but how can you not see?

Well, even if you cannot, here’s what I saw.

If watching Roma doesn’t turn you into a feminist, I don’t know what will.

If watching Big Eyes doesn’t turn you into a feminist, I don’t know what will.

But, there are lots of things I don’t know.

What I do know is that Roma paints a picture of life as a woman in a developing country, and the strife that is the female situation regardless of class, regardless of intelligence or skill.

I know that Big Eyes paints a picture of life as a woman in a developed country, and the strife that is the female situation, again, regardless of class, and regardless of talent.

I felt the pain of all the women in the films. I felt them sacrificing for their men and ultimately disappointed and dejected by their men and by themselves. I felt them bond together to build something new after an abandonment of the original ideal.

What was the original ideal? A man that would take care of them. And that women are to take care of men. And their children. And everything else.

Traditionally, men say they were put on the earth to be in charge, to fight for control, to protect their women and children.

But then, what do men do? Watch Roma. and Big Eyes.

Of course women are having a moment, forming a movement, developing a revolution.

Women have been dismayed by the promises broken.

Toxic masculinity has been a motif throughout history, sure, men deal with their hormonal aggression in a myriad of ways, as history and literature have shown us. Women have been taught to deal with toxic masculinity by… being everything that a man wants her to be.

I see women happily have their man’s babies.

I see women who are thankful for their children despite the man.

I see women who don’t want their baby and feel inhuman about it.

I see men who don’t want their babies and don’t feel any bit of guilt about it.

I see women who think they are putting the child first, but are casually manipulated into putting the man first.

I see women band together to take care of their babies after the men have left them.

I see men take what they want without worrying about who they hurt.

Men rely on women without giving them any ownership in what happens to them.

Women have been taught to put men first. Yet blessedly are burdened with also putting the children first. Women may be abandoned by their men but will rise to the occasion to take care of their children. Because they have to. Because they want to. Men have, (God has? the patriarchy has?) over time, built in women this responsibility of childcare and in doing so have relied on them for the continuation of our species, without thanking them for it appropriately.

Telling themselves that they are the ones being responsible because they have dicks and swords. How do they believe they are so powerful, when women give life to the world? Despite their need of a man, that role can be so small in the persons that females are responsible for building. How much responsibility is given to the mother when the child is messed up? So much. Yet men get so much responsibility just by being absent.

Men have been taught to put themselves first. And in doing so, he believes his wife and kids will fall into line. Sewing his seed is important, sure, but men make their role whatever they want it to be, whether they choose to see that that’s the way it is, it is the case. Women have little or no choice in their roles in life, and of motherhood, expected or not, accepted or not.

Our lack of choice in what becomes to us is a disadvantage of the patriarchy. A form of oppression. A form of control.

I saw an artist suffocated and stolen from, because of her love and abandonment of reason for the man she loved, for fear of abandonment by him? For fear of the sake of her child.

Women have put men before themselves and put men before their children. There is an evilness in that. Women who do that are actually punished, though, and not appreciated for their sacrifice. As we are now being shown.

Men have been taught to demand respect. Women have been taught to give it, to such a degree, that they lose self-respect. They give everything of themselves. Men take. They are accustomed to taking. To asking, sure, but also to taking without asking.

We are demanding respect now.

We don’t have to be available.

We don’t have to be at your beck and call.

We don’t have to do what you want.

We don’t need you at all. Not in the way you think.

In fact, you might be surprised and delighted, so let us speak.

It is time we tell the world our mind

Share our ideas and solutions in kind

A feminine spin to rewind

A system to dismantle

An agenda of humanity

A shifting of the tide

Roma is an enjoyable black and white beauty… a collection of moving pictures that form a story that transcends time and place.

Big Eyes is as sad and pretty as the art that is glorified and abused for the commercial candour that is The Man. A woman driven crazy by the possession of her work, consider it like a child, her art, taken away from her by the selfish desires of a pathological liar.

I see these women as mothers, but I see them as so much more than that, as well. Complex female characters is what cinema has been lacking for far too long.

Different examples of women doing what is expected of them, being disappointed with it, and doing something completely different.

Men have had many examples for them to follow and to inspire them.

Finally we have more than princesses waiting to be rescued.

More than a simple heroine wanting to find a hero.

More than a distressed lady looking for a lover.

We are finally showing each other the reality of what comes after ‘Happily Every After.” What do you do when your happy ending isn’t so happy?

We can be something after being mothers. We can love children and not have or want our own. We can have art and work that is as important to us like a child is.