Put On Your Big Girl Panties!

"Put on your big girl panties and deal with it." I don't know who said it first - Dept. of Ed. Sec'y Margaret Spellings or country singer Emily Ward (quoting her mother), but whoever it was, good on her. Happy I am to type the words here, recognizing one who risked all manner of meanness and ridicule when she got up one morning, determined not to to drag around a load of gathered skirts and petticoats on her person. Instead,author/editor/reformer Amelia Jenks Bloomer, born this day in 1818, pulled on a pair of pantaloons, bless her heart and courage. Those baggy, big girl pants, ever to be known as "Bloomers,"that might've freed up many a busy woman, never caught on in Amelia's day. Honor her, think of her, when you pull on your jeans, your capri pants, your whatever that allows you to walk freely and deal with whatever life throws at you. And, by the way, on the very day that Amelia Jenks turned one year old,another independent, steely-minded girl child was born: Julia Ward Howe. Speaking of whom, visit this site and read Ms. Julia's Mother's Day Proclamation (1870): http://www.peace.ca/mothersdayproclamation.htm

"Arise then, women of this day." Put 'em on and deal.