What's a Girl Gotta Do?

by Holly Bourne

  Evie looked at her watch. “Are we ready to go? The shopping centre gets really busy after lunch.”

  I nodded. “I’m ready. Will, you got all your battery packs and unwelcome opinions?”

  I watched him stifle a laugh. “I’ve got both.”

  “Right then,” I said. “TO TOWN.”

  twenty-one

  I made Will turn his electronic devices off, so we could gossip on the walk in.

  “So, what’s going on with you and Oli now?” I asked Evie, linking my arm with hers. “I saw you both staring at each other over the lunch table on Thursday, your lips all a-quiver with lust.”

  “Lottie!” she protested. “Nobody’s lips ever quiver with lust.”

  “Mine do!” I shouted – then instantly felt weird that Will was listening. Especially after his bedroom comment earlier. As if he was a mind-reader, he said, “I’m going to walk ahead a bit. I…well…I’m feeling outnumbered.”

  “Told you,” I stage-whispered to the girls. “He’s scared of girls.”

  Will flipped me the finger and strode off in front of us. The playfulness of it gave me an unhelpful stirring.

  Evie must be psychic because she proper whispered to me, “I could ask you the same question. What’s going on with you two? You’re being all mean and sassy, like when you fancy people.”

  I made an eww disgusted face. “Are you kidding? Have you not heard him say the need for feminism is a figment of my imagination?”

  “Hmm,” she grumbled. But then stopped when Amber and Megan linked with us.

  We walked for a few minutes, discussing boring coursework, then Evie said, “Oh, I’ve been meaning to tell you. Oli’s having an eighteenth birthday party. Next weekend – at The Admiral. He says you’re all invited.” The excitement in her voice was thinly hidden.

  Amber bumped her hip. “It all sounds like an elaborate ploy to pull you.”

  “Yeah.” I swung her arm really hard. “I bet it’s not even his birthday.”

  “Guys!” she protested. “It may all be an elaborate ploy to kiss some other girl.”

  “No chance,” I said. “I see the way his basily eyes stare at you all basily.”

  “You two are so perfect for each other,” Amber added.

  Evie stuck her tongue out. “Jesus, Amber, Kyle has well and truly broken you, hasn’t he? When did you get so romantic?”

  “I’m scared for myself. Please don’t tell anyone.”

  I wondered what it would take to finally get them together – if I could help engineer it somehow? Maybe if I dressed up as one of those cherubs from Fantasia, and brought them together by playing a flute?

  “What the heck are you talking about?” Amber asked.

  “Oh? Am I thinking out loud again?” I touched my throat.

  Yep – I was.

  Megan was all quiet and I felt bad for not including her in our banter.

  “You coming then?” I asked her – examining her face, which was all of a sudden staring determinedly at the ground.

  “Umm, yeah…maybe…” Another pause. She looked up. “Umm, who’s going?” she asked Evie.

  “Umm, Jane, Joel, I guess Will” – she made a face at his back, but he had his headphones on – “as they’re in film together. Umm, most of our film class, I suppose. And then all the music tech people. Ethan…”

  “The sex addict,” Amber butted in, and we giggled. Evie had gone on a date with Ethan at the beginning of last year but he’d randomly got with someone else then told Evie it was because he was addicted to sex.

  “Ethan’s okay now!” she protested. “He’s told me he’s going to try not to have a girlfriend until he’s twenty-two.”

  “Why twenty-two?” I asked.

  Evie shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s not a normal person. Anyway, he’ll be there, and the rest of The Imposters…” Evie trailed off just as Megan stiffened.

  All of us pretended not to notice but she held herself like someone had clamped down all her limbs with force. Max, her ex, was in The Imposters.

  “I mean…they might not all come…” Evie stammered desperately, looking really guilty. Megan swallowed, saw our expressions, then struggled to smile.

  “I’ll see if I’m free,” she said, all breezily, then gave us another nothing’s-wrong-here smile. I wondered for the eight-millionth time what exactly had happened and why, if it was what we all thought it was, she wasn’t going to the police. Why wasn’t she talking about it? She needed to. She couldn’t just keep it all locked up to sour inside of her.

  An awkward silence descended and we pretended we didn’t know why. Fortunately, Will saved us, taking off his headphones and turning round. He turned on his camera and pointed it towards my face.

  Oh yes – the project – the never-ending project.

  “We’re here,” he said.

  And sure enough we were on the edge of our local shopping precinct. It was busier than normal for this time on a Saturday – the pre-Christmas shopping panic kicking in sooner every year.

  “You ready, Lottie?”

  I stared out at the pedestrianized concrete oblong of everyday suburban shiteness that was our local town. The usual gathering of parents with buggies, who sat on the benches near Primark, the posher mothers pushing their silver-spoon spawn around in Maclaren buggies, their arms straining under bags of shopping, the Big Issue lady who everyone at college did impressions of, the crowded entrance to the newish shopping centre that had a Nandos now. I looked at the shop windows, at the products on display. I looked at everything.

  I saw at least eight sexist things.

  I sighed. Already tired, but already excited about the fight I was about to fight. Though, if we escaped arrest today, it would be a miracle of the Feminism Gods. I just hoped, whatever happened, it wouldn’t ruin my future…

  “I’m ready.”

  twenty-two

  Amber pulled out her home-made map.

  “Dude,” Evie said. “This looks just like the map Kevin makes in Home Alone.”

  “I know. I’m very talented.”

  I pointed my finger to the other side of town. “So,” I said, my voice all authoritarian. “We’re working in a criss-cross direction across town, to avoid capture by undesirables. We all need to be quick and efficient in our tasks – otherwise we will get caught.”

  Evie gulped – she wasn’t the best rule-breaker. Though, because of her well-researched tweaks to today’s schedule, we were unlikely to get arrested. Always get someone with OCD to help you be a criminal – they’re good at thinking up worst possible outcomes.

  Megan leaned over the map. “So, where we going first?”

  Amber jabbed her finger onto a big red blob, showing off her chipped purple nail polish. “In the words of my hunky American boyfriend” – she put on an accent – “first stop is the Drug Store.”

  Evie grabbed a horn, honked it, then sped across town. She sometimes took us by surprise like that – usually so well behaved and then KAPOW…totally brilliantly manic. We ran after her, Will on our tail, racing past the Saturday shoppers. We slowed as we got to the entrance and caught our breath. I looked in through the giant glass shop window with the pink frontage. It was pretty busy inside. A queue for the pharmacy stretched across most of the store.

  “So,” I said, in a stage whisper. “We better split up and enter in two groups. Shops always hate gangs of young people.” I grinned. “They always assume we’re up to no good.”

  We all raised our eyebrows at that.

  “So – are you all aware of your mission?” They nodded. “Amber, you’re going to cause a distraction. You still okay with that?”

  She nodded. “I’m five foot eleven and ginger. I was BORN to make a distraction.”

  “Megan? Will can’t have cameras on both of us, so are you okay filming Amber on your phone?”

  “Er…okay.” She looked unsure, scraping her hair back again.

  “You don’t have to be obvious,” I reassured her
. “She’ll be causing a hold-up at the counter. Just pretend to be browsing near the till and point your phone at her discreetly.”

  Will’s eyebrows danced all worriedly. “Have you ever filmed anything before?” he asked.

  “Erm…no.”

  “Relax!” I interrupted. “Will, you can’t be in two places at once. And it will look cool to have some mobile phone footage. It will make it all gonzo.”

  “All what-o?” everyone asked.

  I sighed. “Never mind. Come on!” I pulled Will and Evie’s arms to follow me. “Let’s go.”

  We sauntered in as casually as we could, though I’d suddenly forgotten how a normal person walked.

  “You’re strutting,” Will whispered from the side of his mouth, his camera held low so as not to get attention.

  “I’m not!”

  “Are.”

  “Not.”

  “Are.”

  “Not.”

  “Guys?” Evie interrupted. “Amber’s about to make her distraction. We need to get on with it.”

  I peered over the top of a shelf and saw Amber approach the girl on the counter. She was carrying a pink box of ibuprofen – the ones they have for period pain.

  “Excuse me,” I heard Amber say, her voice much louder than normal (and it was pretty loud anyway). “I’m confused by this ibuprofen.”

  The girl looked Amber up and down, which happened to Amber a lot. “What is it?” she asked.

  “Well” – Amber held out the box to show her – “it says here it’s especially for period cramps. However, I was reading the label on the back – and the ingredients say it’s just two hundred milligrams of ibuprofen…like all the other ibuprofens over there. But this one is more expensive and has fewer capsules. Why’s that?”

  GOD I LOVED HER. I wanted to stay watching her. The shop assistant already looked totally bewildered, reading the box herself. Agreeing. Then she picked up the shop phone and called someone over to help. We watched as a shop assistant lady put down the tubs of Vaseline she was rearranging and made her way to the counter. A queue had already built up around Amber, but she seemed oblivious. Only we knew she wasn’t.

  I wanted to watch. To see what she said. Because it was Amber and I knew she would be hilarious. But this time Will grabbed my arm – his touch jolting me back to my mission.

  “Lottie, come on.” I reluctantly turned away and scuttled after him and Evie into the Holiday Body aisle.

  It was pretty empty, it being winter and all. I leaned right into Will’s camera lens and did a big lion roar – which I’ve been told is surprisingly realistic.

  “Right – cellulite cream,” I snarled. “We’re coming to get you.”

  Checking no one could see, Evie and I started picking up bottles of all the various anti-cellulite creams and cradling them under our armpits.

  “What are you doing, Lottie?” Will asked me, all documentary-style.

  “Hiding the cellulite creams.”

  “Behind the diarrhoea medicine!” Evie chuckled behind me.

  We made our way to the Stomach Pain section – which was also, pretty empty.

  “Why are you hiding the cellulite cream?” Will asked.

  I pulled forward a line of diarrhoea recovery sachets, making room at the back, and planted four tubes of cream behind them. You could hardly see them there – it was brilliant.

  I shot the camera a look – mid-mission. “Because,” I said, “loads of women have cellulite. It exists for a biological reason. Women tend to store fat that way because of our hormones. Yet some smart-arse decided to give it a label and start telling us it was gross and we shouldn’t have it. Basically, making ninety per cent of women feel insecure about their NORMAL bodies is just yet another way of controlling us, getting us to worry more about our thighs than the bigger things and feeling shit so we spend money on stuff we don’t need, to prop up our capitalist society and the existing dynamics of power.”

  Evie popped up beside me. She’d already hidden all her creams behind some bottles of Rennie.

  “In English, Lottie!” she demanded.

  “Umm…” I tried again. “The invention of cellulite as something we should hate about ourselves and spend loads of money trying to get rid of is yet another thing that makes girls feel shitty about themselves.”

  “That’s better,” she and Will said at the same time.

  I shoved the last few tubes behind some Gaviscon, shouted “Next mission!” and we scurried to the razor section. I took a peep over the shelves again, checking in on Amber. The queue was MASSIVE now and she was wavering. Her hair had grown in volume in the last two minutes – a sure sign of stress. Megan, I noticed, had put her hood up and had a pair of sunglasses on. I stifled a smile – she fitted in with us just perfectly.

  “Quick,” Will said. “We don’t have much time.”

  I glanced back one last time at Amber.

  “Can you ring it through and check?” she was yelling. “I mean, it just makes NO SENSE that something with the same ingredients, by the same brand, would have such a price difference just because the box is pink.”

  We slid to a halt at the shavers. There were customers there – a youngish couple, both staring intently at the men’s razors, like his shave was an important joint decision or something.

  Evie and I looked at each other helplessly. “What do we do?” she whispered.

  I then overheard Amber raise her voice even louder. “NO I WILL NOT STEP TO ONE SIDE. YOU CAN’T CHARGE TWO POUNDS MORE FOR THE SAME THING JUST BECAUSE IT’S PINK.”

  We were almost out of time. But the sexism! The sexism of razors! It was there – and the rules of the project said I had to call it out. I plunged into my bag and pulled out the posters Megan had made.

  “Let’s just start in the ladies’ section and see what happens,” I whispered back. We ran-walked down the aisle and an explosion of pink and moisturizing strips and the word GODDESS engulfed us. The razors themselves dangled from the shelves – surrounded by photos of slender brown sausage legs on exotic beaches. When, usually, the achieved look is polka-dotted legs from where your fake tan has sunk into the hair holes, poking out from under a skirt that’s really hard to pee in, at a shit, rainy barbecue in the park, where none of the guys let you cook anything. I thought of my own legs, hidden under my fifty-denier tights. They’d just got past the stubbly stage…but no one could see them…thankfully…oops…cognitive dissonance.

  The couple were still lurking – with their weird unnatural interest in razors. We had to do this with them there.

  “Ready?” Evie said.

  “Ready.”

  I blobbed some superglue onto the laminated poster, spilling some onto my fingers which would be impossible to get off later.

  Quick as I could, I stuck the poster so it dangled over most of the razors. The poster had a huge arrow, pointing left, towards the men’s section.

  IDENTICAL BUT CHEAPER RAZORS THAT WAY – JUST BE A MAN.

  Megan had drawn a giant cartoon willy (complete with hairy balls) running away from a cartoon razor, with a speech bubble saying: My pubes are cheaper than yours!

  Evie laughed when I stuck it up.

  “It’s disgusting and doesn’t make much sense, but I love it,” she said.

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” Will said.

  I heard Amber’s call suddenly. “Abort mission. Abort, abort!”

  And a whish of her red hair whizzed past us, towards the exit. I froze – looking around. The couple had disappeared, and a sales assistant lady was heading in our direction. The couple must’ve dobbed us in! The dobbers! I was so stunned I was internally using the word “dobbers” for the first time since primary school!

  “RUN!” I yelled – way too loudly and thus drawing more attention to us. Will and Evie didn’t need to be told – they were already running. The top of Megan’s head flew past the shelf.

  “WAIT,” a voice called.

  But we didn’t wait. Within seconds w
e were out of the store, dodging slow shoppers, my toes thumping against the tops of my shoes – making our way to the dodgy fire escape Evie had picked as our first “safe house”. I felt terrified, I felt strong, I felt alive… I was fighting. Again. It had been a hard week but I was still fighting…

  twenty-three

  Amber held out her overflowing wine glass and yelled: “I demand a toast!”

  Evie and I looked at each other. Amber was pissed. She had a red-wine smile and her hair was drooping.

  “To what?” I asked, louder than I thought. Maybe I was a bit drunk too.

  “To not getting caught today!”

  Will’s own wine glass came veering into my hazy vision. “I’ll drink to that,” he said. “And, I now have enough video evidence to send you all down. You have to be nice to me for ever.”

  “I’ll toast to this,” I said.

  “Me too,” Evie said.

  “Me three,” Megan slurred. She was so tiny and slim I think the wine had made her ten times more wasted than the rest of us.

  “Okay then.” Amber’s glass swayed mid-air, slopping some down onto her hand. “Come on then – here’s to NOT GETTING ARRESTED TODAY!”

  “HERE’S TO NOT GETTING ARRESTED!” We all clinked in the middle, and yelling it made me realize just how relieved I was.

  I leaned back in the big leather armchair and let the warmth of the wine flow through me – regenerating the parts of my body that had been sacrificed to adrenalin throughout the day. We’d managed to pull off the entire feminism shopping extravaganza without a hitch. At the clothes shop, Amber had started fake-crying in the changing rooms, yelling, “I CAN’T FIT EVEN MY CALF INTO THESE JEANS EVEN THOUGH THEY’RE A TWELVE. I’M A FAT COW.” It’d been quite a beautiful moment actually. Almost all the female shoppers had flocked to her – telling her she wasn’t fat, that the jeans were cut funny, cooing that she was beautiful. “THESE MIRRORS MAKE ME NOTICE CELLULITE I’VE NEVER NOTICED BEFORE,” she’d continued wailing, while Megan and Evie filmed it all on their phones.

  Meanwhile, I’d pulled out the Special T-Shirts Megan had made, and Will and I had dashed from skinny mannequin to skinny mannequin – shoving them over their heads. They were branded with #Vagilante and said things like: I’m too thin to menstruate. We were just getting noticed when we’d sped off to the toy shop. While surrounded by neon plastic bleeping things, we’d swapped the sign over the Toys for Boys aisle with the Toys for Girls one – so the boys’ section was full of dolls, and the girls’ was full of Lego and pirates. Then – finally – we’d finished up at the bookshop, inserting Post-its into the books we found most offensive. I slipped some Post-its into the latest novel by a famous male author, known for his “smart romantic comedies” that always won loads of awards, saying: If a woman had written this, it would be called chick lit and win nothing. We also hit the children’s books – particularly the activity books. There was a display of colouring-in books – one was called The Beautiful Picture Book for Girls and the other The Brave Picture Book for Boys. Lots of Post-its went on there (Boys can be beautiful too! Girls can be brave too! And, the old favourite for good luck, Gender is a social construct). Now, exhausted, we’d crashed into a pub Will knew about that didn’t ID. It was a proper old man’s pub – all burny fire in the corner and old leather chairs and shaggy dogs lying with their heads between their paws.