Speaker 1: There'll be an inquiry into the cosmetic surgery industry after
Speaker 1: a raft of botch beauty procedures, everything from life persuction
Speaker 1: to breast implants and even but uplifts. For sure, that's
Speaker 1: bad enough in itself, but more broadly, it raises bigger
Speaker 1: questions about women and their body image. Indeed, a fair
Speaker 1: minded observer might conclude that the cosmetic surgery industry was
Speaker 1: built on making young women feel bad about their looks.
Speaker 1: Why are women surrendering to the cosmetic industry's ideal of
Speaker 1: female beauty? Eva Cox, you're a proud feminist. Does it
Speaker 1: sadden you to see so many young women feeling the
Speaker 1: need to get cosmetic beauty procedures.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure it saddened to me or puzzle to me.
Speaker 2: I can't look out why, you know, because we're supposed
Speaker 2: to be feeling good about ourselves. You don't feel good
Speaker 2: about yourself If you want to sort of go to
Speaker 2: the cosmetic surgeon to sort of add bits to your
Speaker 2: titsul admits to your bottom, or to take away a
Speaker 2: bit from here and a bit from there, it sounds
Speaker 2: wasteful and cruel in a sense. I really wonder where
Speaker 2: the young women are coming from where that becomes so important.
Speaker 2: I think one of the points about feminism was to
Speaker 2: get is less feeling that we had to sell our
Speaker 2: bodies for you know, for comforter or pleasure.
Speaker 1: More on that later, because it's got to be worth
Speaker 1: noting that most of these cosmetic surgeons are male. So
Speaker 1: you've got men prescribing an ideal of female beauty.
Speaker 2: Oh, they've been doing that forever. That's on the point
Speaker 2: about it is, you know that the idea is because
Speaker 2: you know, women had to sort of sell their appearance
Speaker 2: and their capacities to men to sort of put up
Speaker 2: with the fact that the men have been supposed to
Speaker 2: take care of them for the rest of their lives
Speaker 2: or various other ways of doing it, that we really
Speaker 2: haven't got through the idea that there's a genuine male
Speaker 2: and female partnership which would depend on a range of
Speaker 2: relationship attraction things and not just on the physical bumps
Speaker 2: stick out in particular ways or don't stick out enough,
Speaker 2: or whatever happens to me. I mean, I just am
Speaker 2: appalled about the level of women that sort of feel
Speaker 2: they've got to adjust their bodies, and it's often not
Speaker 2: even because of men, but because of things in magazines
Speaker 2: or online or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: What about social media? Is it fair to say social
Speaker 1: media plays a crucial role in heightening female body image issues.
Speaker 2: I think social media does, and I gather this is
Speaker 2: where these cosmetic surgeons or cosmetic doctors are not really surgents,
Speaker 2: constantly sort of advertised because that's where they get the
Speaker 2: women and sort of convince them that if they don't
Speaker 2: get their laby as trimmed, that they're going to be
Speaker 2: soon as unattractive.
Speaker 1: I'm talking with feminist Eva Cox. Either women seemingly get
Speaker 1: boob jobs, buttocklyphs and the rest to please men. So
Speaker 1: has feminism failed women or have they simply rejected feminism.
Speaker 2: I don't know whether they've rejected feminism. I think what
Speaker 2: feminism gives a sort of mixed message to say of
Speaker 2: them in the way that they do it in so
Speaker 2: far as they feel they have the right to have
Speaker 2: the body that makes them feel good. I don't even
Speaker 2: know how fight's to do with the attraction of men
Speaker 2: or how fight is to do we're just looking good
Speaker 2: for the general community at large. But certainly there is
Speaker 2: a sense where women feel one of the rights that
Speaker 2: feminism has imposed on them is the right to sort
Speaker 2: of make their body look whatever they think it ought
Speaker 2: to be. And I'm not sure they actually, as I say,
Speaker 2: responding to individual men, or even responding to individual cosmetic surgeons.
Speaker 2: It's just that sort of feeling that somehow or other,
Speaker 2: we've got to look like some sort of plastic doll.
Speaker 2: I think what feminism has done is fail to give
Speaker 2: women enough of a good sense of who they are
Speaker 2: that their body in toto is taken into account and
Speaker 2: not whether they stick out in an appropriate way in
Speaker 2: various sexual or even non sexual things.
Speaker 1: Do you think young women, especially see feminism as something
Speaker 1: that doesn't matter to them.
Speaker 2: No, I think they get confused about it and say,
Speaker 2: feminism is about my freedom to do whatever I want,
Speaker 2: in the same way that there's a whole lot of
Speaker 2: politics at the moment that seems to be saying exactly
Speaker 2: that sort of stuff, that that sort of emphasis on.
Speaker 1: Self feminism. Isn't it about freedom from mild oppression?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean you can put that in, but I
Speaker 2: think feminism is basically about the recognition of all of
Speaker 2: those things that we tend to put down because that's
Speaker 2: what women do. If you take a look at the
Speaker 2: world generally. You know that care is actually undervalued and
Speaker 2: underpaid sort of, you know that the contributions we make
Speaker 2: are undervalued and underpaid. That it's what we look that
Speaker 2: seems to be important.
Speaker 1: I've got to ask you, do women still need feminism either.
Speaker 2: Yes, because we're still in a world that's entirely run
Speaker 2: by men. I mean, we wouldn't have made such quite
Speaker 2: a stuff up of a lot of the politics at
Speaker 2: the moment if we were sort of concerned about society
Speaker 2: and not concerned about bloody economics, which is something that
Speaker 2: was definitely that seems to have a penis erected amongst
Speaker 2: the you know, the various figures, because it doesn't seem
Speaker 2: to deal with emotions, it doesn't deal with relationships, it
Speaker 2: doesn't deal with society, it doesn't deal with obligations, it
Speaker 2: doesn't deal with ethics, it doesn't making a profit. And
Speaker 2: that's you know what blokes And I mean, I feel
Speaker 2: sorry for blokes because they very often get forced into
Speaker 2: the idea that if they're not making a profit, they're
Speaker 2: not a real man. So, I mean, we've still got
Speaker 2: huge inequalities about power, relationship, what's good and what's bad.
Speaker 1: We got into the place where cosmetic beauty became the ideal.
Speaker 2: It becomes a product, becausmetics makes us a product, and
Speaker 2: a product is saleable.
Speaker 1: Thanks very much either God bless you, and thanks for
Speaker 1: talking to us tonight.
Speaker 2: It was a pleasure.