The Adults Aren't Alright

It’s time to give up, fellow 30-somethings. But not in the way you think. This episode is all about letting go of what we can’t control and facing that fear of being left behind in the pop culture zeitgeist head-on.

In this episode:

• Seeing things from our adolescence (low-rise jeans!) come back in fashion and feeling vaguely attacked
• The vibe shift article from The Cut and how it’s predicting an impending pop culture pivot
• How there’s no real need to fight Gen Z over denim styles; fashion is and always will be cyclical
• The younger generation is supposed to do this; it’s the natural order of things
• Revisiting cheugy
• Exploring why Millennials err on the sensitive side
• Leaning into being more self-assured and wise (yes! Even though we don’t feel like it!) than our younger counterparts

Show notes + links:

There has always been immense pressure for moms to "do it all," but that means something different now with the fishbowl lens social media brings. 

Today I’m sitting down with my best friend of 20+ years, Lauren Alquist, as she shares her story and experience of becoming a mother, balancing her life and identity, why she chooses to work— and how it makes her a better mom.

In this episode:

• The pressures moms of all styles (stay-at-home, working) face today
• How to integrate becoming a mom and giving your kids your all— while maintaining your own identity
• Parenting children with completely different personalities, finding tidbits of your own personality in your kids and the full-circle moment that brings, and how being a good mom to your kids doesn't = being their friend
• How putting yourself first in terms of health not only helps you (which is actually most! important!), it also serves the needs of your family

Timestamps:

• 10:45 Parenting two children with completely different personalities: one regimented and one completely free-spirited
• 16:30 Our relationships with our siblings and how we totally (lovingly) hazed my sister as a freshman in high school
• 24:09 The rise of Facebook in college and how every time we went out it was a 30-photo FB album event
• 27:30 How Lauren found her own style of being a mom and how she integrated that with having a job she loves; not sacrificing her entire identity in being a mother when society expects it
• 50:08 How different it is today in having children and knowing the sex vs. knowing the gender; navigating "boy mom" and "girl mom" readiness while experiencing the fear and joy of impending motherhood- it's not one or the other. 
• 57:00 The "life-altering love" people say happens at birth; it doesn't actually for everyone and it's not a bad thing if it doesn't happen for you
• 1:06:00 The pressure to bounce back to "pre-baby weight" and the lack of respect we have for women’s bodies always, but especially during and after pregnancy, all stemming from the very narrow acceptable range of what a woman’s body can look like at any given time
• 1:17:30 The mommy influencer scene and how inauthentic it can feel
• 1:23:52 How Lauren navigated not feeling good in her body and taking steps to feel better while still presenting a healthy body image to her girls

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More and more Millennial women are opting to either delay becoming mothers or choosing not to have children altogether. Why? Sabrina Osborn is back and we dig into just that in this episode. 

We also confront the deeply-rooted societal belief that a woman “isn’t successful” or “doesn’t know real love” until she’s a mom- a trash take that we take where it belongs: to the dumpster.

In this episode:

• Choosing to be childless today
• The things we have heard (or people have said!) to us re: the choice not to have children
• Why more and more women (and couples in general) are choosing to remain childless
• The gender pay gap and how it relates to women having children
• Note for the moms out there: we support you! Your decision to have children in whatever form that takes and how you feel about your role as a mom is valid and important.

Timestamps:

• 4:00 Societal idea that you are not successful or complete unless you become a mother and where that comes from
• 9:35 Completely inappropriate/misguided things people have said to us when they learn we don’t want to be moms
• 24:55 The argument that it's actually selfish to have kids you don’t really want than it is to choose to remain childless
• 27:55 Statistics time: why women are delaying having kids, the enormous cost of raising a child, and the link between children and a woman's earning power in the workplace
• 36:42 Subscribing to the accepted life plan of having kids and then discovering I actually didn't want them
• 40:05 Brina briefly catching baby fever
• 49:15 If motherhood is the "best" thing a woman can do, why aren’t we unconditionally supportive of ALL single moms? Especially single moms of color and women in lower socioeconomic classes?
• 55:00 The media + entertainment we consume is a huge part of our (and society's) programming
• 1:00:05 Holding space for women who want to become mothers and cannot (infertility, etc) and are judged as “selfish”

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Sitting down on the pod today with Caitlin Fore, my longtime friend and artist, stylist, mom, and influencer (one of the good ones). We reflect on her journey balancing her happiness with her career aspirations, disappointments, and pivots- all while trying to have a life and a family of her own.

We then jump into what’s wrong with the influencer industry today (hint: a lot), what we learned in all the unrest of 2020, and how it forced us into a new way of using our platforms.

In this episode:

• Losing your dream job- only to end up happier, better off, and open to your REAL calling
• Balancing a family while sorting out your career
• Irresponsible/fake influencer behavior, especially during COVID and BLM
• Why I don’t identify as an influencer anymore and the future of the influencer industry (will Instagram survive?)
• Addressing our unconscious biases and how we have tried to fold that work into our platforms

Timestamps:

• 4:48 How we met (start here if you want to skip the astrology bits)
• 19:39 Getting her dream job… then losing it and rectifying the aftermath
• 34:00 Checking all the success and happiness boxes but coming up empty, now what?
• 36:00 Manifestation and self-worth
• 42:30 Not wanting to be a stay-at-home + the pressures society puts on women to make motherhood their whole identity
• 50:40 Influencer culture (rampant consumerism, irresponsible behavior, loop giveaways, fake people, and fake followings)
• 1:02:03 Bullshit influencers exposed during 2020 amidst Black Lives Matter, COVID, the election, etc., and one’s responsibility as an influencer
• 1:17:56 Inclusivity, body image issues, finding body positivity, and recognizing the societal programming of what bodies are “acceptable"
• 1:32:50 Retiring as an influencer but not from blogging

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What do you do when you land the fairytale life and then it doesn’t work out? We've been sold on the romantic ideals of our parents: you find the love of your life and you marry them. And yet the divorce rate in the US hovers between 40-50%. So what if that fairytale’s not forever? What happens then? 

I hash all this out with my good friend, Jared Dunn. We're both members of the Formerly Married Club, but with two completely different divorce experiences. We compare and contrast those experiences here. 

This episode is all about maneuvering through massive life change (divorce, career pivots) and finding yourself on the other side.

In this episode:

• Jumping off metaphorical cliffs to find happiness in work
• Navigating a relationship that no longer serves either party (and working to stay friends throughout)
• The other side of divorce and how it feels to put yourself back out there (spoiler: terrifying)

Timestamps in case you want to hop around:

• 7:50 Look at us, just not feeling our age AT ALL
• 12:40 Pivoting careers (and industries!) when you're not happy
• 29:40 We were sold a version of success as kids that didn't exist by the time we came of age
• 39:35 Social media and peeling back the curtain of vulnerability 
• 49:56 Gross influencer behavior + NSale rant
• 1:00:33 Let's all get divorced (Ain't No Wifey!)
• 1:03:54 Our different experiences in getting divorced (and boy, are they DIFFERENT)
• 1:20:15 Dating after divorce
• 1:29:00 To have kids or not to have kids?
• 1:45:45 Guess what, no one actually has it figured out

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Who doesn’t love a good 90's boy band? They reigned over the 90s and early 2000s and I’ll be damned if I ever turn my back on the Backstreet Boys. I sat down with one of my best pals and fellow boy band authority, Sabrina Osborn, to have a massive walk down memory lane. 

If you covered your walls in Tiger Beat posters or you know what KTBSPA means, this ep is for you.

In this episode:

• BSB and how they got started
• The Backstreet/NYSYNC rivalry and what really caused it
• Some discography (for pop-loving playlist building)
• So much floor humping (it was an epidemic)
• NKOTB
• LFO
• 98 Degrees
• 90's pop princesses
• The painful art of stalking the girlfriends
• The British Boyband Invasion: 5ive, BBMak
• The importance of the 90's music video
• Back when the VMAs mattered

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Friends are friends forever... or are they? Let’s get into why adult friendships are weird (and why that’s not always a bad thing).

In this episode:

• How friendships change in your 30s
• Why those friendships change
• How internet friendships factor into the equation
• How to have a successful friendship at this stage (hint: it involves some expectation-reckoning but the result is SO worth it)

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Photoshop can be misleading and dangerous, as it can be used in a way that warps our sense of what normal bodies and faces look like— and while this affects everyone, Photoshop was especially damaging for the 90s kids. Let's dive into why.

In this episode:

• A dive into Photoshop culture and how it shaped the beauty standards we’re still trapped in today
• The way unrealistic standards directly influence how we feel about our bodies
• How Photoshop and the apps it inspired directly contribute to the fake world of social media
• What’s been expansive for me in terms of learning to love (or at least accept) my body today

Body positive/self-love/body acceptance babes I dig:

Welcome to Episode 1 of The Adults Aren’t Alright! In the inaugural ep, we’ll jump into what inspired me to start this podcast: the weirdness of being an adult on paper, but totally not feeling like one in real life.

I’ve been talking to my friends about this for years— and what I realized is that we all seemed to feel this way. All of us in our 30s; none of us feeling in our 30s.

So here we are!

Listen to the episode to:

• Learn what I mean when I say “the in-between generation”
• Come along as we put adulthood under the microscope, viewing it through the lens of beauty standards, career, success, and so much more
• Get a very healthy dose of 90s nostalgia (because the Nokia 3390 was a phone AND a weapon and I miss it)

Follow The Adults Podcast + Ashley: