Educational Media Reviews Online

Tick Tock! Tick Tock! Tick Tock! Turning 35 alerts Anjanette Levert that her biological clock is ticking away and she has still not been able to get on the bandwagon of marriage, children and family. Anjanette realizes that choosing to be educated and pursuing a professional career has left her behind many other African American women of her age who are married and raising a family. In this well thought out personal documentary, Anjanette shares the predicament that she is in through a medley of humorous and poignant interpretations of life decisions.

For Anjanette, being smart and pursuing an education and a professional career has driven men farther away from her! She belongs to a group of single women friends (Sassy Sistas) who meet and discuss issues they face as they pursue their choices in life. Anjanette finds that not having a boy friend only aggravates the problem of remaining unmarried. She decides she has to find a man – an African American educated man. She is excited to find an African American Men’s club that lets women join for free! She hopes to find the man of her dreams here, but to her horror, finds instead that although women could join for free, they had to be less than 35 years old and hand in a full length photograph. Her chances for finding an African American educated male look even slimmer when she also finds out that of the 12% African Americans that have a college degree, 65% are women!

The documentary clearly exposes the fundamental quagmire of choices women have to make early on in their life that have deep and binding implications on their future. Anjanette’s tortuous pursuit of playing catch up with the choices of marriage and family resonates with the thoughts of most young women today as they face their choices of career or family. Further, the documentary also provides important insights into the differing expectations from boys and girls as they are raised today. Boys are brought up to expect to pursue their dreams and have a support structure available for them. Girls however, are raised to be independent, pursue a career as well as provide the support (but not necessarily receive the support) structure for their family. Anjanette clearly exposes the contradiction in such a precedence and structure for women to make reasonable decisions in their lives. She finally decides that for her as an educated career woman “marriage might be a diversion, but not life itself.”