Thread by @monaeltahawy

“Bitch” and “cunt” are not the worst things you could call a woman. Selfish is. Knowing what you want and taking it is filed under “selfish” in patriarchy’s dictionary. And by the time we meet Nancy, she is a woman determined, finally, to be selfish. #GoodLucktoYouLeoGrande

https://twitter.com/monaeltahawy/status/1539279844911026180

I cried as my selfishness met hers, as I recognized the heady terror of being done, finally, with obeying. I wrote about @LeoGrandeFilm feministgiant.com/p/the-fuck-it-… #GoodLucktoYouLeoGrande

In one of their earliest scenes together, Leo asks Nancy “Why won’t you take what you want when it’s right here within reach?” He is what she wants. He is right there. Yet she wants to cancel the whole thing several times.

She was never allowed to want. #GoodLucktoYouLeoGrande

#GoodLucktoYouLeoGrande belongs to a few recent films that not only center women in their 50s and 60s, but gives them options and desire in ways mainstream films rarely do. feministgiant.com/p/the-fuck-it-…

Recently widowed Nancy has never had an orgasm. She faked them in her passionless 3-decade marriage She hires the eponymous Leo Grande, a much younger male sex worker, to help her go through a list of the kind of sex she never had with her husband–a “fuck-it list,” as he calls it

How often do films center a woman in her early 60s?
Rarer still is the film that centres a woman in her early 60s who wants to fuck.

Heteronormative patriarchy’s designated shelf life for cis women is age at which we cease to be its walking incubators feministgiant.com/p/the-fuck-it-…

Subscribe to my newsletter and get my essays delivered to your inbox.

It's free. No paywall or ads. If you can pay, it helps to keep it free.

feministgiant.com

There is liberation in speaking our desire. It will leave you feeling faint and nauseous when done suddenly, akin to losing one’s breath at higher elevations before the body has acclimated. We are called selfish because patriarchy understands the dangers of such liberation.

Once acclimated though, there’s no knowing what rebellion is instigated as you develop greater lung capacity, as you fuck the guilt out of your system. feministgiant.com/p/the-fuck-it-… #GoodLucktoYouLeoGrande

And @LeoGrandeFilm is among recent films that center older women and their desire as well as options.
Connect Nancy to Evelyn in #EverythingEverywhereAllAtOnce

feministgiant.com/p/essay-the-me… #GoodLucktoYouLeoGrande

As we watch these women get a taste of options–the What If’s–available to them, we understand why women are denied a three-dimensional life, why their imagination is flattened out of daring to want any more than what they have. Because we would want more, we would want different.

We would want more, we would want different, we would want a multi-dimensional life and enough freedom to determine who - in this Universe of ourselves - we want to be. feministgiant.com/p/the-fuck-it-… #GoodLucktoYouLeoGrande