Golden Globes draws attention to sexual harassment and inequality

The 75th Golden Globes awards took place in Los Angeles Sunday night and what’s usually a night of colorful glamour and fun was more about bringing attention to a pervasive problem in Hollywood and in many other industries–sexual harassment and inequality.

The Golden Globes red carpet was more like a sea of black as high profile celebrities from film and television donned black attire in solidarity against sexual harassment and assault.

Actress Meryl Streep said, “We’re standing up together, we’re drawing a thick black line between yesterday and tomorrow and the way things used to be done, the way business used to be conducted. It’s not going to be that way any more.”

The all-black call to action is part of an explosive movement that all began when mega producer Harvey Weinstein was accused of sexual harassment by multiple women. This triggered an avalanche of accusations against other high-powered men in entertainment and beyond.

The issue was addressed head on from the very start of the Golden Globes. Host Seth Myers used humor, saying: “Marijuana is finally allowed and sexual harassment finally isn’t.”

Others struck a much more serious tone–in her acceptance speech, Best Actress in Limited Series Nicole Kidman, who played an abused woman in “Big Little Lies” said, “This character that I played represents something that is the center of our conversation right now: abuse. I do believe and I hope that we can elicit change through the stories we tell and the way we tell them.”

But no one brought the room to its feet with an impassioned speech like the first black woman to receive the Cecil B. DeMille award, Oprah Winfrey. She acknowledged the crucial need to support the press.

“We all know that the press is under siege these days. We also know it’s the insatiable dedication to uncovering the absolute truth that keeps us from turning a blind eye to corruption and to injustice.”

And Oprah, of course, addressed sexual harassment and the “Time’s Up” movement that is leading the charge against it. “For too long women have not been heard or believed, if they dared to speak the truth about the power of those men. But their time is up!

The Golden Globes did, of course, hand out several awards to honor the best in film and television. The surprising big winner in film was Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, which took home four awards including Best Drama Motion Picture.

In television, the HBO mini series Big Little Lies was also awarded four globes.

The Golden Globes 2018 are now over but this is just the beginning of the fight against sexual harassment and inequality. The call to action to wear black on the red carpet will last through the entire awards season and hashtag me too and Times up, those movements aren’t going away anytime soon.