In spite of a record number of women legislators in Missouri, the 2023 House of Representatives gathering focused on saying The Pledge of Allegiance and demanding that woman legislators cover their arms.
We seem never to entirely escape from our fear of powerful women. For what would our arms show? Often, much more muscular definition than our mothers’ arms—and I remember a young woman in my family leaving a college rowing team because her shoulders were getting “too big.”
From my point of view, there’s nothing sexy about bare arms, and this addition to an already pretty restrictive code is not to prevent a male legislator from experiencing an embarrassing moment. It’s to protest strength in women.
But time is on the side of enlightenment. I remember when bikinis caused an uproar and now topless or even bottomless swimming is tolerated, if not admired.
And, to cheer myself up, I remember a woman surgeon here describing how she maintained her faith in her own future while battling her way to a degree advising, “Take three deep breaths and imagine where you want to be.”
Which connects to my swiftly concocted answer to a woman in my audience two days ago when Joan Baker and I read to a large group in the community room of the Santa Fe Public Library.
She asked how Margaret Erskine, the narrator and heroine of my historical novel, Taken by Indians maintained her faith in her future during her first hard days with the Shawnee. I referred her back to the first chapter I’d just read, which describes how Margaret strengthened herself for the journey west: carrying buckets of water on a wooden yoke across her shoulders (which must have been broad), mastering (can we say mistressing?) a wayward mare, digging potatoes out of winter hard earth.
Of course it’s not enough. But the outcry raised against this puritanical ruling proves once again that good-hearted men will rise against injustice. And if we go at it together, in the long—very long!—term it will end.
Why do we keep going backward?