The Power of Remembering The Past

One week out from book launch: my college reunion has me in my feelings

Ivy Day, 1921, Smith College Archives

Welcome to My So-Called Feminist Life: Essays, interviews, and book reviews that wrestle with what it means to be a feminist today. Comments and questions and musings and suggestions are welcome, because life and feminism are messy and I love diving in with you all!

---

I went to my 15th college reunion a couple of weeks ago. Being an alum of an historically women’s college is weird and strange and amazing. Many of the women’s colleges have this extremely strong reunion tradition, which seems to be much more intense than any other colleges I’ve heard of. At my school, every five years you have an official reunion back on campus, and here’s the thing, a lot of us show up to them, every year. I’ve been to two so far in just my 15 years of being a college alumna. So every year at Commencement, you don’t just celebrate the new graduates, you also see the earlier classes of alums — the ranks you’re joining.

At Smith College, where I attended, there’s a tradition we call Ivy Day, the day before Commencement, where all the graduates wear white (yes, weird, bridal/virginal vibes, I’m sure intentional), and we stand according to our class year and do a little parade through campus. The way it works though, is that you stand along the side of the parade with your class year, and you watch and celebrate all those graduates who came before you. Then it’s your turn and you go past those younger than you. Finally the current graduates join in. It’s pretty amazing.

This year, I actually attended the second weekend of Reunion, the one that happens a week after actual Commencement, so the current grads weren’t there. But second reunion gets to do a little fake Ivy Day anyway, with all those alums who are there putting on our white outfits and our little parade. I told you, it’s kind of weird. And it felt a bit silly, yes, to bring an outfit of white for this strange little tradition, but actually, it reminded me of why I love this women’s college community so much. We show up for each other, again and again, and in this showing up we are constantly reminding ourselves of the past, of the progress, of the regressions, of who we are and who we can be. Earlier in the weekend, I’d walked through the revamped College Archives, where so much feminist history is kept and cared for. I paid my respects to Sylvia Plath’s typewriter. Women’s colleges, not incidentally, are also often very good at caring for archives. (More on this in a later newsletter).

At the Ivy Day parade, I cried and applauded as women from the class of 1944 (yes, there were multiple alums there celebrating their 80TH COLLEGE REUNION) walked past me, some got a ride in a little cart. The rest of us admired them, nearly a century of history inside their bodies, history they could also trace back to this campus. I saw hundreds of women, who graduated in 1949, 1954, 1959, and 1964, file by, all of whom went to college before Smith had any intercollegiate sports, despite hosting raucous annual class basketball tournaments, because competition was not thought to be good for women. I thought about how powerful it was to see multiple members of the class of 1969, college students during the protests of the Vietnam War, wear a Keffiyeh, or hold a Palestinian Flag, honoring the current era of campus protest. And I cheered those graduates from 1979 who left college as some of the first women allowed to get a credit card in their own name, without the approval of a husband. Some of them had grandchildren along for the walk.

The parade might be a little cult-ish on the surface, but it gives perspective. Life, if you’re lucky, is long. There goes the past, but also, your future. “Perimenopause starts a lot earlier than you think!” shouted a member of the class of 1999, ten years our senior to my friends and I, in our late 30s, as we cheered them on. Finally, our class entered the parade, many of my classmates had their small children in tow, past the youngsters attending their 5 year reunions, most of them still in their 20s, when college is still close enough to taste.

Going to a women’s college meant being around a higher concentration of women than anyone typically is during their lives otherwise, for four full years, and reunion gave me a time I could reflect on how special and important it is to have had that time. The stories of women deserve this space of our own, deserve to not be constantly pushed up against men’s accomplishments for comparison. This year, I got to consider how lucky I felt that a part of my career, one I dreamed of while at this college 15 years ago, is about shepherding stories of women that might otherwise have been forgotten. And to whisper some gratitude to a place that helped me discover some of them.

Where Else to Find Me This Week:

• This past weekend, I had an essay in The Wall Street Journal Weekend Review that’s an adapted excerpt of my book, telling the story of how gender and racial norms intersected in an interesting way while women's track and field was just getting off the ground in the United States. In the book, this story delves into the history of Smith College’s physical education program, as well as that of Tuskegee Institute. This history can be traced forward to the racially segregated makeup of our elite sprinters (mostly Black women) and distance runners (mostly white women) today. I’m so pleased with how it turned out, and can’t wait for you all to read more.

  maggiejmertens

  

  A post shared by @maggiejmertens

• I was so thrilled to see Better Faster Farther listed in the Boston Globe’s 75 Books We’re Most Excited to Read This Summer, a truly star-studded list!

maggiejmertens

A post shared by @maggiejmertens

• If running podcasts are your thing, you can hear me talk about the book on Run Farther & Faster; Run to The Top; and/or Trail Runner Nation.

• My older kid’s Kindergarten Graduation *insert crying emoji face here*

• Keeping a literal countdown until my book launch: 7 DAYS!!! I know I am a broken record, but please do pre-order if you can, and send the book link and event info to anyone who might be interested, I will be so sad if I read to any empty rooms (or rooms where I am related to every attendee!) More tour info below!

---

Thanks for reading! My So-Called Feminist Life is a weekly newsletter wrestling with feminism in today’s world. I encourage conversation in the comments if you wish to share your own thoughts, feelings, memories, opinions. If you’d like to support this project financially, you can become a paid subscriber.

You can find me on Instagram: @maggiejmertens

Pre-order my book Better, Faster, Farther: How Running Changed Everything We Know About Women (Algonquin Books, June 18, 2024) from your favorite local bookstore, request it from your local library, or push this quick pre-order button from Bookshop.org

If you’re on the West Coast, mark your calendar for my book tour! I’d love to meet you in person and talk feminism and bodies and sport and running and women with you!