Friday Hoyden: Artemis
With Katniss and Merida currently ruling our movie screens, this is a great year for women with a flair for archery. Certainly time, then, to give some love to the prototype arrow-wielding woman, the Greek goddess Artemis.
Friday Hoyden: Grace O’Malley, the Pirate Queen
Grace (Grainne) O’Malley ruled the seas to the west of Ireland in the sixteenth century. It was unheard of for a woman to command ships and lead a clan, but Grace did it, holding the loyalty of her troops for decades.
Understatement OTD: “One of the things we will be looking at urgently is the communications team”
Says the representative of the Argyll and Bute Council in Scotland, whose heavy-handed response streisand-effected a regional scandal into a worldwide media storm about attempts to censor a schoolgirl blogging their school lunches. Now the school lunch menu is being reformed, and the furore helped her raise more than £80,000 for development charity Mary’s Meals. Martha Payne is authentically awesome.
Friday Hoyden: Joanna Russ
Guest post from Tansy Rayner Roberts: Joanna Russ is one of the mighty legends of the science fiction field that everyone needs to know about. As well as writing many important novels and short stories, she was a brutal literary critic, a brilliant academic, an unflinching feminist, and a devastatingly articulate commentator on gender, not only in science fiction but in the history of culture.
Friday Hoyden: Kathrine Switzer
In 1967 an angry race official tried to stop Kathrine Switzer from running the Boston Marathon. He failed, she changed her society.
Friday Hoyden: Emmy Noether
Emmy Noether – the greatest mathematician you have probably never heard of.
Friday Hoyden: Lucy Lawless
Lucy Lawless has to be about the only awesome Kiwi we Australians haven’t unofficially adopted and claimed as our own.
Friday Hoyden: Dora Chance
Dora and Nora Chance (the “Lucky Chances”, naturally) are twins born into post- war London, on the wrong side of the theatrical tracks. Bastard children of a grand Shakespearean actor, Dora and Nora learn to dance to work their passage through a world that makes a great fuss of legitimacy, but likes to have less licit elements on call as well. Dora narrates, and you accompany her giddy passions, frantic hopes and pragmatic compromises.
Friday Hoyden: Madonna
Just like the political press gallery, the showbiz beat reporters love to have a predictable narrative for artists, especially female performers, and she just doesn’t play that game.
Blegging: Name Orlando’s Book
My first book is to be published later this year, and I am still not happy with the title. It is an academic text, but one I hope will have a broader appeal for people interested in the theatre, and the way women are presented on stage.
Friday Hoyden: Marita Cheng, Young Australian of the Year
Marita Cheng is the Young Australian of the Year winner this year. In 2008, early in her undergraduate studies at the University of Melbourne, she founded Robogals, which is an engineering and computing outreach group.
Sunday Singalong: Remembering Etta James
Lots of folks have been playing her ballads or her blues songs of lost love, which are classic Etta, but I especially loved her when she got playful. This is one of my favourite versions of You Can Leave Your Hat On.
Friday Hoydens: Ellyse Perry and Suzie Bates
There’s something about women cricketers… they just can’t confine themselves to one sport, dammit!
BFTP – Friday Hoyden: reading in public
This post is part of our Summer Slowdown repost series, and is revisited in solidarity with 15 year old Reddit user Lunam: comments on the original version of this post in October 2008 showed how often a dim view is taken of women reading in public.
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