This Movie… The Suffragettes” is due for release Friday 23rd October 2015 – TODAY!!! Lets go see the reality, the ugly and celebrate the now, the history, and respect the movement for what it was and the struggles they had to get us to where we are today! NS: I don’t condone the violent measures but do respect the desperation that led to such violence.
TODAY also, I have the pleasure of being a guest speaker on “Putting Your Best Foot Forward (It’s Not all about the shoes!)” to 100 year 10, 11 & 12 girls at a private college here on the Gold Coast. I am so excited that this school (and hopefully more will follow) are implementing this new initiative in putting on a girls conference on “Love being a Girl”. I am in pretty amazing company when it comes to guest speakers on the day and am feeling a little nervous right now! Nerves are good though! Keeps me on my toes. I know once I start talking from the heart then my time will be over in a flash and hopefully in that time I have shared enough with these young ladies to have made an impression or at least given them food for thought. I’ve even done a little powerpoint presentation which I needed to ask a 6 year old to show me how to operate! Technology!!! Ha!
What will I be sharing with these girls today? Well this is how it starts:
“I wouldn’t be satisfied with a life lived solely on the barricades. I reserve my right to be frivolous” Betty Friedan the mother of modern American Feminism
From the Suffragettes to now the way is paved with boots and stilettos that allow us to be as powerful as we are feminine. We don’t need to limit ourselves to being one or the other, WE CAN HAVE IT ALL.
In my allocated time, some of the things I will be covering off include:
- Making A Positive First Impression (You have 10 seconds to own them or lose them)
- Deportment, Poise & Posture
- Informed Introductions
- Polishing your Presence
- Etiquette and Modern Manners
- A Charming Manner
There’s lots more that we will cover but above is the core and given it is the same day as the release of this much anticipated movie “The Suffragettes” and from where the empowerment of women all started I think they will also get a little history lesson on these women and the movement AND of course… I will be talking about Red Lipstick!!! How on earth do you ask, will I bring in the importance of Red Lippy in amongst all that important stuff above???? Well….
Elizabeth Arden was an advocate for women’s rights and in 1912 she marched past her Red Door Salon on Fifth Avenue alongside 15,000 fellow suffragettes, all wearing red lipstick as a symbol of strength. During WWII she developed cosmetics for the women who served in the military.!
Now the Movie… then More Red Lipstick.. Read on…
Starring Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham Carter and Meryl Streep.
Lets add some more Red Lipstick History… Just because!!!
Red lipstick is as en vogue as ever this summer. But did you know that behind that color is a rich history steeped in identity, self-expression, and liberation?
According to Madeleine Marsh, author of “Compacts and Cosmetics,” red lipstick “is in fact more than anything else about female strength.”
Since the dawn of time, women have decorated themselves. Marsh found the first representation of lipstick on an ancient Egyptian papyrus, but red lipstick wasn’t always socially acceptable. During the early 20th century, women who wore red lipstick were seen as prostitutes.
Modern-day makeup really gained popularity after World War I. When the United States invented the metal push-up lipstick tube, cosmetics became more portable and mainstream than ever.
“The first and most famous manifestation of red lipstick was in fact in New York when the suffragettes took to the streets, banded together, and as part of their defiance and fight for the vote, they all wore bright red lipstick,” explains Marsh.
It’s no surprise that lipstick continued to gain popularity after that period, and the accessory came to represent strength during World War II.
“Cosmetics were certainly hard to come across because we were making more important things, but the lipstick that was being made was given names like ‘Fighting Red!’ ‘Patriot Red!’ ‘Grenadier Red!’ And ladies were encouraged to look your best to do your best,” says Marsh. “On one hand lipstick is always being portrayed as about sexuality, but that strong vain and the power of women and the power of presenting yourself in a strong way is always there, too.”
According to Marsh, lipstick fell out of vogue for a time during the 1970s when the modern feminist movement began to take off. Cosmetics were seen as tools of patriarchal oppression.
“But if you think of Rosie the Riveter—there she is, this big butch lady in her overalls with arms like prize winning hams, yet she’s got hennaed hair, red nail varnish, and bright red lipstick,” she says. “You can be a lipstick feminist quite happily.”
But not everyone liked red lipstick. French fashion designer Coco Chanel found it along with red nail polish vulgar, complaining that house guests left stains on her glassware and table linens.
While some might say that cosmetics and lipstick are trivial, Marsh says the symbolism of these products runs deep.
“It’s about much more than that because it shows us what we expect women to be at particular periods,” says Marsh. “During the war, having your lipstick on was part of your fight against the enemy.”
Adolf Hitler also hated the trend and said that it was made from “animal fat rescued from sewage.”
“The Aryan ideal was a pure, un-scrubbed face,” says Marsh. “Visitors to Hitler’s country retreat, lady visitors were actually given a little list of things they must not do: Avoid excessive cosmetics, avoid red lipstick, and on no account ever are they to color their nails.”
Red lipstick is a part of history, but Marsh says don’t count on men, now or then, to pay much attention.
“I think men don’t really notice a lot of the time,” she says. “It really comes down to how you feel about yourself, and that makes you attractive.”
GUESTS:Madeleine Marsh
PRODUCED BY: Megan Quellhorst
EDITORS:T.J. Raphael
Now…. What of the Suffragettes? Who were they are what was the movement about?
The Suffragettes wanted the right for women to vote.
The move for women to have the vote had really started in 1897 when Millicent Fawcett founded the National Union of Women’s Suffrage. “Suffrage” means the right to vote and that is what women wanted – hence its inclusion in Fawcett’s title.
Millicent Fawcett believed in peaceful protest. She felt that any violence or trouble would persuade men that women could not be trusted to have the right to vote. Her game plan was patience and logical arguments. Fawcett argued that women could hold responsible posts in society such as sitting on school boards – but could not be trusted to vote; she argued that if parliament made laws and if women had to obey those laws, then women should be part of the process of making those laws; she argued that as women had to pay taxes as men, they should have the same rights as men and one of her most powerful arguments was that wealthy mistresses of large manors and estates employed gardeners, workmen and labourers who could vote……..but the women could not regardless of their wealth…..
However, Fawcett’s progress was very slow. She converted some of the members of the Labour Representation Committee (soon to be the Labour Party) but most men in Parliament believed that women simply would not understand how Parliament worked and therefore should not take part in the electoral process. This left many women angry and in 1903 the Women’s Social and Political Union was founded by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia. They wanted women to have the right to vote and they were not prepared to wait. The Union became better known as the Suffragettes. Members of the Suffragettes were prepared to use violence to get what they wanted.
In fact, the Suffragettes started off relatively peacefully. It was only in 1905 that the organisation created a stir when Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney interrupted a political meeting in Manchester to ask two Liberal politicians (Winston Churchill and Sir Edward Grey) if they believed women should have the right to vote. Neither man replied. As a result, the two women got out a banner which had on it “Votes for Women” and shouted at the two politicians to answer their questions. Such actions were all but unheard of then when public speakers were usually heard in silence and listened to courteously even if you did not agree with them. Pankhurst and Kenney were thrown out of the meeting and arrested for causing an obstruction and a technical assault on a police officer.
Both women refused to pay a fine preferring to go to prison to highlight the injustice of the system as it was then. Emmeline Pankhurst later wrote in her autobiography that:
The Suffragettes refused to bow to violence. They burned down churches as the Church of England was against what they wanted; they vandalised Oxford Street, apparently breaking all the windows in this famous street; they chained themselves to Buckingham Palace as the Royal Family were seen to be against women having the right to vote; they hired out boats, sailed up the Thames and shouted abuse through loud hailers at Parliament as it sat; others refused to pay their tax. Politicians were attacked as they went to work. Their homes were fire bombed. Golf courses were vandalised. The first decade of Britain in the twentieth century was proving to be violent in the extreme.
Suffragettes were quite happy to go to prison. Here they refused to eat and went on a hunger strike. The government was very concerned that they might die in prison thus giving the movement martyrs. Prison governors were ordered to force feed Suffragettes but this caused a public outcry as forced feeding was traditionally used to feed lunatics as opposed to what were mostly educated women.
The government of Asquith responded with the Cat and Mouse Act. When a Suffragette was sent to prison, it was assumed that she would go on hunger strike as this caused the authorities maximum discomfort. The Cat and Mouse Act allowed the Suffragettes to go on a hunger strike and let them get weaker and weaker. Force feeding was not used. When the Suffragettes were very weak……….they were released from prison. If they died out of prison, this was of no embarrassment to the government. However, they did not die but those who were released were so weak that they could take no part in violent Suffragette struggles. When those who had been arrested and released had regained their strength, they were re-arrested for the most trivial of reason and the whole process started again. This, from the government’s point of view, was a very simple but effective weapon against the Suffragettes.
As a result, the Suffragettes became more extreme. The most famous act associated with the Suffragettes was at the June 1913 Derby when Emily Wilding Davison threw herself under the King’s horse, Anmer, as it rounded Tattenham Corner. She was killed and the Suffragettes had their first martyr. However, her actions probably did more harm than good to the cause as she was a highly educated woman. Many men asked the simple question – if this is what an educated woman does, what might a lesser educated woman do? How can they possibly be given the right to vote?
It is possible that the Suffragettes would have become more violent. They had, after all, in February 1913 blown up part of David Lloyd George’s house – he was probably Britain’s most famous politician at this time and he was thought to be a supporter of the right for women to have the vote!
However, Britain and Europe was plunged into World War One in August 1914. In a display of patriotism,Emmeline Pankhurst instructed the Suffragettes to stop their campaign of violence and support in every way the government and its war effort. The work done by women in the First World War was to be vital for Britain’s war effort. In 1918, the Representation of the People Act was passed by Parliament.
Timeline of right to vote for women:
- 1893 New Zealand
- 1902 Australia1
- 1920 United States
- 1928 Britain, Ireland
- NOTE: One country does not allow their people, male or female, to vote: Brunei.
- Australian women, with the exception of aboriginal women, won the vote in 1902. Aborigines, male and female, did not have the right to vote until 1962.
- Women in Saudi Arabia will not be eligible to vote until 2015.
Credits:
Photos by Creative Commons
Movie trailer. Courtesy of You Tube – The Movie Official Trailer (Movieclips Trailers)
Lipstick History by thetakeaway.org
Suffragettes History by: The History Learning Site: historylearningsite.co.uk/
Timeline: Wikipedia
Here’s something to think about: in the movie of Mary Poppins, Mrs Banks needs a nanny to look after her children BECAUSE she’s a suffragette and is out marching for votes for women!
YES!! absolutely thought provoking …