Tomorrow, Valentine’s Day, is the 95th anniversary of the League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan political organization founded to help educate women so they (and many others!) can make informed decisions at the polls. In this brilliant video, a parody of Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance, singing and dancing women in Victorian clothing get down and demand their rights.
Who’s the confrontational Lady-Gaga-female-central-character, you ask? The dark-haired woman with the serious expression and even more serious dance moves represents Alice Stokes Paul, an activist with remarkable courage and commitment, a “soldier in the battle to win equal rights for women,” who willingly suffered abuse, beatings, force-feedings, and imprisonment to advance the cause.
Pay attention to color when you watch, as color is especially important symbolically:
- Green, white, and purple were the official colors of the British Women’s Social and Political Union, the organization founded by militant suffragists Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst. In the U.S., these colors were adapted to green, white, and violet to represent the acronym, Give Women the Vote.
- Yellow was the main color symbolizing pro-suffrage sentiments in the U.S.
- Red, and the American Beauty rose, were symbols of anti-suffrage groups.
Whenever I wear yellow, or put on a favorite pair of green and purple earrings, I think of the courageous women who fought for my right to wear pants, speak in public, and express my choices at the ballot box. I’m grateful for all they did. And at some point, I’m thinking I really need to come up with a crochet pattern that’s as cool as this one, a green, white, and purple rosette that was worn by some woman in the fight.
To learn more about the video and the amazing group that made it, or if you just want to read the revised lyrics to Lady Gaga’s song so you can sing along, check out this website, from Soomo Publishing.
’till next time,
Katherine Durack
© Katherine Durack 2015
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