Happy Birthday to Oprah Winfrey who turned 60
today!
Have you listened to the wonderful speech Oprah
Winfrey gave in December upon accepting The Sherry Lansing Leadership Award at The Hollywood Reporter Women in
Entertainment breakfast?
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/video/oprah-winfreys-motivational-speech-at-665409
Very fitting for such a powerful woman to receive this
award from Lansing, the groundbreaking most powerful woman in Hollywood, who at
age 35 became the first female President of 20th Century Fox.
Winfrey defines Power as “Strength over time. Strength x Strength x Strength =
Power.”
“Your real power lies in the opportunity that
you have in this moment in time to use your life for something that really
matters,” Winfrey said. “The common denominator in human experience is
validation. Did you hear me? Did what I say mean anything to you?” She quoted Joseph
Campbell, who said, “The privilege of a lifetime is to be who you are.” Winfrey
said, “The real privilege is to use who you are to elevate the higher good of
everyone else.”
100 Women have not let their gender get in the
way of their career path as they were recently named to The Hollywood Reporter’s 2013 Women in Entertainment Power 100 List.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/hollywood-reporters-2013-women-entertainment-power-100-664497
I wonder how they felt about their position on
the list, whether they went up or down, that many of their ages were listed,
what they decided to wear for their power shot. How many of these women have
been called names behind their backs as they rose through the still male
dominated entertainment industry? How many helped other women along the way? Hey Number 101, don't feel bad. Oprah says she has been all over the list from #1 to OFF.
What percentage of “power” positions do the top
100 Women represent? If Geena Davis’s calculations were correct, I would say
17%.
I recently got to hear actor* Geena Davis speak
at Warner Bros. about her own Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. Davis,
best known for her roles in iconic female buddy movies Thelma and Louise and A
League of Their Own, calls herself an *actor, defined by Merriam-Webster as
“a person who acts.”
She says she developed a heightened sense of
awareness of how women are portrayed in media after those two roles and her own
experiences watching
G-rated movies with her young daughter. She
started to study the disparity and discovered that for every one
female-speaking character in family-rated films
(G, PG and PG-13), there were roughly 3 male
characters; crowd scenes rarely showed more than 17% women and that 3:1 ratio
hasn’t changed since 1946! Oh, and the #1 occupation of females in family
movies? Royalty. Even I don’t see those opportunities on LinkedIn!
Davis isn’t on a crusade, she just wants to
even out the playing field in a non-threatening to men way so that Forensic
Scientist isn’t the only new female occupation.
Read about Geena Davis’ Two Easy Steps to Make
Hollywood Less Sexist:
No matter what number we fall on a list we all
have the opportunity and the duty to lead those around us on a path as a
positive role model!
#OprahWinfrey #TheHollywoodReporter
#WomenInEntertainment #GeenaDavis
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