Trailblazing women on your television
Beat back the patriarchy by streaming these enticing movies and TV shows
March is Women’s History Month, a time to recognize and celebrate the contributions of women in the past and in the modern world.
History doesn’t have to mean dry academic textbooks or stodgy lessons, however. Just as in any classroom, there are plenty of ways to incorporate a few entertainment moments into your curriculum. Whether you’re looking for basedonatruestory dramas, escapist adventures or deep cultural insights, here are eight television shows and films to stream this month.
“Bridgerton”: This Shonda Rhimes series set in 19th century London is based on a Julia Quinn novel. Unlike Quinn’s books, however, Rimes’ story exists in an integrated universe where the color of one’s skin doesn’t dictate titles or noble standings. The historical romance series, which stars Adjoa Andoh, RegéJean Page and Phoebe Dynevor, may be lighthearted fantasy, but it’s also a delicious “what if ” antidote to the likes of “Downton Abbey,” “Aristocrats” and, yes, even “The Crown.”
⏩ Watch: Available to stream on Netflix.
“Unbelievable”: This 2019 miniseries, based on a 2015 article, “An Unbelievable Story of Rape” and a 2018 book, “A False Report,” dramatizes the efforts of detectives Grace Rasmussen and Karen Duvall (Toni Collette and Merritt Weaver) to solve a series of rapes that take place in Washington and Colorado. At the heart of the story is Marie Adler (Kaitlyn Dever), a teen whose life is upended twice: once after she is raped, and again after she is charged by police with lying about the assault. Difficult to watch at times, if only for its rawness and intensity, “Unbelievable” documents the harrowing ways that women, even in their most vulnerable moments, are often treated by law enforcement, and sometimes friends and family.
⏩ Watch: Available to stream on Netflix.
“Iron Jawed Angels”: Katja von Garnier’s 2004 film recounts the efforts of suffragist leaders Alice Paul (Hilary Swank) and Lucy Burns (Frances O’Connor), who meet abroad as part of the Women’s Social and Political Union. The women meet resistance when they return to the United States to enlist the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association to campaign for voting rights. They’re more successful, however, in their efforts to organize the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession, a gathering of thousands of women the day before President Woodrow Wilson took office. While the film, like many books on the subject, overlooks how white suffragists largely ignored women of color, it’s a nonetheless fascinating page from an oftoverlooked chapter in the suffragist movement.
⏩ Watch: Available to stream on Hulu.
“Hidden Figures”: This 2016 film, based on the Margot Lee Shetterly nonfiction book by the same name, is the story of three female African American mathematicians working at NASA in the early 1960s. It follows the journey of Katherine Parker (Taraji P. Henson) and her colleagues Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson ( Janelle Monáe) at the Langley Research Center. Noting her talent for analytic geometry, Parker’s supervisor (Kirsten Dunst) assigns her to assist NASA’s Space Task Group. As the team’s first Black woman, she’s met with hostility. When her colleagues, Vaughan and Jackson, join the group, they also face prejudice and mistreatment — despite their mathematical genius. Ultimately, however, their collective work plays a critical role in America’s first successful orbital spaceflight, the Feb. 20, 1962, launch of Friendship 7.
⏩ Watch: Available to rent on various services, including YouTube.
“Mrs. America”: Cate Blanchett stars as conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly in “Mrs. America,” which chronicles the ’70sera fight to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. With Rose Byrne as Gloria Steinem, Uzo Aduba as Shirley Chisholm and Tracey Ullman as Betty Friedan, this starstudded series is a gritty, juicy look at the political battle between progressives and the socalled Moral Majority. Sure, it’s been generously fictionalized (each episode starts with a disclaimer to acknowledge as much), but it’s an enlightening take nonetheless on one of secondwave feminism’s most notable moments.
⏩ Watch: Available to stream on Hulu. “Frida”: Salma Hayek earned an Academy Award nomination for best actress for this 2002 biopic on the surrealist Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Directed by Julie Taymor, it’s based on Hayden Herrera’s 1983 biography by the same name. The story follows Kahlo’s journey after she is seriously injured in a bus collision and takes up art as part of her recovery. Her legendary marriage to the muralist Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina) gets its historical due, as do her relationships with various women and the Russian Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky. At the center of it all, of course, is Kahlo’s radical body of work.
⏩ Watch: Available to rent on various services, including Amazon Prime.
“Real Women Have Curves”: America Ferrera stars in this 2002 comingofage film about Ana Garcia, an East Los Angeles high school student. Ambitious, Ana is encouraged by a teacher (George Lopez) to attend college, but she also feels held back by a sense of duty to her closeknit family — particularly her mother (Lupe Ontiveros). Fresh, warmhearted and funny, “Real Women Have Curves” is an insightful glimpse at what it means to find oneself caught between family, culture and personal aspirations. ⏩ Watch: Available to rent on various services, including HBO.
“Desert Hearts”: Donna Deitch directed this dreamy 1985 drama (adapted from Jane Rule’s 1964 novel, “Desert of the Heart”) about Vivian (Helen Shaver), a buttonedup college professor who travels to Reno in 1959 for a divorce. As she waits for her divorce papers to be finalized, she falls for a carefree artist, Cayy (Patricia Charbonneau), and imagines a future she once didn’t realize was possible.
⏩ Watch: Available to rent on various services, including Showtime.