What do Nicole Kidman, Miranda Kerr and I all have in common? Come on, it's not too hard a question. No, it's got nothing to do with how stunningly gorgeous we all are. But thank you for thinking that. It's that our careers were all launched by Dolly magazine.
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Nicole appeared on the cover in July 1983, still one of the biggest selling editions, and Miranda won the model search in 1997 at the age of 13.
At the age of 19, in 1985, Dolly magazine launched my journalism career.
I was a first year professional writing student at the then Canberra College of Advanced Education with an assignment to write an article for an intended publication.
I chose Dolly. A magazine that had been a constant through my teenage years. Sure, by university I had moved on to Cleo and Cosmopolitan (and the occasional copy of the Women's Weekly, my inner dag admits), but I knew Dolly well, felt as though I knew what they would want.
There was always a couple of pages of fiction, mixed in with the fashion, and so I wrote a story loosely based (very loosely if you're reading this with your legal team Damian Chown) on my unrequited love for a boy through my high school years. My heroine, in love, or so she thought, with a boy, pulled out of the race for school captain once she realised he was running as well. It horrifies me know that I would write such a story. In 2016 this young girl would be empowered to keep running, win the election, and tell the boy if he didn't like it she didn't care. But that's not what this story is about.
My tutor didn't like the story. Said it was light and ridiculous and I was aiming too low. She failed me.
And then it got published, on the glossy pages of Dolly magazine. I was paid $150. Which was a fortune in 1985, hell, many Canberra Times contributors don't even get paid that today. But that's not what this story is about either, the poor rates for freelancers.
She begrudgingly reassessed my assignment and gave me an A.
I knew then I wanted to write, professionally, for a living.
But I will never see an article of mine in the print version of Dolly again. Bauer Media announced this week that Dolly would cease publication of the print edition after 46 years. Things are going well online and dolly.com.au will continue. Another story there too.
When journalist Lisa Wilkinson, the magazine's youngest ever editor at 21, posted this week about the passing of Dolly, she noted how many people got their start via Dolly. Wilkinson herself, Nicola and Miranda, and countless other young models, photographer Graham Shearer, Mia Freedman too had her appetite for magazines whetted by Dolly. And me.
But Dolly gave me more than a start as journalist. It gave me a start as a young woman. It gave me the confidence in my body, my smarts, my friendships. Nothing like a quiz to set the world straight. Indeed, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say it did that for generations of women.
I clearly remember one night, armed with that month's magazine, which had a sealed section all about your lady bits. I got out the hand mirror (note to young women, if you're looking at your lady bits don't use that side of the hand mirror that magnifies everything) and had a good look and a poke about to see how things worked.
I had posters of Leif Garrett and Scott Baio on my bedrooms walls, I read Dolly Doctor religiously, I bought a couple of groovy pairs of flared terry towelling pants.
I was a Dolly girl. I am sad to see her go.
