Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "Botox Feminism?" with Jessie Stephens

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"Botox Feminism?" with Jessie Stephens · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  G'day, humans! Well, don't you get a lovely episode today? I've been saving this one up for you.
• 0:06
  I am on holiday. I'm still working for you because you matter to me, to my heart, to my soul.
• 0:14
  I'm walking along a street in Hamilton, Ireland. I don't know if you can hear the distant
• 0:19
  resort music in the background. It is bloody freezing. I've come to Hamilton, Ireland,
• 0:25
  which is in the Whitsundays on the Great Barrier Reef. For a little bit of R&R with the family,
• 0:32
  this is our first post-pandemic holiday. And so I thought, look, we're going to escape the Sydney
• 0:38
  winter. We're going to go somewhere really warm. Here I am on an island freezing my balls off.
• 0:46
  But there are palm trees and beautiful beaches. So this is the ultimate first world problem.
• 0:53
  Great interview for you today. It's what I would like to call a comfy couch convo.
• 0:59
  As you may be aware, if you're a regular listener, uncomfortable conversations are my long form
• 1:04
  interviews with world leading thinkers and celebrities. And then occasionally we'll sprinkle
• 1:10
  throughout like little nuts on the delicious Sunday that I just ate down at the Hamilton, Ireland,
• 1:17
  Marina. Did I mention I was on holiday in Hamilton, Ireland? Did I make you feel guilty about that?
• 1:21
  Did I make you feel jealous? Good. Mission accomplished. Occasionally peppered throughout
• 1:27
  the season of the show will be comfy convoes where I grab a friend of mine and whisk it down.
• 1:33
  We have a cup of tea, a cup of coffee, some cocaine, perhaps. And we chat about this and that
• 1:42
  and anything that's on our mind. This is a corka of a comfy convo. It's with one of my faves,
• 1:49
  Jesse Stevens, and it's about Botox. It's about lip fillers. It's about the things that we do,
• 1:55
  especially if we happen to be women, to try to make other people think that we're prettier than we
• 1:59
  actually are. And what that means for self-image, for social media, and more broadly for feminism.
• 2:08
  Jesse is the assistant head of content at Mama Mia, one of the biggest, I suppose content
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  manufacturing empires in Australia. And she's the co-host of Mama Mia's flagship podcast,
• 2:20
  Mama Mia, out loud. I hope you enjoy this one. Next time I see you, I'll be back in rainy,
• 2:26
  cold, freezing, suddenly. I hope you'll love one too. Well, enjoy in the one moment. Jesse Stevens.
• 2:34
  Hello. We're looking very lovely. Thank you. Have you had any plastic surgery lately or any
• 2:48
  fillers, injections, Botox? I haven't. But I will say it started to happen among my friends,
• 2:55
  so I'm 30. Right. And my friends have started saying that they're going to get a little bit of Botox,
• 3:02
  a little bit of filler, a little bit of sometimes they turn up and they have a bit of a different
• 3:06
  face with new lips. Do you ask them? Depends on the friend, but sometimes I do. And I am grappling
• 3:17
  with this strange feminist moment and trying to work out what I think about it and what to do when
• 3:24
  facing the realities of aging and whether there is even a choice anymore because feminism is about
• 3:31
  to be, it's feminism is meant to be a choice. And sometimes I look in the mirror and go, I don't
• 3:37
  even feel like I have a choice whether to have Botox anymore because I feel like that's the only way
• 3:42
  to manage. Yep. That's how it feels. Get out of town. Yeah, because my mum. Delusional. Why would
• 3:47
  you feel that way? Why would you feel that way? Because of the magazine? No. Because of the card
• 3:52
  actions that the card actions done this to you, Jesse. Look, probably a little bit, but it's,
• 3:57
  I've always thought that it's not... You need to get bumming plans as well. I'm pretty sure they kill
• 4:01
  you, but I have never found that it's the Instagram aesthetic or it's the magazine thing. It's
• 4:08
  the contemporaries that are really influencing you and teaching you how to age and you're watching
• 4:12
  people five years or ten years ahead going, how are they aging? How are they doing it? What am I
• 4:17
  allowed to look like at 35 or 40 or 45? And you have this moment, I think it's in your late 20s,
• 4:24
  where you suddenly realize that just about everyone, especially on television, has Botox.
• 4:30
  And I fold myself into thinking they just age well and more sunscreen and drank lots of water.
• 4:36
  And that's not a fact. I don't even know the extent to which Botox is widespread because I mean,
• 4:41
  you can tell when you can tell. Yes. You can tell when it's like Nicole Kidman 15 years ago.
• 4:46
  And it's like, wow, that person has no facial expressions. Or actually, there's a movie on Netflix
• 4:53
  that's a Helen Hunt film. Oh, yeah. Have you seen the photos of this? Yes, I have. I started watching
• 4:58
  it and you can't, I can't even watch, I can't watch the film. It's distracting. It's so distracting.
• 5:03
  She doesn't look like a human being and she has no, she cannot move her face. Like someone's
• 5:08
  created a plaster cast of Helen Hunt from like the, the era when she was famous. And they've made
• 5:18
  a plastic model of it and they've superimposed that plastic model onto the face of a 100-year-old
• 5:24
  mummy. Well, mummy would be older than 100, wouldn't they? 4,000-year-old mummy. And that person,
• 5:31
  that person is now, that mummy is now starring in a Netflix film. It's quite distracting and
• 5:35
  there's no reference to it. Like there's no reference to why this woman looks, why she's been
• 5:40
  horribly disfigured by plastic surgery. Yeah, they're trying to play like an average suburban mummy and
• 5:44
  it's like, why did you get all that money to do the space? Exactly. It doesn't make it. In fact,
• 5:50
  there was a movie, sorry, I'm just remembering. There was a superhero movie. I think it was Ant Man
• 5:56
  2 or something where they go down to a microscopic level and his mother has been stranded there for
• 6:06
  centuries or something and she's been at the microscope and they managed to beam her up into
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  real human life. And the mother is played, I think, by Michelle Pfeiffer. Oh. And I did tweet,
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  I did tweet about how it's good that at the microscopic level, they still have Botox
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  surgeries, clinics down there because clearly she has had a lot of work done.
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  They thought of every detail. They thought of everything down at the microscopic level. But what,
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  all of this is a long way of saying, how do you know who's had it if they've had it done well?
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  So this is what I've discovered is that the people I thought hadn't had it have had it
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  and to not have it is an act of rebellion. But there's this new thing called like baby Botox,
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  which is when you get a tiny little bit and you still move, you've got the movement and it's
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  getting, I'm sure, the technology is getting better and better. So you can still see
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  movement in their faces move, but it doesn't have the depth of a crease or it isn't getting,
• 7:01
  you know, more obvious or whatever it is. And that struck me as as worrying because even the
• 7:10
  Helen Hansen, whoever else, they're the taste makers. They're the people who are culturally deciding
• 7:17
  what we are going to look like as a race. And are they just foreshadowing that that's what
• 7:23
  all of this are going to look like in in 30, 40 years? No, just as we don't all, they're like,
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  everyone in China doesn't bind their feet anymore. It goes through fads, I think. And like
• 7:34
  hair color, we don't have big behind hairdoes anymore. It's just a period of people becoming
• 7:39
  obsessed with a particular look, I think. But certainly that's true of like lip fillers and things
• 7:43
  like that, where there's a specific look associated with it that in 30 years, I think people
• 7:47
  will look back and go, what the earth were people doing? How about teeth? Do you reckon that this
• 7:51
  thing of big white teeth that ask in a stick? Do you think that's a moment in time or do you think
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  that's an evolution? That's a bit tricky because I think that's actually a national difference
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  in the sense that America has had that for a long time. Britain has never had it. And Australia
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  is now swinging around to trying to, I think the export of American cultural imperialism is what's
• 8:15
  imposing fake really, really fake looking teeth on the rest of the world. So I don't know whether
• 8:20
  that'll last. It's certainly. It's everywhere. And I think it's a marker of health. Like it's not
• 8:28
  really, but sort of in this weird, unconscious way, we see big white teeth as health, privilege
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  class. Privilege. I think privilege and class are where it's at. I don't think why do you say health?
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  Because if you see someone with a bad teeth, then often it can be seen as like,
• 8:48
  and immediately it's the same actually with someone who's got signs of ageing is you go,
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  oh, that person doesn't look well. Is sort of the first thing. It's like when a woman doesn't
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  wear makeup for a day and everyone at work buys a flower because they're like, you have a terminal
• 8:59
  illness. That's, there's this thing that, that as, as we age or, you know, naturally,
• 9:06
  that we want to look well and we want to look like we're alive and energetic.
• 9:12
  Get it. But I, I mean, I think you're missing, there's something in between
• 9:19
  terrible teeth and blindingly white fake teeth, which is just teeth. If you have terrible teeth
• 9:26
  that are all crooked and they're brown, then you look unwell. Yes. If you have blindingly white,
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  obviously fake teeth, then you look like you're trying to project an image of, of class and
• 9:42
  privilege and opulence. And I think if you just have regular teeth, just like, you know,
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  not wildly crooked and not wildly gray, but just normal teeth, then I don't think that that
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  registers unless you're in, unless you're in those circles, like unless you're a Wall Street
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  broker or you're in Hollywood or something like that where it's managed to have the fake teeth.
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  Then for me, it doesn't land. I don't notice people who have normal teeth. I notice terrible teeth
• 10:10
  and I notice the obviously fake teeth. Yeah, that's true. And I suppose it's to do with class
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  mobility and all that kind of stuff too, like if you can afford to have your teeth winded or if you
• 10:20
  can afford to have the veneers thing, it says a lot about your standing. But I'm interested to see
• 10:26
  if that's going to be a trend because even dying your hair, like women dying their hair,
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  that's been a pretty long once we could do it. We were like, why would we ever go gray?
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  And there are some women that do it and they're kind of, and I still think it's quite transgressive.
• 10:44
  I was going to say same with body hair, but that's also fairly recent, I suppose, a removal of
• 10:50
  all body hair. And that again, I'm sure that that's cyclical. That's not it. That's a lot of
• 10:54
  thing. You know, in the in the 70s, there was hair. I mean, there's less hair. Well, I mean,
• 11:00
  I don't know now because I haven't been on the dating scene for a while, but like 10 years ago,
• 11:04
  everyone was shaved, like including their pubes and everything. And but 10 years before that,
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  they weren't when I was just starting to experiment. So like, I wonder if it'll come back,
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  but then all the people that got laser, well, they shouldn't have gotten laser,
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  just having permanent. Exactly. She's waxed. Exactly. And now I just feel like you can see certain
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  trends happening, but this thing of, and I suppose it's a question of, we've always feared age.
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  Even the ancient Greeks, the ancient Romans, there's been a thing especially about the old woman.
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  The old woman was the wicked old witch. She was to be afraid of, she terrified men,
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  she terrified children and she was lonely and in a forest and eating children. So I think that
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  that's what we see when we look in the mirror. And I say this, my mother has never had anything
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  done. And my grandmother's were not vain at all. And I suppose that's why I'm grappling with it
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  because I'm thinking is this going to be an inevitability of my generation that we all get to a certain
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  age and just as you go through other things where, you know, you dye your hair or whatever,
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  we might get to an age and go, all right, this is the age where I'm sitting around a table with
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  10 friends and nine of them have Botox and I don't. How strong am I really? Would you do it?
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  I would say absolutely not. But then there is a thing about not wanting to be the outlier.
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  And I suppose a competitive instinct and wanting to be part of a tribe and all that kind of stuff.
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  But those aren't good reasons. I mean, doing it because you feel like, you know, you could use
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  a few few wrinkles around your eyes or something might be a potentially legitimate reason if it
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  comes from a place of self love. But does it? I don't know. I don't know. Because I worry that for
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  me, it's political and I know a lot of very, very smart, very feminist women who I love who have
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  had worked on and it looks great. And for them, it must not be. The decision must not be a political
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  decision. And in the same way, they buy a serum or they wax their eyebrows. They're like, well,
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  if there's a solution to this thing, I don't like, why would I do it? That's right. It sort of reminds
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  me a little bit of, and maybe it's not a perfect analogy. But like once you reach your 30s and
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  certainly your 40s, you have to start working out and like taking care of yourself and thinking
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  about that in a way that you didn't have to in your 20s. And isn't that vain? I mean, isn't that
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  similar to Botox? Isn't that an attempt? We can count you in all the, in all the language of
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  kind of health and wellness that we want to. But fundamentally, when most of us want to lose weight,
• 13:46
  we want to do it for vain reasons because we want to look better. We're not doing it because we're
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  you know, deadly afraid of being wildly unhealthy. Or because we enjoy running. Yeah, exactly.
• 13:56
  That's right. Nobody does. And it is being that language around wellness is interesting because
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  in fact, I think that the Botox and plastic surgery discussion is being hijacked by wellness. And
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  somehow it's to look after your face or to use certain products which are all prohibitively
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  expensive is, is wellness, is an investment in your health, which you, you be, yeah, let yourself shine.
• 14:23
  And I've heard it said that putting foreign toxic chemicals in that we don't really know what
• 14:28
  it does, but just go for it. And I've heard it said that if all, not all, but if a lot of women are
• 14:34
  doing something and you feel a bit weird about it, look if the men are doing it. And if they're not,
• 14:40
  then something's going on. Yeah. And something is going on. It's not that no men are getting Botox
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  because some men are, but not to the same extent. And there is something more broadly about
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  a raising expression and a raising experience that doesn't sit right with me, I suppose.
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  But then I can understand women who say, I am in my mid 40s, I'm applying for jobs and I'm being
• 15:05
  dismissed because of that I look my age and people think I look tired or they think I look old
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  or whatever it is. And they get it because they feel like they have to. And that to me is a problem.
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  And then it becomes a question of are you creating an arms race? Yes. Where it's not even just that it's,
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  you know, that there's a gender component and there clearly is a gender component to the way that
• 15:27
  we conceive of age, the way that that lands for us. Like I'm not worried about, like some of
• 15:33
  a lot of my friends, including my husband, will like use serums and moisturizers and apply SPF
• 15:39
  every day. And like they always have kind of vaguely shiny, like shiny gay face, I sometimes call
• 15:45
  like, you know, very well manicured, metrosexual or homosexual gentleman who always look perfectly
• 15:51
  like manicured and there's a lot of things. Like that face is expensive. Yeah, there's not an
• 15:55
  eyebrow out of place and nails are always perfectly clipped and they're just shiny all over.
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  And I'm not. And when they're like, oh, but you're going to get wrinkles. I'm like, you know what,
• 16:04
  some of the greatest characters I've ever known have had wrinkly, craggly faces. I'm not afraid of
• 16:09
  having a crinkly face as a guy. Yeah. You look like Bob Hawke. That's great. That's a face that's
• 16:16
  seen something. You know, that that lands for me as more trustworthy and like sort of or just like
• 16:24
  it doesn't land as being worse than a young face. And I think you're right that there's something
• 16:28
  about the old we could witch stereotype or something in the way that we are acculturated to see
• 16:34
  femininity. Yeah. That an old woman's face. I mean, I think there's a beauty in it and I loved
• 16:40
  my Nana's face every little crease and and and crevice in it. But you're right that it doesn't come
• 16:47
  like an unmade up purely natural old woman's face doesn't land with the same gravitas that an old
• 16:55
  man's face does. The strength doesn't it lands with more pity or more. It's it's culturally
• 17:02
  the butt of a joke. I mean, aging generally is the butt of a joke. And I remember seeing those
• 17:09
  Prince Philip memes going around about how he'd actually been dead for years and blah blah blah
• 17:13
  because he looked like a 99 year old man. The way we talk about older people generally says a lot
• 17:19
  about us as a culture and you know can explain a lot of what's going on in aged care facilities
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  because we have a complete disregard for for older people. And I think that might come down to
• 17:31
  it as well. There's a sort of a lack of respect the way we value youth. But I've got the same thing
• 17:38
  with my Nana. I remember sitting in her lap and playing with her neck. And that would have probably
• 17:43
  been quite offensive. But she didn't seem to mind and you could pull it out and it would stay there
• 17:48
  for like I used to count. It would stay there for like 30 seconds and then go back in and it was like
• 17:53
  her whole life's story was written in the complexity of her face. But in saying that
• 18:00
  I remember her being in hospital. I think she'd had a stroke and catching her. Had people pulling
• 18:04
  her neck skin? Yes. Exactly. She just couldn't handle it. And she was in hospital and she couldn't
• 18:10
  find a comb. And so she found a fork and unused fork and was brushing her hair. I was like how
• 18:16
  interesting that vanity or how she looked in that moment still did matter a little bit.
• 18:25
  Well, maybe it's vanity. But isn't there also particularly among women of that generation a sense
• 18:30
  of sort of quiet dignity and doing the way doing things the way things are supposed to be done?
• 18:36
  Like my Nana had that. Had a very she would have never it wouldn't have been even if they'd
• 18:42
  been no one to see her. She would have had a certain level of decorum about the way that she
• 18:47
  carried herself and presented herself just for her for her own sense of self. I wonder if it is
• 18:52
  about control and feeling I guess a lot of women's lives whether it's childbearing or whatever it
• 19:02
  was doesn't feel completely in control. But you are and we even saw that during COVID like
• 19:08
  skincare and skin rituals went through the roof because it was a a part of our lives that we
• 19:14
  could control even if it was vain and narcissistic. And so I wonder if that's part of it but
• 19:20
  ultimately it's to do with I suppose our our value. And if a woman is 70 or 80 or 90 or whatever
• 19:28
  she's no longer a sex object. And so her value our culture is like I don't know what to do with that.
• 19:34
  I mean it's interesting that you mentioned like control and self-control because the the same
• 19:42
  the same the thing that is motivating your grandmother to still keep combing her hair even if all
• 19:47
  she has is a fork is also it also sounds a bit like the kind of advice that you get from
• 19:54
  the Jordan Peterson's of the world or the general. Was it general Macrystal who gave that famous
• 19:58
  address to the university graduating class where he was talking about like make your bed in the
• 20:03
  morning. Like if you're not going to do anything else before you go out and save the world and
• 20:06
  sign up to you know to your activist class to overthrow the the patriarchy or the capitalist
• 20:11
  pigs or whatever. Like make your bed and have a shower. Like take care of the little things that
• 20:17
  are within your control because you're not going to be any use to anybody unless you can master
• 20:21
  yourself in the small ways that that make a life sustainably worth living and effective.
• 20:28
  Sylvia Plath had the same in her book The Bell Jar that was the advice she was you know deeply
• 20:33
  depressed and the psychological advice was put makeup on in the morning and go out which says
• 20:39
  something about control and feeling as though I'm going to put my armor on in order to face the
• 20:47
  world and try and perfect oneself before you try and you know affect any any change in the world.
• 20:56
  But is it also a way of um is it also one of the most powerless things we can do you know like
• 21:03
  is it another way of being subjugated by another set of values and we think we're making a choice
• 21:09
  by putting on our makeup and Botox and whatever it is but really we are completely oppressed by
• 21:16
  capitalism by people who are making all this money off women's choices to you know invest in
• 21:23
  themselves and look after themselves which isn't really is it making us happy like I don't know.
• 21:30
  Yeah you're right is it self mastery or is it just a different version of being manipulated
• 21:36
  just being manipulated by bigger forces yeah I mean it's interesting I've seen I've seen
• 21:43
  Islamists I follow quite a lot of Islamists on on Twitter yeah because I think it's interesting
• 21:50
  to actually hear from the horses mouth what they think about things and they'll frequently be a
• 21:55
  meme of like a a woman wearing a bikini a cartoon for example of a woman wearing a bikini
• 22:01
  walking down a beach and then on the other panel it'll be a woman in a burka and it'll be you know
• 22:08
  it'll say and they say you know and they say we're cruel to our women or something like that yeah
• 22:13
  implying that there's an equivalence between requiring women to wear a burka and expecting
• 22:19
  women to be okay with showing themselves showing a little bit flesh at the beach and it's a fair
• 22:24
  point well I mean I always object to that because if you actually look at what the consequences are
• 22:28
  for most women in most Muslim countries for not wearing the codes there are severe I mean
• 22:33
  ostracization from the family divorce you know having no rights being excommunicated from your
• 22:41
  from your local mosque and in some cases actually being convicted of a crime if you're in places
• 22:46
  like Iran or Saudi Arabia so I don't think there's an analogy there because nobody is being arrested
• 22:54
  or excommunicated for not for refusing to wear a bikini on the beach but there's social there's a
• 23:00
  yeah there's a like I think they're pointing to at least a tiny kernel of truth which is that
• 23:06
  it's not a completely free choice to conform to the norms of the society you live in no there are
• 23:13
  social consequences that we've internalized especially heterosexual women in order to be you know
• 23:21
  appealing to a male gaze and are we free in those choices and at least in the 50 60 70s when
• 23:30
  that wave of feminism was coming up you could point to the home and point to very clear oppressive
• 23:34
  forces like hang on I'm not well we're still not going to pay the same but I can't go and get a
• 23:40
  bank loan if I'm a teacher and I get married I'm not allowed to work anymore that's a clear kind
• 23:46
  of marker of inequality these markers are way less clear because there are women going know this
• 23:52
  is my choice so that's what I'm it is this a new way for the patriarchy to subjugate women under a
• 24:02
  new set a new kind of form of oppression because the reality is that the more we're you know putting
• 24:08
  into our face or the more we're staring in the mirror like what not doing other things
• 24:13
  and and is that a new way to control and reduce women to their bodies under their own under women's
• 24:20
  own choice well I mean I don't think it's there's nothing new about people being expected to conform
• 24:26
  to the norms that are imposed on them by the wider culture but maybe it feels new because the other
• 24:32
  forms of oppression have been stripped away yes there are layers of oppression I mean it's a good
• 24:37
  thing that the kinds of oppression we're talking about are so nebulous that we can't even figure
• 24:43
  out if there if they exist right because is it is it worse to think that your form of oppression is
• 24:50
  a choice because no it's worse to actually be physically prevented from from getting the job you
• 24:56
  want this is what actually be legally prevented from divorcing your husband and to like yeah I know
• 25:01
  what you're saying you need you need you need actual break but then at the same time ask someone
• 25:07
  from go back in a time machine and ask someone in the 50s what they are feminists in the 50s what
• 25:12
  they really object to and they'll they're not going to say you know the general vague expectation
• 25:18
  that I look pretty they're going to say I want the same rights as men to do the same things that men
• 25:22
  do those are the low hanging but at least they knew what to point at and I wonder if it gets to a
• 25:28
  point where you no longer know what to point at you know you're not happy you know it's not fair
• 25:34
  you know you're spending an hour in the bathroom every morning and your partner's not or whatever it
• 25:38
  is and I know this is no matter of life or death and you're you're exactly right about that but is
• 25:43
  it even more sinister because we can no longer point at it and we can no longer fight on the street
• 25:49
  because it's become increasingly unclear as to how gender inequality has has manifested and that I
• 25:57
  find really difficult I even look at for example Chinese footballing I always find this fascinating
• 26:02
  that when they tried to outlaw that the women were the ones going please don't outlaw this yeah
• 26:08
  this is part of our culture I don't have big clunky flip of it yeah have you seen those ugly
• 26:12
  feet those other women have and it was them that were like this is part of our culture this is
• 26:17
  part of who we are and it was extremely problematic I think for you know whether it was white people
• 26:22
  or whoever to come in and go no stop your cultural practice because is that any different we look at
• 26:28
  Chinese footballing and we go oh how could women put themselves through that pain and then in you
• 26:34
  know Western culture we're getting a Brazilian wax like how is that different or we look at
• 26:40
  female general mutilation there's a there's obviously a very big difference being forced but
• 26:45
  then you've got women in Western culture who are spending their own money because they're going
• 26:50
  I don't think that my genitals are acceptable and I am willingly as a choice getting them changed
• 26:57
  and going through this extremely painful surgery so I don't think they're equivalent but I think
• 27:02
  there's an interesting argument to be made about oppression for that at some point you also
• 27:09
  have to give women agency yes exactly like if they say they want it what are we going to do say
• 27:14
  that they're not allowed to want it I mean Marx dealt with this a lot Karl Marx when he talked
• 27:19
  about false consciousness and he was talking in the context of the proletariat like thinking
• 27:24
  you know the working the working stiff will think that but what they want is to get ahead in life
• 27:29
  and to make money and to get more material acquisition so they know yeah actually what they don't
• 27:35
  realize is that if they if only they could have my communist utopia that they then they'd they'd
• 27:40
  want it but at some point after you know 50 years of eating borched and wearing bold
• 27:47
  airy and shoes everyone in the Soviet Union was like fuck this I actually just want the tv and the
• 27:52
  coke it's so true and maybe that's you know they're allowed to they're allowed to who will we
• 27:58
  to tell them who we to tell women that they can't get their genitals you know yes if they if they
• 28:03
  if it's truly a free but then what is truly free but I mean all you can say is that it's free from
• 28:10
  overt coercion like none of us is free from subtle coercion not women not men not anything
• 28:17
  and by coercion I mean the expectation the the fact that there will be consequences from
• 28:23
  you trying to exclude yourself from the norms of the culture that you live in and I I wonder if the
• 28:30
  if the coercion to not get to not look old will become more and more overt I know it's not
• 28:36
  going to be Hamid's tale style like an authoritarian regime where you get whipped if you get old
• 28:42
  but when there are social payoffs very real perceivable social payoffs for making a certain choice
• 28:48
  then the question is whether it's free at all but you're right it's not
• 28:53
  well it's free it's just weighted like all the choices are yeah I mean and I say this partly from
• 29:00
  the perspective of the fact that I've got a little bit of a chip on my shoulder about the fact
• 29:04
  that women who I've worked with particularly in entertainment and in on air presentation roles
• 29:12
  will hide behind what a hassle it is to have to conform with these norms and then privately express
• 29:19
  to me how much they love looking nice and presenting well yeah and so I'll you know when I was at
• 29:25
  half post live every morning there was one co-host in particular who would just hog the makeup
• 29:35
  because you've got two makeup like people and so if I need to go on the air I only need three
• 29:39
  minutes they just need to put some anti shine on me but she'd be there now admittedly she might
• 29:44
  take 40 minutes or 50 minutes but she'd be there for an hour and a half because she'd be so
• 29:47
  particular about exactly what eyelashes she wanted and exactly how she wanted her hair to be done
• 29:51
  and then she'd complain loudly about the patriarchy forcing it to look a particular way I guarantee
• 29:56
  there was no one would have complained or judged her at all if she'd been in makeup for half the
• 30:00
  time that she was she liked it she loves that it makes her feel a certain way now is she feeling
• 30:05
  that way because she lives in a culture where men dictate the expectations about how she's
• 30:12
  going to look maybe is she feeling that way partly because she lives in a culture where women
• 30:17
  are extremely obsessed with how she looks I don't think you can just blame the patriarchy or the
• 30:24
  male gaze and she may be just a bit vain and she'd be doing vain things even if she was in a
• 30:28
  tribal culture even if she was living in an indigenous Australian community 80,000 years ago
• 30:33
  would she be the one who's always like trying to come off the best I don't know or is it has she
• 30:39
  internalised that to such a degree it's like you know when women are at home and have to wear
• 30:45
  makeup or there are instances of you know being alone with no one watching you but you still
• 30:51
  feel watched and that's because we've internalised this kind of policing or surveillance that we get
• 30:57
  socially all the time and so has she just internalised that to such an extent that she's
• 31:03
  terrified that she's terrified of judgment is she getting off and reading a hundred comments
• 31:07
  of people saying how ugly an old she looks whatever it is it could be that and even the fact
• 31:15
  that a man still we talk about equality needs a bloody powder to go on air and then women and it's
• 31:23
  impossible to untangle because if you said to every woman on television tomorrow okay three minutes
• 31:29
  you've got for a bit of a powder before you go on air they'd go no no no no no no no no no no no yeah
• 31:33
  they'd be terrified because they know the social payoff they're also it's habitual it's cultural it's
• 31:39
  there's a million other things at play but that's such a disparity in in how we function in the time
• 31:46
  that a man might get to do other much more fun things and sit in the makeup chair
• 31:51
  exactly that's right speaking of um coming back to teeth whitening uh there's an ad in the
• 31:57
  state so there was when i was living there that i thought was so bizarre it's two teenage girls and
• 32:04
  one of them is looking at her teeth in the in a little portable mirror that she's pulled out of her
• 32:08
  her handbag going like oh no look at my teeth they look they look terrible and her friend goes
• 32:13
  why don't you take a tissue test and she goes why the tissue test take the tissue test and she
• 32:18
  holds up a tissue a what a blindingly white tissue and holds it next to a teeth and goes the
• 32:23
  tissue test it's how you know if your teeth look look sparkly white and she holds it up and like
• 32:29
  and then it goes to the it's for like a whitening strip that you can buy at the chemist and
• 32:35
  that erodes your enamel yeah and they are advocating like they are advocating that you test whether
• 32:40
  or not you need this product by holding the whitest thing that you can get your hands on a tissue
• 32:47
  next next to your teeth your teeth aren't supposed to be the color of a tissue your teeth
• 32:51
  are supposed to be mother of pearl or or cream colored they're not the color of a tissue
• 32:57
  that ad would have planted a seed for a generation hurricane that would still have it in the back of
• 33:02
  their head every time they pick up a tissue they go oh i should really ease off that red wine or
• 33:07
  whatever it is like that plays in the back of your mind and advertisers know that that is very
• 33:13
  totally i mean they're making you feel like the way that you're built the way like the
• 33:17
  the ideally perfectly healthy person is dysfunctional yes it's still not enough
• 33:22
  yeah so is sexiness sexist no i don't know i don't think so because i think there is actually
• 33:34
  something very primal about the desire to appeal to the opposite sex in both genders and i
• 33:45
  think that men do it as much as women in in a lot of ways but i think that it's when
• 33:53
  it infiltrates and this is the thing and then it gets really complicated i'm thinking about the
• 34:00
  ridiculousness of being at an all-girls school and the way in which the male gaze infiltrates
• 34:05
  that community and it becomes about how you look and comments about your appearance
• 34:09
  um in in the same way and so that's already been internalized by you know a bunch of 16-year-old
• 34:15
  girls that you ought to look a certain way or you're not going to be accepted and that's not
• 34:19
  if you're a straight girl that's not about sexiness right so it's i think that that's really
• 34:27
  complicated but i think that we do a lot of things to try and attract
• 34:32
  i think a lot of women have an idea of what the male gaze is that actually isn't correct either
• 34:37
  that you're trying to do a certain thing and do a certain dance and fit into a certain mold
• 34:41
  that actually the menu one aren't looking for what depends what menu want exactly yeah
• 34:46
  and the way i think it's a good one so i'm looking for that exactly i think it can take people
• 34:50
  a long time to to realize that but i guess there is something primal as you say and
• 34:57
  grooming is as old as humans are but it's it's when we're resisting the passage of time that i
• 35:04
  start to get a little nervous okay before you get Botox will you text me yes and i'm going to
• 35:10
  go should i do it should i do it and then you'll come back with some Marxist analogy and i'll
• 35:14
  be like you know what don't worry about it i just want to look for a shot out thank you jesse thank you