What does it mean to be a woman today? Contradictory advice from childhood to adulthood has rendered it almost impossible to know, impossible to understand the landscape across which woman venture.

While the world has seemingly moved on in terms of how women are accepted across workplaces, governments and even the sporting world, the contradictions and tensions still remain. These competing pressures are at the heart of a powerful new film released by the alt-fashion magazine Girls, Girls, Girls. Directed by Paul McLean and produced by the magazine’s founder and editor Claire Rothstein, the video sets out to dismantle what it means to be female navigating through the world in 2020.

‘Be a Lady They Said’ demonstrates the pressures of what it means to be female-identifying in today’s world; of the expectations placed upon you to look, sound, feel and express yourself in a certain way.

Cynthia Nixon stars in the video, delivering a powerful voice over which lists the orders directed to women using the words of a 2017 post published by the blogger Camille Rainvill called Writings of a Furious Woman. It is a litany of paradoxes, with each phrase contradicting that which came before it, from what women should wear to how they should eat, how they should present their bodies and their emotional expression.

The confronting imagery that accompanies the words show the lengths women go to to conform as well as tapping into cultural moments from the last decade. It includes Trump’s facial expressions, nods to Harvey Weinstein and Alexandria Orcasio-Cortez, and the actor Rachel McAdams’ fashion shoot in which she was photographed breast pumping.

It displays a list of rules so lengthy and incomprehensible, it’s no wonder women can seemingly never get it right. The subtle, and often not so subtle, messages of sexism still permeate modern culture. Don’t try hard but try hard enough; the double bind of damned if you do, damned if you don’t. These are the messages which infiltrate the lives and understanding of young girls, shaping them into the women they become. A media ecosystem in which women, inevitably, are always in the wrong.

Nixon closes with the line, “Don’t say yes, don’t say no. Just be a lady they said.” As many strive to create a world of equality, this video is a stark reminder of the distance we still have to travel. It is a raw, powerful and so very true depiction of half of the world’s population’s lived experience, a fierce demonstration of female resilience when it comes to dismantling modern cultural gender norms.