Why Smart Women Podcast
Welcome to the Why Smart Women Podcast, hosted by Annie McCubbin. We explore why women sometimes make the wrong choices and offer insightful guidance for better, informed decisions. Through engaging discussions, interviews, and real-life stories, we empower women to harness their intelligence, question their instincts, and navigate life's complexities with confidence. Join us each week to uncover the secrets of smarter decision-making and celebrate the brilliance of women everywhere.
Why Smart Women Podcast
Emma from the Broke Generation went a year without buying clothes! WHAT is going on here? Pt.1
We talk with Emma Edwards about The Wardrobe Project, a year-long pause on clothes shopping that reveals how bias, body image, and culture fuel compulsive buying. The pause creates a new way to enjoy style without chasing constant newness.
• the no-buy year and why a full stop on shopping matters
• how hedonic adaptation keeps us stuck in the “newness” loop
• body image pressures and the polished ideal
• the clean girl trend, wellness purity and coded thinness
• fantasy self versus real self in our wardrobe choices
• practical ways to find joy using what you already own
• building an outfit album to retrain your eye
• confidence as practice, not purchase
And don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast and share it with your fellow smart women and allies
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You are listening to the Why Smart Women Podcast, the podcast that helps Smart Women work out why women typically make the wrong decisions and how to make better ones. From relationships, career choices, finances, to photo jackets and tail smoothies. Every moment of the day, we're making decisions. Let's make a good point. I'm your host, and you're a couple, and as a woman of the curtain day, I've made my own chairs really bad decisions. I know this podcast has been around to save me from myself. This podcast will give insights into the working of your own brain, which will blow your mind. I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which I'm recording and you are listening on this day. Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land. Well, hello, smart women, and welcome back to the Why Smart Women Podcast. I am broadcasting today from DY, Northern Beaches, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. And I am joined by a very special guest today. It's Emma Edwards. And I have just had the absolute pleasure of consuming, I want to know if pleasure's the word really, of consuming Emma's book. And Emma's book is called The Wardrobe Project. Is that correct, Emma? Hello, Emma.
SPEAKER_00:Hello, Annie. Thank you for having me. I hope that it was a pleasure to read, but now I'm nervous.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, do be nervous. Do be very, very nervous. And Emma's in Melbourne. How's the weather down there, Emma?
SPEAKER_00:It's oh, it's been classic Melbourne. It was raining and freezing earlier in the week, and I had my heating on. And today it's 27 and humid, I believe.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's it. That's Melbourne for you. Four seasons in one day. Yeah. So um, yeah. So I got your book and then I read it, and then I had to lie down for I don't know, an extended period of time, whilst I looked back over the last 45 years of my life and began to consider the sheer amount of money that I have spent on clothing. And then on top of that, um, I then had to unpick the cognitive biases that I had steadfastly refused to look at that had resulted in me doing this relentless shopping. And um, and then I thought to myself, if I had read this book um in my twenties or thirties, it might have been more helpful than reading it now. I'm somewhat substantially decades over that. So um good on you for writing it, I think. Um and any anybody out there that is um like myself a a relentless, compulsive shopper of clothes, you need to read Emma's book really like quickly, like leave Myers, leave David Jones, leave Witchery, exit Country Road and immediately run and buy Emma's book.
SPEAKER_00:That's the the best glowing review I've had so far. So I'm so glad that you had to lie in a dark end room because it hit home, not because you could clearly tell that I dropped out of English in year 10.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, I could actually your writing is really, really good and highly accessible. And just, I don't know, I thought it flowed, I thought it flowed really, really well. And I'm a huge consumer of books, and I'm currently trying to write one, and then that happened as well. I then read it and I and then I went, oh, also her writing's really good. So then it was like a double lie down whammy.
SPEAKER_00:You're too kind, thank you.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and then I and then I I don't know, then I drank some wine and I was a little bit better. But um happens like that, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. But I I haven't I haven't shopped since I read it, which is not that impressive because it was only um yesterday.
SPEAKER_00:So let's you don't know how long it'll last. It might it may pull you out of your next online shopping car. You never know.
SPEAKER_01:I don't know. I I figure I I uh yeah, man, it's just this classic thing, isn't it? That we, you know, here's me, right? The big, you know, apparently expert on critical thinking, writing comedy books about it, because apparently I'm just so all over it. And um this bias that I had had completely slipped through the net. So let's talk about the wardrobe project. I mean, I've read it, everybody else is going to read it, but they haven't read it yet. So maybe you can give a pricey on it and explain why you wrote it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I wrote it um off the back of me doing this challenge for myself. So at the end of 2022, I thought, what if I went a whole year without buying any clothes? Not secondhand, not new, not rented, not see. I'm having a little panic again. Yeah, the op shoppers, the hives start to come out.
SPEAKER_01:So just to clarify, you went an entire year without purchasing a single item of clothing, even secondhand, yes, or renting anything.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, I've I've rented things in the past, and I did think, oh, you know, would that be allowed? Yeah, yeah, that would be allowed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You could do that. But I thought when I really thought about what I was trying to achieve, which was break up with this obsession with newness and this need to have novelty to have any kind of enjoyment in my outfit, I thought, uh, I'll just use it as a way to break the rules with a clean conscience. And so I thought, no, let's just let's just wear only what we have and we'll cross every other bridge when we come to it. Because when I say I did this, people like to go, well, what if you go to a cowardly? To a wedding hall. Yeah. A wedding. What if you need to go to a cowboy themed party? What will you do? Exactly.
SPEAKER_01:That was that was my first thought. What if you have to go to a cowboy-themed party and you don't have a vest and a sheriff badge?
SPEAKER_00:I decided that because the only sort of real thing I wouldn't have had anything for would have been a really specific dress code like that, which doesn't tend to come across my desk. Um, or something like a black tie where you do need like a floor-length dress. I don't have anything that formal. But I kind of thought, you know what, if it happens, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. I'll either make one exception, I'll borrow something, I'll rent something. Are you allowed to borrow? I didn't, I would have allowed myself to borrow. I didn't purely because I don't have many friends that have the same size as me. Um, so it wasn't something I could do often. But if I'd needed something and somebody was offering me to borrow it, then yeah, I would have.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. All right. Okay. So, you know, I'm incredibly popular and I'm constantly invited to our boy parties and balls and weddings. I would have to shop. No, I'm actually not. So, um, all right. So you've uh what was interesting for me, I mean, the whole thing was fascinating, but starting to look at the the psychological drivers and also the societal pressures on us to look a certain way and how that translates into, I don't know, us feeling better about ourselves because we've got something new on, etc., etc., etc., etc. And also the link um with looking polished and just having to look a certain way and be a certain weight. And it's all really connected, don't you think?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, it really was for me. Anybody that reads the book will know that it does quite vulnerably touch on body image uh multiple times throughout the book, because that was such a big driver of my clothing consumption. It was the way that I reconciled being in a bigger body in a society that doesn't like bigger bodies very much. Um, I have a degree of size privilege that I can fit into some stores, but a lot of stores I'm at that very top end where they either don't carry my size or they do, but it's actually two sizes smaller than that, so there's no chance at all for that. It's vanity sizing still, right? 100%. But I, you know, I do wear an 18 usually, so there are some mainstream stores that carry that.
SPEAKER_01:Yep.
SPEAKER_00:Um, so just kind of I guess prefacing that I'm sort of on the very bottom end of the plus size community.
SPEAKER_01:So you're saying you're on the bottom end of the plus size community? Yes. Yep. Yes. And and what about that?
SPEAKER_00:It was, I guess I just sort of I say that because everybody's experience in a bigger body is different. And this book really encapsulates what it felt like for me. And, you know, every generation is different as well. Every generation has grown up with different standards. And you know, in the book, I sort of talk about how I I grew up through the 90s and the early noughties, where you know, any celebrity's body part was picked up was picked apart, the amount of cellulite that it is still is in, you know, you'd have across those magazine spreads of whose cellulite was spotted on the beach this summer, and these bodies that were like a size 10 or 12 being called chubby. And it really formed my view of myself and kind of instilled in me that I had a body that was a problem, and I needed to do whatever I could to either change that or dress it up. Yeah, dress it up or hide it in some cases. Yeah, and that became pretty much the way that I I think clothes became the currency I used to like myself. If I wanted to like myself, I could pull this lever and get some clothes, and that would give me a short-term hit of feeling good because the novelty was sort of, I think I was sort of misattributing the novelty and the enjoyment that I got from the newness and from the shopping to a positive feeling about myself, which is why it wore off.
SPEAKER_01:Well, also, I mean, you you're you're right in the middle of hedonic adaptation. I just find hedonic adaptation fascinating that we we long, we long for something, uh, and it is in the longing, not the actual acquisition. Yeah, that once we've actually acquired the thing, the wear-off is quite rapid. And that, of course, goes in many, many, many contexts, does it not?
SPEAKER_00:It does. And I I touched on that uh exact phenomenon in the book because I sort of I noticed through other women that I was talking to about this about this clothing thing that this commonality is that we have nothing to wear, we feel like we have nothing to wear.
SPEAKER_01:I have nothing to wear, it's true though.
SPEAKER_00:And so logically we buy more, but then when you interrogate, has buying more ever made you feel like you have something to wear?
SPEAKER_01:Temporarily, temporarily, it's only two. In fact, you want to hear this. So we were we sold our house. Um, and it's only occurred to me since reading your terrible book. So we sold our house uh I don't know, December last year and moved into an apartment. So my wardrobe. Oh, yeah. Um I didn't even think about it. Anyway, I'm putting my clothes in the wardrobe, and I'm like, what the hell? I can't fit everything in here. So then I I put half of it in bags and shoved it downstairs in the storage. And I'm looking through my wardrobe yes, and I'm like, why is it so crowded in here? I need more space as opposed to going. Hang on, maybe you don't need more space. Maybe you can stop acquiring clothes. Anyway, in the middle of that, I thought, where's that where's that green Sassin B dress? And I went, oh, hang on. So I ran downstairs to the storage and I had this massive bag of dresses sitting down there that I hadn't missed like at all. And also then couldn't fit in my already over-crammed wardrobe. And yet, and my friends will attest to this, I'm just the worst at it. If if there's something on, my I'll flick, I'll flick like this, I'll flick. Um, it's auditory. Sorry, sorry, listeners. I'm doing a flicking motion with my right hand to sort of um show that I'm looking through my wardrobe. So I flick through my wardrobe and I go, there's nothing there. There is literally nothing there that is suitable or will make me feel good. And to the size, the size thing, um of course we're we're now in this fixated period online where we're no longer talking thin, we're talking fit, and we're talking strong. And of course, it's all bullshit because it's all still code for thin. Yeah, right. They're not, you know, Lululemon is not putting their models in a size 16, are they? No. So very occasionally, it's still the minority. Oh, it's it it's very cursory, isn't it? So um I just think we're still so trapped in this sort of patriarchal expectation of what females should look like and how we should present ourselves. And I think we're still pretty much in the thrall of this. What do you think?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I agree. And I think unfortunately, if anything, with the size thing, we're going backwards. Um, we're sort of seeing the resurgence of thin being trendy, 100% social media. We're seeing very modern iterations of those previous magazine spreads I talked about. And while it's always been there, we did have a brief period where it felt like we were making some progress. But now it just feels like we've taken 10 steps back. And you see it.
SPEAKER_01:I can see it. Um, yeah, I can absolutely see it, you know, every time I I look at Instagram. It's all, and except now all the you know, weirdo influences that I spend my life debunking and now shoveling butter and raw meat into themselves, don't even get me started about the whole freaking dietary thing. And yet they're still, you know, they're still a size six. You know, I don't I don't know. I don't know. The whole the whole thing is just so screwed up. So I think back back to the fashion thing, of course, we are so good at motivated reasoning, are we not?
SPEAKER_00:Yes, we are. I sort of found that it wasn't so much the clothes that we're drawn to, but the possibilities that they hold. And I've got a whole sort of section fairly early on in the book about the stories hanging in our wardrobes and the pathways that each thing in our wardrobes took to get there.
SPEAKER_01:Give me an example of one of those stories if you can.
SPEAKER_00:I can. Well, a big one that comes up many times in the book is the fantasy self or the fantasy items, and that's sort of this big chunk of what I uncovered during my year-long challenge of just how much of my buying behavior was motivated by trying to be this fantasy version of myself that had all of these qualities, all of these um physical attributes that I didn't have.
SPEAKER_01:And how so you hang on, you had a fantasy self that has physical attributes and qu like what? And qualities like what?
SPEAKER_00:I've observed that a lot of women have an image in their head of what they wish they looked like, and it's a fairly consistent image. So for me, it was somebody with quite a uh lean, um, you know, back in the day in the UK we would have called them leggy, athletic body type, very slim, yeah, um, which is the antithesis of what my body is. I'm very curvy, I'm very voluptuous, I'm jiggly, as I refer to myself as. I have big boobs, I have a big bum, and my fantasy was really everything that I wasn't. Yeah, sure. And I would buy clothes with the intention of increasing my proximity to that fantasy. Yeah. And I would buy clothes that would work well in my head in the way I wanted to look, but then on my body, not only not look like me, but go really completely against my body type and my body composition and even my personality to a degree. Um, because I'm quite sort of bold and silly and loud and colourful, you might say.
SPEAKER_01:And what were the qualities that you so in the fantasy self, you're sort of lean, leggy, athletic? And what were the qualities that these clothes you thought would infer upon you?
SPEAKER_00:It really comes down to that polished thing. I I recognized in so many conversations I was having that this polished conversation comes up again and again and again. And it's this sort of, you know, you're seeing it more online now being talked about in the clean girl aesthetic or the old money aesthetic. Yeah. Very demure, very put together, very neat, very almost disciplined, regimented. And it's this sort of it's conceptual, it means something different to everybody. But for me, that fantasy self and her outfits and her attributes were very neat and quiet and almost shrinking myself, both in a size sense, but also in it.
SPEAKER_01:It also sort of seems to me to be heading towards a sort of um right-wing conservative trad wife, in my mind, where the woman is neat, small, obedient, pretty, stays at home, cooks the meals which she probably can't eat, um, takes care of the children, has sex on demand with her husband, and doesn't really and is beginning to lose her voting rights because you vote as the as the male does. Is there any correlation between that and that sort of right wing sort of retraction towards the 50s?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I definitely think there is, especially when we're talking about online trends, which obviously are so reflective of um what's going on in the rest of the world. That rise of the clean girl sort of aesthetic is sort of, I think that's picking up where we left off with that kind of 90s, um, very critical of women's bodies type thing. That's really picking up and bringing it into this new period of time where we're seeing the rise of the far right, we're seeing fascism and like hate hate commentary all over the internet, very, very divided, very conservative values, as you mentioned, the the trad wife trend coming back. I think everybody's sort of move towards that thinness and that cleanness and that polishedness and almost the erasure of individuality. I think that is really reflective of where we're at and how fashion often mirrors what else is going on.
SPEAKER_01:That's so fascinating. And within that clean, neat sort of aesthetic, do you also include in that the trend for clean eating? That sort of clean-I don't know what it is. I think you don't have frigging dairy or something. I don't know, you oat milk, I don't know what it is really annoying, but it appears to be something, but there's a lot of use of the word clean.
SPEAKER_00:It's really coming, you really notice it coming around again, and I think it's now being sort of used as this like health purity thing, like it's definitely health purity with the clean movement, 100%. And it's all sort of fat phobia wrapped up in different packaging.
SPEAKER_01:I agree. I t I to I cannot agree anymore that all of these trends that are dressed up with these names are all about thin. A whole lot of them. It's just that we can't say thin, so we we're gonna say clean or we're gonna say fit or we're gonna say strong or or whatever, but it's all to do with thin. And it's interesting because I am pretty much a standard 10. Um, but I am as of course as well, completely in the thrall of a fantasy self.
SPEAKER_00:Tell me about yours.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I'd I'd have really long skinny legs. Yep. Um, yeah, that's me. I'd have really the top of me's all right, but I've had the I'd have really, really long skinny legs. My my hair would be really glossy and really easy to manage. Um, I'd be about 30 years younger, right? Um, and I could just wear shorts all the time and I'd be like super relaxed. Yeah, I'd be super relaxed because I'd have these really long brown legs. So I'd be super relaxed in like sandals and shorts. Yeah. And then I'd just be drifting, I'd be drifting around beaches, I don't know, writing things in notebooks to just being being really cool and interesting and drinking margaritas. That's sort of me.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. It's funny how everybody has this sort of character that they could describe who's got you know, age and stage of life comes into it, um, career lifestyle comes into it. A lot of the time, there's fantasy um sort of lifestyles or jobs, or you know, one of the women in the book who generously shared their insights with me, she said that her fantasy self came down to this kind of emulation of this aesthetic online that was the mum who's not really a mum. Mum doesn't look mum who doesn't look like a mum. Yep. And she's like, I'm a mum now, my identity has shifted, I'm reconciling with that. But at the same time, I feel all this pressure to not look like I'm a mum. Don't look like a mum, glossy, not look like my life has changed at all, not look like I have anything else going on.
SPEAKER_01:You've got to be a yummy mummy, right? Of course, the yummiest. And you've got to shift your baby fat within you know 12 weeks of giving birth to your baby.
SPEAKER_00:This is all back as well, yep, all the baby weight stuff.
SPEAKER_01:All the all the bloody baby weight. Oh my god. So I okay, so we we understand to some degree the drivers behind um why we do this. So I was talking to someone the other day and she said to me, if I um was a friend and she said, if I could just lose five kilos, I know I'd be fine. What does that mean? Everything would be fine. If I could lose five kilos, everything would be the same, but you'd be five kilos lighter. Yeah, but that that's that's the that's the delusion of us all, right? If I lost five kilos, I'd be confident and I'd I'd I'd be like the sort of I'd be the sort of person that I want to be. And I get that. I get that we think that when I get, when I get to this point, then everything's going to be fine. And of course, this point that we have to get to is just so external.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_01:It's so external. So external.
SPEAKER_00:That's the most profitable lie that's ever been sold, I think, that there's an end destination where you don't feel insecure anymore. That's the most profitable thing that the patriarchy's ever sold. Because when we believe that, when we believe that the feeling of being confident, of being done trying to change, of being happy, of being good enough, lies externally. We can lose weight to get there, we can change our bodies to get there, we can get uh butt implants to get there, we can buy products to get there, we can do all kinds of as long as the goalposts keep on moving, that's all that matters in terms of in terms of um the commercialization of our insecurities. And that for me, you know, I have always been a bit bigger, I was always a bit like chunky in school, speaking of that sort of size thing. But at one point in my life I did lose about 20 kilos and I was tiny. Did I feel any any more confident? Oh, for about a week when everybody kept praising me after that.
SPEAKER_01:No, no, well, that's the hedonic adaptation, it makes no difference. You know, I've been fit fairly small my whole life, it makes absolutely no difference. And I think the thing is that we infer on other people that we perceive to be attractive or young or they've got really good skin or really good hair or the perfect weight or or whatever. We infer on them that they this confidence that they must possess. And of course, they don't. No.
SPEAKER_00:And how bullshit is that that there's all these standards, and even when you meet them, you don't get to feel like you have, you don't get to realize the benefits. That's that's what's so ridiculous about it all. And what I uncovered during my year, particularly for myself, is that I realized that women aren't actually seeing themselves. We're so caught up in seeing everything that we're not and everything that we're striving to be, that we never really see who we are. And through the year, I was taking pictures of my outfits when I put something together that I liked so that I could refer back to a collection of images of myself when I felt like I didn't know what to wear or was looking for an outfit. I'd look back at my album. And for the first time, all of the external places I would look for a benchmark of what looked good were completely gone. And I was only working with my image of myself. And I realized by the end of the year that I saw myself completely differently because I was actually aware of what I looked like and I was able to neutralize the way I felt about that and eventually build really positive feelings about the way I looked.
SPEAKER_01:Wow.
SPEAKER_00:That's what gave me the free. It's huge. That one thing is what gave me the freedom to start enjoying wearing my clothes because I previously I'd only experienced enjoyment through buying and consuming. Sure. Because it gave me that possibility of changing myself.
SPEAKER_01:But when I was So has that lasted that sense, that sense of um sort of acceptance?
SPEAKER_00:It has. I did notice that the year afterwards, as I was able to buy things again, and I was, you know, making sure that I was making good decisions and trying to be really mindful about the things I did buy. I did notice that it buying again and having those possibilities again did almost like it. It's not that it came flooding back, but I could hear whispers of it again. And I thought, wow, that is the pull of consumption. That is the impact of having all of these things available to us to buy all the time.
SPEAKER_01:Hang on, hang on. So not let's just go back over that. So not making purchases and only working with what you had. Yeah. Um, so that robbed you of the opportunity to go into the optimistic, optimistic space where you go, I'm going to buy this thing, and this thing is going to make me feel better or feel something. So you didn't, you were robbed of that optimistic notion. So all you had was almost like just an extension of who you already were. Is that right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And I could, you know, there's a difference between throwing on my trackies and putting my hair in a bun and putting together a nice outfit. And when you can't buy anything new, you actually work on that spectrum a lot more creatively. If I've got uh, you know, it's my birthday or I'm going to a wedding or something, I haven't got that shortcut option of going to buy something and automatically feel good about the way that I look because it's new. I've got to create that with what I have. And that was really the difference because I started to experience joy in fashion outside of shopping.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So outside of the thrall of consumerism, it's so interesting, Emma. So you ended up just being, well, just being who you were. And then from being without the added optimism, you're just looking at who you actually are. And from that sprang this sense of actually getting to know yourself. Is that right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, I realized by the end of the year it must have been October or so. So I was rattling towards the end thinking, oh, I've I've bloody done it. I realized that my body image and the the the way I was looking at myself and the things I was saying to myself, that inner critic that we have about the way we look, yeah. I realized that my body image was the best it had ever been, even though I was the heaviest I had ever been. And I thought that can't be a coincidence. Wow. Can't be a coincidence. It's so interesting. That's it. And it's so funny because that feeling that I had of liking how I looked had been what I'd been chasing for. So many years through weight loss, through shopping, through buying, through fixing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And yet I found it through not doing any of those things.
SPEAKER_01:Well, that was part one of my very, very interesting interview with Emma Edwards in relation to her book, The Wardrobe Project. Now we've identified that this sort of relentless shopping. Um we've identified the biases that drive us to consistently buy clothes when we don't need them. If you'd like to know what to do about it and how to counter that, then please tune in to part two of my Emma Edwards interview. Thanks for listening. Bye. Thanks for tuning in to Why Smart Women with me, Annie McCubbin. I hope today's episode has ignited your curiosity and left you feeling inspired by my anti-motivational style. Join me next time as we continue to unravel the fascinating layers of our brains and develop ways to sort out the fact from the fiction and the over 6,000 thoughts we have in the course of every day. Remember, intelligence isn't enough. You can be as smart as paint, but it's not just about what you know, it's about how you think. And in all this talk of whether or not you can trust your gut, if you ever feel unsafe, whether it's in the street, at work, car park, in a bar, or in your own home, please, please respect that gut feeling. Staying safe needs to be our primary objective. We can build better lives, but we have to stay safe to do that. And don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast and share it with your fellow smart women and allies. Together we're hopefully reshaping the narrative around women and making better decisions. So until next time, stay sharp, stay savvy, and keep your critical thinking hat shiny. This is Annie McCubbin signing off from Why Smart Women. See you later. This episode was produced by Harrison Hess. It was executive produced and written by me, Annie McCubbin.
