I Did It My Way

Just recently I received a text from my oldest friend. We met at the age of eleven, sixty years ago. There’s nothing unusual about receiving a text from this friend. What was strange was that it was all about magazines, and it was right at the time that I was planning to write this blog. She listed every magazine she had ever read. It seemed a lot to me, but she was a copywriter, working in advertising for many years, and I think magazines went with the job. She asked me what magazines I’d read, and I realised, as I started to recall them that I also had quite an extensive list.

It all started with comics. My brothers read Beano and Beezer, and of course I read them after the boys, sneaking them into my bedroom when they weren’t looking. My own weekly comic was Bunty which featured, amongst other things, the Four Marys, schoolgirls who got into a new scrape each week, but miraculously managed to solve all problems and come out on top. 

Even at the age of eight I was slightly sceptical of the Marys’ abilities. My favourite page was always the back cover filled with cut out dolls and wardrobes of fancy clothes with little tabs to put them on the dolls. Many happy hours were spent with a Bunty and a pair of scissors, dressing the dolls. My twenty first century, eight year old granddaughter with her own make up bag, lipstick and hair products couldn’t be a bigger contrast to my twentieth century self.

When I was about eleven a new girls’ magazine appeared on the shelves. It was called Jackie, a popular name at the time. I remember there were three in my new high school class. I’m guessing it was named Jackie rather than Jacqueline in order to be more appealing to the young teenage market. It was exciting to wake up on a Wednesday morning and find my own Jackie Magazine on the doormat. I knew the boys wouldn’t be interested as it was mainly about fashion, make up and young love. looking back it was all very tame, but it meant a cosy half hour after school, reading from cover to cover.

Recently, I discovered a Facebook group devoted to Jackie magazine. It all started so well. I was amazed at the friendly tone within the group. Each post elicited hundreds of replies. They were always positive and supportive, praising the original poster on her views. I became quite addicted to this group and began adding my own posts and pictures. There was a craze for wedding photos from the ‘70s and ‘80s, presumably because this was the time that most of Jackie’s readers would have been getting together with their future partners. There were lots of discussion about the dresses and hairstyles, but all in good spirit. We Jackie fans had something in common. Our young teenage years been simple with no phones, laptops or computers to distract us. I suppose we were fairly immature and innocent. It was interesting to read about the weddings and to see that the majority of them had survived over forty years. I’m sure it was a higher successful percentage than the general public, those poor souls who had never read Jackie in their formative years, but what do I know?

Despite the original camaraderie one day the Jackie Facebook group exploded and disappeared. Only to rise again a few days later with new admin, new rules and a rather falsely jolly ethos. As far as I could make out this had all been caused by one unmarried or divorced (or perhaps unhappily married) group member who was sick of seeing all the ‘then and now,’ wedding pictures. Fair enough.

When I started reading Jackie I had only just learned the facts of life, which intrigued and appalled me in equal measure. The learning of these facts had come, not from a magazine, but from a rather different type of booklet. I remember the incident vividly. I was off school, in bed, poorly, and my mum was on the landing, ironing to keep me company. The conversation turned to a friend of my dad’s who was in an iron lung, due to polio. He had been in hospital for about 20 years but had recently married his physio and moved into a house with a mobile contraption which kept him breathing. Only his head - and two waxy looking arms and hands - were outside the machine He could move nothing but his facial features. Innocently I asked my mum if she thought he and his wife would like to have children. This was obviously the moment my mum had been waiting for. She dashed into her bedroom, and I heard the bedside cabinet being opened. She returned with a booklet, the cover a black and white picture of some smiling women in vest and pants, reaching up into the air. The title was ‘The Way to Healthy Womanhood’. My mum handed me the booklet, suggested I read it, and went downstairs for a cup of tea.

I flicked through the first few pages. There were several diagrams with labels, and a couple more pictures of (presumably) healthy women. It took me a while to get to the main event. I read it two or three times, with growing realisation of what it was all about. This ‘having it up,’ which was thrown about at school by some of the bolder, more streetwise children, was actually a euphemism for making babies. Wow, that meant my mum and dad had done it three times. Crikey.

My mum was great at answering questions so by the time I returned to school I thought I was quite the expert on sex (or Making Love, as ‘The way to Healthy Womanhood’ liked to call it). So when Jackie introduced a problem page I felt perfectly qualified to read and comment on these dilemmas, most of which were very mild and innocent by today’s standards. There were lots of questions on ‘heavy petting,’ (which always made me think of patting a dog); dating etiquette; whether to kiss on a first date; and not much more. Even then I remember wondering if they really merited publication.

Petticoat was my next magazine of choice. It was geared much more to older teens, and the problem pages had moved on. Heavy petting had apparently become much more common, which was news to fifteen year old me. Nevertheless, I devoured the problems, along with the fashions and make up, week after week, until I left home and went to college. I’d forgotten all about the magazine until I went up into our attic one day about twenty years ago and tripped over a large cardboard box. After the obligatory swearing, I opened the lid to see what I could blame. Inside was a huge pile of Petticoat magazines, which I vaguely remembered carting from house to house with each move, much to my husband’s annoyance. As I flicked through them I was transported back to the mid sixties and joss sticks, flowers in my hair, patchouli oil, tiny home made dresses and gladiator sandals. Life was so full of both angst and promise. By the time I discovered that box I’d got three adult children and had obviously found my own way to womanhood, healthy or not.

Postscript: I sold the Petticoat magazines on eBay for £1500 to a man in Japan, and my husband was not quite so annoyed. But that’s a story for another day.

The Way to Healthy Womanhood

The way to healthy womanhood
Or so they said in '63:
Be feminine
Be careful
Be virginal
Be sporty
But not too sporty
Beware of horse riding
And bikes
Save yourself
No risks
No leading boys on
No giving it away
No petting
No snogging
No tongues
No flirting
No undressing
No fumbling
NO SEX
And, under no circumstances……
No fun
No enjoyment
No wonder 60 years later
I never even took that first step
On The Way to Healthy Womanhood

Thanks for reading.

Jill Reidy