The other day I was at the Lafayette Art and Wine Festival and there it was – again.  A plaque that said “Well behaved women rarely make history.”  We’ve all seen it – on bumper stickers, lapel buttons, greeting cards.  The author of this line is Dr. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, a feminist Mormon with a PhD in History at Harvard.  You can read about her on Wiki where it is stated that her work “has been described as a tribute to the silent work of ordinary people   – an approach that, in her words, aims to “show the interconnection between public events and private experience.”

Sounds like someone I’d like to read more about.  But the wooden plaque that you can buy for $30 at an art festival just bugs the hell out of me.  Why?  Because it doesn’t really mean anything as tossed out in souvenir shops and bumper sticker racks, and it certainly doesn’t seem to reflect what Dr. Ulrich meant to say.  It’s just a trite phrase taken out of context that insinuates to the masses that unless we as women stand up and fight for whatever, we are somehow less of a woman.   What is well behaved? What is history?  And why is that statement any more true about women than about men? Ultimately any human being who “makes history” has had to stretch themselves and others.

And then I get to thinking, if making history means being remembered in a history book for some grand accomplishment, then what are the rest of us even here for?  Are we not all making history by the very nature that we are alive? That we are interacting with other human beings?  Is the woman or man who quietly serves meals in a soup kitchen every day less powerful and influential in the evolution of the world than someone who marches in the streets?  Is humility and grace a bad thing? Am I useless unless my name is in the top 50 most influential women of history?  Just looking at the brief biography of Dr. Ulrich I sense that she would agree with me, that she didn’t mean to suggest the banal inferences that the kitschy crafts evoke.   But there it is, thrown around like a clever call to arms at art fairs and t-shirt shops.

I just don’t see how the use of a brilliant woman’s phrase, taken out of context, moves us forward in any meaningful way.  It just sends a message to women saying “yeah, screw the men, we have to behave badly to get them to regard us.”   It says we are oh so hip without requiring us to do the dirty work of actually trying to make a difference and possibly taking the risk of behaving badly.

My final question right at the moment is: does my challenging the common reference of this phrase qualify me as behaving badly?  And if so, have I made history yet?