The Motherload Part 2

Amelia Earhart was a vanguard, a woman who wore trousers, believed in equality of the sexes, and flew an airplane all at a time when women were expected to sit quietly and keep their legs hidden under a big skirt. Disappearing somewhere in the Pacific wasn't the only thing she was famous for—Amelia was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, and she held a number of other records. She was an author, an advocate for women's rights, and a champion for aspiring female pilots. It's quite possible none of those things would have been true about her had it not been for the influences of her mother.

Amy Otis was a young woman of genteel society, the daughter of a well-known judge who sometimes took her on trips out west instead of going to school. They climbed Pike's Peak on one of those trips, and Amy claimed to be the first woman to make the entire climb. That's disputed, but the fact that she climbed it in 1890 when women weren't encouraged to be so adventurous said something about how she would live her life and raise her children.

Amy married beneath her socially, despite her father's objections, and set out to raise her daughters with the same independent and nonconformist approach she had adopted for herself. Her girls played baseball and hunted rats with their own gun. They played with bugs and rode horses. They rode snow sleds like boys, read books about adventures, and were encouraged to challenge the expectations of their surroundings and live out their dreams. To see that they were not hindered too much by all those billowy skirts that kept girls standing still, Amy dressed them in bloomers, a relatively new invention meant to free girls up and allow them to be active. At first, bloomers were consider improper for delicate girls, but the Earhart sisters ran wild in them and ignored the taunts of the other girls whose legs were still getting tangled up in petticoats.

Amy's husband was haphazard about making a living but not so undisciplined about being a drunk, so when it became necessary, she moved her girls to Chicago to find a better life for them. They flourished, and Amelia went to work pursuing her dream of flying.

Amy Otis Earhart did simple things to mold her daughters into passionate and independent women capable of denting the world in positive ways. It just shows that simple gestures and a steady example are sometimes all it takes to keep girls from being stuck in petticoats when they should be running free on their feet.