EP. 154 — Ask Jameela Anything

 

[00:00:26] Jameela Hello and welcome to an unusual episode of I Weigh with Jameela Jamil, a podcast against shame. This week, I have no guest. There were some scheduling issues and so I’m on my Jack Jones. I’m all alone. And I think that is there’s almost nothing I find scarier than the idea of talking completely alone with no one to bounce off of. I don’t trust my brain. But you know what? I keep telling you guys to run at your fears and to face failure and to, you know, not negotiate with the terrorists in your head, that’s telling you imposter syndrome things. And so I guess I’m just going to jump in my own fuck it bucket and and and do this alone. Thankfully, you’re all great. And I asked you all on Instagram for some questions that you would like me to answer. And I’ve done some of these kind of episodes before, but I normally have a much smarter and funnier guest with me but you’re stuck with me on my own. You’ve sent me those questions, however, and I’m going to do my best to answer them so this is an ask me and only me anything with Jameela jamil. Here we fuckin go. Now. First and foremost, the questions that I saw come up, god, maybe like 200 times was about how thin everyone was at the Oscars last Sunday. So many questions, so many comments, so many people feeling triggered. And I did briefly respond to this publicly on Instagram, but I’d like to delve further into it because it’s a fucking complicated situation, right? You have a noticeable weight loss amongst very famous women in the industry, including women who have up until now been significantly curvier than a lot of actresses who have made their kind of brand built around kind of body positivity, body acceptance and relatability. And even those people, and we see the same thing with like influencers on TikTok and Instagram are losing really like noticeable and shocking amounts of weight in a very short period of time right in front of us, because they’re constantly documenting their lives. Now it is every single person’s right to do whatever the fuck they want to do with their body. No one owes it to anyone to be any size, to stay big, to stay small, whatever. None of that is any of my interest. But watching people lose weight publicly at a very fast speed, whether we like it or not, is difficult for people to see. And I want to just acknowledge that I understand that’s difficult and you’re allowed, while they don’t have any responsibility to look a certain way or whatever, you are allowed to feel triggered by that, you are allowed to compare yourself to your own body. That’s the fucking name of the game. That’s the reason why Hollywood and the fashion industry thrives is because they want you to feel bad about yourself. They want you to compare yourself to really unrealistic ideals set by people in my career, my position, so that you’ll go out and buy shit that they tell you will make you look like incredibly privileged people who’ve often had surgery and loads of cosmetic procedures and who are airbrushed and wearing makeup that’s been done by professional artists like Michelangelo level makeup artists and having their hair done and they’re wearing extensions and fake eyelashes and all this shit, all these smoke and mirrors. And we want you to feel like you are failing because you don’t look like these people who are spending like sometimes five grand in one day to look the way they do on the red carpet. And it’s super problematic. It’s why I talk about it all the fucking time. I never shut up because I was so fucked up by this stuff when I was a teenager because I used to compare myself to these people chronically. And then it was absolutely insane to enter this industry unexpectedly. I never planned to be in Hollywood or in the entertainment industry. I wanted to be a doctor because I am South Asian as fuck but didn’t manage to finish school. So I find myself like Trojan horsed my way in partially by mistake into this industry where I’m in the belly of the beast and I get to see first hand all the bullshit that goes in to making people look the way they do. I see them before and after, and I now know the inner workings and the exact system and chain of command that leads to us feeling as shit as I did when I was 12 years old, looking from the outside in. Now I know that there’s been more transparency because of social media since then. I’m not about to like fucking blow everyone’s mind. But sometimes we do need a reminder because we do feel gaslit when we see nothing but constant images of absolutely everyone starting to look the same. Everyone’s getting the same nose because we use the fucking filters that changed our noses. And then everyone wanted to look in real life like they did in the filters. And so they went to surgeons and got their noses done. And it’s the same nose. I look around Hollywood parties now, everyone’s got the same nose, everyone’s developing the same lips, everyone’s eyes are lifting and now the same body. Everyone wants to be thin again. We saw that headline a few months ago that went super viral where everyone was saying heroin chic is back. We have gone through the cycle that comes up again. We saw it in the twenties, we saw it in the forties, We saw in the late sixties, early seventies and eighties. And then it got really bad in the early noughties and then it went away again. Everyone got curvy again, just like they did in the fifties and the sixties and blah blah, blah, blah blah. And now we’re back to the cycle of emaciated. That is that is the chic. Now I have some conspiracy theories and I’m going to offer to you, and I have no one here to challenge me. So maybe I’m going to go off the rails more specifically to this period as to why I think heroin chic came back so quickly out of nowhere and why everyone conformed in my industry is because during the pandemic, a lot of factories suffered massively due to the fact that we had lockdowns and we had people who couldn’t go and work together indoors in factories and people couldn’t work in design houses. And suddenly there was this ginormous material shortage. I genuinely think this might have something to do with the fact that then I noticed because I’m constantly having to do fittings for work and for events and stuff that the samples were getting smaller. I think the samples are getting smaller, not just because designers who are predominantly male hate women or something like that, but because the material that we did have available after COVID suddenly became much more expensive because there was less of it available. So I think that’s why we suddenly started having cropped everything. I didn’t see a single fucking shirt that wasn’t cropped, cropped t shirts, cropped vests, like three inch mini skirts, the mumu skirt that went super viral that barely covers your clitoris. And that’s fine. You could do what you want, but that became like a normalized length of skirt. The trousers became everything was fucking cropped. And I remember at the time thinking, Why is this a style? And then it occurred to me that, oh yeah, this, this, the sizing is getting smaller. Suddenly a small feels like an extra, extra small. Suddenly a large feels like a small like suddenly I can’t fit into and I’m a, you know, a slim sort of size 8 US woman I can’t fit into most normal clothing stores’s bigger size. Everything’s shrinking. Oh, it’s because there’s been a fucking shortage. But rather than say that rather than pull back on the amount of output they are producing, rather than announce the fact that there have been shortages, therefore they need to make less clothes. They gaslight us into thinking there’s something wrong with us and our bodies, a lot of which got bigger during the pandemic because we were stuck inside and not doing anything and not moving and protecting ourselves like good citizens. Instead, they made us think this is a new, fun, exciting trend for everyone to jump back on. And so they made us feel like it’s now our responsibility to feel comfortable in constantly cropped clothes and to have the kind of bodies that suit really cropped things. I personally think anybody can suit any kind of item. It really depends on the individual and the confidence with which they wear it. However, not everyone feels comfortable if they’re spilling out of things. Not everyone wants to show their flesh. I particularly don’t love showing my flesh all the time. I have to be in a very particular kind of mood and I normally need to have some sort of anxiety medication because I’m weird about nudity. I don’t know where that comes from. Honestly, if I could shower in like a full suit and tie, I think I would. Anyway. So now how do we take the shortage and apply it to what we’re seeing currently at the Oscars? Actresses, models, entertainers, etc., Influencers. We have to promote the work that we do. Sometimes we contractually have to promote the work that we do, and that means going to red carpets and it means appearing in fucking magazines. Now when we do this, the things that we are allowed to wear we are supposed to wear are current collections that have just come fresh off a runway. Now if something is fresh off a runway. It means there’s only one single sample of it. That’s where sample size comes from. So it’s all these clothes made in one size. In spite of the fact that this industry is full of entertainers from different ages, different heights, different fucking racial backgrounds, which means different body types, different weights, different human beings. But we are just given one single uniform size that we are basically subliminally told or maybe kind of explicitly told that we are all supposed to be. It’s like, Fuck you. It doesn’t matter if you’re five foot one or five foot 11, you have to be the same size, hips, bust and waist. And so you turn up in a magazine shoot and they’ve got all these clothes just in one size, and you have to find a way to fit into them. And that is non-negotiable. There’s nothing you could do about it. You can’t bring your own clothes. If you want to be in the magazine to promote your fucking shit, which you have to do contractually, otherwise you won’t be hired again for another job. You have to fit into this fucking sample. Same thing with the red carpet. Now with the red carpet it’s slightly different in that you can sometimes alter the dress to make it bigger, right? However, doing that costs an extra thousand to $1,500. You’re already paying for a stylist. Now, if you are a younger actress or an actress who is more marginalized, or an actress who doesn’t have the same kind of readily funds available and that’s an insane amount of money, that’s an insane amount of money for anyone. So potentially, and not just potentially, but certainly because I used to be in this position when I was younger and I didn’t have any money and I didn’t have any power. You have so many talented people, but because they look a little different in their body and because they don’t have millions of fucking dollars are being priced out of being able to promote their work, being priced out of the industry, priced out of the limelight, there’s no democracy whatsoever. It’s all about who has the most privilege, who fits into the uniform, who can afford it, and a lot of people who can’t afford it, especially in an industry where the women are mostly paid significantly less than the men just think, Well, fuck it, I can’t afford to change the clothes. I’m going to starve my way into these clothes. I’m going to do whatever it takes. I will, at any cost, make myself so thin that I’m not going to have to inconvenience my stylist or inconvenience the magazine. I don’t want to be embarrassed in front of everyone having to make the clothes bigger or leave them completely open at the back, which I have done several times at photoshoots because I refuse to starve myself. I’m going to conform. That’s what they want. They want us to conform. They expect us to conform. They don’t want us to change the clothes. It is treated like a huge inconvenience when we have to tailor anything. And so there’s constant underlying pressure and in these performers to be able to conform. Now, I know this sounds really fucking frivolous given everything that’s going on in the world, but I’m about to break down why it matters. This is a part of the industry that’s never going to change. People are always going to have to promote work. They’re always going to have to wear shit right off the runway. God forbid we can make samples in multiple sizes straight off the runway. God fucking forbid. We are always going to have people feeling a pressure to have to fit into those clothes. Are not being able to afford to tailor those clothes. So that means we’re left with if all the samples get smaller, a bunch of people doing whatever they have to do to fit into those clothes. And that means losing a shit ton of weight. An award season is when we see the worst onslaught of that, because that’s the most pressure to go out every single day to a different event in a different tiny dress. And those images get circulated everywhere and they exist in perpetuity. And that is our image of that actress or that performer or that influencer. Right. We think they look like that 360 days a year. They do not. The starving for the Oscars begins in like Christmas, right. Day after Christmas Day. Everyone sort of starts there. Not everyone, but the vast majority and I’ve been in this industry for 15 years. The normalized conversation begins of right. I’ve had my Christmas dinner. I’ve enjoyed myself with my family, time to cut out as many foods as I can so I can slip into those gowns without troubling anyone. They have personal trainers. They get procedures done. There’s been a huge increase in people taking weight loss injections. They’re for, traditionally for people with diabetes. Right. We’ve spoken about this before on the podcast, there are people taking I think it’s called semaglutide injections to experience fast weight loss. Now, some people really need these medications. They are not designed for people who just have 5 to 10 pounds to lose, but they’re being abused by entertainers in the industry who can afford these things off prescription. So through all of these methods, a lot of which are dangerous and a slippery slope to their mental health, they achieve this thinness. And then the peer pressure starts. We start seeing them congratulated everywhere. We start seeing people in the comment section clapping and applauding them. We see them looking happy and confident in those images. And we haven’t been told about all of the hell that it took, all of the Spanx that they’re wearing, all the padding, the fact that they haven’t eaten for days beforehand, the fact that they’re fucking terrified on that red carpet, the fact that they can’t breathe, we just kind of normalize women’s pain and discomfort and suffering and and deprivation. Now, as you’ve seen in the last week, you see all these people who are on social media seeing these images feeling incredibly bad about themselves. My DMs are rammed. They are rammed full of people who suddenly feel like they’re not good enough. You suddenly feel like all the people who spoke about body positivity, were just bullshitting. And they were just saying that because they weren’t in the accepted thin body yet. And now that they’ve become acceptably thin, they’ve discarded all of the talk of body positivity. A lot of you feel let down. And I just want you to know you’re not alone. I haven’t seen this much conversation around bodies and celebrity weight loss as I’ve seen in the last week, and it’s okay to feel triggered. It’s really fucking important that maybe you step away from social media right now. Maybe you take a break from these images because while we remain in this ambiguous state in which we are compared to the most pampered, preened and polished version of a human woman, it’s just not safe. I have been that woman. I have been the woman who starved herself for three weeks before a photoshoot who can barely stand, who finally eats a carb at the end and then starts shaking because my body doesn’t even know what to do with the stuff. I was not happy. I’m smiling on all those red carpet photos. I look confident, I look happy. I’m bullshitting on the red carpet about what a great day I’m having. I’m fucking starving. I’m fucking freezing, have no sex drive. And surely the point of going to a party where everyone is really hot and attractive is that you might shag someone. I’m not interested. Can’t wait to get home. Can barely stand. Comparing myself to everyone else feel so insecure, feel so terrified that some photographer is going to catch me at the wrong angle. I’ve been that woman. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. It’s not as good as it looks. Everyone’s making it look great. I can’t tell you the fucking horseshit suffering a nightmare It is to maintain that. And I have never stopped feeling sorry for being a part of that culture when I was in my twenties and talking about how, you know, I just eat what I like. I was one of those fucking pygmy girls who had bullshit like that because I couldn’t admit I had a really crippling eating disorder. Now I don’t want to shame anyone, and I’m trying not to shame myself about that time. But it’s just how the fucking industry works right now. And before I move on, I just want to say one more thing about the women who are being complicit in this. I wish they weren’t, but I understand why they are. And so this really isn’t built to demonize them. They are part of a system that is designed to shame them, blame them, hold them back, make them fear gaining weight, make them fear daring to age just because they’ve lived a long time, which is a great thing. I don’t want the blame to be placed on them. They aren’t the problem. The samples are the fucking problem. The industry is the problem. The magazines are the problem. This industry is the issue. So don’t take your rage out on the individuals who are being poisoned. As long as they’re not selling your shit, they start selling you those weight loss injections. I will come for them before you even make it to them. But they are victims of this system. Go after the system. Don’t follow the magazines. Don’t engage with the red carpet photos like unfollow people. That’s how you change society. Capitalism will always follow you. You are the market. You get to decide what’s trendy. If you don’t give these things attention, if you don’t get these people attention, shit will change so fast. We saw it happen with body positivity. As soon as it became trendy, everyone started jumping on it. We’ve done it before. We have made so much fucking progress we don’t have to go back. All right. So next up, someone says to me, How did you manage to accept and love your body in any shape or size? Really struggling with body acceptance. I’ve said this before, I think at some point in the podcast, but as you’ve heard, it’s still an ongoing process. It’s still a journey. It’s not easy in a world that continues to gaslight us and harm us and shame us and make us hate ourselves. I don’t know if I’ll ever be at full body acceptance. I think I’m always going to have body dysmorphia, which is where you see something different in the mirror from what really exists. But I practice neutrality, and so that means that I don’t try to accept my body. I just know that my body is there and I try to think of my body as like a separate person as like my friend, my friend who took me out, you know, until 5 a.m. on the Oscars night and still managed to help me wake up the next day. I think of my my body as having healed me and survived a pandemic and and taken me through my ridiculous twenties where I don’t think I slept the entire time. I look at my body as this friend that I want to protect and look after because it’s done so much for me. We’re taught to hate and turn on our bodies and it’s really, really important that we don’t because that’s all in the name of capitalism. Our bodies are the ultimate ride or die. And as with anything you want to preserve in the long term, you have to treat it well. Looking at it in a more sort of pragmatic way like that has really helped me, has really the thought of my help has really helped me look at my body as like an engine. And I look at food now as fuel for my engine. What’s the best fuel to help my engine run? That’s going to stop my engine from getting really sick one day and failing on me. And when it comes to mirrors, I just don’t really look in full length mirrors. I often wear tight clothes. Almost everything I wear is baggy because I just don’t want to think about it. I don’t want the feeling of something tight pulling on my body and I just don’t make myself uncomfortable. I don’t take a lot of photographs. I don’t put myself in positions that are going to make me feel self-conscious. I really protect myself as if I’m still that little 12 year old with an eating disorder. I don’t follow people online that trigger me even if I like them, even if I’m friends with them because I am in this industry. But the images they put out make me feel bad about myself, so I just don’t want to look at it. I don’t follow certain magazines. I really practice neutrality. I just don’t want to think about my body. I’d like to think about literally anything else because when I was obsessed with my body, it made me a boring person. And that’s not to shame anyone. It just it takes over your whole soul. So don’t try too hard for acceptance as the first goal. Just try and work your way to neutrality. And even that is an amazing achievement. If you can get to a point where you’re like, I don’t hate it and I don’t love it, it’s just there and it’s doing its best. It’s just chugging along, doing its thing. That’s an incredible achievement. And then maybe one day you’ll get to acceptance and love. But just for now, try to get to a place of kind of ambivalence. That’s my advice. Someone else cleverer might have better advice. Also, therapy. Therapy, if you can reach it in any way. Very, very good. So. The next question is how do you deal with your EDS symptoms day to day? How does it affect your mental health? Now, EDS is Ehlers-danlos syndrome is something I don’t talk about a lot publicly, because specifically when women talk about their health, they get gaslit and accused of lying about it, especially if they look well. And the problem with EDS, which is a ehlers-danlos syndrome, is that we are very sick, but we look absolutely fine. So I have been gaslit publicly before over my health, and therefore I somewhat minimize how much I speak about it. But today. I. I told you you were allowed to ask me about it because I would like to have that conversation with you. Even though I’m really just barking at a microphone on my own. But, uh, EDS is a collagen deficiency. It affects, like, every cell in your body, basically every new cell that’s being created. It impacts, impacts your skin, your teeth, your organs, your joints really fucks up my joints. I have hyper mobile EDS, which means that I dislocate my joints all the time really easily, even if I’m not doing anything. Sometimes it happens while I’m lying down in bed. And so it’s a debilitating condition and it makes you feel, as with many chronic health issues, really fucking persecuted. So I find my youth really hard and I find this industry really hard. And I look around all these fuckin healthy people, especially the ones who are like taking drugs or taking the fucking weight loss injections if they don’t need them or like starve. Like they do all these like damaging things to their body. And I feel really resentful that these people can take any risks, um, knowing that, like, the slightest thing can throw me off for weeks and weeks and weeks. Um, I feel resentful that it’s harder for me to do a 14 hour day sometimes than other people. I resent the fact that my legs are swollen at the end of every single day. So in between every take, I have to run somewhere and like privately put my legs up against a wall to try and decrease the swelling as fast as I can. I resent the fact that I can’t really talk about it openly with people I work with, otherwise I’m worried I’ll be discriminated against, which is why I’m just talking about it now on this Super Secret podcast. But at this point, cats out of the fucking bag and I don’t really care anymore. I don’t want to do work that’s going to be too hard for my body. It’s frustrating being a brown woman and already having the limitations that come with that and then also having this thing that is stopping you from fulfilling your dreams and your potential. It’s hard. But it has also taught me to be incredibly grateful for the things that do work in my body for the days that are good, for the days where I wake up in less pain. It’s taught me a gratitude that I don’t think I ever would have had and taught me an ability to enjoy the day and make the most of everything. And I know it sounds so cheesy to be like, you know, without the darkness we can’t appreciate the light, but I think it’s made me a stronger person. I think it’s made me a more empathetic person towards other people’s struggles. It has made me realize I’m fucking made of diamonds. I mean, slightly sort of budget diamonds, I think, because shits not working properly. But I feel I feel so proud of myself for getting up every day and for trying and for getting past the insecurities that come with when you’re, you know, your whole face fucking swells up for no reason and your legs are swelling and you’re in pain or you’re walking a bit funny. You know, it’s it’s testing and it’s okay to say it’s testing. It’s okay for you to admit that you find it testing. You don’t have to be stoic all the time, but I give myself space to mourn the freedoms that I lose. And I’m luckier than many who have this condition because I have a great health support system. But it has shaped me in ways that I’m comfortable with. And I wouldn’t go so far as to be so disingenuous that I say I’m so grateful for it. But there are things it has given me that I I’d do it again. I’d have this condition again because of ways in which it shaped me that make me like myself. And and so I want you to know that I think you’re fucking amazing. If you’re dealing with something like this and you’re allowed to be grumpy. I’m so fucking grumpy. Sometimes you’re allowed to be grumpy. Let it all hang out, babe. Be grumpy, fucking moan about it. You’re a hero and heroes are allowed to moan. We don’t talk enough about the moaning that heroes need to do. You can’t store that stuff up inside, otherwise you’ll just get sicker. So let it out. Let it be known to others around you what a legend and hero you are. And just take it easy. Take it easy. Feel free to take it easy. You don’t have to keep up with anyone. You just have to keep up with yourself. Listen to your body. Do not push it. Do not think you can outsmart it. Eventually everything catches up with you. Just live your life as slowly and tenderly as you can. I’m not going to have the kind of career that maybe I dreamed of because there are certain things I’m just not going to be able to do certain hours I’m not going to be able to work, and I’ve come to accept that that’s okay because nothing is more important than feeling good in the long term. I hope that was clear. All right. The next one, what was the last thing you did for you that made you feel empowered? And any tips on how to encourage others to do the same for themselves? What was the last thing I did? I think I’ve been on a kind of gradual empowerment journey in the specifics of learning how to say no. Even in the way that I was talking about earlier, like no, I’m not going to go to that event and wear that thing for that brand. That won’t make something in my fucking size. No, I don’t want to put up with this friendship that makes me feel like shit. No, I don’t want to talk to this family member anymore who makes me feel like shit. I have strict boundaries and I offer people the chance to meet me at my boundary, and if they cross it, they can all go get fucked. I have fired people who work with me because I felt like they were not being honorable or truthful. I have just I’ve just decided, like I’m I’m in my villain era. I am in my era of no. And it started with my micro nos, just like little things like, Oh, sorry, that coffee hasn’t come the way that I ordered it. Please, can I have one the way that I ordered it or this this meal has got something I’m allergic to in it can can I please have a different plate without the thing I’m allergic to? And which normally, as an English person, I would never, ever do, that’s a sacrilege. And then it became bigger and bigger nos like little career nos. Like, No, I won’t do that. No, I’m not going to starve myself. No, I don’t want to take my clothes off on camera and and be a sexual object. No problem for people who do. But I personally don’t, and I know that will advance my career, but I personally won’t feel great on the day. And so I don’t want to do it. Just little nos that I’ve just grown exponentially to the point of now cutting off people that society tells us we’re not allowed to cut off people in our lives, family, old friends. I just don’t care. I have my boundary, I’m sticking to my boundary and my mental health has soared since doing this. I cannot recommend it enough. No, it is a full sentence. It is the most powerful word in the English language other than maybe fuck, but I think no might be even more powerful and I urge you to use it as often as you can because it is the best weapon for your self-preservation. And you know what’s being selfish gets a bad rap. Be a bit selfish. Life is short. YOLO. If we learned anything in the pandemic in the last three is is that very few people have actually got our back. So let’s look after ourselves and be a bit ruthless and get the fucking life that we actually want. You don’t have to put up with anyone that you don’t want to. And if you are stuck in a situation with someone that you don’t like, work as fast and hard as you can to extract them from your life and you know, you never know. They might change and they might come back and you might, you know, rekindle your relationship. But. I really want you to practice more ruthlessness and self-preservation. Okay, so the next question I got, I got loads of times and I feel like this is a conversation that’s starting to crop up more and more on social media. Someone asked me, In your opinion, is there a risk of people becoming less resilient the more emphasis is placed on exploring mental health? It’s really fucking tricky and it’s really fucking nuanced. And what I would say is that the overall outcome of us talking about mental health more and pathologizing and naming feelings has been positive, right? Because a lot of people feel much less alone and they all have sought more help because they realize that there’s something that’s not working quite right and they’ve opened up to friends and family and it’s made people just feel like we’re together in this. I think that’s really fucking great and really fucking important. And it probably saved my life to understand that I was mentally ill, which I might not have understood had we not changed global discourse around the brain, around the mind, how mental health works. However, I saw this video of Esther Perel, who was fucking brilliant on this podcast last year. You should definitely go listen to that episode. But Esther Perel is an amazing psychologist and she was talking about the fact that she’s concerned that the rise, especially on apps like TikTok, of people saying, I’ve got ADHD or this is depression or this is anxiety. She was like, there’s benefits to it. But also, are we making people only less resilient, but like, are we over pathologizing what is really just young people struggling with a terrible world? And the reason that’s important is that she’s not victim shaming anyone, right? She’s not being like, you need to toughen up your little snowflake. She’s saying that the world is objectively shit right now and things are getting shitter in far too many places, in places where it should not be getting any shitter at all. Places where we know better and where we have the funds to not make things as scary as they are becoming. Right. The rise in abortion access being taken away. The rise in gay marriage now being on the chopping block, the rise in hate crimes. And the discourse has become so uncivil on both political sides. It’s like it’s just chaos. The fucking climate, the flooding, the fires. It doesn’t actually mean there’s something wrong with you if you’re feeling anxious or you’re feeling depressed. And I’m not in any way trying to diagnose you. I’m not a fucking mental health professional. But her point is that we might not push for the social change that we need for the societal change that we need if we’re just telling everyone that they’re just sick. Like, maybe you are having a very, very normal response to an abnormal society, and maybe rather than just you needing to change or you needing to work on yourself or you needing to be medicated, our system needs to change. This world needs to be less scary for women, for marginalized people, for trans people, for people living in areas that are disproportionately impacted by climate change. Maybe we need to change the world. It’s really fucking convenient for the government and for the people who are supposed to build systems to protect us, to keep telling everyone, well, the numbers of of suicide rates are going up, the depression’s going up, ADHD is going up. And we never actually investigate the cause as to why that is. People aren’t just randomly becoming unhappier. We’re becoming unhappier because the world is becoming a harder and harder place to be. Some people are not having children because they don’t want to. Some people are not having children cause they can’t afford to, or because they’re terrified of raising children wherever they live, they might live somewhere that’s becoming really fucking scary. So why are we only looking at the individuals rather than the actual culture built around it? It’s all going to be on an individual case by case basis. But I thought what she raised was an interesting point about no longer just making everyone feel sick, but also registering that there is a sickness in our society that needs to be remedied first and foremost before we just start pointing our fingers at everyone and pathologizing everything. And there’s nothing wrong with you if you are feeling anxious. So it’s just worth consideration. So I think Esther has a point, and I think it’s a really important point, and I don’t think it’s attempting to gaslight anyone, but it’s just making sure that you don’t get too lost in all these labels of mental health issues that might just be symptoms of your environment. What I, what I what I will say on the kind of personal level is that whatever you get labeled with or you label yourself with, do you know that life can still change. Don’t allow that to define you. I think that’s something that I feel very strongly about. Don’t feel like, Well, then I am just an anxious person. So I’m never I fallen into that trap before. Like when I was told I had anxiety, I was like, Well, I’m so anxious. I’m just not going to leave house anymore. I’m not going to do anything that makes me anxious. Maisie Hill, who was also amazing on this podcast talking about period Power, recently said in an Instagram post of hers that, you know, she’s got autism and she registers that the wind is something that really triggers her. And so it made her obsessed with avoiding the wind once she learned that she was autistic. And it’s a proper trigger for autism. And she started even checking like every day the weather to see if it was going to be windy that day and then wouldn’t go outside, even with her kids if it was windy and she just became like petrified of it. And actually there was there was a difference to be split there where it’s like, okay, I register that I’m troubled by the wind. I’m going to try not to go out into like fucking, I don’t know, like a gale storm, but I know that I’m going to survive and I’m going to be okay and I’m going to find a way to make some peace with the wind where I can at least bear it so that I’m not stopped from living my entire life. It really resonated with me because I think I’m someone who has a predisposition to wanting to bubble myself too much. Now I’m all for self-preservation, as we know, but I don’t want to get to a point where I deny myself of experiences and growth and things that might I might actually be okay with just because I wasn’t in the past. Maybe I can find some other coping techniques. Maybe I can work with the therapist or with friends, or tell someone that I’m scared and they can reassure me and we can do it together. I have found that to be work arounds when I haven’t just gone well, I’m afraid of that. Therefore, I’m never going to go near it again. So it’s a more important subject and it’s one that I realize now in this moment that I probably need to cover with a proper psychologist on this podcast. And I will do that. And I thank you for asking that question. So many of you asked me that question today because of the rising discourse of are we pathologizing people too much, especially women? And and I appreciate it. And I’m going to delve into it with someone who went to school. Okay, so next one. Do you find it hard to be in an industry that is riddled with eating disorders and unhealthy standards? Short answer yes, but I make it through because of you guys. Because I have you guys and I have I Weigh. And we’re fighting this shit together and I feel hope and optimism because of you. Next question. Hey, Jameela, do you ever have something like a quarter life crisis? I’m having one big time, and I’m practically doubting everything I do. If it’s the right decision, if I’m good enough, where do I want to go in life, etc.? Yes, absolutely. I don’t know a single person who has ever gone through life without having a meltdown, because I and especially at Quarterlife, because I don’t believe that we become adults at 18. I think it’s fucking insane that we say 18 year olds are adults. I didn’t know shit when I was 18. I mean, I still kind of don’t know shit, but I wasn’t prepared for the world until I was still a child. Now when I look back and I see 18 year olds from my sort of 37 years of age, I’m like, That’s a baby. And I’m sorry for listening to this. And you were under 18 and you’re like, Fuck off, Jameela, I’m a grown fucking woman. I appreciate you, I’ve been you. I get it. But it is so young to be labeled with the responsibility of being an adult when your brain is still developing, when you are still working out who you are and what you like and everything starting to settle like the world is hard even at my age. Never mind when you are still like working out your place. And so almost everyone I know, myself included, as we were starting to get towards our thirties, that’s when our meltdown happened, because that’s when we were really becoming like proper adults, really becoming the people we were going to be for the rest of our lives. And it is a painful growth spurt that is inevitable for most of us because very few of us have the opportunity to afford health care, mental health care before that age because we don’t have jobs yet. And often people who have jobs still can’t get that fucking health care. But also, you know, we’re in the chaos of our 20 we don’t realize what’s going on. Everything feels like a fucking cyclone. Everything move so fast when you know you’re young that you can’t really stop to realize that you’re starting to feel like you’re falling apart. It’s completely normal. It is a necessary growth period. You will come out of it. It’s okay to doubt yourself at any point in life, but especially now because you’re shifting. You’re becoming a more permanent version of yourself. And maybe the things that worked for you when you were younger, just don’t work for you right now, and that’s okay. So my advice is to slow down. Lean in. Write the questions that keep going round, and round, and round in your head down and give yourself grace for the many mistakes you’re about to make and you will survive those mistakes. I had a full nervous breakdown. Like a full nervous breakdown. Like only Leonardo DiCaprio is talented enough to play me in the story of my nervous breakdown when I was in my quarter life crisis. It was real chaos and I was super suicidal, and I thought it was never going to end. And it was so dramatic, but it forced me to make the necessary changes that led to the protected woman that I am now and a woman who was forced to look inside at myself, forced to look at my traumas, which for some reason seem to surface when you’re about 26 or 27 years old. I couldn’t run anymore from it. My brain stopped me and was like, No, no, no. We’re not going into our thirties with the same level of chaos. We’re going to go through this with a fine tooth comb. And until you have fucking started the journey of fixing yourself properly and effectively and permanently, I’m not going to let you calm down. So just don’t look at it as your mind or body working against you. You look at it as your mind and body trying to give you a sign that something’s trying to get your attention that you need to address something from your youth. And that’s okay. And it’ll be a bit painful, a bit brutal, but it’ll ultimately change your life for the better. So don’t panic. You’re not alone. Uh someone asked, How is it to work with Ehlers-danlos syndrome? It’s a short answer. It is shit, but it is doable. And you can live some of your dreams. Okay, final one. How to properly talk to people about social issues in general. I usually try to explain what activists or people of the community say about the topic, but I don’t have the confidence to elaborate or explain further as I’m afraid of saying the wrong thing. This is a really important one, and it speaks to a huge anxiety of this generation now, especially post 2020. We have become very politicized. We have learned a lot of concepts and and words and and terminologies that we’ve never heard before. And a lot of academic language has entered the kind of zeit geist about giant infrastructural issues of oppression, and especially amongst the left. And I’ve spoken about this before with Owen Jones, who was excellent on this podcast. On the left we are striving to be perfect people and our hearts are in the right place, but it leads to very intolerant practices of speaking about very tricky issues that have existed for a very long time, that there aren’t any easy and quick solves to. And we can be quite impatient and we can demonize people who make innocent mistakes and we can conflate ignorance with evil really easily, and we can ostracize people when they do make mistakes. And I think that’s all a fucking terrible practice. And I will continue criticizing us for that. Obviously, I think our hearts are in the right place. I will always be a bleeding heart liberal, but I really disagree with the fact that we always seem like we are seeking traitors and not converts. It means we’re looking for people who’ve done something wrong rather than people who we have the opportunity to impact and change the minds of and welcome them into our group and grow in numbers. That’s the way that you make change, is you ignite empathy in people who don’t understand you or don’t agree with you, and you bring them over to your side. And the opposition is very good at doing that. They’re very good at acquiring new people because they make it seem so welcoming. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t hold each other to account. I’m just saying that the anxiety expressed in this young person’s message is the same anxiety I see all day, every day in my DMS from young people reaching out to me saying I’m terrified of saying the wrong thing. I’m terrified of asking these questions. I’m terrified of being pushed out of my group because I don’t understand certain things, certain very complicated things. And so what I want to say to you is you don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to get it right. You don’t have to be an expert before you scrap in and help other people. And just because other people say that you do fuck those people, they can’t stop you from helping people right. I’ve been criticized loads because I’m still learning and because I make mistakes and because I was slow to arrive at a lot of, you know, knowledge. Part of that is because I was so mentally ill when I was younger and so consumed with myself and with anorexia that I just didn’t learn about the world. I didn’t know fuck about shit, but I refuse to be shamed for the fact that I still have more to learn and that I’m actually trying. We have got to stop shaming people for trying. I think it’s fucking amazing that you, the person who’s written to me, is even using their young time to try to change the world. You’re a fucking legend for doing that. And I love you for doing that. And the best thing that you can do is not feel like you have to be the mouthpiece for every issue. But go and find great books by excellent experts who break the shit down, find great podcast episodes. I know that on this podcast alone, we’ve had so many great episodes in which I’ve learned so much from my guests. And so you can find those episodes and find those books and hand those to people and give them those tools. You don’t have to become an expert in every single fucking issue in the world. It’s impossible. I’ve been there where I feel like I have to know absolutely everything about every type of suffering, and all it did was confuse me, exhaust me. I made loads of mistakes and fucked everything up and pissed everyone off and then got ostracized. So it doesn’t even work. It’s not sustainable, it’s not possible. And no one lasts doing that. Pick a few things that you know you can be effective in, learn as much as you can. Continue to share the knowledge, continue to be open, continue to to learn and continue to know that you will never be perfect. You will never have this down perfectly. And every time you think you know everything, something’s going to fucking change and update and then you will be back to square one. And that’s okay. It is not your responsibility to be a collegiate expert on every single subject. Thank you for trying to help and and know that it is not normal the way that we behave towards each other online. And it’s not how the world off of Twitter actually works and it’s not how we’re going to make any progress. So don’t apologize for doing your best and just keep going and stay away from people who make you feel like you saying something imperfectly is more important and more pertinent than your actions and what you’re trying to do and the person that you clearly are, stay away from those fucking people. I have no time for those people anymore. Alright I’ve spoken loads and my voice is starting to die. And so thanks for staying with me if you did, and I’ll try to answer more of your questions in different ways, but I’ll probably bring experts on instead of me just doing it on my own. And thank you for all your questions. I got to as many as I could that I felt represented the masses like any question that came up again and again and again. Those are the ones that I most try to answer here. But I saw all of them and they were all great. And you’re great. And listen, we’re all just fucking trying our best and everything just couldn’t be more challenging right now. And it’s okay to take breaks. It’s okay to shut yourself off. It is okay to shut yourself away it’s okay to do frivolous, dumb shit and watch silly movies and just protect yourself. Wrap yourself in bubble wrap because the world is doing very little right now to make us feel protected. But you’re not mad. You’re not alone. I genuinely believe this shit is going to pass. I know it feels like everything is getting worse because in some ways it is. But technically we are still technically moving in the right direction as a general civilization. And I have changed from being the most problematic asshole I’ve ever met to being someone who is constantly trying to do the best I can do for other people. And so if I can change, the world can change because I knew fuck all and really didn’t have a lot of hope in myself. And I take that optimism on. And I believe in us and I believe in the world. And I think right now we are just having an extreme pendulum swing because we made so much progress so fast. That pendulum will swing right back and we will be back on the road to recovery in so many areas again. We just need to stop giving up on ourselves and we have to stop giving up on each other. So try to stay away from toxic discourse that that favors perfection over progress. Perfection is known to be the enemy of progress. Don’t fall into that trap and don’t feel bad if you have setbacks, relapses with your health, with your mental health. It happens. It’s part of development it’s part of growth. Just stick up for yourself, as I always say, as you would for your best friend. Just stand up to the voices in your head. Stand up to the voices outside of you and know that the chances are in the end, we’re going to be okay. Well, I’m going to go now and lie down because I found this very scary and message me and tell me any of your thoughts and I love you very much by. Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode. I Weigh with Jameela Jamil is produced and researched by myself, Jameela Jamil, Erin Finnegan and Kimmie Gregory. It is edited by Andrew Carson. And the beautiful music you are hearing now is made by my boyfriend, James Blake. If you haven’t already, please rate review and subscribe to the show. It’s a great way to show your support. We also have a bonus series exclusively on Stitcher Premium called Ask Jameela Anything. Check it out. You can get a free month of Stitcher premium by going Stitcher.com/premium and using the promo code I Weigh. Lastly over at I Weigh we would love to hear from you and share what you weigh at the end of this podcast. You can leave us a voicemail at 18186605543 or email us what you weigh at IWeighpodcast@gmail.com. And now we would love to pass the mic to one of our fabulous listeners. I Weigh the love I have for my friends and family and the love my family has for me. I Weigh always being there for my friends when I can. I Weigh my desire to help people. I Weigh my beliefs and a creator being a single God. My beliefs and spirits. And the spiritual power of your ancestors.