Why girls must make films

Poster from the exhibition The Personal and the Political @ Experimenta 2012

Almost every important book that I have been taught in primary school had been written by a man. Even the most beautiful poems were feelings and perspectives were those of a man. And when I was a kid there was a hidden massage in all those literature I read and that it was the boy who were the main character.  The voice of that book has always been from the head of a boy. 

The girl ? Well, the girl is almost always the love interest of the story.  She is the subject of an interest , albeit love , of the boy. It could be Harry Potter or David from I Am David. Or even the Bible. It is never a story told by a girl's perspective. They were books from four guys.  John, Peter, Mathew and Luke.  I used to wonder if that Luke is the same Luke with Skywalker who is off course another boy. 

And that's why I was blown away by the TV series Girls. Somebody has the audacity to write in a girl's point of view and even dare to call the title of the script Girls.  I was never explicitly taught that our stories are important enough to be told.  In fact, after so many years living out in this world, I sometimes think I too have lost my voice. 

For I like many women have lost their true self and has one narrow version of feminity to be thrust upon them. The church group which I belonged to as a teenager told me that God fearing girls do not have sex and have sex is only after marriage.  Suffice to say that I was a very sensitive and serious girl.  It was only years later ....  

to be continued.