A guide to surviving your 20s and thriving in your 30s with Ashley James

You know, you speak a lot now about being labeled and being boxed in.

Yeah.

When was it that you first, I guess, realized that labels were being put on you?

I think first time I realized labels was holding me back, or the first time I remember feeling, like, angry about labels was during my teenage years.

So I went to an all-boys school.

There were 37 girls and over 500 boys.

So yeah, [laughs] literally that.

That is the reaction.

What was the thought process? [laughs]

That, that was the, the reaction.

So that-- there was like real double standards between the boys and the girls, but it was also enforced by the teachers.

Mm-hmm.

So there was a real, like, boys will be boys attitude, but also that if girls wanted to be taken seriously, they had to almost like adopt very kind of what we call masculine traits in terms of like career ambition, shunning fashion and makeup, and things that were considered frivolous.

Mm-hmm.

So on top of that, there were all the, like, sexual double standards.

So I think that was the first time I-- even though I didn't get it, I felt like angry and frustrated that it felt like there was a different set of rules for girls and a different set of rules for boys.

But that said, I was always super ambitious, so I think I always wanted to be like the good girl-

100%

... through the eyes of others.

So yeah, I think that's why it took me so long to get into the industry I'm in now because I didn't really think it was like a possible route.

So I, you know, I, I worked really hard at A levels than I did, you know, went to university, and I always thought I'd kind of do the graduate scheme and then kind of whatever else.

And it took me a long time, I think, to find myself and to break free of that sort of like beauty or brains or the need to be taken seriously-

Mm-hmm

... and knowing that you can be taken seriously no matter what route you choose.

It's so true, I think, that, like, what you kind of described in terms of the fact that when these labels are first put on you and you're first told, "Well, to be taken seriously, you have to do this, or you have to do more of this, or you can't do that," because of the patriarchy and the, the reward system, we do naturally become what would be known as pick mes.