US feminists championing botox are betraying the cause
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/us-feminists-championing-botox-are-betraying-the-cause-20091214-kr11.html
VIRGINIA HAUSSEGGER
December 14, 2009
Every time I use the ''f'' word in public I get walloped. Feminism is
a funny thing. Just when you think you've got the old dear worked
out, she throws off the knee rug, leaps up from the rocker and pulls
your hair. Nasty. It's usually the result of some profound
disagreement. And if we've learnt nothing else during feminism's
third wave, we've certainly learnt that hell hath no fury like a
feminist scorned. So I tread with trepidation.
But I take refuge in the knowledge that feminism is indeed a ''broad
church'' as writer Elizabeth Farrelly once put it, ''its cults many
and varied''. Which is a kind way of saying – it takes all sorts.
Yet, I would never have thought the head of the most famous feminist
group in the US, the National Organisation for Women, was the sort of
feminist to fall victim to the beauty myth – all over again. But she has.
Last week Terry O'Neill, the President of NOW, came out swinging
against a proposed US tax on Botox, arguing that it was a ''tax on
middle-aged women''. If Naomi Wolf was dead, I'd be saying that she'd
be turning in her grave right now. Fortunately she's not dead, but
perhaps her 1990 treatise on how ''images of beauty are used against
women'' has been laid to rest – and long forgotten.
As chief of NOW, O'Neill leads a massive organisation that has long
been one of the most powerful voices for women in the US. Founded by
Betty Friedan, NOW has been instrumental in groundbreaking
legislative reform, and the organisation's energetic campaigns have
served as a model for women's groups around the world, including in
Australia. The most famous NOW action - burning a trash can full of
bras and girdles outside a Miss America beauty pageant – became the
stuff of folklore, and made ''bra-burning'' a universal symbol of
women's liberation. As a symbol it's perhaps been over-hyped, but at
least it grabbed attention and made a point.
So what on earth is O'Neill doing now by falling backwards into the
bottomless pit that is the beauty myth? When quizzed by Judith Warner
in The New York Times as to why a tax on Botox was ''devaluing''
women ''for being middle-aged'', O'Neill argued that access to
cosmetic surgery – Botox, breast enhancement, face lifts etc – is an
important contemporary feminist issue. In a nutshell, this leading
feminist is suggesting that if middle-aged women are serious about
getting - or keeping - a job, then they must buy into the myth that
they are only as good as they look, and spend money on a good plastic
surgeon. ''I know a lot of women whose earning power stalled out or
kicked down as they entered into their 50s, unlike their male
counterparts', whose really went up'', she told Warner. And no doubt
that is very true. But is cosmetic surgery really the answer? And are
women really the problem?
This issue is hot in the US right now because the massive health care
reform bill currently before Congress includes a 5 per cent excise
tax on cosmetic surgery and ''related procedures''. It's been dubbed
the ''Bo-Tax''. O'Neill is arguing against it because she says it
hits middle-aged women hardest: which it no doubt does. But her claim
that cosmetic surgery is not a luxury, but rather a modern day
necessity is where she comes unstuck. Her argument that it's up to
women to nip, tuck and enhance themselves as much as they can afford,
because ''we live in a society that punishes women for getting
older'', is where her particular brand of feminism not only falls
apart, but shatters with contradiction.
As president of NOW, surely O'Neill is aware of her own
organisation's ''Love Your Body'' campaign? In its website blurb
women are told how dreadful it is that Hollywood and the fashion,
diet and cosmetic industries ''make each of us believe that our
bodies are unacceptable and need constant improvement''. The campaign
calls on women to rally and ''together we can fight back''. So,
where's the ''fight back'' in encouraging middle-aged women to
believe that the battle has been lost, and their best weapon of
defence is the cosmetic surgeon's scalpel, or the beautician's syringe?
There is no doubt cosmetic surgery is no longer an ''if'' but a
''when'' proposition for many women. And as a dull ''sameness''
pervades celebrity circles, where it's getting increasingly harder to
tell one puffed lip and expressionless brow from the other, perhaps
it just doesn't matter. Perhaps it's just an exercise in choice. But
where is the feminist scrutiny of that choice?
What hope is there of women receiving any respect and admiration for
the wisdom and maturity they've achieved by middle-age, if even NOW
is telling them they're old hags? Ironically the NOW ''Love Your
Body' campaign appears aimed at girls and young women, rather than
those in their 40s, 50s or beyond. And yet it's that older
demographic most at risk of being socially sidelined and rendered invisible.
.
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