And when were you last hoydenish?
Open nomination thread for your favourite hoydens: any woman with a whiff of unconventionality about her!
Yes, stay-at home mums absolutely do count: there’s nothing to stop us being audacious, exuberant, and boisterous in our mothering. And you can count yourself, too, if you’ve done anything particularly hoydenish lately. Here’s me:
The shot above is from my holiday last month – taken up at one of the escarpment lookouts on the eastern edge of the Dorrigo Plateau. Coff’s Harbour is somewhere towards the horizon a little to the northeast of this particular outlook, and Port Macquarie is hidden from view to the southeast by the mountains.
N.B. This post has been edited to improve clarity
Categories: arts & entertainment, Life
In memoriam: Diana Rigg 
100 books by women in 2016 
Sunday Poetry: Agendas by Elaine Gallagher 
Vale David Bowie 
Hoyden About Town 
I know that lookout so, so well. I have spent many an hour in the vicinity, driving sensorially overloaded bairns to calmness. If you ever pass nearby again I’d love to fire up a coffee pot in your honour.
My friday Hoyden is my sister, but a close second is the unrepentantly exuberant, hollerin’ Mary Murphy,judge of So you think you can Dance, a happy refuge for me from Olympic obsession. Never was white noise quite so pleasing to my ear.
I didn’t realise you were nearby, su – I would have definitely dropped you an email and slurped some coffee.
SO, what’s your sister’s particular field of exuberance?
I think the only proper way to enjoy castle viewing is if you’re gonna take photos of yourself as a Princess Warrior.
Sadly, other than the man I married, everyone else who was with us on that date was terribly embarassed and hasn’t spoken to me since.
Pfft. Silly people. (The staff at Linlithgow thought it was great and asked us to come back.)
[admin magic!]
I am loving those pictures.
OMG!
Julia Child was a spy!
That’s hardcore. Can she be all Hoydened up? 🙂
Unfortunately I am very not hoydenish in public. Unless you count actually, ya know being in public for reasons other than offering to let men rape me for money. In which case, I am totally hoydenish! In the DRC women used to have to pay a tax for being in the city/public because it was just assumed that they were prostitutes. Off-topic I know, but I didn’t want anyone to think I was completely nuts with my prostitution reference.
Ooh, I forgot, those are gorgeous photos!
Can I nominate you?
Awesome pictures! I’m with lala. I think you’re totally my Hoyden for the week, tigtog.
I’ve been stuck at work too much lately to do anything especially Hoydenish. Unless beating my previous record on Dr. Mario counts.
1,336,200!
Anna, the Princess Warrior photo is magic – I wouldn’t have been embarrassed to be there, I would have been cheering you on!
aw fisticuffer, sometimes being in public is a hoydenish act, most definitely, especially if you are doing your own thing and not smiling inanely just to make men passers-by feel good about the world.
Tracey – great score!
Thanks for the kind nominations, all. I can’t deny that I hoped you’d like the pics, but I still want to hear about other hoydens.
Oh jeez Aw Fisticuffer, that’s a sobering story!
Gulp.
So my Hoyden, love of my life, person I want to be when I am fully growed up (I guess that’ll happen around 70)…can I have more than one?
Miriam Margolyes comes first every time! Fiesty, funny, spirited, deliberately ‘rude’ – one of those people I desperately want to be ‘best friends forever with’
Germaine Greer for saying shit people don’t want to hear, for defiance, and for recently ripping a reporter a new one for backing off of the obvious fact of our racist and damaging treatment of Indigenous Australians and instead derailing the conversation into a discussion of ‘personal responsibility’.
I could go on forever…
Just for you, FP – I’ve re-opened comments on the FH post for Miriam Margolyes.
The only reason that Greer has not yet been a Friday Hoyden is that I haven’t felt quite able to do her justice. Perhaps I should just set her up one week with a very basic intro and let the Hoydenizens loose to share their favourite Greer moments/readings.
I’d like to give you a 10 for the dismount, but did you stick the landing?
Ha!
I didn’t stumble, does that count? I don’t think I remembered to flourish though.
Look at you! Fantastic!!
I also think your Herculean efforts (I really ought to learn my Greek mythology better so I can have a female in place of Hercules there)over at LP in the face of utter knobheadedness must earn you another nomination! I was having so much fun baiting TH last night, and I almost added another comment to say “Gee, tigtog, it sounds like you might *know what you’re talking about* there”…gaargh! He’s SOOoooooo freaking dismissive and condescending.
It’s cool to have a pic of you to associate with all the writing and wonderful fiestiness and knowledge.
Hmm Greer…yes, I’ve caught whiffs of things she’s said that make me go “WTF??” but…she’s so very very fiesty!!! And those Steve Irwin comments were comedy gold! (I did like Irwin and my son even has a talking Irwin doll, but those were valid points she made). Occassionally my best friend encourages me by telling me I could become the next Greer. I don’t believe it for a second being as she’s a whole other level of awesomeness, but secretly it makes me warm and fuzzy to hear her say it anyway. 🙂
OMG, I’m in heaven and am rushing off to read the Miriam Margolyes stuff right this second!
There should be some bonus points for avoiding any cow pats, Tigtog. Nothing specific on my sis – more of a lifetime achievement thing.
I love Greer’s earlier feminist writings (haven’t been able to find Slipshod Sibyls but love the title) though I think she’s wrong about the ‘culture legitimacy’ of female genital mutilation argued in The Whole Woman. She got torn a new one on a daytime UK talkshow by the then editor of Cosmo who obviously had serious issues with (whisper it) the “f” word (feminism). It was quite strange as what Greer was saying made perfect sense to me but it was like no-one in the studio could actually hear what she said. She looked a bit confused herself by the end so I wrote her a letter of support to Warwick Uni where she’s now an English professor and got a really lovely postcard back. Well worthy as a hoyden, I think.
OK, we’ll have Greer as our Friday Hoyden next week – can we hold off on too much discussion of her now? It would be nice to keep it all collected on that thread next Friday.