AustLit

'We were … well, who were we? It was a floating group of 25 or so leftists, radical leftists, ultra-leftists from around Melbourne Uni, people dressed in black, a style still univocal and of a post-punk form: hair close-cropped around the edges, but piled high, boys wearing black jeans and black or dark-blue shirts, buttoned to the neck, girls in a near-compulsory style for a few years: black tights, black skivvy, a highly patterned, op-shop–derived, short skirt over the tights, and a haircut in which one side was shaved, and the other half grew long to the shoulder, bobbed. It appears to have returned a few years ago as a style—in our era, one among a hundred—but for a couple of years it was semi-compulsory, at least among our gang. Then it was the only game in town. Gender fluidity, which had been around in the seventies, had retreated, even with the success of The Cure. We were looking to … well that was the question.' (Introduction)