F/F Friday: Hey, Dollface

[osprey_archer]

Deborah 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.

Comments

[evelyn_b]

That sounds really interesting! - and is a book I've never heard of before (not that that's rare).

[osprey_archer]

You might enjoy it! The first chapters are a bit of a slog, but it really does pick up once the girls meet.

There are SO MANY books in this world, I'm hearing about new ones all the time. Sometimes beloved and widely-read classics that have somehow managed to escape my notice all this time.

[kore]

Aaaaaaahhhh, you read it! I loved this book so much as a teenager. She wrote it while she was still a student at Sarah Lawrence, like Peter S Beagle wrote Fine and Private Place at Pitt when he was 19. (Brats.)

Hautzig also wrote one of the classic YA novels about anorexia, Second Star to the Right (1981), when she was 23 which turned out to be deeply autobiographical (probably so is this book -- she went to Chapin). Then she wrote the Little Witch series, forty or fifty Sesame Street books, fairy tale retellings for kids, &c &c.

[osprey_archer]

I spent a not inconsiderable amount of time while I was reading thinking "But haven't I seen the name Deborah Hautzig before?" until I finally gave in and looked it up and of course I had. I was a big Little Witch fan back in the day.

[kore]

AWW.

I think she went on to have a good life (after something like 2 decades of anorexia?) with her husband and daughter in NYC while writing those books, which makes me v happy.

[missroserose]

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.

I wonder if this isn't a generational thing. My mother has openly talked about being attracted to other women in the past, but (usually when she's lamenting about her lack of options in the dating arena) I ask her why she doesn't consider that side of the spectrum, her answers tend to be along the lines of "I don't want all of that baggage". I questioned her further about it once, and while I don't remember her precise wording, her answer was something to the effect of how being A Lesbian meant that she'd have to constantly fight for her right to be in a relationship with her chosen partner, and she felt like she was busy enough without having to go to various political rallies and support groups and meetings and whatnot...I pointed out to her that plenty of gay people don't do any of that, and that it wouldn't even do more than raise a few eyebrows these days (especially in Alaska, which is surprisingly diverse), but she seemed to feel that part and parcel of a homosexual identity was that kind of constant rallying. It was definitely one of the more weirdly disconnected conversations we've had.

[osprey_archer]

That seems quite possible. Val and Chloe's parents are pretty liberal for 1978, but it's clear they'd be facing an uphill battle, and I suspect that a pair of teenagers in New York City today with similarly liberal parents (adjusted for the changes in attitude over the last forty years) would have way less of a struggle.

[kore]

I think it's totally a generational thing. And from what I remember, altho I grew up in the eighties, even then "bisexual" was a really invisible category (and also often stood for "slutty") -- the expectation was you were Gay or Straight, it was very binary, and if you were Gay, you took on a whole political identity and it was a big part of your life. Or, you were in the closet.

[missroserose]

Sadly, this still seems to be the case—I have a lot of friends who identify one way or the other despite dating people of different genders, because they experience a lot of pressure to 'pick a side'. It's one of the reasons that I try to be pretty open about my attractions, in a low-key way; I want to do what I can to normalize the idea.

[kore]

I have a lot of friends who identify one way or the other despite dating people of different genders, because they experience a lot of pressure to 'pick a side'

Yeah, plus I have bisexual friends who have partnered/married someone of the opposite sex, and boy do they feel erased and patronized a lot of the time. It's still difficult to be liminal, fluid, in modern society, both in gender and sexual preferences. //is watching Magicians fandom burn down in real time right now because TPTB apparently could not BEAR the idea of a bisexual lead

[kore]

Also, I forget if you already know this, but Esther Hautzig, who wrote The Endless Steppe (another YA novel I read as a kid) is Deborah's mother!

[osprey_archer]

I feel like I should have guessed that, because it's not like Hautzigs are thick on the ground, but I didn't.

I was the only kid in my eighth-grade class who loved The Endless Steppe when we read it. Somehow no one else was digging all the misery and hardship. They probably didn't think The Long Winter was the best Laura Ingalls Wilder book, either.

[kore]

LONG WINTER IS TOTALLY THE BEST LITTLE HOUSE BOOK, I <3 IT.

I read Endless Steppe because it was in my junior high? school library and then somehow found my own used paperback copy. I think I still have it. Much, much later on I got her nonfiction memoir about the Holocaust and Siberia.