I did a specialization in Wilderness Medicine.
Bet none of you knew that, huh? Because I’ve never mentioned it. Because it was a disaster, really, I passed the class with flying colors, but I was a disaster. I’m a tall, awkward female without much upper body strength and with nothing approaching grace at all. I have horrific vision (legally blind in one eye and near sighted in the other thus making any attempt my brain makes to see in 3D an unending disaster) and at the time, I wore really bad glasses.
So what I’m saying is that carrying an improvised stretcher carrying a 175 pound dummy down the side of a mountain did not go well and no one was surprised.
But there was one part I was looking forward to, our instructor had brought in a retired rescue diver friend of hers to give us basic lifesaving advice. I’m a good swimmer. I have been since I was a kid, and I was looking forward to that.
For those of you who have taken basic water safety, you know the mantra: Reach, Throw, Row, Go.
Reach with a pole or oar, and if you can’t do that, throw a line or towel. If you can’t Throw, you row a boat out. And only, only if all that fails, do you go. And the truth of the matter is, you shouldn’t go. You shouldn’t go, because putting yourself in the reach of a drowning person is a very dangerous proposition.
And this man looked at us and explained, no matter how strong you are, how good of a swimmer, how small the drowning person may be, or how much you know and love them, the moment that they are in the water, and so are you, they will kill you.
He said, “You cannot save anyone if you’re drowning. If you let someone else drag you under, then you will both die. You have the right to stay alive, no matter what, and you cannot save anyone if you’re drowning.”
In the coming years, that became my mantra. It’s still something I keep in the back of my head. ”You cannot save anyone if you’re drowning.”
What does this have to do with IM3 and our girl Pepper? I think a big chunk of the fandom expects her to drown. I don’t. I think she made the right choices.
This is an awesome Iron Man meta, but most important is this bit, which I think will do a number of my friends some good to read:
“You have the right to stay alive, no matter what, and you cannot save anyone if you’re drowning.”
Here’s the thing. Women, especially in media, are often demonized for looking out for themselves before others. We are expected to put the good of others, our lovers, our children, our families, before our own, and that training begins early.
We are expect to be the lifesavers in these situations, despite the cost to our own health and well-being. We are expected to understand, to accept, to internalize.
And most of all, we are supposed to put the feelings and ego of men ahead of our well-being.
[Pepper] puts her health and well-being ahead of Tony’s mental state, and you know what? That is her goddamn right. That is the inalienable right of all human beings, and especially women. Pepper has the right to protect herself, even if it wounds Tony.