Badass Babes

The other day, while motoring around, running errands and enjoying Bix’s brill AC, I spied this on the bumper of a car in front of me. My first thought was christ, how trashy! This is the sort of thing a woman, whose shining moment is when the 'bad boy' asks her out, pastes on the back of her car.

Second thought was how does spelling bad with an extra D make you look anything beyond illiterate?

And third was this — is this badd-ass thing a...ya know...”thing” now?

So I came home and googled it of course.

I didn’t find anything with the double D badass (apparently there's just the one and no hyphenation) but I did find Badass Lady Creatives. Huh.

Badass Lady Creatives celebrates women working in the creative industries.
The idea is simple: creative communities benefit from diversity, but there is a notable lack of women (for starters) featured on speaker panels, in leadership positions, and even in our daily blog feeds. We feature talented female professionals who deserve to be recognized for their work, because good things come from getting the work out there. Our brand of feminism is a joyous one, and it’s for everyone—if you call yourself a woman, you are one. If you’re a man, we heart you too. Let’s build a healthy industry together.
— Melanie Richards

Cool!

Then I tripped over the Global Post page celebrating 7 of the most badass women who ever lived (who you've probably never heard of)

Coming in at number one is Khutulun, Mongolian warrior princess

In the 13th century, when khans ruled Central Asia and you couldn’t go 10 minutes without some Genghis, Kublai or Mongke trying to take over your steppe, women were well-versed in badassery. In a society where skill on a horse and with a bow and arrow was more important than brute strength, Mongol women made just as stout herders and warriors as their men.

Nana Asma’u a 19th century Nigerian scholar is in the number two spot.
Policarpa Salavarrieta, a late 18th/ early 19th century Colombian revolutionary is at número tres.

排名第四 is Ching Shih, a late 18th/ early 19th century Chinese pirate.
She started as a prossy but, when the dread pirate Zheng Yi fell in love with her and proposed marriage, she agreed on the condition that he grant her 50% of his profits and the command of one of his fleets. He did. She went on to be the leader of her husband’s and other bands of buccaneers.

Her power grew at a frightening pace, and within a year the Red Flag Fleet boasted two hundred oceangoing junks of twenty guns each, eight hundred small ships, dozens of riverboats and over 17,000 men.

Wow. She also beheaded the men who raped female prisoners. Awesome!

Gertrude Bell, British traveler and writer or Florence of Arabia as the site terms her, comes next.

Followed by The Night Witches, a regiment of Russian WW2 fighter pilots.

It was their enemies, the Nazis, who gave these women their nickname. Officially, they were the members of the Soviet Air Forces’ 588th Night Bomber Regiment. To the German pilots they fought, however, they were tormentors, harpies with seemingly supernatural powers of night vision and stealth. Shooting down one of their planes would automatically earn any German soldier the Iron Cross.

 LOVE the name — The Night Witches — and I totes think this needs to be the name of a punk/art rock band. They'll have cellos and bouzoukis. It'd be phenomenal!

and lastly Hedy Lamarr,  who wasn't just a gorgeous Hollywood femme fatale. She was also an Austrian inventor. Wow. Just wow. Who knew?

Go to the Global Post and other sites and read about these wild, tremendous, strong women — fabulous!

Moving on in badassery, the The Mary Sue pointed me to The Rejected Princesses site, with it’s subhead Women too awesome, awful, or offbeat for the movies.

Check out the FAQs page where, amongst other witty Q&As is this:

Who are you?
My name’s Jason Porath. I used to work at DreamWorks Animation (as an effects animator), but not anymore. Now I do this blog, and write, and am a general man about town.

Back to that car’s egregious bumper sticker though — apparently, for this SUV owner, all it takes to be a bad-with two Ds-ass Lady is that you drive a Ford versus Mercedes. I suspect the driver lacks ambition and hasn't read any REAL badass women's history. Ever.

Call it a hunch.