Hot Pants Magazine Symbol Analysis

While spaghetti sauce symbolizes Josie’s relationship to her Italian heritage, Hot Pants magazine represents how much Josie wants to be a part of Australian mainstream culture. Josie regularly reads Hot Pants and refers to the magazine often throughout the novel. It is, in her opinion, the pinnacle of white Australian youth culture—the models in the magazine are gorgeous, the quizzes teach Josie how she should behave in social situations, and its discussions of sex present premarital sex positively (unlike Josie’s conservative Italian Catholic community). But as with the tomato sauce, Josie isn’t entirely sold on the ideals that Hot Pants sells. Though she aspires to look beautiful enough to model for the magazine and occasionally thinks she does, Josie also resents her classmates who actually model for Hot Pants. And as much as Hot Pants encourages and normalizes having premarital sex for its teenaged readership, Josie chooses not to have sex for the duration of the novel.