I absolutely cannot contain my excitement. The notorious RBG is releasing a movie. RBG, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is an icon among women and a champion of women’s rights. The documentary, titled after her pop culture nickname, “RBG,” is set to release later this spring.
If you don’t know who this phenomenal woman is, here is a crash course on the legend. You may be thinking, “this seems a bit dramatic,” and perhaps you’re right. But let me explain what Ruth Bader Ginsburg has meant to me.
Ginsburg was born in 1933 in Brooklyn. She graduated from law school when women were less than warmly welcomed into the legal profession. I type this article as I sit in my own law school, and I say without a doubt that it is because of Ginsburg and women like her that I am here. A few times in my legal career thus far my place has been questioned because of my gender, but I cannot imagine enduring the insurmountable stress that is the law school environment while being surrounded by people, men, who do not think you belong or have any right to be where you are.
After achieving her law degree, RBG quickly became a voice for women. In the trailer for the documentary she describes herself as a “kindergarten teacher” trying to educate men who did not believe that gender disparity existed at all.
Ginsburg graduated first in her class from Columbia law school. She was a law student, she was a wife, and she was a mother. She speaks in the trailer about her husband as, “the first boy I ever knew that cared that I had a brain.” After over 56 years of marriage, he passed away in 2010.
In 1980, she was appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States and was only the second women to achieve the status. Her dissenting opinions is what garnered her the attraction of pop culture. Now at age 84, she says she has no plans to resign any time soon.
One thing I think most important to note about RBG in today’s world is her strong friendship with Justice Scalia before he passed. Scalia and Ginsburg were about as polar opposites in beliefs and ideals as you can get, and yet Ginsburg spoke so fondly of him and their friendship. It is vital that we all find a way back to a place where you can vehemently disagree with someone, and yet call them a friend.
RBG is more to me than a sassy strong-willed woman on the highest court in the country. She is a pioneer, and a reminder to me and all women in the legal field everywhere that there is nothing that can stop us. And with that, I will leave you with a few of my favorite RBG quotes:
“I am fearful, or suspicious, of generalizations... They cannot guide me reliably in making decisions about particular individuals.”
“Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one's ability to persuade.”
“You can't have it all, all at once. Who—man or woman—has it all, all at once? Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all. But in different periods of time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.”
“It is not women's liberation, it is women's and men's liberation.”
“I try to teach through my opinions, through my speeches, how wrong it is to judge people on the basis of what they look like, color of their skin, whether they're men or women.”
