That Takes Ovaries!: Bold Females and Their Brazen Acts - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0609806599 ISBN 13: 9780609806593

Verlag: Crown, 2002

Inhaltsangabe

Having ovaries: unabashed, gutsy, feisty, playful, challenging, full of chutzpah, mettlesome, naughty, victorious, straight from the hip, full-flavored, outrageous, righteous, loving, inspiring, bold as brass, self-assured, self-confident, self-possessed, daring, heroic, wild, wanton, crazy, optimistic, unflappable, pushy, unstoppable, impressive, rebellious, kick-ass, carefree, having moxie, having heart, having no fear . . .

“That takes balls” are words of praise usually reserved for a man who has done something tough, fearless, and maybe a little crazy—someone who pushes the boundaries or breaks a few rules. But when it comes to hotheaded courage, impassioned activism, quirky wisdom, or bold confrontation, women have got what it takes—and then some! That Takes Ovaries! is a lively, fun, and often touching celebration of women and girls doing their thing their way:

* Kathleen, who reduced a would-be burglar to tears by lecturing him about black pride (all while standing in her underwear)
* Elaine, a sky surfer who plunges from airplanes on a 30-inch surfboard
* Rachel, a high school junior who organized 100 high school girls to take on the boys who harassed them
* Denise, a teenage cashier who faced down an irate, gun-wielding gangbanger in an inner-city fast-food joint
* Joani, a public health educator who opened the country’s first women-oriented sex-toys store
* Eva, who made the dangerous, illegal journey from Central America to the United States in order to give her children a better life

Now that takes ovaries!

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Focusing on women’s and girls’ issues, editor Rivka Solomon writes and rabble-rouses on the East Coast.

Aus dem Klappentext

es: unabashed, gutsy, feisty, playful, challenging, full of chutzpah, mettlesome, naughty, victorious, straight from the hip, full-flavored, outrageous, righteous, loving, inspiring, bold as brass, self-assured, self-confident, self-possessed, daring, heroic, wild, wanton, crazy, optimistic, unflappable, pushy, unstoppable, impressive, rebellious, kick-ass, carefree, having moxie, having heart, having no fear . . .

That takes balls are words of praise usually reserved for a man who has done something tough, fearless, and maybe a little crazy someone who pushes the boundaries or breaks a few rules. But when it comes to hotheaded courage, impassioned activism, quirky wisdom, or bold confrontation, women have got what it takes and then some! That Takes Ovaries! is a lively, fun, and often touching celebration of women and girls doing their thing their way:

* Kathleen, who reduced a would-be burglar to tears by lecturing him about black pri

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Introduction

What Is This Book?

That Takes Ovaries! is a collection of women’s and girls’ real-life stories written in their own words. From courageous and smart to outrageous and foolhardy, these accounts capture the breadth of gutsy acts. It is a collection that embraces diversity with the voices of everyday females of many ages and cultural backgrounds, and also includes stories from a few better-known individuals and activists.

This book contains more than sixty first-person narratives representing a wide variety of audacious deeds. It includes accounts of women and girls standing up to a gun-toting gangbanger in a fast-food joint, skysurfing out of airplanes, organizing a hundred high-school girls to take on the boys who harass them, jumping off a moving train to see the Alps, defying abuse in prison, diving into the middle of an ice hockey fight, staging a Lesbian Avengers action inside a conservative think tank, earning a living as a sex writer, making a would-be burglar cry, and telling President Clinton what to do--and having him do it! The stories tell how a fourteen-year-old led a revolt in her synagogue, a poor woman rose out of destitution and prostitution, a passerby confronted a crowd of catcalling men, a public health educator founded the country’s first women-oriented sex-toy store, a peacemaker met with guerilla leaders in a war zone, a girl was the first to wear pants to elementary school in the 1960s, a reporter started a mass movement against brutality toward women in the Middle East, a Catholic schoolteacher snuck in to see the Pope . . . and dozens of other sassy, spirited acts.

That Takes Ovaries! places all its stories, from the seemingly frivolous to the obviously political, under the single umbrella of a larger philosophy: freedom and empowerment. What’s the link between the woman who boldly fights for social justice and the one who boldly has fun? Both are acting powerfully, because each is rejecting preconceived notions of how females “should” behave. Each storyteller is irreverently saying, “No way I’m accepting limits placed on me!”

How Did This Book Come About?

I had a party one night. The guests were more acquaintances than good friends. During the evening a man told a story about a woman who had done a totally brazen thing (though now I can’t remember what). When he finished, I casually remarked, “Well, that took ovaries.” The roomful of people fell silent, and then they burst out laughing, exclaiming “Great phrase!” I was surprised. I’d used the saying often enough in the past, around my buddies, and gotten back only nods, grins, or “Amen to that.” This time, using the expression with the general public, I saw its power.

This phrase is great, I thought after my guests left. Not just fun and funny, it challenged the myth of the passive female--and that made it political. Even more, the phrase reflected a key sentiment behind the latest rising wave of young feminists (the Guerilla Girls, Riot Grrrl, Third Wave, and girls’ movements), that is, the attitude of playful brazenness in the push for gender equality.

Besides all that, I concluded as I flossed before bed, “that takes ovaries” would make a great book title!

By the time I climbed under the covers, I had decided to assemble a collection of ovarian acts where women and girls take charge, and maybe even have fun. I hoped my book-to-be could add to those already coming out that are a platform for girls’ vibrant voices and a celebration of womanly resilience. I envisioned a book that would excite women and men of all ages who want to see their sisters, mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and friends leading empowered lives; mothers and fathers who care about their daughters growing up self-assured and confident; and girls eager to be a part of the growing “girl power” movement. That Takes Ovaries! would be for everyone interested in challenging a culture still wrought with inequality and double standards--everyone hungry for unabashedly powerful females.

Collecting the Stories

The day after my party I whipped up a “call for stories.” I e-mailed the notice to friends and a few listservs (e-mail discussion groups).

That Takes Ovaries!

Seeking submissions of anything YOU have *ever* done--little or big--that was gutsy or audacious. It can be playful, serious, spontaneous, calculated, smart, sexy, and/or an example of leadership. Something that when you think about it today, makes you nod your head with *pride,* or even semi-disbelief, and think, “Wow! I did that!”

Soon my e-mail in-box was full. Not only with cool, gutsy-gal submissions, but also with notes from women and men around the country saying they loved the idea of the book and asking when they could buy it. Apparently the phrase had struck a chord. When women got the e-notice, they were so tickled they promptly sent it to their girlfriends; my call for stories became a popular forwarding item. Before long I was seeing it sent back to me via a number of women’s listservs and e-newsletters to which I subscribed but had not sent the notice. In the end, three hundred stories came in and thousands of women on the Web considered, at least for a moment, their own bravery and brazenness.

Defining Ovaries

What does it mean to have ovaries? If I was going to edit this book, I’d need a definition.

First, I tried to define the male equivalent: having balls. That takes balls, I surmised, is what you say about a man who has done something rather fearless, a guy we might envy for having the confidence to push the boundaries or break the rules. Actually, I thought, these were great characteristics for any person to have . . . but they’d be especially helpful to a woman. She’d need just these traits to live fully in a world that often tries to limit her. So even as I kept an open mind regarding defining ovaries, I also kept this balls description in the back of my head. Then I set about reading the stories. With each one, I gained a clearer picture of what other women thought the expression that takes ovaries meant. I merged the contributors’ ideas with my own until I reached a working definition.

Something takes ovaries, I concluded, when it is bold, gutsy, brazen, outrageous, audacious, courageous, or in-your-face. Combined, this string of words encompasses the spectrum of what having ovaries is about. (For more ovarian synonyms, see the beginning of this book. Just reading it, your inner bite-me grrl grows stronger.) Having ovaries is a catchall phrase. It includes smart, brave, altruistic acts and silly, shocking, impulsive ones. So, it seems, having ovaries isn’t that far from the definition of having balls--except that we are female.

By adapting the phrase that takes balls to that takes ovaries, we end the myth that equates only the male sex organ with innate power and fearlessness. By adapting the phrase, we claim our inherent strength and courage, too. Hell, we’ve been acting on our strength all along; the only new thing is that now we have a cool expression we can use to brag about it.

The predominant culture may try to socialize girls into believing femaleness and femininity equals not-as-powerful, not-as-bold. (Even common put-downs targeted at guys who act less than macho instill this idea: You have no balls; Don’t be such a girl; and plain old pussy--simultaneously the slang for female genitalia and an insult.) It’s so pervasive, no wonder some girls have to fight to keep from internalizing the notion that being female means being less than.

But the stories I collected show women and girls are actively fighting this view of themselves. In fact, the stories...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Crown
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2002
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0609806599
• ISBN 13: 9780609806593
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 256
• Herausgeber: Solomon Rivka
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland