Yesterday I managed to sneak in a ride before sunset. It wasn't long, but it took me to familiar haunts I hadn't ridden in a while: a few loops around Roosevelt Island.
It's probably been a couple, maybe a few, months since I last took a spin on the island. However long it was, enough time had passed to see something new:
Actually, it's been under wraps for a while. It was supposed to be unveiled last year, but the COVID pandemic delayed that, and other things.
The "Girl Puzzle" installation is an homage to Nellie Bly, a pioneering journalist. Next year will mark the centennial of her death: two years after she, and other American women, won the right to vote.
In a way, it's appropriate that the installation stands before the lighthouse, as she shed light on all sorts of terrible, scandalous and interesting situations. One of them prevailed at the other end of the island, in its now-closed sanitorium. As flimsy as this country's mental health care system is, it was much worse in her day.
She was able to write an expose of it--which morphed from a series of articles into a book (Ten Days In A Mad House)--and much of her other work by going under cover. That, of course, makes it ironic that the installation is by the lighthouse. Perhaps equally ironic is that she was able to go undercover at a time when she was conspicuous simply by being a woman doing paid work, let alone journalism. Then again, her first published work, in the Pittsburgh Dispatch, was a response to a previously-published misogynistic complaint about female wage-earners.
The title of that piece was..."The Girl Puzzle." While it garnered complaints and other negative reactions, the editor realized her potential and had her write more pieces. Soon after, he hired her as a full-time reporter.
Although women in professions like journalism have become the norm, we still have to solve "The Girl Puzzle": How do we--whatever our gender identities, however we express them--realize our potential and our dreams while remaining true to ourselves and dealing with those who try to enforce their notions of what men or women, boys or girls, should be?
As I looked at "The Girl Puzzle," I couldn't help but to think about Simone Biles and the other female gymnasts who, yesterday, reached a settlement against their sport's governing bodies in their case against their coach--and abuser. It sounds like a story Nellie Bly would have covered--and been appalled that she had to at this late date.
