Marlene Wagman-Geller - Unabashed Women: The Fascinating Biographies of Bad Girls, Seductresses, Rebels and One-Of-A-Kind Women

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The Fascinating Biographies of
Bad Girls, Seductresses, Rebels,
and One-of-a-Kind Women

Marlene Wagman-Geller

Coral Gables

Copyright 2021 by Marlene Wagman-Geller
Published by Mango Publishing, a division of Mango Publishing
Group, Inc.

Cover Design: Jermaine Lau
Art Direction: Jermaine Lau
Interior Layout: Katia Mena

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Unabashed Women: The Fascinating Biographies of Bad Girls, Seductresses, Rebels, and One-of-a-Kind Women

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication number: 2021936138
ISBN: (print) 978-1-64250-582-5, (ebook) 978-1-64250-583-2
BISAC category code BIO022000, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Women

Printed in the United States of America

To unabashed women everywhere.
And to my special women: My mother, Gilda Wagman, my daughter, Jordanna Geller, and my friend Jamie Lovett the wind beneath my writers wings.

Well-behaved women seldom make history.

Laurel Ulrich (1976)

I decided long ago/Never to walk in anyones shadow.

Linda Cree and Michael Masser (1977)

Table of Contents

Anyones Shadow

What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice/And all things nice/Thats what little girls are made of. When Mother Goose penned her rhyme, little did she realize the heavy load she had placed on female shoulders. To be nice is daunting. And what of those girls who shirked the role of Ms. Goody Two-Shoes? In every age, in every clime, there are those whose DNA does not contain the Polly anna gene.

Ever since Eve, the original bad girl, went against Gods directive against eating from the Tree of Good and Evil, wayward women have had a bad rap. The wages of sin was an angel with a flaming sword who ensured eternal banishment from Paradise. Eves punishmentas well as that of all her female descendantswas to give birth in great pain. As penance for his participation in Original Sin, her partnerand his male descendantshad to work by the sweat of their brow. No more free rides, thanks to the lady fashioned from Adams rib. From this biblical couple, the male-female power structure was born.

Throughout the first millennium, the standard of womanhood was to exercise modesty, especially in the sexual arena. The Old Testament admonishes, Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies. Revered role models remain Madonna (not the Material Girl) and Mother Teresahard shoes to fill. In the Medieval era, when the knights rode off on crusades, to ensure their wives didnt play while their hubbies were away, they devised the chastity belt. After all, trust can only go so far. While brides wear white to signify virginity, a prize surrendered on the wedding night, males are allowed free rein to their libido due to the mindset of boys will be boys. The male adage for sexual conquesta notch on the crotchis a much-vaunted trophy. A woman equally liberal with her body is viewed as a slut. Rebel girls viewed the legs crossed mindset as another way for the patriarchy to clip th eir wings.

Language is symptomatic of societal mores, and English has a plethora of words to describe women who do not walk the prescribed gauntlet. The most derogatory put-downs for those ladies who do not subscribe to the time-honored double standard for sexual transgressions: whore, cougar, frigid (feel free to add your own)all which have no male equivalent. And no matter how much one peruses Websters , there is no male counterpart for wallflower, or shrinking violet. Other searing adjectives to describe pushy broads: sassy, shrill, spinster, hag, ditzy, bitch, hormonal. And we have a newer term to describe a bride who places unreasonable demands on her wedding party: Bridezilla. No one seems to feel the need to use the male equivalent of G roomzilla.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on perspective), there have always been badass broads. In Aristophaness 411 BC play Lysistrata, the titular heroine arranged for wives to withhold sex until their soldier husbands ended the Peloponnesian War. As a further measure, the ladies took over the Acropolis, which halted access to the money funding the feud between Athens and Sparta. Another feisty fictional femme was the lady whose name manifested her fiery spirit: Scarlett OHara, from Margaret Mitchells Gone with the Wind . Unlike most women in the antebellum South, Scarlett was brash, bratty, and ballsy. She is far more memorable than her archrival Melanie Hamilton Wilkes, the embodiment of virtuethe quintessential good girl. Another woman who gave no fucks was Lisbeth Salander, the tattooed, chain-smoking anti-heroine who favored cour tier Goth.

Non-shrinking-violets go through life with upraised middle finger, with an ever-ready retort. Much to the chagrin of those who looked askance at gender equality, there were always women who did not abide by the premise that, when playing a game, everyone accepts the same rules. And for their daring to listen to a different drummer, for their audacity of treading the road less traveled, condemnation was swift. Society put them in pillories of social ostracism, marking them with figurative scarle t letters.

Liberal ladies often use ink as a means to fight against a hostile status quo that does its utmost to keep different femmes in line. Dorothy Parker, the Jewish girl from Jersey, had no tolerance for the constraints of a Victorian mindset. As a prolific drinker in the era of Prohibition, she smoked, and slept with whomever caught her fancy. In the 1920s, a decade when the Ku Klux Klan had its largest membership, she wrote the short story Arrangement in Black and White to skewer racism. Her take-me-or-leave-me philosophy (which expression summed up her romantic history) can be explained in Parkers words, But I shall stay the way I am/Because I do not giv e a damn.