translator: ellen maloneyreviewer: helena bedalli hello, my name is tracey spicerand i am a vain fool. let me take you through my schedulebefore appearing here today. six am: get up, look in mirror,see old lady looking back, wonder, "how the helldid she get in there?" put on running gear designedto suck in wobbly bits. run, even though no-oneis chasing me with an axe, but run to maintainprofessionally acceptable size ten. get home, do 20 wide leg squatsin futile bid to get inner-thigh gap.
(laughter) add 20 tricep dips to get ridof nasty bingo flaps. go to bathroom, scour skin with exfoliateto get rid of those dreadful dead cells. hop in shower, lather hairwith sodium lauryl sulphate, rinse out. dollop on conditionercontaining placental extract, wait until it sinks in, and wait,and wait, and wait. (whistles) rinse out. soap up, wash off,get out of shower, dry body,
lather body in petroleum byproduct,otherwise known as "body moisturizer," and wait till that sinks in. and wait, and wait, and wait. cleanse face, add tonercontaining alcohol - wish it was a g and t and i could drinkthe bloody thing instead! apply serum carefullyand wait till that sinks in. and wait, and wait. increase the paraben loadby dabbing eye cream. dab, don't wipe- don't want to damagethe delicate skin, do we?
by this stage, i'm feeling likethe gulf of mexico after the bp oil spill, but i can't stop. cover the rest of the bodyin bronzing cream, and wait till that soaks in. and wait put straightening gel in hair, section off, and apply searing heatuntil styled into shape. burn finger on tongs, ow! almost do back in, lifting up make-up kit.
foundation power, concealer, blusher,eye-shadow, eyeliner, eyelash curler, mascara, eyebrow liner, eyebrow color,lip liner, lipstick, lip gloss. put on shapewear to suckin "mummy gut" after two children. pop on dress, perfectly pressedby a dry-cleaner, using known carcinogens. add liquid to nails, containing phthalateswhich are linked to breast cancer. but wait! there's more! yesterday, visit the "house of pain," no, not the one with the whipsand the fishnets, the one with the hot wax which they dripabove my lip and below my eyebrows
before large hairsare torn out of my face, as i lie there and solemnly chant,"beauty is pain, beauty is pain." today i ask the question;why do we do this to ourselves, why? why? because it's bullshit. (cheering) (applause) today i'd like us to reassess the amountof time we spend on our grooming, and the effect it has on our productivity. imagine what we could achieve
if we weren't beholdento society's unreasonable expectations about how we should look? imagine our increased levelsof productivity in the workplace, and in the home,in our lives more broadly? and imagine how much happierand healthier we would be by not adhering to societyand advertising's unreasonable and unrealistic imageof how a woman should look. a survey by marks and spencer found women take an averageof 27 minutes to get ready for work.
over a year, that is tenfull working days. that's an awful lot of productivity lost. a second survey expanded that;they compared men and women, they looked at, not just groomingfor work but for personal life as well, and they extrapolated thatover a lifetime. over our lives on average, women will take 3,276 hours in grooming. for men, it's 1,092. that's homer simpson being groomed;"he's grooming me!"
that's about a third. do you know what we could doover those 3,276 hours? we could complete a pre-mba courseat oxford business school, become proficient at a musical instrument,or learn another language. but for me, this is the killer statistic: the american time use survey lookedover four years at the effect of grooming time on earnings. and what they found was this: for women, excessgrooming time actually signals
a negative worker attributerather than a positive worker attribute, and guess what? it decreases earnings. if a woman doubles her grooming time, her earnings are decreased,on average, by 3.4 per cent. because it's a non-market activity. you know the other bignon-market activity? housework, which we alreadydo the bulk of. it's an absurditythat we get caught up in all of this.
so, what can we do about it? this is the difficult thing:how do we move forward from this? i'm not a wowser: i love the "girl power" movement, i lovegetting dressed up from time to time. but that doesn't meanthat we should stop asking questions. and the questionsi would like to ask are these: why does society expect this of us? will this make me happier and healthier,and is there a better way of doing it? the reason why i chose thisas the topic to speak about today
is because i've gota seven-year-old daughter. every time i get readyfor my tv appearances, she stands next to me in the bathroomand she always asks the same question: "mommy, why do womenwear make-up and men don't?" and for months, i struggledabout how to answer her. i thought, i can't say, "because honey,it makes me look better," because that implies that women don't likethe way they look naturally. i can't say, "it makes me feel better," because that pointsto pathologically low self-esteem.
what i do say to her is, "darling,i don't like it, it's not right. but it's what society expects of women,and i'm doing whatever i can in my very small wayto try to change that. hopefully by the timeyou're a young woman, you won't have to go through this." i remember when i was a young womanat my first job in journalism, at a metropolitan radio station,i was breakfast news editor. i'd come in at 3:30 in the morning, no make-up, wet hair,straight out of the shower.
sometimes i'd come in in my pajamasbecause it was so early. i still got the job done, you know? the boss came in one day and he said, "tracey, i need to talk to youabout your attitude." i said, "oh yeah? what's this all about?" and he said, "you needto tidy up your act. you're not looking professional." i was genuinely perplexed. i said, "what do you mean?"
he said, "well, you could at leastput on make-up once in a while!" i said, "how does that make memore professional?" he said, "look, it's just what societyexpects of the ladies." then he stormed out and slammed the door. he couldn't explain it,couldn't articulate it; it makes no sense. i've been accused of a lot of thingsover my time in television and radio. "porking up" when i was a size 12, being "too longin the tooth" when i was 37, and having "limited intellect"because i'm a blonde.
i know that women on televisionand in the media more broadly are a microcosm of what is experiencedby women in society more broadly. but the message is the same: you are valued for how you look, not for what is in your heartor in your head. well i'd like to starta movement to change that. like any big movement,it starts with small steps, and the first stepis to deconstruct the problem. i'm quite literal, i take thingsquite literally, okay?
so i'm going to physicallydeconstruct the problem. i don't like wearingthree inches of make-up. it makes me feel... (cheers) (applause) thank you. thank you, soundslike i've struck a chord there, sounds like it drives you guys nuts too. it makes me feel like i'm wearing a mask,like i can't really be who i am. and yet every time i go out withoutmake-up, the comments are always the same.
and i try to not wear make-upwhen i'm not doing tv appearances or making speeches,and these are comments from friends, they are well-meaning, they don't mean itin a belittling or insulting way, but they're just comparing the way i look when i see them without make-upwith the way i am on television. and they always say things like, "you looka bit pale, are you not feeling well?" "are you a bit iron deficient?here, i'll get you a steak!" "oh, you look a bit washed out,are you coming down with the flu?" god, that feels better.
see how long that took? i literally dohave three inches of make-up on. oh, thank god. alright, what can i deconstructnext? this is fun. this is like pulling a barbie doll apart. now the hair is more difficult, because this is whatmy hair looks like usually. an electrocuted poodle, or "a blonde afro"as it was known at university. now any woman knowsthat getting caught in the rain
is the best way of getting frizzy hair, so let's hope this worksand doesn't short-out the microphone, or in some way electrocute myself because then the cameramen down thereand the news journalists will have a really great story. (sigh) that's better! alright! that should undoubtedlytake effect in a few minutes, i'm telling you. alright, i love this dress.
see how emotional we arewhen it comes to clothing? i fricking love this dress! but we shouldn't love pieces of fabric,we should be loving people. this dress becomes constrictingafter a couple of hours. i can't think properly,i feel like i can't breathe, so it's coming off. now i know what it feels liketo be a stripper. this is awesome! that's okay. now we get to high heels.
i could do a whole speechon high heels, frankly. we all know they're the toolsof the patriarchy, but we get caught up in how they makeour legs look longer and more shapely. but they are bloody uncomfortable. we also get caught up in the narrativethat we are expressing our individuality, our economic power,and our strength through them. well that's bullshit too. remember "sex and the city"? that's gone, there we go.
i grew up in queensland so i'm extremelycomfortable in thongs or bare feet. (applause) so this is me. the real tracey spicer without my armor. because that's what it is. there's a reason why a woman's bouffantis called her "helmet of hair." we do this to physicallyprotect ourselves. i have a friend who was diagnosedwith breast cancer recently, and she had chemotherapy.
believe it or not, she saidthe worst thing was her hair falling out, that she always felt like a lionwith this mane of hair, and that she felt likethe biblical samson without that power. it's sad, isn't it? quite obviously, i couldn't goto work looking like this. most of us couldn't. i love the idea of binning our brasand not shaving out legs. i did that when i was at university,it was marvelously liberating. but i think with this fourth waveof feminism, we need a new way.
so i've devised three easy steps. if they'll come up. one easy step is i should learnmy technology better. step one: take noteof the number of minutes your personal grooming takes over a day,week, month, year, and lifetime. you'll be shocked by how much timewe spend on this stuff. step two: think aboutthe other things you could be doing; writing a book, meditating,learning how to surf, learning how to sing,doing a masters, doing a phd.
whatever it is, think aboutwhat you wanted to do as a kid. we only have one life, we don't knowwhen it's going to end. you might as well think about thingsyou wanted to do as a kid, and think, "right, i can do that now!" step three: decidewhat you can reduce or live without. this is the difficult thingand it's different for every woman, and i don't wantto be prescriptive about it. as an example for me:it'll be simplifying my hair-do - 45 minutes a dayon one's hair is ridiculous -
minimizing the make-up on televisionand continuing to not wear it off-camera, stopping painting my nails and, i mean, who said that women's nails needto be shiny and colorful and men's don't? it is an absurdity! and getting rid of the fake tan. i mean it is expensive,and it is full of nasty chemicals. like any change, this will takesome time to remove society's layers of expectationsabout how a woman should look. and there will be backlash,there always is.
but i hope that everyone herein this room goes home today and at least has a thinkabout this time spent and it's effect on productivity, and reassessesthat mathematical equation. because if we do this, i assure you,we will be happier, we will be healthier, and we will be more productive. my name is tracey spicerand i'm no longer a vain fool. (applause) (cheers)
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