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.
