If previous year’s Women in Hollywood arrived in the midst of a reckoning, then what occurs now, in the consequence of the seismic change that was the #MeToo trend? This year’s honorees are distinguished by a question: Where do we leave from here?
For the 2019 Ladies in Hollywood, the answer arrives with plotting a path foreign.“No logic in going down that similar Old Town Road” says ELLE Icon Dolly Parton. “We brought other roads to go to.”
Yes, Parton was referencing her judgment to pass on an affiliation with Lil Nas X, but her directive clasps true for all. New roads are overseeing projects that thump the lid off once-taboo issues, like Bombshell, aa movie that follows the Fox News crime involving Roger Ailes.
“The story it is trying to tell is wider than Fox News. It is much more about sexual abuse and the women,” tells Nicole Kidman, who acts as Gretchen Carlson.
Mindy Kaling’s Late Night examines the power imbalance of a writers’ compartment, where a woman of color sits at the table among an ocean of white men.
“That experience [of aa variety hire] is so common for so many women who are striving to do something that they were not educated to do, and who have the intention, and who do not see people who look like them achieving,” Kaling says.
And even more tales of barrier-breaking await: Natalie Portman reflects on the contemporary definition of feminism (“When you exhibit a woman being an exact human being, with the terrible as well as the good, that is feminist”).
Scarlett Johansson examines the sense of being arrested in Marriage Story; Zendaya acknowledges her daily battle with suspicion; Gwyneth Paltrow indicates her “intention has been revealed” as a firm founder, and the three-woman ambition team of Queen & Slim have a significant dialogue about the added burden they carry with their craft. We can all admit that the foundation was set—now it is time to raise the ceiling.
