Dear Gossips,

After Time’s Up was launched earlier this, we started hearing about membership and committee meetings, how women in Hollywood were getting together to exchange information, to share with each other best practices, helping each other through negotiations. Because as we’ve all slowly started to realize, when they tell you not to talk about money, when they tell you not to let anyone else know what you know, it’s not an advantage to you, it’s an advantage to them, those who uphold the status quo. 

This is one of the many things Gina Rodriguez, Ellen Pompeo, Gabrielle Union, and Emma Roberts address in a new interview with Porter. I’ve embedded the full video below and if you have time today, or this week, watch it, as it’s basically an open door to what’s gone down at those Time’s Up collectives. The part where they discuss the power of disclosure among each other happens at the 11 minute mark. The part that went viral is this:

As so many others have pointed out on social media, look at Gabrielle’s expression, and Gina’s expression. They’re like… finally, finally we don’t have to be the ones who say it. Again though, that clip is even better in the full context of the conversation. And if you don’t have time to watch the entire video but you just want to appreciate that part of the discussion, where Ellen models allyship, start at 13:25 below. Right before Ellen “snaps”, you’ll hear that she says that she doesn’t mind being uncomfortable, that she doesn’t mind being inconvenient. Isn’t that what we were taught was the worst thing to be, as a woman? Inconvenient? A pain in the ass? 

I’ve been reading Rebecca Traister’s Good and Mad which is about “the revolutionary power of women’s anger” and the ways in which women have been conditioned to minimise, redirect, or suppress their anger, even when their anger is valid, because of the inconvenience it imposes on the people who uphold systems of oppression, because of how uncomfortable it makes those who benefit from systems of oppression. Ellen Pompeo is good and mad. Ellen Pompeo clearly isn’t interested in hiding her anger. Ellen Pompeo is here to be an inconvenience. But other women, less privileged women, women like Gabrielle and Gina, and especially women who aren’t famous, who don’t have the resources, have been doing it, on their own, without support, for a long, long time. The takeaway for me is that Ellen has been listening and learning. Which is the goal of these meetings, which is what so many of you have been sharing with Duana and me through Show Your Work. We’ve heard from women in so many industries who’ve been getting together regularly, opening up the dialogue on subjects that have long been discouraged – money, benefits, hiring, promotion – with surprising and motivating results, instead of the division that we were told would inevitably happen. Thank you for sharing your experiences with us. We look forward to hearing more. 

Yours in gossip,

Lainey