tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38548109.post4915803007456745420..comments2024-02-13T10:20:04.888+00:00Comments on David Hepworth's blog: Girls talkDavid Hepworthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05973053694541321308noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38548109.post-33138818445461907722008-05-05T16:44:00.000+01:002008-05-05T16:44:00.000+01:00Women, eh?Women, eh?Matthew Ruddhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05842392964784000029noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38548109.post-58080627347024261302008-04-27T11:36:00.000+01:002008-04-27T11:36:00.000+01:00Hugging is actually banned at our daughter’s schoo...Hugging is actually banned at our daughter’s school, a big all-girls comprehensive, because it was slowing the process of switching between classrooms after lessons. Girls are streamed etc. so don’t do all their lessons with the same people - hence the emotional farewells and reunions. The fact that it had to be banned demonstrates what a phenomenon it was. <BR/>I think a lot of this stuff is to do with soap operas. My daughter and her friends spend a lot of time watching re-runs of Friends and Hollyoaks (before sloping off to write to each about it on MSN). Soap operas are built on exagerated emotions; interaction between people, from affection to conflict, operates at a more dramatic fevered pitch than it does in real life - or real life before people started watching soap operas anyway. So, if our little drama queen so much as splashes a drop of milk onto the worktop while making a cup of tea it’s the whole hands clasped to the face/look of horror/“oh my god” routine. (Smithy’s various displays of affection/disaffection towards both his sister and Gavin in Gavin & Stacey are a brilliant “comment” on this.) It isn‘t just restricted to young people either. Can’t think who it was but I remember someone once talking about how his quite elderly parents, who had rubbed along together in calm mutual affection and tolerance for many many years, had suddenly started having furious screaming rows over minor niggles and quibbles. He wasn’t that worried about their relationship though: “it’s just since they started watching Eastenders” he said. <BR/><BR/>On the subject of girls’ interaction, there’s a charming little snippet right at the end of this film <BR/><BR/>http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/white/189_white.shtml<BR/>(you can scroll to the end of it) with some girls doing doing a playground song in Liverpool in 1959. It’s fascinating for two reasons: earlier on in the film most of the older people talk in either Lancastrian or Irish accents: by the time of these girls’ generation the two strains have mingled and mangled to become what you’d recognise as the modern Liverpool accent. Then there’s the words of the song. I remember it from when I was at primary school a decade later. But it’s only just occured to me what is probably the origin of lyric: the old Irish Catholic practice of sending knocked-up young girls “away“ to “get better” i.e. have illegitimate children to be put up for adoption before slinking back home.Richard Lowehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04237260684135790673noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38548109.post-19237665841676362922008-04-26T17:21:00.000+01:002008-04-26T17:21:00.000+01:00david, I second every observation you've made. Whe...david, I second every observation you've made. When we pick up our daughter from parties we factor in an extra 15 minutes hugging time after the party ends. And although I don't do the school run any more it's pretty much the same at the school gates every day. Young female friendships seem ludicrously intense these days. I've lost count of the number of times my daughter has moaned about not seeing a friend "for ages" when in fact she has seen them a couple of days earlier. As for the socialising in threes and playing favourites, my daughter hangs around in a quartet and after various fallouts they actually devised a written pact forbidding them from doing things as a trio - twos are allowed, but not threes, because that singles just one out for exclusion. Having said that they only wrote their constitution on Wednesday and as they are thirteen it probably has about as much chance of lasting as Chamberlain's scrap of white paper from Herr Hitler...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38548109.post-82051012348951756232008-04-26T16:03:00.000+01:002008-04-26T16:03:00.000+01:00I realised I was well and trulty living in Essex a...I realised I was well and trulty living in Essex a few months ago, when a girl on the bus (about 15, bit gothy) answered her ringing mobile with, 'Hello? Oh, all right ya bitch! You coming out later?'Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38548109.post-56581181526429533422008-04-26T11:31:00.000+01:002008-04-26T11:31:00.000+01:00I really like the way "crazy bitch" seems to be a ...I really like the way "crazy bitch" seems to be a term of affection among girls these days.<BR/>I've tried it on my male friends and colleagues, and it just doesn't work the same way.Timhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14029131747151415931noreply@blogger.com