How Toe-dully Max Is Their Valley

By Michael Demarest

From Teen-Age Land comes a new species: the Val Gal

All of a sudden, from Tarzana, Calif., to Tarrytown, N.Y., everyone with a teen-age daughter is wondering: Is she one? A Valley Girl, that is. If she's from a fairly well-to-do family, and between the ages of 13 and 17, chances are she is. If her passions are shopping, popularity, pigging out on junk food and piling on cosmetics, the answer is probably "fer shurr." If she is almost unintelligible, the verdict can only be: "Totally." Particularly if she pronounces the word "Toe-dully."

A Val Gal does not have to come from California's San Fernando Valley, though indeed the subspecies Puella americana vallensis (PAV) was first identified in that beige outreach of Los Angeles. She can equally well be from some honker place like Lake Forest, Ill., or Longeyeland. She got to be called a Valley Girl because of the hot five-minute single record by that name in which Frank Zappa and his maximum brilliant 15-year-old daughter Moon Unit lampooned the San Fernando species and its tribal habits. Valley Girls are by no means mere pubescent versions of the California Girl but exist, in differing regional colorations, from coast to coast. Like Zappa, puts it:

Last idea to cross her mind

Had something to do with where to

find

A pair of jeans to fit her butt

And where to get her toenails cut.

Meanwhile, a lot of Melvins who must have Val daughters have been writing them up in neat magazines and newspapers, not to mention major cool calendars, coloring books, beach towels, T shirts and lapel buttons. Two books on the Valley Girl's way of life are to be published in the next few weeks. CBS's fall lineup even has a sitcom called Square Pegs featuring a PAV.

A lot of space cadets assume that Val Gals are simply updated versions of the 1940s bobbysoxer. Kiss my tuna! One conspicuous difference: the amount of billies a true Val pours into clothes, sunglasses, tanning oil, lip gloss, Tab, Doritos, Kahlua brownies, Bubblicious chewing gum, beer (Heinies and Lowies), burritos, movies, Harlequin romances, records (anything by Journey, Rush, Van Halen, AC/DC) and movies (alltime fave: Mommie Dearest). Other Total Necessities: a blow dryer, a Walkman and at least one gold chain. PAVs are obsessed with fashion, crowding mondo cool stores from the Galleria in Sherman Oaks, Calif., to the Galleria in White Plains, N. Y. (Minis and ruffles, short pants and denim jackets with the collar turned up and cuffs rolled back are in.) Top status possessions are a horse, a health-club membership and a monthly clothing allowance. A rilly killer bedroom has a waterbed, little baskets full of cosmetics, a mega sound system, wind chimes, posters of favorite bands and, of course, a private phone. All PAVs dream of arriving at the beach in awesome cruisemobiles like Mercedes and Rabbit convertibles, but sometimes are reduced to taking the bus or being chauffeured by their mothers.

What really differentiates a Val from a bobby-soxer or a preppie is, say, her arcane argot and the enunciation that goes with it. Suddenly, as if she's been taking total immersion courses in Lower Slobbovian, the neo-PAV communicates in a strange new language. It is culled from 1960s surfer slang and hippie lingo, black street jargon, etymological reversals (a vicious dude is a real buf babe, or someone desirable; groovy means out of fashion), some vividly onomatopoeic neologisms (like rolf for vomit, scarf-out for overeat), or is just plain spacey (zod, spaz, goober or geek, all meaning weird). The wackiness of the verbiage is accentuated by the blase enunciation, a special way of talking that combines a pinched nasal drawl with a high-pitched song rhythm. Many declarative sentences are delivered as sardonic questions. Omigod can be stretched over two octaves, while totally is expelled through clenched teeth, with the emphasis on the first syllable. "I'm shurr," the ultimate rejection, is mumbled in a marinade of sarcasm. The words and phrases themselves are as ephemeral as a Val Gal's passions -- as if they had a Poindexter (brainy nerd) stashed somewhere cranking out hot new ones. Onetime Val staples that are now Joanie (passe) include bitchen and tubular, adjectives of approbation borrowed from surfing. In words are bud sess (pronounced sesh) for a pot smoke, cas (pronounced caj) for casual ("real caj dude"), skanky (gross), rad (excellent) and bufu (homosexual). Val-speak renews itself almost daily.

The most revealing exploration of the species to date is The Valley Girls' Guide to Life by Mimi Pond, a paperback to be published by Dell in October. A California-reared writer and cartoonist who moved to Manhattan this year, Pond has a hi-fi ear for Valspeak stream of consciousness and its nuances, as well as an affection for her subjects. She notes, for example, that soccer is the Val's favorite sport" 'cause all the dudes are total babes, like not all gross like football players, and the best part is they wear those totally darling shorts and have cute butts." And, of course, there is always the mall: "Shopping is the funnest thing to do, 'cause, O.K., clothes? They're important. Like for your image and stuff. Like I'm sure. Everything has to match. Like everything. And you don't want to wear stuff that people don't wear. People'd look at you and just go, 'Ew, she's a zod,' like get away. And you have to brush your hair a lot in case any guys walk by."

Psychologists would probably explain Valism as just another way of allaying adolescent insecurities. It may help. Like a PAV observes in The Valley Girls' Guide to Life: "Being popular is important. Otherwise people might not like you." --By Michael Demarest.

Reported byAlessandra Stanley/Los Angeles

With reporting by Alessandra Stanley/Los Angeles

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