Afua Hirsch on different cultural views on bodies - body hair, puberty, fertility and aging
Changes with Annie Macmanus
Annie Macmanus
4.6 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 6 May 2024
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Rounding off this miniseries on Bodies, the incredible journalist, broadcaster and bestselling author Afua Hirsch unpacks Eurocentric beauty standards and discusses unlearning some of the myths around women’s bodies. Why do western cultures think body hair is bad? How do non western cultures treat puberty and aging? Can we change how we view our bodies from our ancestors? Certainly, what we think we know about women's bodies is very narrow.
Afua Hirsch is at the forefront of discussions about race, history, and culture in Britain today. Her book ‘Brit(ish)’ was an award winning Sunday Times bestseller and delves into the uncomfortable truth about race and identity in Britain today. Her latest book is called ‘Decolonising My Body: A Radical Exploration Of Rituals And Beauty’. It was a 2023 political book of the year for Waterstones, described as 'ground-breaking' by Bernardine Evaristo and makes her perfect for discussing Bodies and change.
Originally training as a human rights barrister, since being a journalist, Afua has presented documentaries for the BBC, been a regular contributor to Sky News debate show The Pledge and current affairs programmes including Channel 4 News, Newsnight, Question Time, and CNN. She has also written for multiple prestigious publications including British Vogue where she interviewed Rihanna!
In this incredibly enlightening episode, as well as covering different cultural views on bodies, Afua and Annie discuss Afua’s view of her body as a young black girl and how that has changed, a life altering moment with Oprah and why she personally wanted to unlearn and then relearn everything when it came to understanding her body.
Find out more about Afua Hirsch and order her book ‘Decolonising My Body’ here:
www.amazon.co.uk/Decolonising-My-Body-radical-exploration/dp/1529908663
Other books and people mentioned in this episode:
Maisie Hill - Period Power
Laurence Moniasse
GET IN TOUCH
Contact us at [email protected] with your emails and voice notes.
Changes is a deaf friendly podcast, transcripts can be accessed here: https://www.anniemacmanus.com/changes
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Changes is brought to you by electoral dysfunction, a new weekly politics |
| 0:07.3 | podcast from Sky News. This podcast is hosted by three political |
| 0:11.7 | powerhouses. |
| 0:12.8 | Sky's Beth Rigby, Laborers Jess Phillips, |
| 0:16.0 | and Conservative Pier Ruth Davidson. |
| 0:18.5 | It's an all-female, no-nonsense, straight talking podcast |
| 0:22.0 | that explains what's really going on in Westminster and beyond. |
| 0:25.6 | Every Friday they unravel the spin and explain the week in politics with a current |
| 0:31.0 | MP former party leader and a journalist who has interviewed them all, |
| 0:35.0 | the women have seen politics from every angle and they bring their own personal approach to every topic. |
| 0:41.0 | This is a hugely important year for elections with more than half the global population going to the polls. |
| 0:47.0 | With so much at stake, Beth, Ruth and Jess work through and explain which politicians are coming out on top and who is having an electoral dysfunction. |
| 0:56.0 | The best name ever. |
| 0:58.0 | Listen to electoral dysfunction now, |
| 1:00.0 | wherever you're listening to this. |
| 1:01.0 | New episodes drop every Friday. |
| 1:04.4 | Changes is brought to you by Spexavers. |
| 1:07.4 | Guys, this is such an important service that I don't think enough of you know about. |
| 1:12.2 | So Spexavers have a team of specialist |
| 1:15.2 | mobile opticians who can basically come to your house if you're one of those people who |
| 1:20.4 | cannot make it to a Spexavers store unaccompanied due to a physical or mental illness or a disability. |
| 1:26.4 | So they are home eye tests really similar to the ones you'd experience in store. |
... |
Transcript will be available on the free plan in -282 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Annie Macmanus, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Annie Macmanus and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.