(Small headed) Women’s history by Jacky Fleming | Interview
In “The Trouble with women” the illustrator Jacky Fleming ironically recounts why the female universe has been cut out from the world’s history.
Female Voices - Women Writers to Remember
by Alessia Pizzi
N.6 - October 2023
A history made by great men and their wives, sisters, lovers, friends, counselors. Or worse, muses. No history for women, to quote the Coen Brothers. Which is confirmed by a very simple theory, supported by famous scientists like Darwin: women's brain is not able to study, to learn, to understand. Consequently, women from the ancient times drawn by Jacky wear tight corsets, cumbersome skirts, but above all they have tiny heads on their shoulders. They are locked in a big ball, the domestic sphere.
The idea of the book
One day Jacky watches a documentary about the art scene in New York in the 1950s. Among many great men, no woman is mentioned. The annoying feeling leads the author to ask Google an unusual question:
Can women be geniuses?
Answers are discouraging. Darwin’s theory about women’s inferiority stands out: it’s proved by a comparison between a list of great men and a list of great women. Obviously in the 1800s it was very simple to draw wrong conclusions. Jacky, two centuries after that, makes the same lists filling out eleven blocknotes. The amount of work is becoming crazy. Here’s the epiphany:
Why did I learn about only a handful of brilliant women when there were so many?
That’s how she gets the idea of realizing The Trouble with Women: the intent is to show how information about women were kept from us, and how they ended up in the “Dustbin of History”.
The book’s message
Anyone can read this book, that’s the great thing about it. It reveals simple and immediate truths for men, women but most of all for schoolchildren, because: “it isn’t like a school lesson, and doesn’t provide the answers, but it makes people curious. Curiosity makes you want to know more.”
Surely Google Search had this effect on Jacky.
“Girls would be inspired (by this book ED), and boys would have a new respect for women. It rattles the foundations that keep inequality looking normal, but lets you laugh.”
The books starts with the phrase Nullius in verba witch means Take nobody's word for it. And it’s not a coincidence.
“The book says the history we learn has been deliberately chosen to reinforce the power of a particular group of men. […].We have to be extra vigilant, and really research carefully before accepting something as true.” “It’s particularly relevant just now with so much ‘fake news’ available online, and Donald Trump stating that anything he doesn’t like is ‘fake’, whilst being only too ready to sway people with propaganda himself.”
Obviously many important women don’t appear in The Trouble with Women but Jacky knows they’re missing and why. They were not excluded because of ignorance. That’s already a big step forward. Everything you’ll read in the book about women’s world is true, except for one page. Guess which one it is!
Gender Gap Issues
When I ask Jacky if her book can be defined feminist she answers with her typical acume: Is the pope Catholic? Her book, she says, is feminist according to her concept of the term, so often discredited. In the author’s opinion feminism is great because it brings to light things which were kept invisible. “It’s a privilege to look at the world differently through someone else’s eyes. […] Women aren’t the only people to be left out of history, or defined by others.”
At school we learn about a few exceptional women, such as Sappho, Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf. But where did all the others end up? Jacky underlines that there are so many websites dedicated to listing women’s achievements, but they often talk about the same people. With the rise of feminist movement and Gender Studies a new curiosity was born about women’s history, so often restricted to the corner of Academic fields and not at all encouraged by schools and media. Gender gap is not over. Today women are able to study and work but they are frequently victims of prejudices and limitations in the job market, in which they are still considered as a “spare part”.
“It was a woman who gave us wifi, afer all, even though we only remember her for being a glamourous filmstar”. (ED Hedy Lamarr)
Are we still “small headed” women? Jacky admits she has been treated like that most of the times because it’s considered “normal”.
“If societies are organized to ensure women can’t achieve as much, or if they do that those achievements are not recognized, then a fundamental belief that women are in some way inferior appears normal. Then it also seems reasonable that it should be men who make the important decisions, or to pay women less. ‘Small-headed woman’ is so naturalized into our cultures that we barely notice it happening. The documentary about the New York art scene would have passed for an ordinary piece of well researched journalism, delivered by an expert in his field. Nobody would particularly have noticed the absence of any women.”
What is certain is that the more we find out female potentiality and what they could conquer throughout the centuries, the harder is to keep women locked in the house. When Darwin affirmed that female gender was inferior, he was surely aware of his influence in a society where women were starting to fight for the right to an equal education and to vote.
With his theories the scientist supported an ancient commonplace, according to which women had to be excluded from public life and used in the domestic sphere as incubators, everlasting uneducated children, a property sold from a father to an husband, and sadly celebrated in identical gravestones: good wife, good daughter.
All this because women had always been viewed as unreliable and unstable. Creatures who should be controlled. Strong enough to strike fear. Then maybe too dangerous?
The final secret
Jacky accepted many different translations of the book title provided that the last word was kept in the same position not to ruin the comic effect. Buy the book, but read it from the beginning. Resist the temptation to find out which is the last mysterious word!
Italian version and original source of my article: https://www.culturamente.it/libri/breve-storia-delle-donne-jacky-fleming-libri-sulle-donne/