Girl's World Bead and Style Head

Product Information

I was embarrassed by being head girl’: Frances Stonor Saunders. Photograph: Sophia Spring for the Observer Confronted by the expectations of her teenage self, Anna, who now works in health and social care in Camden, detects she felt pushed in the wrong direction. “I spent quite a bit of time swimming against my natural tide in terms of career choices. I can now see from what I said then that human rights and international development, as well as the social justice stuff, was the way I was actually inclined.” The post of head girl was “a huge boost”, she thinks, because she did not feel like a “star type”. It buoyed her in tough times. “I went on to fail pretty miserably in the things I thought I was going to do – like be a radical documentary filmmaker. But I ended up taking a path that suited me much better.” Elsewhere some men who had volunteered to work in German factories had their heads shaved, but that was an exception. Women almost always were the first targets, because they offered the easiest and most vulnerable scapegoats, particularly for those men who had joined the resistance at the last moment. Altogether, at least 20,000 women are known to have had their heads shaved. But the true figure may well be higher, considering that some estimates put the number of French children fathered by members of the Wehrmacht as high as 80,000. Elected to the post of vice chairman of the sixth form committee at her new school, she approved of the way such democracy prevented “the usual biased preferential treatment”. A university degree would be a way to bide time. “That should tide me over till I’m 21, which is when I can legitimately stand for parliament. As a Tory. But I realise it’s very hard for ladies to get into parliament. Look at the figures – out of 635 only 23 are women.”

Frances can recognise herself in the article, although her sentiments about children – she didn’t go on to have any – do not ring as true for her as the fear of being a housewife (“I’d hate to think of myself just being at home with children while my husband was out earning the money”). She noted grimly then it was “still tough for a woman in a man’s world”, asking: “How many successful women are there in the City?” But literary ambition was already in place. “I’d like to write, but how realistic that is I don’t know.” We all thought the world had changed to fit us in as career women, and then we found that it hadn’t

Simplified field tables

I went on to fail pretty miserably in the things I thought I was going to do’: Anna Wright, in her old place at school. Photograph: Sophia Spring for the Observer

Joanna is now a Conservative councillor in the London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and stood against David Miliband in South Shields in the 2001 general election. A qualified solicitor, she has worked on large public projects, frequently dealing with government. In the late 80s she “cringed” when the magazine article came out and she feels much the same seeing it now. “But 30 years on,” she says, “some of the issues remain – for example, the need for more women MPs.” Churchill heard these stories of women snipers during his visit to Normandy on 12 June and wrote about them to Anthony Eden on his return. British officers, however, later became increasingly sceptical of these "latrine rumours".Unwanted Food or Drink Products - Once supply conditions are broken, there are a number of factors outside of our control that can affect the quality of a product. Therefore perishable goods such as food and drink cannot be returned. The head girl who has come closest to grasping the reins of power is Joanna Gardner, who went to Pimlico School (now Pimlico Academy). This mixed comprehensive in London offered her refuge from a previous convent school, as Joanna, the daughter of Tory peer Baroness Gardner of Parkes, explained at 18: “I hated it. I had a lot of bullying. Here I’m a different person. They take you for what you are.” The young Joanna believed that a husband would have to fit in: “It would have to be somebody who supports me in politics. I wonder what would have happened to Margaret Thatcher if Denis hadn’t supported her. I’m not an out-and-out feminist. I don’t like people who get riled and wear men’s clothes or scream merely to justify their point. We depend on men and men depend on us.” The schoolgirl Frances complained about the “insulation” of convent life, but had strong apprehensions about work in the world outside. “I’m ready to leave, but it is a bit frightening to wonder where the next meal is coming from,” she said. From the viewpoint of 2015, she thinks her stint as head girl gave her a sceptical attitude to authority. “I was embarrassed by being head girl then and I still am. It set me slightly apart from my friends at school, who were all naughty.”

Unfair popular bias suggests head girls are bossy and self-satisfied – and probably swots. It is no surprise to learn that Margaret Thatcher once had the title at her Grantham grammar. Nor perhaps that the wholesome Kate Winslet was head girl at her drama school. And I certainly understood, in the wake of punk, that my success at the ballot box was pretty uncool. It was a victory likely to make me more enemies than friends. This realisation was possibly the most valuable lesson that being head girl ever offered.The American historian Forrest Pogue wrote of the victims that "their look, in the hands of their tormentors, was that of a hunted animal". Colonel Harry D McHugh, the commander of an American infantry regiment near Argentan, reported: "The French were rounding up collaborators, cutting their hair off and burning it in huge piles, which one could smell miles away. Also, women collaborators were forced to run the gauntlet and were really beaten." Each of these former head girls sees the blueprint of the person they became in their younger selves. And now, all around 50 years old, they feel the story is not over. As Joanna puts it: “My husband and daughter mean the world to me. I don’t, however, feel I have quite finished in my life’s challenges.”