As I puttered around the house this morning, I came across a book, The Art of the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Unwieldy and expensive, it was all I wanted for my 14th birthday. I’d coveted the book all summer long after falling in love with a character in the movie the movie, unable to pass a Disney Store without going in and thumbing through the pages of concept and finished art. I was Ralphie, and it was my Red Ryder BB gun with a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time. And sure enough, when I went to breakfast on Monday, September 16, 1996, a lone present waited for me at my seat at the table; I convinced my parents to let me stay up till 10PM so I’d have time after my volleyball game to properly look through my book, even though I’d been through it cover-to-cover countless times already in the shop.

Today I’m twice as old as I was then. My 28th birthday is my first birthday as a mother; the Burt Squirt, now six and a half months, naps in my lap as I write this. I’m not sure why my 14th birthday should stand apart in my thoughts from the 27 others, except that it highlights how different the world and I are now. For example:

• From June to January ‘96, I saw Hunchback four times at the same movie theater.
• And it was over a year between theatrical release and home video (we’re talking VHS).
• My career aspirations were to be a Disney animator.
• I participated in athletics at school.
• Flowing skirts, vests, head scarves, big hoop earrings, and bangles were wardrobe staples: yes, I believed I was a Gypsy at heart.
• I got crushes on fictional characters.

Erm…strike that last one. At the age of 28, married and a mother, I still get crushes on fictional characters (though typically not animated ones).

Come to think of it, even though I didn’t grow up and become an artist for Disney or any other animation studio, I doodle in the margins of my notebooks became a storyteller, which I think is what I truly wanted to do all along; at 14, I just hadn’t discovered through what medium. Writing (and Disney World) satisfies my wanderlust, so maybe I didn’t grow out of my Gypsy spirit, either.

I did kiss organized sports goodbye for good in ‘96, and at 28, my wardrobe bears no traces of my Gypsy phase-though not for fear of being nominated for What Not to Wear. No, I’ve moved on for more practical reasons: bangles and dangly earrings are dangerous for mommies!

It’s nice to think that if 14 year-old LR met 28 year-old LR, she’d recognize her.

And have a buddy to dress up like a Gypsy and ogle animated characters watch The Hunchback of Notre Dame with.

Monday’s post about Walt Disney Productions not hiring female animators in the 1930s may not have interested y’all much, but it has had me thinking — and talking.  (Perhaps because for years as a girl I harbored aspirations of being a Disney animator — until I realized I hadn’t had adequate training and I was better at writing, anyway.)

One friend I discussed the rejection letter with pointed out that it was dated 1938, and that WWII would soon change perceptions about women in the workplace.  I wondered if it was possible if, just as factories were short on employees when the men went off to war, Disney lost a number of animators to the military.  After all, Disney kept rolling out the annual theatrical animated features kept during the war years:

August 13, 1942 – Bambi

August 24, 1942 – Saludos Amigos

December 21, 1944 – The Three Caballeros

April 20, 1946 – Make Mine Music

September 27, 1947 – Fun and Fancy Free

May 27, 1948 – Melody Time

October 5, 1949 – The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad

(I do realize that the war was over in 1945; I included the latter dates from the 40s because production on these films certainly would have begun during the war, as hand-drawn animated films typically take three years to complete.)

So, did Disney relax its strict women-in-paint-by-numbers-positions-only rule during the war to work on some of these productions?

Another friend did the necessary googling and came up with this article:  The Mystery of the Female Disney Animator.  It’s a fascinating look into the history of women in the Disney Animation Studios, but here’s the pertinent bit:

Retta Davidson had a girlhood ambition. She loved art and wanted to be an art teacher. However, in July 1939 when she was only 17 years old and had just graduated from high school, she was hired by the Disney Studios as a painter for the feature film Pinocchio. She worked at the old Hyperion Studio location. When the Disney Studio moved to its current location in Burbank, Retta did special effects painting of fire, water and bubbles on animated features like Bambi and Fantasia. World War II provided Retta a unique opportunity and until now, a previously unknown anecdote in the story of Disney animation. With so many men being called into service, there was a shortage of animators. In 1941, women who worked in the Ink and Paint Department were invited to submit drawings of Donald Duck in order to be considered for jobs in the Animation Department. Retta and nine other women…were chosen to be trained as in-betweeners and background artists. According to my sources, only Retta and two other women of that special 10 stayed in the animation business.

The answer to my question is yes:  WWII did open up the field of animation to women.  However, I find it even more intriguing to learn that it didn’t last.  Or rather, I don’t; the Baby Boom certainly many drew working women back home to become the housewives of the 50s and 60s.  But according to a number of forums I’ve perused, even after the women’s liberation movement, even right now — today — the animation field is still dominated by men.

I’m not crying sexism.  But if it’s not sexism, then what is it about the field of animation that attracts more men than women?  It’s a strange concept to me, coming from two artistic backgrounds (literature and music) which always seemed heavy on women.

Mr. Burt theorizes that it might be an issue of spatial relations (apparently men are supposed to have better ones than women).  I don’t know about most, or even a number of women, but I know this woman got a special note on her TAAS test back in the day:  “Demonstrates poor spatial relations.”  (So poor, in fact, that I read the word as “spat-e-ul” relations and thought it had something to do with quarreling.)  Maybe it’s a fact, though, and I’m not capable of improving my drawing much even with training.  Maybe, if I could bend space and time and travel back to the 1930s, I would only be suited to paint-by-numbers at the Disney Animation Studios.  (Although I’ve also never been very good at following directions; but that’s a character flaw.)

Definitely I’m fascinated lately by issues of gender.  Which is something I can explore in those novels I’m writing.

I saw this on Digg and just had to post it here.  This is a 1938 rejection letter sent by Walt Disney Productions to a woman who queried about a position in the animation department:

I’m trying to imagine what it would feel like to get a letter like this from a literary agent or a  mazagine or publisher to whom I’d pitched a story:  “Sorry, but women currently do not write any of the work we publish.  The only work open to women is signing rejection letters to applicants.”  Because notice, if you will, that the signature on the letter is a woman’s.  I wonder how she felt, sending such a letter that basically told another woman she wasn’t good for anything but paint-by-numbers.

Somehow, this is made all the more horrible by being on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs stationery.  I suddenly feel like my little collection of rejection letters isn’t so bad.  Not even the one I got from the editor of a cat fiction magazine (that’s right, I did try — and fail — to get a work of cat sci-fi published) signed “meowishly yours.”  At least he criticized my story for being too description-heavy and, frankly, pointless, which I can work to improve, and not my gender, which I can’t change.

It almost makes me reconsider using L.R. Burt as my nom de plume.  Maybe I should be Lisa Burt and embrace the fact that I am a woman and that has no bearing on my ability to be successful at creative work.

Speaking of which, I’d better get back to outlining my novel.