Ashley James: You’re a bimbo! Mumsy! Bossy! How we shrink confidence out of girls
Happy Place
Fearne Cotton
4.7 • 15.6K Ratings
🗓️ 9 February 2026
⏱️ 62 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
You’re a bimbo. A nag. Too mumsy. Too bossy. Ever had any of those labels put on you? Far from harmless words, Ashley James is clear they all work to shrink women and girls.
In this chat with Fearne, Ashley recalls her first experiences of street harassment, and the way she victim blamed herself.
They also explore the shame that keeps women silent about their altered bodies after giving birth; Ashley talks about her own post-partum body, including the reality of piles, prolapse, and vaginismus.
Wondering if marriage is right for you? Ashley runs through her pros and cons. Plus, are we still allowed to watch and enjoy wildly problematic films like Grease...?
Ashley’s book, Bimbo, is out on February 12th.
If you liked this episode of Happy Place, you might also like:
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello and a massive welcome to Happy Place. I'm Fern Cotton and this is the show that helps you unlearn |
| 0:08.1 | shame and societal expectations. Today I'm chatting to Ashley James. Why is my breast size |
| 0:16.6 | linked to my morality or my promiscuity? Why can't I just have a body? Because Ada's two, |
| 0:23.7 | and when she looks in the mirror, she's so, like, I love the way she looks at her body with, like, |
| 0:29.4 | wonder and like pat's her belly and even like sees my belly, like she's always like saying |
| 0:34.4 | how squishy it is and she loves it. And I think like that was me, that was you. And we're born with like so much confidence for our voices and our bodies. And so why do we shrink it out of girls? |
| 0:47.2 | Guys, I'm at my kitchen table yet again where I'm preferring to record these introductions for the podcast at the moment. So if you hear a rogue |
| 0:55.2 | cat or a kettle go or a police car wailing past, you can picture me sat in my dimly lit kitchen. |
| 1:05.4 | I'm really excited about this chat. We're not talking entirely about shame, but shame is a theme |
| 1:10.4 | that we cover. And it's |
| 1:12.9 | something that, oh, God, I mean, I've spent years thinking about shame. But I don't suppose I've |
| 1:17.8 | started properly challenging it. I'm not sure if that's even the right word looking at how I'm |
| 1:22.8 | trying to recover from it, but facing up to it, confronting it, looking at it, getting stuck into it, staring it |
| 1:29.3 | squarely in the eyes. And I've found it so helpful in limiting it. You know, sometimes you think that |
| 1:37.6 | talking about the subject matter, looking into it, is going to accentuate it, but it does absolutely |
| 1:42.2 | the opposite. So, oh, there's a cat, there's a cat in a bag, |
| 1:45.6 | fig. So in this chat, we do, we do talk about shame quite a bit and it's a subject that I think |
| 1:53.4 | I'll probably be obsessed with forever. It's something that might be a life's work in Ridding, in fact. |
| 2:01.9 | So that is something that we talk about. |
| 2:04.8 | So I want to get properly stuck into all these big subjects with Ashley because she's written |
| 2:09.2 | a book called Bimbo, which is a real battle cry of a book, actually, to make sure that we |
| 2:14.4 | as women aren't shrinking ourselves. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Fearne Cotton, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Fearne Cotton and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.