In this informal, podcast‑style conversation, Matthew AI and Steve (with occasional interjections from a third speaker) use the Netflix series Sex Life as a springboard to explore how media—TV shows, teen magazines, and social platforms like Instagram—shape body‑image insecurities for both men and women. They recount a specific scene from Sex Life featuring an exaggeratedly large male genital, discuss a 1990s FHM interview with the lead singer of the UK garage band Mystique about whether penis size matters, and reflect on how such messages embed lasting anxieties about size, height, and appearance. The hosts also joke about personal height discrepancies on dating apps, compare Instagram’s filtered bodies to comic‑book fantasy, and critique the way both sexes are pressured by unrealistic standards. Throughout, humor and pop‑culture references are used to highlight the persistence of these insecurities and to suggest a more detached, “comic‑book” perspective on modern beauty ideals.
Chapters
[Pting] have you seen the series Sex Life yet on Netflix?
Sex Life, it's called?
It's called Sex Life, yes.
No, I haven't seen it.
Unlike this podcast, it's called Love Life. This show is Sex Life. There's a, I was at a party the other night. It was for my friend Ryan. He's having a little birthday party and there were a group of women who were talking about the show Sex Life, which I have seen. on Netflix. I haven't actually watched it from the trailers. And I'm just speaking about the trailers is about a woman who's in a marriage where she's got. They've got a kid. He sort of comes home, gives her a, you know, a quick, casual kiss on the cheek, and then, you know, gives lots of his attention to the kid instead, and then says, you know, I'll see you later. I'm gonna go and watch the game. Meanwhile, she's got an ex that she's. Again, I'm just reading from the description on YouTube now, Steve. She's. She's got a sort of. They didn't say sordid. They said sort of a. She has, like, a interesting sexual past. They didn't use the. The adjective interesting. They used something else that was a bit saucier. I can't remember what it was, but basically it was. The insinuation is she's had a mad old time with her ex. who's British, I think. And figures, you know.
Right.
And she's had a pretty wild sex life with him, but now she's in this stale old marriage. There's a renowned scene now that they were talking about where the guy's in the shower and he's just got an enormous penis, which I was surprised they showed, which I suppose shows the inherent sexism in movies and TV. But I'm surprised. who do you think, Steve?
Right.
Do you think it was the boring husband?
No, it's old Big Ben, isn't it?
Right. Very good. So they've played, you know, so they've added to this fantasy, this.
This.
This pornography is essentially what it is, right? It's pornography of the Mind, actually, I suppose one at the point at which you're just showing an enormous penis in the shower, it might be. starting to cross over into just pornography. Well, no, see, there's the inherent sexism again, because we see women's parts on TV and movies all the time, don't we? Anyway, I heard this, and there was guys at the party. It was quite funny, because there was a guy at the party who was like, I immediately went, this is no joke. The guy said, I immediately went and googled that actor's shoe size. He goes, because I wanted to know if it was real. Firstly, as if like there just always is a car, like you know for sure from someone's feet size what it is. And if he was like a size seven, he'd have gone, oh, phew. Like, thank God.
And that Google has accurate feet sizes for all actors is suspicious as well.
Right, yeah. We can't even trust Wikipedia on my height. Wikipedia had my height wrong for years. They're not exactly going to get my shoe size right.
Yeah, you're 5'3.
According to Wikipedia, I was 5'7 for years. And I'm not everyone. All right. I'm 5'11. I could say 6'0, but I'm an honest man.
Yeah, that is honest.
I always thought, Steve, I thought it would be good for someone on a dating app if you were 5'11 as a man and if I was a man, which I am, and I was on a dating app. If you put, you know, 5'11 and then somewhere on the thing, you could put, you know, why you should date me. Well, you know, I'm honest because I said I was 5'11.
That's good. That was good.
It's good, isn't it?
If I was 5'11, I'd use that.
Wow. What a little dig.
That is not a dig.
What a dig. So here's my dilemma. Do I have to watch this show so that we can make a video on it?
Sorry, okay. Do we have to watch this show? What were the women saying about the fact that were they like, oh, British man is so hunky, you'd want to go and have a romp with your ex? Or were they, it sounds like they were on the side of fidelity and commitment.
One of them was a bit annoyed that she hadn't just had more of a conversation with her husband. first, but that wouldn't have, that wouldn't have really played to the fantasy, I suppose, is months of, months of couples therapy, trying to work it out, talking about the feelings you've been having.
This thing sounds as well, very Provo, very designed to provoke the sort of angry male Community who feel like, you know, they're always writing these sort of hate articles that, like, women are unfaith, only as faithful as their options and, oh, there's some, like, Sexy guy and as soon as he shows up, as soon as he's higher value and has a big old boy down there, then she's off.
So, Steve, I always remember, it's funny how you look at things and you go, this is, oh God, not to get too philosophical or sound too old, but it's like there's so much of what we read and see creates insecurities. Do you know what I mean? It might be in the value of entertainment. It might be in the way of an article. I remember when I was a kid, I was like 11 years old, just sort of nearing that age where you started to worry about things. One of them, your penis size. And I remember the day I started worrying about penis size.
Really?
I was reading yeah, I remember it. I was reading an article in fhm. Do you remember there was that band, that girl band Mystique?
Yeah.
It was a.
In.
In the UK, they were an old garage band.
Yeah.
And for those of you that don't know, in the UK, there was a garage. Garage was like two-step it. It was kind of a sort of sped up something between hip-hop and drum and bass on the register, and I used to DJ that. sound a lot. And I, Mystique was like one of the commercial garage bands. And there was the main woman from Mystique. She was really beautiful. And I used to fancy her quite a lot. And I just remember a cop. I was reading FH M, which, you know, I was too young to be reading FH M. It was the 90s.
It was the 90s Lads Mag era, the 90s early 2000 Lads Mags. And that was sort of one of the, one of the sort of cleaner ones, but Saucy, a little bit Saucy.
But you could still read some sauce in there as a kid.
Yeah, yeah. They had sex.
Yeah, exactly. Like, yeah. Which every 11 year old needs, obviously. But, though, you know, I went there for my. I went there for my source, and I. There was a little article with her. It was just like an interview with the lead singer of Mystique, and they asked her, like, does penis size matter?
Right?
Now, this is a moment where she's gonna leave an imprint on me. I think she's gorgeous. I fancy her a lot. You know, I DJ her music. What's she gonna say? This is the ultimate verdict. And she goes, by the way, I can't remember her name, but apology if she's a listener of this podcast. which, Steve, I'll tell you this is more than possible these days because Rebel Wilson put out a story this morning about how she loved our last podcast together.
Shout out to Rebel.
She absolutely loved it. Yeah, we should. You should get Rebel on here, Steve.
That'd be brilliant.
I got. She's a listener. So, Rebel, if you're listening to this, this is me putting public pressure on you, friend. to come join us. So, you know, it's possible that the lead singer from Mystique is listening to this, but it did have an impact, 'cause here's what she said. She said, well, if it's not big enough, I literally remember the words of this, Steve.
It was a great piece. It was a great piece.
She said, if it's not big enough, how are you ever gonna reach those, how are you ever gonna get to those hard to reach places? She made it sound like some sort of cavernous cave of wonders that had all sorts of different tunnels you could go down.
Some sort of online adventure game.
How are you, if it's not big enough, how are you going to get to those hard to reach places? By the way, she may have never said that. I've been misquoted in many a magazine and newspaper. So it's possible she said it doesn't matter and that the writer then took that to mean what they wrote. But this was what came across and it stuck with me through those teenage years. That's how easily insecurity can be born. By the way, think about that now. That was me at 11 from an FH M article. Think of kids now with Instagram. Disaster. Think of, imagine I was 11 watching sex life. I'm not hearing it from the lead singer of Mystique. I'm seeing a guy with a third leg in the shower.
Like Boogie Nights.
And I'm thinking, good Lord. Well, I suppose. I suppose boys are getting that anyway from porn, aren't they, when they're watching porn? Where are we in this podcast?
My point is, your point is what? Body insecurities stay with you.
I suppose my point is that these shows are greater stories. They're greater as, like. like, they're like, you know, they are like that cheap magazine or a comic book that you're reading just for some sort of fantasy story.
Yeah.
They're probably not, they're probably not something we should take many lessons from.
I do, I see Instagram a little bit that way you're talking about as well, where I, I treat that, a lot of people say that Instagram and things makes them feel insecure. You've got guys with, like, rippling six packs, you got women who look like glamour models and they're kind of everywhere, right? But I treat that as like a pulpy comic book, silly magazine. Like, I see it as like a cartoon thing. I know they're real people, but I just like, these are people doing like an extreme version of a kind of play acting. and they're really like disproportionately mutated, like they're just focusing completely on their body and airbrushing it, changing it. And I kind of that's my way of putting myself at a remove from it. I'm like, this is silly cartoon comic book version of beauty. And I kind of treat it as all a bit of a silly game.
That's that's a that's a good way of looking at it. It's like a comic book. It's just these ridiculous accentuated things. That's a really good way of putting it. And of course accentuated both by the attention they're given in someone's profile with every other picture is a picture of his six-pack abs and also accentuated quite literally through the filters and tools they now have to be able to do it.
Yeah, and it's like I want burritos in my life, you know? I haven't got that kind of, it's like, let them do that thing. That's cool. You can have the protein shakes for lunch. You can have that.
I quite like it when a woman posts a photo of like the bikini photo of, you know, two, two, it's literally the same moment, but just a slightly different pose.
Oh, yeah. Those are good ones.
This is how different you can make your ass look. in the space of three seconds for a photo, and one of them will make the world insecure about their ass, and the other one will make us all feel united in our asses. And I quite like that because.
It.
Makes it so evident how so many of the things we're comparing ourselves to are not just, it's not just, you know, an unrealistic expectation for ourselves. It's an unrealistic expectation for themselves, for the one that posted it, that they can't even live up to that three seconds later after the photo is taken. I think that's fascinating. Well, we've come to the end of the video. Did you like it? No, I mean, really, did you hit the like button or did you just sit there? Please like the video, hit the like button, hit the subscribe button if you're not subscribed, join the club and hit the notification bell so that the next time a video is coming out I can stalk you with it.
