#MeToo One Year On: What 14 Women in Hollywood Are Thinking Now
As some of the biggest names in entertainment packed the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills for ELLE’s annual Women in Hollywood celebration on Monday, we also marked just over a year since the #MeToo hashtag went viral. At last year’s event, Reese Witherspoon spoke of her assault at the hands of a director, while Kathleen Kennedy called for a Hollywood commission against harassment; we were all in awe of the women who spoke out, and united by the horror of so many revelations.
This year, we asked 14 women on the ELLE red carpet: How has the conversation changed in the past year? What still needs to happen? Here’s what they had to say.
“What I think will be wonderful is to see not just women come together, but men to come together with women, and that we all stand together in terms of this issue. I think it’s something that is important.”
“We have to have legislation change to protect us. That needs to happen. But there’s a solidarity and a real momentum behind this movement that has not slowed down-if anything it’s just picked up. And I think, in my entire career, that’s what’s different. I feel like there’s never been this kind of momentum where something has stayed in the conversation for this long, and that gives me real hope that this is the moment.”
“I think change is happening. Also, it’s about the support among women and really checking our own judgment. Just because you may deal with something a certain way, or you may not look at something as any type of misconduct or harassment, does not mean that might not be affecting someone else. So-more conversations about how to be more sensitive.”
“We’re actually pushing ourselves to be more intersectional. When you look at the founder of #MeToo [Tarana Burke], she herself is such an intellectual, and to be a woman of color I think really sets a precedent, because oftentimes in movements there’s a separation of identity-you have to choose what identity you take on, and what identity you advocate for. And what I’m so grateful for within the #MeToo movement and in the Black Lives Matter movement, or anything that’s really helping us create space in Hollywood, and creates space in all industries for women, is that there’s no longer that separation, and that we are advocating for the whole human, and that we are advocating for our stories, and you can exist as a whole person in this space.”
“I love how much everyone’s talking. I just don’t want everyone to get tired. I want everyone to continue to put their shoes on and keep walking, keep running, keep standing, keep screaming, keep using your voice. There’s so much going on politically, and I think we have a little bit of fatigue, and I think we are required as citizens of this country to take our vitamins and keep swinging.”
“I’m a Latina and even in female spaces of the dominant culture-white female spaces-we have been sort of shut out. But it seems like the tide is turning, like a new world order is happening, a shift. So people like me, otherized people, are being allowed to be in spaces like this and that’s really exciting. Not just be in the spaces, but have a voice in these spaces. Also, I’m a queer woman, so [my voice] is not quite celebrated, but it’s being heard, and that’s really exciting.”
“I feel like the conversation had just gotten started last year. I feel like the conversation has started to evolve. We’ve formed a community, we formed Time’s Up, and I feel like that’s spread to other communities, but I feel like we’re still just getting started. There are a million conversations yet to be said. We’re just getting ourselves off the ground, and I’m looking forward to where we’re going. You can’t undo 200 years of misogyny in a day, so we’ve got a lot of work to do.”
“I think what’s changed is awareness, obviously. I think that women feel that we can talk to each other now about things that have happened in our past, things that we’ve all been through, and how that’s affected us and shaped us. We can be more open in our work environment. I feel like there’s been a real shift in group camaraderie and support. Not enough has changed, as evidenced by our Supreme Court nomination-this notion that there has to be hard evidence, and the notion of belief and believing people’s stories. We just have a long way to go.”
“I’ve thought a lot about experiences that I had a young woman, that I took at the time as absolutely par for the course. So much so that I didn’t even quantify them as the really bad experiences they were, because it was just what was so. And you got used to it, and you absorbed it. I never had a really horrible experience that was shaming or injuring, but it was borderline. People putting pressure on me in job situations, directors. They would never say it so boldly, but the implication was clear. It was very, very difficult, but I didn’t realize how it was abusive, because it was the norm. I’m talking 40, 50 years ago. I think that it’s been a snowball, but I think that progress of every kind starts slow, like a train going up a hill, but then it’s a train going flat, and before you know it, it’s a train coming down the other side, and it's going really fast then, and that’s what’s happening now.”
“Men behave very differently now around women, I’ve noticed. I can’t speak for every room, but most of the rooms that I’m in, there’s less hugging, there’s less asking for follow-up meetings at dinner at 9 P.M., there’s less inappropriate innuendo, and there’s less mansplaining. People don’t interrupt women as much. We do definitely still have a long way to go, but I’ve noticed a different vibe in every single room, and there’s more of a feeling of respect and maybe even a bit of fear, which for a while isn’t a bad thing. I’m not mad at the fear that men feel-we’ve been afraid since the beginning of time. Maybe you’re going to be afraid for a couple of years, then you’ll empathize with us and know how we’ve been feeling all along.”
“It moves at a glacial pace. Any real, lasting change takes longer than everybody would like it to, but I do think that there has been a sea change, and once there has been that major change, you can never go back. I think we have now crossed a threshold, and once you’ve crossed it, there’s no returning to the point where you were before. My daughter, who’s 11, will be going into a different world than I did. I think she’s going to have an entirely different experience. I also think women feel much more empowered now to speak up, and I think you see how strong we are when we’re together. But it took one person to say something, and then another person said, ‘Oh wait, that happened to me.’ It’s a domino effect and once you’ve got that power in strength and numbers, there’s no stopping it.”
“What I’ve really seen is that there’s communication, and the realization that you’re not alone. As women, we’ve all gone through so many things, and you think that your issues and your obstacles have been so singular; society wanted you to feel that they were singular, and that way you never spoke out. And now, to see that you’re not alone, and to be able to look over things that happened in your life, and realize those moments were inappropriate, and those moments were wrong, and you might have been taken advantage of-being able to recognize that in yourself is a very big deal. It’s really beautiful to see people becoming comfortable with understanding what they’ve been through, and growing past that and connecting together.”
“I started in this business when there were no women in sight, hardly, except for maybe my script supervisor and my costumer. There were no women in executive positions, there were no women who were directors, no women on crews, other than make-up or hair. So that world has come alive now. We planted a lot of seeds for many, many, many years and now it’s blossoming, and it’s a good thing.”
“For so many years in Hollywood, it simply was a conversation that we didn’t have. Then all of these women got together and said, ‘Enough is enough.’ Very quickly, people are wanting to say we’re having the conversation too often and too much. But we’re laughing and continuing to have the conversation, and that is a big change. Forever in Hollywood, if you talked about these things you didn’t have a career.”
As some of the biggest names in entertainment packed the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills for ELLE’s annual Women in Hollywood celebration on Monday, we also marked just over a year since the #MeToo hashtag went viral. At last year’s event, Reese Witherspoon spoke of her assault at the hands of a director, while Kathleen Kennedy called for a Hollywood commission against harassment; we were all in awe of the women who spoke out, and united by the horror of so many revelations.
This year, we asked 14 women on the ELLE red carpet: How has the conversation changed in the past year? What still needs to happen? Here’s what they had to say.
"I'm not mad at the fear that men feel."
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