In case you missed it, last night a pretty low-key, under-reported event took place called the Oscars. Charming Brit Eddie Redmayne won best actor for his portrayal of Stephen Hawkings, Julianne Moore won for her turn in* Still Alice*, and Patricia Arquette won best supporting actress for her part in Richard Linklater’s* Boyhood*, a film 12 years in the making.
Rather than using her acceptance speech to spend forever thanking her drama teacher from school, Bob from down the road and all of that other conventional stuff though, Patricia used her platform to speak about equal pay for women.
‘To every woman who gave birth, to every taxpayer of this nation. It's our time to have wage equality once and for all in the United States of America.' She said as she accepted her award.
(It was around this time that fellow nominee and all-round awesome person Meryl Streep jumped up and shouted ‘Yes, yes, yes!’)
Backstage, Patricia continued to speak on the matter…
‘It's amazing, but it is time for us. It is time for women. Equal means equal. And the truth is, the older women get, the less money they make. The more children ‑‑ the highest percentage of children living in poverty are female‑headed households. And it's inexcusable that we go around the world and we talk about equal rights for women in other countries and we don't have equal rights for women in America and we don't because when they wrote the Constitution, they didn't intend it for women.’
Elsewhere, Reese Witherspoon, who was nominated for best actress for her part in Wild, used Instagram to get the hashtag #AskHerMore going, encouraging journalists to ask women more interesting stuff on the red carpet than just where their dress is from.
'This is a movement to say we’re more than just our dresses' Reese said.'There are 44 nominees this year that are women and we are so happy to be here and talk about the work that we’ve done. It’s hard being a woman in Hollywood, or any industry.'
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.