Patricia Arquette Calls For Wage Equality During Oscar Acceptance Speech

Patricia Arquette brought down the house during tonight’s Academy Awards with an Oscar acceptance speech for her role in Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood” that doubled as a rallying call for equal rights and wage equality for women.

The actress went down her list of of thanks — which included cast and crew (another nod to egalitarianism not always seen in Hollywood) and her “beautiful, powerful nominees” — and then, nearing the end, she cried, “It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all!”

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“For every taxpayer and every citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else’s equal rights. It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all! And equal rights for women in the United States!”

The room erupted in cheers, and the camera caught fellow nominee Meryl Streep’s delight and solidarity with Arquette’s sentiments, as she pumped her fist in the air grinning. Jennifer Lopez seemed just as enthusiastic.

Women in Hollywood make less than their male counterparts, just like they do in the rest of the country. Hollywood is still shocked that a female over the age of 22 can carry a movie (see Sandra Bullock, Gravity).

Conservatives like to blame “liberal Hollywood” for everything bad in the country (read: equal rights for others), but Hollywood is a corporate business just like any other. When it comes to women’s rights, they are way back in the dark ages like the rest of the country.

Not all political speeches go over well at the Oscars, but Patricia Arquette rocked the room because pretty much every woman in that room, and every woman watching her, agrees. It’s our time. It’s time for wage equality and equal rights for women in the U.S.

Sarah Jones

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