Читать книгу Badass Women Give the Best Advice - Becca Anderson - Страница 13
ОглавлениеIf there’s one thing that’s been on the minds of all badass women for as long as we’ve been around, it’s love. And since wild women have been on the scene right from the very beginning, it’s safe to say that we’ve accumulated a veritable stockpile of wit and wisdom on the subject of amour—both good and bad. Whether the topic at hand is true love, lost love, scandalous love, or even (heaven forbid) unrequited love, we’ve always got a good story or an inspiring motto to share.
What better way to celebrate our past, present, and future than with a book devoted to one of our favorite subjects? There are as many kinds of wild love out there as there are wild women, and that’s certainly something worth honoring. With this in mind, there’s much more to this book than your usual Valentine’s card sentiments (although there’s plenty of that for you true romantics to enjoy). In the chapter that follows, you’ll find reflections on everything from the joys of new love to the heartbreak of divorce, and from lust and sex to loving someone of the same gender. It’s all part of what makes us so wonderfully wild, and it’s all part of this book as well.
So whether you’re in the middle of a lasting romance, starting something new, or even recovering from your last tangle with Cupid’s arrows, there’s a quote here that will speak to you. And with legends and life stories of some of the most famous amorous women included in each chapter, you’ll be inspired as well as entertained. Love has always been a part of our lives; keep embracing its wildness and add your own stories to those that have come before!
Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us, but we can’t strike them all by ourselves.
—Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate
If they substituted the word “Lust” for “Love” in the popular songs, it would come nearer the truth.
—Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
The young habitually mistake lust for love, they’re infested with idealism of all kinds.
—Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.
—Maya Angelou, distinguished poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist
Lust is what keeps you wanting to do it even when you have no desire to be with each other. Love is what makes you want to be with each other even when you have no desire to do it.
—Judith Viorst, journalist and psychoanalytic researcher
Lust is temporary, romance can be nice, but love is the most important thing of all. Because without love, lust and romance will always be short-lived.
—Danielle Steel, bestselling author
I have not changed; I am still the same girl I was fifty years ago and the same young woman I was in the seventies. I still lust for life, I am still ferociously independent, I still crave justice, and I still fall madly in love easily.
—Isabel Allende, noted Chilean-American “magic realism” author
You never lose by loving. You always lose by holding back.
—Barbara De Angelis, author and transformational teacher
Love comes when manipulation stops; when you think more about the other person than about his or her reactions to you. When you dare to reveal yourself fully. When you dare to be vulnerable.
—Dr. Joyce Brothers, psychologist and columnist
Kiss me and you will see how important I am.
—Sylvia Plath, renowned poet and fiction writer
In real love, you want the other person’s good. In romantic love, you want the other person.
—Margaret C. Anderson, literary magazine founder, editor, and publisher
In our minds, love and lust are really separated. It’s hard to find someone that can be kind and you can trust enough to leave your kids with, and isn’t afraid to throw her man up against the wall and lick him from head to toe.
—Tori Amos, radically insightful singer-songwriter
Love at first sight is easy to understand; it’s when two people have been looking at each other for a lifetime that it becomes a miracle.
—Amy Bloom, writer and psychotherapist
There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship.
—Iris Murdoch, Anglo-Irish novelist and philosopher
The only abnormality is the incapacity to love.
—Anais Nin, erotic author extraordinaire
Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly.
—Rose Franken, playwright and author
I’m not good at being alone. Especially at the end of the day when my finances are a mess, my car is falling apart, [and] I can’t find my shoes. That’s when I need a big strong guy to hold me close, so I can look deep into his eyes and blame him.
—Simone Alexander, funny woman who tells it like it is
Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.
—Iris Murdoch, Anglo-Irish novelist and philosopher
I have no patience for women who measure and weigh their love like a country doctor dispensing capsules. If a man is worth loving at all, he is worth loving generously, even recklessly.
—Marie Dressler, stage and screen actress of the silent film and Depression era
You’ll discover that real love is millions of miles past falling in love with anyone or anything. When you make that one effort to feel compassion instead of blame or self-blame, the heart opens again and continues opening.
—Sara Paddison, writer on human potential
…Dreaming that love will save us, solve all our problems, or provide a steady state of bliss or security only keeps us stuck in wishful fantasy, undermining the real power of the love—which is to transform us.
—Bell Hooks, revolutionary author, feminist, and social activist
Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need.
—Mary Baker Eddy, founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist
The greatest science in the word, in heaven and earth, is love.
—Mother Teresa, philanthropic missionary nun
Never let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved.
—Barbara Johnson, feminist literary critic, translator, and scholar
Badass Clare Boothe Luce: Luce Cannon
Clare Boothe Luce, “the woman with the serpent’s tongue,” was the anti-Eleanor Roosevelt, a sort of alternate universe doppelganger who used her razor-sharp wit to oppose while “faintly praising” the First Lady and other unrepentant New Dealers. A virulent Republican and FDR basher, Clare was both a smart and tough cookie, albeit not to everyone’s taste. Clare, however, had a wholly unique way of asserting her woman power. As a young woman, one of her summer jobs during college was dropping feminist tracts out of an airplane for some elderly but unstoppable suffragists. Her next job was writing photo captions for Vogue; there, the renowned beauty quickly ascended to the position of managing editor at Vanity Fair. She was the first woman to hold this post for the glamour glossy and soon proved she could hold her own with the boys, even managing to be welcomed in to their cigarettes and brandy ritual.
Then she met Time and Fortune magnate Henry R. Luce, married, and quit the day job to write plays, starting with the stinker Abide with Me and then surprising everyone with the all-female To the Women, a take-no-prisoners satire of snooty society ladies, which went on to become a very successful movie. Clare became an international cause célèbre with the success of To the Women, penning a few more stage plays including Kiss the Boys Goodbye before she pulled another switcheroo: war correspondent for Life magazine on the battle fronts of Burma, India, and China during the early years of World War II. She even interviewed Madame Chiang Kai-shek and Prime Minister Nehru.
Clare’s next incarnation was as a politician, and she went on the stump, dissing FDR, Winston Churchill, and a herd of other such sacred cows. She stunned everyone with her gift for rhetoric of the biting, stinging sort. Her next move was to run for a seat as one of Connecticut’s representatives in Congress with a very hawkish platform—her slogan was “Let’s Fight a Hard War Instead of a Soft War”—and she campaigned for the rights of women, blacks, and workers. Easily winning a seat, she served for four years and then retired while she was ahead. Clare then took her domestic campaigns abroad, convincing the Italian Prime Minister to give Italian women the vote! Her good relations with Italy garnered a post for Clare as the ambassador to Italy in 1953, becoming the United States’ second woman ambassador and the first woman chief of mission to a major European power. In 1953, she was fourth in the Gallup poll of the most admired women in the world.
Clare became the grande dame of the Grand Old Party from the Goldwater sixties until her death of cancer in 1987. Clare will be best remembered for her quick wit and verbal virtuosity. She was absolutely one of a kind; she never luxuriated in her husband’s great wealth, but instead worked her behind off for many causes and left a legacy of great strides for women in her wake.
Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say “She doesn’t have what it takes.” They will say, “Women don’t have what it takes.”
—Clare Boothe Luce, politician and first U.S. woman in a major post as ambassador
Luce Lips
From the diary Clare kept her psychedelic-inspired musings in when she and hubby Henry dropped acid in 1960: “Capture green bugs for future reference,” “Feel all true paths to glory lead but to the grave,” and “The futility of the search to be someone. Do you hear the drum?”
On Veep Henry Wallace, “His global thinking is, no matter how you slice it, globaloney!”
On Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “Now, I do not for a moment believe that Mr. Roosevelt is a real dictator. Rather, he is a sort of super-duper, highly cultured political boss.”
On Harry Truman, “A gone goose.”
On Eleanor Roosevelt, “No woman in American history has ever so comforted the distressed or so distressed the comfortable.”
On Mississippi senator Theodore Bilbo, “the high muckamuck in America of that muckiest and most vulgar of all modern pagan cults: racism!”
On the environment, “I am bewildered by the paradox presented by a nation that can land on the moon, orbit satellites 190 million miles from earth, but can’t find a way to rid its own landscape of broken-down automobiles.”
Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.
—Ursula K. LeGuin, prize-winning speculative fiction author and poet
I have never met a person whose greatest need was anything other than real, unconditional love…. There is no mistaking love. You feel it in your heart. It is the common fiber of life, the flame that heats our soul, energizes our spirit, and supplies passion to our lives.
—Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, pioneering Swiss-American psychiatrist and writer
As you continue to send out love, the energy returns to you in a regenerating spiral…. As love accumulates, it keeps your system in balance and harmony. Love is the tool, and more love is the end product.
—Sara Paddison, writer on human potential
Where there is great love, there are always miracles.
—Willa Cather, award-winning author known for novels about frontier life
Loves conquers all things except poverty and toothache.
—Mae West, memorable actress, comedian, screenwriter, and sex symbol
Love is like pi—natural, irrational, and VERY important.
—Lisa Hoffman, entrepreneur and nerdy wit
Esteem Yourself!
You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.
—Sharon Salzberg, best-selling author and Buddhist teacher
Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.
—Marilyn Monroe, iconic actress and singer
The man who does not value himself cannot value anything or anyone.
—Ayn Rand, in The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism
For once, you believed in yourself. You believed you were beautiful and so did the rest of the world.
—Sarah Dessen, author of Saint Anything
One of the greatest regrets in life is being what others would want you to be, rather than being yourself.
—Shannon L. Alder, Mormon self-help author
Don’t waste your energy trying to change opinions…. Do your thing, and don’t care if they like it.
—Tina Fey, actress, SNL comedian, writer, and producer
You’re always with yourself, so you might as well enjoy the company.
—Diane Von Furstenberg, Belgian-American fashion designer
To lose confidence in one’s body is to lose confidence in oneself.
—Simone de Beauvoir, intellectual, writer, philosopher, and social theorist
I never loved another person the way I loved myself.
—Mae West, memorable actress, comedian, screenwriter, and sex symbol
I am my own experiment. I am my own work of art.
—Madonna, iconic performer
I don’t entirely approve of some of the things I have done, or am, or have been. But I’m me. God knows, I’m me.
—Elizabeth Taylor, British-American actress and humanitarian
Self-esteem isn’t everything; it’s just that there’s nothing without it.
—Gloria Steinem, journalist, activist, and feminist founder of Ms. Magazine
They are called “SELF-worth” and “SELF-esteem” for a reason…we can’t let others decide what we are worth, that is so dangerous! Empower yourself!
—Jaeda DeWalt, author of Chasing Desdemona
The beauty of a woman must be seen from in her eyes, because that is the doorway to her heart, the place where love resides.
—Audrey Hepburn, piquant actress, dancer, and humanitarian
A charming woman…doesn’t follow the crowd. She is herself.
—Loretta Young, Oscar-winning actress
Every woman is a queen, and we all have different things to offer
—Queen Latifah, royal rap star, actress, talk show host, and TV and record producer
Badass Divinity Oshun: Not Your Grandmother’s Love Goddess
Known in Africa as the Mother of the River, Oshun is the Yoruba goddess of love, sensuality, and beauty. Though she is said to have a fierce temper when crossed, she most often uses her powers for the benefit of mankind. During the creation of the world, the blacksmith Ogun became tired of working and abandoned his tasks, retreating into the forest. Oshun entered the woods to draw him out, dancing and beguiling him with her splendor. Ogun was so inspired by her loveliness that he took up his tools with more skill and power than he had ever shown before.
Oshun is also a deity of courage and determination. In ancient times, humankind rebelled against Olodumare, the Lord of Heaven, and refused to serve him. Enraged Olodumare brought a drought upon the earth, and the people were afflicted with famine. Birds were sent to beg for the Lord’s forgiveness, but none of them was able to fly high enough to reach his house in the sun. Oshun, in the form of a peacock, was the only one able to complete the journey; but by the time she arrived, her beautiful feathers had been burned black as a vulture’s. Moved by her bravery, Olodumare restored her and ended the drought, naming her an honored Messenger of his house. As the embodiment of love, Oshun combines sexual allure and beauty with a strength that can overcome all obstacles.
Love and magic have a great deal in common. They enrich the soul, delight the heart. And they both take practice.
—Nora Roberts, bestselling romance author
Love is the best medicine, and there is more than enough to go around once you open your heart.
—Julie Marie Berman, Emmy-award-winning television actress
He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much.
—Bessie Stanley, writer and poetic author of the famed verse Success
To fall in love is easy, even to remain in it is not difficult; our human loneliness is cause enough. But it is a hard quest worth making to find a comrade through whose steady presence one becomes steadily the person one desires to be.
—Anna Louise Strong, international activist journalist
Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.
—Emily Bronte, poet and author of the classic Wuthering Heights
Love is a force more formidable than any other. It is invisible—it cannot be seen or measured, yet it is powerful enough to transform you in a moment, and to offer you more joy than any material possession could.
—Barbara De Angelis, author and transformational teacher
Infatuation is when you think he’s as sexy as Robert Redford, as smart as Henry Kissinger, as noble as Ralph Nader, as funny as Woody Allen, and as athletic as Jimmy Connors. Love is when you realize that he’s as sexy as Woody Allen, as smart as Jimmy Connors, as funny as Ralph Nader, as athletic as Henry Kissinger and nothing like Robert Redford—but you’ll take him anyway.
—Judith Viorst, journalist and psychoanalytic researcher
Hate leaves ugly scars; love leaves beautiful ones.
—Mignon McLaughlin, journalist and author of The Neurotic’s Notebook and sequels
Love never reasons but profusely gives, like a thoughtless prodigal, it’s all, and trembles lest it has done too little.
—Hannah More, poet, playwright, religious writer, and philanthropist
Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.
—Zora Neale Hurston, novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist
Love is a game that two can play and both win.
—Eva Gabor, Hungarian-born actress, comedian, and singer
Badass Women Who Followed Their Bliss All the Way
Of Cockpits, Cocks and Bulls, and Other “Ladylike” Pursuits
Adalynn (Jonnie) Jonckowski: This card-carrying member of the cowgirl hall of fame has an unusual idea of a good time—hopping on the back of an angry bull and hanging on as long as possible. Called the “Belle of Billings” (Montana), she has repeatedly proved to be the world’s best bull rider. Adalynn’s winning attitude is evidenced here, “Any time you have the freedom to do what you want to do and exercise that freedom, you’re a champ.”
While Jonnie Jonckowski clings to the backs of angry Brahma bulls, Julie Krone has her own wild rides. Petite and determined, Julie Krone was the first female jockey to win the Triple Crown, a race at the Belmont Stakes. She has shown that women can ride the winning race and has $54 million worth of purses to show for it. (Jockeys keep 10 percent of the take, quite a motivator!) Even though Julie says that “times have changed” for women, she will still occasionally be heckled with yells of “Go home, have babies, and do the dishes,” when she loses. The wealthy winner’s final comment: “In a lot of people’s minds, a girl jockey is cute and delicate. With me, what you get is reckless and aggressive.”
Shirley Muldowney, born Belgium Roque, took on one of the last bastions of machodom—drag racing—and came up a winner. She fell in love with cars at the age of fourteen in Schenectady, New York, racing illegally “when the police weren’t looking.” At fifteen, she married mechanic Jack Muldowney, and they became a hot-rodding couple. Shirley put up with enormous hostility from race fans and outright hatred from fellow drivers. In 1965, she became the first woman to operate a top-gas dragster and went on to win seventeen National Hot Rod Association titles, second only to Don Garliz. Queen of the cockpit, Shirley Muldowney became an internationally famous superstar with a critically acclaimed film about her life and achievements, Heart Like a Wheel.
Hockey is certainly no sport for lightweights. For many, taking shots from a bunch of big men with sticks might seem like a risky business, but to French Canadian Manon Rhéaume, it was the sport she loved. She was a goalie for the Atlanta Knights and, as such, is the first woman to have played professional hockey in the men’s leagues. At five feet six and 135 pounds, Manon was slight compared to many of her team members and opponents, but she proved her ability to stop a puck. The world is finally taking note of women’s ability to play this sport overall; in the year 1998, women’s ice hockey became a full medal sport at the Winter Olympics, no small thanks to Manon and others like her.
Then there’s Angela Hernandez, who is surely to be admired for fighting for her right to bullfight in the birthplace of machismo—Spain! In the polyester-laden year 1973, she demanded to be allowed to compete in the male-only zone of the bullring. This caused quite a commotion; how dare she question the 1908 law forbidding women to participate in the sport of horseback bullfighting. Twenty-year-old Angela took her case all the way to the courts, where the Madrid labor court ruled in her favor, allowing her to fight, but only on foot. But threatened males found another way to thwart her—the Ministry of the Interior wouldn’t issue her a license. Would-be torero Angela refused to go quietly into the Seville sunset, loudly contesting her plight, “These damned men. What do they think they are doing? Women fly planes, fight wars, and go on safaris; what’s so different about fighting bulls?”
There’s nothing more freeing than the shackles of love.
—Emma Racine deFleur, witty writer
The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love.
—Margaret Atwood, Canadian literary critic, eco-activist, and author of The Handmaid’s Tale
Nobody has ever measured, even poets, how much a heart can hold.
—Zelda Fitzgerald, novelist, painter, and socialite of the 1920s
Love, like a river, will cut a new path whenever it meets an obstacle.
—Crystal Middlemas, poetic writer
When you love someone, all your saved-up wishes start coming out.
—Elizabeth Bowen, Irish novelist and short story writer
Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it, and it darts away.
—Dorothy Parker, deathless poet, short fiction writer, critic, and satirist of skewering wit
The truth [is] that there is only one terminal dignity—love. And the story of all love is not important—what is important is that one is capable of love. It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity.
—Helen Hayes, prize-winning twentieth century actress
There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.
—George Sand (pen name of Amantine Aurore Dupin), badass nineteenth-century French author
The best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even heard, but must be felt with the heart.
—Helen Keller, author, activist, lecturer, and the first deaf-blind person to earn a B.A.
Each time you love, love as deeply as if it were forever.
—Audre Lorde, award-winning writer, poet, and civil rights activist
The dedicated life is the life worth living. You must give with your whole heart.
—Annie Dillard, author of notable fiction, nonfiction, and poetry
Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some people move our souls to dance. They awaken us to new understanding with the passing whisper of their wisdom. Some people make the sky more beautiful to gaze upon. They stay in our lives for a while, leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never the same.
—Flavia Weedn, prize-winning artist, illustrator, and inspirational author
Romance is the glamour which turns the dust of everyday life into a golden haze.
—Elynor Glyn, daring English novelist and scriptwriter
You will manage to keep a woman in love with you only for as long as you can keep her in love with the person she becomes when she is with you.
—C. JoyBell C., inspirational author
I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart.
—Alice Walker, award-winning author, poet, and activist
I love you—those three words have my life in them.
—Alexandra Feodorovna Romanov, last Empress of Russia, addressing her husband, Nicholas II
We can only learn to love by loving.
—Iris Murdoch, Anglo-Irish novelist and philosopher
Love is the mortar that holds the human structure together.
—Karen Casey, inspiring author
