Actress Genevieve Angelson On How She's Protesting Today And Every Day
- "I walk into a room full of frightened women and I scream joyous cheers at them for 45 minutes to make them feel happy and loved."
FOR ELLE
I was the lead in Good Girls Revolt, a popular new television show about feminism that was mysteriously canceled. Women who admired the show frequently look to me as a leader for what they can do with their passion for women's rights and fear of what may happen to those rights under our new presidential leadership.
The answer is, I don't have a lot of answers. I know how to ask questions, I know how to follow balanced news sources like NPR and where to subscribe to intelligent feminist discourse, and I know how to take small actions locally. And I am going to march with my country today.
But we need to find ways to do things for each other every day, on days that are not so publicly organized around activism. I have an untraditional tactic of my own creation.Four times a week, I walk into a room full of frightened women and I scream joyous cheers at them for 45 minutes to make them feel happy and loved. I throw my ego to the wind, conjure the spirit of a cheerleading leprechaun and I hold no silliness back to make a mundane Monday at 9am feel like a Stevie Nicks concert at circus camp.
This is what it feels like to go to an exercise class with me. I drop weights on purpose, trip over steps and take any opportunity to lighten other women's hearts. It is my favorite thing about myself.
Why do I do this? One, because exercise soothes and enlivens my brain chemistry during this Kafkaesque clusterfuck of an America, but it is boring as hell and I need something to distract me. But much more powerfully, group exercise classes are one of the most frequent opportunities I get to be in a room full of women. And rooms full of women are rooms full of fear.
I cheer as though we are at her own personal Super Bowl and she is winning it.
Women are afraid of each other. They are afraid of what others are thinking, because in fact, they are afraid of their own thoughts―about who is skinnier aka more powerful aka fearless and without struggle and wakes up glowing in an alkaline pool of green juice. And about who is fatter aka pathetic and full of struggle aka I hope I never sink that low aka I bet even that woman has more money/fun/sex/love/gay friends/respect from her dog than I do.
I am telling you: if this imaginary ladder of value exists at a gym, it exists in every group of women in every environment. In a boardroom, in a family, in a red state whose votes ran headlong into women's rights.
This is not a groundbreaking observation, but I think my reaction to the fear is groundbreaking because I'm the only ass clown doing it. I see a room full of women, about to do something as privileged and absurd as ride on stationary bicycles in a nightclub setting midday in West Hollywood, and I stand up and I cheer. Voraciously. For every other woman around me. As though we are at her own personal Super Bowl and she is fucking winning it.
Is this stupid and annoying? I don't care. I make people laugh and sometimes join in and always break their concentration on changing their body shape and size (which absolutely, never ever fixes the fear problem). And I walk away not thinking about my own body shape and size, but about how incredibly privileged we are to be Americans with enough time, money, access and freedom to exercise. And about how much women love each other when we open the door to love for one another. It's the single most emboldening love source in my life: the power of my female friendship.
This is my point. It is so important that we march together on today. We are opening the door to be one another's side, with assurance that we will be there with kindness and cheers not judgment. But it is more important that we find ways to march with each other for four years. As a team, with no imaginary ladder of worth, but no small hill to climb.
