Respect, we all deserve it and, as women, we often have to demand it. Aretha Franklin taught us that. And our female protagonists, don't they also deserve respect? Absolutely! When they get it, we rejoice. Can you think of a children's book where the heroine rocks feminism so hard that the National Organization for Women sold it on their website? It's The Paper Bag Princess, by Robert Munsch, which has sold over seven million copies since its publication in 1980 and is still going strong.
In this classic, Munsch breaks the stereotype of the princess who must be rescued in order to find her happily ever after. Instead, it is Princess Elizabeth who sets out to rescue Prince Ronald, her betrothed, after he's kidnapped by a dragon that destroys her castle and her clothes. Donning a paper bag, she pursues the dragon to its lair, tricks it, and rescues Ronald, who is ungrateful and insults her appearance. She calls him a bum and breaks off the engagement, delighted to be rid of him. The motto? Girls can rescue themselves, demand respect, and call it out when they are disrespected.
To borrow an old advertising slogan, you've come a long way, baby. While women certainly have a long way to go to achieve equality, we often forget how far we've come. For example, a 17th-century law in Massachusetts declared that women would be subjected to the same treatment as witches if they lured men into marriage via the use of high-heeled shoes. Since then, there have been numerous Supreme Court cases dealing with what women were permitted to wear at work and whether their boss could make them wear make-up (the ruling was they could!). In 1948, the Court upheld a Michigan law prohibiting women from being licensed as bartenders. In 1970, sixty female employees of Newsweek filed a claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that Newsweek had a policy of only allowing men to be reporters. They won their case and were hired. Incredibly, barring women from practicing law wasn't prohibited until 1971, and it wasn't until 1974 that women were able to obtain a credit card without their husband's signature. It took another decade for the courts to rule a husband couldn't unilaterally take out a second mortgage on joint property.
Speaking of property, it wasn't until 1900 that American women had the right to own real property. Did I say women? I meant married women. Prior to that, as Harriet Beecher Stowe explained in 1869: "A married woman can make no contract and hold no property; whatever she inherits or earns becomes at that moment the property of her husband. ... Though he acquired a fortune through her, or though she earn a fortune through her talents, he is the sole master of it, and she cannot draw a penny. ... [I]n the English common law a married woman is nothing at all. She passes out of legal existence."
Think about the poor female authors! A married woman's right to contract with a publisher and control her earnings depended on the state where she and her husband lived.
The full end of the legal subordination of a wife to her husband came in 1981(!) when the Supreme Court held that a Louisiana Head and Master law, which gave sole control of marital property to the husband, was unconstitutional.
Historically, stories about women were framed around what rights women had--or lacked. We all know the familiar trope of the old-timey villain tying the poor woman to the railroad tracks but we don't remember that it's based on a 1914 serial film melodrama called The Perils of Pauline. Per Wikipedia, Pauline was an ambitious young heiress with an independent nature (in the time before women could vote in the United States) and a desire for adventure. The premise of the story was that Pauline's wealthy guardian Sanford Marvin, upon his death, left her inheritance in the care of his secretary, Raymond Owen, until the time of her marriage. Pauline wants to wait a while before marrying her beau, Harry, as her dream is to go out and have adventures then write about them afterward. Owen, hoping to keep the money, tries to turn Pauline's various adventures against her. He hires men to sabotage her plans, or kidnap or murder her, and often Harry ends up coming to her rescue when she is trapped on a cliff or tied up in a house set afire. As the series goes on, she is also shown to be able to extricate herself from various predicaments. Finally, after being trapped on an abandoned ship being used for target practice, Pauline has had enough of adventuring and agrees to marry Harry. Personally, I think it would've been more satisfying for Pauline to keep having adventures.
Which brings me to National Women's Equality Day on August 26th. National Women's Equality Day commemorates the day in 1920 when women were finally guaranteed the right to vote by the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, after fighting for that right for over seventy years. Yes, women are tenacious and we don't back down. We don't need rescuing; we can rescue ourselves, but when we embrace stereotypes of women as weak, helpless, or less capable than men, it's detrimental to all women. Like us, our female protagonists are full-fledged people, capable of making their own decisions, in charge of their own lives. Even Disney caught on to the evolution of the princess from a sleeping beauty who needs a prince's kiss to the magical Elsa who saves her sister from the evil Hans.
So, here's to our sisters, both real and fictional, strong women all!
