A girl with a fat bottom thinks she’s a loser: Germaine Greer

It is difficult to believe Germaine Greer when she says she is 72. One of the most influential feminist voices of the 20th century, Greer is still as fiercely energetic and controversial as she was 40 years ago when her iconic book, The Female Eunuch, became the ultimate manifesto for the women's liberation movement. DNA caught up with her at the Hay Literature Festival in Thiruvananthapuram. Excerpts from an interview:

The Female Eunuch’s main thesis is that the traditional suburban, consumerist, nuclear family turns women into eunuchs. Do you find it to be true today as well?
It seems to me quite simple. For instance, take Katie Price (English media personality, former glamour model who previously used the pseudonym Jordan). She is so thin. Her hips are almost nothing, and she has a bottom on her top. And she is a very powerful woman. She creates marketing opportunities by the thousands. She is worth over $35 million. And in the West a lot of little girls think this is the way to power.

This worries me a lot because these little girls are not eating. And this affects their brain. Our little girls are not eating, and they don't have any flesh on them, and therefore, they don’t have any bosom. So they end up buying one. It has got to the point where boys don’t know what the real thing feels like. They look at girls in porn films, which they watch on the laptops inside their bedrooms, and they want girls to look like that, and girls don’t.

In England, the worst thing you can have is a fat a---. A girl with a fat bottom is a loser. It’s crazy, they are all mad. And it’s costly in terms of the girl’s health, and also their ambition. Why do they all want to be Jordan? There are some who can’t be Jordan because they are too big, too dark, too hairy. Then they are lost, they just give up completely. The situation today in the West is dreadful.

What do you see in India?
Here, an educated man wants an educated wife. An educated wife can probably earn a living, assist in family income, work in the family business, bring up the kids, and so on. In India, you don’t want an ignorant woman if you are, say, a doctor. It’s not the case in England, and people don’t want to get married anymore. This is my fault. [Laughs]

So, is Indian society less repressive for women than the West?
Hmm... that’s very hard. For example, what the West will say about India is that in India, perhaps more in rural India, a young woman will be taken from her home in tears, has to come and live with her mother-in-law, who will be cruel and horrible to her and make her work like a servant. But wait a minute, you are identifying yourself with the bride. The mother-in-law is also a woman. And if she is intelligent, she doesn’t want a desperately unhappy bahu. She doesn’t want some little girl trying to hang herself on a saree. If she wants a happy family, she wants to keep her daughter-in-law happy too. It is more often the case.

But we don’t have that option in the West because the senior woman in the family has nothing to do. She can be a baby-sitter if they can’t afford to pay anyone. If their son or daughter decides to move away, they go, they don’t ask, ‘mother, can we go?’ In England, if your son and his wife come to have dinner with you once a month, they think that’s too much.

So it often happens that, you have children, you love them so much that it hurts, then they grow up, and start pushing you away, and they say: ‘Mom! You don’t know anything’, and finally it gets to the point that they don’t even ring you up because they don’t want to hear your voice. That’s the reality for older women in England.

What’s your take on the problems facing women in India?
The problem in India will always be, how to modernise without getting Westernised. There are certain values in the Hindu system and in Islam that the West doesn’t respect. I mean, ours is a pornographic code, and women are sexual merchandise. The pornography on the Internet is enormous, it is the biggest cultural activity online. That has an effect on the way women live, they are half-naked. You can’t do that in Islamic countries, and I would hope in India too — just because nakedness in India is not something that happens. Western feminists never understood anything about India, they never sat and watched. I think there are still values here.

You had said in the 1970s that women have been separated from their libido. Your take now?
Well, in India it is different. You have the concept of shakti. Shakti is energy, but if you think of the iconography, it is sexual energy. I have an Oriya Kali picture. She has a stream of energy flowing from her tongue through her body, and down her legs. Shakti is the female side of Bhakti, and as long as you have this idea, you have an idea that women have sexual power.

For example, in villages in India, when a little girl begins to menstruate, it’s a big thing. She must be treated as a sacred creature; she must be covered, and treated with respect as she is now capable of becoming a mother. Yes, I know people get cranky about how repressive India is. But it is also protective.

Rape is India’s fastest growing crime. Your take...
There are a lot of things you have to think about there. First of all, India is a huge country. You can find the best and the worst here. One of the terrible things historically is that the woman who was raped is herself destroyed. She cannot give evidence in the court of law. She is made to feel guilty, she is like a piece of dog turd on the floor. It’s insane. You lodge a complaint of rape and what is going to happen is you get beaten up, thrown out of the village, or stripped. The most obviously worst case is when your husband is raping you. To be raped by a stranger is bad luck; to be raped by your husband is death. And you can’t tell anyone because the honour of the whole family will be destroyed.

But I can see the attitude is changing. Women are now saying, no, you don’t abuse me. I will stand up and say you are doing this, and this will not be my shame, it is yours. So what is happening is more women are finding the courage to come forward. It is getting proved that sexual assault is as common in India as in other parts of the world.

What do you think of lesbianism as a radical political stance, of ‘revolutionary feminists’ who tell women to get rid of men from “your beds and your heads”?
Haha. It is a bit unfair to your partner if you adopted it for political reasons. Lesbianism as a political stance is just silly. You don’t want to be in love with someone who thinks it is politically correct to have sex with you, do you?

You have been arrested for using words like ‘f---’ and ‘bulls---’ in a speech. How much of feminism has to do with language?
Hmm, for example, the most powerful word in English, the word that makes men pale, is ‘c---’. It is the same in India. It has Indo-Aryan roots. It’s such a great word. Go for it. You have to be careful, you have to ration it. You don’t want to use it too often, so that people stop caring. Just flick it into some conversation and people gasp!