In 2020, documentary-makers Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine put Gen Z politics in the spotlight with their acclaimed film Boys State. Focused on a nationwide US political initiative started in the 1930s, which immerses highschoolers in democratic processes, Boys State followed 1000 teenage boys who gather at a week-long summer camp in Texas to form a mock government. The feature won the prestigious Sundance Grand Jury Documentary Prize.
Four years later, with the US on the precipice of an election, Moss and McBaine have returned with a timely follow-up, Girls State. Set in the Midwestern state of Missouri, Girls State examines an equivalent scenario at a girls' camp.
Missouri Girls State moved to Lindenwood University in St Charles, Missouri in 2022 (Credit: Apple)
In Girls State, 500 teenage girls vie for positions including Governor and seats on the Supreme Court. As they begin to set out their political beliefs and ambitions, the participants grapple with the responsibilities and moral questions that come with wielding political power – as well as coming face-to-face with the limits of political power and the ingrained social structures that dictate those powers.
Though Moss and McBaine had covered similar territory with their original film, they say the rampant "hyperpolarisation" in the US drove them to make a female-focused follow-up.
"I think in 2018, we were looking for ways to help us understand the polarisation of the country… understand why our country had gotten to the place it was in," McBaine tells BBC Culture. "We were all pretty traumatised by the extreme political situation that we were in – left, right, whatever."
"Now and then, I think we're all asking ourselves, what is our political future?" adds Moss.
The film shows the first time that boys' and girls' programmes take place on the same campus in the 80-year history of the mock governments (Credit: Apple)
While Boys State was filmed in The Lone Star State, Moss and McBaine chose Missouri for Girls State, because, having a votership that is spread across the political spectrum, it contains so many of the "contradictions" that permeate the current US political landscape. There was also a practical reason: for the first time ever, both the state's boys' and girls' camps were occurring on the same campus.
"Missouri is [sometimes] derisively [called] a flyover state [a derogatory name for states in the US people pass by but would never visit], but it actually embodies the same [contrasts as Texas]," says Moss. "It has [Republican Senator] Josh Hawley, and it's got Cori Bush, a member of the Squad [a group of progressive Democrats] from St Louis. And it's got everything in between. It's got rural, suburban, it's got these big cities.
"Girls who come from these towns of 300, they've never met a young black woman before."
In the film, argues McBaine, "you see the awkwardness of that encounter, but you also see the promise of that encounter".
Filming took place just as a leak suggested that the Supreme Court was going to overturn its 1973 Roe v Wade decision (Credit: Apple)
Making Girls State even more timely, weeks after Moss and McBaine began shooting the film in 2022, a leaked US Supreme Court document suggested that the constitutional right to an abortion was about to be overruled. As the Girls State Supreme Court was hearing an abortion case, while participants mulled the implications of the leak, those very rights were being questioned in the real world, in real-time. Giving the film even more relevance, days after filming wrapped, the Supreme Court officially overturned its 1973 Roe v Wade decision. According to Moss, this generation-defining issue weighed heavily during filming.
"I feel like that was everything everywhere, all at once," he says, referring to the chaotic atmosphere for camp participants following the leak. "We've never had a Supreme Court opinion leak, in my lifetime at least… [it felt like] a sword hanging over their heads."
These young women want to confront it because it involves their bodies too – they feel like this is a conversation that's been owned largely by men – Jesse Moss
In the documentary, one of the biggest topics is abortion, an issue that remains divisive for many Americans. According to 2022 data from the nonpartisan Pew Research Centre, 61% of Americans think abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 37% think it should be illegal in all or most cases. "This particular issue, which we know has enormous electoral consequence at the federal and state levels… these young women want to confront it because it [involves] their bodies too," says Moss. "They feel like this is a conversation that's been owned largely by men."
One aspect Moss and McBaine did not anticipate was the nuanced nature of views on political subjects – which were often surprising. That diversity of opinions was reflected in participants such as Emily Worthmore, a conservative and daughter of a pastor, whom, while staunchly against abortion, believes in allowing other women to make their own choices on the matter. "You have places like Kansas and Ohio where the abortion conversation isn't as cut and dry. So, Emily represented to me a little bit of that vote," says Moss.
The daughter of a pastor, Worthmore is one of several to run for governor, the programme's highest position (Credit: Apple)
Yet one of the most refreshing elements was that those who disagreed showed compassion and respect. In one key moment, Worthmore and Cecilia Bartin, a liberal activist, have a lively yet civil debate on gun ownership. "There was a huge willingness to listen, that gave me a lot of optimism," says McBaine.
"Teenagers are elastic too. And one of the questions we would ask kids when we were auditioning them was, 'what have you changed your mind about? Are you capable of changing your mind? If so, how did you do that?'," says Moss.
A seat at the table
Another major issue Girls State tackles is the lack of female representation in the US government, a problem several participants criticised, and which is illustrated at the start of the film. Photos of the US Congress from 100 years ago, with a single woman surrounded by males, are juxtaposed with eerily similar pictures from subsequent decades, through to 2020, where Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Donald Trump are seen in the Cabinet Room, amidst a sea of men.
According to the Pew Research Centre, in 2023 women made up 29.9% of US state Senate seats, and 33.7% of state House or Assembly seats, placing the US 71st in the world for female representation in national parliaments for February 2024. It's a problem not lost on Girls State participants. Though topics like abortion, gun violence and climate change are discussed, the documentary includes complaints from the girls that in the early parts of the programme, there is more emphasis on the girls supporting each other, rather than discussing issues and allowing serious and substantive political debates – which is not the case for the boys. The girls "want to have their voices heard", says McBaine.
Yet an even more systemic issue arises in the film, one that even comes to permeate the very event they are attending. The documentary shows how Worthmore uncovers a $400,000 funding discrepancy between the girls' and boys' state programmes. The girls' programme – with around 500 delegates – is given $200,000, while the boys' programme of just over 800 delegates receives $600,000.
In the doc, Bartin – a proto-liberal activist – debates gun control with Worthmore, and gives an impassioned speech (Credit: Apple)
And other disparities are revealed in the film – the girls are given a dress code yet the boys are not, a difference reflected in a speech by Bartin in which she indignantly declares that "our bodies are policed". The girls, not the boys, are given a "buddy system" where they cannot go anywhere alone – intended for their safety, but in the film several girls openly question this, vent frustration and complain that it is a double standard. And the Boys State governor is sworn in by Missouri Governor Mike Parson, which doesn't happen at Girls State.
Husband-and-wife team Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine have twice been shortlisted for the Academy Award for feature documentary (Credit: Apple)
These differences were one of the most eye-opening aspects for Moss and McBaine. "The boys are simply treated differently. They are given different opportunities," says Moss. "Why should that be okay?"
Worthmore wrote a piece published on the Missouri Girls State website, in which the Missouri Girls State director Macae Mickens pointed out that the girls' and boys' programmes are funded separately because of the different ways in which they're structured. Brad Lear, director of Missouri Boys State, told Worthmore: "The American Legion and the American Legion Auxiliary are two separate veterans organisations… they are independent organisations."
Missouri Boys State delegates also told Worthmore about inequalities from their perspective – including a Girls State trip to the Missouri State Capitol that the boys were not offered. According to Vox Magazine, "While there is still a funding gap and other issues occurring within the programme, the girls now share classes and content with the boys and receive free time for sports."
Moss and McBaine hope Girls State will encourage both more female representation in US politics, and more political engagement from Gen Z. "We have to imagine a healthier politics before we can get there," says Moss. "And I think that the film hopefully offers a corrective to the steady diet of toxicity that we all ingest as a result of some of the dark forces in our current politics. I think these girls are not naive. They're not sentimental. They're very grounded and very realistic about the obstacles they face."
Girls State is streaming on Apple TV+.
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