The Good-Time Charlie Girl

When I was about nine years old, my then-stepmother warned me about always hanging around with boys. My two best friends at the time were a pair of brilliant, hilarious, creative males, and the three of us spent a lot of time together.  We could be seen plotting the next edition of our weekly magazine during recess, and were regular fixtures at each others homes for sleepovers and evenings after school.

"If all of your friends are boys, you're going to get a reputation as the Good-Time Charlie Girl."

At nine years old, I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.

As best I can determine (in my terribly extensive ten minutes of Google research), the "Good-Time Charlie Girl" term is a combination of the designation "Good-Time Charlie" (used to describe a man who is social, outgoing and always the life of the party) and a reference to characters such as the star in the 1965 play "Charlie Girl", about a tomboy who's mother is trying to marry her off to a millionaire aristocrat, despite Charlie (Charlotte)'s attempts to dodge the engagement.

Sounds right.

After being issued this warning several times over the next few years, I finally got curious and asked my stepmother what it meant to be a Good-Time Charlie Girl.  She explained that it was "a girl who is always hanging out and being one of the boys, but then ends up always being available to have sex with all of them." I was probably about thirteen by now and completely horrified by her suggestion that, by having male friends, I would inevitably grow up to be the town whore. (In case you haven't figured it out by now, my then-stepmother was not exactly the smartest, understanding or most qualified person to be parenting teenagers. More on that in a later post. Maybe.)

The best part about these exchanges with my stepmother is that, at age nine, I looked like this:

Twenty years later, I will admit I don't look much different (although I don't always make this face in photos today).  However, I did not become the town whore (if you want to dispute this, I assure you the comments section of this blog is NOT the place...please), but I did - and still do - accumulate a large store of tales about what it's really like being a childhood tomboy, an independent and free-thinking teenager, a perpetual tshirt-wearing straight woman (with short hair), and one of the vast minority (females) in my chosen profession. 

So welcome to my blog about what it's really like as the Good-Time Charlie Girl.