Celebrating famous female cannabis connoisseurs throughout herstory to the present day.
All contents copyrighted. "Bright Leaf" artwork by Jean Hanamoto, camomoto at Spoonflower.com
Maya Angelou, the first poet since Robert Frost to read a poem at a Presidential inauguration, wrote about her experiences with marijuana in Gather Together in My Name, the second installment of her autobiography after the acclaimed I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. She recounted that after smoking grifa, "I lost myself in a haze of sensual pleasure....The shapes and forms melted until I felt I was in a charcoal sketch, or a sepia watercolor."
Playwright and author Lillian Hellman was reportedly a bit of a cougar in her later years, enjoying the company of young single men in New York in the mid-1970s "with a leaning towards the sort of outrageousness that produced the hearty Hellman belly laugh," sometimes induced by smoking marijuana. "Lil said she used mj when she was around people who used it. As in 'Whenever I'd be at a dinner with Gene Krupa...'" said journalist/activist Fred Gardner, who used to supply her in the 60s.
Gertrude Stein co-hostessed a salon in Paris that fostered artists like Picasso. She also was a stream-of-consciousness writer who wrote "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" about her longtime lover, whose cookbook features a recipe for hashish fudge, "which anyone could whip up on a rainy day." An interesting character by the name of Jenny Reefer appears in "The Mother of Us All," a 1947 opera about the life and career of suffragette Susan B. Anthony for which Stein wrote the libretto.
A disc depicting Enheduanna (second from left) overseeing a ceremony.
Cannabis and storytelling have long been interwoven. Terence McKenna connects the expression "spinning a yarn" to hemp's dual purpose as a fiber and an intoxicant leading to flights of fancy in his book Food of the Gods. In Fitz Hugh Ludlow's influential 1857 book The Hasheesh Eater, he describes a hashish-induced vision of a crone knit of purple yarn.
It's now come out that the first known storyteller was a priestess named Enheduanna, who was the subject of a "She Who Wrote" exhibition at the Morgan Library last year. Her poem, "The Exaltation of Inanna" was written around 2300 BCE to the goddess and "Queen of Heaven" known later as Ishtar.
Below are more storytelling Tokin' Women we celebrate this month, by their era. Read more about these remarkable women by clicking on their names.
A pitcher for the South Bend Blue Sox, one of the teams that made up the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League during and after World War II, Faut was the league's all-time ERA leader (1.23) after eight seasons, and was second in career wins (140). She also threw two no-hitters, as well as two perfect games – a feat no Major League Baseball pitcher ever matched. She also competed in tournaments of the Professional Women's Bowling Association. Among the jobs she held after her playing days was running the mosquito biology training program at the University of Notre Dame. Source.
Simone Segouin(2/21)
Also known by her nom de guerre Nicole Minet, Segouinwas a French Resistance fighter during World War II. Among her first acts of resistance was stealing a bicycle from a German patrol, which she then used to help carry messages. She went on to take part in large-scale or otherwise dangerous missions, such as capturing German troops, derailing trains, and acts of sabotage. On 14 July 2021, she was appointed a Knight of the Legion of Honor, France's highest order of merit.She died at age 97.
Richard Belzer (2/19)
In a 2010 interview with AARP Magazine, Belzer described his character Munch on Law & Order as “Lenny Bruce with a badge.” Belzer served in the army, and worked as a truck driver, salesman, dockworker, reporter, and drug dealer before turning to stand-up comedy, doing his signature crowd-work warm-up for Saturday Night Live. An advocate for medical marijuana after using it to counteract the effects of radiation treatments for testicular cancer in 1985, Belzer was featured in High Times magazine in the '80s and '90s, where he said, "For God's sake, it's a plant. It's been around for thousands of years and been used in many forms. It's heartbreaking that anyone would deny someone the use of such a harmless substance." Interviewed by Hemp Times magazine in 1998, he sported a black hemp sweater and jacket, and shades, for his cover photo. In this video Munch signs off, after teaching his grandson an important lesson.
Ellen Hovde (2/16)
Hovde was one of the directors of “Grey Gardens,” the groundbreaking 1975 movie that examined the lives of two reclusive women, relatives of Jackie Kennedy, that inspired both a Broadway musical and a 2009 HBO film starring Drew Barrymore. Hovde was an editor on “Gimme Shelter,” the documentary that captured a Rolling Stones tour (including the Altamont concert), and on "Gilda Live," a Gilda Radner concert film directed by Mike Nichols. She was a director on “Christo’s Valley Curtain,” the 1972 Oscar-nominated short documentary about an environmental art project from artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude. In 1978 Hovde and collaborator Muffie Meyer formed Middlemarch Films (named no doubt for the George Eliot novel), which went on to make scores of documentary features and videos in various styles and on a wide range of subjects. One of those, a television mini-series about Benjamin Franklin, won an Emmy for outstanding nonfiction special in 2002. Hovde grew up in Pittsburgh and earned a degree in theater in 1947 at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. In 1950 she married Matthew Huxley, son of psychedelic author Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception), to whom she remained close until his death in 1963, sometimes reading books into a tape recorder for him as his eyesight began to fail. Source.
Raquel Welch(2/15)
When Playboy in 1998 named the 100 sexiest female stars of the 20th century, Welch came in third — right after Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield. This iconic poster of her in a deerskin bikini from One Million Years B.C. (1966) adorned at least a million teenagers' walls in the 60s and 70s. She won a Golden Globe for her comedic role in the 1973 adaptation of The Three Musketeers, written by Very Important Pothead Alexandre Dumas. I loved her for her inspiring and encouraging book Raquel: The Raquel Welch Total Beauty and Fitness Program (1984) which details in photographs her 28-pose yoga routine, which she teaches in this video.
Huey "Piano" Smith (2/13)
Born in the Central City neighborhood of New Orleans, he was influenced by the innovative Professor Longhair and became known for his shuffling right-handed break on the piano that influenced other players. In 1955, Smith became the piano player with Little Richard's first band in sessions for Specialty Records. In 1957, his band Huey "Piano" Smith and His Clowns recorded "Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu," a song that's been covered by artists from Johnny Rivers to Deep Purple. "Li'l Liza Jane," a folk song Smith's band recorded in 1959, was performed by Nina Simone at Newport in 1960; Alison Krauss won a best-country-instrumental performance Grammy for her recording of it in 1989. Steve Huey of AllMusic noted that, "At the peak of his game, Smith epitomized New Orleans R&B at its most infectious and rollicking, as showcased on his classic signature tune, 'Don't You Just Know It.'"
Burt Bacharach(2/8)
Bacharach became Marlene Dietrich’s musical director in 1958 and toured with her for two years in the United States and Europe. He discovered Dionne Warwick, a gifted young gospel-trained singer from East Orange, N.J., singing backup at a recording session for the Drifters. A string of hits followed, among them “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” “Walk On By,” “Alfie,” “I Say a Little Prayer,” and “I'll Never Fall In Love Again.” Among the other artists who had hits with Bacharach's songs written with lyricist Hal David were Jackie DeShannon (“What the World Needs Now Is Love”), Dusty Springfield (“Wishin’ and Hopin’,” “The Look of Love”), Tom Jones (“What’s New Pussycat?”), The Carpenters ("Close to You), and B.J. Thomas ("Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head.") “The Songs of Bacharach & Costello,” a boxed set including Elvis Costello’s recordings of Bacharach songs and songs they collaborated on, is scheduled for release next month.
Jeff Blackburn (2/7)
Blackburn began practicing law in 1983 and spent his decades-long legal career representing underserved people, often for free, in criminal and civil rights cases around Texas. He was a major player in significant criminal justice reform after taking on the cases of 38 people in 2001 who were arrested on drug-related charges in Tulia. Over the next few years, during which he formed and led a national coalition of lawyers, his clients were exonerated in the largest mass pardon in US history. Blackburn went on to contribute to developing subsequent criminal justice reform legislation, and co-founded The Innocence Project of Texas.
David Harris(2/6)
Harris was a Vietnam War protester who was elected student body president on a platform focused on righting the unequal status of women at Stanford, and made national news when a group of pro-war Stanford students grabbed him and shaved him bald as punishment for his activism. A gifted orator, he toured with Joan Baez, and did 20 months in prison for refusing the draft, just after marrying her. In prison he led hunger strikes to improve conditions for inmates. When he got out in 1970, he began writing for Rolling Stone, starting with a profile of Ron Kovic, whose story was told in the movie Born on the Fourth of July. He also contributed to The New York Times Magazine and wrote several books, including, Our War: What We Did in Vietnam and What It Did to Us (1996) and My Country ’Tis of Thee: Reporting, Sallies and Other Confessions (2020), a collection of his newspaper and magazine articles. His son with Baez, Gabriel Harris, is a percussionist who studied with Baba Olatunji and his daughter Sophie Harris is a filmmaker. Source.
In spite of some misreporting going around, Very Important Pothead Woody Harrelson didn't say he'd given up marijuana while hosting Saturday Night Live this weekend.
What he said on SNL is this, while telling a story about what he did after he hosted the show three years earlier:
I went walking the greatest part of this city, Central Park, leaning against a tree, and started to read the craziest script. Full disclosure, I smoked a joint first.
The reason I like herb more than alcohol is because it makes me feel good, no hangover, and I never wake up covered in blood. But regardless, I have decided to quit smoking pot altogether, andI’m sticking with it...until after the show.
The first president I got to vote for, after campaigning against Richard Nixon four years earlier at the age of 14, was Jimmy Carter. It's been announced that the 98-year-old Carter is in hospice, to spend his final days at home.
On his second day in office in 1977, Carter pardoned all Vietnam War draft evaders. During his term, two new cabinet-level departments—the Department of Energy and the Department of Education—were established.
During his presidential campaign, Carter responded to a candidate survey from NORML stating that he was in favor of decriminalization of cannabis. Six months into his administration, on August 2, 1977, he issued a Drug Abuse Message to Congress stating:
Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself; and where they are, they should be changed. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against possession of marijuana in private for personal use. We can, and should, continue to discourage the use of marijuana, but this can be done without defining the smoker as a criminal.
States which have already removed criminal penalties for marijuana use, like Oregon and California, have not noted any significant increase in marijuana smoking. The National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse concluded five years ago that marijuana use should be decriminalized, and I believe it is time to implement those basic recommendations.
Therefore, I support legislation amending Federal law to eliminate all Federal criminal penalties for the possession of up to one ounce of marijuana.
Rihanna is the name on everyone's lips these days afterher sheroic performance at the Super Bowl, balancing in mid air while dressed as a pregnant vulva with an army of sperm dancing around her, just like the woman/goddess she is. I mean, even Gladys Knight only had three pips.
The billionaire singer and fashion icon rose from modest beginnings in Barbados, where she sold clothes from a street stall, to sell 250 million records worldwide. She is the second-best-selling female music artist of all time (second to her fellow Tokin' Woman Madonna, someone she admires and emulates, along with Bob Marley). She has branched into successful fragrance, fashion, and beauty products businesses, and launched several charitable foundations.
The singing sensation was caught by the pot-parazzi smoking a blunt at a hotel in Hawaii in 2012.
That morning, she tweeted to her 12 million followers, "Waken...Baken...Good morning." Later she wrote, "Kush rolled, glass full... I prefer the better things," a lyric from Drake's song, 'Up All Night'. A week earlier she tweeted, "4:20... Hi." That year, she dressed as a pot fairy for Halloween and rolled a joint on the bald head of her bodyguard at Coachella. For her single "Diamonds," she used imagery of diamonds being rolled into a joint.
A 2013 article in USA Today titled, "Marijuana's celebrity stigma goes up in smoke" was adorned with a photo of her wearing a pot-leaf shirt at a concert in Berlin to represent a new generation of celebrity stoner. "And then there's Rihanna, who readily flaunts her affection for the illegal flora, posting pictures of her Valentine's present (a bouquet of weed), 25th birthday cake (adorned with a gilded marijuana leaf) and Christmastime tush tattoo (yep, another leaf of weed)," the article stated. Rumors that she founded a brand of marijuana called MaRihanna in 2015 at the High Times Cannabis Cup in Jamaica turned out not to be true.
UPDATE 2/06: Moreno is Star of the Month on Turner Classic Movies. Her films are being featured on Thursday evenings throughout February, including The King and I and The Vagabond King (2/9), West Side Story and Popi (2/16), and The Ritz and The Four Seasons (2/23).
Rita Moreno at age 91 remains the talented and sexy star she always was. Her movie in which she co-stars with Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Sally Field as octogenarians who travel to the Superbowl, 80 for Brady, opens today.
In the film's trailer, Moreno is shown to consume a "high dose" (presumably cannabis) drink, after which she has a bizarre "Being John Malkovich" moment wherein she wears a cat mask and imagines she is Guy Fieri. (Those are some pretty strong edibles.)
The actress, who was the first Latina to win an Academy Award (for "West Side Story"), also consumed an edible in the rebooted series "One Day At a Time," as comic relief in Episode 5: "Nip It in the Bud," with a thoughtful script that addressed vaping, youth use, opiate addiction, and racism in the drug war.
Turns out Moreno may have more than a passing acquaintance with marijuana.
At the age of 6, Loring originated the role of Wednesday Addams on TV's The Addams Family (1964–1966). Afterwards, she joined the cast of the ABC sitcom The Pruitts of Southampton with Phyllis Diller. In the 1980s she played the character Cricket Montgomery on the soap opera As the World Turns and appeared in a few B slasher movies. In 1987, she married an adult film actor after meeting him on the set of the 1987 film Traci's Big Trick, on which she was a make-up artist and uncredited writer. Christina Ricci played the role of Wednesday in two movies in the '90s, and Jenna Ortega said she paid homage to Loring's groovy dance moves (above) while playing the role on the new smash Netflix series "Wednesday."
Cindy Williams (1/25)
Williams appeared as an American girl who turns on a staid British bank manager to pot in Travels With My Aunt, just before she played the quintessential American girl in American Graffiti. She went on to be paired with Penny Marshall as a writing partner, leading to a guest shot on "Happy Days" and their spin-off "Laverne and Shirley" (1976-1983). The show has a 1981 "lost episode" titled "I Do, I Do" in which the girls get stoned on pot brownies. David Lander, who played Squiggy on the show, was an MS sufferer and advocate for medical marijuana who told producer Garry Marshall that instead of patrolling the halls during the show he ought to put marijuana in the budget.
“I know this is good. It’s from Crosby.” - Rock roadie passing a joint in Almost Famous. Story.
NORML Advisory Board member, activist and musician Crosby stayed full of life and passionate about reform until the end, weeks before his 82nd birthday. "He was always, I repeat, always present for me, to defend my character and politics. He was funny, clever, and refreshing to be around," said Joan Baez, whose portrait of Crosby is on his last album cover. He's higher than Eight Miles High now.
Bonnie Raitt called the Australian Geyer, "One of the greatest singers I’ve ever known....Her husky, powerful and deeply soulful voice and phrasing has blown me away since I first heard her." Geyer had hits with her cover of James Brown's "It's a Man's Man's World," and "Difficult Woman," a song written for her, and sang back up for Sting, Chaka Khan, Toni Childs, Neil Diamond, and Joe Cocker, among many others. Her Ready to Deal (1975) was the first album co-written and co-produced by a woman in Australia.Asked once if she thought she would emulate the international success of fellow Aussies Helen Reddy and Olivia Newton-John, Geyer replied: no, because “I’m not a very well-behaved person.” Her memoir titled Confessions of a Difficult Woman is open about her alcohol and drug use.
Lupe Serrano(1/16)
Trained in Chile and Mexico City, Serrano joined the American Ballet Theatre in 1953 when "American audiences had rarely seen a female dancer achieve the soaring jumps, fleet footwork and swift turns that Ms. Serrano executed with aplomb." On a 1960 stop in St. Petersburg (then known as Leningrad), the audience was reported to have been so enthralled by her performance that they insisted she repeat her solo turn rather than simply take a bow. One who noticed was Rudolf Nureyev, who invited Serrano to dance with him after his defection in 1961. The two perform here the pas de deux from Le Corsaire, based on a poem by Very Important Pothead Lord Byron. Source.
Gina Lollobrigida (1/16)
"She makes Marilyn Monroe look like Shirley Temple," said her co-star Humphrey Bogart. Italian actress Lollobrigida overcame Howard Hughes's interference in her film career and won the Henrietta Award (World Film Favorite) at the 1961 Golden Globe Awards. She had a second career as a photojournalist in the 1970s, photographing, among others, Paul Newman, David Cassidy, Ella Fitzgerald, and Fidel Castro, publishing several books of her photography. Lollobrigida was an active supporter of Italian and Italian-American causes, particularly the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF). In 2013 she sold her jewelry collection and donated nearly $5 million from the sale to benefit stem-cell therapy research.
Lisa Marie Presley (1/12)
Lisa Marie's parents Priscilla and Elvis Presley divorced when she was four, and her father died when she was seven. Starting in her teens, she was reportedly sexually abused by her mother's boyfriend and experimented with alcohol and drugs. She credited Scientology for ending her addictions, and along with fellow Memphian Isaac Hayes, founded their Literacy, Education and Ability Program before renouncing the cult in 2014. In 2002, she testified before Congress against children being forced to take a "cocaine-like stimulant" (probably, Ritalin) for ADHD rather than a drug-free approach. Presley was a recording artist, and on the 30th anniversary of Elvis's death in 2007 she released a "duet" with her dad of "In the Ghetto" (shown), with proceeds benefiting the Presley Place Transitional Housing Campus in New Orleans, a project of The Elvis Presley Charitable Foundation that Lisa Marie chaired. Her death of a heart attack at the age of 54 was determined to be a result of complications from gastric bypass surgery she'd had years before. She died two days after Austin Butler lovingly thanked her in his Golden Globe acceptance speech for his portrayal of her father in Elvis.
Among his many accomplishments, guitarist extraordinaire Jeff Beck really knew how to back up a woman, shown here with Imelda May. A member of the influential Yardbirds, Beck pioneered the use of the "talkbox" (here on the Beatles' "She's a Woman") and toured this year with Johnny Depp. "I loved him since I was 14," wrote Tokin' Woman Chrissie Hynde. "Sadly, he couldn’t influence my primitive skills on guitar - but my hair style was all his." Beck backed up Hynde on her 1999 pot anthem "Legalise Me."
Melinda Dillon(1/9)
“Melinda Dillon was such a great actress, with a wonderful delicacy about her. She was a delight to direct in Prince of Tides," Barbra Streisand wrote. Known and loved as Ralphie's calm and loving mother in A Christmas Story (1983),Dillon got her start when, as Second City's first coat-check girl, she leapt to the stage as a last-minute understudy. She was nominated for a 1963 Tony Award for her Broadway debut in the original production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Oscar-nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and Absence of Malice(1981), in which she played a Catholic woman tormented by a reporter's coverage of her abortion. Nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for her performance in Magnolia (1999), she also played Woody Guthrie's wife and singing partner in Bound for Glory (1976, directed by Hal Ashby), and Paul Newman's lover who also slept with women in Slapshot (1977).
Fay Weldon(1/4)
Over the course of her 55-year writing career, she published 31 novels, including Wicked Women (1995) and Mantrapped (2004), but was most well-known as the writer of The Life and Loves of a She-Devil which was the basis for the 1987 movie "She Devil" starring Tokin' Women Meryl Streep and Roseanne Barr. A self-declared feminist, Weldon's work features what she described as "overweight, plain women" and spoke out against the "appalling" lack of equal opportunities for women, and the myth that they were supported by male relatives. Later she took flack for telling BBC in 1998 that rape wasn't the worst thing that could happen to a woman, and championing faked female organisms in her 2006 book What Makes Women Happy.
Marilyn Stafford(1/2)
In 1948, Stafford went with friends interviewing Albert Einstein for a documentary film, getting her first lesson in using a 35 mm camera in the car on the way and making Einstein her first portrait. She worked as an assistant to the fashion photographer Francesco Scavullo and in 1958, while six months pregnant, traveled to Tunisia to document the plight of Algerian refugees. When her photo of an Algerian refugee nursing her child (shown) appeared in The Observer, Stafford became one of few women photographers working for national newspapers. Throughout her career she photographed war victims, fashion photos and street scenes (often combined), and portraits of Indira Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt, Edith Piaf, Sharon Tate, Donovan, Joanna Lumley, and Twiggy among many others.
Edith Lank(1/1)
Author, advice columnist, and blogger Lank wrote or co-wrote ten books on real estate and one on Jane Austen. Her books include the Home Buyers Kit and Home Sellers Kit, and her syndicated weekly real estate column "Housecalls" appeared in more than 100 newspapers and web sites, leading USA Today to dub her the Dear Abby of real estate. In 1984 Lank won the Matrix women in communication award. She filed her last column in 2019 while writing "86 and Holding," a blog about adventures in aging. She died at age 96.
Lise Nørgaard (1/1)
Journalist and writer Nørgaard was known for her precise and often humorous portrayals of Danish cultural life. She wrote numerous novels, compilations of essays and short stories, and from 1978 to 1982, she co-wrote the television series Matador. The memoir of her childhood, Kun en pige (Just a girl), became a bestseller in 1992 and is considered her masterpiece. The work was adapted into a feature film in 1995. Nørgaard died in her sleep at the age of 105.
Fred White(1/1)
White began playing the drums in high school and toured with Donny Hathaway, recording Donny Hathaway Live, which Rolling Stone named one of the top 50 live albums. In 1974, he joined his brothers Maurice and Verdine White in the funk band without equal, Earth, Wind & Fire. White also played with The T-Box Band and Little Feat, and worked for Motown Records. EW&F guitarist Sheldon Reynolds died on 5/23/23.
