Little Sure Shot Sure Shocked ‘em
Jackie Wells-Fauth
I have read, for many years and with great interest, the expression, “the weaker sex,” when talking about women. As a member of the weaker sex, I frequently laugh myself sick while I drag around heavy, wet baskets of laundry or giant mounds of garbage or wheelbarrows full of dirt. Being the weaker sex means I shouldn’t have to do that kind of thing, right?
Oh wait, I forgot, all those types of jobs are also considered “women’s work.” There is another phrase that really eludes me. What exactly is women’s work and how did women, who go through the rigors of childbirth and hold entire households together, become known as the weaker sex? Hold the door for me? How about you lug heavy rugs to the deck to be cleaned or juggle three children, the evening meal after working outside the home all day and a couple of hours of homework wrangling. Then, I will be glad to open the door myself, thank you!
I was having all of these bitter, gender-war thoughts when I came across a picture of Annie Oakley this week. Maybe you remember Annie Oakley, the young woman who was an expert shot with a gun and who traveled for many years with Buffalo Bill Cody and his Wild West Show. “Little Sure Shot,” they called her and I’m convinced that half of her appeal was that she was a woman—and since the weaker sex are not expected to be good at shooting, her ability to drill a dime in mid-air with a bullet made her an aberration worth watching.
Of course, women participating in the Wild West Show would be expected to ride out with the rest of the performers on a horse. The rest of the group, men in cowboy attire, would be astride their horses, one foot in each stirrup on either side of the horse. Not so for the “weaker sex.” Annie Oakley, as befitted the delicate gender, rode on a contraption called a “side-saddle”. Historians can explain all the many reasons for assigning women to ride the side-saddle, but if you’ve ever seen one or ridden on one, you know that there is nothing “weaker” about anyone who can hang on, draped as they would be in long skirts and clinging to one side of the horse!
I got to try out one of these things (not on a horse, of course) which was set up in a museum and the signs invited you to try and mount and sit on the saddle. It also mentioned that you should attempt to imagine sitting on that saddle on a moving horse. I was wearing jeans and I was a few years younger than I am now, and I could not mount and stay upright even with that saddle immobile on a sawhorse. I can’t imagine trying to sit on the side-saddle strapped to a horse.
That brings me to the picture of Little Sure Shot. Annie Oakley wasn’t just riding a horse with long, draping skirts and a side-saddle, the picture captured her as she reared the horse up on two legs. Now, maybe, after the photo was taken, she slid off the saddle and ended in the mud, but that picture made me so proud of her—proving that even with all of a woman’s restrictions, she could live in a man’s world. I didn’t see any of the men in the Wild West Show doing that!
In the same group of pictures was a photo of Belle Starr, also seated on a horse, riding side-saddle. That one just made me laugh. Belle Starr, if you remember, was known in the Old West as “the Bandit Queen.” She was an outlaw with the best of them. In the picture, she is both wearing guns and carrying them, but still, there she was, on a side saddle. I can understand; if she had ridden astride, people might have thought she wasn’t a lady!
Annie Oakley apparently lamented the fact that she was considered a “trick shot” because, as a woman, she wasn’t expected to be a good marksman. I see her point and I see that she was far ahead of her time in her outlook and abilities. So thank you, for setting the pace for all the girls coming after you and proving that the “weaker sex” isn’t so weak, after all!
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