Tag Archives: feminism

5 Books about Women Who Are Cooler Than You

While at a flea market last week, I saw the books being sorted into the category “More Interesting Women”. In my mind I automatically made the label say “more interesting women than YOU”. So what female characters do I find more interesting than myself. Well, lets begin…

5. When Everything Changed

This collection of real women’s stories written and collected by Gail Collins is the perfect example of a book full of interesting women. The first story features a woman wearing pants in a courtroom. Can you get more bad ass?

4. I Capture the Castle

This novel by Dodie Smith tells the story of a young girl, Cassandra, as she develops her writing skills in a diary she keeps. Like any young girl she complains of her boring life, but she lives in a castle, making her life way cooler than mine.

3. The Color Purple

Lesbians in the 1930s. Woah! That’s interesting.

2. Zelda

In this biography Nancy Milford tells the life of Zelda Fitzgerald. She was the inspiration for almost every female character F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, so it makes sense that she is super interesting. And reading about Zelda’s transformation from Southern beauty to sad schizophrenic is both unfortunate and engrossing. I have not finished this book yet, but with 75% done I know she is cooler than me.

1. The Women’s Room

I think this book has to be my number one because every woman explored in this book had a story that explains so much about women and their evolution over time. It was remarkable how Marilyn French would delve into minor characters so deeply, telling full back stories that are impossible to forget. Even the most minor character are more interesting than myself.

Well those are the books I could come up with. Have any more to add? Tell me what they are.

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Great Art!

My mom just sent me this link to Edith Vonnegut’s work, daughter of Kurt Vonnegut. She has multiple series all building off of a strong female character. The piece above is entitled Eternal Mopping. Look at her series entitled Domestic Goddess. Here are a few more of her pieces:

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What a book!

Finished The Women’s Room by Marilyn French. The novel follows Mira a woman restricted by her gender through her entire life, but slowly pushing against the bounds that constrain her. As she learns about herself and the world, she meets a variety of woman all experiencing the limitations and often the dangers of being woman. The story begins in the 50s with Mira’s traditional, mind-numbing marriage, and continues concluding in the 70s. Seriously a fantastic book. 

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“As long as I have thought or written at all on politics, I have been in favour of woman suffrage. None of the arguments for or against have any weight with me, except the broad one, which may be thus stated:— ‘All the human inhabitants of any one country should have equal rights and liberties before the law; women are human beings; therefore they should have votes as well as men.’ It matters not to me whether ten millions or only ten claim it—the right and the liberty should exist, even if they do not use it. The term ‘Liberal’ does not apply to those who refuse this natural and indefensible right. Fiat justitia, ruat coelum.”

Alfred Russel Wallace (1909)

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A great article.

isolt found this NYTimes article today on the gender gap of Wikipedia contributors.

“This is about wanting to ensure that the encyclopedia is as good as it could be. The difference between Wikipedia and other editorially created products is that Wikipedians are not professionals, they are only asked to bring what they know.”

– Sue Gardner (executive director of Wikimedia Foundation)

So let’s get to it women! Start adding, start correcting, start creating. It’s time for us to add to the topics that interest us. 

Login and make your account here.

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Mad woMen

Everything in this picture would be totally legal except a woman wearing pants?

If you click on the ‘woman wearing pants’ link it will bring you to an excerpt from Gail Collins’s book When Everything Changed about women not wearing pants. Pretty cool stuff.

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