Celebrities put feminism back on world agenda
Rich and famous women wore black and called out inequality instead of responding to fawning questions about whose gowns they were wearing.
For once during a Hollywood awards ceremony, they ignored the industry imperative to thank their agents. Instead, they spoke about inequality, sexual harassment and abuse.
Some brought feminist activists as their dates. Others walked in pairs, challenging the deeply ingrained notion that professional women can’t be both friends and competitors.
They challenged both the entertainment industry’s status quo and society’s more generally.
What happened at Sunday night’s Golden Globe awards matters because we live in a celebrity- obsessed society. It’s now almost axiomatic that for substantive change to occur, it must be supported — if not embraced and led — by famous people.
After second- wave feminism crested in the 1970s, few celebrities have embraced it.
Their reluctance mirrors that of people generally.
Two years ago, for example, a Chatelaine poll of 1,000 Canadian women found that while the overwhelming majority agreed with feminist goals and aspirations, negative connotations associated with the word “feminist” meant that only three in 10 women identified themselves as such.
The word is toxic enough that
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s assertion of feminism was deemed extraordinary and gained him international renown.
For better and worse, celebrities are our role models.
So when some of the world’s most famous people espouse feminist ideals, they blow away the stereotype of feminists as humourless manhaters in schlumpy clothes.
By saying “time’s up” for sexual harassment and abuse and backing it with a legal defence fund that has already raised $ 16 million, their black- gowned militancy may have put those issues on the popular agenda, and have inspired others to join the fight for justice and equality.
And, out in front, on Sunday night, was Oprah Winfrey.
The first African- American woman to be honoured for her contributions to the entertainment industry, Winfrey’s acceptance speech was an inspiring, rallying cry for change.
“For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dared to speak their truth to the power, to those men. But their time is up,” she said. “Their time is up. Their time is up.”
There were fears among women’s activists that U. S. President Donald Trump’s stunning defeat of Hillary Clinton last year would kill progress on feminist issues. Others believed it would invigorate a new generation.
The first stirring was the worldwide Women’s March, a day after Trump’s inauguration.
The # MeToo movement started by civil rights activist Tarana Burke in 2006 to raise awareness about the pervasiveness of sexual abuse gained star- powered momentum in October after the first allegations of abuse were levelled at producer Harvey Weinstein.
By the end of 2017, high- profile men in the entertainment industry had been engulfed by allegations of sexual misconduct, including actor Kevin Spacey, comedian- producer Louis C. K., broadcasters Matt Lauer and Garrison Keillor, U. S. Senator Al Franken and, closer to home, Albert Schultz, co- founder and director of Toronto’s Soulpepper Theatre.
We’ve all heard the adage that wellbehaved people rarely make history. Less acknowledged is that provoking real change almost always requires that the ranks of the ill- mannered include the well- connected, whether it’s Emmeline Pankhurst, Gloria Steinem, Rosemary Brown or women in black on the red carpet.