Rachel McLish deltar i ny dokumentär

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Rachel McLish och Ulf Bengtsson på omslaget till B&K Sports Magazine 4/1982.

På MAKERS.com möter man hundratals banbrytande kvinnor – både kända (Oprah Winfrey, Hillary Clinton) som för allmänheten okända – och får höra deras berättelser från det senaste halvseklets Amerika. En av deltagarna är Rachel McLish, 57, som dominerade dambyggningen i början av åttiotalet (hon vann bland annat den första Ms Olympia-tävlingen 1980).

Från webbplatsens egen beskrivning:

Welcome to MAKERS, a living library featuring hundreds of original and compelling stories from exceptional women whose pioneering contributions to society continue to have a profound impact on the world in which we live. Explore the stories from these trailblazing women and inspire your own through MAKERS.com.

Den lokala tidningen intervjuade Rachel:

From her Harlingen gym, Rachel McLish helped launch a fitness revolution that transformed women’s health 30 years ago.
Now a new Public Broadcasting Service project features McLish, the first Ms. Olympia, among a roster of women who have helped change America.

”It’s an incredible privilege,” McLish said from her home in Rancho Mirage, Calif. ”To be regarded as a groundbreaker is quite an honor.”

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Over the last half-century, America has seen one of the most sweeping social revolutions in its history, as women have asserted their rights to a full and fair share of political power, economic opportunity, and personal autonomy. It’s a revolution that has unfolded in public and private, on grand stages like the Supreme Court and Congress, and in humbler ones like the boardroom and the bedroom. No individual and no aspect of American life has been unchanged.

MAKERS: Women Who Make America will tell this remarkable story for the first time in a comprehensive and innovative three-hour documentary for PBS, to air in early 2013. Built on the extraordinary archive of stories already completed for MAKERS.com, the film will feature the stories of those who led the fight, those who opposed it, and the unintentional trailblazers — famous and unknown – who carried change to every corner of society.

Taking its cue from the motto of the movement – ”the personal is political” – MAKERS will delve deeply into the personal lives of its subjects. The film will not be a top-down narrative of events over people. It will be built, bottom-up, from the first-person, intimate accounts of women who were there, including movement leaders like Gloria Steinem and Naomi Wolf; opponents like Phyllis Schlafly and Beverly LaHaye; famous faces like Oprah Winfrey, Katie Couric and Hillary Clinton; and the many ”ordinary” women confronted with what equality meant in their own lives.

Through the perspectives of those who lived through it, MAKERS will recount the seminal events of the organized women’s movement from the publication of The Feminine Mystique in 1963 to the Anita Hill vs. Clarence Thomas hearings in 1991. But it will also go much further, telling the surprising and unknown stories of women who broke down barriers in their own chosen fields, from the coal mines of West Virginia to the boardrooms of Madison Avenue. And it will take the story to today, when a new generation is both defending and confronting the reality of their mother’s legacy.

Throughout, the film will capture with great period music, humor, and playful graphics the dizzying joy, aching frustration and ultimate triumph of a movement that turned America upside-down.