Vocabulary Exercises.

Sum these people up. What similar qualities do they have? How did they achieve what they have now?

1. great charisma / entertaining speaker / attractive to normal people / statesman

2. natural leader / an ability to see the “big picture” / imprisoned

3. wonderful hostess / have a natural touch / charming / sincere / honest / background / experienced / suffered

4. wealthy / he’s amazingly clever / down-to-earth / grounded / real / enthusiast / approachable

Vocabulary III

1. to defy (authority)

2. resist

3. achieve world fame

4. huge fame

5. explore and extend (a talent)

6. to extend one’s knowledge

7. to go long

8. to charge things with energy

9. to alter one’s personality

10. adroitness

11. proficiency

12. cynicism

13. self-knowledge

14. to efface sth.

Transcript (p. 99)

Anita: My name is Anita Roddick and I’m founder of The Body Shop.

Interviewer: And how did your career start?

Anita: I was trained as a teacher, English and history. And like most teachers in the sixties…er…er…the world was big and you…you moved out of your career really fast. So I had a…a lot of… a lot of the experiences I had that formed my thinking for when I started The Body Shop were formed by the ability to travel, because in the sixties students suddenly, you know, had the ability to travel. Um…I worked with the United Nations in Geneva for the Women’s Department. I lived with...er…communities, fishing communities, farming communities, in Indian Ocean islands, in the Pacific islands, and it’s there that I got the idea for skin care from natural ingredients.

***

Interviewer: And why do you think The Body Shop has been so successful?

Anita: I think we have a covert understanding of women, I think…er…um…we have an amazing sense of not feeling when you go into the shops that you’re going into a female fortress, everything is…it’s very much like going into a supermarket, there’s information that you can take or not take, there’s…um…samples that you can try or not try, there isn’t that heavy-duty pressure, and th…you don’t feel that you’re less than the products, coming in. Um…so I think, and…the…there’s a very strong female identity in The Body Shop and that’s a lot to do with language and…er…the visual images.

There’s never a celebration of a perfect type, a perfect Caucasian type: very passive, um…very flawless. In fact the images are never that, the images are very multicultural, very real. There’s that, and then the language is almost profoundly puritanist. You never er…er: ‘This product will do this for you’ it…outside of the function of cleaning, protecting and polishing the skin and the hair. We never espouse and support this absolute obsession with youth, youthful looks. Er…we c3elebrate wrinkles, we celebrate the ageing process, we celebrate women and social justice, rather than women and passivity. And I think that’s…that’s been a real bonding with women…er…in many ways. Plus we have a great smell! You know, go into the stores and it smells like, er...you know, whatever, you know, а pantry, it smells like, you know, a fruit bowl and that's very tangible in there. And 1 think the other success to The Body Shop is because we stand...we turn our shops into social action stations, you know, we campaign on human rights issues, we campaign on social justice issues, environmental issues, and we leverage the customer as they come into the shops or they're in the shops on these actions, so it's not only selling skin and hair care it's, you know, it's the ability to campaign in

those shops as well. .

Interviewer: I must say I always feel that your customers can feel that they are doing something positive: trade not aid for...er...Third World countries, so...

Anita: Yes, I think there's a...it's a very difficult thing for us because there's a whole, you know, behind the scenes there's a whole...er.. .market of thoughtfulness and it's really hard to describe thoughtfulness in a very very busy shop: how we source our ingredients, how we determine our re...relationships with small and fragile communities in the majority world, how we...er...make sure that we audit the process towards sustainability , how we don't do excessive packaging, how we make sure no ingredient is tested on animals. I mean, I'm amazed, really amazed that we get any products on the shelf because there's a minefield of things you can't do, cannot say, um ... .

Interviewer: And that must have changed tremendously since you started?

Anita: Yeah, I think...er...where people are looking at everything we do through a microscope, everything, everything we said twenty years ago, every aspirational statement so that's quite...that's quite constraining. But it's...um...it's the nature of the company, because when you act in a very very radical way, when you challenge the system and challenge a very powerful beauty industry and, you know, accuse it of racism, accuse it of not celebrating real women...you know...you, you know, it's, as Helena Rubinstein said, 'It's the nastiest business in the world'.

***

Interviewer: What do you really enjoy about your life?

Anita: I love my life because it's a thumbprint of who I am. If...you know, if one had to describe The Body Shop, being active and being socially concerned and having a sense of humour and a sense of counter-culture and being...guerrilla tactics, that's exactly my personality so 1 think a lot of what 1 like about it is 1 constantly, you know, reinvent it and thumbprint it. 1 love, because it's again, it's my...the fact that there are so many planks in my job: the planks or, you know, creation, creativity, looking at the style and image, looking at the product development. And then the amazing stuff which, you know, if 1 packed it in tomorrow, which I'm not prepared to do, the work I would do on human rights, you know, the., .the profits that we make, the way we choose to channel them into supporting activists, human rights activists, or...um...social justice activists, so...and one minute 1 can be, you know, knocking my head on looking at product or redesigning the store and then I'm rushing to a meeting in Bosnia about what we can do in the orphanages there. And 1 think that...that is really what women are good at, they juggle, they won't be boxed_ into...um...a style that says This is who we are.' You know, you know, we have relationships that we have to deal with, we have issues that we have to deal with, we have style that we have to deal with and that very much is what I love about the job, its multiplicity of…er...of involvements.

Interviewer: And it allows you to use your your potential fully.

Anita: Yeah. I mean it's... I think what's...certainly at my age, in my mid-50s, for me everything is about continuous education, you know, and education of the human spirit. That's why 1 spend so much time travelling because it's like a university without walls, and pushing myself into arenas and areas and situations that are very very uncomfortable. Because when you run a company as popular as this and when you have wealth, which I have, the great and worst things it can give you sus...the great thing it gives you is spontaneity but at the worst is it corrodes your sense of empathy, you know, your sense of understanding the human condition. And putting myself into situations where I'm either for ex...like, travelling with a vagabond and living in some of the worst areas ot black rural America or working in...er... majority world countries makes for a very uncomfortable existence, but gives you a sense of human connection and 1 would be bereft without it and the company would be bereft without that type of stuff.

•••

Interviewer: What...what do you not enjoy so much about. . . ?

Anita: You know, 1 think it's the dark side of this company and the dark side of any entrepreneur is that sense of huge, onerous responsibility. You cannot be dilettante, you can't say, 'Oh, I'm going to go off for six months, and laze around on an island in some, you know, Caribbean. You've got thousands and thousands and thousands of people that depend on you for their livelihood, and their life. And I'm not dilettante about the 150 people that are working in a project in Kathmandu, most of them 'untouchables', who depend on our relationship, our trading relationship with them. So it gives you...er...the dark side is that you never have time for nourishing yourself in terms of what you want to do, you end up being so bloody selfless that you're...that selflessness is...urn...counter-productive. So that's the dark side. The other dark side is that I hate, loathe, fight against structure and...er...hierarchy. And women are not good at hierarchy, we're much more inclusive, we want all the world to sit round a table and work things out. We want to talk feelings and we want to talk how... how...emotions in the workplace, and...er...when you have a company as big as ours you yearn for intimacy. Where are those intimate relationships that you had 20 years ago, when you went into somebody's home and you...er, you know, you sat in the televis...watched television with them? And so I constantly have to try and regenerate that. So the lack of intimacy, the hierarchy, urn...the...the anguish of people in the workplace, um...which is a constant, I think are the things 1 don't like.

INTERVIEWER: Well, how do you then relax when you have a. . . ?

Anita: I have a very very strong family life. I'm Italian and the Italians always have a strong sense of extended family. I have a wonderful granddaughter and, you know, I'm much more reflective and playful with my granddaughter than I ever was with my kids when it was survival and you just got out and worked. I'm a great one for...um...er...for the movies, the theatre, so it's all performing arts stuff. er...!ong walks is another way, you know, I'll do great six-hour, five-hour walks. Um...and I think being in the company of people 1 love, a...and being a housewife in the best sense, you know, where you...people come and you eat, you cook them dinner, you walk, I mean it's the way I fashion my home, it's four sinks in the kitchen, a great jukebox, we all cook together, we all clean up together, we all rock 'n' roll. So it's very much around the.. .the.. .the haven of the house.

Interviewer: What do you think you're proudest of having done?

Anita: I think I'm proudest that...a couple of things: one is that really challenging the beauty industry, really challenging it, and...er...hopefully redefining beauty. Really defining it as not as some manipulation of...er, you know, bone structure but about vivaciousness and energy and action and.. .er.. the... the essential qualities of what women are, and...and the self-esteem that goes with that. And I think the second thing has to be, we will go down in the books in terms of how we've reinvented business, giving it a kinder and gentler face, er...um...giving it a social agenda that., .er...and a responsibility again for which there are no books for.