The Lesley Hawkins Podcast
Anchored by the question, "What’s one pivotal moment in your life?",
Lesley hosts candid, personal conversations that reveal the turning points that shape who we are.
With her signature empathy, wit, and warmth, Lesley creates space for guests to open up, sparking insights that challenge assumptions, stir reflection, and ignite growth.
Each episode blends honest stories, surprising insights, and moments of laughter, leaving listeners feeling inspired, seen, and more deeply connected to the human experience.
The Lesley Hawkins Podcast
Brie Mathers - Love The Skin You’re In
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As a teenager, our guest was a high-performance athlete. Her body was strong, capable, built for competition. Then it started to change and what followed was a battle with an eating disorder that reshaped not just her relationship with her body, but her understanding of the forces working against young people every single day.
Because this isn't just a personal story. It's a much bigger one.
She has spent her career speaking to youth about the devastating impact of cultural norms, societal systems, and more recently, the impact of social media on mental health. And she is not mincing words. The youth are not alright. And the platforms designed to connect us are doing something far more sinister by feeding an addiction, one scroll at a time.
This is a conversation about activism, feminism, and protecting our youth loudly and unapologetically.
#pivotalmoment #lovetheskinyourein #selflove
Lesley Hawkins is a keynote speaker with her signature keynote "The Courage To Define and Own Your Worth", workshop developer (The Leadership Mirror and The Leaders Table), leadership strategist, and storyteller who believes growth happens in the everyday moments that define who we become.
Drawing on years of experience leading, guiding, and mentoring teams, Lesley brings authenticity, curiosity, and heart to the conversation as each interaction is an opportunity to define what truly matters.
One question. One turning point. One powerful story.
To learn more about Lesley: www.lesleyhawkins.ca / www.marsley.ca
@the_lesley_hawkins_podcast
The Lesley Hawkins Podcast is a Marsley Canada production.
Welcome to the Leslie Hawkins Podcast. Each week, my guest and I discuss one pivotal moment in their life, what they learned from it and their words of wisdom. As a teenager, our guest was a high-performance athlete. Her body was strong, capable, built for competition. Then it started to change, and what followed was a battle with an eating disorder that reshaped not just her relationship with her body, but her understanding of the forces working against young people every single day. Because this isn't just a personal story, it's a much bigger one. She has spent her career speaking to youth about the devastating impact of cultural norms, societal systems, and more recently, the impact of social media on mental health. And she is not mincing words. The youth are not all right. And the platforms designed to connect us are doing something far more sinister by feeding an addiction one scroll at a time. This is a conversation about activism, feminism, and protecting our youth loudly and unapologetically. Welcome to the Leslie Hawkins Podcast. I am so grateful that you are here with us today. Please join me in welcoming today's guest, Brie Mathers. So Brie is the founder of the Love the Skin You're In Youth Resiliency Project. And we're going to hear all about that today. So welcome. I'm so glad that you're here with us.
SPEAKER_04Thank you, Leslie. I'm so happy to be here with you.
SPEAKER_00So good. So this podcast is all based on one question, which is what is one pivotal moment in your life? And the reason that's the question is first of all, we all have multiple pivotal moments. In some cases, there are pivots that are chosen by us and some that are imposed on us. And I've, you know, through personal experience and talking to lots of other people about their pivotal moments, found that there's a common thread. And it's all stories of human resiliency and courage and trying to give a platform for people to learn about those stories and then meet incredible people like yourself. And it's just been such an honor and pleasure to help tell people stories. And I really I love having conversations. So I look forward to having a good chat with you today.
SPEAKER_04I look forward to it too. I've definitely enjoyed listening to your other interviews.
SPEAKER_00Oh, thank you. Appreciate that. We love all with all listeners and viewers. So let's kick it off. Let me ask you that one pivotal, that moment of what is one pivotal moment in your life?
SPEAKER_04Yes. So not too long after I had won the OFSA, the Ontario Provincial Track Championships as an 800-meter runner when I was 15. Um, I came down with anorexia and, you know, was just sort of um in the long dark night of the soul that people go through when they go through a mental health battle. And um seeking, you know, like just really seeking for the light and trying to find my way through. And um I I I was on the beach actually in Florida. It was spring break. My whole family was down there. And I read this line in this book, and it said, Your dream for the world, you know, is love's gift to the world through you. And I had a transcendent experience. My heart opened up and the sky opened up, and I just realized the indivisibility of love. And I couldn't tell if the source of love was outside me or inside my heart, but it was just so deep and so powerful and so expansive, and it was certainly the answer to everything I had been seeking. And I just it that was the moment that gave me the courage to heal, to really set forth on a path of healing, because there was this recognition that we are so much more than the body. Yeah. Right. And I just felt this sort of fire in my belly that was really like feeding this flame in my heart to do something about the fact that I was not the only young woman at my high school that was struggling with body image-related eating disorders. Like you could go around that cafeteria table, and every young woman had a story about just having a muffin for lunch or hating how fat her thighs were or what have you. But everyone had this kind of negative inner dialogue. And I, because I'd had this kind of moment of realization, I just really wanted to bring that love and that light first to my peers. I did my first talk in my last year of high school, and then um I was just spiritually called to to continue on that journey. Okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Wow. So how how are you a track champion who then you know who who then falls into anorexia? I'm not even sure what the right term is. Because I would assume as an athlete, a high performance athlete, there is nutritional guidelines and things that you should be following. Yeah. So was it like I finished the race, I got the award, I did what I wanted to, and then your world started to change.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that is a good question. I thought, you know, I thought that that would be what happened once I got that off the gold medal, which had always been this kind of pinnacle in my imagination. Right. I thought like then I would arrive. Right. Yeah. And what actually happened after that, as I was 15, going on, 16, was that like my body started to change.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_04And there I was living in this image saturated culture as a young woman who was starting to gain, you know, some breasts and some hips and some thighs and all of those wonderfully, you know, fertile aspects of being in a woman's body. And um and I really panicked. But underneath there was also, you know, and I think a lot of the a lot of high performance athletes, I think, are often sort of licking honey from the razor's edge in terms of their relationship with like positive psychology. Yes. And also sometimes like some of the negative imprinting that we all get as a result of the culture that we're in, right? That sense of not enoughness can be very pervasive, I think, you know, for athletes and non-athletes. And so I definitely had this kind of negative little voice inside of me of not enoughness.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_04And when my body started to change, I would say that that voice got projected onto the body. Um, it really like met its moment with you know, being a woman in the culture, and that that things just unraveled. Okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Okay. And I I'm assuming that there was a lot based on your comment about the cafeteria, that there was lots of other young girls that were in similar situation, whether high performance or not, yeah. But in this negative self-image fight uh with themselves.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I would say so for sure. Okay. It was it was culturally normative. It's still culturally normative. In fact, if anything, it's just, you know, so amplified because of the amped-up online world for young women, especially today. And yes, you know, all the statistics on eating disorders, depression, anxiety are are monstrous and and monstrous even compared to where where they were at when I was 17 in high school and struggling. And so um, you know, there's there's ways in which we've evolved and there's ways in which we haven't evolved, right? And um I think we're really in a moment right now of of recognizing, like, now's the moment, I think, for us to all sort of awaken to our inherent radiance, to our inherent, and as women, to our inherent worth. I know you do a lot of work with women and women's leadership, and I'm sure that that there's a strong strain of of having women recognize their worth. Yes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, ironically, my my keynote, my signature keynote is called the courage to define and own your worth.
SPEAKER_01Of course it is.
SPEAKER_00Well done. So yeah, okay. Well, so then you uh you manage to heal yourself. Yes. Um, and then you start speaking at your high school. Curious how that happened.
SPEAKER_04So I was still in recovery, right? Right when I did, and it was the last year of Ontario Academic Credits. Okay, yeah. We actually had grade 13. Yes. And I read um The Beauty Myth back when I was 17 and Revolution from Within by Gloria Steinem. Super, super uh pivotal books for me. And and really there was just something that touched me so deeply that I would say my journey as um a feminist activist was just born within the pages of that experience. And so I've just felt I have to do this. I have to do something. This is something that's that's so pervasive and this can't continue. And so I connected with Carolyn Bray, who was at the time a professional speaker on women's health issues. There I was, I was 18. I just knew I wanted to do something. I just knew there's something wrong when all the young women in my peer group are engaging the same conversation, and it's a lie, right? Like everything we've been taught to believe about our bodies as and you know, a lot that we've been taught to believe that are worth as women is a lie. Right. And so I I wanted to um just bring the light to that so that we could all live more freely. Right. And um, so I connected with um this speaker on women's health issues. Her name was Carolyn Bray. She later went on to become the director of the YWCA in Bracebridge, very nice. Um, and actually drowned tragically with her 12-year-old daughter some some years later. Oh. But she was my original mentor, and uh, and she was the um, you know, she was that rudder for me when I was starting my work. And I did my first talk. So Love the Skin You're In, it's a it's a multimedia journey that looks at representation of women, of women's bodies, of race, um, uh, of hypersexualization. It looks at the intersection between social media and mental health and um representations of the feminine and mental health. Um, and she guided me through my very first talk. And we did the first two together, one at my my high school, which was Bracebridge and Muskoka Lake Secondary School. And then we did a second one a little north of us at Huntsville High School.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_04And then when I went to university, I started, you know, flying on my own with it. Okay. But um yeah, that was the the beginning.
SPEAKER_00Okay. So at that time, yeah, social media was not what it is today. It wasn't even a thing. That's okay. I was trying not to age us, but okay, got it. So from then, at that time, the major influence on young women and how they felt about themselves was what they saw in magazines because we used to read magazines, uh, what was on TV uh 9 or 210. Yes, all of that, but definitely nobody was talking about mental health at that point.
SPEAKER_04That's right.
SPEAKER_00Um, and yet there was the expectation of you know, when I was growing up, it was you need to be 125 pounds, you need to be 5'8, blonde hair, blue eyes, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Yeah, maybe a BC cup, somewhere like it's ridiculous. Totally. Um and and so that's what we grew up with, and yet it's you know, it's obviously not reality. So that was what what we grew up with, but then you put on social media, yeah, and what what has happened with that? Like we're now starting to talk a lot more about social media, we're talking a lot more about mental health, but uh love the skin you're in. How does it sort of tackle that conversation?
SPEAKER_04Well, uh, head on, really. I mean, when I get in into an assembly with, you know, it's often 500 young women at a time.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_04Um, I'm just really frank with them and I put the graphs up in front of them. I mean, I open the talk, getting them up on stage, emulating actually often Victoria's Secret models, right? I get them emulating their poses and you know, they really ham it up on the stage. And then I say, How many of you strike this pose when you put on your brawn underwear in the morning? And it's a great icebreaker and creates a great laugh. Um, and then we're able to take a deeper dive, you know, and and look at representations of women, representations of race, and and and sort of like often like looking at different advertisements and seeing what's actually underneath them, or looking at different moments in the culture and then looking at what's underneath them. Like one of the moments in the culture I I do a critical analysis with the young women of is Miley Cyrus's VMA Awards show performance.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_04So in 2013, you you're probably familiar with it. She was up on stage with Robin Thick. We all remember she twerked her way to the top of Twitter. I mean, she probably was a record-breaking performance. And um and and it met with a real backlash, right? It met with uh a lot of mixed response. And Miley Cyrus kind of said, you know, hello, this is my this is my feminism, and this is my body, and I'll do what I want to do. And the the reaction in the culture amongst young women was kind of claiming this kind of performative sexualization as girl power, right?
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_04And but that can be really problematic, right? Because if if your performance of sexualization becomes your expression of girl power, um you know, if that decision is made within or on behalf of the system that is saying that, you know, we value and we prize women as objects of sexualization rather than relationships with sexuality, that's really problematic. And so one of the things that we're seeing in young women as a result of social media use, and according to the Canadian Association for Mental Health in Canada, you know, we have um like over 30% of girls are considered problematic users, and that's over 35 hours digitized a week, right?
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_04So one of the things that happens with this, and Jonathan Hay talks about this in his book, Anxious Generation, is social comparison. And one of the things that I like to introduce into that conversation around social comparison is self-objectification, right? So self-objectification is when we sort of learn to relate and treat ourselves as objects of others' desires, and we start to relate first and foremost to the body as an object, you know, to be consumed, right? Rather than a place that we live, right? Rather than what we inhabit, rather than something that makes available wonder rather than recognizing all of the body's inherent intelligence, which is at our fingertips in any given moment, right? There's this contraction around thinking the body's an object and then seeing it from a third person kind of perspective. Yes. And so girls are engaging in both self-objectification and self-sexualization, largely as a result of all of these sort of faux feminist role models that they're being exposed to, right? Kim Kardashian is still super, super popular, right? And we we've, you know, the the ramifications of that, like girls joining Instagram and then sort of wanting to be part of that kind of Kim Kardashian effect, yes, um, is actually a generation of girls that are struggling from the outcomes of self-objectification, which include things like decreased condom use, decreased sexual assertiveness, increased anxiety, increased disordered eating, increased depression, decreased academic performance, decreased ability to perform basic physical um feats, like like throw a ball, right? Because as long as you're relating to your body as a thing, right? That's kind of being consumed or scrutinized by people around you, you're you're no longer in touch with that amazing resource. Yes, right. And and the body, when resourced, is is this amazing magical thing in the female body. Yeah. Can we just talk about the female body first? Okay, let me tell you about something really cool that you know I never got taught about. We have this thing as women called gluteal gluteofemoral fat. And that's the fat that starts to develop around our thighs in particular as we're growing into women's bodies. Well, the cool thing about gluteofemoral fat is that that the lipids in that fat actually feed, like when we get pregnant, the lipids in that fat feed our baby's retinal and brain development, right? So fat has we've been taught by the culture, it's been perverted into this scary thing that we're supposed to all fear. Yes. Meanwhile, it is original magic, you know. Meanwhile, it is a source of life itself, right? Um, so that's how backwards it is, and that's what I'm talking about when I say we have such a need to like see through the smoke and mirrors of all these lies that we are entrapped in as women.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yeah, that's incredible. Yeah. Well, and I I keep going back to the idea that you know, women give life. We're not an object, we're not an incubator, right? But the society wouldn't function if it wasn't for women. Like there's yes, we make up more than 50% of the population, but there would be no babies, right? And and it it and yet we continue, particularly unfortunately, right now, um, in the space we're in where we have, I think, devolved in uh the view of women and the importance and the value of the human body and of the woman's body. Um, and that it's not it's not for the taking, right? It's we should be owning our own space and it is our bodies, and we get to make our own choices. Um and a a lot of that has been, I would say, blurred to be polite over the last while.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. You're pointing to something that is so crucial, and it's crucial for women to know, and it's crucial, but it's really crucial for all beings to recognize, right? What we see with the devaluation of the feminine is you know, basically the moment that we're in right now, right? We have uh a climate catastrophe that we're in, we have um, you know, increased polarization. You know, there's it's it's kind of like compounding crises. Women, women long ago in ancient goddess worshiping cultures were seen as a site of spiritual and physical regeneration. Yeah, their bodies were seen as magical, they didn't even understand the role that sperm was playing in bringing forth light. So women's bodies were like these trees and they were bringing forth the fruits of life. And so women were extolled into leadership positions, right? And what went along with this was a partnership style of leadership. Leadership was shared between men and between women because it was this collaborative way of leading. It was this recognition that we all have strengths to bring to the table and we need to celebrate all of them. Um, and so it's it's really interesting that that you mentioned that because with the devaluation of the feminine in all genders, you know, we we find ourselves in a really difficult moment. And one of the things that we really need right now is for all of us to to look at the feminine within us, right? To look at those qualities, those stereotypically feminine qualities, right? Because they're really human qualities, but those qualities of nurture and those qualities of belonging um are really powerful. And when we bring, I know you do a lot of work in the field of women's leadership. There was a study that done by the Center for Partnership Systems. Um, Dr. Rihanna Eisler is my mentor, and she wrote the famous book, The Chalice and the Blade, which is in you know 57 US print editions and I think 37 languages around the world right now. But um she she she just really brings forward and births in this book this this recognition of um that gender is the most Um, but it's it's the most important social organizing principle, right? The most important social and economic organizing principle is actually gender, right? Um, and so we would all do better to um be lifting up the qualities of the feminine within us and within our places of work, within our places of government. Um, the Center for Partnership Systems did a study on 89 different nations around the world, and what they saw was that when women occupy more leadership positions in government, we actually see the outcome is more caregiving legislation that takes care of women and children and men and the earth. So it turns out as well that what's good for women is good for the world.
SPEAKER_00Right, right. And there's been recent examples, right? Um, Jacinda Arden, that was Ardern, yes, that was in uh New Zealand, how she managed through COVID and the pandemic and did it while she was, you know, pregnant and a brand new mother. I the the care and the empathy with which she managed through that chaos was exemplary. Yeah. And there's there's other examples I know of women, strong women leaders around the world. Um, there's just unfortunately not enough of them that we can talk about, right? Yeah, um, which makes it more challenging.
SPEAKER_04Absolutely. I love her as an example. There's a wonderful documentary out. I haven't seen it yet, but it is about her. I don't know if it's called soft, I don't know if I'm remembering that properly, but you've just reminded me that I really want to watch it. She's one of my favorite role models and sources of inspiration for the work that I do.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So do you have any insights of today what the stats are about young girls and um eating disorders and all of that?
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Well, um it's not good. You know, we hospitalizations for girls in Canada have quintoppled, right? And a lot of people, and and this is for self-harm types of incidences. A lot of people like to blame the pandemic, but but in fact, the pandemic sure, it amplified what was already there. But um these um statistics that came to be were already years in the making, and it really happened as soon as you know, we had access to smartphones and girls were walking around with these digital slot machines in their back pockets, right? Um, and I think that, you know, we the tech behamoths are just now being held to account. I don't know if you're familiar with the outcomes of the social media victims lawsuit. And so finally we're starting to see some repercussions. Um, but you know, it it's one third. Meta's own internal documents show that one third of kids are being approached by online predators weekly.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04Right. I mean, these statistics would never be considered acceptable if they were happening in a grocery store. No, right? If they were happening in real life, it would never be considered um acceptable.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_04Um, but certainly uh our girls are really struggling, and our our boys are struggling as well, and they're um being influenced by uh uh manosphere icons like Fit and Fresh and uh Andrew Tate and uh that that are you know providing a prescription for masculinity that's just incredibly violent and regressive and and really uh misogynist. Yes, exactly.
SPEAKER_00So can you talk a little bit about the work that you do specifically, the audiences that you speak to, uh, and how you're in your corner of the world driving change?
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Um the first thing that I make sure that I do before I walk onto the stage that morning, I sit and I do mindfulness practice for half an hour.
SPEAKER_00Nice.
SPEAKER_04And part of one of the things that I did along my journey was I actually lived in a Zen temple for two, two and a half years. And I was so I was sitting these sashins sometimes five times a year. And a sashine is a weeklong meditation retreat where you're actually practicing you know mindfulness 10 hours a day. So you're sitting, you're walking, you're eating, it's all in silence. Then the bell rings again at 5 30 the next morning and you're back on your cushion and you're sitting, you're walking, you're eating. And so wait a second, how long do you do that for? Well, uh, it it turns out to be 10 hours a day. When when you know, if you're starting your sitting rounds at 5 30 in the morning and ending at nine o'clock at night. That's incredible. Yeah. And what's amazing is what happens in the brain, right? Like the neuroplasticity of the brain, is this is one of the gems that I like to bring to young women in my talks, is that our brains are plastic, right? And so we can actually train them. There's so much that we can work with inside of it because it's easy to feel overwhelmed and like you're a victim to the system, but it's so powerful if you can take that step to put down your phone, right? Yes, it's so powerful what becomes available to us, yes, you know, when it comes to working with the the simple gray matter of the brain. So so I met I I do this mindfulness practice before I get on the stage, and and it's largely to bring me into um feeling whole bodily, okay, and an opening so that I can meet the moment because every audience, as you can imagine when you're working with middle schoolers or high school young women, every audience is a little bit different. Yes, right? And and every audience needs medicine that's maybe a little bit different. And sometimes I'll talk to uh a school counselor or an administrator or a nurse beforehand, or I'll talk to a student representative and find out what's what's in particular is happening. So, you know, at one school on Cape Cod that I was at not that long ago, they were really struggling with mean girl culture.
SPEAKER_02Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_04And and mean girl culture just it it is so uh amplified as a result of social media because girls are able to say these things online that it's much harder to say to another person's face, right? And then girls are crushed because they just don't have the, you know, what like any of us ever have the neurological development to handle that kind of meanness. I don't know if we ever do, but when you have a developing brain, right? And that's when girls' brains, the the time that girls are the most vulnerable to also to the impacts of social media is between 11 and 14.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_04It is just particular particularly um an emotional train wreck that is created. Um and so at that talk, the real sort of thrust of that talk was um helping young women see the universality of their experience and the way that they are being targeted by the messaging of not enoughness and and helping them see that actually, contrary to what we've been taught about resiliency, which is that it's some kind of solo pursuit, yes, resiliency is collective, right? Resiliency happens inside of sisterhood, and it's this message that we are all in this together, right? And that is the message that just like lifts audiences up. I've seen it, there was um another school in North Virginia, it's called HB Woodlawn School, and that was a magical talk because they actually have grades six through 12 students at that school. Oh, interesting. And um, I I was brought in by the Global Co-Lab Network, and Linda Staley is the executive director of that um organization, and she hosted a salon in her living room after the talk, and the girls were able to come so that we could debrief and just take a deeper dive and get to know one another and talk about next steps for how do we do the work to shift school culture.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_04And out of that salon, I had the privilege to meet a young woman named Body. Well, her name was Avery. Aves was what she was called at that point. And Avery and I kept in touch. She was sort of like one of the young women that I ended up mentoring along the way because that's one of the real gifts of this work is meeting young women, and there's something that sparks and they want more. And I love making myself available for that. And so at the time, we didn't know that um Instagram was not good for young women's mental health, right? This was 2016 when this happened. And um, so I encouraged Avery because she was talking about she had been on Weight Watchers and she was struggling with dieting and she's struggling with body image, but she said, you know, you came to town and your talk was the catalyst. That's it. I'm done. Yes, I want something different. And I said to her in one of our follow-up phone calls, I said, You know, Aves, you have this magic about you. You could be a lighthouse. There's so many girls who need you. Yes. And she went for it. She started a channel called Body Posse Avery, and she started posting her experiences of being in her body with her like beautiful, soft curves, and all the vulnerability that she felt and her journey to self-acceptance. And that was so well received that not only were girls clamoring after her, like in the comments, like, Way to go, Aves, you're my hero. Love you, you know. But then they started to share their stories with her, and she started to feature other young women. So she then became a role model for other young women at her school. And there were so many young women that shared their stories of vulnerability. And that was that was the build, the making of collective resiliency. And what also ended up happening at that school is it was no longer cool to fat shame. Suddenly, fat shaming was out and sisterhood was in. So it suddenly became cool to lift each other up. And when you can make that shift in the cool factor in a whole school culture of girls, like to me, like that that's the um, I mean, that's the greatest, that's the greatest reward I could ever know as an activist who's out there, you know, trying to help young women. Absolutely. That's incredible. Yeah, it's a beautiful story. It's a great story, it's a beautiful story. Yeah. But to get back to your earlier, so I take young women on a journey. Okay. And it is, it is this journey of um, you know, you know, teasing through the smoke and mirrors of popular and social media representations of women, right? Seeing the way in which the algorithms pump up hypersexualized visions of themselves. Okay. Because it's not like girls join social media thinking that they're gonna become want to become the perfect object. Right. They join social media and they're interested in something. Maybe it's baking.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_04And they they they're posting things about baking, and then suddenly they see that somebody posted this picture in a bikini and she's showing under boob, and it's got like so much attention. Yeah. Right. And so, and then you know, she's 12 or something, and she's thinking about well, what is valuable about myself as I come into the world and what's getting attention, and that it's that. It's that and so, and then and then that begins. And and so I just help them see the way in which they're being trained to do that. Yes. And like in the incidents of of Miley Cyrus, I tell her the the bigger story. So there's the story of her 2013 award show performance. There's also the story of her swinging naked on her wrecking ball. And when she was swinging naked on her wrecking ball, she basically said, Hey, I'm like Sinead O'Connor, you know, I shave my head and I'm I'm this renegade, right? I'm this rebel. Well, Sinead O'Connor then wrote this open letter to Miley Cyrus, basically saying, you know, the music producers are going to be sunning themselves on their yachts while you are, you know, says prostituting yourself for their profit. Like this is not empowerment. It's certainly not empowering for the other young women to see it. Yes. And and so I I share that that journey and I also share that her uh wrecking ball performance was actually choreographed by an alleged sexual predator. Okay, this Terry guy, who he, I mean, he was a super famous photographer, had contracts with all the major magazines. Yeah, but he also had this um dirty habit of of sexualizing minors and putting women in compromising positions and exploiting them. And that's the guy that was whose vision was behind her swinging naked on the wrecking ball. But but we never see that, we never saw that part of the story. So we don't actually realize that this is the system propagating itself, right? Right with the lies, right? The the reality is female sexuality is powerful. It's immensely powerful and it's pretty gorgeous, and it's something we should revel in and something we should celebrate. And girls deserve to celebrate it. But what we see happening right now is rather than being able to be in their bodies, which is where they can access all that pleasure, right? They're actually doing this thing called spectatoring, the way that a porn star might, right? A porn star is, you know, like watching her every move for how she's coming across. That's what's happening with girls once they get in bed, right? They get in bed and they're suddenly relating to themselves from the that third person perspective, the way that a porn star might, right? Wondering how their every move is being received rather than being in the fullness of sexual experience and expression and hopefully even, you know, intimacy. Yes. Um, and so, but when I take them on this this journey of Miley Cyrus, I also talk about 2017 when four years later Miley Cyrus herself was reflecting back on that moment. And I think it was Harper's Bizarre Magazine that captured this quote. But she said, I got to the point where I didn't want to be the woman who was like sticking out my tongue and getting my tips out. It got to a point where I did feel sexualized. Yes. So even Miley Cyrus herself was acknowledging, yeah, she had actually, you know, been hyper sexualized. And and, you know, who was who else was on that stage with her? The fully clothed, married guy who was singing the song Blurred Lines, you know, which really has a lot of undertones of of rape, right? And he's singing, Just Let Me Liberate You. Yeah. I mean, the irony of the whole situation is just loss. It's lost on young women until you put it in front of them. But when you put it in front of them, that's where the magic happens. Yes. Because when you put it in front of them, that's a moment of uh where something sparks, right? There's an opening. There's a like, what, what, wait, what? Did that really just happen? Is that what happened? Yeah. And then you can kind of watch this like the wheels are turning. Yeah, thing that sort of happens inside of their brain. And then they ri they can kind of rise up together and and throw off the system.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_04Right? Like throw off the shackles of the patriarchy. Like I say to them, you know, every young woman in this room deserves to recognize you are whole and complete and perfect exactly as you are. Exactly. Right? Like no airbrushing needed, no, like no plastic surgery needed, you don't need a lip job, you don't need Sephora, you know, like you are whole and complete and perfect right now. And what would the world be like if every young woman embraced the power of recognizing hey, we actually are already totally awesome and whole exactly as we come.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_04It would be very powerful.
SPEAKER_00Very it would literally change the world.
SPEAKER_04It would literally change the world.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. And that's why we have to dismantle these systems of oppression, right? And that's why we have to dismantle these narratives that young women are inheriting, these narratives that young men are inheriting. I mean, young men don't go onto social media looking for Andrew Tate. No. They don't go onto social media looking for the manuscript. They go onto social media because they feel insecure because they don't have big biceps. And so they start searching fitness videos. And then it's the algorithm programmed by the tech bros that suddenly starts pumping out all this content. And then they see Andrew Tate and they see what he's doing. And well, he's got six women in his hot tub. Like maybe that's what I need. And so, you know, we we just we really have to hit it from all angles. Yes. Um agreed. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because it's one thing to empower the young women, but it's another thing to also to empower to educate and to have honest, like raw conversations with the men as well.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It because I think it it's it's a a societal challenge, yeah. Um for which yes, women are objectified. It needs to be a collective change, though. Definitely, definitely.
SPEAKER_04And and to that end, I actually um just a couple of years ago started mentoring a young man who was at one of my boys' talks because I was doing boys' talks up until 2024. I think I did my last boys' talk. Um, he's a third-year McGill psychology student, but he was a senior in high school when he saw me speak and it sparked something. And um, you know, we he he said, Can we keep in touch after your talk? And I just had this intuition. Yes, this is this is a kid who's going somewhere. Right. And sure enough, um he he checked in uh right before he when he was working on a TEDx McGill talk.
SPEAKER_00Oh, very nice.
SPEAKER_04He ended up doing the talk about masculinity, and it's a wonderful TEDx McGill talk. And um, his name is Nick Chomsky, and I've been mentoring him for the last couple of years in developing curriculum that's for boys. And so now when I go on my tours, I bring him with me and he speaks to the boys while I speak to the girls. And it's the it's this beautiful but unlikely partnership, right? He's 30 years younger than me. Doesn't matter, and yeah, but he's exactly what young men need, yeah, right? Like they need a male role model who's of their age, who grew up in inside the social media wilderness, who get it. And he himself will talk about being influenced by Andrew Tate, but how Andrew Tate actually pushed him further into depression with his lies about you know being a man and you know how you can uphold that, right? Because it just leads to more emotional suppression and then more depression. So um, yeah, Nick Nick Chomsky, he's a he's a wonderful counterpart.
SPEAKER_00That's a really good partnership. I like that. Yeah. And so did you at some point make a decision like I'm no longer going to speak to young men? Or is because of this partnership? It just evolved. It evolved, okay.
SPEAKER_04You know, and I mean there would be there would be circumstances wherein I would still do a boys' talk, but um it it emerged out of you know, him seeing the talk and them him looking for a summer internship the following summer after he'd done his um TEDx McGill talk, and and so I just said let's do it. And amazing. And I just think it's just a wonderful opportunity for boys. So yeah, it was not um, it didn't come out of this decision, like, but it it really came more out of what he what wanted to emerge, you know, out of the work.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. And so I know that there's lots of parents that are listening to this podcast. Um, and you know, my daughter is now 21, my son's 22. Um they've gone through a lot of the social media, I will call it train wreck that it is when they were younger. They're smarter, more educated about it now. But what would you say to those parents that are in the thick of it? Like, how do we help how do we help our children manage through it? Yeah, when it is so pervasive, when it is like so ingrained in their life, and also manage it as a parent without being like, you shouldn't do that because you know what they're gonna do. They're just so you know, gonna completely ignore you. Totally. So, what tools or what suggestions would you have?
SPEAKER_04It's so hard. It's so hard because the tech Bahamas have really created a collective action problem.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_04This is a collective action problem. You cannot be the only parents that just rip your kids' phone away and say, You can't go on Instagram anymore. I don't want you exposed to that when everybody else in the peer group is part of it. That's why so parents have to get together in collectives, is what the the The number one thing that parents can do is get together in collectives. If your child is not yet of age, where they're going to be on social media. And hopefully, I mean, it's it's seems like it's really happening right now in Canada that we're looking at changing the laws around correct access to these social media platforms. But get together with parents and create a pod, as long as your child is not the only one, as long as there are others that are in that same boat and they can create landline pods, right? Landlines worked well for us. Very well. And there was a lot of connection and a lot of social connection that came of that. And as much as you can, if you're a parent and you do not have your child on social media yet, don't put them on it. Spend your time working with other parents in collectives to create a subculture of kids that are not on it. And I know it's, you know, I know it's super difficult because it's connected often to sport teams and announcements and this and that. There's all the arguments. And parents are tired, right? Like when you, if you've got two full-time parents that are working full-time and trying to parent, like, oh my gosh, now we have to take up this whole social issue. Right. But I also look at it like we wouldn't give our kids the keys to the alcohol cabinet. Right. And we know all the research shows Meta's internal documents. There's over 30 internal studies done by Meta that show that it it breeds addiction. Correct. Right. And so if you know, if engagement is the metric, then the outcome is addiction. Yes. And that's as soon as you give them a phone, that's what's going to happen. Yes. Um, and but but they could read uh Jean Twenge, who is a mother of three girls, and she wrote the book IGen. She's the one that broke this whole idea that that social media and smartphones, you know, there was an article in The Atlantic back in 2017, have smartphones destroyed a generation. Yes. That was her. She's a uh, I think a University of San Diego professor. But she has recently after, you know, she is in the thick of it with her three girls, but she's come out with a book called, you know, 10 rules for you know how to manage the whole social media world with your kid. Okay. And so um you could read that parents can read that book basically and get a lot of ideas for for what to do. Certainly, you know, you don't want a situation where a kid is in their bedroom with their phone, especially at night alone. That is where all the bad stuff happens. Yes. So for sure, phones are docked at night, they're docked in the kitchen if your kid has a phone. But if I was a parent, I I would really be focusing on the pods, like really focusing on, and even if your kid is already on social media, like um one of my favorite, I I'm connected with these wonderful eating disorder researchers out of the University of Rochester, one of them, Dr. Richard Cripey, he won the National Academy Award for Eating Disorders in 2015 for helping girls heal from anorexia. I mean, he was just this amazing pediatric doctor. And his partner at the Western New York Comprehensive Care Center for Eating Disorders is Dr. Mary Tantillo, who has written several books on family therapy for eating disorders. And I interviewed her because I recently was working on writing a book. And she said, the parents, you know, like the parents need to not feel like they're victim. They need to really take control around the phones. And these are this is just one of those things. It's a hard conversation. You we don't let our children drive when they're 13. Yes. Right. We don't let them go snort cocaine, yeah. Hopefully ever. Right. Right. But um, the phone really needs to be seen in that category in terms of what and and and it's disastrous what they're exposed to because it's not just their mental health that's suffered.
SPEAKER_03No.
SPEAKER_04Um, Jean Twenge, her there was a recent Substack I received from her maybe a month ago, and it was called the the Trad Wives and the Manosphere Have Won. Um, but basically showing that even young women themselves are now adopting regressive gender roles as the way it should be. Yes. Right. And and this has huge consequences for for all of us and for our societies. Like we need women's voices, we need their participation in the workforce. Um, our our world works better when we have women. We need women in in leadership positions.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So it's really to recognize the consequences. Like, and and yes, you need to keep in mind that you don't want your child to be siloed and the only one that's excluded because that's a recipe for disaster.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely it is. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04But there are other parents, I think enough, enough parents are waking up to how problematic this is that there's there's gotta be, there's gotta be the collector collectives that can come together and talk to the schools, at least have bell, no phones, bell to bell, at the very least. Um but in in the ideal world, I mean, I don't I don't think kids should have access to phones until they're 21. Yeah. I don't. I think that the the brain is just developing and there's so many things. The Canadian Association for Mental Health talks about how um their statistic on girls is that 30 over 30% of them are problematic users. That's 35 hours a week. So 35 hours a week that they're just oh, they're doom scrolling. Yeah, like how how else could that time be spent? And what happens? The kids themselves say that they don't even want to be on it. Even my studies on the kids themselves now are saying they don't want to be on it, like given the choice they'd like to not have to be on it because they recognize that it's creating all kinds of anxiety for them and depression. And so let's relieve them of that, let's be the adults that that create a different world for them, right? And and some of that comes down to political courage, yes, right? Like it comes down to political courage, what Australia has done. There's other countries that are following. I think um Spain is following, France is following, I think Indonesia. Um so let's go. Yes, exactly. Let's go. And and it's not about denying, you know, they say it's the social media ban. What it's really about is denying these tech Bahamas access to the kids, to be able to collect their data, to be able to advertise to them, to be able to use them and exploit them. Like that's really you know what really what it's about. That's really what it's about. It's about protecting the kids.
SPEAKER_00It's about protecting the kids, not punishing the kids.
SPEAKER_04Totally. It's about protecting them.
SPEAKER_00It's a very different lens.
SPEAKER_04Totally.
SPEAKER_00So interesting. Is there, do you feel like there's also a responsibility for the influencer, on the influencer, on the entertainers, on the Kim Kardashians of the world to just be incredibly mindful of the amount of power that they wield, and that if they were to put their power in a way that that could heal as opposed to hurt, how incredible that would be? Or is that like my little utopia world?
SPEAKER_04We're in the zeitgeist, Leslie, because I just wrote a book that that is largely focused on this. Okay, you know, because I believe the social media influencers have a tremendous amount of responsibility and power. Yes. Um, they're platformed and they have, you know, millions upon millions of followers. And when they put out, so I mean, Cardi B put out a uh an advertisement for uh this tea, this brand of tea that's like a dieting tea, right? Well, she's Instagram's fifth largest influencer. So what happens when Instagram's fifth largest in influencer is pushing diet products, right? Dieting is a single leading cause of eating disorders. Yes, right? Over 80% of eating disorders onset by 18. The the under 18 age group is is a huge part of the followership, right? And so there's there's a responsibility that these influencers have, all of them, you know. Um, certainly Kim Kardashian. Yes. Um, I would I I would love to see her her shift, yes, um, her shift her positions. Um I uh I really I'm I'm I'm just deeply troubled by what young women are exposed to. And I'm deeply troubled by the faux feminist content, by this idea that making my body is an object. It's this choice feminist feminism where like if I choose it, then I'm empowered, right? And it just it really ignores the water that they're swimming in, it ignores the system inside of which and on behalf of which they're making those decisions in in how to present their bodies. And I don't blame the girls, yeah, right? Like I don't like they this is what they're being taught, and they are impressionable, yes, and they are young and they're just looking for meaning, and yes, they're looking for power, and they should be looking for power, right? But I would like to see some influencers that are an embodiment of power that is truly something to aspire to. Correct. And you know how we know that that that embodiment of power or that expression of power is something to inspire to, it doesn't make legions of girls sick. Correct, right? So the fact that girls are sick, yeah, there's a direct line between the fact that girls are sick and to the messaging that we're getting from influencers, but keep in mind that even behind that is the tech bros. It's the tech behammoths that are also driving and amplifying and lifting up, especially hypersexualizing content. Yes, right? It's hypersexualizing content and it's anything that creates rage or polarization. Yes, right. And all of the old algorithms are are bending and curving around those realities, and then we have the world that we have right now. And so, really, the responsibility first and foremost, it falls with the Mark Zuckerberg's and the Elon Musk's of the world.
SPEAKER_00Agreed, agreed, and yet you are talking to thousands of kids at a time to try and open their eyes to what they could be, what they are, and how they can carry themselves in the world for better. And so, first of all, thank you for doing that work. Don't stop now. Write every book you can, get on every platform you can. The world needs to hear the message uh really, really loudly. So, if we go back to the beginning and your initial start to your journey of this eating disorder and anorexia to where you are now, what have you learned about yourself and about your community and those that are closest around you?
SPEAKER_04Well, I've definitely learned that resiliency is collective. Like when I'm in a moment of struggle, because certainly being a feminist activist working in schools, it's not been the easiest path. I mean, my parents wanted me to become a professor, and I can kind of see the wisdom in that. Oh, because you are a professor, you are, just in a different way, right? But I'm also an entrepreneur, right? I ended up being an entrepreneur. I didn't realize, you know, when I had this fire in my belly and my heart, I didn't realize I was going to be an entrepreneur, but that's a whole different skill set. Okay. Yes. Um, tell me your question again.
SPEAKER_00So it's more about what did you learn about yourself and your community through your journey.
SPEAKER_04Uh for me, I've learned that when I feel connected, yes, um, I can access the greatest, my greatest resourcing. And that connection happens both interpersonally and intrapersonally. Okay. So when I'm interpersonally connected, you know, with my with my partner who's also an activist journalist, and with girlfriends that are just really conscious. A lot of my girlfriends tend to be therapists. Like, um, it's a good fit. But when I'm when I'm when those connections are really active, that really helps me thrive. It really bathes the neurology of my brain in all of the good stuff, right? Um and and a lot of this work has been, I have been kind of on my own. I've been a sort of a for the for the largest part of the journey, I've been a one-woman um pioneer in in the love, the skin you're in experiment, right? Like, can we inspire a generation of young women, yes, you know, to to recognize their inherent radiance, to reclaim that, to own that, right? And live from that. Um, that's definitely one of the things that I've learned, but also intrapersonal connection. An intrapersonal connection is one that I can sort of access all the time. I get it through mindfulness practice, I get it through yoga practice, I get it, you know, by listening to some of my spiritual teachers. Um, and just that that really helped me in the great remembering, right? The remembering of who we are and the remembering of the medicine that that we're here to bring as women.
SPEAKER_00Right. That's amazing. All right, my last question for you. Although I have to be honest, we could talk for about 12 hours. My husband is sick and tired of me like raging as we're walking through the trails of like, I can't understand why we can't figure this out. Anyhow, uh, so he's grateful for you being here as well. Um But my last question is what would be your words of wisdom for the audience?
SPEAKER_04Okay, can I give you three?
SPEAKER_00You can give me as many as you like.
SPEAKER_04Um, so make your life about the moments that you can't double tap.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_04That would be one of them is to really connect to the awe and the wonder that is available from just being present. And that links into you know, gem number two, which is cultivate a spiritual practice. In the moment that we're in, it is really important that we be resourced, right? And that's not even languaging that most of us are familiar with to talk about what it is to be resourced. What it is to be resourced is to be in a place wherein you can respond to the world, to your own emotions, to your children from a place of responsiveness rather than reactivity. And that's really hard when we have like everyone's working so hard and long hours and trying to parent and their kids are struggling and suffering. Like, I mean, it it is hard. So finding the time, making the time, finding a way with other people in your life, you know, to collaborate around how do we create this time for resourcing. Because if we're not resourced, we can't do any of it. If we're not resourced, we are gonna be flattened, we're gonna collapse in the face of everything that we have to face right now. So for me, part of how I resource is through mindfulness practice and having a regular and daily practice. And my third gem is to really uplift the feminine, to recognize, right? To recognize that uh gender is the most significant social and economic organizing principle. And what can you do to uplift the feminine within yourself? What can you do to uplift the feminine and the feminine principle within your family, within your organization, within our world? Because our our world is is deeply in need of the medicine that that can bring.
SPEAKER_00Yes, definitely. Okay, so we need like a megaphone to spread this around the world because you your um your message is so uh poignant, it is so immensely relevant, uh, not only right now, but I think particularly right now. Um because the news cycle isn't kind, isn't kind to women, is definitely not kind to young girls, and and we see it again and again and again with those around us, our families, our friends, our community, where women are not we're not all right anymore. And I think it's so important to be having these conversations and all of the work you're doing is making a huge difference in the world. And so I will forever be a cheerleader. I will be screaming from the rooftops to cheer you on, to help anything I can do to try and elevate your message because I think it's so critical right now. And so thank you for sharing it with us today. Thank you for the work that you do, and please don't stop.
SPEAKER_04Oh, Leslie, thank you so much. I just so appreciate the container that you hold. It is, you know, it is the divine feminine is about receptivity, right? And being able to hold that container. And I really emptied my basket today, and I just really appreciate your divine feminine capacity to be able to hold it.
SPEAKER_00That's awesome. Thank you for joining me today. This is such an important topic, and Bree is absolutely the right person to be leading the charge. Our youth are not all right, and neither are the women. More women leaders in the world would make it a kinder, gentler, more empathetic place. And it's not just my opinion, there is research and statistics to back it up. If this story resonated with you, please share it with someone you care about. And be sure to subscribe so you can continue to hear more pivotal stories involving one question, one turning point, one powerful story. I'll see you next week with another guest on the Leslie Hawkins podcast.
