Dressed to Pull

BEA’S TAKE

In my late teens my living situation changed from being a household of all women – my mother, sister and I – to having a live-in stepfather. This change, while being difficult to get used to at first, turned out to be enormously lucrative in the marketplace of my dealings with my mother. In the early years of my parents’ divorce my mother was incredibly strict. Whenever I wanted to wheedle a teenage night out I had no leverage, no chips, no stock. Sometimes I was allowed to go to birthday parties. But even if I had a party to go to on the weekend we always went to church first on a Saturday night. I must have been the only person at those parties who had received the Eucharist an hour before. One time, as a passive aggressive sort of rebellion, I wore a leather coat to church with no clothes underneath. To this day I don’t have the guts to defy my mother in any overt kind of way.

Everything changed when I got a stepfather. He is not a Catholic and soon church ceased as a weekly ritual. This was not a standover move on his part, I think religion just was no longer relevant to their life as a couple. Note to the kids: when I got a stepfather, I simultaneously got a lot more freedom. Stepfather guilt, so much more potent than divorce guilt alone, was like suddenly getting a 51 per cent stake in the family corporation. My mother started letting me go out at night. It didn’t even have to be someone’s birthday. My mother never neglected me, or stopped worrying about where I went. She just went from being hyper-vigilant to being a normal parent who could be duped with a fairly flimsy excuse.  So there I was, not yet legal, getting into clubs with the purloined license of a 26 year old who looked nothing like me. (Don’t know where the license came from, think a friend donated it).

Having been denied access to nightlife and coming from an all girl school, I relished the chance to mingle in a world of men and booze. In my day life I was a nerd, I wore 70s revival printed polyester shirts from op-shops that made you stink if the temperature went up without warning. The front of my favourite shoes bore the hand drawn silhouette of Sherlock Holmes embellished with glitter smoke. At night I became something different. I was the anti-dork. I don’t think Salt ‘n’ Pepa ever released a track about lady vampires, but if they did I would have been the perfect back up dancer. A lot of makeup and lycra went into the creation of nighttime me. Pale skin, batwing eyeliner, dry matte lips in colours like “mulled wine” or “intense cranberry”. The gothic-lite hooker look. I was a caricature of night living for females.

Everything was super tight, short, and low cut. Most of the time I was profoundly pissed. In a club serving two dollar drinks my friends and I were ordering doubles. We had competitions on how many guys we could kiss in one night. All of us were virgins then, but we thought we were big time temptresses with our chaste snogs.

Now I can’t really tell you whether my heavy makeup, boobs and tight clothes would have been an effective lure for men in everyday life. I can’t tell you this because I led a split existence. There was daytime me and nighttime me. Nighttime me, the try-hard Elvira, fared well in the world of club make outs. But in a darkened room serving cheapo drinks most people can get a leg over for a dry hump and some slag shuffling. I know I did. By three o’clock in the morning I might have been similarly prolific if I had dressed in a cat suit covered with duck feathers. If nighttime me and daytime me had been one, I would have been drunk and skimpily clad all the time. Career options would have been limited. Over the course of my life I have had a few relationships with people I met in bars. But they didn’t turn out to be very good ones. I had much more success with people I met during the day. This may not be the case for everybody but for me it is a personal formula.

At some point in my teens I internalised the message that tight sexy clothes = pick up. If I am going to be honest I should say that my nighttime clothing choices were also driven by insecurity, I thought I had to look sexy to get attention. Club/bar life can be brutal, people are drunk, they leer and flatter and take the piss in equal measure. What I wore at night I would never have worn in the day. As I aged and stopped going to clubs I stopped wearing the hyper-sexualised uniform that enabled me to move with a sort of paradoxical confidence in that world.

Here are a couple of unfair truths. Truth One:  If you go to a bar or nightclub, you are unlikely to see guys in hotpants trying to pick up women. In dedicated gay clubs as well, most guys are wearing pants and a shirt.  They aren’t revealing the delicate curve of their balls. Unless somebody asks. Truth Two: ‘Sexy dressing’ for women in clubs and bars is fairly proscribed and generic, and has been for some time. The basic formula is boobs, legs, tight clothes, makeup. This is unlikely to change and seems only to be getting more extreme. Pretty soon, women will be wearing swimwear in clubs.

Day life, or what I call day life to designate life away from clubs, is somewhat different. In day life people can communicate on a more complex plane. Tastes and interests and personal charm assume greater importance. Not that you don’t chat with people in clubs and bars, but the transactions are a bit more animalistic. Even with internet dating, where the profile pic is all important, banter assumes a heavier importance than it does with the initial first flirtation and gyration in a club. I can’t help but feel that if you meet a person wearing something that in any other context (including sobriety) would make you feel utterly uncomfortable and exposed, then that does not bode well for any potential relationship.

Of course, there are plenty of people who don’t feel uncomfortable about their flesh being exposed, drunk or sober, day or night. And good luck to them! Women or men should be able to dress in a sexy revealing way if that’s what they like. But they shouldn’t feel that revealing clothes are the only way to get attention. I would like to think that if a woman dresses according to the style which makes her feel comfortable and appeals to her own aesthetic, there will be like-minded people out there who will dig her look. This is maybe being overly idealistic. I am aware in the hetero game a lot of guys are put off by looks that are overly fashiony or eccentric (As documented in the great and popular website manrepeller.com)

But if you love high fashion or unusual dressing, or just comfortable and loose clothing, is it worth compromising to pick up? If you think it’s a bit unfair or even sexist that the woman always has to do excessive amounts of primping and revealing, shouldn’t you be able to eschew that whole process? Surely the man or woman who respects and understands your look is more your type anyway? I am not sure of the answers to these questions. I don’t think there really is a simple answer, it’s too easy to pontificate. Maybe if you are a really horny woman and in a sex drought you could go put a mainstream flirty feminine look out there to draw the greatest number of potential flies. But I wouldn’t advise dressing to pull all the time. It’s too boring. Also for me it’s started to feel like a costume, like I was always pretending to be something I wasn’t. Maybe the whole charade is kind of like The Crying Game. You dress like the sexy archetype to lure the man flesh. When he sees what you really like to wear in private he might feel a bit nauseous, but by then it’s too late. He’s hooked. *

* Possibly a bad example given that a penis is not necessarily something you wear, and also things really end badly in that film.

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LEE’S TAKE

My older friends tell me that it all changes at 30.  I did not believe them until recently.

When I hit puberty my skin began to pump enough oil to satiate the global oil shortage.

Now, as I am approaching 30, my skin has shriveled up to sandpaper. The fine lines on my hands won’t disappear no matter how long I dunk them into a vat of coenzeyme Q10 and cocoa butter.  My ears now prick up whenever I hear ads which say “fight the 7 signs of aging.” But perhaps what is more terrifying is how much aging actually bothers me. All of my good friends are attractive women over 30 and none of them use walking sticks.  They tell me that your 30s are when you find confidence.  Unless I get a personality transplant, I don’t see this happening.  #Vain

I have been through both phases of being happily single to being unbearably jealous and intolerant of any couple who dares to even hold hands in my presence. My friends possibly think I’m asexual or in the closet as I’m often single but always in the company of a male friend or two.  Sure I’ve had exciting flings, but nothing more than that.  It also mostly boils down to an inhibiting lack of confidence, having less sex appeal than Rosie O’Donnell, being incredibly picky and not being fortunate enough to meet someone who I like who is single. The celebrity I get the most mistaken for is Ugly Betty. I don’t know any guy who lists her as their crush. Perhaps I’m aiming way out of my league and should settle for someone who is more of my physical match. In that case, this would be him. #NoSelfEsteem

I wonder if my bad luck has also brought about by the way I dress. People say women dress for other women but when I was 15 my entire closet was influenced by what I thought boys would like. One would think that obviously this means I dressed like a slapper. Wrong.

Skatergirl

In the late 90s I was pretty much the only girl in my small Malaysian school who didn’t fall under the spell of boybands.  I listened to anything with a guitar and was particularly concerned with keeping the spirit of grunge alive by graffiting “grunge is not dead” and the Nirvana smiley face over every available surface.  I thought, to set me apart from the designer-clad girls with no interests other than shopping, I should dress in the same way that the guys I liked dressed so they could identify that I was just as cool as them.  As I was fond of the skaters and garage musicians this equated to a uniform of baggy pants and t-shirts. Plus, I was stuggling with a 20kg weight gain that happened in the space of a year, so I was only comfortable in clothes sized for Biggie Smalls. #ThanksPuberty

I naturally became friends with these guys but that was it.  They lusted after the skinny girls in tight midriff bearing t-shirts and mini skirts who were more concerned about debating the Versace vs Dolce & Gabanna than Eddie Vedder vs Kurt Cobain. They dated the girls who killed grunge.

(Note: if these girls were debating Tom Ford vs Marc Jacobs or Prada vs Marni I would have had more respect for them.  Though I dressed like a tomboy, Vogue was still my bible.)

Mod

The skater boys in high school evolved into bearded, mop-haired indie boys at uni who were either wannabe singer-singwriters, filmmakers or writers.  They wore second hand leather or tweed jackets and aspired to be Serge Gainsbourg or Jean-Luc Godard with a Jane Birkin, Anna Karina or Jean Seberg lookalike on their arm.  They wanted more than just a girlfriend – they wanted a muse.

Off to the vintage store I went to buy mod dresses, mini skirts, horizontally striped tops and trench coats.  I got a blunt fringe, wore liquid eyeliner and pulled my socks up to my knees.  When I posed I pointed my feet towards each other.  Perhaps I did look cute (baby-cute, not sexy-cute) but I had the womanly bodyshape of Marilyn Monroe as opposed to a pre-pubecent waifish body of a French New Wave ingenue.  I have yet to see one of these guys with a girlfriend who has a cup size bigger than B.  If they had an Asian girlfriend, she had to be of the immaculate Japanese or pretty half-Asian variety.  Perhaps intelligent guys aren’t attracted to curvy woman (or don’t express an attraction towards them) to show they are a step above the masses who think silicone is sexy.  Obviously what I am writing is nonsense and just reflective of my bitter experience, but show me evidence of a skinny intelligent man with a fat chick and I will believe you. #BitterToday

When it works

Since I have the least amount of luck in the world (for a healthy, able-bodied person) in making a man’s blood rise (#NoExaggeration) I have given up altogether in trying to figure out what to wear to attract them.  I don’t think it makes a difference for men anyway anyway – it’s all about the face and then confidence.  I could be styled by Grace Coddington but if Rachel Bilson was next to me wearing a tattered Snuggie that smelled of tuna and faeces she would be fighting off guys with a stick while I’ll be standing by the wall looking like a (well-dressed) clown in couture.  I just wear whatever suits my mood now.

I can pathetically count on one hand the number of times I’ve been picked up.  The two times this miraculously happened I was wearing one of my most ridiculous outfits: a yellow and blue 80s skort dress.  One would think this would be a Man Repeller but instead I attracted the attention of two very sexy men (who had beer goggles on as it was very late at night).  I can’t explain what it is about this outfit.  Maybe it’s the confidence that comes with wearing such a thing?  They say that it’s sexier when you show less skin, so is the fact that it’s actually shorts and not a dress make it more appealing because of the challenge involved in removing this one-piece outfit?

Haircuts (or, our experiences with “The Rachel”)

So no one told you your hair was gonna be this way
Your bob’s a joke, you’re broke, your split ends are D.O.A,
It’s like you’re always stuck in second gear,
When you haven’t had a good hair day for a week, a month, or even a year…

LEE’S TAKE

I have shed more tears than hair at the hairdressing salon.  My hair is so thick and straight it could be the next Republican presidential candidate.  One would think that it would be really easy to cut but it only provides a more exciting canvas for hairdressers.

The Pixie Cut

I was only 9 when I exploded into my first post-haircut tantrum which would have made Naomi Campbell cower in fear.  My mum took me to an illegal salon in the kitchen of a Chinese woman’s house in Nunawading.  I think she took me there just so she could play mah-jong.  The long hair which I had for most of my life was chopped off into what my mum said was a Linda Evangelista haircut, but I screamed that I looked like a boy.  I think my mum made the hairdresser cut it that short because was sick of me not brushing my hair.  To make things worse, the next day I was forced to sit for an illustrated portrait in Caribbean Gardens market.  When my friend came over she asked who the boy in the portrait was.  I ripped it apart.

The Rachel

I might hold the record for the most number of visits to a hairdresser in a day.  While on holiday in Kuala Lumpur in 1996, my aunt took me to a dodgy salon in the back of some woman’s house (notice a pattern).  The hairdresser didn’t speak English so my aunt had to communicate what I wanted – The Rachel.  Obviously this woman didn’t watch Friends and gave me The Carol instead.  As in Carol Brady.  When my aunt saw tears streaming down my face as I was getting the last few whisps put in my hair, she told the hairdresser to put the scissors down.  We went to another salon (this time not in someone’s house) to fix my hair, but they turned The Carol into The Ellen Degeneres.  Finally, third time a charm, we tried an upscale salon.  The hairdresser, Kevin, spoke English and knew exactly what The Rachel was.  He also kept saying how pretty I was, which made me  I immediately like him.  I loved my haircut.  I tried to replicate it throughout my teenage years but unfortunately no one was ever as good as Kevin.

The Mullet

I had no style direction in my early 20s.  Due to my lack of self confience and judgement I would say to hairdressers “Do whatever you think looks good.”  I was subject to an assortment of experimental short haircuts that the gamine Mia Farrow could pull off, but would not suit someone who often gets mistaken for Ugly Betty.  I only went to upscale salons, trusting that they knew what they were doing.  I think mullets were coming back in vogue (but only ironically) in 2005.  One young hairdresser unfortunately failed to see the irony and gave me this haircut because I said I wanted something different and trendy.  All of the hairdressers in the salon swarmed around me and cooed how good I looked.   I thought I was so avant garde.  I knew that I made a mistake when my always complimentary aunt could only comment that my new haircut was really…short.

Finally

I came into a haircut that completely works for me 2 years ago, but that only happened because I was too broke to get a haircut for a year so I finally let it grow out.  Prior to that, I would break out in hives the moment my hair grew past my shoulders as I thought it didn’t look good.  If only a hairdresser was honest enough to say to me “Hold it there, you have a double chin – you shouldn’t have short hair.  Let your hair grow out for a bit and come back in a few months,” it probably would have saved me years of grief.

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BEA’S TAKE

Hair: The great makeover promise

Hair. It’s always the last step in the makeover, isn’t it? Of all the steps that go into creating any superficial metamorphosis, hair cutting and styling is the most dramatic and definitive change of the lot.

The cinema reflects the truism that hair makes or breaks. In Sabrina (1954), Audrey’s girlish and unchic ponytail was snipped and trimmed so that she could become a modern woman. In Working Girl (1988), Melanie Griffith’s poodle pouf-fant perm was also tamed so that she could be taken seriously in the corporate world. And in Pretty Woman (1990), the hooker shag and the Carol Channing wig both had to go before Julia was ready to celebrate the annual ‘stomping of the divots’ with rich WASPs at a polo match. Without a hair change, these great cinema makeovers would have lacked integration, focus, and (in the spirit of makeover vernacular) “wow”.

The same is true of Makeover TV. The hair is always kept til the last big “reveal”.
We know pretty much what the wardrobe will be because we have seen the outfits being sobbed over and debated between stylist and putz in a protracted and repetitive lead up.  It is only hair (and to a lesser extent makeup) that has the potential to really surprise in those shows where tragic personal style is extended the kindly fist of total humiliation. Even in the case of Extreme Makeover, hair comes after the removal of bloodied gauze and the gentle fading of blackened eyes.

Yeah people are pretty into hair and what it can signify: health, status, tribal belonging, sexual allure. Long hair on a woman is particularly prized in cultures around the world. Put long hair on a women’s mag and it sells more copies than a shorter style. I was once told by some Chinese people that long hair in China is a symbol of patience. They could have been having me on, but it makes sense.

My Bad Hair Years

For a long period of my life I hated haircuts. Not because I am patient like the ideal Chinese lady of my friends’ tale. (As an aside, and Lee can attest to this, I am quite the try-hard Chinese in many other respects, just call me Stevana Segall).

I hated getting my hair cut for ages because it always looked shit afterwards. And I had paid to make it look shit, which was even more infuriating. My resentment was probably made worse because all through my childhood and teens my hairdresser cousin cut my hair for free. She was good, her cuts were minimal and well suited to my thick hanging hair. But my cousin got knee trouble and had to give up the cutting caper for good. I was then left to the scissors of strangers. It is weird to start going to a salon in your early twenties, a bit like going to uni after having been home schooled all your life in the country.

All through my twenties hairdressers everywhere were mad on short layers and razor cutting. It was the Friends effect. After years of being asked for “the Rachel” most hairdressers had forgotten to cut any other way. Everywhere I went, although I was emphatic that I didn’t want short layers, I always ended up with these wisps that bounced up at the crown and made my long face look even longer. Note to long face ladies like me: We need hair that’s not longer than shoulder length, with weight at the bottom, not at the top. For other face shapes, sorry gals I haven’t put any research into your ideal hair template.

This bad hair period stretched on through the noughties, (see the noughties were shit). Chairman Mao would have been impressed by the ubiquity and uniformity of the Rachel in this decade. Even when J-Aniston was well shot of it, I still kept getting that damned Rachel inflicted on me. Although I was completely disloyal and kept having one night stands with many hairdressers, all of them had the same crappy technique.

How I Got Better Hair: The Bottom Line

In despair and having turned 30 I decided to do something I don’t usually do. I threw money at the problem. Now I am usually quite a bargain hunter when it comes to matters of personal appearance.  Most of my life I have bought second hand or sample clothes. I don’t buy expensive makeup because I know it all comes out of the same factories anyway and you’d be a mug to think otherwise. I might not be super frugal (I like clothes) but I am pretty canny. As for hair in my bad period I never went to a salon next to a supermarket but I never went for the boutique salons on the flash side of town where newsreaders and celebrities go either.

I decided, not one day but probably over a number of days filled with indefinite musings, that I was sick of bad hair. I needed to get rid of it for good.  To kill off my bad hair and replace it with something that didn’t piss me off I would go to the best hairdresser I could find. I researched one that had won a bucket-load of awards. I found the head stylist, a celeb type hairdresser. One that looks like you might have seen him on some fashiony show about next top models or something. When I rang up I felt intimidated by the breezy slick speaking voice of the receptionist and the sound of heavy blow drying in the background. Waiting for my appointment, I felt out of place around all the clients with real bags and fake tans and big blonde hair. I felt like a fraud being asked if I wanted a coffee or a glass of champagne. “Na I’m right thanks” I squeaked in my westie accent. I wondered if my hairdresser would be a self-important dickhead.

It turns out my celeb hairdresser is really nice. I suppose it’s like the old cliche about how people at the top of their game are much more down to earth than mid rung climbers who have something to be pretentious about. My hairdresser is friendly but not overly chatty, and he does what I say. He asks questions and he has that wonderful quality of follow-through. Most importantly, he doesn’t make me look like a Rachel try-hard from ’94 through to ’04. And the thing is, a cut is not even obscenely expensive with him. It’s not cheap, but it’s cheaper than getting your hair coloured in most salons, and I colour my hair at home. So that’s how I justify it anyway. I went from years of getting hair cuts for free to high end coiffure. I think of it  as a levy for years of not paying. And yes, I am as horrified as you that I just wrote a piece where the moral probably is “spend more”. Actually it doesn’t matter what you spend, just work out what cut suits you and make sure your hairdresser listens. Be firm. Don’t put up with the layers from hell.

Our formal/prom dress

North Americans say prom. Australians say formal. Whatever you want to call it, just get one thing right – the dress.

LEE’S TAKE

I spent my final year of high school at a Canadian school in Malaysia. We called our end of school soiree a “prom”, much to my delight. Though I lived in Australia up I was 14, I never felt comfortable with calling this rite of passage a “formal”. While growing up in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne I fed my pre-pubescent brain on a North American diet of Baby Sitters Club, Sweet Valley High, Degrassi, 90210 and Seventeen. Everything from that continent was exotic: Gap jeans, Urban Decay nail polish, Bloomingdales, Seattle, New York, LA, Oreos, Twinkies. I would have given up the Southern Cross for 50 stars and 13 stripes quicker than you can say “Rupert Murdoch” (and I still would – currently accepting marriage proposals from cute Jewish New Yorkers). Proms are built up to so much hype in American pop culture that they seem to be the high school equivalent of the Oscars. Students spend a semester agonising about who their date will be, what type of corsage and limo to get, campaigning for homecoming king or queen, planning the hotel room they’ll lose their virginity in. Australian formals aren’t steeped in such tradition, so for Aussie students it’s just another occasion to get drunk on the Passion Pop and Bacardi Breezers they’ve snuck in.

When I was 9 I became fascinated with a blue taffeta prom dress worn by Elizabeth Wakefield in Sweet Valley High (obviously, the dress complimented her sparkling, ocean-coloured eyes). As Sweet Valley High was written in the 1980s most of the prom dresses described were taffeta. I didn’t really even know what taffeta was. I just knew that my prom dress had to be it. Alas, a taffeta prom dress was hard to come by in the year 2000, which is weird as taffeta was used in 1980s disco futurist fashion and the year 2000 represented the beginning of “the future” back then. I guess they predicted wrong.

Next on my agenda was a red strapless gown because Jennifer Aniston wore one. I went on a search for months across every shopping centre in Kuala Lumpur but unfortunately they don’t make dresses for women who have grown out of their childhood clothes and have to wear bras for support, not just modesty. I had to settle for a black dress. Boring black. I wanted to have my Rachel Leigh Cook moment in She’s All That where she walks down the stairs all made up and – shock, horror – she’s pretty without glasses. I had contacts lenses and was going to wear makeup, a dress and heels for the first time ever. I wanted people to gasp at how pretty I was dressed up. I could not make this statement in black.

The dress was not too bad though. It had a burnt velvet floral print so at least the texture was interesting. I did not have a date to the prom but I asked this guy who I used for his car my friend Ben if he could give me a ride. This was a guy who drove me home from school every day. He was a school council nerd who was made fun of by all my guy friends because he was a pompous suck up. I thought he was harmless because he showed no romantic interest in me until the time he asked me in a salacious voice if I was “all wet” when I stepped out of the shower to answer his call.

When he picked me up for prom the first thing he said was “Mmmmm. Your dress shows off all your curves.” If he had said it in a less creepy voice I might have been okay with it, but an all out tomboy/product of the heroin chic era I was ashamed of my large breasts (I wanted to bandage them up like Hilary Swank in Boys Don’t Cry) so I sat with my arms crossed over my chest the whole ride. I wondered if he was expecting us to engage in any physical contact after prom, a thought which I did entertain so I could get my first kiss and fuck over and done with (I am efficient) and be amongst the millions of others who lost their virginity on prom night, but since he bore no resemblance to Luke Perry it was way out of question. Also, I did not want to give him the satisfication.

I was born with two left feet so walking in heels has always felt more uncomfortable than walking on stilts while balancing a ball on my nose. To this day, I pull of heels and a tight dress with the elegance of Adam Sandler in a dress. As Ben and I walked up the stairs of the classy hotel to the ballroom where the prom was held, he told me to walk with my legs closer together so I wouldn’t look like a hooker. If only Hector Elizondo was there to give me a lesson in class.

The prom itself was uneventful. The food was shit. The converastion was boring. Since it was in Malaysia there was no alcohol. The homecoming queen was a predictable choice. It definitely did not live up to my expectations. Does anyones?

When Ben drove me home we sat in the car for a few minutes making small talk but it was getting awkward and I didn’t want him to ask me to “thank him” for all the rides home so I cut the small talk short, said goodbye and thanks and rushed out of the car. We did not see each other again.

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BEA’S TAKE

FROM VESTAL VIRGINS TO DEPRAVED DEBS: MY TWO HIGH SCHOOL FORMALS

My high school formals took place on the later half of the 1990s. If you want to imagine ’98-9, go right ahead, because that makes me feel younger. There were two formals, in Year 11 and 12. I think of them as the year nobody vomited and the year almost everyone did, respectively.

Neither of the hotels which hosted our formals were establishments of fine dining. Still it was not botulism that sent the young bodies hurtling towards the bowls and basins in Year 12. It was the more customary culprit, drink. Alcohol in its distinctly non-brut varieties, from Midori to raspberry vodka.

The Year Nobody Vomited

So why did nobody vomit in Year 11? I went to a Catholic girls school and the effect of pastoral care and religious retreats was very strong. We watched documentaries about groups of older girls who binge drank and we wondered how they had allowed their moral rectitude to collapse so completely, if it ever existed. We made floral wreaths for each other and exchanged them, dancing in the school gardens in our ugly asexual uniforms. Each of us was encouraged by our teachers to have a healthy self esteem, based on a love of God, life and ourselves. The ethos of personal regard was intended as a safeguard against the brutal elitism of life: no blooming acne, youthful plumpness, physical ineptitude or dull wittedness could destroy it.

The dogmata of care and self respect made for a wholesome and conservative Year 11 formal. Only a few of the fast girls brought male partners, because there was no pressure or expectation on the slower. Nobody brought female partners. This was the late nineties, an even more homophobic time than the one we currently occupy. Ten points for being able to spot the irony in the situation.

That year we all ate our three course meals with healthy teenage zest and acted civilised, chatting to the teachers who stood on the periphery of the room as sentinels and chaperones, should the self-love propaganda prove violable after all. They needn’t have bothered though. We tamely roasted each other by handing out awards under hilarious categories such as ‘person whose CD collection only includes George Michael’ (and fuck off I still like him). We danced sober to ‘Blister in the Sun’. Nobody was bullied, or fingered, or called a scrag.

OK, at this point you might be feeling a bit incredulous and I’ll have to admit I slightly exaggerate the cultish innocence of the Year 11 group. There was a small handful – a child’s fist – who drank and smoked that year. A scattering of rebels with craggy old boyfriends in their mid-twenties. These girls got picked up from school every day by tradie-mobiles. They belonged to a different, adult world. In an alternative route to perdition some girls had been schooled by older, badder siblings. These prodigies could assemble a bong from a Spring Valley orange juice bottle at 12. But the seedy countermovements I describe – for the sake of accuracy – were always hush-hush, something to feel a bit embarrassed about. The dominant tone was innocent debutante.

That year I was dressed prettily in a full length pink gown trimmed with pink at the ankles and around the three quarter length sleeves. My look was something like Doctor Zhivago Barbie. I displayed a hint of decolletage out of a square collar. It was very fitting, given the nourishing environment, that I was dressed like a milkmaid at a country dance. I was a virginal Tess soon to be preyed upon by some rakish Alec D’Urberville. Unfortunately that night I was one of the many unpartnered and went home alone to masturbate about George Michael (just kidding, it would have been about one of the teachers).

The Year Almost Everybody Vomited

So where did it all go wrong/right? A bubble can only expand so far before it pops and ours had by the end of year 12, letting the world rush in. Maybe it was exam fatigue or the gradual erosion of idealism. By the time of the Year 12 formal even the squarest squares, the most pitiful of geeks were assembling a pyramid of sambuca shots. Social smoking was more de rigueur at this event than at a French health spa. Parents had signed waivers to the effect that the school would not be responsible for any stomach pumps, and teachers were off at their own pubs getting wrecked.

That year all the girls dressed according to their daytime personae, just more seductive. Perhaps due to the Spice Girls having entered into the collective unconscious, it seemed like everyone was out to present a heightened, nighttime incarnation of themselves. The sporty girls wore lycra gowns with long Adidas stripes than ran along their sinewy curves. The grungy/Brit pop girls wore customised (i.e tartier) versions of their mothers’ dresses. The everygirls bought bridesmaid dresses from Myer. Having an Italian mother (and other people of Mediterranean parentage will be feeling me here) I wore a homemade gown. It was sexier than the last one though, black, tight and long, trimmed with jet beads. I yelled repeatedly at my mother to cut the front lower, which bless her she did. Thanks to my Mum I had a prodigious rack on display.

I don’t remember feeling particularly sexy though because I was dosed up on Accutane, a severe acne drug that dries out every sebaceous gland you’ve got. It turned me into a depressed raisin but I soldiered on for the promise of no more zits. On previous occasions when I had mixed this drug with alcohol I felt like a cosmonaut walking on the moon drinking the brine of pickled cucumbers out of a jar. So this night I wasn’t getting pissed. I was probably the only really sober person there.

Envisage it: I had a gothic-lite dress, thick ivory-coloured spack on my face, dry eyes and matt burgundy lipstick on my bleeding, cracked lips. I probably looked like Marilyn Manson when he wore that androgyne boob suit, remember the boob suit? And I walked around like a dark ministering angel, moving silently among the toilet bowls and holding back hair on head after head as girls purged their grog into the bowls. I cut a creepy figure but that’s OK, it’s all in the past. Now I’m an old creep. And at least I remember both my formals.

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