Women's History Month: real role models

It's March!  March, that lovely month during which the weather in San Antonio turns from "occasionally really cold" to "occasionally really warm."  When flowers no longer need to fear frost, when I begin to never leave home without sunglasses, when the sliding glass door is wide open all day, when we put away our pants and sweaters in favor of shorts and t-shirts until September rolls around--that's March!  It's also the month we celebrate the fifty-one percent of humanity born without a Y chromosome.  You know who I'm talking about.  They're the ones who invented beer (Egyptian priestesses), developed the theory of radioactivity (Marie Curie), founded Rhode Island (Anne Hutchinson), reformed mental institutions (Dorothea Dix), invented the Gothic horror genre (Mary Shelley), championed the cause for equal rights (Ida B. Wells, Sojourner Truth, Jane Addams, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the Grimke sisters), and put cracks in every glass ceiling they came across.

THESE are role models.  Not the actresses on the idiot box who land in the tabloids for wild drinking binges in between seasons.  Not the singing tween sensations who've grown up so fast they missed out on childhood entirely.  Not the women on the covers of Elle and Seventeen, airbrushed to within an inch of their lives.  THESE are role models.  Pioneers.  Trailblazers.  Heads of State.  Suffragists.  Muckrakers.  Scientists.  Mathematicians.  Poets.  Philosophers.  Astronauts.  Scholars.  Philanthropists.

We have no end of awe-inspiring women to look up to and be inspired by.  Our younger sisters, nieces, friends, and daughters share in the gifts of the amazing women who came before us.  It's our job to ensure that the next generation knows that there are far, far better role models for them to emulate outside of Hollywood.  To end the month in style, I'll devote an entry a day to a noteworthy book that celebrates the history -- and the future -- of women in one way or another.