Released this past July, Mad Men’s season two DVD set gives viewers the option of watching three special features that provide some of the historical backdrop for the 1960s-based series. One is titled Birth of an Independent Woman. If you haven’t seen it yet, then you might be thinking (as I did) that this piece focuses on the character of Peggy, or Betty, or Joan.

Well, in some ways, you’re correct: Each of these characters becomes increasingly agential over season two, and Birth of an Independent Woman includes clips of their development. Nevertheless, this special feature is about much, much more than that.

Produced by Cicely Gilkey for Lionsgate (Mad Men’s production house), Birth of an Independent Woman is a two-part, forty-minute documentary that explores the rise of the U.S. women’s liberation movement. Opening with still images of feminist pioneers Susan B. Anthony, Margaret Sanger, Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, and Sojourner Truth, the film intercuts archival footage and scenes from Mad Men to exemplify points made by experts Diana York Blaine (USC lecturer), Emily Bazelon (Slate.com editor), Ellen Dubois (UCLA professor), Marcelle Karp (Bust co-founder), Michael Kimmel (SUNY professor), and Michelle Wallace (CUNY professor).

The first half of Birth of an Independent Woman, “The Problem,” takes viewers back to 1950s’ America and women’s frustrations with the suburban housewife ideal, which the media industries popularized after World War II in order to free up jobs for returning veterans.

Tracing the rekindling of feminist sentiment during the 1960s, the film’s second segment, “Independence,” examines women’s marginalization in the New Left and the civil rights movement, while also exploring the social and cultural transformations that contributed to women’s increased agency and public presence during the latter half of the twentieth century.1

Although this history is well known to anyone who participated in or has studied the women’s liberation movement, the material presented in Birth of an Independent Woman is not part of popular knowledge about the postwar era. It’s fascinating, therefore, to consider this documentary’s possible effects on public understanding of both gender oppression and feminist activism. After all, this film is now available to all those who rent, purchase, or borrow Mad Men’s season two DVD set, a figure which will likely reach a few million globally.

If you’re as intrigued by this phenomenon as I am, then you either know something about DVDs’ typical special features, or are familiar with the dire straits of feminist documentary distribution today. In the first place, the supplemental material on DVDs for narrative TV series is usually comprised of deleted scenes, interviews with producers and cast members, or “behind the scenes” production footage. Documentaries about political movements are rarely included. Indeed, Birth of an Independent Woman may be the first.

Secondly, despite the increased popularity and commercial success of documentaries since Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), feminist documentaries have not played much of a role in this recent trend, as their filmmakers must surmount enormous obstacles in order to get their work seen by more than a few hundred people. (Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman’s Born into Brothels [2004] is one of the very few contemporary feminist documentaries to get wide-spread theatrical distribution, though its $3.5 million in U.S. receipts is paltry compared to Fahrenheit’s $119 million.) 2

This is all to say that Birth of an Independent Woman is an extreme rarity in today’s medialand, and its inclusion in a popular television show’s DVD release upends conventional notions of not only commercial TV entertainment, but also feminist documentary. Moreover, it raises provocative questions about women’s power as mainstream media producers as well as the state of feminism among industry professionals.

According to Gilkey, the idea for Birth of an Independent Woman came from Matt Weiner, Mad Men’s creator and executive producer, who has encouraged her to develop supplemental DVD material that matches the series in terms of production quality and a focus on social issues.3 Nevertheless, Birth of an Independent Woman is clearly a Gilkey not Weiner creation, and that is largely due to the considerable agency she has as Mad Men’s DVD Content Producer. A role created by the Criterion Collection when it began to include supplemental features on its laser discs, the DVD content producer is much like a one-person crew. In addition to writing, directing, and producing DVD features, they are the primary researchers for their projects and often supervise editing also.

Gilkey, who has worked on Dr. Phil and The Tyra Banks Show, seems in an especially lucrative position today, for not only is she producing DVD content for one of the most popular U.S. television series, she is working for a show runner and production house that are paving the way for her future success in media production. Indeed, when Gilkey’s last employer laid her off in the midst of her work on Mad Men’s season two DVD, Weiner insisted that she continue as the series’ DVD Content Producer, and Lionsgate concurred. This situation allowed Gilkey to bring her Mad Men work within her own company, The Journey Film Group, which recently produced Cargo: Innocence Lost, a documentary about sex trafficking.

While Gilkey’s success as a DVD content producer says much about the potential for women’s agency in the television industry today, also intriguing is the prospect that feminist content will reach more viewers as a result of DVD special features. Indeed, the distribution of Birth of an Independent Woman may very well signal a new moment in feminist filmmaking, particularly distribution. For as feminist producer Wendy Quinn argues, “Distribution is one of the paramount factors in changing attitudes and ideas. Distribution determines who sees media, who gets to think about it, talk about it.”4

Viewers’ options on Mad Men’s season two DVD

Although feminist documentaries have always served a smaller, specialized audience, with the decline of women’s film festivals since the 1980s, that audience has become even smaller. In fact, college classrooms are the primary location for feminist screenings today, and only one U.S. feminist film distributor, Women Make Movies, remains operative. As a result, feminist documentarians have increasingly looked for alternative ways to get their work seen by larger audiences. While the Web’s potential in this regard remains to be tapped, television has become a particularly desirable site, since the broadcast medium can increase by tens of thousands the average theatrical audience for a feminist film. Nevertheless, female documentarians, especially those who are feminist, have been unable to compete with the field’s male superstars, particularly Ken Burns, the first filmmaker to come to mind when “TV” and “documentary” are mentioned in the same breath.

Thus, Birth of an Independent Woman suggests new avenues for the distribution of feminist film. As a result of its inclusion in a DVD set for an extremely popular television series, this documentary about women’s lib is bound to be seen by thousands, if not millions, more viewers than if it had been distributed via the traditional channels of feminist cinema. Indeed, over 190,000 copies of Mad Men’s season two DVD set were purchased in the U.S. in the first five weeks of its release.5

Yet, it is the type of viewers who might watch Birth of an Independent Woman that is perhaps the most intriguing aspect of its mainstream distribution. Surely, not everyone who has access to Mad Men’s season two DVD set will watch its special features. And many will likely be put off by the phrase “independent woman.” At the same time, however, it is possible that many viewers who would never step foot in a women’s studies class or a feminist film festival will sit down to watch this documentary about the rise of the women’s liberation movement. And when they do, hopefully they will respond to Birth of an Independent Woman in the same way that Gilkey’s primarily male crew members did while they were making it, with surprise that they know so little about the gender politics of that period and with concern that sexism continues to limit the opportunities of most girls and women today.

Image Credits:
1.) Mad Men’s women: Peggy (Elisabeth Moss), Betty (January Jones), Joan (Christina Hendricks)
2.) Author Screen Capture: Mad Men, “Six Month Leave,” Season 2 / Lionsgate
3.) Author Screen Capture: Birth of an Independent Woman / Lionsgate
4.) Author Screen Capture: Mad Men, Season 2, Disc 1 menu / Lionsgate

Please feel free to comment.

1. Because of space constraints, my analysis of this documentary’s representation of the rise of the women’s liberation movement must wait for a longer study.
2. http://www.boxofficemojo.com, accessed Sept. 19, 2009
3. Information about the production of Birth of an Independent Woman came from the author’s interview of Gilkey on 11 Sept. 2009.
4. Quinn qtd. in Women of Vision: Histories of Feminist Film and Video, ed. Alexandra Juhasz (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001) 233.
5. http://www.the-numbers.com/dvd/charts/weekly/2009/20090816.php, accessed 11 Sept. 2009.

In addition to the comical fur-lined hat worn by former President George H. Bush, one of the more notable images during President Barack Obama’s swearing-in ceremony was that of his oldest daughter, Malia, snapping photographs of the occasion. Apparently, I wasn’t alone in noticing the young Ms. Obama’s photographic practices. At least one television network and five U.S. periodicals, including People, Wired, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, have run stories about the girl snapshotter after numerous photojournalists captured her in their lenses, turning this young spectator into the latest spectacle.

But Malia’s photography and media attention to it were not restricted to the swearing-in ceremony. On January 17, the 10-year-old was photographed taking pictures in Philadelphia before she boarded a train to Washington, DC with her family and that of Vice President-elect Biden.

The following day, Malia was photographed snapping away at the Lincoln Memorial Inauguration Concert.

And the night before Inauguration, she was photographed with her camera in hand at the Kids’ Inaugural: We are the Future Concert.

What is the significance of Malia Obama’s photographic practices, and why have they garnered so much public attention in the past few weeks? What fascinates us about this particular photographer? Are we simply excited by the possibility that we might see pix taken by a First Daughter on Flickr or Facebook? Or is something else piquing our curiosity? In order to answer these questions, we need to consider the history of girls’ photography, the role of media technology in girls’ lives today, and the racial landscape of American girlhood and girls’ culture.

After Kodak’s introduction of its small, portable Brownie camera in 1900, amateur photography became a common pastime for American youth. Boys had long been encouraged to tinker with such mechanical gadgets so as to prepare for future jobs and affirm their masculinity. Yet girls were not excluded from Kodak’s appeal and became quick adopters of this new consumer technology. Indeed, because early amateur cameras were relatively cheap (the Brownie retailed for $1.00) and did not require much skill to operate, photography swiftly became one of the primary means by which girls of the early twentieth century documented their lives and expressed themselves creatively, thus challenging the primacy of diarywriting, which requires elementary literacy of its practitioners. By the 1920s, photography had become such a hit with female youth that Kodak began manufacturing Girl Scout cameras, the first media technology created specifically for girls.1

As apparatuses that confer considerable agency on users while also encouraging their engagement with the outdoors, cameras offered additional bonuses to female youth of this period, which might explain photography’s quick ascendance in early twentieth-century girls’ culture. Like schooling and sports, photography enlivened a sense of mastery, control, and autonomy in its young female practitioners. In turn, it legitimized their participation in public life, thereby complicating the sex-segregated roles, practices, and spaces associated with Victorian society, which in turn helped to shift gender norms in a progressive direction.

From Kodak’s Brownie to today’s EasyShare (Malia’s current model of choice), photography continues to be a primary pastime for many female youth the world over. Indeed, judging from the number of girls who own cameras and camera-enhanced cell phones, it seems the dominant demographic group to occupy the role of photographer today is comprised of young females between the ages of 10 and 25. With toy manufacturers now creating pink and purple point-and-shoots for little girls, such as Mattel’s Barbie Smile with Me Camera, that age range is likely to skew even younger in the next few years, thus expanding the number of contemporary girl snapshotters.

If girls’ blogs and MySpace pages are any indication, today’s female youth take photos of seemingly every person, object, and occasion in their lives, and no wonder: With no film cartridges to load, lenses to adjust, or processing to wait and pay for, digital cameras and cell phones have made photography super easy and efficient. Moreover, with the help of software packages, like Photoshop, female youth who are invested in photographic quality can manipulate their images without ever stepping foot in a dark room. But perhaps the most notable change in girls’ photo culture is related to distribution, not production. Girls’ snapshots, once carefully preserved in photo albums, can now be swiftly uploaded and circulated online, available for millions of viewers to see.

But contemporary girls’ photo culture is not just about taking and sharing images. Available in numerous colors and with a variety of accessories, today’s cameras are used by many female youth in much the same way as their cell phones—technologized consumer products that complete the public image of the postmodern “can-do” girl.2

If, as already suggested, Malia Obama is but one of the millions of young female photographers currently in our midst, then why all the excitement when she’s seen using a camera? Yes, she’s also a First Daughter, so anything she does, even the most typical of “girly” activities, is bound to garner public attention. (Remember images of Amy Carter walking a gauntlet of photojournalists on her way to school?)

Yet the lure of Malia the Photographer does not just result from her relationship with the President of the United States of America, and thus her ability to capture images of one of our most public and powerful figures in his most private and perhaps vulnerable moments. Certainly, those factors pique our interest about this girl photographer. Nonetheless, I believe the primary reason Malia’s photographic practices have garnered so much attention is their juxtaposition with a young, female African American body. Most individuals in the U.S. are simply not used to seeing a black girl in a position of such agency. Stereotyped as crack whores and teen moms on welfare, black girls are more commonly constructed in the media as victims than heroes, “at-risk” rather than “can-do.”3 Thus, it seems Malia is attracting attention not just because she’s a girl who takes pictures or because she is a First Daughter who takes pictures, but because she’s a black First Daughter who takes pictures.

While most Americans have grown used to the concept of “girl power” and the idea of female youth interacting with cameras, PCs, and musical instruments, African American girls have not regularly been in our cultural limelight since the girl groups helped to revive Tin Pan Alley in the early 1960s. Despite some notable exceptions in sports and music, the vast majority of female youth who have received attention for their cultural agency has been white. This is not to say that girls of color have been absent from the field of cultural production. Plenty of African as well as Asian, Latin, and Arab American female youth have been engaged in media-making practices in the past few decades. Indeed, hip-hop culture would not have developed as it did if not for the Latina and African American girl DJs, MCs, break dancers, and graffiti artists who helped to create that scene in the 1970s.4 Yet, these are not the girl performers and artists that have attracted and held media attention. Given the overwhelming whiteness of contemporary American girls’ media culture—from dolls to magazines to musicians to fictional characters—is it any wonder that the girl performer most noted for her interactions with our black First Daughters is Miley Cyrus?

Malia Obama’s snapshotting has captured the public’s attention and thus encouraged a barrage of photographs of her in response. In addition to acknowledging contemporary girls’ technological agency, one of the most significant consequences of these images is that our whitewashed notions of girls, girlhood, and girls’ culture are beginning to disintegrate. With numerous cameras ready to capture her every move over the next four years, Malia is helping to alter the dominant image of American girlhood through her place in front of as well as behind the lens. Let’s hope she asks for an SLR for her birthday in addition to those Jonas Brothers’ concert tickets.

Image Credits:Images

1. Malia the Photographer at President Obama’s swearing-in ceremony
2. Malia in Philadelphia before the President-elect’s train leaves for Washington, DC
3. Malia and Sasha at the Lincoln Memorial Inauguration Concert
4. Malia at the Kids’ Inaugural: We are the Future Concert
5. Mattel’s Barbie Smile with Me Camera
6. Amy Carter on her way to school

Please feel free to comment.

1. Mary Degenhardt and Judith Kirsch, Girl Scout Collectors’ Guide: A History of Uniforms, Insignias, Publications, and Keepsakes (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2005).
2. Leslie Regan Shade, “Feminizing the Mobile: Gender Scripting of Mobiles in North America,” Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 21.2 (June 2007) 179-189.
3. Anita Harris, “The ‘Can-Do’ Girl versus the ‘At-Risk’ Girl,” Future Girl: Young Women in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Routledge, 2004) 13-36.
4. Nancy Guevara, “Women Writin’ Rappin’ Breakin’,” The Year Left 2: An American Socialist Yearbook, eds. Mike Davis, Manning Marable, Fred Pfeil, and Michael Sprinker (Stonybrook: Verso: 1987) 160-175.