I Was a Girly Girl

INTRODUCTION

As a filmmaker, creating this film is new territory for me. I have made a career producing social-issue documentaries, stories grounded in personal experiences to be sure, but never explicitly my own. On the sidelines over all of these years, I have filmed my daughters, but as a mother first, capturing holidays, private moments and various rites of passage, with only a vague sense that something besides home-movies might one day emerge. Now, as both a mother and documentarian, I find myself looking back and inward, drawn to tell the story of one daughter – Sarah.

THE STORY

It’s spring 1995 in Montclair, NJ and my daughter Sarah is getting ready for her senior prom. She is radiant. As my wife Karen helps with her hair and zipper, Sarah fidgets and flinches and then snatches the kitchen telephone off the base.

Slowly piecing together fragments of the conversation we overhear, the reality dawns on us all: Sarah’s date has stood her up. We do everything we can to deny it. Karen calls the date’s house. Sarah’s sisters pop in, but their reassurances quickly become efforts to console. And when Sarah can no longer pace inside, she goes out to the street to tell our entire, close-knit suburban neighborhood.

Sarah delivers the news with her signature toothy smile meant to convey cool incredulity and detachment, but watching from the porch, Karen covers her mouth with her hand. We feel Sarah’s pain as if it were our own, yet we are powerless to protect her.

In a single image, this is what it means to be a mother. After finishing high school, Sarah moved to Brooklyn. En route to our home, not 20 feet from our front door, she was sexually assaulted. After the assault, Sarah moved back home and couldn’t go outside alone for months.

She seemed to have changed overnight, from gregarious, strong-willed and free-spirited to scared, quiet and cocooned. Many of her friends couldn’t handle it. Karen and I sheltered Sarah and did our best to bring her back into the world, but the attack left us all shattered and wary.

Over the last three decades, I have filmed Sarah as she has healed from this trauma and grown into a powerful woman, marrying and having two children of her own.

Protecting too much, or not protecting enough: this has been my lifelong struggle as a mother; Karen’s too, and probably almost every mother in the world. Sarah is a changed person however her radiance and smile have survived.

Sarah’s journey has given me the inspiration to tell this story.

WHY THIS FILM

I WAS A GIRLY GIRL reflects the realities many women face who have been victims of sexual assault, highlighting the complexities and injustices of living in a patriarchal world.

For survivors, the experience is often shrouded in silence, shame, and most remarkably, blame. Through the telling of Sarah’s story, the filmmakers tear away this veil, giving voice to survivors and challenging the persistent silence surrounding violence against women.

The very absence of shame is what makes Sarah’s story so distinct and remarkable. Her strength lies in her refusal to treat her assault as something she must hide or carry as a badge of shame. She is willing to speak openly about what happened to her, using direct language and, when necessary, graphic detail to tell her story truthfully. And for that we are grateful.