ON MONDAY NIGHT in Los Angeles, Cate Blanchett attended the InStyle Awards ceremony to pick up the annual Style Icon award given out by the magazine.
Accepting her award on stage, Blanchett talked about what the term “style icon” means to her, as well as harassment of women because of what they wear:
Cate Blanchett at tonight's #InStyleAwards: "We all like looking sexy, but it doesn't mean we want to f---k you." pic.twitter.com/3FKFjJJVzC
— Andrea Mandell (@AndreaMandell) October 24, 2017
If you can’t see the video, click here.
A clip of the speech was captured in the audience by journalist Andrea Mandell and it’s been shared widely since. Blanchett began with a summary of what she thinks makes a style icon:
“It’s always those women who have been utterly themselves without apology, whose physical presence and aesthetic is really integrated in a non self-conscious way into a part of who they are, women who know how they look is not all of who they are, but just an extension of that.”
“It’s about women who wear what they want, when they want, and how they want to wear it”
And eventually got to why women shouldn’t be judged or harassed on what they wear and how they choose to look:
“We all like looking sexy, but it doesn’t mean we want to f**k you. No one says to Steve Bannon ‘you look like a bag of trash, do you want me to throw you out?’ but the comments that get said about what women wear on the red carpet… I mean, if you trawl through those trolls on the internet… just don’t.”
Jessica Chastain shared the video on Twitter, and from there it’s been retweeted tens of thousands of times
The line “We all like looking sexy, but it doesn’t mean we want to f**k you” particularly hit a nerve
A bit of swearing during an award speech went down well, as well as the articulate, important point itself
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