Mary Elizabeth Bowser

Described by the U.S. Army Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame as “one of the highest placed and most productive espionage agents of the Civil War,” Mary Elizabeth Bowser was a freed slave from Richmond, Virginia, who got herself hired on as a servant in Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ household. For the duration of the war, Bowser fed to a Union spymaster everything she heard or read about troop strategy, movements, or plans while never losing her nerve or giving away her identity as a gushing leak of crucial information. It’s clear that Davis’ and his other military leaders held a perspective that underestimated African-American capabilities. And underestimating an in-your-face woman can lose the war for you.

Margaret Bourke-White

A photograph by Margaret Bourke-White was on the cover of the very first issue of the famous Life magazine in 1935 and, for a number of years, she served as one of the staff photographers for that publication, the most prestigious news and culture magazine of all time. A forerunner in the newly emerging field of photojournalism, Bourke-White was the first Western photographer allowed into the Soviet Union after the revolution, a war correspondent who routinely went into combat zones, and one of the first photographers into the German death camps after the defeat of Hitler in World War II. Famous for her willingness to go anywhere or do anything to complete an assignment, she once hung off a flag pole high up on a skyscraper to get just the photo she wanted, and was quoted as saying, “I want to be alive when I die.”

Kathy Boudin

During the 1960’s, an organization called Students for a Democratic Society (S.D.S.) formed in U.S. colleges and universities to fight against racism, inequality, and the war in Vietnam. One of the most militant factions of this organization was the “Weathermen,” who took their name from a Bob Dylan song, a line of which went, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” While the Weathermen did not believe in killing people, they claimed responsibility for exploding bombs in at least sixteen government and corporate buildings, and thus became “The Weather Underground,” in hiding for twelve years. Kathy Boudin, a member of the Weather Underground, ultimately wound up serving more than twenty years in prison for her role in a Brinks truck robbery. Whatever you think of her politics, she most certainly was an in-your-face woman, willing to sacrifice her own peace and comfort in the attempt to bring what she saw as necessary, positive changes to her nation.

Boudicca

Twenty years after the Romans had  overcome the Iceni Celts on the island of Britain in 43 A.D., the Celtic king died and Queen Boudicca (from the Celtic word for “victory”) -- described by one Roman writer as very tall with fierce eyes and red hair to her knees -- got into an argument with her captors.  Ill advisedly, some Roman soldiers, thinking they could teach her a lesson, beat her up and raped her two daughters. So Boudicca (who the Romans called “Boadicea," from which we get the word "bodacious" for brazen) returned the favor.

Amassing a force of warriors to attack and very nearly defeat the Roman army, Boudicca and her troops razed London to the ground and held the Romans at bay for six months -- longer than any other military leader ever -- pillaging the Roman settlements mercilessly for the duration, and leaving, it is said, as many as 70,000 bodies in their wake.

Celtic women always fought side by side with their men anyway, using swords and axes and renowned for their terrifying battle-cries. But in this case, the force was led by a woman, making the whole thing particularly embarrassing for the Romans, who were supposed to be the greatest fighting force in the world at that time. Somebody should have warned them she was an in-your-face woman.

Laskarina Bouboulina

With her own little fleet of warships, including the Agamemnon, a corvette with eighteen heavy cannons, Laskarina Bouboulina was a rich widow who loved the sea and is sometimes called a “pirate queen.” The only woman member of the underground revolutionary organization that overthrew the Turks' Ottoman Empire, Bouboulina was the one who raised the rebel flag on March 13, 1821, to signal the beginning of the revolt that ultimately freed the Greeks for the first time in seven centuries. Attacking the impregnable fort at Nafplion, through a rain of bullets, her solders fell back at one point only to hear her shout, “Are you women, then, and not men? Forward!" And they pressed on.

Ila Borders

If there’s a young woman out there who wants to be the first female pitcher in a men’s professional baseball league in the U.S., it’s too late. Ila Borders started out in college ball in California, where she had to deal with slashed tires, rude name-calling, and even attempts to hit her with the ball when she wasn’t looking. Nevertheless, Borders kept at it and eventually worked her way up to playing in the independent Northern League (equivalent to Class AA teams) for three years beginning in 1997, before retiring in 2000 from the Zion Pioneerz. A left-hander with a fast ball clocked in the low 80’s alongside a big curve and screwball, Borders won games and gave it her best shot despite all distractions -- which is what in-your-face women always do.

Dee Booher

Born in California in 1938, much bigger than the average woman and even bigger than many men, Dee Booher discovered the sport of wrestling while she was a student at El Camino College and rapidly became their star. Winning 75% of her matches in the 200-pound class -- all against male wrestlers -- Booher helped to propel the team to the state championship and the school was too happy about winning to care how they did it. Turning her collegiate success into a career in professional wrestling, Booher earned great respect coast-to-coast as “Queen Kong” and “Matilda the Hun.” How in-your-face is that?!

Rosa Bonheur

Rosa Bonheur, the famous 19th century realist painter, wore men’s clothing, including pants, when she worked because she specialized in painting animals and found it more convenient, much to the horror of those who saw her dressed that way. “I was forced to recognize that the clothing of my sex was a constant bother,” she was quoted as saying, “But the suit I wear is my work attire, and nothing else. The epithets of imbeciles have never bothered me.” In-your-face women tend to be busy -- very, very busy -- and far too busy to care what somebody else thinks.

Micheline Blum-Picard

Another hero of the French Resistance during World War II and decorated for saving the lives of U.S. soldiers shot down behind enemy lines was Micheline Blum-Picard. Only eighteen-years-old when she first became involved in the Resistance, Blum-Picard started by carrying messages taped to her back and then progressed to photographing inside factories damaged by bombing raids. By D-Day, however, she was carrying a rifle, a pistol, and a hand grenade wherever she went. Now, that’s an in-your-face woman!
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NOTE: The women pictured here are unnamed women of the French Resistance. Micheline Blum-Picard Glover may or may not be one of these particular women.

Ella Reeve Bloor

Ella Reeve Bloor was married three times, but none of her husbands was named Bloor. Nevertheless, while organizing workers in Chicago as a socialist, she assumed the name “Mrs. Richard Bloor” and spent the rest of her life being affectionately called “Mother Bloor.” Thrown out of the socialist party for being too radical even for them, she served on the Central Committee of the Communist Party for twelve years and even ran for governor of Pennsylvania in 1938 as a Communist candidate. An in-your-face woman to the end, “Mother Bloor” pointed proudly to her hundreds of arrests for labor organizing, the last of which was in 1936 in Nebraska at the age of seventy-four!

Denise Bloch

Unlike most of the women of the British Special Operations units who sneaked into France during World War II, Denise Bloch already had extensive experience in the French Resistance when she turned up in London after escaping France one step ahead of the German authorities. Despite the fact that she was a Jew and repeatedly warned that the Gestapo probably already knew who she was, Bloch was adamant about returning to France to undermine the German occupation.

So, in the spring of 1944, she re-entered France as an operative, fully trained to collect, code, and transmit information, but with orders, as well, to cut the railway and telephone lines just before the U.S. troop invasion on D-Day. Successfully fulfilling her mission threw the Germans into great confusion as they tried to communicate with their command headquarters while under the massive and unexpected attack. Bloch and the other Special Ops women were crucial to the war effort in Europe, receiving multiple medals, most of them (including Bloch) having been captured and executed -- in their twenties -- for their heroism.