In the beginning of September Griselda Blanco was shot and killed outside of a butcher's shop in Medellin. She was born in Cartagena and at the age of 11 kidnapped a rich little boy for ransom. When his parents failed to pay up, she killed him. By her early teens she had moved on to petty theft and prostitution. It was not until she emigrated to Queens, NY in the mid 70s that she found her true calling- cocaine. She was really good at both smuggling it into the country and selling it. She was the first Pablo Escobar. Escobar may ultimately have moved more product and had a little more flair, but I'm pretty sure Griselda was way crazier.
In 1975, she was indicted on the biggest cocaine charges in history and fled back to Colombia. She returned to Miami a few years later and was involved in the Cocaine Cowboy Wars that plagued Miami in the 70s and 80s. Griselda became known as The Godmother and was credited with the invention of motorcycle sicarios (hit men). She was suspected in masterminding around 200 murders in Dade County, helping to make Miami the murder capitol of the United States during this time. At one point there were two many bodies to fit in the Miami morgue and the city had to rent some refrigerator space from the local BK. In the very male dominated world of narco trafficking she was a real trailblazer.
However, she was more than just a very successful drug dealer. She was also a total psychopath and absolute nut. She had a son named Michael Corleone and a dog named Hitler. She once tried to organize the kidnapping of JFK Junior in order to hold him hostage to secure her release from prison. Her three husbands? She killed them. However, while Pablo Escobar went on to become a huge cultural icon, very few Americans have heard of The Godmother. Why? Well, I think it is largely to do with the fact that she looked like this:
Even as a younger woman, The Godmother was not excatlty a sex kitten.
While The Godmother's lack of hotness might have made her less famous, it certainly did not get in her way. She bought some of Eva Perone's diamonds, built a bronze statue of herself other drug dealers would rub for good luck,and beat the worst charges leveled against her in the US because her hit man was so sexy the secretaries in the Miami Dade State Attorney's office couldn't resist having phone sex with him making a plea bargain seem like a good idea to the prosecutor. When she finally went to prison in California she continued to run her empire from behind bars with the help of this young Oakland dealer, Charles Cosby.
Now,at the risk of sounding cynical, I am sure that the fact that she made this dude a millionaire a month after meeting him helps explain how he also became her lover since they weren't exactly an obvious match. Each time Senor Cosby came to visit she paid guards $1,500 dollars to let them get busy.
All of her accomplishments add up to a special kind of crazy that I think has been really over looked.Unfortunately, people don't seem to be so interested in female criminals unless they are also super hot. I have a sneaking suspicion that if The Godmother had looked like Shakira she may have usurped Escobar's title of Colombia's most famous drug dealer. However, people were not as interested in a female criminal who looked a lot like some one's little old pee paw. Often time when bad girls get famous they look a lot less like pee paws.
For Example:
The Manson Girls
The Manson Girls weren't all super hot, but they looked pretty damn good considering they spent most of their time dropping acid, creepy crawling, looking for a giant cave filled with gold in the middle of the desert, and preparing for a race war. LSD must be a very powerful drug if a dude who is 5'2" (yes, Manson is 5'2")can convince you that all of this, plus bludgeoning some innocent strangers is all a very good idea.
Amanda Knox
I am pretty sure that the idea of a young, sexy blond having some sort of sex orgy with a couple of African bouncers and her roommate was part of the reason this case got so much press. If Amanda Knox had looked like a young Bea Arthur I am sure none of us would know who she was. I know she was exonerated and everything, but those look like crazy eyes to me. If I was planning a sex orgy involving knife play she would not be on my guest list. The Godmother was rumored to have hired Miami hookers for cocaine filled orgies at her Florida mansion, but I guess that image isn't really all that titillating and probably wouldn't sell too many magazines.
Casey Anthony
Unfortunately, there are more than a handful of horrible mothers out there who decide that their life would be better if they kill their kids. However, most of these moms do not get the media to cover their trials 24 hours a day for months or inspire Nancy Grace to talk about the Devil dancing. I have a feeling if Casey Anthony didn't like to spend her pre trial days doing body shots and wearing half shirts she would not have gotten nearly as much press.
Bonnie (&Clyde)
Even Bonnie looks like she was pretty cute in an old timey way.
There are other bad girls that kill people and rob banks, but we only seem to hear about the ones who are also good looking. This leads me to believe that it is really hard for women to get any respect for being homicidal maniacs, lunatics, or psychopaths unless they are also sexy.
Sometimes, it is easy to forget that perhaps feminism didn't really work out. I can see how the traditional grumpy and dumpy feminist is sort of a no fun image. However, it seems to have been replaced by ladies working 40 hours a week and taking classes on both BJs and pole dancing in their spare time. I have a feeling this was not exactly what Gloria and Betty had in mind.
Even though I hope Christopher Hitchens RIPs, that ridiculous article he wrote about women not being funny was just published in 2007. So, just 5 years ago enough people thought that an article whose main premise was that women weren't funny because humor is a male province used to seduce women and women don't really understand that "life is quite possibly a joke to begin with" because they have babies and want life to be "fair and sweet" was reasonable enough to publish in magazine. I can think of at least a couple of moms who must have realized that life is at least a little bit absurd. I mean at least the mothers of The Menendez Brothers and Ted Bundy must have thought that life was not all fair and sweet, right?
To make matters worse Naomi Wolf, who I think used to be considered a sorta serious feminist, wrote a book about her vag. I don't have a problem with that per say, but the fact that she felt the need to describe her big Os as "mystic" and "oceanic" seems a little troubling and a little gross. She went on to describe how she believes vag slander (like the see you next Tuesday word and "the awful feline moniker")can negatively effect the very tissue of bagingos as as a result prefers some Sanskrit term that I am sure is also really mystic. Uh Oh. In a world where women are often times still expected to cook dinner and laugh at bad jokes, I think Naomi has gotten a little off topic. Especially, since I am pretty sure I would not want to date any investment bankers that would greet my ladyparts with a "Welcome Goddess" each time they entered the boudoir like she did. If this is what serious feminism has been reduced to at the start of 2000s, maybe the Mayans were on to something.
Ultimately, we still live in a world where Griselda Blanco couldn't get the attention she deserved for selling lots and lots of cocaine, killing hundreds of people, and being a world class crazy person just because she was not very foxy. Our job is not done ladies. It is just not done. Our job is not done until ladies can get the respect they deserve for being homicidal, drug dealing maniacs even if they don't look like supermodels. I'm going to start by listening to this:
To make matters worse Naomi Wolf, who I think used to be considered a sorta serious feminist, wrote a book about her vag. I don't have a problem with that per say, but the fact that she felt the need to describe her big Os as "mystic" and "oceanic" seems a little troubling and a little gross. She went on to describe how she believes vag slander (like the see you next Tuesday word and "the awful feline moniker")can negatively effect the very tissue of bagingos as as a result prefers some Sanskrit term that I am sure is also really mystic. Uh Oh. In a world where women are often times still expected to cook dinner and laugh at bad jokes, I think Naomi has gotten a little off topic. Especially, since I am pretty sure I would not want to date any investment bankers that would greet my ladyparts with a "Welcome Goddess" each time they entered the boudoir like she did. If this is what serious feminism has been reduced to at the start of 2000s, maybe the Mayans were on to something.
Ultimately, we still live in a world where Griselda Blanco couldn't get the attention she deserved for selling lots and lots of cocaine, killing hundreds of people, and being a world class crazy person just because she was not very foxy. Our job is not done ladies. It is just not done. Our job is not done until ladies can get the respect they deserve for being homicidal, drug dealing maniacs even if they don't look like supermodels. I'm going to start by listening to this:
