How I Got Radicalized
‘Funny Girl’ Made Me Rethink What It Means to Be a Leading Lady
I never thought I could be the star. Barbra and Fanny showed me the way.
Welcome to “How I Got Radicalized,” a series from GEN that tells the story of a cultural moment that made you drastically rethink how society works.
There is something both horrifying and awe-inducing about the chorus girl. As a young girl, I was enraptured by this sort of pageantry, from the serene statues of the Ziegfeld Follies to the army of women in Busby Berkeley musicals. I loved the way the chorus girls, like rows of soldiers, swiveled and kicked in unison. I admired their commitment to bold lips, lashes, and pearls. They were glamorous and cool, with long legs and finger-curled hair — and yet somehow they were unbearable to watch, no better than pattern makers, metal casts of the same MGM Studios-manufactured woman.
Back then, musicals were my primary means for interpreting the world, and the women I saw in musicals were prim, controlled, and entirely unoriginal. They were sweet and unassuming, with singing voices that blended together to make just the slightest hum despite belonging to a chorus of hundreds. They seemed like the ideal woman. And for some reason I couldn’t fully grasp, I knew I’d never be anything like them.
It was against this backdrop that I first saw Funny Girl, Barbra Streisand’s 1968 resurrection of the off-kilter, turn-of-the-century comedienne and Ziegfeld Follies star Fanny Brice. As a theater-bewitched high school student, I’d already inhaled a serious number of movie musicals, but Streisand’s interpretation of Brice in Funny Girl captivated me more than anything I’d ever seen.
I spent a good part of my adolescence obsessively studying women in musicals. By soundtrack alone, I could decode their intentions, quirks, and shortcomings. Whether dutiful and coy, or crass and recusant, I eventually saw many of them for what they were: one-dimensional (Laurey from Oklahoma!), objectified (Christine from Phantom of the Opera), or manipulated (Eliza from My Fair Lady).
