Birthday Women: The Female Continuum

Today marks the birthday of two women, each of whom quite happily and successfully staked out a position on the further reaches of female self-expression.

First, we have Saint Gertrude:

Seen here, as she should be, with her inevitable companions Alice B. Toklas (possessor of one history's great names and moustaches) and the poodle, whom if memory serves was usually called Basket.

She was a Genius, full stop, and someone whose baffling, brilliant, and in its own way quite entirely lucid prose changed how English speakers think about our language. She and Alice were in their way style pioneers as well; their sometimes dowdy-looking lesboduds were often by Poiret, Schiaparelli, and other friends.

From the Sublime to the...well, something else: it's also Morgan Fairchild's birthday. She is somewhat younger than Miss Stein.

Seen here in full glam, albeit without her trademark hair, we can see that she actually has rather marvelous bone structure. And enormous hands.

Only one of the two has, to date at least, been immortalized in bronze and enthroned behind the New York Public Library in Manhattan's Bryant Park.

On the other hand, only one gets to go to premieres and hang out with ZZ Top, so I suppose things balance out in the end.

You know what I'd pay good money to see? Morgan Fairchild starring in a revival of Pat Carroll's smash one-woman show Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein.