Freya India

“They found that more privileged women felt even more pessimistic. And these are things that I've been trying to argue very carefully and I hope with some compassion, but I've had to put up with constant smears and backlash. They're not happy. Something is happening in their relationships. They don't they feel hopeless about the future.”

“The argument of the book is that women are becoming something more like products rather than people. And so I think they're being encouraged to see their lives as the ultimate goal is to optimize yourself for the market. The ultimate goal is not to have a collection of human experiences. And I think this explains a lot of things. So it explains what young women value and what they don't value.”

“All of the foundations and anchors that help women and people in general feel stable have basically been eroded. And that's the argument in my book that we have had our families break down. We've we don't know our neighbors. We don't have communities. We are less religious. We're less religious than young men even. So we don't have any of these anchors.”

“I think for the women I'm talking about, there's much more pressure to stay single, to stay unattached, to stay available. I think what Emma is really describing when she talks about the rush and the hurry is she feels pressure to cram in all her self actualization before she meets someone. So in the podcast, she's talking about healing herself and fixing her mental health and becoming the best version of herself and becoming whole and healed and enlightened.”

“If young girls say they have an anxiety disorder, they have social anxiety, I think what they're really feeling is actual distress from the world that they're growing up in. And so they have had less practice. They have had less face to face interaction. And so they do have this outsized reaction to socializing, but it's not a disorder. The problem is you have a lot of young women who, typically, by their nature, will go inwards when they feel distressed.”

“Instead, it is young women moving to the radical left that is widening the political gender gap among the under thirties. Yeah. And I would put that down to social media because, obviously, there's all different spheres of content on social media. And every trend, basically, you can get dragged toward the most deranged and extreme endpoint of that trend.”

“The self love campaign was basically ways to sell things like editing apps. So Facetune was marketed as something that can help you feel confident and empowered. And I talk about these influencers in the book who are literally talking about how they don't have any insecurities anymore, and they've overcome it, and they finally reached a stage of self love while they're literally reshaping their jaw on FaceTune, teaching girls how to do it.”

“I just really don't want to lose the other things and become just a mother. I still want to be me, and I will probably lose that. Yeah. I think it's a fear of vulnerability and Dependence. Yeah. I think this gets missed sometimes with the discussions on girl boss feminism and all young women just wanna be a girl boss and for sort of selfish reasons.”

“I think women do have unmet needs. I think the reason that more privileged women were more pessimistic in that piece was that they have everything they want and basically nothing they need. So all of the foundations and anchors that help women and people in general feel stable have basically been eroded. And that's the argument in my book that we have had our families break down. We've we don't know our neighbors. We don't have communities. We are less religious.”

“all of the foundations and anchors that help women and people in general feel stable have basically been eroded. And that's the argument in my book that we have had our families break down. We've we don't know our neighbors. We don't have communities. We are less religious. We're less religious than young men even. So we don't have any of these anchors. And that is why I think when the social media platforms came in, they really destroyed young women because they offered substitutes and simulations of these things that we didn't have in the first place.”

“So the problem is you have a lot of young women who, typically, by their nature, will go inwards when they feel distressed. But you have industries encouraging them and telling them the problem is you. Yeah. They're not making it up, but they are being manipulated. Yeah. Yeah. And and and the point of the book is basically there's nothing wrong with you. Your reactions are human reactions to the world and and to a world that's trying to turn you into a product, the fact that you feel unhappy.”

“So for example, not having children, having more of an aversion to having children someday than young men. I think that's because they think of themselves as a product, not as a human. And so people say things like, oh, that's the most human experience. Why would you not want to do that? But if your goal is to be a perfect, pristine product, then why would you take the risk of motherhood when it could destroy your body? It's unpredictable. It's dangerous. It's scary. It's not really something you can display quickly.”

“I think for the women I'm talking about, there's much more pressure to stay single, to stay unattached, to stay available. And I think what Emma is really describing when she talks about the rush and the hurry is she feels pressure to cram in all her self actualization before she meets someone. So in the podcast, she's talking about healing herself and fixing her mental health and becoming the best version of herself and becoming whole and healed and enlightened. And I think that's a core message that young women are growing up with.”

“The only thing I can think is that it becomes, again, another form of signaling you are a good person. Look at how much I care? Yeah. And these will be the same women who've, again, grown up with believing that what counts as being a good person is what they post. And Well, also empathy, you know, to steel man that, this person is if that's the truth, this person really cares about what's going on in The Middle East and is genuinely pained by it. And that that's a kind of investment that's really impressive.”

“FaceTune is, like, one of the most popular apps where girls would edit themselves to then post on Instagram. Like filters? No. Going in and editing each part of your face. So you can slim your jaw. You can enlarge your eyes. You can change your waist. You can tan your skin. You can whiten your teeth. It's everything. But that is what girls were using as teenagers all throughout their all throughout growing up. And then they've reached their twenties and people say, oh, why are they unhappy with the way they look?”