CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
JUNE 10, 2005

Filmmaker looks for meaning of the other F-word 

BY DEBRA PICKETT 
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST 

Therese Shechter turned 13 in 1974, the year "Free To
Be You and Me" hit the airwaves.

And, like a lot of
wayward and impressionable youths who've let
television shape their lives, Shechter took the
message of Marlo Thomas' irresistibly sing-along-able
musical very much to heart.

She decided she was a feminist.

As far as life decisions made by 13-year-old girls go,
it was probably a pretty good one. But it wasn't
exactly one that she held on to.

And, by the time she turned 40, Shechter realized, she
hadn't even thought about feminism in years. Though
she'd lived a cool, independent life, the word
feminist -- everyone's second-favorite F-word -- just
didn't seem to apply.

This is the sort of revelation a lot of us have from
time to time, when it hits you that if your younger,
smarter self could see you right now, that younger
self would be ticked off and disappointed by what
you've become. Personally, I try to ignore those
moments or quiet my younger self by insulting her
unfortunate hair color choice.

Shechter made a movie.

'What happened to my feminism?'


"I Was a Teenage Feminist" makes its Chicago debut
Saturday night at Chicago Filmmakers, 5243 N. Clark.

The hourlong film feels a little bit like a chick
version of Michael Moore's "Roger and Me," but,
luckily, there's no real villain. It's just the story
of Shechter's quest to figure out, as she puts it,
"What happened to my feminism? Did I lose it, or did
it lose me?"

There's a moment, early in the film, when Shechter,
who gave up a full-time gig as a graphic designer to
work on this project, sits down with uber-feminist
Letty Cottin Pogrebin, who helped produce "Free To Be
You and Me," and tells Pogrebin that the idealistic
musical feels, in retrospect, like a lie.

Shechter believed that whole line about being anything
you wanted to be.

So did I.

Somehow, for those of us raised on the 1970s version
of girl power, life feels surprisingly complicated.
Because no one told us about all the trade-offs and
compromises and no-U-turn detours that are part of
life as a modern woman.

No one explained that being an astronaut might be sort
of hard to combine with being a mother. No one
mentioned that climbing mountains could get lonely or
that, almost no matter what you do, the most intense,
demanding years of your professional life will
probably exactly overlap your childbearing years.

This, Shechter points out, would have been very useful
information to have at some point. Some point before
you stepped onto the launch pad or scrambled for the
peak.

Pogrebin doesn't really have much of an answer for
that, other than to say that, you know, she'd been
really hoping that, by now, there would be decent,
affordable child care available to every family so
that people's choices about their lives and careers
wouldn't be constrained by the lack of a baby-sitter.

Retail therapy


Shechter, who narrates and makes frequent appearances
in her film, spends most of the documentary trying to
figure out how the F-word got such a bad rap.

Somewhere along the line, she says, she realized that
it wasn't a word you could mention, say, on a first
date. And why is that, she wonders, when the
dictionary defines feminism simply as "belief in the
social, political, and economic equality of the
sexes."

"Who could be against that?" she asks.

But, of course, Shechter realizes, the dictionary
definition isn't what counts. There are some great
scenes of her asking people -- or being too scared to
ask people and making a colleague do it -- what they
think of when they hear the word "feminism."

You can sort of guess what comes up.

Unlike the usual politically correct thinkers who ask
this question, though, Shechter is actually interested
in the answer, and where it comes from.

After meeting some serious "third-wave" feminists, who
devote their lives to activism, vegetarianism and a
few other -isms, Shechter declares in frustration, "If
I'm not a queer woman of color on public assistance, I
don't rate."

About to give up on the whole quest -- and this was
the moment when I decided I'd really like to hang out
with Shechter -- she decides to stop asking questions
about the socio-historic meaning of the women's
movement and head to Pottery Barn.

Free to be . . .


I won't give away the ending -- check out a screening
at 6 p.m. or 9 p.m. Saturday -- but Shechter's
documentary does turn out happily for all concerned,
except, possibly, for the third-wavers, who really
can't be happy about anything until the indigenous
people of the world get an ownership stake in
Starbucks.

For the rest of us, still figuring out what, exactly,
we are free to be, there isn't anything so easy as a
happy ending. Just some fun movies to watch along the
way.

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