©Iskra Johnson

In today’s health news it is increasingly rare to hear something positive. But this week my ears pricked up at reports of what may be an upside to the Trump administration’s obsessive interest in women’s bodies: the new crash test dummy designed for real women. For 40 years, a female crash test dummy has been “in process“ and somehow never got beyond the curiously miniaturist “Hybrid III” made of duct tape and cake flour, weighing in at 4’11” and 108 pounds. 

In those four decades the top forty progressed from “Like a Virgin” to “Die With A Smile.” Generations of children aged out of college and into jobs at Amazon warehouses, husbands aged out of interest in age appropriate wives, and as the realization dawned that staying home to clean house and wait on husbands and children had accrued zero Social Security, women hit the road selling Mary Kay, Longaberger Baskets, candles and teddies, and for those existential moments between pyramid schemes, they worked the night shift, stocking the shelves at Walmart. They also got a bit larger, averaging 5’3” and 170 pounds.

As they went from pushing baby buggies to cruising the highway, 17% more women than men died in car accidents, and 73% more suffered serious injuries. Many of these female casualties were no doubt driving, as I was last night, while listening to the radio, under the misguided notion that in an accident their air bag would hug them appropriately and save their life. I recently gave up my 1988 Toyota Corolla, and now drive a 2006 Subaru. I am petrified of being obliterated by its airbag, and now I know why: it’s designed to kill me.

We have an administration keen to outlaw abortion, restrict access to birth control, and even, with Pete Hegseth’s encouragement, take away women’s right to vote. Every available resource is being expended to protect sexual predators and keep them out of jail. This week nursing was demoted from “medicine” to “hotel services,” meaning that a nursing degree, running from $70-to $200k, can no longer be financed with a federal loan. Trump & Co.’s incoherent jumble of patriarchal kindness, deregulation and degradation is exhausting my endurance for whiplash. And yet, these folks are the first to step up to protect women’s bodies from collision, with a new crash test dummy based on our own godess-given proportions—a dummy that will keep us alive and able to reproduce. Where was Bill Clinton, and where were the other women-loving Democrats in the last 40 years? 

I have scoured the news for who was used for the new body double. Was it the Rubenesque Karoline Leavitt? Kristie Noem of the vixen waist and writhing hair extensions? Some anonymous girl-fan dressed in Lands End packable down wandering the plains of Ohio? I do hope they included the former wrestling pro now bashing a folding chair over what remains of the Department of Education: Linda MacMahon is 77, 5 feet and 147 pounds— close to average. Based on the All American Woman’s diet of highly processed foods she should shrink about half an inch every year, and as bone loss and dementia are correlated, we can pray she forgets why she is at the Department of Education and one day wanders off campus to take up something more productive, perhaps ironing autumn leaves in waxed paper, or scrapbooking.

The Trump Administration has been crash testing the feminine mystique for the last long ten months. It’s about time we have a win, and I am celebrating tonight as I head down Highway 99, with on old mixtape of the original Crash Test Dummies, who are back on tour.  If you want to join me as a fan of this band, (“as if Eddy Vedder had a baby with Johnny Cash,”) I recommend their second album, God Shuffled His Feet for its mastery of the surreal. Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm, 3 years and 41 days left until the next presidential election. . . .