How Many Words Is This Worth?

From Rene Maltete, via Octopus at Swash Zone:

My dear Peeps, how many words does it conjure for you?

p.s. The lettering on the sign: Is that 7 Peaches or 7 fishereries?

Childhood Heroines Redux

I really didn’t like playing with dolls, much to the despair of my mother. Back in the 1950′s, little girls were expected to want to play mommy to their inert little babies, who would just lie there in their doll beds with their sleep-a-bye eyes closed tight. Where was the fun in that? I craved action and excitement, like the boys had with their toys. It wasn’t until Barbie was introduced in 1959, when I was approaching age 12, that I finally got enthused about dolls.

Now we’re talkin’!


I ask you, would you rather play with a typical 50′s doll that looked like this…..

…..or a Barbie that looked like this…..

Who looks like a better time? I rest my case.

Awhile back I read an article in the New York Times about the powerful women in our country who read Nancy Drew books when they were young. The list ranged from Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor to Nancy Pelosi, to many women in law, education and industry whose eyes were opened to the possibilities that had seemed beyond their reach. If Nancy could be daring and adventurous and go against what was deemed the norm for young ladies back then, well so could they.

I remember owning some Nancy Drew mysteries, but they never became my favorite reading, although I did (and still do) love to read. I think her books probably wound up somewhere at the bottom of my toy drawer underneath my toy Winchester repeating rifle and the wooden tomahawk my Dad made for me. (I think there was a little derringer in there too, like the one Paladin had on “Have Gun Will Travel.”)

My heroines were of the action variety; ones who could give the good ol’ boys a run for their money. So I thought I would put together a list of the ladies whom I held in the highest esteem during my childhood, along with some sketches of them to illustrate my point.

First up…..Joan of Arc.

I loved reading about how Joan heard angelic voices telling her that it was up to her to go to battle to save France. She cut her hair short (like mine!), put on armor (basically boys’ clothes), and got to ride around on her steed telling the guys what to do. What’s not to like?

(Except for that whole burning at the stake thing.)

Most of the paintings of Joan show her wearing a skirt over her armor. I have a difficult time believing anyone who went as far beyond what was considered proper behavior for a young lady as she did would even think about adding a skirt to keep the neighbors’ tongues from wagging. Joan was such an all-time favorite of mine that I created an artist trading card in her honor for my “Great Cats in Art” series, starring my cat Neferkitty—”The Pussycat of Orleans.”

Next up is Gail Davis of the “Annie Oakley” television show of the 1950′s.

From the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture:

“Gail Davis was an Arkansas-born actress who starred as the legendary sharpshooter in the groundbreaking TV Western series Annie Oakley, which ran from 1954 through 1956. She appeared in thirty-two feature films, was guest on a number of TV shows, received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, was inducted into the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame, and was an early role model for young women.

At just over five feet tall and under 100 pounds, Davis was a charming heroine on Annie Oakley who wore pigtails and stopped criminals by outsmarting them or shooting the guns out of their hands. She rode horses and did many of her own stunts. She was the first woman to star in a TV western. Many young women later said they were influenced by watching Gail Davis as Annie Oakley, a female character in a traditionally male role. In the show, Gail took care of her younger brother, Tagg, in the fictional town of Diablo and solved crimes with handsome deputy sheriff Lofty Craig.”

My kind of gal. Plus, she had cute outfits.

Finally, we have Irish McCalla as “Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.”

From Wikipedia:

“In a newspaper interview, McCalla recalled being discovered by a Nassour Studios representative while throwing a bamboo spear on a Malibu, California, beach, famously adding of her Sheena experience, “I couldn’t act, but I could swing through the trees”. Her 26-episode series aired in first-run syndication from 1955-56.

The athletic, reportedly 5’10″ McCalla said she performed her own stunts on the series, filmed in Mexico, until the day she grabbed an unsecured vine and slammed into a tree, breaking her arm. Her elder son, Kim McIntyre, once told the press he remembered watching his mother swinging from vine to vine and wrestling mechanical alligators.”

I was so enthralled with Sheena’s capabilities. (She could really kick butt.)

Near our house in Southern California was an orange orchard that was being turned into a housing tract development. There had been a lot of excavating done by heavy equipment and one morning my mother got a phone call from a neighbor who said “I don’t want to alarm you, Iris, but Melissa’s walking down the street with a snake around her neck.” (I was around seven or eight years old—Nancy Drew had unsupervised adventures too.)

I remember sashaying down our street with the snake draped around me, a la Sheena, with a gaggle of admiring followers trailing behind. God knows what kind of snake it was or how long it had been dead, but that didn’t matter to my mother who hated snakes of any stripe or color. My homage to Sheena was cut short. But I loved it….it was so cool.

I enjoy looking back at the heroines of my youth. I still hold them dear to my heart. I’m just so glad that there are so many more now for young girls to emulate than there were in my childhood.

But I still think these gals hold up pretty well even after all these years.

Disinterring Ophelia

"It is the false steward, that stole his master's daughter."

Bristol Palin's coupe de mere this week, the ubiquitous airing of Mel Gibson's verbal sexual abuse, and my accidental viewing of Lady Gaga's "Alejandro" video have convinced me that it's time to re-empower those who mother adolescent girls. I am reared up over the cynical forces that undermine and threaten to bury the tender developing selves of our daughters, so break out your copy of Hamlet (or watch any filmed version other than Gibson's); it's time to disinter Ophelia.

In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Ophelia's fate demonstrates the fragility of a young girl's hold on stability and safety. In adolescence, she begins to live for the approval of her father and of Hamlet, with whom she has fallen in love. Hamlet is pre-occupied with his own demons and rejects her; subsequently she loses her grip on reality, dresses in her best and drowns herself. Hamlet comes upon the gravediggers; here, Shakespeare inserts a cruelly ironic moment of graveyard humor before he allows Hamlet to discover for whom the grave is intended. Ophelia will haunt you.

In 1994, Mary Pipher, PhD, published Reviving Ophelia: Saving The Selves of Adolescent Girls as a wakeup call to families, fingering modern media and culture for increases in the rate of depression, anorexia, and suicide attempts in teen girls.  The book made its title a household phrase and Mary Pipher was deluged with speaking requests. I recommended the book to dozens of families who were trying to save their girls from illnesses exacerbated by America's sexualized marketing of teens. It pleases me to report that many families realized how wisely, carefully, and persistently they were going to have to fight in that cause; they were able to shut down the gushing well of exploitation that was drowning their daughters. 


Other families, sadly, felt helpless; their attitude was, "If she doesn't get it on MTV (or through magazines, books, ads in stores, etc.) at home, she'll just get it at her girlfriends' houses." They didn't realize that, if they could set and hold strong boundaries at home, they would be giving their daughter a critical safe port. The daughter could then internalize that concept of herself as precious. The sense of being worthy of careful nurturing, of possessing a selfhood worth fighting for, could operate to help a girl protect herself as she moved toward womanhood. 

I happened to see segments of Stefani Germanotta's (Lady Gaga) music video for "Alejandro" (a worthless waste of audio perception) on the screen of an adjoining exercise bike at the gym. The rider of that bike looked to be about 40 and perfectly normal, but she was glued to the video.  I have to admit, it was the proverbial train wreck; my neighbor's screen was so hard to ignore, I almost missed the news on my own screen that the BP oil well had just stopped gushing. Imagine what the Gaga video would be like for a thirteen year old girl! You can it see it on YouTube here, but approach with caution. It's not that the video is objectionable in a new way (it pretty much struck me as picking up where Madonna left off), but that it is objectionable in the same old way.

I often despair at how each generation has to relearn lessons that the previous generation sweated to master.  Not only did absolutely NOTHING change in the exploitation of teenage girls since Pipher's book was published, but the trend has accelerated. As age of menarche declines (as measured in decades) and secondary sexual characteristics (telarche) appear even earlier with the rise of obesity in children, America's media, driven by the unchecked profit motive, reaches further back into childhood to sexualize and exploit our daughters.

In Bristol Palin's passive aggressive decision to alert Us magazine, instead of her parents, about her decision to marry the father of her son, I see the fear and anger of a daughter whose family failed to protect her adequately. Bristol learned from her mother to live an overexposed life, and she applied that lesson to her television debut on the reality show "The Secret Life of The American Teenager."  Specialness that special can only be learned.  To me, it all further demonstrates the Palin family's willingness to exploit its most vulnerable members relentlessly.  They seek celebrity rather than substance.

There is a segment of the country's middle and lower class women who slavishly worship Bristol's mother; in their idolization of her, in their--typically inaccurate--identification with her, I see a feminine cohort that Feminism has failed.  Perhaps especially when they try to wrap the cloak of Feminism around themselves.


In the huge popularity amongst teens of Stephani Germanotta's pornographic music video, I see another failed crop of adolescents, both male and female. The lyrics of "Alejandro" are explicitly aimed at a young audience: "She's not broken, She's just a baby. But her boyfriend's like a dad, just like a dad/ and all those flames that burned before him. Now he's gonna fight your fight, gonna cool the bad."


Now, listen to Mary Pipher, PhD.  The video will sound and look a little dated, but its message is more applicable now than when it was filmed.




Who do you know that needs to hear it?