What's in a name, Mary Beard?
I'm delighted that Professor Beard is so constantly herself, or perhaps her selves , in all her fantastic intellectual variety. I'm thrilled that she is a role model for other women. Bearding Mary might have seemed funny at first, but the trolling that has been aimed at her is, as she puts it herself, truly 'vile'. Thank you, Professor, for not spending time plastering yourself in makeup. For not wasting hours of your uniquely multiple public intellectual's life in salons. How would you get everything done? Thank you for spending your time... professing instead, which is what you're paid to do. Thank you for being intelligent, for having common sense, and for having the intellectual humility to know what you know, and listen when you don't. What you do encourages other women to do the same. Thank you for wearing, doing, saying and thinking as you please, in conversation with others. Your freedom to do this, and your openness, is one of the signs t...