Last weekend I went to see Fun Home, so today’s Fem Fri is about some of the women who write comics. We start, of course, with Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home and therapy innovator:
“I think there should be a kind of therapy where people hire playwrights and composers to make musical theatre of their sad childhoods.”
One thing that I did a lot of during Fun Home was cry openly – or, I suppose, not that openly, it was in a theatre so it was dark – anyway, here’s another great female comics artist, Ellen Forney, on how to cry in public:
Forney is considering a one-page graphic comic on “How to Cry in Public.” (“Just let the tears run down your face. Don’t wipe your eyes, don’t slouch down, just sit there like normal and let the tears run down your face while you’re walking down the street, or in yoga class. That’s it! That’s how to cry in public.”)
I also really love her illustration (in Marbles) of how it feels to slip into mania:
Finally, this has all been about quite serious comics so far, but women are extremely funny as well, so here’s Kate Beaton in a quite long interview that is, in part, about the mechanics of being funny:
You really need to develop that voice, I think, in order to get good. And to be funny. There’s a certain amount of humor out there that’s kind of prescribed. And that’s fine, but the funniest stuff out there is the most unique voices, really.
Today’s Fem Fri is about the women of graffiti, both in history and right now.
We start with the inspiring Dr Joyce Reynolds, who at 99 is working on a major work on the graffiti of Pompeii. She’s also just been given an honorary doctorate from Cambridge, which is great, but feels like it might be a bit of a distraction too? She is ninety nine years old and has a major work to finish!
Born in 1918, Dr Reynolds became one of the world’s leading historians of the ancient world, exploring remote areas of Libya, Syria, Romania and Turkey – often as the only woman on an archaeological dig. She drove an all-woman party of archaeologists across North Africa in the 1950s, and is currently working on a major publication of the graffiti of Pompeii.
If you want to know more about the graffiti of Pompeii, Dr Rebecca Benefiel is working on digitising and mapping it. Lots of fun details in this article:
Scholars can tell, for instance, that a tavern was once beyond the wall where a welcoming greeting—“Sodales, avete,”—can still be read. [People] also shared snippets of literature (lines from The Aeneid were popular) and succinct maxims like, “The smallest evil, if neglected, will reach the greatest proportions.” And then there was the trash talk. One speaks of "sheep-faced Lygnus, strutting about like a peacock and giving himself airs on the strength of his good looks"
In the most recent one thousand years, here’s Faith47 talking about her street art in South Africa:
working on the streets is way more experiential. it’s a whole process from finding new spots to actually painting. I mean its much harder to get your ideas and style together and be focused when you have all the outside elements, cars rushing by, people walking past or talking to you, getting mugged, gangsters telling you stories, kids wanting cans. […] on the flip side a canvas is like a personal thing, your thoughts, your music. you can block the world out and lock yourself up; it’s more of a meditation. the one is like breathing in, the other like breathing out.
Maya Hayuk’s work is inspired by Ukrainian crafts and embroidery, so of course I am all over it. She is based in New York so if you have any good photos of her work, let me know:
When we moved in I asked the landlord if I could ‘cover the graffiti’ and THIS WALL COULD BE YOUR LIFE was born. We never had any problems with cops until the moment anyone used a spray can. They would hear the shaking ball bearing from a mile away and be right on top of us asking for permits and threatening to arrest us. As long as we stuck to bucket paint, we somehow did some kind of Jedi mind trick that we were supposed to be there.
I hope you, unlike me, are not too sad about recent events in the Men’s World Cup*. Or maybe you are Scottish, French or Croatian and very satisfied with how things are panning out! Either way, you’re great, I love your beautiful country, here are some links that have cheered me up recently and if you need cheering up I hope they work for you as well.
Do you want to know something else I like, it’s the Magic Mike movies and particularly the less self serious one, i.e. Magic Mike XXXL. If I hadn’t read the below article in public I would have gurgled with delight at several points during it:
Do Mike and his crew win the stripper contest? It’s never discussed. Is the convention they travel to actually a contest? Mike’s crew’s envy of the success of the other group of strippers who perform the Twilight routine might imply that it is, but besides that very dim implication, nothing else would lead us to believe that their goal is to win rather than simply to enjoy performing, to be the best male entertainers they can be. Magic Mike is a decidedly anti-capitalist story. It doesn’t want to gain anything but joy, and has no interest in the upward progression of a narrative any more than it is interested in the approval of dads.
OH AND ALSO the toast archives are back online which means that the our generation’s superior brutal work of art is also back online – How To Wait Out Your Best Friend’s Boyfriend:
10. Avoid criticizing him at all costs, but if you must, put the words “It’s endearing how” before your criticism so he takes it as a compliment and the seeds of doubt are planted carefully in her mind. “Something I really like about Greg is [subtly horrifying trait.]”
*Many thanks to Sarah for this one, it’s been absolutely useless re: helping me to maintain emotional distance but has consistently amused me since mid June
Excellent news – the Observatory in Greenwich is opening for active use again! And the telescope they have, the Annie Maunder Astrographic Telescope, is very obviously named after a woman. There have been some great women astronomers and I hope you look forward to reading about them today.
Let’s start with Annie Maunder, it is after all her telescope that kicked this Fem Fri off. There’s a crater on the moon named after her as well!
Annie Maunder was eventually made a fellow of the Royal Society in 1916, 24 years after first being proposed. Annie Maunder’s groundbreaking achievements in the sphere of astronomy, particularly solar observation, were remarkable for the time. Along with her husband the Maunders are also well known for the butterfly diagram, which shows how the number of sunspots varies with time, and the Maunder Minimum, a period in the 17th Century when sunspots all but disappeared. Much of their work still holds true today.
Initially, Caroline trained as a singer but she more and more began to collaborate with William on his astronomical work, for example, in his endeavour to build larger and better reflecting telescopes. The grinding and polishing of mirrors were very gruelling work, and a session could even go on for some 16 hours, nonstop […] After a while, she made her own “sky-sweeping” surveys independently and discovered nebulae and comets. In 1796, she was given an annual salary of £50 by King George III for her role as assistant to William, making her the first woman to be paid for her contribution to science.
Here’s a woman who has made an amazing contribution to astronomy and is still alive: Carolyn Shoemaker. No other astronomer has more comets named after them than she does. She also makes astronomy in general sound like an incredibly joyful thing:
Her passion for her work sustains her through the long nights of tedium and painstaking work, combing through exposed films. "My real love for the night skies developed while observing at Palomar Observatory in California, and that love has never diminished." Carolyn Shoemaker has spoken about her feelings when she finds the latest comet, "I want to dance."
After all that typing last week, here is a shorter Fem Fri on a perennial theme; endurance.
Ada Blackjack was the real deal, surviving an Arctic winter with only a cat for company. It was, in case you had not guessed, not what she had planned:
Blackjack was barely five feet tall and 100 pounds and lacked any wilderness skills. Nonetheless, she taught herself to hunt and trap, picked roots, hauled wood, made her own clothing, dodged hungry polar bears, and cared for Knight [the sole remaining man, who had scurvy]. After he died, in June 1923, Blackjack clung to survival on this treeless 2,800-square-mile expanse of ice and tundra, where summer temperatures hover in the thirties. Living in frigid solitude for the last two months of her two-year sojourn, she frequently scanned the horizon for rescuers. Some days, it seemed uncertain what would overtake her first: scurvy, a ship, or the nerve-fraying despair.
This next link – look, okay, I get that you read about people who are better than you so that you know what’s physically possible and can push yourself further – but still, to hear someone talk about a race “really coming together” in the last FORTY ONE MILES is mind boggling to the point of being actively galling. Anyway, read here about Devon Yanko, bakery owner and ultramarathonner:
“It really came together in those last 41 miles to make a truly special performance,” Yanko says. “I just wanted to see what was possible for myself.”
Here is something that is maybe more in the realms of possibility but still extremely punishing physically:
When you’re in a great relationship, it’s absolutely normal to fantasize about the future. You’re loving the movie dates and the long talks, but you’re hating the hike up to his apartment, which is truly unethical, considering it’s four floors up, with two sets of stairs each, making it eight sets of stairs total. This apartment is not marriage material, but he is! Here’s how to see a future with him even though he lives in a fourth floor walk-up.
I am sure you know, in your heart if not as a matter of deep consideration, that embarrassment is often used as a tool against women and the fear of same stops them from speaking up about what is wrong in their lives and in the world. To demonstrate that this is really nothing to fear, here are two stories of times when I have unambiguously embarrassed myself followed by some loosely related links. In case you’re wondering, neither of these concern me speaking up against injustice, in fact they mainly concern me being a dick.
The first of these stories is going to start with me looking okay, socially and so forth, but stick with it. It begins when one of my colleagues asked me if I’d be happy to have a chat with his girlfriend about jobs and careers, as she was not enjoying what she was doing and it was quite similar to my job. Of course I was all over this opportunity both to talk about work and to have dinner with a new friend, so we went out a couple of weeks later and had a really great conversation about marketing, careers and so forth. This was inevitably followed by a shift to more general topics, which my dinner companion launched with “So, Alex, you strike me as being maybe a feminist.”
Which again I leapt on with some variant of “haha yes totally this is a point of identification for me”
just casually asking their partner’s colleagues about their tastes in erotica while stone cold sober
millennials!
tumblr!
So I tried to be cool and said, “Well no, but one of my friends did, and she thought it wasn’t working and then a couple of pages later it was doing what it does”
And my dinner companion, who was lovely, went on to describe in detail a book that was very clearly Lean In, which, of course I’ve read Lean In, but I had to spend the rest of the conversation saying things like “interesting!” and “does she use examples from her own life!” and “so do you think I should read it?!”
Here is an article and it’s not about Lean In, it’s about writing romance and erotica, and the specific mechanics of how women succeed at it. This is also something that requires a certain imperviousness to embarrassment!
Faced with rejection and ridicule from other writing groups in the 1970s, romance writers formed their own professional association, Romance Writers of America. It now has some 10,000 members. From its start in 1980, the group embraced newcomers. Unlike other major author groups – and most professional associations – this one welcomes anyone seriously pursuing a career in the field. Newcomers may join once they’ve completed an unpublished romance manuscript.
The second story is both more recent and more bad, both for me and for the other party. I was at a festival recently – and I wasn’t drunk, but I was massively feeling festival ~vibes and so super friendly – and I saw a woman with an… emblem… embroidered on her tshirt.
Right now I am genuinely pausing to rub my face in horror.
I saw this emblem and I thought oh cool, I wonder if this is a Tampon Club thing? We can have a fun interaction about that!
So when I got the chance I said to her, “hey is that a tampon embroidered onto your tshirt!”
What I would like to make very clear here is that I had planned a range of responses for me for exactly one response from her. She would say “yes” and I would say, maybe “cool” or maybe “legit” or maybe – I’m feeling the ~vibes here, remember – I’d say “sick”.
It should also at this point be extremely obvious to you that this is not a story about me gaining a new newsletter subscriber.
Because she turned to me with a look of utter dismay and said
“It’s a log”
“It’s a log like in Twin Peaks”
As it happens I have some quite good Twin Peaks chat but I could neither deploy it here (I had not prepared for this situation) nor apologise gracefully (I had not prepared for this situation) and nor could I move from where I was standing, very close to her, because I was awaiting a companion who was bringing me a beer.
I mentioned Tampon Club above so here is an opportunity to read an interview with its inspirational founder Alice Bartlett:
I work in a big office that doesn't provide sanitary products in the toilets except for those machines that only take exact change. For about the first five months of working there I would frequently get to the toilet, realise I needed a tampon, and have to go back to my desk to get one or go buy some. Sometimes I'd be too busy to go back to my desk and just have to feel uncomfortable or use a toilet paper stop-gap until I had an opportunity to get back to my desk and then back to the toilet. I was thinking how undignified it was, and how much better it would be if I could legitimately keep my tampons in the toilets, when I realised that a communal tampon stash would solve the problem for me and any other disorganised slobs in the office.
DID YOU KNOW that I have an emergency Fem Fri written for when I don't have time to write a Fem Fri from scratch? Well, now you do because you are recieving it! I'm calling this one the test card so I suppose it should have an image in it - here's one that should be familiar to longer term subscribers, plus some links unconnected to each other but deeply connected to the Fem Fri rubric.
Susan Sontag in a bear suit.
Here's an article on Mother Julian of Norwich and her view on God as a Mother as well as a Father:
'when [a child] is hurt or frightened it runs to its mother for help as fast as it can; and [God] wants us to do the same, like a humble child, saying, "My kind Mother, my gracious Mother, my dearest Mother, take pity on me"'
Science! It's been pretty useful these last four thousand years, here's more about the contribution of Émilie du Châtelet to how we understand fire:
During this period, the dominant theory surrounding the nature of heat was that combustible substances contained something called phlogiston that is released during combustion and is responsible for what’s now called oxidation. Well, Émilie didn’t believe in the stuff. She and Voltaire set up a research laboratory in the château to study the nature and propagation of fire. Émilie’s research surfaced a few years later when she published a paper which gave great insight into the nature of light, suggesting that different colors of light had different energies, and hinting at the existence of what we now call infrared as the main carrier of heat.
“Sara is a liar and, honestly, a bit of a snake,” said Frank’s boss Melodie Sato. “However, I can’t technically fire her for lying about how her hair dries, so I ask that everyone in the office try to remain civil during this trying time.”
As I’m sure you have noticed, I want Fem Friday to be a fun and a happy newsletter where you can read about women being good at things, interesting and funny as well as all combinations of the above. Of course, women can also be good at things that are not necessarily good for the world or people around them and one of those things – one of those things that I enjoy reading about a great deal – is fraud on a grand scale. Enjoy three stories of women who convinced people with money that they were the real deal (they were not the real deal)
The amount of fooling oneself that is required to pull off a successful fraud is always what really engages me about these stories, and with Theranos I’m never quite sure when either
Elizabeth Holmes realised she wasn’t going to revolutionise the world of blood testing and decided to carry on anyway
or
Elizabeth Holmes became convinced that against all odds she actually was going to revolutionse the world of blood testing.
I don’t know if Elizabeth Holmes is sure of the answers to these questions either! Anyway you can read the following article and come to your own conclusions:
“Theranos was a combination of fraud, with hubris mixed with incompetence,” Carreyrou told me in his precise, economical manner. “Some part of Sunny and Elizabeth, I believe, knew they were committing fraud. Knew that they were lying to investors, to a lot of people. But part of them also were convinced that the Theranos technology that they were working on — which they knew was still a work-in-progress — that it actually was revolutionary. That it actually was great,” he says.
It seems impossible that you haven’t read the story of Anna Delvey, but you know what, it’s Friday, treat yourself by reading it again. She also actually thought that she was going to set up an international Soho House style club for the art set! With… okay, on the remote offchance you haven’t read it, I’m not going to tell you the actual mechanism of her fraud, but I’ll give you a clue: it’s pretty old skool:
When the banker at City National asked to see the UBS statements, he received a list of figures from a man named Peter W. Hennecke. “Please use these for your projections for now,” Hennecke wrote in an email. “I’ll send the physical statements on Monday.”
“Question: Are you from UBS?” the banker replied, puzzled by Hennecke’s AOL address.
No, Anna explained. “Peter is head of my family office.”
Finally, are you the spouse of a billionaire bond trader? Here’s a fun new hobby for you; project great works of art onto a canvas in your cinema room to create replicas of great works of art. PRO TIP FROM SUE GROSS, make sure it’s art you already own so you’ve got some negotiating chips if things go south with your billionaire bond trader wife or husband:
“Well, you didn’t take it and leave an empty spot on the wall, though, did you?” lawyers for Bill Gross asked.
“No,” Sue responded.
“You replaced it with a fake?” the lawyer asked.
“Well, it was a painting I painted,” Sue responded.
Today concludes the theme that Fem Fri has been on for the last five weeks, I hope that you have enjoyed it. We finish (the theme, not Fem Fri) with one of my favourite pop music genres; songs with lists of rules governing the relationships between men and women. Put your headphones on and enjoy a little desk dance to advice of these strong and beautiful women.
Obviously Dua Lips is extremely famous so I am unlikely to be introducing you to something you have never heard before here, but this is actually very sound advice for dealing with an ex:
Electrik Red are, unjustly, not extremely famous so I’m really excited for you to listen to this one. These are guidelines for “someone you are kind of seeing” rather than you specifically:
Finally we have Nicki Minaj presenting her rules for being a boss ass bitch and also what emojis to use while doing so. Been a while since we covered correct emoji use here at Fem Fri, mainly because I can’t find a feminist angle on the bat 🦇🦇🦇:
Oh and here is a classic Minaj interview (classic = I have featured it here before and also read it several times) in case you want to read something rather than watch or listen:
She was fired from a waitressing job at a Red Lobster after she followed a couple who had taken her pen into the parking lot and then flipped them the bird. I asked her if it was a special pen. "No," she said. "It was the principle."
I hope you are stoked for a bit of German art and culture because today's newsletter takes as its theme the city of Munich.
We start with a woman artist of the late 12th/early 13th century, Claricia, who drew herself swinging from the “Q” of an illuminated manuscript. Technically she was not from Munich (or: we don’t know she was Munich) but her abbey was in Bavaria which means it is (a) close enough and (b) this delightful illustration fills me with joy and I would like to show it to you:
I hope you all enjoyed the Nell Gwynne story a couple of weeks ago, and here we have another scandal-making royal affair (in Munich, the theme of this newsletter) – it’s Lola Montez! Lots going on with Lola Montez, including but not limited to cross dressing and causing a king to abdicate:
On August 25, 1847 Ludwig created her Countess Marie von Landsfeld but the Bavarian aristocracy and middle class refused to acknowledge her. In February 1848 street riots broke out against her influence; thousands of burghers marched on the palace to demand her expulsion. Presented with proof of her background and infidelities, Ludwig gave way but also insisted on abdicating the throne. […] Lola arrived in New York in 1852, dressed like a man, with spurred boots and a riding whip, which she used immediately on an admirer who dared to grab onto her coat tails. Once in the States, controversy began anew.
Finally, here’s Ulrike Draesner, whose books my German speaking subscribers might like to check out. Non-readers of German, the best I can do for you is Twin Spin, in which she translates Shakespeare’s sonnets into German and a translator translates her translations back to English. At the below link she talks about her creative process, including the interview that led to this this evocative and beautiful story:
I talked to an eyewitness who had come to Wrocław in 1945 as a child. When I asked him what he had liked, he told me about toys and, as an aside, mentioned: ‘We were all red, we had red skin’. I wondered whether this meant [..] I had read about how the city was heavily bombed and destroyed by the Germans themselves and the Russians, and even in July ’45 there were fires, ruins were still smouldering, ash and dust everywhere. But the dust, as I learnt now, was red, as most of the houses had been built of red brick. Since there wasn’t enough water either, people were covered in red dust, which after a while got into your skin and couldn’t be entirely washed off.
working on the streets is way more experiential. it’s a whole process from finding new spots to actually painting. I mean its much harder to get your ideas and style together and be focused when you have all the outside elements, cars rushing by, people walking past or talking to you, getting mugged, gangsters telling you stories, kids wanting cans. […] on the flip side a canvas is like a personal thing, your thoughts, your music. you can block the world out and lock yourself up; it’s more of a meditation. the one is like breathing in, the other like breathing out.
Susan Sontag in a bear suit.
