Somehow, however progressive one's lifestyle (and this columnist lives in cosmopolitan and permissive Garran), and in spite of one's support of Conchita Wurth's success at Eurovision 2014, there is still something shocking about a hairy man in a schoolgirl's dress. And there are some shocks to be had out there (even in hard-to-shock Garran) because October is One Girl's Do It In A Dress month, and some of those doing it are men.
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This reporter hardly knew where to look on Monday when three members of the ANU's 12-strong Bruce Hall Do It In A Dress team turned out to be (horror!) men.
But it was effortlessly easy to look at the team's leader, ANU student Miriam Walsh. Female and 20, she looked plausible in her school dress as she explained that on this Monday residents of Bruce Hall were wearing school dresses to raise funds for and awareness of girls' education in Sierra Leone, West Africa. She is an active One Girl ambassador, and said that One Girl was founded early in 2009.
"It's a not-for-profit organisation that focuses on girls' education in Africa. Sierra Leone has also been in the news a lot because of Ebola, but the reason that we [One Girl] chose Sierra Leone is that it is one of the worst places in the world to be born a girl.
"A girl there is more likely to be someone who has been sexually assaulted than to be someone who attends a high school. And so the whole thing with fighting for the education of girls there is that it's education that breaks the cycle of poverty."
Education helps save women and girls from the inevitability of relentless pregnancy and child-bearing.
"In Sierra Leone a girl has a one-in-three chance of being pregnant by the time she's 15 and then there's a one-in-eight chance that a girl will die during childbirth."
On Monday she said that as she (living in one of the best places on earth to be a girl) began to acquaint herself with the plight of females in Sierra Leone "it made me realise how lucky I am".
"Here I am in Australia attending one of the best universities in the world. I had to do something."
And so she (and all of the other members of the mixed Bruce Hall team) have done something, all raising money when and wherever they can. By late yesterday afternoon, with Do It In A Dress month in its twilight days, she had raised $1440 personally and was proud to rejoice that Australia had thus far raised $258,700.
Unlike the shy males in her team (who really only put on their school dresses for photo-opportunities like Monday's) she's often worn her school dress while out and about.
"It's so rewarding wearing the dress in public, perhaps doing the grocery shopping, and getting some weird looks and having people ask me what on earth a 20-year-old uni student is doing in a school dress! When people ask me "What's with the dress?" and I tell them, I've achieved my
I spoke, trying not to look at him but taking the occasional enthralled peek, to the hirsute George Laffan. He is a Bruce Hall resident, doing a Bachelor of Science degree. Hairy, manly, rugby league arms emerged from the short sleeves of his girlie dress. The morning sun glinted on his manly stubble.
In his manly baritone he explained that one of the things he'd done for the cause was to take part, in the dress, in a boxfit boxing fitness session at a gymnasium. He and other men in dresses had boxed with one another.
The One Girl campaign does all sorts of worthwhile things with the money it raises. Walsh said they run a business education program to help show people how to be entrepreneurial while beginning with very little. But the best dreams of One Girl are founded on education, and a little Australian money goes a long way in Sierra Leone. Late last week, when the money raised at the ANU alone was already $3,353 this was thought to be enough to send 11 girls to school for an entire year.
Another Bruce Hall student, Stephanie Corish, had by late last week raised more than $1600 (enough to send five girls to school for year) but had also met several politicians to speak to them about girls' education in Sierra Leone. One of those she spoke to was Dr Andrew Leigh, the member for Fraser. Perhaps, even as we all met at Bruce Hall on Monday morning, Dr Leigh was out and about in Canberra doing it (raising funds and awareness) in a dress.
Perhaps, to raise national awareness to fever pitch, he continued to wear that dress to yesterday's Question Time in the House of Representatives. Certainly, from a distant TV set in our newsroom, there seemed to be a good deal of Question Times mirth and restlessness in the chamber.
