Free Best Kept Secret by Debra Moffitt Page A

Pink: What Happened to the Pink Locker Ladies?”
    â€œThe Pink Locker Society has a long and complicated history—so complicated that it’s hard to find anyone who wants to talk about it on camera. Hard, but not impossible. Meet former Pinky ‘Patricia,’ who asked that I conceal her identity for this interview.”
    On screen, I couldn’t make out the silhouette of the woman’s face, because a lamp was set up behind her. Her voice had been scrambled a little, too. She sounded like she had sucked on a helium balloon and then spoke through a harmonica.
    â€œIt was just chilling when it happened. Can you imagine us, the Pink Locker Ladies, causing such trouble? With our bell-bottoms and feathered hair, we got death threats and I-don’t-know-what-all. But it was the seventies and the times were a-changin’.”
    The woman—who was she?—went on to describe the morning in 1976 when they went into their Pink Paper office and found it ransacked. Chairs were turned over, papers and supplies strewn about. And something called a “mimeograph machine” was gone.
    â€œIt wasn’t like today. People didn’t have computers. No copiers in the school. We had our mimeograph, this blue-ink contraption that stunk to high heaven. We used to crank out The Pink Paper one by one. Funny that it was called The Pink Paper, because mimeograph print is blue.”
    This “Patricia” paused a moment at the memory. She sure came across as a no-nonsense person. I studied her shadowy figure and, for an instant, almost recognized her. The rhythm of her speech and that clipped way of talking sounded like someone I knew, even with all that vocal masking. She spoke rapidly— rat-tat-tat-tat —like an old typewriter. Who? I was sure I knew, but between the shadows and the helium voice, I was temporarily stumped.
    â€œWhat can I tell you about 1976?” the so-called Patricia told Bet. “It was the bicentennial, the nation’s two hundredth birthday. Parades and patriotism were on the front page that year. So you can imagine the reaction when the Pink Locker Ladies printed what we did. But those girls at Yale—we just had to do something to support them.”
    Bet said the “girls at Yale” were members of the women’s rowing team, a group of young women who had been fighting for their own locker room. This sounded odd to me. Yale is an upper-crusty kind of place. It costs like a zillion dollars a year to go to college there, and I assumed they always had the best of everything, including locker rooms. I pictured their locker rooms, for both guys and girls, as spa-like with gold-framed mirrors, steam showers, and aromatherapy candles scenting the air.
    â€œIt seems a small thing now,” Patricia continued, “but those girls had no place to change. Money for girls’ sports just wasn’t there at the time. Here at Margaret Simon—well, it wasn’t called Margaret Simon Middle School then—we didn’t have much in the way of girls’ sports. Hell’s bells, the first girls’ track team got started here in 1976, so that gives you an idea. There was a basketball team, but they didn’t travel. There was cheerleading, but it’s much more a sport now than it ever was then.
    â€œSo there we were answering girls’ questions about body changes, brassieres, and what have you,” Patricia continued. “Things were looking up somewhat, and we definitely had some well-placed faculty members who helped the Pink Locker Ladies stay secret and get The Pink Paper out.”
    The camera switched to Bet, dressed in cool, casual anchorwoman attire.
    â€œWhat were you trying to do back then with The Pink Paper ?” Bet asked.
    â€œGirls needed basic information, was our point,” Patricia said. “It wasn’t as easy to come by back then. But others were not so fond of our work. So when we starting