Iron Jawed Angels

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Iron Jawed Angels Film Review Women have been fighting for equal rights and treatments for centuries now. Though men have also experienced discrimination, women have been on the most painful receiving end. Iron Jawed Angels is a film which illustrates the women’s suffrage movement of the 1920’s. The message of the film is effectively portrayed by the hardships and adversity women had to withstand to get the 19th amendment passed. It is effectively portrayed by the struggle the suffragists faced and is accurately and beautifully depicted. The film presents women in a positive, accurate light, avoiding the three main complaints of how media portrays women. Considering the media's usual under-representation of women in the media, Iron Jawed Angels suitably shows women from all lifestyles. Thin and overweight, beautiful and ugly, rich and poor, homemakers and working women are all shown. In the process of illustrating these different women, the film tries not to express one lifestyle being better than another lifestyle. Some of the women are perfectly content to be single and childless and other women are happy to have families. The character Emily Leighton demonstrates qualities of the "ideal" loving mother and wife. However, where some films would make her character seem weak or submissive, the film portrays Emily Leighton as a strong woman, who was willing to defy her husband and make a better life for her daughters. In one scene, her husband accuses her of being a bad mother and Mrs. Leighton responds by saying, "They are the only reason I am here." The film offers a healthy mix of the women who existed in society at the time. The stereotypes of women set forth by a patriarchal society create images of submissive homemakers and mothers. A woman who falls under the control of men, whether he is her husband, father, powerful official, or the

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