{My girl, on top of the world.}

I was nineteen the first time I decided that feminism was a load of crap. I was a co-president of NYU’s Women in Film association, had nearly completed my minor in Women’s Studies, was one of only nine women in my class at Tisch’s prestigious Kanbar Institute for Film and TV, and I decided that the whole thing was kind of a giant crock that I wanted nothing to do with.

Maybe it’s because I grew up with a Mother who raised herself, or a paternal Grandmother who survived divorce and single-parenthood in the 1950s, but I never really bought in to the idea that women couldn’t do things just because we’re women.  (Except possibly for peeing standing up.  That never goes well for me.)

In college, the deeper I dug into the culture of “womyn with a Y” the less I wanted to do with it.  As Cine Chica and the girls of Womyn’s Center tried to work together, it became clear that our philosophy of celebrating the triumphs of Women in Film and their philosophy of raging against the male machine were not going to jive.  An adjunct professor came over from Sydney who had an incredible reputation in the world of feminist films and documentary.  I petitioned to take her class. But on the first day, rather than vigorously scribbling down the wisdom Professor “Penny” had to impart, I was passing snarky notes to Sara musing on the homogenized nature of our white/privileged/female/agro classmates “…and to think I almost wore a bandana today. Now THAT would have been embarrassing.”

I graduated from college and my “female driven” thesis film hit the festival circuit. (For the uninitiated, “female driven” just means there’s a woman in the lead role.)  With an all-girl crew from Camera to Costumes if there was an “excellence in female film making” award or commendation to be given, we got it.  The Director’s Guild nominated me for their student award for Best Female Director.  Sara was given the Nestor Almendros Commendation for Female Cinematographers.  Emma and Tara, our producers were touted for achieving such high production values…as women.

At the risk of seeming ungrateful, I was 21 and incredibly disenfranchised by feminism.  I left my Women’s Studies degree off of my diploma. I wanted to enter the professional world on an even playing field and I was sick of being singled out for having a vagina.  I felt like all feminism had ever done for me was remind everybody that I was different from the boys. I truly didn’t think I was different. And therefore, I didn’t want to be identified as a feminist.

But as I grew from a girl into a woman, something changed.  As I took meetings with folks who weren’t afraid to admit “when I asked you to come in, I just assumed ‘Morgan’ was a male” and learned to laugh off what some might call sexual harassment, but we in the film business call “camaraderie” I realized that like it or not, I WAS different.  As I heard stories of female studio heads swearing off female writers, and worked as hard as my male writer friends only to be the last un-produced scribe left standing, I found myself forced to question my hard-and-fast denial of all things feminist and wonder if in fact there was something to this gender inequality business.

And slowly but surely, my views shifted.  Eventually, I came to see feminism as a buffet.  I love that the women before me burned their undergarments in protest, but I also love the way my boobs look in a wonder bra.  I love that my husband would never describe me as “fairer” but will open a door for me anyway because it’s chivalrous, and it’s okay to want to kick ass at work but be treated like a lady at home.  I love that when I tried to go back to pitching movies after two weeks of maternity leave, a producer who I’d long admired asked me to lunch to make sure someone told me that the business wouldn’t forget about me if I took a minute to recover from childbirth and bond with my baby.

And as the mother to a young girl, I love modeling for her every day that Mommy works hard and has dreams, and I can’t wait for her to cheer me on as I make them come true.

But then came this whole Ann Romney/Hilary Rosen flap, and the TIME breastfeeding cover/their attempt to re-launch the Mommy-Wars, and now this absurd  “SAHM’s can’t be feminists” article in the Atlantic from Elizabeth Wurtzel (which Rita Arens wrote brilliantly about on BlogHer, if you missed it) and OMG FEMINISM YOU ARE TOTALLY MAKING MY HEAD SPIN.

I have friends who are 1% SAHMs with nannies and workout schedules, and I have friends who only get to see their kids from 6 to 7:30pm between quitting time and bedtime. I have friends who run companies and have no children at all.  None of these classifications makes me, or any of the archetypes in question any more or less a feminist.  If a woman never earns a penny because her husband’s salary affords her that option, but she devotes her life to helping and inspiring young girls — who is Elizabeth Wurtzel to call her “not a feminist”?  If a female studio head makes millions of dollars a year but won’t hire her screenwriting counterparts because “PMS isn’t conducive to delivering a draft on time” does her sizable bank account truly overshadow her oppressive attitudes?

And if so-called “liberated” women are going around calling child-rearing “not work” do they really have a right to call themselves Feminists?  Are they truly in favor of “advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men,” which as Rita reminded us is the dictionary definition of the word?  Because right now my kiddo is at school, and I’m working, and let me tell you — writing this post feels like a FREAKING VACATION.

Ivy league degrees, financial independence, and fancy titles are great, but feminism is so much deeper than that.  Please, elitist smarty pantses across America, don’t sully the word so badly that those of us actually in the trenches of feminism don’t want to touch it.