Puberty
Blues starts on Ten on August 15…Source:
Supplied
Helen Parker, The Punch News Limited Network, reports
When the 1981 film Puberty Blues hit the big screens, parents across Australia recoiled each asking their teens with wide-eyed alarm.
“Is this really what goes on?” Somehow teenagers of the ‘70s and ‘80s whose parents had survived World War II and Vietnam had been left to fend for themselves.
It was only when the youthful Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey penned their brutally honest account in their book Puberty Blues of what it was actually like to be a teenage girl in Australia that modern society sat up and noticed.
Deborra-Lee Furness starred in a film in the 1980s called Shame that depicted the practice in rural Australia of using girls as “training” for sex. It was basically about the accepted ritual of gang rape. Girls in so many ways were at the mercy of young men. Young adult males ruled supreme. It was the task of young girls to ingratiate themselves into the inner circle.
I grew up in an eclectic country town. When Puberty Blues, the book, hit the shelves that was shocking enough. I distinctly remember reading a review in a broadsheet paper. I was about 15 years-old away on a holiday camp when the film came out and the lead counsellor, an admired, affable Christian fellow, asked me, with sincere concern; what did I think about Puberty Blues? Is it accurate?
I looked at him and said “it’s a documentary”. It seemed to me no adult had a clue what was going on and finally a light was being shone on it.
As I grew older and travelled Australia I quickly came to observe that whether you lived in Cronulla, Toorak or in a tiny country town, the treatment of young women didn’t alter much.
Australia was a far more simple place then, more brutal but simple… at high school boys got the cane - and girls, on so many levels, were fair game.
Yet the transformation within a generation has been immense and is rarely recognised. For all the headlines about brutish behaviour of football players, street violence and bullying, the reality in the suburbs and in the country is refreshing and very human.
I was recently at a rodeo in rural Queensland and watched as friends teenagers arrived en masse. The boys were tactile, responsive and affectionate towards the arriving platonic girlfriends.
Back in the city I have, time and time again, witnessed the same. I started a family at a young age, and have raised three children to adulthood, attended more parties, rugby matches and teenage social gatherings, with other parents and watched with pride and relief at the turnaround in young adult Australian males and their attitudes towards their female mates.
And that’s the difference between this young generation and my Puberty Blues generation: mateship. Sure we’ve lost much of the Australian lingo and bluntness, but it has been replaced by putting a value on girls beyond sexual conquest: they’re your mates and should be looked after.
Ultimately it is probably, definitely also about sex; young men have finally figured out if they’re actually decent to girls then copulation is much easier and much more fulfilling than the thuggish ‘treat ‘em mean and keep ‘em keen” generation.
I have two stunning daughters, and not for a nanosecond would they tolerate the attitudes portrayed in Puberty Blues. When I walk in my neighbourhood I’m amazed how many young folk still call me “Mrs Parker”. This is modern Sydney we’re talking about. Young people deserve a lot more credit than we in the media give them.
Recently my eldest daughter and I were out in Darwin. Unknown to me a feral, sly camp-dog of a stockman was leering at me and making inappropriate comments. My daughter sensing danger motioned to leave “come on mum, don’t you know what some men are like?”
Thankfully she’s been raised well. We don’t hear it enough: a generation has evolved.
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