Crystal Cheatham — Indie from the start

I recently saw the Amelia Earhart movie. The first thing I thought was “FEMINIST…” and then I thought “I wanna be her when I grow up!”

People have always painted me as an activist. I guess it’s true. There’s always been a large amount of anger inside of me, soothed only by maturity (well kinda). I grew up with three brothers and countless boy cousins so, hell yeah, I was always for women’s rights. I wanted to do what the boys did, even if it meant taking off my shirt and getting bruised just to prove I was one of them.  I spent a lot of my high school years defying and cussing out teachers and authority figures. I had a geometry teacher who got tired of me picking on everything he said during one of our classes. He followed me out the door one day and said with defeat, “Crystal I guess I have to get used to it. You’re an activist.” To which I angrily said, “No I’m Not!” and stomped away. That’s me, defiant to the last…

But today when I look at the media and popular culture I get a completely different feel for the words “activist” and “feminist.” Ask any teenage girl if she’s a feminist and she’ll probably cringe because the modern term is really outdated. Even now when someone says feminist the first thing that comes to my mind is a pair of droopy boobs and excess hair (don’t get mad, you think it too!). I know it’s a stereotype, but I’m just saying the definition has changed from something purely noble and adventurous to something vapid and shallow.

Amelia Earhart was a true feminist. She started the 99s, wrote countless books, and oh yeah, was the first woman (second person) to fly over the Atlantic Ocean ( ahem… She had them balls, like wow, hangin low). I dare say she influenced Eleanor Roosevelt.

Eleanor Roosevelt briefly passes through the movie, but what she did for American history was irreplaceable. Up until her husbands presidency woman had been denied the rights to their bodies. By this I mean that family planning techniques and contraception were illegal (condoms & birth control). Can you imagine?! Illegal! These things had been around for ages but men and apparently God said no. Goodness & SMH…  Mrs. Roosevelt herself actually spent years of her life pregnant, popping out 5 kids, only to discover that her husband was cheating on her. So she put her foot down. She believed that regardless what the church said about it or what men thought about it, a woman had the right to not be stuck with a kid every single time (ahem). I mean, she did her activism with tact, and I’m sure I’m spicing it up but you get the point. With her endorsement, contraception made its way into the hearts of women, America, and eventually the world. Eleanor Roosevelt, in all her ordinary efforts was a feminist. And so was Amelia dear Earhart.

The subtle hints of feminism were well done in the movie. It was characteristic of the true form of feminism and not a derivative of the definition we’re left with today. Amelia’s movie showed great tact elsewhere too, there was no giant climax where the hero is suspended between certain solidification in the annals of history and being cast asunder as a nobody. You know Hollywood always does that. They take the ordinariness of achieving something great and pack it into one grand moment (complete with tear jerking music) and call that the hero’s big break. But in real life greatness isn’t achieved like that. Through Amelia’s story we see that greatness doesn’t happen all of a sudden, it’s a series of life choices that kind of meander rather than climax. So bravo to the makers of Amelia. Her story has inspired me to be the greatest version of me I can be every day; angry activist, feminist, musician, and all.