Women in History, Women Today, Women in the Trump Era

From Meredith Brooks' "Bitch".

Image source: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/23918343018153590

As I posted this week on Twitter, September 18th-24th marks a number of notable historical events involving women. This week in 1975, heiress and kipnapping-victim-turned-Symbionese-Liberation-Army participant Patty Hearst was captured by police in San Francisco. On September 20, 1986, the TV show Cagney & Lacey won an Emmy Award for Best Show (Windell 2015). The show was about two women detectives who worked for a police department in a large city, and dealt with issues like alcoholism, harassment of women, and death of a fellow officer. Also on September 20 but in 1973, tennis legend Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in the highly publicized "Battle of the Sexes". (A movie of the same name is coming soon to movie theaters everywhere.) On September 21, 1981 Sandra Day O'Connor was confirmed as the first female Supreme Court justice by the U.S. Senate. She would ultimately serve 24 years on the bench. On September 22, 1692, the last eight 'witches' were hanged in Salem, Massachusetts (Windell, 2015). Most (not all) of the arrested and executed witches were women. Also on September 22, 1975, a would-be female assassin, Sara Jane Moore, attempted to kill President Ford (Windell, 2015). 

Fast forward to present day, two weeks ago Hillary Clinton's account of her 2016 bid for the Presidency, What Happened, was released. I'm currently on p.121 (348 more pages to go). I heard about the book first, with the predictable framing on both sides. Always better to read something for oneself than to take others' words for it. Example: Counter to what some conservative pundits are saying, Clinton doesn't blame everyone else for her loss, but accepts her fair share of responsibility for things that went wrong. 

In Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman, author Anne Helen Peterson (2017) notes that after Clinton's unexpected defeat, she sat down to write an article tentatively titled "This is How Much America Hates Women" (p.x), which would eventually evolve into a book (Too Fat...). I don't think America hates women per se. (We make up half the population of the U.S., after all.) But I do think that those who've traditionally been in the dominant gender group (i.e., men) don't really know what to make of women. We are wives, mothers, and daughters. We're coworkers (probably paid less). We're pioneers, sports champions, outlaws and victims. As Meredith Brooks sings in "Bitch", "I can understand how you'd be so confused, I don't envy you, I'm a little bit of everything all rolled into one...."

As the filmmaker Michael Moore satirically observed in his blog post "Five Reasons Why Trump Will Win", "Our male-dominated, 240-year run of the USA is coming to an end. A woman is about to take over! How did this happen... and now, after having had to endure eight years of a black man telling us what to do, we’re supposed to just sit back and take eight years of a woman bossing us around?" Is that really what men think? That if put in charge we'll boss them around and take their toys and not share? Because that's what they've done to us all these years so now it's payback time? Really??

I didn't vote for Donald Trump, but accept that he's the President. "Give him a chance," I've been told by one of the many men in my life (men I like and consider good friends). I'm trying. Like many women, I haven't forgotten POTUS's famous "Grab 'em by the p*ssy" comment. Why this doesn't offend all women deeply I still don't understand, but I also accept that not everyone has to think like me. Also, Mr. Trump isn't the first Pig in Chief we've had in the White House; he's just the most unapologetic about it. Bill Clinton was a pig. JFK was also a pig about women. (White House intern Mimi Alford wrote a book about her affair with President Kennedy, including that she gave Appointments Secretary David Powers a blowjob on the President's instruction, with JFK in the room.) Many men in my life -- men I consider to be good people, (mostly) non-sexist -- voted for Trump and still (mostly) like him. They assure me that terrible things for women aren't coming with Trump as President, and I try to believe them. I try. But I'm still waiting and watching.

Crime, Justice and Music

As I recently tweeted, September 14, 1974 was the anniversary of "I shot the sheriff" -- hitting #1 on music charts. The song was written by Bob Marley and performed by Eric Clapton (Windell, 2015). This is not the only time that the theme of crime or justice has come up in music.

Sammy Hagar has sung about his propensity to speed. Before the dark web, AC/DC famously offered a variety of methods of disposing of a nagging spouse ("concrete shoes, cyanide, TNT... high VOLTAGE!") at cost effective prices. Johnny Cash sang "Folsom Prison Blues" at Folsom Prison. Bob Dylan sang of the wrongful incarceration -- still an issue today -- of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter. Years before the #BlackLivesMatter movement took off, N.W.A. rapped about strained police-community relations. Similar frustrations with police, racial profiling, and traffic stops were expressed by Chamillionaire in "Riding (dirty)". Canadian rapper Snow shares his unwillingness to rat out a friend in "Informer". Perhaps this is why, at the end of the video for the song, he and his friend end up together as prison cellmates. 

Then there are the many songs about substance use. George Thorogood has a few about alcohol: "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer" and "I Drink Alone". And everyone likes to sing about cocaine, from Styx's "Snow Blind" to Eric Clapton's aptly-named "Cocaine". Jackson Browne also has a song of the same title ("Cocaine"). The inspiration for the Eagles' "Life in the Fast Lane" came from singer Glenn Frey riding in a car with a drug dealer who said those words to Mr. Frey, who thought "Now there's a song title." During his solo career period, Mr. Frey also co-wrote "Smuggler's Blues" about drug trafficking. Guns N' Roses "Mr. Brownstone" is about the band's heroin struggles. "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" by the Beatles is commonly thought to be about LSD. Bone Thugs are known for their love of marijuana (e.g., "The Weed Song", "Mary Mary"). It's unclear if Afroman's "Because I Got High" is a tribute to weed or a cautionary tale. 

Victimization themes come through in songs as well. Two that quickly come to mind are T.I.'s "Dead and Gone", a tribute song to his murdered friend Philant Johnson. "I'll be missing you" is also a tribute to Notorious B.I.G. by his wife, Faith Evans and Puff Daddy. Eminen and Rihanna tell the tale of a physically and emotionally abusive couple in "Love the Way You Lie". Violence is a theme in a few other Rihanna songs as well, particularly "Man Down" (homicidal revenge after a rape) and "Russian Roulette".

I'm sure there are many others I've forgotten. Feel free to comment below to add some.

Pregnant on September 11th

I remember September 11th, 2001 very clearly. I was eight months pregnant - very, very pregnant - at the time and generally moving slowly. Working in Newark, NJ at the time -- and running late on that particular day due to oversleeping (pregnancy fatigue) -- I was on Bergen Street, I think, waiting to turn left to begin hunting for parking. Z100 radio station was on, I believe. Sometime around 9:00am, one of the DJ's announced that a plane had flown into one of the World Trade towers. It wasn't known at that point that the hit was intentional. Probably just a terrible accident, was my thought.

Photo source: TheBump.com

Managing to find parking, I waddled along the sidewalk slowing making my way to my office. I noticed that people were standing, not moving, staring in the direction of New York City. The street is elevated enough that there was a view of the city, and the World Trade Center, even from 10 miles away in Newark. Smoke was pouring out of one of the towers. The plane! I thought. At the time both towers were still standing.

In the office, everyone clustered around a radio, listening for details. Word came through that the other tower was hit. The terrible realization: Oh my God, we're under attack! 

Photo source: USAToday.com

Our boss dismissed us shortly thereafter. By the time I left, one or both of the towers were down. Manhattan without the World Trade Center was bizarre to think about. Hadn't they always been there? And now... they were gone? Driving home, I suddenly remembered a high school friend -- also 8 months pregnant -- who worked in one of the banks at Ground Zero in Manhattan. Oh dear God, NO!!

As soon as I got home, I called my friend. Fortunately, she had overslept that morning too. Panicking when she woke up, she had been in such a rush to get to work that she didn't kiss her husband goodbye, she recalled. Her oversleeping saved her life, as both towers were down by the time she was on the NYC subway. After numerous tries, she managed to get a message through to her husband -- who by then was in a full-blown panic -- that she was okay. She was alive. Our kids were born a month later, two days apart.

Three days after the 9/11 attack, co-workers threw me a surprise baby shower at work. I was grateful, but confessed to a colleague that it felt like a strange time -- maybe the wrong time -- to be bringing a child into the world. A world that suddenly felt much less safe.  

October 2001, motherhood day 1. For better or worse, it's been quite the journey. Still is. 

Women in Policing - Then and Now

Photo source: http://www.huntingtonbeachca.gov/government/departments/pd/employment_opportunity/women-in-policing.cfm

As I recently commented on Twitter, September 10th is the anniversary of Alice Stebbins Wells becoming one of the early female officers, signing up with Los Angeles Police Department in 1910 (Windell, 2015). Marie Owens, who joined the Chicago PD in 1891, may actually lay claim to the title of THE first woman police officer. Women began joining police agencies in other countries as well in the early 1900s. Just yesterday, it was announced in local news that NVMPD police recruit Andrea Martinez won the Miss Nevada pageant and is now competing to be Miss America 2018 in Atlantic City, NJ. A woman of color, she states her goal of improving police-community relations.

According to the National Center for Women and Policing, women still make up only about 13 percent of police nationally. Women bring a different skill set to the job, are less likely to use force against citizens, and may be less likely to incur complaints. Some research shows that women police have not made great progress in attaining supervisory positions within their organizations.

Looking around my undergraduate criminal justice courses, I have as many female as male students. Most of these young women want to go into policing in some capacity (local, federal). How far we've come, how far there still is to go.

Why HBO's Insecure is So Much Better than Girls

The season 2 finale of HBO's show Insecure is approaching this coming Sunday, and I can't wait. 

Image: Issa Rae, creator & star of Insecure; Photo source: http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/enICWEUMsSW/HBO+s+Insecure+Block+Party

Series synopses are described elsewhere (e.g., Wikipedia, HBO.com/Insecure) so I won't go into too much detail other than to say the show is about two young Black women friends in their mid- to late-twenties, and their experiences with careers and co-workers, friendships (with each other and others), dating and sex. Since it's the second HBO show in recent times focusing on the perspectives of young women -- Girls being the other -- mental comparisons are inevitable. 

Insecure is a much, much better show. Here's why.

The writing is better for Insecure. The randomness of the Girls story lines was always irritating, and over the many seasons I kept waiting for it to improve. It never did. I stopped watching halfway through the first episode of the final season and never went back. 

The characters in Insecure are more well-rounded, focusing on multiple life issues. Unlike Girls' Hannah, Marnie et al., Issa and Molly don't just focus on guys. Molly (played by Yvonne Orji) has to navigate being one of the few African Americans working at a largely White and male law firm. While issues of race, identity, and professional recognition come into play, Molly's experiences transcend race, IMHO, and speak to all women. Fast forward ten years, one can imagine Molly navigating work, marriage, motherhood, childcare arrangements, and making partner at the firm -- as many women (Black, White, Hispanic, Asian) similarly do. 

Issa (played by series creator Issa Rae) works for a non-profit after-school program, offering academic and homework assistance, and mentoring to middle school students. Among the ideas put forth are Issa's successes and failures at recruiting snarky adolescents for the program; having to answer questions about her hair, why she's not married, and whether she made the right choice in choosing to work for a non-profit organization; whether her White co-workers are excluding her from meetings and emails; and her financial worries. (In season 2, Issa wrecks her car and doesn't quite have the money to fix it.) These are issues that speak to many young (and not-so-young) adults. In season 1, Issa turns 29 and reflects on whether her life -- professionally, romantically, self-confidence-wise -- is where she wants it to be. This is a universal question that anyone might ask themselves at 29, 39, 49, and beyond. 

By contrast, over the various episodes of Girls, the audience learned a little about the characters' professional ambitions. But never too much. Jessa (played by Jemima Kirke) is studying to be a therapist of some sort, and Adam (Hannah's ex) is paying for it. We never learn anything more about how that goes. (Does she graduate? Land a job?) In fact, the scenario seems more of a lead in for the main point that Jessa stole Hannah's ex-boyfriend! Shoshanna (played by Zosia Mamet) ditched a boyfriend in one season to follow a career opportunity to Japan. This was going well, and Shoshanna seemed to just love it... except that none of that was true. Counter to what her character explains at the beginning of the episode, she doesn't really love it (for reasons that are never made clear); she's terribly lonely; and only wants to return home. In a later episode or season, she becomes some sort of political campaigner for Ray (Alex Karpovsky). Very little is done with the character after that. Throughout the series, various characters let the audience know that Hannah Horvath (played by series creator Lena Dunham) is a great writer. Not that she seems to do much writing or ever really commit to it. 

Despite its name, Girls seems to be mainly focused on the characters' relationships with guys, and even this has a random, meandering feel to it. In one episode, Hannah is headed off for the summer with then-boyfriend Fran (Jake Lacy). Except that she doesn't want to, doesn't love him. Abruptly abandoning him while they make a pit stop (leaving her luggage and all possessions [wallet, phone, etc.] behind), she gets a ride back to the city from Ray, wearing only a bikini. This makes about as much sense as anything else in the show.  

Girls has been criticized for the lack of racial diversity in its casting. Hank Steuver recently wrote in the Washington Post that "[t]he talking we did about Hannah and Marnie in 'Girls' far outweighs the talks we skipped about Issa and Molly in 'Insecure.' Let’s not pretend we don’t know why." I assume he's referring to race, and that Insecure has garnered less attention (if in fact that's the case) because people assume it's a 'Black' show. If so, that's too bad because the show's themes go beyond race and speak to a larger audience. That, plus it's just terrific TV.