The women will wear black.
But why?
The stated purpose behind the call for women to dress in black at tonight’s Golden Globes Awards is to protest sexual harassment in entertainment and other industries. It’s part of Time’s Up, the sweeping anti-harassment program spearheaded by many of Hollywood’s most powerful women. The initiative includes seeding a legal fund to benefit low-income victims of sexual assault and harassment in the workplace.
From the moment the first Harvey Weinstein story broke in The New York Times in October, this awards season was destined to be like no other. The Globes are the first of the major awards, and the hours-long, on-camera parade to the mics couldn’t happen without acknowledgement that the entertainment industry has been rocked to its core and forced into a new, in-progress way of conducting business.
But why the de facto dress code? Does asking women to converge to a visual norm strengthen their message about forcing change? Or does it infringe on the embrace of diversity, restricting to a degree the creativity involved in dress selection? Absent a clearly articulated explanation (and I haven’t found one), a few “whys” seem plausible. Sartorial sameness has long been employed as a tool of group protest, in photos
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