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The Book Show – Germaine Greer (1992)

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What is a woman? education content clip 2

Original classification rating: PG. This clip chosen to be PG

Clip description

Andrea Stretton is talking to Germaine Greer about her new book The Change: Women, Ageing and the Menopause (1991), which is proving just as controversial as her previous work. In the interview, Greer suggests that a woman’s mental state might have more to do with how she goes through menopause than any medical issues. Greer expresses strong views about the older woman and her place in society. She insists that the older woman is often invisible in a world that is focused on youth and beauty.

Curator’s notes

by Janet Bell

The interview confirms that Greer will always bring a fine intellect and the ability to express herself forcefully, in prose as in person, about issues that have impinged on her life. As a woman over the age of 50 she is now looking at the older woman in society, emphasising the new freedoms this age can bring rather than what has been lost. The interviewer Andrea Stretton skilfully elucidates these ideas.

Teacher’s notes

provided by The Le@rning FederationEducation Services Australia

This clip shows arts journalist and television presenter Andrea Stretton in an interview with Germaine Greer, the Australian writer and academic, about Greer’s recently published book The Change: Women, Aging and the Menopause. In what looks like a living room but was actually a reception room in Greer’s hotel, Greer and Stretton sit facing one another in armchairs.

Educational value points

  • The clip reveals Germaine Greer’s (1939–) forceful personality, striking turn of phrase and controversial ideas on the subject of women, which have been features of her writing since she came to public notice in 1970 with the publication of The Female Eunuch. In Australia to publicise her book The Change: Women, Aging and the Menopause (1991), she presented her views, as seen in this clip, forcefully and unapologetically.
  • The clip shows Germaine Greer making the kind of bold sweeping statements about pre-menopausal and post-menopausal women that drew strong criticism at the time from feminists and the general public. Her critics challenged her assertion that menopause desexualises women, thus liberating them from being sexual objects, and her claim that through menopause a woman ‘may be allowed to turn into herself’ (http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk).
  • In the discussion both women claim to have insight into 'the world women live in’ to support their arguments. The younger Stretton speaks on behalf of career women, claiming that their lives are so busy that they do not have time for the sorts of concerns and anxieties Greer claims they have. Greer speaks of women acting 'a part in a game’ and being anxious to measure up lest they fail to win the perfect husband or produce perfect children.
  • Greer talks of the link between women’s body image, sexuality and power, arguing that women prior to menopause hold ‘a particular sort of hand’ that is linked to their sexual allure. To maintain this power results in self-consciousness. Writers such as Naomi Wolf (1962–) in The Beauty Myth (1991) have drawn attention to the way women’s bodies are looked at, objectified and sexualised in Western cultures and how this may be problematic for individual women.
  • The interview showcases one of Australia’s best known personalities and writers and one of the most well-known feminist voices of the 20th century. Greer, born in Melbourne but living and working in the UK since the late 1960s, achieved fame in 1970 with the publication of her book The Female Eunuch. Now regarded as one of the foundational texts of the women’s movement, it saw sexual liberation as the key to women’s liberation.
  • Stretton (1952–2007) demonstrates in this interview with Greer some of the qualities that made her such a successful interviewer. Her questions challenge Greer’s forcefully presented views but they do so in a way that indicates her knowledge of the text and a genuine desire for discussion and engagement that brings out the best in her interviewee. She consolidated her interviewing skills as producer and presenter of television arts programs from 1987 to 2001.