Today is June 14 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “How often can you ignore the critics and nay-sayers?”
Mildred Ella "Babe" Didrikson Zaharias was an American athlete ignored the critics and achieved a great deal of success in golf, basketball, baseball and track and field. She won two gold medals in track and field at the 1932 Summer Olympics, before turning to professional golf and winning 10 LPGA major championships.
She was named the 10th Greatest North American Athlete of the 20th Century by ESPN and the 9th Greatest Athlete of the 20th Century by the Associated Press.
In 1957, she posthumously received the Bob Jones Award, the highest honor given by the United States Golf Association in recognition of distinguished sportsmanship in golf. It was accepted by her husband George, four months after her death.
She was one of six initial inductees into the LPGA Hall of Fame at its inception in 1977. Zaharias broke the accepted models of femininity in her time, including the accepted models of female athleticism. Standing 5 feet 7 inches tall and weighing 115 pounds, Zaharias was physically strong and socially straightforward about her strength. Although a sports hero to many, she was also derided for her "manliness."
Babe performed at a time when female athletes were considered freakish at best, downright unacceptable at worst. For most of her life she was the antithesis of femininity; not until her later years did she dress and act less manly.
"She was not a feminist, not a militant, not a strategist launching campaigns against sexual liberation," wrote William Johnson and Nancy Williamson in Whatta-Gal!: The Babe Didrikson Story. "She was an athlete and her body was her most valuable possession."
Some writers condemned her for not being feminine. "It would be much better if she and her ilk stayed at home, got themselves prettied up and waited for the phone to ring," Joe Williams wrote in the New York World-Telegram. Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart noted “I pay no attention whatever to anybody's praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.”
Zaharias refused to let the critics get in her way. Do you?