Mercury 13

****PLEASE READ BEFORE YOU PASS JUDGMENT**** I've said it many times before, if Netflix does anything right, its the incredibly well made original documentaries and docu-series. As a history buff I enjoyed it, as a man raised by a feminist mother I found it harsh and hateful towards men. With incredible historical footage, well structured stories of the bad ass women's early lives and their work as pilots, questions about sexism of the time and how these women faced it. I definitely enjoyed this documentary, but I watched it with a person that had a problem with it. My mother was a bra-burning feminist of the 60's and 70's, and she told me she found the whole description of NASA as "a good old boys club" to be insulting, because she worked with the NASA branch in our city. She told me she found it offensive because the men didn't do this out of hate, that's just how history was, and there no reason to be angry about it, because as the documentary shows these amazing women and how they changed how women were seen in the workforce.

So putting aside the harsh and semi-hateful attitude towards men, as I said, the film, like other Netflix documentaries, is incredibly well paced and put together, you are taken along on a ride through the history of women pilots both civilian and military, from WW2 WASP's to the women in this documentary. The film calls into question the natural sexist state of the 1940's and 50's and how it was changed through the changing perception of what women were capable of. Not only the story was an interesting one, but all the archival footage was truly incredible to watch. From the female WASP's of World War 2, to the women plane racers of the early 50's, to the Space Race of the Cold War. All of the footage was very well preserved and a true treat for this history fan. All in all it was another great Netflix documentary, though some will find the insults about men in NASA to be insulting, like my feminist mother did. But I liked it, a lot!