It's not too late to recognize Women’s History Month. Phew! I didn’t know it began locally in Sonoma County in 1978, first as Women’s History Week, which included International Women’s Day, March 8, 1911. Seventy six years later, Congress gave us the whole 30 days!
Once I got the history of Women’s History Month locked down, I got a little curious about what finally tipped Congress over the edge. When I say “little,” like every revered historian, I turned to pop culture for the answers. That’s when the month long expansion started to make sense. For a few years, Cyndi Lauper had been telling the world "girls just want to have fun," and then in 1987 Madonna dropped "Open Your Heart," which, if you remember the video, involved a stripper, a little boy and a trench coat.
With this kind of popular messaging, Congress probably felt they had to step up and do some damage control for the integrity of American women. Fortunately before Whitney Houston’s “I Get So Emotional,” would be blaring out of every speaker from your car to the mall, cementing our fragility. Or maybe it was about something deeper.
I am definitely guilty of not knowing more about the history of women. I didn’t fully appreciate that the life I lived, the freedom to do whatever I wanted, was a direct result of the women who had to fight for everything. Voting. Working. Having a bank account without a husband co-signing like it’s a Costco membership.
In my defense, I have a boy’s name. It’s not short for anything, it’s just Dani. My sister’s name is Toni. Also not short for anything. Growing up, one day I asked my dad, “Are you sorry you And he said, “What do I need boys for? I have you. You do everything a boy would do.”
Which you could read as somewhat feminist. Although I don’t think that’s what we was going for. Regardless, he made it clear, I can do anything a boy can do. I ran with that.
I went to a mostly male college and became a stand up comedian. I never gave much consideration to being a woman. I mostly just thought guys are cute and I’m not one. Also, and forgive the tone shift here, I was molested when I was a girl. Only relevant because my radar has been on since. Nothing like that happened again. Like, nothing. Ever. My #metoo trauma happened when I was eight. And it wasn’t rape, so despite the wreckage, in the last ten years there have been times I thought, “at least I never saw Harvey Weinstein in an open robe.” Not that I didn’t have my near misses. There was the time Cleavon Little invited me to his hotel room. He was hilarious, charming, very handsome, and I still responded with, “Why?”
To his credit, he had no follow-up. Just silence. We hung up. Very respectful!
Then I was invited to a party early in my time in LA in the Hollywood Hills. It felt like every hot girl was there, and every Arab sheikh. I thought the whole vibe there was ridiculous. It was also making me nervous, which inspired me to do a running commentary on all of it. Until one of the men looked me dead in the eye and said, “You talk a lot.”
It suddenly hit me that I was being evaluated for future use, all of us there like cattle at a state fair. I bolted, running down the driveway in stupid heels feeling very…stupid. It wasn’t until years later, reading Heidi Fleiss’s book, that I realized where I’d actually been.
Even after this, I still didn’t spend much time thinking about what it meant to be a “woman.” I never had a corporate job, so I didn’t have to “lean in,” claim my seat at the table, or smile through meetings about upcoming meetings.
It wasn’t until I started working at the Feminist Majority Foundation that the coin finally dropped for me about the protections we need, freedom of choice, pay parity, the list is long. And incomprehensibly growing.
I don’t usually comment about politics. Mine is more of a “Laughter For All” mission. But desperate times call for desperate acts. Hats off to Claire Zetkin, the German woman who launched that first Women’s History Day in 1911. Because at least we have over a century of wind beneath our sails that can’t be destroyed by one administration. I’m reminded of that famous line ad-libbed by Roy Scheider in “Jaws,” when he realizes the magnitude of what he’s up against, we’re gonna need more than a month.
