Loved it when 'You Don't Own Me' closed out the final scene of The First Wives' Club and tremendously pleased to hear it open this homage to our tentative, first, first approach to the critical mass finally, finally breaking through the barriers of sexism. My way - I'd have thousand of sound trucks blasting it through the streets of every bastion of sexism from London and Paris to Shanghai and Beijing and have every radio and TV station in America open their morning news with it, with the caption, 'This is who we are, this is America. Celebrate who you are - native born or emigrant.'
Personally, 'You Don't Own Me' came out just as I was becoming a teenager and reflected the attitudes I encountered among many of my female classmates, much to my pleasure. My interest was in girls with a strong sense of their individual identities who knew what, and whom, they liked.
All that had fizzled by 1972 when everybody ran screaming back to Fifties; I've been waiting ever since for Feminism to re-ignite. Which it has been, slowly, individual by individual, from the grass roots spreading over two generations, to that critical mass. Which is what this show documents.
The show itself is simply a number of women talking about their experiences, about helping to create that critical mass by being themselves and refusing to knuckle under, learning all the way and keeping their eyes on the prize and celebrating the icons who have preceded them. A plenitude in the West and America in particular, since well before the Revolution.
The cumulative effect of their stories makes me believe that we may finally be reaching that critical mass and I highly recommend spending an hour listening to them.
Personally, 'You Don't Own Me' came out just as I was becoming a teenager and reflected the attitudes I encountered among many of my female classmates, much to my pleasure. My interest was in girls with a strong sense of their individual identities who knew what, and whom, they liked.
All that had fizzled by 1972 when everybody ran screaming back to Fifties; I've been waiting ever since for Feminism to re-ignite. Which it has been, slowly, individual by individual, from the grass roots spreading over two generations, to that critical mass. Which is what this show documents.
The show itself is simply a number of women talking about their experiences, about helping to create that critical mass by being themselves and refusing to knuckle under, learning all the way and keeping their eyes on the prize and celebrating the icons who have preceded them. A plenitude in the West and America in particular, since well before the Revolution.
The cumulative effect of their stories makes me believe that we may finally be reaching that critical mass and I highly recommend spending an hour listening to them.
