“Bleach-blonde, bad-built, butch body;” “fake eyelashes.” These are among the insults thrown around last week in Congress by women in the U.S. House of Representatives. A new low indeed, for the whole country to watch and laugh at. And while women may behave badly just like men, what we saw last week was nothing to emulate and not what the great phrase often depicted on greeting cards —“well-behaved women rarely make history” — epitomizes.

Many women are credited with coining that phrase, including Marilyn Monroe, Gloria Steinem, Eleanor Roosevelt, Anne Boleyn, and others. Even Princess Leia from “Star Wars” saying “well-behaved women rarely defeat empires” is a popular internet meme. I’ve learned that the quote actually came from Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, a professor of Early American history at Harvard.