What is a Virago?
Sunday, June 19th, 2005Now, nasty dictionaries (note the word “dic” in their name) make viragoes sound bad – a quick Google search gave me “a noisy or scolding or domineering woman,” and wikipedia even said it’s ” a pejorative name for a verbally abusive and angry woman. It is borrowed from Latin virago, which means ‘resembling (-ago) a man (vir)’. ”
Well, this “noisy, domineering, angry woman” says to hell with all that.
I got the wonderful phrase Virago from Florence King’s book “Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady.”
In it King writes that viragoes are “the only V worth having… A virago is a woman of geat stature, strength and courage who is not feminine in the conventional ways.”
That’s me to a V.
Like King’s mother, I should have it painted on my bowling ball. If I had one, I would.
Instead, I’m painting it on my blog.
Perhaps my parents knew before I was born that I wouldn’t fit the conventional ways of womanhood.
My father decided to christen me Elliotte, the name of a cocktail waitress he met on vacation in Hawaii. She’s not my mother, and dad claims “nothing happened, I just liked the name.”
I’ve yet to meet another female with the same name, although the brilliant show “Scrubs” has a female Eliot Reid (I like my spelling better) as one of its main characters.
A few people have told me they’ve met other female Elliottes (spelling varies), and another quick Google search showed me “Elliotte Crowell” is an actress, but generally I’m a unique first encounter with the female Elliotte kind.
I like it that way, because my dad might not have known it when he named me Elliotte, but I’m a woman of geat stature, strength and courage who is not feminine in the conventional ways.
So when I start my vagabonding in August, you can call me Elliotte, or Virago for short.
Virago Vagabond