Our acceptance of gender as a spectrum rather than a binary continues to grow throughout society. Today, there is a strong emphasis on the respect of people’s pronouns and the normalization of different gender identities.
Charlize Theron is a prominent advocate for gender equality, as she is raising a transgender daughter. She told Jimmy Fallon, “I am raising two beautiful, proud, black African girls and I want them to find themselves and not necessarily push my ancestry on them.” When she adopted her daughter August, she believed that the baby was male. However, at age 3, she told Theron that “I am not a boy!”
The South African native has long supported LGBTQ+ rights. In 2009 she was in a relationship with actor Stuart Townsend and refused to marry him until marriage equality was legal in the United States.
There have been motions toward gender neutral award ceremonies in the last few years. The most noteworthy being Sam Smith, who identifies as gender non-binary. Smith asked that their pronouns be respected at the Brit Awards, considering that the “Best Male Artist” and “Best Female Artist” would make placing them in a category difficult.
Theron understands this struggle and hopes for the abolition of separate male and female awards soon. A few award ceremonies, such as the Grammys and MTV Movie and TV Awards, have already made the move toward gender neutral awards by scrapping Best Male and Female categories. Emma Watson was the first actor to ever win a gender-neutral MTV acting award. She elegantly addressed the topic by saying, “The only distinction should be between each outstanding performance.” We should see a change in the award titles in the next few years, just as society has done by embracing the idea of a non-binary world.
Theron played a bisexual woman in her 2017 movie, “Atomic Blonde.” When asked, she revealed that she had no problem with playing the character and that at this point, the idea should be normalized. She said, “It’s something I feel is not represented enough in cinema … I feel that when you make movies, if you’re going to hold that mirror up and reflect society, then you should reflect society.” We can only hope that more actors and filmmakers have the same view as her in the future. As society becomes more progressive, shouldn’t the world of Hollywood too?
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