Brian Damage
10-13-2009, 10:19 PM
In 1977, Andy Kaufman issued a direct challenge to the women of America. Kaufman was a longtime follower of the ridiculous machismo and overblown personas of professional wrestlers, and began to wrestle women as part of his stage act, declaring himself the "inter-gender wrestling champion of the world." The perennial oddball offered a $1,000 prize to any woman who could pin him in a grappling match, with the added guarantee that he would shave his head and also marry the woman who could beat him.
It's somewhere between 99% and completely likely that Kaufman was hoping that his tongue-in-cheek sexism would stir the passions ignited by the '60s women's liberation movement, and he wasn't disappointed. He received a swarm of mail in response to his contest: fervent challenges, love letters and hate mail from thousands of women (and more than a few men).
And after marinating for more than three decades in Kaufman's personal files, the cream of this crop has been collected into a book, billed as an "astonishing portrait of the late '70s liberated female psyche": Dear Andy Kaufman, I Hate Your Guts! The book is a collection of those hand-written letters, photos and illustrations, with an introduction by Lynne Margulies and forward by Bob Zmuda. It hits bookshelves just in time for Christmas on Dec. 1.
http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2009/10/andy-kaufmans-wrestling-career-put-to-the-printed.html
It's somewhere between 99% and completely likely that Kaufman was hoping that his tongue-in-cheek sexism would stir the passions ignited by the '60s women's liberation movement, and he wasn't disappointed. He received a swarm of mail in response to his contest: fervent challenges, love letters and hate mail from thousands of women (and more than a few men).
And after marinating for more than three decades in Kaufman's personal files, the cream of this crop has been collected into a book, billed as an "astonishing portrait of the late '70s liberated female psyche": Dear Andy Kaufman, I Hate Your Guts! The book is a collection of those hand-written letters, photos and illustrations, with an introduction by Lynne Margulies and forward by Bob Zmuda. It hits bookshelves just in time for Christmas on Dec. 1.
http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2009/10/andy-kaufmans-wrestling-career-put-to-the-printed.html