Remember that comic strip, Cathy? She was the pre-Bridget Jones, pre-Spice Girls feminist.
And she said ‘Ack!’ a lot.
Cathy was a regular feature in the 90s Sunday papers. I looked forward to Dennis the Menace’s antics, the marital spats of the Lockhorns, and then there was Cathy.
I was too young to fully appreciate her wit and neuroses. I was baffled by her relationship with food and shopping, and yet, because it was a ‘comic’, I read it, thinking that it must be for children.
But it really wasn’t.
Cathy was dealing with relationship, work, food, and weight-related stress. She was a caricature of the 80s/90s woman. She was dealing with low self-esteem, at a time when women had to prove their worth and capability in the sphere of womanhood. Yet, as her mania invariably surfaced by the second frame, Cathy was an independent woman, who struggled with her independence.
I realise this now, as I look back on those comic strips. Just think of all that shopping she had to do, which then became another revelation that she was ‘over-weight’ by society’s (and her mother’s) standards. Cathy was dependent on material things, and societal norms. Yet she had a good job, good friends, a stable relationship, and her parents were still in her life.
She may have been relatable for women of her age, but to an awkward preteen dealing with weird hair and oversized spectacles, Cathy was a strange creature.
Was Cathy the future?
Was I supposed to end up like her?
Would I also develop a love/hate relationship with food?
Would I see shopping as a salve for my problems?
I thought she was silly. Why would you let these things control your life?
And so I thought I’d became the ‘anti-Cathy’; the one who wouldn’t succumb to her melodramas, the one who would choose logic over sentiment.
Years later, and Cathy is no more. On October 3, 2010, she said her last ‘Ack!
I’d long since stopped reading the Sunday comics. I grew up, the spectacles are still big, and the hair slightly more under control. But now I chuckle as I read some of the Cathy strips online.
And while I may not be as overcome by Cathy’s neuroses caused by consumerism, and a lack of self-worth, her sense of detachment resonates today.
Feeling obliged to be more in contact, but only through the insubstantial channels of social media.
I still have those arguments with my computer.
In her manic way, was Cathy telling us to take care, and avoid the self-obsession inspired by the fixation on other people’s perfectly curated on-line lives?
