Sunday, March 15, 2015

My Favorite Women (Part Two) (Happy Birthday Ruth Bader Ginsburg)

Ruth Bader Ginsburg turns the glorious 82 today. That's 82 years of badassery worth celebrating in this one meager blog post, but try I will. From being the second woman on the United States Supreme Court to pregaming the State of the Union, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is my hero. Happy birthday Notorious RBG.


First off, Ruth can accessorize. She has a jabot specific to all her supreme court justice-ing needs including one for dissents and another for majority opinions. Read here if you are dying to know more about Ruth and her wide jabot selection.

Her dissenting jabot whose black velvet and studs scream "I'm right, everyone else is wrong."
But there's more to Ruth than just her fashion or the fact that she fell asleep at the State of the Union because she was tipsy. She made up one of nine women (out of 500 students in all) in her Harvard Law class. She was even asked what it felt like to be taking up the spots of "more deserving, qualified males." When her husband was diagnosed with cancer within her first year at Harvard, she typed his term papers (upon his dictation) and took his notes for him, all while maintaining her own workload. She graduated first in her class.

In 1965, while working at Rutgers University Law School, she hid her second pregnancy to avoid discriminatory employment practices. She was Columbia's first female tenured professor. She served as the director (and co-founder) of the Women's Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. She realized equal gender rights were not just for women, but men as well. She argued a case before the Supreme Court (and won) regarding a portion of the Social Security Act that granted certain benefits to widows, but not widowers. 

You go Ruth, you go.


Her and unlikely best friend Supreme Court Justic Scalia have an opera named after them — Scalia/Ginsburg by Derrick Wang. Ruth was also diagnosed with Colon cancer in 1999 and didn't miss a single day on the bench amid radiation, chemo, and surgery. In 2009 she had surgery relating to cancer in the pancreas and 12 days later heard oral arguments.

She also does the Canadian Air Force Exercises on the daily. She even used to Jazzercise.


Ruth is the star of her own comic book and even has a LEGO figurine modeled after her thanks to Maia Weinstock (although this project was note affiliated with the actual LEGO company as they have a policy against creating political figurines). She also has numerous shirts donned with her namesake. I once watched an interview where she admitted that she gave Notorious RBG t-shirts to her law clerks on their birthdays. 


Amid all this, I'm not sure how you can't help but love her. And love her I do. Happy birthday RBG. I hope you out live us all.

greatdiva

Have a fabulous day.

2 comments:

  1. Happy Birthday, Ruth Bader Ginsburg! That last photo with the quote is awesome.

    xoxo Morning

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you (although I feel like I can't really take credit for the quote she said haha!).

      Delete