This summer, I got cultural whiplash.

As a child of the ’90s and early 2000s, I grew up with my mother’s and grandmother’s generations’ fight for legal and workplace equality helping shed social misogyny.

In the past decade in particular, I saw the evidence of progress in my media diet. The movies, shows, books and advertisements I consumed were increasingly giving women a seat at the table. Heroin chic fell away, and body positivity entered the fashion world. Stories about a woman stealing your man were traded for celebration of the “girl’s girl” who resisted the competition for men’s attention.

And when my husband and I got married earlier this year, our vision of what our life could be included wide-ranging possibilities, influenced in part by the movies and shows we grew up with.

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