Cowgirls and Hippie Chicks
Tatoos, Neon Hair, and Other Psychedelics
by Debora Black
The sky was blue. The snow was refreshed after a recent storm. And the crisp, spring temperature was perfect. It was a good day to be on the ski mountain. I crossed the trail and dropped over the edge into the lower section of Rudi’s Run. I paused to take in the landscape, and there it was, the story playing out once again. Off to skier’s left was a guy—in his late twenties, or so—trying to teach his girlfriend how to ski. She was, at this point, paralyzed. They were speaking Japanese. I did not understand a single word; nonetheless, I knew the conversation. He was saying, “It’s easy. Just go across, then turn, then go across and turn.” She was saying, “I can’t do it.”
Lower Rudi’s is fun to ski if you are skiing with a stem Christie turn or better. The slope is kind of pitchy. For a beginner looking downhill and still doing wedge turns—which are not that reliable—the bottom and safety look a long way off. I skied down, but curious about the predicament, I decided to do a lap from the Four Points chairlift, so I could ski past Rudi’s and watch their progress. Three laps later—which included the slow lift rides up—she had made it down. That was a long time to be shaky and terrified. I wondered if the poor girl would ever ski again.
A woman, I noted, would not have taken that skier onto Rudi’s until she was turning with confidence. Being physically able to get down challenging terrain is not the same as being able to do it mentally. Women, I concluded are the better leaders. But as I meandered around the ski area that day thinking about women and leadership, the topic became troubling. I had worked with a few wise, intelligent, strong, and inspiring women over the years, but those years seemed long ago, before I moved to Steamboat. Who inspired me now?
As I thought about the women in leadership positions in Steamboat, I was coming up kind of empty. I recalled one disappointing moment from a few years back. Someone had unexpectedly resigned from the School Board, and due to the many complaints about the school system, several people had applied for the position. At the time, there were only women on the board, and there were two very qualified men who were in the running. According to the Chair, the goal was to promote diversity—which was a promising view since diversity of thought is what forms the body of a community to begin with. Both male candidates spoke well on important issues related to managing the schools and improving certain problems. Both, in my opinion, displayed skills that are important in leadership. But in the end, the Board filled the vacancy by appointing yet another woman who seemed to think exactly like the current Board members. This incited a wave of anger from the parents. Even from my more neutral position of not having any kids in the school system, the Board members did look rather authoritarian—unwilling as they apparently were to actually negotiate through the challenges that diversity creates. When the women individually explained their vote, nothing they said came across as particularly smart, certainly not visionary, or even concerned with solving the problems as perceived by a significant portion of Steamboat parents. I left the meeting thinking the parents were correct, and the schools were in bad shape from poor leadership. I cringed that the Board members were women. I believed we were better than that.
Turning my thoughts to more current events, I considered our City Council. For years, that collection of women and men have been under the skin of various factions of Steamboat residents, and at this point, the Council members only seem to regurgitate and reinforce far left ideology. None of which, once you get into the guts of it, truly supports communities, women, the environment, or the economy. To that end, one female Council member, Joella West, had changed her vote at a council meeting in order to block a public vote on the annexation of the controversial Brown Ranch development. She said that she changed her vote "in part" because Governor Polis had called her and encouraged her to do so. https://www.steamboatpilot.com/news/voters-reject-brown-ranch-annexation-in-preliminary-results
Two questions I have as a Steamboat resident are why Governor Polis is so interested in the Brown Ranch and interested in it to such a degree that he would try to prevent the vote from going to the public. That act alone causes me concern. Under Polis governance, the rights of Colorado citizens have been diminishing. As you know, parents have lost rights to make medical decisions, or even to access their child's medical records, for minor children aged 14 and older. Parents' rights have diminished in their capacity to choose their local schools' curricula. Students' rights to receive high quality academic instruction have been replaced by a focus turned toward ideological instruction on far left doctrine. The rights of gun owners continue to dwindle, and after landlords' property rights were reduced during COVID, and they were forced to house nonpaying tenants, when the COVID regulations finally ended, landlords were left having to hire legal representation to remove nonpaying tenants from the properties. Those policies do not support the responsible and productive citizens in our communities. And it seems like the Brown Ranch could purpose any number of objectives for Polis, such as pushing through Green New Deal goals, which more and more Americans, seeing the failures, are rejecting. Who knows, considering the 40,000 illegal border crossers that have been welcomed into Denver alone—that number according to a report back in January, 2024 by NBC https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/denver-struggles-cope-40000-migrants-rcna135555 —maybe Polis needs places to house all of those people and all of the other illegals scattered around Colorado. Regardless of whether Polis would be able to utilize the Brown Ranch and funding mentioned in the above Pilot article to bring any of his own far left objectives to fruition or not, I have no faith at all in “leaders,” such as the Steamboat Councilwoman, who by all evidence merely follow. Almost any collection of people can manage to kick the can of meetings down the road to some eventual end. Leadership is quite another story.
I began to wonder about a very important question, who is out there inspiring all of our young women and girls? Considering all of the neon hair, tattoos, piercings, and provocative clothing, it occurred to me that we might need some better role models. It seems to me that women and girls need to be smarter about whom they admire. A pop star who tells us she is powerful while she grinds and pops, nearly naked, across her stage isn’t demonstrating her power. She is only fortifying the position that women are sexual objects rather than talented, intelligent, and valuable contributors. True strength is not so easy to come by. A character in a movie who is pierced all over her face and body isn’t a badass because of her freakish piercings. She is a badass because she possesses some exceptional skill like tech genius or martial arts ability. In real life, skills like that take commitment and endurance to achieve. Those qualities appear to be lacking in far too many young women these days.
I totally get how young women would like to stand out a little bit. In fact, I encourage them to do so. But where are the sensible boundaries? Why don’t young women and girls understand that what they actually have is so much better than any kind of heightened reality of them? Youthful skin is plump, glowing, and beautiful. Why would anyone cover it with tattoos? A ring hanging through the septum of a girl’s nose? What is she trying to say about herself? Lime green hair will surely get a girl noticed, but why and by whom? No, it is not the neon hair, the revealing clothes, or the piercings that make women interesting. Just ask the good-looking guy whose girlfriend was willing to be clumsy and scared as she learned how to ski down a mountain slope. Now that girl was impressive.
To be fair, I admit that I am probably a hard case to convince. When it comes to leadership, I won’t get behind just anyone. I have to see a certain amount of quality. I have to see that a person is very smart, has a strong moral and ethical code, and aspires to a worthy vision or cause. I have to see the person’s strength. I have to see an ability to connect with others and to bring others toward the goal without compromising the very things the person says she represents. I know, it’s a big list. But I also recognize that being a quality woman takes a lot of practice. Women must do the work of it though, because gaining the respect of others can be a tough job. Keeping it can be even harder. A leader must have the skills—or at least some of the beginning skills—to be able to navigate the terrain even if it means side-slipping down the steepest sections.
Usually when I see a guy trying to teach his girlfriend how to ski, it’s a disaster. The guy is frustrated, the girl is demoralized, and their vacation seems like a bust. True, the Japanese guy perhaps made a rookie mistake by taking his girlfriend down a blue slope too soon. But from what I saw he never made her feel badly. He even took pictures of her, like she was the Queen of Egypt. And when they got to the bottom, he was still speaking in the same kind voice that I had heard when I first came across them. That’s some good leadership, right there. I bet his girlfriend does stick with it. She will certainly remember that even though it was scary, she made the turns happen and got herself all the way to the bottom of that first difficult blue. There is no better feeling and state of mind than what a girl gets from her own private successes. When we gather enough of those achievements—and the falls that are a part of getting there—we actually have something real to offer as leaders. I can say this much, that girl with her awkward skiing was far more inspiring and interesting than those School Board members and that City Councilwoman had been. Those ladies just didn’t bring enough game.
