Mostly I’m very grateful to my parents for the upbringing I had. They instilled discipline, a work-ethic and were very keen that I studied hard, worked hard, went to university. Like your parents, I expect, they took me to the library, to museums and castles; encouraged my ambitions, gave me piano lessons, and told me never to care what other people think.
I am grateful, truly. I personally think a lot of their instincts were right, and hope to instil them in my own children. However. And it is a BIG however. It is not entirely true that outward appearances and fashion are solely the preserve of the frivolous.
As long as we were neat and clean, my parents genuinely weren’t interested in what we wore, and the idea of complimenting your daughter on her looks was seen as show-boxy. But to me, as the youngest twelve-year-old in her class – and the only one not given a bra for going to secondary school, regardless of whether I needed it or not – it was torture.
School discos were, of course, the worst. Fashion was a complete mystery to me. How did everyone know to wear legwarmers? How did you know? And how did you know if you wore them wrinkly down at your ankles and not pulled up your legs? After years of begging, my mother finally, long after everyone else had stopped wearing them, knitted me a pair. They were horrendous baggy things in Pepto-Bismol pink. When I wore them once, and never again, she got very personally miffed.
And here was everyone done up in their finest. Well, the girls were, the boys just wore their school uniforms without the tie. There was Claire-with-an-i, whose skinny legs had suddenly, in a miniskirt, turned her into a fashion model. Pauline looking scary and glamorous in full Goth regalia (how did she find out about that? Did they do it at school that day I was sick?). Clare-without-an-i having all the boys asking her to dance (why her? Apart from the blue eyes, blonde hair and early bosom of course).
‘Where's your outfit from?’ asked Yvette.
In truth it was a hand-me-down from my aunt, who was five years older than me, in Devon. It had a high collar and a red and black shirt. In retrospect I probably looked like Janet Street-Porter.
I twisted my neck desperately to try and see the label and pulled it out.
‘Uh, I got it at Clockhouse,’ I read.
‘Oooh she went to Clockhouse,’ said Yvette loudly to everyone. ‘Ooh, that shop Clockhouse,’ said someone else and they all laughed. I didn’t know what it meant. Was Clockhouse posh? Rubbish? What was it?
Someone took pity on me later and told me it was the in-house brand of C&A and not a shop at all. But if I hadn’t faced fashion failure before, it was certainly rammed home now. Not a single boy asked me to dance until I was nineteen years old, and far, far away from school.
So, although I mostly like to write about the teachers in Class, and follow their adventures, I like to think I haven’t entirely forgotten the travails of being a teenager either . . .
© Jane Beaton 2008
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Did you experience school disco hell? Tell us about it!
Posted 04/09/2008 10:32:44 by Jane Beaton with 0 comments.
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