Being a Girl in 1981

Ever wondered what it was like to be a teenage girl in 1981? I just came across this recollection on flickr by Solitaire Miles:

“I found this old pic of me from 1981 dressed in my Linda Ronstadt rollerskating wanna-be outfit, right before I went skating with my friends. I was 14 in this pic, and I wasn’t allowed to wear or own a tube top, but I did wear it to skating with a satin baseball jacket over the top, like Linda Ronstadt, and my Mother never knew. The top was loaned to me by my 17 year old baby sitter, who was the scandal of our neighborhood because her mother put her on the pill.

When I was 14, the kind of things I looked forward to were roller skating with my girlfriends, reading copies of Tiger Beat magazine, and sneaking into the theater to see films that my Mom wouldn’t allow me to watch, like ‘The Blue Lagoon’ with Brook Shields and ‘Little Darlings’ with Tatum O’Neal and Kristy McNichol. Both of these films dealt with issues of teenage girl sexuality, and they were VERBOTEN in my Roman Catholic home, but I found a way to see them, nonetheless. At age 14, the most scandalous thing I did was hold a 16 year old boy’s hand at skating during a couple’s skate, and then let him kiss me closed mouth, once, in the parking lot before my Mom came to pick us up at 9 pm. An open mouthed kiss would have been considered slutty….”