On Thu, 18 Sep 1997, Luz Guerra wrote:
>
> When I was 10 there were so few female heroes. Wonder Woman, Cat Woman,
> they were more my style than Mary Poppins! Who else was there? Do you
> remember Poison Ivy -- she was an enemy of Batman who, for at least a
> few issues in the mid-sixties, had her own "short" after the cover story
> in Batman comics.
>
I don't really remember Poison Ivy. But - who else was there? Gloria
Brooks McNye in Heinlein's "Delilah and the Space Rigger", written in
1946, who got her job under an equal-opportunity law passed in Mundania
in 1964, and proceeded to kick chauvinist ass. Dr Mary Lou Martin in
Heinlein's "Let There Be Light". Both women, I think, were classmates of
MASH's Margaret Houlihan, who I started to really like once she got a
commanding officer she could respect and stopped trying to run the camp
all be herself with that weak reed Frank Burns as her front man.
The best role models around were out of books from the early 1900s
on - Lost and GI Generation women. And don't forget - the latter might
include Edith Bunker and Mom, but it also included Hot Lips, Rosie the
Riveter, and what career women were around until the next wave of
feminism.
Patricia (Pat) Mathews
mathews@unm.edu
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