Discovering a Childhood Hero and When I became a Feminist

In the third grade (it might have been the fourth--I had the same teacher for both years) my teacher lead the class into the library.  There were dozens of biographies sitting out on one of the tables.  "Pick one," she said, "and write a paper on it."  (We also had to make a diorama.)

My eight or nine-year old eyes scanned the books.  George Washington.  Abraham Lincoln--all the big name presidents.  The Wright Brothers and Frederick Douglass.  The first book I was drawn to was Amelia Earhart, but I already knew everything about her because I had books on her at home.  I wanted to learn about someone new.

There was only one other woman in the pile for me to choose from.  Two books out of pretty much the entire 3rd grade reading level biography section of my school library.  I wanted to read about a girl and I wanted more of a choice than two freaking books.  If only I had been a braver, more vocal child I could have called out the librarian on this injustice.  Instead I took the one other girl from the pile, and I started to read.

Damn, she was fucking amazing.

Nellie Bly was a news reporter in the in the late 1800's and beyond.  At the age of 16, after writing a scathing letter to the editor over a mysogynistic column in the Pittsburgh Dispatch, she was invited by the editor to write her own piece for the paper.  This launched her into a career in journalism.

Her early work focused on the plights of women, but her male editors kept pushing her onto the fashion pages. She revolted by, at age 21, becoming a foreign correspondent.  She spent six months in Mexico before she had to flee the country over fear of arrest after speaking up for the rights of a jailed Mexican reporter.

She is most famous for two stunts.  In 1887 she feigned insanity and got herself locked up in a mental institution with the intent to expose the barbarous conditions there.  She spent ten days locked up, and the media hype, her articles, and her book on the experience, led to a complete reformation of how the mentally ill were treated.

Her second biggest accomplishment turned her into a star.  She had trading cards and a board game. A board game.  She vowed to travel around the world in less than 80 days, beating the time in the Jules Verne book.  She made it back to New York in 72 days, traveling alone for most of her trip.

She married in 1895 and retired from journalism, running her husband's company, the Iron Clad Manufacturing Co., after his death nine years later. The company ultimately failed. (I've read that it was her fault, but according to Wikipedia it was due to employees embezzeling money.)  During that time she was considered a well-known woman industrialist and she patented several designs of her own making.

In the early teens she went back to reporting and covered the Women's Suffrage Movement and WWI.  She died in 1922 at age 57 from pnemonia.

Nellie Bly blew my child-mind.  She was so cool, she was so strong and brave.  I wanted to be just like her.  She joined the ranks of my other childhood heroes, the aforementioned Amelia Earhart and Laura Ingalls Wilder.  There were no men on my list.  I admired these pioneering women because of their daring and strength, probably something I didn't feel I had a lot of as a severely introverted child.

It's interesting that two out of three of my childhood heroes were writers even though I didn't even consider becoming a writer myself until the age of twelve.  I'm not sure when I learned what a feminist was, and because I was in the Girl Scouts and had an awesome mom I always knew that girls could do anything, but I know I became a feminist that day I got pissed off at my lack of choices and chose Nellie Bly out of that pile of men.

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