In her presidential speech accepting the Cecile B. DeMille Award for outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment, Oprah Winfrey spoke passionately about her pride in being the first black woman to have won the award (awarded since 1952 to 49 men and 14 women in total), and about how she was inspired to pursue her dreams when watching as a little girl in 1964 Sidney Poitier become the first black person to win an academy award for best actor.
But overall her speech and the Golden Globes ceremony in general was a celebration of our times in which women are speaking up to men in power and saying no to their abuses of that power, with most women at the ceremony wearing black in solidarity with those women who have spoken out as part of the Me Too Movement and Oprah saying to a standing ovation:
“For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dared to speak their truth to the power of those men. But their time is up.”
Also in solidarity with this feminist movement the Big Little Lies actresses brought female activists to the ceremony as their guests rather than their male partners, while a female-centred and anti-sexual-abuse-themed film, Three Billboards, won best film and various other awards.
So it would seem that this is not a passing news story or a political moment in time to be replaced by the next big noise, at least not if the powerful women of the world, like Oprah, whose mother was a domestic cleaner, and like all of us in our own brave, little and big ways, have anything to do with it. And they/we do.
Oprah for president 2020? Sounds like a golden idea to me.
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