OPINION:
What courage, what bravery, what an unmitigated bold stroke of in-your-face protest — Hollywood actresses attending the 2018 Golden Globes have agreed to don black for the event, to send a solidarity-sistah message around the world that goes like this: Thou shalt not sexually harass.
People Style gives a clue to the inner workings of these fiendishly clever minds, with an opener of the story that reads: “The red carpet will be all-black at the 2018 Golden Globes.”
No reason a good protest can’t be fashionable, folks. Nothing like black to set off red. Nothing like a black silky full-length gown on a bright red carpet to draw the camera eye upward.
After all, as the motto goes, sexual harassment may not be pretty — but we are.
“Multiple sources confirm to PEOPLE that many major actresses — including presenters and nominees (Jessica Chastain, Meryl Streep and Emma Stone are among those nominated) — are planning to wear all-black looks as a symbol of protest against harassment in Hollywood,” People Style wrote.
Right. That’ll show ’em. That’ll keep ol’ Harvey Weinstein in his place.
“All female actresses attending the Globes are protesting by just wearing black gowns,” a source told PEOPLE.
But here’s the thing — or things.
Does sexual harassment really need a protest color — or a silent protest movement at all? Is there, in other words, anyone out there who could possibly stand for sexual harassment?
At first blush, the black-dress brigade seems a bit like Nancy Pelosi’s women’s suffrage movement rally, when she pressed all the Democratic women to don white for President Donald Trump’s address before Congress. But Hollywood’s all-female protest is lamer. Why? At least Pelosi’s movement had a counter-movement of sorts — at least there were Trump supporters the Dem women could contrast with, stand separate and apart from, rally against, so to speak.
Who stands for sexual harassment?
Who is there to serve as the so-called “Other Side” to these women — the counterprotesters, so to speak?
Ostensibly, it would be all men. But that only makes sense if all men were sexual harassers. Already, the protest crumbles. Then there’s this: The Globes is a formal event. Is black really that brave a color to wear anyway?
Puke green — now that’d be a color that says “We’re women, we’re angry, and we’re here to say we’re not going to take it any more.” Yes, there’s a color with a message. But black?
That’s formal wear. That’s fashionable wear. That’s actually quite appropriate wear for the Tinsel Town tinsel.
Come on ladies. Surely, there’s a deeper level in there in which to dig. Maybe Streep, for instance, could swap out her black dress for a T-shirt with an anti-pedophilia message atop an image of her pedophile pal Roman Polanski, something along the lines of a “Stop the Drugging and Sexual Abuse of 13-Year-Old Girls” — you know, the kind that’s contained within a red circle slashed by a red line.
Now there’s a camera-pleaser — a real red-carpet moment.
But putting on the black for a black-tie affair? That’s not a protest movement. That’s simply dressing for the occasion.
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