Girls and Boys State, put on by The American Legion, are quarterly meetings that give high school students the opportunity to practice state through mock conversations, efforts, and elections. Individuals assume political offices, decide circumstances, and represent the values of their not-quite-old-enough-to-vote-yet higher school contemporaries. Each condition holds an quarterly Girls and Boys State, and they are usually held separately.
Although these events were once noble civics education activities, a new Apple TV film titled” Girls State” suggests that these activities may not live up to the current assault on American values. To wit, the winning government of the 2022 Missouri Girls State won on the app : “Be proud, be arrogant, and vote Cecelia. ”
Essentially, her platform dictated that women must think of themselves because the men wo n’t. Generally, in the terms of one of the girls that, Emily Glasgow, Cecelia ran on an unstoppable platform: a female manifesto.
What was the magnitude of injustice that compelled these women to band together under a similar gimmick? greater clothing standards and a friend system that Boys State’s counterparts were not required to follow. But while these ladies lamented these grave inequities, the boys were discussing plan, albeit with its own issues, but plan yet.
After Apple TV’s “Boys State” video dropped in 2020, it was only a matter of moment before Mile End Films killed the normal movie, “Girls State. The ideal opportunity was provided by Missouri’s first simultaneous screening of Girls and Boys State at Lindenwood University in 2022.
Although audiences may be wary of jarring narrative choices and framing, Boys State is interesting and worthwhile to see. It discussed the conversations of a largely conservative group of boys, which were largely in response to the controversial politics of the Trump presidency. Despite the recurring and basic choice to portray traditional boys as illiterate and dishonest,” Boys State” reveals how tabloid-style political journalism has influenced generations who do not understand a world without it.
In trying to depict a unified fight for womenhood, “Girls State” missed out on any of the more important discussions of the past video, avoiding many of the same materialist perils as “Boys State.”
In contrast to its predecessor, “Girls State” did never really seem interested in depicting heroes and villains and instead concentrated on the unity of women from various political viewpoints. For the first 30 days of the video, women were shown making jewelry and posters, decorating muffins, and complaining about the gown code.
Climate policy and mental health were labeled as bipartisan issues at the conference, which sounded to lean left. One of the few traditional Christians at the meeting, Emily Worthmore, was painted as a “good human being, ” in the terms of the far more democratic Maddie Rachel. Worthmore was interested in hearing from others and establishing real connections.
Girls State’s main design eventually came down to connection and the strong bonds of womenhood that unify people from all sides of the aisle.
Any of the substantial discussions about policy that we were able to hear in “Boys State” were compromised by this. The Ladies State Supreme Court made a single policy point in the video, in which they decided on an abortion-related problem, in which they ruled that forcing women to attend counseling before having an abortion is against their privacy. Every other political discussion took place because it was not a fair group of boys at Boys State and because we did n’t have the same serious conversations as they did.
Worthmore was the only person who made any intelligent contributions to this. Talking about growing up in a traditional home, she claimed that because she was a woman, she had never been told she could n’t do anything. Having said that, she stood out as one of the several voices voiced her frustration over the lack of real conversation. She explained that instead of being encouraging, such conversations reinforced the idea that woman is a risk.
Whether or not the editing staff or the students were to blame for the lack of actual gender inequality, it became clear that discussions about gender inequality only slowed the girls ‘ ability to concentrate on developing substantive policy discussions. In light of the severity of the conversations and goals of the “Boys State” documentary, which clearly was n’t perfect, dress code and funding differences ended up looking awfully unimpressive. However, there was still some serious consideration given to the issues of policy and politics.
The more terrifying reality that emerged in both of these movies, more so in” Boys State” than” Girls State,” was how the over-the-top 24-hour news cycle filled with tales of leftist heroes and conservative villains has rendered the up-and-coming generation incapable of seeing beyond it. The dialogues in both films, in material and shape, were generally only repeated information from the past four years of tweets, media clips, and infographics.
Through “Girls State” specifically, it became clear that the consumerism brain rot of Instagram models and “it-girls ” may even be hindering the ability of young women to engage in substantive conversations about the differences, similarities, and any actual injustices found in comparing them to their male counterparts.
Mile End Films, which was the subject of two documentaries, was the result of four years of development. Turns out, it actually looks a lot like what politicians are doing right now: governance without a thorough understanding of our country’s founding and in search of nothing but the self-interest of those who are unsure of who they are and what they should believe.
Junior at Hillsdale College, Jillian Parks studies rhetoric and journalism.
