Articulated boredom weekly
In 1969, my first year out of secondary school, I found myself enrolled in a one-year magazine journalism course in Buckle St, directly across the road from St Patrick’s College in Wellington. Not that I ever ended up as a magazine journalist, though I have given the matter a passing glance, occasionally from a poetic viewpoint.
Ballade of A Glossy is taken from my book, Ballads, Satire & Salt (2003). Here’s the first stanza: In trains by Pymble and Central Station, In lifts from the first to the second floor, In brick bungalows throughout the nation, One can’t imagine what they did it for, In fact, behind every fly-screen door, In cattle pens of the dry Kimberley Women would snicker, sneer, chuckle and roar And read the Australian Women’s Weekly. Had the work been written in New Zealand then the place names would be different and the last line, the repeat refrain, might have read, ‘‘And read the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly.’’
Regardless, this somewhat quaint publication is still with us, much like some dear old aunty, but not quite as fusty as it once appeared. This institutional magazine unites the two countries much as Anzac does; recognising, in this case, shared domestic fashion and cultural mores. I can smell the baked scones from here. Pavlova looms large before me. The second stanza reads: Our mothers devoured it with a passion Between baking and the latest league score, What the queen said, who promoted fashion, Did Cary Grant inseminate that whore, Was Grace Kelly upset by a cold sore? While the winds of change blew but meekly Women pickled and stewed, knuckled and swore And read the Australian Women’s Weekly. The Women’s Weekly served up ‘‘official gossip’’ to the housewife in generous dollops – that happily housebound mother performing her wifely duties, a fiction the magazine staunchly promulgated; meanwhile, the breadwinner was out there heroically doing the 9 to 5 slog, five days a week, (with overtime if lucky) to maintain a family he could barely afford. Everything superficially in its correct place and order across suburbia.
The occasional murder and rape popped up like some ghoulish reminder that bad things happened elsewhere.
Naturally, there would be the anticipated tittle-tattle in next week’s Women’s Weekly – that is, after the Truth newspaper had got hold of the story and mauled it to death for the second time – right there on page four, next to the bikini girl.
Doris Day, that patron saint of the Women’s Weekly, most probably beamed from the cover.
Those freckles! That scintillating smile proclaiming the American dream sweet as apple pie. Lordy! She and Rock were an item way back then. No-one knew or admitted at the time that Rock Hudson was gay.
Curiously, one of the first celebrities to die of Aids, followed closely by Liberace, as it turned out. Rock had been rocking in the seedier part of town for decades, a hushed-up public secret in Hollywood. The heartstrings of many a housewife slackened at the revelation. The third stanza of the Ballade reads: To each appetite its daily ration Of sex, beauty, youth and a touch of gore, The nun, the mutant, the sex-slave Martian, More lies please, it’s the truth I abhor. Whatever the next issue holds in store It will help to break the monotony As I scrub and iron and chop and snore And read the Australian Women’s Weekly. These days we suffer a plethora of glossies too numerous to mention but they invariably follow the same slick formula, from the editor to the copy contained therein.
The editor, relentlessly female, is the epitome of hip etiquette and business chic. Hurrah for feminism – the girls finally got to storm the boardroom. At any rate, the pages are chock-a-bloc with the latest in dietary salvation, and how to look youthful at some ancient age. Botox beauties of the world unite!
Endless advice on partners and how to ditch them, on child rearing without stretch marks, on how to renovate a villa in the south of France, not to mention the perfect dinner party on a limited household budget.
Did Coco really play footsie with Gerald? Ah yes, the world of glossies whose pages positively roar with innuendo and sexual titillation, (bring back the bikini girl!).
Consumerism stalked the neighbourhood and ‘‘white goods’’ reigned supreme. Articulated boredom is what it inevitably boiled down to.
I think I will go down to Paper Plus today and browse the magazine rack to see what I am missing out on in life.
If I were to launch a women’s glossy for the lower end of the mass market I would call it something like, Trashed and for the top end, (Remuera, Parnell, Khandallah, et al) something like, Kate. Every conceivable taste would be catered for, especially tips on how to be famous in the bedroom while yet sustaining the decorum of the kitchen cutie. And bring back the bikini girl! The Ballade closes thus: Now if you contend that life’s a bore Pause for a glass of dry, chilled Chianti To toast Our Lady of Domestic Law, And read the Australian Women’s Weekly.