Professor discusses women role models in biographies

11/3/06 - Professor Gale Eaton, director of the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Library and Information Science, gave a presentation on "Clothing the Role Models: Well-Dressed Biographies" yesterday in the Galanti Lounge at the University Library. The presentation, based on Eaton's newest book entitled "Well-dressed role models: the portrayal of women in biographies for children," addressed the changing image of women in children's biographies from 1946 to 1996.

"The changes in women's lives over time are very easy to trace, and I thought this would result in differences in the way the biographies were handled," Eaton said.

Eaton said in 1946 America "tried to get Rosie the Riveter back into the kitchen." Biographies were "spunky, but feminine" and found that women who had war experience would go back to their "place" after their services were no longer needed. Eaton used examples like Pocahontas and Dolly Madison to convey her point.

According to Eaton, biographies from the 1940s euphemized scandalous details from the lives of their subjects to provide wholesome role models for children.

If famous historical figures misbehaved, Eaton explained "you didn't want little bourgeois girls in the 1940s and 1950s imitating that."

Eaton said that biographers from the 1940s didn't like the idea of portraying women in a bad light and tried to make them look more "wholesome." For example, Eaton said that biographers added Queen Elizabeth's request for a New Testament while she was in prison to make her seem like a more traditional woman. Biographies about Queen Elizabeth omitted the probability that Elizabeth had several affairs, Eaton said.

By 1971, the feminist movement had begun to affect the portrayal of women.

"We burned bras and went to consciousness-raising sessions," Eaton said. She said biographies from this era included "women of color [and] rabble rousers," but were still traditional and left out certain aspects of their lives.

In the 1970s, painful aspects of women's lives were still being softened. Eaton presented the example of Phillis Wheatley. As a child, she was sold on the Boston auction block. She started writing poetry while she was his servant.

"The book finished by saying, 'By her poetry, she transcended her life of slavery,' which I think is a pretty insensitive method of describing being kidnapped into slavery and sold," Eaton said.

She presented biographies from 1996, which presented different kinds of women including teen athletes, advocates for the poor and celebrities.

"There had been a shift [in the 1990s] from women embedded in the community to women empowered to be who they wanted to be," Eaton said. "One of the most striking things is that on one level [biographies from the 1990s] may seem . more frank about details that would never have been mentioned in 1946."

She explained that in the 1990s, issues such as drugs, drinking and pregnancies outside of wedlock were no longer taboo in women's biographies. However, they still did not show completely liberated women. The increased focus on celebrities caused new problems in biographies of women.

"These women present themselves in public in a way that veils who they really are," Eaton said.

She cited a 1990s biography of Aretha Franklin where only two pictures of Franklin showed her friends or family. There were more pictures of other celebrities posing with Franklin.

"In the way women are publicly presented, the glitz, the microphones in hands, kind of veils them . their real interests and real family relations are veiled," Eaton said. "The books themselves are a form of clothing over who they really were.