ABSTRACT
This chapter asks who speaks for the smart girls and maps an inter-generational dialogue between those who do. It explores two lines of female genealogy: the extrinsic, which is handed down through various waves of feminism, and the intrinsic, which is defined by simultaneity in the relationship between Lady Bird and her mother. It contends that Lady Bird pushes away from the majority of films about youth cultures that emphasise hormonal behaviours, physical attractiveness and consumerist desires in order to describe a youth culture that is low-income, female, smart and curious, sarcastic and conscious of irony, and engaged in deliberate means of betterment and escape. And it reveals how the film's subversion of the conventions of the coming-of-age genre gives way to forceful, feminist intent.
