This story is from Sunday magazine
When your worries about sex and health couldn’t be answered with an incognito Google search, the Dolly Doctor was there to fix it all. How does the 90s magazine’s health advice hold up now? Lyric Waiwiri-Smith, 22, found out.
Women who grew up in a certain era will know there was no expert more qualified on the matters of teenage life than the Dolly Doctor. At least, this is what I’ve been told – as a 2000s baby, the golden age of Australian magazine Dolly’s advice section mostly missed me, but thanks to a colleague unearthing their massive mag collection, the words of the Dolly Doctor have once again seen the light of day.
Each month, readers would submit their nagging – and sometimes pretty big – concerns about their bodies, relationships and sexual health to the magazine, and a legitimate medical professional would share some words of wisdom. Was that advice any good?
Well, dear reader, let us take a step back in time to the 90s – when a teenage girl’s worries about sex and health couldn’t be answered with an incognito Google search, and the Dolly Doctor was there to fix it all.
'15-year-old girl who is in love with a 26-year-old man... I''m scared I'm pregnant.'
In Dolly’s January 1991 issue, the Doctor gets real on questions about “your first time”, whether that be having sex, or getting pregnant – by a man nine years older than you.
“We have had sex a couple of times, now I’m scared I’m pregnant. I’ve missed two periods,” one 15-year-old reader writes of her 26-year-old boyfriend. To the credit of the Doctor, they offer helpful guidance on what to do, but there is one glaring issue left out: why is a man in his mid-20s dating a young teenage girl?
Perhaps a modern edition of the Dolly Doctor would include some choice advice on grooming, but if I’ve learnt anything from 90s films, age gap relationships weren’t as contested as they are now.
'Is she becoming a lesbian?'
In the August 1990 issue, one reader writes in that they are “terribly frightened” their friend has turned into a lesbian. The letter begins with a reader explaining their best friend has become a bit too touchy and affectionate, writing: “Is she becoming a lesbian? Please help me. I cannot handle it. Terribly frightened.”
The Dolly Doctor provides advice on talking to a trusted adult about the discomfort of unwanted affection and greatly sympathises with the reader, though neglected to mention there’s no need to be “terribly frightened” by lesbians.
'I'm worried about my friend. He says he has been wanking.'
This worried reader landed themselves in the October 1992 issue’s Sex and Body special titled “The truth about his penis” after sharing their concerns over their friend’s masturbation habits.
Next to letters titled “Will his penis go in?” and “His dick is too big”, this reader asks the Dolly Doctor if their friend’s excessive masturbation will “affect him as he gets older”.
As the Dolly Doctor tells this anxious (and perhaps a bit intrusive) friend, “masturbation only creates problems if the person feels guilty about it".
'My boyfriend can't find a condom that fits.'
It has been many a teenage girl’s unfortunate rite of passage to meet a boy that reckons his penis is too big for every single condom on the market. Of course, the Dolly Doctor has seen it all before.
“Condoms come in a range of sizes and shapes, so it’s very unlikely that you could not find a condom which would fit your boyfriend,” the Doctor writes. “Maybe you haven’t read the instructions on how to use the condom properly.”
'Am I making him sterile?'
In Dolly’s July 1991 issue, a “just say no” section takes a look at letters provided by readers who feel they are being pressured to have sex.
One letter writer tells the Doctor her boyfriend is convinced she is making him sterile by refusing to sleep with him although he has had sex in the past. “Can you become sterile by not having sex once you have lost your virginity? I am so worried I am ruining his life making him sterile,” the letter reads.
There’s one thing you learn very quickly as a teen girl trying to figure out your ideas on sex – there will always be a boy who will pressure you to sleep with him.
“No-one has ever become sterile from getting aroused and not coming,” the Doctor responded. “If he doesn’t believe you, why not get him to ring the Family Planning Association or a doctor to put him right.” Oh, to be a fly on the wall for that conversation.
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These Dolly magazines provide an immortalised snapshot into the worries of teenagers and the awkwardness around sex and health you feel at that age – although this was the 90s, there were many parallels between the worries these teens had to what I was facing as a teen in the 2010s.
Some letters sent into the Dolly Doctor told stories of abuse, incest and molestation, and you hope, other than the published advice, that private letters of support reaching out to the victims were sent from the magazine as well. Perhaps some of them shouldn’t have been published at all.
There are letters from girls as young as 13 wondering whether they should take diet pills, 16-year-olds who are convinced they’ll never find love because they still haven’t had their first kiss, and teenagers across all ages dealing with feelings of anxiety and depression.
There was always a medical professional at the other end of the Dolly Doctor pen - John Wright was the first to hold the title and from 1993 it was Melissa Kang. The Dolly Doctor’s advice was always factual and helpful, even if a few extra words of guidance were left out (check all those age gap love stories and fears of lesbianism). When you consider the channels teenagers have now to learn about sex and their bodies, at least the Dolly Doctor was a trusted source.
