RBG vs. Seeing Allred

Images found here and here.

I saw the movies RBG and Seeing Allred during the Edlavitch DCJCC Washington Jewish Film Festival this year. While I will write a blog post covering the other films I've seen during the festival (stay tuned!), I wanted to call out these two documentaries specifically.

The obvious similarity between Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Gloria Allred is the fact that they are both female lawyers who have spent decades fighting for equal rights, specifically for women but also for minorities, homosexuals, etc. Today, Ginsburg is a Supreme Court Justice, and Allred is a women's rights attorney. Gloria Steinem, not surprisingly, makes an appearance in both films. She played a huge role in the feminist movement and was a social political activist around the same time these other two women were targeting their law work to protect women and their rights; she clearly supports the work they are both doing to combat gender discrimination (and discrimination and inequality on the whole).

The documentaries themselves are quite similar, telling the life stories of these women from the time they were born to where they are today (although I think the chronology of RBG is a bit easier to follow). And they are clearly "girl power" movies, emphasizing the incredible work that both of them have achieved to help promote women's rights (and show that they continue to do so).

But, even though these women have focused their law work on similar issues and have amazing stories to tell about the achievements in their careers and otherwise, I have very different views about each of them. Here's why:

Education and Family Life

Now of course some of what I say about this may come off as unfair, since you never really know how your relationships with other people will go. But you do have a say in whom you bring into your life and the decisions you make about having and raising a family.

This was when Ginsburg was taking care of both her daughter and her husband. Image found here.

Ginsburg attended Cornell University when less than 25% of the student body was women. She met her husband, Martin "Marty" Ginsburg when she was 17, but they did not marry nor have children until after they both had graduated. She attended Harvard Law School (one of only nine women in their class) and then transferred to Columbia Law School when her husband moved to New York, and she was first woman on both the Harvard and Columbia Law Reviews. And during all that time while she was in law school, she was taking care of her daughter AND her husband when he was diagnosed with cancer (she even organized his friends to take notes for him since he was missing classes). Despite his illness, they did have a son later on, and Ginsburg was married to Marty for more than 50 years until he passed away in 2010.

Allred's story, on the other hand, is not quite as positive. For one thing, Allred was married and had her first child before she had graduated from the University of Pennsylvania; my guess is that her personal life impacted her schoolwork, as the film does not brag about any scholarly achievements that way RBG does about Ginsburg (who was Phi Beta Kappa at Cornell, btw). Allred's first husband, Peyton Bray, was diagnosed with bipolar disorder early on in their marriage. And while I can understand the fear of living with someone whose lows include throwing pans around the kitchen, nowhere in the film does she say that she tried to make it work or that she wanted to stay with him. She simply saw that she could not help him, and therefore left him. And her second marriage was unsuccessful as well: while William Allred did pay for her tuition to attend Loyola Marymount University, he was convicted of fraud in the late 1980's for selling (or at least trying to) fake aircraft part to the government at Kelly Air Force Base. She later divorced him, winning more than $4 million in the divorce settlement.*

There is another, very personal story that Allred shares in the film. When she was about 25, she and a girlfriend traveled to Mexico, where she met a doctor and agreed to go on a date with him. The date seemed strange, because he took her to the hospital to "check on his patients," and then told her he had to take her somewhere else after that to check on more patients who were no longer in the hospital. He ended up taking her to some random building and raped her at gunpoint. Later she learned she was pregnant, and she had an abortion; since abortions were illegal then, she had a "back-alley" procedure that nearly killed her because of the hemorrhaging and infection that occurred.

I realize many people will call this victim blaming, and of course I don't think Allred was "asking for it." BUT the idea of two single women traveling to Mexico on their own just sounds dangerous on its own. This is why I have postponed pretty much any international travel until I am married; at least I will have a personal "body guard" with me! And then the fact that she went on what was essentially a blind date in a foreign country is another poor decision from the offset. Then agreeing to go to the hospital with him? Of course hindsight is 20/20, but if any man tried to take me to a hospital on our "date," I would have DTMFA. Again, I'm not saying she deserved this horrible thing that happened to her, but I also think it could have been easily prevented if she had had better judgement.

*I tried to find a family photo for Allred. When you Google "Ruth Bader Gindsburg family," you'll find pictures of her with her children and grandchildren, just with her husband, and with her Supreme Court family. On the other hand, when you Google "Gloria Allred family," you'll see a few pictures of her with her daughter, Lisa Bloom, many photos of Allred with her clients, and LOTS of photos of her by herself. Read more below; maybe that'll explain something.

Personality

This is a young Allred (with a vulcan haircut) when she was speaking from the audience on a TV show. Image found here.

It is clear that these two women, while passionate about the same things, handle themselves very differently. From the get-go, we can see that Allred cares A LOT about money: in the first few minutes of the film, we see her extensive closet of pink suits, her seaside mansion on the coast of California (right on the beach), and her black sports car. Later we get a shot of her huge diamond ring and watch as she gets her hair and make-up done. And while the film continuously tries to deny that she doesn't love the spotlight, you can tell she eats it up. From her many TV interviews to the numerous press conferences she hosts, she clearly loves being famous. She's loud, out-spoken, and tends to thrive off of conflict; she seems to be one of those people with the mindset that "all press is good press." As long as people are talking about her (and a lot of it is negative), she doesn't mind because she's still getting attention (and a lot of money, no matter how much the film tries to play up her pro bono work).

This is the collar she wears when she is announcing the opinion of the court. Image found here.

Ginsburg is the exact opposite. She is a woman of few words, and in the film there are times that it almost seems like conducting the interviews is like pulling teeth just to get a response. She clearly thinks reflectively before she speaks, and because she doesn't say much, her words are that much more powerful. She even specifically says in the film, "The way to win an argument is not to yell." (Clearly Allred would not take that advice.) Throughout the film, Ginsburg seems very humble and the opposite of flashy; she does show off the multiple collars she wears when she is in court, and even then she made many of them and the others were gifts. She doesn't seem to be the kind of person to buy frivolous things or show off that the fact that she's famous. If anything, she seems surprised by the impact she has made on younger generations, seeming in disbelief about the whole "Notorious RBG" situation or the fact that people are buying merchandise with her face or name on it (even getting RBG tattoos!). I think she sees herself as just a woman who is doing her job and trying to do the right thing, and doesn't expect much in return other than respect.

Conclusion

After watching both films, I can definitively say that Ginsburg is very likable and a woman I feel proud to admire. While she is not a self-proclaimed feminist (at least she doesn't call herself that in the film), she clearly is one, and in the best way. The decisions she has made throughout her life and the way she conducts herself to this day have brought her to the highest court in America. She has a truly amazing life story, all the while living a seemingly very happy life.

Conversely, I didn't find Allred likable at all. I found her to be conceited and combative, a self-centered woman who, while doing good work to help other women, is making sure she gets a piece of the pie, too. And even when the film tried to make you relate to or feel for Allred, I was not sympathetic at all. While I believe a lot of the work she has done has helped move women closer to equality, I would not say I idolize her in any sense of the word. She is the kind of feminist who gives feminists a bad name; she's one of the people who makes "feminist" a bad word.