Yumi Stynes: ‘I’m not for everyone’
THE podcaster has made a name dealing in frank opinions — and has sometimes received death threats for it. But Yumi Stynes has made peace with the fact that not everyone will like her.
Stellar
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WHEN Yumi Stynes is your mother, the birds and the bees conversation is more open than your average parent-to-child chat.
In fact, when Yumi Stynes is your mother, you might even want her to be a little less forthright. “When [my two older daughters] first started asking ‘Where do babies come from?’ many years ago, I’d try to answer them honestly, but also just say, ‘Do you want to know more?’ and sometimes they’d say ‘No, that’s enough,’” she tells Stellar with a laugh. “I think the more honesty they have, the better, but I’m often checking in with them about what they want to know and when they want me to stop.”
As well as a parenting philosophy for her brood of four kids, frankness — with some hard-earned limits — has been Stynes’s career MO since she first roared onto our screens in 2000 as a Channel [V] reporter.
In her nearly 20-year career since, she has opened up about her postnatal depression and alcohol abuse, taken on morning television and fended off death threats. And she’s not done yet — as well as holding down a busy radio job, book-publishing career and regular speaking gigs, she’s bringing her particular brand of feminism to the new broadcasting frontier: podcasting.
Yumi Stynes grew up in Melbourne with her Japanese mother, Yoshiko, fifth-generation Australian father, David, and three siblings. As a 15-year-old, she was kicked out of Kew’s Methodist Ladies’ College for drinking and smoking (when her alcohol problems began, she later said).
Her flair for frankness didn’t come from her mother, who handed her a pamphlet in lieu of a discussion about puberty and periods. Instead, she learnt how to be open from the women around her. “I had a lot of great female influences in my life; great female friendships and older relatives, like aunties and older sisters.”
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The male-dominated music scene she came to inhabit after moving to Sydney didn’t leave a lot of room for heart-to-hearts, but plenty of space for brashness — and drinking. And it was how she met her ex-husband and father of her two oldest children, Regurgitator’s Ben Ely. But it’s not a world she still hankers after.
“It has been an evolution. I found myself in a place where I didn’t know all the bands anymore and I didn’t care. I didn’t want to go out every night of the week, so it didn’t suit me to be a music journalist because it would have been a bit fake,” the 42-year-old says. “I think my career has probably followed my interests. I’m not able to go out four nights a week, but I am able to talk about good eating for a family.”
It’s why she wrote last year’s The Zero F*cks Cookbook, joined KIIS 106.5’s 3PM Pick-Up show and signed on to Ladies, We Need To Talk, which is an ABC podcast “that isn’t afraid to dive head first into the tricky topics we often avoid talking about” — think addiction, miscarriages, and the mental load.
It may have helped her as much as she’s helped it: the podcast episode on alcohol abuse encouraged her to attend Alcoholics Anonymous. “I just felt like it would be really disingenuous and fake and lame to lie about it or disguise it, because I’m there extracting information out of other people who are generous and vulnerable. Once I felt comfortable and empowered to share it, I really found that sharing helped me on a personal level, and so it felt like I was definitely doing the right thing. [Quitting drinking] was reinforced and fortified by talking about it. Part of me would die if I was in a restaurant and I ordered a glass of wine and someone came up to me and said ‘Hey...’ I would just f*cking die.” She hasn’t had a drink since the start of 2017.
Her schedule is a lot for anyone, never mind a mum of four, aged between two and 16, who can’t fall back on a glass of wine at the end of a long day (she has two children with second husband Martin Bendeler, who she married in 2012). Yet Stynes is hungry for more.
“I think as you get a bit older, you get perspective on what opportunity means. When I was younger, I didn’t really understand it, but now I see opportunities are not infinite; they are a real gift, and if you know what to do with an opportunity, you can extrapolate it into something beautiful.
“That’s one of the great lessons I’ve learnt in the past decade. I’ve always had a pretty good work ethic, but now I’ve got it so down pat. I’ve got four children, I’ve got three jobs and I have to just focus and be effective with my time.” She also knows when to push back. “Saying no is like an orgasm,” she laughs. “You feel this pressure to be the breadwinner and this accomplished mum, so saying no is pushing back against that pressure.” She applies the same logic to protecting her personal life, and hasn’t shared her youngest son’s name publicly.
In 2012, she received “shocking and frightening” death threats over a joke she made about war hero Ben Roberts-Smith while she was co-hosting The Circle. It shook her.
“I really try to not f*ck up,” she says now of the scandal. “Everybody does muck up and make mistakes and misstep and it can be so excruciating, but when people send death threats or that sort of strong reaction, I really feel a strong sense of compassion because I have to step quite a long way out of my own experience to imagine their experience that’s led them to that reaction.
“That is humbling, and part of being a broadcaster: trying to put yourself in the shoes of the people you’re speaking to. If you’re struggling to understand them then maybe you’re not speaking to them. Or maybe they’re just not your audience. That’s another thing you just come to peace with: you’re not for everyone. And I certainly am not for everyone.”
Ladies, We Need To Talk is available on the ABC listen app or abc.net.au/ladies.