I know your antiseptic, your deodorant smells nice
I'd like to get to know you, you're deep frozen like the ice
She's a germ free adolescent, cleanliness is her obsession
Cleans her teeth ten times a day
Scrub away, scrub away, scrub away the S.R. way
You may get to touch her if your gloves are sterilized
Rinse your mouth with Listerine, blow disinfectant in her eyes
She's a germ free adolescent, cleanliness is her obsession
Cleans her teeth ten times a day
Scrub away, scrub away, scrub away the S.R. way
Her phobia is infection, she needs one to survive
It's her built-in protection, without fear she'd give up and die
She's a germ free adolescent, cleanliness is her obsession
Cleans her teeth ten times a day
Scrub away, scrub away, scrub away the S.R. way
She's a germ free adolescent, cleanliness is her obsession (4x)
Cleans her teeth ten times a day
Scrub away, scrub away, scrub away the S.R. way
— Germ-Free Adolescents, Poly Styrene
In a 2018 AV Club article, Katie Rife deftly described the song Germ-Free Adolescents as a timeless angst young women experience with the changes in their body throughout sexual maturation. Rifles writes about the theme of scrubbing and spraying the unruly female body into a state of sterility/safety, portraying Germ-Free Adolescents as a love ballad …about a teenage girl who tries to fend off the dangers of womanhood with aerosol deodorant and obsessive tooth brushing. Rife notes that the products designed to alleviate the fears of the dangers of womanhood never disappear, and neither do the fears. Poly Styrene didn’t feel at home in her body, one of her friends said in I Am A Cliché.
Note, I think we can extend this angst to beyond girls, to all young people, because I think boys and young men experience a similar repugnance and fixation with their own sexual development, particularly in the current sociopolitical climate where the dominant narrative in pop culture and hence paediatric medicine promotes commodification of sex and sexuality and sexual arousal and sexual pleasure, and hatred of one’s own sexual physicality as affirming and even lifesaving.
In Germ-Free Adolescents Marianne Joan Elliott-Said aka Poly Styrene, front woman of the punk band X-Ray Spex, does a brilliant job expressing society’s disgust with the human body, with bodily functions, and in particular with female sexual reproductive development. Where does this come from, this enduring social theme of hating human bodily functions, of denigrating reproduction and sexuality, of detesting the female form?
You can take the girl out of the Catholic and you can’t totally take the Catholic out of the girl. In many ways Catholicism as a culture remains strongly embedded in me because it occupies a large part of my early life and attachment formation. With that in mind, sometimes I quip that female people are paying Eve’s debt. Surely I jest, right? Right? ((Awkward silence from myself)). Well, Catholics would have you believe that Mary, mother of Jesus, paid off Eve’s debt when she said yes to the Angel Gabriel, why are we still doing this dance then, hmmm? When she told Gabriel, behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word (Luke 1:38) did Mary really pay Eve’s debt, or did she sign up the female portion of humanity for this handmaid gig, in perpetuity? Given that Catholic philosophy underlies much of western institutional development, it seems relevant that humanity remains committed to its inherent mistrust and disbelief in female people, as embodied by Catholic canon and lore.
Reader, do you really need evidence that hatred of female people, that denigration of female sexuality + female reproductive biology, that hatred of female power + vulnerability both, has come to obstruct human innovation and progress in profound ways we did not anticipate?
In Summa Theologica I q. 92 a. 1 13th century philosopher and father of the Catholic Church Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote as regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten. Aquinas sought to fold Aristotle’s vision of humanity into early Christian thought.
Doesn’t this sentiment embody western society’s view of the human body generally — as defective and misbegotten? Why else would we be sitting around, handing control of our children + grandchildren over to a powerful group of western society ruling elite do-gooders who possess a disturbing and intense devotion to creating a cohort of synthetic children?
Synthetic … plastic … disposable … modular … throw away … POLY STYRENE.
a future where the natural world has retreated, the final world of everything that is fake … future where synthetics rule, where burgers will be meat-free rubber buns
“Aren’t they beautiful because they’re’ so horrible?”
— Poly Styrene, aka Marianne Elliott, “Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché”
👏👏…some people think little girls should be seen and not heard.. but I think…Oh bondage, up yours!