The Slice: Reddy or not, here comes a big fan

Some of the responses to last Thursday’s column item about Helen Reddy and “I Am Woman” were so mean-spirited and misogynistic that I feel like I have only one choice.

I’m turning today’s Slice over to a big Helen Reddy fan.

“I attended that Helen Reddy concert at Expo ’74,” wrote Debbie Miller of Hayden. “It was on a school night, and my parents knew how much I adored her that they got us (the family) tickets to attend it. My mom was a teacher. It took something really special for either of us kids to be allowed to go anywhere away from home during the school week.

“I still have the Expo program and the program that was sold at that concert. I was walking on air the next day at school but I couldn’t tell a soul about it because the only friend I had who also liked Helen had moved across the country. For some stupid reason, being a fan of Helen Reddy has never been cool.

“Helen was the first ‘musical act’ I really, really loved.

“… The album ‘I Am Woman’ was the second record album I ever got, and I still have it. I played it nearly to death.

“… OK, enough gushing. What does ‘I Am Woman’ mean to me? It was the anthem for young women of my generation. Its message got me through my misfit years in junior high and high school. It helped me while pursuing a degree in physics, when moving away from home for the first time, and when facing the ever-uncertain future. Now, in my middle-age years, its message continues to help me get through way too many losses at this time in life. ‘If I have to, I can do anything.’

“What does it mean to me? Everything.

“I encourage anyone, especially any young woman, who has not heard it to do so. Take its message to heart. The goals for which women in the ’70s were striving have still not been reached. We need that anthem now as much as we ever did. If we have to, we can do anything.”

Today’s Slice question: What is your worst habit when it comes to eating?