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Emily Tsiao

Movie Review

“What do 16-year-olds care about?” high school junior Vivian asks her mom, Lisa, while filling out a college application.

“Smashing the patriarchy and burning it all down,” she replies jokingly.

Except when Lisa was a teenager, that’s exactly what she and her friends were about. They listened to angry, rebellious girl bands, refused to shower when someone said a member of their group smelled bad and protested everything.

At first, Vivian doesn’t quite understand. If a guy is being a jerk, then why can’t you just ignore him?

But after the boys at her school distribute an incredibly offensive list ranking girls in their class based on things such as female anatomy and alleged promiscuity (not to mention calling one girl the c-word), Vivian is inflamed.

Donning her mom’s old leather jacket covered in feminist patches, she starts a magazine (a zine, if you will) called Moxie, aimed at calling out the sexist practices at her school, the boys who benefit from them and the teachers and administrators who refuse to change them.

But Moxie isn’t just a one-girl revolution: It’s an inclusive movement giving voice to every girl who’s ever been “shoved aside, dismissed, ranked or assaulted.” And if there’s one message they want to get across, it’s this: “The girls of Moxie are over it.”

Positive Elements

As alluded to in the introduction, this film focuses on feminism. And while there are certainly some negative aspects to Vivian’s protest (which I will discuss further in the Negative Elements section of this review), we also find some positive ones.

Vivian and her friends are vehemently (and rightfully) against the idea of being “ranked” by their male classmates. So, Moxie asks all the girls (and guys) who are against the list to draw stars and hearts on their hands as a show of unity.

This seemingly small act allows many girls to realize that they aren’t alone. It encourages them to support one another. And several of them soon start a school support group so they can discuss which school rules and practices are beneficial to all students and which ones specifically benefit one gender over the other. It also gives many of them a platform to discuss how they have been negatively affected by the inappropriate behavior of their male classmates, along with the school administration’s failure to address it.

Later on, Moxie shows support for a student who was sexually assaulted, with the zine asking students to walk out and protest on the school’s front lawn. And while it’s probably never a good idea to leave class in the middle of the day—especially when expulsion is on the line—this small stand supporting an anonymous victim gives her the courage to come forth about her attack and name the person responsible.

However, while Vivian ultimately learns a lot about feminism and standing up for what you believe in, it isn’t entirely smooth sailing.

Despite being inspired by her mom, Vivian goes a little overboard at times, yelling in anger not only at her mom but her best friend (Claudia), her boyfriend (Seth) and her mom’s boyfriend as well. However, she eventually realizes that just because people don’t always support her in the way she feels they should, that doesn’t mean they don’t care. They’re still human beings, and they still deserve to be treated with respect and understanding. She also apologizes to everyone she hurt along the way.

A boy offers to distribute the Moxie zines to other guys at their school since they “need all the help they can get.” However, he also respects the fact that Moxie is meant more to help the female students than the male ones. When Vivian faces expulsion for creating Moxie, her friends back her up, essentially stating that if she gets expelled, then they should all get expelled since it was a group effort.

We hear about a girl who would release spiders into the wild instead of smashing them when she found them. Several female students learn to speak confidently about their hair and body types, shutting down prejudices about certain races in the process.

Spiritual Elements

A girl says she has to clean rugs to “atone for her sins.” Someone else talks about signs from the “universe.”

Sexual Content

The catalyst for Moxie is a list that primarily focuses on ranking the bodies of teen girls. In addition to the crude comments we hear from the boys who created this list—not to mention the sexual terms they use to describe these girls—we also see them leering at girls in the hallways and touching them inappropriately and unwantedly (one girl is smacked on her backside, another is grinded on by a shirtless guy, and still another is forced to sit in a boy’s lap when he takes her seat). At one point, a girl zips her hoodie up to cover herself when the boys around her make her uncomfortable.

When a girl is sent home for wearing a tank top, she tries to point out that another girl is wearing the same type of shirt and a boy is repeatedly removing his shirt at school to show off his muscles. But she’s the only student who gets into trouble. Later, Moxie protests this school decision by asking every girl to wear a tank top to school (with some girls showing off cleavage and midriffs), and we hear further discussion about the double standards of their school’s dress code (which allows boys to wear tank tops) and the administration’s failure to punish boys for sexually harassing their female classmates.

Vivian and Seth make out in his car (he is shirtless, and she’s wearing a tank top) and talk about having sex. They decide to wait so it can be “special,” but Vivian’s friends tease her about “hooking up” with him. A boy puts his hand on his girlfriend’s chest and kisses her on her neck, face and shoulders. We see teen couples making out at a party.

Two girls kiss each other twice. A trans girl called CJ complains that people won’t use her new name and pronouns. CJ also protests not being allowed to audition for the role of a female character in a play. Song lyrics talk about a lesbian. There are jokes about sex, virginity, teen pregnancy and extramarital affairs. We hear multiple sexual innuendos.

Violent Content

A girl talks about how she was raped by her then-boyfriend. After learning this, Vivian paints “Rapeport” on her school’s front staircase. A boy gets angry and punches a vending machine after a girl stops him from touching her shoulder. In other scenes, he attempts to physically intimidate her by getting in her face and looking down at her while using his body to push her back.

After a boy is purposely tripped, he is accidentally trampled by the football team and breaks his wrist. A girl smashes a glass trophy. Several guys fall and crash into things while trying to do stunts at a party. The principal says she has to fill out paperwork if there is a weapons threat on campus.

Crude or Profane Language

We hear the f-word once and the s-word 10 times. (We also see the s-word in text form, along with “a–hole” and “b–ch.”) We hear 10 uses of “a–” and “a–hole,” three uses of “h—,” two uses of “b–ch” and one use each of “d–n,” “d–k,” “ball-buster” and “ho.” And although we never actually hear the word, we learn that a girl is called the c-word by her male classmates. God’s name is abused 15 times (including once in text form), and Jesus’ name is also abused twice.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Dozens of teens get drunk at a party (with one kid shouting, “Beer is my best friend!”). A girl brings champagne to a football game, getting drunk and eventually vomiting. Adults drink wine with their meals. A nurse talks about handling DUIs. The school principal briefly mentions drug use.

Other Negative Elements

So, let’s take a moment to discuss Moxie’s take on feminism. As stated in the Positive Elements section of this review, Vivian uses her platform to make some very good points about the sexism happening at her school. Unfortunately, she and some of the other young girls and women don’t always hit it right on the mark.

Moxie asks students to break school rules and risk expulsion. Vivian steals from the principal and defaces school property. Several female students put stickers that say “a–hole” on the principal’s car. They also film a male teacher’s awkward response when he tries to address the school’s dress code. When someone tries to point out to Vivian that her ideas may not be entirely healthy, she ignores them because of her anger. And when a boy attempts to be more inclusive towards his female classmates, they shut him down for not doing it “correctly.”

Lisa berates a man at a store after he kindly reminds her how to bag her groceries (and while it could be argued that his insinuation was condescending, he was really just doing his job). She also makes Seth feel uncomfortable when he asks why she kept her maiden name.

However, despite the many mistakes that the Moxie girls make, their school arguably makes even more. Several male students, particularly athletes, are given preferential treatment. The girls’ soccer team especially takes offense to this since they are state champions but haven’t gotten new uniforms in years, while the boys’ football team gets new uniforms each season despite never winning games.

Even when the principal and teachers see boys acting poorly toward female students, they choose to look the other way and ask the girls to simply “ignore” the boys. And Principal Shelly invalidates the concerns brought to her by female students, insisting they’re just being “emotional.”

In one case, a boy spits in a girl’s drink after she refuses his advances. And later, when someone puts his name on a “dirtbag” list, he blames her and gets physically aggressive with her. When she brings this up to Shelly, the principal asks her to use the word “bothering” instead of “harassing” since she doesn’t want to punish a student who’s in line to win a scholarship. Of course, this has even worse consequences when the boy in question then uses the principal’s non-action to claim that Moxie is targeting and bullying him.

A girl using a wheelchair is frustrated that she has to repeatedly remind her classmates to put her somewhere where she can be seen and to stay off the wheelchair ramps around school.

A girl has a frightening dream in which she is being chased and can’t scream for help. Two well-meaning signs saying, “You matter” and “Don’t give up,” are placed in such a way that it appears they say, “You don’t matter” and “Give up.”

A nurse talks about urinary-tract infections. A teacher hands out pom-poms with the disclaimer that they are “choking hazards.” A girl vomits. We hear about a student vomiting during a presentation. We also hear about a boy who wet himself on a school field trip when he was younger. We hear a joke about postpartum depression. A girl cries that her dad won’t spend Christmas with her. Teens attend a luau-themed party and one girl wonders if it is culturally sensitive. Two teens break into a funeral home and make some dark jokes about death. A girl says her mom would rather she died of bacterial meningitis than get suspended. Some students of color talk about how Black women are judged by their hair and wonder why their English class only reads books by white male authors.

Conclusion

I want to start off by saying that Moxie is exactly the sort of movie that could inspire women—especially teen girls—to stand up for themselves when they’re being harassed and speak out against double standards.

And admittedly, the film shows some beautiful portrayals of women supporting women, unity against misogynistic practices and believing girls who are being harassed or even assaulted.

Unfortunately, much like how Moxie the zine makes many mistakes in its protests, so does Moxie the film.

This movie seems specifically designed to make women angry. And rightfully so. The girls fight against sexual harassment, unfair school rules and educators who refuse to hear what they’re saying. It shows us the difference between a guy who’s just “annoying” versus one who’s dangerous.

However, the film makes it seem like Moxie’s mistakes were small and inconsequential since they served a greater purpose. In reality, staging school walkouts and telling girls to protest a dress code by breaking it would more likely result in mass detentions than a principal just choosing to ignore it.

Now, ordinarily I would say that if parents simply sat down with their teens while watching this film and had a discussion about what to protest and (perhaps more importantly) how to protest, then the film’s purpose could still be served. Unfortunately, there’s some other content concerns that negate that sentiment.

Characters swear throughout the film (up to and including a single usage of the f-word). Things between a teenage couple literally get steamy in the backseat of a car (though they refrain from actually having sex since they want their first times to be “special”). We see romantic interactions between a same-sex couple and hear about the struggles of a transgender girl (portrayed by a transgender actor). And we also see some aggressive behaviors from boys on screen that almost certainly wouldn’t be allowed even in the most permissible of schools.

Vivian reads in Lisa’s old journal that “girls constitute a revolutionary soul force than can and will change the world for real.” And while that could certainly be true, Moxie doesn’t show us an honest portrayal of how that could happen.

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Emily Tsiao

Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.