Iowa on Neighbours???

Yesterday, I was watching my favorite show Neighbours (it is so sad I am admitting this). The show is an Australian hit that is shown all over the world and is very popular in England. It has been on for decades, and I watched it nightly when I was in Australia. It is the Aussie's version of Guiding Light or As The World Turns. Well, Donna Freeman is a teenage character that is having heaps of issues. She can't decide which boy she likes, her parents are having huge issues, and lots of the girls don't like her. The story line is beyond the point, because during the show she was wearing a shirt that said "Iowa: The Hawkeye State" it made me smile, and then ask "Where can I get the shirt?"


More about Donna Freeman:

You know when Donna Freedman hits the room. Sure, she’s gorgeous, free-spirited and creative – but she’s also too noisy, and too intense.
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Don’t be confused by the outward confidence – Donna is driven by a fierce need for approval and acceptance. And most people can smell that a mile off, which means she gets neither love nor acceptance. Which makes her try that little bit too hard.

Her parents are in the middle of a toxic divorce, and they each use Donna to communicate their rage and disillusionment to the other. Donna’s father is a copper working night jobs to support the family; Donna’s mother has taken disappointment to a professional level. He lectures her; she has made a sport of outshining her, and each blames the other for what they perceive as Donna’s failings. Since early adolescence, she’s called them by their first names – it makes life easier if she thinks of them as badly behaved kids, not as her parents.

Donna's too competitive to have female friends; you can thank her mother for this. And she’s too out of control to have boyfriends. Who does that leave? No one really. So the music scene has become a home for her. And rising star Ty has become the focus of her heated dreams of love and acceptance. She can recite all the lyrics to all his songs – part of her thinks that he wrote them all for her.

This makes her sound like a train wreck. And it’s true – she’s brittle, awkward, and sometimes completely unscrupulous. But underneath that there’s a warm, vulnerable girl, loveable and charming and playful. She’s just seen too much disappointment to let anyone else know her.

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