Holy cow. Amelia Earhart was beautiful.

[Fran Kubelik]

...in a very shy, kind of butch (for the 30s!!) way.
I think I have a crush.

[yellowdogintexas]

1. yes she was. nt

[Blue-Jay]

2. I'd hit that.

:D

[Fran Kubelik]

4. .

[La Lioness Priyanka]

3. yes.

:P

[Fran Kubelik]

5. I think Eleanor thought so too.

Look how giddy she looks holding Amelia's arm. :)

[Zuiderelle]

6. It's always been very apparent to me that Eleanor had a crush on her...

if not something more. Very sweet picture there!

[Lex]

7. Author Willa Cather was 'unconventional' in her day too.

[Fran Kubelik]

8. Yes, great author, short hair...

Not sure I would agree that she possesses the physical beauty that Amelia did - if that's what you're saying. If you're just pointing out other early-20th century rumored lesbians, well...yep. There you go.

[Lex]

9. "kind of butch (for the 30s!!)"

is what I was pointing out

don't know about the lesbian thing or not

[Fran Kubelik]

11. ah ha.

Got it. Yeah, Willa was definitely butch.

[HughBeaumont]

29. Willa was indeed a lesbian.

As a student at the University of Nebraska in the early 1890s, Cather sometimes used the masculine nickname "William" and wore masculine clothes. <5> A photograph in the University of Nebraska archives depicts Cather, "her hair shingled, at a time when long hair was fashionable, and dressed boyishly." <6>

Throughout Cather's adult life, her most significant relationships were with women. These included her college friend Louise Pound; the Pittsburgh socialite Isabelle McClung, with whom Cather traveled to Europe; opera singer Olive Fremstad; and most notably, the editor Edith Lewis.

Cather's romance with Lewis began in the early 1900s. The two women lived together in a series of apartments in New York City from 1912 until the writer's death in 1947. From 1913 to 1927, Cather and Lewis had lived at No. 5 Bank Street in Greenwich Village. They had to move as the apartment was to be taken down during construction of the Seventh Avenue subway line.<7> Lewis served as the literary trustee for the Cather estate.<8>


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willa_Cather

[Arugula Latte]

20. Have you ever read My Antonia by Willa Cather?

The narrator is male and describes female beauty in great detail and in obviously sexual terms.

[Lex]

23. Absolutely.

I've read O Pioneers, My Antonia, One of Ours, A Lost Lady, The Professor's House, and Death Comes for the Archbishop.

I adore her, and I really connect with the way she writes.

[Sanity Claws]

10. Were people more tolerant of unconventional women in the 30s?

I came of age in the 70s and 80s. Despite the liberation movement, society was quite intolerant of unconventional women (and men). Feminism somehow became a dirty word in that time period.
Did people just turn a blind eye back then to unconventionality or did history simply not record the societal disdain?

[Fran Kubelik]

12. You know, I don't know.

I wonder if it is just that history didn't record the societal disdain.
When I have more time I will do some digging on that. What a really good question!

[tigereye]

14. I think unconventional women - authors, scholars, artists, musicians, etc

were more accepted in the upper levels of society - and probably more in Europe than here.


Think O'Keefe, Gertrude Stein, the jazz and other types of artists who migrated to Europe...




Although I think there have always been communities in the US where women who didn't fit the conventional mores/standards/limitations on the time were supported, I think. I think most women then were expected to marry and raise families and ignore their artistic desires or goals. But there were always a number who did not choose that path and fortunately those mores did change over time!

[intheflow]

32. I think she was among the first wave of modern feminism.

The 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote was ratified in 1920. That was the same year Amelia Earhart was first taken on a plane ride; she was 23 and started flying lessons the next year. In the next decade, Margaret Sanger founded the Women's Birth Control League (precursor to Planned Parenthood), Margaret Mead published her revolutionary book about sexuality (Coming of Age in Samoa), Katherine Hepburn won her first Academy Award for playing a woman who rejects marriage in favor of her career, and Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly the Atlantic solo. So while most women were not truly free to be unconventional, woman were beginning to step to the fore of national news and so built the national narrative that eventually led to the feminism of the '60's and '70's.

I agree the word "feminism" became a dirty word in the '70's and '80's (when I also came of age), but I think that was really part of the same cultural backlash that gave us Reagan. After the social and political turbulence of the '60's and '70's, when women, among other disenfranchised groups, criticized the white male power structure, the predominantly white male media promoted
nostalgia for the "simpler" 1950's (think "Happy Days" and "Porky's" and even "Dirty Dancing"). Of course they never recognized it was that "simpler", more restrictive decade that gave rise to the chaos in the '60's and '70's. It's unfortunate that American culture still blacklists the term "feminism." Even many boomer women have given up the idea of reshaping society into a more gender-balanced society in order to excel in "a man's world."

[begin_within]

13. My Dad met both Amelia and Eleanor

My grandparents lived in Chevy Chase, MD and were members of the National Geographic Society and went to all their monthly luncheons. Each event usually had a guest of honor or famous person as a guest speaker. When he was about 14, my Dad went with my grandmother because my grandfather was sick that day. I think it was about 1932 or 1933. The guest that day was Amelia Earhart, and after it was all over my Dad was walking through the corridors with my grandmother, and they came upon Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt having a conversation, and my grandmother introduced my Dad to them, and they had a polite conversation for a minute or two. I don't know what they talked about, but my Dad remembered it and told me about it several times.

[Fran Kubelik]

17. Oh WOW.

That would have been amazing. What a very cool story!

[begin_within]

22. I guess security was much more lax in those days,

because another story he told me was that when he was in high school, they had a scavenger hunt, and one of the items on the list was a piece of White House stationery. So the first place he and his team went was the White House. They drove right up the driveway and rang the bell on the front door. A butler answered and gave them the piece of stationery. A few minutes later when they drove past the White House again, they noticed the gates had been shut. So they won the scavenger hunt, because they were the only team that got the piece of stationery.

[bertha katzenengel]

15. Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.

A line from one of her poems.

My fave is where she's sitting on the running board.

My dad's plane crash is the second I know of where we'll never know exactly what happened.

:hug: Fran

[Fran Kubelik]

18. hey Bertha

:hug:

[Oeditpus Rex]

16. She didn't think so

Ms. Earhart didn't open her mouth when she smiled because of a gap between her front teeth. But part of the reason her husband, publisher G.P. Putnam, sought so much publicity for her was because she was beautiful.

As she climbed into the cockpit for her around-the-world flight (though I can't remember if it was the first attempt, which was aborted after a crash, or the second attempt, on which she was reported missing), the newsreel cameras had to re-shoot the goodbye kiss between her and Putnam. Ms. Earhart was so shy about it, she turned her head and giggled on the first take.

[Fran Kubelik]

19. I read that too.

Made me love her more.

[Orsino]

21. Hmm. In a Brigitte Nielsen/Dolph Lundgren/Peter Weller sort of way.

An odd beauty, but yeah.

[mainegreen]

24. Yup. And she was a quiet warrior too.

She was amazing. Her amazingness went way beyond the 'oooh, wasn't she groundbreaking for a woman.' Screw that. She was groundbreaking period.

[PeaceNikki]

25. She looks tall.

If one can look tall in a photo.

And she is quite stunning.

[nytemare]

26. I think Cate Blanchett or Tilda Swinton would do a good job playing her

I wonder why a good film hasn't been made about her. Such an interesting person.

[sammythecat]

28. Good choices there nytemare.

They all have that plain yet beautiful look.

[nytemare]

30. And, they can pull off being somewhat androgynous.

Amelia was a groundbreaker, and very courageous. She deserves a quality film to be made about her.

[Oeditpus Rex]

31. One has

Diane Keaton played her.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109096/

[nytemare]

34. She is a good actress.

I wonder how that film was.

[Oeditpus Rex]

35. Not bad, especially for teevee

It had solid actors in the three most prominent roles. That helped.

Wasn't much on character development, though it does make the point that Ms. Earhart just wanted to fly airplanes without all of Putnam's folderol, and that she wasn't particularly good at it — in particular, her navigation and radio skills were lacking.

It's an entertaining film, if not especially accurate in all the history. I think I'll watch it again tonight. :)

There's an old one, Flight for Freedom, with Rosalind Russell "not" as Ms. Earhart, Fred MacMurray "not" as Fred Noonan and Herbert Marshall "not" as G.P. Putnam (nudge, nudge) that makes some interesting speculation. I wish to hell it were on DVD or even VHS.

[av8rdave]

27. Oh yea, she was hot

Any red blooded aviator's fantasy

[Akoto]

33. She was certainly much braver than I.

Flying across the Atlantic with only a single propeller to keep you in the air. Aviation technology wasn't exactly mastered in those times, either. Must have been as terrifying an experience as it was exhilarating!