Girls STate Review

Evan D.

Smack dab in the middle of the Trump era, filmmakers Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine trained their cameras on an ambitious bunch of teenage boys in Texas participating in a weeklong program designed to simulate American government. Shot just before the pandemic ground everything to a halt, and released in the darkest depths of it, Boys State found a moment to reflect the insidious ways in which the politics of the day influence the politicians of the future and offered a glimmer of hope that the future generations might yet offer a balm for the divisions of the moment. Four years later, Moss and McBaine have found another eerily perfect moment for Girls State, examining if the politically engaged girls of America might form a more perfect union in an equally divisive time.

In 2022, nestled between the leaked Dobbs ruling and the ultimate gutting of Roe v. Wade, Missouri’s teenage politicos flocked to the campus of Lindenwood for the first combination Boys State and Girls State. The genders are kept separate but for the first time in state history, both are being held at the same place at the same time. Once again Moss and McBaine have found a charismatic group to focus on as they navigate Girls State. Governor candidate Faith Glasgow is an impassioned liberal young woman who has overcome her deeply conservative evangelical upbringing. Cecilia Bartin is the firebrand of the group, cool under pressure and seemingly at ease in any given moment of the program. Emily Worthmore gets probably the most screen time as the conservative aspiring journalist — more rare than you’d imagine even at Missouri Girls State — with her eyes already set on the White House.

Girls State follows these candidates as well as a handful of other participants through the events of a week simulating government. Others like the deeply introverted Nisha Murali and the more cool under pressure Brooke Taylor compete for spots on the Supreme Court and the opportunity to hear pressing cases on abortion access. In the shadow of the leaked Dobbs ruling, these battles at Girls State are the most timely and its evident the passion brought to them even in retrospect. High stakes as the arguments are, they never spiral into chaos the way such conversations did at Boys State. The court cases are also among the precious few moments that these Staters get of the kind of fully developed activities that populate every moment of Boys State.

A heavy shadow is cast over Girls State by their brother program, both conceptually in its tether to the 2020 film and literally due to the raucous boys next door. Intelligent and compelling as they are, the teens taking center stage in Girls State are not given the opportunity by the program — or the documentary at times — that the Texas boys were. Tochi Ihekona personifies this in a frustrating manner as she is elected Attorney General midway through the story and absolutely none of that process is shown. It’s a triumphant moment for an intelligent and deserving young woman and the audience only sees the celebration that follows. 

Moments like Tochi’s feel especially squandered because the American Legion — the group that puts on both Boys and Girls State — gives the opportunity for precious few of them to the young ladies while lavishing them on the young men. If there were party forming processes, platform building sessions or law proposal activities at Girls State they were not captured on this documentary. It certainly seems likely that the Girls Staters were not allowed the same type of full experience that took place across the campus from them. Its a shame because seeing how these smart and ambitious young women would handle the act of government making would serve as a crucial contrast to the failures of a real life political system dominated by men determined to strip away ever more rights from these very girls. 

Moss and McBaine’s documentary suffers dearly for it. What made Boys State so prescient was the mirror it held up to the American political establishment, reflecting the spiteful rhetoric and cults of personality thrown to future generations. The girls of Girls State certainly act with more decorum and dignity than their male counterparts but are never put in any sort of election situation that might test that. Even in the gubernatorial debate, nearly every candidate is forced to discuss how unfairly the girls are treated in comparison to the boys. A necessary sentiment, but one that further underscores how little room the program provides for its female participants to have the kind of debates engaged in by Steven Garza and Ben Feinstein in Boys State. 

If it feels like Boys State is coming up a lot in this review, thats because it does in the film too. Emily, Tochi, Cecilia and the other girls do get the spotlight but the boys are never far out of frame. After the governors are elected the girls have to sit through the inauguration of Boys State governor by the actual governor of Missouri with no such consideration paid to them. It isn’t until that moment, in the final third of the story, the film figures out that the real compelling story unfolding in Missouri is the divide between the two programs sharing a campus at Lindenwood.

After the inauguration fiasco, Emily begins to write a story about the difference in treatment and funding received by the two programs. Administrators caution her against comparing the two. Girls State is built differently by design and monetary necessity. Focus of the documentary shifts quickly to why the American Legion has determined that the boys deserve a well funded immersion into American politics while the girls only need a sparsely scheduled event tailored towards girl power and mutual support. That dichotomy becomes the fiery and fascinating central question of a film that runs out of time to explore it. 

Girls State ultimately occupies a middle ground between its two more interesting components. Moss and McBaine hold on too long to the notion that they’ll be able to make the same kind of allegory for the gamification of politics they did in Texas and they come too late to the realization that this set of circumstances is better suited for a story of sexism. These girls deserve their own shot at the type of experience this directorial team captured in with Boys State and were deprived of it, thats the idea Girls State eventually gets to just a little to late to fully land. 7/10