like you open a gossip magazine like those that you're referencing,
it's not like you see two very famous men. Generally
this happens every now and then, but it's usually best dressed.
It's not who wore this boring old suit better than
(27:19):
that guy? Right, And it doesn't matter. And that's the
whole thing. And then we put all this weight into
it and think we did something wrong because they did
it better. Why did they do it better? And who
the heck made this decision? I mean, all of it
is ridiculous and hilarious and and it cultivates that in
young women because they see these magazines and they think
that that is how they have to communicate correct And
(27:42):
that's the whole thing. I mean, I've been told so
many times, don't talk about this kind of thing. No
one cares. It's you know, it's just gonna sound stupid
coming out of your mouth. And that's as becoming a
mother and also connecting more and more in building my
girlfriend group makes me want to talk about it because
again going back to that influence, the influence that trickles
(28:05):
down and is making all of us not just be
worse friends with each other. And again for what for
buying address, for buying a makeup product, it's, you know,
we we take out the peoples, the woman's humanity, and
we take out their soul and we just reduced her
down to what she looks like and what she decides
(28:26):
to wear. And you know that's something that I definitely
don't want to be a part of it. I want
to do our very best on this podcast to try
to have those conversations. You know, I've seen I've seen
my niece, my nieces Haley and she her and and Selena.
You know, for years people are having all these like
crazy conversations about like what they're rift is over over
(28:47):
justin it's so silly. And what kind of photo We
all just saw the photo that they posted to try
to send a message to people, and it's like, what
photo do they have to to to post to make
you guys believe that they have continued on with their
lives and the people who are gossiping about them have not.
And I think one of the best examples for our
(29:07):
particular generation was the brand Jelina one because you had
people wearing team Julie Team Anniston shirts when it's just
this one married guy who cheated and it's so and
what that did to millennials I think really messed, really
messed with how we look at relationships. And it's only
manifested even more right. I know in my experience, my
(29:30):
mental health has declined so many times over stuff that
people were just poking and laughing at me about. You know,
I had times where I would, you know, stare at
myself in the mirror and be like, oh, you know what,
you're right, I my eyebrows are very fair by the way, guys,
I got them microblated, so you know what, I guess
I jumped on that that one, and I'm happy with
(29:52):
that choice, but it made me feel so bad because
people would write but like, don't you know how to
pencil in your eyebrows? I don't want to be like, well,
actually I do not. I teach you all the day
and I do not wear makeup, so um, you know.
I mean, I had this whole thing, but it really
made me feel very bad about myself and some of
the stuff I jumped on, like the bandwagon and I did,
and some of the stuff I had to just learn
to be more comfortable with myself and realize that there's
(30:15):
just going to be people that are going to tear
me down. But then at the same time, I was thinking,
I don't I don't want to be a part of
that and I have to when I'm somebody that when
I see something that's unjust or experience something unjust, I
realized that other people are probably seeing and experiencing it too,
So I feel the need to speak up about it.
Who the hell is wasting their time being so petty
(30:37):
and cruel when there's so much more you can do
with your energy, You know, it's impossible not to absorb it.
So I guess that is our exercise here. That's something
we have to work on and try to cultivate for
our community, is how not to absorb that negativity and
how not to perpetuate that negative cycle of women being
so critical, you know. And it's not just what we're
(30:57):
experiencing as adults and looking in these magazines. It's also
the stuff that we grew up with, you know. I
was one of the one of the mind blowing experiences
I've had over the past two years is I was
obsessed with snow White growing up. I named some pets
after snow White. I loved snow White, and then I
started thinking about women and us competing with each other,
(31:19):
and that I used to listen to the Queen say mirror,
mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all,
and the mirror is a man, and the mirror would
always say you. And then one day the mirror said
snow White, who is a younger woman. And the queen's
way of dealing with this, you know, competition maybe is
(31:42):
that she ordered snow White to be killed, brought into
the forest, killed, and have her heart delivered to her
in a box. If you guys remember that correctly. And
the fact that we saw this as children and we
continue to show this to our kids is kind of frightening. Um.
But it was a man said somebody else was more beautiful,
because there can apparently be only one beautiful person, and
then it put this fierce competition where she had to
(32:05):
get somebody else to go and kill her. And you know, Michelle,
I mean, it's it's horrifying because these are the messages
that we grew up with. Yeah, I mean, in going
to the Disney movie that I love that it has
disturbed disturbed me the most as an adult. That's the
Little Mermaid. And you know, Arielle gives up her voice
(32:28):
to have a better shot with this guy that she
doesn't even know. She gives Ursula her voice so she
can have legs like what one is willing to give
up to conform to maybe make it work with what
you think is Prince charming. But I still think at
the end of the day, just what it represented as
a little girl to give your voice away for a man.
And there's so many resounding themes of that in life,
(32:50):
in relationship dynamics, in literature. We will cover this over
and over again because your voice is your power and
your agency, and that's taken way you're nothing but an object.
And I think that's a very important thing for us
to keep coming back to. Michelle, What does it mean
for you? What's your definition of a witch? Mhm. I
(33:12):
see being a witch as a positive, encouraging thing and
I don't want to limit it into the two containers
of being good or being bad, because there's so much
to it and will expand on this every week when
we honor these women. One of the things I've loved
about what you've said since the beginning is that by
using the term which, which was obviously you know, there
(33:33):
are people that we're going to talk to talk about
in history and today that when they hear the word
which and somebody's pointing at them, they know that that
means that they're not going to live, and that they
weren't going to live. You know, I mean this, which
is has been a very cruel term over a very
long piece of human history. And so one of the
(33:54):
things that I loved about, you know, what you've said
to me, Michelle over the past year is that we're
reclaiming that word. We're taking that word that has been
used to shame women and to hurt women and kill
women over and over and over again over so many years,
you know, and we're taking it and we're saying, hey,
you know what being a woman is powerful for me,
(34:15):
being a witch is that it is it is a
powerful nature. There has been times where I felt the negative,
which where I'm I'm feeling that I'm being excluded and
pointed at um or you know, as we talked about before,
where I felt, you know, in the past, I excluded
people and um and I didn't come together, and probably
purely because of all the stuff that we've listened with
(34:36):
that we've talked about about how I'm you know, we
grow up being concerned about the other woman because it's
survival of the fittest. We are repressed group. You know
we are, but we're fifty percent of the population. And
if we get this right, if we bring this coming together,
if we get on the same side, we're going to
really have so many options and rise up to the
(34:58):
place of freedom that we really want to it into.
You know, times where I've been the negative, which I
remember that, you know, pr people would say to me.
They'd say, oh, don't worry. You know, this is just
something that's being done, and if you wait a minute,
they'll move on to the next. They always move on
to the next. And I heard that a bunch of times,
(35:19):
and then one time when somebody said it, I looked
at them and I said, I don't want to have
them move on to the next. I don't want them
to because this is such a bad feeling to be
pointed at and excluded. And if we are just moving
onto the next one and I'm staying silent, I don't
think I can live with myself. You know. I have
(35:40):
to feel the pain and the injustice of you know,
these of these feelings and reach out and realize because
it doesn't just happen to me. I need to do
my very best to make sense out of it, and
then to create a space where we can talk about it,
which is ultimately what we're doing here. I mean that
is that is the goal of this show to come
(36:03):
together and know. By the way, guys, no little trauma
or your feelings hurt is too small. One of the
things that women get shamed with a lot of like,
oh it could have been so much worse or oh
my god, you know those problems it doesn't matter, are
like are you really talking about fashion and beauty? You
know what for people who grew up, I had an
eating sort of for twenty years of my life growing up,
(36:24):
and I'll talk about that when we when we get
into that that you know, part of the episodes. But yes,
it did have a lot to do with what I
felt I looked like and how I felt about myself.
So there is nothing that is either too big or
too small that doesn't filter into our mental health. So
don't ever let anyone shame you that the things that
(36:45):
you feel are not valid for you living your best life.
And if you again allow yourself what is that quote,
Michelle that a woman who allows herself to be free
gives permission to other people to do exactly the same,
And um, you know that is in essence, what going
back to what you said about intuition, right, allowing yourself
(37:07):
to be free and to trust yourself. And so we
are here to keep cultivating that part of the conversation
because we don't live in a society that encourages anyone
to trust their gut to listen to themselves. And that
goes back to which definitions, because by by trusting oneself
and allowing your internal compass to lead you, you make
(37:29):
great decisions. I mean, that is a gift that we
are all given that our society ignores and largely just
called silli or woo woo or whatever. But time and
time again it proves to be one of our most
powerful assets. And so that's something that will keep coming
back to here because you and I talk about it
all the time. But intuition is magical and I guess
(37:50):
that combines with witchery and I'm okay with that because
it's gotten us this far and it's only going to
get better, and we're here to just keep having this
calm rectation really make it safe and inspiring. And again
like no complaints too big or too small, and we
never have to minimize our struggles because they're all real.
We're all going through something and that's why this container
(38:13):
is going to be a safe place where we leave
with love and we help each other find our power
because so often it's taken away. This is a place
where women support women. We're going to take care of
each other. We're going to talk about some of the
uncomfortable things. We're going to talk about a lot of
the really comfortable things where we can get inspired about,
you know, how we can treat each other better and
(38:34):
create a safer environment, not just for the next generation,
but for each other, because hey, we deserve it too,
and how often do we as women are we able
to say we deserve it? Hi, It's Bethany Frankel. My
time on the wheel Housewives of New York is a
few years behind me, and now I'm ready to put
(38:55):
the reel back into the real Housewives. That's where my
new podcast Rewives comes in. It isn't your typical rewatch podcast.
I'm watching only the most iconic episodes from all cities.
I'm sharing never before heard stories of what happened behind
the scenes, and I'm not just pulling in cast members
for postgame analysis. I'm doing something a little more interesting.
(39:15):
If you've ever seen an episode of The wheelhouse Wives,
you know the drill. But beyond throwing drinks and legs,
there are lessons about marriage, divorce, friendship, money, parenting, and fame.
If you have the right minds, analyze and dig deeper.
So I'm bringing on unexpected thought leaders and celebrities to
get their take on the chaos this season. I sit
down with Elizabeth Moss, Kevin Neal and Zusie Orman, Griffin
(39:36):
Johnson and more. You think that there isn't much to
learn from flipping tables and yanking wigs, but that's where
you're wrong. Listen to Rewives with Bethany Frankel on the
I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get
your favorite podcasts. All right, guys, we're introducing something called
(39:58):
what are We Coveting in the Coven, which is we're
gonna do every single time, um, every single episode, we're
going to recommend something, a product, a quote, a book, um,
something some experience that we've tried. And the one rule
about it is Michelle and I cannot be sponsored by
this company or whatever it is, and we really can't
(40:19):
have a connection with it whatever. So it's literally just
something that we absolutely love and we want to share
with you. And today mine is Michelle my phone case.
So you guys all know that really I have like
kind of a really ugly hallway outside of my apartment,
and um, it's why I live in a very old
school New York building and I take these selfies in
(40:40):
this really ugly mirror. And my husband, you know, ten
years ago when I started doing this, like it was
just like, can't you find like a prettier mirror around
the apartment? I was like, no, this is part of
it is that I love just this, like how bad
the lighting is and everything. And so you guys always
see my little selfies and my phone case. So my
phone case is thing called plant because you guys have
(41:01):
asked about a lot, and I love it because it's
modern and I'm all into like modern things right now.
And um, it's so it's a plant case. It's an almond.
I like it from having a million children who would
throw my phone around all the time. It's never broken
knock on wood and um. And then the bear that
I have on it, which you guys have asked about,
is just a pop socket. It doesn't come with the case,
(41:22):
but it is from Etsy and if you just google
pop socket bear um or not at Google, ets at
pop socket pop socket Bear. This one is in rose
gold and I absolutely love it. I've bought so many
that I have a drawer to my right side right now.
We're probably about a dozen different bears in it. She's
(41:42):
always always showing up to dinner with a different bear.
It's just it's very glamorous. So mine this week, Um,
I went with something that I use all the time
because I'm tired a lot, and I shouldn't be saying
that to someone with so many more kids than I have. Um,
but I'm going there and I've travel a lot for work,
(42:04):
and so I have the I got on Amazon and
I buy these like under eyed jelly things that revived
me and so I put them. I put them in
the fridge so they're always cold, and I'm just gonna
put one on, so you know, but it's like this
crazy like little under eye gel gold. Leave these on
for a while, because wait, you travel with them? I travel,
(42:25):
I travel. There's you can get travel packs, you can
get jars of them. I don't know, I mean, like,
are you on the airplane with them on? Oh? I've
definitely done that. Um, I don't love that. Not every time.
There's been some like more international trips when you know,
I was just like, okay, let's like who cares some
in pajamas, but yes, so this is this is them.
He's like, get me through all my hardest time. So
(42:47):
then you just you look a little brighter and you're
faking that maybe you've got some more sleep. So yeah,
under Eye gel patches, any brand, they're like snail under
eye things, get them money Amazon. You're very shiny right now.
All right, Witches, thank you for joining our coven. Make
sure you follow us on Instagram at Witches a non pod,
and subscribe to follow the show on the I Heart
(43:09):
Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts, and remember,
don't be a bitch, be a witch. See you next time. Hi,
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