Embracing Being Velma
(and letting go of being Daphne)
Earlier this week I got a message from a friend whose partner had read an interview with me, headed with my favourite author photo (pictured). She laughingly told me her partner had said that I was giving serious Velma (from Scooby-doo) vibes, and I was elated. To my mind, Velma is possibly the coolest member of Mystery Inc. She is sharp, stylish, bookish and intelligent. I’m very happy to be Velma.
That wasn’t always true though. For most of my life I wanted desperately to be gorgeous Daphne. To my younger self, Velma was plain and boring, all the things I worried I was too. Whenever the boys at my school did polls about the girls (yes, that was a thing) I was always voted ‘best personality’ which used to devastate me. Who wants to have the best personality? Not me. I wanted to be the prettiest, with the best boobs, or at least the sportiest.
The desire to be something other than I was started early with me, way before the usual adolescent discomfort in one’s own skin. A precociously early reader, I discovered the word ‘demure’ aged nine or ten and became desperate to claim the word for myself. Given my whole life at the time was shaped by books and television I wanted to be Ann in the Famous Five, Clara from Heidi, or (as above) Daphne from Scooby-doo, but even then, I knew it would take work.
