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bookgazing) wrote2010-11-12 08:09 am
bookgazing) wrote2010-11-12 08:09 am
My Lovely Horse
I feel like there are never enough fluffy, happy posts here at Bookgazing, so let’s have a totally cheerful, nostalgic Women in Sports post to take us to the weekend. Today I’m going to talk about horses!
as the rest of the series. Yes I was still like that about matching covers when I was twelve.
I know it sounds kind of silly to say that this simple series of books, where girls had crazy adventures with horses taught me BIG THINGS about being a girl, but they really did. I still remember them fondly and not just because they were full of gleaming horses doing cool things like flying changes (when I was younger being able to do the perfect flying change was among one of the super powers I wanted). I never knew I was learning lessons from these books, they were fun and the characters were wonderful and there were so many horses, omg one of them had barrel racing in it... I read them purely because they were fun to read. But when you read that many books with subtle, positive messages you absorb them right into your brain and you come out with some of that good stuff embedded in you. Hopefully this slyly implanted knowledge makes it easier to spot and combat the negative messages about women that are stuffed into other media.
Lessons from ‘The Saddle Club’ (Or If my maths teacher had used horses I would have nailed the long division) :
I learnt that girls friendships could be incredibly strong. Stevie and Carol and Lisa were such great friends. Yay for girls being friends in books. I think that the idea that some women do not learn that women can be friends with women at a young enough age.
(Please note that I do not mean to say that if you are a woman and all your friends are guys you have somehow failed at feminist life and that you should go get some female friends because friendships between women are somehow better. I just think it is important that individual women realise that the rest of the female gender have the potential to be friendly towards women, because women are not intrinsically more ‘insert a negative descriptor here’ towards women than men. To sum up in a sunny, happy way: don’t hate, woman can be nice).
I learnt that girls could be competitive without being huge forces of evil in other girls lives. Stevie, Lisa and Carol were always competing against other horse women and sometimes against each other, but they made it seem so fun, like a way of achieving excellence and being proud of yourself, rather than a way of beating the world and proving yourself to others. I’d say all sports books for teenagers try to teach them about healthy competition, but I think it’s a lesson girls especially need to absorb, because the world will try its best to encourage unhealthy, divisive competition between women. Girls need to be able to see how enjoyable competing can be, because winning is fun and girls should know it’s ok to go out there and strive and win what they want, because again the world will try to convince them this is not how ladies behave. They also need to see how to compete appropriately with other girls. This means competing without slating other girls, despite wanting to win. The girls only spoke badly of other girls when they were hurting the horses through negligence, or bad riding and they tried to be fair, although I admit they might have failed a bunch at being fair about their nemesis Veronica Lake.
I learnt that girls that were capable characters could also be feminine and look after their appearance, but that being feminine and well turned out weren’t the only options for girls. Horse riding novels are really the perfect sport novels to teach this lesson to girls, because you have to get dressed up to compete and you have to pay attention to your horses appearance to impress the judges. At the same time no horse related contest is won on looks alone, as Lisa learns in one adventure where her horse is well turned out, but behaves badly (I swear it’s not as twee as it sounds). The girls spend plenty of time getting messy. One of them is called Stevie and I do love female characters who shorten their names to boy like variations. Stevie was the girl who excelled at dressage, which requires the most rigorous attention to presentation. Complexities – we learn from them.
Most importantly I learnt that sport was for girls. Horse riding was the first sport I ever identified as a positive sport that I might enjoy doing (yeah prescribed, competitive PE will really do in a girls enjoyment of sport, even though it keeps kids healthy). Although I’ve never quite had the cash to take lessons, I’ve been horse riding about five times in my life and do I ever love it! I love to watch it and while I think guys who horse ride are spiffy and I have my favourites, I’m always cheering for the women to win (Ellen Whittaker, Mary King, you kick ass) because I first learnt about horse riding by reading about female characters. Imagine if teenagers all grew up reading about men and women doing every sport, they might start thinking of all sports as women’s sports and men’s sports. They might start a revolution of thinking.
The reason I don’t ride, or do sport right now is not because I think being passionate about sport will make me unfeminine, or doing sport will make me look unfeminine. It’s because I’ve been lazy/can’t afford some of the sports I’d like to do. I like to watch speedway, I took a weight lifting class for about a year and I’m not sheepish about those things because they might make me seem less feminine. I blocked out a decent amount of the ‘sports aren’t for girls’ messages that bombard girls in their teen years because I read books where sport very much was for girls.
I know some people get leery about girls and horses ‘Horses are so girly, there can’t be any of worth in those books can there?’, ‘Don’t horse books just encourage shallow, greedy, pony mad, boy crazy ladies (because for some reason boy crazy and horses are inextricably linked)?’. But I say that noise hurts my ears and this is a happy post, so I’m gonna shut this window now. Novels about horse riding, are novels about girls playing sports and the more of those the better I say.
To make this a super happy, horsey post shall we finish with the happiest horse related song ever? My Lovely Horse makes everyone happier doesn’t it?
I’m still horse mad by the way, so if you have any books about horse women that you’d like to recommend the comments box is wide open.
Horses are pretty.
Seriously (but still happily, tralalalala) books about horse riding were my first real exposure to girls who were serious about sport. I was mad on )The Saddle Club books by Bonnie Bryant, which featured three girls who were friends and loved riding. I read the series totally out of order (unthinkable now) and would grab whatever books I could find, as long as they had the same horseshoe cover design
as the rest of the series. Yes I was still like that about matching covers when I was twelve.
I know it sounds kind of silly to say that this simple series of books, where girls had crazy adventures with horses taught me BIG THINGS about being a girl, but they really did. I still remember them fondly and not just because they were full of gleaming horses doing cool things like flying changes (when I was younger being able to do the perfect flying change was among one of the super powers I wanted). I never knew I was learning lessons from these books, they were fun and the characters were wonderful and there were so many horses, omg one of them had barrel racing in it... I read them purely because they were fun to read. But when you read that many books with subtle, positive messages you absorb them right into your brain and you come out with some of that good stuff embedded in you. Hopefully this slyly implanted knowledge makes it easier to spot and combat the negative messages about women that are stuffed into other media.
Lessons from ‘The Saddle Club’ (Or If my maths teacher had used horses I would have nailed the long division) :
I learnt that girls friendships could be incredibly strong. Stevie and Carol and Lisa were such great friends. Yay for girls being friends in books. I think that the idea that some women do not learn that women can be friends with women at a young enough age.
(Please note that I do not mean to say that if you are a woman and all your friends are guys you have somehow failed at feminist life and that you should go get some female friends because friendships between women are somehow better. I just think it is important that individual women realise that the rest of the female gender have the potential to be friendly towards women, because women are not intrinsically more ‘insert a negative descriptor here’ towards women than men. To sum up in a sunny, happy way: don’t hate, woman can be nice).
I learnt that girls could be competitive without being huge forces of evil in other girls lives. Stevie, Lisa and Carol were always competing against other horse women and sometimes against each other, but they made it seem so fun, like a way of achieving excellence and being proud of yourself, rather than a way of beating the world and proving yourself to others. I’d say all sports books for teenagers try to teach them about healthy competition, but I think it’s a lesson girls especially need to absorb, because the world will try its best to encourage unhealthy, divisive competition between women. Girls need to be able to see how enjoyable competing can be, because winning is fun and girls should know it’s ok to go out there and strive and win what they want, because again the world will try to convince them this is not how ladies behave. They also need to see how to compete appropriately with other girls. This means competing without slating other girls, despite wanting to win. The girls only spoke badly of other girls when they were hurting the horses through negligence, or bad riding and they tried to be fair, although I admit they might have failed a bunch at being fair about their nemesis Veronica Lake.
I learnt that girls that were capable characters could also be feminine and look after their appearance, but that being feminine and well turned out weren’t the only options for girls. Horse riding novels are really the perfect sport novels to teach this lesson to girls, because you have to get dressed up to compete and you have to pay attention to your horses appearance to impress the judges. At the same time no horse related contest is won on looks alone, as Lisa learns in one adventure where her horse is well turned out, but behaves badly (I swear it’s not as twee as it sounds). The girls spend plenty of time getting messy. One of them is called Stevie and I do love female characters who shorten their names to boy like variations. Stevie was the girl who excelled at dressage, which requires the most rigorous attention to presentation. Complexities – we learn from them.
Most importantly I learnt that sport was for girls. Horse riding was the first sport I ever identified as a positive sport that I might enjoy doing (yeah prescribed, competitive PE will really do in a girls enjoyment of sport, even though it keeps kids healthy). Although I’ve never quite had the cash to take lessons, I’ve been horse riding about five times in my life and do I ever love it! I love to watch it and while I think guys who horse ride are spiffy and I have my favourites, I’m always cheering for the women to win (Ellen Whittaker, Mary King, you kick ass) because I first learnt about horse riding by reading about female characters. Imagine if teenagers all grew up reading about men and women doing every sport, they might start thinking of all sports as women’s sports and men’s sports. They might start a revolution of thinking.
The reason I don’t ride, or do sport right now is not because I think being passionate about sport will make me unfeminine, or doing sport will make me look unfeminine. It’s because I’ve been lazy/can’t afford some of the sports I’d like to do. I like to watch speedway, I took a weight lifting class for about a year and I’m not sheepish about those things because they might make me seem less feminine. I blocked out a decent amount of the ‘sports aren’t for girls’ messages that bombard girls in their teen years because I read books where sport very much was for girls.
I know some people get leery about girls and horses ‘Horses are so girly, there can’t be any of worth in those books can there?’, ‘Don’t horse books just encourage shallow, greedy, pony mad, boy crazy ladies (because for some reason boy crazy and horses are inextricably linked)?’. But I say that noise hurts my ears and this is a happy post, so I’m gonna shut this window now. Novels about horse riding, are novels about girls playing sports and the more of those the better I say.
To make this a super happy, horsey post shall we finish with the happiest horse related song ever? My Lovely Horse makes everyone happier doesn’t it?
I’m still horse mad by the way, so if you have any books about horse women that you’d like to recommend the comments box is wide open.