 Do you feel like your audience became less interested in your work as a sex educator once you had a baby? Yeah, I think it's part, probably, a mixture of like sexism, ageism, the motherhood penalty. Like, all of these things kind of wrapped up into one. It's almost like you should be like removed from public life. It's that weird feeling. Hi lovers and friends, this video is sponsored by Squarespace. Create stunning websites, email marketing campaigns, online stores, and so much more with the power of Squarespace. I've been using Squarespace for years to power my website and my book website to do quizzes, to do amazing email campaigns. And I want you to see how this can make your next big idea even bigger, bolder and more beautiful than you ever imagined. And best of all, if you go to squarespace.com.shanbudi, you can get 10% off the purchase of your website or domain through Squarespace. Plus, plus, you actually get two weeks for free on Squarespace, no credit cards required, regardless of how you go. So go to squarespace.com, play around, see if you can bring something cool to life, and once you're ready to launch, then go to squarespace.com.shanbudi for that 10% off the purchase of a website or domain through Squarespace. Now, before we get into the conversation with Hannah, I want to say this is a dialogue around sex appeal, which is something that as a sex educator and as an aging woman who is adding more layers and dimensions to my life, you know, wife and mother is a topic of conversation for me as I examine how this shifts and changes over time. It's a conversation that I enjoy having and I know that it can feel heavy to some people, but I think it's important to ask these questions. Now, with Hannah, I specifically wanted to talk about this from a business perspective, not from the gaze of your partner or the gaze from others, although we did touch on that a little bit, but more so how that has impacted your audience and your reach. And we do a little bit of complaining about views. And whenever I do that, it's always like a ha, because if you're watching this, then you are not the person that I am talking about. And furthermore, it sucks sometimes that we don't talk directly to you. So I want to say this to you. Thank you for showing up and for being here for me in all phases and stages and looks of my life. Thank you, especially for anybody who engages with my podcast lovers and friends or other places that I'm doing cool things. And I deeply, deeply value it. This is more so just a commentary on how I'm noticing shifts and changes with who and where people find me based on where I'm at in my life. And that's what we're about to get into right now. Hi, Hannah. Hello. Hi, Sham. Long time no chat. A lot has changed. Congratulations. And congratulations to you too. All right. Rapid fire question. Motherhood in three words. Go. Incredible, exhausting, contradictory. I want to hear more about contradictory. I think parenting is something that you can so easily complain about all of the time, but then also it just be the most wonderful thing all of the time. And those things like happening simultaneously. Yes. Did you watch the movie Everything Everywhere All At Once? I did. I loved that movie. I loved it. I came out of that theater. I was pregnant when I saw it. I came out bawling my eyes out, but that has been my explanation for parenting after that. I'm like, it is everything, everywhere, all at once. All right. I want three words to describe how being a parent has impacted your career as a sex educator. Three words? I'm thinking like in phrases, because like one of them is like income loss. Another is priorities shift, and then another is like not wanting to be pigeonholed. Okay. These are great. Let's go through those one by one. Income loss, I took three months off, so I gave myself three months maternity leave, I wasn't working, and now I work part time. So I'm working less, so it's not actually a shock to me that my income has decreased because input, output, all of that. Do you feel like your audience became less interested in your work as a sex educator once you had a baby? And if so, I would love to hear what you think the connection between those two things are. Yeah. I think I got a lot of worried comments that people were scared that I would stop doing sex ed videos and I would only talk about parenting. And I had to do like a lot of reassuring, like no, no, no. That's going to be like sprinkled throughout, like because I have the two YouTube channels, I got like the sex education one and then the lifestyle one. And yeah, sure, the lifestyle one has gone full parenting mode because that's my lifestyle right now. But the sex education channel, I think is very much stayed the same obviously because I've had this huge life shift. My viewpoints and maybe the way that I look at things now will, it just, I just have like an extra thing to bring to them if it warrants it. I wonder if you had this realization that I had and I had this specifically after the first baby a little bit where we talk about sex for a living. So this is like a conversation I can probably only uniquely have with you and a small handful of people. And I didn't really realize how much my sex appeal was tied to my success as a sex educator. Professionally, you have a lot more sex appeal than I do. I kind of then, I go down like the nerdy friend route, I think a lot more. I almost wish that I could like have that kind of sexiness in my videos, but I often hold back because I don't know, just like the comments and the viewers that I don't want to watch my videos tend to find that more appealing. And so sometimes I think I unsexify myself in order to avoid that. And then like being a mom now and also not having time to put on makeup has helped. Do you not feel that there was a direct relationship between sex appeal and your work and even like sexual image? Like because I think once you become a mom, even if you're still putting on makeup and you're wearing bustiers every single day, societally, there is a view on you now that you should shift your role to accommodate a more matronly role. Yeah, I've honestly not felt that from my audience. Have you? I don't know. I mean, I think for me, it is less about what was said and more about what was felt and experienced. I noticed for me, my experience with pregnancy was when I got pregnant, people were really interested in engaged. And it's almost as like as soon as I gave birth, everyone was like, we're done with you. I felt that it was real big during pregnancy. Like, you know, people were actively really interested in me and that and then all my other work by association. Yeah. And then I had a big spike when I came back after my maternity leave, because I did like a, you know, birth video or whatever. And people are like curious to see how I was and stuff. But then after that, yeah, it's been real quiet. What's your societal assessment of that? Yeah, I think it's part probably a mixture of like sexism, ageism, the motherhood penalty, like all of these things kind of wrapped up into one. Like not everyone is a parent or wants to be a parent. So people aren't interested. I think there's also like this stigma around like, oh, as soon as you become a parent, like that's all you're going to want to talk about. And yeah, sure, it's like, we're never going to stop being parents. So like, it is always on our mind, even if we're not like around our children. But yeah, it's hard because I'm just like, no, I have other interesting thoughts about things. But then also at the same time, it's like, hey, what is so wrong about wanting to talk about your kid all the time? Has this loss of audience and loss of income reinvigorated your work or discouraged your work? Or is it a mix of both? Everything everywhere, all at once? A little bit of a mix of both because the first few months after I came back, I was really struggling, I think, to keep up with everything. Like we were publishing the same amount of content as we were before. I had Rowan and I was working part-time. So the maths doesn't math. That shouldn't make any sense. And what was suffering was my passion and happiness with what we were doing. And then also, I think, the quality of it. Like what I felt was good enough quality to put out there. But then there's been this huge shift where, I don't know, I think there's like a sense of freedom. I don't know whether you felt this of like, when you were first starting out on YouTube, when you don't have as many eyeballs looking at you, you've got that like freedom to experiment. And you can just kind of like do what you want. Whereas when you have lots of eyeballs on you and you've had some success, you're like, well, this is what is successful. This is what I have to do. This is what I have to stick at. And it's a lot scarier to deviate from that. But in the last couple of months, I've been like, Hey, do you know what? Screw it. We're going to do what I want to do. We're going to experiment. We're going to be a bit more ambitious with videos. We're going to do the videos that I've always like put on the back burner of like one day, one day, one day, like we'll get to that. And now we're just doing it and I'm having a whale of a time. Like I'm loving it. And do you know what? The numbers actually still aren't there in terms of what I would want. But I am so proud of those videos. I love them. And I think the quality of what we're making is excellent. Other people just need to get on board. That's the tricky part. Am I right? I love that. And I totally attest to those feelings at the beginning. And I'm in the exact same place as you. And we actually, I think we reconnected because of that. Because my journey was similar in that I came back and all of a sudden I realized that a lot of things that I didn't take into account that led to my success now were different. And then as a result, we're no longer leading to those same numbers and that same engagement. I think the appearance of sexual availability, I think the relatability of being a non-parented person or somebody without a child. And so even though people were really happy for me to have a kid and really excited about that journey, once I became a mom, all of a sudden I was in a completely different category. Yeah. It's almost like you should be like removed from public life. Is that weird feeling? Well, I think like even your maternity shoots were really sexy and you did a really sexy stoma bag photo shoot. So you have always found ways to still advocate for yourself as sexually desirable in settings that societally traditionally would not be seen as such. It's something really important for me to hold on to. So how, whatever way I am displaying my sexuality, it has to first and foremost be for me. And then whatever other people take from that is secondary. Is sex appeal or sexual desirability from others important to you? I want to like say no, but then part of me is like, is it naive to say no? Like it's important to me from my husband. And I also think it's hard for me to give an honest answer, one because I don't really know what it is, but also just because I'm like a white and thin and you know, like I have pretty privileged. So like I think when I have all of those things and they're not something that I've had to work hard for, it's hard to be like, oh yeah, I don't care. Do you know what I mean? It's interesting though, because I would think it's sort of the opposite because naturally, like even you not being aware that you are sexy and you have been deemed as like a sex symbol before comes because you never had to work for it because existing. But if that was taken away from me, maybe I'd then be like, oh no, it's really important for me to be seen as sexually desirable. Whereas because it's something that I already have, I can, it's really easy for me to just like shrug it off as not important to me. What's interesting though, because if you feel like it hasn't been taken away from you post-partum, that's also really interesting to acknowledge. My sexuality for me and in my personal relationship has not been taken away. And so I know that. And so that fills me with confidence for then when I present myself publicly. I don't feel the same way, but I do feel the same way. Yeah, like I definitely realized for me how important external validation as being seen as sexy and sexually desirable is to me. And it's something that I've been willing to really fight for. And I have other mom friends who are like, I didn't feel an interest. And I felt an interest to fight for it for two reasons. One, because it personally fills me up and I'm an attention whore and I've learned that about myself. But number two, because I did want to be an inspiration to other non-parents and existing parents that you don't have to lose this part of yourself in exchange for opening yourself up and your world up to mothering children. And I really, really felt that after my first pregnancy. This time around I've been a bit slower with it obviously because I have now more competing priorities. But yeah, it has been important for me to continue to fight for my right to not only view myself as sexual but to position myself to the world as still a sexual person plus being a mom. Yeah, and also like knowledgeable about it as well. Well, can we end things off on like a teaser note? Is there something that you're working on right now that you're really excited about that you want people to check out or watch out for? Yeah, so I'm working on like a whole big rebrand like aesthetically of all of my stuff, which is feeling really good, like just making everything so cohesive. And then also we've started to have conversations about restructuring my podcast slightly. So early days it feels criminal even saying that but we're in the middle of seasons but the next season might look a little bit different to other seasons. Well, congratulations. That sounds really exciting. Different is good. It is. Different is good. I like it. This video was made possible with the support of Squarespace an all in one platform that allows you to build a website that is beautiful, easy to customize, easy to edit and easy on the eyes. Also to build an online store and do everything keep a track of your inventory, make sales, mark down things, everything on one single platform. Also to market your business, especially using their incredible email campaigns which are affordable and minimal and beautiful and powerful. Squarespace is what I utilize to market myself and also it's where my websites are housed. 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