Grit

What about that Miss Kitty? She sure can speak her mind. This is my conclusion after watching two back-to-back episodes of Gunsmoke yesterday. Yesiree, Miss Kitty had grit. She owned her own business, sat at the table with the men and matched them shot-for-shot. She was as good as one of Marshall Matt Dillon's "boys", and feminine to boot. It took some strength to hold up those eyelashes of hers. Everybody respected her. Hell, her tavern was like a fucking kitchen and she was the mother hen with all the boys coming in for comfort. She saw into their souls, too. After the very young "Midnight Cowboyish" John Voight accidentally killed someone's wife (it was the wife's fault!), she knew by intuition that he was a good boy, and she protected him from the evil rich neighboring town's power broker, who just happened to be the murdered woman's husband. Festus, hell, he'd do cartwheels for Miss Kitty, squinting one eye at anybody who crossed her. Doc was her co-conspirator. And didn't you just want Marshall Dillon to throw her on a beer-stained table and fuck her brains out?

And what about that Stella, the bar-owner in Silverado? A heart of gold. And grit? She'd take care of you, yes she would, and she wouldn't care what anybody said. She knew her mind. She was the gun-totin mom, the whiskey-drinking protector of the town, the liberated woman who patiently waited for her chance to fight evil. And she took it. She found her Matt Dillon in the form of Kevin Kline, and she stuck with him. Dying? Shit, who cares.

Ok, here's another one. Sharon Stone in The Quick and the Dead. She was a man, encompassing all of the qualities that define one. She had compassion, but transcending that, she had cold determination, and that transcended self-protection. She was beyond grit, and suddenly you realized what chaps were made for.

And the bad guys? Men. Weak, power-driven and sadistic, Brian Dennehy and Gene Hackman were beautiful antagonists. Simply fantastic. Irrepressible sociopaths. Sexy. Maybe Miss Kitty could have made them see the error of their ways. She would have set them down and talked some sense into them. Or sent them upstairs with one of her "girls", who would bring them round and make them "care" again. Miss Kitty gave whores a good name. She knew the power of being a man.