The contest: Field Hockey
The teams:
squaring off against:
Without in any way wishing to drag the Smackdown into the realm of educational toys, something did occur to me as the teams were lining up. It has been very difficult throughout history for a woman to become notable without first becoming at least somewhat notorious. Unless you're a nurse or a nun, you're likely going to get a bad rap - and even then your success may ruffle feathers.
There's a lesson in that, no?
The Good/Bad designation is tongue-in-cheek, with a few guidelines based on the woman's career.
Good: nurses, canonized saints, devoted wives, public servants,** ladies who wrote about nice things, ladies who pursued gentle arts like writing and painting without stirring up too much trouble
Bad: professional whores, open lesbians, those connected (horrors!) with the stage, ladies who wrote about unladylike subjects that stirred shit up
*I think it's so nice how women get a month. It suggests that during the other 11 months they were getting their nails done. But I suppose it's better than nothing.
**That's how Elizabeth Cady Stanton wound up as captain on the Good side, although she really could have gone either way. Certainly in her own time realtively few men would have considered her a servant of the public good. But when she steps up and says, "I'm in charge," you don't argue.
44 comments:
Bad girls will win for the simple reason that they'd be more likely to play dirty. It's more fun that way.
"I've given myself up a long time ago as a heartless baggage!", Elizabeth Gaskell said as she kicked Alice B. Toklas in the shin.
You didn't specify how much toast and peach dessert Melba's been eating lately, and if Toklas brought enough brownies for the whole team. I don't think the bad girls could get it together; I think there'd be a lot of infighting. The good girls know how to work hard and get what they want. So there.
It takes serious determination and cleverness to make a name for yourself within the limited definition of a good girl. Therefore I vote that they could stage an upset.
LaurieM
I know. I really wrestled with where to put Flo. But then, Lytton himself was such a bitch...so I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt just this once.
I think it could go either way. The "good" girls could be putting up a smoke screen, and then they get you in the shins. Dirty pool.
I find the whole "Women's History Month" just a bit bizarre, especially because if there was ever a "Men's History Month" people would lose their sh*t! I think I will stick to calling it "March" and continue on with my manicure.
Women's History Month? Who thought that up? Glad we dont have that in Aus. Bad girls will win hands down, 'cos they don't waste their energies pretending to conform.
I never did see much difference between "good" and "bad" people, those who are judged to be bad are being judged by the source as much as by themselves. Rant: people make mistakes and people get caught making mistakes, or don't get caught. But everyone makes mistakes. Everyone is unscrupulous in some decisions, especially if they really really care about the Cause they are espousing. Rant over. Sillyness may continue! I like my bad women really good and my good women really bad!
How about Emma Goldman?
Bad girlz all the way. Hooking sticks, elbows to the gut, the whole nine yards.
"*I think it's so nice how women get a month. It suggests that during the other 11 months they were getting their nails done. But I suppose it's better than nothing."
::delurking::
Heh. Remember, 1992 was the "year of the woman."
::relurking::
Dear Franklin:
I miss Dolores. Is she on a bender?
Love,
Bevin
You shouldn't forget Victoria C. Woodhull... first woman candidate for president. She'd be on the "Bad Girl" list because in addition to women's sufferage she also promoted free love, which made Susan B. Anthony et al turn against her.
It's been my experience (including Catholic girls' high school) that good girls play hockey.
Bad girls ride around in cars with cute boys after school.
They don't do team sports.
I am not even sure who Elizabeth Gaskell is but I used to work with a woman (or FOR a DOKTOR, as she would have put it) named Gaskell who was screwing her way to the top of academia, having few merits of her own, so I could never vote for anyone with her name. Yes, I'm prejudiced.
Why are all the good girls ugly and plain?
Hmm. I'm detecting a pattern.
My alma mater (a woman's college) sells bumper stickers that say "Well behaved women rarely make history."
I answered a whole doctoral qualifying exam on women in American religious history and how they were all "troublemakers" in some way shape or form (Ann Hutchinson, Mother Ann Lee, Sister Amy anyone?)
I love your celebrity smackdowns Franklin....
Mrs. Cady Stanton knew how to get things done. She didn't let people get away with messing with her. Miss Nightingale was the same. I think there's a misconception of "good girl" as wuss. A lot of powerful women have been mislabeled.
Haven't had a chance to listen to the podcast yet. I moved last weekend and I don't have my DSL yet. The pain... But moving led me to a question: when I took the mattress pad off my mattress, there was this Serta label with nine sheep staring at me, and I found myself wondering, has Dolores ever done any modeling for Serta?
My Mum told me her proper girls' school team turned into something straight out of St. Trinians when they invited the lads from the nearby airbase for a 'friendly' game.
Goods girls have drive and determination that runs below the surface, but deeply.
The good girls will win by default. The bad girls won't bother to show up.
There are lots of passionate and organized women on the good girl team. I think they will be the George Mason of field hockey.
Them "good" ones were tough strong women who took on the establishment honestly and publicly (none of that feminine wiles stuff for them)so the "bad" ones better watch out.
Having known a few field hockey players, I'd have to say good girls here. Tough call, but some of your good girls were tough wenches. Besides, as someone else commented, the bad girls were more of a smoke the ciggies behind the gym crowd.
Now, had you said soccer, I'm thinking bad girls - because most of those ladies could probably see the field hockey kilt thing as a proper uniform for a lady, but none of them were going to do a Brandy Chastain and go celebrate in sports bra.
I had to vote for the bad girls, because I know a few (by Franklin's definition) who play a mean game of (field) hockey. And I do mean mean... :-)
Me, I just bodycheck occasionally. Nothing wrong with that!
Damn it!
I voted Good Girls, thinking that they had *god* on their side and all. But apparantly they are a tad weak in the organized sports arena since they're getting their asses handed to them by the Whores!
Just proves that piety counts for naught in the afterlife. I'm off to plan an affair, then. With an actor. And brownies.
Hrmph,
Dhi
No fair! How could you leave Carrie Nation off the Good Girls team: "Standing at nearly 6 feet tall and weighing 180 pounds, Carry Amelia Moore Nation, Carrie Nation, as she came to be known, cut an imposing figure. Wielding a hatchet, she was downright frightful."
But even without her, I think the Good Girls will win.
How 'bout these for backups?
Montserrat Caballe on the good girls team. She could throw her weight around.
Lizzie Borden for the bad girls. A hatchet-weilding crazy chick would be rather intimidating.
T in SP
Dude. Alice B could take everyone else one-handed. You KNOW that.
And I don't mean to criticize, but where's Margaret Sanger?
GO, MARGARET!!
What? No Carrie Nation? Truly a good girl gone bad if there ever was one.
Emily Dickinson would come and cheer on the bad girls, but she's feeling a bit depressed.
Really, the winner should be whatever team Carrie Nation was on. Smash, ladies, smash!
Beth said there'd be too much infighting on the bad girls team, but I think they'd unite against a common foe (goody two shoes! gasp!) and THEN they'd beat the snot out of each other.
And sadly, my women's history is deeply lacking. I'll need to google these ladies on my lunch hour and ejimacate myself.
You're giving Alice B. Toklas a HOCKEY STICK??!! Lord help us all.
Toot toot, honk, beep beep.
No woman of color? How about Harriet Tubman on the good girls side?
Good or bad, Florence wouldn't play on any team; she was always totally out for Number One. She didn't stand up for women, only for herself. Now, is that Good or Bad? I'm surprised that someone who is as knowlegable about the sayings of Oscar Wilde as I assume you are should use this as the distinguishing characteristic for the teams; after all, 'It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.' But perhaps you have used his definition of fiction, where 'The good end happily and the bad unhappily.' I think I need more information before I can place my vote :)
Bad girls are great at individual competition--they cheat, they flirt with the referees, they buy the fight. But in team sports? I'm not seeing it. The good girls are more organized and actually show up for practice.
gotta vote for the good girls. Cady Stanton is one tough broad, for starters. And as the proud veteran of 12 years of Catholic education, which included playing basektball with nuns, let me tell you that sisters play to win.
I'm laying my money on Stanton. I'm sure Miss Toklas was up much of the night baking brownies.
This is GREAT! In the event the bad girls teams needs some alternates, I'd suggest Sojourner Truth and Lucretia Mott. And perhaps Louisa May Alcott.
I must search your archives to see if you've had a celebrity smackdown a June past...
This brought a smile to my face!
Dang! I missed another smackdown!
You had one canonized saint in there, but there are a few women in religion sitting on the bench: Mary Baker Eddy, Aimee Semple McPherson, Mother Joseph and Mother Emilie Gamelin of the Sisters of Providence (who founded hospitals in Montreal and Vancouver Wa in the 19th century). Aimee would be there with the bad girls; Mama Jo and Emmy would be in charge of pregame training of the good girls. Marie Curie would be concocting and mixing special liniments for injuries.
What fun!!
Man, I can't believe you missed out on having Matilda Joslyn Gage playing for the bad girls. She was so owed a grudge match after that bitch Stanton sold out....
according to http://www.nps.gov/wori/gagebio.htm
"When Anthony led her followers in merging the two existing suffrage organizations, thereby bringing in the conservative Women's Christian Temperance Union forces, Gage left the suffrage movement and formed the anti-Church group she had been considering. Made up of anarchists, prison reformers, labor leaders and feminists, the Woman's National Liberal Union was viewed as one of the most radical organizations in the country, and Gage's mail was intercepted by the government.
Stanton chose to become president of Anthony's combined National American Woman Suffrage Association rather than join Gage's group. Anthony denounced Gage's "secession" (as she called it) from the suffrage ranks, and Gage spent her last eight years estranged from most of her movement allies and friends of the previous forty years.
Loneliness was not the only price Gage paid for her uncompromising radical vision. Historians tracing an undeviating line of a single-issue suffrage struggle from the 1848 Seneca Falls convention to the adoption of woman suffrage in 1920, don't know where to fit Gage. The contemporariness of her thought makes Gage even today a threat to the status quo."
And, without her *influence* on her son in law, L Frank Baum I doubt that the Oz books would have got written...
On behalf of knitters everywhere-May I suggest next time have Madame LeFarge on the team!!!
On second thought- to keep in character- Madame Lefarge would be a great cheerleader!
I really like your writing style. Such a nice Post, Can’t wait for the next one.
Asus - 15.6" Touch-Screen Laptop - 8GB Memory - 1TB Hard Drive + 24GB Solid State Drive - Gray Aluminum (N550JV-DB72T)
Asus - 15.6" Laptop - 8GB Memory - 750GB Hard Drive - Dark Gray
obat wasir racikan herbal pengobatan penyakit wasir cara mengobati penyakit wasir obat herbal penyakit wasir obat wasir ambeien cara menyembuhkan ambeien atau wasir
Post a Comment