Compelling and somewhat heartbreaking: Girls State, on Apple TV+, reviewed

Here’s a fun thought experiment: instead of entrusting the future of American democracy to one of two old men, what if you put it in the hands of 500 teenage girls? Girls State, the sister documentary to Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss’s award-winning 2020 film Boys State, follows the events of a week-long civic engagement camp where high-schoolers create an all-female democracy from scratch.

A feminist manifesto is much easier to compose than a real solution to culturally ingrained inequality

Girls State and Boys State programmes have given argumentative American teens an education in the necessary evil of politics since the 1930s. Each state has its own variations of the camps, where high-schools nominate students in their penultimate year to apply via a highly competitive, state-wide interview process. The top applicants are invited to spend a week creating their own government: running for office, debating bills, hearing court cases. Attendance, at least at Boys State, bestows the prestige of being part of a group of (in)famous alumni: Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, Chris Christie, to name a few.