A grandmother’s hands. A grandmother’s hands are old and worn. The skin is spotted with circles from days spent under the brilliant sun. They are rough and calloused from hours bent over a patch of dirt, ripping out weeds with a force that shakes the frail body. The skin flaps loosely over the slender fingers, protruding bones, and knobby knuckles. Pale flashes of flesh as she rips into the ground. A rotating tremble as she blends the buttery mix of wet ingredients. Blinding dance of wool and skin as she darts silver needles in and out, clicking and twirling.
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The word and works of God is quite clear, that women were made to be wives or prostitutes.
-Martin Luther
The year is 1664. The Gazzetta di Mantova is published in Mantua, Italy, which will one day make it the world’s oldest operating newspaper. Elisabetta Sirani paints “Portia Wounding her Thigh”, in which a woman wields a dagger over her leg, a stark white leg stained with crimson blood. The legend tells us Portia stabbed herself in order to prove to her husband, Brutus, that she was strong enough to hear the secrets of his plot to kill Julius Caesar.
Did her hand tremble, betraying her tranquil smile, before she brought it down ripping into her own flesh? Did it shake, did it quiver? Or, did it act of its own volition, tearing apart membranes and slicing into tendons before the woman even had time to realize what her own hand had done?
At age 17, Elisabetta Sirani’s father fell ill with gout. Sirani sold her works and kept none of the earnings for herself. She supported her parents and sisters and became a renowned artist of the time. Having been taught by a mentor, as academy training was forbidden to women, Sirani later establishes a school for young, female artists in Bologna to help these women break into a world that shuts them out at every opportunity. One year after the completion of “Portia Wounding her Thigh”, Elisabetta will die at the age of 27, cutting short a talented life.
At age 17, I am financially dependent on my parents. I have been given every opportunity to succeed, it seems. I am in an advanced art program, I have every medium and material at my disposal. I have a makeshift studio in the converted playroom of my house. Take these away, and what is left? If I were stripped of all my privilege, how much would I have accomplished? If I too were to die in ten years, what will I have done?
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For me there are only two types of women, goddesses and doormats. -Pablo Picasso
The year is 1940. Frida Kahlo paints Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, a solemn face with blood dripping from a necklace of thorns. Ivory earrings in the shape of hands dangle from her ears, a gift from Picasso. During her life, Kahlo experienced divorce and betrayal, and suffered from polio, spinal malformation, alcoholism, chain-smoking, miscarriage, poor nutrition causing her teeth to fall out (two sets of dentures, one gold and one diamond-studded), infected kidneys, an ulcer, amputation of toes, recurring hand fungus, addiction to painkillers, and a terrible car accident in which a bus pierced through her body, fractured her leg in 11 places, and crushed her foot. She is known as la heroína del dolor, “the heroine of pain,” She fearlessly portrays herself, exposing her battles with deformity, love, and identity. She is neither goddess nor doormat.
I am a white, upper-middle class American. I live in suburbia, with a nice yard and comfortable bed. I go to school each morning, take AP courses and art classes, and spend my afternoons running cross country and playing soccer. I have it good.
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Advantages of Being a Women Artist: Working without pressure of success… Not having to be in shows with men… Having the opportunity to choose between career and motherhood… Getting your picture in art magazines wearing a gorilla suit… -Guerilla Girls
It is 1989, in New York City. Across the world, a lone figure stands before a hoard of metal monsters. They roll over him. They carry on into the center of Tiananmen Square where students ask for freedom. In Germany, the Berlin Wall falls. Two million people in East Berlin are finally free to cross into West Berlin. In America, Ronald Reagan is worshiped by many. The Equal Rights Amendment failed only a few years prior. On the 28th floor of the Chrysler Building, a young female lawyer has just been admonished for wearing a pantsuit in the office.
You are walking along Broadway. A bus grinds to a stop next you. You look over and see the back of a naked woman on a poster. She has no head. A ferocious gorilla mask sits atop the body that is the epitome of delicate, traditional beauty. The poster reads, “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum? Less than 4% of the artists in the Modern Art sections are women, but 76% of the nudes are female.” It is signed by the Guerilla Girls. The Guerilla Girls are five anonymous gorilla-headed women who led an attack on the art world, displaying posters across the city with startling yet witty statements. Would their voices have been heard without the gorilla suits?
I think of those who came before me. I think of the repressed artists that had to fight to gain even an inch on the mountain before them, the ancestors who fought so that today it can almost feel like I don’t need to fight. I am free, I can paint. Elisabetta Sirani. Frida Kahlo. The Guerilla Girls. So many more. Unlike them, I have been given everything.
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A mother’s hands. A mother’s hands are strong and smooth. The skin is just beginning to fold, showing wisdom in the lines of age. They hold a different kind of strength. They wield the pen and fly across the keyboard. They handshake. They drive. They write. They tremble. They still grasp at the hands of the daughter they have not yet lost. The grandmother’s hands are frail yet free. The mother’s hands still show the stress of holding on. They have not yet lost the one thing they are truly afraid to lose. And so, they handshake, they drive, they write, they hold. They hold the fingers that seem so big now, shielding them with their comforting warmth, holding on until the last of the fingers slip away.
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My mother tells me of her early days as a lawyer in New York City, in the late 1980’s.
"So I was working for a law firm that was mostly men, with very few female attorneys, and I wore pant suits, and lawyers, most female lawyers at the time did not wear pant suits. It was risky and a very bold thing to do, because you know, how are people going to react? And there was this one senior partner who was, you know, a bit odd to begin with, but I was in his office one day talking to him, and this other senior female associate comes in, and he says to her, and his name was Doug, and he says, Sandy! What do you think about Wendy’s- pantsuit! And he doesn’t even let her, he goes, I’ll tell you what I think about her pantsuit, I - don’t - like it! And I’m not gonna tell you it’s because I think it’s unprofessional. I don’t like it, because I like to look at her legs, and when she wears pants, I can’t see her legs! That was dear Douglas Lindhurst. Can you imagine anybody saying that these days?”
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A daughter’s hands. A daughter’s hands are supple and bright. They grasp for the things they cannot yet reach. They fail and fall, but continue reaching all the same. A daughter’s hands hold power. They hold the unique trajectory of a life that has not yet been lived. The creases of age and hardship have yet to be drawn across the bare palms. A daughter’s hands inevitably wring free of the mother’s grasp, eager to touch the stars above.
The mother fears this moment of liberation. She knows too well the world her daughter will grow up in, and yet startlingly, not enough.
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My father tells me that when I was a baby standing in my crib before bedtime, he would pump his fist in the air and say girl power! I would raise my fist and say it along with him in my garbled baby voice. I vaguely remember this, unless however, this foggy memory is simply an image conjured from the many times I have heard this anecdote. I don’t think it matters if it is memory at all, it is the remembering that makes it a reality for me.
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Marco! The cool water chills my body, and a slight breeze whispers across my neck. Polo! Back towards the beach a group of kids in Waterworld splash across the sand, running away from the girl whose eyes are closed, stumbling and falling, and then running again. Marco! We are bobbing around the moored sailboats in vibrant yellow PFDs, propelling our bodies forward with our paddles. Today is Fun-Friday, and for class we are canoeless-canoeing.
Paddling herself over to where I float, one of my campers tells me she is not feeling well, and asks if she can go back to the beach and sit on the shore. Days before, she had told me she had an ear infection and could not possibly go swimming. As we piled into canoes she sat on the sand, alone. And so, I do not believe her, yet I tell her yes anyway. As she wades back to the sand, shrinking away from my eyes and my mind, I resume making figure-eights with my campers around the sailboats.
The campers have all filed out of the beach, tagging out and heading to their next skill class. All but one. All but one of the campers slide their sandy feet into sandals or shimmy their sandy toes into socks and sneakers, heading off to fire arrows at targets or play soccer up at Tall Pines. One camper sits on the beach after all the others have gone, a small figure, legs curled tightly against her chest.
Two lifeguards squat next to her, while just behind a cluster of important adults stand talking in serious tones. The lifeguards hand her a water bottle, encouraging her to drink in small sips and breathe in slow breaths. In … and out, they say. In… This girl has just passed out. She has not passed out because of heat or dehydration. And out… She passed out because she has not eaten anything. All day. She has not eaten much all week, and it will be neither the first, nor the last time that she passes out this session. This girl is maybe 14. She is only a few years older than the children splashing around the bay moments earlier playing Marco Polo.
Today is the last day of the session, and so, I expect I will not see her again. Later, as I walk with my cabin to closing campfire, I see her sitting on the side of the path. Two counselors hover over her, as hundreds of kids file past. She has just collapsed, again. I only glimpse her for a second, until her body becomes hidden behind a blurring flash of anonymous faces. Once more I think it is unlikely I will ever speak to her again, ever see her again. When she goes back home, I will still be back at camp, teaching canoeing and leading hikes, making s’mores and playing Marco Polo. Eventually she will likely pass out of my mind altogether. I have already forgotten her name. She will likely keep suffering each day, alone. Her mother will hold her daughter’s hands that feel so unnaturally thin. She will feel her thumb and forefinger wrap so easily around the wrist that has shrunk to a skeletal loss of childhood. It is so frail she fears she might break it. Her fingers will hold the girl’s bones delicately even as she longs to grip them tightly, tight enough to squeeze out all the pain. The mother will be driven mad by her inability to protect her own daughter, the fingers that have so suddenly slipped away.
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The daughter watches. I watch a 200 billion dollar industry market packageable beauty. I watch a modeling industry glorify emaciation. I watch my friends dieting, and I watch those same friends follow their own campers into the bathroom to make sure they do not throw up their lunch. I watch girls faint from hunger. I watch girls who when they look at their reflection do not see reality.
The daughter also listens. She has been told many things.
I have been told I must always be careful. I have been told that nearly one fifth of freshman women on college campuses are sexually assaulted. I know I must always watch my drink. I must always bring it with me when I go to the bathroom. Never leave it alone, never leave a friend to watch it. Never accept an opened drink. Never forget the reality of roofies and date rape. Never forget it could be anyone. Next-door neighbor. Government major. T.V. anchor. L.A. Director.
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I’ve got to use some Tic Tacs, just in case I start kissing her. You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful—I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. -Donald Trump
It is 2017. It is one day after the inauguration of President Trump. Over one million men and women march on Washington and across the world. A bird flies overhead, stretching its wings as it circles through the cool January air. Its beady eyes peer below, and it sees an ocean of pink, a tidal wave of bobbing heads. It hears the reverberations of a distant cacophony. One woman’s steps are lost among the echoing rumble of feet. One woman’s voice becomes lost among the clamor of voices yelling out in a chorus of pitches. The lyrics are different but the song is the same. Their fists are raised into the air, clenching onto posters that demand protection of their rights.
The bird flies overhead, circling, circling. It flies into the clouds and emerges on the other side above a pretty yellow house with large oak trees and rhododendron. Through the panels and into the tiny pink bedroom it travels, where a tiny bald baby rests in the crib. Her fist pumps into the air, and her mouth imitates the sounds of the father’s voice, girl power! The baby’s hand will one day join the union of fists on a cool January morning.
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Any woman can ruin a man’s life. - John Cornyn of Texas, Senate majority whip
It is 2018. The Me Too movement is sweeping across the country, and women are finally speaking up. One woman’s voice is heard, and it is almost enough.
“I believed he was going to rape me, I tried to yell for help. When I did, Brett put his hand over my mouth to stop me from screaming.
“Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter. The uproarious laughter of the two, and their having fun at my expense … I was underneath one of them while the two laughed. Two friends having a really good time together,” says Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.
Yet, any woman can ruin a man’s life.
“Can you show me that Kavanaugh meme again?” I ask.
“...Which one?”
“Which one?”
“Well, could you be more specific? I’ve seen hundreds.”
The image has circulated through the Internet. It shows an image of Kavanaugh as a young man juxtaposed next to a portrait of a young woman with a bad haircut, glasses, and braces. The image is presumed to be young Dr. Ford, yet the photograph is another person entirely. The caption reads, “That does it. He’s innocent.”
The message is clear. The woman is not attractive enough to be a victim of sexual assault. Again, Ford must suffer the sounds of laughter, laughter that echoes back across 36 years, to the night that her life was irrevocably changed. Sexual assault is about power, not appearance. It preys on vulnerability. When sexual assault victims are silenced, their stories discredited, the power dynamic is used once again to harm, creating wounds that when suppressed can fester, slowly poisoning from the inside out, blackening and charring into a twisted black mass.
In 1664 Elisabetta Sirani paints the knife in Portia’s hand.
In 2018 Christine Blasey Ford does not hold the knife, the public does.
Any woman can ruin a man’s life.
At age 15, Ford was the victim of sexual assault. Since that time, she has become a survivor. She is now a psychology professor who has dedicated her life to the study of resilience and post-traumatic growth, the concept that, “you can always recover.”
In light of the Supreme Court nomination, Dr. Ford spoke out, reliving her trauma for a global audience. Now, she is being punished for it. She was forced to hire a security detail and move her home 3,000 miles across the country, uprooting her children and her life. She has been harassed, had her email hacked, been impersonated online, and has received death threats.
“No one believes you. Karma is a bitch and it will be visiting you very very soon,” reads one, "From what I've heard you have 6 months to live, you disgusting slime," reads another.
Any woman can ruin a man’s life.
Christine Blasey Ford, too, is a heroína del dolor, heroine of pain.
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Our mothers, our daughters, our sisters. A young girl who will not eat. A lawyer. A painter. A professor: victim and survivor. All the women who knowingly or unknowingly take part in their experiences - who watch, who listen. Who protest. All the mothers who cannot protect their daughters. All the daughters who cannot protect themselves, who do not realize they must do so in a society that feeds on vulnerability and capitalizes on suffering. We are all heroines of pain.
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