The Age of Fibs: bras, breasts and living in the Seventies (text extracts)

Here’s some extracts from the title story of my collection, The Age of Fibs (SW, 2022), and if you prefer to listen, go here for an audio version.

Time for loving, time for caring, time to move, yes it’s time 
– 1972 ALP campaign jingle

I must, I must, I must; I must increase my bust! 
—  70s schoolgirl chant

It was in 1971 that the Tech school I went to introduced Cookery and Needlework classes for the boys and, a year later, Woodwork and Sheetmetal for the girls. Although our form missed out on Woodwork because there was a shortage of trained teachers. We got Biology with Mrs Pivlovski instead.

Looking back, I don’t remember anyone’s parents (or any teachers or students) complaining about this. Maybe they did, and we just didn’t hear about it. Or maybe it was incredibly gasp-radical for the first few weeks and then it just became incredibly normal. Like David Bowie wearing make-up, and Gary Glitter’s platform shoes.

For the first few years these classes, unlike the less physical Maths and English, were always segregated. 

We liked having these all-girl classes, and we liked Sheetmetal, because Mr Harvey let us listen to the radio. Wednesday afternoons were passed happily watching Mr Harvey make anodised nut bowls and enamelled pendants while we perched in rows up on the benches, swinging our legs, brushing each other’s hair, singing along to Suzi Quatro and the Kinks.

Music, taught to us by Mr Foster the Senior Master, was another ‘physical’ and hence segregated class. We had to sing a song and our class chose ‘Nobody's Child’ and sang it with great passion (just like a flower…). Mr Foster, in his tweed suit, sat on the edge of the desk at the front of the room and said we were very sensitive; much more sensitive than the other class of girls in our year who had chosen to sing ‘Dizzy.’ 

And then out of the blue he shocked us by talking about how opera singers always have such large bosoms.

No-one said a word.

The thing was that if Mr Foster (who was at least forty) had noticed the bosoms of opera singers, then perhaps he had noticed ours (those of us who had a bosom).

And if he'd noticed (way too horrible to think about!), perhaps our fathers had too.

We knew the younger teachers had this area under surveillance after the famous case of Belinda Tilley who sprouted over the holidays (real breasts, firm and grapefruit-like, not the pointy embarrassing and painful things most of us began with). Mr Saunders commented on it at the Sports carnival as she sped past round the track for the 200 metres, breasts streaking jauntily ahead in her new larger sized blue t-shirt.

‘Jesus. How long has Belinda had tits?’ 

…

But it was the season for big changes all round. Not just Belinda Tilley, but out there in the wider world too. 

The Australian Labor Party started the ‘It’s Time!’ campaign and every night on the news there would be another one of those Labor devils – Gough Whitlam, Lionel Murphy, Bob Hawke, Jim Cairns, Al Grassby, Lance Barnard – spouting off about something and causing my father to rattle his spoon in his teacup and swear under his breath. (‘You bar–of soap, you!’)

…

Back at school, in Social Studies we learnt about the developed nations, compared to the underdeveloped ones. And at home on television Big M girls pranced around in bikinis drinking flavoured milk, spilling it down their chins; and on the covers of Cosmo they had a fondness for halter tops, apparently because of the way they squashed the girl’s boobs together to show a good cleavage.

Cleavage: such a magical word. The split, and the join. The thing that links, and the thing that divides.

…

And then: It’s Time!

In the month Gough Whitlam became Prime Minister of Australia, after twenty-three consecutive years of conservative Liberal government, my mother gave me a Fibs bra for Christmas. I opened up the parcel, expecting something usual and boring, and there it was. Stunned happiness!

So on the day the seven newly-released conscientious objectors sat down to their Christmas dinners at home rather than in prison, I stood in front of my bedroom mirror looking at my new midriff: this hallowed ground poised in between my orange-striped bra and matching orange-striped bikini pants. 

I shared something with Communist China that year: recognition. And Wilfred Burchett himself couldn't have been more pleased with his new passport than I was with mine.

And so this is Christmas…

Of course the Vietnam war wasn't over, not in 1970 when John and Yoko first sang their famous song, and not in 1972 even though conscription ended and Australia pulled out its troops. Ending the war took a few more years until the fall of Saigon. (Not that I knew that, back then: I thought Vietnam was somewhere near Biafra.)

And I had a bra, but it was an interim affair: a Fibs bra. One step away from Rudi Gernreich's no-bra bra. Soft and stretchy, not much thicker than leotard material. But at least it was a bra.

In the 70s Fibs bras were all the rage, made in crazy new bright colours— purples, greens and reds. A miracle of modern textiles they sold in their hundreds of thousands. Sizing was easy: small, medium and large. Whatever size or shape you were, a Fibs bra would fit you.

Some credit their invention as one of the things that saved the bra industry in those difficult years. (The other saviours of the industry being older ladies, like Gran, still religiously sticking to their longline bras and panty-girdles, and cross-dressers.)

Why were they called ‘Fibs’ you ask?

Well, because it looked like you weren’t wearing a bra (only fibbing that I'm that kind of girl).

Another year over,

a new one just begun…

And then, before it even really began: the Dismissal

I did find the perfect bra eventually: in a small boutique in Croydon, just opposite Woolworth’s in November 1975, at the end of my HSC exams. 

I had just sat my Social Studies exam, and had gone shopping to celebrate. The night before, our teacher Mr Pitt had rung each of us with advice on how to handle the sudden sacking of the Whitlam government by the Governor General, John Kerr, the day before.

‘It's ok,’ he said. ‘It's going to be ok. Instead of referring to The Whitlam Government or The Labor Government, you say The Former Labor Government. And Malcolm Fraser is head of the Caretaker Government.’

That was all it took, just a few changes in how you talked about it. And it would all be ok.

My new bra was white, underwired, and lacy. Strong thick fabric so no nipples showed through; beautiful round cups, but without hoiking them up too high (the low-slung 70s look). The most elegant perfect shape as it edged down from the straps to the centre-join. And it fit like a glove. 

At the end of the year HSC bash we stayed up all night and drank champagne and orange juice for breakfast. Someone ran Tracy Feather’s bra up the flagpole for luck, and my favourite Lois Lane jacket (filched the year before from Gran’s wardrobe) got destroyed by a flour and water bomb. 

Between the Fibs bra and the Perfect bra: a galaxy of changes. 

And then so much, even-more, so quickly, in the time that followed. 

Within six months I was standing in a crowd of uni students on a dark wet night, chest to chest with a row of uniformed police; not a bra in sight. Waiting for Malcolm Fraser’s car to arrive at some fancy reception. The crowd surging forward suddenly, with cries of ‘Kerr’s Cur!’ as he drove past. 

My breasts no longer quite so virginal. 

My lovely perfect bra already history.

From: The Age of Fibs (SW, 2022)