Recently, I tuned into the Netflix original movie Moxie. It has all those things I like in a girl-power themed movie: an ordinary girl, an inciting event, subversive acts of rebellion, a strong soundtrack featuring women-led rock bands, and the leading of a revolt against an oppressive power structure. The fact that the setting is a high school is not insignificant. The message is clear: You are never too young (or too old) to call for change. And sometimes, a revolution is needed when the powers that be won’t do a damn thing to change what’s happening.
Girls are raised up with the idea of princesses locked in towers, waiting to be saved by a handsome prince. Yet, we don’t tell them that they are already locked in towers, kept in place by a power structure that tells them to stay within the walls like good girls do. We live out the lives of generations before us, seeking love as if it’s where our stories start, and never realizing that our stories started at our birth — when we came into the world to change it.
Many girls grow to women who exchange one tower for another, told that marriage is the destination. And that happy marriages are measured in longevity, not in actual happiness. We put aside our dreams to encourage the ones we partner, and we suffer. We don’t even realize that we’re surrounded by walls because the patriarchy has informed our thinking. It’s institutionalized misogyny, and we snuggle up with it at night and dream restless dreams. Or dream nothing at all.
This is how we get women shouting from the rooftops that we are equal already, the voices growing more shrill because they know, on some level, that we’re not or there wouldn’t be yet another news cycle where a proven rapist has walked free. Our bodies are still viewed in the justice system as property available for anyone to lease out at their will and not ours. We are not equal, and the ones who say we are wear blindfolds and walk in darkness and shy away from a light that would reveal an uncomfortable truth.
Women exist side by side with uncomfortable truths. These truths follow us down the street in shouts that draw attention to the desirability of our bodies, an objectification that serves as so much background noise in a world where the media tells us who we should be and what we should look like. They are in every news cycle where reporters wonder how much she had to drink and what she was wearing and why she was in that part of town at that time of night and how dare she step outside of social convention to choose a different path.
It’s not a surprise to think that women will be the ones to change the world. After all, we’re the ones who have done the physical and emotional labor of life — working inside of our homes and outside of them, too. But change is coming. It’s inevitable.
We arm ourselves with the knowledge that women matter, and we begin to mobilize. We may start small, in typical film fashion. We come together at first in twos or threes to talk about what’s wrong with the world. Then, we gather in larger groups, our voices joining our sisters and our allied brothers online, voices rising up in outrage and stretching beyond the borders of our own country and into others. We unite, and we are the wave, the avalanche, or the tsunami that will bring down the societal acceptance of oppression that’s been put upon us from birth, that dictates the terms of our own reproductive futures, and that would seek to build walls around us.
Of course, there are always those voices crying out that equality for women means draining the rights of men. How interesting that there’s an objection to even the thought of a female-dominated leadership structure but no objections offered for a male-dominated one already in place. The assumption that a female-oriented power structure would seek to oppress men is an admission that a patriarchal power structure is an abuse of power.
This thinking is limited. It doesn’t take into account the damage that the patriarchy causes all genders. The fear is that equality could lead to the scales tilting in the other direction — a fear that the oppression they benefit from could one day be the oppression they live under.
There is work to be done for equality, and Moxie gives us a small taste of what that could look like if we sought to change the wrongs we see around us. If we did what we could, no matter how small it might seem. Imagine the change that could happen if we decided enough was enough.
The film even reminds us that the way forward needs to include BIPOC and the LGBTQ+ community. It must be intersectional and inclusive to succeed at all. Without preaching its message, it is a reminder that we may make mistakes along the path to change, but that doesn’t mean we stop learning and trying. Because it matters to the generation living under the blanket oppression of misogyny — and it matters to the generations that will follow our lead.
The work to be done is enormous, and like in most aspects of life, women are tasked to do the physical and emotional labor of creating change, of giving birth to a new movement toward true equality. It’s painful, and we spend weeks triggered by news cycles that underline our oppression.We struggle inside of unions that we know aren’t as equal as they should be. We teach our children, and we have to ask ourselves if we’re teaching them misogyny along with everything else.
I’m not at all surprised that women will pioneer the change. Men may populate the history books, but women have done much of the work — unappreciated and unseen. This is changing, too. First, we drink our coffee. We put on lipstick- or don’t, as is our choice. Then, we go out and change the world. Moxie reminds us that we are all rebel girls — we just have to care enough to do something about it.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Alora Griffiths on Unsplash