Lessons From the Future Leaders of "Girls State"

Hello Sunshine.

Hey, besties. Today, on the bright Side, the Future is Female, we dive into the world the new Apple TV doc Girls State. We'll be joined by co director Amanda McBain and a young woman from the film who might just run for president one day. It's Tuesday, April ninth. I'm Simone Boyce.

I'm Danielle Robe and this is the bright Side from Hello Sunshine. Okay, Simone, before we talk about anything else today, please tell me about your Total Eclipse of the Heart. Tell me about your trip.

Well, it's true. Scientific name is a total eclipse of the Sun. I mean, I've never seen something like it before. The sky goes totally dark and then it comes back. And being able to see it up close and in person like I've seen I've seen it from far away, but to see it this close, it was just remarkable.

Your dad's been planning this trip for like four years. Do you think that it was all he wanted it to be?

I hope so.

I hope it was everything that my dad wanted a lot of his cousins and brothers and sisters there, so it was a really special time. Okay, Danielle, you know I'm a space nerd. You know, I would go to space tomorrow if Jeff Bezos called me and asked me to go totally nuts. But I think he should call you. But I think I'm not the only space nerd out there. So for all y'all who are interested, here's a little

I didn't know if you were speaking English or not for the last sixty.

Seconds, Danielle. It wasn't even that complicated.

It really is. You lost me at moon and Sun and stars and location.

And yet when Channy's here, you're all ears.

And she has something to say about what that means. I don't know but if you didn't make the trip like me, Apparently you can still see a solar eclipse eventually. The next one is in twenty twenty six. I read and you can see it in Iceland, in Portugal and Spain, or you can wait until two thousand and thirty three, so like nine years from now and you can see it in Alaska. That would be cool. Maybe we should plan on doing that in nine years?

Do you want to go to Alaska? I heard Portugal, and then I didn't hear anything else after that.

Well, apparently if you want to see it in the lower forty eight states, you'll have to wait until twenty forty four. So you're right, this is a pretty rare occurrence.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know that I'll get to see another one in my lifetime.

Feels like a bucket list moment.

Yeah kay, I'm about to shift to something that's totally unrelated.

Here we go.

There is all of these videos on social media of women sharing their IUD insertion stories, and it's basically this trend where women record themselves getting their IUD insertain and I have to tell you, at first glance, I was like, whoa, this is very personal to see watch here, and then I felt differently.

Wait, they're showing what are they showing exactly? Because I haven't seen these videos.

They're covered by the rope, But the girls that are sharing these are saying that they felt really unprepared for the pain that they felt when it was inserted, and they wanted to share with other women.

So I've always been afraid of getting an IUD, largely because one of my really good friends got it, and she has had a horrible experience with it, truly a saga to where it was problematic from the time that it was inserted and then she had to get surgery

Right.

So, I didn't grow up taking birth control pills. I've always wanted to limit any exposure to hormones, and in hindsight, I'm actually really glad I didn't do that. But a few years ago, I think it was the summer of twenty twenty one, I had an abortion, and because of that experience, I had an IUD inserted because I felt like the risk that I was taking was too great. It felt like I didn't want to have that experience again, and I'd rather have an IUD. I like having it.

Do you feel it?

I don't feel it. When I first got it, I felt a little anxious for like a month or two, and my doctor said there's no actual proof that that's the case, but he has had other women say that. But the anxiety dissipated, so I don't feel it. I don't feel effects from it. I'm grateful for it, but I think every women nowadays are much more thoughtful about what they're taking in terms of birth control. I think before it was kind of like just pushed on everybody.

Yeah, I haven't taken birth control in the years because it just does a number on my body.

I don't like it.

When you say a number, what do you mean just.

Not feeling like myself. So I think that you do have to take everything that you read on TikTok with a grain of salt. But the mere fact that we're having these discussions that might prompt some of us to go have the conversations with the experts, with the doctors to get to the truth.

Up next, we're talking to the director and one of the subjects of the new documentary, Girls State. The film looks at the annual leadership event for girls and let me tell you, the future looks bright.

Danielle, I have been so excited about this segment because the idea of young women becoming empowered to be leaders is something that just gets me so fired up. And that's what Girls State is all about. It's a week long program for young women interested in politics, and every year, hundreds of teenage girls gather in cities across the country to create a mock government. At this summer camp, they run for office, they debate their peers, and they even pass mock legislation.

It's so cool and at its core, Girls State encourages young women to engage politically and potentially to run for office. And now there's a whole documentary about it called Girls State, which you can catch on Apple TV.

Here's what went down behind the scenes.

Okay, So, in the summer of twenty twenty two, just days before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, filmmaker Amanda McBain traveled to Missouri to attend Girls State and to meet the incredible young women who were participating in that year's program. Now, one of them was nineteen year old Emily Worthmore. Both Amanda and Emily are here with us today. Welcome to the bright Side ladies.

Welcome, Hi, Danielle and Simone.

Hi. Thanks for having us.

Emily, I'd love to hear more about why you were drawn to Girls State and politics in general.

Yeah, so, I since the fourth grade, kind of before I knew what politics really meant. I had ran for mayor of my fourth grade classroom and I had won, and that was kind of my introduction to public office, I guess, and I decided at a very young age that I wanted to be the president one day. That was like my dream jobs from fourth grade forward. So I had had time to look into the program, see what it was about, and gain a lot of interest

You mentioned wanting to be president since fourth grade. I used to dress up like Hillary Clinton for every book report in like third and fourth grade.

Not Hillary Clinton, but I used to dress to placate a president too.

Yeah, but I was wondering who, because that for me was a visible political figure that I looked up to. But for you, who was it? Who did you look to?

Interestingly enough, I really liked Trump's press secretary. Her name's Kaylee mcindinney, and I really liked her because I think that she was really good at defending somebody who isn't necessarily the easiest to defend a lot of times, but she was always very well educated. She attended Harvard, She always had a million facts of her sleeve ready to

Amanda, you and your husband Jesse Moss directed and produced a prior documentary called Boys State, which followed thousands of teen boys attending Boys State in Texas. So what drew you to these programs? I feel like when documentarians get into things, it's usually because of a real passion.

Great question, I think for Jesse and I.

Trump's election actually and the division of our country in twenty sixteen was so top of mind that we were looking for some project we could get into that would help us kind of make sense of things. And that's when we read an article in the Washington Post that was coverage of Texas Boys State that year had their legislature had voted to secede.

From the Union.

And we thought that was funny but also kind of indicative of sort of the weather vein of our country. And a light bulb went off in our head, like, oh, here's what we need to do. This is we want to check out how young people are coming of age in this moment in our country politically. And we didn't know about the program before that, honestly, either Boys State or Girls State, which has been around for eighty years and in California too, in every state, so we called

But it was never a matter of why. For us.

It was really then the question of do girls do politics differently and what their take on the challenges of representational democracy might be. And there are similarities and there are differences.

Amanda, as you were making the film, I'm so curious as to what you learn from the younger generation about politics and the political climate right now.

I'd say learning still not learned.

Part of it for me is a refresher on my patriotism, frankly, because I think I'm so kind of traumatized by the chaos of national politics. So these spaces are so special because they are a place where people whose politics are so different. Emily and I do not share the same politics, but we can all come together in real life, right not online, and have conversations about very very tricky subjects if we respect one another and.

Look at each other as human beings.

When we talked to hundreds of kids before deciding who we were going to follow, in the four or five months before the session starts, we talked to hundreds of kids over in Missouri, and I got a real sense from them that they don't buy into the binaries of Democrat and Republican. They're very all acarte with their politics,

Emily, do you feel like any of your political beliefs shifted by being friends with these girls who have opposing political beliefs than you.

I would not say that any of my political beliefs shifted so much, but I do think.

That I have a lot of empathy.

And I think now, you know, as years go on, we become more educated about things, and I'd say I'm still politically pretty similar to where I'm at, but I'm thinking of ways to make liberals conservatives alike more happy with the situation that we have, like things with guns and abortion and things like that. I think that there's

I think exposure matters, and that's part of the promise of these programs is some kids who had lived in small towns of three hundred people had never met somebody from a big city and vice versa. And I think that that interface actually may not change politics, but it certainly makes you understand there's a human being who's on

So maybe that's.

Something that But there's common cause, you know, between Emily and I about that, right, And there's common cause about the lack of female representation in politics. That's something we have common cause. And she has a giant, giant, giant heart and I have a you know, a good sized heart. So those are the things you lean into.

You said that so well, Amanda. I think it's absolutely about exposure. Emily, you are going through this mock government process in the film and you decide to run for governor. And there's a moment in the film when another citizen of Girls State tells you don't feel like you have to be so perfect, and it brings tears to your eyes. Do you put that pressure on yourself or do you feel like you have something to prove to everyone else?

I think that I.

Think it might be an internal pressure just and don't I don't I wouldn't consider myself a perfectionist, and I think that internally now I want to succeed. I think that's a pretty natural reaction. But I think since then I've learned to be a little less perfectionistic and more messy.

And I think that it's really good.

But the moment that her name's Charity, the girl that had that conversation with me in the hallway, I think that moment right before you're about to cry, when you're holding in tears and then somebody says something nice to you, like it's okay, and then you're just like.

Oh, and I'm really gonna cry. Yes, that was one of those moments. So I think it's so funny that it was.

You know, captured on camera because it's like that choking feeling in your throat when you're like trying not to cry and it burns and then like you like really are trying to hold it in. That was like one of probably the highlights of the film for me is seeing like just somebody who was actually running against me feeling be so kind.

I just it's so beautiful to me.

Big girls do cry, right, Danielle, Yeah, I like I'd say at least once a week at work.

I agree, you know, at least once to at least if you're not crying, do you really have feelings?

That's how you know you're human.

Amanda Is, you were making this film and observing these kids govern them, were there any moments that struck you as particularly powerful?

I think to watch all the girls that have been finally made it through the very long, arduous task of even getting a position on the Supreme Court and girls state. So those seven girls they hold hands and they give each other affirmations before they head on stage to hear the privacy case. And then to watch them listen to this privacy case, which had a lot of resonance at the time because it was a week after this leaked

Was very, very powerful because I was watching.

Young women in the state of Missouri, where there's a trigger law that they all know is going to go to and go into effect in a week. Making abortioning legal to watch them take ownership of that conversation in a really smart way too. This is not a moral conversation, This is not do you believe in this? It was a legal conversation. It was a constitutional conversation. To watch them take ownership of that, if only for a brief moment, was very powerful for me to witness.

Spoiler alert ahead, turnback if you don't want to understand the ending of this film, Emily, your journey inspires me so much because you're going through this mock government process. After you lost that governor's race. That was a really tough setback, but you make the most of the week and end up winning a full scholarship to Lyndenwood University. Looking back, how did that rejection motivate you?

I mean, I had been one of those front runners for every election of my high school. Then you go into a place where nobody knows you and you have less than a week to make an impression.

It's a lot of pressure.

And then to lose, which wasn't the end of the world, and I knew that going in, but it still stings a little bit. And then the scholarship was really like the cherry on top, because now my life.

Is so different than it could have been.

So overall, I owe a lot to Girls State, and I'm just so thankful for that.

Emily, after you lost the governor's race, you didn't give up on Girls State. Instead, you switched to your other passion, journalism, and you were able to uncover a major story that ultimately led to your scholarship. What did you write about?

Yeah, So the reason I actually went into writing the article, I throughout the week everybody was talking about dress code and about you know, the boys have time for athletics and we don't, and just some different disparities. And for me personally, I wasn't necessarily too interested in the they get to wear whatever they want and we don't. That wasn't just the top of my list because it made sense to me, Okay, we're at a professional camp. It

Were, and I really wanted that.

So that's what I was looking for when I first started writing it, but I covered everything just for the sake of being fair and balanced. I wanted, you know, dress code, I wanted the gym things. And then I was curious about the money that goes into both programs, because that's like an interesting you know, that's the way you start something necessarily is look at how much funding. And so I went online and basically what I found

And obviously there's not a ton.

That we can do about that because they do are funded by separate organizations. But if anybody would like to help or contribute, anybody can donate to the American Legion Auxiliary for Girls Missouri Girls State and have that directly impact our program.

But it was just so I mean, I thought, at first, while we're being ripped.

Off, and it just felt very wrong. But now I understand why it's happening. But it still is an ideal obviously.

To watch Emily's pivot to leaning into her journalistic talents Frankly, she's a great listener, which is what made her a good candidate, but makes her a great journalist. And when she's investigating the funding disparities between the two programs, she knows that it could potentially jeopardize her getting this scholarship because she is writing an article that's critical and who's that going to rub the wrong way? And she does it anyway, and I think that that kind of risk,

We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back. We're back with Amanda McBain and Emily worthmore from the New Girl State documentary, which you can catch on Apple TV. Amanda, you have two teenage daughters. How did they shape the way that you and your husband thought about this film and how did it compare to your prior film Boys Date.

I think we are sensitive to how coming of age during this moment is particularly challenging because the world feels very binary. You're there in this camp or that you're either in this gender or that gender. I mean, there's just so many like make a choice, pick a side, and I don't think that's a good place to be when you're young, because you should be trying on all the things.

I think we're also particularly sensitive to.

How girls are very hard on themselves in a way that I was not surprised to see. At Girls State, girls give amazing speeches and then walk off stage and itemize how they had not done everything they wanted to do on stage and criticize their own performance. I had not seen that. At Boy State. I'd seen Wow, I'd seen a lot of okay speeches. I mean, I'm a mom, so I believe in everybody's speeches, but some of them

You know what I mean? I would love some of.

That, Amanda, how are girls responding to the movie?

In sharing this film on stage, We've sometimes had very young kids in the audiences, like Emily, I don't even remember there was a ten year old in the audience in Missouri who came up to the mic afterwards to make a statement that she just loved seeing all these seventeen year olds kicking butt and doing amazing things in leadership roles, but also that they'd shared how afraid they were, or how much how sad they were, or how hard it was to do that, and that she felt seen

That's my favorite part too, is hiring little like young people in the audience, and like, I think everybody young is like that really makes me happy to see younger people seeing this just if anything to be like an encouragement of like, you can fail, you can go for big things, especially like little girls like I'm just like, oh my goodness.

You know, it's the sweetest thing ever.

And I just hope that a lot of young, young girls and young people get to see the film.

You know, there's so much rhetoric around the things that are facing us that feel so imminent. There's climate change, there's reproductive rights, there's gun laws, and so often I hear adults talking about how well, hopefully the younger generation will fix this mess. Do you feel inspired by that or do you feel frustrated by that?

I think that's frustrating, because I mean, even though I do it to.

Myself a lot, where I procrastinate issues that are maybe smaller, like homework, and I'll say this is for tomorrow me to handle, I think that it's a whole different ballpark when we're talking about climate change and things like that that are very big, and it's not necessarily fair to push it onto your children. So obviously it'd be great if we could find solutions now to work towards, because things only get worse as they get put off and

I think everyone should watch this movie because it gave me a lot of hope for the future. The fervor and the determination in these women. It really inspired me and moved to me. Emily, you've got aspirations in politics and journalism. You're a college student right now. What's next for you after Girls' State?

Well, currently, I'm a freshman majoring in broadcast, so I'm focusing on that journalism side. I would love, ideally to go into political journalism and then run for maybe Missouri House of Representatives or wherever I end up living.

That'd be the dream.

I don't know if that'll be what happens, just because everything's very unpredictable and so whatever doors open for me, I'll jump down them and see I'll see what's there. So if you guys ever need a third podcast host, let me know.

She's hustling. She's hustling.

I mean, I also want to say, just like, as an aside, Reese Witherspoon was all over this film on some level because Tracy Flick, because Elle Wood's because sort of female centered stories, Like she's someone I evoked in my head. So an inspiration obviously in all all ways. So it's extra special talking to you guys. And I love the work she's doing. You guys are doing, so go team.

I'm so glad that you brought that up, because there were several Legally Blonde mentions in the film. But also as I was watching, I saw the nods to election. I don't know if that was intentional or not, but hanging up the posters in the.

Hallway, Emily hands are up in the air.

Yes, and even the music that you used it it felt like an homage to election in a small way.

I've never seen Election before.

Fun fact, and I love Reese Witherspoon because I love Legally Blonde so much. Definitely one of my favorite movies growing up. Actually, you asked me who my political role model is, it's uh, legally Blonde, Ellwoods.

No.

But a lot of articles have been comparing me to Tracy Flick, and I read like every article that comes out about this movie, because I'm just that person. And so I googled like Tracy Flick Election and it says antagonists, but then it said Rees Witherspoon, and I'm like, if it's somebody played by Reese Witherspoon.

How bad can they actually be?

Like, I'm okay with being compared to an antagonist if it was played by Reese.

Witherspoon, But I do wonder if Election came out today, if people would be viewing Tracy Flick as an antagonist. I don't think she's an antagonist. I just think she's a complex woman. And I also think that we weren't ready to handle an ambition woman like her back then.

So I need to watch Election.

You absolutely do. I want to watch it with you.

But also, like, I love that Tracy Flick and el Woods very very different people, very different complicated female protagonists. And that's sort of the joy of Reese too, is that there's so many different ways to be a strong woman.

Please tell her, I said, Hi, we will.

Emily, Amanda, thank you so much for joining us on the show. We really appreciate your time.

Thanks so much for having us.

Thank you so much meeting you.

If you haven't seen it yet, Girls State is available on Apple TV right now. Amanda McBain is the film's co director, and Emily Worthmore is currently a college student and who knows, maybe future president.

Before we go. We want to leave you with a lesson that we learned today from Emily. Can't let the things that get you down take you down. We can always find a way to pivot from those defeating moments and walk away with a different kind of win. We've actually learned from so many of our interviews that there's no such thing as failure. It's only a pivot.

That's all for today's show.

We'll be back tomorrow, same time, same place.

Listen and follow the bright Side on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode.

And if you're enjoying the show, please please show us some love in the reviews.

I'm Simone Voice.

You can find me at Simone Voice, on Instagram and TikTok.

I'm Danielle Robe and you can find me on Instagram and TikTok at Danielle Robe. That's ro Bay.

We'll be back tomorrow with more culture conversation and inspiration. Keep looking on the bright side.