This is a guest post by Megyn Cawley.
Sluts, famewhores, gold-diggers – all terms I was encouraged and paid to use while working in the entertainment media industry in my early 20’s. After a long stretch of unemployment post-undergrad in the late ’00s (hello, recession), I gladly accepted a position as an editorial assistant with a somewhat infamous media company. Initially, I was so stoked to have landed the job, but the thrill of “working in Hollywood” quickly wore off. My workdays became a daily exercise in shaming women’s appearances and pitting them against one another. It was difficult for me to digest that my weekly paycheck depended on perpetuating these antiquated stereotypes and gender divisions. Who am I to publicly deface any woman as an “off-the-rails coke whore” or “lezbot”? How is a broke lil’ feminist with minimal job experience supposed to stay afloat in an inherently misogynistic industry without defaulting on her student loans? By turning to art.
Although leaving my job was not a realistic option at that moment in time, I realized if I could make films and videos aligning with my feminist point of view, they would somewhat diffuse the growing pit in my stomach screaming, “WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR MORALS, GF???” While attending the California Institute of Arts for my MFA in Film & Video, I started scavenging YouTube for video diaries of teenage girls for an installation. The first-person videos feature young girls publicly declaring their classmates and frenemies as “sluts” and “whores,” all while giggling, suggesting punishments for the girls who may or may not have wronged them. I felt like I was watching a real life version of the the snark I perpetuated at my job. When cut together in rapid succession, the nonstop string of of these girls publicly humiliating their peers from the safety of their bedrooms quickly turned barbaric. We are so quick to label adolescent girls as these terrible, unruly, hormone-driven monsters, but underneath the name-calling and back-stabbing, where do the behaviors originate? It’s easy to say that we, as women, should be holding one another up rather tearing each other down, so why do we lash out so quickly at one another?
I began exploring the psyche of the adolescent female for my graduate thesis film, GIRL. I interviewed women of all ages and backgrounds, asking them a series of the same questions – “How would you describe your teenage self?” “When did you become conscious of wanting to belong to a certain clique or social circle?” “Did you ever feel isolated or depressed?” and so on. Although the experiences varied from woman to woman, the psychology driving their behaviors was almost identical- the desire for validation of self. Surprise, surprise- teenage girls have an inherent desire to be accepted, to have their existence validated by someone outside of themselves. If I feel self-conscious about my appearance, you better be damn sure I’m going to make you feel self-conscious too. I soon realized, through making the film, that being open and candid about our personal experiences in adolescence, our empathy for one another as adults can grow tremendously.
My goal is to bring that understanding of commonality of self to my newest project, LIL’ MER (currently crowdfunding on Seed & Spark). The short film is an experimental retelling of the classic Hans Christen Andersen fairy tale, The Little Mermaid, using the framework of the story to explore gender identity and self-actualization. The story centers around Mirabella, a young woman struggling to express her inner self, and turns to a late night infomercial for the solution. The desire to shed our insecurities and feel free be our true selves is one of the hardest struggles we encounter, and by making this film, I think I may be one step closer in my own path to finding her.
Megyn Cawley is a multimedia artist and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. By channeling nostalgia and camp ethos through the juxtaposition of analog and digital media formats, her work explores the expression of ego, self and gender identity. Megyn holds an MFA in Film & Video from the California Institute of the Arts, and has exhibited her films and multi-channel installations across the western US. She is currently in pre-production and crowdfunding for her latest short film, LIL’ MER.