[UnHerd] If history teaches us anything, it’s that you can’t be a warrior woman without some guy wondering what you’d look like going commando. According to Herodotus, after the Greeks defeated the Amazons, they loaded three ships with captives — only for the Amazon women to kill the ships’ crews and make landfall on coast of Scythia.
There they first fought with local Scythian men, only for those men to set up camp near them, creating an uneasy standoff. Herodotus recounts how the tension broke when a Scythian man met a lone Amazon woman near the camp, and sparks flew. After this, the two groups came together to form couples — though, even then, the Amazons refused to become Scythian village women, insisting their newfound husbands instead adopt their nomadic, pillaging ways.
The combustible cocktail of militarism and female sex appeal causes meltdowns to this day. Recently, news that 22-year-old US Air Force Second Lieutenant Madison Marsh had become the first active-duty soldier to be crowned Miss America caused instant media pandemonium: "She’s beauty, she’s grace, she’s bad to the bone," said NewsNation.
Marsh is a serving servicewoman, accomplished martial artist, and Harvard graduate student as well as beauty queen: not so much "bad to the bone" as a genuinely impressive avatar of modern American respectability. Even so, does her victory really represent another step in the long march toward women being able to Have It All? In a very limited sense, perhaps. And if recent mutterings from the MoD about reintroducing conscription come with a side order of liberal feminism, perhaps the young women of Britain will soon be obliged to Have It All too, whether they want to or not. |
