Blog / 2026 / A National Symbol That Brings Me Comfort

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Boys aren’t always bigger than girls. That’s how my book Crime Against Nature starts: with a bald eagle as an example.

In plenty of species of birds, reptiles, insects, fish, and mammals, females are larger than males. This may seem counterintuitive given the way human culture likes to harp on male physical size and strength, but it’s true.

Among bald eagles and raptors in general, the females’ bigger bodies have to do with access to food. Because of their differing sizes, female and the male birds have different diets. The male has an edge agility-wise over the female because he’s littler, and that encourages different hunting strategies between the sexes, ensuring that everybody gets fed.

I made this painting of a female-male pair of bald eagles to emphasize that girls can be bigger than boys as part of my 250^th anniversary celebration for the United States.

America’s national bird is often used to evoke this country’s independence, strength, and far-reaching vision, and I suppose that’s fine. I agree that these birds are strong and they can see far. I’m not sure what makes them such good representatives of independence, given that they are, like all species, deeply tied to the ecosystem they inhabit and therefore dependent on many other lifeforms. But I can let that slide, because the symbolic use of animals is always a little muddled and a lot about the eye of the beholder.

For this beholder—for me, I mean—the bald eagle as symbol of the United States feels acutely important right now as our Semiquincentennial is being celebrated when our president is a sexual predator and pedophile who will stop at nothing—not even potentially starting World War III—in order to distract from his name appearing more than a million times in the Epstein files.

In this moment, I find a little bit of comfort in my nation’s symbol calling attention to the fact that outdated ideas about the sexes have gotten us to this dangerous and chaotic moment in our history. It’s high time we recognize that maleness doesn’t automatically equal supremacy. It’s high time that we stop using the excuse that “boys will be boys” and start holding rich men accountable for their crimes. We, the eagles, see the president for who he is very clearly.