Episode 192: Dolly Jones

Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor

Sophie Ellis-Bextor welcomes former Vogue.com editor Dolly Jones to discuss her new book, 'Leaving the Ladder Down,' which explores the realities of balancing high-level careers with motherhood. They examine the

Key takeaways

• Dolly Jones spent over 20 years at Condé Nast overseeing digital content before writing 'Leaving the Ladder Down' to guide working mothers.
• Sophie Ellis-Bextor shares her experience taking her youngest son on tour at just four months old, finding it a halcyon peak moment.

Main topics

• Working motherhood
• Career breaks & flexibility

Notable quotes

"You run a marathon before you get to work in the morning."

Conclusion

The episode offers a reassuring, practical roadmap for women navigating

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:05) I'm Sophia the specks der and welcome to spinning plates the podcast where I speak to busy working women who also happen to be mothers About how they make it all work I'm a singer and I've released eight albums in between having my five sons aged between seven years old and nearly 22 So I spin a few plates myself Being a mother can be the most amazing thing that it can also be hard to find time for yourself and your own ambitions I want to be a little bit nosy and see how other people balance everything. Welcome to Spinning Plates. Speaker 1 (0:39) Hello, Sunday morning here. I'm in the park. It's actually the first time I've taken the kids to a playground in absolutely ages. I feel like it's just not something we do that much of at the moment. But actually, it's very sweet. I'm watching my two youngest and a friend for the 10-year-old playing on swings. And we cycled here and it all feels quite wholesome. And I'm having quite a nice Sunday, actually. So happy to be home. It's been a busy old time of it, but it's also been good. I came back from Brazil when I last spoke to you. I think I was actually a bit jet lagged. There's only a four-hour difference, but it was just enough, you know, to really knock my sleep out of whack. And then it's just been a usual week, really, but kind of plugging back into everything because I'm home now. I don't have any long-haul trips until next year, and I'm so relieved, actually. I love what I do so much, but I'm just really happy to be... home and in my bed at the end of days and I've had three gigs this week and I did a university visit day yesterday with Kit, my 17 year old. Coming in a minute! And what can he need me for? He's on a swing. And yeah, so it's just been a usual lots to do, time poor kind of thing but one of the gigs I sang at on Thursday night. was a fundraising ball with Cancer Research celebrating what would have been Deborah James' 45th birthday. And Deborah James was one of my guests on the podcast a few years back. And, you know, what an impactful, incredible woman. She went on to receive a damehood, in fact, in recognition for all the work she was doing for bowel cancer. And hold on, darling, I'm just doing something. Did you hurt yourself? Is that from on your bike? Oh, ouch. Ouchy pouchy. That looks sore. Give it a little suck. Speaker 1 (2:30) Well, listen, when we get home, I'll put some cream and a little plaster on it. Those little cuts. It's all right, Jess. Come here. Let me give you a cuddle. Come here. It's all right. When we get home, we'll put a plaster on it, OK? Yeah. OK, good boy. Look at all the colours of the leaves on the trees, Jess. It's so pretty. That's actually quite a nasty little cut. It's just caught a little bit of skin. I'm sure you're happy to be hearing about that. But yeah, anyway, the point I was trying to make is it was glorious to be... seeing Heather, James, Deborah's mum, who also has been a guest on the podcast, and her husband, Sebastian, and the two kids, Eloise and Hugo, and just... You know, a family who got through, still getting through something as big as losing a daughter, mother, wife, and the legacy she left. Speaker 1 (3:22) Okay, what with your bikes? Yes. Okay, go on then. You can do that. Speaker 2 (3:25) We don't like to. The swings are too low. Speaker 1 (3:28) Okay, all right. Maybe you are. I'm going Speaker 2 (3:30) to put it on the swings and they're going to take long time. All Speaker 1 (3:33) right. Let's take the bikes outside then. Sorry, this is a really silly time to do the intro. The point I was trying to make is I woke up on Friday morning. I was feeling tired. There were loads of things to sort. There's been some things going a bit wonky this week. And I thought to myself, Deborah would have done anything to have the stresses and strains and busyness of everyday life like I have right now. And honestly, talk about perspective. And it's such a privilege to get to be part of those things and to get that mindset, you know, redressed. And yeah, the perspective it offers you is pretty magical. So that's given me a lot of food for thought this week. The other thing that's given me food for thought this week is... maybe unexpectedly actually, but Esther Ranson died this week and it's made me really think about my childhood because my dad used to direct That's Life and we were always going to Esther's and Childline was like something I was so aware of in my childhood and it's just been so special to see how impactful a life can make. I suppose we're talking again about legacy, aren't we? But these people who come along and actually do something. I mean, my whole ethos really when it comes down to it, aside from the big stuff like family and... You know, being lucky enough to be creative, but it's really about trying to leave everything a little bit better than you found it, which involves... It seems to motivate so many of my guests, including Dolly Jones, who's my guest this week. So Dolly was the editor at Vogue.com and worked at Conde Nast at a very high level for over 20 years, overseeing their digital content. So incredibly experienced and has two kids at secondary school age now, 11 and 13. Girl 11, boy 13. But she found... The nature of going back to work and how her new skill set as a parent was sort of just not part of the picture when she was talking at work or the stress of the life. She was supposed to, you know, basically be this mother on the outside, but at work, pretend that none of that life existed and drop it all so that she could seem like a really efficient worker, even though, really, so much going on all the time, so stressful, so isolating. So she started speaking to other working women, I suppose, not dissimilar to what the podcast is about, about how they've navigated it, the advice they could offer, the tricks and tips that helped them get through it all. And just... Speaker 1 (6:08) sharing the wealth of knowledge really and what I really like is even though it's really easy to talk about the bits that are really hard and they can be really hard I like the positivity that comes with sharing the experiences and how actually we say you know what we're all doing the best we can doing a good job and just acknowledging that really and acknowledging all the skills that you suddenly have to develop when you become a parent that you didn't even know you could have and the juggle and yeah just the network the strength that can come from women sharing their stories so yeah it's very much on brand for what spinning plates is all about so this is my chat with Dolly who's written a book called leaving the ladder down all about just that how other women can help support women getting back into the workplace building on their career whatever it may be so yeah it resonates a lot because it's so many of the themes we've explored in so many conversations so I'll leave you with her wisdom and all the things she's learned and her own story. And I'll see you on the other side. And meanwhile, I can just about see where they are on the bikes. And I have to say, I'm really enjoying this lovely warm weather. It's a nice place to sit on a bench in the park, surrounded by all the leaves as they change colour. Listening back. So here's the chat with Dolly. See you on the other side. Speaker 1 (7:31) Well, I can't believe we haven't met or spoken before. When I was reading your book, I just kept smiling. I could feel my cheeks going up because I was like, this book is essentially so much overlap with the conversations I've been having for a last little while. And as we sit down, I notice you've got a little ladder. Yes. I suppose in tribute to your book. Well, I Speaker 2 (7:50) was given it. Actually, I was thinking about the title for the book. Speaker 1 (7:53) Quite Speaker 2 (7:54) far into writing it, we had sort of various working titles that were quite dull. Speaker 2 (7:59) And I suddenly found myself writing the phrase, leaving the ladder down. And then I thought, oh, I think I've got a gold ladder charm. My mum had given me a set of gold charms she'd found in an antique market when I was about 18. And there was a ladder to represent my career, because I was already quite sort of ambitious and talking about it all the time. There was an elephant to represent some time I'd spent in India. There was an iron, as in to iron clothes, to represent her, which I always think is an interesting... detail yeah um a little gold bagpiper to represent my father who played bagpipes and various others anyway and i suddenly thought have you still got that somewhere and it was knocking Speaker 1 (8:35) around to the bottom of an old jewelry that is adorable and then i thought Speaker 2 (8:37) there's the there's the title of the book and i've wanted ever since thank you thanks there's Speaker 1 (8:41) a story within a story yeah Speaker 2 (8:43) exactly Speaker 1 (8:43) and actually Speaker 2 (8:44) it's an incredibly Speaker 1 (8:45) rich book um thank you well it is and it's it's I mean, I have no idea how you put it together because it covers so much ground and so many different voices, but it's gathered together very comprehensively. And it would basically be an excellent book to give to anyone who is actually even just contemplating how parenthood would affect them, even if it's not something necessarily a path they're going to go down. Because I think, actually, I've met people who listen to the podcast who have either... never had kids for, you know, they wanted to, it didn't happen, or they've chosen not to. And they're curious because it's such a big, a big, you know, life-changing event. And there's a curiosity, isn't there, about how that might affect you. But particularly if you're standing on the precipice and thinking, I don't know how to do this. And how's it, what does life look like on the other side of parenthood when I'm also wanting to be ambitious for myself and work? Speaker 2 (9:40) Yeah, and who I have always been beforehand. Yes. And also the moment, You start thinking like that, I think you feel so alone. And so what was lovely about writing the book was that whoever I spoke to, wherever they were on their career path or whatever profession or whatever kind of background, there was so much we all have in common. Yes. But then that doesn't mean that we can assume anything of anybody. But there just are all of these kind of threads that everyone was like, oh, yes. And so that's why the questions that I asked every single person, there was a kind of, you know, 10 or 12 questions that I started every conversation with. Speaker 1 (10:11) And Speaker 2 (10:12) whenever I said something like, you know, and sorry, I'm going to have to broach the subject of guilt. And Speaker 1 (10:18) everyone would go, Speaker 2 (10:18) oh, my God, the guilt. Pretty much everybody had the same response. And then lots of different responses as we talked about it more. Speaker 1 (10:26) But Speaker 2 (10:26) I love the idea that any... I wanted anyone to be able to pick the book up, open it anywhere, and either recognise or really strongly disagree with the various bits that they would come across. Because it's that commonality and the different experiences. I wanted to kind of hang together. Speaker 1 (10:44) Yeah, and I suppose as well, it's going behind the first impression you get of someone and all that invisibility, all that stuff that goes on behind closed doors. how they're prepping the day, how they're keeping on top of childcare, how they're organizing themselves. And what I really like as well is the emphasis is on a reassuring positivity that whatever you're achieving is actually pretty phenomenal. Yes. If you're keeping on top of these things. Because, I mean, you know, we're a sort of similar age. We're similar with where we are with our kids. So you've got a 13-year-old and an 11-year-old. Speaker 2 (11:19) And Speaker 1 (11:19) I think, you know, When I had my age-equivalent child, it was very much the time as well of not being very positive about some aspects of motherhood, actually. It was all a bit kind of, you know, the sort of sloppy side of it and, oh, you know, let's just get to having Prosecco or gin. You know, it was quite sort of, I understand that, you know, scales always need to be recalibrated. But I think it wasn't very much about saying, oh, my gosh, we're actually doing a pretty good job here of actually just trying our best to... keep on top of everything yes Speaker 2 (11:53) trying our best and doing a brilliant thing if you well first of all if you paid somebody else to do the mothering part of your job Speaker 1 (11:59) you'd Speaker 2 (11:59) pay them a lot of money and expect them to work really really long hours and be really you know well researched and you'd really be impressed with the new ideas all the stuff that we're doing every day just as a given as a parent is really phenomenal if you looked at somebody else doing it you might be really impressed but when it's ourselves we're just like yeah but we've just got to get that done because we have kids and so that's just sort of a given um But yes, I think that that negativity, when I first was going back to work, I was full time at Vogue. It was 2012 when I had my first child. And everything I could read was negative. It was sort of, you know, porridge in my hair, stress, relationship failing, child suffering, work suffering, me suffering, unable to lose baby weight, wardrobe just shot. Just everything about my life was going to be kind of subpar from then on. And so I started to try and read around to kind of find some more galvanizing stuff. And I couldn't really find. I could remember I read one book and it mentioned hemorrhoids in the first couple of pages. Speaker 1 (12:58) And I was Speaker 2 (12:58) like, oh, no, it's not Speaker 1 (12:59) sexy. Not where I would need my focus, Speaker 2 (13:01) thanks. And then somebody else wrote, you know, wear flat shoes all the time because you're running around so much. Like, don't wear heels. I mean, fair enough, but also not, I know, I don't want to be sort of told what to wear that much. Don't eat carbs. I can't remember, don't eat carbs after 12 or do eat carbs. Anyway, there was some rule about food. I just was like, no, this is not, I'm not, I don't need that lecture either. Thank you at that stage. And then I got back to work. And obviously there were days when it was, you know, panicky and I did feel guilt and I did feel, you know, such worry. But the days when it worked, when I did like what I was wearing, the sun was shining, the tube had worked, work was going well. Fundamentally, I'd left the house that morning with a child who was well and safe and in childcare that I was. happy with. And you had this kind of, I had this surge of sort of euphoria of like, oh my God, this is amazing. And I'm going to go home tonight and he's going to be there. And it was just such a wonderful feeling of capability and hope and excitement about life. And I just thought I've never heard that spoken about, that sense of achievement and then the children grow and little by little. they they're interested in your work too and then they get quite excited about your work or their potential because of what they see you doing or the joy they see you experiencing all couched in a lot of them having joy at home with you and you being with them and the connecting stuff that you do at home and um and so it seems to be something this this joy and the potential and it wasn't really ever voiced yeah Speaker 1 (14:33) and Speaker 2 (14:33) when i did interview these women you know, from taxi drivers to lawyers to pilots to actors to whatever they did with themselves, there was always this, when you really start to pick at what they do and what their day-to-day is like, you would hear this sense of self-worth and excitement. And they were so pleased and proud that they'd kept doing it, even though at times it had been, you know, challenging for whatever many, many different reasons. But there was a sense of... you know, they were pleased, they were proud of having done it. And that seemed to me to be something we should be able to celebrate rather than apologise for. Speaker 1 (15:08) Yeah, no, that's really wonderful. And also I imagine that for a lot of these women, this is when their children have grown up a little bit and they've got the different perspective. Because I think that early parenthood is the most shrouded in this big question mark of, oh my goodness, I've upended absolutely everything and I don't quite know who I am right now. And I'm also thinking to myself when you're reading that, that book you were talking about and it's all about the porridge and the hair and the note you carved and all the, you know, the frumpy and all this horrible frowning stuff that's going to homogenize and knock all the edges off you. There's not many more juxtaposing environments that you're returning to work in than working at Vogue. No, no. Just for lols on that level. Where that whole world is about aspiration and beauty and fashion and glamour and really heading towards something gorgeous and sort of like an elevated version of reality. So it really is very, very opposing. Speaker 2 (16:07) That's what the kind Speaker 1 (16:08) of prevailing narrative Speaker 2 (16:09) was, that it was completely and utterly two opposite ends of the scale. But actually there's an example I write about in the book. came back from maternity leave the first time. Kim Kardashian had had their first baby, I think, while I was away. Or she was pregnant. It was around that time. Anyway, and her Instagram was suddenly filled with pictures of presents that people had given her for the new baby impending arrival. And like Phoebe Philo, a very, very hugely cool fashion designer at the time, she was... designing Celine and she'd sent her some booties so that was super cool fashion people and prior to her pregnancy Kim Kardashian hadn't really been mentioned by Vogue she was a bit reality TV and now she was being invited to the Met Gala and getting presents from Phoebe Philo and I was like oh hang on so it wasn't the pregnancy that had changed her kind of Vogue reputation but the fact was now we could see via her Instagram that she was being celebrated as a mother by all these very high-fashioned people. And I was like, people spend money on their own kids, but they spend money on other people's kids. We need to do Vogue for mothers. We need to do mini Vogue about babies and pregnancy and all the rest of it. And so many people at Condé Nast said to me, no, you don't. That is, you know, people. And in fact, Alex Shulman said that she'd always thought that people who like Vogue don't like babies. That was her. And she likes babies. She's an incredibly maternal person. She's got a child and stepchildren or whatever. But, um, But from a commercial point of view, that was how the brand was understood. And I was like, yeah, but every time we write about a model having a baby, because we could read the traffic on Vogue.com. I was running the website. And so we had the traffic live up on the wall every day in the editorial room. And we could see if you wrote about somebody having a baby and posted a photograph of them, the traffic would go wild. The audience were interested in how models dressed when they were pregnant and how they dressed their babies, albeit. This was before really the news took hold of how bad it is to be on social media the whole time and posting all these pictures of people. But this was, yes, Speaker 1 (18:05) another conversation. Yes, Speaker 2 (18:06) the Speaker 1 (18:07) naive early Speaker 2 (18:07) days, exactly. So I was like, A, the audience is interested. B, I can see people spending money here. So I think we can do this. So we did eventually launch Minivogue online. And it was hugely successful, both commercially and with the audience. And then they kind of redressed it and did a section on GQ called GQ Dads and a section on Tatler called Totler because they could just see the commercial potential. But prior to that, everyone was like, I don't know, once you've had a baby. You know, you're off the radar of this kind of, both from an audience point of view and a commercial point of view, you're no longer interesting, which is not true in real life. Speaker 1 (18:44) No, and actually, I think very much, when you said about Vogue doesn't like, Vogue readers don't like babies, I think also that ties in with what you were talking about in the book, where you're saying about the fact that you felt that you weren't allowed to bring this other world you had to you, this motherhood in your new... baby and talk about it at work. You're supposed to pretend almost that that hadn't really happened. And so that was kept in another space. But actually, I suppose, as time's gone on, these conversations are opening up. And I think even when I had, so my eldest is 22 now. And when I had him, I didn't really, I couldn't really think of even other pregnant pop stars or seeing them after they become parents or how you could be a mum that also performed at clubs, I didn't really know what that world would look like. And I've definitely felt part of that kind of thing of having to try and almost pretend that motherhood just hadn't really happened or it was just a separate part of me that wasn't, wasn't at all appropriate to bring into that environment. Which is so extraordinary Speaker 2 (19:44) because it's, you know, I always say to people, if you, you know, if you worked in an office and you had an accident, you've had a car accident and you broke your leg and you came into the office whenever it was a month later and people would probably say to you, you know, how are you? So glad to see you. Is your desk in the right place? Should we move it so that your broken leg isn't sticking out into the corridor? You know, it would be quite a kind of boring but essential conversation. Are you comfortable? If you come back after having had a baby, whether or not you've had traumatic birth, whatever, your life is different. But honestly, beyond a possible baby photo, it's just not mentioned in any way. And they don't have to be huge changes to make, you know, huge flexibility, you know, awkwardness. You just might need a little bit of, you know, dial up the flexibility this way or that way. At least have the conversation just to make sure everybody feels comfortable in their new sort of, you know, personal circumstance. But in fact, during the research for the book, I watched the documentary about Paloma Faith, Speaker 1 (20:40) which,