The importance of inter-generational conversation among women
PERSPECTIVE | The catalyst behind ‘A Decade Apart’
There’s something captivating in how conversations among women change as they age.
I’m fortunate to have female friends of all ages. There are the ones who are so similar to me that it feels like we are the same person — a sentient blend of mid-to-late 20s angst, realizing it’s a waning battle between self acceptance and rejection, and that self love is truly the best love.
There are spunky young ones like my little sister, in her second year of college and coming of age in a time that seems much more flat and connected. She deals with more layers of social media pressure than I can imagine.
There are my friends and mentors who are older, who have children who are young and grown. They have the heavy responsibility of keeping human beings alive and dealing with the aftermath of loved ones dying.
In many of my conversations, I find myself wondering if it will always be this way. How much will my perspectives change as I get older, and what will stay the same?
It’s this curiosity that inspired the series, “A Decade Apart.” It’s a set of five films, with five pairs of real women. They’re all, predictably, about ten years apart in age. We invited them to interview one another for a day in New York City, and the conversations were fun, enlightening, and achingly honest. We wanted to see what changed as women aged.
Did they have the same views on sex, or friendship, or their careers? What pressures did they face? Were there things that were steadfast and unchanging?
We found a beautiful and diverse group of women to tell their stories. They ranged from 20 to 61 years old, and despite being complete strangers they were sincere about their largest insecurities and truthful about their lived experiences. Each film deals with a different topic: bodies, work, love, friendship and feminism.
It was important to us, at The Washington Post and The Lily, to make a set of films that showcased a variety of perspectives from very different women, that was also by women.
Reaching women is something we care deeply about. Our YouTube audience is staggeringly male — the YouTube platform skews male as well, and men spend a longer time on the platform than women do.
Very often, the Internet is a hostile place for those who identify as female. In my search for a talented female producer to work with me on this project, which I found in Lucy Wells, I was accused of discrimination by a male producer I had never met or even heard of, in a Facebook group that’s meant to be a place for industry professionals to find the right people to tell our visual stories.
I hope you watch. This series is as much for us who made it as it is for you. I hope you take something away from the series, and maybe realize that things won’t always be this way.
