The Edition: Barbie's world

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The Spectator

News Commentary, News, Daily News, Society & Culture

4.4 • 785 Ratings

🗓️ 13 July 2023

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week:

Ahead of the release of the Barbie movie, Louise Perry writes in her cover piece about how social media is fuelling the cosmetic surgery industry. She argues that life in plastic is not, in fact, fantastic. She joins the podcast alongside the Times’s Sarah Ditum, author of the upcoming book: Toxic: Women, Fame and the Noughties, to discuss the normalisation of plastic surgery. (01:11)

Also this week:

In anticipation of the BBC Proms Philip Hensher writes in The Spectator that classical music has gone from being a supreme cultural statement, to just another curious musical genre. He is joined by Sir Nicholas Kenyon, former controller of BBC Radio 3 and director of the Proms and now opera critic for the Telegraph, to discuss the changing face of the BBC Proms. (16:54)

And finally:

The Spectator’s Damian Thompson writes about some of the misguided – as he says – initiatives by both the Church of England and the Vatican to engage with popular culture, prompting him to ask: has the Vatican abandoned beauty? He is joined by Fr Lawrence Lew, Prior and Parish Priest at Our Lady of the Rosary and St Dominic. (27:13)

Presented by William Moore.

Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Spectator combines incisive political analysis with books and arts reviews of unrivaled authority.
0:06.4	Subscribe today for just £12 and receive a 12-week subscription in print and online,
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0:15.5	Go to spectator.com.uk slash summer.
0:26.9	Thank you. co.uk slash summer. Hello and welcome to the edition podcast from The Spectator.
0:30.6	Each week we look at three pieces from the magazine with the writers behind them.
0:35.4	I'm William Moore, the Spectator's Features Editor.
0:38.3	On this week's episode, we'll be looking at the normalisation of plastic surgery,
0:42.9	discussing the changing face of the BBC proms, and asking if the Vatican has given up on beauty.
0:49.9	First up, in her cover piece for the magazine this week, Louise Perry writes about how social media is fueling the cosmetic surgery industry.
0:58.1	She joins me now, along with The Times' Sarah Dittam, author of the upcoming book, Toxic, Women, Fame and the Nauties.
1:06.4	Louise, is plastic surgery problematic, and if so, why? Is it problematic? I mean yes I also think it's
1:16.0	probably completely inevitable because I think that as more and more ways of pritifying
1:22.6	ourselves have become available they have been welcomed with open arms by consumers.
1:30.7	And I think the really striking thing about beauty trends now compared to in the past
1:35.6	is that now the cost, the sort of annual cost of looking normal, right, at least looking well-groomed,
1:43.7	is much higher than it used to be.
1:45.6	You know, it's not just getting a manny-pedy and getting your hair dyed or, you know, whatever,
1:51.7	already quite expensive, right?
1:53.4	It's now fillers, Botox, facelifts, all of these things.
1:57.8	It really, really adds up.
1:58.6	And I think what's going on there is just that the sort of desire for beautification is pretty much bottomless, particularly among young women. And they're not wrong to recognise that actually being beautiful advances your interests in all sorts of ways. There's so much data that I cite in the piece showing that people, you know, they do better professionally when they're better looking.
	...

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