EXACTLY. With Florence Given. Episode 5: FEMINISM: Jameela Jamil - Misogyny, Media and Mistakes

Floss: Hello welcome to another episode of Exactly. With me, Florence Given. I’m so happy you’re joining me here today as it’s very excitingly the start of a brand new mini-series and the subject I’m going to be exploring over the next four episodes is Feminism. Learning about feminism changed my life, it ignited a fire inside me and it’s the very reason I’m doing this podcast today. Feminism taught me that I have a voice, that it doesnt need to suppressed, that there is more to me than how I look as a woman… Feminism was my introduction to myself, Feminism taught that there’s so much more to be a woman and that there are so man things I don’t have to put up with. And I am so excited to continue this journey with you and my guests on this podcast.

To kick off this episode of this new miniseries I’m speaking to my friend and one of the most prominent voices in modern feminism, Jameela Jamil. At the end of the episode we'll be answering the questions you've sent in via my Instagram stories.
And remember in the fourth episode on feminism I want to hear from you, we’ll be answering your calls texts and voicenotes so any questions or dilemmas you have on feminism just drop me a line on my podcast whatsapp, the number is +447980302665 

I'm so excited to have my friend, Jameela Jamil join me today. She describes herself as a feminist in progress. And she's not afraid to say what she thinks or call people out. She definitely pisses a lot of people off, including feminists, but I fucking love her for it. I've so much respect for the work she's doing. She's been a huge inspiration and support to me privately. I talk about my own journey into feminism in chapter one of my book 'Women Don't Owe You Pretty'. It's simply titled 'Feminism is going to ruin your life (in the best way)". My own journey into feminism started when I was in secondary school around 14. I stopped wearing a bra and people would point out to me. I then started to Google all the stuff about how our bodies were objectified when the same body parts of a man weren't. It wasn't until I turned 18 and I started going out that I experienced sexual harassment from men and found that it was so normalised that I actually started to act upon this rage that was building inside of me. I started combining my illustrations with my slogans that I was creating. And I started putting them online, and that's kind of where it came from. my entire career has just come from this boiling pit in my stomach of feminist rage. And that's why I'm really interested to find out about where other women got their rage from. What I love about my guest today, Jameela, is that she's refreshingly a lot more open to the human side of feminism. The side of women that make mistakes, and I feel that that's another part of feminism is that we can go from one end to the other where we're now not demanding beauty perfection from women, but moral perfection from women. And it kills me to think that women are moving from one space of defining themselves by beauty to another, where we are now defining ourselves by morals in a way that are just impossible to uphold. It's impossible to always do the right thing. It's impossible to always make good choices for yourself. We're all a product of our environment and yeah, women are going to fuck up. In fact, I'm with Jameela on the belief that we should be giving women a little more room to fuck up because we hold ourselves to such ridiculous standards anyway. We've got to be that for each other, and it's nice to know that you have people that have your back. I've seen Jameela attacked far more from feminists than people on the left than I've ever seen her attacked by conservatives. Jameela and I have spoke about this privately, but there was a time where I wasn't sure what to think of her because people on our side of the camp were calling her everything under the sun, and I got sucked into believing many lies about her over the years. And today I just want to get a little more insight into the life of Jameela and what she believes it's going to take for us to get our act together and sort this shit out for good! 

Floss: Hi Jameela. Thank you so much for coming onto my podcast today. I can't wait to talk 

Jameela: with you. Same. Thank you so nice to be here. It's nice to see your beautiful face. 

Floss: Of course,well, I've got so many questions to ask you today, but first of all, I'm going to ask you my high five questions, which I ask all of my guests. Just say the first thing that comes to your mind don't think too much about it-

Jameela: This is a nightmare. This is just a bad idea. Okay. Okay. 

Floss: What's one thing that sets your soul on fire?

Jameela: Keanu Reeves… sorry James

Floss: If you could, wear, one [00:02:00] outfit for the rest of your life, a look that would define you forever. What would the outfit be? 

Jameela: Big baggy suit with a shit ton of pockets. 

Floss: Okay. What color is the suit? Pinstripe? Velvet?

Jameela: It’s black with like very thin gray pinstripes and, uh, and it's very, very low cut. You can see a lot of tit.

Floss: Oh nice. Nice. Okay, amazing. What's something that people frequently misunderstand or get wrong about you? 

Jameela: I think that I care. I think people think that I am very, very concerned with public opinion. And I don’t give a fuck. I think people think I'm sitting there like Googling myself all day. Just like seeing if I'm liked. I, I knew I wouldn't be liked at the second I had an opinion, so it's not something that I, that I need or crave or desire because I don't really like anyone. So I don't expect anyone to like me. That would be very hypocritical of me. 

Floss: Okay. Next question. I'm still a work in progress when it comes to. 

Jameela: Everything, [00:03:00] literally everything. I am not good or finished at anything other than maybe like snack hunting.

Floss: Okay. When was the last time that you majorly cringed at yourself? 

Jameela: Oh God. I think a better question would be when was the last time I didn't majorly cringe at myself. I constantly cringe at myself, but also, you know, I live with all my best mates. We've known each other since we were teenagers. And so we live in a big English commune and they laugh at me all day. To the point where now it just feels fun whenever I've done something embarrassing, because It’ll create comedy in the house. That's great. It's very, it's very, very handy that it's completely like changed the tone of my cringe, where now I can weaponize cringe for comedy points in the 
house. 

Floss: That’s amazing.
So that's the end of my high five questions. Now I just want to get straight into it. Um, I want to talk about how first of all, the reason I've got you onto this [00:04:00] episode of my podcast. Exactly. Um, you've helped me a lot privately and it hurts me to see people paint you in a way that's not true of who you are at all on the internet.
You've helped me out in a lot of ways. Um, I think you spoke about. How the cost of women's mistakes is a lot higher than it is for men on social media. And I just, I think I replied to your story saying, fuck, this is so true. And I've not seen anyone actually say this out loud. It's been in my head for awhile and immediately you were like, what's your number?
And then you gave me your number. And we had a whole conversation about all of this kind of stuff, about being a woman in the media. And then it led me to your highlight on Instagram, the gaslighting highlight. And I, I just want you to talk a bit more about your gaslighting, Instagram highlight that talks about the cycle in the media that women get caught up in where we're overexposed, and then it's a joy to watch us be defeated by the public,

Jameela: It's like a social Olympic sport, I think, um, regarding men's and women's cancelable mistakes. I think what I've said about it, uh, at least on my Instagram or in interviews is that I think that we value men much more than women, which is why we set the bar much higher for their cancelable mistakes, because we cannot lose a talented man. We must give Shia Lebouf another chance! Come on. Can we replace Shia Lebouf! Anne Hathaway, Jennifer Lawrence can just fuck off, uh, you know, and all these like different, um, incredible people. We’re just so much, we're just so much harder on women than we are on men. I mean, look at the difference in the coverage of Megan Markle, where they're having to get behavioral experts to determine whether or not her facial expression means she's secretly hostile.
And in we're doing that instead of talking about the fact that Andrew, may well, be a big old pedo! But that's the difference. It's like Pedo. He is a Pedo [00:06:00] maybe- probably- 

Floss: And she's not nice enough. 

Jameela: And, and, and she's just not quite nice enough, which really just means she's not white enough and she doesn't have a dick.
Otherwise we would find it so much harder. We just don't label men as annoying. And also we have this thing where, when we don't like a man, we just kind of don't learn his name and we ignore him and we don't really bother with him at all. He just gets to kind of exist peacefully or just like wander off into nothingness, which is much more peaceful than what we do with women.
When we don't like women, we learn everything about them because there's maybe a part of us that's maybe defensive about not liking that woman. And we want to prove it's not because of jealousy or misogyny. So we're going to find anything we can, any morsel that will justify our profound, um, visceral hatred of this woman, even if that means going 15 years back into her tweets, finding baby photographs of her, that you find objectionable, maybe that her behavior was problematic at the age of 3, or you will start to dislike her facial expression.[00:07:00] 
Um, and, and all of this is like, um, fed into by the media. There's like a very specific cycle and. I didn't notice that cycle the first time I was in it, because I became famous once in the United Kingdom. And then sort of 10 years later became famous all over again in the United States. And the second time I was aware of that, I was in the middle of the machine and that system is very simple and it's very, it's a very well-oiled system.
We, we pluck a woman who stands out and we lift her above everyone else. And we start to obsessively talk about her. We hyperbolize how excellent she is. So we're starting to kind of boost her up and up and up onto this pedestal. So we're, overexposing this woman, she's absolutely everywhere. We're constantly showing, uh, photographs of her next to these incredibly hyperbolic headlines saying how amazing she is. And she's smiling in this kind of knowing way. And the picture that makes you feel like, oh, she's buying in to this hype, whereas often the woman is not even reading any of this stuff and she's so insecure and terrified that she's being [00:08:00] overexposed, and hyperbolized that if anything, she's feeling the most insecure she's ever felt and like, fuck, how am I going to live up to this- very few women actually drink the Kool-Aid. 
Um, and so we start to think, oh, she's smoked. Like she's getting a little bit ahead of herself. Why is she giving so many interviews all the time?
And often we're not, they're just pulling stuff from one interview that we did as if we've given an interview to someone else, they are constantly. Taking our tweets or our tweet conversations with someone else, the amount of fucking headlines about me that I've had no idea where they've come from, because I've just replied to someone on Twitter and somehow that's made a story.
And so it looks like we're desperate for yeah headlines.

Floss: Yeah All of a sudden your tweets are a press release, anytime you say anything it could be used against you when you have a platform. 

Jameela: Exactly. So it looks like I'm just shitting. Like I just have press release diarrhea and I'm just constantly leaking press releases. And this is the case for so many women that I know in the public eye.
And so, so then we are primed. The public is fucking sick of us. They are sick of our face. They think that we are [00:09:00] arrogant and if we're not constantly self-deprecating, then they think that we buy into our own hype. But if we do self-deprecate too much, then we're disingenuous and we're trying too hard to be relatable.
It's a fucking impossible line to walk. And so once we're primed and ready then comes the take down, then come, the rumours is about she's difficult or the, um, headlines that paint her as aggressive, or like, you know, for example with me, uh, or with anyone else with any melanin in their skin, uh, slamming, lashing out at, like clashing, bashing. Like, I'm always just like everything. I'm everything. Other than like, at these, every adjective other than wanking about me, like it's always in like big caps lock Jameela Jamil slams- I sound like a UFC fighter in the headlines. And normally I'm just chill, just replying to some. Very calmly, very politely, especially if it's a white woman, I'm putting like love hearts on it to make sure that I'm not going to be called an aggressor.
Like, and yet it gets turned into the most violent language possible. So, sorry. I digress. So [00:10:00] the public and our primed, we now start using rumors or smear campaigns or, or, uh, disproportionately focusing on minor negative behaviors or mistakes. And then we drag her through the mud by her pubes. And it's like, it's a big drop from that pedestal that they put you up on.
And that pedestal was a trap door. And so in 2018, when everyone was like overly bigging me up for making me out to be like the new, like, I dunno, like Ghandi with a double d. And they, you know, it's like Jameela, Jamil, the feminist hero we need. And, uh, I was like time magazine's 25 most influential list.
And all the shit was going on. Everyone was like, isn't this amazing? And I was like, no, this is fucking awful. This is going to be horrible. It was like at-

Floss: So you knew/

Jameela: -the top of a ride and Alton, I knew, cause it was the second time round. It was like, it's like the top of the ride at Alton towers where, you know, you're just like, they keep you there waiting for the drop.
And so every day you're like, is it getting today? Today's going to be the [00:11:00] day. 

Floss: It's a feeling in your stomach, you feel it.

Jameela: And it's a, it's a visceral feeling of big part of like, everything's going to, well, they're being too nice. I kept on trying to tell people the whole time I was like, I'm a feminist in progress. I really don't know shit.I left school at 16-

Floss: disclaimer, after disclaiming 

Jameela: shouting like I'm problematic. Constantly caveating myself, making sure that people knew, like, please don't believe the hype. Like I'm really basic. I'm really, really fucking basic. And everyone was like, oh, she thinks she's such a great intellectual. I'm like, no, I don't.
I just learned the term patriarchy when I was like 26. Yeah. And then, then comes the tear down and it's epic and it is just unstoppable. And the, the hunger for it is so intense. And what's crazy, especially if you work in social justice. Uh, but even if you don't, is that the most negativity doesn't come from the opposition, doesn't come from the people that you fight.
It comes from your own. And most of the meanness comes from women, you're a woman, most of the cruelty comes from women and, and it is just like endless and how much people enjoy it is a really [00:12:00] grotesque and that's what made me suicidal last year was not people not liking me. It was watching the ugliness of people's behavior that made me think this world is too ugly for me.
Like I actually like how much people are enjoying this. There's a bunch of black doughs and abusers walking around, just going completely unscathed on the internet and I'm annoying. And so therefore I must be like maligned in every single way, uh, it just made me feel like, oh, these people are gross. People were writing tweets like, oh, I miss bullying Jameela Jamil. Remember when we all bullied Jameela Jamil. That was so fun. Like oh, you're so gross.

Floss: Oh my God. Yes. I've I was like, I've seen the same thing, uh, about me. Someone said, um, Fuck Florence Given let's bring back bullying. And then it was, and, and what's funny is if my friend, um, Matt Bernstein on Instagram, I know that, you know, his content as well.
He said to me, he said, if you cover the usernames of these people, You would think it was someone from the right, like if you cover the username and the, and the [00:13:00] pronouns in the bio and you just read, ‘Fuck Florence Given, bring back bullying’ or the stuff about you to me, like you would assume that it was actually coming from someone completely opposed to you hates women Um, and actually, you know, you, I mean, you coined the term double agent for patriarch. Could you talk a bit more about that and that term? 

Jameela: Yeah, I just, it's something you can do knowingly or unknowingly where you are doing the patriarchies work for them. You are going out of your way to either bring down women, to lie to women, to, uh, harm other women, you know?
And so that could be, if you were selling diet or detox products or you are making money off of your appearance and not disclosing that you are using Photoshop and you are, uh, having surgery and fillers and attributing your aesthetic to a bullshit product that you don't take, uh, or you are going out of your way to bring down a confident woman who really could probably just do with a little bit of support or a call in rather than a let's destroy them in the stocks/
Witch-hunt

Floss: which, which is what we do. 

Jameela: Oh, it's a complete witch hunt and it's I'm so pro people like [00:14:00] criticizing, I'm so much better for having been criticized and called out, but I only need to be criticized or called out by a handful of people. One thing I think is really toxic about our online behavior is that when we know that someone has already heard something 50 times, like it's trending, we feel the need to add and say the exact same thing. We're not bringing anything new to the conversation. We just come in and, um, shit on them, the exact same way, or criticize them in the exact same way that's already happened. We can see it a hundred times in the comment where like, I must add my voice to this.
Now, when you do that, and you can see that something's already trending and people are already well aware of what the problem is. You're not doing it for the person. That you are writing to you're doing that so that everyone else knows you are on the right side, and that you have the right understanding. And it's very like important to check your own posturing.
Cause there's a lot of that online and it's tribal. It's that thing that we do because deep down, we're still just fucking in the caves worrying that we're going to be isolated from the group and then left to be eaten by the saber [00:15:00] tooth tiger. But we're not. Now we’re just being cunts.

Floss: Yeah we're just being cunts!

Jameela: Yeah there are saber tooth tigers, we need to just check ourselves, whatever Kim Kardashian does, something problematic people are always all like, or any of the Kardashians, always in my DMS, every single day, all of their fans in my DMS being like, can you call Kim out for this? And I always write back. Nope. If now a hundred thousand people have already called her out for that thing, I'm not the punisher. I don't need to add my voice to this because then I'm just harassing her when I was the first person to say that shit to them, then that was important because no one else was saying it, but I'm not going to add to a hundred thousand voices.
Otherwise, then I become a bully. Then I'm hunting them. That's not what I'm about. 

Floss: Now we can display our morals online. I feel like the standards for women have changed from looking perfect to having perfect morals. I don't think that that's ever not been there, but now with the internet, the cool girl no longer is pretty.
She has [00:16:00] cool politics. And I think that what's changing with that is that we're confused politics with morals and then using them as like an indication of where we stand within the tribe. Like that's where it's becoming tribal. Now it's like the cool girl, now isn't someone who looks preteen, all that kind of stuff.
It's someone who you have to be pretty and have the cool politics.

Jameela: Everyone pretends to like hate the police, but everyone's becoming the police. You know, all cops are bad and everyone hates hierarchy and systems, and everyone is trying to in, uh, to further integrate hierarchy and systems there just in different ways.
And I personally think that, you know, I think Scarlet Curtis has spoken about this before really well, but when, like, when, when activism like went into academia, that was great because it was further studied, but then it kind of became this untouchable exclusive thing. That then was like, suddenly the rhetoric changed, the language changed and simple wording was no longer used and everything was cognitive dissonance, this cognitive dissonance [00:17:00] that.
And so, you know, like, do you know what I mean? Like everyone was using the same terminology that didn't feel very accessible to most people in the world. Like it's classist, it's elitist it's. 

Floss: Um, and then you have people misusing it as well. 

Jameela: People misusing it, but also like people abusing their understanding of it against people who don't like people are all products of their fucking environment.
I grew up. Problematic fucking household possible. It's a miracle. I'm not like a murderer. You know, like I also was really like, I was really sick as a kid, so I was away from school. Like I missed a lot of social cues. I missed a lot of conversations around feminism and all these different things. I didn't actually have a lot of friends who were girls when I was out with friends full stop when I was young, no surprises there.
Um, I, uh, and so I, you know, I didn't understand a lot about women, which then led me to be like a judgy slut-shaming dickhead 22 year old, who was like, yeah, I'm just not really. I'm like friends with guides really likes that women are just too much drama. You know, I was like, we are all products of our [00:18:00] environment.
I was bred to be, you know, anorexic. I was bred to be like, thinking that, you know, women have to be jealous of each other and competitive with each other. It's just, we're all products of our environment. We're all doing the best we can. And we should just encourage people to be better tomorrow than they were today, rather than strive for instant perfection. Nowhere on earth else is anyone expected to be instantly perfect as something only the massively nuanced world of social justice.

Floss: You touched on, uh, eating disorders. Then when you mentioned anorexia and you were taught to be on our exec and obviously have your platform and your podcast, Iweigh, can you talk a little bit more about why Iweigh was such an important project to you?
I remember when it started and it just took the internet by storm and it was really incredible to watch and it's grown into something. Bigger and just more and more and more every year. Can you talk about why you started that and why that was important to you?

Jameela: sure everyone, it was an accident. I was just pissed off again.
It was the Kardashians, but I was pretty, I was actually defending them. That's how [00:19:00] our relationship started. It's really disintegrated since then. I saw a picture of them together and there were numbers written across their bodies. And I was like, oh, I wonder if that's like something to do with their businesses or like how much their net worth is- Which is obviously still a gross way to like monitor anyone. But I was curious, clicked on the picture and it's how much they weigh. And I was like, fucking hell. You'd never see a picture of businessmen, like a family of businessmen who created an empire with their weight written across their bodies. We don't know what men weigh. We don't care. You have to be a literal UFC fighter for anyone to ever care about as a man. And so I was like, Jesus Christ. This is what I thought when I was 12 that my body weight dictated my value. And now 20 years later, this is still what 12 year olds are being taught. And so. I just wrote one day on Twitter I had a very small following.
Um, I had no Instagram following. I was just like, I weigh my relationship and my orgasms and my bingo wings and my eating disorder I've overcme. Like, I don't remember what I said exactly, but it was just, I weigh the sum of all my mother fucking parts. Right. I'm a whole [00:20:00] human with a whole story and I deserve to be acknowledged that way and I just tweeted it and I did not expect it to go so viral.
Within three days I had 10,000 responses from women around the world and some gay men. And so, uh, I started the Instagram account just to kind of create like a little museum of at least 10,000 responses. And I was like, it'll be like the ice bucket challenge will go away after two weeks. And now it's been three years.
And we have like one and a half million followers. We have a big podcast, we have a learning platform and it started off as a space to talk about bodies and radical representation, but it has now kind of morphed into something that I think I really resonate with you over, which is that it's a starting, it's a starting platform.
It's a learning space that feels like this is it's okay for this to be. You're like early port of call and learning about social justice. Like it's okay. If you don't know everything that everyone has to have a starting point. We aren't pretentious. We aren't going to punish you for what you don't know yet.
We're just so excited that you're here and that you want to learn. And I'm super ignorant. [00:21:00] I learn in real time in front of everyone. I see people mock me about that on the internet. And I think that they are so dumb. And short sighted-

Floss: They could never do it. They could never do it! 

Jameela: To ever like disqualify someone learning as something that's lesser is so pathetic because everyone's got somebody to, I'm not always learning about the same one topic.
I'm trying to learn about the whole fucking world type me forever. And so I want Iweigh to be a happy learning space and that's what it is now. 

Floss: Absolutely. I agree. Everyone can learn what it was going to say is they could never. Learn. So publicly the way you do, because it is completely different.
When you are a public person, you are robbed of the privilege of making mistakes privately, which I believe anyone should have the privilege of doing, of making mistakes with your interpersonal relationships and saying, I'm sorry. And then it not being this thing in your head of going, is this going to be a Twitter thread tomorrow?
Um, and I like what you're saying about Iweigh being a first point of. For activism for social justice. And I know that what you do with [00:22:00] Iweigh is incredible in the way that you constantly share, I remember when you started doing takeovers at the beginning, and now it's just constant. Like, I feel like you've the whole platform is for other people Jameela.
Um, and you've done that really well and made it in a way that it is accessible, even with the caption videos and all of this kind of shareable content that is easy to digest. Something that I've come up against. And even with my book, Women Don’t Owe You Pretty is the people it's like this new trendy way of, um, gatekeeping feminism is to bash women who find liberation in my book.
So it's like all through these platforms that are accessible it's as though, you know, everyone wants you to have read all of Marx theory before you can call yourself a feminist or call yourself a, this or that, or call yourself someone who cares about social justice. And that in itself is just completely inaccessible.
It's not accessible to everyone. And if the path to liberation for one woman [00:23:00] using like coming across my book in Tesco, because it's pink she thinks it's pretty, she takes it home and then she becomes a raging feminist at the end of it and then find reads bell hooks and all of these other incredible women.
If that's someone's first point of call for this kind of stuff, who are we to shame those people? And I totally relate to that. 

Jameela: Exactly! Exactly that, but that's why I really like, that's why I really like what you do is just like, I, I could have done with something like what you put out into the world. When I was younger, it would have felt like a, an accessible way.
I wasn't very, well-read like, I wasn't very, you know, and, and you write really well and you write in a really accessible way that it feels like you're not being lectured or made to feel stupid. You're just being spoken to by a mate. And I think that that's a real art form Florence, and I think that you are a great communicator. And it's not just your whiteness or your prettiness that has, uh, led to this level of success.
Cause a lot of white girls also trying to do the same thing as you, you do have a special skill for communicating and you do have a [00:24:00] way of making people like, you know, feel a bit rowdier.

Floss: Getting the girls rowdy!
 And I think that it's something that like when, when people were just trying to act like you are only a product of your privilege, I take an issue with that because you are more than that.
Of course you have privilege. Of course, you've had a leg up that someone else may not have had who looks different to you or whatever, um, or who moves differently through this world. But, but you. Yeah, you have a, a needed place in this society. You have a way of connecting with many different types of women and, or maybe especially different types of women like you.
And so if a girl who looks like you, maybe is more drawn to your book, but then learned about intersectional feminism, about race, about class, about all these different things about disability or sexuality, that's valuable. We still need that. It's what I mean about the pretentiousness. Now we don't need to all be Dostoevsky.
Like, like I, I am, I am very, very simple and plain in my terminology. And that doesn't mean I'm stupid. It just means that I am trying to speak [00:25:00] in a way that will communicate to the most people as fast as possible. We don't need awards. What we need is change fast and what's amazing to me. And like, I'm so curious to hear what you think about this, but I've been thinking about this a lot lately.
I, I wonder if it's because of like, I don't know, Tinder and Instagram and so many TV channels that we have such a, like a feeling of entitlement to choice that we feel like we get to also choose who helps. 

Floss: Yeah. You mean? 

Jameela: like you get to choose the people who speak about important issues and like who just chip into the conversation.
Obviously we should be able to choose our leaders. I think we have, now it was with, I was like, oh, it's like, we seem like we're doing so well. Like we're so ahead actually. Sorry, we don't actually need your help. Uh, cause you're a bit annoying or I don't, I just, I don't really like your fringe, so I'm just going to wait for someone else.

Floss: That was too specific but also I totally get the fringe thing!

Jameela: Like how well do we think that we're doing? We [00:26:00] need everyone to scrap in. Fucking educated, uneducated prop, formerly problematic and trying to change. Perfect. Morally superior. We need everyone evolves because we are fucking losing. We are in a fascist authoritarian, patriarchal uprising. Our abortion rights being taken away-

Floss: And we're saying get rid of her because we don’t like her fringe. 

Jameela: And we're just like, well, she's annoying. I don't like that she spoke about Tom Holland's and Zendaya’s height difference. Just, just fuck off and shut up. And scrap in man

Floss: Scrap in! Sleeves up!

Jameela: Stop showing everyone how great you are and just, yeah. Roll your sleeves up and help and educate people who don't know better. I think that's an excellent fucking point and everyone looks more disposable.

Floss: Yes. And I think, I think that that's, that's what it comes down to. I think you've made, uh, an amazing correlation there between the two, because yeah, we, you, we do a few people as more disposable. Dating apps or hell now that, that absolute hell we do view people as disposable because, uh, I recently watched his documentary called 15 minutes of shame.
Um, and [00:27:00] this expert on facial expressions said that you cannot register a human being as a human being, unless you see that face a name and a username and a profile picture, it's impossible to recognize them as a person. And so we do treat them through the screen as though they are fictional. And every time I do a talk, I don't know if you get this as well I have, and I'm doing a book signing or something, and I'm actually meeting people who follow me online and engage with my work. They always say, I can't believe you're real. I thought you were like this fictional character. And it was then that it clicked for me. Why people have said horrible things about me and why people treat me as so disposable as I'm sure you relate to as well.
And it's because yeah, they don't, you don't view people as a person. And I think that this entitlement and this access that we have to people on dating apps, it's like choice paralysis. We think that the world's our oyster, which can be a really liberating feeling, but also almost too much choice to the point where yeah, we're viewed as disposable.
So we're also gaining autonomy in our choice, but also losing some because of how we're being viewed.

Jameela: [00:28:00] Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's also, it's no coincidence. Therefore that the last two years has been especially brutal. And, and we have been especially cruel to one another and impatient with one another, because we aren't seeing each other's faces.

Floss: Because of the pandemic 
We're just sitting in our houses on our own frustrated, looking at, looking at everything, looking at the entire globe through a lens, looking at our friends, our loved ones and finding it just easier to discard human beings.

Floss: We're talking about social justice. Obviously the reason we got into this is because we care about it so much. Do you have any tips for anyone who has something they fucking care about and wants to turn something into it? Whether it's a school project or whether it's, uh, an Instagram platform or a podcast, what tips do you have?
Surviving this stuff, reminding yourself constantly coming back to your mission and why you're doing it. Well, look, I think, 

Jameela: First of all, I want to piggyback of what you just said, which is that we are absolutely not trying [00:29:00] to discourage you from joining, um, social justice. We are telling you to not be part of the problem and to not hold yourself to these impossible standards.
And we are telling you that you can be driving. I got accused of literally everything people said, I killed Caroline flack for fuck sake. At one point like this woman who I really cared about who had no, we had no beef with each other. That was nothing to do with me, but Piers Morgan needed the attention off of him because of what he was doing to peers, to Meghan Markle at the time as a, he quickly just randomly threw me under the bus with some old, like maybe real, maybe fake DMS from Caroline when she was mad at me a couple of years ago in a brief five minutes spat that we had that we immediately got over.
Because I've known her for 10 years. 
I got accused of having Munchausen. I got accused of, of like lying about my sexuality. I got accused of this, that, and the other, like it just being this like terrible evil liar. I weathered that storm and I knew it wasn't fucking true. I know that what I care about matters more than what other people think.
And I know that I will never be able to live in peace if I don't keep fighting for the things that I care about, [00:30:00] which is other people, marginalized groups. Women, Disabled people's rights. Like I, um, I know that what I want is more important than someone's passing judgment, some random fucking strangers passing judgment with me and there's life after death, because I thought everything was over for me back then.
And now I'm in fucking Marvel. All my shows have been picked up and I've got new fucking projects on the roads. And Iweigh is growing, and my podcast just hit 10 million downloads in our first year. Like this is not like, oh, I'm a girl boss. I’m saying all the things I cared about are still here. I'm better and I'm better and stronger for having withstood that and realizing the world doesn't end when you get criticized or when you are not liked or when you are not believed or when you are not approved of, I am living, walking, breathing proof that there is life after death.
I think that's what I said to you. I was like, I am the ghost of cancellations past and I was like, I'm here to tell you to keep going. Women cancel themselves. And this is feels like it's been a very Celebi podcast. [00:31:00] But we're talking about politicians or public figures or like famous activists or like women, or like, you know, actresses, whatever this, this shit is bleeding out into schools.
This is how kids are talking about when people are like, oh, Euphoria seems a bit dramatic. No Euphoria is practically a documentary of what it's like to be a teenager these days it's fucking harrowing. So this, this behavior that they watch us play out in a public sphere with politics and with actresses and influences.
That all bleeds into our culture. This, what we're saying is relevant to everyone, even though it might seem like we're talking about a very small subset of society, it's unfortunatelyvery influential, very highly publicized subset of society, that influences the rest of society. And so if you are someone who is looking to engage in the social justice space, or maybe re-engage because you left because you got terrified, like just practice, practice, what you preach, teach or treat others the way that you would like to be treated yourself. 
Like I used to be a much more brutal person. I'm much more careful in how I call things out, much more careful about [00:32:00] when I call things out, whether or not my voice is actually needed. And I reach out to other people.
I do not compete with other people. I look at newer activists who are doing the exact same thing as me as exciting, because there are more voices on the ground. I look at everything as we are growing, how do we grow stronger? Not how do I pick us apart until there's nothing left. And so I think it's just about listening to this, examining your own behavior.
Are you part of the problem? How can you be better and learning that, that even when you think it's over, it's not over till you say it's over. No one else gets to tell you when you have stopped growing. 

Floss: That was fucking brilliant. Um, I think so much, so much words of encouragement in the, um, for anyone listening, because I know that a lot of my audience are going to be people who maybe care about the things that I talk about and want to know how they can do the same, um, whether my podcast or my book or anything that I do is like an introduction to their feminism and their social justice.
But yeah, I think a lot of people coming to [00:33:00] this podcast are gonna take a lot from what you just said about being in social justice spaces.
I do have a few questions from my listeners that I'd like to ask you, um, obviously the theme of the episode is feminism and these are some of the questions. Oh, someone asked: Am I less of a feminist because I enjoy wearing makeup and care about my appearance?

Jameela: No David Bowie wore makeup. I think makeup is hilarious and fun and like a brilliant celebration of your face.
It's just art. You're just painting art. I would try to stay away from like the hell that is contouring and baking and caking, if you're trying to use makeup to cover up your face. I’d rather that you use it to try and celebrate what you do like rather than cover what you have been told not to like, but I think makeup is fine and fun. It's just like wearing colorful clothes to me. I, I don't [00:34:00] personally use makeup to, to like fake a new face. I use makeup just to be like, I'm throwing a party on my face. It sounds a bit jizzier than I meant. You know what I mean? Like I'm, I'm and throwing the party here on my face. 

Floss: Jizzier? [laughs]

Jameela: Yeah. 

Floss: Okay. Amazing. I thought you, I thought that would be the answer. 

Jameela: Yeah. I have a problem. Photoshop, because I think that then you are literally like, everyone can see when I'm wearing makeup or when I'm not wearing makeup. But if I'm literally changing my actual structural features, then I feel like I'm not only just like being dishonest to other people- fine that's not great, but, I'm really harming myself because then I have to look at my real face in the mirror and see that it doesn't get all my filtered face and then I cannot help, but hate myself because I've sat like a unrealistic precedent. It's bad for us more than it is for other people.

Floss: An interesting thing I found is that we've not only got beauty standards to now live up to, which obviously worse for people who are marginalized, [00:35:00] but we we have like two standards. So we have the standard of ourselves online and the beauty standard to live up to. And both. Morphed in the way that you're talking about with airbrushing your skin and tuning your body and stuff are impossible, but 

Jameela: that's what we do. Like this is just, it's just, it's this isn't feminism, feminism. Isn't like demanding someone be able to immediately run the marathon. It means allowing someone to like find the reason that women aren't perfect at fucking speaking about all of our feelings is because we've only just been allowed to start doing it since like 2015, on mass, you know?
Well, people came out, spoke about it. They want, we don't have a lot of practice. Men have been fucking banging on about shit for, you know, the whole of the history of time women are gonna need, we're gonna need some time to get really good at this, you know, like to get confident, to word things in a way that feels more inclusive of everyone else's experiences, not just ours.
Uh, you know, it's just like, we need to, we need a bit of fucking like time. What is this expectation? That's like, no, there will be no training. There [00:36:00] will be no stretching, go straight for the marathon. And win. This is not what feminism was supposed to be about, it's supposed to be about our equality and our growth.
Um, we're stunting each other's growth right now with this perfection standards of the inside and the outside of the human, you know, woman or person socialized as female. 

Floss: Such a good point. We've only just been allowed to fucking speak. So, um, give us a bit of leeway on how we express ourselves. Okay.
Another question: Why is competition among women more stimulated and why do women comply to this? What do you mean? What does that question mean? So we've spoken a lot about the ways that women compete. I think this person is asking, why is the competition among women more stimulated than it is with men?

Jameela: Oh, it's because we were taught that there's any room for one of us and that we must, uh, kill each other. And it's a way to make us focus on each other rather than focus on problematic men. So they've turned us against destruction so that we're all staring at one another. Yeah, it's a distracting, it's a distraction technique.
It's also a feeling of like [00:37:00] scarcity, basically just this feeling that like there's only room for one. That's just so depressing it's so, um, it's so shortsighted and it makes the world feel very small for us. And that's because they don't want us to grow a numbers because we grow numbers will become more powerful because we're stronger together.
So they want us isolated. Cause we're easier to abuse, gaslight and corrupt on our own.

Floss: Easier to manipulate when isolated, just like a cult. 

Jameela: Yeah. Yeah, truly. Yeah. It's just an abuse. It's an abuse mechanism. It's a perfectly, uh, well-oiled abusive mechanism. 

Floss: So another question on the same topic, um, to do it like women competing, how do you respond to women?
Who don't share your views on feminism or hate to feminism? How would you approach that situation? Let's say someone in your life. 

Jameela: Um, I mean, I have someone in my life who didn't think that she was a feminist, she said to me, I'm not a feminist. And I was like, do you think that a man should be paid the same as you, if you do the same work.
And she was like, yeah, I was like, that's feminism. I was like, do you think that you should have the same voting rights? Do you think you should be entitled to like [00:38:00] healthcare and like safety? 

Floss: So it’s laying out the basics Jameela. 

Jameela: That’s feminism, it's just, it's just really just making it feel as like. It as, as easy and, and humane and, and natural as possible because it is it's so it's so humane. It's so not radical. Feminism is the least radical thing in the world. It's just basically, it's really just very, very basic, uh, everything we're asking for just because the language is complicated, the concept is not. Um, and so that's, that's how I feel. I don't feel, I often feel like when I meet someone like that they’re are product of their environment, just like I was and having been as problematic as I was before, and probably still am in some ways. Um, I have nothing, but like I'm, I'm excited to meet someone who has room to grow. I'm not out here the same Saint saints and Pope's, I'm out here excited to watch people like kind of, I don't know, see things differently.
So I approach them with great enthusiasm. 

Floss: That's so interesting and a really positive spin [00:39:00] because I do feel like we are encouraged to cut out or disqualify people who have room to grow, but I equally feel so excited because I'm like, wow, you have so much to learn.

Jameela: It's fun. Learning is fun. Learning is cool.
Absolutely. 

Floss: So a spin off question from that. How much total? Should you have for people in your life who are learning when it comes to people using outdated language? Yeah, 

Jameela: I think, I think I would always extend, especially an older person. I would extend them the grace of having the conversation with them about why that is a problem.
And, you know, and if you don't want to do it yourself, you can send them a podcast. Cause there are millions of podcasts about it or you can give them a book. I think it's only the people who aren't willing to look at it, who aren't willing to unpack it, who aren't willing to change. Those are the only people that I would then discard, but yeah.
I, I always accept that people are a product of their environment and I always take the phone kind of like with Dave Chappelle with all that shit, like the first time he did it, I was like, okay, this man just clearly does not know any trans people and does not really know what he’s talking about it. And he's like a product of like maybe a homophobic upbringing or like friendship group or whatever.
Like, [00:40:00] but by the fourth time he’d done it? Well, the same thing with J K Rowling, like by the fucking second and third time she'd done it. You were just like, I want to go just doing this on purpose. You actually don't want to see another point of view. You are actually enjoying the fact that you were allowed to be problematic and just get away with it because you're 14 million followers.
So I think that I always, like, I hope for the best in people and that's what I think we've lost in our society. We're not actually wishing for the best anymore. 

Floss: Wow that’s so depressing. And true.

Jameela: And I do still have hope for people to change. And I, I do, I, I do believe I know the capacity and the impact of human change, and I'm still looking for it.
So I'll always give someone one opportunity, maybe two, depending on their age and environment. And after that, then that's a choice. That's not just a, an accident. 

Floss: Yeah, I totally agree. I'm um, I'm making new friends who are, who didn't know me through social media, I've just met them like out and about. And it has been the [00:41:00] most refreshing experience ever to interact with people who don't have their head in this, uh, black and white way of thinking that you kind of adopt with social media.
And it's been the most refreshing, refreshing thing ever to be around people that don't view you as disposable. Um, and that's something that I, on top of what we're talking about now, to anyone listening, I would recommend making friends that don't view you as disposable. And if, if you're constantly treading on eggshells around your friends about saying the wrong thing, or even asking questions or whatever, then that's probably not really a healthy environment to be in, because like you said Jameela, we’re losing hope in people. And we can't, I think it's bell hooks, I saw this quote floating around recently because obviously she passed away and it was a quote about how accountability and forgiveness have to be hand in hand, because to be able to believe in accountability, you have to [00:42:00] believe in people's humanity to change else accountability won't work. And I think that's really important, allowing people to change. 

Jameela: What is activism? Yeah. What is the point of activism? If you don't think anything's actually going to change? 

Floss: I thought that's what we wanted. Right? Change people to change?

Jameela: That's the whole point. Yeah. That's what I want you to change, but I don't believe you can say fuck you. This is not how we're going to get anywhere 

Floss: So Jameela, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Um, I've enjoyed this conversation so much. I have one last question for you to kind of round off with, if you have one book to recommend to anyone listening to learn about all the stuff we're talking about on feminism, social justice, um, women in the media, all of this stuff that you care about, what book would that.

Jameela: Probably Bad Feminist by Roxanne Gay, who does an amazing job at investigating, uh, our own kind of inner hypocrisy is within the movement and what we need to unpack in [00:43:00] ourselves. And all of our kind of internalized patriarchy- it’s a real masterclass in honesty. And I think has liberated a lot of women to feel like I'm allowed to grow in this space. You are allowed to grow in this space and I hope you do, and I hope you do it with me and Florence. 

Floss: Yeah. I read Bad Feminist a couple of summers ago and it felt exactly the same, it’s a great recommend.
You have no idea how refreshing it is to have a conversation with someone about such a niche topic like being a woman in the public eye. A lot of people speak about, you know, how to get there. But not really so much, how to deal with it. And I love that that's what Jameela is doing and that she continues to exist in the public eye, despite the many attempts, from several people in the media, in hub, in her public life to make sure she doesn’t stay there.
And that's what I admire about a lot of the women that I've interviewed for my podcast, because they have this tenacity and resilience to just keep fucking going. I really hope that what Jameela and I had to say today could help you look at the media with more of a critical eye and see that not everything is as it seems- the click bait and all of this stuff is designed to lure you in. I think Jameela is an absolute legend. I love how ridiculously honest she is. And I think that that is something to be valued. Especially in this industry. If you enjoy today's episode, you're going to love Jameela’s podcast Iweigh, and you can get more from her on her Instagram, @JameelaJamil, and all other social media platforms that she uses.
Next week I'm going to be talking to the incredible Shon Faye. I can't wait for this episode. It's all about trans liberation. It's such an important subject. Well, she's an absolute cracking guest and I can’t wait for you to hear it. And if you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget, I'll be answering even more [00:45:00] of your questions in our bonus episodes that are available to subscribers. You can ask me absolutely anything. 
If you want to send a question in you can drop me a text or a voicemail on WhatsApp on plus 4 4 7 8 9 0 3 0 2 6 6 5. And a massive thank you to the fucking incredible Black Honey who composed the original theme music for my podcast. You can find them on instagram @BlackHoneyUK and check out their latest album called Written and Directed. 

To keep yourself updated with all the latest episodes as they drop. You can follow it exactly on apple podcasts, Spotify, Amazon music, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And please take the time to rate us wherever you listen to our podcasts and leave us a review, it really does help people to find us and make sure that the people who need to hear these conversations do.

This is a podcast, something else. My producer is Milly Chowles. My assistant [00:46:00] producer is Ella McLeod. Executive producer is Carly Maile, production coordinator is Lily Hambly and I want to give a special thanks to our engineers, Jay Beale, Josh Gibbs and mixing engineer, Gulli Lawrence Tickell, and additional production from Chris Skinner and Teddy Riley.