SeriesWomen we love on film who inspire and motivate the rest of us.

Many of us are all about those times when we get to rise above the cacophony of everyday life, even if it’s just for the time it takes to watch a Youtube clip. Be they feminist or girlie or green, these are the moments when you realize that life is really this complex, wonderful thing. We’re riding its wave, occasionally bumped into our own realities by some spectacular moments of clarity.

Joyce Carol Oates once wrote, “It is only through disruption and confusion that we grow, jarred out of ourselves by the collision of someone’s private world with our own.” For many of us, our motivation comes from many places – including film. After all, what more than film gives us the illusion that we’re “colliding” with someone else’s private hopes, dreams, dramas and triumphs?

This is just the kind of thing you might need in the morning with your coffee and multi-grain toast points. And so, we’ve decided to offer up a series of cinematic heroines for your viewing pleasure. These are the characters who have had us out of our seats through the years. Whether we’re cheering, weeping, applauding, or laughing alongside them, we’re always routing for them to succeed.

So who better to kick off our series than our first feminist heroine, Norma Rae? The Academy Award-winning 1979 film of the same name stars Sally Field, fearless textile worker and young mother. Norma Rae Webster is a minimum wage cotton worker who agrees to help unionize her mill despite threats and intimidation. Already angry by the terrible conditions of her work place, she meets New York union organizer Reuben Warshowsky (Ron Leibman). Despite pressure at home from her husband Sonny (Beau Bridges) that she’s neglecting her young children, Norma Rae preserves.

“Norma Rae” is based on the true story of Crystal Lee Sutton, who in 1973 took a real-life stand on a table to protest the deplorable conditions of a textile factory in North Carolina. As The New York Times reports, “Ms. Sutton (then Crystal Lee Jordan) was a 33-year-old mother of three earning $2.65 an hour folding towels at the J. P. Stevens plant in Roanoke Rapids, N.C., when she took her stand.”

Low pay and deplorable working conditions motivated Sutton, who was fired after months of efforts to improve conditions. Because of her stand, the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union won the right to represent her former co-workers. Sutton eventually became a union organizer herself.

Life imitating art or art imitating life?

Regardless, after seeing Norma Rae, women everywhere started walking into work a little taller.

Image: The Best Picture Project

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