It's been three years since Marielle Hellar’s directorial debut graced cinema screens worldwide, bringing with it a heated – and much needed – debate on film content rating. Each avid cinema goer to their own, but as someone who was once a fifteen year old girl, I can attest that I would have benefitted hugely from seeing this movie at that age. Sadly, such bold depictions of the authentic female teenage experience were pretty much non-existent back then; so, either way, I would have always ended up watching Hellar’s masterpiece from a place of hindsight. Now, however, thanks to directors like her, brutally, to-the-bone honest depictions of adolescence largely comprise the Coming of age canon – just look at Bo Burnham’s depressing satire on teenage life in the age of social media dominance.

Heller’s translates Phoebe Gloeckner’s graphic novel for the big screen superbly; through stunning San Francisco shots and vivid animations, she interrogates the male gaze controlling the protagonist –sexually inquisitive 15 year old Minnie – and reveals it for what it is: an arcane, and groundless, means of controlling the female body and emotional state. It wasn’t until I had finished watching it that I realised how, just short of 40 years from when the movie is set, sexism continues to shape how men and, by proxy, women equate sexuality to personal identity. As we follow the protagonist on her sexual odyssey with Monroe - her mother Charlotte’s (Kristen Wiig’s youth-chasing bohemian) handsome, laid back boyfriend (Alexander Skarsgård) and the subplot of her maternal figure seeking meaning through a sexual reawakening with the same man, we are shown just how dangerous and pervasive gender stereotyping can be.

Heller alludes – but never explicitly states – what causes Minnie and her mother’s victim hood at the hands of sexism: the lingering influence of traditional patriarchal values coupled with the media-propagated argument that sexual desirability elicits power and influence for women. Whilst the former has its roots in Christian values, media toxicity began to emerge in the late 50's with the growth of advertising companies, and by the 70's, campaigns were giving out the dangerously false impression of eschewing the patriarchal dominance of political conservatism whilst simultaneously parading women as objects of sexual desire.

Both traditional and modern sexism interlace to inform how Charlotte views herself, her daughter, and the world around them. Having failed to maintain a traditional familial unit for her children after her husband, Freudian-esque bore fest Pascal (Christopher Meloni) walks out, she undeservedly feels redundant; no longer needed - or desired – in the traditional ‘wifely’ sense. The only option she can find to reclaiming her sense of value is to prove her desirability by consolidating her sexual appeal, and so finds a younger lover before the narrative begins in Monroe. Paradoxically, she chooses to assert her liberation from the domestic space by proving how much she is needed by men, because the world she inhabits provides no visible options for female empowerment.

Minnie, however, is different. After having watched a mother who roots her identity in male praise, she seeks fulfilment in the same way, and soon discovers its futility. Upon her reconciliation with her mother at the end, she realises that female empowerment comes ultimately from self-acceptance. She and her mother, she deduces, were always strong, impressive women – but because they were fulfilling their patriarchal duties, they felt useless, and so sought appreciation from men, thus perpetuating the sexist societal cycle.

With Charlotte, Minnie and her younger sister Gretel, three different generations experience the impact of female sexualisation by the media, as well as the enduring influence of religious-rooted sexism. Whilst Minnie’s development centres on her experience with, and later repudiation of, modern sexism, her mother concurrently confronts her internalisation of traditional patriarchy by rebelling against it.