The girls wore tight jumpers or tops, flat pointy-toe shoes, and lots of full petticoats under their gathered skirts so that when they danced the petticoats whirled right up to show Presley purple or bright fluoro pink knickers. Waists were pulled in to eighteen inches with wide leather-studded belts. The petticoats were only what you’d call half-slips but each had metres of material and so did the skirts. Girls kept their petticoats stiff with starch or a mixture of sugar and water squirted on then left to dry.
It was really important to shop with your friends and to share beauty and fashion secrets after school and on Saturday mornings. The shops weren’t open on Saturday afternoons, and they shut at 5pm on Friday nights.
Dear Diary,
I bought a new petticoat today. Ally and Jan came with me. I tried on seven and Ally tried on eight. Jan tried on five. The shop lady was going berko. There were petticoats everywhere standing on the floor. Now I have three multicoloured tulle ones, a rope one and a wire hoop one.
I’ll wear them all to the dance. Dad says I look like a flamingo. But if I don’t wear at least five petticoats I’ll be a square.
Dear Diary,
Ally and I are making plastic flower earrings. We bought coloured plastic tubing in three colours then melted it into shapes. The plastic stuck all over the stove and Mum went nuts. But our earrings look good, huge red, white and yellow flowers glued onto clip-on bases. We’re going to make some more.
Ally is doing the seven day Ponds beauty treatment. If you cream your face for seven days you’re supposed to get rid of wrinkles. Ally has five wrinkles round each eye when she smiles. Ha. I have three. Ally also came with me when I bought my new togs. She has bottle green ones with a built-in foam bra. Mine’s got blue and white stripes and a padded bra too. I look like I’ve got big boobs at last. Marilyn Monroe’s are size 38 inches. Mine are size 32 inches if I puff out my chest. Boys don’t like you unless you have big boobs. We wore our new togs swimming to Eastern Beach. I crashed into everyone because I can’t see without my glasses. I look like a goog with glasses and act like a goog without them. My granny says, ‘Boys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses.’ Thanks Gran. I’d rather be dead than wear my glasses.
When you are a teenager it’s important to look the same as everyone else and wear the right stuff. Friends help you do this by making suggestions and telling you if you look like a dick.
Dear Diary,
Our parents won’t give us enough pocket money to buy decent gear so Ally and I are learning to make our own clothes, mainly skirts and matching tops. Each skirt needs yards of material because it has to be gathered in tightly at the waist, and have lots of flare before the top gets sewn on. We bought the same material but different colours. My new dress is American Beauty, a sort of pink, and Ally’s is Ming blue. The latest colours. Ally’s cut her top low but then her boobs are bigger than mine.
Privately I think it’s too low. You can see her nipples if you peer down her neck. Her mum will throw a fit.
It was important to have big boobs. That was the fashion. And a big bum. Marilyn Monroe was our idol. She was actually a size 16. She had a 38 inch bust, 23 inch waist, 36 inch hips and a big bum!
It was the ‘hour-glass’ look. I was a bit jealous of Ally because she had big boobs, 36 inches.
Also I had this problem. My right boob was much bigger than my left! I thought I was the only girl on earth with one bigger than the other. It was my big secret. I didn’t even tell Ally! I certainly didn’t tell my mother! I would stuff socks down my bra to pad it out. And secretly I worried that I’d never get married or have kids because no man would want a wife with one boob bigger than the other.
Then suddenly one morning it seemed to be bigger. Just like that. Unbelievable. And gradually the left one caught up with the right and I had a matching pair! Whew! So if you’re lopsided, don’t panic.
Having friends also gives you the courage to try new things. New experiences.
Dear Diary,
We had a seance in Joanie Timm’s bedroom. There was Ally, Jan, Irene, Yvonne, Joanie, Judy and me. She didn’t have a ouija board so we used a glass and wrote the letters of the alphabet on bits of paper. The glass kept falling over. Then Joanie used her sister’s crystal ball. She reckons it said I’m supposed to marry Wade Kimberley! He’s the biggest square in the school. I’m supposed to have five kids, three girls and two boys.
I’d rather be dead than marry Wade Kimberley and have five kids! But then the freakiest thing was when everyone left the room except me and Judy and we were just mucking around and the glass took off with me sort of attached. It was like I was glued to it. And Joanie came back and was reading what it said. It was going so fast. She said that my spirit guide was called Mike, he lived in the Mauritius Islands in 1820 something and he’d got hit on the head with a stout stick and any time I wanted his help just ask. Then the glass sort of fell over. I was so scared I was shaking. I don’t want some old ghost called Mike being my spirit guide, watching me get undressed and stuff. Forget it. I’m never going to a seance again as long as I live.
I didn’t dare tell my mum about my seance for ages but when I did (after I’d been screaming out in the middle of the night for the sixth night in a row while having a nightmare about it), she said that my great great uncle had lived on Mauritius Island for a while. She didn’t know whether his name was Mike or not. I thought this was even spookier.
Once when I was walking along the beach on my own with no one near for miles, I thought I could smell my dead grandpa’s pipe smoke. I thought that was spooky too.
Personally, I don’t think seances are very useful unless some expert clairvoyant is running them, and I think you need to be careful when you dabble in this stuff. It’s not worth the nightmares!
I do believe in guardian angels and spirit guides, though, or whatever they are, because they’ve hauled me back from the brink of danger by the scruff of the neck about fifty times. Like, I was picking blackberries and there was this thick piece of car tyre in the grass and I was about to step over it and this voice sort of in my right ear said, ‘Don’t do it!’
I got a real fright because there was no one there. Then I thought, this is stupid and those blackberries are the best here, so I went to step over and the voice said, louder this time, ‘Don’t do it!’
I bent down and peered at the tyre and I saw stripe, stripe, stripe. It was an enormous tiger snake! I was outa there faster than a speeding bullet.
Some people say it’s intuition, some people say it’s destiny, some people say it’s God, some people say it’s the universe. All I know is that I trust these ‘good guys’ and I don’t trust the ouji board /seance guys. And I’ve never told anyone about some of this stuff. Till now. With you.
The problem is that if you try to share some of these experiences with certain people like your homeroom teacher, the doctor or a cop, they might think you’re nuts. If you are going to tell about weird personal experiences, make sure the person is trustworthy and a good friend. But back to the basics of life.
Hair.
The best thing about girlfriends is that you can share hair fashion and sympathise together about bad hair days.
Here’s an extract from a letter sent to me by Miranda, age 14.
Skye and I dyed my hair. She got this purple dye and did streaks. I’d already dyed it red so it looks cool with red and purple. There’s this boy Will who I think likes my red and purple hair. Not like my father. He says I look like a Ribena berry.
When I was sixteen the beehive was top hair fashion. You had to grow your hair long then back-comb it till it stood out a mile from your head and you looked like Yahoo Serious, then you carefully and gently combed the top strands over the ‘hive’ neatly and kept it in place by spraying a couple of litres of hair lacquer on it. The higher the beehive the better.
Dear Diary,
Ally, Jan, Yvonne and I did each other’s hair in the beehive look. It took practically all Saturday
afternoon. Ally’s was the highest. It was exactly ten inches off her head. Mine was only six inches, but Ally put in this Silver Magic dye. It’s for old ladies with grey hair but on my blonde hair it looks fab, real deep purple. It washes out. We were going to the Youth Club dance. We wore blue eye shadow and we pencilled our eyebrows thickly with black eyebrow pencil and drew ‘wings’ on our eyes. Jan had black mascara and I had new Baby Pink lipstick so we shared. But when we were walking to the bus stop it rained on us and my Silver Magic dribbled all down my face and on my dress and our hair fell down. We were wrecked. We had to go home.
My English penfriend Val is another person who became my best friend when I was seven years old but I didn’t meet her face to face till I was forty. You can have best friends through snail mail, email and the internet. All our teen years Val and I shared secrets through our letters and we still do.
When I was busy being a teenage widgie she was being a teenage rocker and going out with a rocker guy called Ronnie Simpkins. Rockers were called teddy boys and teddy girls in England. Ronnie was what we called a sort. A sort was a good-looking male. If we got one we’d say we’d ‘collected a sort’.
Last year I double-dared Val to put out an advertisement in the British papers for Ronnie to come forward because we wanted to see if he’d got fat and bald. She wasn’t game in case he’d turned into a serial killer or a Tupperware salesman or something and he started hanging round her. Do you think she should do it?
Best friends can last a lifetime and Val and I will be friends forever even though there’s kilometres of ocean between us.
When I wrote the book Love on the Net I went to the island of Barbados in the Caribbean with her. Now that she has a new man in her life (not Ronnie!) we may never do that girl thing again — sit on the sand under a palm tree on a tropical island and talk our heads off, and tell each other our innermost hopes, dreams and fears. Sitting on that sand we made a vow together: ‘We are women of substance, not women of shit,’ and we set ourselves some goals which we are both achieving. Our friendship will always be there.
Here’s another email from Amy J about her friendship hassle:
>From: Amy J.
>To: Margaret
>Date: Tue, 8 Jun 1999 7:32 PM
hey there,
well, u haven’t written to me in ages but maybe it’s my turn to write anyway. i just hope u haven’t gone and dropped dead on me or anything, coz i know ur old.
i was writing this really long email to u in geography in the library and the dweeb of a librarian comes up behind me and roars, ‘u shouldn’t be on the internet in class time, i should give u a detention.
‘if i catch u again i’ll take away ur internet rights!’ bloody hell, she scared the shit through me, i didn’t even hear her coming. she must have teleported herself across from the other side of the library. i was really upset cos the email was long and interesting …
well, it’s been an in-ter-es-ting week. After the fight with Claire me and two friends sent this email to this boy in Melbourne called Hamish about Claire being a cow, and then i sent him one, u know how it is, i really went off, then i was so wound up i couldn’t remember what i’d said and the dick sent it to Claire! u can’t tell a boy a secret, that’s for sure. what a nob! so i apologised to Claire and she seemed all right but she ignored me and my friends and then she didn’t come to school so we phoned her in the middle of maths and said we were sorry.
then that night Claire’s mum made her let her read all the emails … which she did, then Claire’s mum came to the school with a copy of our emails and especially mine but not the 14 k apology email i’d sent straight away. grrrrrrrr. so me, Prue, Sophie and these other two girls that didn’t even do anything, Claire just said they were involved coz she h8s them, well we all had to go to the principal’s office, we went in one by one and everyone came out crying. i swear Ms Holland is such a bitch, she went on about how i was a disappointment to her, my parents, the school, the community, Australia, the world, the universe and me. she crapped on about how she could take me to court coz i broke the school internet user agreement and what i did was slander and what a bad person/girl/friend i am, and how she never thought anyone could sink to the low standard of language (like shit, bitch, cow) then she said some sort of shakespeare quote about some dick of a king or something. i was bawling my eyes out and she goes, ‘oh, silly girl, don’t cry, u shouldn’t be crying, ur not the one who feels hurt.’ SHE WAS MAKING ME FEEL HURT.
Then i told her about the numerous times i’d rung Claire and how she kept ignoring me … and Ms Holland said i wasn’t sincere enough! so now i’m banned from the school internet for the rest of the year and detentions and a black mark on my file. i’m starting to hate Claire all over again. and Hamish was giving me so much crap on the email about how girls never make up from a fight the right way and this coming from a person who punched some guy in the nose and cracked his ribs for making a move on his ex …
i’m writing this at home. cya, and write back soon. Amy J.
Poor Amy found that school principals are seldom tolerant about illegal and inappropriate use of the internet, and that when parents try to sort things out they often get worse, and that girls can be bitchy.
Boys tend to handle arguments in different ways than girls. They can be more aggressive and resort to beating up on each other, although some girls can have a bitch fight, pull hair, punch and claw, and some boys can be bitchy.
During teen years girls are often ruled by their hormones. For no apparent reason you wake up mopey and can bawl at the drop of a hat, or yell at your parents over little things that normally wouldn’t bother you. Once hormones settle and get into a sort of rhythm it’s not so bad.
I’m not sure whether Lauren’s hormones are out of control in this letter or if she’s more of a ‘tomboy’ and deals with things physically:
Dear Margaret Clark
I’ve just finished reading Pulling the Moves and I swear you come up with the best sayings, the best thoughts and the best comebacks. It’s cool what the characters are always thinking and saying. I’m sort of like Leanne. I have a brother like Sam, (like, der) and a father who ran off to WA with this fat blonde slut. But sometimes I get in cow fights. Trouble is now I’ve got a rep for cutting a good fight and I usually win anyway. My friends are a bit scared of me so they do what I say. Mostly.
But there’s this school careers teacher and she’s also my homeroom teacher, she’s a REAL COW, she says my career is sorted and I’m gonna be a door bitch, you know, stand guard outside nightclubs and stop people coming in, like full-on power trip. Like, if she likes you you’re in. The door bitch i mean. So I can’t talk to anyone about this because the school counsellor is going with the careers teacher. Secretly I don’t want to be a door bitch, I’d like to be a vet. Can you help me? Do you want to be my penpal? Or epal? Bye from Lauren.
PS I’m fourteen.
And my answer:
Dear Lauren,
Thanks for your email and for saying nice things about Pulling the Moves. I really appreciated it.
Re your career teacher. Have you ever actually told her that you’d like to be a vet? To be a vet you need to be good at maths and science. You haven’t said whether you’re good at school subjects. You haven’t really told me much except that you get in fights and you don’t want to be a door bitch.
If you don’t end up a vet you could be a bodyguard or a detective or go in the army if you enjoy being tough and physical. If you want to change your reputation then you’ll have to stop cow fighting.
Because I get about a hundred letters and emails a week I can’t be your permanent penpal or epal, but while you’re sorting out this fighting-door-bitch-vet thing I’ll be your friend, okay?
Maybe Lauren needs to learn not to get physical with her friends. Friendship is a trust thing. It’s a bit hard to trust someone if you’re not sure if they’re going to beat up on you!
So, you can make friendships that last
a lifetime. You can make new friendships that are ongoing. You can lose friends when they move or you have a fight with them or they take up new sports or hobbies that differ from yours. You can also have full-on or temporary friends on email or the internet.
The best thing about friends is that you can share activities like shopping, make-up, horoscopes, hopes, dreams and secrets.
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School
There is a growing number of children and teenagers whose parents would rather teach them at home for different reasons, so they attend Home School. There are also children and teenagers who have School of the Air or correspondence lessons. There are probably some children or teenagers tucked away who’ve never been to school and may not even be able to read or write. But the majority of children and teenagers in Australia go to school! Some young people love school. Some don’t care one way or the other. For some it’s a comfort zone. Some young people hate school.
And guess what? There are hordes of adults who feel exactly the same way.
‘My school never did anything for me and I never did anything for the school,’ is a comment I hear a lot from adults.
For many young people, school is a place where there are lots of rules and people called teachers to make sure the rules are followed.
When I worked at the alcohol and drug centre a lot of kids were on the street because they’d been chucked out of school for various reasons.
This is Rossie’s story:
‘Like, they put me on a contract. I’d stuffed up a few times, see. You know, jigged a few times, been late, not done homework, been caught smoking in the dunnies, given cheek to teachers, you know, and this was it. If I broke any part of the contract I was out. Like, Jesus H Christ hisself couldn’t have kept to this contract. like, they’d made it
Secret Girls' Stuff Page 2