Episode 30
Transcript
Welcome back to the Fully Nourished podcast, a place to explore where female physiology and feminine energy dance together to shape our life experience. I'm your host, Jessica Ash, functional nutritionist and integrative health coach and I'm inviting you to journey with me through both the scientific and spiritual facets of what it looks like to awaken our feminine radiance and become deeply and fully nourished despite living in a society that is increasingly desperate to erase our female set-apartness. You ready?
As a reminder, everything in this podcast is for education and inspiration only and is not intended as medical advice. Please talk to the appropriate professional when necessary. And please use common sense before making any changes to your diet and lifestyle.
Introducing Isabella Malbin
Today's guest is Isabella Malbin. She is an educator and host of a podcast and multiple social media channels by the name of Whose Body Is It. And I wanted to have her on not just because I think she's bold and brave and unapologetically stands for what she believes in. I mean, I pulled this quote directly from one of her Instagram posts, she says, “Well, censorship is real. So is self censorship. I'm talking about self betrayal, withholding, and playing small when speaking on topics that matter most to you.” And I found it really unique that despite her sphere of influence, and even her training as a doula, she was willing to look her previously held belief systems right in the eye and ask the hard questions. You know, she's very passionate about maintaining integrity and the language that we use regarding female physiology, and really just protecting the sanctity of the female experience.
During our interview, we talk about her story and where she comes from, and also this topic of female erasure, and how there are things going on in our society that have ever lasting influence over our future. We talk about some of these very politically uncorrect questions that we're not allowed to ask anymore, such as, what defines a woman, and why the words we use regarding many different things matters so deeply. So with that being said, I hope you enjoyed this interview. And let's dive in.
Jessica: Hi, Isabella, thank you so, so much for being here.
Isabella: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to have this conversation with you today.
Jessica: Yeah, you know, I introduced you earlier and just said, you're so bold and so brave, you always have so many amazing things to say and just a very different outlook. And I want to know more about your background, what led you here? Why are you so passionate about the topics that you speak out about? Just tell us more about yourself and your story?
Isabella: Sure. So I am born and raised in New York City, grew up with a single mom, but still with a pretty involved dad, was surrounded mostly by liberals. Although my my mother came from a Republican family, who held all sorts of what at the time, I thought were regressive beliefs and whatnot, had more traditional values, lived more traditional lifestyles, early marriage, early children, having children early, and I was on an art track up until I was about 24. I was the Art Girl I went to art high school conservatory, was trying to get into an MFA program. Yeah, I was just like the art girl until I wasn't and I started reading some feminist literature. And I wanted a higher purpose. And I wasn't finding my purpose in art. And I think art can be that for many people. And you can do beautiful things by by being an artist, but I couldn't. It wasn't my medium. I needed to do something else. So I started reading some feminist literature and through that I had been exposed to corruption in birth, like I had heard that women were getting abused in their in their births and their hospital births primarily. And I learned about this thing called a doula. And it and I watched "The Business of Being Born” just like a classic doula story. Like I watched “The Business of Being Born" and I was like, I have to become a doula. And I told everyone I knew and it was a bit of an identity crisis. I'm like, good, the art girl. Now I'm going to be a doula. Like going from one like low paying career to another one. So I became a doula. I signed up for a doula training. I did it in Brooklyn with a company called Doula Trainings International. I did that training in 2016. And before we got to like the birth component, and all that, they introduced something called what I know now to be gender ideology, but they introduced it as like the inclusivity or cultural competency part of the program. And, you know, I grew up in the West Village like I've been exposed to drag queens and gay men and gay women, all sorts of different family structures. So when they started to talk about things like gender identity and shifting language around, it just was like, Yeah, let's go. I'm a, I'm an inclusive, thoughtful, compassionate person. And there are some people, you know, I was told that don't identify as women or don't identify as men and being, you know, care providers or service providers in this intimate setting. The modern, modern thing to do as a doula as a contemporary doula was to not use the words woman and mother anymore. And instead to use terms like birthing person, chest feeder, menstruating human. And so that was my, that was my introduction to doula work, and also gender identity theory. And in college, I had read like queer theory, and had read about, you know, men, you know, taking estrogen and occupying female spaces, and it wasn't completely brand new, but it was the the merging of like, okay, I'm starting this new career, and I have to integrate this civil rights issue with quotes that I thought it was at the time. And so how do I show up for justice? Like, how do I show up, not only in this, like birth crisis, but also in this civil rights issue? That is that I'm learning about?
Jessica: Right. Wow. So then after that, did you go full force into becoming a doula? Were you kind of like a warrior for this next to issues really like what's going on with the birth world? And then also, this social mission?
Isabella: Yeah, yeah. And it turned out that they were incompatible at the end, because I will, in my birth work, I gravitated towards physiological birth, homebirths, and a program called Hypnobirthing. So I taught that program and in that study, in that program, it there's a very clear hierarchy of like, what is physiologically optimal for mother baby, and they're not afraid to say it. And, you know, the doula culture that I was educated in and working in was very much like, all birth is birth, there is no hierarchy, like, we don't shame women for choosing scheduled C sections. And, you know, it's your role to not have an opinion, you're this just there to serve. And so as I moved towards a more like physiological approach to birth, and only wanting to work with families who were dedicated, you know, doing the best that they could to achieve that optimal, you know, outcome for themselves, I started to notice some some cracks in the gender stuff, particularly around language, I know what we'll get into all of that. But for those who aren't familiar with Hypnobirthing, Hypnobirthing is puts a strong emphasis on the words that we use to create our reality, and kind of highlights the robotic and like the associative language that surrounds industrial birth, like delivery. So yeah, so I did the, I wouldn't say I was ever like a full blown activist, but I definitely considered myself to be like a trans ally. And so my marketing material for the first three years as a birth worker, including being a lactation counselor, you know, just had the terms like birthing person, birthing people, I mean, I would be sitting in front of a group of like 10 couples coming for a hypnobirthing class, saying birthing people, birthing person, and this is not part of the Hypnobirthing curriculum, I don't actually know how if they've gone on the inclusivity bandwagon, or not, I'd be interesting to see what they've done. But yeah, I had never even served a woman who had had a double mastectomy, and, you know, was convinced that she was a pregnant man, like I had never even dealt with that level of like, special needs in my, in my clientele. So yeah, it was a, it was part of, you know, going more into the physiologic and, and also trying to get to the root of things. You know, moving from being more of like a reformist to a radical. It just, it started to unravel. But yeah, for three years, I used those terms.
Jessica: So it kind of keeps going, and I'm sure you felt deep down something subconsciously, was at odds, like it felt a little bit confusing. Maybe, as you were going through that, like, what, how do I kind of come to a happy medium between these two? Because if I want women to really, if I am for women, how can I also encourage them to do what's maybe not best for them? So at what point? Did you feel like that at odds? I feel like so many women go through this experience where we're at odds with something, something deep within ourselves is saying, This is not right, this is not right. And sometimes it's just an explosion, where we go all of a sudden, or it's a slow waking. So tell me a little bit more about where that changes are, how that changed.
Isabella: I think it was a slow waking. For me, I think, like if I went back to my early 20s, and just my own health journey of being disappointed by doctors and having to take my gut health into my own hands, and, you know, being on hormonal birth control just for a year and a half, and then coming off and, you know, my own kind of like, personal exploration, exploration, that might be the considered like the first, like, kind of, hmm, this isn't what I thought it was, you know, or I'm not getting answers, or I just learned something that they didn't tell me, you know, and why. Why do I know this? And they don't like I thought they were the experts. So I think, yeah, so it was a slow roll. And I think, I mean, I used to go to hospital and just think like, I have just gone to the opposite world where women can birth, they're being lied to, to their face. Men are being emasculated and everything that I've read in my books about the physiologic design of birth and best outcomes and optimal, like evidence based practices, like everything is being flipped on its head here. And if that could be happening, I was like, wow, there's a lot more we're being lied to, a lot more than any even thought is, is kind of what I came to, I'd add my own experience with the gut issues with my own experience with birth control, that I'm watching women be abused, and everyone thinks this is like normal. And everyone's like lying to her. And like, she's rationalized, she's trying to reframe the abuse. It's just like, what it was just so much, so much. And then through that, I was also peaking with like vaccines and stuff. Oh, and another kind of nugget of the slow roll was that I had started helping women come off of hormonal birth control. So I was teaching workshops, I was working with women one on one teaching body literacy and fertility awareness method. So I wasn't quite teaching like double check Symptothermal. It wasn't that in depth, it was mostly just like, here are your primary fertile signs, here are the secondary vital signs, like, send me videos of your cervical fluid, like, let's let's decode this and know, like, let's learn when your fertile window is. You don't have to be on this drug. Hey, by the way, did you know that this is a fact? And maybe this is why you have acne? And how do you rehabilitate after, you know, seven years on the copper IUD and like that.
Jessica: So and I feel like when you start to really get into the weeds with women, you start to recognize, I guess, for me, I always ask questions. Why do we not know this? Why are we you know, why? Why is it that we're learning this at 30 years old, or 32 years old? Or, you know, why are we not? Why is this not being passed down from woman to woman? Why is this not taught in schools? Why is this? You know, we start asking those wise, like, why, why, why, why, why? And then what are we spending our time actually learning? So you're starting to recognize now that the truth maybe doesn't matter, you are starting to feel truth deep in your bones. And you're starting to maybe seek other people that feel the same way? Is that kind of what led you to recognizing like, wow, this is not just a symbol as an ideology? This is an erasing of the feminine, or a watering down of both femininity and masculinity. Yeah.
Isabella: I prefer to use the terms, female and male. I mean, I think we mean the same things. However, in this climate of materiality, and materiality, and, you know, like ideas versus flesh, right. Like, I think it's so important to distinguish that those two things, and they're both real in their own ways, but in terms of measuring, like, I can't measure your level, or you can't measure my level of femininity, it's immaterial, right? But I can be categorically recognized as female, right? There's no confusion as to that it can be you can confirm it.
Jessica: Are those terms important to you? Because what you've seen in your spaces, they're taking these ideas of femininity and masculinity, kind of these esoteric ideologies, and almost like bastardizing them and kind of using them to support their own ideologies.
Isabella: Yes, on both ends, right. Like on both ends. So you have the gender ideology, corrupting it in a very, like liberal, individualistic way. You know, like, if I say, I feel like a man, that means I am one and you have to play along. Otherwise, you're a bigot. Right. And man, for me, means long hair, but also a deep voice because I take a little testosterone like that's what man means to me. Right, and I and I'm so oh free and have so many choices that I can make up meaning like I can ascribe material meaning to like personality, basic, like random choices of garb, and, you know, medications. Okay? So in that also you lose the meaning of the word if man equals woman and woman equals man, and the words don't mean anything anymore, they don't signify anything anymore. If we can't clearly make distinctions, we cannot protect each other. We, I mean, that sex distinction is fundamental to our humanity, we are first human, and then we are sexually dimorphic species, there's actually nothing more integral to our like lives here on Earth than our our sexed bodies. So when we pretend that it's just kind of random or can be changed, it's a complete denial of like our humanity. Right. And so then on the other hand, on the other end, you know, the, the radical feminist analysis sees gender, as you know, primarily socially constructed, so again, not material. So gender is an expression, right? It's a, it's a performance of socially prescribed behaviors, right? So then, the female gender role in Austin, Texas is going to look different than the female gender role in Southern India, not to say that there's no overlap, but it is culturally specific. And that's not to say that I don't believe that the only, well, I can say, verifiably, the only thing all women have in common across class, religion, ethnicity, all of it is our female physiology. Everything else is like, pretty debated, you know, and I, and I'm not against a discovery or belief that, you know, we do tend to be more interested in social connection than men. Like, that makes sense to me just from being a woman, but where gender gets perverted in like a regressive sense is when it's used as a hierarchy. Right, instead of a binary, right? So I'm all for like, men and women are different. We have different biological needs, our bodies work differently. I do believe that we relate different socially, we have different needs in that way. And I don't think all gender roles are bad, right? It would make sense that the woman would be spending more time in the home if she is childbearing. And breastfeeding. Like that makes sense. That doesn't mean she doesn't also work inside the home or just outside of the home or down the street. But the other women are, you know, so there's like a, there's a perversion on both ends. And so yeah, so a radical feminist, you know, let's say like a second wave feminists will, generally they're what's called the gender abolitionist. They see gender as purely oppressive, and they want to abolish it, because they see the way that it's been abused to create a subordinate class of people, women. Right. Right. Right. And with that extreme, you know, we've lost I think, some some good stuff, too. So but that's kind of like to paint a picture of Yeah, the the gender stuff.
Jessica: No, that's absolutely helpful. Because I absolutely agree that you're right. The one thing that binds us all as women is that our physiology and our physiology, what I talk about on the podcast a lot for women is it's really an exploration of what does our physiology demand of us? It's not a question of can, right, like, I can do whatever I want to, we can all do whatever we want to, but is that what is best for women? And so it's an exploration of what is our feminine physiology or female physiology demanding of us so that we can thrive because we have this, I think we can both agree that we have women right now that are so what I call, they have the soul deep or cell deep burnout, they really resent and reject the idea of being a woman, simply because being a female seems like this kind of drudgery, you know, from periods to birth to raising children. It's like, okay, here we go. Even women that don't have children, kind of look at, okay, like, I'm going to give my life away once I become a mother. And so this podcast was really an exploration of why do we feel this way about our own our own body and our own experience, and we can't change it, and whether women are maybe subconsciously just trying to kind of fill this masculine role. And we can, you know, we can also talk about how birth control has really impacted women's physiology to feel this way. I guess, can we dive a little bit more into the history or I see in your work that you have kind of come across this, you realize women are being erased? You know, females are being erased, and you start to explore the history behind it. So you're looking at birth control, you're starting to see the repercussions of industrialized birth, right in front of you, you're in the weeds with these women, you're you're there. And you're seeing that none of these things are really for women. They're not pro women. And I'm assuming like, as a as, as a feminist, or as someone that is pro women, as we both are, it's it starts to become disenchanting as well. If no one is for women, then what's going to happen to not just us but as society as a whole?
Isabella: Yeah, yeah. So, so important to ask these questions, and, you know, and then what you're doing, you know, like the, and what do we do about it? You know, how do you come back into your body? How do you solve your hormonal disruption and live more biologically, and I when talking about female erasure, and women becoming more masculine allies, like, I really like to stick to material stuff, you know, because, again, it's weaponized, you'll, you'll hear a man, a douchebag, be like, she's so manly, you know, she just, she has so many demands, like she really like, you know, it's like, okay, well, do you mean organized or like assertive? Like, you know, what do you mean? What do you mean by that? You know, so when I, it again, it can be weaponized, absolutely anything. So when I think about female erasure, as you mentioned, you've got it on a physiological level, like, we literally have our fifth vital sign being turned off, this being normalized. When you get your period, it gets turned off, shortly after that whole system just gets turned off. I'm sure your listeners know this, right. So the part that is where the part of me that is required, and is essential to regulating my whole system, which like dictates my personality, my libido, my creativity, it's just been turned off, and we do not have the equivalent for men, there is no male equivalent for that. So for me, that's just a really obvious, just concrete example of like, female erasure, it's like the most literal, it's kind of like the most literal one, the chemical castration, other than the removal of, you know, healthy breasts but, but even that, it's like, you could still have a hormonal system intact, without breasts, like, there's something about the chemical castration of turning off that whole system, which is really fucked.
Jessica: I think of like Dr. Sarah Hill's research, where she's talking about how it really impacts who we're attracted to. I've seen in my work, so many times, as women come off of the birth control pill, they start to really work on their progesterone levels, and really just kind of getting back into balance and into rhythm, their their paradigm kind of shifts, they recognize that the career choice that they made while on birth control is actually making them so stressed out and overwhelmed, and is not what they really wanted in life, they felt almost like they were just kind of stuck in this motion moving toward something. And then of course, the pressure that we get of like, you can do anything, be anything, you know, just anything you want is yours. And nobody is really explaining or giving consent at the cost of these things. And so I see how women, once they hormonal get back into balance, they say, it's almost like their whole life comes crashing down, because all of the choices that they've made up until this point is not really what they wanted. And physiologically they would have made a different decision, every part of themselves would have been drawn to a different decision if they did not get chemically castrated, or have these hormones shut down.
Isabella: Such a good point. And you're, yeah, you're, it really speaks to the empathy that we need to have, as you know, like, counselors or consultants like that resistance is so real, like that vulnerability, not everyone is willing to see or even admit, if they do see it, that they've been duped. It's very, very scary to believe that you actually have way less, you were making fewer choices than you thought you were right. But you were actually just given like a menu. And you chose one of the things on the menu, but you didn't even know there was another menu or that you didn't even have to order anything off the menu at all. It's very, it's very scary. And imagine being like married to this person, or your career being wrapped up or you have kids and it's like, Whoa, yeah, and I think you know, I've seen I think there are a lot of reasons why you know, people split up in the first like, year or two of you know, starting a family but yeah, I've seen dozens of relationships and as women step into their power in birth, or death, you know, it's it's all unconscious, but like sabotage their birth experiences or not advocate for the kind birth experiences that they want, because they know it will fundamentally change the relationship with their male partners.
Jessica: Wow. And do you think that the industrialization of birth all these interventions that may or may not be necessary, right? Do you think that this kind of takes away the transformation that women can go through birth?
Isabella: Yeah, it's just another one of those like stolen rites of passage for sure. Another, another way to just like put the woman down, literally throw out literally turn to garbage or you know, sell them for profit, like the organ that was created to grow her baby the placenta, like literally erase it. Like, she doesn't even get this, most women don't even get to see their placentas. It's a tragedy. It's, it's the most like literal form. And then, and then, you know, you have, you have what's going on in language and in the law, and the educational system. So you know, we can get like super spiritual about it and talk about like Abrahamic religions and the, you know, suppression of women's ancient wisdom. And the shift from worshipping, you know, the goddess sculpture of you. I don't know if your viewers can see the poster behind me, but I have a statue poster of ancient fertility sculptures from all over the world. So yeah, and it's it's like, it's, again, this is a literal, this isn't like a paranoia that we're, you know, that I'm suffering from, like, we're getting erased. It's, it's, it's been institutionalized, it's been legalized. Depending on what state you're in, you can actually be legally prosecuted for misgendering, aka, correctly identifying someone's sex, someone's biological sex.
Jessica: Yeah, so it's impacting people's futures. It's impacting people's lives to just tell the truth or say what is true. Wow. Wow. So from your perspective, do you believe that women are more powerful than they have ever been? I think you've already kind of answered this. But I think that's kind of the underlying beliefs that we have more freedoms that we've ever had, and we need to keep fighting for these freedoms? Or do you see that our power actually has been taken away from us? Or a little bit of both? I'm just curious.
Isabella: I think a little bit of both, like, I definitely appreciate that I can open up my own bank account, like, I definitely am appreciative of the fact that I can vote, I don't, I don't participate in in the, like, national elections anymore. But, but I appreciate that I can, but what I don't appreciate is the story that I was fed that my value, it depends on what I can produce, like, in a material sense, or like in a corporate sense, like how I can contribute best to the economy, right, like the money a kind of economy, not the, the other kinds of economies. So yeah, if you look at like, just like health outcomes, and like loneliness, issues and divorce rates, and I don't think having more choices, has necessarily resulted in happier, healthier women, more embodied women. So I think what we should be moving towards is like interdependence, so like knowing the women in your community, women's health and women's hands, you know, learning how to show up for one another, in in the stages in all our reproductive stages, you know, everything from our first menses, to birth to relationship to separation to menses, you know, making time for our elders for our crones. But I definitely think it's about like, again, we've benefited in some ways, and it's cool that we can, like, have some financial stability before starting a family, but like, you know, Mary Lou Singleton talks about this all time, she was like, everyone was broke when I was having kids, like I was in my early 20s, I had, you know, I was a single mom, and like, everyone was broke. It was like, just what you did, the kids didn't care if you were broke.
Jessica: Right? It was like, just a thing. Like, you just figured it out.
Isabella: So yeah, I think that the way to think about that or figure out how you feel about that for any for the women listening is like, well, what are the results of your life? And like, what are the results of your peers? And you know, we look at our society like, where are we at? How healthy are we really, but I do appreciate that I can get like medical care and not be like put in jail in most states. If I were to, like very rare occurrence but to like hemorrhage after like an at home abortion for an example. You know, I definitely appreciate that I could get medical care for that. So I do appreciate you know where, while I'm all for women's health and women's hands and taking back everything from birth to releasing pregnancies, I'm not quite like a libertarian, where I'm like, do everything yourself. As long as there are industries that prey on us, I think those industries need to be regulated. So I thought at the beginning of 2020, I thought I was a libertarian, and I and I've realized that I'm actually not for that reason. Yeah, I want I want an industry to be regulated.
Jessica: Do you feel like it's hard to find a political home? I think when you stand for truth, it's like, is there any political home?
Isabella: I find home in myself? I mean, I find home and the women that I'm with, yeah, it is, it is hard, it is hard to find a party or politician who represents the interests of women, the way that I believe women should should be represented. I have to say, I am a total RFK Jr. Fan. There's actually nothing he said so far that I'm not like on on board with, which is, I think rare. For yeah, this political climate. But yeah, I definitely do not consider myself a Democrat or Republican, or an independent. But if I feel strongly about a candidate, like I would vote whatever ticket they were on, and, you know, as someone who was at the anti Trump rallies in 2016, and 2017, you know, fast forward to 2020, realizing that, you know, he wasn't afraid to say that, you know, men can't become women and women can't become men. And then on the other hand, Biden, you know, pushing the executive orders that just like legally erase women and girls, that was a pretty shocking discovery to be like, wait, the like, ultimate buffoon, misogynist, is the candidate who isn't pushing gender ideology. Isn't that interesting? Yeah.
Jessica: Well, I think a lot of women can see how, I love what you said about finding home within yourself. I think once we recognize that we have to take the power back, there's really no other option. No one is going to stand for women like women. Yeah, you had said these amazing words. And I just want to read them to you, and maybe that will be kind of gateway. But you had said, I think this today in your story is actually that, “many women in our 30s are rethinking the cultural programming that discourage us from having our babies at an age that would afford us the energy and resilience to more easily bear the challenges of motherhood, or garnering the support of our own parents. There are plenty of benefits to building up wisdom, life experience and financial resources before you have kids. But there's grief to what happens when we exclusively put our self worth into our careers or accomplishments, instead of embodying the portal of life and death. That is our birthright as women.” So in your work, do you work as a doula anymore? Or have you shifted?
Isabella: I do not. From like 2019 to the end of 2021 I was attending women like in a more unassisted way, like just me and the couple and maybe their younger kids or grandma. So not quite fully unassisted, because I was there. But that's where my birth work landed. And then I have been on a hiatus and don't really know when I'll go back to birth work. But yeah, my last birth I attended was in 2021. Wow.
Jessica: Wow. So do you think that as women, it seems like women are having children, you know, later and later in life, or afraid to have children kind of like their life is going to be given up in some way? Do you think that this is impacting us as a society culturally, and I even think maybe it's impacting our children as well, the way that we used to look at the raising of children as if it was a village effort. Now it's this nuclear family where everything is on you. How is this impacting us? Like, spiritually, culturally? Do you have any thoughts on that?
Isabella: Yeah, well, I can speak personally, I feel like it's emotionally stunting, to not move into that chapter of maturity earlier. Not that it's not going to happen for me, but that it's like, it feels delayed. I'm 32. And I never thought I'd say this because my mom had me when she was 35. And my peers, you know, the similar experience, like I remember, my dad was like, one of the younger dads, when I was born. He was 32. Yeah, so I, I think that going through the process of, of childbirth, and child rearing, like is just integral to the continuation of our species. First of all, like we have to do that. But also, I mean, just like purely practical, like, who's going to take care of you when you're old and sick, who's gonna take care of you? You're not in a village. Maybe your partner dies before or you get divorced. It's generally going to be kids and like, I can say, as an only child, I had a lot of fear about being solely responsible for taking care of two sick parents. That wasn't my reality. My father passed. We know just recently, and I think my mom will live a very long life. But it was a, it was in the back of my mind and you take, you know, like, let's just say, anyone who has a similar kind of like, who was whose mom had them, you know, let's say between 35 and 40, who's, you know, doesn't have kids yet themselves, and they're 35, 40. You're gonna run up against having small children with sick and aging parents, it's just not compatible. It's just not practically ideal. So yeah, so I think that's a problem. I think that's a, that's a problem. Not living intergenerationally is a is proving to be a bit of a problem. You know, just like the nursing homes. Like it's just isolation, the isolation, it's really, yeah, it's like culturally acceptable, whether you have and in the case, even if you have the money for like, at home care, it's culturally acceptable to put your parents somewhere where you don't have to see them every day where you visit them once a week. It's, it's bizarre.
Jessica: Yeah, we kind of brush our hands of our elders, we don't want their wisdom, we don't want their we can kind of do it better.
Isabella: I think, I think we think that it's like, inconvenient, I think is another thing and and like, you know, it's I understand people are under a lot of pressure, you know, to earn money and, you know, to provide for their own family and keep the you there's like a there's a scarcity. There's a real scarcity of like time and money. That's also very real for people. And then from a physiological level. Like, we know that in most cases, in almost all cases, like pregnancy is a hormone reset, you know, pregnancy and birth is a reset. It's a healing process. You know, the the act of breastfeeding will reduce a woman's rate of breast cancer for each child she breastfeeds. It just goes, you know, she's more protected with each child.
Jessica: Yeah, I think one of the research papers that I read said that for every child a woman has up to 14 children, it expands her longevity. So up to 14 children, you're just not aging as quickly. And I kind of see this I mean, these women that have had, you know, 7, 8, 9, 10 kids, I'm like, Wow, I can't believe that you have like, I think we get surprised, but they look younger, they look more youthful. So we can sometimes just see that anecdotal evidence as well. But the science shows it.
Isabella: Yeah. And I know, I can hear someone saying like, you know, you saying that women who you know, give birth when they're 40. Or like, less often will, but it's like, historically speaking, that would be the 14th kid like that wouldn't be number one with IVF. It would have been, you know, like I had a great, I have a great grandmother who had her last child when she was 45, or 46. It was a replacement child, after her 17 year old had died tragically, you know, like those are those that that wasn't uncommon at the time, it was called like a second life, a second life child, a second life, baby. And so I definitely believe in women's, you know, capacity to birth in into their mid 40s. But the culture that we're in right now is the culture of egg freezing and delaying and being incentivized to use other women to grow your biological baby, and career first, and, you know, merge your life with someone like down the line, like don't get married too soon. Don't make a mistake, you're still a child, travel, have all these experiences, and then settle down. I was even talking about this with the blurb that you read was from a recent episode with a friend of mine, who I interviewed named Danielle Evans. And we were talking about the programming of like, when you get enough money, you get your own place. Yes.
Jessica: Right. It's like you get to isolate, be alone.
Isabella: Yeah, the ultimate success is to isolate and be alone and have complete control over everything and not have to share.
Jessica: Which is really not a part of our history. Like never in our time. Have we ever been this selfish or self centered?
Isabella: It's hard. Like I mean, I have struggled, like I live alone. I'm not going to be living alone anymore. But living with a partner like we were learning to share, like children.
Jessica: I know it's so funny. I had that same experience. It's like, wow, to coexist with somebody. Why is it so hard? I'm in my late 20s. I'm in my 30s. Like, what what's going on?
Isabella: Totally.
Jessica: So, I mean, I guess going off of that, I think we are so focused on what we can produce. And I think we are very money centered culture. So it is our values wrapped up in production. But do you think we're also kind of materialistic and I guess I'm going I'm segwaying into some of the stuff that you've talked about. I love what you said about Botox where you said that you feel a deep sadness and having been robbed of the privilege of watching your elders age without Botox and influence or interference but even segwaying into that like it's just we are seeing that women are getting defined by their looks their clothes, their hair, their makeup, their breasts, right. And this is this is leaking into transgenderism or vice versa transgender ideology where what defines a woman and what is the female experience in aging actually supposed to look like? Yeah,
Isabella: Yeah, the Botox and the injectables, all that is so fun. That's so depressing. Having not been born at home, having not been able to watch as my female elders go through menopause. I've never been intimate. I've never seen up close and personal like what menopause looks like, without hormonal interference. I don't know. I don't know what that looks like. So yeah, I'm always I'm guessing. I'm always asking the question. You know, how do we get back to our femaleness? Like, another way to ask that is how do we become more biological, not in a moralistic way, not because I'm like, think it's moralistic or I'm trying to create you unnecessarily like a matriarchal society. It's just, I just because I feel like, I'm like, How can we be healthier? Like, how can our, how can we be mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually healthier? And I just returned to like, what is the most biological way of living? And this is like, an insane question, because we're like, on a Zoom, like, we're on a digital recording, and like, this is a microphone and I'm sitting alone in a concrete building, and there's a ring light, and, you know, it's all kind of a ridiculous thing to ask. But it's like in this environment, thinking, given what we've been dealt, yeah. How do we live biologically?
Jessica: Yeah, yeah. Or as biological as we can? And really, like how can we thrive and with the the cards we've been dealt really, what change is going to matter? The most? I get asked that question a lot, too. Yeah.
Isabella: Yeah. So your question was what defines a woman? Yeah, the only thing that defines a woman is her physiology. So a woman is an adult, human female. A woman is not a woman because she shaves her leg hair, or because she performs in like a demure way, or is really good at a certain skill, like none of that makes her a female. What makes her female is that she is physiologically, categorically a woman like every cell of her being. So with the with the trans stuff, you know, that's, that's the inversion of that. It's like, No, I can be a woman because woman is is a feeling it's not material that can't be categorically recognized. It's a it's a performance, it's makeup. Its hair removal. It's getting raped, woman is getting raped. Woman is being demeaned. Right? Like, that's what you have in the like, pornography fetish. It's like, they are saying what it means to be a woman is to be fucked. Like, is to be demeaned. Right? It's to be humiliated.
Jessica: Which is, I mean, I find that pretty misogynistic, like that is so, it's a weird way of viewing women, it shows what you really truly deeply feel about women.
Isabella: Yeah, yeah. I'm always thinking about my relationship to my body hair, makeup, like I've been, you know, makeup for, you know, like, like thinking about the ways that I've been programmed to perform femininity, you know, what is authentic? Like, what is inherent? And this might sound like an impossible question, because we're just, you know, its nature and nurture. Right? Right. But I also don't believe any woman is like born wanting to have laser hair removal. Right, just doesn't make sense to me.
Jessica: Or, or get a Brazilian wax. You know? Like, no one wants to do that. No.
Isabella: No, but I hear this from women all the time. And I've had a similar experience. When I started to, like, grow out my body hair. It was very uncomfortable. And I was like, this is ugly. I hate it. I hate it. I'm ugly. I hate it. I hate it. And then it just shifted right? Or like, this is itchy, right? It's like, because you you haven't reached the full like length yet. You know, it's like, nobody likes stubby legs. Like it's uncomfortable, right? And it's like, no, I just don't like the sensation of hair. Is it a problem for you up here? Or like here? Like it's just you just don't like the sensation on here of hair in the places you've never experienced it, like it's new. Right? So this was like a big challenge for me to like shift over to that. Because yeah, I don't, have you ever, like chronically removed my body hair, because that's what women do. That's what women do. That's what the modern woman, Western woman does. For in the east, it's a it's not specific, just here. So, and it also makes sense to me that like, the more biological we are, the more in our bodies we are, the more willing we are to like take up space. And I've seen this like great side by side. So it's this, if you imagine like one picture of a woman with no makeup with her, you know, her full hairy armpits. And then another image of a woman in like a corset with impossibly tall heels with a full face of makeup, she's almost unrecognizable. And the captions are like, what one is the image of a woman created by a man. And the other one is just a woman in her uninterfered state. And we're told that like the woman with the hairy armpits is the manly one. But I love that, like the image of the woman created by a man and so, and it's a spectrum, like, I'm not saying that, you know, I do think there is a middle ground where I'm still navigating more like, do I want to wear eyeliner again? Like, is it? How do I make the distinction between performance or seeing my worth, like through the amount of makeup I wear and like adornment? Or like, okay, am I comfortable with non toxic makeup? Is that the issue? Is it the toxins? Is it the endocrine disruptor? Like, what is it? And like with a lot of these things, you know, it's like porn is, you know, taking advantage of our desire for like sexual connection and sexual arousal and attraction. It's like, the makeup like, it's not inherently wrong to, I don't believe to want to adorn yourself to attract a mate. I think that's a wonderful thing to consider. But when it starts to require mutilation, and it compromises your health, or affects your pelvic floor, showing me like the high heels, like we run in, we run into problems. So this is like a yeah, this is the tricky part of like, who am I doing this for? And what is the cost to my health?
Jessica: Yeah, and like, why? I know when I first recognized that I went for, I think I didn't wear makeup for like, three years, and I have been through similar questions like, why am I doing this before it was an utter performance? I didn't even want to see my own face. Like I felt afraid to go outside of the house without makeup on. Because I was always told that you don't you never leave the house without makeup. You know, like, I was so uncomfortable looking at my own face. And there was a point where I was like, why am I uncomfortable looking at my own face, how it is. And what being makeup free taught me for a couple of years was I actually really love my face, I want to see my face. And I want to enhance the things that I find beautiful about myself, not cover myself up. And I think that's what we see right now, like this whole society of women who just are so they don't want to see their own face. They don't want to see themselves. They're so disassociated that they want to just cover up the parts of themselves, that they feel ashamed to show and, you know, that can go in many different directions, our wrinkles, our lips, our boobs, whatever it might be like, it's just that is where we're at as a society.
Isabella: Yeah. And imagine like looking like your face is your family. Your face is your family. I love that, right? Like I interviewed this woman, Stella Parrot who is an illustrator in the UK. And she told me in the interview that that she had her jaw purposely broken. I don't know who the what kind of doctor would this crazy person did this. So she had a facial reconstructive surgery on her jaw to say that she did not look like her father's side of her family because she had trauma with her father, and she got her father's jaw. So this pain, like you know, you've got the, you know, just the cultural stuff that that we're being exposed to like media and Instagram influencers and the filters and all that. And then you've got the like, the history of that reminder every day of like what you've been through based on who you look like if it's, you know, if you have family trauma, that's an incredible point. It's like you don't want to really see yourself in the mirror.
Jessica: So I guess taking all of this I loved how you mentioned like IVF and surrogacy earlier and also just you know how we're messing with our face. And we are, we're moving in a direction, I guess. And kind of I think there's a lot of people that say, why does this matter? Who cares? Just let people do what they want to do. Who cares? Why does this really matter? Like it's not affecting you right? But what what did you say to that. I don't think we really know where I think we can kind of see a direction we're headed. I don't think we really realize or know where we're going to end up. But why does it matter? To close off this podcast? Like, why does the language matter? Why do we want to say breastfeeding instead of chest feeding, or a birthing woman, you know, instead of a birthing person or human, why does all of this matter so much?
Isabella: It matters if we want to, you know, retain the natural world and like, retain the integrity of our human bodies and flesh. Like if you believe that we are just random assorted parts that can be rearranged and cut off and put on and you're not really interested in like living a long, healthy, happy life and like communing with nature, then I could see why this like wouldn't matter to you at all. And if you don't mind being like touched by people, you don't want to be touched by, you know, like, it affects everyone like, gives, I'm going to do like the airport example, you know, and also just say that this issue affects women disproportionately. And it's sometimes difficult for men to understand why it's bad because they're not losing as much. They are losing like I'd say they're, they're, they're also affected by porn, and in the other way, so you've got the woman being used for porn, and then you've got the results of the man who's addicted to porn. And you know, but surely, one person is being trafficked legally, while the other is suffering from erectile dysfunction and mental health issues. Right. So we are already living in a transhumanist like nightmare. Like for me, surrogacy is devastating enough, it is devastating enough that we in the US, it's it's state by state, so surrogacy is not legal in every state, but we're getting there. The fact that it is legal to rent the inside of a woman's body for 10 months and control what she does or doesn't do, what she eats, who she sleeps with, where she goes kind of medication she does or doesn't take, that, to me is scary enough that we can can rent women and buy children. But one thing to note about, you know, the the gender stuff is just 1/10, the transgender stuff is just one tentacle of this anti life, anti nature, transhumanist takeover. And I, you know, I think that that the end goal, and that the transhumanists will say this, that the end goal is to completely just dismantle the boundaries between men and women, that that this binary is inherently oppressive, and that we have the truest freedom will have is to not have sex at all. But we see the result of this in like the kids who have bought into this ideology, and we see them have kidney damage, liver damage, they're their brains are stunted, they've been loaded up with drugs, they've lost parts of their bodies that will never be recovered. Some of them are permanently sterilized. So these ideas, and this abstraction, this postmodern, you know, thought experiment has a material consequence, which is the mutilation of flesh and body. And so the airport example that I'll just briefly mention, it's like, you know, one of our one of our, like, rights as women is to both our right as the person traveling in an airport, and the female TSA worker, is that we can only be paired with each other. If I request a pat down, I used to be legally entitled to a female TSA worker, just as the female TSA worker is entitled to only be paired with a woman, this used to be the case. Now, if you have a man with fake boobs, who's maybe been on estrogen for a year, or maybe not at all, and he comes in, he says, I'm a woman, I want a female attendant, he now is protected, because of the ideas in his head, right. And if I'm going as a traveler, and I request a female attendant, I can now be paired with a man whose birth name is Carl who's 6’2”, who has fake boobs, who insists that he's a woman and therefore can use the back of his hand to touch my groin and my breasts and the you know, my inner thigh. So that's like a practical example. And this is, I get messages from women. This has happened to like, this is not like a what if this is like been happening kind of thing? That yeah, for the parents listening. It's like, you know, when your kid goes, if you have your kid in school, and they're going on that seventh grade trip to DC, you know, does your daughter deserve to be in a hotel room with four other girls? Or is she going to be bullied or you as a parent going to be bullied into her having to share a bed with a 12 year old boy, also a very real thing happening. So hope that answers the hope that answers your question.
Jessica: I think I think for most listeners, it definitely will. You have given me and the listeners, so many things to think about. And I just love your perspective on things. For people that are interested in learning more about you, I know you have a lot of different masterclasses and goodies, but share where to find you and what you offer.
Isabella: So my website is whosebodyisit.com that is where you can find the master class library, where I invite experts in their in their realm to come teach classes. And so there's a lot of good content there. Like spanning the some of the stuff that we talked about today. You get instant access to the class, you have lifetime access. It's like a deep dive. It's like the feminist woman, pro women education you will not find in university. That's that's for sure. And I do one on one coaching and consulting that's also on my website. And then my podcasts can be found on all podcast platforms, YouTube, @whosebodyisit? And then I, but I spend the most time on Instagram. So yeah, if you want to chat or say hello, you can DM me on on Instagram.
Jessica: Amazing. And is there anything else you want to share with listeners? Isabella, I appreciate your time so much. It's been an honor having you.
Isabella: Oh just I just love this conversation. And I just thank you for the opportunity to keep spreading the word. And I would say it can get very it can get dark. But I think the antidote to all of this is like the work that you're doing, you know, embodiment, really reclaiming your health. And that is what I'm also trying to shift to it's like, Okay, now that we know everything is totally fucked. What are we going to do about it? Because it is it is exhausting. It is very draining to constantly talk about these like really, really heavy things. So it's like, once you have the information, they know what's next. So I would encourage, you know, the the women who are already in the same realm or industry of of embodiment, and female health, it's just like you're doing such important work. That's really important.
Jessica: Yes, and it's time to, to step forward. Well, we need influencers, I guess we need to be influenced by influencers, such as yourself. And that's what real influence leads to is empowerment. So we appreciate you and thank you so much for coming on.
Isabella: Thank you so much, Jessica.
Episode Links
Connect with Isabella:
Whose Body Is It - https://www.whosebodyisit.com
Whose Body Is It Podcasthttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/whose-body-is-it/id1597517757
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YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLbmq2oP9994A7aYJGw6_aw
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