Is It Just Me? (9 page)

I think I'm onto myself. Yep, the jig is up, as my gran used to say. I have, I believe, taken the easy way to parenthood by being a mother to boys and not girls. In fact, I think that if I ever have a third child and it is a girl, I will fully lose my mind.

I wonder if other mothers of boys are thinking the same thing I am.

I have friends with little girls. I feel like they know I don't really know what I'm doing in the parenting stakes. And I'm talking about the kids, not their parents. Little girls just seem to have my number. They are all-knowing. They are serious and smart and switched on. They seem to know I have no idea.

I was eavesdropping on a conversation the other day between my six-year-old god-daughter and her grandpa. The lovely old fellow was talking to her about party food and how if she ate too much she'd get a tummy ache. She fixed him with a withering stare and said, “Don't patronise me, Grandpa.” Boom!

I have two sons and sometimes I think this is God's way of acknowledging that, as a parent and as a person, I mean well but am generally too goofy to be trusted with a proper responsibility.

Raising a daughter seems so … complicated. It scares me. How could I possibly navigate the scary minefields of self-esteem and eating disorders so prevalent in the lives of girls? How could I ever live with the guilt if I got it all wrong?

I have a very clear idea about the kind of men I'd like to raise. I'm raising them to be kind and respectful, with a healthy appreciation of fun and manners. So far, so good. And I suppose raising a daughter would be the same in some respects.

So why am I so spooked? Are they really that different to boys? They seem so much more sophisticated, even from an early age. Little girls seem more powerful, more formidable. Bringing up a daughter feels to me like a greater responsibility somehow.

I just feel like I'd be getting away with less.

My friend was telling me the other day that her daughter gave her a mini-counselling session in the car. After the ten-year-old had stopped singing all the words to the new Bruno Mars song, she turned to her mother and suggested she take better care of her appearance and maybe tried wearing a few “younger” things, because it was obvious she was a beautiful woman but she wasn't, and I quote, “doing herself any favours”. Ten years old. And she wasn't being disrespectful. My friend was wide-eyed over her latte when she whispered to me, “Know what the spookiest thing is? She's RIGHT!”

How could her daughter, who has only been alive since 2002, know so much? And how would I deal with a daughter of my own, looking at me with my own eyes, telling me truths I knew but didn't want to, or simply could not, admit? That's what I'm scared of.

Girls are strong – the ones I know seem to have been born with a great idea of who they are and it's up to the parents to figure it out. I'm just nervous that I'll misjudge them. That I'll think they're an A when really they're a B. Tears, slamming doors and the words “I hate you” will ensue.

My sons are so straightforward. And I have found parenting them so darned easy. A joy. Lots of cuddles, lots of laughs, lots of running around, lots of stories and away you go. Girls just seem like the real deal to me. Emotional, thoughtful, analytical. Argh!

I will have to keep my fingers crossed that if a girl ever does come along into our goofy old lives I won't totally lose the plot and take my parenting cues from
Ab Fab
's Eddy Monsoon or
The Lohan Guide to Raising Girls
.

 

21st October 2012

There's a craze that's gone bonkers, and, no, I'm not talking about the hyper-charismatic Korean genius who goes by the name of Psy and has taught preschoolers and grandparents alike to stroke their own legs while singing, “Heeeyyyy, sexy lady!”

I'm talking about the trend of writing letters to your ten-year-old self. The letters started dripping in a few years ago and, since then, they've become a deluge of pretty much the same warnings. The most common of these include, “don't let the turkeys get you down”, “you will find someone who really loves you” and “don't believe that mean girl when she tells you you're fat and useless”.

When I turned ten, something extraordinary happened. My mum gave me my own key to the family home so I could let myself in after school and I never looked back. In fact, it was a great year. I wore shoes from Sportsgirl and listened to Wham!'s
Make It Big
and saved up all my pocket money for a cat which ended up celebrating my twenty-seventh birthday with me. Things were sweet. And, frankly, if I could go back to 1984, all I'd say to myself is, “You probably do need a bra for those sore little walnut boozies but, apart from that, carry on.”

Not so to my 23-year-old self. So let's go instead to 1996 …

Dear Chrissie,

Are your eyes feeling small and toxic because you ate four home-brand dim sims last night for dinner? Thought so. That's cool. One day you'll be able to afford something exotic like rocket and bocconcini, so don't sweat it. I do, however, wish to point out that if you hadn't just sunk yourself into debt for that white Grundig TV, you'd probably be enjoying a plate of something nutritious right now. But choices are what define us and, in truth, TV is going to be important. So get another bag of dimmies.

I think it's great that you've enrolled in your dream university course to finally chase your goal of becoming an advertising copywriter. It took a lot of effort and you were right to celebrate it with 14,000 bottles of lambrusco and all your naughty friends. Remember to recycle those bottles as candle holders, by the way. You'll need them in a few years when you host share-house board-game nights attended by friends and four families of mice.

About uni, I should bring to your attention that you will need to actually attend some tutorials, and by this I don't mean sitting in a city cafe, smoking with your hairy mate Nick Swifte, drinking coffee and plotting whose notes you'll scam. Also, when the other people in your course see you in a lecture and exclaim, “What?! Chrissie's here? There must be a test!” this is not a compliment.

Let's go now to the beauty department. You're all right. No real problems … but that matte lipstick makes you look like you sleep in a coffin. It also comes off in sheets on those coffee cups you're so fond of studying during “tutorials”. Give it up. And wax your upper lip. Do it now and you will avoid an embarrassing intervention in a few years from your gay housemate.

Your boyfriend is a great fellow, and when you finally break up with him after seven years you will think it was a waste of time because it didn't end in a ring and babies. Don't. That relationship was a lovely safe house through your whole twenties and meant you avoided most of the types of men you'll meet in your thirties. And anyway, if you had married that guy and had kids you wouldn't have the man and little boys you have now and they are awesome and worth waiting for.

Finally, you are terrible with money right now and are focused on fun over almost anything else. Accept it. You are not going to change. You are in big trouble from your mum right now for buying that apple-green vase for $95. True, this amount represents a week's rent and half a month's payment plan on the parking fine debt you've accrued for leaving your Daihatsu Charade wherever the hell you like for however long you want.

Tell your mum to back off. That vase will bring you joy your whole life and give you a thrill every time you look at it because it represents that you had faith that one day you'd be able to afford a few beautiful things and have a lovely house with gorgeous people in it that you made.

And so it will be.

Warmest regards,

Chrissie (at one week from thirty-nine years old)

PS I mean it about the moustache. And for God's sake don't bleach it. Just because it's orange doesn't mean it's invisible.

 

28th October 2012

I was recently contacted by my old high school and I was delighted. For many people, their school years were fraught with a combo of not fitting in, bullying and bad papier-mâché puppets. I'm pleased to say only the latter applied to me. I went to a small private Catholic girls' school, which is a sentence that usually ends in “and I couldn't wait to escape” or “and they were the worst years of my life”, but I loved school.

I was one of those kids who couldn't wait for school holidays to be over, and I got so worked up the day before we went back I usually had instant-onset insomnia. One time I was so excited that I found myself having a shower at three in the morning so I wouldn't miss my 7.20am tram.

So the phone call from the school alerting me to the fact I'd been nominated as an “alumni of note” was met with excitement and internal clapping, not horror and avoidance.

Part of this honour was that I would be featured in a coffee-table book showcasing the 125 years the school had successfully educated girls in the ways of needlepoint and hymn-singing, human rights and Shakespeare.

It was, and still is, a lovely school that turns out smart, independent women year after year. A few that come to mind are the brilliant comedians Jane Turner and Marg Downey, as well as High Court judges and innovative doctors. Apparently you can rub shoulders with these luminaries if you make a living talking about boozies, babies and big bottoms … but who am I to object?

I was invited to come to “the parlour”, a room at the school that was strictly out of bounds to anyone in brown T-bar shoes and ponytails. I was met by two photographers, who told me they wanted me to take them to a spot in the school that held memories for me.

So, first things first, I asked to be taken to the huge Chesterfield sofas that were parked at reception, where the naughty girls had to spend their lunchtimes. But the Chesterfields had gone. No problem … what about a shot of me at the careers counsellor's office? This was where I was told one afternoon that my test results had come in and I was most suited to a life spent in the circus. Nope. Those offices were now home to whirring servers.

Hmm … I know! Why don't we go into the chapel, where, in one corner, much to the delight of me and my teenaged friends, we discovered a life-size plaster version of Jesus's head? Sadly, that was gone, too.

We tried several different locations, but all to no avail. The secret air vent where we would sneak up to whisper demonic messages to the bewildered class below was shut off. The timber box built to house an air conditioner, but which doubled as an excellent place for fourteen breathless seventeen-year-olds to cram in and hide, had been removed. The Year 12 common room that we had eventually been banned from for too much smoking and a rat infestation had become a tasteful breakout area for what I imagine are much better-behaved girls than we ever were.

Eventually, I settled for a shot in front of the wall on which we used to play handball when we were nine years old. One of the only memories I had of school, apparently, that didn't involve breaking the rules!

“You were pretty naughty,” the photographer said as location after location fell flat. I'd always thought I was a good student. I had a ball at school, but I had no idea I was so damned badly behaved. No wonder I didn't get the marks I needed for law! I was clearly too busy plotting mischief and thinking of new ways to crack up my friends. Shame on me.

But maybe this is the sign of a truly remarkable school – I never felt like the bad kid. I was never defined by my naughtiness. Perhaps those nuns and teachers recognised that sometimes kids like me needed to be allowed to be a bit of a larrikin in order to survive in the world.

I hope that my school, and others like it, aren't extinguishing the fires in feisty girls these days. Because being a buttoned-down lawyer or commodities trader is well and good and lucrative, sure, but sometimes girls are better suited to a life behind the mic, or in front of a camera sporting lycra and a tight blonde perm saying, “Look at moyyy.” Or indeed, as my careers counsellor suggested, pursuing a life under the Big Top. Follow your bliss, girls, no matter how long you have to spend on that squeaky Chesterfield.

 

4th November 2012

Misogyny is the buzzword of the moment and it seems every­thing and anything from politicians to entire cultures are being accused of it, while new articles every week blow the cover of one industry or another and the lady-haters who work within them.

I think it's great. Apart from making really juicy reading, it's important that such candid dialogue has been initiated by women about the sometimes outrageous conditions they've had to put up with over their lives.

What I am enjoying most about it is the memory lane it is encouraging women to walk down. For many years I have experienced situations that have made me feel worthless and I've never had an accurate word to file them away under. Well, now I do.

It's been great to know that those awful self-esteem-eroding moments are not mine alone; that women all over the country, for decades, have been living through them, too. That's not to say our lives are a wall-to-wall festival of judgmental and degrading conversations, but occasionally they occur and, man (pardon the pun), are they hard to forget!

One time, early in my radio career, I was told by a male boss that my role was specifically to “be fun, but never funny”. The funny bits would be covered by the man I was working with. At the time I was so hurt by this. And also so angry. But I said nothing. Well, technically I did say something, but the conversation was one way, two hours after the meeting, in the car alone, and so filled with expletives it would have made my sugar-cane farmer grandfather blush.

I wanted to tell this guy that in my real life, with my family and friends, I was the funny one. It was so insulting for me, who loved nothing more than making people laugh, to be told that, as a woman, my role was merely to support the man in the show, to laugh at his jokes, but never to “steal his thunder” in the humour department. I was incensed.

Later in my tenure at that job, and after having my first child, I was harassed in my hospital room by phone by the same man.

I didn't want to do a live cross the day after my C-section. I'd haemorrhaged quite badly and gone into shock soon after the birth of my baby, and was riddled with guilt for choosing not to breastfeed. I was in a darkened room with a brand-new baby and frankly trying to process the enormous joy and terror of it all – the baby, the surgery, becoming a parent, and the raging hormones that made me cry ALL THE TIME.

Call me crazy, but I didn't really want to talk about it. Not right then. And yet the calls kept coming. And coming. “The listeners deserve the payoff,” he said. “They've invested in your journey,” he said. “This is part of the deal,” he said. I couldn't articulate the reasons why I wasn't in the mood, so I did nothing but cry and feel hunted.

Eventually, when I'd been at home for two days, still walking gingerly and changing the dressing on my wound every two hours, I acquiesced and took a call from the fill-in breakfast team, consisting of a former pop star from the '70s and an Olympic athlete and model I'd never met. I stood in my courtyard, so as not to wake my baby, and cried, mobile phone in hand, waiting for the studio to call me for a live cross after the 7.30am news.

With a sniffly voice I answered incredibly personal questions delivered by an impossibly insensitive guest host that included, “How quickly did you start breastfeeding?” (“Ummm … I haven't”) and “How painful was the natural birth?” (“Errr … actually I had a caesarean”). My partner watched helplessly and angrily from inside. I was deeply and irrevocably humiliated, and we actually never spoke again about this moment.

There are many more examples of times in my working life when I have driven home screaming the lyrics to Moving Pictures' “What About Me” in floods of snot and tears. We all have them, don't we? Is this misogyny? Or is it just gender-non-specific nastiness? Would a male radio host have been put under the same pressure to do a live cross after major abdominal surgery? And if he was, and wasn't up for it, could he have just said, “Nah, mate, don't feel like it,” and would that have been the end of it?

I would absolutely have the courage to do that now, but, sadly, sexism preys on the insecure. When I was starting out I would have done anything to keep a job. And that included putting up with the kind of cruelty that would have me charging to the principal's or boss's office if it ever happened to my children at school or at a weekend job.

The saddest thing about all of this is that those women who speak up, particularly at the time of the insult, are labelled “difficult” and are whispered about in boardrooms as candidates for the list of “dames who'll never work in this business again”. Because, hey, no one likes a woman who sticks up for herself. Particularly when the attack is fresh.

Thankfully there are now outlets where we can share our terrible episodes and help other women identify that hideous moment when they felt their soul and self-worth was evaporating before their very eyes.

Our work ethic, determination and ability to focus on all the other wonderful men and women we work with makes us all carry on regardless – even if we have to limp for a while. Power to us!

 

11th November 2012