Mom of Mind of Mully & Female Role Models

Best Experienced With:          Kings of Leon;      Use Somebody

(please right click on the link below to open the suggested background music for this evening’s treatise in a new browser window.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRgFeZa_I48

 

While driving through a parking lot this evening, happened upon a young lady with very unfortunate arm ink and even more unfortunate face metal.  Mostly the face metal directly under her lip.  By “happened upon” her, I mean she almost unwittingly became part of the Thunderbird’s left front quarter panel as she wandered off the curb, sullen faced, looking down at her iThingie.  Most likely she was catching up on Robert Smith from the Cure’s latest Twitter nonsense or looking up a Wiccan ceremony to perform this evening to conjure up even more ennui in her life.

Was unable to take a good photo of the unfortunate under the lip metal so the Mind of Mully crack scene reconstruction crew did the mock up below.  This is a true representation and, as noted, to scale.  Clearly, this young woman does not have a good role model in her universe.  That’s too bad because there as so many wonderful female role models in the world.   Just have to look up from the iThingie once in a while and find the one that best fits your aquarium.  

 

My three sisters were fortunate to have my mother as a role model.  Mom has worked almost every day from 1959 until three hours ago in The Land of Cleve…..that’s EST.  She pursued and attained several degrees, the last one in her late 40’s.  Mom never takes anything too seriously, laughs a lot, has a heart the size of Jupiter, and a brain size that rivals Alaska’s in square footage.  Much like The Dude. Kathy Mulligan abides.  

Seeing that poor young woman with the unfortunate face metal made me ask myself the following question:

“Self, if you had a daughter and that daughter’s mother was a Kardashian, what three non-Kardashian women would you want to be your daughter’s role model?”

Briefly, the hamsters drifted off the wheel to thoughts of Thanksgiving foot races with Bruce Jenner at whatever Kardashian home we rotated Thanksgiving to that year.   Barefoot Thanksgiving foot races after dinner with just me and Mr. Jenner!  Each Thanksgiving we would hobble Bruce Jenner like Annie Wilkes does to Paul Sheldon in Stephen King’s Misery, just to keep it sporting.  My poorly and scantily clad Kardashian would cheer me on as I sprinted,  rueing the day I joined the Kardashian clan.

Back on point.  In a world seemingly dominated by The Man, there are still many wonderful women role models that have said “no mas” to their situation and the plight of women where they are.  Brilliant and strong women that persevered and made a difference for many.  

Here are Mind of Mully’s top three women role models.  Feel free to share these three with your friends or any young woman that has unfortunate face metal or may be contemplating unfortunate face metal because she has not yet found the proper role model.

Benazir Bhutto:  Pakistan

 

If you had nothing to gain and everything to lose……if your assassination was at least eighty percent certain, would you return to a patriarchic country for an election?  What if your father won an election and then was subsequently hung when you were twenty-six and then you yourself were imprisoned time and time again until you went into exile in London.?  Would you return home for an election?  

Benazir Bhutto was the first woman to serve as prime minister in an Islamic country back in the mid-1980’s when she was thirty-five.   35.   Then we have the “yadda yadda” years with a Groundhog Day repetition of imprisonment, threat of death, elected again as prime minister, imprisonment, exile, husband imprisoned, yadda yadda.  You get the picture.

How strong is your will and character to go back to Pakistan in late 2007 for elections?   Knowing some whack job would take you out, which is exactly what happened?   “You can imprison a man, but not an idea. You can exile a man, but not an idea. You can kill a man, but not an idea.”

True, that quote.  Beautiful woman with remarkable strength and convictions.

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf:  Liberia

 

If Haiti is this hemisphere’s example of a Horatio Alger story going horribly wrong and ending after the fourth page, Africa is that Horatio Alger analogy for women.  The home of ritualistic vaginal mutilation, the highest per capita physical abuse of women, and a continent where, even today, rape is used as a warfare tactic is where we find role model number two.  Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.

On January 16, 2006 Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf became the first democratically elected female president of an African nation.  Not just any African nation, but a seriously messed up African nation that had been through decades of ugly civil war where children as young as six were used as soldiers.  Samuel Doe marked Ms. Johnson-Sirleaf for death in the 1980’s and she chose exile in Kenya.  Though Kenyan for a bit of time, she never competed in or won the Boston Marathon.

Fortunately she was then charged with treason and marked for death by crazy dictator man number two, Charles Taylor.  Long story short, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf stayed the course, stayed with her moral and ethical compass and in November, 2005 became the first democratically elected president on that misogynistic continent.  

We will finish up with my favorite, and perhaps one female role model who has fallen by the wayside.   If you want some idea of her strength, rent the 1995 movie Beyond Rangoon.   Good flick. 

Aung San Suu Kyi:  Burma

 

 

Going to go ahead and call it Burma here because I do not recognize the new name, Myanmar……..mostly because Myanmar is only half as fun to say aloud.   Aung San Suu Kyi won the Nobel Prize recipient and the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.  She has never won my coveted Polk Award.

No one gets to see these two awards on her mantel or on a moronic Fox News interview because Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for most of the past twenty years.  Despite the silly fact she won the general election with 59% of the vote in 1990.  Popular elections are overrated and uneeded when the miltary runs the government.   Her husband passed away from cancer without the ability to see her one last time because the junta denied his visit.  What are the odds Aung San Suu Kyi wishes Burma was an oil producing Islamic country?   Peaceful democratic movements seldom work unless lots and lots and lots of dinosaurs died under your country millions and millions of years ago.

Ever the champion of the dispossessed and disenfranchised, Aung San Suu Kyi  owns the following two statements.  “The value systems of those with access to power and of those far removed from such access cannot be the same. The viewpoint of the privileged is unlike that of the underprivileged.”   And, “It cannot be doubted that in most countries today women, in comparison to men, still remain underprivileged.”

 

If you have a long plane ride or if you have a daughter or niece that enjoys reading books by fearless female role models, buy The Voice of Hope.   It’s an engaging and enlightening read.  

Aung San Suu Kyi understands the importance of women as expressed by the widely known United Nations Millennium Development Goals and the very seldom recognized Mind of Mully “HEY…..IT’S ABOUT THE WOMEN AND CHILDREN” goals.  Perhaps we should not have put those goals in all caps.  Most folks do not like shouting.   Good thing it’s a plutocracy up here in The Attic.  LeBron James and Larry Ellison pay for all this Mind of Mully silliness.  Neither is a misogynist. 

If you see some kid with the face gear shown below or if you are a kid with face gear like the face gear shown below, please get over here.   Group hug.   There are plenty of wonderful and magical female role models in the world.  You can not like your mom and still find positive role models in the world.   You can take that silly thing out of your face.\

It’s OK to hate your mom.  My mom found her mom face down drunk in the living room more nights than she found her upright making dinner when she got home from school.   Her father died from cirrhosis of the liver when she was young.  Mom looked elsewhere for role models and took a different path, a path sans face metal or that irresponsible 1960’s hippy crap.   As mentioned earlier, my sisters were fortunate to have Kathleen Mulligan as a role model.  My nieces are just as fortunate to have my sisters as their mothers for exactly the same reason.  

Quo erat demonstradum…………………..

‘

The Mind of Mully

 

While you live it up

I’m off to sleep

Waging war to shake the poet

And the beat