We are women, you heard us roar. Vale Helen Reddy | PruGoward
I can still remember the hairs standing up on the back of my neck, and my lungs starting to fizz as they unexpectedly began to double in size, when I first heard Helen Reddy sing these words in 1971. It was so loud. Not the usual feminine, breathless voice sweetly trilling across the airwaves but an uncompromising, totally controlled, full-on sound.And what a relief: there wasn't a word in it about being in love; men only get a mention as brothers.
I had attended the first "women’s liberation" meeting at university a year earlier and was quietly trudging through life, trying to figure out what it all meant but sure it was meant for me, when suddenly, an anthem was delivered. An entire generation of women found their voice in that song. The power of the song, sung joyously in street marches, loudly in front of boyfriends in the car, spontaneously with friends, was as much about its musicality as its words. Even if you sang flat, you could make a fist of it.My friends in the musical composition world advise that singability is an important feature of any would-be anthem; it must be easy and pleasurable to sing. And yes, this one could be raucously roared out. How very unfeminine.
Nevertheless, she accepted with good grace her ineluctable position as a star in the female cosmos; along with Germaine Greer, Reddy is surely the most significant Australian contributor to the worldwide women’s movement, second wave. With the sad news of Reddy's death, we should pay her this tribute.is not a hymn. It's a victory march. It's a song filled with pride and with the first-person singular pronoun, I, used in almost every line.
But here was Helen Reddy, talking about herself in every line – and not only not apologising for it, but telling us all how terrific she was. Well, what a relief. Now we could all use the I-word without apology. Finally, "I" could claim its rightful place in feminine consciousness.Then there is the acknowledgment in those words, without whingeing, of how hard it has been for women to step forward and claim that space.
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