If you ask a random person who is stronger between a man and a woman, they are most likely to say, “A man.” Society has locked us up in the thought process that men will always be stronger than women. People always give silly examples like “Oh, we just know that physically and biologically a man will always be stronger than a woman.” Well, the movie “The Woman King” has been able to break that bias.
I know personally I have struggled with the thought that women were less strong than men in all aspects of life. I’m living in a society where that is constantly reiterated to me as a woman, but it never seemed to sit right in my mind. Later I found that I was actually right. We are all strong!
This argument in itself is unsurprising, as the world always finds a way to compare even the littlest thing, and in this case it’s the difference in strength between men and women. I wish this comparison was the only one we had to deal with, but clearly, it is not.
Women are not only seen as less strong, but this belief within society also tends to affect the passion, dreams and career choices of many women. It can genuinely mess with a woman’s mind. For instance, you are more likely to hear a young boy say “I want to be a bodybuilder or athlete in the future,” than a girl. This varies across the world, but there is always a difference, and there can be multiple reasons for this sad truth. One reason can be because the societal norm always tries to categorize male and female roles,making a particular gender stick to a specific type of career, disregarding other genders altogether.
Another reason Society also messes with a woman’s mind is through underrepresentation of certain genders in specific industries or spheres of the economy. People can be motivated to pursue their passions just seeing similar people doing what they love to do. A woman may be more likely to join the track team if she sees more women running different races from all around the world.
Moving back to the movie, “The Woman King” is a film that expresses the beauty of women who fought for the freedom of their people in Africa. These African women were the soldiers that defended the whole community.
In “The Woman King,” to become a soldier, the woman had to do strenuous training to become well-developed and acquainted with fighting and defense skills. The women were from the Kingdom of Dahomey in Africa and were exceptionally powerful. The actors in the movie made it more interesting because of how well they embodied their characters. The movie made it seem like all soldiers should really be women.
I have always been a feminist and thought that women can do anything, but this movie broadened my perspective because it gave me the visual representation of my imagination, as a women’s advocate, that I needed.
The highlight of the movie is the strength of the women and the idea that it was normalized to have women soldiers in the community. No one thought it was weird that women were soldiers, and that is definitely what we need in today’s world. We need to normalize that women are capable of doing many more things than what the societal mindset has limited them to. This includes women in politics, engineering and architecture, law, fitness and athletics, and many more roles the society has said to be a no-go area for women in the past.
The uniqueness and need for the movie “The Woman King” cannot be explained just by the words in one article. The film is way more than what can be expressed in writing, and “The Woman King” is worth seeing by everyone, regardless of any social identity. I myself as a young, strong, African woman have been highly motivated by this film, and I would definitely recommend this as a must-see for anyone.
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