Kaz Cooke Redux

Tonight I popped over to my parents' house to eat pie and mash with Dad in front of the TV while Mum larges it in Sydney for a few days. My mission was to ensure the pets did not starve to death under his watch, and to keep the old buzzard himself fed and happy too.*

After the third consecutive crappy 'current affairs' show (he channel-surfs indiscriminately from coiffed commercial telly to Kerry's sauvignon-soaked mush back to something with Dicko/Katriona/Ernie/Eddie in it usually) I crept out of the room unnoticed to draw myself a hot bath. Perusing the shelves of my old bedroom for a book to read, I settled for a dusty copy (inscribed with my name and the year 1994 in my 20 y.o. script - yes, I seem to be stuck in that year of late, don't I) of Kaz Cooke's Real Gorgeous to soak with. I also grabbed a book on Princess Mary (our Tassie one) I'd bought for Mum a couple of years ago, which had been returned to MY shelf, but in the end that didn't make the bathtime cut.

I haven't opened Kaz's popular classic of second wave feminism, pitched at young women, since the year inscribed on the inside cover, but now I feel I must quote some of it at you with the fervour of Monsignor Baron, and considerably more righteousness. For this is the credo which saw me into adulthood and has served me well for all these years.

How times have changed since Kaz was telling us that millions of women have free range armpits - back then, free range muffs were a given. Sadly a lot of my compadres from that billboard-defacing era are now slaves to the wax - some have even succumbed to the knife, and I'm sure there will be further casualties of botox and other anti-ageing bollocks as we get on. Kaz started with the simple premise that young women should make friends with their bodies - and the subtext is that the female body is the battleground over which so many political struggles are won. The personal as political and all that.

I remember an issue of Judy's Punch, the Melbourne University feminist magazine I used to devour with relish, which advocated the use of sea sponges as reusable tampons, to be wrung out over a public washbasin because 'my blood is not something to be ashamed of'. Being the modest prude I am, I never subscribed to this form of feminine sanitation myself, but I was there in spirit.

Anyway - back to Kaz. It's nigh on time for a '10 years on' sequel to this book. Read and delight.

Kaz on waxing (her legs, mind!):

I had my legs waxed for the first time as research for this book. Here are the results: it hurt like hell, my legs felt bald, startled and affronted, it cost about $20 and would 'have' to be done again in a few weeks (oh no, it wouldn't) plus it made my legs itch like crazy for several weeks afterwards.

She really has to do a post-Brazilian update, doesn't she?

Kaz on lotions and potions:

My favourite cosmetics ads are the ones that faff on in French. Even the exported goods only for overseas sales from France have the names in French still on them.

Why say 'concentrated gel' when you can say 'Gel Concentré Multi-Actif'?
Doesn't 'Eclat de Jeunesse' sounds less unlikely than 'Burst of youth'?
You can get respect, serenity, balance and curves in a bottle and it sounds more plausible in French - respectée, serenissime, harmonie and galbeor. What a loade of merde.

On dieting:

Dieting makes you sick, depressed, obsessed with food, unhealthy and stupid.

Perhaps the dumbest diets are single-food diets, like the Maggie Tabberer one, or the Israeli Army diet (only apples one day, only cheese another), the Beverly Hills Diet, the Grapefruit Diet, the Banana Diet, the Airline Hostess Diet (I certainly won't be eating any of them), the Martini Olive Diet, the Great Whacking Gobs of Lard Diet. Sorry, I made that last one up. All right, I made the last two up.

And finally, Kaz on plastic surgery:

Cosmetic surgery is not gentle. It's about cutting, slicing, gouging, grasping, pulling, blood, bruising and plastic drains poking out of wounds to allow fluids to escape from the body after an operation. The bulk of the work is violent, unnecessary surgery on healthy people which is presented more prettily and inaccurately as 'nips and tucks' or 'sculpting'.

Somewhere along the line the bizarre, scary, degrading practice of surgery on normal women gained respectability from the media and writers such as Dr Miriam Stoppard.

Actually, Miriam old sausage, I'm the kind of woman who doesn't want to undergo general anaesthetic unless I have no choice. I'm the kind of woman who thinks 'cosmetic' surgery is only okay in the most extreme cases - breast reduction to stop back pain, for example. I'm the kind of woman who thinks that your book describing gouging and cutting out bits of arm as 'simple and straightforward' is misleading and an advocacy of mutilation.

WORD Kaz. You should be compulsory reading for Year 7s.

Along with the hard word she puts on the media, cosmetics companies and the fashion industry, there's lots of good, solid, affirming advice about being happy with who you are and realising 'you are not your buttocks'. It was certainly a comfort to the young me.

As you can see, it wasn't subtle - she clobbered us about the head with it - but sadly, a lot of it really doesn't seem to have sunk in, does it?

*I am painfully aware of the irony of writing about having to look after my Dad because my Mum is away and he can't cook for himself in this particular post.

OOPS

Never fiddle with your blog template when you're bored at work. I just deleted all my links! I will try and reconstruct them from memory, and it will be an opportunity for me to do some housekeeping and add all the great links I've been meaning to for some time, but it might take a little time. Thank you for your patience, o great throng of readers.

so... today the old fuckstick turns 68. let's hope he gets the boot as a belated birthday present.

My new crush

While the rest of the known universe was in lock down reading HP7, we were out and about on the weekend - the CBD on Friday, out west to Newport on Saturday night, and last night we ventured out to the jewel of the east - Ruby's Lounge - to see the beautiful Ms Sarah Blasko.

I've been singularly resistant, even hostile, to the charms of Ms B over the last few years - not least because my Chris has an unhealthy interest in her, but also because she had seemed an insipid amalgam of any number of fragile warblers. After last night I'm a convert.

It might have been something to do with the setting. I love that part of the world. We arrived in Belgrave just as the afternoon sun was faltering and the house lights were starting to pepper the hillsides. When you're up in steeply set Belgrave village the only things which stop you from falling over the sides are the leafless trees, and their branches were black silhouettes against the ice blue sky. And there on the main strip is Ruby's, glowing like a boudoir, 'an oasis in a desert of bogans' indeed.


















We got to Belgrave way too early, thinking we'd have an afternoon picnic. It was freezing. So after an exercise in contrasts - an indulgent blackberry crumble and cream at the Garden of Earthly Pleasures cafe (set in a dimly lit old manor) followed by a Coopers at the simple and friendly Bell Tavern - we joined the throng at Ruby's, which was older than expected save for a very scary teenage Sarah stunt-double at the very front of the stage. She was dressed in identikit Blasko - a high-necked stripey blouse, cardigan and woollen skirt. And the devil was in the detail - hair parted in precisely the same place as her idol and swept to the side in a scrappy bunch, pink blush and wide eyes. Support act Trumpmanis spied the doppelganger and the singer remarked 'um, weren't you here last night' to the impostor's posse, who'd obviously been there since the early afternoon to secure their spot at the front. Later in the night we caught our undeterred Blastalker lip-synching and staring into her idol's eyes as she did so - and a look of discomfort on the real Blasko's face. It reminded me of Nik Kershaw performing on Countdown and being confronted by a sea of masks of his face staring right back at him. Disconcerting, but very amusing. But once Blasko took to the stage, I was totally down with our obsessed teen.
















She’s remarkably pretty. Elegantly decked out in a full-skirted, belted maroon dress with customary cardigan, she paced the stage with the demeanour (and complexion) of an English nurse tending soldiers in the first world war - gentle, demure but encouraging, and somehow otherworldly. Last time I felt so stunned by the precious, fragile beauty of a singer was most probably when the impossibly small and neat Bjork took to the stage at the Big Day Out to a sea of stage divers back in 1994. She has these beautiful long fingers that she gesticulates with as she dances, and at times she sings to the ceiling in an ethereal reverie. I was transfixed. By the end of the night both Chris and I wanted to dress up like her too.

Her voice is more powerful and intriguing live than it is on record. At times she sounds like Bjork too, but at her best her voice has a surprising richness that reminds me of Portishead's Beth Gibbons. Of course, she did her cover of the Chisel classic Flametrees*, and while I like the slow, drum-led intro of her version, and she handled the emotionally charged middle 8 admirably, that song needs the hoary, beer-stained voice of a disappointed bloke to do it justice. It's uncoverable, basically. Anyway, she’s got enough great material of her own.

But it's nice to be proven wrong about someone.


*and it is a classic – yes, the cool people might be playing catch-up now, but I have always known it – since I was 10 and widening my eyes at the use of the word ‘bullshit’ in a song.

The web is currently flooded with people saying things more eloquently than I.

I was going to write a post about how celebrities and climate change make very uneasy bed partners (apologies for the equally uneasy metaphor - you see! i'm having real trouble with the pen at the moment), but the lovely George Monbiot says it far better:

I was also going to rant and rave about Bracks's prevarication on the timely and vital Broad Bill, and probably still will, but there's plenty of creatively presented posts in the blogosphere on it at the moment.

I can't even be bothered writing about Rudd selling out on Tassie's forests, or agreeing 'in principle' with the unlawful detention of Mohammed Haneef, or being a general arse (but the only choice we've got), because I'm too disappointed in him to talk about it.

So I'm currently sourcing a pictorial in the style of 10 wrong crushes.

Back soon.

In defence of Rushdie

For the past couple of weeks there have been some rather specious arguments thrown around on the subject of Mr Salman Rushdie and his gift of a knighthood from the British establishment. People like Jack Marx from The Age and coolsie author Will Self have surprised and disappointed me with their failure to grasp the issues, to put it bluntly*.

So Rushdie, the Indian-born author educated at Rugby and Cambridge, gushingly accepted the knighthood. As a result, predictable old angers were stirred, and there was instant furore, from left and right, in papers like The Guardian and The Age.

The issues commentators seemed to have with his gong fell into one or more of the following categories:

1. His writing isn't worthy of a knighthood.

Come on! If we set aside for a moment (I shall return to it) the notion that a knighthood is nothing more than a reward for political cronyism and that the people who receive this honour are usually a conga-line of suckholes (to poach a phrase from Mark Latham) - it's an award that dozens of deserving and undeserving people receive every year without comment from either the left or the right. It's just a measure of recognition.

So leaving the Queen out of it for a minute - do we really think he is less deserving than Ian Botham? Than Mick Jagger (give me a break!)? Than countless faceless public service drones lining up to kiss arse for the privilege? After all, he's a Booker Prize winner. Artistic merit is subjective, but at least he is an artist and not a sporting 'hero' or a bureaucrat who said the right things in the right ears.

2. As a member of one of Britain's ethnic minorities, he shouldn't be getting into bed with imperialist dogs lest he get fleas.

This is a tricky one. But it is his choice to do so, and it is thoroughly patronising for anyone other than those in the same position who have actually rejected the honour (and there are several) to comment.

3. He is irritating/smug/looks like Garfield/has married a fancy piece and is therefore not a serious author/leftie/human being.

Yes, this about sums up what Jack said in The Age. I have not heard the same accusations levelled at Paul McCartney, Bob Geldof or John Major as reasons for their ineligibility for the prize. And surely all of the above slurs are equally applicable to those guys.

4. He is Indian.

Yes, there are still vile bigots out there in Little Britain who think along these lines. We won't even bother to discuss this, save to say that I feel some concern that some of the commentators who have cited other reasons are using those other reasons as a shroud for basic racism.

5. The big one - he 'insulted' Islam in his 1988 book The Satanic Verses.

The price Rushdie paid for doing this has now gone down in folklore. The Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa (effectively a death sentence executed by the faithful, upon whom there is a 'duty' to kill him) against him. Riots and violence in many muslim countries ensued, and Rushdie's Japanese translator was killed and two other translators badly injured. Rushdie himself went into hiding and only re-entered public life in 1998 when Iran made undertakings to the British that it would no longer actively support the fatwa. Many fundamentalists believe the fatwa to be irrevocable, because the person who issued it, being the only person able to withdraw it, has since died.

Those who thought he should not be knighted for this reason fall into one of two subsets - obviously, his religious detractors, who clearly don't believe he should live, let alone receive an award, and secondly, those who fear upsetting the aforementioned group, or believe it is too costly to protect him from the consequences of a reinvigorated fatwa.

Right.

I'm not even going to bother with the 'they probably haven't even read the book' line, because in this case it's almost a guarantee that 99% of those burning effigies of Salman haven't read the book - it was banned in most of the countries where there has been protest. I'm not going to say that he has written plenty of other 'non-controversial' novels to justify his award. Because the people I'm concerned about are not just those who are angry on religious grounds, who will never be placated, but the flippant western columnists who are happy to take pot shots at Rushdie.

These commentators, in a range of publications, have taken the opportunity to extricate themselves from defending Rushdie against worrying attacks (for example, the Pakistani foreign minister saying that the knighthood would 'justify' the actions of suicide bombers - though he later modified this remark) on very flimsy grounds, and I find this despicable.

Freedom of speech for writers, artists, musicians, politicians as well as religious nutters, cronies, monarchists, fish and chip shop owners and yes, even Garfield-lookalikes is fundamental to our society.

The sort of cultural relativism that says that we must edit speech lest it cause offence is patronising to all concerned. Lots of ideas people have are offensive to me, but I don't expect anyone to edit their thoughts around me in case I pop a cap at them!

Religion is based on ideas. As long as attacks on these ideas do not stray into the realm of cultural bigotry and racism, and I agree it is murky territory, then discussion of the merits (or otherwise) of these ideas, and yes, open parody of them (them being the ideas) in art and literature, should be allowed without fear of reprisal. After all, we still live in a secular society, and long may that continue.

Whether you dislike Rushdie's writing or the fact that he's married a hot younger woman or you think he's a hypocrite is entirely irrelevant.

He is worth protecting because the freedom to speak is worth protecting.

End of rant.

*It's mortifying to have to say that I agree with Christopher Hitchens on this one.