The Book of Awesome Women is a collection of the life stories of the harbingers of female transformation. Each of the sheroes in this book, and the legions who are not, have done this work. They have released their full energy and, in so doing, changed the world for us by blazing trails, breaking down barriers, and empowering other women to do the same.
Sister-sheroes, suffragists, amazons, and priestess-healers laid the foundations for the post-modern sheroes of today, who are making new strikes in art and letters, the business world, and in the power and sports arenas. From Madeleine Albright, who declared politics “is not a fraternity anymore!” to the courageous televised outing of lesbian Ellen DeGeneres, women are making enormous strides today that should see us to a fabulously feminized twenty-first century. A delightful irony I’ve noticed is that the aforementioned Star Wars Trilogy contains the perfect parallel journey of hero and shero, although that hasn’t seemed to get nearly the air time among all the hype of the incredible international success of this mythical sci-fi series. You will recall that Luke Skywalker has a twin sister, none other than Princess Leia Organa. While Luke was playing with droids and scooting around his planet in jerry-rigged spacecrafts, Princess Leia was masterminding the rebellion against the fascist Darth Vader. Talk about leaving your father’s house!
Tripping the Light Femtastic
This book of sheroes is intended to be a call to action as well, and a challenging exhortation to honor bold and brave women by telling their stories. This book is only the tip of the sheroic iceberg, however. If I had my way, it would never end, because I wanted to include every shero who ever lived. My greatest hope is that it will spark something in you, the reader—who are your personal sheroes? Let me know (see the personal note in the back of the book).
Ethnographer Marina Warner, in her compelling examination of women in fairy and folktales, From the Beast to the Blonde, concludes that words and the wielding of words is the realm of women: “The story itself becomes the weapon of the weaponless. The struggles of women, for example, are not resolved by combat on the whole (one or two Amazon heroines excepted), as the contests of men may bring heroic epic…women’s arts within fairy tales are very marked, and most of them are verbal: riddling, casting spells, conjuring, understanding the tongues of animals, turning words into deeds.” Storytelling is a way of weaving the fabric of consciousness, introducing new strands, new awareness. In this way, the shero stories can, on an archetypal level, shift, transform, and create new reality for ourselves, and, most importantly, for young women and girls. Imagine a neo-Amazonian utopia where every adolescent girl has sky high self-esteem—no Ophelias to revive! Estrogen empowered, full-esteem ahead, and absolutely, unabashedly glorious.
This brings me back to the original point of this storytelling adventure for me. In the beginning was the word. Logos. Sophia. In the new beginning was the word—sheroes! The term women heroes is no longer sufficient for a post patriarchal populace, and the auditory twinning of heroine to the supremely addictive opiate is certainly a turn-off, and reason enough to embrace the mantle of sheroism. For this, I must thank poet shero Maya Angelou, who used the word in a speech and sparked the muse for me. In closing, I want to thank all the women who set the standards and knocked down the walls of oppression, brick by brick. Often, as I researched the lives of these women, I was moved to tears with the realization of what they went through for their magnificent accomplishments—by, among others, Elizabeth Blackwell, who got into medical school on a joke and had the last laugh, by supermodel superwoman Waris Dirie battling against the scourge of female circumcision, and by every working-class shero who demands her due. I dedicate this book to every shero whose story remains untold and whose unquenchable spirit lives on!
Since the fall of Troy, Amazons have never gone out of style. Now, in the new millennium, they have never been hotter! The global phenomenon of Wonder Woman Xena, Warrior Princess and her Amazon sidekick, Gabrielle, is proof positive that Amazons are, once again, ruling the world. Archetypically, Amazons represent aggressiveness on the part of women. (Say, if you can call upon the muse, why can’t you invoke Amazonian courage? And tell me why, for that matter, isn’t there a self-help book for empowering women by “embracing your inner Amazon”?)
The myth of the Amazon nation tells of an all-woman country by the river Thermodon with a very advanced gynocentric government and the finest army on earth. Occasionally, they socialized with the men of other nations for the purpose of begetting children. The fate of the male babies in Amazonia was woeful; they were neutered and enslaved. The ancient historian Diodorus Siculus recorded stories of Amazon military campaigns on swift and well-trained horses, sporting bows, arrows, double-headed axes, and a single breast (they would cut off one breast to be better archers in battle and in order to wear their special shields), with which they conquered a wide swath from Asia Minor to Egypt. Greece and Africa weren’t the only cultures to celebrate womanly valor. Norse mythology has a sort of afterlife Amazon, the Valkyries, “choosers of the slain” from Old Norse culture. Handmaidens of Odin, the Valkyries include Gondul, “she-fowlf”; Skuld; death-bringer Skorn; Brunnhilde, “she who calls out”; Hrist, “storm”; and Thrud, “force,” who ride through the heavens on charging horses getting ready for Ragnarok, the battle marking the end of the world.
These and all other avenging angels and hell-spawned hags break all stereotypes about women as the gentler gender. Epitomizing the “take no prisoners” attitude, these women warriors punched, kicked, stabbed, shot, and charioteered their way to the top. Gorgons, furies, pirate queens, warrior princesses, martial nuns, maenads, gladiatrices, and guerrillas from antiquity to the twenty-first century represent sheroism at its most visceral and thrilling.
Penthesilea: The Real Thing
The daughter of Orithia, Penthesilea was the ruler, along with her sister Hippolyte, of Amazonia, the Bronze Age Amazon nation in an area of the Black Sea. A fierce warrior, Penthesilea’s name means “compelling men to mourn.” During Orithia’s reign, repeated attacks from Greek war parties eroded the borders of their once widespread empire. The nation of Amazonia itself, however, lived in peace; its women warriors were regarded as the most highly skilled soldiers among all the armies of the world. Even the piratical adventurers of myth, the Argonauts, dropped their plans to invade Amazonia when they saw how peaceful and self-sufficient the country was.
Penthesilea was the greatest Amazon of all times. At first, her excellence with weaponry was primarily for the purpose of hunting. When her sister died, falling on Penthesilea’s spear during a hunt, Penthesilea chose to channel her grief and rage into battle. At the request of Queen Hecuba, she liberated the city of Troy, under siege by the Greeks for years. The link between Troy and Amazonia predates Homer and Euripides by centuries, and many scholars believe that Homer adapted his famous story from the Egyptian poetess Phantasia and reoriented it toward the patriarchal tastes of his Greek audience.
Essentially, Penthesilea’s Achilles heel was her desire to lead the attack on Troy, the last Goddess worshiping city-state in the Mediterranean Asia Minor. The legends vary, but the consensus among historians is that Achilles took one look at the powerful and pulchritudinous Penthesilea and fell deeply in love. They battled ruthlessly one-on-one, and the Amazon queen proved to be the only soldier Achilles had ever encountered who was his equal. One version depicts the great Penthesilea taking Achilles’ and dozens of other Greeks’ lives on the battlefield surrounding Troy, only to be confounded when the God Zeus brought Achilles back to life. In this version, she died, but Achilles’ grief was so severe that he killed several of his allies who had mutilated her corpse (in one version he rapes her corpse in a wanton necrophilic lust). Other tellings of the tales have Penthesilea brutally killing the Greek and falling in love with him as his dying eyes lock with hers, then setting upon his corpse and devouring him, in a final act of savage