This School Letter Is Nightmare Fuel & Just Throw Away Your Iron

0:03 Welcome to Parenting Out Loud, the podcast for parents who just want to know a little bit more about the trends and the news and the culture and what makes parents so intense right now. I'm Monique Bowley.

0:14 I'm Amelia Lester. And I'm Stacey Hicks.

0:17 We like to read everything on the internet just so you don't have to because who has the time, really?

0:22 Yes, exactly.

0:23 That is what we like to do. Just let us do that for you and then bring it to you and you can sound really smart as a result.

0:29 Yeah? Yeah.

0:30 Yeah.

0:30 So what's on today, Stacey?

0:32 The Victoria's Secret Fashion Show and the story about motherhood that everyone missed.

0:36 Yes.

0:37 And what does your child want to be when they grow up? And do you want an AI rendering of it? It's the debate of the week on Parenting Instagram.

0:46 And just when you thought that the summer school holidays couldn't get any longer, the letter sent home to parents that was the stuff of nightmares.

0:55 But first, as we record this, Australia is reeling from what looks to be a horrific act of violence which was committed on the independent MP Helen Haynes. Facts are still emerging, but at a moment like this, and unfortunately these moments seem to be coming thick and fast, I do find it helpful to remember what the beloved American children's TV host Fred Rogers once said, Mr Rogers. This is something that I've heard my American friends talk about a lot, and I've found it to be a really useful pointer in these troubled times.

1:31 My mother used to say a long time ago, whenever there would be any really catastrophe that was in the movies or on the air, she would say, always look for the helpers. There will always be helpers, you know, just on the sidelines.

1:59 So in the spirit of Mr.

2:00 Rogers, there were so many helpers who demonstrated really extraordinary acts of heroism in this story. And I want to spotlight just one of them today, a barber called Ricky Jeffries. We've been talking a lot about upstanders versus bystanders on the show and how to raise upstanders, people who say this isn't right and I'm going to do something about it.

2:22 And that's exactly what Ricky did this week. Ricky is a dad. He's a father of three and he cuts hair at a business called Ricky Chops. He saw something not right on the street outside Helen Haynes' electoral office on Monday. He saw a car moving forward.

2:38 He ran out.

2:39 He ordered the driver out of the car. He got him on the ground. And then he did something equally incredible. He showed restraint. So after all that heroism and sheer bravery, he showed restraint. He didn't shout abuse at the man or hit him. He stayed with him until the police got there to make sure he didn't escape. And he said to him, everything is all right, mate.

3:00 You'll be all right.

3:02 So it was the right thing to do, he said, to show kindness and grace instead of escalating things.

3:09 Here's Ricky talking about that moment on Nine News.

3:12 I'm humbled and I feel grateful and blessed to have.

3:16 Been here to help.

3:17 I didn't realise the seriousness of the situation initially and once it became relevant I just did what I could and what others were already.

3:25 Trying to do. Ricky, you are a helper. You are an upstander.

3:29 And I know that your three children must be so proud of you.

3:33 And I loved that he was just like, I'm not a hero. And I know a lot of people say that, but he really did seem like he was genuinely like, no, no, no, I'm not. I think this is what we should all do, which is lovely.

3:44 Oh, he touched you, Amelia. We got tears from you this week. Wow.

3:49 Yeah.

3:49 Good on him. Ricky Chops.

3:51 Ricky Charles Barbershop. I'm super into it. I went to Instagram. I followed his page straight away. If I'm ever in Wangaratta, we are all going to Ricky Charles Barbershop.

3:59 Definitely.

4:00 We had something come across the Parenting Out Loud desk that really made my jaw drop this week. The first reason is because people are out there looking for stories for us. It's real boots on the ground journalism. So thank you. But the reason it made my jaw drop was just when you thought the summer school holidays couldn't get any longer, one school has announced it's finishing up next year in November.

4:26 Yeah.

4:26 No, no, no, no, no.

4:28 Cancel Christmas, guys. You're going to be just looking for vacation care.

4:31 All right.

4:32 So this Parenting Out Loud listener who will remain anonymous sent us this letter from a Gold Coast private school announcing that from 2027, students will finish school for the year on November 26. This is Makes me feel sick in my stomach. November 26th, that's not even December.

4:51 If it's still magpie swooping season, the kids need to be in school.

4:56 That's my rule.

4:57 Yeah.

4:58 The school says the reason they gave, it's doing it with the aim of increasing the time our students spend in meaningful learning. The letter says, we have reflected carefully on how the closing weeks of each year are used. The final weeks of the year have offered students fewer learning days than we would like. From 2027, I am pleased to share that learning will continue through to week eight, the final week of term four, which for 2027 will be Friday, 26th of November. Teachers will then use the following week to finalise marking and reporting. Thank you for your continued support and partnership. Together is how transformation happens. Amelia, is November the new December?

5:42 This letter was such a masterclass in euphemism. If the children are facing fewer opportunities for learning in December, the solution is not to tell them not to come to school in December. I'm sorry, that just makes no sense. And you know what I learned in doing the research for this? Apparently Queensland already has the shortest year of all the states, the shortest school year. Because term four in Queensland ends officially on the 11th of December, which is the earliest date of any state.

6:12 And I'm sorry, but moving that end week, we all know you've now just moved the slacking off a week earlier.

6:19 Like no one is going, you know what?

6:22 I'm doing one less week, so I'm just going to go hard for all eight weeks.

6:25 That's not happening.

6:27 Children with their famously developed executive functioning skills are definitely thinking I've got to fit all my learning in in just eight weeks.

6:33 Yes, exactly. That's insane.

6:36 Hey, it's crazy. We need to call up Georgie Dent. to get her analysis on this one because she did that amazing speech in the press club recently for the Parenthood talking about how there is just this huge discrepancy between school holiday hours and leave and parents' annual leave at work.

6:56 Yeah, can we bring up what that number is because it's crazy.

6:59 It is.

7:00 That two working parents, even if they took their annual leave separately, would have to find 107 days of care for kids that are in school. And I'm not good at math, but this now feels like that's about 200 days that you're having to figure out.

7:14 I think it's 112, but yeah. Yeah, something like that.

7:18 Yeah, it's a serious problem. And like, thoughts and prayers to this Queensland school. And I hope, you know, parents, you've got a year to sort of put your foot down and say, can we work something else out? And I get, so the school argument was that the teachers will then do all the marking and all the report writing in that following week. So the teachers are still going to be at.

7:38 School, but guys just wheel in the VCR and put on the world's longest movie, put Mary Poppins on, on repeat and just get it like, yeah, just do it that way.

7:48 It's tradition.

7:52 If you have a phone, you probably saw some photos of some gorgeous women with wings walking down a runway this week. And I'm, of course, talking about the Victoria's Secret fashion show. It has very much burst back into the culture this year. It is back to almost the same numbers that it had when it was at its peak in the early 2000s.

8:11 Stacey, I didn't want to talk about this. No, you didn't. And I need you to tell me why I should care that it's in people's algorithms.

8:21 Yeah, okay.

8:21 Okay.

8:22 This was, I think this is one of those micro generation things because I'm a few years younger than you, I think.

8:28 As you never stop reminding me.

8:30 I'd like to remind you both. I'm a few years younger than both of you. And this show had a chokehold on me and my friends. The first Victoria's Secret fashion show happened in 2001. So I would have been about 13 years old. I can't explain what it was. I don't know whether it was the unattainable beauty of the models or the fact that they almost kind of turned it into a pop culture event. Like people like Lady Gaga and Rihanna and Taylor Swift performed at these runway shows. Like it was the first time that fashion runways really became a show, a spectacle like this was.

9:04 And we used to obsess over it.

9:06 It was like your Super Bowl. It was our Super Bowl. We called it the Super Bowl every year when this came up.

9:11 And I knew... the names of every model.

9:12 Like, when it was at its peak, it's, you know, the Heidi Klums, Tyra Banks, Adriana Lima. Every big model in the world has walked in that show.

9:22 Miranda Kerr. Like, there was a few Aussies in there too. Okay, so you loved it, but then it hit.

9:27 tough times because then a little thing called feminism came for it remember like when Beyonce stood in front of a giant sign that said feminism and performed that was the heady days of the early 2010s body positivity came in yeah that's right people thought maybe we're less interested in watching women wear lingerie more interested in seeing them perform on a sporting field for instance and there was really kind of a utopic time where we decided that that we could do more interesting things with our time and watch that show.

9:55 Definitely.

9:56 And then I should also mention that there was a little bit of a scandal around the fact that the head of Victoria's Secret was closely aligned with Jeffrey Epstein and basically bankrolled his adventures.

10:06 Yeah.

10:07 All that said, why has it made a comeback? How did they do this? So five-year hiatus. It returned in 2024.

10:14 Wait, so they took it off for five years?

10:16 It was gone for five years after. There were so many scandals around this. And like you say, it just seems so out of touch. Like all of a sudden it was just like, why are we doing this?

10:26 What is this?

10:26 There's no diversity there. It seems to be objectifying women. Like what is the point of this now?

10:32 And now it seems that the answer they've come up with is motherhood.

10:35 Yes.

10:36 Yep, they have.

10:37 So obviously they would have been looking around this year. Last year, it did do well. We're looking at maybe, I think it was 2.5 million streams last year. They stream it on YouTube now. That's about what we get every week, just for comparison.

10:49 Yeah, exactly. It really, it kind of came back, but.

10:52 2.5 million's not heaps, Stacey, for America.

10:55 No, no, it wasn't.

10:56 It was an underwhelming response. It was a lot more diverse. There were diverse bodies. It was better, but people went, uh.

11:04 Come on.

11:05 So this year they would have been looking around going, how do we up the ante on this?

11:08 What's in the zeitgeist? Yeah, what's in the zeitgeist?

11:11 What cuts through and what are going to be those media moments, the bits that everyone picks up and runs with? And this year it was very much the mums in two streams. So they've targeted the Gen Z women, the younger women with Kylie Jenner, who they just are obsessed with. Even here in the Mamma Mia office, they were screaming.

11:29 That reeks to me of desperation. Kylie Jenner is also selling meta glasses to people. Does anyone care what she's trying to sell anymore?

11:36 They very much did. Okay, I feel old. It was her first time on the runway and she was wearing a $ 50.

11:41 Million fantasy bra. Wow.

11:44 That she did not earn.

11:45 They actually usually give it to someone who's been a veteran angel for a long time.

11:49 I love the notion that anyone could possibly earn a $ 50 million bra.

11:53 Hey, that's chump change to Kylie. She's like, whatever.

11:57 But the second way they did this and the way that they targeted the millennial women like me, who are now mothers, is that they used Barbara Palvin and Elsa Hosk. Two mothers, who I need to point out, gave birth, Elsa gave birth 12 weeks ago, and Barbara Palvin was one day short of six weeks postpartum when.

12:18 She stepped onto the runway. She's not yet cleared to have sex.

12:21 Nope.

12:21 Correct? Well, I assume.

12:23 Not her individually, but I think most doctors would be saying, wait a bit.

12:27 Yes.

12:28 Like, her body would be adjusting faster. We all know exactly what goes on.

12:32 Hugh comments on mesh underwear. Yes, exactly. Exactly.

12:36 And so what they've done is use this, and I think for three reasons. I think there's a reason why they've wanted Barbara and Elsa in this show. And there were actually 16 mothers on that runway out of about 22 models. 16 of them were mums. But why I think they've used these two in particular.

12:54 Well, and Kylie, right? And Kylie, yeah, exactly.

12:58 One is that mothers equal softness traditionally. Mothers are nurturing.

13:05 Are you saying that they deliberately sat around a boardroom and said, right, what are going to be the moments that people click on, that people share, that people engage with, that people get angry about? Let's put a model who is six weeks postpartum on the catwalk. Are you saying that they, you think that they've made that as a deliberate casting decision?

13:26 The cynical part of me says yes.

13:28 And I think that get angry about the rage bait of it is for sure part of their reasoning because we now know that the things that people are most likely to linger on on social media are things that make them feel angry. And I watched an Instagram of which one of these two lovely women was it who was doing her exercise routine in the weeks following birth with her elastic bands. Yes. it made me feel a bit angry because I thought, why are you putting forward this beauty.

13:57 Standard for all of us? But that's part of the technique, right? Yeah, I think so.

14:01 And look, Barbara, both of them have been angels for years. They have an ongoing relationship with the brand. So it can just be part and parcel that they said, well, they have worked for us before. They will continue to work for us if that's something that they want to do. But I think it did do exactly what they probably assumed it would do is that there was 50% of the camp going, go girls. Like how incredible, what an incredible feat. And it is, this is what they're hired to do. And they are out there on that runway looking gorgeous and Six weeks postpartum.

14:33 How incredible.

14:33 Is it an incredible feat?

14:35 I don't know. I feel like an Australian woman was just made an actual astronaut.

14:39 I think that's an incredible feat.

14:41 Well, Barbara Palvin herself actually said, you know, the standard maternity leave in the US is six weeks. I'm kind of just doing what all the other mothers are forced to do, except I'm just having to walk down a runway. Like she's in on it.

14:53 I love her. She's very self-aware.

14:55 And the other half went, this makes me feel bad because I didn't look like this six weeks postpartum. And so then there was the inevitable rhetoric of, Don't compare yourself to her.

15:05 Of course.

15:05 Like that is what they knew would happen. And that is what happened. But that meant eyeballs on this show.

15:12 But is part of it also just that they want to tap into nostalgia? Because I understand that the final song on the show was the Spice Girls classic, Say You'll Be There, a 1997 banger. Are they just trying to get... younger millennials to feel the excitement that they felt when the show was at its peak by hiring the models.

15:34 Who were in the show at its peak, who happened to also be mothers?

15:37 Yes, I think so. I think it's one, the fact that they are mothers. Two, the fact that they're mixing nostalgia with the new age and going, these are women that you remember from the heyday and look at them now, still thriving and back here having this relationship with our brand. And the third is that, as much as we don't want to admit it, that snapback narrative still works. It's like we can't look away. Like anyone who has a quick transformation in any form, in any workforce, it's irresistible to look at. And that's what's happened. And I think it worked I think it worked perfectly for them. Did it work for your group of friends? Were you all excited about it?

16:13 Everyone was talking about it again.

16:15 Whereas last year and the year before, it felt like there was a murmuring, but it kind of didn't cut through in the way that it has this year. So I think it was a smart marketing tactic by them.

16:25 Can I just play devil's advocate?

16:26 Yeah, of course.

16:27 So Barbara Palvin, this is her job, right? Her job is to get up and walk on a catwalk.

16:32 Mons, you're being an angel's advocate.

16:36 I want to interrogate the idea that she didn't have any like say in this and that she was a pawn in their marketing game like she's her own woman I'm sure if she didn't feel ready to do it she probably wouldn't have this is her bread and butter and I think maybe the bigger conversation is why don't why do we why do we expect women to go back to work six weeks after giving birth because they have to in this economy You know, that's a problem too.

17:01 But I also want to talk about the fact that Victoria's Secret is an aspirational brand. That is what it is. Like its entire business model and this entire show is built on that word aspiration. But what is more aspirational than putting a woman who is six weeks postpartum in the biggest catwalk show of the year? That is the most aspirational thing that you can do with a woman's body, right?

17:29 Yeah, absolutely.

17:30 I think the question is, though, is that good or bad for women? That's where we always get to in these kinds of conversations. So is it good because we're giving jobs to mums, mums who are presumably a little bit older than the average age of an angel back in the day?

17:47 So is that why it's good?

17:49 Or is it bad because it is yet again kind of forcing unrealistic beauty standards on us all?

17:56 I don't think it has to be either. I don't think it's binary. I think it sometimes can be both. And I do think I think the bottom line is what Stacey's saying is that this was a deliberate attention magnet and we've all fallen for it. We're talking about it now. It's been all over my feed. And yeah, this has been the big hooky thing that has made people look eyeballs on this show again.

18:20 Yeah.

18:21 And I think at the very least what it did is start a conversation where the general consensus seems to be, we can celebrate her for being able to do that. And we can still not have that as the benchmark for ourselves.

18:33 And I think that's what we need to remember at the end of the day. the challenge for Victoria's Secret is what are they going to do next, right? Because they've done, they're going to be sitting around going, how can we possibly scale this further? And I think what they need to do, I'm going to say it now, here's my prediction for Victoria's Secret. They need to do a documentary in the style of Dallas Cowboys. You know how you have to go and be cast for the show?

18:54 Yes.

18:54 And then, yeah, I would watch the shit out of that. I've never watched the show itself, but I would watch that doco and then drop it on Netflix, just like leading up a few months before.

19:05 Well, actually did a YouTube version. One of the models was selected through a search this year. So they have taken you up on that. They are going to start doing that. I think you're right. I think it should be on Netflix, bigger and better. But I just thought you were about to say someone should just give birth on the runway. I think that's the only logical next step.

19:22 Victoria's secret postpartum underwear.

19:26 Carrying their placenta down the runway on a wing maybe placenta wings that would be fancy.

19:32 There wouldn't be enough fabric in the victoria secret factory for my postpartum.

19:35 Knickers there's been a death that happened so gradually none of us even noticed and i want to talk about it RIP to the humble iron.

19:47 Ironing is dead, guys, apparently.

19:49 I want to play you a video that gave me the most visceral memory of ironing from my childhood.

19:56 Here you go.

19:57 Remember in the 90s, your mum would have a whole day dedicated to ironing? I completely forgot about that. The seven years that I've been moved out my parents, I haven't ironed a single item, not Not a single time, not a single thing, ever. I don't even know how all my clothes aren't creased. They probably are. I probably just don't even notice. I don't think I've seen a single person ironing for years, for years. Like, I work in people's houses, so I see their daily lives, and I cannot remember the last time I see someone iron something.

20:29 Oh, it's a race to the bottom. It is a race.

20:32 It's a race to the wrinkly bottom and I.

20:35 Will not have it. And I am sick of this show and you two in particular in your Sydney ivory tower turning your nose up at the simple pleasures of domestic life. I iron and I love it.

20:48 I knew you were going to say it.

20:51 I want to say to this man, you're a slob. Actually, how about you get an iron?

20:55 Stacey, to answer your question. Did you hear that, by the way? No, there was a weird crackling noise. And then, yeah, I don't know. I don't know what happened. I don't own an iron. You don't even own one? No.

21:08 Wow.

21:09 And sometimes I hang my clothes in the shower.

21:12 Yep. Because I once had a boyfriend many years ago. who was an aspiring actor, and he did waiting at cocktail parties as his day job.

21:22 Of course. So he always had to wear, like, a suit.

21:25 Yeah.

21:25 But he was an aspiring actor without, like, proper furniture, so he hung his suits in the shower.

21:30 It works very well.

21:31 And every time I do it, I think of that aspiring actor, and I think, you taught me well, aspiring actor.

21:37 He hasn't won a Golden Globe yet?

21:39 Not yet.

21:39 Didn't work out?

21:40 Okay.

21:40 I think he's probably still a cocktail waiter.

21:42 Okay.

21:42 I think.

21:44 I think you just brought this topic to the show, Stacey, so that you could smugly tell everyone about your non-ironing hack, which is to hang your clothes on the clothesline with clothes hangers, right?

21:53 Yes. Yes.

21:54 You're right. Which doesn't work.

21:55 It doesn't work.

21:56 It works enough, Mons. This is the thing.

21:58 I think COVID lowered the bar on how slobby we can look and we've never gone back.

22:04 I think everyone went, you know what? Collared shirts. Don't worry.

22:08 It's fine.

22:08 It's fine. They can have a little bit of a crumple to them.

22:11 It's also funny because on the internet, I feel like the ultimate go-to piece of snark that people have about celebrity clothing is she didn't even iron it. And I think to myself, if that's the worst thing you can say about someone in 2026.

22:24 I'll live with it.

22:27 I think I also don't iron very much because my mother is an absolute legend and can't resist. She was one of these mums in the 90s that even used to iron the bed sheets. And if she comes to my house to look after my daughter, I will come back to a few of my shirts magically pristine.

22:43 And I just want to thank her for that on the show.

22:45 Yeah, and how nice is it? How nice is it, Stacey? And how good do you feel when you're wearing it? I do, you're right.

22:51 It does feel great.

22:52 Your child looks good at school. Like I will stand on my ironing board and yell to the rooftops how much I love ironing and it makes me feel good inside and it makes me feel good to send my children out with pressed clothes. And also, ironing technology has come such a long way. Like, they used to be really heavy and cumbersome. Now I've got a steam station that just rips through it. Seriously, girls, you've never known the pleasure of getting into pyjamas that have been ironed.

23:18 I tell you, it's hot.

23:20 Monique Bowley, you are not ironing your pyjamas.

23:24 I am.

23:24 I even ironed this New York Knicks t-shirt.

23:26 I mean, that does look very crisp. I will give you that. Looks good. Looks good.

23:31 I don't believe it's over. I know your job is to find the trends on TikTok and I just want to say not in my algorithm.

23:39 Mons, can you do a video for us on hypothetically how to iron?

23:44 I would love to.

23:45 I actually don't know. Yes.

23:48 The story blowing up parent algorithms on Instagram this week is a very simple one where a mum has posted something that her six-year-old brought home from school. But it's a little bit darker and this is already in the tens of thousands of shares and I want to unpack it. Because in classrooms every day, kids are asked to imagine what they'll be when they grow up and they might draw a picture or do a painting. They might get some construction paper and put something together about what they want to be. But one mum was completely outraged after a school used an AI tool to turn her kid's drawing of a nurse along with this child's face into a very real human image of her as a nurse or grown up. Here's some of what Nikki Anderson, who's

24:34 on Instagram as Mums Who Write, wrote. My daughter's public school uploaded her face into AI to show her what she would look like at 25. She is six. She wants to be a nurse. This is the one she made out of construction paper. That's childhood creativity, imagination and cognitive development. Then look at the AI version. She's young, thin, conventionally attractive with long hair and clear skin. My child's interpretation of the world has been replaced with an algorithm's interpretation of what a successful adult woman should look like.

25:08 she'd already imagined the future and made something incredible to represent it. What part of that need to be finished by a computer? Amelia, are we just like outsourcing childhood creativity to chat GPT now? What was your reaction to this?

25:22 I thought Mums Who Write, she really is a good.

25:26 Writer because she unpacked why I felt a visceral sense of unease when I saw this and she put into words what was wrong with it and what was wrong with it is that it took away a child's ability to imagine multiple different futures for themselves. That's really in a nutshell what the problem of an AI image is.

25:47 And it's also why whenever I pass a restaurant or a business that's using AI imagery to sell me, for instance, food, I recoil from that too, because that's not how I want to imagine the food. And it's this sort of limiting of what the world can be, which comes from AI.

26:04 Stacey, is that overthinking it? Oh, I don't know.

26:08 I think I can see what the intention with it was. Like, I think it was to be like, here's a visualisation of that thing that you wanted to be. And to show that it's possible as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's more that then the end result of that is something that's so limiting that it kind of takes away the original intention.

26:25 Like, I think.

26:27 we're increasingly seeing how dangerous this is as time goes on. Like I kept thinking of Elf Yourself. Remember that from maybe 10 years ago where you'd upload photos of your entire family and it would put your bodies on an elf dancing around. And we thought that was hilarious and it felt very harmless. And it was just, oh, there's that thing. And you went on and you never really thought about it. Now it's like, where does that image go?

26:48 Where has my child gone? Especially given she's saying She didn't give consent for this, right, Mons? Like this just happened and there was no kind of conversation with the.

26:59 Parents at all.

27:00 Yeah, she says that in the post. She says the photography consent that we sign for the school did not include uploading my child's photo to generative AI. Where has that photo gone? What's happened to it now? Is it going to be destroyed or is it going to be used to train other models?

27:15 We talked on this show a few weeks ago about an amazing expose in the Monthly episode about the fact that no one really understands what happens to all the photos that are uploaded by schools into apps like Seesaw and Brightwheel and those apps that update parents on what's happening at school. So the AI companies are even less regulated than the school photo companies.

27:38 Yeah.

27:39 I think what rankled me was the privacy issue, first and foremost. But secondly, the white, thin, clear skinness of it all. Like, I just thought that this AI generated nurse is very, very thin and very pretty. And what message is that sending to our kids? To me, this is the 2026 equivalent of reading those sweet belly high books in primary school. Where it was those twins, Jessica and Elizabeth, who are blonde, blue eyed, sporty, thin and popular.

28:13 And I would look in the mirror and go, I'm none of those things. Telling children in an education system, this is the ideal. It's not okay.

28:21 Well, that's kind of one of the most well-documented flaws that AI has that they can't really seem to overcome. Like there's been a lot of research on this, that it just amplifies stereotypes and they kind of can't get around that because it goes and searches everything that's out there and then it perpetuates that stereotype. So like the Washington Post did a study back in 2024 where they got three of these AI generation sites to put in what a beautiful woman looks like. All of them were thin, 100% were thin. Only 2% had any signs of aging whatsoever and only 9% had darker skin tones.

29:00 Like it picks up.

29:01 the most stereotypical thing and then amplifies that out. And kind of what message is that sending, I guess, if we're saying, here's what you're going to look like and it's perfect with no flaws, no wrinkles, no signs of life.

29:15 Maybe we are deeping it, but it just feels scary.

29:18 No, we're not deeping it. And what's troubling is that there were thousands of comments on this post, on this original post. And we'll put a link in the show notes so you can read some of them yourself.

29:28 And see the images as well.

29:30 One of the most troubling ones was from other teachers saying, yeah, my school put this in the newsletter as like a fun thing to do with the kids in your class.

29:38 Well, but that's what I guess.

29:39 I'm a little bit worried about us sort of piling on this teacher who did this because... There have been this spate of articles recently about how AI is a tool that parents are using, and let's be real, mostly mums are using as a second brain to kind of outsource a lot of the emotional and logistical labour that falls to mums, and the AI can help them do that.

30:04 And those articles are generally presented in a morally neutral way. We all know that mums are overworked and harried and need help. AI can help with that.

30:14 Why is it that we seem to think it's okay for mums to lean on AI to assist with their tasks? But when teachers try and use it, we come down on them so hard.

30:26 Yeah. And it's probably mixed messaging too, because there was a lot of teachers in those comments saying, I'm in a school where they're now talking to us about, you know, really pushing AI and how we need to incorporate it into learning, make it better, do this, do that, like optimize. And then there was other ones saying, well, we're getting told not to use it at all, that it needs to rip out entirely. So I think it is like this, it's this thing where anything's new and sparkly, where you kind of get both sides of it, where no one really knows what the end result's going to be.

30:55 And I'm sure the teacher in this case was just trying to show the kids that it is possible to pursue your dreams and make those dreams a reality. And is at the same time, I'm sure being pressured by hires up at the school to incorporate digital learning and technology into the classroom. So I just wonder if we have a dip a different standard for teachers than we do for parents on this issue.

31:19 That's interesting.

31:20 I don't disagree. I think I do want to give teachers the benefit of the doubt, but this is, she'd already made a, done a drawing of the nurse with her own hands and with her own imagination. And she doesn't, do kids really need to see what they're going to look like at 25 in this AI simulated model? I don't know. I think it's the part, the part that also rankles me is like the loss of creativity, the loss of imagination here. And I think We are already seeing kids who have loss of like fine motor skills because they're not colouring in. They're not drawing. They spend all the time scrolling on an iPad. I have got primary school teachers I know who are saying these children cannot hold a pen and colour in a piece of

32:00 paper anymore.

32:01 But let me give you an example from my own life because I'm curious about what you think of this. I have noticed a lot of parents are leaning on AI to produce party invitations now. It's sort of become the norm. Party invitations are generated with AI. You just know what they look like and that's where they come from.

32:19 Why are we not condemning them for kind of leaning on an AI tool, potentially uploading photos of their own children to embellish the invitations? Shouldn't we be coming down hard on that too?

32:32 I think that's an individual choice. And I think the problem with this is that we expect our schools to have governance and to be regulating and to be thinking about putting our children's safety as a priority. I think individually in your own home, it's like you can do what you like. That's your prerogative. But in an educational setting, I would want more governance. And I think that this month, the Australian Education Research Organisation, They've released their AI in schools guidelines and they say it needs to be avoided entirely for the first three years of primary school and that schools need a very cautious approach to AI. Okay, it's time for recommendations where we like to bring you hopeful, cheery,

33:16 helpful things to your life. Stacey, what are you recommending this week?

33:21 Okay.

33:22 You know that we like to recommend products. We recommend specific things for your TV shows.

33:27 Yes.

33:28 This week, I would like to recommend the city of Brisbane. Yes.

33:32 You can't recommend a whole city.

33:34 No, you can. Brisbane is clearly the best city. I can. And I'm its biggest fan, second only to Amelia Lester. Yes, love Brisbane. I go there for my girls' trips.

33:42 I know. I know. And you had given me great recos. I went for a wedding this past weekend, Mons. I've been once before. And then this time, I was like... This place is so underrated. Like every restaurant, amazing meal. Every person I encountered, lovely.

33:58 But you know what, Stacey?

33:59 We're just getting in on the ground floor because soon the world's going to discover Brisbane when it has the Olympics. And we're going to say, world, we told you so.

34:06 Where have you been?

34:07 Yeah, we're going to be like, we were there before you couldn't book in anywhere. Like before it was famous.

34:13 I went to Bluey's World.

34:14 I went to delightful night markets with 100 different vendors of all different foods. I went to a country bar at 1 a.m. Who can do that in Sydney?

34:23 No one. And my skin's always better in Brisbane.

34:26 Yes.

34:26 The humidity. The delightful jet cats. Honestly, it's just a vibe.

34:30 What's a jet cat? Like on the river.

34:32 And they have ones that are the Bluey cat or the cat dog, I think they call it, or the dog cat.

34:37 I don't know what you're talking about. That's decorated like Bluey.

34:39 What?

34:40 My Brisbane love clearly has some bounds. Look, Mons, we know you love Adelaide, but Brisbane's where it's at. I'm happy that you're promoting another state. I want to posit a theory to you. You were away in a sunny location at a wedding. Like, could it have been anywhere? Like you were already having a good time.

34:58 I waited until this was the second time I had been. First time I was like, maybe this is a fluke. I was with my best friend, no children. I was like footloose and fancy free. I was like, maybe it was just that. This time it was a family holiday, equally as delightful. And I had so many people in my DMs going, you've made Brisbane look good. And I was like, I didn't have to make it look good.

35:17 It is this good.

35:18 You know what we need to do? oh my God, we need to go and do a live show in Brisbane.

35:21 Yeah. Yes.

35:22 It can be a tax deduction. And we can be like, we're doing it for the show and then the show can pay for it and then we get.

35:28 To have it.

35:29 And then we get to go to our favourite place.

35:30 Yes.

35:30 With all the pout louders.

35:32 Yes. Please pout louders, help us make that happen.

35:34 Yes, if you want that to happen, can you like flood the DMs with that if you want us to come there?

35:38 Because we would very much like that.

35:40 Spotify comments.

35:41 If we start a search in the Spotify comments, this could happen.

35:43 But also just DM us because there's people on Apple. There's people who want to watch us that are on Apple. We can't forget them. If you are listening to us on Apple, send us a message as well and tell us if you want to come to Brizzy.

35:54 Do we have many Brizzy listeners?

35:55 Let's find out. Here we go.

35:57 All right.

35:58 Good. Here we go. Or if you just want to come to Brizzy, they don't have to be from Brizzy. If you just want to come and have an excuse to visit, we'll go and do a show there.

36:06 That would be so fun. I think we should.

36:08 Okay.

36:08 All right.

36:09 Love that.

36:09 I've got a recommendation for something that you could wear in Brisbane.

36:13 Okay.

36:14 And it's a T-shirt. Okay. So I saw a picture of myself on a bushwalk in a T-shirt recently, which did me no favours.

36:22 And because I'm a millennial, I am actually concerned with what looks nice and flattering.

36:26 Flattering.

36:27 I know.

36:28 Gen Z, you think that's so passe. You think that's so old-fashioned to want to look nice in something. Well, I'm sorry, Gen Z, but I do. And that is why I went on a mission.

36:39 She will not iron. Let's be clear.

36:42 No, I have some.

36:44 lines to draw. I need to go to Brisbane. That's why I'm not ironing. You don't even need to iron in Brisbane because the steam of the city just kind of makes everything smooth. Look, I needed a new T-shirt and I was haunting Reddit for some recommendations and I came across an Adelaide-based brand, Mons.

37:04 Adelaide has a.

37:05 Lot to recommend it. And the most recent recommendation is Blue Sky Day. This is a brand that specialises in solving... fashion problems. And this is why I bought the Blue Sky Day big boob t-shirt.

37:21 Oh, so you don't get the pull across the front. I mean, I famously have small boobs. This is not relevant to me, but I love this for you.

37:27 The reason why it's relevant to me is because if you are endowed in that area, and I did turn down the Victoria's Secret show just because I had a pout loud recording time that conflicted with it. But When I wear T-shirts, they look a bit like tents because they need to cover my bosom, yet then they're not fitted properly in the shoulders and in the waist. So these T-shirts address that issue. And they have more room around the chest, but then you're regular size everywhere else.

38:00 Okay, that's great.

38:01 Oh, my God.

38:02 That's so smart. Yeah, I know.

38:05 I think if you'd told me about this 10 years ago, I would have been like, what a flex, like you're just flexing. But now I'm like, oh, you poor thing, that must suck trying to like having a big boozies and getting close to feet.

38:16 Yeah, Mons, I'm not flexing. I've breastfed two children.

38:20 Like I'm not claiming that they're particularly impressive, but they are large.

38:27 The cotton is very nice.

38:29 It's this sort of perfect weight where it's substantial enough that it doesn't that it's not see-through, but it.

38:36 Doesn't feel really thick. Because you don't want to wear a T-shirt that's so thick that when it's hot.

38:40 What color is it?

38:41 Well, it comes in white and black.

38:42 Can you wear one next week and show us?

38:45 Yeah, I will.

38:46 I have the white V-neck because the conventional wisdom around big boobs and T-shirts is that you should wear V-necks, but they have a crew neck. And I reckon if anyone can pull off a crew neck for me, it is blue sky day. So maybe that's the one I'll buy next.

39:01 Love it. That's a great rec. You just get them from the website, Blue Sky Day's website. Well done, Adelaide.

39:07 Yeah, thank you. I want you both to hold the space for this recommendation.

39:11 Okay.

39:11 Because I know what you're thinking.

39:12 It's going to be domestic related.

39:14 Oh, yes.

39:15 Hold space. We're holding space for you.

39:17 Thank you. I mean it. I don't want to hear any judgment or mean comments about my love of domestic things.

39:23 We love you, Mons, and your love of domestic. You know that.

39:26 I think I've achieved my greatest ever domestic achievement.

39:29 Okay. Okay.

39:30 So for a while, background, I've been going to those car washes to use the industrial vacuum to vacuum out my car. Because I do think there's two types of people in the world. There's people that vacuum their car weekly. And then there's people whose vacuum has never seen the inside of their car.

39:43 Yes. Me.

39:44 Yep.

39:45 I'm a weekly vacuumer. I grew up in a non-vacuuming household. And so I think, And then one of my first jobs was in a car wash detailing place. And I just saw the other side and was like, I want this for my life.

39:57 So for the longest time- Wait, one of your first jobs was in a car wash detailing place? Yes.

40:02 Yes.

40:02 And not only that, it was in the really fancy part of Adelaide. So it was lots of very fancy cars with rich people who just wanted immaculate cars all the time. And so I got to see how the other half lived. And from then on, I've been pro-vacuuming my car. So I've been going to these little drive-thrus using their industrial ones, but I never have coins on me.

40:21 And I thought, I'm going to give myself an early Christmas present to get me through term four. And I put a stick vacuum in my carport. So I have basically built for myself a the little car wash drive-through, but in my own driveway carport.

40:40 So have you stuck this up on the wall? Like is it hanging?

40:43 This is the genius. I got this one called Dyson Conical Auto Empty Dock. So it comes on a stand so you don't have to drill anything into the wall. It sits on a stand and the stand has a bag in it that sucks all the dirt out. So it's just like my own personal thing. vacuuming car wash station I just cannot tell you I cannot tell you the level of happiness I have and the level of smugness I feel for this like this is luxury for me a lot of women want a butler's pantry a lot of women want a designer handbag I just want a vacuum that's one meter from my car and now girls I have it and I can't believe I hadn't thought of this until now and now it's done and it's like I just feel so good about it thank

41:26 you for holding this space.

41:27 Dyson's are expensive presumably you could achieve this same effect with a less expensive vacuum correct.

41:33 Yes, it's expensive. But I do want to say in the interest of transparency, Dyson sent this to me because they heard me bagging out vacuum cleaners and they were like, try this one. And I said, I'm not going to talk about it unless I really like it. And then I did this and it was the greatest thing I've ever done. So there.

41:49 And it's also about the experience, right? The experience you can create. Completely.

41:54 And you absolutely could do it with a different model and a cheaper thing. The thing I liked about it was that, you know how I feel about bagless vacuums. I don't like them. I wanted one with a bag.

42:04 Yes.

42:05 And this one has the bag. So I don't have to empty it out and the shit gets everywhere again. So yeah, it was expensive, but I think price per vacuum is going to be very low.

42:15 And look at the joy. Look at the joy on your face.

42:18 When I told some of the school mums, they were all like, holy shit, you've cracked it. You've got a good.

42:25 Group of school mums. They're very supportive of you and your domestic duties.

42:29 We're very happy for you. I genuinely am. I think that's great. And maybe if I had one close enough to my car, maybe I would vacuum it more than once every decade.

42:39 So maybe that is the key.

42:40 Yes.

42:41 It is literally, I just go click, back, done.

42:43 It's so good. It's so good.

42:46 Before we say goodbye. Good news, hot news. If you're thinking, fuck, Monique got given a Dyson. What about me? What do I get out of this podcast? Well, I have good news for you because if you're a subscriber to Mamma Mia, you are going in the draw to win a $ 5, 000 voucher with B2C Furniture to spend online or in-store. Here's what I would get. I would get, it's all about me again, me, me, me. Monique wants everything. A trundle bed.

43:13 A trundle bed for sleepovers or extra kids without having like a full second bed. Super handy. And with B2C, it's not like online where you see it and you click on it and then it comes in 12 weeks and you go, shit, it doesn't fit.

43:25 Yeah, that's so annoying.

43:27 Everything's like in stock and ready to ship. Right, Stacey?

43:31 Yes.

43:32 Yes.

43:32 You'll be able to get it right away. And the best part, if you're a subscriber, don't do anything. You don't have to do anything now.

43:38 You're done.

43:39 You're already in the draw.

43:39 Yeah. You're already in the draw to potentially win this. Except we can't win it, which is really annoying because I would quite like a trundle bed for my house.

43:48 Yeah.

43:48 It's high-end living, made affordable, designer looks without the designer price tag. If you are not a subscriber... Then come and join up and then you'll go into the drawer as well and you get access to all the podcasts. You get access to Move, the fitness app, and lots of extra little bonus prizes all the time like this.

44:05 Go to mamamia.com.au forward slash subscribe or click the link in our show notes. Offer ends October 31st. T's and C's apply.

44:14 All right.

44:15 On that note, that is all we have time for this week on Parenting Out Loud. Have a great week. We will be back in this feed next Saturday morning. Bye. Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land on which we have recorded this podcast.