Throw Like A Girl!

As a girl, whilst walking around Woolies with my Mum, bored and trailing behind her, I used to practice my bow-legged swagger I had mastered by watching Starsky on the telly. My Mum, fully aware of my shenanigans, left me alone to explore and grapple with these notions of gender-bendering. And so, I wore Starsky, if you like, as a loose garment, for some months to come!



Ah Starsky - I loved Starsky. I even wrote him a fan letter telling him over and over again, how much i loved him. The letter was later returned to me. Contained within an envelope bearing my name, was my letter to Starsky - all chewed up. It had never arrived. Starsky never received my letter. I was totally devastated, whilst at the same time, secretly happy to receive my very first letter ever in the post, all the way from America. Even if it did contain my sad chewed up confession to Starsky of undying love - I was eight.



It was a few years later, one day whilst sitting at the back of the class, chewing on my tasty red pencil, staring out of the window at those prefect hockey girls, with big thick woolly socks on, I realised that I had not been in love with Starsky after all.........................
I don't want to shag Starsky,
I want to be Starsky!



Basically I am looking at the language of femininity and masculinity as a construct in western society and the codes and signifiers used to communicate this definitive. I am particularly interested in the transition girls experience from girlhood into adolescence and then womanhood. I am looking at how girls who are not yet (fully) conscious of issues surrounding gender difference or sexuality express themselves; carry themselves, their body language and perhaps who or what they identify with.