Enjoy two articles, both of which I found genuinely inspiring, about women and their attitudes to their health and their bodies.
In our first article, Ashley Ford writes about how she felt about herself at 15, at college, and how she feels about herself now. Eating a loaf of bread for comfort certainly sounds like something I might have done, but I can’t be entirely sure. What about you? Where’s the weirdest place you’ve eaten an entire loaf of bread on the offchance that doing so would make you feel even a little a bit happier? Let’s share.
Fast forward to college, where I was engaged in an active battle with my body. It was clear to me, and the members of my family who commented on it, that my Freshman Fifteen was going to be closer to The Freshmen Thirty. Part of this was my homesickness, which literally had me riding the bus to the local Walmart to buy entire pans of the Hawaiian bread my grandma cooked with, and then eating the entire pan on the ride back to my dorm. After making some friends and starting on-campus counseling, I was eating better, working out, and feeling a lot less homesick. But the weight didn't come off.
In the second article, Nina Mitchell (no relation, although it’s always great to see Mitchells doing well) writes about having a baby after a stroke. It sounds difficult, in case you thought the answer might be “it’s a total breeze, #live #love #life”:
It’s OK that my stroke put physical limits on certain elements of motherhood. I know many moms who try to do everything, especially at first, and then wonder why they are miserable. The fact that I knew in advance that there would be limits made these choices easier.
I’m currently rewatching Twin Peaks, in anticipation of the upcoming season 3. I love this show and am going to use the women of Twin Peaks as an excuse to show pictures of the women of Twin Peaks and share flimsily related links with you all. I hope you are as excited as I am for this.
AUDREY HORNE
Audrey’s main function in season 1 is to swan around Twin Peaks, engaging in low level trolling of all and being by far the best dressed person in the town. She also delights in ruining the schemes of her businessman father, vulgar misogynist Ben Horne. If there is a vulgar misogynist whose schemes you would like to ruin, perhaps you will be inspired by this article on Nwanyeruwa, one of the first people to contest British rule in Nigeria:
The campaign which was called the ‘ogu umunwanye,’ or “the Women’s War,” referred to women ‘making war on the men,’ or sanctioning men who had been disrespectful. This practice, which was also called ‘sitting on a man’, was a traditional form of protest among Igbo women. When a man had done something disrespectful, he would be followed everywhere and forced to think on what he had done, with his hut burnt as a punishment and this pattern was followed in each village.
Donna – pictured here visiting her murdered best friend’s former boyfriend in jail – is trying to get out of being stereotyped as “the sensible one”, with reasonable success to date. If you too want to get out of whatever stereotypes people are putting on you, enjoy this story of amazing Vietnamese warrior woman Triệu Thị Trinh:
“I only want to ride the wind and walk the waves, slay the big whales of the Eastern sea, clean up frontiers, and save the people from drowning. Why should I imitate others, bow my head, stoop over and be a slave? Why resign myself to menial housework?”
Norma runs the local (only?) diner and is an inspiring woman entrepreneur. In the episode I watched last night the special at the diner was Rabbit Chilli, so here is a recipe for rabbit chilli:
It’s fem Friday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY to all my March baby subscribers.
As it’s the spring, or at least has been intermittently here, I am wearing a light jacket and no tights to celebrate. If you’re in London, it’s far too cold to do that. Please wear a proper coat if you are going to leave your home or workplace.
The Pill! It is the fifty seventh anniversary of the Pill this year. Look at this excellent tagline before you read the article:
the fastest way to create awkward silence, where even the cricket chokes, is by stating with the most serious face that I can muster, “Yes, I’m cataloging birth control pills at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.” […] On one occasion, while I was meticulously documenting the oral contraceptives exhibited in the museum onto a clipboard, a visitor laughed and took a photo of me—probably supposing that I was eagerly jotting down some pointers.
You guys know how much I love problem pages, and here is a really great example of the genre. I don’t want to spoil the question that elicited the below response. It seems quite obvious when she puts it like this but I guess we all have our journey:
There is no healthy, sustainable love story that includes “I knew he was cheating, but he wouldn’t admit it, so after going through his phone, I falsified medical information to get him to confess and now everything’s great.”
I’ve searched and searched and it looks like I never sent around the fake boyfriend article in a previous fem Friday. Firstly, my apologies for that – I enjoy reading it and have done so several times – and secondly, here’s a piece about fake girlfriend apps, some of which appear to be shoddily written in a quite entertaining way.
I’m not sure that I can refer to this investigative journalism project as a joke given how many hours I’ve legitimately squandered talking to robot women. Like, downloading one virtual girlfriend app is a funny bit, and then downloading 23 virtual girlfriend apps is another thing entirely.
Today we look at work and organising and fighting for rights!
Let’s kick off with this (long, good) story about the women who clean the hotel Harvard own and use for conferences. Some pretty awful details on what it is to be a cleaner in a hotel here, and a grim indictment of corporate versus actual feminism:
Nothing has a longer lineage in feminism than chronicles of cleaning—how much it hurts, how little it is respected. Dorothy Lee Bolden, founder of the National Domestic Workers Union of America in the 1960s, declared that housekeepers, nannies, and in-home caregivers had built the nation from “the sweat of their brow” as surely as their parents had by working in the fields. Nearly half a million people work as housekeepers in hotels nationwide, about 90 percent of them women. Boston’s hotel industry thrives on university business—at Harvard, Boston University, Boston College, and others—putting up conference participants, parents of college kids, and visiting scholars.
Speaking of the difference between corporate and actual feminism:
Being a upper middle-class white woman from Massachusetts, I am of course well-versed in oppression; I am victim of it every morning on my way to buy a cruller at Dunkin Donuts. Do you know how awful it is to be catcalled at 8 am? I am more than just a pretty face — I am an intellectual. In the moments following my feministic Google search, I felt empowered. A renewed sense of purpose and energy flowed through me like I was Maya Angelou reciting “Phenomenal Woman” on Oprah. It was then I knew I would become the best intersectional feminist in the world.
Also also, have you guys been following the Uber story? As a former woman in start ups, this is hideous even by my standards and well worth a read. Of course, Reductress are also on the case:
“It’s probably some kind of spirit portal or energy vortex,” explains Kalanick, who admits he is new to the world of spirit phenomenon. “And our new corporate policy won’t stand for it. We’re going to install some crystals and do everything we can to eradicate the spirits that are tormenting our employees.”
Let’s read about the past! Two different eras, and radically different topics, so this is the flimsiest connection I’ve done in a while and I hope you enjoy it.
Firstly, Clara Schumann! One of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era, maybe the love of Brahms’ life, with a quite horrifying upbringing:
Schumann (née Wieck) was born to be a famous pianist, namely because her father decided at a very young age that that’s what his daughter was going to become. He had her learning piano when she was a toddler, and even before she was 10, Clara was recognized as one of the most promising musicians of the mid-19th century. When she was 11, she met Robert Schumann, who was 9 years older than her, who dropped everything to move into her house and teach her piano and one day marry her. Nice. Nice nice nice. Extremely normal and good thing from the past.
And next – radium! Radium and the unfortunate women who worked with it before they figured out it was extremely bad for you. This is a story about science but also a story about a legal fight at a time when women’s lives very explicitly counted for less:
The young women had no reason to worry about radium then. The factories assured them it was safe. They were even taught to paint tiny numbers on the dials by licking their paintbrushes to a fine point. Plus, radium was supposed to be good for you. You could buy radium water, radium face cream, radium toothpaste, and even Radium Brand Creamery Butter. These products didn’t actually all contain the expensive and precious element, but the evocation of radium gave them a healthful glow.
To recognise the telling off a dear colleague gave me for calling it “spring” just because the sun is out, today’s Fem Friday is all about quilts and quilting.
While we’re on the topic of weather, here’s a quilt (by a woman) that is also a data visualisation about weather. Lots of things I like here, including the time span it took to create – one line of crochet for every day of last year. Not a lot of references online for this one so look at an image:
This week I was also introduced to the work of Harriet Powers, who was born into slavery and was an accomplished quilter and folk artist. She is most famous for her “Bible Quilt”:
We don't know the details but what we will call the Pictorial Quilt may have been commissioned after the Bible Quilt was seen at the exposition in Atlanta. It was then given to Dr Charles Cuthbert Hall in 1898. Hall was a pastor who dedicated much of his life to the education of his fellow African Americans. Apparently the quilt was meaningful to him as he kept and cherished it as did his family after his death. This second existing quilt was a bit different than the first, mixing Biblical stories with celestial and other events.
Finally, a film about the place of quilts in women’s lives – one for your lunch break if you are in the US and maybe for tomorrow if you are west of that:
Quilts was a ground breaking film used by folklorists, anthropologists and historians of art and womens history that presented the lives, art, work and philosophy of ordinary women in the days when few documentaries came from women filmmakers. This deceptively simple film won most of the major awards for independent films during the years after its release in 1981.
Allow me to introduce women and their diaries! You may know that I am extremely into reading other people’s diaries and am currently reading an entry a day of Pepys, so I’m excited to have some ideas for diaries to read that have less of some dude eyeing up ladies in church.
Firstly, Altas Obscura delivering as usual with this article on a Chinese script that only women could read or write. It’s fading out of use so if you know it and would like to write a guest Fem Friday in Nüshu, let me know and we can keep the dream alive:
Stemming from the southwestern Hunan Province county of Jiangyong, a small group of women in the 19th and 20th centuries practiced this special script that no man could read or write. The writing system allowed these women to keep autobiographies, write poetry and stories, and communicate with “sworn sisters,” bonds between women who were not biologically related. The tradition of Nüshu is slowly vanishing, but at one time gave the women of Shanjiangxu freedom to express themselves.
Here’s diarist Alice Dunbar-Nelson! She did not enjoy taking second place, or anything less than first place it seems. Similarly to the “sworn sisters” in the Nüshu link, she had a supportive group of women and activists around her, which must have helped in her often difficult life:
This rare and often absorbing diary contains many accounts of Dunbar-Nelson playing supporting roles and hating it. Whether in the delegation to the White House, a decision-making session on the paper she coedited for a time with her third husband, Robert Nelson, or in one of her furies at having been placed too low on the roster of speakers at a political rally, Dunbar-Nelson steams - and occasionally curses a blue streak - at being expected to defer to men she deems less talented than herself. Anger animates some of the most vivid writing in this diary, including some pungent, unforgiving character sketches.
And on the topic of secret languages, Anne Lister invented one of her own so she could enjoy writing about her wife and girlfriends in the 1700s without anyone else knowing about it. She was also a heavy hitter who did not care what people thought of her:
When she took on local coal-mining interests, and opened her own pit in direct competition with the macho-men of Halifax, effigies of herself and her wife Ann Walker were burnt in the town. Money and class had allowed her to escape too much trouble up till then, but the moment Ann Lister stopped living like a landed, if eccentric, gentlewoman, and starting living like a man – competing openly for wealth, – her sexuality was brutally used against her. Gentleman Jack, they called her. It is to her credit that she did not give up.
A shortish Fem Friday this week, but I hope one that is useful and fun.
DO YOU WANT to read a history of agony aunts? I can’t think of anything more satisfying right now than putting a flimsy veneer of “interest in history” over a much less elevated pleasure, “interest in other people’s problems”. Get yrself a nice cup of tea and settle in for this sort of action:
The pre-Victorian agony aunts and uncles could be surprisingly liberal and outspoken. Dunton once advised a woman fearing a lonely old age to get herself down to the docks when the fleet was in and hook a sex-starved sailor. Nothing simpler. Others campaigned for better rights for deserted wives and other mistreated women. The Victorians, of course, were working under a very different regime, and every syllable of their responses to readers' queries rings with the repressive certainty of the age. "You have foolishly lent yourself to a clandestine courtship and must withdraw from it promptly," the anonymous aunt in the London Journal in 1857 snaps. "The serpent found his way into Eden, and why not into the park adjoining your father's house? Do not add guilty weakness to your folly."
Here’s a review of an advice book for how to be a nice friend to people who are going through awful times! It sounds great and I’m surprised it didn’t exist before:
Even when it was well intentioned, I grew to hate people asking me how I was. […] Nothing felt right. But “how are you, today?” was a different thing entirely. It’s an acknowledgment of what you’re going through that doesn’t force you to do too much heavy-lifting. When people asked that, I found myself answering easily: I’d mention trouble sleeping, I’d talk about stumbling back into work, or share something about my brother that had come up during the day. In turn, these more tangible answers gave the asker a better foothold. People would recommend a great TV show for late nights, promise to send an article on something I was hoping to write about, or simply nod compassionately.
If you have smaller problems – specifically the smaller problem of being a bit worried about a relationship – please also enjoy this flowchart to guide you through those exciting but also difficult early days:
In stark contrast to last week’s domesticity, in this episode we celebrate nomads and women on the move:
This women did the Appalachian Trail, which I’m given to understand is extremely difficult, and over the course of it read only books by black writers, which she left as she finished them so that by the end the trail would have the start of a library. I recommend you read this excellent story in full:
I started to leave books at shelters along the AT so that other hikers could read them as well. Some books were left at hostels. Zora Neale Hurston is in Walasi-Yi, mile 30.7, where roughly a quarter of all thru-hikers decide to call it quits. Yaa Gyasi was last seen at Peru Peak in Vermont. Ladan Osman is at Crazy Larry’s in Damascus waiting for next year’s Trail Days. Responses to my project from hikers consisted of either effusive praise or dead silence. I chose as many short story, essay, and poetry collections as possible to encourage exploration. I thought about what the author or protagonist of the title might have wanted to see. I got to a view. I held them to the light. I told them, firmly, “This is yours.”
More books, in this case a book about the nomads of the Sahel and loss. As you may know I am a sucker for media about loss and grief:
The year I spent with the nomads I was missing someone very much, and my sadness contoured everything, created a frame of reference of its own. It clung to the savannah like wet silk. As my hosts migrated, in each of their footfalls I saw a separation. I saw them leave behind loved ones, lovers, their dead. I saw them shape their living within sequences of holding on and letting go, trying to accept the transience of everything […]. My narrative of their journey is an imperfect decoction of a world seen through my particular prism of loss.
Enjoy a morning of links about domesticity and home.
Our first article is not only about domesticity, it’s also about cultural imperialism! In the 1950s, the Red Cross (!) ran ‘bride schools’ (!!) to teach Japanese women marrying American men how to cook American food:
“I have a Japanese war bride mother and I grew up with a culinary repertoire of Sloppy Joes, pineapple upside-down cake, spaghetti, and tuna casserole,” says Elena Creef, a professor of women’s and gender studies at Wellesley College. “It’s kind of hysterical. How did my mother learn to master these really basic, slightly awful all-American dishes? Well, she was trained.”
Also on the topic of home, I read this poem on Matt Ogle’s lovely newsletter. Apparently it (the poem) went viral last year, but I did not read it then, so sorry if you’re totally over this but perhaps you will at least enjoy rereading Maggie Smith’s Good Bones:
Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Finally, enjoy this important opinion piece from Reductress; before you settle down, you should be really sure that this is the person you want to be telling you to read Infinite Jest:
It’s not like I’m a prude—I’ve read David Foster Wallace before. I love Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and have watched the “This Is Water” speech on YouTube with a few guys. But before I read Infinite Jest, I’ll want to have an open discussion about it first: How many other women has he recommended it to? Is his copy of the book clean, or is it full of notes in the margins? Has he recently been tested on the novel?
Audrey’s main function in season 1 is to swan around Twin Peaks, engaging in low level trolling of all and being by far the best dressed person in the town. She also delights in ruining the schemes of her businessman father, vulgar misogynist Ben Horne. If there is a vulgar misogynist whose schemes you would like to ruin, perhaps you will be inspired by this article on Nwanyeruwa, one of the first people to contest British rule in Nigeria:
Donna – pictured here visiting her murdered best friend’s former boyfriend in jail – is trying to get out of being stereotyped as “the sensible one”, with reasonable success to date. If you too want to get out of whatever stereotypes people are putting on you, enjoy this story of amazing Vietnamese warrior woman Triệu Thị Trinh:
Norma runs the local (only?) diner and is an inspiring woman entrepreneur. In the episode I watched last night the special at the diner was Rabbit Chilli, so here is a recipe for rabbit chilli:
the fastest way to create awkward silence, where even the cricket chokes, is by stating with the most serious face that I can muster, “Yes, I’m cataloging birth control pills at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.” […] On one occasion, while I was meticulously documenting the oral contraceptives exhibited in the museum onto a clipboard, a visitor laughed and took a photo of me—probably supposing that I was eagerly jotting down some pointers.
We don't know the details but what we will call the Pictorial Quilt may have been commissioned after the Bible Quilt was seen at the exposition in Atlanta. It was then given to Dr Charles Cuthbert Hall in 1898. Hall was a pastor who dedicated much of his life to the education of his fellow African Americans. Apparently the quilt was meaningful to him as he kept and cherished it as did his family after his death. This second existing quilt was a bit different than the first, mixing Biblical stories with celestial and other events. 