The Last Knight and Us
By Karen and Erica
The Last Knight, a show at the Metropolitan Museum, is totally fascinating.
The subject is Emperor Maximilian I, who became a Holy Roman Emperor in the Middle Ages. His story is pretty amazing. His origins were rather modest, then was married off, young, to a more powerful woman, then she died, then he took over the world. How did he do that? He understood the power of image
In Maximilian’s case he relied on armor. He had sumptuous coats of arms made for himself and his horse, and he looked fantastic. And powerful. And glamorous. So did his horse.
He also gave amazing armor to those whose favor he needed. He understood that if he made them look fantastic and powerful and glamorous they would like him. And do him favors. And it all worked.
The show is worth seeing just for the armor, which is beautiful, and also involves more engineering than we had expected—lots of gorgeous nuts and bolts, mechanisms that allow a knight to get into the armor, and machines that cause a shield to fly off at an appropriate time.
But the show is also a handbook on how to succeed in a man’s world. First, project an image—a fantastic and powerful and glamorous image. If you have to, fake it til you make it—Maximilian seems to have been pretty expert in that regard. Then, feeling confident, you can conquer the world—as he did.
That’s what we did. We came out as women, dressing to impress, once we figured out the game,. We needed to demonstrate what real women look like. Our clothing was our armor. Once confident, we performed, and we became accepted, for who we were.
And we are still doing the same thing. When we retired, we began to understand that there was no image out there of retired professional women. The only images were of impotent older women who had no glamour whatsoever. So we decided to put ourselves on the map, the way we look now, so we, and everyone else, could see what we had to offer.
It worked for Maximilian. It worked for us when we entered the workforce. It will work now.