Maintenance Phase - Diet Book Deep Dive: Angela Lansbury's "Positive Moves"

Episode Date: October 26, 2021

At the height of her "Murder She Wrote" fame, Angela Lansbury released a home workout video full of synth music, peach jumpsuits and ~sensuality~. This week, we’re exploring the anti-Goop-ness of Angela’s fitness book and video, "Positive Moves."!  It gets a little heavy toward the end, but we promise: No one was canceled in the making of this episode. Support us:Hear bonus episodes on PatreonDonate on PayPalGet Maintenance Phase T-shirts, stickers and moreLinks!Positive Moves video on YouTube (cued up to “moving freely”)Positive Moves bookWhat is Gaslighting? The 1944 film Gaslight is the best explainer.Support the show

I'm not holding the microphone. Welcome to Made in its Faze, the podcast that you can count on not to count calories. Oh, okay. I was trying to count myself in generic. I'm sorry. I mean, it's fair. I didn't tell you what the topic is today. That the thing. You've given me a difficult brief. Yeah, you got nothing to go on. And it fits. Look at that. It fits.

I am Michael Hobbs. I am Aubrey Gordon. If you would like to support the show, you can do that in two ways. One, you can join our Patreon at patreon.com slash maintenance phase, where we have bonus episodes, most recently. Mike and I did a lot of talking about fat suits. You can also support us on tpublic.com.

And today, Mike, we're doing a surprise topic. Yeah, tell me, we were gonna do something else, something involving downstairs parts. We will still do the downstairs parts topic. Yeah, tell me, we were gonna do something else, something involving downstairs parts. We will still do the downstairs parts episode. Okay, good. We've been going hard on problematic people. Today, we do have another problematic person that we're gonna talk about.

Ooh. But it's a complicated and not entirely problematic person. It's a person who's like trying to do good and succeeding some of the time and failing some of the time. Is it all over North? What's it? Which figure in Geopolitics will we be discussing? No, today we are doing a Diet Book deep dive. It is called Positive Moves, My Personal Plan for Fitness and Wellbeing. It is written by one Dame Angela Landsbury.

Angela Landsbury has a diet book? I'm so glad we did this on Mike. Shouldn't it be called like breakfast, Chi-Roy? So it totally should be. Book came out in 1990. Prior to that in 1988, she released a home VHS. Of like fitness stuff?

Of her fitness stuff. And we're going to watch clips of Angela Lianzberg's home VHS. I don't know if I'm ready for Angela Lianzberg to be problematic. I don't know. Can't she just live in my head as a sweet old lady? I mean, a lot of this is sweet old lady content.

And in fact, my framing for this episode is, and this is a hot take. Angela Landsbury is the anti-goop. Oh, okay. So you can keep your Angela Landsbury. All I wanna do is dive in and show you video clips of the most fucking 80s video you have ever seen in your life, Michael Hobbs.

Absolutely. If Corey Hayne is not in this episode, I'm boycotting it. Okay. So Angela Lenthbury is a living legend. She turns 96 this month in October. Happy birthday. You know her from like 70 million different things, including the Manchurian candidate. She played maim on Broadway.

She was in Murder, She Wrote. Of course, she was the voice of Mrs. Pots in Beauty and the Beast. Oh yeah. So, Angela Lansbury was born in London in 1925. Her mother was an actor from Belfast, Irish actor. Her dad is a real fascinating character that nobody gets into and super depth in.

His name is Edgar Landsbury. He is a wealthy timber magnate. Okay. Who was also a politician? And he's a member of the Communist Party. So it's like red Angie? Very confusing, wealthy family. And then her dad is also in the communist post like a huge commie. Very tragically, her dad passed away when she was nine. He died of stomach cancer,

and she has spoken in interviews about sort of like, that's when I turn to stories and characters sort of for comfort, was that she could step into other stories and not into the story where her dad dies. Shortly thereafter, like within like a year, her mother gets engaged and then gets remarried. This is around the age that Angela says she discovered her passion for what she calls movement and exercise. Okay. And I've got a little quote from her, from the positive moves book for you.

Wait, can I look up the cover of this book? You can also turn on your camera and I'll show you. Oh yeah, do it, do it, do it. Okay, here we go. Oh wow, it looks like a romantic, like a romance novel. It's, there's a lot of like cursive, it has the wedding invite font. And then positive moves is in like a lawyer font.

And then it says my personal plan for fitness and well-being. And there's like, she has kind of dead eyes in this photograph. It's her like staring at the camera and she looks like he hasn't blinked in years. It really looks like, you know, you could swap out this title and I'd be like, oh, is this Angela Lansbury like does Martha Stewart? Yeah, it seems like the deranged wedding planner

who like murders everywhere, like the day of the event. Wait, can I show you the back? Because I feel like the back is where you get the health and fitness part and you get a flavor for what health and fitness means to Angela Landsbury and it makes me really happy. Oh Fuck yes. She's in like sweaters and like jumpsuits the whole time This is good because she's like gardening and like going for a walk

Uh-huh doing some stretches. It's like doable stuff. There's one part where she's like having a cup of tea with her husband I thought it was Leslie Nielsen, okay. She does write about sort of her initial relationship to, quote unquote, movement and exit. Practicing movement and exit. Practicing movement and exit. Would you like to read this quote? Yes. She says, the foundation of my attitude toward what is now called fitness was laid many

years ago by my mother. When I was a very young child, she took me along with her when she joined a group of women who met once a week in Regions Park in London to practice movement and exercise. The group was called the League of Health and Beauty. There I was. An enthusiastic six-year-old all dressed up in a little Greek tunic. We would practice walking on the grass with velvet doughnut sorts of things on our heads. My mother would tell me how to lower my shoulders, walk straight, and center

myself in order to walk properly. And we would do classical Greek dances out in the fresh air. This sounds great! She's doing weird like pagan like satanic rituals that walk around in the grass. I really like how quickly you took this to. It's a satanic ritual. It's in the text. I agree, it's in the text. It's midsummer. This is midsummer. I feel like a lot of the moon juicy and goopy kind of stuff we see today is just like, we're Carter and B. Richard. Yeah, I know.

I mean, just like B. wealthy. And this is all just like go be in a park and do some dances. Where's that thing comfortable? Dude, this is also because this would have been like the 1930s in London, right? So this is all just like go be in a park and do some dances. Where's that the comfortable? Dude, this is also, cause this would have been like the 1930s in London, right? So this is back at a time when medical treatment was like, why don't you sit outside in a chair for like three days?

Fresh air at the seaside. I should say, when her mom remarried, she married someone who's in the military. So then World War II hits, this person gets deployed. And the reason that Angela ends up leaving her fancy pants high school in 1939 is that in 1940, her family relocates to the United States with a larger group of evacuees at the beginning of the blitz. Oh, wow.

So she and her family leave London. They settle in New York. She is a person who has a great deal of wealth and privilege and she's also a person who has what sounds like a legitimately hard childhood. Yeah. I can't imagine that like wealthy British parents in the 1930s and 40s are gonna be great for like processing

a young child's grief at the loss of her father. She's only met them like three times. I know her parents are more stubborn. She files a formal request to have dinner together and twice a year. So this like style of parenting kind of shows up again when her mom goes on a tour of, again, she's an actor, so she goes on tour. And at the end of her tour, she decides to move to Los Angeles.

Oh. She's got British theater friends who are working in LA and she thinks that they can help her break into film. Oh yeah. So in 1942, her mother moves to LA by herself and sends a telegram to a 16 year old Angela Lansbury and says, quote, suggest you put the boys in school, close up apartment, and come out to Los Angeles.

So it's like being broken up with by text, except the exact opposite. Yeah, basically, like find a school, put your brothers in a boarding school, break our lease and move by yourself out to Los Angeles in 1942. Be a deer, take care of it, see you soon. Wow. So she does it, she moves out to LA, she lives with her mom for a bit. And in 1944, just a couple years later,

her mother is hosting a party in LA. And one of the attendees is a screenwriter. That screenwriter had just finished writing Gaslight, the actual film that gives us the term Gaslighting. Isn't it like a thing that like he keeps turning off all of the gas lights and she's like, why are you doing that? And he's like, I'm not doing that.

Yeah, he's basically like engineering a physical environment to make this woman think that she has lost her mind. Right. This is where the story starts kind of to seem apocryphal to me. At this party, the screenwriter, she says offers her a role in gaslight and I'm like, but you're the screenwriter. Yeah, you don't actually just get to do that.

Also, she's 17. Yeah, he was absolutely just like trying to have sex with her. Oh, no. I've never been to Hollywood and no one's ever tried to have sex with me, so I'm not speaking from experience, but that's what it sounds like. No one's ever tried to have sex with me. So regardless, she does get this part. Okay.

And the movie gets sort of mixed reviews. Her performance is lifted up as like one of the brightest spots in this movie, right? Oh, okay. And she gets roles from there in National Velvet. She goes on to the picture of Dorian Gray. She gets a seven year contract with MGM. This is the studio system.

Oh, yeah. And in fact, her performance in Gaslight gets her an Oscar nomination. Wait, really? Yes! First roll on film. So she really hit the ground running. Yeah.

She totally fucking did. Can I look up a picture of her at this age? Absolutely. I cannot imagine her as like a child, honestly. She looks so childish as the child, but also she looks like Angela Lansbury. It's confusing. Okay, I have a photo.

Tell me what you're seeing. It's so, she's so interesting looking because she doesn't have the like super skinny look of most Hollywood actresses. Even when she's like a very trim, I guess 17, 18 year old, she has like a really round face. She does have a round face, she has full cheeks. She doesn't look like a fat person at all.

She is definitely not fat. She has kind of the same build she has for the rest of her life. Is it the case that she was kind of not doing sex party role? She was always seen as somebody kind of like non-threateningly, huh? She is someone who is consistently kept around. She's described throughout her career as like a sort of towering figure

in the world of character actors. That she's like never really all the way a lead, she's never really the romantic interest, often she's always sort of like a really enjoyable bee plot. And she talks about this in her book, she talks about she's like, I'm not really a classic beauty,

I'm not really a blah, blah, blah. Like all of that sort of stuff, which I think out in the world at large, I think if you saw Angela Lansbury at this age, out in the world, you'd be like, oh my God, she's lovely. Yeah, totally. And in the world of screen acting, I can see how that would get distorted real quickly.

And like, at one point, she dates someone who has just dated Joan Crawford. Okay. So like, that's the kind dates someone who has just dated Joan Crawford. Okay. So like, that's the kind of stuff that she's up against. Is she's like, why don't look like fucking Joan Crawford? Right. She talks about her sort of movement practice as a way that she has learned to embody the elegance

of a more glamorous woman. That's the league of health and beauty that she's in. That's fucking right, it's the league of health and beauty. These are like such good role models because like 99.9% of people are not Hollywood conventionally attractive. Like we're all attractive in our own way. Right, we're gonna be attractive to some people

and not others. And like that's the experience of like the fast majority of humanity. Like people who are sort of universally considered conventionally attractive are such a small slice of people. Totally. And I think it's also like easy to fall into the trap of like universal attractiveness.

Like the idea that anyone is categorically the most attractive person, right? Right. This is also how we get into weird ranking stuff. It's how we get into describing people as like a seven or a 10 or a two or whatever. Yeah. And it's not actually how human attraction works. And you should describe people according to like, they give me a boner.

That's the way to talk about people. So I respectfully talk about people's appearance. Okay. So from there, I trust that folks sort of know Angela Lansbury's career a little bit. We're not going to do the full life story of Angela Lansbury. It did feel important to situate this conversation in terms of her like upbringing because I think that comes up a lot. So shall we dive in to the book in the video?

The video. The video. Okay, so the year is 1988. Angela Lansbury is at the height of her murder she wrote fame. For folks who don't know murder she wrote, Angela Lansbury plays a writer named Jessica Fletcher who lives in a small town and solves murders and there's a murder every week in this small town.

No joke. I forgot about that. And it was all the air for like seven or eight years. I didn't write down the years. It was all the air, but like for it had a long run. And people in this tiny fucking town just kept dropping like flies. So she's obviously doing it the whole time, clearly.

You saw the dead eyes on the cover of her book. Come on. So let's dive into positive moves. I mean, here's my case for the anti-goop and then we'll go through different aspects of the anti-goop. Angela Lansbury is a wealthy white woman as is Gwyneth Paltrow. She's an actor as is Gwyneth Paltrow,

whose mom is also an actor as is Gwyneth Paltrow's mom. Yeah. She's talking about health and wellness and somehow she manages to not be aggressively terrible. Okay. This I think is gonna be kind of the meat of the episode, if you're ready for it. she manages to not be aggressively terrible. Okay, this I think is gonna be kind of the meat of the episode if you're ready for it. The filet of the neighborhood. Step one for why she is the anti-goop.

She doesn't make any big claims about results. Okay, she's not telling you that you are going to drop 50 pounds. She's not telling you that you're gonna get shredded. She's not, and also like, why are you going to Angela Lansbury get shredded? Don't go to her for shreds. Yeah.

She's not telling you that you're gonna have the energy of a 20 year old. She just consistently talks about like, hey man, I'm in my 60s and I would like to continue to have energy to do the things that I like to do. Here are the ways that I do that. That's not bad. I should also back up and say,

this is also the era of like Jane Fonda workouts and buns of steel. All right. This is the beginning of the big wave of home video workouts. The way that it presents to me is as counter programming. To just be like, hey, you don't have to wear like French cut shiny leotards.

You don't have to, again, get shredded. You don't have to be the hottest lady in the string bikini on the beach in 1988. You just got to stretch and play with your grandkids and do some gardening, man. Make some tea, hang out. I guess this also reveals the ways that this is a marketing industry more than a health industry. Absolutely. Because under normal circumstances,

yeah, there would be lots of advice for people in different places in their lives. And for people with like different levels of ability, right? If we were actually trying to make the population more healthy, we wouldn't actually aim, diet and exercise advice at semi-hot, like 26 year olds, right? Who wanted to lose their last 10 pounds

or get their last app or whatever. It would be like, okay, you're someone who's in their 60s and you wanna maintain the ability to play with your grandkids here's some steps that you could take. Right. That would be reasonable health advice, but most of the health advice that we're getting is aimed at health nuts and

people who spend money on this stuff. Yeah, and I think, I mean, I do want to say this is also clearly a marketing opportunity, right? Oh, yeah. This is getting marketed to the audience of Murder She Road. So, Angela Landsbury might not have been an old person at this time, but the audience for Murder She Road was a lot of older people. So, she does have a built-in audience here. There is money to be made. It was kind of a sensation amongst that set at the time, which is really lovely to me.

It is marketing, but it's less of the weird, skewed, sort of moralizing marketing that we have now, and less of, as you say like 25 year olds get ripped to you on love island or what the fuck right right? I don't know what 25 year olds are doing They're swiping on each other. Aubrey the swiping. That's what they do Um, okay, so you're ready for a clip. Let's do it In a moment, I'm gonna show you how I prepare every morning by doing some gentle stretches. You don't need any special equipment or any sort of tricky outfit or something comfortable that you can move in.

Once I've loosened up, I then do a longer series of movements that keep me flexible and hopefully graceful and feeling a sense of freedom within my body. All together the morning stretches and the movement routine take a good 30 minutes to do. If you have the time, you can do them all at once. Or you can do pots of the routines at different times of the day. The movements you will see on this tape

are very fluid and easy. So let's begin. I have a little routine that helps me to swing into action each morning. After I get out of the shower, I give myself a mini massage with allotment. By doing this massage every day, I am literally staying in touch with my body. I can't help but be aware of whether or not I'm in shape. Once you really examine your body, you have faced the moment of truth. Of course, we're all a product of our genetic heritage

and certain things we cannot alter. But I do think that self-acceptance is vital. Give yourself a break. There's something to like in everybody. Look at her. Right? Angela Lanzbury said fat acceptance now. So the reason I picked this clip

is that it feels like it is in a nutshell. All of the great stuff and a lot of the hard stuff about this video. Like I like to do these stretches. I do a minute, 30 minute chunk. Look, if you're gonna do five minutes here or there, that's fine too. The thing is that you do them.

And you do as much of them as you feel like, and you adjust them until they work for you, and you get in touch with your body, and you accept it. But also, you have a moment of truth where you face your body. And again, like, this is 1988. I know, dude. No one really at this point outside of some like radical fat activists is really saying

like there's something to like in everybody. She is also showing a lot of her stuff in this. She is fully wearing a towel. This is like a fucking only fan. She's like pulling up the towel. She's rubbing on the lotion. This is the erotic episode I thought it would be. So, part of what I appreciate about this clip

is that she's doing the like, get in touch with your body, right? Like there's some mindfulness in there. She's very clear that she's not an expert. That's actually like a kind of like celebrity health and wellness thing that I can sort of get behind. You know what it is? She's like the Bob Ross.

Oh, she is. Oh, she is. She's like, maybe there's some lotion on this elbow. Happy little clouds. Cause watching this, just this feeling of warmth, just like cascades over me. I'm just like, I'm in good hands. This woman wants what's best for me.

Can I tell you, within the first five minutes of watching this video, I like, without even thinking about it, I just got up and started doing neck rolls. No way. I was like, oh, man! I was just like, Angela Lansbury wants me to stand up and stand with my feet shoulder with the parts. So I'll do that.

So that's the one that I would say sort of makes her the anti-goop is that she's like not making big weird claims. She also does a good job. Another thing that makes her sort of the anti-goop is that she contextualizes her health and wellness practices. And she does that around class in particular.

Okay. She's talking about being sort of a working mom. and she does that around class in particular. She's talking about being sort of a working mom, and throughout this book, she talks about health and wellness is both sort of like, what can you physically do and what do you eat? But it's also about having a positive mental attitude. And she has this section when she's talking about having a positive mental attitude, where she talks about

the things that allowed her to have a positive mental attitude. Okay, so I'm gonna send you another quote. Okay, so she says, of course I was a working mother, but that label didn't carry with it all the baggage that it does now. Nevertheless, I suppose I felt very much the way young professional women do today. Part of me was dying to stay home with my children and part of me enjoyed my work. There were times when the emotional stamina called for was almost more than I could muster when I had to leave my children for months at a stretch.

Although I hated being away from my children, in those days women weren't saddled with the mantle of guilt that they are now. For professional women, it was more accepted that they would hire people to help them look after the children. That's what I did. I hired a lovely Scottish woman who took care of what had to be done when I couldn't. She comes twice a week. She cleans the toilets. I hear the women. My God. Our Harriet Tubman and I'm just like that. My God. Angela. I will not participate in the holosing of the actual names very. So I mean, talk to me about this

quote. Well, she's literally talking about exact, like word for word, the exact scenario that Rachel Hollis was talking about, where her work requires her to be away from her children for a while, and there is this sense of guilt for doing that, right? That you have this work-life balancing

that's really difficult in a capitalist society. In contrast to Rachel Hollis, she explicitly admits, she's like, I was able to hire somebody to help me look after my kids, so that's what I did. Yeah, as part of a class of professional women, right? So she's making some level of class explicit here. She's making some level of access explicit here. She is not making race explicit like at all. So she has this story

where she talks about a negotiation with universal television about a role and she says, I'm just going to read this quote out to you. All I wanted was to work no more than 12 hours at a stretch. And if that meant it would take us eight days to complete a show instead of seven, then that's how it had to be. When I pointed out the problem, they realized that they were right in conceding to my demands, and they were very generous and sweet about it. I had to take a stand and say, this doesn't work for me. Let's find a solution that does. In my definition, being healthy involves taking charge of your life and making sure that you have enough rest and that your stress isn't too great. I genuinely can't read that without thinking about

all of the folks of color in my life and particularly women of color who've been like, this doesn't work for me, let's find something that does and then people are like, no, get out of here. Yeah. There is a lot of this that is like, yes, also your Angela Lansbury and she doesn't necessarily make that part explicit here

that it's like about being white, it's about being wealthy, and it's about being Angelo fucking landsbury. Yeah, I mean, if you're the star of a TV show, she could basically just say, like, I don't wanna work Wednesdays anymore, and they would probably capitulate. It feels very possible, right? Yeah. There are times when she like loses the thread

a little bit of the contextualization stuff, but I think there are lots of times when she doesn't. Well, is she turning it into bumper sticker advice stuff? Not really. She's like, here's, that's the extent what you just read that in my definition, being healthy involves taking charge of your life and making sure that you have enough rest and that your stress isn't too great.

That's it. She's just like, this is my definition for me the end. She's not trying to voice it. It doesn't feel like a voice to me. Yeah, I mean, because on some level, it's sort of fine for people to say, like, yeah, I used to really struggle with watching my kids and then I hired someone and that worked for me. That just seems like a true story and she's not implying that that's everybody. Yeah, totally. Okay, so thing three that I think makes Angela Lansbury the anti-goop. I like it when episodes have little backbones.

She focuses on accessibility and she focuses on joyful movement. Throughout this entire video and the book, pretty much every stretch includes some suggested adjustments. She's like, hey, if you can't bend over this far, try doing it to this level. If you can't bend over at all, then skip this one and do other stretches. If you need a towel to grab your foot in this stretch,

use a towel. That's what I knew. Here's me doing this stretch with a towel. Not only are the modifications present, she's announcing them in almost every stretch, and then she's often doing the modified version. This is like where I got tricked into going to hot yoga on a date without my- Without warning and the teacher, like I introduced myself and was like I've never done this before

and then the teacher, the whole class, she was like and now lift your left leg. Mike, do it with the towel. She's like unless you're Mike, in which case you're the adjustment, I can't just say the adjustment. Yeah, just say the adjusted part, you don't need to fucking call me out, she's like, I don't know what to do. Also, what kind of nightmare date takes you to the sweatiest thing on the planet? I'm still mad and I never saw him again. Not a coincidence, I think it was like a test that I did not pass. So she focuses throughout and like very emphatically

on having a pretty forgiving attitude around food and exercise and aiming to get it right most of the time, not all of the time. Oh. She has this quote, I'm gonna send this one to you too. I like being Angela. I'm a little character actor. I really enjoy it. Okay, she says, more is not necessarily always better. I think 15 to 30 minutes of exercise a day is great. If you do five minutes, if you do two minutes, thinking of yourself, that

in itself is beneficial. In fact, if I don't feel like exercising one day, I don't. The sun is still gonna rise and set and I know I'll get back to it another day. Self-reproach is dreadful, and I'm against moving if it hurts. If it hurts, stop. I love this, Michael. It's just like, you know what? Forgive yourself.

Sometimes it's a tough day. You don't have to do everything every single time. Totally, and listen, sometimes your days are real busy, and maybe you live a really busy life. If you can do five minutes of walking around the block or joyful movement or what she calls moving freely, go forth and do it. And don't do anything that hurts you.

Try doing something instead of nothing. If you're doing something, try doing a little more. And if you don't do all of that, don't beat yourself up, get back to it when you can. And it's also none of this tough love bullshit. Yeah. Tomorrow, you have to do it even harder. Get up earlier, meet your goals.

It's sort of starting from like, eh, here's some tips, but also like, sometimes you're not gonna wanna do these. Totally. Would you like to see some of her moving freely? Yeah, yes. Now I'd like you to come along with me and enjoy just moving freely. Oh my god!

It's like percure for old people. She's just like a fiving. Oh, now she's trying to do a macarena thing. She's like waving her arms around and sort of swaying back and forth. When I was a child, I watched Fred Astaire, Eleanor Power, Tindy Rajazal, the great movie dancers. The impression they made on me was so indelible that I found my body could literally translate what I remembered about them into movement.

You can picture someone graceful in your mind's eye, then feel yourself moving as they do. Try to move easily. As I am and don't worry about getting it just right. There's no wrong way to do these movements, just feel free and loose and easy, and light, and hopefully grateful. Oh my God! When I first began dancing as a child, the Isadora Duncan School of Greek Dancing was all a rage, and we would plan surround wearing those funny little tunics. But I appreciate now that gracefulness was the most important element of that dancing,

and graceful movements have continued to interest me. Oh, in the 60s, I rocked with the best of them, but as I grew into myself, I went back to the movements that helped me to have good posture and move as if I didn't have a hurting joint in my body, which isn't always true. I mostly that one I left so long because I wanted to include in the 60s. I rocked with the best. I know I was like Angela. I was dropping acid. I fucked a lot of dudes like oh Angela Slow down That was honestly I could have kept watching that for like 10 more minutes

So lovely so my oh god, I have to stop giggling. I, this is almost the whole video. Like, we're pulling, we're pulling clips of it. Sorry, there are whole sections that are just like, Angela Lansbury laying on the ground in her living room with her knees bent doing it thrust. Yes. And like leg lifts and whatever. And it's just that synth score. And it's so relaxing and wholesome and wonderful. It's so great. It's obviously then jealous.

I love it so much. The vibes are good. Also, she's wearing like a great outfit. She's wearing like a peach full, like a jumpsuit, but it's like a really flowy, loose jumpsuit. Like I swear to God, I have seen like 21 year olds at Music festivals in Denmark wearing this. Yes.

In like 2011, this could easily be like the coolest people on the planet wearing this. Totally. It looks so comfortable and great. It looks fantastic. It's like she's slow dancing with herself. It really is. Which is like so lovely.

It's not choreographed. It's clear that the moves that she's doing aren't, like I'll do this and then I'll do that. Or like she's practiced this. It's just like arm up, arm down, other arm up And she, yeah, she looks really comfortable and really graceful like honestly it would make me so happy to see Somebody doing this in like a park right? You're like, oh, they're just like super like doing their thing and they look really blissed out while I was watching this for

Research for this show. I was like, maybe I should start doing this. Like, you have the sounds great. I know what's best needed. Just do some fucking free moving. So the next thing that I would say that I think makes this the anti-goop is that her view of health is like legitimately pretty holistic. Yeah.

She has little bits and pieces of what I would now characterize as mindfulness. She talks about the importance pieces of what I would now characterize as mindfulness. She talks about the importance of accepting yourself and your body. She talks about the importance of a positive mindset, which sometimes gets her into trouble, and most of the time she contextualizes pretty well. She talks about the importance of naps. Any wellness guru who tells people to do less and immediately behind. Right, I'm like kind of here for it. She has a whole section at one point where I was like,

you're really revealing the target audience for this video, Angela, whereas she talks about the importance of puttering for your health. She's like, you're in defense of puttering. And she's like, there have been studies that it's important to putter. And I was like, there have been studies that it's important to putter.

And I was like, I could try to fact check this. I don't feel compelled to try and fact check. Angel Lanzberry's saying it's good for you to putter around the house. We measured puttering versus dottering. And we decided one was superior. So if you thought that the self-massage with allolotion was a little sensual for your taste.

Oh my god. Get the fuck ready because she also talks about the importance of like senior sexual health. Hell yeah. It's fucking fantastic and we are about to watch the video clip of a fucking lifetime, Michael Hobbs. Like I don't wanna oversell this, but I don't think I can. Send me to give it to me now.

Alright, done. This is her porn hub. What have you done? I'm telling you, pull up the clip and then see what it is. Oh, Jesus! Oh! Now I know. I think femininity and sexuality go hand in hand. It used to be thought that women lose interest in sex after men and girls, but now we know

that just isn't true. Obviously, both you and your partner are different than you were thirty years ago, but if you can accept the inevitable physical and other changes, you can keep romance in your life. I believe it's important for a woman to try and maintain a certain sense of mystery about herself, and I think that can continue to any age. It's so easy to give up or to get lazy. It's worth it to continue to present yourself as a woman of loveliness and dignity. A woman who feels good and knows she's looking her best. She'll continue to attract attention as a feminine sexual person.

The right kind of attention doesn't have to stop unless you want it to. Oh yeah. Michael, would you describe to the listener is what you just physically saw? I mean, it looks like something from fucking cinematics in 1992. It's Angela Lansbury in a bubble bath and like sensuously rubbing herself and like she pulls her leg out and then she sort of deliciously puts it back into the water, it's hot.

And I feel like it's always useful to have a reminder that like people fuck. And there's no particular reason why like people who like fucking would stop liking that when they get older. And like listen, you and your partner are gonna be different now than they were 30 years ago. She says at one point.

And I'm like, yeah, actually, that's like an adjustment worth talking about. I do think she sort of loses the thread a couple of times where she's like the right kind of attention doesn't have to stop if you don't want to do. And I'm like, okay, that's not entirely realistic. And also the right kind of attention

feels like an extremely weird phrase to hear in a M2 era, but I think overwhelmingly, I'm just like, look at fucking Angela Landsbury, talking about fucking. Yeah, I don't know. I'm not taking a bubble bath with a bunch of like pillar candles around her next to an open window.

I want her husband's head to come out of the bubbles. So bad. Tell me what he does, Angela. So the next thing that makes her the anti-goop is that her meals are fucking meals. Oh, okay. If you'll recall, the last time we did a diet book deep dive was with Ed McMahon. Mr. McMahon. His daily meal plans were banana pants. Literally banana pants was one of the meals.

And like a Manhattan. Here is Angela Lansbury's. This is titled a typical day's menu. Breakfast, quarter of a cantaloupe and a banana, 11 a.m. A big red apple or an orange or a cup of strawberries. Lunch, a chopped vegetable salad with two tablespoons of vinaigrette, a piece of whole wheat toast with one ounce of low fat cheese like Yarlsburg or Camembert or Feta. At four o'clock she has a cup of tea and an oatmeal cookie or a homemade

blueberry muffin, and then for dinner she has five ounces of broiled swordfish or chicken or turkey, microwave steamed broccoli and brussel sprouts, a slice of whole grain bread with strawberry jam for dessert or a half a cup of tofu ice cream or a piece of fruit. I mean, that honestly seems a little like sparse to me, but also it has less of a like, I need energy to grow Weightresses all night. I didn't ask you out. So pick one or the other. Yeah, I mean, I think there are times when it feels like a little bit sparse,

but she's very clear in talking about all of this that she's like, hey, so the quantities of these things don't matter. You should eat until you're full. You should eat foods that you like to eat. And she says at one point, she aims to eat like this and stay on track about 80% of the time. You know?

She does have one story where she's like, when I was playing maim on Broadway, I wanted to take part in cast celebrations, but I didn't want to feel like garbage the next day. So I would like go to the cast celebrations. I would have one or two drinks, and then I would go to bed early, because I know if I don't get rest, I don't feel good. Oh, dude, that's like such a Michael Hobbs move.

It's so good. It's so good. And I'm like, yeah, man, she's talking about sleeping as part of your health routine. Also, leaving parties early. A radical act of self-care. There is one place where she loses the thread. Oh, here comes the problematic stuff. Here comes the cancellation.

This is the problematic part, but it's like also a kinder gentler problematic. I mean, by the standards of this show, Jesus Christ, as long as she's not doing like colonial nightmare races. She's probably, yes. It's probably okay. We're gonna watch a little bit more. These are all, sorry, I keep sending you like the same link. I guess I had different points. Send me the cancel stuff. I'm comfortable at the weight I am now, but I haven't always been.

A few years ago, after the first season of Murdershoe Road, I got quite sedentary and overweight. Or still, I kind of sunk into my expanded body, and I said to myself, well, this is the way I am. Well, it didn't take me long to decide, no. I didn't want to stay in that state. I want to look good and have a sense of pride in myself. I lost the 15 pounds in about three to four months

and I kept it off. So you can tell I'm not on a diet. Most diets simply don't work for me because I work up such an appetite, doing what I do. Then there's a whole section, this is where she really comes for you, Mike, where she talks about how fun it is to ride a bike and everyone should ride bikes.

Oh my God. Because it's really fun to ride bikes. Let's not talk about the problematic stuff. She's fine. So now I... So talk to me about responses to the weight loss portion. I mean, it's quite bad to be like, I gained 15 pounds and like even worse, I like felt okay about it.

Yeah, totally. I wanted to get my pride and my sense of self back and I wanted to look better and feel better about myself. It's this stuff that is sort of omnipresent and insidious in that way. The thing that I do appreciate about this is that she's like, I lost 15 pounds in four months. Yes, yes.

I don't know if that's true. Like she didn't really talk about how she was eating after she gained the 15 pounds, but it doesn't sound like she did anything like that drastic. I mean, the story is that she gained a bunch of weight when she was playing maim on Broadway. The way that she tells the story of losing it is that she's like, I stopped going out to eat so much

and I started walking around New York City more. That sort of thing seems fine to me. It's just like she was like, I was out of my routine, my body changed in a way that she was that I was out of my routine. So I got back a way that she looked that I was out of my routine. So I got back in my routine. The stuff that stays with me the most is the ways in which she just very seamlessly is like, accepting being fatter means that you don't have a sense of pride in yourself and

how you look. What's thing with me is mostly the mom jeans, honestly. Oh, the mom jeans. Epic mom jeans, she looks great. She does have these sort of moments throughout the book where she'll be like, you know, my mother was a lovely lady, but she was awfully pear-shaped.

Okay. She is an actor and a character actor and a woman who's been making a career out of being seen for the last however many decades, right? So I'm also like, I get that that wouldn't be totally unpacked for her. Yeah. It was also like, this is a book that was written like 30 years ago almost. For younger people, I feel like people do not know like how bad this stuff was in the

80s and the 90s. It was horrific. The government was telling you to eat zero grams of fat. Yeah. Yeah, it's a really low bar. And honestly, if she was doing the same thing in 2021, I probably would go harder on her. Yes, I agree. In 1988, like this counted as like the woken shit imaginable. Yes, it was like, oh, she only said like one fat phobic thing. Yeah,

totally. And it's like not like fuck fat people. Yeah. It's just like, I don't love the way that I look at this size and I want to have pride in myself. And like again, it's like totally insidious, but also like definitely not the worst version of that thing. Yeah. Part of why I thought that was like really interesting is that that is sort of like a line of thinking

that is very much still present today. And is the way that many people will talk about weight loss in like fat or body positive spaces. Tell me, tell me more about that, what do you mean? I think mostly like, people will do this thing where they are willing to come along with a conversation about the dignity of fat people and treating fat people better,

but they are totally unprepared to let go of their own insecurities about their own body. And so what they will do is go, I'm just not comfortable in my body as it is. You look amazing. Whether or not you feel like that's a lie, it reads as a lot. Yeah. It reads as, oh, I just realized you're just here. Right.

So like, I think there are these ways in which people sort of like strive to figure out how to talk about their own body image and their own comfort in their own skin and all of that sort of stuff. And think that they can do it in this kind of clinical way that doesn't connect to how they see and treat other fat people, but they also don't ask fat people for feedback on that. How have you been dealing with people like I'm sure you have friends that are trying to lose like the COVID-19 or like I really want to get back in shape

Now the pandemic so or whatever like have you been having those conversations and like how does it feel feels horrible? Yeah, it feels horrible My friends for the most part are not talking to me about it, which I frankly appreciate Yeah, everyone's all be like get a report back that they talk to like another friend of ours about it And I'm like good job. Yeah. Not me. I'm not the guy. So that's thing one. And then the other stuff is just really hard. I feel like I muddle through.

I have an expectation of myself as someone who has written about this stuff and thought about this stuff and researched this stuff extensively that I'll have an out to be like, here's how to do it. And on some things I do, and on this thing, I really don't. I don't really know how to navigate these conversations. And it just fucking sucks to sit there for like,

it always starts out as a quick conversation. Like, I just need to talk about this thing for five minutes and then it turns into two hours and it's two hours of talking, hearing somebody talk about like how many Weight Watchers points is in something and how no one will ever love them at this size that is fucking half my size. And you know what I mean?

Like it just feels shitty. And I don't wanna take away their space to process that, but I also know that they don't go into that conversation wanting to hurt me. Would you, I mean, tell me if this is like a super offensive metaphor. Sure, tell me. Would you analogize it to something of like,

you know, you're somebody who earns like $500,000 a year, you're like a super offensive metaphor. Sure, tell me. Would you analogize it to something of you're somebody who earns 500,000 a year, you're a super high powered lawyer, and then you're having some money problems, your new job might only pay you 450,000 a year. And the idea is that maybe your friend who drives the bus is not the person to talk to about that. Yeah, totally. Oh my God, I might have to sell one of my Teslas.

It's the kind of talking that you do when you're not thinking about your audience. Right. And I think like a thing that we don't really grapple with in our social interactions is like, you genuinely don't know who you know that has an eating disorder. Totally.

You might actually actively be not just making that person feel bad in the moment, but causing their mental and physical health harm. Totally unintentionally, that's why the consent part is so important. I mean, I definitely have like, I have people in my life currently who are on Weight Watchers and I don't interrupt their process. If they ask me what I think about it, which has happened, I will tell them. Maybe it's like a subtle pact, but it's like, you don't tell me about your diet, and I won't tell you that your diet fucking sucks,

and it's not gonna work. It is kind of a ceasefire. It's a loaded, challenging thing, and I think it's a thing, I don't know anybody who's like, my system is this, and it works great, and it retains the strength of our relationship. I don't know anybody who has sort of the perfect silver bullet for all that stuff. I mean, I think one of the accusations

that you hear lobbed against shows like ours and that activist is like, they don't even let anyone lose weight. You can't even tell them, I'm trying to lose weight after the holidays or whatever. And I don't think that's the thing. I think it's like, just don't tell me about it. And maybe don't bring that's the thing. I think it's like, don't just don't tell me about it. And like maybe, maybe don't bring that up

with like every random like work acquaintance. Mike, I'm gonna bring in the zeitgeist in a way that might make you very unhappy, which is to say, I genuinely think that when it comes to weight loss, like our cultural template for talking about weight loss is talk about it all the time to anyone who will listen and they should congratulate you.

And if they don't, you have a right to be upset. Yeah. It's sort of our default setting. It is in that way, this is where it gets too zeitgeisty. I might ask you to cut this later. We're all the fucking kidney donor lady from Bad Art. Oh, I thought you were gonna go to a delegate. I zagged on you.

But do you know what I'm saying? We're all like, why didn't you congratulate me? I'm writing you a private DM, why didn't you congratulate me? I'm doing a good job. Why didn't you come on? Everybody talk about this good thing that I did. I just think it's this kind of thing where like we are all desperate for validation around this thing.

And when we don't get the very specific kind of constant uninterrupted validation that we expect, we become kind of fucking dicks about it. And we don't really have a template for still holding a person in high regard, but opting out of that specific exchange, which is what I would like to do. I also think, even if you don't get it, I also think that your friends, especially close friends, are allowed to have weird things.

Yeah, that's a pretty small thing to ask, ultimately. Yes, there are million places in society where you can talk about the 15 pounds you really wanna to lose. Like there's so many places where it's acceptable to talk about that. The idea of one person being like, uh, I'm just not somebody that wants to really do this with you. That seems pretty fine. Yeah, I also think like, oh my god, I have so many thoughts. One is, I do think that there is a little bit of a magnet effect with fat people. When I know people who pursue weight loss,

it really does feel like they are gunning for my approval. Oh, interesting. As a fat person to be like, you're not like me, you did it, you did the thing I can't do. Really? It's bananas and it feels horrible. That's awful, yes. It's horrible and they don't. That's awful, yes. It's horrible.

And they don't necessarily, like they're not consciously, they're not like hatching a plan to do this. They're just like, oh, I really wanna talk to you about this thing. It seems organic to them. It feels unbiased, it feels natural. And I will say, I really do think I have had disproportionately way more conversations about friends negative body image

than my thinner friends have with the same people. What do you think that is? What's the mechanism behind that? I'm sort of woof. Okay, I'm gonna say a thing that's like, I'm out on a limb. Okay. I think there are a lot of factors in sort of why that's a phenomenon that I've noticed.

And I think probably one of the bigger ones is that part of losing weight is becoming a formerly fat person and separating yourself from fat people. And being seen as not one of those people, I think that's the root of a lot of the anti-fatness that we see from people who've lost a lot of weights, right? And I think it's some of this too,

which is like, I need your specific noticing that I'm different from you now. And I'm doing that intentionally. And again, I don't think this is ever anything that they would say to me, but the vibe is definitely like, I'm better than you now. Yeah.

Right? And that's the thing that fucking sucks about it, is I'm like, this is totally earnest. You? And that's the thing that fucking sucks about it is I'm like, this is totally earnest. You are really going through a thing. You are genuinely feeling all of your feelings. And part of that is you haven't really checked in with yourself about like, wait a minute, why do I want to have this conversation? Why do I want to have it with this specific person? What am I getting out of this in particular that I couldn't get out of affirming myself or going to a different person?

Why does this need to be a social interaction and why does it particularly need to be a social interaction with someone who is more marginalized than me in this way or on this front? The fact that it feels that way to you is also like extremely relevant. Yeah, totally. Right, like the idea that somebody is having this effect

on their fat friends by doing this, like people should consider the possibility that like, yeah, your fat friend like really fucking hates hearing you talk about this. Yeah, totally. And some fat people don't, right? Like some fat people are fine with it. A lot of fat people have a real hard time with it.

Yeah. You know, part of the ways that we think about fat people and particularly fat women is in these roles of servitude, right? Right. And of sort of this like emotional midwifery that fat people are expected to do, which is like, we aren't here. We're like NPCs, right? Right. God.

We're like NPCs. We're like, just hanging out and we're just here to like move the plot along and you were the plot and we are a prop to move the plot along. It is I think the ways in which lots of people have been trained to engage with fat people and particularly with their friends. They're there to help you pick out an outfit for your big night out, but if they have a problem

they can't come to you. And if they have a boundary they can't come to you. Right, like it's a real imbalance and it's hard to talk about in a way that doesn't either blow up or make everybody feel like shit. But also the alternative is then just your fat friend feels like shit all the time? There's also the normalized,

like little jokes at the Christmas party of like, I gotta lose 15 pounds, like in a way that like everyone kind of glances at the fat person out of the corner of their eye. Yes, absolutely. This has happened to me as a person who was less fat than the fatest person in the room. I was talking to someone at a group event about weight loss

and they pointed to a person who was fatter than me and said, well, at least we're not that fat. Oh, fuck. Right. And that is a person who I believe to their core, thinks of themselves as an equitable, thoughtful, kind person. I think in many, many ways they are,

that was a brutal thing to do. And I think there are some folks who think, I just think it in my head and that's not great, but it doesn't show up in my behavior. And like our brains are not that sophisticated everybody. It is really difficult to disentangle our motives from for weight loss, from our attitudes toward fat people. And I think it makes it really hard as a fat person to intervene and be like, you're kind of talking about me when you're talking about this stuff, right?

I will say what most fat people that I have talked to about this and myself are looking for is just I have talked to about this and myself are looking for is just like, just an opt out option would be great. I don't think that's the end goal, but I think it would be a really great starting point. Yeah, I mean, I don't like to give advice on the show, but I would say next time, like in the break room or something, if somebody brings the stuff up, I would say start doing some freestyle movement.

Ha ha ha ha. Wave your, wave your hands around. Just jockey back in your jumpsuit. Okay, so I just want to round us out. There's one more quote from Angela Lansbury about sort of like body image and aging and dieting stuff that seems worth talking about. Angela, Angela took us on a journey. This is her last thing of sort of like losing the thread around weight stuff. These days, I'm not wild about the way my arms look in short sleeves. I have terrific muscles in my arms from gardening, but there are areas of loose skin that are

just genetic. After a certain age, it's more becoming for a woman to have a little extra on her upper arms and have a well-rounded face, rather than a face that's scrawny and gaunt from dieting that has lost its skin tone. I have friends who live in fear of their scales. As if those inanimate measuring devices had some sort of power to affect the quality of their lives. Let's keep some perspective and remember that the goal is to be healthy and attractive.

She was so close. She really had it. She really had it until the end. She's like, you know, all you have to be healthy and moving ways that make you joyful and then she's like, also, I'm really paying attention to your face and it looks kind of fun It's wild to me that she's like you shouldn't die it because you look worse So you die and is like I know and extremely fucking hot take Angela I think it would be hard to say like the goal is to be attractive

Yes, you're not sort of supposed to admit that that's what it's about, even though that's absolutely what it's about. No question. But everything has to be wrapped up in all this fake shit about like health and like moisture. Yeah, she said the quiet part loud, which I think is like kind of not the cardinal sin. Do you know what I mean? The cardinal sin is the quiet part being there,

not the quiet part being explicit. So many people have skinny faces, I don't know. It's fine, it's fine. You know what, Angela, you found what works for you? Go make yourself a salad sandwich, let people be afraid of their scales, let them work through their own feelings on their own time.

But if they're considering moving to a small town where somebody gets murdered every week, stop them. Thank you.