Courage is a Decision
I just re-watched Good Girls Revolt (and yes, it's an Amazon Prime original, and I am aware of the yucky Bezos connection.) I hadn't watched it since 2016, right before that year’s consequential election.
I remember relating to it so deeply. Connecting with the struggles of the characters in the show, but also admiring their courage. And feeling the potential dawn of another new era, when we'd finally evolve enough as a society to choose a qualified woman to lead the country. I felt that hope even in the midst of my fear and near certainty that tfg (at that time not yet tfg) would win the election.
He won, and my sense of possibility for the future went underground. My immediate reaction to the 2016 election was fear.
I couldn't bear to watch Good Girls Revolt after November 2016. It hurt to hope for progress after that, and the show was a painful magnet for my own buried hope.
This year, when I watched it, I was struck by two things in particular.
First, there's a scene where one of the characters gets an illegal abortion, because the show is set in 1969-1970, before Roe v. Wade.
When I watched the show in 2016, that scene felt like a relic from the past.
Now, watching it in 2024, after the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, the scene is again the reality for millions of women. Realizing this was jarring, and sobering. A lot has changed in eight short years.
Good Girls Revolt is based on the true story of women who, in 1970, filed a complaint with the EEOC because, on the job at Newsweek, they were not allowed to work as reporters. (In the show, the women work at the fictional publication News of the Week.) Only men at Newsweek were allowed to work as reporters. The women worked as researchers who helped the male reporters with their stories. The women did the legwork. They were paid less. The men wrote the stories (often with much help from their female research assistants.) The men got the byline. They were paid more.
The entire show leads up to the moment they actually file the complaint with the help of ACLU attorney Eleanor Holmes Norton. (Norton currently serves in the House of Representatives representing the District of Columbia.) The final scene of Good Girls Revolt shows the women sitting down for a press conference to announce their action.
There is only one season of the show. Amazon canceled it after Season One.
The second thing that impressed me as I re-watched Good Girls Revolt, was how courageous all these women were, in small ways. In small, everyday ways. None of their acts of courage would inspire an action movie or a superhero franchise. Their courageous acts are unseen, even covert actions. Being collaborative with each other on the job, instead of competing against each other. One woman providing shelter for a co-worker who is in an abusive relationship with her husband. All the women in the office pooling their resources to help a co-worker pay for the best abortion care available at the time.
None of these actions would fit in the superhero genre, but they are heroic all the same. Courageous, all the same. And that quiet superhero courage is my takeaway from Good Girls Revolt this time around.
I think Kamala Harris is going to win this election. Despite the derogatory drumbeat of mainstream media that constantly nitpicks at Harris in a way that is all too familiar for every woman in America, I believe the momentum and the numbers are on her side. On our side. The 2024 election is not going to be a repeat of the 2016 election.
But even if I’m wrong, I’m not letting my hope go underground this time. In 1970, a group of women had the courage to band together and demand better for themselves. They did not have the freedoms I was fortunate enough to be born with later in the decade. But they did it anyway. They accessed their own courage, anyway.
Freedom is manifested in legislation, social norms, and public discourse. But freedom generates from the heart, and from the spirit. And no matter the outcome of this election, we still have that resource available to us. We have to know this, and claim it. As many times as necessary, with acts of courage that are seen and unseen, both overt, and covert. Whatever we can do. Over and over again. The women who came before us did it. And we can do it, too.