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.