“Step Sisters” is a movie directed by Charles Stone III, it is a movie about a university student called Jamilah, who is forced made to help out a sorority of white party girls win a step dancing competition. This movie is a comedy aimed at teenagers, mostly because it is easy to relate to for people that are around the same age as the people in the movie, as they could have been in similar situations. It is a witty movie about a white sorority trying to learn a dance, which is originally an African foot dance. It does have multiple messages behind it including friendship, leadership, overcoming challenges and many more.

Jamilah is asked to go against her own sorority and teach the “white girls” how to step. For Jamilah this is a challenge as she is the leader of a black sorority who happen to be the step champions. She has to make a choice, on what is best for her. If she doesn’t help them then she won’t be able to go to her dream school, Harvard. Jamilah has to make sure she has her priorities set straight through this tough choice because it’s either keeping her friends and the bond they have, or sacrifice that for her future. Jamilah would be silly to let her future go down the drain just because her friends think that white girls shouldn’t be able to step dance. She is in stage of life that many people go through. As a teenager you are put in so many difficult positions and have to overcome them in a positive way to maintain your brightest possible future. I personally have been put in a position similar to Jamilah when I had to make a difficult decision with my future in mind. This being when my options clashed at the start of the year so I had to change what I wanted to do, while keeping in mind what I wanted to do with my future. If I chose the wrong subject then it may have meant I wouldn’t achieve the prerequisites needed for the courses I want to do later in life.

In many movies racism is portrayed in a way that white people are discriminating against black people and their culture. In this movie “Step Sisters” they play with the reality of racism being a two way street. That people of colour have such protection over their culture and they believe somethings are only for them and white people will ruin it for them. For example, in this movie the step champions disagree with Jamilah helping the “white party girls” how to step because they feel that is their dance and people of a different race should not be able to dance it. Jamilah on the other hand is a very opened minded and determined girl, therefore she doesn’t care that they are trying to go up against her “black” friends. She feels if it’s what they want to do they have a right to do so no matter their skin colour. Racism is shown again in the scene of the prize giving. The girls are up on the stage and being given their prizes, the judge gives the black sorority 1st place and the white girls don’t even place. The new leader of the black sorority gets told in secret by the judge, that they changed the results because they couldn’t let some new white girls take 2nd because its not “their dance”. Luckily the leader of the black sorority does the right thing and rewards the girls for dancing way better than they ever expected, that any white girls could. This can be related back to olden day life, in the sense of how the world used to be with racism. It was completely disgusting and everyone was segregated, but now people are more accepting of colour and don’t care whether you’re black or white.

I would consider “The Blind Side” by John Lee Hancock to be a similar film to “Step Sisters” because of the way Michael Oher has to overcome social challenges and the Tuohy family teach us that colour doesn’t matter, they show us this by the way they take him into their home without even knowing who he is. This movie has really helped me to take a step back and look at the way the world approaches these issues. It has really shocked and pleased me in the way we have all changed our outlooks on people’s skin colour and less people are racist today. 

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