Personal safety, the art of being authentic and botox denial: All on this week’s The Spill

Have you ever had one of those days that screamed for a wine and chats sesh with your girlfriends?  Enter Image.ie’s podcast, The Spill. 

The Spill is hosted by our very own self-proclaimed agony aunts Sophie White and Rhona McAuliffe.  With a mix of discussion on current affairs, arts and culture and some healthy advice to our listeners, it’s the best place to unwind and deliberate the issues affecting Irish women today.

This week’s episode starts off by discussing personal safety. Women have to deal with a near-constant sense of anxiety over their surroundings, and we all find different ways to deal with dangerous situations. Rhona is an advocate of the ‘be crazier than the crazies’ approach, having beaten previous creeps by stopping to pick her nose and scratch her crotch in the middle of the street. Sophie revisits some bad memories of being assaulted on the street, and ponders over how and why she felt paralysed by fear each time. As a woman, are you constantly vigilant of dangerous situations when you’re on your own? How have you dealt with feeling in danger?

This week, beloved Irish illustrator Aoife Dooley (author of ‘How To Be Massive’ & ‘How To Deal With Poxes’) released an emotional statement on her recent diagnosis of autism, and how it had brought clarity after many years of struggling with her identity. Both Sophie and Rhona praise Aoife’s bravery in telling her story, and go on to discuss authenticity and ‘being yourself’. Neither of our hosts feels that they are 100% themselves, but have had very different journeys to this point. Rhona felt that she was more unfiltered and unapologetic in her younger years, but with self-analysis and awareness, has moved away from that. Sophie puts forward that she’s still ‘growing into herself’. What do you think? Are we ever really 100% ourselves?

In this week’s Hit Me Up dilemma, Sophie and Rhona deal with a plea from Stop being A Fake in Waterford. This frustrated friend is convinced that her pal has had work done on her face but won’t admit it. The lie has led to our writer being concerned that, if her friend can’t be honest with her about this, what else can’t she be honest about? Should she press the issue? Or should she accept her friend’s privacy?