Have you heard of Anne Innis Dagg? The answer is probably not, and people around the world should know her. Writer/director Alison Reid’s The Woman Who Loves Giraffes shines a spotlight on Dagg, a Canadian who traveled to Africa alone in the 50s to do some of the first studying ever of animals in their own habitat. The researcher and, as the film’s title suggests, lover of all things giraffe-related, has had the tenacity and fearlessness to fight misogyny not only in academia, but the world at large, for her entire life. She wrote or co-wrote books with titles like The 50% Solution: Why Should Women Pay for Men’s Culture and The Feminine Gaze: A Canadian Compendium of Non-Fiction Women Authors and Their Books, 1836-1945, as well as what is considered the bible for giraffe researchers, The Giraffe: It’s Biology, Behavior, and Ecology. That’s right, she uses the term Feminine Gaze in a book about female writers. At the very least, female journalists should find out more about her and her life.
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