School has been stoking my passion. I feel small, but I feel so, so deeply about human rights and equality. So I’d been scrolling through the streaming apps for good looking documentaries. And then, in true Rose fashion, I realized that two I had chosen, on two different apps, were by the same director.

Rayka Zehtabchi, an Iranian-American film maker. I remember when her short documentary, Period. End of Sentence., won the Oscar for Best Documentary, short subject.

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Period. End of Sentence., is extrordinarily eye opening at first. About a small village in India, where the mere mention of menstruation is considered taboo. When asked, the villagers don’t even seem to fully understand what a period is. Women grab whatever cloth they can find, run far away to change it, and wait until nightfall to dispose of the soiled clothes. This seems almost unthinkable by American standards, as well as terrifyingly dangerous. And so, a machine is donated to the village, and the women are taught how to mass produce their own pads. Not only do they then embrace what makes them women, they also become stronger, independent women.

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A Woman’s Place follows 3 women in the food industry. All three had gone to culinary school, where a woman’s place was in pastry. The expectation that women have more delicate hands and patience for pastry. It was not what any of these women wanted to do. One woman described the kitchen as being like a pirate ship. Towel snapping, cussing, and everything is a penis. Like being someone of colour, these women had to fight twice as hard to be seen as equal in the kitchen. They break the mold and prove how strong and how astounding and how dedicated women truly are.

Women are not just beautiful ornaments for the pleasure of others. They are not just delicate creatures fit for delicate tasks. They are beautiful, and delicate, and they are smart, and hard working, and strong, as any man.