Uppity women star in new film

“She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry” opens today in a San Francisco movie theater, and I can’t wait to see it. The headline on San Francisco Chronicle film critic Mick LaSalle’s review calls it “How women got started getting uppity,” which of course reminds me of the uppity women I’ve been interviewing for my book on the people behind Title IX.

Some of the Title IX foremothers never would have joined the street protests or other public demonstrations depicted in the film. They weren’t those kind of women. Much too radical for them. Yet, uppity they were, too. And all the efforts of the uppity women — whether on the streets or working the halls of power, in the 1970s or 2015 — changed America, and continue to change it today.

The review notes that one of the film’s aims is “to refute the illusion of inevitability. The movie tells us, contrary to what we might tell ourselves, that change did not come about through some process of societal evolution. It came about through the specific acts of specific women.” Uppity women.

For those of you familiar with the Chronicle’s rating system: the Little Man is jumping out of his chair. See you at the theater.

(Photo from “She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry.”)