#AskHerMore Calls Out The Sexist Red Carpet Ritual Of Reducing Talented Women To Their Dresses

FotorCreatedThe red carpet may be fun to watch, but it’s a tradition steeped in sexism. We can do better. It’s 2015 and we’re still content to focus on what talented female artists are wearing, rather than what their achievements are.

Some would argue that the red carpet is mere pageantry — that we shouldn’t focus on changing the dynamic. The Oscars celebrate an artist’s achievement; it’s not a fashion show. Watching women be repeatedly reduced to objects on the red carpet year after year is tiresome. It’s archaic. So some decided to attempt to shift the conversation.

The Representation Project’s #AskHerMore campaign begs us to look at the way the media treats female talent on awards show red carpets. And if you really think about what we do to women on those carpets, it’s hard not to be dismayed. They posted a call to action on their site this week:

Even at the Oscars, where we celebrate the highest artistic achievements in film, reporters often focus more on a woman’s appearance than what she has accomplished. This Sunday night we’re encouraging the media to #AskHerMore!

We’re using the hashtag on Twitter to send suggested questions to reporters, in real-time, whenever they risk devaluing the accomplishments of women in Hollywood, and to spark deeper conversations in front of a national television audience.

The idea inspired hundreds of tweets, begging presenters to take the red carpet questioning in a different direction. Whether you agree that the way we treat female celebrities on the red carpet is problematic or not, it’s worth the conversation.

It’s hard to separate the pageantry of the red carpet with the purpose of an awards show — to reward artists for doing amazing work. It’s even harder still with the media tradition of dissecting what women wear, which designers are highlighted, and the ridiculously expensive jewelry dripping from their bodies. There is still away to approach women without making them feel like objects when they are walking a red carpet into a professional event.

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 Case in point: here’s Cate Blanchett calling out an E! News cameraman for panning up and down her body on the SAG red carpet last year. And it’s not just their treatment on the red carpet – women are grossly underrepresented in film. Which makes minimizing their talent on the red carpet by focusing on the dress they chose to wear even more damaging. Variety points to a new study that says each year we’re seeing women on screen who are “less defined” than their male counterparts:

A larger percentage of male characters were shown in the workplace ”” 59% to 41% ”” while 85% of men had identifiable jobs, compared to 75% of women. Sixty one percent of male characters were identified only by their professional roles, whereas only 34% of females have that kind of designation. In contrast, 58% of females were identified by the roles they assume in their personal lives such as wives or mothers. That’s the case for only 31% of male characters.

Trivializing and objectifying women on the red carpet is a symptom of a much larger problem in Hollywood of reducing their worth in general.

Here are a few examples of tweets from last night’s Oscars event that attempted to elevate the conversation around women on the red carpet.

 

 

 

(photos: Getty Images)

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