Women Can Weld – Get over it!

What is going on in the 21^st Century folks!  1998 was the 150th Anniversary of the Women's Rights Movement and we've come a long way baby! Women have been voting, running Corporations, flying planes  and WELDING  for a very long  time,  so why is it that when I’m doing a show and my husband just happens to be sitting in my booth that he’s the one they think makes my ART.  What’s funny is my ART is delicate looking, whimsical; it’s got flowers and butterflies and could even be considered girlie, in a way.  My husband is 6’5 and looks like Tom Selleck and in no way portrays anything delicate.  He makes knives, hunts and shoots, he doesn’t make “whimsical, flowery art”, and so it makes it even wierder that they think he does my ART.

It never fails someone walks into my booth and we are both sitting there and every single person looks at my husband and says “how do you do this”?  He points to me and says “Ask her, she does it” and they gasp and reply “YOU DO THIS”!!   Like being a Woman Who Welds just doesn’t happen in this world.  Then for some strange reason they continue to ask my husband more questions while I’m just standing there.  At first, I thought it was really funny that this kept happening over and over, now I’m not laughing.   I even had a friend helping me set up at my last big show and she sat with me for a while and I’ll be damned if they didn’t look straight at her and think she did it. 

What is it about me that makes me look like I can’t do this?  Maybe I need to not wear makeup (can’t do that I’d scare them away), get a tattoo, or cut my hair short – I know I’ll wear a Rosie the Riveter T-Shirt and just for the heck of it I’ll get one of those temporary skull tattoos and an earring in my nose.  Then I'll look like a bad-ass that can weld!