Comments on: “Don’t Call Me a Cowgirl!”

By: Irene

Irene — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 18:47:52 +0000

Christina, have you seen photos of Kristin Bobo? She IS about the size of a child around age 12 or so and she does have beautiful doe eyes. She’s tiny and can get into places a lot of other cavers can’t which is a truly awesome thing. You’d understand if you were a caver. NG wasn’t insulting her, they were complimenting her.

By: Irene

Irene — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 18:41:17 +0000

Christina, have you seen photos of Kristin Bobo? She IS about the size of a child around age 12 or so and she does have beautiful doe eyes. She’s tiny and can get into places a lot of other cavers can’t which is a truly awesome thing. NG wasn’t insulting her, they were complimenting her.

By: Christina M.

Christina M. — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 18:35:03 +0000

In a recent article in National Geographic about cavers, a female “master caver” is described as: “Small as a child but strong as a miner, with big doe eyes that belie a will as unbendable as angle iron, she slithers through the Sphincter easy as a snake.” And: “Bobo, five feet four and 102 pounds, won the ‘squeeze box’ competition in her age and weight class three years in a row.’”

A male caver is described as: “loose-jointed, long, and lean, with skin so white you’d think he had spent his entire life underground.”

Small as a child with big doe eyes. Nice. I can’t see NG equating a small man to a child. Aargh.

By: MC

MC — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 14:16:48 +0000

You know, I keep leaving these obnoxious comments here which annoy even myself, because of the fact that I obviously agree with all the statements about feminity and roll my eyes just as hard at the media needing to underline the “feminity” of women who succeed at “masculine” things — but I always need to stick up for myself and be all reactionary and try to start talking about how much less comfortable we are with ambiguity. We can point out that the media/public/society is “more comfortable with women who break some gender rules as long as they maintain their femininity by following other rules” — but here in all our feminist/queer analyses, aren’t we more comfortable with women who are breaking ALL the gender rules, and aren’t we assuming that the remaining “femininity” is a.) negative and b.) enforced and projected by society?

Say Barbara here DID actually genuinely enjoy, feel comfortable, and feel emotionally and socially satisfied with the aspects of feminity mentioned here? That’s so much less comfortable for us to talk about here. While the observations made here ARE absolutely correct — clearly the bit about marriage and all the sexualized pixie-ish descriptions are gross, and a lot of the article’s spin is obviously worth discussing in that frame. But our criticism to some extent still cater to the frustrating gender/sexuality binary: if a woman does something “manly”, oooobviously any “femininity” she retains is projected by an intimidated patriarchal media trying to marginalize her or she’s been “brainwashed” by society. What’s so offensive about a cowgirl who also loves baking bread?

By: june quest

june quest — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 04:47:58 +0000

“Nobody objects to a woman being a good writer or sculptor or geneticist if at the same time she manages to be a good wife, good mother, good looking, good tempered, well groomed and unaggressive.” –Leslie McIntyre

By: BG

BG — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:32:10 +0000

I’ve noticed that too. Women who transcend gender roles in some ways also have to show that they are feminine in other areas to still be acceptable. I’ve noticed those things about female athletes, myself.

By: Village Idiot

Village Idiot — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 20:17:29 +0000

In 1937 it was proven that women also have ideas. There was an article called Proving Women Also Have Ideas in the 1937 issue of Modern Mechanix.

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2007/10/16/proving-women-also-have-ideas/

Fortunately, in 1953 Cosmopolitan recognized the difficulties that women having ideas can cause themselves, so they came to the rescue with this article called Her Brains Didn’t Get in Her Way. Granted, the article was about working in Hollywood so the concept of intelligence as a stumbling block does have some merit (even to this day).

Anyway, I thought the quote below was an interesting thing to say in 1953, and not a sentiment likely to be seen in print very often at the time. It appears she almost let her brains get in her way (of her career, anyway)!

From the Cosmopolitan article:
When she was introduced at the Dutch Treat Club, a luncheon group of New York business and professional men, as “a young lady who thinks like a man.” she took umbrage. “The greatest compliment a man can pay a woman.” she remarked, “is to say that she thinks like a man. But I think that maybe it isn’t such a great compliment, when I look around at the state of the world and consider that men made it that way by thinking like men.”

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2009/06/30/her-brains-didnt-get-in-her-way/