Faculty of Art

Experimental Animation

Maggie Cameron

Excited Girls Outside

“Excited Girls Outside” is a 2D mixed-media short film that explores the way in which women and young girls are predisposed to be pitted against one another in service of patriarchal society. The film follows two young women navigating their connection within three separate cycles of life: “Pre-birth”, “Excited Girls Outside”, and “Death”, experiencing different external constraints on their relationship and themselves in each phase of this cycle. “Excited Girls Outside” was developed from my own personal experiences with jealousy between women. A common thread I found in these experiences was an underlying feeling of inadequacy, and an inability to accept the parts of ourselves we deem negative. Society has trained us to believe that we as women are inherently “wrong”. We are constantly questioned and second guessed, forcing us to build an almost impenetrable wall of "right” answers. This leads to an internal battle when it comes time to question our own behavior. It becomes harder to accept the negative parts of ourselves especially in our youth. This has been the case for centuries, breeding the feeling of inadequacy into our bodies, into our DNA. Systems have always taught women that Internalized misogyny keeps us safe. That It allows us to work in the system of society, as society is set up and controlled by men. Internalized misogyny works until it doesn’t, it works until it is your turn, the rules that kept you safe now constrain you. Having the Female anatomy at the forefront of this project was important in communicating this constraint as it applies to each phase of the cycle of life. We are first physically constrained in the womb, whilst being passed down the internal constraints of our mother. In life, we are constrained by societal expectations, and the systems that are set up for us to fail. And in death we are constrained to our mistakes we made during life. Even if you don’t believe in an afterlife, society is prone to remembering women by our faults, thus constraining us even when we are no longer living. This film allowed me to process my own toxic cycles and my own experience with breaking free from them. I want women who watch this film to experience the same, to realize how important and sacred their female friendships really are, even the ones that were negative. How they forced and continue to force us to look inward and reflect on positive and negative aspects of ourselves, allowing us to grow and become internally strong. To look past their ego, and see the greater picture–that the structures and systems that continuously try to keep us docile and submissive are the real culprits to the demise of connection between women.

“Two young women navigate the cycle of life with an unconscious, internal need to compete with one another brought on by patriarchal society.”