{"id":2227918,"date":"2024-04-23T08:20:02","date_gmt":"2024-04-23T12:20:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/girls-state-considers-american-democracy-in-the-hands-of-teenage-girls\/"},"modified":"2024-04-23T08:26:05","modified_gmt":"2024-04-23T12:26:05","slug":"girls-state-considers-american-democracy-in-the-hands-of-teenage-girls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/girls-state-considers-american-democracy-in-the-hands-of-teenage-girls\/","title":{"rendered":"Girls State&#8217; Deliberates American Democracy Through Teenage Girls"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">16<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fgirls-state-considers-american-democracy-in-the-hands-of-teenage-girls%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2227918&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The American Legion hosts annual events called Girls and\u200c Boys State, \u200bwhere high school students participate in\u2063 mock governance. \u200bA recent documentary called &#8220;Girls State&#8221; highlights issues faced during such events, emphasizing themes of unity, feminism, and \u2064the\u200c absence of substantive \u2064policy debates\u2063 compared to the counterpart Boys State.\u200c The focus shifts\u200d to friendship and \u200cthe bonds of womanhood\u2062 across <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-purge-has-begun-where-it-stops-nobody-knows\/\" title=\"The Purge Has Begun. Where It Stops, Nobody Knows.\">political divides<\/a>.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<p><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><\/p>\n<div class=\"article-content\">\n<p>Girls and Boys State, put on by The American Legion, are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/second-amendment-sanctuary-bill-passes-wisconsin-senate-heads-to-governors-desk\/\" title=\"\u2018Second Amendment Sanctuary\u2019 Bill Passes Wisconsin Senate, Heads To Governor\u2019s Desk\">annual meetings<\/a> that give high school students the opportunity to practice government through mock debates, campaigns, and elections. Students assume political offices, decide cases, and represent the beliefs of their not-quite-old-enough-to-vote-yet high school peers. Each <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/number-of-republicans-who-trust-the-media-has-fallen-by-half-since-2016\/\" title=\"Number Of Republicans Who Trust The Media Has Fallen By Half Since 2016\">state holds<\/a> an annual Girls and Boys State, and they are typically held separately.<\/p>\n<p>While these events were once earnest exercises in civics education, a new Apple TV documentary titled \u201cGirls State\u201d suggests that these events may not survive the present assault on traditional American values. To wit, the winning governor of the 2022 Missouri Girls State won on the platform:\u00a0\u201cBe prideful, be selfish, and vote Cecelia.\u201d <\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-2-long d-flex justify-content-center\" style=\"margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center; \" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-254541628\">\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-1379703300879-0\" class=\"mb-30\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-04d176cbf5dea6e4efdc4a64238ad2a5 fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-2\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-04d176cbf5dea6e4efdc4a64238ad2a5\"><\/div>\n<p>Her platform was essentially women have to think of themselves because the men are not going to. Basically, in the words of one of the girls there, Emily Glasgow, Cecelia ran on an unbeatable platform: a feminist manifesto. <\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"> <span class=\"yhvqJ1Vkw3FCE2tYAveiHjumKz6frgp7ebl4WH7xqG0BNraNx9bsCRotjSpSdOyahZLQVRdMfwPWE\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"ratio ratio-16x9\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Girls State \u2014 Official Trailer | Apple TV+\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/F5GTaV7oZ2g?start=2&#038;enablejsapi=1#038;feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><\/span> <\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>What was the great inequality that propelled these girls to unite under such a slogan? Stricter dress codes and a buddy system that their counterpart at Boys State did not have to adhere to. So while these girls lamented these <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/honoring-frederick-douglass-on-the-fourth-of-july-just-makes-sense\/\" title=\"Celebrating Frederick Douglass on July 4th is logical.\">grave injustices<\/a>, the boys were discussing policy, albeit with its own issues, but policy nonetheless. <\/p>\n<p>After Apple TV\u2019s \u201cBoys State\u201d documentary dropped in 2020, it was only a matter of time before Mile End Films shot the natural sequel, \u201cGirls State.\u201d When Missouri held Girls and Boys States concurrently for the first time at Lindenwood University in 2022, it gave filmmakers the perfect opportunity. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cBoys State\u201d is interesting and worth a watch, although audiences should be prepared for frustrating narrative choices and framing. It followed a mostly conservative group of boys and their conversations that were largely responses to the contentious politics in the era of the Trump administration. Despite the consistent and reductive choice to depict conservative boys as unserious and pandering, \u201cBoys State\u201d shows glimpses of the influences of tabloid-esque political journalism on the generations who do not know a world without it.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-7bb49397e977673b97fe760739698c9c fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-6\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-7bb49397e977673b97fe760739698c9c\"><\/div>\n<p>While \u201cGirls State\u201d managed to avoid many of the same reductionist pitfalls as \u201cBoys State,\u201d in trying to paint a unified struggle concerning womanhood, it missed out on any of the more substantive conversations of the previous film.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike its predecessor, \u201cGirls State\u201d did not really seem interested in painting heroes and villains and managed to focus on the unification of girls from disparate sides of the political spectrum. For the first 30 minutes of the documentary, girls were shown making bracelets and posters, decorating cupcakes, and complaining about the dress code. <\/p>\n<p>The conference seemed to lean to the left, with environmental policy and mental health being labeled as bipartisan issues. One of the few conservative Christians at the conference, Emily Worthmore, was painted as a \u201cgood human being,\u201d in the words of the far more progressive Maddie Rowan. Worthmore was interested in hearing people out and forming genuine relationships. <\/p>\n<p>The major theme of \u201cGirls State\u201d subsequently ended up being friendship and the strong bonds of womanhood that unite women from all sides of the aisle. <\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-612d2706fee2260ac75c6c13bf3d573f fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-10\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-612d2706fee2260ac75c6c13bf3d573f\"><\/div>\n<p>This happened at the expense of any of the substantive conversations about policy that we got to witness in \u201cBoys State.\u201d The documentary featured a single policy discussion in which the Girls State Supreme Court decided on an issue concerning abortion, where they ruled that forcing women to go to counseling before undergoing an abortion violates their right to privacy. Every other political discussion existed in the context of not being equal to the boys over at Boys State, and not having the same serious conversations as they did. <\/p>\n<p>The only person with any thoughtful contributions to this was Worthmore. Talking about growing up in a conservative house, she said she had never been told she couldn\u2019t do anything because she was a woman. That said, she stood out as one of the few voices expressing frustration over the absence of genuine conversation. She explained that instead of being empowering, such conversations reinforced the notion that womanhood is a disadvantage. <\/p>\n<p>Whether it was the fault of the students or the editing team, it became clear that conversations about gender inequality amid no real evidence of gender inequality only inhibited the girls\u2019 ability to focus on having real policy conversations. Dress codes and differences in funding ended up looking awfully juvenile in light of the seriousness of the debates and aims of the \u201cBoys State\u201d documentary, which obviously was not perfect, but at least there was real consideration surrounding the topics of policy and partisanship.<\/p>\n<p>The scarier reality that crystallized in both these films, more so \u201cBoys State\u201d than \u201cGirls State,\u201d was how the saturated 24-hour news cycle with narratives of leftist heroes and conservative villains has rendered the up-and-coming generation incapable of thinking beyond it. The conversations in both films, in content and form, were largely just regurgitated content from the past four years of tweets, news clips, and infographics. <\/p>\n<p>Through \u201cGirls State\u201d specifically, it became clear that the consumerism brain rot of Instagram models and \u201cit-girls\u201d may even be hindering the ability of young women to engage in substantive conversations about the differences, similarities, and any actual injustices found in comparing them to their male counterparts.<\/p>\n<p>Two documentaries later and four years in the making, Mile End Films provided a picture of what happens when a bunch of kids who don\u2019t know much about nature or the aim of politics gather together and try to engage in the art of governing. Turns out, it actually ends up looking a lot like what politicians are doing right now \u2014 governance without a rich understanding of our nation\u2019s founding and in pursuit of nothing beyond the self-interest of people who are confused about who they are and what they should believe.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-1d0b55d22c9ca3773940d8d114e78bbe fdrlst__b89e9-after-post-content\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-1d0b55d22c9ca3773940d8d114e78bbe\"><\/div>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\">    \t\t\t\t\t   \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Girls and Boys State, organized by The American Legion, are yearly events where high school students engage in mock debates, campaigns, and elections to experience governance. They take on political roles, make decisions, and voice the opinions of their underage peers. Every state hosts its own Girls and Boys State event annually<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":2227919,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Girls_State_Photo_0116-scaled.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2227918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Girls_State_Photo_0116-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2227918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2227918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2227918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2227919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2227918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2227918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2227918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}