The U.S. Treasury Department (motto: Go ahead and spend it! We’ll just print more!) has announced a woman will join Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill and we have five years to decide who that woman will be.
Preliminary polls have produced predictable choices: Eleanor Roosevelt, Susan B. Anthony, Harriet Tubman, Sacagawea, Amelia Earhart…fine history-making women all.
But, if we’re being honest, a little meh. I mean, sure, they were great and did a lot of important stuff, like, a gazillion years ago. Sacagawea, for instance, went by one name long before Madonna and Pink making her an important trendsetter. But, at the end of the day, it’s not like any of them invented Netflix so maybe we should all just settle down.
Why not shake things up a bit? There isn’t a rule that you have to be dead to be on currency, after all. Oh, there is? Well, that’s dumb.
Let’s change that pronto. Here my suggestions for the First Woman to be on the Ten Dollar Bill, in no particular order…
- Beyonce’. If I have to explain this to you, well, maybe you’re not really an American. Besides she is a Queen.
- Betty White. For those of you who aren’t buying the whole Beyonce thing. She’s an American icon, for heaven’s sake.
- Mary Kay Ash. This clever Texas entrepreneur recruited women to sell her cosmetics door to door and rewarded the top sellers with pink Cadillacs. An entire generation of bored housewives found new purpose peddling Mary Kay.
- Caitlyn Jenner. She was an Olympic athlete like no other. And now she totally rocks the perfect smoky eye. Both near impossible feats.
- Taylor Swift. More than a just pretty young thing, Tay-Tay is a financial genius who brought Apple to its corporate knees recently. Think about that the next time you can’t even get the home button to work on your iPhone5.
- Susan B. Anthony. Oh, I hear you. Didn’t I just diss her? Well, that was soooo 10 minutes ago and I’ve had a chance to rethink it. Why? Because, let’s face it, putting her face on a ONE DOLLAR COIN was actually an insult. When you can’t even be used at a laundromat, you’re not much of a coin. She deserves a do-over.
- Martha Stewart. This self-made billionaire had it all, lost much of it, went to prison, had it all again. Bonus: She could redesign her own $10 bill, using a palette of colors from her paint collection at Home Depot. Win/win.
- Hillary Rodham Clinton. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to put Hillary on the $10 bill but those are all exceedingly dull. The biggest reason to do it? Because it will be fun to watch all the haters have sputtering hissy fits and demand “two fives instead” whenever the clerk gives them a Hillary in their change.
- Jennifer Aniston. C’mon. She lost Brad and now she’s past her childbearing years. What are y’all? Made of stone?