Copyright Nelly Thomas 2012. All rights reserved.

. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

According to a barmaid with a library card . . .

NELLY THOMAS

Copyright Nelly Thomas 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Copyright Nelly Thomas 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Please note that some of the names and places that appear in this book have been changed to protect the privacy of people who appear in it. People can get funny about shit like that.
An Ebury Press book Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney NSW 2060 www.randomhouse.com.au First published by Ebury Press in 2012 Copyright Nelly Thomas 2012 The moral right of the author has been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia. Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at www.randomhouse.com.au/offices National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry Thomas, Nelly. What women want /Nelly Thomas. ISBN: 978 1 74275 488 8 (pbk.) Women Anecdotes. 305.4 Front cover image courtesy James Penlidis Cover design by Luke Causby/Blue Cork Internal design and typesetting by Xou Creative, www.xou.com.au Printed in Australia by Griffin Press, an Accredited ISO AS/NZS 14001:2004 Environmental Management System printer.

The paper this book is printed on is certified against the Forest Stewardship Council Standards. Griffin Press holds FSC chain of custody certification SGS-COC-005088. FSC promotes environmentally responsible, socially beneficial and economically viable management of the worlds forests

Copyright Nelly Thomas 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

For my girl: Be too big for your boots, Work out for yourself what you want, And never get a spiral perm.

Copyright Nelly Thomas 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Chapter 1

A Childhood
We share some history, this town and I. Flame Trees, Cold Chisel

A childhood. Im sure most of us can agree that we want kids to be kids, and that they should be worried about nothing more than how to scam an extra bit of cake or what colour texta is their favourite. We can also agree that if a kid says that theyre just resting their eyes, theyre not, but that its okay and they should be allowed to stay up past their bedtime occasionally. Our childhood goes a long way to making us who we are, to shaping us, and Im no exception. I cant remember the day I left home. I know it was 1991 and I was seventeen years old, but I cant remember how I got to Perth or with whom. One thing I know for sure, though: I couldnt get out quick enough. I got my first job at the age

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What Women Want

of thirteen. Naturally, like every other girl I knew, I had done babysitting, but thats not a real job: you eat junk food, watch movies and go through strangers personal belongings thats just a fun Saturday night. My first proper payroll job was at Big Rooster, a fast-food chicken outlet in my hometown. Guess who was the Big Rooster? I staffed the drive-thru, worked as a kitchen hand and dressed in a rooster suit for kids birthday parties. The restaurant was too small for the parties, so my manager would draw a square in chalk on the bitumen in the car park and wed take the kids out there for pass the parcel and a snack pack. Every actor needs a motivation; mine was to not get run over. All that ended when one day a little boy put his hand inside my rooster suit, squeezed my breast and yelled, Its a girl, its a girl. I left. My strongest memory of that job is my manager, Bevan. He was twenty-four, had three kids and a really obese wife. (No judgment, just some info.) He had large glasses, childbearing hips and the frenzied look of a man on a mission. What mission and for whom I never worked out (Dude, youre the manager of a chicken shop, why are you in such a hurry?), but a mission that nonetheless prevented him from brushing his teeth, hair or clothes (he also had three dogs). Believe it or not, he was an improvement on the previous boss, who spent most of his time trying to get the cashiers to give him a hand job behind the grease trap. Bevan and I didnt get along, by which I mean he hated

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Nelly Thomas

my guts. The hatred seemed to stem mainly from the fact that I did pretty well at school. In that place and time, being a smart girl was more like being a smart-arse, so Bevan used to tease me for being a square and try to trip me up to prove I was actually stupid. I remember one Saturday morning, I was salting the chickens, and he walked up and said, Hey Nelly, whats the capital of Ethiopia? I said, Addis Ababa. (Dude, its the 1980s I just did a project on the famine.) Another time, while serving someone on drive-thru, he fires at me, Hey Nelly, whats twelve times twelve? I said, One hundred and forty-four. (Dude, we did the times tables in Year Four.) Then there was the occasion we threw down over the third decimal placement of pi. He said it was 3.141, I said it was 3.142. He got out a math textbook from Mrs Edgecombe at the library that said it was 3.141. I explained that it depends how many decimal points you go to, and that the next number is 5, so that in this instance you round up to 3.142. He told me to go and clean the deep fryer 3.141 times. Bevan and I worked together for five years. I stayed because the idea of a teenager not having a job was really weird then; he stayed because he loved chicken . . . or something like that. I finished my days at Big Rooster with an offer to be the manager. Bevan had moved on to head office in Perth, and bizarrely had recommended me for the job. I was seventeen, nearing the end of school, and I had a choice

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What Women Want

to make: manager of Big Rooster or go to university. Im still not sure I made the right decision. Lacuna, the town I grew up in, is a fairly typical WestAustralian town known to locals as the middle of the universe, and to everyone else as the middle of fucking nowhere. It sits inland (no glorious coastline to boast about) and is roughly in the vicinity of Kalgoorlie. In the early 1990s the population was around six thousand, but today its something like a third of that the railways closed down, everything got privatised and farming started to suck, so people left. I cant believe Slim Dusty never wrote a country song about it. Australians tend to have an idealised image of what it means to live in the country. Its all sunburnt plains, rugged mountain ranges and quaint B&Bs. Its fresh air, friendly folk and country hospitality. Its scones and Australian tea towels, standing in sheep shit at the Royal Show and A Country Practice. My town wasnt like A Country Practice; well, it could have been, but Simon the vet wouldnt have had qualifications and Fatso would have died from lung cancer. We didnt spend our weekends picking apples or riding horses; instead, we lay around wondering if it was possible to be alive but so bored that your pulse had literally stopped. There were no bookshops in town, no cinemas, no cafs and one library, which was quaint and little, with paper index cards and a display cabinet holding AB Faceys A Fortunate Life. In the seventeen

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years I lived in Lacuna, I never saw a single person go in there. They were too busy at the trots, the dogs or one of the six pubs in town. Thats right: two thousand people, six pubs and one Ceciles Dress Shop. Incidentally I got my first (and only) formal party dress from Ceciles. There were three options: ruched sleeves, sleeveless with a ruched bodice, or ruched neck-to-knee. You could then choose between metallic blue, pink or pearl (Samantha Samson got a red one from out of town bitch) and vary the hem length. I chose a metallic blue number, ruched in the bodice, with a puffed sleeve (just the one) and hemmed at the knee. I got a corkscrew perm and put on enough blue eyeliner to make Elton John blush, then I coloured a pair of mums white high-heels with some blue paint. I didnt just go to a Blue Light disco, I looked like one. Thank you, Cecile. I was born into a very large, extended family. Were a mob that tends to exaggerate for effect so Im not sure of the exact size, but I do know that my mum came from a family of twelve, dad from a family of nine and all of them breed like rabbits. (And neither Mums nor Dads family are Catholic what were the chances?) I lost count of all my cousins, their kids and kids kids, but there are certainly more than a hundred cousins and many of them still live in town. Wake up and smell the claustrophobia. Many communities are cohesive, but once you scratch the surface there are significant divisions and Lacuna was no

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What Women Want

exception. For a start, the town was divided down the middle by a railway line, the two sides being known colloquially as Snobs Hill and The Rest of Town. I came from a respectable family, but I lived at the wrong end of town literally on the wrong side of the tracks. As far as I can tell, the only difference between our side and Snobs Hill was that everyone in Snobs Hill had a brick house (ours were ex-commission asbestos or weatherboard numbers) and they had ornaments. Thats how I knew I was in a rich persons house: ornaments. Shit lying around that serves no purpose other than to look pretty they must be loaded. There were also divisions between townies and farmers. Townies were generally working-class country-born-and-bred folk (or those escaping the law or their wives) and farmers were farmers. Townies voted Labor, farmers voted Nationals. Townies thought farmers were whingers; farmers thought townies were white trash. We were townies, which in the Australian imagination has much less street-cred than farmers. I never sat around a campfire singing ditties, I dont own a dusty apron, and to date I havent killed anything. Then, of course, there were racial divisions. I didnt really know it as a small kid (who does?), but there was a significant division between the sizable Aboriginal population in Lacuna and everyone else. The everyone else was overwhelmingly white. There must have been people of other races around, but I dont really remember them. There were a lot of Italians

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Nelly Thomas

in town, but like in most of Australia, they were basically fully integrated by the 1970s and 1980s. Im sure it looked different from their point of view, but I didnt know they were ethnic. My godmother was Italian, and sure, she talked funny, wore mourning black, had dead chickens draining in the back yard and made biscuits that tasted like custard, but she let us stomp barefoot on her grapes in a barrel and eat lollies by the kilo. If she was a wog, then wogs were all right with me. The racism against Indigenous people, on the other hand, was profound and overt. Ugly stereotypes about boongs were common. I saw Aboriginal people abused, yelled at, ridiculed, refused entry to various shops and pubs and on one occasion I saw an Aboriginal man get a beating from a policeman. Brawls between the whites and blacks were semi-regular, and racial tensions were palpable. I grew up learning all the golden oldies: that Aboriginal people were dirty, neglected their kids, were violent, were to be feared, were simple and were getting special treatment. I dont know exactly where I learned all this. It certainly doesnt have one source and my parents were relatively tolerant for the time and place. But learn it I did. I suppose it makes sense when you consider that Kevin Bloody Wilsons Livin Next Door to Alan was a smash hit (he still tours prolifically), and Wilson Iron Bar Tuckey was our local member. Ill return to Tuckey later, but suffice to say he got his moniker Iron Bar after being convicted of assaulting an

Copyright Nelly Thomas 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

What Women Want

Aboriginal man with a length of steel cable. And we elected him for twenty years. Perhaps the most disturbing element of all this for a child was the lack of compassion. I didnt have the language to call it racism then, but I knew that what people were saying was mean. I recall hearing a group of adults laughing about an old Gin (old Aboriginal woman) who regularly threw herself in front of oncoming traffic so shed get arrested and get a meal in the lock-up. I knew this womans grandkids from school, and wondered why it was so funny that she was hungry. It didnt seem to occur to the adults that she shouldnt need to get arrested to get fed. They thought she was milking the system. It should be said that I was talking to a friend from home recently about all this, and he had a different memory of Lacuna. He recalls it being more racially harmonious, and felt that there was much more mixing of the blacks and whites than I acknowledge here. While I maintain that the racism was real and overt, I wonder if his memory is different because he was a very keen sportsman. He played footy and other sports with blackfellas and regularly socialised with them at various sporting functions. On the footy field and in the sports club, men are just men and their skills are what count. If a bloke kicks five goals or takes the mark of the season, you buy that bloke a beer, regardless of his skin colour. When your town revolves around sport, thats a lot of time celebrating (and/or commiserating) together and

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Nelly Thomas

respecting one another. In a sense, this is one of the most confusing aspects of rural racism in many small Australian towns the Aboriginal population is large and theres significantly more mixing of the races than there seems to be in the Latte Belt (i.e., the inner-cities of Melbourne and Sydney). But in my view and despite this mixing there remained a line in the sand. I went to school with Aboriginal children and we played sport together, but friendships were rare and we certainly knew better than to date or, heaven forbid, marry one of Them. My memory is that Aborigines were welcome at school and on the footy field, but as soon as the siren went they could pretty much Get Fucked. On my darker days I fear this might be a metaphor for Australia still. Rural racism and indeed Australian racism is a strange thing. Its weird growing up in a place where everyone wholeheartedly believes in good old-fashioned country hospitality, and yet has an aversion to outsiders. Indigenous folk aside (literally), it was mainly the Asians we were taught to fear as kids. Apparently they almost won the war and ate dogs, and so they were the subject of numerous jokes (both at home and in movies, here and abroad). At worst, Asians were depicted as dirty homicidal maniacs, and at best, they were ridiculous. How do Chinese parents decide on a name for their newborn?

Copyright Nelly Thomas 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

What Women Want

Throw five cents down the stairs. Ching Chong Chin Chan. LOL. But time marches on (even out in the sticks), and Australia was changing. In the late 1970s and early 1980s two things happened Lacuna got an Asian doctor and its first Chinese restaurant. The yellow hordes were descending, and bringing sweet and sour pork and penicillin with them! Both newcomers presented a massive dilemma for the locals. On the one hand, the new doctors a chink, but hes a doctor and its hard to get one of those when you live in a town where the greatest tourist attraction is the Railway Dam. And the Grand Oriental Palace (ironically named by the owners, Im sure, given the plastic patio tables and reheated flied-lice) probably serves cats, but it makes a nice change from a pubs counter meal. Eventually, everyone succumbed to the bulk-billing healthcare of Dr Chang and the economical Palace. Even a racist cant resist an all-you-can-eat buffet that shit is Good Value. You are probably getting the impression that promoting diversity and moving forward werent really on Lacunas official agenda back then, and youd be right. There was some religious diversity, but it was limited to multiple churches of different Christian denominations. In fact there didnt seem to be many overtly religious people in town at all. I saw people go

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Nelly Thomas

to and from church on the weekend, but my only encounters with religious people were Jehovahs Witness door-knockers (yes, they travel that fucking far) and priests at weddings and other celebrations. I liked the men wearing frocks, but their presence seemed to be largely nostalgic at these celebrations. I went home once in my twenties for a friends wedding at the local Anglican church; when I asked my friend if she was happy with the service, she said the minister was a bit too churchy. He looked good in the photos though. Like a lot of working-class folk, my family had a profound mistrust of anyone religious (godbotherers) whom they seemed to feel judged by. I heard Billy Connolly once say he doesnt like any organisation that bird watches people, and that pretty much sums it up. The prevailing attitude to religious institutions among the working classes I grew up with was mind your own business. I was christened Anglican, and when I asked Mum why, she said, What if theyre right? to which I replied, Then were fucked. Or something less swear-y. I did seek out religion at one point. I was about twelve years old, and like many budding teens, I thought Id missed out on like, everything. I read the bible (New Testament, enjoyed it immensely) and took myself off to church . . . then realised why Mum and Dad never went. It was very quiet (read: uptight), and I just couldnt understand why everyone thought the guy up the front knew better than they did. Im still not sure why they do.

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What Women Want

Upon reflection, its surprising that people in Lacuna werent more religious, considering there wasnt much else to do there. Bands sometimes came through, Rodney Rude came once and Collars & Cuffs (imagine Jamie Durie in a bow-tie and crotchless undies) were regulars for the ladies, but that was about it. Occasionally, films were shown at the town hall, but they were all by the adventurer (glorified pin-up boy on a yacht, really) Alby Mangels. Actually, Im not sure if using the plural films was correct it could have been the same film seventeen times over: man appears in loin cloth on a catamaran; lady with massive hooters in string bikini suns herself on the deck; man spears shark; lady and man make out. Repeat. As kids, we made our own fun. Sure, we had the Agarama agricultural show every other year (like Sea World but with no rides, games or water), but mostly we made cubbies, went to the pool (on our own, unsupervised), rode our bikes and hit each other. There were no cars parked in the street or fear of skin cancer, so we roamed around town getting sunburnt, playing Cowboys and Indians and Knuckles and making prank phone calls from public telephones: Hello, is Mrs Wall there? No? How about Mr Wall? No? Are any of the Walls there? No? Then whats holding up your roof? Classic Hits.

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We had a lot of freedom as kids and we made do. It was very hot in Lacuna like farking hot, mate but few people had air-conditioning. In the heat of summer one of our favourite things to do was wander up to the pipeline and lie on it. If you dont know your West-Australian history (and why would you?), in the late-nineteenth century a man called C.Y. OConnor built a massive pipeline from Perth to Kalgoorlie to transport water to the desert town. Its a tragic tale: OConnor killed himself because he thought the pipeline hadnt worked, when in fact it had and the water just hadnt had sufficient time to flow. The legend goes that the water trickled through less than twenty-four hours after the pipeline was opened, but by then he was already dead by his own hand. However, for us, the upshot was that there were two large pipes, roughly the diameter of a small car and with cool running water flowing through them, near our house. Wed go up there, lie on them, and just wait the heat of the day out. Wed also go to Lacuna Rock for some tadpoling. Wed walk about, Huck Finn style, with our little kerchiefs of sandwiches and a fishing rod. Okay, wed take an esky and a few tea strainers that wed use to fish for tadpoles and frogs. Wed collect moss and wildflowers and make daisy chains, and convince each other that dandelions made you wet your pants. Wed catch gilgees (pronounced as jil-gees and known to East-Coast types as yabbies) with rotting meat hanging off

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What Women Want

a string, and then cook them that night on the barbie. School holidays would stretch on forever (were they longer then or did they just feel that way?) and endless, hot days were punctuated with the occasional trip to the city or visit from cousins and the like. Of course, it wasnt all harmless fun. There were dangers. I dont want to scare you, but Ive been attacked several times in my life: by birds. Yes, birds. When I was a kid we all walked to school through a shortcut in the bush. We also rode our BMXs on the same track so it was well worn, but it was in the middle of native bushland and contained numerous magpies and, in spring, magpie nests. Until I was sixteen I had very long, blonde, shiny hair, and for some reason, this was a red rag to a magpie bull, and I was swooped regularly. It got so bad that eventually Mum made me a protective helmet out of an ice cream container, complete with eyes drawn on it in thick black texta. The idea was that the fake eyes would distract the birds from my real eyes they want to peck them out for their babies. I wore the helmet, while simultaneously swinging a branch above my head, Inspector-Gadget style, all the way to school for seven years. That I never had to fend off human bullies as a result is proof of the existence of god. All that freedom we had as kids came at a price, and we often hurt ourselves. I was concussed several times, usually while getting double-bounced on the trampoline, or while in the process of pretending to walk the high beam (top of

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Nelly Thomas

the fence) like gymnast Nadia Comaneci Perfect ten! Perfect ten! Blackout. Theres a lot thats said about children and how free we were back then, but less is made of the chronic injury rates. How often have you heard Uncle Barry reminisce about the old Kingswood with its column shift and no seat belts? The kids didnt have to be strapped in like bloody cargo, they went to sleep on the floor or in the bucket seats! Yes, they did. They also died when the car crashed and they were thrown out the window. My favourite injury story involved my big brother. I was young, maybe seven, and I was sitting at home watching Jaws with some of the other kids from the street. Sure, Jaws was rated R, but parents believed in exposing their kids to a range of influences then. Either that, or they couldnt be bothered censoring us same result either way. Were at the part where Quint is getting chomped in half by the massive shark when my nine-year-old brother walks in with a bleeding cricket-ball sized chunk of flesh missing from his thigh, and a series of third degree burns down both legs. He had been doing tricks BMX Bandits style, but on a motorbike near a cliff. These days, we think more than an hour of television a day will kill a kid; back then, we thought life-threatening injuries a bit of a worry. All kids take risks, but bored kids take even bigger ones. One of my favourite things to do was go over to my friends place for Honkers. All the kids would sit on the fence on the

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What Women Want

highway and make a honking gesture at the passing trucks. If the trucks honked their horns in response, you were good; if you ran across the road in front of the truck, you won; if the truck hit you, you were dead. We never got dead, but as they say in the classics, fuck knows how. Other favourite pastimes included putting our hands down snake holes to see if there were any tenants, playing spin the bottle with older kids and smoking paper. Actual paper. I remember sitting behind my friend Michelles house, rolling up a piece of foolscap from my school folder and smoking it. We later moved on to snorting lines. Michelle and I had just seen Midnight Express (again, possibly not the best movie for a twelve year old), so we snorted the only white powder we could find: Wizz Fizz. Then she assaulted me in the shower; I bit her ear off it was just some good old-fashioned country fun. We often entertained ourselves by trying to get the attention of the grown-ups. The baby boomers like to tut-tut about overbearing modern helicopter parents (that is, parents who hover protectively over their kids every move), and seem very proud of the freedom my generation had as kids, but some of us experienced all that freedom as a wilderness. Is anybody out there? We did lots of things to get noticed. I remember one particularly fun night when my friend Paul and I decided to stage our own deaths. Our parents were playing cards when he and I both got a blood nose at the same time. This was an opportunity not to be missed! We went into his room,

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dripped blood all over his bunk beds and Lego; we lay down in the blood, cock-legged-and-armed, tongues hanging out, trying to feign rigor mortis. Unfortunately, by the time anyone came to check on us, the blood had dried and we were both snoring. There were less creepy activities. Mostly these involved visiting friends and family. Theres a lot I didnt like about growing up in a small town, but man, I really miss the dropin. When I go home, even as an adult, the days stretch out forever, and much of the day is spent just hanging out with loved ones. You drop in for a cuppa to call ahead or ask permission would be bizarre and you just sit. You might talk, you might not; the point is being in the company of others. I dont know if its modern life or city life or both, but these days nothing seems spontaneous and even married couples schedule in date nights. If you have to diarise to get a root, you know youre too busy. So I miss the visit, and especially the leisurely visit. My all-time favourite thing to do as a kid was sleep over at my nannas house. Her house smelt like buttery toast, and she had a bottomless biscuit tin. Being the matriarch of the family, she was constantly visited by various aunts, uncles and cousins, but when they all left after tea time (that is, 5.30 pm) Id hang out with Nanna and wed do puzzles in Take That or Readers Digest. Id drag out her massive jar of two-cent pieces and wed play shops. I always ordered ice cream, she always

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What Women Want

obliged. Then wed get into her double bed with an electric blanket, and read her books (Womans Day, No Idea) while sucking on mints before drifting off to sleep. The American novelist Thomas Wolfe says, You cant go home again, but sometimes I wish I could just go to Nannas. Then there was like, the greatest thing ever: television. Letting your kids watch television these days is thought of as the equivalent of giving them heroin it will subdue them for a while, but theyll get sick in the long term but back then it was on twenty-four-seven. We woke up to television, ate breakfast to television, watched television after school, during dinner, after dinner and left it on while we were asleep, in case we had to go the toilet and needed to catch some television in the middle of the night. Im not recommending it, just saying. There was a time when I, like many edu-ma-cated folks, pretended not to like television. Oh, its so low-brow, what a waste of time; look at Them with their idiot boxes. But the truth is, I always have and always will love television. You hear a lot of artists and celebrities from humble beginnings say that books were their refuge from difficult or limiting childhoods; that books gave them access to other worlds, other ways of being. I read a lot as a kid The Magic Faraway Tree, Judy Blume, the Bronts, Anne of Green Gables, Stephen King and Jeffrey Archer (not kidding), but reading wasnt something most people I knew did for pleasure they did it for work or school, because they had to. Television, on the

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other hand, was a regular feature of everyones life and their primary leisure activity. I watched it a lot, and it was my main window to other worlds and lives. It was where I learned that people speak different languages. It was where I learned about wildlife and science and history and art. Its where I learned to sing. I dont remember anyone singing to me as a child (which doesnt mean they didnt, but I have no memory of it), but I remember Benita from Playschool teaching me incy-wincy spider. I also remember her wearing bikinis on the show, and me running screaming to tell my mum that Benita was in her undies on the telly and that someone should do something about it. I would have made a terrific Puritan. It was on television that I saw inside the home of a black family for the first time. It was the Cosbys, and I was struck by how nice they were to each other, how their parents asked them about their feelings, about how ironically they didnt eat dinner in front of the television! In fact Mrs Cosby was my first conscious role model: a smart, educated woman with a happy family. I wanted what they had. I looked up to them and out to them. Naturally, it wasnt all smooth sailing in Year Six Monkey Magic was banned from our school because we were all hitting each other with sticks but television opened up new worlds for me. And you know what, it still does. I still adore television and even strap yourselves in love the ultra-modern juggernaut that changed culture forever: reality television. I do. I love it.

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What Women Want

My favourite show ever is Survivor, which is one of the original reality shows that embodies everything critics of this genre hate. Its schmaltzy, full of unlikable Americans, the host is a powder-puff and its NOT REAL. Shows like Survivor, it is argued, are contrived, fake and bland. Heres my spirited defence: for a start, reality shows like Survivor reflect the true diversity of post-industrial, first-world countries. Theres a heady mix of black, white, Latina, Asian, gay, straight, fat, thin, white-collar, blue-collar and everything-else-you-canimagine contestants. Therere nave country chicks wholl believe anything, and sociopaths wholl do anything. Therere old people, young people, youve-had-too-much-work-doneso-I-cant-tell-people. Choose a type of person, and I can almost guarantee that in the twenty-four seasons of Survivor, weve seen them in all their glory starving and crapping in the jungle for a chance at a million bucks. Likewise with competition shows like Australian Idol and The X-Factor. As far as I am concerned, they are the best thing to happen to the music industry since punk. Music snobs may scoff into their Chivas Regal, but I say Idol is the new punk. If Idol were around in the 1970s, Johnny Rotten would have won it. Why? Because Idol (and shows like it) offer truly democratic Idols. Theyre not picked by some fat guy smoking a cigar in his corner office, theyre chosen by the people who watch the show and listen to the music. This changes the game. The first winner in Australia was an ethnic, evangelical

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Christian virgin with a bung eye (Guy Sebastian), the second winner was a 16-year-old, obese, Aboriginal goth (Casey Donovan), and weve since had the likes of chunker Kate DeAraugo and Wes Carr who, it has to be said, is a bottle and a paper bag away from looking like he lives under the Westgate Bridge. Sure, by some travesty Damien Leith beat Jess Mauboy, and Natalie Gauci is a bit bland for my taste, but they dont detract from our Susan Boyles and Altiyans. The fact remains if any of those kids had walked into a record executives office asking for a record deal, theyd have been laughed out of the building. The people get to choose on Idol, and unlike the beige Neighbours-type nonsense were usually served up on telly (does an all-white neighbourhood even exist in Australia anymore?), reality television is diverse and allows more of us to see ourselves represented. As an aside, you can only imagine my joy when recently I was lying in the bath reading the Guardian (just the entertainment bits, steady on), and I stumbled across an article about a reality television show in China being banned. The show was called Super Girl, and is apparently something like X-Factor or Idol. At its peak, it attracted four hundred million viewers a night, and the article quoted Chinese government sources who were concerned that the democratic method of choosing the winner [texting, calling] was a bad influence. Reality television talent competitions banned in a dictatorship for promoting democracy: stick that in your vinyl Dylan collection and

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Copyright Nelly Thomas 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

What Women Want

smoke it! Yes, I might be making a silk purse out of a sows ear, and yes, it is voyeuristic down and dirty, sneak-peaky, I-want-to-watch-you-doing-private-things voyeuristic. As are Lady Chatterleys Lover, Anas Nin and Goya. Speaking of voyeurism, I often delight (quietly, and on my own, over a toasted cheese sandwich at lunchtime) at the dominance of minorities in the other lowbrow television genre of daytime talk shows. Hate groups and their affiliates want to protect mainstream society from Jews, niggers and queers, and yet every day all around the world millions of people have been watching, listening to and loving Oprah Winfrey (African American), Ellen DeGeneres (lesbian), and back in the day, Sally Jessy Raphael and Jerry Springer (both Jewish). Even the forerunner of this genre, Phil Donahue, while not from a minority himself, may as well have been given how often he featured them on his show. Consider Oprah: tacky and centre-of-the-road she may be, but heres a fat, black woman who was born into poverty and sexually abused as a child who has become one of the most influential people in the world. So mainstream. Im not saying that seeing two cousins punch on over the paternity of their child is necessarily a good thing (but fuck, its entertaining), however, one cant deny that talk shows and Donahue and Oprah in particular gave a platform to issues and voices that needed to be heard and werent. Besides, even if all that werent true, there are worse things

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Copyright Nelly Thomas 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Nelly Thomas

you can do than watch television. When we werent in front of the box, a lot of our time as kids was spent being plain old bored: bored, bored, bored, boring, bored, snoring, bored, Coldplay bored. This meant that, as we got older, we went to desperate lengths to entertain ourselves, as teenagers do. We spent hours on end devising elaborate scams to steal cigarettes and alcohol, and when successful, spent the rest of the day smoking and throwing up. Thank goodness there were little to no drugs around, or we probably would have tried those too. The rest of our time we just spent pretending to be someone else. A particularly memorable episode of this fantasy existence involved myself and my best friend Tiffany (who remains my BFF to this day, a friendship for which I am eternally grateful) pretending to be disabled. Some girls pretend to be married or live in a castle; we pretended wed lost limbs in the Boer War. To achieve the limbless effect, we shoved long, bamboo backscratchers up our sleeves as makeshift prosthetic limbs and committed to spending twenty-four hours insisting that they were our arms. I bailed after a while when I couldnt light a stolen Alpine Lite; Tiff persevered, even going so far as to manage to make several rounds of Vegemite sangers using nothing but the little forks. After about seven hours Id had enough, and insisted she put the backscratchers down. What backscratchers?

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Copyright Nelly Thomas 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

What Women Want

Those bamboo ones sticking out of your shirt. You mean my arms? No, I mean those backscratchers. Are you making fun of my prosthetic limbs? Theyre not prosthetic limbs; theyre backscratchers. Oh right, tease the cripple. Is that what this is? I can jump puddles, too, you know . . . Im not an animaaaaalllll . . . Aaaaddrrrriiiaaaaannnn. Stop being pathetic and put those stupid things down. How dare you make fun of my arms! Dont you have a heart? I do: its real and not made of bamboo. Come on, hand them over. Never! Give them to me! Not til the day die! SFX: TEENAGE GIRLS WRESTLING IN NONPORKYS WAY Give me the fucking arms! See, they are arms! SFX: BAMBOO BACKSCRATCHERS BEING SNAPPED IN TWO OVER KNEES OF THE LARGER TEEN My arms, my arms! Youve broken my arms! The agony . . . Nooooooooooo! Its a miracle our friendship survived. The other thing we spent a lot of time doing as kids was

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Copyright Nelly Thomas 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Nelly Thomas

pulling each others pants down. Yes, there were boys (and girls) to play with. Like all kids, we were libidinal, but it was massively denied and repressed, so we consoled ourselves by playing kiss-chasey and listening to (real) grown-ups doing it. I distinctly remember the first time I heard sexing. I was ten years old and about five of us crowded around a friends parents bedroom door, listening to them going for it. It sounded like it hurt and was very hard work. My romantic life started in primary school and I had various crushes, but my favourite was a boy called David Radinkoff in Year Three (when I was aged six or seven). His dad owned the local pub, so he had access to free chocolate and soft drink. Tick and tick. I remember going to his birthday party AT THE PUB! and all of us mixing our drinks (Coke and Fanta) and falling around pretending to be drunk. David and I were together for a few weeks, until he shared a Cherry Ripe with Tamara Smith. Bastard. I had a couple of boyfriends in later primary school (aged twelve), including a young coppers son, who I subsequently dumped when I found out hed gotten a head job from a girl in Year Ten (aged fifteen). I didnt know what a head job was, but I knew it wasnt good. This guy had sent me notes via the class question box asking me to kiss him after school; meanwhile, hes getting his whistle wet by a cougar. Bastard. In high school, around the age of fourteen or fifteen, I had a very intense friendship with a girl in my class. Looking

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What Women Want

back, I think we were definitely smitten with each other, but it would never have occurred to us to say so. We just thought of each other as really, really good friends who made each other mixed tapes and pretend pashed when we were drunk. Its not lesbian if youre both straight. However, the major romantic (non-)event of my teen years was a boy called Brian Campbell. Oh, Brian Campbell. He was two years older than me and looked like Ralph Macchio from The Karate Kid. I didnt know the term then, but if I did, Id have called him a ladies man. He was one of those boys who just loved women. All women fat, thin, tall, short, shy, extroverted with a vagina. He was a pants man, and I adored him. In retrospect, I think he adored me too. There were a couple of times at the drives (yes, we had a drive-in!) when he held my hand, and once at basketball, while sitting watching a game, he put his hand on my thigh and winked at me. I was so completely terrified and disbelieving that anyone that hot would be interested in me that I got up and ran off. I dont regret much, but I regret that. He went on to marry our maths teacher. Yes, she was still teaching at our school (albeit at the tender age of twenty-one) when they started dating, and I believe theyre still together. Things were different then. Brian Campbell: I wanted to be your lady in red. So, there were kids games and risk taking and a budding sexuality; the other thing I spent a lot of time doing especially as a teenager was torturing myself with my

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Nelly Thomas

inadequacies. On the surface I was fine. I was a very outgoing and successful girl. I was both dux and head girl of my primary school, and a captain and one of the brightest kids at high school (it was a small pond, but still). I had friends, I was good at sport, and if Id had access to a debating team, theatre studies or languages, I would have been good at those too. And I hated myself. Much is made today of the need for young girls to have self-esteem, and we all marvel at the self-assuredness of young modern women, but I wonder how much of it is genuine and how much is bluff? I wonder how often were misrecognising achievement or social confidence as self-esteem. The primary source of my inadequacies (or so it seemed at the time) was the fact that I was Big Boned. For those of you who dont know my Aunty Lynne, that is code for fatty boombah Whos been at the pie trough? Shes got a great personality, Youre looking very well, My, what a pretty face, you get the drift. I was a bit fat (not nearly as fat as I thought, mind you), which meant nothing I did meant anything. For a teenage girl, fatness is a crime far greater than any other. Better that Id been dumb and skinny than fat and too big for my boots. Body image is one of those issues that the health people and government types of our mums generation thought was dealt with. Old-fashioned mums taught us that Its whats on the inside that counts, and those 1970s bra-burners taught us that we should be loved and respected

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What Women Want

for our talents, not our cup size. However, the issue still plagues women, and certainly plagued me as a girl. The pressure to attain the perfect body and conform to unrealistic body ideals was and is huge. For me, it was the Robert Palmer girls and Elle MacPherson. The Robert Palmer girls were the back-up dancers in the 1985 film clip for Addicted to Love. If you were around then, youll remember them a dozen or so supermodels in the same skin-tight black dress with a red sash around the waist, and long hair pulled back tight in a bun. We had a school social not long after that video clip came out, and I distinctly recall my friends and I, dressed like the RPGs, dancing in a circle to the song, making come hither glances around the room. I suppose it beats Facebook. Or does it? But Elle MacPherson was really where it was at for me. Do you remember that Tab cola ad where Elle walked out of the ocean wearing some dental floss? I wanted that bloody dental floss. I was about eleven years old when that ad came on television, and I put myself on a diet immediately. My food plan consisted of drinking Tab and only Tab every other day. I lost about 8 kilograms (I was only about 50 to start with) within a fortnight. I remember walking up the path of my Nannas house and feeling literally faint with hunger, but everyone commented on how good I looked. Thank god I didnt have the determination (or, more accurately, mental illness) to be an anorexic or bulimic. It didnt last.

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Nelly Thomas

School didnt help and in fact actively made things worse. I was in primary school during the Life. Be in It campaign, where good nutrition and exercise were heavily promoted. I guess it was the precursor to todays borderline hysteria about healthy weight ranges. We had a junk-food-free primary school (and all gorged on cream doughnuts and pies after school), and did aerobics to Lets Get Physical every day before school. I had legwarmers, and I wasnt afraid to use em. School sports days were a trial. Swimming carnivals, with their public displays of teen bodies in bathers, hardly bear thinking about, but athletics carnivals were just as bad. Interschool rivalry was fun we chanted convent dogs at the Catholics, they chanted heathens at us (the religious are never good at insults) but they became insufferably tedious in the mid-1980s when participation was in vogue. Participation meant that it wasnt about winning, so everyone had to do every fucking event. In a (not) surprising outcome, I won the shotput, which really put my sex-appeal factor up there, and Lindy Ball and I took so long to run the 1500 metres that it was called off. Note to sports advocates: for the love of god, just let the athletes shine while the rest of us do a crossword. In addition to compulsory sports, we had regular, statedirected health checks, and this is where the wheels really came off my dwindling body image. One time in Year Eight (aged thirteen), we were all weighed, measured and pinched

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What Women Want

with the fat pincers. (Can you imagine anyone thinking it was appropriate to measure the fat rolls on a teenage girls stomach?) After the weigh-in, our sports teacher got us to line up in a row from lightest to heaviest, for MOTIVATION. Once again, I was top of the class! I was very motivated from that point on to have my period during sports every week. Note to sports teachers: find another way. Almost all the women and girls I knew were perpetually on diets Atkins, Jenny Vague, Mean Cuisine, no fat, low fat, low carb, Herbalife, Jane Fonda, Richard Simmons and Ford Pills and this hasnt really changed. According to both the American and Australian Psychologists Associations, eating disorders are on the rise. Even where diagnosable eating disorders are not present, body dissatisfaction and body-hatred (which is really just another form of self-hatred) are common among modern women and girls. You only have to sit on a train for ten minutes and listen to a group of school girls to realise that they are, like, totally devo d about their, like, thunder thighs. Today, it is estimated by experts at the Butterfly Foundation that 90 per cent of teenage girls are on a diet of some type. Dieting (as opposed to eating healthily) takes a shitload of work and means youre often starving, which cant be good for your scholastic performance or chances of swimming a lap of backstroke. But even worse (especially when you add all the waxing, curling, straightening, shaving, moisturising, exfoliating and self-loathing), what about what

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Copyright Nelly Thomas 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Nelly Thomas

youre not doing when youre dieting and preening furiously? I know women are multitaskers, but ladies, imagine what we could achieve if we spent the same amount of time reading, learning new skills and googling Jeff Probst (or whatever youre into) as we do worrying about how many calories there are in avocado. These days, even being skinny isnt enough. There is a seemingly endless list of imperfections that require anything from miracle creams (creams where you can see the face of Baby Jesus) to surgery. Children in their teens are having corrective cosmetic surgery, the most (in)famous recent and public example being the fifteen-year-old British girl who received a boob job for her sweet sixteen birthday. I got a nautical T-shirt and a white handbag, so Im in no position to judge, but jebus, thats mental! Experts caution against calling teen plastic surgery a trend, and I dont know if it is or not, but its clear that there are those who are willing to exploit the fears and insecurities of these kids and cut them up for money. One website I looked at claims to be a portal for those seeking such services in Australia, and they quoted a doctor who says that plastic surgery for teens in increasing because of visibility . . . todays teenagers are growing up with parents who have had cosmetic surgery, so they see and hear about it more. The media has also done a good job of making people aware of the procedures available. Another reason is acceptability. In a way, cosmetic surgery has come out of the

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What Women Want

closet. I read that and tasted a little bit of sick in my mouth, then did a wee cry, then got angry and decided I want laws in Australia that prohibit plastic surgery for anyone under the age of 100. Fine, under the age of eighteen, at least. I dont care if your parents think its okay, theyre obviously nuts. Incidentally, and a truly bizarre indication of a world gone freaking mad, one of the fastest-growing cosmetic procedures in the western world is vaginal surgery. Yes, cosmetic surgery on your vagina, which, according to Jane Martinson in the Guardian, ranges from surgery to neaten up or remove your labia (labiaplasty) to procedures to tighten up your love tunnel (vaginal rejuvenation). It is a multi-milliondollar industry and, according to a 2008 report quoted by Martinson, there were over a thousand labiaplasty operations on the NHS (UK government health service) and over five thousand private enquiries for the same. Seriously, WTF, surgery on your lady bits? Since when has there been an expectation for anyones genitals to look good? Dick and balls; sausage and fried chicken. Old school muff; hairy map of Tassie. Done. Okay, Ill pay it if you have a deformity or a health issue (massive hooters that hurt your back, or a giant mole, Nanny McPhee style), but if you just want a nicer nose or pert tits, thats bullshit, mate especially for teenagers, but for anyone really. Its surgery! You could die! They are going to cut open your skin, poke around, break bones, and leave you unable to move your face, just so you can look prettier.

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Copyright Nelly Thomas 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Nelly Thomas

Meanwhile, there are landmine victims in Iraq hobbling around on stumps where their feet used to be. Okay, thats an extreme comparison and a bit of a low-blow. How about: meanwhile, you could go to Phuket for a month for the same price. They have pools where you can swim up to the bar! Yes, I can hear a waxwork-lady-statue screaming from the ether that Im hypocritical, given that I alter my natural physical appearance to meet societys expectations of women and definitions of beauty. Yes, I, Nelly Thomas, do wax my legs and wear make-up and dye my hair. Yes, they are on the same continuum as Botox and lipo and boob jobs. Yes, it is just a matter of degree. But all important things are matters of degree. Its one thing to shave your legs, put on your good jeans and spray on some Impulse; its another altogether to avoid sex because youve got an ugly vagina, or not leave the house because youre too fat, or get botulism pumped into your face, or have surgery. We recently did a No Means No Show (one of the sexual ethics theatre performances I do with teens) at a boys school, and during one of the scenarios the boys were asked to assist a male and female actor in a roleplay. The girl wants to do some sexual things with her boyfriend, but doesnt want to go all the way, and the boys in the audience are asked to give suggestions about what she might say to him. The first

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What Women Want

suggestion was for the girl to tell the guy that she couldnt have sex because she hadnt shaved her pubes for a few days. When the male actor said, I dont mind, the boys went how can I put this ape-shit. They clearly assumed that any girl with pubes would be so self-conscious about them that shed avoid sex altogether, and that any boy who saw a vagina with pubes would be disgusted. Thats full-on hatred of the natural female form, yall. You might think these individual instances are no big deal, but surely you dont have to be Germaine Greer to think that the increasing ordinariness of plastic surgery is concerning. I went to a dermatologist recently who, it turns out, is also a plastic surgeon. It took exactly 3.7 seconds for me to be asked if Id be interested in cosmetic procedures and a skinage test? I said yes to lipo, on the condition that they bottle the fat for future use on MasterChef, and no to the skin-age test. Skin-age test? Im pretty sure its thirty-seven years old, like the rest of me. And for your information, ladies: you can now have plastic surgery parties. When boob jobs are like Tupperware, you know this shit has gone too far (although theyre roughly the same price). Its well-documented that cosmetics and beauty are massive industries that peddle unrealistic representations of womens bodies to sell shit. No one needs to do a research report into it (though they do) to know that insecurity sells stuff to women. The worse we feel about ourselves, the more crap we buy to fix it. Incidentally,

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Nelly Thomas

men are increasingly being sucked into this collagen-fuelled lair. Lets chalk that one up to progress, shall we? To be honest, Im not sure of the solution. People women have always adorned themselves, and theres nothing inherently sinister in saucing yourself up. But the focus on the physical self and a persistent desire to look better and this being so narrowly defined by what and who is represented in the beauty advertisement is exhausting, and distracts us from things that really matter. It wasnt until I was in my late twenties that I deliberately started to kick this stuff in the nuts. By this time I had learned a lot about the perniciousness of the beauty industry, but I also had just got so sick and tired of worrying about and hating my body. Hating the thing that keeps you alive is really draining. I also started to wonder what it was all for. It certainly wasnt for men, as we seem to believe. Ive learned over the years that most men despite the no pubes boys mentioned before most men couldnt give a shit if youve got stretchmarks or a DD cup; theyre just thrilled if and when youre happy to get your knickers off. Put it this way, Im no Pamela Anderson, but Ive never had any complaints. (It is possible that Im just exceptional between the sheets.) I hear urban tales about men who wont sleep with women because they have pubic hair, or are a few kilos overweight, and I think, Where are all these fussy men? Dudes, bless you, but sometimes I think youd root a kiwi fruit if it batted its eyelids at you the right way. No, the

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What Women Want

one-eyed trouser snake doesnt have any interest in looking for womens faults it just wants to go home. It started to occur to me in my twenties and I wish Id known this as a teen that maybe, just maybe, I was putting all this pressure on myself, and in turn, I was putting it on other women. And thats the often unspoken truth about body image, isnt it? We put this pressure on ourselves and each other. Sure, as girls and young women we dont have the critical faculties to rebuff this nonsense, but as women we do. Like the Americans say: we are part of the problem. We dont like to admit that, of course, and prefer to lay the blame elsewhere, often on nameless men. I saw Kylie Minogue interviewed a while back, and she admitted to using Botox (the immovable forehead hadnt given it away). She explained/justified it on the basis that her industry is youth-focused, and theres a lot pressure to stay young-looking. I wanted to say, Kylie: YOU ARE THE INDUSTRY. You are creating the problem you bemoan stop spinning around, and think about it, woman. And look, were all guilty of it. Whether its buying stars without make-up magazines, bitching about Amanda Vanstones fat arse, or judging women based on the brand of their handbag, we are putting pressure on other women, on ourselves and (apologies for getting ABC talkback about it) on our daughters. We have to stop, or at just ease off a little. And at the very least, dont get your genitals mutilated. Poor body image is like cockroaches and Kerri-Anne

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Kennerley: it has always been there and will survive bloody anything. It doesnt seem to matter what campaigns are waged or how many messages there are about its whats on the inside that counts, a lot of young women still think theyre fugly (fat and ugly, for the sheltered), and will do almost anything to change. I would have done anything at that age to look better or, more precisely, to avoid looking awful. One of the most painful recollections I have of that time involves me seriously considering how to break my own leg. I had been selected for a basketball camp in the city, which was good news, except that I had to wear bloomers (like spandex undies, I guess) instead of shorts. The thought of wearing so little clothing WHILE RUNNING and therefore having my fat legs wobbling all the way up and down the court was absolutely excruciating. So excruciating I thought Id rather injure myself than have to do it. In the end I went, but I was bloody miserable, mate. The funny thing is we all know what normal women look like, dont we? The women in my family failed spectacularly at being yummy mummies, and their dieting attempts were borderline ludicrous. Some of them have dipped into the teens (size twelve, fourteen, sixteen and eighteen), but usually not for long. One thing Ill say for them, though: they have a sense of humour about it. There was a lot of Oh, I couldnt eat another thing, (wink wink, nod nod, laugh), and Youre fading away, (wink wink, nod nod, laugh), and

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What Women Want

if a skinny aunty was over Someone give her a plate of pasta, (wink wink, nod nod, laugh). Comedy was a blood sport, and you either got on board and gave as good as you got, or you got out of the kitchen. I should add that the comedy wasnt restricted to fat jokes: everyone was fair game. If you were a slow runner youd be called Bullet; if you were a red head, Bluey; if you were an effeminate man, Handbag. I was often sent down to the butchers to ask for a long wait, or to the hardware shop for a left-handed hammer. I remember finding all this infuriating, but I suppose it got me out of the house, and hey, I ended up a comedian, so whos to complain? And yes, when youre a fat girl at high school it helps to be funny, otherwise you just feel sad. I left my family home and entered the next, more grownup phase of my life knowing very little about the kind of woman I wanted to be. I was raised in a small, conservative town where the greatest hope for your girls was that they catch the next bouquet. Feminism still hadnt really reached Lacuna in the late 1980s. I remember hearing about how some of them burned their bras once, but the closest anyone came to that at our place was when the cord on Aunty Jennys terry-towelling dress got caught in the Webber. We werent discouraged from working, but it was kind of still seen as something you did around your real tasks of becoming a wife and mother, or as a way to help your husband pay the bills. On the other hand, I was surrounded by big, funny,

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Nelly Thomas

bossy, opinionated women (obviously, they had no effect on me whatsoever . . . ahem) who were bloody tough, mate. They were built like brick shithouses and took no prisoners. Some kids watch shot-putters on the Olympics and think, Who is that man-lady? I watched them and thought, Isnt it nice to see Aunty Edna doing so well. The matriarch of my family, my beloved nanna, still rules the roost in her mid-nineties. Her sisters all made it to their ninth decade, and one even died while chopping wood at the age of ninety-two. As a girl, it would never have occurred to me to consider females the fairer sex, in either sense of the word. My world was replete with contradictions and pretty much all I knew was that I didnt want to be fat (but that I likely would), that sex was going to be a minefield (but that I wanted to do it), and that I wanted to get out of town (but what would greet me when I did was a mystery). I packed my Cold Chisel collection, my Collected Works of the Bronts and my Winnie Blues, and set off to the Big Smoke. Everything changed for good.

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