Bay of Plenty Times
  • Bay of Plenty Times home
  • Latest news
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Property
  • Sport
  • Video
  • Death notices
  • Classifieds

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • On The Up
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Residential property listings
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
  • Sport

Locations

  • Coromandel & Hauraki
  • Katikati
  • Tauranga
  • Mount Maunganui
  • Pāpāmoa
  • Te Puke
  • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua

Media

  • Video
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-Editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

Weather

  • Thames
  • Tauranga
  • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • What the Actual
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / Bay of Plenty Times

Rosemary McLeod: Strip-a-thons now penchant of the posh

By Rosemary McLeod
Bay of Plenty Times·
11 Sep, 2014 02:39 AM4 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

IN HOT WATER: Former St Cuthbert's football coach Mike Stephen at his home.

IN HOT WATER: Former St Cuthbert's football coach Mike Stephen at his home.

They used to have debutante balls and now they have strip-a-thons. It's the new etiquette for the elite.

Seventies feminists, these girls' grandmothers, were so boring. Cervix-examining sessions, the menstrual extraction craze, bra burning and unshaven legs - where did it get you? Abortion law reform? Yawn.

You need fishnet tights, saucy brassieres and dainty thongs to arm yourself for a future of gender parity. Get with the programme.

Do the gynaecological selfie. Stand out from the crowd.

You've got to build up to that gently, and the first steps at the costliest private schools are taken slowly.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Posh St Cuthberts in Auckland's posh Epsom is a leader in this forward-looking field.

A pupil of the school, said to look 14 or 15, stripped off to a bikini and fishnet tights last week, reportedly in an initiation rite for her football team.

She held a sign reading, "Toot for Strip", with every toot of a car horn saucily removing another garment.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Folks on the busy Rotorua street enjoyed the spectacle while three adults, said to be with the group, stood by grinning - in admiration or amusement, or more likely both.

This is what young women are for, after all. To strip in public, to titillate, is to be empowered.

In a less interesting feminist performance piece, another St Cuthberts girl ran through a Rotorua supermarket in her swimsuit and towel.

Possibly she was deemed unworthy of the fishnets, and this was a consolation prize.

Their headmistress was displeased with these forays into the real world.

I guess the parents could be too, because they pay heaps to send their daughters to this private school with the dainty motto, "By love serve".

A Year 13 boarder costs her parents $35,000 in fees there, plus the inevitable extras for zillions of dollars more.

St Cuthberts girls wear their uniform ankle-length, the school publicity shows, and that's modest; it will make their stripteases all the more alluring.

They wear shirts and ties, as I once did in a greatly inferior, but nonetheless pretentious, boarding school. Strangely, nudity was a noteworthy state even then, despite the reality of communal showers, having to share bathtubs in junior school, and endless exposure to other girls' un-alluring bodies in the dormitory.

Being lower in the posh scale, our parents were less lovely than those at the top, and so were we.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

We were not imaginative with our initiation rites, but I recall a new girl in a junior dormitory being told to strip off and dance about naked. At which point we lost interest, and she put them back on again.

The idea that males should be looking on to make that worthwhile was lost on us, since we seldom saw any, which shows the difference between a posh school with brainy pupils.

At my school, we were dullards, but a staggering 45 per cent of St Cuthberts students won university scholarships last year, and Metro names it as a top Auckland school. You'd expect finesse.

We lacked the capacity to exploit nudity greatly in those distant days, but there's no problem now, with smart phones always at the ready.

It's to their credit that the bright St Cuthberts girls get the point. They've had Madonna for a role model, after all, not St Theresa, and there's Miley Cyrus, with her jaunty icecream nipple tassels, for inspiration.

They see all around them what the real world is like, and they're fully prepared for Facebook and its tributaries, where revealing your genitals, or at the very least stripping off, is expected, and the nicest people twerk.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

It's a neo-feminist thing. It's good for a young woman to own her sexuality and tease the boys, and we shouldn't criticise.

The best we can do is encourage, like the adult onlookers in the Rotorua event reportedly did, and quietly pass the fishnets. And if a seventies feminist finds the prospect enticing, and thinks she wants to join in, she should be warned that fishnet tights do not (thank god) come in an XXXL. You've got to draw the line somewhere.

• Rosemary McLeod is a journalist and author

Save

    Share this article

Latest from Bay of Plenty Times

Bay of Plenty Times

Tauranga Mayor finally buys home in city - why he isn't moving in yet

15 May 09:28 PM
Bay of Plenty Times

'Like riding on marbles': Motorcyclists blame loose gravel for crash

15 May 09:00 PM
Bay of Plenty Times

SH25 closed: Seriously injured person found on road

15 May 08:41 PM

The Hire A Hubby hero turning handyman stereotypes on their head

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from Bay of Plenty Times

Tauranga Mayor finally buys home in city - why he isn't moving in yet

Tauranga Mayor finally buys home in city - why he isn't moving in yet

15 May 09:28 PM

Mahé Drysdale's new home in Pāpāmoa is rented out for now.

'Like riding on marbles': Motorcyclists blame loose gravel for crash

'Like riding on marbles': Motorcyclists blame loose gravel for crash

15 May 09:00 PM
SH25 closed: Seriously injured person found on road

SH25 closed: Seriously injured person found on road

15 May 08:41 PM
Staying active: Seniors forge bonds at Katikati gym

Staying active: Seniors forge bonds at Katikati gym

15 May 07:29 PM
Gold demand soars amid global turmoil
sponsored

Gold demand soars amid global turmoil

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • Bay of Plenty Times e-edition
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Subscribe to the Bay of Plenty Times
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • What the Actual
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven CarGuide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP