This amazing graphic about how to knock someone down while rollerskating seems execuse enought o talk a little bit about Whip It! and Coco Before Chanel. Both feature spunky actresses (Ellen Page, Audrey Tautou), delicate precisely in proportion to their subject matter. Traveling back chronologically (and therefore hitting more recent events first. Yes, I am a nerd.), let's take Whip It!:
Roller derby is rough, for sure, and a lot of its charm comes from its participants reclaiming and remixing stereotypes of women. But it's hard to imagine it as a genuinely revolutionary act, even in the fairly restrictive social circumstances that Drew Barrymore, directing for the first time, lays out. If your'e an unwilling beauty queen, lacing up some skates is definite progress. But in the broad scale of things, it's a step forward, not the seizing of the radio station.
In contrast, the clothing that Coco Chanel rebelled against was genuinely restrictive. Wearing a corset has a long-term impact on your body, and on your options. If you can't breathe, it's hard to do much else. But if you can breathe, and run, and laugh, and dances, and eat, and sing, it's much easier to think, and to dream on a large scale:
I love working, and I have a hard time imagining a time when that would have been an unladylike emotion. But I think for women to make progress, it's important not just that our condition shift, but that the framework by which we measure our life experience, and our options, shift as we move forward, too.