CANNES — Shonda Rhimes received uproarious applause when she reminded an audience that women are a force to be reckoned with.
“I think the first thing we have to start pushing against is, stop allowing other people to define us,” said 49-year-old Rhimes during a Cannes Lions discussion on Thursday to an excited room.
“I also think that giving people an opportunity to see themselves putting people in more positions of power.
“You have to remember that we’ve been in a society that’s been male-led for a very long time and [a project like this] didn’t happen, so as women began to take positions of power, things began to happen.”
The “Grey’s Anatomy” creator was talking about Dove’s project in partnership with Getty Images and Girlgaze, titled #ShowUs, which is a collection of more than 5,000 unedited photos of women around the world. Rhimes, who first partnered with Dove in 2017, said the only way to truly affect change is for women to continue to rise in the corporate world so that they can elevate even more people.
“I do think that as you climb a ladder you bring people with you,” she explained. “… You have to have more critics who are women. You have to bring other people along so that their voices are heard.
“The more people in the mix, the more people who have opinions, the less it’s about somebody telling you that you’re niche because there’s nothing niche about being 51 percent of the population.”
Although Rhimes spoke minimally in comparison to the rest of the all-female panel, which included bosses such as Girlgaze founder Amanda de Cadenet, Dove Global Vice President Sophie Galvani and Creative Insights Director at Getty Images Dr. Rebecca Swift, the Shondaland founder continuously had the crowd cheering for her pro-feminine stance.
Rhimes also praised the #ShowUs movement because she wants her three daughters to grow up in a visually inclusive world.
“I don’t want them growing up thinking there’s only one way they can look,” she said.