Good morning,

Please enjoy this Fem Friday about not accepting things the way they currently are. Thank you Saxey for the excellent swordfighting news last week!

We start with a book review about a woman of the Paris Commune, Louise Michel:

It creates a ripping yarn out of the life of Louise Michel, schoolteacher, active communard, exile and anarchist thinker. […] The tale begins on the eve of the Commune, as young Louise agitates among the Parisian workers, goes through her experience of the brief, violent revolutionary moment, her exile in New Caledonia, and a brief switchback to her childhood as the daughter of domestic servants, in Montmartre. Nicknamed the “red virgin” already in the 1870s, Michel has always been considered a saintly figure, and so she appears here, even lending her red scarf to the indigenous residents of New Caledonia as they rise in revolt against the French, in a gesture connecting the Commune and anti-colonial revolt.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/29/the-red-virgin-the-last-communard-gavin-bowd-review

For perhaps the first time I’m including an article that directly relates to what I do for a living. This is about insight, branding, segmentation, and leading change in a large organisation. And also, women buying cars. Enjoy. It’s quite long so perhaps you want to get a tea before you read it, or save it to lunchtime:

[I]t took a year and a half to get everyone at Subaru onboard. For a car company, openly marketing to gay customers still felt new, if not taboo. Bennett recalls holding company meetings with names along the lines of “Who Are Gays and Lesbians?”

http://priceonomics.com/how-an-ad-campaign-made-lesbians-fall-in-love-with/?Src=longreads

I’d not heard of the Ladies Of Langollen before this week. It’s like if Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa had a happy ending, as one half of this relationship was suffering the unwanted attentions of her middle-aged guardian, Sir William Fownes. His wife, Betty […] was still alive, but […] Sir William over-eagerly anticipated the day when he could take pretty Sarah as the second Lady Fownes. The below is straight out of a fun adventure story:

Both women felt trapped in an unbearable situation. Clandestine correspondence flew back and forth between Kilkenny Castle and Woodstock, and they decided to elope to England together (elope did not have the same marital connotation that it does today, it just meant run away). Dressed as men, carrying a pistol and Sarah's dog Frisk, they rode through the night to catch the ferry at Waterford, but it did not sail and they were forced to hide in a barn[.]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/uk/wales/724170/Wales-A-tale-of-two-ladies-ahead-of-their-time.html

Love,

Alex.