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Saturday, October 14, 2017

Liberated Women by Anna Jeffrey

Lately, I've seen a few Victorian-era photos online of what I call "liberated women."  So I started thinking about women who bucked society back when doing it had a price.

Lotta Crabtree.
Take this woman, for example. Her name is Lotta Crabtree and she smoked cigars. She was a major singer-actress in the 1880s, earning up to $5,000 a week. When she died in 1924, she left an estate worth $4 million. She donated a fountain to San Francisco at Market & Kearny where people meet to mark the anniversary of the 1906 earthquake.

Can you imagine being a cigar-smoking gal in 1885? Can you imagine the mountains she had to climb to make $4 million on her own?


Pearl Hart



Or this one. This is Pearl Hart who served two years for armed stagecoach robbery in an all-male prison. After two years, she became pregnant and was pardoned. ..... Who says history ain't interesting? Click the Wikipedia link below to read about her.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_Hart

Annie Oakley





Then there's Annie Oakley who famously said, "I ain't afraid to love a man. I ain't afraid to shoot him, either." I doubt if anybody argued with her.



I think about the women who built tanks and airplanes during WWII, the nurses who stormed the beaches alongside the soldiers, the ones who were POWs in the Philippines. I think about the first woman who had the nerve to smoke in public.

Nowadays, more women than men are graduating from college. Women are doctors and lawyers; prime ministers and senators; stock brokers, war fighters and race car drivers.They own companies; they run companies. They run countries. Just about anything a woman imagines for herself in our society, she can do.

So how hard is it to be a "liberated woman" these days?" Mostly, youhave to just declare yourself "liberated" and most people will say okay and leave you alone. You don't  have to do one thing that's noteworthy. Then, why are they marching and speecifying and moaning about how oppressed they are? 

3 comments:

  1. Another woman who gets an "atta girl, way to go," from me. It was these women who went against the perceived norm who laid the stepping stones for future liberated women.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I have a book that I love UPPITY WOMEN OF THE MEDIEVAL. Uppity women paved the way for us.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Each of us is liberated compared to women of the past. Remember when the only approved career choices for a university woman were teacher or nurse? Still, many women through history have persevered and through luck and cleverness become rich and famous.

    ReplyDelete

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