Busy Philipps new show, Girls5Eva, is currently streaming on Peacock. I totally forgot about this show, I actually wanted to check it out. I’m going to end up downloading all these stupid streaming stations, aren’t I? Anyway, I’ll post the trailer at the bottom. It looks cute. Ashley Park is also in it, but I only caught a glimpse of her in the trailer. I know she’s wrapped up in Emily in Paris, though. To promote the show, Busy gave an interview to Health. It’s a good interview in that there was a lot I hadn’t heard from Busy before, which isn’t always the case. Like the fact that Girls5Eva is the prefect project for Busy because it involves mostly women. According to Busy, she’s done working with men, like, 4eva.
On never working with men again: I don’t ever f—ing want to work with men, like, ever. I just don’t. I spent so many years of my life doing it and so, yeah, no. I’m at a point where I’m like, “The less men, the better.” Yeah. I mean, part of the appeal was obviously taking a look at just what the show was going to be and knowing I was mostly going to be working with women.
On well-being: It changes—like everything, it’s fluid. As a woman in this country, in this world, in this time, we all have a lot of responsibilities. I do think that the idea of securing your life mask before helping others is important. The other thing is, make sure you have your s— figured out and that you are being kind to yourself. For me, that’s one of the harder things. I can be really hard on myself. Something I have been working on is thinking about the way I talk about my family and friends and then trying to be that kind and gentle on myself, too. It’s not easy, you know? Expectations to take care of other people are put on girls from a very young age—I should say girls or femme-presenting kids. That’s what Birdie is, femme-presenting nonbinary.
On people understanding Birdie’s pronouns: My mom is older and wants to understand the pronoun conversation more. There are some really good books out there—like What’s Your Pronoun? Beyond He & She by Dennis Baron. I said to my mother, “Here’s the deal: You don’t have to understand it.” That’s how I feel about all human rights—you don’t have to understand it. You can choose to believe what you want, but you don’t get to have jurisdiction over anyone else’s body or belief system.
On parenting: I think the secret with kids is leading by example. I make a concerted effort to be aware of how I talk about diet and exercise around them—like, what my intention and goals are with those things. I’m also lucky that I have a partner in Marc, who does cycling and works out for his own mental health. We talk about therapy in our house and never shy away from hard conversations. I’ve always been open—but not in that “I’m not a regular mom; I’m a cool mom” way. I don’t want to be my kids’ best friend. I want them to know by watching me what my values are and the things that are important. You can tell your kids to stand up for what’s right until you’re blue in the face. If they don’t see you doing it, they never will.
I didn’t edit out anything in which Busy further detailed why she doesn’t want to work with men. The answer above is all she said on the matter. Clearly, she feels strongly about it, but it also sounds like there’s a story there. Maybe there’s an answer in the show itself. Or maybe it’s as simple as Busy has spent the majority of her career with male-heavy cast and crews. Fortunately, it’s Busy, so we will probably get a follow up on this. And she also retired from acting when her pilot with Casey Wilson didn’t get picked up in 2017, so we also know there’s some wiggle room there.
I like most of what she said in the interview. I, too, am trying to treat myself as kind as I think others deserve. It’s hard to remember to do that. And I have never sought to be friends with my kids, also preferring to keep the discussion honest, even if it’s difficult. I am chewing on Busy’s comments about not having to understand human rights to treat people with respect. I love Busy’s last sentence, “you don’t get to have jurisdiction over anyone else’s body or belief system.” And I used to feel like she did, that a person doesn’t have to understand something, just keep their mouth shut. But I’m changing my mind on how much understanding is necessary for true change to come about. I’m not criticizing her answer, just wrestling with it a bit.
Here’s the trailer for Girls5Eva.
Photo credit: Instagram and YouTube
I don’t need her to explain though. I feel that statement. Men take over everything. They talk over you, they take up all the space. They just take over. I’m over it too. I like them as friends and romantic interests, but have zero desire to work with them again.
I feel it too. I’ve been working on a committee made of all women at my job recently and it’s been soooo refreshing. I feel like I can relax in those meetings. I don’t have to constantly assert myself to be seen and heard.
Honestly I’m over them as romantic interests too, same bs as the workplace lmao
Damn, I must be in the minority here. Don’t get me wrong, I have dealt with my fair share of asshole men, but there are quite a few men in my personal and work life that are amazing human beings. Because I have been so fortunate I would never dismiss working with men. Then again, my experiences are not everyone’s.
I wish I had as good experiences with women as others seem to have. My last roommate I had to make the decision no more female roommates for me. I wanted a good experience for once so I had to change things up and it’s made all the difference
I, unfortunately, work in a male dominated corporate environment. I only work with men because I have to. In my personal life, I don’t care to be friends with men anymore. I have a partner I love, but I’m sick of living in world dominated by men and will take the chance to be in primarily femme environments every chance I get.
I completely, utterly get her statement. My current job industry is completely male dominated, and so it was mind blowing to find a company that does niche work in the industry, that was primarily women, with a woman owner, president, and vice president. We were female dominated for a long, long time, and now that our company has been growing, more men have come in. Some of our meetings have become very disheartening, especially with the newest male hire, who just steamrolls over all of us women. I’m hoping he settles down some, but it’s disappointing to have that come into our little company.
I’m also completely over any romantic interest in men at the moment, to which my BFF spends half her time fretting about and trying to change my mind and the other half telling me how smart I am. Maybe someday I’ll feel the urge again, but for now, I am happy (and whole) being single. I am enough for myself.
I kind of have the same philosophy about not always needing to understand. Like I’m cisgender and no matter how much I listen or try to understand how it feels to know you are a different gender than the sex you were assigned at birth I know I’ll never really understand what that feels like. But I accept and believe people who do have that experience. I think there are just some things you can’t fully understand if you don’t experience it, but that doesn’t mean you don’t respect that other people do experience it. I hope what I was trying to say came across right.
My personal experience/philosophy is: Say it once, say it clearly, then let it go. If someone is truly open and interested in discussion, that’s great. But if they aren’t, I don’t need to put energy into changing them.
Vizia, that philosophy intrigues me. I hadn’t heard that before. I’m going to think about that and see how that can apply to my situation. Always learn something from this site…
Me, too. There are a lot of things my kids and their friends do, say, and are that I don’t really get, and that’s fine with me. I just try to meet them where they are. I try to educate myself a bit, but I’m not interested in becoming an expert on everything. I trust that they’ve got this.
Me too. I don’t understand how it feels to know you’re a different gender than the body you’re living in, but when somebody tells their experience of being transgender, I can still choose to believe them, even if I can’t fully empathize.
I’ve had some really bad experiences of men (criminal level, sent to jail level) in the workplace and I’ve also had a few quite good experiences. Right now I work in a building 95% women, and our director is a woman, and it’s great — except I don’t like my immediate boss! But everyone else is so nice and easy to work with.
That’s great. I will say that I have been stabbed in the back by women as well as men and abused in relationships as well, friendship and love. But I do understand since at age 16 I decided that women’s college was the only option for me, to get away from boys who were doing everything they could to bully and torment me and getting in the way of my education. The bullying hasn’t stopped but it just takes a different form in corporate or institutional environments. I just struggle because of the abuse I’ve experienced at the hands of women so I don’t ever have a rosy view of what an all-women environment might be, though I did have a wonderful experience of this earlier on in my young adult years. All of this said, I agree with everything Busy mentions. Kudos to her.
Given all the horrible abusive male stories that have come out of Hollywood i don’t think Busy needs to explain a thing. If i was in an industry that sheltered Weinstein, Woody Allen and Cosby I’d probably feel the same as her.
She’s absolutely right about parenting and not
Just one parent but both. They say children stop listening to their parents when they become teenagers, simply not true. Kids still
model their parents’ behavior. When I was 17, I remember having a list of pros and cons. Of course never dating a married guy etc was on there. A few years later, my brother and I found out the great guy my mom was seeing for years was a married man. Fast forward a few years later and I “relaxed” my cons and ended up dating a married man. Found out only a few months ago, my brother is in an emotional rollercoaster with a woman who is married. All of us caught with the “I’m leaving my partner, my marriage sucks etc.” My mother did eventually leave after 10 years but subconsciously being in it for so many years made us understanding and accepting to this crappy situation. Despite all the good everything else done for us, this took many years away from our lives. I’m not blaming my mom just noting her example took hold. We made a choice of course, but it should have never been entertained and believed we would have been less vulnerable had she not done it. My dad was a smoker but my mother wasn’t. None of us became smokers..:: so it’s not all bad just because.
Just started the show last night—highly recommend! Paula Pell, is of course, the absolute best. I was surprised by Sara Bareilles— didn’t know much about her but she’s actually great in the snow.
I’ve always been a fan of her music, and saw her in Waitress on Broadway – she’s great! I love that she’s now in a show. I haven’t had a chance to watch but it’s definitely on my list.
I was having this 1:1 with my line manager, who is not actually involved in anything I do but wants to support me since he happens to be my line manager in the hierarchy.
As he was talking in quite a patronising manner I couldn’t help thinking: “You’re white maling me, I’m just so over it..”
I’m over how so many men believe they have this natural and evident superiority over women.
I completely understand Busy here.
Me too, I am over the whole thing. I worked for years in a male-dominated industry and you couldn’t pay me to go back (for many reasons, but all the d!cks, literal and figurative, is the biggest one.) I’m sick of them not understanding their privilege, looking at women as weak, or dumb, or less-than. I’m sick of them minimizing harassment, dominating conversations, and refusing to listen to the experiences of non-white-males. It’s gross and exhausting.
@Mirage — I wish you patience, strength, luck and safety in dealing with this bullsh*t.
For me, the next stage of that interaction is some form of: “Why aren’t you more grateful for me going out of my way to do these things for you? I made a big effort to do these things that you never wanted and definitely didn’t ever ask for.”
Ugh. All Goodness and Grace to you, Mirage!
Girls5Eva is great! Highly recommend — it’s a fun binge.
personally, some of my best champions at work have been men, and some of my worst experiences have been w women — inc one woman I now think was prob a sociopath, really really toxic. So altho I think gender clearly matters, a lot, and men are def given so many privileges in so many ways that I’ve finally become aware of and have learned to ask for on my own behalf, and for others. I also think it’s important to seek out good guys and avoid awful women, to not be fooled by just gender alone either way… Actually, fueling gender conflicts can be used as a divide and conquer kind of strategy by people at the top…
Everything you say, so true. The “all men suck” trope is dangerous and unrealistic.
“Dangerous?” LOL okay. Men have institutional power, you don’t have to cape for them.
As a woman, I agree. I think when a man is awful we generalize and say all men are awful. However, when a woman is awful, we think only that individual is awful. Working in the criminal courts with both male and female attorneys, I see the awfulness pretty evenly split, that includes opposing counsel, the judges and clients.
My current supervising attorney is a wonderful man. My favorite judge is a man because he is compassionate, understand, and listens to each defendant that he comes across. Yet, there is a female judge that is VERY lenient with female defendants but down right cruel to male defendants.
Basically, lets not generalize. These are merely MY experiences and you all have yours. But just as my experiences are not the rule, neither is everyone else’s. It is a big world, with lots of difference people that don’t deserve to be pre-judged.
@teecee is right. The factor that cannot be dismissed here is *institutional power*. White men and women have the systemic racial power. That’s the truth. Everything they do and say and know comes from this and from being raised in a society that systemically promotes this and gives them every advantage. It’s not about an individual thing; this is the *system*. Institutionalized white male supremacy. So yes, they do act like this. Ask any Black woman who has married a white man about the *work* she has to do to get him to learn and unlearn, even when he may be relatively (or so he thinks) “woke”. This is not a game. BIPOC people and Black folks in particular are being murdered because of this. So no, it’s not a generalization. It’s a reality.
@Anna- Completely agree. It’s missing the mark when people get into the spat of My Experience vs Yours. The point is the macro level, not each individual’s stories. The system should be the focus & the patterns that are happening in our society, which then effect each person’s individual experience, not the random happenstance of each person’s life. This line of thinking takes practice for people to get out of their own head, feelings, shoes & try to see the bigger picture that it’s not All About Them. That seems to be very difficult to do, or even be willing to do, for people in our society who are ingrained to be so wrapped up in their own egos.
Your personal experience does not refute the truckloads of research-backed studies on this subject.
The way pickmes are so quick to shout #notallmen will never cease to surprise me.
Lmao at this academic intrusion. As if “All Men Bad” and not holding women accountable for anything because “feminism” has really gotten us anywhere.
Lol at “academic intrusion”! Is this the new buzzword for the backlash against data, studies & societies in favor of your one ego’s experience, story & opinion?
Feminism is not a tool to “hold women accountable”, but I have no doubt you try.
Feminism definition: the advocacy of women’s rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes.
Maybe we need “not all men” because toxic, terminal attention seekers like the horrific Busy Philips are loudly proclaiming they never want to work with ANY men again.
It’s divisive and pathetic and has helped to give feminism the worst possible name, the roots of which essentially mean equality. People like her are pedalling the “men suck, women are better” and make rational and logical women very reticent to any longer refer to themselves as such.
I would imagine after the cringe-inducing and childish tantrum she threw when her chat show was cancelled, all men will be breathing a heavy sigh of relief that they never have to work with her either.
Also, if anyone has ever seen Busy’s deranged screaming rant at a pro-choice rally which basically translated to” I WOULDN’T HAVE MY GREAT CAR IF I HADN’T HAD AN ABORTION” , they’d think twice about endorsing anything she said at all. She’s crazy.
And I am saying this as a very much pro-choice woman.
Ps. Every time I’ve been screwed over and betrayed at work, it’s been by women.
Men have been much easier to get along with.
Using feminism as a weapon isn’t going to work. When people use the all men crap, they lose any argument because there is no balance and it all sounds irrational.
@MM2- Makes no sense to talk about equality and then support the idea of all men suck. But keep furthering your own agenda.
It’s not really an either/or thing. Both sexes can do serious harm and should be held accountable for how they treat people. We do need to be able to look at the role institutional power plays, and allow women (and people in general) to talk about these these without shouting Not All Men every time though. This idea that we already got to some dangerous All Men Bad/All Womyn Innocent dystopia requires some reaching at best.
What’s interesting about Pickme’s though is that some SAY they want women to be held accountable, but they don’t like it when that actually happens with women who have treated people cruelly and unequally in the same ways they, personally, have always been encouraged to. They don’t even want people being specific about what kind of harm is being done and will cry free speech 4 woman, cancel culture, At Least The Right/Center Doesn’t Try to Censor ME1!, yadda yadda yadda.
I’ve had 2 bad experiences with women at work – one was a “born again Christian” who was so mean and bigoted (shocker) and the other I think was borderline sociopath – I’ve never dealt with anyone so utterly lacking in empathy and so self centered and greedy.
My boss is a male, and awesome. I’ve worked here 20 years for a reason. Most of my male coworkers have been great. My current female coworkers are awesome.
That said, my industry is very white male dominated, there’s a lot (a LOT) of sexism and racism and gatekeeping, starting in university and all the way through. So while my personal experience has been mixed, overall it heavily favors white males. And I’d guess it’s pretty hard to find an industry that DOESN’T do that.
btw to the above thread, all kinds of things can be true at once, inc an abusive patriarchy and awful individual men and awful individual women and the reverse… I was just sharing that I’ve been fooled a few times into trusting people I shouldn’t have because they were women and they presented themselves as allies. I think the same can be true of all kinds of situations where someone gains your trust for surface reasons. That’s all, meant just as a heads up after a few stumbles here…
cosign!
My personal experiences have been the same. Men colleagues and managers who elevated me, on the whole, and several extremely vicious female bullies. My all female workplaces with these bullying, mean girl women were so toxic and debilitating I personally am extremely wary about an all female work environment. But I guess we all need to do what’s right and healthy for us.
Maybe you should seek out good women and avoid awful guys.
“I also think it’s important to seek out good guys and avoid awful women, to not be fooled by just gender alone either way.”
I agree with her about men. I work with predominantly females, I only have one close male friend, and otherwise don’t interact with men anymore. I’m in my 50s and I’m done with the misogyny and lack of compassion evidenced by a large swatch of American males.
After working for men most of my career, I am finally in a team with all women and I love it! I’m with Busy on this one. Being a working mom during this pandemic was extremely challenging, and I don’t think a male boss would’ve been as accommodating and empathetic. I don’t have the luxury to say no more men in my workplace like Busy does, but I would if i could!
This is so timely! I watched 4 of these last night and laughed alot. I really like her
funny thing- I was just thinking today how fucking exhausted I am from always,always being the only woman on a construction site. Like most of the time I don’t notice it but then some times the exhaustion just hits me and I realize how much it actually weighs on me. God how I would love to work with an all-fmale construction crew. i don’t see it happening in my future though. At least I don’t have to worry about my period and leaking and using the construction site port-a potty any more- menopause perx! one less thing to be anxious about.
Eh, just be careful there, Busy. I’ve met plenty of extraordinarily toxic women, too, many of whom have internalized misogyny and sexism they love to throw around. I’m less patient with “men” as a social class than I am “men” as individuals. We’re not doing ourselves any favors feeding into gender roles by pretending we’re so very different.
I have worked with toxic people of all genders. Toxic is toxic. One woman boss LOVED broken men, because she could despise and control them, and threatened dominated and bullied her female coworkers and underlings. The job was a misery where I was gaslighted into believing I could never get a straight job because I was so emotionally damaged. I had no idea how messed up it was until I got out. My current job is 95% woman, and our boss has set up an environment of non competitive nurturing collaboration. It’s a miracle. The boss sets the tone of a workplace in tangible and intangible ways.
I didn’t qualify that my current boss is also a woman!
Face palm. People forgetting how basic biology and procreation works. Let’s think proactively about how we can work with men instead of pretending they don’t exist.
“Face palm. People forgetting how basic biology and procreation works.”
What does procreation have to do with work settings?
And what about for people who aren’t going to be procreating … what do they care?
I actually prefer working with men. They get my sarcasm and dry humor better than women do. It does sound like there’s more to her story than just working with too many men.
I’ve experienced garbage from both women and men. I’ve had a few snaky, vindictive female roommates and almost entirely harmonious experiences with male roommates. I’ve never had a woman sexually harass me, but aside from that, in the workplace: I’ve had a few blatantly steal ideas from me, refuse to give proper credit to those who did the hard work or helped them, make ageist comments (at different times I’ve been deemed both too young and too old to do my job, despite high performance and promotions), behave unprofessionally and withhold supporting me or other teammates.
Many people are so selfish and insecure that they’ll throw anyone else under the bus to keep themselves looking shiny, and I think some see people of the same gender presentation as more direct competition. So I’ve felt targeted by other women, just as I’ve felt targeted by some men. Wouldn’t we all love to never work with assholes again, regardless of gender? But the reality is, they can’t be entirely avoided. There are just too many out there. All you can do is call out injustice, maintain (reasonable) boundaries and keep trying to be a decent person yourself.
I had no idea that being a rich, conventionally attractive, white woman in America was so hard.
Until she realizes that a different opinion will get her more attention and a new magazine cover down the road, at least..,
Sure, I’ve worked with a few awful women and a few awful men in tech. But the men held the power and there were a lot more of them. Most of them were white and they preferred to hire white men. And mentor white men. So it was a constant battle for anybody else to get into the lineup and advance past the entry levels. That is exhausting.
The glass ceiling is real. You don’t have to advance many levels to find yourself the only woman in the room at meetings. Trying to break through can drive you crazy. And maybe you’re not so sweet at work.
So it’s not as easy as saying there are good men and bad men, good women and bad women. If you want to get ahead, then you have to get along with men. That’s just harder if you’re female.
CORRECT!
Absolutely right. I also know a lot of “good” men who are truly nice people that want support women, and even those men exhibit some of the subtler behaviors that negatively impact women in the workplace. They mean well but everyday sexism is just too deeply engrained and they haven’t done the necessary work yet to recognize it.
That’s really a stupid statement. It’s too extreme.