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.

Dancing Queens and Other Early Sartorial Influences

Did you do dance classes as a little dude or diva? I most certainly did, from the age of three until my family and I moved to Canberra when I was eleven. And I loved it. Mainly, actually entirely, for the clothes.

The dance school I went to, romantically named Belcastro’s School of Dance, was a St Clair institution, and put on an end of year dance concert every November. Depending on how many genres of dance you were taking, you would need anywhere between three and SEVEN (!!!!!!!!!!!!) glorious costumes for the end of year recital. And I’m not just talking tutus here, although there were plenty of those. I’m taking Jungle Girl Outfits. Snow Princess Robes. Antebellum South Bonnets. Futuristic Fluorescence. POCHOHONTAS. These costumes were in addition to the privilege of being able to wear ‘dance wear’ 1-3 afternoons per week. Leotards and plaited buns. Those peculiar thick flesh colored ballerina tights. Tap shoes. Crossover tops.

In addition to all this wonder, I had the privilege of being taught by some most noble and lovely ladies, who profoundly influence my attitudes towards style to this day. Belcastro’s was run by the two Belcastro sisters, Julie and Jan. Gorgeously, Jan was very very skinny, and Julie was very very large. Their mum, Mrs Belcastro, looked after the till and ran a made-to-measure costume making service for those poor girls and boys whose mum’s couldn’t, or wouldn’t, sew. Julie and Jan, despite the size disparity, wore exactly the same outfits every day – a floaty skirt, camisole, and over jacket in watered silk. I don’t ever remember them wearing anything else. With hindsight, I think the magical dancing outfits were probably polyester, for ease of washing, but, to Little Peggy, they were as soft and as shiny, and fit for dancing royalty – they couldn’t be anything but silk to me. Julie’s outfit was rose pink, and Jan’s was jade green. Mrs Belcastro wore a never-ending series of home-knitted and home-sewn cardigans and skirts, befitting her gray-haired, bifocaled seniority.

As the year drew ever closer to the end-of-November concert extravaganza, Julie and Jan’s stress levels increased as the strain of coordinating hundreds of tiny dancers into a coherent performance became apparent. Both would chug vitamin B tablets during class, single handedly keping Nature’s Own afloat. Mrs Belcastro’s desk was obscured by piles of feathers and rhinestones as she bought her sewing for idle moments. Senior girls, whom the Babies (as all the under fives were known) revered as demigoddesses, jockeyed for prime solo spots. Dads began to despair that a WHOLE SATURDAY, at the start of cricket season, would be spent in the stifling school hall of St Clair High, watching DANCING. Although, once they cottoned on to the fact that there would be senior girls, wearing not a lot, dancing on stage, they regarded dancing in a more positive light.

The day before concert day was dress rehearsal day, which was a point of high stress and anxiety for poor old Julie and Jan, but the best day of the whole year for me, because it meant seeing all the costumes, all finished, all at once. We also got to do a trial make-up run to see how our faces would look behind the lights –almost, but not quite, as exciting as costumes.

There was always a bit of competition to see whose mum’s take on Mrs Belcastro’s pattern was the best – when we were babies, this meant The Most Sequins and Tutu Pouf. As we got a little older, it meant The Shortest and Tightest. After a year of planning and hard work, with a typical Sydney thunderstorm building, there was inevitably a row on rehearsal day between the Belcastro sisters, the senior girls, the other dance teachers, or the poor husbands who were on sound system duty. Jan, particularly, was a tat Nazi, and made no bones about the fact that anybody with visible tats would not be dancing under any circumstances. End of. Hence, there were some particularly choice phrases tossed around backstage as the senior girls, in little but G-Bangers, anxiously helped each other cover the ubiquitous early 90s dragon shoulder n’ cleavage tats – this was the time before tramp stamps - with layers and layers of sweat-proof-dance-proof-nuclear-proof foundation. Oh how the mighty demigoddesses were fallen, but we Babies loved them anyway.

I remember, more than the rows and tat dramas, the kindness and graciousness with which Julie and Jan treated their students on dress rehearsal day. More than anything else, it’s this graciousness that makes them queens of dancing and of style. I’ll never forget Julie consoling a distraught mother and daughter who, upon seeing all the other Lion Cub Suits for the Lion King number, realized that they’d spent all night fashioning the sequins into leopard-like spots, rather than scattering them randomly for a luminescent effect. Julie swept in, in her magnificent rose pink dancing outfit, crowing about how wonderful it was that we’ll have a special leopard cub dancing with all the lion cubs today? Wonderful indeed, because I think that girl danced her leopard-spotted heart out that day.

Likewise, I’ll never forget Jan quietly having a word with the senior girls about a little girl whose mum wasn’t around, and whose adoring dad, trying his best to make up her face for the spotlights, had given his six year old a facefull of slap that would, by comparison, make a trannie look natural. The senior girls, adept with the make up brushes, quickly did a spray n’ wipe on the little one’s face and worked her make up back to something more Dance Concert than Drag Night. I don’t think her dad noticed the difference from the audience, but his daughter certainly did.

At the end of the concert, as the whole of the dance school filed on stage to take the final bow of the year, Julie and Jan would graciously accept the overblown bouquets of roses, organized by the senior girls, and thank us all for the wonderful year of dancing we had given them.



Standing on the stage, in front of all the parents, they would clap for us, and make us feel like we really were dancing queens. And it’s this graciousness, and the radiance that it bestows, which is the true legacy that the Belcastro sisters have bequeathed to me –I am always striving towards a glimmer of what they had. That, and there’s nothing I like more than a crossover top, a couple of sequins, and a floaty, poufy, skirt.