The first time I saw this scene, I was sixteen, a child who thought she was grown. I’m one of those old soul kids, so I’d lived a few lifetimes by 16. Those of you in my boat know exactly what I mean. I, too, was tired. I understood Bernadine in a way that I should not have. I also understood the rage that Angela Bassett brought to that scene. I don’t think I’d ever seen a portrayal of female rage quite like this before. Seeing Bernadine yank those suits off the hangers and stuff them into that car did something to me. It gave my rage somewhere to go. I don’t even think that I understood what alchemy was, but I was watching it in motion. I was captivated by the power that was beginning to grow in my chest.
Yesterday, when this scene came into my feed, I saw something different. Yes, the rage was there, and I still felt it in my bones, but now it felt much bigger than me and Bernadine. Normally, when there’s news about violence against women, I’m the girlfriend who spirals into a cloud of anger and rage. Injustice sort of makes me nuts. Trauma’ll do that to ya when you’re a kid. This time it wasn’t just me. Every woman I have talked to about the Cornell 7 and Lindsay Clancy cases was incensed, enraged even. This time it was all of us.
As you may or may not know (and if you don’t, please look it up because we should all be informed enough to know how half of society views the other half), the Cornell 7 allegedly gang-raped a fellow student. She reported the rape to Cornell University Police, stating explicitly that she had been raped. However, according to the district attorney’s office, Cornell University Police neglected to include that statement in the six-page signed statement they provided. The DA also confirmed that he had not reviewed the full interview transcript from police before deciding not to prosecute the case. Cornell failed her. University police failed her. The DA failed her. Each of the 57 men in the group chat who saw her advertised as free pussy and did nothing to stop it failed her. The friend who invited her to this party and did nothing to protect her failed her. The bile creeps up into my throat every time I think about it.
So, what am I supposed to do with that bile? Do I swallow it? Push it down, bottle it up? Give myself an autoimmune disease? Most days, us ladies come face-to-face, online or in the wild, with men who think we should be killed, raped, or beaten. All those violent tidings for something as simple as having a differing opinion on the Cornell 7 and their alleged culpability, or Lindsay Clancy and hers. And we are well aware of how a lot of men see us: to them, we’re objects, servants, mothers, caretakers, not equals. We live with their reality every day, even though it has nothing to do with how we see ourselves. Do you have any idea how enraging that is? Yeah, me too. So does Bernadine.
When Bernadine begins listing off the compromises she had to make to support her husband, to build his business and their family, I hear the sacrifices we’ve all made as women to keep the peace in our own lives and in society. Each one of those compromises feels like a spear piercing the flesh between our ribs. Each one ratchets up the heat. What have you had to do to get to where you are? What did you silence? What did you put on hold? What did you give of yourself to keep the peace, to make the family happy, to make your parents proud?
In the clip, you can almost see Bernadine’s world cracking open when she begins to list out her life-altering compromises, but then she does the most beautiful thing. She reaches up and grabs the edges of that crack and forces it open to birth something new.
When she gets to the part where she talks about her kids, it breaks me every time. I’ve watched this scene four or five times now while writing this essay, and every single time she bellows, “YOU’RE THE MOTHERFUCKING IMPROPER INFLUENCE,” I lose it. It overwhelms me. And I cannot tell you how many times I have YELLED, “GET YOUR SHIT—GET YOUR SHIT AND GET OUT,” as I was experiencing my own explosion of female rage. But we’re done, right? What now?
Bernadine is done. So am I. So, are we? Are we?
I think we are. And I think you think we are. I know we can all feel it. We are done compromising. We are done minimizing. We are done silencing. I think we give our rage somewhere to go. I think you should come over here. Take my hand and the hand of 16-year-old me, who is still firmly grasping Bernadine’s, and we’ll stand here together.
I’ve collected a bunch of stuff outside: a little misogyny, some of those pedophilic beauty standards, some slut-shaming, unequal pay, and a little rape culture. Now how about we form a circle around all this stuff, but before we get to singing ‘Kumbaya,’ I say we light this bitch on fire and burn it all to the motherfucking ground.
