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‘Jackie Collins hidden behind Wuthering Heights’?: Sex, drama and overstepping boundaries in 1980s teenage girls’ magazines

The fourth lecture in the five-part Bonkbusters series, curated by Jo Parsons.

In 1983 the teenage magazine Just Seventeen ran a feature on differences between the sexes which declared that girls ‘keep a Jackie Collins book hidden behind Wuthering Heights’. This talk will examine the role of Just Seventeen and other teenage girls’ magazines in acknowledging the increasing level of interest in ‘anything with kissing on the cover’ but also on reading and other media that depicted sexual adventurousness well beyond kissing. The landscape of early-mid 80s is marked by the emergence of sometimes glamorous, always strong women in narratives across media platforms, including bestselling novels by Judith Krantz and Shirley Conran, soaps like Dallas and Dynasty, and the increasing presence of bold women as role models in the pop scene.

Jo will explore 1980s Just Seventeen’s representation of sex, success and women’s roles in an increasingly multi-media world, where prominent women, from Alexis Carrington to Madonna, were held up as daring, morally dubious, yet also inspiring role models. Just Seventeen played a critical role in framing narratives about the tempestuous lives of adult women for a teenage audience, while also maintaining its status as a trusted provider of advice on how actual teenagers should manage their personal lives.

This talk draws on the Femorabilia archive of women’s and girls’ magazines at Liverpool John Moores University.

Biography

Joanne Knowles is a senior lecturer in Media, Culture, Communication at Liverpool John Moores University. She’s written about a range of popular media including Jackie magazine, The Snowman and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. Jo is a big fan of 1980s pop culture, which allows her to mix business with pleasure.

Image held by Jo’s University’s archives

Don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day

SERIES OVERVIEW

Join us as we enter the glamourous and ruthless world of the Bonkbuster, a phenomenon in mid-late 20th century popular women’s writing, which showed us that sex and excess really does sell, and taught women they could come out on top in both bedroom and boardroom.

Bitches, studs and hedonistic female pleasures: adapting the bonkbuster in 1970s British cinema

The third lecture in the five-part Bonkbusters series, curated by Jo Parsons.

This talk explores 1970s film adaptations of successful popular fiction ‘bonkbusters’ focusing on the film versions of Jackie Collins’ bonkbusters The Stud (1978) and The Bitch (1979). Starring Jackie’s sister Joan, the film versions were broadly dismissed as trashy, tasteless sexploitation, panned on release for their lack of plot and for the performances. But is there more to be discussed here? These late 1970s adaptations appeared to anticipate 1980s hedonism showcasing money, travel, opulence, decadence and excess. The sexuality being explored is both female and mature. In this fantasy world of money, clothes and opulence, men are either sugar daddy’s or sexual playthings, whilst central protagonist Fontaine Khaled (Joan Collins) emerges as a particular kind of protagonist; hedonistic, determined, self-absorbed and unashamedly sexual. In focusing on the pursuit of sexual pleasure of a mature female character, as well as showcasing her traditionally unattractive female characteristics such as ruthlessness and business acumen, these films are unusual and hint at a progressive agenda in which women set the agenda.

Biography

Sian Barber is a Reader in Film at Queen’s University Belfast. She has published widely on censorship, controversy, and cinema including Censoring the 1970s: The BBFC and the Decade that Taste Forgot (2011) and The British Film Industry in the 1970s: Capital Culture and Creativity (2013).

Joan and Jackie Collins: https://x.com/Joancollinsdbe/status/819631064431742976/photo/1

Image available under free use.

Don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day

SERIES OVERVIEW

Join us as we enter the glamourous and ruthless world of the Bonkbuster, a phenomenon in mid-late 20th century popular women’s writing, which showed us that sex and excess really does sell, and taught women they could come out on top in both bedroom and boardroom.

Bonktastic Bonkbusters!: Sexing Up Late Twentieth-Century Women’s Writing

The second lecture in the five-part Bonkbusters series, curated by Jo Parsons.

The pejorative and spiteful term ‘Bonkbuster’ was derived from ‘bonk’, a British term for sex, and ‘blockbuster’, a very commercially successful book or film, and was used as a means to dismiss a popular, hugely influential, and diverse subgenre of women’s writing which emerged in the 1970s before barging its way, stilettoed and shoulder padded, into the 1980s. The Bonkbuster gave women permission to desire and demand good sex and professional success in a time that was still very much a man’s world. Its authors were revolutionary in many ways; for example, Jackie Collins, ‘Queen of Trash’, celebrity author, and alleged chronicler of Hollywood’s bad behaviour, is famous for her catchphrase and unwavering belief that ‘girls can do anything’; and Shirley Conran was still active until her death in 2024 in empowering women through her social entrepreneurship, a mission which previously involved using her novel Lace (1982) to educate teenagers about sex – an aim that was somewhat undermined by a rather unusual encounter featuring a goldfish.

The Bonkbuster is having something of a resurgence today. The Disney+ adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s Rivals (1988) landed on our screens last year with cheeky pops of champagne corks and a scene featuring an airplane toilet and membership of the mile high club. These women have repeatedly proved that sex sells, while challenging and reshaping attitudes to female sexual pleasure.

This talk will provide a saucy and fun introduction to the Bonkbuster and the ways in which it spiced up both women’s writing and their bedrooms in the late twentieth century.

Biography

Dr Joanne Ella Parsons is Senior Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at Falmouth University. She is an expert on romantic fiction and is currently writing a book on the Bonkbuster. Her books include Doomed Romances (British Library 2024) and 13 Cornish Ghost Stories (Mabecron, 2024)

images available under fair use

Don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day

SERIES OVERVIEW

Join us as we enter the glamourous and ruthless world of the Bonkbuster, a phenomenon in mid-late 20th century popular women’s writing, which showed us that sex and excess really does sell, and taught women they could come out on top in both bedroom and boardroom.