Geena Davis is changing everything in a world full of illusions. She goes beyond being an Everyday Heroine onscreen and offscreen.
30 years after the movie “Thema and Louise”, I watched the documentary movie titled “This Changes Everything” which came out in 2019. And I’m excited to share the documentary from the Everyday Heroine’s perspective along with all the data, and plenty of action items and solutions along the way.
So have no fear, Geena Davis is here and thank goddess that woman has the power to influence.
The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media has a tagline which states ‘If she can see it, she can be it’. The movie ‘This Changes Everything’ (currently playing on Netflix) brings to light what makes this tagline so important for everyone and what we can do about it. The documentary is jam-packed with powerful women and they bring their honest perspectives to help us dissect and digest some of the complicated issues in the entertainment industry around gender bias. I find these same challenges to be true from a long career as a female engineer. By the end of this episode, I will break it all down for you and offer plenty of action items to walk away with.
Geena Davis says, ‘80% of the media consumed worldwide is created in the United States. We are responsible for exporting a pretty negative view of women.’
The path to adventure for the Everyday Heroine’s Journey is from EP 009. We begin with Part I – Separation we receive a call to greatness, and we have three options.
Geena Davis says, when she was young she read that feminists are ruining the world and thought I don’t want to be one of those if they are ruining the world. All she wanted to do was be a movie star.
With that story we can say she ignored an early call to greatness. But don’t worry, your call to greatness seems to call back again and again even when you try to ignore it.
She answers a call to greatness when she gets the part of Thelma in Thelma & Louise. Sometimes you don’t even know you are stepping into your greatness when it happens. You follow your bliss and then you realize it later.
For the Everyday person it can be difficult to see the difference between living a life of illusion. It is easy to follow the status quo and live a life in fear. This means we took the blue pill and we didn’t even know it.
Versus taking the red pill and choosing the heroic path to find the meaningful truth where the world becomes a better place, the courageous path.
Watching this movie, they slowly unravel what has been happening since Thelma & Louise. The Geena Davis Institute of Gender in Media connects the dots for us. We can see the unseen with irrefutable data. Here’s what’s been happening.
Part II – Initiation, like Geena did when she took the part of Thelma, you must follow your bliss and enter the forest to walk your own path, slay the dragon and create personal transformation.
The women in this movie see the illusion as an illusion and they say yes to the call to adventure, they see the world as a place where ‘women are treated as objects’ – this is the illusion, and they recognized it as the obstacle to overcome. The dragon. The way you slay the dragon is to ignore those inner demons that want you to believe that you are an object, something less than and not something greater than the limited description… that demon inside your head that lets you believe this is true is the one that keeps you small.
Geena Davis’s archery coach notices In 2012 when Brave and the Hunger Games came out suddenly the percentage of girls taking up archery shot up 105% higher than adult men
The phenomenon has become known as the CSI effect – after you saw female forensic pathologist on screen then you saw the field grow especially among women. Marg Helgenberger, Actor (CSI) says, it made her heart sing to see the increase and now women are half the workforce.
Part III of the heroine’s journey, the return or closing the circle where you transform others by being yourself. This is what change looks like! Now that we get a glimpse of how it can be done, it’s time to do more work. We have other sectors of the workforce to fill with smart and capable women.
While some industries have seen improvements for women, Hollywood continues to present roadblocks for its female storytellers.
The story of Maria Giese is an Everyday Heroine story within an Everyday Heroine story. She says, I wanted to be a director because I wanted to have a voice.
The documentary takes us on the journey to witness the fight for equality for women in Hollywood. Being a director comes with some challenging obstacles for tackling gender bias.
The failure to enforce Title VII has allowed gender inequality in Hollywood to continue unabated for decades.
This is the initiation part of a Heroine’s Journey in action. Geena Davis did the work. She went into the forest and set a brand-new path of her own and came back to tell the world a story about what she found. We think everything is fine, we think everything is getting better without challenging the world that we see right in front of our own eyes.
Here’s what Geena did for Part III – The Return to tell others her story…
Data turns out to be the magic bullet in this case because the bias is unconscious.
In 2012 Geena and the Institute received a Global Impact Award from Google to advance the research.
Hartwig Adam, Google’s machine learning research specialist says, ‘It takes one minute to use this new software to process approximately one film.’
In May of 2015 after an investigation instigated by Maria Giese’s activism the ACLU drafts a 15 page letter to the US government.
ACLU came to the conclusion that it was a really serious civil rights problem that deserved the attention of the EEOC.
What to do to take action?
- Never give up!
- Be the change you wish to see in the world and make choices that support the legacy you want for yourself, your family, your family’s future, and for the world.
- Don’t let the status-quo be the loudest voice to vote.
- Send a clear message that your daughters and sons deserve every chance they can get to see the brightest future possible.
- Be a conscientious consumer.
- And most importantly, be an Everyday Heroine.
Geena Davis ends by saying if I could go back and say something to my teenage self, I would say a feminist is exactly what you want to be because it’s good for everybody.
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For now, enjoy your adventures and journey responsibly!
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