I picked my spot in the glass and called it my target

December 15, 2014 6:19 AM

Shonda Rhimes received the Sherry Lansing Leadership Award at The Hollywood Reporter's Women in Entertainment breakfast, and made an extraordinary speech. Video. Text.
posted by pjern (17 comments total)

Her characters on Scandal communicate through all those improbably long and uniterrupted speeches, whatever the situation, so you know she's got the speech writing experience.
posted by w0mbat at 6:55 AM on December 15, 2014

So I didn’t have to fight as hard, I had time to study the cracks. I had time to decide where the air felt the rarest, where the wind was the coolest, where the view was the most soaring. I picked my spot in the glass and called it my target. And I ran. And when I hit finally that ceiling, it just exploded into dust.

Like that.
My sisters who went before me had already handled it.
No cuts. No bruises. No bleeding.

Making it through the glass ceiling to the other side was simply a matter of running on a path created by every other woman’s footprints.

I just hit at exactly the right time in exactly the right spot.

Made me cry a little. Thanks, Shonda.
posted by rtha at 7:03 AM on December 15, 2014 [10 favorites]

"Think of them. Heads up, eyes on the target. Running. Full speed. Gravity be damned. Towards that thick layer of glass that is the ceiling. Running, full speed and crashing. Crashing into that ceiling and falling back. Crashing into it and falling back. Into it and falling back. Woman after woman. Each one running and each one crashing. And everyone falling.

"How many women had to hit that glass before the first crack appeared?"

Thank you, Shonda Rhimes.
posted by MonkeyToes at 7:04 AM on December 15, 2014 [11 favorites]

Oh my god, about halfway through, I wasn't sure where it was going, but it's just a perfect speech. What an amazing writer and speaker.
posted by xingcat at 7:18 AM on December 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

That was fucking fantastic. And proof in and of itself that she didn't just win for participating - being able and willing and sharp-elbowed enough to make such a speech does open and will open more doors. Hats off to her.
posted by Mchelly at 8:08 AM on December 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

She's awesome. And inspirational. And she does it all without cliches, without gladhanding, without pretense. And, like Mchelly says above, she's not afraid to throw elbows either. More power to her.
posted by blucevalo at 9:10 AM on December 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

god, it feels like this where I stand in tech, too. love her, love her, love herrrr. she summed it up.
posted by gusandrews at 10:06 AM on December 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Here’s why: It’s 2014.

This moment right here, me standing up here all brown with my boobs and my Thursday night of network television full of women of color, competitive women, strong women, women who own their bodies and whose lives revolve around their work instead of their men, women who are big dogs, that could only be happening right now.

Think about it.
...
15 years ago, that would not have been as true. There’d have been maybe a few women in Hollywood who could say yes or no. And a lot of D girls and assistants who were gritting their teeth and working really hard. And for someone like me, if I was very very VERY lucky, there’d have been maybe one small show. One small shot. And that shot would not have involved a leading actress of color, any three dimensional LGBT characters, any women characters with high powered jobs AND families, and no more than two characters of color in any scene at one time — because that only happened in sitcoms.

Women are free today to claim they aren't feminists, even when they are, because of feminists.
posted by Mental Wimp at 10:09 AM on December 15, 2014 [7 favorites]

i really didn't expect it but i totally teared up.
posted by nadawi at 10:44 AM on December 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

Phenomenal.
posted by grubi at 10:55 AM on December 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

I love this speech. The metaphor she uses allows for other women and people of color who haven't had as much success, even in 2014, because they've encountered more overt sexism and racism than Rhimes has. They have just set their targets for an area of the ceiling without as many cracks in it.
posted by twoporedomain at 12:08 PM on December 15, 2014 [4 favorites]

If you haven't clicked the links, I recommend watching instead of reading the speech.

I too had tears in my eyes.

While I don't want to diminish her own assertions that this is just a 'participation' award, she very clearly earned this. Her acknowledgements of those that came before her were an important reminder though.

Yeah, watch this if you haven't.
posted by el io at 3:46 PM on December 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Brilliant speech, and so cleverly delivered that its power sneaks up on you.
posted by Georgina at 4:02 PM on December 15, 2014

The thing that is clearest to me after watching this video (and after more than 10 years as a Grey's Anatomy fan) is that Cristina Yang's voice = Shonda Rhimes' voice. In almost every way.
posted by likorish at 5:09 PM on December 15, 2014

That was really something. Her delivery wasn't all full of high drama, but her words sure were. Put me in the "got all teary" column.
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 5:14 PM on December 15, 2014

Superb. Wow.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 5:58 PM on December 15, 2014

She makes great points in the speech, but I have a hard time getting excited about Shonda when the majority of her female characters regularly turn into whimpering idiots around the right (wrong) men, despite normally acting like intelligent strong women.
posted by ktkt at 12:58 AM on December 17, 2014