Personal Essay: It Girl
Piles of clothes washed and dried. Neatly folded into separate piles on the table, ready to be worn by the people in my life, for the living, they all seem to do, except me. I don’t have work clothes or going out clothes; instead, I have leggings. Lots and lots of leggings.
I have leggings in an array of colours and forms. Leggings of forest green and animal print. Leggings with branding down the leg. Leggings for the exercise I hardly ever do. Leggings for leisure. Leggings with zips. Leggings with holes.
Sometimes I even shock myself with the number of leggings I have accumulated over the years. When I’m looking for a t-shirt in a draw, I come out with fists full of leggings. Slinging them over my shoulder like a bouncer carrying a drunk mate.
I used to wonder how people changed their sense of style. Like how ladies of a certain age start wearing flowery dresses and capri pants. Is it a gradual thing, or do they emerge one day like a butterfly from a chrysalis bobbing their head to The Hits and wearing a patterned blouse from Caroline Eve?
I didn’t always live in leggings. For one fleeting moment in time, I was an ‘It Girl.’ In the paper, framed for all to see. A mirage concocted by a once ‘world-famous in New Zealand’ gossip journalist that would never fly in the face of #MeToo.
Back then, I was a sportswriter. Football, soccer, whatever you want to call it. Fresh off the plane from England. Legs full of Gallagher swagger and a mouth full of swearwords ready to be discharged at any given moment. I had a Journalism degree and high hopes of becoming a war correspondent, but I couldn’t afford Sky Sports, so I took a job at a New Zealand newsroom so I could watch football while I worked.
I lived, breathed, and slept football. Literally, I slept with sports radio on so the information would subconsciously enter my brain during slumber. My boyfriend didn’t sleep for a year, or even like football, but if you asked him who won the FA Cup final in 2010 he could probably tell you (Chelsea, with a goal from Didier Drogba in the 58th minute).
You could have asked me any question about world football back then, and without hesitation, I would have given you the right answer. I was a female football expert in a male-dominated industry. I knew my shit, and I was damn proud of it.
One day I was approached by the PR women to be in one of New Zealand’s most prominent newspapers, with a selection of other females smashing their chosen field.
There was a rising reporter, a tech expert, and me. When we arrived at the shoot, dolled up thanks to the newsroom make-up artists, who made fun of my wonky eyebrows, we realized the other girls were not, in fact, ‘paving the way.’ They were skinny blonde models and Auckland socialites that wouldn’t even make it onto the celebrity alphabet in England, preening themselves in the mirror and applying Thin Lizzy to their legs.
They lined us up like Fox News girls in a sexy identity parade. Smile. Put your hips this way. No, that way is better. Suck in your stomach. We looked like idiots. All our expertise, all our hard work, all our dedication to getting ahead in a male-dominated world, reduced to LBDs, fake smiles, and tits.
The rising star was furious. Bosses had warned her. You can’t do things like that if you want to be a serious journalist. My friends and I laughed. Me the It Girl, sitting on a deck somewhere on a Saturday night, drinking beer, probably wearing leggings.
