Today I read something that made me feel very old, and rather uneasy. On my friend’s Lucy’s blog she was talking about the latest Marvel movie, the one featuring Captain Marvel, and she observed that while comic-book-based films have a number of drawbacks, she still welcomes a movie that might inspire some young girl to become a jet pilot or an astronaut.
And I was drinking to that, when somebody commented…

I can’t see what’s good about suggesting to a girl to become a pilot

And my head hit the desktop with a deep, hollow Tunc!, like a wooden bowl.

There’s a lot of this rubbish going on right now, in my country but also everywhere else. Stuff that I considered normal when I was in my twenties, like women piloting aircraft, exploring the ocean’s depths, and basically doing what the hell they pleased, is being criticized as … wrong.

Why should a young woman want to fly an aircraft, maybe even become a jet fighter pilot?
Like, for the same reason a bloke should?
Because she can?

And I thought about Beryl Markham, or Bessie Coleman, or indeed Amelia Earhart. Amy Johnson, whose name intrigued me as a kid in a song I liked…

With your photographs of Kitty Hawk
And the biplanes on your wall
You were always Amy Johnson
From the time that you were small
No schoolroom kept you grounded
While your thoughts could get away
You were taking off in Tiger Moths
Your wings against the brush-strokes of the day

And yet there’s people younger than me (and this, really, is the scary bit), that “can’t see why” a girl should want to fly. Maybe because by taking flight in a jet aircraft she’d avoid the risk of hooking up with idiots like these?

I think it’s time I do a few more posts about those wonderful adventuresses of the past – and the present – that have been an inspirations for us all, boys and girls, back when adventure was not a bad word.