With very few real life and fictional girls that signaled a non-normative way of “doing girl” in the 1960s, Eloise was a huge influence on me during my childhood. I was regularly encouraged by my Catholic upbringing to be a “good girl” (a subjectivity I still struggle with as an adult), yet regularly dismayed by the performances of insipid, narcissistic, and boy-centered girlhood represented for my demographic by the media and encouraged by many adults. Eloise reminded me that girls could be smart and rambunctious, creative and rebellious. She was the first figure through which I developed my own particular way of performing a proto-feminist girlhood.
-Mary Celeste Kearney
Check back tomorrow to find out about a heroine who dedicated her life to helping others.