As Roe v. Wade fell, these teen girls formed a mock government
In the summer of 2022, days before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, some 500 high school girls gathered in Missouri for a weeklong mock government camp in which they elected their own governor and seated an all-female Supreme Court that would rule on their own bodies.
Not everyone came from the same part of the political spectrum or felt the same way about abortion. But, for a handful of days, theirs were the voices that counted. It was during that week that documentary filmmakers Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine chose to film the followup to their award-winning 2020 film “Boys State.”
“It felt like we had gone from this sort of — not quite utopia — but this imagined, wonderful world where we had control of our bodies and we were involved in these conversations,” says Nisha Murali, one of the handful of young women followed in the film. “And then it just got ripped away from us.”
“Girls State,” which debuted Friday on Apple TV Plus, is, like 2020’s “Boys State,” an election-year documentary where national political discourse is experienced and reflected through coming-of-age teenagers.
“The programs are uniquely sensitive instruments, picking up these frequencies of American political life. It’s not a surprise that abortion would be front and centre in that conversation,” says Moss. “We knew the court would hear a single case. We prayed it wouldn’t be speed limits, which has happened.”
Even before “Boys State” premiered, the filmmakers were contemplating a “sibling” film. While there are many corollaries, “Girls State” is, in compelling and illuminating ways, not a twin to “Boys State.” The Boys State program, run by the American Legion since 1935, is more well known and better funded.
Missouri teenager Emily Worthmore signed up for Girls State expecting an experience like she saw in that film.
What Worthmore and others realized was that the system of Girls State wasn’t the same as the Boys State being held across the campus at Lindenwood University. The girls’ program was funded by a separate organization, the American Legion Auxiliary, had a dress code that some deemed too strict and didn’t schedule sports activities the way the boys’ did. There was a camp cheer for the girls but not the boys. The Missouri governor attended the final ceremony at Boys State, but not Girls State.
As they do in so many facets of life, the young women of “Girls State” found themselves simultaneously pursuing a goal while being keenly aware of limitations placed on them.
“To me, one of the powers of this movie is making an invisible thing that’s baked into the structure of everything visible,” says McBaine. “I love that that then becomes part of the conversation after watching this film.”
Whether due to those factors or others, there’s a bond that connects the young women of “Girls State.” The film isn’t short on tension, disagreement or competition. But it’s more marked by moments of supportiveness.
After spending years immersed in the simulations, the married filmmakers — while raising their own two teenage daughters — have come away only more convinced the American political system would be better served reflecting Girls State than the other way around.
“It feels like something precious to hold on to,” Moss says. “If we’re going to have a political future that sustains this democracy, it seems sad to say that we would have to turn to 17-year-old girls to present that to us. But perhaps it makes perfect sense.”