Thursday, March 04, 2004
 
Ten Women in History Who Weren't Important to Anyone But Modern Journalists

MSN has a bit on Ten Women Who Changed the World, and I didn't realize it was getting to be chick history month again. Upon further review, perhaps it's not, since MSN and its content partners iVilliage and/or Lifetime put their logos on this list of important women:
  • Amelia Earhart
  • Eleanor Roosevelt
  • Betty Friedan
  • Shannon Faulkner
  • Anne Morrow Lindbergh
  • Margaret Sanger
  • Elizabeth I
  • Mother Jones
  • Jackie Kennedy Onassis
  • Katherine Graham
:: cough, cough ::

Excuse me? That's the best this particular person could scratch up for women who changed the world? An aviator, the wife of a president, the wife of a president and then the wife of an industrialist, the wife of an aviator, a college student, someone responsible for birth control promotion, a queen, an union organizer, a feminist academic, and a journalist?

This sounds more like Ten Women Who Made A Young Columnist Able to Do A Simple Job She Likes and Sleep with Whomever She Likes on Her Way To Marrying Well. This isn't Ten Women Who Changed History. This is Ten Women Who Enabled Sex and the City.

The only members of the list with which I agree are Elizabeth and maybe, maybe Eleanor Roosevelt. But jeez, if you want to hit women who have changed world history, here's a short list of world-wide (and now dead) heavy hitters from the top of my head:
  • Dido, the original, not the pop singer, you damn kids.
  • Elizabeth I, okay, she was tough.
  • Joan of Arc, kept the French from surrendering and speaking English.
  • Boadicea, who led a people.
  • Cleopatra, who ruled an empire.
  • Mother Theresa, who arguably helped a lot of people.
  • Susanna Rowson, who had the best-selling book in early America, until
  • Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote an abolitionist novel that outsold it.
At least the writer of this piece didn't pick Viola de Lesseps, for crying out loud.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:35 PM
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