Dolly Alderton/Pandora Sykes

[maketheswitch]

I don’t believe that story. I think she didn’t want to be called something as normal as Hannah and Dolly works with her 1960s guitar girl fantasies.

 

[AdoraDelano]

Even her acknowledgement of the criticism comes across as snooty and privileged.

I do think it's shitty to directly send someone something criticising them though.

 

[smartgirl600]

Long time lurker here! I am really enjoying this thread and the discussion on class. I think that class is so under-discussed in the U.K, and Pandora running away from criticism instead of engaging with it just highlights that for me - it seems like it's something that people just aren't allowed to criticise or point out, and when they do, it's "unfair" and "cruel". Also just absolutely incredible that she chose to throw her toys out of the pram when hundreds of thousands of young people with A-Level results have had their lives ruined, literally (in a lot of cases) in factors that ultimately come down to their class.

I think the author of the Guardian piece has noticed this too -

 

[Hillcragg]

Is it just me or has anyone else found the premise of - and in fact everything that pandora has said about - her new book to be completely fucking irritating and hypocritical? she is in an article with porter which she has shared on social media. is she really that blind to the irony of saying something like:

Why don’t I have that holiday?’, and the answer is that’s never the way life has worked. But Instagram makes you think that everything is just within reach. It’s a huge pressure and it’s deeply, deeply cruel.”

And yet still posting really posey images of herself with her children in her gigantic house, or on holiday, or wearing really expensive clothes etc etc?

Or in saying something like 'there is no 'right' life, just be good enough' - isn't that a bit rich coming from someone who has - in the not so distant past - appeared in home magazines, gone on sponsored holidays, done paid partnerships with expensive designers, and frankly had a relatively easy ride career-wise. It's so condescending, and unhelpful. If she really is worried about the impact of social media on young women, about the pressure generally on women to look and be everything and amazing all of the time, why does she choose to continue presenting this curated image of herself on instagram, be featured in magazines like fucking Porter, or home and garden? With a following of at least 300k followers on instagram, how on earth is she not contributing to the very thing she is complaining about?!

I get that she can't 'help' being privileged, but I do think its her privilege which contributes to her tone-deafness and completely blinkered view.

 

[emm]

I agree! And I don't think this is particularly a particularly new discussion either, other than Chrissy Teigen's strikingly raw photos. Plenty of other celebrities have spoken about baby loss and difficult pregnancies.

This reminds me of a discussion on the podcast a few weeks ago. They were talking about some celebrity who had said she was "proud" of the fact she'd given birth "naturally", and how this might affect other women. I thought that Dolly was far more sensitive and thoughtful in the discussion - she recognised that "pride" might not be the right word to use, given that childbirth is not something that most women have any control over. I certainly couldn't have chosen to have a "natural" birth - I needed an emergency C-section - so does that mean I'm a "failure"? Obviously not, but framing natural birth as something to be "proud" of risks this connotation.

Pandora didn't seem to get this, at least not as much as Dolly. I thought that was striking, given that Pandora is the one with children.

Also: "I've found myself recently grateful" - terrible wording! And what is going on with that first paragraph: word salad!

I HATE this focus of a "natural" childbirth, there is no other medical procedure in which people would brag about not using painkillers, it is so bizarre

 

[Horatio]

So I listened to the new episode on a tedious tube journey across London I noticed something that’s a small but kind of disappointing in terms of how contrived it actually is.
The epsiode is all about motherhood and the choice women face to do it or not, society’s judgement etc When discussing a book about a group of friends who all make different decisions by Emma Gannon, Pandora ever so casually compares it to expectation’, another novel about female friendship they’ve discussed in the past. She raved about it back then, I found it terrible, as it goes. One of the key reasons I don’t have much respect for her taste or judgement.
But that’s not important, the comparison still made sense on this new episode. it felt like a very insignificant moment, something she just thought of then and nothing more was said about it. But I kept the podcast running past the outro, music , end credits etc (unusually for me,) because my hands were occupied at that moment. At the very end there’s a disclaimer that ’support from the high low comes from expectation and penguin random house.’ So ...mentioning the book was not something that just occurred to her at all - and the whole thing feels more contrived.

How many of the books and shows mentioned are paying their way in to the conversation ? How much did they structure or script it to make it relevant to bring up ?I know I shouldn’t be surprised but I guess I didn’t realise a single book could sponsor a podcast epsiode - and only require an off the cuff mention. Also it rubs me the wrong way that the epsiode starts with their gin sponsor but this one is hidden at the end where most wont hear it. A glimpse at how the sausage is made I guess, never nice.

 

[Lanavalentine]

This is exactly it! The assumption that people who work in average jobs don’t work as hard. I hear it a lot and it really winds me up.

Honestly, sorry to go on about my own experiences but my mum worked nights in a care home, then came home, got us to school, slept for two hours or so and went to work at lunchtime as a playground supervisor. Went home and cleaned as quick as she could, got us from school, fed us dinner, dad home from work around 8pm and then she went to work all night.

That, in my mind, was a total grind and very difficult on her. Not the same as unpaid internships. The stakes aren’t as high - it is a luxury to do the kind of hard work D&P are talking about, when it’s not about keeping a roof over your head or your bills paid but advancing your competitive career.

 

[queenamber]

She loves to remind people how short her maternity leave was but fails to acknowledge what a unique position she was in. She had a full-time nanny, a supportive partner, and was working from home which brings its own flexibility and probably had her child close by even when she was working. I've noticed whenever people challenge or question her she loves to get in that she has a "new baby" too.

 

[Lanavalentine]

Respect Pandora for being upfront about having a nanny - a lot of privileged women should follow her example, instead of hiding their hired help and making everyone else feel shit via social media.

However, I think this illustrates how she is not best placed to write the book. She only has experience of a certain kind of lifestyle. Her trying to sympathise and pretend we’re all in the same boat is, at times, a bit disingenuous.

I don’t want to go into too many details about myself, but I will say I grew up in a working class family with financial difficulties and through immense luck and good choices, my life is very different now. I am not quite Pandora levels of rich but I’m probably not far off either. I have friends now who come from similar backgrounds to D&P, and although I love them, sometimes I inwardly cringe at their inability to realise their privilege, and that their experiences just aren’t universal. They are very much in a bubble. To be fair, I’m in a bubble too now, but I will never forget what it was like to grow up in a freezing cold house because we couldn’t afford to put the heating on, and this often shows up in my attitude to life vs my privately educated friends.

I don’t mean to say that nobody can write about something they haven’t experienced, or that only people who’ve lived through hardship are worth listening to. It’s more that I notice this implicit idea that their lifestyles are the norm and therefore they are just the authority on every aspect of the female experience. It’s only true if you’re a middle class, white, straight woman though, and even then, both D & P have a very limited approach to the topics they talk about. It’s all very myopic.

 

[Gflo93]

I can’t believe there is a thread on these two that I totally missed. I have to say that like many of you I do like Dolly, but I find Pandora a bit grating (and her writing atrocious).

I stopped listening to their podcast because I found they were starting to sound too preachy and it was turning all a bit pseudo intellectual. They were overthinking everything they discussed to the point that the joy was totally sucked out of it... fun tv shows were suddenly ruined and overanalysed. I feel like they try and sound intelligent but it’s so surface level, like first year university students. Plus on almost every show I heard something I knew to be factually inaccurate which got on my nerves.

Anyway I thought I would give this one another go after I saw they were ending it, and I don’t know if anyone else cracked up when they played May it Be and one of them was like... I could see this in a film. I mean it is literally the theme tune to the little known ... Lord of the Rings. I truly don’t think they google/fact check half the stuff they chat about.

 

[Old fart]

I met them both at an event when they both still worked at the Sunday Times. Dolly kept running outside to smoke every five minutes and Pandora didn’t speak to anyone, stood with her arms folded for most of the event.

the nastiness that Pandora tweeted about was around this tweet

Also, as intelligent as they both are I think they are completely blinded by their privilege and are in that little circle jerk of white millennial women in the media who all appear on each other’s podcasts, blurb each other’s books and probably spend more time artfully arranging Instagram shots than engaging with social justice. And people need to stop talking about Dolly and Nora Ephron in the same sentence. At least Nora had *lived* a life before she wrote about it

 

[LaurenRM]

She brought up in an interview that she had her nanny continue during lockdown, which is just horrible. For someone who considers herself such a feminist, to not put one’s childcare on furlough during this time feels insincere and thoughtless. If you want to support other women and be an intersectional feminist, you need to start in your own home. Especially when her and her husband were working from home, it feels so awful and selfish to put your childcare at risk.

 

[TriviaNewtonJohn]

Have just seen this on Twitter. It's a really good reply in my opinion.

 

[Love_hate_small_town]

She really excelled at fashion, interiors and travel. Maybe she tried to pivot when she had children to content she felt had more longevity?

I agree. I think the Instagram cleanup was probably something that was recommended to her rather than something she chose to do herself. Either way it’s a bit whiffy.

When I first started listening I realised they were both pretty well off but I thought it was in a - one bracket above the poshest person I know - kind of way not in a Pandora’s epic London home way. The reason I thought this was because they say things like - I make it a financial priority to XYZ. Or when Dolly mentions having difficulty paying rent (not sure if this was podcast or book). There is such a difference between not being able to pay the rent because you’ve spaffed all your money in the soho club (but it’s okay because ultimately someone will bail you out) to not being able to pay rent because you’ve had an unexpected expense like your car breaking down and your monthly budget has no room for such things and it is too effing shameful to ask anyone for help because you’ve always been the poor one.

I like so much of what they do. And they are so so far ahead of others in promoting diverse work and I genuinely applaud them for making room on their platform but it shits me that publishers hand out book deals purely on media status and audience. That is taking up room that could’ve gone to a BAME/ LBTGQ / any other than classic white rich girl who works in the media. It’s so lazy on behalf of the publisher.

 

[Old fart]

When someone takes a performative social media break I always return to that old mantra: “this isn’t an airport, no need to announce your departure”

 

[Kirstyy]

I really like Dolly and Pandora and find quite a lot of this criticism unfounded. They are privileged and have both acknowledged this on a number of occasions. Beyond that what does it matter? I’d understand the annoyance if they denied it but they don’t and never have done?

The person who mentioned the posh name thing made me laugh. Hannah is Dolly’s real name and couldn’t be more run of the mill for someone born late 80s/early 90s and since when was having a nickname posh? Also the only other famous “Dolly” - Dolly Parton was dirt poor growing up so it’s a completely daft comment.

I like the book chat (that’s unashamedly a huge part of the podcast) and think the use of long intellectual words is inevitable for well read writers?

They’re both quick witted and talented writers and The High Low is what it says on the tin- it’s about books and news stories and happens to be hosted by two privately educated women. So what?

 

[Love_hate_small_town]

Pandora cannot take any type of criticism, constructive or not. I stopped following her on Twitter a while ago after she kept moaning whenever someone gave a slightly negative review to the High Low. She’d have an outburst of ranting tweets so the likes of India Knight could soothe her bruised ego by telling her how amazing she is. I’m not surprised she’s reacted like this over one less than glowing review.

Was going to same the exact same.

She has a real problem with criticism. She plays it extremely safe. She’s made a point of saying she only talks about books she likes, she has stopped having an opinion and stated that she thinks it’s fine to sit on the fence which obviously it is while you consider your view but ffs don’t have a podcast then. Refusing to offer any constructive criticism about other books is a way to protect herself from criticism - look how mean everyone is when I never say anything mean and am nothing but supporting of ALL groups in society, poor me - and her circle leap to her defence. I notice that the bloke who gave her a cover quote (the worst one, calling her a leading thinker of her generation or some other ) readily springs into action when anyone is critical on Twitter.

If you’re going to write a book of essays and get well paid for it you should be confident enough to defend your ideas or accept that they need more work. Don’t hide behind your publicist who doesn’t know the meaning of the term ‘kill piece’. Suppressing any criticism is so anti being a leading thinker of a generation

Also notice that she has Stacey Dooley on her podcast. They must be under same management or something as Stacey is fast become part of the gang. She has her own problems with criticism (see comic relief BS where she could t see what the problem was with the white saviour pic).

 

[Lanavalentine]

I like them both... their podcast keeps me entertained.
I can’t see too much how they are posh / privileged but I am not From England so I think it may be one of these nuances as A foreigner you struggle to understand

That’s really interesting. Do you mind telling us where you are from?

I can see how the small signifiers of their class/background like their accents and even their names (not many working class or lower middle class women called Dolly or Pandora around!) might pass a foreigner by. I can also see how they fit into the stereotypical mould of how English people are portrayed internationally in the media, which is generally very far off the mark of an average Brit.

There are also the more obvious clues about their wealthy backgrounds - where they’re from (London suburbs), both privately educated (Pandora went to boarding school), they were both able to afford to undertake unpaid internships when they were starting out. It’s all very obvious to someone from the UK, so it’s interesting to read an international perspective!

 

[cedarpeach]

Privilege runs so deep and is about more than money (though money is at the root of it, of course). Does anyone read Satnam Sanghera in The Times? He’s a writer from Wolverhampton who went on to Oxbridge. He’s a son on working class immigrant parents and writes well about the class divide.

He once wrote about how working class kids are fish out of water when they reach the corporate or professional worlds. Privileged kids know “the rules” from day one and are primed to expect positions of power. That kind of confidence counts for a lot. As someone who also grew up poor in the midlands my parents taught me zero about the “real” world because they’d never stepped foot in an office or professional/corporate setting. I was absolutely lost for years as I tried to make sense of the world of work.

I’m now “successful” (hate that word) in a traditional sense as I have risen to a senior corporate role. I am still shocked at what a huge role connections, schooling and networks play. the amount of people that are hires because they know someone high-up, or because they’re a friend of a friend or a peer is shocking. Meritocracy is such a laughably naive idea.

finally, as for Panda’s expensive house, I used to know a guy whose dad ran a plumbing company. The company was so successful that the family have been on the times rich list every year for well over a decade. The guy I used to know lived with his partner and newborn in a variety of his parents houses across the cotswolds and major cities in the uk. When he decided it was time to buy his own house his dad quadrupled the deposit he had saved (from his job as CEO of his dads company.....) and he now lives in country pile in Somerset complete with cinema, gym, pool etc. alright for some!

 

[l0vecat]

Think a few people mentioned they wanted to read this from Private Eye just found a pic of it on my phone so sorry for the poor quality!