i watched Girl Climber last weekend and i haven't stopped thinking about Emily Harrington and Adrian Ballinger — just one of the world's best sport climbers and her alpinist-ski mountaineer-Everest-guide partner — sure, alright. firstly, can you imagine being a world-renowned mountain guide picking up some girl — and she was, at the time, some girl — on Everest Camp 2 only for her to turn out to be the love of your life and also one of the world's very best mountain climbers? what's it like to be so powerful; what does it feel like to co-exist within that much ambition? i imagine it to be like constantly brushing up against fire.
Emily Harrington was 34 years old when she finished her one-day free ascent of El Capitan's Golden Gate route. Golden Gate is not even the easiest route up El Cap; there are several easier ways up the mountain, with "easy" being a relative term. Girl Climber is a gorgeous climbing film, but more than that, it's a story about keeping all of your dreams alive: Emily is on the record saying, i want to be a mom but i need to finish this adventure first. over the course of several years, she encounters several big, scary, could-have-been-career-ending setbacks — and she keeps going.
there's a lot of controversy about the title of the film, but i think it's perfect. being a girl climber is a singular experience, but being a girl anything is universal, and here's the thing: dreaming is girl-coded. do you know what it's like to try to keep ambition alive in a world which is always trying to exhaust women into submission? i've watched women in my life sacrifice their own dreams for motherhood — sometimes to beat the clock, and sometimes simply because they were exhausted by what it took to keep the ambition alive. but motherhood via resignation results in women channeling their suppressed aspirations into their children, tiger-mom style.
Girl Climber tells the story of Emily Harrington facing down the same choice that we all do: is it time to retire this dream to become a mother? the universe gave her several off-ramps but she stayed the path. there are very few women at the top of the mountain, but this is true in every discipline that demands rigor and excellence: there are very few women physicists, engineers, mountaineers, chess grandmasters — they get worn down before they achieve their full potential. do you ever wonder why all these high-achieving women you used to know end up as resentful tradwives in middle age? 45% of women married to the most high-achieving men have graduate degrees; at one point the the tradwife had dreams, too. it would be easy to get pregnant and never pick up my dreams ever again. i think all the time that there are many easier things to be than girl engineer.
you can be just a girl — who also summits mountains; literal or otherwise. the adult woman may be too exhausted to dream, but the girl in you knows how. Girl Climber is a film about climbing mountains, but it is also a story about female ambition and persistence, and we desperately need more stories like that. i want my daughter to know what ambition looks like; feels like. i need these stories to exist for her. girl climber, girl engineer, girl whatever — girl forever.
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