Why I loved Paper Giants

Looks like I’m not alone when I say the last two nights on ABC was great viewing. Paper Giants made me feel as if I was 14 again (even though I was only 7 in 1973 when Cleo started) and yearning to get started out in the big wide world of journalism. Not only did I learn EVERYTHING about being a woman from reading my big sister’s Cleo and Cosmo (she would not let anyone touch it before she had read it from cover to cover – couldn’t even sneak it into the toilet to read as she could tell the spine had been creased!), but it instilled in me a yearning to be just like Ita one day. Needless to say this did not happen. By the time I was 15 I realised that Dad could not afford to keep me in the lifestyle I wanted to become accustomed to, that is going out every weekend to wherever the Radiators were playing. So I sacrificed my future career for a whole lot of hangovers and a love of 80’s music. Oh well…

ANYWAY … one of the great attractions of Paper Giants (besides the absolutely brilliant acting by all the cast) was hearing the music of the 70’s. Toy boy husband (well he is 6 years younger) could not name half of the songs played and I reveled in my historical knowledge (maybe not quite ready for Spicks and Specks or Rockwiz yet). Along with the shout out from Twitter about the angry finger bun request by Kerry, I am almost absolutely sure there was not a friand to be found in Sydney in the 80’s, little alone in the 70’s.

I also loved – the fashion (facial hair included); real shots of the streets of Sydney which I spent all of the 80’s and half the 90’s working in (sorry! not working IN the streets! IN the buildings … as a secretary …. really); and the furnishings (the exact same telephone table was at Mum and Dad’s house for 30 years and funky yellow holey curtains at big sister’s flat).

Overall this mini mini series got me very excited in a nostalgic way. Not for the times when women were not only seen but expected to be second class citizens, but for the times when you could bring on revolutionary ideas to the public, when political correctness hadn’t gotten out of control, sealed sections actually educated and there were NO PHOTOSHOPPING! And of course, who doesn’t miss the centrefolds!

Let me know what you loved about Paper Giants, or, if you remember, what you miss about the 70’s.