BOSTON — We approach Aug. 26, the anniversary of the passage of women’s suffrage, with unusually mixed feelings. How can we begin to characterize the past year in women’s history?
In Washington, Hillary Clinton moved from the White House to the Senate. In Massachusetts, Gov. Jane Swift gave birth to twins. And in Florida, Katherine Harris single-handedly picked the president of the United States. Is this what Susan B. Anthony meant when she said "Failure is impossible"?
Nevertheless, we intend to honor our founding mothers in our usual quirky fashion by delivering our annual Equal Rites Awards to those who did the most over the past 12 months to set back the cause.
So without further ado, we turn this event over to our one-woman jury. The envelopes please.
To begin, we award the ever-popular Patriarch of the Year Prize to — who else? — Tom Green, poster papa for open polygamy. Tom married a quintet of women, fathered 29 children and bragged about it on TV. We would sentence Tom to a 12-step program for overcommitted men but Utah, which convicted him of bigamy, has another commitment in mind.
Moving from the patriarchal to the post-modern man of our nightmares, the Cybercad of the Year Award goes to Bradley Chait, the Brit who forwarded to his pals the steamy e-mail he received from girlfriend Claire Swire praising his sexual prowess. His pals forwarded it to their pals who forwarded to some 10 million others. We send Brad a hard-disk-crashing.
While we are on the Internet, the Our Bodies, Our Selves Award goes to those gurus who created Web sites promoting anorexia "as a lifestyle and a decision, not an illness to be fixed." Go to your (chat) room!
Speaking of female body images, Kay Franklin gets our Barbed Barbie Award. Franklin came up with a great present for daughter Jenna’s Sweet 16th birthday: breast implants. Franklin receives the statuette — in silicon of course — inscribed "Mother Doesn’t Always Know Best."
Nor does father. Rudy Giuliani wins the Papa-razzi Prize for trying to host girlfriend Judi Nathan in Gracie Mansion along with his estranged wife Donna Hanover and the two kids. We sentence Mayor Rudi to sit through reruns of "The Vagina Monologues" starring, of course, Donna Hanover.
Now for the Fashion Ms.-Statement Award. Our prize goes to wife-beaters.com. Those ho-ho-humorous folks sell an entire line of trendy clothes proudly emblazoned "Wife Beater." For an extra buck they’ll customized the T-shirts with a dollop of "blood." We reward them with a fully paid night at a domestic violence shelter. Oh what the heck, we’ll just lock them in there.
Why not entertain them with some tracks from the Misogyny in Music Award winners. No, it is not rapper Eminem, who won last year for his endearing lyrics, "Now, bleed, bitch, bleed." It’s the folks in the music business who gave Eminem three Grammys and a featured spot at the awards for that sensitive male work. The prize is deafening silence.
Do I hear a foreign tune? The International Sexism in Song —a close second to the domestic — goes to the Brazilian samba group Pagod’art for their sweetheart of a lyric, "Face Slap." "When we make love what does she ask for? Slap in the face." We do not turn the other check.
Let us not forget that Old Boys Will Be Old Boys. In South Carolina, both parties sent their state chairs to Boys’ State, where the alleged adults promptly debated which party would give the boys better access to "beer and girls," or, "cold beer and hot girls." We send these old boys warm beer.
Our Raging Hormonal Imbalance Award goes to New Hampshire’s Tom Alciere, who won his seat in the 424-seat legislature despite suggesting in a letter to the editor that a woman be "dragged by her hair or hit with a baseball bat every now and then." We would give the state a prize but they already got it — Alciere’s resignation.
As for our Ms.-Ad-ventures Award, always hotly contested, we choose the folks at Colgate-Palmolive who advertised their dishwashing liquid with two manic women dancing around the kitchen with the slogan, "Springtime every time you do the dishes." Mel Brooks is right now working on the prize: a musical number called "Springtime for Dishes."
Now for our Backlash Award. In years past, this has gone to assorted regressives of the male persuasion. Alas, this year it is divided into two parts — the personal and the professional — and given to women.
One goes to Laura Doyle, the author of "The Surrendered Wife" who believes that "women should turn into powder puffs at home," batting their eyelashes and saying "whatever you think, dear." Ms. Doyle believes that surrender will rekindle love and romance. We send her a doormat. Though she doesn’t need one.
The other goes to Jean Hollands, founder of Bully Broads, which is not a Grrrl Band but an anti-assertiveness program for female executives deemed too uppity, uh, aggressive. She trains them in stammering and crying and getting in touch with their beta-female side at the office: "Talk right through the tears." We would send her and her hankie into a workshop for Bully Boys, but of course there isn’t one.
As for countries where women are already surrendered and bullied, we award our International Ayatollah Award to Nigeria. Under new Islamic laws, 17-year-old Bariya Ibrahim Magazu was sentenced to 180 lashes for premarital sex. It didn’t matter that the sex with three men was against her will.
Finally, our Double Standard Bearer Citation to those media types who described Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris as everything from "Cruella De Vil" to "Halloween in drag." Loath as we are to defend this woman (see above), gender watchers hold your tongue: It wasn’t her make-up but her math that was the problem.
Ellen Goodman can be reached at The Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20071-9200 or send e-mail to EllenGoodman@Globe.com.
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