Mother-Daughter Relationships on Screen: Where is Modern Feminism Going?

Boston University’s Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies Program and the Graduate Consortium in Women’s Studies Film Festival hosted a screening of Catherine Hardwicke’s Thirteen followed by a talk by Kathleen Rowe Karlyn, author of Unruly Girls, Unrepentant Mothers: Redefining Feminism on Screen on March 22 and 23.

Evan Rachel Wood as Tracy and Nikki Reed as Evie in Thirteen | Photo courtesey of Fox Searchlight Pictures

The 2003 film, starring Evan Rachel Wood and Nikki Reed, portrays the everyday lives of two young teen girls, Tracy and Evie, who fall prematurely into a culture of drugs, crime, drinking and sex. Meanwhile, Tracy’s mother struggles to keep a grasp on her young daughter who increasingly rejects the expectations of their family and home.

Karlyn outlined the issues surrounding the mother-daughter dynamic present in the film, and also cited Mean Girls, American Beauty and Legally Blonde as crucial cinematic evidence of women’s issues in the post-feminist era of the mid-1990s. She discussed how in films like these, mothers are rarely depicted with strong connections to their daughters, and are sometimes even “invisible” in films and television shows that are addressed to girls.

The inter-generational clash between mothers and daughters during this time period emphasizes the gap in their feminist ideas: the consumerist daughters take back the constraints of domesticity that their mothers rejected, creating contradictions among their goals.

“I’ve always been intrigued by aspects of pop culture that feminist theories don’t really have answers to,” said Karlyn. “Are these girls redefining feminism? We are not all mothers, but we all have mothers and a stake in feminism for the next generation.”

Thirteen is an example of how the over-sexualized daughter devalues the morals of her upbringing, when, in the end, the mother’s love and comfort re-grounds her. The melodramatic mother, according to Karlyn, does not apologize for who she is, and asserts love and adulthood on her daughter through her maternal power, which ultimately wins out.

Portrayals of this type of mother-daughter dynamic continue across racial communities, through a myriad of films and television shows, perpetuating the shift in feminist thought and creating a universal issue that any audience can relate to.

Karlyn hopes that with the acknowledgement of the generational differences in feminist thought and the portrayal of women and mothers in the media, we may move toward an even more powerful feminism.

About Nee-Sa Lossing

Nee-Sa Lossing is a broadcast journalism major at BU. She's a music writer for The Quad and only wears black and white.

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