Rose McGowan, one of the actresses who has been front and center at speaking against sexual assault in Hollywood, has spoken out against fellow actresses who will be wearing black dresses at the Golden Globes as a means of protest.
“Actresses, like Meryl Streep, who happily worked for The Pig Monster [Harvey Weinstein], are wearing black @GoldenGlobes in a silent protest,” wrote McGowan in a now deleted tweet reported by Ny Daily News. “YOUR SILENCE is THE problem. You’ll accept a fake award breathlessly & affect no real change. I despise your hypocrisy. Maybe you should all wear Marchesa.” (Marchesa is the label co-founded by Harvey Weinstein’s ex-wife Georgina Chapman.)
A few days ago, PEOPLE Magazine reported that actresses in Hollywood such as Jessica Chastain, Meryl Streep and Emma Stone would be banding together to wear all black dresses to protest, what seems to be, a revolution against rape culture within Hollywood.
“All female actresses attending the Globes are protesting by just wearing black gowns,” a source told PEOPLE. This form of protest, however, has generated controversy with many people criticizing it for trivializing the issue at hand, especially since many actresses already do wear black to awards shows.
After Streep was quoting saying that “the thing abound Harvey Weinstein is that he is sort of the most gargantuan example of a kind of disrespect that permeates every industry, every enterprise,” McGowan responded by saying “No, Meryl, IT’S A FUCKING CRIME. You are such a lie # ROSEARMY.” She interpreted Streep’s quote as trivialization, as well.
https://twitter.com/rosemcgowan/status/939118902809837569?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Back in October, in a statement to the Huffington Post, Streep did speak out against the wave of accusations against Weinstein, saying that his actions were “disgraceful,” and she considered the women speaking out “heroes.” She went on to clarify that not everyone around him new about the sexual assault “open secrets.” She included this, because Streep, as stated above by Rose McGowan, has worked with Harvey Weinstein in films and even went on to win an Academy Award for Best Actress for the lead role of Margaret Thatcher in Iron Lady.
Meryl Streep went on to respond to McGowan in a statement to the Huffington Post saying, “It hurt to be attacked by Rose McGowan in banner headlines this weekend, but I want to let her know I did not know about Weinstein’s crimes, not in the ’90s when he attacked her, or through subsequent decades when he proceeded to attack others. I wasn’t deliberately silent. I didn’t know. I don’t tacitly approve of rape. I didn’t know. I don’t like young women being assaulted. I didn’t know this was happening.” She went on to to say how sorry she was that McGowan saw her as an “adversary.”
