Annie Oakley
Well, I could go to my yoga class, or I could go into work and perform some of the tasks the very thought of which gave me a panic attack yesterday, or, hey! I could sit around and talk to y'all.
Yeah, that'll work.
Friday turned out to be ALL about the gender. After blogging the "Are You Feminine" pamphlet in the morning, I ended up in the evening at a middle school performance of Annie Get Your Gun.
The child's school was putting it on, and it was a major event, which had been being talked up in the school newsletter for weeks, and the child wanted to go. So I said I'd go with him (and by god, he stayed up for the entire three hour extravaganza), and we arrived, and we got candy for the child, and we sat down in the packed Catholic school auditorium, and then the musical started, and I thought, "Oh. Damn."
Cause I'd forgotten completely the plot, which is like an expanded version -- with music! -- of the pamphlet discussed earlier. Annie's a brilliant shot, and well able to provide for a family, on account of being able to shoot squirrels through the eye without damaging their small meat content, but she cannot get The Man of Her Dreams, since you can't, as it turns out, get a man with a gun, and also she dresses "mannishly."
And, oh, doesn't it just progress. She DOES get the man of her dreams, but only after pretending she can't shoot. To which gesture he gallantly responds by pretending he can't shoot, either. So they're happy forever, living in a marriage solidly built on lies and deceit.
Great.
At the intermission, I asked the child, "So. Whatcha think? Is it a good idea to win your true love by pretending you can't shoot, when you're really the finest little sure shot in the world?"
"Yes," he answered, romantically.
"Uh-huh. I see. So, let's approach this from a different angle. Let's pretend your dad's concerned that your mom writes better literary analysis than he does. Should your mom pretend she can't write, in order to make him feel better?"
"NO!" --horrified child here. I could see the foundations of his world shift.
Good. You think about that, darlin'.
Anyway. Annie Get Your Gun has some wonderful music. But it manages to insult both Annie Oakley and Frank Butler. Annie Oakley did NOT pretend she couldn't shoot, in order to assuage Frank Butler's fragile ego. She started out as his assistant in the show; later he was her assistant; they both seem to have been happy with either name listed first on the marquee. He was proud to be married to Little Sure Shot; she insisted on being called, when off-stage, Mrs. Frank Butler. They died within three weeks of each other, after a 44 year marriage.
Interesting people, altogether. Oakley, who thought that women should learn to shoot in self-defense, and taught hundreds of them to do so, wrote to President McKinley once, offering to put together a troop of women sharp shooters for the war with Spain. He didn't take her up on this. Butler, an Irishman renowned for being able to shoot the center spot out of a five of spades, said, of their famous first shooting match, that he'd shot the best he'd ever shot in his life, but that she'd made impossible shots he'd never seen anybody make.
If you google them, you're going to find a lot of trash out there, cause they've gone so far into legend -- and had even in their day -- that they can hardly be extracted.
But they're in there someplace. Much better story than the musical provides. True romance.
Yeah, that'll work.
Friday turned out to be ALL about the gender. After blogging the "Are You Feminine" pamphlet in the morning, I ended up in the evening at a middle school performance of Annie Get Your Gun.
The child's school was putting it on, and it was a major event, which had been being talked up in the school newsletter for weeks, and the child wanted to go. So I said I'd go with him (and by god, he stayed up for the entire three hour extravaganza), and we arrived, and we got candy for the child, and we sat down in the packed Catholic school auditorium, and then the musical started, and I thought, "Oh. Damn."
Cause I'd forgotten completely the plot, which is like an expanded version -- with music! -- of the pamphlet discussed earlier. Annie's a brilliant shot, and well able to provide for a family, on account of being able to shoot squirrels through the eye without damaging their small meat content, but she cannot get The Man of Her Dreams, since you can't, as it turns out, get a man with a gun, and also she dresses "mannishly."
And, oh, doesn't it just progress. She DOES get the man of her dreams, but only after pretending she can't shoot. To which gesture he gallantly responds by pretending he can't shoot, either. So they're happy forever, living in a marriage solidly built on lies and deceit.
Great.
At the intermission, I asked the child, "So. Whatcha think? Is it a good idea to win your true love by pretending you can't shoot, when you're really the finest little sure shot in the world?"
"Yes," he answered, romantically.
"Uh-huh. I see. So, let's approach this from a different angle. Let's pretend your dad's concerned that your mom writes better literary analysis than he does. Should your mom pretend she can't write, in order to make him feel better?"
"NO!" --horrified child here. I could see the foundations of his world shift.
Good. You think about that, darlin'.
Anyway. Annie Get Your Gun has some wonderful music. But it manages to insult both Annie Oakley and Frank Butler. Annie Oakley did NOT pretend she couldn't shoot, in order to assuage Frank Butler's fragile ego. She started out as his assistant in the show; later he was her assistant; they both seem to have been happy with either name listed first on the marquee. He was proud to be married to Little Sure Shot; she insisted on being called, when off-stage, Mrs. Frank Butler. They died within three weeks of each other, after a 44 year marriage.
Interesting people, altogether. Oakley, who thought that women should learn to shoot in self-defense, and taught hundreds of them to do so, wrote to President McKinley once, offering to put together a troop of women sharp shooters for the war with Spain. He didn't take her up on this. Butler, an Irishman renowned for being able to shoot the center spot out of a five of spades, said, of their famous first shooting match, that he'd shot the best he'd ever shot in his life, but that she'd made impossible shots he'd never seen anybody make.
If you google them, you're going to find a lot of trash out there, cause they've gone so far into legend -- and had even in their day -- that they can hardly be extracted.
But they're in there someplace. Much better story than the musical provides. True romance.
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