F/F Friday: Hey, Dollface
Apr. 19th, 2019 02:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerDeborah Hautzig published Hey, Dollface while still an undergraduate at Sarah Lawrence, which goes some way toward explaining the unevenness of the prose. The first couple of chapters in particular are pretty rough: we follow Valerie through her first days at a fancy private high school school, and it’s more or less a record of “this happened and then this happened and this happened,” without a lot of elaboration or emotion.
But the book perks up when Valerie meets Chloe, another new girl who swiftly becomes Valerie’s best friend. They share a sardonic sense of humor, a love of thrift shops, an interest in art, a sense of “us against the world” - and slowly their friendship begins to grow a new dimension of sexual attraction.
Like Kissing Kate, this book is a somewhat awkward fit for F/F Friday, because it doesn’t end with the leads together. Neither of them wants to dive into a romantic relationship - as Chloe comments, it feels like it would be declaring themselves lesbians forever, and both of them feel some attraction to men, although their forays toward heterosexuality are just as awkward and uncomfortable as their feelings about their attraction toward each other.
(The book was published in 1978 and I guess no one told them bisexuality was an option. But even if it was on the table, they both come across as young enough and uncomfortable enough with their bodies - not just their bodies, with who they are as people - that they’re not ready for romance, full stop.)
But Val and Chloe do acknowledge and discuss that attraction and decide that even though they don’t want to do anything about the sexual side of things, they do really love each other as friends and I at least got the sense that - although this conversation is so awkward - it’s a productive kind of awkward and they really will be able to continue their friendship.
And maybe in a few years, once they’ve had more time and space to grow into themselves, they’ll revisit the question of sex. Or maybe they won’t, but either way they’ll be friends all their lives.
Even though the prose is rough in places, the story was satisfying. I read it all in an evening, partly because it’s pretty short, but also because I didn’t want to put the book down till I knew how it all turned out.
But the book perks up when Valerie meets Chloe, another new girl who swiftly becomes Valerie’s best friend. They share a sardonic sense of humor, a love of thrift shops, an interest in art, a sense of “us against the world” - and slowly their friendship begins to grow a new dimension of sexual attraction.
Like Kissing Kate, this book is a somewhat awkward fit for F/F Friday, because it doesn’t end with the leads together. Neither of them wants to dive into a romantic relationship - as Chloe comments, it feels like it would be declaring themselves lesbians forever, and both of them feel some attraction to men, although their forays toward heterosexuality are just as awkward and uncomfortable as their feelings about their attraction toward each other.
(The book was published in 1978 and I guess no one told them bisexuality was an option. But even if it was on the table, they both come across as young enough and uncomfortable enough with their bodies - not just their bodies, with who they are as people - that they’re not ready for romance, full stop.)
But Val and Chloe do acknowledge and discuss that attraction and decide that even though they don’t want to do anything about the sexual side of things, they do really love each other as friends and I at least got the sense that - although this conversation is so awkward - it’s a productive kind of awkward and they really will be able to continue their friendship.
And maybe in a few years, once they’ve had more time and space to grow into themselves, they’ll revisit the question of sex. Or maybe they won’t, but either way they’ll be friends all their lives.
Even though the prose is rough in places, the story was satisfying. I read it all in an evening, partly because it’s pretty short, but also because I didn’t want to put the book down till I knew how it all turned out.
