Pin-up Girls

Elizabeth Parker

Pin-up Girls

           Evan woke up in such a state of confusion, she wondered quickly if she had been slipped a roofie? Except for at sixteen, she has never been out with a boy nor gets invited to any parties for something that extreme to happen to her. “Then why do I feel so lethargic,” she thinks out loud?  Or better yet, what am I doing in bed and in my bedroom? Sitting up she shields her eyes against the accosting sunlight glaring at her through the window.  Feeling misplaced, she reaches under her pillow for her cell phone but finding it not there. 

           Bolting straight up, confusion grips her and she exclaims, “Wait, where’s my phone?”  Cold sweat forms upon her upper-lip as she looks at the alarm-clock-radio her mother insisted as a back-up to her precious phone. Evan silently acknowledges its usefulness now, only thinking of her phone. The clock flips to 8:04 a.m., the 11^th… Sunday! Wait. Evan struggles to place where the last time she saw her cell, and realizes it was at the school newspaper, on Friday. What? But it’s Sunday. How did I get from the newspaper office Friday afternoon to here on Sunday morning?  Still questioning herself, she flips on the television to check the date. In illuminous block format, the TV reads, Sunday, October 11, 2020.  Trying to place the past two days, Evan thinks back to Friday and a burning shame comes over her thinking of the trial conducted in the principal’s office and she is the guilty party.  Her mother and the principal, Dr. Martin, were discussing Evan as she shuffled in and takes a seat by her mother. As her cheeks grow warm, she catches part of the conversation Dr. Martin is leading, “…and that just might be the best option for Evan to fully understand how hurtful her use of, to quote an old term, yellow journalism is.  She has too much potential to waste her high school years by sitting in my office for two more years, repeating the same patterns.  At this point, the only other option would be to suspend her from the newspaper. I’m hesitant because I believe this action will have an adverse effect on her future.” I attempt to speak but Dr. Martin stops me by holding her hand up as an apoplectic shield of red envelopes my mother’s face.  So, I am left sitting like a criminal, waiting for the jury to finish deliberating and for sentencing to begin. Was my offense so terrible?  Evan believes herself to be a good reporter, observant and great at research. Awakened from her reverie, and becoming agitated, Evan shifts positions to be out of the ever-hostile light pointing at her from her window. “Is it my imagination or is the sun getting stronger?” Seems strange for an October morning thinks Evan as she recalls the rest of Friday afternoon. 

           As a sophomore in high school, Evan’s gift for writing awarded her the assistant editor position on the school newspaper. Somewhat of a loner, and taller than most girls, she has extraordinary eyes the color of leaves turning brown in the fall and shoulder-length wispy hair, the color of autumn. After recently shedding her braces, her teeth were straight and white, adding to her air of freshness. She thought herself plain, yet her skin tone is a rosy bronze and she can pull off any color she favors. Her frame is lithe and athletic covered in baggy jeans, rolled at the bottom, purposed with rips, and vans on her feet. A little chartreuse t-shirt covers her frame.  In her position as assistant editor, Evan has autonomy in printing the stories she chooses. While listening to the principal and her mother’s summation on journalism, how with free speech comes responsibility, Evan understands that her manipulation of the facts and this latest episode is the last straw. 

           Dr. Martin looks directly at Evan and says, “In 2020, the importance of women’s issues should revere a woman’s mind by empowering them, not exploit women as pin-up-girls for the amusement of others.” Evan’s face grows hot and she wants to scream that she has been hearing about these issues her whole life!  No woman’s right rally too small, no bra-burning too hippish; true zealots fight for equality! Moreover, her mother heads the Woman Studies Department at the local college where they live. Evan was raised a woman-liberation-brat, drilled with the task of living an independent, strong, and confident life, committed to the righteous cause.

           However, Evan does understand why everyone is so angry with her for her article in the school newspaper. She knows she has a responsibility to empower people and not tear them down for her own amusement. Her mother struggled raising her, while working extremely hard to become the chair of the Woman’s Department at the College town where they live. Thinking back to the women’s rallies that were a part of her upbringing, Evan admits to having enjoyed the veracity of the women during the demonstrations. This type of integrity made her want to challenge the wrongs in this world. Sighing, she tries to draw away from the pull of the light.  Lately, she has been feeling like a sapling searching for sun under the shadow of a Redwood. Moreover, October, at her mother’s college, celebrates the national #MeToo Movement. Naturally, mother’s movement has trickled down from Her college into my local high school, and to the newspaper where I am a “responsible” assistant editor. 

           “I really like my article on Playboy Bunnies,” I say. 

           “Have you never heard of Gloria Steinem,” my mother retorts? 

           “Your hero,” I say snidely, “She was a Bunny.” 

           Angrily mother snaps, “only to uncover the injustice put on women!  She used her position, as a journalist, to infiltrate the basis of sexual harassment and violation of women’s rights.  Your story insinuates that girls who participate in certain student activities and clubs are like pin-up girls, pretty but vapid, willing to do whatever it takes for popularity.”  That part of the story really got me in trouble, especially naming the activities and rumors circulating about a variety of girls in the school.  She throws her hands up at my blank stare, as Dr. Martin interjects, “Ladies, what we need now is to move forward with a solution. I don’t believe Evan actually believes everything she wrote. The problem is, this is not your first, second, or even third time sitting before me regarding your biting, thoughtless remarks toward your fellow students and/or women in general. Your selfish actions have consequences, but I have concluded that suspension is not the answer. One could surmise your reckless behavior stems from not utterly understanding what women have fought for throughout history to be where you are sitting today.”

           “I’m sorry, Dr. Martin, actually, I do understand.  How could I not? Growing up in a world where facts and research engulf me like wildfires consuming the hills of California. I know of the horrors, the subjugation, and the inequality that women still today live with. I also believe that girls today don’t heed enough importance in demanding equal rights and working toward one’s potential. The article’s purpose is to target girls that do not respect themselves, to make them see how messed up their actions are. What about all these girls that think having sex makes them popular or disrespecting themselves by getting drunk or high at parties so people will consider them cool? Or because they don’t have enough confidence to be themselves? I have a responsibility to call them out!” 

           My mother reaches over and touches my arm, saying quietly, “Honey, as a mother I’m proud that you believe women should respect themselves. Sex and alcohol come with its own responsibility and abusing either is very harmful. However, you mock your audience with your imperial tone and condescending attitude. People who take for granted their freedoms don’t learn by being lectured to and you certainly don’t make any friends. Even great women in a position of power sometimes forget that they have a responsibility toward their own sex. Learning how and why women are subjugated, that they are left uneducated to keep them ignorant so they can’t provoke change. Also, how they are manipulated or even murdered as a threat to the men in power, supreme rule over women. History proves time and time again that keeping people scared and meek, is ruinous to individual freedom.”

           Dr. Martin stared at me for quite a long time. “Exactly.  Miss Evangeline… (that’s my full name) your hurtful articles are not the responsible way to get your message across. Frankly, it’s rather like you enjoy being a stuck-up snob when it comes to your intellect and ideals. Therefore, I think you should try and educate people in different ways. That said, your mother and I have come up with a solution that we hope will be educational yet frustrating enough to serve as a punishment. And at the end of the school year, perhaps others will also benefit from your knowledge. Henceforth, you will study famous women in history and write about their accomplishments through their adversity. But from here on, you will need an editor to check your articles for appropriate content before you are allowed to publish anything.”

           Sitting on her bed, Evan is suddenly aware of the rising hairs on her arms. She shivers as if remembering these events on Friday jolt a series of dream-like episodes. How odd to be suddenly thinking of Anne Boleyn? The fateful woman who became Queen of England from 1533-1536, the second wife of Henry VIII. The King who went through six wives, divorcing and banishing the first and fourth, beheading the second and fifth, delivered a son by the third only to die as a result, and finally succumbing himself before his sixth wife could displease him.  Anne Boleyn, whose brilliant mind is marked by her political and religious dedication to the establishment of the English Reformation, where England separated itself from the Pope and the Catholic Church, creating the Church of England. In pop culture, however, the former Queen is seen as a 16^th century equivalent to a pin-up girl; husband stealer, adulterer, fornicating with her own brother and practicing witchcraft on her husband to become pregnant, only to deliver devil babies. Anne Boleyn’s power culminated with her removal to rooms in the Tower of London, before being beheaded on the order of the King.  Slowly, getting out of her own queen size bed, Evan almost fell from the pain in her left leg. Sinking back on her bed, thinks how strange that she didn’t notice the pain before. Did she hurt her leg during the missing hours, days?  Oh, yeah, it was when she was being chased by spies of the King’s Chamber that she fell hard off her horse in the process. Absentmindedly reaching again under her pillow for her missing phone, Evan bolts upright, wait, what kind of ridiculous thought was that? Faint music emanates from somewhere and Evan’s eyesight and hearing become as sharp as a pigeon.  “My cell!”  Looking around, Evan’s head swims, it isn’t sunlight that is glaring at her through the window, it’s a circle of light in her wall next to it, beckoning her back. Touching her leg and wincing, previous jumbled thoughts start piecing themselves together as Evan exclaims, “My paper, on Anne Boleyn, I’ve met her! My cell is in her cell.” Swooning, the room swirls about her and she’s sucked back toward the portal that somehow dropped her in her room today, or yesterday. Seconds before the strain is too much, she understands that she has unfinished business at the Tower of London, in England, in 1536. She needs to deliver an assurance to a Queen that her contribution and brilliance will be remembered and revered. More importantly, that her position of power provides confidence and strength to the most important person in her life, and the one woman who will need it the most. Then in a flash, she was gone, swallowed by the hole that closed as fast as it opened.