BOOBS, RAGS & JUDY BLOOM ‘When will I get my boobs?’ I was eleven years old, and ever since I’d finished Judy Blume’s seminal work, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, I was in our kitchen moaning to Mum on a daily basis about my glaring lack of mammary glands (Ms Blume has a lot to answer for). Mum made no comment, just shifted her weight slightly on her feet and continued standing at the sink with her back to me. I sighed and resolved to return to my bedroom to do some more breast-enhancing exercises. ‘I must, I must, I must increase my bust... ’ I’m not sure how this technique was supposed to work, but I hoped it would – and soon! My gaggle of girls (I had dubbed us ‘The Gang’ so we sounded tougher than we actually were) was due to arrive in a few hours for a weekend get-together at my place and I was still as disappointingly flat as the proverbial surfboard. There were seven of us, and I’d worked hard to make these friends after swapping schools a year earlier, in Grade 6. I watched with envy as they all got their ‘marbles’, which gradually developed into well-formed little breasts. I only had fleabites where two nice little mounds should be. I would try to fool my mates by popping down the front of my top some dried up balls of ‘Slime in a Bucket’, horrid kids’ gunk sourced from a showbag I got at the local agricultural show in Townsville in Far North Queensland. That got old when my snot-green goo boobs slipped out of place, or worse, fell out and onto the floor. ‘Phoebe’s got fakies!’ screeched the other girls, as I burned with shame. Cute as my struggles seem in retrospect, my overdue puberty eventually became beyond a joke. One by one, members of The Gang came to school with a certain look in their eyes – an unholy mixture of pride and horror – and announced they had got their ‘rags’. Each time I felt a choking jealousy that made my head fuzzy. It was like the sensation of sand being 30
sucked out from under your feet as waves break on the beach. My ears blocked up. I barely heard my friends as they gushed through the gory details of the arrival of their monthlies.
‘It’s raining down south!’ one would say. ‘Nosebleed in Tasmania,’ another would reply. ‘Clean up in aisle one,’ piped in a third. Resounding giggles. I moved so I could sit on my hands. ‘How about that new Madonna video clip?’ I would offer weakly, desperate to appear somewhat mature and cool. ‘What do you think she’s on about when she says, “Papa don’t preach”?’ The girls would stop to eye me before going back to listing their top ten euphemisms for menstruation. For my part, I would resist the urge to flick their trainer bra straps until their backs bled in tandem with their vaginas. But now was not the time for revenge. Rather, I was making a blue-chip investment in my popularity stock, which would soar to an all-time high when I held a rockin’ pre-teen sleepover. This would be our chance to gossip about hot boys and choreograph some new routines to the synthstyles of ’80s pop music like ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’ by Cyndi Lauper or, if we were feeling a tad more artistic, something like ‘One Night in Bangkok’ by Murray Head. It was going to be a bonding time for us all, and I sure as heck didn’t want to be on the outer for that. I spent a lot of time making sure it would all go perfectly. My bedroom was looking just right: plastered with teen idol posters of the boys from Pseudo Echo and Wa Wa Nee and the permanent paint murals Mum had allowed us to splatter the walls with as she was ‘going to wallpaper over them as soon as we moved out when we turned seventeen’ anyway. The fridge was crampacked with drinks and snacks – mini pizzas, party pies and fizzy drinks – and my little sister Bonnie had been banished to one of her own friends’ houses for the afternoon. Everything was set to go. Only Mum seemed out of sorts.
