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