Goodbye DOLLY

A magazine of one’s own. That’s what DOLLY was to 12-year-old, lanky and friendless me, sitting in a bedroom in a modest house behind a swamp in regional Australia.

Its big sister tone, hyper-femme colour palette, pretty girls and rank perfume samples were the monthly private pleasure that let me escape my bedroom and enter girl land. That’s where I was valued. That’s where I could dream my way out. That’s where I could ask embarrassing questions about my vagina, or at least read other people’s.

DOLLY started in 1970, the same year The Female Eunuch, a bestselling feminist book, was released. Now DOLLY wasn’t a feminist manifesto. It was a much more subtle space for articulating and redefining pre-pubescent subjectivity. It had never been done before in Australia.

By the time the ‘90s came around, DOLLY  looked like Seventeen but spoke like Sassy. It can only be appreciated retrospectively as the magazine’s peak, in voice and in look. I devoured all the issues I could afford like a hungry teen wolf, with a sponge for a brain. There’s so much still fresh in my memory.

I remember when a 13-year-old future supermodel Miranda Kerr won the annual “DOLLY Model Search,” sponsored by Impulse, a saccharine body spray that girls too young to need deodorant used as deodorant. I remember discreetly ripping open the sealed section — yes it had a sealed section for the graphic stuff — to learn about different types of contraception and to see diagrams of boobs.

I remember being inspired (by geographical and figurative isolation) to write to one of the “Pen Pals” classified ads, only to have my letter unrequited. Why cruel fate?!

I remember reading letter after letter in the “DOLLY Doctor” section — every girl’s fave — asking the same set of questions. Do my genitals smell normal? Does it hurt to have sex? Will my tampon get stuck? What if I’m attracted to my friend?

Most questions had one thing in common. They articulated the sad state of sex education and the pure shame that it seemed most girls felt about their bodies.

They were writing because they couldn’t ask their parents. They were writing because their friends might judge them. They were writing because there was literally no one else to ask back then. The internet was not a thing.

DOLLY Doctor was a real doctor, of course. She knew her shit. Without judgment, she would tell you if you were in a dangerous situation. She would encourage you to look at your options and she would remind you that there’s nothing wrong with you. You were “normal” even if you didn’t think so. You were valued as a whole person. Not just a kid. And not just a girl.

Last week DOLLY’s publishers, Bauer Media, announced the December 2016 print issue would be the magazine’s last. You could almost hear the sighs of nostalgia through the internet. Former editors like Marina Go and Tiffany Dunk sung the magazine’s swan song online.

DOLLY will still publish online, but the content will be different — more trending news, less teen guidance. Plus, you can’t hide a website under your mattress, and you can’t dog ear the pages containing your favourite quizzes. Ah, the quizzes. I remember them well.

When I grew out of my awkward teen phase and into a slightly less awkward young journalist phase, I returned to my love of DOLLY by interning there. One of my first missions? Organise the issue library — an archive of magazines dating back 46 years. It was a temple to Australia’s young women in the shape of a dusty room and quite the fire hazard.

I pored over the old pages and noticed the nuance. The changes in tone. The ebbs and flows of commercial interests and ethical guidelines. DOLLY wasn’t perfect, but it was ours. Even as we didn’t exactly know who we were.

To some, it existed to move product. To me, it was a liminal space to jump into and come one step closer to finding myself. And for that matter, who I wasn't. Like a 2D, pastel “pick n’ mix” you could take what you wanted and leave the rest.

RIP DOLLY. You were indeed the most popular, but you were never mean.