In this month's "Australian Literary Review", Germaine Greer reflects on her book The Female Eunuch and the effects it has brought about after 40 years. She doesn't seem overly happy with the changes she sees in modern society:
She doesn't think she will be remembered well, if at all. I'd like to think she was wrong.Among the impossible demands that are still being made of the woman of 2010, as they were of the woman of 1970, is that she stay forever young, when our pedophilic culture makes clear that actual adulthood is already too old. Why else would Kate Moss, who has the body of a 12-year-old, be the rich world's favourite model? The anguish to which The Female Eunuch addressed itself is more acute now than it has ever been. Little girls are frantic about the least sign of fat on thighs or buttocks; girl children are starving themselves; girl toddlers everywhere are hideous in pink, which they wear as a uniform confirming sexual identity. Teenagers are demanding augmentation mammoplasty and their parents are happy to pay for it, because they think it will confer self-esteem and confidence. As if.
