The Elbow Clutch

Growing up in the sixties and seventies had it’s own ups- and downs. My father believed that good girls needed to attend a girls-only school. I think this is just wrong. To say the least. My own experience proves it. But when you are twelve, you kinda don’t have a choice. My family is strictly Calvinist. There is no choice. Happiness comes after guilt. Anybody who has every survived a conservative school will tell you: rules are there to follow without asking questions. There is no reason or logic. Just do it. Feed the teacher’s power trip. Rules are there so that it is easier to control the masses. And this is also why one should wear a uniform. Uniforms are the ultimate controlling device. With uniforms inevitably comes inspection once a week. Monday mornings just before first break. Here, the old maid teachers checked, with some hidden glee I have always suspected, every little millimetre of all their favourite private fixations, as well as glossing over the other girls who just had to get the message that the eye is watching them. Always. We were also checked for school regulation panties. These panties, usually the colour of the school uniform, thus royal blue or maroon, or maybe black if you were lucky, were pure plastic-nylon; enough to start every teenage girl on a solid track of lifelong vaginal infections. The pantie was upheld by a standard white elastic; those types of elastic that one can to this day, buy over the counter or find in the supermarket’s emergency needlework section. My friends and I found those packets of elastic much more exciting to use for elastic jumping games in primary school. But I digress.. How can one ever forget the mixed feelings of elation and consternation while sitting in class one morning; it usually happened quite early in the day when the angels of mischief are at their most active; when one wonders whether you have lost a bit of weight. As a teenage girl, this is good news. One is always glad for a flatter stomach. It then dawns on you that the reason your pantie is suddenly giving way more than normal has nothing to do with weight, but everything with the giving power of elastic: your pantie’s elastic has snapped. You make your sums: how many periods before short break, and how many towards long break. And then there are two more before you will be able to crawl towards your bicycle. If this has happened to you before, you will have perfected the art of the Clutch. Let me explain this movement: while you sidle out of the cramped school desk, you already prepare to use your right elbow to clutch your waist so that the now-loose pantie would be securely pressed to your hip. Even though you are only surrounded by girls, you cannot afford to lose face. The loose pantie is your very own secret. This is where your schoolbag comes in handy. If you clutch it in your hand, you might appear for all intents and purposes as just trying to handle a very heavy load by using your hip as additional support. So this leaves you shuffling down the corridor looking like the Hunchback of Notre Dame with your schoolbag bumping awkwardly, swinging from your right knee; bumping up and down as if you are guarding the most precious loot. And while you shuffle past all the cool groups huddling next to the main stairway, you suspect, just know what they are thinking: Why, oh why is the poor creature not prepared? Why does she not have a spare one in her bag? In hindsight I could have made it much easier: just chuck the pantie. Nobody will know. Your dress goes no further than two finger widths up your knee anyway!

The Rise and Demise of Beauty

The Doll:

Desire makes the world go round. And here I am not necessarily talking about sexual desire. Giddens says that everybody is ‘caught up in the pursuit of desire’ (Giddens in Howson 2004). Desires unsurprisingly also change from person to person, and from society to society. In a stereotypical way, some women are seen as using the man’s sexual desire in order to fulfil her very desire of success and social status. For people like The Doll, the Hulk becomes a tool, in a manner of speaking.

They met in a boarding house where she lived. The Hunk enjoyed a balanced daily meal there. He was already a professional man. Being much too clever for his age, and also his own parents admiration and pride, he graduated three years before his peers (at that stage, a child was still allowed to jump three grades because of an above-average intelligence). He remained a child in a grown-up world. His family thought it best that he was not left to his own culinary devices. Throughout my childhood, I knew what the term ‘chouw-chouw’ meant: such a meal from his cooking abilities is not supposed to be wholesome and nutritionally desirable. So, he would rather eat in a reputable establishment.

The Doll’s parents also regarded this student abode in high esteem. It must have been a very prim and proper establishment. Mother and Father were embarrassingly over-protective. The Doll never learned to swim or ride a bicycle. These activities were deemed extremely dangerous. The parents wrapped her in cotton wool. She was their only daughter. Blonde, beautiful, and clever.

While society is currently obsessed on using the body as visual embodiment of the ‘pursuit of a healthy life’ (Lupton in Howson 2004), other generations have had various unrelated fixations. In The Doll’s youth (the fifties), emphasis was placed on the American dream-look: wholesomeness, and the female as an attractive homemaker, always to the man’s service in every way. The ideal woman was supposed be petite, helpless, and in want of protection.

This passion with fertility and the woman as homemaker were also partly what Bourdieu referred to when he pursued the notion that people establish their social status with their dress (1994). Thus, they use clothes as part of their cultural capital. It was a way to negotiate their standing in the community. If you combine beautiful dress with an attractive woman, you kill two birds with one stone.

Psychological studies have proven that beautiful people are also perceived as more competent in other areas of life (Webster & Driskell 1983). Beautiful women, thus, are better cooks (consider Nigella and the host of food channel fundi’s of female persuasion), better lawyers (when last did you see an ugly female lawyer in Alley McBeal, or on the prosecutor’s side in Law and Order), and better teachers as in the Doll’s world. What does the Hunk get out of this? Bingo! Social status, of course! It all rubs off, you know?

Sadly, nothing comes without a price. The Hunk waited patiently for the wedding night. To cool his amorous desires, he even embarked on a year-long trip. Far away. On a ship. Explorer-style. His profession called him, and he obliged. It suited him. While he was away, she wrote long letters relating engagements and marriages in their circle of friends. The sub-text was always the same: We should follow the example. All our friends are pursuing the admirable convention of marriage. This act, and only this one, will make us truly content: ‘and they lived happily ever after..’.

Upon the return from his major venture, he realised what he was getting into. Not only is he marrying his petite little doll, but also her mother, and father, and the whole damn Calvinist environment. He was trapped. He wanted out, but his father-to-be warned him: ‘What will the people say? Do not embarrass my only daughter! The wedding is planned, and you should stick to your word’. And so he did. For twenty painful years. It not only pained the Hulk personally, but it also hurt the two fruits of his loins. More about them tomorrow.

We will explore how sexuality and Calvinism go together like lemon juice and fresh cream. It curdles instantly. And why should a man have a future, and a woman, a past? (Oscar Wilde somewhere in the beginning of the 20th century…)

About pride and prejudice

Watch out for some serious referencing into academia tomorrow!


Yes, I know. This entry is way overdue. In fact, I am a whole week late. But since I am the One Who Gives The Marks, and since I am doing this only to empathise with you guys, the Ones Who Needs To Pass, please forgive me. From now on, I will do a proper job every day.

I actually already started dressing this past Wednesday. So I will re-cap from Day Three, which is Day One for me. At least in this regard, I will join many of you. I notice that some of your blogs (only a few, though!), although existing in name since the beginning of time (Blog-Time), have not been updated with a single iota.

But I digress. Let me get to my own story. Imagine a little girl, raised strictly Calvinist. She saw life only 11 months after her sister. To this day, she still thinks that her sibling, the glamour girl, depleted the (glamour.. and brain?) resources to such an extent that it has not grown back into her mother’s body yet. Her mother, a seemingly cute and perfectly built Calvinist Barbie Doll, was raised with enough manipulative resources and cunning that she could outsmart any hot-blooded man who possessed some feeling of responsibility. More about this curious creature will follow in the next entry.


So the girl was born into a family of suppressed hostility. The negative vibe was not really personally directed onto her. Nevertheless, everyone knew that she was the cause of it. The grandmother furiously blamed the responsible hot-blooded Calvinist Hunk of ‘making her poor daughter pregnant within a very unfashionable time’. Images of her mother ‘lying back and thinking of England’ has dogged the Unglamorous One since she became aware of some facts of where babies originate.

The up-side of having two daughters of nearly the same size (the +11month glamour blonde just appearing to be a tad cleverer than the dark-haired one), was that they could be dressed in exactly the same garb daily – up to the panties! And that would make people go oooo and aaaaa, and comment on what a good mother the Dainty One is, since she is also industriously sewing everything with her own ten nail polish-clad little fingerlets. So, she was redeemed, even elevated, in the eyes of her Dutch Reformed Church community as well as the colleagues at the school for special children where she taught. Mainly, the whole family regarded her in extreme esteem. That also pleased the grandmother.

The chubby, dark-haired youngster always knew that she was the sibling without the electric windows or air conditioner. Some models are just utilitarian. And she did not really care for the frilly (always shades of blue or pink) dresses coming forth as fruit from the Petite One’s sewing machine. Then again, girls were not really allowed to wear pants in the Sixties. Jeans were straight from Hell, and I think the Dainty One simply did not know how to make a cute pair of pants. Maybe in the back of her consciousness, she was still reminded of how unpleasantly atmospheric the second pregnancy was, what with the breach of properness and all. After all, she was raised with the mantra ‘wat sal die mense sê?’ (what will the people say) uppermost in her mind.
So, with this scant background as life story, I will start my Body Blog. I do not like to wear make-up, or high-heeled shoes, or to stink of various perfumes hidden in countless beauty products making up this ‘look’. For the next week, I will repulse myself. I will think of my mother not only daily, but every second of the day. The lipstick, aching feet and sickeningly properness of Calvinism and female wile will dog me like the smell of formaldehyde that drenched my sister’s hands when she dissected corpses in her second year medical class. Let the rot begin!