Today is Penguin Awareness Day, so in tribute to our waddling little feathered friends, we begin with an article about women in the Antarctic. DID YOU KNOW that the US Navy â for a long time the only organisation that would send anyone to Antarctica â refused to send women until 1969? When they finally did, the comms around this seem to have been managed poorly :
One time Terrell noticed a fellow following her around McMurdo. Later, she saw him sitting on a porch crying. She asked him what was wrong. He said, âI think youâre a woman.â Terrell assured him thatâs what she thought as well. Apparently, the Navy hadnât told most of the enlisted men that there were going to be women there â a particular shock to those who had been on the Ice for more than a year.
Unrelated to penguins, but related to work and talking and organising, I loved this Atlantic interview with a Rhode Island state representative who, after a decade of waitressing, is devoting herself to her community. I highly recommend that you read the whole thing as I had real trouble finding a pullquote here:
I'm a waitress, and have been for going on 10 years. I literally went across the street, to the restaurant across the street from my high school, and I got a job there in what I thought was going to be a very transitory period of my life, and it has ended up being my main form of income. A couple of years ago, a coworker of mine tricked me into coming to an industry night for the Restaurant Opportunity Center. All of a sudden, I was surrounded by these really amazing union organizers who were explaining to me that while it might not feel like it, I did in fact have rights as a worker and could stand up for them if I so decided.
Two obituaries of two amazing women this week, from very different fields.
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We start with Clare Hollingworth. Â As well as working tirelessly and calculatingly to help refugees in the 1930s, she broke the news of the start of the Second World War, nearly died several times, lived to be 105 and â based on the below interview and pullquote â was landing zings to the very end of her life.
âMy mother thought journalism frightfully low, like a trade,â she says, sipping champagne and working her way through a celebratory tin of caviar. âShe didnât believe anything journalists wrote and thought they were only fit for the tradesmenâs entrance.â
What did her mother want for her daughter?
âNo idea, just sort of walk about and show off my non-attractive body.â
Secondly, Vera Rubin, who proved the existence of dark matter. She loved her subject and did so much to advance it, all while âprotest[ing] every all-male meeting, every all-male department, every all-male platformâ. She did not take any guff whatsoever:
Her masterâs thesis was, her Cornell supervisor said, worthy of being presented to the American Astronomical Society. But she was about to give birth, so, he suggested, he would present itâbut in his name. She refused. Her parents drove up from Washington and took their 22-year-old daughter, nursing her newborn, on a gruelling snowy trip from upstate New York to Philadelphia. She addressed the roomful of strangers for ten minutes about galaxy rotation […]âand left […] Fed up, she looked for a problem âthat people would be interested in, but not so interested in that anyone would bother me before I was done.â
Did you see the Brontës drama that the BBC did over Christmas? It was great and I thought extremely moving. There were also moments of maybe a bit unintended comedy involving Anne, Charlotte and Emily creating enduring classics of western literature in one room while in the next their useless brother Bramwell yells things like:
i HATE you
i never ASKED to be born
maybe iâll just KILL my self if thatâs what you want
You can watch it here and I highly recommend doing so over the upcoming weekend:
In more modern reading, I enjoyed this article on A Handmaidâs Tale. Not a laugh riot so Iâd stick with the BrontĂ«s if you need cheering up (âcheeringâ âupâ):
Among other things, The Handmaidâs Tale reminds us that the mechanics of oppression are so often masqueraded as benevolent truths, even gifts. Those in power believe, or act like they believe, that they care about womenâââworship them, even. But their formulation is simple: the price of womenâs protection is their subjugation. Many women come to believe this, too.
Finally, here is the annual not-particularly-feminist thing in fem Friday; my review of the books I have read last year. I hope you enjoy it! There are some graphs that I really enjoyed making in there:
Is it misty where you are? Visibility is about thirty yards here in London and I am looking forward to curling up with that BBC thing on the Brontës tonight. Unrelated - if you, like me, feel like you've not listened to enough music this year, here are some artists and songs that you might enjoy! You can add them to your end of year lists and talk about them at parties tomorrow.
Firstly, here is Dawn Richard with the last in an excellent trilogy of albums:
Tomorrow is the last shopping day before Christmas! If you are stuck for a gift to buy for anyone, here are my books of the year. Any or all of these would make a great gift for a friend, family member or â if you have not started your break yet â co-worker. Plus none of them were published this year, so any one of them is quite a thrifty option, or you could buy them all as a bundle if you are in need of a big present.
This is the best book I have read all year. Itâs about the stories we tell about ourselves, the stories we tell about other people, and the stories we ultimately choose to believe. It delivers a series of fairly brutal punches in the gut while retaining an essential kindness â a belief in everyoneâs capacity to care and to love far beyond what we can express. I cried several times while reading this book and was very grateful that I was on holiday and wearing sunglasses throughout.
I also read this brilliant and horrible book on holiday. I didn't deadlock the door of our hotel room at night before I read it and I did so religiously after, occasionally waking to remember that the fear was not outside my door but inside my mind. If you â or the person for whom you have to buy a gift â is a fan of creeping dread and a sense of impending doom â do not delay your purchase of this ghastly little story.
Continuing the theme of creepy tat in a big house, The Little Stranger is a complete delight. Perhaps as you read Fem Friday you are thinking, âhmmm, I read Fingersmith in 2K5 and I donât recall feeling it at the timeâ. I once felt as you feel. Ignore these thoughts! Iâm on page 300-ish right now and I never want this book to end. Creeping dread in the 1950s, maybe with an unreliable narrator â I canât think of a better book to take you through the ACANYNY* period.
This is the story of the Lewis Chessmen and the woman, Margret The Adroit who (possible/likely) carved them. Because thereâs not a lot of information about Margret The Adroit, this is also a book about Vikings, church history, and the history of chess. Obviously I was going to be all over it. I read this book on a trip to New York, and can confirm also that it goes incredibly well with room service mac and cheese.
As this is the second year running in which Iâve recommended a book by a man, maybe this is a tradition now? Anyway, I reread The Comfort Of Things this year and I think youâd really like it as well. Itâs an ethnography, looking at peopleâs lives and loves through the lens of things they own. Like Veronica, this is an almost infinitely kind book â the authorâs delight in and respect for his participants shines through every page. If you like people and looking through lighted windows, I hope you read and enjoy this book soon.
Here are the stories of women who use art to let light in â to expose what is happening and to force it to be visible, whether thatâs for their own time or the future.
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Firstly, Dorothea Lange, who took photos of FDRâs Japanese internment camps. They were suppressed for a long time but you can see them here:
The military commanders that reviewed her work realized that Langeâs contrary point of view was evident through her photographs, and seized them for the duration of World War II, even writing âImpoundedâ across some of the prints. The photos were quietly deposited into the National Archives, where they remained largely unseen until 2006.
Barbara Nelson puts bright lights in abandoned houses to call attention to declining investment in cities:
âI want locomotive trains; I want murals; I want 3-D lights and Christmas postcard backdrops,â Ms. Gilmore, 64, said as she toured Stanley Street with Ms. Porterfield. âItâs when the lights are out that the depression sets in.â
Helen Frankenthaler was one of several women abstract expressionists. I love this quotation and how it speaks to the joy and the love involved in bringing light:
âThe landscapes were in my arms as I did it,â Ms. Frankenthaler told an interviewer. âI didnât realize all that I was doing. I was trying to get at something â I didnât know what until it was manifest.â
Itâs been ages since I covered proper history in Fem Friday. Here are some excellent fightinâ women of the past. Enjoy!
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Did you know about the tradition of women samurai? Neither did I until this week, but here is the story of such a woman, Lady Gozen, from 12th century. She was married to the guy who sent her to war as his first captain, which maybe looks a bit like favouritism on the surface of things, but sounds like she acquitted herself excellently:
Lady Gozen was more than a defending wife. She was onna bugeisha, a female consummate warrior. She was either the wife or an attendant of her master Minamoto Yoshinaka, who sent her into battle as his first captain. She was a strong archer and swordsman (she fought with a manâs katana), and could skillfully handle unbroken horses down steep descents. She was known as one warrior worth a thousand.
Iâve recently enough finished Herodotusâ Histories, which whilst a bit of a slog recommended Artemisia to me. Iâm not especially sure Iâd want her on my team, because she seemed pretty open to taking down anyone who interfered with her direct advantage, but I guess you donât get to be a woman commander in the Persian army c.480 BC by being nice to people. Hereâs a page that compiles everything Herodotus has to say about Artemisia:
There is no reason for me to mention any of the other commanders, except for Artemisia. I consider her to be a particular object of admiration because she was a woman who played a part in the war against Greece. She took power on the death of her husband, as she had a son who was still a youth. Because of her courage and spirit she went to war although she had no need to do so.
I am ill today so veeeery minimal commentary for you today. It's about the senses, though! I came up with the theme in a time of health.
Jess Zimmerman has never disappointed and this piece is no exception. Side note based on the pullquote: what is your favourite Nickelback song? Mine Is "This is How You Remind Me".
Sometimes, hunger doesnât even kick in until someone puts food in front of me. I will rely on any other cueâthe ease or difficulty of procuring food, the time of day, what other people are doing, the timing of my work and gym and social plansâbefore Iâll remember to look inward. Imagine being told that your biggest secretâyour weirdest sexual fantasy, your most embarrassing faceplant, your favorite Nickelback songâwas supposed to dictate your behavior, publicly, as many as three times a day.
âIf you remove a couple of tiles from its wall, the smell of the German Democratic Republic would come off immediately,â she says. âItâs that of lignite and a detergent which I suspect was used in all the public buildings, probably supplied by the same, state-owned company. The smell is omnipresent as if The Big Brother is looking at you.â
This Friday I present a series of articles on being who you are and not what you represent. One is serious and two are funny and I hope you enjoy them all.
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Firstly, an interview with Elena Ferrante! She gives some lovely considered answers about many things, including narcissism, her writing process and also her reading process (like me she forgets books she reads quite fast and unlike me she doesnât let it get her down) â but this is the paragraph that really struck me:
It seems to me risky to forget that no one gave us the freedoms we have todayâwe took them. For that very reason they can at any moment be taken away again. So just that, we mustnât ever lower our guard. Itâs wonderful to give oneself fully to another, we women know how to do it. And we should continue. Itâs a serious mistake to retreat, giving up the marvelous feelings weâre capable of. Yet itâs indispensable to keep alive the sense of self. In Naples, certain girls who showed the marks of beatings would say, even with pleased half smiles, He hits me because he loves me. No one can dare to hurt us because he loves us, not a lover, not a friend, not even children.
Everything in this âIf Women Wrote Men The Way Men Write Womenâ article is a delight, but of course my pullquote is going to be the Lolita reference:
But of course, it had to be the Nabikova where he showed a little glimmer of hope. What other book would serve?
âProfessor,â Stephen began, one well-tanned arm in the air. âWhat if itâs not really about the boy? What if, like she says, heâs a safely solipsized something else? What if the plaything isnât the jailbait kid, but the English language itself?â
Reductress has been on point lately, so if you have some time today, just browse through everything theyâve written in the last two weeks.
After the first dozen inquiries came in, she said she found the messages âthoughtful.â But once they fell into the triple-digits, Khan reports they became âuncontrollable in volumeâ and states that they put âpressure on women of color to have all the answers.â
Letâs read about some women innovators. I hope you appreciate how much it took for me not title this âWomennovatorsâ. Please let me know if you would have been fine with this because there is for sure more where that came from.
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Itâs quite far down the page so youâll have to ctrl+F (or â+F if you are on a mac) for Lucy Jones, who redesigned the hospital gown for greater comfort and dignity. Part of what I love about this is the value it puts on the everyday and the comforts of the everyday â the more normal things feel, the smoother the recovery.
A paper published two years ago […] even found that the garments could contribute to âpost-hospital syndrome,â a condition caused by environmental stressors that can make a patient more susceptible to illness. [âŠ] Here, Lucy Jones, who was named Parsons Womenswear Designer of the Year in 2015, reimagined the hospital gown with a comfort-based approach and an emphasis on modesty. âIt is all about patient dignity,â Jones says. âYouâre already having your environmental space interrupted, your body prodded. The hospital gown is a contributor to that treatment.â You should feel warm and safe, she says, not exposed.
Eva Zeisel went from fine art student, to journeyman ceramicist, to artistic director of the Russian republicâs china and glass industry, to solitary confinement under Stalin, to New York, to a commission from the Museum of Modern Art. Again, I love the focus on the everyday here, and on improving the everyday:
âShe brought form to the organicism and elegance and fluidity that we expect of ceramics today, reaching as many people as possible,â said Paola Antonelli, a curator of architecture and design at the museum. âItâs easy to do something stunning that stays in a collectorâs cabinet. But her designs reached people at the table, where they gather.â
Itâs not usual for me to feature an oil heiress on Feminist Friday, but I think you will be interested in Leah Hunt-Hendrix. She is the founder of Solidaire, a means by which the global 1% can fund grassroots community and protest movements. My many subscribers in the global 1% (advertisers take note) may also be interested in their site:
Leah wondered what her role in producing the sort of structural changes in society she had become convinced were necessary might be. She came to the conclusion that she needed to organize within her own community. In 2012, she cofounded the Solidaire Network, which she describes as âa way for people with a lot of privilege to find a role in the social movements of our time.â
A paper published two years ago […] even found that the garments could contribute to âpost-hospital syndrome,â a condition caused by environmental stressors that can make a patient more susceptible to illness. [âŠ] Here, Lucy Jones, who was named Parsons Womenswear Designer of the Year in 2015, reimagined the hospital gown with a comfort-based approach and an emphasis on modesty. âIt is all about patient dignity,â Jones says. âYouâre already having your environmental space interrupted, your body prodded. The hospital gown is a contributor to that treatment.â You should feel warm and safe, she says, not exposed.