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When Did Being a White Woman Make Me so "Powerful" and "Privileged"?
This is technically about a movie but I put it here since it's on Netflix which is also kind of TV? Anyway...
Over the last couple of years I've seen it everywhere. The overwhelming hatred for white women, and discussions about how "powerful" and "privileged" we are. I do see discussions about male privilege, almost always applying to white men only. But white men do not get near the same amount of hatred.
Of course there's "karen" and the "basic white bitch" memes. Then there's a tiktok I saw about the two different kinds of white people - white women and "white women" (said with derision). And all the white women pickmes in the comments of course to insist they are the first type and not the second.
Now I just saw this article about a Netflix movie called "White Girl" where apparently a young white woman is to blame for all the problems of this poor drug dealing Hispanic man. Apparently it was written and directed by a woman (Elizabeth Wood) who I am assuming is white.
Full Disclosure - I have not watched this movie. So maybe I'm way off base here and shouldn't even be writing this. But I read the article and then the plot summary and came here to see what you ladies think after I dislodged my eyeballs from the back of my head.
Here's a quote from the article "What unfolds is a thorny labyrinth of white privilege. Leah holds more power than she thinks, and she wields it recklessly, though she's still on a lower rung than her boss, or the slimy lawyer (played by Chris Noth of "Law & Order" fame) helping with Blue's legal troubles. "Let's start with a name like 'White Girl,'" Wood told BuzzFeed in 2016. "Aside from being a reference to cocaine, this is a girl dealing with whiteness, with being a woman, and how both of these things change her privilege, her power, in every situation."
A critic described the movie as "a trenchant critique of the privilege afforded young, beautiful, white women, and the wreckage they can leave behind."
I'm not saying racism doesn't exist, or that white privilege doesn't at exist. I recognize it does. I'm certainly not saying white women are never racist and never use racism to their advantage.
But does this concept of the powerful young white woman seem overblow to anyone else? Where are all the early 20s white women ruling the world in anything else besides porn and insta modeling?
I'm a white woman who has been the victim of physical and sexual assault and the hands of men. I was beaten up by a man of color, my boyfriend at the time. The police officers, a white man and a man of color, could not have cared less. They laughed and rolled their eyes while talking to my assailant. I was 23 years old at the time and while not a supermodel, I was considered relatively conventionally attractive. Where was my privilege over that poor man of color who beat me up? Why was he believed and I was deemed a "crazy bitch?"
Has anyone seen this "White Girl" movie? Is it really as bad as the article makes it out to be? Again maybe I shouldn't be writing posts about movies I haven't seen. I also won't watch it because it apparently includes lots of graphic sex scenes and violence, which I'm not interested in.