Filmmaker Therese Shechter usually waits a few dates before she tells men about her new autobiographical documentary, I Was a Teenage Feminist, which will be screened this weekend at Chicago Filmmakers.
The video starts with a voice-over of Shechter saying she hadn’t thought about feminism in years. “What happened to my feminism and the power it gave me?” she asks. “Did I lose it, or did it lose me?” That’s followed by an interview with Shechter’s mother, then one with Ms. magazine cofounder Letty Cottin Pogrebin, who helped Thomas make Free to Be . . . You and Me. Shechter tells her that she listened to the show’s sound track a few years ago and cried because she felt she’d been lied to. “Feminism . . . had said everything would be OK,” Shechter complains. Pogrebin doesn’t let her get very far. “All we said was, Let’s get rid of the barriers,” she tells Shechter. “We never promised you a rose garden. . . . The rest was going to be up to you.” Shechter responds in voice-over, “That was the kindest kick in the ass I’ve ever gotten.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Reading Natalie Angier’s 1999 book Woman: An Intimate Geography, which puts a feminist spin on traditional theories of gender differences, made her feel better. “It changed the way I looked at the world, which was exactly what Free to Be did when I was 13,” says Shechter, who thinks she lost sight of her feminism sometime during college. “I never took women’s studies, I never marched,” she says. “If there were things that were problems I didn’t quite notice. I just thought, Of course I can do anything I want to do.
Chicago author Paula Kamen was one of Shechter’s primary advisers, and her interviewees include Oak Park activist and stay-at-home mom Carollina Song, who along with Shechter will attend Saturday’s screenings; they’ll both be available to discuss the movie during a break between them, from 8 to 9 PM. “For a long time she was the only person I knew who was politically active,” says Shechter. “You couldn’t say the word abortion around her without her going into this long diatribe, so we wouldn’t mention it around her.
Where: Chicago Filmmakers, 5243 N. Clark
