The Good Girl Stripped Bare
by Tracey Spicer, Harper Collins, 2017
About the Book
From bogan to boned and beyond -- a full-frontal 'femoir' by one of Australia's best-loved journalists.
Tracey Spicer was always the good girl. Inspired by Jana Wendt, this bogan from the Brisbane backwaters waded through the 'cruel and shallow money trench' of television to land a dream role: national news anchor for a commercial network.
But the journalist found that, for women, TV was less about news and more about helmet hair, masses of makeup and fatuous fashion, in an era when bosses told you to 'stick your tits out', 'lose two inches off your arse', and 'quit before you're too long in the tooth'. Still, Tracey plastered on a smile and did what she was told. But when she was sacked by email after having a baby, this good girl turned 'bad', taking legal action against the network for pregnancy discrimination.
In this frank and funny 'femoir' - part memoir, part manifesto - Tracey 'sheconstructs' the structural barriers facing women in the workplace and encourages us all to shake off the shackles of the good girl.
““Glows with the wisdom of a woman who has learned essential truths about love, life and happiness” ”
““Wickedly witty and wonderfully wise” ”
““Fiercely smart and ferociously funny” ”
Prologue
A crew from A Current Affair is chasing me – like a dodgy plumber – down the street in front of the TV station.
I’ve been kicked to the kerb after more than a decade at Network Ten for committing a crime against television: spitting out sprogs. A wraparound dress covers the lumps and bumps of the woman formerly known as a ‘yummy mummy’.
(Apparently it’s a ‘pregnancy pouch’, as though I’d somehow morphed into a marsupial.)
Gone are the power suits, tight-fitting frocks and camel-toe trousers that are de rigueur for a television newsreader. I’m beyond the AMAZING POST-BABY BODY stage, lauded by the trashy mags after the birth of my first baby. Such stories are the children of commerce and envy, chimeras designed to deceive women. The publications that propagate these myths should be destroyed in a bonfire of the vanities.
‘Will you ever work in television again?’ the journalist asks, thrusting a microphone towards my mouth.
It’s feeding time and I need to express. As I spin around, I feel the ‘let-down’ and breastmilk almost squirts in his face.
It seems there’s nothing dodgy about my plumbing, after all.
The milk seeps through my bra, saturating the dress. Imagine the tabloid headline: Twin Peaks Leak. (It’s so surreal, I expect The Man from Another Place to appear – speaking backwards – from Agent Cooper’s dream in the David Lynch series.)
‘I hope so,’ I say, scuttling into the adjacent caf.. But what are the chances of that? No one sues a television network and gets away with it. Perhaps I should have signed that press release saying I’d elected to leave for ‘family reasons’. That’s what a good girl would have done.
But I can’t let them get away with it. I want to fight – not just for me: for all women.
Still, questions niggle like chafed nipples. Can women stand up for their rights without retribution? Should you cry over spilled milk? And what happens when a ‘good’ girl turns ‘bad’?