The Golden Girls Awards

This year’s Golden Globe awards are going to be talked about for years to come. Not just for the caliber of entertainment provided, but the caliber of the women talent that took the ceremony by storm. This year’s Golden Globes hall of fame was rife with roles, characters and shows that championed the cause of power-women.

Maggie Gyllenhaal summarized the year fittingly in her speech on winning best actress in a mini-series for The Honorable Woman: “I’ve noticed a lot of people talking about the wealth of roles for powerful women in television lately, and when I look around the room at the women who are in here and I think about the performances that I’ve watched this year, what I see actually are women who are sometimes powerful and sometimes not. Sometimes sexy, sometimes not. Sometimes honorable, sometimes not. And what I think is new is the wealth or roles for actual women in television and in film.”

A Times magazine article elaborates the characters that made some major waves: Maggie’s own role in The Honorable woman was of a character that steers into rather controversial territories in order to do the right thing for her family. The other women that featured in the category also stood for a lot more than just ingénues or sex objects. They were closer to reality- as Alison Tolman played a cop that wore shoes, and not heels; Frances Mcdormand and Jessica Lange played protagonists that weren’t the obviously likeable goody-two-shoes, but had their shares of evil stints. Such women, who weren’t images of perfection, but exhibited various layers- they were fierce, yet sensitive, they were powerful, yet vulnerable. Together, they kept it real. And this real made for hell-on interesting television.

What better indicator of the fact that the women have arrived, than the two riotous figures that held the show together:  Amy Poehler and Tina Fey. Both women are icons in their own rights. They were trailblazers in the women comedy scene, and the patrons at the awards kept calling them back year after year for how they boldly call everyone out on their claims. Political correctness is not for them, and through the powerful medium of humor- they put up a feminist exhibit. No one was spared, neither Bill Cosby, nor George Clooney! The highlight was when they joked about how Amal Clooney’s CV was better than her husband George Clooney, who was set to receive the lifetime achievement award.

Maggie Gyllenhaal at the Golden Globes
Picture By: People Style Watch

What’s more: A man won the best actor in a comedy series award for playing a woman! Jeff Tambor as Maura Pfefferman in "Transparent”- the series normalizing LGBT stigmas- was the man that pulled off this fete. And Julianne Moore won Best Actress in a Drama Motion Picture for "Still Alice." "No one wants to see a movie about an old woman," someone had told her.

Tweeple also felt the mood that was so thick in the air, and generously lauded the feminist undertones. A Huffington Post article compiled what everyone had to say:

“I'm in a black GAP turtleneck, Joe's skinny jeans, & Merrell boots this evening, accessorized with dog hair from @DaisyJDog. #GoldenGlobes” tweeted Nina Bargiel and“I am appreciating the amount of women with pockets on this red carpet. #GoldenGlobes” tweeted Elizabeth Plank as @feministabulous about the not-so-shallow affair this year.

“Cancel the awards and let Tina and Amy tell jokes that turn sexism on its head for 3 hours” tweeted a Rebecca Schinsky. Another one, a Rachel Simons, tweeted “Only 17 minutes into #GoldenGlobes and two women have talked about sexual assault. Mind blown.”

Indeed, this two-woman show was symbolic of what a long way the industry has come, in fashioning their leading ladies.

Original Source: Time Magazine, Huffington Post

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