But can you blame me? None of us should feel proud of how we behaved during the Brexit era. You know what I’m talking about: those embarrassing arguments with friends of friends on Facebook, when we miraculously discovered that you could use social media to fight people as well as wish them a happy birthday. 2016 wasn’t just a disastrous referendum result for the UK; it was the year we made online abuse an everyday thing, spilling out from the guard of disgusting trolls to everybody with a keyboard. John Suler (2004) calls this disinhibition: a failure to suppress our natural urges and override social convention. It’s why we’re more aggressive on the internet than we’d be to someone’s face. Brexit fed us steroids, with all the angry side effects that entails. Hate became a very public and effective political weapon, and then the algorithms lit the match and our shared emotional wellbeing burned. The populace became infected with this permanent sense of existential irritation, like your worst ever PMT.

Everything about Brexit was gross, even its strapline. Farage’s oral imperative that we “TAKE BACK CONTROL” with impressive yet ultimately devastating wit-craft hypnotised the relatively discontent and captured the rage of the politically ignorant. This assertive implication that Brits had somehow lost control is the perfect example of what George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980) call framing. Political communication, especially at its most manipulative (which is most of the time) creates these unconscious structures that denote things about our experience, which are quickly believed. The framing is subtle, but it’s everything: TAKE BACK CONTROL. You can’t take back something you already have. The control is assumed to have existed, been lost, and is therefore recoverable. All built into that one stupid line. With one line, they made villains (all those meanies like immigrants and the EU who’d taken our control away), positioned the voter as a victim, and fraudulently promised that with one tiny vote, Great Britain would belong to us once more. Three words, followed by decades of likely financial torment.

But you have to hand it to Farage, Cummings and all those other bloodsucking wordsmiths; they know how to generate a punchy one-liner. A repeatable buzzphrase that can be repeated up and down the country’s pubs. Corbyn’s “for the many, not the few” was fine, but felt like an inside joke that needed explaining, and who even knows what Keir Starmer’s election message was. For years, we’ve been waiting for a left wing politician to be as ballsy as the slickest of right-wing spin doctors and finally we seem to have one. Zack Polanski.

Polanski’s reign as the leader of the Green Party has gone better than any of us expected. Not because we lacked faith in this unfathomably articulate fella, but because we’re not used to leaders of socialist parties receiving praise outside of social media’s often self-indulgent leftie pool. The party now has 200,000 members and counting (I’m one of them!) which is more than the Tories and Lib Dems, and Hannah Spencer’s recent snatching of Labour’s seat in the Gorton and Denton by-election is a sign that Green fever’s tipping over into the mainstream.

The catalyst? Hope. It’s fucking hope. Imagine having hope again! But the Green Party’s line, LET’S MAKE HOPE NORMAL AGAIN is another example of Lakoff and Johnson’s framing, but this time for the purposes of good, not economic ruin. Let’s look at why this line’s so smart. They’re diagnosing the present (i.e. sadness, rage) as abnormal, and suggesting that the emotional baseline of politics needs to change, because the system is the problem, not us. The “again” is a nice dig at the nostalgic fascism of Donald Trump’s famous catchphrase, whilst encouraging us to remember times when communities were closer and we slagged each other off on Instagram less. LET’S MAKE HOPE NORMAL AGAIN. It doesn’t overpromise, and for a challenger politician with a party no one ever thought would have a chance at winning a general election, hope is a genius move.

Hope could be what saves the UK. The use of the word as a political device not only sounds nice, but it provides a cognitive buzz that’s been missing since Blair used the song Things Can Only Get Better by D:Ream as a New Labour theme tune in 1997. I’m no Blair fan, but having a theme tune? As a campaigning tactic, it slaps. Hope makes us feel good. A recent study from Missouri university found direct links between hopeful people and a sense of personal purpose. In fact, hope was found to be a bigger contributor to a meaningful life than amusement, contentment or happiness. Megan Edwards, who worked on the project said: “Our research shifts the perspective on hope from merely a cognitive process related to goal attainment to recognising it as a vital emotional experience that enriches life’s meaning.” Which explains how devastating it can be when we lose it.

With hope, Polanski and team have landed on an emotional lever that’s inspired hundreds of thousands of people who felt disillusioned by our existing government of utter plebs and a world filled with megalomaniacs. After its release in October 2025, his hope-powered party broadcast went viral, with one YouTube viewer commenting:

“God, didn't realise how badly not having hope was hitting me.

Vote. Greens.

Keep up everything you're doing.”

When have you ever seen a YouTube comment that bloody sincere?!

While hope is great, what makes the line even better is the word “let’s.” A rallying cry and call for action. LET’S. It works every time. Let’s go! Let’s do it! Let’s dance! Let’s get ready to rumble!

A key voice in the psychology of hope C. R. Snyder (1991) says that we need two things for hope to turn into a positive reality. You need agency, i.e. a sense of autonomy and knowledge of the doable, and you need to see the pathway. It’s not enough to hope, you have to match that hope with action. The word “let’s” is working overtime to convince us that change is possible when we work together. Another incredible output from Snyder’s research is that apparently - unlike most things in society - there are no gender differences in ability to hope. It’s an equal emotion. Has Zack Polanski - a gay Jewish man from Salford - finally found the secret ingredient for a diverse nation?!

Hope is a team sport. A collective act. Hope needs people. According to research from Cohen-Chen & Pliskin (2025) hope is a crucial precondition for group efficacy. Without hope, even the strongest sense of collective capability fails to translate into action. The study found that in intergroup conflict situations (i.e. “us and them”) a hope for peace predicts support for concession-making, forgiveness, and openness to the outgroup's perspective. They also showed that expressing hope - whether by outgroup members or ingroup leaders - is contagious.

Of course, there are downsides to hope. Sometimes, it really is the hope that kills you. I experienced this firsthand after my dad’s stroke last summer, with all the peaks and troughs of the aftermath. He’s better! He’s worse! It looks hopeful! No it doesn’t! (Spoiler alert: he died.) False hope can leave you jaded. Some who’ve experienced repeated disappointment may develop "hope aversion" and actively protect themselves from hope to avoid the pain of having it crushed once more. I get it. And politically, the UK’s grubby landscape might compel some to tread carefully in the garden of hope, in case a swarm of demented insects comes flying in, with the bodies of wasps and the face of Tommy Robinson.

But this isn’t just about hope. It’s about imagination. What Polanski and friends have written is a social commitment to act in the present so that the future might be better. All we have to do is see it, and sign. Tech billionaires tell us that we’re passive recipients of the future. That we’re destined for unemployment at the hands of robots, and AI-powered lobotomies. But what if we get to collectively imagine an alternative? A different future in which teenagers aren’t depressed, and the UK doesn’t fund international human rights abuses. A future in which our water isn’t poisoned, and people can afford homes. The social imagination can be such a powerful thing. It’s difficult, sure, because imagining a more positive future relies on all of us to do it at the same time; to feel the same amount of hope in the same way that inspires us to do the same things. To vote. To march, probably. To be a little bit nicer to each other. Which isn’t easy, given the decade we’ve all just had.

LET’S MAKE HOPE NORMAL AGAIN doesn’t just sound cute: it’s fucking smart. With just a simple message of hope, Zack Polanski could revolutionise the political system, but in a pleasant way that doesn’t resort to lies and dirty tactics. Ironically, it could actually help us TAKE BACK CONTROL of a system that has sucked for so many years. So, let’s.

LET’S!

Rebecca Solnit, author of Hope in the Dark: The Untold History of People Power says it best: “Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency. Hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth's treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal... To hope is to give yourself to the future - and that commitment to the future is what makes the present inhabitable.”

When Hannah Spencer won the Gorton and Denton by-election I felt something in the air, like a combination of euphoria, shock, relief and the kind of optimism you see on the first warm day of spring. It was hope. But I don’t think the hope will kill us this time. I reckon it’ll make us stronger.

“Do you have any distractions in bed, like a phone?” he asked.

“Well, I tend to fall asleep watching the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, so yeah. I guess,” I replied.

His face dropped visibly, exaggeratedly, like a popped balloon. “What’s the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills?” he asked.

I told him of my addiction to a television franchise that’s acted as an informal guardian angel throughout my adult life. It’s not just Beverly Hills, I explained. Many cities have a Real Housewives show! Which follows the highs, lows, breakdowns and occasional imprisonment of rich midlife women who love to fight with each other. I relayed my favourite Beverly Hills moments, Camille Grammer’s head to head with the “morally corrupt Faye Resnick”, the infamous Amsterdam dinner with smashed glasses and GBH threats, Yolanda’s Munchausens, Crystal’s ugly leather pants, the disastrous Carlton season and Garcelle’s iconic confessional line: “Google me if you want to know me. Google me.”

If you’re not an RHOBH fan, none of those seminal cultural references will mean anything to you. But they mean a lot to us, the fans. This show has been my saviour on hungover Saturdays. My comfort blanket. Until a few years ago, that is, when the tone turned. It hardened. Certain scenes shifted from entertainment to discomfort. We started seeing gang behaviour. Three against one; like when Lisa Rinna, Erika Jayne and Diana Jenkins targeted their fellow housewives Sutton and Garcelle with straight up abuse, and (allegedly) paid-for social media bots.

Real Housewife battles are fun when the fight feels fair: two equal women with same-size egos exchanging harsh words, but each giving as good as they get. The conflict-resolution nature of reality TV means that a few episodes later - or at the very least by the season finale - the beef will be quashed. Until the reunion, that is, when the arguments start all over again. That’s just how it goes! The audience knows it, the wives love it, they stay rich, and we remain captivated.

Yet despite the show’s not-so-subtle shift in tone from chaos to calculated, my loyalty persisted. I wasn’t going to give up on these women when they’ve been by my side for so many seasons! But lately I’ve been thinking that maybe it is time to quit.

Let me catch you up. We’re on season 15. There’s a new addition to the show, Amanda Frances. She’s circa ten years younger than the other housewives, a self-made millionaire and author of the bestselling book Rich as Fuck. She sells online courses on how to manifest money and maintain your boundaries. She’s clearly very successful and probably not everybody’s cup of tea, because the smugness of manifesters is quite something. She’s marmite. But smug and marmite make great TV. Over the last few episodes, however, we’ve watched the other housewives’ mild irritation for her self love mutate into all-out bullying.

She’s being picked on by a group of women in their 50s. Ruthlessly, and loudly. From episode to episode they’re obsessively bitching behind her back and turning every group situation into a witch-hunt. In the latest episode she’s was told that she’s fake, a “Pinocchio”, that she’s sulky, has a victim mentality, that she’s too sensitive and her life isn’t pure. It was painful viewing.

Watch the full scene below. And get ready to curl your toes. The general sentiment of the accusations is that Amanda seems too content and too calm, and the other women don’t like it.

Shall we unpack what the fuck is going on? The other housewives are famous, yes, but none of them seem particularly happy. You’ve got Dorit, an ardent Israel supporter going through a messy divorce while her ex partner kisses other ladies on sidewalks for the paps to catch. You’ve got Erika, whose entire life imploded when Tom Girardi, her 80-something year old famous lawyer husband got done for fraud, while she repeatedly gets caught in the crossfire. There’s Boz, who’s attempting and failing at IVF at the age of 49, terrified that her partner will leave if she doesn’t give him a baby. And Rachel Zoe, another stressed divorcee who claims to be devastated that her ex has a new girlfriend and repeatedly discussing that devastation with her young children. Oh, and a woman called Natalie. No one seems to know who Natalie is and where she’s come from, but she’s in a lot of scenes.

Bullies don’t tend to be happy people. The motivations for which victim to pick shift from childhood to adulthood, however. At school, kids that are considered different, less cool, more vulnerable or weaker are at greater risk. For grown ups, it’s pretty much the opposite. Research on workplace bullying has found that talented, hardworking and popular colleagues are prime targets, because the most significant driver is… envy. As envious anger increases, the strength of the correlation between envy and bullying also increases.

We all feel a pang of jealousy every now and again, scrolling through social media being served the endless successes or heavenly holidays of our peers. But most of us keep those feelings in check. When left unchecked, however, those mild gripes can evolve into malicious envy: hostile feelings towards an envied person and the burning desire to drag them down. You see them as undeserving, as too boastful, and by positioning them as a baddie you provide yourself with a “permission structure” for that hostility, which legitimises targeted behaviour. In essence, you conduct mental acrobatics to justify lashing out. In women, this normally starts as gossiping and backstabbing; a process known as “relational aggression” (Crick and Grotpeter, 1995). Women don’t punch each other in the face. Much. They’ll just try and destroy each other’s reputation and social relationships. Why? Because they’ve effectively convinced themselves the victim deserves it.

Once the bullying starts, those cheeky brain chemicals kick in. In fact, our brain literally rewards us for bullying. Research has found that aggression increases dopamine in the brain's nucleus accumbens (our "pleasure centre") producing a pleasurable effect that lasts almost two hours. Schadenfreude - the process of enjoying the misfortune of others - has been linked to underlying feelings of rivalry and justice, and often overlaps with dark traits such as narcissism. Is it any wonder then that a pack of rich women on a reality TV show have such overwhelming urges to completely humiliate a fellow cast member who (checks notes) claims to have a nice life?

When women bully women, it hurts my soul. When it’s happened to me, the bullying has always coincided with a successful stage in my life: when my first book came out, for example, and when the company I built started gaining traction. In a female group I no longer belong to, I sensed the camaraderie slipping away at those times. The more accomplished and proud of myself I became, the nastier they were. It was relentless. They dehumanised me. I was a constant source of gossip and drunken spite; bitchy voice notes and WhatsApp group tumbleweeds whenever I spoke in the chat. When it’s an entire group doing this to you, it’s hard not to believe you’ve done something wrong.

Bullying creates social bonds. It’s what Brené Brown describes as “common enemy intimacy” - a really quick and easy way to feel accepted in your social group. She argues: “Common enemy intimacy is counterfeit connection and the opposite of true belonging. If the bond we share with others is simply that we hate the same people, the intimacy we experience is often intense, immediately gratifying, and an easy way to discharge outrage and pain. It is not, however, fuel for real connection. It’s fuel that runs hot, burns fast, and leaves a trail of polluted emotion.”

What’s interesting is that when women feel stressed, they crave social cures. It’s the “tend-and-befriend” response. Rather than hiding away, we seek reassurance, and this is what common enemy intimacy provides. It’s a surface level satisfaction that requires minimal introspection, accompanied by that outpouring of aggression that gives the brain a buzz for half a day.

The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills are sad and angry. Which is understandable; so many of them are going through draining life events that should elicit sensitivity and understanding from their loved ones. But they’re dealing with that sadness by kicking someone else and seeking the easiest form of intimacy available; the biochemical satisfaction of a shared human target. It’s gross. In the quest to make themselves feel good, they’ve made Amanda, the new girl, a sacrificial lamb.

My dream specialist wasn’t impressed, when I told him all of this. It took up most of our allotted time.

“So you fall asleep listening to women scream at each other?’ he asked.

“I… Um… Yes. I suppose I do.”

He nodded, knowingly. I wonder how many other women and gay men admitted to the same dystopian lullaby?

The specialist recommended a new routine (don’t fall asleep listening to women scream at each other, drink some herbal teas) and my wallet was £200 lighter. It worked! My nightmares have all but disappeared. But the feeling of uneasiness remains. If the housewives can’t sort their shit out and get some better therapy, I might have to say goodbye to our friendship.

Bullies can stop being bullies, but only when they’re brave enough to look in the mirror. As Brené says: “If we live with any level of self-awareness, common enemy intimacy can leave us with the intense regrets of an integrity hangover. Did I really participate in that? Is that moving us forward? Am I engaging in, quite literally, the exact same behaviour that I find loathsome in others?”

The wonderful thing about being a Real Housewife is that you don’t even need self-awareness. You can just watch your behaviour on screen! You can see the clips on Instagram! You can listen to the feedback from fans! You can read essays, like this, and reflect on your behaviour and reclaim your identity. What a powerful opportunity!

Will that happen? In our dreams, maybe. But as it stands, I wonder how many of us will even stick around to see them repent next season.

But Gisèle Pelicot became an exception. What made her horrifying case so critical is that it was impossible to disprove. With so much footage of her being raped whilst unconscious (like a rag doll) by so many men, it’s one of those rare sexual violence cases where the woman couldn’t be blamed, or accused of deceit. You couldn’t allege that she was asking for it. You couldn’t use booze, or her clothes, or mixed messages as an excuse.

The rapists attempted to, of course: some suggested that she was faking unconsciousness. She must have been awake, because who can stay asleep for that long?! Another of her rapists claimed he felt her hips move during the assault, concluding that she may have been enjoying it, which led to further scrutiny of the recordings in court. Did her hips move slightly? Let’s watch that again. Even with literal video evidence of them entering an unconscious woman, several of the guys appealed. Despite the most unequivocal evidence you could imagine, the case was still predictably degrading. As Pelicot says in her book, A Hymn to Life (which we should all buy because this woman deserves to be a millionaire):

“I listened to the defence lawyers make a request that the word 'rape' not be used, in order to preserve the presumption of innocence. One proposed 'sexual relations'. One of the judges suggested 'sex scene'. I was fuming inside, but from the bench where I sat, I wasn't allowed to react. I had to restrain myself. All the time. Restrain myself while my lawyers responded. Restrain myself when the presiding judge asked a doctor if my vaginal secretions might be a sign of pleasure. Restrain myself when a female lawyer sneered at a medical examiner testifying to the gravity of my physical condition, 'Oh, let's weep for Madame Pelicot, shall we?' I will not record her name here, nor those of her colleagues, nor those of the defendants. Not out of any consideration for them – their identities are easy enough to find online or in the court records – but so that they will be remembered only for what they are: parrots, deplorable mouthpieces, violent, cowardly little people.”

These men, these 51 men who raped Gisèle Pelicot while she was drugged (by her husband) and lying unconscious were regular men in the local community. Men with wives and kids and firefighters’ jobs. Women all over the world felt sick. Unsurprised, but sick.

It was an honour to attend a live interview with Pelicot at the Royal Festival Hall a few weeks ago, and give her a standing ovation alongside 2000 others. On stage, she talked about her childhood and family life (because sexual violence victims have childhoods, and hopes and dreams). She discussed the remarkable day she decided to waive anonymity in court, thus making her case - and the perpetrators - known worldwide. She spoke of her appreciation for the world’s support, which brought so many women together. As she says in the book:

I can’t remember the day I first heard the applause as I walked into the Palais de Justice. I realised that the people around me, mostly women, were forming a guard of honour, something I had never imagined or expected. I could feel the warmth of their bodies, their emotion and vulnerability melding with mine.

On stage, Gisèle shared how that iconic line - which she’d heard years before - became her call to arms: “Shame must change sides.” Was there ever a more gut wrenching line for our times; a line that slaps the face and boils the blood. Shame must change sides. Is her case the event that finally achieves this? You’d hope. The press attention. The convictions. The outrage! Surely, this will spark change? The attention given to similar cases suggests the law are taking this more seriously than ever.

But there’s one thing I know to be true: Gisèle Pelicot cannot be the woman leading the charge. And we shouldn’t ask her to. Gisèle Pelicot is a hero, but a reluctant one. She never asked for any of this. Gisèle isn’t the leader, and it’s not her job. Yet in the same way that any time a famous American says something smart we implore them to run for president, we have this tendency to put our famous feminists on pedestals and expect them to solve all our problems; to show us how to fix all this, once and for all.

Megha Mohan is an international journalist with an incredible, meaningful career. She spoke at my Unlikeable Woman™️ Summit a few weeks ago about the release of her new book, Herlands: a cultural-moment-in-waiting about the communities and subcultures around the world where women are in charge. And - spoiler alert - it normally works quite well. Mohan’s extensive research on matriarchal and matrilineal cultures makes her an expert on the relationship between women and power, and what we can achieve from a place of cooperation.

At the summit, Megha addressed her fears for women all over the world as the war against our human rights rages on. “Now is the time for a revolt,” she argued, to a standing ovation. (I love giving women standing ovations.) “We need to do this, urgently, but we don’t need a leader.”

She’s right. Women don’t need a leader. Leaders feel like a patriarchy thing. Megha’s research shows that whether in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro or Australia’s First Nations, leaderless communities work. There’s less ego, and less potential for land grabs. Community is the focus, not hierarchy. Why would feminism even need a leader? We can organise perfectly fine amongst ourselves, take it in turns to do the speeches, plan the marches. Waiting for the perfect front-woman only delays things. Do we really need someone else to worship?

No. We don’t need a leader, nor do we need deities, because when you put people on a pedestal, it’s easy for them to disappoint you. When we put people on a pedestal we dehumanise them, and then any sign of imperfection sends our expectations spiralling. I don’t want Pelicot’s every word and act to be analysed just in case she accidentally says the wrong thing and lets the side down. The contribution she’s made to our lives so far is more than enough. As she says in the book:

Here I am, in my seventies, a martyr, the symbol of a new feminist wave that I hardly know a thing about. This time I won’t turn away from it. I will stay as I am, without hatred, unable to set men against women, for I believe we are meant to live side by side. I imagine this might disappoint a few campaigners. I am not a radical person; all I’ve ever wanted is a conventional, quiet life. But I heard women transforming the pain of the trial into emancipatory chants that they sang on the steps of the Palais de Justice. I heard joy and anger prevailing over silence, and I am more than happy to offer my experience as an example and my name as a battle flag.

Joy is good. But anger is the most powerful of all the emotions because it’s the one that makes us act. We don’t need a leader; we just need to be angry for a while. And if Gisèle Pelicot can do one thing for us (which is plenty!) it’s to make us really fucking angry. Our job then is to make that anger last, and turn it into progress. That 2000 people (some men were there too!) came together in the Royal Festival Hall to give this brave woman her flowers proves there’s at least 2000 of us primed to revolt. That’s a good start. We don’t need leaders, we need curators! We need energisers! We don’t need leaders, we need equal actors sprinting in the same direction with grenades and a unified roar.

At the end of the interview, Gisèle was asked: “So, what’s next?”

She took a breath. It’s a huge question, but her answer was simple. She’s 73, and wants to finish life with her new partner and dogs in a serene, quiet way. Her final line was both a promise and a boundary: while she won’t be running for feminist president any time soon, “I will always be here,” she said. On the sidelines, not at the front. We need to let Gisèle Pelicot live the rest of her life in peace, and make sure her trauma doesn’t go to waste.

When you’re standing next to 2000 people, all crying and clapping and cheering, it’s easy to feel like we could be on the cusp of something, if only we could lose our egos and agree on the direction of travel. We’re way overdue a global rebellion. We don’t need permission or an army general; let’s just link arms, and charge. We can thank Gisèle Pelicot for the nerve.

I told my dad how elated I was to find a new favourite food. I LOVED QUICHE! In response, he bought me quiche every Tesco trip. He’d slide into the living room waving freshly purchased quiches in the air while I sat on the floor, watching cartoons. Unfortunately, my dad bought me so much quiche, and I devoured it across so many mealtimes, that I got sick of it. A few weeks after trying quiche for the first time, I didn’t ever want to smell one again.

Welcome to my dad’s personality. Terence Kean liked to care for people, obsessively. He lived to make his family happy. He loved looking after people. If my sisters or I ever got sick, he’d activate; checking in non-stop with offers of Lemsip or a cup of tea.

The world feels lonely when there’s one less person who loves you. A bit scarier. My dad died four months ago but it’s only hitting me now, and at the stupidest times. Because grief is stupid, like an annoying classmate tipping pencil shavings on your head, or flicking bogies in your face. Grief picks its moments, and those moments are weird and inconvenient.

Like this week, I got an exam result. My first exam in twenty years, in social psychology; part of my Masters course at LSE. An exam I took three weeks after my dad died. Fuck knows how I managed to string a sentence together let alone memorise an entire textbook’s worth of dates, names and theorems. My result was 66% which, given the godawful circumstances, is pretty decent. But that 66% sent me spiralling. Why? Because dad paid for my Masters with his savings before he died, and as he laid in hospital desperately trying to get better, that damn Masters was all he could talk about. (Bear in mind he’d had a stroke that paralysed his entire left side, so talking wasn’t easy.)

Terence was so proud of his daughters for aiming high. Not having been to university himself, he was delighted that I was furthering my education. Maybe I could become a doctor afterwards, who knows! One day, when the occupational therapists and I were trying to get dad into a wheelchair to take him outside - his first fresh air in months - all he did was distractedly ask how excited I was about starting my course. I burst into tears, pretending that I was reacting to nerves, and not because even when my dad was at his lowest, his sickest, he was still thinking about other people. “You’ve got lives to live, don’t worry about me!” he’d say, when we visited him every day.

So this week, since my exam result, I’ve been stuck in a maudlin hole. I wish I could tell dad my result. He would’ve been so happy. Funnily enough my sister’s also doing a Masters at the same time, in neuroscience, and her marks are even better than mine. “I don’t know where you got your brain’s from! Not me!” he’d joke.

So even the lightest moments are tinged with loss. If life’s a circus, then grief is the clown with a custard pie in his hand, ready to smack you in the face and send you flying with a choked up throat and bright red eyes. I feel like grief is chasing me. Toying with me; circling my mental state on one of those ridiculous tiny bicycles, ready to honk its horn and send me loopy. Grief is my entire inner monologue, while I’m trying to buckle down, work and interact like a normal human being.

Internalising it doesn’t help. Nor does keeping calm and carrying on. It’s not acceptable to let people know that you want to wail 24/7, or that you’re playing someone’s final moments in your head on repeat because it’s comforting in some way, despite the pain. I want to talk about grief, because we all experience it. Yet so many of us keep it to ourselves. Grieving brings the mood down. You’re Eeyore. A sad sack. Wussy. It’s considered not OK to make everybody else feel uncomfortable by discussing your sadness. You’re supposed to do a social media announcement, an obituary, and move on. Death comes to us all, just for God’s sakes don’t bring it up at brunch.

Not every culture does it like us. The Toraja people of Sulawesi, Indonesia, keep their deceased loved ones at home; dressing them and serving them meals for months or even years after death. How’s that for clinging on? Death isn’t seen as a sudden end, but a stepping stone to becoming one of the Gods. It’s a process, that matches our emotions. The eventual funerals, known as Rambu Solo, are proper social affairs. The community comes together making loss a shared experience, rather than isolated and felt in private. Isn’t that healthier than our Western approach, in which we're expected to take a few days off work and then just crack on with our to-do list?

Grief doesn’t have to be a secret.

Your grief is you. It’s your background, and your memories. It’s the important life of the one you lost.

This grief is mine, and I’ll cherish it until the day I die. I want to own it and tend to it like a magnificent mulberry bush. Alongside some photos and a certificate of Lordship I bought him for Christmas a few years ago, my grief is all I have left of the dude who looked after me when I was ill, had my GPS location on his mobile, liked all my Instagram posts, and texted to ask how I am because he knew how much I despise talking on the phone.

I’ve started buying quiche again. It’s a silly thing, but it reminds me of my dad and makes me cry in the M&S Food Hall. That Quiche sits inside my fridge as a friendly reminder of the warm reassuring hug of a dad’s love. I might not even eat it, but at least I know it’s there.

Kind of.

It’s important to take accountability, and I take accountability for my terrible judge of character and abysmal boundaries. My hope is that you’ll learn from my mistakes, and stick up for yourself far sooner than I ever did.

I’m sharing this story because last week I ran an immense event called The Unlikeable Woman™️ Summit, and two of our speakers - international journalist Megha Mohan and Hey Savi founders Vic Peppiatt and Sarah Daniels - talked about the importance of honesty. As female leaders and role models, we have to show the rawness, illuminate the mess while we’re in the middle of it, tell stories about our hurdles and bad days. So I want to share some shitty stuff. A shitty pattern. I want to share a shitty pattern that I am responsible for.

Described as “a love letter to women the world’s afraid of” the Unlikeable Woman™️ Summit doesn’t provide frameworks or toolkits; we just celebrate women who exist despite society. They’re opinionated, and blunt, and sexual, and angry, and all those things we’re not supposed to be.

The lineup was exceptional, I gotta say. Dr Kate Lister, Oloni, Marina Purkiss, Dr Pragya Agarwal, Charlie Craggs, Megha, Vic and Sarah. Close to the event we made a huuuuuuge speaker announcement: Fearne Cotton! With a book out in March called Likeable - about giving people pleasing the finger - this was a perfectly serendipitous meeting of like minds. The summit sold out, we were happy.

A couple of weeks prior to the big day, I got an Instagram DM from a stranger saying she was friends with one of our speakers (turns out, they slightly know each other from years ago!) This stranger runs a beauty business selling candles and crystals and mists. Now, I’m not a massive fan of crystals, but I was intrigued by the message: “We’d love to give you some freebies for the event!”

That’s exciting, I thought. Freebies are awesome. “Cool,” I said. “We have 200 people attending.”

“Oh,” she said. “I can’t give away that many products. Can I do some gift bags for the speakers?”

“Sure!” I said.

“Maybe I can set up a stand a the event?” she said. “To show your delegates my range. We could run a competition or something?”

“Hmmmm,” I said. “We’d generally reserve that for sponsors, which would be a few thousand pounds, but you can have a stand if you’re up for sponsoring?”

“Oh no,” she said. “Definitely not. I’ll just drop off some gift bags for the speakers.”

I gave her the address of the venue and thought little else of it. Events are an absolute nightmare to organise, and we’re a small team. It wasn’t until 9.15am on the morning of the Summit, while I was frantically getting the venue ready before doors opened at 9.30am, that a woman ran up to me.

“Hi!” she said. “It’s me, Jess? I’ve got the speaker gifts! Don’t worry, you’re busy. I’ll just drop them off in the green room.”

“OK, cool, thanks” I said, thinking she was cutting it fine. Other brands had given us free products for delegates (like GSpot, Gillian Anderson’s drink!) but they’d sent them to the venue days or weeks in advance.

The event began, the energy was flawless, and eight months of hard word was paying off. A couple of hours later I headed up to the green room - the area where speakers went to chill before their talks - and to my surprise the woman was in there, chatting with one of our guests. “Er…. what?” I asked, confused, yet polite.

“I’m just finishing off the bags” she said.

“OK,” I said. “But this is a private room, so….” She smiled, and nodded. I ran back downstairs to introduce the next speaker.

Four hours later I went back into the green room. The woman was still in there, but by this time, she’d laid out an entire display of her mists and candles and crystals, and was pitching her brand to Fearne Cotton, who’d just arrived. She was pitching to Fearne Cotton so intensely that I couldn’t even get a word in for the speaker briefing.

“Er… hi,” I said to her. “Are you leaving?”

“Yeah, yeah” she said. And carried on talking to Fearne. At this stage, I should have read her the riot act and forced her to leave, but I was flabbergasted. Who boasts that kind of audacity? I messaged the staff Whatsapp chat. “Has anyone spoken to this woman in the green room?”

And this is when I heard it all. She’d been pitching to the speakers one by one. Two of our guests had complained because she’d interrupted them trying to prep for their talks. She’d brought a card reader along, told event staff she was a sponsor and was selling products in the green room. She’d been asked to leave twice. Once, she refused. The second time, she ran away, only to return to the green room fifteen minutes later. She was asked to leave again, but said she’d only do so after she finished watching the talks. She’d been running around the venue, hiding from our staff, until eventually a group of us had to ask her to leave at the same time. Eventually, she did. The fuuuuuuuuuuck.

Shocking behaviour of the most entitled proportions! I felt used. Embarrassed. A woman I didn’t know, setting up camp in the most private area of my event, enjoying exclusive access to to people we’d worked hard to forge relationships with. And two of them had complained.

But this was my fault. Kind of. When she offered to drop off gifts, I assumed she wouldn’t do anything as wild as set up a market stall and bombard our VIPs with discounted rose quartz. Silly me.

The next day - still pretty stunned - I sent her an email outlining how inappropriate the behaviour was, attaching an invoice for £650 + VAT, which included the ticket cost and a modest charge for the space she decided to take in our VIP area. It should have been quadruple that amount.

Her response ever since has been obvious: she didn’t mean to, the green room “felt like a safe space” so she stayed, she hadn’t intended to sell products, she’s devastated that people complained, and refuses to pay the invoice, just like she refused to leave my event. As such, she’ll be receiving a legal letter from me.

But because of my reaction, and the fact I’ve called out her really bad behaviour, it’s only a matter of time before she calls me the B word.

A bully.

Or the T word. Toxic.

And this is the crux of my problem. A problem I am entirely to blame for. Kind of. The accusations of entitled women. They’ve been doing it for centuries. When entitled women do bad things and you react, they’ll make you the villain. They’ll make you the villain because it wasn’t their intention to behave badly. Why look in the mirror when you can lash out? It’s a victim mentality as old as time, and this situation’s affected me so much because it’s not the first time I’ve been accused.

I run an L&D company, which I love. We sell wonderful training courses that make a huge impact on people’s lives. Our work is excellent, the brand’s a success, but also… I have zero boundaries. It’s embarrassing. When people say they want to work with me I’m like: oh that’s so lovely, thank you! It’s flattering! If they want to work for me, I train them up as a facilitator for free, and let them loose on our amazing trainees, beaming like a proud mum. I write all our facilitators scripts and pay them for prep time, and celebrate them after every session. My motto as a leader is “I am at your service.”

But what happens when you have no boundaries is that people take advantage. They get over-familiar real quick, and standards slip. The early promises metamorphose into piss-taking. Over the years I’ve had various facilitators turn up to sessions inebriated, turn up on a raging hangover so debilitating they could barely speak, not turn up at all, turn up completely unprepared, drunkenly scream at me for two hours after a workshop (trying to negotiate a day rate increase), slag off clients IN FRONT OF THEM, lie compulsively, steal ideas. There’s a long list.

Each time, when I addressed it, I got the T word again. Toxic. Or the B word again. Bully. Because when you have no boundaries and people take advantage, when you ask them not to, they don’t like it. What I’m only now understanding is that those accusations worked. They kept me silent. Ashamed. They made me question whether basic professional standards were somehow unreasonable; that I was unreasonable. But this ridiculous green room situation has made me realise: some people just suck, and because they suck they’ve developed suck tactics to make the sucking everyone else’s problem.

My experiences are nothing. At our Unlikeable Woman™️ Summit, Charlie Craggs gave the most powerful speech about being a good girl gone bad. How, whenever she responds to people abusing her or attacking her, clapping back, she’s the one that gets reprimanded. Because everyone hates a woman who sticks up for herself.

Being called toxic for trying to protect my livelihood in an increasingly fragile market should be the least of my worries. It’s not lost on me that as woman from a working class background I’ve always struggled to take myself seriously. I’m constantly reminded that I don’t belong in certain privileged spaces. That I should be eternally grateful for my success and simply get what I’m given. As a woman from a working class background I’ve always been told that my tone is wrong, that my words are wrong, that my attitude is wrong, that I’m too brash, because leaders don’t often sound like me. There’s a shame attached to that, too.

But you know what? It’s ok to react. It’s ok to fight back. It’s ok to tell someone that you’re annoyed. My reluctance to set boundaries screwed me over time and time again, and I blamed myself for it. But actually, this isn’t my fault. I’m not perfect. But, are you? I don’t always get it right. But, do you? Here’s some advice I’m giving myself - and you - to learn from my mistakes.

Make your boundaries so watertight they’re almost impenetrable. If someone can’t afford to sponsor your event, they don’t get a stall. Even if they offer candles. From now on, I’m going to say yes less. Say no to collabs. Be ridiculously strict about who’s allowed into the Good Shout world. At least for a while, anyway. My days of trusting are over and I’m happy about that. If you’ve built something you’re proud of, protect it.

Be surrounded by people who’ll support you, loudly. For a while, I wasn’t. It meant that I internalised conflict, and whenever there were issues surrounding my business, no one had my back. That’s a really scary place to be.

Make peace with the inevitable bitching that’ll occur when you stick up for yourself. Despite trillions of Instagram posts telling us to be unapologetic, a woman with a voice offends people. If you defend yourself, someone’s going to be wounded, and they’ll probably tell others. It’s a fact of life, and you can’t control other people. You can only control how you feel. So fuck ‘em.

I created The Unlikeable Woman™️ Summit as a fiery passion project, and last week I had to really live and breathe the brand. So many women spend their lives tiptoeing around others, terrified of saying the wrong thing, or being accused of being a bitch or a bully. Because god forbid we’re not loved by everyone.

But no more. The woman who crashed my event can call me whatever names she wants. She still owes me £650 + VAT.

A series of vague statements from the likes of Bill Clinton, Deepak Chopra, Elon Musk, Mandelson and pals denying all knowledge of Epstein’s devilish ways seems to have done the trick; in the authors’ minds at least.

As we sit glued to our feeds, served up trauma after trauma, name after name, it’s natural to try and understand these men. Because children aren’t born wanting to destroy lives. It’s rare to ask a 5-year old boy his ambitions and be told “sex trafficker.”

But mindreading’s impossible. Empathy is powered by the imagination; an ability to put yourself into someone’s shoes. For regular people (non-billionaires without any of the 5 dark psychological traits) it’s impossible to imagine how they feel and how they think, because they’re on an entirely different psychological plane to us. We’re incapable of simulating their thoughts; it’s a different operating system, and we don’t have access to the ‘upgrade’.

Psychologists have tried, of course. They say that power is like booze; it has a complex yet inhibition-reducing effect on the human mind. Like 10 tequila shots on a Friday night, power centres the self, makes you feel invincible, reduces your empathy and critically, reduces fear. The important difference being that when you and I are five pints down, bravery results in grabbing a karaoke mic, not assaulting a child. Power corrupts, obviously. Rich people are more likely to shoplift than poor people, for example. Power distorts your view of the value of a life. According to a study by Cislak et al (2018): “Powerful people distance themselves from others, objectify them, and devalue their performance.

We see this in the dehumanisation floating around Epstein’s filthy inbox. The man himself compared women to sea creatures. “They’re like shrimp ... You throw away the head and keep the body,” he said, in an exchange with French diplomat Olivier Colom. You can see it in Musk and Chopra’s demands that Epstein “bring girls” to parties. Richard Branson asked Epstein to “bring your harem” on an impending visit. Bring girls. Requested as flippantly as cigarettes or crudités. To Epstein’s mates, they were nothing but dolls. Toys. Unhuman.

There’s another layer to power we need to grasp here, particularly in relation to Epstein crimes. People with higher perceived power in a relationship are more likely to fantasise about infidelity; to crave other partners and pursue them. Why? Because feeling powerful increases a person’s self-perception as desirable. You walk in a room and truly believe that everybody wants you.

This potent cocktail of sinister attributes and elevated self-image has created the men we see in Epstein’s emails. These men see themselves as Gods. Not theoretically. I’m not accusing them of having a God Complex, or personality disorder. In the most literal sense, they believe they are Gods, living on earth until they eventually fuck off to Mars. In the same way that serial killing British king Henry the Eighth believed he was appointed by a higher power, there exists an entire race of men who self-identify as above human. Perpetually unsatisfied as they pursue a life of excess and carnal whims. Treating politics as a game and its events as entertainment.

Perhaps like Zeus, a hobbying rapist who shapeshifted to trick his victims. Or Dionysus, involved in the frenzied mangling of his enemies. Or Pan, who would chase and sexually assault nymphs through forests for sport. None of this stuff is deviant; in their eyes, it’s just the perks of being a deity. In order to reinforce oneself as a god, one must treat the mortals as lesser. Mortals can’t punish gods. They don’t have the capability. The Gods are only scared of each other; and even then the repercussions aren’t even that worrying. Mortals are both a hindrance and a source of fulfilment, but they need to know their place.

And that’s where we are now. A pack of untouchable men smirking down on us, playing games. The powerful are great at dehumanisation. At any one time they’ll be dehumanising poor people, immigrants, trans people, Palestinians and all manner of social minorities. But it’s the perfect irony, because it’s them who stopped being human. No longer able to demonstrate basic human emotion, with Epstein reducing human connection to “two chemical interactions with survival drive”.

When powerful men stopped viewing themselves as part of humanity; when laws don’t apply, they become something other. And that other is perilously hard to predict. It’s also impossible to control. We keep trying to understand them as corrupted humans, but this is a futile operation. Because they’re not human anymore. Not superhuman, which they’d love, but subhuman. Epstein’s inbox is filled with men who’ve exited humanity entirely. It’s where empathy and basic decency went to die.

There’s a very thin line between gods and monsters. These men have elevated themselves to a place of morbid mythology; so dead inside that their only modus operandi is using their inferiors as chess pieces, or a pellet of chewing gum, lobbed on the floor when the flavour’s gone, before moving onto the next human sacrifice.

But Gods fall, too. And they must. Because their feelings of superiority aren’t facts. In the words of Deepak Chopra himself. “God is a construct. Cute girls are real.”

For every time you say club passwords like “Have a nice day” and “Weather’s awful today, eh?”, you yearn inside to say forbidden things like “Tell me something that makes you cry” or “What do you think deja vu is for?”

Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on conversation with a stranger? Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others…”

Timothy Leary

I’ve become that guy at parties, desperately trying to discuss the live-streamed elimination of tens of thousands of children we’ve been watching unfold for the last two years, while everyone else does tequila shots. I see squirms and eye rolls when I raise the subject, as the awkward silence gets dealt a swift conversation manoeuvre from a bystander. “Erm… Has anyone seen the new White Lotus?”

Sometime’s I’ll get a tokenistic “yeah, yeah, it’s bad isn’t it” - like a cheeky nod is enough to appease my sleepless nights and perpetual state of mourning for people I’ve never met, but whose suffering I’m consuming in my social feeds from morning to night. And yet… I’m the weird one? I’m the inappropriate one? Whilst clearly in the midst of an unintentional social pariah project, I’m not some doolally conspiracy theorist; these are current affairs. When I attempt to discuss Israel’s humanitarian law-breaking rampage, I’m repeating facts and figures. But even then, it’s too much for many dining tables. No one wants to talk about Gaza.

Why is everyone so silent?

I run a company called Good Shout which teaches people how to communicate brilliantly, so I care how much people speak and what they talk about. So, I decided to investigate the scale of silence. Because in 2024, while I was getting death threats from zionists in my LinkedIn DMs I looked around and saw that people were talking less, in general. Less about society, less about war, less about the planet, just… less. Rather than attributing it to apathy, I wanted to find out whether there were complex reasons for all the tumbleweed. So, we partnered with an agency called PHD to conduct a survey of over 2000 British citizens.

What we found was a widespread political paralysis in the UK. Around 40% of people choose to disengage from social issues (the exact figure fluctuates depending on the issue). There were various reasons for this: some say they feel powerless, others say they don’t trust the government to do anything, and a lot of folks feel unheard.

So they stay shtum, which feels like the safest possible option. What this results in, however, is what the political scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann described in 1974 as “the spiral of silence”: a process in which people assume their views are in the minority so they don’t say anything, which makes other people think that the topic is socially unacceptable to discuss, so no one talks at all.

This is a phenomenon that’s occurred since society began, and amplifies during times of crisis. It’s easier to be silent. It’s nicer to be silent! The writer Naomi Shulman once warned: “Nice people made the best Nazis. My mom grew up next to them. They got along, refused to make waves, looked the other way when things got ugly and focused on happier things than “politics.” They were lovely people who turned their heads as their neighbours were dragged away. You know who weren’t nice people? Resisters.” But where did all the resisters go?

When even your family and friends aren’t a safe space

What I find more concerning is the insights in our report that were closer to home. When we asked people what they did do, only a third-ish (38%) claim to speak to their friends and families about massive social issues. It’s a common joke that every Christmas around the dinner table you have to put up with your racist nan and your misogynistic uncle (both of these should be called out, btw) but why aren’t we chatting to our dearest and dearest about huge global forces that face us all? There’s a very simple reason. We’ve become terrible at difficult conversations, especially in Britain. We cannot have a difficult conversation to save our lives; or the lives of others. It’s either avoidance, passive aggression, or unadulterated spite and nothing in between. I don’t just blame social media for this; I blame social media during Brexit for this. In 2016 the way we spoke to each other changed forever, fighting in the comments section with strangers or pissing off our newly-bigoted parents, and this wild swinging between quiet tension and vicious attacks spilled out into IRL.

But also, when we do disagree, the repercussions can be really shitty. We don’t just live in a world where mature discussion no longer exists, this is the public shaming era. If you have a disagreement, you’re blocked. If you support a cause that’s in any way complex, you get unfollowed by your cousin. If you slip up and send an aggy Whatsapp (like a normal flawed human being, it gets forwarded to another Whatsapp group you don’t belong to, or posted online. We’re constantly walking a social tightrope trying not to piss off an entire population who now have the emotional fragility of an erratic volcano feared by its local villagers. We don’t want to talk to our friends and family anymore because everyone’s so unforgiving. Our loved ones our disposable. Lose a friend? Doesn’t matter, I’ve got two thousand others following me on Instagram.

This means that our conversations remain shallow. Cautious. Skimming the surface in case things turn sour. So when it comes to Gaza - a situation that’s been positioned as “complex” despite being really fucking simple - I understand why people are too scared to talk to each other. Because being unfollowed by your cousin for caring about genocide isn’t nice.

Given, the Gaza situation isn’t as ‘simple’ as the murder of George Floyd, when everyone posted their black squares on Instagram in a move that social psychologist Mariah Wellman (2022) called “credibility maintenance”, as opposed to genuine care and activism. That was easier. Whack a shape on your feed and move on. Israel-Palestine has a history, a depth, you have to actually think of words! But that’s no excuse. Because when you can’t find the words, there’s always extremists who can.

Our research found that right now, we’re mid spiral. And the thing about spirals is that they tend to… well, spiral. They get worse. When everyone’s a people pleaser avoiding the difficult conversation, nothing gets said. The vulnerable go undefended, rights start to get lost, and then it’s too late. The spiral of silence turns each of us into the Little Mermaid, trying to survive society and form social bonds without the most important thing we own… our voice. But in real life there’s less chance of a handsome prince or happy ending. The history books tell us that very bad things can happen when everyday people give up their voice.

I’m hosting a free webinar on Speaking Up for Good, that you can book here.

And you can read the full Say Better report (on political paralysis and how to fix it) here. It’s really hard to get people to talk about a report about people not talking, but we had to try: will you share it?

Social media has its own version of Godwin’s law, however, that’s just as basic and just as predictable: that most online debates will eventually end with women being shouted at or shamed.

Whether it’s sex-related, life-stage-related, body-related or controversy-related, women get the blame. It’s easy. It’s contagious. Even famous victims of domestic violence or workplace harassment somehow become the villains, while I’m sat here wondering how the hell Brad Pitt still has his reputation intact.

Let’s take Ozempic and weight-loss jabs. What a cultural phenomenon. The hottest drug in Hollywood, sitting alongside Wegovy and Mounjaro as the ultimate appetite suppressants. I have friends who struggled with their eating for decades crediting the injection with “cancelling out the noise” of food, allowing them to eat without obsession for the first time. That’s… huge. It’s huge! And has undoubtedly saved lives. Aside from some legitimate scare stories, these drugs have made millions of people like or love themselves again, because of all the relationships we have as humans, probably our most complicated is the one we have with consumption.

I doubt cavewomen watched their weight. I’m sure they loved food and sometimes even ate it raw. Our problematic relationship with consumption exists only within the context of a patriarchal society that loves small women and attacks the bigger ones. Therefore it’s reassuringly unsurprising that women are being blamed: for the drugs, for abuse of the drugs, and for the rapid shrinking of society. Famous women who’ve spent years carrying public opinion about their bodies are accused of having ‘Ozempic face’, or being too weak to resist. Silly girls.

There are important conversations to be had about eating disorders. Primarily that the public numbers are so wrong they’re laughable. NHS statistics say 4.3% of teenage girls have an eating disorder, alongside 9% of women, and that 1–2% of us suffer from bulimia. Nah. Try 50%, and you might be closer to the lived reality of disordered eating. Meanwhile, the real culprits - brands and businesses selling the idea of perfection - keep laughing all the way to the bank for inventing and then preying on female insecurities. Advertising ruins lives. And I say that as an ex-advertiser myself.

Scrolling through social media, I sometimes wonder if society hates women’s bodies even more now than it used to. Nelly Furtado was chased out of a career comeback because she’s not the same size as 20 years ago. 52-year-old Heidi Klum was labelled “old and bloated” on the Venice Film Festival carpet. If a female star gains weight, TikTok goes nuts. Any famous woman attempting to hide an early pregnancy is immediately met with fat comments on Instagram.

Even Lizzo, who’s been on her own weight loss journey without the use of drugs, said: “If I did all of this on Ozempic, if I did all this with surgery, I would be just as proud of myself, because this s--- is hard. Everyone who’s ever been in a bigger body in this current version of society knows that this s--- ain’t easy. Existing isn’t easy.”

A UK survey found that 88% of people living with obesity report being stigmatised because of their weight. People with higher weight (BMI ≥35) are 84% more likely to report job discrimination, and 25% of employers would choose a healthy-weight candidate over an equally qualified person with obesity. In a world that keeps telling women to “take up space”, we’re certainly not rewarding those who do.

So, yeah. You can probably understand why women who’ve spent a lifetime paranoid about their size might want help losing weight. I don’t blame women for reaching for that needle. In the same way I don’t blame a single sufferer of anorexia or bulimia. These are pressures that have been forced upon them. As Busy Philipps put it recently: “Give me fucking Ozempic. I didn’t create the fucking problem. We all live in it. We’re not changing it. Everyone can go fuck themselves.” I mean… she’s got a point. She also noted the hypocrisy of famous male actors using steroids to bulk up for action films for years; a ‘phenomenon’ that’s never made the cover of Time magazine.

The backlash to widespread Ozempic use was inevitable, and now it’s everywhere. High-profile commentators are declaring war on weight-loss drugs, warning about unhealthy standards and a shrinking entertainment industry. But instead of shooting at the system that forged these standards, the fire lands squarely on the women taking them. The message is clear: if you’re using these drugs, you’re a bit pathetic. Foolish. Gullible. Weak-willed. A lemming. Viral posts screaming WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT SKINNY WOMEN rage about side effects and cultural harm, yet focus almost entirely on users, not on the industries that have spent decades selling thinness as virtue. Instagram is filled with critiques delivered by female commentators to overwhelmingly female audiences, but what’s confusing is that many of these creators are already thin, conventionally beautiful, and deeply embedded in the fashion economy. Their posts rack up millions of views while millions of other women scramble to justify their bodies and their choices. This doesn’t feel like progress to me, nor does it feel like ✨smashing the patriarchy✨. It feels like punching down, or at the very least, sideways.

Women shrinking themselves is a social issue. But aiming your anger at the ones doing the shrinking misses the point. There’s a name for this pattern: lateral aggression, or horizontal hostility, which is when oppressed groups target their frustrations towards peers rather than upwards towards the structures that benefit from that oppression. Our fury at the fact we live in a world which still insists upon tiny female frames is being taken out the wrong people, because they’re the only ones who’ll listen. Lateral aggression has been studied extensively in nursing, a female-dominated profession where peer-to-peer hostility flourishes under rigid hierarchies and limited power. Women perform the system’s policing for free. But what do we gain from that?

Two things can be true. We can warn women about a multi-industry global machine designed to make them smaller, examining the side effects and reminding them that the “perfect” body is a work of fiction. And we can protect and respect the women who believe these drugs are necessary for their health or happiness. We can mind our language so that, in the middle of rants about celebrity weight loss, no one feels shame for what the patriarchy did to them. Shouting is good. I love shouting! But we need to be careful who the shouting’s aimed at.

Very few social problems are solved by shaming women. There are exceptions: I’m perfectly happy to shame the 2025 version of Nicki Minaj, the 52% of white women who voted for Donald Trump, or women caught on camera screaming at immigrants on the street. But whether it’s Ariana Grande or Busy Philipps or that girl you went to school with, when it comes to weight, we need to refocus our fury. Let’s slag off processed food. Let’s slag off Meta, for forcing perfect aesthetics on us. Let’s slag off brands! Let’s slag off those hijacking a public health issue for likes. Let’s slag off the people in power who’ve been brainwashing women for centuries. Because in the race for a hot take that does viral digits, we risk add further shame to an already shame-ridden aspect of life.

Nothing protects a system quite like women arguing over who’s doing womanhood “correctly”, or competing to see who succumbed to the patriarchy the least. The basic rules of negotiation tell us to respect face and treat people as competent and intelligent rather than stupid or weak. So if we genuinely want to negotiate with women in this process; to help them become immune to patriarchal demands, then our conversations need more care, and less accusation.

Because shame doesn’t fix us. It only makes us suffer in silence. And haven’t we done enough of that already?

Facts are fleeting, but feelings stay. When I was a kid, those gasped mornings and tortured sunrises were as common as Coco Pops. Waking up and knowing I’d experienced a fear, or shame, or humiliation, but with zero recall. What dark and distressing creature sat waiting in my dreams each night? What had I seen?

One Saturday morning, lying in bed eating toast with mum, I told her about my nightmares.

“I can’t explain it,” I said. “I know I have nightmares because I wake up terrified and shaky.” I wiggled my hands, to show her what I meant. “But I don’t know what they are.”

She put her mug down on the bedside table, and sighed. Back then I didn’t understand how this could make a mother worry. That the one place she couldn’t protect me was inside my own mind.

“Well,” she said, matter of factly. “Did you know… if I hold your hand while you fall asleep, that I can travel with you into your dreams? I read a book about it once.”

“Oh yeah?” I asked. “What’s that called?”

“Well, it’s… er… it’s called… It’s called Sleep Hopping! I hop in, check you’re ok, and then when you start having loads of fun, I hop out again. Like we do at the park. When I leave you on the seesaw with your friends, but you know I’m standing over there by the gates, watching you. So it’s fine.”

That night, I clung to her hand in so much hope the knuckles went white, gripping her perfect pink fingers until I allowed myself to slip into another, denser reality. But I woke up the next morning feeling awful, again. “I know I had a nightmare. I’m sure I did!” I sobbed.

“No!” my mother squealed, with an enchanting grin. “Don’t you remember? I was there with you. We danced to Kylie Minogue on a big stage at Wembley and then ate doughnuts for hours. It was Spring!”

“Did you?!” I asked, believing her in that wholesome way only children want to. “Ah, yes. I remember. I remember that! We had so much fun!” And oh-so-suddenly, I felt safe. Because what a lovely time we had! And every night, for many years, she would hold my hand as I drifted off to sleep, and every morning describe the amazing adventures we’d had.

I do it for her, now. When the glitches come, and time loses its footing, When names and faces and facts slowly wash away. When her past returns to greet the child she was and the present melts like microwaved butter. I hold her hand until she feels safe.

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Being an early adopter doesn’t bother me, but wasting my time does. And so whilst millions of others are years into the newsletter game, this is me being late to the party, as per. But social media is exhausting and I need a place to keep my pinball thoughts organised, so Weirdism will share everything I’ve learned about people. Weird, weird people. Some things will be good, some things will be bad, but all of them will be scientifically robust. No fake news here, people.

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