Fifi talks family: ‘I’m doing it my own way’
In a rare photo shoot with her two daughters, radio host and single mum Fifi Box opens up on her fertility struggles and her determination to shift the “frustrating” definition of what a traditional family looks like.
Stellar
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If ever experts needed proof that there is no such thing as “work/life balance” and that it should be re-labelled a “work/life blur”, they might want to start by paying a visit to Fifi Box’s house.
On the morning she speaks with Stellar from her home in Melbourne, the popular broadcaster is in isolation after a Covid case closed down the radio station where she works. She managed to do half her breakfast show before two-year-old daughter Daisy woke up, needing her attention.
And when she sits down for our interview – although she will not actually sit down for the full hour we speak – Box is overseeing eight-year-old Trixie’s homeschooling, directing Daisy away from the paint pots and out to the garden to look at the petunias, and somehow stringing together cogent sentences.
She clearly has her hands full, so… would she like to postpone until another time? “No,” she says with a laugh. “Let’s push through. Because I doubt there will be another time.”
Single mum, radio host, TV favourite and all-round nice girl – and despite having spent so many months living in the world’s most locked-down city, Box has not only kept all her balls in the air, but also added a couple more.
In that time, she also wrote a children’s book and designed a clothing label, all the while dealing with a baby who barely slept. Which meant, of course, that neither did she.
“So,” Box says, “I got busy. Having Daisy, and being so happy with my two girls, I had this sense of completion. It gave me a fire in my belly and a fearlessness that I didn’t have once upon a time. I have these two beautiful girls and I’m building a future for them and leading by example.”
Rather than feeling exhausted, Box, 44, chooses enthusiasm, contentment and gratitude for the family she has created and looks after on her own.
Daisy’s arrival brought sleep-deprivation (until a sleep nurse stepped in to help), but it also magnified the love she shared with Trixie. After six years as a close-knit unit of two, Box thought all her love was spoken for.
Instead, she says, “The love in our little family just exploded. You can’t guarantee which way it’s going to go, but Trixie loves her sister more than anything. They are besotted with each other.”
Box rarely does photo shoots with her daughters. Despite intense speculation, it was years before she confirmed that Trixie’s dad was her former partner Grant Kenny, the celebrated ironman previously married to Lisa Curry.
But Box has been open about her route to falling pregnant with Daisy via IVF and using a sperm donor.
Indeed, as her girls play with her on the sofa during Stellar’s photo shoot, it is clear she wants to expand the traditional notion of “family” to make it more inclusive.
“You don’t always necessarily see yourself in scenarios or even books,” she says, explaining that she seeks out stories for her daughters that reflect their family unit.
“It’s so important to point out and educate that families come in all different shapes and sizes. Fortunately, because I’m in the media and have a profile and platform I’m able to shape and shift that, but it is frustrating.”
She says the pandemic highlighted the limited view of modern families as single parents found themselves stuck at home with no adult support before social bubbles were introduced.
“I can see changes happening, and there are wonderful advocates in the media who are trying to shift these paradigms. I’m doing it my own way by the way I’m living,” she says.
Box makes single parenting look not just possible, but also desirable. She regularly references her daughters on her Melbourne radio show, Fifi, Fev & Nick (with Brendan Fevola and Nick Cody) on the Hit Network, and several times a week she shares snapshots of her girls’ lives with her 328,000-plus Instagram followers.
Nothing, she says, makes her happier than bouncing on the trampoline or rolling around the lounge floor.
“We have full-body laughs, and their little giggles and faces make me feel so lucky and so happy.”
Daisy, she says simply, is “a miracle”; an exception to the odds. Despite wanting a second child from the time Trixie was aged two, Box delayed because of her workload and other distractions in her personal life.
She was 40 when she finally froze her eggs, and it took another 12 months to find a sperm donor, at which point her doctor told her she had a 7 per cent chance of success.
When she conceived Daisy on the first transfer and gave birth in June 2019, Box knew how lucky she was.
“My heart goes out to couples or single men or women going through IVF, because it’s hard and heartbreaking. I wanted Daisy so badly,” she says.
While Trixie has a good relationship with Kenny, the pandemic has meant they’ve had trouble seeing each other.
“Like most families affected by border closures it’s been really tough because Trixie hasn’t been able to see her dad [who lives in Queensland], but luckily there’s FaceTime and you just have to find ways to be creative in times like this,” says Box.
“I know they’re both excited to be reunited soon.”
If the past decade has grown her heart, it’s also broken it. When Jaimi Kenny – Trixie’s half-sister and Grant’s older daughter with Curry – died in September 2020 after a long-term illness, Box had to explain the loss to her little girl, who adored her big sister.
“Telling Trixie what had happened was really difficult,” she says. “Losing Jaimi was devastating. We loved her so much, and she and Trixie were incredibly close. Jaimi was such a beautiful, special soul. We miss her so much.”
Of course, there are challenges raising two girls six years apart and Box concedes she has very little time to herself, especially when she bookends her working day with appearances on The Project or Have You Been Paying Attention?
She laughingly admits she’s never been for drinks with her co-hosts, even though Fevola has tried to get her out for the past five years.
“I have no ‘me-time’ but I just figure they’re so little for such a short time, and right now I’m their everything. I know one day I won’t be. I’ll be one of those needy parents begging my teenagers to stay home and watch movies.”
And after decades spent struggling with her own self-image, Box is also a ferocious advocate for body acceptance, somebody who is keen to pass that messaging on to future generations. In that vein, her recently released children’s book, Minty Mae Gray And The Strangely Good Day, champions self-acceptance and individuality.
“I look back and cannot believe I spent my teens, 20s and most of my 30s being insecure about the way I looked,” she says.
“It took my turning 40 to finally say to myself, you’re not that bad. But as a teenager I felt pressure from magazines like Dolly and Cosmopolitan. I’d see pictures of Elle Macpherson and think, I just don’t look like that in a bikini.”
Box was just 27 when she started in television – she has since appeared in panel shows and in acting roles, too – and remembers being told by make-up artists that she could fix parts of herself she hadn’t realised needed fixing.
“They’d tell me I could shave off a bit of my nose to make it more symmetrical or that I laughed too much and the lines it created could be filled.”
She fears the proliferation of social media portends even worse for her daughters. As she says: “I’m in my 40s and it can get me on a bad day if I’m scrolling Instagram and see everyone’s perfect lives.
“I look at my girls and I can’t have them going through life comparing themselves to other people and wishing they looked a different way. I want them to have a strong core of resilience and confidence in themselves so they can weather the negativity and criticism.”
Box has trained herself to spend just 15 minutes a day on Instagram, but she also believes the secret to healthy body image is looking outwards rather than inwards, having a meaningful life and developing a sense of self that values uniqueness.
To that end, she’s currently encouraging Trixie’s imaginary life as a secret agent by leaving little notes on the doorstep and getting her colleagues to dress in black and play along when her daughter visited her at work.
“Now she believes she has ice powers,” confides Box, “and she’s decorated the spare room with origami snowflakes.”
As for Box’s own creativity, she’s recently added fashion designer to her list of accomplishments. Foxi Box, dreamed up during those long nights trying to get Daisy back to sleep, is a range of clothing basics for women who can’t find comfortable clothes.
“When I had Daisy I put on 30kg. I was the heaviest but also the happiest I’d ever been,” she says, explaining that as a size 18 or 20, she found T-shirts clung and even tracksuit pants chafed her thighs.
Instead of fighting her short and curvy body, she wanted to work with it, so with the help of a pattern maker she’s designed a range including tanks, T-shirts, lounge pants and a waterfall cardigan in a luxe bamboo fabric that she will sell online.
While several companies were keen to collaborate with her, Box went it alone, devising the size 8-24 range simply on her experience with clothes; samples were finessed until she felt they were perfect.
“I couldn’t be a victim to all those clothing companies who don’t make clothes for me,” she says.
“What I realised being a size 18 is if you put on items that flatter you, it doesn’t matter what size or shape you are, you feel confident. That’s what I want, instead of walking to the shops feeling like I want to roll up in a ball under my doona.”
That said, she jokes she got in a good workout during her chat with Stellar since she carried all of Daisy’s 15kg around with her for most of it. Suddenly the little girl calls out for someone called “Anthony”. Box laughs.
“It sounds like I have a man in the room but I don’t! She just wants The Wiggles,” she says, clarifying that for now there is no significant other.
“I don’t have enough time or energy for committing to another relationship. It’s hard enough juggling these jobs, so someone else is not an option, but it might be one day.” And, no, she says, she is never lonely. “I have so much happiness, and I’m so fulfilled.”
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