Wonder women in Washington DC
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. She’s a ballerina. Dressed in a cotton and silk tutu with linen slippers, Belgian dancer Marie van Goethem stands proud, face upturned, and feet in classic ballerina pose.
She’s been immortalised for eternity as Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer, a wax sculpture by Edgar Degas. Today revered for being one of his greatest works, Little Dancer wasn’t warmly received by critics and French bourgeois society who called it “ugly", “repulsive" and oddly, a “threat to society". All because Marie didn’t fit the society ideal—she was, after all, an “opera rat", a term given to working-class young dancers with the Paris Opera ballet.
Today, a recast of Marie is one of the highlights at Washington DC’s National Gallery of Art. It speaks volumes that even today women are still often lambasted for not fitting a perfect society ideal. As Marie shows us, it is absolutely alright to stand out from the crowd because history will remember you.
It is my maiden visit to Washington DC, the capital of a country that could soon be electing its first woman President. There, I find many other powerful women, like Marie, whose stories fascinate and delight. At The National Museum of Women in the Arts, I am reacquainted with that legendary feminist painter, Frida Kahlo.
It’s a self-portrait painted for her lover, Russian revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky, during their brief affair. She’s dressed in a pink embroidered skirt, gold jewellery and honey-hued shawl, black hair woven with flowers. The revolutionary artist and feminist may be the most famous woman in the museum but hers isn’t the only inspiring work.
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