the super inside
The Indy 500 was on this weekend. I tuned in for about 20 minuets (which was 20 minuets longer than I have ever watched a race event on TV) The reason- Danica Patrick a "lady" racer who qualified to race (the only one this year) and was promoted on TV as a front runner. I'm a sucker for athletic stories with an interesting angle. And conquering girl hero got my attention.
I still remember clearly my kid books from school where all of the boys pictured were either firemen, doctors or cops and the girls were nurses, secretaries and dancers. I also remember not figuring out the following riddle when I was a kid...
A man is driving down the road with his son. They get into a crash. Two ambulances come. They take the man and his son to different hospitals. The son goes into the operating room, the doctor looks at him and says, "I can't operate on this boy, he's my son." How is this possible?
Answer: The doctor is a woman, she is the boy's mother.
per 1970's kid-speak....Doy!
Suffice it to say that I got kind of choked up when I was watching Danica leading the pack. She finished 4th and gave a chipper speech about the other great competitors, but her mouth was tense and held tight.
100 years ago children were admonished to stay in there "rightful" places. Some worked in factories. Others played with dolls and learned French from their nannies. But for all opportunities were surely limited.
I think of all of the little girls my friends have and in some ways how they live in a brighter better world than before. Even with the heavy global and local troubles. When I compare to the reality of the past it still seems that there is more opportunity. More choices. More hope.
posted by lilylord at 11:53 PM
4 Comments:
I’m not really a fan of car racing, nor am I an avid watcher of boxing. But, I see no reason a lady couldn’t follow in the trend of women qualifying for sports heretofore reserved for men. But there’s a limit. I read the other day an interesting article about women who have entered the sport of boxing. It seems that there is a lot of negative hullabaloo about the gentle sex pounding each other with their fists. There are lady bull fighters, lady combat soldiers, lady wrestlers (the staged kind one sees on TV) and lady husband bashing, too. But all in all, if a lady has the compunction to enter the field of violent sports, why not, that’s a choice they make and the media propagates (or maybe some people want.)
We are in the era of unisex clothing, more power to the people who advocate unisex sports, but to a limit.
I remember the same riddle and I didn't get it either. Rather an eye-opener for an ardent feminist who helped found the National Organization for Women chapter in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 1972 and was a delegate from Wisconsin to the International Womens Year Convention in Houston in 1977. Things have definitely changed for the better for women. One mark of success is that so many women are able to take their choices and opportunities for granted, unaware of the heartbreaking, life changing struggles of the women who came before them. When I first moved to Kenosha, in the 60s, wives needed even their library cards to say Mrs. Somebody. Why? Overdue fines of course. Assuming that wives did not have access to their own money, there had to be some way to identify the husbands in order to trust a wife with a borrowed book, that might incur a fine! I still know women in their sixties who do not and have never had their own credit cards. We read What Do Women Want and marched and organized and campaigned and fought to let the world know what we wanted. Our own identities, our own credit, equal pay (still fighting for that one), the right to control our own bodies (still fighting for that one), and to have a true choice of work. We changed the English language. Hello Ms., firefighter, chairperson, actor (for both genders), flight attendant. Title IX was a major victory and responsible for the number of women in sports today. Our battle for the Equal Rights Amendment was defeated, but changed state laws throughout the nation. These laws need to be safeguarded, elements would undo them if we are not vigilant. I am glad that both my US Senators and my representative in Congress are brave and bright women. There is more to accomplish as well. And, we will. As Susan B. Anthony said, "Failure is impossible." Way to go Susan.
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Cruddy spammers have been posting here. With links to stupid sites that have nothing to do with mine. Spammers go AWAY!!!! Stop posting your garbage here. You are horrible things and should be put down.
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