Congratulations to Patricia Arquette. “Boyhood” was a great flick and she deserved to win for her role as Best Supporting Actress.
I’m typically not one of those people who boycotts movies or an actor’s politics. But here, it’s different. I have to pipe up.
Because she’s just flat out wrong, and I want little girls and grown women alike to know that things are much better than she would want you to believe. So here goes.
Truly, Arquette had me until her little ill-timed rant on gender equality on the Oscar stage Sunday night.
“To every woman who gave birth to every citizen and taxpayer of this nation, we have fought for everybody else’s equal rights,” she said. “It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America.”
Time and again, studies and data and antecdotes show that we do have gender equality in the United States. That is, when women act like men, we make as much or more money than men. Here’s what we have to do: leave our babies in the hands of others and immediately return to work post-birth; leave our elderly parents in the hands of others to age — and die — so we can work; and aggressively negotiate salary and wage increases.
But we girls, you see, time and again choose different. For whatever reason, we are addicted to those little souls we bring into the world. We choose to take Tuesday afternoon off without pay for the school play. As American women, we have choice, and there is nother better than seeing my babies center stage.
Now, let’s negotiate wages like the boys and we’ve got the rest covered. I run my own business. It’stough at times, but never have I ever had a male client suggest I should demand a lower wage just because I’m a girl.
Equality, by necessity, includes choice.
Arquette should get her facts straight and understand that choice has downsides, too. But she needs to decide if money is all that matters to her.
I see school plays as priceless.
Jessica K. Peck (jessica@jpdenver.com) is a Denver-based attorney.
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