Woman’s World

It was rainy here in the ‘Berra this weekend. One of those grey days where the only sensible thing that you can do is curl up with a good book and a nice cup of tea, or, failing that, go book shopping. My housemate, Virginia Boots, and I, are frequent habitués of the particularly excellent second hand bookshop across the road from our apartment. For those of you who haven’t visited ‘Beyond Q’ at the Curtin shops, it’s worth the trip down the stairs to this treasure trove, not only for the quality merchandise, but for the wonder of discovering the curios that the owners specialise in.

This weekend, I found a particular treasure, a tome titled ‘Woman’s World’, from, I guestimate, the sixties. Divided into nine sections, it deals with the following: Beauty, Fashion, That Something Extra (including how to avoid something called ‘Phone Boners’ – I’ll leave you to imagine what that term may have meant in the sixties), Cooking, Every Wise Woman ( i.e, money and catching a man), Love and Marriage, The Home, The Family, and Interests and Hobbies (‘Let’s Write a Letter!’). It gave me laugh-out-loud giggles in the store, and, knowing that at least two girlfriends could use some of the camp common-sense that this book dispenses (‘You must cherish your looks if you want to be cherished’ ‘It takes a bright girl to keep a job, but if you never get inside the door, how can you prove you’re bright?’), I simply had to buy it.



All Sunday was spent, with various lovely people, chortling over the staged yet somehow naieve colour photographs. The book certainly paid for itself in laughs. It goes without saying that we allowed ourselves that (post?) feminist moment of self congratulation: Baby, We’ve Come A Long Way. Particularly when comparing out lives with the limited focus offered in the pages of this book.

It was only this evening, after a particularly exciting and strenuous fist day of fieldwork, that I actually sat down and had a good read of this book. When I looked past the giggles, and past the self congratulation, I found myself thinking about the woman (women?) who might have read this book over the years, and their serious hopes and aspirations for the things that my girlfriends and my mum found so funny.

I could tell, from the outset, that this mystery woman was much neater than I, for the book is in immaculate condition. And, she didn’t like to write in her books – the nameplate was left blank. I gleefully filled my own name in – possibly my favourite part of a new book purchase.

But what really pulled at my heartstrings, and made me feel a bit shabby for my mocking laughter, were three teeny tiny crosses, made in pencil, against some names on the list of Names for Baby Boys (is there anything this book doesn’t cover?). What little else I know about this woman who came before me, and whether she followed the advice of this book to the letter or perhaps if she threw it out the window in favour of a smaller and punchier book by Ms Greer, I know that she liked Brendan, Gavin, and Malcolm as names for boys. Knowing this about her, and knowing that she must have felt these three names were important enough to grab a sharp pencil and mark them in her immaculately kept book, made her so much more real, and my gentle mockery somehow wrong and mean.



This book was written for, and read by, women whose hopes were as real as mine, who were as excited and anxious about how best to live their lives. Maybe I’m a little too quick to dismiss books like this, or to have a giggle, because it’s too close to home. Maybe, Baby, it’s best not to think of women as having Come A Long Way, at point B as opposed to point A, but working on the same things, albeit form different angles. And, as always happens when we look in the margins, between the lines, beyond the sixties typeface, we can see women, and lives, infinitely more complex and rich than a series of instructions and paper-cut-out dollies.