Mary Brent Wehrli

Sometimes, an in-your-face woman's life has chapters like a book. Mary Brent Wehrli is one such woman. The chapter in the 1990's involved her serving as a Social Welfare professor at UCLA, where she established, among other things, a program for all first year students working toward a Masters degree in Social Work to spend at least one full day on Los Angeles' skid row. During that same chapter, she helped to organize grassroots coalitions to fight for a living wage law, to mobilize regional service agencies in response to the needs of the poor, and to move Los Angeles in the direction of declaring itself a sanctuary for Central American refugees. And in the process, she was named California's Social Welfare Practitioner of the Year in 1999.

The chapter before that, though, was even more lively because that was the decade during which Wehrli served as Executive Director of the Southern California Ecumenical Council's Interfaith Task Force on Central America, a body committed to educate and urge the religious community to oppose the U.S. government's interventionist foreign policies. One of her most in-your-face moments in that chapter was when Wehrli somehow finessed her way into a fundraising dinner for George Herbert Walker Bush, who was then campaigning for the U.S. Presidency. Standing up at an opportune moment, Wehrli loudly asked, "Will you do everything you can to end the bloodshed in Central America by withdrawing support for the repressive regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala?" All hell and a cadre of secret service agents broke loose immediately, with one of the agents grabbing Wehrli's blouse in such a way that it laid bare her shoulder (and part of her bra) for all the world to see.

Her current chapter is as a retired person, a position she has certainly earned, but it's doubtful such an in-your-face woman could lay all action and influence aside after getting used to having so much fun in the past.

Beatrice Webb

That Beatrice Webb was completely self-taught is only of passing interest. Many women born and raised in Great Britain in the 1800's missed the benefits of a formal education. But when you consider that she went on to be one of the founders of the Fabian Society, a group of socialist intellectuals that strongly influenced the Labor Party in their country, as well as one of the founders of the London School of Economics and Political Science, it becomes somewhat more apparent the degree to which Webb was an in-your-face woman. And a smart one at that.

Espousing the idea of cooperatives as a way for workers to maintain control over their own labor and the profits thereof, Webb wrote The Cooperative Movement in Great Britain in 1891 after doing extensive research on the topic. And a few years after that, she co-wrote a history of trade unionism with her husband as the first in a whole series of books they wrote together. Lest we imagine that her husband carried the weight, however, we need to note that it was Webb herself who coined the term "collective bargaining," a practice by which workers unite to more effectively negotiate with their bosses.

By 1919, she was publishing on other topics, such as Men and Women's Wages: Should They Be Equal? And as she aged, having not borne biological offspring, Webb was quoted as saying that she considered the London School of Economics and a highly successful periodical entitled The New Statesman as her symbolic children. Sometimes, an in-your-face woman socially reproduces herself as a way of leaving her mark on the future. Beatrice Webb was satisfied with that.

Jessica Watson

At age twelve, Jessica Watson decided she wanted to sail around the world -- unassisted and alone. At age sixteen, she did it. A citizen of both New Zealand and Australia, Watson grew up with her mom and dad and three siblings living and being home schooled on sailboats and in a double-decker bus. So she's more than comfortable on the water and in small spaces. But even for her, the seven-month voyage she took from October 18, 2009, until May 15, 2010 (three days before her seventeenth birthday), was a test of true spirit, which is actually the title of the book she wrote about her feat. "I hated being judged by my appearance and other people's expectations of what a 'little girl' is capable of," she explained after arriving triumphant back to her home port in Sydney.

Facing forty-foot waves and 80 mile per hour winds, having to repair virtually everything on her boat at one point or another, and spending hour after interminable hour alone, Watson traveled a total of 23,000 nautical miles in 210 days crossing the equator and all meridians of longitude without touching land or any other boat and without anyone giving her anything. Yet her route, her management, and her unwillingness to accept "advice" from the powers that be telling her she should attempt shorter trips to work up to her monumental accomplishment has been criticized by the mainstream male power structure that regulates who gets recognized and who does not.

Robbed of her "official" standing in the record books, Jessica knows that an in-your-face woman -- however young -- is liable to meet resistance. But she also knows who she is (as demonstrated by a whole raft of accolades and awards), as well as what she can do. And so do the 75,000 people that met her at the dock on her return. Nothing and no one can change that.

Frances Watkins

Frances Watkins was born free and Black in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1825. She got a good education and many opportunities to read and write. In fact, she got so good at writing that her poems were being published while she was still in her teens. But rather than just resting on her laurels, Watkins continually expanded her interests and her influence.

She was paid to deliver lectures on the abolition of slavery and the rights of women. She boldly assisted slaves to escape on the Underground Railroad. She reached out to and supported John Brown and his wife when he was arrested for his attack on the armory at Harper's Ferry. And she worked to get women the vote, reminding her White sisters that Black women needed to be included in their actions, as well.

"Talk as you will of woman's deep capacity for loving," Watkins preached, "I do not deny it; but will the mere possession of any human love fully satisfy all the demands of her whole being?...Woman -- if you would render her happy -- needs...her conscience [to] be enlightened, her faith in the true and right established, and scope given to her...God-given faculties." In-your-face women want more out of life than a husband and children to serve.

Kate Warne

Everyone's heard of the famous Pinkerton Detective Agency that started in the 1850's and still exists today. But few may realize that one of its earliest operatives was a young woman named Kate Warne. She talked her way into a job in 1856 and, within a couple of years, had distinguished herself as one of their most trustworthy and clever detectives.

Warne helped to recover $39,000 embezzled from the Adams Express Company. She became a one-woman spy bureau during the Civil War. And she finagled a bank robber's wife into admitting where he had hidden $130,000 in stolen money. But her most famous case involved being instrumental in foiling a carefully planned assassination attempt on the life of Abraham Lincoln when he was on his way to be inaugurated President of the United States.

Warne's adept investigation while she was pretending to be a rich Southern belle flirting her way through Baltimore uncovered the plot in the first place and once her information was corroborated, Allan Pinkerton himself joined Warne with several others to make sure the President would make it safely to Washington. It has been said that the way Warne stayed up all night while Lincoln slept on the train is what gave Pinkerton the idea for his agency's motto: "We never sleep."

Unfortunately, Kate Warne died of pneumonia at only thirty-five years of age, but not before establishing the fact that women make great detectives. They're smart, courageous, sometimes sneaky and ultimately, very in-your-face.

Vera Dawn Walker

Called the "Tiny Texan" because she was only 4'11" and weighed 97 pounds, Vera Dawn Walker was so short, she had to sit on pillows so she could reach the rudder pedals on the airplanes she loved to fly in the late 1920's.  And when flying alone didn't provide enough excitement, Walker just climbed out onto the wings and walked up and down while the plane was in the air!

Fascinated by birds swooping from tree to tree when she was a child, Walker grew up longing to do what they were doing. So, when a reporter asked her as an adult, "Why do you fly?" she shot back simply, "I want to!"

When she contracted tuberculosis after a flight to Guatemala in 1931, instead of retiring to a sanitorium to recuperate, Walker pitched a tent south of Tucson, Arizona, and spent four years placer mining. Nothing like a nice pile of gold nuggets to make an in-your-face woman forget her blues.

Mary Walker

Born in Oswego, New York, in 1832, Mary Walker grew up on a farm, spent a few years as a teacher and then graduated from medical school in time to offer to be a battlefield surgeon during the Civil War. Unfortunately, women doctors weren't taken very seriously at the time, so her initial practice, which she set up with her husband -- also a doctor -- didn't build the way it would have if she'd been a man, and the U.S. Army would only hire her as a civilian nurse.

Eventually, of course, as the war progressed and needs became more crucial, the Army made her an Assistant Surgeon, after which she traveled back and forth across the front lines to treat civilians caught in the cross fire. Her freedom of access got her arrested as a spy by the Confederate forces in 1864, but she was released in a prisoner exchange. And her service to her country resulted in her being awarded the Medal of Honor.

Subsequent stints as the supervisor of a women's prison and a children's orphanage suggest that she worked her way up some kind of ladder, but Walker had one idiosyncrasy that caused her continued problems. She insisted on wearing clothing usually reserved for men, including a top hat. When she became well known in the women's suffrage movement, her commitment to her clothing choice marginalized her greatly and she was, in fact, arrested on several occasions for "impersonating a man." In-your-face women don't see why they shouldn't become what they want to become, serve where and how they want to serve (or not), and wear exactly what they want to wear. Seems reasonable.

Ethel Walker

When Ethel Walker's physician father died in 1884, her British mother fairly quickly married another man and moved to Washington, D.C. with her new husband. How ever and why it worked out that way, Ethel -- barely an adolescent -- wound up first in Connecticut and then in Pennsylvania, separated from both her mother and her beloved older sister and largely responsible for her own financial well-being.

This hardship, coming so soon on the heels of the loss of her father as well as the loss of her brother (who died a year before her father did), could well have collapsed the resolve of a less strong and independent soul. But with aplomb that would characterize her all her life, Walker finished high school and then college, with a bachelor's degree in history and economics from Bryn Mawr.

Spending the next couple of decades teaching and serving in various administrative posts, despite her lack of resources and business experience, Walker began to get the itch to start her own college preparatory girls' school. "I learned to teach by teaching," she later said, "and secretarial work by doing it, and I took a chance that I might learn how to manage a school from having one."

So, in 1911, at thirty-nine-years of age, she opened The Ethel Walker School with ten students utterly committed to a highly rigorous regimen of academic study, athletic achievement, and unfailingly demanding discipline. The first five years, the school survived only on a wing and a prayer. But by her death in the 1960's, Walker had watched her school -- her dream -- take root and grow capable of facing the challenges that marked the second half of its first century.

Some in-your-face women march into battle. Some rob banks. But some in-your-face women -- like Ethel Walker -- put off marriage to focus on their work, turn a dream into a reality with little more than determination, and so, are instrumental in producing generation after generation of other in-your-face women. Not a bad legacy, is it?

Lillian Wald

When Vassar College turned down her application for admittance in the late 1800's because she was only sixteen, Lillian Wald just went to nurse's training instead. It was a life changing and even historical decision. Undaunted by any challenge, Wald's work with the children at an orphanage convinced her that she needed to start providing services -- medical and otherwise -- for immigrants in New York City, most of whom were living in abject poverty.

She taught nutrition and cooking, sewing and emergency medical procedures. She provided recreational activities for the children. And she even moved into the neighborhood to be more accessible, coining the term "public health nurse." Over time, she got so much attention for her work that philanthropists started throwing money at her and by 1913, Wald was supervising a team of ninety-two people.

Writing a pair of books about her work helped to publicize its importance and effectiveness and further helped her to fund it, as well as her other interest: organizing around labor rights and child labor issues. She lobbied for children to go to school rather than work. She lobbied for rights for African-Americans and racially integrated all classes at her Henry Street Settlement House. She helped to organize the women's suffrage movement in New York City, marched against entering World War I, and helped to establish both the NAACP and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. No wonder The New York Times named her one of the twelve greatest living American women in 1922, but getting her to stand still long enough to accept the award must have been quite a trick!

Rosetta Wakeman

Even though Rosetta Wakeman was only five feet tall and in her late teens, with no offer of marriage and her family in poverty, she decided in 1862 that her best bet to help out was to dress like a man and take a job building a canal. It worked. She was able to take care of herself and send money home. But when she found out that men enlisting in the Union Army received a sign-on bonus of $152, she couldn't resist such a windfall. So she marched on down to her friendly neighborhood recruiter, told him her name was Lyons Wakeman and left for war.

An initial stint protecting the White House may have given Wakeman a false sense of security about surviving the situation, but in February of 1864, her regiment was shipped to Louisiana to participate in the Red River Campaign. Marching for hundreds of miles through the backwater swamps didn't kill her and neither did the battles, some of which lasted all night. But contaminated water resulted in chronic diarrhea and she died in New Orleans and was buried under the name Private Lyons Wakeman in the Chalmette National Cemetary.

We know all this today because she wrote letters to her family throughout her two years in the army. In one of them, sent from Washington, D.C., Wakeman wrote: "I don't know how long before I shall have to go into the field of battle. For my part, I don't care. I don't feel afraid to go." Said like a true in-your-face woman who's just trying to make a living.

Nancy Wake

Born in New Zealand in 1912 and raised in Australia, Nancy Wake set out to seek her fortune when she was sixteen and, after touching base in New York and London, she found it in Paris in the person of a wealthy French industrialist who she promptly married. When the Nazis occupied France, she immediately became a courier for the French Resistance and began to work with those who aided Allied soldiers and others to escape the country.

By 1943, Wake (called "The White Mouse" by the Germans because she was so good at eluding capture) was the Gestapo's most sought resistance fighter, with a 5-million franc bounty on her head. Still, she was so in-your-face that she'd pass through the German checkpoints winking flirtatiously and say, "Do you want to search me?"

When it became obvious that she needed to bolt for safety, Wake crossed the Pyrenees into Spain and on to Britain, where she joined the British Special Operations Executive and parachuted right back into France. A "good and fast shot" with a great attitude under duress, she had soon helped to recruit, train, and organize a resistance force of 7,500 guerilla fighters in the hills around Montlucon.

Leading attacks on Gestapo headquarters personally, Wake proved herself capable on many occasions of killing in cold blood. Later, during an interview, she remembered killing a sentry who spotted her. "They'd taught this judo-chop stuff with the flat of the hand at SOE, and I practised away at it. But this was the only time I used it -- whack -- and it killed him all right." Another mission required her to ride a bicycle 500 miles though multiple German checkpoints.

After the war, Wake received more than a dozen medals and acknowledgements. Unfortunately, it was only then she learned that her husband has been tortured to death by the Gestapo in their efforts to locate her. It can be dangerous to be an in-your-face woman. It can also be dangerous to be close to one.