[Desire: Julie’s Mother 2]

This is raw footage of a conversation between Julie Gustafson and her mother Margit for the movie Desire.

00:37Copy video clip URL Julie Gustafson and her mother Margit sit in silence, waiting for the crew to prepare the shot. 

01:05Copy video clip URL Julie discusses the relationship of shame and taboo to sexuality in their household, and how that has affected her life and her work. 

06:07Copy video clip URL Julie talks with her mother about why she had sex at such a young age without using protection, and then why she decided to have an abortion. She was, she said, desperate for male attention. 

09:04Copy video clip URL The effects of Julie’s father’s early death and her decision to not carry her pregnancies to term. 

11:22Copy video clip URL Julie discusses the logistics of her abortion at a time when it was legal only in certain states.

13:11Copy video clip URL Margit discusses using her savings to help her roommate get an illegal abortion in the 1940s. They talk about women’s options before abortion was legal. 

15:18Copy video clip URL Julie claims she wasn’t frightened about any physical danger when she got her legal abortion – which she points out was much safer than childbirth.

16:11Copy video clip URL Julie and Margit talk about a relative named Gayle, comparing her own life and decisions to those of Gayle, whose family was much more oriented towards preparing her for motherhood. As a teenager, Julie was conflicted between the desire to go to college and the desire to become a mother and how she felt unprepared to make those choices.

23:26Copy video clip URL Margit discusses their home life and about her attempts to communicate about sex to her daughters. 

27:40Copy video clip URL Julie discusses her attempts to educate her own daughters about sex. 

29:50Copy video clip URL Julie criticizes the media’s objectification of women and its impact on the culture.