O Brave New World...

This was always a big holiday in my house, when I was growing up. It involved going to political parties in the evening, with music and dancing and speeches and fundraising. I was a little taken aback to find, when I was older, that most people don't celebrate it. In Cuba, however, my father and stepmother and mother (who were vacationing together there, in 1994) got a flower and a kiss on the cheek from people in the streets.

Anyway -- Happy International Women's Day, Livejournal folks!

My niece is wondering who to do her March-is-Women's-History-Month report on. Her father is pulling for Helen Keller, socialist wonder woman. I like a lot of the international possibilities -- especially Alexandra Kollontai, who I memorialized this month in the March/April issue of Against the Current, with a slightly obnoxious article on Wikipedia and revolutionary women. But here is a list, off the top of my head of women who are interesting in history. I cannot limit it to Americans. Feel free to add! I'm surely deficient in lots of areas:

"Lucy" and other forebears learning to live in a dangerous environment
Venus of Willendorf -- statues representing Mother Goddesses
Hatshepsut, of Egypt (okay, I don't often cave to the Elite Women thing, but she's always fascinated me)
Sappho
Boudicca
Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine (see Hatshepsut)
Artemisia Gentileschi, Renaissance painter
Nzingha, a princess in West Africa who resisted the Portuguese
Sacajawea
Abigail Adams
Angelina and Sarah Grimké, abolitionists
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Susan B. Anthony
Harriet Tubman
Sojourner Truth
Florence Nightingale
Clara Barton
Julia Morgan, California Beaux Arts architect
Victoria Woodhull, socialist, free lover, US Presidential candidate with Frederick Douglass, 1872
Jane Addams
Florence Kelley
Lucy Parsons
Helen Keller
Mother Jones
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
Rosa Luxemburg
Clara Zetkin, FOUNDER of International Women's Day!!! Represent, German SPD!!!
Inessa Armand
Alexandra Kollontai
Nadezhda Krupskaya
Natalya Sedova
Raya Dunayevskaya
Dolores Ibarruri
Dr. Antoinette Konikow
Rosa Parks, especially if she was closer to the CP than one might think.
Ella Baker
Valentina Tereshkova, Soviet astronaut

My niece would add Eleanor Roosevelt and Shirley Chisholm.

ETA: Lady Murasaki, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Louise Michel, Christine Dargent, Eleanor Marx, Emma Goldman, Margaret Sanger, Marie Curie, Jeannette Rankin, Benazir Bhutto

For March, as Women's History Month, I am telling students about various women in French history, in chronological order. The first woman the internet told me about (more than I already knew about her, which wasn't much) was Sainte Geneviève, the patron saint of Paris. She's actually much cooler than most martyred-by-violent-rape saints.

The semi-firm dates: 422 - 512 CE. Here's my mangled version of her story: she was apparently the daughter of an educated and well-off couple in Nanterre, only what, 200 years since the fall of the Roman empire? People in the Gallic regions spoke Langue d'Oc and Langue d'Oeil still, and had names that sound more Latin than anything else, though hers is derived from the Gaelic for "the white wave" -- genovefa, according to the internets. It was a site about Celtic saints, so who knows.

Anyway, she was a bright and brainy seven year old when Germanus, the Bishop of Auxerre, stopped in Nanterre, spoke with her parents at Mass, and tried to entice her into the only career open to women who didn't want to marry and have kids, the Church. Several years later, around age 15, she travelled the short-ish distance to Paris and took the veil.

She's famous not for miracles, per se, (a relief to me, atheist that I am, reciting this stuff to credulous thirteen year olds) but for rallying women to prayer (twice) in a war-threatened city. The first time, Attila the Hun was nearing Paris, and the men of Paris were fleeing, and she rallied women to the church to pray to god, and the men were so shamed that they stayed. At the last minute, the Magyars (or whatever -- the Huns?) swerved south to Orléans and were stopped before they got there.

The second time, Childeric of the Franks was beseiging Paris and supposedly she gathered some laymen and organized boats on the Seine, under cover of darkness, to get through the enemy lines to outlying villages, where they collected grain to bring back to the city the same way, thus breaking the siege, in part.

Childeric won anyway, but was impressed with her and lenient to the city. She tried to convert him to Christianity and failed, but is credited with converting his son Clovis, who was then the first Christian King of the Franks.

Apparently she was known from Ireland to Byzantium during her lifetime, and all of it without magical intervention.

Next week, I'll do Eleanor of Aquitaine and Jeanne d'Arc, and the week after that, I'll leave behind the church and royalty, and do Charlotte Corday and Manon Roland, and the week after that, Louise Michel (my absolute favorite) and Marie Curie.

If anyone has other suggestions, I'll be glad to hear them. I don't want to do Marie Antoinette except to curl my lip at her. I am considering George Sand, but I've never read any of her work. Camille Claudel is depressing as hell.

Okay, so I go to Curves. I know, I know, they're the Dominos Pizza of the fitness world, and Gary Heavin (come on, now, surely he didn't get born with that name?) funds antiabortion forces with 10% of his profits... But that works out to four cents of my money a month, and I give more than that to pro-choice activist groups, not to mention having been active in the movement for ages. So I'm not quitting, make of that what you will.

Meanwhile, I've given some thought to what it is that is so damn appealing about Curves. I've only been a member for a month, now, almost. But I haven't missed one single workout, and I haven't had to struggle for it, either. And before I joined, from the little I vaguely KNEW about it, it sounded pretty rigidly fascist: go around a circuit of machines, in the exact order prescribed, for the exact length of time prescribed, doing the exact range of motions prescribed. Plus a lot of rah rah, sis boom bah cheerleading which generally makes me ill.

But. But its appeal may in fact BE that lack of a need for independent thought. To be honest, after work, the last thing I want to do is consider in depth HOW I want to exercise. It's exhausting, and I'm exhausted, and stressed. Curves requires absolutely no thought at all. You listen to a tape played over some pounding soundtrack purchased from late night TV for three easy payments of 29.99 -- the fifties, the sixties, the seventies, eighties, and nineties. The recording tells you when to start, stop, check your pulse, change stations, etc. There are no decisions to make, except perhaps which machine to start with.

It's relaxing. It removes stress magically. It only takes 30 minutes. It's really that last thing. As a teacher, I can get there by 4 PM, and be home by 5 PM. That rocks. It removes all the toxins of stress and tension and anxiety, it makes me loose and relaxed and endorphin-filled, and it does it all in a Taylorized fashion that is efficient and fits into our sped up, downsized world. There are no lockers or showers, just two curtained changing booths and cubbyholes for your gym bag.

Anyway, the franchised mushroom growth of this niche-filling gym fascinates me. I can easily imagine that men might like something equally easy (and cheap) as a fitness routine.

And voila, I was told today by the franchise owner at the Curves I go to (because I asked her) that there IS such a thing. There is a Curves for men.

It's in Chicago, apparently. Instead of being called "Curves," which men don't want, it's called "Cuts," which is appropriately muscle-focused and MALE. Instead of being a circular arrangement, it's a horseshoe (connotations of racing? Of luck? Of an escape route?). Instead of facing inwards, towards the other women working out, the machine stations on this horseshoe shaped circuit face OUTWARD, the better to avoid any guy LOOKING at any other guy. Instead, there are TVs around the perimeter, overhead. Instead of a gentle stretching routine at the end of the timed circuit... there are punching bags.

I couldn't MAKE this shit up; it's really true -- well, actually I am taking it on faith, not having been to one or read an article about it myself. But I trust the woman who told me about it. I think the gendered implications are hilarious, myself.

maeve66