Luckiest Girl Alive

My daughter is an insistent talker. She talks everyday with me, multiple times, about things serious, and things irreverent, and things profane. We both read (and she also has her Tik-Tok feed) and we both try to find and share vocabulary for phenomenon that have bothered me, and bothered her and share with each other. It is empowering to have this little being by your side. In this same spirit, some days ago, she told me about a girl who thought she was date-raped by a University senior she hooked up with. I know you are stuck on the ‘thought-she-was-date-raped.’ You are probably wondering – girl, either you were raped, or you were not raped. There is nothing like ‘I-thought-I-was-raped.’ But going by the details of the girl's encounter, her experience does qualify as rape. And she talked with a mutual friend of my daughter’s and hers. Once the guy she hooked up with (and thought she was raped by) came to know that she had talked with someone, it scared him so much that he started to publicly bad-mouth this mutual friend at every opportunity. How talking to a friend will help the girl, I have no idea for now, but I am glad she is not staying silent. She is trying to figure it out – she is trying to understand her role (actually lack of it) in this situation. Perhaps she will make sense of the things soon. Perhaps it will take this kid a lifetime to do that. Until she does that, she will re-live every second of that encounter every single day – in every single moment. She will not be able to cleanse it off from her skin until she sorts it. She would want to scratch it off from her person, and her mind every single day. She is the one who will be left to sort this mess which is nothing of her making, because he didn’t understand the concept of consent. Many entitled young men, older men, and husbands of all colours and hues and races have no idea there is something called consent that needs to be considered when a sexual-intercourse takes place. Rape is more prevalent than we think it is. Trauma of someone known or unknown having raped them tortures more women than we can imagine. The movie “Luckiest Girl Alive” has been doing rounds on my Netflix suggestions for a few days now. The face of Connie Britton had been staring out at me from the promos. Sorry to say but her face did not cut it for me, and I kept avoiding watching the film. Well, I must add here that these days I had been watching “Derry Girls” in a piecemeal fashion and was enjoying imitating Irish accent while speaking English (especially with my daughter- who does the accent too !). Today, ‘Derry Girls’ ended, and before the loss of a long series ending could hit me hard, I just started watching ‘Luckiest Girl Alive’ – thinking it was just a crime thriller. And as soon as Mila Kunis appeared, I knew it was quality stuff. After finishing watching it, I feel it is a must watch for everyone. I would not give any spoilers here, but the film treats the evil of date-rape and victim-shaming well. Boys-will-be-boys type teenagers who think they will go scot-free are meted out poetic justice, but the real deal is the character of Ani, the character that Kunis plays. This character is painted with so many different shades of good and not-so-good, that the viewer is always kept guessing. Her pursuit of her identity as a successful career woman, and the impediments that hold her back are not just conventionally laid out for you to watch, you are made to pay attention to understand her. Highly recommend everyone, especially all women and girls, to watch it. Edited to add: Every man must watch the film. Sit together and watch it with women of your household - if possible.