Have you ever considered the effect your emotional outpouring has on your hairdresser? I have not, although that could have something to do with spending very little time in the barber’s chair each time I visit. Also, I do not regard my barber as a bestie. Nor am I in the habit of gratuitously sharing intimate details of my life with acquaintances, and I am bemused by those who do so with me.
Come to think of it, I do not even know my barber’s name nor he mine, even though he has had my business for a decade. I doubt that worries him. He is the courteous but reserved type who prefers to concentrate on the task at hand rather than play life counsellor. Given his tools include a cutthroat blade and a sharp pair of scissors, I regard this as a good thing.
But in saying so, I must be on the outer if this is any indication “If it feels like your hairdresser knows more about your life than you know about theirs, that imbalance will tell you something as well,” says Fiona Bennett, a counsellor and Relationships Australia’s WA manager. You can read more about that in “The emotional labour of jobs like hairdressing and personal training”, which you will find on the website of ABC Life.
Launched in August 2018, ABC Life promised to “help audiences Australia-wide discover and enjoy the huge variety of distinctive and informative content they expect from the ABC” as well as “meet the changing needs and expectations of audiences within the ABC’s Charter remit”. Let’s have a look at a few examples of what it offers.
“Like most forms of contemporary fashion, nail art has a long and complicated history, intertwined with racial and class discrimination,” wrote filmmaker and former SBS journalist Santilla Chingaipe last month in an article titled “It’s time to stop judging women for wearing nail art”. Commenting on nails is racist now? Next thing you know it will be food, and so it was less than two weeks later.
“Reflecting on my own history as a third-generation Italian, I can say that the distaste for Italian food when my mother was a girl felt like part and parcel of the widespread racism Italians experienced,” wrote social commentator Rebecca Huntley under the heading “Australia can have a racism problem and multicultural food scene at the same time”. Speaking of “the racism experienced by Chinese and Greek Australians who ran cafes in Australian suburbs and towns,” she wrote that they “often cooked Anglicised versions of their native dishes for their customers or avoided serving anything resembling their native cuisine at all”. I never thought it was possible for one’s palate to be racist, but there you go.
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“I start sweating nervously every time I read about how air travel impacts the environment,” wrote frequent flyer and writer Lise Floris in May. Her solution? “My conscience was temporarily relieved when I made a donation through myclimate.org and invested in some new stoves for a group of women in Kenya.” Helpfully, she also asks us to consider whether “flying is necessary for the soul”. My first thought was that flying was necessary only in the sense of quickly getting from A to B and that the author literally has her head in the clouds, but admittedly the Pink Floyd classic Learning to Fly evokes a powerful counterargument.
Then there are titles such as “Yumi Stynes on why women should go on strike this Christmas”, “When it’s appropriate to attend the funeral of someone you didn’t know well”, and “Why is it so hard for men to link their personal behaviour to gender inequality?” If someone could point to that part of the ABC statutory charter that says the organisation must incessantly self-flagellate and berate concerning matters relating to race, climate and gender, I would appreciate it.
In September, the Sydney Morning Herald reported ABC Managing Director David Anderson had completed a review into ABC Life after an efficiency study raised questions about whether it was within the remit of the broadcaster’s core duties. No substantial changes were made.
READ MORE: ‘We want to reflect our audience’, ABC managing director says
Now consider the ABC’s announcement this month that it would not be sending commentators to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics to broadcast events live on radio. The ostensible reason for ending this 67 year tradition was that it could not afford the $1 million cost. Commenting yesterday on this decision and ABC Life’s hairdresser hang-ups, Michael West, a former business editor at then Fairfax Media and now adjunct associate professor at the University of Sydney’s School of Social and Political Sciences, was not impressed.
“ABC can’t cover the Olympics bc spending $6m a year on high priority Life stuff #priorities like this critical scoop,” he tweeted, prompting a defensive response from ABC Life editor Bhakthi Puvanenthiran, who stated the site served a need for those seeking “non-sensationalist, non-sexist non-commercially compromised advice on their day to day lives”.
Hi Bhakthi, 60pc of my (130k) audience is <34 yrs. Not bagging the journalism, just the asset allocation. Public interest could be served better, that's the point https://t.co/FVJbfTrYQh
— 💧Michael West (@MichaelWestBiz) November 13, 2019
Tellingly, ABC Life deputy editor Osman Faruqi protested: “The amount of grief @abclifeau cops from people inside and outside the building for daring to tell stories about regular Australians who live outside of Annandale is ridiculous.” Copping criticism, but this time from inside Ultimo? Quelle horreur! A former Greens candidate who recently cried “xenophobia” over the nation’s celebrating an Australian-reared horse winning the Melbourne Cup, Faruqi might have to work a little harder at selling himself as the champion of suburban and regional Australians.
On Sunrise this morning one of the guests literally said the Melbourne Cup result was good because the winning horse “grew here, not flew hereâ€.
— Osman Faruqi (@oz_f) November 5, 2019
The culture is so racism poisoned we’re being xenophobic about racehorses. pic.twitter.com/exIMaCxm3T
As for the ABC’s crying poor over Olympic coverage, it had no problems with sending a Compass host Kumi Taguchi and two others to Japan this March, as The Australian’s national affairs associate editor and Sky New Presenter Chris Kenny revealed last month. “Where we feel at home is such a fundamental question, the ABC Compass team felt it worthy of interrogation,” wrote Taguchi, who was born in Australia to a Japanese immigrant father and a white mother. “So, over a series of months, we planned Kumi’s Japan.”
I have ancestral yearnings too, but do not like my chances of ABC paying for me to explore my Irish roots for what essentially would fall under the decidedly non-Charter category of “finding myself”. But for those Australian Olympic Committee officials taking issue with the ABC’s decision not to broadcast events next year, fear not — there is some great footage of a delighted Taguchi taking photos of the picturesque cherry blossoms.
So what else can we expect from ABC Life if it is to continue to operate as it does? Something along the lines of “Mona Eltahawy: “How I f**king reconcile the f**king extrajudicial killing of f**king alleged rapists with my f**king opposition to the f**king death penalty,” in honour of last week’s train wreck Q&A episode featuring an Egyptian-American feminist of the same name. Her fellow panellist indigenous activist and author Nayuka Gorrie could write a piece titled “I said ‘yeah, let’s burn stuff’ on national television last week and guess what’s happening on Australia’s east coast this week — yay!” We also look forward to reading Radio National Fran Kelly’s “A guide to moderating Q&A” (It should not take long).
"When I talk about imaginary violence against men, everyone’s like, 'Oh, my God! Mona wants us to kill men,' and I’m just asking you to imagine a scenario that is the daily reality for women everywhere."@monaeltahawy #QandA pic.twitter.com/T0JEjxegXn
— ABC Q&A (@QandA) November 6, 2019
That would be followed by journalist Tracey Spicer’s “From #MeToo to #MehToo: yet again gender hegemony comes up trumps”. Indigenous historian and author of Dark Emu Bruce Pascoe could regale us with “Aboriginals invented space travel and were the first to split the atom”. Basically if your writing is along the lines of giving voice to the so-called marginalised, or if you believe anything that white people say or do is racist, or if you are convinced there is a patriarchy hellbent on subordinating women, ABC Life is your outlet.
No doubt someone from Aunty will again insist that ABC Life plays a vital role in serving the average Australian’s need to be informed — did I mention Kellie Scott’s “More orgasms for women: It’s time to close the masturbation gap”? To quote David Gilmour of Pink Floyd: “Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earthbound misfit, I …”
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