Dear Gossips,

Is the needle moving?

TheNYT Times needlewas a thing on Twitterall last night. That needle was STRESS.

But maybe the needle is an appropriate metaphor. Is the needle moving? It’s been over a year since that Access Hollywood tape was leaked. It’s been over two months since The New York Times and The New Yorker exposed Harvey Weinstein. Last night, the needle moved in the right direction – but it didn’t swing. It was pushed. And the people who did the pushing were primarily women. Women who’ve risked so much to tell their stories. Women who shared their experiences even though they knew they would be vilified and challenged and not believed. Black women who continue to use their voices, even though they’re the last ones to be heard, and are often completely ignored. Like Tarana Burke, the creator of the #MeToo movement whose face wasn’t even included on TIME’s Silence Breakers Person of the Year cover last week (she was featured on the inside). Tarana Burke is moving the needle. And what’s even more incredible is that women like Tarana Burke are moving it out of love for a world that hasn’t treated them fairly.

I’d like to say here that I look forward to learning more from the Tarana Burkes of the world. But I also worry that that would be unfair to them. Because haven’t they been doing most of the work already? And usually by themselves? Hopefully that’s part of the answer. That they no longer have to do it alone.

This might be corny and if it is, I apologise. But I’d like to leave it on a fist pump from a baby whose mother knows something about what it means to fist pump: YEAH…but also… MORE.

Yours in gossip,

1zplay