411. Growing up online, early fame and rediscovering your creativity ft. Arden Rose

00:00:05
Speaker 1: Hello everybody, I'm Jemma Spake and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments, and transitions of our twenties and what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. It is so great to have you here, back for another episode. I have been really looking forward to this episode because today, not only do we have our first guest for our Netflix episodes if you are watching over there, but we are talking about something a lot of us have experienced in very small ways, but very few people have experienced on a massive kind of life defining scale, which is growing up on the Internet over the last two decades as social media has become more omnipresent and hosting our entire lives has become more normalized. I think a lot of us are having this weird experience whereby our identity, our mistakes, our awkward years, our best years, our relationships are all documented not just for us, but for other people. On a small scale, that might mean like embarrassing Facebook memories. For others, it means like millions of people getting to see you as you are still trying to figure out your life, expecting you to be the same, expecting you to grow in a certain way. And today's guest is somebody who has lived through all of that and more. She is one of the original YouTube creators, or I would say YouTube it girls of our generation. And she builds a platform where I think at a time when nobody really understood what the Internet could really become. And now as she enters her thirties, she is here to talk to us about that experience and how it has shaped her and her relationship to creating. Now, Arden Rose, welcome to the Psychology of your twenties.

00:01:56
Speaker 2: Hi, thank you so much for having me.

00:01:58
Speaker 1: I'm so excited.

00:02:00
Speaker 2: I'm so excited to be here. I feel like you gave me a really nice setup.

00:02:04
Speaker 1: Really like I like my intro. I really did, Yeah.

00:02:07
Speaker 2: Because I think it gave a good, h I don't know, like a grounding of how I felt for a really long time, but I never put it into words.

00:02:14
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's what we always endeavored to do. We're going to talk about it so much. But you know what we were talking about on the elevator, Rapp, is that you used to have a pub costs.

00:02:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, I did.

00:02:26
Speaker 1: I did.

00:02:26
Speaker 4: It was called Crash on My Couch and it was really cute. It was me and my.

00:02:29
Speaker 2: Husband doing it together before we were married, and we would just talk about like random stuff, like he was really into the idea of getting to eventually go on a treasure hunt, which I think all straight cisman have some kind of fantasy for. And so we used to go on these like deep dives about like hidden treasures that we might be able to find and stuff like that. And then my segments were all about like animals that were extraordinary in the news, very very diverse, very interesting topics that we were tackling important stuff.

00:02:58
Speaker 1: Honestly, wait, this gives me a business idea. Oh yeah, any but there is money on the table for people to do themed birthday parties for grown men where they set up try to hunts.

00:03:08
Speaker 2: For them add percent, it's kind of the same thing as like an escape room and a lot of way yeah.

00:03:13
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you think about it that way.

00:03:14
Speaker 2: They yearn for it, They yearn they yearn to be trapped somewhere and to have to steal a golden niol, the Indiana Jones of it all.

00:03:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, would you ever do another podcast. I would.

00:03:25
Speaker 2: I just I think I need a partner like you. I need like a cool Galpalda to chat with podcast.

00:03:32
Speaker 1: So yeah, really really what it is? You know, what I've realized is that I didn't even let you introduce yourself. So for people who may not know who you are, can you briefly introduce yourself? Tell us about your work, tell us about yourself and yeah, how do you think most people know you? Yeah?

00:03:49
Speaker 4: Okay, Well my name's Arden Rose, so that is my name.

00:03:52
Speaker 2: My actual name is Arden Rose Ricks, but I've always used my middle name just because, like every basic white girl, I have.

00:03:57
Speaker 4: The middle name Rose.

00:03:59
Speaker 2: And also my first name was so weird that I feel like I needed like kind of a normal second name to back it up.

00:04:04
Speaker 1: Where is your first name from? You know what?

00:04:06
Speaker 4: It's so funny it my mom came up with it.

00:04:10
Speaker 2: She used to live in Texas while she was pregnant with me, and she had a neighbor who used to make her baked goods, who was like quite an older lady. And I think her name was Arden or her second name was Arden, or her last name was Arden. And I'm assuming because I've looked it up a few times that it has something to do with French spelling of arden, which is like a R D E N N E s. But my name is ard and like Garden without the G is what I tell every barista that ever has to write my name down.

00:04:40
Speaker 1: That is a great namonic device. Yeah, because I've never had the name Aarden before.

00:04:43
Speaker 2: It's a weird one. Man, which it's a weird one.

00:04:46
Speaker 1: If you had kids and not to like we were literally talking about this before, would you give them a unique name?

00:04:52
Speaker 4: I totally would.

00:04:53
Speaker 2: I think about it all the time because I think it's like it's I think it's like really lame that men are allowed to carry their names down and like women don't have like as much of an okay to do it. Because Ardene is such a cool name. Like I remember being a kid who being like I've got a cool name, you know what I mean. I wasn't bullied for my name. Maybe I would hate it if I was bullied for my name, but I like, I really want it to be like my kid's name.

00:05:13
Speaker 1: Now make the rules, maybe it will. You should totally do it.

00:05:17
Speaker 4: I'll do a Laura like Gilmore thing.

00:05:18
Speaker 1: Well, I think that we must. Yeah, it's this post the other day that was like middle names used to be the way that women could pass down their names to not be erased from the history of their children. And I was like, so, I think it's going to be the new trend.

00:05:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a good idea. I think Arden's a good middle name too.

00:05:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, beautiful middle name.

00:05:35
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:05:35
Speaker 1: I completely interrupted you as you were talking about your beginning.

00:05:38
Speaker 4: No, I appreciate it.

00:05:40
Speaker 2: No, I so appreciate it. Well, I think it's so funny. I think I have like different iterations of people who have watched me, Like, there are some people who have literally watched me since I was like fourteen years old in my childhood bedroom in Little Rock, Arkansas, And to those shouts out, y'all are the real ones out there. But yeah, that's a very different crowd than the people who probably found me in like their college years when I had like just moved to LA and I was like living with all of these girls. We had kind of like a not a content house necessarily.

00:06:10
Speaker 4: Because that was not a thing at the time, but.

00:06:12
Speaker 2: It was like four girls who were all YouTubers living together but doing like kind of separate things, and that was an era of time that people might know me, and then like as I grew up, then I started traveling more and met my husband and eventually now have immigrated to the UK.

00:06:29
Speaker 1: What was it like in that content house, like this YouTube past that you were in, Well, you said it wasn't a content house, but I like.

00:06:35
Speaker 3: It feels like content house like has a derogatory like because I just think of like the hype house or like Teams Dead, which now feels like the ancient texts, like you know what I mean. Even though that was like what ten years ago, it feels like it was like twenty years ago, But it was.

00:06:50
Speaker 4: It was really cool.

00:06:51
Speaker 2: It was like kind of a funny thing because it's playing off the theme of like growing up on the internet. But I experienced a lot of like that what people probably would have had in university or in college, like that same socialization with people who were in the same like peer group as you. But I was having it visibly online with other girls that were also having it visibly online while we were all maintaining friendships together. So I think that was complicated because when you're eighteen and nineteen, like that's a cop that's complicated relationships anyways, goodness and so but I really enjoyed it. It was like yeah, and then also, this is so random, but like the whole reason that my husband and I got together was because Rebecca Black of Friday right yeah, came over to our house and like we had had a night out the night before and she stayed over and the next morning we were all having breakfast together and I was like, who's this random British guy that keeps sliding into my dms?

00:07:47
Speaker 4: Like who is this little?

00:07:48
Speaker 2: Did I know that I had already met him and I'd completely forgotten that I had met him, But she like vouched for him and was like, oh no, he's really cool and you two would totally hit it off, like you guys should go on a date together. So like way, yeah, so it's kind of butterfly effect. Like if I hadn't, you know, lived with those girls, I probably would have never I wouldn't be sat here probably, I know.

00:08:05
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:08:06
Speaker 1: Take me back to like your first YouTube video and before, because I have a lot of questions about this era of your life. But when did you post like your first video online? Yeah?

00:08:17
Speaker 2: You know what, It's so funny, It's like it's really funny to think about how the history of YouTubers, like the history of the Internet. Like I was kind of not there for the creation of it, but I was there watching people go from doing like makeup tutorials online to being like personalities online and like how that transformed and like why that shifted and changed. And I think in my case, it happened really organically because I was admiring all these like beauty gurus, you know, like the the og beauty gurus of the time, like Juicy Star O seven and all the you know, Blair Fowler and el Fowler and like, you know, all these people and Gigi gorgeous, Like.

00:09:01
Speaker 1: I used to watch her religiously.

00:09:03
Speaker 4: Girl, like so many different people. Bub's Beauty. I don't know if you remember her.

00:09:08
Speaker 2: She's like an I think she was Irish, but she was like an amazing Michelle Hall.

00:09:13
Speaker 1: Oh my god, yeah I do. She had read is this what I'm thinking of? Bugs? Beauty?

00:09:17
Speaker 2: Bugs beauty I think is different than Bub's beauty, Okay, but.

00:09:22
Speaker 4: I know it's just so fun. Everyone had such cute user names.

00:09:25
Speaker 2: I wish we stuck to use her names, but you know, it was kind of the era still of like the Stranger Danger era, which is so funny because now everyone posts everything always, but I was just watching these people and really loving it. And then I had a friend named Kennedy who went to my school when I was younger and then moved to Texas for I think for her dad's job. And when she moved, we would watch YouTube videos together, like in middle school, and so I started sending her like we would make kind of like fake beauty guru videos like to each other, like getting ready in the morning and right, and.

00:10:05
Speaker 4: So we would send it back and forth.

00:10:06
Speaker 2: But then it became a bit of this thing where like we both started getting followers from like people watching us get ready for each other, and so it became this thing where like that's kind of where it started. And I lost all those videos, which I'm really sad about, Like I think I privated all of them when I was probably like eighteen, because I just thought I'm so young in these videos. Even at eighteen, I was like, I'm too young to be like have these videos on the internet. Which is also really funny because even at that time, when I was posting as like a fourteen year old girl, I and I mean this sincerely never had a creepy comment.

00:10:39
Speaker 4: Not really, I was complete. I don't know what. I don't know what was looking out for me really, but I was completely sheltered from like pervs.

00:10:48
Speaker 1: Will your parents worried about that? Would they? Did? They ask you?

00:10:51
Speaker 4: Well, they didn't exactly know about it initially.

00:10:53
Speaker 2: That I the only reason I told my parents about it when I was I think I was sixteen years old when I finally told them. So, It'd been like two years of very intermit and posting, like I would post like a video and I would post like four videos a week, and then I wouldn't post for like two months.

00:11:05
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, like just team stuff.

00:11:07
Speaker 2: And then I Google ad Sense became a thing and you needed to have a bank account and you need to have your parents' permission if you were going to sign up with you I was sixteen years old, and I was like, I think I can make money doing this. Like that was the first like wow inkling that anything. And I think I probably had like twenty thousand followers on YouTube wow at the time. Granted, also, the other thing about YouTube at that time was that it was such a small ecosystem that there weren't that many people to watch that were making content like that, so like it's so ubiquitous now anyone everyone has access to it, and everyone feels.

00:11:41
Speaker 1: Everybody's thought about it. Yeah, totally have to admit, like everybody has thought about Yeah what I what if I made YouTube videos? What if I posted tiktoks?

00:11:49
Speaker 2: Absolutely so it was but it was like at the time for me, it was like a thing like you can make money doing that, you know what I mean? Like, oh, okay, well that's interesting. So I remember I told them when I was sixteen, and they were.

00:11:59
Speaker 1: Like, well, you being safe?

00:12:01
Speaker 4: Like not knowing what.

00:12:03
Speaker 2: Question to really ask me for that, but like, are you like an amorphous? Are you being safe? And I'm like yes, I think, like I'm sixteen, like I don't know, but I was. Also I'm one of four kids, so I think they were just like happy that I wasn't, you know, joining some kind of cults?

00:12:17
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, doing something else nefarious.

00:12:20
Speaker 1: It's so interesting that you're like, I never got a creepy comment. But your first video you posted when you were fourteen? Yeah, and what was that video? Was to get Ready with Me?

00:12:30
Speaker 4: Yeah? I think it was a get Ready with Me?

00:12:32
Speaker 2: It also could have been like a review of something. You know what it might have been. It might have been.

00:12:39
Speaker 4: So like silly, like so lame now to think about.

00:12:43
Speaker 2: But I think at the time, you know, Mac Cosmetics was like huge, and I remember there was a significance right and there was this brush called the back two one seven brush that was like the blending brush everyone was like obsessed with.

00:12:53
Speaker 4: I can see it in my mind's like to this day.

00:12:55
Speaker 1: Color was it black?

00:12:56
Speaker 4: It was well all the.

00:12:57
Speaker 2: Black like black handles, and then it had white, like really soft bristles.

00:13:03
Speaker 4: I remember this. I want this brush now, but maybe they've changed it.

00:13:06
Speaker 2: I don't know, but I remember I went to Mac and I bought that, and I bought I think a single eyeeshadow, and I came home and I did a whole with my two items.

00:13:15
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness and my heart.

00:13:20
Speaker 2: I probably thought I was being so cool because Michelle Fon used that brush.

00:13:24
Speaker 1: So I was like, I got, well, this is what I was going to ask you about. It was like, what is it what was it like back then, which you've kind of already answered, And what is it like to watch those videos back now? Knowing what the internet is these days, because back then it was such low production value and it was really organic and now it's this it's mega, Like yeah, literally people now realize like being online can make you a millionaire, could make you a billionaire in some situations. Maybe we're not at that level yet, but pretty close. Like what was it before that kind of what was it like before that took over?

00:14:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting because it's like you're so right, people just didn't really have like the means to figure out that it was such a thing until it was, and then everyone who could possibly exploit it kind of like figured out how to work algorithms and stuff. I think that was like a really interesting phase of YouTube.

00:14:16
Speaker 4: But I think.

00:14:16
Speaker 2: Before that point there was this real kind of like OOI guy center core of people on YouTube that were like kind of not anti social people because I think that has like a negative connotation, but people that maybe felt more comfortable being creative in their bedrooms on the internet, which is like a very different thing than wanting to make money on the internet, right, Like that's like those are two different types of people. Oh yeah, and sometimes even diagram exists. But for me, it was like I didn't feel like I had a lot of friends at school, my friend Kennedy had just moved. You know, I was like joining cheer and I was like very awkward, and I was just like I had a really bad haircut at the time. And I think all of that to be said, I think like I was looking to express myself to someone or something like just like gab out loud. I was kind of screaming into the void. Yeah, but by just like showing mac eye shadows, you know, like accept me.

00:15:11
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:15:12
Speaker 2: Love me, except me, help me figure out how to be like a young woman. So yeah, that was sort of like the genesis of it. And then also like I there were limitations as far as like set up, like I had to wait for my dad to come home because his crappy laptop had had a webcaminet.

00:15:30
Speaker 1: You filmed on the oh yeah book.

00:15:32
Speaker 4: It wasn't even a MacBook. It was like an HP. It was so buggy, it was so bad.

00:15:36
Speaker 2: I remember like there were months where I couldn't record anything because he would get so many viruses on his laptop.

00:15:41
Speaker 4: He would have to like go get it wiped.

00:15:44
Speaker 5: Like I remember when that was a bag yes McAfee babe, oh yeah, big time. So yeah, there was like, yeah, just moments where like stuff like that would happen and it was just kind of like an organic break. And then but I remember there were times like that where I would go on my comments section and you know, there'd be like or five or six comments on a video and one of them would be like, where's she been all this time?

00:16:04
Speaker 2: It's like, it's so funny to think that that was the reason I wasn't there.

00:16:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you were, like I feel seene like people.

00:16:10
Speaker 4: Miss me, miss all three of you watching coming back?

00:16:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, sorry, guys, I've been on the little break. I just want to be completely transparent about what I'm doing on Yes, let's address it.

00:16:21
Speaker 2: Lots of stuff happening in my personal life, lots of viruses on my dad's leftop.

00:16:27
Speaker 1: What was the first video of yours that went like viral? It was and was like virality even a thing back then?

00:16:32
Speaker 4: Yeah, it definitely was.

00:16:33
Speaker 2: I think virality had had a different connotation, like I'll use your Becca as an example, like Friday had a very different virality than what viral is today. Like viral today is something popular for a week, like viral back then was popular for years, like talked about for years, Like where have they been kind of vibes, you know, like when you think about the Chocolate rain Guy, Tayson Day or Beca for Friday or like all these people, like they still have these like statements next to them, like you know, Capital Chocolate Rain Guy, because they were like, you know, integral parts of the Internet, whereas now it's like nothing can really.

00:17:15
Speaker 1: And nobody can trace it back to who's startled it.

00:17:17
Speaker 2: No, exactly, yeah, and it's yeah, and I don't know, we can't just anything nowadays, so it's just like hard for anyone to like be one hundred percent on anything. Yeah, we live in a really weird time. But at the time, I think I did a video. This is so lame. But so the bad haircut happened, and then I made a video where I had researched a bunch of stuff as it's probably fifteen year old's okay, sixteen year old, maybe of ways that I could grow my hair back.

00:17:44
Speaker 1: So wait, what was the hair cut? We need to know the haircut. It was just a bob. It was a bob, like it was just a bottle. It wasn't like a funky little bob.

00:17:51
Speaker 2: It was like a oh no, it wasn't chic. It wasn't it wasn't French Claire, but it was fine. It wasn't atrocious like I think. I was just like insecure and I was, you know, a Southern girl fifteen sixteen, Yeah, exactly exactly. So I had made this video and it went really really viral, like I think it had like millions of views, which is so funny because it was obviously just people like before I knew what SEO was.

00:18:17
Speaker 4: Oh, it's like someone.

00:18:18
Speaker 2: Just searching, Oh, I grow my hair back, and they're getting some dumb ass sixteen year old and little Rock Arkansas telling them how to grow that, like I know anything.

00:18:25
Speaker 1: What was your advice? Was it? Like, I don't even remember. It was bad.

00:18:28
Speaker 2: You can barely hear it. The audio is so bad. And again I'm recording it on like either do you remember those flip cameras. Yes, it was either one of those which sounded like you were it sounded and looked like you were in the ocean, or it was my dad's MacBook, which also looked like it was in the ocean.

00:18:44
Speaker 1: So but being in the ocean, it's good for the heir, you know it? So true?

00:18:48
Speaker 4: Wit is like that it all come yeah.

00:18:51
Speaker 1: It's so funny. This brings me so. I think the real big question of this episode, which is, like what's been the hottest part of growing up online? Like half of your life on the internet. Do you feel like as you've entered your thirties, like people who know you from back then have like expectations for your Uh.

00:19:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I have like a really interesting audience. Like I said, I've like picked up these like little core cool girl groups I'll say, like throughout time and space. But for the most part, I have always had like a really intelligent, really emotionally mature and very kind audience. Like I've always had really really sweet people follow me. I've never felt bullied by my audience, and I've never felt like put on the back foot. And I think part of that is because I've never been someone who has like that serious viral fame that usually comes with some kind of outrage or you know, like I don't know, Like I always just think about how like as women, you if you get to a certain point of virality, there will always be like a guillotine waiting for you, you know what I mean. Like chapelone is a great example right now, Like even get me started on that, because I could go on for so long about that. But so I've had kind of like this weird privilege where because I've been a bit of a middling creator in the sense that like I've you know, I still have like millions of followers, but people have tens of millions of followers now, people have like hundreds.

00:20:18
Speaker 4: Of millions of followers.

00:20:19
Speaker 1: Now.

00:20:20
Speaker 2: I've always been able to maintain this like cool, smart, sweet group of people all the way through and that's been like such a blessing.

00:20:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, I honestly relate to that a lot. I have this full theory that it's like an elevator. It's it's a Taylor swift lyric. Okay, it's like an elevator that rats swifty. Yeah, elevator that rits is too fast, like never lasts. And I genuinely do believe it. Where it's like a lot of people will get online and be like I want to be famous, and I want this and I want that, and it's like be careful what you wish for. Like the slow burn of like really caring and about what you're doing is going to take you so much further. Yeah, And it's really interesting something you said before of like you started YouTube, because like it sounds like you just really wanted to make because you just liked it, and you know, you were waiting for your dad to get home, and you were trying to communicate with your long distance friend and you were just like enjoying it as a craft. And I think that's something that people these days don't have. Yeah, people always like how do you start a podcast? Like how did you make money off your podcast up above? And it's like you don't start at wanting to make money? Yeah, Like that's literally you've already lost like the moment you're like, I want to do this so that I can be famous. Yeah, if you're like one percent of people who have that intention, maybe it happens, but it like drops off so quickly. It's like this whole easy crazy things.

00:21:36
Speaker 2: You don't have the inner well to keep up the energy to keep doing stuff. If that's the main goal, then once you get famous or once you get enough money, then like where's the spark to continue it?

00:21:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's nowhere. Or once you get your first like have you ever had any controversy? Because I feel like once you get your first thing like that.

00:21:52
Speaker 4: Yeah, then it knocks you off.

00:21:53
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I haven't really ever had like a big controversy. I like, I I stream video games, so I do, like I play cozy games online.

00:22:04
Speaker 4: Really yeah, I didn't know that. Oh yeah in the twitch.

00:22:06
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and like especially on I used to play a lot of animal crossing, so, like animal crossing was my big game all through Lockdown and during like the whole Black Lives Matter movement. I raised a bunch of money for the Bail Project, like the most money I've ever raised for charity, and it was like such a big deal to me. But my family's very conservative, and so the only controversy as I have ever been in are with interpersonal relationships.

00:22:31
Speaker 4: I'm I I'll feel really good about.

00:22:32
Speaker 2: Something that I've done online, and I'll be like, I'm really glad that I did that, and I feel really proud of like my audience to be able to do something like that, and then I get like pushback from my personal of the reverse.

00:22:43
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, that is really interesting totally.

00:22:45
Speaker 2: So it's like a weird thing of sort of just being like, you know, having to kind of be my own best friend in that situation.

00:22:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, well, and it's often because people will find, you know, controversy online and seek protection in your family, and it's like wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, she's doing it different. Can we talk about something a bit more personal, which was you? Obviously she had a lot of you know, sheared some of your experiences going through an eating disorder when you were online.

00:23:18
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:23:18
Speaker 1: Do you think that, like being online at a young age kind of contributed or do you think it was already there and just kind of followed you through those early years of the journey.

00:23:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's so funny, Like, I mean, nothing about eating.

00:23:30
Speaker 4: Disorders is funny, but sometimes you go to.

00:23:36
Speaker 2: It's I think for me, I think I think disordered eating, but a lot of like less understood but very culturally prevalent mental disorders are or like mental health problems are things that people broadly understand but don't but like the minutia of them are kind of like complicated. And so for mine, I had such like a combo where I I felt really out of control when I was growing up and when I was like a teenager, like felt very isolated from people in my school. And I also have tricotellemania, which is like a hair pulling disorder. It's so bad right now, Like I have no eyelashes, but I used.

00:24:15
Speaker 1: To do that as well, but I started getting fake lashes. Yeah, and it helped me. Well you have trick. Well, I would just do my eyelashes. I was just it was just like a nervous thing. But I never really identify this happening. I would just pull my Yeah, yeah.

00:24:27
Speaker 4: I pulled my ashes out too. Yeah, it's funny.

00:24:28
Speaker 2: It's it's it's that's a weird one because it's like it's like you know, because like you understand like clinical psychology, but there's so many like layers and cross layers of what things could be. Right. So when I was younger, I was like, I think I have OCD because I do this hair pulling thing.

00:24:43
Speaker 4: It's compulsive.

00:24:45
Speaker 2: And I also my eating disorder was very wrapped up around like threes. Like I would tell myself I could only eat three things. So it was like I remember, for a while, it was like apples, triscuits, and cheese, and I ca as much of it as I wanted, but I just needed to eat those three things and there was no reason, like there was no religious reason, which threes are usually kind of a religious thing, and there was no like doom spiraling OCD. If I don't do this, something bad's going to happen. But I just had this like feeling of control that was really important to me. So that's what my eating sort of kind of like started out as. And then as the Internet developed, veganism got really big because of conspiracy and again completely think that is so like valid. But then there was this huge, like the way the pendulum swings, there was like that banana lady.

00:25:38
Speaker 4: What was her really?

00:25:40
Speaker 1: She used to girl? Just sorry girl, fun fact she lives still near where I grew up.

00:25:47
Speaker 4: That's so scary, that's so dark sided.

00:25:49
Speaker 1: She she lives actually like deep in the rainforest of Australia.

00:25:53
Speaker 4: She always looked like she did.

00:25:54
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, like she and all those bananas. But I don't know, And now the whole thing is like drinking.

00:26:00
Speaker 2: No, because she's just started posting again, didn't she.

00:26:02
Speaker 4: Yeah, sorry, sorry we had getting off topic.

00:26:05
Speaker 1: And with you sharing sensitive stuff, I'm sorry, but yeah, so freely the banonaca. I think she genuinely not to make, you know, irreputable claims, but triggered a lot of people.

00:26:15
Speaker 4: I say that was not great, I think so.

00:26:17
Speaker 2: I think part of the problem was that she was a very visibly thin woman who was like attractive by societal standards, and was also had the craziest fucking diet you've ever seen, Like that was a crazy diet, and so I think it did like push a lot of people, like both this sort of rise in veganism and this kind of moral guilt of eating animal by products, and then also this rise of like this conventionally attractive person with a crazy diet I think pushed me and I started eating vegan. And again, I have vegan friends who eat very healthily and eat so well and take care of themselves.

00:26:56
Speaker 4: I was not doing that. I was like restricting.

00:27:00
Speaker 2: I don't think I had a solid bowel movement for like three years.

00:27:04
Speaker 1: Like beside the people aren't talking about people don't talk about it.

00:27:07
Speaker 4: It's growth.

00:27:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, you eat a salad, you poop a salad. It's like it's really something.

00:27:13
Speaker 4: You can put that strap line in this episode, a salad, you.

00:27:16
Speaker 1: Poop a salad.

00:27:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah, just like in general, it was just like I again, it became this way of controlling, and then it became also this like moral thing as well. Where people associated me on the internet with like eating vegan food, and I don't think.

00:27:32
Speaker 4: It was healthy either, because I think I was too thin.

00:27:33
Speaker 2: At that point and I was showing other girls that the way to be thin boop yourself every day was by eating vegan, and like I wasn't doing it well.

00:27:43
Speaker 4: I wasn't giving like whole meals. I wasn't showing people how to do it right.

00:27:46
Speaker 2: I was just you know, picking the thing that was the most vegan on a menu, even if it was like the cucumber salad with no protein and no carbs and nothing but a cucumber, you know. So that's kind of like where I was like, I kind of need to do something else with this because I'm having headaches all the time and I'm really tired and I can't stop pooping. Yeah, so, and you know, I think I really messed up my digestive system. That's the other thing that like people don't really talk about is like even now to this day, I have so many digestive issues because of all the eating, the disordered eating that I was doing in my developmental years from when I was like fourteen or thirteen even until you know, maybe six years ago.

00:28:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well it is a big thing. Right your stomach starts to eat itself basically totally, which is again like I think a lot of people and these days with skinny talk, it's like you just don't understand what you're doing to your body's on top? Can I actually come back to this? This what sounds like kind of a big realization for you, which is like maybe I wasn't doing this the right way? Like how have you kind of felt about that as you've gotten older? Being like I don't know, not to say you misguided people, but have you ever been like I don't know, like how do you feel about it now?

00:28:58
Speaker 2: Yeah?

00:28:58
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't want to say set an example for other people because I don't think you just have to feel like guilt about it, but yeah, how do you feel about it? That that was like something you live through online?

00:29:08
Speaker 2: Like I still I feel really guilty about certain videos I posted.

00:29:12
Speaker 4: There was like I remember there was one video that I posted.

00:29:14
Speaker 2: It was supposed to be kind of like a clickbaity title that then I would flip it on its head and I'd be like, you don't need to worry about this because this is stupid, And it was like five ways to look thinner, But it was when you got into the video, I was like, this is so dumb, like the way that people do this, Like these are I basically like gathered all these different ways that people talk about it online and then was like, this is how people are trying to look thinner online.

00:29:36
Speaker 4: Isn't this so silly?

00:29:37
Speaker 1: Like this is so like journalism, like a real like journalistic video journalism.

00:29:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I took it down because that video got crazy views. And what I realized in the comments was like my audience at the time was like nineteen year old girls, and they weren't reading it the way that I was posting about it, if.

00:29:55
Speaker 4: That makes sense.

00:29:55
Speaker 2: They saw the title and they clicked it so that they could actually get advice, and I was pushing them into these corners of the Internet that were basically skinny talk before skinny talk existed Tumblr pages like talking about stuff, you know, and like I didn't even realize it until I got older. And I remember when I first posted that video, I was sort of like, Wow, this video is doing really well. It's getting millions of views, and like kind of ignored the moral complication of it and then sounds so crazy but Amy Poehler had a production company and she I think she probably still does. She might run her podcast through it. But I had a meeting with her production company because I was like, would love to just do something with you, anything, if you needed like a host to do something whatever. It was just one of those like Hollywood things that I was having, And I remember I sat down with one person from her production team and the only thing she said to me, as like a twenty year old, was she was like, we can't work with you because your content doesn't align with us.

00:30:50
Speaker 4: And I was like, what what.

00:30:52
Speaker 1: Do you mean?

00:30:52
Speaker 2: My content doesn't align with you? And it was fat video. She had seen the thumbnail, she had seen the title of it, and she was like, this girl is promoting eating disorders, Like this girl is promoting like yeah, like yeah, and so like I was, So I remember like my stomach dropping and like me trying to explain it, and I remember being really mad about it afterwards. But like, and that was before the era of like clickbait titles are the only thing that you read, like when you only read a headline, right, I feel like now that's so prevalent, Like I'm even bad about that. So I was kind of annoyed at her that she didn't take the time to like look at the context of the video. But after that meeting, I immediately went home and took it down. It was like one of my most viewed videos, and I was like taking that down and also feeling like so ashamed and so horrible for like, you know, months, but also feeling like righteous fury where I was like.

00:31:39
Speaker 4: She doesn't even know me, she doesn't even know me.

00:31:40
Speaker 2: But I was like, that's defensiveness, like that was that was actually probably a good thing that she had said that to me, because I'm really glad that I had a chance to like fix that, if that makes sense.

00:31:50
Speaker 1: But it's so interesting because it's like I see your intention, right, I see your intention of being like if somebody is going through this or is going to look for this, yeah, this is kind of like a reverse psychology thing of like I'm going to lure them into like.

00:32:03
Speaker 2: Don't Yes, that's exactly what I was trying.

00:32:05
Speaker 1: To do exactly, but it was ahead of its time totally.

00:32:08
Speaker 2: But also it's coming from the wrong person. I'm not the person that should be talking about that period, you know what I mean. It's this like funny place where I'm the person that they're going to listen to about that kind of thing because i'm their age and I like look like them, but also I'm not the person that should be giving.

00:32:22
Speaker 1: But also i'm your their age and I look like them. Yeah, like that's the thing. It's like wait, yeah, yeah, Because at that time, had you been open about the fact that you were maybe struggling with disordered eating.

00:32:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I had talked about that a lot on the internet that mooin, Like, I think that had been something. And I think that was also a time when a lot of people were starting to talk about body positivity. But then also I think I resonated less with that because so much of my disorder eating, like I said, was about control, and so it was like like everything numbers was really important to me. My tricko till Maania was really bad, Like you know, I was just like struggling with all of my other mental problems, and then like then the eating disorder was the way to kind of like gain a bit of control back, you know. So I couldn't really understand, Like I don't know, I feel like I was coming at it from like a like a I felt like it was a really like personal angle when in reality that's how like a lot of people deal with eating disorders, Like that's a very common way to be introduced into an eating disorder is like lacking control. But it definitely opened my eyes like to what like body neutrality could look like, and that seemed to.

00:33:30
Speaker 1: Be that's freedom. Genuinely, everybody tries to. Body positive is fine. Body neutrality is the best. I really love it. I could seek my teeth into that anything.

00:33:39
Speaker 2: Oh it's delicious, Yeah, I don't eating yeah, oh yeah. And as I get older, I think that's the other thing too, is like I think I also like being in Hollywood and going on auditions and stuff because I was auditioning and I was acting from when I was sixteen, so I would go like That's how I originally kind of got slightly bigger on YouTube because I got picked up by this like show called Awesomest TV, which was oh my.

00:34:04
Speaker 1: Goodness, flashback, I remember that, yeah, and they would do like all these TV shows, but on YouTube, right.

00:34:11
Speaker 2: It was like I think it was backed by Nickelodeon y yeah, and so it was basically like supposed to be like a tween like in the same way that Nickelodeon has always done a really good job of making tween content, they.

00:34:21
Speaker 4: Tried to do that for YouTubers.

00:34:22
Speaker 2: So I became and I lived like down the studio, like down the road from the studio, and so I used to just walk to work to like film episodes with them, and da da da da. But that being kind of like my jump off point, I started auditioning and doing all this stuff and being critiqued as like a twenty one year old, a twenty year old.

00:34:41
Speaker 4: On your body, your looks, like everything.

00:34:43
Speaker 2: Like I remember walking into auditions where they would just like immediately turn off the camera, like they wouldn't even they like they would let me go through with the whole thing. And then I would look and I realized the camera was never on because I was just not the look. And that's fine. But there's just like an ego death that happens like every time. So I think that that was also just like I was in a unique circumstance in that way as well.

00:35:03
Speaker 1: I think this is something that you wouldn't know unless you were in industries that ale in entertainment industry or tangentle It's like there is always this thought of like, would I be most successful if I was skinny you totally? Totally. I have thought about that. I think about that all the time.

00:35:18
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, completely.

00:35:19
Speaker 2: And it's also like I think it's again, it's kind of a control issue because when you're in industries like that where there is literally nothing else is in your control. You are not the NEPO baby that can have the like mom and dad call to make sure that like someone actually pays attention to you in a room or like sees your name on a sheet. So if there is anything that you can control, it's learning your lines and starving.

00:35:41
Speaker 4: Yourself like that. That seems to be like the two things that.

00:35:44
Speaker 2: At the time I thought I had control over, which is not.

00:35:48
Speaker 1: And if then everybody's gonna look at you like that's the thing, it's like you're going to be noticed. Yeah more. Yeah, it's such a such a mind fulw Yeah.

00:35:57
Speaker 2: It's funny though, because I think that, and then I think about, like, because sometimes I think about like what I would do now if I was in that same situation, I'm like, I actually think I would have looked a lot more unique, and I think I would have been a lot more castable had I just been like very normal. I think if I had just been like very normal, I could let the NEPO babies be like the really hot thin people, and then I could be like the normal girl, which is usually what I got cast for anyways.

00:36:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, so do you do much acting these days? No, I've you kind of been like I'm done with that.

00:36:27
Speaker 2: We'll kind of done with it again. I keep coming back to this problem of control. But like, even when you do get cast, there's like a very good chance the person who cast you is like a man who likes you in some way, and so it's just like it's just not I don't know. Like my husband's a filmmaker and a writer and a director, so he is totally in on that, and like I love the writing side of things now.

00:36:51
Speaker 1: Yeah. Interesting.

00:36:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I've always said like I would do acting again, but only if I had like.

00:36:57
Speaker 4: A lot of control over it.

00:36:58
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:36:59
Speaker 2: I Like, so I got to work on a comedy for four years. That was really amazing. It was so fun. Yeah, it was really really cool. It kind of got like put into the bin of history because it was like it was for one of those like apps where it has like a weird timing of like a run time for each episode, Like it wasn't a half hour and it wasn't split into quarters, so it was kind of a weird one to play. What was the comedy It was called mister Student Body President.

00:37:25
Speaker 1: Oh my god, mister student Body President. Okay, everybody go and get this woman's royalty.

00:37:30
Speaker 4: I have no idea where it's playing. I don't know if I've ever gone a rules before. You can find it.

00:37:35
Speaker 2: But the guy, my good friend, Jeremy Shada, who's the voice of Finn from Adventure Time.

00:37:42
Speaker 1: He was the lead.

00:37:43
Speaker 2: So I became like really good friends with him because we hung out so much for the last like four years.

00:37:47
Speaker 4: So it was like really good things that would happen in tandem with.

00:37:50
Speaker 1: Like terrible stuff. Yeah stuff, Yeah, yeah, that makes so much sense, And you know what, the segues into the next questions have been so smooth because Hey, this is what I was going to ask you about next, which is like, how is your relationship to like the media and social media and your career, Like how have things changed in recent years? Have you felt more of a desire to be online? Like I'm sure there was a period when you were actor where you were kind of like maybe I shouldn't be online as much, like maybe I should have the small professional look, like I'm putting words in your math. How How how has it changed for you.

00:38:26
Speaker 2: I think I'm gonna be honest, because I did social media from when I was a kid, and I did it like without earning money and enjoyed it so much, and it was like my emotional release.

00:38:37
Speaker 4: It was like my.

00:38:39
Speaker 2: Social release, and it gave me like all my friends, it gave me my future, like all these amazing things. I stopped wanting to do it for a while because I hated the idea that like I was just doing this now to make money like that. Like yeah, that that inverse relationship between like making money and posting on like authentic content like became really unbalanced, where I was like, I'm doing this because I need to like make my rent. I'm not doing this because I necessarily want to be posting these things. Yeah, it kind of got to that point, and I've had like ebbs and flows of that, and I think when it came to the acting stuff, I always really loved the I was really passionate about it, and I think of it as like an art form obviously, and filmmaking as an art form, and if there was ever a world where I could have actually done that and made money and like felt secure in that, I think I would have thrown my phone into the ocean and like never posted anything ever again. But that's just also not realistic because that didn't happen, and that's like a you know, like a retrospective fantasy. But I think nowadays, I think that's like not how that would have gone. Yeah, Like I think I probably still would have posting stuff just because you loved.

00:39:47
Speaker 1: It so much.

00:39:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And I'm like, I'm a blabbermouth.

00:39:51
Speaker 4: As you can tell.

00:39:52
Speaker 1: This is what I'm saying. You need to start a new podcasts. It is the ultimate medium blabbermouth. Yeah, it's amazing. So do you think you going to keep posting for like the rest of your life? This is something people ask me probably.

00:40:04
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, like it wouldn't shock me. Yeah.

00:40:06
Speaker 2: Well because also like not to like segue too early, but because.

00:40:10
Speaker 1: You were doing my job for me, and it is this is what I'm saying, It was your dapto. Yeah. Are you looking at the new question as.

00:40:17
Speaker 2: I wanting to segue into the neck notWe Yeah, I've just realized how important it is, and like I've gone from being kind of resentful of like feeling like this is the only way that I can make money. Because also I'm not college educated. I didn't go to college, Like I.

00:40:32
Speaker 1: What was that decision? Like quickly, well, your parents are.

00:40:35
Speaker 4: Like, well, okay.

00:40:37
Speaker 2: So it's so funny because it's like it's the political burblings of like what conservatives were valuing in like two thousand and eight Obama era, which was like, actually we don't like college anymore, like the anti intellectualism kind of started popping off. But also it's so funny because all three of my siblings are really highly educate, hated, Like two of them went to grad school, So I'm like, I don't know where one of them went to law school when I went to grad school, so I'm like, I don't know where the hell.

00:41:07
Speaker 4: I became the one.

00:41:09
Speaker 2: But but also I think part of it was that my parents were like our like middle class Arcansas and they were like, oh, one of them doesn't want to go to college. That's kind of cool, and she's already making money. And like my dad was the one who would fly me to La and like be with me when I would do like the Oustmoast TV stuff and like when I would get these little for Ostma's TV. I was getting six hundred dollars a week to like come in on the weekend.

00:41:33
Speaker 1: And then that is low.

00:41:36
Speaker 4: Huge, huge for a teenager.

00:41:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, but like you, we're huge for a teenage but but not alive.

00:41:42
Speaker 4: Yeah no, yeah totally.

00:41:43
Speaker 1: But like in my working in the weekends like doing all this crazy stuff. Oh yeah, And so it is for a teenage like wow, totally.

00:41:49
Speaker 2: And also that being said, it would be once a month, So it was six hundred dollars a month, yeah, to get flown out, And I thought it was the most glamorous thing in the entire world.

00:41:58
Speaker 1: It was.

00:42:00
Speaker 2: But like I was like, I've got my own money. I could pay rent because I've been saving all my money, Like I wasn't what was I spending my money on in Little Rock, Arkansas. So I would just like save all my money. So I have this like little fat pad from when I was sixteen until I was like eighteen to be able to get rent and da da da dah. And so I applied to NYU, yeah, and I applied to UCLA.

00:42:22
Speaker 4: Yeah, and those are the only two schools that I applied to.

00:42:25
Speaker 2: And I got waitlisted at UCLA and I didn't get into NYU.

00:42:29
Speaker 4: So I was like, well, I guess I'm gonna fly to.

00:42:31
Speaker 2: California and see what happens, because like, maybe I'll get into UCLA.

00:42:33
Speaker 4: Maybe they'll oh so sweet to think about.

00:42:35
Speaker 1: Way, I actually love that. I love think you were like the big unies.

00:42:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was like, they're gonna let me in?

00:42:41
Speaker 1: Yeah? Do they not know who I am?

00:42:42
Speaker 4: And they want awesome to CV come on?

00:42:45
Speaker 2: But yeah, So I ended up getting like a really shitty apartment at this place called Park Librea.

00:42:51
Speaker 1: Where what pot of LA is it in?

00:42:53
Speaker 2: It's okay, if you know La, you will know this place it is, and if you visit you will know it. It's it's in West Hollywood. It's or it's in Hollywood, and it's right by the grove. It's like right down the Yeah, it's those giant towers always saying like, cheap apartments, cheap apartments. The reason why they're cheap, allegedly is because they are absolutely I can't tell you how many cockroaches and how many bed bugs.

00:43:16
Speaker 4: Oh, oh my god.

00:43:17
Speaker 1: The bed bugs are the one cockroaches. I can live with bed bugs crazy maybe probably.

00:43:22
Speaker 2: Now listen, you can live with a cockroach until they start coming out of your faucet like a horror movie.

00:43:26
Speaker 4: Like it is a devious quite devious.

00:43:29
Speaker 2: And also the other thing I didn't understand about the apartment sory I'm going on rand please, but they also their windows were so high. I lived on the thirtieth floor and the windows didn't have uh screens on them. Oh girl, you're asking for someone take a take a dumble.

00:43:46
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Like somebody could just have an eke full through that is crazy.

00:43:51
Speaker 2: It always freaked me out, like you know, like I think that's where my fear, like a large fear of like heids has come from. You know, when you're like looking over something really high and you're like, I could just fall off this right now, or like I could just jump.

00:44:03
Speaker 4: Like there's something about staring like into that that.

00:44:06
Speaker 2: I remember doing that a lot when I was in my apartment, not like in a creepy way, but just in like a like I really don't want that to happen. Like I kept like having dreams about acidentally slipping out of the window.

00:44:14
Speaker 1: I feel like that's very ears d card to be real with you, like this obsession around like, yeah, it could happen, it could happen. What's I used to have this where I'd be like, what's to say that I actually didn't fall yesterday? And this has just been anyways, we'll not get Oh sorry, I should not put that in people's heads.

00:44:29
Speaker 4: Whoa, oh I got.

00:44:31
Speaker 2: I guess it's been excited to mull over later.

00:44:33
Speaker 1: I know we'll hopefully you live on a thirty four the third floor.

00:44:37
Speaker 5: Way better, very much safe, way happier about bafer.

00:44:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, how's your career? What are you doing now? I feel like you're kind of in this period of like starting fresh. Yeah, does it like to start afresh as like you enter thirty.

00:44:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's I think it's been like a cool that's been really it's felt like like an appropriate time to start something new, you know, like yeah, a turning over of a leaf really, especially since like turning thirty is the time when you're supposed to like shrivel up and turn into like an old hag and I don't know, maybe start performing hexes on people. I don't know what, like the general consensus is, it sounds I'm already doing that, so I'm.

00:45:20
Speaker 4: Already way ahead of you guys.

00:45:23
Speaker 2: But I think it's just like funny to like step across the threshold of thirty and not like immediately pass away.

00:45:30
Speaker 1: You seem pretty healthy, you see, you seem happy, You're feeling really good.

00:45:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that's the secret is that. And my mother in law has told me this because she was like, was and is the most fabulous woman. But she was like, your thirties are like the best years of your life, easily, and then she was like, but actually your forties are the best, but actually your fifties er like it only gets better, I think for women as we get older. I've yeah, like I really do had this and I feel that, like I feel it in my bone.

00:45:55
Speaker 4: How old are you?

00:45:56
Speaker 1: I'm twenty six now.

00:45:58
Speaker 2: Oh my god, it's only going to get so much better.

00:46:00
Speaker 1: You know what. I also feel like I've documented my entire twenties. Yeah, so I've literally been doing this podcast for since I was twenty one. That's so so, I honestly think that thirty is going to be a not like a liberation, but like a whole new chapter. I don't know to go. Yeah, yeah, to make this about me, but like I just think it's going to be you know, I turned thirty. It's like a new chapter of life that maybe I don't document and I do just get to live and like, yeah, so many things.

00:46:27
Speaker 2: That don't it's very transformative, just like I'm excited again. And maybe it's also on my OCD, but like having a number where I'm like, oh, this is when things start or whatever.

00:46:35
Speaker 4: It was like very freeing for me.

00:46:38
Speaker 2: Like before I left LA, I was twenty eight, and I was like, I feel really sad that I haven't oil painted in like a really really long time. Like I hadn't done an oil painting in probably ten years. And I used to do like semi competitive oil painting in high school.

00:46:58
Speaker 4: If that's a thing.

00:47:00
Speaker 1: Everything can be competitive.

00:47:01
Speaker 4: Everything can be competitive.

00:47:02
Speaker 1: If you're a hiva, if you try hard enough.

00:47:06
Speaker 2: But I used to do these conservation paintings for this thing in Arkansas called the Four Age Center where it was like a fish and wildlife conservation and so I used to do these like hyper realistic oil paintings of endangered species and sometimes charcoal, sometimes chalk pastel. But I would just like do these, like I learned how to kind of like replicate nature in a way that was really cool. And I was really competitive, so that that was something that I did all throughout high school and I loved it. It got to the point where I had from the little bit of money that I had been making from Austin's TV, I had asked my art teacher if I could come to her studio that she would work out of with all these other like cool adult artists, and I basically got a little corner of her like studio with my friend Sarah, who also wanted to do the same thing, and we would oil paint together like in this like adult studio and if so cool, like you know, to come on Thursday and like oil paint. So anyways, but that was like such a positive memory for me and something where I really got into flow state.

00:48:09
Speaker 4: And then as I.

00:48:10
Speaker 2: Got older and I was living in tinier studio apartments, I was like, I just don't have room for this, yeah, And so I would just put it off and put it off and put it off, and I would do, you know, like watercolor paintings.

00:48:22
Speaker 4: I would do anything that was like not messy in my apartment.

00:48:26
Speaker 2: And then when I got to the point where I was living in LA and I could like buy my own house. I bought a house and still didn't oil paint, even though I had the space for it. And I was like, well, this is like stupid, Like you're just you've literally created a barrier for yourself and now you're just not breaking it because you are nervous about being bad, like cause it's been so long. It was like I had such a competitive spirit for it when I was younger, that the idea of going back to something and being bad at it immediately because I.

00:48:53
Speaker 4: Was going to be bad. Oh yeah, like that's just how it's going to be.

00:48:57
Speaker 1: How liberating, Yeah, exact me crap and just get it.

00:49:00
Speaker 4: Try be bad, just try.

00:49:02
Speaker 2: And so then when I started painting again, I started recording myself painting and kind of told the story of what I just told you, which is that I used to really love doing this and then I felt really like a lot of shame around being bad at it eventually, and so kind of trying to like re reinvigorate my like artistic side of myself. And that also coincided with us realizing that we were going to be very kind of last minute and unexpectedly going to be moving to London.

00:49:34
Speaker 1: Wait, that was just like a last minute. That was a quick decision.

00:49:37
Speaker 2: That was something that was we knew was going to probably happen in like the next couple of years, but for like unforeseen personal reasons, it ended up being like I had like two and a half months of like, oh, I think we're moving, and then it was like, oh, I'm trying to get my visa now, like oh, we're like in process, and I was kind of in denial of it the whole time that it was happening.

00:49:59
Speaker 4: I I know, it was just like all.

00:50:01
Speaker 2: These things like that felt very like left behind because even like when I bought my house, I bought basically half a house, which is like so weird to say, but it was.

00:50:09
Speaker 4: Like under construction. Oh really yeah, because that's what I could afford in the area.

00:50:13
Speaker 2: But my dad's a builder, and so I was like, I'm going to be the person that like can make money off this house because I'm gonna flip it, like I'm gonna I'm gonna do it, and then I'm going to live in it and I'm gonna feel and then everything was like three hundred thousand dollars like a minimum for everything, and I was like, cool, so that's just never gonna happen.

00:50:30
Speaker 4: So we ended up living in kind of like half a house for like the entire time that we were living in LA.

00:50:35
Speaker 2: That was also praying on me because I was like, oh, this is such a failure, Like I wanted to be able to redo this house and like all these things. And so in the middle of this, while I was waiting to get my visa, I had started oil painting, and I started I went around my neighborhood and I started taking film photos of all of my favorite houses in the neighborhood, and then I set myself up outside and painted my view from my window so that I could see like what my neighborhood looked like when I lived there, and then also did like personal portraits of all of the houses around me. And it became like the way that I kind of like exercised that feeling of being sad about leaving and also memorialize them and then also like could kind of tap back into my artistry in a way that felt really like therapeutic. Yeah, it was really nice, But then also I felt really good because somehow I managed to do all of that and film it, which is not normally Like that's the other thing about doing art and filming it.

00:51:35
Speaker 4: And you probably know.

00:51:35
Speaker 2: This, like it's it feels like you take a bit of the soul out of it if you have to film it.

00:51:40
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:51:41
Speaker 2: Sometimes Yeah, But I think because I was so comfortable like filming myself, that I could kind of like get past that and just be like, this is another example of being able to hopefully help other people feel like, if you haven't done this artistic pursuit, whatever that may be for a real long time, it's like never too late to come back to it and be bad. And so I think that's what like the first video that did like well about my art on YouTube was it was called like it was something like it's okay to be bad.

00:52:10
Speaker 1: Honestly, a very profound statement that you realize the older you get of just like being bad is. I feel like we've talked a lot about control and then a lot about freedom in this episode. Yeah totally, And this is what I'm hearing. I'm hearing you'd be like, wait, like this journey towards just letting yourself be bad at things, letting yourself explore old hobbies in a way that doesn't sound as like restrictive anymore as it probably was at times.

00:52:35
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's true.

00:52:36
Speaker 2: Ooh, we're finding we're finding themes here.

00:52:39
Speaker 1: Really psycho to like dig into. I have one final question for you. This is a question that I was going to ask you about moving to London. Actually, let me ask you about it. Okay, everybody else can cheue out. This is this is a me question because I've just moved to London, and how do you enjoy it? Because I'm really struggling with it. And I'm sure a lot of people have moved to cities and been like, oh, I had this whole romantic idea of what this was going to be and it's not that. So somebody who's just moved to London, I em or somebody listening, Yeah, what's like some advice that you would have?

00:53:15
Speaker 2: What would you say is what are you struggling with? Do you feel like the social situation is a thing.

00:53:21
Speaker 1: I've gotten so lucky. I've made so many friends really quickly. It's actually funny. I like went out and was like, I'm a very practical person, and I had been here for a month or two, and I was like, great, So I need to make some friends. So I booked like seven like friendship making activities in one weekend was and just made all my friends on one week and now I'm like good to go. So and I was, but I think it's just like realizing this isn't what I thought it was going to be and like making peace with that. Yeah yeah, what did you think it was going to be? I think I love how oh to at the tables? Oh no, I think that I thought it was going to be a lot more like exciting and go go go and like easy, and I you know what I think I thought. I didn't think the city was this big, right, I thought that things were going to be closer, And maybe that's what it is where I was like, oh, there's gonna be so many opportunities to do things. It's like there are, but it takes you two hours, so you actually can't do it all because of a commute.

00:54:13
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, you're not wrong, Like is that not how Sydney is?

00:54:16
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, no. Well also I would never go over the bridge, so like there's two sides of Sydney. It was like three technically.

00:54:23
Speaker 2: But.

00:54:25
Speaker 1: I don't know, like I lived where like in the heart of it. Yeah, No, it's not how Sydney is. Like.

00:54:30
Speaker 2: But you know what's funny is even you saying like I don't go over the bridge in Sydney's that is the knowledge that you.

00:54:36
Speaker 4: Will have of London.

00:54:38
Speaker 2: Like yeah, in like three or four months, you'll be like, oh, I don't go to I don't go there because I don't like my connections there, Like you know what I mean. Like you will have moments where you go, you'll know the city. It just takes you know, it's like you have to carve your little mark in the city by experiencing it until you get to the point where you understand the grooves and you can like figure out where you're going.

00:54:57
Speaker 1: Oh I love that.

00:54:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a really beautiful and well it's like you know your your pathways where you end up, like going the most is kind of.

00:55:05
Speaker 1: Like river run. Yeah totally. Yeah.

00:55:08
Speaker 4: But I found it, okay.

00:55:10
Speaker 2: I think like in a similar way to you, I found my friends really quickly because my husband was the entire reason I came to London. Like we were long distance for years and years and years, and we started dating when I was nineteen, I want to say, and he was twenty twenty one.

00:55:27
Speaker 4: A little older than me. What can I say? I love it older men.

00:55:31
Speaker 2: But because he is from London, I basically kind of got to like plug into his whole friend group. And what's really cool about my husband is that he is like I mean, this is like the most positive way.

00:55:44
Speaker 4: He's like, mister Alli, We're like, yeah, like our entire friend group is queer people. So that was really cool.

00:55:50
Speaker 2: So, like I don't know, coming from Little Rock, Arkansas, where I was like so sheltered to them, living in Los Angeles where like my mind was expanding a little bit, and then moving to London and being like in the epicenter of like just cool people was just such a different I don't know. I think I really liked moving here because it was I was just absorbing so much.

00:56:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is what I need to do. I need to get out of there, find my I found definitely found great people, but I think I need to like focus on experiencing the city for what it has to offer. Yeah, and that being like it's a big horizon expanded. Yeah.

00:56:22
Speaker 2: And I also think that people are very locked in on their burrows, like have noticed like big time, Like I'm like, I'm a big, Like like I used to live in Southwest London, which was great, but it's like the sleepiest place.

00:56:33
Speaker 1: Let's give me a suburb.

00:56:35
Speaker 2: It's like near Hammersmith, like notting Hill would be southwest like you know what I mean, Like that kind of like area like a lot of.

00:56:42
Speaker 1: My friend geography.

00:56:43
Speaker 2: Well yes, right, yeah, West West in general, I feel like it's just like very sleepy now but like no hate to West, West, East.

00:56:50
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:56:51
Speaker 2: But then like I hadn't really explored a lot of the other boroughs, and then I, yeah, I have just been spending a lot more time kind of like east and North and a little bit of time in South, kind of like expanding my horizons.

00:57:06
Speaker 4: But here's the thing, Like you just got here.

00:57:07
Speaker 2: I just started doing that. I've been coming back and forth here for like ten years.

00:57:10
Speaker 4: So what excuse do I have.

00:57:12
Speaker 1: I don't know. I need to get in on it. I need to. This is this is like the wiser you are, the wiser version of me, like like that. But no, but like I need to. I need to. I need to take a bigger bite of London. I think, yeah, well we can, we can do that together. We'll get dinner in the east.

00:57:27
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, I'm always trying to like pull people in different directions.

00:57:30
Speaker 1: Like all my friends are in the East, by the way, and I'm like yeah, and I'm like, what have I done because I don't like the Northwest, and I'm like love where I live. Yeah, but every all my neighbors are either very old or very famous, right, and we are neither of those things. So it's like I think they're sometimes confused as to why we are there.

00:57:47
Speaker 4: Totally.

00:57:48
Speaker 1: I don't think I've met anybody who lives in my neighborhood. Wo's under the age of thirty five right right, very right under like the income level of thirty five.

00:57:55
Speaker 4: Million, right right, right, right right, And.

00:57:57
Speaker 1: I feel like we just kind of messed up. But also we have like this really apartment that is technically not living, Like I don't really think you meant to live there.

00:58:04
Speaker 4: I love that about London.

00:58:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, sometimes it's just like, yeah, we just live in this like rat hole. Yet we live in a bucket and like it's three thousand pounds, but like exactly at us.

00:58:14
Speaker 1: I remember Landla when we moved in. I was like, so, what happens if there's a fire? He's like, well, there should be a ladder on the roof. There should be a ladder on the roof. I can't, but we don't know where that is, Like where is it? Technically?

00:58:26
Speaker 4: Yeah, anyway, yes, awesome, No, that's like such a thing.

00:58:29
Speaker 2: But but no, you'll have to You'll have to come hang out with me over on my side town done elsewhere and see maybe someone under the age of thirty.

00:58:38
Speaker 1: I don't think they exist. I don't know, do they not?

00:58:41
Speaker 4: I don't know.

00:58:42
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, I'm not going to hold up that statistic, but I'll find someone who can thirty.

00:58:46
Speaker 1: I feel like thirty is the new twenty five. Hey. Thanks, I've been saying that to my friends. Thanks. Final question we asked this of every single guest on the podcast, which is what is the biggest lesson that you have learned in your twenties?

00:58:57
Speaker 2: Ooh, I think you know what again? And I think it comes back to everything we've been talking about. But I think the biggest lesson I learned was that people aren't really looking at me like that, you know what I mean. Everyone's like so obsessed with themselves, and I think, like I was so worried all the time, like as someone who was like bullied in high school that I was like going to be always kind of watching my back or like always saying the wrong thing or always being kind of awkward. And then I realized like, actually, no one, literally no one cares, and that was very freeing in so many ways. Like I think I had a lot of like guilt and like negative feelings around just like like being a person in being perceived, not even like a social media perception, but just like interpersonal perception. I think I actually cared less about what people thought about me online than people think about me in person. But I think I've just like completely like itxnained that.

00:59:54
Speaker 1: Oh God, I wish you could bottle that feeling and pass it out.

00:59:57
Speaker 4: I want to so badly.

00:59:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I think about that sometimes for like people in their early twenties, because I'm like, oh girl, yeah, I feel so bad for you, like women in their young, like early twenties, Like I don't think I would ever go back.

01:00:09
Speaker 4: To being twenty one.

01:00:10
Speaker 2: You could not pay me no unless I had my brain now and I could be like none of this shit.

01:00:14
Speaker 4: Mad, Yeah, I'd be fine.

01:00:17
Speaker 1: I think about that with dating all the time. I'm like, brick, I wish I could be dating as like a twenty year old. Obviously I love who I'm with. Sorry, yeah sha my beautiful boyfriend, and yeah, love of my life. But like sometimes I'm like, I wish that I had the brain that I have now and could have dated back then and actually had fun because I never had fun dating until I met my boyfriend.

01:00:35
Speaker 4: Totally, I totally know what you mean. I feel the same way.

01:00:37
Speaker 2: It's kind of that whole thing about like what's this Sylvia Plath fig Tree.

01:00:41
Speaker 1: We literally just did an episode on that the other day.

01:00:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's similar where, yeah, you know, well less depressing when you're talking about dating, but like, yeah, I agree, just like being able to enjoy stuff because you know, like it doesn't matter. But you know what, that's also hindsight, like you know exactly. I get really nervous and like anxious about things now. It doesn't mean that like in five years, I'm not gonna be like I wish I just didn't care when I was thirty.

01:01:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, I probably will still say that.

01:01:02
Speaker 2: You know.

01:01:03
Speaker 1: It brings it back to that thing you said before of like getting older is like such a privilege. And I look at like my mom for example, and like my aunt's and I also think it's so important to have friends who are a few years older than you as well. Yeah, like, and I also a few decades older than you, because it just seems like it gets better and better. It looks so much fun.

01:01:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, crazy, what perspective can do. Like when you meet someone who's like still rocking it and looking so cool and like doing like the best kind of life and they're like twenty years older than you.

01:01:30
Speaker 1: I'm playing for some gray hair. I know I'm going to do full gray if it happens, I'm clown.

01:01:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm so down to clown, I know.

01:01:38
Speaker 4: Like, do you remember that show it was called There.

01:01:41
Speaker 2: There was a woman named Stacy London who was like a stylist on the t on TLC. It was like a thing in America. But she you need to look her up later. She had this show it was called What Not to Wear, and it was not great. It didn't age well. It was a lot of things being flattering or unflattering or frumpy or not frumpy, like not great body discussions happening.

01:02:02
Speaker 4: But she had the most fabulous streak of gray in her hair from when she was like at like our age into her forties and she still like maintains it and she looks so cool.

01:02:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is going to be the new trend. I think gray hair is going to be where it's at. Yeah. I think it's signd of like being it's a sign of total self acceptance and like push back against like the aging propaganda.

01:02:24
Speaker 4: One hundred percent.

01:02:25
Speaker 1: Yeah.

01:02:25
Speaker 2: I think that's also like being able to move your face is the same thing, you know.

01:02:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I hope you had a great time.

01:02:37
Speaker 2: I did.

01:02:38
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me.

01:02:39
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed this chat.

01:02:41
Speaker 4: Yeah, let me know if you ever want me back.

01:02:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know. Well maybe people are going to be like and hopefully they think we have a good vibe. Yeah, where can people find you? And what is something you're really excited about going on in your career in your life right now you want people to know about.

01:02:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I'm on all my socials as per huge. I also just released a collection with Lisa Saysga, which.

01:03:02
Speaker 1: You are wearing if you were watching on Netflix. Literally you walked in and I was like that that shirt is phenomenal. Yes, and you painted that thing. Yeah, this is my painting. I think the saturation has been bumped up a little bit. But yeah, I did a trip.

01:03:14
Speaker 2: Deck of blossoms in a field kind of like all uh money. It was my mone copy, not nearly as good. Unfortunately, he's kind of a master, so that's kind of my attempt of it. But it made a fabulous shirt.

01:03:26
Speaker 1: It does, it actually does. Okay, I'm going to get people to check that out. You can find Join the on Socials as always, guys, thank you so much for listening. You can also find the Psychology of your Twenties on Socials in the episode description down below. If you want to follow us on substack, Instagram, all those things I feel like every single episode, I give you a longer list, but it's all down below. And of course you can also find Arden and see more of what she's up to by following the links in the description. But until next time, be safe, be kind, and be gentle to yourself. We will talk very very soon.