Khadija Magardie
Body Language
If shocking political incorrectness, coupled with sheer bad taste, were a virtue, a prominent local weekend rag would turn up trumps.
In the face of abysmal schooling conditions, and equally dire prospects for school leavers in the job market, it is heartening to note that the Sunday Times has given matriculating teen girls something positive to aspire to yet another “tits’n’ass” parade.
Naturally, as the organisers would glibly proclaim, the “Matric Dance Dress of the Year” is all about confidence-building and other epithets. But one does wonder why, in that case, they did not simply assemble the panel of “judges” in a brightly lit showroom, with the frocks in question lined up one after the other on some mannequins, or some rails rather like the equally kitsch auction of Princess Di’s cast-off Diors.
Instead, for those grade 12 lasses who managed to squeeze through to the finals, there was a “glitzy finale” as the rag itself proclaimed, where there was much sashaying down the catwalk to the tune of the geriatric crooner Tom Jones’s latest offering, Sex Bomb.
Local purveyors of “fun” in this country might dismiss this broadside, labelling it yet another clichd swipe at beauty pageants. But in a country where pupils have been known to take headmasters hostage for refusing to use school-kitty funds to pay for matric-ball booze and where parents are struggling to pay for schoolbooks and uniforms, promoting glamour of this kind deserves not praise, but ridicule.
If the grand lady of Versailles could think of confectionary when the peasant hordes were shouting at the gates, one wonders what must have been running through the minds of the well-heeled winners as they strode out before the adoring crowds. Not to mention the minds of the losers at home, who had to be satisfied with twin-sets from Woolworths.
Of course, every girl was as sweet as maple syrup and as coquettish as a Mughal sultana. But what leaves a rather bitter taste in the mouth is the feeling that this type of thing is somehow encouraging schoolgirls nearing the end of their school life to start thinking ahead not to their algorithms, but to more complex questions of where to put the tassles, or how many centimetres below the pelvic girdle a slit should end.
It is also a continuation of a “sugar and spice and all things nice” mentality that saw our mothers kit us in ribbons, frilly socks and starchy dresses and we would stare forlornly from our perches, watching our brothers whooping it up on the see-saw, or making mud pies. Debutante culture thrives on the mythical transformation of a teeth-in-braces, jolly hockey-sticks schoolgirl into a fairy.
And there has been no contest initiated for a “Best Tuxedoed Matric Male” yet.
Perhaps if the pupils had made the gowns themselves or even saved their own pocket money to buy them, it would not be so pathetic. But in this instance, what is clearly being encouraged is: “You are what you wear” and even further, you are the price tag that you wear.
What is even more obvious is that the contest is, by its very nature, exclusive. Your parents’ bank balance determines whether you can even enter. Though there were several categories, such as “best shop purchased” and “best home-made” dress, these were not cheap-looking numbers. The doting parents of some entrants spend thousands of rands to dress their angel. Rather like wedding gowns, some consider it unnecessary wastefulness to spend so much money on a one-night affair, but this is not the point.
One “judge” coincidentally an associate editor of the rag sponsoring the contest offered a gem of insight into the contest. “The matric dance represents growing up,” she saged wisely, adding how “the dresses suited their (the contestants’) bodies and personalities”.
There are, indeed, trying times ahead for teenage girls when a newspaper a guardian of public virtue, says that their value is judged on how much fabric covers (or uncovers) their bodies. Not to mention that sinking feeling for those girls out there who all but managed to sausage into their coming-out frocks. One might be forgiven for thinking there are no fat matric girls out there.
I concede that nobody is compelled to enter such pageants. Nor are parents forcibly coerced into coughing up thousands of rands for designer gowns. But harmful precedents are set when girls who have not even finished school imagine that their “dream” is to be the hanger of a garment that attracts the most oohs and aahs from an otherwise bored crowd.