In A Girl Like Her, writer-director Ann Fessler collects several disturbing first-person accounts of teenage pregnancy during the 1950s and '60s. None of the women appear on camera, but their interspersed narratives play over scenes from contemporary films and newsreels showing idealized depictions of romance, marriage, and domestic life. The subjects recall their parents' silence about sex, menstruation, and birth control, as well as the uniformly condemning reactions they faced when revealing their pregnancies. Generally treated with indifference during childbirth, they were blindsided by the emotions they felt toward infants whom they were discouraged from even holding—and all gave up their babies for adoption in anguish, signing papers that identified the children as abandoned and the fathers as unknown, believing they had no legal options, while facing crushing familial and social disapproval. All of the women assert that the trauma affects them deeply to the present day, coloring life choices and ambitions in spite of popular notions that one simply “moves on” (an onscreen statistic notes that of the 100 women interviewed, 30 never had another child). The movie footage here punches up the personal accounts, creating a jaw-dropping picture of “ideal” womanhood in an America that existed only 50 years ago. Highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (M. Puffer-Rothenberg)
A Girl Like Her
(2011) 47 min. DVD: $89: public libraries; $295: colleges & universities. Women Make Movies. PPR. Volume 28, Issue 5
A Girl Like Her
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