Everyday Activist - She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry

Posted on Thursday, May 26, 2016 at 07:00 PM

She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry

Movie Review by Everyday Activist X CalgaryMovies.com

This one was on the Calgary documentary circuit at least twice and I missed it both times. It was featured last September as part of the Movies That Matter series and again in April as part of ArtFlicks. I’m glad I could finally catch it on Netflix. While I wouldn’t label myself a feminist per se, I enjoyed watching history unfold as these women banded together to create change in the United States. They encouraged people all over the world to follow their example; demonstrating mob mentality at its finest.

When we look at the decades of struggle these women faced, it’s disappointing to see how little has changed in terms of equality and yet we have to celebrate the successes. The documentary starts out with present day Texas voting about abortion laws. It goes through how well women could organize in a pre-Internet age to get tens of thousands of people to come out to marches and their publicity stunts as well as the hard work to educate women about their bodies. To this day the book, “Our Bodies Ourselves”, continues to make differences in women’s health education. Wife battery and sexual harassment are now illegal and women have access to places in the work force that they might not have had the opportunity to enter. In many families both parents work as well as participate in childcare. Day care is more common, but in many cases expensive.

Director, Mary Dore, does a good job of highlighting not only the success of the women’s liberation movement, but also some of the internal struggles they faced in terms of leadership and with representing all women regardless of race and sexual orientation. Some of the ways to solve these problems were to form special groups within the movement. At times outspoken women were asked to leave, which surprised me, because leaders are difficult find. Another facet she adds is to include some of the men involved, especially those helping women have safe abortions. They took the time to teach the Jane members, how to do the procedure safely even though the procedure was illegal in many states at that time. On the flip side, many extremists in the movement considered men the enemy and even went as far as to ban male children from their offices.

Now that the film is on Netflix, I hope more people will watch it to follow the evolution of women’s liberation movement and find ways to incorporate the fight for equality into their own lives. People have the right to feel safe in their homes, neighborhoods and schools and yet women are constant targets of violence. When people talk of feminism, this is what they are concerned about, not man hating, not bra burning, not lesbians, just equal opportunity to basic rights such as safety. As the documentary demonstrates, right from the beginning of the women’s liberation movement, men felt threatened and made comments like “Take her into the alley and f*ck her”. It’s sad that, this behavior hasn’t changed and in some cases escalated to where outspoken women have had to cancel events as a safety precaution, because they received death threats.

The way forward is to know our past, so we have more tools to shape our future. Nona Willis, in the movie, makes a good point that sexism experienced now “is a little more insidious and it’s harder to point out”, which means we need more cooperation. “She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry”, ends with a rally where both men and women participate. We have to work together to change the systems and attitudes towards women. 

Calgary Showtimes: She's Beautiful When She's Angry >