The Great Australian Moll

Photo by Bradley Scott

This article originally appeared on VICE Australia.

Earlier this year, two young women in Queensland, Australia, were filmed verbally and physically assaulting an old man on a bus while shouting slurs about aboriginal people. The resulting video introduced the world to Australia’s one truly unique contribution to the global taxonomy of douches: the moll. Most countries have loud, irritating, and offensive youths, but only we have the special breed of scrag capable of committing a violent racist act while wearing $40 shoes, $300 sunglasses, and a cocktail dress.

The moll shares several things in common with her male counterpart. She loves drinking and her friends, is not above punching someone in the face, and spends eons getting an outfit together. Her dresses resemble those worn by early-2000s Latin Grammy Award winners. She gets her tan from a can and works in places with names like Ice, Magnetic, or Xposed. At times, she's indistinguishable from any other young woman. What sets her apart is the pure primal aggression with which she lives her life—she controls every situation through a terrifying mix of heightened competitive sexuality, simmering violence, and a confidence derived from a dozen or so watermelon Cruisers.

Molls roam in packs day and night. Before dark they stalk suburban malls in tracksuits and $40 worth of makeup, calling shop assistants bitches for not sharing their staff discount at Cotton on Body [sort of the Aussie equivalent to Victoria's Secret]. When night falls they shed their fleecy skins and emerge as screeching and bedazzled butterflies. It’s maximum impact with zero body hair.

Photo by Bradley Scott

The cornerstone of all their social interactions is alcohol. In the early evening they pre-game with friends on the back decks of their parents' houses. Living at home has its advantages: You never have to learn to do laundry, you get to use your dad's good stereo to listen to Jason Derulo, and you can pour the savings into drinking alcopops with your BFFs every Friday and Saturday night.

They have highly complicated female friendships which were formed in the first few days of high school and have been tested by years of online passive aggression. You’ll know who they are before you meet them because of the thousands of selfies they post every time they come within 15 yards of a bathroom. You’ll also know what all their friend’s bathrooms look like (spoiler alert: purple towels). These are the women they get shitfaced with before going out to meet the guys they will drink under the table. Drinking serves several purposes: It limbers them up enough to both flash the party photographer at the club and, if the mood strikes, punch someone in the face.

To outsiders it might look like a bunch of chicks smashing wet pussy shots [this is a drink, in case you were wondering] and letting their 50 percent human hair down, but beneath the surface this scene anything but carefree. The Australian female douche is locked in a constant battle to keep up with the boys, which means she has to humiliate whichever douchebag she is screwing at that moment.

She values strength above everything, so there’s no way she’s hooking up with a pussy—but at the same time she’s nobody’s bitch. To date her is to look good on her arm. Their boyfriends may be 'roided-up beefnecks who sucker-punch strangers after the ecstasy kicks in, but at home they are dominated and deballed.

She drinks to be one of the guys, but also to dominate and destroy the guys. There’s nothing the moll loves more than belittling her significant other in front of their mutual friends. Any guy who dates a moll is completely whipped. It’s kind of awesome. Next time you see a dude screaming, “Show us your minge!” at some girl outside a club at 3 AM, remember that there is a terrifying woman waiting for him at home who will make fun of his weird dick while his buddies spit-laugh beer and Doritos.

Obviously, it's a good thing that young women are able to level the playing field in their interactions with young men in some social arenas. But in Australian culture, our national identity is inextricably bound together with drinking, so naturally, this playing field is soaked with liquor. The combination of drinking and being super uncomfortable in your outfit usually leads to one of two things: forcing your less hot friend to swap shoes with you or fighting.

Photo by Sam Wong

These women love to fight. On any weekend at any club pumping some sick bass, you'll see two (or more) molls throwing down. It doesn’t take much: Madison banged Caz? Tegan spilled Amee’s Bacardi? Stacy clipped Sheryl’s car? You better believe someone is going to get leveled. In other countries, girl fights are all pushing and slapping, with maybe some hair-pulling when things get serious. In Australia, after a lifetime’s training of fending off randy Australian drunks, these fights feature haymakers, above-the-neck tackles, and beating on someone when she's down and cowering. If there is one thing Australia teaches its young, it’s how to kick the shit out of one another.

What is it about Australia that breeds such a heightened sense of entitlement? The country's wealth helps—molls belong exclusively to the upper and upper-middle classes and are raised to feel that they deserve their wealth. When you mix that attitude with a rugged outdoors culture of booze and fighting, you’re basically creating huge muscular toddlers whose tantrums can lead to broken noses.

Getting into drunken fights with strangers—once practically the Australian national pastime—is now being discouraged by public curfews, while penalties for violence in sports—another once-celebrated tradition—have increased. The only place where our inborn desire to punch someone in the neck is alive and well is the dance floor on a Friday night. Because no amount of police presence, legislation, or positive role models is going to stop a moll from teaching a bitch a lesson.

If we step back, there is something admirable in Australia’s hyper-aggressive alpha females: their prioritization of female friendships, domination of men, and physical prowess. It’s almost a testament to the power of woman—or at the very least the equality of men and women at their lowest ebb.

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The Great Australian Moll

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